When the USA gets a cold, the rest of the world gets the ‘flu… so the saying goes. Well, it seems the USA is about to get the (economic) ‘flu… do we get a cold? I doubt it somehow. This documentary from 2008 shows firstly the terrifying state of the US government debts, and secondly, why it is important (they state it mildly - the US will be under the thumb of its bankers, mainly China. This effectively means that their ‘empire’ will end and by extension the Western empire will end; US citizens will be in hock for a generation or more; poverty will be commonplace).

Putting it more strongly, it means US citizens (and others) will end up effectively as slaves, working to pay off irredeemable debts all their lives. In short, freedom is good, but you cannot sustain freedom without financial responsibility. To me, that is just the way the Universe is constructed. Money represents freedom of action. Without the one, you can’t have the other. Debt equals slavery.

The West has a demographic time bomb as well: the average age of the population is increasing so much that not enough workers are available to pay for pensions, healthcare and so on. Clearly, governments in Britain and the US are dealing with it, secretly, by allowing huge numbers of young immigrants from Eastern Europe and Mexico respectively to enter the countries (while pretending to be tough on immigration). Well, fine, but it will alter the cultures of these nations. And anyway, the debts in the USA look too big for this to work too well. But… maybe they’ve done their sums. I’d like to see them. The video doesn’t address this possible solution, mind you.

We are semi-blissfully going about our daily business thinking that maybe the ‘Credit Crunch’ wasn’t so bad after all… a little hiccup maybe, but not so bad. But, actually, there are a lot of problems lurking, not least of which is the massive debt both governments and individuals around the world are contending with.

The problem with debt, basically, is that it needs to be paid back, or, it is necessary to default on it. Either solution messes up the economy. Either solution messes up your and my finances. If we divert funds to paying it back, that money isn’t being spent on productive capital, or even on goods. It is money down the drain. If we default, well, our creditors have money shortages instead. Either way, we all lose.

Economies historically deal with huge national debts in one of two main ways: economic recession (or its extreme version, depression/panic), or inflation (or its extreme version, hyperinflation). Recession sees prices falling, jobs getting lost as businesses can’t make a profit or jobless consumers can’t consume, and so on. Inflation sees prices rising rapidly and consumers not being able to keep up, and, after a time, jobs getting lost as businesses can’t make a profit because they can’t afford the raw materials or customers can’t afford the high prices… Depression and hyperinflation are extreme versions of these and can be quite terrible.

After the Credit Crunch (caused entirely by slack regulation of the financial markets by governments around the world, encouraged by free-market economic theories (not that the alternatives work so well either)), governments had basically two choices: stand back and watch the economies of the world slump into depression, or print money (sorry, euphemism of the day: “quantitative easing") to try and cancel out the collapsing money supply as shares and banks tumbled. Well, they chose the latter and printed money (or, really, sold treasury bills and reduced interest rates - effectively the same). In the UK they only did this enough to cancel out about half of the slump, however. That is one reason why our economy isn’t recovering much yet the recession hasn’t been so intense either (on the surface). Nevertheless, this amounts to a huge debt which is going to have to be paid or defaulted on. In the US they’ve gone further and the outcome is much the same so far. This video suggests the outcome is going to be hyperinflation. The video makers have their own political free-market axe to grind (and as I mentioned free-market theories led us into this mess in part), but the evidence that the economic ramifications of this mess are still working out seems pretty good. Oh, and if, unlike me unfortunately, you happen to have some spare cash, it might be worth investing in silver, apparently…

Why do we put off doing things we know we have to do? Why not just do them and make life easier for ourselves? Well, I’ve puzzled over my own ‘laziness’ for years… but this video may have the answer: we are not nice enough to ourselves! Yes, it’s that naughty old voice in the head again, as discussed on my enlightenment page. I’ve used the method he speaks of to some extent to ameliorate my own resistance to doing things, but it appears a more concentrated approach would work better…

Credit cards. We all know how expensive they can be, but many people find them very convenient. What people don’t know is how the card companies trick people into permanent debt. It isn’t simply a matter of people being irresponsible (although it has its part to play): credit card companies vary their terms, at will, to trick the poorest people into the most debt. Why? Because people in financial difficulty are the best source of money. If you pay off your card every month you are no use to the credit card company because they can’t charge you any interest or any delinquency fees. They make no money out of such customers. The best customers are people who pay the minimum payment every month, or, better, miss it sometimes and pay late fees, over limit fees, and more. This video, ‘The Secret History of the Credit Card’ (just under an hour long) from the US Public Broadcasting Service, explains how it works.

How long does it take to pay off a card? This calculator lets you work it out, but a couple of sample calculations are given below. They assume the minimum payment is 2% of your balance.

1) First, a basic example. You have £100 on your card and the interest rate is 14% APR. It’ll take you 23 months to pay back £100 if you only pay the required minimum of 2.00%. Over that period of time, you’ll pay an additional £13.05 in interest.If you could afford to pay an extra £10 a month towards your credit card debt, it would mean you’d repay it in 7 months and you’d save yourself £9.58 in interest. In fact, if you could afford an extra £25 a month, you’d repay it in 4 months and save £11.82. Not too scary perhaps.

