“You want my advice on whether or not you should propose to Denise?” I asked Simon dumbfoundedly. “Why are you asking me?”
“Because Ralph. I need some feedback from someone who doesn’t think the way I do and as I went through my spreadsheet of all of my friends, you were top of the list of who doesn’t think rationally about things.”
“You have a list of your friends in a spreadsheet. Why?”
“Doesn’t everyone? How do you keep track of your friends? How do you know which you can ask for a ride somewhere? How do you keep track of their birthdays? Or all the other things?”
“Ok Simon, so no, I don’t have a list. And I think I might have been insulted there. But why are you having a problem with this anyhow?”
“Ralph, perhaps I’ve thought about this too much and I’m looking for something a bit more impulsive, something you are good at. And I mean that as a compliment. Look, let me show you the printout of the worksheet I put together on Denise. I’ve listed all of the positive things about her and given each item a ranking. Then I listed all of the negative things and also gave them a ranking. After I added up the rankings of both columns, they turned out exactly the same! Do you know that the odds of this happening are 1.735 million to one AGAINST?”
“No I didn’t know that Simon. Math never was my best subject. Let me see those lists.”
I read down the columns and when I finished I knew more about Denise than I know about my mother.
“Nice lists Simon. But they’re all crap.”
“There! That’s why I’m talking to you. You didn’t ask me to justify what is on my lists. You didn’t attempt to refute my logic. You simply replied insultingly without thinking. So what should I do? What does your impulsive instinct for reaction tell you to say to me?”
“Arghh. Let me look at those lists again. Aha. I see the problem. Here, give me a pen.” I scribbled on the positive side a bit and handed the list back to Simon.
He read what I added, stopped, and then said quietly, “Ralph your logic was impeccable. I’ll ask her to marry her of course. And yes, I do love her and I won’t argue that putting that missing point on the list was worth one million points or one billion. But how do you know I love her?”
“Simon I didn’t think I used logic at all. I just figured that anyone who could spend as much time writing down so much one person the way you’ve done about Denise could only have done it because he’s crazy about her. And since you asked me, as I see it that’s the only point worth considering.”
“Ralph, you’re right. I’ll propose this evening. Thankyou so much.”
“One last thing Simon. Under no circumstances will you show her that list, nor mention that you even had one, nor mention that you talked to me or anyone else about this.”
“No wait. One more last thing. If for some reason she says no, would you mind if I asked her out?”
Saturday, 21 August 2010
Monday, 16 August 2010
Closing the door (by Heather)
You’ll never understand another person until you’ve walked a day in his shoes.
Hopeless old drunk.
I stand in the paint-peeled doorway looking into the one-room bedsitter that my father had so recently inhabited. My stomach lurches. No wonder he kicked the bucket at age 59. Although he’d made a valiant effort in the last decade - never touched a drop in all that time, so he said, the previous 30-odd years must have turned his liver to Swiss cheese. I remember that that self-same liver is probably hell-bound in the crematorium at this exact moment, along with the rest of his used and abused body.
And here am I, stuck with clearing out the hopeless old drunk’s place. Before me stands a pathetic array of cheap, scarred, worn junk in a bedsitter in the worst part of town, requiring final distribution. I step in and close the door.
I notice his slippers sitting side by side just at the edge of the bed. I sit on the faded patchwork quilt (probably a gift from the Salvation Army) and pick them up. They’re brown plaid, seams wore out down the front so that bits of fleece are finding their way out. The rubber heels are flattened on the outside. On an impulse, I undo my own shoes and slip his on. They fit like gloves. I’d forgotten we were the same size. They are familiar in a way that I’ve been feeling all day, to my great discomfort. It’s as if a little of his soul has slipped into my feet. I almost kick the slippers off, but I don’t. I flex my toes inside them, surrendering to this feeling of profoundly knowing/not knowing my father.
I inspect the bedside table. There’s a photo of three boys by a lake. I’m not sure I’ve seen this photo before but it’s certainly Sammy, Bert and me. I’m the one holding a foot-long trout. I remember the day. It had been a good one. Dad had taken us out to Johnson Lake, where we’d spent the afternoon alternatively casting off the main pier or leaping off it into the lake. I remember the joy of catching that fish, and can feel Dad’s pride as he helped me get it off the hook.
I study the faces of Sammy and Bert. I feel a little wash of affection mixed with regret, and I can’t tell if it’s me or if it’s Dad’s slippers talking. Anyway, they sure as hell weren’t here for the service this morning -- couldn’t locate them anywhere among the seven people who gathered to say goodbye to Dad.
