November 2017

I’ve said no every time we’ve been asked to take part in these studies. A lot of the twin research is genetic determinism, attempting to prove this or that gene ‘causes’ this or that condition. It’s like studying what powers your lights by studying the light switches.

Those nice feelings of being in love, or of nice food or drink, or nice weather (for example) - where do they come from? Proust says we often make the mistake of thinking they come from the objects themselves - from the person we love, or the food or drink, or the weather. And this is why we repeat our loves for example, as we try to ‘empty’ each partner in search of the source of each feeling. Or why we over-eat or over-drink, again searching for the elusive source of those nice feelings in the food or in the drink. Or why serial shaggers can never get enough sex. Feelings and emotions are not isolated things to be enjoyed. If love, cake and wine make you feel good, more love, cake and wine won’t make you feel better. Our feelings tell us what has changed from one moment to the next, it’s the differences and contrasts we enjoy, not the feelings themselves. Addiction is the search for the source of the nice feelings, in the objects themselves.

Story of the week. http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/school-life/highschooler-run-over-by-topless-girl-doesnt-want-to-press-charges/news-story/a34054de4f59207a273ef4a34357d1bc

Identity is a fascinating topic. For example, it’s extremely difficult to say what makes you, you, in a definitive way. Or where an individual organism starts and finishes. Bands have been playing without some or even all ‘original’ members since music began. Like the Stones, pictured, who haven’t had an original lineup for decades. But it still gets peoples’ emotions going. A nice article with some actual thought about this topic.

One of those sayings that people use all the time. Even great thinkers like Aristotle. And yet, it’s absolutely wrong. (Also, can we take the ‘math’ out of ‘polymath’? It kind of defeats the purpose of the word.)

If ever there was a wolf in sheep's clothing, it's Julie Bishop. Her views are much more extreme than she lets on in the public sphere. This is how Trump started. The ultra-conservatives within the conservative side of politics trash the place and the whole democratic process, leaving a vacuum that populist boofheads rush into. It destroyed the Republican Party, as it's destroying the LNP. Politics now isn't a battle between Labor and Liberal, or Left and Right, it's a battle between democracy and chaos. Chaos is winning, and nasty, powerful people use that chaos to get what they want. Trump doesn't give a toss about working people, look at every policy he's introduced since becoming President - all about helping the rich and powerful. Same with Abbott, pretends to be a man of the people, but is really just a spokesperson for the top end of town.

Ha.

One for the mums.

What worries Australians, graphed over the last 7 years. Look at housing on the rise. Australia is in real trouble. Its economic success in the last 20 years is almost a complete fantasy. The country has been run like a casino, the only thing making the ‘economy’ look good has been the eye-popping amount of private debt. There has been no real investment in the nation at all, instead individuals and families are shouldering the increasing burden of paying for things that previously the country as a whole took responsibility for. The two things that have kept the whole fantasy going have been the mining boom, and the ridiculous inflation of house prices. Neither of those things have actually produced a single thing for Australia, except debt. No new infrastructure, no new sustainable jobs, no investment in our productivity. Any money made from mining was pissed up against the wall in tax cuts in the Costello era, and is already spent, but not on any investment in the country. House price inflation has given us ridiculously over-valued homes, again no actual investment in the productive capacity of the nation at all - nearly all of the money going into housing has been used just to endlessly inflate values of existing houses. Housing has been our permanent Melbourne Cup; gambling, nothing more. The mining boom is over, housing will be next. Then we could be left with a train wreck. If you think this is alarmist, name one industry or product Australia has produced in that last 20 years, that it can sell to the rest of the world in any sort of big earning way. Or one measure of how our capacity as a nation has improved, in that time - better education, or productivity, or better infrastructure etc.

If you’re one of those idiot people who post idiot things about Germans speaking like B-grade Hollywood actors in films about Nazis, have a read. You might learn something.

Happy birthday :)

Happy Birthday!!!

Happy anniversary GK. Love you, may all your GS’s and GA’s be penalised heavily :)

To be honest I don’t even know what a Snapchat streak is. Except that it seems to be a cunning way to get people addicted to Snapchat and using it 24 hours a day. So my gut feeling is with this article.

