Well, I bought a couple of new computer mice recently, trying to find one that works for me. This is one which will likely be my favourite computer mouse for awhile. The brand name is Eblue, and the model is "Trozo."

The workmanship is fair, only. It's a laser mouse, rather than an led/optical version. It's a radio frequency wireless mouse, but the range is pretty minimal... It will start skipping if there's anything in the line of sight between the mouse and the little receiver which you see here. The mousewheel action feels rubbery and indexed, but there's a problem where it hangs up and then releases when you roll it up; the wheel rolls fine in the down direction. It takes a single AAA battery, and with heavy use that lasts no more than three or four days (so it's best to use rechargeable nickel metal hydride batteries).

According to the pictures in the pamphlet that is packaged with it, apparently a regular flash of red light under the mousewheel means that there is a low battery. Sadly, this happens immediately after installing a fresh lithium or alkaline battery.

On the up side, the mouse is rather stylish. It has a nice rubber rim around the outside which feels good in your fingers. It's very light. With the battery inside, it weighs about 1½ ounces, which makes it really easy to use all day long.

Because it's a laser mouse, it works well on all different kinds of surfaces. The pattern or color doesn't matter - as long as the surface isn't shiny or clear.

The mouse has a trick you can use to change the speed of the cursor motion. If you press and hold both buttons simultaneously, and wait for a rapid pulse of light under the mousewheel, you can get the next in a series of options: slow medium or fast motion.

The trozo mouse turns itself off rather quickly if it's not in use. And to get it to turn back on, you have to press one of its buttons.

As you see, it's tiny. And that's the reason I bought it. I have found that really tiny mice that I can lift without effort between my thumb and pinky finger are much easier on my hand. There is less inertia when you move it the pointer from place to place, so it doesn't tire your hand out. The arch of your fingers has to be very high, in order to press the buttons, and that really takes the stress off of your wrist.

It always makes me shake my head in wonder to see how manufacturers believe that big heavy mice that are molded to the person's hands are "ergonomic." They aren't. That style promotes wrist strain, rather than alleviating it. Light, very small mice that require a high and angular finger arch are much easier on the hand.

Further developments and observations: the battery compartment lid catch tab broke off within two weeks; this would make it very awkward to use as a notebook mouse. It seems to me that the mouse has a reliable range of about 1 meter without any obstruction in the way. The mouse does not work with dos programs such as XOSL and Norton Ghost; it does, however work fine with Linux. I wrote to a technical support email address inquirypro@e-blue.jp, but received no response.

One of my favourite movies of all time is this 1968 British version of Oliver Twist. I watched my DVD of it again, last night, and then I was delighted to see that someone had posted the first half of it (the best part, in my opinion) on youtube.

I'd like to share it with you.

If you want to watch the entire first half of the film, touch on the title text of this post, or here. For part five, you'll have to go to youtube. I don't know why, but the person who uploaded the film disabled embedding for that one scene.

The opening credits are here:

Progressives of the Usa, listen up. This is a film talking about one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's important policies. Roosevelt created the economic juggernaut which we have seen so much wealth from over the course of the 1900s. We, the progressives, did that. We were the ones who wanted high stock prices, who wanted to get the nation off of the gold standard, who were savvy about business. The republicans try to be seen as the people who support the free market, and who are best for business interests. In fact, the reason they are able to claim that, is only because we on the left, have forgotten that we were the parents of this wonderful process of wealth creation. It was our plan and our doing.

Do you know why the nation faltered under the Bush policies - why the financial market crashed? Because those in the right wing do not understand business. After all, they were the ones who favoured staying on the gold standard. They were the ones who have been against many other policies throughout the decades which have produced so much good fruit for our nation.

This film is fascinating for me, in other ways. It seems to me that intellectualism tends to thrive in times where people feel they're struggling. The phrasings this narrator uses show a lot of insight, and a lot of caring, and a lot of zeal which you don't see in discourse in the Usa, today. The people in these pictures look happy and as if they have direction and feel that they have a purpose in life, in a way that people in our cities today often don't.

I think that we nurturing thinkers are kind of still geared up for that mode of working. We tend to know what to do for our society when times are rough. There were some wonderful films and other intellectual material which came out of postwar Britian, and now British discourse seems to be degenerating, in the same way ours did across the pond when we became wealthy.

I remember growing up in the 1970s, how everybody who was a nurturing thinker in my life - english teachers, sociologists, progressives etcetera - identified as democrats, and were excited about things like the civil rights movement, they like the poet Ezra Pound, and the writer Susan Sontag. Today, the same thing seems to be true. Caring thinkers are associating themselves with the netroots movement to get Barack Obama elected, with peace rallies, etcetera. And I myself find that I spend a lot of time at sites with rollicking raucous debate like reddit.com - where very smart people are trying to get some traction with their ideas using the passions of struggling, hurting people to facilitate social change.

