The return of Mulga Bill

It's been a while since I posted one of my favourite poetic moments. The appearance on Unreal nature of "The world's greatest tricycle rider" has prompted me to respond with Mulga Bill's bicycle. – like many of my comic poetic memories (Tumba-bloody-rumba, for instance), it is Australian*

Mulga Bill's bicycle
(A.B. "Banjo" Paterson)

'Twas Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk, that caught the cycling craze;
He turned away the good old horse that served him many days;
He dressed himself in cycling clothes, resplendent to be seen;
He hurried off to town and bought a shining new machine;
And as he wheeled it through the door, with air of lordly pride,
The grinning shop assistant said, "Excuse me, can you ride?"

"See here, young man," said Mulga Bill, "from Walgett to the sea,
From Conroy's Gap to Castlereagh, there's none can ride like me.
I'm good all round at everything as everybody knows,
Although I'm not the one to talk - I hate a man that blows.
But riding is my special gift, my chiefest, sole delight;
Just ask a wild duck can it swim, a wildcat can it fight.
There's nothing clothed in hair or hide, or built of flesh or steel,
There's nothing walks or jumps, or runs, on axle, hoof, or wheel,
But what I'll sit, while hide will hold and girths and straps are tight:
I'll ride this here two-wheeled concern right straight away at sight."

'Twas Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk, that sought his own abode,
That perched above Dead Man's Creek, beside the mountain road.
He turned the cycle down the hill and mounted for the fray,
But 'ere he'd gone a dozen yards it bolted clean away.
It left the track, and through the trees, just like a silver steak,
It whistled down the awful slope towards the Dead Man's Creek.

It shaved a stump by half an inch, it dodged a big white-box:
The very wallaroos in fright went scrambling up the rocks,
The wombats hiding in their caves dug deeper underground,
As Mulga Bill, as white as chalk, sat tight to every bound.
It struck a stone and gave a spring that cleared a fallen tree,
It raced beside a precipice as close as close could be;
And then as Mulga Bill let out one last despairing shriek
It made a leap of twenty feet into the Dean Man's Creek.

'Twas Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk, that slowly swam ashore:
He said, "I've had some narrer shaves and lively rides before;
I've rode a wild bull round a yard to win a five-pound bet,
But this was the most awful ride that I've encountered yet.
I'll give that two-wheeled outlaw best; it's shaken all my nerve
To feel it whistle through the air and plunge and buck and swerve.
It's safe at rest in Dead Man's Creek, we'll leave it lying still;
A horse's back is good enough henceforth for Mulga Bill."

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* Private autobiographical note – if my Australian national youngest brother is reading this: I first read, and laughed with, Mulga Bill while you were in antenatal care at the Lyell McEwin hospital, Elizabeth Vale, South Australia ... it therefore reminds me always, and in the best possible way, of you!

Statistics and Esperanza

In the course of work, recently, I ran across the following paragraph:

“So, what does 107 million underweight children under the age of five really mean? Before you can answer that, make the child come alive. Give her a name. I call mine "Esperanza". It means that little Esperanza has probably gone to bed hungry for each or most of the 1825 nights that she has lived so far. And, there are 107 million Esperanzas in Asia.”

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• Rajat M. Nag ( Managing Director General, Asian Development Bank). Graduation ceremony commencement speech at the Asian Institute of Management Master in Development Management Program. 31 July 2009. Full text available here.

The joy of cabbage

I've recently commented on the resurgence of Martin Brown's Jungle Igloo and Cabbage Factory blogs.

The Cabbage Factory, whose bizarre poetic obsession with Brassica oleracea really should be picked up by a publisher or radio producer, has this week delightfully spoofed two poems from long ago school recitations: Wordsworth's Daffodils and Shelley's Ozymandias.

I now eagerly anticipate the turning of Brown's attention to The wreck of the Hesperus... or The rime of the ancient mariner ... or Xanadu ... or...

Friday Awika blogging

Out of a wormhole through time and space from the lair of Dr C, comes...

Hop, hop...

I doubt that these photographs will cause Julie Heyward of Unreal Nature any anxiety that I am in competition with her. In fact, with their out of focus and camera shaken fuzziness, I doubt that they would impress anybody at all as photographs. But they do come with a story.

When I first saw the little bird, it was sitting on the kerbstone between sidewalk and road, beside a light controlled crossing. It waited there, hunching down into itself and freezing whenever anyone came close, but not moving away or flying.

Eventually the lights changed, the traffic stopped, pedestrians crossed the road and so did the bird. I don't kid myself that it understood light controlled crossings; I am certain, however, that it knew the traffic would stop if it waited.

Presumably it couldn't fly, since it hopped busily across the road and on down the pedestrian area opposite. It was plainly nervous of all the human beings milling around it, and to fly would have been so much safer; but it hopped, a couple of hundred metres to the park where it started pecking for crumbs.

