Vast gas reserves have turned up in Lancashire. This is not surprising to those who have been paying attention. There is lots of gas everywhere. There is as much conventional gas as there is oil. And coal bed gas can be found all around the world.
We’re tired of picking up the bills for other people’s kids. We already pay millions every year in school taxes.
— Lindsay Naegle
You can’t change the rules in the middle of the game! We never would have had these kids if we thought we had to pay for them. Promises were made!
Buildings burnt down; shops looted; homes destroyed. All because “a minority of people who do not represent the people of Tottenham” went on a rampage. The police were completely unable to maintain order.
The police will be criticised, but I think that misses the point. The police are what they are. They were trying their best. They’re not suddenly going to get ten times more effective, no matter what anyone does or how much is spent.
The law abiding are completely at the mercy of thugs. If more of the thugs realise this we’re in trouble. That’s why I think it’s a problem that the law abiding have been disarmed.
Sky News has some pretty exciting live video from Tottenham right now.
What strikes me about this is just how much havoc the bad guys can cause when they are minded to. The police are fairly powerless — they can’t deploy the amount of force needed for fear of escalating things.
Well, guess what: there are some tough economic times ahead. Scenes like those in Tottenham tonight could become more common. It’s not hard to imagine a level of unrest in which the police completely lose control.
What then for the disarmed middle classes? We are told there is a gun crime problem in Tottenham, so we know the bad guys have guns. Some of the police have guns. But the likelihood is that they are outnumbered by the bad guys.
What we really need to maintain order in tough times is an armed middle class.
“Why is it better to be alive than dead?” asked someone at a gathering I attended recently.
This was met with much derision at the time, but I thought I’d attempt a serious answer.
If A is better than B, that means someone prefers A to B. So someone has to do the preferring. In game theory is the concept of revealed preference. You can tell what people prefer by the way they behave.
So it is better to be alive than dead because people behave as if they would rather be alive than dead.
The context of the question was a discussion that started after someone suggested that it would be good if everyone in the world could become middle class. People don’t want to live in mud huts; subsistence farming. They want long and comfortable lives without threat of starvation.
So if you want to know why it is better to be middle class than to live in a mud hut, the answer is that it enables you to act on all your other preferences, including the one about not dying of starvation. To deny that this is better is to deny that people have preferences.
The Asus Padfone is a smartphone that can be docked to a larger screen, turning it into a tablet.
And it’s finally a tablet I want, having resisted the first two iPads.
I can carry it in my pocket, but when I’m at home or at work I can dock the phone into the tablet and do everything on a lovely big screen. It’s been argued that you might as well have two devices and sync the data between them, but there are many advantages to a single CPU with multiple form factors:
1) If I’m half way through typing an SMS or Google+ post and decide I want the bigger screen, there’s no interruption. Saving a draft and loading it into a different device would interrupt my train of thought.
2) I only have to manage one set of installed apps. With two devices, I have to install the apps I want on both, and install updates twice too. Similar arguments can be made for device configuration and preferences.
3) I only have to pay for one 3G data connection. These can be had pretty cheaply anyway, but managing two contracts is a pain, and paying twice for what amounts to the same data stream seems pointless. In fact, with this configuration I will use less data — I don’t have two devices both syncing stuff from Evernote, for example.
4) I only have to charge one device. I assume the phone and tablet will charge together, with the phone docked in the tablet. If the phone gets low on juice later in the day, there’s a good chance I can dock it and keep working.
5) It seems like the future. The amount of stuff that can be done on a smartphone-sized device is about to hit some critical level. Already desktop PCs are only needed for high end games and serious number crunching. The PC has become a laptop has become a netbook has become a phone. The only problem is the ergonomics, and a single device with multiple form factors is a good solution.
I have thought of a downside: a phone is somehow more personal than a tablet. If I bought a standalone tablet the chances are my wife would use it a lot at home, too. With the Padfone this is less likely because I wouldn’t be able to do phone stuff while she is doing tablet stuff. This thought is enough to make me consider delaying a planned upgrade of my wife’s phone from Blackberry to Android. Maybe we should become a two Padfone household.
Engadget has more photos.
Last night I attended a talk by Michael Jennings entitled Why there is not and will not be an energy shortage.
This is a “pencast” I made with my Livescribe pen. You can see my written notes, hear the audio, and click on the notes to jump to that point in the audio (though you may have to rewind a bit if there is a long gap between Michael talking about something and me writing it down).
It’s an interesting medium — I’m not sure if it is as good as a video of the presentation. For example, you can’t see the original slides. But you can download them.
Also, the pen seems to have trouble detecting when I am writing if I do not write firmly. So towards the end, when my hand is tired, some of the writing turns to scribble. But it is still possible to follow it. I am quite pleased with the audio quality given the conditions.