I was very disgruntled about this practice as a teenager. I would have pointed to two other areas that nurturing thinkers should focus on, instead:

• Children - because children are the future.

• Media organisations - if we are so smart, why can't we use that intelligence to make money, and start to build a media empire?

I think that we nurturing thinkers need to shift gears. For thousands of years, we have lived in a society which was very poor and struggling. And we have taken a certain role in that society. We have been successful.

It seems to me, however, that when a society develops a middle class, the old strategies we have been accustomed to using, in order to spearhead social trends and to inspire people, and to impart wisdom to people don't work anymore. People who are doing well for themselves, with their children, and their job, and their house in the suburbs don't see a need to learn new things, or to make their world a better place by implementing new ideas.

Therefore, I think that focusing on kids is a really good way forward for us. Kids are very appreciative of those who care about them and who wish to impart wisdom to them. Kids are like little beacons of light in a community when they have good teachers and mentors and adults in their lives who have taught them how to be ethical and how to be smart. The incubation time for ideas which are imparted to groups of children might be longer. But the overall effect on society over the decades is much larger as well.

I was listening over the web today to this segment on Radio New Zealand. Searching through and trying to find the meat of the interaction, and the attitudes behind both the interviewer and the interviewees gave me some really intriguing food for thought.

I look for these kinds of controversies and for points of weakness in famous people's lives, because it offers a great opportunity to learn about the person's character, and about the culture that these things happen in.

To understand these interviews, you'll have to know a couple words from the New Zealand lingo. Paheka (emphasis on the first syllable) is "white people." The word that sounds like "Modee" is "Maori" (the native new zealand people). "MP" means "Member of Parliament."

Listen to the interviews streamed from the Radio New Zealand website:

• First interview (1.3mb mp3)
• Second interview (3.7mb mp3)

This has been a big to do over the last several days in the New Zealand mass media. There was this incident, and a similar incident where another minority party member - Rodney Hide - decided to use taxpayer money to fund several international trips for himself and his wife. Rodney Hide when he was found out immediately apologised publicly and committed to paying back the $10,000 he had spent. This mea culpa was applauded by someone on one of the Radio New Zealand's panels that day. It's fascinating to see a society which understands that mea culpas are good - and that they mean that a person with public responsibilities will be successful at reforming his actions. In the Usa, the attitude is the opposite. Public figures here (for instance George Bush the 43rd) never apologise. Because once you apologise, rancourous people latch onto the sin, and rub it in your face, and bring you down with it. It's prudent in the Usa to never ever admit to wrongdoing if you are in the public eye. So, in this regard, New Zealand is a much more mature and friendly society.

However, with this other incident with a member of parliament not adhering to what he said he would do... I see a less admirable side of New Zealand. It was surreal to figure out what was happening. The interviewer has a blind spot.

• He should be seeing that the Maori MP is pointing out a couple very important things - one is that a person needs to maintain a good work/life balance - this is important even in order to keep being effective at whatever tasks he is given to do on the job.

• He should be seeing that it's important to offer people some measure of flexibility with their work. I insist on this, myself, whenever I'm involved in some project at the behest of someone. Sometimes you can't keep your word, because of extraneous circumstances, or because what you had originally agreed to wasn't the best way to approach the project.

• Thirdly, the interviewer should be seeing that the Maori MP was making salient points in his reply - even if he was a bit rough around the edges in how he stated these things.

  • Using the phrase "puritanical bullshit" is a way of saying that there are differences between Maori culture and ethnic european culture. It's more important to be effective at what you do, than it is to do it in the manner you were told to do it in. The Maori apparently recognise this fact in a way that ethnic europeans in New Zealand do not.

  • Talking about the renegging on treaty obligations was not intended as a way of logically justifying the trip to Paris. Instead, it was a way of pointing out that there is a difference between substantive and non-substantive things. Taking care of business in Brussels by scheduling a meeting with an important person, and then being footloose and fancy-free by taking off to Paris the next day is relatively speaking a non substantive thing. I wasn't following the NZ news about the offshore rights thing which is brought up - but it sounds to me that it is an incredibly substantive thing. The europeans who settled in New Zealand have certain agreements with those people who were there first... and those have been ignored, and land and rights have been stolen - just like they were in Australia, Canada, and the Usa.

In his blindspot, the interviewer didn't see these things I speak of, but instead saw "bad character" - which to him, was a very palpable object in his world which he felt he could reach out and grasp. The thing that was so surreal to me when listening to these interviews was that I recognised that believing in "bad character" is the same sort of intellectual poison as the other similar conception, which is more common in the Usa - believing that someone is an irredeemable "bad person." It certainly is more benign to believe in "bad character" than it is to believe in "bad people."

