Close Up (a news magazine show) last evening featured an item on Robots in a rest home here in Auckland. This is a trial that is underway to evaluate various robots to see what help if any they can be within the aged care setting.
The robots seemed at the lower end of what is possible, mostly reminding people about their meds taking blood pressure readings and the like, they certainly were not mobile or truly autonomous. The feedback that the show presents after items such as this was enlightening, two comments were presented and both of them referred to this simply being a cost cutting exercise to eliminate wage costs. No such mention had been made of anything like that in the actual article so this is probably a sub conscious display of peoples fears of such technology.
This article is another example of synchronicity for me as I had already been considering the impact of robots on our society. This interest had been sparked by the release of Honda’s latest robot, Asimov. Who is more the embodiment of what we generally think of as a robot, a mechanical person. It was the sophistication of this particular robot that had me thinking as it can clearly perform a lot of interesting tasks and it is only a development project currently. (refer Youtube.com and search for Honda Robot)
The fact that it is Honda’s robot is also of interest, Honda clearly makes mass market “things” and is presumably investing in this technology because they think there is or will be a market for them. I mean who wouldn’t want one of these fetching you a drink or better yet doing some chores like ironing etc. The meet, greet and direct function demonstrated on one of the videos is a useful application right there for some larger organisations. Not a great leap to see these things in stores walking the floors and helping customers. Do you want to buy a skill saw? Follow the robot assistant to where they are and it can then answer your questions about the saws, once you have selected one pick it up and carry it to the register where potentially another one completes the check out and then the saw is carried to your car for you.
This is far from science fiction; Asimov could clearly do this right now without any problems. But what happens to the people that do this now? Well clearly they are out of a job right but that is just the way of technology so why worry, when blacksmithing went into decline we had the rise of the mechanic so no big problem.
Well I don’t want to sound like a Luddite but this time I suspect this is different. Just think for a moment of all the jobs that can be displaced by robots and it is a lot, basically it is any job that does not require creativity. Factory jobs, pretty much all gone. Food service, all gone. Shop service, gone. Construction, gone. (yes construction, while complicated once the plans a drawn the rest is pretty much a process.) Information provision (thinking teaching). Surgery, perhaps not gone but there are already robots doing brain surgery. Robot Surgery
See the problem with this technology is that it is so pervasive and is specifically designed to replace humans not to augment them. How does the world work when most people have no work to do? Who is going to buy the goods and services all the robots produce? I can’t imagine my way to how this works out but what I do know is there is a robot coming to your life very soon (think 10 years) either as your helper or replacement. Something to think about.
I came across this little bit of doggerel some years back which now seems potentially prophetic.
When Machines do our work and machines do our play
For then we shall all be in clover
We’ll have nothing to do all the live long day
Till the machines that do nothing take over
Random thoughts on Random topics sparked by my travels through life and the things I see or hear on the way
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
The measure of the thing
Recently, if you follow such things, there has been some internet chatter about the possibility that some CERN scientists (the LHC chaps) have found neutrinos travelling faster than light. For those of us focused on the mortgage and such like this is fairly dull news but for physicist this would put a major dent in the theory of relativity and everything else that is built on this theory, hence the chatter.
Because of the importance of this issue a lot of attention has been focused on the experiment and some criticism made of the accuracy of the measurements involved. One of the measuring devices (don’t ask me which one) had a potential error rate of 30 billionth of a second, which apparently at light speed could be an issue so they have improved it down to 3 billionth of a second for their second try. (Just sit and try and imagine how small that is for a moment.). Next issue is the distance from the start of the race and the end, they are using about 450km and for some reason an exact measurement of this is important also. (I would have thought if both things travel the same distance and one is first the exact distance wouldn’t matter, shows what I know) But the main point is that measurement is important if you want the correct answer.
It reminded me that we are quite keen on measuring things, you can go to university and do a 4 year course on it if you like (surveying). It also reminded me of when we adopted the metric system in this country and there was an extended education campaign. As a kid the most memorable item was a ruler that had inches on one side and centimetres on the other side. It was made of wood and made a very satisfactory sound if one end was held by the lid of my desk and the other end was twanged to make it vibrate. Very educational but probably more about the relationship of pitch to wave length, (not that I could have told you that at the time), than measurement.
So of course the measurement issue comes up a lot, if you want your view point to sound authoritive it doesn’t hurt to have some numbers or statistics to back it up. A technique that I frequently use myself I will admit. But there are some numbers that are simply irritating due to their actual lack of substance versus their perceived importance.
