"One day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior."

Lord Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, in Pratchett's Unseen Academicals

Often, in the moments between sleeping and waking, ideas become visceral, almost literally. This can include things like 'oh my God, Sarah Palin might be one heartbeat away from leader of the free world' or 'oh my Christ, we really are managing the fuck the one planet we have.' That last one is often accompanied by the 93 million miles between the Earth and sun shrinking so that the heavenly bodies are almost within mental grasp, almost in the same room. There really is a star blasting at us, churning our water and atmosphere.

More recently, there's been a few occasions when it's been more corporeal: yanked back from sleep and plopped into a vast dark room of consciousness, so I can have some stark fact about my physical form klaxoned at me. For some reason, my spine got that treatment (probably because of a bad back); a keen sense of bone and gristle holding my centre line together. More recently (probably after some film or other) my brain decided to get all 'aaargh' at the idea of a bullet going through it. Quite reasonable thing for it to do, one might think. The fact that usually it doesn't says something about our ability to just get on with what the world presents us with. But right then, my brain wasn't having any of it: so, here's a bullet, right? It goes through and me, this person - suddenly I'm goo, I'm all over the place.

A commenter over at Tamino's blog puts in a good word for economists:

How would you physicists like it if you had to survey a bunch of molecules to find out what they planned to do, only to have most of them change their minds anyway, and the government restructure the laws of physics because of some opinion poll?

I went to hear Nicholas Stern speak a couple of nights ago: the subject was 'after Copenhagen'. It was a great talk; the man has the gift of speaking in a way that, written down, would make excellent reading. (A skill many politicians learn early.) But I was struck most forcefully again by timescales we now now talk about: what will happen in a hundred years? Current emission rates, according to climateinteractive, give a mean of 3.9 degrees. (OK, that's 90 years...) The spread's wide: if we're lucky, closer to 3, if we're unlucky, closer to 5. It hasn't been 5 degrees above current temperatures for 55 million years. Stern had a nice turn of phrase: these are the kind of changes that move people, move deserts, and are already manifesting as season creep (discussed in this recent paper that attempts a robust framework for analysing the impacts. No model in sight there: 30 years of data.)

One hundred years. Very few humans last that long. A hundred years ago, no first world war. The Los Angeles International Air Meet showcases some crazy new designs. The first commercial air-freight flight takes place - and the first commercial dirigible flight. (Now, this many flights happen in a 24 hour period.) Albania rises up against the Ottoman empire. George V becomes king. Wow - the Vatican makes all its priests take a compulsory oath against modernism. Mark Twain dies; 1.75 billion people live on.

It turns out the past is a different planet. Let's make a prediction: a hundred years hence, it'll be a different planet again.

I'm starting this blog entry with no idea what I'm actually going to say. I've never really been sure what the purpose of this blog was. For a while it was meant to help form thoughts for what is rapidly becoming the Never-Ending PhD. Well, today, what I'll do instead is be self-indulgent. More than usual. It's my blog after all; if anyone's reading, apologies - some vaguely connected thoughts follow; they'll all loosely related by a thread of cold icy chill. One chill from telly, one from history, one from the interwebnets, and I guess there's some snow there at the end, as well as the sun being destroyed. Which is must have been, cos it's dark. No real narrative thread.

Interwebnets first: I'm on academia.edu, and it turns out that it emails you when you're googled. This is only slightly more passively narcissistic than googling oneself directly, but it's been quite alarming. It should, of course, have been obvious, but since I decided to use my own surname (rather than my old secret leftie name you'll never ever find), every blog comment or appearance I make is viewable. When someone googles 'dan olner climate change' what do they find? Having not done a thorough survey, I suspect they find someone with inconsistent views, and venting more in comments than I would consider civil. A recent google of my name + 'economics' reveals more than I knew myself about the various places I've been posting, and that my Transitionista sympathies are on clear display. This is stuff to make sociologists wet themselves; we're all seeing each other now, consensually. I don't really feel like I consented, though sticking to my own name seems an honest choice, but it does look like I've ceded privacy by default. I can't recant anything. Luckily there are no awful, drunken diatribes out there - I don't think. Who knows?

"Assuming the world doesn't end, will there come a day when all the music it's possible to write has been written? It's finite isn't it?" - Claire W, via Twitter.

Excellent question. Apologies if I patronise in what follows, I like describing things from the bottom up! Yes, there are a finite number of songs in the universe - with the one condition that no song can last forever. Let's make it more restrictive and say no song can last for more than 5 minutes (though we could choose 20 or 30 mins and come to the same conclusions.)

Given that, though, it turns out it might not make very much difference that its a finite number...

Obama: vp, running mate, nation, biden, girl, antichrist, berlin, birth certificate, muslim

McCain: vp, running mate, ad paris hilton, paris hilton, paris hilton ad, mccain houses, mccain celebrity, vs obama

Biden: obama, vp, senator, wife, veep, abortion, voting record, israel, quotes, family

Palin: for vp, alaska, scandal, mccain, vice president, investigation, for america

US President, Andrew Jackson, speech to Congress, 1830:

What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?

Heard this on Simon Schama's excellent first programme about the limits of US infinity - available online for a little while.

Was just reading this which is being discussed locally here and for some reason (probably my own common-or-garden liberal internal self-loathing I would imagine) I was reminded of the following from Waking Life. Youtube snippet here.

If the world that we are forced to accept is false and nothing is true, then everything is possible. On the way to discovering what we love, we will find everything we hate, everything that blocks our path to what we desire. The comfort will never be comfortable for those who seek what is not on the market. A systematic questioning of the idea of happiness. We'll cut the vocal chords of every empowered speaker. We'll yank the social symbols through the looking glass. We'll devalue society's currency. To confront the familiar. Society is a fraud so complete and venal that it demands to be destroyed beyond the power of memory to recall its existence. Where there's fire, we will carry gasoline. Interrupt the continuum of everyday experience, and all the normal expectations that go with it.

To live as if something actually depended on one's actions.

To rupture the spell of the ideology of the commodified consumer society, so that our oppressed desires of a more authentic nature can come forward. To demonstrate the contrast between what life presently is and what it could be. To immerse ourselves in the oblivion of actions and know we're making it happen. There will be an intensity never before known in everyday life. To exchange love and hate, life and death, terror and redemption, repulsions and attractions.

An affirmation of freedom so reckless and unqualified, that it amounts to a total denial of every kind of restraint and limitation.

(To man up telegraph pole) Hey, old man, what you doing up there?

I'm not sure.

You need any help getting down, sir?

No, I don't think so.

(quitely)... stupid bastard.

No worse than us. He's all action and no theory. We're all theory and no action.


import uk.myGeography.*;
import uk.childhood.cycling.*;
import parents.washingRoutines.*;
import parents.larkin.*;
import uk.job.random;

public class Morning implements AlarmListener {

Life me;
int today;
boolean breathing;
boolean sleeping = true;

public Morning (Life alive, int today) {

me = alive;

this.today = today;

}

public void alarmGoesOff(MorningEvent m) {

breathing = (me.stillAlive(today) ? true : false);

while (breathing) {

wakeUp( me.initialAngst(), me.generalGuilt() );

goToSleep( me.checkCheeseLevels() );

}

system.exit( me.religiousBelief() );

}