Bad science and bored men of a certain age

There seems to be a proliferation of retired and semi-retired bored men with too much money and free time on their hands for our good, not to mention theirs.

I envision you all sitting around a pub table, pill boxes spread out beside your beers, wondering among yourselves what to do until bedtime.
“Oh,” says one of you with a light bulb going on behind his eyes, finger raised. “What about we go out and find some bad science to support?”

May I suggest, wrong thought?

How about considering this list of leisure activities instead?

What about

• Golf? Bored men should always occupy their time with golf.
• Chess? This stimulates brain activity, something, apparently, a number of you need right now to make effective, genuinely socially conscious decisions.
• Gardening? I am a firm believer that growing your own vegetables makes for a good relationship with the earth you would otherwise be messing up with your support of bad science.
• Watching television? This will numb your brain into nothingness and provide a modicum of protection against your boredom - our protection against your boredom.
• Playing endless games on your favourite social network? Ditto above reason.
• Long cruises on notorious shipping lines? With a bit of luck you’ll come back a hero and spend your over-abundance of free time doing media interviews on this rather than on how you next plan to mess up our lives by supporting bad science.
• Buying lottery tickets? Wealth is addictive and so this is a perfect, and relatively harmless, way of investing in renewable capital.
• Shopping till you drop? Think of all the things you could buy at your friends’ stores, and how, by doing so, you boost their wealth and find a way of spending your own - and doing something to address that boredom of yours at the same time.
• Doing what other men of your age but not of your income do? Find a hobby more suited to your skills, like making string balls or spending the year planning a nice light festival in your garden with all those imported LED lights which can be seen from space and defy even the remotest notion of energy conservancy.

Try starting with something on this list, but if nothing appeals to you, I have many, many more ideas and you are welcome to contact me for additional suggestions.

Just, please, whatever you decide upon, concentrate your boredom on something that does not cost the rest of us in income, property and lives.

Source: Inspiration for this post came from this article in The Guardian.

New releases and re-releases

Few things happen quickly in the book world.  The gestation period of a novel, from conception to completion, is usually measured in years rather than months and, though e-publishing may change this, the process of getting a book into the marketplace isn't much quicker, if and when publishers get involved.  Similarly, an author might think there's no longer any interest in something they wrote, when it's been out of print for several years, only to find that's not the case.

Take Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist.  Written in 1987 and published by a small Brazilian publishing house, with a limited print run of 900 copies, Coelho later sold the rights to a larger publisher who turned it into a Brazilian best-seller.  Since then, it's grown into a world best-seller, translated into 67 languages and has sold many millions of copies.  Film rights for The Alchemist weren't purchased until 2004 - some 17 years after first publication - and, even then, filming came to nothing... until the rights were again sold on in 2008, although (4 years later) the film is yet to appear.

All this by way of saying that things are slow in the publishing industry and you just can't tell when a book is going to rise from the ashes and live again.  Which, in turn, is a roundabout  lead-in to giving a shout-out to Louise Cusack, whose fantasy trilogy Shadow Through Time is about to be re-released after being out of print for some time.  First published by Simon & Schuster 10 years ago, Pan Macmillan's ebook division, Momentum Books, will be releasing the digital version on 15th February.  She is understandably ecstatic, and you can read about the journey of the trilogy at Louise's website, where you can also pre-order the books.

While I'm shouting and congratulating about the place, congratulations to Jason Nahrung, who I've also mentioned here before. Jason's novella Salvage is being published by Twelfth Planet Press, and can be pre-ordered here, where you'll be able to read what it's about.  (And ain't it great, by the by, to see more and more publishers investing in novellas?)

Are you information literate?

How to have fun with history is available

on http://booklocker.com/books/4809.html

If you wake up to discover that the Internet and all cell phone towers are down, could you:

• Get directions by reading a physical map
• Identify north, south, east, west visually
• Do basic arithmetic, i.e. add, subtract, multiply and divide, in your head or on paper without the help of an electronic crutch
• Source the information you use and need on a daily basis manually
• And, if the downtime for the Internet and your cell was due to some disaster, could you source basic survival information manually?

