[ignobel awards] and the dignity of plants

Video via Instapundit

Here is the 2008 list:

The "18th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony" was held on 2 October 2008 at Harvard University's Sanders Theatre.

• Archaeology: Astolfo Gomes de Mello Araujo and Jose Carlos Marcelino, for showing that armadillos can mix up the contents of an archaeological site.

• Biology: Marie-Christine Cadiergues, Christel Joubert, and Michel Franc, for discovering that fleas that live on dogs jump higher than fleas that live on cats.

• Chemistry: Sheree Umpierre, Joseph Hill, and Deborah Anderson, for discovering that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide, and C.Y. Hong, C.C. Shieh, P. Wu, and B.N. Chiang for proving it is not.

• Cognitive science: Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Hiroyasu Yamada, Ryo Kobayashi, Atsushi Tero, Akio Ishiguro, and Ágota Tóth, for discovering that slime molds can solve puzzles.

• Economics: Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tyber, and Brent Jordan, for discovering that exotic dancers earn more when at peak fertility.

• Literature: David Sims, for his study "You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations".

• Medicine: Dan Ariely for demonstrating that expensive placebos are more effective than inexpensive placebos.

• Nutrition: Massimiliano Zampini and Charles Spence, for demonstrating that food tastes better when it sounds more appealing.

• Peace: The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology and the citizens of Switzerland, for adopting the legal principle that plants have dignity.

• Physics: Dorian Raymer and Douglas Smith, for proving that heaps of string or hair will inevitably tangle.

Let's look at the peace award a moment longer. Yep, it appears to be genuine:

The ECNH has also published a report on the consequences the constitutional definition of the dignity of living beings will have for our treatment of plants.

Practical Ethics addresses this thorny question:

This respect for plant dignity does not extend much outside science (or rather, the ethics committee). While most rules about handling animals apply regardless on whether they are in a lab or are someone's pet, it seems that Swiss gardeners are allowed to do whatever they want to their plants.

They can treat plants as instruments, create new ecological relationships or arbitrarily harm or destroy them (for example when weeding) with no legal repercussions. It is also hard to come up with a less dignified treatment than being cooked and eaten, yet this is the fate of many vegetables.

Maggie's Farm raises the question of how far this thing can be taken. This now effectively criminalizes Vegans who are clearly obsessed with non-animal food sources and are therefore dangerously psychotic. Cleve Baxter, father of the polygraph, maintained, in the 60s, that plants did indeed have feelings:

He also discovered that plants were aware of each other, mourned the death of anything (even the bacteria killed when boiling water is poured down the drain), strongly disliked people who killed plants carelessly or even during scientific research, and fondly remembered and extended their energy out to the people who had grown and tended them, even when their "friends" were far away in both time and space.

Gosh, you only need go as far as the Ents in Lord of the Rings to know they don't appreciate being mistreated by Orcs and the like. Do you mistreat plants? Do you maliciously chop a cabbage or gouge the stalk out of a tomato?

Leaving all that aside, it is not a greeny issue nor a party political one that most people I know adore the country stroll and the leafy nature of roadsides - property values are often higher where there is copious foliage too. Yet they'll still sit down to a dish with three veg and not feel any qualms.

I eat meat and veg in equal proportions, at least when I'm not being a pauper.

[duff equipment] the bane of the poor soldier

Pinnacle Dragon Skin

To bring us up to speed on this body-armour business, BAE has paid out to the U.S. over zylon, a defective component of body-armour which degrades over time. What made me smile was:

Gregory Katsas, the assistant attorney general for the Civil Division, said: "The Justice department will not tolerate its first responders wearing defective bullet-proof vests."

Hmmm. You might like to read this and this, by James Cleverley, which refer to substandard equipment and shortages for UK troops. It includes a video which should make your heart run cold. [Update - it would if they hadn't taken it down.]

I cobbled together an article a long time back on the vests themselves - here. This was linked to a site called Defense Tech, which runs a few articles on the issue. This article castigated the U.S., not the UK for a piece of nicely-awarded defence contracting which did not take into account the ultimate safety of troops, in this specific case, body armour again.

Essentially, Defense Tech asked:

Why the negative statements about Pinnacle Armor to Margaret Warner on News Hour with Jim Lehrer Armor for U.S. Troops In Iraq (Jan. 11, 2006) and why Major General Jeffrey A. Sorenson's, Col. John Norwood's, Col. Thomas Spoehr's negative statements about Dragon Skin in their recent news briefings?

