Good evening.
If you start talking about atheism again, I shall walk off this site and never come back.
OK. I was checking out YouTube again the other day ....
And don't knock that wonderful Mitt Romney again either. By the time he's been in office for a year there will be so many jobs that nobody will ever need be unemployed again!
That quick, eh? I hope people like burgers, there' ll be plenty of people flipping them by the sounds of it.
Anyway I came across this site where this Aussie was claiming that the Internet would see the end of atheism ....
LOOK I WARNED YOU!!!!
OK, Tschüss! Hope you enjoy your time working at Burger King or Wendy's or wharrever.
Anyway - for anyone still listening - this Aussie was claiming that atheism would die and Christianity would boom, as word would get around about all the miracle cures out there. People who would have some serious problem that their doctors had written off would either pray like crazy to God, or go and see a faith healer, or even a run-of-the-mill priest and be cured! And this would be all down to belief, science will have been proved phoney, and religion will have won.
(Stop laughing please - yes, I know that it is hysterically funny, but even so - you'll set me off in a minute!).
For Americans, I am told this is not new. Every so often someone gets cured like that on some or other TV channel - at least that I have been led to believe. It couldn't possibly be that the person was never sick in the first place, and the "healer" is a charlatan, could it? Hey, 5 minutes ago I had Alzheimer's disease, and now I feel like a 20-year-old ....
The famed magician and sceptic, James Randi, has checked out a number of these claims and found them all to be phoney. As a magician, he knows more about illusions than most, and he takes his art seriously.
And if the "healer" were so good, wouldn't we know about these people far better? They would never get any peace! Medical science has come a very long way even in my lifetime, but they are still searching for a lot of cures to a lot of significant issues. If my wife ever got breast cancer, for example, I would be devastated.
The US is, of course, not the only place where these miracles cures are "practised". Some years ago I saw the movie "Man in the Moon" starring Jim Carrey. A film about the American comedian, Andy Kaufmann. Brilliant film, mainly drawn from reality. At the end, Andy was ill with some form of cancer and went to the Philippines as some faith healer there could evidently cure him - he didn't. (Readers in the Philippines, I am not knocking your country or your people - just one or two malicious individuals!).
Then if you go to Paris some time (and you can speak French!), pick up one of the free magazines that you can find at stalls around the city - Paris Paname if they still produce it, for example. At the back you find a load of adverts from African practitioners who will promise either to rid you of your financial difficulties, or bring back your lost lover, or maybe even cure some illness that you have. Theoretically there is a money-back guarantee!
Believe it if you must.
I don't particularly trust doctors, but if they have decided that there is no cure, they must have their reasons. Eventually a second opinion is the best choice. A faith healer? A priest? A witch doctor even? Sorry my lack of belief that they can cure you does not come down to my religious scepticism. It comes down to my pragmatic nature, and my understanding that charlatans always know how to prey upon people's gullibility.
Saturday, 30 June 2012
Friday, 29 June 2012
Italians
OK, back to my favourite game.
I will give you a word, you will be give me the stereotypes attached to it.
Today's word: "Italians".
Excitable.
Disorganised.
Couldn't run an economy if they tried.
Criminal (Mafia, Camorra usw).....
Expert tax dodgers.
HANG ON - anything positive?
Well they all eat spaghetti and pizza (that's positive?).
Fashion (they produce great fashion in Milan and hold great fashion shows and they are disorganised? Logic?).
Catholic (as an atheist I wonder whether that is a compliment, but at least it is not insulting).
If you live in Germany the chances are you have run into someone who is Italian or whose parents or grandparents came from Italy. Raise the often thorny subject of immigration here and people often automatically assume the word "Muslim" should go in front of it. Mistakenly. After Turks, Italians (principally but not always Catholics) make up the second largest immigrant group here. Maybe second or third generation - people whose parents or grandparents came to work in the Rhine-Ruhr during the boom years of the economy under Adenauer and Erhard, or came to Munich - in many ways a favourite city for them (realise incidentally that Munich in Italian is Monaco, which sounds very Mediterranean!).
A lot of Germans apparently have a lot of time for Italy, despite the occasional frustrations caused by the culture clash. I knew a lady in Hamburg back in the 1990s whose words to describe Italy and Italians were none of the above stereotypes (though she had a fondness for the best of Italian cuisine). Her chosen words? Renaissance, Michelangelo, La Scala, Florence, Raphael - you get the message? Italian culture is a major interest for many, it reflects, for all the complex historical background, what is worthwhile and positive about the country.
There are other frustrations that Germans face with Italians as we found out last night - namely Germany's national football (North American =soccer) team - no matter how good a team - can never seem to beat Italy when it matters (the same seems to happen with German club teams, Bayern München always seem to fall over when playing either of the Milan giants - AC or Inter). Maybe there is too high a level of respect in this area as well, overmuch as we saw again last night!
Meanwhile back to the stereotypes. In my IT days (which I still hope against hope are not over - look at the talent you are missing!), while working on international projects I often had to deal with the Italian business or IT personnel involved. Serious, intelligent, sometimes taciturn individuals who would not know what excitable meant, but who definitely understood organisation.
Their problems running an economy are well documented, but I wonder if that is much worse than anywhere else. Yes, you can make the mistake of picking a Berlusconi, several times, but is that any worse than the British picking the dreadful Margaret Thatcher three times, or the Americans picking the equally awful GWB twice. Pick a pragmatist like Lamberto Dini, where would Italy be now?
And as for crime, there was the infamous bloodletting, in Duisburg of all places, between elements of the Camorra a few years ago. But some brave judicial officials have tried to bring these gangs to justice and are slowly getting there.
Feeling hungry already. A lightweight vegetarian pizza would actually go down very well at the moment - with a glass or two (no more than two!) of Chianti! So there are many positive things that the Italians have brought us and to be enjoyed. Alla salute!
I will give you a word, you will be give me the stereotypes attached to it.
Today's word: "Italians".
Excitable.
Disorganised.
Couldn't run an economy if they tried.
Criminal (Mafia, Camorra usw).....
Expert tax dodgers.
HANG ON - anything positive?
Well they all eat spaghetti and pizza (that's positive?).
Fashion (they produce great fashion in Milan and hold great fashion shows and they are disorganised? Logic?).
Catholic (as an atheist I wonder whether that is a compliment, but at least it is not insulting).
If you live in Germany the chances are you have run into someone who is Italian or whose parents or grandparents came from Italy. Raise the often thorny subject of immigration here and people often automatically assume the word "Muslim" should go in front of it. Mistakenly. After Turks, Italians (principally but not always Catholics) make up the second largest immigrant group here. Maybe second or third generation - people whose parents or grandparents came to work in the Rhine-Ruhr during the boom years of the economy under Adenauer and Erhard, or came to Munich - in many ways a favourite city for them (realise incidentally that Munich in Italian is Monaco, which sounds very Mediterranean!).
A lot of Germans apparently have a lot of time for Italy, despite the occasional frustrations caused by the culture clash. I knew a lady in Hamburg back in the 1990s whose words to describe Italy and Italians were none of the above stereotypes (though she had a fondness for the best of Italian cuisine). Her chosen words? Renaissance, Michelangelo, La Scala, Florence, Raphael - you get the message? Italian culture is a major interest for many, it reflects, for all the complex historical background, what is worthwhile and positive about the country.
There are other frustrations that Germans face with Italians as we found out last night - namely Germany's national football (North American =soccer) team - no matter how good a team - can never seem to beat Italy when it matters (the same seems to happen with German club teams, Bayern München always seem to fall over when playing either of the Milan giants - AC or Inter). Maybe there is too high a level of respect in this area as well, overmuch as we saw again last night!
Meanwhile back to the stereotypes. In my IT days (which I still hope against hope are not over - look at the talent you are missing!), while working on international projects I often had to deal with the Italian business or IT personnel involved. Serious, intelligent, sometimes taciturn individuals who would not know what excitable meant, but who definitely understood organisation.
Their problems running an economy are well documented, but I wonder if that is much worse than anywhere else. Yes, you can make the mistake of picking a Berlusconi, several times, but is that any worse than the British picking the dreadful Margaret Thatcher three times, or the Americans picking the equally awful GWB twice. Pick a pragmatist like Lamberto Dini, where would Italy be now?
And as for crime, there was the infamous bloodletting, in Duisburg of all places, between elements of the Camorra a few years ago. But some brave judicial officials have tried to bring these gangs to justice and are slowly getting there.
Feeling hungry already. A lightweight vegetarian pizza would actually go down very well at the moment - with a glass or two (no more than two!) of Chianti! So there are many positive things that the Italians have brought us and to be enjoyed. Alla salute!
Thursday, 28 June 2012
European economics - a quick quiz
Answers below:
1. Which country currently has a lower debt to GDP ratio? Spain or Germany?
2. Which country has a lower rate of inflation - Greece or Germany?
3. Greece has the highest debt to GDP ratio in Europe, but which of the world's 5 leading economies has a higher rate still?
4. The Euro came into full existence on January 1st, 2002. Which of the following currencies has gained most against the other two since - the Euro, the US Dollar or the British Pound?
Answers - as of today (June 28th, 2012 - if answering this in the future, check again on the Web).
1. Spain - 68.5% against 81% (figure courtesy of Focus magazine)
2. Greece - 1.5% against 2% (figure courtesy of Focus magazine)
3. Japan - somewhere in the region of 233% as of February 15th, 2012 - see
http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/15/10408834-japan-tops-list-of-countries-deepest-in-debt?lite
4. The Euro.
On 1/1/2002, the EUR was worth $0.88, today it is worth $1.24
On 1/1/2002, the GBP was worth €1.62, today it is worth €1.25
NB -- since first producing this piece I have remembered that EUR/USD was the original 1999 figure ($1.17). I have since checked and found the correct figure - sorry for the mistake, NOT THAT IT CHANGES THE ANSWER!
1. Which country currently has a lower debt to GDP ratio? Spain or Germany?
2. Which country has a lower rate of inflation - Greece or Germany?
3. Greece has the highest debt to GDP ratio in Europe, but which of the world's 5 leading economies has a higher rate still?
4. The Euro came into full existence on January 1st, 2002. Which of the following currencies has gained most against the other two since - the Euro, the US Dollar or the British Pound?
Answers - as of today (June 28th, 2012 - if answering this in the future, check again on the Web).
1. Spain - 68.5% against 81% (figure courtesy of Focus magazine)
2. Greece - 1.5% against 2% (figure courtesy of Focus magazine)
3. Japan - somewhere in the region of 233% as of February 15th, 2012 - see
http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/15/10408834-japan-tops-list-of-countries-deepest-in-debt?lite
4. The Euro.
On 1/1/2002, the EUR was worth $0.88, today it is worth $1.24
On 1/1/2002, the GBP was worth €1.62, today it is worth €1.25
NB -- since first producing this piece I have remembered that EUR/USD was the original 1999 figure ($1.17). I have since checked and found the correct figure - sorry for the mistake, NOT THAT IT CHANGES THE ANSWER!
Wednesday, 27 June 2012
Fragen auf Deutsch, answers in English, commentaires en français
dédié à la mémoire de Jean-Marc Reiser
F: Guten morgen.
A: Not a question, but good morning, hi, hello, welcome.
F: Wie heissen Sie?
A: Apart from the moniker "astonysh", you mean (you know incidentally that there is a guy in China who also calls himself "astonysh"? Not a problem for me, though I have been using it since 2003). That I cannot really tell you, as I have made some comments about Islam being a load of superstitious junk (it is!), it encourages some people to do some murderous things (it does!), I have challenged them to put a fatwa on me (!), but just being an open target makes no sense. They will have to think (definitely not their strength) and plan in order to find me. Anyway I have this idea of one day just falling asleep in bed, the brain and heart switching off and there being permanent peaceful sleep - great prospect for a chronic insomniac, and of course there will be no after-life!
F: Wie heisst du?
A: Being less formal will not change the last answer!
F: Wo?
A: In Frankfurt of course, where else?
F: Wohin?
A: Context? As in "wohin liegt das?" maybe? You have to be somewhere. I would rather be in Amsterdam still, but things do not always work out.
F: Woher?
A: Köln/Cologne, Amsterdam, München/Munich .... you can toss in Paris, Manchester and Humberside if you like.
F: Wann?
A: How many dates do you want? Interesting that nothing happens twice on the same date though. That actually is not altogether true, I can think of a couple of important things that happened on December 19th in different years.
F: Was?
A: Anything it takes to keep you alive. That said, ever wonder what the chronic homeless (people who know that they will never find their way back to having somewhere to live) do to keep alive or why? Sad. Anyway you're the one who is supposed to be asking the questions.
F: Wer?
A: Whoever was there at the time.
F: Wem?
A: Rupert Murdoch, preferably under the nose and above the chin.
F: Wie?
A: In the most efficient way possible - needless to say.
F: Warum?
A: Ask Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris or Stephen Hawking - they can give you far more lucid answers than I can. I have tried to reason, most people prefer to remain ignorant or superstitious or both.
F: Warum nicht?
A: It maybe still applies. When I was a young man in England, girls preferred guys who were at least 1.90 m tall, smiled a lot, weren't that intelligent but had this line of patter, muscular, glib, extrovert. 1.71 m, quiet, serious, not built like an Adonis, intelligent, shy - not much chance.
F: Was bedeuten Sie?
A: If you know me at all, you will realise that I do not give easy answers - try and work out the complex thinking involved.
F: Was bedeutest du?
A: You should know me well enough by now to work it out - yes, I have lived with women in the past who couldn't work out what I was thinking as it was far too complex, even after several months. There are seven colours in the rainbow, not two - which is why simple yes/no answers do not work, and nor do two-party political systems (if Obama is bad, Romney is a sight worse, so what would be good?).
