Koyaanisqatsi

Once it was said that religion was the opiate of the masses.

Today, organised religion is among the last bastions of community against the new opiate of the masses: the altar of personal entertainment.

The great ages of organised religion sprouted such edifaces as the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris or the Airavatesvara temple complex at Darasuram, while at the same time the common market sprouted a will to satisfy every possible wish of the faithful, from personal amulets to pardons to building a home altar.

The great age of personal entertainment sprouts such edifices as Disneyland and cable network satellites, while at the same time the common market sprouts a will to satisfy every possible wish of the faithful, from Gameboys to extended warantees to building the ultimate home entertainment system.

A bit of background

Symbolic gestures by the international community are cheap.

If the population and government of any country is absolutely serious about the moral primacy of freeing Tibet, let them impose significant economic and trade sanctions on China.

If you, as an individual, believe that Tibetans who want to be free ought to be free, don't buy anything of Chinese manufacture, or give your business to companies who make their profits from Chinese imports.

... er, no?

It is okay to wish me a Merry Christmas. Or a Happy Hanukkah. Or a festive Eid, or Diwali, or ... take your pick. They are all festivals of celebration and peace, and that is all to the good!

If you were given the power to kill anyone in the world, at any distance, in any manner, and seemingly without consequence either in this world or the next: what would you do with it?

This is the question posed by the manga/anime Death Note.

When a death note, a amall notebook originally belonging to the shinigami, falls into the hands of Yagami Raito ("Light"), he finds himself able to command the death of literally anyone, so long as he knows their name and face, simply by writing their name and the manner of their future death into the death note within a specified time. He chooses to bring about a brave new world by killing off the criminals of this one; but when the forces of law and order discover what is happening and try to stop whoever it is that is doing this, the line between justice and injustice and even the line between good and evil blurs very quickly. After all, besides his own intellect, the wielder of the death note has one single method of protecting himself and his vision. As the net strands tighten, increasingly the choice becomes that of using it or being caught.

To simply discard the death note carries a penalty of its own. Once found, anyone can use the death note, to write in any name they wish. To release it back into the world is to deliberately relinquish the power of killing, with no guarantee that another might not use it against you -- and if they did, you might never know whether or not it was the death note that was the cause of your death.

In our world, deathnote-styled notebooks have surged into popularity, even as many schools and even an entire country has tried to ban them on the basis of being "unwholesome". Yet something in the idea of this easy non-consequential power strongly appeals to the youth of this generation; even as it casts uneasiness and perhaps even fear into those who have gone before. Outside the schoolyard, one linked murder has occurred, as yet unsolved -- but only one, worldwide, though the manga and its television and film interpretations have now been circulating for five years. Actual killings in the name of God are far more common -- and would we place upon God the reponsibility for such killings?

We all handle tools of murder, each and every day. Though anger and hate and fear and other killing emotions abound, the vast majority of us choose never to exercise those tools in that manner.

Is it the threat of consequences that stops us, in this world or in the next? Is it only the messiness that stops us? the reluctance to physically do such a thing?

Two ballots to watch this day, one in Russia, the other in Venezuela.

Risking most, Hugo Chavez perhaps has most to lose. His referendum, if it passes, will result in sweeping changes to the constitution: introducing social security for informal workers and encouraging popular participation in government; but also giving him far more power than before, potentially even moving him into a position where he could be president for life. By linking social reform with the increase in personal power, it is an interesting political quandry he sets before the voters. Probably the original reforms had been needed -- an urgent erosion of economic colonialism masquerading as external corporate power -- but where have those reforms led? Sales of luxury goods are up in Venezuela; but price-fixed staples are difficult to obtain. Domestic resources have been reclaimed; but half the population still lives in poverty despite the domestic cheapest fuel prices in the world. It is an easy trap that others around the world and of all political stripes have slipped into before this: that, having a vision, more and more power must be needed to drag all others into the path of that vision. Regardless of the outcome, perhaps Chavez' most potent legacy is inspiring others such as Bolivian president Juan Evo Morales Ayma: who may yet find the ability to set a new grassroots example where Chavez is faltering.

Don't be surprised at the degree of popular support that will be shown in this election for Vladmir Putin. Whatever else, Putin has almost single-handedly made his country once again into a world power, a strong Russia. Most Russian citizens appreciate that. (Those who find the spectre of a more potent Russia an uncomfortable shadow might remember that more and longer periods of almost not-war occurred during the post-WW2 balance of three superpowers than at any point before or since; and the global loss of life due to war was far less.) Probably Putin will observe the letter of the law in limiting himself to the two maximum terms of the existing constitution: but other positions could also be made to carry more power.

Even so, it might be advisable for the election fraud monitors in both areas to be out in force. Much has been invested, here: and neither can afford to lose.

The tragedy of the commons does not teach what economists think it teaches.

Property held and tended in common will be individually abused, so long as human beings choose to see themselves primarily as individuals. This much is true: but its application to communally-held property is a special case, a specific symptom of a deeper cause, in much the same way that our perception of gravity results from our not having the full picture. The primary lesson the tragedy of the commons has to teach us is not that human beings will exploit individually what is held in common but why: and how this why brings about other effects outside a communal property context.

Ironically, a part of this relationship resides in the scarcity = value equation economists have known about for centuries.

In the specific case of the commons, the lands held in common were denuded as each person tried individually to draw out an individual maximum benefit, without regard (it seemed) to maintenance of a renewable resource. Traditionally this is explained as simple exploitation of a resource held in common; and no further explanations of actions need be sought. Yet even those who exploit come eventually to understand a need for sustaining a resource, especially when that resource directly constitutes personal survival and not an abstract commodity. This did not happen with the commons.

To me, the commons' reaction implies instead an initial perception of scarcity.

