Year: 2010

Scuba Diving

The greatest danger in scuba diving? You may be surprised!

I learned to scuba dive about 20 years ago. I was certified by NAUI (the National Association of Underwater Instructors) in Chicago, Illinois, and did my check-out dive in a quarry in Wisconsin. It was dreary and raining. The water was cold and the scenery sorely lacking: we dove down to the top of an abandoned school bus! I did just fine as long as I had air; strap a tank on me and I can dive for hours.

But take away the air, and make me go underwater, and I want to surface immediately. It was a huge accomplishment for me to complete my surface dive (where you go fairly deep with no air, just a snorkel, then surface and clear out your snorkel to continue breathing on the surface) although I bit through at least one snorkel before I was through! I blamed it on the cold but the truth is that I was very tense.

I did a fair amount of diving before I had children and hung up my fins. I dove the Blue Hole, going down 120 feet and getting “narced” (nitrogen narcosis, where you feel “drunk” underwater). I did open water diving with hammerhead sharks off CoCos Island.

My buddy and I were swept away in a current in the middle of the ocean, but so was the dive master and the rest of the dive team, so the boat followed us and we were just fine. I dove with sea turtles, manta rays, eels, and sea horses. I’ve done night diving, which was surprisingly noisy as the fish nipped the coral as they fed. I loved scuba diving. It was a magical, liberating, beautiful experience. But I never forgot how dangerous it was and that it could kill you if you weren’t careful and aware.

I tend to be fairly risk averse so I did a lot of nerdy research as I prepared for my first real diving trip. I wanted to know all I could about how to avoid a scuba diving accident. I learned something that I thought others might find very interesting: that diving as a threesome is the single most dangerous thing you can do when scuba diving! More dangerous than cave diving, ice diving, open water diving, or diving alone! (If my memory serves me right, this result is based on Canadian data on scuba diving accidents, injuries, and deaths. )

It seems hard to believe at first but I think I’ve got it figured out. For one, it happens fairly often. I’ve seen it on many diving trips: someone comes alone or their buddy can’t dive, so they join up with a buddy team. Dive instructors suggest that people join up in threes rather than dive alone. Or the dive instructor joins a pair.

Two, I think people feel safer in a bigger group. Three, I think that when you are diving alone, or cave or ice diving, you are very aware of the risks and take extra precautions to avoid the dangers. But diving in threes doesn’t “seem” risky, so everyone relaxes. And people tend not to clearly lay out ahead of time who is watching whom at the bottom of the ocean where seconds can make the difference between life and death. And that is likely where the danger lives: with a buddy system, there is no question about who is responsible for whom. I am watching out for my buddy, and he is watching out for me. Period. But when diving in threes, the pairing gets muddled. Are you watching out for two people? Are they watching out for you, or for each other? And inevitably someone gets overlooked. And accidents happen.

So, if you ever take up scuba diving, have a blast! But don’t ever dive in threes!

by Sherry Jarrell

Lies, damn lies and statistics

How safe is flying?

Wikipedia have an interesting, and well referenced, entry on Air Safety. Within that entry is a table showing comparing deaths by air to other forms of travel.

The table in Wikipedia is much easier to read, it’s here, but the data is shown below for those that do not want to click through.

—————–

There are three main statistics which may be used to compare the safety of various forms of travel:

Deaths per billion journeys
Bus	4.3
Rail	20
Van	20
Car	40
Foot	40
Water	90
Air	117
Bicycle	170
Motorcycle	1640

Deaths per billion hours
Bus	11.1
Rail	30
Air	30.8
Water	50
Van	60
Car	130
Foot	220
Bicycle	550
Motorcycle	4840

Deaths per billion kilometres
Air	0.05
Bus	0.4
Rail	0.6
Van	1.2
Water	2.6
Car	3.1
Bicycle	44.6
Foot	54.2
Motorcycle	108.9

It is worth noting that the air industry’s insurers base their calculations on the number of deaths per journey statistic while the industry itself generally uses the number of deaths per kilometre statistic in press releases.

————————

Interesting to see how air travel varies in terms of comparative safety depending on how it is measured. But also interesting to see that however it is measured, riding a motorbike doesn’t come out so well.

Finally, that word’ billion’ is too easy to throw away, as it were. A billion hours ago was over a 114,000 years ago – when mankind was living in the Stone Age. A billion kilometres would represent 114,285 trips between London and Los Angeles.

If you are interested!

By Paul Handover

Stop Flaunting Sexuality Please

Oh, this is really clever! Not!

I was stunned the other day to read this:

In the latest development in his campaign to show how dramatically the Tories have changed, David Cameron has published the party’s first-ever official list of openly gay MPs.

The Conservatives say they have 20 openly gay candidates standing in the Election. Of those, 11 told party chiefs they were ‘happy’ to be named in the first authorised list of gay Conservative candidates.

Homosexuality is no longer – thankfully – a crime. It has always existed and no doubt always will. It is therefore – logically – a normal feature of human society. Isn’t it time to accept it as such and stop flaunting it constantly in the media? Can we not keep private those parts of our lives which are private? Do heterosexuals go around flaunting their heterosexuality?