2) Now, take the same figures as above, but you owe £1,000 instead. It’ll take you 236 months (that’s over 19 years) to pay back £1,000 if you only pay the required minimum of 2.00%. (maybe you think you won’t pay just the minimum for 19 years - but things can change. You lose your job, or get ill, have an accident… and suddenly minimum payments could be all that are possible, for a long time). Over the 19 years or so, you’ll pay an additional £1,123.41 in interest (in other words, you’re paying twice over for it). If you could afford to pay an extra £10 a month towards your credit card debt, it would mean you’d repay it in 68 months (just over 5 years) and you’d save yourself £763.10 in interest. In fact, if you could afford an extra £25 a month, you’d repay it in 34 months (just over 2 years), and save £943.84.

3) Suppose now the credit card company has given you a more typical APR of, say, 20% on your £1,000 outstanding credit. It’ll take you 483 months (that’s over 40 years) to pay back a mere £1,000 if you only pay the required minimum of 2.00%. Over that period of time, you’ll pay an additional £3,622.71 in interest (you’re paying over 3.5 times for whatever you spent the money on). If you could afford to pay an extra £10 a month towards your credit card debt, it would mean you’d repay it in 80 months (just over 6 years) and you’d save yourself £2,983.72 in interest. In fact, if you could afford an extra £25 a month, you’d repay it in 36 months (just over 3 years), and save £3,337.53.

4) APR 24%? It’ll take you 3780 months (that’s over 315 years) to pay back a measly £1,000 if you only pay the required minimum of 2.00%. Over that period of time, you’ll pay an additional £38,752.57 in interest!! If you could afford to pay an extra £10 a month towards your credit card debt, it would mean you’d repay it in 92 months (just over 7 years) and you’d save yourself £37,831.47 in interest. In fact, if you could afford an extra £25 a month, you’d repay it in 39 months (just over 3 years), and save £38,383.04.

5) If the APR is 25% or above, the debt is unpayable with the minimum payment as the interest adds more than the minimum payment to your debt each month!

The motto? Either don’t use credit cards at all, or if you must, then pay at least £10 more than the minimum payment, ALWAYS. Indeed, the recommended system for paying them off is to pay AT LEAST the minimum payment PLUS the interest charged each month. Count THAT as your ‘minimum payment’. If you can’t afford to pay all your cards like this, then pay off the one with the highest APR first. Then destroy it. Then pay off the one with the next highest APR, etc. It can be handy to set up a standing order for this ‘minimum payment’ (the one that includes the interest) and always pay this same amount - even though the interest will go down each month (other things being equal), if you can afford it, keep paying as much as that anyway until the card is history. But… what do you do if you can’t even afford to do this much? If you can’t even make the standard minimum payments? Well,  there are various official methods, of varying efficacy (voluntary arrangements, bankruptcy) but which are not really much use to many people, as is the way with official methods generally. I’m looking on the web for a better solution; I’ll put a link here if I find something.

I’ve been interested to see that others take a similar view to myself as to what ‘enlightenment‘ is, and how to achieve it. [It is: living in the present moment, just as you are, with no need to try to be other than what you are; you achieve it primarily by silencing the inner voice so you can just BE.]

Philosopher Alan Watts describes enlightenment nicely in this hour long video, and provides some examples for you to try, so you can begin to experience just being for yourself. The video is very old, but hey, Zen is much older…

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/jun/18/matt-ridley-rational-optimist-errors

I haven’t read ‘The Rational Optimist’ by Matt Ridley, but I have read this review:

Review

And… it has put me off. It is a book arguing that free, unregulated markets work better than regulated ones, and that the environment is not deteriorating. But, according to the review by George Monbiot, the book is full of blatant distortion. Like not mentioning how relatively free, unregulated markets led to the Credit Crunch, indeed particularly so in Ridley’s own company, Northern Rock (he was chairman of the company!), which needed a GBP £27bn bailout when it crashed due entirely to slack regulation, greed and stupidity (presumably on his part at least). As readers of my blog will know, I’ve forecast this economic depression for a long time now. Who listens? Not people who should know what they’re doing, anyway.

I guess we all know something of the cruel way that animals are treated by people, because we need them for food, clothing and so on. But that ‘because’ is perhaps a mistake. Maybe we need them for these things (I eat meat, use animal products, etc.,), but do they really have to be treated so badly? The video below is perhaps one of the most depressing, horrific videos ever made, but it is also based firmly in reality. Prepare to feel guilty… Oh - and I should probably warn you it includes lots of images of animals being maltreated (putting it mildly). So if you think you can prepare yourself for the sights of kittens being tortured, foxes being skinned alive and so on, then get ready and press that play button.

Well, let’s hope it works… then I’ll add all my old Blogger entries. One by one. Because Blogger didn’t export it properly and the import function seems flaky as well. Good thing I’ve got a backup. :)

It wouldn’t be necessary but Blogger have changed their system, no longer allowing FTP access, which means the blog would have to be hosted on their site rather than mine. Shrug. Well, OK, they’ve lost a customer. Several in fact, since I do websites for people and often integrate their blog - they’ll all have to become independently hosted now instead.

I’ve tried Nucleus blogging software, but find it cumbersome to use and the documentation is written by programmers for programmers. In other words, the entire system is user unfriendly. B2evolution seems far superior.

Anyway, for now, my old blog entries will appear below, one by one… hopefully.

As mentioned previously, I don't know whether there is any global warming going on, or whether we humans are responsible for it. The evidence as I see it is too mixed: any search on the Internet comes up with wildly differing views, out of date evidence, hearsay, scaremongering and more. Real, hard information is not really available to Joe Public.