I get up from the bed, shuffling a bit in the slippers as I cross the room. There’s an old laminated closet. Three shirts are hanging neatly in there, along with two pairs of trousers folded carefully over wooden hangers, a summer jacket, a winter coat and a threadbare plaid dressing gown. There’s a pair of shoes, old as the hills but spit-polished to a high shine. It’s hard to reconcile this neat and tidy existence with the chaotic one I knew as a boy growing up.
I close the closet door. The slippers drag a little on the threadbare carpet, where a worn path takes me through the little archway into the kitchen area. I see his teacup on the table, on its side. They said he was sitting at the table when the heart attack got him. The cup is stained with tannin and there’s a little ring of tea on the bottom. I give the cup a careful rinse at the sink. There’s a canister of tea on the shelf, and I take out a teabag. I spill a little water into the old jug, which promptly sighs into action. I find a litre of milk in the fridge. I don’t generally have sugar or milk with my tea but today the slippers seem to be calling the shots.
I bring the tea with me as I trundle over to the old arm chair in front of the TV. God, I haven’t seen a TV like that for a few years. I thumb through a magazine rack sitting at the side of the chair. There’s a Reader’s Digest, a couple issues of MacLeans, and to my surprise a dozen New Scientists. Who’d have thought the old man had an interest in science?
I think about this morning at the chapel, where a couple of Dad’s old AA buddies had shown up. They’d both pumped my hand and told me what a great gin rummy player he was. “Oh, we had a lot of laughs together,” one of them had said. “He was a great guy, your dad.” They’d asked about me, and I told them I’m a science teacher with a wife and a couple of kids in Vancouver. They’d liked that.
There was also a buxom middle-aged woman who was dropping a few tears into a tissue. “I’m so sorry for your loss,“ she’d said to me in a shaky voice, obviously feeling a lot more loss than I did. “He was a wonderful man.” I stood completely still while she patted my shoulder, neither of us able to say anything. I thought, it’s clear he didn’t break your face on numerous occasions like he did Mum’s. Obviously you didn’t see him whacking his sons around. You didn’t see what he could do to a dog that annoyed him. You didn’t see him hurling the phone through the window when the landlord called.
I get up to take the cup to the kitchen table. There’s a deck of cards there and I sit down. I surprise myself by remembering how to play solitaire with a real deck.
I hear a car pull up outside and realise it’s Sally back already with the rental. I snap the cards back into the box, kick the slippers off, and swing the door open just as she’s about to knock. She gives me a big kiss, then looks around my shoulder. A look of dismay crosses her face.
“Geez, Dave, didn’t you get anything done?” Her glance takes in the whole of this little dump. “Look at this place. Imagine living like this! What a hopeless old drunk.” She speaks with distaste but I hear a note of sympathy leaking into her tone, whether for me or my father I don‘t know.
“He hasn’t been a drunk for years,” I say. I grab a plastic bag and stick in the slippers, the tea cup and the photo. “Anyway, let’s get outta here. I’ll get the Salvation Army people over in the morning and I’ll have it finished before we have to catch the plane.”
Sally looks relieved. We step outside and I close the door firmly behind me.
Hopeless old drunk.
I stand in the paint-peeled doorway looking into the one-room bedsitter that my father had so recently inhabited. My stomach lurches. No wonder he kicked the bucket at age 59. Although he’d made a valiant effort in the last decade - never touched a drop in all that time, so he said, the previous 30-odd years must have turned his liver to Swiss cheese. I remember that that self-same liver is probably hell-bound in the crematorium at this exact moment, along with the rest of his used and abused body.
And here am I, stuck with clearing out the hopeless old drunk’s place. Before me stands a pathetic array of cheap, scarred, worn junk in a bedsitter in the worst part of town, requiring final distribution. I step in and close the door.
I notice his slippers sitting side by side just at the edge of the bed. I sit on the faded patchwork quilt (probably a gift from the Salvation Army) and pick them up. They’re brown plaid, seams wore out down the front so that bits of fleece are finding their way out. The rubber heels are flattened on the outside. On an impulse, I undo my own shoes and slip his on. They fit like gloves. I’d forgotten we were the same size. They are familiar in a way that I’ve been feeling all day, to my great discomfort. It’s as if a little of his soul has slipped into my feet. I almost kick the slippers off, but I don’t. I flex my toes inside them, surrendering to this feeling of profoundly knowing/not knowing my father.
