In the laboratory of the hermits, no one noticed that the monkeys could talk.
Mindfulness
When a book ends with the above line, you know it’s going to be interesting.
When the inside front page carries a short review from Prof Alan Dershowitz of Havard Law School that reads, “One simply can’t finish this book and see the world in the same way”, you know the book is important.
Yes to both.
On Page 2, Ellen writes,
Unlike the exotic “altered states of conciousness” that we read so much about, mindfulness and mindlessness are so common that few of us appreciate their importance or make use of their power to change our lives.
This is a book for so many different aspects of life. From fields like aviation where mindlessness can, literally, kill to mindful new perspectives for people looking to explore new horizons for the soul.
Langer demonstrates a rare capacity both to see what is extraordinary about human events and to envision even more enlivening human possibilities. – Lee Ross, Stanford University.
Amazed they don’t just tax Fun and leave it at that!
Lemonade isn't a substitute!
Once again the British Politically Correct nanny-state lobby seems about to pounce by reducing the drink-driving limit to 50 mg. This is yet another fatuous knee-jerk “Let’s give the image that we are responsible and doing something” initiative.
No, I do NOT favour driving while drunk, but at 80 mg per ml you are not “drunk” or even impaired. The introduction of the 80 mg limit was a great step, but more would be a mg too far.
I know for an absolute fact that if I drink one pint of beer I am in no way more dangerous than if I drink nothing. Don’t ask me how I know; I just do. I’ve been driving all over Europe for 40 years; and experience counts for something after all.
Yes, I do want to see road accidents reduced, but let’s see something REALISTIC and EFFECTIVE. Why are most accidents caused? (apart from people way over the limit, unlicenced or driving unroadworthy cars and so on)
arrogance and lack of imagination: “It can’t happen to me.”
impatience: overtaking dangerously to save 45 seconds on a two-mile journey
driving too fast in the wrong place at the wrong time.
driving without consideration for others
not driving as if every other driver was an idiot
failing to give yourself enough of a margin for error
failing to understand statistics
The last two points are perhaps crucial. Drive on the périphérique in Paris and you’ll see examples of both. Of course, the French are, in general, brilliant drivers and 99.9% of the time they can get away with driving up someone’s boot, but statistics tell us that there is 0.01% of the time when this will NOT be OK.
What steps COULD be taken instead of clobbering the one pinter?
Start with the apparent ONE MILLION people in Britain driving either unlicensed and/or in uninsured or unroadworthy cars.
Ban rich Daddy’s boys from driving high-powered sports cars: nobody under 25 should be able to drive anything over 80 bhp for a start.
Where is the logic in manufacturing cars that can drive at three times the speed limit? BAN THEM. BE LOGICAL.
Make the viewing of video of the aftermath of accidents a compulsory part of the driving test so that people came reeling out of the room white and vomiting at the sight of accident victims with their faces smashed up and/or their heads severed. This is the REALITY of accidents. Let’s GET REAL.
Prevent people from driving for TOO LONG. Tiredness is a MAJOR factor in accidents, but there is ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL over the hours that private motorists can drive. Modern technology could do something here.
Make the punishments for careless and/or dangerous driving SEVERE.
Make people AFRAID of causing an accident.
The truth is that a car is as dangerous as a gun and people should treat them as such. Sadly, familiarity breeds contempt and people too often forget the basic principles.
Every time I get in my car I tell myself the following:
Drive with as much care as when you first drove so nervously and gingerly on your first trip with your new licence.
Every journey could be your last. Just because the last n days have been trouble-free it doesn’t mean that today will. (statistics again)
There could be an idiot around the next corner, so drive defensively. (there is always a percentage of idiots, so statistically you are CERTAIN to meet one now and again)
Going too fast in the wrong place and/or conditions isn’t worth the risk. (stats again)
You have no right to maim or kill anyone else by bad driving and causing “an accident”‘.
Be afraid – think of what a serious injury or even your death would mean to your family.
It’s no good being “sorry” afterwards ……
Let’s hope the new British government has a bit of commonsense about this.
PS The Police could do their bit, too. A significant number of people are killed by policemen rushing about.
By Chris Snuggs
IAM Logo
A P.P.S. from the Editor. In fact, one of the best things that could be done is create an
incentive for passing the Institute of Advanced Driving driving test. I passed the test in 1966 and it has been the best investment I have ever made.
Why doesn’t the UK Government give a free year’s road-tax for every person who passed the IAM test. All this proposed change in the drink/drive limit will do is to put yet more British pubs out of business. G’rrr.
‘Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.‘ (Samuel Johnson, from The Idler, 1758)
I have used this quotation simply because we need to remind ourselves that the media, politicians, journalists and many ordinary folk find it easier to be extreme, opinionated, outlandish and provocative (ergo, ignorant) than to be thoughtful and reflective about an incredibly complex situation. Rant and blame, while making for great reading or viewing, is not helpful.
