Category Archives: thoughts

thoughts

Lent On, or Off

OK, so it’s Lent. At least they tell me it is. Not being of a religious turn of mind I really wouldn’t know — or care.

But I keep being asked what I’ve given up.

Answer: Nothing.

I gave up giving things up years ago. Just as I don’t do New Year resolutions (see here and here).

Giving things up is a synonym for misery. For unnecessary guilt. For unnecessary mortification of the brain as well as (sometimes) the flesh. It isn’t good for you.

Doing things like giving up stuff because someone tells you to takes you a long way towards having your mind controlled for you. Change has to come from within otherwise it is pointless and destructive.

In fact thinking back, I never did do Lent. Even when I was purporting to be a Christian. The whole idea always did seem pointless and even dangerous.

As my friend Katy says (specifically of her children, but equally appropriate to anyone in my view):

I really am not sure what not eating chocolate does for a person’s soul and their general state of grace, frankly. Does their abstinence from spending every free hour glued to CBBC mean that they are a better person at the end of 40 days and nights?
No. I don’t think so.

I don’t think so either.

And in case anyone thinks I’m being specifically anti-Christian, I’m not.

I feel the same about the Islamic adherence to Ramadan, which in my view is positively dangerous medically as it specifically involves the absence of food and drink during daylight which must have a major effect on one’s ability to function safely.

And the totally a-religious New Year resolutions are no better; they mostly achieve nothing except increasing the adherent’s level of guilt when they (almost inevitably) fail.

Let’s keep things in perspective and balanced. Let’s just take things as they come, ride the storm waves and (if feeling philosophical) contemplate the meaning of life.

Surely, if you must follow a religious dogma, then some quiet contemplation of what it means, and why, and perhaps doing something practical (for someone else or the environment) to further those ends is a better way forward? Just giving up some random thing “because it says so in the book” doesn’t achieve any of that.

And if you’re not religious why are you even bothering with this religious stuff anyway?

thoughts

More Rules for Life

Following on from my earlier posts about my guiding principles and lessons for life, I’m reminded of the 11 Rules for Life often attributed to Bill Gates. Except that they ain’t by Bill Gates. They appear to have first surfaced in a 1996 piece in the San Diego Union Tribune by Charles J Sykes** and subsequently been pared down. But wherever they first appeared many people, not just youngsters! (present readers excepted, of course!) would do well to take them to heart. So, in case you missed then the first few thousand times around, here they are:

Rule 1: Life is not fair — get used to it!

Rule 2: The world doesn’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping — they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

In fact the original had another 3 rules (which I’ve only slightly edited):

Rule 12: Smoking is not cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you’re out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That’s what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for purple hair and/or visible pierced body parts.

Rule 13: You are not immortal. If you think living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven’t seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.

Rule 14: Enjoy your youth while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school’s a bother and life is depressing. But someday you’ll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid. Maybe you should start now.

Hands up anyone who can honestly say they’ve never fallen into any of these traps.

Mmmm. Yeah. Not me either.

** Sykes appears to have subsequently published the list in his book 50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School.

thoughts

Lessons for Life

Today is my birthday. It is a Feria. Almost nothing of note has happened on this day (except for me, of course!). About the only at all well known person I share my birthday with is former miner’s leader Arthur Scargill. But let us not be forlorn!

I thought that this year I would celebrate my birthday by sharing with you 61 Lessons for Life (one for each of my birthdays). I stole the idea (and a few of the lessons) from here. They are a sort of a logical successor to my New Year post.