One that irritates me a lot is the “Poverty Line” we hear all the time that people are this or that in relation to the Poverty Line. Well let’s start with, in NZ there is no such agreed number. So this so called line is presumably where people wish to place it which isn’t much of a yard stick is it.
A recent idea that has had a bit of press lately is “there are 220,000 children living in poverty” this comes from the commissioner for children and he has at least had the good manners to define what in his view poverty is and according to him these children are living in households with income less than 60% of the median income. OK so what is the median income, well according to Statistics NZ’s June 2011 survey it is now just a touch under $41,000 per annum, so 60% of that is approx $25,000. So to make the remark easier to understand if you have an income of less than $25,000 and you have children you are according to the children’s commissioner living in poverty.
So who are these people, well despite my dislike of the idea of minimum wage legislation this is useful in this conversation as it is currently $13 per hour or roughly $26,000 per annum. Therefore it is easy to conclude based on the above that poor people in NZ are those that either don’t work or only work part time. (for whatever reason) So reframed the idea is “If you don’t work you don’t earn much” Gee what a shock.
Yes, yes I know there is no work out there etc, but that is a different issue isn’t it. Do we really expect people who don’t work to be well off?
Because of the importance of this issue a lot of attention has been focused on the experiment and some criticism made of the accuracy of the measurements involved. One of the measuring devices (don’t ask me which one) had a potential error rate of 30 billionth of a second, which apparently at light speed could be an issue so they have improved it down to 3 billionth of a second for their second try. (Just sit and try and imagine how small that is for a moment.). Next issue is the distance from the start of the race and the end, they are using about 450km and for some reason an exact measurement of this is important also. (I would have thought if both things travel the same distance and one is first the exact distance wouldn’t matter, shows what I know) But the main point is that measurement is important if you want the correct answer.
It reminded me that we are quite keen on measuring things, you can go to university and do a 4 year course on it if you like (surveying). It also reminded me of when we adopted the metric system in this country and there was an extended education campaign. As a kid the most memorable item was a ruler that had inches on one side and centimetres on the other side. It was made of wood and made a very satisfactory sound if one end was held by the lid of my desk and the other end was twanged to make it vibrate. Very educational but probably more about the relationship of pitch to wave length, (not that I could have told you that at the time), than measurement.
So of course the measurement issue comes up a lot, if you want your view point to sound authoritive it doesn’t hurt to have some numbers or statistics to back it up. A technique that I frequently use myself I will admit. But there are some numbers that are simply irritating due to their actual lack of substance versus their perceived importance.
One that irritates me a lot is the “Poverty Line” we hear all the time that people are this or that in relation to the Poverty Line. Well let’s start with, in NZ there is no such agreed number. So this so called line is presumably where people wish to place it which isn’t much of a yard stick is it.
A recent idea that has had a bit of press lately is “there are 220,000 children living in poverty” this comes from the commissioner for children and he has at least had the good manners to define what in his view poverty is and according to him these children are living in households with income less than 60% of the median income. OK so what is the median income, well according to Statistics NZ’s June 2011 survey it is now just a touch under $41,000 per annum, so 60% of that is approx $25,000. So to make the remark easier to understand if you have an income of less than $25,000 and you have children you are according to the children’s commissioner living in poverty.
So who are these people, well despite my dislike of the idea of minimum wage legislation this is useful in this conversation as it is currently $13 per hour or roughly $26,000 per annum. Therefore it is easy to conclude based on the above that poor people in NZ are those that either don’t work or only work part time. (for whatever reason) So reframed the idea is “If you don’t work you don’t earn much” Gee what a shock.
Yes, yes I know there is no work out there etc, but that is a different issue isn’t it. Do we really expect people who don’t work to be well off?
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Tough Sell
I have sometimes wondered about the poor chap that took up the job of telephone salesman to sell the first telephones. I mean think about the sort of conversations he would have had.
“Good Morning Lord Meldue, I would like to interest you in the very latest technology, the Telephone, it will revolutionise all aspects of commerce and social discourse”
“Well that sounds exciting what does it do?”
“Well you simply pick up this part and you can talk to anyone you like without leaving your house”
“Marvelous old chap, let’s talk to Lord Budgie I need to send word to him about lunch”
“Ah, well you can’t actually do that yet”
“Why not?”
