Animal Farm

“All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others” a very famous line from George Orwell’s Animal Farm a book I was forced to read at high school, however unlike some of the other compulsory reads this one was quite interesting albeit my interest in social constructs and politics was still fairly low at that time.


For those that haven’t read the book it is George’s commentary on Communism, where the animals on a farm revolt and throw off the oppression of the human farmer and run the farm themselves. I can’t recall how the book ends but given that George was not a fan of communism it probably ends badly for the animals.

I was reminded of this line for a couple of reasons but principally because I was listening to a radio article on poverty in America. The setting is only of passing interest as the commentary was probably applicable to most developed western economies. They were discussing the outcomes of various assistance programs, who were the clients, how they could be helped and if that help worked long term after the programs were withdrawn.

In part they were talking about LBJ’s (Lyndon Johnston) “war on poverty” which was a group of programs he initiated. It seems that US Presidents are keen on “wars” as another one had the “war on want” and of course we have had the “war on terror”. War is a very emotive term of course but it also carries connotations of direct, goal focused action with certain outcomes. LBJ’s war was really a skirmish as he lost the next election with his opponents attacking the idea of big government versus personal responsibility, a fairly constant battle ground in US and other democracies, and dismantled a lot of his programs.

The idea of poverty as a personal responsibility is relatively recent and arose with the erosion of the class system in England on the back of the industrial revolution. Previously you were either born poor or rich and as there was no movement between the classes it clearly wasn’t your fault you were born poor, it was just your burden lot to bear. Once we had the rise of commerce and “self made men” then the conclusion became “if they can do it so can you” This idea is very powerful today and we all have a bit of “if they just got their act together” thinking in our attitude to the poor.

So what struck me about the tone of the conversation was the mostly unspoken but implied contrasting views on what constituted poor. This lead me to consider my own definition and the one that sprang to mind was the media sound bit phrase that anyone earning less than X% of the average wage was “in poverty”. But this isn’t a real definition of poverty is it, it is really a statement about a standard of living expectation.

Given that the basis for the measure is a statistical normal curve of income levels what this really argues for is a narrowing (?) of the bell curve. i.e. a taller curve so that everyone is more closely aligned to the centre. In fact the logical conclusion of this type of measure is that we should all earn the average and hey presto no poverty.

But are all animals created equal should we all be paid the same. I suspect most people would answer no we shouldn’t all be paid the same (especially those on higher incomes). So that means the pigs (the authors of the opening quote in the book) were right some animals are more equal than others. If one person is “worth” more than another it is hard to argue we are all equal. And if we are not equal what does that say about some other ideas founded on the basis we are all equal, like universal suffrage for example.

Strength and Honour

So I own very few DVD’s as there are not that many movies that I have a great desire to see more than once, one that I do own is Gladiator. In the event that you don’t know the film it is the story of a Roman General who falls from grace, endures and then rises to triumph again. Part of the reason I bought the DVD is that there is an opening battle scene that sounds particularly good on a surround sound system where you can hear the arches fire the arrows over your head and pots of flaming oil likewise catapulted over you to crash into the trees with a very satisfying explosion.


Prior to the commencement of the battle we find our General delivering the pre match pep talk which is suitably stirring before they all ride off to kill some Germanic tribe. At the end of his speech he concludes with a salute which includes the phrase “Strength and Honour” to which his troops all respond likewise “Strength and Honour” The historic accuracy of this particular phrase seems to be doubtful but it has returned to my memory while I was turning over the issue of what it means to be a man in today’s society, a topic I alluded to in my last post.

I had started with the idea of a sort of bullet list of things a man might ideally be and first on that list was Strength as it is an obvious differentiator between the sexes. In this context I am talking about physical strength and while I accept there are wide range of male and female examples, as a statement of averages men in general have the capacity to lift heavier weights etc than women. They also have greater genetic capacity in this arena, you only need to look at the extremes of body building to see that women never reach the gigantic size of some of the steroid enhanced males in this activitiy.

So this initially physical attribute has morphed into some of the other things we like our men to be, they should be able to protect their loved ones. They should be “handy” with tools etc, which I believe to be a manifestation of the heavy lifting sometimes associated with this type of task. They should be less emotional at times of crisis, which is not to say that men don’t have emotions or shouldn’t share but when the ship is sinking we admire those that can put aside the immediate concerns of fear etc and act for the good of the group. Women do this too especially in relation to their children but we still operate on the “women and children to the life rafts first” system. Even some of the negative things that men get up to like drinking too much with their mates is something to do with being the strongest and therefore last man standing. So a lot of being a man is derived from being strong one way and another.

Now a muscle bound man who simply knows how to be “strong” is to be avoided as their solution to all problems will probably be from the school of “hit it harder”. A man simply with strength is probably a danger to themselves and almost certainly to others. We need a modifier of that strength and it comes in the second part of our pseudo roman saying, Honour.

To act with honour, which implies “doing ones duty”, “a gentleman never tells”, “to protect my good name”, “a man’s word is his bond” and other clichés in both words and actions are bound up in the concept of Honour and acting with honour. We respect and admire people who can act with integrity and while this is not a trait reserved for men it is perhaps even more important to have when you are cast into the role of acting with strength. It is also the part that allows men the freedom to be caring and nurturing and not devoid of feelings to be giving and appreciative of the world. To honour learning etc is mans route to the intellectual to balance the physical.

So to be a man is “strength and honour” however it troubles me to have to base my foundation of manliness on a made up pseudo roman quote, but being fortunate to have been born in Aotearoa I don’t have to I have the word Mana to turn to and guide my quest for manliness. Mana in my mind encompases strength and honour and more. So to act in a way that enhances my Mana this, I think, is what it is to be a man today as it was yesterday and as it will be tomorrow.

And – which is more – you’ll be a man my son

The above is the last line of a poem by Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1936) someone who was in no doubt about the qualities one should possess or the activities one should indulge in to be described as a man. He had the fortune (from his perspective) of being born British at a time when “The Empire” was at its height and the roles of men and women were well defined. To put that in context women only achieved limited suffrage in 1918 and it wasn’t till 1928 in Britain that universal suffrage was achieved, both events relatively at the end of Rudyard’s life.


In 2010 the role of men is not so clear cut as I suspect it was in 1910. In today’s society we have seen the “rise” of women which has had a profound influence on the traditional gender roles. One good example is the often quoted statistic is that the majority of students entering university in New Zealand are now female in contrast to only a few generations ago when women were achieving firsts. The first Otago University Graduate was 1897, in Law and many other degrees had to wait much longer to boast a female graduate.

So I mention all of this as I had some “mans” yoghurt in the weekend. I have had plenty of what was presumably women’s yoghurt before without realising I could be putting my man status in jeopardy. What makes it “mans” yoghurt is that the company making the stuff is running a deliberate advertising campaign targeting men and it uses descriptions of what is manly to make an admittedly tongue in cheek humorous pitch at the male consumer. Which is fair enough, but it took my attention as it is only one of a number of campaigns that are currently around targeting the idea of “being a man” There are a couple of beer adverts, which admittedly are always blokey in their approach, however these have a theme of freedom from the tyranny of the way you are supposed to act. Then there is the road safety campaign which uses “being in control” as a manly attribute and a hook for its campaign, something I suspect that will be more effective than the blood and gore campaign they have been running up till now.

All of these campaigns were likely to have been subjected to a focus group study prior to going to air. A fairly standard marketing technique where you ask a group of consumers about your product and its attributes etc as well as potentially commenting on the effectiveness of the campaign. So the conclusion would seem to be that men are interested in being men, perhaps no surprise there. Of interest is that they need the idea to be reflected in the media and do not have the confidence to already be men. The slightly worrying point might be that they may be looking to advertisers to provide them with the answer to what a man should be. This is an opportunity for men to learn something from women who have been beset by the media telling them what it is to be a woman and not always (possibly never) a positive thing.

