What is the point of "rational self-interest"? Everything you do for yourself is lost when you die.
Perhaps it's an observation rather than a precept.
But it needs unpacking - what's the self? What are the drives that count as "happiness"? Are you exercising your freedom by obeying your impulses?
Reminds me of what little I understand of Sartre. Having proved to his satisfaction that man is a futile passion, he then tries to build on the void - you should be brave, honest. Why? When you're gone, you won't be able to applaud yourself or stick any trophies on your ethereal shelf.
The "selfish gene", that I can understand. But that implies that the organism lives for the next generation and for others that share its genes, not itself alone.
We share about half our genes with bananas, I'm told.
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Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.
Monday, September 02, 2013
Haunting
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| http://xkcd.com/1259/ |
Sunday, September 01, 2013
Delingpole in love
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| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ooKsv_SX4Y |
I’m now half way through Atlas Shrugged and I’m loving almost every moment. But Ayn Rand isn’t someone you read for pleasure, I’m beginning to realise. She’s someone you read so you can underline sentences and scrawl in the margins ‘Yes’, ‘God that is so TRUE!’ and ‘YES!!!’
It's a coup de foudre: as he admits, he's only halfway through the book. The intemperate marginalia suggest a loss of balance.
Discounting for a moment the possibility that he's gushing annoyingly because it might increase his chances of another booking for Any Questions?, I have to wonder why it's necessary to counter one extreme with another. Is the only answer to Communism, Objectivism? If all that matters is opposites, would Mein Kampf do just as well? After all, Rand appears to have been very taken with the triumph of the superior person's will.
I recall a Conservative election advert - was it as early as 1979, or would it have been in the Eighties? - where the voter's choice was represented as being either Tory or Labour, and nothing in between: the Liberals were symbolised by a contemptible little boneshaker of a car rattling down the centre line and meeting a noisy end round the corner, with only a hubcap rolling back into view. On the other hand, I also remember the first time I tried punting: you head towards a holly bush on the left, correct hard and find yourself making straight for some thicket on the right. Very clever of the ad firm (the Saatchis?) to persuade us that dualism is the only way.
Words, phrases, images can be intoxicating and misleading. We translate reality into our code system and then stick to the translation - think of our false memories of places and events, and Alistair Campbell's subordination of fact to "narrative".
One has to distrust stirring prose that divides us into camps: shale frackers vs "hard-left, deep-green pressure groups", "wealth creators" vs "looters". One can see that fracking may give us a few years' opportunity to reform the ergonomics of our economy, without either believing that the boom will last for a century or that we will all be poisoned and our homes disappear into sinkholes. Similarly, one can value the contribution of entrepreneurs without seeing everyone else as a bloodsucker.
But maybe Delingpole is just doing a Matt Ridley. Maybe he's not really nuts, just crazy like a fox, dressing up in whatever meretricious opinion will scandalise. After all, as Wilde said, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
On the other hand, instead of throwing sticks of TNT around in the attempt to get attention, you could try taking your coat off and work up a sweat, digging for the truth.
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Defending savers: an email to Peter Hitchens
Dear Mr Hitchens
I'm glad you're taking up the cudgels for savers. You may (I hope) be interested to know that when NS&I ILSC were first introduced in 1975, both the Government and the Opposition explicitly accepted that there was a moral obligation to savers to protect them from inflation, and with your and the Mail's resources you may be able to get more of the back story.
Here are two relevant Hansard extracts:
I'm glad you're taking up the cudgels for savers. You may (I hope) be interested to know that when NS&I ILSC were first introduced in 1975, both the Government and the Opposition explicitly accepted that there was a moral obligation to savers to protect them from inflation, and with your and the Mail's resources you may be able to get more of the back story.
