Homicide Olympics

 

Somewhat tongue in cheek this I imagine, but a useful contrast between the real world and people trying to run a glitzy fraction of a second faster than each other. No gold medal for guessing which one gets saturation coverage from the BBC.

At least I assume the BBC is devoting lots of time to the Olympics. I haven't watched a single minute of it, so I'm merely guessing.

Somewhere between plague and the sniffles say experts

COVID-19: New deadlier coronavirus variant that could kill one in three infected people 'a realistic possibility', SAGE warns

In a paper on the "long term evolution" of coronavirus, SAGE also says the virus could result in "much less severe disease" in older people and those who are clinically vulnerable in the long term.

The emergence of a new COVID variant with a similar death rate to MERS, which kills one in three infected people, is a "realistic possibility", the government's scientific advisers have warned.

However the experts also say the virus could result in "much less severe disease" in older people and those who are clinically vulnerable in the long term.

I think I could come up with hedged bets on that scale. Especially if I'd been given a strong hint that the circus has to be kept going until the numbers rise again after the summer. 

The Saintly Public Sector

David James has a piece in CapX about a tendency to portray working in the public sector as a vocation rather than a job.

Covid-19 has been damaging for many of the professions we have relied on most to get us through the pandemic. Recent furores about modest pay increases and freezes for NHS workers, teachers and the police are heightened by an assumption that the people who work in these industries are, somehow, different from others who toil away in less virtuous jobs. Perhaps only an increase that would have made Croesus blush would have satisfied the BMA, or the teaching and police unions...

Despite all evidence to the contrary we persist in claiming the NHS is world class when it is only mediocre compared to other rich nations’ health services. This isn’t just incorrect, but seriously damaging. By insisting on defending the NHS and everyone who works for it, we actually make improvement difficult and keep its failings in place. The same goes for teaching: unless we accept the weaknesses of our educational system we will unintentionally limit the prospects of too many of our children.

The whole piece is worth reading because this skewed perception of the public sector is a major problem when it comes to even the mildest reform. I worked in the public sector for most of my working life. It's a job, not a vocation. 

In my experience, those who present it as a vocation are usually indulging in special pleading. Much of the blame for this seems to lie with the BBC which certainly does appear to view the public sector as more virtuous than the private. As they would of course. 

When political parties are too old

When any one asks me what I think of the weather or of the Prime Minister, does my answer report anything that I have previously thought ? Probably not ; my past impressions are lost, or obliterated by the very question put to me; and I make bold to invent, on the spur of the moment, a myth about my sentiments on the subject.

George Santayana - Scepticism and Animal Faith (1923)


The great political myth is that political ideologies provide permanent solutions to social and economic problems. The evidence that this may be so is weak and easily challenge, yet over recent decades the myth has grown even stronger.

In one sense we should be surprised that the myth is so strong. When political ideologies are applied to practical matters there has to be some corresponding assumption that human behaviour is predictable. Plus of course, a related assumption that political ideologies can be used to predict the future trajectory of social and economic trends. Neither is plausible yet the myth grows, in part because these key assumptions are not made explicit.

As Santayana said, there is a fleeting, transient aspect to our responses to many subjects and situations. We have a general ability to respond to political questions in transient ways too. Elections rely on transient interest plus the groove of habitual responses. The combination is destructive, ensuring that we do not generally analyse our own voting habits, which in turn ensures that those same habits remain unchallenged for decades. 

Political parties and their ideologies grow old and decrepit but still we do nothing. Parties cannot even respond rationally to blatant political insanity fermenting away on their own fringes. Cannot deal with it. Cannot even respond to the slow failure of a dynamic, constructive culture which brought us previously unimaginable levels of freedom and prosperity. 

A good example here in the UK is how we vote for the same tired old political parties which have quite obviously been captured by a senile establishment and are quite obviously well past the point when they should be consigned to the past. We need new parties but we won’t get them because voters won’t vote for them.

At the point when the cross goes against the chosen candidate, which in reality is the chosen political party, I make bold to invent, on the spur of the moment, a myth about my sentiments on the subject. That myth keeps old and inadequate political parties going for decades beyond their use-by date. It will not end well.

A Net Zero Personal Transport System

 

A government advisory body called the Net Zero Think Tanked has designed what it calls the NZPTS or Net Zero Personal Transport System. As can be seen from the design mock-up, it is a zero emission three wheeled ultra-light vehicle with single personal support platform, fully directional steering facility with daylight-only zero power technology incorporated into its innovative totally-absent lighting modules.

Every aspect of the NZPTS has been specifically designed to weed out the slightest concession to old-style high emissions transport. Even the construction material is sustainable and degradable. The base construction material is Plebyne, a completely new flexible material formed from compressed sheets of vegetable processing waste with plant-based binders.

Although not yet released from its primary testing phase, Plebyne has just a few hurdles to overcome before it hits production. We are told that a tendency to become sticky in wet or not particularly wet conditions. This stickiness and an unpleasant odour are the only glitches left before the remarkably green material goes into full production.

The enthusiasm driving this project gives us many reasons to be optimistic. For example, the design team has suggested that the sticky nature of Plebyne could be an advantage for NZPTS drivers in that they are less likely to fall off. It is this kind of blue skies thinking which is sure to bring them all the success they deserve.

"Scientists" want to build humongous freezer

Climate change: Scientists call for 'refreezing' of the Arctic after several 'never before' events

CCAG researchers call for urgent research on refreezing the Arctic, and say many other solutions already exist.

The Arctic is now experiencing several "never before" events, with dramatic, human impacts on the planet's ecosystem, according to a new report...

The authors say we must explore ways of restoring damaged climate systems, including refreezing the Arctic, though no further detail was provided.

No further detail was provided? The wimps - ask Electrolux what they think of the idea.

Old Photos

 

I've been scanning an album of old photos today. Mainly to reduce the space taken up by bulky photo albums we never look at from one year to the next. Some photos are deteriorating, so I had to do something about that anyway. Presumably the digital versions will last, but how we'll pass them on when we pop our clogs I don't know.

All the photos I scanned today were from the seventies, from about 1972 to 1979 and there were about 120 to scan. In the era of the digital camera, a similar period seems to generate about ten times as many and I suspect it would be no great loss if I were to delete ninety percent of them. 

Digital clutter has replaced physical clutter I suppose. Oh well - there are quite a few more albums to go.