Much later, I saw it coming back up through the town again from further down. Hop, hop. Past the park. Wait again at the kerb for the lights. Back across the road. On up town and out of sight.

Solid gold?

Professor Greg Parker (who runs the New Forest Observatory amongst an extraordinary number of other interests), asks me whether Growlery readers can help in finding real world manifestations of a particular ratio.

The ratio in question is a 3D case of the Golden Ratio: division of the surface of a sphere in the ratio 1:1·618...

More detail can be found on Greg's StarVistas site.

If you can help, comment directly to Greg's post – preferably letting me know that you have done so, just to satisfy my own "'satiable curtiosity"! (I've closed new comments to this post only; other posts are not affected. Comments initially left, although invisible here, are available on request.)

Conversation overheard...

...by a manhole cover.

Small boy on scooter: “When you come to a manhole, you have to say «manhole!», then run over the manhole, then you zoom on to your tenth level.”

Haiti earthquake appeal

“DEC Haiti Earthquake Appeal now live

“The Disasters Emergency Committee Haiti Earthquake Appeal is to launch with the support of major UK broadcasters including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Al-Jazeera.

“The money raised will support the efforts of the DEC’s members which are the major UK aid agencies.

“We expect the appeal to be broadcast on Friday but donation lines and the website are already open for donations.”

The DEC donation line is +44 370 60 60 900.

For the website, click "DEC" at the top left of this blog.

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• Unreal Nature's "Haiti" post gives alternative donation routes.
  

Two in one week

If you liked "Baldies", at Jungle Igloo, a week ago, try Martin Brown's sister blog Cabbagefactory which has also just updated after a quiescent period.

Counting the cost of energy

“The problem with energy,” says the earnest civil servant across the café table from me, “is entropy. Actually, three problems. Where the energy comes from is a problem. Where it goes to when we’re done with it is a problem. And the process of using it is a problem. Those three things will always be true. They will always cost us in money, resources and consequences.” Then she adds, looking nervously about her: “But saying so is a shortcut to a short career. People want to hear that they can have unlimited free supplies, without spoiling their view, while saving the planet at the same time ... juggling things to try and square that circle is mostly computerised data analysis.”

The analysis to which she refers is not just application of a known set of techniques to a static set of criteria. Not only is the landscape changing as technologies and economics shift, but the analysis itself invariably informs change in both methodologies and approaches that in turn alter the criteria on which the analysis was based. This is not unique to energy issues, nor to the present time, but it does become more acute when (as here) both policy and innovation respond to pressure in an area where margins have become the main area for advance. As Tom Tietenberg commented in a recent survey of energy efficiency effectiveness, ‘policy makers must recognise an expanded set of barriers and respond with some ingenuity in applying an expanded set of available instruments’.¹ [More...]

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1. Tietenberg, T., "Reflections – Energy Efficiency Policy: Pipe Dream or Pipeline to the Future?" in Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 2009. 3(2): p. 304

The plank in my own eye...

[Oh dear ... this has turned out to be one of those sickeningly preachy ones, I'm afraid. I've dithered over deleting it, but I do believe every word of it ... so, here it is for better or worse.]

In yesterday's post ("Same intersection, different streets"), Thinking through my fingers confronts a morally and philosophically knotty problem: where to draw the line between asserting and defending different human rights, which they conflict with one another. I don't have any answers in this area; but it's certainly important to strive for them.

It's a staple of philosophy 101 that the concept of a "human right" can have no objectively absolute validity; human rights are what we humans (or a subject of us) agree, at any particular time, to assert and/or confer ... and defend. Their definition changes with time and geography and culture. That doesn't mean that I deny their importance; on the contrary, I very passionately assert it. It does mean that they cannot ever be taken for granted.

One crucial pitfall, it seems to me, is confusing individuals, societies, religions or states with each other. Societies and states are not moral, regardless of their religious and/or political philosophies. They are, at best, amoral. It is individuals who make moral choices, and a society is simply the sum total of all moral choices made by the individuals within it.

A question picked up and offered by TTMF from another source is:

“If I'm demanding that Muslims respect our right to freedom of expression, do they have a right to demand that I respect their debasement of women – which is often brutal and disgusting, especially those who've been raped. Is my argument that these extreme attitudes are perversions of the Holy Quran good enough?”

That illustrates the confusion. "Muslims" (or "Christians", or...) do not demand or respond to demands: individuals do. I do firmly and completely believe that debasement of women (like the debasement of anyone) is abhorrent. I do firmly and completely believe that debasement of the Quran to support such abuse is abhorrent ... as are the many debasements of the Bible by Christian groups too numerous to mention. But to condemn Moslems (or Christians) en bloc, because their beliefs are perverted by some, is simply a perversion in its turn: a new excuse to demonise the other, rather than take responsibility for confronting the wrong.

