[thought for the day] wednesday evening

This post is dedicated to Calum Carr, Bendy Girl and all the others out there who are in similar positions.

Cheer up - the worst is yet to come!

[Philander Chase Johnson - 1920]

Before you get angry with me, let me explain:

In 1989, in Finland, I came off the end of a bobsleigh run, sailed through the troposphere and landed halfway down the hill.

In the hospital, two orderlies took my hand, braced their feet against the bed and hauled it so that the wrist bone went back inside the skin.

What gets you through things like that are prayer and cracks like, "Hey doc, they're trying to steal my hand," and other such corn.

Zero to do with courage - just a simple defense mechanism - true fear in fact.

On the 15th of this month my appeal is decided. If successful, things continue pretty much as they were. If not, for reasons I can't publicly write here, it's the end of the line [smiles to himself].

My mate, not being appraised of the fine print, felt it was less dramatic than that until I explained the ... er ... complications of me going out there.

He's in more shock now than I actually am and looking for solutions.

The interesting thing is the effect on the psyche when something is hanging over you - you've all had it at some time or other - and you almost wish to get it over and done with. Sometimes a strange levity comes over a person.

And so the days of May drag on and nice things happen like an angry sunset this evening after today's storm, a girl who unexpectedly didn't wish me to leave this afternoon, many friendly faces and a nice cheesecake.

You have to laugh.

Just to make us all feel better, here's a photo, courtesy of Julie, of tomorrow morning's sunrise.

And a giggle from Brummie Mum.

Each night for this week until he 15th, I'll try to present one musical piece:

boomp3.com

Lyrics here if you're interested.

Have a nice night, readers.

[komodo] looking for a pet?

Why run this post again? As Jim Carrey said, in The Mask:

Because I just gotta ...

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.

Have a lovely night. Sleep tight.

[heraldry] blogger family crests

You'll possibly recall this recent post and it appears some of our fellow bloggers already have crests:

Wonko, who's about to fly off to Gordotaxland:

First found in Lancashire where they [the Parrs] were seated from early times and their first records appeared on the early census rolls taken by the early Kings of Britain to determine the rate of taxation of their subjects.

Cherie, who shares a very famous surname:

I did a little check and it seems 'We Jeffersons' have one already! But my ancestors seem to have been from the Whitby area! That being the case I can't tell you which county I was born in!!!

It appears JMB has a few as well but she's not showing.

Lord Nazh appears to have one though:

First found in Leicestershire, where the Martin family was seated from very early times. The family was granted lands by Duke William of Normandy, their liege Lord, for their distinguished assistance at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 A.D.

For many English families, the political and religious disarray that plagued their homeland made the frontiers of the New World an attractive prospect.

[food crisis] price fixing, deregulation and other goodies

Quite frankly, we are in the grip of gonzo-economics right now when speculative funds poured into wheat futures and stockpiling in the U.S. and Europe cause a Japanese butter shortage.

There was always bilateral and multilateral trade and there've been depressions but the rhetoric now is about "global" food prices and "global" downturns - everything global, including good old monopolies, of which more later.

Excellent article over at International Political Will on food prices.

So, for example, just as an interesting thought for you, there are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class. That’s bigger than America. Their middle class is larger than our entire population,” Bush said.

Not so fast:

According to the McKinsey Global Institute, the number of middle class Indians is only 50 million (defined as having an annual income between $10,000-20,000). It’s difficult to claim that just 50 million Indians are having more impact than 300 million Americans…so Bush went ahead and “fudged” the numbers.

The Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh said: “Bush has never been known for his knowledge of economics. And he has just proved once again how comprehensively wrong he is. To say that the demand for food in India is causing increase in global good prices is completely wrong.”

More importantly, there is the matter of scale. The average American consumes 1,046 kilograms of grain each year – the average Indian consumes 178 kg. That means in terms of global impact, each American equates to ten Indians.

