Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Monday, November 18, 2024
POETRY SPOT - THE MAN HE KILLED
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Thomas Hardy c 1910-1915
Thomas Hardy (1840 – 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain such as those from his native South West England.
While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, he gained fame as the author of novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895). During his lifetime, Hardy's poetry was acclaimed by younger poets (particularly the Georgians) who viewed him as a mentor.
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The Man He Killed
Thomas Hardy
"Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
"But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
"I shot him dead because —
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although
"He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Off-hand like — just as I —
Was out of work — had sold his traps —
No other reason why.
"Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown."
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Paraphrase:
"If only we'd met
in some old pub,
we would have sat down
and shared many a beer!
"But I met him on the battlefield,
each of us aiming at the other. We both took aim and fired,
but he missed, while my shot killed him where he stood.
"I shot him dead because...
well, because he was the enemy,
that's all. He was the one
I was obviously supposed to shoot.
"Then again, he'd probably joined his army
in similar circumstances to me, on a kind of whim.
He was probably out of work at the time, just like I was.
He'd probably had to sell his belongings—why else he would have enlisted.
"Yup, war is a very strange thing!
You end up shooting someone
who you'd get along well with in a bar—
buy a drink, even give money if he needed it."
Sunday, November 17, 2024
PERVERSE INCENTIVE
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In 1902 during French colonial rule, Hanoi was plagued by rats. Driven by the desire to modernise the city, the Governor-General instituted a bounty program. Citizens were paid one cent for each rat they killed. However, given the health risks, the colonial government didn’t want piles of rat corpses to be handed over to officials. So instead they paid locals for every rat tail they brought in. The tails soon became an object of value.
Colonial officials, however, began noticing rats in Hanoi with no tails. The Vietnamese rat catchers would capture rats, sever their tails, then release them back into the sewers so that they could produce more rats.
Needless to say, the bounty failed to achieve the desired results. The rat plague was now worse than before and the bounty program was cancelled.
Known as The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre, it happened in the middle of a global pandemic only a few years after Swiss-French physician and bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin linked the spread of the pandemic to rodents.
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Today, the events are often used as an example of a perverse incentive, commonly referred to as the Cobra Effect.
The phrase "perverse incentive" describes an incentive structure with undesirable results, particularly when those effects are unexpected and contrary to the intentions of its designers.
This name Cobra Effect was coined by economist Horst Siebert based on an anecdote taken from the British Raj. The British government, concerned about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi, offered a bounty for every dead cobra. Initially, this was a successful strategy; large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually, however, people began to breed cobras for the income. When the government became aware of this, the reward program was scrapped. The cobra breeders set their snakes free, leading to an overall increase in the wild cobra population.
The modern discoverer of The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre, from records and documents in Hanoi archives, Michael G. Vann, argues that the cobra example from the British Raj cannot be proven, but that the rats in te Hanoi case can be proven, so the term should be changed to the Rat Effect.
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Some other examples:
Experiencing an issue with feral pigs, the U.S. Army post of Fort Benning (now named Fort Moore) in Georgia offered hunters a $40-bounty for every pig tail turned in. Over the course of the 2007–2008 program, the feral pig population in the area increased. While there were some reports that individuals purchased pigs' tails from meat processors and then resold the tails to the Army at the higher bounty price, a detailed study of the bounty scheme found different effects from perverse incentives were mainly responsible. Both the pigs' fertility rate and offspring survival rates increased under the scheme. This was due to improved nutrition made available by the feed bait used to attract the animals to hunting sites. Secondly, hunters were found to be more likely to preferentially target large males as "trophy"-quality game, while ignoring females and juveniles as targets. Removal of mature males from the population has a negligible impact on population growth, as remaining mature males can each stud many breeding sows.
In 2002, British officials tasked with suppressing opium production in Afghanistan offered poppy farmers $700 an acre in return for destroying their crop. This ignited a poppy-growing frenzy among Afghan farmers, who sought to plant as many poppies as they could in order to collect payouts from the cash-for-poppies program. Some farmers harvested the sap before destroying the plants, getting paid twice for the same crop.
