Dogs are animals of integrity. We have much to learn from them.
Month: Dec 2009
But how difficult can it be for Boeing to make yet another new aircraft? The answer depends on how different the 787 aircraft is from anything the company has built in the past. Some initial indication that is significantly different can be taken from its being named Dreamliner.
The wonderful, irrepressible DSB – Dame Shirley Bassey
This wonderful lady was born in 1937 and, thus, next January 8th she turns 73. So for this author, born in 1944, DSB has been in the background of my life for ever, and for millions of others. There is so much written about her that the only purpose of this Post is try and bring her to the attention to those that may not know of her so well.
I only have to think of the soundtrack to the film Goldfinger to instantly hear Shirley Bassey’s voice loud and clear in my mind. Unforgettable, stunning, thrilling and still capable of raising the hairs on my skin now over 40 years since the track was recorded. Just listen to this voice:
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSH)
I must say that I am very confused about bringing an admitted terrorist into our country and its court system, where everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty, has an attorney assigned to them if they cannot afford one, and they enjoy the full rights and benefits of any other individual accused of a crime in the United States.
Evidence will be brought to bear on the case and, based on the preponderance of the evidence as presented skilfully by attorneys on both sides, and as adjudicated freely and with respect for the law, the judge and/or jury will find KSH innocent or guilty.
If, as Eric Holder, Obama’s choice for the U.S. Attorney General, has indicated ‘KSH’ should be found guilty of horrible crimes and should be brought to justice, I am wondering what is Holder’s real purpose of trying this mastermind here. He must know that there is a chance that the well-meaning set of 12 honest, everyday jurors in this case, through legalese or side-deals or bias, might find to acquit. Right? Then what?
Holder says he’s guilty, yet brings him here (while trying others in a military tribunal) to “try” him in a courtroom which Holder expects to find him guilty. I see the twisted mess we are left with if this happens. But where’s the upside?
Am I missing something?
How to approach the global warming dilemma.
Yesterday, a Post was published a Post about Greg Craven. It made the point that social media was becoming a very real force in influencing opinions and how that threatened traditional politics. Here’s an extract:
I was doing some research for an earlier Post about Copenhagen and came across a YouTube video created by Greg. More details and links later after making a more fundamental point.
This video of Greg’s has had 2,704,000 viewings! The information on that YouTube ‘page’ has had over 7,500,000 viewings. Greg has now written a book and so on, and so on.
Now I want to return to the core subject of how we deal with very complex issues that have the power to decimate humanity, e.g. global warming.
The fact is that the majority of people who think about such issues as global warming don’t have the skills and knowledge to determine what to do for the best. It comes down to determining risks, which was the theme of an earlier Post acknowledging the work of Peter L Bernstein.
That’s also the theme of Greg Craven’s video on YouTube. It’s a noble effort by a concerned citizen of Planet Earth. Watch it.
By Paul Handover
It’s getting crowded down here!
For those readers who are not regular BBC television viewers, the Beeb has for many years run an excellent factual/science & nature series under the name of Horizon. Just recently there was a programme with the title of How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?
It was presented by that familiar face on the BBC in terms of the natural world, Sir David Attenborough. It was an appropriate and worthy person to present the information.
But before getting into some of the details underpinning the programme, there seems to been an enormous and unspoken omission at Copenhagen – why no debate about global population trends?
Luckily the media noticed the rather obvious exclusion. Here’s the UK Daily Telegraph newspaper (online version) of the 8th December, 2009. An extract:
Population growth is the one issue accused of causing driving climate change that no one at the Copenhagen climate summit dares to talk about.
The argument is that more people consume more resources, therefore producing more greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
The global population is currently at 6 billion and could rise to 11 billion by 2050 if fertility rates continue, not only threatening the climate, but food shortages and conflict as well.
Organisations like the Optimum Population Trust, that is backed by Sir Jonathan Porritt, Dame Jane Goodall and Sir David Attenborough, advocate birth control as a way of slowing climate change.
