Jo S. Wun's Blog, page 3
January 24, 2012
Get Outside
Robert_Palmer_-_Get_Outside.mp3
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That's just what I did. It was turning into one of those days just like Robert Palmer describes, so I took his advice. I'm glad I did because I saw these flowers in my travels, and snapped them so I could bring a bit of the outside back inside with me.
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Get Outside is from Robert Palmer's 1974 album Sneakin' Sally Through The Alley.
January 23, 2012
Put Yourself In Their Shoes
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So where's this a map of? But perhaps you were not fooled by my artistry with the GIMP, if I can call it that? It is, of course, an unusual colour scheme for the location, and the eroneous labelling is also designed to mislead you, if only for a moment. Crazy old Jo, eh? But there's a reason for my deception.
The shoes I want you to put yourself in are those of the marine lifeforms of this planet. Metaphorically, of course. I am well aware that none of them wear shoes. Not having feet, for most of them at any rate, precludes the option. But suppose our situations were reversed.
The map is a fish's eye view of the planet. The 'solid land' is a representation of the area which belongs to marine life, while the 'water' is the area which is generally not accessible to them, and belongs to terrestrial lifeforms. Yes, there are exceptions, but let's not get sidetracked.
The point of it is to give us a perspective which we can't easily see when we look at our 'normal' maps. I've shown you a different map. I'll leave you to do the thinking.
Mark_Knopfler_-_Our_Shangri-La.mp3
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More Mark Knopfler here.
January 22, 2012
Oh, You Say The Wildest Things!
I had occasion to read a letter written by one Mr Ratzinger to some other chaps in his organisation who he holds responsible for the management of said organisation in the USA. But before I go further, I should point out that I mean no disrespect to the gentleman by referring to him as Mr Ratzinger. Bearing in mind that I don't believe there are any gods, let alone the one he not only claims to exist, but also claims to represent, it would be hypocritical of me if I was to use a title which implies that such an entity exists. However, I suspect that some people who hold him in awe will already have switched off their brains (quite possibly a long time before they began reading this).
But back to that letter. I hardly know where to start. There are so many things in it which could do with examination, but I'll just pick up on one or two. After all, you can read it for yourself and come to your own conclusions, if you feel so inclined.
Let's dive in at the third paragraph which ends with the following sentence: "When a culture attempts to suppress the dimension of ultimate mystery, and to close the doors to transcendent truth, it inevitably becomes impoverished and falls prey, as the late Pope John Paul II so clearly saw, to reductionist and totalitarian readings of the human person and the nature of society."
"Dimension of ultimate mystery"? He's been reading too much Deepak Chopra! And is he really suggesting that his organisation doesn't exhibit totalitarian tendencies? Or perhaps 'totalitarian readings' is something else?
Skipping forward to paragraph six, he writes of "grave threats to the Church’s public moral witness presented by a radical secularism". I'm a tad confused. Is he saying that good old common or garden secularism is okay, but it's this pesky radical secularism which is the problem? And what exactly is the difference. Is it that the common or garden variety is okay because that's the kind which nobody defends, or, if they do, they say what they have to say very quietly? Does secularism only become radical when people say "Hey! I'm standing up for secularism and I wish to complain about your behaviour!"
But wait. In the very next paragraph he writes of "reductive secularism". Ah... you've got me there. I haven't a clue what he means by that. True, I could spend time trying to figure out what he might mean by it, but I get the feeling that he simply can't bring himself to write secularism as a word on its own. Mind you, he does write of the secular sphere a bit further on.
In the penultimate paragraph he writes of "the great moral issues of our time: respect for God’s gift of life, the protection of human dignity and the promotion of authentic human rights." Bugger me if he hasn't done the same thing with human rights! Why not just human rights? Are they somehow different from authentic ones?
I've heard of passive-aggressive, but I've never been absolutely certain I really know what it means. Maybe those are examples?
But fear not, my friends. It's all gonna be okay because we learn in the final paragraph that it's all about "the building of the civilization of love."