In Alberta, under the Child, Youth and Family Enhancement Act, every person must report suspected child abuse to a director or police officer, and failure to do so is punishable by a $10,000 fine plus 6 months of imprisonment. However, according to criminal law professor Narayan, enforcing it would cause people to overreport, which wastes resources, and it would also create a chilling effect that prevents people from reporting child abuse observed over a period of time, as that would incriminate them for failing to report earlier. There are similar laws in other Canadian provinces.
In 2005 the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change began an incentive scheme to cut down on greenhouse gases. Companies disposing of polluting gases were rewarded with carbon credits, which could eventually get converted into cash. The program set prices according to how serious the damage the pollutant could do to the environment was and attributed one of the highest bounties for destroying HFC-23, a byproduct of a common refrigerant, HCFC-22. As a result, companies began to produce more of this refrigerant in order to destroy more of the byproduct waste gas, and collect millions of dollars in credits. This increased production also caused the price of the refrigerant to decrease significantly, motivating refrigeration companies to continue using it, despite the adverse environmental effects. In 2013, credits for the destruction of HFC-23 were suspended in the European Union.
Around 2010, online retailer Vitaly Borker found that online complaints about his eyeglass-sale website, DecorMyEyes, pushed the site to the top of Google searches and drove more traffic. He began responding to customer reports of poor quality and/or misfilled orders with insults, threats of violence, and other harassment. Borker continued writing toxic replies for a decade despite serving two separate sentences in U.S. federal prison over charges arising from them.
The 20th-century paleontologist G. H. R. von Koenigswald used to pay Javanese locals for each fragment of hominin skull that they produced. He later discovered that the people had been breaking up whole skulls into smaller pieces to maximize their payments.
In building the first transcontinental railroad in the 1860s, the United States Congress agreed to pay the builders per mile of track laid. As a result, Thomas C. Durant of Union Pacific Railroad lengthened a section of the route, forming a bow shape and unnecessarily adding miles of track.
In his autobiography, Mark Twain says that his wife, Olivia Langdon Clemens, had a similar experience:
Once in Hartford the flies were so numerous for a time, and so troublesome, that Mrs. Clemens conceived the idea of paying George a bounty on all the flies he might kill. The children saw an opportunity here for the acquisition of sudden wealth. ... Any Government could have told her that the best way to increase wolves in America, rabbits in Australia, and snakes in India, is to pay a bounty on their scalps. Then every patriot goes to raising them.
Saturday, November 16, 2024
REMEMBERING HEROES
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The stories behind the names on the signs at the rest stops on the Remembrance Driveway, which goes from Sydney to Canberra.
The highway commemorates persons awarded the Victoria Cross by naming rest stops after him.
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The Victoria Cross (VC) is the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces
The VC was introduced on 29 January 1856 by Queen Victoria to honour acts of valour during the Crimean War.
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RON MIDDLETON VC
Flight Sergeant Ron Middleton VC
Rawdon Hume "Ron" Middleton, VC (1916 – 1942) was a bomber pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force and a posthumous recipient of the Victoria Cross.
Rest Stop:
Location: Bywong
(Bywong is a rural residential area in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, approximately 24 kilometres north-east of the Australian city of Canberra on the Federal Highway).
About:
Rawdon Middleton was born on 22 July 1916 at Waverly in Sydney, a great-nephew of the explorer, Hamilton Hume. His family moved to the western districts of New South Wales when he was young and he attended school in Dubbo, becoming a keen sportsman and later finding work as a jackeroo.
He enlisted in the RAAF on 14 October 1940 under the Empire Air Training Scheme. Having learnt to fly at Narromine, New South Wales, Middleton was sent to Canada to continue his instruction. He reached Britain in September 1941 and was promoted to Flight Sergeant in December that year. In February 1942 Middleton was posted to 149 Squadron, Royal Air Force, and began his operational career. His first operational flights, to the Ruhr, were as second pilot in Stirling bombers but by July he had become first pilot. His first operation as captain of an aircraft was to Düsseldorf.
Final action:
On 28 November 1942 he took off on his 29th operation, to the Fiat works in Turin, Italy.
