An article in The Conversation [1] discusses trust in and by government, mentioning nudge units and so overlapping with several of my pieces of the last 30 months. My takeaway was that the author clarified (stated more clearly than I have, I think) the situation: Here’s the rub. If a government constantly tells you that the problem lies in those around you, it corrodes trust in and solidarity with your fellow community members – which explains why most people (92%) state that they are complying with the rules while others are not doing so.
Ultimately, the greatest threat to controlling the pandemic is the failure of people to get tested as soon as they have symptoms, and to provide their contacts and self-isolate. Providing adequate support for isolation is critical to all of these. And so, by deprioritising the case for support, blaming the public fuels the pandemic. The government’s psychological assumptions have, in fact, squandered the greatest asset we have for dealing with a crisis: a community that is mobilised and unified in mutual aid.
When an inquiry is eventually held about the UK’s response to COVID-19, it is essential that we give full attention to the psychological and behavioural dimensions of failure as much as the decisions and policies implemented. Only by exposing the way in which the government came to accept and rely upon the wrong model of human behaviour can we begin to build policies that work.
I continue to say that we need and needed for sick pay to cover obligatory isolation. That the State thinks we will in general game the situation to individual benefit (some will and the press will trumpet those cases) is exactly what parliament is there to clarify and sort out; that does not mean we should not fix the problem, only that it is non-trivial. Which is what we have politicians for, surely.
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Another piece from The Conversation [2] struck me as of low quality, but that this might well be the result of unsympathetic editing. The diagrams fail to communicate content; the one message received was that EPC measurements (the energy certification you have on buying/selling a house) are flawed. It would be better, I think the author was trying to tell us, to instead declare kWh/m²，which is then relatively subjective, as a measure of how the residents have behaved. But really the EPC needs to be redesigned so as to recognise the variety of housing types and ages. A useful document would tell you something about the running costs you would experience if it were you living there, but of course assumes that your lifestyle, and therefore energy consumption, is the same as the previous occupants.
A linked piece [3] gave much more detail. This from the abstract: The patterns of heating in 249 dwellings in Leicester are derived from measured hourly temperatures and a face-to-face socio-technical survey. Of the 93% of homes that were centrally heated, 51% were heated for two periods each day and 33% were heated for only one period per day. The mean winter temperature in the rooms varied from 9.7 °C to 25.7 °C. Heating patterns varied significantly and systematically depending on the age of the householders and their employment status. Compared to younger households and those in employment, households with occupants over 60 and those unable to work, turned their heating on earlier in the year, heated for longer each day, and heated to higher temperatures. The indoor temperatures were much lower than those customarily assumed by BREDEM-based energy models and patterns of heating were quite different. Such models could seriously and systematically misrepresent the benefits of energy efficiency measures to some sectors of society.
And yet there is a connection between these two articles more than just the common source. The linked paper [3] indicates that the standard modelling for how we heat our houses does not stand comparison with the real world. Since this standard is the basis for many (and, I'll bet, largely undeclared) models telling us what we should be doing, it appears to me that the evidence of what we actually do shows that the population is indeed quite sensible about things like energy consumption.
Having read a good deal of this paper [3], I am intrigued by the assumption that external threshold temperature is important. This is the outside temperature values at which the heating is (low value) turned on and (high value) turned off. To me, the critical factor is internal temperature, and I rely upon the thermostat to be aware of this. In our case, that internal figure might be 14ºC – if the thermostat is colder than that, the heating will turn on when the clock indicates that a heating cycle should occur. But others behave in a more immediate manner ("I'm cold, we'll have the heating on"), many turn off the heating if they're not in residence (that's not the same as leaving the controller to function, either) and some have the heating 'up' all of the time with a target temperature I consider 'hot'. We cannot all be painted with the same brush (not without careful washing of brushes between paints, anyway). A third of us like warm bedrooms, two thirds prefer them cold (compared with the living room). Many people, especially in older housing, use spot heating to effect, such as electric blanket (not only on the bed), a living room fire and study heaters – with, it is understood, the house general heating (about 90% of houses) on or not at the time. Quite clearly, compared to Leicester, our house is cold; recorded temperatures in the study were 11-30º, but arithmetic means ('average' if you're a non-numerate) by house type were as narrow as 20-22º. But it is recognised that young people in general have their houses more often unheated (and unoccupied), while the retired have far less variation in house temperature across any day and across the year. Factors that ought to be considered in (better) modelling would be: occupancy, household age and employment (these might be one characteristic), house age, location and construction (another grouped characteristic) and patterns of heating, since several distinct classes can be established, perhaps overlapping with the previous two characteristics. Not least, the actual heating system has an effect on what occurs in practice.
