DJ Abs on (Yet) Another Global Financial Meltdown

Groovers,

OMG!  We wake to find panicked newspaper headlines of another global financial meltdown, with lots of extra exclamation marks for extra emphasis!!!!!!!!!! 

Sigh - if only everyone read DJ Abs on the GFC back then and calmed down all this could have all been avoided ...

The hysteria of the media when there is a stock market downturn is silly at best and irresponsible and dangerous at worst.   Markets are like herds of cows - they are quite stupid, scare easily and once scared can do a lot of serious damage. 

The fact is yes - America and Europe have a huge debt problem and yes that needs to be fixed quite soon or they risk default.    BUT the productive capacity of these economies, the real economy has not just suddenly shrunk by 10% over night... 

This problem that has been creeping up for many years and is hard to tackle and everyone keeps trying to sweep it under the carpet.  Still - no need to get all hysterical about it.  

As DJ Abs said so wisely in his first article in the GFC, economies today are far, far larger than they were in the Great Depression and the risk of widespread hardship and economic collapse is nil. 

DJ Abs' learned colleague Professor Gai of Oxford scholar clever chappie land, once wrote a learned piece of Argentina's debt default.  It caused the real economy to shrink by 20% and that is dreadful and careful debt management can avoid this but at the end of the day Argentina and other heavily debted nations can and do recover.  America's debt level was higher in 1946 as a percentage of GDP than it was today and it recovered.   

Interestingly one of the problems with governments is unlike individuals or corporations they can't just go bankrupt or insolvent, clear their debts and start again.  Their debt gets inherited from generation to generation condemning the highly debted nations to long term poverty as much of the government income and spending goes on paying the interest bills on the debt and not much else.  I should also point out that it was a Democrat, Bill Clinton, that brought America back into surplus and a stupid Republican George Bush that squandered it and caused the problems Barak is facing today.  So much for the conservatives being better economic managers...

Anyway, enough rambling.

Groovers relax -  DJ Abs will write to Barak and whathisname (British PM) and a few others and sort it out.  

And BTW groovers if you want a far more interesting and learned piece of European debt crisis and why the Greeks need a kick up the rear and the Irish don't,  refer to DJ Abs learned spiritual and economics adviser Polarious for more wisdom....

Until next time,

Peace Love Respect Drugs and Rock n Roll


DJ Abs

DJ Abs on Charlie Sheen, Climate Change and Slavery

Greetings Groovers,

Thanks for all the wonderful feedback and once again apologies for my tardiness. It has been far too long between rants.

And for all those confused about whether there is a God or not, fear not - DJ Abs will return to that topic in due course (he is still working it out).

But today we need to deal with more earthly matters - is man made climate change real?

Well to quote Charlie Sheen:

"Climate change?  Ah - Yeah!!   Ah - Duhhhh !!!  Have some more tiger's blood.  Parts per million of CO2 have jumped dramatically and are rising Duhhhh!! we are pumping billions of tonnes of C02 in the air every day and have done for over a hundred years and this must be having an effect Duuhhh!! And the last two decades have been the hottest on record Duuhhh!  (have some more tigers blood) Winning!  And everywhere you look around the world you see record cold snaps, record rain, record floods, record droughts, record cyclones, record bushfires Duhhh!! This must be a direct consequence of the increased climate volatility caused by green house gases Duhhhh!!  Winning again!!   98.5% of the scientific community including the entire Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are absolutely certain we are facing catastrophic climatic events if we don't do something soon.   Duhhh!!!  And even if they are all wrong or exaggerating surely it is not worth taking the risk.  Duhhh!!! My brain is so big it is about to explode...  need to scull 25 cans of tigers blood and go and see the goddesses.   Winning!!!! "

The climate change and carbon tax debate reminds me of the slavery debates in England in the early part of the 19th century (go and see Amazing Grace - really good film).  In that case, most realised slavery was wrong and should be abolished but parts of the economy were so dependent on it there was strong resistance to change. And the political arguments were similar to climate change:

• “Oh if we English abolish slavery the French and Spanish will continue to do it and will get a competitive advantage over us and it would make a difference anyway”.
• “If slavery is abolished, the ports of Bristol and Liverpool will be destroyed.”
• And of course the distraction technique favoured by politicians world wide - cite a trivial and irrelevant piece of contradictory evidence to muddle the debate. So anti-abolitionists gave examples of a well treated slave and that somehow suggested that slavery wasn't really that bad.  And today some sceptic finds a glacier that is growing slightly and concludes therefore that all climate change science is bunk and we can relax.

