The Joy of Paper

Guilty pleasures are the best. Reading a paper,  a full broadsheet, is a rare luxury. I read the news, most of the time this is consumed via web sites, Twitter or various dedicated apps. If take the train I’ll pick up a Metro, it’s a desultory reading experience. Red Tops are equally dismal. I wonder about the quality of the journalists or the editors or the combination of both. These papers are visceral in their response to any event. Analysis and reason fly out of the window and all I get is bias and sensationalism. They are the news equivalent of drinking brackish water. I really rather wish I hadn’t, wonder what diseases I’ve contracted and need something to cleanse the unpleasant residual taste.

Broadsheets though ….there is something mightily decadent in spreading almost a square yard of paper open to absorb the contents. You can’t easily read one on a rush hour train, unless you hold a black belt in origami. But, at home, on the sofa or at the kitchen table, I can hog  space. Using the vast paper acreage to, ostrich like, shut out the rest of the world and immerse my head in the tiny black and white print.

The sheer weight of paper in some of the Sunday papers is amazing, I’m pretty sure Lord of The Rings weighs in lighter. Yet, unlike the latter, which, once read, will sit on the shelf awaiting the next time, this broadsheet and all its supplemental inserts and magazines will shortly be discarded - compost, barbecue lighter or just more landfill. 

Yes, reporting is biased, that is inevitable, but they forsake the rabid fervour, overt xenophobia and outright propagandist soapboxing of the Red Tops for a more measured argument. At least some evidence of reasoning here, some detail in the reporting, an appeal to use one’s brain rather than being bounced into rash conformist judgements. Once I have reconciled myself with the  sorrow of sacrificed trees, my proxied contribution to global warming, and the final disposal problems; at least its a good read, an intellectual challenge and, coffee in hand, a very civilised way to spend a Sunday morning.

I Am Rage

Awoke this morning ready to rip the head off anything that even slightly irked me. Exit wrong side of the bed? There are 4 sides to a bed and I doubt that any of them could have been the right side today. Some sides much worse than others obviously. Clambering over the headboard into the wall, definitely contraindicated. Sliding down the bed and escaping over the footboard also ill advised, much pain and multiple bruises. That just leaves two potential soft exit options, neither of those would have resulted in me being in a better mood.

Buddhism proposes that I am not my emotions. It is alright to feel the emotion, but it does not define who I am. That is so much easier said than done. Emotion takes over. If I am water and emotions are the ripples, waves and currents, then rage is a tsunami. It is loud and destructive. It takes over and the rational part of me is submerged and awash. It’s not as if it is just me and few inanimate objects effected, anyone in the vicinity gets the full benefit as the air turns a shade of blue when I fumble something. Fumbling is so much more probable, rage has a physical effect; tensing muscles, ragged breathing, pumping heart. All the fine motor skills are affected, I’m so much more likely to be clumsy. 

But, if emotion is a surface effect, and after it has passed you are able to observe yourself again, there is still the aftermath to deal with. Like that tsunami, there is probably a trail of emotional, or even physical, consequences to manage. I say probably, I could have been lucky and just vented my spleen in private, no one around to witness the outburst and nothing damaged. In this case can I claim ‘falling tree in forest’? No, not really, I was there, I witnessed it, I know it happened.

Is it necessary to understand the cause of my anger. The cause may be frustration, something that needs to be dealt with. If it is possible to change the environment then I should do it. Sometimes easy and straightforward, often a struggle, but even trying can be palliative. Maybe there is no solution, in which case acceptance of the true state of the world is the only effective path forward. Knowing the difference, well that requires a wiser person than me.  

This Buddhist ideal, to be at peace with yourself, what of it? It is a goal, something to aim for. To realise your mental state, to moderate it if necessary, to be self aware. It helps to be conscious of the external effects on people I care about. Being angry passes on in the same way as being happy. The old cliche of a candles and flames applies just as well to propagating anger as it does to happiness. Finally, this concept of not being your emotion is rather dependent on everyone else around  being equally aware of their transient nature. I would really rather not be known as ‘The Angry Man’,  even if, sometimes,  that is exactly what I am.
with apologies to 'Being Peace; Thich Nhat Hanh' (Parallax Press 2005: ISBN 09380770077)

