ordinaryjoewish

Steve Jobs Dead

2011-10-24T16:12:00.000-07:00

So I read again my blog post about Schmidt and Jobs and have a feeling of guilt. I put both names in the heading something he would have hated, I know more about him now than I did previously, however, I still stand by my comment he was no genius in the Einstein sense of the world; an individual who discovered something radically new.

He should though be acknowledged for his bravery and perfectionism. There are few people who want to excel in the world who want to do their best, Apple succeeds more than anything because people are committed to producing the best quality products they can, not just delivering at the lowest cost. His adulation is also a sad reflection on our world where too many products are produced at the lowest possible cost, where perfectionism isn't aspired too.

In many ways I am sure he was not a particularly nice man, I would dare to say Bill Gates is probably a more decent human being, but Steve Jobs would always be more interesting. Bill wants to please you as does Microsoft, Apple want to show you and dazzle you. They reflect their owners and founders so clearly.

He resents Mr Gates not for his success but for leaving before he could beat him, for not allowing him to have that feeling of success and fulfilment.

Great men such as Steve are different to the rest of us, it is that capacity to succeed massively or fail, that ability to take risks that most of us would not dare to, that ability to gamble their lives, their careers on a belief, they maybe wrong or right but they will do it. When they win we adore them, when they fail we ignore them. On my way to work I walked past the apple store on the first day and their sitting at the side of the road was a tramp drinking the last dregs of his beer. There are many men who gambled like Steve and will have a very different ending to their lives.

So he was no genius not in the sense of the word I understand and individual who discovered something radically new, he was though a great man, a great builder of companies, a great developer and recruiter of talent and he was a perfectionist. The world needs more perfectionist and thanks for giving us the great perfectionist of the iage.

I salute you Steve even though you perhaps would not like my blog posts.

Mr Schmidt/ Steve Jobs

2011-08-26T16:53:00.000-07:00

So Mr Schmidt decides to give the UK the benefit of his knowledge and experience and lecture us. In many ways he was completely right but in other ways he was 100% wrong. America doesn't produce originality, America doesn't produce the great thinkers it should, America is a country of implementors and spenders. It is not a nation of inventors. Now a country of implementors in the manner of China and the USA is what ultimately deliver wealth but truly America needs quirky countries like the UK.

Countries that produce outrageous genius, that experiment with idiotic ideas such as our 30 year experiment with the comprehensive system. These countries produce people that think a different way, that come up with the idea of the internet. The UK is a loser as it doesn't do as Mr Schmidt says, but the world is a winner. The more we all become American the more creativity dies in the world. Creativity requires variety and experimentation. The truisms he spoke do lead to great break throughs they deliver implementors.

Mr Jobs was the ultimate implementor, the ultimate business man. He took great ideas from others, the mouse, the mp3 player and simply did them better than anyone else. He was not a genius in the true sense of the word, someone who radically changes the world with fundamentally new ideas no one has thought of, he is the implementor who takes the ideas of others and shows the world the true potential of them. Perhaps that is genius i am just showing my prejeudice.

The world is a poorer place with out its ultimate implementor, who changes the world the implementor or the ideas man? The chicken or the egg. I don't know, but i know who i worship it is the ideas man/woman. They are the insane crowd, the people on the edge, the people going against society, those that risk scorn in their own time, those that push their brains to the limit.

America produces too few true ideas men, and the UK produces far to few implementors, but in the unequal exchange there is only one winner and that is the US.

Our future and our solution

2011-07-17T08:33:00.001-07:00

The most striking thing about the News International, News of the world scandal was not the disgust I felt at the journalists and their contempt for humanity and the rule of law, but how poorly educated and completely dull the elite that mix with each other are.

News International was run by a lady with minimal education and quite simply an intellectual embarrassment. An elite must exist but that which dominates our society now is intellectually humiliating, and they were courted by politicians of all parties. She doesn't surround herself with intellectuals, David Cameron doesn't meet the great thinkers of our day, he meets a fairly poorly educated, but by some accounts nice lady. I would much prefer a man or woman who met with scoundrels, thinkers, whores and anarchists than someone who meets with nice, dull and intellectually vacant individuals. We continually moan about broadening access to elite institutions, I worry more about how embarrassingly stupid our elite seem.

So what are the solutions to our malaise?

1 Intellectual thought
We need a way of ensuring scientific studies and analysis are open to all. That people are taught to think generally and in a detailed manner, that the acquisition of knowledge is our duty. A human must play, but also study. Too many humans are kept in a child like state like puppies only ever playing. They have children and view this as their only commitment to serious thought. They frequently like Jeremy Clarkson espouse his worries about the decline of British industry yet who does he surround himself with, the Chipping Norton set, nice people he says, but intellectually dull individuals who do very little. They talk about sausage rolls for Christ sake, no wonder our country is in a mess. Our elite need to challenge themselves, work harder, stop just playing but play harder, work harder and look for intellectually stimulating individuals who push them. Not like minded individuals who do nothing, yet make a living from their personalities and networking.

2 Mechanics of our system
We need to be honest about the mechanics of our system. We have a capitalist society with varying degrees of democracy. Some countries such as Italy, Russia, China and Saudi Arabia have chosen a different path away from the liberal norms of north America and north Europe. Capitalism is a great wealth generator but decision making is increasingly flawed due to the short term nature of stock markets and the increasing juvenile nature of adults. We are also reaching the stage where long term decisions are increasingly important and democracy seems incapable of making them. We need to be more honest about our failures and those countries such as Italy which are not really Democratic and parts of Italy are similar to those failed or struggling states in South America. The Asian dictator is fast rising and in some cases solves international problems better than the West, as much as I hate to say it.

Democracy is flawed due to its short term decision making, its naive lack of realism often based around Hollywood movies. In life what is good and decent is not always right, and its voracious consumption of resources threatens the globe.

3 our animal heritage

Prejudice
Our animal heritage means we think about ourselves and our immediate group first, this was fine when did not have the potential to impact the biosphere and the planet. Our thoughts are chained in an ape man past but our power exceeds almost all elements of the universe excepting the power of the stars in it's different forms. We must accept this and define a way of combating it.
Sex
We are a strange discontented animal partly due to our unnatural life style and also our confused heritage, a creature who pair bonds but who is driven to infidelity. A highly sexed creature. We must gain a sense of our sexuality not suppress it, but work out the best way of harnessing it to maintain the stability of families.

4 need for belief
We have Need for belief but our belief systems are ancient and outside of simple child like truths offer modern man little in practical tools, but many ways to help us bond and find solace. We need a new more global inclusive belief system adopting the simple truths of the older ones but with practical direction to enable us to work together and think about the whole

5 managing complexity
People are pitiful in their ability to move from the small picture to the large picture. Most people are big picture or small picture idiots, whatever university or education they had. We must revolutionise our education system and analyze how to combat overcome this problem.

6 Eduction

99 percent of educated individuals are intellectually embarrassing, we have few broadly educated people on the planet. Few people read across our society and many understand small elements of our literary and scientific culture. The obtaining of degrees has blinded people to the fact that most are intellectually flawed and badly educated.

7 short term v long term how to persuade the mob

The story of history is of rulers persuading the mob to accept short term sacrifice and the mob fighting the ruler to stop over exploitation

Daily we need to eat and drink, satisfy our family demands yet the planet and societies have longer term needs.

In summary we have become complacent, arrogant and objectionable blinded by our democratic values to the wrongs we commit, blinded by our degrees and scientific achievements to our general stupidity, blinded by our governments to the decision making failures and selfishness that afflicts us all
We must first accept our flaws like an alcoholic, curtail the influence of our ancient belief systems and act more in a more modern, global way. We must realise our our own selfish aims and desires are inflicting damage on the planet, we must have fewer children, consume less, read more and devote ourselves to our planet and our global society not ourselves. We must once again realise what is good is not always right. We must learn to make hard choices.

Our elite must stop their lazy self serving ways which revolve around fun and acquiring greater wealth and space.

The poor work hard, starve or wonder how to exploit the system and produce too many children.

The middle classes treat life and the world as an entertainment park, earning enough for their families, but never really doing anything which stops their objective of having fun, some break into the rich echelons, they pay for most social works but run from personal commitments on their time and money. Their participation and commitment to society continues to drop. They must consume less and do more.

The rich separate themselves from society, they live in shuttered estates, take up ever more resources, and move to wherever taxes them less. They feel little commitment to society as they simply move. They avoid taxes and benefit the most but care little for anything but themselves. They do not support intellectuals, but puerile artists who offer little to our societies. They have become devotees of fun, and selfishness. An elite who care about more than just for themselves, who take on responsibility to society and a planet are critical. They are broadly though, shallow, poorly educated embarrassment to our civilisation. We do not produce John Ruskins anymore. There are exceptions, however, Bill Gates change the rich and you will change the world. Promote birth control and you will prevent a famine. Yet he shows his inability to move from the small to the big picture and misdirects his resources, operating as if life were a Hollywood movie.

I Ponder the the future

2011-05-15T07:16:00.000-07:00

Ideas they flow around, my like a maddening rush of waves in the surf, relentless but seemingly pointless. The ideas i grasp them, hold them, realize things then they are gone. What is the point. My mind wants to explode, i want to run and hide. Yet, yet why i wonder why? What is the point of my brain it seems to serve no purpose yet it tortures me with so much yet delivers so little.

So i gaze upon the world, i watch the images on the TV the patterns are all so comprehensible. So America funds Pakistan, the Pakistanis are hooked on the finances so they don't advance, yet, yet its choices are simple. Encourage education and population restraint otherwise you will descend into choas. We always veer towards a balance, we follow underlying rules. The rules though are so painful to acknowlege and they relegate the human being. We so want to believe in magic, we watch Rock concerts, we salute our rock gods we want to be elevated above the normal, above the animal. There are great humans, those who are off the scale but we are an animal following fundamental rules written by our planet, by our genes, by our geography, by our technology. We must acknowledge them to progress and move forward we must accept the animal in us and the basic biological, geological and geographical framwork that forms part of us and our existence.

So as we heat our houses as we eat from cans as we ignore our heritage, our past we ignore our future. We must accept the animal in ourselves to move forward, we must accept he planet, we must accept risk, we must acknowledge who we are.

A gaze into the distance

2011-04-12T16:27:00.001-07:00

An eye that gazes into the distance.
A calm that descends on your brain.
A touch that placates your beating heart

A love we search for,
A love we remember
A time past, always time passes

Endlessly it reaches into the future

Why i ask, why.

Man and honesty

2011-04-12T16:09:00.001-07:00

The victor always writes history has been much reflected upon through the eons, and endless films and books have been written about hypocrisy in its many guises:

- The families who superficially seem very happy, yet harbour a deep secret
- The contrasts in wealth and living standards that exist in many socities
- How great creativity from an elite when surrounded by great poverty
- The varying morale judgements made upon one sector of society

A difficult relationship with truth surrounds us and always will. On the one hand we need to ignore some details of life thus enabling us to continue with our existence. If we considered all the pain and suffering and injustice in the world we would probably lose all will to live.

There is a negative side though in that we have a desire to justify ourselves, to justify our own success, so we are capable of explaining away the most horrendous ways of life so we can justify our current position. We are able, on occasions, to turn a blind eye to the most incredible injustice. Let's be clear the pain of the holocaust was not just it happened, but that it could have happened in any country anywhere in the world. The Nazi, were not exceptional they were us - homo fucking sapiens.

So now as we gaze around the world constantly i can hear the words mendacity, we need some to enable us to exist but too much and god help us.

Humanities Desire

2010-11-26T14:49:00.000-08:00

Well i wonder whether i should put Osama, i saw him yesterday in the title to get a little attention, however, i probably would only get the wrong kind of attention. In a world where we argue about the Western or Asian model then people ponder the imposition of values from one culture or another we forget the basic tenants of life.

It is a fact that Europe, the Middle East, India and Asia have effectively been joined for the millennium and have alternated leadership throughout that period. We are more similar than we are dissimilar and the main characteristic that has always joined us and and always pushed us forward is the accumulation of wealth. The problems in Afghanistan arise not through a difference in models but the inability to provide them with the wealth they so crave. We give them freedom without the wealth they so desire.

So that is the problem in the modern world wealth can only be delivered to a limited few and the rest, well the rest they turn to whatever they feel may provide some form of salvation and frequently that can be devastating. So man my ape, my humanity the sun rises, the birds rise, the armies march they always have the politicians scheme they negotiate people lose their values, yet, yet life is simple give me wealth the people scream, and if you don't you will fall. Yet the people they breed ever more the politicians they run, they scamper faster we all run but we can't deliver the wealth to the people.

So as i ponder as i placate my daily needs and requirements, as i listen to the over educated masses who seem to forget the basics requirements of life, those that read philosophy avoiding what is visible in front of them.

Man oh so simple, the naked ape.

What is the point I wonder

2010-09-24T15:03:00.000-07:00

I wonder sometimes what is the point. I have talent I have a good brain I write more meaningful words than appear in a multitude of newspapers, I periodically email journalist then give up what is the point. Someone emailed me once saying please unsubscribe. She might as well have said, I don't want to think I just want to protect my income.

Journalist protect their livelihood in a world where incomes are dropping people aren't really interested in creativity, in original thinking, why think why write, why imagine, in a world where people are desperate to earn a living, desperate to provide the newest and greatest to their beloved, what is the point in talent.

No one really cares, no ones really wants it. What is the point I wonder.

The Streets of London

2010-09-18T01:58:00.000-07:00

Early in the morning I rise and wonder the streets of London. I look to the skies and see the myriad of birds which have risen with me exploiting niches around the every present ape. Life is resilient it searches for another way to exist and persist and it will long after we are gone. We do not yet have the power of the stars so we can destroy ourselves but not all life.

Also in the early hours you understand a little of the city. The immigrants rise and work, they catch the early buses. You can distinguish them from their serious faces, focused on the basics of life unlike the more frivolous natives. So we have created a social system that benefits some, but our city, our great city cannot exist without vast numbers of immigrants perhaps working for less than the minimum wage, many indisputably working in the black market. Like all great cities through the ages it is a magnet for those searching.

They look at me a stranger in amongst them, but massively dependent on them. So in an over populated world, the people are ultimately exploited, unions help, laws help, but there are too many people, too many desperate people and they will be exploited. The only solution is a massive change in attitudes to child birth and control across the planet. The number of young available people drops on a huge scale and salaries and living standards will explode for the poorest. The rich and upper classes would suffer, but the poor would only benefit.

The Meloncholy It comes

2010-09-17T15:46:00.001-07:00

I feel my talent, it breaths within me, it stares out of the mirror, it is closer when I read a newspaper, when I turn on the TV I cannot avoid it, talent, yet I hate it so. I understand, I see, I can calculate, I can fathom, yet for all that failure seems to swamp me.

I wish I had no talent, nothing why have it when the world seems so unappreciative, when other qualities are valued more.

The tears they flow sometimes why, oh why I wonder why do you torture me so... give me so much potential and so much failure.

the space

2010-08-26T16:03:00.001-07:00

There is a space in my heart, it remains empty.
There is a space in my bed, it remains empty.
There is a space around me.

Sometimes the simplest things are all that we search, yet, meloncholy it comes, does it come to all humans, what do we search. Yet if one day i meet him, i will ask so what came before you.

The universe so wide across our brains cannot comprehend, other intelligent life we have never seen it, met it, so short our lives and we leave a few short words that we hope someone in the future may read, someone may find the answers.

I imagine him some far off man thinking on the solutions, perhaps finally grasping and the laughing and going fuck if i understand that, you stupid fucking computer can you explain that a bit more simply. The computer goes it is the meaning of life you piece of shit of course it is fucking complicated humans inferior beings.

The Next Belief System

2010-08-26T15:25:00.000-07:00

So as ever more clutter this little planet, as the floods surround us as the bomb proliferates we must again return to the subject that has tormented man ever since he first began to communicate. What must we believe in?

So now people look to prophets that haven't lived in a millennium that i cannot mock, i cannot draw some of them, others say that we should rid ourselves of religion, yet, yet i look upon the world and know something very simple. We must believe in something, in the modern world that we don't understand, in the world which seems so confusing what must man believe in, i wonder, i wonder, i wonder.

So the Greeks as they cluttered around Athens and built the foundation for the modern and Arabic world, those men those scribes, who were they, who were they that passed the knowledge on for a millennia, please someone write a book, a film for the scribes who passed on the knowledge. You believed in so much, in so little my Greek fathers what must we believe in? Confucius, so you influenced the Chinese, ma, god. Those that believe in the deity can never answer one question which is if there is a god what came first? How did he originate?

So the bomb will come again, it is the way of the world we use technology we always will. Who will drop the next bomb, my blood runs a little colder in my veins as i think. The men sitting in the mine now, as they drill down, life is so cruel, what meaning do we search for, we need a new belief system what should it be?

For that I must think.

Life

2010-07-13T14:58:00.000-07:00

Life what is it? We search for its meaning everywhere when it is so simple really. We are meant to reproduce the next generation, produce children that can survive and prosper. We look at artists, musicians and the messages they send and the understanding they seem to have. Yet what do they do? They are simply discussing the ape man's torment in an alien environment. We did not evolve in cities, we evolved on the savanna. We are meant to move, to travel, to see a limited number of people, not see so many women, to have a small tribe we depend on and see regularly. The human condition is dealing with an environment we are not meant for, and the anguish in artists expresses this condition.

We look up at genius in art as it is so individual, nobody looks at the world the same way and they create something unique where as scientists, brighter, more profound search the same questions so appear less unique.

I feel my heart under my shirt now as you all can, I look at the stars above and wonder. The torment of life, it has generally been so short so brutish, we are fortunate if we have limited pain. So now as we have tamed our suffering like no other generation we have seemingly risen above nature, yet as we move further from nature we harm much more, the planet we depend on. The fish stocks, the floating plastic... yet our elite rarely do they stretch themselves. Ben Fogle nice man, but treating the world as a play ground which his grandchildren will never enjoy the same way. Let me see your anger elite, let me see you sacrifice for her.. no you don't do you, you talk your platitudes but we must give up the ipods, we must have less, we don't like having less, we are not good when we must sacrifice when our families must... you are an ape man... we must evolve as our power has, to look beyond our own selfishness, our own short sightedness to see and act more for the whole.

Onward we march the planet will have the last word......

The Shame That is Dutch

2010-07-12T02:13:00.000-07:00

So the world cup ends in a farce the only thing rescuing it, is that the Spanish won. The Dutch so liberal in their education, so outward looking played disgraceful football. They were an embarrassment to humanity. In their desperation to win they would do anything. You almost felt they would take a pistol on the pitch and shoot an opposing player.

Robben failed to take his chances and as a fairly nasty human being was unable to look inside and go I failed but ran screaming at the referee. Grow up.

They finished the match abusing the referee instead of asking themselves why they played horrible football and brought the most desperate aspects of humanity onto the pitch. I have always loved the Dutch, but now I wonder what kind of people are they? They are simply human and desperate to win, and when we become desperate we slide quickly back into the jungle. They should not be met by the Queen but sent to work on the farms and learn some respect some humanity.

They were an embarrassment to humanity, to Europe, to democracy and a reflection of our selfish society which is destroying the world. Orange men do you have no shame? You make me angry as you reflect us so when all around on this little planet i see the evidence of our nature, I listen to the views on the TV and see the evidence, selfish, self-centred, egotistical tribal and when desperate an animal. Do i have to watch it when I want to dream?

The Myth of Intelligence

2010-07-02T17:40:00.000-07:00

So in the electronic age where knowledge, photos and information can be copied millions of times it gives us a dangerous illusion of permanence when the creeping digitilisation of our knowledge makes its future increasingly precarious. Civilisations are not on eternal upward paths and gyrate haphazardly. If that little electonic switch is flipped then so much knowledge will evaporate.

We must maintain written copies that can be preseverd without the requirement of electricity. Even preserving the books, careful duplication of digital documents will we still leave enough of civilisation? Our creativity, our ideas, our videos, our blogs, our podcasts all will be gone perhaps our music too.

So with buildings that won't last, books that are just in electronic format, paintings that are too introverted and child like what will the future think of us or know of us as they admire Monet, read the Greeks? Perhaps not much.

If they do manage to turn on a computer how will they decipher it? The people I go to seem to need books, help pages, and the internet to understand anything what of those of the future? Perhaps they will hate us for the layers of confusion that surround our culture and all these things make it more inaccessible for the future. If we struggle to understand computers what of future man?

Perhaps we will just leave huge holes in the ground and pollution in the sea, I hope not.

BP, Greeks, Democracy Struggling - Booing England Fans

2010-06-19T17:37:00.000-07:00

So England underperform at the world cup and England's premier player shouts his frustration at the camera. England as the largest part of Britain is an immensely over crowded piece of productive farmland that struggles with some of the limitations of the most glorius system we have ever invented democracy.

Yet its key advantage over dictatorship, the creativity it is supposed to engender is being crushed slowly and inexorably by the deadly hand of criticism, the rule of the mob and the fear of failure. England failed for many reasons, but the most important beyond the moment of luck or genius which can relax a team was because they feared failure. This comes from the over exuberent media desperate to sell papers or garner listeners who exaggerate and incite the mass through incessant criticism. They have no incentive to calm the populace down or reason. Rather embarrassingly on radio five live, an English talk station, they were discussing the minutiae of the failure and personalities inbetween a competition around who could have the best mocking headline about the team and they ask why they failed. Look at yourselves media.