DJ Abs says pah, hah and bah to all this. England abolished slavery and its economy was not destroyed. Indeed the rest of the world followed shortly thereafter. If everyone waits for the other to make the first move nothing will change. England has decided to proceed with a carbon tax regardless of the rest of the world as finally its politicians seem to get the seriousness of the situation. Australia, which is the world's greatest carbon emitter on a per capita basis, should do the same.

As Charlie would say: "We have a choice - double our electricity prices or risk the meltdown of the polar caps and global catastrophe..."

Hmmmmm.

Duhhh.

That is a tough one.

Until next time groovers,


DJ Abs

Dj Abs on God - Part 2 (a)

Groovers,

So now for the hard part. 

Is there any actual evidence of God? 

And just to clarify, poor DJ Abs has been inundated with thousands of emails suggesting his previous blog on God was illogical and stupid but WITH THE GREATEST AND UTMOST RESPECT to his many critics I don't think they fully understand the point DJ Abs was making.

Which is this:   if there is a God (note the if ), ie. a supreme being, ie a  creator of this universe, then almost by definition, he or she or it will sit outside this physical world, outside time, outside space, outside matter and so direct experience of this God by us mere mortals is impossible.   Just as science suspects there are 10 dimensions of space but we can only experience 3 of them, it is the same with God.

But the fact that we can't directly experience God does not, of course, mean that we should not seek some evidence of God's existence.  Otherwise the question become absurd and God has no more likelihood of existence than the Easter Bunny, Father Christmas or an Honest Lawyer (to quote an old and hackneyed joke).

So what evidence is there (assuming we have no direct evidence eg. burning bushes, voices from up high, miracles, etc)?

Well I don't know if I can do it justice to this in a short sharp blog  but Groovers think about these things:

• the remarkably structured and  ordered nature of the universe and the scientific laws that underpin it (which have an elegant, logical and structured mathematical basis)
• the moral code or conscience that all people seem to have inside them and which appears to exceed reasonable social necessity
• music and other forms of art that have no rational basis in biology or Darwinism
• humour
• love
• the human brain and the fact we have intellectual capacity well beyond what is needed to survive as a specie
• the flukiness that life exists at all - indeed that the universe exists at all*
• the tendency of humanity to gravitate towards greater good throughout history (despite many obvious set backs)

Each of these examples is worth a blog on its own but are examples, Groovers, that you should be thinking about in this Great God Debate.  Put aside for now the God of the Old Testament or the New Testament or the God of any religion.  The simple question is this -  is there a God?  Is there a supreme being and creator of this universe?  In my opinion, the above examples suggest there might be or at least opens the door to such a possibility.

But that is enough for today.

Until next time groovers,

Peace,


DJ Abs



*For example, the ratio of mass of a neutron to a proton is 1.01378841870.  If this ratio, did not exist there would be no atoms, no chemistry, no life.  There are numerous other examples - the rate of the expansion of the universe after the big bang, the ratio of dark energy and dark matter to normal energy and matter and numerous others.  All of these remarkable coincidences do not, of themselves, necessarily prove a God or a divine intelligence or a creator but they, do I think, make the atheist position quite implausible as well.

DJ Abs on God - Part I

Groovers,

Thanks for all the great feedback on my blogs. Glad to know you’re enjoying them. And apart from some quibbles on the correct order for David Bowie’s albums, everyone seemed in complete agreement that the DJ Abs plan for world peace was a.) the right thing to do and b.) never going happen :-). Still one can only try.

So given it is Easter, DJ Abs turns his mind to matters spiritual and answers for you the biggest question of all – is there a God?

The answer is of course: no, yes, perhaps, possibly and not sure.

Indeed this question is so big DJ Abs can only answer in five parts:

1. What is question all about (ie. Why Dawkins et al are misguided?)
2. What evidence is there of God?
3. How could a loving God allow suffering and evil?
4. Isn’t the whole Easter/cross thing a bit silly?
5. Given Parts 1-4 what does this all mean for my life?

I may merge or compress a few of these rants depending on how we go but am told young Gen Y’s can’t cope with too much detail, length or complexity so need to chunk it down – hence a rant in 5 parts.

OK so looking at the initial question - is there a God?