If you said no to one of the above, you should be on alert. If you could not answer two or more of the above, you are not information literate, regardless of education or profession.

Information literacy is the ability to access, extract and comprehend information effectively and efficiently. If your only skill for accessing information is to google an answer, then the rest of the pyramid collapses.

Information literacy exists within the individual not within his or her ability to manipulate and bundle key terms on the Internet.

Alternative sources include individuals such as specialists, organizations, knowledge repositories such as libraries, and physical sources such as books, maps or documents. Two important factors in accessing information is to know what is available to you, and where. The process of discovering these can be fun and the journey packed with happy surprises.

The ability to memorize or retain information is also key to information literacy. This process is called building general knowledge. General knowledge is a personal database of useful - and sometimes trivial - information which can be relied upon when technology fails to deliver the answers - or when party talk flags.

Heather Vallance is the author of How to have fun with history which explores the principles of information literacy in the context of historical research. She is also the coauthor of How to be information literate which is a textbook for tertiary level education, particularly for students with English second language skills.

Who are you really texting?

Have you ever wondered about that unusual chat you had with a long-time friend, only to discover that s/he was away some place distant at the time? Or, about the sudden change in content, context and tone while engaged in a long bout of texting? Or, even the occasional emails from family members that make you wonder if they have stopped taking their meds?

Online voyeurism is a growing issue which few of us think about on a day to day basis, but which we should think about because it points to disordered personalities with potential access to intimate details capable of facilitating predatory behaviors against children and compromising adults.

In a recent experiment to test home camera systems, the New Zealand Herald hacked a collection of IP addresses with security cameras installed. The staff discovered that they could access homes and businesses with ease. Had they been true voyeurs they would have inserted themselves into the lives of their targets and learned more than any stranger has the right to know about the private moments of others.

It is probably wise to remember that everything has a camera attached these days, from  a simple dial-in dial-out to a smartphone, a tablet, laptop and desktop.

When dealing with the compulsive communicator in chats, texts or emails, it is easy enough, as an adult, to pick up change in tone based, often, upon basic levels of maturity, experience and intimacy. Most compulsive communicators lack the ability to adapt to the target's life experience and fail to incorporate those little personal details which build up over the years among and between people.

Sadly, it is easier for adults to think down to a child's level based, this time, on the lack of life experience, developing ego and trust issues. In other words, children as shown time and time again, cannot pick up on the nuance and subtleties of interpersonal communication.

The question now becomes, what do we do about the tablet camera as we prop up in bed, or that seemingly secure security system at home, or the smartphone which follows us into intimate places?

The Internet has moved beyond its cyber crime potential into a world of unrestrained voyeurism where we are visible in the street, at our windows, on the beach. Our voicemails are fair game to any sick mind with our password, and our correspondence is conquest and rite of passage in the real-time game of virtual reality.

And, we are the conduits, because we carry the tools voyeurs use against us with us 24/7.

The new eternal conundrum is, "What is privacy?"

With universal access to our lives, the issue of protecting online copyright becomes redundant.

The Internet is our perceptual signifier - the vehicle and expression of reality which makes life in the flesh a gossamer reflection on a screen.

Nothing is sacred, and everything is fair game.


Heather Vallance has worked extensively on defining information literacy as it applies to taken-for-granted knowledge and life skills. 

Research on Fukushima worth sharing

As I write, there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of children who have been robbed of their innocence and right to a full, healthy life. Neither they nor their parents have committed a crime, yet they are punished for simply being alive in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This is the raw truth, the stripped down reality of Fukushima.

We owe it to these children to inform ourselves to the best of our ability so that if our paths ever cross with theirs we are, at least, able to offer the compassion they, and those who love them, will need to face their futures.

Global Research is a Montreal based independent research and media organization which provides simple, scientific and informative material on many important issues affecting us today. GR has released an ebook, a compilation of data on Fukushima and its impact, not just on the Japanese, but on the world as a whole, wherever the trade winds blow and the oceans flow.

