Category Archives: thoughts

environment, photography, science, thoughts

Oceanic Truths

A short but very sharp posting from Sheril Kirshenbaum on Wired today points out what many of us already know …

Oceans are Totally F*cked


So what can we do about it? Well you’ll point out that what I do as an individual isn’t going to make a whole bunch of difference. Which is true if I’m the only one taking action. But if we all make changes then it will help bring pressure to bear where it hurts: big business!

So what do we do? It’s a complex problem and there is no simple answer. However the more of the following as you can do the better:

  1. Reduce your dependence on oil. Walk, don’t take the car. Don’t jet around the world on holiday, especially long haul. Fight against excess, especially plastic, packaging. Buy locally grown produce wherever you can to reduce food miles. You already know all these things make sense. And they all help the oceans.
    The less oil we use, the less is transported around the world in mega-tankers, which run on … yes … oil (often horrible crude bunker oil, at that). And the fewer environmentally damaging oil spills there are. And the less off-shore drilling there is. (Yes, that may mean nuclear power; but that’s an argument for another day.)
  2. Buy only fish which is farmed or sustainably caught and which is as locally produced as possible. We have to stop over-fishing. As well as reducing food miles.
  3. Reduce your garbage output. A vast amount of our garbage gets dumped at sea!
  4. Reduce your wastewater output; and clean up wastewater as much as possible. Yes, that means sewage, amongst other things. As with garbage it is scandalous the amount of dirty/polluted wastewater that gets dumped in the oceans.
  5. We also need to reduce agricultural run-off. That means reducing pesticide, herbicide and fertiliser use, and also preventing animal slurry getting into waterways. Which in turn means more sustainable land management. Going organic isn’t necessarily the whole, or even the right, answer; but it should help.
  6. If you’re an aquarist, don’t keep marine fish which haven’t been captive bred. Catching marine fish from the wild is extremely poorly regulated (unlike the trade in wild-caught freshwater Amazonian fishes). Fishing (for the aquatics trade and for food) does enormous damage to tropical reef environments because of the methods used.
  7. And anything else you can do to improve air quality and reduce climate change will help too. A large part of the problems the oceans face is from acidification, which is caused by pollutants and increased carbon dioxide levels. And if we can slow down climate warming, we’ll likely slow down the rate at which the polar ice caps are receding too.
  8. And finally, support marine nature reserves, conservation areas and scientific efforts to better understand the oceans and their biodiversity.

Notice, however I am not saying be totally organic, don’t eat fish, stop using a car or an aeroplane, and grow all your own food. Yes, it would be great (for the environment anyway) if we could do all these things. But let’s be realistic, it isn’t practical and it won’t happen. But we do have to reduce all the harmful things we do and the more you can do the better.

Some of you won’t think about any of this, and won’t bother with any of it, which morally I find inexcusable. But it’s your karma. Many will already be doing something. But which of us couldn’t do a bit more. It all helps. I at least would like there still to be an inhabitable world for your grandchildren. And I think I have a moral obligation to do something the help ensure there is.

beliefs, books, memes, pleasures, thoughts, topographical

Listography – Travelling

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Unlike me, many who responded to last week’s listography about decision they’re glad they made included some item of travel. So this week Kate is asking us to nominate five places we would still like to visit.

For me this is quite easy as I have some places I know I would like to see. But it is sad because I know I likely never will see most of them: I don’t much like the actual travelling to get to these places (too much stress) and at 60 and living on my pension I’m unlikely to be able to make myself afford (even if fit enough) the cost of getting there. Quite a number of the places I won’t visit on principle because of their lack of respect for the environment or the people. But leaving all that aside, here is my choice of five places I would love to see.

Japan. I find Japan a fascinating country. I’d really love to see all those Buddhist, Taoist and Shinto temples; Kanamara Matsuri, the annual Shinto fertility “Festival of the Phallus”; the koi carp farms; the unspoilt mountainous country; zen gardens; Mount Fuji; and the bullet train. What a photographic experience it would be. We have friends in Japan, so we should be able to do this easily; and as our friends are in topical Okinawa islands we’d get some great music and wonderful beaches too. But I won’t go to Japan on principle because of their intransigent stance on whaling. And I don’t much relish a 12-14 hour flight.