I inspect the bedside table. There’s a photo of three boys by a lake. I’m not sure I’ve seen this photo before but it’s certainly Sammy, Bert and me. I’m the one holding a foot-long trout. I remember the day. It had been a good one. Dad had taken us out to Johnson Lake, where we’d spent the afternoon alternatively casting off the main pier or leaping off it into the lake. I remember the joy of catching that fish, and can feel Dad’s pride as he helped me get it off the hook.
I study the faces of Sammy and Bert. I feel a little wash of affection mixed with regret, and I can’t tell if it’s me or if it’s Dad’s slippers talking. Anyway, they sure as hell weren’t here for the service this morning -- couldn’t locate them anywhere among the seven people who gathered to say goodbye to Dad.
I get up from the bed, shuffling a bit in the slippers as I cross the room. There’s an old laminated closet. Three shirts are hanging neatly in there, along with two pairs of trousers folded carefully over wooden hangers, a summer jacket, a winter coat and a threadbare plaid dressing gown. There’s a pair of shoes, old as the hills but spit-polished to a high shine. It’s hard to reconcile this neat and tidy existence with the chaotic one I knew as a boy growing up.
I close the closet door. The slippers drag a little on the threadbare carpet, where a worn path takes me through the little archway into the kitchen area. I see his teacup on the table, on its side. They said he was sitting at the table when the heart attack got him. The cup is stained with tannin and there’s a little ring of tea on the bottom. I give the cup a careful rinse at the sink. There’s a canister of tea on the shelf, and I take out a teabag. I spill a little water into the old jug, which promptly sighs into action. I find a litre of milk in the fridge. I don’t generally have sugar or milk with my tea but today the slippers seem to be calling the shots.
I bring the tea with me as I trundle over to the old arm chair in front of the TV. God, I haven’t seen a TV like that for a few years. I thumb through a magazine rack sitting at the side of the chair. There’s a Reader’s Digest, a couple issues of MacLeans, and to my surprise a dozen New Scientists. Who’d have thought the old man had an interest in science?
I think about this morning at the chapel, where a couple of Dad’s old AA buddies had shown up. They’d both pumped my hand and told me what a great gin rummy player he was. “Oh, we had a lot of laughs together,” one of them had said. “He was a great guy, your dad.” They’d asked about me, and I told them I’m a science teacher with a wife and a couple of kids in Vancouver. They’d liked that.
There was also a buxom middle-aged woman who was dropping a few tears into a tissue. “I’m so sorry for your loss,“ she’d said to me in a shaky voice, obviously feeling a lot more loss than I did. “He was a wonderful man.” I stood completely still while she patted my shoulder, neither of us able to say anything. I thought, it’s clear he didn’t break your face on numerous occasions like he did Mum’s. Obviously you didn’t see him whacking his sons around. You didn’t see what he could do to a dog that annoyed him. You didn’t see him hurling the phone through the window when the landlord called.
I get up to take the cup to the kitchen table. There’s a deck of cards there and I sit down. I surprise myself by remembering how to play solitaire with a real deck.
I hear a car pull up outside and realise it’s Sally back already with the rental. I snap the cards back into the box, kick the slippers off, and swing the door open just as she’s about to knock. She gives me a big kiss, then looks around my shoulder. A look of dismay crosses her face.
“Geez, Dave, didn’t you get anything done?” Her glance takes in the whole of this little dump. “Look at this place. Imagine living like this! What a hopeless old drunk.” She speaks with distaste but I hear a note of sympathy leaking into her tone, whether for me or my father I don‘t know.
“He hasn’t been a drunk for years,” I say. I grab a plastic bag and stick in the slippers, the tea cup and the photo. “Anyway, let’s get outta here. I’ll get the Salvation Army people over in the morning and I’ll have it finished before we have to catch the plane.”
Sally looks relieved. We step outside and I close the door firmly behind me.
Sunday, 15 August 2010
Kuhn-Tucker conditions--Gordon
This is text on the Kuhn-Tucker conditions which sits my spatial equilibrium book in the chapter on optimisation. Tonight I have extended the last three paragraphs and some equations. Also, I have found a way to download a pdf file using Scribd. Make sure you enlarge the page and print using Fullscreen.
Gordon
15-8-10
Gordon
15-8-10
Creating art to 'save the world' (Kerry)
A group of teenagers is seated around a low table on which are displayed various artworks and brochures from Uluru and Kakadu. They finger the boldly etched wooden carving and study the map of Australia curiously. Some are sketching designs from the brochures and prints in front of them. There is an excited buzz in the room.