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With apologies to the memory of Tommy Cooper
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Well, it is Sunday. And, as is my custom, I will share with you the song which was the first randomly selected track from my phone's music player this morning. To be honest, I'm a bit ambivalent about Cat Stevens, as he used to be known. I like this track but I can't get to grips with why he decided to get religion as he did. But then, I suppose he was a bit new-age-spiritual, and perhaps Moonshadow was a clue to his future path.
Cat_Stevens_-_Wild_World.mp3
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Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam home page
And, Posterous, if you are listening, I wish you would sort out your music player so it displays the tags properly. All the tracks I upload have ID3 v2.3 tags which ought to work! Grrrr!
January 21, 2012
Peaceful, Easy Feeling
Fred Rune Rahm, who I met on Diaspora, created this video on vimeo for the purpose of a lecture in mindfulness. Fred wrote the following notes on the vimeo page:
No exciting video, nothing happens. So this is kind of special.
Most will find this boring, but if you care to take the two minutes to watch, then do it mindfully:
Focus on video and music, focus on the moment right now.
Take on a non-judgemental stand, don't fight intruding thoughts and feelings, but reconize them, let them go, and focus back on the video. Accept the moment, - and relax.
I don't find it boring. In fact, when I'm in 'thinking mode' (which sometimes finds me staring blankly at the wall), I could watch a much longer version. It's in HD, so I highly recommend you watch it in full screen (click the icon at bottom-right between HD and vimeo), and you'll need patience to let it load if you have a slow connection.
Music is by Evgeny Grinko. And thank you, Fred, for introducing me to the Free Music Archive.
January 20, 2012
The Hall (Of Mirrors) Effect
A friend introduced me to the Joslin Rhodes Adviser Blog. He had some dealings with them when they did the conveyancing on a property he sold, and, he says, although they could have done better in the service they provided, he finds their monthly email newsletter quirkily amusing; enough that he usually forwards it to me.
The email usually contains an excerpt from a blog post. The latest one contained the following excerpt:
"Good evening and welcome to the Nine O’clock News.
The world is going to end and it’s all Kevin McCloud’s fault…….reportedly.
You may be surprised by that headline as we normally like to start the program by reporting on a grisly murder or such like. Ideally, a good hammer attack in some pretty middle class village, although anything that makes you feel like ‘you could be next’ is good for us. Unfortunately, and surprisingly, nobody was murdered today, which caused us a bit of a problem.
We tried very hard to find one, and in desperation the Producer even considered bringing one about however we talked him out of it.
We’re sure that lots of nice people did some good things today but as the media, we are unable to bring ourselves to report these to you for fear that you may go to bed in any state other than terrified for your life. Click to read more."
Bearing in mind that Joslin Rhodes describe themselves as Independent Financial Advisers who give advice on pensions, mortgages, savings, investments and insurance, not to mention the conveyancing services I alluded to earlier, I wonder if they have among their employees a staff member who not only likes to indulge his or her penchant for illegal substances, but also manages to slip blog posts onto the company blog, written under their influence, which have nothing whatever to do with the company business. I don't think it's a spoiler if I tell you the last sentence of that post reads: "Remember that you may still be hammered to death by a maniac at any time though, so don’t drop your guard."
If you click that link to read the rest of it, you'll find that the whole of the post carries on in a similar style, and doesn't 'drop out of character' at any point. The author strives to illustrate, through the use of humour, how TV 'news' programs seek to manipulate their viewers' emotions via the spin they put on their 'reports'. In one of those coincidences which spawns knowing looks from those who see hidden meaning in every coincidence, it arrived in my inbox just as I was thinking I'd do a post about TV soap operas, and the effect they have on their viewers. [Cue dramatic music]
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I have heard it said, although I can't point you to where, that soap operas just hold up a mirror to life. Hmmm. Leaving aside the bad acting (have you ever watched a soap opera with the sound turned off?), it strikes me that if there are any mirrors involved then they are far from perfect. They may not be as distorting as those found in the fairground hall of mirrors, but they most certainly reflect the bias of the soap's makers, and their backers.