F: Was bedeutet das?
A: Probably that we are almost without hope!
F: Kann ich?
A: Probably, if you are not trying to build the Eiffel Tower Mark II!
F: Darf ich?
A: If you are male, I wouldn't bother. If you are female, you had better ask my wife first.
F: Soll ich?
A: Certainly. I will give you my bank account details later. Even small donations are welcome, given my current financial difficulties.
F: Muss ich?
A: If you are American, probably, but you will try and avoid it. If you are German - yes. If you are Italian, you will probably say "no" and get away with it. If you are British, you probably will not understand the question in the first place.
F: Hoezo?
A: Hang on, that's Dutch (or Flemish - much as I hate to disappoint any readers in Belgium, the Dutch do see the Flemish as being different from them, and that also comes down to the language in Belgium being called Vlaams and not Nederlands where the Dutch are concerned)! What are you doing here? We'll be having a united Euope and a common currency next (great idea, no more being ripped off by currency speculators and change bureaux and banks!)!
F: Danke.
A: You're welcome - and I really think that this is the best country to live in of all those that I have known. Thanks to you also.
Les anglais - ils sont fous! Et merci, Jean-Marc, on rit toujours!
F: Guten morgen.
A: Not a question, but good morning, hi, hello, welcome.
F: Wie heissen Sie?
A: Apart from the moniker "astonysh", you mean (you know incidentally that there is a guy in China who also calls himself "astonysh"? Not a problem for me, though I have been using it since 2003). That I cannot really tell you, as I have made some comments about Islam being a load of superstitious junk (it is!), it encourages some people to do some murderous things (it does!), I have challenged them to put a fatwa on me (!), but just being an open target makes no sense. They will have to think (definitely not their strength) and plan in order to find me. Anyway I have this idea of one day just falling asleep in bed, the brain and heart switching off and there being permanent peaceful sleep - great prospect for a chronic insomniac, and of course there will be no after-life!
F: Wie heisst du?
A: Being less formal will not change the last answer!
F: Wo?
A: In Frankfurt of course, where else?
F: Wohin?
A: Context? As in "wohin liegt das?" maybe? You have to be somewhere. I would rather be in Amsterdam still, but things do not always work out.
F: Woher?
A: Köln/Cologne, Amsterdam, München/Munich .... you can toss in Paris, Manchester and Humberside if you like.
F: Wann?
A: How many dates do you want? Interesting that nothing happens twice on the same date though. That actually is not altogether true, I can think of a couple of important things that happened on December 19th in different years.
F: Was?
A: Anything it takes to keep you alive. That said, ever wonder what the chronic homeless (people who know that they will never find their way back to having somewhere to live) do to keep alive or why? Sad. Anyway you're the one who is supposed to be asking the questions.
F: Wer?
A: Whoever was there at the time.
F: Wem?
A: Rupert Murdoch, preferably under the nose and above the chin.
F: Wie?
A: In the most efficient way possible - needless to say.
F: Warum?
A: Ask Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris or Stephen Hawking - they can give you far more lucid answers than I can. I have tried to reason, most people prefer to remain ignorant or superstitious or both.
F: Warum nicht?
A: It maybe still applies. When I was a young man in England, girls preferred guys who were at least 1.90 m tall, smiled a lot, weren't that intelligent but had this line of patter, muscular, glib, extrovert. 1.71 m, quiet, serious, not built like an Adonis, intelligent, shy - not much chance.
F: Was bedeuten Sie?
A: If you know me at all, you will realise that I do not give easy answers - try and work out the complex thinking involved.
F: Was bedeutest du?
A: You should know me well enough by now to work it out - yes, I have lived with women in the past who couldn't work out what I was thinking as it was far too complex, even after several months. There are seven colours in the rainbow, not two - which is why simple yes/no answers do not work, and nor do two-party political systems (if Obama is bad, Romney is a sight worse, so what would be good?).
F: Was bedeutet das?
A: Probably that we are almost without hope!
F: Kann ich?
A: Probably, if you are not trying to build the Eiffel Tower Mark II!
F: Darf ich?
A: If you are male, I wouldn't bother. If you are female, you had better ask my wife first.
F: Soll ich?
A: Certainly. I will give you my bank account details later. Even small donations are welcome, given my current financial difficulties.
F: Muss ich?
A: If you are American, probably, but you will try and avoid it. If you are German - yes. If you are Italian, you will probably say "no" and get away with it. If you are British, you probably will not understand the question in the first place.
F: Hoezo?
A: Hang on, that's Dutch (or Flemish - much as I hate to disappoint any readers in Belgium, the Dutch do see the Flemish as being different from them, and that also comes down to the language in Belgium being called Vlaams and not Nederlands where the Dutch are concerned)! What are you doing here? We'll be having a united Euope and a common currency next (great idea, no more being ripped off by currency speculators and change bureaux and banks!)!
F: Danke.
A: You're welcome - and I really think that this is the best country to live in of all those that I have known. Thanks to you also.
Les anglais - ils sont fous! Et merci, Jean-Marc, on rit toujours!
Tuesday, 26 June 2012
Too grown-up at 13?
After five years teaching in a place on Humberside that was so obscure even half the residents hadn't heard of it, I decided in 1979 that I was in the wrong career and needed to get back to living in an urban environment - rural communities (particularly in the pre-Internet days) were far too remote for my gregarious personality.
On the advice of a close friend from my University days who lived nearby, I moved to Manchester, consulted a company called Career Analysts who thought that I was right about teaching and I ought to try accountancy ("huh, am I that boring? And legalised theft doesn't sound like me either") or IT.
While I was waiting to get on the appropriate IT retraining course ("Accountancy? You're joking, right?"), I started to run out of money - the usual story of my life, and anyway Thatcher had just become PM, so of course there was no money to be had! Not many jobs to be had doing much else either (Thatcher had just become PM, so of course there were no jobs to be had!), so I ended up for a couple of months .... as a supply teacher - this time in a very affluent suburb of the city.
Totally different world from the backwaters of rural Humberside. Very different world from the inner-city comprehensive in Sheffield where I had started teaching as well. Parents with expectations, a lot of well-shod, very bright kids (not all of them though!). Being fierce and irascible as you had to be to teach in rural Humberside would not work. I was only there two months and never really did acquire the style needed to succeed.
The world of parental expectations and how the kids reacted to them was new and interesting. The one example that I recall in particular. She was 13, very intelligent, effervescent, enthusiastic, positive, physically mature, and nothing stood in her way. And she already was in a steady relationship with a boyfriend!
Her parents were concerned, interested, wanted her to do well, expected her to do well, were very pleased with the results that she was getting (not even two months of my teaching impacted that!). There are a couple of things most teachers will tell you about their profession. One is the number of times children come to you and quietly take you into their confidence about "secret things" that are going on. Why I never found out. The other thing is the way cliques develop and how members of one clique dislike members of the other cliques. In this school it was extremely pronounced.
How much truth there was in the story I do not know, but one day I recall being told by a member of another clique that the girl quoted above "was sneaking off after school every afternoon and having sex with her boyfriend". The usual wry smile from me, the shake of the head that invariably accompanies it (too young - should be careful usw). Anyway given the "clique attitudes" there may have been nothing to it.
This precocity is not an uncommon phenomenon in the UK even now, though. A survey a few years ago indicated that some 40% of kids in the UK are sexually active before their 16th birthday (in Germany it was 25%, which is still on the high side IMHO). And apparently it is not just the dumb, stupid kids from the wrong side of the tracks - it crosses the entire range (except maybe where religion raises its head - I don't imagine that those figures would apply to kids with strict Muslim parents for example).
The question that you feel inclined to raise though. If you are the parents of a girl like the one described above and discover that despite all the success stories, all the pluses, all the Grade As, that there is this one thing going on - that she is already sexually active. What do you do? Tell her that you want it stop. Politely, firmly, not so politely, with a threat of physical punishment (not in Germany you don't!) - what? And will she listen and follow your advice? I suspect not.
I have never been a parent, so I have never had to face this dilemma. It is a curiously un-liberal thing for me to say (there goes my reputation again), but all this is happening far too soon in their lives, and they really should be encouraged (now there's a word that covers all the possibilities - from the namby-pamby to the outright brutal!) to learn restraint until they are older and more mature and can handle their desires better. But quite how you manage it? Good luck, I wish you well.
And for the kids reading this, it is exactly the same as with drugs: "Just say no"!
On the advice of a close friend from my University days who lived nearby, I moved to Manchester, consulted a company called Career Analysts who thought that I was right about teaching and I ought to try accountancy ("huh, am I that boring? And legalised theft doesn't sound like me either") or IT.
While I was waiting to get on the appropriate IT retraining course ("Accountancy? You're joking, right?"), I started to run out of money - the usual story of my life, and anyway Thatcher had just become PM, so of course there was no money to be had! Not many jobs to be had doing much else either (Thatcher had just become PM, so of course there were no jobs to be had!), so I ended up for a couple of months .... as a supply teacher - this time in a very affluent suburb of the city.
Totally different world from the backwaters of rural Humberside. Very different world from the inner-city comprehensive in Sheffield where I had started teaching as well. Parents with expectations, a lot of well-shod, very bright kids (not all of them though!). Being fierce and irascible as you had to be to teach in rural Humberside would not work. I was only there two months and never really did acquire the style needed to succeed.
The world of parental expectations and how the kids reacted to them was new and interesting. The one example that I recall in particular. She was 13, very intelligent, effervescent, enthusiastic, positive, physically mature, and nothing stood in her way. And she already was in a steady relationship with a boyfriend!
Her parents were concerned, interested, wanted her to do well, expected her to do well, were very pleased with the results that she was getting (not even two months of my teaching impacted that!). There are a couple of things most teachers will tell you about their profession. One is the number of times children come to you and quietly take you into their confidence about "secret things" that are going on. Why I never found out. The other thing is the way cliques develop and how members of one clique dislike members of the other cliques. In this school it was extremely pronounced.
How much truth there was in the story I do not know, but one day I recall being told by a member of another clique that the girl quoted above "was sneaking off after school every afternoon and having sex with her boyfriend". The usual wry smile from me, the shake of the head that invariably accompanies it (too young - should be careful usw). Anyway given the "clique attitudes" there may have been nothing to it.
This precocity is not an uncommon phenomenon in the UK even now, though. A survey a few years ago indicated that some 40% of kids in the UK are sexually active before their 16th birthday (in Germany it was 25%, which is still on the high side IMHO). And apparently it is not just the dumb, stupid kids from the wrong side of the tracks - it crosses the entire range (except maybe where religion raises its head - I don't imagine that those figures would apply to kids with strict Muslim parents for example).
The question that you feel inclined to raise though. If you are the parents of a girl like the one described above and discover that despite all the success stories, all the pluses, all the Grade As, that there is this one thing going on - that she is already sexually active. What do you do? Tell her that you want it stop. Politely, firmly, not so politely, with a threat of physical punishment (not in Germany you don't!) - what? And will she listen and follow your advice? I suspect not.
I have never been a parent, so I have never had to face this dilemma. It is a curiously un-liberal thing for me to say (there goes my reputation again), but all this is happening far too soon in their lives, and they really should be encouraged (now there's a word that covers all the possibilities - from the namby-pamby to the outright brutal!) to learn restraint until they are older and more mature and can handle their desires better. But quite how you manage it? Good luck, I wish you well.
And for the kids reading this, it is exactly the same as with drugs: "Just say no"!
Monday, 25 June 2012
And when politics and sport don't mix
The semi-finals of the Euro 2012 football (North American = "soccer") tournament comprise Spain (recession hit, its banks need a bailout), Portugal (recession hit, also needed bailing out), Italy (almost needs bailing out and in serious trouble) and Germany (who are paying out millions to keep the others afloat, and put out Greece the most indebted nation in Europe in the previous round!).
Interesting!
Good job it is sport and not politics or war!
Interesting!
Good job it is sport and not politics or war!
Saturday, 23 June 2012
Getting on with people no matter what
As people might gather relationships between Germany and Greece are not that good at the moment.
More accurately you might say that the Greek people are not at all happy with the German government. And the people in Germany are not all happy with any of the versions of the Greek government.
For the Greek people Angela Merkel has become something of an ogre as the terms for the bailout deal seem far too severe and it is exacerbating an already dreadful situation, though the German government will explain (as a good austerity oriented Conservative government will) that if Germans are going to be responsible for paying out the money, they must expect a deal where they expect to get paid back.
Meanwhile many Germans oppose the idea of bailing the Greeks out at all. Their government(s) got them in the mess, they can get them out of it, and if that then means leaving the Euro - then tschüss! A survey in the couple of months old edition of "Stern" that I was reading in the doctor's surgery this week, had a party by party breakdown of whether Germany should bail out Greece. Except for the German Green party (die Grünen), supporters of all the other parties opposed a bailout of Greece by some margin, supporters of die Grünen supported it, but not my much!
Forgotten amidst all this is the usually low-profile, but substantial Greek immigrant population here (which saw a substantial rise in new arrivals - 90% up on 2010 figures - in 2011). All part of the interesting multicultural mix here.
I was reminded of this yesterday. Amidst all the political turmoil, of all things there was a significant football (North American = "soccer") match yesterday between Germany and Greece. Quarter finals of EURO 2012. Germany won as expected (4-2), but the Greeks gave a good account of themselves. Notably some four or five of their team make their living in the Bundesliga.
There seemed to be the usual rivalry between the fans, but it did not seem anything unpleasant. There are some wonderful photos on the Web today of German and Greek supporters carousing together on the streets of Gdansk (still called Danzig here - despite the ominous overtones) in Poland where the match took place. Well if rival football supporters can meet in such a friendly fashion, there is hope for us all!
