Dogs are animals of integrity. We have much to learn from them.
Author: Paul Handover
Not content with ‘inventing’ the world wide web, Sir Tim is still at it.
This Post doesn’t really require any introduction.
If you see Sir Tim as the hero that he is then you will want to watch this presentation given to a TED audience in 2009.
Enough said!
By Paul Handover
Welcome Per Kurowski Egerström
On the 22nd March, Learning from Dogs had the pleasure of a Post from our first Guest Author, Elliot Engstrom. We are doubly delighted to have Per Kurowski join us as our second Guest Author.
Per is a prolific blogger. He has had a full career including serving as an Executive Director of the World Bank from 2002 until 2004 for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Spain and Venezuela. More about Per’s life experiences can be found here.
Here is Per’s first Guest Post for Learning from Dogs.
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The GPS and the AAAs
Not so long ago I asked my daughter to key in an address in the GPS and then even while I continuously heard a little voice inside me telling me I was heading in the wrong direction I ended up where I did not want to go.
Something similar caused the current financial crisis.
First the financial regulators in Basel decided that the only thing they would care about was the risk of individual financial defaults and not one iota about any other risks.
Second then, though they must have known these were humanly fallible they still empowered some few credit rating agencies to be their GPS on default risks.
Finally, by means of the minimum capital requirements for banks, they set up all the incentives possible to force them to heed what the GPS said and to ignore any internal warning voices.
Of course, almost like if planned on purpose, it all ended up in a crisis. In just a couple of years, over two trillion dollars followed some AAA signs over the precipice of badly awarded mortgages to the subprime sector. Today, we are still using the same financial risk GPS with the same keyed in instructions… and not a word about it in all recent Financial Regulatory Reform proposals
I hate the GPS type guidance of any system since I am convinced that any kid brought up with it will have no clue of what north, south, east or west means; just as the banker not knowing his client’s business or how to look into his client’s eyes or how to feel the firmness of his client’s handshake, can only end up stupidly following someone else’s opinion about his client on a stupid monitor.
I hate the GPS type guidance system because, on the margin, it is making our society more stupid as exemplified by how society, day by day, seems to be giving more importance to some opaque credit scores than to the school grades of their children. I wait in horror for some DNA health rating scores to appear and cause a total breakdown of civilization as we know it.
Yes, we are buried under massive loads of information and these systems are a tempting way of trying to make some sense out of it all, but, if we used them, at least we owe it to ourselves to concentrate all our efforts in developing our capacity to question and to respond adequately when our instincts tell us we’re heading in the wrong way.
Not all is lost though. I often order the GPS in my car to instruct me in different tongues so as to learn new languages, it gives a totally new meaning to “lost in translation”, and I eagerly await a GPS system that can describe the surroundings in more extensive terms than right or left, AAA or BBB-, since that way not only would I get more out of it but, more importantly, I would also be more inclined to talk-back.
By Per Kurowski
How many remember this?
Very early on in the life of this Blog, indeed on the second day, I wrote a short article about the NASA mission to the moon, some 40 years after the event. You see, for me that has been the historic event of my lifetime.
I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.
That speech before Congress by President Kennedy was on the 25th May, 1961. I was 16 and was enthralled by the idea of being alive when man first set foot on another planetary body. That came about on July 20th, 1969 at which time I was living and working in Sydney, Australia. I took three days off work, rented a TV and watched every minute of the event.
Exploration is a core need of man. By pushing out the boundaries of our knowledge we continue to offer hope to mankind.
So it is with great disappointment that it has been announced by President Obama that the manned mission programs to the moon are to be severely curtailed – that sounds terribly like political speak for cancelled!
As Eugene Cernan (last astronaut to set foot on the moon) said:
I’m quite disappointed that I’m still the last man on the Moon. I thought we’d have gone back long before now.
I think America has a responsibility to maintain its leadership in technology and its moral leadership… to seek knowledge. Curiosity’s the essence of human existence.
Curiosity is indeed the essence of human existence.
That curiosity and the investment in space exploration by NASA on behalf of the whole world has shown us some remarkable findings about Saturn and it’s majestic rings. Just watch the video segments in this piece from the BBC.
The one-time cost of Cassini-Huygens mission was $3.26 billion. Just 0.3% of the cost of one year’s expenditure on U.S. defense spending.
Science missions like Cassini enhance cooperation between nations, and greatly contribute to scientific progress which benefits everyone.
Perhaps the big Banks would like to pick up the cost of further manned missions to the Moon?
By Paul Handover
What is it about wood?
When I was a very young boy at Grammar School (aka High School) in Wembley, North West London, one of the subjects taught was wood-working. I loved the feel of wood, still do, and the smell of a wood shaving fresh off the wood plane is still remembered. But, for whatever reason, wood and I never got on.
Later on, my first yacht was a pretty little East Coast gaff cutter, built in 1898, with a hull of pitch pine laid on grown oak frames. Her original name was Mimms but this had been changed to Esterel by the time she was purchased by me. Despite needing a lot of remedial work, the over-riding memory was how the hull ‘spoke’ when she was being sailed.