Clearly advertisers don’t have social agenda’s, they have a desire to sell their product so this does not make them a reliable source of information on any topic really and as much as we already know this it is amazing how many of these messages get picked up and incorporated into the main stream.

The question for me remains, why are men currently so uncertain of what it means to be a man, is it a wider set of choices, is it a lack of fathers in some families, has society been “feminised” Or am I reading this wrong are men still safe and secure in their manhood. As a sample of one I don’t feel too bothered but then I am old fashioned and a bit of a dinosaur on these matters sometimes. Probably more to come on this topic but in the mean time here is the poem

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master,
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

What have you got to lose.

Recently I came across some thoughts on 5 things you can do to make you happier. They struck me as sensible small things we could all do without turning our lives upside down and so unlike a lot of self help advice might actually work. So here they are.


Accept unhappiness, this one seems a little odd but the point is happiness is not achieved by the avoidance of unpleasantness. This is there can be no light without dark type of thinking to be happy you need to have a contrast and also an acceptance that not everything in the world is pleasant. A trivial example but not confronting the neighbour about his tree may avoid a difficult conversation but you will be stuck with the tree.

Share real time with family and friends, the research shows that the more time you spend with the people you care about the happier you will be. These should be real face to face interactions without distractions, eg watching TV with the family is good but better is no TV. Emailing friends is ok but no substitute for a sit down conversation over coffee. Arrange a face to face conversation with someone you care about today.

Do some exercise. Well apart from all the other benefits 20mins of moderate exercise 3 times a week will make you feel happier. The good news is a walk with the dog will do it and if you don’t have a dog become a volunteer walker for the SPCA and if you hate dogs (well you should try and get over that cause you are missing out) you can always walk yourself or better yet a walk with someone you care about. In other words you don’t have to turn into a multisport nut just a little bit will do it.

Do more of less. We have a tendency to cram a lot into our lives and then be busy running from one thing to the next. Instead pick out the activities you really like and spend more quality time focused on the activities that bring you the most joy. We have all met someone who is passionate about something and it seems to consume their lives and when you talk to them about whatever it is you can see them light up. Well you don’t need to be that obsessed but you can see the joy a focus on some things you love could bring you rather than trying to do a little of everything.

Keep a gratitude journal. At the end of the day note down in a journal the good things that happened in the day. Just a few notes not an essay. Eg had coffee with Jim, heard a great song on the radio, my boss said thanks for a job well done. So for some bosses that last one might be a stretch but you get the idea, you don’t have to write much and the items don’t need to be big. I reckon even the worst days should be able to yield three.

That was the list, all of them are small ideas and achievable so give it a go what have you got to lose.

The Myth of Sisyphus

Stu’s comment on one of my earlier entries posed a question "what is comfort?" which in the context of the blog I chose to reinterpreted into What is happiness? My quick answer was “you get to choose” eg whatever you want it to be, which on the face of it looks either flippant or designed to be clever (in the negative use of the word) It was neither and so I thought I would expand on that thought.


Albert Camus (pronounced Kamay) 1913-1960 was a French Philosopher who among his credits was a Noble Laureate in Literature. So he is contemporary (as these things go most famous philosophers are long since dead) and clearly no dummy. He is mostly associated with a theory in Philosophy known as Absurd. As I understand it (I have no formal philosophical training) in a search for the meaning of life there are various ways you can go, one is to look for an external meaning most commonly god. Alternatively you can look for an internal meaning a Platonic view of living a good life as dictated by universal laws (not from god but more from nature) Or you could decide that life has no meaning and is an “Absurd” enterprise.

Faced with the dilemma of a meaningless life most philosophers end up abandoning the idea and arrive back at God or Reason. Camus did not but embraced the idea of a meaningless life and focused on what the logical conclusion would be. Is it suicide for example in the face of futility? Camus uses The Myth of Sisyphus to explore this idea.

Sisyphus was a Greek King who managed to capture and imprison death so that humans would no longer die. The gods freed death and to punish Sisyphus they granted him immortality but he was condemned to roll a rock to the top of a hill only to see it roll down to the bottom again over and over again. Among other ideas explored by Camus he posed the question “what does Sisyphus think on his walk down the hill?” You see in his “free” time of walking down to resume his labours he has two (significant) possible thoughts. The negative option of reflecting on the futility of the task and the doomed existence that is now his lot. Or he can choose to think about a job well done on reaching the top and look forward to the challenge of achieving the outcome again.

The fact that the task is immediately undone as soon as it is completed does not make the task any less worthy. As soon as we are born our life starts to run out with each passing day getting shorter and shorter but this does not negate the value of life.

A lot of life can seem like rock rolling and our attitude to that will be an important part of our happiness with our lot. Even if you do not subscribe to an “absurd” view of life the active choosing to see your rock rolling as a job well done and not a hopeless exercise in never ending futility can’t really hurt now can it. So you choose, choose happiness.

Speed Kills......

Clearly not or there would be F1 drivers with their heads exploding when they reached the magic speed at which it killed you. So as we all know it is the abrupt stop at the end that does the damage, however this safety message has and continues to be drummed into us and frankly I am sick of it. In my view it is a simplistic and boneheaded answer to a far more complex problem.

So lets examine the question does the average driving speed increase the rate of driving deaths.

Of course running experiments to prove or disprove this point is problematic however there are some natural experiments that we can look at. One of which is the experience of the United States. During the oil shocks of the 70’s the US Federal government took over the setting of speed limits to aid in lowering fuel consumption. The older members of the audience will recall that the government here also lowered the speed limit at that time for the same reason. After the oil price settled down the Federal government passed this function back to the individual state governments who then set a range of speed limits. So how do the states compare to each other?

Well here is the table of results and asking Excel to Correlate the Deaths per 100,000 with the speed limits it calculates a correlation of 0.21 or in other words no correlation of any statistical significance. Also if you look at Hawaii at 6th lowest with a low speed limit and death rate but then Utah with the highest speed limit is only 8 places higher. And there are 5 other states with higher speed limits lower than Hawaii. So clearly there is other stuff going on here, some of which might be obvious such as New York which encompasses New York City where there are a lot of people but no one drives anywhere much . But we know that California is the driving capital and with a speed limit of 70 and 9th on the table it is doing well. New Zealand also included is very mid table and 2008 was the best road toll NZ had had for 30 years.

Double click to enlarge

So let’s look at a New Zealand experiment in 1985 the government raised the speed limit from 80kph to 100kph. At this point let me remind you of the world’s most famous physics equation E=MC^2 with the important bit for us being the C squared bit C equals velocity or speed in our case so the impact of an accident with the 20 extra ks is exponentially worse because of the squaring. Eg 1000kg vehicle hits at 80 kph equals 6,400,000 energy units where as at 100kph it is 10,000,000 so a 50% increase in the severity of the crash. So there should be a massive increase in deaths as a whole bunch of survivable crashes suddenly become 50% worse. So what happened well 1986 did show a spike in deaths (nowhere near a 50% increase) but in 1987 and subsequent years it showed a decline which is now an established trend, so despite a 50% increase in potential road deaths are falling. So much for Speed Kills.

In doing some research for this I came across this page http://www.socialreport.msd.govt.nz/safety/road-casualities.html
It shows an increased mortality for Maori in road deaths of twice the rest of the population, why this should be so is of interest as it may reveal something the rest of us could learn from. I doubt that Maori as a population drive on average any faster than the rest of us so I bet it isn’t speed that is killing them (my pick is because Maori, as a group, are worse off economically it is because they drive worse cars) so rather than handing out more and more speeding fines how about we look for the real causes.

Crime and Prejudice

What is up with this country and locking people up? We have the second highest incarceration rate (per head of population ) in the OECD. (second to the red necks in the good old US of A). Are we particularly bad or mad? Or is it more to do with our attitude to punishment, lets face it rehabilitation isn’t even in our zip code for discussion when it comes to criminals.