Here are two relevant Hansard extracts:
______________________________
Hansard record of House of Commons debate, 10 July 1975:
Mr. Neubert
Does the Minister accept that the opportunity to invest in inflation-proof schemes is an act of belated social justice to millions of people who have seen their savings irreversibly damaged during the recent rapid rise in the rate of inflation? Will he make recompense to many of them by easing up on his vindictive attacks on the principle of savings embodied in the capital transfer tax and the wealth tax?§Mr. Barnett
The hon. Gentleman has put his supplementary question at the wrong time, because National Savings are rising very well at present. I am sure he will be delighted to hear that. As to what he called "belated social justice", I am sure he will pay due attention to the fact that the scheme was introduced by a Labour Government and not by a Conservative Government.Mr. Nott
Is the Chief Secretary confident that a further extension of index-linked schemes—which are welcome to savers—will not cause a diversion of funds away from deposits with building societies, leading to a rise in the mortgage interest rate?§Mr. Barnett
We are, indeed, aware of those problems. That is precisely why we introduced the scheme in this limited way.
Hansard record of House of Lords debate, 4 November 1975:
Mr. Neubert
Does the Minister accept that the opportunity to invest in inflation-proof schemes is an act of belated social justice to millions of people who have seen their savings irreversibly damaged during the recent rapid rise in the rate of inflation? Will he make recompense to many of them by easing up on his vindictive attacks on the principle of savings embodied in the capital transfer tax and the wealth tax?§Mr. Barnett
The hon. Gentleman has put his supplementary question at the wrong time, because National Savings are rising very well at present. I am sure he will be delighted to hear that. As to what he called "belated social justice", I am sure he will pay due attention to the fact that the scheme was introduced by a Labour Government and not by a Conservative Government.Mr. Nott
Is the Chief Secretary confident that a further extension of index-linked schemes—which are welcome to savers—will not cause a diversion of funds away from deposits with building societies, leading to a rise in the mortgage interest rate?§Mr. Barnett
We are, indeed, aware of those problems. That is precisely why we introduced the scheme in this limited way.
Hansard record of House of Lords debate, 4 November 1975:
http://hansard.millbanksystems
Lord LEE of NEWTON
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that while the index-linked schemes are extremely good value for money, it would be a good idea—as inflation has been rather rampant—to increase the maximum amount that can be invested in them?§Lord JACQUES
My Lords, the Government have two conflicting obligations. One is an obligation to the taxpayer to buy goods and services as economically as possible, and secondly there are certain social obligations. The Government believe that by the action they have taken they have got the right balance.
Lord LEE of NEWTON
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that while the index-linked schemes are extremely good value for money, it would be a good idea—as inflation has been rather rampant—to increase the maximum amount that can be invested in them?§Lord JACQUES
My Lords, the Government have two conflicting obligations. One is an obligation to the taxpayer to buy goods and services as economically as possible, and secondly there are certain social obligations. The Government believe that by the action they have taken they have got the right balance.
______________________________
I have been trying for 447 days so far to get my MP (John Hemming) onside and so far I've sensed a definite reluctance to consider this issue important. When I gave him the above extracts (for the third time - I suspect he doesn't read his correspondence with sufficient attention) he very grudgingly said (by email, 22.07.2013) "I will ask [my researcher] to put these points to the minister with the suggestion that a small number of index linked bonds should be made available with a limit as to how much any one person can hold."
NS&I retrospective changes - http://broadoakblog.blogspot.
I have been trying for 447 days so far to get my MP (John Hemming) onside and so far I've sensed a definite reluctance to consider this issue important. When I gave him the above extracts (for the third time - I suspect he doesn't read his correspondence with sufficient attention) he very grudgingly said (by email, 22.07.2013) "I will ask [my researcher] to put these points to the minister with the suggestion that a small number of index linked bonds should be made available with a limit as to how much any one person can hold."
______________________________
A further point:
You may have seen that on 9 August the Treasury announced retrospective changes to NS&I savings products held by savers, some of whom will now be very old and may even depend on them for funding care. The date of the announcement is suspicious, coming as it does in mid-holiday silly-season time. But the date that these changes are due to take effect is even more suspicious: Armistice Day 2013 - a good day to bury bad news?
It occurs to me that this apparently cynical choice of date could be effectively turned against the pocket-robbing spivs of the Government, since it may be possible to track down WW2 survivors who now hold NS&I products - do you think this could be worth a try?
