Food

FoodTV, Master Chef, Hell's Kitchen, the list is long.  Shows about chefs, aspiring chefs and clocks.  Food preparation at the speed of light takes the centre stage.  Can you cook a three course meal in an hour?  Will it look like it can garner a few of those Michelin stars?  Will it taste divine?

I don’t know if I like food shows anymore.  I used to.  I used to watch Ken Hom do quick Asian dishes, I liked to look at Keith Floyd preparing robust dishes in exotic places, and I even watched the Barefoot Contessa and the luscious Nigella sneaking up to the fridge at midnight for a snack.  For a while the Naked Chef kept me transfixed.  And then one evening I suddenly felt that it was all getting a bit tedious and somehow empty.  Yes, empty is the word I want to use.

Suddenly all I could see was how much waste was being created in the modern shows.  Fantastic cuts of meat that most cannot afford, exotic things from all over being used to prepare glamour dishes, all of them obviously tasting like heaven (have you ever seen a chef tell you her dish tastes like horse manure?) and above all a mad rush to get it cooked in a short space of time to rush it to customers waiting somewhere.  How could this food still be soul food?  How could this be seen as working with respect with the bounty of the earth?  

I think we have lost the art of cooking by rushing through the techniques for food preparation.  Food is central to our well-being, and if it is rushed during preparation and consumption, it cannot be worth much, can it?  Forget about the costs in dollars and cents.  

I like shows where I can see where the meat comes from, even if it is just bought from a butcher that handles it with care as he folds it neatly in brown paper.  Sometimes you can see that these people know that they are working with something that has given up life to sustain life.  For no matter what we eat, we have to take some form of life.  This demands respect.  It asks that we treat the food with love and care.  When we add the salt it is good to know that it comes from a sea shore somewhere where it was harvested by a family.  Or do we just pour the NaCl from an industrial plant into the mix?  I like to think that the fish I am preparing was harvested in a sensitive manner, that it was even farmed with regard for its life and that of the ecosystem it was embedded in.  

Why would one rush through this process of preparing these offerings?  The smell and texture of salmon mixed with fresh dill and the colour of good quality vegetables are all part of the process of satisfying our need for food.  It is food.  As the dish comes together and the smells merge slowly into deep aromas, it is time to take it in and to sip on a glass of wine.  Stimulate all the senses and be satisfied at many levels.  This is what food is now for me.  

These days I am deliberate in how slowly I work with food.  Not wasting time, but rather taking the time to do it right.  I want to see food as ‘n whole experience, not just an industrial process aimed at feeding the gaping holes in the faces of the waiting masses.  I want to see people talk at a table over the food that was prepared with love and dignity.  They should share laughter, a glass of wine or a tumbler of rich golden beer while they enjoy the food.  They should thank God for the richness we can explore these days and they must not waste food.  Every bit should be considered as a source of nourishment.  This is how we may be able to feed the world.  

When we take our time with food preparation, when we build a certain slowness into the process of enjoying a meal and when we take the time to contemplate the meal with family and friends, then I believe it leaves us satisfied, full even.  Maybe it is because I do not see this in the modern cooking shows that I feel so empty when I watch them.

Time

Some days are a real loss, or a win if you consider the writings of Dr Seuss.  Looking at the battery meter on the laptop computer, time is depicted as a draining potential.  But it has a fullness from which it has to start...

And so it is: Today was filled with pain, it was filled with longing, and finally, it was filled with reminiscence shared with souls of my kin.  This is a loss and it is a win.  I speak not of the lost time here.  I dare not mention time won, because time is an artifact we construct of necessity and guilt.  Time as an artifact of deliverance and guilt does not enter my life anymore.

I reconstruct the images.  The images reflect the experiences.  There is the image of my childhood friend.  She wears a simple dress and she kisses me, doll in hand as we imagine being husband and wife.  We know nothing, but we copy, and it leaves a mark.  It ignites a flame of commitment that I keep to this day.  Sealed with a kiss, we stand together.  Some walk away from this, with a shrug and a new-found love.  Pain has shades of intensity.

There is loss, and there is gain.  The images compress and the images dilate.  I see long summers and endless loneliness, I see winters filled with hope and letters smuggled  over school desks as I learn about the smell of nearness. 

We listen to music, we taste the shudders cuddled in a simple kiss.  The draining potential kicks in as soon as the link is made,  There is expectation and fear of loss, moments of unbridled optimism, and finally fact.  But time, I maintain, sits in the background, like a darkness, waiting to be constructed as a causality.  The doctrine of the what is and what will be lurks for those without the power of imagination!

I see toes wriggling innocently and with utter abundance.  It is the kick-start that gets energised by a walk down a passage and a sense of destiny.  There is no time connected to this.  These are just images that string together.  Some may call for causality, I call for the smell and the emotion of the image.  Yes, I defy the science and I defy the insistence on the ticks of time, I only see the movement of that fairy body and the golden hair that signaled my fate.  There is an image of the mother of my son that becomes my imagined future and a reality that dawns many images later.  Time passes, almost as an aside.

We look at the watches that hog our lives, the calendars that steal our love and our abandonment.  We read the days off and we count the hours.  These are the days of tragic loss as we calculate the seconds to our demise.

But I care not for these measures.  I live for the soft touch of lips, the moments of a shared hug when it is least expected, the handshake and the extended eye contact.  I live for the smell of self-love, carefully prepared after a warm shower and administered from a lovingly selected bottle of perfume.  I watch hair shift over a brow, and I see the varnish on a nail.  I see the sweat on a brow in a meeting and the intent in a frown.  I collect these images like shells at the seashore.

The tide comes in and the tide recedes.  It takes and it delivers.  I do not connect hours to these images.  Hours will detract from the feelings, hours will bring a blandness to the events.  Repetition is the bastard son of these time ticks, and I renounce the existence of this abomination.

No, I live with an image of the next and images cascading away from me to my birth.  I imagine the impossible and I extend my dreamy moments into the light of day.  If I can dream it, I can give birth to it.  My dreams are simple though.  I find the lips of my lover in a tender embrace, I am not older and I am not younger, and I smell the clear intent of closeness and I taste the urgency of life. 

It is now and as I imagine it.   I look at the footsteps of my God that walks before me.  The moment is an artifact of deliverance and I know no guilt as I walk the path I see unfolding before me.  The quick-snap lock of time is unsprung.

Trading in Carbon

Here in New Zealand motorists are reported to pay up to $25 per metric ton of carbon when they fill their cars with fuel.  Some sources report that the open market cost for carbon credits is just over $13 per ton.  The fuel supply companies are effectively making a 100% markup on carbon credits on the face of it.  This is similar to governments making money trading in carbon credits.  

As a simple man with a desire for simple explanations, I find it hard to understand why there is a trade in carbon credits.  Yes, I know all about global climate change and the smarty pants scientists putting evidence on the table that we are the cause of the impending doom.  But how does this trading scheme work, if it trades in the unseeable and unmeasurable based on sketchy science?  Why are we going along with it?  Is it because we have been kicked into submission and guilt?