Biker Interruptus

Finally, I’ve taken delivery of my R1200 GS Adventure, replacing the one stolen a few weeks ago (see Citychosis). Another pre-enjoyed bit of kit it’s every bit as large as the previous one, and came complete with a full quota of panniers. I’ll probably leave these on a shelf in the garage, they make the bike almost as a wide as a small car. In the close quarters commuting world I live in every centimetre counts. Any extra width would inhibit effective use of the bike lanes commonly denoted by dashed white lines between the queues of stationary cars. There is an old joke about ants scurrying along the tops of cornflake boxes. Why would they? Because it said ‘Tear along the dotted line’. There are some bikers who seem to have taken this philosophy off the top of the cereal pack and on to the road. Personally, I’m quite happy plodding along at a rate where I stand half a chance of stopping if some bod in a car executes a rapid lane swap to snatch a space in the other queue. Another impediment to rapid progress is that the height handlebars matches exactly the height of Transit and SUV mirrors. These massively reduce the width of the lane I have to manoeuvre in.

What is disconcerting is how out of practice and unsure I felt after a six week enforced break. Intellectually I know I can ride a bike. I know where all the controls are, how to make it go faster, how to slow it down and how to manoeuvre at very low speeds. All the physical skills necessary to safely negotiate the clotting morning traffic. But the reality is rather different, I need to regain that fine edge, that balance, that feel, to be able to competently execute my theoretical ability. That will probably take me a few rides, during which I will, again, look like novice.

It rather makes me wonder in which other capabilities I have lost that performance edge. Knowing the theory and being able to perform at a fine level are very different. This is evidently true for motor skills, but equally true of cognitive and emotional abilities too. Perhaps I’d better go through the dusty attic that is my mind and brush a few of them off whilst I still have the physical and mental health to be able to do so and start practising again.

A Head Rolls

A head rolls, but was it the right one? Timothy Hunt resigned his posts at UCL and the European Research Council. With a Nobel prize for his work, a distinguished and on-going scientific career what could be so important as to cause these sudden and immediate departures. Did he win the lottery and, with multiples of millions at his disposal, decide to give up working the domain he had held so dear? No, he made a self deprecating joke about women in the lab. Was it heinous, raucous or rude? Again, no. Along with saying he found women distracting, he said that if you criticised them they tended to cry. This may not have been particularly funny, nor in particularly good taste, but should this be a career terminating statement? The consensus of the comments on his utterances has been that he has just epitomised how entrenched sexism is in science. Multiple examples illustrating how badly women have been treated have been published showing how endemic this is. So, given the nature of my last post, do I think his comments justify the press furore and the subsequent outcome? Simply, no.

There exists a state of being in the scientific community where women are not given sufficient respect for their contributions. Their work is not properly valued. There is ample evidence of adverse bias in evaluating their performance. Tim Hunt’s ‘joke' may play to these concerns. Is his statement an expression of his disregard of womens’ scientific competence? Is there a history of him rating poor work by men above good work by women? As far as I can see, there has been no accusation against him for such practices. Or, has he been fair in his evaluations and given credit where credit is due regardless of the sex of the author? If the former, his subsequent pillorying is justified. However, if the latter, then a few poorly chosen words have wrought havoc far beyond their worth. Our obsession with political correctness has just claimed another poor innocent whilst leaving the guilty free to continue to exercise their prejudices unimpeded. 

This frenzied media response may have focussed attention on the issue for a short while, but the fact is that such bias needs to be addressed from within the disciplines. Tim Hunt’s guillotining by a baying feminist revolutionary mob for being a public relations incompetent does not address the core of the problem. To focus this level of attention on such a trivial episode distracts from the many serious instances of adverse sex bias that have so far passed, and continue to pass, unnoticed. 

What’s In A Name?

Names and name calling are far from innocent things. The hoary old chestnut “ Sticks & stone may break my bones ….” may have have idealistic ring to it, but the truth is far removed from the idyll it assumes. We only have to look at the current obsession for political correctness to see how sensitised society has become. Using the ’N’ word is a career terminating mistake. Describe an incline whilst the wrong nationality is on it and again that career terminating warning light starts blinking. So what is going on? It seems fine for one black skinned individual to refer to the other as ’niggah’ but a white one doing the same, that’s racism. And so it goes on. It’s not just restricted to ethnophauliisms.