You may have seen that on 9 August the Treasury announced retrospective changes to NS&I savings products held by savers, some of whom will now be very old and may even depend on them for funding care. The date of the announcement is suspicious, coming as it does in mid-holiday silly-season time. But the date that these changes are due to take effect is even more suspicious: Armistice Day 2013 - a good day to bury bad news?
It occurs to me that this apparently cynical choice of date could be effectively turned against the pocket-robbing spivs of the Government, since it may be possible to track down WW2 survivors who now hold NS&I products - do you think this could be worth a try?
______________________________
If you'd care to glance through my attempts to get heard - and read the stupid, guff-filled and irrelevant responses from various Treasury ministers - please see below for the links to my humble amateur blog/magazine:
Part1 - http://broadoakblog.blogspot.
Part1 - http://broadoakblog.blogspot.
NS&I retrospective changes - http://broadoakblog.blogspot.
Very best wishes
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Media bias? Syria, chemical weapons and napalm
There is some confusion in media reporting on Syria, and I wonder whether it is deliberate. BBC News at Ten talked about chemical weapons a couple of nights ago, and then screened an on-the-ground report (no longer available on BBC iPlayer) showing the burn victims of an air attack on a school:
Trouble is, the wounds look like the effects of napalm, a mixture of petrol and gel that sticks to you as it burns. As it was invented in 1943 it was obviously not proscribed by the Geneva Protocol of 1925, nor is it banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention, which took effect in 1997.
Wikipedia says its "use against civilian populations was banned by the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) in 1980" but, sorry as I am that anyone at all should suffer, I have to wonder what these "schoolchildren" were doing that might have prompted an air strike. If a teenager is firing bullets and RPGs, is he a civilian?
And although the horrible injuries seem perfectly genuine, there was a slightly stagey feel to the BBC clip, as I have noted before. As with those Middle Eastern demonstrators who hold up placards written in English, one gets the impression that people there are learning how to play to the Western cameras; they're far from stupid, and propaganda is an important element in modern warfare.
By the way, the same Wiki article notes that although Protocol III to the CCW restricts the use of all incendiary weapons, the US itself has not signed that part. The US made enthusiastic and terrible use of napalm in Vietnam, sometimes adding white phosphorus to the mixture so that it continued to burn to the bone even if the victim dived into water.
So, is it merely age-related daftness that made me conflate the banned use of "chemical weapons" with a possibly legal possible napalm attack on possibly innocent civilians, or was the BBC "nudging" us into support for military action against the Syrian government? The news media have form in angling coverage - remember the 1992 pic of Bosnian Muslims apparently caged behind barbed wire? There were real atrocities in that conflict, but surely the news media, who are our ears and eyes on the wider world, have for that reason a special duty to be carefully truthful, unbiased and critical, and to give us context as well as image; I don't feel we've had that.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.
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| http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b038zlbl/BBC_News_at_Ten_29_08_2013/ |
Wikipedia says its "use against civilian populations was banned by the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) in 1980" but, sorry as I am that anyone at all should suffer, I have to wonder what these "schoolchildren" were doing that might have prompted an air strike. If a teenager is firing bullets and RPGs, is he a civilian?
And although the horrible injuries seem perfectly genuine, there was a slightly stagey feel to the BBC clip, as I have noted before. As with those Middle Eastern demonstrators who hold up placards written in English, one gets the impression that people there are learning how to play to the Western cameras; they're far from stupid, and propaganda is an important element in modern warfare.
By the way, the same Wiki article notes that although Protocol III to the CCW restricts the use of all incendiary weapons, the US itself has not signed that part. The US made enthusiastic and terrible use of napalm in Vietnam, sometimes adding white phosphorus to the mixture so that it continued to burn to the bone even if the victim dived into water.