Let’s just look at this quickly using round numbers:  one liter of automotive fuel (C₈H₁₈) weighs about 700g (equal to about 6.2 mole of fuel) and reacts with 2.4kg oxygen to form about 2.2kg of carbon dioxide (CO₂), which translates to about 600 gram of carbon.  This means that for an average tank of fuel used (50 liters), you produce about 30kg of carbon, and this translates to about 75 cents per refill.  Or you could pay about 38 cents, if the fuel companies did not rip you off.

I maintain that this is fruitless expenditure.  Where is the money going to?  You see, I see 1.5 cents per liter disappear from my wallet.  That is REAL.  I use about 800 liters of fuel per year in the one car we use.  Obviously I also consume fuel when I take the bus or the taxi cab.  I have no idea how much that is.  So let’s just work on 1000 liters to make the case here.  That is $15 per year.  Insignificant!  Maybe we are playing along because in the bigger scheme of things this is of no consequence....

But wait, there is more.  Wolfram Alpha reports that there were 3.1 million vehicles in use in New Zealand in 2006.  Assume there are about 4.3 million people living here.  Just for now, assume there is a steady growth in vehicles and that it came to about 3.5 million vehicles this year.  As a very conservative assumption, assume all these vehicles have similar patterns of use to mine, then we use about 3.5 billion liters of fuel per year. That comes to $52M of carbon tax.  $52,500,000!!!  Not shabby.

If I now ask where that money is going, I think I am asking an important question.  Let us take this further.  I can buy a large beech tree for about $15 (Fagus Sylvatica Purpurea).  This tree will conservatively sequestrate about 15kg of carbon per year in the climate of the South Island.  One tree will sequestrate the carbon delivered by using about a half a tank of fuel.  As I am generating 600kg of carbon per year, I need to have  40 healthy beech trees somewhere to sequestrate my carbon production from using typical transport.     That comes to an investment of $600.  These 40  trees will stand there and consume carbon for the rest of my natural life.  The 3.5 million vehicles need to have the same sequestration, so let’s make it easy and say that we need to invest $1000 per vehicle.  That comes to $35B once-off.  I hope my math is right, because it says that we can sequestrate the carbon we produce in New Zealand from using cars and trucks by investing about $35B in trees.  That is 670 times what we pay in tax per year.  

I assume a tree like this will need 10m² to flourish (I do not have a lot of information on this, so maybe someone can comment).  I need 400m² planted with these trees.  Nothing else, just the the 40 trees.  Make that 500m² for the sake of my argument.  The total perennial crop area of New Zealand is about 1.8 million hectares.  I have 36 million spots available for my trees to sequestrate my type of fuel consumption.  Sure, we also need to produce other crops, but they do their bit in cleaning up carbon too.  

Back to maths.  We need to clean up 3.5 billion liters of fuel derived carbon.   One tree does 15kg of carbon which is generated by 25l of fuel.  Therefore, we need 140 million trees, or about 140 000 hectares covered in trees.  That is less than 10% of the perennial crop area covered in trees or similar carbon sinks.  I hope my math sucks big time.  

I am worried that we do not attempt the maths, that we do not ask the questions and that we do not take our governments to task on this.  A once-off payment of $35B will cover us for a few years (say 10).  That comes to $1 extra per liter, or $1000 for every vehicle.  This is what we need to pay to pay for the carbon pollution, if that argument holds.  I see no trees being planted.  Will I be exempt from tax if I plant 40 trees?

So why are we paying $52M per year?  It is not enough to make a difference.  Where is the money going?  Are we the generation that is guilt ridden and ripped off because we choose to be ignorant?  Please check my math.  I try to spend no more than an hour per blog entry, which means I my me mistaken here.  If I am right though, we should be asking a few questions.

(Image used under the Creative Commons License - see http://www.freefoto.com/preview/15-19-15/Tree)

About Sugar - InfoGraphic

Created by: Health Science

Mindless Rant

It is so bloody hot in Pretoria, South Africa, this week!   It is close to 40˚C (104˚F) every day and the night time temperatures never go below 20˚C.  We are all on edge and tired.  Beer is warm in a country where people consume a crappy brew called Castle by the tanker load.    I mean, who calls a beer Castle?  It must have been a hot summer when they came up with that name.  And it shows in the beer.  Have one and your whole system turns to toxic sludge.  Come on SAB Miller XXX fishpaste - sue me!  

Oh, and I woke up to discover that Steam had been hacked.  I was angry man!! What is this?  And I mean, STEAM hacked - the same idiots that ban people for a typo!!  HACKED!!  Karma is such a bitch.  Lucky I have a tech savvy son to help me secure my account.  He LOLs as he confirms that I have not left any important stuff in the account in any case.  I use 1Password to generate the mother of all passwords.  Take that!   Even without salt that is a killer.  I feel better - momentarily.  

The politics are just as hot.  The leader of the ANC Youth League was suspended for 5 years from his party.  He responds in defiance from an even hotter Limpopo that he’ll appeal the outcome.  Why?  Please claim that you have heat stroke Julius.  Just continue with your business my friend - it is good as it is.   Please do not have another march from nowhere to nowhere to test the resolve of your followers.  People might die.

In Cape Town the Aussies look like they are crushing the local flower boys in one of two REAL cricket games, just to be blown away by a great bowling attack on the mother of all of the weirdest pitches ever prepared at Newlands.  One has to ask how this happened, and in the light of the history of screwing with the game, one feels cheated.  I mean - WTF!!  This is worse than the Bryce (who remembers him) debacle a few weeks ago.  But who would notice?   It is about the money these days.  Screw the poor fools that thought they would be seeing great cricket on Saturday.  

Went to the local super supermarket, you know the posh one,  and bought imported (I cry in my warm bubbly) pomegranate.  Use by date is 3 days from now.  It has a distinct fizz to it and being a consumer of alcoholic beverages, I notice the smell of the by-products of fermentation.  I take it back and I ask if they would replace it.  Yes, sure, no worries.  So I open the next container, and point out that it too is evolving.  The manager sniffs it, and no, it is fine.  This is where the beast in me wakes up, I guess.  So I say, well, I’ve paid for it, and I am happy to walk away from this - you just eat it sir!  Nope, no can do!  Why not, well he does not like pomegranate.  You see where this is going?  It is warm, even in this posh air-conditioned shop.  Fade out and fade in as I walk out into the late afternoon with a bottle of warm bubbly.  

Meanwhile I pour over pics from Dunedin NZ where my family indulges in seafood and a bottle of the most divine Sauvignon Blanc bubbly from somewhere cool in New Zealand.  I listen to TuksFM and they insist on playing metal.  I mean, get a life, just play some Johnny Cash - we are all dead already, have mercy.  Metal!  Sweating teenagers with hormones dripping from hot guitars and drummers sweating blood.  There is no mercy in this world.  The TV offers nothing of value.  It is Noot vir Noot.  For those souls reading this  outside South Africa, this translates to Note by Note, but for those in the know, it equates to crap squared!   About two minutes into the show, the host does what is expected and he chooses the girl in the second row for a competition - NO SHIT SHERLOCK!!