This all came to mind from reading a recent article in The Financial Times (you may need to register to view it) which was titled:
Britain should back down over BP
By Clive Crook
That article starts like this:
A week ago I criticised the US media for childishly demanding that President Barack Obama “just do something” about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, observing there was much to be said for a leader who stayed calm in a crisis. Next day, no doubt as a result, Mr Obama became pointedly less calm. He called for some “ass to kick”, a very Bushian sentiment, and dialled up the invective against BP – which he likes to call by its old name, British Petroleum, to underline the company’s alien perfidy.
The US outcry against the company is still building, and the administration, intent on deflecting its critics, has put itself in the vanguard. Criminal investigations and efforts to remove a statutory cap on the company’s liability are under way. It is ominous that lawyers are working hard, with the administration’s blessing, to enlarge the very concept of civil liability.
And concludes thus:
The question of whether even this company’s mighty resources are adequate to meet these demands cannot be dismissed. In such circumstances, I cannot see why BP has hesitated to suspend its dividend. The idea that it can take this calamity in its stride and proceed on the basis of business as usual is absurd, and politically foolish too, since it is a provocation to critics intent on vengeance.
The Gulf disaster will have far-reaching economic and energy-policy implications. The right liability and mandatory insurance regimes for deepwater drilling are high on the list. No doubt the White House should worry less about kicking ass and more about thinking these questions through. But British complaints that BP is being “scapegoated” will not help reason to prevail. Let us not add insult to injury.
Frankly, I don’t have either the knowledge or the competence to judge the validity of Mr Crook’s article and, as so often in cases like this, took to reading the comments as they can frequently shed more light on a particular issue.
And that is how I came across the following comment from RiskManager. Whoever you are, well done on taking the time to put what feels like some badly needed balance into this issue. This in no way lessens the terrible harm being metered out on innocents, just as in any ‘war’, but this is not about winning – it is about learning.
From RiskManager
Unlike ANY U.S. company EVER in a similar situation (Exxon, Union Carbide, Accidental Petroleum, etc. etc. – its ALL of them), BP has indeed done the right thing since the blowout by immediately admitting its liability/responsibilities. It has mobilised the largest containment and clean up operation ever and immediately issued compensation to those affected. The effort to stem the well, something never done before at this depth, has seen the assembly of the best experts in the world and the greatest concentration of sub-sea equipment perhaps ever seen. That efforts have failed so far to stem the leak is a fact that testifies to the challenge of the task, a challenge that cannot be understood until the failed Blowout Preventer (BOP) is recovered and we find out why the accident happened and why the top-kill did not work. What is going on inside the BOP?
And there it is. Today we just do not know. The failsafe in place, a modern BOP, failed. We don’t yet know why. BP may well. Transocean and Cameron the same. When we do recover the failed BOP which is under subpoena already all the questions will be answered. Until then it is fatuous and unhelpful to go round looking for bottoms to boot.
Why the gas kick happened down the well seems to me to be secondary. Things happen. That’s why we have a failsafe, that’s why there was BOP installed and paid for by BP, the failsafe device.
An editorial in The Daily Telegraph of yesterday said….
“It should not be difficult to rewrite the rules to make sure that no deep-water drilling is permitted without a fail-safe arrangement in place from the start,…..”
No, these are the current rules. The fail-safe arrangement was the blowout preventer, the one that failed. Note how BP always refer to it as the “failed blowout preventer”. Always.
The BOP has multiple (five I think) valves, of varying types with at least one that is meant to shear the casing, the drill pipe and anything else.
One valve was operated from the surface by the tool pusher who testified as such, indeed he operated it before the Offshore Installation Manager gave permission as mud circulation had been lost. That failsafe BOP valve failed.
The next I believe is a failsafe that shuts when contact is lost with the rig, like a dead mans handle on a train. As the Deepwater Horizon rig sank and contact was physically broken (or before), it also failed.
The others (three ?? ) are I believe all meant to be operable by sub sea vehicles (ROV’s). The first days after the blowout were spent trying to shut these valves as per the design of the failsafe device, the blowout preventer. All these valves failed.
That’s a lot of failure. Why??
Now, if BP should have known about whatever is found to have happened in the failsafe BOP then it is their fault. If sub-contractors installing and operating the BOP or is manufacturers lied or were negligent it is there fault.
If the blowout preventer had worked as intended, as the failsafe final defence device, there would have been no loss of life and no oil spilled.