These denials either show ignorance of the facts, a lack of knowledge of the available ballistic data, outright lies or are deliberately deceptive.Well, this is due to the fact that the military has (for years) outsourced these types of positions at Natick and PEO to [certain] civilians, instead of maintaining them within the military.

Unlike military personnel these civilians do not have the same level of oversight or controls on them to maintain the typical checks and balances necessary to ensure true and unbiased evaluation of performance-based products (like SOV/Dragon Skin, for instance) for the protection of the America's soldiers.

So you see, it is really rich for the U.S. to single out the UK for approbation, bad though the UK provision is.

[labyrinth 2] publish and be damned

There are different types of anger - annoyance, earthquake anger and then there is the type where there is little outward sign but inside there is a very deep, silent anger over some injustice or other.

This is the type I feel this evening and yet it is at odds with the mood in RL. Actually I've had two successes in the past two days and am right chuffed about that, as the pieces start to fall into place. So in terms of general mood, everything is hunky dory.

The problem is that I have seen three emails in that same time which show what can only be called the treachery of friends. The last post on the matter mentioned this. My friend said tonight and he's not one to mince words, that I am a "guppie being slowly encircled by sharks who are moving in for the kill".

Now I don't know if that is so but I know I am incensed by one particular email tonight which spoke of my "imagined version" of events at Blogpower. Sorry - I think you mean the chronological order of events as they occurred, don't you, which has nothing whatsoever to do with "interpretation"?

It goes on to ask why I, as admin, who called for someone's expulsion at BP for publishing a private email not his own, should now be publishing private emails myself. So let's look at this email from the previous post:

"In fact James carried on as if nothing had happened in one way, visiting us and commenting, as we did too ... it was all just so bizarre."

Now perhaps I'm completely wrong but it seems to me that posting this fragment, related directly to me, is a teensy weensy bit different from publishing a whole damned email of someone else's in a group mailing list. I was then accused of being dictatorial for insisting on his expulsion. Then I was accused of being wishy-washy. Now which one was it?

The best one of all was the question of why am I stirring all this up now. That's a real corker, that question. Let me answer it please. Have you seen, in the past two months or even earlier, any reference to this sort of subject matter on this blog? Has any reader on this blog seen a post like this current one from me, in this mood and using this strength of language? Does any reader think that my usual blog persona is that of an "angry-blogger" like, say, DK?

Of course not.

So why then would I suddenly burst out with all this, out of the blue so to speak? Wouldn't it be more intelligent to conclude that there might be the tiniest little bit of provocation behind it? Actually, what there was was a litany of untruths and distortions about events and the reasons behind them. Worse though were assumptions of guilt on my part and assumptions of innocence on the part of the one who was accused. It is the assumptions by "friends" which is the most galling.

As someone else emailed me this evening, a true friend: "People who do these things are not your friends."

So we come to the statement that I tried to ride into Blogpower as a great king [see that motif again] and take it over again. Makes a good story but it actually happened like this: I was approached about coming back to BP. After all, I'd made peace with everyone and we seemed to be back on an even keel. Yes, I replied, just as soon as that person who should have been thrown out is thrown out. The reply came back to me that that would be a very long time. Next there was a post on their mailing list that I had tried to dictate to them from outside BP who could and couldn't be a member.

[UPDATE October 11th: Blogpower have taken issue with the last sentence in the last paragraph here in particular. The "post" was a message put up by Matt Wardman at the time and others concurred. It gave the impression as I've just stated and Matt further commented along the lines of,"It's just James sh-- stirring again." I saw this message but not being in BP now, I can't say what would have happened to it. Of course it may have been removed by now.]

Sorry, there was just the one. Just one.

Someone else wrote to me about an hour ago [this thing's like an iceberg] that "you shouldn't worry about them as you have support you don't even realize in the blogosphere." To that, my friend has just answered: "You do at the moment but they're clearly doing their level best to undermine that."

"Should I have posted nothing?" I asked.

"You're damned if you do, you're dead if you don't."

Better to be damned. I'm guilty all right - of sweeping the injustice done on me under the carpet. Bizarre, eh? Well, I'm now sick to death of the assumptions, the distortions and the lies. It may be the end of nourishing obscurity as we know it, it may not. But one thing runs through the mind:

"Publish and be damned."