So a small population residing in Athens over two thousand years ago was probably the most creative pupulace of all time why? We can but guess at some of the factors but a society which demanded excellence, which we are losing sadly, a society with a well educated populace who were allowed to think freely and not fear the deadly incessant hand of negative criticism where we start from the premise that you are wrong and idiotic to think those thoughts, rather than the positive why are you right, i disagree with your synopisis for several reason. Let's dare to consider your ideas.

So a society where we fear risk, we fear failure, where the state slowly intrudes more on us as the populace show less and less interest politics we are crushing our last advantage on dictatorship our ability to be different, to try new things to stimulate creativity. We are slowly crushing ourselves.

So what of BP. The oil spill the dominates American TV screens that prevents Obama going overseas. Well mistakes have been made, perhaps BP has followed greater cost cutting than other companies, however, we should also look at ourselves before we overly criticise.

- We want oil and we like the ease of our life which comes from fossil fuels.

- Extreme events happen and we cannot predict them all or prepare for them all. Sadly shit happens we need to look at mistakes that were made, we need to understand what we can do better, but we also need to accept shit happens.

- We are intrinsically selfish. Americans do not consider the use of depleted uranium in Iraq or the thousands that died in Bhopal india, an explosion by an American owned company.

- Finally our elite can be unimpressive. In a society which does not cultivate risk and creativity we are given leaders who are political and broadly liked. The quality of their brain, of their ability to solive problems, to anticipate are secondary. So some of why BP is struggling is due to the complexity of the problem but some will be because the right people to solve it, who can think are not in the right roles.

In fearing failure the wrong people are often given jobs, the England team is booed and a piece of our civilisation begins to wilt and Chinese dominance looks ever more likely.

Democracy is a myth just ask the Greeks

2010-05-06T12:13:00.000-07:00

Democracy only exists as a political form as it has been the most successful way of organizing a country to deliver economic growth and along with economic growth comes power to determine to a greater extent your own destiny. There is no divine right given to us by our creator that democracy is the way we organize; it exists as it has been successful.

So now as we look at Greece we can see the extreme ridiculousness of the democratic myth. The politicians bribe the population to vote for them, they give them more than they should, heh presto the country is bankrupt. They then turn to a body which is not directly elected, is external to the country who tell them what they should do. Greek democracy matters not one jot to their future, as it is now being determined by foreign countries, politicians and bankers.

So democracy rests and falls on a sense of community and our ability to sacrifice for our country and to recognize that we are part of greater whole from which we should not only take.

Religion was invented to provide this sense of community, homogeneous countries are more able to demand a sacrifice you may not like it but it is the case. So what of the UK diverse, where across society we broadly have people that take, take, take. We may give periodically but we outsource from ourselves what really needs to happen. Let's look at the list of takers:

- Politicians who took for years more than they should have through expenses.
- Over paid individuals at the BBC with excessive salaries and pensions.
- A huge percentage of state workers outside London are overpaid, The pensions of all nationwide are typically excessive.
- The rich evade taxes wherever possible and live overseas.
- Doctors have repeatedly taken from the system are now overpaid and inflexible.
- Way more people than should be are claiming disability benefit.
- People have children just to get additional benefits.
- People not willing to work and perfectly happy taking as much benefit as they can.
- City Bankers are overpaid and short term. They wreck the fortunes of many companies by thinking always of their bonuses.
- Senior managers of many companies earn a disproportionate amount beyond what most are worth.

There are many decent individuals in each of these categories but there is a long list of takers, who vote from self interest. So as Bertrand Russel so beautifully puts in a few sentences:

'Every community is exposed to two opposite dangers, ossification through too much discipline and reverence to tradition......[or] dissolution, subjection to foreign conquest, through the growth of an individualism and independence that makes cooperation impossible' Liberalism he said is trying to find a happy medium between the two. We are now witnessing its failure. The list of selfish individuals spans socioeconomic, religious and regional groups. We are more unified by our selfishness than perhaps anything else. The naive Utopian vision of extreme capitalism that selfishness is good and helps drive society ignores the fundamental problem, this leads to a destructive short term democracy based on bribery and people on the streets as in Greece. Comic relief may help and is worthy, but it doesn't stop Jonathan Ross being overpaid or BBC executives to give back some of their excessive pensions. Not to say they aren't talented they are but they are on the list of takers.

Democracy will only survive by engendering a great sense of community and sacrifice for the greater good. Intrinsically we have this in an underdeveloped form given our ape man past, but not for the millions with whom we share a city, country and the earth. The ape man struggles to look at the greater good, the ape man is a selfish creature and that could destroy democracy and huge swathes of habitable land. It has in Greece where the people have lost their ability to choose, soon we may lose it across the planet as she revolts from our abuse.

The Bomb the next Nuclear strike

2010-04-25T15:41:00.000-07:00

There may never another war like the second world war as Great powers will simply obliterate each other in the instant it takes an iris to expand. The moving parts, the complexity something we will never see the like again. The end of an era, a tradition of war that stretches back to the dawn of cities, taken to the most obscene level, yet still the armies faced each, still the armies needed building, yet now the bomb, the bomb.... it changes everything. The bomb, so many details are imbued in our concsiousness that we forget, the plane Enola gay, hitler beaten after commiting suicide, Japan unwilling to surrender wanting the Americans to pay for every inch. Churchill knew, we even informed Stalin, what would they think now.

So we have the bomb, we struggle to limit its proliferation, yet it will be used and then will the proxy wars also cease, when will we next use the atom bomb? Our understanding of the planet and how to harness her and the laws which imbued her saved millions sixty years ago yet will those brains working in the American desert one day have cause to regret their innovation and if, oh if hitler had invented first what then what the?

The shadow of the mushroom cloud is there, we try to forget it, we can hide from it, but we live in its shadow.

The World Order Changes - The Dying Embers of the West

2010-03-31T14:52:00.001-07:00

So a period that began with the reconquest of Spain and the loss of Constantinopole will end with the rise of the dragon. We never thanked the Arabs for introducing us to Greek masterpieces and Middle Eastern and Indian mathematics, so the Chinese will not thank us.

India will never be the power it aspires to as ethnic and cultural diversity maybe admirable and deliver the world's most decent, warm and understanding people but it also curbs the power of a nation and of its people to act in a unified fashion. America solves this problem through indoctrination. The European nations too will find themselves less able to act forcefully on the world stage and many would say this is but a good thing. We will become much more Indian in our diversity and we should all visit that great country to learn.

China though has no such restraints and its dictatorship maybe abhorrent but it provides a power to act and enforce its will that few other countries have. This power to act is now being combined with great economic power that few dare to anticipate. Why do they want Volvo do you hear anyone asking? They are the world's greatest ever mercantilist nation where will this take them? Influence is a combination of economic power and the ability to act and Chine will have both.

We are loathe to discuss the limitations of democracy, however, China is making them ever more evident. The rule of the mob having to appease the mob, delivering a joke leader to a major European nation. Do we have the courage to ask if democracy has failed in Italy? The people have some freedom they are not persecuted but when a leader such as Berlosconi can rule can we really claim democracy is the best system? No we ignore it.

We promise the people ever more where will they turn once the paradigm of ever greater wealth is undermined by natural forces at play on our planet. Capitilism will be finally slayed by the harsh realities of Earth. Resources are finite and there is a limit to the number of people that can live here, at the ever higher standards of living that fundamentally drive capitilism and fund the mass bribery that is democracy. I will make you richer good Sir and secondary that I will delivery justice, equality and fairness - vote for me. Humans maybe a highly creative creature but there are some problems which cannot be solved. We cannot eat air or live in Space with no protective clothing. An extreme example but demonstrates there are limits to our power and innovation and we will reach them on Earth.

Our rapid advancement makes us feel unique beyond the grip of nature but we are not.

So where will we be in 50 years, will China implode revealing greater tensions than are apparent, will she inherit an earth which is collapsing. Our civilisation is incredibly fragile. We understand so little and are dependent on so many experts, so many chains and processes deliverying, light, electricity, water and heat to our homes, that when the collapse begins it will be rapid. If we were to lose one generation of experts, one generation of education and experience for our children throughout the world our civilisation would collapse.

Ask yourself how does your television, your computer work. Can you build one? What can you make that surrounds you as you drive, walk, amuze and work? Very, very, very little. So our civilisation is more fragile than it ever has been, we are arguably reaching the limits of economic expansion and the one system, democracy, which is likely to breed wisdom is slowly imploding. What hope for us, what hope....

Well in all honesty, the world has always changed, I am a child of democracy tainted by an unrealistic positive view of the future, free from the doom of the middle ages when plague, war and serfdom abused the working man. So now as I face an uncertain future, as the clouds begin to gather and we struggle to count them or understand them and as the Chinese, the poor Chinese inherit an Earth ready to collapse we should not forget. The Earth will survive and so will we, just not existing as you would expect.

The Democracies don't see it how can they, they are short term, they are thinking about how to get richer, people are reading and writing about how to get richer..... reading....

Hitler Meets Churchill

2010-03-21T19:03:00.000-07:00

In a hotel in Munich Hitler planned to meet a travelling Churchill. He decided against it and the men who pitted their wits against missed the opportunity to shake the others hand and look the other in the eye. For years they thought about each other every day, they pitted their wits yet they never met.

Churchill had an advantage, however, a book Mein Kampf where Hitler revealed his most personal views and opinions. Mr Beever has a huge advance to write on the second world war, he is a talented writer but the great man himself wrote several massive tomes and should be part of any reading of the period. Who could know it better, who could? He may be biased but surely his wisdom would recompense. So a man that fought them with his words, with a few whiskies believed that democracy was partly to blame for the commencement of the 2WW. The leaders had to appease their people and they did this by enforcing rash conditions on Germany. As we face a rising threat from Asia we should not forget the limitations of democracy as so clearly expressed by a great man.

Drugs on the streets

2010-02-25T12:25:00.000-08:00

I was once interviewed by someone that asked me what I thought of Kate Moss taking drugs; I rememeber a journalist on the radio explaining The Tsunami of money Western drug consumption brings to developing countries and the bloodshed that inevitably follows.

The BBC annoys me in many ways for its waste of money and the overpaid, underworked faces that peer out from the television seeming to exude self satisfaction, however, from our correspodent is a little gem of a program opening your eyes to the pain and change flooding the world. Recently they had a journalist in Ciudad Juárez one of the most violent cities in the world where the drug cartels rein supreme and the Mayor struggles to keep the grim reaper at bay by surrounding himself with body guards and sending his family far away.

We struggle to grasp complexity we were not created to deal with it, our minds are instinctively lazy wanting to see small details we can easily grasp, yet the complexity and suffering of the drug problem is mind boggling. We watch Opray Winfrey not simply because she is good but because she takes us to a place of security and certaintity that harks back to a less complicated world - a homeliness. The modern world is truly scary in its interconnected complexity and no man is capable of truly grasping how it functions.

We have the natural world that governs us, the climate the patterns of the stars, food, but layered on that are the myriad interconnections that exist around us. The large complex social, economic and political networks we have built.

A Tsunami of money hits the third world and bloodshed rains on the streets corrupting the local societies. Capitilism's dirty undercurrent something distasteful we have exported, that services our stars who we cheer at sporting and music events. We should be telling them to hang their heads in shame for the suffering they inflict by their purchasing habits. Yet what are we to do, we seek security in our backyard, food for our children, we may occasionally reach out financially to help those less fortunate but they are distant and remote our own immediacy cannot be felt by others.

Haiti pains me as i reach for my credit card, i have to give yet i am aware that just giving the money not paying attention to how it is spent, not monitoring, not commiting people to assist in the management can mean needless waste and just featherbed the aid agencies and high ranking officials. Yet if we do what is really required and manage we have to avoid taking over. The solutions are complex they are always are but they must have basic principles. We have to ensure the money is well spent, not corrupting, we look at the short term and the long term and we commit for a considerable length of time.

The solution is to manage until the locals can take over, put in audit committess to make sure the money is well spent and honestly look at long term solutions by using people with significant understanding of the local environment and to be brave when required. The drug problem, oh the drug problem.

The simple principle is we should not leave these cities to rot with the money Tsunami of our creating, we should have an advertising campaign highlighting the damage the stars inflict humiliating them, we should look at long term how to assist and we should be brave. We should help with building schools, training people but they only work long term with appropriate family planning. Extreme wealth how it can make people suffer and complexity how we struggle thinking about it. How can we teach ourselves to deal with complexity? I truly don't know i shout out in anger when i read the newspapers, but it is simply frustration because the very thing that is most important we so struggle with. Everywhere we like to look at one factor, we like to simplify.

We have to move from big picture to detail, we have to simplify and then complicate we have to think around the problem, so, so difficult and we are largely failing, that is at the root of our present issues. Our inability to deal and think about complexity in the appropriate fashion and our innate short-term selfishness - we are a naked ape.

I answered the interviewer with a,

"Kate you should hang your head in shame I don't care what you do to your body but i care about those people gunned down in a developing country and so should you. Being cool, looking good suddenly has no meaning when you are laid in a pool of blood, your parents lamenting the could have been!"

The Development of Thought

2010-02-24T15:40:00.000-08:00

We all occasionaly consider what separates us from other animals and there are those that would point towards small percents and the great length of time we have had to evolve. Others would point to language, our ability to use tools, the development of agriculture perhaps simply luck.

Yet, yet in the argument over religion the origin of man the passion that inflames both sides we fail to see the obvious. A zoologist would say perhaps as religion exists in every corner of the world in every culture some belief system to hold us together is necessary. I don't believe in god i think Islam is largely failing its people at the moment but it binds them together.

Marx tried to replace religion with another belief system but it failed, we sometimes have coffee with people that are searching for something, people always say searching for something don't they, yet really life is very simple at the basic level but the simplicity of life isn't enough to motivate people, to bind them together. They need more, they need to feel special, they struggle to accept you are just a naked ape, put here to breed the next generation. There is no fate, there is no god, there is nothing you are simply alone on this planet with the faculties you have been given and you will be dust when you die. If you get crippled in a car crash there will be no divine retribution against the criminal but society will try and punish him. If he escapes the law beyond his guilt he has escaped.

So the fundamental question in a world with no god is how do we bind people together, how do we draw them closer and motivate them? We may all mock the flyover states in the US yet their religion binds them together it gives them a fervour, a passion that has strength. You may dislike how it is directed and their ideas but one should not ignore the strength it gives them.

Unfortunately it is the case with Islam as well and anyone that frequents the streets of the UK on a Saturday night can see that a godless society with no restraint, no values, no code feels a little lost. I have talked to very sexy girls, yet one can feel they are lost. A sophisticated Atheist argument about learning is beyond them, they need a simple morale code that can be followed and by the elite removing religion, for many worthy reasons, has left them in a void and many do not have the intellect or the desire to fill it with learning and philosophy.

What should we do then? How to give someone who lacks the motivation to learn or the intellect the morale compass and meaning they desire and require. We need to adopt a strong civil code that has to be taught in our schools and unfortunately that means the end of relgious schools as it has to be universal, it has to come with clear punishment and we have to have community activities that everyone participates in such as national service. Minority views will have to, on occasions, be eschewed for the larger civil code. In some instances things may even need to be prohibited IE the burkha.

What should it contain i do not know. We have to choose though, we either all follow a relgious code or a strong civil code needs developing.I don't see any other way and religion has always existed, it may not be the truth, but man has needed it for a reason. That reason was to service a need. If there is no universal code in a country or a code the majority follow then bloodshed always, but always follows. The most difficult and perhaps most important balance we have always struggled with between conformity or uniformity and diversity.

Richard Dawkins a clever man but we all make mistakes

2010-02-23T14:42:00.000-08:00

Richard Dawkins is a wonderful writer articulate clear thinking but no man is infallible. Given the entrenched traditional views of creationism in the US I feel he is fighting yesterday's battle.

However far we push our understanding of the planet of the universe there will always be questions that remain unasked and unanswered. Let's assume for one second there is no creator but other intelligent life forms in the universe have existed. If we found another planet that could support life millions of years away, if we were aware it was in its early stages would we not be tempted to send perhaps bacteria to assist the process?

Given the craters so evident on the moon indicating the many collisions objects suffer is it not probable that some alien bacteria may have found its way onto planet earth, how would we know and detect it?

Richard Dawkins in his own book says that in the future how would an alien life know what was natural and influenced by our own intelligent design through GE foods and other tinkering of the biological code. How do we know that some other intelligent life forms have not tinkered with our code not influenced the development of life on this planet?

The universe is very lonely would we not be tempted to assist its development on another planet?

So my question to the scientists is can bacteria survive on an asteriod? How could we tell if something had come from another planet? If we found another planet in the universe able to support life how would we assist in its development? Perhaps Crick who looked at this was wrong in one aspect life did not come from other planets but has it influenced us? Do we have some alien genes?

The climate controversy the real truth - The Islamic world

2010-02-15T12:35:00.000-08:00

The real truth is very simple. When your child asks you what it takes to be rich and famous and asks for a guarantee can you give it, can you? Of course you can't. You can tell them the right things to do, but you can not guarantee it. The world is too complex, there are too many factors at play and so it is with the planet we really are not quite sure what will happen we can guess. Societies collapse they always have and they will. There are huge numbers of people on the planet and increasing; there will surely be some payback for christ sake economists do we ever get free rides? Are you assuming we will have a free ride on this planet can that really be the case?

The myopia of the papers so obsessed with one report, with global warming misses the larger point.

Man to live requires:

1) Water
2) Oxygen
3) Food
4) Land

Advanced civilisation is more fragile and requires:
1) Fuel which are FOSSIL, meaning they come from ancient remains, meaning they run out. Why do people use the term fossil and not think; argue about when, they will run out we really will never precisely know when we just have to take sensible decisions now to minimise the impact.
2) Highly educated population.
3) An interconnected planet, people moving, resources moving

As population numbers increase stress is placed on the other areas making our survival more challenging, however, if global warming doesn't occur we will still have a huge problem supporting our population as ground water runs out as we over farm the land and over fish the seas and resources diminish as they are fossil after all.

We argue about precise figures let's just be sensible. Why is thinking deeply so hard, were we not created for thinking so we avoid it as soon as we leave university? Why do intelligent people not think, not read, not consider? It is so damnable obvious. 6 billion and increasing, never before seen on planet earth, what will they eat, where will they go, where is the fuel coming from, where is the water coming from?

We are not quite sure why the jet streams move, the world could get warmer but one of them permanently moves and and an area of the world will have more water, we are just not sure, it is too complex however, let's be sensible do the commonsense things and look at the whole of the problem.

The Islamic world, how can we help them? They are bringing about their own Armageddon. Oil is their curse, their populations are increasing the ground water will run out, they need an agricultural miracle otherwise when the world turns away as the FOSSIL fuels diminish which they surely will, assuming no change in climate best case, then they will not be able to feed their populations, their radicalism means they will not be accepted in neighbouring countries, they will perish. In turning to radical Islam they are bringing about Armageddon, it impoverishes them intellectually, economically and ensures their populations become too vast. Perhaps a change in the jet stream will save them, perhaps they will be able to invade a country and usurp the locals, Russia is empty and agriculturally rich, perhaps world food production will rise. If they don't get lucky with one of the above they will die in their millions.

God help them.

The Stupidity of Economics/Extinction

2010-02-07T02:17:00.000-08:00

Economics is a mind numbingly simple and straight forward profession. Knowing the right economic decisions, given the correct information, is extremely simple the difficultly is receiving the information and in implementing given the sensitivity. It is so closely linked to individual welfare, equality that individuals become overemotional and compromises are made in the delivery of information and implementation.

I could within one month come up with a program that would transform the fortunes of the UK .

1) Introduce Grammar schools to every town above a certain size.

2) Increase tuition fees emphasize science and technology within education as countless surveys over the last 100 years have indicated.

3) Only provide state funding for one child in any family, above that no additional funding whatever the circumstance. If they are unable to support the children they will be removed from the family or they will be given the ability to be sterilized.

I could go on the point is our problems are well known but democracy is struggling to deliver the reforms required. China challenges us not just economically but also politically. We are fast reaching the point where democracy is no longer the most economically successful system. Economic success may lead us to environmental ruin as our population increases past the point where resources and climate can support; however, economic wealth always leads to power which enables you to enforce your will in the world for the betterment of your country. Just ask those African countries who are now suffering the influence of Chinese power as they once suffered imperial European influence.

Blair is a failure on the British education system as much as a failure of morals; he could have been great truly great, but he lacked a broad education allowing him to make balanced decisions, he was too persuasive given his excellent legal education but with minimum understanding of the world and he was surrounded by many poorly educated individuals. Our political elite are an embarrassment not because they feed ravenously on any rule they are able to bend for personal benefit but because they are broadly poorly educated. The collapse of the state education system and the narrowness of experience delivered by the private sector means they are broadly unfit to rule.

How many politicians read regularly, how many politicians are studying for a qualification, perhaps it is our fault relentless wanting a view and opinion from them, allowing someone like Prescott, who is a well meaning man, but plainly not particularly bright to effect key decisions.

We should be challenging them to read, to study, to travel to understand the world, to perform the most important management task, which is gain a high-level understanding from key experts, then perform a deep detailed deep dive focusing on one issue, don't push it on consultants do the deep dive yourself, do they I don't think they do.

So Harriet Harman pushes through her equality legislation someone needs to be brave enough to say we are not equal and quite simply men are paid more because they are generally worth more to an organization as they have fewer days away from the office. Someone needs to say the Eiffel tower was not built working fu*king working 9-5 and going home and being a decent father, our society depends on difficult problems and solutions being solved men are more able to do that as they are more likely to sacrifice for work, work which someone needs to do.