“Well Lord Budgie would need one too and then we, the telephone company need to run a wire from your house to his house”
“I see, well who can I speak with?”
“Well currently no one because you will be the first”
“So I should buy this thing, so that it should do nothing until such time as my friends buy one, also to do nothing, until after you have run wires to and from all of their houses to mine, and then the thing will work”
“Exactly sir you have it now”
“Thank you but goodbye to you”
When you think about how did this system ever get going, the very idea of running wire from every house to a central exchange seems extraordinary but that is how it works after all.
And there is a lot of this stuff when you start thinking about it, Sir Walter Raleigh who brought tobacco back to England. “well you take these leaves place them inside a paper roll put one end in your mouth and set light to the end” or “you take this powder of ground up leaves and shove it up your nose” You really do have to admire the salespeople who pulled off getting tobacco off the ground.
But the tough sell I was really thinking about was God, without Heaven. Is there a religion that does not promise an afterlife which is as far as I can tell an improvement on the current state? So why do all religions have a heaven?
There is no automatic connection between the existence of God and the existence of an afterlife, apparently according to most religious traditions this is exactly the proposition that holds for all creatures on earth except us of course. Dogs don’t go to heaven according to any priest of minister I have ever spoken to, which in my mind is a yawning gap in the system as I like my dogs a lot more than most people I know.
I reckon you don’t find a God without a heaven because it would be a tough sell. It would be similar to the conversation above wouldn’t it. “you should worship God and do as he says” “and if I don’t” “well he will be really grumpy with you”, “umm I’ll get back to you”
So it seems potentially that Heaven may potentially be nothing more than an air points scheme dreamed up by religious advertisers to encourage people to join their team. As a scheme of course it is perfect because the liability to deliver is placed on someone else and only after the customer is dead and effectively worthless from a mortal bound churches point of view.
Based on my scant understanding of Buddhism this appears to be a system of Heaven but no God which may be a step in the right direction, also dogs presumably are part of the cycle of life they seem to believe in. Not sure if the orange robes would come in my size and then there is the whole don’t eat meat thing... Hmm it’s a hard road finding the perfect religion.
“Good Morning Lord Meldue, I would like to interest you in the very latest technology, the Telephone, it will revolutionise all aspects of commerce and social discourse”
“Well that sounds exciting what does it do?”
“Well you simply pick up this part and you can talk to anyone you like without leaving your house”
“Marvelous old chap, let’s talk to Lord Budgie I need to send word to him about lunch”
“Ah, well you can’t actually do that yet”
“Why not?”
“Well Lord Budgie would need one too and then we, the telephone company need to run a wire from your house to his house”
“I see, well who can I speak with?”
“Well currently no one because you will be the first”
“So I should buy this thing, so that it should do nothing until such time as my friends buy one, also to do nothing, until after you have run wires to and from all of their houses to mine, and then the thing will work”
“Exactly sir you have it now”
“Thank you but goodbye to you”
When you think about how did this system ever get going, the very idea of running wire from every house to a central exchange seems extraordinary but that is how it works after all.
And there is a lot of this stuff when you start thinking about it, Sir Walter Raleigh who brought tobacco back to England. “well you take these leaves place them inside a paper roll put one end in your mouth and set light to the end” or “you take this powder of ground up leaves and shove it up your nose” You really do have to admire the salespeople who pulled off getting tobacco off the ground.
But the tough sell I was really thinking about was God, without Heaven. Is there a religion that does not promise an afterlife which is as far as I can tell an improvement on the current state? So why do all religions have a heaven?
There is no automatic connection between the existence of God and the existence of an afterlife, apparently according to most religious traditions this is exactly the proposition that holds for all creatures on earth except us of course. Dogs don’t go to heaven according to any priest of minister I have ever spoken to, which in my mind is a yawning gap in the system as I like my dogs a lot more than most people I know.
I reckon you don’t find a God without a heaven because it would be a tough sell. It would be similar to the conversation above wouldn’t it. “you should worship God and do as he says” “and if I don’t” “well he will be really grumpy with you”, “umm I’ll get back to you”
So it seems potentially that Heaven may potentially be nothing more than an air points scheme dreamed up by religious advertisers to encourage people to join their team. As a scheme of course it is perfect because the liability to deliver is placed on someone else and only after the customer is dead and effectively worthless from a mortal bound churches point of view.
