Things I am interested in…

Since Cosmo’s death Dilmah has been a lonely pussy.  Now he has a new playmate – Rollo!  Short for “Roll Over (and fall off Andrew’s leg)”, which is the first thing he did when I met him on my return from Wellington this afternoon.  Jen chose him from the RSPCA yesterday.  He is six weeks old (which makes his nominated birthday Oct 1, 2007).

He also answers to “The Claw Beast” (Andrew), and “Munchkin” (Jen).

Click here to go to the web album…

 I am very sad to report that one of our two brother cats, Cosmo, was hit by a car while crossing the road in front of our house at about 0630 this morning.  The driver did not stop.  Cosmo managed to crawl off the road, but died shortly afterwards.

 A nice gentleman who witnessed the event later came back to contact us and tell us what he saw.

 We brought Cosmo & Dilmah home to live with us in early May (see link here).  We think they were born towards the end of February.  Their birthday was recorded with our vet as Feb 18, the same day as mine.  This means Cosmo was about 8 1/2 months old when he died.

 I am suprised at how emotional I feel over the death of a pet cat.  In some ways Cosmo was the physically more frail of the two brothers. He was always getting sunburnt ears, and we were worried that he would get skin cancer. However, I liked him because he was more adventurous and inquisitive than Dilmah.  He figured out how to climb in our bedroom window first.  He was also less prone to come seeking affection, unlike “love slut” Dilmah.

 He is being cremated, and we will scatter his ashes in our garden, along with his favourite toy, Mousey (if we can find it wherever he left it last).

 At least he had a better life with us and his brother than he would have found if he had been left with his mother (a stray).

 Here is a link to an album of pictures. Cosmo has the white fur on his nose, and wears the red collar. His brother, Dilmah, has the black collar.

 We will remember him…

An amusing excerpt from something I was listening to while walking to work this morning:

One of the earliest and most aggressive exponents of this economic imperialism was Gary Becker, the Chicago economist par excellence, who in an article published in one of the profession’s most prestigious journals applied the principles of microeconomics and consumer behaviour to what he called the market for marriage. Becker defined marriage as an arrangement to secure the mutual benefit of exchange between two agents of different endowments. In other words, people marry in order more efficiently to produce ‘household commodities’, including ‘the quality of meals, the quality and quantity of children, prestige, recreation, companionship, love, and health status’. The rational person will base any marriage decision on quantifiable costs and benefits. The gain from marriage has to be balanced against the losses – including legal fees and the costs of searching for a mate – to determine whether marriage is worthwhile.

Becker went on to analyse the effect of ‘love and caring’ on the nature of the ‘equilibrium in the marriage market’. To do so he defined love as ‘a non-marketable household commodity’, noting that more love between potential partners increases the amount of caring and that this in turn reduces the costs of ‘policing’ the marriage. Policing, of course, is needed ‘in any partnership or corporation’ because it ‘reduces the probability that a mate shirks duties or appropriates more output than is mandated by the equilibrium in the marriage market’. There’s no need to put a padlock on the fridge if your partner loves you. After pages of differential calculus, Becker reaches a triumphant conclusion: since love produces more efficient marriages, ‘love and caring between two persons increase their chances of being married to each other’.

What Becker’s wife thought about this analysis is not recorded, but in 1992 the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences was sufficiently impressed to award him the Nobel Prize for Economics for this and related work.

(excuse the pun!)

 Just heard on a podcast I was listening to while walking to work (Scientific American Science Talk) that the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has finished this week.

 Here are some interesting factoids from this:

• Internationally, scientists are 90% certain that the increase in mean global temperature of 0.75 degrees centigrade since recording began during the Industrial Revolution (1850) is due to human activities, as is the ongoing rise in temperature
• Eleven out of twelve of the most recent summers have been the warmest on record (again, since 1850)
• The global atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased from a pre-industrial average of 280 parts per million (ppm) to the most recent measurement of 379 ppm in 2005
• The rate of increase of atmospheric CO2 has been larger in 1995-2005 (1.9 ppm per year) than it has been in the 145 years preceding (1.4 ppm per year on average)
• If all human CO2 production were to freeze at current levels tomorrow, the mean global temperature would rise about another 0.5 degrees by the end of the century
• If things continue in the worst possible way, with unabated greenhouse gas production, then scientists are predicting a further rise in mean global temperature of about 4 degrees by the end of this century
• If that is the case (i.e., worst case scenario) then two to four billion people will face water shortages by the end of the century, and a further 170 million person’s homes will be under water due to the 0.4m seea level rise

According to the podcast, this is a very conservative report – it had to be so that all of the governments involved would agree to its publication.

 I personally think this is food for thought…

In NZ the government has decided that our television transmission standard has to be changed from analogue to digital over the next few years.  This process has already started, and from the middle of last year a geostationary satellite (currently the Optus 4) has been beaming TVNZ signals down to earth, and all who can receive it.  This is called FreeView.

 The advantages of FreeView over other satellite broadcast systems (like Sky) are:

1. It’s FREE!  Once you have purchased and installed the satellite dish and the decoder there are no more bills… ever.
2. It’s government sponsored, so it is very unlikely to go out of business.
3. The number of channels is being expanded all the time – at the moment there are seven (TVNZ One, 2, The Maori Channel, Bloomberg, Deutsche World TV, CCTV-9 (Chinese), and TVNZ widescreen).  Next month TV3 and Prime are coming online, and by the end of the year there are expected to be about 18 channels available.
4. Did I mention – it’s FREE!

The previous owners of our house had Sky, so a satellite receiver dish and cabling were already in place.  Our friendly neighbourhood aerial guy installed a set-top box, and instantly we had the best reception I’ve experienced in years.  Our previous flat was in the reception shadow of a local mountain, and had shoddy television and cellphone reception.

 I must admit, I’m sold on digital satellite television, and even Jen, who is a bit of a sceptic about these sorts of things thinks that the ability to watch Antiques Roadshow in perfect reception is great.

And best of all… it’s FREE!

A Topfield PVR