Given the sums of money involved I suggest the UK immediately prepares to seize US assets of potentially liable companies or associates in the event that BP is found to be the victim of its supplier’s negligence. Unlike BP these companies have already sought protection of US law, are paying dividends and are saying nothing at all as BP gets a kicking
At the end of the day, we (you and I) need the deepwater oil as the worlds easy and cheap to produce oil reserves are controlled by the OPEC cartel and restricted to about a 40% of global production from 80% of reserves. But however many failsafes, however many regulations, human activities entail risk. The deep water drilling was thought to be safe with a modern BOP. It wasn’t. Now we need a BOP and inspection/testing regime that really is failsafe and expertise in responding if that fails. I would have thought the facility to install a new shear ram at the well head below the BOP after a blowout would do the job, or a fitting at the top of the LMRP that a ready built new valve could be installed on top of post blowout would do the job..
Ironically BP will certainly be the world experts in these matters after this accident and response.
P.S. Shortly after completing this Post, I read the following from the BBC. (Extract provided only – see link for full BBC article.)
Barack Obama calls for clean energy push
President Obama
US President Barack Obama has called on his Democratic Party and other supporters to back a government campaign for clean energy.
In a statement aimed both at paid-up Democratic Party members and at millions of individuals who backed his 2008 presidential bid online, the president asked his network to lend their name to a campaign to change the way America produces and consumes its energy.
“We are working to hold BP accountable for the damage to the lands and the livelihoods of the Gulf Coast, and we are taking strong precautions to make certain a spill like this never happens again,” Mr Obama said.
“Beyond the risks inherent in drilling four miles beneath the surface of the Earth, our dependence on oil means that we will continue to send billions of dollars of our hard-earned wealth to other countries every month – including many in dangerous and unstable regions,” he said.
“In other words, our continued dependence on fossil fuels will jeopardise our national security. It will smother our planet. And it will continue to put our economy and our environment at risk.
“We cannot delay any longer, and that is why I am asking for your help.”
Let me close as I started, by using an old saying:
“It’s an ill wind that blows no good.” (John Heywood (c.1497-1580))
[Apologies to our readers but a consistent error in all the links to previous posts within this and earlier posts has now been corrected. You can view all the previous sections of his lecture by clicking the links in this Post. Ed.]
We live on a finite Earth. But really understanding what that means is difficult. I guess because most of us think that in our own little way we can’t really be doing any harm to the planet – I mean what’s another few grams of CO2?
Al Bartlet, University of Colorado
Well here’s Dr Albert Bartlett of the Department of Physics at the University of Colorado chatting about arithmetic! And if you go to his website, you will come across this quote on the home page:
“Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?”
Want to sit in on his famous lecture, “Arithmetic, Population and Energy: Sustainability 101”? Well you can.
The lecture is broken down into 8 10-minute videos, each of them on YouTube. The first two instalments are here , Part Three and Four here
Parts Five and Six were in this post. These are the concluding two parts.
We live on a finite Earth. But really understanding what that means is difficult. I guess because most of us think that in our own little way we can’t really be doing any harm to the planet – I mean what’s another few grams of CO2?
Al Bartlet, University of Colorado
Well here’s Dr Albert Bartlett of the Department of Physics at the University of Colorado chatting about arithmetic! And if you go to his website, you will come across this quote on the home page:
“Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?”
Want to sit in on his famous lecture, “Arithmetic, Population and Energy: Sustainability 101”? Well you can.
The lecture is broken down into 8 10-minute videos, each of them on YouTube. The first two instalments are here , Part Three and Four here and Parts Five and Six in this post. The concluding two parts are tomorrow. Part Five
We live on a finite Earth. But really understanding what that means is difficult. I guess because most of us think that in our own little way we can’t really be doing any harm to the planet – I mean what’s another few grams of CO2?
Al Bartlet, University of Colorado
Well here’s Dr Albert Bartlett of the Department of Physics at the University of Colorado chatting about arithmetic! And if you go to his website, you will come across this quote on the home page:
“Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?”
Want to sit in on his famous lecture, “Arithmetic, Population and Energy: Sustainability 101”? Well you can.
The lecture is broken down into 8 10-minute videos, each of them on YouTube. The first two instalments are here with Part Three and Four in this post. The remaining four parts over the next two days.
We live on a finite Earth. But really understanding what that means is difficult. I guess because most of us think that in our own little way we can’t really be doing any harm to the planet – I mean what’s another few grams of CO2?
Al Bartlet, University of Colorado
Well here’s Dr Albert Bartlett of the Department of Physics at the University of Colorado chatting about arithmetic! And if you go to his website, you will come across this quote on the home page:
“Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?”
Want to sit in on his famous lecture, “Arithmetic, Population and Energy: Sustainability 101”? Well you can.
The lecture is broken down into 8 10-minute videos, each of them on YouTube. The first two instalments are in this post with each of the following three days having the next two.