I open doors and windows.  This allows the great multitude of insects in, even on the fifth floor.  It is clear to me now.  We are the dinos of our age.  It is time.  We refused to pay carbon tax, so GAIA is taking revenge and unleashing the exoskeleton brigade.  I smile and take a sip of iced bubbly while I spray the room with a phosphate and chlorine mix laced with nitrous elixirs.  What the hell - GAIA is pissed off already.  

A cool breeze clears the smell of death momentarily and my thoughts go back to late 2009.  The pool light is set to deep red and we are floating in the salty warm water.  The stars are bright lights in a black sky, even here in the city.  We are wrapping up here before moving to the next phase of our lives.  There is sadness and anticipation as we point out the familiar constellations and we talk about the winters in Bloemfontein when we first discovered the majesty of the Universe.

I walk out on the balcony.  Some idiot grills his motorcycle in a moment of madness, a dog barks at a shadow and I look towards the east where Saturday is dawning.  I imagine my love welcoming the day...

This afternoon a tree was dropping red flowers and leaves like tears.  The vastness of loss of so many lives and so many loves hangs over this day,  Turning away, I sip the bubbly and I realise it is a pretty good day to be alive today. 11/11/11

Social Media

I was blown away when I first read about hypertext and the concept of rich documents in Byte Magazine (1988 - Volume 13 number 10 to be precise).  What a pity that one cannot access these articles easily anymore, and just another reason to support the move away from publishers owning content. 

Back to the story...  I remember that I was asked to talk in a small forum about technologies that I thought would change the way we deliver information content. This volume of Byte came as a revelation and shaped much of my thinking about situation awareness, of all things!  The article by J. Fiderio  “A Grand Vision--Hypertext mimics the brain's ability to access information quickly and intuitively by reference”  was so well written and made so much sense.  How would we thread these links in electronic documents to access the content in this natural manner?  Remember, this was before the days when Marc Andreessen’s Netscape hit our screens, and years before Internet Explorer!  Most people were using the internet to send e-mails around.  At best you could search for stuff in a static ‘online’ database like dBase III.

I remember telling the forum that having these hot links in documents that could even reside on the internet, we would be able to jump from one piece of information to the next relevant one without skipping a beat in our unfolding understanding of subject matter.  We would ‘flick the pages’ almost at random looking for the information we needed, weaving new information as we went, all based on current documents on other topics.  For me as a generalist, this was exactly what I needed to really do what I do well, and that is to integrate across boundaries.  I had no idea how this would be done in terms of the underlying technology, but I knew that once we had thought about it, and with the exciting emergence of the internet, it would only be a matter of time.

In 1992 I saw the first application of this technology in a simple product for the masses: The New Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia was part of a bundle of software I got with a CD ROM drive.   Over time the hypertext links in documents just became part of the every-day experience.  These days I am constantly trying to convince people to accept the work I deliver in PDF or HTML formats, so that I can add links to other material in the document.  Why do we still want to print things on paper and have static documents?  I guess there may be reasons, but think about it.  You can get so much more, and I can even keep those links updated with new information at a small cost.  We can have real live documents.

How do social media applications fit into this discussion?  Well, FaceBook is just one big ‘hypertext’ mess.  Almost everything on the page is a link to something else, and then on to the next thing, and so on.  In Twitter we see the use of link shorteners in almost every post.  The post is almost just there to grab attention - the real stuff (or the fluff) is somewhere else.  Links appear everywhere, even ones to show where you are when you are posting something.  This truly represents how we interact with content, it helps us answer the what, why, where, how and when type questions on the fly.  Our search engines thrive on these links.  Our social media applications use this to sell us stuff, to find people, to share ideas.

My current social media favourite lives on my iPhone.  Instagram allows me to capture the emotions I feel with a picture in the instant I experience it.  I have to write very little.  I add the place where the picture was taken, some text to describe the moment and then the picture becomes the story.  This works for me as a visual thinker.  Chrissie asked the other day: “Who would want to see your snap shots?”.  I think Jan-Dawid answered appropriately by saying that it not just the picture, it is about the moment, the place, the hidden story.  He gets it.  The picture is the start.  Instagram allows people to 'Like' and add comments.  But often a 'Like' is enough - you know what was going down, you acknowledge that you grasped it, the moment became a common experience.  The art is to compose the message in the picture.  This is a long way from a static link in one document to some other content in another document.  However, it started with that Grand Vision that Fiderio talked about.  

Where are we going next?  I am not sure, but I do know that retakes on FaceBook will not do it, and Google+ is just not intuitive enough for me.  Twitter is good to broadcast with, but it seems to be a bit one-way.  Instagram may be the first of a new breed.  Live links in the pictures may be an obvious next step.  Links to where pics were taken, immersive experiences and ways to have tracks of pics, rather than just a singular timeline, may follow.  The closer we get to telling stories around the fire and learning from the discussion, the closer it comes to being natural.  I think that is the key.

My Instagram images can be seen at: http://instagrid.me/drhenkroodt/  It lacks the descriptions, etc.  You can also link to my stream if you have the Instagram app by looking for @drhenkroodt

Now, if only I can get that Byte magazine from 1988 in electronic format.....

Of the heart

What is distance to the heart?  A beat translated to a flutter under soft skin and not seen, I guess.  But that same heart will not be still and it beats through the fiber of space and time and we know it, no matter the time of day or the physics of the moment.  The rhythm flickers through dreams and manifests in the moments of a day.  Distance is not of the heart, it is of the mind.

The soul manifests in the heart.  As the soul flees the confines of the flesh the heart shudders and retires.  It is silent.

The soul is not of the material world, it knows no boundaries and it is good that its tongue can speak without knowing chains.  Beating in a rhythm that is ancient and understood by all, the universal translator whispers in every wave of this universe.

And so we sing to each other, oblivious to the kilometers and the hours.   The song is without pretense, and it knows no lies.   The mind finds pain and elation in the notes, and it disguises it in the clothes of the moments we live in.  We know, we know it as a primal truth, the mind can never be trusted!

Listen closely and suspend the logic, suspend the mind, send it on a holiday and wave it away.  Listen to the heart.

I hear you my love.  Your voice is clear.  Together we turn to the bright blue sky over those hills and the bay.  Only the angels see us smile in this moment.   Let me hold your hand through this day as I go into this night.  We know distance is not of the heart.

Campaign for the counter trend

To be precise, this piece is about modern economic systems failing society.  My simple disclaimer here is that I am not an economist.  I am one of the individuals trying to make a living running his own, single person business. 

After almost 25 years in the corporate environment my situation changed in a way that left me in a spot where I discovered that my years of diverse experience were counting against me.  It was difficult to cast me in a specific job in the corporate pigeon holes. Had I been doing the same type of job for a decade, it could have been simpler, but I am also a generalist, not a specialist.  I integrate the specialized stuff that others work on for ages; they research the details, I see the patterns that link it across boundaries. Maybe it is just a failing of the human resources departments, or the agencies, or my own inability to sell myself, but no-one could translate my (previously valued) experience into their environment and I could not do it either.  I could not get into interviews and I had no option but to start my own business. 