Try watching a soap from a non-English speaking country, and observe what the themes are. You don't have to understand the language to recognise which behaviours are considered bad, and which are considered good, and if you spend a little time, you'll see behaviours which are presented as normal, even though they are not normal to you, probably because you don't live in the country of production. Then watch an English soap with the sound turned off.
Frank_Zappa_-_I'm_The_Slime.mp3
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From the album Overnite Sensation
January 19, 2012
Gorillaz!
No. Not those ones. Real ones!
Watching this I was reminded of David Attenbrough's encounter with wild gorillas in his Life on Earth series, which aired on British TV way back in 1979. I don't know if gorillas can 'think', but something is going on in their brains during such encounters.
One thing is for sure. If we couldn't 'out-think' them, as we have done for thousands of years, then we really wouldn't stand a chance against them. However, watching them idly wandering through as if they own the place (they do, at least as much as we do), their powerful bodies having the capacity to snuff out a human life with ease, puts me in a place where my perspective on this world, and how we humans behave in it, is considerably broadened.
If we, as a species, were treated half as badly as we treat gorillas, in a general sense, we'd attack our oppressors on sight, with whatever strength we could muster. How fortunate we are that gorillas don't have the capacity to organise themselves as we do. If they did, we might show them more respect.
They deserve far more respect than they get.
Hat tip: WEIT
January 18, 2012
January 17, 2012
How Can We Make This Fun?
I read this article the other day, and the final sentence leapt out at me. Apparently, the gentleman around whom the article centres, has urged institutions who share his beliefs "...to become more accessible to the young, for faith leaders to make religion fun and put more emphasis on teaching religious ethics."
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It brought back memories of groovy young clerics who attempted to make religion fun in the make love, not war days of forty, or so, years ago. I don't think they were very successful - singing happy-clappy songs can be vaguely fun, but it's all those DOs and DON'Ts which always seem to be a stumbling block in the fun stakes. And with DOs and DON'Ts which are based on the immutable, absolute truth, there's not a lot of wiggle room when it comes to making them fun, when they are plainly not.
Together with the happy-clappy songs, the tactic seemed to be simply to not mention the bits which are not fun, at least not until later when the poor unsuspecting victims of all the smiles were already ensnared, by which time it was much more difficult to extricate themselves. However, the figures for religious affiliation in the UK, over the last forty years, suggest that, as a strategy for arresting the decline in interest amongst the young, making religion fun was a dismal failure.
It's not that surprising, really. Religion never has been about fun. It's been about unconditionally obeying instructions, and, as far as I can see, it still is. The fact that the instructions are supposed to come from a god doesn't make them fun. And the fact that some things, which seem and feel like fun, are the subject of instructions which prohibit them doesn't add to the gaiety.
I suppose it's an example of that saying "some people never learn"? But perhaps that's a little unfair to the man featured in the article I linked to above. After all, he's probably not had direct experience of the failures associated with previous attempts to make religion fun. For Ahtsham Ali, a cleric and the Prison Service's Muslim advisor, it probably feels like a bright new idea which is sorely needed in view of the numbers of young men in UK prisons who are considered, at least by him, to be Muslims.
It does make me wonder what they talk about at those interfaith dialogue meetings. Perhaps, assuming he attends, he never thought to mention his idea, and, consequently, was not given the benefit of the experience of the now aging groovy clerics whose efforts in the last century showed how ineffectual such initiatives tend to be.
But really, if he read his own words with some detachment, he should be able to see that making religion fun and putting more emphasis on teaching religious ethics, are two concepts which, when put together, will surely end in tears.
Crosby,_Stills,_Nash_&_Young_-_Teach_Your_Children.mp3
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January 16, 2012
On Yer Bike!
Do you ever get flashes of inspiration/enlightenment/understanding? How about the situation where you see or here of something that someone has invented and you feel a bit affronted because you had that idea ages ago (but never did anything with it - [insert expletive of choice] )? It's happened to me, occasionally, and I suspect everyone has experienced at least one of those scenarios.