Yet in the specific case of the commons, the perception of scarcity had been a mirage -- until the reaction to scarcity itself brought about the reality. The renewable resource could have been sustainable indefinitely, even as the individually-owned lands were. What was different was that perceived scarcity: which threw away any consideration other than maximising immediate/short-term personal benefit.

The reaction is an understandable one. When key resources are in short supply and individual benefit is primary, human beings tend to do everything within their power to secure for themselves not only their own share, but as much as they can of the whole. This tendency leads to one of two results: hoarding, or a growth in consumption to fill the new level of available resources. Both results work to further reinforce the perception of scarcity, both among "haves" and "have-nots".

It is also well-known that the perception of scarcity often evokes reaction precisely as though there had been true scarcity: which itself can then bring about the scarcity which had not originally existed. Runs on banks are classic examples.

Which brings us to the core question: what caused this illusion of scarcity to arise in the first place?

I propose that whenever an individual or society has become dependent upon a specific resource, any part of that resource over which that human being or society does not have utter control is inflated in the perception of that human being or society: often to the point that the percentage of key resources which is controlled decreases in perception to scarcity levels -- whether or not this is actually the case. This change in perception, in turn, evokes classic reactions to scarcity, within the individual's or society's means.

As economies, technologies, and all other manner of curves appear to be speeding up in recent decades, the perception of scarcity also takes on a temporal component. Resentment grows against those before us, who are increasingly seen as having already consumed more than their fair share of resources. The only "logical" response is to ourselves consume all we can, to ensure that we get our "fair" share of resources --

Being of sound mind, I spent my money before I died

-- and try our damndest to spend them in our turn. In fact, abstract future generations increasingly count against that perception of scarcity: in that having to lay aside sustainability levels of resources for them deprives us of total control.

All of this is utterly dependent upon neither the vast majority of individual human beings nor countries currently finding it desirable to think outside its own individual best interest. (See the Prisoner's Dilemma.)

In this expression of common underlying principles we find not only peak oil but also an explanation for why resources continually evoke battlefields; why rapidly developing economies such as China's see no reason to restrain themselves against a possible threat of human-caused global warming; even why there is so determined and consistent opposition to every hint that global warming might possibly have a human cause. In this context, it makes utter sense that the greater the warnings, the more frequent and more extreme the behaviour that helps to precipitate/accelerate/bring about a real reason for those warnings. Whether or not the scale has tipped, the idea has been planted that it could be tipping -- in which case it behooves us to grab everything we can for ourselves before the balance empties altogether.

In the tragedy of the commons, those who helped bring it about were unable to escape the cycle by themselves: powerful third-party intervention was required to restore the land, which also happened to result in its loss to its original, common owners.

Can we do better?

I am so tired of people writing self-help and advice books which they don't follow themselves. Advice is cheap. How much do you think your words are worth, if you expect others to live by them when you won't yourself?

... or are you really writing only for the $$$? and is that all your communication is worth?

'The time has come,' the Walrus said,
'To talk of many things:
Of shoes -- and ships -- and sealing wax --
Of cabbages -- and kings --
And why the sea is boiling hot --
And whether pigs have wings.'

'But wait a bit,' the Oysters cried,
'Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!'
'No hurry!' said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.

A rare social outing slipped easily into discussion about national social policy and immigration, and then into debate. I kept my part in the exchange to asking questions testing what was actually meant, and to what parameter or extreme. One of the core points on which the conversation turned out to be the degree to which immigrants should be allowed to keep their cultural identity. Perhaps predictably, the key points of contention were the turban, kirpan, burka, and acceptable levels of service in non-official languages.

The strongest and least flexible policy view in the group held firmly to a dominant, immutable national identity, rooted within existing law and logic: to which all immigrants should be required to adhere as a requirement of their being admitted to the new country, abandoning their own cultural heritage except as a strictly at-home thing (and even that to be discouraged). I tested a few of the limits of this view. If a different cultural group grew to become the majority, should they be allowed to change existing language laws to suit them? Should uniforms allow the Sikh turban, a religious requirement? If not, did this mean that Sikhs should not be allowed to apply for those positions unless they gave up this part of their religion?

(I decided not to mention that logic is not objective and absolute; and that any logic system is entirely dependent on which a priori tenets are selected.)

Then I pointed out that since both turban and kirpan are required religious symbols (as burkas are not), to restrict a person based on those two was discrimination based on religion. I like to call a spade a spade. In and of itself the word is value-neutral: and in testing the concept it was in this value-neutral way that I used it, solely by way of determining the hierarchy of societal priorities within a given viewpoint. After all, all it really refers to is the concept of selecting by way of creating or maintaining a desired ideal.

The concept itself was entirely acceptable. Apparently the word was not.

Once, discrimination was even a positive word: still can be, as reflected in such phrases as "discriminating taste". However, mores seem to have changed to the point that overtly admitting to such selection for or against different racial and religious groups has become a non socially acceptable viewpoint. Ironically, this non-acceptance only drives these viewpoints linguistically underground to the point where the non-acceptable word is completely divorced from the acceptable social policy.

Should it be surprising that it was only a matter of minutes longer before the questioning itself came to be seen as contentious, and then as illogical "bleeding heart" opposition: even though I had not said a single word pro or con?

'A loaf of bread,' the Walrus said,
'Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed --
Now, if you're ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed.'

'But not on us!' the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
'After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!'
'The night is fine,' the Walrus said,
'Do you admire the view?'

'It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!'
The Carpenter said nothing but
'Cut us another slice-
I wish you were not quite so deaf-
I've had to ask you twice!'

'It seems a shame,' the Walrus said,
'To play them such a trick.
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!'
The Carpenter said nothing but
'The butter's spread too thick!'

'I weep for you,'the Walrus said:
'I deeply sympathize.'
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.

'O Oysters,' said the Carpenter,
'You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none --
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.

To feel envy is human, to enjoy schadenfreude is devilish.- Arthur SchopenhauerPrison is an alien place.