You soon find out that the economies of the world primarily consists of two large entities: government clusters and large corporations.  Both have similar hierarchies and similar loops and hoops that one must learn to negotiate.  As a knowledge worker (and I’ll come back to this concept) it is exceedingly difficult to compete for contracts that are being outsourced as companies and government departments become increasingly closed entities.  This is to my mind the result of the insane concept of intellectual property.  While several academics have questioned the idea, corporations and governments have (with eager lawyers in tow) seen it as another way to hype their perceived value.  They own an asset that is intangible they claim, they can attach a price to it and they can trade in it.  And so they do, trading these imaginary assets on their books.  It seems that it often exceeds the real value of the company. 

Where have we seen this before?  Simple, the dot com boom and crash consisted mostly of organizations with some sort of innate value, unquantifiable in many ways, just waiting to be unlocked and valued on potential.  The concept of a knowledge worker is part of this - we supposedly trade in things that consist of knowledge.  Is this true?  I think not.  I have skills and access to the knowledge base of humanity.  My skills can be tested.  What we know is written down in books and other records.  Experience and know-how are things locked up in people and in their networks.  It is not quantifiable, unless it is used to generate solutions to real world problems or to discover new opportunities to develop and improve the human condition (or in some cases to take advantage of it).  It is tested and made explicit in this way.  It becomes tangible and only then does it have value.  Do the corporates own people, like slaves?  Well, we have to conclude that this is indeed true if they claim to own that which is in the heads and in the networks of people.  I think this is a silly notion.

How does this link with my claim that the economic systems are failing us?  For one, the economies of countries now rely heavily on this concept of potential value.  They trade in it when they trade futures on the stock exchanges, and they use it to borrow money to make their departments work, all under the banner of making the countries viable and sustainable.  It may surprise you that I am not at all confessing to being a capitalist, socialist, marxist or communist.  None of these systems are viable anymore.  They all claim to be something special, but it all comes down to a few being in power positions, able to manipulate the situation.  Socialists claim that they will look after society by spending the money on societal projects, but they soon run out of the resources to continue to live up to the promises.  Capitalists give free reign to the corporations to generate wealth for all, but somehow that money goes only into the pockets of a few.  In both cases these ‘organisms’ thrive on being able to centralise the power structures.  Freedom to the workers and other slogans just do not cut it any more.  This is why I am amused by the whole “Occupy” movement.  It is just another outlet for anarchists, marxists and disillusioned (read “failed”) capitalists.  And it is just another excuse for those that are aggrieved by what others have and they lack, just an excuse to demand more in exchange for - what?

For a while now I have been following another train of thought.  It seems the current financial systems and the economic paradigms driving them are running out of steam.  We cannot continue to grow within the context that we are used to: growth equals making and selling more stuff.  Growth will need to be something different as we are running out of planetary resources to support the “more” paradigm.  Similar thoughts are being expressed by several individuals on the web.  Rather than campaign for redistribution of the wealth (or what is left of it) the new thinking challenges the role of centralised centers of power, whether these are big corporates or governments.  Sustainability will come as a counter trend to the development of larger metros and ever larger budgets to keep these monsters intact.  Smaller cooperatives with distributed power based on synergisms will most probably start to replace the failing über systems.  As fewer and fewer people can afford to be part of the mega systems they will be forced to find other ways to look after themselves.  Local networks (and it includes those that extend via the internet) will become centers of power focussed on nodes of one or in some cases, the collection of a few. The currency will change back to skills exchange in many cases.  Growth will be measured in value addition and the supply of necessities at a personal level, not by the desirability engineered by the brand managers.

Where this awareness cannot take root successfully, the rot of the large systems will cause major social upheaval and unrest.  More “occupiers” will emerge with insatiable demands that will lead to the destruction of the power sources of the large systems as well as the occupiers in many instances.  This is an uncomfortable view of the future.  It may not come to the extremes explored here, but it will come in a form similar to what I describe here unless something really disruptive happens soon. 

It should be obvious that if we want to campaign for anything at this time, it would be worthwhile to work to ensure that systems and technologies for communication and electrical power are secured.  More people will be forced to know more about more and not more about less.  Not being part of a metro may be rather beneficial.  Campaigning for decentralisation could possibly avert disaster if those in governmental power realize that this is the way to best govern to the benefit of those that still chose to take part in elections.  The next few years will be exciting as we see these patterns unfold.  I’ll be campaigning for this evolution while working to develop my network and my skills and understanding who my fellow cooperative members are.  You will not find me camping on the town commons. 

The Apollo Age

On 16 July 1969 mankind took an important step towards the stars. It was the next step in a journey of discovery and exploration that is core to the spirit of man.  It was the age of anti-war demonstrations and a new realisation that we were exhausting the resources of the planet.  I am a proud child of that age of nuclear power and space exploration and hugging a fellow living entity.  And, to this day I am blown away by the image of a rocket perched on a plume of fire and smoke, breaking free of this earth with a mighty thunderous roar that beats into your soul. 

The whole image reflects adventure and when one considers the technology that made it possible, I feel that we are not nearly so ready to take real risks these days.  Dredging a working harbour suddenly becomes fraught with dangers.  There may be a small colony of undiscovered snails that will be wiped out, the surf break may suffer and surfers may not be able to surf there as in the past, and so it goes.  The masses wave posters about global warming and a raped planet and no progress can be made without coughing up a million impact studies printed on the bodies of a thousand trees.  If this attack fails, the hordes fall back on the bread before roses argument: millions are hungry, millions are dying, millions are ill, as if this is something new! 

While this is happening, this civilisation slowly recedes into navel gazing and emotional derailment.  It is all about my little village, my little garden, my fishing spot, my house at the sea side, or, the small village on a continent on the other side of the planet, the orphans of war, the people ravaged by the effects of a drought, the latest quake and the latest acts of a dictator.  I look at the daily news and it is filled by the wailing naysayers forever getting in the way of any new ideas.  Do not build the new soccer stadium before you have spent money on my local school, rather spend the money on relieving my tax burden so I can buy more of this or that.  People work from Monday to Friday, feel like there is no hope, and join causes on FaceBook to save the rhino, to save a whale, to save the planet, supporting the next battery car, without actually being part of the emotional effort and the financial pain!  Sales of anti-depressants soar and people cannot understand why addiction to all sorts of substances go through the roof.

Could it be that we are just not designed to be so focussed on mankind and its primary survival?  Is it possible that when we lose our sense of adventure and when we are not pushed into the unknown, we are by default into a mode of decay?  Maybe we can only survive when we are looking beyond ourselves (meaning that we move beyond worrying constantly about man and the environment) and when we have audacious goals, like putting a man on the Moon when our technology does not even allow us to calculate the orbit of our tin can that well. 

Do not get me wrong, we only have one Earth and we must tread lightly, we must be kind to it and all of its inhabitants.  But we should not forget who we are, and I leave that for you to decide for yourself.  For myself, I am one with a longing for the future that is grander than any imagination of the now, and where we manage better, where we go from stones to stars.  I am not part of the clan that wants to remain small and I am not ready to cope with the same beans for dinner and marrying my cousin, however comfortable it may be. 

