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Wednesday, 19 November 2014

Economic Growth: the destructive god that can never be appeased

The blind pursuit of economic exapansion stokes a cycle of financial crisis, and is wrecking our world. Time for an alternative

A man walks past a television monitor showing a drop in Hong Kong's benchmark Hang Seng Index
'Perhaps it’s inaccurate to describe this as another crash. Perhaps it’s a continuation of the last one, the latest phase in a permanent cycle of crisis.' Photograph: Tyrone Siu/Reuters
Another crash is coming. We all know it, now even David Cameron acknowledges it. The only questions are what the immediate catalyst will be, and when it begins.
You can take your pick. The Financial Times reported yesterday that China now resembles the US in 2007. Domestic bank loans have risen 40% since 2008, while “the ability to repay that debt has deteriorated dramatically”. Property prices are falling and the companies that run China’s shadow banking system provide “virtually no disclosure” of their liabilities. Just two days ago the G20 leaders announced that growth in China “is robust and is becoming more sustainable”. You can judge the value of their assurances for yourself.
Housing bubbles in several countries, including Britain, could pop any time. A report in September revealed that total world debt (public and private) is 212% of GDP. In 2008, when it helped cause the last crash, it stood at 174%. The Telegraph notes that this threatens to cause “renewed financial crisis … and eventual mass default”. Shadow banking has gone beserk, stocks appear to be wildly overvalued, the eurozone is bust again. Which will blow first?
Or perhaps it’s inaccurate to describe this as another crash. Perhaps it’s a continuation of the last one, the latest phase in a permanent cycle of crisis exacerbated by the measures (credit bubbles, deregulation, the curtailment of state spending) that were supposed to deliver uninterrupted growth. The system the world’s governments have sought to stabilise is inherently unstable; built on debt, fuelled by speculation, run by sharks.
If it goes down soon, as Cameron fears, in a world of empty coffers and hobbled public services it will precipitate an ideological crisis graver than the blow to Keynesianism in the 1970s. The problem that then arises – and which explains the longevity of the discredited ideology that caused the last crash – is that there is no alternative policy, accepted by mainstream political parties, with which to replace it. They will keep making the same mistakes, while expecting a different outcome.
To try to stabilise this system, governments behave like soldiers billeted in an ancient manor, burning the furniture, the paintings and the stairs to keep themselves warm for a night. They are breaking up the postwar settlement, our public health services and social safety nets, above all the living world, to produce ephemeral spurts of growth. Magnificent habitats, the benign and fragile climate in which we have prospered, species that have lived on earth for millions of years – all are being stacked on to the fire, their protection characterised as an impediment to growth.
Cameron boasted on Monday that he will revive the economy by “scrapping red tape”. This “red tape” consists in many cases of the safeguards defending both people and places from predatory corporations. The small business, enterprise and employment bill is now passing through the House of Commons – spinelessly supported, as ever, by Labour. The bill seeks to pull down our protective rules to “reduce costs for business”, even if that means increasing costs for everyone else, while threatening our health and happiness. But why? As the government boasted last week, the UK already has “the least restrictive product market regulation and the most supportive regulatory and institutional environment for business across the G20.” And it still doesn’t work. So let’s burn what remains.
This bonfire of regulation is accompanied by a reckless abandonment of democratic principles. In the Commons on Monday, Cameron spoke for the first time about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). If this treaty between the EU and the US goes ahead, it will grant corporations a separate legal system to which no one else has access, through which they can sue governments passing laws that might affect their profits. Cameron insisted that “it does not in any way have to affect our national health service”. (Note those words “have to”.) Pressed to explain this, he cited the former EU trade commissioner, who claimed that “public services are always exempted”.
But I have read the EU’s negotiating mandate, and it contains no such exemption, just plenty of waffle and ambiguity on this issue. When the Scottish government asked Cameron’s officials for an “unequivocal assurance” that the NHS would not be exposed to such litigation, they refused to provide it. This treaty could rip our public services to shreds for the sake of a short and (studies suggestinsignificant fizzle of economic growth.
Is it not time to think again? To stop sacrificing our working lives, our prospects, our surroundings to an insatiable God? To consider a different economic model, which does not demand endless pain while generating repeated crises?
Amazingly, this consideration begins on Thursday. For the first time in 170 years, parliament will debate one aspect of the problem: the creation of money. Few people know that 97% of our money supply is created not by the government (or the central bank), but by commercial banks in the form of loans. At no point was a democratic decision made to allow them to do this. So why do we let it happen? This, as Martin Wolf has explained in the Financial Times, “is the source of much of the instability of our economies”. The debate won’t stop the practice, but it represents the raising of a long-neglected question.
This, though, is just the beginning. Is it not also time for a government commission on post-growth economics? Drawing on the work of thinkers such as Herman Daly, Tim Jackson, Peter Victor, Kate Raworth, Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill, it would look at the possibility of moving towards a steady state economy: one that seeks distribution rather than blind expansion; that does not demand infinite growth on a finite planet.
It would ask the question that never gets asked: why? Why are we wrecking the natural world and public services to generate growth, when that growth is not delivering contentment, security or even, for most of us, greater prosperity? Why have we enthroned growth, regardless of its utility, above all other outcomes? Why, despite failures so great and so frequent, have we not changed the model? When the next crash comes, these questions will be inescapable.