These are students from a secondary school in Palo Alto, California. They are undertaking a project with their art teacher in collaboration with the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, rangers from Uluru and Kakadu National Parks, authorities from their local Olhone Indigenous communities and four artists from Victoria, Yorta Yorta women, Treahna Hamm and Lee Darroch, and Kirrae/Gunditjmara women, Vicki and Debra Couzens (Palo Alto, 2007).
Their goal is to create works that encourage their communities to take care of the environment. They are referring to design elements from Australian Indigenous artworks as aids to creating their own symbolic language for environmental awareness. They are taught that the symbols used in the Indigenous works are significant in describing country, cultural practices and community relationships. Over the following weeks, two of the groups within the class complete their project using rabbit and possum skins from which they create two cloaks. The cloaks are decorated on the inside (away from the fur) with symbols and patterns of significance to the students in urging others to be environmentally aware.
The four Victorian artists consulted for the Palo Alto High School project have been responsible for reviving the art of making possum skin cloaks in Victoria over the last ten years. Treahna Hamm and Lee Darroch began by creating an Echuca possum skin cloak after seeing a Maidens Punt (Echuca) cloak and a Lake Condah cloak in the Melbourne Museum in 1999. They then proceeded to teach other Victorian Indigenous communities the necessary skills to make their own cloaks. The cloaks of 35 of the 37 Indigenous language groups in Victoria were worn at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in 2006. Subsequently a series of glass possum cloak panels designed and constructed by Hamm, Darroch and a third Yorta Yorta artist, Maree Clarke, has been installed in the new Oxfam Building in Carlton, Melbourne.
These two art projects using possum skins raise some pertinent issues about the role of art in imagining sustainable futures. The artists are creating the art collaboratively and in the process forming a strong sense of community. As well, the collaboration serves to unite “diverse skills, experiences and interests” (Carter, p. 9) and has the potential to materialise a new inventive understanding of the community’s shared culture. Paul Carter uses the metaphor of weaving to explain his idea of the collaborative process. He proposes that the warp threads extending lengthwise in the loom represent the “culture’s myth lines, the grand narratives in terms of which it defines its sense of place and identity” (Carter, p. 11). However he suggests that the warp-thread narratives cannot gain cohesion “unless the shuttle of local invention is at work, casting its woof-thread back and forth” (Carter, p. 11). The term 'local invention' refers to the art-making process itself and Carter sees it as being “a structure for reinventing human relations” (Carter, p. 10). Thus we have the idea that a collaborative art-making process can be the means for inventing and strengthening a community’s culture and its stories.
In each of these projects, in Victoria and in Palo Alto, the artists were explicitly involved in creating sustainable futures. For the students in Palo Alto, it was important to be using natural materials, materials that could be seen as recyclable. Their focus was also to proclaim the message of environmental awareness and to remind their community of its responsibility, both as individuals and as a community as a whole, of the need to take care of the environment. In Victoria, the Indigenous artists are also involved in imagining a sustainable future, but this time in terms of sustaining their cultural heritage, by telling their community’s stories and reviving past skills and traditions. They have already inspired other Indigenous communities to reconnect with their past traditions and stories by creating possum skin cloaks using their own signs and symbols. Carter regards this process of collaboration, and creative research, as “the always unfinished process of making and remaking ourselves through our symbolic forms” (Carter, p. 13). He sees it as an “imaginative breakthrough, which announces locally different forms of sociability, environmental interactivity and collective storytelling” (Carter, p. 13).
References:
Carter, Paul. Material Thinking: The Theory and Practice of Creative Research. Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2004.
"Patterns of Culture: Cultural Identity and Environmental Practices Illustrated in Design Symbols." Palo Alto, California: Palo Alto High School, 2007.
These are students from a secondary school in Palo Alto, California. They are undertaking a project with their art teacher in collaboration with the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, rangers from Uluru and Kakadu National Parks, authorities from their local Olhone Indigenous communities and four artists from Victoria, Yorta Yorta women, Treahna Hamm and Lee Darroch, and Kirrae/Gunditjmara women, Vicki and Debra Couzens (Palo Alto, 2007).