So, is it merely age-related daftness that made me conflate the banned use of "chemical weapons" with a possibly legal possible napalm attack on possibly innocent civilians, or was the BBC "nudging" us into support for military action against the Syrian government? The news media have form in angling coverage - remember the 1992 pic of Bosnian Muslims apparently caged behind barbed wire? There were real atrocities in that conflict, but surely the news media, who are our ears and eyes on the wider world, have for that reason a special duty to be carefully truthful, unbiased and critical, and to give us context as well as image; I don't feel we've had that.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Syria: how did your MP vote?
See the Ayes and Noes (for Division Number 70) here in Hansard. (I tried to transcribe the lists but computers, you know.)
Sadly, as Autonomous Mind says, you can't necessarily read any good motive into a No vote; and the vote in the Commons nowhere near reflects the split in public opinion. All this has achieved is to highlight the disconnect between the electorate and their supposed representatives. However, I on this occasion I see an Aye vote as a slightly less ambiguous demerit.
And just as US Congress first voted the right way on the $700 billion bailout, and was then bullied by Paulson & Co. into voting again his way, I shouldn't wonder if Parliament has another go at this issue from another direction, perhaps after Obama sends in the drones.
And as for John Kerry's "proof" of Assad's guilt re chemical weapons, here's a pregnant snippet from John Ward:
At the website of French weekly Valeurs Actuelles, an interesting message from a threader mentions the arrest by the Turkish authorities on the 30th May 2013 of a dozen members of Al Nosra ( close to Al Qaida)*. The same also reports on a dispatch from Agence France Press regarding the recent seizure of ” a great quantity of gas masks” in South East Lebanon; According to an anonymous source these masks were to be delivered in Syria.
* Caught with, the threader says ("Jean Billet", 23:53), two kilos of Sarin.
____________________
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.
Sadly, as Autonomous Mind says, you can't necessarily read any good motive into a No vote; and the vote in the Commons nowhere near reflects the split in public opinion. All this has achieved is to highlight the disconnect between the electorate and their supposed representatives. However, I on this occasion I see an Aye vote as a slightly less ambiguous demerit.
And just as US Congress first voted the right way on the $700 billion bailout, and was then bullied by Paulson & Co. into voting again his way, I shouldn't wonder if Parliament has another go at this issue from another direction, perhaps after Obama sends in the drones.
And as for John Kerry's "proof" of Assad's guilt re chemical weapons, here's a pregnant snippet from John Ward:
At the website of French weekly Valeurs Actuelles, an interesting message from a threader mentions the arrest by the Turkish authorities on the 30th May 2013 of a dozen members of Al Nosra ( close to Al Qaida)*. The same also reports on a dispatch from Agence France Press regarding the recent seizure of ” a great quantity of gas masks” in South East Lebanon; According to an anonymous source these masks were to be delivered in Syria.
* Caught with, the threader says ("Jean Billet", 23:53), two kilos of Sarin.
____________________
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.
Friday, August 30, 2013
The painful progress of fusion
I recently undertook my decennial scan of our latest efforts to extract useful amounts of energy from controlled nuclear fusion. It’s one of those subjects I feel a need to check up on every decade or so in case I miss an interesting new development.
Okay that may be a little cynical, but domestic electricity produced by nuclear fusion seems to have been thirty years away for my entire life and time is running out. My time at any rate, because I’ve finally reached an age where I may claim with some confidence that fusion power will never be viable. I mean – there is no longer much risk of my being proved wrong before coffin time is there?
So where are we now? Well iter.org is possibly the place to go for the upbeat, mainstream, big money view. Technically and as an example of human determination to succeed, it’s a mighty project. In spite of my crusty cynicism, I’m also something of a closet nerd. I simply can’t help but be impressed. I want it to work but that thirty year horizon is still with us.
ITER is not an end in itself: it is the bridge toward a first plant that will demonstrate the large-scale production of electrical power and tritium fuel self-sufficiency. This is the next step after ITER: the Demonstration Power Plant, or DEMO for short. A conceptual design for such a machine could be complete by 2017. If all goes well, DEMO will lead fusion into its industrial era, beginning operations in the early 2030s, and putting fusion power into the grid as early as 2040.