So as we perhaps look upon the dying embers of advanced civilization; societies have repeatedly collapsed through the millennia and listening to 'From Our Correspondent', it is clear globally there is increasing stress on resources our elite seem poorly educated and democracy is struggling to deliver. The giant in the East rises as competition for those resources increases and we turn inwards and fail to see the coming battle. Food, water, oil, land very simple really.

The average animal has lived on planet earth for 5 million years and one day we will become extinct, how ironic that we are still so chained by our pre-19th century mindset. The Victorians gave us so much allowing us to understand the world like never before, to construct and develop the planet like never before yet we failed to understand some of the simplest details, the influence of the bible meant the end result of everything was man destined to rule for ever more, always present on this planet. We know it is not true academically but emotionally we have not accepted it. Man's existence depends on several simple details, food, water, appropriate atmospheric composition. The climate will change it always has, the earth is in constant change and our numbers will swell beyond what the Earth is able to sustain and there will be a population collapse without doubt it will happen, the question is when as we are all in the long run dead and perhaps Keynes was more right than he truly realized. The planet is 4.7 billion years old the average animal lives for 5 million we will evolve into something else as the planet changes or we will become extinct it is truism the question is when and in the short-term are we about to suffer one of the many population collapses that afflicted man. I challenge you post Victorian person, hope you like that Harriet, to see it and understand it, to take a view of deep time can you truly escape the bible can you truly see it. We haven't yet have we? No you will look at 200 years of history forget the plague of 1347, forget the population collapse in Vietnam etc. Chained you are by the bible still.

Whatever may happen though, we should not succumb to stupidity and for that I cry out for a better educated population, a better educated and read political, academic and business elite. Without that we will succumb to stupidity and we will create an embarrassment that is Mr. Blair, shame on you Mr. Blair and shame on us for creating you.

Freedom What is It - Obama, Osama, Dimbleby

2010-01-14T12:04:00.000-08:00

We always think we are so unique, our Victorian legacy fills us with confidence for the future or the belief that the Americans have infused in the world, from their conquest of nature and the Indian. Yet, fundamentally what drives us is so basic and we function ultimately by rules delivered to us by our little planet.

Obama struggles to deliver further Economic growth to his population, that is what they elect him for, a clever thoughtful decent man, struggling with the bitchy politics that come with a modern democratic power. Can he truly face the problems which afflict our planet? If he can't then democracy will die as we turn this planet increasingly lifeless. We mortgage the planet yet, sooner or later its people will have to realize we cannot always have more, the middle classes will have to realize that, the rich who escape into the unreal world have to realize they can't hop on yacht and run. We have escaped the planet, the monotony of the hard agricultural life we all aspire to escape it, living like those images we see in Hello, yet it is not sustainable. We will have to live more simply, have less. Can the good man bring in that change or will we just mortgage the future? With it democracy becomes doomed.

Osama, oh dear you are an idiot aren't you now. So what are you aiming for the implementation of Sharia law across the middle East? Osama and Queda lack any understanding of the modern world, the countries they cultivate will collapse under population pressure and their inability to maximise the productivity of their land. The Middle East is a disaster as the Islamic world, excepting perhaps Iran and Egypt, do not understand that their countries are generally unproductive and cannot support the populations that are erupting. Al Queda do something for your countries your religion, read some Geography, understand what makes a land work, what can make a civilisation work, control your population and perhaps your people will have a chance without it you are sentencing yourselves to bloodshed.

So there you go the opposites and their challenges, the Islamic world and its worst creation need to reestablish a link with the land and what enables their countries to function and reduce their birth rates. Osama and his ilk are reading a book written eons ago that cannot help them solve the problems of the modern world, they should take what can and neglect what it can't. Perhaps then they would have a chance to help the people. The problem is that with international travel, nuclear weapons the abject mismanagement now becomes our problem. They are in a vicious cycle which more children, more poverty, more recruits disaster for them and us.

America, oh America and the West, can democracy face the challenges, can it engage with the other large countries can we reach across cultures and ways of government to get global deals? I think not and for a good man in the White House that is the challenge. Can democracy escape its achiles heal, it is based on bribing the mob. We mortgage the future, we suck from it and the land dies around us, before we will begin dying and if we don't die our little planet will fall ill and what will she do in her illness?

Oh and Journalists Dimbleby he is taking me on a journey through Russia, so naieve so unaware of the modern world, looking through the myopic glasses of a Westerner. He talks about Czars who ruled for 300 years saying they could never tame the flame of independence in the people, that they still keep their old religions. He hasn't looked at a map, such a huge country no one man can ever enforce his will, the country is too large, you cannot monitor everything, read a map sir, yet they ruled for 300 years and it was only under the pressure of the German invasion that they collapsed, without it when would they have collapsed, how would they have made a change.

He talks obsessively of freedom, a journalists obsession no Sir people want food and stability before freedom, and if you can take the long view, Vikings, Mongols were the Czars/Stalin etc just a continuation. Has anyone managed to run Russia as a democracy? Freedom is the odd man out here, much as i love it, much as i want it everywhere it is the odd man out. A good man who needs to read a bit more Geography and take the longer view a little more.

All, USA, the Middle East and Russia all chained by Geography and climate and productivity of the land. We can mortgage it, metaphorically speaking, we can talk about freedom, but what does that matter what does religion matter, if the land is unable to provide for us the quantities required, what does democracy matter if the land and resources are unable to provide us the products that people want. Osama tries to hide from it in his books, in his religion, in his anger, in his hate, but it is unavoidable too many people on very poor land that can be sustained for awhile through oil revenue in some countries but it will come to an end. Obama, perhaps can see it with his education and wisdom, but will democracy allow him to face it. Jounalists obsessed with freedom, forgetting the basics.

James Cameron Hang your Head in Shame

2010-01-07T16:51:00.000-08:00

Avatar, it creeps its way towards the total of Titanic and now Mr Cameron has the two highest grossing movies in the history of celluloid moving pictures give or take a little bit of inflation of course.

He failed though, he failed massively. He is a man that enjoys looking at the world's oceans, he is bright I don't doubt it, well I give him the benefit of the doubt, yet what did he really do? He had an idea to do something discussing the environment where did he do it in an imaginary fucking world. How many lines did he really bring in regarding the state of our world, how did he make people really question what we are doing to planet earth.

What is up Mr Cameron, afraid to really ask the questions, can we exist on this planet for another 300 years, are we going to starve? It must nag away at you, yet you succumbed to corporate pressure you had a great film in you, you have the brains it almost was yet you stepped away, you didn't quite make it, you didn't really ask the fundamental questions. You didn't have people leaving the cinema going my god what should we do about the planet about our earth. You made a piece of entertainment and then thought you would be fucking cool with a few environmental references ahhh our elite, how they all play to the masses, how they all protect their incomes, their life styles, yet all so cowardly.

They make a few moves, they make a few pretty movies, but they don't really get angry, they don't really get out, where are they now, they are pandered to by luxury and comfort and they have to appeal to the mob.

Where is out elite now, our artists, our politicians, our painters, our film makers, journalists where are they really challenging us, really stepping up to the plate, standing in front of the tank. They are brave in the poorest countries, in the most dangerous countries they risk all for what they believe in, yet democracy and luxury seems to suck the drive, suck the passion, there are a few people on a boat fighting the Japanese about whales, yet the majority of our elite are an embarrassment.

Mr Cameron you have a brain, you spent a few years in oceans, I would hope you occasionally read a book about these problems, I would hope you can think, why didn't you do it Sir, Avatar could have been amazing you could have really had people leaving the theatre going my god what is happening to our world, you didn't Sir, you didn't. You had the power, the knowledge yet you didn't, hang your head in shame Sir in shame. Our Elite are an embarrassment an embarrassment, Mr Cameron is better than most but just a little.

On a side note from our rather pitiful elite who seem to bathe in luxury and new years parties in exotic locations, are we reaching the phase where computer games, movies creating images of nature and life that are so amazing when will they go beyond in experience what we can really see on this planet and won't it therefore just exacerbate our distance from nature. Why go to nature, why preserve when it is so much better in my living room, on my computer game?

Man On Earth - Tony Robinson

2010-01-03T13:19:00.000-08:00

Well it was good to see a program covering such a major issue with breadth, however, they tried perhaps too hard to create a compelling narrative and avoided questions that threatened their theory that climate has dictated perhaps everything about our society and culture. It is a key element, but not everything, we are shaped by our ecology, the richness of the land, the geography, water, the development of cooking and what our climate provides and the resources we have at our disposal and our ability to exploit them technology.

In Egypt they talked about how climate had shaped the development of the culture, a better way of phrasing would always be geography and resources always shape us, however, the first cities were not in Egypt they were further East in the fertile crescent, which they didn't seem to mention. A few quotes from Fernand Braudel, would have added much intellectual depth.

The development of agriculture was more important than climate change in the development of cities, agriculture was connected to the climate as they should rightly point out but other factors such as the richness of the land, availability of crops that can be developed. Seeds needed to develop over time through our manipulation so they could be farmed animals etc again here quotes from Jared Diamond would have added depth and credibility.

The flow of individuals into Europe due simply to filling of the black sea, linking the two seemed very tenuous, people migrate they always will we are not in a position to directly link the two at least not to my knowledge and i am sure both before and after they would have been.

Finally the black plague global warming had an impact in Europe but it grew and originated we think in another rodent in central asia. We were weakened by the famine perhaps it helped the spread of the disease but it was people moving and more importantly how it developed on the plains and then how it was spread from there at that time was more important. Did it die out due to lack of contact with an animal that could transmit for centuries so it became steadily more virulent, we have had other plagues as well why was this so terrible?

TV they seek to explain a good story to always make things more dramatic to have a compelling narrative, serious television should be given back to serious people to make and produce, serious scientists should be doing this show with Tony assisting. They should have been interviewing Jared Diamond, James Lovelock, they should have been presenting it. So sad that a great man such as James Lovelock a Brit at the end of his days was not interviewed a disgrace i feel.

Our culture is in the hands of individuals who are not informed enough on their subject. Books can be written by experts, journalists and amateurs alike TV is in the hands of an elite who stretch themselves too thin, who often know too little on their subject and flit between huge areas. Documentaries like this should be made by experts with depth and challenge us and themselves not in the hands of people who don't know enough. They should be assisting and advising but they should not be running the show, we have it the wrong way round.

The naked ape though always protects his own and searches for his empire and so it is in TV and we are poorer for it. Who would dare step aside and say i am not qualified to write this, who would say i am not qualified to produce this? You don't need many experts but they should have had more. No they protect their livelihood, they protect their families and we lose as the experts on subjects are not making enough serious television.

Finally what let the show down completely and utterly were the final few statements, they discussed and enlightened us on much, Tony finally gained in enthusiasm as we came closer to the present, the point is though Tony can the earth support 7 billion if the climate changes and how will it change, do we really know enough about this incredibly complex system? He said we have a choice as we can see it coming incredibly simplistic and plain wrong. Can we really support 7 billion do we really know how the weather will change.

Good effort, heading in the right direction, please though have several experts dictating the subject matter, script and the locations and perhaps producing. Finally Tony get some fucking passion you are talking about the greatest subject on Planet Earth, read some books challenge some of these clever people you are interviewing think, think, wake up man, I despair. Thank you for trying though it is better than nothing much much better.

Stephen Fry Twitter - Depression

2009-10-31T18:46:00.000-07:00

So Mr Fry is without doubt a very nice man, thoughtful at times, intelligent, sometimes witty although often over complicates his humour and doesn't just say something instinctive so it feels contrived but certainly reasonably witty yet he is annoying... why?

He has announced to the world he suffers from bi-polar, he has done shows about depression does that truly really help anyone. It is a problem that people have, that is difficult and challenging as he mentioned Churchill had it but didn't he get on with life. He didn't tell people, is it right that we put everything in front of people, doesn't that tend to make us feel sorry for ourselves, doesn't it make us more likely to accept it?

Someone is being mean to him, Christ Churchill had depression and led the country against the Nazis come on Stephen don't slide into self pity. Am i being too hard i don't know.

What bothers me most about Stephen is jealousy, he has travelled around the world, he is free, he has money, he can make movies, he can act, he can write, he can read, he can influence people yet what does he do? What does he truly do? He worries about himself and his depression. I say Stephen get on with it. You are incredibly lucky go write a book, go make a film, don't leave twitter because people are being mean, do it because you have a brain and should be writing something meaningful, you are a decent human being with a seriously good brain do something with meaning, then perhaps you will feel better.

Depressed - The BBC, State of the World and Marx

2009-10-18T03:28:00.000-07:00

So it is with some sadness that the reality of the situation confronts me. Humans we are intrinsically selfish and self serving. Remove some of the fierce structure of religion and deep seated moral training from childhood and we revert to type, we are fundamentally selfish. The BBC, employers of vast numbers of highly educated liberal and otherwise worthy types is also a centre for massive abuse of public money, where the acquisition of personal comfort and wealth has become an obsession.

They exploit every legal loophole to prevent the public from knowing the true extent of waste. Presenters, who are supposed to be defenders of democracy, have their snouts in the trough of tax payers money. They are one and the same of as the fat cats that sit atop the city banks plundering every last penny, overcharging customers exploiting their oligopoly status.

There is no god of that i truly believe, but is a godless valueless society able to function when the rich or those in a position to be self serving exploit the system so brazenly and extensively. When our most educated, those with access to perhaps the most liberal and broad ranging education in history are so self serving then is Richard Dawkins truly correct. We are a selfish animal and we need some common values and a necessary obligation of duty, perhaps we do need religion.

We have lost that obligation now, and our elite exploit it in every walk of life, in every position irrespective of background and education. The elite at the BBC are no better than the Eastern European mafia, or the city investment bosses, they are one and the same self serving homo sapiens. Those at the BBC may be able to justify it much more and feel they are serving the public by going to war zones, and some will be very brave and heroic, most though are simply after number one and exploiting the system for every last penny they can. The scale and ruthlessness are on a different scale to that of the Mafia but in one way it is far worse the scale of their mendacity, self denial and pomposity.

Mr Dawkins you should write a book titled the Selfish Ape as we truly are and Marx you are wrong as you fundamentally misjudged human nature. We are the naked, selfish ape, held together by the most fragile of means, by the force of our belief, religion and national structures. These are prone to crumble and break and we revert to our fundamentally selfish, self seeking nature and this happens in every environment, culture and country. There we are stripped naked. We are capable of amazing acts of sacrifice when there are strong bonds of loyalty, belief, and conviction, when these disappear we are not left with much and no amount of education seems to prevent our worst traits from dominating.

A matter of intelligence.

2009-10-11T06:21:00.000-07:00

What is intelligence, we think every day and we are labeled in one way or another people continually make judgments, but around us the world never quite matches up to our thoughts and ideas. Clever people do stupid things, dumb people make some astute observations. There are broadly several types as far as i can see:

- Memory and the ability to memorize details.

- Ability to to see through detail and pick out the pertinent points in an argument.

- Wisdom the ability to learn from experience and apply it to your decision making.

- Ability to digest a complex problem with many sides and facets and work through and apply techniques of analysis to it such as mathematics.

We simplify to make the world understandable, to allow us to function and progress, we ignore pain and suffering to allow ourselves to move on, i live in relative comfort in a European country whilst in the world people are being tortured murdered and killed.

So i read about scientific solutions to fix the problems of global warming they are talking about putting a hose spewing volcanic particles into the atmosphere, apparently some guy who Bill Gates thinks is the most intelligent guy he ever met... well that already shows a crass lack of wisdom, how many humans do we truly meet who have all the intelligence skills, zero or close to zero and they are never the types who spent years at large corporations.

Geeks should be praised for their contribution to humanity and that men in sheds have given us what we have today, yet let's never forget that the most difficult skill to acquire is wisdom and that the problem which afflicts highly intelligent individuals is arrogance, they sometimes don't step back and reflect.

So the most complex system on planet earth they think they can fix with a hosepipe into the atmosphere, perhaps they have created the cheapest weapon of war, it ignores some basic ideas. Global warming is part of the equation which involves, population, consumption, declining resources... idiots, bloody idiots... damn these highly educated Harvard types and their inability to know their own limitations, their lack of understanding of the limits of their own intelligence.....

Thanks for the contribution guys but criticize what it lacks, show us also why it is a bad idea as well, put both sides, talk about the whole problem, how are you going to solve population, declining food stocks.. good start but must do better and acknowledge in some ways you lack wisdom and go and see James Lovelock.......

The Hollowing of the UK Economy

2009-09-06T14:02:00.000-07:00

The journalists scribble away worrying about interest rates, we must get out of recession quickly, the housing bubble yet beneath the surface the tectonic plates begin to move, the UK as a leading country is finished and will struggle as a middle ranking country.

The power of finance the drug that means the government is unable to take the radical action required, the slave to the city means that the UK is literally giving away its knowledge capital to India. Why as the requirement to drive down costs means too much is being shipped overseas. In some companies now they are losing the ability to run their own systems, without which they cannot function, we are losing the skills to be able to build them in the future, we must drive down costs the slave to the city the short term requirement means we are sentencing our children to increased poverty.

Wipro/TCS names that the average man on the street will not know, they will be running the country soon and unlike wiser heads in France and Germany less a slave to the city, we will be suffering higher costs as they push them up or in many ways they will simply cut out the middleman. The government with its debts unable to operate independently and take the long-term view, the UK becoming a second rate power, and not just losing its knowledge capital giving it away for a few years of lower costs before they jack up the prices.

Does it all matter really? I guess not but crass stupidity and short sightedness is depressing to see, watch and follow. The power of the city, Britain's cash cow, yet now driving the country to give away its knowledge capital, keeping Britain short term, keeping the pound over valued, helping to destroy manufacturing, forcing the UK to give up its greatest companies, making Britain poorer.

Yet we are all to blame the welfare state built over many years, now a huge financial burden we will do anything to maintain and keep it even if it means selling the house, the car and the very organs that keep us and the country running. We are a slave to the city and the welfare state, who would have thought the polar opposites would drive us in the same direction. The welfare state drives us into the arms of finance who hate it and it makes us short term and makes us give everything away.

Oh the Optimists

2009-08-10T14:21:00.000-07:00

Why won't the debate progress a little. We always get the people who say there have always been end of the world theories that never happened. Duh.... are you capable of looking at history a little longer than a twenty year period. 1347 or around that depending on which part of the world you lived in. Thirty percent of the population of Europe gone... was that not an end of the world period.

South America witnessing the arrival of the gun and germ carrying conquistadors... some people say 90% of the population of the Americas disappeared. Was that not the end of the world scenario?

Catastrophes on a mega scale happen and they happen repeatedly, so let's not stray down the Malthus said it would happen and it didn't. Malthus has been right, just look at Rwanda, the most densely populated country in Africa. Globally he was wrong, but he may yet have his day although i pray he won't, as i am sure he would. Oh and those that constantly criticize Malthus don't forget his massive influence on a young Darwin, somebody those very same people look up to.

So now stop the end of the world theories are stupid they never happen, to bad things happen, and they have what are our main worries. What are the risks, what can we do about it.

The main thing we have to do all over the world is moderate population increase, we have to promote family planning, if we do that one thing we have a chance. How can we solve the world's problems whether they be drug use, poverty, child labour, fish stocks imploding, the chopping down of the rain forest if population continues exploding. We have to moderate population increase and promote family planning, so do your bit for the planet, for your children, and your own long term future and promote it whenever you are with a person of influence, without it we might as well forget about global warming, and carbon emissions, it will be for worthless.

So do your bit for this planet

What do you do when down - Read Darwin

2009-07-10T18:00:00.000-07:00

So I can't face reading about the state of the world, I almost can't pick up a newspaper at the moment as so few people seem to be really thinking about the great problem of our age Earth management. They don't realize that without resources to sustain population, whether it be food, oil, fish or sheer living space we will turn on each other. We have repeatedly in the past.

So Obama visits Ghana, we talk about human rights, extremely important, but if we don't manage this earth all the our beautiful freedoms will disappear. So we have a conundrum; Democracy and freedom are based on mass bribery of always more yet always more is killing the planet or the life that we require to sustain us.

So it is all so obvious you go to any busy location with lots of humans and just watch and then wonder can this be sustained with minimal regard and thought for the earth?

So I read Darwin, or the voyage of the Beagle to take me to another time and another Earth. Oh he would weep now, if he were to take the same journey now, the tears would flow down his cheeks.

I watched some skate boarders the other evening they were being photographed in a concrete jungle with graffiti. That is all we will have left, the people will not be able to amaze at nature, it may look green in areas, but nothing much of any size will live. So we will be left photographing humans, doing something as mundane as skate boarding not a killer whale chasing a seal.

Everywhere he saw life, everywhere...

In all the noise of the Internet will this make a difference, will I be able to influence someone with far superior prose and connections than me? Probably not the odds are very small.

Well I have Charles for the duration of the book and then there will be another book, and perhaps just perhaps someone might stumble across this blog and think about the Earth a little, I hope so. We can but hope...

Depressed State of the world

2009-07-07T16:41:00.000-07:00

I am incredibly depressed as I write this. I went diving in the med brought by locals who knew an area yet there were hardly any fish, could have been coincidence perhaps yet I did this years ago and there were swarms of fish.

I spoke to the locals there are much less fish now, squid gone...