Their goal is to create works that encourage their communities to take care of the environment. They are referring to design elements from Australian Indigenous artworks as aids to creating their own symbolic language for environmental awareness. They are taught that the symbols used in the Indigenous works are significant in describing country, cultural practices and community relationships. Over the following weeks, two of the groups within the class complete their project using rabbit and possum skins from which they create two cloaks. The cloaks are decorated on the inside (away from the fur) with symbols and patterns of significance to the students in urging others to be environmentally aware.
The four Victorian artists consulted for the Palo Alto High School project have been responsible for reviving the art of making possum skin cloaks in Victoria over the last ten years. Treahna Hamm and Lee Darroch began by creating an Echuca possum skin cloak after seeing a Maidens Punt (Echuca) cloak and a Lake Condah cloak in the Melbourne Museum in 1999. They then proceeded to teach other Victorian Indigenous communities the necessary skills to make their own cloaks. The cloaks of 35 of the 37 Indigenous language groups in Victoria were worn at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in 2006. Subsequently a series of glass possum cloak panels designed and constructed by Hamm, Darroch and a third Yorta Yorta artist, Maree Clarke, has been installed in the new Oxfam Building in Carlton, Melbourne.
These two art projects using possum skins raise some pertinent issues about the role of art in imagining sustainable futures. The artists are creating the art collaboratively and in the process forming a strong sense of community. As well, the collaboration serves to unite “diverse skills, experiences and interests” (Carter, p. 9) and has the potential to materialise a new inventive understanding of the community’s shared culture. Paul Carter uses the metaphor of weaving to explain his idea of the collaborative process. He proposes that the warp threads extending lengthwise in the loom represent the “culture’s myth lines, the grand narratives in terms of which it defines its sense of place and identity” (Carter, p. 11). However he suggests that the warp-thread narratives cannot gain cohesion “unless the shuttle of local invention is at work, casting its woof-thread back and forth” (Carter, p. 11). The term 'local invention' refers to the art-making process itself and Carter sees it as being “a structure for reinventing human relations” (Carter, p. 10). Thus we have the idea that a collaborative art-making process can be the means for inventing and strengthening a community’s culture and its stories.
In each of these projects, in Victoria and in Palo Alto, the artists were explicitly involved in creating sustainable futures. For the students in Palo Alto, it was important to be using natural materials, materials that could be seen as recyclable. Their focus was also to proclaim the message of environmental awareness and to remind their community of its responsibility, both as individuals and as a community as a whole, of the need to take care of the environment. In Victoria, the Indigenous artists are also involved in imagining a sustainable future, but this time in terms of sustaining their cultural heritage, by telling their community’s stories and reviving past skills and traditions. They have already inspired other Indigenous communities to reconnect with their past traditions and stories by creating possum skin cloaks using their own signs and symbols. Carter regards this process of collaboration, and creative research, as “the always unfinished process of making and remaking ourselves through our symbolic forms” (Carter, p. 13). He sees it as an “imaginative breakthrough, which announces locally different forms of sociability, environmental interactivity and collective storytelling” (Carter, p. 13).
References:
Carter, Paul. Material Thinking: The Theory and Practice of Creative Research. Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2004.
"Patterns of Culture: Cultural Identity and Environmental Practices Illustrated in Design Symbols." Palo Alto, California: Palo Alto High School, 2007.
Friday, 13 August 2010
Swapping shoes - Sue
I love casual, almost hippie like clothes and this is my favourite outfit, if I’m out for a coffee in one of the funky areas of town. A mid calf-length floppy skirt in bright pink with orange splodges and a double layer tee-shirt in orange and white. On my feet, I’d have my everyday-wear orange Birkenstock sandals and my Raban sunglasses would be pushed back over my short spiky hair.
But today, I am being my twin sister. We look exactly alike so we can get away with standing in for each other if tricky situations demand a less passionate position. According to Amanda, she’s had a stand up argument with her garage mechanic who is trying to rip her off on the repairs to her Porsche. I’m off to sort it out.
Amanda has dressed me in her “off to combat the men” gear. She thinks I’m dressed to do battle whereas I feel a complete burke. But let’s see what you think.
Naturally I am in trousers. It’s a cream trouser suit with tight creases and narrow legs and a very fitted jacket that slightly flares from the waist. The trousers narrow to my thickening ankles to reveal strappy, amazingly high heeled, black leather sandals. My short hair is flattened with moose so I look almost bald.
Well here goes. I’m walking, or trying to walk, down to the garage.