Iceland. Land of glaciers, volcanoes, geysers and geothermal hot water. The country looks frighteningly beautiful; Earth in the raw; new land still very much being built by plate tectonics. Visiting should be easily achievable (there are endless package tours) and a wonderful photographic experience, but again it’s a land I won’t visit because of the whaling issue.

Norway. Like Kate I’d love to see the Aurora Borealis. The midnight sun. The fjords. And to go to Hell. (Yes, there really is a place called Hell). And Noreen has friend who lives on a tiny island off the south coast. Again it should be easily achievable. But again it is off-limits for me because of the whaling. (Why is it that my top three picks are all off-limits because of whaling? It really wasn’t designed that way!) Although we could achieve a lot of that by visiting (friends in) Sweden; which we might yet manage — at least do keep talking about going to Sweden!

Tibet. It must be one of the poorest countries on Earth, but it’s hard to find out because it has been assimilated into China. But it’s a land of rugged mountains, high plateaus and curiously interesting Buddhist monasteries. But it is another place I’m unlikely ever to visit: it is so hard to get to and I won’t go on principle because of the way China has occupied it and largely destroyed the culture and the people. Again it would be just such a wonderful photographic experience. One really should have done this when young and fit.

The Amazon. I’d love to see the Amazonian fishes and parrots (not to mention Jaguars) in the wild. And for once I have no moral objections to going there other than tourism beginning to impact the environment, although nowhere nearly on the scale of Africa. Again I can’t help feeling this is travel one should have done when young and fit.

So they’re the five places I’d probably most like to visit. But there are so many others which should be more achievable: Bruges, Kyle of Lochalsh, Ireland, Italy, the pyramids, the Alhambra, ride the Orient Express, travel from Thurso/Wick to Penzance by train, Scilly Isles.

So much to do, and so little time to achieve it.

memes, personal, thoughts

Listography – Decisions

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Kate’s Listography this week is really HARD! She has asked us about the top five decisions we’re glad we made.

Why do I find this hard? Well not because there are so many to choose from. The opposite. I’m not one for making big decisions. That’s partly I think because I’ve been lucky and not been forced to make many big decisions, but more because I’m not one for planning my life and career. I’ve drifted; gone with the flow. OK, maybe I could have got a higher-powered job, a better salary & pension, a bigger house, whatever. But drifting has been a lot less stressful and kept that work-life balance, well … balanced. And drifting wasn’t a conscious decision, so I can’ even count that! It’s just the way I am – lazy, avoiding and procrastinating.

OK, so here are five good decisions I’m glad I made, in no particular order.

Staying at University. For me it wasn’t the going to university that was the decision. That was more or less a foregone conclusion. The decision I’m glad I made was to stay on and do several years of post-graduate work. They were the formative years. And the most fun years. So much fun I nearly didn’t get my PhD and then left my post-doc job because I was doing too much of everything else and not enough proper work. I’d love to have those years all over again and do it all properly this time, knowing everything I do now. Maybe it’s a good thing one can never go back.

Marrying Noreen. I guess the decision was in asking her to marry me. Neither of us can remember how it came about, or exactly where/when we were when she (finally) said “yes” – having said “no” initially. We know roughly when it was – the week or so leading up to Christmas 1978 – but not the exact day or place. Unusually, Noreen says even her diary doesn’t divulge. That’s maybe a reflection of the fact that we’ve always talked and communicated, so decisions often just evolve rather than being momentous occasions. And yes, you did read it right; I did say Christmas 1978. We were married just 9 months later (no, not for that reason!) in September 1979. And we’re still together! Scary or what?!

Taking Early Retirement. I took early retirement at the beginning of 2010, just days before my 59th birthday, after 33 years working for the same multinational IT company. I was given the opportunity to go before they totally screwed up the final salary pension plan. Despite not getting a golden goodbye, (indeed scarcely a goodbye at all; more likely “thank God we got rid of him”) it actually worked out well for me. I had originally planned on retiring at around 55, but this got delayed as Equitable Life and then the financial markets hit the buffers. But sometime this year (2011) I would have hit the maximum I could get out of the pension scheme, so I hardly lost out. And am I glad I went: I think another year of the huge IT restructuring project I was running would have killed me; it was too big and with too much management interference. It’s taken me a good year to surface again.