All information from NASA, used under agreement on site: http://history.nasa.gov/ap11fj/01launch.htm

Energy

I was tempted to start this piece by claiming that our society is becoming more sophisticated.  As I typed the word, I suddenly worried that it was not conveying the idea I had.  My dictionary says that if I use it to describe a person, it means that the person is aware of and able to interpret complex issues.  A system that is sophisticated has high complexity.  I then thought that “advanced” could work, but that again could imply that I mean “highly evolved”. 

I guess that what I have in mind is that our society (and I hasten to add that I do not want to call it a civilisation either) is putting more demands on the environment every day and our technology requires more and more energy to deliver the comforts we have come to expect.   We use huge amounts of fossil fuels to run our cars, for heating and for cooking.  We manufacture materials from these resources: plastics come to mind, and we cannot effectively recycle it.  The list is long. 

What sparked this piece was a combination of things.  I was typing away on my keyboard when a little warning came up on my desktop to inform me that the keyboard was low on power.  I rushed over to where I have a stash of batteries for just such an emergency, and next to it is the graveyard of used cells.  I was shocked to see how many spent batteries I have collected over a short period of time.  These things are not easy to recycle and probably use a vast amount of energy to deliver the 1.5V for a few months.  It has been shown (and debated hotly) that the Toyota Prius is more of an environmental hazard than a Hummer over its useful life, mainly because of the cost of developing the materials used in the Prius.  We use batteries every day in our mobile phones, our flashlights, the computers we use and as backup power for most things that use electricity. 

Apple is a high technology company that is striving to bring down its impact on the environment.  Whether you like the company is another matter, but I did find it interesting to see how they go about minimising the effect of their company on the environment.  What was not surprising is the role the users of the technology play.  If we could recycle …. And it is here where I find a problem with all of the arguments.  The reality is that recycling is expensive as well, especially in the energy used to do it traditionally.  It is obvious that it would be best to go without that iPhone or Droid monster in your pocket.

It is rather obvious that our requirement for energy is more than what we can deliver from the traditional resources.  Assuming that we will continue to require lots of electricity for example, we need to think how we can deliver it from renewable sources.  We may need to pump non-renewable energy into developing the technologies to develop renewable energy.  It comes down to bootstrapping.  As long as we realise that we can ONLY bootstrap from the non-renewable sources and that they are running out as I type. 

With all of this in mind I find it rather demoralising when people advocate against a source like wind power, based mostly on the emotional argument that it impacts negatively on the scenic beauty of a place.  Almost by default these farms go up where most people do not go, exactly because of the fact that it is rather windy there.  The really good windy places are almost always cold places too.  But property values decrease when the skyline is littered with these huge machines, it is said.  The turbines kill bats by bursting their lungs and impacts on hunting as clearing is needed to establish the sites, etc.  The impact on human health is claimed too, as the “constant exposure to infrasound” is harmful.  Oh, and it is not nearly as efficient as a coal burner.

The same goes for solar panels. Well, it is true that they are expensive to make (processing of materials, etc.), they only work when there is enough light (surprisingly) and they are not as efficient as, wait for it, burning coal.  What about solar collectors, like heliostats?  The initial costs can be high and to work well you need quite a bit of sun every day.  Interestingly enough, the communities that do use massive amounts of energy are in places where there are not that much sun available every day, or even for months on end.  And I guess it will blemish the beauty of that peaceful valley in which it is built.

Hydro is an option, but hugely expensive to get going.  Most other schemes are just so esoteric that it is not worth mentioning.  Obviously we can use nuclear, and in many ways it is the best option around.  But we have come so far down the road of viewing nuclear power as bad that it is possibly easier to just give up cell phones.  It comes down to the fact that we still seem to have too many choices.  This makes it possible for us to compare and discover all sorts of disadvantages, which unfortunately leaves us feeling less than happy with any option.  Soon, however, we may have fewer options than we thought we had, and bootstrapping into clean options may then be even more difficult than it is today.

The fact remains that the demand for energy is spiralling out of control, and it underlines the reality that we are definitely not sophisticated.  Certainly, if we cannot find alternatives or curb our usage, often because of emotional issues, this makes us stupid too.  I would love to hear from you on this one.

I only use images that I own the rights to.  The one in this piece is  from iStockPhoto.

Ups and Downs

Normally I write about wider topics, but today I am inclined to get personal.  It is a windy and emotional Sunday for me in Dunedin, New Zealand.  

Maybe it is time to take stock of a year, or even of a couple of years.  It has been an amazing and scary journey since March 2008.  Not only did I experience an epiphany of sorts where I saw how life should be different and how it could be more rewarding, but I also went through the turmoil of following my new insight and dragging my family (and the dog) into it.  And here we are, still in the process, but much of the change is behind us.

Chrissie is in a new position at a new hospital,and she is very happy and successful.  I have seen her flower into a new being as I imagined in the taxi in the middle of Johannesburg in 2008.  For all the effort, this is reward beyond any expectation.  My wife, my best mate, my fellow traveller on this road of life is now an assertive and confident individual, slowly growing into the full potential I believe she has.  As Ian Dean (a very wise man) once said: “Chrissie has a certain presence that many of us just dream to have.”  I took this to heart Ian, I listened and wondered why she is not shining like she should be.  Now she is getting there.  It is her time.  I am awestruck.

My son is finding it tough.  Perhaps he is like me, a slow starter.  In 1995 I was siting in an old library room at the chemistry department of the University of Stellenosch.  It was a cold  day and I took the early flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town.  I was waiting on a professor that was supposed to be able to evaluate my proposal for a doctorate.  He walked into the room, a man with a smile and a soft attitude, and after listening to my carefully prepared presentation, he made a few comments.  Only one stayed with me: “Jan, some people flower later in life.  It is more important to know that you have to persevere than it is to achieve early.”  This is what I hope Jan-Dawid will hear from people around him.  We are ready when we are ready, not a second before then.  And we are often ready for things completely different from what we think we should be.  It takes wisdom that we do not have necessarily at age twenty.  I just hope that he takes the cue from us and persevere through the tough times he now faces.

I have registered my own company and I am getting to grips with what it means.  At the same time I am trying to do more at home, to be a more supportive partner to Chrissie and a better father.  I also try and take Jessie (the Irish Terrier) for regular walks.  It is not easy, to be honest.  I have many days of severe doubt and fear.   At fifty it is scary to drop everything and take up something completely new.  It is also something that gets the energy flowing.  That is important.  Some guys buy a Harley, some get a girl friend (in her twenties), I move to NZ.  I guess it equates.  

In summary, it has been 24 months of discovery for us.  It has been more than a 100 weeks of contemplation for me.  It is not done yet, not by any measure.  We have a house and we can sleep sound at night.  I have the resources to cook for friends and give them a glass of wine.  We can crack jokes and debate the plight of humanity.  

I can look into my beautiful wife’s eyes and see her joy and I can see my son getting to grips with reality.  This is all I need.  And perhaps to have Jessie listen when I ask her not to go after the cat across the street.  We need less than we imagine. 

