Philosophy – Page 9 – Me on the net

Holidays

I should imagine that going on holiday, for many people would be a relatively new thing. While those with money might decide to shift operations from home to another location, which might or might not be near a beach, those who work from them would mostly have no respite from day to day toil, since their employers would still require looking after as usual.

As ordinary people became wealthy, and the old social structures faded away for the most part, it would have become more usual for ordinary people to go away, just as their employers used to.

Rangiputa, Karikari Peninsula, Northland, New ... — Rangiputa, Karikari Peninsula, Northland, New Zealand. Rangiputa is a beach and bach (holiday home) community on the west side of the peninsula (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The word “holiday” itself is a contraction of “holy day”, and on holy days there were celebrations and less formal work. The word has come to mean a day on which one does not have to work. Most countries these days would have statutory holidays on which which people would not have to work. There may be other restrictions, such as legislation that shops should remain closed.

It’s understandable that some countries require shop closures, as this means that shop staff get the holiday too, but many countries these days allow shops to stay open if they wish and some of the best retail days are on statutory holidays. Usually shops that stay open are required to compensate staff who are required to work.

Holidays are disruptions to normal schedules. When one goes away, one is in a different environment and one has to make do. Even something as simple as making a cup of tea may be complicated by the need to find a spoon, a cup, and a teabag, not to mention the need to figure out the operation of a different jug!

These things are not an enormous issue, and in fact draw attention to the fact that one is on holiday. All schedules are voided and one can do whatever one wants. Often this may amount to doing nothing.



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A “holiday industry” has evolved, which provides accommodation, and resources for those temporarily away from home. It also provides entertainments or “attractions” if the holiday maker doesn’t just want to lay on the beach. The holiday maker may do all sorts of things that he or she doesn’t usually do, from the exciting (bungy jumping or similar) to the restful (a gentle walk around gardens or maybe a castle visit or may a zoo).

These facilities are all staffed by helpful people who arrange things so that the holiday maker can enjoy his or her self without worries. These people are of course employed by the facilities, but many of them enjoy their work very much anyway. It’s a sort of bonus for helping people.

English: Ultra Dynamics Dowty Turbocraft water... — English: Ultra Dynamics Dowty Turbocraft waterjet boat (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Holiday makers must also be fed, and this has become a huge industry too. In any seaside towns so-called fast food outlets can be found in abundance, along with more up market restaurants and cafés, for more leisurely eating. For many people one of the advantages of being on holiday is that one doesn’t have to cook, and one can choose to eat things that one doesn’t normally eat.

Holidays can be expensive. Since we are close to the Pacific Islands, like Tonga, Samoa and Fiji, many people fly out to the islands on their summer holidays. This means flight and accommodation has to be booked and paid for.

When the holiday makers arrive at their destinations, they have to pay for food and entertainment. Other expenses may be for sun screen cream, snacks, tours, tips, and the odd item of clothing which may have been accidentally left at home.

Holiday entertainment may comprise guided tours, or visiting monuments or zoos. Amusement parks are often an attraction as are aquariums. All this can cost a lot, but unless you are content to veg out on the beach, you’ll have to pay for it. Even vegging out on the beach comes at a cost, from sun protection through to drink to offset the dehydration caused by the sun.

So, why do we throw over the usual daily regime, and drag our family on an often uncomfortable road, sea, or plane trip, to a location where we know little of the environment, which will cost us money, to spend the days traipsing from “attraction” to “attraction” spending more money and feeding on often costly food of unknown quality or provenance?

Part of the answer is that the daily regime becomes boring and descends into drudgery. Removing ourselves from the daily regime allows us to escape that drudgery for a while. As far as the cost goes, well, one is prepared to spend a certain amount of money to escape the drudgery for a while.

Removing ourselves from the usual means that we can try the unusual. We may try Mexican food, or Vietnamese food. Or even Scottish cuisine if we choose. The world is our oyster.

We can try sports and pastimes that we have never tried before. Bungee jumping. Skiing, water or snow. We can visit a “Theme Park”, ride a roller coaster, or other ride. We can scare ourselves and excite ourselves.

We can experience different cultures, different scenery, but at the end of the day we know that we will be returning to our mundane lives. We have at the back of our minds the cosy ordinariness of our usual lives, as a sort of safety harness.

We know our comfortable house will be there for us to return to, and while we may enjoy the beds in our hotel, motel, holiday home or tent, we look forward to the return to our own beds. We look forward to drinking the brands of coffee and tea that we prefer and fill the fridge with the foods that we prefer to cook.

Few people would want to live in hotels and sleep in strange beds as a way of life, but there are some people who do so. While we enjoy being on holiday, as a break from our usual lives, we would probably not want to live that way for an extended period. Those who do are unusual people.



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Success

Everyone likes to succeed at their endeavours, but not everyone is able to succeed for a number of reasons. People have varying drives to succeed, with some having little drive and others have a high level of the drive to succeed.

Maybe “succeed” is not the right word here as what I am referring to is the drive to create a company, or an artwork, or some other goal. Some people seem to have this urge almost from birth, such as top sports people, and some have some sort of “Damascene Moment“, where some event gives them reason to achieve some goal.

the Conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus... — the Conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus as painted by Michelangelo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Actually St Paul is probably not a good example of what I am talking about as he already had a goal (persecution of the Christians) and his goal was changed dramatically. Many others, however, have experienced conversion events to many different religions. Some however have experienced more gradual conversions.

It is not my intent to argue that sudden or gradual conversions to any religion or creed are real mystical or religious events. They may give the person a life long belief in the creed or religion, but in many cases such conversion may moderate or fade over time.

In the big religious revivals in the US such as those run by Billy Graham people at the rallies were encouraged to make a public declaration of their faith and millions did so. The pressure and excitement engendered by the event most likely resulted in people being swept along and making declarations and later reconsidering.

People who succeed in things are focussed individuals who have a clear goal, and do not see or discount the difficulties in achieving their goals, whatever they might be. Others, who are less driven would more likely see the difficulties, and indeed, such difficulties may be overwhelming.