Based on my scant understanding of Buddhism this appears to be a system of Heaven but no God which may be a step in the right direction, also dogs presumably are part of the cycle of life they seem to believe in. Not sure if the orange robes would come in my size and then there is the whole don’t eat meat thing... Hmm it’s a hard road finding the perfect religion.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Occupy
These occupy people have become cause for some head scratching. Originally I thought they were the usual grab bag of professional protesters and complainers and I still think some of them are. And I have no idea what they want. Well yes I know they want the world to be fairer and nicer and lets all hold hands and the like but.... what exactly is their proposed solution to the problems they have identified. It is hard for concrete thinkers like myself to get on board with ideas based on feel good slogans. But gradually and grudgingly they have earned a level of respect from me.
Our City Council is desperate to have them removed and stop them from making the place untidy and has called on the police to “do their duty” and forcibly evict them. The police refused which made the Mayor very unhappy. Trouble is I find myself agreeing with the police. These people are being totally peaceful and very polite. They don’t shout and carry on, they don’t get in the faces of passersby no one is prevented from their lawful business and I suspect with Christmas approaching and their “campground” normally be used for various events they are more than likely to politely move out of the way for the event and move back once it is over. It’s actually hard to dislike people who are acting reasonably even if you don’t understand what it is they want. Live and let Die I have always said so why should they be “bullied” by the police.
The other level of success for the protesters is I have been paying more attention to the rich / poor divide and wondering what the solution to this is. The current political flavours don’t seem to work. On the right we have “every man for himself and work hard” On the left we have the equally silly “let’s all share everything evenly” Then we have the Green movement which seems to desire a great leap backwards to a non existent fairytale world of gentle farmers.
So articulating the problem is pretty easy, the economic cake is not shared evenly enough. We decide what share of the cake you should get by assigning value to the inputs you bring to the economic table be that labour, mental labour or capital. So based on that equation some peoples inputs are not valued at a high enough level to make it work for them and they become (or always were) poor.
Assuming for a moment that the laws of supply and demand still work then the assumption must be that there is an oversupply of certain inputs which drives down the price. So who in our society is poor... as a general and almost universal rule it is the unskilled and the uneducated.
So on to solutions, the most popular are to either “create” more jobs or upskill the unemployed. Neither of which will work. There are no more unskilled jobs to be “created” we don’t need them any more and any way how does this help presumably more low paid work doesn’t really assist with raising living standards. As to upskilling, well despite a bit of hand wringing every now and then there are very good opportunities for education in this country so that doesn’t appear to be working. It’s the “lead a horse to water” thing.
In normal economics if there is an oversupply of anything leading to a reduction in price then people stop producing that thing which brings the supply demand equation into balance. Think of farmers and crops, if the price of corn falls too low they switch to growing grain or whatever. So here is where it starts to get tricky the obvious conclusion must be that we need to limit the “supply” of the unskilled and uneducated and this means limiting the support we give to people to have children. (see told you its tricky, and yes I am not unaware of the issues that sort of statement will raise in peoples minds) Yet as a society we like children and we do lots to help and promote the idea of children, but in lots of ways it isn’t helping. Apart from unemployment and poverty exponential growth in the population isn’t exactly helping the planet either. Time for society to stop promoting children. Try winning an election with that as a policy.
Our City Council is desperate to have them removed and stop them from making the place untidy and has called on the police to “do their duty” and forcibly evict them. The police refused which made the Mayor very unhappy. Trouble is I find myself agreeing with the police. These people are being totally peaceful and very polite. They don’t shout and carry on, they don’t get in the faces of passersby no one is prevented from their lawful business and I suspect with Christmas approaching and their “campground” normally be used for various events they are more than likely to politely move out of the way for the event and move back once it is over. It’s actually hard to dislike people who are acting reasonably even if you don’t understand what it is they want. Live and let Die I have always said so why should they be “bullied” by the police.
The other level of success for the protesters is I have been paying more attention to the rich / poor divide and wondering what the solution to this is. The current political flavours don’t seem to work. On the right we have “every man for himself and work hard” On the left we have the equally silly “let’s all share everything evenly” Then we have the Green movement which seems to desire a great leap backwards to a non existent fairytale world of gentle farmers.
So articulating the problem is pretty easy, the economic cake is not shared evenly enough. We decide what share of the cake you should get by assigning value to the inputs you bring to the economic table be that labour, mental labour or capital. So based on that equation some peoples inputs are not valued at a high enough level to make it work for them and they become (or always were) poor.