Even better was the video image from Hamburg where huge numbers of fans were watching the game on a large screen in a public area. There was this shot, in the middle of this vast throng, of a young woman draped in a Greek flag. At which point Sami Khedira scored the goal of the night to put Germany ahead, and amidst all the excitement in gold, black and red, the Greek flag disappeared from view! Hope she came out unscathed!
There doesn't seem to be that much animosity among the people of the two countries, and with the immigrant population here. The Greek immigrants here seem to mix in well, as far as I can tell that doesn't seem to be changing.
There is an awful lot of despair about the politicians and the politics involved though. Eventually we need answers that work. As I have said before debt is to be avoided if at all possible, austerity and unemployment do not work to improve things, and the general aim must be turn things round for the benefit of the people as a whole. Quite how we get there is uncertain, but there is a lot of goodwill available if you look to the people (rather than the politicians) involved.
Good luck anyway to the Greeks, and I hope that they have better times sooner rather than later!
More accurately you might say that the Greek people are not at all happy with the German government. And the people in Germany are not all happy with any of the versions of the Greek government.
For the Greek people Angela Merkel has become something of an ogre as the terms for the bailout deal seem far too severe and it is exacerbating an already dreadful situation, though the German government will explain (as a good austerity oriented Conservative government will) that if Germans are going to be responsible for paying out the money, they must expect a deal where they expect to get paid back.
Meanwhile many Germans oppose the idea of bailing the Greeks out at all. Their government(s) got them in the mess, they can get them out of it, and if that then means leaving the Euro - then tschüss! A survey in the couple of months old edition of "Stern" that I was reading in the doctor's surgery this week, had a party by party breakdown of whether Germany should bail out Greece. Except for the German Green party (die Grünen), supporters of all the other parties opposed a bailout of Greece by some margin, supporters of die Grünen supported it, but not my much!
Forgotten amidst all this is the usually low-profile, but substantial Greek immigrant population here (which saw a substantial rise in new arrivals - 90% up on 2010 figures - in 2011). All part of the interesting multicultural mix here.
I was reminded of this yesterday. Amidst all the political turmoil, of all things there was a significant football (North American = "soccer") match yesterday between Germany and Greece. Quarter finals of EURO 2012. Germany won as expected (4-2), but the Greeks gave a good account of themselves. Notably some four or five of their team make their living in the Bundesliga.
There seemed to be the usual rivalry between the fans, but it did not seem anything unpleasant. There are some wonderful photos on the Web today of German and Greek supporters carousing together on the streets of Gdansk (still called Danzig here - despite the ominous overtones) in Poland where the match took place. Well if rival football supporters can meet in such a friendly fashion, there is hope for us all!
Even better was the video image from Hamburg where huge numbers of fans were watching the game on a large screen in a public area. There was this shot, in the middle of this vast throng, of a young woman draped in a Greek flag. At which point Sami Khedira scored the goal of the night to put Germany ahead, and amidst all the excitement in gold, black and red, the Greek flag disappeared from view! Hope she came out unscathed!
There doesn't seem to be that much animosity among the people of the two countries, and with the immigrant population here. The Greek immigrants here seem to mix in well, as far as I can tell that doesn't seem to be changing.
There is an awful lot of despair about the politicians and the politics involved though. Eventually we need answers that work. As I have said before debt is to be avoided if at all possible, austerity and unemployment do not work to improve things, and the general aim must be turn things round for the benefit of the people as a whole. Quite how we get there is uncertain, but there is a lot of goodwill available if you look to the people (rather than the politicians) involved.
Good luck anyway to the Greeks, and I hope that they have better times sooner rather than later!
Friday, 22 June 2012
A woman's right to say "no"
I find the whole current story surrounding Julian Assange rather ridiculous.
Here is someone who released a whole load of supposedly secret government information (of wharrever importance) to the world, and is now concerned that someone would want to prosecute him for it. Is it really so surprising that the governments concerned took so long to get there (not that any substantial charges have appeared yet!)?
Here is someone who is frightened to go to Sweden to face trial on a sexual assault charge because the Swedes might deport him to the US on the spying charge with the above leaks, even though no charge has been laid. And yet he has been in the UK all this time?
Which do you think would be more likely to deport him to the US? Sweden, a country that managed to stay neutral in both the Second World War and the Cold War (and would be extremely unlikely to extradite anyone to a country on a charge bearing the death penalty, given its humanitarian record) or the UK, the US's marionette on a string for the past few decades (that tends to be much worse though when there's a Republican in the White House - maybe they are waiting for 2013?)?
And now he wants asylum in Ecuador. Nothing to do with facing trial in Sweden, of course. Of course? On Ecuador - the current government is one of several in South America which is not that keen on the US, but how long will that be the case anyway? A change of regime and who knows what will happen?
I made myself unpopular on Yahoo today by remarking that if even if Ecuador does offer him asylum, they should cut a deal with the Swedes that he has to go there and face trial (and serve any sentence if found guilty) first.
Eventually there is a charge to answer. In many ways it is a typical consensual sex charge. He will insist that the girl agreed all the time to go through with it. She will insist that she wanted him to stop - it was her right to say "no", she shouldn't have started in the first place, he refused to stop once he was charged up (that actually I can understand) .... He said, she said - who do you believe?
The point is though if she did change her mind halfway through as she insists, then she has a right to be heard. And if it is a set-up (as his supporters claim), we will soon find that out as well.
Personally I think that if someone had wanted to set him up, again it was much more likely to happen in the UK than in Sweden!
There is always a risk for men on one-night-stands. The problem at time is that voice in the back of your head refuses to understand the word "no" and the word "stop". Once you are beyond a certain point, how do you show restraint?
But women in that circumstance must be allowed the right to refuse, to go back, to change their minds. They probably should not let themselves get drawn into the situation in the first place if even the slightest bit uncertain (or if they have maybe drunk too much alcohol), but it happens.
Never easy, this case should be heard out though, and all the other side issues should be dropped and not even be available till it has been. And if that means a safe passage to Quito afterwards, so be it.
Here is someone who released a whole load of supposedly secret government information (of wharrever importance) to the world, and is now concerned that someone would want to prosecute him for it. Is it really so surprising that the governments concerned took so long to get there (not that any substantial charges have appeared yet!)?
Here is someone who is frightened to go to Sweden to face trial on a sexual assault charge because the Swedes might deport him to the US on the spying charge with the above leaks, even though no charge has been laid. And yet he has been in the UK all this time?
Which do you think would be more likely to deport him to the US? Sweden, a country that managed to stay neutral in both the Second World War and the Cold War (and would be extremely unlikely to extradite anyone to a country on a charge bearing the death penalty, given its humanitarian record) or the UK, the US's marionette on a string for the past few decades (that tends to be much worse though when there's a Republican in the White House - maybe they are waiting for 2013?)?
And now he wants asylum in Ecuador. Nothing to do with facing trial in Sweden, of course. Of course? On Ecuador - the current government is one of several in South America which is not that keen on the US, but how long will that be the case anyway? A change of regime and who knows what will happen?
I made myself unpopular on Yahoo today by remarking that if even if Ecuador does offer him asylum, they should cut a deal with the Swedes that he has to go there and face trial (and serve any sentence if found guilty) first.
Eventually there is a charge to answer. In many ways it is a typical consensual sex charge. He will insist that the girl agreed all the time to go through with it. She will insist that she wanted him to stop - it was her right to say "no", she shouldn't have started in the first place, he refused to stop once he was charged up (that actually I can understand) .... He said, she said - who do you believe?
The point is though if she did change her mind halfway through as she insists, then she has a right to be heard. And if it is a set-up (as his supporters claim), we will soon find that out as well.
Personally I think that if someone had wanted to set him up, again it was much more likely to happen in the UK than in Sweden!
There is always a risk for men on one-night-stands. The problem at time is that voice in the back of your head refuses to understand the word "no" and the word "stop". Once you are beyond a certain point, how do you show restraint?
But women in that circumstance must be allowed the right to refuse, to go back, to change their minds. They probably should not let themselves get drawn into the situation in the first place if even the slightest bit uncertain (or if they have maybe drunk too much alcohol), but it happens.
Never easy, this case should be heard out though, and all the other side issues should be dropped and not even be available till it has been. And if that means a safe passage to Quito afterwards, so be it.
Thursday, 21 June 2012
No guns, no bombs, no suicide jackets
Just very brave, very persistent, undaunting passive resistance in the face of injustice and tyranny.
The example of Aung San Suu Kyi to the rest of the world.
Now if more people who have (maybe) worthy causes to follow would follow her example!
The example of Aung San Suu Kyi to the rest of the world.
Now if more people who have (maybe) worthy causes to follow would follow her example!
Tuesday, 19 June 2012
On women's underwear and astrology, and choosing your own gender
OK, it is a day for silly news stories and I haven't a lot of time free to think.
Perhaps the silliest concept yet though was something that I read on the German version of Yahoo today where you can decide the sort of underwear women prefer by their astrological signs.
So try this if you speak German.
http://de.lifestyle.yahoo.com/blogs/leben/das-w%C3%A4sche-horoskop-sternzeichen-und-ihre-dessous-vorlieben-081759583.html
If you don't, a few quick points (not enough time to give all details), Pisceans like beautiful stuff, Leos flashy stuff, Sagittarians loads of stuff, Scorpios matching sets, Taureans and Cancerians practical and nothing too expensive, while Capricorns are not too bothered all told usw.
Maybe useful if you work in a department store selling such garments. Replace "what would you like, madam?", with "may I ask you when your birthday is?", and away you go.
Do I believe it? No, but what would a mere male know about such things?
Then there was what I was reading in an old copy of "Stern" in the doctor's surgery waiting room this afternoon. Apparently now when filling out official forms in Argentina you can choose whether you are a man or a woman - accurate description it does not have to be apparently. The detail given was fairly brief, but it seems that there were very few critical comments about it.
Could be very useful when it comes to retirement in countries where women retire before men do, officially. A sudden change from being a man to a woman overnight and you can get several years extra pension. Somehow though, I cannot see you getting away with it!
Perhaps the silliest concept yet though was something that I read on the German version of Yahoo today where you can decide the sort of underwear women prefer by their astrological signs.
So try this if you speak German.
http://de.lifestyle.yahoo.com/blogs/leben/das-w%C3%A4sche-horoskop-sternzeichen-und-ihre-dessous-vorlieben-081759583.html
If you don't, a few quick points (not enough time to give all details), Pisceans like beautiful stuff, Leos flashy stuff, Sagittarians loads of stuff, Scorpios matching sets, Taureans and Cancerians practical and nothing too expensive, while Capricorns are not too bothered all told usw.
Maybe useful if you work in a department store selling such garments. Replace "what would you like, madam?", with "may I ask you when your birthday is?", and away you go.
Do I believe it? No, but what would a mere male know about such things?
Then there was what I was reading in an old copy of "Stern" in the doctor's surgery waiting room this afternoon. Apparently now when filling out official forms in Argentina you can choose whether you are a man or a woman - accurate description it does not have to be apparently. The detail given was fairly brief, but it seems that there were very few critical comments about it.
Could be very useful when it comes to retirement in countries where women retire before men do, officially. A sudden change from being a man to a woman overnight and you can get several years extra pension. Somehow though, I cannot see you getting away with it!
Monday, 18 June 2012
Interesting day in Europe
Well after weeks of pessimism and phoney reporting in the international media, yesterday was a positive day for European politics.
The Greeks came up with a fascinating solution to the insoluble - vote for a party that will keep them in the Euro (well would a 300-500% devaluation with the Drachma rather than the Euro really help?), while making the anti-austerity radical Left party under Alexis Tsipras (who does not want Greece out of the Euro either) more powerful in opposition that it was 6 weeks ago.
It will give Tsipras time to make his party's policy planks more workable the next time round. It may be to his advantage that there may be no more elections till some others have occurred elsewhere in Europe and the atmosphere on resolving the crisis will place more emphasis upon getting economies to grow and getting unemployment down from the current disgustingly high levels than letting banks and speculators drive the rest of us into recession.
And despite some comments that I have heard from know-nothing American conservatives about all the Socialist governments in Europe (to which my response was "name me one" - up to yesterday every country in the western part of Europe had conservative, austerity-oriented governments!), the French gave the Parti Socialiste an outright majority in the French parliament. Hardly that radical a party (no bank nationalisation as suggested by the Radical Left in Greece for example), they may resemble Schröder's SPD in Germany that promised more than it delivered between 1998 and 2005 (but at least it kept Germany on the right side of history where the Iraq War is concerned).
The voices across Europe though are clear. We have had enough of austerity, we have had enough of the high unemployment. If we can find a way to get banks to behave sensibly and considerably reduce the powers of speculators to impoverish us all, things might to start to improve. Even when the Americans elect Romney as President and consequently find them quickly heading into recession the way that the UK (with a carbon copy of Romney's economic policies) is doing.
The Greeks came up with a fascinating solution to the insoluble - vote for a party that will keep them in the Euro (well would a 300-500% devaluation with the Drachma rather than the Euro really help?), while making the anti-austerity radical Left party under Alexis Tsipras (who does not want Greece out of the Euro either) more powerful in opposition that it was 6 weeks ago.
It will give Tsipras time to make his party's policy planks more workable the next time round. It may be to his advantage that there may be no more elections till some others have occurred elsewhere in Europe and the atmosphere on resolving the crisis will place more emphasis upon getting economies to grow and getting unemployment down from the current disgustingly high levels than letting banks and speculators drive the rest of us into recession.