Yet and still, it leads to grievous errors in judgement. Unlike the "bad people" idea, the belief in "bad character" would tend to allow for the fact that people are not static - they change and develop over time. However, as I have illustrated here, even the more tame belief tends to lead to blindspots - where you can't rightly assess motivation, and cultural differences, and differences in ways of thinking between two people.

I am adamant that it's proper to believe in "bad actions" - but to believe in "bad character" or "bad people," is only a manner of chasing after a mirage. Actions can be weighed against other actions, in a very reasoned way.

So today I learned that there are a couple things that New Zealanders really value - the idea of "a person's word is his bond" - and perhaps in certain cases, they also really expect obedience to authority.

I've heard that bullying at the workplace is a very big complaint of expats in New Zealand. I see how certain uncivilised bosses might have internalised this cultural value of "the word being the bond" - but they also might give slack to the expat, and when that employee seeks to use the flexibility he thinks he has, he might end up at the brunt of a lot of abuse. This is how things work with poor ethnically european people in the States anyway - they tend to internalise certain values from their society, but then they openly criticise other values - and then when they get drunk, they might end up acting in a way that doesn't make sense because of this "cognitive dissonance."

I am also beginning to recognise why the NZ immigration point system represents such a difficult set of hurdles in my estimation - because it only caters to those who have played by the rules their whole lives. It doesn't work for people who have lived unconventional lives. Thankfully, there is a back door where if you get permanent residency in Australia, you can also live and work in New Zealand.

I was listening to this discussion about the new zealand economy today.

• Radio New Zealand interview with Don Brash (8 megabyte mp3)

I really like the way that Kiwi academics think. It's wonderfully sensible. But I think, in this case, I see that these people are not seeing the forest for the trees.

First of all, I think it's good to think more broadly about raising the standard of living. One shouldn't narrow the discussion to macroeconomic theory. "Catching up with the economy of Australia," isn't the whole story. And if you stand back and take a broader look at things, you will all of a sudden see that there are many areas you can focus on, here.

One thing that I would suggest is that your parliament and government would consider what constructive policies they could institute which would would require no taxpayer moneys. I'm consistently saddened to read of unsafe business practices in New Zealand, even in the food sector. In places like the Usa, businesses are fastiduous with safety practices - and that's because of the threat of the lawsuit. I think that New Zealand would do well to encourage victims of poor business practices, or poor labour practices, to sue those companies.

I've also seen a lot of stories about poorly constructed or badly insulated buildings - no central heating, no double glazing. There's a free way to resolve this problem too - and that's to create better building codes. Everyone who builds a structure needs to abide by a set of regulations, which might include a central heating system, insulation, and double glazing.

Maybe you can also give certain tax incentives to the types of companies you want to set up shop in your region or in your country.

In regards to the specific things discussed, these are my suggestions, if I may be so bold:

First of all, yes, freeing up land use for industrial applications, even if that means more pollution and other things, is important if you want to develop your industry. There are costs and benefits to these things...and if you want the benefits, you'll have to pay the costs. Look at Norway for a way forward, there.

A common idea running through this interview seems to be the idea that a trade surplus is equivalent to a healthy national economy, and leads to a high standard of living. I think there's an error here. The Usa shows us how a large trade deficit - where you are the consumers of goods made around the world - is a position of power in the world. The worldwide economy just faltered in 2008 and 2009 when the usa consumer stopped spending. Also, when you have a lot of inexpensive goods coming into the country, that is in itself, an influx of wealth. Those goods raise your standard of living. So perhaps, it's better to work towards a strong NZ dollar rather than a weak one.

Finally, social programs should be drawn up so that they are secure and so that people can count on them. I am shocked that your public pension plan - the "superannuation fund" - is a thing which is set up in such an ad hoc way that an incoming administration can just gut the thing. ACC also seems to be an ad hoc system. Look to Canada for a way forward with these things - or the Usa. You have to reliably take care of the poor and needy. This gives them the ability to get their feet under themselves, and go forward and strive to become members of the middle class. The middle class - that wonderful and important block of people which makes an economy sustainable - is in my opinion, forged out of reliable social programs which assist the poor.

One thing I've seen when studying other countries like Canada and New Zealand is that censorship is a very central part of their society. And I find it interesting that when talking to people from these countries on the internet - and debating the issue - they seem unaware that there is no censorship in countries like the Usa. Yes, librarians might be instructed to remove a book from the library shelves of a school. But there's no government department dedicated to deciding universally what books are inappropriate for anyone to read, ever. There are those kinds of government offices in Canada and New Zealand.

I admire both of those two countries, and I believe that they have a more sensible public discourse about all the issues affecting their countries than the Usa, the UK or Australia have. However, I also think that in a core way, it would be very damaging to a society to have a government censor. People need to think freely about the world around them. And so you need both the information, and also the freedom to state opinions publicly about matters. And one has to work hardest to preserve this right when it comes to matters which are controversial or taboo.