We are killing this planet let's not beat around the bush, she is dying slowly, or life is. We are going through a massive amount of species extinction, polluting the planet, chopping down the habitat. Talking about global warming is stupid; the subject should be Earth management.

She is dying around us yet, most of the elite seem to have little complete grasp of the larger issue. Mr. Lawson the absolute idiot to think he had an important job writes a 120 page book, was he too lazy to spend a bit more time on it discusses that one issue. You miss the point Mr. Lawson you tried cooking? You might do a better job. If you are going to think on this issue do it properly and think of the whole problem. Whether global warming does or doesn't happen we need to manage this planet which equals:

Habitat protection. What are all the services it provides us? Can we just turn everything to farm land or will it have other effects?

Are we likely to run out of water can desalination help? Which countries will that effect?

Are we polluting and over fishing the seas endangering humans that survive off fish primarily? Is farmed fish really a solution?

Is the world getting warmer what are the effects?

What drives the agricultural revolution is that sustainable at ever greater population levels?

Morally should we allow the great extinction event to continue? Is it possible to prevent?

Which animals can we afford to lose for our own self preservation? Are we sure of all the effects of the myriad of others that are dying out?

Is our life style sustainable at ever increased population and consumption levels?

Earth management is the question.

Like most people I have friends I don't want to isolate myself I have a normal job so I hold all this worry anger and depression inside and I write to strangers in the hope I might incite some clever people to begin thinking about the challenge of our age. We are all so polite. I am actually thinking of going up to strangers and giving them an information sheet, standing outside universities and giving them an information sheet as I want to see the elite thinking about this problem and reading.

I left an information sheet in a bookshop the other day with a reading list and why as I hope I may incite some people eventually to begin reading some of the important books.

I met a girl doing a masters in Ecology she didn't know about the Columbia Earth Institute, she hadn't read any Jared Diamond, didn't know Jeffrey Sachs I mean for f*&k sake what are we teaching people. Why do we let our elite off so lightly read for Christ sake, read about these problems before it is too late, especially as you are doing Ecology and if you are going to write about it Mr. Lawson, even if you think it will all be great look at the whole problem and stop acting like an educated idiot.

I read something the other day and he said if it doesn't feel right it probably isn't right, go to a large sporting event, concert or even a busy beach and watch the people with their mass consumption, mobile phones, designer clothes they throw away, the cans thrown to one side and then think can this really go on? Does it feel right to abuse the planet so? Are there really free rides in the universe?

Michael Jackson Dead

2009-06-28T15:34:00.001-07:00

So he has gone. Someone that was always around in your life, either his music or strange pictures and stories. The press abuse and in a way he was too successful we don't always like people who are too good, they make us realize our own inadequacies. He was too good. The fans may have loved him but the media never did.

I truly don't believe he would abuse any child, you feel it when you watch an interview or you watch him, i am sure he was naive and spent too much time with children not thinking how it could be exploited. You can see people almost pushing their kids to be around him an opportunity a free ticket.

I am most saddened though that there was no one there for him, to help prevent his excesses. He had a good heart, he was probably a bit spoilt sometimes, yet no one was there to stop his extravagances why? In his family, so large, there are bound to be some really caring wonderful people and i am sure a few bad apples i wouldn't want to speculate which ones are which.

People made millions out of him, everyone did, how many people let greed get the better of them around Michael? We are terrible as humans he was adored and hated for his talent and his extraordinary success and when we see something that can truly be exploited, whether it is a good woman getting more money from her husband than she truly should, or someone with access to Michael's talent not thinking what was good for him, perhaps lying to themselves and now we see the result.

On the other hand as well as been exploited, you can see how he may have driven people away. He hadn't lived a normal life so he would be difficult to socialize with perhaps a little immature. He suddenly left home in the early 80s, massive success, he may have been impulsive and childish in his mood swings and a little unpredicatable. I can only guess at the details, however, he was not normal or socially aware and that would have created barriers. You never saw him socializing or heard stories about him him going for a meal with someone or other.

As a hunter gatherer we were meant to exist in small bands dependent on each other, not above the band and able to survive easily without it. Mega stardom is not something we were created to manage. Suddenly you are above everything, you don't need to answer to anybody, because you can buy whatever you required, including phoney friends. This has only recently existed man has spent most of his time struggling to eat, and needing other people to work with to accomplish that.It distorts the way we were meant to live and makes them feel above the rules of nature, able to do and live anyway they want. I don't like that friend well i can do without him or her, i don't like that girl, i will get another, these friends are boring me, i will get some more, i can smash up the hotel and just pay the fine... all these things are stabilizers they are suddenly gone and this naive little boy got lost and no one was there for him. Did he drive away those that mattered, or were those that mattered too scared to help, or did they have too much vested interest? We will never know..

I heard someone saying the simplest thing about MJ, he made a lot of people happy and he was truly talented no doubt and for that we should be saddened. He gave a lot to us, and perhaps didn't get as much in return ultimately.

Obama's Love\ The Naked Ape

2009-06-14T15:35:00.000-07:00

So people around the Obama's are jealous we are told of their surprisingly romantic relationship. We look around us and any thinking person must sometimes despair there are so many needy people in the world, yet it takes a zoologist and not an economist or a musician to really help us understand the world and who we are.

Everyone should read the naked ape, and not forget as he so beautifully points out that for most of our existence we have operated in small nomadic bands and not in huge cities.

We are designed a certain way, our reaction in relationships are for a reason. Some people are very fortunate like the Obama's to find true happiness but they are still like the rest of us just naked apes.

We have sex in a different way to other animals and we have the pair bonding for a reason, we must bring up children, and our sexuality helps bind us together, but was meant for small bands not cities with all the temptation that surrounds us.

So as we look at the problems which beset us, as people wonder about the solutions like the naked ape we are we seem to turn to simple solutions and cling to them desperately in the East they turn to extreme religion with the hollow promises it seems to give.

Here we cling to the concept that democracy as it seems so just and fair, it must be the right solution, let's truly hope it can come up with it. As someone that enjoys the freedoms of a modern society i do hope so.

Small percents matter

2009-04-13T07:03:00.000-07:00

There is only a two percent difference between us and our nearest relative the chimpanzee, yet over 5 million years the differences between the two creatures are simply astounding. If there is a two percent difference between us and a chimp then the difference between you and a genius, a criminal and the most stupid person on planet earth is even smaller.

So now the great leaders of the world gather, the press like rabid packs of dogs feast on any piece of news, the public turn their worries from larger issues to the simpler ones in life, the economy, the extension of the can I feed my family which has now become can I provide them with what we expect from life.

Economists and journalists write narrowly on interest rates, the influence of Marx the rise of China and how we can avoid the great depression and as a consequence a great war. The tectonic plates are shifting, economic power is shifting but will any of it really matter?

We have an economy based on ever more, we have an expanding population who want ever more and we have a stressed planet. Are we heading to Armageddon? People have written about it for centuries and they say it never happens well it does happen, and it happens repeatedly. In ad 100 Population plummeted as our bodies struggled to fight the bacteria and diseases which were jumping from animals to humans and spread around a loosely globalized Eurasia. This decline in population lasted for around 300\400 years.

The world doesn't end but the world as you know it and the norms that you expected can be radically transformed. Armageddon happened for the dinosaurs after a meteor struck planet earth leading to the rise of the mammals.

The Mongols riding from the East butchered and wrecked the agriculture of present day Iraq the consequences they still live with and of course the black death struck Europe in the 1340s laying waste to our populations. Much later isolated populations came into contact with those disease hardened Eurasians and if the guns didn't kill them the germs more often than not did as Europeans swept through the new world.

So yes Armageddon does happen, radical changes do.

The world isn't currently effected by small percents over long time frames it is suffering large percent changes over extremely short time frames, something it will find extremely difficult to react to. World population is still increasing and has about trebled since 1950. These are massive increases and can only end one way which is huge increases in global tension.

So idiots worry about the falling Russian population, there can be nothing better for the stability of the world now than to see a naturally falling population, except it means lower economic growth, if lower economic growth allows your grandchildren to avoid global war, conflict and Armageddon then perhaps it is no bad thing.

People continually talk about the potential for human ingenuity and innovation to save us. God if another idiot talks about innovation as if it can solve every problem on planet I think I will eat my right hand, but they always forget we operate with in constraints, and there is a pace of innovation and there are always problems which are not solved for generations. We cannot hope to solve every problem and every situation unless we deal with fundamentals. We need to learn to accept lower growth, have smaller families and try to live more harmoniously with the planet. If we do these simple things then perhaps innovation will truly help us without it innovation doesn't have a hope.

So small percents can make a huge difference over time, but sudden shocks and changes do happen and as the politicians fret over a changed world and small percentage drops in growth, rises in unemployment are they missing the bigger picture and will democracy be able to deal with the challenges we are likely to face?

Could I be wrong, well of course as prediction is notoriously difficult perhaps we will truly innovate our way out of our conundrum or perhaps it will simply happen later. Malthus will always have his day again it is just a question of judging when and where and on what scale.

Paul Kennedy\ Black Swan

2009-04-08T04:09:00.000-07:00

Nassim Taleb annoys me, he has adopted sound bites appropriate for the modern world in his recent contributed to the FT. I actually broadly agree with his statements, but I find his style annoying and arrogant. He fails to challenge himself, to admit where he has doubt, to show some kind of uncertainty, he has become what he criticezes.

A sign of true intellect is balancing one's argument and showing doubt. That is the difference between a politician and an academic or between a wise politician and someone like Tony Blair. Tony Blair the cleverest idiot on planet earth, a man with no life experience and no wisdom. He is a clever man searching for a cause yet he doesn't have the wisdom of life experience to find a worthy cause. His life will be one of personal failure however rich he may become.

Now here is a brain a man to listen to Mr Paul Kennedy. His book, 'The Rise and Fall of Great Powers' is an insightful modern classic and as a man that makes his living working in the US it is refreshing to hear him discussing what can be learnt from Marx. Karl Marx was a great thinker about problems he should have shied away from solutions.

http://dev.www.tmsfeatures.com/columns/political/international/paul-kennedy/25561319.html?articleURL=http://rss.tmsfeatures.com/websvc-bin/rss_story_read.cgi?resid=200903311159TMS_____PKENNEDY_ctnpk-a_20090331

The tectonic plates are moving the great power shift is happening in our time, however, will it mean anything if this planet decides to evict us.

There was a dog that was swept overboard in Australia:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7986816.stm

It quickly reverted to surviving and then back to being a well trained house dog. Would we be able to make the switch so easily if the planet decides to exact her punishment. There are no free tickets in life and these beautiful constructed arguments from Taleb, Marx and Kennedy will mean nout if this planet decides that there are too many people and the eco system begins to collapse.

Where will their years of study leave us?

As Jared Diamond notes in his study of the Greenland Danish, who starved to death, the rich were the last to starve but starve they still did and their wealth offered little protection. I would add to that our elite academics with their beautiful theories, their books for consolation will not be the first to starve, but starve they will.

I wish great brains would step outside the human focus of their arguments, theories and look more holistically at the planet and how we can exist and function with a productive economy a stable population in balance with the planet.

Fundamentally the only economics that works involves wreaking havoc on the planet and environment. In the West that cost is much more carefully hidden. The most powerful countries are largely the most polluting and those with the largest populations. Until this paradigm is broken:
more people= more wealth=more growth = power and strength so i can tell you what to do we have a severe problem.

If we don't find a solution to this then the planet will. As James Lovelock notes, the earth has survived greater challenges, but have we?

The True End of History\ The End Of Economics?

2009-03-09T12:45:00.000-07:00

I don't believe in God, I don't believe in karma, yet I have the intrinsic human belief that I am here for a reason and to witness something. It is on a rational level completely stupid and perhaps connected to the human need to feel our lives have some worth.

So I do wonder as I read a rather poorly written book about humanity, and in between mentally improving his annoying English, I pick up facts about man.

What is modern economics fundamentally based upon?
It is based on more people, more consumption, more more.....

Is this collapse in the financial system symptomatic of something greater. We can debate the Israel\Palestine conflict for years, but isn't it basically a problem of space. Two very different races of people who feel slighted are trying to live in very close proximity. What would have happend in prehistoric times? There would have been an all mighty fight and one tribe would have annihilated the other or one of them would have simply moved out in the great expanse of earth. We are running out of space and tension is rising.

Can we carry on producing more, when the effects devastate the world? Can population carry on increasing when we struggle to support and feed those new arrivals and deliver the standard of living expected?

We are still an Animal, we shit, we eat, we procreate. We may paint our faces, we may hide our toilet habits, have sex in private, mostly, we try to distance ourselves from the animal kingdom but we can never escape what we are. We live in cities which are largely devoid of diverse life, we may rarely venture into the wilderness and few of us could survive there yet as hard as we may try and escape it, we are still an animal.

Has this animal reached its limits?

Are we about to descend into chaos as we struggle to deliver food to the masses as the world becomes hotter and arable land decreases. I do wonder. Are we killing the goose in our need for ever more.

Politicians hang to global warming like their small stupid brains are incapable of thinking of the bigger picture, perhaps they are right as it is too scary. It is man's effect on the environment that is critical, man's requirements to consume ever more, man's need to have ever greater numbers of people on the planet.

The Progress of Knowledge

2009-02-26T16:31:00.000-08:00

The Polymath isn't dead and there are still great men around who are able to contribute towards the development of knowledge in a number of key areas. The modern world, though, is one where specialists predomoninate and with the progress of time it can be increasingly difficult for people to have a broad grasp of their own particular subject and we are often pushed into ever narrower areas.

There is danger to society in this dependence and if society struggled to produce them for a period of time most of our modern world would collapse. We should never forget that even though we live in a time of plenty, our cities are only a matter of weeks from starvation. How many of us have stocks of tins in our cupboards like previous generations? Having people with a broader knowledge base and less dependent on specialists ensures socieity is more robust, whereas ours is increasingly fragile.

It also means those with great brains, of ilk of Thomas Young from a few hundred years ago, are unable to contribute as they once would have, although, you could argue we have more educated people now so it should deliver us more great brains. They still will typically contribute in only one area whereas in the past we would have had a much broader benefit from their genius.

The additional problem is that everywhere in many ways the knowledge base of an individual is shrinking and it is often acceptable to be ignorant. Creativity is often driven, in my view, by someone that can bring a new way of looking at problem, a new angle or perhaps something they have seen in a different area or study or analysis. We are losing the cross fertilization that has helped make previous epochs creative and this is exacerbated by the increasing specialization of the modern wold.

Gaia James Lovelock

2009-02-02T09:38:00.000-08:00

I read voraciously. If I have one talent it is my ability to read at speed like few people I know. Most people don't read and sometimes I worry that the capacity to read books may slowly whither. I was so impressed with the Chinese PM, I think it was the PM, who said he reread the Wealth of Nations. How many of these gurus we have to listen to have actually picked up the Wealth of Nations?

I love to live, but i also feel it should be a duty for us if we have time and a brain to spend some of it thinking about something serious. I laugh at the French and their pretentiousness, occasionally showing off their knowledge, but also think it is perhaps better than the British pride in what we don't know.

So the two authors I would like to hear in conversation are Jared Diamond and James Lovelock. I recently read one of James Lovelock's books and he is clear thinking with a willingness to challenge himself by considering the unthinkable.

Now his core prediction and yes he has made a prediction Mr Taleb, we shouldn't predict, that billions of us may die this century as Gaia takes her revenge. He uses the phrase Gaia to evoke the image of a living planet as opposed to one of those lifeless rocks that inhabits our solar system.

At a simple level something intrinsically feels right about what he is saying in terms of there are no free rides in life and surely for the abuse we have heaped on mother earth, how we have exploited her then surely there must be some payback. We unthinkingly buy another mobile phone, drive miles to see someone, burn fuel visiting some far off country, throw our rubbish on the floor, waste, waste waste, waste....

So what will be the payback and will we be able to flee to another country that remains unaffected. That is the key. Throughout history we have been able, or the lucky ones have been able to flee the problems afflicting a country. There has always been a safe haven and the idea of I can escape to a better life has existed, once in that country then you remain relatively protected from the more local problem.

Perhaps the only time this was not applicable was with the great plague and occasionally with a war which has been more total, however, for much of history there may have been a great war but if you were a little farmer in the middle of nowhere, unless you were really unlucky life just went on, so we have remained largely local in our thinking as we have been able to. One could discuss this for hours and my little theory probably misses loads of important details, the fact remains we are very locally orientated.

Now if Gaia takes her revenge, if the global planet system begins to collapse like some of the societies that Jared Diamond looked at what would happen to us. Would we become a squabbling rabble or would some part of the world escape so they could assert some kind of structure on the world. Would we turn on each other setting off nuclear weapons, where will we be?

The scary thing is the scientists simply don't know. The Earth system is too complex to truly know what our impact on our beautiful planet has been, and how she might react. We may have been lucky and done something to help her, delaying the problems for later, the system as far as i can see is really too complex to model correctly so they have to make assumptions some of which may be wrong. At at a simple level, however, there will be payback, of that i am certain and what will it be I wonder? Is Mr Lovelock right, or is he simply more pessimistic given his age? Could he be right will billions of us die? Will large parts of the world become a waste land?

I think it is time to take that drink, take that person out you always fancied, tell the people important what you always wanted to, visit that place you always dreamed of and read that book you always said you would, because this century could be payback century and I am scared. Mr Taleb this is something you should think about predicting with your fractals rather than the movement of stocks.

Taleb views our world as living in extremistan whereby most key events do not not live around the average therefore, applying the bell curve is a waste of time we need to use fractals which scale IE they look the same what ever the scale you use unlike the bell curve which has extreme events as becoming increasingly unlikely. Unfortunately he uses his theories to think about stocks and making money sad really.

Finally for the Economists and their obsessions with interest rates, growth rates, unemployment, innovation for god sake people, stop for one second and think. Where is mother Earth in this concept, where is she? When did you last sit in a field and look at her? Economics and ever greater growth and consumption is dead if she doesn't die then she will kill us all.

The Stories we should tell.

2009-01-23T03:48:00.001-08:00

So the world changes and life seems to move so quickly, I listen to all these idiots trying to peer into the future by looking at the tea leaves of economic data. The mass hysteria which seems to be gripping the media seems to be missing the point and really makes me worry that democracy is finished. The panic that seems to be gripping the government just seems to reflect it.

So let's set one thing straight, Japan in the 90s was not economic Armageddon if I hear one more idiot discussing how we need to avoid Japan's situation like it was the worst thing for a millennium I think I might hurt myself. It had issues with moderately rising unemployment loss in wealth due to depreciating asset values but IT WAS NOT a basket case. For Christ sake folks the UK in the 70s was in a far worse condition.

Second thing we need to set straight is that many of the imbalances in the economy quite frankly need working through the system and we should not prevent them we should not allow the system to collapse however, the UK and other developed countries probably need to allow asset prices to drop, unemployment probably needs to rise we need re-balancing to take place. What we need to do is stop the worst case scenario, put safety nets in place invest in infrastructure but not panic. Can our democracy face these challenges that is the question.

It may become really bad, we may enter economic Armageddon however, at the moment in the West people aren't starving on the streets, people are not rioting except in Greece, but hell they do that when they get bored.

As I watched like millions of others Mr Obama taking his oath of office, listened to his beautiful words and his exquisite delivery, I thought but sir there are some things in life, some things which cannot be overcome by will alone, we are simply humans and we operate within certain rules. We can't stop the tide coming in, we can push it back we can reclaim land but it still comes in and it will take the land back eventually.

So as we over populate this land, as we struggle to feed the masses, we cannot give the whole world the standard of living the US has, we simply can't, and if we did then the world would not be worth living on. So what are we to do? We all watch American movies and they touch you like nothing else, or the best do, and we marvel at the houses, the standard of living yet we cannot give it to the world. Together we must encourage the world to have fewer and smaller families and if that were to be the case in a place like the middle east then I feel certain their anger would diminish. There are way too many young men with nothing to do, not enough land and not enough wealth so what do they do? Sadly they occasionally come into our lives through that little square box and frighten us by their other worldliness.

We ask ourselves how could they feel such anger yet occasionally when you feel very poor, when you feel like you have no chance in life then suddenly life changes. I once sat with a man in a South American city and he was a painter and decorator he had a small son, and he didn't have much, he didn't have great shoes. There I was within my pockets probably with one or two months salary for him and a bank card, yet we talked and he got up and walked across the square. Would I have done the same as him. Would I keep my dignity I ask you? Now there was a brave man, a truly brave man. Those are the stories we should tell more.

White Swan, Gray Swan, Black Swan - A critique

2009-01-15T16:03:00.000-08:00

Black Swan is truly wonderful book from a man that is pushing himself to think, that is being brave enough to criticize and challenge the orthodoxy. It is an amazing thing from great thinkers that they are often breaking down barriers, they are having to challenge well accepted ways of thinking that they forget to be their own critics and talk about the dangers in their way of thinking. They don't have the time as all their energy is being used in breaking down barriers.

The Danger in Taleb's book is if we can't learn anything useful about the past, it is all stories he says and we can't predict the future so why should we even try. There is a great danger in this everything is a matter of luck, down to chance. Without doubt luck plays an enormous part in life, without doubt we fall for what he calls the narrative fallacy in terms of wanting to put stories around situations when perhaps there isn't one.

He forgets to mention or think about deep time. Ultimately the fate of mankind is predictable we will become extinct like most animals on his planet. We will all die, there will be earth quakes, there will be wars, so in some ways life is incredibly predictable the problem is in the time frames and then applying it to his first reason for investigating this area which is investing.