The traditional agnostic view of God - commonly misunderstood as being that you can’t make up your mind – is that knowledge or proof of God is impossible within the realm of human experience. So the question is incapable of answer in the strict sense. And this makes sense to me. If there is a God, I imagine he or she sits in a spiritual world outside the physical world. And as we don’t inhabit that world – we can never know for certain he or she exists or doesn’t exist. And there are plenty of examples even in the physical world of things we believe in that we can’t proof or even experience but we consider likely to exist. Atoms for example. Or deeper than that - one-dimensional vibrating “strings” that are said to make up all matter. Indeed, science now believes there are likely to be 10 dimensions of space plus time but we humans can only ever experience 3 dimensions of them. The other 7 don’t exist for us in any real sense but science is pretty sure they are there.

“So what?” I hear you say (or at least some of you say) – just because you can’t prove God doesn’t exist doesn’t mean he does. Yes – good point.

But the agnostic view does at least explain why Dawkins and his supporters are to a large degree barking up the wrong tree when they try to disprove God through an examination of the physical world. The question cannot be answered by science alone.

BTW – and for the record - DJ Abs is not an Earth Worm and does not believe the world was created 10,000 years ago with Adam and Eve*. I think in any rational debate about God we must start with the assumption that we accept all science (acknowledging of course that science has its limits and is fallible).

The important point is that a belief in science does not contradict a belief in God. One is looking for a truth in the physical world, the other a truth in a spiritual world.

OK – DJ Abs is getting a tad mega-physical here. Back to the initial question.

So you can’t prove the existence of God. But importantly this does not mean you can’t look for evidence of God.

Otherwise you might as well believe in fairies and flying mounds of spaghetti and anything that takes your fancy. My key point though is that in looking for evidence of God, you will never get a completely convincing answer to the initial question. As God, if he or she exists, sits outside the realm of actual human experience, evidence can only ever point or hint to his or her existence – never actually prove it. Some faith is required.

Thus ends Part 1 of this rant. Part 2 next week.

Until then groovers,

Peace. Amen. Respect. Love.


DJ Abs

DJ ABs on David Bowie and a World Constitution

Groovers,

When we last left off I was going to explain how to eliminate world poverty but in the last few months got a bit distracted by the important issue of the top 5 David Bowie albums of all time and this reminded me that I did also promise to blog on the title "Why one should never meet one's heroes - The sad tale of David Bowie and DJ Abs" and then someone rather unkindly pointed out that this suggested I had actually met David Bowie and since I hadn't, this made DJ Abs and his blog somewhat disingenuous but surely you understand I was speaking metaphorically not literally and really just wanted to make a point about hero worship, male emotional retardation, the cult of the celebrity and the phoniness of it all and then move on to a deeper point based on that new book by Malcolm Gladwell "Outliers" that suggests that what is behind most successful people is (more often than not) luck and opportunity rather than superior genes and then say something about executive salaries and the whole moral bankruptcy and unfairness of our modern reward and recognition system but then that was all getting a bit complex so I refocussed back to just settling once and for all the top 5 David Bowie albums and in the process reconciling the deeper emotional issues that DJ Abs has with David Bowie and whether one could ever forgive him for Tin Machine, Blue Jean, his appearance on Rove Live and Extras, etc, etc so without further ado, and after some 25 years of careful deliberation and research, I herewith present to you David Bowie’s Top Five Albums of All Time:

1. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
2. Diamond Dogs
3. (somewhat controversially) Hunky Dory
4. Scary Monsters
5. Low (with Aladdin Sane a close sixth).

OK - glad that issue is finally settled.

Time to move on and eliminate world poverty.

So, it seems to DJ Abs that the fundamental failure with most developing nations is not just a lack of resources (after all the greatest resource of all is people) but the failure of government within those nations. And without reforms to that government, these economies will never get off the ground.

Development aid is important - no doubt. But there is a growing body of evidence that suggests development aid is not enough and indeed, in some African countries, extreme poverty and associated measures such as life expectancy, infant mortality, literarcy, etc have been going backwards despite increases in aid over the last two decades.

Going back to the Magna Carta, it seems an important, if not an essential pre-cursor to any successful economy that it has a stable government supported by a strong independent legal system that secures basic human rights, including private property rights. If people are going to build houses, grow crops, work hard, etc they need to have the confidence that their private property rights will be respected and enforced.