Ha, burn.

A bit of what I do in my spare time. You can’t float above the ground like this. But you’re always floating ON the ground. Which doesn’t make sense to a lot of people, who think I’m deranged. But boats float on water, and it’s that sort of floating you do on the ground. Just as the water holds a boat up, the ground holds you up. Which is not how many of us experience everyday life on Earth, we think gravity is trying to pull us towards the ground all day. It’s not true, it’s an illusion.

The real function of music.

Easier to catch than it is to spell.

The NRA might suggest that sexual assaults from the likes of Harvey Weinstein could have been avoided, if the women had just had the gumption to assault him right back.

Here's a real test for just how stupid Australia can be. Let's see if we can blitz it, the rest of the world are already convinced we've been infected by some sort of moron virus. Most of the WW1 battlefields in Europe have been dug up over and over ever since, for farming for example. The French and Belgians have to eat, funnily enough. And the area in question, when shown for the news story, is currently being farmed as well and is dug up. Apparently it's a different sort of digging to the digging you do to put up a windmill. Ffs, could we get any more stupid?

The metal milkshake cup. One of life’s great things.

The Flat-Earthers are a growing movement, apparently. It does seem like it’s less about the Earth and more about a growing distrust in any sort of authority at all, in politics or now knowledge too. Is the Earth flat people?

Happy Birthday Brett, bust some moves! And upload.

What you were probably never taught about gravity, at school. Gravity is not 'weighing you down' in everything you do. So many hip and knee replacements, aches and pains, disease, exhaustion and effort could be avoided, if we really understood this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysdglvr7s7E&app=desktop

Have a look at this clip of CK, and see whether you think the headline below is surprising. https://youtu.be/zNRNCk3YwqE

For a long time street art or murals seemed to often escape tagging and other graffiti. But it seems to be changing? Everything is fair game now?

Title says it all. @[585851453:2048:Adrian Farrell] recommends squatting for a ‘bad back’, it will fix you faster than just about anything else. I’m amazed how many people can’t actually squat, or only with difficulty, and also can’t stay in a squat or get up out of one easily. https://quartzy.qz.com/1121077/to-solve-problems-caused-by-sitting-learn-to-squat/?utm_source=qzfb

I’m glad somebody is saying this. Outrage is such a dangerous emotion. I also don’t think the current Manus situation is half as simple as outrage is making out. Beware outrage, of all flavours. #presumptionofdueprocess http://www.smh.com.au/comment/i-was-among-the-early-supporters-of-metoo-but-this-is-starting-to-get-ugly-20171109-gzhzco.html

The struggle is real.

Happy birthday Di :)

Maybe the most magical Christmas I ever had was in Switzerland, here at Arosa. Travelling by train into the mountains, watching the snow outside. And then living here for a week or more. Sigh, snow...

Happy birthday Nell Thompson! Hope I’m not interrupting your breakfast in bed.

Happy birthday dear friend - 50!

There’s a quality to photos taken with old techniques, like wet and dry plate collodion, daguerreotypes and tintypes. Modern example of a wet plate collodion onto glass, and an old shot from the early days of Bathurst. There’s a volume to the images, or something.

They’re very acidic.

Usual alarmist silliness. The solution is simple. Not less Facebook, but less personal sharing on Facebook. It’s a social site, it’s about humans as a community, not as individuals, about sharing our common concerns and interests. When people use it to (usually selectively) post only about themselves as individuals or as a family, the damage starts because then your personal life is being compared to and judged by the community. And slowly comparison becomes the main game. That’s how teenagers live, and why they’re often miserable.

“The parade of the aghast”. Understanding needed. Not outrage.

The stealing of milk in shared workplace fridges - apparently this is a huge issue? It's happened to me too, so I can believe it's real. This pic is from a police station in the UK.