I take tiny steps as the trousers refuse to bend at the knee or crease at the groin and the shoes create blisters on the outside of my little toes. In fact my toes feel like squashed tomatoes. It takes half an hour to walk the 500 metres and by the time I get there I am hot, sweaty and sore. I glance at myself as I pass the deli at the corner. Oh my god. My face is like a beetroot, the hair has gone spiky and stiff and my feet look like lumps of puffy dough. The crisply ironed trouser suit looks the same as it did hanging in the wardrobe.
I take a few deep breathes and think of Amanda’s $3000 bill and her beautiful silver Porsche that the garage has refused to let out of its sight. I’m inspired to do battle.
“Hey you. You’re Jones aren’t you?”
“You slimy, good for nothing. I’ll teach you to try and rip me off.”
“Now. Let’s get down to business”.
Poor Mr Jones hasn’t been able to get a word in. I’m on a roll, and I’m on a mission.
“Right, I booked in my Porsche for a 180 km service. You took a week. God what where you doing? Anyway at the end of the week you dish out a bill for $3000. Where the hell did that come from? What? Do you think I’m made of money?”
Mr Jones is trying to speak. His mouth is opening like a sleepy goldfish and is tongue is wobbling up and down. Barely a squeak escapes his narrow mean looking lips.
“I uuum, I don’t ......”
”What do you mean, you don’t know. If you don’t who does? Anyhow I don’t really care about the hows, the whys and the wherefores. Just give me the keys to my car.
Now”
“Now. Do you hear me?”
Vaguely I hear a door slam. Then I hear the familiar roar of the V8 Porsche. There’s a flash of silver. There’s a raucous roar of laughter from Amanda as she and the Porsche disappear down the road. She must have found her spare keys after all.
But today, I am being my twin sister. We look exactly alike so we can get away with standing in for each other if tricky situations demand a less passionate position. According to Amanda, she’s had a stand up argument with her garage mechanic who is trying to rip her off on the repairs to her Porsche. I’m off to sort it out.
Amanda has dressed me in her “off to combat the men” gear. She thinks I’m dressed to do battle whereas I feel a complete burke. But let’s see what you think.
Naturally I am in trousers. It’s a cream trouser suit with tight creases and narrow legs and a very fitted jacket that slightly flares from the waist. The trousers narrow to my thickening ankles to reveal strappy, amazingly high heeled, black leather sandals. My short hair is flattened with moose so I look almost bald.
Well here goes. I’m walking, or trying to walk, down to the garage.
I take tiny steps as the trousers refuse to bend at the knee or crease at the groin and the shoes create blisters on the outside of my little toes. In fact my toes feel like squashed tomatoes. It takes half an hour to walk the 500 metres and by the time I get there I am hot, sweaty and sore. I glance at myself as I pass the deli at the corner. Oh my god. My face is like a beetroot, the hair has gone spiky and stiff and my feet look like lumps of puffy dough. The crisply ironed trouser suit looks the same as it did hanging in the wardrobe.
I take a few deep breathes and think of Amanda’s $3000 bill and her beautiful silver Porsche that the garage has refused to let out of its sight. I’m inspired to do battle.
“Hey you. You’re Jones aren’t you?”
“You slimy, good for nothing. I’ll teach you to try and rip me off.”
“Now. Let’s get down to business”.
Poor Mr Jones hasn’t been able to get a word in. I’m on a roll, and I’m on a mission.
“Right, I booked in my Porsche for a 180 km service. You took a week. God what where you doing? Anyway at the end of the week you dish out a bill for $3000. Where the hell did that come from? What? Do you think I’m made of money?”
Mr Jones is trying to speak. His mouth is opening like a sleepy goldfish and is tongue is wobbling up and down. Barely a squeak escapes his narrow mean looking lips.
“I uuum, I don’t ......”
”What do you mean, you don’t know. If you don’t who does? Anyhow I don’t really care about the hows, the whys and the wherefores. Just give me the keys to my car.
Now”
“Now. Do you hear me?”
Vaguely I hear a door slam. Then I hear the familiar roar of the V8 Porsche. There’s a flash of silver. There’s a raucous roar of laughter from Amanda as she and the Porsche disappear down the road. She must have found her spare keys after all.
Sunday, 8 August 2010
The tracks (by Heather)
Write a story using the phrase, “The earth shook”.
Phoebe balanced on the rail of the train track, still panting from her wild climb up the hill. The rail felt smooth and warm on her battered feet. She lifted one foot and glanced at the sole - it was torn, scratched and bleeding. Typical of her to be so stupid as to come here with bare feet.
