Politicians do not lie!

You may find this hard to believe but the above is not true!
We all had our doubts about WMDs now there is documented evidence that those nasty Republicans are harnessing Weapons of Mouse Destruction. Susan McCarthy has a blog about mice or more correctly the absence of mice that nails the political process. Being a zoologist I guess she is very familiar with the lower forms of life and their slimy habits.
Susan's projection of how mice might spend $30m is fun and the San Francisco Chronicle gives space for Congresswoman Jackie Speier(Democrat California) to add a measure of perspective about the process and the worthy burghers of San Francisco.

You do have to watch those mice though. Wee sleekit cowerin' timorous beasties they may be but turn your back in a recession and they have got their bewiskered noses in the trough.

Libraries.

Some people think libraries are the biz.
I have been known to comment on them myself. We could be wrong! We will certainly not expect the changes to libraries that the iDog will bring.

If I haven't mentioned it before the iDog is a mobile/broadband phone that is under development by Buddhist Pizza Industries. It doubles as a text and A/V processing unit which comfortably uses electronic paper to display books, periodicals, and newspapers (remember them?) at any ambient light level. It can of course project, via a wireless link, onto an iWall (do I have to explain everything?) I thought the incorporation of the audio switch to enable the text to be read by the iDog in a range of voices from Juliet Stevenson to John Humphries (desending order) was a nice touch.

I can just see one of my nieces explaining to her grandchildren, wide mouthed in disbelief, about libraries and books.

Your uncle was a jolly old soul and in his later years he used to borrow a lot of books from the library. Yes, Kirsten, you remember seeing on VID all those books behind the glass wall in the British Library, well there was a library in the village next to where your uncle lived. He would look up the library catalogue on his computer, you don't need to know what one of those is dear, and order the book that he wanted to read. The library would send him an email, it's like a long text dear, to say he could collect the book, read it and return it for another reader in three weeks. He could have it for longer than three weeks if no one else wanted to borrow it. Yes, Jan, I think he was a veeery slow reader......

Who knows what will happen to books, journalism, publishing, copyright, etc....
What will that do to libraries? What will that do to us?

Magnanimous!

Let's just keep a sense of perspective here.

Yeeees!

Sorry, now where were we?
I must say Mary looks very well and Prince Willie, not sure what he was doing there. Mind you from the look on his face I'm not sure he does either.

Who are you calling a pansy?

There are lots of green shoots and buds in the garden. There are flowers planted by the previous owners and those planted by the Head Gardener (HG) who rules our vast estate with a rod of blackthorn. It is a joy and now that we have both shaken off our colds, maybe the same one generously shared, we can even appreciate the experience with our noses. HG has placed two pots of welcoming pansys by the front door. They have survived the late winter and now bask in the spring sun, don't we all!

The cold has seriously affected my appreciation of wine. Heavens to Betsy I hear our readers cry as one person! In support of the local playing field we had a cheese and wine tasting. I felt obliged to go. The wine was supplied by Shami Gill, an independent supplier from a local village. It was an interesting evening. All but one of the five wines we tasted had no nose for me, sadly. However, they all contributed to an increasing sense of conviviality and enjoyment as the evening flowed, very strange that. We rolled home knowing we had made a positive and selfless contribution to the wellbeing of the pueblo!

Municipal Socialism

There are many reasons for being a member of a credit union or two.
One of the more obscure is the chance to roam around locations at unfamiliar times at near zero temperatures waiting for the venue of the AGM to open. Not having the resources of RBS behind us we hire a room in the library by the hour. There were some chuckles when the meeting agreed unanimously that the Treasurer should be paid an honorarium of £500 for the work carried out voluntarily each year. Some wag at the back was heard to say:-

Shouldn't that be five hundred thousand with a pension thrown in!

