In Waterstones, in the corner of a display of mostly leftist political books “chosen by the booksellers of this store”, is Christopher Booker’s The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the obsession with ‘climate change’ turning out toi be the most costly scientific blunder in history?
What could it all mean?
Really I’m just testing Flickr’s “blog this” feature. But here is a photo of a radio controlled helicopter flying inverted very close to the gound. It takes years of practice to be able to do this. Google Alan Szabo for more of this type of thing.
I’m a member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology mostly by accident: I took a degree course accredited by them.
Their Engineering and Technology magazine has the odd good article but is increasingly full of statism and greenery. There’s an article about how much governments of the world are going to spend “in your industry”. This is seen as “investment” and only fair, what with the banks getting all that money.
The star letter on the letters page is all about how carbon sequestration doesn’t work and includes an earnest quote from a book called “The Vanishing Face of Gaia”.
The section on “Power” has one article about government cash for going green and another about the costs of green energy containing sentences that start with things like “However, governments must not ignore…” The section on management contains a positive book review of “Fools Gold”, subtitle: “How unrestrained greed corrupted a dream, shattered global markets and unleashed a catastrophe.” Unrestrained. Unrestrained.
Even the funny article at the end, which is about the pros and cons of living in various tax havens, lists being allowed to drive at 16, breath tests being illegal and a lack of seat belt laws and speed limits as reasons not to move to the Isle of Man.
I am beginning to suspect that the IET may not be aligned with my interests.
I just watched some Big Brother. Marcus, the funny-looking, geeky one from London had an argument with Sree, the slick, cool looking Indian. Something he said got him called into the diary room for a telling off by the production company, in the guise of Big Brother.
Big Brother [played by a woman]: During a discussion with Sree about the shopping list, you said the words “thirteen thirteens” in an imitation of Sree’s accent. This, along with the aggressive tone used when saying this, is what brought it to Big Brother’s attention.
Marcus: Yeah, you need to step right back from that right now. If he can say to me all the things that he copies from me [...] he goes to me “oh come on hurry up mate hurry up mate” in exactly the same was as I said it to him — don’t even start all of that because when you start all of that then it becomes something.If I had an argument with Naureen and I said it in an Irish accent, or if I said it in a Geordie accent or I said it in any other accent in the house apart from Sree’s, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and that’s a fact. That’s an absolute fact. So, no-one else in the house would get offended by it. [...]
BB: Marcus, using words regarding a housemate’s cultural background along with an aggressive tone, is what could be deemed offensive.
M: No, it’s not. Seriously. Everyone else in the house argues with Freddy and [...] do his [posh] voice and do it back to him. How many times have you called them in? No times at all, and there’s been plenty more aggressive arguments with Freddy, and you haven’t called any of them in. So all of that stuff with Sree didn’t bother me but now I’m bothered, now that you’ve started all of this absolute claptrap.You need to have a good think about things you say, you know, you’re too PC sometimes. And I realise that there’s millions of people watching but at the end of the day everyone knows right from wrong and they know what happened like that. So you need to stick up for people in the right as well with this, and your programme. And not just give in to a few stupid bloody people who’ll just moan about the colour of the sky or something like that. Because it’s just absolute popycock that just spoils everything in society.
It struck me as a fairly robust, almost heroic defence against the PC case. In other cases like this people have lamely accepted the accusation of un-PC behaviour and apologised. Marcus came close to making the point that people are offended by what they choose to be offended by, and the PC movement is all to happy to pander to them by, for example, defining offensive behaviour as anything that someone says offends them.
It also struck me how Big Brother the TV show often reflects the state.
You can now subscribe to comments and get emails when someone replies to you. Hopefully this will encourage more discussion.
I recently travelled to Bangkok. Here are some observations, in no particular order.
Bangkok street clutter
Human labour seems cheap. There appears to be a surplus of it. For example, on street corners it is not unusual to see two or three street vendors with about 12 other people just hanging out. A family convenience store or restaurant employs an entire large family.
