Hypermobility

Martin Kelly joins us once more with a lengthy piece on hypermobility and the new feudalism. It reaises questions over the issues of expats and the loss of community. If you get a chance, check out his quite different blog which now, sadly is only an archive but what an archive.

Having been very graciously invited to join an expat's blog, one must be careful in one's choice of words on this subject - but one cannot help but wonder whether the current fetish for hypermobility is one of the most regressive social developments in history.

This morning Paul Craig Roberts (whom God preserve) writes:

"Although it should be working on its corporate ethics, BAE Systems is working on an "Onboard Threat Detection System." The system consists of tiny cameras and microphones implanted in airline seats. The Onboard Threat Detection System records every facial expression and every whisper of every passenger, allowing watchful eyes and ears to detect terrorists before they can strike. BAE says its system is so sophisticated that it can differentiate between nervous flyers and real terrorists.

Think about this for a moment. Aside from the Big Brother aspect, the Onboard Threat Detection System is either redundant or the security authorities have no confidence in the expensive and intrusive airport security through which passengers are herded."

One would have thought that the easiest way of reducing terrorism on aircraft would be to reduce the number of flights; but perhaps sticking to our routines of going on holiday to countries like Egypt and Turkey, places where jihadists can actually kill you and where our very presence is considered by some to be an act of aggression, is a manifestation of a kind of 'Dunkirk spirit' which is otherwise notably, and shockingly, absent in a nation allegedly at war.

It's not so much 'Keep the home fires burning' as 'Keep the engines turning' that's now what counts. The natural conclusion to be drawn from this is that it is government policy to prefer that citizens be exposed to the risk of mid-air terrorism rather than to ground planes. Although I used to love the excitement of flying - the anticipation of travelling, of the act of doing something out of the routine - since 9/11 I have not been an enthusiastic flyer; I'm not afraid of saying I now prefer to use other means of transport where at all possible.

By the same token, the hypermobility madness flies in the face of what we are told to believe are immutable truths concerning the state of the environment; and is also irreconcilable with what we are told the technologies available to us can actually do.

For example if any government wishes to cut carbon emissions from aircraft then there is a very starightforward tool available to them with which they can do so; tax business travel out of existence. When business travellers are all already likely to have Blackberrys and mobile internet and the benefit of extremely competitive mobile phone rates, why do they actually need to travel out their front doors at all?

When such technologies are able to increase personal interconnectivity across the globe to a degree that would have seemed impossible even 25 years ago, what is so special about their particular travel requirements that they can't just do what they have to do by picking up the phone?

Or sending an e-mail? As a wise man once said, 'There are no easy answers, only simple answers', for sure; but that seems to be a particularly simple answer which might go some way towards solving a problem which we are told is particularly pressing.

What's the problem?

But the same fetish for hypermobility, in fact it's encouragement as policy, acts as a negative force in terms of travel within nations as without.

Anecdotal, personal evidence is never the best - but my family's history of home ownership helps illustrate the point.

My maternal grandfather (1894-1950) was a prosperous businessman, probably a millionaire in today's terms; but he never owned a house. My paternal grandfather (1907-1984), in his pomp only a very slightly less successful businessman, only ever owned one, which he bought at the age of 46. My parents (both war babies) have owned two properties over the course of their married life, and have been in their current home for over four decades.

My brother, a relatively late entrant to the housing market on account of his having spent the first few years of his working life as part of the Scots diaspora in London, is on his second property, having bought his first home aged 27. I am also in my second property, having first bought aged 26 - I anticipate moving at least once more. My sister is now in her fourth property, having first bought aged 19.

Whether or not this new mobility is a consequence of more liberal borrowing arrangements or the availability of a wider range of mortgage tools or greater social expectations or perhaps even of changes to the labour market, I don't know; but if the experience of me and my kin is not unusual, what it does seem to illustrate is that the property ladder, and property dealing and trading, plays a far bigger role in our economic lives than it used to - and that while we're all buying and selling properties like billy-o, we're not pursuing other, perhaps equally productive , activities.

