Miss Pendragon's Mysterious Miscellany

Transformer explosions

2011-05-19T06:24:00.000-07:00

I was sent a link for transformer explosions in Fort Worth, Texas, which happened a few days ago. The video shows amazing coloured explosions which were attributed to lightning strikes on the power lines somewhere out of shot.

The comments on the video on YouTube draw attention to the orbs/spheres/things which can be seen in the sky at the beginning of the film. Some people questioned the authenticity of the film, but it seems to be borne out by eyewitnesses and news reports around Fort Worth and I see no reason for assuming it is fabricated.

In the comments on the video, some people drew attention to the fact that there had been transformer explosions around the US in the days around the Fort Worth explosions. SheilaAliens has gathered reports of four here.

There are also reports of transformer explosions in Germany, Brazil and Portugal. It made me wonder if this sort of thing is going on all the time and we simply don't notice it, or whether this is a new phenemenon... or maybe tied to the age of the transformers? Seems odd, anyway. I will add to this post as I find more videos of thesame phenomenon.

Help Domenic Johanssen

2011-05-14T00:36:00.000-07:00

I'm taking the unusual step of posting the same blog to all my blogs, no matter what their subject.

Domenic Johanssen was a happy child of two loving parents. His parents were taking him to India from Sweden where they had been living, when officials boarded the plane and took Domenic away. People who are told the story cannot believe that Domenic was removed from his parents on such flimsy grounds: the Johanssens were planning to home educate (which was legal in Sweden at that time), they hadn't allowed him to have all the vaccinations, and he had two cavities in his baby teeth.

He has been in the care of the Swedish authorities since then, and repeated attempts to get him back have failed. The separation has adversely affected the health of his mother and father, and the photograps of the child now compared to the child then make it obvious that he is far less happy in the care of the authorities than he was at home.

Th Swedish system seems to be a heartless and inhumane system which ignore human bonding and puts the interests of the family last in any decision. I find it absolutely incomprehensible that a state in a civilised country could be allowed to behave like this.

I don't know what can be done. I have written to judges and officials over the past two years. In a place where home educating seems to be considered abuse, it is very very hard to know how to communicate with these people.

Everyone to whom I have told this story have been suspicious that there must have been another, hidden, reason for taking Domenic away from his parents, but that truly isn't the case. If you can think of a way to publicise, or to put pressure on the Swedish authorities, please, please let me know.

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Onward and upwards

2011-05-10T14:13:00.000-07:00

I'm struggling with a few things at the moment, and finding it hard to carry on as usual with work and daily life when my head is in such a strange place.

I have been reading a lot, and thinking a lot. I came across a website which claimed that in 2012 we will all be going to heaven, as God has decided that we need not live and die in the third dimension. Well, there's a lot of 2012 craziness out there -you don't have to look very far to find people predicting the end of the world this year or next, or ascension or a change in the poles or a three and a half days darkness and Armageddon.

What struck me about the webpage I visited, and with many sites with a spiritual slant, is the idea that the world is intrinsically evil, and that everything in spirit is good. If one accepts that this is part of God's Plan, and that being on earth is part of the cycle of life, I can't understand how it can be thought to be evil. There is good and bad and everything in between on earth.

Most especially for those who believe in reincarnation, the experience of being on earth is apparently a critical part of a soul's development. It seems to me that value-judgements about people's behaviour become rather cloudy and difficult to judge in those circumstances. If I am here to learn not to value material things above people, then isn't being robbed of them part of the lesson? In which case maybe that burglar was doing God's work?

It's the sort of stuff that starts to turn your head inside out. It's not wonder I am not sleeping well. I had a reiki attunement last weekend, but I have been feeling iller and more tired over the past week than for a long time. Hopefully it is just the healing crisis that was mentioned in the training, and not, say, something serious...

An Indigo child who remembers everything

2011-05-07T14:54:00.000-07:00

FBI files reveal "alien craft" incident is real

2011-04-10T13:14:00.000-07:00

Newly-released FBI files reveal official government memoranda which mention the recovery of bodies and craft. So far, only the Sun and the Daily Mail seem to have picked up on the story in the UK. The Daily Mail link provides a link to the FBI vault.