Buying Our House. 30-odd years married. 30-odd years working for the same company. And at the time of writing just weeks away from 30 years in the same house. We moved here in July 1981 from a scruffy rented flat. This is only a small 1930s terraced cottage in an unfashionable area of suburban London, but it is a welcoming house; it just felt right to us from the moment we first saw it. We bought just before the height of the high interest rates (6 months after we bought we were paying 17.5% on our mortgage; and that was normal!). Luckily we slightly under-mortgaged ourselves and were able to ride out the storm, eventually managing to pay off the mortgage some 7 years early! And we’re still here. There has been no imperative to move, except maybe to find more room for our ever-expanding mountain of books. There are only the two of us and two cats; we’ve never had kids (by choice); so why have a bigger house? And, now were both retired, we’ve decided that we’re staying here if we can rather than move. Yes there are other places we’d love to live, but none is as convenient for everything we want to do.

Don’t be like Father. I’m not sure whether this counts as a decision or not, but I’m glad I realised that I didn’t have to be a miserable old git of a Victor Meldrew character like my father. I know my father had many good qualities, not least giving me an intelligent and bohemian upbringing. But he was always negative and one of those people who fights life, rather than embracing it. Totally risk averse (there I do take after him and it has largely paid off for us) he was someone “they” were always out to get, especially financially. He was a Luddite and totally anti almost all technological developments – to him they were all an unnecessary con. I’m not sure quite when I realised I didn’t have to be like him and worry about everything; it probably wasn’t until I was the wrong side of 40. But somehow, once this dawned on me, I learnt, unconsciously, to let things wash over me. I still don’t know how I did it. But it doesn’t half make life easier. I still don’t exactly hedonistically embrace life (I’m not extrovert enough) but at least I’m not now worrying myself into an early grave.

So there it is. How I got to where I am by not making decisions!

freedom of speech, nudism, thoughts

Why is Nudity Shocking?

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What follows is the text of another article I discovered while clearing out the study, first published in BN (the magazine of British Naturism), issue 107, Spring 1991. I trust I will be forgiven for reproducing here the whole of the short article for posterity as otherwise it has doubtless long since sunk from sight. The author posits an interesting evolutionary perspective on nudity and society’s reactions to it. I make no comment on whether the author’s ideas are correct or not; simply that they are interesting.

Why Do They Find Nudity Shocking?

Browsing one day in a second-hand bookshop, I found a copy of Kinsey’s Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female. In a section on sex and nudity, Kinsey remarked The fear of observing the nude human body constitutes one of the most curious phenomena in human history.’ He cited the example that, in strict Judaism, man and wife are forbidden to copulate in the nude. Religious objections have often been raised against nudity in art. And almost all naturists will have encountered the ‘textile’ reaction ‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that!’


Fear or horror of nudity is obviously an extraordinary perversion. How could an animal have been brought to the point of responding with revulsion towards the bodies of members of its own species? In animal evolution, what could be more unnatural? Social behaviour — responses to other members of the same species — has evolved by sexual and natural selection. To mate or to attempt to mate with another species is obviously a response with very low fitness: few or no offspring are produced for the next generation. To be fit in this Darwinian sense, any animal must, at the very least, have evolved favourable responses to the bodies of the opposite sex. A social animal also lives in a group with others and must be able to cooperate with them to survive. So how could animals develop fear or horror of other bodies — the exact opposite of which must have evolved by sexual and natural selection? Nobody would suppose that a peahen or female pheasant might respond with fear or revulsion towards the brilliant plumage of the males: the tail of the peacock, the collar and crest of the golden pheasant exist — they evolved by sexual selection — precisely in order to attract the females. Humans must have evolved as naked animals, just as chimps and gorillas, are naked now.

From an evolutionist’s point of view, therefore, fear or horror of observing nude bodies is indeed most curious. Yet when, for example, a naturist beach is proposed, it is normal for local councillors to react with a ‘shock horror’ response. Of course this may be merely conventional — what is thought to be socially acceptable — for political or religious reasons. Even so, we should still have to explain why it should be thought to be socially acceptable to express horror at nudism. Most people may not really object to nudity, but a vociferous minority does appear to respond with genuine outrage. So we must ask how the normal evolutionary response should have become perverted to fear or even revulsion. I believe the general behavioural phenomenon of imprinting may be the answer.