To extrapolate this greater mobility to what I for one consider to be its logical conclusion, the effect of all this accumulated movement might be quite pernicious in that it has the potential to completely break the bonds we hold in common. Man has always been a hunter-gatherer, with the difference between now and the Ice Ages being that we hunt in the office from Monday to Friday and gather in Tesco at the weekend; but this mobility might just have the capacity to turn us back from living in settled communities towards the nomadic state - or, worse than nomads, into a state which we eradicated from our culture a very long time ago.

Vassals

From different perspectives both Tim Worstall and The Pub Philosopher have commented on how London prices might be being driven up by investors, usually City types on phone number bonuses. While that particular cause would not necessarily duplicate across the country, its effect would - the bonus hounds drive up the price of London property; the Cockneys realise they can make a killing, so sell up and move to Anglesey/Aviemore/Cornwall; the prices in A/A/C thus get driven up; and Daffydd, Hamish and Jethro get priced out of the local market.

The more this happens the worse off more people become. People become lifelong tenants, just as my grandfather was, without ever being able to invest in property.

Add to this that we are now more heavily indebted than we have ever been and that our collective prosperity seems to depend as much upon inherently unstable places maintaining their fragile stability and the goodwill of the Chinese Communists, and the picture becomes, to these eyes, bleak.

But lifelong dispossession from the property market is not as low as this scenario might take us. Not by a long chalk.

When sufficiently few people own a sufficient volume of property, it is inevitable that they will organise; and when that happens, the risk of liberty being diminished, and of the resurrection of feudalism, becomes real.

The New Feudal Order need not establish itself by pillage, invasion or droit de seigneur; all it needs are a few tweaks to the letting agreement and a sufficiently high number of people desperate to house themselves and their families.

Our culture of debt has impoverished our children; it remains to be seen whether it will one day make them serfs.

And if that happens, all those who shouted the joys of fluid housing might care to mind Adam Smith's injunction that there is 'much ruin in a nation'; and behold what they have done, and reflect that there is just as much ruin in a market.

[If you haven't already read the Devil's Kitchen's earlier piece, Prion for your Thoughts, you'd best get there straight away. It can't be missed.]

Prion for your thoughts

DK pops over with the stunning news about rogue proteins and how they might not be all they're cracked up to be. Read on, if you dare: 

Whilst Fabian Tassano rails—quite correctly—against the Marxist bias in many (if not all) universities, and politicians use the climate change orthodoxy to justify yet more tax rises, it is perhaps a salutory time to emphasise the danger in dogma. One of very first essays that your humble Devil wrote for his—prematurely aborted—microbiology degree was on the subject of BSE and, of course, CJD. Both of these are in a group of diseases, that also includes scrapie, known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). 

It was research into these TSEs that threw up the concept of the prion, a protein that effectively acted as an infectious agent, for these conditions, in a way that no one had previously thought possible. For various reasons, these prions acted utterly unlike any other protein described: they were, for instance, able to infect cross-species (e.g. from cow to human) as well as survive unprecedented rigours of heat and intestinal digestion whilst retaining both their form and virulence. 

At the time that I wrote the essay, I considered prions to be a deeply dubious idea and I remained convinced that they were only a symptom of the disease. My chemical and biological learning—including my Biology A Level experimental project, which involved the investigation (and poisoning with heavy metals, etc.) of various proteins—led me to conclude that the prion concept was absolute bollocks and that there must, therefore, be another transmissive agent. 

Unfortunately, my microbiology tutor disagreed and refused to mark the piece (although she did acknowledge that it was written well, if in a somewhat flippant style). Flicking through an old edition of New Scientist—the February 17 2007 issue—I see that, finally, some people in the scientific community are coming around to my way of thinking.

VIRUSES, not prions, may be at the root of diseases such as scrapie, BSE and vCJD.The widely accepted theory of what causes these so-called "transmissible spongiform encephalopathies" (TSEs), such as mad cow disease, is that deformed proteins called prions corrupt other brain proteins, eventually clogging and destroying brain cells. But this theory has never been proved completely.