I'm intrigued to find that it is possible, after all this time, that there may have been a cover-up which concealed the finding of disks and their occupants. I wonder what else awaits in the FBI files.

Meanwhile, someone has compiled a video of all the most recent UFO and aerial pheomena from the mainstream news reports.

Conspiracies, Comets and CMEs

2011-04-06T05:15:00.000-07:00

I have always been interested in mysteries, as long as I can remember. Everything from unsolved crimes to apparently supernatural events, from historical mysteries, to the mysteries of life. I've always had an open mind - and when I say open, I mean REALLY open. Not the scientific sort of open mind, which discounts anything that doesn't seem rational before it starts an investigation.

It seems very strange to me, than in an era where quantum physics appears to tell us that something may be where it appears to be, but it may be in several other places too... when the Newtonian laws of physics do not appear to apply to the contents of an atom... and when there is so little known about the dark matter which comprises a large part of the universe, scientists can be so wedded to the idea that there is a version of reality about which they can be sure. They claim to have an open mind, but it soon becomes obvious, once anyone challenges the status quo, that this isn't true. In science, as in most other walks of life, there is a strong aversion to risk or to change, and people will vilify someone who breaks rank and tries to establish a new path. The man who first suggested that BSE could be transmitted from cow to calf was utterly rubbished for a long time, and shut out as a pariah by other scientists, until what he said was demonstrated to be true.

Anyway... I find myself in a middle ground between mainstream scientists on the one side, who appear to me to have only partially open minds until you beat them around the head with incontrovertible evidence, and what I can only describe as the crazies on the other side... people who need no evidence to believe the most outrageous of things, particularly if they involve the government or an elite group of citizens, and a conspiracy.

What I have learned in half a century, is that an open mind may lead you astray, just as a closed one can. Being open to the idea that UFOs may be visitors from other planets or other solar systems, incorporates a whole encyclopaedia of other stuff, according to the crazy contingent. Stuff you don't have to bother about if you are determined not to accept the possibility that advanced life exists in other places in the universe.

On the other hand, sometimes, scientific method will not explain something. Recently the best example I have seen is Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). This is a system of tapping on acupuncture points. No-one who has observed the effects on war veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, some of whom have been ill for decades, could claim that it wasn't stunningly effective in treating the symptoms. If you disbelieve me, watch this video.

The trouble is, I can see that it may be effective, but no one understands why. For a scientist, it seems that this is the equivalent of it not working at all. They want to understand the mechanism at work, in order to agree that it is effective. And they cannot. Nor can I, but I can look at the effects of it upon the people who have tried it, and take a decision about whether it is effective.

The crazy contingent see conspiracies everywhere. People who are respected in their community will speak of a government conspiracy to conceal the existence of UFOs, and to keep us from using their technology for free power, in order to protect the oil market, as though that is a proven and accepted fact. There has always been a certain turn of the century madness, where people have built up to the end of the world, and this effect seems to have been enhanced by the fact that our turn of the century was also the turn of the millennium.

I follow a number of groups who have been predicting the end of the world and the return of Nbiru for about five years... and they're still waiting. There is one group which is convinced that a government-funded project called HAARP (google it) is producing unwanted effects in the environment, including earthquakes. There is another which predicts the end of the world in 2012 according to the Mayan calender and Hopi prophecy, and another group which says that the date is actually 2011.

What they have in common is a distinct lack of trust in government, and a conviction that the powers-that-be are in possession of the facts, and are refusing to share those facts with the general public, for good motives (to avoid panic) or bad (control and power over the masses).

Now I do not discount the fact that I do not think that governments share all that they think and do, and that there are different levels of knowledge in government. I think that to a small extent, that may be necessary. I do not know if it is actually necessary, because I don't have experience of government, and I do not know that the alternative - being completely open about what is done and why - has ever been tried by any government of a large country. But I have a suspicion that covert operations of one sort or another may be a necessary part of both national security and police investigation, and therefore that there is a need for a level of secrecy in government.

