The Southern Higher Latitudes

For some time I have been considering the climate and other desirable features of the higher latitude cities. In particular, I am interested in the southern latitudes. This should come as no surprise as I live in South Africa. The photo at the right here is Cape Point as seen from a stormy sea just south of it. I was lucky to be on a South African Navy Corvette when this photo was taken. It might seem calm enough, but those waves are 5m from top to bottom! Other photos are from south of Dunedin in New Zealand and obviously of the incredibly beautiful Table Mountain in Cape Town (With permission from Martin Wierzbicki).

Back to the topic of this piece; reading Jared Diamond’s interesting work “Guns, germs and steel: a short history of everybody for he last 13,000 years” I realised that the lands at higher latitudes and especially those with Mediterranean climates are rather special in that often the edible grasses came from those areas (especially in Eurasia). These grasses were domesticated early and proved critical to the development of civilisations. I guess the question then is why the tropics are almost as hostile as the arctic zones when it comes to food security for people, etc. Jared has several wonderful explanations in the book and it is well worth a read.

Still not satisfied I kept on looking and found this article at a NASA site. In “Location, location”, Rachel Hauser tells us that in 1990 about 35% of the world population lived on 1% of the ice-free land. We are also told that somehow the rate of economic growth of the poor nations are much lower than that of the rich nations and the link is made to the location of the fastest growing economies (despite the process of globalisation). Interesting enough, most of the poor countries are situated in the tropical regions of the world. Looking at climate zones and coastal proximity, it was found that only three tropical economies were classified as high-income (Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore). Every country zoned as temperate had either middle or high income economies and in countries (and economies) straddling both temperate and tropical climates (for example Brazil and Australia), it was found that wealth concentrated in the temperate zones.


The three key factors driving this situation were: coastal proximity, prevalence of infectious diseases and agricultural productivity. It is explained that tropical agricultural yields are low because the soils are more “fragile” than temperate soil, etc.

These things all make sense to me. I also find that I cope better with climates that are cooler and often less humid. I like “seasons”: very cold winters and mild summers. I work best when I can see how the days get longer or shorter and where dusk and dawn are long events. Some time ago I had to write a motivation for air conditioning of some old offices. I had a tough time explaining that most people find it hard to concentrate or work in an information type environment for a reasonable stretch of time when it was hot. I was told that because they were sitting quietly at their computers, they could easily stand temperatures up to 30C. I did not agree, and eventually the fight was won, and now I see people setting their conditioners to about 23C, and I see them actually working and not looking tired and restless. The climate in the higher latitudes is such that one can easily regulate the temperature in the working environment via natural means. Anybody who has been to Hauser’s three successful tropical economies will also know that there the information worker environment is highly climate controlled. Is this possibly also a key to economic success? And if it as simple as that, why is it that the poor countries do not take this information to heart like Singapore did, for example? Any ideas?

All Saints Day

On the 1st of November most Christians in churches closer to the Catholic Church will be keeping All Saints Day. This is in contrast to the pagan feasts and other reasons for parties falling on the 31st of October, going under the name of Halloween.
I’ll be in Brisbane on Halloween and flying from Australia to South Africa on All Saints Day. It is about the context of All Saints Day (ASD) that I want to talk in this blog. Thinking about the context of ASD, I suddenly thought about my grandmother. Born just after the turn of the previous century, she saw both world wars and raised 5 children under very difficult circumstances in South Africa. It was a time of colonial rule of most of Africa, and she and her children were called names and ridiculed for speaking Afrikaans (a descendent language of Dutch). Discrimination against Afrikaners like my grandmother was not recognised for what it was by the world at the time - racial and cultural discrimination of the worst kind. One wonders how this contributed to the nationalist dreams of people like my grandmother and her children, and how it contributed to them being ready to be exploited by politicians during the Apartheid Era.
But these things mean nothing when compared to the thing she did well. She had a secret recipe for a South African delicacy called a “koeksister” and here grape jam was beyond belief on warm toast, made by toasting bread directly on warm stove plates on those eye-watering cold winter nights in Kimberley. She was not an easy woman to get along with, but she had a simple approach to life: always speak the truth and keep things simple.
She prayed a lot and in later years when we spoke on the phone (we would call her once a week) she would often say that she has so many people to remember in her prayers that she often fell asleep during these prayers. She would quickly add that she always had us up front in the queue, so we would be ok!
She was an active woman her whole life and she had a coloured young woman living with her in the house, and when this lady’s son was born, he stayed with my grandmother, often sleeping with her in her bed after falling asleep after a long day and a great bedtime story. She always said that he was her reason for waking up! On the day she died, she got up in the morning, at age 94 and still readied herself for shopping. She walked a couple of kilometers to the shops, did not feel well and went past her doctor, who immediately had her taken to hospital. When the family reached the hospital, she was calm and collected, and with a clear voice gave them the instructions on where the koeksisters were, where the frozen meatballs were, etc. She had prepared everything in detail for her funeral and the family get-together as is the custom. And with clear eyes and a smile, she asked that we let her go and she passed on.
There was a feeling of immense loss but also of great peace when I was told of her death. I knew that from that moment on one less person was praying for my well-being. There would also not be anymore koeksisters and grape jam on toast dripping with butter. But most of all, we have lost a person of great serenity, of simple and straight-forward values and a person with wisdom of almost a 100 years locked up in every sentence.
Tomorrow on the plane I’ll be remembering her on All Saints Day, for all the right reasons. I know we all have people to be remembered on this day. Go ahead, let’s be grateful. Being touched by these people gives us direction. And maybe, it shows us the way so that we can become saints in our own way.

Operating Systems with Client Awareness

I need to explain my background in computers as the context for his piece.  I was privileged to have access to an electronic calculator when I was a kid.  This was 1977 and I was positively influenced by the power of this device.  I soon understood that getting the right answer meant that I needed to consider the rounding errors that were still part of the calculators of that era.  I became a master of the little machine by spending an enormous amount of time with it.  

In 1980 I became the proud owner of a Sharp EL5100 programmable calculator, while I studied computer science at University, learning to program in FORTRAN 77 on a mainframe.   This calculator was followed by a Sharp PC1500, which I could program in BASIC.  Then I bought an Apple //e in 1984 and finally a HP15C (which I still use today).  I used the Apple //e for programming in Apple 6502 machine code, Apple Basic, Apple Pascal and Turbo Pascal running on the Z80 card of the Apple.  For the latter I wrote my own graphics routines that used a tunnel built into the Z80 card to access the Apple routines in ROM.  I had the opportunity to use the first Macintosh and Lisa computers and then I was forced to switch to PC architectures in the early 1990s, where I continued to program in various languages, including C and C++.  I wrote my own PostScript driver for the Apple //e before I retired that machine in 1998!  I think it is fair to say that I have experience in tweaking and forcing hardware and software to do my biding. 

