Category Archives: thoughts

environment, natural history, thoughts

Alfred Hitchcock is Missing

The Birds. Or rather the lack of the birds.

There’s something very odd going on near me. Maybe elsewhere too.

In the last couple of weeks almost every bird has disappeared.

We used to have several dozen feral pigeons around – I not infrequently count upwards of 20 at a time sitting on my neighbour’s roof. Yesterday I counted a grand total of four, and that’s the most for several weeks.

Similarly we used to have dozens of house sparrows. A few week ago they were around. In the last couple of weeks no more than a handful. And there isn’t the usual incessant chirping from the hedges.

Starlings? Not one. Wood pigeon? We usually have two pairs around; but at present just a single scruffy bird. And almost nothing else which uses the gardens.

Am I sure? Yes, because I contribute (every week) to the BTO’s Garden BirdWatch project, so I regularly count and log the local birds.

Now we know that the sparrow population crashed a few years ago, but it had generally recovered hereabouts. However I have seen an article from BTO that sparrows are susceptible to a form of malaria (the same genus as the malaria parasite which affects us, just a different species), and that could be one factor in their decline.

Also we know that once the breeding season is over, birds moult and grow new feathers, during which time they’re more vulnerable so they tend to hide up. All of them? And all species? Suddenly? At precisely the same time? That doesn’t make sense to me.

On top of that I haven’t seen a squirrel in weeks, when we normally have one around fairly constantly. And the local cat population (other than ours) are also conspicuously absent.

The cats, I can understand. It’s been either hot or wet recently, so they’ll likely be hiding up somewhere cool, dry and shady. I can’t blame them! But no squirrels? That’s unusual.

Now I have a hunch, which could of course be totally wrong. I just wonder if some id.10.t has been throwing rat poison around? That would take out the rats, and the squirrels. Likely the sparrows and pigeons too as they’re grain eaters and will be attracted to the rat bait. It could also take out the odd cat if it eats a poisoned rat or mouse.

It’s a murder mystery, without any bodies. But then I wouldn’t necessarily expect to find bodies. I’m mystified.

I guess I just have to watch and wait to see if the birds come back in the coming weeks.

It’s a puzzle.

current affairs, thoughts

They Don’t Get It

I’ve been working up to writing this for some while; today I’ve been pushed over the edge.

So when will MPs, and others, wake up?

While I agree with Lord Heseltine that imposing a No-Deal Brexit is an attack (“intolerable” was the adjective he used) on democracy, Parliament cannot block No-Deal just by saying they don’t want it – in fact they did this months ago. And Caroline Lucas calling for an emergency female cabinet to block No-Deal, is, frankly, pissing into the wind.

My understanding (which may not be complete) is that there are only two ways in which Parliament can prevent a No-Deal Brexit:

(1) By passing a motion agreeing to, and instructing the executive to ratify, the deal which is currently on the table.

or

(2) By passing a motion instructing the executive to cancel the Article 50 declaration.

Even so they could be ignored, but at the cost of an even bigger constitutional crisis.

The clock is ticking inexorably towards 31 October. Parliament and the Executive have effectively run out of time to do anything. So unless the Government come up with something radically new and (as a minimum) get the EU to agree to a further postponement of the leave date (all very unlikely in my estimation), then the UK will crash out of the EU on 31 October – no deal, no backstop, a hard border with Ireland, no transition period, no proper preparation, no international trade for months … and no international standing because having faffed around at nothing for three years who would trust us?

All of that can be averted by Parliament only by one of the above two actions. They can talk all they like, but they’re powerless to stop No-Deal otherwise.

When will they wake up?

Gawdelpus!

beliefs, current affairs, personal, thoughts

On Protest

A few days ago one of our favourite Zen masters, Brad Warner, wrote a blog post under the title What You Don’t Speak Out Against You Co-sign? He was responding to a comment that “what you don’t speak out against you co-sign” and taking him to task for not openly campaigning against Donald Trump and all that he stands for. Needless to say Brad disagreed, as I do too.

Let’s start off being clear. “What you don’t speak out against you co-sign” means “If you don’t speak out against something then you are supporting, aiding, facilitating, even encouraging it”.

As Brad says, this is a very common way of thinking. It goes along with the “if good men do nothing …” trope. But it isn’t true and it is (designed to be) divisive and create factions. It is nothing short of moral blackmail.

Many people see their target as some variant of evil. So if you don’t campaign, demonstrate or protest against Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Brexit, pervasive CCTV, fossil fuels, or whatever, then you condone them and you are the work of the Devil. Not so.