In case you were born well after the moon landings. Dave Scott demonstrating Galileo’s experiment, on the moon, with a hammer and a feather (apparently the feather is still there, he forgot to pick it up, proving boys are always boys). This experiment went on to inspire Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. The equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass. One for my weightless fans, I sense the excitement 😉

@[100001374621876:2048:Michael], @[783412914:2048:Kyle] and @[606028898:2048:Jason], something we’ve discussed a lot. http://ow.ly/m1Ts30gyFrM

Technologies don't change the world, because technologies aren't a thing. Put a computer in the middle of a paddock somewhere and see if it changes the world.

Haven’t commented much on same-sex marriage. But watching ultra-conservatives at work is revealing, having known that for decades they’ve been manipulating our political systems with impunity. Now they’ve been flushed out, and their true colours are finally in public view. Listen to the absolute rubbish about the need to protect ‘religious freedoms’ they’re going on with now as their latest stalling tactic for same sex marriage. These are the same stinking hypocrites who jump up and down about Sharia Law, saying there’s only one Law for everyone. And they’re right, there is. But now they want to introduce the right for them to treat people differently, based on their religious belief, in law. It beggars belief.

Happy birthday Shaz! May wine o’clock start at 10am today.

Trivia questions for the day. Why were the stairs in the towers of medieval castles nearly always arranged clockwise? And what was the real function of moats?

He’s got those hips moving. White is a bit see-through.

So - what does 'religious freedoms' mean? We're going to hear that phrase a lot in the coming weeks. The No campaign thinks it means if a gay couple walks into your bakery and orders a wedding cake, you can refuse them service, because gay marriage is not something you agree with. In other words that 'discrimination' (settle Kato) should be allowable under law, if you have religious grounds for it. That's not what it means. No matter what religion you belong to, you follow the laws of the land. A point these same No campaigners are very quick to make when other religions want freedoms that place them outside the law. At root ultra-conservatives never believed the separation of Church and State happened.

Manners are not just politeness. They balance obligations. I see a lot of this balance being missed with modern etiquette. Not even discussing etiquette is one reason there’s a perception that the world is going mad. “But if a friendship's interpersonal accounting gets out of whack, then friends start to wonder whether they really have a friendship, and the accounting comes to the surface to be analyzed, with one party saying things like "Why do I always end up sacrificing for you?"”

Is the obsession with coffee a healthy thing? When does liking something tip over into an addiction? Keeping in mind that all addictions don't start as addictions, they kind of creep up on people. When people say "I can't get my day going without coffee", are we getting to that tipping point? From firsthand experience, I love coffee and used to drink it every day. For medical reasons I now can't, but remember the withdrawal I had to go through to make that transition. Now from the other side of that withdrawal, a lot of the behaviour of coffee drinkers looks like addiction. It's like the 'wine o'clock' phenomenon, another one that is dressed up as a social thing, but is definitely addiction at work, in many people.

Took the No campaign all of a day to turn really nasty in defeat. Abortion today. Bun or bump? Is a woman just a container for a baby? Or is that baby also part of her? For Cory and his friends a woman is like an incubator. The abortion debate has always been about power over and control of women, not a concern for children. Their concerns for the child cease at birth too, where they happily vote to cut funding to child care and schools and health. Thoroughly nasty people, these ultra-conservatives, they’ve been flushed out of hiding and we’re seeing them in full view.

The Great Green Wall.

Stevie Wonder is incomparable. Everything about this song is genius, from the first two amazing chords you hear, which become the theme of the whole song, through to how he orchestrated the whole thing himself, through to his singing. https://youtu.be/O0lGbunBzDg

Another tragic story in the news today about a cyclist killed by a motorist, whose attention lapsed for a moment. Bikes on roads is an emotional issue for people. And putting to one side whether there should I be more dedicated cycleways - I’d say obviously yes. Today’s story made me think about it again - should they both be sharing roads? A momentary lapse of concentration is not unusual for any normal person, and if it’s another car that gets dinged, it rarely causes anybody much harm. But it can be deadly for a cyclist. Is bikes on roads like having Little Athletics events on the runway at Mascot?

Many happy returns. (I’m still not sure if that means “I hope you get crap presents.”)

