ByMyReckoning

This morning the BBC reported that British police had found evidence of low levels of radioactivity on three aeroplanes (one of which is still in Moscow and will be flown back to the UK) which are connected with the investigation into Alexander Litvinenko's death.

Apparently these planes have been used by associates or other people who have come into contact with Litvinenko in the five week period leading up to his death.

This case is becoming increasingly strange. The early conclusions drawn by the media are probably too obvious. The Independant newspaper in London has pointed out that British security services don't think things are necessarily what they appear to be.

Exactly how one of President Putin's fiercest critics came to ingest polonium remains unanswered. Scotland Yard is not officially treating this as a murder inquiry but as an "unexplained death", and intelligence sources have told The Independent on Sunday that they have doubts over the former spy's version of how he first became ill.

There seem to be four main theories in circulation;

• 1. Rogue FSB agents punishing a former member for breaking ranks.
• 2. Kremlin sponsored assassination.
• 3. Boris Berezovsky the exiled Oligarch assasinating a former ally to create a martyr for their anti-Kremlin cause.
• 4. Litvinenko poisoned himself.

Observations on each of the above:

• 1. On the face of it the FSB theary seems the most likely candidate given the information we have.
  
• 2. Would the KGB or Kremlin really be so clumsy and transparent in their methods as the details of this case appear to suggest?
• 3. It's not clear why would Berezovsky kill an ally?
• 4. There are easier and less painful ways to kill yourself.

Additionallly:

• Who says Cold War Bond movie plots are outdated?
• I thought we were supposed to be worried about nuclear terrorism from Al-Qaeda?

Technorati Tags:
Alexander Litvinenko, polonium-210, polonium, FSB, KGB, Boris Berezovsky

A counter-intuitive, but convincing argument for the establishment of a whale ownership scheme has been put forward by Kendra Okonski & Carlo Stagnaro at the International Policy Network. They present a case for the International Whaling Commission returning to its originals goal of sustainable management of the global whale population rather than its more recent focus on preservation.

Okonski and Stagnaro say:

"The debate about endangered whales is fundamentally flawed. Whale scarcity is not caused by whale hunting - the real problem is that no one owns whales."

"Think about it - environmental groups like Greenpeace and the International Fund for Animal Welfare are not fussing about chickens, cats, or canaries. These creatures benefit from domestication and ownership, but whales are still subject to the "tragedy of the commons". Whales have become the victims of a massive international skirmish between environmental groups, and nations with a cultural practice of whaling, because no one owns them."

"Preserving endangered species is not rocket science. We should not rely on people's benevolence to ensure their survival. If we allowed people, businesses, communities, and environmental groups to own whales, then Greenpeace could buy up all the whales to protect them, and businesses could sell whale-watching or sell hunting rights or whale meat."

"New technologies would assist in protecting the whales – a small, harmless antenna could be implanted in whales to track their movements by satellite. The whales might even be valuable enough to merit a boat which travels with them to protect them. The IWC could assign property rights to whales and auctioning them to the highest bidders. If poachers violated those rights, they would be subject to the same legal procedures and punishments as for other forms of theft, and the owner would be awarded compensation."

"Regardless of whether the whales were kept alive or eaten, ownership would ensure that whales never go extinct. This is because markets harness the self-interest of individuals. Whale markets would be no different - they would be driven by prices and would be subject to the same incentives that drive creativity and innovation through our economy."

Apart from the issues they raise around cultural imperialism, (imagine being forced to stop eating Chicken McNuggets because chickens are venerated by people of another powerful culture), this discussion reminds me of my previous post on lions hunting elephants and our selective emotional attachment to certain animals. This is a case in which those attachments have been ruthlessly exploited by Greenpeace in order to further their own aim.

Technorati Tags: whale hunting, Greenpeace, whale+meat, whale whatching, IWC, whaling, hunting as conservation

The EU has announced a proposed ban on the use of dog and cat fur in clothes after a vociferous campaign by animal rights activists.
A leading light in the drive for the ban was Heather Mills MsCartney. In fact she can be seen on her website posing with a rather luxurious coat made from 31 brown cats.