Children are not born there or brought up there. Perhaps through family we have come to know a little of what it means; but really, until we experience it, we can have no idea. Until the moment we find ourselves powerless within its walls, we don't know. We can't.

I find a great gladiatorial cruelty in the viewing crowd, of late.

Completely independent of justice -- but sometimes confused for it -- there is a great wish to see others suffer: the richer or more perversely powerful the better. No longer is there any sense whatsoever of "there but for the grace of God go I", replaced instead by a complete separation from the other: a separation perhaps essential if that other is to be an acceptable source of entertainment and celebration. I saw a variant of it last year, when Fidel Castro fell seriously ill -- and people were laughing and counting down and dancing in the streets, without apparent awareness of the 9/11 parallel to those other pictures of people dancing in the streets. Again, when Saddam Hussein was captured and later executed: celebration and cheering, mostly among people who had never lived under his rule. Not of the same gravity but drawing from the same wellspring, today, the utterly insane celebrations when Paris Hilton was sent weeping back to jail (and the cheers were the louder for her tears).

Justice perhaps demanded action. At the very least I suggest that money and privilege ought to be independent of punishment for repeatedly flaunting law, and thus that some jail time was definitely appropriate for Paris Hilton's carelessness of consequences. How much is under debate: was the trial judge biased in the opposite direction? Because, by the same token, privilege ought equally to be independent of deliberate targeting.

In no case is justice served by a ravaging illness, and to seek pleasure in this is obscene. Why not look in the mirror and take a gleeful pleasure in one's own wasting illness? I can't even excuse it with survivor's relief: he died, but I lived! for in such delighted glee exists not even enough empathy for that. At the extremes, no longer is the victim even a human being in the eyes of those laughing and celebrating; but has been completely dehumanised into a scapegoat for every injustice we have ever felt ourselves to have received, independent of personal or familial or racial responsibility.

There are other times in history we have seen the tilt toward this societal pattern of Schadenfreude, almost invariably in other great empires on the edge of collapse. (Consider, for example, the period of history when this German word became common currency: and what resulted.) As microcosm, so macrocosm: what can be expected of a country whose citizens have so completely abandoned empathy for exploitive, vengeful entertainment?

CREATORS OF RUIN
- Steve Toth

O developers of desolation
Before you comes the forest
After you the deserted street
The extremes of intoxication & toxicity
punch out their differences
in the open sewer you call a personality
Where does iron go when it's eaten away by rust?
Maybe that's what happened to your conscience
When I see you pouring I say drink up
Will knocking yourself unconscious
grant you the break you're grasping at
from the ordeal of your own company?

O betrayers of the earth's intentions
Before you comes the clear stream
After you the festering cess pool
Isn't it irritating when everybody
doesn't turn out to be as easy
to manipulate as the greedy beggars
who call themselves your special one?
But paying wages that are cheaper
than slavery & insisting on golden showers
on the first date are two ways
of weeding out the unsuitable

O creators of ruin
Before you comes the wilderness
After you the wasteland
I can't seem to find my name on your list of friends
I take that as a compliment
You say there's nothing you can't afford
I take your best & give you better
You just know I'm a another species
Maybe you're overdue & the baby wants out
Even your body is sick of resembling you
Bumblebees slam glass doors to get to you
Your fear is fully realized

Science is the vehicle through which we learn about the building blocks of the universe and of ourselves. Applied science – technology – is what allows us to make use of those whats and hows to physically improve our environment and our lives. In a world where unthinkable journeys have become eighty days and then less than eighty hours, where communication with anyone in almost any part of the world is only a heartbeat away because we have ringed our globe with satellites; where it is commonly assumed that medicine can always do something – and all that, now, for a longer period of time than our own human lifespan (let alone our human memories) : we take so many of its discoveries and applications so much for granted, it can be difficult to conceive of just how profoundly its discoveries have altered how we live our lives.

At its best, science seeks to constantly to revise itself with new insights and new discoveries; and to find physical ways to solve the world's problems. Hypotheses fitting the observed data are tested and revised and tested again, always seeking better understanding, a more accurate model. We can learn as much or more from a completely contradictory experimental result as we might have from an experiment supporting our guesses, because while supporting evidence might allow us to more firmly place a small building block, contradictory results can show us that our entire foundation is shaky to begin with.

At its worst, the pursuit of science becomes dogmatic: driven no longer by the desire to learn so much as by the desire to support or perpetuate an existing dogma: be it a determined advocacy of a particular hypothesis or agenda; or an end goal of an unending profitability.

But science alone gives no answers to other, equally sweeping questions, such as how or when (or even whether) to make use of a specific scientific finding; or even why these patterns exist at all – and seek none. Although technology can give us a historically unprecedented dominance over our environment, it can't tell us what to do with that knowledge. It can't give us a preferred perspective through which to filtre its findings. It can’t define for us a value hierarchy, or identify what should be a society's priorities. It can't suggest to us whether we should be considering those priorities on a personal or societal timescale; for an individual or family or country or world.

After all, technology is just one of many tools to use in working to achieve those priorities. When it itself becomes one of those priorities, we start seeing something very close to a closed causal loop where the societal priority it fulfills is its own self-perpetuation – and again the question raises its uneasy head: why?

Especially, what science can never give is a Reason. If we are ever to see ourselves as more than a random collection of sentient chemistry, we will have to seek elsewhere than in the mirror of science.

From Jasminembla's Weblog:

Owls have secrets. They like to write them in hurried little notes on scraps of hazelnut husk paper--things like, 'Ontology remains exact!' and 'C=R2--yes--but what about Radioli??'--and then, they tend to lose them. Little scraps of dried hazelnut paper everywhere: pinked on one edge, heavily veined across, and covered in tiny, clever scrawls, dropped all over the forest floor and festooning the undergrowth. Spiders think them a nuisance, but the mice rather like the irony of it. You have to understand. Owl talons aren't very deft, you know.