Why on earth does a potential government-forming party feel obliged to publish lists of people’s sexuality? Why do I suddenly feel as if I am bizarre in thinking that one’s sexuality should be something private? Personally I haven’t got the faintest interest in other people’s sexual inclinations. Like religion, it should be personal and not eternally flaunted in the media.

And it is all illogical. Either homosexuality is normal or it isn’t. If it is (as it is), then why the constant need to bang on about it, as for example in the Tory party? What on earth has it got to do with running the country? Are the Tories supposed to be better-qualified to run the country the more homosexuals they have? Is there a point at which having TOO MANY becomes a negative point? Would they then start to proclaim how many heterosexuals they had? On a personal level, I keep my sexuality to myself. It is nothing to do with you and certainly not with running the country.

It is analagous to sex in the media. It is overdone. The endless superficial titillation and flaunting of sexuality is demeaning of the Human Spirit. Sex is – or should be – a private matter. It’s better that way. It is more mature that way, but the media – and now the political parties – sink to the lowest denominator instead of focusing on what really matters.

Please, please give us some politicians with common-sense.

By Chris Snuggs

The EU and the European Taxpayer

Integrity? Here is your quiz question for today:

Which international, taxpayer-funded organisation has an unelected crony of the British Prime Minister in a high-level post (though not the highest) who earns more than the President of the United States and double the salary of Hillary Clinton?

Clue!

Yes, you’re right. It is the European Union. This is an organisation of member states that in principle is supposed to be

about creating a free, democratic and open market in Europe. It has turned into a proto-state (in the eyes of the Brusselocrats) which – therefore – has to have a “Foreign Minister”, in this case Baroness Ashton.

This is a person with very little knowledge of international affairs sent by Gordon Brown to Brussels because he couldn’t afford to lose Peter Mandelson or David Milliband. This is a person never elected to any public post, yet who receives a vast salary and benefits package higher than that of ANY of the Presidents and/or Prime Ministers of ANY of the member states of the EU.

As “The Daily Mail” points out, in addition to this very large salary the Foreign Minister also enjoys an extraordinary raft of other benefits:

“Her basic pay of £250,000 is double that of her U.S. counterpart, Hillary Clinton (who’s on £124,000). And on top of that, Lady Ashton is entitled to a raft of benefits including a £38,000 yearly accommodation allowance, £10,000 annual entertainment budget, two chauffeurs, plus thousands of pounds more in sundry allowances and – if she survives – a pension of £64,000 pa (three times the average salary in Britain) plus a “golden handshake” of over £450,000.”

All this goes hand-in-hand with billions spent on the new EU “diplomatic service”.

But hang on a minute! The EU is NOT A STATE!

The EU has no army! Baroness Ashton as “Foreign Minister” can decide on practically nothing that the key heads of government do not agree to. So what is going on here? Is all this vast waste of public money in a time of financial crisis either A) the bloated pretention of Brusselcrats who have a delusional idea of their own importance or B) another brick in the wall which one day WILL be a United States of Europe.

One can see how the thinking goes: “We’ll set up a “Foreign Ministry” so big and powerful that one day they will just have to agree to creating a single state to justify it. And of course the more it costs, the more important it obviously is and therefore the more powerful we ourselves will be. And naturally, the more jobs there will be for us to go to on the Brussels merry-go-round.

Of course, it is both A AND B. And how can they afford these humungous salaries? Well, because they can get away with it. In theory they are accountable, but in reality? How many people even know who their European MP is? Once you get onto the Euro Gravy Train it disappears out of sight. Nothing the voter says or does seems to stop the bloated upward creep of salaries, allowances and pretentions.

How ANY Brusselocrat can justify such a ludicrous salary for an unelected and essentially unimportant “minister” is a mystery. The main justification seems to be “self-interest”. The EU is NOT A STATE. States have Foreign Ministers.

It is dishonest and amounts to theft of public funds. But that is not the WORST of it. The saddest thing is that it damages the morale of those who – like me – used to believe in a Europe united but not “statefied”. I want a free and open market. I do NOT want a United States of Europe. But this is where they want to lead us, and – like a black hole – each year sees a tiny creep in that direction, or in the above-mentioned case, a BIG creep. I also do not want a venal, money-grabbing, bureaucratic elite in Brussels which makes 80% and rising of British law.

Once again, one wonders if delusional pretentions will bring the whole edifice crashing down and the baby go out with the bathwater …

By Chris Snuggs

Econned, by Yves Smith

Learning from Dogs muses the new book from Yves Smith

In Econned, Yves Smith, founder of Naked Capitalism, argues that the economy was doing just fine in the regulated environment up to the 1970s. Then began the work of the Chicago economists who challenged Keynesian economics and touted the benefits of deregulation which eventually led to the financial crisis we have today.

Yves argument is internally consistent and well researched, but ignores some factors that I think would change the conclusions drawn from her work.