Fascinating. As with covid, the harder you look, the more there is to see and the less use is any form of single unified and averaged measure. People are not simple and neither is their behaviour.
[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378778814008317?via%3Dihub
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I overheard two runners talking about negative splits. I understood that they meant speed in equal length portions of a run were different and changing, but I did not understand what they meant; 'difference' doesn't have a direction. Apparently they mean that the times are getting shorter, so the runner is going faster. Which, on a graph of distance over time (time on the x-axis as usual), is a positive gradient. Generally, it would appear, the splits refer to a comparison of just two halves of a race. Given how many mathematicians are runners—I remember a group (more than five, perhaps seven) discussion one evening with Wallsend Harriers, where the subject was several topics in Further Maths A-level—so I find the explanations of the term 'negative splits' disappointing. If I'm running a race even as short as a mile on a track, I'll have an idea what I expect each lap to be; in a half marathon I'll have a similar (but slower) expectation of time for each kilometre (or mile in some scenarios). I'll have adjustments in mind for hills up and down and I'll be looking at the way the mean changes; a lot of arithmetic occurs when on a long run (meaning race, because I might well try hard to ignore the clock entirely on a training run).
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As we consider coming out of lockdown, or out from under covid, so we make assumptions about 'acceptable' levels of death from avoidable or preventable disease. Historically, we have accepted large and variable numbers of deaths which we attribute to 'flu', from 5 to 20 thousand and occasionally very much higher than that. This is a disease we make effort to curb through vaccines and still we have deaths in volume. One expects that the political expedience will be to add covid to the same list of 'permitted' respiratory diseases; whether it is subsequently acceptable to have the totals of deaths from respiratory diseases to rise or for the target to be to hold them to a similar (and very variable) level, is something we have yet to see. The measure we were using in 2020 was the five year average of deaths from flu and of course these figures are now rendered largely useless by covid case counts. Because, repettition, they ahve all been classed under 'respiratory disease'.
I doubt that the passage of covid will cause any change at all in the inequalities perpetrated by disadvantage, also called inequality, and the current phrase 'levelling-up' is much bandied about, with no visible action.
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It is twenty years since we took first faltering steps towards devolution in the UK. The Guardian has some observations [4], [5] and more at [6]. Devolution as considered by parliament continues to duck looking at provision of devolution in England; the Scottish version only comes with attached separation, the Irish issues continue to be locally weird and not understood elsewhere and in Wales we see sense without independence, such that this is a model we might encourage and pursue. Gordon Brown, ex-PM, has published views [7], and a response, [8]. This of course encourages argument for a British constitution, a written one. It encourages all sorts of out-of-the-box thinking, such as changing the role of the House of Lords into a body where the devolved regions meet, helpfully so as to reach consensus. It begs for study such as citizens' assemblies and reports, none of which are of any use if there is no commitment by politicians to turn study into result. It particularly encourages shouts for (loud calls for) reform of our electoral system. Meanwhile we continue to see erosion in trust in our politicians, the state organs and institutions (though it is difficult to substantiate such a comment, so this single data point (myself) says his trust in all forms of government has seriously eroded since 2015.
