Hungry Gustav - Life Nonpareil

Energy consumption nonsense

I am just watching "Bang goes the theory - human power" where presenters are trying really hard in showing how much energy we use. They are even using dozens of sweaty cyclists to dramatize the situation. They go even further and show how leaving laptops, TVs and other appliances on a stand-by is so wasteful that it could even destroy their studio if they released the amount of wasted energy. Now, I'm exhausted after a day's work but still, this is completely insane.

So now we should feel bad because the companies that produce these appliances are installing stand-by as one of the features, we should feel bad because innovators in these companies are producing ever new appliances that consume ever more energy (by the way, these same companies receive innovation grants from governments around the world), we should feel bad for consuming energy while energy producers constantly increase prices to fill their/government coffers with more money so their executives can drive huge petrol-guzzling cars, private jets and we should feel bad because we want to live decent lives???

Come on people, wake up! Why don't they create documentaries showing the other side of the game - the commercial side? Well, they won't because they are afraid of the consequences and losing advertising money if they upset some of the big players. They won't because it is easier to press on the average Joe but let me tell you something: We are not stupid, we know what the game is and you can show all the drama on the TV but unless you yourself change the behavior there is no way people will follow you. It's a hypocrisy game nonpareil!

Advertising: Changing Perception

What a fantastic talk by Rory Sutherland! It's interesting how easily most people can be persuaded solely through advertising. I particularly enjoyed a few good lines on placebo education and diamond Shreddies.

Work Life Balance

Almost all magazines I opened today had an article about work life balance. Just pure coincidence or a hidden message? And not that I would be superstitious in any way. I read one, then the other and further I dug the more agitated I'd become. They are talking about healthy drinks, vitamins, healthy food, the need to exercise, blah, blah blah. That's all fine and nice, and even healthy, but there is much more to work life balance than healthy eating.

The major problem people face today is that they are overworked, they do not sleep enough and they spend more time with their work colleagues than their family. One of the main reasons we have ended up behaving so strangely is the push for higher productivity and I've covered that in my previous post. The other problem is greed and our obsession with achievements driven by the culture of continuous promotions. Yep, they work to a certain extent but the impact on our society is almost irreversible. Crime rates are increasing, close tied communities in their original form have more or less disappeared and as incredible as it may seem, morality and family values have become close to heresy.

So what can and should we do? Well, 24 hours can be nicely split into three 8-hour slots, each used for different purposes. We should work 8 hours, sleep another 8 hours and be involved in family life for another 8 hours. That is a fundamental requirement for work life balance and no diet will ever replace this. In fact there is plenty of scientific evidence behind this statement. For some people, running some types of family businesses for instance, 16 hours of work and family time will be blended but the end result should be that your family life or in deed your work life and sleeping do not suffer. What is obvious from all of this is that achieving work life balance is far more difficult than achieving an extremity in favor of one or the other 8-hour slot.

Real heroes are therefore people who can still achieve a degree of work-related glory but manage to keep the work life balance intact, including the stuff that magazines are so successfully selling. Why? Because when old and unimportant you should be able to look back at your life and see an encyclopedia rather than a professional dictionary, and then enjoy the remaining time filling up encyclopedic gaps rather than being confined to worn out specialism.

Counterintuitive behaviour that isn't so counterintuitive

I've read this J W Forrester's seminal 1970's paper several times now. It was in 1998 when I found it for the first time but it sounded all too vitiating at the time. The economy was just recovering from the wrath of the 1990's recession and I was just about to embark on the biggest mental journey of my life thus far. So I didn't pay much attention, after all the paper was written almost 30 years ago at the time and global warming wasn't making the headlines yet. I've read it several times since and every time the picture becomes bleaker yet more lucid in the wrap of the current circumstances.
What Forrester managed to reveal with the use of a computer simulation is just how perniciously wrong the world order we live in is. Ramifications are hardly comprehensible let alone describable yet his Figures 1-7 show very neatly what follows if the world as a unified entity does not react in one voice. The whole story Forrester is telling wouldn't really make much sense would this paper not be almost 40 years old by now. It is only a computer simulation many would smirk but it is a simulation that predicts pretty accurately what has been happening ever since Forrester decided to show the results to the US government in the 1970. Industrialization, quality of life, depletion of resources, pollution and most importantly the population growth are all there and the predictions are all pretty spot on. What follows in the next few decades is really scary to say the least. It might not be such a good idea to live in an industrialized nation after all. Where has all the knowledge gone, I wonder? Do policymakers know all that and are playing it stupid or are they really just losing the touch with reality? Or as Nobel laureate Paul Krugman would say "We're living in a Dark Age of macroeconomics".

Weather causing further economic meltdown?

OK, this really is hilarious! I'm just watching Channel 4 News with John Snow and there is a debate over current hugely overrated weather events causing closure of thousands of British schools. The debate would get my admiration because a few centimeters of snow shouldn't even be worth mentioning. Particularly  considering that my home country is just now being affected by more than half a meter of substance and this is measured in several meters on higher grounds yet everything works as normal. However, things turned sour when one of the invitees started talking about the damage closed schools are causing to the businesses. Now, come on, it is an exaggeration to close schools for a little bit of snow but then to say the businesses are affected by this is even worse. In the economic climate where businesses are wondering how to sell anything and pay their staff a couple of days of leave is like God's blessing even if it is unplanned.

I'm sorry but this just shows how far we've gone with everything. First we close schools for a few centimeters of snow and then claim that this will seriously affect businesses. My goodness, is it even worth keeping a business that can go bust by something so innocent? On the other hand, can anyone think that, although I'm not supportive of the closure per se, kids actually benefited by spending a bit more time with their parents who in turn could relax a bit from a daily frenzy? Has anyone thought that this may now also motivate people to be a bit more committed if only employers don't lift so much dust about these two wonderful days and has anyone though that perhaps we have avoided a number of car accidents because people stayed at home?