While I was waiting for the meeting and stand up comedy routine to start I took this snap.
Not quite up to Bolton or Manchester standards but a suitable reminder of civic vision. A bit like a well fed county solicitor with an expanding waistline and an increasingly vague but avuncular demeanor.

Watering The Hummers

Not what you think.
Susan McCarthy's blog paints a sparkling word picture. It would be quite a sight to see.
Love the title, I have felt like that on many an occasion!

In the meantime link to a picture:- a picture.

It was one of those books, I'm sorry!

Have managed to raise my nose from the grindstone to read a few chapters of

Palestinian walks, notes on a vanishing landscape by Raja Shehadeh.

Very interesting.

Boy we think we have got problems. You spend your life building a cast iron case against the illegal annexation of your land by the Israeli State and its head banging extremists. Land which most of the world regards as little better than a rock strewn rubbish dump but which you recognise as the gentle soul of your nation and wham, bahm, thank you man the PLO have sold you down the crapper!

So it goes!

And then today I read

good gracious!

Science and Priorities

So Nancy and Caroline agree on throwing money at science.
Hmm... I might have considered this before
It's a bit like throwing shoes at failed Presidents. You can appreciate the sentiment but question the aim. I seem to remember, in this country, a certain Mr Wislon muttering about the white heat of the pound in your pocket. I think we have missed the trick here. Money thrown at science does not equal material progress. We need science to achieve intellectual, economic and humanitarian objectives. Science of itself will not:-
- reduce the number of human beings dying painfully and needlessly for want of the wherewithal to live sustainable, productive, and fulfilling lives;
- protect us against the destruction of the environment;
- protect us against the excesses of corrupt and totalitarian governments;
all of which come pretty high on my list.

One person's space programme is another country's supply of malaria nets for a generation.

I'm off to consult with the Stakhanovites of the Suffolk Couty Libraries to see if we can obtain this tome. It may offer a way to shape priorities internationally!
Thanks to John Naughton for the link.
-

The theory and practice of everyday resistance

My Mum would have approved, she was a great believer in communality and cleanliness!

Louisa Waugh's blog is certainly a different view for the blind.

Book Burning Stove

I must admit the horrible, truly horrible, thought crossed my mind again (see end of linked post) when I saw this story in the Grauniad today.

Brought to books: bibliophiles and traders enjoy giveaway bonanza

Thousands descend on warehouse in search of free treasures

It was accompanied by a picture of a volume books, on an industrial scale, stacked and strewn free and ready for......... aargh!

Francais v Paye de Gaulle

Our 6 Nations correspondent West of Winchester writes:-

We are all getting ready for the big game in this house.
The blue berets are ready to be worn, the tricoleur is pinned up on the back wall. I have thrown out some festering leeks I found in the back of the veg box and have suggested we do not want any lamb on the menu. Coq au Vin is, however, stewing nicely, while the claret is ready to be decanted. I have down loaded all the lyrics to the Marseilles. I have been taking accordion lessons and will play along. We are looking after a poodle for the night. I have taken up smoking [Gauloise] and a bottle of pastis has been opened for aperos. Tarte de pomme is up for desert. As a warm up we will be watching a DVD of Jules et Jim, just to get in the mood, followed by highlights from the carrier of Serge Blanco. I just found a cluster of daffodils starting to shoot in the garden so dug them up.

I do love watching neutral 6 Nations Games when you don't care who wins!
Toodle pip,

My feelings, entirely!

Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!

A bas M. Poireaux

February fill dykes

Sorry! I have no pictures of drifts of ice-blue snow, or any of the other manifestations of a winter wonderland.

There is a crisis on and some of us need to keep the inner man satisfied. Now, if you don't mind, I'm having my lunch.

¿Que Cosas Hay En El Mundo?

En El Mundo hay O'Bama :-

Obama: 'El mundo ha cambiado y debemos cambiar con él'

Worth noting the bible on which he swore was closed.
I've written before that Izzy Stone had fun with the fact that previous presidents selected pages of the book to have open while they tried to pull one over on the almighty and the tax payers of the USA.

