It is time to say my goodbyes to Bristol. These are the reasons I’ll miss it.

… you believe a friend is lying, what should you do?

When everything points to a hypothesis but without hard fact to back anything up. When being blunt and asking directly doesn’t seem appropriate. When there could well be a plausible explanation for everything. When you just can’t think what that might be. When you can’t win, suspicions correct or not. When you can’t just ignore it. When you genuinely feel you need to know. When knowing could be worse then not knowing. When it may be too late anyway.

When will you know? When will you be able to forget once you do?

Despite having lived in Bristol for eight months and walked through Stokes Croft just about every time I go anywhere, I’ve only just gotten around to taking some photographs of the area. I always find this, that by living somewhere I take the best bits for granted.

I did it in Vancouver, ignoring the every day and mundane that actually make the places you are so special, that intrinsic part of the environment. It is not the most beautiful views, the most unusual architecture or the most photographed places that remain the most memorable; it is the what forms the fabric of your life every day. The things you don’t bat an eyelid at until they’re gone.

One day I’ll learn to appreciate these things from the off and not wait until I’m about to move out of town. So, a week left in Bristol and then on to pastures new. In many ways, I don’t feel ready to leave yet. I know the city has so much more to offer me. Just as I am beginning to uncover some of its gems, to understand the place and identify where my involvement should be, I’m gone. Partly it is itchy feet (I appear unable to settle anywhere of late) and partly it is opportunity elsewhere. Lessons are to be learnt.

I shall open my eyes and see what I have so frequently been blind to.

More pictures after the jump.

A pair of slightly twee videos for your Sunday night. The former comes from Vicky T; huge thanks to Ella for letting me in on this one. Gizmo!

The second (sorry, can’t see to find a way to embed it) comes from Lavender Diamond’s Becky Stark. Even I find this almost painfully twee! Colin Meloy features somewhere in this series; I think there’s due a new one every Tuesday.

Califunya #2 Bluebird

Sometimes the best weekends are the simplest.

When I’m feeling a bit geeky, there are a few things I find a bit annoying. The first is when people start talking about “rational”. I was explaining something at work to someone and they kept stating, that if people were “rational” in a market (in this case for boats), they’d forsee that if the price was historically low and ship owners weren’t ordering new ships, the fleet will dwindle as boats are retired and lead to a shortage, and hence a price rise. So, if they were “rational”, they would build boats now and beat the rush, having fresh new boats just in time.
Would they? What’s to say that the past will repeat itself? It often does but to assume it will seems foolhardy. Moreover, I’d assume the folks that own these ships are suffering from low incomes from their current fleet and probably aren’t able to (cheaply) raise the cash for what would be a large and speculative position. So far, so simple. But consider a bit of game theory and what might be “rational”. We’re talking basic prisoners dilemma here: my best strategy is to do what my competitors do. In doing so, we maintain the status quo, I don’t take the large risk of going out of business but may miss out on windfall profits. Isn’t my long term survival also in my “rational” interests?  This is before we ask what to be “rational” is and most definitely before we consider whether anyone can truly behave in the cold sober state of the mythical “rational” agent neo-classical economics takes as its core .