The reason for this outburst is that the news today seems dominated by rampant stupidity surrounding locking people up. We have the case of a guy convicted of manslaughter for the death of a four year old that he beat to death. For which he has served 12 years in jail, the total length of his sentence and is now to be released. The parole board has imposed a further 6 months restrictions on him as they have the power to do but after that he is once again a free man. Foul screams the mob, this guy is a monster and because the parole board has concerns that he may reoffend (presumably he has anger issues as a particular issue with children does not seem to be part of the commentary) we should keep him behind bars forever until the parole board is satisfied he will not offend.

Really? Am I the only one that is slightly perturbed by the idea that people could serve their sentence and then be arbitrarily detained by a committee with no recourse to due process or review? Where do I start with what is potentially wrong with this picture. For one thing presumably all prisoners who are released carry a high risk of reoffending. According to Corrections the recidivism rate after 4 years is 50%. So that is half of them that we shouldn’t let out.

Another burst of stupidity surrounds David Tamihere with calls for him to remain locked up until he reveals the site of Heidi Paakkonen’s grave. There are questions about the safety of this conviction which are not worth going in to but some facts are agreed, Tamihere has always maintained that he didn’t kill Heidi and her boyfriend. This ongoing position has cost him additional years in gaol already, so maybe just maybe he didn’t do it so how is he going to reveal the grave site if he doesn’t know where it is. And if you don’t like that one if he is stubborn enough to maintain his innocence for 22 years and cost himself additional gaol time already I think we are on a loser keeping him locked up.

And if these sort of calls from the mob aren’t enough to make me worry about my civil liberties, how about the government attempting to legislate away your right to silence by extending so called “examination orders” This is the situation where you are minding your own business as an accountant say and suddenly realise that you are doing the books for a dangerous mob boss. The government now wants the power to make you a criminal by extension if you don’t dob in your client, despite the fact that mob bosses don’t deal well (or fairly) with people who do that.

Not to mention additional unnotified surveillance powers etc, and please don’t tell me that you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide. Even in little old NZ people have come under surveillance for being members of the communist party or for being part of Halt All Racist Tours, both organisations and most of their activities being perfectly legal (ok so the HART guys stepped over the line sometimes). Neither organisation I support in any way, however I am not a big fan of organised religion and I am a bit concerned about masons and those guys that play with little plastic soldiers are a bit weird. None of which gives me or the government any rights to do anything to them provided they conduct themselves within the laws of the country.

And if they do break a law, just like when I get caught speeding, after they have done the time or paid the fine they should be free to start again.

I Wish You Enough

I heard this recently and thought it was well worth sharing
I Wish You Enough
by Bob Perks

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.
I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.
I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.
I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.
I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.
I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.
I wish you enough “Hello’s” to get you through the final “Goodbye.”

The Goldilocks Approach

Once upon a time there were three bears, now there are thousands of the little buggers....


So I am sure you will recall that in the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Goldilocks committed a series of crimes neatly chronicled as a children’s story, the moral being presumably that breaking and entering, stealing food and the appropriation of assets is ok provided they are committed against a minority group. In this case brown bears (while the colour of the bears to my memory is not explicitly stated presumably there would have been more outrage and police intervention in the story if these crimes had been committed in a white bear neighbourhood. Not to mention a lot more snow in the pictures rather than pine trees) By the way what is the point of this story as it just ends with Goldilocks running away.

But the other aspect of the story was the “too hot, too cold, just right” etc that is a feature of the story as Goldilocks tries out porridge chairs and the beds and always ends up with “just right”.
I was wondering about this in relationship to knowledge and happiness, is there an amount of knowledge that is “just right”.

We have all heard the saying “Ignorance is bliss” but we have also witnessed what happens if people don’t know enough about things they are involved in and how badly wrong things can go. Generally I am a believer in education at all levels to all comers and the barriers to education should be as low as possible.

This is based on the view that higher levels of education tend to be represented in all the good statistics and lower levels in the bad. Eg your chances of ending up on prison or dying young are highly related to your education levels.

And it doesn’t seem to matter what your education is about as long as you achieve a reasonable level, of course to do that you need to have mastered the basics especially reading, writing and comprehension.

On the other hand I can give examples where additional information provides no additional utility in fact sometimes it can reduce your happiness levels. Once I scratched the surface of my eye and part of the treatment (or diagnosis I forget) was some drops into my eye, so with head back eye open and dropper bottle poised to deliver the drop the nurse announced “this is going to hurt”. Information that I can attest was accurate, however was it helpful, the drops still went in, my eye still hurt and the earth went around the sun. However it did make me tense and just a little less happy (when I wasn’t that happy with the world to start with).

A trivial example I grant you, but what about food then, we are bombarded by messages about good and bad foods which has us all living in some sort of permanent neurosis about what we eat. Even kids read packets and worry about food. Is this a good thing? I don’t remember worrying about food as a kid.

Knowledge can take the wonder out of our world, shooting stars are now meteors burning up in the earth’s atmosphere and no longer the recipients of our wishes. A red dawn is now the refraction of light in the atmosphere influenced by dust or water vapour. Or potentially worse as Stephen Hawkins has now discovered too much enquiry into the big bang evaporates the need for god and could profoundly damage humans who seem to have an innate need for spirituality.

On the search for knowledge make sure you adopt the Goldilocks approach, not too much, not too little, just the right amount.

My child your taxes

There is a cut to government spending on early childhood education and quite a few people are upset about it, specifically and predictably the workers in the sector who stand to lose their jobs and the parents of the users who stand to either pay more or cease having or using the service.

So no one likes having thier free stuff taken away from them so ignoring that, the question is, is this a good idea? How does subsidising child care or early childhood education, as the sector participants prefer, help society.

First up lets tackle that one about child care versus early education. Do kids under five need "educated" there doesn't seem to be much evidence that they do. Clearly there is a lot of evidence that they need interaction with adults, a secure enviroment and so forth but formal education?
Worldwide the age at which people commence formal education varies a lot, however the outcomes appear to me to be very similar in terms of education. In Northern Ireland they start at 4 years old  and in Sweden they wait till they are 7 but I don't think that people from Ireland / Sweden are considered that differently in terms of education at the end.

This paper http://www.eale.nl/Conference2010/Programme/PaperscontributedsessionsF/add129051_MLbgtSeX9b.pdf
specifically looks at the question from an economic view and concludes that as an "investment in human capital" the early the better.
So to be clear early childhood education is about ensuring that your child is an effective unit of production for our industrialised society.

So as I have asperations for my child that mostly revolve around her having a happy and fulfilling life and nothing about her being a unit of production I vote for child care and lets ditch the idea of formal education for 2 year olds. A sand pit and a bucket is going to teach them a heap all by itself.
This education argument may seem irrelevant but it goes somewhat to the heart of the debate as the previous government was pushing for an increase in the number of formally trained teachers employed in this area and the current government does not see this as so important. Further this goes to the level of funding that you think is required as trained teachers cost more than lesser trained staff.

But why is the government involved at all in this area ? A couple of  comments stuck with me, one was "we are reluctant to ask our parents for more money" this from one of the teachers at a child care facility and variations were echoed by other teachers. Why they were reluctant was not canvased but we are led to presume that they would be unable or unwilling to pay.
The solution though was that "the tax payer" i.e. people without kids presumably should pay so that the people with kids, the users of the service didn't have to. I really don't understand the logic for this, unless there is a social good at work, i.e. society is better off by having children in child care than having them at home with their parents.... hmm can't imediately see how that could be unless we are saying that the state (via childcare facilities) is a better parent than actual parents.

The othe comment that struck me was "one of our parents has had to give up work to look after her children as the child care fees made working uneconomic" This was a truely strange comment from where I sat as this was presented as a bad thing. I suspect the economic argument was that the work undertaken was clearly of lower economic benefit than child minding and so by giving up this job society is in fact better off economically.
However never mind that, was the suggestion that we should all pay higher taxes (government money doesn't come from no where) so that this person could continue to work and therefore have a higher standard of living (us lower, her higher) because she chose to have a child? Can't make that work in my mind either.
This view also undervalues the role of stay at home parents as some how this was a "bad" choice.

