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.

There is no safe level of radiation exposure

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

Closing 2011 opening 2012

December 21, 2012, is predicted to be the end of life on Earth. It certainly seems that the majority, including the body politic and big business, believe this to be true because everyone is acting as if there is no tomorrow.

For myself, I doubt seriously that there is any universal design which will bring our species to a close. I do not believe that we will be lucky enough to be destroyed by a giant red planet lurking behind the sun, but 2012 will bring to an end many of the things we have taken for granted up until now.

We are likely to spiral into the abyss of 2012 carrying all the familiar baggage, and to enter 2013 lesser than we are now, bereft of health, wealth and happiness. If that qualifies for an end of world experience, then, yes, the scryers are right.

Einstein, I think, said that we will go out with a whimper not a bang, and I tend to go with this statement.

A bang would be something glorious, a thing of legend. As a species we don't deserve to be immortalized even in the untold story. With the way we treat each other we deserve to be chased into a corner whimpering and fearful, and left there to rot.

No species responsible for acts of gross stupidity like Fukushima, or for incomprehensible acts of aggression like war, animal abuse and bullying, deserves to be remembered.

The difference between clinging to the past and preserving heritage

Disclaimer: This post is not written as an indictment against the many, many wonderful men on this planet.

Growing up we called them pale males, the vanguard of brut ignorance which ruled our daily lives by bullying, intimidating and, mostly, throwing very public tantrums.

For a brief, very brief, moment in time we seemed to shed these dinosaurs and be on track to prove that our species was better than its inheritance suggested.

But, like all horror movies, we missed the few lurking in the shadows and they have come back to haunt us with renewed energy.

I am older now, a wee bit wiser, and I know that things happen in cycles which are dominated by bad behavior interspersed with wispy spirals of rationality.

I know that we will survive this too, but so much poorer - not only materially but also intellectually.

Heritage is a reminder of what we can be both for the good and the bad. These reminders are embedded in books, documents, artifacts and traditions. When we lose these we lose the memory of how to rejoice in each other, and how to protect ourselves from each other. We lose our civility.

Pale males are hot-wired to cling to the past, but disrespect heritage.

Heritage is a reflection of what they never can be.

The past means something very different to them.

The past is always about what they've lost, or what they perceive is about to be lost to their way of life. And they are easily affronted - quick to use force.

In the end they lose the past anyway.

The tragedy is that in the process of losing what was never real they destroy everything else.

This is the difference between them and us.

This is the difference between clinging to the past and preserving heritage - preserving the future.

The portal is closed

Copyright Heather Vallance 2011

We have stopped celebrating the achievements of the West, we concentrate only on its abuses and failures.

Even these will be forgotten within another generation.

A new empire will eclipse the old - replace the relic, the tourist attraction of reconstructed memory not its own - and crumbling architecture where once proud citizens engaged in their future.

The Internet will be purged of the past to make space for the present, and our ghosts and shadows will be lost within the resonance at Avesbury, at Carnac, as myth blends to become a single forgotten legend.