We should accept that we can't predict when things will happen, over the medium and short we are useless but over the very long with generalizations we are more accurate. He also doesn't talk about the fact there are patterns in life, there are trends, they change and evolve on an incredibly fluid basis, we have issues so really he falls for his own mechanical training.He is unhappy stepping outside of mathematical models and thinking about the patterns that exist in the world and how they move fluidly.

Some people spot these patterns and they use them and they are successful, sometimes the pattern doesn't turn out to be as expected, however, they still exist. The Germans knew the future was around tanks after the first world war, they guessed correctly, it was a correct prediction. Of course something else could have happened, a black swan however, they were correct.

Geronimo hiding in his last refuge with his twelve comrades in Mexico must have known all through his life it was inevitable that the white man was coming. The white man had technology and numbers it was inevitable. Of course a black swan in an epidemic could have come along but still there are patterns and trends to life which some of the Indians must surely have seen.

So in a way Taleb is a child of the thing he criticizes, he criticizes it beautifully with maths, he is beautifully read a wonderful mind, however, he fails to realize that life is full of patterns and the key point is in fact they are tenuous moving, difficult to catch on to prone to black swans and the future can only be guessed at except in certain areas over the very long term. Yet the patterns still exist, there are explanations to events we just don't always want to see them or report them and we make mistakes we are human.

In fact we should accept more vagueness, we should accept a lack of certainty we should acknowledge that sometimes maths is no use, sometimes we should trust fussy, open minded narrative and the human minds ability to spot patterns. They are prone to black swans, they will not be right but patterns do exist and there are reasons and explanations they are just not always the ones we like.

References:
I don't have f**k**g time, I have to work for a living, if you really must go buy something on Geronimo. If you must know about the tanks go get something on tanks and the first world war. Put Black Swan into Google.Happy?

Credit Crunch Humour

2009-01-06T15:01:00.000-08:00

A man from a rather specific down to earth part of the UK said the following lines to me over the Christmas period,

'If these goddamn experts can't predict a credit crunch six months before it happens how the hell can they tell what the weather is going to be doing in fifty years time, global warming I don't believe it.'

Like many things in life most experts over complicate arguments to make themselves feel self important and intelligent, most arguments around the social sciences and sometimes even in science can be had on a way more basic level and the man on the street can be as likely to get it right as an esteemed Nobel prize winner.

The credit crunch at a simple level was should we be borrowing so much to spend on rubbish? How long can that go on? A very simple argument really.

Yet scientists will operate very hypocritically in that once they want to convince the public of something they will try and scare them by cutting out any sense of doubt in their estimation models. So without doubt it makes sense to try and conserve what resources we have, not be so wasteful, look at renewable forms of energy, but is global warming really going to happen, is the case really so clear, or are we simply focusing on the one factor which is less political and easier to explain.

Surely the more complex argument is we need to be eating different foods, we need to looking at how we can encourage smaller families as population growth combined with wealth growth is the true problem.

So will our form of capitalism based on ever increased wealth, which fuels the bribe that is democracy, I will make you richer and your kids so vote for me survive? I don't know if global warming will happen, but resource depletion will, competition over scarce resources will, a challenge to modern democracy will and the limits to growth will perhaps be reached.

This is my view though and not based on any empirical testing and i don't pretend to be a scientist who can prove it 100%, I leave that to others who cut out the doubt around prediction and there is always doubt, but we the public are too stupid to hear their doubts.

Barack Obama, Women and Sex.

2008-11-07T04:58:00.001-08:00

So in all the noise that is and will be written about Obama very few people are likely to read this, however, unlike most people I don’t write for others I write for myself and if someone else happens upon it and likes it more the better if they don’t it doesn’t really matter.

There was an English man called Alistair Cooke and when I was driving my car on a Friday evening I used to listen to him talking about America from his longest ever running radio show and he always had a different angle on the major events that were affecting the country. Surrounded by all the noise about Obama I long for his unusual American twang and his wisdom, sadly though he passed a way a few short years ago. He is one of the few celebrities, if you could call him that, who I have wanted to meet.

So what do I think about Obama? The only way of integrating a country is through sex. People have sex together and produce children that don’t have the prejudices of their parents. Two people sexually attracted by each other, from vastly different backgrounds and who fell in love have produced a man with no ridiculous prejudice towards blacks and no bitterness towards whites. You can feel it when you watch him talking. How could he be bitter towards whites when his mother deserted by the man she loved brought him up by herself? How he must miss her. As he stood there looking out at the crowd of 250,000 in isolation from all around him, alone as only the truly powerful can be, how he must have wanted her close with his own younger family.

Women are the most important people in society and I will never like the Islamic world when the role of women is so crushed. The people I have met who have most impressed me in life have generally been women. The stories of women from the 20th century from friends and relatives are truly impressive, such stories don’t exist in the Islamic world as women have no freedom, they have no voice, they are dependent on men. The Islamic world does not produce great men as it doesn’t allow women to grow and develop; great men such as Obama often have incredible mothers.

Finally Barack, if I can call you that, I would like to wish you luck and pray for you. I hope you are surrounded by strong people who have the courage to tell you when you are wrong, that you have the wisdom that Kennedy did to allow other views to develop to counteract your own so that you have opinions to juxtaposition your own against.

We have very little in common really, my hopes and aspirations are on a much smaller scale and infinitely more personal, anyone however, whatever level in society needs luck and I pray you have it. We have one important thing in common, though, I have much to be thankful from the women who have touched my life.

An irritated American living in London.

2008-10-05T03:00:00.000-07:00

Americans are often frustrated when they live abroad they have to deal with sniping foreigners who too often like to take what America offers in terms of products and would love to live there but spend inordinate amounts of time criticising it.

We are all instinctively jealous of the largest and most successful and part of us always would like to see them brought down a peg or two. This becomes tiring for those who find they are continually defending it and feel much of the criticism is unfair and unbalanced. If you come from Greenland this is not a problem you have to suffer, however, you also don’t get the joy of watching your Olympic team win a multitude of golds. Undoubtedly as Europeans we have much to be grateful for from the USA, following the UK experience in many ways some of its greatest atrocities and meddling have been on its own doorstep.

Sniping about the USA or defending its direction seems to ignore fundamentals. We are always full of hyperbole and at the moment there is more than enough of it. The Economist this week had a wonderful picture, focusing on the colour red which made me smile saying that the world is on the edge. Well let’s be clear, life may be rare in this universe but it has endured for millions of years and will endure so the world is not on the edge.

This economic crisis may lead to something worse but at the moment life is continuing in many parts of the world. The greatest risk to this planet and life on it is the continuing expansion of the human population and the demands it places on our ecosystem and the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

People who criticise end of world theories or espouse seem to ignore truisms. The world will ultimately end and humans will probably follow the way of other creatures and become extinct. As far as I can see it one of greatest advantages we have is being long lived. This is a massive advantage for so many obvious reasons, primarily all based around stored knowledge and skills development, however, there may come a time when this is not such a distinct advantage. Perhaps following nuclear war a shorter life cycle may prove advantageous when a premium is put on rapid evolution.

In fact most life is predictable if we extend the time frames enough. The trick in life is knowing when things will change, they have a habit of not happening when we expect them. House prices will ultimately drop and fall again, it is true, predicting when is the trick. The world will ultimately end but we need to move away from talking about humans to talk about something deeper to really understand what is happening around us.

So the greatest danger to this world is nuclear weapons and the impact they could have on the planet and history shows us is that technology once developed is ultimately used, and if it has been used once or twice it will be used again. We should not forget this when we look at our short term issues.

So back to my point which is lets look deeper at the USA and what are its advantages based on and are they likely to disappear any time soon?

It has had an expanding population which over the last 200 years has been an advantage as it has meant low cost labour and increased consumption and a continual supply of motivated people working hard to further their lives. Is this likely to change, I really don’t know but this is what we should be looking at.

It has an abundance of key resources as far as I can see which are food, minerals and coal. Are they likely to disappear soon? Will global warming impact them?

It has space lowering the cost of land and the price of building and buying homes, factories and distribution centres.

It dominates its region enabling it to make key decisions secure in its relative geographic isolation.

It has an advanced educational system delivering a large number of educated people ready for a modern economy.

When we discuss the political and social side we should not forget the other fundamentals on which its strength has been based and often shifts in power can be traced to more fundamental underlying shifts when advantages change to disadvantages. It has ever been so on the human, social and animal level that our greatest strengths are often our greatest weaknesses depending on the situation.

Now regarding its political structure even though a democracy is much more lovable and likable than other systems rising in different parts of the world it shouldn’t stop us from stepping back and looking at the failings and asking whether its system will be successful moving forward. What are its limitations? Short-termism driven by the political cycle, the power and sometimes beauty of the mob.

My personal view is this system I love so much is fundamentally based on bribery. I will make you richer, vote for me and allow me to make a few tough decisions, you will though get richer and so will your children. The financial crisis happened because of collective greed and it was leading to ever increased consumption which people liked but was driven by debt. No one dared tell the people you cannot have it all and always have more. So in a world where continual economic growth and consumption might not be possible may mean the mass bribery which has fuelled the system I love and allows me to read, write like this may be unsustainable.

So talk of bailouts is short term, interest rate cuts, short term, fundamentally people are going to have to spend less, consume less, save more. Life is going to be tougher will you vote for me? That is the truth but it doesn’t get votes.

One final point Malthus or some of Malthus analysis was undoubtedly right he just succumbed to the Marx failing of prediction. Fundamentally if population expands quicker than food production or the resource exploitation that people expect then there will be potentially be mass starvation riots, civil disorder etc. We may delay this for centuries with invention but the risk is always there, and at some stage in history perhaps not on a mass scale globally the point will be reached. We have seen it so terribly inflict a number of societies last century.

And finally, yes finally Americans should stop comparing themselves to the old Western European world so much of the future is going East and here you go a prediction after I have talked of so many failures in that area, the great power will be Russia. I could be wrong, and I am basing it on one article about the fact it has become a food exporter. Large land mass, stable population and abundance of vast resources in practically every area and a number of other advantages. I think its time will really come in the next one hundred years.

Wars, Finance, The Future

2008-09-23T17:14:00.000-07:00

I have been reading a book about the First World War and history can teach you many things and perhaps in the most extreme of human activities you learn the most. The First World War like any war had its turning points, but it was perhaps the first Great War where powers with such varying political systems came to battle. We could argue over semantics here and say that systems of government have always differed, but as democracy is relatively new then I would argue The First World war is where such radically different regimes and ways of governing have gone to war. It would be an interesting to study the wars and how different the political organizations been between the combatants have been and perhaps I am wrong and it is a question of perception.

So how close were the more democratic countries to defeat?

The difference between this war and the Second World War is that Germany completely defeated some of the geographically peripheral countries who acted as the swing countries in the central and western European battle for dominance. A truce was signed with the Russians which gave the Kaiser vast swathes of Eastern Europe. In the Second World War they swept through France which must have elated people like Hitler who had spent years in the trenches however, the main swing protagonist in the West remained the UK.

They would have won in the west without the UK in the First World War. In terms of knocking out opponents the French were not the people to beat as they didn’t have the navy, economy or empire the size of the British, they had better generals than the British in the first, lost more soldiers but they couldn’t decisively change the balance of power in Europe like the British. In a straight fight between France and Germany there would only be one winner. Between the UK and Germany it would be harder one to call given Britain’s relative Island security and its overseas resources, although one feels Germany in the second would have defeated it if they had only focused in the first it is much more doubtful and unlikely.

So I would argue the Germans were closer to victory in the First World War, particularly and importantly the Americans entered the battle so much later in the first than the second. The Germans made three mistakes; they conducted general submarine attacks and discussed with the Mexicans the opening of another front which brought America into the conflict and they failed to develop the tank.

My point would be that democracy was extremely close to being defeated in the First World War, and even though the Americans arrived late, the sheer numbers of men they could provide following the exhaustion of the European powers was decisive along with the tank. It is quite possible that the western powers would have negotiated a peace, if the Americans hadn’t arrived and I would put the odds at perhaps 30%. The tank may have swung the balance away from the power of defence and the trench system which is what the Germans excelled at, but the Germans could have learnt and developed their own perhaps. So if they hadn’t have antagonised the Americans they could have been left dominating continental Europe.

Democracy was close to being defeated. So what does this have to do with finance do you ask and our current predicament? We are so used to reading about the success of the democratic powers in defeating the German led allies on two occasions and then the winning of the cold war we forget how fragile our hard won freedom and democracy is.

Democracy is precious the market can function under many different political regimes and it has throughout history. It is the best way of allocating resources and most dynamic human creation although I wonder whether it will be able to actively help and assist in solving our resource\environment problems but that is another debate. That is not at risk what is at risk is democracy.

The Germans didn’t have a good tank in the First World War and paid a significant price. For the second they had well developed tanks and tactics. The American’s had terrible military intelligence at Pearl Harbour they didn’t make that mistake again. At the battle of Midway they had better intelligence than the Japanese, which proved critical. He who has the hardest lesson often learns the hardest. Not always but often.

Russia, China, India have had some hard lessons throughout the last century and they have learnt. They are developing, particularly in the case of Russia and China other ways of governing and they maybe able to harness the market differently to Western Europe and America. If they continue to progress and the West struggles then the greatest political system ever created for the average human could be threatened.

We have severe problems that need to be discussed and faced. The inherent short-termism endemic in the UK and US exacerbated by an extremely lengthy election process in the US and the media hunting packs who focus overtly on charisma and scandal. They forget issues, intelligence and judgement. The bonus culture has been discussed enough, but one would bracket it here along with the obsession with quarterly targets.

The work ethic and always assuming that everything will improve and get better, people wanting the easy life, governments petrified of allowing people to realize that sometimes life is tough and the hard times won’t always last and look population we are going to have a tough few years we will do our best to build a long-term future but hell life is sometimes tough we have to take the ups with the downs.

Democracy needs defending it is a fragile thing and not something we should take for granted or take liberties with.

Financial Armageddon a threat to democracy

2008-09-15T03:52:00.001-07:00

So,

In this a age of modern technology where information is instant some problems never change and that is receiving relevant, accurate and timely information and interpreting the information you are presented with efficiently without allowing yourself to be swamped or swayed by the panic and emotions of yourself and those around you.

Great men in dramatic situations aren't the cleverest they are the ones which are best informed and able to quickly and efficiently work out what are the key pieces of information they are being presented with and then acting decisively. One day they will be able to test this skill and traditionally I guess they would have called it calmness of thought or having a steady hand.

The television I look at now is swamping me with information and the internet provides even more on this so called credit crunch. Bear Stearns was rescued America nationalized its mortgage market and one of America's great financial institutions today has collapsed as America's properties continue to decline in value. Alan Greenspan says this is a once in a century act without doubt he is correct but as a child of a great democracy he doesn't quite grasp what the real problem is, in the heat of the moment my interpretation would take his argument further.

Magazines such as the Economist and most economic writers blindly follow and write about the market as being the best system to distribute resources and power forward economies and the world. Laissez faire is the idelogy we should follow liberalism.

This idea is being challenged and with political economic and successful alternatives arising in the world the Western liberal democratic system is under attack as the best means of running a country.

Western Intellectuals need to realize that now more than ever we need to question our way of running our countries and economies, we need a rebirth of ideas and of economic management without this democracy could be on a potentially fatal death march. It doesn't need to be but we need careful thought about the limitations and problems in the way our countries are governed and managed.

Sarah Palin is very scary, not because of where she comes from, not because she carries a gun but because she is quite simply stupid. Listen to her interview here and cry. This is a problem and challenge to democracy if because an idiot is like us we will elect them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jvfm8tn_Cw

When President Trueman fired General Macarthur during the Korean war it was because he was a wise thoughtful and clever man. The USA could have gone Nuclear and that would have had disastrous consequences for the world.

So it is with Financial crisis the markets have failed totally, utterly and completely this is a challenge to capitalism and the liberal democratic approach of managing them. The USA went socialist the other week when it nationalized its mortgage market.

If idiots continue to be elected to govern countries then effectively decisions will not be made by leaders but by experts who are able to grasp the problem or interest groups who are able to sway the leaders.

They should be informing leaders but if they are not clever enough to understand the problem they will not be making the decision and sorry but Sarah Palin is no Magaret Thatcher who had a degree in Science from one of the world's greatest university. She maybe more like us than Mrs Thatcher but that means she is even less capable of running a country

This is a challenge to the greatest system of government and economic management the world has produced. Fukuyama wrote about the end of History if we are not careful due to the rise of the East and alternative Political Economic systems, our financial mismanagement and our blind faith in the market is always right, the power of the media and the rule of the mob meaning idiots get elected, the short termism that is perhaps endemic such as quarterly profit drivers and a 4 year election cycle with a two year campainging period, may lead to the end of democracy.

This is the challenge facing us as we move forward.

The End of Education

2008-06-20T15:16:00.000-07:00

Education, Education, Education we hear and as ever in life there are forces pulling the world in several directions.

The world is more educated, more literate and we all know it is critical to progress in life but on the other side we are also seeing the degrading of degrees, the idea that one can buy a masters, the rise of wanting instant fame, people who make vast sums of money with little talent and simply from being seen with the right people.

The general respect for education and culture is dropping in society, if we go back to the middle ages people with education and culture were admired partly as there weren't many people with education, whereas now people often seem to enjoy saying they know nothing.

Perhaps like many things in life, that when literacy and education is at its peak its decline has begun especially when coupled with the environmental and social problems which will afflict society over the next few decades.

Dear Gates, Ellison, Jobs

2008-06-20T14:43:00.000-07:00

Dear GEJ,

We all know the names.

One of them a super geek, one a truly creative mind, one the supreme marketing being.

Two of them have been accused of stealing other's ideas. I have heard a table rumour that one of them left a library with material he perhaps shouldn't have. One they say was helped by his Aunt or a relative to negotiate a critical deal.

I wonder whether they have ever sat down together and if they were to have dinner what would they say?

The helped relaunch America's economic mights, they powered their companies forward for decades.

Now Bill is stepping down, whilst Larry and and Steve march on.

Who would you rather spend time with?

They are a remarkable triumvirate, they weren't the only key people to launch America's techno might many others played roles and ran or launched smaller companies, however, they were without doubt the must successful and prominent.

So what of America now these titans begin to step down? We look at google, however, i don't think it will be quite the revenue and job creating organization that the three former ones have been. I could be wrong and Google is certainly innovative, however the only tool from Google most people regularly use is the search engine, everything else is a small spin off.

America's skill has been its sheer chutzpa its ability to go for it, its entrepreneurial spirit, but however large a country however attractive it is to immigrants there are golden ages and remarkable people that arise in those ages. Sometimes it is simply in a period of time there are the opportunities and the right set of circumstances to allow creativity and dynamism to blossom, the 70s & 80s was that time in the US and we won't see it again to the same extent for a long time.

America will see more remarkable people in business, in science perhaps more remarkable than the three mentioned, however, they won't see the sheer number of creative entrepreneurs blossoming and powering forward the country to the same extent for a very long time.

So good-bye Bill, I dare say you were often annoying, perhaps not as much fun to have a beer with as Jobs, I could be wrong who knows, but damn you were from a remarkable time and you were a remarkable individual.

To you Larry, let's see you smile a bit more, i bet you're great to get drunk with unless you say the wrong thing I imagine you are a little moody, loyal but never to be crossed. You are an awesome businessman, truly awesome...

Jobs.. you're the creative one, perhaps a little arrogant sometimes but i imagine full of wisdom, but probably need knocking down occasionally too many people think you are too awesome. My guess is you are probably loyal and trusting but a little burnt.

Anyway guys as I sit here using your technology, giving you some money, you are a remarkable triumvirate and do yourselves a favor go out for a meal sometime as America won't see your like again for a very long time, if ever.

Heathrow Expansion

2008-04-13T02:21:00.000-07:00

Am I the only person that can see what the solution is. I am fed up listening to people that write for the times and apparently live under the flight path, the editor of the Sunday times obviously lives in Richmond.

Let's build one in the estuary on the East Coast of England they say... yeah right and what happens to all the infrastructure that has been built around it, the massive amounts of invesment which has gone into Reading.

No the solution my friends is obvious. Build a high speed rail M25, which connects all of London's airports so expansion at Stanstead benefits Luton, expansion at Gatwick benefits Heathrow. To begin with this would just connect the airports but eventually normal commuters could exploit the trains and huge carparks can be built north of London so people can travel by high speed train to Heathrow without going on the M25, you could even charge for going on the M25 once the rail m25 has been built.

Blindingly obvious with caveat price.

Come on ladies and gentlemen let's get some creative thinking going on in public life and the media. Steal my idea make some money from it but for god sake think a little.

If after building this we need a new airport then build it, but first build the rail M25.

Overbelief. Communism\Economic Liberalism

2008-02-03T11:32:00.000-08:00

Belief in a philosophy or idea to the exclusion of anything else is dangerous. Marx was an excellent critic of the worst excesses of British 19th Century capitalism however, his ideas of how to run a society, how to organize an economy were patently wrong, and led to some of the worst crimes of the 20th Century. He should have remained an observational writer and not talked about solutions.

He had a big idea, sadly it was a bad idea.

So now as I read the papers, as the British and Americans belief in the efficiency in the free market continues, news papers like the Economist, very fine journalists seem to blindly talk about leaving things to the market, less legislation. It is mind numbing sometimes... questions yourselves i want to say...you are not thinking you are just quoting the orthodoxy.