That doesn't mean that I think that the powerful governments are conspiring to keep me in the dark in general, however. I have always assumed that most governments are too incompetent to conceal anything of substance from the masses. I don't have the sense that I am being fooled or kept in the dark. Perhaps I am deluded about that, but I find that Americans in particular have a much stronger sense of there being a conspiracy, than people in the UK do. I find it hard to believe, and I haven't seen any evidence that convinces me, that the US government are concealing big stuff.

However... from time to time things surface on the internet which do compel me to look again. Firstly, this film, apparently official film from NASA, shows things which are not immediately explainable. The people who draw attention to them say that Nasa spends a lot of time cleaning up images to remove anomalies, but if they do, why were these released as they were? On the other hand, if these pictures are real, why hasn't NASA commented on what can be seen in them?

In the last week to two items have given me pause. The first is that I began to read things about a newly-discovered comet, Comet Elenin. This was apparently discovered by a Russian astronomer, in December 2010. It seems strange that it should be discovered so late, but then looking for a comet, particularly one which is hurtling directly towards the centre of the solar system, is like looking for a needle in a haystack. It has been estimated that this comet has a orbital period of around 10,000 years, which means that this is the first time in recorded history that is has come close to earth.

Of course, the appearance of this comet, now, has started a lot of speculation about the hopi prophecy that in the end times for the earth, we will see a blue and a red object in the sky. This may be the blue. Some people predict that the return of a planet Nbiru will be the red. The interesting thing is, that some people have calculated that the earth, this comet and the sun were in alignment when the Chilean earthquake happened last year. Someone asked a question on the Nasa website, asking if the alignment around March 11-15 would cause other catastrophes. As you can see, the person answering the question was somewhat scathing about the chances of the comet affecting earth at all. However, youtuber 9Nania predicted that there might be an earthquake or similar disaster, saying that she feared it would occur on March 11, two or three days before the Japan earthquake and tsunami occurred.

There are any number of posts on youtube about Comet Elenin, of varying degrees of craziness. Just like looking at the effects of EFT, I feel that the fact that this alignment apparently occurred at the same time as two very large earthquakes, should give us pause, and lead to some degree of scientific examination. I fear, however, that scientists are already so convinced that no connection can be possible, that they will refuse to look at it as a possibility, and most information about the Comet will be promulgated by the crazy element. There are other alginments due in September and October, and of course, the possibility that there may be other earthquakes and disasters ahead is feeding the speculation on 2012 end of times, or 2011 if the splinter group who believes the date of doom is earlier, are right.

It is claimed in one of the videos about Elenin, that if you key in the location of the comet into google skies, the piece of sky containing the comet comes back blank. I have not tested that for myself. I can't think why it would be true if it is. I don't believe it is a conspiracy to keep the truth from us... but I don't know what it is.

The second event to give me pause, is that someone sent me a link to a soho video of a huge coronal mass ejection, apparently recorded on April 3. According to the buzz on the internet, this image has been pulled from the NASA soho site, they haven't commented on the CME on SpaceWeather.com and there is effectively a news blackout about the CME. This is very strange. I usually rely on SpaceWeather to get information about CMEs. If the images are real, and they look like Soho images, then why should they be pulled from the NASA site, and why didn't SpaceWeather.com report on it?

The government recently set up a special committee to look at how we can protect our power grid from the sort of event that hit Canada in the late 1980s. There is a daily report from youtuber DrKStrong.

The conspiracy theorists predict disasters and mass panic if the government should publicise the event... but I find that hard to believe. On the other hand...well I am keeping my open mind open, and looking for a good and reasonable explanation of this alleged blackout.

In the mean time, the advice from the sites which have been predicting the imminent arrival of Planet X for years, is to stock up on food, things you need for survival, and to put them all in a handy grab bag, like the Japanese. I guess that can't hurt, even if the sort of events they are predicting seem on a cataclysmic scale. Mind you, to collect all that 9Nania recommends, you're going to need a jolly big bag....

Strange bird, fish and animal deaths reported around the world

2011-01-06T08:18:00.000-08:00

There have been a number of reports in the past few days, about bird and fish deaths. First came word from Arkansas that 5000 red wing blackbirds had suddenly fallen to earth, dead. Initial reports from the autopsies diagnosed "trauma" as the cause, with a possibility that fireworks at New Year or storms might have caused the deaths.