61 Lessons for Life

  1. Life isn’t fair. Deal with it.
  2. When in doubt, don’t.
  3. Life is too short to waste time and energy hating others.
  4. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
  5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
  6. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
  7. Learn to love yourself.
  8. Don’t worry about things you cannot change.
  9. Save for retirement starting with your first pay packet.
  10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
  11. Make peace with your past so it doesn’t screw up the present.
  12. It’s OK to let others see you cry.
  13. Be open and honest in all that you do.
  14. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
  15. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.
  16. Don’t be afraid to admit you were wrong. Be prepared to change your mind.
  17. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
  18. Over-prepare, then go with the flow.
  19. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.
  20. Listen.
  21. The most important sex organ is the brain.
  22. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
  23. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: “In five years, will this matter?”
  24. Forgive everyone everything.
  25. What other people think of you is none of your business.
  26. Time heals almost everything. Give time a chance.
  27. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
  28. Don’t be afraid to admit you don’t know.
  29. Be curious – about everything.
  30. Be yourself, not who you think you want to be.
  31. It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.
  32. Growing old beats the alternative – dying young.
  33. Your children get only one childhood. Make it as good as you possibly can.
  34. Think as much as possible and to the best of your ability.
  35. Don’t be afraid to tell it like it is. If other people don’t like it that’s their problem.
  36. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.
  37. Every decision is the best you can make at the time with the information available.
  38. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.
  39. Never forget that your enemy is also a human being.
  40. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
  41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
  42. It gets better.
  43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
  44. Masturbation is good.
  45. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
  46. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
  47. When you do ask, the worst they can say is “No”.
  48. You can never have all the information you want to make a decision.
  49. Every coin has two sides. So does every situation.
  50. Respect other peoples’ beliefs however much you disagree with them.
  51. Communicate, communicate, communicate.
  52. If it harm no-one, do as you will.
  53. Treat others as you would wish them to treat you.
  54. No regrets – just things you now know weren’t the best.
  55. Only one person is responsible for your orgasms – you!
  56. “No” is an acceptable answer.
  57. Be comfortable in your body.
  58. If you need a God, fine. If you don’t, that’s fine too.
  59. You are entitled to believe whatever you like. You are also entitled to express your beliefs. But we aren’t obliged to listen to them or agree with them.
  60. Embrace sex and nudity – they’re a natural and rich part of life’s pattern.
  61. Look under the bonnet of all knowledge. Remember research causes cancer in rats.

Hmmm … now how many of those do I adhere to? Hmmm …

sexuality, thoughts

Sex and Robots

A week or so before Christmas Kyle Munkittrick wrote what I consider to be an important post over on Discover Magazine blogs under the title The Future: Where Sexual Orientations Get Kind of Confusing.

It is important because it looks to the future and asks what sexual orientations should be acceptable and when.

The situation at present if reasonably clear. Heterosexual and homosexual relationships are both accepted as sexual orientations and as being acceptable. So are polyamory, queer and transgender relationships. As long as all the parties are consenting.

But paedophilia and zoophilia, while arguable sexual orientations are not acceptable. The difference is that in the latter neither a minor nor an animal can give consent.

This seems to provide a simple rule: sexual orientations/relationships are acceptable as long as the parties all give informed consent. Where there is not consent, then they are verboten.

But, Munkittrick asks, what of the future? A future where it is conceivable that humans may wish to have sexual relations with cyborgs and robots? Should human-robot sexual orientations be acceptable, and under what circumstances? Can a robot or cyborg give informed consent? If so under what circumstances and how would we know?

Thinking about this is important, not just for the future but because it helps us understand our present moral position. [For instance, how and why does incest fit the model?]

It also begs the question of whether we should be worrying about our relationship with our dildo, vibrator or blow-up doll! 🙂

Go read the full article!

science, thoughts

More on the Calendar

Following up on my post of a couple of days ago, I saw a further article in Wired about the proposed new Hanke-Henry Calendar.

What is interesting is that when I looked at this Wired article, they had a poll asking whether readers wanted to retain the existing Gregorian calendar or change to the HH version. To my surprise almost two-thirds for the almost 20,000 voting said they would prefer the new Hanke-Henry Calendar.

Hmmm … Maybe! I bet if we went there most of this support would vanish. Such, in my experience, is the way of people.

While I think the Hanke-Henry Calendar is interesting, and would probably support it, I continue to have two reservations.