In Brad’s words:

If someone characterizes you as evil, do you want to be friends with them? Do you want to support the things they support? Do you want to listen to their reasons for calling you evil? Or are you more likely to say, “Well screw you!” and deliberately support whatever it is they’re against?
… …
The stance that [such people] are taking will only drive more people to support the [cause] they hate.

So their efforts become a self-denying ordinance.

Also implicit in this is (a) that there is one right and one wrong answer, and (b) that there is only one way to protest. Some must choose to refrain from joining in with the noise everyone else is making. Protesting noisily is seldom effective. In general, protests and petitions work only to reinforce the determination to do whatever is being protested against. They may convince those who are already of like mind to join your bandwagon, but to many, like me, they are annoying and pointless – even if I agree with the sentiments.

Don’t get me wrong. I object just as strongly to the same things (see list above) as anyone else. But I choose not be be mouthy about it or jump on bandwagons. Like Brad I am not skilled in political rhetoric, and whatever I might wish to say has already been said a thousand times over by those more skilled (and likely more knowledgeable) than me. So I would largely be wasting my breath.

Everything goes through cycles and fashions; always has, always will. Ultimately “we are where we are” and “what will happen will happen” – although by “right action” we can indeed hope to affect the outcomes. But what is “right action” for you may not be so for me.

Essentially it doesn’t matter what I say. Brexit will happen or it won’t happen. North Korea will blow us all sky high, or it won’t. Rinse and repeat, with your cause du jour.

That’s not to say that we shouldn’t speak out about things we fundamentally disagree with, but there won’t be thousands not speaking out because I keep quiet: there is already plenty of discussion and debate. Your mileage may vary.

Like Brad, I believe there is a better way, at least for me. First of all staying silent (or maybe just quieter) helps protect my sanity – something which is precarious enough for most of us at the best of times. The Dalai Lama always talks about compassion, and self-care is only having compassion for oneself. Without self-compassion and self-care you are not able, and not there, to show compassion for others.

Keeping silent has other benefits too. It provides quiet space where other topics, perhaps of more immediate personal importance or urgency, can be discussed. And, when appropriate, it also allows controversialists and facilitators (as I like to think I am) help others see the wood for the trees and take an appropriately thoughtful and nuanced approach, rather than jumping on some blinkered, raucous bandwagon.

There’s more than one way to stop the crocodile running off with the sausages.

For another perspective on this see Silent Protests Are Still Protests.

amusements, arts, memes, personal, pleasures, thoughts

100 Days of Haiku

2 Comments

As I have nothing else to do (joke!), and wanting to add something to my woeful practice of mindfulness, I have set myself a little challenge:

To write at least one haiku a day for 100 consecutive days.

What are haiku? Haiku is a Japanese verse in three lines with 5, 7 and 5 syllables respectively. Traditionally haiku are mood poems and don’t use any metaphors or similes; however beginners, like me, are usually start with just the restriction of the number of lines and syllables. There are many online collections of haiku, for example here, including those of the Japanese master Matsuo Basho.

I started this challenge last Monday, so I’m now seven days in and it is time to record the first results. In total I have written 16 haiku in the seven days – some good, many not so good. Here is one from each day showing a variety of ideas and subjects.

Monday 1 July
Cicadas singing
Long through sultry summer nights.
Thunder before dawn.

Tuesday 2 July
Sunshine streaming in
windows open wide for air.
Why such depression?

Wednesday 3 July
Hickory dickory dog,
rough enough through cough, lough and chough.
Cork works porky quark.

Thursday 4 July
Useful man, Paddy:
Build, fix, repair, recycle.
Moonshine of the bog.

Friday 5 July
Wispy cirrus cloud
Against Dutchman trouser blue.
Metal bird glides by.

Saturday 6 July
Sticky, sticky day
Energy drained away.
Starry, starry night.

Sunday 7 July
Seven round a table;
Friends’ dinner party makes mirth.
Mountainous paella.

Well no-one said that haiku had to make sense – at least not modern haiku; the traditional style seems more rigid!

I’m not going to post an offering every day, as some proponents of 100 day challenges do, but I shall attempt to post at least weekly updates. And I’m logging all the output, whether posted here or not, so who knows what might happen at the end.

beliefs, thoughts

Devil Worship

It is well known hereabouts that I am non-croyant, so when the God Botherers rang the doorbell the other day my thought processes were stimulated.

It occurred to me that believers in God(s) are fundamentally not just that. It is deeper. They are actually Devil worshippers.

“How so?” you ask. Well to me it is perfectly simple. If they didn’t believe in the Devil and revere his powers, they wouldn’t need God to save them from him.

