Learning from Dogs

Some remarkable recent achievements in aeronautics

Just happened that a few items crossed my inbox more or less in the same time-frame that made me reflect on the ingenuity and persistence of inventors and explorers.

Here’s the first item that I came across in The Register.

Canadian enthusiasts have finally achieved a feat that has eluded humanity’s finest engineers since the time of Leonardo da Vinci – to build a machine, powered by a human pilot’s muscles, which flies by flapping its wings: an ornithopter.

Here it is on YouTube.

Read the rest of the report here.

Then Klaus Ohlmann is recorded on the FAI website as submitting a world record claim for flying a solar powered glider a total of 375.7 km (233.4 miles) around three turning points.  Oh, and not forgetting a claim by Jan BÈM and Olga ZALUSKÁ  from the Czech Republic for a world record altitude by a weight-shift microlight – 8,188 metres no less (26,864 feet!) – or the claim by Richard Young of the USA for a world record of flying an aircraft between 300 to 500 kg around a closed circuit of 100 km at a speed of 390 km/h (242 mph).  What is it with these guys – have they not got proper jobs to go to?

Anyway, here’s Klaus on a nice video.

Finally, my dear friend of many years, Dan Gomez, reminded me in a recent email of this very brave pushing back of the boundaries.

More from here.

Swiss pilot Yves Rossy

By Paul Handover

The Center for the Advancement of Steady State Economy

My post published a short while ago contained a contribution from Carla.  This, in part, is what she said:

We have to try to work constructively for change. I keep urging people to check out the potential for an economy based not on constant growth, which is impossible on a finite planet, but on some sane principles of equity and sustainability.

If you go to http://www.steadystate.org and look at their position statement, you can see that people from all over the world are signing on–yes, just three or four people a day–but they are from every continent and just about every country.

Now, can you help this “go viral”?

I spent sufficiently long at the CASSE website to be comfortable that it is well worth supporting.  Here are the members of the Executive Board.  Here are the staff and here are their advisors.  Here’s their Mission:

The mission of CASSE is to advance the steady state economy, with stabilized population and consumption, as a policy goal with widespread public support. We pursue this mission by:

• educating citizens, organizations, and policy makers on the conflict between economic growth and (1) environmental protection, (2) ecological and economic sustainability, and (3) national security and international stability;
• promoting the steady state economy as a desirable alternative to economic growth;
• studying the means to establish a steady state economy.

Even if you don’t want to make a financial subscription to CASSE you can still register your support.  Here is their Position Statement:

The CASSE position sets the record straight on the conflict between economic growth and environmental protection. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution are just three powerful examples. And how will the next generation find jobs when the planet can’t support our overgrown economy? The CASSE position calls for a desirable solution – a steady state economy with stabilized population and consumption – beginning in the wealthiest nations and not with extremist tactics. Join the likes of E. O. Wilson, Jane Goodall, and David Suzuki; fill in the information below to sign the position and support a healthy, sustainable economy.

Go for it. After all, one of the definitions of madness is to continue doing the same thing and expect a different result.

By Paul Handover

The power of human networking.

My article published yesterday referred to a post on Baseline Scenario entitled After The Recession: What Next For The Fed? Do go across and read it.

I had been in a bit of a rant mood and contributed a comment to that Post.  I wrote:

I don’t have the knowledge to respond to Simon’s excellent Post in detail but his comments reinforce what feels like a constant throbbing in my mind – how can the citizens of so many countries have abdicated so much interest and concern in how they/we are governed. Wish I had even a clue as to the answer to that question.

Significant social unrest would be very scary – the ‘law’ of unintended consequences and all that – but there are times when I wonder if this, in the end, might be the only form of real progress for the hard-working, tax-paying majority.

End of rant!

Interestingly, that stimulated some replies which were, in my opinion, worth sharing with you; kind reader of Learning from Dogs that you are!

Sir, you raise a sad but true point when you ask how a majority of us citizens, on a worldwide basis, could have lost true “by the people” control of our own governments.

For most of us the loss of healthy economic functioning has been the main consequence of this, something that has been very painful. But I also find myself reflecting on the unspeakable genocides in our collective human history. One gets an awful sense of how such things were permitted to arise…ZeroInMyOnes

And

Well spoken Paul Handover. The system cannot and will not be changed politically or judicially because the malevolent forces who conjured the system own and control both the political and judicial operations and operators. Those operators work to advance the interests of the predatorclass whose operations, operators, and structures are malevolent.