This makes labour intensive business models viable. Service in hotels and restaurants is excellent because there are plenty of staff and they are all keen to keep their jobs. But I found more noticable the people who wanted to serve me whether I wanted it or not.
For example, it seems to be a viable business model to spend your days chatting up tourists on street corners (“the weather is very hot” “where are you from?” “I would love to go to England, it is very beautiful there”) and attempting to get them to go to wherever you can get comission for delivering them (“where are you going?” “oh, that is closed” “I know some good shopping places, I’ll take you there!”). Other people tried to get us to go to see the “big Buddha” or the Grand Palace. Right outside the Grand Palace there were people trying to sell tickets to the Grand Palace, even though you can walk inside and buy a ticket. I’m still not sure what the trick is, there.
Taxis
Taxis. There are taxis everywhere. They yell “taxi!” at you instead of you yelling “taxi!” at them. If you walk along a street, they slow down, wind their window down and ask, “where are you going?” Tuk tuks are motorised rickshaws and they do the same thing, but even more aggressively. I hear that they will offer you a tour for next to no money and then take you to a jewellry store to collect comission. We never hired a tuk tuk*, but we did take taxis. They have a sign on the top saying “TAXI-METER” but they rarely use the meter. We got meter rides on three occasions: twice when the hotel arranged the taxi for us and therefore probably insisted on our behalf, and once at Bangkok bus station where we got off the bus, fought through the crowd of men offering taxis (“where are you going?”) and went to the official taxi rank which is probably run by the government. Normally I would say that if taxi drivers don’t like the meter it indicates that the meters are calibrated wrongly by the taxi authorities. In Bangkok I think if you are a tourist the drivers know you can afford to pay more.
Some would say that taxi drivers rip off tourists. I think it’s quite fair and sensible to attempt to charge more if you know your customer is ten times richer than anyone else. I never felt particularly ripped off paying £4 instead of £2 for a twenty minute taxi ride.
A bigger problem is getting taxis to go where you want. In London you get in and state your destination. In Bangkok you get in and have a conversation about how bad the traffic is, whether or not your destination is open, and whether or not the driver knows how to get there. Once, needing to cool off, we decided to visit a shopping mall. “No, no, big traffic jam! You want go shopping? I take you shopping!”
Transport-wise, the commuter boats are the best. Men will try to sell you boat tours but 13 Baht will get you to any pier by commuter boat, and many places you’ll want to visit will be near a pier. If you go to pier 0 you can catch the Skytrain, which is modern and comfortable and has good views. As well as commuter boats, the river is well used for transporting stuff around: there are many huge barge trains. Each barge seems to have a family living on it permanently.
River transport
Bangkok has lots of contrasts. One night we spent £2.80 on dinner in Chinatown. I pointed at the dumplings and the street vendor said “you want noodles? Soup? Sit down!” There were lots of vendors at the end of a street and each one had a couple of seats. While our meal was prepared a little girl came over from another stand and offered us drinks, which turned out to be very tasty smoothies. The £2.80 included the drinks. The next night we spent £160 at a restaurant called Sirrocco at the top of a hotel called Lebua at State Tower. Considering the view and the service, it was a bargain.
* It was Thai New Year. This is an excuse for the people to spend three days throwing water over each other and tourists. Tuk tuks are particularly vulnerable from bucket and water assault rifle toting gangs riding in the back of pick-up trucks.
Songkran gang
Back on Friday, Perry de Havilland wrote this about Somali pirates:
…simply hire people from Private Military Organisations to man the weapons. Two belt fed 50 cal machine guns per merchant ships should be quite sufficient. This is a trivial threat and dealing with it is a trivially easy matter that if left to the market would be solved in a matter of weeks.
Seems like he’s been proved right.
Private security guards on board an Italian cruise ship carrying 1,500 passengers and crew fired pistols and used water hoses to fight off an attack by Somali pirates.