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The media is happy to promote success stories, such as this one, and they are supposed to be inspirational. The person mentioned in the article appears to have been successful, with a high powered job and a similarly high powered lifestyle, only to lose it all. The story ends on an upbeat as the person succeeds in turning her life around.

This little example shows a couple of things. Firstly, although she was successful, her life crashed and burnt, and secondly, she turned her life around but her goals were now set much lower.



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Many people who attempt to become successful crash and burn like she did both before and after becoming successful. Also, she was successful in turning her life around, achieving a different sort of success.

That’s an interesting point – one form of success is to acquire lots of money, property, possessions. Another form of success is to be able to enjoy oneself in a hedonistic way, usually as a result of acquiring money, property, etc.

However, such successes may not provide happiness, and indeed money may not buy happiness for many people. To achieve happiness one may need to give up such worldly wealth and adopt a simpler life. Others may find other ways to achieve happiness, for instance, in a job which they enjoy, and achieving happiness may, in many cases, equate to achieving success in life.

Personal success can come as a result of success in other fields, of course, and worldly success, such as starting and running a successful business, is almost always considered to be any achievement worthy of public approbation.

However many newly started businesses fail. This does not hurt just the entrepreneur, but also anyone who has come to depend on the new business and those who have invested in the business. Normally a start up gets finance from friends and relatives in the first place and only wins finance from other sources later.

Some entrepreneurs have a history of failure. Some fail multiple times causing severe financial distress to friends and relatives. However, if such start ups were banned, this would severely hamper the evolution and growth of businesses. Such companies as Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Facebook, and Google, not to mention Amazon and similar would perhaps not have come about.



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However, it is worth noting that Richard Branson, whose Virgin companies are well known, and who is now trying to conquer space commercially, came from a fairly well to do family. Mark Zucherberg, also came from a fairly well to do family. Bill Gates of Microsoft had a similar background. It seems that having a well to do family helps one succeed as an entrepreneur.

Of course, that’s a sweeping generalisation and would need a lot more data to justify. It might be that the reason, if there is one, for such a correlation, is genetic, and successful people may often come from families that have an entrepreneurial gene. It may be that the reason if cultural, and that children of successful people learn from their families how to succeed.

English: Renowned speaker, author, entrepreneu... — English: Renowned speaker, author, entrepreneur and artist Jewel Daniels (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If there is a correlation, this doesn’t bode well for the children of the less well off. They either don’t have the genes for success, or the don’t have the environment for success. Nevertheless some of them do succeed, against the odds.

A successful businessman or woman is like a successful athlete – an athlete is more likely to be successful if he comes from a successful sporting family. Such a family is more likely to provide the support that any aspiring athlete needs and will have provided a successful gene set to their sporting children.

A family that knows how to compete will be able to inspire in their children the will to succeed if they follow in the family footsteps. However the child will need to have the intrinsic ability to perform, if he or she is to approach or even exceed parental achievements.

I think of this whenever someone points to someone who has achieved success in business or their life and remarks that this person shows what dedication and hard work can achieve. The implication is that anyone who does not succeed isn’t dedicated enough and is lazy.



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This implication is just not true. No matter how hard I try, if I trained every day, there is no way that I could become a top athlete. Such athletes are anomalous phenomena. They are gifted individuals, and this should be recognised. In business, as in athletics, it takes more, much more, than hard work and dedication to succeed. Thomas Edison‘s adage is true, but without the one per cent inspiration, which comes to few, it is all just sweat.

None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.



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Space – the Final Front Ear

Portrait of William Shatner (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sorry about the fabricated mondegreen, which obviously references the Star Trek series of films and TV shows. Captain Kirk saw space, or more correctly distance, as a barrier, but it really is one of the factors that determines the structure or shape of our Universe.

It is interesting to me, that, although the Universe is finite, if it derived from a Big Bang, there is a human urge to explore outwards, as if it were infinite. That is probably one of the factors that led scientists such as Fred Hoyle and others to support a Steady State Theory of the Universe.



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Personally, I believe that there is no such thing as a steady state in anything. When we see something which appears to be in a steady state or equilibrium state we should look for the feedback factors that are keeping it that way. For example a pendulum hangs straight down when at rest because any deviation from that position results in gravitation forces pulling it back to the rest position.

If friction is low the pendulum will actually pass through the equilibrium position and swing to the other side, whereupon gravity will slow it and draw it back towards the equilibrium position again. Eventually friction will slow the pendulum down and the pendulum will again hang vertically.

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So we have two forces, gravity and friction, resulting in the pendulum returning to the equilibrium position. No pendulum lasts for ever, as the pivot will wear out or an elephant may step on the thing, so the equilibrium will only exist for a finite time, but it will last long enough for us to use in clocks or in scientific experiments.

Space is itself expanding as I understand the theories and some of it is out of our sight, over an event horizon, which is a locus where everything is moving away from us at the speed of light. That doesn’t much our location special – it is true of any point in the Universe. LGM on a planet around a star that is over the event horizon from us have their own event horizon, and while they may be able to see a star inside our event horizon and we in theirs, we cannot see each other.

Alien (creature in Alien franchise) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Space separates us form the LGM, but it also separates from things local to us. Ben, our dog, is over there, about 3 metres away. My cup is mere centimetres away. It is fair to say, I think, that this is the essence of space – it is hard to conceive a universe which doesn’t incorporate a spacial concept. Or rather, a separation concept to allow things to be different from one another.

Space is not the only “separation concept” that I can think of. Things can also be separated in time, so two different bodies can exist in the same spacial position, but just not at the same time. Time is so connected to space that Einstein and others were able to link time and space into a complex space/time concept.

Time dilation spacetime diagram06 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The similarity between the space dimension and the time dimension is striking. You can even measure distance in time units as astronomers do when they talk about light years. We also do it when we say that a distant town is three hours away.

We less frequently talk of time in distance units, for example, when we say things like “six laps later”, to describe the time between two events in a car race. At some level we acknowledge that time and the space dimension have a lot in common.