Every time I cycle through this position I reject the impossible (electoral reform) because of the vested interest of those in power. Yet we still have a need to cause change. Politically, those who perceive that they hold advantage (not merely the elected) are surely unwilling to surrender any fraction of that unless some competing perception of advantage is on offer. To do that we need to pursue ideas like those that cause businesses to move away from city centres (but especially the capital), we need to see the lead taken by government—and the [Pb] lead taken out of government—and we do not need to see vast infrastructure projects whose objectives and results are so very questionable. Article read last week on the success—or arguably not—of the Humber Bridge. [9] 20210704
[6] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/devolution
[7] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/09/scots-independence-union-nationalism
[8] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/11/its-too-late-to-save-the-union-gordon-brown
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As predicted a year ago, kids have been experimenting with covid tests to see what will fool them. My ex-colleague Kevin predicted that coke would do it. It turns out [10] that he is quite right and that many soft drinks will fool the test. This idiot assumes that it is the acids that cause the 'positive' result — this is most definitely not properly called a false positive. Washing the resulting faked test with buffer solution should reverse the result.
A tiny amount of research shows reports that many available domestic acids will succeed in fooling the test, but not ketchup / tomato sauce. It must be tempting for school chemists to discover how often a test can be fooled before in some sense it is denatured.
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_solution
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E-scooters are not legal in the UK except where trials are being run. So they can be used on private land, but not on public road or pavement. Blackpool, particularly. Yet I met two in use in my last wander through the local park. The trials were announced as changed a year earlier, and the missing detail is that they are only permitted where trials are running. As it is, there are issues with user licences (A,B, AM, Q, full EU licence), whether the bikes must have lights, where they can be used (not at all on the pavement, but cycle lanes are OK) and whether users should be wearing protective clothing (same position as a bicycle). Given the Cummings Effect that pushes the chancer mentality (just do it; you probably won't get stopped). Here's the gov't guidance. Don't confuse this with an e-bike. Interactive map may be misleading. They class as PLEVs, personal light electric vehicles, so they have mostly the same legal requirements as, say the motor scooter as in the background of my inset picture. The trials are revealing issues. Gov't paper to read (nothing new). Interim report from trial area in York.
Typo: 'provbably' keeps occurring. How appropriate for those who feel they'll always 'get away with it'. Because they are the elite, as each such occasion shows. That's evidence, not proof; a single counter example amounts to disproof. 20210705.
I'm afraid my own perception is that a bike (and e-bike and e-scooter) remains largely unsafe, given traffic attitudes. I am very unhappy at bikes of any sort on pedestrian pavement and I recognise that perhaps we need modified rules for runners, being pavement users at some speed. Perhaps there is an upper limit we can agree is acceptable, like ten or twelve miles an hour. I continue to feel that bike security and the requirements for protective equipment (and so, carrying it with you once the bike is parked) work against using a bike at all. Thus I can see that publicly owned e-bikes and e-scooters offer a way forward, but that then the attached issues change. For example, if one 'hires' such a contrivance, I'd like it to have an unobtrusive 'on hire' flag so it isn't 'stolen' as soon as you park it. I presume that all such devices have locator signals and that some central body is following the usage, including perhaps recognising possible accidents.
I note that powered wheelchairs have an upper speed limit of 4mph in pedestrian areas. Source, rule 39.
[12] https://www.lancs.live/news/uk-world-news/electric-scooter-rules-change-saturday-18518861
[13] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/e-scooter-trials-guidance-for-users
[14] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8958/
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Looking idly at other traffic rules, I see that car parking on pavement continues to be unevenly applied. Gov't paper Oct 2020. There's a balance to seek between loss of pedestrian route and gain of vehicular traffic route. The issue is where footway is adjacent to road (hence, pavement). The test, I suggest, is that car parking fails as soon as pedestrians are forced into traffic. I see a lot of pavement damage caused by (heavy) parking; quite clearly not fit for (the new) purpose. We have conflicting demands; that traffic flow (without congestion or disruption) and that pavements be safe (for pedestrians). 'Unnecessary obstruction of the highway', an offence under section 137 of the Highways Act 1980, includes both road and pavement.