And despite some comments that I have heard from know-nothing American conservatives about all the Socialist governments in Europe (to which my response was "name me one" - up to yesterday every country in the western part of Europe had conservative, austerity-oriented governments!), the French gave the Parti Socialiste an outright majority in the French parliament. Hardly that radical a party (no bank nationalisation as suggested by the Radical Left in Greece for example), they may resemble Schröder's SPD in Germany that promised more than it delivered between 1998 and 2005 (but at least it kept Germany on the right side of history where the Iraq War is concerned).
The voices across Europe though are clear. We have had enough of austerity, we have had enough of the high unemployment. If we can find a way to get banks to behave sensibly and considerably reduce the powers of speculators to impoverish us all, things might to start to improve. Even when the Americans elect Romney as President and consequently find them quickly heading into recession the way that the UK (with a carbon copy of Romney's economic policies) is doing.
Sunday, 17 June 2012
Advertising and sport
I was standing this afternoon at a tram stop in Bockenheim. In the tram shelter was a large advertising poster - an artist had gone to a great deal of trouble to create likenesses of the entire German national football (North America = "soccer") team.
It was not there though to wish the team well in the European Championship currently taking place in Poland and the Ukraine. It was, rather, a beer commercial.
In a country where beer brewing is still a very important industry, it probably makes sense to have a sponsored beer for a national sports team. At the same time beer and sport do not make the best companions. A player who was knocking back the team sponsor's product in copious amounts the night before may not be at peak fitness for the game the following day, and someone who has been doing this for days probably should not be capable of being in the team at all.
One thing that you realise quickly here though from watching beer commercials on television here is that no matter how much people drink, they never get drunk! Everyone is there looking cheerful (but not too cheerful!), and there are no loud-mouthed, raucous, aggressive individuals for whom standing up has become very difficult.
So I suppose a sports team could act in pretty much the same way? Drink cheerfully and never get drunk, that is. Not recommended. Myself, for the record, I have a maximum of two any evening (which is very rare anyway - even two in a week is not that frequent a consumption rate now).
Anyway for those of you who have money floating on the German team to win EURO 2012 (gambling - another habit not to be encouraged), fear not. Written on the bottle of beer on this poster was the German for "alcohol free"!
I never did get the point of alcohol-free beer. There are plenty of great non-alcoholic drinks out there, and gas-free as well (i.e. I do not drink Pepsi, Coke, Orangina and Fanta). Pure fruit juice with no added sugar - now that is to be recommended! The only problem with advertising it, is that many of the companies who make it are not household names and do not advertise! One wonders why not ....
It was not there though to wish the team well in the European Championship currently taking place in Poland and the Ukraine. It was, rather, a beer commercial.
In a country where beer brewing is still a very important industry, it probably makes sense to have a sponsored beer for a national sports team. At the same time beer and sport do not make the best companions. A player who was knocking back the team sponsor's product in copious amounts the night before may not be at peak fitness for the game the following day, and someone who has been doing this for days probably should not be capable of being in the team at all.
One thing that you realise quickly here though from watching beer commercials on television here is that no matter how much people drink, they never get drunk! Everyone is there looking cheerful (but not too cheerful!), and there are no loud-mouthed, raucous, aggressive individuals for whom standing up has become very difficult.
So I suppose a sports team could act in pretty much the same way? Drink cheerfully and never get drunk, that is. Not recommended. Myself, for the record, I have a maximum of two any evening (which is very rare anyway - even two in a week is not that frequent a consumption rate now).
Anyway for those of you who have money floating on the German team to win EURO 2012 (gambling - another habit not to be encouraged), fear not. Written on the bottle of beer on this poster was the German for "alcohol free"!
I never did get the point of alcohol-free beer. There are plenty of great non-alcoholic drinks out there, and gas-free as well (i.e. I do not drink Pepsi, Coke, Orangina and Fanta). Pure fruit juice with no added sugar - now that is to be recommended! The only problem with advertising it, is that many of the companies who make it are not household names and do not advertise! One wonders why not ....
Friday, 15 June 2012
Maybe I do not speak German well enough
For many of my regular readers it is old news. The old PC (vintage 2004) decided a few months ago that it wanted a rest and was not going to do anything without an overhaul.
Essentially a battery needed replacing as one of my new friends found out for me a couple of weeks ago. After 4 months living without the PC urgency was not the order of the day, but I decided today to do something about it.
Off to an electronic consumer goods store in Frankfurt with a very large computer selection. Given the range of goods, it was not an easy task to find what I wanted, so finally I had to enlist the aid of a friendly local member of staff - helped by the fact that I had brought the old battery with me!
I have this thing about speaking German - it took me long enough to become nearly fluent, and even with the Humberside drawl that will not go away when I speak the language, I insist upon using it. If they start talking to me in English without me choosing to do so, I tend to revert to South Yorkshire rather than Humberside (learned in my teaching days in Sheffield, nearly 40 years ago). When you have tossed the odd "tha' knaws that thissen, sithee" at them (perfectly good English, they should be able to understand it), they are only too happy to revert to German, even Hessisch.
Shown a not particularly major sample of what I was looking for, I checked the box for where it was made. Sure enough. "Made in China" (and written in English as such, not in German). YAWN!!!!!!!
"You have nothing that is not made in China?", I asked in perfectly good German.
The guy looked at one or two other examples closeby, shook his head and made some comment about wondering why that is so important.
I had gone to buy a battery rather than have a political discussion, but it is always difficult for me. I pointed out that I wanted to keep people in Germany working, unemployment was a scourge, unlike with Chinese imported garbage "Made in Germany" meant quality, and I would eventually accept something made somewhere else in the EU (preferably Spain or Greece) as getting people working there was vital to getting the European economy working again and getting past the banking crisis. People who don't work have no money to save in bank accounts, so the banks have more problems and more bad debts ....
Well he was only a guy working in a shop and he had a living to make. I decided to promise to think about it, and I came home without the battery.
I wondered on the way home whether I had sounded convincing enough. Maybe my German did not sound authentic, maybe the Humberside drawl got in the way ....
Or maybe I am just lousy at watching the ever-increasing deterioration that lack of choice and lack of protection of our own markets and jobs is causing us. I love Germany and its emphasis upon quality. I would hate to see it go the way of the UK and sell out to the cheapest buyer on just about everything that matters.
Essentially a battery needed replacing as one of my new friends found out for me a couple of weeks ago. After 4 months living without the PC urgency was not the order of the day, but I decided today to do something about it.
Off to an electronic consumer goods store in Frankfurt with a very large computer selection. Given the range of goods, it was not an easy task to find what I wanted, so finally I had to enlist the aid of a friendly local member of staff - helped by the fact that I had brought the old battery with me!
I have this thing about speaking German - it took me long enough to become nearly fluent, and even with the Humberside drawl that will not go away when I speak the language, I insist upon using it. If they start talking to me in English without me choosing to do so, I tend to revert to South Yorkshire rather than Humberside (learned in my teaching days in Sheffield, nearly 40 years ago). When you have tossed the odd "tha' knaws that thissen, sithee" at them (perfectly good English, they should be able to understand it), they are only too happy to revert to German, even Hessisch.
Shown a not particularly major sample of what I was looking for, I checked the box for where it was made. Sure enough. "Made in China" (and written in English as such, not in German). YAWN!!!!!!!
"You have nothing that is not made in China?", I asked in perfectly good German.
The guy looked at one or two other examples closeby, shook his head and made some comment about wondering why that is so important.
I had gone to buy a battery rather than have a political discussion, but it is always difficult for me. I pointed out that I wanted to keep people in Germany working, unemployment was a scourge, unlike with Chinese imported garbage "Made in Germany" meant quality, and I would eventually accept something made somewhere else in the EU (preferably Spain or Greece) as getting people working there was vital to getting the European economy working again and getting past the banking crisis. People who don't work have no money to save in bank accounts, so the banks have more problems and more bad debts ....
Well he was only a guy working in a shop and he had a living to make. I decided to promise to think about it, and I came home without the battery.
I wondered on the way home whether I had sounded convincing enough. Maybe my German did not sound authentic, maybe the Humberside drawl got in the way ....
Or maybe I am just lousy at watching the ever-increasing deterioration that lack of choice and lack of protection of our own markets and jobs is causing us. I love Germany and its emphasis upon quality. I would hate to see it go the way of the UK and sell out to the cheapest buyer on just about everything that matters.
Thought for the day - time to tax the speculators
What would happen to the world economy if a tax of 50 to 70% were placed on the profits made by bond traders?
I am open to persuasion that this is a bad idea, but I cannot think of any.
People gambling on money (which is the essential nature of bond trading) are not exactly turning out anything useful or productive - in fact at times their impact is downright destructive, ask the people of Greece, Spain or Italy - so maybe their gains could be put to excellent productive use elsewhere!
Of course we are not suppose to challenge the rights of the almighty speculators, are we? Though again I cannot think of one reason why not!!!!
I am open to persuasion that this is a bad idea, but I cannot think of any.
People gambling on money (which is the essential nature of bond trading) are not exactly turning out anything useful or productive - in fact at times their impact is downright destructive, ask the people of Greece, Spain or Italy - so maybe their gains could be put to excellent productive use elsewhere!
Of course we are not suppose to challenge the rights of the almighty speculators, are we? Though again I cannot think of one reason why not!!!!
Thursday, 14 June 2012
Theories of evolution
or how do you get inside the heads of 104 million people?
One of the problems that we often fail to acknowledge about this life is that we are, in fact, always alone. In the respect at least that we alone know what we are thinking. You may have been married for a long time and be used to that person being round the house and having a certain predictability.
But you never know exactly what is going on in their head at one particular moment, and that special close person may always have the ability to surprise you.
And then what happens with the people you know well but not that intimately, the people you know vaguely, and the billions that you do not know at all?
Most of us have had our own experiences, our own learning patterns and, let us face it, our own training. We may start with a capacity to learn to a greater or more limited extent, but our knowledge at birth is virtually zero, and while we do and should learn from experience, inculcation from an early age is a significant part of that learning process.
In other words as a child what your parents know, what close relatives know, what your teachers know, you learn. Of course you may become exposed to new information through reading, listening to radio, watching television, using the Internet these days (what I could have been if the Internet had been around in the 1950s!), but the influence of others on the information that you acquire remains. If you discover something that flies in the face of what your parents believe, it may be too embarrassing for you, as a child, to hang on to this as quotable fact.
What may surprise some American readers is the fact that in the UK religious education is compulsory in state (American = "public") schools, and these schools are obliged by law to hold a religious service. Brought up in a town where there was little immigration, that meant I had lessons in Christianity at school from the age of 5 till the age of 18 - what happens in the areas in the UK with large numbers of Hindu and Muslim families now I am not certain, but I digress.
In the 1950s, this even meant Protestantism. Catholic kids could opt out, and usually did (and my parents encouraged me, incidentally, not to mix with Catholics - what my longstanding friend in Glasgow would think if I told him that we were really not supposed to talk to each other .....). Later as a teacher myself in the 1970s, I shocked the school establishment by refusing to take part either in the compulsory school religious assembly or anything similar at class registration on grounds of conscience. As a committed atheist I believed (and still believe) that it was unnecessary and unacceptable indoctrination.
As Richard Dawkins has pointed out many times, correctly, the teaching of religion is a cultural thing (so Europeans become Christians, Arabs become Muslims, most Indians become Hindus usw, as that is what is taught in their communities). Children are for the most part not encouraged to examine belief and lack of belief , to question faith based regulations, or to decide which road to follow. It is not easy at that age as while intellect can actually be far more pronounced in children than in adults (I had instinctive arithmetical abilities as a child that still frighten me now, and I sadly seem to have lost many of them), experience is lacking, and all the information that you need to draw conclusions takes years to acquire.
But as adults we can assess, examine and change our opinions - dependant upon the facts available. If we so choose! Often there is a problem in that we do not choose to challenge the facts or look at the available alternatives out there. This is, though, not so surprising.
Academic and intellectual ability is not equal within individuals - there was a "Glück in Unglück" stat that I read a couple of years ago where the top 40% of kids in the UK got the best ever results in the history of public education in the UK (great - there are some very bright kids out there doing really well, the ex-teacher in me beams with pride), while the bottom 40% got the worst ever results in the history of public education in the UK (yikes!). I am not sure how these stats are measured or how long they have been collecting them incidentally.
Which does not mean that those 40% at the bottom are not worthwhile people who cannot go on to have thoroughly worthwhile lives as adults - given what I know of some members of my close family, lack of academic success at school may be a glitch in an otherwise very meaningful existence!
But trying having an in-depth discussion upon science and religion with them. Not impossible, but not easy. And often they will never get to move on later in life to a situation where they will question the beliefs that they have entrenched. Which, I repeat does not make them any less worthwhile people!
So when I see the survey that I saw last weekend regarding religion, creationism and evolution in the US last weekend and how horrifyingly ignorant a large number of people there seem to be, it is important to step back and consider the results carefully - and not be abusive or too critical.
The population of the US is approximately 310 million, of whom some 230 million are adults (figures courtesy of google), and the sample did seem small.
Nonetheless according to it some 46% of Americans believe in creationism (as taught in the Bible, no questions asked and dismissing any evolutionary possibilities), which equals some 104 million American adults.
32% believed in evolution but guided by God - more on this below. This equals approximately 73 million American adults.
15% believe in evolution - approximately 34 million American adults.
The other 7% fell into the "Don't know" category.
While there is some encouragement in those figures (the most "atheistically friendly" area of Europe, the Nordic countries - Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland - have a combined population of less than 30 million, so that 34 million is reasonably encouraging), it also has a disturbing side. It affects voting patterns (which given that the global economy and war, sorry "defence", policy also impacts us .... Another GWB asking God whether he should start another unnecessary war we definitely do not need!).