I used a wide variety of application software and wrote a lot of my own as well.  Over the years I realized that one can spend an inordinate amount of time on tweaks and tasks other than your primary goals, like writing that research report, developing that business presentation or writing the book you always wanted to write.  Most of this tweaking and fiddling comes naturally to so-called techies.  It is easy for them to set up the operating system on a new machine, to extend the word processor with scripts and to add all sorts of fancy formatting and programming to a spreadsheet.  But it eats up time.

Many people do not want or could not care for this sort of “power”.  They want to access the power of a computer.  They want to be seen as a client by the vendors of the software and hardware, not as collaborators on the software and testers of the new interfaces.  They want to point at an icon that makes sense to them, get a page up and start typing the letter, etc.  They do not want to learn how to set up a piece of software, or tweak it to work with the printer.  90% of the features are just hurdles to them.  

This is my contribution today: maybe we should start to look at these users as clients of our hardware and software, not as useless or stupid newbies that should just get out of our lives.  If we see them as clients, we will design the operating system and the hardware so that they can feel comfortable, so that they have access to the powerful functions without knowing to open a terminal window and type SU to get administrator rights to modify things.  Yes, allow that for the tweakers, they are clients too.  But many people want to work (write a fancy report, add a picture, add video, etc) without wanting to know about file formats, codecs, etc.  

I am using a MacBook Pro running OS X 10.5, a descendent of the Berkley Software Distribution of Unics and the FreeBSD line of code as well as the ground-breaking NEXTSTEP system.  So, at heart it is Unix.  I also run openSUSE 11 in a VMWare fusion box, along with Windows XP Professional and Windows 98 from Microsoft on the Mac.  SUSE is a true Linux child and this version is a very popular distro with only Ubuntu possibly being more popular.  There are similarities between the metaphors of OSX and SUSE, but one thing is clear, OSX is streets ahead in ease of use.  I switched on my Mac out of the box, it ran unassisted through the initial setup functions, found my wireless network, connected, discovered my printers on the Microsoft based network, and was ready to roll before 30 minutes were up.  I then installed several packages.  Put in the CD, click and wait, and then work, no drama.  The only software that took a bit of tweaking was the VMWare Fusion stuff.  I discovered that I was sold an older version and once I downloaded the free update, things went better.  Then I discovered something interesting.

Installing XP under Fusion was simple enough, but took 30 minutes and several tweaks (similar to setting it up on a new PC) before it was functional.  It was not simple at all.  Windows 98 was even worse and needed many tweaks to get to work.  SUSE took me a full day to get going!!  I had to wade through sub-directories and fiddle packages, I had to get down to code and scripts to get the VMWare package installed, resorting to super-user status before I could get it to work, with no real gains.  The openOffice (2.4) with SUSE would not read some of the documents done in the same version under XP, asking for character sets etc to be modified, corrupting the files.  So, SUSE is not for my wife!  It does not understand anything about serving me as a client, it assumes I want to waste my time tweaking things.  It is Unix, and so is OSX, but on my Mac I am treated like a valued client, on SUSE I am treated like I should know it all or suffer.  It is too busy being smart-ass and cool to care about the user that just wants to get on with work. And the software on it is really good (in the sense that it is free and can be coaxed into doing things if you are willing to sit and fiddle).

Windows XP is really not bad after all.  It works most of the time, as long as you do not overload it over time with lots of applications and modifications.  Office 2007 is also very good and quite intuitive in a weird way.  I can do really good work in minutes and I can access the advanced features easily when I need to.  Not bad and I hope Windows 7 is more like XP than Vista.  

Lastly, my son bought a new laptop and it only comes with Windows Vista Home (something – not Basic).  This is a self-indulgent OS, constantly going off to the internet to check things, constantly telling you what to do, throwing stuff into your face without you asking for it, and it does not just connect and play.  Not for my wife either, and by the looks of it, my son (a new breed of super user) hates it.  As he says, the stupid thing is always busy with it-self and has no time available for him to actually get some work done.  Yes, Vista is so busy doing things on your machine that it has very little time left to listen to what you want to do.  I guess we’ll soon sell that laptop and replace it with a Mac. 

If you want to feel like a valued client, get some work done and feel like you have accomplished things, get a Mac.  I can say this after 30 years of working with computing machines.  For now you have no real choice, unless you have lots of time to waste.

New Zealand

This blog is written and submitted from Dunedin in New Zealand in late October. One would expect it to be warmer, but it is just around 15 centigrade and the breeze is quite cold from the west. From the walkway at the hotel I can see the brilliant green hills to the east dotted with mustard yellow vegetation. The air is clear and crisp.
The opportunity to visit this beautiful country arose suddenly and despite huge cost, we decided as a family to just do it and make the break! The flight from Johannesburg on Qantas started late as expected. I am sure that this is not the fault of Qantas, but rather that of the system shared with South African Airways and by the Airports Company of South Africa. Checking in took over three hours and we were only airborne after 21:00, and this with the flight planned to leave at 18:10! In typical South African fashion everything went along at a snail’s pace, with all sorts of extra events invented to slow progress to departure, like several searches of luggage, each successive one being successful in finding something missed by the X-ray machine and previous rummaging. When we finally took off in a typical Gauteng thunder storm, things became more organised, with Qantas assuring us hat we would still be able to connect to Auckland on the same day (or within eight hours). This was important, because the process at the Australian embassy to get a transit visa is now so drawn-out that we could not get that done in time (it could take more than a month, and this to pass through the airport!), and all our flights were planned to ensure that we had a smooth passage. I was told that most South African families on trips to Australia and New Zealand are now viewed with suspicion by the staff at the Australian embassy. I wonder why?
We were put on another flight to Auckland when we arrived in Sydney, with the real Aussies at the airport being friendly and VERY professional. Our introduction to New Zealand after more than 13000km of travel was smooth and professional, with friendly and efficient people working at 02:00 with a smile. The next day we had another great flight to Wellington, where a friend that emigrated to New Zealand about a year ago awaited us as we walked off the plane. It was as if this new Kiwi was just an extension of the psyche of the nation here, friendly and relaxed, light years away from the stressed person we knew in South Africa. A couple of glasses of Sauvignon Blanc later we finally went to bed at a civilized hour. Wellington is a wonderful place, rich in culture and atmosphere, and we definitely left too soon.
My first glimpse, through clouds, of the Otago area was filled with lots of emotion. The sun brushed the hills with yellow strokes. The brilliant green patchwork was dotted with white flecks where the sheep reflected the sun slicing through the clouds. The airport is modern, but the single runway is just long enough to handle the 737. Dunedin mixes the modern with the old in an effortless way, the pace is relaxed, but there is a purpose for everything.
As I look out at the new clouds rushing in with a cold front I think about the many decisions ahead of us. On an island things are so finely balanced.