As a confirmed (and hopefully rational) omnivore. I really don’t see the difference between eating a cow and 'wearing' cat/dog gloves. Animal fur doesn't really do anything for me from a sartorial or aesthetic point of view, but as long as it's humanly sourced, I see no problem. Surely I can't be alone in thinking this?

I wonder, would the proposed law allow me to start a free range cat/dog fur farm? If I employed ethical breeding techniques to make sure tiddles and fido had a comfortable unbringing with plenty of stroking?

Maybe I could save everybody a lot of bother and kill two birds with one stone by rounding up all the strays fouling europes footpaths and make them into warm winter coats for the homeless?

Technorati Tags:
EU fur, cat dog fur, cat fur ban,

The lastest installment in the election fallout has landed on our doorsteps with a bump. No sooner had George Bush replaced Donald Rumsfeld with Robert Gates. A Berlin lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck from the Republican Attorneys Association (RAV) representing a group of international and US human rights groups including the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the National Lawyers Guild, and the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH). Filed a lawsuit in Germany against US Secretary Of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and several other administration officials. The suit is being filed in Germany because, thanks to George Bush, Rumsfeld and other Bush cronies enjoy immunity from prosecution in the US whilst in office. However they can be tried in any other country under the doctrine of universal jurisdiction.

Although we'll have to wait to see whether Rumsfeld or the other plaintiffs will ever be brought to book. This is a welcome development which sends the message that war criminals must be held accountable for breaches of international law. There appears to be concrete evidence that Rumsfeld sanctioned the use of techniques such as waterboarding, intimidation with dogs, removal of clothing, stress positions, hooding, isolation for upto 30 days, sensory deprivation, sexual humiliation and physical coercion. Rumsfeld has also participated in high level decisions that sanctioned the extrajudicial execution of several people.

Technorati Tags:
Rumsfeld warcrime, Rumsfeld, Wolfgang Kaleck, Rumsfeld Germany, waterboarding, torture

Last night the BBC aired the eagerly awaited 'Great Plains' episode of the wildlife show Planet Earth containing footage of lions in Savuti Botswana hunting and killing elephants. Up until this footage was captured, the wider world had never suspected that lions, one of natures most efficient and fearsome land predators, were capable of tackling elephants. Apparently naturalists were informed by local wildlife guides, that a pride of lions had began to hunt and kill baby, adolescent and sometimes even adult elephants, but had dismissed this information as heresay.

Although there are occasional reports of lions attacking injured or sick elephants. This behaviour, involving regular nightime hunts, is believed to be born of desperate hunger experienced during periods of drought. Presumably after killing a young or weak elephant. The lions soon adjusted their hunting strategies, seeking their new quarry at night when their superior night vision gives them the edge over their much bigger prey. The crew witnessed the lions kill eight adolescents and harass several adults without success. The captured footage was viewed as so potentially upsetting, that it was edited to remove the more graphic details.

Media reaction to this has been interesting. I've been struck by how selective our empathy for animals is. In particular our attachment to our furry cousins and animals which exhibit behavioural traits we see as being more 'human'. This program has located an area of conflicting loyalties. Lions are seen as regal rulers of the jungle and now people have to face the fact that these creatures are ruthless hunters even willing to kill and eat another of our favourites ... the elephant. Predictably the BBC are expecting to received some complaints from the viewing public.

Even the film crew, people used to witnessing the harsh realities of the wild, were affected by what they saw. One member of the crew, producer John Keeling said "It seems irreverent watching a noble beast being killed. Elephants are such honourable animals," Keeling says grimly. "It's just unbelievable. The lions are trying to kill every night, even though their bellies are full. They are just machines."

That utterance exposed how even someone who works closely with animals and supposedly possessed of a more realistic point of view was affected. How can an elephant be honourable? Lions are no more killing machines than any other organism that preys on another. I wonder, is this reaction confined to a western anthropomorphic sensibility? One trained from birth to regard animals as talking, fluffy companions by cartoons and Hollywood movies? How far removed from reality have we become? I wonder how the local wildlife guides who originally alerted us to this phenomenon view the fact that elephants have become prey to lions?