What gets me though is how little is really understood by a lot of people about evolution. It is not a static theory written in the 1850s (by Darwin, who was probably an agnostic, not an atheist), but rather is itself evolving as more and more scientific research is made. It also covers a whole load of areas, geology, physics, anthropology to name but three. Research in those areas has moved massively forward in the past 160 years, and will continue to do so.
Science does though impact all of our lives whether you believe in evolution or not, whether it is the simple act of switching on the television or the computer, turning on a light, or getting the latest wonder drug from your chemist.
Opposing this argument that everything was created according to a load of old Jewish myths and has remained unchanged ever since in spite of all the scientific discoveries since - it ought to be a straightforward argument to win, but how do you get inside the heads of 104 million people who are not obviously not even interested in the discussion on the "don't confuse my mind with facts" principle? It is like fighting for the world title with an opponent who will not get into the same ring.
The argument that God guided evolution is far more interesting (pretty much what I was taught in RI classes in school - 50 years ago! The UK was more advanced than the US in this respect even then?). It also sifts out some of the nonsensical inconsistent arguments about God (not just in the Bible, but in other religious works) and places a God in the universe who understands scientific principle. It is an interesting argument, often intelligently thought out - even if I don't agree with it!
A reasoned discussion on that aspect of things is possible though. Arguing with dogmatists who do not want to reason is another matter. Getting inside their heads and persuading them to think logically - if they are capable of it! - is difficult, if close to impossible. Which does not mean that we should not keep trying, and which also does not mean that we should be unnecessarily aggressive or abusive towards them - it does not help the quality of the debate or the value of our arguments to be overly confrontational.
One of the problems that we often fail to acknowledge about this life is that we are, in fact, always alone. In the respect at least that we alone know what we are thinking. You may have been married for a long time and be used to that person being round the house and having a certain predictability.
But you never know exactly what is going on in their head at one particular moment, and that special close person may always have the ability to surprise you.
And then what happens with the people you know well but not that intimately, the people you know vaguely, and the billions that you do not know at all?
Most of us have had our own experiences, our own learning patterns and, let us face it, our own training. We may start with a capacity to learn to a greater or more limited extent, but our knowledge at birth is virtually zero, and while we do and should learn from experience, inculcation from an early age is a significant part of that learning process.
In other words as a child what your parents know, what close relatives know, what your teachers know, you learn. Of course you may become exposed to new information through reading, listening to radio, watching television, using the Internet these days (what I could have been if the Internet had been around in the 1950s!), but the influence of others on the information that you acquire remains. If you discover something that flies in the face of what your parents believe, it may be too embarrassing for you, as a child, to hang on to this as quotable fact.
What may surprise some American readers is the fact that in the UK religious education is compulsory in state (American = "public") schools, and these schools are obliged by law to hold a religious service. Brought up in a town where there was little immigration, that meant I had lessons in Christianity at school from the age of 5 till the age of 18 - what happens in the areas in the UK with large numbers of Hindu and Muslim families now I am not certain, but I digress.
In the 1950s, this even meant Protestantism. Catholic kids could opt out, and usually did (and my parents encouraged me, incidentally, not to mix with Catholics - what my longstanding friend in Glasgow would think if I told him that we were really not supposed to talk to each other .....). Later as a teacher myself in the 1970s, I shocked the school establishment by refusing to take part either in the compulsory school religious assembly or anything similar at class registration on grounds of conscience. As a committed atheist I believed (and still believe) that it was unnecessary and unacceptable indoctrination.
As Richard Dawkins has pointed out many times, correctly, the teaching of religion is a cultural thing (so Europeans become Christians, Arabs become Muslims, most Indians become Hindus usw, as that is what is taught in their communities). Children are for the most part not encouraged to examine belief and lack of belief , to question faith based regulations, or to decide which road to follow. It is not easy at that age as while intellect can actually be far more pronounced in children than in adults (I had instinctive arithmetical abilities as a child that still frighten me now, and I sadly seem to have lost many of them), experience is lacking, and all the information that you need to draw conclusions takes years to acquire.
But as adults we can assess, examine and change our opinions - dependant upon the facts available. If we so choose! Often there is a problem in that we do not choose to challenge the facts or look at the available alternatives out there. This is, though, not so surprising.
Academic and intellectual ability is not equal within individuals - there was a "Glück in Unglück" stat that I read a couple of years ago where the top 40% of kids in the UK got the best ever results in the history of public education in the UK (great - there are some very bright kids out there doing really well, the ex-teacher in me beams with pride), while the bottom 40% got the worst ever results in the history of public education in the UK (yikes!). I am not sure how these stats are measured or how long they have been collecting them incidentally.
Which does not mean that those 40% at the bottom are not worthwhile people who cannot go on to have thoroughly worthwhile lives as adults - given what I know of some members of my close family, lack of academic success at school may be a glitch in an otherwise very meaningful existence!
But trying having an in-depth discussion upon science and religion with them. Not impossible, but not easy. And often they will never get to move on later in life to a situation where they will question the beliefs that they have entrenched. Which, I repeat does not make them any less worthwhile people!
So when I see the survey that I saw last weekend regarding religion, creationism and evolution in the US last weekend and how horrifyingly ignorant a large number of people there seem to be, it is important to step back and consider the results carefully - and not be abusive or too critical.
The population of the US is approximately 310 million, of whom some 230 million are adults (figures courtesy of google), and the sample did seem small.
Nonetheless according to it some 46% of Americans believe in creationism (as taught in the Bible, no questions asked and dismissing any evolutionary possibilities), which equals some 104 million American adults.
32% believed in evolution but guided by God - more on this below. This equals approximately 73 million American adults.
15% believe in evolution - approximately 34 million American adults.
The other 7% fell into the "Don't know" category.
While there is some encouragement in those figures (the most "atheistically friendly" area of Europe, the Nordic countries - Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland - have a combined population of less than 30 million, so that 34 million is reasonably encouraging), it also has a disturbing side. It affects voting patterns (which given that the global economy and war, sorry "defence", policy also impacts us .... Another GWB asking God whether he should start another unnecessary war we definitely do not need!).
What gets me though is how little is really understood by a lot of people about evolution. It is not a static theory written in the 1850s (by Darwin, who was probably an agnostic, not an atheist), but rather is itself evolving as more and more scientific research is made. It also covers a whole load of areas, geology, physics, anthropology to name but three. Research in those areas has moved massively forward in the past 160 years, and will continue to do so.
Science does though impact all of our lives whether you believe in evolution or not, whether it is the simple act of switching on the television or the computer, turning on a light, or getting the latest wonder drug from your chemist.
Opposing this argument that everything was created according to a load of old Jewish myths and has remained unchanged ever since in spite of all the scientific discoveries since - it ought to be a straightforward argument to win, but how do you get inside the heads of 104 million people who are not obviously not even interested in the discussion on the "don't confuse my mind with facts" principle? It is like fighting for the world title with an opponent who will not get into the same ring.
The argument that God guided evolution is far more interesting (pretty much what I was taught in RI classes in school - 50 years ago! The UK was more advanced than the US in this respect even then?). It also sifts out some of the nonsensical inconsistent arguments about God (not just in the Bible, but in other religious works) and places a God in the universe who understands scientific principle. It is an interesting argument, often intelligently thought out - even if I don't agree with it!
A reasoned discussion on that aspect of things is possible though. Arguing with dogmatists who do not want to reason is another matter. Getting inside their heads and persuading them to think logically - if they are capable of it! - is difficult, if close to impossible. Which does not mean that we should not keep trying, and which also does not mean that we should be unnecessarily aggressive or abusive towards them - it does not help the quality of the debate or the value of our arguments to be overly confrontational.
Wednesday, 13 June 2012
Why don't we want to know what is happening in Africa?
I was reading somewhere the other week about yet another outbreak of violence in the Eastern part of the Congo and wondering whether there was another war in the offing. Just another local outbreak, a few more women horribly raped, and everything calms down again? I can find little up-to-date information (and yes, I can read French!).
A summarised history of the Congo since independence courtesy of the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13283212
I should add that the West poured in millions during the Cold War, and while the millions poured in its leader Mobutu Sese Seku got extremely rich while the country's infrastructure rotted. This is not the only example of dictators around the world seemingly enriching themselves on Western aid (see Mubarak in Egypt, Suharto in Indonesia).
You wonder why though more isn't done to stop this sort of thing while it is happening (thorough and proper accounting rather than discovering the truth years after it has happened). The aid is needed and I do not want to see it stopped, but it should be invested in projects to help people help themselves out of poverty (so they will not need more aid in the future), not to help corrupt leaders build palaces and invest in Swiss bank accounts.
IMHO the West needs to be proactive in its dealings with African countries rather than continuing to follow the policy that seems to have been in place forever, namely we only do something when something drastic occurs. The issues in Somalia and Darfur should have deserved far more than a shrug of the shoulders a long time ago.
I was pleased to hear that Charles Taylor had finally got his just reward, but why did it take so long to get there, and why was he able to get away with what he did?
I think that the founding principles of the United Nations are admirable, but its failures in Africa are palpable for all to see, and an organisation far more aware of events and far more ready to take preventive action is required.
Quite how this can be done and what is required is not easy to define, but the constant turning of our backs and shrugging our proverbial shoulders does not show us in a good light. There is a lot of potential in Africa, and many people with great abilities that could be used in a forward-looking, positive manner. They deserve better from us.
A summarised history of the Congo since independence courtesy of the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13283212
I should add that the West poured in millions during the Cold War, and while the millions poured in its leader Mobutu Sese Seku got extremely rich while the country's infrastructure rotted. This is not the only example of dictators around the world seemingly enriching themselves on Western aid (see Mubarak in Egypt, Suharto in Indonesia).
You wonder why though more isn't done to stop this sort of thing while it is happening (thorough and proper accounting rather than discovering the truth years after it has happened). The aid is needed and I do not want to see it stopped, but it should be invested in projects to help people help themselves out of poverty (so they will not need more aid in the future), not to help corrupt leaders build palaces and invest in Swiss bank accounts.
IMHO the West needs to be proactive in its dealings with African countries rather than continuing to follow the policy that seems to have been in place forever, namely we only do something when something drastic occurs. The issues in Somalia and Darfur should have deserved far more than a shrug of the shoulders a long time ago.
I was pleased to hear that Charles Taylor had finally got his just reward, but why did it take so long to get there, and why was he able to get away with what he did?
I think that the founding principles of the United Nations are admirable, but its failures in Africa are palpable for all to see, and an organisation far more aware of events and far more ready to take preventive action is required.
Quite how this can be done and what is required is not easy to define, but the constant turning of our backs and shrugging our proverbial shoulders does not show us in a good light. There is a lot of potential in Africa, and many people with great abilities that could be used in a forward-looking, positive manner. They deserve better from us.
Tuesday, 12 June 2012
At the risk of repeating myself
The problem with writing a blog is that at times you keep coming back to the same themes and repeating what you have said more than adequately before.
All well and good writing a piece on an old topic if people start reading the whole blog from the beginning. What I have learned though since checking the stats that we are kindly sent daily is that readers select various articles that they have found on the blog that are often the old pieces - probably pointed there by a search engine like google or bing.
I was this week once more going to return to the subject of unemployment, a subject about which most of my regular readers know that I am extremely angry, and social benefits. And the conservative view that the unemployed are all lazy usw. For the record the unemployment rate is a disgusting 24% in Spain. And while their PRIVATE BANKS are having to be bailed out (a continuation of the crisis of capitalism in 2008), and their PRIVATE BANKING CRISIS is having to be resolved by governments across Europe, this disgusting number is not going to go down.
And you want to tell me that all the unemployed in Spain are unemployed because they are too lazy to work? WHO IS KIDDING WHOM?
On the subject of scrounging and state benefits, rather than go over old ground I will point you back to two previous items that I wrote on the subject on this blog:
"The usual conservative nonsense about scroungers" dated October 5th, 2010, and
"Too many scroungers" dated September 19, 2011.
After hearing the solutions offered by the Marxist leader of the party that looks likely to win the upcoming elections in Greece, I would be highly sceptical that that will do much to resolve the issues either. Nationalising the banks for example sounds an interesting concept (at least it might remind them that they are banks, not casinos!). This, however, is not a new solution, and is beset with problems. Either the government buys them out, which is very expensive (and the Greek government is already broke), or you seize them and take them over free of charge, which will prove to be illegal.
I have read some sad stories this week about some talented people in Greece who worked hard for years to get qualified only to see their "good jobs" eradicated by the crisis. No new jobs out there, little hope of anything turning up for years, their lives ruined. And thrown on the scrap heap of the unemployed with the rest.
Good, solid, hardworking, intelligent people who wanted a fulfilling career and the interesting life that accompanies it. AND CERTAINLY NOT SCROUNGERS!
All well and good writing a piece on an old topic if people start reading the whole blog from the beginning. What I have learned though since checking the stats that we are kindly sent daily is that readers select various articles that they have found on the blog that are often the old pieces - probably pointed there by a search engine like google or bing.
I was this week once more going to return to the subject of unemployment, a subject about which most of my regular readers know that I am extremely angry, and social benefits. And the conservative view that the unemployed are all lazy usw. For the record the unemployment rate is a disgusting 24% in Spain. And while their PRIVATE BANKS are having to be bailed out (a continuation of the crisis of capitalism in 2008), and their PRIVATE BANKING CRISIS is having to be resolved by governments across Europe, this disgusting number is not going to go down.
And you want to tell me that all the unemployed in Spain are unemployed because they are too lazy to work? WHO IS KIDDING WHOM?
On the subject of scrounging and state benefits, rather than go over old ground I will point you back to two previous items that I wrote on the subject on this blog:
"The usual conservative nonsense about scroungers" dated October 5th, 2010, and
"Too many scroungers" dated September 19, 2011.