Dogmatic Sloganism

The beliefs held by the freedom fighters in Africa and I guess in the rest of the world are often mostly informed by slogans. For example, what are the belief systems that benefit from a leader in South Africa singing a “struggle song” like Umshini Wami (Bring me my machine gun)?

South Africa is a country with a broad spectrum of cultures and backgrounds. People from the Zulu culture might feel positively encouraged to support what a leader stands for when he chants this song, based on the fact that it brings back the memories of a successful struggle against Apartheid. However, given that this regime had been ousted almost 20 years ago, might negatively influence minorities and their mental models, creating fear of another campaign against certain groups. One would guess that simple logic would dictate that such action would not necessarily be possible. I mean, would Jacob Zuma really take up a machine gun (if he had one) and go off to some sort of campaign? I think not. However, why does it seem to work for his followers?

I think it comes back to humans being so massively open to the power of suggestion. We tend to take a single piece of information and then elaborate on it mentally to try and understand where this might lead. This extrapolation and interpolation will be driven by biases and not by facts. If you had recently been held at gun point during a car theft, you might immediately see a link between Jacob chanting away and the guy pointing a gun at you. The effect of fear will then be used by the brain to develop a rather dark picture. Similarly those that are desperate for change and action might not ask the key questions to test the possibility of this actually reverting to a new struggle of sorts.

Successful slogans are linked to emotions; they consist of simple words, linked to vivid images and symbols with accepted universal meaning. It is interesting that the universal symbols of revolution are so well known. These revolve around flags, songs, fists/hands/weapons, and simple tools. Flags have a long history and reflect coherence, hands and tools show where the power lies (with the individual people and not with the corporates) and weapons, the means to the end. Each of these elements may be crafted to become a coherent whole to et a simple doctrine across. This is the essence of dogmatic sloganism.

Why would it be used so extensively by revolutionaries? Simplicity, I guess. Getting a message across without the need for long debate; hungry and angry mobs do not do well during long debates. So back to Zuma and the ANC: is the use of slogans now a sign of an organization that has not grown at all or is it just that their support base are not capable of debate, or is that they are too hungry to be bothered by logic? My feeling is that it is more sinister: sometimes we can be swayed by slogans even when we know that the logic dictates something else, for all the reasons above. Is the ANC using slogans now, because it wants to defy common sense? This is something Robert Mugabe did for a long time and very successfully. Even when his country was falling apart rapidly, slogans kept the crowds aligned. Are you able to break out of the grip of dogmatic sloganism?

I use my own graphics and graphics sourced from iStockPhoto - observe the copyright.

Symbols of Conversation

In a previous blog I spoke about language as an important element of the learning process. In a discussion with a friend, we considered what we mean by language, and with a bit of debate (and still open to debate), we concluded that there are at least three types of languages that people use: Spoken language and sound utterances, written symbols and strings of symbols, and gestures and body stance. A fourth possibility could be telepathy, but given that there is a lack of well documented evidence, we decided, for now, to not consider it.

Some written text (this sentence for example) conforms to a set of rules for the English language and it is represented by a combination of symbols called the English/western alphabet. I could have done something similar by using another form of encoding, called the Chinese character set, or any other one of several sets. In each case the character combinations would either develop a word or a concept, or even be a full concept. This written language is a record of the spoken languages that we learn for example during our early formative years. At some stage we might get formal instruction as to the use and rules of the language and some individuals master it to such an extent that they can ‘verbalise’ and put to text very complex emotions and mental images. Poetry is an example, and the picture below is my rather untidy handwritten section from a poem by an Afrikaans poet called Breyten Breytenbach (from “Die Windvanger”).

Mathematical symbols may be used to convey certain principles more effectively. However, here the rules are strict, and instruction on the use and the rules are needed before this written form (some of which are called equations) will make sense to readers. Mathematical symbology allows us to describe in a consistent way the world around us and some of the natural phenomena we perceive. There are also several implied relationships, as in this equation ascribed to Euler and the equation from the discipline of chemistry followed by one from physics:

Similarly, the notation of music must be mastered before music may be written down or, as in the case of the poem, before music may be composed successfully. We need to understand what the symbols and strings of symbols mean, what their spatial relationships imply and we must understand the context, before the symbols will make sense.

We use “body language” and facial expression to communicate. The following set of images are taken from Daniel Goleman’s book “Destructive Emotions” and shows what can be termed universal human emotional signals.

It is my contention that all these elements are in play during the process of learning, from birth onwards. Over a glass of dry white wine, a young friend of mine recounted her experiences at school, both good and bad, and we found some interesting patterns! Successful teachers know how to utilise all the language elements and apply them in imagination-stimulating ways to convey concepts. They tell the stories that make the symbols friends! They recount situations and generate scenarios where the expectations can be linked to internal theories towards solving the problem of making sense of the environment. This environment could be many things. It could be the lines and dots of the Cartesian plane, it could be the pathways of the nerve system, it could be the patterns and behaviour of the benzene ring in chemical design and it could be the form and stroke of a brush on a virgin canvass.

There is one prerequisite though for all of this to succeed. We must recognise that we as humans, although we have the a priori (genetic) ability or predisposition for symbol manipulation, still need to be made aware of the rules of engaging with these symbols and we must master them before we can apply them successfully. The South African school system seems to have missed this point completely and it reflects in the demonstrated slip in international standing in reading and maths ability. Please ensure that this does not happen where you live on our beautiful planet. It cuts to the heart of what makes us different from other species on this planet. Humanity cannot afford to have our young people crippled in this way.