Squirrels have secrets too. These too they tend to write on scraps, and then lose. But squirrels' secrets, unlike owls', tend to be more emotive, more frenetic--hastily dashed lists, when in a temper, of "People I Hate!!" and that sort of thing. Fortunately for squirrel world peace, these lists too--on little curls of birch-bark, by the way, not hazelnut husks (would you choose to manufacture notepad paper out of something you liked so much you could never wait, even, to unwrap it before gobbling it down ? No. That would be very counterproductive)--are quickly lost and forgotten, and are never read. Squirrels change their minds very quickly, anyways. The "Who They Hate" lists alone could never be kept up with any real accuracy without whole lines of little expert squirrel secretaries and scribes and emanuenses working hard to maintain such an endeavor. And everybody knows that being a secretary is no fun at all--so no squirrels would ever even think of it. Anyways, it is true that, as they say[1], squirrels tend to be rather more heavy on the 'pert' than 'ex'-pert in most things.

[1] Who 'they' are only the owls, probably, could tell you. In a pinch, though, cite National Geographic. You probably won't be wrong.

In mathematics education, an artificial line is commonly drawn between rote memorisation and application. Yet mathematics shares many of the same properties as language, which we have never thought to teach by isolating memory work from practical meaning. The basic symbols and concepts and rules of mathematical grammar must be memorised, it is true -- in absolutely the same manner as the basic symbols and concepts and rules of language. If mathematical concepts are not simultaneously translated and revisited in the context of practical usage, the child may well struggle with "abstract" thinking all their life.

When we idealise abstract thinking, usually what we are really thinking of is symbolic thinking: the ability to separate out layers of a problem in order to develop and cross-apply a general rule. The first and easiest layer for a child to access is its hands-on representation: how many apples? do I take an apple away or do I add another apple? The second level introduces symbolism, as the number in isolation begins to replace the necessity for concrete objects. This process is no different than the child's growing ability to separate out the colour "red" from the object "apple". Both numbers and adjectives are descriptors which initially are linked in with specific types of objects, but which are not inherently a part of that object. As the child's conceptual skills grow, the child gradually learns to separate out the descriptor from the object, and then to manipulate that descriptor separately from the object.

Life itself continually reinforces spoken language, grounding us each day in the interactive practical examples which allow us to develop and refine the general rules. The practicality is important to introduce the primary layer upon which symbolism is built; but even more important is the continual give and take of interaction as the child continually learns new connections to determine what does and doesn't work. Rote memorisation only allows a baseline "A is A" type of learning, a series of isolated factoids ultimately without sense or context -- and does that ever show in average writing skills! In contrast, continual interactive examples of how to use spoken and written language allows for continual refinement of the general rule -- which, after all, is not an absolute.

Absolutely the same is true for mathematics as well: which originally developed as a way of explaining and applying specific functions found in everyday life. For very young children play is learning; and to some extent this never changes. Construction blocks, games, even imitative play can all be used to give the child those interactive practical examples. To this day decimal percentages are second nature to me because I learned them as the banker in playing Monopoly. Shopping trips are particularly rich in potential practical examples, the possibilities limited only by imagination.

Building the foundations of a continual learning style requires far more initial work than rote memorisation, but in time those foundations will make all practical uses of mathematics much, much more accessible. For those who pursue higher mathematics, they will further allow the personal flexibility essential to those leaps of insight which allow us to recognise that what we had thought the general rule is itself a special application.

It was sheerly coincidence that I ended up at the biographical talk examining in some detail the decades of Churchill's active support of the Zionist movement and eventual establishment of Israel. From his early elections as the neophyte member of parliament for Manchester West, a riding with one-third Jewish electorate (who, statistics tell us, are much more likely proportionately to vote than the other major demographic in the riding, Irish Roman-Catholic), through white papers and "black" papers, to the resource-securing twist by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the trilateral negotiations with Ibn Saud during the final sunset of Britain-as-empire (revealed in papers only just publicly released): so much more of where we are today now makes sense to me.

What at first startled me, and then quickly began to unnerve me, was how eagerly the audience seized on Churchill's instant, reliable, and utterly polarised partisanship and sought in this, not historical context, not lessons, not even understanding, but unquestioned examples for modern-day leadership. The parallels sought lay not (for example) in uncomfortable comparisons between demographic implications of immigration then and now: why perhaps the Arabic populace of the 1920s might have been as uneasy with the inevitable influence of further Jewish immigration upon an existing native culture as a good deal of the west is today with the cultural shifts resulting from non-Christian immigration (the more so then because representational government in the region was specifically suspended by Britain until such time as the demographics could shift in favour of immigrating Jews). Rather, those parallels were sought solely in demonstrating how Churchill, in all particulars, was right.

Are we so determined to be the sole island of civilisation against the forces of darkness? Is an unchanging cultural identity worth being at continual outright war with the rest of the world? until an even more cataclysmic Hiroshima?

"May I?" is the distinction from "Can I?" learned by children to establish in them a sense of relative status and authority, by replacing the concept of ability to do a task with the concept of permission from another to do that task. This is intended as a structure upon which to hang initial socialisation of the child, especially the idea of living with others who might be negatively impacted by the child's actions. Where the child does not learn some variant of this distinction, the resulting person has no respect for authority (because no perceived need for authority, except on occasion to protect from the consequences of their own actions) and sees external impersonal restrictions such as laws to be unreasonable. (Laws which directly and visibly and parentally protect the person are exempt, so long as they don't come into conflict with what the person wishes to do. Such laxity while retaining a patina of protection is often termed "freedom".) Across a society, this pattern leads to a cult of individualism which, at the extremes, can become total anarchy.

