Bob's blog - the realm of threalm

Humility, Hardwork, Honesty, Honour and Humour After reading in Jonathan Haidt's wonderful book, The Happiness Hypothesis , about Benjamin Franklin's daily self scoring regime to make himself better practised in behaving virtuously, I have been mulling over how an attention-span-challenged modern like myself might successfully implement a similar system, adapted for our times. Choosing which of the many possible virtues to measure oneself against is fraught with challenge and all the inherent perils of wanton list making , so my criteria, for the moment, has been reduced to ease of recall in a tight spot, hence a resort to onomatopoeia . I can just remember 5 things, sometimes, so here is my new ready reckoner to arm myself with as I prepare for my daily engagements with my fellow humans. Remind yourself, the 5 aiches : " humility, hardwork , honesty, honour & humour " As a boy I was subjected, through a school cadet corps, to the gross stupidities of mass ...

McCain loses when he shows the content of his characterisation It's an inspiring and historic thing that America can transcend race and elect a black man to be its president. My residual concern is that however storied this triumph of the great American experiment in democracy may be, they may not have got the right guy for the job. It is not enough that he is black. He really does need to be good enough too. If America is to live out the true meaning of Martin Luther King's words that a man should be judged, not by the colour of his skin, but by the content of his character, it seems quite possible that America has again chosen poorly. If McCain had won instead, we might also have had cause to have doubts on this too. I know that the conventional wisdom is that McCain's true mettle for this job was already tempered and battle tested as authentic by his experience as a POW and as a working Senator with a real resume of achievements. How can one not respect and admire this c...

A story of O If you remain curious about this still opaque individual who seems imminently to become the leader of the free world, you might want to go to the link below (Hat tip: Eric Falkenstein ) to peruse and ponder a detailed third party account of his personality and proclivities. PDF Format It is a free 240 page self published online PDF written by a conservative US journalist named Steve Sailer . My initial browsing of it for about an hour found it a sympathetic if unfiltered telling of Obama the man, based mostly on O’s first autobiography: “ Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance ”. It seems refreshingly non PC and direct on racial issues. I am linking to this interesting tract now ahead of next week’s election because there seems to be some unfulfilled appetite for real attempts at discovering the character of this emerging potentate. It at least gives us an opportunity to focus on something other than the deluge of bilge from US news anchors and ecstatic or...

Get Palin . Get the Plumber. Just get Obama the Presidency. An understanding of what constitutes fair play had, within tolerable limits, quite wide common ground in the communities I grew up in. That includes the books, newspapers, magazines, television programs and radio broadcasts that have shaped my perceptions, as well as my homes, schools, teams and workplaces. I'm certainly not the first to say this, as a parent of teenagers or as an ageing adult, but I am still genuinely surprised I have to say it. This is no longer the case. "Fairness" has been captured by post-modernism to such an extent that it has become a casualty of the culture conflicts of contemporary society, the same way that "truth" has. Just look at the media reporting of the Obama and Palin phenomena. Reporters and commentators (they are now the same thing) no longer feel the need to even be seen dealing fairly with the subjects of their news reports about unfolding political processes. Chec...

And I am an expert at criticism ... Eric Falkenstein has again given us some gristle to chew on : " The sad fact is that experts are often more wrong on facts in their field than the average person. They are able to create a highly scientific rationale for their belief, and deflect criticism from 'conventional wisdom' because most people with mere common sense do not follow the academic protocol of the field that sets the standard for accepted expert opinion ." After what we have all been through recently; with economists and market analysts being made fools of by financial markets and with scientists and environmentalists looking sillier by the year when the planet openly defies their decrees to heat up; this is a very appealing observation. The items of evidence that Falkenstein offers for this proposition are illuminating ... . And I will store them up here, for my own future reference: Anthropologist , Elizabeth Thomas, acclaimed author on prehistoric cultures (...

The economic modellers and the climate modellers were wrong. We were told by Glenn Stevens, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia ( RBA ), in August 2007 (during a Federal election campaign): "...developments to date do not appear to have changed significantly the broader global outlook. Even with the US slowing down, forecasts of global growth have recently been revised upward. " We were told by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ) in its Summary for Policy Makers in 2007 that: "[Most] of the observed increase in global temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likley due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concertrations." So how have these statements of such august and responsible public institutions in economics and climate respectively, stood up in the light of the implacable gaze of history? The RBA's Glenn Stevens told us yesterday that: "The recent deterioration in prospects ...

We wait on feckless populists & reckless opportunists in Congress Now that the Democrat controlled US House of Representatives has voted down Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's "$700 billion bailout package", there is a palpable sense of fear in world securities and credit markets. The US Senate reconvenes on Wednesday to try to pass an amended package, which is to be resubmitted to the House on Thursday in the US. In the meantime the world just watches and waits, paralysed. If the new package is voted down again, then the market could crap out again and, worse, credit could dry up to business. This is as bleak as it gets. If the axe falls then we know we are in the abyss and can adjust our expectations. If we get a reprieve then, we muddle through as before. But at present there is only the powerlessness of waiting on others to determine our fate. Some plan Bs and plan Cs are emerging as the world faces the unthinkable, financial meltdown. The US Federal Deposits Insu...