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So, OK, following Stu’s comment to the below global warming article, let’s see a bit of the other side of the argument. This video debunks the global warming debunkers… so what the heck is the truth???

Ever since I noticed in Al Gore's famous global warming video 'An Inconvenient Truth' that his graphs showed carbon di-oxide throughout pre-history increasing and decreasing 400 years *after* changes in the climate that it was supposed to be causing, I thought that something was up. This video explains pretty well that the world is probably not in fact overheating, with some real science and some real investigative journalism (for a change).

The conspiracy theorists are saying that the swine flu vaccine is highly dangerous for a number of reasons (poisonous adjuvants, nanochips and more), and that the whole thing is a plot to cull a large number of people for the purposes of power and profit. Now, of course, conspiracy theories can be quite fun, but what is the evidence behind these accusations? Is there any basis to them? Should I avoid the vaccine? Well, I’ve been doing some reading, and…

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On my enlightenment page I talk about how to achieve that state. This lecture (1h 40m long) discusses it from the point of view of the way the brain works and I think it provides further insight into the process, and how to achieve it.

Enlightenment, Self and The Brain by Todd Murphy:

I like to trawl the Internet reading the various conspiracy theories about what’s going on in the world, not so much because I believe them necessarily, but because I think it is mind expanding to evaluate different points of view carefully. After all, what if any of it is true?

For a long time now, people have been saying that the World Trade Center 9/11 disaster was sabotage: a set-up; an inside job. Well, that’s all very well, and the videos in my previous blog entries show a good deal of circumstantial evidence that is very suggestive and quite convincing in itself, I think, but in the end, I always prefer good old-fashioned hard evidence. Where is that?

Well, guess what? There is hard evidence too. This scientific paper shows conclusively (to my mind) that the twin towers were deliberately blown up:

Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe

If that’s a bit heavy, here’s a lay person’s explanation (it is still somewhat technical, but well worth reading if you really want to know the truth):

Active Thermitics Made Simple

If you just want a quick summary, this TV interview with one of the scientists involved in the above study is pretty good (it is in Danish but has English subtitles):

And for a second opinion, an architect talks about it too:

One question that gets asked is, why would anyone want to do such a thing deliberately? However, it has to be remembered that a) the biggest profits come from i) drugs (heroin from Afghanistan); ii) oil (from Iraq); and iii) war (such as a never-ending ‘war on terror’, and b) as many as 1 in 20 of the Western population is a psychopath: to them, other people are disposable.

So: it’s make your mind up time. There is no doubt in my mind that the above demolition could only have been organised by a government. What do you think? Is the world being run by evil people, or not? And what does it mean for our day-to-day lives? What precautions should we take to ensure our own safety and well-being?
 

I watched this excellent documentary the other day. It is about how the public are conned by big business into believing that ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ in the form of free enterprise (business) must go together: we are, it seems, conned into believing that you can’t have democracy without free enterprise, when in fact the two have little to do with each other. Also, it shows how we are manipulated into wanting things we don’t need so we’ll spend our hard-earned money on the products of the rich people’s factories. Episode 1 is here; there are four in all on Google Video, each just under an hour long.

Well, it must be pretty clear to everybody now that what I wrote about on my Great Depression page back in 2003 is arriving with a vengeance now, in 2009.

The religious portion of Zeitgeist is refuted here:

…or how the ball got dropped this time around. The government *always* drops the ball in the end, or, as Bob Beckman used to say (paraphrased) “What we learn from History is that nobody learns anything from History.”

People keep asking me to fix or create their web sites for them. Well, OK. Maybe that will be my new mode of income, apart from the film work at the Studio. So I shall be a web designer. The www.shortletbudapest.co.uk site has since gone, so um... here's a picture of it.

I've done others recently too, now I think about it. I guess I can be a web designer. And, since people keep asking me, I don't think I'll have to search too hard for business. And as people typically ask extortionate prices, I can be more reasonable, I think. After all, I have a day job to go to too.

It seems Spring is making a proper appearance at last, albeit only for a few days perhaps. Anyway, I went out and took some photos in a nearby bluebell woods - you can see the pics via my Image London blog.

The credit crunch is all very well - indeed, I’ve been having my very own credit crunch for most of my life it seems - but in some parts of the world things are, of course, much worse than here. According to Macrohistory, a very good history site, the news for April 9th is:

I’ve hardly had time to do anything much lately - too much work! Plus watching the Great Depression unfold, if that is what it is doing (see previous post). But here are a few interesting web pages I’ve managed to dig up even so. You might want to calculate your global “footprint” at the Earthday Footprint Page. They try to calculate how many planet Earths would be needed if everybody lived like you do. My lifestyle adds up to 1.5 Earths; below average for a Westerner. But really I don’t buy all this scaremongering. Yes people could take more care of the planet and I wish we would, but in the end, I believe we will sort the problems out and maintain or improve our lifestyles. Technology rules!

Back in 2003 I wrote an article about the coming Great Depression. Well, the current “sub-prime” banking crisis certainly fits the pattern of a financial bubble finally bursting.

Basically, a wunch of bankers have been lending money to people such as myself who can’t afford it, and now they’re all surprised as it blows up in their faces. The boss of the Northern Rock bank, Britain’s recent casualty, bleated before a parliamentary committee that “nobody could have foreseen this", as if people such as myself haven’t been forecasting this outcome for, literally, decades.

