Elinor Ostrom Nobel Prize Economics 2009

I have just been introduced to the work of Elinor Ostrom, although she’s been around for a while. More than ever, her research is important.

From her website:

Analysing the design of long-enduring CPR institutions, Elinor Ostrom (1990) identified eight design principles which are prerequisites for a stable CPR arrangement:

1. Clearly defined boundaries

2. Congruence between appropriation and provision rules and local conditions

3. Collective-choice arrangements allowing for the participation of most of the appropriators in the decision making process

4. Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators

5. Graduated sanctions for appropriators who do not respect community rules

6. Conflict-resolution mechanisms which are cheap and easy of access

7. Minimal recognition of rights to organize (e.g., by the government)

8. In case of larger CPRs: Organisation in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small, local CPRs at their bases.

Prime Minister’s Science Prize for Nanotechnologist

Rachael loved her sparkly new nanodiamond ring. Illustrated by Mike McRae

From CSIRO Science by email. If you had a watch with glowing hands in the early 20th century, there is a good chance it was painted with a newly discovered element called ‘radium’. Radioactive chemicals such as this were used in everything from clocks to toothpaste to health tonics. The technology might have been new and exciting, but was also potentially dangerous. Workers who painted those watch hands fell ill, most of them dying of cancer.

Of course, today’s world wouldn’t be the same had we never discovered radioactivity. It’s used in medical diagnostics, scientific research and technology such as smoke alarms. However it’s vital that we remain cautious about new discoveries to reduce any possible risks they pose.

Amanda Barnard was presented with one of the 2009 Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science for her work on nanotechnology. Researchers have understood for a long time that a material can behave differently depending on whether you have a big chunk of it, or a tiny piece. For example, specks of gold only a few nanometres across look purple rather than bright yellow.

Amanda’s computer models attempt to predict what certain nanoparticles will do in different environments. Knowing how chemicals behave when they are so tiny is important as we find more applications for them. While they might be safe in some circumstances, combining them with UV light, changing the temperature or adding other chemicals could lead to unforeseen problems.

Her current work involves exploring how tiny diamonds might be used to deliver drugs to the right part of the body. Modelling the way nanoparticle diamonds move in an electrical field might help reduce the amount of chemotherapy cancer patients need.

Technology always poses a range of problems as well as useful outcomes. With the help of super computers and researchers like Amanda, it’s possible to avoid the dangers while still getting the benefits from new discoveries.

Partisan Politics proves again to be a Dead Ant

The Australian ETS legislation which is deplored by both environmental and conservative elements in Australia, is being used as a battering ram by the incumbent government against the opposition.The legislation itself is not expected to assist in the reduction of anthropogenic CO2 or the environment in general. The strategy of the incumbents is to try to destroy the opposition so that they will have little chance of winning elections for a few terms into the future.

Well, perhaps the government will improve environmental legislation when they have totally destroyed the opposition. Or perhaps by then it will just be a big mess.

We are reaching very improtant crossroads in global human society. If we cannot create conditions for communities to ameliorate and  withstand climate change, then we are allowing the future of humantiy to be very strained indeed.  Party politics will die on the day that they let the world die. Worse case is that democracy dies with the parties and we end up in regional totalitarian conflicts. Best case is that a weary democracy tries to build up wasted communities around the world. But partisan politics do not look close to solving the crucial issues facing us this century, are as useful as the black in the eye of a dead ant.

 

Education fails from lack of vision

There is plenty of well-researched and less well-researched evidence of what works in education. Australia, and I suspect, many countries don’t do it well. Recently some of our best educational academics have deplored the national approach. Why. Well, to take a notion from the Crawford Report into sport in Australia, “There is no National Vision” We don’t know what we want an education system to do. We don’t know what sort of society we want to be. And these two things are inter-related. I have addressed some of the elements I think need to be considered in the design of educational program for children and youth.

Britain advances the nanny state

Well, read it here. All I can say, is, take all the money spent on these sorts of ideas, abolish churning and middle class welfare, divert the money spent on the war-on-drugs, and a large part of the prison expenditure, and implement enthusiastic community engagement and training processes. Risk is good. Young people should learn between risk for value and risk for nix. Risk for value requires advanced training in communication skills.  Then more young people will be in human service, and less on the sauce.

Musician arrested for singing religious song

Amazing to think that during the week that the first world reminisces the bad old days behind the Berlin Wall, the totalitarian regime of Iran shows us that jokes about totalitarians are less weird than the truth. In iran you don’t get arrested for escaping or being a spy, but for singing religious songs at a memorial meeting.

Charter of Compassion

New. Wonderful.

Is alcohol legalised human trafficking

Much is made in most western countries of the building of alcohol-based trade across the world. Unfortunately, the trade in alcohol is proxy for trade in human lives. Companies trading in alcohol have one goal, increased sales. Increased sales can only come about by increasing the amount of alcohol consumed per head. As one of the great trading products of the world, more individuals and corporations want a share of the world market. The competition for alcohol market, even in a world that has a rapid population growth, means all-out selling of alcoholic products, encouraging young people to get more drunk on more nights of the week. A goodly percentage of these young people will loose their lives far earlier than otherwise, another percentage will loose their livelihoods, another percentage will harm others who will then be enslaved to a life of suffering, another percentage will spend time in a prison. Alcohol, is a product of enslavement. It is perhaps, the biggest trade in human lives on the planet, that such a large number of people have been encouraged to forsake their own lives for no good, but to fulfil the greed of others. Nowhere is this more exemplified than in the case of the dismissal of Professor David Nutt from the UK advisory Council on the misuse of drugs.Alcohol is the “gateway drug” that remains the greatest threat to society, and the Government’s failure to address the problem epitomises its disregard for scientific evidence, Professor David Nutt said yesterday.   For the full article see Times Online