So the more I think about it the less convinced I am that government has any role at all in early childhood "education" Do people need an organisation and government to help them organise some play friends for thier kids? Is staying at home and raising your kids a bad thing to do? (by all accounts it is a very rewarding activity, I unfortunately have not had the privilage) And do you want your child to be an efficient "unit of production" or are you aiming at happy like most parents. Just some things to think about.

If you can't stand the heat.....

So Global Warming is no longer the phrase de jour of the Henny Penny Brigade (the fable about the sky falling in case you missed it) as surveys told them that this mostly didn't bother people, the idea of the planet being a bit warmer, it especially didn't bother people in cooler climates (read most of the industrialised world) So we now hear about Climate Change. You can tell by my reference to Henny Penny that I remain unconvinced that this is real but you will be pleased to know I don't propose to go into all that right now, for the purpose of this discussion lets assume that this is true, carbon is bad and we should do something about it.

What I wonder at is the "solution" that all these brilliant folks have come up with, in a phrase it is known as Cap and Trade. Or to expand they want the levels of carbon in the atmosphere Capped (Cap) and for people wishing to emit additional carbon to buy that right off someone who no longer needs it (Trade) so as the total amount of cargon emitted remains constant.

Effectively this is another version of the "Ban It" school of problem solving and yes I conceed they haven't banned carbon emission altogether but presumably carbon emission isn't the problem is it, it is the growth in carbon and that is what they are trying to ban. I would also wonder if this is the thin end of the wedge and long term the proposal is to lower the limits.

So what will be the result of this idea?
Well more stuff the HPB (Henny Penny Brigade) and I can agree on, the rise of industrialisation is tied to the ready supply of energy at affordable levels. Before coal came along energy was provided by horses and people, which provided limits to what was acheivable.
Further not only did this lead to industrialisation but after a patchy start a higher standard of living (lets face it the early industrial period wasn't much chop for those at the bottom of the heap)

So lets stop increasing our use of carbon based fuels, pretty obvious what's going to happen. The increasing standard of living will halt and because of the trade angle either every one will average out as the haves give up some of thier standard in favour of the have nots (think USA and China sort of leveling out) an idea I find completely unlikely or the haves will buy up the credits to the detriment of the have nots, which I find much more likely. (or third not everyone is going to sign up to this which makes it a dead duck)

So the HPB will reject this idea (of stagnant or declining standards of living, which they know is unsaleable) as they see a "switch" to other forms of energy, however it has been shown time and again that the alternative energy sources such as Wind, Solar or Bio Fuels simply can't supply enough to meet the demand (for existing levels never mind future levels). In fact we have already seen some disastourous consequences of land being switched from food production to bio fuels and increase in food prices potentially leading to some people starving to death. (the chain of connections is obviously difficult but there is no doubt the higher food prices don't help feed poor people)

All and all the Cap and Trade model (like all "ban it" solutions) is doomed to failure based on a few simple observations of supply and demand and human behaviour.

How about some things that will work, well there is Nuclear power which is effectively unlimited and produces no carbon emissions, but as Climate Change is a polished version of the "Green Religion" this is not allowed as it is against church doctrine. If HPB really believed the world was going to end soon if we don't take action (something they are fond of telling us) why are they not promoting the hell out of the only near term solution readily available. Even if Cap and Trade works it will take forever to impliment by comparision.

OK so if you don't like that one, how about the London School of Economics paper that shows the most cost effective solution to Climate Change is to provide free contraception to all the women of the world, which of course limits population growth.
Because this is the real problem (to a number of global problems) too many people for the amount of resource, potentially including carbon emission if you want to view this as a resource but again this is against some (or probably all ) religions, not to mention the "human rights" folk.

So potentially the solution to climate change rests in the hands of religious leaders which is a bit frightening. One thing I know for sure is that "Ban It" never worked before and it won't work this time either.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

I have refered to the following poem a couple of times recently and the reference was lost on my audience on both occassions. As I think it is even more relevant now that when it was written in  1818 I though I would reproduce it to introduce it to a slightly wider audience.

Ozymandias

Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".


I often think of this when I see or hear of misplaced priorities. So some things do need taken care of but ask yourself sometime who will look upon this mighty work and therefore should you care.

Money can't buy you love..

The Teachers negotiations with government are back in the news with another impasse in negotiations and more threatened strike action.

This is not peculiar to them right now and it seems to be a period of discontent among workers at the moment with teachers, doctors and nurses among others either having been on strike or threatening to strike. The claim is always the same we are either underpaid or our working conditions are unacceptable. (Which is the same thing dressed up differently)

A big part of this discontent seems to revolve around the current pay levels not delivering the level of lifestyle that these groups believe themselves entitled to.

So firstly some facts, the groups I mentioned are paid around $50k per annum (as a wide sweeping generalisation with some paid quite a bit more and a few being paid a small amount less) So how does place you in the NZ scheme of things? Quite well as it turns out, referring to the IRD for the most recent stats I could find http://www.ird.govt.nz/aboutir/external-stats/income-distribution-income-bands this puts them in the top 20% of income earners in NZ. So it is impossible to argue that they are poorly paid relative to others.

So assuming for a moment that you pay packet dictates your lifestyle then the alternative explanation is that they think they should be higher up than the to 20% and real life is failing to meet their expectations and this is leading to unhappiness as manifested by their demands.

So what we have is an external item (your pay packet) and the agency that pays you (in this case mostly the government) controlling your happiness levels.

I think this happens to a lot of us and it is a major source of dissatisfaction in our lives. It is a comparative happiness at work, we judge ourselves by those around us and if we come up short we tend to be unhappy. The important part of that phrase is “those around us” so for example if we lived in Cuba where cars are hard to get and we had one when none of our neighbours did then I suspect we would be happy about that. However in NZ we almost have a car each (2.7M in 2007) so having any old car doesn’t make a lot of us happy, having a “good” car does and again it depends who you are what that means, for some it is a tricked out Subaru WRX for others it is the latest Mercedes.

But in all cases we are judging our worth and associated happiness by the people around us. Now if you happen to be at the top of your local tree then this will work fine for you but most of us never are and in fact as soon as we are we tend to move trees and start comparing ourselves to a “higher” group.

Now based on my limited knowledge of the world’s religions and philosophical musings I have never encountered a system that suggests fulfilment comes from external sources, all of them to the best of my knowledge tend to suggest we look to ourselves and our inner person for fulfilment and happiness. This is often expressed in spiritual terms within religion and in “moral codes” in more secular writings but the message is the same, happiness comes from within.

This makes sense to me as the world, the people in it, the weather, even my dog are only within limited control by me but presumably I do control me. So I can look to my employer to deliver happiness to me (via a bigger pay packet or whatever) or I can look to my motivations and be content that being in the top 20% isn’t that bad.

So I have heard it said that “Money can’t buy you love, but it can buy you a better class of misery” and I think that is true in the way it was intended to be read and also the way I would suggest you read it. No external source can make you happy for long.

I am a Rock

I am a rock or so sang Simon & Garfunkel in their 1966 hit (well it got to number 3 does that count) For those that don’t know that song and given that it is approaching 50 years old there may be some, it discuss an individual who has decided to close himself off from love and friendship and become “a rock”.


This of course is unusual within the context of the human condition because we are by nature social creatures, we seem to have a built in need to communicate and interact with others and people who choose a solitary life are not well regarded by the rest of us. Being referred to as a “loner” is seldom found in a complimentary sentence.

On the other hand all of us exhibit a bit of the “Greed is good” attitude of Gordon Gecko from the 1980’s film Wall Street (now that I have started with the old cultural references why stop). To paraphrase the theme of this speech he credits “greed” for love, life, etc with being the driving force of humanity. To gather to oneself that which you desire if you will.