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I have started a new blog: http://imagelondon.blogspot.com. I have noticed various blogs showing photos of various cities around the world on a daily basis, and getting lots of visitors, so I thought why don’t I do the same (although probably not daily, knowing me)? There are London blogs already but each has its own style. There is room for one more: the things I like will be the things some other people like, after all.

Apart from making the occasional entry in this blog, I also make the occasional web site, such as http://www.britishunitedartists.com/ , http://www.cwfstudio.com/ , http://www.actingcourses.net/ (at which I also maintain the blog)… I mention this because web sites require e-mail links or forms of some sort, and this presents a problem: spammers. Spammers fill in the forms, usually automatically, or they harvest the e-mail addresses for later use by a zillion zombies.

Well, I suppose one can’t talk about the meaning of life without thinking of Douglas Adams, for whom the answer appeared to have been “42″ (in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy“), and indeed, this web site does just that. But he also indirectly makes an important point about the alternative philosophy of nihilism, which states that life, and indeed everything, is meaningless: if everything is meaningless, then so is the idea that everything is meaningless… In other words, the idea that life is worthless is a worthless idea. To me, that means it is false, or might as well be. So nihilism is imploded by its own definition: if true, it must be false.

I expect that is arguable, but it seems close enough for practical purposes. And the purpose of life - its meaning? Altruism. So there.

Here is a recent photo of Douglas Adams, taken at Highgate Cemetery in London.

And here is a quote from him:

“There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

Douglas Adams has written quite a few books, many of which I have read and enjoyed.

On another subject, I rather liked this rather well-travelled photographer’s travel photos. And the latest Batman movie trailer.

Here is a nice 90-second overview of the progress of “democracy” (of sorts) down through the ages, assuming that no tribal systems were democratic, I suppose. And assuming that the modern system of “representative democracy” actually counts given that most such governments seem to claim to listen then do what they like anyway (and then claim to wonder why voter turnout is so low).

…the woman whose boyfriend thought she was too drunk to drive, so she called the police. While drunk. And driving. Or the desperado who broke into parking meters, but plugged his drill into the local police station ("Capitol guardhouse” in US English, AIUI).

After many years of not being rich yet (in Western terms anyway), I have discovered the joys of cheap shopping on the Internet. Now, I have shopped online before, but this Christmas I specifically wanted to buy cheaply… and as I like to give books and movies, I was pleased to explore Amazon’s second-hand options. And sure enough, the bulk of books and DVDs that I bought for people second-hand were just fine. In near perfect condition, indeed. One or two were a bit off, but overall, I managed to handle Christmas for about £70 instead of the usual £200. With a DVD movie costing about £2.37 including delivery instead of £10-£30, the savings can be immense. OK, the risk of a problem with the product is slightly higher, but at that kind of price I can just buy another one from another supplier.

Funny news stories… How about the latest pyramid selling scam in China? Over a million people have been persuaded to spend some £1300 on ant farms. Then there’s the latest teenage-wild-party-while-the-parents-are-away event [link now defunct, it seems]. I like the fact that the naughty fellow has his story well thought-out. His video chit-chat is a bit hard to follow but the article spells it out.

Now here is a photo showing the Moon over the ‘top’ of the Earth’s atmosphere, taken from the Space Shuttle Discovery in July 2007. “Image ISS013-E-54329.JPG courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center.”

Well, I know I’ve been off-air for a bit now, but I’m back today, as I slowly get over the flipping flu. My latest money-making scheme, i.e., the domain names thing, isn’t producing any results, so it is suitably abandoned unless something comes of it before they expire. Probably I need to be more persistent with schemes, but they are boring when they don’t work. My next plan is to try doing some paintings and selling them (online, ideally). The first one is here:

Those wavy Moire fringes you may see running from right to left in this rendering do not exist on the original. They are an artefact caused by the texture of the canvas mixing with the pixel system that computers use. Possibly I need to upload a lower-resolution photo or something; I’ll have to experiment. You can click here to see a larger, relatively fringe-free version. The colours are reasonably accurate in the photo, except I would say that the blue is a noticeably darker shade on the actual painting. Anyway, the painting is acrylic on mounted canvas, 406x305mm (16x12 inches), 38mm deep. Looking around online and in shops, things like this go for around £150 which seems about right to me.

Now for something more serious. These people are letting themselves be beaten at Wii tennis… by their dog (video). The poor animal will never learn to respect them! I don’t really ‘get’ tattoos and piercings. They just seem bizarre to me. So this blog has the top 10 of them. Prepare to be grossed out. Or bizarred out, I suppose. Well, I guess that’s enough Western culture for the moment. Now for a bit of culture from the East: the Thousand Hands Goddess Dance. We may not know what it means, but we know quality when we see it, I think. Finally, for those people who are savvy enough to use ‘hijack this‘ to clean the junk programs and spyware from their computers every now and then, a log auto-analyser to suggest to you which of your start-up items may be worth eliminating. Just paste the saved log into the box, press the button and hey presto! No guarantees or warranties, E&OE, yabba dabba doo.