The ebook is called Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War: The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation.

I strongly suggest that this be read and kept as reference.

The authors invite sharing.

Questions Writing and Photography Prizes

I was handed details of the Questions Writing and Photography Prizes for young Australians (under 23) yesterday, and thought them worth passing on.

Writing submissions can be fiction or non-fiction, between 1500 and 2000 words on any topic.  The prize is $2000 and publication.  Closing date is 1st July, 2012.

Similar prize and closing date for photography.

There's also a Future Justice Prize, recognising leadership and initiative of individuals or organisations.

Further details here: http://www.questions.com.au/prizes/index.php

Good luck.

Listening to: Playing for Change - Songs Around the World

After being introduced to this YouTube video of Playing for Change - Songs Around the World - I was given the CD, and have been playing it pretty heavily.  It's great music and a tremendous concept: musicians from around the world contribute to the recording of ten classic songs.  The video sums it up superbly.  This has to be one of the best recordings of Stand By Me.

Censorship trivia

Or, these things too shall pass.

The recent furor about Internet censorship and copyright have left many roaringly indignant, including me.

Then I began to think about the good old censorship times in Nationalist South Africa.

• The time when the censorship board banned Black Beauty because they thought the book was about an African prostitute - only to learn later that the story was about a horse.
• The time when pornography and dirty literature were forbidden in the country but freely available in neighboring states, creating a flood of South African tourists who boosted teetering African economies.
• The time when communist history was not taught in schools, but available for perusal in books on world history available in local bookshops.
• The time when banned materials could be accessed by anyone who signed a single-page access form at the national repository.
• The time when overseas holidays meant filling in the blanks left by the shortfall in education and censorship, not mindless drinking sprees on South American beaches.

There have been other times in history when books were dragged off shelves in libraries and private homes, and burned on the street. When cultural centers were ransacked. When life seemed hopeless and intellectualism dead.

After each Dark Age there is rebirth.

I have a picture of a Chinese proverb hanging over my desk in the office which reads, "Pen and sword in accord."

The intended meaning is to keep life in balance, but a global, more historical interpretation can also refer to the cycle of mind vs body. That which we could become vs that which we prefer to be.

We are a species in constant circular motion, destined always to defeat itself by beating the higher self into a bloody pulp - just to see what it looks like.

Good living

It's been an idyllic summer so far - hot days and still nights, walks to the beach, regular swims, afternoon siestas, the cooking of fine meals, the drinking of much wine... you get the picture.  However, I suspect that too much good living gets in the way of writing at times, and the heat certainly puts my brain into a slower, mushier gear, so while I don't wish to trade any of this for being hungry in a cold attic (no thank you very much), I am feeling under-productive at the moment.  Two or three hours of editing and rewriting, a bit of reading and painting, but not a lot more than this.

Never mind, I tell myself, this delicious holiday feeling won't last forever, and then, human nature being what it is, I'll be yearning to recapture it all over again. So I'm damned if I won't make the most of it whilst it's here!

One of the books I've read - well, a booklet really - was lent me by a friend who's a fan of crime writer Michael Connelly.  In it, Michael Connelly describes how he developed two of his key characters: Mickey Haller and Harry Bosch. Although I haven't (yet) read any of Michael Connelly's novels, I found this a fascinating study, partly because it's often interesting to see how other authors work and partly because Mr Connelly very clearly recalls and articulates almost every stage of how these particular characters evolved.

I think this booklet was won as a prize.  I'm not quite sure what my friend had to do to win it, but it was a neat get all the same.

There is no safe level of radiation exposure

Cancer Risk To Young Children Near Fukushima Daiichi Underestimated from Fairewinds Energy Education on Vimeo.

Recent reads: War with the Newts by Karel Capek

War with the Newts by Karel Čapek (translated by Ewald Osers) is unfortunately one of those books I would never have come across if it wasn't for a little serendipity: I was introduced to it by a friend who had recently travelled to the Czech Republic, and who, whilst there, had decided to read a Czech novel or two.  That I hadn't heard of it before may be the result of ignorance on my part, but, regardless of that small matter, this book deserves to be even more widely known. 

