… if this is the logic!
BBC Breakfast is this morning reporting the need to “halve the number of people in the UK with HIV”. And how are we going to do this? But getting people tested earlier, etc. etc.
No, guys!
Even if there were zero new infections, the only way you halve the number of people with an incurable disease is for them to die!
So did you mean you need to halve the number of new cases? Or halve the number of people who have HIV but are undiagnosed? Or what did you mean?
This week’s small selection of the curious and not-so-curious you may have missed …
According to a recent survey people spend too long in the shower and use too much water. And it isn’t as green as we were told. Now there’s a surprise!
But then no wonder we go for the therapeutic, because according to uSwitch the UK is the worst place in Europe to live. Well it is if you care about what they measure. For geeks like me you can follow their method, recalculate the scores, exclude things you don’t care about and add in other things you do care about. But you’ll still get much the same answer. 🙁
Now here’s a seriously WOW! image. Yes it’s a European Hornet, Vespa crabro; a humongous but relatively docile wasp**. Sadly you don’t see them often. But just look at those compound eyes … and the detail which I’m sure shows the substructure underneath the eye. I’ve looked out other images of hornets and they all seem to show the same eye substructure. Absolutely amazing!
If you had a pet monkey, would you feed it crap food and never let it exercise or play and tell it how stupid and ugly it was? No, you’d love your pet monkey! So love your Monkey!
We all make mistakes. They’re nothing to hide. But we all do hide mistake, because they make us feel stupid. Don’t be afraid of Stupid. Stupid means self-awareness. Stupid means you’re learning. Love your Stupid.
… go together like, well, err … rutting animals?
Well maybe not so much.
I’ve written several times before (eg. here and here) although not recently.
Regular readers will know that I’ve long advocated the more liberal Dutch approach rather than the American (and British) proscriptively controlling approach. So I was interested to see yet more expert opinion and research supporting this view under the title “What We Can Learn From the Dutch About Teen Sex“. The article is inevitably American, but in my view it is just as applicable to the the Vatican, the UK or indeed any culture.
I’ll leave it to you to read the complete article and, I suggest, some of the linked items therein. What interesting is that Amy Schalet (author of Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens and the Culture of Sex) who is being interviewed has experience of both the Dutch and American systems, and based on that experience is firmly of the Dutch persuasion. Here are a few quotes which struck me.
Teen birth rates are eight times higher in the U.S. than in Holland. Abortion rates are twice as high. The American AIDS rate is three times greater than that of the Dutch. What are they doing right …
[What] I’d noticed with my American friends is that there wasn’t a lot of conversation between parents and teens about sexuality and there was a lot of discomfort around the issue …Coming out of the sexual revolution the Dutch really decoupled sex from marriage, but they didn’t decouple sex from love. If the first piece is that there weren’t these immediate associations of teen sex with danger, the second is that it remained anchored in the concept of steady relationships and young people being in love …
[The Dutch] say ‘We permit so we can control’ and that’s also their attitude toward drugs and prostitution. It’s worth pointing out that US teens are more likely to use drugs than the Dutch, even though there are more liberal policies [in the Netherlands].
That idea of ‘It’s actually a form of control’ is for most people in the US counter-intuitive. But if you expect self-control and give people an opportunity to exercise it, you might get more of it …
Something that did strike me when I came in early ’90s to this country [USA] is that one of the differences in the aftermath of the sexual revolution is that Dutch society became a lot more secular.
What stood out to me was that so often [in the US] people seemed to think you can only have morality and a strong social fabric if you believe in a higher authority, a God that would otherwise punish [people]. There isn’t a belief that people are naturally cooperative, which lots of research suggests they are.
Schalet then goes on to expound her ABCD approach. Here are the one-liners.
A is autonomy. A lot of times people do realize that adolescents are supposed to develop autonomy during that phase of life, but that doesn’t get applied to sex …
B is build good, positive relationships. We need more emphasis on healthy teen relationships …
C is connectedness. It’s possible to really challenge the assumption that teens and parents have to be at loggerheads …
D is diversity. A lot of sex education doesn’t recognize diversity [and] I don’t just mean differences in orientation …
I wish I knew how we could change the prevailing ethos. It would be so much better.
The usual eclectic and eccentric mix this week …
If you can’t see the bright side of life … then polish the dull side.
Wear short sleeves … Support your right to bare arms!