[tube quiz 1] did you know these

1 There is only one tube station name which does not have any letters of the word "mackerel" in it - which? SJW

2 There are only two tube stations which have all five vowels in them - which? MH, SE

3 ___________ has the shortest escalator on the system - 50 steps. CL

4 The shortest distance between tube stations is ____ to _____ on the Piccadilly line - 0.16 miles. LS, CG

5 The most popular route for tourists is _____ to _____ on the Piccadilly line. It is quicker to walk this distance than travel on the tube. LS, CG

6 The phrase "Mind the Gap" originated on the ________ line. N

7 The Jubilee line was originally going to be called the ________ line. F

8 ________ station on the Piccadilly line was the first to use kestrels and hawks to kill pigeons and stop them setting up homes in stations. N

9 The line covers the longest route - from West Ruislip to Epping you will travel 34 miles without changing. C

10 For non Brits - what is the name commonly given to the London Underground? T


Rsswean

St John's Wood, Mansion House and South Ealing, Chancery Lane, Leicester Square to Covent Garden, Leicester Square to Covent Garden, Northern, Fleet, Northfields, Central, the Tube

[odd one out] it'll make you cry

Who is the odd one out? None of them - they've all cried in public.

How do you feel about public figures crying in public? Women are always saying men should emote more but when they do, they are vilified. Should they cry? Should they not cry?

Another question - you might know who they are [above] and well done but where and when did they cry? Here is Roy crying:



If that was a little too much for you, here's a video to redress the balance:


Famous Cry Babies - The funniest videos clips are here

[the crisis] hang in there

The overwhelming lesson of history is that when the credit system collapses around a nation's ears, fear and gloom are the only things people can see. No one believes economists, as they disagree on how best to tackle the problem and the result is a run on the credit institutions.

Roosevelt gave his "the only thing we have to fear is fear" speech at such a time and the finance loves him for it in getting America off gold. What he did do though was inspire with confidence and in the end, that's all he had to do. Confidence that the government would not fall thereby backed the [now] fiat dollars and the people got through it but not until the leaders' luvverly war had devastated the world.

It's simple logic - either you maintain confidence in the government or the fiat system collapses completely and the results of that don't bear thinking about. Very difficult in our country to be confident in Gordo and yet Gordo himself doesn't back the fiat pound. If you have goods at home, if your home is yours and if you work on spending within your means, a near impossible thing today, then you will live a frugal lifestyle but survive.

It would help to have some spare cash, of course, to buy up some depressed assets whilst you were there.

[sydney substandard] well what's new

Melbourne skyline

So Paul Keating has attacked Sydney eateries? Well, what's new in that? If you want decent food, go to Melbourne, the restaurant capital of Australia.

[labyrinth] twists and turns of the unstraight

There are such bizarre things going on behind the scenes right now that it is like a bad B movie - you know, the one where someone comes out and says something is happening and most people say, "There, there, take your tablets, Jamesie," until he is eventually smothered in mire.

Just now, I had the misfortune to see an email, from July, which had been doctored. I know this because in the original, it was mainly about a particular blogger and a little over one paragraph about me but in the doctored version it is one paragraph about him and a diatribe about me.

[THIS FRAGMENT HAS NOW BEEN REMOVED BY REQUEST ON OCTOBER 10TH]

Right, I have to say there are a few of us on this case at the moment, some quite extraordinary things have come to light and it points very strongly to our emails being hacked, doctored and distributed as if they were original. Let alone the gross disloyalty of supposed friends, of which one we are fairly certain has the technical expertise to bring this off.

And this author calls my actions bizarre?

Certain people have felt complete freedom to slander me behind the scenes in the past months, whilst smiling on my blog but more particularly in the last week and one name keeps popping up, the common link, a non-visitor, always close to the action and a total innocent. Now that's no surprise but what on earth has come over the others?

The answer is partly in the word "appeasement".

Why would I continue to hobnob with someone who has poured dirt on me and put about the diametric opposite of the truth in most cases? Why would I hobnob with someone who chooses to select certain incidents and present them in such a way that he/she is a babe in arms but I look like a dangerously edgy character?

I think the motivation is fairly clear, wouldn't you say? Either that or they clearly don't have the antennae to see that I usually go back to friendly relations because:

1. I don't hold grudges, don't like feuds and prefer to forget something, once it is over;
2. I prefer to just blog and create things rather than spend my life on dirty slanging matches;
3. I ultimately have faith in human nature, to my detriment;
4. I see it as their problem, not mine.

I wonder if the appeasement theorists have ever heard the expression "olive branch"? No? The down side of this - and it has been commented on this blog by some friends I do consider loyal - is that by putting up with things and letting them continue, true friends depart, perplexed and a bit upset.

I know how true friends act, I know how true friends very much do not act. Trouble is, when a friend receives an email from another blogger whom he has always thought is a pukkha sahib and that sender has misinformed him by passing on some tidbit, he then goes back to my blog with new eyes, sees some perplexing comments by me out of context and starts to come to conclusions.