So now, go read a poem or page through a book on mathematical proof and listen to some music. Find the sheet music for your favourite song. Be human to the hilt!

(Copyright notice: I use graphic elements licensed to me by iStockphoto.com. Observe the rights of the owners of this material.)

Learning

The question of learning is a fascinating one. Why do we learn, how do we learn, and what do we learn? One can probably try and answer these questions by considering the current thinking on cognition. Perception is fundamental to this tack. With perception goes the thinking around memory stores: long term memory and short term memory. All of this seems a bit mechanistic to me to be honest.

Yes, surely situation awareness is key to learning, for many events are just filtered out. Interaction with the environment may be seen as core to the process of learning and indeed, it forms the basis of nearly all theories of learning and intelligence. But is that it? My dog is rather aware in this sense, and in terms of homology it has an organ similar to my brain in the physical space. Does this mean that my dog is just especially impaired when it comes to learning? Where did humans leave dogs behind in evolution of the learning ability of the brain and can we be sure that this is in fact the case? Is knowledge just the product of learning or can we claim the concept of a priori genetic knowledge? Darwin punts the need for evolutionary learning (a priory learning) as a prerequisite for survival. Does this mean that real learning can only happen in the context of survivability, that is, the acquisition of true knowledge, knowledge that transcends the individual is dependent on threat scenarios?

Some authors, notably Karl Popper, point to language as a key concept in self-awareness and the concepts of knowledge (Popper is careful to not call this knowledge the equivalent of the German “Wissen” – the Greek equivalent of the knowledge of the gods). If this conjecture is accurate (it approaches Truth), then there is definitely a difference between me and my dog. However, my dog has signalling abilities; I used signals recently in France to explain that I was feeling like death warmed up to a French doctor. I signalled my pain when I breathed, coughed and looked dizzy! He considered my situation knowingly and did exactly the tests that my Afrikaans speaking doctor would do had I consulted him. And he came to the same conclusion and prescribed similar antibiotics. Surely, this was only signalling. In context to be sure, but my dog can do that as well. I am just not sure that my dog will be able to put together the story of its own misery in a past, present and future coherent sense.

Being conscious of identity, having a theory (not just a sense) of time and being able to construct discourse on expectation seems to be other aspects of learning that are important when I read musings of the enlightened ones. I know that my dog has a sense of time, but I have no evidence that it can construct a signalling event to me or another dog to communicate the expectation of me going on holiday and sending it off to the dreaded kennels!

All of this made me wonder how the people in charge of the school system come up with the methods used to train humanity. Do they use threatening circumstances to get kids to become mathematicians? Possibly, but I suspect that approach is not too successful. Is it about “cognition”? Again Popper has a bit of a different view. His conjecture is that we theorise about things, that we see problems, that we attempt solutions before we observe in a directed manner. We seem to have an expectation of events that drives our need to know. I am sure that I am not doing Popper justice, but this is the best I can do on a blog site!

What is more, theorising is connected to being able to tell a story, to imagine a beginning, middle and end, to see causality as a thread during the recounting of something, even if it is imaginary, like a fairy tale. Telling a story is uniquely human it seems, and that brings me to the (possibly) related work of Stephen Denning on Business Narrative. Here stories are used to share learning and discovery. Back to the start of the blog, and we find the cognition elements there, but if we follow Popper and Denning in a logical fashion, it seems that cognition (and learned information) is a result of experience on the back of a theory of possible outcomes and expected problems, and expectations met or refuted, in the real world or in the imaginary world.

Maybe successful learning is a result of such a process, and not just copying of behaviour or patterns. Yes, that may be part of learning, but true knowledge seems to come from some empirical process. I think this means that we must 'learn' to listen to our inner stories, have mind experiments, develop models and stories, expect outcomes and test this against reality. Another important point is that when I talk about "language", I include all the concepts of mathematics and music as well. Just like the construction of conversation in spoken word was learned during childhood, we must learn the concepts of mathematics for example. Again Popper points out that normal children have a priori language abilities...

The core concept is that we need to suggest possible outcomes even before we experience them. From the delta we deduce something new about the world (even if the delta is zero!) and we adapt accordingly.

If someone will tell me a story about Einstein and his problems, his conjectures and theories, then maybe, just maybe, I can be a successful student of relativity theory? Well, it is clearly not as simple as that, because as Popper points out, I must do my own theorising then with what I have heard and with what I expect, build my own expectation set and "solve" the problems from my unique perspective. Just maybe I can find the story that will lead me to new discovery on the back of what I already understand through the manipulation into a causally/logically coherent theory of possible worlds. Maybe a story is at the heart of learning….

Democracy

Let me start by saying that this is not a critique on democracy, and that it is not an attempt to describe or explain democracy. It is a simple commentary on the state of affairs.

For some time now I have had this uneasy feeling around what is being described as democracy in South Africa. It is thus fitting to look at what the word means and in what context it stands. Consider “monarchy” – mon:archy, the rule by a single person and “aristocracy” – rule by the aristocrats, those that are the “best”. Democracy stands in relation to these as the “rule by the (free) people”. It implies that the people have the power and jurisdiction to direct how things will be done.

As a theory it sounds great, as long as the assumptions are clear. For example, as long as the majority is not much bigger than the minority, that is, as long as there is a power balance, those representing the people in the positions of decision making will be careful to consider what actions might swing the power balance. If the democracy is based on some sort of representation that is not specifically allied to the party from which the representatives come, then the individuals may make the best decisions on behalf of the constituency. The assumption is that party dogma will take the back seat and that the individual will operate with integrity and within the moral value system of the majority.

My concern is with these assumptions. If the understanding of democracy is only that the “will of the people is paramount”, and if the people are not sensitive to how they may be open to powerful suggestion from those in the positions of power, things may go horribly wrong. It might be that the people come to recognise less and less of the failings of the bureaucrats because of a cultural predisposition to believing that those elected are indeed morally sound. Ultimately, if the elected individuals fail, the implication is that the people failed!

How can one test whether a democracy, or any other form of rule, is sound? I suppose there are many logics available for this, but I like the approach of Karl Popper. Unless the people can remove the government without bloodshed, the system is flawed. I also feel that if it becomes exceedingly difficult to ensure that government does what is in the best interest of citizens, and if government resorts to “sloganism” in order to suggest new realities and values and to preserve their positional power, then there is no rule by the people and a “tyranny” is taking root. In fact, then the country has embarked on the road to dictatorship.