She intended to kill herself but she hadn’t intended to do herself so much damage on the way.
She reviewed her decision. She thought about the kid from her school who’d been killed on the tracks last year. Lester. Lester Yellowfeather who’d lived on the reservation. Nobody knew if he’d done it on purpose or not, but the accepted wisdom was that it had been quick and painless. Well, painless? - who knew, but quick, anyway. Quick was the important thing.
The 11:35 freight would be along in a few minutes and that would be that.
She stepped on a tie between the two rails, then bent to put a hand to the rail. Did she feel a faint murmur in the rail? She put an ear to the silver track, as she’d done many times near here in the past. Yes, the familiar hum was definitely stirring the rail. In a few moments, the train would round the bend a half mile away.
So, this was it. She straightened, standing tall between the rails. She closed her eyes and stilled her breathing, just as she had when she’d imagined this happening. For an instant, she could feel the summer sun drying the grasses around her, then she put her senses away so that the sound of the train racing toward her dissolved into her own heartbeat.
Suddenly the wail of the train’s whistle rent the air. Get off! it shouted.
Phoebe’s eyes flew open. Get off the tracks. Get off NOW, the whistle screamed at her with ferocious intensity. From somewhere, she collided back into her body. Her muscles clenched beneath her and she flew off the tracks, coiling into a rolling ball almost exactly as the train sliced through the space where she had been. Where she not quite still was.
She landed against a grassy tuffet at the foot of the little gravelled incline. She lay there, curled into a cocoon. The earth beneath her shook as the mighty engines and heavy boxcars flew by. The whistle sounded its furious reprimand over and over, Don’t ever do that again! Never EVER do that again. Never ever EVER.
For some unimaginable amount of time the train pounded by. Phoebe lay unmoving, palms pressed into the jagged gravel. Finally the last car passed. Her heart slowly resumed its regular rhythm as she heard the train disappear into the distance.
She pushed herself up with trembling arms til she was sitting. She lifted her head and inhaled, allowing her senses to begin talking with her again. She could smell barnyard smells from the livestock cars that had so recently passed through. The trees soughed behind her; a little brown bird flickered by. The sun beat down on her with its summer intensity.
She looked at her arms and legs stretched in front of her.
They could have been broken, but they weren’t. She thought about the baby taking shape inside her. It could have been broken, but it wasn’t.
She could have been dead, but she wasn’t.
She got up, scrambled up the little incline and carefully crossed the tracks. No, she wasn’t dead at all.
Phoebe set off down the hill.
Phoebe balanced on the rail of the train track, still panting from her wild climb up the hill. The rail felt smooth and warm on her battered feet. She lifted one foot and glanced at the sole - it was torn, scratched and bleeding. Typical of her to be so stupid as to come here with bare feet.
She intended to kill herself but she hadn’t intended to do herself so much damage on the way.
She reviewed her decision. She thought about the kid from her school who’d been killed on the tracks last year. Lester. Lester Yellowfeather who’d lived on the reservation. Nobody knew if he’d done it on purpose or not, but the accepted wisdom was that it had been quick and painless. Well, painless? - who knew, but quick, anyway. Quick was the important thing.
The 11:35 freight would be along in a few minutes and that would be that.
She stepped on a tie between the two rails, then bent to put a hand to the rail. Did she feel a faint murmur in the rail? She put an ear to the silver track, as she’d done many times near here in the past. Yes, the familiar hum was definitely stirring the rail. In a few moments, the train would round the bend a half mile away.
So, this was it. She straightened, standing tall between the rails. She closed her eyes and stilled her breathing, just as she had when she’d imagined this happening. For an instant, she could feel the summer sun drying the grasses around her, then she put her senses away so that the sound of the train racing toward her dissolved into her own heartbeat.
Suddenly the wail of the train’s whistle rent the air. Get off! it shouted.
Phoebe’s eyes flew open. Get off the tracks. Get off NOW, the whistle screamed at her with ferocious intensity. From somewhere, she collided back into her body. Her muscles clenched beneath her and she flew off the tracks, coiling into a rolling ball almost exactly as the train sliced through the space where she had been. Where she not quite still was.
She landed against a grassy tuffet at the foot of the little gravelled incline. She lay there, curled into a cocoon. The earth beneath her shook as the mighty engines and heavy boxcars flew by. The whistle sounded its furious reprimand over and over, Don’t ever do that again! Never EVER do that again. Never ever EVER.