Air pollution in India. It’s not well known that nearly half the air pollution caused by vehicles doesn’t come from the engine. It comes from the wheels. Both shedding the tyre compound, and throwing up dust and tyre particles and other pollutants sitting on the road surface. And a lot of brake dust.

So exercise scientists have discovered that sex uses about the same amount of energy as climbing two sets of stairs. The "I'm too tired" argument suddenly looks thin. Now I just have to Google 'sex', it sounds interesting.

The world repeats the same patterns, and I think we often get stuck in just one part of the pattern and miss the wider movement of what’s going on. Take the music and film industry. For years they’ve been talking about how music and film production and musicians and artists were being destroyed by digital technology. But they weren’t, what was being destroyed was only who held the strings of power in music and film. Now, as even an ancient reptile like Murdoch acknowledges, content is king again. Murdoch is over. The focus is back on the artists, the old business models were smashed, but then new ones were built. Those who moaned about the end of civilisation were the losers, those who went with the trends won big-time.

Palliative care or assisted dying? As always the answer is probably neither of the extremes. And it’s not the middle or ‘moderate’ position either. Paul Keating has been out again, exercising his big Catholic muscles, unhelpfully. I don’t think many realise that palliative care was created by those vehemently opposed to assisted dying, it’s not something that came out of medicine itself. And they don’t realise that many still die horrible, painful deaths, even with the best palliative care. On the other hand the answer is unlikely to be just offering assisted dying. As the author says, the debate needs to shift frameworks.

One of the things I think Marshall McLuhan made people aware of was that copies make originals. The idea of an ‘original’ doesn’t even exist, until you have copies. Tarde said it, imitation is the heart of all life. Our obsession with the authentic and original in modern times, in music, art, food, lifestyle etc. is largely driven by the increased ability to imitate. Even the search for one true God or one source of scientific truth is driven by the ability to copy. It’s a trap, there is no more authentic life, more authentic music or art or lifestyle. There is no single truth separate to how things are. Fundamentalism is the belief in a more authentic life than the one we’re already living. Copying is life itself.

This is a very common gripe doctors tend to have - administration. Academics are the same. And we’ve all been told to despise bureaucracy. It’s well known that the amount a charity spends on administration has almost no connection with its effectiveness as a charity, often those that spend the least on admin are also the least effective charities. I don’t normally trust anybody who thinks administration is the problem. Nearly every administrator I know is part of the glue holding society together, in some way.

Was watching the fawning over Brian Cox again last week, on one of his visits to Oz. He’s a lovely, smart bloke. But science is in a mess, and the wide-eyed gee whiz people give to Brian is a symptom of that mess. And it’s in a mess because it has contempt for philosophy. The two used to work together, because they have complementary functions. All the greatest historical scientists were also well versed in philosophy. Without that marriage, science has been unable to solve major issues like reconciling quantum and classical physics, the problem of consciousness and the problem of time. Most of the popular cosmology coming from the likes of Hawking and Cox is philosophical drivel, and is science’s attempt to fill the gap left by philosophy, a gap it either doesn’t even realise is there, or which it mocks. At the same time philosophy often tried to be its own science, to fill the gap left on its side of the fence.

Polygons, those geometries many suffer through in school maths, are not as abstract as they seem. But we don’t learn that at school.

One Platonic solid a day, for a week. (There are 5.) To be a Platonic solid all of the faces must be the same size and shape, all angles and sides have to be equal, and each vertex has to have the same number of faces meeting at it. Tetrahedron first. All triangles. Three of the Platonic solids are all triangles, in the real world of engineering they’re the most structurally sound of all structures, because the triangle is both the simplest and strongest shape.

More fun evidence that societies are built out of imitation and status. Now that everybody is going private, a new way to differentiate yourself is to go public. If everybody follows this trend, people will then shift back to private, to differentiate themselves again. Has nothing to do with what actually happens in the schools. Not criticising imitation and status either, it really is what makes a society exist in the first place. People might deny that imitation is the root of everything that happens in a society, but I haven't seen an exception to the rule yet. It's the same reason the most senior doctors in the UK insist upon being called "Mr" (they're usually blokes), rather than "Doctor".

The local Nationals member seems to spend a lot of time publicising local Nationals politicians, I guess we should expect that. I guess we should also expect some of them to say things like “local Council should be above politics”. *cough*

Memories.

I went to a family event on Saturday, a barbecue lunch for a local club. Generously they’d laid on all the food, and drinks were free as well. What disappointed me but didn’t surprise me was what the younger parents drank. Vodka Cruisers and bourbon and Coke. At lunchtime, at a community family barbecue. Are we totally oblivious to how alcohol is out of control in our society? I hate sounding like a wowser, I always loved a drink myself, but seriously - vodka and bourbon at noon, at a community family event? Apart from the health effects, it just lacks class.

Platonic solid of the day - the cube. Probably the most famous of all the solids. Used together with other right-angled solids as the basis for most of our building, as straight walls give you the most space on either side of a wall - the most efficient way to organize living space. But also the weakest of all the solids, you need to brace those right-angled corners in multiple ways, to prevent the structure collapsing. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Hexahedron.gif

Woohoo, $100 per kid for the Active Kids Rebate, from next year. A bit conflicted, as I'm sure the rebate will make absolutely no difference to the levels of obesity in the community (exercise doesn't really reduce obesity). But hey, free money, makes me feel like a boomer ;)

The octahedron next (because I know you were all on the edge of your seats waiting). The second Platonic solid that is all triangles. Structurally in real-life therefore immensely strong. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Octahedron.gif

For years I’ve tried to understand why colours can produce a profound sense of depth. The stereo experts have no explanation at all, they’re very stuck in their ideas about stereo all being two images combined ‘by the brain’. I think that’s nonsense. Only one image here and the ‘depth’ is right at ya. It’s actually a known phenomenon. Called chromostereopsis. But they still have no idea why it works, because they keep using the same ‘binocular disparity’ ideas to explain depth perception.

I think this is very good advice.

Where have you been all my life?

The dodecahedron. 12 pentagon faces. Interestingly, you can fit 5 cubes inside a dodecahedron. The Platonic solids have lots of amazing properties, with real-world implications. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Dodecahedron.gif

During the anthems for the beginning of the Ashes today, it struck me what a hopeless anthem God Save the Queen is. The entire anthem is just a grovelling homage to the monarch, there’s not one reference to the country itself. I wonder if that’s deliberate, whether at a time when the Commonwealth was more of a thing and every Commonwealth country used it as an anthem, reference to Britain or England etc. would have made the anthem less suitable for this wide use. Dunno, but it’s a tempting theory.

Last of the Platonic Solids. The icosahedron. All triangles again, so very strong in real life. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Icosahedron.gif

Puzzle of the day. Is the table holding the buckets up, or are the buckets holding the table up?

Happy birthday buddy, rock on :)

Michael Kato will love this comment from the V8 coverage: “Look at that, there’s not a soul on Newcastle beach, I’ve never seen that before.”

So muso friends. Is it just me or does the EVH tone sound rubbish? No clarity or harmonic richness. Years of dicking around with guitars and amps and if anything the sound has gone backwards. Most of it seems to have been driven by big sponsorship deals with amp and guitar makers anyway, rather than anything really innovative in terms of tone. And Eddie spends more time on developing his merchandise than he does practicing guitar these days, same old licks again, some dive-bombs etc. And has he had work done to his face?

The Space Shuttle weighed over 2000 tonnes. To escape Earth’s gravity, it had to reach speeds of over 40,000 km/h, going straight up. Imagine the force needed to propel something that weighs more than 2000 tonnes, straight up, at 40,000 km/h. It’s one of the reasons I’ve never been the guy who tinkers with engines. They’re boring, weak technology.