Many people who follow natural history programmes on the television will have seen film of young goslings swimming behind the ethologist Konrad Lorenz just as if he were their mother. They had been reared by him from hatching; he had been imprinted on them as their parent. Many hand-reared animals show this behaviour. A hand-reared ram will attack humans as sexual rivals. Exposure to other species early in development can override the normal sexual preference for one’s own.

Cross-fostering experiments provide a scientific basis for this explanation. Birds will readily incubate the eggs of other species. Putting the eggs of one species in another’s nest produces chicks reared from hatching by the other species. Herring gulls and lesser black-backed gulls have been cross-fostered in this way. The cross-fostering males were as ready to mate with the fostering species as with their own. Females mated almost exclusively with the fostering species. This is consistent with observations that females are more discriminating in choice of mate and usually initiate pair formation. The females, and to a lesser extent the males, had been imprinted by the fostering species.

Imprinting of different forms of the same species can also occur. The lesser snow goose exists in one of two forms – a white form or a blue-grey form. The white snow goose is pure white except for grey wing tips. The blue snow goose is mostly grey tinged with blue and marked with black. Only the head, foreneck and rear underparts are white. Both forms are found together in the same population and freely interbreed. Snow geese show mating preferences imprinted by their parents’ colour. A snow goose reared by blue parents tends to choose a blue mate; reared by white parents, it would choose a white mate. Offspring of white and blue parents choose white or blue equally.

Imprinting can thus strongly influence sexual preference in animals. It can produce a preference for particular forms and colours, and even preference for completely different species. Mating with the wrong species is unlikely to happen in nature, of course, though it can be produced by experimental manipulation.

Humans are great manipulators of their own appearance, particularly in their variety of dress. Even naked, they manipulate their appearance to some extent – by shaving or dieting or exercise for example. Fashionable dress or body form might easily become imprinted on babies as the standard human type. This might explain periods of conservatism in dress, especially men’s dress if females are responsible for the final choice of mating. Great variety in dress would presumably break down the previous effects on imprinting, just as snow geese show no preference if one parent is white and the other is blue.

If a baby only ever sees its parents clothed, it will have the clothed human form imprinted upon it. To such a child, when it grows up, being clothed is how humans ‘should’ look. An aversion to nudity will have thus been imprinted. This could be further reinforced if the parents themselves had also been imprinted. Some parents react with shock and horror if they are encountered naked by their children. A parent’s reactions affect children strongly, and presumably will imprint a horror of being observed nude as well as a horror of observing nudity.

If fear or horror of nudity is indeed a product of imprinting, this would explain its persistent as ‘one of the most curious phenomena in human history’. Parents who may have avoided nudity on account of some religious prohibition, for example, will pass on an imprinted fear or horror of nudity to their children. This now more deep-seated fear will be passed on in turn and thus perpetuated over many generations. It is like the passing on of a gene from parents to offspring; yet it is non-genetic — an example of the cultural transmission of an highly aberrant behaviour; and it affects all the offspring, not just those who happen to receive a gene.

Does this theory have practical applications? The first is obvious: get ’em young — from birth. Babies who have always seen their parents naked may be expected to become imprinted with nudity as a normal human form. Perhaps they will then be less likely to become the ‘disappearing teenagers’ we hear about in BN. The second is, don’t bother to argue with those who have a deep-seated emotional bias against naturism. But local councillors, whose opposition is merely conventional and whose main concern is re-election, may be more amenable, particularly to arguments based on surveys of constituents; what their c
onstituents want, they can usually be persuaded to want too!

Peter O’Donald
Fellow and Director of Studies in Biology
Emmanuel College
Cambridge

people, personal, sexuality, thoughts

Of Men and Boys

In the still ongoing process of clearing out the toot from the study the other day I came across an article from 1989 (Carol Lee, “How We Hurt Our Sons”, Sunday Times Magazine, 22 October 1989, 54-58) in which the author maintains that we are continuing to screw up our boys by not allowing them to understand and express the full range of their emotions, fears, during adolescence.