Okay that may be a little cynical, but domestic electricity produced by nuclear fusion seems to have been thirty years away for my entire life and time is running out. My time at any rate, because I’ve finally reached an age where I may claim with some confidence that fusion power will never be viable. I mean – there is no longer much risk of my being proved wrong before coffin time is there?
So where are we now? Well iter.org is possibly the place to go for the upbeat, mainstream, big money view. Technically and as an example of human determination to succeed, it’s a mighty project. In spite of my crusty cynicism, I’m also something of a closet nerd. I simply can’t help but be impressed. I want it to work but that thirty year horizon is still with us.
ITER is not an end in itself: it is the bridge toward a first plant that will demonstrate the large-scale production of electrical power and tritium fuel self-sufficiency. This is the next step after ITER: the Demonstration Power Plant, or DEMO for short. A conceptual design for such a machine could be complete by 2017. If all goes well, DEMO will lead fusion into its industrial era, beginning operations in the early 2030s, and putting fusion power into the grid as early as 2040.
As early as 2040? Almost a whole career from now, but one hopes that is merely a coincidence. Yet if nuclear fusion is ever to yield an unlimited supply of energy at an accessible cost, then we are surely entitled to be a little hard-headed as well as taking the long view. Take this on the Hot Cell Facility for example:-
The Hot Cell Facility will be necessary at ITER to provide a secure environment for the processing, repair or refurbishment, testing, and disposal of components that have become activated by neutron exposure. Although no radioactive products are produced by the fusion reaction itself, energetic neutrons interacting with the walls of the vacuum vessel will 'activate' these materials over time. Also, materials can become contaminated by beryllium and tungsten dust, and tritium.
The Hot Cell Facility will be necessary at ITER to provide a secure environment for the processing, repair or refurbishment, testing, and disposal of components that have become activated by neutron exposure. Although no radioactive products are produced by the fusion reaction itself, energetic neutrons interacting with the walls of the vacuum vessel will 'activate' these materials over time. Also, materials can become contaminated by beryllium and tungsten dust, and tritium.
By the phrase components that have become activated by neutron exposure, they mean components made radioactive by the neutron flux from the fusion reaction. Although the deuterium/tritium fusion reaction is the most favourable fusion reaction energetically, it spews out a lot of neutrons which are bound to make containment materials radioactive.
So as well as the extreme technical difficulties in containing a fusion plasma at 150 million degrees, we have a radioactive waste problem which never goes away.
Not only that, but tritium is a rare isotope of hydrogen and about 300g of tritium will be required per day to produce 800 MW of electrical power. The plan is to generate this in situ via lithium and that neutron flux, but this too has yet to be tested on a sufficiently large scale. According to Wikipedia, commercial demand for tritium is 400 grams per year, costing about US $30,000 per gram.
So as ever, fusion power has many hurdles to overcome, but a serious fusion plant is being built and more lessons will be learned. Somehow though, it all sounds ominously expensive even though costs will be driven down if the technique ever goes commercial.
Will it ever go commercial though?
Something inside me says not, but maybe that’s because I’ve waited such a long time for this particular egg to hatch. For me it has acquired the queasy feel of a colossal vanity project.
Ho hum – maybe I’ll take another gander in 2023.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
So as well as the extreme technical difficulties in containing a fusion plasma at 150 million degrees, we have a radioactive waste problem which never goes away.
Not only that, but tritium is a rare isotope of hydrogen and about 300g of tritium will be required per day to produce 800 MW of electrical power. The plan is to generate this in situ via lithium and that neutron flux, but this too has yet to be tested on a sufficiently large scale. According to Wikipedia, commercial demand for tritium is 400 grams per year, costing about US $30,000 per gram.
So as ever, fusion power has many hurdles to overcome, but a serious fusion plant is being built and more lessons will be learned. Somehow though, it all sounds ominously expensive even though costs will be driven down if the technique ever goes commercial.
Will it ever go commercial though?
Something inside me says not, but maybe that’s because I’ve waited such a long time for this particular egg to hatch. For me it has acquired the queasy feel of a colossal vanity project.
Ho hum – maybe I’ll take another gander in 2023.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
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