Posts by David Haywood
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Oh... very sorry to have been absent from the discussion. I've been catching up on the lawn-mowing and hedge-trimming which various ailments have prevented me from doing the last couple of weekends.
Thanks to everybody for their kind words... they are *very* much appreciated.
Stephen Judd wrote:
I for one would love to see a piece on the state of research in New Zealand.
Yep, I plan to write something about this, Stephen. Quite a big job, though, as I'd like to take a close look at how they do this in similar-ish countries to NZ (which basically boils down to Ireland, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Singapore (if you count Singapore as a country rather than a city-state)). I'd also like to do some digging as to how much it costs the government to award research funding. To extrapolate from the CRI I used to work for -- I estimate that it must cost around $0.50 in administration for each $1.00 awarded (which doesn't strike me as very efficient).
Che Tibby wrote:
david, assuming i'm not preaching to the perverted (if you can hear this, ref. last comment), think of supplementing your $$ from this site.
That looks really interesting, Che. I shall definitely check that out as a possibility. Much appreciated.
Juha Saarinen wrote:
"No, Haywood. You're this stupid," I said... I padlock the dungeon door and hope someone will find Haywood while he's still somewhat useful as a scientist.
Err... alarmingly vivid prose there, Juha. It makes me slightly nervous to accept your invitation to celebrate Finnish National Dungeon Day with you. Are you absolutely sure that this festival is the Finnish equivalent of Waitangi Day?
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Jon Knox wrote:
"Freelance writer" - isn't that a euphemism for....
I fear it might be. Or, at least, that's what my friends with 'proper' jobs keep suggesting...
Emma Hart wrote:
One assumes, however, that your near-mummified hands still perform their lift, tilt, and pour functions?
If you're implying that I might be deficient in beer then rest assured that bandaged hands are no obstacle to my quaffing habits. My hands are all better now -- but I bet I would still exhibit the motions of beer-drinking even if my head were removed (which might be an interesting experiment to try sometime).
Russell Brown wrote:
... congratulations on the new direction, David.
Thanks, Russell. Actually, it's all down to that phone call from you a couple of years ago (so if it all goes wrong you can guess who I'll be blaming!).
The cheese shop suggestion sounds great -- I'll bear it in mind... Oh, Emma has just anticipated the joke I was about to make RE: Barry's Bay...
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Don Christie wrote:
Brave use of "ontological", I might add.
Thanks Don. You may be interested to know that first-year students in cultural studies are forbidden to use the word 'ontological' because it is simply too frightening. After six months they are allowed to use the word 'ontic'. This is introduced gradually into their normal day-to-day conversations. After another six months they are allowed to use the phrase 'transgressive performativity'. Only when they have fully mastered this recondite terminology are they allowed to employ the word 'ontological' in a real situation.
Jon Knox wrote:
May I be so bold as to suggest Reginald Perrin as someone who might translate David's post into English?
What a outrageous and contemptible suggestion, Jon. That's like asking for Derrida's De l'esprit: Heidegger et la question to be translated into English! Don't you realize that your inability to understand my post is simply an extension of your patriarchal fear of castration?
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Jen Hay wrote:
This is the most sophisticated and insightful economic analysis that I have seen in a long time, and I think it could represent a true international breakthrough... [but] I don't really understand what 'Dasein' is.
With respect, Jen, your question suggests to me that (like Andrew) you hardly know anything about economics or philosophy. A thorough understanding of Dasein is essential in order to comprehend the important economic theories that I put forward in my essay 'Another Night to Remember with Alan Bollard'.
The meaning of Dasein is most easily explained by saying that Dasein can only be explained by understanding existence. Dasein always understands itself in terms of its existence, in terms of its possibility to be itself or not be itself. Dasein has either chosen these possibilities itself, stumbled upon them, or already grown up in them. Existence is decided only by each Dasein itself in the manner of seizing upon or neglecting such possibilities. We come to terms with the question of existence always only through existence itself. The question of existence is an ontic 'affair' of Dasein. For this the theoretical perspicuity of the ontological structure of existence is not necessary. The question of structure aims at the analysis of what constitutes existence. Its analysis therefore has the character of an existential understanding.
In other words, the task of defining Dasein is prescribed with regard to its possibility and necessity in the ontic constitution of Dasein.
I hope this answers your question.
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Andrew Llewellyn wrote:
The original Gower Champion choreography? Or Bob Fosse's for the later Broadway season?
With respect, Andrew, your question suggests to me that you hardly know anything about economics.
Obviously, the original Gower Champion choreography.
In my opinion, Bob Fosse's lacklustre dance routines have contributed less than nothing to international understanding of economic theory.
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Glad that people have enjoyed my little allegory. To answer Jon Knox's question: Yes, I was trying to make a serious point in this blog.
I have deep concerns with regard to the ideological myth of 'economics'. Postmodern theorists such as Aronowitz (1988) have shown that economic 'reality' emerges from the transgressive performativity of economists, who -- by definition -- are pre-postmodern, trans-determinate, and neo-essentialist in their outlook. This suggests to me that the socio-political nature of 'economic' constructs (such as value, time, and money) must have important ontological implications for all financial processes.