So why do I say this.

The country i live in has done remarkably well out globalisation, the market is a supremely efficient mechanism, yet all countries try to manipulate it and few of them are as willing as the UK to let well run, wealth producing companies disappear.

Scottish and Newcastle, a company that wanted to stay independent a successful company, yet no the needs of shareholder were paramount. The problem with the market the problem with finance in the UK is that it is always run by financial brains who chase a short-term return when this is often not in the nations interest.

They hang to this over simple idea, leave it to the market, yet they don't wonder why car companies are in Germany and they are in danger of impoverishing their children, they are denying wealth creation from the UK. Foreign companies often protected, sometimes funded by governments.. but we have a quick return today, resources can always be reallocated.. can it are you sure....

Companies must be bought and sold, the market is the best mechanism of distributing goods and services, yet should it be so easy to buy British companies? I do wonder.

Crossing the Rubicon

2008-01-07T13:00:00.000-08:00

Narrative history at its best and the opening paragraphs are some of the best English you could read anywhere. Caesar as he stood looking across the Rubicon what must he have thought, committing a crime against the City he loved.

As a Western European, ancient Greece and Rome will always fascinate me more than the great Eastern empires, although the Mongols you could argue are the primary difference between Russia and Western Europe. If you go to Russia you can still see the genetic legacy and parts of that great country were dominated for hundreds of years by the horde, or should I say the golden horde.

Rome was the first great European empire and there began the movement of power away from the middle East, although, they had another renaissance after the collapse of the Roman empire and as we all know reintroduced Plato to Europe. So why did Rome fall and what lessons does that give us for the future?

It is a scary world for the Western powers now, as we move to a multi-polar world where power is shifting away from the traditional centres and those countries who once bestrode the world are now having to deal with a realignment. It may not appear so as Russians desperately try and live in Western Europe, impoverished Africans head in their droves to any European destination, yet Economic and military power is shifting. It might not always be so noticeable as these up and coming countries have chosen not to spend on their people. There are huge inequalities but precisely as they are not spending their wealth in such huge amounts on their social systems means they have more to spend on the military, infrastructure and perhaps nationalistic economic objectives.

Rome fell as all Empires do, now why... perhaps it is simply when a country is successful we focus on the positives and forget the negatives.... Perhaps Rome destroyed itself, its dynamism came from its competitiveness, perhaps it was the ending of the republic, perhaps it was the spread of ideas outside of its domain of control, perhaps it was the over use of lead in flavouring reducing the fertility of the elite.

So now one country bestrides the world, the sole economic and military super power. The only large country with a high standard of living, a capability to renew itself. Yet what will bring it down, perhaps it will be its short term democracy and an inability to focus on the long term. One election doesn't finish before the next one seems to start. Its people are hooked on every greater living standards, it requires always more immigrants to feed its creativity, perhaps there are the seeds of its downfall. Who knows, but as Hilary looks tearful and wonders whether she will follow her husband, pick up the book Crossing the Rubicon and wonder how will the US fall as it surely will and will it be in our life time, and does that make the world a scarier place?

Time marches on

2007-12-09T15:17:00.000-08:00

In the 40s there were news reals that talked about the march of time. As one gets older one realizes how transitory life really is. We have all heard it so many times before, you think you are invincible when you are young and then when you are older.

It is not that which strikes me it is more the thought of losing those around me that I love and hold dear. The people that one has shared one's life with, will begin to fade and fall, and one might be left in a home alone hoping the next generation will provide support.

I think it is beginning to dawn on humanity, perhaps the most startling statistic of all, that life expectancy is rising but healthy life expectancy is not rising as quickly. Many of us will fade away and that is the statistical reality.

What choices will we have in the future one has to wonder, is it really better to spend one's life avoiding fatty food and smoking if it means we end up fading away with Alzheimer’s? What would those Roman warriors think of the modern world and how we seem to extend life at any cost. This is the really interesting or terrifying question. What choices will we have in the future... people fertile into their 100s, then it will be a population question, prolonging life so people have 30 years of poor health before they die.

They are not nice choices but the world may have to face them, or perhaps it will be live to their 100s with health. We must but wish it is so.

The Hatton boo boys

2007-12-09T15:06:00.000-08:00

What is becoming of the country I love, that has given the world so much....

Hatton v Mayweather..

Exciting a contrast in styles... somebody to admire and then the booing started... why do we let these yobs and thugs ruin our image abroad... where has self restraint gone?...

Are we to be dominated by muslim extremists, kids in hoodies and yobs abroad?

The first significant country to ban slavery, a country that stood alone against hitler and a country run by the worst elements in our society.

Sugar Ray Leonard talked about his hurt and for yobs in my country to hurt people like that, I hang my head in shame.

Innovation

2007-09-29T02:30:00.000-07:00

Education, banking systems, peace stability etc..... etc... our modern societies are based on a large number of factors and the world becomes ever more competitive the search for an advantage becomes ever more urgent.
We analyze how different countries cultivate success and one word crops more than anything else Innovation. I always to laugh when I hear businessmen discussing innovation, the systems required to run modern business efficiently, the discpline required to progress through the hierarchies often crush creativity.

We should not be talking about innovation we should be talking about creativity.

The crucial elements are education, risk, freedom, open minded thinking and enough people stimulating each other.... transferring this into $$$ will always be something else.. Anything else is just putting new words and buzz phrases to something older, stimulating creativity is not difficult, willing to embrace what is required to stimulate it is harder as it involves.... risk...... business is risk averse....

Business should cut the crap about eco systems, about how to stimulate innovation.... and simply say are we willing to take some risks and gambles... The bigger question is does modern society and shareholders allow companies to take risks..... we have to embrace risk if we want to be innovative.

China and the Environment

2007-09-29T02:18:00.000-07:00

I bought the American publication Foreign Affairs this week, primarily because there was an article on the coming environmental collapse in China. I look around at the world and so much that we discuss seems to ignore the fact that we live as part of an eco system.

We preen ourselves, try and separate ourselves from nature as much as possible, we get embarrassed when we talk about toilets..we discuss to the nth degree how countries, education system can be run efficiently, and most importanly how to keep our wealth expanding. Yet we cannot escape it we are part of nature and part of an eco sytem.

You go to dinner parties and people discuss obscure books and artists and how they are going to transform their properties.. yet.... where is there any acknowledgement that the most important thing in this world is to live sustainably both from a consumption and a population perspective.

The Earth is suffering from a tragedy of the commons and our generation will perhaps be the most hated in the history of mankind. China's coming environment collapse..... are you sure it will be just China's?

Growth: Capitalism’s problem

2007-05-25T09:38:00.000-07:00

When people talk about Marx, we struggle to look at him objectively and see him for what he was which was a great critic of 19th century capitalism. Left on this level and viewed in this way his material is interesting and insightful. As a predicator of history, of an idealised society, of how to cure society’s problems he was no better than a London cabbie and probably a lot worse.

The one problem he did articulate was capitalism’s need for continued growth and expansion. This problem is something we are suffering now, we need growth everything in the world depends on it. Growth comes, at the moment, from two things increased consumption and growing populations. Here lies the problem how can we, in an ever more crowded world, continue to see increased population growth, increased consumption and not run out of natural resources; not begin to push more people into environments where survival is marginal.

Marx talked about the declining rate of return of capital this is not our problem, our problem is more Malthusian. How can we continually extract more from less without inflicting damage on our rotating sphere? The Economist would say the market will find solutions, lets hope so. Our generation, living in the developed segment of society wherever you are is probably the most fortunate in the history of the homo sapiens or any of the other two legged up right chimp that has had the luck to make the earth his or her home.

Statistics and Risk.

2007-05-25T09:23:00.000-07:00

When ancient man went out hunting buffalo or as it is thought by some trying to run down an animal, as two legs are more efficient than four over distance I wonder what he thought about risk.

Should I have some insurance? What will I do if I break a leg, what will happen to the mother of my children, well I think she is the mother, but who could be sure before DNA testing.

Now though we are all intent on reducing the risk in living, reduce the possibility of being in pain, yet life by its nature is risky, it is a dangerous world and always will be. We should take sensible precautions against unnecessary risks but mankind must accept that life is dangerous and the individuals, countries and governments are not capable of anticipating and dealing with every possible situation in which somebody is negatively effected. That is not to say that we should be complacent about issues and problems but we shouldn’t be obsessed about the obliteration of risk.

Statistics, I remember a friend of mine telling me that at school she had a psychometric test that came back with very negative results and she was told that she should therefore, have psychological treatment, she was devastated, and as far as I could see perfectly normal.
Statistics can help us understand the world and people however, there is no telling for exceptionalism, the people that go against the statistics are often the most remarkable. Statistics might help explain them but we will never completely understand them. Sometimes very different groups of exceptional people have more in common than we like to admit and perhaps in pre-anticipating one group we may infact damage the more positive group.

If we aren’t careful in the future our fear of risk and use of statistics might damage our societies creativity, and reduce the number of exceptional people who positively contribute to the world and our society.

The Closing of the Western Mind

2007-04-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

Glaciers can suddenly melt and the water cascading down the mountains reaching for the open ocean can scar and transform a landscape for millions of years.

A fighter jet as it flies over a village is an amazing site. The sound of the after burner can send thrills or fear down your spine. Nobody but nobody can prevent been stirred by it..... it is one of the pieces of engineering that dramatically illustrates what man has accomplished and also what he can do positively and occasionally negatively if it is in the wrong hands.

The skills required and the number of specialists used to build, maintain, develop is phenomenal and they sit on the shoulders of millions of other thinker through the ages.

The point is though, in our modern world we are so dependent on specialists in many areas of our lives... To repair a television, to do the plumbing, to teach our children, to get oil out of the ground, to manage banks...... we have created a very complex civilisation which is dependent on millions of highly skilled and educated individuals..

The closing of the western mind would have a dramatic impact on the nations which allowed it to happen. Free thought and a broad education are an essential underpinning of a modern society.

We have a precedent 1400 years ago and its effects were dramatic and only the Muslim world and a few Nestorian Christians were able to preserve ancient mainly greek ideas and preserve them they did often adding to them richly.

Could it ever happen again, I worry sometimes, I really do.

Evanomics

2007-03-07T01:14:00.000-08:00

The BBC economics correspondent has an interesting blog and he is brave enough to voice what most economists always think but never do, which is over the short run nothing is completely clear, in fact on occasions they have no idea what will happen.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/evandavis/

Then when something surprising happens they all say well with hindsight it was obvious, no it wasn't it never is. In something as complex as the economy with so many factors involved humans and computers are not yet capable of assessing all the variables and outcomes and correctly predicting with 90% certainty what will happen. In hindsight we can see what were the most important variables, but only in hindsight.

Interestingly though, he voices what all economists do... boring, boring, with the rise of China we are all going to get richer, heard it so many times...... now let’s cut to the chase and talk about something really interesting.........

Capitalism is based on always more, we will get richer because they will have more money to consume products which will drive industry...... got it... easy... now the question is do we have enough raw materials from food to oil, to metal to support such a high level of consumption and this isn't even talking about global warming. That is the key question.

Moving on... in a book I am reading at the moment it discusses the great mystery which is why man moved to agriculture. Hunter gatherers actually didn't work as hard and were better nourished than the first farmers. The debate seems to hinge on whether there was a food shortage due to climatic changes or perhaps population pressure. The key point is though during a pivotal point in the history of man we actually adopted a practice that was harder and made us poorer for perhaps several hundred if not a few thousand years.....

What will population pressure and resource pressure do to us over the next few hundred years, perhaps it will unleash a wave of creativity or perhaps we will actually get poorer over the short as we adopt practices to overcome this pressure.

What is Culture

2007-02-26T08:26:00.000-08:00

At sophisticated dinners I am sometimes frustrated by what is classified as interesting and intellectual. Knowing about Shakespeare, that Kiss Me Kate comes from the Taming of the Shrew, knowing about wine, knowing about Opera that means you are interesting and intellectual.

It is just knowledge, nothing more and for me there are far more interesting things in the world. A brief encounter with someone well travelled with wisdom and life experience. A movie full of passion and life, yet as I sit through my DVDs of planet earth I feel nothing is quite as moving a mother nature.

It is a box set of 5 DVDs about the shape of world. A celebration of the planet: the forces that shape it and the animals that live in its many environments. The most powerful image in this collection of DVDs is the sight of a polar bear, struggling for survival as the ice melts having to swim further than it used to find nutrition. It lands on an Island where it finds a group of Walruses. These are immense creatures and only a Polar Bear which is close to starvation would dare attack an adult. It does, so and as the herd move seaward, the polar bear becomes more desperate. Finally the Walrus escapes to sea, and the starving, injured polar bear hobbles back to land and lies down to die. We leave the island as the Walruses return no longer afraid and the polar bear curls up, waiting for death.

What is culture and knowledge? Taking an interest in the world whether it be maths, opera, science, the habits of polar bears or the climate.

How Can you tell if something is ill? Europe?

2007-02-26T08:09:00.000-08:00

I am not a doctor, but when I look at Europe I often think the first thing a doctor would do to ascertain the health of the patient is look at the periphery.

Italy, its stadiums have been shut because of problems with violence, unemployment is high, its companies are struggling to adapt to competition from the East, it is Europe’s weakest link they say.

Spain, undoubtedly living beyond its means, competitiveness collapsing, but the economy roles on.

Now as an imaginary doctor lets turn to look at the heart of Europe... France. As a Brit I have always had an interesting relationship with France. In many ways we will always feel closer to the Northern Europeans, who drink and would fight if they weren’t so well educated. The British aristocrats may superficially resemble the French in the clothes they wear, yet we are very different. In many ways that can make the relationship more interesting in others it can be more combatitive. The British have always had a grudging admiration for their style and the panache with which they play sport, and the French have always had an admiration for particular British charcters, whether they be Churchill, Thatcher, Livingston or Adam Smith.
It hasn’t received much news in the UK, but France has gone into a massive commercial deficit, which is truly worrying for Europe. The only large country which is managing to export in significant quantities to the far East is Germany, the UK one could argue could come back into balance if its consumption wasn’t maintained unnecessarily high, although, I am not so confident. The problem with France is consumption is relative low, economic growth low and it has gone into a commercial deficit.

So what are we to make of these problems?

Europe is struggling to compete and adjust to the changing global landscape, if this continues Europe itself could soon be fighting for its survival as anything more than a trading block if that.

Jared Diamond A Great Mind

2007-01-15T07:17:00.000-08:00

Jared Diamond.

I will start with a slight criticism. As a speaker he isn't the most charismatic man I have ever listened to, however, he doesn't need to be.

I often think charisma is for those who don't have intelligent or interesting things to say, or for those who are speaking to an audience who lack concentration and mental ability.

When a person is as well educated, as open-minded as Mr Diamond, as well travelled and with an ability to explain complex concepts then charisma is simply unnecessary trimmings. There are few women or men you could apply that statement to.

I said to my partner that one of the most stimulating characteristics in a person is an interest in the world coupled with having an open mind. These characteristics generally become more prevalent the more educated one is, however, I have seen some lower ability people who have them and lacking in people of very high IQ or EQ. When you combine these characteristics with a mind filled with the potential and ability of Mr Diamond's the result is truly compelling.

He is truly one of the greats of our time.

One of his books should be read by anybody who claims to be educated or openminded and as a very minimum listen to his lecture here:

http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?tip=1&id=3583

POPULATION, CONSUMPTION, POPULATION, CONSUMPTION and global warming.

2007-01-05T17:30:00.000-08:00

I was listening to radio four, for anyone that is not a robot trawling the web and actually shock horror a human reading these few thoughts, the best thing about the BBC is the radio. Radio 4 is a bastion of quality, intellectual, free thinking discussion and was the home of Alistair Cook, perhaps the greatest radio correspondent of all time. If you are not British and passing through Heathrow, and not going nuts over the new security procedures then pick up one of the books from his radio show. The wisdom, turn of phrase will enchant you and bring a smile to your travel weary face.

On radio four they were discussing the coming year. One issue seemed to crop up frequently and that was global warming. They felt that finally the USA would get it, Arnie our hummer driving but with gas, bottom pinching robot beating hero and the plight of the polar bears would finally drive it, or should I say slap it or pinch it home to middle America…. Somehow having spent time in middle America I do wonder whether they will get it… but perhaps they will……

My anger as anyone that has read more than a few of these thoughts is the intelligentsia don’t really get it do they………. At the start of Planet Earth the wonderful BBC program about our planet, again something to pick up at heathrow, they say one hundred years ago the population was 1.5 billion it is now around 6……..

The problem if I can’t say it any more clearly is….

AVAILABLE LAND+AVAILABLE RESOURCES
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
POPULATION * (CONSUMPTION*ENERGY USED TO PRODUCE)

This all delivers global warming which reduces land available to produce and consumption which reduces available resources. By concentrating on one part of this equation we neglect the vital factor which is population…. Come on guys how can we begin to control population with a loose touch before something really starts going wrong… how can we move to a system where democracy isn’t based on always delivering more, where people don’t always want more, where we become more thoughtful consumers……… my aging mother nearly broke my heart this Christmas by saying sometimes the consumption at Christmas is obscene the waste in food, in packaging, the waste in products… she is right but how are we going to change this…???

Which part of the equation is going to be the biggest problem? Global warming is only part of the issue and it might not even be the most important….. the whole is the problem not one part…… it poses a challenge to the democratic liberal economic system that I love so….

Richard Dawkins The God Delusion

2006-12-19T10:37:00.000-08:00

Richard Dawkins is an incredibly talented writer and his book the God Delusion was one of the books I began to work my way through at Christmas. Ironically Christmas is often the time when you feel most religious and when it can be at its most inspiring. I would beg any woman or man to sit through a Christmas carol service and not feel moved and closer to the rest of humanity.

There was also a program on British TV which discussed the problem with Atheists, where a number of distinguished non-believers were asked about the massive loss of life that has occurred in a number of godless societies, starting with the Jacobians after the French revolution. In the twentieth century there were a number of instances and I shed a few tears as I walked round Auschwitz/Birkenau. It felt right to take something and I was accompanied by a rose which I left infront of a pile of shoes from those that never returned.

Just as Marxists unrealistically claim Stalin and Lenin perverted communism so it wasn’t really a Marxist society so the atheists try to squirm out of the question of massive death in godless societies. The answer given was they didn’t kill in the name of atheism, where as people do kill in the name of religion.

Oh i imagine that made a huge difference to those that lost their life...... I can imagine the scene now.

'Hmmm look person who about to be killed.. don't worry about it... it will feel much better as it isn't in the name of religion. Are you happy now?'

Dawkin’s book in many ways is directed at the rise of religious power in the US and the push to move creationism back into schools. His book is basically a call to arms for agnostics and atheists and an academic dissection of a belief in god.

In the first paragraph he sadly negates a great deal of the book by directing his argument primarily at Christianity and Islam… hello Mr. Dawkins there are huge swathes of the world which are neither, and the two rising super powers are a case in point.
Secondly he doesn’t point out the benefit of religion which is it provides us with a moral code, that can be twisted and manipulated by individuals, leaders and countries but in its best manifestations can be worthy.

More importantly though, in the form of Christianity I know best, the Church of England, it can be tolerant, open and provide comfort and warmth to individuals and communities.
Perhaps Mr Dawkins we shouldn’t blame religion but look at why humans are so easily able to commit heinous acts.

Property Market.

2006-12-19T10:25:00.000-08:00

David Smith of the Sunday times writes very elegantly on the British economy in his weekly economics article. I would like to see him write more about global issues, however, I imagine his brief is to be more UK specific.
To some extent he has aped the economist's Big Mac index, by having his own tongue in cheek index regarding the housing market, the skip index. How many skips are there on his road? If there are a lot then it means the economy is booming. He has broadly been accurate in predicting the housing market, although this is probably more due to his analytical ability than his index.

The global house price boom is phenomenal and tests economists’ powers of prediction to the limit. Personally I have felt the market would cool in the UK but figures for property price growth have continued to astound me.

So what of the future?
As has rightly been pointed out the UK is not building enough houses, so the supply side continues to remain tight, however the demand side has surpassed all but the most bullish expectations, particularly in the UK, the market I know the most about.
We cannot, however, ignore the sheer quantity of speculative capital that has flooded the housing market. The number of ordinary people who are leveraging themselves and buying several properties and restoring them. I know a number of people who struggle to pay for holidays yet have a property portfolio of over a million pounds. They are able to do this by buying off plan, or by self-certifying. One friend has bought hundreds of miles from London, two properties in markets she knows nothing about.The other important factor is the broad based nature of the property price increase, even in Scotland which has a declining population has felt the full effects. Parts of West Yorkshire where thousands of flats have flooded the market have joined the property price surge. So my biggest question is why don't we see more regional imbalances? Is it because properties in these areas were so undervalued for so long?
The city of London is awash with cash, the South East has a huge property shortage, but I cannot believe this is the case in large parts of the UK, yet they have all seen massive property price surges, therefore my personal view is that in the more deprived areas of the UK, speculative capital has played a more important role, and these areas are more likely to see a severe slow down, London and the South East are unlikely to suffer in the same way, when the slow down arrives.

When will this happen, when will property really begin to slow?

It will only be when there is demand side shock to the economy, so this has to be when interest rates reach a tipping point, or when economic growth begins to slow, or if banks begin to tighten their lending criteria. None of these factors look remotely like occurring in the near future.