I had one of those moments today. I had to do a fair bit of driving, on narrow roads, and at one point got stuck behind a cyclist while a long line of oncoming vehicles went by. Not having to concentrate particularly hard on driving (the cyclist was going as fast as his little legs could manage, but it was up a slight gradient so progress was slow), my mind had spare capacity to wonder why cyclists don't fall over.
More specifically, I was wondering why it's very hard to prevent yourself from falling off your bike if you take your feet off the ground when it's stationary (oh yes! now I'm thinking about those 'slow bicycle races' I participated in as a youngster), but as soon as you start to peddle along, or even roll forwards, falling off just isn't much of an issue anymore. That was the point when I suddenly understood.
Riding a bike is just controlling the direction of your fall. Instead of falling sideways, with the painful results which often accompany such a manouvre, riding is simply falling forwards, in the direction you want to go. And seeing as you can only fall in one direction, once you get moving, that's the direction of your fall, and that's why you don't fall off sideways.
Ouch!
Now, I have to accept that you might be thinking, "Duh! Everyone knows that!", but to the best of my knowledge, that piece of insight came to me without having heard or read it elsewhere. I suppose, though, I could have simply forgotten. Maybe I read it years ago in one of those little Reader's Digest books which one would find in the waiting room of the Doctor's or Dentist's surgery. Or perhaps it's splattered all over the internet and I've got some sort of mental block which causes me to forget the numerous times I've clicked that link. Oh...it's so depressing!
Humour me, let me continue in my self-satisfied ignorance for a little longer. Let me wallow in the glory of my innovative thought, even if I am deluding myself. I, for one, will resist the temptation to search the internet for all those splattered articles, for at least twenty-four hours. Yes, I'll have my cake and eat it too!
Cake_-_Long_Line_Of_Cars.mp3
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Long Line Of Cars is on the Comfort Eagle album.
January 15, 2012
Egyptian Cracker
When I fired up my PC this morning, Skype began to run automatically, as usual, but then, instead of signing in automatically, it popped up the log in window. I was a bit surprised because it hasn't done that for a long time. I was more surprised, and a little perturbed, when my Username/password combination was rejected. I let all the other apps which I have set to auto-start settle down, and then, after l logged in to my email account, I found out why.
A message from Skype informed me that my account had been suspended because they had recently identified some unauthorized activity and, for my protection, they had temporarily suspended it. Oh, bummer!
Fortunately, a quick online chat with a customer service person restored my account again, and, in the process of chatting, I was informed that although they obviously could not identify the culprit, they did know that the intrusion originated in Egypt.
After access to my account had been restored, which involved changing my password, I logged in to find that the culprit had apparently depleted my balance by a pound, or so. although, to be honest, I could be wrong about that. I don't keep that close a check on it, but I certainly thought the balance was lower than it should be. However, if they made any calls, they don't show up in the history.
Oh well, these things happen. But of course it meant that I've spent a good part of my day running security scans on my PC (almost 4 hours for Windows Defender Offline to do a full scan), and then changing all my passwords, everywhere. The scan revealed my PC is clean, but man was it boring. Boring. Boring. Boring!
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The first track on my music player this morning (I had to wait to fix Skype until the morning's church run had been done) was Ashes, by KT Tunstall, which is one of those songs I like because it's a bit unusual, lyrics-wise, especially considering the style of the music. I'm not going to include it in this post, but you can listen on You Tube if the fancy takes you.
The reason I'm not including it is because a little later, Boogie Street by Leonard Cohen came on. It's from his Ten New Songs album with Sharon Robinson, and is one of many songs of his I like, including this one which has the immortal line, I was born like this, I had no choice, I was born with the gift of a golden voice. Yes, Leonard, it makes me smile that I have to agree.
Leonard_Cohen_-_Tower_Of_Song.mp3
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Tower Of Song is featured on several albums which are listed here.
