Bregmata

Two things happened last week that are related in an important way.

First, my eldest child started high school.

Second, a federal election was called.

Now, you might not see much of a relationship between those two events. I’ll explain.

The first thing my daughter learned when she walked through the doors of the school was that trust is contemptible, and the second was that honesty is not valued. First impressions are very important, and set the stage and tone for everything else that follows. The first lesson was that all students had to buy locks for their lockers from the school so that the school administration would know the combination for the lock so that they could invade the privacy of a student at any time (this, trust is contemptible). The second lesson was that all students must pay mandatory fees — illegal under the Education Act of Ontario (I can give you clause, paragraph and sub[aragraph if you want, only I don’t have it to hand at the moment). By the schoold administration telling the student that such a fee is mandatory when it is in fact illegal re require such a payment simply teaches the lesson that honesty is not valued.

On to the election. The first thing that I heard on tge radio after the writ was dropped was a panel with representatives from the three most powerful parties all bemoaning the fact that the electorate is cynical and acts negatively when personally canvassed.

Well, nobody should be surprised. Cynicism is rampant in our society, and grows stronger as time passes. Its roots are in the first lessons we learn in school (no trust! no honesty!) and reinforced by what we see our authorities do every day. Election campaigns that focus on ad hominem and ipso dixit arguments, policies rooted is cynical mistrust and dishonesty, and spin, spin, spin.

I am starting to think cynicism is the biggest sin there is out there. It’s a vicious circle that feeds on itself.

We can stop it. We would start by demonstrating trust and honesty at all levels, especially and including institutes of education and governance. We’re not all criminals (schools don’t need penitentiary-style lockdowns). We’re not all children. We’re not all in it for ourselves without regard to others.

Is there some way to design institutions with appropriate checks and balances so that they become self-correcting to keep trust and honesty as the default state?

The company that provides hosting for this here blog seems to be at best some sort of amateur hobby run by a buncg of stoners out on the wet coast. They’ve consistently failed to renew domain names, regster new domain names in a timely fasion, and now they lost all redundant disks in a RAID array on their server and have no backups.

The upside is when they finally restored my account so I could at least try to recover from my own backups (which I made when this site was cracked a few weeks back), they seem to have granted me pretty much unlimited access and multiple add-ons that I have not paid for. Not that I’ll use such treasures, but I’ll be sure to check the next bill and I’m dang well prepared to switch to a different provider if they try to charge me extra.

The downside is that I lost all my pretty pictures, since I didn’t include them in my backups (I still have the originas of course, but I don’t remember what I posted where) and my themeing, which I was going to get around to changing some day anyways, as soon as another hour is added on to the day (a legitimate election promise?).

The grippingside is that between the cracking and the service failure I haven’t had much chance to post updates,so there may be a slew coming down the pipe soon.

The high speed fairies continue to denied me their bounty. The medecine men from Storm came out, climbed to my root, waved their totems and chanted but they could not make the the magic happen. They mumbled something about “lining up a micronode down the line” (another cryptic incantation) and hurried off, promising to be in touch when the heavens are aligned more auspiciously. Hmph.

Anyways, this year for the first time in a few I seem to have manage to get a giant pumpkin to fruit. It may look small now, but I have every confidence it’ll be a contender for the fair at the end of August. If nothing else, our experience is that the giant pumpkins make a wonderful, sweet, mild pie filling (and muffins, and cookies, and a delicious pumpkin ginger chutney). And lots of it, too. Lots. More than sufficient quantities. And it’s really good for you.

The monk peas are in full bloom, and they have a very attractive flower. All delicate pinks and veined with crimson. Not at all like the tonsored and robed monks I picture cultivating these guys back in the 1300’s. The little pictire here doesn’t do full justice to their beauty, but until the high speed internet gets hooked up (in a couple of weeks) this is the best I can do.

We’ve grown these peas for the last few years, although the squirrels tend to get an unfair share. We don’t seem to have a problem with squirrels this year. The local population seems to have, um, dropped. I pity those poor guys over on the other side of the lake. I suspect they’re experiencing a bumper crop of the little devils.

We do have other wildlife. Lots of fences are keeping those nasty pointy-hooved forest rats (hey, that’s deer to you) away so far: the electric fence is keeping the peas and beans safe but the potatoes have been well-trimmed. I spotted a pair of Colorado beetles making the beast with two carapaces in the giant pumpkins, and we have a family of snakes in the woodpile which makes it hard to move (we have to move the wood to fix the collapsed woodshed). Nobody wants to disturb the little guys while they’re sunning themselves so comfortably.