To put it another way there is a bit of selfishness in most of us, which at a minimum desires that those we love are first among equals.

But the people who have impact on us and that we eulogise are the unselfish, Jesus, Ghandi, Mother Theresa and the homeless guy on the TV the other night who gave a silly TV presenter one of his few dollars when he asked for some cash as a prank. To name but a few.

And what about Eugene Gifford Grace, who I hear you ask, he was the President of Bethlehem Steel for almost thirty years from 1916 – 1945 at which time this was the second biggest company in America employing 283,000 workers and Eugene was the highest paid person in America (the taxes at that time were crippling claiming two thirds of what he got paid). So in his day a prominent and powerful man who most of us have never heard of because he was not focused on helping his fellow man he was a business man. Before any one thinks I am maligning Eugene I am not, apart from a business man he was also very philanthropic and supported many charities and the like.

My point is that we are social beings by choice and we cherish the people who improve our society at the most human level and scale.

So why then do I get the feeling that we are forgetting the social contract which is implied in this arrangement?

That is that you need to put back in at least as much as you take out or the system won’t work, or it may continue to work but you are relying on someone else to put in additional effort to make up for your lack of effort.

If we think of our society as a bank account to maintain status quo then as much money needs to go in as is drawn out, otherwise we are eroding our balance (quality of our society) if we all contribute a little extra then the balance will increase and our “societal capital” will improve. Too much “greed is good” and not enough Ghandi and the society we live in becomes very unpleasant.

My challenge for today is what did you give back today, it doesn’t need to be a big thing because all the little things add up, just think about your contribution to your corner of the world are you a contributor or a spender.

Murder is Wrong?

It is unlikely that many people would disagree with the title phrased as a statement but the idea of it as a question will vex some.

Most of us (including me) would hardly stop to consider the question "is murder wrong" as it seems such an obvious statement. But why?

Why is it obvious is the question.

Clearly society doesn’t have a problem with killing per se as we routinely involve ourselves in wars with NZ troops currently involved in at least a couple of armed conflicts at this time. We sometimes make heroes out of those who involve themselves in active service such as Willie Apiata (who has succeeded Sir Edmund Hillary as “most trusted New Zealander” according to his Wiki entry and he certainly looks like a great successor) however we need to recognise the Willie was not “playing tiddlywinks” and received his VC because people were shooting at him and more than likely he shot back.

Some societies also sanction the death penalty for certain crimes (including NZ who still retains the death penalty for treason for some odd reason) most notably of course for murder which seems a touch ironic.

So in the right circumstances killing people is ok but not murdering them. So is the difference knowing the possible outcome, i.e. you go to war you know you might get killed, you do the crime you know the potential punishment so therefore these things are ok.

What about civilians that get killed in wars, presumably then that is not ok. Clearly the world was very concerned with Hitler’s attempts to wipe out Jews, presumably because they were innocent civilians who did not volunteer to be part of his war. On the other hand many innocent lives were presumably lost by the bombing of Hamburg and Dresden during WWII. This campaign was carried out with the explicit objective or weakening the populations resolve to keep fighting. i.e. civilians were the targets. Of course we all know about the atomic bombing of Japan. These examples seem to be covered by the greater good theory, i.e. some civilians killed today will save the lives of many others tomorrow. So killings ok as long as you have a good reason.

Which extends to self defence, it’s ok to kill people if they intend to kill you a variation on the “good reason” school of killing. Or assassinations where you are a political power and your world view clashes with another political power.

So to sum up killing is ok, if you are politically powerful or if you participate in an activity where you know you can get killed and or the person killing you has a good reason. (glad we cleared that up)

But what about gangs? We are against them killing each other even though they presumably know the rules, after all dealing in drugs and other illegal activities has always carried a high risk factor.

Yet even the murder of a gang member by another gang member strikes us as wrong (and to be fair war etc strike a lot of people as wrong too) but there doesn’t seem to be any reason for this other than perhaps vested self interest. We don’t want to get murdered so we see it as wrong as we might be next if it was tolerated. That seems a little simplistic but I can’t identify a reason other than that.

Lucky for me many other wise minds over the centuries have pondered the same or similar questions when trying to establish the basis for our ethics or distinguishing right from wrong so not having an answer puts me in good company at least.

Multi coloured people

In 1988 the band When the Cats Away had a hit with a song called Melting Pot. The song is an anthem for the "why can't we all just get along" school of thought and suggested that if we chucked everyone in to a pot and produced "multi coloured people by the score" then life would be sweet.


It seems for any number of reasons (not least the shortage of a big enough pot) we are a long way from racial harmony.

Paul Henry's (an insignificant but well known broadcaster) recent question of the Prime Minister about the next Governor General "are you going to choose someone who looks and talks like a New Zealander" has provoked predictable and justified outrage. The current Governor General Sir Anand Satyanand is of Indian decent and I can't recall what he sounds like but judging from Henry's comments perhaps he has an accent of sorts. He was, as the Prime Minister, was quick to point out born here making him very much a Kiwi. (as an aside while recently watching a TV show a Ngapuhi representative drew a distinction between Kiwis and Tangata Whenua with Kiwis as a lower term in his mind. If we didn’t already know this shows that potential racism works in all directions)

The problem is I knew exactly what Paul Henry meant and as I don't consider myself a racist this left me a little disturbed at my own reaction. I mean we have had lots of pakeha men in the role, some pakeha women and "even" a Maori bloke none of whom gave me any pause for thought but when Henry said it a little part of me understood his comment.

This set me to think about the whole question of racism and why it persists, we all do it (yes even you dear reader) what about "Asians are terrible drivers", "white men can't jump" or probably more correctly "white men can't dance" "Maoris’ are all happy go lucky types" Yep we all do it and for the fathers of daughters out there how would you feel if they brought the "wrong" coloured boyfriend home. (for some reason we are less concerned with the choices of our sons) It’s a lot like being ok with gays and then finding out your son is gay. You may well accept it but are you sure there won't be a little part of you that reacts.

Now granted some folk are a lot more liberal than others and I can already hear the objections from a number of people to the idea that there is a little bit of this in all of us. (especially that boy friend one)

And let me state once again I don't think I am a racist and I don't condone the idea I am just asking the question why it seems at some level to be hard wired into us.

Certainly the "Asians are bad drivers" type of racism is potentially just a generalisation which helps us deal with groups. Equally you could say "all Canterbury rugby supporters are bad losers" which has been my personal experience but I put that down to them not having enough practice at losing. Or all Aucklander’s are.... (well, fill in your South Island prejudice of choice) so that doesn't seem to bad.

And then potentially it is the selfish gene theory at work, our genes wish to survive and thrive which means in some ways we want carbon copies of ourselves, think how pleased parents are to see parts of themselves in their kids (understandable for males perhaps but females seem to enjoy this also). So people who look significantly different to ourselves are a challenge to that.

Your own history, by which I really mean peer group influences, could be the cause, obviously if the people you hang around with express racist views you are much more likely to pick up these points of views yourself. We only need look at some of the long running conflicts in the world that are divided on race lines to see historic influence at work.

Skin colour and appearance are also often tied to cultural differences so potentially it is not that Anand is an Indian it is just that we don't agree with his culture. Discrimination on the basis of having cultural differences makes sense because presumably if we did agree we would do as he does so there would be no difference.

The problem with Anand is that if I read his CV without his name attached to it, I would like as not assume he was a middle class white guy (ie the same as me but way more successful). Born in Auckland, educated at Sacred Heart College then Otago and Auckland Uni, successful time in the law rising to become a Judge, married to Susan with 3 children, interested in reading, travel and entertaining.

So all this proves is one of those old and wise ideas is still true before we judge one another we should get to know them.

God Knows Best

My local pub had a guest beer on tap recently called God Knows Best and a fine drop it was too so perhaps in terms of beer he does although I suspect he left it to some mortal to actually brew the stuff.