I wonder what Izzy would have made of Mr O'Bama?

I can't help thinking that a little Isaiah between friends would not go amiss at the eastern end of the med just at the moment.

'come let us reason together'

You know it has a certain something, reasonableness is it? I wonder who Isaiah got to write it for him. Probably Toby from the West Wing, or even CJ.

Our friends in the frozen north

Interesting, inspirational, article via open Democracy, Iceland: "It will fix itself" by Tobias Munthe. I like the idea of thetta reddast, especially the it will be done interpretation. We will do it and we will be better, stronger and more able to weather future storms. The impact of the global downturn on a small country is substantial and the article recognises this and the opportunity it provides for fundamental change...

... there is consensus on the need for change, not only in terms of political and economic restructuring, but also in relation to values and even to national identity. The era of Icelandic excess - parading around in shiny Range Rovers (now referred to as Game Overs), weighing up the benefits of Greek versus Spanish extra virgin olive oil - has come to an end.

and maybe...

For a population as small, interconnected and homogenous as Iceland, the possibility of a genuine cultural shift is less of a pipe dream than it might be for a larger nation with greater class, race and net-worth inequality than this insular outpost in the North Atlantic.

There are some interesting concepts; scratching your own itch is very Icelandic, Auden would have been proud, and the thing about bubbles is that they burst. What I would like to see is a culture of ‘bubble wrap'.

Clearly the "In Cod We Trust" mentality is not enough to save the nation at this stage, but that is not to say that Iceland might not find some salvation in its old religion.

Good luck to them I hope they share any lessons they learn with us!

The Creative Commons

As always, a thought provoking link from John Naughton at Memex to this essay.
Love the hat, and the jacket, maybe it's a whistle! Anyway, sartorial faint-heartedness aside, a nice balance by Howard Rheingold.
A positive view of the network.

One of the first questions that arose from my earliest experiences online was the question of why people in online communities should spend so much time answering each other's questions, solving each other's problems, without financial compensation...

and the explosion of creativity

...that followed the debut of the Web in 1993 was made possible by deliberate design decisions on the part of the Internet's architects−the end-to-end principle, built into the TCP/IP protocols that make the Internet possible, which deliberately decentralizes the power to innovate, to build something new and even more powerful on what already exists.

We have lived long enough to realise that there are dangers.

A population with broadband infrastructure and ubiquitous computing could be a captive audience for a cultural monopoly, given enough bad laws and judicial rulings. A population that knows what to do with the tools at hand stands a better chance of resisting enclosure. The more people who know how to use participatory media to learn, inform, persuade, investigate, reveal, advocate and organize, the more likely the future infosphere will allow, enable and encourage liberty and participation. Such literacy can only make action possible, however−it is not in the technology, or even in the knowledge of how to use it, but in the ways people use knowledge and technology to create wealth, secure freedom, resist tyranny.

Resisting enclosure, resisting tyranny.
A very powerful image.

New Year Solutions

A letter to the FT from a colleague engages in the debate which I have mentioned before.

Faisel and the team at Fair Finance have done some great work. Have a look at the maps which claim what they have delivered. A nice bit of transparency that the big fellows could emulate, but of course they won’t.

It would be interesting to extend the argument about affordable lending to the realm of home finance. How much of the current ‘turbulence’ is due to greed in institutions and irresponsible lending to the subprime housing market in the US and elsewhere? Those with 20/20 hindsight consider it substantial.

There are some good ideas, in embryo, out there, see Subprime Solutions by Robert Shiller and Will Hutton’s development of this based on the Crosby Report.

We need to positively build a system of housing provision and housing finance that underpins and supports the general economy.

