Posts by Moz
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Hmm, I'm a fan, but I don't know that I'm $90 a fan (Sydney talk). Will have to ask the lady of the finances for permission.
Asked a kinda-friend if she wants to go, made myself not say "the social ethics aspect may be too pointed for you" because friend has very much sold out and is making good money managing forced council amalgamations. Those are being done for a combination of long-term ideology, and short-term "administrators we appoint will support the motorway we're forcing through"... most affected councils have court cases in progress against said motorway. But the pay is excellent!
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Southerly: I Fell Down, in reply to linger,
Nah, the Babylonians make Asimov look like a shirker. The whole point of base 60 is that you can easily count in base 60 on your fingers. Five fingers times 12 joints means you get to 60 on one hand, and by the time you run out of fingers you've probably also run out of daylight. 3600 is quite a large number when you're counting things. I'm sure they also have tricks for multiplication as well as addition.
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Hard News: An interview with Ben Goldacre, in reply to David Hood,
Interesting plot, that one.
And thanks Russell and Ben for the fascinating interview/article.
Also, I think that the further you get from seeing the meat hit the grinder the easier it is to forget that in the end that's what you're supposed to be working on. It's absolutely essential to have the "how best should science communicators work to convey the summary of research into a possible solution to a problem identified by epidemiologists working for a committee of political appointees" people working, but they both depend on the rest of the chain, and their ultimate goal is still "less meat into the grinder".
At the extreme I think it's really useful when the political decision makers have to face the people whose lives they effect and say face to face "it's better that you die than these other people I have identified". My fear is that too often one pretty, stricken figure gets the media attention so the easy political solution is to let 100 poor, elderly people freeze to death away from the media eye so that the politician can fund treatment for that one person. Which is a whole other part of the "is this social science or politics" question :)
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Southerly: I Fell Down, in reply to Graeme Haywood,
I dunno, some people can write about paint drying and it sounds interesting. Literally about paint drying. Well done, David.
Cheer us all up by writing about holidaying in Hawaii.
I have a friend who's taken time off cancer treatment to visit Melbourne (complete with wig that vaguely resembles her usual hair). I get the impression that one of the big benefits of being away from Christchurch is the lack of reminders that you're in a city still recovering from a series of disasters. The weather is nicer, but mostly it's the "I'm on holiday" vibe. Which I thoroughly recommend.
Although this may not be the best week to visit Sydney. We had an outburst of weather last weekend.
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Speaker: If the fish stinks ..., in reply to Kiwiiano,
Computer analysis of the images?
That's got to be where they're heading. It's also something that if NZ made it work I think a lot of countries would buy off us. And our reputation as sustainable would get a boost too, simply because we had that system.
I work in the physical security industry, and one thing we're seeing a lot right now is "smart monitoring" where instead of 50 camera feeds on multiple monitors, the security people mostly see one feed selected by the computer as interesting. As that technology improves we're going to see much more use made of stuff like biometrics so that people not on the allowed list are flagged and tracked in real time.
I suspect that one really useful side effect of the above fish-watching would be the ability to get excited if a non-fish went over the side. So instead of waiting for another crew-member to say "I haven't seen Bob for a while" the computer would be all "whoop whoop, man overboard" the instant Bob cleared the rail.
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Speaker: If the fish stinks ..., in reply to Bart Janssen,
But either way the solution is to increase funding to allow them to operate independently and not to simply accuse them of being corrupt.
I agree with the first part, more funding is essential.
But I did not mention corruption. I think it's interesting that my impression of MPI is reinforced by the article above, where you seem to have taken it as evidence that the regulator really is independent.
My feeling is that MPI are clearly not capable of independent analysis, let alone fair regulation. So we either need to get rid of them, or provide an independent oversight body that is capable of regulating the industry.
What I would like to see is a requirement that all catch be landed. I don't care whether it's a protected species, if they kill it they have to bring it ashore. If nothing else it will give fishers an incentive to catch only what they can sell. It would also simplify analysing the video since they only have to scan for fish going over the side, rather than get into the messy details of exactly what is going over the side. And the detailed analysis can be done on land by anyone, not just people who have to live on the boat with the people they're regulating. It's "small town cop" exacerbated to the Nth degree, not least because people often die on those boats and if you're an "independent observer" who is offside with the crew... that's really sad.
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Speaker: If the fish stinks ..., in reply to Bart Janssen,
MPI is full of good dedicated hard working folks who believe their job is worthwhile. I'm sure there will be the odd bad one
My impression from a few random contacts is that MPI has quite a lot of people who feel that commercial fishing is under attack and will reflexively defend it against even the mildest criticism. That kinda suggests to me that they feel they're part of the industry, rather than an independent regulator who is there to stop abuses. I can see how it would be easier to work that way, and we do see that type of capture everywhere from policing to politics, but it's still a bad thing.
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Polity: Labour and the Greens in a tree..., in reply to izogi,
What in particular do you dislike about Nick Smith in Conservation?
Purely based on his responses to personal communications, I got the impression that he was quite unwilling to spend political capital on DoC issues (or maybe he didn't have enough clout to achieve much). There was no way he was going to get involved in an argument about extending protections or supplying enough money to DOC to fulfil its statutory functions. I suppose what really annoyed me was that he seemed so reasonable in comparison, but in the end has was just "not as bad as other Nats".
I fully agree that other Nat ministers have been absolutely atrocious.
I suppose it's important to note that my expectation for Green MP's is that they will be genuine and doing their best, so saying that Nick Smith seemed to meet that bar at times is my version of condemning with faint praise. I expect Stefan to be in that sense similar to Nick - charitably, he'll try but he's just not up to the task. The more I think about it the more I realise that I had unrealistically high expectations of Nick as a minister, since he seemed quite keen on the conservation estate. He didn't *do* anything politically that made me think that was actually true. (sorry, repeated edits as I think about this)
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Polity: Labour and the Greens in a tree..., in reply to Bart Janssen,
... and Steffan Browning as minister of science?????
for all that I despise the nonsense that individual spouts, I'm kinda tempted by the view that he couldn't be much worse than Nick Smith as Minister for conservation or Pullya Benefit as Minister of Social Welfare. It might almost be a refreshing change to see someone so publicly clueless rather than the National repeated success at persuading the media that their minsters are competent and good-intentioned.
Plus I love the idea of a chemical-free Science Minister. Now *that* would be innovative!
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Access: The Universal Basic Income and…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
I open the curtains at 7am
just so you think I'm up with the rest of the menThe whole song is quite appropos