You only have to look at Zimbabwe to see how quickly a society can be destroyed by the absence of a functioning legal system. DJ Abs visited Zimbabwe just over 10 years ago and let me tell you groovers it was the jewel of Africa. Black and white living prosperously in peace. A modern, first world nation. Clean water, traffic lights, shopping centres, parks, schools, nightclubs - the whole kit & caboodle.
And then Mugabe started acquiring land without compensation, setting prices by executive fiat, printing money to prop up his power base and pay his government and the economy collapsed. An entire nation destroyed was within a matter of years with 80% unemployment and millions left starving.

So how do we encourage corrupt, lawless, despotic nations to reform themselves in a way that will enable their countries to get off the poverty line and develop economically and sustainability.

Well – it is hard and probably unethical to simply externally impose a system of government on a nation even if its leadership sucks.

What I propose (and have been proposing for some time) is to look at a way of gently and slowly encouraging reform from within. The way to do this is by making developing nations comply with a basic set of human rights as a condition of access to the world trading community.

These rights would be set out in a simple document which I call a World Constitution. Compliance with the World Constitution will be a pre-requisite to access the world trading community.

The rights in this World Constitution need not be complex or detailed. I’ll quote my man Barak Obama on the key ones: the right to free speech, the right to worship how or if we wish, the right to peaceably assemble or to petition the government; the right to own, buy and sell property and not have it taken without fair compensation; the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures; the right not to be detained by the state without due process; the right to a fair and speedy trial; and the right to make our own determinations, with minimal restrictions regarding family life and the way we raise our children.

Most would consider these rights universal and indeed many are currently enshrined in the UN Charter of Human Rights (which many nation states have already agreed to).
But where my idea differs from others is its needs to be more than a well meaning statement of nothing.

For a start, all nations will need to comply with this Constitution to be accepted to the World Trade Organisation or similar federal trading body. And if, over time, a nation fails to comply with the Constitution, it needs to run the risk of enforcement action in the form of economic sanctions or ultimately expulsion from that community. And to prevent abuse and ensure legitimacy, such enforcement action should only be taken with approval of a World Court - a Court independently constituted by eminent jurists to adjudicate on compliance with the Constitution (similar to America’s Supreme Court or Australia’s High Court).

This might all sound like pie in the sky stuff but there are precedents for this idea.

After all the United States of America is a federation of smaller states built on a constitution that contained all these rights. It is no small coincidence that it is now the largest economy in the world - an economy built by impoverished immigrants and outcasts from Europe (which was then way and beyond the most powerful economic block in the world). In my view, America’s Constitution, its Supreme Court and its system of government helped secure and enforce the basic human rights necessary for economic development.

Turkey is another good example. It is transforming itself into a modern, secular and tolerant society and developing rapidly. A key reason for this is its leaders understand Turkey’s economic future lies with admission to the European Union. And the EU will not tolerate breaches of human rights amongst its member states. So Turkey’s improvement in human rights is partly motivated by its desire to join the European Union.

Indeed, what I am suggesting already happens to a limited extent through the United Nations. Nations seek to impose sanctions on errant nations such as Zimbabwe or Burma because of human rights abuses but any action gets bogged down in inter world politics precisely because there is no clear, independent and objective way to adjudicate on these human rights abuses.

A World Constitution would provide that legitimacy.

It would also provide a powerful incentive for despots and human rights abusers around the world to lift their game. What the Mugabe’s and the Kim Jong’s recognise (and if they don’t, their supporters ultimately will), is that their survival, and that of their nations, depends on economic prosperity. And that won’t happen without trading access to the wealthier nations of the world (forget what some anti-globalisation people may have told you - time and time again the evidence strongly suggests poorer nations have the most to gain from free trade with wealthier nations).

The other benefit of a World Constitution is that the more a country’s economic fates is tied to its trading partners, and the more interaction and trade between them, the less the prospects of war. The chances of the United Kingdom, Germany or France ever engaging in major war again are virtually nil and the European Union is a powerful reason for that. The same with the United Nations (or States) of America.

So there you have it – how to permanently eliminate world poverty.

The problem is not just lack of resources – there are ample resources to feed the world - but lack of basic functioning legal systems and human rights in many developing nations. A World Constitution – a set of basic human rights that all nations are required to comply with - is one way of encouraging the necessary changes to enable these economies to grow and develop. And for those of you that think there aren’t sufficient resources to feed the world, I remind you the number one health issue in the developed world is obesity – hardly a sign of food shortages. I am fond of saying we live with the ridiculous irony that about half the world worries about eating too much whilst the other half worries about getting enough to eat.