Cycling is not allowed on pavements. But it is not often enforced because it is deemed that the cyclist is exhibiting consideration for other road users. Children over ten are not allowed to cycle on the pavement. Source. I am unclear how much of the Promenade here in Blackpool is okay for cycling. The rules are clear where there is a marked cycle path, but unclear as soon as that route is lost (unmarked, moved, missed). It is fairly clear that 'furious cycling' is not allowed (meaning, one assumes it should be on a road not a footway). Big issues with parking on a cycle lane (often done, illegal) I discover that Blackpool is a Cycling Town and that we have many designated cycle routes, including the whole of the prom. Map. I dislike how much of Stanley Park is permissible cycle path.
[17] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1980/66/contents
[18] https://www.first4lawyers.com/news-and-resources/cycling-on-the-pavement-what-are-the-rules/
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We received a letter addressed to the house but not occupants from the Energy Funding Service, telling us to hurry hurry hurry to claim loads of free government grant. Complete rubbish: (i) I claim no relevant benefits (ii) we cannot install cavity wall insulation and our boiler is already of the 'right' classification – and these are the only benefits on offer. Which I discovered very quickly thanks to google. So the conservation area business is not involved, which is the usual bar to home improvement. Yet the government trumpeted a loadsamoney campaign through the Green Homes grant. Just a moment; the letter was addressed to the house, yet the qualifying features apply to the inhabitants: so the very first line of content "Our energy records indicate that your property meets the criteria" is not true. Green Homes Grant take-up is at a dazzling 5%. Source. £2 billion was on offer. Collection of promised funds has been a minefield, putting suppliers out of business, not because applicants fail but because the fund administration has failed repeatedly. One result is that this funding will inevitably be withdrawn, so we should expect the unspent funds to be announced all over again with a load of new promises that the increasingly cynical will point at. Having looked at the scheme, no-one in their right mind is going to risk any funds in the hope of recovering them later. This adds wonderfully to the drum I've been banging that is labelled 'distrust of state institutions'. Government policy document. Other comment.
I have concluded that this is a scam. I can find no simple way to report this.
[20] https://www.edie.net/news/11/Billions-to-be-slashed-from-Green-Homes-Grant-budget/
[21] https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5801/cmselect/cmenvaud/346/34606.htm
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Following on from the heat dome business (last snippet in June), I began to wonder about other consequences of climate change, such as what a hotter, wetter climate might do to building materials. While the west coast of the US reports a plague of grasshoppers, [23], I suspect that termites—a common issue across the US) might also prefer such a climate change. Other insects swarm in similar ways, locusts for example. I wonder if wood in general responds badly to warm and wet, rediscover that concrete badly made decays rapidly in such conditions and that electrics need thorough earthing (practised in the UK, but not so much elsewhere). Only then did I find this piece.
Many of the global pests don't reach the UK; climate change may well mean we are susceptible. Termites would cause huge damage here. Of particular concern is the Formosan subterranean termite, which has not been eradicated anywhere. Asian hornets arrived here in 2019. See what to do if... (pic insert).
Thinking of pests (besides Y9&10) I'd top my list with pigeons and seagulls, but Rentokil list their top ten as rats and mice; bedbugs, cockroaches and fleas; wasps, flies and moths. Wood-boring beetles (woodworm) doesn't reach the top ten. Safeguard [27] lists by 'when' you should look out for them and, though it's a longer list, does include some not in the earlier list: nesting birds, ants and spiders. Ideas on prevention, [28]. I don't think I've ever seen a cockroach in the UK, but they are found here. Check the house insurance for pest damage; thought so, no mention whatsoever.