Kissing

The art of loving needs some attention at the end of 2010, I guess.  Many of us have long-term relationships and these need more effort to keep them fresh and vitalised.  It is easy to be blown away by the heady fragrances of a new lover.  It is an automatic reaction to buckle at the knees when a new flame ignites the pheromones.  However, how do you ignite the flames of an established relationship, how do you kindle the embers of those passionate days?

Without being ready to take responsibility for the outcome, may I suggest the following course of action?  (As my son would claim: whatever - just get on with it!).

Kiss:  Science tells us that this is the primary way to ignite the fires of passion.  We only kiss those we are comfortable with. Yes, just forget about kissing your aunt when you were a kid, it does not count as kissing!  So kiss with clear intent to pleasure.  Slowly and with intent to touch the soul.  Kiss with the sole intent of giving something of yourself.  Kiss where it matters.  

Kiss your special one on their eyelids.  Land kisses on ears and on the nape of the neck.  Brush over hair with your lips.  Lightly taste the skin of a forehead.  Brush over cheeks.  Caress shoulders with your lips.  Find the lips of your partner - but softly now - like flowers touched by the airy attention of butterflies.  Breathe in the soft fragrance of your lover and savor it for a moment, then breathe your heart over them.

Spend time in embrace.  We need to be touched and we need to touch.  We were made for kissing in soft embrace.  We were made to speak in soft tones and to share moments of quiet.  Go into these days with only one intention - the one of touching with deep care.  Kiss with intent, kiss with your soul.

Have a great end to 2010.  

Via: OnlineDating Blog

Snapshots

When you remember an event, what does it “look” like, or feel like?  How do we “experience” the past?  A new website I subscribed to recently suddenly had me thinking quite a bit about this.

According to the scientists (and no, I am not even going to try and make this into a scientific paper with references - just go search Scientific American for some good articles), we have long term memories, short term memories and sensory memory.  We have ways to remember things that we use to drive a car for example, which seems to be located in a different part of the brain than the part that remembers your fifth birthday.  The sensory memory fades quickly and is related to what we remember shortly after having seen a flash card with a number of items on it.

I am interested in what I call the snapshots in time that we seem to carry with us.  These are those images that somehow get burned into our minds: a specific scene that we remember fondly, how someone looked on a specific day, a feeling that we resurrect sometimes in moments of solitude.  Do these snapshots fade or change over time, do we re-contextualize them as we move on in life and what is it that makes for a good snapshot for each of us - is it the same for all of us? 

My first overseas trip was when I was already 35 years old.  I remember packing my analogue camera and a video camera to make sure that I capture as much of the event as possible and bring it back to share with my wife and family.  I took hours of video, and quite a few rolls of film.   The film I promptly developed on my return and as soon as I had an opportunity I sat my wife down in front of he TV and started playing back the video.  I had high expectations of how she would react.  Obviously it was not going to be the same as being there, but still, it would be great to share all these events. 

Not so.  And you will probably tell me that you could have told me so!

Some things that I found very special she found utterly boring.  I had long sweeping country side shots, she asked what the people looked like.  I had lots of pictures of old churches and great buildings, she wanted to know how I experienced the interactions with the people I met.  Yes, it was great to see the different places and things, but to her there was a disappointing  lack of “life” in what I brought back.  After that, I noticed that she almost always had people in her photographs, some posed, but mostly just grabbed in a moment!  Somehow our contexts were not overlapping...

Maybe we all have different signals that we use to recover the experience?  And this brings me back to the website that triggered all of this:  Blipfoto.com.  Here you are allowed to post only one image on the day that you took it, building a snapshot collage of the days of your life.  I’ll let you go there from here just now.  But before you go, first imagine something that you would have liked to capture today and that you would have posted there.  I have learned that I need people in my snapshots too, and not posed for the moment so much as just being in the moment of life - frozen in a certain setting that will help me recall a multitude of emotions.   Enough already - link me to Blipfoto!

Migrants

Immigrant - “A person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country”.  That sort of sums it up when natives of a country consider anybody that was not born in their native country.  How can they become truly part of us?  And when the chips are down, these immigrants are easily pointed out as being part of whatever problem the natives may be facing.   I believe that the migrants may hold the keys to more solutions than what they are credited for and I shall return to this later.
When a person emigrates, the loss of sense of place is immediate.  The natives in the country of origin see the emigrant as a “loss” for the country or in many cases as “good riddance”, one less person to worry about, or in the worst case, the emigrant is seen as a traitor to the values and culture of his country of birth.
All immigrants and emigrants are transients or wanderers in the eyes of those that have never ventured to settle outside their known world.  As migrants our accents give us away, the simple things we get wrong in conversations, the subtleties of the culture you are trying to adopt, all these things set you apart.  In many cases being an immigrant puts you at a disadvantage in the work place.  Can this person be trusted, will this immigrant be able to cope with our way of doing things, and should he/she not rather start at the bottom and remain there?
Many immigrants to the developed countries go through stringent selection processes.  You must be of the right age group, you must have a skill that is in short supply, you cannot have a criminal record, you must bring enough currency to fend for yourself for a while, you and every family member that comes with you must be in excellent health, you must conform to very interesting rules and regulations, and once you arrive, none of this is effectively recognized by the people you meet every day at the supermarket, in the job interview, on the bus and in the classroom.
Still, governments have expensive immigration programs.  They see it as a way to bolster the economy, to grow the number of productive citizens, to cover for the skills that leave their country for various reasons, to bring investment into the country and to get a certain diversity that they see may be advantageous in future.  These are all valid reasons.  But do the general population accept these facts?
The world is rapidly changing and the developing countries have aging populations.  For this reason getting skilled young people from other countries into the economic activity makes sense.  As long as the immigrants can integrate with he culture of the new country, this is a good way to renew economies.  The key is integration.  This can only be achieved if there is acceptance that the immigrants are carefully selected for their future contribution and if the community invites them in and values their contributions.
Many older people have a sense of adventure and massive experience that they can bring together to the benefit of a country.  The fact that they are older and wiser must be seen as a positive for those countries looking for exceptional skill sets.  Here you can choose people with proven track records in the country of origin, you can inspect their value systems by interrogating friends and family and co-workers.  The fact that they have the energy and the will to bring incredible change to bear on their settled existences must be an indication of the potential of these people to be active participants and agents for change in their new countries.  For this to happen the communities in the new country must acknowledge this potential and integrate these people rapidly at the levels of planning and strategy to harvest the wealth of experience.  In many cases these people bring established and strong families with them that can be centers of renewed growth in family values in developed countries where this has deteriorated.
As I said earlier, I believe proper immigration policies and programs are key to the constant renewal of cultures and countries.  Immigrants are not the slaves of the new era, they are often the cream of the crop.  They may be the ingredients needed to refresh a stale economy, or to bring the insight for renewal of a stagnant city, or they may bring with them the warnings of paths taken somewhere else that ultimately led to disaster.  It is up to the communities in which the immigrants imbed themselves to utilize this resource.  It also asks of the immigrants to unconditionally adopt their new environment, and to do the rootstock onto which they are grafted proud by bringing forth magnificent fruit. 