Or, if we are being truthful, at all; however, that hasn't stopped a great many scientists making Doomsday proclamations with an ever-increasing desperation in order to secure vast amounts of public money.

Laura Manuelidis of Yale University has insisted for years that virus-like particles observed in TSE-infected brains may be the culprits, but since such brains are degenerating, the particles have been dismissed as general debris. However, when Manuelidis studied the particles in cultures of neural cells infected with two particular strains of scrapie and CJD, she found they contained particles that had clustered in regular arrays, as viruses do in cells - and no apparent prions (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 104, p 1965). Cells with more particles were better at infecting other cell cultures, while boosting prions did not appear to increase their infectiousness or particle numbers. Agents that disrupt viruses stopped the cells infecting other cultures.

Generally speaking, if it looks like a virus, acts like a virus and quacks infects like a virus, it's a virus. Needless to say, those with a vested interest really are not happy with this idea at all.

However, leading prion researcher Adriano Aguzzi of the University Hospital of Zurich in Switzerland says Manuelidis won't prove her case without isolating the proposed virus and showing it causes TSE. She should also test other strains for these particles and see if her infected cultures cause TSE in animals, he says.

Despite Aguzzi's challenge, what Manuelidis has found tallies nicely, not only with my own opinion but also with observed practice: I have no doubt that she will obtain the proof that is needed. For, whilst we should beware of basing ideas merely on what we already know, in science—as in almost every other field of endeavour—we should hold true to the principle of Occam's Razor. 

So, what is the least complex interpretation—that the transmissive agent is of a type that we already know, or that we should attempt to explain a hitherto unthought-of (and, indeed, observation-defying) group of complex structures? If we combine Occam's Razor with what we know of all other proteins, the prion-as-pathogen theory has never been credible to anyone with a wider knowledge of proteins or of infective agents. 

Scandalously—and despite the consistent non-fulfillment of the dire death toll predictions, and the lack of success in replicating the infection path—this has not stopped the prion theory becoming the "concensus" amongst politicians and scientists either too ignorant to know or too greedy to care. Now that we have found evidence for a tenable, and logical, hypothesis for transmission, it is my hope that we may see some sensible theories brought to light in the TSE debate. 

One can only hope that something similar happens to the climate change "concensus"—a dogma which has far more potential for damage to both our prosperity and our personal liberty—before this stupidity causes the sort of death toll that has utterly failed to materialise under the prion orthodoxy. (For more of my writings on this subject, including a fair amount of very strong language, see here, here and here.) (Cross-posted later on today at The Devil's Kitchen.)

[komodo dragon] imagine one of these coming at you

Watchoo lookin at, eh?

I recently made certain references to those who purport to govern us:

I thumb my nose and blow a raspberry in your general direction, you rattlesnakes, you komodo dragons, at least until you squash me with your pythonesque foot.

Upon reflection, I feel this may have been a bit OTT, particularly after researching the poor creature whom I insulted in the post. And its foot is nothing like pythonesque. Some Wiki facts to set us straight [I know you all swear by Wiki]:

The largest verified wild specimen was 3.13 metres long and weighed 166 kg, including undigested food. Komodo Dragons have a tail that is as long as the body, as well as about 60 frequently-replaced serrated teeth that may be 2.5 centimetres in length.

I love this next bit:

They have red, blood-like saliva, because their teeth, which are almost completely covered by their gums, slice their own gums while feeding. This creates an ideal culture for the virulent bacteria that live in their mouths. It also has a long, yellow, snake-like tongue.

Think you can outrun them?

With the help of a favourable wind, they may be able to detect carrion up to 8.5 kilometres away. They are capable of running rapidly in brief sprints up to 20 kilometres per hour.

Outswim them?

They are excellent swimmers, diving up to 4.5 metres.

What about climbing a tree?