For some unimaginable amount of time the train pounded by. Phoebe lay unmoving, palms pressed into the jagged gravel. Finally the last car passed. Her heart slowly resumed its regular rhythm as she heard the train disappear into the distance.
She pushed herself up with trembling arms til she was sitting. She lifted her head and inhaled, allowing her senses to begin talking with her again. She could smell barnyard smells from the livestock cars that had so recently passed through. The trees soughed behind her; a little brown bird flickered by. The sun beat down on her with its summer intensity.
She looked at her arms and legs stretched in front of her.
They could have been broken, but they weren’t. She thought about the baby taking shape inside her. It could have been broken, but it wasn’t.
She could have been dead, but she wasn’t.
She got up, scrambled up the little incline and carefully crossed the tracks. No, she wasn’t dead at all.
Phoebe set off down the hill.
Chapter 7 Alternative Model Formulations--Gordon
Introduction (Section edited and 3rd para added for this post)
This chapter is about some of the recent practical and theoretical developments in spatial equilibrium modelling which are aids to practitioners in applying such models to real world policy problems. Consideration will be given to a variety of formulations of the models that take into account economic policy mechanisms such as subsidies, taxes, exchange rates, and fixed and ad valorem tariffs and price pooling. Finally, some formulations that are non-competitive in character will be developed along with more sophisticated nonlinear models which include balance of payment type constraints and dynamic formulations.
The work of Takayama and Judge (1971) provides the substantive starting point and has extensive documentation of various spatial equilibrium models. However, work by Enke (1951) and also Samuelson (1952) laid the early foundation for these models. In modern usage, the most important and distinctive feature of spatial equilibrium models is that the direction of trade is not pre-determined and that there is an intermediate position for which no trade takes place between the two regions. These two characteristics provide the basic reason why such models are likely to be useful. When these issues are not important then other, and possibly simpler, techniques may be more appropriate. However, the spatial equilibrium model, in the form presented in Chapter 4, is very efficient in terms of data and therefore can be built quite rapidly and easily.
There is one further feature of spatial equilibrium models in what is known as the primal-dual forms. In a primal-dual structure there is a price or shadow price associated with each constraint. This provides a very clear picture of the economic structure, in both price and quantity terms, of complex trading systems. Particularly is this the case when there are nonlinear constraints, say, in the physical domain, that must have an equivalent in the price domain. The direct incorporation of the Lagrangian variables (prices) into the structure of a maximisation problem allows for the combining into one model relationships between both price and quantity variables. This opens up a whole array of new model forms that can be modelled with a greater richness and directed toward defining a more useful but still abstract representation of the real world. Such models will always rely on a degree of abstraction so as to deal with the essence of a problem rather than with the impossibility of representing the detail of the whole world.
This chapter is about some of the recent practical and theoretical developments in spatial equilibrium modelling which are aids to practitioners in applying such models to real world policy problems. Consideration will be given to a variety of formulations of the models that take into account economic policy mechanisms such as subsidies, taxes, exchange rates, and fixed and ad valorem tariffs and price pooling. Finally, some formulations that are non-competitive in character will be developed along with more sophisticated nonlinear models which include balance of payment type constraints and dynamic formulations.
The work of Takayama and Judge (1971) provides the substantive starting point and has extensive documentation of various spatial equilibrium models. However, work by Enke (1951) and also Samuelson (1952) laid the early foundation for these models. In modern usage, the most important and distinctive feature of spatial equilibrium models is that the direction of trade is not pre-determined and that there is an intermediate position for which no trade takes place between the two regions. These two characteristics provide the basic reason why such models are likely to be useful. When these issues are not important then other, and possibly simpler, techniques may be more appropriate. However, the spatial equilibrium model, in the form presented in Chapter 4, is very efficient in terms of data and therefore can be built quite rapidly and easily.
There is one further feature of spatial equilibrium models in what is known as the primal-dual forms. In a primal-dual structure there is a price or shadow price associated with each constraint. This provides a very clear picture of the economic structure, in both price and quantity terms, of complex trading systems. Particularly is this the case when there are nonlinear constraints, say, in the physical domain, that must have an equivalent in the price domain. The direct incorporation of the Lagrangian variables (prices) into the structure of a maximisation problem allows for the combining into one model relationships between both price and quantity variables. This opens up a whole array of new model forms that can be modelled with a greater richness and directed toward defining a more useful but still abstract representation of the real world. Such models will always rely on a degree of abstraction so as to deal with the essence of a problem rather than with the impossibility of representing the detail of the whole world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)