On batting - The perils of premeditation

Due to the demand for sixes in T20, more and more batsmen are resorting to predetermined slogging, which leads to their downfall in the other formats
Martin Crowe in Cricinfo
November 19, 2014

If you clear your mind before a shot, you actually find you have more time to play it © Getty Images

For someone who believes in meditation, it's only right to question premeditation. In my humble opinion, to clear the mind is far more beneficial than filling it. When it comes to batting, also from experience, nothing is more accurate.
To clear the mind is to allow an instinctive charge to ignite. To clear the mind allows potential to rush forth. On the other hand, to fill the mind is to force the issue, to demand a specific action, resulting normally in hitting too early after moving too little. The mind has jumped the gun, resulting in an early swing of the bat with decelerated power.

----Also by Martin Crowe

The space between two balls is where cricket is really played

On Playing Spin - Watch, move, and play late

-----

Far better to see it early, allow for the information of the ball to manifest, a decision found, the movement fluent and full, the hitting late and powerful. When you take that extra split-second, you ensure all is ready and working, the late timing and gap found, confirming there is always time for anything.
Yet the line between success and failure is so fine. As the bowler runs in, there is often a brief moment of wavering between predetermined thinking and a clear, instinctive mind. The mind can switch, and it often does completely out of the blue. One of the best ways to shut out a random interrupting thought is to repeat a slow positive affirmation: "This ball, this ball, watch the ball, watch the ball."
When a random predetermined thought rushes in, there is no stopping the outcome. The message goes straight to the hands, the hitting. Yes, the ball is sighted clearly, but it's the predetermined shot that is prominent in the mind, so the swing is made urgently, prematurely, the body doing very little while the hands and bat rush in to send the ball to where it was commanded prior to being bowled.
At this point the odds are with the bowler, the batsman having given away all his power, mentally and physically.
One of the best ways to shut out a random interrupting thought is to repeat a slow positive affirmation: "This ball, this ball, watch the ball, watch the ball"
The clearing of mental stimulation prior to the ball means trusting the instinctive software waiting to send accurate information to the nervous system and body. It results in a full appreciation of the ball's behaviour through the air and off the pitch, and what the appropriate reaction should be.
This choice is the one that supreme batting champions for over hundred years have used. However, recently, with the addition of T20, the desire to decide first, before the ball is seen, has changed the nature of the batting mindset for good.
Prior to T20, the only time batsmen were lured into such prolific premeditation at the crease was in the first and last ten overs of a limited-overs match. In T20, with only 120 balls an innings to play with, suddenly the decision that a boundary is needed instantly becomes a no-brainer. The need to hit sixes becomes the focus from ball one. To prepare for this, the batsman feels a need for a headstart, literally. He thinks that to clear the fence he needs to muster his strength and methodology early. Hence the early swing of the bat.
It's a huge tease. Yet time and again we see that clear-headed batting is the ultimate way to operate in normal, more timeless cricket. It will always produce a better long-term result.
Sadly, in the frenzy that can descend quickly in T20, short-term gain is sought. When it comes off on odd occasion, it becomes a drug. It's so cool to predict a shot and then pull it off. It's like you have this special gift and you want to show it off often. Yet it all goes against the art of batting as demonstrated by Don Bradman, the greatest ever.
In the good old days, if you tried this with an old-fashioned bat you would get out. Nowadays, with the latest innovations in bat-making advancing as quickly as they are, the premeditated slog has become successful. The six is now easily achieved with a turbo weapon and a tiny ground to clear.
This six-hitting phenomenon is a massive boost to the brand value of a player. He is prime real estate in a T20 market if his slugging profile is lifted. This kind of freelance slugger has become the rage in the IPL.
And so this is the tease for generations to come: do you set the brain to "pre" or to "clear"? It depends on what uniform you are wearing, what format you are playing, even what country you are in. "Clear" for Tests, "pre" for T20, and "good luck" in one-dayers.