They climb trees proficiently through use of their strong claws. To catch prey that is out of reach, they may stand on their hind legs and use their tails as a support. As they grow older, their claws are used primarily as weapons, as their great mass makes climbing impractical for adults.

Although they eat mostly carrion, studies show that they also hunt live prey with a stealthy approach followed by a sudden short charge. When suitable prey arrives near its ambush site, it will suddenly charge at the animal and go for the underside or the throat.

What if you escape by some miracle?

The bacteria in the mouth cause septicemia in their victim; if an initial bite does not kill the prey animal and it escapes, it will commonly succumb within a week to the resulting infection.

Still, little chance of that, eh?

Komodo Dragons eat by tearing large chunks of flesh while holding their food down with their forelegs, then swallowing it whole. The copious amounts of red saliva that the Komodo dragons produce help to lubricate the food, but swallowing is still a long process (15-20 minutes to swallow a goat).

But all is not lost:

Because of their slow metabolisms, large dragons may only eat 12 meals a year. Whew! So you're as safe as houses. First you'd have to go to Indonesia. Then you'd need to be present around the time of its monthly meal. Then again, if you threw it a goat, you'd be fine.

Perhaps. Hmmm.

Still, have a lovely night. Sleep tight.

[democracy] plutocracy or meritocracy

Wil Robinson opens and closes with two excellent statements which are so close to the truth as to be uncanny:

The struggle for true democracy continues in many parts of the world, but the global battle we are told to fear – against the militant Islamic fundamentalists – is simply a distraction.

The real fight is within our own societies over which system will wield power in the world: A representative democracy with power resting in the hands of the many; or an authoritarian plutocracy that manipulates information to suit the elite’s own greed.

Because the ‘civilizations’ clashing aren’t Muslim vs. Christian or Muslim vs. Jew, nor is it East vs. West. It’s a clash in our own communities, our own nations, between the privileged and the oppressed. It’s a fight among those with a voice and those being silenced.

It’s a battle in our own backyard, between democracy for the many and authoritarianism perpetrated by the few.

After that we differ because I think the Democrats are just as bad, if not worse, plus they're hypocrites. I think Wil is wrong about Pelosi, who was well out of order, as Cheney said [sorry to agree with Kissinger's successor]. Wil might have something about Israel but seemingly ignores the other side's appalling behaviour.

However, the source, or at least the exacerbation of, all the trouble is most definitely and demonstrably the financial cabals and their organs.

So, what of meritocracy? Yes, what of it?

[old poll down] new poll up

Which current election campaign is the most interesting:

French 23%

American 46%

British 15%

Canadian 0%

Other 15%

13 votes total

Posted by Colin Campbell on April 9, 2007

The Australian Election is interesting because the Liberals, although the economy is strong, are looking tired and Labor has a charismatic and electable leader. Interesting to see what Rabbits they try to pull out to get the polls going there way.

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Posted by Dave Petterson on April 8, 2007

None of the above. They are all boring.

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Posted by James on April 8, 2007

The French is interesting, certainly and the participants easy on the eye but the American is more up in the air, with more at stake. The Canadian seems to me a foregone conclusion and the British campaign is dire.

New poll: The direst threat we face is:

# Police state
# Climate change
# Earth destruction
# Consumer debt
# Social breakdown
# State of education
# Warmongerers

# Leisure time loss
# Bad sex
# Idiots
# Other

Kelly's Theory Of Productivity

has been expounded in the 'Comments' section here and here.

It is this -

"In a global labour market, overall productivity gains equal zero; or, globalisation is productivity dilution."

(Cross-posted on 'The Devil's Kitchen').

(Update, April 11 2006 -

This is a quite perfect illustration of the perils of blogging late at night and early in the morning, and of trying to be profound while sober. Brethren of the Cybersphere, take note.

Kelly's Revised Theory of Productivity reads,

"In a global labour market the overall gains occasioned from productivity growth equal zero: or, globalisation is productivity dilution."

Well, that's the Nobel gone for another year...)

Thanks a lot for this, Martin. Food for thought, especially if one reads the linked comments sections. My personal reply is below.