It will come eventually though, I do not believe it will never arrive.

The Success of Man

2006-12-10T14:37:00.001-08:00

The Economist had a few stimulating and interesting articles this week. They discussed whether organic food was really helping the poor as it takes more land, stops us importing from poor countries and perhaps doesn't really reduce poverty. All valid points and worth discussing.

I also went to a zoo this weekend and sat for about 30 minutes looking at a giant gorilla but not in the face, as apparently they view this as aggressive. They are truly incredible creatures, vast, lumbering and eerily human like. If you believe in evolution then there was a point in time when we had the same ancestor, I guess we have the same ancestor with any life but it was much more recent with gorillas. All relative I guess.

I also read another theory about when neandthals and man occupied the same space and why we survived and they didn’t. The new theory says it is because we specialized with women hunting small game and gathering berries whilst the men hunted large game. Neandthals, though, just hunted large game so they had a lower calorific potential than our human ancestors. We ultimately out ate them and therefore out bred them, so they were eventually wiped out. I do wonder who was the last Neanderthal. A man struggling to hunt large game whilst humans bred and reproduced at a greater rate. I imagine him stood looking at the landscape perhaps starving and fleeing the early humans, perhaps even crying.

As I looked at the gorilla I thought about this and thought about how all the animals in the zoo are seeing their habitats disappear. Our potential to exploit the planet, out compete everything else has led to our success but now as the economist rightly points out it means that we are dependent on artificially produced foods. It means that we are slowly eating the planet. Competition for scarce resources our capacity to eat the planet is our danger.

We have to find a way to naturally control our population and our consumption of resources, global warming is a problem, our carbon foot print is a problem but population increase coupled with consumption is THE problem. That gorilla sitting in the zoo knows it. Life is so majestic in its diversity; I just hope we will allow enough of it to survive.

SHIA-SUNNI Conflict

2006-12-10T14:19:00.000-08:00

The business wrote an excellent piece this week on the Shia-Sunni conflict in Iraq. It is a conflict we all know something vaguely about in the West but we have never really seen it unleashed. We blame the Americans and British for their current policies but its roots go back much deeper as I think we are all aware. The nation states that were forged in the region by the British and French.I also think about Jared Diamond whenever I watch clips on the TV about the desert nature of Iraq. The term Fertile Crescent is nothing but a sick joke, is what he said. The land looks incredibly infertile, and the land is always the first place that poor people can eek a living. Coupled with this it is obviously a pressure cooker that has been kept under control and now it has been unleashed.Now the business talks about the potential of conflict between Shia and Sunni nuclear states Iran v Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Thought provoking and quite frightening reading.

The Global Shift

2006-12-03T06:46:00.000-08:00

Historians write beautifully on the concept of deep history the movements that take generations to have their effects felt. Others perhaps view deep history as those small imperceptiable items which we don't really notice but have a huge effect on us and our society.

For me deep history, or the idea it conjures up, are the underlying movements which might be imperceptable in a life time but slowly over time they have a great effect on societies.

One of the deep trends in society occuring around us now is the rise of wealth around the world and particularly in quasi democratic countries such as Russia, Saudi Arabia and obviously China. Economics used to be called Political-Economy and its study was of both subjects. The economic challenge is something that is very noticeable however, its deeper challenge is on the political system that underpins Western society. More freedom more democracy and all those modern values, which are dear to me, are being challenged and will they lead to more successful and powerful countries than the quasi-democracies or dictatorships that have adopted some market related policies, yet politically remain stunted?

Perhaps in just 20 years the most powerful country in the world might be a dictatorship. We assume, in the West, that China will move to democracy as it becomes wealthy but there are not guarnatees.

The other shift that is occuring around us some of it visible some of it less so are the imbalances in the world economy are slowly being worked out, and with it the power of the US is waning. The long us induced boom is drawing to a close.

We talk about the world's only super power being the US; this may be factually true but practially the US is no longer a super power. It has greater influence than any other country on global affairs, yet it doesn't have the political will or financial muscle to exercise its influence as it once did. We are moving into a multi-polar world. The decline of the US is shown graphically by its inability to win the two wars it has most recently entered into; it is even having to enlist the help of the axes of evil to assit it.

Any history student or casual observer will note that the decline of an empire can be traumatic. The collapse of the USSR and the decline of the Roman empire all left states struggling to cope with the freedom and instability that was left by the declining giant... will we have the same problems now the US is declining? The US has always had a quasi empire not really occupying countries but more indirectlyly exercising its power. So perhaps the indirect nature of its power will also mean that its decline will have less of destabilising effect on the world.

Humans have terribly short memories which perhaps is in part due to our relatively short life spans, especially when compared to the age of humanity, to the oldest trees or to life itself. A biologist would also argue that short-term memory allows us to recover from trauma and deal with life and the intrinsic dangers that have always been a part of existing.

Any student of history will tell you though, that terrible things have happened in recorded history, most people on the street will have a feeling about some of them, but will have rarely considered them. During the 14th century in just a few years 30% of the population of Europe was devastated by the great plague. This is conservative and my feeling is, it was actually more like 50% as in our judgements we intrinsically never want to hear the worst.

Bad things happen to humanity and bad things will happen again, but will they happen in the relatively short time period of the next 50 years or so. Economists with their extremely short time frames and the youth of their subject never really noticed that Malthus has been right. As Jared Diamond indicated with his analysis of collapsed societies. Environmental pressure, coupled with population pressure has led to economic collapse in history and he worries for our future. He doesn't view this as global warming, in my interpretation, but more global environmental pressures.

I should preface these comments by saying terrible things are happening all over the world all the time, however, the global rich elite, those that produce the most literature and therefore, the books which will be read in the future and shape our view of a period have led relatively tranquil lives for the last 50 years. Will the next fifty years see the global rich list of countries suffer problems and will globally a greater number of countries suffer trauma than over the last 50 years. This is a better phrasing of the question.

Taking the short-term view then you would say the future will more than likely follow the recent past then it is looking fairly rosy..., if you take the longer term view you would say that we were probably in for a rough patch simply because history goes through cycles. Change is rarely painless, global population pressure will mount and there are going to be difficult moments...

What will the nature of the these problems and how bad will things get? I can't consider them I want to live and enjoy life, but a conservative judgement has to say the next 50 years are going to be turbulent and challenging.

Finally how will our declining global champion deal with its waning power? Will it go humbly into old age, or will it be the angry champion lashing out at its loss of influence and power?

London Tax Haven.

2006-12-03T06:16:00.000-08:00

London we are reliably informed is the onshore money haven in the world. Non British born citizens can avoid paying tax on their overseas earnings and pay only on money that they have brought into the UK.

The city can attract expats by exploiting this loop hole and it is seen as crucal in keeping London's competitiveness, should it be allowed though. We are informed by the times, however, that the 54 billionaires in the country payed a paltry 14.7 million in income tax, and most of this from one man, Dyson, who seems to feel a moral obligation. This is wrong they should be taxed.

Taxes on the rich shouldn't be from a socialist persepctive we want to remove your wealth it should be taxed on you should show a commitment to the country you are living in by making a financial contribution to it. The level should be set low, perhaps 5 to 10% of global earnings but they should still be taxed. It shouldn't be intrusive and simply on the principle if you want to live in this country you are expected to financially contribute to its well-being. British expats should be taxed in the same way perhaps 5% of their earnings, if they are living in a tax free country and earning above a threshold they should make a small contribution to their mother country. If they are in war torn zone, the UK will spend thousands extricating them. They benefit from the passport so they should make some small contribution.

As well as taxing at nominal levels, the government should be hardnosed, if you care so little about the country you are living in to not to be willing to pay 5% of your global earnings then we are happy for you to leave.

This should also be combined with much fairer taxes regarding inheritance. Is it really right that the government taxes so highly that which someone wants to leave their children. This should also be lowered to nominal levels 5% over a million and perhaps applied to all global earnings if you hold a British passport.

Thresholds on taxes applied to dividends and savings should be set at much higher levels perhaps at over 50,000 and also the taxes should be lower.

Coupled with this the government should begin being much more transparent on the the costs of everything within the country. We should all receive a tax statement showing us where our money has gone. The people should be told to vote on the correct level of taxes and where they want taxes to be spent. We should try and balance our budget much more and a flat tax rate should be adopted, but also raising the entry threshold, so that voting on taxes affects us equally throughout society.

We should also bring back a broadly based national service where the young of both sexes are asked to contribute to the well-being of the country by working in the army, hospitals and other social functions.

As has been noted it is unfair that the Scots have their own parliament and can vote on English issues it is also unfair that London's mega rich do not contribute financially to the well-being of the country.

The Bankers and the Stock Exchange

2006-11-26T02:17:00.000-08:00

So a group of bankers are going to try and setup their own alternative trading system, as they feel the charges are too high..... nothing can be more ironic than the large banks complaining about charges. Incredible what is the world coming to?

Perhaps the stock exchanges are making too much money and lowering the cost of transaction would be a good thing, surely however, more important is to try and create a model where investment bankers are encouraged to think over the long run, and government tax on savings and investments is brought down.

Their bonuses are so huge, that they are in the UK encouraging companies to merge, diverge anything to increase their commissions, these same companies that often complain about high charges can adopt policies which may be detrimental to the long term health of companies and economies because they get huge fat bonuses on an annual basis. When they can earn millions in a year, when they can earn tens of millions in a year, what is the incentive to think about the long term health of companies, to build long term relationships? This is a far greater problem than the charges applied to buying and selling shares. The UK as one of the most open countries in the world will perhaps over time be most effected by this.

The liberal economic view is often a little naive, it is like escapism, it is the easy view to adopt, it is comforting and in many ways it is largely right. In some crucial ways it is wrong. The bankers are part of the market, the market is the best system, let Adam Smith's invisible hand guide the allocation of resources. Government intervention is always bad. Undoubtedly the market is a vital instrument in allocating resources, however, the Liberal Economic view is also naive, and ignores crucial facts.

Let’s start with trade...

Two countries by specialising in what they have a competitive advantage in will become richer; as the cost of the product will drop... trade is good...... what if you have nothing of importance to trade? What if you are the country that has a very low value added product, the benefit is disproportionate to the country with the higher value product and for many in the country in the lower value product, the benefits will perhaps be minimal, just visit Bolivia and parts of Africa to see the truth in this.

Governments should intervene to nurture nascent industries, the government should try and encourage technology transfer, government interference matters... just look at Japan, Korea, China... governments have played a massive interfering role in helping their countries to develop. It is naive to think governments should leave everything to the invisible hand of the markets.

The market is better than an average or poor government but a cleverly constructed policy by a government to help develop industries to protect industries can have a major positive effect on a country's economy. The problem with this policy is it can be exploited by unions and politicians to protect industries which are not so vital for the future of a country.
So what does this mean for the future what does this have to do with investments banks?

In many ways the investment banks are exploiting the UK’s unwillingness to intervene in the functioning of the market. The UK benefits from the inward investment of capital however, are these mergers really in the long term benefit of the companies and UK plc? The Spanish after all have a tax advantage which is heping them fund the takeovers. Why are smaller foreign companies able to purchase large well run British ones? This is surely wrong and only possible because the British government is so willing to let finance dictate the terms of the running of the UK economy. Leave it all to the market is their mantra as long as we can over tax.

Governments should never ever leave everything to the markets and they should try and help their companies and nascent industries where they can. They need to avoid supporting hundreds of companies. They should though adopt policies to help their best companies grow and develop as Porter says create clusters of companies as competition is important, but it should often be slowly introduced... governments matter.... what is the danger with this policy?

In protecting it can also stop openness to the change, companies must always evolve this is the power of capitalism; governments will often provide funds for the most politically sensitive companies and not those that will have the most importance for the future of an economy. Perhaps just like the bank of England is independent so should the government protection board. It would have to be called something less politically charged. The government sets the policy and the board decides those companies and industries which should benefit the most. The banks shouldn't be targeted but the government should try and adopt policies which encourage and help the long term development of companies, and make Banks think about the long term. The governments should try and reduce the importance of investment banks in the running of the economy and their short term horizons. The government should encourage no foster competition in this area, so that the charges commissions and bonuses available will drop and hence they should begin thinking more over the long run….so that talented people are spread more evenly throughout the economy. Obviously it goes without saying that it should continually invest and improve infrastructure and education.

Stock exchanges lower their charge.. nah I say Investment Bankers should first start by lowering theirs. Policies to reduce the importance and charges of investment banks will never happen in the UK as it has allowed finance to become too important as a proportion of the overall economy, anything it does that effects the revenue stream of the financial community would be devastating for the short run in the UK, something no government will ever be able to sanction. It needed to encourage and develop a more diverse economy, now it is beholden to the financial community whether it is or isn’t in the long run benefit of the UK. The only country which could force change in this area because of the size and diversity of its economy is the US.

Thatcher took the brave decisions that transformed the UK economy, she was willing to make the tough choices and the wealth that flowed has powered the labour government these last ten years. She also helped unleash the city a money generating machine, however, does it now operate for the good of the economy as a whole over the long run?

The Problem with Economists

2006-11-20T13:29:00.000-08:00

It is known as the dark science. It has tried to turn itself into a science at various stages and it is always a joke that you can never get two to agree. They have a huge influence on our lifes as we all pretty much work in a money based economy. Their views and ideas about how an economy should be run, if they gain the ear of the politicians, can effect every single one of us.

I don't think this is their problem, their problem is their lack of historical perspective. An ecologist can look at soil samples or ice extracts from greenland, whereas most economists will only look back a maximum of 60 years and normally much much less, after all how long have we had sophisticated economies.

They should be forced to study huge quanities of history..... they should be forced to read about the worst century, the 14th, to study Roman history.... they need a far greater historical perspective.

The problem with economists is they don't take the long view, after all we are all dead aren't we Mr Keynes....Many of the policies they advise are incredibly short term , they view success over incredibly short term scales, a generation is an extremly short time scale yet we all know in historical terms this is nothing.

This is the problem with Economists, because two never agree, surely that just makes it more interesting.

Questions I don't like

2006-11-20T13:12:00.000-08:00

I always remember someone asking me a question when i was a student.

Stalin industrialized Russia at a huge human cost but that helped crush the nazi, was the cost worth it.

I could never answer it... i still can't.... i don't like questions like that... it is too painful to consider....

Suddenly we are faced with a similar situation, not quite on the same scale but nevertheless a similar question....

Tonight i watched a program about the atrocities in Iraq, and the massacres that Saddam committed, yet look what we have now! People are being killed daily, which is worse? I really don't know. What I do know is that unless you can improve something you shouldn't intervene and the very least you should leave is an improved infrastructure. I remember when they entered Baghdad a colleague of mine pointed out the celebrating masses. I said I will hold up my hand and admit I was wrong with my criticism of the invasion in 5/10 or even twenty years if we have improved the situation for the people at the moment we haven't, we are failing them.

The Challenge of Science

2006-11-19T05:51:00.000-08:00

The popularity of science is diminishing, few and far between are the politicians with a scientific background, yet its importance in society has never been greater.

The creationist are challenging in some schools the idea that evolution really occured the scientists responded, as was covered by the New Scientist, with a conference in the US regarding whether science could replace religion. Richard Dawkins feels that they should go on the offensive... that Scientists should come out as it were.

As important in the same issue were the signs of how science is reaching further into our lifes and minds helping us understand the human brain and behaviour, how in analyzing the minute the miniscule they are beginnging to change how we look at reality, impacting subject such as philosophy, psychology, economics.....

What does this mean?

I am always reminded of the Khmer Rouge and how they massacred anyone educated... the killing fields... scienists have always challenged the status quo, but what Dawkins is doing? Questioning whether religion should be usurped whether it should exist...hmmmm?

My reading isn't as comprehensive as i would like in this area, and i hope to change that over the next few months.. but could perhaps the greatest conflict of the future will not be between, the West and Islam but between those that believe and those that don't?

There was a piece in the New Scientist discussing if you don't believe, then you lose your connection with eternity... which can perahps be replaced with your atoms being reused and being transferred so in a way you do......hmmm........

The Press American Interest/London Review of Books

2006-11-12T02:08:00.000-08:00

Recently I have been in essay mode when it comes to my reading material. I picked up a new magazine called American Interest. It is a little like the Harvard Business Review in format but its topics are from a far wider subject area. I have also been reading the London Review of Books the last few weeks. Its personals are far funnier than those I have seen in the New York Review of Books. There may be a play in London based on an advert in the New York Review of Books... it would seem to me it should be based on those from the London Review of books..... much more entertaining.
There was recently in LRB a wonderful piece on Iraq and in particular the funds for reconstruction. Leaving some kind of infrastructural improvements should be the very minimum that can be provided to the Iraqis, judging by this article however, it would seem they are being let down as most of the funds for reconstruction have already been spent with very little to show.

There are two ways of looking at a war. The first discussion point is the moral reason for engaging in a conflict, the second is how you win a war and the peace. Regarding the second point the fact that the US and British governments engaged on two fronts in two very difficult environments and countries is mind boggling. It seems like military and political suicide. I wonder whether we will ever find out why. I think the first thing any politician should do before he engages in an ambitious foreign agenda is sit down with five esteemed historians, individually, and have a history lesson....surely they would both have then followed a different path.

The American Interest had an article written by Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, regarding the imbalances afflicting the world financial system and in particular the US trade deficit. 75% of excess world exports are being taken by the US. This is a phenomenal sum and obviously leading to an enormous US global IOU. This has to change and can it change without significant dislocation is one of the most pressing questions of the next twenty years. Severe economic problems as we all know puts society under significant pressure and can lead to international conflict and distasteful regimes gaining power.

Interestingly he also touched on the detail that has had little coverage which is China could actually use the IOU as leverage over the US and its policies. The Americans did this with the French and British at the time of the Suez crisis, now that would be a twist...

It is a truly excellent piece of journalism.

Oil Strike 2006

2006-11-12T01:38:00.000-08:00

It is a funny old world and sometimes you wonder what gets reported in the press.

In Aberdeen, which due to the Oil rush is a boom town again, 10 days ago 900 divers went on strike. It was news in Scotland but in the English press not a word.

Their demand was for a 50% pay rise and they were offered 35% which they rejected and they walked out on strike. About one week later the employers, who subcontract to the oil companies, struck a deal and it was for 46%. A truly incredible rise…

Who can begrudge them though? I know stories on the North Sea oil rigs of the sheets from divers being collected covered in red patches, where they have bled during the night from their ears and noses.

It is a reminder that can so easily be forgotten that when there are supply shortages in the labour market and an industry is very profitable, workers can demand large pay increases. I do wonder whether one day globablly we will ever see shortages that allow workers to ask for large pay increases. China is after all aging.

It reminds me of one of the greatest natural tragedies to hit Europe, The Black Plague in 1347. It was one of the first examples of chemical warfare as the Mongols or Tartars were afflicted by the plague and were laying seige to a European town. They used large catapults to fire in some of the corpses and it quickly spread through the population who began to flee taking the plague with them spreading it throughout Europe.

There are estimates that perhaps 30% of the population of Europe was wiped out, a heart-breakingly high number. One simply can't imagine the pain, the human loss and rupture that it must have caused. In many countries society would have been in a state of near collapse.

The consequence economically during the plague were devastating however, for the working man that survived they were suddenly able to demand far higher salaries, and it was the beginning of the end of serfdom in Europe.

So the message for the modern working man living in poverty in many parts of the world, is have less children and practise birth control at the preconception stage. The problem is it is something that everyone needs to practise for it to have a consequence but fewer children, would ultimately lead to higher salaries over a generation or two for their children. For governments that really want to help their people they need to think about ways that they can encourage pre-conception birth control.

Shifting Power.

2006-11-05T09:56:00.000-08:00

In the late 80s Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, was the book that everybody was reading. American’s were worried about their relative decline compared to Japan. Then the technology induced revival of the US, the bursting of the property bubble in Japan changed all that.

Fast forward 18 years or so and now it is the rise of China. The West worries about the movement of industry to the East, and I do sometimes wonder what we will have to export to them…

The most important impact of the rise of Chinese power, and of Russian power will be those middling countries in the developing world. The global agenda will increasingly be set by Chinese ideas, views and attitudes. The rise of China is more important to them than it is to the West, as they have far less wealth. China is inviting a whole host of African leaders to Beijing, is investing huge sums of money throughout Africa. This will only spread, with their war chest of money, and with huge swathes of the West increasingly financially under pressure they will have little competition from the liberal democratic West. Perhaps it won’t be just Chinese money but also the financial wealth from countries such as Russia.

In the UK there is a massive debate regarding the correct level of taxes, this misses the point somewhat. The reason we are having this debate is financially we are struggling to support our social and military commitments. We have constructed a very worthy social support network that is coming under strain.

Paul Kennedy said that when a country’s military expenditure and commitments become too much of a burden for an economy then this is when their decline begins. In the modern world this is social and military commitments. The huge problem, in the West, is that we have reached this stage across a huge range of countries. The countries that are performing fiscally are well managed small countries.

So as has been discussed in many papers the balance of power is shifting, in many ways the balance of power has shifted…. We the people are just catching up.

So what is the future?

Competing on innovation they say is the only way but how much of development is due to innovation, the Brits have been wonderful inventors, yet the US they say is the country that has benefited more from British creativity. Move into higher value products, however, can everyone in the UK/US really do this.. Surely there is a limit to the amount of higher value work a country can do. Any teacher will tell you there is a huge difference between the abilities of children. Not everyone can be a PHD scientist.

