My incarceration is finally at an end. I have been reunited with my humans. This is a Very Good Thing for All Concerned.

But I am starting at the end of the story, when I should start at the beginning.

The Other Human has taken Drastic Measures to implement his many changes to the status quo. He won the 'Badger doesn't sleep in the bed' battle, and the 'Badger doesn't stick his nose in the humans' food' fight. I was happy to give him those victories, because they were little enough. I thought he would be happy with his successes so far.

Oh, how awfully wrong I was.

While my human thought I was in storage, I was in fact being Reformed. I was sent to a special Reform School. It was horrible. It took FOREVER in the Awful Box just to get there, and then the Other Human left me in the hands of a Corrections Officer. Somehow the Other Human had convinced this Corrections Officer that I had Behaviours that needed Correcting. I am not sure why the Corrections Officer was so ready to believe this! I have many Behaviours, some of which are idiosyncratic, some that are learned (I spent many hours in puppy school learning how to steal treats from other dogs how to sit, drop and spin around in circles), and all of which are endearing, but none of which, in my opinion, need Correcting.

I think the Other Human takes issue with my tendency to tell humans and other animals that they are in the wrong place, and that they should go away because I am a big scary dog who is not scared of them at all. He thinks that this is a Behaviour. I think he convinced the Corrections Officer that it was a Behaviour, and that I needed to be Socialised. If that sounds awful, well, it isn't really. I think Socialising means something other than what the Other Human thinks it means.

Socialising means foodies.

... I am perfectly serious.

In order to Socialise me, the Corrections Officer had lots of Humans bring me foodies. As you can imagine, this was extremely relevant to my interests. I am perfectly content to let many lots of Humans bring me foodies. I slowly came to realise that the Corrections Officer was acting in my Best Interests. I do not think that the Other Human paid him enough. Either that, or my natural charms affected a sort of reverse Stockholm Syndrome on the Corrections Officer.

I think the Other Human is sending me back to Reform School next week. I think he will try to convince the Corrections Officer to fix another of my Behaviours, and I also think the Corrections Officer will just give me more foodies. I am looking forward to this, even though it means being away from my Human and giving the Other Human a chance to attempt to usurp my place (which is, as always, In The Way).

Huge drops in world poverty rates, except in Africa.

Apparently, it is easier to be happy if you have more income.

Study finds evidence that open capital markets markedly increase growth in manufacturing wage rates.

Nice set of talking points on why drugs should be legalised.

A young woman’s personal experience of the coercive power of minimum wages.

Lecture on Austrian trade cycle theory (nicely presented). The PowerPoint™ available from here. The story about over-shooting the production possibilities frontier does not sit right with me: it surely would be better put in terms of misinformed use of resources.

China is planning a rail revolution:

Over the next three years, the government will pour some $300 billion into its railways, expanding its network by 20,000 kilometers, including 13,000 kilometers of track designed for high-speed trains capable of traveling up to 350kph. Result: China, a nation long defined by the vastness of its geography, is getting, much, much smaller.

Europe and England&Wales have quite different approaches to wills and bequests.

Paper finds that, for large fiscal adjustments, tax cuts tend to generate more growth than spending increases and spending cuts quicker budget balancing than tax increases.

About laffer curves in search-and-rescue (pdf). A case in point (of moral hazard in national parks).

Arguing that the recent financial crisis strengthens the argument against (pdf) discretionary central banks.

Nice review of Superfreakonomics:

Their research into Chicago prostitution reveal that prostitutes’ wages have plummeted in real terms in the last 60 years. Why? Simple really. Sex is much easier to come by than it was then. Between 1933 and 1942, more than 20 per cent of American men had their first sexual experience with a prostitute. Now it’s around five per cent. … Learning that a prostitute in Chicago is statistically more likely to have sex with a cop than to be arrested by one doesn’t necessarily tell you much about incentives …

Interview with the Gates’ about their global health aid activities. What strikes me is how anti-poor-people many of the on-site comments are. But if you look at your own (very successful) societies primarily as a set of problems then of course prospects will be framed mainly in terms of looming failure, not possible (let alone likely) success.

Paris’s rent-a-bike program has run into problems:

Many of the specially designed bikes, which cost $3,500 each, are showing up on black markets in Eastern Europe and northern Africa. Many others are being spirited away for urban joy rides, then ditched by roadsides, their wheels bent and tires stripped.
With 80 percent of the initial 20,600 bicycles stolen or damaged, the program’s organizers have had to hire several hundred people just to fix them.