The people are the abused victims of predatorclass criminal enterprises bent on total control of the earths wealth and resources, and the enslavement or eradication of the rest of the population.

The peoples only hope for implementing the changes necessary to form a more perfect union is best described here:

(“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”) TonyForesta

And

Paul Handover, that was not a rant. You are simply talking common sense.

Scary is right. And it’s scarier by the day.

We have to try to work constructively for change. I keep urging people to check out the potential for an economy based not on constant growth, which is impossible on a finite planet, but on some sane principles of equity and sustainability.

If you go to http://www.steadystate.org and look at their position statement, you can see that people from all over the world are signing on–yes, just three or four people a day–but they are from every continent and just about every country.

Now, can you help this “go viral”? Carla

These are strong, powerful views.  I have joined Casse, the organisation referred to in Carla’s comment – see second Post from me today – and Tony’s comment motivated me to look up the history of the United States Declaration of Independence, the subject of a separate article on this Blog.

Powerful stuff!

By Paul Handover

…. or have we all gone stark, staring mad!

Sorry, in a bit of a rant mood just now.

I read widely many Blogs out there because it seems that this channel is one which is more likely to offer real, valid commentaries on what is going on at present with regard to the economic crisis, that is the crisis in the broader sense.

Here’s a recent piece from Baseline Scenario about the US Federal Reserve.  Here’s how that piece ends:

Regulation remains largely ineffective (in fact, the industry has managed to demonize the word), the big banks are too important to fail, and interest rates are low across the yield curve. The Fed provides downside protection and there is no effective limit on the amount or nature of risks that the private financial sector can take. This is a recipe not for stagnation but rather for a metaboom in which we will receive warnings, including painful recessions – but consistently ignore them.

The 1920s opened with an 18-month recession, an eerie parallel to the 2007-9 experience. It ended with the Great Crash of 1929.

Then across the way we have a piece on The Daily Beast about Summers. I quote from the first two paragraphs with their permission (thanks guys.)

Washington is swirling with the usual rumors—the White House’s man was pushed! He jumped! But Summers is leaving because he made sure real reform was discussed—but not accomplished.

Thomas

The rumor that come November, when the mid-term elections are history, Lawrence Summers, administration’s quarterback on economic matters, will leave the White House, has been confirmed. The usual presumptions have been put in play: Summers is weary of the job; the president and his men and women feel the need for a new pair of hands under center; the man has done well; the man has done badly. There is no indication that, like Bush II’s ill-served first Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, Summers is being canned for speaking truth to power. That is not the man’s style, not—let it be said—that there’s much evidence that the administration has better than a shaky grasp of the practical truths of American financial and economic life in the Age of Goldman Sachs.The bottom line is that we can expect the usual judgemental blahblahblah to grow in volume and marginality on the talk-show and Op-Ed circuit as the day calendared by the media for Summers’ leave-taking approaches.

Now go across to the article and read it in full. Read why Michael Thomas, the author and no stranger to Wall St., describes Summers as someone who “saw to it that the talk was talked, but the walk was never walked.“

And I’ll close by repeating a comment I made to the Baseline Scenario article:

I don’t have the knowledge to respond to Simon’s excellent Post in detail but his comments reinforce what feels like a constant throbbing in my mind – how can the citizens of so many countries have abdicated so much interest and concern in how they/we are governed. Wish I had even a clue as to the answer to that question.

Significant social unrest would be very scary – the ‘law’ of unintended consequences and all that – but there are times when I wonder if this, in the end, might be the only form of real progress for the hard-working, tax-paying majority.

End of rant!

By Paul Handover

“You’ve got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.” Irish quotation.

In England, inexplicable happenings are commonly ascribed to being ‘Irish’! It’s meant in a loving way; there is a great deal of warmth towards the different ways that Irish people appear to see the world.  But what is facing Ireland (and other countries) as a result of some distinctly unfunny goings-on in the USA is potentially hugely damaging.

To many the way that the world has descended into a dark, economic abyss, which is likely to affect us all in so many ways, and in which we are going to remain for a long time (a la Japan?), is also inexplicable.

Thus a chance comment from Norm Cimon to a recent post on Baseline Scenario set off a chain of discovery that for me has been very interesting.  Here’s how it ran.

I have subscribed to Baseline Scenario for some time.  It describes itself thus:

The Baseline Scenario is dedicated to explaining some of the key issues in the global economy and developing concrete policy proposals. Since it was launched in September 2008, this blog has been cited by virtually every major newspaper, Internet site, and blog covering economic and financial issues.