As one grows up, the can I/may I division needs to be blurred anew, evolving into the ability to perform the task not requiring particular permission from anyone for the task to be performed. This is required for a child to grow into an independent adult who will not require parent-substitutes to constantly corroberate their choices. Where this blurring fails to occur, the result is stagnation, a person who generally lacks personal initiative and who is reluctant to undertake any task they have not specifically been instructed to do. In the hidden background of all actual doings of such a person is always a tentativeness, a lurking dread that they might be doing something wrong or at least inappropriate. Across a society, this pattern leads to an entropic inertia of hierarchy and bureaucracy which, at the extremes, can become fascism.

And finally, in the adult, the division needs to be re-thought, maturing into a can I/should I. Adult society is the internal tension between cans and should nots which allow individual lives to run smoothly, with minimal reference to external authorities and codefied regulation to oil out the occasional jars. Even after a person has accepted the need for some degree of personal restriction by way of initial socialisation, but outgrown the childish concept of continual permissions, wish and ability are still not the only elements of an action undertaken within a symbiotic societal structure.

Laws and regulations can't do it for us. Laws are made by human beings. To accept a body of law as our only adult voice of authority is to accept a permanent, imperfect, inflexible, impersonal parent. Like human beings, to retain relevance a body of law has to evolve. And if it is to evolve, we ourselves have to choose which laws accurately reflect our personal shoulds and should nots: not only for ourselves, but for society as a whole -- and, in equally important parallel, not only for other people, but also for ourselves.

In choosing to live with other people, the only person who can choose to accept any restrictions upon oneself at all in the interest of a greater whole is oneself. In choosing to live with other people, the only authority who can decide the appropriate restrictions by which one chooses to abide is oneself.

But our first and primary choice, as adults, is whether we do choose to live with other people, or away from other people, or in spite of other people, or even against other people. Will the society we choose to live in be primarily or even solely cooperative, isolationist, combatitive, competitive? All the rest follows.

Different cultures have different versions of the same saying: that polish comes from the cities but wisdom comes from the heartlands, be they farmland or wasteland. Heroes are born to decent folk who all their lives have eked out an adequate living in small towns and farms and even sometimes nomadic travel, and are brought up within an environment of hard work and adequate rewards for labour: basic, few or no luxuries, but nothing missing truly necessary in life. In this balance, generally, is found a happy childhood, solidly grounded in all that is good and decent.

An increasingly common part of the myth is that success is not found in the heartlands. Dick Whittington must undertake a hard trek from the English agrarian countryside to London before he can become "trice lord mayor of London Town". Longfellow Deeds, the "Cinderella Man", must be uprooted from his simple small town life to become the Depression-era philanthropist. Clark Kent must move to Metropolis before he discovers the need to become Superman. Brantley Foster leaves his parents' Kansas farm to pursue his MBA dreams in New York City. Luke Skywalker abandons his uncle and aunt's moisture farm to pursue his Jedi quest through a series of increasingly greater cities, ending finally in the echo of galactic capital that the Emperor carries with him everywhere. (A curious twist in Jericho, where the prodigal son returns to the heartlands from the big cities with the necessary knowledge and evolved leadership to counter the betrayals homegrown in the big cities and spreading their way into the heartlands like a cancer: and it is this very return that coincidentally saves his life.) The move may be willing or forced, one and all quickly find themselves initially betrayed by the realities lurking beneath the tantalising promises of Capitol City, but one and all come to the realisation (eagerly or reluctantly) that they have grown beyond their roots. Though a few heroes may return home occasionally to touch base, to rejuvenate, or even simply to discover that they no longer fit within the old adequacies, all find that they cannot stay. What was good enough for their parents and guardians is no longer good enough for them. The heroes are better than that.

The first half of the myth is lived out by countless thousands of millions around the world each and every day, seeking in the cities the opportunities they do not find within the spiritual heartlands of a hundred nations. Cities occupy the apex of the capitalist pyramid. Cream rises to the top.

But, carrying through the myth to its logical conclusion: what of those left behind? The Soviet Union taught us some hard lessons about the law of population averages. When the cream of youth continually leave to pursue success within greater civil-isation, who then is left in the heartlands, to raise the next generation within an environment of hard work and adequate rewards for labour, solidly grounded in all that is good and decent?

The recompense for an injury is an injury equal thereto (in degree): but if a person forgives and makes reconciliation, his reward is due from Allah: for (Allah) loveth not those who do wrong.
The guerdon of an ill-deed is an ill the like thereof. But whosoever pardoneth and amendeth, his wage is the affair of Allah. Lo! He loveth not wrong-doers.
And the recompense of evil is punishment like it, but whoever forgives and amends, he shall have his reward from Allah; surely He does not love the unjust.

Ash-Shura 042.040

As with the capture of two Israeli soldiers which last year became the flashpoint of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict on Lebanese soil, the capture of fifteen British sailors last month was a tactical negotiating ploy -- but toward a very different end. This time, the purpose was to draw a line in the water: not the still-disputed question of whether or not a British ship had strayed into Iran-sovereignty waters, but to demonstrate that Iran did not intend to be a passive observer of matters unfolding within its near neighbour.

What followed was a darkly amusing storm of third- and fourth-party diplomacy: in which, at least initially, neither country's representatives was speaking officially to the other after the initial mutual lecture exchange, but each was certainly monitoring what was said by the other to third-party "neutrals" such as Russia.

The British sailors probably did not have a good time of it. Most war captives don't. Still, unlike (probably, based on history) the captured Israeli soldiers, all the British sailors survived, and in very good condition for former captives of a borderline-active war. There will no doubt be much polarised political debate on whether the release demonstrated weakness by either side or appropriately applied diplomacy. There is as yet no surety that the incident will not yet escalate into a true war flashpoint. Certainly the sabre-rattling continues unabated.