This phrase sprang to mind again when listening to coverage of the Popes current visit to the UK, which as these things go is generally being hailed as a success. I was particularly struck by a speech he made in Scotland which has turned into a bit of a theme throughout his visit, it was a plea to ensure that religion (presumably his) is not excluded from decision making in an "increasingly secular society" He reminded his audience that the current legal system and laws were founded on Christian values and that this tradition needed to continue as the freedom promised by secularism was illusory and it merely provided people the "freedom to harm themselves"

So my first thought is that this Pope, who as a previous member of Hitler youth should know better, seems to have limited grasp of history. In particular the history of his own church and religion in general and the misery it has visited upon millions of people, never mind the harm it has wrought.
As a very recent example during his current visit he has felt the need to apologies for the catholic churches part in child sex abuse but seems to fail to recognise that the very "do as I say" attitude that he is promoting was a significant factor in why these particular events came to pass and why the church felt the need to systematically cover these up. The rise in secularism that he so bemoans is exactly why we even know about these events, as the church has lost its all powerful grip on people's lives they have felt safe enough to come forward and let the light shine on these dark times.

It is also condescending to believe that only Christian values are worth considering in the drafting of the rules that govern our societies, especially as an ever decreasing number of people necessarily subscribe to these values. This seems to me to be a simple plea for the once powerful to remain or become powerful again.

 On the other hand we can all be prone to a bit of "I know best isim" especially when we see someone doing something that runs counter to our own belief system, so take up one of the Christian messages the Pope has forgotten and remember to be tolerant of the people you meet who do stuff you don't agree with, perhaps it is hunting and eating whales or maybe it is wearing a burka or letting prisoners vote. Whatever it is remember to apply the test of personal liberty versus societal contract rather than any adherence to an outdated dogma written ostensibly 2000 years ago when the world was quite a different place.

You only bury your mother once

So thankfully my mother is still alive and doing well, so is her mother so I have good genes on my maternal side at least for a long life.

The title was taken from a comment I heard on talk back radio and a women was relaying how incredibly hard it was for her and presumably most of us when we face that event. She talked of the absolute grief that overwhelmed her and said that two years down the road she felt she was still recovering. She observed at one point that she didn't know how to handle this event because "you only bury your mother once" Now having said that my mother is still alive I like most of us have still faced the death of a loved one and I am sure we can all understand how this lady was feeling.

The host of the radio program went on to observe that "rationally we all know that the person in the box doesn't want us to be sad but at times like this we don't really think rationally" Again I think this is a sentiment that we can all get on board with. Certainly if I was "in the box" I would not want people to be distraught with grief and certainly not for two years afterwards, especially if they were one of the people I loved in life. (OK so there is a small part of our ego who would like people to miss us a bit when we are gone as it validates our time on earth but other than that.)

So the two comments combined lead me to think about practicing being rational because you "only bury your mother once" and so in preparation for that event I wondered if it is important that we practice not letting our emotions overwhelm us and with some practice in the bank this might help us a bit when we face very difficult emotional moments. I am not crazy enough to think we can just rationalise away grief but it should help to realise that our loved one would still want us to be happy, if we remember that and believe it.

We all know that we can find ourselves saying things that we later regret, normally because we were angry or some other emotion has taken control of our tounges. Or that we react to situations and feel foolish later "in the cold light of day" etc. These are all opportunities to try and involve your rational self and put in some practice to help you through the tough times, not to mention the benefits of not having to deal with the aftermath of some ill advised comment made in anger.

The extreme version of this may well be found in the death of Seneca and event that has been much written about and is the subject of a number of famous art works. Seneca at one time was tutor to Nero (famously the emporer who fiddled while Rome burned or perhaps more relevant to this topic had his mother executed)Nero ordered Seneca to kill himself as he suspected him (probably wrongly) of being involved in a plot to kill him. Seneca was a student of Stoic philosophy which helped him meet his fate with calm resolution. This made him the poster child for Stoicism and gives rise to the label of stoic that we sometimes give to "stiff upper lip" types. In a sentance Stoicism teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions.

So I am not suggesting we all adopt Stoicism but I do think that there is some good in the idea that the rational can help with some of those "destructive emotions" such as fear, anger, depression etc and may help us with our grief when the time comes, as it will, for all of us.

Action, Crowd Reaction

So Newton told us that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, however he was refering to physics not people.

The recent Christchurch earthquake is an interesting case, clearly Newton was right on the physics front as all that action generated by the ground certainly caused a reaction with the buildings, roads, infastructure etc that it came in contact with. At this point I wish to say that I understand that a lot of peoples lives have been effected by the quake and I do feel for them however.....

That doesn't really account for the frenzy of fear, doubt, panic and over reaction we are witnessing on the TV and radio. We have people saying the can't sleep for worry, that they are moving out of town, some temporarily some suggesting permanently. That their lives have been permanenetly scared by this event etc.

I mean come on, this is completly silly, in the moment of the earthquake the fear and associated fight or flight response kicks in the juices flow and we act in a hyper mode of stress, increased heart rate etc. All of which can be very handy when a wall might fall on you at any moment and jumping quickly out of the way will save your life. The event lasted a few minutes or less at a guess (I wasn't there but I did feel it) and I will give you a couple of hours to calm down but after that the big reasoning brain should take over.

The likelyhood of aftershocks is high, however I understand that the first one is always the biggest (per a geology prof on the telly) and better yet you know they are coming so you can get ready. After that I suspect that the risk of another "big" quake (in quotes because it is all relative I guess) is the same as it every was (or probably less as my personal observation is they seem to be spread out in time) and that your level of panic should be the same as the day before the quake. I mean after all we live in a country created by two plates coming together this is a highly earthquake prone country.

Why then do so many people dwell on their feelings and completely disregard the rational response, also at times like this people who request rationality are likely to be branded as unfeeling and as I am at risk of that I feel the need to defend that position. Is it feeling to promote peoples fears as legitamate when they are not? Does this make them feel better? Can I feel empathy for your situation and loss without buying into your irational emotions? Well of course I can and acting rationally I am likely to be more useful to you. If a fireman comes to rescue me I could care less what he/she feels for me as long as they cooly and rationally do their job and help me out. Same thing isn't it?

But the media loves the drama, not much of a sound bite if someones says "well no one died so no real problem", on the other hand a distressed person grieving the loss of their property and vowing to head for the hills "before another one gets me" makes a much better image and so around it goes.

The worst example in my memory was the death of Lady Diana Spencer, the crazy scenes of people in major distress grieving for someone they didn't actually know will always be a head shaker for me.

Its a fine and good thing to have emotions but lets keep the big rational brain engaged which in the end should help us with our emotions. So do someone in Christchurch a favour ring them up and tell them the world is just the same as it was before and that you are thinking about moving to Christchurch as it should be about 100 years till there is another quake there. (rationally speaking of course)

My Children are my Greatest Achievement

I heard a woman the other day say "my children are my greatest achievement" This set me to thinking because I was unconvinced it was true, like a lot of women these days her children were only one aspect of her life, she had been well educated, she had a job in which she had done well, served on community groups, was interested in cooking at a high level with which she entertained her friends etc.

So many aspects to her life where she was operating at a high level and yet the "achievement" was her children?

On first glance I thought she was confusing love and affection for acheivement after all few would deny the great love that a parent and potentially especially the mother has for her children. Many parents have given up even their own lives to protect their children in extreme cases and in the less extreme a still significant amount of resources and effort are devoted to children.

But lets be honest, they sort of get there regardless don't they ? I mean there are some terrible parents out there and their children still grow up and some even go on to  be great members of society and acheive great things in spite of thier upbringing. So as parents aren't we rather overstating "our acheivement" when we beam with pride at little Jimmys graduation. Our own graduation sure and my reference mother presumably had to put in a lot of effort to graduate herself, but when she had kids... well....