This was swiftly followed with reports from Louisiana and Kentucky of similar bird deaths in smaller numbers on subsequent days, and then others from Italy and Sweden.

Although these things have been reported sporadically by the media in the UK, I haven't seen much sign that anyone is gathering together or linking the strange occurrences, although there are a large number of bloggers blaming the internet for any connections being postulated.

Following this, 100,000 drum fish are reported dead in Arkansas, not far from the original bird fall. The odd thing is that nearly all the fish involved are of one type... if this were poison or some environmental disease, you'd expect that different populations might be in the same area and also affected. Now millions of fish are reported dead in Chesapeake Bay and in New Zealand. So... I am going to gather links on this page for all those I can find, dating from end of December 2010 to date.

One theory being put forward for the bird deaths is the possibility that there are changes in the earth's magnetism which have affected birds' sense of which way is up. Another possibility is that the deaths have occurred along geological fault lines and are associated with a possible earthquake or volcanic activity.

Just like the apocalyptic reporting of swine flu in the UK, it is hard to know what is normal and expected every year, and what is out of the ordinary... once you hear about one of these events, you are naturally alert to others, and the journalists must be the same. It is possible these things are happening all the time and we are simply not aware of them because they aren't well reported.

Birds
Beebe, Arkansas: 5000 red-winged blackbirds, December 31/January 1, 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana: 500 birds, January 3, 2011
Western Kentucky: 1000? birds, end December, 2010
Falkoping, Sweden: 100 Jackdaws, January 5, 2011
Italy: turtle doves, unknown number, January 5, 2011
Texas, US: blackbirds 100+, January 4, 2011

Fish
Ozark, Arkansas: 100,000 drum fish, December 30
Chesapeake Bay: 2,000,000 fih, January 2/3, 2011
Coramandel Beach, New Zealand: 1000s of snapper fish, January 4, 2011
Paranagua, Brazil, 100 tons of fish, January 3, 2011

Crustacea
Thanet, Kent: 40,000 crabs, End December/Beginning January 2011 (probably killed by the cold weather, third year there has been a big die off).

Interesting blogs on the Subject

Greg Laden's blog

Edited January 9, 2011 to add: This article suggests weapons testing may be responsible for the bird deaths. I'm not sure I agree - seems unlikely that weapons have been tested simultaneously around the world.

Julian Assange/Raoul Wallenberg

2010-12-15T04:54:00.000-08:00

For some reason when I was reading the account of the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the name Raoul Wallenberg kept intruding on my consciousness. Apart from the link with Sweden occasioned by the court case, I couldn't think of a reason why I would associate Assange with Wallenberg, but when I looked at the pictures of the two people, I could see a distinct similarity.

I have been convinced of reincarnation as a possibility for some time, and websites like return of the revolutionaries are intriguing., particularly when someone who resembles an earlier person has memories of a previous life.

I don't claim any psychic powers to deduce whether reincarnation is a fact, but it worries me that Wallenberg was a person who fought for the freedom of people who were being oppressed by the Nazis, and was disappeared, possibly by the Russians, although they have always denied this.

Assange is fighting for freedom of information. I hope he is well protected from being disappeared, especially in light of the extremely violent comments made by various American politicians calling for his assassination.

A strange thing...

2010-11-21T10:58:00.000-08:00

I promised my mother I would make lunch today. We'd decided not to have a traditional roast dinner, as I don't much like them and I'm not good at cooking them. When I went down to the kitchen to cook, my mother was making the Christmas cake, and so I couldn't prepare lunch in the little galley kitchen. I sat at the kitchen table in the adjoining breakfast room, to peel the potatoes and chop onions.

We were chatting away, when one of the plastic storage jars in the cupboard behind me shot out of the cupboard like a bullet from a gun and hit the floor 12 feet away, in the galley kitchen. I was so stunned I just sat there for a moment.

I have tried to find a logical and scientific explanation, but have so far failed. The contents of the storage jar were not under pressure, it was about a tablespoon of plain flour. In any case, the lid didn't come off, it was still sealed.

My mother does live on a busy road which gets a lot of traffic, including lorries and buses, but I don't see how this could have pushed the jar out of the cupboard. If the rattling from the road had dislodged the jar, I feel sure it would have just fallen off, not shot across the room. Other things in the cupboard, including some teetering stacks of tins and packets were not dislodged.