Chavez has introduced water rationing and blamed capitalism.

Post (apparently in an intended series) on the bad calls of a TV investment guru.

An unemployed Ottawa man makes money being paid to take people’s place in queues.

Comparing US per capital GDP growth and median family income growth 1950-1980 and 1980-2007.

Not a lot of bank failures in the US this time around. One would hope not, after all that bailout money was tossed around.

Estimating tax rates needed to erase the US budget deficit.

Summary of the US health care reform bill. One employer on what it will mean for his business.

US companies are hoarding cash: regime uncertainty anyone?

Texas has now overtaken New York and California for headquarters of Fortune 500 companies, as people flee and increasingly debt-ridden and dysfunctional California while Texas attracts internal migrants.

The day improved dramatically once we had a car. We've found a mechanic who we can drop the Mazda off with, and who thinks it should be all fixed by Tuesday arvo. We went to the Huon Show, which the BatPup and the Boy Wonder loved without reservation. I think it will stand as the highlight of their entire holiday, in fact. Then we drove around Huon and checked out stuff. A much more relaxed day and consequently less argumentative all round. I suspect our dastardly EDoD is more of an empath than I give her credit for (I give her credit for being an autistic paranoid sociopath with a hair fetish, so she'd have to be, really) because she always picks up our stress levels and bounces them back.

Tomorrow it's off to Port Huon. We love this place! If only there were such a thing as a job market...

Thanks for all the responses to my question about the American white T-shirt thing.

I'm a little confused though: what's with the abhorrence of men's nipples and/or chest hair? Are they really that disturbing? If you're not in the US, do men wear white undershirts where you live?

Just speaking from personal experience, it's not been an issue in South Africa, that I'm aware of. I know white perforated vests were were popular with my grandfather's generation, but not recently. I spent yesterday looking at shirts etc. at work, and I noticed that almost no-one wears smart white shirts any more - they're all striped, lightly checked, or coloured - and also that nipples did not appear to be visible under smart shirts (golf shirts are another story).

All rather interesting...

Sarah Palin, fast and loose with the facts in her new book? NO WAI!

-Ren

My personal communicator woke me at 6 this morning, and I gathered up the world-wide navigation speech-synthesiser and portable super-computer and drove our long-range transporter down the Hill Of Doom, whereupon I got a lift with the co-owner of the retreat into Hobart. Consulting my network-linked navigation system I found a car rental place. It was only when I went to sign up that I found I'd left my license behind! Fortunately, I spoke instantaneously at great distance to my Beloved, who was able to send a perfect facsimile directly to the office. While I waited, I sat in a cafe and ate food pills and Romulan ale until they called to let me know everything was in order, during which time I also published my experience to a world-wide network-linked audience.

The car, regrettably, does not fly. But you can't have everything.

Here I sit, in the reception area of Huon Bush Retreat. We're all moved in to our cabin (we forewent the opportunity to camp yet again in our tent, because meh) and all is well... except that our car appears to have celebrated the trip to the top of the hill by dying. The radiator exploded. The RAC guy said we won't get anyone to look at it before Monday, and it may take a couple of days to find a replacement radiator. Way to enforce a getting-away-from-it-all ethos, Chaos Gods!

So if we have any readers in the area of Huonville who want to pop up to the Huon Bush Retreats with a care package of a take-away Chinese meal for five + yourselves, we'll welcome you and do our best to entertain you (and pay you for your trouble). Meanwhile, it looks like I'm about to make a taxi company and a hire car firm very happy...

An interesting article on the perceptions of "handicapped" athletes by non-handicapped.

The most thought provoking bit of this article was the idea that athletes with disabilities are viewed now as being "too abled", whether it's the carbon-fiber legs that the author has or the golf-cart the one pro golfer uses. I don't know if I'd ever really considered that point of view before.

-Ren

I have a question for the Americans: what's the deal with the white T-shirts that, judging from movies and TV, American men often wear under their shirts? What are they for? Is it for warmth, or what?

I found out about this from the Plastic Logic Twitter - there is a publishing house now that only publishes electronically.

http://www.quillandquire.com/blog/index.php/2009/11/09/harlequin-tries-for-some-online-love-with-digital-publishing-venture/

Dictionary.com defines "terrorism" as: 1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes. 2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization. 3. a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.