Assuming for a moment that the laws of supply and demand still work then the assumption must be that there is an oversupply of certain inputs which drives down the price. So who in our society is poor... as a general and almost universal rule it is the unskilled and the uneducated.
So on to solutions, the most popular are to either “create” more jobs or upskill the unemployed. Neither of which will work. There are no more unskilled jobs to be “created” we don’t need them any more and any way how does this help presumably more low paid work doesn’t really assist with raising living standards. As to upskilling, well despite a bit of hand wringing every now and then there are very good opportunities for education in this country so that doesn’t appear to be working. It’s the “lead a horse to water” thing.
In normal economics if there is an oversupply of anything leading to a reduction in price then people stop producing that thing which brings the supply demand equation into balance. Think of farmers and crops, if the price of corn falls too low they switch to growing grain or whatever. So here is where it starts to get tricky the obvious conclusion must be that we need to limit the “supply” of the unskilled and uneducated and this means limiting the support we give to people to have children. (see told you its tricky, and yes I am not unaware of the issues that sort of statement will raise in peoples minds) Yet as a society we like children and we do lots to help and promote the idea of children, but in lots of ways it isn’t helping. Apart from unemployment and poverty exponential growth in the population isn’t exactly helping the planet either. Time for society to stop promoting children. Try winning an election with that as a policy.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Let them eat cake
This much repeated quote is attributed to Mary Antoinette and has passed into general language as a put down towards protesting mobs. Of course history shows that things didn’t work out very well for Mary ultimately losing her head to the French Revolution guillotine alongside her husband.
No expert in the area but my understanding is that the cause of the French Revolution was the widening gap between the rich and poor, with the breadless peasants vs the French Queen the ultimate example and hence the power of the supposed quote.
So as we know those that ignore history are destined to repeat it and while I think we are some distance away from the “peasants” taking over the streets they have made a start with the Occupy Wall Street protests which seem to have morphed into just Occupy.
We have our only local version here that are camping out in The Octagon, a central green space in the heart of the city and just outside the front door of the council offices. I was taken to task recently for referring to them as an “idiotic mob” with my critic pointing out that they were peaceful and well meaning with some valid points to make. So I would have to concede that what he said was true as far as it went but I still stand by my comment on the basis that these folk (the local version) are against a lot of stuff but “for” absolutely nothing (well for the environment, people first etc) but there is no how, what do they want to see done exactly? They have no answers to the problems they pose so they are just noise machines. I am against cancer but protesting on the streets won’t fix that either.
As to mob, well all of them as far as I can tell are living off “the state” or put another way the system they despise is allowing them the income to sit around protesting and because they don’t believe in central authority they are a group of individuals acting for the time being in concert, eg a mob, as opposed to a political party or movement.
But overlooking the short comings of the way they are going about it, there are certainly shades of the French Revolution in the current world wide unrest.
Locally there seems to be an increasing theme around the widening gap between rich and poor (so called as both terms are relative to the society within which you happen to be measuring) and there is no doubt that this is ultimately a bad thing for all. Problem is the solutions seem to be missing. On one side we have “trickle down” economics and on the other we have “wealth redistribution”, neither option really seems to deliver on its promise.
The other interesting plot line that is playing out is “do we care and should we care”. As I have mentioned before the idea that the poor should be anything but that is a reasonably recent idea and alongside that idea is “blame” for being poor. Once upon a time being poor was not your fault and you couldn’t change it. Both ideas are currently in question. Then we had the rise of social justice, “we should help people not be poor”, which is somewhat in conflict with the “they should help themselves” idea.
Once again the clash comes with a poorly defined statement of the problem, “no poor people” or “helping the disadvantaged” are very worthy ideas but what do they mean in practice. How do you define poor, a percentage of average income seems popular but obviously flawed. Helping often turns into dependency and is it even possible with 20 something percent youth unemployment at the moment, how exactly do you “help” these people into employment there are simply not the jobs... although perhaps the youth have the wrong skills... or too expensive to take on.... or not paid enough to attract them to work. Seems I don’t have the answers either so I am off to The Octagon with my tent.
No expert in the area but my understanding is that the cause of the French Revolution was the widening gap between the rich and poor, with the breadless peasants vs the French Queen the ultimate example and hence the power of the supposed quote.
So as we know those that ignore history are destined to repeat it and while I think we are some distance away from the “peasants” taking over the streets they have made a start with the Occupy Wall Street protests which seem to have morphed into just Occupy.