It’s a great resource.

A recent Post on Baseline Scenario, Irish Worries For The Global Economy, had already attracted 135 comments at the time of writing this post.  A recent one was from a Norm Cimon, who is described in Linked In as the owner of Info Synchronicity LLC.  This is what he said:

That is the other side of the coin. William Black has been lucid on this topic, and clear on the morality of the current age and how to fix it. Put people in jail and let everyone know why they were sent there. If you want to change perceptions then change the reality. The anger of the general public and the disdain of Wall Street are tied to that one issue. No one has paid for the crime of the millenium and everybody knows it.

And included was this recording of Bill Moyers interviewing Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Own a Bank is to Rob One.

Here’s the interview:

However, there’s more to this discovery than the YouTube video.  If one clicks on the link behind Norm Cimon’s name on that Baseline post, then one is taken here.  It’s a pdf of a paper written by Norm Cimon entitled, “Computing Power and Human Greed.” It seems to me to explain the tools, for want of a better word, that enabled the American banking system to behave in the way that Bill Black so roundly condemns in the Bill Moyer interview.  Here’s how Cimon ends his paper:

With networked computers now cast by all organizations, including the financial sector, into the role of wizard-behind-the-curtain, we all live in Oz.  It’s long past time we pull back the veil and call a halt to the mindless application of this supreme and supremely dangerous creation before the damage gets any greater.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a date to the paper but my guess was that it was written late in 2009. Whatever the date, it is a very apt observation.

Where do we go from here, I ask?

By Paul Handover

The Russians are building a load of nuclear power stations to fuel their expansion and landgrab to the North Pole to extract the 75 billion tons of oil and gas thought to be there.

This is sure to outrage not only those against carbon emissions but others who don’t like nuclear fission, thus scoring a double whammy for the Russians. Putin must be pleased.

I can’t really see the point of trying to reduce emissions on a personal level; on a macro scale countries are not taking it seriously and are still extracting oil and gas as fast as they can. I believe only a dramatic breakthrough will actually achieve anything. Why they are not putting up giant mirrors into space or if you like in slowly desertifying Southern Spain is a mystery to me.

It’s all nothing if not ironic. Global warming caused most probably by emissions is opening up the Northeast passage which makes it much easier for the Russians to send MORE oil and gas to China. A perfect vicious circle indeed …..

And if WWIII doesn’t start in the China Sea maybe it’ll be up in the frozen North as nations squabble over “their” territory.

Look on the bright side; when there is no ice left at all it will be even better; ships will be able to go direct by straight line from any country to another. Mind you, when they arrive they’ll have to deliver the oil by submarine. No doubt they’re already working on that.

What does a (I hope) fairly sane private citizen do about all this nonsense? I’d like to save the planet for my children, but I am feeling rather helpless ……

By Chris Snuggs

P.S. One way to do something is to support those organisations that are doing all they can. See:

And recognise that this is something else we can learn from dogs – not to foul one’s own bed.

P.

Not forgetting First Officer Jeffrey Skiles

There has been much written and published about these two heros who enabled the stricken Airbus A-320 to ditch on the Hudson River with no loss of life.  That was Flight 1549 on the 15th January, 2009.

However, at this year’s Oshkosh, Sullenberger and Skiles were presented with a wonderful memento from Jeppesen who publish among other products instrument approach charts for aircraft.  They did something very creative in producing the following.

Hudson miracle approach chart

Here’s what was said by Jeppesen:

Englewood, Colo. | 27 Aug 2010

Jeppesen, known in the aviation industry as the worldwide leader in navigation and charting services, recently presented “Miracle on the Hudson” pilots captain Chesley Sullenberger and first-officer Jeffrey Skiles with a specially designed approach chart and engraved Jeppesen chart binders to commemorate the remarkable ditching of US Airways flight 1549 in the Hudson River in New York in January 2009.

Entitled “Hudson Miracle APCH,” the one-of-a-kind chart includes several light-hearted notations that honor the famous water landing that saved the lives of 155 passengers and crew on board the flight disabled by bird strikes.  In the “briefing strip” section of the chart, instructions include: “After water landing, oversee evacuation of ALL SOULS from airplane. Float via HUDSON RIVER to RESCUE point. Once everyone is SAFE aboard rescue boats, secure passenger list and double check cabin. Captain is last to exit. Give THANKS.”