On the news, over the last few days, I've been seeing people, mostly on the Right, trying to claim that this is some kind of terrorist plot. That it is a tragedy is understood, but a terrorist act? While John McCain, other politicians, and the pundits on Fox News might be certain, I'm not.

Let us look at the definition of terrorism above in regards to this event. Did Maj. Nidal Hasan use violence? Yes, that's obvious, but was it for political purposes? While many are claiming that he did the shooting because of his Muslim beliefs and his deep discomfort with the fact that our nation has been fighting Muslim nations and groups for years, I don't know if this would count. To argue that he shot up soldiers in order to try and convince the army to let Muslims bow out of possibly fighting other Muslims seems weak and nothing I've read has said that he admitted to performing the shootings in order to try and change military policy surrounding Muslims in service specifically (he did, at one point, give a lecture that concluded with the recommendation that Muslims be allowed to opt-out of fighting that might include combat against other Muslims).

Did he successfully cause a state of fear or submission? Certainly fear in the short term but for any lasting impact? No. Trying to claim that because he shot his fellow soldiers, in that essence, was a terrorist act would also lead to school shootings and other such gun rampages to also being considered "terrorism"because they caused fear, when they clearly weren't caused for terrorism-related reasons.

Did he try to resist the government by this act? Unknown, although I'd assume not. Hasan was a military psychologist, not a serviceman about to be sent overseas, so it wasn't as if his crime was committed because he was resisting orders.

That Maj. Nidal Hasan is a Muslim is true, and by all accounts he had a personal religious and moral conflict with the fact that our military has been fighting Muslim countries and groups for years. According to investigators, Hasan's mother died in 2001 and personal acquaintances of his said that he became much more withdrawn when she passed away. Are these possibly mitigating factors? Certainly, but I don't think that they would lead to this being called a "terrorist" act.

And what do we get now? We get crazy Christians trying to claim we should remove all Muslims from service or require them to sign some kind of special loyalty oath (yet Christians, who have their own terrorists and violent fundamentalists, get a pass presumably). We have people on ABC trying to claim that he "reached out to Al Queda" despite the fact that the FBI, who investigated e-mails sent to an iman in Yemen, ruled that the e-mails were innocent and in line with Hasan's personal religious studies. We have people trying to beat the very worn out drum of fear to the tune of "Terrorism!" and multiple people framing the idea of terrorists as Muslims despite the fact that the FBI has so far ruled that Hasan was a lone individual and not part of any kind of terrorist plot or conspiracy.

I think the things here that are important to look at are varied:
1. I think an investigation into why Hasan committed the crime is important because getting the facts out and as public as possible will help remove the ability of individuals wanting to spin this for their own gain.
2. I think it's important that people should be critical of why politicians, any politicians on either side of the aisle, and pundits are trying to claim this is a "terrorist" attack. The whole purpose of terrorism if to dictate to others through the use of threats and fear. You should be critical of why anyone, even our own government, would tell you to be afraid.
3. I think it's important that people should consider the other Muslims in our armed forces, the hundreds, possibly thousands of individuals who will now possibly be negatively impacted by people's misplaced fear when they have done nothing wrong. I can't find the quote to attribute it to but someone, very shortly after the attack happened, said something along the lines of "One of our greatest strengths is our diversity. It would be a shame if that became a casualty of this as well." and I can't agree more.

-Ren

Why, if you're a Marine reservist you grab your trusty tire-iron from your trunk, club the terrorist in the head, and then chase him down for blocks, pin him to the ground, and call 9-11.

The only problem?

Said "terrorist" is, in fact, a Greek Orthodox priest.

Further problems include that said priest, who speaks very little English, couldn't have in fact made the lewd allegations in perfect English the Marine reported. Also, why would a Greek Orthodox priest shout "God is good" in Arabic, the cry of Muslim jihadists?

Marine got lucky though because the priest, in accordance with his beliefs, is forgiving him and not pressing charges.

GOOD MORNING!

-Ren

We avoided much of the navigation stress today by the deceptively simple trick of giving up on our plans. Instead of aiming to be at X at 09:00 and at Y at 09:45, we just packed our stuff (while it rained! Canberra people may need to look that up on Wikipedia) and headed off to Hobart. There were assorted random blow-ups, including a delightful attack of the bullying bullshit from the EDoD just when we needed her and the Boy to shut the frak up for some complex city-traffic farnarkling, but that was a minor hiccup in an otherwise pleasant day.