Middleton and his crew arrived above Turin after a difficult flight over the Alps, due to the low combat ceiling of the "bombed-up" and "fueled-up" Stirling (This was due to its short stubby wings, which were designed to keep all-up weight down, but which were unable to carry the aircraft to high altitudes.) Over the target area Middleton had to make three low-level passes in order to positively identify the target; on the third, the aircraft was hit by heavy anti-aircraft fire.
One shell exploded in the cockpit, Middleton suffering numerous grievous wounds, including shrapnel wounds to the arms, legs and body, having his right eye torn from its socket and his jaw shattered.
The same shell also wounded the second pilot and wireless operator. Middleton lost consciousness and the aircraft dived to just 800 feet before the second pilot brought it under control and dropped the bombs.
They were hit by more flak as they tried to escape the target.
When Middleton regained consciousness he began the long and gruelling flight back over the Alps towards England, knowing that his damaged aircraft had insufficient fuel to complete the journey.
Middleton was in great pain, was barely able to see, was losing blood from wounds all over his body, and could breathe only with difficulty. He must have known that his own chances of survival were slim, but he nonetheless determined to fly his crippled aircraft home, and return his crew to safety. During the return flight he frequently said over the intercom "I'll make the English Coast. I'll get you home".
After four hours of agony and having been further damaged by flak over France, Middleton reached the coast of England with five minutes of fuel reserves. At this point he turned the aircraft parallel to the coast and ordered his crew to bail out. Five of his crew did so and landed safely, but his front gunner and flight engineer remained with him to try to talk him into a forced landing on the coast, something he must have known would have risked extensive civilian casualties. He steered the aircraft out over the sea, off Dymchurch, and ordered the last two crew to bail out. They then too bailed out, but did not survive the night in the English Channel. Middleton stayed with the aircraft, which crashed into the Channel.
He was only one operation away from completing his first tour on bombers.
Burial:
Middleton's bravery was recorded in the English press and earned him the admiration of the British public and a posthumous Victoria Cross. His body washed ashore at Dover on 1 February 1943 and he was buried in the churchyard of St. John's, Beck's Row, Suffolk, with full military honours
VC:
The last line of his Victoria Cross citation reads: "His devotion to duty in the face of overwhelming odds is unsurpassed in the annals of the Royal Air Force".
Middleton was posthumously promoted to pilot officer, and is buried at Beck Row, [Mildenhall], Suffolk. His Victoria Cross and uniform are displayed at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
Gallery:
Middleton (far right) and classmates from No. 7 Empire Air Training Scheme course at No. 5 Elementary Flying Training School Narromine posing in front of a Tiger Moth in 1940.
Portrait of 402745 Flight Sergeant R. H. Middleton VC, taken while he was undergoing training.
Portrait of Flight Sergeant Rawdon Hume Middleton, VC, RAAF wearing B-type flying helmet, oxygen mask and Ervin jacket.
A painting by David Smith, formerly of No. 149 Squadron RAF, shows one of Middleton’s crew members watching the last moments of the Stirling bomber and its pilot. The men in the two parachutes seen floating seaward later drowned.
Flt-Sgt Ron Middleton’s graveside service in England was conducted by Chaplain H. Thrush of the RAAF and formerly of Prospect, South Australia.
Osman Middleton (left), with his father Francis Middleton, view his brother Flt-Sgt Ron Middleton’s VC medal n 1943. The medal now sits in the Australian War Memorial.
Thursday, November 14, 2024
FUNNY FRIDAY
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Some office related humour today, Byters, enjoy.
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SOME HUMOUR:
__________
I told my wife, “I won the Leslie Nielsen prize at the office today.”
Her: What’s that?
Me: It’s a place where people go to work, but that’s not important right now.
__________
I told my boss three companies were after me and I needed a raise to stay at my job. We haggled for a few minutes, and he gave me a 5% raise. Leaving his office, he stopped and asked me, "By the way, which companies are after you?" I responded,
"The gas, electric, and cable company."
__________
Suggested New Phrases For Your "Out-Of-The-Office" E-Mail Auto-Reply:
*I am currently out at a interview for a decent job and will reply to you if I fail to get the position. Be prepared for my mood.