[...]
A team of Israeli guards hired by the vessel’s owners immediately began firing back with pistols and spraying the attackers with fire hoses.
It is believed to be one of the first times that a non-military ship with private security aboard has used firearms to deter a pirate attack.
“It felt like we were in a war,” said Commander Ciro Pinto, the Melody’s captain.
“They tried to put up a ladder with hooks. They were climbing up, so we reacted. We started firing. When they saw us firing – we even sprayed them with water with the fire-hose – they gave up and went off.”
[...]
But ships with arms onboard are not allowed to dock at non-military ports.
To bypass this rule, some operators are hiring private security teams who board as the ship enters a risky stretch of water and leave once the danger has passed.
Great stuff! Thanks to the Englishman for the link.
I have been travelling around but now I am back. I am going to try and do what Brian Micklethwait does and post something here every day. The idea is to make my blog more blog-like.
Since I am stealing one of Brian’s ideas I might as well steal some more. Here is a quota photo.
Monk with camera
It’s a monk billion monkey, seen outside the Temple of the Reclining Buddha in Bangkok. I suppose I think of monks as eschewing material posessions so I was surprised to see this. But then again, these Buddhist temple mottos suggest that Buddhism is okay with acquiring wealth (click to make it bigger):
Just watched a particularly good episode of QI whilst drinking beer. Three fascinating things:
Slashdot links to news about some study predicting doom and gloom. The discussion is interesting. Someone writes:
It’s the old “Limits To Growth” bullshit back again. The same people who predicted mass starvation in the 70s are now predicting massive climate change. The whole concept that new technology means you can’t just extrapolate seems to be lost on them.
Someone else agrees:
And this kind of hysterics has been around a long time. Hobbes had his “nasty, brutish, and short” predictions for mankind in Leviathan. According to experts 30 years ago, the was simply no way we could produce enough food for 5 billion people. Now we’re doing it for 7. These professional pessimists have always underestimated mankind’s ability to change, adapt, and solve problems. They’ve always underestimated our capacity to make things happen.
An example is provided:
In 1898, delegates from across the globe gathered in New York City for the world’s first international urban planning conference. One topic dominated the discussion. It was not housing, land use, economic development, or infrastructure. The delegates were driven to desperation by horse manure.
[...]
The situation seemed dire. In 1894, the Times of London estimated that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. One New York prognosticator of the 1890s concluded that by 1930 the horse droppings would rise to Manhattan’s third-story windows. A public health and sanitation crisis of almost unimaginable dimensions loomed.And no possible solution could be devised. After all, the horse had been the dominant mode of transportation for thousands of years. Horses were absolutely essential for the functioning of the nineteenth-century city — for personal transportation, freight haulage, and even mechanical power. Without horses, cities would quite literally starve.
All efforts to mitigate the problem were proving woefully inadequate. Stumped by the crisis, the urban planning conference declared its work fruitless and broke up in three days instead of the scheduled ten.
Someone else objects:
And just how did they get out of this horseshit disaster?
By recognizing the problem and finding a solution. Street cars, subways and eventually motor vehicles.
You can recognize the foresight of the New York administration of the late 19th century for recognizing that their current path was not a sustainable one and began planning and investing in solutions to the problem.
But no. I’m sure you’re right. If we just completely avoid the problem then the inevitability of progress will happen without any research. Without any change and without any effort.
Which is almost a fair point, but fails to recognise the real actors and motivations. Fortunately another slashdotter doesn’t let him get away with it:
“The New York administration of the late 19th century” did not invent or popularise the automobile, or the train. They did nothing to solve the problem. They threw up their hands and gave up because the problem was entirely beyond them – and the world today would be a better place if more governments would follow their lead in that.
The problem was solved by new technologies invented, developed, an popularised by private individuals looking to either make a buck or solve a problem that they faced personally. Not by any committee of busybodies trying to save the world.