We're now camped out in the living room of thelancrewitch's friends L. and O. and their daughters X.¹ and A. X. and the BatPup got on like a house on fire² and were dressing up as ballerinas and being quite lovely. A. latched on to the EDoD and followed her around happily. The Boy Wonder just tagged along and occasionally climbed furniture, ate wax fruit and generally did Boy Wonder things. Once they got a bit rowdy, we stuck them in the bath then the Beloved did her energy (ie meditation) trick and got them to calm down, and then I told the BatPup a story and they went cheerfully off to bed.

I've been telling the BatPup a complicated multi-part epic at the moment. See, she has several story-worlds, in approximate order of creation:

• the Three [BatPup]s, a story of an alternate-universe family like ours but with triplets, all called the same name as the BatPup; their Daddy is a bit of a dabbler in weird technology, so they have a space-time rift that wanders about the farm they now live on, and three friends (also triplets) who are alien shape-shifters;
• the Household Gods, a story of a little girl named Chloe who can talk to the various Pratchettian Small Gods who do things like create earworms and blow lightbulbs;
• the Planetary Society, kind of a Famous Five version of Ellis's Snow, Wagner and Drummer, which is still finding its feet as a story and hasn't really gelled yet, but so far there's also a were-dragon named Miriam and a very grumpy computer named Orac (yes, that Orac);
• Lilliam and the Zoo, a tale of a little girl whose parents own a zoo that contains, hidden among the normal animals, a lot of mythical and magical monsters, like a family of TV-obsessed sasquatches and a terribly under-confident boogyman; and
• Flea, a little girl who lives in a caravan park with her mother and has just discovered that she can talk to animals.

They're all Magical Realism stories, because that's the formula she seems to like -- the Three [BatPup]s started out just mundane, but the storytelling engine just worked naturally in the direction of universe-hopping space ships and suchlike.  So anyhow, I was telling her a Flea story, and the two pairs of triplets just kind of showed up, and then they went to a zoo and met Lilliam, and I think tomorrow night they're going to meet Chloe as well.  I can't see the Planetary team mixing in very significantly, though they may get a cameo just for laughs.  It's Crisis On Infinite BatPups around here!

The Planetary stories are very popular, as it turns out, but I'm having trouble getting a handle on them, which is why I've been throwing more elements in to see what sticks.  It's a tricky business, designing a storytelling engine.  Having them all in a shared world with a lot of unspoken back-story also helps, because it means I know why those shape-shifters can do what they do, and I also have some idea why Flea and her mother live alone in a caravan park.  It may or may not come out in the stories, but just having the underlying knowledge makes it easier to tell stories.

Anyhow: off to Huonville tomorrow, then back to Hobart later.  Plenty of time to iron the bugs out of a few storytelling engines and set them up for the long run.  I rather enjoy this particular parental task, and I'm sure the Boy Wonder will like it too, once he's old enough.


¹ And don't I feel silly abbreviating that, since there's really only one name it could be unless you're a Lucy Lawless fan.
² Apologies for that metaphor to anyone living on the Australian mainland at the moment.

A “Veteran” whether active duty, discharged, retired, or reserve, is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to his or her country for an amount of “up to, and including his life”.

Joseph Kittinger.

springheel_jack: I'll take off my hat but I won't clap.

fengi on Armistice Day. (He did a bunch of good posts today, actually.)

Those two are generally more articulate than I am unless I'm talking about rocket ships. Being a techie has eroded my ability to construct a coherent essay, because the longest continuous strings of prose I've been required to write since 2003 are in-house user manuals.

Anyway. Dulce et decorum est.

Study suggests climate change can create volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.

Study finds significant cosmic ray effect on clouds:

"The evidence has piled up, first for the link between cosmic rays and low-level clouds and then, by experiment and observation, for the mechanism involving aerosols. All these consistent scientific results illustrate that the current climate models used to predict future climate are lacking important parts of the physics.

The paper (pdf).

Study of English temperatures (the longest-maintained series in the world) shows English summers were slightly cooler in the C20th than in the C18th.

About 1% of land ice is in glaciers, 10% in Greenland and 89% in Antarctica, which just had its lowest level of summer ice melt since measurement began. Headlines will not follow.