It is time to fix that problem.

Until next time Groovers,

Peace, Love, Respect and Amen.

DJ Abs

DJ Abs on the GFC

Groovers,

Apologises for my tardiness in updating this blog.


Life just keeps getting in the way although it some cases it not just life - DJ Abs repeatedly drafts blogs only to realise he is making rather obvious (and some would say facile) points and although those of you that know me well may say "well that never stopped him in the past", the new sage and wise DJ Abs doesn't want to waste people's time with facile statements - there is enough of that in the modern media as it is.

Today's topic is the GFC.


DJ Abs has been told by his spies in the blogging community that a few prominent right wingers like Peter Schiff, are gettting a lot of attention lately. In essence, Schiff claims that US government's action to address the GFC will only make the problem worse and could lead to unsustainable levels of public debt and hyperinflation and could be the end of america as a major power.


So as a responsible thinker for the forces of good , DJ Abs needs to respond.

So what exactly caused the GFC (BTW - why are there so many TLAs in this WLD? Is it yet another sign of the imminent collapse of our civilsation??)?

OK this is the DJ Abs take on the GFC:

1. Over the last 10 years or so there has been an explosion in cheap credit and many non -bank lenders have been able to lend to people who were not exactly ideal lending risks ("sub prime"). As much of this lending was to buy property such lending was considered pretty low risk (provided the loan was secured by the value of the property.) Eg. I lend you $90K, house worth $100K, if you default I am pretty sure I'll get my money back.


2. So far so good. Attached to each mortgage is an income stream (eg. my repayments on my home loan) and that is worth something to businesses seeking cash flows. So financiers start putting all these loans together and then cutting them up in various ways and on- selling them to other financial institutions. These "contracts" are often called collatoralised debt obligaitons or CDOs (another f..n TLA) and people got cleverer and cleverer at packaging them up and selling them. And the rating agencies made the CDOs all the more appealing by giving these contracts (or products as financiers like to call them) good credit ratings because they all assumed they were secured by rock solid mortgages.


3. Still so far so good. As the credit explosion caused property pricees to rise and the share market was also rising, everyone seemed happy. There is a well documented school of economic theory that notes strong correlations in consumption whenever assets prices rises. So my share price rises makes me think that I can afford that new plasma even though the share price rise is just a paper gain and has not been realised yet. And this is essentially Schiff's main point, and one I agree with, America (and many other western nations but especially america) was funding its property and share market boom on high and unsustainable levels of debt. Everyone seemed to know high debt was a problem and not sustainable but it just kept going and going and since everyone was making money no one seemed to mind too much.


4. And then reality started to cut in. As the economy started to slow and the property and sharemarket bubble that supported it started to falter, governments rather stupidly maintained high interest rates as they were worried about high inflation. And whilst this happened the sub-prime mortgages started to fail (i.e. the borrowers failed to make payments).
   
5. The problem was, unlike a normal slow down, due to the high levels of rapid exchange of these collatarised debt obligations through the system, a default in one end had a huge rippling effect through the financial sysetem at the other end. And as the defaults got higher it became clear that the entire financial system had become riddled with these CDOs. No one seemed to be able to work out precisely who owned what and to what extent they were exposed. These CDOs are also often called toxic assets because they effectively "pollute" an otherwise sound balance sheet. They do this because the value of and asset cannot easily determine the chain of title back to the original debt and its relative risk is difficult to determine (since they were all packaged up in complex ways and on-sold many times through).
   
   
6. Then things got really bad. Due to these uncertainities, banks and other financial institutions started to not be able to trust each other or have faith in their balance sheets. Credit start to shrink up and highly exposed institutions starting to tank completely. And then the GFC started in earnest.


7. So basically people had borrowed way more than they could afford and the whole system was propped up for years by a property and share bubble. But to make things worse, the complex way these borrowings were allocated within the financial system meant that, when the crash inevitably occured, it's impact went through the entire financial system rather than limited to the orginators of these dodgy mortgages.

That is probably an oversimplication but you get the general idea.

So governments have responded in two basic ways

• Try to unfreeze the credit markets by guaranteeing bank debts


• Pumping money in to the economy to slow the decline and try to stablise consumer spending
  

No one seems to object to the first action.

What Schiff et al object to is the stimulus spending. They argue this is being funded by further debt and it will only worsen the position of excessive consumption.