One of these days I really am going to Get Rich Quick ™. My latest scheme is to dream up three really good-sounding domain names, which I hope to eventually sell. I have added links to them in the side bar:

* www.yourstarsdaily.com
* www.howtochatupgirls.com
* www.worstchatuplines.com

Now aren’t those great names? My plan originally was just to put them straight up for sale, maybe on Ebay or somewhere, but then I thought: perhaps I should monetize them first. That is, a) get some money from them somehow, and b) demonstrate to potential buyers how valuable they might be, before selling them. So I have put some content in them and will add them to various search engines…

Of course, if they make enough money I won’t want to sell them, I suppose. But, at least for the last two, I doubt that they will make much for me directly as I have no plans to sell related products. I shall probably just put Google AdSense on them. I can do tarot readings for the first one though.

Update: scheme got nowhere… No sales, and I got tired of doing tarot readings and typing them up each day, after about a month. Sigh. Probably 3 good names isn’t enough anyway. And they certainly do have to attract a lot of traffic - I did not invest in promotion, having no money to do that with…

I went for a long walk around the Arrandene nature reserve the other day. Originally I had a little slideshow going on in this blog entry, but I have decided to remove it as it uses up a lot of bandwidth - not a problem for those of us with unmetered broadband or better, but too slow or costly for some viewers. So, instead, if you would like to see the pictures, you can go to my Web Album.

Actually, quite well. The question is, though, how do I figure out how much is still to be done? Today I reached 30,000 words, i.e., 50% of my original estimate of 60,000 words.

However, I am certainly more than halfway through the story. Counting scenes in the script, I am up to scene 86 of 116. That’s 74%. That seems more like it! I think I had better count it that way in future. So, I am almost three-quarters of the way through the first draft. Excellent!

This year’s Big Brother 8 (UK) has begun so my annual addiction to this programme has begun too. I even auditioned for it last year! Sadly, I didn’t make it through to the programme, but maybe I have been saved for something better. ;-) But… why do I like this detestable programme, you might ask? Isn’t it voyeuristic, moronic, and salacious? Well, yes.

In fact, I think the series suffers from one rather strange paradox: the more detested the programme is, the more it is worth showing. My position on it is a bit like Oscar Wilde’s when he said, “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” Big Brother certainly causes controversy, and flushes out the usual rent-a-quote MP’s. But controversy is not a bad thing: it allows society to evolve peacefully, after all. It is one of the bases of our much-neglected democracy. And with the average viewer having between 30 and 400 channels to choose from on the TV, plus much more on the Internet, they really don’t have to watch it if they don’t want to.

There is another aspect to the series as well. Unlike other programmes, you actually get to know the characters of real people. What happens in the house is not scripted or limited by the imaginations of scriptwriters and producers. You have to use your social skills to get the best out of this programme, unlike any other (except perhaps some of its imitators). This is what is truly novel about it: it requires a different kind of intelligence to watch: social intelligence and emotional intelligence. With ordinary programmes, if you can stay awake long enough to watch them, there is little requirement for intelligence on the part of the viewer: we are spoon-fed the ‘entertainment’ or ‘information’ and that is all that is expected of us (other than to watch the spam - sorry, adverts). But if you watch Big Brother passively, you will miss out on exercising your brain. The housemates are constantly jockeying for position, changing tactics, lying, being friendly (genuinely and not so genuinely sometimes), and so on. Are you able, after years of watching passive TV, even capable of keeping track of their relationships? Can you figure out who will win?

Steven Johnson explains these ideas in more detail in his book, Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Popular Culture Is Making Us Smarter. I don’t recommend betting if you’re prone to addiction, but whether you bet or not, you can get a good idea of what the public thinks of the housemates by looking at their odds of winning at oddschecker.com. Betting odds are likely to be a better guide to what is really going to happen than what the pundits say: after all people are putting their money on it!

I’ve called this entry ‘No Topic’ as I don’t have any particular topic to write about: I’m in a non-write-about-it frame of mind lately - hence the lack of entries for the last few days. Nevertheless, some more writing has been accomplished.

And some surfing… Did you know some people are trying to build a time machine? And not using a black hole - that method is old hat:

On a totally different slant, have you ever tried hurling yourself down a 1:1 slope (that’s 45 degrees - I don’t know what it is in percentage units: 50% of vertical, I suppose)? Well, at Cooper’s Hill in Brockworth, Gloucestershire, people do it every year in a stupid old festival that allows grazing rights on common land or some such. It is a race in which the contestants chase after… a piece of cheese. Yes. Cheese. Double Gloucester, to be exact. I was actually present one year. A woman was knocked unconscious by the aforementioned cheese as it bounced into the crowd. This video shows the 2007 event:

Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling

After all that excitement, how about a bit of cyberwar? It seems somebody is attacking the government of Estonia - they suspect the Kremlin. Alternatively, how about a bit of art? [Link no longer working.]It takes a few moments to load (it is a flash drawing), but it is worth the wait. Click and drag up or down with your mouse to move in or out.

Well, I wrote another 1% of the book today… things are moving on quite rapidly really, on those days when I get some writing done! I still rather feel, though, that things are moving rather more rapidly than I thought originally and I may well be finished a long way before the 60,000 word estimate I started with. Well, we will see.