It is with this in mind that I consider the situation in South Africa. I see slogans everywhere, urging the people to rule in step with the wishes of the ruling party and in many cases towards the preservation of those in power. The majority is not balanced by a minority that can shift the power by pointing out the immoral acts or failings of those in power. Those in power talk about blood and spread fear. Is this a democracy? Back to Popper: there are two kinds of state: one where it is possible to get rid of the government without bloodshed, and the other where this is impossible. Then I must consider how the previous regime exited: was it through bloodshed? The new regime is quick to claim that this is so, but closer scrutiny shows revolution fired by dogmatics, pushing children into the line of fire for the cause and finally the previous regime that negotiated itself out of power. I cannot claim that this is the only way to see the situation, but it definitely is one that, if it is close to the truth, takes South Africa close to the edge of chaos. Then we must now consider how we shall preserve our freedoms as a matter of urgency.

The last word goes to Popper: “Democracy in the sense of ‘rule by the people’ has practically never existed, and when it has, it has been an arbitrary and unaccountable dictatorship. Rule by the people cannot be; it is unaccountable.”

Stress and quality of life

It dawned on me today, floating in the Mediterranean at Cannes, that my memory is severely impacted by the life style I’ve been leading since 1995.  As the warm sun needled my exposed skin and the cool water lapped over me, I stared up into the blue sky and tried to remember my previous trip in July 2006 to the same place – and I could not recall much!  My memory had these little snapshots, but they were link-less, story-less, meaningless in a way. 

As we experience stress, hormones are released in the brain, impacting several structures physically.  If the stress becomes a permanent feature, the chemicals will have a permanent impact on these structures, it seems.  For example, we seem to “blank” out those stressful moments.  The memory is erased before it is created and with it other good things suffer as well.  Over time, no memories are created beyond the superficial. 

Trying to be too many things to too many people at once, living up to the expectations I created, being manipulated by unscrupulous people with power over me (financially for example) had created a zombie! 

I designed this zombie by creating an untenable vision for myself and I informed other people of it.  Some of them now use this as the whips and stirrups to control my will and direction.  I have become a slave, relentlessly trying to be more than what is human, constantly hearing only those words that tell me I am not good enough. 

Time flashes by.  I have no anchor points in memory, nothing to fill the days, running on empty I urge myself into every future moment, responding with the intellect of a smart robot, but without soul, without the passion and integrity of wisdom.  Wisdom comes with real lived age, not with time passing under self-induced memory inhibiting drugs.

What am I saying?  The time has come to stop the bus, to get off, to stroll through the park, to smell the wood and the grass, to see the insects, to hear the far-off voices of people in love, to look at the sky, to see the faces in the clouds, to share stories, to laugh, to be quiet, to think about God, to listen, to love in a simple way, to consider what I consume to sustain me, to live by the second, to suspend time and to die with grace. 

My task is simple: take the first step and get off the bus.  It has consequences, I realize that, but what if I do not do this now, will I have another moment of clarity under a black-blue sky, immersed in the substance that is us….?

Where are you today?  Are you reaching for the bell to signal departure at the next stop, or are you too busy worrying about what to do next to keep your bus rolling?  Are you grazing like a sheep, focused on the next tuft of grass, or are you looking up to see the next field of green?

I recall the words of “Wish You Were Here” suddenly:

So,

So you think you can tell

Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field

from a cold steel rail?

A smile from a veil?

Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade

your heroes for ghosts? 
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange

a walk-on part in the war

for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl,

year after year,

Running over the same old ground. 
What have you found?

The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

Wind mills and the sun

I have written previously about the concepts for sustainable power. The only real source of sustainable power available to us is the sun. I suppose one must also consider the possibility of generating power from tidal activity, energy that is driven by the lunar-terrestrial system, but I have not seen too many success stories in that area. So I guess it is reasonable to consider the sun for now as the only candidate.

It drives the climate system and thus winds and rain. Rivers may be used for hydro-electric power and winds may be harvested by wind generators. We can use the direct energy of the sun to heat solar heaters and to cook food in the heat of solar collectors, or we can use photo-voltaic cells to change light into electricity. Heliostats can be used to drive turbines for generation of electricity. Quite a diverse range of options provided we are willing to consider them all carefully. It seems though that we have all sorts of issues with some of these options, like the fact that many people dislike wind farms. They claim that it disturbs the landscape. I suppose it is true that one could find it disturbing to see these machines all over the place, but at the same time we have no problem with the aesthetic disaster posed by steel power cable pylons, or coal fired power stations belching smoke. People consider hydro-power, but often forget the impact of building weirs and channeling systems in fragile river eco systems to tap into the energy.

The point is that everything has a price: what we need is to develop an unbiased score card for all these alternatives to fossil fuels. Communities must consider the costs of being completely reliant on the electricity network or to be part of a system that supplies much of what is needed around where they live. The video on this page was recorded close to Shrivenham. It shows the turbines on the Westmill wind farm that belongs to a co-operative of 2400 members. What can we do in our own communities to lighten the burden on our planet?

Developed World Plus

Sweden is an amazing country with an amazing culture. During my recent visit I was impressed by the Swedes and their way of doing things. It seems that they are preparing constantly for the future – a long term plan. They are very punctual, and service orientated. Their systems work. If it fails, they are quick to repair and maintain it and quick to explain why delays occur when they do.

Stockholm is remarkably clean for such a big city with so many visitors. At the same time there is a keen sense of caring for nature, for bringing up their kids in the first few years at least in a close family unit and for being part of their nation. There is much to learn there, and in all my discussions, the people were open and engaging, free of fears of being hi-jacked or attacked. Children and women are safe, even late at night on the tube.

A warming and calming experience, it showed me again that it is possible for humanity to live in reasonable harmony. It only requires respect, a sense of belonging and above all, the discipline to take responsibility for the here and now and for the future. They do not dwell in the past and they do not shift blame. This is what we must achieve in South Africa as well. Yes, Sweden do have some ghastly issues too, but it is being managed actively, decisions are made and executed. How do you become “First World Plus”? I quote a new friend in Sweden: “I make decisions and act on them, I do not change my decisions, I only make new ones.” Subtle.

Nordic Ice

Sometimes we just need a bit of a change of pace and environment to see things in perspective again. Sometimes you just have to spend a bit of time with new friends in an exotic place to get the stress release needed. During our short visit to Stockholm we have had great weather so far and we have seen wonderful things. Mingling with a culture different from your own is always great and at a gala dinner in the Vasa Museum, we were fortunate enough to meet Keith and Karen Pollock from Vancouver.