This isn’t just Christians. It applies to all (major) religions as, in one form or another, all have a God(s) and all have a Devil figure – although they may not state it so explicitly. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism (I think) and some schools of Buddhism (eg. Tibetan Buddhism) are all the same – all have God(s) and all have a Devil in some form – as do ancient “sun worshipping” religions and mythologies

[I don’t claim to know enough about either Taoism or Shinto to know if they are also included. The “purer” forms of Buddhism (eg. Zen) are excluded as they don’t have God(s) and are more of a philosophical way of life and personal development than a belief system.]

What I don’t understand is why people need to believe in either God(s) or the Devil. It is much easier without both.

So if you want a way to really piss off the next set of God Botherers who come calling, just remind them they’re Devil Worshippers and to “get thee hence”.

current affairs, history, thoughts, topographical

Notre Dame de Paris

Devastating though it is, Vulcan failed in his mission to reduce Notre Dame de Paris to a pile of ash and rubble. I enjoy watching disasters like this, and plane crashes, not from a a sense of morbid curiosity but from a forensic and analytical perspective; I’m curious about the how, why, what was the cause, and what next.

While one hates to see any medieval, historic, and important building – let alone a church – reduced as it has been, it is equally irritating to see Vulcan not finish the job! The Brigade des sapeurs-pompiers de Paris did an heroic job, against all the odds, and won. But let’s be honest, this fire is a grand calamity for the cathedral, for France, and for the French. And it is a truly sorry sight.

It could easily have been so much worse. As one Parisian official has said there was a critical 15-30 minutes, which I presume is referring to the time when the flames reached the NW and SW towers but was contained before it took hold there. If either tower had gone up in flames all bets were off as those towers contain the bells which would almost certainly have fallen, destroying masonry and probably bringing down a large amount of the stone structure if only through a domino effect.

The French government has committed to rebuild the cathedral and somewhere around €1bn of private money has already been pledged to help finance this. Such is the understandable, predictable, knee-jerk reaction. But should Notre Dame be rebuilt? I suggest that maybe it shouldn’t – and not just because of the horrendous cost.

Clearly the remaining structure has to be made safe. After that why not conserve what remains to preserve the medieval splendour. Then do something modern (but, of course this being France, tasteful) which will commemorate the fire as a remarkable event in the cathedral’s history and the heroic efforts of les pompiers. Why not install a transparent (glass, probably) roof so that light (the light of God?) continues to shine through the holes in the stone vaulting emphasising what very nearly didn’t survive. After all the photographic record, and existing skills, are so good that there is little to be gained from remaking the lost parts. Well at least that’s what I would be tempted to do.

I’ve been to Notre Dame twice, and I didn’t like it. It didn’t just leave me cold, I had a feeling of the sinister, even evil, there – and that’s unusual for me in a church (despite my lack of belief). So from an totally personal perspective I would not have been too distraught had the whole building been destroyed. But that’s not to be (at least yet) and a major rebuild of some form will happen. Which is probably as it should be.

current affairs, history, thoughts

Historical Precedent?

I’ve been thinking recently about the UK’s current political mess. I don’t pretend that what follows is necessarily new or entirely original – I’ve certainly seen parts of it elsewhere, see for instance here and here – but I do find it illuminating as well as rather worrying.

It seems to me that the situation we’re in at the moment is a very nice combination of Henry VIII and Charles I. Bear with me …

First there was Henry VIII telling he Pope for f*** off (1532-4), for no reason other than his own vanity; and being excommunicated for his pains (1535). He also managed to ensure he was able to amend, or institute, any law he chose, at any time, with never-ending powers (effectively ignoring Magna Carta).

A hundred years later we have Charles I who thought he could rule by divine right, while ignoring and/or riding roughshod over Parliament. But Parliament was having none of it, thus leading to the Civil War and Interregnum of 1642-1660. Parliament, of course, won. When the Commonwealth fell apart (as such chaos so often does), the Restoration in 1660 brought a country with a more robust form of parliamentary government.

This seems to me to be more than a little like where we are at the moment.

We have a government (executive) who are basically telling the EU to f*** off, with exactly the reaction one would expect from an EU who hold all the cards. The executive are granting themselves Henry VIII powers – the ability to amend large swathes of legislation, as they choose, with no reference to Parliament. And they’re attempting to side-line and/or bully Parliament. Yet again Parliament is having none of it (despite not knowing what they do want) and is fighting back.

Ultimately I suspect Parliament will win (possibly with a little help from the Judiciary), but not before there’s been huge damage inflicted on the country as a whole. Eventually (in maybe 10 or 20 years) the country will hopefully emerge with strengthened parliamentary government and a fully codified and written constitution, although perhaps at the expense of a break-up of the federation.

But it will take many decades for the country to recover economic prosperity, and then only if the plunge into being an under-developed third-world country can be avoided. However I’ll not be here to see it.

