a loss of confidence...

I have been listening to Dr Karl for some time. He occasionally complains about his slide down the scale of trustworthiness in the ABC surveys. Though he is still very credibly in the top 10. I would suggest that this is the reason why:

What the listeners are seeking is unbiased views of the world. They do not necessarily have to be correct, but they should be biased on good science. However Dr Karl occasionally makes the mistake of towing the line of the ABC. So when he gives a view on some topic that is to do with policy he takes the policy line rather than the good science line, even thought they may end up with the same outcome. This makes him a less trustworthy source of information. We do not want dogma, we want honest science.

I have no surveys or other analysis to back up this hypothesis.

fears of the internet

Today I was listening to an ABC podcast. They were talking about the phobia of pedophiles infecting the community at the moment and the extreme measures being taken to prevent them. They pointed out that the level of activity is very low and that children, as they have always been, are mostly at risk from their immediate family: fathers, brothers and uncles. It seems that there is much selective blindness is going on. It led me to have the following thoughts:

1. Many parents actually know next to nothing of the internet. This allows them to easily be led down the path of fear. For instance it is much harder to make the same claims about being afraid of pedophiles driving down the local street as the parents have lived through this themselves as children. What is happening on the internet is new and people are bewildered and afraid.
2. If you go around saying you are family friendly and thing that families are the best thing in the known universe it is hard to admit that they oft go wrong and sometimes are the worst placed in the universe. When I was a kid, had friends who I reckoned were safer living in the gutter or a garbage bin than at home. So lets blame the internet and ignore the most significant part of the problem. If they were serious they would attack the main problem.
   

This is not to say I think that the internet needs regulation, there needs to be social structures as anywhere in society. What I think is that it does not need fear mongering.

the benefit gained from decpit and deception

There is a major driver in the business world toward deceit and a major requirement for honesty and transparency. What we have here is a fundamental conflict that is part of the powerhouse that drives forward the economy and society.

Rambling commentary:

If one is in a car crash, and you know you made a mistake, you are told to lie about your liability. Or at the very least deny by omission. This is to limit the damages you may have to pay. It is also dishonest. The tax department would be very unhappy if you did this to limit your tax liability. So would the police. But it is ok to do it to non-government groups. Maximize your gain. Limit you losses. This is how the business world works. Hidden knowledge is beneficial to the profit statement. Yet this sometimes goes very wrong. For instance when the tobacco industry hid their knowldege of the health effects of tobacco, this can have deadly effects. It is in the benefit of too many people to change the rules. So they deflect the criticism to some bunch of people who are not powerful enough to fight back. For example, I saw a major catholic priest here in Sydney the other day quoted on the front page of a paper to say that we should ignore the problem of bad priests (his problem) and concentrate on another. When in reality we should concentrate on both. It is up to the society to determine what is bad and take appropriate action. But powerful vested interests direct the changes to ares where they are not involved. Another example: the recent slavery issue in China. This is what happens when an authority supresses questioning and say shit like you cannot question what we say and do because you will be considered to be disloyal and persecuted. You need to question and look. Ask the question why. I think the Germans understand only too well the need to question. So there is a force for disclosure, and there is a force saying, do what you are told and maintain deception. Complete disclosure does not work. Complete deception does not work. The trick is to know when which is appropriate and why.

More to come on this topic. It is very simple, yet has very complex results.

A cunning plan

Today, going through my mail there is a letter from Telstra Corporation offering me a dividend reinvestment scheme. These were all the rage a decade ago. Something must have changes because most have been abandoned. However, going against the trend Telstra is offering the scheme. Why? To get rid of all those (17%) future fund shares by stealth. It is quite a clever scheme. Of course if they did not have all these surplus shares, they would not be implementing this scheme. I will not partake as I am rejigging my finances as I buy a new place to live.

"just a minute" by jæms [?]

pol pot syndrome

Well, this is not really about Pol Pot. But a documentary on his regime caused me to have this though. So I will call it Pol Pot Syndrome.

I have been interested by the whole topic of purges and to what purpose they server. Obviously there is an overtly political one, to remove your competitors. But watching the Pol Pot story I was seeing what was presented by the media as a man who was systematically removing his supporters. So here is a simple hypothesis:

1) You have a world view of how people (or economies) should behave.
2) You implement the theories.
3) The results you expected do not occur.
4) You blame and punish those executing the plan as it could not possibly be the plan that is wrong or those who are the victims for being unworthy or not normal.
5) You repeat steps 2 to 4 over and over.

Obviously this is an extreme case, but one would hope that even the most stubborn people see the way out in the end.

prices

I was reading an article and was astonished to see the price of NAND ram has fallen to USD $9.26 for 8GB. Wow. So I wandered off to the web to see the retail price. It comes in at a mere $165 AUD for a 8GB USB stick. This seems to be approximately the price, across about three different web sites.

Chinese Economy II

Previously I discussed the Chinese Economy from the inside. One of the things that is mentioned a fair bit here in Australia is that fact that their economy will soon be bigger that that of the USA. While this is a major milestone, I think it had no great significance. You see, China has approximately 4 times the population. So the Per Capita GDP is quite small. If they caught up on that measure, that would be significant. Anyone who has been to China knows how patchy the economic development is, and just how far they have to go. Also GDP is only one measure. Total wealth is another. There are so many more. And then there is the issue that so much of the existing infrastructure is of such a low quality. I was always amazed that they do such a poor job at plumbing. All of those buildings need a lot of fixing to bring them up to standard of what would be considered good building practice here in Australia. That is not to say that this will not happen, or that it happening is not a good thing, but it will still take quite a long time, even at the break-neck speed that China is growing. What the USA needs to do is keep their eyes on the ball. They have a good track record at this in the last few centuries.