First, Yves notes that the primary reason that economists are not useful to the real world is that economic research presumes equilibrium. Smith misses the point here, but it is understandable. It took me years of study and contemplation to fully appreciate that an equilibrium simply gives economists a point of reference, a common base, from which to study shocks and movements. In and of itself, equilibrium is not interesting or important. But movements to and from equilibrium are of real interest because they enable us to study and try to predict how individuals will react to incentives and changes in market conditions.

Second, we have to put the contributions of the Chicago economists of the 1970s into context. Up until that time, the only real school of thought in macroeconomics was based on Keynes, who presumed that markets fail and that the government must play an active and large role – primarily through government spending and taxes — for the economy to perform well. Keynes’ work was a reaction to the Great Depression.

Friedman’s monetarism also sought to explain the Great Depression, but focused on the role of monetary policy on the economy. This work showed that the missteps of the Federal Reserve was the primary cause of the depth and length of the Great Depression, and that long-term accommodative monetary policy causes inflation. This body of work did not stress deregulation, although it did lean more heavily on enabling private market solutions than on replacing them with government solutions. Neither theory is complete; Keynes focused on the short run (“In the long run, we are all dead” is a rather famous Keynes quip) and Monetarism focused on the long run.

There was a second large body of work that came out of the University of Chicago during the late 1960s and 1970s. This research documented the tremendous costs of regulation. I know this literature personally and believe that its conclusions are very sound: it shows that any effective regulation limits either the quantity or price of a good or service away from what it would have been without the regulation. In fact, in my view, it was the passage of regulations requiring certain lending behavior that set off the series of events that led to the crisis, which is the exact opposite argument from what Ms. Smith makes.

By Sherry Jarrell

Shame on you, President Obama

President Obama’s lack of grace.

Shame on you, President Obama.

To publicly comment on the singular importance of the Iraqi elections without crediting President Bush for having the courage and fortitude to free those people from a tyrannical leader who threatened the security of the free world – shameful.

Of course, you also failed to acknowledge President Bush’s role in enabling the historic Afghanistan elections of 2009. I just hoped you would have matured a little since then.

The media is not doing much better on this issue. But then we expect less of our media than our President.

by Sherry Jarrell

A genius of a teacher

A lesson for all of us

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan“. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A…

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that.

By Bob Derham

The Hypocrisy of Cutting Waste

Cut Waste Later? How about now?

I honestly cannot understand how President Obama can look the American people in the eye and tell them that Health Care reform will be paid for, in part, by finding savings and reducing fraud in Medicare over the next several years.

Obama at Health Care Summit — President Obama on Health Care Reform

If it is possible to operate Medicare more efficiently, why have we not done it already? Why must doing it right wait for new programs and new legislation? Why doesn’t Congress first prove to the American people that it can operate a program efficiently and then come back and ask for more?

Because it can’t, that’s why not. The plain and simple truth is that it cannot do so now, and will not do so in the future. So why are we letting our elected officials get away with such a charade?

I just don’t understand it.

By Sherry Jarrell

Nationalist Hysteria Yet Again

Politics, history and daftness!

The Armenian “genocide” of WWI is once again in the news. The Americans seem to be on the point of recognizing what happened as genocide, much to the fury of the Turks. (though Obama is – once again – apparently wobbling ….)

To my mind, what happened WAS genocide or as near it as makes no difference, but that judgement is best left to historians and is not what interests me in this matter. No, once again it is the absolute hysteria that nationalism can provoke that intrigues me. I take hysteria to be a form of insanity; it is certainly as potentially destructive. How can most of an entire nation be insane?

The point is – but logic seems to go straight out of the window when nationalist hysteria takes over – that this happened nearly ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. Any Turks involved are long dead. Present-day Turks cannot POSSIBLY be blamed for what their predecessors did, no more than Germans today can be blamed for Hitler or indeed today’s Mongols for Genghis Khan.

What is the POINT of Turks protesting so loudly about what was the appalling mass killings of Armenians? Nobody is going to blame TODAY’S Turks, are they?

The Turks’ current position could be described as anything from wrong through illogical to insane. For goodness sake, just admit the truth and let’s get on with the future. It happened, it wasn’t YOUR fault but THE TRUTH must be told. Without the truth, we are lost.

The irony is – and irony is never far from human experience – that one supposes the Turkish reluctance to admit that it WAS a genocide or as near as dammit is because to do so would mean they “lost face” or “were guilty”, whereas in fact what is reprehensible is the very FACT that they refuse to admit it, not the original events themselves for which THEY TODAY cannot be held responsible.

This seems to me such a self-evident truth that I truly do not understand the Turkish position. Perhaps someone else can help me here ……

As for “we must avoid damaging relations with Turkey”, I can only throw up my hands in despair. The truth is the truth, and what is the VALUE of “relations” based on lies?

As for joining the EU, forget it. There is enough hysteria within our borders already without adding another 90 million people’s worth.

PS And while we’re on the Turks and Armenia, it is time that the Japanese made a more convincing admission that their army was guilty of appalling atrocities in WWII.

By Chris Snuggs

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: