Club Troppo

I recently linked to designer Milton Glaser’s ten point credo about life one of the points of which was this.

PROFESSIONALISM IS NOT ENOUGH or THE GOOD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GREAT.
Early in my career I wanted to be professional, that was my complete aspiration in my early life because professionals seemed to know everything – not to mention they got paid for it. Later I discovered after working for a while that professionalism itself was a limitation. After all, what professionalism means in most cases is diminishing risks. So if you want to get your car fixed you go to a mechanic who knows how to deal with transmission problems in the same way each time. I suppose if you needed brain surgery you wouldnt want the doctor to fool around and invent a new way of connecting your nerve endings. Please do it in the way that has worked in the past.

Unfortunately in our field, in the so-called creative I hate that word because it is misused so often. I also hate the fact that it is used as a noun. Can you imagine calling someone a creative? Anyhow, when you are doing something in a recurring way to diminish risk or doing it in the same way as you have done it before, it is clear why professionalism is not enough. After all, what is required in our field, more than anything else, is the continuous transgression. Professionalism does not allow for that because transgression has to encompass the possibility of failure and if you are professional your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat success. So professionalism as a lifetime aspiration is a limited goal.

Now Peter Singer (no not that Peter Singer) draws our attention to something about the defence White Paper that is truly amazing.   

An amazing revolution is ongoing around us, especially in war. The US military went into Iraq in 2003 with a handful of unmanned planes. There are now more than 7000 robotic drones in its inventory. In 2003, the invasion force had no ground robotics. Today there are roughly 12,000 on the ground. And the latest models of our robots give new meaning to the technology industry term “killer application”, as they now come with a lethal armoury of missiles, rockets, and machine-guns.

Yet, it is interesting that in a white paper that plans a force out to the year 2030, [o]ther than a discussion of buying a mere seven high-altitude drones, to supplement the manned maritime patrol aircraft, (essentially talking about Australia one day buying the capabilities of the US Air Force’s Global Hawk type drone, a remarkable system, but one which is already almost 10 years old), this revolution isn’t mentioned. (Continued)

Ken: G’day Tab.
Tab: G’day Ken. What are ya doin’?
Ken: Just sitting here reading the Sunday paper and eating these squid satays …
Tab: Mind if I join you?
Ken: Not at all. Pull up a chair …
Tab: What are you doing these days? (I represented him at one stage in one of his numerous excursions into land claims and native title claims. We say hello whenever we pass but haven’t sat down and chatted for years)
Ken: Teaching law out at the uni. Been there for about eight years now. Got sick of private practice law. Too much of a grind …

I go back to the Sunday paper but there’s not much in it …

Ken: Saw on a poster you were giving a speech the other day out at CDU about that Fannie Bay marina proposal …
Tab: Nah, it was about the Inpex gas plant and East Arm. But I might get onto that marina thing too …
Ken: You want to be careful there. That Helen Secretary is in favour of it and her mob owns all that land.
Tab: Yeah, but she’s only one woman ya know. What about the rest of the community? The land commissioner recommended all that land be held by a trust you know.
Ken: Yeah maybe. But it’s actually owned by Gwalwa Daraniki on a special purpose lease, and Helen’s the President.
Tab: Yeah, but she’s only one woman.
Ken: But a fearsome one. She killed her first husband you know, and he was a lot bigger than you or me …
Tab: Mmmm … Ya know I was the President of Gwalwa Daraniki once, for 24 hours …
Ken: What happened?

(Continued)

I had a knee operated on last Thursday.  Having had almost exactly the same thing done on the other knee a couple of years ago, I told my doctor I wasn’t that happy with the way I was treated, and asked if he could suggest anyone else. Though it’s a very minor procedure, it’s still a massively complex process – getting all the people with the right skills and equipment in the same room and getting it all to happen at the right time.  So I can’t complain.  But at least by the standards of today, it was not particularly flash. Nothing terrible went wrong.  On the other hand just like the old days, and just as in courts today, all the ‘customers’ queue up and wait their turn. In this case the customers all turn up at 7.00 am even though no operations are on till at least 8.00 am.  So you’re there so all the professionals can suit themselves about what order things are done in – and also rearrange you if it suits them.  Finding out I was third on the list from the hospital, the doctor’s rooms were very put out and told me that there was no list and I coudln’t know I was third on it.  I told them I couldn’t turn up till 7.20 so as to reduce my waiting time.  Still I turned up bleary eyed at 7.20 and sat in a waiting room watching the channel 9 morning show – not so flash – until around 8.20.  I was supposed to be being seen by the aneasthetist and the physio during this time, but wasn’t. 

Then a nice lady took me into a room and started ‘inducting’ me to the op – asking all the same questions I had provided on the form that I’d handed in.  She explained that this was for other forms.  She asked which knee it was, and wrote ‘right knee athroscopy’ somewhere (yet again). I was asked which knee it was about four times before theatre, and eventually was relieved to see as I was about to be rolled into the theatre someone mark up my right shin with a big black arrow. That seemed much more fail safe than asking the same question sufficiently often that there arose a small chance that I’d eventually get it wrong.  

Things suddenly sped up as the lady inducting me told me that the first operation couldn’t proceed and it was a big one – because they didn’t have the right equipment there.  So everyone was in a hurry.  She started shaving my knee. (Continued)

Peter Thiel is a super-smart, super-successful businessman and libertarian activist. He co-founded PayPal, invested in Facebook and has pledged three and half million dollars to a project searching for the key to human immortality. He also thinks it was a bad idea to give women the vote. (Continued)

Remember how Luke Skywalker destroyed the Death Star? At the crucial moment, the young Jedi switched off his targeting computer and used the Force to aim his laser torpedoes. It was one of the most important decisions of his life, and he made it, not on the numbers, but on instinct. In today’s market, home buyers seem to use much the same process. They don’t rely on the data, but on intuition.

That might sound silly but according to some economists, it’s often the way people make major economic decisions. Of course they have a different word for the Force — they call it ‘confidence‘. Consumers, producers, employees and employers, investors and borrowers — they all need to have it flowing through them. If they don’t, the economy won’t work. There’s more to decision making than data — or at least that’s the theory.

As anyone who’s studied Star Wars knows, there are two sides to the Force. And our economic Jedi Knights stress how important it is that our leaders don’t allow us to drift to the dark side. That’s called "talking the economy down" and it’s the kind of thing that makes young Jedi lose their nerve.

The Force is strong in first home buyers right now but seems to be lacking in other buyers. At his blog, Peter Martin has a fascinating series of graphs taken from the Reserve Bank’s latest Statement on Monetary Policy. They show that the recent surge in home loan approvals has been driven almost entirely by first home buyers. As a result, the prices of houses in the least expensive 20 per cent of suburbs have risen. At the same time, prices in the most expensive 20 per cent of suburbs have fallen substantially. Despite extraordinarily low interest rates, investors and other home buyers have not surged into the market the way that first home buyers have.

Does the government’s super-sized first home buyer’s grant explain the difference in behaviour? Probably. Home buyers don’t know how long the grant will continue after the budget comes down so it’s probably bringing forward demand. Banks and real estate agents are certainly talking up the idea of a brief ‘window of opportunity’. But could there be something else going on as well?

(Continued)

HT Michael Neilson

Strength through joy wasn’t such a big hit in the end, but fun through stupidity – now that’s an inexhaustible well. Michael Neilson links to ten videos of chairs being used in various silly ‘extreme’ sports. Except for the very first office do, virtually everyone is a young male. Delightfully stupid things are done and less delightful risks are taken. All in the name of good clean male fun.

This is my favourite. Along with the due hilarity that ensues.

HT Three Quarks

The finish of this game is pretty cool.  I would in fact go so far as to call it tres cool. Indeed, Adoph Andersson won plaudits in the nineteenth century infancy of the modern game of chess for his ‘immortal game’ against Lionel Adalbert Bagration Felix Kieseritsky(!) in which he allowed his opponent to snaffle most of his pieces and used the few remaining to checkmate his opponent.  The ending of the game below is rated difficult by the star system beneath the image.  Indeed it is difficult. I didn’t get it, having thought of the correct variation and dismissed it for no very good reason.  In any event, even if it’s difficult, the game ends after only four more moves.  So it’s not difficult for depth of moves. The finish is more immortal than Anderson. 

White to play L Milman vs J Fang 28. ? See game for solution. about our puzzles

Paul Collier has finally ‘nailed it’ as they say on Australian Idol.

Climate change is, in fact, infested with ethical baggage, much of it unhelpful. Lets get rid of some of it now. First, climate change has been hijacked by the environmentalist hatred of industrialized modernity. The scientific process behind global warmingthe buildup of carbon emissionsunfortunately might have been designed as a parody of medieval Christian theology. Instead of the wages of sin being death, the wages of industrialization is global warming. Rather than burning in hell, we will burn on earth. The cap and trade system, under which the right to emit carbon beyond a set limit can be purchased from the authorities, echoes with remarkable precision the indulgences sold by the medieval papacy. The popes needed to finance the building of the Vatican; President Obama needs to finance the fiscal deficit. The environmentalist hatred of industrialization is matched by the guilt-ridden colonialist hangover: we in the rich West are responsible for the poverty of the South. As colonialism receded into history this sense of guilt became harder to sustain, but global warming gives it a new lease on life. We, the rich, have emitted carbon and now the worlds poor will suffer climatic deterioration as a consequence. Victimhood is back in business. Lets try a thought experiment to cut through the thicket. Suppose that scientists discover that the reason why we in the North die before we reach the age of 150 is that cassava, a crop grown by poor peasant farmers in Africa, emits ions which affect the air in Northern latitudes. Does this discovery give us all a claim for compensation from African farmers? The answer is, obviously, that it does not. Since the farmers did not know, they incur no liability. Now push it one step further. Once the science is accepted, what should happen? Clearly, African peasants should cease to grow cassava, but who should bear the cost? Should Africans simply recognize that killing us is an unacceptable price to pay for growing their favorite crop, or should we in the North compensate them for not killing us? I hope that you recognize the analogy with global warming: the emotive baggage surrounding the issuesin and guiltis not intrinsic to the structure of the problem, but imported from other agendas.

Now let me get down to the genuinely difficult ethical issues. 

And so he does – a fantastic article if occasionally a little too strident and self assured for my taste.