Discussing all sorts of issues we soon realized that we all have the same things that delight and bother, it is just the intensity that differs! To celebrate the long day, we decided to visit the Ice Bar at the Nordic Sea Hotel. At the same time Sweden pulled off a 2-0 win over Greece in a soccer match, which had the whole of Stockholm celebrating like crazy. Chrissie had a great vodka drink called Diamond Dust: Vodka, lime and tonic and I went for Wolf’s Paw – no surprise there I guess. The drinks are served from ice tumblers in a very cold room at an exorbitant price, but who cares. We had fun.

Maybe all we need is a proper break from our environments to see life for what it can really be. So now I’m off to go get rid of that Wolf’s Paw taste and the after effects (which strangely include a rapidly growing beard and a keen sense of smell and hearing, and I find it hard typ........).

Rome

When in Rome... And so we did. It is not easy if you cannot do the language in this town. People ignore you, so if you plan to visit the eternal city, buy that language course and practice. It will pay back in the savings you make by being able to negotiate!
I only spent a few hours in town, but it was amazing. Soon pictures from this trip will feature on my Picasa site (reflected in the slide show on this page). But I was really here for work, and that is why my visit to the city was brief. The work was a fantastic learning experience, more so as it again strengthened my resolve not to just buckle under pressure and to be part of some non-event in Africa. I think we must always remember what humanity can achieve if it puts its mind to it, rather than to consider being less just because that is what culture prescribes. We in Africa have some really cool ideas and smart approaches and we must continue to believe in ourselves: that is the only way.

Then, I must also reflect on my visit to the Colosseum: I walked into the place expecting to feel a sense of wonder, but a deep feeling of despair and fear gripped my soul as I looked out over the trenches. It was as if I could smell the pain and trauma, as if all those animals and people that suffered were still there to remind us not to ever be so cruel again. Returning to my room I fired up my browser and checked in on the news in Africa. Zimbabwe! I suddenly experienced the same emotions that came to me in the Colosseum. God help the poor people, animals, in fact, all of creation that suffer under the incredible selfishness and brutality of so many ignorant leaders in the world, and especially in Africa. May people with clear and balanced positive values come to power soon, because we cannot build monuments like those I saw in Rome anymore. Or are we no more than what we were 3000 years ago?

Space - The Final Frontier

South Africa is at present a space faring nation, having joined this exclusive club with the launch of a small satellite built in Stellenbosch in the late 1990s. We could have been there earlier, was it not for the unfortunate impact of political change on our scientific capability. We were close to having our own launch capability as well, but today not much of that expertise remains in the country.

And now, through a weird coming-together of events, we might also forfeit our capability to develop and build our own satellites. The details are messy and shrouded in controversy. My concern is with the people that dedicated their lives to this dream, those that went without sleep, without salaries sometimes, to make the deep dreams of South Africans to also be counted a reality. That dream is slipping away from us, again. This past few weeks had been some of the worst days of my life, leaving my physically ill. Helpless in the face of bureaucratic process I had to listen to people saying that maybe we do not need this capability. The message is clear; we are not top class as a nation.

I do not and will not subscribe to such nonsense. It is irresponsible to have bureaucrats decide what we may dream as a nation. The audacity is too much to handle!

Regardless of the outcome of all the debate and counting of rands and cents, I will continue to strive for the stars. I know that there are more of us out there. We must not be quiet about this. We must insist on being seen, on being counted, on contributing to the knowledge and achievements of humanity. We must never resign to just making a living, to just worry about our immediate needs, soulless and aimlessly just crawling from womb to grave, always asking for hand-outs, hoping for something to come to us for free!

Let us take what will come to us over the next few weeks and turn the adversity into a competitive edge. If we scrape through, let us decide never to get this close to disaster again. If we take a knock, let’s gather the pieces together and try again, from stone to stars, via the staircase of smart work.

Zen, the complex and xenophobia

Alan Watts, a Zen student (I guess he would forgive me for calling him a student), says: “Just as the highest and the lowest notes are equally inaudible, so, perhaps, are the greatest sense and the greatest nonsense equally unintelligible.”

This is the distinct feeling I get when reading about and listening to the explanations of complexity and emergence. Some would have me believe that we can design for a specific emerging property, whilst others would have it that true emergence must be surprising. This duality arises, it seems, from the inability we have to untangle highly connected things. This is absolutely no good when we try to make sense of our world today. As a scientist of this age, I am perturbed by our inability to come to grips with these things. It is as if the path has arrived at too many forks all at once, as if time is howling around us, like a vicious wind, dragging us towards a catastrophic end. In mathematical terms, it seems as if we have arrived at one of those points on a logistic map where everything suddenly become chaotic, where the slightest change in the dynamics around us, ramps the whole system to another level of unpredictable behaviour. The end of certainty, for sure, Prof Prigogine!

Our divide and conquer approaches seem to fail us when we try to make sense of the xenophobia in our country, for example. Some of us quickly look for other theories, like a mysterious third force, that is driving the killing of people all over the place. Some blame it, predictably, on the past. Whatever the driving force, we cannot seem to analyze the problem down to its constituent levers, ready to be pushed and pulled into a new and better configuration. We assume (realistically) that poverty is normal in a society of free traders, but sometimes something skews the system and poverty becomes an overriding feature of a society. Worse, the gap between the poorest and the richest becomes massive. The worst case scenario is when those rich few are actually also those in charge of the society and were voted into that position by the poorest people in an attempt to escape the poverty. Again, it sounds simple, maybe too simple. One step further, and we can imagine these rulers using their positions to “direct” the society to believe certain things, to distract them from the reality of their miserable existence, or to direct them towards sinister goals to preserve their power base. This has got nothing to do with xenophobia, but it makes for a very nice cover.

Shown below is the very deterministic equation to generate a logistic map, and below it the map showing the bifurcation forks and the high density of possible states of the system to the right.

If we are somehow in such a chaotic state, what equations are driving our state, where do we go next, or will the system have to explode or implode necessarily before we can have relative stability again? Is this what revolutions are all about? Was our “managed” revolution to come from Apartheid to democracy just a fork in the road where both choices actually lead to disaster? Or was this path chosen even before Apartheid? Was it chosen maybe a couple of thousand years ago? I cannot imagine that it is possible to know the answer, but I am willing to bet that it is also not as simple as blaming it on the history of the past 1000 years or the past 50 years or just to blame it on poverty alone.