In re-reading the article I realised the author is right. I realised that I too had been blighted by this – despite having relatively bohemian and enlightened parents. That what Carol Lee was saying was true in the 1980s. And it is still largely true today.

Moreover because this is important (and because Times newspapers are now behind a paywall) here are a few salient extracts of what was for a Sunday magazine article well written, thoughtful and useful.

Time and again when working in schools … I have come across boys who go through agonies … They suffer particular pain because of a strong sense of being alone in whatever they’re feeling. Unlike girls, they are not encouraged to share their problems and more intimate fears. They think they will be laughed at if they show weakness. This leaves them fewer outlets for discovering that their particular “shame” is shared by most of us, and is of human rather than monstrous proportions … The strongest impression they gave was a sense of isolation, guilt and anxiety. Feeling isolated and afraid is a painful experience at any age. It can be devastating during adolescence.

[…]

The loss of “normality” is experienced by both girls and boys as they leave childhood for the difficulties of puberty. Both sexes suffer the loss of the intimate, gaily-coloured world of their primary schools with their own familiar teacher, and classrooms decorated with their own pictures. This Garden of Eden is suddenly replaced at the age of 11 with a large secondary school which is frightening for many children. Then, at the same time as nice, cosy “Miss” or friendly “Sir” has been replaced by a bewildering stream of different subject teachers, children’s bodies suddenly start becoming hostile territory, too. This affects boys more than it does girls … Girls are given positive images of womanhood: menstruation is no longer a “curse” and libraries contain an array of books on young women’s health, rights, body-images and on issues like self-assertion. They do not seem to have similar material for young men.

[…]

Girls are taught to be articulate, to express emotions like anger and to be proud of being female. They are no longer wrapped in cotton wool. Boys are still brought up to be tough … Notions of maleness have changed considerably in the past two decades, but the bringing up of boys has not kept pace. There is little in the way of a rite … of passage which takes them from childhood to the increasingly complex business of being a man.

[…]

[P]uberty for boys is not seen as a positive experience, but a negative one. Mothers withdraw from boys because they are afraid of making cissies of their sons, and also because they are uncertain how to treat developing male sexuality … The confusion is experienced by boys, too. Their bodies are now prone to hydraulic uncertainties called erections. Boys are fearful in case unwanted erections happen in front of – or because of – mothers. Mothers, aunts and other concerned females have the same problem. So boys suddenly find themselves pushed out in the cold.

[…]

When given the chance to discuss such issues … teenage boys will say how abandoned, neglected and anxious they feel. They will tell you that their mothers avoid them “like the plague” and that their fathers don’t talk to them anyway. They will also express envy at the way girls are more mature and self-sufficient than boys of the same age.

[…]

A boy’s journey from childhood into manhood is dictated by his ability to be unemotional, to bear pain and also to die for his country … Why should they be any less hurt when their first romance ends? Do we want them to be human or inhuman? … Man is no longer a slayer of dragons or a knight in shining armour. But this change in attitude has left a vacuum in the condition of being male.

[…]

We hurt boys by believing they are ‘alien’. We deny them their ability to nurture. That’s why they end up different, because we believe they are, and make them so. And fathers still don’t nurture their sons in the way women do their daughters.

[…]

[B]etter adjustment is achieved by allowing boys a full range of emotions instead of the traditional “stiff upper lip”. What goes wrong is that boys are not invited, as girls are, to be sensitive, caring and considerate.

[…]

Society praises youth for the way it flings itself into life, romantically, impetuously, protected; yet this same society offers youth no room for spontaneity, for improvisation or sincerity, for relationships that are irrational or non-utilitarian, either in its social structure or in its everyday routine.