So here is a blatant example of hypocrisy, of apportioning blame elsewhere and of course - price fixing. If you feel price fixing is a myth, look at one of the areas less on the media's mind just now - the Roche, BASF and Rhône-Poulenc vitamin monopoly:

[T]hese are the same two global giants that masterminded the most rapacious price-fixing cartel in modern business history during the 1990s and got nailed with the largest criminal fines ever levied. Roche paid $954 million and BASF more than $500 million after entering guilty pleas with the US Department of Justice, Canada, Australia and the European Union.

When the cartel was exposed in 1999, Roche, BASF and Rhône-Poulenc (now Aventis) -- which escaped charges because it was the first cartel member to cooperate with the DOJ -- controlled about 75 percent of the $6-billion-a-year global vitamin business. They had used their industry dominance to pressure at least twelve smaller vitamin makers in Europe and Asia into an arrangement that top executives had taken to calling "Vitamins Inc."

But now, three years after the cartel was exposed, instead of having been reined in, Roche, BASF and Aventis/CVC (in November Aventis sold its vitamin business to CVC Capital Partners of London for an undisclosed sum) are close to grabbing a near-monopoly in the global production and distribution of vitamins, having increased their dominance to at least 85 percent of the global market.

Why should this be of concern? Because these vitamins are blended into feed grains for animals and that's global trade. Buy your vitamins from this cartel or be undercut. Business is business.

China itself is in the grip of price fixing:

The government accused Chinese instant noodle makers in August of pushing up food costs by illegally colluding to raise prices by up to 40 percent. It has given no indication whether it has evidence of illegal behavior by other producers.

The price surge, which began in mid-2007, has so far been limited to food and is blamed on shortages of pork and grain. The government raised gasoline and diesel prices in November to curb rising demand, but said that should add only 0.05 percentage points to monthly inflation.

The surge in food prices has been especially painful for China's poor majority, who spend up to half their incomes on food.

In simple terms, the mechanism is - deregulate markets, in move the cartels, monopolies are created and prices fixed - all causing immense instability. Example:

Deregulation in agricultural markets, like economic deregulation in many sectors, reached full tilt in the eighties and nineties. Trade and development economists preached the wonders of open markets, unfettered production, and industrial agriculture. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund conditioned loan policies on the elimination of government intervention in agricultural markets.

Global commodity agreements, price supports, and other mechanisms which helped keep global supplies and prices stable were dismantled. The World Trade Organization's Agreement on Agriculture, together with multi-lateral and bilateral agreements including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), slashed agricultural tariffs in the developing world, and opened up markets for a growing global agribusiness industry.

In the U.S., the 1996 Farm Bill eliminated the last vestiges of domestic price supports for most commodities and replaced them with a massive system of subsidies-the only thing left to prop up a farm economy in perpetual crisis. Market liberalization and the dumping of cheap commodities swamped small farmers here and abroad, pricing them out of local markets.

Cheap feed crops fueled industrial livestock production, increasing meat consumption and driving out small producers. The few independent farmers who stayed in farming shifted production to a few commodities including corn and soy that can be stored and shipped to distant markets.

Wonderful idea in an ideal world, deregulation but it cannot work. An analogy is livestock in a corral in a clearing. Stretching the analogy, imagine ravaging wolves in the surrounding forest. The fences are dismantled to allow the livestock to roam free and the result is pretty obvious.

Can we appeal to the wolves to act altruistically? So how can we regulate the wolves? With subsidies? And that's why we're paying more and more and can do absolutely nothing about it.

A previous article on the matter is here.

[thought for the day] tuesday evening

As Captain Masafumi Arima said to the brave young Kamikaze fliers as they took off:

I want to see a real do or die attitude out there today.

[pirates] answer these five, yer lubbers

1. Who eventually decapitated Edward Teach?

2. What terrible death did Henry Morgan suffer?

3. Jack Rackham is known for his two female fellow pirates. One was Mary Read - who was the other?

4. What happened at Captain Kidd's first hanging at Wapping?

5. Whom did Grace O'Malley petition at Greenwich?


Answers [usual method]
1. Lieutenant Robert Maynard; 2. not terrible - he possibly died of disease at his home; 3. Anne Bonny; 4. the rope broke; 5. Queen Elizabeth