I can remember being inspired by the construction of an espigon at the mouth of the river in San Sebastian. Its purpose was to protect the beach from being washed away. The initial stages consisted of very large vehicles bringing rocks the size of a small house to the beach where a gigantic crane would lift them and swing them out to sea and just drop them. The corps of observadores, myself included, would let out a huge cheer at this, great fun to watch. The idea, of course, was to build a substantial, immovable, barrier to the floods of the river and the overwhelming power of the Atlantic in the Bay of Biscay.

We need to do the same with our financial systems and we could start with the systems of housing finance.

So, answers on a postcard please to G. Broon Esq. PM

Let’s have some New Year solutions.
Leave the resolutions to the Amalgamated Society of Witterers, Fritterers and Merchant Bankers!

The egregious idiot

I suppose it was that word egregious.
Andrew Brown has an article about Ratzo Ratzinger on the Cement is Free website. Old Ratzo has been bothering himself about a number of things including trees and homosexuality. Thank god he has not been hugging them or talking to them. The trees, that is, well to the best of my knowledge.

Let me say at the outset that I have nothing against popes. Some of my best friends believe they are god's representatives on earth. Other male acquaintances that I have a great deal of affection for accoutre themselves in ankle length dresses and burqas. However, I have to say that I would not let my son marry one! A man in a burqa can have no style at all!

One of the minor sadnesses in my life, though I admit in some religions and countries it can be vicious and deadly, is that some deluded gobshite, usually in the name of his god, wants to stick his nose into sex and pronounce. There is little enough love, comfort and union between consenting adults in this world. We don't need yet another deluded man, who converses regularly with an invisible being, telling us what we may feel and do.

There. I feel a bit better now. Not egregious in the least.

It's never quite as simple as that!

Nice bit of provocative dressing from Ben Goldacre.

.....much awaited, we have possibly the finest all-purpose political t-shirt slogan ever conceived. Better still, they only reveal their true powers when you are standing next to someone who is also wearing a slogan t-shirt.

I look forward to suitably outrageous pickies of adjacent t-shirts.

I've thought a similar slogan associated with the phrase

I'm a string theorist. I can explain anything

is just biscuit as they say.

Trenchant in foot and mouth!

Tim Harford’s article in the FT Weekend Magazine (December 6 2008) about the battle for the soul of microfinance caught my eye.

It also produced this letter which was drawn to my attention.

The burden of the first part of this was that microfinance results in poverty

....in nearly 25 years of academic and consulting work in local economic development, my experience is that microfinance programmes most often spell the death of the local economy. Put simply, to the extent that local savings are intermediated through microfinance institutions, the more that country or region or locality will be left behind in a state of poverty and under-development. This is an “iron law of microfinance”.

Having some small knowledge of the business I was stirred into the repost:-

The trouble with iron laws, be they of the command economy or the market, is that they tend to crush the people who lack economic or political power.

I'm involved in microfinance because the market in this country and elsewhere refuses to service the sector fully and transparently. If the banks would lend responsibly to our customers I would be more than happy to put my feet up and read more books.

Sadly the law allows subprime lenders to charge outrageous interest. There is evidence, as the FT letter suggests, that the big boys are moving into this area and using the lack of regulation, control and transparency to generate even more profit.

Bangladesh, Mexico etc are poor countries for a complex of reasons and, truly, a dynamic economy is the fastest way to lift a substantial part of the population out of poverty, but it is naive in the extreme to suggest that it can all be simply resolved…

...through channelling much, if not most, of their savings into serious
growth-oriented sustainable business projects.

My (usual) response is that it is never quite as simple as that.

My views were described as trenchant
I made a note to myself to be less trenchant in future!

In the meantime, a happy time to all our readers.
I'm off, through the wonders of steam radio, to listen to some music from some place called Kings.

Midwinter Day

OK
Want to see some nice pickies here they are.
Want to hear some nice sounds, go buy the disk.
You can probably download it for free, whatever!

We are now mainly, apart from a bit of global warming, heading for the summer.
Yippee!

Could even be an xmas xword on the way.