But the release just in time for Easter, the gift of freedom offered during the very holiday of renewal that lies at the core of the religious divide between Christianity and Islam: ah, that was poetry indeed, and a coup of diplomatic brilliance -- and sanctioned by the Qur'an, no less.

I was woken up this morning -- holiday morning -- by a telephone marketing pitch that initially sounded like nothing so much as a creditor call.

It was not. That period of my life thankfully remains over. In fact by local law a collection agent would not even have been allowed to call on a holiday. And yet the learned reaction still sets in, teasing with a near panic: somewhere between hide and (once found) to do whatever it takes to make it Go Away!

Fair it was not, but since when has marketing ever specialised in fairness? This product would sell well among those who continued to run into financial trouble with credit cards; and so the campaign specifically targeted those with a history who might possibly have an emotional knee-jerk response to a creditor's call. No question, it would sell.

What else matters?

When will we accept that what comes out of our mouths during drunkenness and drug-induced vision and fever dream cannot but have been in our minds all along?

Occasionally I set my intuition in stone a year or more in advance, by way of testing its accuracy.

Prediction:

Hilary Clinton will win the Democrat primary.
Rudy Giuliani will win the Republican primary.

Giuliani will be the next president of the United States.

(Al Gore, learn from Colin Powell's example. A return to politics can only dilute your current potency of message. ... Although, words are much, but manner of living can erode them entirely.)

On the plus side, I now know that the entire house can be heated with only a wood stove. And I have an entirely new appreciation for running water.

Some of you know some part of what the past two years have been like, for me. Last November, I had believed my time finally to be my own. I (almost) finalised a bit of basic web construction for a joint dream project. I had finally managed to establish my first ever personal Internet connection: dial-up (for broadband technology has not yet reached this neck of the woods), tech-support amusing, as the house is not cable-capable and thus the connection makes use of the same telephone line I needed to talk into in order to set it up. I found a thirty-page dot-matrixed single-spaced piece-of-novel draught I had thought vanished forever two computers ago, and gradually began to transcribe it prior to flow-editing it back in. Hundreds of new plants went into the ground. I had started to become caught up within this nest of blogs. I even began to make solid commitments with others for myself again (rather than on behalf of others), though I fell slightly behind due to a record amount of rainfall during what should have been the outdoor-sale season, (the last?) of the estate and power-of-attorney issues, and an unexpected urgent researching of real estate law. Still, I hoped, within reasonable limits.

It began to snow. Storm, ice, wind. And then the temperature plummeted.

Last month I woke up to the sound of the electricity going off again, again, again. (Poles snapped, this time.) By this point I had decided that I would bother with the generator only if this particular power outage lasted more than a day or so. By this point shovelling myself out from a metre or so of snow had become almost routine. Besides, the deepest part of this particular cold snap would ease in less than a week -- so it was perhaps inevitable that the furnace would choose to fail just then. Still, I had a wood stove and an axe; and I could manage without running water from the well for a short while. After all, while I could manage heat, the pipes were in no danger of freezing. And the computer ...

Presence or lack of electricity or heat was not the limiting factor, by that point. My computer had suddenly begun cutting out at random points even before the snow began in earnest. Sometimes it would stop before the boot cycle had even properly started. Twice, it even allowed me to get as far as dial-up logging in before it would suddenly stop, with no warning whatsoever. This turned out to be the opening tip of a stack of dominoes: one part would be identified as faulty and replaced, only to allow another to fail. By the time the power outages were becoming significant, the computer had long been with a trusted computer hardware-literate friend of mine. (With each visit, I sometimes managed to sneak in an e-mail or typing in a handwritten post -- but just barely.) I finally got it back last month. Most of the information had been recovered, if painfully scrambled -- but the thirty-page piece-of-novel draught I had almost finished transcribing had been erased back to just past the first page. Staring at what was left, knowing how long it had taken me the first time to transcribe, I was too tired just then to try to restore the Internet connection. Still, I plugged in the modem, and --

with an explosive *bang* and an uneasy smell of burning electrical wiring, shorted out the telephone lines in the entire house. (That was the one that made me feel most truly isolated. I have no cellphone.)

Next break in the storms, back went the computer to the shop. In came the telephone repairman. Come true spring, out go most of the telephones in the house, which are no longer usable without some serious re-conditioning beyond my current abilities.

Home came the computer. This time, the monitor burned out. I managed to scrounge up a spare monitor (left over from my original 286). It is almost half the size of my old one and washes out reds and blues without warning, but it retains enough colour contrast to function for my purposes. After three attempts and an hour on hold, I finally re-established the Internet connection yesterday.

Each, individually, a minor thing. Taken together, a comedy of errors which had the potential to be much more serious than it was, and taught me well the purpose of having (had) savings.

But ...

The worst of it, easily, was that for over three months I had no way of informing those I knew on-line what was happening ... those to whom I had made commitments. Those who were counting on me. I know that, yet again, I have let many of you down. I think, now, that communications have once again stabilised ... I hope. At least, everything I can currently think of to cover has been covered, hopefully leaving only the usual list of tasks associated with resolving a house. (Your best wishes for the apple blossoms, tulips, and various other sprouting plants and birds and no-longer-hibernating animals would be welcomed. Another deep cold snap is coming, and everything is in full spring mode and as vulnerable as it gets.) Part of hand temporarily in a splint, making typing interesting, but that too should improve shortly -- either that, or else it will require surgery.

But at least now you know what happened.

A new kind of business model is evolving in the pharmaceutical world: sprouted out of too much data.

Difficult to imagine such a thing. Knowledge is power, 'tis said; and thus raw knowledge must necessarily be a desirable thing: more computer memory, more education, more information streams, more facts -- and yet facts in and of themselves mean nothing. With the completion of the outline sketch of the Human Research Project, too much is suggested even for a single source in isolation to identify all the appropriate questions, let alone pursue all potential lines of research.