Evolution theory supports ‘Manifestations of God’

A while ago, I proposed that increased ancestoral awareness and a paralysing fear of death was alleviated by the appearance of one person who was able to elevate the concept of death into everlasting life.  Norman Doige’, in his book, The Brain that Changes Itself”, has referenced S. Mithen’s hypothesis that around 50,000 years ago human beings discovered they could link circuits in the brain between previously seperated modules related to social, technical and nature intelligence. Doige argued, “perhaps by accident”. I suggest that, if Mithen’s hypothesis is correct, then, as with racial development theory, there was probably one individual born with some new links between modules. This individual would have shown powerful new insights (relative to the others). He / She would have become a leader in the clan, and had many children, many likewise favoured. This person would have been the equivalent to what, in the Baha’i Faith, we call ‘Manifestations of God”. They would have taught their new insights, probably by direct example – art, burial rites, make a spear – and showed people how to stretch themselves to do these ‘wonders’ and build new circuits.  Maybe every 10,000 generations, that was old hat, perhaps developing a new ‘rut in the modules’. Then, someone is born that carries a new form. And so on, until the very modern civilisation we experience today has developed. As Doige declares, “We only have a one generation veneer of civilisation”.  Yet that veneer doesn’t need to ge thicker, it just has to get more plastic. As it comes to encompass the globe, one humanity will eventually become the only culture there is. In the future, it will be considered a completely horrible handicap to be born with a capacity for hatred.

What’s wrong with a little supported democracy?

Perhaps because of my proximity, remote Aboriginal politics has strongly grabbed my attention over the past year.  Today I read of an ex-minister of the Howard government, and now opposition front-bencher, Tony Abbott, wants to put someone in charge of Aboriginal communities, taking advice from Aboriginal Elders, on all local government decisions. This, so-called, Cape York model, puts totalitarian power into the hands of an unelected administrator, in another patronising and paternalistic approach to Aboriginal people. Abbott advocates it because it is “more respectful than the (northern territory) intervention was.” Of course the Northern Territory intervention called for the suspension of the human rights of Aboriginal people, whether they were professional people or bush people.

It beggars belief that politicians still talk about going down these tracks. In the 15 years I worked on boards and committees of rural health organisations, every year or two I would be in Canberra raising the issue of the failure of funding of health for Aboriginal communities. I am sure the same lack of funding occurs across all sectors: justice, education, etc. Yet, when politicians decide they need to be seen as a strong leader or ‘doer’ for political reasons, they spend huge amounts sending the army in. Instead of just appropriating the relevant expenditure for Aboriginal communities to pay for necessary services, the tax payers money is splashed across the headlines with little reward. We don’t talk about the NT intervention anymore because it didn’t achieve anything. Today, it seems that child neglect by community and government is as bad as ever in remote Aboriginal communities in the NT. The money is spent, the people are still without house or school. Their human rights might soon be reinstated, but Aboriginal people around Australia now know that a lot of political leaders think that they are chattle, irritating chattle, whose only value is in wedge politics.

Many Aboriginal people have not had the education I have had. I have spoken to some Aboriginal elders who are lost for a vision, but have great yearnings for being part of a culture they have ownership. Well, that is much a tautology because if there is no ownership, there is no culture, whatever it may be. I have spoken to Aboriginal elders who have strong vision, put in long hours in support of their community and families, and can walk a meandering back and forth between newer and older cultures. So, yes, it is clear that Aboriginal elders must maintain their place in unfolding the story that needs to be told (a consultation) for appropriate local decisions to be made.  And, yes, it is clear that skilled bureaucratic support is necessary to ensure the outcome is achieved. But it is surely wrong to relegate Aboriginal communities to the status of preserved museum pieces, from which only old cultural advice can be sought, but no true decision-making can ensue. What of the benefits of better education in those communities? Are they forever denied a place in decision-making, no matter how many degrees, or businesses, or awards for community development? Will an Aboriginal have to become the ONE, the KING, to have any ownership of life. And then they can have ownership of everyone’s life. Hasn’t this been done by the nation’s government and some Aboriginal leaders already? Hasn’t it already failed as a policy?

So, spare a dime. Don’t waste it on the fanfare of Aboriginal politics. All communities in Australia can be governed under the same democratic model that supports local government. All residents in all local communities should be allowed a vote for their local government, whatever the colour of their skin or ancestoral background. The local government should be guided by State and National law how to  manage the land within their jurisdictions. Even if the local government has a massive landmass under Aboriginal land rights, then it might have elected official from whatever diverse backgrounds reside in the jurisdiction, and will be able to deal with the ‘ownership’ and use of the land under that legislation and other legislations such as natural resources, etc., in the appropriate fashion.

Aboriginal communities don’t need to be dealt with differently than any other. They just need to be dealt with the same. They need to be able, on one hand to elect their Councillors to local government, to make by-laws for all people living in their jursdiction, and on the other, to deal with the land that the clan has ownership. In every local / regional jursdiction there must be allowance for any person legally in Australia to access or live, equally of any other.  The roads must be accessible to all. Towns must have availability for any person to live, if any person at all is to live. Councils must have allowance to build new towns as the needs of their community and the pressures of a growing population demands.

Aboriginal communities need, as we all do, a supported democracy.