Monday, 17 November 2014

List of 40 free educational websites

1. ALISON –  over 60 million lessons and records 1.2 million unique visitors per month
2. COURSERA – Educational website that works with universities to get their courses on the Internet, free for you to use. Learn from over 542 courses.
3. The University of Reddit – The free university of Reddit.
4. UDACITY – Advance your education and career through project-based online classes, mainly focused around computer, data science and mathematics.
5. MIT Open CourseWare – Free access to quite a few MIT courses that are on par with what you’d expect from MIT.
6. Open Culture – Compendium of free learning resources, including courses, textbooks, and videos/films.

7. No Excuse List – Huge list of websites to learn from.
8. Open YALE Courses – Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University All lectures were recorded in the Yale College classroom and are available in video, audio, and text transcript formats. Registration is not required
9. Khan Academy – Watch thousands of micro-lectures on topics ranging from history and medicine to chemistry and computer science.
10. Zooniverse – Take part in a huge variety of interesting studies of nature, science, and culture.
11. TUFTS Open CourseWare – Tufts OpenCourseWare is part of a new educational movement initiated by MIT that provides free access to course content for everyone online. Tufts’ course offerings demonstrate the University’s strength in the life sciences in addition to its multidisciplinary approach, international perspective and underlying ethic of service to its local, national and international communities.
12. How Stuff Works? – More scientific lessons and explanations than you could sort through in an entire year.
13. Harvard Medical School Open Courseware The mission of the Harvard Medical School Open Courseware Initiative is to exchange knowledge from the Harvard community of scholars to other academic institutions, prospective students, and the general public.
14. VideoLectures.NET – the title says it all – amazing video lectures on many topics.
15. TED – Motivational and educational lectures from noteworthy professionals around the world.
16. Shodor – A non-profit research and education organisation dedicated to the advancement of science and math education, specifically trough the use of modeling and simulation technologies. Included in this site are instructional resources, software, interactive lessons, explorations and information about workshops for students, teachers and learners of all ages on mathematics and science. Make sure you check Shodor Interactive – a great collection of interactive math, geometry, fractal, probability, algebra and statistics activities.
17. Udemy FREE Courses – hundreds of experts teach on Udemy every month including New York Times best-selling authors, CEOs, Ivy League professionals and celebrity instructors. Courses include video, live lectures and tools to help teachers interact with students and track their progress. There are many free courses that can teach you business online, law, programming, design, mathematics, science, photography, yoga and many more.
18. Maths & Science – Courses, tests and learning materials about mathematics and science for students from 1 to 12 grade.
19. edX.org – Free courses designed specifically for interactive study via the web, provided by MIT, Harvard, Barkley, Georgetown, Boston University, University of Washington, Karolinska Institute, Kyoto University and many more.
20. iTunes U – Apple’s free app that gives students mobile access to many courses. It offers many free video courses, books, presentations and audio lectures.
21. Liberty Classroom – Owned by bestselling author Tom Woods. Offers some free courses in history and economics, but at the price of one movie ticket a month you can gain access to a lot of useful information. Not completely free, but totally worth it…
22. Drawspace – Hundreds of free drawing lessons.
23. Codeacademy – Easy way to learn how to code. It’s interactive, fun and you can do it with your friends.
24. Duke U – Duke offers variety of free courses on iTunesU.
25. Scitable – A free science library and personal learning tool that currently concentrates on genetic, the study of evolution, variation and the rich complexity of living organisms.
26. My own business – Offers free online business administration course that would be beneficial to new managers and to anyone who is interested in starting a business.
27. Kutztown University’s free courses – The Kutztown University of Pennsylvania’s Small Business Development Center offers more than 80 free business online learning. Kutztown’s courses are individualized and self-paced. Many of the courses feature high-end graphics, interactive case studies and audio streams.
28. Open Learn – Gives you free access to Open University course materials.
29. Free Computer Books – Free computer, mathematics, technical books and lecture notes.
30. Academic Earth – Free video lectures from the world’s top scholars.31. American Sign Language Browser – Teach yourself sign language online
32. BBC Languages – Teach yourself a new spoken language online.
33. unplugthetv – Randomly selects an educational video for you to watch.
34. Lifehacker – Learn to hack life! Tips and tricks for improving all areas of your life.
35. JustinGuitar – Hundreds of free guitar lessons as well as some basic music theory.
36. DuoLingo – Learn a new language for free while helping to translate the web.
37. Layers Magazine – Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash, Premiere Pro, In Design and After Effects tutorials.
38. Creative Flow – list of OVER 950 Photoshop tutorials to keep your skillset up to date.
39. Open2study – Open2Study delivers free, high-quality education online. You can study subjects with real value, and in just four weeks you can learn something new, explore the next step in your career, challenge yourself or simply satisfy your curiosity. These subjects are provided by leading Australian institutions, and are taught by academics and leading industry professionals who love to teach. All you need is an internet connection and the desire to study.
40. OEDb – Choose from over 10,000 free online classes