It's certainly a bit odd.

Alien ship on the Moon?

2010-10-08T01:24:00.000-07:00

This story has been attracting some attention, and it's quite intriguing. While the testimony seems completely unbelievable, there is no doubt that there is something odd showing up on images which come from Apollo 15. The images can be independently verified, which is what makes it interesting.

It appears that high-resolution images show a large object on the surface of the moon which does not look natural or man-made. Whether, as the person quoted in the article has said, there were covert trips to the moon, and whether the videos provided are real or faked, I have no idea.

I find the idea of covert trips to the moon problematical. Surely the thousands of astronomers and radio hams around the world are unlikely to have missed an American/Soviet spacecraft flying to the moon and back?

For some reason that I do not understand, the US seems to have an obsession with conspiracy theories and secret government. Maybe they are right and we aren't being told important things, but I find it hard to believe the claims that people like David Wilcock make, that the government is in possession of technology that would make the use of fossil fuels obsolete etc.

Apparently sane people say insane things all the time... but conversely, apparently insane people - like David Icke for example - don't always get things wrong.

Some of the people on the comments for this site clim that some other images disprove the photographs, but it seems that those were not so detailed because of the resolution. It's intriguing certainly.

Day before Disclosure

2010-10-06T00:55:00.000-07:00

This film, by Norwegian film maker Terje Toftenes, is now free to watch here. There isn't a lot that's new, but it is quite nicely done, and there are some interesting snaps etc.

I have always been fascinated by the possibility that we have been visited. I don't like the current skepticism which seems to regard even considering this possibility as being hopelessly deluded. I believe that - as in most things - there is a spectrum which ranges from people who are mistaken in what they have seen or believe, through people who have seen something which can't be explained, to people who really are deluded or who are using the interest in Ufology for their own gain.

Unfortunately, the progress in special effects and computer assisted design mean that it becomes ever more difficult to assess whether films are real and accurate depictions of what they purportedly show, or fakes. That there are fakes is undeniable... that there is a possibility that some of them are not fakes is what is interesting.

Just to add to the confusion, I do believe that this subject is not treated scientifically by government or the scientific community. If people dismiss reports, refuse to record them, or suppress them, it is impossible to make a scientific assessment of the evidence. It seems inexplicable to me that some of the more famous cases do not appear in the official record because, even if they turn out to be attributed to weather balloons, satellites, delusion, the fact that the have been reported should lead to a record being created, and often hasn't, even when people involved have reported things which - if true - would be matters of national or even global security.

Problematica: Starchild

2010-08-10T00:47:00.000-07:00

Interesting video about the results of testing of the so-called "starchild" skull. I think it is clear from the composition of the audience that this is not an academic, scientific rendering of the facts around the starchild skull. It is interesting however to wonder what the response will be if the claims made in the video are borne out by reputable scientific investigation of the artefact.

Unusual events relating to fish and animals

2010-08-09T09:28:00.001-07:00

This is where I am going to collected links to items on fish disasters and similar.

December 2009
Thousands of starfish washed up in Norfolk.

August 2010
Like this one in Bolivia.

Spheres

2010-08-08T03:05:00.000-07:00

I have read a number of articles about mystery spheres - everything from enormous stone spheres in Croatia to small spheres in Peru.

This is where I am going to collect links to anything I stumble over on the internet about spheres.

This story is about spheres in South Africa.

Reincarnation

2010-07-08T14:37:00.000-07:00

This is going to be a page of links about Reincarnation stories which appear to have some evidence behind them. I will add links as I find them.

The stories I find most interesting are the ones in which a person not only has a memory of a previous life but also looks like the person they say they remember. It is going to be interesting to see if the children who remember past lives actually look like the person they say that they were.

Reincarnation from World War II
There is an American boy called James, who believes he was a pilot in the second world war, shot down by the Japanese.

Martin Heald memories of Richard Seymour. Part One. Part Two.

Reincarnation from 20th century
Child remembers previous life, other family.

Reincarnation from previous centuries
Four cases from Australia, where the hypnotist takes the women to see the places where they say they lived.