We have our only local version here that are camping out in The Octagon, a central green space in the heart of the city and just outside the front door of the council offices. I was taken to task recently for referring to them as an “idiotic mob” with my critic pointing out that they were peaceful and well meaning with some valid points to make. So I would have to concede that what he said was true as far as it went but I still stand by my comment on the basis that these folk (the local version) are against a lot of stuff but “for” absolutely nothing (well for the environment, people first etc) but there is no how, what do they want to see done exactly? They have no answers to the problems they pose so they are just noise machines. I am against cancer but protesting on the streets won’t fix that either.
As to mob, well all of them as far as I can tell are living off “the state” or put another way the system they despise is allowing them the income to sit around protesting and because they don’t believe in central authority they are a group of individuals acting for the time being in concert, eg a mob, as opposed to a political party or movement.
But overlooking the short comings of the way they are going about it, there are certainly shades of the French Revolution in the current world wide unrest.
Locally there seems to be an increasing theme around the widening gap between rich and poor (so called as both terms are relative to the society within which you happen to be measuring) and there is no doubt that this is ultimately a bad thing for all. Problem is the solutions seem to be missing. On one side we have “trickle down” economics and on the other we have “wealth redistribution”, neither option really seems to deliver on its promise.
The other interesting plot line that is playing out is “do we care and should we care”. As I have mentioned before the idea that the poor should be anything but that is a reasonably recent idea and alongside that idea is “blame” for being poor. Once upon a time being poor was not your fault and you couldn’t change it. Both ideas are currently in question. Then we had the rise of social justice, “we should help people not be poor”, which is somewhat in conflict with the “they should help themselves” idea.
Once again the clash comes with a poorly defined statement of the problem, “no poor people” or “helping the disadvantaged” are very worthy ideas but what do they mean in practice. How do you define poor, a percentage of average income seems popular but obviously flawed. Helping often turns into dependency and is it even possible with 20 something percent youth unemployment at the moment, how exactly do you “help” these people into employment there are simply not the jobs... although perhaps the youth have the wrong skills... or too expensive to take on.... or not paid enough to attract them to work. Seems I don’t have the answers either so I am off to The Octagon with my tent.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
William Webb Ellis
So Mr Ellis lived from 1806-1872 and were it not for his “invention” of Rubgy was unlikely to have been one of history’s stars. The idea that he invented Rubgy by picking up the ball and running with it during a football match doesn’t seem very likely but none the less this myth is strong enough for the Rugby World Cup trophy to carry his name.
At the moment with NZ hosting this competition and the general religious zeal with which some Kiwis treat rugby it seems as if the future of the nation hangs on one last game in the finals when the All Blacks play France. The AB’s bogie team at world cups just to add some interest to the match.
This cultural phenomenon where the emotional wellbeing of the nation in some part hangs on the performance of roughly thirty men (the total squad size) playing a game of rugby is rather intriguing, for a start how did rugby come to have such a dominant position as the sport of choice of so many Kiwis.
In the majority of the world Rugby is an elite sport played most often at private schools as a sweeping generalisation only in NZ is it the game of the masses. Most other countries have soccer in that position and in the country of origin of so many Kiwis when it was first settled, England, this is certainly so.
So presumably I can deduce that NZ was settled by the upper classes who brought with them a love of Rugby and the poor working classes that followed went along with this and abandoned soccer when they saw what their betters had to offer in the new country......Hmmm doesn’t seem that likely and even less so when you sprinkle in some facts for example it was the working classes who settled the land and given that life was quite comfy in London for the rich I can’t see hordes of them volunteering to come out to a land “lacking in culture and refinement”.
So why is soccer not our dominant sport? Well it seems to be down to the efforts of one Charles Munro who learned the game while being educated in England, presumably in one of those private schools. Upon his return to Nelson he established a team at Nelson College, but who did they play is the key they played the Nelson Football club (i.e. the soccer boys) and this set a pattern that was to be repeated as the energetic Mr Munro established the game in Wellington and then organised tours of the country. Every where the team went it played the lads from the local soccer club as presumably they were the only easily contacted local sports teams who could organise 15 lads for a game. Clearly some of the clubs enjoyed their rugby outing and presumably switched codes, in fact quite a number must of because the game took off quite quickly and was a sporting force in the country within 10 years of Mr Munro’s return from England.