First published in 1936,  two years before Čapek's death at the age of 48, there's a classic timelessness about War with the Newts, even though the narrative voice comes across as a little dated at times - although this might also add to its charm.  Overall though, it possesses a number of exceptional qualities that remind me, at one and the same time, of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, George Orwell's Animal Farm and Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle.  That these three novels satirise the political follies of mankind may give an indication of what War with the Newts concerns itself with.

'Man discovers a species of giant, intelligent newts and learns to exploit them so successfully that the newts gain enough skills and arms to challenge man's place at the top of the animal kingdom. Along the way, Karel Čapek satirizes science, runaway capitalism, fascism, militarism, journalism, even Hollywood, yet he presents all the events on a comically human rather than spectacular scale.'   Catbird Press edition

His astute portrayal of various national stereotypes certainly has relevance 70 years on, and the political insights he provides make it easy to see why the Nazi Gestapo named him Czechoslavakia's "public enemy number two."

Reading this was time well spent.  Very glad I was introduced to it.

Aah, that's better.

What a difference a couple of weeks away from the keyboard makes.  No routine, no expectations.  Love it.  I suspect I began to go sane for a while.

I printed out my first paper copy of Number Three just before Christmas, but didn't start editing it until two days ago.  That's not to say I wasn't thinking about writing though, because it seems I do my best reflective thinking whenever I remove the imperative to actually sit down and write.  (Creating a distance allows for greater critical objectivity?)  So, between sleeping off Christmas day lunch and Boxing day lunch, wandering down to the beach for a swim or two, catching up with friends and the like, I've been doing a fair bit of thinking about what I want out of Number Three, and have scribbled a few notes down on scraps of paper, book covers, the back of miscellaneous hands, edges of wine labels - whatever was lying around at the time.  Now to try and put some of those ideas into practice.

*

Upon discovering how intently I was talking to myself this morning, I told myself I was going banonkers - more banonkers.  Now there's a neologism: Banonkers - the state of having gone bananas and bonkers at the same time.   Except, in checking it out, I discover it isn't a neologism, but that Google has over 2,600 references to it.  Which means that a lot of people have gone banonkers before me.

*

During the break, we woke up one morning to find this fellow in our backyard. He was a black-nosed wallaby, I think, and about 40" or a metre from head-to-foot, though considerably taller when he was pushing himself up with that tail and those feet.  Quite curious at first, he got very bouncy very fast when he couldn't find his way out again.  About 45 kmh fast and about 6' bouncy, I'd say.

Also discovered this fellow on New Year's Day, all washed-up and dried out on one of our local beaches.  I think the New Year celebrations may have been too much for Percy the puffer fish, but at least he died with a grin on his face.

Compassion

One's life has value as long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, and compassion. Simone de Beauvoir.

2012 Hiatus

I am on hiatus for 2012, exploring the world through means other than words.

I will, though, continue my occasional posts on something close to my heart - the Japanese tsunami and nuclear disaster.

Besides the ongoing release at the Fukushima 1 plant, there is now potential release from Fukushima 2 in 2012 but, as always, we simply do not have the facts. This is not the worst of it.

2012 will be punctuated by an increase in imported food and products as the Japanese government and business community dump their contaminated items on foreign markets, and it will also be the year in which the reality of the tsunami begins to wash ashore in North America, creating what will become one of the most devastating environmental disasters in history.

While I spend this next year finding joy in the little and very real things in life, I leave you with two warnings:

• Do not make trophies out of potentially toxic Japanese debris.
• Buy local. Although the planet is contaminated to lesser or greater degrees by Fukushima fallout, you do have the power to control you own exposure over time.

And, I leave you with an iota of hope.

Someone told me that we are here, now, because we chose to be the midwives of a new era.

Let's at least suspend disbelief and hope her analysis is correct.