After hearing the solutions offered by the Marxist leader of the party that looks likely to win the upcoming elections in Greece, I would be highly sceptical that that will do much to resolve the issues either. Nationalising the banks for example sounds an interesting concept (at least it might remind them that they are banks, not casinos!). This, however, is not a new solution, and is beset with problems. Either the government buys them out, which is very expensive (and the Greek government is already broke), or you seize them and take them over free of charge, which will prove to be illegal.
I have read some sad stories this week about some talented people in Greece who worked hard for years to get qualified only to see their "good jobs" eradicated by the crisis. No new jobs out there, little hope of anything turning up for years, their lives ruined. And thrown on the scrap heap of the unemployed with the rest.
Good, solid, hardworking, intelligent people who wanted a fulfilling career and the interesting life that accompanies it. AND CERTAINLY NOT SCROUNGERS!
Monday, 11 June 2012
So where are they now?
In 1973 the American film maker, D.A.Pennebaker, made a movie about the concert at the Hammersmith Odeon in London which was part of David Bowie's farewell tour (which turned out merely to be the end of his performing as Ziggy Stardust, but I digress).
I remember one thing in particular about that movie. Some teenage girls (15, 16, 17) throwing themselves on stage only to be thrown off again by the bouncers who seemed to be there purely for that purpose.
Those girls will now be mature women in the mid, late 50s. Maybe they went on to be respectable married women with families of their own, suburban housewives who are pillars of the community. I wonder if any of them ever look back on that night at the Hammersmith Odeon, or can even remember it. And what they think about it and why they did what they did?
And then there were the groupies. I remember Rod Stewart being asked once how many women he had slept with, to which he answered "thousands!".
An exaggeration? Maybe not.
Another city, another tour stop, another set of groupies, another girl back at the hotel.
There must a large number of women in their 50s now who had pretty ordinary lives otherwise eventually who spent one night of their lives in a hotel room having sex with the likes of Rod Stewart or Mick Jagger, or, or , or .... You wonder what they must think looking back. You wonder whether they look back on that one night as anything memorable, was it enjoyable, was it interesting, was it worthwhile, was it any good, why did they bother?
"Memories may be beautiful and yet" - lyrics from the Barbra Streisand song "The way we were" (written by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, quoted without permission - sorry, but it fits my context). How beautiful are memories like that? I had my share of one-night stands (nothing like the number that these pop icons had), and it tends to be sad rather than memorable; she might have been the girl of your dreams, and she is gone - already.
The night might have enjoyable, but where does it lead? If you're the pop icon to another city and another set of groupies, but as for the girl involved? 30, 40 years later just a happy, sad, confused, proud, bitter, fascinating, depressing memory? What and where?
I remember one thing in particular about that movie. Some teenage girls (15, 16, 17) throwing themselves on stage only to be thrown off again by the bouncers who seemed to be there purely for that purpose.
Those girls will now be mature women in the mid, late 50s. Maybe they went on to be respectable married women with families of their own, suburban housewives who are pillars of the community. I wonder if any of them ever look back on that night at the Hammersmith Odeon, or can even remember it. And what they think about it and why they did what they did?
And then there were the groupies. I remember Rod Stewart being asked once how many women he had slept with, to which he answered "thousands!".
An exaggeration? Maybe not.
Another city, another tour stop, another set of groupies, another girl back at the hotel.
There must a large number of women in their 50s now who had pretty ordinary lives otherwise eventually who spent one night of their lives in a hotel room having sex with the likes of Rod Stewart or Mick Jagger, or, or , or .... You wonder what they must think looking back. You wonder whether they look back on that one night as anything memorable, was it enjoyable, was it interesting, was it worthwhile, was it any good, why did they bother?
"Memories may be beautiful and yet" - lyrics from the Barbra Streisand song "The way we were" (written by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, quoted without permission - sorry, but it fits my context). How beautiful are memories like that? I had my share of one-night stands (nothing like the number that these pop icons had), and it tends to be sad rather than memorable; she might have been the girl of your dreams, and she is gone - already.
The night might have enjoyable, but where does it lead? If you're the pop icon to another city and another set of groupies, but as for the girl involved? 30, 40 years later just a happy, sad, confused, proud, bitter, fascinating, depressing memory? What and where?
Saturday, 9 June 2012
What is it about conservative politicians and the police these days?
This should be one further blow to my reputation as a "liberal", though maybe not - given recent events.
I am a great admirer of the police service, and I can say that for any of the six countries in which I have lived (which, my American conservative friends, includes a time living in Milwaukee). They do a very necessary job that is never easy, and sometimes downright dangerous. Even in Germany, with its low levels of violent crime, there have been stories in recent years of police officers being killed in the line of duty.
There was a time that this was a "conservative" issue. Liberals (equals the Labour Party in the UK) were soft on crime and criminals and it needed a firm hand to deal with the situation. In the 1979 UK election Margaret Thatcher made a big point of emphasising the fact that there were not enough policemen to fight crime, and they were ridiculously badly paid.
I have never given that woman much credit for anything, but on this issue there was no doubt that she was correct. The results of her years in power actually saw a massive increase in the crime rate, so the rhetoric proved more successful than any actions taken - which is a pity. I recall in Manchester in the 1980s the local chief constable, James Anderton, cut a very high profile in the national (not just the local) media. At the same time the burglary resolution rate was at a ridiculously low level, and reporting a burglary to the GM police force was almost a waste of time.
But undoubtedly it is a difficult job, and shortage of manpower never helps. In fact the major mistake in the Thatcher years was not putting their money where their mouth was and recruiting far more people to do the job - there would have been no shortage of volunteers!
Recent events though seem to indicate a souring of relationships between the conservative politicians in both the UK and the US and the police. Among the cuts that David Cameron announced to get the budget deficit down was a cut in the police service.
Glad to know that crime is no longer so serious in the UK that they can afford to do that! "What do you mean it isn't serious?", I hear you ask. Well, come on, if they can afford to spend billions upgrading a nuclear weapon that they will never use, they can surely afford to at least keep crime fighters fighting crime - dealing with actual incidents, not potential ones! If the will was there.
And then there was the GOP candidate to be the next President of the United States, Mitt Romney, announcing to the world (not just the US) that they do not need to hire any more police officers. To my American friends, conservative and more likely liberal - I am pleased that things over there have improved so much! There is nothing worse than having dangerous criminal scum in your midst.
I could raise a slight political point here and suggest that if crime is not the serious issue that it was, it sounds like Obama has actually got something right, but that cannot possibly be correct, can it?
The point to raise though is very significant. When competent policing is not available, crime rises. This in turn has all sorts of side effects like having your household goods insurance premium rise, which costs you anyway. Personally I would rather see the money spent upon prevention than have the side effects. I tend to be security conscious and I would actually like to see the number of police here rise (after the robbery that hit us the other day, it is a bit of an issue with me as you might guess). Cutting police numbers, or not raising such to match deteriorating circumstances, is sensible neither in the short nor the long term. It is very last thing that I personally would cut!
To repeat, the police do a difficult job. They deserve our thanks, our admiration and our support, and if that means our financial support, so be it.
I am a great admirer of the police service, and I can say that for any of the six countries in which I have lived (which, my American conservative friends, includes a time living in Milwaukee). They do a very necessary job that is never easy, and sometimes downright dangerous. Even in Germany, with its low levels of violent crime, there have been stories in recent years of police officers being killed in the line of duty.
There was a time that this was a "conservative" issue. Liberals (equals the Labour Party in the UK) were soft on crime and criminals and it needed a firm hand to deal with the situation. In the 1979 UK election Margaret Thatcher made a big point of emphasising the fact that there were not enough policemen to fight crime, and they were ridiculously badly paid.
I have never given that woman much credit for anything, but on this issue there was no doubt that she was correct. The results of her years in power actually saw a massive increase in the crime rate, so the rhetoric proved more successful than any actions taken - which is a pity. I recall in Manchester in the 1980s the local chief constable, James Anderton, cut a very high profile in the national (not just the local) media. At the same time the burglary resolution rate was at a ridiculously low level, and reporting a burglary to the GM police force was almost a waste of time.
But undoubtedly it is a difficult job, and shortage of manpower never helps. In fact the major mistake in the Thatcher years was not putting their money where their mouth was and recruiting far more people to do the job - there would have been no shortage of volunteers!
Recent events though seem to indicate a souring of relationships between the conservative politicians in both the UK and the US and the police. Among the cuts that David Cameron announced to get the budget deficit down was a cut in the police service.
Glad to know that crime is no longer so serious in the UK that they can afford to do that! "What do you mean it isn't serious?", I hear you ask. Well, come on, if they can afford to spend billions upgrading a nuclear weapon that they will never use, they can surely afford to at least keep crime fighters fighting crime - dealing with actual incidents, not potential ones! If the will was there.
And then there was the GOP candidate to be the next President of the United States, Mitt Romney, announcing to the world (not just the US) that they do not need to hire any more police officers. To my American friends, conservative and more likely liberal - I am pleased that things over there have improved so much! There is nothing worse than having dangerous criminal scum in your midst.
I could raise a slight political point here and suggest that if crime is not the serious issue that it was, it sounds like Obama has actually got something right, but that cannot possibly be correct, can it?
The point to raise though is very significant. When competent policing is not available, crime rises. This in turn has all sorts of side effects like having your household goods insurance premium rise, which costs you anyway. Personally I would rather see the money spent upon prevention than have the side effects. I tend to be security conscious and I would actually like to see the number of police here rise (after the robbery that hit us the other day, it is a bit of an issue with me as you might guess). Cutting police numbers, or not raising such to match deteriorating circumstances, is sensible neither in the short nor the long term. It is very last thing that I personally would cut!
To repeat, the police do a difficult job. They deserve our thanks, our admiration and our support, and if that means our financial support, so be it.
Friday, 8 June 2012
Atheism is not anarchy
During my university days in Swansea (you know, when dinosaurs and pterodactyls were still commonplace), I occasionally bumped into anarchists.
Being anarchists they did not have a society (that sounds like a structure). Rather they had a federation.
I never quite did get how their philosophy worked, but a load of things had to go - governments, capitalism, communism, all the associated laws usw. People were born good, society corrupted them into taking evil actions, so you had to remove all the rules which breed the tools of tyranny usw.
Well-meaning in a lot of ways, and never likely to work in the proverbial month of Sundays (any anarchist reading this, please enlighten me if your philosophy has been misinterpreted above, I would be intrigued to know how it is supposed to work). Of course nobody would go round hitting people on the head and stealing things. Young kids would never feel the need to go round stealing old ladies' handbags usw.
Well there may be many shortcomings with the social structures that we have, but I am unlikely to subscribe to that sort of philosophy, mainly as I do not have this faith in people being absolutely good, any more than I subscribe to us all being greedy (see my previous item on that).
One curious thing that I get though when discussing religion is that many believers (particularly fundamentalist Christians AND Muslims) seem to think that that is what atheists believe.
Which is a total misconception. Atheists can be anarchists - a small number are. They can also be communists, free-market neo-liberals, social democrats, traditional conservatives, extreme nationalists, in fact anywhere on the political spectrum - with the exception of anywhere where religious restrictions are the guiding light. Atheists are by propensity individuals with their own commitment to a secular society, very often they will not share the same opinions as other atheists (review what I had to say about Pat Condell elsewhere on this blog for example).
They will though normally be committed to the civil law. You have one shot of this life, living in an ordered society makes sense. And no waiting for the "next life" to be punished for anything that you have done wrong. Do something wrong now - you get punished now! Being locked up for 30 years in jail for murder does not sound a very satisfactory way to be spending your one shot at this existence, with nothing to follow. All the more reason to be a "good person"!
And if you do not like how things work, you can advocate to get things changed. No silly restrictions though based upon some ancient text written by members of nomadic tribes wandering round the deserts of the Middle East at a time when nobody understood how vast the cosmos was or how it operated. The world has moved on, and so have the laws that govern us. "Thankfully", I would be inclined to confirm, but I doubt that most anarchists would think that we have moved anyway near far enough.
Being anarchists they did not have a society (that sounds like a structure). Rather they had a federation.
I never quite did get how their philosophy worked, but a load of things had to go - governments, capitalism, communism, all the associated laws usw. People were born good, society corrupted them into taking evil actions, so you had to remove all the rules which breed the tools of tyranny usw.
Well-meaning in a lot of ways, and never likely to work in the proverbial month of Sundays (any anarchist reading this, please enlighten me if your philosophy has been misinterpreted above, I would be intrigued to know how it is supposed to work). Of course nobody would go round hitting people on the head and stealing things. Young kids would never feel the need to go round stealing old ladies' handbags usw.
Well there may be many shortcomings with the social structures that we have, but I am unlikely to subscribe to that sort of philosophy, mainly as I do not have this faith in people being absolutely good, any more than I subscribe to us all being greedy (see my previous item on that).
One curious thing that I get though when discussing religion is that many believers (particularly fundamentalist Christians AND Muslims) seem to think that that is what atheists believe.
Which is a total misconception. Atheists can be anarchists - a small number are. They can also be communists, free-market neo-liberals, social democrats, traditional conservatives, extreme nationalists, in fact anywhere on the political spectrum - with the exception of anywhere where religious restrictions are the guiding light. Atheists are by propensity individuals with their own commitment to a secular society, very often they will not share the same opinions as other atheists (review what I had to say about Pat Condell elsewhere on this blog for example).
They will though normally be committed to the civil law. You have one shot of this life, living in an ordered society makes sense. And no waiting for the "next life" to be punished for anything that you have done wrong. Do something wrong now - you get punished now! Being locked up for 30 years in jail for murder does not sound a very satisfactory way to be spending your one shot at this existence, with nothing to follow. All the more reason to be a "good person"!