So the dictionary says;

Achievement –noun
something accomplished, esp. by superior ability, special effort, great courage, etc.; a great or heroic deed: his remarkable achievements in art.

Does this sound like having a child?

Well actually I think it does in the end, it takes great courage to set out on a long journey to bring a child into the world and raise them up. The chances of great hurt along the way are high, some children don't make it and a greater tragedy can not befall a human being, our children will themselves be hurt and we feel all their pain no matter how small or great. Despite my reference to bad parents most try hard as they understand the world to show their children the way and it takes great sustained effort over a long time.
And the rewards, well there are rewards no doubt but it is mostly a selfless act.

So here is to those making that great courageous and heroic effort to be a mum or dad and here is cheers to the giants on who's shoulders we stand our own heroic mums and dads.

Blame Storming

Blame Storming - sitting around figuring out who to blame for the latest stuff up.

Why do some corporates insist on this type of approach, we all know that people make mistakes and people say it so often that you almost forget that it is true. Then when people do make an error some personality types feel duty bound to punish them, effectively for being human.

Now we have a category of "mistakes" that we find unacceptable and worthy of punishment they are called crimes, the reason we punish is that we don't really think it was a true mistake. If we do think so then even within this category we make allowances. eg if you deliberately run someone over we will charge you with murder and you may spend a long time in prison, if however you have an accident and kill someone you may still be punished for essentially not being careful enough but the penalty will be nowhere near as severe.

So back to corporates and how they behave, I was speaking with someone recently who had discovered an error (not made it just discovered it) and was concerned about bringing it to the attention of thier boss because it would spark a round of recriminations and Blame Storming. I have to wonder how this organisation feels this is useful. It is clearly incentivising employees to stay quiet even if they are aware of issues, it will probably limit any willingness to take risks and therefore inovation (always a risk) will be stiffled, it will likely lower productivity as it may not be a happy place to work etc I can't really think of any positive reason to behave this way other than... it makes the boss feel superior (potentially) or some other ego boost for the people pointing the fingers.

OK so I can understand the frustration with the "non learning" employee who continues to make the same mistake over and over, however blame is still not very useful outplacement councilling is probably best.

Is this really the answer to everything?

So on the TV the other night is an UK based expert on the problems associated with Alcohol, who was here at the behest of some interest group or other presumably the anit Alcohol lobby as his message in a nutshell was to "ban alcohol" His views on the matter prehaps best tipified by the comment "if alcohol was invented today we would ban it"

Indeed "lets ban it" a message likely to be very well received here in NZ as this seems to be our standard response to anything we see as a problem and if we are not going to ban it outright we need to regulate it into oblivion.

But does this work? Has it ever worked? and do we stop to work through the consequences based on research not emotion?

While not something banned but something regulated cycle helmets are a fantastic example where there is no reliable data on the effectivness of these helmets in preventing injury. There is evidence that the number of fatalities increase amoung helmet wearing cyclists and the stat that I like the most on this subject is you are more likely to suffer a head injury walking and yet no one is suggesting helmets for walkers. Another negative statistic is that helmets are shown to decrease cycle participation.

But I digress back to Alcohol we have a fantastic experiment in the form of the American Prohibition period between 1920 to 1933 when Alcohol was in fact widely banned in America and to varying degrees they did try and enforce the ban. Clearly it didn't work but it did turn otherwise law abiding citizens into potential criminals and gave criminal gangs a fantastic source of revenue which they were prepared to defend with violence.

Sound familiar, sounds a lot like the current "war on drugs" that America and varioius other countries including our own is currently involved in. The sad facts are people are still doing, the gangs make money out of it and in the case of harder drugs a lot of suffering results not from the drug taking itself but the surrounding activities. Pharmacy grade cocaine is cheap (it is used in some medical situations) for example but not if you have to get it off your local gang member and it may not be of the same quality standard.

So none of the above is an argument in favour of drug taking or binge drinking (the current manifestation of our drinking culture) both can be very harmful to your health, relationships with others chances of employment etc, etc. However how does increasing restriction or outright prohibition help curb the problems, so far there is zero evidence that this is working so far.

With booze the often quoted solution is to increase the price, however as I understand it the price of P (methamphetamine) is very expensive (I am not a user so stand to be corrected) but it doesn't seem to put people off. Not only that but we now have the example of "pre loading" where young people will buy cheaper supermarket booze and get hammered at home before heading out for the night. I think in economics this would be called substitution, if the price of drinks in bars was more reasonable however prehaps a more controlled approach might be taken. After all you can't take your bottle with you to the pub unless it is inside you which is what happens after all. So sometimes the "solutions" make things worse.

In the exact same arena we have an example of a system that does seem to work. Once upon a time not so long ago no one thought anything about driving drunk and it is still possible at the squash club for example for older members to talk about when xyz got hammered and end up in a ditch and the yarn is told as an item of humor not warning. These same clubs where these stories are told will also tell you that bar takings now are "way down" as "no one wants to drink and drive"

So how did this happen? Education of course, we were all taught that drink driving was not funny and that it was socially unacceptable. "if you drink and drive you are a bloody idiot" went one advert. and over time it has worked. OK police will point to greater enforcement as a factor although the evidence of penalty as a deterent to behaviour is weak as a general rule but as social animals we are driven to conform to the social norms. Change the norms get a result.

Far from banning alcohol make it unacceptable to be drunk.

You will notice that the "ban it" logic is already creeping into the food debate because some people (actually quite a few) are fat. "lets tax fat" they cry, sigh some people are slow learners is all I can say.

My Kingdom for a horse

So driver behaviour featured in a recent post on being inconsiderate and I am begining to feel that I might have it in for vehicles or more specifically the way some people drive (not me of course like everyone I know "we" are good drivers)

To move on from the idea that people are just generally incondsiderate in cars and assume for a moment that most people are decent human beings then the question arises why do people behave the way they do in cars.

Brain power strikes me as a key determinant, no I am not insinuating that people are thick it is just a couple of things we have inherited presumably make driving more difficult.

Firstly speed of decision making which manifests in hesitant driving potentiall especially around intersections and the like.
So people have evolved to travel around at say a maximum speed of about 35km (which is Olympic sprinter speed) and mostly at about 5km (lesiurly walking speed) Therefore dealing with things coming at you at 50 - 100km must present a challange.
On the other hand we see tennis players and cricketers etc facing balls traveling at over 100km and they are able to deal with it? But they do it by reaction rather than analysis. The part of our brain that deals with reaction is the amigdala and is buried deep in our brains and the "oldest" part of the brain. This is also our watchdog the bit of the brain that makes you flinch at an unexpected noise or close your eyelid in time to protect your eye from an incoming partical. It is the "act first ask questions second" part of our brain. You know from your own experiance that the thinking part is much much slower.
For example if you have ever been to a scary movie and flinched at a sudden sight or sound that is our friend amigdala in action the fact that you relax again and don't run out of the theatre is our slower but smarter thinking brain taking over.

So the point is we all make decisions relatively slowly, admittedly some people are faster than others but what a car does travelling at higher than walking speeds is make this slower process visable. While some of the time we rely on learned responses such as changing gear a lot of what happens on the road is constantly changing so we have to think it through not merely react.

Next time we see someone being indecisive on the roads lets assume that they are getting to it as fast as they can its just that sometimes good decisions take time.

Next post, why some people drive in a very sequential manner, but this one is long enough for one day.

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink

So the UN is trying to make water and sanitation a human right. It was described as a non binding aspirational goal. Which presumably is what the rest of the human rights are also based on a cursory examination of the others.

Here is a link to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr

As you can see there are 30 of them. What strikes me reading through the list is how few of them NZ has acheived at the moment without adding further rights on top.

1 "...human beings are... endowed with reason...." clearly whomever wrote this was living on a different planet from me. I meet humans on a daily basis who have virtually nil ability to reason.