Far more important than our ability to innovate, is the general quality of education, fiscal intelligence, social harmony and diversity allowing us to be more open to new ideas… and the ability to change as the world changes. The US for all its deficiencies is the country in the world that has a greater ability to transform itself than anyone else… and the dark cloud, whether liberal democratic countries will be able to make these changes. Another political economic challenge is rising, the economic argument was won, with the collapse of Russia, what we are seeing now is a new political system and way of doing things.

Anyone that is close to China will tell you how they are more divided, have more internal dissent than you would ever believe from the outside, however, the political gauntlet has been thrown down, and not just by China but also Russia. Perhaps it won’t be the West that faces China with an alternative liberal political system but India..now there is a thought…

Poor Quality Journalism

2006-11-03T07:48:00.000-08:00

Today I feel angry, whatever, I read I feel I am not getting anyone who is capable of facing the real issue. Is half the world blind? Obviously extremely intelligent people are writing these articles and surveys but why are they not reflecting properly?

First the business published a critique of the Stern report about the environmental impact of global warming. It completely misses the point….. I want to hit my head and go doh….. The point isn’t the world is getting warmer the point is the cumulative effect of humans on the environment. The issue is population…. consumption, global warming, running out of resources, degradation of water supplies.. talking about one issue global warming is pointless, we have to talk about human’s global effect on the environment. So the issue is how we deal with all these issues not just one… the greatest danger doesn’t come from global warming it comes from population pressure combined with scarce resources, made scarcer. Then the question is how do we transform capitalism and democracy to cope in a world where people might be poorer and on one which isn’t based on always more people more consumption? Finally when political power is closely linked to economic power which large country is going to take the steps to perhaps make itself poorer and reduce its population? This is the problem…

The Independent was equally disappointing but from the opposite angle. They had a full front page on the increase in Air Travel… now really… so the Editor of the independent where does he go on holiday? I bet he takes his kids to a cold beach in the UK….. the problem isn’t air travel the problem is population and wealth… so do you propose making us poorer Independent? Tell your kids that this year they are not going on holiday and not having an IPOD. Will you, of course you won’t so you blame the government! You have to first face the truth, we have to have less kids and accept less…. Are we willing to do it…..I don't know if I am I like my life too much That is the question… finally whatever we do in the UK doesn’t matter a jot without change globally…..

Finally some notes on poorer quality work in the Economist the last few weeks: The Economist. High quality/low quality. The Economist represents what is best in free thinking journalism and sometimes what is worst. It can change direction make bold statements, however, on occasions its journalism can fall in quality. The last two weeks there have been several articles which have been well constructed full of facts which have said very little. The first of which was an article talking about the rise of the Asian consumer, quoting hundreds of facts how exports to this area are rising… America’s importance is declining. Tell us something we didn’t know….
The really interesting points were never mentioned though. Which countries would lose from this shift in importance to the East, so they are importing more, but most of this will be capital goods to help their exports… now the really important details, assuming Asian consumers will be the future drivers of the world Economy as the US weakens then what will they want to buy from the West? What can the West export for them. This was never considered, never debated, and in any change there are always winners and losers who will be the losers.. oh so they will buy luxury goods will they?.... hmmm… this will keep Europe going… now then time for some deeper analysis. The second article that was of rather weaker quality was regarding the changing nature of the US economy and the falling long term trend rate of growth…. Hundreds of facts were quoted but the impact never was… analysis is explaining what might happen not just diagnosing whether it will… only one fact is necessary to know that it will, that is the baby boomers retiring, this could have been said in a paragraph with just a few facts…. What happens is far more important, how this will effect the world, and more importantly how do we create a sustainable economy which isn’t always based on more people, more consumption….. one day we will reach a Malthusian problem.. when I don’t know, but something always based on more is going to hit problems eventually. The rest of the magazine has been great well done… but we should always pick up on what is of poorer quality.

In conclusion why does this happen, because most people don't like being properly challenged in debate they like to hear an alternative to what they think, so they sit round not really challenging each other..... so here I am challenging you all to improve... they’ll hate me for it.

Darwin and the Bible.

2006-11-03T07:08:00.000-08:00

These words as I am sure you are aware are from Genesis, and as an Aunt of mine used to say the literature in the bible is wonderful so just a few lines….

001:001 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

001:003 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

001:004 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

001:005 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

001:006 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

001:007 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

The new Yorker recently published a stimulating essay on Darwin about the quality of his writing and the huge gap between his travels on the Beagle the publishing of his great work. How in many ways he is the one great scientist who amateurs read for pleasure, his prose they said is beautifully constructed……

Sitting here in the naughts I look back and think about the impact that he has had upon our society, upon our belief system and how all the major religions have managed to survive, and yet how he managed to release such an earth shattering thesis, without been persecuted.

Gallileo espoused ideas which for us are far less threatening to the modern religions, but was persecuted. There is a play in London about his life. How he was tortured, and forced to make a public statement saying he renounced all his beliefs… his daughter watched him through the last years of his life Darwin never suffered this kind of persecution. I guess society was primed for his revelations, they were in the midst of the industrial revolution, and my feeling is if society hadn’t, Darwin perhaps wouldn’t have published… Darwin's impact has been greater, but the greater man was Galileo as he was alive in a more hostile environment.

The one thing that I find quite remarkable, is the Victorians left us with the idea that we could shape the planet and the environment to our will, that we are the ultimate masters. The positive attitude can be seen in journals such as the Economist, where anything is possible, man can truly over come anything. Through Darwin, though, they also left us with the idea, that ultimately there is one thing we can never truly over come and that is death. They eroded the belief for many in an after life… now that is ironic…

I can remember lying in my bed as a nine year old and thinking what came first…. Darwin, Hawkins, Newton, Einstein… they will never explain that… oh there was gas was there, and before the gas.. what?...... how can something come from nothing… no one will ever explain that… we may come within one milli second of the start of the universe they say and before that millisecond what? Somethings will never be explained… even a 9 year old can see that..

The Clash of Civilisation Debate.

2006-10-26T09:35:00.000-07:00

So across Western Europe, there are debates about whether women should be wearing the full face veil, there was a court case in Northern England regarding a woman wanting to wear the veil whenever she was in the presence of a male teacher.

There is massive debate about whether Europe should let Turkey join the European Union. This debate has two sides to it. The first side is simply that Turkey is a secular country, that is broadly supporting the West and we don’t want to push them to Islamic extremism. I find this argument slightly childish and naive….
Turkey is a relatively rich country with a long history, because it won’t be allowed into the European Union it will suddenly become an extreme country seems to be slightly simplistic. The British Muslims have lived and worked inside a western European country for many years; they first started arriving in the 1950s, yet on the streets of northern cities with large Pakistani populations the impression can be they are more radicalised than they were 20 years ago.
There is also a danger when the intellectual elite move too far away from what the people on the street think, the door is left open for extremist to enter. So should Turkey be allowed into the European Union, in short I do not know, but the debate about the EU has to be far wider, more inclusive, more honest with arguments that appeal to more than we have to support Turkey, because they are our only friend in the Middle East. We also have to look at the social problems that may occur if large numbers of Turkish immigrants begin to arrive in European cities, many of which are seeing a resurgence of rather distasteful political parties. We have to look at whether an EU can function as it continues to increase in size, without reforming.

We should also treat Turkey fairly openly and trasparently. Discuss our worries not operate a two value system, what we say to our populations internally and what we say to the Turks, this is surely the worst thing.

The Weeks Press

2006-10-18T00:51:00.000-07:00

The British New Scientist had a few wonderful articles this week.

One about a not so famous Polymath.

I have always loved people that are curious about the world. A close friend of mine is very keen on the arts, and likes to talk about its cultivating, moderating aspects. Its importance in society. What will be left without the arts?

I always respond that culture for me is much wider. It is the interest in intellectual pursuits in the world around us. Maths is culture and interesting, language is, science, art... we are so fortunate to have so many interesting intellectual pursuits that we can pursue... so i say lets glory in the polymaths that epitomise this... an interest in the world.

The Business has changed its format and become a magazine.

The business should be read for one element which is its thought provoking editorial, which can also can be read on line at:

http://www.thebusinessonline.com/

Y0u may often disagree with what they say but you will nevertheless be stimulated by a direct and brave editorial style.

Sadly this week's first editorial was a little poorer than normal.

The New Scientist also had an article about Bio technology and how it could be used negatively. I haven't quite got round to reading that it looked a little depressing. If human's disappeared tomorrow was my favorite. A sobering thought as after a million years or so there would be very little trace of us. The Earth they said would very quickly forget us.

I didn't bother with the Economist this week, as time for a change of reading material occasionally. Nothing caught my attention when reading the contents either.

The Prospoect should also be occaionally read as it writes in an essay format about such a wide variety of topics.... I also love the whats on lecture page:

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/landing_page.php

The papers well I got the Sunday Times as ever but nothing really hit in that.

The Ecologist is interesting for a change but didn't fancy that either......

http://www.theecologist.org/

Definition of Age

2006-10-18T00:21:00.000-07:00

I went to the theatre the other night and I sat next to an incredibly knowledgeable gentlemen. He was telling me about the different performances of Faustus he had seen, and the great show that he saw in the sixties when there was a German actor playing the role.

He had seen Jude Law playing it at the young Vic as well.

He also mentioned the acclaimed Kevin Spacey in O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten. This is the third time he has been in an O'Neill play, one of the other times opposite Jack Lemmon, who was in the role he is now playing.

It made me feel sad as it must become quite lonely when you have seen so much more than everyone else, when your friends are slowly dying away, or losing their minds and there are so few people that you can share these thoughts with; so few people that are your equal.

You must know you are getting old when you have seen so much more than anybody else, remember facts that nobody else cares about, and feel lonely as there are so few people to share them with, instead of just relating the stories.

The Elephant in the Room

2006-10-15T04:42:00.000-07:00

Francis Fukuyama's famous phrase the end of history, was one of those comments which was almost correct.... He should have said rupture with history, and used it discuss a far greater problem. OK he wrote it an answer to the Marxist view of history but in a way that just made it even worse. He was simply answering a lot of those left wing academics that he had met during his career. That debate misses the point though. If we step back from our current lives and look around us we live in, perhaps, sorry definitely the most remarkable period in human history...... when did this rupture with history begin? When did we suddenly begin to break away from the past to start living by different rules and what does it mean? Now any student of history will know that there have been periods when developments have flowed more quickly, when amazing things have been constructed, however, we admire them because they managed to complete these buildings and structures when they didn't have our technology. Sometimes we feel we can even learn from some of the things that they had been able to accomplish. For instance the Japanese have studied how Machu Picchu was built and its resilience to earth quakes. The fact remains though that if we were to bring the greatest inventors and scientists from the past and put them into the modern world they would be staggered. Now rupture with history, what does that mean? It means that millions of people around the world have a far higher standard of living than ever before.. It means we can travel, use instruments that people in the past could scarcely imagine.... all wonderful.. all incredible... but it also means there is an elephant in the room which we are all ignoring. Our cultures, our ideas, our opinions evolved over millions of years, and this has also changed but not quickly enough given the present state of the world. The emancipation of women, fewer children in the developed world etc, yet so much of our debate about the world is framed in ideas that have little relevance in the modern world. We talk about a clash of civilisations betweens East and West, whether women should or shouldn't wear the veil, whether abortion should be legal or not, whether condoms should be encouraged...... These issues don't deal with the elephant in the room. These issues are framed by our cultures, by our views which are unable to deal with the elephant..... What is the elephant in the room, the one thing that people struggle to discuss.... The West consumes too much, and the developing world has too many children..... Now you might say that these issues are discussed now, we hear about global warming, we hear about population, but are they discussed? Jared Diamond's excellent books shed more light on this subject than anything else I have ever read, however, even he doesn't want to touch the elephant in the room. The problem is the most productive economic system ever created is based on more, always more... more consumption, greater growth increasing share prices more inventions etc..... In solving the problem, always higher population and consumption, we could undermine everything in our civilisation and what our forefathers struggled for. Waste creates jobs; we are all part of this system, we eat from McDonalds, we watch television, we consume and we want to consume, we all take pensions, and we want to have a good retirement... Can a capitalist democratic system deal with these problems, when it is based on more? Can our companies survive when they are based on more? Can our countries survive? I don't know but the world has to stand up and face it... We consume too much and you guys, I guess I should say ladies are having too many kids. It is naive of ecologists to think that simply by changing our habits by being more aware, by cutting down on our green house gases we can begin to solve the question... Mr. Goldsmith/Mr. Branson to solve global warming we have to commit to having less. We have to tell our children they will have less. We will be poorer, you will be poorer and life will be tougher.... We have to have fewer kids, we have to have less leisure, we have to eat less of what we want... we have to have smaller cars, less cars, we have to take fewer glamorous holidays...the list just goes on... As you relax in your expensive homes, turn on your TV and discuss these ideas with the intelligentsia stop for one second and think what it really means, as your children get excited about the latest IPOD, just stop and think what is really required to make the change..... It is truly scary.. I am scared... I love my life and I love my standard of living... Yet however, we criticise, those that have broken into the modern wealthy world love it. This is the greatest period in history to be alive; we are the fortunate ones... yet... yet... yet..... The elephant is there asking us whether we can or will make the choices..... will I.... do I want to... I don't know but at least I can see it there questioning me when I take another flight, when I wastefully buy some more junk food, when I get into my car.. when I go to a party and look at the waste, when I turn on the TV.... Do you want to change, does society want to that and will we face it honestly and really look at what it means? It means and lets not beat around the bush, that you voter are gong to be poorer and have less. It means that you voter in the developing world are going to have fewer children, and you are not going to ever, all live like the films you watch... ever.... That is truly scary for all of us..... time to turn on the TV, listen to my IPOD, read a newspaper and eat a McDonalds... no one else is really considering this so why should I? I didn't answer when this began.. that will be my next topic.

Economist Talent Survey

2006-10-15T04:26:00.000-07:00

The Economists recent survey on talent was a wonderfully argued and written piece it, however, failed to acknowledge several fundamental realities. The first of those realities is that talent, brain power, imagination probably only explain 25% of success in the modern world. There are a number of other factors, which are at least as important.

Manners….(Which means those born at the bottom of the social spectrum are likely to have more problems)

Dedication (Modern companies don’t just want you 9-5 they want incredible dedication and commitment.)

Right Education (Even discussing a world where everyone successful is more talented than those unsuccessful is ridiculous when state schools across the developed world are failing so atrociously.)

Company politics/networking (Often those that are the most successful are simply those that play the game better)

Specialisation (The modern world forces an enormous amount of specialization, so that if a talented person chooses the wrong profession, it is difficult to change and redirect his brain power )

HR people are never brave, their priority it to ensure that if mistakes are made then they cannot be blamed. Many of the most talented people live unusual lives, however, HR departments are chained by a PC correct world, and by fear of failure, they rarely take major risks in selecting candidates.

The experience conundrum. Many CEOs simply aren’t good enough, the quality has risen over the years, but there is no open transparent way of becoming a CEO. It is an old boys club, meaning those that crack it have often simply played the game well. They may be competent but often not particularly talented. Once they acquire experience it allows them to move between senior management positions. Some of them will pick up this experience and simply not damage a successful company, they can then move on to another and do nothing in particular. More talented creative individuals simply will not get the opportunity if they haven’t played the game properly. The skills required to progress through a company are often not the same as those required to run a company. Those that are more equipped for senoir management may be less well equipped to progress through the company.

Finally and most importantly, the ROI on going to university in some countries in the developed world is now debatable. The cost is increasing and there will often be greater returns by learning a trade. Those who are most talented at the trades may rise to the top, however, trades probably don’t distinguish talent in quite the same way as some of the jobs discussed in the survey.

Finally lady luck, whether it being the last man standing, the one that has stayed the longest, or simply having built a good relationship with an important manager, or having the right face at the right time…. LUCK we make some of it but not all of it.

Belle Du jour

2006-09-24T14:12:00.000-07:00

I have read her book, never really looked at her blog and my question is should we splash our sex life all over the web?

I haven't been an angel but most of us haven't, however, why do people feel the need to tell the world about it, whatever happened to discretion, to having a little bit of embarrassment about our weaknesses and sins.?

In the end I felt sad for her, she was having all this sex yet she was alone, and she has taken the final step which is to cross the I don't care threshold, many of us do things yet we still don't want the whole world to know, ok so she is anonymous but she has put so many details up, made herself such a celebrity that anyone that spends any time with her will know the truth.... she will always be that person... she can never run from it, hide from it, move on...... so good luck to her....but I feel sad for her....

Most importantly is there a difference between living a life like that and being embarrassed by it and wanting to hide the details and the opposite which is being brash and openly telling the whole world. Is it honesty or is it merely degrading to her and the rest of us?

Which is the best path?

I know the one i think is better.

The Short Term Long Term

2006-09-19T07:11:00.000-07:00

It is a famous quote from John Maynard Keynes that in the long run we are all dead...... the skill in investing, politics, is being able to separate the long run from the short run.

Detecting the long run tendencies is easier than predicting when they will have an impact. You could argue the revival of Asia began at the start of the 2oth century, when Japan beat the Russians in a small war, yet the West is still dominant in so many areas.. when will the East really gain dominance?

The American trade deficit has been at high levels for many years yet, the world just carries on, and it doesn't seem to matter, when will it matter? When will Americans finally begin paying back their IOU to the world, and will I be alive so will it matter me?

Our lives are so short yet trends, the currents of the world are much deeper and take far longer to work themselves out...

Will the environment effect my life significantly or will it be my children/childrens...

It is just 400 generations since people were drawing on cave walls.... trying to communicate with us....... and 400 generations later we aren't sure what they were trying to tell us.

London 7th July 2005

2005-07-07T06:27:00.000-07:00

So here I am sitting in my house with the TV turned on and tears streaming down my face.

I feel violated, I feel like my mother has been assaulted by someone.

Death in any part of the world is horrible, bombs anywhere are horrible, yet London for me is like a precious jewel. I have never been to New York, but I imagine it is the same. Truly in the history of humanity, there have not been many cities as free and open to opportunities as New York and London today.

I have friends from many countries, who are struggling and fighting to make their lives in London with opportunities they would never have in their own city or country. I hear people moaning about London, yet they are still here and London offers them a home and opportunities, however, tough it sometimes is.

So they attack this, a place in the world where Muslims can come and make a success of their lives, they attack it.

So I prey that for me a beacon of opportunity and freedom in the world will not be extinguished. Perhaps I am melodramatic in this emotional moment, but after years of travel, visits to many cities in the world I know what London has is rare, so not everyone can experience it, but please let us not extinguish it.

A world without the cities like London would be a far poorer world, and where would people then be able to dream of going?

Where will the poor immigrant's children be able to climb the slippery pole, not many do, but there is still opportunity for some.

So I cry for the London I love and for what it has given me and many other people fortunate enough to make it their home.

Poverty

2005-07-02T14:11:00.000-07:00

The most inspiring thing in my youth was live aid, the original, and reading Bob Geldof's book. I even wrote a childish letter to him, and I was moved. I wanted to save the world, I wanted to change the world. Sadly it never quite worked out like that.So now twenty years on, and I read the press which ranges from positive to quite cynical, and I am more confused as the world seems so much more complex to me now.

I feel that we should always try and help those that are less fortunate and that surely to do something is better than doing nothing, and an insane man would surely say canceling debt relief is a bad idea for these countries. I do realize as I am older, though, that the issue is far more complex, and poverty far more widespread than just Africa. I have traveled to many other countries outside of Africa where it exists.

It is quite ironic seeing a live aid concert in Russia, as it is a rich country but it also contains huge swathes of poverty, shocking for a Westerner, but still not as devastating as that seen in Africa. I also heard Madonna say she lives just around the corner from Hide Park, the location of the London event. Sometimes walking through London one can be shocked by seeing people sleeping on the streets, and I want to cry. I live in one of the world's richest cities yet, even here we are not capable of looking after our own.

Why are these people on the streets, without doubt some because of drug habits, but the point remains we don't live in perfect societies in the West, and many middle ranking countries or smaller countries suffer massive problems with poverty. Latin America has suffered enormously over the last forty years, as has India and China although they are rapidly dragging themselves out of poverty.

So in no way here is there an undercurrent that we should revolutionize our economic system, socialism failed, and the dynamism and wealth of capitalism won't be replaced by another system, but we should still strive for a way of harnessing capitalism without crushing its dynamism and wealth creating facilities.

So perhaps we also need to look inside ourselves, and ask ourselves what role we have to play in society, both internationally and locally, and we need more of community spirit on a local level and also on a global level.We must never though, move too far away from the knowledge that competition with success and failure are an important part of the power of capitalism, however, it needs to be fair and just and we must protect those that are less fortunate.

The trade system must be made fairer so that Africa can unleash the dynamism that undoubtedly exists there.

We must though in our own societies allow those with talent as much as possible to succeed and benefit from the system but we should always protect the weak......So perhaps naively I feel that we need more of a commitment to our local societies and to our global societies, perhaps one part of me feels we need to attack this on two fronts, one that Bob is facing which is trying to attack the most shocking disturbing things that are happening in Africa and our world. In terms of poverty and also unfairness.

The other side is to build, on a local level, the feeling that we are part of a community that begins in our own neighborhoods, our own towns, our countries and stretches globally. We also should not forget poverty exists in many places in this world, and we need to start looking after our own, humanity, in many areas of the world, not just Africa, but wherever poverty exists including in our own societies.