Thoughts of Angel
The very concept of “average” necessarily implies variability.
Emily Nakoski, On monkeys, bullshit, and scale
I hold this truth to be self-evident, that a debt crisis cannot be resolved with more debt.
Hellasious on Quantum Economics
It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.
MFK Fisher quoted in Why Do People Eat Too Much?
Ponder less on what you yourself perhaps think than on what will be the thoughts of the majority of others who, carried away by your authority or your reasons, become persuaded that the terrestrial globe moves among the planets. They will conclude at first that, if the earth is doubtless one of the planets and also has inhabitants, then it is well to believe that inhabitants exist on other planets and are not lacking in the fixed stars, that they are even of a superior nature and in proportion as the other stars surpass the earth in size and perfection. This will raise doubts about Genesis, which says that the earth was made before the stars and that they were created on the fourth day to illuminate the earth … then in turn the entire economy of the Word incarnate and of scriptural truth will be rendered suspect.
17th-century Rector of the College of Dijon writing to the priest-scientist Pierre Gassendi. With thanks to Barnaby Page.
A collection of the curious and interesting you may have missed. This week we have a selcetion of the eccentric and the scientific …
First up here are nine equations true (science) geeks should know — or at least pretend to know. No I’d never heard of some of them either!
Why is this cargo container emitting so much radiation? Seems fairly obvious to me but it clearly puzzled the Italians.
Science, philosophy and religion: which best offers us the tools to understand the world around us? Here’s the scientist’s view, which is much as expected but still interesting to read.
John Lennon’s tooth bought by Canadian dentist. FFS why?
And finally … They’re baffling but they’re rather splendid. Who left a tree and a coffin in the library?
From time to time I dip into all manner of curious authors, often returning to them at protracted intervals. One such is the late Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) the American mythologist and author who is best known for his work in comparative mythology and religion. He was one of those early/mid-20th century polymaths who managed to see deeply into everything and extract paradigm shifting ideas and ways of explaining things. His words invariably make one think long, hard and deep — even when they at the same time contain a certain throwaway humour.
So I thought I’d share with you a few I picked, some while ago, from an anthology of his work compiled posthumously. In no particular order …
Our Purpose
When we talk about settling the world’s problems, we’re barking up the wrong tree. The world is perfect. It’s a mess. It has always been a mess. We are not going to change it. Our job is to straighten out our own lives.
Marriage
If you go into marriage with a program, you will find that it won’t work. Successful marriage is leading innovative lives together, being open, non-programmed. It’s a free fall: how you handle each new thing as it comes along. As a drop of oil on the sea, you must float, using intellect and compassion to ride the waves.
Spiritual Need
If what you are following, however, is your own true adventure, if it is something appropriate to your deep spiritual need or readiness, then magical guides will appear to help you.
Rituals
People ask me, “What can we have for rituals?” Well, what do you want to have a ritual for? You should have a ritual for your life. All a ritual does is concentrate your mind on the implications of what you are doing. For instance, the marriage ritual is a meditation on the step you are taking in learning to become a member of a duad, instead of one individual all alone. The ritual enables you to make the transit.
Ritual introduces you to the meaning of what’s going on. Saying grace before meals lets you know that you’re about to eat something that once was alive. When eating a meal, realize what you are doing. Hunting peoples thank the animal for having given itself. They feel real gratitude.
Vegetarianism
Vegetarianism is the first turning away from life, because life lives on lives. Vegetarians are just eating something that can’t run away.
Truth
When we talk about scientific truth — just as when we talk about God — we are in trouble, because truth has different meanings. William James said, and it’s valid, “Truth is what works”.
The idea of Truth with a capital “T” — that there is something called Truth that’s beyond the range of the relativity of the human mind trying to think — is what I call “the error of the found truth”. The trouble with all of these damned preachers is the error of the found truth. When they get that tremolo in the voice and tell you what God has said, you know you’ve got a faker. When people think that they, or their guru, have The Truth — “This is It!” — they are what Nietzsche calls “epileptics of the concept”: people who have gotten an idea that’s driven them crazy.
Burqas
Those women were going around in tents! Even their eyes were covered with cheesecloth, so you did not know if it was an old hag or a glorious goddess walking around. And you can’t respond to a tent.