I have of course been surfing the good old Internet the rest of the time. I was very interested in The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do about It, which says what I have thought for many years (since my school days, indeed): homework is of little benefit, and of much harm to people’s social lives. OK, yes, that is a link to Amazon, but I thought I’d try once again - we’ll see how long it is before Amazon break the link like they usually do. Anyway, I haven’t read that book, but it looks like a good idea to me. I see that there are others making the same point too. Meanwhile, have you wondered what those brighter than normal stars are in the sky? Well, at the moment, it could be the planets Mercury, Venus or Saturn, for example. See which one you’re seeing at Planetfinder [Update - it’s a bit old so you may get Java security warnings, but it used to work harmlessly for me]. For a bit of fun, here’s how to deal with unwanted telesales calls… (video). Alternatively, see if you can spot the difference between a computer geek and a serial killer. I got 8/10. Ain’t no-one going to serialize me! ;-)

I have discovered that for the last few days, none of my e-mails are reaching any hotmail.com addresses (and I have tried a few). Something is wrong, but e-mail to elsewhere seems to be OK. I will reply if and when the problem is fixed. Although I can receive e-mail from hotmail addresses, if you want a reply, e-mail me from a non-hotmail address. Thanks. [Update - hotmail thinks I’m a spammer and wants me to implement some arcane ID system. No thanks. Some other domains think the same, such as yandex.ru, so I guess I can reply from a googlemail address or something. I’m not a spammer, by the way.]

Meanwhile, how about some links? Does biblical law apply today? If so, why can’t I own a Canadian? Next: how annoying is it when someone answers their phone during a meeting? Darth Vader has the solution (video). Now I know you regret not paying attention in physics classes at school, but here’s your chance to catch up: flash animations of a large number of physics experiments for your entertainment and edification. I don’t need to watch them ‘cos I already have a physics degree, but you should. ;-) Finally, something to try when you’re locked out of your car (video).

I felt like a change, so, since I like blue, I now have a blue blog. I have also got up to 42% of my projected 60,000 words in the Katherine of Alexandria book, and have added a couple of links to the new ‘Links’ bar to the right… Specifically, Calorie Connect, which gives you the calories in various food items on request with a simple but nifty form (with a few curious omissions, such as toast), and Diego Goldberg’s Arrow of Time page - a look at his family down through the years: what a good idea. I’ve no idea who these people are, but it almost makes me want to find out…

…not that I have links here every day, but I plan to do so fairly often.

Whilst searching for historical info relating to the Katherine of Alexandria book I am busy writing, I found Eye Witness to History - a site that concentrates on reports from people who were actually present at historical events as they happened, so you get a personal view. This is much more engaging than a more dry and scholarly approach.

I take a few photographs myself from time-to-time, so I was interested to see the Young Gallery. Unfortunately, the pictures are mostly rather ‘arty-farty’ for my taste - you know the kind of thing: if it is in black-and-white and shows some silky-looking skin, or if it shows some abstract colour, somehow that makes it ‘art’. I don’t buy it: it is too intellectual for me. Surely ‘art’ is supposed to generate some reaction other than boredom? There doesn’t seem to be anything new in that sort of stuff: it has been done over and over again for a good century now. There are some nice time-exposures of cities in one gallery though, and some nice wildlife pictures too. You might also be interested in Richard Gere’s (black & white) photos taken in Mongolia.

Hmm… getting plenty of writing done. Good! More than 1% of my total done today, anyway - can’t be bad!

I had kind of hoped to do more, but I got tired - in fact I got downright sleepy, and a “few minutes” of rest turned into a few hours. Ho hum. Still, if I need the rest, then it is best that I take it.

Later on I did a bit of web surfing. I’ve not been exercising enough lately - it has been slipping gradually for a long time, so I’m back to working on my motivation and thinking, and this time, ways of integrating the exercise into my normal daily routine: I think a “workout” is just rather dull, basically. I have tried a bit of self-hypnosis for it as well, with a free session from mindmedia.com, - Find Your Inner Athlete [Update: well it used to be there, anyway - there’s lots of new stuff there now]. There are also free sessions from the author of that session at mindchanginghypnosis.com. [Update: domain seems to be parked. Sigh.] Hypnosis? Yes, and I know people have this impression that it is something weird and dangerous, but, basically, it isn’t. It is simply a way of learning something more quickly than you might otherwise. Think of it as the same sort of thing as a guided visualization: it is not much different from using your imagination, basically, while your verbal mind is resting (ideally). Anyway, since trying the session a couple of weeks ago, I have indeed been doing a little more exercise - not full-on major sessions, but nevertheless, there has been some improvement.

I have also looked at a couple of web sites that talk about the thinking you need to get in place - similar to my own diet and exercise page actually! But it is good to see other people’s way of putting it too - and I obviously need a bit of extra input from somewhere. The Hussman Fitness site was very interesting and talks about the mindset, and has a good section on what a fitness/weight-loss programme needs to involve (rather a lot of exercise - Hmm…).

Yes, it’s get-rich-quick time again. I have been looking at the so-called “Secret Law of Attraction” as pushed on the Internet in books, programmes and videos, and thinking to myself… Hmm… it is a sales pitch. Here is an example:

You see, on the one hand, the authors have a point - the idea of it is true as far as it goes, I believe: that you attract to you what you think about, so think rich, think happy, etc., and you will become rich, happy, etc. But my problem with it is that they are mystifying the subject rather than clarifying it, in my opinion, to get you to purchase products from them - that is, to attract money from you to them.