Space in the sort of concept that everyone knows and experiences but no one thinks deeply about. There’s no doubt that space separates events from one another. You can’t have two solid objects occupying the same space at the same time, without catastrophe ensuing. Scientists have been trying to achieve this for years, with the aim of harvesting the energy generated from the ensuring nuclear fusion.

Space appears on the macro (normal) level to be continuous. We appear to move smoothly from one location to another when we walk, incidentally forcing the air out of way as we do so. There is no sudden jumps that we notice, we don’t hop from point to point like a chess piece on a board.

Animation of the Knight's tour — Animation of the Knight’s tour (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The philosopher Zeno came up with a number of paradoxes related to movement, that is getting from point A to point B. For instance, the athlete Achilles could not overtake a tortoise in a foot race, because Achilles would need first to reach the tortoise’s starting point, by which time the tortoise would have moved on. Achilles would then have reach the point that the tortoise had reached now, by which time the tortoise would have moved on. And so on, ad infinitum.

Of course Achilles does overtake the tortoise, and I believe the main issue in this case is related to the summation of an infinite number of decreasing distances, which intuitively one might this would sum to an infinite distance. In fact the sum of the distances is a finite number. If Achilles runs 10 times as fast as the tortoise and they start 10 feet apart then Achilles overtakes the tortoise after he has travelled 11 and 1/9 feet exactly.

Zeno’s paradoxes still inspire debate, but his conclusion was that movement, the smooth transition of something from one place to another is an illusion. One of the assumptions used is that distance is a continuously varying property, but it may be that it is not, and there are hints of that at the quantum level. The Planck length is the smallest distance about which statements can usefully be made and it is impossible to determine the difference between two locations less than one Planck length apart. Perhaps we do hop from place to place like chess pieces, or at least our atoms and their constituent particles do.

Max Planck 1910 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Space and time enable events to happen uniquely, and without collisions. Events may happen in the same place as long as they happen at different times. It may be that events of different probabilities happen at the same place and time, so long as the sum of the probabilities of all events is one. It may therefore be that probability is a dimension with the same sort of status as the space and time dimensions. This would require that our view of probability, of one event out of many being the one that actually happens is an illusion and that events of all probabilities happen in a sense.

English: The probability pattern for a single ... — English: The probability pattern for a single electron atom. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This title is secret



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Everyone has secrets. Even a hermit in a cell has secrets, not the least of which is what made him become a hermit. His overt reasons may be plausible, but it is likely that for most persons his overt reasons would not be quite enough to drive them into seclusion.

I don’t believe that anyone can be completely open and still be sane. It may be that a person, while being non-racist in actions and philosophy sometimes has thought that is racially biassed. The person will probably then suppress those thoughts as wrong or unnatural.

Couples often claim to be one hundred percent open with each other, but this is unlikely to be true. One person may have eaten the last chocolate, and remains strategically silent when the other partner remarks that they thought that there was one more left.

One partner may prefer Indian cuisine but may silently go along with the other partners desire for Thai or Japanese if he or she has no strong feelings about the matter on a particular occasion. Over time however partners will know one another’s preferences and a compromise will be reached.

Pad Thai at Sarah's restaurant in Toronto, Canada. — Pad Thai at Sarah’s restaurant in Toronto, Canada. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Families may have secrets – the skeletons in the cupboards. Very often the emergence of such secrets may be disturbing or traumatic and may shake the family to the core. The secret may be something that the family knows but which is get from outsiders, or one or two family members may keep from the rest : “Well, Aunty P and Uncle Q were never formally married, you know.”

Firms often have secrets. A firm may fail, and few people outside the firm may have seen it coming. Either the firm purposefully has been optimistic in its accounts and its presentation to the outside world, or the accounts may have been in a mess and the warning signs missed both internally and externally.

Firms have other secrets, such as the exact processes that are used to produce their product. Such secrets are believed by the firm to give them an advantage over their competitors, so they do all that they can to prevent the competitors from learning their secrets.

Often a firm will keep a yet to be launched product a secret, again so that competitors can’t steal the ideas. This has led to big launches and product announcements that are covered by the media, often for products which are not significantly different from previous products already released.



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Of course, one firm will know that another firm has secrets, and so firms will spy on one another, there will be leaks of information, and all sorts of skullduggery will ensue!

There will be political secrets too, and a great deal of energy is put into uncovering such secrets and exposing them for political gain. The media are always searching for political secrets, simply to sell more publications.

World wide governments spy on each other. While this information can be used to find out if another government has hostile intentions, it can also be used to assess the threat that the other government poses.

The 33 convicted members of the Duquesne spy r... — The 33 convicted members of the Duquesne spy ring (FBI print). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

An example of this was spying on Iraq gave the United State government an excuse to invade Iraq, because spying had been said to have revealed that “Weapons of Mass Destruction” had been developed in Iraq. This turned out to be untrue, and whether or not spying had really erroneously indicated that such weapons had been developed has been a topic of debate ever since.

Governments routinely spy on their own citizens too. If a government suspects that certain of its citizens are secretly planning revolt they may keep a close watch on them. Also, governments may take an interest in someone if they are suspected of planning to commit a crime. In many cities around the world it is almost impossible to walk down the street without passing a number of surveillance cameras.

Indeed such surveillance cameras are common these days. People have been accustomed to seeing them on the roads and in shops, and most are accepting of them. The argument is that if you have no secret to hide, then the cameras are not a concern, and people believe that if there is a camera, then this will frequently deter people from misbehaving.

This is more or less true, though there are enough videos on YouTube of idiots doing silly things in front of security cameras. Those people don’t have any secrets from them!

English: A payload surveillance camera made by... — English: A payload surveillance camera made by Controp and distributed to the U.S Government by ADI Technologies. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sometimes secrets are good. You would not set a password and then tell everyone about it, of course, and your password keeps your stuff secret from any possible attackers. Before the rise of Internet banking things were kept secret by locking them up in a box or safe. These days your password might be what is kept in the safe!