Awareness
“Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods”. That is James Joyce. The statement is quoted in Ulysses by Buck Mulligan. The situation is that Leopold Bloom, thinking of his home problem, is looking intently at a red triangle on the label of a bottle of Bass ale. When someone starts to disturb Bloom, Mulligan stops him, saying “preserve a druid silence. His soul is far away. It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access” and so on.
Religion
There is a wonderful line in the Portrait [of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce], where Stephen’s friend, who’s been hearing all this heretical stuff, asks if he intends to become a Protestant. “I said that I had lost the faith,” Stephen replies, “but not that I had lost my self-respect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?”
Life
The obvious lesson … is that the first step to the knowledge of the highest divine symbol of the wonder and mystery of life is in the recognition of the monstrous nature of life and its glory in that character: the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed. Those who think — and their name is legion — that they know how the universe could have been better than it is, how it would have been had they created it, without pain, without sorrow, without time, without life, are unfit for illumination. Or those who think — as do many — “Let me first correct society, then get around to myself” are barred from even the outer gate of the mansion of God’s peace. All societies are evil, sorrowful, inequitable; and so they will always be. So if you really want to help this world, what you will have to teach is how to live in it. And that no one can do who has not himself learned how to live in it in the joyful sorrow and sorrowful joy of the knowledge of life as it is.
Advice
A bit of advice given to a young Native American at the time of his initiation: “As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think”.
I’m currently dipping into The Power of Myth, so expect some more of the above in due course.
This weeks collection of the curious and interesting you may have missed …
Lord Norwich makes some sly remarks about Popes. But how does he know what Pope Nicholas V was like?
Now apparently out gut bacteria may be causing obesity. And you thought it was because I ate too much.
Scientists also think they’ve discovered why some of us hate Brussels Sprouts. Yes it’s all in the genetics, and our taste buds.
In other news, speculation is rife that Palaeolithic man went in for piercing his penis. It all sounds pretty tenuous to me, but then there’s nothing new under the foreskin sun.
And finally … And finally someone in “authority” has come to realise that what we’ve been saying all these years might just be helpful: prostitution could be solved by decriminalising brothels. Government: smell the coffee … it ain’t going to go away and if you licence it you can tax it!
Here’s this week’s selection of interesting articles you may have missed. And what a selection it is!
Turning the lights off won’t save oil, says Melissa C Lott in the Scientific American blog. Maybe not, but it will save coal and gas, reduce emissions and stop wasting our (increasingly expensive) electricity.
“Put that fly down! You don’t know where it’s been.” But Rob Dunn does. Again in the Scientific American blog.
The Divided Brain is an 11 minute video in which Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist describes the real differences between the left and right halves of the human brain. It’s not simply “emotion on the right, reason on the left” but something far more complex and interesting. Love the cartoons!
Max Davidson in the Daily Telegraph defends old-fashioned words against the influx of new text-speak.
And here’s yet another from the Sci Am blog … Ingrid Wickelgren goes looking for the secrets to a happy marriage. And finds some unexpected answers.
The right to keep your pubes. A feminist perspective on shaving for childbirth. I dunno what’s so feminist about it; seems like a basic right to me.
And lastly, if I hadn’t read this here, I wouldn’t believe it. Londoners are being told to stop shagging for a bit, ‘cos the Mayor doesn’t want girlies dropping bairns in the streets during the sacred cow Olympics. Maybe Boris needs to make sure we keep the lights on!
This week’s selection of quotes which caught my eye during the last week …
Everyone has a photographic memory … Some just don’t have film.
[Thoughts of Angel]
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
[Kurt Vonnegut]
Which links quite nicely to the following two …
We now return to the spring of 1593 and the events leading up to the killing of Christopher Marlowe … with a new understanding of the continuity of secret politics as a factor in his life. He is remembered as a poet … and as a wild young blasphemer in an age of enforced devotion, but he was also a spy … one of hundreds of such men, part of a maverick army of intelligencers and projectors on which the government of the day depended, sometimes out of a genuine need for information, but often in ways that relate more to political expediency, to courtly in-fighting, to police-state repression.
[Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe, 2nd edition, 2002]
As we have found, time and again, informers have often a need to create information. They are ‘projectors’ who provoke or indeed invent dangerous sentiments in order to denounce them. They are ‘politicians’ in that pejorative Elizabethan sense, the sense in which Shakespeare means it when King Lear says, ‘Get thee glass eyes and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the things thou dost not’.
[Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe, 2nd edition, 2002]