The chart documents the historic five minute flight with a unique graphic, beginning with departure from LaGuardia Airport, followed by a “Cooked Goose Transition” point and “Hudson River Approach,” which is then followed by “Splash” and “Rescue” points on the water.  The humorous chart also salutes the career achievements of the crew of flight 1549, including Sullenberger, Skiles, and veteran flight attendants Sheila Dail, Donna Dent and Doreen Welsh.

Along with the commemorative chart, the pilots were presented with a special Jeppesen chart binder, engraved with the famous fortune cookie advice kept in Sullenberger’s flight bag: “A delay is better than a disaster.”  The items were presented by Mark Van Tine, Jeppesen president and CEO, during the 2010 Gathering of Eagles fundraiser dinner and auction held during the EAA AirVenture fly-in and air show in Oshkosh, Wisc.  The EAA Young Eagles event raises funds and awareness for youth involvement in aviation.

To view the commemorative US Airways flight 1549 chart, please visit this page.

A fellow pilot, Martin Thorpe, sent me the chart shortly after the Oshkosh event but it seemed appropriate to let some water flow under the bridge, so to speak, before I mentioned it on Learning from Dogs.

By Paul Handover

Science explains what our hearts feel

Love for all!

Yesterday, I posted an article based on a lecture given by Dr Helen Fisher presented to the TED Conference in 2006.  It included some fascinating evidence about the nature of love and why it is such a powerful human emotion.

Then in 2008, Dr Fisher gave a second lecture, again at the TED Conference, that continued to reveal more amazing findings about how the brain functions when in love.  As the presentation summary says:

Why do we crave love so much, even to the point that we would die for it? To learn more about our very real, very physical need for romantic love, Helen Fisher and her research team took MRIs of people in love — and people who had just been dumped.

Included in the lecture is something that I had wondered about and was delighted to see confirmed – animals fall in love as well.  Here’s the extract from that part of the presentation (min:sec 50:50):

I would also like to tell the world that animals love. There’s not an animal on this planet that will copulate with anything that comes along. Too old, too young, too scruffy, too stupid, and they won’t do it. Unless you’re stuck in a laboratory cage –and you know, if you spend your entire life in a little box,you’re not going to be as picky about who you have sex with –but I’ve looked in a hundred species,and everywhere in the wild, animals have favorites.

As a matter of fact ethologists know this. There’s over eight words for what they call animal favoritism:  selective proceptivity, mate choice, female choice, sexual choice. And indeed, there are three academic articlesin which they’ve looked at this attraction, which may only last for a second, but it’s a definite attraction, and either this same brain region, this reward system, or the chemicals of that reward system are involved. In fact, I think animal attraction can be instant — you can see an elephant instantly go for another elephant. And I think that this is really the origins of what you and I call, “love at first sight.”

Do watch it.

And a quote to conclude this post.

True happiness and a fullness of joy can be found only in the tender and intimate relationships of the family. However earnestly we may seek success and happiness outside the home through work, leisure activities, or large bank accounts, we will never be fully satisfied emotionally until we develop deep and loving relationships.
~ by James J. Jones Ph.D. ~

By Paul Handover

Watch the video to the end to make sense of the title!

The digitally connected world that is now so much a part of our lives brings lots of new issues, dangers and irritations.  But it also brings us a great number of tremendous opportunities.  TED is one of them.

For those that haven’t come across the TED website it offers a wonderful range of “Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world” as summarised here.

Dr Fisher

Thus it was via the TED website that I came across a fascinating talk by Dr Helen Fisher who is a Biological Anthropologist who has specialised on romantic love and connected areas.

Anyway, without any more waffle from me, if you want to be surprised by a number of Dr Fisher’s findings then do watch the TED video that may be found here.

And the reference to the rickshaw driver?  Watch the video to the end (23 minutes) to find out.

P.S. since writing the above, I found a YouTube copy of the TED video, which is below.  I haven’t watched it to the end to see if the reference to the rickshaw is in it, but I suspect it is.

By Paul Handover

Yet another beauty from Naked Capitalism

Regular readers will have run out of counting the number of times that I applaud Yves Smith and her amazing blog, Naked Capitalism.  Not only is it a fantastic source of many stories of real public concern, her daily antidote du jour is often delightful.  Here’s the one that came from her Blog posting of the 19th September.

Clarence and Cindy

Cattle dog Clarence plays with an alpaca named Cindy in “Alpaca Land” in Goeming, Austria. The two have lived together on the farm since they were 3 months old. Eighty-seven alpacas, the largest flock in Austria, live on the farm.

By Paul Handover