[23] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/04/grasshopper-swarms-us-west-drought
[24] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932021_locust_infestation
[26] https://www.rentokil.co.uk/top-10-house-pests/
[27] https://www.safeguardpestcontrol.co.uk/4013-2/
[28] https://www.hometree.co.uk/energy-advice/home-cover/types-of-pests-and-how-to-prevent-them.html
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From [29]: Average house prices now stand at 7.6 times the average annual salary, more than double the figure for 20 years ago, according to the ONS; this problem is even more acute in London with the figure being a staggering 14.2. This unaffordability has left us with a generation of renters, with just 34% of households led by a 16-34 year old owning their home, down from 54% in 1996. This threatens to spell the end of Thatcher’s ‘property owning democracy’, posing a grave threat to Britain’s broadly free-market system, with property ownership being a traditional bedrock for support for Capitalism.
I disagree with some of what this author put (eradication of the green belts for example), while agreeing with other points, such as a need for drastic planning reform and putting more funds into the hands of councils.
The related page [30] basically makes a case that Stamp Duty is a bad tax. If so, explain where else the Exchequer will recover a similar amount of money. Yes, it discourages moving house, but you could just as well argue that it makes any house move a more significant decision. The whole article assumes rights, such as that there is a right to own your own home; while we have a mismatch between demand and supply, that is not going to be a satisfied 'right'.
I wanted to be persuaded to read Think: this author persuades the opposite.
Looking then elsewhere on this site, I read a (much better) piece on education. I value pointers to things not previously discovered, I value an explanation as to why an assumption might well be false, but I denigrate adjacent statements to those making exactly that error. This might translate as a need for more content and less opinion.
[29] http://thinkiea.com/housing-and-environment/how-to-fix-housing-market-1/
[30] http://thinkiea.com/housing-and-environment/how-to-fix-britains-broken-housing-market-part-2/
[31] http://thinkiea.com/education/the-value-of-education-spending/
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Link [32] above argues that urban dwellers have bigger carbon footprints (than non-urban dwellers). It takes evidence that comparisons between urban, semi-urban and rural dwelling (Austria, Finland and the UK) output CO₂ in the relative order 100%, 108%, 104%. Given the disparity between these areas in other respects, I see this as making a lot from very little. Yes, there's a difference, but it is quite small and says nothing about any other measures for things that are good or bad in causing climate change. Or for life satisfaction.
One other interpretation is that yet again The Conversation has missed its own target, the claim for integrity and journalistic flair.
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Is there a general argument that we should be 'doing something' about climate change? What is the greatest threat to our world – what is that we are doing that most threatens the continuation of the world as it is and as we would like it to be? I found an argument that says the threat is capitalism, [33], which might be called affluence and that in consequence we can only achieve sustainability through drastic lifestyle changes.
Such wonderfully large statements imply a wealth of other argument. I question whether climate change is the same as sustainability, to the extent that I'd like that explained at some length, so that perhaps it becomes an agreed conclusion. In the context of demanding change, what properties of wealth, affluence and capitlaism are those which work against (for want of a better word) sustainability? I have no doubt this is, in general, short-term thinking and greed, the chase for immediate personal advantage and other things that provide good reasons for mankind to continue to behave more like the lemming than any rational being. But then we have only rarely exhibited rationality.
The graph to the right exhibits correlation but not causation, connecting growth of GDP with CO₂. References to the need for a 'reset of capitalism' call for changes to taxes and policies, moving the 'market' to pursue fairer outcomes for all and a stakeholder economy. I'm not at all sure any of those has meaning when a politician says the words. This is much too vague and, like explaining that the global crisis is huge, leaves no action for the little people while at the very same time leaving no trust that the hands of politicians are in any way 'safe'. If we are to in any sense 'fix' the problem—whichever problem you perceive—then it is we, the little people, who will end up paying for it. Therefore any change requires our wholehearted support and that, in turn calls for us to agree that inequality of advantage (at some level) is what it is that has to change. I can readily agree that 'building back better' is a good idea and sounds wonderful; I am happy to agree that this means we need very much better processes and systems, but while we don't have any clear explanation what the new purpose of such systems and processes is to be, we cannot make any beginning. Thus, without having had any open and wide-ranging conversation about whatever 'this' is really about, we remain very likely to fall just as fast as we can into the old, bad habits.