Reincarnation of Paul Gauguin and his wife Mette.

Reincarnation from US Civil War
Jeffrey Keene, a retired firefighter, who believes that he is the reincarnation of General Gordon.

Ian Stevenson's work
Video about reactions to Ian Stevenson's work.

Michael Newton's work
Michael Newton is a hypnotherapist who has come to specialise in past-life regression. His website is here.

Work of Joseph R. Myers
Joseph Myers' page of photographs and possible links was the first place that I came across the idea that a reincarnated person might look like the person they claimed to have been in a previous life. Some of these cases, particularly those involving a husband and wife, are pretty convincing.

Echoes of the past

2010-07-04T15:09:00.000-07:00

I have always had an interest in reincarnation, since I had an experience myself in which I remembered flashes of a life before my life. I am perfectly prepared to accept that many people would consider that a delusion, and be unable to even contemplate the idea of reincarnation.

It's not a subject that is unknown, even for christians, as despite the best efforts of Constantine to eradicate reincarnation from the bible, there are still numerous references to reincarnation there. Jesus identified St John the Baptist as the reincarnation of Elijah, for example.

A few years ago, I encountered the idea that a reincarnated person might look like the person they claim to have memories of being. Intellectually I find this an interesting idea: how would this work exactly? How would the facial and other characteristics of the person magically transfer to someone who wasn't related to them? What was the role of DNA? When do babies become people? All those things, wrapped up into one.

I have stumbled over a number of sites which claim to have found a link between a person and someone else, and often the resemblance is remarkable. What is even more remarkable is that from time to time, someone has provided pictures of a couple of even a group of people, who all seem to resemble people from another time. One such website is return of the revolutionaries, which I have no doubt you will explore if you have an interest in reincarnation, and which you probably would not otherwise.

However, one of the people on that website who caught my eye was Michael Jackson, because the person he is alleged to have been in a past life is relatively obscure. Charles Dassoucy, was known as the Emperor of Entertainment in his time, was friends with Moliere, and a host of other people, and was successful.

I thought it was interesting, but I wasn't much convinced by the argument that Michael Jackson was trying to return to his previous caucasian incarnation with surgery. I just try to keep an open mind, and I wasn't convinced or skeptical, but balanced somewhere in the middle.

Tonight, I saw the "Who do you think you are?" from the US version of the show, featuring Brooke Shields. I thought her ancestry was fascinating, particularly on her father's side. He was born from an Italian family, with connections to the aristocracy. In the course of the programme, Brooke went to Rome, to trace back the origins of her Italian ancestry, only to find that her Italian ancestor actually came from France.

It was the only frustration of the programme: there was obviously a fascinating and involved story about how he came to move from rural France, freeing an Abbott who was a relative, and fleeing around Europe with him, eventually ending up in Rome, but there wasn't the time within the hour of the programme to flesh out that story.

Brooke visited the small house where the parents of her ancestor lived, and then set off again to research her Royal connection, through Christine Marie, who was born in the Louvre, the daughter of Henri IV of France.

At the end of the programme, I googled Brooke Shields, in case there was additional information that wasn't on the programme, and saw that she had been great friends with Michael Jackson. I thought for a moment that it was an odd coincidence that Michael Jackson should have supposedly been French in a previous life, and Brooke Shields should have French Ancestry.

Then I looked up Charles Dassoucy in Wikipedia, and discovered that one of his patrons had been Christine Marie, Brooke's ancestor. I thought that was an interesting coincidence.

I was intrigued, and thought I would look up the people around Charles Dassoucy and see if I could recognise someone as beautiful as Brooke Shields... I didn't think she would be too difficult to spot.

The obvious first person to look at was Moliere, whose picture you can see here.

Hold on a moment... doesn't he look amazingly like Andre Agassi, first husband of Brook Shields?

I looked for a picture of Christine Marie, Madame Royale, to see if Brooke Shields resembled her at all.

I couldn't see any strong resemblance between Brooke and her ancestress, but when I looked at Steffi Graf, second wife of Andre Agassi... well, call me deluded, but I do think that there is a resemblance.