It’s almost as though wood doesn’t die when the tree is felled, it just passes into another phase depending on the use made of it.
So where’s this all leading?
In the issue of The Economist dated November 7th, 2009, there was an obituary about Alan Peters, furniture maker, who died on October 11th, 2009, aged 76. Like all obits. that appear in The Economist this was well published but something about this particular obituary really stuck in my mind. I tore out the page so it could be re-read over the coming weeks.
It’s still on my desk even 6 months later and it prompted me to write about Alan Peters on Learning from Dogs.
Here’s an extract of the obituary of Alan Peters as published in the The Times.
In contrast to many of today’s school-leavers, who look for instant success and celebrity, the furniture designer Alan Peters served seven years’ apprenticeship in the workshop of Edward Barnsley, which then operated without power tools. When interviewed last year Peters was still proud that he swept the workshop floor quicker and better than anyone else. His eagerness to share his passion and knowledge of furniture design and furniture making was a theme of his life.
And here’s another reflection from David Savage who studied under Alan Peters:
Damn, Damn, Damn, I am getting fed up writing obituries on dead furniture makers. Why can’t they just go on for ever.
I knew Alan quite well. He was a role model and a mentor when I really needed one. This would be way back in the late 1970s when there were very few people making modern furniture in a barn in Devon which is what I wanted to do. Even fewer making a living doing it. I had all the questions and Alan as far as I could see had all the answers. I spent a short time working with him. I was first in the workshop in the morning and last out in the evening. I’m sure he got fed up with my questions but he patiently answered. He gave and gave and gave. When I was set up he helped me get into the Devon Guild of Craftsmen and much later he would come to my workshop in Bideford to give Saturday seminars showing slides of his work and trips to Japan and Korea. He was an inspiration I know not just to me but to a generation of makers. I miss him.
Question: How many furniture makers does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: Ten, one to change the bulb and nine to discuss at length how Alan would do it.
By Paul Handover
Here’s a novel idea – make markets be markets!
I apologise for the rather trite sub-heading but it was a bit of attention grabbing to promote the results of a recent conference called Let Markets Be Markets. It was published by the Roosevelt Institute and had one very impressive line of speakers.
One of the speakers was Simon Johnson of Baseline Scenario fame, a Blog that Learning from Dogs has followed since our inception.
Here’s 8 minutes of Simon pulling no punches.
If you want to read and watch other presentations, then Mike Konczal’s Blog Rortybomb is the place to go.
As this Blog has repeated from time to time, this present crisis is a long way from being over.
By Paul Handover
Prayer works! Even for dogs!
One of the better items that wings around the Internet.
By Paul Handover
Can this form of holidaying still remain popular?
The Celebrity Eclipse has recently left her construction dockyard at Papenburg, Germany bound for her home base. This enormous new ship attracted some news simply because the exercise of getting her from the dockyard to the open sea required some ‘shoe-horning’! This YouTube video shows why (amateur filming but a great soundtrack!):
All would wish any ship that sets out to sea safe travel. But one wonders whether this huge ship, that must require such huge sums of money just to stay afloat, and that must have been conceived and ordered when times were much rosier, will ever be a commercial success?
By Paul Handover
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.
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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.
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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
Will this prove to be an accurate analysis of what happened?
Regular readers of Learning from Dogs will know that Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism is held in high regard by this author. She was one of the authors mentioned in a recent Post titled Free Speech and then a little later on there was a Post from me specifically praising her.
Last Friday the US Business News Network, BNN, ran a piece which included Yves discussing her new book ECONNED.
The reason for publishing this Post is that the video clip covering Yves contribution is a very clearly articulated account of how we got ourselves into this economic mess. For those like this author who don’t really understand many of the sophisticated economic terms used widely elsewhere, this was a refreshing ‘tutorial’.
Do watch it – Yves is brought in around 3 min 45 secs.
By Paul Handover
An old aviation theme has a wider message
In flying, mistakes have the power to inflict harm way beyond the immediate significance of the mistake. Thus the flying community have created a whole load of sayings that serve constantly to remind all those charged with the safe transport of aircraft. For example we have ‘If there’s any doubt, there’s no doubt‘. Or ‘There are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots‘. However the saying that underlines this story is ‘Never assume, always ask!’
His request approved, the CNN News photographer quickly used a cell phone to call the local airport to charter a flight. He was told a twin-engine plane would be waiting for him at the airport.
Arriving at the airfield, he spotted a plane warming up outside a hanger. He jumped in with his bag, slammed the door shut, and shouted, ‘Let’s go‘.
The pilot taxied out, swung the plane into the wind and took off.
Once in the air, the photographer instructed the pilot, ‘Fly over the valley and make low passes so I can take pictures of the fires on the hillsides.‘
‘Why?‘ asked the pilot.
‘Because I’m a photographer for CNN‘ , he responded, ‘and I need to get some close up shots.’
The pilot was strangely silent for a moment, finally he stammered, ‘So, what you’re telling me, is . . . You’re NOT my flight instructor?‘
By Bob Derham
Learning from Dogs 