Technorati Tags:
lions hunt elephant, Savuti lions, Savute lions

There's a common phrase used nowadays to describe decisions which appear trivial or petty. They are described as “no brainers”. Its most recent public appearance was courtesy of Dick Cheney when he used it to imply that the use of “a dunk in water” on terrorist suspects was legitimate practice.

Without wanting to sound pedantic, there really is no such thing as a “no brainer”. Our brains are always at work and it's in situations in which we are confronted with important decisions that appear be 'no brainers', that we sometimes ought to be most careful.

This is of real interest to managers in the midst of planning exercises or in fact anyone confronted with an important decision.

How often during our day to day activities do we allow for the fact that the normal workings of the human mind can occasionally sabotage the decision making process.

The decision making process can be hijacked by a variety of perceptual distortions (phenomena ranging from) including simple bias, anchors, heuristics, the overconfidence trap, the prudence trap, recallability, status quo, sunk cost and confirmation.

Overconfidence: A tendency to have to great a belief in the accuracy of our own judgment. This is often the result of an underling tendency to recall successes rather then failures.

Prudence: Some people or organisational cultures may be risk averse casing them to miss valuable opportunities.

Recallability: Unusual results or occurrences of an event may be given more significant than they really deserve.

Heuristics: Templates or "Rules of thumb" for making decisions that we apply unconsciously to avoid getting bogged down in the complex minutia of everyday life. They are indeed generally useful, but on occasion they can cause mistakes and we are very bad at making adjustments and learning from the errors they cause.

Bias: Basic irrationalities in ones thought process.

Anchors: Its true first impressions do count. In this case we must combat the fact that humans are wired to unconsciously attach too much significance to the first information received.

Confirmation: Unconsciously seeking information that confirms or supports one's current viewpoint or position. We all have a tendency to consult colleagues who share our opinions.

Status Quo: Favouring courses of action that maintain the current situation or structure. This might take the form of a over reliance on old or established solutions to new problems/situations without making a fresh assessment of the situation.

Framing: It's important to ask the right questions. Questions must be structured in such manner that they do not lead respondents in a particular direction.

Sunk cost: This manifests as a tendency to make decision that justify previous bad decisions and is often apparent in situations where “good money after bad” is poured into a failing project when the rational choice would be to bring the project to a halt.

How often during our normal day-to-day activities do we allow for the fact that the normal workings of the human mind can occasionally sabotage the decision making process?

Techniques that will help avoid these traps;

• 1. Raising individual and organisational awareness is always the starting point for combating these weaknesses.
• 2. Training and education can help to alleviate some of the effects of these problems.
• 3. Testing of hypotheses and assumptions should help to identify biases or oversights.
• 4. Teamwork and the elicitation of opinions from colleagues may help counter bias and qualified.
• 5. A structured and rigorous approach to problem solving will help ensure that errors are minimised.

These limitations will become more important as modern life becomes ever more complex, the number and intricacy of decisions we are required to make increases as we become further removed from the environment for which we were 'designed'. Perhaps some of our leaders would do well to remember that.

Technorati Tags: no braner, Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, water boarding, Heuristics

If you are new to functional programming but have a decent understanding of java checkout Scala. It might be a good place to familiarise yourself with some of the ideas without having to get used to a totally new syntax.

It is a marriage of the java object oriented and functional programming worlds. It has built in pattern matching support like many other functional languages and so good at handling XML data/DTDs.

It is compatible with the JRE and .Net CLR environments, so all those old libraries will still be available. However it doesn't seem to have gained the mind share of other newcomers like Ruby and C#, or the not so new like Python.

Apprently rumours are circulating that Naomi Campbell is going to appear on Oprah Winfreys' show.

She's simply trying to elicit sympathy from the public. Where better to do that than on Oprahs show?

She is trudging up the well worn path to Oprahs door step. It's been trod by many a fornicatin, altercatin, drugtakin celeb trying to sort out their PR Karma. Lets just hope she has the sense to really listen to any advice Oprah gives her.

Ray is not amused