DJ Abs view on all this is that, whilst one may legitimately query the level of the intervention, doing nothing will mean the free market will dramatically overshoot in its reversal and decline.

Just think if you had a 100 homes all facing foreclosure. Assume these home owners all worked and traded with each other. Because of this interdependence as soon as a few start to default, it impacts all the others under stress and the whole system goes down. But if some local authority stepped in and was able to put some cash into the system to buy time for the owners (or at least some of them) to trade out their way out of their debts or refinance, it is easy to see how a dramatic collapse can be averted. That analogy I think applies to the broader economy.

So DJ Abs thinks Schiff et all are being too extreme to suggest NO stimulus is warranted. But it is a legitimate question to be concerned about the size of that stimulus and for how long it should continue.

The other criticism DJ Abs makes of governments everywhere is their alarmist rhetoric. Economies are nothing more than large groups of people that trade. And people are people and they panic easily. On top of that, economies rely on high levels of trust and confidence to work. So whilst the GFC is serious, talking about a return to the Great Depression, massive unemplyment and hyperinflation and other extremist stuff is stupid at best and dangerous at worst.

In addition, Dj Abs also wants to remind everyone that - as bad as it is - the GFC is not the end of the world.

The Australian Sharemarket has nearly halved in value but that just puts it back to where it was in 2004. And where it was in 2004 was way higher than where it was in 2000, 1990s, etc, etc. Same witih GDP (gross domestic product), even if our economy shrinks 5% or even 10%?15% it will only put us back a few years. The fact remains we have just witnessed the greatest period of economic growth in the history of civilisation. Nations now have unbelievable wealth relative to the past and have abundant resources to provide all the basic necessities of life to their people (I am talking developed economies here). And these economies - the real economy of houses, computers, factories, people - have not disappeared and will not disappear just because some bankers f..ed up big time. So it is important not to overstate the concerns.

No, in DJ Abs' view, the most important economic problem of this world is not the GFC but the problem of the developing world. A world where 30,000 people continue to die of malnutrition every day. It is that economic problem that we should be focussing on.

But that is a topic for another day.

Until next time groovers,

Peace. Love. Respect. Amen.

DJ Abs

10 May 2009

DJ Abs on Revolutionary Road

Groovers,



The blog site http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/ - Ouch.





Compulsory read for all white people especially those with apple computers :-). I must throw out my moleskine notebook with my 5 phone numbers and grocery list in it and stop using sea salt.

But I digress.

I know I said I was going to write about saving the world and the global financial meltdown, etc but ROME WAS NOT BUILT IN A DAY and I feel I need to start with the movie Revolutionary Road.

For those that haven't seen it, it stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo Di Caprio and is directed by Sam Mendes. It's about a couple struggling to find meaning and happiness with their middle class suburban American lives in the late 50s.





It's not a great film* but deals with an important theme. One that I think faces many of us bloggy types - how to a get an interesting life and escape "middle class" blandness. A life of of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, action, excitement, adventure. A life of late night poetry readings and wistful stares over misty sea cliffs.





Well Groovers to save you wasting a good many years of disappointment and restless searching, DJ Abs offers the following revelation that one day came to him (sitting under a tree sprinkling himself with sea salt):

1. For 99.999% of us, work will ever only be a means to an end. Our ancestors hunted animals and spent their spare time painting about hunting animals. So it us with us. Focus your creativity and passion on your ends but don't get them confused with your means. Kate and Leonardo had ample opportunity to enrich their lives without radical change but lack the imagination or vision to do it.



2. I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden. (Ok that's a little random but sort of related).



3. Related to 1. Mediocrity is a state of mind, not a suburb. There are mediocre people in Paris and groovers in Baulkham Hills (ok probably but not many but that is not Baulkham Hill's fault). Creativity abounds in your head and not necessarily in a fishing village in Portugal.



4. Great works of art are inherently valid on their own. Art does not need mass appeal or critical praise to validate it. So go ahead create a great work of Art but don't expect your employer or the taxpayer to subsidise it. See 1.
   


5. Despite the sunshine, there's got to be a little rain sometime. (Again a bit random but related to 2.)



6. And if all else fails, write a blog...
   

Of course, there is also the conventional option of escape through drugs and alcohol or mountain bike riding but trust me that is only a temporary escape -reality catches up with you eventually!

And Thus Spake DJ Abs - On the nineteenth day of the third month in the ninth year of the third millennium.

*RR failed for the same reason most Australian films fail. But the topic for another post (TBW).