I think it can be explained more clearly and will write a little about it today. But first… a word of warning. I am not rich yet. At least, not in Western terms. OK, I have a roof over my head, a nice bed, food in the ‘fridge, clothes in the cupboard, and so on, so that makes me one of the richest 20% or so of the people in the world. But as a Westerner, seeing all those TV programmes and movies showing much better lifestyles than mine in material terms, I do not feel materially rich yet. Besides, I still have plenty of debts to pay off. If I measure my net worth the way accountants do, it is negative - so actually a person starving in the Third World somewhere with a net worth of about one penny is technically better off than me, financially - but that just shows what can be done with statistics! :-)

Anyway, in short, I am not rich in my terms: no country mansion, lots of travel, life of leisure, etc. So, who am I to suggest the so-called Secret Law of Attraction could be explained better if I haven’t made it work for myself yet?

Well, I think I am making it work, but it is something that is taking time. The “Secret” is plain and simple. Implementing it is hard. It is hard because you have to work on yourself. But first, a little about this mystification of the idea that I mentioned earlier.

In a way, the problem is with the name. Firstly, it is no secret. These ideas have been around for literally centuries. There have always been successful people who have figured it out for themselves, or who have had fortunate upbringings, or who simply, naturally, think the right way, and who have the energy and courage to take action to get things done. If you want a non-sales version of the secret, try getting a book on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy from your local bookshop (for example, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Dummies is very good).

Secondly, by using a passive word like “attraction” these authors are making it look like you just have to sit there and riches will fall in your lap. This is a mouth-watering proposition to the get-rich-quickers like me who, in reality, don’t really want to actually do anything much to make their fortunes. These hucksters make it look like they can explain how you can become some kind of natural magnet for wealth (or whatever it is you are after). But they don’t explain it, as far as I can tell, anyway. They talk all around it, make it sound good, then sell you product after product (because the previous one hasn’t worked yet, you buy another, then another - like diet plans: it is the same marketing idea to sell you plan after plan, tip after tip - this one really works! Except it doesn’t because you have to do something).

All right. Let’s get to the point. What is the “Secret"? It is this: the way you think about things, about life in general, affects how life turns out for you. There is nothing mysterious in this. If you think miserable thoughts, if you feel inferior, if you are afraid to put yourself out there and meet people, then how are you going to get anything much done? How can you make your life better when you cut yourself off from your own enthusiasm and energy (by thinking badly of yourself) and from other people who could help you? If someone speaks to you, maybe they say, “Hi, that’s a nice pair of shoes!” you could take that as a compliment or as an implied insult. It is up to you. What they actually mean matters much less than what you think of it. So, the point is, getting your thinking in order is the difficult part. Your inner thoughts can very easily sabotage your plans in so many ways and at the same time you can be completely unaware that it is happening. Get a Cognitive Behavoural Therapy book and see how to sort your thinking out. Take control of your own verbal mind (you could also look at my enlightenment page for much more on this general idea and a selection of books that could help you). Only by sorting out your own thinking can you get anywhere. To see how not to think about life, well, just watch East Enders or any other soap opera. They are full of characters ruining their lives through bad thinking skills: people driven by greed, fear, and the convenience of the moment.

Then, having got your thinking straight… you need to do what Tony Robbins always advises: take action. Yes, you have to get out of your comfort zone and do something. You have to meet people. You have to start a business or whatever. You have to find something you like to do and do it. You also have to be realistic and start from where you are: little baby steps are best because trying to do too much before you are ready can undermine your confidence. But do get things moving, within the limits of how far you are capable at the time. And don’t punish yourself for being less than perfect or for being incompetent. That is human nature. What is good is that we can achieve things despite our general uselessness. In fact, that is what is great about us. As the Buddhists say, we are perfect in our imperfection. That is, like a dog or a cat or a child, none of which can do anything particularly useful except be a perfect dog, cat or child respectively, we, as adults are also perfect adult humans. Accept that as applied to yourself, and you have understood Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and you are on your way.

Well, I haven’t done any writing today… it is the weekend and I feel like a bit of a rest. For today, anyway. However, that doesn’t mean I have been doing nothing. I have been thinking that maybe I might add more links to my blog… links to things of interest to me, and maybe to you too… After all, I surf the Internet a lot, and I read a lot, so why not do something with all that ‘activity’ (for want of a better word)?

So… First up… how observant are you? Try watching the colour-changing card trick… (video) - tip: watch it to the end!

Next, I have been thinking about economics and all that lately. Currently I am reading Hernando De Soto’s “The Mystery of Capital” in which he reckons he may have hit upon the reason why capitalism works so well in the West and so badly for the other 80% of the world. His answer, in a nutshell, is property rights - people who can’t obtain proper legal title to their home can’t get loans or investment to start businesses. Plus, of course, bureaucracy in much of the world is ridiculously cumbersome, slow and expensive. He has set up the Institute of Liberty and Democracy to assist governments in implementing the political and legal reforms necessary to get things moving.

Finally for today - I have been thinking about how I might make my fitness regime a little more interesting. But I don’t think I’m going to try this: free running or parkour (video).

I am nearly up to 40% of the projected word total in my Katherine of Alexandria book now! It has crept up on me without my noticing. I have noticed, however, a slight change in my method of writing. On those days when my brain is a little less inclined to create new stuff, I instead revise the last section or so that I wrote. Revision is always necessary anyway, so the project moves forwards either way.