Reduce inequality; yes please. How do we do that? What is it that we measure as being unequal? What might that mean for me personally? For my locality? How is this going to be paid for? What else has to change to make these inequalities (whatever they are) reduce? What is it that is being compared and declared unequal – and just how unequal does it have to be to matter?
World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report 2020, Link [34]
[34] https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-risks-report-2020
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Written in an email to a past pupil (now also past fifty), but with the typos removed:
If my responses help clarify your thinking in any way then they are useful. And if they are not useful, you could bin them and I'd never know. That said, I find that mild dissent is harder to find these days – either one has the response of a rabid, dog, total agreement or tacit (silent, tacet) agreement. What we need is for opinion to be met with (gentle) questioning and suggestion. No-one should require anyone else to agree with any opinion, but at the same time that leaves a lot of scope for discussion as to how two or more people might arrive at differing opinions.
For example, covid vaccination (jab is a far shorter word to use) means that hospitalisation and death are less likely to a nation. However, that does not mean that covid is defeated. The last few weeks in the UK our unvaccinated population is about the same as of Belgium and our population density (England certainly) is about the same. Which, less the death rate, makes us in a position in June 2021 very similar to Belgium in April 2020. And Belgium had as bad a covid cycle as England did, possibly a little worse. So while our (idiot) politicians are pointing with glee to Freedom Day, when 'all restrictions' are lifted, what they really mean is precisely that regulations are lifted and that from that point onwards it is 'your' individual responsibility to behave intelligently. Except that to a large extent we don't have the implied freedoms. Yes, I can choose to not go to the pub, but I didn't do that before; similarly I can continue to not go to things with crowds. But if one's boss decides that the office is now open and that you will attend, then you suddenly have no say at all in what it is that you consider safe and every interaction with the Public will operate at the lowest common decision, i.e. no precautions at all. So our rapidly rising case count will continue to escalate, modified only by the thin wall of vaccination. Thus we create conditions in which new variants will be encouraged. Also, we encourage further incidence of long covid — and if you know anyone with MS or CFS, this is no joke and largely without cure or remedy; indeed, we have surprisingly few remedies for issues with the lungs.
So pushing the responsibility from government to the people sounds great (therefore politically a Good Thing) but in practice pushes us all to the lowest common denominator, making us all equally stupid.
Among the options one has is to withdraw from interaction except when it can be done on one's own terms. But in a world in which (as at the top here) one should not / must not force one's opinions upon others, there is no reason to expect others to behave as you would like them to (give you space, respect your health concerns, wear a mask, etc).
So the converse side to being allowed to express any opinion and to behave as you feel fit is that of respecting the wishes and opinions of everyone else. Making these two equally important is, quite simply, not going to happen.
Given such behaviour, man really doesn't deserve to survive.
Conversely, it looks as though our survival as a race (other than in very small numbers, post-apocalypse) requires us to make wholesale change in our behaviour. Star Trek has it right; "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few". Our problem is that the many agree that their singular needs multiplied many times amount to the 'need of the many', which is NOT what the expression means.
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Zero-sum game is a phrase I see quite often and which I suspect is used but not understood. This is often seen in worthwhile statements such as "Happiness is not a zero sum game, and neither is life". By which what is meant that if it were a zero-sum game, you could have happiness (wealth, advantage of some description) only by someone else losing an equivalent amount. This is game theory, often explained in maths and economics courses. I shall explain, or attempt to.
You have a 'game', which is a series of interactions (think turns in a board game) between participants. Generally it is assumed that all participants place the same value upon the commodities being traded. So movement of commodity is equated to movement of value and at all times the sum total of value remains the same. Thus gain by any participant must be matched by loss elsewhere. No-one is claiming that just because we have transactional situations which are zero-sum that ALL transactions are zero-sum. You have a surfeit of plums and I have a surfeit of apples and we could trade to mutual benefit —we're both better off. We could play Scrabble not so that one of us wins but so that the aggregate score is as good as we can make it. Link [35] to wikipedia on this. When I studied this at university, the idea was to assign probabilities to the possible actions and then to seek the decision route that would minimise loss – to minimise the maximum expected loss independent of the opponent's decisions. This fell within what I called, at the time, linear programming, specifically the study of the minimax method and I long ago gave away the textbooks.