And if you do not like how things work, you can advocate to get things changed. No silly restrictions though based upon some ancient text written by members of nomadic tribes wandering round the deserts of the Middle East at a time when nobody understood how vast the cosmos was or how it operated. The world has moved on, and so have the laws that govern us. "Thankfully", I would be inclined to confirm, but I doubt that most anarchists would think that we have moved anyway near far enough.
Thursday, 7 June 2012
Intelligent clothes
This afternoon I went to use an Internet shop (any visitor to Frankfurt will have no difficulty finding one). I needed to download a file for my translation work, and as I do not have the appropriate tools at home, it was the obvious solution.
To kill the remaining 10 minutes of my allocated time, I spent some time editing the articles that I have written on this blog. While I was checking the one that I wrote this morning up flashed a message whether I wanted it translated into German.
Sounded like fun ....
Beware instant translation tools. It was hilariously funny, even if it did my artistic creation no favours. Nor did it show the German language in anything resembling its true form. The best bit though was where it translated the word for "smart" as in looking smart.
Yes, you got it in one! "Intelligent"! Same word as in English excepting the "g" being hard.
"Intelligent clothes" - what an interesting concept!
The newish jacket I was wearing (a present at Christmas, I could never have afforded to buy it) is smart, so on the S-Bahn home I had an interesting conversation with it. In fact it is a lot smarter than George W. Bush ever was (that doesn't take much doing, thinking about it), so if it had been American, it could well have been in the running to become President of the United States if it had been around a few years ago ....
To kill the remaining 10 minutes of my allocated time, I spent some time editing the articles that I have written on this blog. While I was checking the one that I wrote this morning up flashed a message whether I wanted it translated into German.
Sounded like fun ....
Beware instant translation tools. It was hilariously funny, even if it did my artistic creation no favours. Nor did it show the German language in anything resembling its true form. The best bit though was where it translated the word for "smart" as in looking smart.
Yes, you got it in one! "Intelligent"! Same word as in English excepting the "g" being hard.
"Intelligent clothes" - what an interesting concept!
The newish jacket I was wearing (a present at Christmas, I could never have afforded to buy it) is smart, so on the S-Bahn home I had an interesting conversation with it. In fact it is a lot smarter than George W. Bush ever was (that doesn't take much doing, thinking about it), so if it had been American, it could well have been in the running to become President of the United States if it had been around a few years ago ....
The style of the man
When I was a young man in the North of England in the late 60s and early 70s, I would occasionally go out with friends for the odd drink in pubs on a Saturday nights.
You would wear your best suit, a clean shirt, your sharpest tie. Those were the days!
See anyone in a pub in the North of England in a suit recently (apart from a business executive on his way home)?
I often wonder when this tradition died. Maybe when Margaret Thatcher came along and decided that people in the North of England were not supposed to work any more, and the (mass) unemployed could not afford suits either .....
My father would have understood the suits and ties though. To his dying day (at he age of 66 in 1988) he never wore jeans. They had first appeared in the UK during WW2, brought over needless to say by the Americans. He would never wear jeans as "they did not look smart", and he was quite insistent that working-class and not very well-off as we were, we should always try to look the part. When working round the house (he was a talented handyman), he would always wear casual trousers, never jeans.
Myself I inherited this partly. I have never worn jeans for work, only at home for casual use. In the 1980s in Manchester, they still insisted on men (at least the few who still had jobs) wearing ties in offices as well. Even on startling hot days - now there's a thought, a startling hot day in Manchester?
IT departments in continental Europe have always been more relaxed about dress sense, but Mondays to Fridays without fail, I would wear casual trousers, not jeans, for work. Habit, trying to look the part, part of my father's inheritance, I suppose.
Since the robbery the other day, I have resumed the habit of wearing casual trousers, as if I were still working in an office rather than trying to eke out a mediocre living working for myself. Given the supply and demand situation (3 pairs of jeans less and all these smartish trousers sitting round the cupboard unused) it makes sense. Psychologically it could give me a lift (not the sort of lift a proper job in line with my outstanding talents or a secure income would give me, but that is another matter).
Times change, and dinosaurs may look out of place among the modern fauna, but for once I may not be growing old disgracefully.
You would wear your best suit, a clean shirt, your sharpest tie. Those were the days!
See anyone in a pub in the North of England in a suit recently (apart from a business executive on his way home)?
I often wonder when this tradition died. Maybe when Margaret Thatcher came along and decided that people in the North of England were not supposed to work any more, and the (mass) unemployed could not afford suits either .....
My father would have understood the suits and ties though. To his dying day (at he age of 66 in 1988) he never wore jeans. They had first appeared in the UK during WW2, brought over needless to say by the Americans. He would never wear jeans as "they did not look smart", and he was quite insistent that working-class and not very well-off as we were, we should always try to look the part. When working round the house (he was a talented handyman), he would always wear casual trousers, never jeans.
Myself I inherited this partly. I have never worn jeans for work, only at home for casual use. In the 1980s in Manchester, they still insisted on men (at least the few who still had jobs) wearing ties in offices as well. Even on startling hot days - now there's a thought, a startling hot day in Manchester?
IT departments in continental Europe have always been more relaxed about dress sense, but Mondays to Fridays without fail, I would wear casual trousers, not jeans, for work. Habit, trying to look the part, part of my father's inheritance, I suppose.
Since the robbery the other day, I have resumed the habit of wearing casual trousers, as if I were still working in an office rather than trying to eke out a mediocre living working for myself. Given the supply and demand situation (3 pairs of jeans less and all these smartish trousers sitting round the cupboard unused) it makes sense. Psychologically it could give me a lift (not the sort of lift a proper job in line with my outstanding talents or a secure income would give me, but that is another matter).
Times change, and dinosaurs may look out of place among the modern fauna, but for once I may not be growing old disgracefully.
Wednesday, 6 June 2012
The sad lament of an ageing wolf
Say an attractive young woman in her early twenties passes by.
You pass a more than cursory admiring glance in her direction.
Then it suddenly sadly strikes you that you are probably too old even for her mother!
You pass a more than cursory admiring glance in her direction.
Then it suddenly sadly strikes you that you are probably too old even for her mother!
Two challenges
The first of these I have put out there before, got no responses, so I will try again.
1. I want someone to prove to me that capitalism works. Your task - to make me rich. Your reward - 50% of all my wealth when I have "made it". The limitations - I have no assets, no spare money, will not take out debt and will not gamble (whether with my own or anyone else's money), oh - in addition - I hate selling. I am tired of being poor, I am tired of being turned down for jobs that I could do in my sleep (so no working your way out of poverty - yesterday this happened yet again), I am tired of trying to be self-employed and not being paid the money that I am owed, so I need a solution.
If nobody comes forward, I can logically claim that capitalism is a hoax and a failure.
2. I want someone to prove to me that astrology works. I will provide you with my exact date/time/place of birth and the exact date/time/location of four significant events in my life. Your task - to inform me what happened then and why.
If nobody can come forward and get it right, I will claim, logically, that astrology is a hoax and a fraud.
1. I want someone to prove to me that capitalism works. Your task - to make me rich. Your reward - 50% of all my wealth when I have "made it". The limitations - I have no assets, no spare money, will not take out debt and will not gamble (whether with my own or anyone else's money), oh - in addition - I hate selling. I am tired of being poor, I am tired of being turned down for jobs that I could do in my sleep (so no working your way out of poverty - yesterday this happened yet again), I am tired of trying to be self-employed and not being paid the money that I am owed, so I need a solution.
If nobody comes forward, I can logically claim that capitalism is a hoax and a failure.
2. I want someone to prove to me that astrology works. I will provide you with my exact date/time/place of birth and the exact date/time/location of four significant events in my life. Your task - to inform me what happened then and why.
If nobody can come forward and get it right, I will claim, logically, that astrology is a hoax and a fraud.
Tuesday, 5 June 2012
Well you know you have really hit rock bottom ....
Once upon a time the house where we live might have been the site domain of one family unit.
These days it is split into three separate apartments. As is the limited area outside, which in very German style is divided up between the three apartments in a fairly ordered fashion.
Our bit comprises what would be space to park a very small car if we had one, and at the back of the house a small uncovered area - home to my wife's potted plants - and a small covered area which contains a device for hanging washing (almost impossible to describe the contraption without a photo) and is also used by my wife to park her bicycle (or used to - the relevance of that comment will become clear in the next few minutes).
The other residents also have their odd bits and pieces outside, bicycles seem to be the in-thing here and the young guy who lives alone in the top apartment with his young son often leaves his kid's toys and the like outside.
The front is fenced off by a metal barrier, which a very fit young person might get over with considerable difficulty and a gate that is invariably locked. Not the easiest place to get in, and why would you bother?
Thieves are people with an often weird set of values, though.
Yesterday evening between 1800 and 1900 (6 PM and 7 PM if you must), at least two villains decided that it was our night for an uninvited visit.
Quite how they got in is an interesting question.
Looks like they did not try to enter the house (too many locks to get near anything valuable) and stole what seems to be a fairly modest series of items - three pairs of jeans (one of which would have been replaced a long time ago if we could have afforded it), and two of my wife's tee-shirts. These items had been hanging out to dry as had a pair of her trousers that they dropped in the pouring rain outside the front door when leaving
And then there were her bicycle and the one of the young man in the top flat, the only things resembling anything close to valuable that they took.
The curious thing is though that they then forced an entry in the garden of a house further down the road, and stole a bicycle that was there, leaving behind my wife's instead. Two discussions with the police later, and we had the bicycle back.
You know though how bad your life has got when thieves decide that the items that they have stolen from you are not worth keeping! Meanwhile my wife's bicycle has made its way to its new home in the cellar. Which will require two extra locks to be broken the next time someone thinks that it is not worth stealing!
These days it is split into three separate apartments. As is the limited area outside, which in very German style is divided up between the three apartments in a fairly ordered fashion.
Our bit comprises what would be space to park a very small car if we had one, and at the back of the house a small uncovered area - home to my wife's potted plants - and a small covered area which contains a device for hanging washing (almost impossible to describe the contraption without a photo) and is also used by my wife to park her bicycle (or used to - the relevance of that comment will become clear in the next few minutes).
The other residents also have their odd bits and pieces outside, bicycles seem to be the in-thing here and the young guy who lives alone in the top apartment with his young son often leaves his kid's toys and the like outside.
The front is fenced off by a metal barrier, which a very fit young person might get over with considerable difficulty and a gate that is invariably locked. Not the easiest place to get in, and why would you bother?
Thieves are people with an often weird set of values, though.
Yesterday evening between 1800 and 1900 (6 PM and 7 PM if you must), at least two villains decided that it was our night for an uninvited visit.
Quite how they got in is an interesting question.
Looks like they did not try to enter the house (too many locks to get near anything valuable) and stole what seems to be a fairly modest series of items - three pairs of jeans (one of which would have been replaced a long time ago if we could have afforded it), and two of my wife's tee-shirts. These items had been hanging out to dry as had a pair of her trousers that they dropped in the pouring rain outside the front door when leaving
And then there were her bicycle and the one of the young man in the top flat, the only things resembling anything close to valuable that they took.
The curious thing is though that they then forced an entry in the garden of a house further down the road, and stole a bicycle that was there, leaving behind my wife's instead. Two discussions with the police later, and we had the bicycle back.
You know though how bad your life has got when thieves decide that the items that they have stolen from you are not worth keeping! Meanwhile my wife's bicycle has made its way to its new home in the cellar. Which will require two extra locks to be broken the next time someone thinks that it is not worth stealing!
Monday, 4 June 2012
Legalising drugs
This is one of those "the trouble with you liberals" discussions.
Nobody has berated me for being "liberal" in the past couple of weeks so maybe it is time to provoke some hate mail from somebody who has been "informed" by the Murdoch media (the source of all truth and wisdom) about summat or other ....
"Anyway you are a "liberal"?".
"Correct, if you use American terminology, well mainly - but on certain issues ....".
"Stop waffling, you Commie creep! You're a liberal! So you believe in legalising drugs!". (Excuse the English spelling, my friend, it's the way I was trained).
Anyway of all the issues to pick - the answer actually is "no"!
I can see an argument that if nicotine is legal, cannabis ought to be. Weird argument given how many billions every year are spent helping people with illnesses caused by cigarette smoking. Putting something that burns into your mouth and letting it access your lungs - the area responsible for you being able to breathe - sounds like a recipe for trouble, anyway. It sounds like it ought to damage summat. Logically. Why should cannabis be any different from nicotine in the damage it causes? Please enlighten me.
Move on. As for most anything else, why would you want to? I remember in my early 20s looking to find some LSD as I was interested in finding out once what the hallucinations it caused were like. Just a bad dream? I never managed to try it, so those hallucinations remain a perennial mystery.
But why would you take heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, amphetamines usw usw usw? Because your friends are doing so? That is as stupid an answer as it gets, and certainly not a reason. Why are your friends then taking this stuff, because their friends are? Is that stupid or what?
To escape the gruesome nature of reality then? We would all like to escape reality, as grim as it has become for all but the mega-rich, but, my friend, when you have taken the drug, the reality is there still. As grim and gruesome as ever.
And if you become an addict, the grim and the gruesome are exacerbated 10 or 100-fold.
Go somewhere where they treat heroin addicts some time. Check out the people and how useless and hopeless they have become. That is the life that they have chosen. Well they might not have gone down that road if drugs were legal?
I suspect actually that more would have done so, and my social conscience ("damn you, you liberal!") asks the significant question should we be allowing people to reduce themselves to such a pathetic state or do we try and make sure that the possibilities of doing so are limited.
From experience - some years ago now a friend of mine suffered permanent brain damage as a result of amphetamine abuse. He would blank out all conscious awareness at times, and be totally beyond understanding what he was doing - like beating up his wife, smashing up the furniture and windows in the property where he lived usw. A complete horror story.
