Even before Donald trump won the US Presidential election, some people were exploring what it might mean in the longer term.
History tells us what may happen next with Brexit & Trump by Tobias Sone, 23 Jun 2016
A new information dark age by Phil Bradley
END
Friday, 28 April 2017
Wednesday, 26 April 2017
Prison Crisis in UK 2017
The UK prison service is in crisis. Nearly 40% of young adult inmates spend less than ten hours a day out of their cells. Fewer than half of prisons provide adequate 'purposeful activity'. Boredom increases drug use. Self-harm and suicides in prison are increasing.
Current sentencing is based on symbolic severity of the offense committed; sentencing guidelines are arbitrary and often exessive. Politicians believe in deterrence, so increase maximum sentences rather than increasing the probability of being caught. Punishment for its own sake makes people think of themselves, not their victims.
Offenders already have problems. Up to 75% are illiterate, innumerate or without qualifications. Many have spent their childhoods in care, experienced abuse or seen violence in the home. Many also have mental health problems, which can be made worse by imprisonment. Women are more affected than men. [See also my post on new findings on criminality and brain development: Age of Criminal Responsibility.)
Larger prisons are more difficult to run. Inevitably they are further from the homes of many prisoners, despite the fact that family contact is important to rehabilitation; prisoners who receive no family visits are 21% more likely to reoffend.
Some 200,000 children in England and Wales have a parent in prison. Locking up too many people for too long wastes money and wastes lives.
Money saved by recent prison closures have not been transferred to the probation service to provide education and training in the community without the damaging effects of imprisonment.
The remedies
# Priority should be 'to do no harm'. As few people as possible should be uprooted from their family, if they have one. As few children as possible should be left fatherless or motherless due to imprisonment.
# Take precautions to prevent crime. Schools should teach children about restorative principles: the reason for not harming another person or community is that it would hurt them - not that you might face punishment if caught.
# Prisons need to be places to provide remedial educational and PSHE (personal, social and health education). Currently this is not possible in overcrowded and understaffed institutions.
# Savings from prison closures should be earmarked for non-custodial programmes (including those for mental health programmes).
# Many victims want not mere 'toughness' but action to make others less likely to be victims. This might include 'restorative justice' where a victim (or surrogate) expresses feelings and asks questions. This can lead to offenders to feel empathy, and motivate them to co-operate with reparation and rehabilitation.
# Ideally we would move to a system that reserved prisons for those with a high risk of reoffending, absconding or non-cooperation with community-based measures.
Source: Martin Wright 'How to tackle the prisons crisis' in the Church Times, 24 Feb. 2017. Martin Wright is a former director of the Howard League and co-editor of Civilising Criminal Justice (Waterside Press, 2013). Figures are taken mainly from the Prison Reform Trust's Prison Factfile, autumn 2016.
Current sentencing is based on symbolic severity of the offense committed; sentencing guidelines are arbitrary and often exessive. Politicians believe in deterrence, so increase maximum sentences rather than increasing the probability of being caught. Punishment for its own sake makes people think of themselves, not their victims.
Offenders already have problems. Up to 75% are illiterate, innumerate or without qualifications. Many have spent their childhoods in care, experienced abuse or seen violence in the home. Many also have mental health problems, which can be made worse by imprisonment. Women are more affected than men. [See also my post on new findings on criminality and brain development: Age of Criminal Responsibility.)
Larger prisons are more difficult to run. Inevitably they are further from the homes of many prisoners, despite the fact that family contact is important to rehabilitation; prisoners who receive no family visits are 21% more likely to reoffend.
Some 200,000 children in England and Wales have a parent in prison. Locking up too many people for too long wastes money and wastes lives.
Money saved by recent prison closures have not been transferred to the probation service to provide education and training in the community without the damaging effects of imprisonment.
The remedies
# Priority should be 'to do no harm'. As few people as possible should be uprooted from their family, if they have one. As few children as possible should be left fatherless or motherless due to imprisonment.
# Take precautions to prevent crime. Schools should teach children about restorative principles: the reason for not harming another person or community is that it would hurt them - not that you might face punishment if caught.
# Prisons need to be places to provide remedial educational and PSHE (personal, social and health education). Currently this is not possible in overcrowded and understaffed institutions.
# Savings from prison closures should be earmarked for non-custodial programmes (including those for mental health programmes).
# Many victims want not mere 'toughness' but action to make others less likely to be victims. This might include 'restorative justice' where a victim (or surrogate) expresses feelings and asks questions. This can lead to offenders to feel empathy, and motivate them to co-operate with reparation and rehabilitation.
# Ideally we would move to a system that reserved prisons for those with a high risk of reoffending, absconding or non-cooperation with community-based measures.
Source: Martin Wright 'How to tackle the prisons crisis' in the Church Times, 24 Feb. 2017. Martin Wright is a former director of the Howard League and co-editor of Civilising Criminal Justice (Waterside Press, 2013). Figures are taken mainly from the Prison Reform Trust's Prison Factfile, autumn 2016.
Monday, 24 April 2017
Dietary Iron
Good sources of iron are:
# Non-haem iron is not so well absorbed (found in plant foods)
# Vitamin C promotes iron absorbtion.
# Foods which have a small negative impact on iron absorbtion: spinach, nuts, chocolate, parsley, rhubarb and dairy products (yoghurt, cheese, milk and eggs).