*I'm not really out of the office. I'm just ignoring you!
*You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn't have received anything at all.
*Sorry to have missed you but I am at the doctors having my brain removed so that I may be promoted to management
*I will be unable to delete all the unread, worthless emails you send me until I return from vacation on 20/9. Please be patient and your mail will be deleted in the order it was received.
*Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged £5.99 for the first ten words and £1.99 for each additional word in your message.
*Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queuing system. You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in approximately 19 weeks.
*Please reply to this e-mail so I will know that you got this message.
*I am on holiday. Your e-mail has been deleted.
*Hi. I'm thinking about what you've just sent me. Please wait by your PC for my response.
*Hi! I'm busy negotiating the salary for my new job. Don't bother to leave me any messages.
*I've run away to join a different circus.
*I will be out of the office for the next 2 weeks for medical reasons. When I return, please refer to me as 'Davina' instead of 'Dave'.
__________
A guy walks in to a psychiatrist's office. The psychiatrist asks, "What seems to be the problem?"
The guy replies, "I just can't seem to make friends with anyone. Can you help me, you fat ugly bastard?"
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A married man was having an affair with his secretary. One day, their passions overcame them in the office and they took off for her house.
Exhausted from the afternoon's activities, they fell asleep and awoke at around 8 p.m. As the man threw on his clothes, he told the woman to take his shoes outside and rub them through the grass and dirt. Confused, she nonetheless complied and he slipped into his shoes and drove home.
"Where have you been?" demanded his wife when he entered the house.
"Darling," replied the man, "I can't lie to you. I've been having an affair with my secretary. I fell asleep in her bed and didn't wake up until eight o'clock."
The wife glanced down at his shoes and said, "You liar! You've been playing golf!"
__________
I was leaving the office the other day when I found The CEO standing in front of a shredder with a piece of paper in his hand.
Listen, he said, this is a very sensitive and important document, and my secretary has gone for the night. Can you make this thing work for me?
Sure, I said.
I turned the machine on, inserted the paper, and pressed the start button.
Excellent! He said as his paper disappeared into the machine. I just need one copy.
__________
There was a man who worked for the Post Office whose job was to process all the mail that had illegible addresses.
One day, a letter came addressed in a shaky handwriting to God with no address.
He thought he should open it to see what it was about.
The letter read: “Dear God, I am an 83-year-old widow, living on a very small pension. Yesterday someone stole my purse. It had $100 in it, which was all the money I had until my next pension check. Next Sunday is Christmas, and I had invited two of my friends over for dinner. Without that money, I have nothing to buy food with. I have no family to turn to, and you are my only hope. Can you please help me? Sincerely, Edna”
The postal worker was touched.
He showed the letter to all the other workers.
Each one dug into his or her wallet and came up with a few dollars.
By the time he made the rounds, he had collected $96, which they put into an envelope and sent to the woman.
The rest of the day, all the workers felt a warm glow thinking of Edna and the dinner she would be able to share with her friends.
Christmas came and went.
A few days later, another letter came from the same old lady to God.
All the workers gathered around while the letter was opened.
It read: “Dear God, How can I ever thank you enough for what you did for me? Because of your gift of love, I was able to fix a glorious dinner for my friends. We had a very nice day and I told my friends of your wonderful gift.
“By the way, there was $4 missing. I think it must have been those bastards at the Post Office!”
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LIMERICK OF THE WEEK:
’Twould be of great interest to see
What my store of limericks might be
If I leave out the lewd ones
And omit all the rude ones—
I’d probably know two or three.
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GALLERY:
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CORN CORNER:
__________
My Tinder bio says that I have a corner office with views of the entire city, drive a $500,000 vehicle, and I'm paid to travel
You should see my dates' faces when I tell them I'm a bus driver!
__________
To the person who stole my Microsoft Office Licence
I’m gonna find you. You have my word
__________
Why is Christmas just like another day in the office?
Because you do all the hard work and the fat guy in the suit gets all the credit.
__________
My co-workers have given me “the least expressive person they have ever met” award three years in a row.
I can’t tell you how proud I am about this.
__________
My co-workers are always so nice to me.
They just come up to me and say "You are soul".
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