Cryptography is looked after by Alice and Bob and friends. These characters, invented by cryptographers, are forever exchanging secret messages, which are usually something like “This is Alice”. They use various cryptographical messages means to keep their secret information secret, usually using things like “private keys” and “public keys”.

Cryptography has arisen as a result of the Internet’s total lack of security or secrecy. When the Internet was built no one could have predicted the need for security. After all, it was only a tiny network connecting a few research and educational institutions and joining it was by invitation. Everyone knew everyone else.

Pretty soon, though, the Internet grew too large for everyone to know everyone else and security was needed. At first login accounts were all that way necessary, but soon that was insufficient. Black Hat hackers joined the Internet, and they were interested in breaking into your account to read your emails to your girlfriend, your mother, or your cannabis dealer.

English: A stereotypical caricature of a villa... — English: A stereotypical caricature of a villain (i.e. generic melodrama villain stock character, with handlebar moustache and black top-hat). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Password requirements got stricter and stricter as the Black Hats got cleverer and cleverer at breaking password security but people still use passwords like “password” and “12345”. There are now so many people connected to the Internet that there is a certain safety in numbers. Just like birds flock together so that an individual’s chances of becoming prey are small, so an individual’s private information is probably safe, unless by chance, they are the one in the millions who is picked on by the Black Hatter.



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Friends, Romans and Countrymen



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(A little late this week, but this time I have an excuse – my daughter and her partner were staying with us, which makes writing a post difficult).

I’m going to write about friendship here, and not about Julius Caesar, conspiracies or murder, in spite of the above title. Friendship is where two or more people like and trust each other and form a bond between them.

Most often friendship is a same sex thing, but not infrequently friendship happens between people of opposite sexes, and also between groups of people. However the most intense friendships seem to arise between two people of the same sex.



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Someone coined the phrase “bromance” to describe a close relationship between two heterosexual men. Such friendships can sometimes be stronger in some ways than those between men and their female spouses, to the extent that “the boys” go fishing or boating or to the football or simply drinking coffee or beer together while their spouses are left at home, usually fuming.

However, when “the girls” get together, talking babies, make up and other women, or simply drinking coffee or wine, then it is the men who are left out in the cold to fend for themselves.

Obviously there’s a lot of stereotyping above that is in no way justified, and in many ways is false and misleading, but it does demonstrate that friendship can be as strong if not stronger than a marital bond between spouses. As suggested by the awful stereotypes, above, to strike as balance between friends and families can be a difficult task, but I don’t think that it can be denied that both are required for people to feel satisfied in a relationship.

Friendships and familial relationships appear to be support structures. Friends can have interests that the spouses do not, such as an interest in sports or politics or a particular genre of films. Friendships allow one to enjoy something in company that the other spouse does not enjoy. This makes life easier for partners or spouses to enjoy as they do not have to totally give up any interest that they might have, and can share them with others.



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Although a couple would probably share a lot of interests, it can feel restricting in a relationship if a particular interest bores or irritates one’s partner, and friends who share that interest can ease those restrictions by providing an outlet for the interest.

Friends can also provide financial assistance by means of a small loans, but it is not wise to regularly borrow from friends all the time. Friends can be there to supply a few coins for the parking meter, or similar small costs, but bigger loans between friends can easily become a source of contention. Benjamin Franklin said :

Lend money to an enemy, and thou will gain him, to a friend and thou will lose him.

The reason behind this is obvious – everyone knows the friend who has always left his wallet at home, or who has run out of money, or who disappears when it is his round. Friendship is based on trust and, unless you are prepared to forgive and forget such behaviour, such a person may not long remain your friend.



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As I mentioned above, same sex friendships are very common, but it is possible for persons of opposite sexes to be friends, but if they are of the same age group, this is often slightly dubious – the inference being that such friendships might become more intimate. Platonic relationships are deemed very likely to develop into sexual relationships.

Some research has been done into this, but it is, at least to me, unclear as to whether or not it is true that platonic relationships between friends of opposite sex tend to develop into sexual relationships. On the face of it, this is not so, otherwise men and women would not be able to work together successfully. However, other influences, rather than sexual attraction, may moderate any sexual attraction between platonic friends, in a work situation.

These days many people may make friends on so-called “social media”. One’s social standing can be assessed in some quarters by the number of Facebook friends one has. Facebook friends (and friends or the equivalent on other social media) are frequently in different parts of the world.

In the Facebook world friendship is based on what is written rather than spoken and Facebook friends may not ever meet, and this is perhaps a good thing in many cases. People have met physically after meeting virtually on the Internet and it has not always gone well. Some people have even met up, become engaged, all before physically meeting.



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Others have married after meeting physically meeting (and presumably become engaged). This seems to me to be incredibly risky, but for a growing number of people this works. But one reference that I found reckons that one third of US marriages have followed “online dating”. There is even a suggestion in that article that such marriages are in fact happier.

Discussions on Facebook tend to be very “robust”. This is because of the separation that the Internet provides means that people “say” things on the Internet that they would not say face to face, and they may use more “robust” language.



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Facebook friendships may not last as long as face to face friendships, as it is a matter of a click to de-friend someone, whereas breaking a real world friendship could be complex and time consuming. On Facebook, where people tend to “speak” more robustly, it is common for someone to take offence at something “said”, and de-friend the person who said it. Often it is only a misunderstanding and any insult or slight is unintentional.

Facebook as a forum allows people of different political colours or world views to meet and interact. This could be a good thing, but unfortunately what often happens is that both sides in a discussion become entrenched in their views, becoming more extreme, and the arguments becomes contentious and extreme, leading to no meeting of minds.

Eventually the argument will peter out. The world views of the racially tolerant and the racial supremacist briefly collide, then part again, with no real passage of understanding between the parties. This is somewhat sad and implies that extreme or divergent views will always be with us.



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Weather or not.

(One day late again – this is becoming annoying!)

The human race probably evolved language for the single purpose of being able to discuss the weather. It’s one of the first things that people learn about when learning a foreign language. Obviously, when language had been evolved, the human race found other uses for the facility.