It isn’t going to be pretty, or comfortable.

May your god go with you.

beliefs, thoughts

Ten Commandments for Atheists

I came across this the other day. It’s a few years old but still a worthwhile humanist take on the dreary Christian meme.

These are the ten winning beliefs of the Rethink Prize, a crowdsourcing competition to rethink the Ten Commandments. The contest drew more than 2,800 submissions from across the globe with the winners being selected by a panel of judges.

  1. Be open-minded and be willing to alter your beliefs with new evidence.
  2. Strive to understand what is most likely to be true, not to believe what you wish to be true.
  3. The scientific method is the most reliable way of understanding the natural world.
  4. Every person has the right to control of their body.
  5. God is not necessary to be a good person or to live a full and meaningful life.
  6. Be mindful of the consequences of all your actions and recognize that you must take responsibility for them.
  7. Treat others as you would want them to treat you, and can reasonably expect them to want to be treated. Think about their perspective.
  8. We have the responsibility to consider others, including future generations.
  9. There is no one right way to live.
  10. Leave the world a better place than you found it.
arts, freedom of speech, thoughts

Art, Nicety and the Patriarchy

Over recent months there has been a certain amount of fuss over the appearance (or not) of art which is deemed inappropriate for public spaces (metro systems and the like) but which is acceptable in a museum context.

Elle Hunt’s article …

Repulsive to children and adults: how explicit should public art get?
Censorship in metro stations and other public places reveal limits
to how far we’re prepared to be challenged by art

… was printed in the Guardian on 8 October and looks at some of the recent controversies including the refusal of advertising regulators in Germany, US and UK to allow explicit, uncensored images by Schiele, and the brouhaha in Stockholm over images by Liv Strömquist depicting menstruation on their metro (below). To this I would add Carolina Falkholt’s giant penis mural in New York.

I’m sorry guys, I don’t get it. There really should not be a problem.

  1. It’s art, and art is supposed to reflect life.
  2. Even if it isn’t art, it still reflects life – and life that we all know exists.
  3. I know, it pollutes children’s minds. Pah! That’s about as likely as me being Chinese. Just as they do nudity, children take these things in their stride unless they’ve been taught not to. Children know about these things and they’re curious; if they don’t know then they need to learn, and/or have an explanation. That way they become well adjusted adults.
  4. As I keep saying, sex, bodily functions, anatomy, nudity etc. need to be normalised for the good of our health – mental and physical. They do not need marginalising and criminalising.
  5. Isn’t the ability to display such images all part of freedom of speech?
  6. Obscenity, pornography etc. exist only in the mind of the beholder. There is no external arbiter. It’s down to you, and what you were brain-washed into believing.
  7. Why do public institutions (like metro companies) think they can be the arbiters of what’s appropriate? If some people get upset, so what? There are many things I find distasteful from dog shit to rococo architecture, but I’m not about to have a hissy fit if there’s a poster of one on my local bus shelter; nor would I expect it to have been censored – I may not like it, but that’s my problem not yours. No-one is responsible for another’s thoughts, emotions or beliefs. We have to trust people to make up their own minds and look after their own emotions – ie. treat them as adults.

But let me go one step further. Is all this concern that people might get upset not all part of the patriarchy controlling people and keeping them in their place so the great, the good, the white and the male remain in their dominant positions?

It’s long overdue that everyone woke up and realised there was coffee brewing; lots of flavours of coffee too!

beliefs, personal, thoughts

On (not) Being Angry

There’s an important post by Sensei Alex Kakuyo over on the Same Old Zen blog about approaches to anger and angry people under the headline Buddhism and Professionally Angry People.

It’s important because although Kakuyo approaches it from a Buddhist standpoint it is applicable to all of us. For me the key messages are:

I have a choice. I can be angry, pissed off, and exhausted for my entire life, or I can practice acceptance.

… acceptance is not surrender. Rather, it’s a recognition that there is only so much that I can do with one body, in one lifetime. It’s an understanding that life is filled with suffering, and the only thing I can control is how I react to it.

So, I do what I can within the confines of my own life, and I accept that other people will make other choices. I accept that I may not like those choices …

… professionally angry people get riled up over things they can’t control. They cause suffering for themselves, they cause suffering for others, and the world keeps turning exactly as it did before.

… “Is there direct action that I can take to solve this problem?” If there is something that I can do that will actually solve the problem or alleviate my part in the ill affects, then I do it.

It isn’t always easy, indeed it can be extremely hard, and I know I fail at this more often than not. But it is something I try to live by. There’s only so much one can do and it is necessary to pick one’s fights. There’s no point worrying about things you have no control over; they have to be allowed to wash over you.