Stories Wrought by Volcanoes

When I was flying in from Washington DC to Copenhagen on 12 April I asked to sit on the left-hand side of the aircraft in the hope of seeing the volcanic activity at Fimmvorduhals in Iceland. Little did I know that there would be such a powerful eruption only days later at Eyjafjallajoküll. This event started an avalanche of stories that will be told for the next couple of years by thousands of people directly touched by it.
I was alerted to the fact that I may not be able to catch my planned flight back to South Africa by a travel companion. I looked at the people around me and while a lightness filled my heart I responded with a simple “Fantastic!”. An act of God stranded me in my happy place! I was in Sweden. My family was safe in New Zealand, my dog was happily lounging at Xantah Kennels in South Africa and my house was locked up, lawn spritely growing with the recent rains, and my pool was filled with a chemical cocktail guaranteed to outlive anything. I considered my credit card balance and realised my company sent me here in the first place. I would keep the extra cost to a minimum, work on my projects (I do a lot of individual stuff in any case) and use my free time to experience Stockholm and maybe even more. And I did just that. Some of the images I captured are shown at my Picasa site and on FaceBook. I put one here at the top - it touched me deeply.
But back to my story: you know, I learned other things. For example, we all tend to handle a crisis in our own ways. It is clear that it is a function of how we see and experience life. Is the glass half full.... Can you adjust your sails to the changing winds, or do you look for the outboard? Can you see opportunity in adversity? Do you need others to have sympathy with your plight, or can you help others even when you are taking strain?
I saw so many pictures on TV of people complaining, of people insisting on support, of people blaming others, most of them at an airport, stranded during or after a long expensive holiday. There were others. The couple that got married in Singapore, where the hotel owner heard that they were on their way to be married in Europe, were accommodated by the same hotel owner, who organised a wedding for them there, and invited all his stranded guests to the wedding. That is a worthwhile story!
The elderly couple from Australia were only happy to be on TV so they could let their children know that they are out of pocket but ok, and happy. That is the story of two people that have seen it all and have nothing to lose but life and each other - and they smile.
Yes, there were immediately some stories of people losing millions and claiming someone should pay, there were growers of vegetables for Europe in Kenia that said they would have to throw the food away and looked for compensation - while the food could just as well feed the hungry in that pitiful place. Everywhere there were people trying to play cards that they did not hold. Innocent people at hotel desks were crapped on, tour operators were told how they should go out of business, and yes, some people did not do their jobs, I know, but in a way, this was way beyond us.
Now, I want you to think about the people and animals in Iceland. Imagine the situation there. How are the farmers going to feed their animals; the air is toxic, the soil is toxic, the water is toxic? Who can they blame? God? The planet? Global warming? Does it make sense that those who only have to wait to be shipped home should take up 90% of the news coverage? Should the world not react like in Haiti?
No!
Maybe the people in Iceland are proud and brave and used to making it work, regardless. Maybe they never rely on hand-outs. Maybe God blessed them with the right attitude to handle volcanoes. Maybe they are the lucky ones. Maybe they have the real stories to tell. And maybe they represent the true spirit of man!
I could not get rights to show the pictures on my page that I wanted you to see. Unless you are a large business you do not deal with Reuters or their photographers, I guess. But do yourselves a favour and surf over to this website.
This was the one picture that tore my heart out. We have such a special link with these animals. While I was writing this, I was listening to some music from Iceland. The artist is Jónsi and the CD is called “Go”. I love the first track and the lyrics - well, check it out here. Jónsi is the frontman of the Icelandic band Sigur Rós. For those with a sense of adventure - Go Do!

Anthem

With international sports events now becoming one of the biggest draw-cards for television content directors, we have had the opportunity to be exposed to many national anthems on a regular basis. An anthem is typically a musical piece written as a response to some cause or call. Derived from Greek and Saxon words, the anthem has a place in religious events as well.

Anthems are often emotional expressions if intent, devotion and promise and prayer. In many instances, anthems are seen as tools to engender and unite people around a common cause or country, after wars, or struggles for example. Anthems come from the souls and the hearts of people only when they truly believe in what is being sung.

I thus find it difficult to contend with the modern trend of mixing several languages in one anthem. Unless you understand the language that you are using, how can you feel the emotions stirring in you from the context that comes with language, how can you be truly absorbed in the emotions? I understand that these modern anthems are attempts at consolidation of nations and cultures, but they fail to my mind, because they are compromises. Such a compromise is at best a reminder of something that could have been. I am sure that there will be many comments about my position, and that will be great. However, my idea here is to get to another position, that of the anthem of our souls.

I this piece, my aim is to consider what I call the anthem of the soul. For this, we need to go back to the roots of the word. The dictionary on my MacBook says that an anthem is a rousing or uplifting song, sung antiphonally (from the Saxon antefn and Latin antiphona, and originally from Greek, which indicates an “opposite voice” - or in answer to something). In church, the antiphon was usually sung in response to a psalm, or other part of liturgy. Gregorian chant is an example of the original form.

These chants and songs are devised in a way that makes the words and/or the emotions clear. It responds to a call, a higher voice. In some of my previous pieces on this blog I spoke about how the lack of playfulness, rushing around and an absence of hope whittle us down to nothingness. Our souls are dumbed down by constant insistence by those around us to deliver something, to do things now or to be accountable for even more things. We are brought up to listen closely to the voices of parents and peers, teachers and politicians, and those that can muster the loudest call. We are swamped by the messages and calls on television, radio and the other forms of media, including the internet.

We become deaf to the higher calling in our lives. We stray from the path we are intended to take, our own voices start to fail us, and our language becomes garbled. Where is the energy and belief that fire the devotion to our true role on this planet? It is swamped by the noise and our response to our life’s calling turns into a whisper. In an attempt to compromise, our personal anthem becomes just a reflection of the demands of those shouting us down. We answer in their voices, slowly disappearing as a unique voice. Our souls blend into nothingness, our value diminishes to zero.

We have no anthem left, no rousing song to take us through the day, no way to show our good intent, or to rise to the occasion when we are called to do those things that lift us as humans above the other animals. How can we care for our planet, for the frogs being poisoned, for the birds being pushed out of their habitats, if we have no soul that responds with an uplifting burst of song?
We all need to go back and ferret in the corners of our souls for the song we need to sing to the world. Each one of us must retrain our voice to sing in our own language, with crystal clarity about our call, our intent and our promises to the universe around us. We must not hide behind circumstances or the past. Write a book, draw something, sing the song you always wanted others to hear, play the piano, walk the dog, teach someone something you have mastered, learn from a friend, wave goodbye to old enemies, respond with energy to a sunrise. In fact, do none of the above! I echo Popper, who urged his students to listen closely to what he had to say, if only to be able to dismiss it and to replace it with their own original ideas.

Just bring your anthem to the liturgy of life.

The image above is from my personal library and my not be used without written consent. It is a recent photograph at a wine farm called “Anthem” in New Zealand. This piece is dedicated to my best friend and her quest to sing her anthem as her soul wants and her Creator wishes.