Firstly, it starts the year (and therefore every week) on a Sunday which, as I mentioned before, is counter to the international standard on dates (ISO 8601) — but when did that ever matter to Americans? However this is really easily fixed by starting the year on a Monday, although that does mean the new calendar couldn’t be introduced until 2018 without moving the names of the days. I see no problem with a 2018 start date as that will give everyone time to adjust.

(Out of interest, using Henry & Hanke’s method Christmas Day would always be on a Sunday, whereas using my Monday method Christmas Day would always be on a Monday.)

Secondly, and more seriously, while Henry & Hanke do away with the annoyance of leap years and leap days, they have to introduce an alternative to ensure the calendar keeps roughly in line with solar time as the years pass. So they introduce the leap week — an extra week added at the end of the year every 5 or 6 years. That’s fine, but is it every five years, or every six? Actually it is some arcane combination; there is no good (read, easy for Joe Public) method for determining when to add the leap week.

According to the Wired article the leap week is “inserted into years starting or ending on a Gregorian-calendar Thursday” which “would almost perfectly account for Earth’s 365.2422 day-long orbit around the sun”. This is unutterable madness! Why base the leap weeks on the “old” calendar we’re replacing?

Currently there is a simple method for calculating what is a leap year. A method which Joe Public is capable of understanding. But the Hanke-Henry system would leave people with no clue as there is no simple pattern to what would be leap week years. How many people are going to keep track of the “old” calendar just to calculate leap week years? Answer: none! Within a few years people will have no clue when leap week years are (the calculation is arcane, to say the least), just as now almost no-one can calculate when Easter falls despite that it follows a simple rule.

But I reckon this too can be pretty well fixed with a simple algorithm. How about this? … In the new calendar every year is 364 days (52 seven day weeks), except when the year is divisible exactly by 5 when you add the leap week unless it is also a century or half-century year. So years 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020 and so on would be leap week years; but not 2000, 2050, 2100, 2150 etc. According to my calculation that runs about as close as this calendar can to true, being just a couple of days out after 500 years. That’s about as good as you’re going to get given that with a 7 day leap week system the variations from true solar time can be up to a week or so. This way people will know very easily what are leap week years and what aren’t. No need to perpetuate the calendar we’ve tried to replace.

(Actually after 500 years the calendar is maybe lagging solar time by slightly too much, on average, so you might want to add back the leap week in 2500. But that is maybe a refinement too far at this stage.)

Now who would like to sort out the moveable feat known as Easter? Shall we just adopt the Pagan feasts?

science, thoughts

New Year, New Calendar

Did you change your calendars yesterday for the bright new 2012 versions?

I bet you didn’t! At at least not to the overhauled calendar being advocated by Richard Henry and Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University in the USA, because the proposed Hanke-Henry Calendar is a bit radically different: it has a reformed pattern of two 30 day months followed by a 31 day month, four times a year. So the rhyme, “30 days hath September, April, June and November” would be revised to “30 days hath September, June, March and December”.

This means that every year would be composed of a regular 52 seven-day weeks, and every date will always fall on the same day of the week — like Christmas Day would always be, say, a Sunday. It gets rid of the silliness of leap years and of remembering how many days each moth has.

So who sees the problem? Surely if it was that easy it would have been done centuries ago.

Yes, that’s right the Hanke-Henry Calendar produces a year of just 364 days. Whereas the Earth year is 365.2422 days (hence our need for a leap day every four years to correct for that almost ¼ day error). So what do they do? Yes, that’s right! They impose not leap days, but leap weeks by adding an extra week to the end of December every 5 or 6 years. GOK how they’d cope with the moveability Easter!?

There’s another flaw, which the Scientific American article doesn’t pick up on. Hanke and Henry want their calendar to start with 1 January on a Sunday (as 2012 is, and which will next occur in 2017). The only problem is that the International Standard on dates (ISO 8601, and see also the Wikipedia entry) decrees that the week starts on a Monday and that week 1 of the year is the first week containing at least 4 days (which turns out to mean the week containing the first Thursday of the year). It’s that “week starts on a Monday” rule that is the killer. Thanks to 2012 being a Leap Year the next year when 1 January is a Monday is 2018. Hanke and Henry don’t want to wait that long! But it would give time for everyone to agree to the idea and get their ducks lined up.