Photo from iStockPhoto.com (licensed to Jan Roodt - do not copy this image)

Arcadia

Arcadia – that place of the Golden Age, the domain of Pan, where incorruptible life emerges as if by magic, and the name of a play by Tom Stoppard. In Arcadia Stoppard toys with the idea that the concepts of chaos theory could have been discovered in the early 1800’s. He develops the ideas of chaos theory through one of the main characters and the play asks some of the eternal questions again: truth, evidence, what are these, by what qualities do we recognise these?

For me the key is in the next quote from Act 1, Scene 4: it sums up my experience of the world since 1981: “It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you knew is wrong.” Newtonian certainty finally gets the boot when Prigogine publishes The End of Certainty. Gleick publishes Chaos and Hofstadter wins me over to the concepts of holism (first coined by Jan Smuts) when I read Gödel, Escher and Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid after my mathematics professor asks me to take the rest of the semester off to read it (we both gave up on me for a year while I considered what was really important). I return a year later to mathematics, applied mathematics and physics, ready to suffer through the linear and the deterministic, just to get to Schrödinger, Einstein and Planck, to name a few. I was never the same, always keen to work with uncertainty, keen to understand why we cannot predict some things so well, keen to model these complexities.

These days I bask in the Golden Age of our information age discoveries. I marvel at the work of Cilliers, Alexander, Wheatley, Strogatz, Capra, to name a few. All are trying to make sense of complexity and emergence. The only black spot in my Arcadia is the current system of learning in schools that claims to prepare children for this new reality.

It does this, it claims, by expecting of kids to re-invent the wheel, to discover pi, to discover the structure of language, and a miriad of other things that are typically part of the accumulated body of knowledge of humanity. How many of these poor souls will suddenly develop into a Derrida, an Einstein or even Michelangelo? All I know is that this leads to a lot of confused people, people not ready to absorb and question the merits of the thinkers of our time, basically shuting them out from the new age of wonderment. “When almost everything you knew is wrong” has a premsie built into it: we knew something that we took for truth and we discover a new truth to replace it through our keen analysis and synthesis of the current knowledge base. We sometimes walk away from our truth, deliberately discovering beyond ourselves. But by no means can we attain this without walking the path first.

The path of Zen is often described along the lines of the quest of searching for an animal, finding it, taming it and harnessing it towards fullfilment of our needs, only to discover that the animal “is not”. I leave you with that thought and the discovery of Tung-Shan: “The man made of wood starts to sing. The woman made of stone starts to dance. This cannot happen through logic.”

To our children: Arcadiae vias peregrinentur!

Flying

Those that know me well will know that I just love flying. It is one of the best ways to get from A to B in a hurry – or it used to be. These days getting to an airport and onto the plane might take as long as your plane journey. When flying to Durban from Johannesburg, it takes about 40 minutes to get to the airport, another 40 minutes to get airborne as a minimum and then about 20 minutes to get to the car rental. The flight time is about 60 minutes. What a pity.
But getting onto the plane for the flight has a certain magic to it for me. The seats, the food, the magazines, all of it somehow reminds me of my dream to see all sorts of far-away places. You get out of the tube with wings, walk onto another continent or island and you are suddenly part of a new culture. The air is different, the daylight casts a different shadow and even the people look different. There are different smells as well.
I remember my first visit to New York in 1992. After a long and tiring flight from Johannesburg to London and then to New York, and after a taxi ride that took forever, I finally found myself in a small room in an even tinier hotel just off Times Square. As I later walked out into the cold night air I was aware of a scent I never smelt before: I soon located the source, a Wendy’s, about a block away! My first real introduction to VERY fast food was scary to say the least.
Many years later, in Linnköping in Sweden, I had a sudden sensation of being where I belong. Walking through some snow back to my hotel after a stroll around town, I looked at the people cycling past and my soul screamed out for being part of that place. Where I have always felt that I was “home” when I walked out of the airport at Johannesburg after a long overseas flight, this time was different. I walked off the plane and felt sorrow for having to return. The smells and scents were familiar, but it was not mine anymore.
Every trip has added to my life, enriching me and convincing me that not everything about globalisation is bad. Those that fear the world and the currents of change will be washed away. Those governments that put up barriers to the free flow of people and skill will suffer for it. The people that are fanatic about preserving their cultures and languages will lose it in the hugeness of the diversity out there. We must learn to carry culture with us, in our hearts, and to enrich it with experience. What is culture today was new a century ago.
But back to airplanes: have you ever thought about those fantastic machines? Which one is or was your favourite? I always loved flying in a Boeing 727. It was such a novel design. It was fast! It was quiet inside! It was the mark of “far away” for me. I like the 747 too, and the 737 is great, but the 727 stands for me as the icon of the new age. Yes, I know about the other planes, the Comet, the McDonald Douglas machines and today the oh-so uninspiring Airbus aircraft. Anyway, I hope you will be going somewhere exotic soon and that you will think about the marvels of modern technology while you do. I’m going to Italy (Rome) soon for the first time and then I’m off to Stockholm for a couple of days. I’m so looking forward to the trip.
For the aircraft fanatics, go visit http://www.airliners.net/ . The picture at the top is from a great photographer in Australia, David Morell. Go visit him at http://www.davidmorrell.com/index.cfm.

Wine

Wine has been made in South Africa since the first harvest in 1659, after Jan van Riebeeck started a trade post in what is today known as Cape Town. He must have planted his vines almost when he got here in 1652. Good for him and his insight. Today South Africa has a good wine industry, with top class wines being exported all over the world. We do have a local grape variety, called Pinotage, which was developed here by Professor Perold in 1925 by crossing Hermitage and Pinot Noir. It takes a special person to make a good red wine from Pinotage.

Why this lesson in history? Maybe because we have several hundred wine farms and other producers of wine in South Africa today and I feel that also in this area of expertise South Africa had achieved acclaim. As the shortages of electricity, lack of government skills and management issues start to take their toll, I wonder if the wine industry will also suffer the fate of other areas in South Africa that had gone pear shaped recently. We used to produce the finest doctors (Chris Barnard springs to mind), scientists and even the classiest of social reformers, but because of crime and lack of education (to name a few factors), we are slipping fast down the ranks of the nations to the bottomless pit where other African nations wallow in their self-pity and destructive behavioural patterns.