I think this metaphorically describes the Queensland election, and most politics in the Western world. The conservative side of politics - the LNP here - is a very shaky coalition of people who are in many ways fundamentally different. It’s a complete marriage of convenience. They often say the ‘natural’ party of government in Australia is Labor - this is why, it’s the only party that comes within cooee of getting a majority by itself, in any State or federal election. The LNP is that very uncomfortable coalition of two quite distinct parties, united mostly by their hatred of Labor and not a lot more. This isn’t a plug for either party, just an observation of the reality. Politics in Australia is mostly a battle between historically wealthy rural landowners and city business interests, represented by the LNP, and the working class, represented by Labor. There are far more workers than there are farmers or business owners, which is why Labor is the natural party of power. So that’s why the conservatives also disintegrate at regular intervals, as has happened in Queensland. A third party comes along and pitches to one half of the coalition in ways the other half of that coalition can’t stomach. So they split the vote.

I’ve discussed this with a lot of friends. Flirting really is a lost art, as the article says, in an age of such appalling manners and almost zero etiquette even being polite can be misread as flirting. We confuse and mix up flirting and seduction, they’re entirely different. Flirting can be used as part of seduction, but they’re not the same thing. Flirting and teasing I think open up a space between people that’s not friendship, but is not a relationship (or an intention to have one) either. And it’s not about how a person looks either, it’s about playfulness. A great performer flirts with a crowd, a teacher like the one Robin Williams plays in Dead Poets Society flirts with their students - meaning being playful and challenging. Unfortunately too many genuinely mixed up people got into teaching over the years, the types who try to seduce rather than flirt, so I would strongly advise against anybody trying to replicate Williams - you’ll be fired fairly quickly, as Williams’ character was, there are no shades of grey in this area in teaching now. But it’s such a difficult area, because without a baseline of manners and etiquette, pretty much everything above pleasantries can be interpreted as sinister in some way.

Burke was like Peter Russell-Clarke, well known within the industry as being a completely different person off-camera to what he was on-camera. I wish this whole #metoo thing was not a public name and shame exercise. That's extremely dangerous. By all means go after lecherous jerks, but not without due process.

I think they could be waiting a while.

As is the case with medicine, banks are not private business. They’re HUGELY subsidised by the taxpayer. Tens of billions of dollars. Worth remembering when you hear all the apologists argue to leave them alone. Every single financial crisis in world history has been caused by banks, specifically financial instruments (basic banking is good for us, don’t be deceived thinking it’s much of a priority for banks these days). Some of those crises led to world wars. Finance is the most destructive human force in history.

Do you know any grammar Nazis? This was a story about 85,000 cubic metres of American nuclear waste from the 1940s and 1950s, leaking into the Pacific Ocean. Tony is worried about the grammar. Incidentally, aren’t the US tremendous allies? They and the French, bringing their nukes to the Pacific to explode in the open air. We should ask them why they didn’t do it at home, I’m sure we know the answer. The Brits brought them to our own soil and exploded them right here at home in Oz. God Save the Queen :)

“The contradiction of love consists of this: the means we count on to preserve us from jealousy are the very means that develop that jealousy, giving it a kind of autonomy, of independence with regard to our love.” Gilles Deleuze

The limit, in maths, is I think also an interesting part of life. A lot of our behaviour is governed by limits. Take drinking, people drink with an implicit sense of what the limit would be, including alcoholics, and it’s that limit which actually drives the behaviour. From the very first drink the ‘last drink’ is what shapes how we drink - think of it for yourself, how you evaluate your drinking according to that implicit sense of what would be ‘too much’, and you do that from the very first sip. Or the origins of money and barter, it’s not as is often said about figuring out equivalences (how many chickens for how much potato, or how much is a fair amount of money for something), it’s about each side using their own sense of what would be the limit beyond which they would no longer be happy to exchange. Spending too much tips you over into a new dangerous territory, but that limit is there in every decision you make. In relationships there are always words which, if they’re said, take you beyond the limit of that relationship and into new territory. Words that can harm the relationship or escalate it. Some words you know will possibly lead to a break up, others will take a friendship and make it suddenly something more serious. Those limits are right there in your thinking in each moment, we don’t wait until we’re close to the limit to start thinking about it, it shapes our behaviour at every moment.

When even one of the top PC companies says it, you realise that the real 'fanboys' in the IT world aren't Mac users.

I’d never been in the Union Theatre until last weekend. What a great building. Could do with some air con maybe. Not sure how cold it gets in the winter either.