It’s an interesting and actually quite a logical idea, but to be honest I cannot see it catching on. If we thought the brouhaha over Year 2000 was painful, this would be ten times worse as every date algorithm would have to be not just checked but actually changed. And in the 11 years since Year 2000 the electronic world has expanded ten-fold, maybe a hundred-fold, beyond what it was in 2000. Business would never stand for what would be a hugely complex change — although it might help the unemployment figures.

All those who’d like to try this calendar say “Aye”.

thoughts

Revisionism

In looking at life, the universe and everything over the last days one of the things I’ve decided is that my blogging needs to be a bit less regimented — if only so I don’t get onto a treadmill with it.

So I’ve decided to do away with the regular “XXX of the Week” type features (where XXX is words, quotes, links, etc.). These features will still appear, just maybe a bit less regularly and not always on the same day of the week. It’ll be more when the mood or inspiration strikes me, so irregular. Hopefully that’ll leave me more spare processing power for commentary etc.

The 52 weeks photo challenge has ended, and having done it for two years I’ve decided not to take a break from it. But I do have another idea for an irregular photo series, which I hope to launch in the next week or so.

I have also streamlined the “categories” used to index posts. The previous vast list was completely unwieldy and growing like Topsy. So I’ve stripped it back to a couple of dozen categories and had a happy couple of evenings re-indexing everything. If you want to search for something particular there is always the search facility in the RH navigator.

So what’s the bottom line? Not a lot will change really. As it’s an experiment the weekly “Reasons to be Grateful” will stay as is. Otherwise everything will hopefully become a bit more flexible and a bit more diverse. All in accordance with the Second Law of Thermodynamics: entropy increases over time unless work is done to prevent it. And I don’t like doing work unless I have to!

So keep watching this space!

personal, thoughts

New Year, New Start?

So am I making any New Year Resolutions? As those of you who follow at all closely will by now realised the answer is a resounding “No”. As I blogged on New Year’s Eve 2010 I do not do New Year Resolutions; I view them as a self-fulfilling failures. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t review the year just gone (the good, the bad, and the things I learnt) and look at the year ahead and what I want to achieve. I’ve done that over the last couple of days and I have an idea where I need to focus over the coming year. No, it isn’t for sharing here — it would be way too much information!

However over-riding all of this I have a few guiding principles by which I try to live. I share them with you as my “New Year Message” and because they may help you, my readers, understand where I’m coming from:

Zen Mischief

Nude when possible, clothed when necessary

If it harm none, do as you will

Sex and nudity are normal

Treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself

Say what you mean and do what you say

Don’t worry about things you can’t change

Above all remember:

There are two approaches to life:
– to accept it, get on and enjoy it, or
– to fight it and become miserable & sad

Here’s wishing you a happy and successful 2012!
amusements, books, quotes, science, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

The usual eclectic mix. Firstly something dear to my heart …

A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
[Alan Bennett]

So long as a judge keeps silent his reputation for wisdom and impartiality remains unassailable: but every utterance which he makes in public except in the course of the actual performance of his judicial duties, must necessarily bring him within the focus of criticism. [It would] be inappropriate for the judiciary to be associated with any series of talks or anything which can be fairly interpreted as entertainment.
[Lord Goddard, Lord Chief Justice, 1955]

I suppose one shouldn’t expect anything less po-faced coming out if the 1950s, but oh, dear we are on our dignity aren’t we! Next something I’ve long suspected, from someone who should know …

Science is organized common sense. Philosophy is organized piffle.
[Bertrand Russell, philosopher and mathematician]

There are three faithful friends:
– An old wife
– A shaggy dog
– And ready money
[Thoughts of Angel]

Slightly dodgy ground there, methinks! And finally …

The best of all stratagems is to know when to quit.
[Thoughts of Angel]