Wednesday
Aug212013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Oodles of noodles
Aug 21, 2013 Energy: gas Greens There's a wonderful article at Kernel Magazine in which Jeremy Wilson meets the fracking protestors:
Have you protested before on energy issues?
Prajna: “Well, no. But I’ve designed a few energy things. I’ve designed an internal combustion engine that only has two moving parts, which is far too efficient to produce, otherwise oil companies would kill me. I’ve had some top engineers working on it. My great uncle designed a perpetual motion machine. But he was busy looking for something that would insulate between magnets in order to produce it. Well actually I’ve had a look at the design since. I looked into buoyancy. I did all the maths on buoyancy.
Reader Comments (64)
richard verney (Aug 22, 2013 at 4:04 AM)
Too true. Indeed, nothing is free. I remember a discussion I had a few years ago with someone bemoaning the existence of water companies; to paraphrase: “They are making money from something that is free!”
When I pointed out that the water might be free, but it does cost to be collected, stored, filtered, treated, delivered, then removed (employing many people in the process), they very reluctantly conceded. Perhaps education has now progressed such that those simple arguments cannot be considered anymore (indeed, I had a discussion on another site with someone who seemed to think that all that was needed to get electricity was to hang the electric plug outside, and you get the power! Though, perhaps I misunderstood him when he said “Fool – the power is not in the turbines, it is in the wind!”).
Bless...
Wonder how the current heavy rain is affecting their enthusiasm to protest...
Anyway - school starts again soon, so a lot of them will be back at their desks - or their teaching posts...
RR
You might be right about educational "progress" but I suspect the biggest problem is what used to be termed "information overload". It has a distant (perhaps not so distant) relative in the apparent lack of the general knowledge that we absorbed as kids without most of the time being aware of it.
A lot of simple everyday misunderstandings (the expression "toe the line" which appears to have transmuted into "tow the line" is a good example; there are hundreds of others) have resulted from the fact that people don't read; they listen with half an ear and come away from what they have half-heard with half-baked ideas about the way the world works.
The trouble is that water used to be "free" just as in my younger days there was a general belief that council house tenants didn't pay rates (the figure was included in the rent). The figures for both were available if you went looking for them but once the myth gets well enough established there's not a lot you can do about it!
Unfortunately it tends to lead to a skewed idea of the real world and we end up spending too much time trying to explain the facts as they are to people who are convinced they are right and you are wrong even as the evidence is staring them in the face. Ask any CAB volunteer!
There is a widespread belief, particularly among the Left, that "free at point of use" and "free" are synonymous.
NW (Aug 22, 2013 at 2:10 PM)
They are, if you make a point of not making any contribution to the pool from which the services are paid. This is why those scroungers on benefits (note: not everyone on benefits is a scrounger; some, through the cruel quirks of fate, are true claimants) believe that everything must be free – for them, anyway. The wisdom of Abraham Lincoln would be lost on them (“You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”).
What they don't realise is that it is very difficult to avoid contributing to the pool through VAT and other indirect taxes. "The free buses are great but it's a scandal how much booze and fags have gone up!"
They think that it's good that road transport gets hammered again and again because they don't have a car, not realising that everything gets more expensive as a result.
Many years ago I sat in a pub with a lefty friend who was celebrating the end of the hated poll tax and did the calculations on the back of a beer mat to show how much worse off she was due to the VAT hike which accompanied it. Total astonishment.
NW:
Good point. hehehehe - that'll learn 'em!
I learned a new Oscar Wilde quote today thanks to those Belcombe protesters.
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."
I like that poofter today more than I liked him yesterday.
Regan: “I think when the power of love overcomes the love of power, then we shall find peace. You might want to look that up on the internet to make sure I got it right. I think it’s Gandhi.”
LOL...Don't have to look it up...Jimi Hendrix...Gandhi...What's the difference?
Aug 21, 2013 at 6:46 PM | MikeC
The difference is that Jimmy Hendrix is a West Indian, whereas Gandhi is only a half naked Indian.
Radical, If only they did realise it they might not be so quick to vote for politicians who promise "free beer tomorrow" which they can't deliver.
Not much hope of that though. Remember the fuss over the "complicated" ballot in the Scottish parliamentary / council combined election? Led to things like the letter to the Herald: "I'm a teacher and I'm not stupid but I couldn't understand the ballot papers." Hmm, really?
I ended up doing a vox pop for the telly afterwards, don't know if it was broadcast as I think my "I've always said there should be an intelligence test to vote, but I hadn't realised it could be so simple" was quite what they were looking for.
Interestingly it was the Labour vote which collapsed...
RR
Be careful with that quote because that is precisely what Margaret Thatcher was saying when she said "there is no such thing as society".It's worth remembering the full quote, if only to annoy the lefties who don't want to hear it:Pretty much what old Abe was saying, I reckon.
That is one of the problems with Labour voters; they vote Labour ‘cos their dad voted Labour and their granddad voted Labour. Actually thinking and looking at the promises made (“free beer tomorrow”) then linking it to the truth after the event (tomorrow never comes) seems to be a bit beyond these folk. The fact that this country has been in a worse condition at the end of every Labour administration than when they started goes way over their heads – after all, Labour promised them that they were taking us all to Utopia! And a politician’s promise is a gold-plated promise! (Unless they are not Labour politicians.)
Reminds me of the infamous “Donnygate” of the 1990s – a story which reached as far as California! Protestors marched the streets, asking the councillors to be “named and shamed”, but found themselves unable to vote not-Labour come election time – even when the candidate was still in prison! (No, I have no idea how, either.)
RR
There is a form of dysfunction which most of the human race seems to suffer from in my experience and that is that the part of the brain that controls the hand when writing the cheque for the Council Tax is not the same part of the brain that controls the hand when it is putting an 'X' on a ballot paper.
I've lost count of the number of times I have said, "well, why not kick them out then?" only to be told, "I've aye voted Labour/Tory/Liberal/Monster Raving Loony Party/Whatever."
Suit yourself, pal. Just don't blame me when it all goes pear-shaped!
It's not just Labour voters that are tribal, believe me.