Individually, despite laws designed to prevent it, many women in western secular Christian societies are often oppressed by the relationships within which they live, and by the failure of society, state or individuals to do anything effective about it. Ask any woman in an abusive relationship, or in a refuge. (And it works the other way, too; I'm trying to keep this manageable, but battered men in abusive relationships are equally badly served by "our" much vaunted human rights.) When did you (or I) last personally act to end or alleviate the misery of an abused spouse, partner or child?

I regard the US habit of electrocuting or otherwise judicially murdering criminals to be bestial ... but its not that long since Britain and Ireland did the same, so I'm throwing no stones. It's not that long since women were disenfranchised in the western liberal democracies either. We have short memories – and we all have a convenient knack for ignoring how far we fall short of our own ideals, too.

Three decades ago, in the context of the cold war, Chomsky and Herman pointed out that it is easy and cheap to criticise the sins of our enemies, much less so to point out the same defects in our friends or ourselves. It's a point which remains just as true now. I don't suggest that we should ignore denial of human rights in other societies until we have eradicated them from our own; but we are not likely to be successful there unless we are equally (and simultaneously) clear eyed here.

Wherever a human being is treated in a way which you or I would not wish to be treated ourselves, and we do not protest or act, you or I are guilty and complicit. It's no use blaming Islam (or Christianity, or Nazism, or Communism, or...): blame the person or persons who commit the crime and the person or persons (that's you, and me) who let it happen – anywhere. If you know a Moslem, or a Christian, or an Atheist, don't judge her/him by that label: ask yourself whether s/he or he as an individual is acting in a way that you consider moral. Then ask yourself, honestly and without pity, if you are behaving better. Then you can enter into a dialogue which deals with reality. Confront that person's actions, or make them a model for confronting your own, or point out your common failings, or seeking to build outward upon your shared concern for moral action, but don't make things worse by the cheap and shoddy sideways shuffle of evil onto a label.

Demonising the other simply creates more evil, not less. I offer you two tangential quotations which, it seems to me, have relevance here and gave me pause for fruitful thought.

The first is from a song, Prime time, by Don McLean in the 1970s:

“We had to burn the city 'cause they wouldn't agree
That things go better with democracy!”

The other was written yesterday, an hour or so before TTMF's post, by Simon of Simon says:

“...Chagall's crucifixes ... refuse to let me off the hook as a viewer. And yet they do so with a loving touch.”

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• Noam Chomsky and Edward.S Herman, The Washington connection and Third World fascism. 1979, Boston: South End Press. 0896080919 and 0896080900

Warm news for a cold scalp

Two of my "other voices" (column on the left) are poetry blogs by Martin Brown: Jungle igloo and Cabbage factory. You may not have noticed them, as they are infrequently updated and so don't float to the top of the list very often ... but Jungle igloo popped up in the top three this morning.

Clicking on the link to see what was new, I found the new poem "Baldies". As one who is, as time and a half passes by, follicularly challenged to an ever increasing degree, I am delighted to discover what this means...

A warm thought on a cold, snowy and icy morning.

That electronic life

Having recommended Steve Wheeler's summary of where we have (digitally) come from, I should also point you to today's post in which he peers into a glass darkly in search of where we are (both digitally and actually) going.

Conversation overheard...

...on a pavement:

“I don't know why she keeps my shell collection in her bedroom...”

This electronic life

Steve Wheeler, of Learning with ‘e’s, is always worth reading. I don't always agree with him ... in fact, disagree as often as agree ... but that's OK: if I always agreed, it'd be a lot less stimulating. His first post of the new year (and, he would say, of a new decade: one area where we disagree), "2010: the year when we fake contact", looks critically at one of the downsides to social networking. This is unusual for him: like me (though with differences) he is an evangelist for ICT as a platform of personal learning environments in the widest possible sense. Nothing is pure positive, however, and reflecting on how to get the best while minimising the worst is essential in any area of life ... social networking not excepted.

While on the subject of Learning with ‘e’s I should recommend the recent series of summaries which closed the old year, charting the rapid mycelial spread of personal electronic communications through our lives in the past ten years. They are, in sequence:

1. Networked noughties 2000-2002
2. Networked noughties 2003-2005
3. Networked noughties 2006-2009
4. Noughties ... but nice

The last is a separate entry, but its inclusion seems appropriate to me.

I dislike the label "noughties" ... but, I confess, have failed to come up with an alternative. Perhaps we are embarking on the tweenies...

Friday snow [to]blogg[an]ing

Scrooge greets the new year...

Definition of a year is, of course, an arbitrary matter. To start it from roughly a week after the winter solstice is primarily a western secular decision, derived from pagan animism and formalised by Christianity, albeit tacitly accepted as an operational system by most of the world.

But I am as susceptible as the next person to shortening and lengthening days, cooling and warming air. "New Year's Eve & Day hold neither symbolic nor emotional meaning for me ... but the abstract idea of fresh beginnings, of looking forward to spring rather than back to autumn, is embedded in my biology.

In that spirit, to everyone reading this I wish the best of good fortune as they leave behind the old year and venture into the new one.