What is the role of government in education? The problem of central government power and corruption in relation to education is a cause of great concern for me. I still remember learning that Abraham Lincoln was a champion of civil rights who wanted to end slavery, and that American exceptionalism defeated the aggressive Soviet Union. I also now realize that there were gaping absences from my education, like the complete absence of any classes concerning philosophy, even as an introduction that scratched the surface, or any study of the decline of empires such as Rome whose glories I studied so intensely.
Ancient Rome
If there is any quick fix for the problems I am noting, it would be decentralization of power in respect to our education system. This becomes more problematic on a daily basis, as more and more federal stimulus funds are poured into local education systems. While the beltway political community often paints this as government helping small communities, I see the benefit of a temporary boost in funding being far outweighed by the cost of our central government grabbing more and more local power. Education systems will, in the long run, be forced to either permanently entrust more of their budgetary matters to federal power, or suffer the pain of doing away with an infrastructure that big government created and, consequently, only big government can support. Decentralization would help the education system of the United States to be more diverse as well, as different regions would certainly have different educational programs, and these programs could compete in the form of their graduates to show which programs had the best results.
However, no discussion of education in the United States would be complete without taking a look at the intent of our country’s founders. Here I must thank Professor Jarrell for injecting this concept into the current discussion. In a recent LFD post addressed to me and interested others, she wrote:
The Federalist Papers made it clear, to me at least, that our founding fathers believed that the government, our federal government in particular, should have nothing to do with educating the populace.
I realize it sounds a bit radical now, but I believe that any discussion of what is right and wrong about public education today must begin with a healthy debate about whether the federal government should be involved in public education at all.
Your thoughts? Thanks!
In a very soon-to-come post, I will begin yet another discussion, one that I hope will heavily involve Professor Jarrell and many others, about the original intent of our founders in relation to public education, and whether or not there is any hope of returning to their proposed system at any point in the near future.
Therefore, it has been quite some time since I wrote my original post — which at that point was posted by Professor Jarrell with me as a guest author — in which I laid out my goals pertaining to a discussion of the United States’ education system. Since then I have discussed the positives of our system, the negatives of our system, and pointed out the view of Sir Ken Robinson, who believes that creativity should be given the same status as literacy in education systems.
We are often surprised after researching a topic to find our conclusions to be in opposition with our previous line of thought. However, sometimes it can be equally as surprising to do a great deal of research and then wind up back where you started, simply with a larger factual foundation behind. This has been the case for me throughout this entire discussion of the United States’ education system. Despite the attempt I have made to challenge my own viewpoint and think critically about my own biases, I continue to see the costs of the United States’ education system as far greater than its benefits.
Brick and mortar school building
As I have stated before, there is a great difference between formal education and learning. Or, to be more precise, perhaps I should say that formal education is merely one part, and perhaps not even that large a part, of what “learning” entails. I would suggest that the problem is not so much that the United States’ education system is damaging merely because of its existence, but rather that the greatest damage comes from society expecting far too much from this system. School is no replacement for the learning that entails integration into a complex and competitive global society that necessitates human interaction, critical thinking skills, and creativity. Sure, one can force youths into cinder block rooms and force them to learn multiplication tables and historical dates. And, to an extent, I think this is necessary in a mass society as we have today. However, this formula of forcing youths to learn facts and then having these facts regurgitated has been entrusted with far too much of what we today consider “learning,” and if we are ever to have a positive shift in our society from one of idea-accepters to idea-creators, this must change.
Learning the multiplication tables
Perhaps high school could integrate into their programs a larger degree of extracurricular internships that count for course credit — I am sure that this is an experiment that could be undertaken by a few school districts quite easily, and then expanded if it proves successful. Perhaps also school curriculum could be altered to include more classes on philosophy and economics, which I see as foundational for a solid understanding of our world. However, this alteration of core curriculum would be a much more difficult task to accomplish, and would require some serious time and thought.
Several times a week, I drop into Karl Denninger’s blog The Market Ticker. While frequently the articles are too technical for me, it’s still, nonetheless, possible to get the drift of Karl’s messages.
As his overall theme is strongly coincident with my own views on my pension investments, and which have served me proud over the last 10 years, especially the last 2 years, it’s natural that I like what Karl does.
But the point of this Post is to underline just how much time and effort Karl puts in to his work, all of which is free to the world at the click of a mouse.
Are there others who devote equal amounts of time to their Blogs and websites? Yes, many! And many of them are also heroes (and heroines!)
Of course, I have no doubt that The Market Ticker is part of Karl’s business strategy but, again, he could choose other ways to make his income without sharing, for free, so many valuable ideas.
Here are a couple of examples to underline my deep respect for this man. (Taken from Market Ticker on the 13th May.)
Learning from Dogs 