End
- Liver, beef and lamb
- Clams, mussels and oysters
- Kidney beans
- Leafy green vegetables
- Dried figs and apricots
- Oatmeal and rye
- Brewers yeast
- Soy beans
- Lentils
- Quinoa
- Chickpeas
- Pinto beans
# Non-haem iron is not so well absorbed (found in plant foods)
# Vitamin C promotes iron absorbtion.
# Foods which have a small negative impact on iron absorbtion: spinach, nuts, chocolate, parsley, rhubarb and dairy products (yoghurt, cheese, milk and eggs).
End
Friday, 21 April 2017
How to Cat Nap
A cat nap can be useful if you've had some late nights and need to catch up on sleep, but if you cat nap in your bed you may fall too deeply asleep, which can leave you feeling groggy when you do wake up. Here's a tip to get your cat nap without sleeping too deeply.
- Lie on the floor on your back, legs stretched out in front of you, head on a cushion, placing your hands on your tummy.
- In one of your hands, hold a pencil upright.
- Close your eyes and relax.
- When the pencil drops it will wake you up, reviving and recharging you just enough to get through the rest of the day.
Wednesday, 19 April 2017
The Collapse of Complex Societies
The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter, 1988.
[This book was analysed / reviewed in an article by John Harris in The Guardian. Have not read the book yet, but it sounds interesting.]
Joseph Tainter is a US anthropologist and historian. While The Collapse of Complex Societies looks at historical periods, there are implied parallels with more recent events.
Published in 1988, just before the fall of communism, Tainter argues that one key pattern applies to whole chunks of history, summarised by John Harris thus:. "The way that increasingly complicated systems initially deliver big economic benefits, only for diminishing returns to set in, as systems of power and control become overstretched. Ever-increasing burdens are not matched by material rewards, and popular resentment kicks in."
Tainter focuses on the demise of ancient Rome, the collapse of Mayan civilization in the 9th century, the Minoans and Hittites, and the Chinese Zhou dynasty. JH notes: "He identifies common features of these falls: “revolts and provincial breakaways”, the end of long-distance trade, resource depletion, declining economic growth, and the point when societies are “able to do little more than maintain the status quo”. Currencies become debased; “bridges and roads are not kept up”. Precipitous changes in climate often underlie what happens."
Tainter's thesis is that at certain points in history “declining returns make complexity a less attractive problem-solving strategy”. Under such conditions, the option to “sever the ties that link localised groups to a regional entity” could gain traction. Considered in a global rather than a national view, that could summarise Brexit, and similar movements in Europe.
JH contacted Tainter, who agreed that complexity held the key to a lot of current developments. “JT: The simpler past seems more attractive than today’s complex reality, and so people vote [thanks to] inchoate frustrations. They choose simplicity and locality over complexity; identity over internationalism. Politicians promote themselves by giving voice to this. Hence, in addition to Brexit, we have calls for Scottish independence, Catalan independence, and so forth.”
While imminent social collapse seems unlikely, JT writes: “Civilisations are fragile, impermanent things.” And while he says that "It’s a common belief, that our technological capacity, energy resources and our knowledge of economics and history mean our civilisation should be able to survive “whatever crises ancient and simpler societies found insurmountable”, he also says we should remember the German classicist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff’s view of the lessons of the Roman empire: “Civilisation can die, because it has already died once.”
Source: John Harris, The Lesson of Trump and Brexit: a society too complex for its people risks everything in The Guardian, 29 Dec. 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/29/trump-brexit-society-complex-people-populists
[This book was analysed / reviewed in an article by John Harris in The Guardian. Have not read the book yet, but it sounds interesting.]
Joseph Tainter is a US anthropologist and historian. While The Collapse of Complex Societies looks at historical periods, there are implied parallels with more recent events.
Published in 1988, just before the fall of communism, Tainter argues that one key pattern applies to whole chunks of history, summarised by John Harris thus:. "The way that increasingly complicated systems initially deliver big economic benefits, only for diminishing returns to set in, as systems of power and control become overstretched. Ever-increasing burdens are not matched by material rewards, and popular resentment kicks in."
Tainter focuses on the demise of ancient Rome, the collapse of Mayan civilization in the 9th century, the Minoans and Hittites, and the Chinese Zhou dynasty. JH notes: "He identifies common features of these falls: “revolts and provincial breakaways”, the end of long-distance trade, resource depletion, declining economic growth, and the point when societies are “able to do little more than maintain the status quo”. Currencies become debased; “bridges and roads are not kept up”. Precipitous changes in climate often underlie what happens."
Tainter's thesis is that at certain points in history “declining returns make complexity a less attractive problem-solving strategy”. Under such conditions, the option to “sever the ties that link localised groups to a regional entity” could gain traction. Considered in a global rather than a national view, that could summarise Brexit, and similar movements in Europe.
JH contacted Tainter, who agreed that complexity held the key to a lot of current developments. “JT: The simpler past seems more attractive than today’s complex reality, and so people vote [thanks to] inchoate frustrations. They choose simplicity and locality over complexity; identity over internationalism. Politicians promote themselves by giving voice to this. Hence, in addition to Brexit, we have calls for Scottish independence, Catalan independence, and so forth.”
While imminent social collapse seems unlikely, JT writes: “Civilisations are fragile, impermanent things.” And while he says that "It’s a common belief, that our technological capacity, energy resources and our knowledge of economics and history mean our civilisation should be able to survive “whatever crises ancient and simpler societies found insurmountable”, he also says we should remember the German classicist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff’s view of the lessons of the Roman empire: “Civilisation can die, because it has already died once.”
Source: John Harris, The Lesson of Trump and Brexit: a society too complex for its people risks everything in The Guardian, 29 Dec. 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/29/trump-brexit-society-complex-people-populists
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