Take the word ‘Gay’, time was it quite innocently referred to a mood. I even knew a girl called Gay in younger, merrier times. Then it became a slur reference to homosexuals and now it has been reclaimed by the self same group and used in their struggle for social, political and religious acceptance. Does anyone now use the word ‘gay’ in its archaic sense? No. In the same vein, how many boys are called ‘Adolf’ or ‘Hannibal’? The former, a pariah following the Second World War, the latter was quite acceptable ….. until ‘Silence of the Lambs’. A counterexample, names chosen by royalty for their children suddenly leap up the popularity stakes. Is a common child having the same name as a prince or princess is going to make their fortune in later life? I doubt it.

But name calling is subtle and pervasive. It is not just the person designated that is affected. It is the effect on the name caller and surrounding people that is as important. Choose a flattering name and the person goes up in the callers' estimation and those around them. It will most probably have a flattering and positive effect on the recipient too. Choose a derogatory name and the opposite happens. An extreme case; call someone ‘adulterer', a girl in Pakistan perhaps, and within minutes those sticks and stones will materialise, those bones will be broken. Normally the effects are less immediate and dramatic. Names and words have emotional loadings. Emotions influence opinions and vice versa. Both influence behaviours. If the name sticks, immediate meanings and then distant associations sink insidiously into the subconscious. Instanteous emotional responses come first. But, over time opinions form. emotional reactions embed. People typically seek evidence to support opinions; conscious realisation and reinforcement. Finally, we have manifestation in overt behaviours. Reification, that’s what’s in a name.

Coffee

It's morning, again. They crop up regularly but always catching me unawares. As I force myself out of bed, don a dressing gown and stagger downstairs there is only one thing that makes it worth while; coffee! There is a large lump of stainless steel lurking dark in the corner of the kitchen. Not the oven, not the microwave nor the kitchen sink - the coffee machine. It's pretty basic, 3 litre tank, 2.3 litre boiler and almost 3kW of power. Five minutes to heat the water in the boiler and a further fifteen  for the rest of the machine to come to temperature.
Making coffee is a performance art. An art I haven't quite mastered. Oh I can grind beans to powder, fill a portafilter and microfoam milk - but this barista cappuccino graphic is just beyond me. I've watched YouTube vids, read articles and carefully watched the masters at work. But pouring a heart, concentric forms, clever animals ..... fail! But, quite frankly, my dear, who gives a damn. What we are really about here is beans groaning as they are milled to fine powder, six ounces of steel tamping that dust to a compressed puck, the military precision with which portafilter engages the group head and the aroma of fresh coffee that permeates the air as near boiling water is forced through that puck at 12psi into the waiting cup below. Ahhh crema, syrupy brown foam guarding bitter delights below. Capucino art be dammed, quadruple espresso kick starts my day!

Silence

I did think that leaving a large empty space here would be appropriate. 

Silence in print. 

There is a lot of noise in my world - both auditory and visual. I suspect the same is true for many others. The definition of noise, like the definition of stress, is subjective. I sit on a train, a man is having a loud conversation with someone at the other end of his mobile connection. As far as I am concerned this conversation is noise, his perception may differ. Or, perhaps he is just pretending to have a conversation on his loud mobile to appear important in the eyes of his fellow travellers. I really can’t tell, I don't really care, it's just noise.

But this is just the beginning. Google, Apple, Samsung and their ilk would like us to use speech input rather than keyboards. ‘Hello Google …. NO!!!!!’ For goodness sakes, the last thing I need is to hear is everyones’ searches, Facebook and WhatsApp messages spoken rather than typed.  Imagine an open plan office with every office worker dictating their thoughts into their word documents. Dante’s 10th circle of Hell! When we get to direct brain input ‘Think to type’ then perhaps we’ll have arrived with a usable ‘alternative’ input modality. If noise is positively correlated with stress, and stress is linked to obesity, which in turn is linked to a premature demise then really, I should be jumping ship into the undertaking business and selling plus sized coffins.

How do I get silence? Death? Pretty final, and rather more drastic than I had in mind. Noise cancelling headphones and a blindfold enshrouding my head ? Almost gets the job done, but would impair my ability to function in any meaningful way. Perhaps the way forward is retaliation. More of the same! Useless and loud phone calls ….. that could be me. Painfully bad taste ties, loud shirts and tartan trousers - I can do that. Tinny music spilling out of cheap earphones …. no problem. Spawning acres of meaningless verbiage ……… oh..... hang on …… MUHAHAHaHaha!