As Sir David has said: “I’ve never seen a problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder, and ultimately impossible, with more.”
A study by the London School of Economics found contraception is almost five times cheaper as a means of preventing climate change than conventional green solutions such as investing in green technology.
There’s a new power on the streets and it may make politicians feel very uncomfortable!
Like me, you probably haven’t heard of Greg Craven. I hadn’t until about 24 hours before starting to write this Post (that would be Friday afternoon, Mountain Time, on the 11th December).
I was doing some research for an earlier Post about Copenhagen and came across a YouTube video created by Greg. More details and links later after making a more fundamental point.
This video of Greg’s has had 2,704,000 viewings! The information on that YouTube ‘page’ has had over 7,500,000 viewings. Greg has now written a book and so on, and so on.
In other words, the personal message that Greg is conveying has reached an unbelievable number of people. That would have been impossible without the power and reach of modern social media software systems: YouTube, Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, at al.
In the past, information has flowed outwards in a much more ‘top down’ way. Hierarchical, as it is called. That has suited those that wish, in some way, to control the message. While individuals would always chatter and gossip with their peers, there was a finite limit to that before “Send reinforcements, we are going to advance” morphed into “Send three and fourpence, we are going to a dance”!
The example of Greg Craven shows only too well how information can now flow. Out of anyone’s control, spreading virally.
Having made my point, I want to return to the subject matter that Greg is championing – but will include that in a separate Post.
Politicians! Be very careful what you say. We are all listening now, in one way or another, and ready to pounce if we don’t trust your words!
Will we ever know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
It’s a week since the start of The United Nations Climate Change Conference – Copenhagen, 2009 and it’s clearly been a media success if nothing else.
My instinct has, for many years, been the assumption that mankind behaves in many ways that harm our environment and that, ultimately, harming the very planet upon which our survival depends could happen. Stupid, yes! But in line with some of the more strange behaviours of homo sapiens.
But like millions of people, I do not have either the scientific background or the time available to test the statements made by so many governments and other ‘wise’ bodies as to whether the science of climate change, global warming or whatever, is real and irrefutable. One thinks that would be relatively easy to do and that after all the years and millions of dollars spent on climate research, the proof would be there. Cause and effect were perfectly understood.
Sign of the times?
We have been looking for ways of cutting down our energy requirements and coupled with trying to grow as many of our own veggies as possible, 2 small flocks of chickens for eggs, we have now acquired a reconditioned, wood-burning cooker.
It arrived last Wednesday and weighs in at just under a third of a ton. It was manoeuvred into place by 2 men, some planks of wood and a few rollers made from off-cut, scaffolding poles.
Our youngest son and I fitted the flue and fired it up on Thursday evening. What a transformation!
The quality of heat and ambience it creates in the kitchen/dining room is amazing. It is like being transported back to a bygone era where everything seemed less stressed and slower. Whoever gets up in the morning lights it first and it seems to be able to rise from cold to a useful temperature in 20 minutes. It uses a very small amount of wood to keep it in all day and we have switched off all the heating in the adjoining rooms. We cooked a roast dinner in it on Sunday and a load of mince pies plus bread over the weekend.
It’s not instant and it has its own foibles but we love it – a bit like most of us, I expect!
By Jon Lavin
Bringing out the best in us.
As I visit some of my clients, I am becoming aware of an unusual phenomenon – I think some people are actually becoming less selfish. We are used to hearing stories of institutions reaching heights of greed and selfishness during this recession but not many that are about the other way round.
I don’t go to supermarkets very often because I’m usually out working when my wife goes but by a fluke, I kept her 
company recently. We have been trying to support the local farmer’s markets in the area but this is proving difficult as it’s much quicker to do a one-stop visit to a supermarket than lots of small visits since we both run our own businesses.
It is of course cheaper at the supermarket as they have systematically forced food prices down to a level that prohibits most small food producers from supplying them.
Anyway, I digress. In our local supermarket works an ex colleague and friend of mine. He was made redundant just over a year ago for the second time and decided that he would go for the stress-free, safe option. He used to organise procurement for a large, global communications company so he has his head screwed on around organising things. I guess the supermarket job means that he can just switch off away from work, something he could never do before.