Story on the BBC admits that there is a genuine scientific debate over global warming.

Reaching agreement that the climate models need more work.

An intelligent post and debate about geo-engineering possibilities and using temperature tax/subsidies.

Looking at the cost of solar versus coal.

Having some fun with frustration about delay in disaster:

In this headline on a New York Times story about the difficulties confronting people alarmed about global warming, note the word "plateau." It dismisses the unpleasant -- to some people -- fact that global warming is maddeningly (to the same people) slow to vindicate their apocalyptic warnings about it.
The "difficulty" -- the "intricate challenge," the Times says -- is "building momentum" for carbon reduction "when global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years." That was in the Times's first paragraph.
In the fifth paragraph, a "few years" became "the next decade or so," according to Mojib Latif, a German "prize-winning climate and ocean scientist" who campaigns constantly to promote policies combating global warming. Actually, Latif has said he anticipates "maybe even two" decades in which temperatures cool. But stay with the Times's "decade or so." By asserting that the absence of significant warming since 1998 is a mere "plateau," not warming's apogee, the Times assures readers who are alarmed about climate change that the paper knows the future and that warming will continue: Do not despair, bad news will resume.

NZ poll shows people suffering global warming fatigue. Brits are not much concerned about climate change, according to a poll. The care factor is falling in Oz as well. (But if one does care, it makes one even more a member of the moral elite.)

About the “evil” of cheap fixes:

Part of the genius of Marxism, and a reason for its enduring appeal, is that it fed man's neurotic fear of social catastrophe while providing an avenue for moral transcendence.

Is making kindergarten kids fearful about the future child abuse?

The late Aaron Wildavsky once noted that if you are “Minister for the Environment” pretty soon you are “Minister for Everything”. Climate change pushes that along nicely:

Hold that thought: “They deal with every aspect of our life.” Did you know every aspect of your life was being negotiated at Copenhagen? …
“The environment” is the most ingenious cover story for Big Government ever devised. You float a rumour that George W. Bush is checking up on what library books you’re reading, and everyone goes bananas. But announce that a government monitoring device has been placed in every citizen’s trash can in the cause of “saving the planet,” and the world loves you.

Whatever the cause, left-progressivism always seems to end up the in same place: trying to control ever more aspects of people’s lives. Controlling what you can say, what you are allowed to believe, preferring public to private transport, controlling land use, use of property, preferring rationing water (with its “approved” and “unapproved” uses, good people versus bad people structure) to pricing it properly, etc. Of course, if it is not for people’s good, but for the planet’s good, then the level of “justified” control is even greater.

Calling an Observer columnist on his climate-change human hatred.

Clive James on the virtue of scepticism:

Since then, a sceptical attitude has been less likely to get you burned at the stake, but it's notable how the issue of man-made global warming has lately been giving rise to a use of language hard to distinguish from heresy-hunting in the fine old style by which the cost of voicing a doubt was to fry in your own fat.
Whether or not you believe that the earth might have been getting warmer lately, if you are sceptical about whether mankind is the cause of it, the scepticism can be enough to get you called a denialist.
It's a nasty word to be called, denialist, because it calls up the spectacle of a fanatic denying the Holocaust. In my homeland, Australia, there are some prominent intellectuals who are quite ready to say that any sceptic about man-made global warming is doing even worse than denying the Holocaust, because this time the whole of the human race stands to be obliterated.
Really they should know better, because the two events are not remotely comparable. The Holocaust actually happened. The destruction of the earth by man-made global warming hasn't happened yet, ….
Sceptics, say the believers, don't care about the future of the human race. But being sceptical has always been one of the best ways of caring about the future of the human race. For example, it was from scepticism that modern medicine emerged, questioning the common belief that diseases were caused by magic, or could be cured by it.

George Monbiot is outraged.

Al Gore is going for the spiritual angle in his Inconvenient Truth sequel. Since we now have a legal ruling: environmentalism (climate change specifically) is akin to a religion, Al may be on a winner.

Can I get a rhetorical beatdown on Aisle 1, please?

Lil' Cthulhu is.

This is awesome, I wish they'd do more.

-Ren

This certainly needs no other write up: Russian hairdresser knocks out guy who attempted to robs her store, locks him in a utility closet, and then rapes him for three days.

You can blame snoopyh42 for this one.

GOOD MORNING!

-Ren