So well done Mr Munro for setting in place a cultural icon of NZ for at least the next 150 years (I think there are threats to rugby’s current status but only time will tell.) This idea that an individual who is not a recognised leader can influence the culture of a nation is intriguing but when you think about it a bit more this must always have been the case.
For example the Japanese interest in achieving perfection in what they are doing has always fascinated, I mean to become a sushi chef can involve up to 10 years training and the first three are cooking rice only. To western eyes taking 3 years to learn to boil rice seems a bit over the top but that is Japan for you. This is one example of their approach, so how did this get started? Well presumably it must have been one person and others must have said you know what Fujita is on to something there and followed.
The other question that arises is some cultures have traits that we don’t always admire, so how did that get going? Why would we copy a loud mouth to the extent that it became part of a national identity?
Back to the power of one, looks like a good example could still change the world or at least your part of it which might spread, just like Charles Munro and his love of rugby. So pick your desired cultural norm and practice what you preach you never know what might happen.
At the moment with NZ hosting this competition and the general religious zeal with which some Kiwis treat rugby it seems as if the future of the nation hangs on one last game in the finals when the All Blacks play France. The AB’s bogie team at world cups just to add some interest to the match.
This cultural phenomenon where the emotional wellbeing of the nation in some part hangs on the performance of roughly thirty men (the total squad size) playing a game of rugby is rather intriguing, for a start how did rugby come to have such a dominant position as the sport of choice of so many Kiwis.
In the majority of the world Rugby is an elite sport played most often at private schools as a sweeping generalisation only in NZ is it the game of the masses. Most other countries have soccer in that position and in the country of origin of so many Kiwis when it was first settled, England, this is certainly so.
So presumably I can deduce that NZ was settled by the upper classes who brought with them a love of Rugby and the poor working classes that followed went along with this and abandoned soccer when they saw what their betters had to offer in the new country......Hmmm doesn’t seem that likely and even less so when you sprinkle in some facts for example it was the working classes who settled the land and given that life was quite comfy in London for the rich I can’t see hordes of them volunteering to come out to a land “lacking in culture and refinement”.
So why is soccer not our dominant sport? Well it seems to be down to the efforts of one Charles Munro who learned the game while being educated in England, presumably in one of those private schools. Upon his return to Nelson he established a team at Nelson College, but who did they play is the key they played the Nelson Football club (i.e. the soccer boys) and this set a pattern that was to be repeated as the energetic Mr Munro established the game in Wellington and then organised tours of the country. Every where the team went it played the lads from the local soccer club as presumably they were the only easily contacted local sports teams who could organise 15 lads for a game. Clearly some of the clubs enjoyed their rugby outing and presumably switched codes, in fact quite a number must of because the game took off quite quickly and was a sporting force in the country within 10 years of Mr Munro’s return from England.
So well done Mr Munro for setting in place a cultural icon of NZ for at least the next 150 years (I think there are threats to rugby’s current status but only time will tell.) This idea that an individual who is not a recognised leader can influence the culture of a nation is intriguing but when you think about it a bit more this must always have been the case.
For example the Japanese interest in achieving perfection in what they are doing has always fascinated, I mean to become a sushi chef can involve up to 10 years training and the first three are cooking rice only. To western eyes taking 3 years to learn to boil rice seems a bit over the top but that is Japan for you. This is one example of their approach, so how did this get started? Well presumably it must have been one person and others must have said you know what Fujita is on to something there and followed.
The other question that arises is some cultures have traits that we don’t always admire, so how did that get going? Why would we copy a loud mouth to the extent that it became part of a national identity?
Back to the power of one, looks like a good example could still change the world or at least your part of it which might spread, just like Charles Munro and his love of rugby. So pick your desired cultural norm and practice what you preach you never know what might happen.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Pick Me..
It is election time here in three months and the billboards and campaigning have already started. I spotted a Labour Party billboard at the weekend which beside the shining face of the candidate had “Vote Labour” (naturally) “Minimum Wage $15” (For anyone who is interested this is an increase from $13) So I have rubbished the idea of a legislated minimum wage before and if this was the answer to a low wage economy why don’t they suggest $25 or $45 an hour? Any way the over arching thought I had was that this sort of blatant electioneering nonsense is what needs legislative change. Therefore here is my answer to a change of governance structure.