I saw him with a large trolley, checking shelves and we stopped for a chat. He was fine and generally enjoying his work. He asked about mine and I mentioned that things were a bit tight at the moment. We got talking about how training is carried out at his work and how they work with developing employee’s interpersonal and communications skills. He mentioned that there was a new HR manager at the branch, or is it “in branch?”, and would I like an introduction as they were always recruiting new people and they needed training?
I was flabbergasted as we weren’t necessarily that good friends and he didn’t need to say or do anything but went out of his way to be helpful.
I have also noticed this phenomena in other companies from time to time, in the form of clients arranging meetings and spending time, something previously they really didn’t have time for. Maybe we get more of what we notice and by focusing on the positive, we attract more of the positive into our lives?
Is it because when the going gets really tough, for example, in times of national crisis or great hardship, that we remember that we are all interconnected?
By Jon Lavin
Transcripts from our bug in the Ministry of Misinformation, Whitehall, London
Good morning, Perkins ….
If you say so, Sir
Oh Dear …. I can tell there’s something wrong, Perkins … you’d better get it off your chest.
It’s this Tibet business, Sir, …
Tibet! Goodness me, Perkins! You do worry about such small things!
I wouldn’t exactly call Tibet, small, Sir.
But it’s thousands of miles away, Perkins, in a country of which we know little, and the British people even less.
Perhaps, but no man is an island and all that …
Perkins, we do have work to do, you know!
But nobody takes the Tibetans’ rights, seriously, Sir.
Well, it depends what you mean by “seriously”, Perkins.
But they are an occupied people! The Chinese Han are ethnically-swamping them! If the Americans did that to the Canadians, for example, there’d be all hell let loose …
Oh come, come, Perkins! You can’t compare Canadians to Tibetans! The latter are an underdeveloped, uncivilized race! The Chinese are bringing them into the modern world. They’re investing billions in the country.
Yes, to turn Tibet into a part of China, with Han culture …
But it is part of China, Perkins.
Only because the Chinese seized it by force. What right do they actually have to rule Tibet? Until they started moving millions of Chinese into the country there were practically no Chinese there at all. It was a thousand-year-old and totally different – and to the Chinese Han – alien culture.
What right, Perkins? Well, I’m sorry to disillusion you, but their bigger army gave them the right and after all, possession is nine-tenths of the law!
But they are so arrogant. And so-called democracies don’t say a word. India has even banned a march by a few hundred exiled Tibetans. The west continues to trade with and enrich China so that it can buy arms to oppress its minorities. It’s sickening, Sir.
Only if you have a conscience, Perkins. I’m sorry to see you are still afflicted by conscience.
I don’t think you are taking this seriously, Sir.
I am, Perkins; it’s just that nothing can be done.
You mean, nothing that doesn’t hurt us a bit, don’t you Sir?
Well, that goes without saying, Perkins! Do you really think the British consumer is going to accept to have to pay more for his DVD-recorder just to put a bit of pressure on China!!!
I’m sorry, Sir. It stinks. China supports North Korea, and they’ve just executed 15 people just for trying to flee the country. When North Koreans do get out of the hell of their regime, the Chinese often send them back. And yet we allow them to hold the Olympic Games! To set doves free in a gesture of peace! It is horrible, Sir.
Yes, Perkins. It’s called politics.
But it is preposterously hypocritical, Sir. Have you read “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights”?
Not recently, Perkins …
Well, what about this bit in Article 21?
The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
Well, what about it, Perkins?
Well, members of the UN are supposed to subscribe to that, aren’t they, Sir? But a majority don’t, do they? China certainly doesn’t, does it?
I’m not sure I can answer three questions at once, Perkins. But I’ll give it some thought over the weekend …….
And what are you doing over the weekend, Sir?
As it happens, Perkins, I’m playing golf with the Chinese Ambassador …..
By Chris Snuggs
Learning from Dogs 