If anyone out there especially wants a copy of the full article, then ask me nicely and I’ll send you a PDF.

quotes, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

This week we seem to be majoring on the beauty of love and life …

As long as you have tits and a tongue you’ll never get lost.
[HyperSexualGirl at Love and Lust]

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is worth a month’s study of books.
[Chinese Proverb]

The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.
[Matthew Arnold]

For every girl who is tired of acting weak when she is strong,
there is a boy tired of appearing strong when he feels vulnerable.
For every boy who is burdened with the constant expectation of knowing everything,
there is a girl tired of people not trusting her intelligence
For every girl who is tired of being called over-sensitive,
there is a boy who fears to be gentle, to weep.
For every boy for whom competition is the only way to prove his masculinity,
there is a girl who is called unfeminine when she competes.
For every girl who throws out her e-z-bake oven,
there is a boy who wishes to find one.
For every boy struggling not to let advertising dictate his desires,
there is a girl facing the ad industry’s attacks on her self-esteem.
For every girl who takes a step toward her liberation,
there is a boy who finds the way to freedom a little easier.
[Unknown]

Beauty is a very valuable thing; perhaps it is the most valuable thing in life; but the power to express emotion so that it shall communicate itself intact and exactly is almost more valuable.
[Ford Madox Ford]

Any time not spent on love is wasted.
[Torquato Tasso]

You may not be her first, her last, or her only, she loved before she may love again,
but if she loves you now, what else matters?
She’s not perfect – you aren’t either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can.
She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break – her heart.
So don’t hurt her, don’t change her, don’t analyze and don’t expect more than she can give.
Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she’s not there.
[Bob Marley]

amusements, beliefs, current affairs, medical, personal, science, thoughts

Works of the Devil

Katyboo recently listed a number of things she considers the works of the Devil. And naturally this got me thinking, the way such things do. So here are a few more things which the Devil has sent as a pestilence upon us.

  • Top of the list has to be RELIGION. Now look all you religious people, you’re all Devil worshippers! If you didn’t believe in the Devil you wouldn’t need God to save you from him.
  • And then comes politics. Need I say more when one looks at workers of Devil like Tony B Liar and Gordon Brown.
  • Fast food: especially McDonalds and KFC (or as it’s know in this house Kentucky Fried Food Poisoning). As an adjunct we must include ready meals, and indeed all False Food.
  • Then there is a collection of actual food stuffs, which includes Egg Custard (yeuch!) and Jellied Eels (double yeuch!) and tinned sweetcorn. I love eel, but jellied, no, disgusting – salty and slimy.
  • And a few beverages, especially Pernod and Absinthe which are just vile. They even look like the works of the Devil as well as tasting disgusting.

What else should one add?

  • Hermetically sealed clam-shell packaging. Well you could make that all plastic packaging.
  • Night clothes, especially pyjamas. Haven’t worn anything in bed since I was a student apart from the odd occasions I’ve been in hospital. It’s just so uncomfortable.
  • Braces (suspenders to you Americans). Something else that’s vilely uncomfortable and looks stupid – if you need braces your trousers don’t fit properly.
  • And while we’re on clothes, there’s fashion. Pretentious and a waste of time and money.
  • Girls wearing far too much make-up (so that’s most of them!). Why do they need to look as if they’ve strayed a 2mm thick skin of plastic on their faces?
  • Facial pubic beards and pudenda (on both sexes) without them.
  • Ballroom Dancing. I refused to have anything to do with it as a youngster, despite my parents’ prediction I would be a social outcast. So I’m a social outcast: it’s probably for the best!
  • Maggots. Anything that smells nasty and wriggles. No more to say really!
  • Cinema and films. I just ask “Why?”. What is the point?
  • And finally there are a few people including Lord Winston (I remain convinced that IVF is the Devil’s work), Richard Dawkins (who is just as bigoted as the believers he objects to) plus most of the twats that fill our TV screens.

Oh, you’d better add daytime TV too!

Interesting. Reading back over that list it is very much a reflection of our theory about False Life. Worrying!

Image from 123RF Stock Photos.

sexuality, thoughts

Healthy Sexual Development

It is important that we all develop our sexuality and our attitudes to sexuality in healthy ways. But it seems this ain’t easy especially as this is a many-sided coin. However at last a diverse group of experts have codified what healthy sexual development means. There’s a summary with commentary/interpretation over at Scarleteen.

I commend the reading of this summary to all parents – and indeed anyone involved with the development of children.

Like many of these things it is little more than common sense. It is thus something all good and thinking parents will intuitively know. Nevertheless it is useful and important it is all brought together as a coherent whole especially as large swathes of it often get swamped by the excesses of both our tabloid and religious sub-cultures.

As the author of the summary observes, this is “an excellent framework for working towards cultures which are sexually healthier than most are and have been”.