Cricket - jolly good show mate

What a good thing it was that QandA (ABCTV)  ended again in paradigm territory this week with a discussion about Cricket.
 Such a relief from the dull decades of longwinded greeks and stale old Abcchurch stuff  .
Cricket says something significant about what's good about the West



Tim Wilson might not yet get the point about Cricket , but he's got the point about Labor trying to live the dream of politicaceleste.
I feel for Tim,  because for me too,  Cricket was both  too slow and too dangerous to be taken seriously when I was young . Surely only mad people would stand around on long hot days waiting for that very hard ball  to strike them like lightning- as it most surely would.  Finally ,with a helmet on and some good advice from my superiors ( above),  I have come to really enjoy this wonderful game that is,clearly,  at its best with a Test.

What better education revolution could we ask  for our young people than  to enjoy the game ; To learn what it means to play the ball and not the man ; to learn and know backwards these words( Greg Hunt take note - especially in rediscovering the proper paradigm for the environment) Short term gain - long term pain + vice versa (Hang in there , choose to slap /choose to  slag , teamwork, its not about YOU !............)
So many of us ( quite a few on the panel?) are too busy , and too hooked on the religion of works volume rightousness that we forget the powerful and better directed passion that develops with reflection and rest too.
Cricket teaches the impatient,  like a  nagging mother ( on some long hot summer days)  that there is virtue in patient persistence and working together on slowfix. 
What a celebration of patience , teamwork and  the unexpected win cricket  is .There are rewards for waitin.
The West at its best does not model itself on the machine . It respects the rest day and the need for reflection that comes with taking it.
Noone could benefit more for its lessons than some leading members of government ( been too long at abcchurch ?) and on the ABCTV panel on QANDA tonight who need to slow down and  work ONLY on  the only model that works in the longterm - the one of doing things properly( and using public servants (and not consultants )who have done the hard yards too!) .
As one panelist noted : You can't have 20/20 without learning the game the hard way .    You can't have the cake without eating a few dry biscuits first .
Not a game for wimps ! Go get em boys !

Takes one to know one

There are some great Aussie sayings. I especially like the ones that challenge us to avoid thinking we are so great . "Having a go " is one in that line ."Duck shoving" another .
The great thing about "takes one to know one " is it challenges us to honesty with ourselves . to test the water for projection. .
 Fine  to use em if it  leaves the question open about " whose really got the problem" .The noisy one or the observer?. When the cutting cuts at the idea or the action and not the person,  it's food for thought . The glass half full side of the being a realist. Helping us deal with denial is healthy  (The tall poppy syndrome and the sledging you can have.)
Richard Dawkins is less convincing than he thinks because he's not aware of what he's doing . Sure you can make money like Dan Brown questioning everything and "having a go" .  We rebels ALL agree that words are powerful , but never let us stop using them,  carefully . Let the Dan Browns of this world play up to predjudice with the same old same old .
 Dawkins psychologist and most of us should be asking " are you in denial about being religious yourself" .( science of the mind rather suggests we all are" religous")  ABCnews of the grand conference of Atheists in Melbourne this week focused on what looked like denial ( I'm not vehement am i?" ) Sound sustainability scientists accept the role of aggression,  and are not in denial about it .
 And what seems worse on the convincing stakes is having Peter Singer as second fiddle .; Surely the man has spent  more time chasing reactionary trams than any old greeks we know .
Finally they talk a lot of hot air about evidence.
- few scientists amongst them . They say 'what scientist say" which could mean they just say what they wanna say . They use the word evolution to preach the doctrine of evolutionary and secular determinism . ( a fine but important distinction )
- Celebrating the rise ? All growth is not good. Especially if it arises out of redoubling of effort and there is plenty of evidence for fanaticism and denial amongst them .
-Evidence from History ; need to be more careful who sits in the back row of congregations of people who think they should be allowed to do their own thing . The history of such conferences is that they achieve little ( Ask Emperor Julian - he had lots of money to throw at the problem ) and harbour more tyrants than our own traditions of faith .
- The evidence is that some of these old Greeks ( Plato's cave  )would have gone further with identifying the merry go round of mere rhetoric than they have in the 2000 years since.

Remote Control devices

As a risk management scientist its always fascinated me how non scientists easily fall for the latest gadgets. PRESS HERE and IT ALL HAPPENS .
"SHOW ME THE BUTTON" they say.  Another matter for another time .Boys toys?
Philosophers of science point to the clear dangers of technological fix, but like most of us scientists  these days, pointing isn't enough . You need cooercion, strangulation and media control to be heard and even then,  you wonder .
The noisy ones  just say "scientists say " and say the bits they wanna say ;    the bits they "agree with" ; the bits they" understand".

One thing is certain, The wannebes will grab the new image and and run with it , forgeting to read the instruction sheet and leaving us without the surplus we need to dream and act more sustain-ably .
Scientists and technologists should unite

Nothing better illustrates the danger of the moment, to my mind , than the force of strategy documents over real decisionmaking; the idea that a table in a book can make a better decsion than the examination of the specific issues on the ground .
The situation is so seriuos in local government that I have suggested locally that we stop wasting money on having planners in council and just get the administrators and ever present CEO to act out the strategy documents - that way everybody wins.
We don't waste time weighing real risks on the site when those further away can make decsions easier by simply refreing to the stragety diocument - Decision making made easy --remote control ......at its best?
"SHOW ME THE BUTTON" The CEO was heard to say EA March 12th 2010