Weather would have been very important for early man, as it would be next to impossible to hunt animals in a downpour as rain washes out tracks and scents and makes the task of getting from point A to point B difficult in itself. Heavy rain cuts off hunters from possible hunting grounds.

Visibility is also reduced by rain making location and tracking of prey difficult. Also, prey hunkers down in inclement weather, hiding away in inaccessible dens, or perching in inaccessible trees.

When early man developed techniques of agriculture, he would have been aware that his crops were dependant on the weather. Too much rain might cause the crops to rot in the ground or not develop properly, while too little rain (and more sun) would dry out and kill the crops and prevent them from fruiting.

The early farmer would have had to consider carefully where to plant his crops. It would not be a good idea to plant crops in area prone to flooding (unless the plant, like rice needs flooding, during its development). It would also not be a good idea to plant the crops too far from water, so that watering them would not be too onerous.

Being able to predict the weather would enable the early farmer to take actions to look after his crops. The ancient Egyptians, one of the first societies of whose agriculture we have some knowledge, lived in the Nile basin and took advantage of the annual floods, and developed a complex system of irrigation. This led the Egyptians to develop mathematics, astronomy, and other sciences in order to predict when the floods were likely to happen.



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Arguably the need to predict the weather had a lot to do with the fact that the Egyptians developed civilisation in the first place. Arguably the rise of civilisation goes hand in hand with such developments of science and technology.

Predicting the Nile floods is prediction of the weather on a long time scale, and it is likely that the floods could be a little earlier or a little later than predictions. Such large scale weather patterns are both easier and harder to predict than smaller scale weather patterns, because the floods would come sooner or later in most years, but the extent of the floods would likely vary from year to year.



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Since the exact timing of the floods and the extent of the flooding was not predictable, it was almost inevitable that the ancient Egyptians looked for supernatural guidance, and religion became associated with agriculture, and this appears to be a general rule. In a culture, supernatural beings, gods, are associated with agriculture, often a pantheon of them.

As part of the tasks associated with agriculture, the gods were considered to be responsible for the weather both short and long term. Interestingly while the gods were supposed to be responsible for the weather, this did not stop enquiring minds looking for the mechanisms of the weather, how the gods worked, so to speak.



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We know a great deal more about the weather and how it happens, now. Science has moved on a great deal and we have discovered more and more about how the gods create and manage the weather, to the extent that we have taken the task away from them and given it to the scientists. I’m not debating religion per se, but some people think that we have taken everything away from the gods, removing their very necessity of being.

If forced into a corner and asked for my opinion, I’d probably agree, but there is something comforting to many people in the concept of gods or a God, and billions of people express a belief in a deity or deities, or some other supernatural influence. This may be something that we will leave behind as the human race matures, we can’t tell. It may be that science, with its laws, theories and predictions is just the latest in a succession of descriptions of the world, and may itself be ultimately seen as a simple rationalisation of what we see around us.

It appears that the weather is getting wilder. Scorching temperatures are measured in some places, while other places are in the grip of freezing temperatures. Storms are continually being labelled the biggest in so many years. Flood protection schemes are being overwhelmed. Crippling droughts have hit many countries and ice is reportedly retreating in the Arctic and Antarctic.

This is, for good reasons, labelled global warming and the temperatures do seem to be rising all over the globe. I’m aware that controversy surrounds the whole topic, with allegations of bad science, conspiracy, and manipulation of data on both sides of the “debate”.

The trouble with the global warming discussion is around the time scales involved and the rates of temperature rise. The period of time when we have reliable temperature measurements doesn’t go back very far, and the temperature rise is small and difficult to measure.

Those opposed to the idea of global warming point out that while measured temperatures may have risen slightly, if there is any rise it could be explained by natural changes unrelated to human activities, such as variations in the output of the sun, and that in any case, the data is insufficient to show any upward trend at all.



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Those in favour of the idea, counter that with the claim that the temperature rise is real and that the fact that it has risen in such a short time is a concern, and that action is essential.

It may never be formally decided. As we get better at predicting the weather it may turn out that the models which fit the data may solve the problem, and that one or the other side in the debate will fade away. As in the debate on evolution, the opposition to which gradually faded in favour of Darwin’s theories as time passed, I believe the same is likely to happen in the global warming debate.

English: Human evolution scheme (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s History

The Sunken Road at Waterloo, painting by Stanl... — The Sunken Road at Waterloo, painting by Stanley Berkley, from A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year, Edwin Emerson, Jr., 1902. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was never any good at history. That’s probably because I couldn’t get straight in my mind who was battling who and for what reason and for how long and so on. Later I came across the concept that history is written by the victors. This makes sense to me in some ways but the losers will still have their point of view and will likely instruct their children according to that point of view.

So while one side may say that a battle was a heroic victory over huge odds, the other party may describe the heroic resistance against huge odds. One side might add that an ally came to the rescue at the last minute while the other side might mention a traitorous change of allegiance of a former ally.

English: US and Iraqi Army Soldiers guard bord... — English: US and Iraqi Army Soldiers guard borders in Iraq (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In wars before the twentieth century it might be that the average person would be unlikely to see any military action or even be directly affected by a war or battle. Of course, the authorities might increase taxes and conscript young men, but most people would not have seen any fighting.

Communication about the battles and the progress of the war would have been hit and miss. An injured person on their way home after fighting would no doubt have little idea of what was actually happening either on the small scale of the actual battle or on the wider canvas of the whole campaign.

Anyone who has taken part in any sort of war games, such as paint-ball or capture the flags type games, will know that an awful lot of running through undergrowth and an awful lot of lying in wait is involved, and an awful lot of not knowing what is happening. In older times, it could be that what is going on 100 metres away would not be known.

A lot of ancient warfare was waged based on intelligence brought in by scouts and observers. That’s why armies always try to take higher ground, as it gives you a better view of the field of battle and it also can be defended by fewer people. The disadvantage of course is that a patch of higher ground can be surrounded and isolated.