Star Jumps

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?
– Dr. Seuss (from the Dr Seuss iGoogle Gadget)

We live in hectic times! Hectic: I like this word, because when you understand where it comes from I think you will agree that it is a proper descriptor for this day and age. According to the excellent built-in writing tools of OSX, the word is derived from the Greek word hektikos, related to hexis, habit, or state of mind or body. In medieval medicine it was used in conjunction with a regularly recurrent fever. Someone with a hectic fever had flushed cheeks and hot dry skin.

We live at a frantic pace. The schedules are insane, the electronic diaries we keep are driving us relentlessly from one meeting or engagement to the next. Our days are chopped up into the Franklin Planner, and the 15 minutes of solitude every day remains as a stark reminder only of what we have again missed today.

Here we are in 2009, running around as if a deadly illness is driving our bodies up the wall, trying to be efficient and sane. We use all sorts of modern technology to help us survive. But I am starting to think that the technology is not helping at all. It is just cranking up the pace. The expectation is now that this blog will come out at around 750 words in less than an hour. This includes thinking about the topic, researching some of the things I wish to say and constructing a readable story, pumping it into the blogosphere and inserting, as a final touch, an appropriate image.

I have 11 applications open at once while I am typing away. Three of these are related to the topic, 3 are communication related applications, allowing me to see who is online now so I can organise and discuss other tasks, one is monitoring bandwidth usage and two are doing methodical searches for a document I am preparing on simulation. The other two applications hold images and drawings in several stages of completion. Today is Sunday, it is a slower day. By the way, one of the applications is a browser with four tabbed windows in it, because I am also looking for cheap car rentals, I am trying to track a flight so that I can see if it is on time and two windows contain weather information and news items.

What is the point of this, you ask? You have more things on the desktop, more things in the car, more things on the mobile phone, more beeps on the berry, and several thousands demanding attention from a device starting with “i” something. My point is that all of these things are making us hectic. The bringing together of so many information streams are taxing our bodies and minds. It is not integrated in a way that allows me to actually have time for myself. It is in fact often tools in the hands of relentless masters to ask why you seem to be inefficient. The reality is that all these tools are just that - tools: they do not create extra time for me to think. If the expectation was that this blog would take a day, and I still used the modern tools to do it, this might have been a really good piece. I could think about the flow, the arguments, and the aesthetics. Now, it is a quick piece, just a blog!

When I looked at the word hectic in a message I was sending, I realised that we are not maintaining our bodies and minds as we should, using the modern technology to be efficient, rather than frantic and hectic. We should now have more means to understand how to maintain balance. We should stop promising delivery to the levels of insane expectations of a few that have lost the plot already. Someone has to argue for quality and beauty to become norms again, to ask that people become appreciative of the way that the brain dumbs down if we do not calm down and to ask that we use time to consider the real problems we face on the planet.

We need to be able to walk away from it on a regular basis, to breathe country air, to walk in isolated places and to listen to the wind in grass and leaves, to imagine positive outcomes, where the schedule is subservient to the goal. Smile, jump, bring the fever down with a cup of tea, a good book, some calming music and a long hug of a fellow inhabitant of the planet. Then we’ll have energy to be smart, to be efficient and to make the time to play.

Star jumps are not just for kids, but before you try this at home, you have to relax and release, then imagine weightlessness and flying. The star jump also leaves you with a blush on the cheeks, but there is no fever. It is hectic in another sense - in the sense of experiencing the sheer thrill of being a kid again! Remember those endless days...?

In appreciation of my beautiful friend - the star jumper!
The image is not for re-use without her written consent.

Maps

My fascination with maps started early. I remember how my dad planned a trip from Windhoek in Namibia down to Kimberley in South Africa, using a large map. We poured over it, and I was transfixed by his calculations, and the tracing of the lines on the map with his pencil as he smoked his Rothmans cigarette. In those days large sections of the route were dirt roads, there were areas where we would cross rivers only if they were not in flood as no bridges existed and in many cases we would drive through dry river beds and we needed to know when to exit onto a road to stay on the route down to South Africa.

The important thing was that we would be doing this at night. We were driving down in December and to spare me the inconvenience of the incredible heat, my parents were going to start the trip at 16:00, driving through the night to arrive in Kimberley midday next. My dad was a real navigator. He would study a route and then just go to his destination. On that trip from Windhoek to Kimberley I was sitting in front in the white Ford Corsair, my mother was pregnant with my brother and she was sitting in back. During the night I remember looking at the light from the radio as it crackled and hissed over the short wave, my dad expertly navigating through the dark of the desolate Namibian landscape: Mariental, stopping for fuel and my dad asking for water for our thermos, Keetmanshoop, Grünau, and he sun rising at Karasburg, cracking open a real desert morning, cold and sharp, with Fanus Rautenbach on the morning show on the radio, my dad being tired, but committed to continue driving through those hours when sleep is at every corner of the eye. Eventually we would cross at Ariamsvlei and then it was a couple of hours to Douglas, where my dad took a break on the farm Duikersvlei, before doing the last stretch to Kimberley and the comforting smells of my grandmother’s house, mutton chops, potatoes, pumpkin, onions and her own preserved peaches in a thick syrup, all of it washed down with the then famous Kimberly Hop Beer. Oh, and Covent Garden Ice Cream...
And through all of this, the map was there. My dad was looking at it, folding it, estimating arrival times, etc.
When I went to school I collected maps, from the old territory maps of the British, to maps of the Union of South Africa, and beyond. I studied these drawings carefully, almost memorising distances, imprinting the key cities into my brain, and finally dreaming about all those exotic places. London, Stockholm, Inverness, Paris, Rome, Sydney, Tokyo, St Petersburg, New York, and great areas of land mass - Alaska, Patagonia, the Andes, Australia - this list is long. And I wondered what it would be like being there in these exotic places. Maps unlocked my imagination and my great passion for travel.
Maps have a long history. Early maps were done in clay, or on papyrus. Some were designed for the journey to the afterlife, others were used to show who owned what, and who ruled whom. It soon became useful as navigation tools, and later, in the days of the great maritime explorers, the art and science of mapping became the competitive edge of nations.
We take geographical and star maps for granted, expecting high resolution and accuracy, and maps that change to reflect our changing world. One of my favourite sites is the world sunlight map, that shows the cloud mass and the day-night partition of the planet. I like the maps from the Weather Underground on which I can see changing weather patterns in my area. I have their gadget set up in my iGoogle space for example. From my blog you can also go to the map that indicates where visitors to my blog came from (left bottom of the blog).
There are other maps hat we use every day, like Mind Maps, Concept Maps, and many other diagrammatic descriptions that allow us to navigate through information. There are even maps of the World Wide Web. And while we are talking about the web, I must mention Google maps as well. I believe that Google is doing us all a favour by building these maps and allowing us to use them as support to many new applications. As always, knowledge brings power, and danger. A map in the hand of a fool is a sure way to come to disaster.

The image above is from iStockphoto - and I have bough the rights to use it here. Before you use any of the images that the links take you to, consider the intellectual rights of the owners and get permission to use it. It is the right thing to do.