Firstly as a society we have limited difficulty coming up with collective desired outcomes or “policy” if you will where the debate starts is the best way about achieving the required outcome. The increase in the minimum wage is an example the policy requirement is a liveable wage for all employed persons. Just about everyone will agree that sounds ok (I am going to walk past the definitional issues for the moment) It is the how we get there where it all goes wrong. In this instance the best people to answer this question are probably economic researchers and potential social analysts. Not well meaning, slogan wielding, power hungry, ego driven, vested interest politicians. (some or all of the list normally applies to all of them)
So first it is clear that we need to arms of governance, we need the policy arm and the implementation arm. The Policy arm, let’s call that the Peoples Parliament (PP) would have the same elections, party politics etc that we know and love now but no power to pass any legislation, only the power to pass Policy in the form of Legislative Requirements. These Requirements would be passed to the Governing Parliament (GP) for implementation.
The GP would propose the method for enacting the Policy and design the legislation to give effect to the Policy, this would be referred back to the PP Passing into Law or Veto. If they Vetoed they could offer comment of course but there would be no requirement on the GP to do anything further. The PP would have no right to alter the legislation.
Contained within the GP would be the Prime Minister character and Ministers as we know them now and the various Department Heads would answer to this group.
So the obvious question how do you get into the GP? Answer the PM would be appointed by an Electoral College and they (the PM) in turn would appoint Ministers. The PP would have the power of Veto over any given Ministerial Appointment but not the PM.
Who is this mysterious Electoral College? These would be people elected by the citizens to appoint the PM and after they had completed this task they would go into recess only to reappear between elections if the PM needed removed for some reason (governed by a constitution). To be able to stand for the Electoral College you would have to have no political affiliations, have a suitable level of education and passed a simple test on the constitution. Anyone could stand for Electoral College if they qualified.
What’s the point? Well that way hopefully we get a legislative and implementation arm of government less effected by political influence (no one is totally unaffected but hopefully better than now). You get people in the GP who are suitably qualified for the roles they hold without having to pander to vested interest groups etc.
This is unashamedly designed to put a buffer between the masses and the leadership of the country, hopefully allowing a rational consideration of the facts to dictate government decisions in pursuit of an agreed vision provided by the people.
The opportunity for such a radical experiment seems remote but that’s my idea for what its worth.
Firstly as a society we have limited difficulty coming up with collective desired outcomes or “policy” if you will where the debate starts is the best way about achieving the required outcome. The increase in the minimum wage is an example the policy requirement is a liveable wage for all employed persons. Just about everyone will agree that sounds ok (I am going to walk past the definitional issues for the moment) It is the how we get there where it all goes wrong. In this instance the best people to answer this question are probably economic researchers and potential social analysts. Not well meaning, slogan wielding, power hungry, ego driven, vested interest politicians. (some or all of the list normally applies to all of them)
So first it is clear that we need to arms of governance, we need the policy arm and the implementation arm. The Policy arm, let’s call that the Peoples Parliament (PP) would have the same elections, party politics etc that we know and love now but no power to pass any legislation, only the power to pass Policy in the form of Legislative Requirements. These Requirements would be passed to the Governing Parliament (GP) for implementation.
The GP would propose the method for enacting the Policy and design the legislation to give effect to the Policy, this would be referred back to the PP Passing into Law or Veto. If they Vetoed they could offer comment of course but there would be no requirement on the GP to do anything further. The PP would have no right to alter the legislation.
Contained within the GP would be the Prime Minister character and Ministers as we know them now and the various Department Heads would answer to this group.
So the obvious question how do you get into the GP? Answer the PM would be appointed by an Electoral College and they (the PM) in turn would appoint Ministers. The PP would have the power of Veto over any given Ministerial Appointment but not the PM.
Who is this mysterious Electoral College? These would be people elected by the citizens to appoint the PM and after they had completed this task they would go into recess only to reappear between elections if the PM needed removed for some reason (governed by a constitution). To be able to stand for the Electoral College you would have to have no political affiliations, have a suitable level of education and passed a simple test on the constitution. Anyone could stand for Electoral College if they qualified.
What’s the point? Well that way hopefully we get a legislative and implementation arm of government less effected by political influence (no one is totally unaffected but hopefully better than now). You get people in the GP who are suitably qualified for the roles they hold without having to pander to vested interest groups etc.
This is unashamedly designed to put a buffer between the masses and the leadership of the country, hopefully allowing a rational consideration of the facts to dictate government decisions in pursuit of an agreed vision provided by the people.
The opportunity for such a radical experiment seems remote but that’s my idea for what its worth.
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