More reason to stock up on wine while it is still good and cheap, it seems. There was a time when I thought we would be making some of the best Sauvignon Blanc known to man, but today, sipping away at a Cloudy Bay from New Zealand, and reading about the political interference and affirmative action idiocy that seems to threaten our industry, it became clear to me that we might also be on the verge of missing this milestone. So join me if you may and let us drink to what we have and what might be gone tomorrow, for there are few leaders left in the world, and we seem set on choosing the worst of them to rule in Africa. (By the way, the photo up top is of a great Australian red, as it was being quaffed by me on a long, reflective afternoon in Melbourne.)

Gender and Equality

Gender: are we equals?
Equals in what, I ask. And on what grounds must we compare ourselves? To what end? As I look at you my love, would I not want to be your equal, your slave, your master?
As Sam Hamill says in the “The Sound of Water”: ‘It is easy to imitate; it is difficult to attain.’ As the debate rages and the war of the righteous and the pretentious continues, we walk through the days of spring, summer, autumn and winter to our demise. As we breathe small clouds at the white old moon, I go with you to where we must rest. Only our differences made it worthwhile.

“Pretending wisdom,
a man tells a woman all
about the eclipse”

Why would I want to understand your mysterious ways? Why would I dare compare myself to you? The futility warms my heart tonight.

Haiku

Always interested in poetry and reading about the different forms, I came across the haiku form. Traditionally Japanese, there are now many excellent haiku in English as well, although some break with the rather strict rules. For example, a Haiku has three lines only. Each line has a prescribed number of syllables: 5-7-5. And one of the four seasons is referred to in some way and coupled to something else in nature. Sometimes this requirement is fulfilled by referring to an “element” (fire, water, wood, earth, metal – the Taoist cosmological elements) or by mention of technology or materials (glass, phones). Strictly speaking, one is then deviating from the pure form and it must be a conscious decision that is reflected in the image generated by the rest of the poem. There is also a so-called “pause” that is traditionally placed at the end of the first or second line. In some cases, you will find this pause as a dash in front of the third line. Here is one of my own in Afrikaans:

op my koel herfs-stoep

kloek-kloek rooiwyn in my glas:

ou bamboesklok ril

Roughly translated, it says:

my cool autumn porch

tipple red wine in my glass:

bamboo chimes shudder

The idea is that in autumn we rest after the harvest, maybe with a glass of red wine. Pouring it from the bottle produces a sound similar to that which is produced by a bamboo chime in a breeze. Here the image of autumn is again reflected in the idea left with the reader of the chimes moving in that uneasy breeze before evening (parallels with the coming winter). Anyway, as you can see, I am just learning and playing around with it for my own enjoyment. Being a visual thinker I need some way of reflecting on the emotions conjured up by the things I see every day.

Here is a favourite from a grand master:

from which tree’s blossom

it comes, I do not know

this fragrance

- Basho

And a modern one:

across the fields of stubble

flame stalks flame

- David Cobb

Learn how to write a haiku at http://haiku.cc.ehime-u.ac.jp/~shiki/Start-Writing.html and if you want to see a Java engine have a try at it, go to http://www.everypoet.com/haiku/default.htm

If you need a little book for winter, try out “ Haiku – Poetry Ancient and Modern” by Jackie Hardy, last seen at http://www.amazon.com/Haiku-Poetry-Ancient-Jackie-Hardy/dp/0804838585

Stars

I have always been fascinated by the stars. I remember when I was a kid in Windhoek in Namibia in the early 1960’s how I would sit on the fence in the corner of our yard and watch the sun go down. Like a big ball of fire it would slowly descend on the hills in the distance and the air would cool down rapidly, so rapidly that I could feel it on my cheeks. Then the stars would pop out of the dark blue hemisphere above me, like little lights being switched on one-by-one.
Linda would sit next to me and ask all sorts of questions. She was my neighbour and only friend at the time. I would know all the answers of course. My imagination ran wild as I extrapolated from bits of stories my dad told me. The stars were very far away. Some were balls of fire and some were places just like earth. We imagined what these places would look like, whether the people on those far-away specks in the sky were watching us as we were watching them. We fell silent as the Milky Way appeared slowly, glowing above us with a coldness of deep space that we could somehow feel, making us shiver. I was going to be a rocket man. I would build rockets that would take me to those places and I would come back, floating down by parachute and maybe I would have a present or two from those stars.
Today I can barely see the stars from where I stay in the city. We add more lights for safety, we add more lights for comfort and we dim our imaginations as we do so.
If you feel like exploring the stars right on your computer screen, surf over to the Open Source site of Stellarium and watch in wonder how your screen is transformed by the work of the people that are writing this fantastic piece of software. I wonder what happened to Linda...

Listening to our souls

In my quest to facilitate teamwork and to discover new ways to generate a passion for excellence I met with a phenomenon called Bruce Copley. Bruce introduced me to, amongst other things, a new musical instrument called the Hang (pronounced “Hung”). Maybe the story I am about to share will explain the strangeness of it all.

During 2001 I was working with a dear friend, Michelle Groenewald, on ways to make the work experience of our team of scientists and engineers more vibrant and integrative. We were trying to help people understand the linked nature of everything in our lives. The idea was for all of us to discover for ourselves how our actions can never be seen in isolation and that we all do things that vibrate through time, almost like the notes of a song on a cold and quiet evening.

After some experience of Bruce’s work, we decided that some individuals in the team might benefit from the experience that Bruce delivers during his events. We caught a plane down to Cape Town and arrived on a cold and stormy night, driving over the mountain to Bruce’s place. There we met in a Teepee, with Bruce playing away on his didgeridoo. He also invited a drummer and maker of African drums. I promptly bought a drum that evening. Not any old drum, but rather a drum that still to this day ring true with my moods. Michelle went on and procured a Hang from Bruce some time after that, and through a twist of fate, she sold it to me after a short while. As with the drum, the specific instrument just spoke to me when I heard its first few sounds.

I still have not managed to master the Hang, but I am not too concerned. Whenever I sit and tap away at it I know that my soul is sending a message into time and years later, with only a few successes at making the workplace a better space, I have come to believe that few things matter as much as allowing your soul’s voice to be heard. Write a Haiku, play a drum, sing or whistle, but be heard. Like the inventors of the Hang did, and how even they have to modify what is seemingly a prefect design to take into account learning, new materials and the demands of our times. Thanks again Michelle and Bruce!