Five countries including India, China and Russia account for 61% of all slavery

Modern slavery affects more than 35 million people, report finds

Five countries including India, China and Russia account for 61% of all slavery, says Australia-based Walk Free Foundation
The total number of people enslaved by region
The total number of people enslaved by region, see full image here. Photograph: Walk Free Foundation
More than 35 million people around the world are trapped in a modern form of slavery, according to a report highlighting the prevalence of forced labour, human trafficking, forced marriages, debt bondage and commerical sexual exploitation.
The Walk Free Foundation (WFF), an Australia-based NGO that publishes the annual global slavery index, said that as a result of better data and improved methodology it had increased its estimate 23% in the past year.
Five countries accounted for 61% of slavery, although it was found in all 167 countries covered by the report, including the UK.
India was top of the list with about 14.29 million enslaved people, followed by China with 3.24 million, Pakistan 2.06 million, Uzbekistan 1.2 million, and Russia 1.05 million.
Mauritania had the highest proportion of its population in modern slavery, at 4%, followed by Uzbekistan with 3.97%, Haiti 2.3%, Qatar 1.36% and India 1.14%.
Andrew Forrest, the chairman and founder of WFF – which is campaigning for the end of slavery within a generation – said: “There is an assumption that slavery is an issue from a bygone era. Or that it only exists in countries ravaged by war and poverty.
“These findings show that modern slavery exists in every country. We are all responsible for the most appalling situations where modern slavery exists and the desperate misery it brings upon our fellow human beings.
“The first step in eradicating slavery is to measure it. And with that critical information, we must all come together – governments, businesses and civil society – to finally bring an end to the most severe form of exploitation.”
Countries identified as leading the fight to end modern slavery include Australia, Austria, Georgia, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US. Only Australia, Brazil and the US, however, were making efforts to address the issue in government procurement and the supply chains of businesses operating in there.
Modern slavery is a live political issue in the UK, with a bill on the issue moving through parliament and David Cameron highlighting it in his speech to the Conservative party conference this year.
“But there’s still more injustice when it comes to work, and it’s even more shocking. Criminal gangs trafficking people halfway around the world and making them work in the most disgusting conditions,” Cameron said.
“I’ve been to see these houses on terraced streets built for families of four, cramming in 15 people like animals. To those crime lords who think they can get away with it, I say ‘no, not in this country, not with this party’ … With our modern slavery bill we’re coming after you and we’re going to put a stop to it once and for all.”
Olly Buston, WFF’s movement director, said: “There is still a chance that the modern slavery bill will make Britain’s anti-slavery laws the best in the world. But the draft bill must be strengthened. Children and other victims of slavery need to be properly protected. And the bill must ensure that businesses take action to end slavery in their supply chains”.