Thus, open up the raw data. Make it public without cost to a globe of university and private researchers, let loose the million monkeys to slave upon the million typewriters ... and monitor the results closely, always prepared to snatch away what gleamings of coherence might coelesce.

The B flat is not a democracy.

Brain damage kills craving for nicotine
- Adam Cresswell, The Australian

Smokers who suffer damage to a particular part of their brains appear to be able to quit their nicotine habit easily - a discovery that might open new avenues of addiction research.

A study of smokers who had suffered brain damage of various kinds after a stroke showed that those with injuries to a part of the brain called the insula were in many cases able to quit smoking quickly and easily - saying they had lost the urge to smoke altogether.

The insula receives information from the body and translates it into subjective feelings such as hunger, pain and craving, including craving for drugs.

However, the insula has not attracted much attention in studies on drug addiction, according to the research in the latest edition of the journal Science.

Deliberately damaging people's insulas is not considered a realistic treatment option, because the risks are too great and the insula also has a role in many essential functions, such as the desire to eat.

But in the long term, the authors said, drugs might be developed to target the insula.

Other techniques for affecting the insula might in future also include electrical stimulation, already used in patients with depression. However, current techniques cannot penetrate the brain deeply enough to reach the insula.

The study was inspired by the experience of a man who had smoked 40 cigarettes a day before his insula was damaged in a stroke. He quit smoking immediately after, telling researchers his body "forgot the urge to smoke".

The Pigeon Index of Temperature

Yes, they're rats with wings, but they're better indicators of current and imminent weather conditions than any TV/radio report.

When it's warm, they're long ovals, and relaxed. As it gets colder, they get rounder and more tense. When it gets *really* cold, they disappear entirely.

Oval pigeons: no coat [an umbrella for rain]. Slightly rounded pigeons: bring out the sweater collection; raincoat if the sky is grey. Oblate spheroid pigeons: time for the winter coat. Absent pigeons: winter coat, scarf, mittens, sweaters, hats; better yet, stay home by the fire, going outside will *hurt*.

The weather reports tell me the probable weather for a large area; the pigeons tell me how to dress for *my* weather, better than any wind chill reading. Technology is a wonderful thing, but it hasn't replaced the Signs of Nature.

- Ruffled Puppy

Because imbob said this much better than I would have:

I'd like to thank everyone who made this possible.

I am Time's person of the year. Oddly enough I didn't even think it was really all that noteworthy of a year for me, but never the less Time magazine decided to make me the person of the year, well me along with everyone else. I guess since everyone is the Time person of the year it really isn't all that much of an honor, but still it might look good on a resume.

The north Atlantic hurricane season is over. A strong season had been forecast, culmination of a natural cycle possibly to be strengthened further by global warming.

But there were no Katrinas or Wilmas this year -- very nearly the opposite, with wave after African tropical wave torn apart by cross-shear before they could develop even into named storms, and almost all of those which did develop curving away harmlessly. On a local scale, the forecasting had erred sharply, and the N. Atlantic results held up as further evidence of the myth of global warming.

The rest of the world tells a very different story.

While Pacific storms tend on average to be larger and stronger than their north Atlantic cousins -- the 1979 typhoon Tip, the largest and strongest typhoon ever measured, was born in the mid-Pacific -- this year was exceptional even by Pacific standards. The Philippines were been hit by a record five typhoons of category 3 or greater (including four super typhoons), plus another at category 2. Durian, not even the net strongest of the six, had sustained windspeeds of over 230 kilometres per hour, and is believed to be the strongest yet recorded at that location. Fortunately it had weakened greatly when it crossed the South China Sea and went on to strike south Vietnam. Five typhoons in an average year, this year Vietnam absorbed nine; some of which crossed the Mekong Basin to also cause severe flooding in Laos and Cambodia: something which would usually happen once in every five years. Tropical cyclone Monica, with sustained windspeeds of over 280 kilometres per hour, became the most intense storm ever recorded in the south Pacific (and that in April, at the very tail end of Australia's typical hurricane season), and may yet turn out to have been even more intense than Tip. (Satellite measurements differ from those on the ground at Darwin, a city which still vividly remembers having almost been wiped off the map by Tracy on Christmas Day, 1974.) While Darwin this time was spared more than a glancing blow, the Queensland region was not as fortunate. Although significantly less powerful than Monica, Larry was still a category 4 when it struck, the most powerful cyclone to strike Queensland in at least a century.

Super typhoon Ioke by itself set several new records. Developing into a typhoon less than a day after storm organisation south of Hawaii, Ioke quickly built and held its strength to become not only the most powerful recorded typhoon in the central Pacific -- in fact, the first category 5 ever to form and fully develop in that region -- but also the longest-lived high-strength storm, never dipping below category 4 for over a week (with three separate intensifications into category 5), during which time it managed to cross the greater part of the Pacific Ocean -- and then back again as an extratropical storm. (The previous record-holder was 2004's Ivan.) Even after it had curved north, away from Japan, east of Russia's Kamchatka peninsula, to make an eventual "landfall" in Alaska as an extratropical storm with 8-metre waves and still an extremely damaging storm surge. The single saving grace was its avoidance of any significantly populated islands: allowing full evacuation or appropriate storm-sheltering of the few military bases in its path.

With the addition of Ioke, of the most powerful cyclones to have been observed in the eight cyclonic regions (~nine now, with the addition of the unique Catarina and the January storm in the south Atlantic, 2004), five have been in this decade, two more in the previous decade, and only Tip (west Pacific) dates from before 1997.

Light N. American hurricane landfall does not translate into a negligible cyclonic season: but we stand also at the peak of a natural cyclonic cycle. Whether global storms will keep getting stronger afterwards -- well, one hopes these possibilities (and what the human race can do to contain the consequences) can be considered and acted upon, independent of ideology.