Scouts and observers can of course be mistaken. That “100 or so” men that were spotted may actually be many more, or it may even be a contingent of one’s own troops or allies which are out of position. A scout also risks his life by approaching as close to the enemy as he can.

Such intelligence as filters back to the commanders is obviously flawed and incomplete. They probably don’t know too much about the country that they are invading, whereas the locals may possibly have a better idea of the lay of the land. Maps may be incomplete or inaccurate, and may even have been built up directly from the intelligence.

The Map Room in the Churchill Museum and Cabin... — The Map Room in the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The commanders then need to deploy their troops according to their best knowledge and the intelligence. As a result they may send off troops to places where they may be easily overwhelmed or may be ineffective.

The commanders will instruct their platoon commanders on the objectives for their troops but once the platoon commanders reach their positions they are pretty much on their own. Chaos inevitably ensues, in spite of any attempts to keep order.



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Signals are used for communication, bugle calls, semaphores, runners and other methods are used to try to give the overall commanders an idea of what is happening at the front lines. Inevitably messages will go astray and orders will be misunderstood and this may well turn the tide of battle.

Perhaps this is why I was no good at history. When one is taught about the battle of Waterloo for example, one learns that Wellington deployed his troops here and here and that Napoleon attacked here and here and the Prussian army attacked here and here. While these statements may cover the actual flow of the battle, much of this will have been rationalised after the event.

On a wider scale, take Napoleon for example. He is described in Wikipedia as “one of the most celebrated and controversial political figures in Western history”. From the English point of view he is the villain of the piece but I suspect that to many on his side he was a hero. There is no doubt that he was respected even by his enemies as a brilliant politician and military leader.

On the principal of “history is written by the victors” mentioned above, if Napoleon had won, and should France have held sway over England, then no doubt he would have been painted either as a benevolent leader or as a heavy-handed dictator, depending on his acceptance or rejection by England. By “England” I mean the politicians and powerful in the country. The “man in the field” probably wouldn’t care too much, unless it affected him in some way.

History, to my mind, attributes intent much more than is justified, which renders it debatable at the least. We read that Country A pushed into a region in order to cut off Country B from some resource or other. More likely Country A had the opportunity and the resources to be able to expand into the region while Country B failed to do so because of lack of foresight, opportunity or resources.

So the expansion of Country A would have more to do with young men seeing the opportunities and travelling to the colonies to make their fortunes than any real plans by the government of Country A.

Baudrillard published some articles on the Gulf War, the last of which is entitled “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place“. He disputed the history of the events in the Gulf as presented.

Firstly he argued that, because of the superior air power of the Americans, they did not actually come into actually engage in conflict with the Iraqi army, and therefore the events could not be really considered to be a war.

Secondly he argued that the view of the war as presented by the media which was fed, not from actual events but mainly from the propaganda machine of the American military and as such it presented only one point of view, that of the Americans.

History will present the Gulf War and the American handling of it in overwhelmingly positive light. History has been written by the Americans for better or worse, as the victors in this event. I’m not arguing that history is wrong. Just that it presents a picture and that picture may ignore many important aspects of an event and we should be wary of official histories.

Considering the Universe

(Once again I wrote this on Sunday, but forgot to post it on Monday)

When we are considering the Universe we are considering something that we are part of, and of which we share the characteristics, such as, for example, existence. We can exist only because the Universe exists and the Universe exists, at least in part, because we exist. It is conceivable that in some way a universe could exist with nothing in it, much like a mathematical empty set but it would be pretty boring.

Or would it? Maybe I’m applying some anthropocentric reasoning to that statement. After all, the concept of a mathematical empty set is very useful in mathematics, and but then again, “useful” is a human concept.

"Skeleton of human (1) and gorilla (2), u... — “Skeleton of human (1) and gorilla (2), unnaturally stretched.” Size: 4.9 x 5.5 in² (12.4 x 13.9 cm²) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A universe may be non-empty, but have no life in it. We, from another universe can conceive of such a universe, but there can be no perceiving of that universe if we rule out the possibility of visiting it from our Universe. We can’t even tell if such a universe exists, so some would argue that the question of its existence is meaningless.

That’s a valid argument, but then again, out Universe was not perceived by any entity in the billions of years prior to the evolution of life. Of course the question of the early existence of our Universe before the coming of life, is not meaningless to us – we know that it must have existed for us to exist.

English: An illustration of the time scales fo... — English: An illustration of the time scales for the history of the universe, the earth, and major events in the evolution of life. The scale on the far left is in billions of years the other scales are numbered in millions of years. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of course, we can conceive of other universes other than our own, but do other universes exist in any real sense, apart from our own. A universe is self contained in the sense that there is no logical reason to conceive of anything outside of it. It is all of physics, all of existence.

One definition of universe is:

a distinct field or province of thought or reality that forms a closed system or self-inclusive and independent organization

This is a pretty good description of what I am writing about I’d say. The key word for me is “closed”. If something is closed it contains whatever it contains and the outside is irrelevant so far the contents are concerned.

Though now I come to think of it, maybe that is not true. If we have a can of beans, we know what is inside it by the label, and we can open the can with a can opener. Maybe the contents of our Universe are visible on the outside, on the label as it were.



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Our Universe has laws, or appears to have laws. The laws appear to be universal – that is, they apply everywhere in our Universe without exception. An atom here behaves the same as a similar atom here would and conceptually swapping them would make zero difference.

We do not know all the laws but we humans believe that we can know all the laws and I believe this to be true, even if it might take longer than the life of the Universe for use to discover and understand them all. By laws, I mean “how stuff works” and even if the ultimate answer is “because that’s the way the Universe works” and there is no deeper meaning than that, I’d still consider them laws.



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One bizarre possibility though, is that there is no order and the Universe is totally random, and only appears to have order. When we look at an expansion of the number Π we mostly find what seems to be random digits. Occasionally however we find runs of digits which look like they are non random, such as a lengthy series of the digit “3”, but eventually the random appearance returns.