8 "right to effective remedy for any acts violating the rights granted to him by law" nope not here, we all know that justice via our court system is excedingly expensive and in a number of instances government departments (the ones most likely to violate your rights) are exempt from prosocution

9 "no one shall be subject to abitrary arrest or detintion" except it seems if it suits the state, we all know that people can be detained on the suspicion of terrorisim so strike that one too.

11 "everyone is presumed inocent until proven guilty" except for tax cases in NZ where you have to prove innocence

12 "everyone is entitled to privacy" nope again we allow law enforcement agencies to routinely snoop on people (who are innocent until proven guilty remember)

13 "everyone has the right to leave the country" well as long as it is ok with the government having paid all your fines, obtained a passport and gotten another country to agree that you can go there.

15 "everyone has the right to a nationality" unless you are adopted from a foriegn country in which case you have no nationality until the government decides to give you one.

17 "no one shall be abitrarily deprived of their property" unless of course we need it for tax or perhaps we might want to build a road on it or perhaps we consider your house historic etc.

19 "everyone has the right to expression" unless of course we think that it is hate speech or you want to wear a gang patch or we otherwise disagree with your expression.

23 This one is all about employment and is completely indefensible as a "human right" since when has the "right" to form a trade union been an inalienable part of being a human being. I am confident that many generations of people could live and die without the need of a trade union. This article also assumes that work is some how a societal good which unless you are living in a comunist country it is not.

24 "the right to paid holidays" I can't rationalise the idea that holidays are a human right at all, presumably as a hunter gatherer if you sat on your bum too long you starved to death so when did holidays become a human right. Does this mean unemployed people are entitled to holidays? Why don't stay at home mums get holidays

And now they want to add water to the list, given that this is a necessity of life then this feels as least as reasonable as some of the other nonsense that is included in the declaration now, but how is this to be manifest? Is the first 2 litres a day for each citizen of water provided to be free and then the normal charging regime of direct charging or via rates cuts in and who by the way pays for the first 2 litres? If I am out in the country side etc does that mean I can trample peoples property rights (article 17) in order to asert my right to access to water.

In the debate a case was sighted of a community in Bolivia where a commercial company after putting a water scheme in place wished to deprive the locals of the right to collect rain water. OK I think I can accept that access to rain (or the weather more generally) is potentially a human right, however after that it gets a bit murky.

With all the brain power devoted to the UN shouldn't they be a bit smarter about what they are trying to acheive. "design a system for idiots and only idiots will use it'

You can't always get what you want

Recently I have been told that "In a democracy people get the government they deserve" which is a quote from Alexis de Tocqueville and is an often used quote to explain why democratic governments are as bad as they are. Clearly the quote could be used to explain good government but firstly people seldom think that their government is any good and secondly if they do they will tend to point to the leader or the party philosophy as the reason for the "good governance" rather than the system that created the government.

I first must admit to not being an expert on de Tocqueville and nor have I read any of his books, however a quick internet search reveals that he lived in France from 1805 to 1859 and the quote above comes from his books on America where he was observing the birth of a new form of government practiced in a way that was completely different from the land of his birth.
As he seemed to admire the way America was unfolding I suspect the quote was phrased in the positive i.e. that finally the people will get a government that they deserve rather than the tyrany of Europe where politics and government were dominated by an aristocratic elite.

It is ironic that the period in which this man lived and the emerging democracy of America were really a period of power dominated by the elite (including America) and his comments now being used to justify a system of mediocre government dominated by the masses.

Democracy as currently practised seems to me to be mostly about the tyranny of the majority with some checks and balances to make sure this doesn't go to far. It is odd that for government we believe that "might is right" i.e. no matter how stupid your ideas or policies are if you can persuade enough people to your point of view then you are justified in implimenting this policy. This would be the only area of society where we think this is a good rule. In the playground we call it bullying, in the workplace we have laws to regulate the might of employers etc.

A small example would be the dog chipping law which requires all dogs to be microchipped. This was in response as we remember to a young girl being savagely mauled by a dog (or possibly two I can't recall). It was universally approved of by "the majority" however any short period of reflection will demonstrate that this measure will do absolutely nothing to prevent dogs bitting people and as there has been other incidents since this is clear. Yet "the majority" agreed this was a sensible idea. "The minority" eg dog owners lost out and had a silly law inflicted on them.

As we all end up in various minorities depending on the issue I am not sure we "get the government we deserve" but rather the government other people thrust upon us. Do I deserve to be ruled by a generally uneducated boorish majority or... well the or that is another question entirely.

Just this once.....

So are you considerate? I am...., well most of the time I mean come on sometimes I am in a hurry aren't you, I mean well just this once it won't hurt anyone if.....

Today I was trying to pull out of a driveway from a parking area onto a busy road and along comes another driver who wanted to pull into the same driveway. So thier solution was to stop in the middle of the road with their indicator on holding up all the traffic behind them, clearly getting in the way I had wanted to travel and glaring at me as if I was being very inconsiderate for being where they wanted to go. This forced me to turn in the opposite direction to allow them to get out of everyone elses road. I guess I could have sat there and glared back but hey I would probably still be there, breath in and let the small things go.

A short distance down the road in the wrong direction (from my point of view) I encounted another vehicle that was crawling along as the driver was looking for a park again eyes fixed (well swivilling I guess) on their needs and oblivious to those behind them such as myself and about four other vehicles.

Another breath and sigh... let it go.... however I did start mumbling to myself about why people behave this way. Of course the social scientists will tell you that it is because you are not in their (the people causing you the problem) tribe. i.e. they don't know you, therefore they don't care.
Apparantly we can only maintain about 50 - 70 close (ish) relationships before the time and effort overwhelms us. We can have many more people that we know but even then there is a limit measured in a few hundred for most of us before we just don't care. It simply isn't possible for you to truley care about everyone.

This is not the same as being able to empathise we can do that for anyone once their plight is presented to us, but we don't feel sad about all the people who will be murdered in the next 24 hours as we just don't know them. When someone we know turns up in the statistic we have an entirely different reaction.

But I don't think that is entirely it, I think sometimes we know damn well we are being inconsiderate but in that moment we think "well most of the time I am good" a little bad for just a couple of minutes won't really hurt. "Hey I really need to park my car and I am in a hurry" Trouble is if everyone does this even just now and again our odds of striking someone in any given day go up a lot.

So the next time you are tempted to take up two parks because getting it right is hard, or leaving your supermarket trolley in the middle of the isle while you scoot back for the soup you forgot etc, just remeber that we all reap what we sow in the world of consideration. Life's short but not that short and the time you save today may be wasted tomorrow when someone else forgets about you.

Health or Lack of it

So my grandmother is 92 (or maybe 93 I forget to be honest) and I have been fortunate to have her as part of my life.
Unfortunately she has gall stones something I know about as I have had them too.

For those who do not know about them the salient points are that it is very very painful when they "attack" you and the treatment is relatively straight forward in that it is day surgery to have your gall blader removed, something that you can live happily without.

And there is the problem for my gran, "day surgery" which no matter how routine etc is still surgery and involves a general anestethic. It is unlikely that this would go well for my gran and so unlike me she is having to live with this issue.

Your gall bladder comes into play when you eat, specifically fats and so if you don't eat you don't get the very painful attacks, or more usefully if you don't eat fat you don't get it. This was the way I managed the condition until my surgery I would only eat things that had 2% or less fat content which by trial and error I had discovered was a level my system could tolerate with out anoying my gall bladder.

A variation on this has likewise become my grans solution unfortunately this means she isn't eating very much and losing weight which in the end could potentiall kill her.

The reason for this discussion is a thought I had about the short term benefits of being healthy as we routinely ignore this on the basis that any health issues associated with our current bad behaviour will manifest in the future.

The thought is this, what if you are not healthy enough to stand the treatment and therefore you die of a cureable condition, wouldn't you feel at the minimum a bit dumb. So are you healthy enough to survive getting healthy?