Category Archives: General

Cycles of Life

Posted by David on

I often have the feeling that Life is our greatest teacher, that it has an almost infinite number of ways to make a point. And, if necessary, to keep bringing us back to share a lesson again and again if need be.

One of, for me, the unlikeliest learning opportunities I have recently had has come through my work with IT systems. Late last year I worked with a decommissioning of a system I’d been involved with off and on for some 12 years. It seemed a fitting end to a cycle, having been there in the early development of this particular system, and worked with it again during its maturing phase, here I was, now involved in its death; its passing away.

Yet here I am again, working on a new installation of this system. And within that new installation, I am coming face to face with parts of it that I helped to design over 12 years ago, and the memories keep coming back, of the people I worked with at the time, and the sometimes painful process we went through to design certain aspects of this system.

It is, for me, like a rebirth experience. And Life is saying, no, no, you must understand that death is not an end. Life, if Life is anything of substance at all, is full of endless intricate cycles of birth, growing, passing away and rebirth into new cycles of expression.

© David R. Durham

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Branding

Posted by David on

Rummaging through the internet the other day, like a tin of old buttons, I came across a rather fascinating presentation on branding. No, not the sort of branding you inflict on cattle, but the sort of branding which clean-cut marketing chaps promise to their eager clients. “Yes sir, you will be the new Louis Vuitton of the up-and-coming stripped braces market.”

It contains several very telling comments, as the most savvy of marketers are keen observers of the human condition. Here are a couple of quotes:

Most of us feel an occasional growing emptiness somewhere in the space between the heart, mind and groin. Luxury items provide us with some short term relief to this emptiness….much like Tylenol does to our headaches and Viagra to ED. © Idris Mootee 2004

And later …

The world of plenty: Materialism vs. Spiritualism. We use all kinds of tools everyday. We are tool users and tools are not the end but he means. So materialism does not crowd out spiritualism; spiritualism is more likely a substitute when objects are scarce. When we have fewer things, we make the next world luxurious. When we have plenty, we enchant those objects around us. © Idris Mootee 2004

These are certainly interesting insights. Why does someone living an otherwise modest life-style decide to spend $250 on a pair of sneakers? Why do we choose to buy the coffee which costs three times the supermarket brand?

Enchanting objects, giving talismans magic powers and assigning mythic stories to random events or nature’s patterns, are very ancient human practices. The totems of our age may be the badges of luxury brands. How similar are they to the amulets of the ancient Romans, or mythical story telling in the aborigines’ magical ceremony?

If you’d like to see all of Idris Mootee’s fascinating presentation, then Click Here!

© David R. Durham

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Global Warming?

Posted by David on

US physics professor: ‘Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life’

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Here is his letter of resignation to Curtis G. Callan Jr, Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society.

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists.

As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.
APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.
Hal.

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defence Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety
Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

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FRA Obs

Posted by David on

Observations From Frankfurt.

The Germans here is Frankfurt are a very warm and generous people.

They live in high-quality 2.2 lander** environment, located at a major European financial centre and all the jobs and wealth which that creates, they live in a moderate European climate, have modern housing, transport and work-spaces, beautiful countryside just outside their small city for living and recreation, an international airport on their doorstep and so on.

Of course there are one or two anomalies which I observe whilst I sit in one of the many cafes, sipping my frischer minz tee.

The first observation is the high proportion of young Germans who smoke cigarettes. This wicked destroyer of health from within seems to be somehow at odds with their radiant complexions, fit lean bodies, exquisite dentistry, intelligent demeanour and designer clothes. And runs against all the effort and resources dedicated to their healthy upbringing.

The second group who appear slightly out of sync. amongst these affluent modern European professionals, are harder to place. I imagine them to be intellectuals, with probably 2 or 3 PhDs, a collection of early edition Goeth writings and are able to play the violin to concert standards. They have longish, un-styled hair, have a slightly quirky dress sense, and go about by bicycle.

As the season changes into Autumn, I shall see how their plumage changes.

© David R. Durham

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** By 2.2 lander I mean the average family size, which is allegedly 2.2 children.

Journeys

Posted by David on

“You’ll never forget this journey.”

This intriguing sentence came my way the other day.

It’s one of those throw away lines which can be easily dismissed, or one which can blossom into a range of thoughts and considerations.

In a way it is a classic example of how we are not simply passive observers of our world, but are very much interpreters and creators of our experiences.

© David R. Durham

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Update From China

Posted by David on

I’m currently visiting Shanghai, China.

Since my blog is censored here, my blogging activities have been reduced over the last week.

To blog or not to blog – That is The Question.

One gem of wisdom I have already a picked up here is a quote attributed to Confucius, which roughly translated goes something like … a man with a hole in his pocket feels cocky all day.

Ciao for now.

© David R. Durham

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Parallel Worlds

Posted by David on

I was watching a TV program last night on parallel universes, and it was is many ways quite fascinating.

Apparently, there are potentially an infinite number of these, depending on which theory you chose to follow. There may even be one identical to this one, or ones with slight variations on what we experience here. For instance, what if there was a parallel universe where Hitler won the second world war.

One of the most entertaining concepts was that of of bubble universes, here universes expand, flow and interact like our earth bound soap bubbles.