On to maths for the second. I like it when people use maths properly. Maths is fun y’know. The mis-use of statistics though is everywhere, headline grabbing figures that upon reflection make little sense.
Listening to the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning, one comment bugged me in a discussion between the Families Secretary Ed Balls and the Tory shadow David Willetts. They were discussing policy on how the state should be assisting the “family” [another arbitrary concept no one seems to be able to satisfactorily define]. With the Tories focussing on providing income tax benefits for married couples, being an easy and economic first step, the question was raised as to how non-traditional families are considered – unmarried couples with children, widows and widowers, single parents – and how this would effectively penalise these groups for not being subscribing to a religious view of partnership. And it was put forward as a question, what is the proportion of teenage mothers in the country (with an implied base of mothers, age non-specific)? Numbers spectacularly forwarded included 50%. FIFTY PERCENT! I know politicians are prone to hyperbole and ludicrous use of statistics, but that would be absurd.
No, the real figure is 2%, as they pointed out shortly after. But to even suggest 50% – what would it mean for 50% of mothers (single or otherwise) to be in their teens?
Assume you class a mother as such when she has a (dependent) child under 16 – the age at which I believe legally they can act on their own behalf and not under a guardian. We’ve already set a cap on the proportion of teenage mothers it is possible to have (mathematically, not physically): 62.5%. And that would rely every mother in the country having given birth on the day she becomes a teenager, or before.
If every mother gave birth a little later, say at the age of 12, their child will have a teenage mother for half of their life as a child dependent – which’d give our ludicrous 50% statistic.
Yes, the figure was undoubtedly thrown out in the heat of a debate to provide emphasis to the 2% that was to follow but such blatant disregard for statistical possibility, for me at least, undermined anything else that was to come.
[A few caveats as and when I think of them. One: This assumes, for simplicities sake, a constant birth rate (see below for digressions on this). Two: my statistical abilities aren't amazing, so please point out if there are flaws in my logic, it is more than possible].

While I’m here talking statistics and economics, here’s one a conundrum that has continually wound me up since starting to study economics well over a decade ago, that got a mention on Radio 4’s More Or Less the other week. I’m not aware of any economy that doesn’t set out to achieve economic growth (and possibly only implicitly). We live in a world of finite resources. Are the two not entirely incompatible? You’re about to point out population growth, technology and productivity. Possibly… but what if any of those factors use finite resources, say energy? That growth can’t go on forever. You can probably spot the problem in indefinite population growth (go read some Malthus if not); economic growth must face the same limitations – at some point, the consequences will force us to stop. Consequences? Um, let me think of an example… climate change perhaps?
I’ll leave you with two theorems  from economist Kenneth Boulding, which should leave you with a warm fuzzy feeling in your heart:

Dismal Theorem
If the only check on population growth is misery, then the population will grow until it is miserable enough to stop the growth.

Utterly Dismal Theorem
Any technical improvement can only relieve misery for a while, for so long as misery is the only check on population then technology will allow population to grow, and allow more people to live in misery than before. Thus the result of technological improvement is to allow more people to live in misery, i.e. increase the sum total of human misery.

Sat in the car driving to Butlins for the ATP festival in December, we were reminiscing about bands we used to go see when we were young, given that so many bands seem to be getting back together to play gigs, for better or for worse. King Adora (almost) united the car (Hannie remembered them but I don’t think could compete with Luke or my teenage enthusiasm for them) and we joked about how they should get back together and start playing King Adora songs once more, having come close to booking their subsequent High Society outfit for a gig (more as a joke than anything else) a couple of years back. No chance of them getting back together though, they were hardly that huge – getting about as far as supporting Queens Of The Stone Age on a decent size tour, releasing a debut album that got airplay with Lamacq and his ilk of the time before disappearing (I think after releasing a follow up album).

So, by chance, I stumbled upon a listing at The Garage where they’re due to play a comeback gig. Can’t seem to ascertain whether this is their first gig back or if they’ve been knocking around again for a while, but needless to say, I’m dead excited. Luke and Ellie jumped at the chance to come see them, and with a bit of gentle persuasion (the offer of dressing up and a bit of glitter seemed to do it), Indiehorse is coming down to London for it too. We shall Scream And Shout and no doubt Smoulder too and it’ll be just like we’re 15 once more…

Just a couple of inches of snow and the country grinds to a halt. I struggled for an hour to clear enough of the snow off the hill outside my house to get the car going fowards rather than sideways, then resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn’t be driving to work. Buses or trains though, they’ll get me the 40 miles I need! Well, apparently not. Neither were running. So a snow day for me, which gave me the perfect opportunity to have a wander about in the Bristol snow, engage strangers in snowball fights, check out a tea room I’d be meaning to (Attic – see blog post here) and get working on one of my new year’s resolutions – to make more use of my cameras. Only digital pics so far; those taken on my Zenit-E and Holga will have to wait until I’ve finished the film and had a chance to get them developed.

More after the jump…