This is how character assassination works - a little bit here, a few skewed comments there, damning with faint praise and so on. It is never a frontal assault, such as I have been known to do. It's always behind the scenes , heavy with innuendo and half-completed sentences and the one who is the target carries on, oblivious to his every word being scrutinized for juicy morsels.

What's the purpose? Well, in most cases, perhaps they don't think that far along - everyone likes to ooh and ah and tut tut, after all. In one or two cases though, it is much more to an agenda. Watch what happens to me in Bloghounds in the next few days and you'll see what I mean. There are interesting things going down there.

That reminds me of the accusation doing the rounds that I really love - that my megalomaniacal reason for helping start Blogpower and then Bloghounds was to lord it over a group as a god. Does that sound like my rhetoric, by the way? And if it were so, why would I be forever stepping down, urging devolution, asking others to be admins? Seems strange behaviour for a megalomaniac.

In the end, one has two choices:

1. Seek out, identify and answer every allegation and misconstruction one by one, wasting time, wasting nerves and playing to someone else's agenda, hanging on to something already lost;
2. Identify areas of one's life which are giving grief and excise them, keeping the eyes focused on the main issues - true friendships, job and personal blog.

Last volley - everything I have written at Blogpower, Bloghounds and on this blog is true. Look over, scrutinize my better posts where I get my teeth into some issue, link by link by link and at the end I ask that if I have made any factual error, please correct me. Why should I be capable of that in posts and yet not in real life?

When I say I have evidence, then I do. When I have a reason for not using it, there is a reason., a sound reason. When I'm on a case, then there is a case. When I don't have enough for a final conclusion, I present it as an open-ended question. I'm my own worst enemy in later backtracking in the interests of peace and harmony. That is a stupid thing I do because it detracts from what had gone before. Someone once said I was a cow who gave good milk and then kicked the bucket over. Perhaps.

This blog will continue because even though this post concentrates on negatives, there are many, many other positives which are a bit unsung and there are so many issues to blog on. I wouldn't die for my blog, no way but it is certainly a nice outlet and point of communication.

So to hell with the detractors and let's see what tomorrow brings.

[inhumanity] to the defenceless

Liz's photo

I simply can't run the photo from Eurodog's site as it is so upsetting so I'll run a nice shot instead. One truly wonders what the term "human" signifies in the case of those "people" - it's truly sick. Please sign the petition there.

[bailout] explanation for the unitiated

Looking at the U.S., which is not a bad analogy for other parts of the world in terms of bailouts, where is the money coming from? One answer:

The IndyMac debacle is taking a large bite out of FDIC reserves, and if scores of other banks fail in the year ahead, the fund will be depleted. Taxpayers will have to step in.

... and:

To help pay for these bailouts, the government sells securities. And right now, there's plenty of demand because those securities are considered safe in the midst of all the turmoil.

... and:

Lest you think the Fed has run out of ammunition, the central bank, the WSJ reports, has roughly $400 billion left at its disposal and it has a few aces up its sleeves, including lowering interest rates.

... and:

The government hopes to someday sell the toxic securities it buys from the banks.

A certain amount is debt to other countries and though China looms large in this, it is not 50% of total debt, it's far less. China does not seem likely to refuse to fund more debt even though they might not be keen to:

If foreigners like the Chinese go on a buyers’ strike then - it was suggested - the US might resort to printing more money, and that would cause inflation - and a fall in the dollar and in the value of all those treasury bills held by China.

The key might be in the last quote - printing money. Here is a good guide for beginners, despite the look of it. It says that the government can either print money or change the balance sheet, selling securities to the private sector. It goes on:

The true structural cause of persistent high inflation is a fiscal deficit that is not eliminated with cuts in spending and/or increases in (non-seignorage) taxes.

Standard advice to overcome inflation includes selling shorter, which is what we are seeing - short term buybacks. Even at 0%, it is a safe haven for investors as long as the government guarantee of its fiat money is believed by the people.

In the end, this is the critical point. The government is owned by the Fed in real terms, which is owned by groups like Morgan who make a killing in times such as these, who then decide who is bailed out and who is not.

The moment you mention groups like Morgan, you are talking the world money houses and the real government and so we are back, legally as it turns out, dependent on their agenda. In other words, the people, in the end, are owned by the old money and subject to its whims for unrest, war and any other turmoil they care to finance.

This is the S and C syndrome [short and curlies]. It's a simple enough rule. If there is an almighty conflagration in the offing, it clearly needs funding and the old money needs to top up its coffers in order to finance it. Crash-depression-unrest-war ... the old formula every time.