On the other hand, I think that censorship is good when it cuts out noise pollution. I think that a censor board should consider of a piece of intellectual material in relation to the size of the pool of information which the public is drawing on. Censorship should be specific to the venue. When there are four or five radio stations in a city, or three television stations, or one newspaper - because the pool of options is very small, you have to preserve civility and truthfulness of those media organisations. On the other hand, with the internet - there's no reason that anything should ever be censored. In like manner there's no reason to prevent the distribution of a DVD video, or a book. The wonderful thing about the internet is that when there is a controversial issue being debated - a simple google search will immediately bring up passionate opinions on both sides of the matter, and so it's impossible to deceive people or to produce a bad social trend in a society.

A century or more ago, there was a word in common use which was bandied about in the debate about whether children should be allowed to take employment in paying jobs. The word was "spoiled" - people still use the word glibly, today, and the old wives' tale is that when kids get a lot of material goods from rich parents, it harms their social development. This is obviously a fallacy. But it is true that laissez faire parenting, where children are not held to any standards of behavior, can create maladjusted children.

I don't really see this effect much anymore, when it comes to children. The children that I see who have behavioral problems have them because they're hit at home, regularly. These children are being taught that violence solves problems and teaches moral integrity.

However, I do see this "spoiled" attitude among women. It's the most common attitude I see out there among middle class women. For several years now, I have sought to reach out equally to men and women in my little tourist/college town where I live. As a man, myself, I have found that this doesn't work. We men tend to ritualistically give women a pass whenenver they are unkind or uncivil. We are trained to treat women graciously in all circumstances. And this is not good for young women. We men need to show a little disgruntlement, or a questioning glance on our faces when we see women act in a way that isn't constructive - just like we would for people of our own gender.

I have found I've hit a brick wall socially, in my life for many years. And I realise this is because a man in my community does not get appreciated, and does not receive any approval from women no matter what he does. If he's just really kind and nice, he's seen as a potential threat, because he could seduce you, or he might be "thinking with his dick." If he smiles at your kids, it's thought that he might be a potential pedophile. If he's cool and distant, he's seen as an asshole. There's no way to please these women. Women seem to want to judge a man by trying to read his mind. It's extremely rude. People who succeed socially, learn that giving others the benefit of the doubt is one of the most important skills a person could have.

So, my conclusion is that men have to find their most intimate friendships with other men... not with women (by "intimate" here, I'm not referring to acts of touch, I'm referring to someone who you regard as a soul mate). And when trying this out, the first thing I saw is that the bar is set really low. I suddenly see that I have the ability to be a good friend to these other men.

We men really can do a lot to better our gender, if we make it our agenda.

For many years, I've been applying myself to learn many different kinds of things. I've picked up a lot of skills - writing, graphic design, computer programming, photography, and so forth. And I've also learned a lot about the world, by spending a lot of time on the internet reading the latest scientific and technological news, and things like that. And I always have had in mind the idea that the more skills one has, the more ways you have to make money. I don't think it's true.

Today, I was talking with a gentleman who works for a local natural gas company, repairing compressors. I realised what the word "capitalism" meant today. It means that people with money can create cash cows. And that's how our economies work. This guy estimates that the company he works for pulls in a billion dollars a day, gross, from the natural gas which is sold from their wells. All they have to do is drill a hole in the ground, and pipe out this substance, compress it, and then sell it to others through those same pipes. All around us are examples of other cash cows - from the telephone service, to internet service, to health insurance, to cable television. Basically, any service where everyone pays a certain amount of money each month for a fungible commodity is a cash cow. Factories and mineral mines and forestry are also examples of cash cows. And it seems to me that there is an inverse correlation - the more intellect you throw at a project, the less profitable it will be. This is because simplicity cuts down on the work put into a project.

So, intellect is really a thing which is good for increasing one's own enjoyment of life. And it can be used to make your world a better place, or it can be used when you are teaching other people who need a leg up in life. But intellect leads to poverty, not wealth.

And all of us who engage in creating art, or literature, or teaching children - or any of the "finer" things in life, kind of are living at the whim of those who create cash cows. That's where the locus of control is. Who funds the schools? Those who pay the taxes for them. It's interesting how people who are poor always want to "stick it to the man" - but in fact, our system of government and its social services were created by people who had the resources, and decided they wanted to use them to help people.

These are some fascinating three dimensional images of Japan before world war II. One popular thing at the dawn of photography was a little viewer called a stereoscope. People would take two photographs at the same time, and then you would be able to see the scene in 3d.

Somebody had the bright idea of just creating animated gif images with these old photos - where the picture switches back and forth between the two. This effectively gives you a conception of 3 dimensions, although it is a bit dizzying at first.

• See old Japan in three dimensions