Sunday, 16 November 2014

The world is run by sociopaths – but we still demand honesty at the till


The worldview of Which? has a moral clarity that is missing from nearly every other sphere of life these days
Supermarket trolley
‘Somehow we’ve retained this elemental demand for fairness. “Buyer beware” doesn’t cut it: the seller also has a responsibility not to con people.’ Photograph: Larry Lilac / Alamy

As supermarket giants puzzle over their profit warnings and the nation readies itself to spend a household average of 800 quid it doesn’t have, here’s a quick rundown of festive scams. I don’t mean drunk people in reindeer horns pretending to have lost their wallet and asking for two pounds; that’s next month.
No, I mean the ways we are ripped off in shops. I quite like an old-fashioned swindle, it gives me a sense of continuity: the person who designed the chocolate finger packet so it contains more air than finger is descended on a direct moral line from the grocer of olden days who used to hide a clog in a bag of flour. It is reassuringly simple: most of gangster capitalism is only barely understood by the people perpetrating it, and makes the victim feel foolish, not only for having been the mark in the first place but also for the sudden spotlight on their ignorance. I personally would like to see someone go to prison every time one of us is required to learn a new acronym: if we’d instituted that after the Libor scandal, would there ever have been a Forex?
Clearly, retailers couldn’t stay competitive if they didn’t keep up with the modern world of the corporate predator. Not every consumer shakedown is a period piece: the great cheese swindle, in which wholesale prices have gone down while supermarkets – apparently by wild coincidence, and certainly not because anybody thinks they’re operating as a cartel – put their prices up, has a lot in common with today’s energy market. What we need is some kind of regulatory body to monitor the undulations of milk protein. We could call it Ofcheese. I will happily take charge of that, when the time comes.
But back to the shops, where a new Which? survey suggests there are three broad categories of swindle: making you buy a thing because you think it’s better quality than it is; because you think it’s better value than it is; or because you think it’s healthier than it is. The tricks are so craven, it’s a little embarrassing to name them. The own brand might be designed to be indistinguishable from the branded version. Goodfella’s pizzas print calorie counts based on a person eating only one quarter of a pizza, which nobody has ever done since pizzas were invented. Biscuits loaded with sugar are called “light” because they have reduced their proportion of fat (what with the scandal of the air-Fingers on one hand, and McVitie’s “lite” digestives on the other, I think we could also make a case for the creation of Ofbiscuit). Fruit juices that are mainly apple are adorned with two strawberries and called “strawberry smoothie”. This has solved two mysteries that have plagued me throughout my child-rearing years: how can anyone afford to produce 300ml of pure strawberry juice? (Because that’s not what it is.) And what is the point of the word “smoothie”? (Unlike “juice”, there is no widely understood definition of the word, separate from the product. So you don’t have to name it after what it’s actually made of; you can name it after something it reminds you of.)
Department stores hunt bigger game, packaging things as “gift sets” in order to stick an unwarranted 20% on their prices. We’ve known that for years. And they engage in affective propaganda, trying to manipulate your gift-giving mindset to include people like cousins. You can snort at this, confident you will never be so sheep-like as to buy a pepper grinder for someone whose name you have been known to get wrong. But consider: do you do Halloween? There is no such thing as the successful refusnik of marketing strategies, only variations of late adopter.
What I really love about Which? surveys – indeed, the existence of Which? as an institution – is the sense of moral clarity. There is very broad-based agreement, across the political spectrum, that people selling things ought to be open and honest about what they’re selling. There is total consensus in the shopping universe that markets are social spaces, and like any other social space will only function if people treat others as they themselves would want to be treated. This certainty has gone missing from conversations elsewhere: a banking scandal always comes garnished with people arguing that the financial sector is so wedged with talent that it should be unleashed from moral codes, the better to dazzle us with its heady ambitions. Business is increasingly presented as a quixotic, ungovernable process, upon which we all rely so heavily, and to which we should render such gratitude, that it is not for us to question it. Inevitably, this comes with the expectation that the successful entrepreneur or innovator will be sociopathic – indeed, that that’s what marks him or her out as so special: the ability to separate themselves from the muddled matters of trust and sympathy that beset the world of the non-entrepreneur. And yet, somehow, we’ve retained this elemental demand for fairness at the till. “Buyer beware” doesn’t cut it: the seller also has a responsibility not to con people. Granted, it’s not a responsibility they take very seriously, least of all at Christmas, but it’s heartening that we’re still bothering to articulate it.
Incidentally, the way to prevent overspending in supermarkets and department stores is to wear headphones piping extremely loud, motivational music; it doesn’t have to be anti-consumerist in content, just bouncy, the kind of thing joggers listen to. It does more than speed up your progress around the shop, it taps into a part of your psyche that doesn’t need unnecessary stuff because it already feels great. Complaining about shops and their moral deficiencies is necessary but insufficient. I would like to see shops treated a bit more like shoplifters – prosecuted for dishonesty even when it seems petty – and shoplifters treated a bit more like shops.
For now I just need an iPod, and my red-blooded resistance will commence.