This feature of the number Π can be used for amusement, such finding one’s own name “encoded” in Π, or any other string. Maybe our Universe is like a very long encoded string in the number Π, which seems to be ordered but actually isn’t. Maybe at some future instant things will revert to the real random state that the Universe is its real state.

Some physicists and cosmologists postulate alternate universes to account for some of the weirder facets of Quantum Physics, but in the broader sense we can consider universes which are similar but different and unrelated to ours. Would we want to visit such universes? Could we conceivably do so?

It seems to me to be unlikely that we could visit other universes, as the only methods that we could use are physical ones and our Universe encapsulates its physicality. That is, the physical laws pretty much define it. A frog can leap from a pond, since frog, pond, the air and the surroundings of the pond are physical, but simple leaping cannot take the frog to another universe, no matter how hard he jumps. A human can use physics to travel the Universe, but using physical means it doesn’t appear possible for us to jump out of our pond.



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Would we really want to visit other physics-based universes? The other universes would have to be pretty much the same physically, our physical bodies would suffer – imagine for an example a universe where protons decay in minutes instead of in aeons. We would die in seconds.

Our best prospects for universe-hopping would be those universe which are probability neighbours. That is, they share the same physics as our Universe, but some events happened differently. For example, one can contemplate a universe where slaving never happened or where France’s hegemony dominated the early USA and French language and culture dominate in the North Americas.

Of course, we are used to a physical Universe, but it is conceivable that other universes may be not physically based. It’s extremely difficult to even talk about such universes, should they (in some sense) exist, and my mind keeps trying to populate such conceptual universes with things, and things are presumably physical entities, and would not be able to exist in a non physical universe. Probably!

Perhaps our physical nature hampers us in understanding the real nature of things. Perhaps we can only conceptualise things based on our nature. After all our thoughts are the end result of physical processes evolving over billions of years and are implicit in the history of our Universe and encoded in a way in the Big Bang.

Heaven and Hell

As children we learn that there are consequences to everything. If we misbehave, we are punished in some ways. In earlier days we may have been smacked, but, thank goodness, those days are past. While corporal punishment has done little harm to most people who have suffered it as children, it is very very rarely justified and other options are available.

A child learns quickly that misbehaving leads to withdrawal of treats and privileges, which serves them well when they become adults and the punishments become imprisonment, restriction (like the loss of a drivers license) or the financial punishment of a fine.

The other side of the coin is rewards. For children the rewards for being good are treats and privileges. For adults the rewards of a virtuous life are esteem and again privilege. A virtuous life might also bring financial rewards – you are more likely to go back to a good lawyer, or a good mechanic if he or she does a good job and you may be prepared to spend a little more to do so.

When humans first contemplated death, the obvious question is what happened to the person, his self, his personality, after death. The answer that he just stopped is disagreeable and possibly upsetting. So it was natural to conjecture a non-physical something, a “soul” which encapsulated the persons personality which in some sense continued after the person died.

English: Depiction of a soul being carried to ... — English: Depiction of a soul being carried to heaven by two angels. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some individuals claim to have had contact with souls after death, and claim to pass messages on to the living. Such “mediums” often get money or gifts in thanks or as a reward from the living relatives of the deceased person. Many so-called mediums have been discredited and proved to be merely charlatans, to the extent that to call someone a medium is tantamount to insinuating that they are a fraud.

It’s debatable whether a self-professed medium is a con artist or whether such a person is deluding themselves, but the concept of a soul is to my mind merely wishful thinking, or another name for the personality of the person, which is embedded in and part of a person’s mind. Since the mind is probably an emergent property of the brain I can’t see the soul or personality surviving the death of the brain.

English: Main regions of the vertebrate brain,... — English: Main regions of the vertebrate brain, shown for a shark and a human brain (the human brain is sliced along the midline). The two brains are not on the same scale. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Nevertheless, if you allow the concept of a soul, which inhabits a body during life, what does happen to it during and after death? Does it “softly and suddenly vanish away” like a sailor who has met a Boojum? Or does it continue, either in this world or some other? There are those who have claimed to have encountered incorporeal beings or ghosts, but like the stories of mediums, these claims are dubious.

The most common claim is that souls have passed on to other worlds, to some other realm, and this is where heaven and hell come into the picture. If a person has been a good person, then his soul goes to a better place, and if he has not, then his soul goes to a place of endless punishment of a mental and physical type.



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Many people over the year have been vouchsafed visions of both heaven and hell. Such visions are often weird and look to me more like the utterances of someone who is not completely sane, but the thing that strikes me is that they are all intensely physical – the sinner is thrown into a fiery pit for all time, and good person gets to consort with heavenly virgins or to worship the deity while being in his presence and partaking in his glory.

We know the physical because we live in it. We are it, in some senses. It seems to me that those with visions, even those whose visions are a result of their inner mental issues, can only talk of heaven and hell is physical terms. It is impossible for us to consider a world that is not physical. The very concepts of heaven and hell are concepts of places and places are physical.



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If, for the sake of discussion, we assume the visions are of something real, then if these visions represent something they are interpretations of something so different from out physical being that they must be severely distorted and much will have been lost in the translation. I myself don’t think that they represent anything more than the scrambled thoughts of a probably mentally sick person.

However that hasn’t stopped people building on the earlier visions of others. What happens to someone who dies? In the Christian tradition, if they are good they are allowed entry to heaven, and into the presence of the Deity and to worship Him. There is a certain blandness to this vision, and presumably the presence of the Deity makes up for this.

Pandemonium - One out of a set of mezzotints w... — Pandemonium – One out of a set of mezzotints with the same title (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Those who are sinners (that is, pretty much everyone!) is sent to hell. Eternal fire and so on. Now things get complicated. Pretty much everyone has sinned at some time, so everyone is going to burn in eternal fire. Theologians (alone with their private damning thoughts) came up with a number of issues. What about those innocent who died before having a chance to sin but had not been accepted into the Church? The theologians came up with the concept of Limbo, where these children, mainly those that died in the womb, can reside.

There are other complications, but probably the most famous complex description of hell comes from the Dante’s “Divine Comedy“. The hell contained in the work has nine circles and is a complex system within those. Dante’s Purgatory and Paradise are similarly complicated.