Maybe if I went to http://www.smart-kit.com/ more often, my enhanced brain would go even faster! The site has puzzles and potted summaries of interesting research such as that learning to play a musical instrument makes you more intelligent, and being obese makes you less intelligent - according to some studies anyway. It is always worth pointing out, though, I think, that ’studies’ are never totally fool-proof. It is necessary always to use common-sense when evaluating the results quoted. Often, the quotes are simply wrong, or the study itself was misconceived or badly executed, or, commonly, involves far too few subjects for the results to be considered reliable. Still, the ideas cannot be simply dismissed either…

Well, nothing in particular to write about today, really… except whatever I’ve been thinking about over the last couple of days I suppose. Firstly, I saw some photos of fantastic snow and ice sculptures in china at the Harbin Snow & Ice Festival, taken by R Todd King (the link is to his web site).

Secondly - blogging… I suppose if anybody was actually reading this blog, I might be tempted to think about it more! Darned if I can find it anywhere on the Internet and I know it’s here! But anyway, I have been looking at The Cluetrain Manifesto which you can read online for free or purchase in book form from you know where (I’m no longer going to link to books on Amazon since the links always break down before long - you can find it yourself I’m sure). It is about how companies should stop trying to huckster their customers and prospects and start having real life conversations with them - using blogs. It explains why it will work, too, of course. Basically, human beings expect to be spoken with as human beings - not with sterile corporate-speak. Well, it sounds sensible to me. Companies who feel that their staff are too stupid to speak freely for them, I suppose, must think those same staff are too stupid to hold a normal conversation in their non-working lives too… And I imagine they think that their customers are too stupid to notice the plastic tone of authorized statements (which are also one-way communications and which are therefore largely ignored). Think about it. The solution is to allow the staff to blog freely…

I know I haven’t made a blog entry for a while now… but the writing is continuing, albeit slowly. I am up to about 21,500 words now anyway. So that is about 4,000 words in the last month. I would prefer it to be more, but life has to be dealt with too, sometimes (nothing too bad concerning me directly, fortunately).

As well as that, I have been enjoying the early Spring weather and taking photos, some of which can be seen at my Picasaweb Gallery, particularly in the Hampstead Heath and Flora and Fauna galleries. I have also begun attempting to upload photos to some commercial photography web sites to see if I can make a bit of money from my hobby. I might as well get some free money if I can, I suppose!

Well, I had been thinking that I haven't been getting much writing done, but in fact, it is progressing at a reasonable pace overall - about 17,500 words done now. Maybe I could have done more by now, but I doubt it. Creativity cannot be forced without becoming mediocre, I think. To do my best, I must a) keep at it; and at the same time, b) not over-do it.

Like much of life, the trick is finding the right balance... the middle way.

I have done some 16,000 words or so now - in other words, about a quarter of my projected (guessed at) 60,000 word total. However, when I look at the script, it looks more like I’m nearer halfway through the story… or at least a third of the way through. Maybe it will be a novella rather than a novel. Anyway, there could be more room than I thought available for the non-fiction parts (movie trivia, historical notes and so on).

On another subject (slightly), I often listen to music when I am writing, unless I feel that it is distracting me or messing up the mood. According to this article, some scientists think music makes you smarter! (Original link changed but same article.)

Well, that explains a lot… ;-)

Have I really not written a blog entry since the beginning of the month? It seems like only a week or two. Hmm… well, I suppose it is only two weeks and a few days anyway.

Nevertheless, the writing continues. I have found that I have had more fly swatting to do and less time for writing, but that in fact it has not slowed me down by much. I am managing to do at least one scene a week as before, but in less time. I think that my system of trying to imagine the scenes in my head first - as movie scenes - simplifies the writing process for me. I get to sort out many of the details before I sit at the computer. I can go to a cafe somewhere and stare into space, and imagine my way through the scene.

This is similar to the way computer programs are to be written, some say. You only sit at the computer when you have already planned what you are going to write. If you try to write as you plan, you are likely to end up with chaos, or at least less efficient programs.

Sometimes it is just not possible to get on with what you want to do because dealing with life’s distractions gets in the way. For example, this week I have done no writing on the book so far because, among other things, I have been figuring out how to approach literary agents. It is important in one sense, but it gets in the way of my current goal of writing too.

I call this kind of thing ‘fly swatting.’ Survival has to be dealt with, but it is in a sense an unimportant side-issue. What counts is not what we do to survive so much as what we can do that ‘adds value’ to life: the real business of life. All animals survive for their allotted span if all is reasonably well. Humans have the chance to do a little bit more. That little bit more is what makes a difference in the world.

Sometimes, some of the ‘flies’ can be more like hornets, but still they need to be swatted or, at worst, endured. And, like buses, they are perfectly capable of coming in threes! C’est la vie!

OK. I have written more, now up to an estimated 19.9%, at just under 12,000 words written. Agents seem to want around 20,000 to look at, but we need to get moving - plus, if I can get an advance from a publisher that would help production of the book considerably. And, agents all claim to be really choosy, going by the web sites I have seen - but then, if most applicants are rubbish, they would claim that, wouldn’t they? Here we have a decent product and commercial prospect for them.

I doubt that I can write the book any faster, but I could do with an income… this year (and thereafter)! :-)

Well, I am up to 11,000 words. The question is, do I need to create another new scene? I don’t know. And, having done over 18% of my estimated total, all of a sudden the rest looks daunting! Sigh. At least it is Friday. I can spend the next couple of days considering the next scene. Back to the script, or is there something else that could be said?