Was raking up the last of the pine cones for future woodstove fuel, the dog trailing my ankles, when a sparrow darted to the feeder and back to the cedar hedge and a pair of chickadees hopped into the low branches of the nearby fruit trees, waiting. Earlier that day when I had filled the feeder, before even I had let go, a chickadee landed on the other side and began to feed. This time I set down the rake and settled down on the concrete steps to wait, the dog comfortably tucked against me.

I did not have to wait long.

A minute, maybe two: and five, ten, a score of small birds swept in upon the feeder and back to the cedar hedge alive with bird voices, again and again and again in a wave of cresting feathers; and then flashes of blue and red as the larger jays and cardinals found their places within the hedge and swept in in their turn. Within our own silence the dog and I watched them come and go and listened to the excited chatter.

And when the birds had once again settled in the cedar hedge and the excitement settled down to a constant murmur of birdsong, I re-filled the feeders, the dog at my heels, and went inside.

(Of course, an hour later, the dog remembered that it was Time For His Walk Now, which was another story entirely.)

Where a self-honest person strongly resonates with a specific collective identity, be it religion or nation or something else entirely, it is reasonable to assume that their future decisions cannot but be coloured by that resonance. It is not fair to ask a person who self-identifies as feminist or Christian or Marxist or hard-core Republican to base their decisions on any kind of neutrality and still maintain their integrity. In a democracy, this necessarily means that any such candidate cannot fairly represent all members of their constituency without compromising who they are.

That being said and under the current world circumstances, I do not think choosing a Korean (from either side of the line) to be the new Secretary-General of the United Nations was particularly wise.

Here is a curious equation:

On sale, 2L bottles of Coca-Cola cost between $0.77 and $1.00.

A Coca-Cola on-line promotion allows members to "purchase" cinema gift cards and downloads based on numbers of Coca-Cola purchases. A $25 gift card "costs" the equivalent of twenty-four bottles. (Cinema admissions -- no catch, no limitations -- are proportionately even cheaper.)

Buy the bottles, pour out the Coca-Cola, and receive a 25% discount on one's cinema experience?

At the darkest time of the year, a child is born to restore hope and light to the world.

Three months later, the best of the seed (saved aside from the grain to be eaten) is sacrificed to the thawed earth and the chaff of the old year is turned into the soil to help that seed grow, because upon that growth depends our very survival.

And nine months later, at the darkest time of the year, a child is born to restore hope to the world.

What, I wonder, would have been our religious construct had our gestational period not so precisely matched the natural cycle of seasons?

Trust the French to come up with the idea of gourmet meals for astronauts. The first menu: celery root puree, caponata, roasted quails in wine sauce, and rice pudding with preserved fruit. The first scheduled meal was November 20. The first beneficiary: German astronaut Thomas Reiter.

Let's not kid ourselves. Children in western societies are becoming more obese because they are exercising less and less. They are exercising less and less because they -- like us -- are spending more and more time in front of various screens. We seem to have somehow created an increasing number of hours for that ... even as we ourselves find less and less time to cook, clean, shovel the walk, even have physical sex, let alone children.

In fact, we were so very strapped for time that, coming home after the two-income three part-time overtimed jobs, all we wanted was to stick dinner in the microwave, put our feet up in front of the television, and hibernate. Oh, and for the kids to do something quiet while we vegged. The youngest ones had to stay home, slightly older ones still required a curfew to keep them at least technically under parental supervision while out of school (and in N. America especially, there is a growing culture of fear discouraging non-parental supervised outdoor free play) but always: "Can't you find something to keep you occupied? (and out of our hair during our 'me' time?)"

Getting children their own screens fit the requirement well, the younger the better. Set up the Net nanny, maybe screen some of the games, and then let them do their own thing, freeing us to do ours. Younger and younger, the televisions and computer screens and cellphones moved into the bedrooms: and the programming grew exponentially to match the growing addiction. When we even think about it, we like to delude ourselves that at least some of those screens serve an educational function which some basic interaction with a living person could not serve better. No matter how theoretically interactive, the vast majority of programming for screens is comfortably passive, no thinking required. In fact, screens in bedrooms have also been clearly linked with decreased school grades.

Could not getting children to read their own books also serve an occasional requirement of parental "me" time? While "addictive" in a different sense, individual books come with individual built-in time limits: few even among book lovers will re-read a book or pick up a new one immediately upon finishing. We mourn the decline of literacy, but not enough to ourselves cultivate a love of reading. Instead reading, like bringing home a paycheque, becomes the substance of endurance so that we can be released to do what we enjoy, never of enjoyment in and of itself. Who learns to read at home anymore? Learning to speak is a natural process of osmosis: a delightful merge of social modelling and verbal neural hardwiring. We have the neural hardwired potential to process symbolic thought, and so learning to read can be just as easy, needing only an adult who enjoys reading to instill that all-important hunger to discover what lies hidden in that teasing code. I learned myself somewhere around the age of 2 or so, moving so seamlessly from listening memorisation to reading that I don't remember the first time I actually read (although to this day I still know the full text of that first book). To the very young child, learning is a fascinating thing, and the painful thing is to be kept from it.

But what if the child learns that learning is not supposed to be enjoyed?

Parents are models, never more so than during those crucial years before organised education begins. Just from their example, they can teach a child to relish books and discussion and walking the dog -- or to resent everything that detracts from a completely personalised and sanitised environment. From Teletubbies on up, our children learned what to enjoy and what to hate.

In seeking a societal solution to the growing obesity epidemic, don't look away from the mirror. We encouraged our children, every step of the way. And they learned well.

'Tis the season for the anonymous telephone calls, checking to see whether you're at home or away. (I never used to have this problem, back in my old place.)

Sorry for the extended absence. Now that I finally have telephone and Internet access again (and if you want amusing, picture me trying to talk to dial-up customer support on the same single telephone line as the dial-up-to-be, from a wallphone that do