Finally, I’ll finish up with a picture of a damselfly alighted on a Jerusalem artichoke leaf. Damselflies and dragonflies (which come earlier in the year) are the only creatures that can move all four wings independently. That means they can hover or fly backwards or sideways, a great adaptation if you’re a predator and prey. It’s stood them well: there are fossilized dragonflies as far back as the carboniferous period and they’re almost identical to modern species. It was much much warmer during the carboniferous than it is today. I suspect the dragonflies might still be here in another few million years. We should be so lucky.

They‘re getting closer and closer. Soon we shall move into the 1990’s.

I have a row on Monk peas growing in the lower garden this year. I had to obtain a new supply because the squirrel (cf.) performed attrition on the previous lot. Monk peas are an heirloom soup pea that can trace its provenance back to 14th century Netherlands.

The bill has finally been introduced. It’s definitely been shaped by a very limited viewpoint built around the specific business model currently dominant in the entertainment industry, but it does try to address a few specific consumer concerns.

I say it’s shaped by the entertainment industry, but it appears it’s really just the music distribution industry. The wording of the amendments deal almost exclusively with sound recordings and the transmission of sound recordings and recordings of live performances, although some attention is paid to recording and distribution of broadcast signals, which would conceivably also include more than just sound (eg. video, still or motion pictures).

The problems I’m having with this new bill are this.

1. It does not deal with the new economic reality of digital distribution, and
2. It tells me what I can and can’t do in the privacy of my own home.

Sure, you might ask just what the heck I mean. Let me try to exlain.

Economics is the study of the distribution of scarce resources. Basic economic theory says that the price of a good is a function of it’s relative desireability and scarcity. If a good is relatively scarce, a high price means that only those with greater means can acquire the few items of that good.

The new economic reality of digital distribution is that there is an infinite amound of a digitally distributable good. That means the marginal price of a digitally distributable good is zero (ie. the limit as quantity approaches infinity is zero). The new economy says that once a digital good has been created, it’s natural price is free.

What has to happen for the old-economy businesses to thrive in the new economy is to introduce artificial scarcity into the system. They (the multinationals that belong to the old-economy entertainment cartel) are trying to impose this artificial scarcity through legislative means. It’s like the local thug sharging protection money, and they get the mayor and police to enforce thrie racket.

One of the arguments that spring up is that no new works will be created if the distribution and use of a work is not strictly limited and controlled by a distributor. This is the old economy talking again. The implicit assumption is that the way to finance the creation of work is by profiting from the distribution of the work, and it’s true that that was an effective way to profit from a creative effort in the old economy. Problem is, there is no natural right for a creator to profit from the distribution of his work. We’d all like to profit from something we like to do, just ask stay-at-home parents. That doesn’t make it a right.

So, if generating a profit through artificial scarcity is not going to compensate a creator, how will we get new works created? I’m not so sure about that (although I will point out that recroding musicians have not traditionally profitted directly from the distribution of their recorded work). A lot has been said about this in a lot of places and I still have some thinking to do on that question. My point here is that, like forcing water uphill, forcing people to act against natural economic laws is a losing proposition. Look at the drug trade for an example.

Why should I fund the enforcement of an outdated econmic model through my tax dollars?

As to what I can do in the privacy of my own home, I’m talking about the TPM clauses. They make it illegal for me to open certain files on my own computer even if I legally acquired them. If I use a byte editor to examine a file containing technical protection measures, I’m breaking the law. I will have to get one of those bandit masks to hack on some files.

The mosquitoes come out about a week before planting begins in earnest at our place. Just so you can see what’s coming ahead, here’s a few photos I took this afternoon.
Jacob’s Cattle lying on the dining room table waiting to be planted.
One of my potatoes started from seed (!) last year — a two year investment before you know if you’ve got something useful.
Jerusalem Artichokes — my first time, it seems there were already some growing in that patch.
The garlic is healthy as usual.
For the first time in seven years, we have a blossom coming out on an apple tree in our “orchard.” Yeah, it’s only two trees for now, but I mean to plant one for each of us and I hope to have a few more years until I’m forced to plant more (although planting sooner is better than later, they don’t all have to be a memorial). Hopefully some day they’ll look more like this, a wild apple at the edge of the bush.

Well, we heard the frogs singing last night, which is the signal to play taps for the taps. This has not been the best year for sap: between the dry fall last year and the too-warm nighttime temperatures ate the end of the season and the too-cold daytime temperatures at the start, the yield has not been very good.

It’s kinda strange to be tramping around in knee-high snow in the woods wearing a tee-shirt. This has been a bit of a weird spring so far.

The sap is slow to run this year. It was running when we tapped the trees but a week of below-normal temperatures (not cold, but cold enough) has slowed the run. That’s ok, it’ll make up for it next week and we’ll be desperately trying to keep up with the boiling again in no time.