Don Christie is correct in identifying my deliberate thematic references to the financephalograph. The first part of the allegory explores my concerns with regard to fluid-dynamic genderization in economic theory. As Hayles (1992) puts it:
In the same way that women are erased within masculinist theories and language, existing only as not-men, so fluids have been erased from science, existing only as not-solids.
This leads to considerable difficulties in terms of Phillips's attempts to model national economies. It also raises the obvious question: have all subsequent epistemological approaches inherited the ontological bi-univocalism inherent in the 1940s Zeitgeist?
In order to circumvent these limitations a new paradigm of indexicality is clearly required. The second part of the allegory attempts to achieve this by acknowledging the inherent co(n)textual indexicality of economic behaviour. This new approach transcends both univocalism and bi-univocalism to operate at a 'mono-bi-univocalist' level.
Some examples may be useful to illustrate my point:
1. Darfield Charlie's 'blood-letting' represents not only the monetary flows within the economic system, but also the cultural and socio-political Weltanschauung of economists.
2. The eventual infection of Darfield Charlie's wounds are deliberately suggestive of entropy. The confrontation with his girlfriend contains obvious references to Gödel's theorem (Gödel 1949) and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (Heisenberg 1958).
3. Cultural and socio-political Dasein are characterized using quantitative methods that draw on a variety of iconic popular culture signifiers. The 'axe scene' echoes dance routines from the Broadway musical Oklahoma! (Rodgers and Hammerstein, 1943). Bollard's comments about GDP are 'appropriated' from the television series My Favourite Martian (Green 1963).
As John Shears has observed, my allegorical approach is not without its difficulties. It does not, for example, imply a solution to larger problems such as quantum gravity. However it does confront our societal norms in terms of indexicality issues, and goes some way towards suggesting 'inclusive' economic solutions that could operate within the cultural context of other (non-western) societies.
For those of you interested in this topic I would recommend the following items as essential reading:
Aronowitz, Stanley (1988), Science as Power: Discourse and Idealogy in Modern Society, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Gödel, K. (1949), 'An example of a new type of cosmological solutions of Einstein's field equations of gravitation', Reviews of Modern Physics, 21, 447-450.
Greene, J.L. (1963) My Favorite Martian, CBS, Los Angeles.
Hayles, N.K. (1992), 'Gender encoding in fluid mechanics: Masculine channels and feminine flows', Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 4(2), 16-44.
Heisenberg, W. (1958), The Physicist's Conception of Nature (Translated by A.J. Pomerans), Harcourt-Brace, New York.
Rodgers, R. and Hammerstein, O. (1943) Oklahoma!, Williamson Music, New York.
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Part III of Michael Tritt's superb documentary on Auckland's transportation problems (and how they came about).
This is absolutely fascinating stuff. It should be viewed by all Aucklanders (and probably NZers) -- particularly with regard to the upcoming local body elections.
And wouldn't it be nice if one of the television networks picked it up? I could easily imagine it slotting into 'Campbell Live', with all five episodes being shown over the course of a week.
Part I of the documentary can be found here...
and Part II can be found here.
Parts IV and V are still to be released.
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Belt wrote:
... with respect to S59 and human beings... let me point out that training dogs is all about establishing dominance, and therefore the example doesn't really hold much water.
Several others have made the same point to me by email, and just to clarify...
I'm not suggesting that dogs are the same as children. I'm not suggesting that we should treat dogs and children the same (for example, I don't think we should castrate children or execute them when they bite somebody).
I think we should treat children better than dogs.
As I said when I posted the article, my intention was to respond to some of the email messages that I've received (RE: my previous post on Section 59) which argue that physical punishment is necessary and beneficial for a child.
As with the 'Modest Proposal' post I wasn't necessarily trying to prove anything -- just to leave the reader with a mildly interesting question.
To spell out the question very loudly: "If physical punishment is necessary for 'training' children, then why is it that we can reliably train dogs (and chimps, and seals, and elephants, and dolphins, and birds, and octopi, and whales, and sheep, etc. etc. etc.) without resorting to physical punishment, but we can't do the same for human children?"
I use the word 'train' in the sense of "to teach (a person or an animal) a particular type of behaviour".
I don't know the answer to this question, but I think it's an interesting one...
P.S. Sorry to hear that your child was knocked over by a dog. I don't have your apparent expertise in animal training, so I'm not going to comment on your claims that modern positive reinforcement methods are dangerous and often produce undisciplined dogs. But I would note that Joanne Hammond (the dog training expert in the interview) certainly knew all about dominance, and talked about it at great length (but only a small section of this discussion was transcribed for the interview).
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David Cormack wrote:
Thumbs up for you
Cheers, mate! Nice to be appreciated...
[BTW: This isn't positive reinforcement is it? You know, praising the things I do right, and remaining silent on the (many) things I've done wrong over the past two years?]
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Stephen Glaister wrote:
... my apologies for views I've misatrributed to people.
I may not necessarily agree with what you say, Stephen, but I appreciate that you've tried to make your points in a less confrontational manner than in your previous post. This makes your train of thought much more readable, in my opinion (for what that's worth!).