Where it seemed to get a bit strained was when the presenter was trying to get to another universe, i.e. to travel to a parallel universe. He began each scenario with ‘imagine’, which each time got to be a bigger ask of our imaginations.

The main problem, it seemed to me, was the need to drag our body along when traveling to a parallel universe. Since we are, after all, consciousness projecting through this physical body, why not just shift our consciousness and leave our body here in this universe where it belongs?

© David R. Durham

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2012!

Posted by David on

2012 is coming!

Not just the year, but the dawn of a new era for humanity. At least this is the story according to a number of new age gurus.

Whilst new age gurus have their moments of insight, and contribute in many ways to broader understanding of our humanity, on this one I have my doubts.

The 2012 story is based on some fancy mathematics and astronomy provided by the Mayan civilisation.

The Mayans were a bunch of people in what is currently called Central America. And the question I ask is ‘What did the Mayans ever do for us?’ They are after all, not to put too fine a point on it, a failed civilisation. So why should we care about some fancy mathematics they invented? If they were so smart, how come they are not still running the show in Central America?

But then again, empires come and empires go. There is a similar question asked in England, only this one is along the lines of ‘What did the romans ever do for us?’ This is usually followed by a long list of useful stuff the romans bequeathed to their ungrateful subjects.

No doubt other sufferers of external conquest ask the same thing. I can imagine the Indians asking ‘What did the British ever do for us?’ A few thoughts: Single language, democracy, a unified legal system, railways and most important of all cricket.

The English language is a remarkably flexible tool for expressing ourselves. And whenever the 2012 phenomena rears its head, a specific word springs into my mind, and that word is ‘bollocks’.

For those readers outside of Britain, I’d better define bollocks for you. It basically means, in a rather vulgar way, rubbish or nonsense. And ideally it is said with a certain indignation and gusto.

My vision for 2013, is a number of new age gurus frantically looking around for signs that anything has changed. And by 2014, they will be hoping no one remembers their lofty predictions. And if anyone does remind them, they will reply something along the lines of the change has happened in spirit, but it has yet to manifest into form.

My prediction for 2012 and beyond is that humanity will keep on keeping on, behaving and doing pretty much what it has been doing for the last several thousand years, enthusiastically chasing after short-term selfish gains with the primary unconscious aim of producing and rearing the next generation of happy humans.

Also I’d like to create this nifty mental association for you, so as to save your mental energy for more useful activities: 2012 – Bollocks!

© David R. Durham

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Labels

Posted by David on

Labels are very useful things.

They help us to identify and categorise things, events and people in our everyday world. And for those memory-challenged moments, the label of last resort “thingy” comes in very handy.

Where they often start to fail us is when it comes to ourselves and other people. We become defined by our labels, and often we have trouble seeing beyond them.

This happens quite regularly in the work environment, where middle managers in particular become blinded to someone’s potential beyond the boundaries of their job title. For instance, how creative would you expect an accountant to be?

During our lifetimes we acquire and go through many labels, such as muslim or hindu, girl then woman, single then married, athletic or a couch potato, good person or thief etc.

This phenomena seems to be partly due to our mental filters which we need to use to navigate the world and partly a result of simple mental laziness on our part.

Mental filters are entirely necessary to functioning efficiently (as outlined in NLP literature), as we wake up in a morning we need to know without thinking what a bed is, what to eat for breakfast, what clothes are for, who our family are etc.

The problem is that this short-hand way of thinking tends to get hard-wired and seldom updated. So we can mistakenly believe all Catholics are good, accountants can’t dance, we procrastinate too much or artists are disorganised and so on.

Fortunately, life has a habit of sending someone to us who contradicts our neat labels, and invites us to loosen them up, wake up and to begin thinking again.

© David R. Durham

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Enlightenment

Posted by David on

There is a lot of excitement, interest and information generated by the concept of spiritual enlightenment.

It goes under various terms such as nirvana, satori, samadhi, penetrating the cloud of unknowing etc.

It is generally viewed as a desirable state of being and a mark of spiritual achievement.

There are at least a couple of features of enlightenment, which the gurus, yogis and other assorted spiritual teachers fail to point out to their earnest students.

The first is that an enlightened is not some happy-ever-after state of being. To use an analogy, it is similar to the proverbial romantic tale. Boy meets girl, they fall ‘in love’, they’re from different social or ethnic backgrounds so there is one f**** of a fight before they can get married …. and then after all that emotional trauma, well …. they just sail into the sunset and live happily ever after.

Life turns out to be not that simple, and after the proverbial honeymoon period, their relationship takes a lot of work to maintain and develop and so on.

Enlightenment is a lot like that. After the thrill of all that energy and expanded consciousness there are still bills to be paid, dogs to be walked and meals to be cooked. I.e. living goes on pretty much as before.

Which bring me onto the second feature often not mentioned by gurus: Enlightenment is not an end state, rather it is a new insight into life and a different way of expressing our being. An unfolding way of being which still needs work to continue growing and developing.

A third feature I’ll mention in passing, is that you will discover (rather to your embarrassment) that you were enlightened all along, and you were just pretending not to be, so you could play the game of being human.

© David R. Durham

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