This is a very attractive model. It offers routes to measurement and quantification and, implicitly to 'success'. Yet at the very same time that attraction drags us into competition and drags us into assuming that zero-sum is a necessary condition. The very same theory says that a non-zero-sum game for n players is equivalent to a zero-sum game with n+1 players. That last player represents the global profit or loss. We could interpret this as a corollary for there to be a global profit, some sort of global benefit, and then a general solution is to set as our objective that the optimal global profit is the desired result. Which requires each identifiable 'game' to be non-zero-sum – or to include the globe, in whatever sense that applies, as a player we wish to win.
Yet we persist in treating many of our daily interactions as if they are zero-sum in nature. This something we could easily change, if we could only agree that the result was desirable. In the same way that destruction is easier than construction, so I perceive that a zero-sum attitude, my gain for your loss, is easier. Perhaps in interpersonal interactions it is true that someone seeking gain at your expense will take it while your attitude remains that of the non-zero-sum player. Yet that one change, to see that, for example, happiness can be created—so the globe wins—can change your attitude to how you deal with people. It also means, I currently think, that those who visibly don't subscribe to such an idea are to be avoided. I have yet to discover how to intereact with such people to general advantage.
[35] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game
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Quote of the Euros for me, from Gary Neville, referring to Gareth Southgate: "The standards of leaders in this country in the last couple years has been poor. And looking at that man there that's everything a leader should be: respectful, humble, telling the truth, genuine." links 36, 37, 38. “Haven’t seen Sterling fall that quickly since the day of the Brexit vote.” “They’ll be putting that penalty in the British museum with all the other stolen shit.” 4 [39] Whether or not you disagree with Neville making a political point—if that was what he was doing—he makes valid comment on leadership. I wonder if he planned the sentence.
I spent quite a lot of time watching the match thinking this was quite exciting sport to watch, but at the same time that it, soccer, is actually not a good game, given the spirit in which it is played; the professional foul (defenders) versus the diving (attackers) – I don't agree with the terminology but I do criticise it. The way any two players act in competing for the ball simply says to me that this is not a game worth bothering with, mostly because it encourages attitudes with which I disagree and which I specifically want removed from our society. Within football (soccer, that is) one apparently 'wins' a penalty. That makes a penalty a reward, quite an opposite meaning. The equivalent move in rugby, such as at the scrum, requires one side to push (when pushing is the objective) so hard the other cannot maintain the required behaviour – this is a sense in which I support the advantage that results. I would agree with an argument that caused a change in the label. The pushing and shoving may be considered part of the game in soccer—players competing to occupy the same space—but it is not, the way I see it, part of the construct that the game is supposed to have; it is what it is and that is what spoils this game. No way, is it a 'beautiful game'. If football wants the same fine distinction over what deserves a penalty as rugby has, I'd like to see the rules change so that the advantage is in some sense 'won' for something other than acting. Support of deceit is, in my world, wrong.
36] https://www.joe.co.uk/news/gary-neville-praises-southgate-with-sly-dig-at-boris-johnson-279611
[38] https://www.indy100.com/news/gary-neville-leadership-comments-euro-2020-b1880229
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This page has reached a length at which I ought to move some content to a new page. Later....
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Piece on specialist running shoes.
and, from the same source, on better running. 20210621 The overall conclusion? “The elite runners had a distinctly different relationship with the ground,” Burns explained in an email. Specifically, they spent less time on it (a shorter ground contact time for each stride at a given speed) and more time in the air (a longer flight time between strides). They also applied greater force to the ground with their foot strike, and oriented that ground force more vertically rather than horizontally. Finally, they had stiffer springs—not in the sense of a specific joint or tendon that was harder to stretch or compress, but in the overall behavior of their legs and body working together as a system. Long version.