The argument that if such substances were legally available, they would not be abused, strikes me as wishful thinking in the extreme. It allows for no flaws in human nature and the capacity to think everything through rationally. Letting the genie out of the bottle seems in fact more dangerous than it already is.
What we really need is to educate people more as to why they should not indulge in the culture in the first place and expose the "attractions" for what they really are, not encourage more addictive behaviour for the sake of it.
Nobody has berated me for being "liberal" in the past couple of weeks so maybe it is time to provoke some hate mail from somebody who has been "informed" by the Murdoch media (the source of all truth and wisdom) about summat or other ....
"Anyway you are a "liberal"?".
"Correct, if you use American terminology, well mainly - but on certain issues ....".
"Stop waffling, you Commie creep! You're a liberal! So you believe in legalising drugs!". (Excuse the English spelling, my friend, it's the way I was trained).
Anyway of all the issues to pick - the answer actually is "no"!
I can see an argument that if nicotine is legal, cannabis ought to be. Weird argument given how many billions every year are spent helping people with illnesses caused by cigarette smoking. Putting something that burns into your mouth and letting it access your lungs - the area responsible for you being able to breathe - sounds like a recipe for trouble, anyway. It sounds like it ought to damage summat. Logically. Why should cannabis be any different from nicotine in the damage it causes? Please enlighten me.
Move on. As for most anything else, why would you want to? I remember in my early 20s looking to find some LSD as I was interested in finding out once what the hallucinations it caused were like. Just a bad dream? I never managed to try it, so those hallucinations remain a perennial mystery.
But why would you take heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, amphetamines usw usw usw? Because your friends are doing so? That is as stupid an answer as it gets, and certainly not a reason. Why are your friends then taking this stuff, because their friends are? Is that stupid or what?
To escape the gruesome nature of reality then? We would all like to escape reality, as grim as it has become for all but the mega-rich, but, my friend, when you have taken the drug, the reality is there still. As grim and gruesome as ever.
And if you become an addict, the grim and the gruesome are exacerbated 10 or 100-fold.
Go somewhere where they treat heroin addicts some time. Check out the people and how useless and hopeless they have become. That is the life that they have chosen. Well they might not have gone down that road if drugs were legal?
I suspect actually that more would have done so, and my social conscience ("damn you, you liberal!") asks the significant question should we be allowing people to reduce themselves to such a pathetic state or do we try and make sure that the possibilities of doing so are limited.
From experience - some years ago now a friend of mine suffered permanent brain damage as a result of amphetamine abuse. He would blank out all conscious awareness at times, and be totally beyond understanding what he was doing - like beating up his wife, smashing up the furniture and windows in the property where he lived usw. A complete horror story.
The argument that if such substances were legally available, they would not be abused, strikes me as wishful thinking in the extreme. It allows for no flaws in human nature and the capacity to think everything through rationally. Letting the genie out of the bottle seems in fact more dangerous than it already is.
What we really need is to educate people more as to why they should not indulge in the culture in the first place and expose the "attractions" for what they really are, not encourage more addictive behaviour for the sake of it.
Saturday, 2 June 2012
One day I'll fly away
I spend a lot of time watching birds. I have the strong impression that you can see how healthy the environment is by the upswings and downturns in bird populations and how they learn to adapt to the constant challenges that humans place in front of them.
As a child I recall watching large numbers of house sparrows in the garden of the house (in the North of England, as regular readers will know) my parents rented. There was a large wall with gaps where they could set up nests in the spring. Often at the foot of the wall in April and May you would find a young sparrow that had fallen from its nest, and would be abandoned by its parents. Death could be painful and not always sudden - a horrible lesson for a sensitive child to learn.
The "common" house sparrow is common no more. Its numbers have diminished sharply, almost synchronised with the inexorable growth of human population across the globe which we steadfastly (and incorrectly IMHO) refuse to regard as a problem.
Not all birds have suffered the same fate though. The common pigeon has thrived, often taking advantage of the mess that human beings create. Somewhat less aloof than the sparrows, they will occasionally ingratiate themselves with passing humans who seem friendly enough to bring along food. Their self-preservation techniques are though quite pronounced. If a human is a threat they soon notice it - in fact they are often more in danger from their own species, observe some of the quite vicious fights that break out among them.
In our neighbourhood the less common, but more attractive and definitely more aloof, wood pigeon is a frequent visitor. There are also sparrows, hedge sparrows more often than the house sparrow though. Down by the river Main there used to be a mixture of thick bushes and trees where every year large numbers of these sparrows would come to breed. As this year the powers that be decided (for reasons best known to themselves) to trim the bushes, that breeding colony has been notably absent sadly.
Which has left the river to the usual ducks (of various kinds - some seem obviously to have been imported from East Asia, I doubt whether they would have flown that far), geese and a few graceful swans (advise your children not to provoke swans incidentally, their self-preservation instincts are extremely pronounced). Duck numbers seem to be down (that is maybe just my impression), which may be a bad sign.
Occasionally a gull appears following the river - usually they appear quite lost, and the sea is a long way away- this is hardly the place for them to be breeding. Also the grey heron, a common bird in the Netherlands when I lived there, will put in an appearance, but they are not frequent visitors.
The bird family that perhaps most represents the region are the crows, particularly ravens. Large, magnificently black, smart and intelligent if hardly tuneful. The "caws" are surely more attention grabbing than a tune to attract a mate. They seem relatively unfazed by human presence at times, and definitely have "presence". The numbers seemed to be down last year, this year seems to be back to normal. I live in hope that they will thrive, they are fascinating creatures to observe.
June is on us, the breeding season in Europe is almost complete, but still the odd male blackbird is out there trying to sing its way into the heart of a passing female.
Perhaps one of my last fond memories is of the time when I lived on the Scheldeplein in Amsterdam. In 2001 I was commuting with my job everyday to Capelle-aan-den-Ijssel the other side of Rotterdam. This meant getting up at 5 o'clock and leaving the house at quarter to six. In April that year, I recall opening the door one morning (just before sunrise) and being greeted with the "Dawn Chorus" - the whole square was awakened to the tune of dozens of birds singing. It is a phenomenon known in the English countryside, but one you do not instantly associate with a square in a suburban area.
A glorious moment, one I was to enjoy for a couple of weeks afterwards (I deliberately left the apartment early to stand and just listen for a couple of minutes). As we continue to destroy the planet for other species, I hope that it is something that we will not lose. Nature in all its glory has much to recommend it, and birds are more than a significant part of that.
As a child I recall watching large numbers of house sparrows in the garden of the house (in the North of England, as regular readers will know) my parents rented. There was a large wall with gaps where they could set up nests in the spring. Often at the foot of the wall in April and May you would find a young sparrow that had fallen from its nest, and would be abandoned by its parents. Death could be painful and not always sudden - a horrible lesson for a sensitive child to learn.
The "common" house sparrow is common no more. Its numbers have diminished sharply, almost synchronised with the inexorable growth of human population across the globe which we steadfastly (and incorrectly IMHO) refuse to regard as a problem.
Not all birds have suffered the same fate though. The common pigeon has thrived, often taking advantage of the mess that human beings create. Somewhat less aloof than the sparrows, they will occasionally ingratiate themselves with passing humans who seem friendly enough to bring along food. Their self-preservation techniques are though quite pronounced. If a human is a threat they soon notice it - in fact they are often more in danger from their own species, observe some of the quite vicious fights that break out among them.
In our neighbourhood the less common, but more attractive and definitely more aloof, wood pigeon is a frequent visitor. There are also sparrows, hedge sparrows more often than the house sparrow though. Down by the river Main there used to be a mixture of thick bushes and trees where every year large numbers of these sparrows would come to breed. As this year the powers that be decided (for reasons best known to themselves) to trim the bushes, that breeding colony has been notably absent sadly.
Which has left the river to the usual ducks (of various kinds - some seem obviously to have been imported from East Asia, I doubt whether they would have flown that far), geese and a few graceful swans (advise your children not to provoke swans incidentally, their self-preservation instincts are extremely pronounced). Duck numbers seem to be down (that is maybe just my impression), which may be a bad sign.
Occasionally a gull appears following the river - usually they appear quite lost, and the sea is a long way away- this is hardly the place for them to be breeding. Also the grey heron, a common bird in the Netherlands when I lived there, will put in an appearance, but they are not frequent visitors.
The bird family that perhaps most represents the region are the crows, particularly ravens. Large, magnificently black, smart and intelligent if hardly tuneful. The "caws" are surely more attention grabbing than a tune to attract a mate. They seem relatively unfazed by human presence at times, and definitely have "presence". The numbers seemed to be down last year, this year seems to be back to normal. I live in hope that they will thrive, they are fascinating creatures to observe.
June is on us, the breeding season in Europe is almost complete, but still the odd male blackbird is out there trying to sing its way into the heart of a passing female.
Perhaps one of my last fond memories is of the time when I lived on the Scheldeplein in Amsterdam. In 2001 I was commuting with my job everyday to Capelle-aan-den-Ijssel the other side of Rotterdam. This meant getting up at 5 o'clock and leaving the house at quarter to six. In April that year, I recall opening the door one morning (just before sunrise) and being greeted with the "Dawn Chorus" - the whole square was awakened to the tune of dozens of birds singing. It is a phenomenon known in the English countryside, but one you do not instantly associate with a square in a suburban area.
A glorious moment, one I was to enjoy for a couple of weeks afterwards (I deliberately left the apartment early to stand and just listen for a couple of minutes). As we continue to destroy the planet for other species, I hope that it is something that we will not lose. Nature in all its glory has much to recommend it, and birds are more than a significant part of that.
Postscript (December 10, 2021). The number of ducks on the river has diminished sharply in the past 10 years. The number of geese, particularly Canada geese, has, though, rocketed. I am not sure whether those two facts are related.
Meanwhile the ravens are back in increased numbers, particularly close to the local LIDL supermarket.
Friday, 1 June 2012
World War III is coming?
You occasionally get bits of absolute nonsense coming at you. Everything from the end of the world to Mitt Romney's economic recovery plan for the US to the latest on Heidi Klum's marriage break-up.
One occasional theme is the next World War. The purveyors of apocalyptic visions are particularly keen on this, notably the complete idiots who see the Christian Bible as a work of prophesy (no doubt people who also believe what Mitt Romney has to say on the US economy - and other equally unreal individuals).
On YouTube yesterday I was directed by a link to one of these pieces. It is in the Books of Daniel and Ezekiel, with passing reference to the Book of Revelations, toss in the odd reference to the Anti-Christ and away you go.
The US, Israel, Iran - this is a WORLD war as predicted.
Or rather as implied.
Small world. The two major, gruesome events called World Wars in the 20th Century were both European wars with other continents dragged in due to the Empires of the various European countries being called to action. The Japanese and Americans also arrived for the party - late (though events in the Pacific were eventually vividly unpleasant).
World War III - the scenario above almost excludes Europe entirely. The UK has never found a reason to avoid a war, particularly during an economic crisis, and will invariably dance to the strings pulled in Washington, but the rest of Europe has important economic issues to resolve without adding a very expensive war to the invoices. And François Hollande is as keen to stay out of foreign ventures as his predecessor wanted to be in them (and Germany's post-1945 record is to stay away if at all possible).
So a World War it will not be.
An air attack on Iran's nuclear facilities I would not rule out. A full-scale war like Iraq? Apparently most Americans (according to the opinion polls) do not want it, by a wide margin!
The curious thing about this YouTube piece was the suggestion that Obama would be involved. Another reason to dismiss it as nonsense. This sort of piece may go down well with the fanatical wing of the Republican party in the Bible Belt. With a Romney Presidency (may the non-existent God please spare us from that!), an attack on Iran is likely.
But World War III?
Sorry, no.
Even if it is written in the Books of Ezekiel, Daniel, Revelations usw. That is simply one more reason to dismiss those texts for the load of antiquated mythology that they are!
One occasional theme is the next World War. The purveyors of apocalyptic visions are particularly keen on this, notably the complete idiots who see the Christian Bible as a work of prophesy (no doubt people who also believe what Mitt Romney has to say on the US economy - and other equally unreal individuals).
On YouTube yesterday I was directed by a link to one of these pieces. It is in the Books of Daniel and Ezekiel, with passing reference to the Book of Revelations, toss in the odd reference to the Anti-Christ and away you go.
The US, Israel, Iran - this is a WORLD war as predicted.
Or rather as implied.
Small world. The two major, gruesome events called World Wars in the 20th Century were both European wars with other continents dragged in due to the Empires of the various European countries being called to action. The Japanese and Americans also arrived for the party - late (though events in the Pacific were eventually vividly unpleasant).
World War III - the scenario above almost excludes Europe entirely. The UK has never found a reason to avoid a war, particularly during an economic crisis, and will invariably dance to the strings pulled in Washington, but the rest of Europe has important economic issues to resolve without adding a very expensive war to the invoices. And François Hollande is as keen to stay out of foreign ventures as his predecessor wanted to be in them (and Germany's post-1945 record is to stay away if at all possible).
So a World War it will not be.
An air attack on Iran's nuclear facilities I would not rule out. A full-scale war like Iraq? Apparently most Americans (according to the opinion polls) do not want it, by a wide margin!
The curious thing about this YouTube piece was the suggestion that Obama would be involved. Another reason to dismiss it as nonsense. This sort of piece may go down well with the fanatical wing of the Republican party in the Bible Belt. With a Romney Presidency (may the non-existent God please spare us from that!), an attack on Iran is likely.
But World War III?
Sorry, no.
Even if it is written in the Books of Ezekiel, Daniel, Revelations usw. That is simply one more reason to dismiss those texts for the load of antiquated mythology that they are!
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