All these visions of the afterlife are enthralling and entertaining it is true, but (seeing as no one has verifiably been there and returned), surely there contradictions embedded in the concepts of heaven and hell as found in religious and other literature.

It seems to me that the idea of heaven and hell as places which have a physical nature cannot be true. Dante’s heaven and hell for example, has physical attributes like distance and extent. Things are nearby or over there. Time also passes which allow the narrative development of course.



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However, distance and time are attributes of the physical world, and while scientists have postulated other worlds, the worlds that they postulate are very similar to the world that we experience. Heaven and hell, and any other layers of the afterlife, are conceptually in a different realm, and I can’t see why such a different realm would have anything recognisable as physics.

Fighting Terrorism



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(Second post of Terrorists – this won’t become a theme. At least I will try not to make it a theme).

A terrorist is someone who kills people, often innocent bystanders in an attempt to force his or her views on others. Sometimes the terrorist is part of a persecuted minority, but often he or she is driven by religious fervour. His or her beliefs maybe include the concept of rewards after death and he or she will likely be prepared to lay down his or her life in the furtherance of his or her objectives.

How do you recognise a terrorist? With the current spate of Islamist inspired shootings and bombings many people are looking askance at people with dark skins, beards and who tend to wear a particular style of clothing. To say that this can be misleading is obvious.

The case of a Sikh student who was questioned by police when someone suspected that he was a terrorist merely because of his appearance and the wires of his earphones protruding from his bag is a good example. The person who reported him was obviously ignorant of the fact that Sihkism is a religion which is totally different from Islam. This is sad, but not surprising.

So how do you identify a terrorist then? It’s very hard indeed. The young white spotty youth who lives down the road and has taken to calling himself “Jusef” and dressing in Middle Eastern clothing is almost certainly more of a threat than anyone in the area with dark skin and a habit of fasting for a month at certain times of the year.

William Henry Quilliam (April 10, 1856 – 1932)... — William Henry Quilliam (April 10, 1856 – 1932), who changed his name to Abdullah Quilliam, was a 19th century convert from Christianity to Islam, noted for founding England’s first mosque and Islamic centre. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The things that people have done in the name of religion have led to a call for religion to be banned. This obviously won’t work and it would drive religion underground and radicalise it. There are billions of people who do have a religion or belief which they base their life around who would not dream of using violence to further their religion.

Much of the tension between religious groups is the result of ignorance. There are probably as many texts in the Koran which promote peace and harmony as there are in the Christian Bible. There are also likely to be as many violent exhortations as to what to do to non-believers in the Bible as there are in the Koran. After the Bible and the Koran are related documents with the later Koran commenting on the earlier Biblical texts.

How can we spot terrorists before they commit their crimes? How do we determine who is a harmless and friendly family man and who is plotting to blow us up? Certainly not be looking at the colour of the skin and the possession of a copy of the Koran. Not by checking if he or she visits the Mosque every week. Even if such a person seems surly and unfriendly, he or she might just be having a bad day. And we cannot decide based on their choice of clothing.

The only real way of detecting a terrorist in our midst is unfortunately by closely watching for them. Of course, we should have our suspicions first, otherwise we would need to track everyone who “looked like a Muslim”. This is unacceptable in a free society.



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We can get better understanding of Muslims and vice versa, by education. One proposal was that religion, all religions, be taught in schools. This is a good idea but will not work unless similar is done in Islamist states and countries, and that will never happen.

One big issue is the case of the alienated white teenager. A certain few will for one reason or another completely flip and commit murder, usually of their contemporaries, and sometimes at random. Any nominal motive would be attributed to anything from white supremacy, to political reason (usually nihilistic), or to nothing significant.



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It seems that such teenagers are more and more and more being attracted to Islam and the violent side of that religion and we find that atrocities are sometimes being carried out by white boys who have converted to Islam.

I question whether the problem here lies with the religion or in the fact that these kids had easy access to guns and that their alienation was either not recognised or ignored. If they had not had the concept of Islamic jihad to adopt, would they not have found some other cause to espouse?

So how do we fight terrorism? Do we suspect our neighbours who have ties to the Middle East, or do we quarantine them, or even deport them? All these solutions are ineffective and some followers of Islam have lived here peacefully for generations. Do we force them to give up their culture and assimilate more closely into the community?

All these options have been tried in the past and historically have shown that these tactics are ineffective, not to mention brutal and demeaning. And that is without considering the case of the alienated white boy.

The Government would have us believe that the answer is for more surveillance of all citizens. This is certainly effective in some cases, but in the few cases which escape the notice of the authorities, the terrorists can cause untold damage and inflict a large number of deaths on many innocent people. And this still doesn’t really address the issue of the white teenager who typically acts alone and who quite often has no close ties to Islam.

Another option is for retaliatory military raids on the overt face of the organisation that the terrorists are connected with, but this will always happen after an atrocity and merely gives the organisation rhetorical weapons to justify their aims.

It is sad but I don’t believe that things will change until Islam changes. I have high hopes that it will as the adherents of Islam move into non-Moslem countries and integrate with the non-Moslem communities there. Then perhaps the more liberal ideas will filter back to the Moslem counties together with increased prosperity.

After all, the Christian religion mounted the largely ineffective Crusades against Moslems in the Middle East, admittedly as a result of an Islamist expansion and that crusading religious fervour eventually died out in Europe.

It’s a pity that there is no real solution to the problem of terrorists. One can only hope that ultimately people will evolve to be more understanding of their neighbours and that xenophobia will diminish to almost nothing. Until then we will have to live with the inconveniences at airports and the much more significant internal spying of authorities on citizens.

Unfortunately, we will have to read in the papers of atrocities carried out by one group or other against unarmed people for some time to come. I can see no real effective solution.

(I note that I have conflated “terrorist” with the fanatical Moslem activities that we have seen recently. Terrorists however come in all shapes and sizes, all religions. This was not intentional but shows how easy it is to slip into the habit of equating the one with the other).