I've searched for a beautiful contemporary who might resemble Brooke, but haven't found one yet.... I'm entranced by the idea, and how reincarnation might work, particularly in the case of groups of people.

Links to indigo children

2010-06-16T23:21:00.000-07:00

This page is designed to be a continually updated list of indigo children. I'm not sure I understand what is meant by indigo children, actually, so this is a selection of links to pages about unusual children in general.

This is a Russian boy who claims to have lived on Mars.

This is an American girl who is a genius for painting and poetry. I must admit I assumed she must have been brought up in a fundamentalist faily, but it appears that this is not true.

A science of reincarnation?

2010-06-11T06:35:00.000-07:00

It's an open secret that I consider it possible that reincarnation may be a fact, which is something I have written about before.

Today, during a surf around the outer reaches of the internet, I found a page which purports to link a group of revolutionaries from the American revolution, with people living and connected today.What I find particularly interesting is that the website includes an idea that, if scientists can suspend their disbelief long enough, a scientific investigation into reincarnation might be possible, comparing DNA from people purported to be reincarnated, to see if there is something in the DNA to link a reincarnated person with their previous incarnation.

I find it an intriguing idea. Conventional wisdom on genetics and heredity suggests that we inherit our eye colour and many other traits from our genetic parents. If our facial appearance is roughly the same from incarnation to incarnation, and the two incarnations are not related, how might that work? Can you even consider it as a possibility without being ridiculed as a scientist?

It is certainly striking that often when one member of a couple looks similar to an historical figure, their partner in this life looks very like the partner in the other life. The most famous example of this is Vladimir Putin, wife and dog, and the famous painting of the Marriage of Arnolfini... I was going to put a link to one of the many pages showing the resemblance of all three to the painting, but there are too many crazy and potentially damaging pages out there... I will let you find it for yourself.

I find it fascinating as a mental exercise to consider how this might work in practice... what would the mechanism be? According to the man who wrote the above-linked website, people can vary in sex, religion and colour between incarnations, and a proof that reincarnation is real would mean an end to racism, and end to nationalism and an end to a lot of prejudice between people of different religions. I'm not sure he's right, but it's a fascinating suggestion.

To thine own self be true

2010-05-29T00:36:00.000-07:00

I stumbled upon this page, and this quote from Thomas L. Masson: "Be Yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people".

On the surface it appears to be funny and true. But underneath, it isn't. I believe that people are basically good, kind, honest and courageous. I believe that each of us carries a spark of God, or good if you don't find references to God comfortable.

As a Quaker I believe that if we are still, and listen to that inner guide, we will find our true selves, the person we are meant to be. I believe we are all unique and that we do all have our own paths to follow. We have freedom to change that, to become something different. But inside there is always the person we are meant to be.

Everyone and anyone can ignore the inner guide. Whether you are aware of it, or unaware of it, it is there. We cover it up with concerns about the trivia in our lives... when we are selfish or hurtful or greedy you can be sure that we are stopping our ears to the promptings of our inner guide.

Being still and quiet and listening is all it takes to discover it for yourself. I believe that trying to find harmony between the person you are and the world thinks you are, and the person you are meant to be, is the way to happiness. And that's what being yourself means to me.

So even if you have been selfish or violent or greedy until now, trying to be the person you really are inside, the good and the true, is still good advice.

The full quotation from William Shakespeare reads: "To thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."

Do you think that when you exhibit negative parts of your character to other people that this is the real you? Does anybody? I don't think so. I believe it is what Jesus means when he says "Love they neighbour as thyself". Many people think it has the one meaning, that you should love other people and treat them the way you would like to be treated, and it does carry that meaning for some people. But much more important, much more relevant to many people is the idea that they should learn to love themselves, and it then follows that to be loved one has to be lovable, and to do the things that allow us to love ourselves.

It is easy to see that if we are behaving selfishly, violently, greedily, we may obtain what we seem to be after, but how do we feel, inside? Better, pleased with ourselves? I think not... generally we feel worse about ourselves when we behave badly.

Listening to that inner guide teaches without words, without preaching, without sermons. Try it. Do something nice for somebody else, and see how good it feels.

Drumstick pencils

2010-04-06T00:50:00.000-07:00

I decided to revive Miss Pendragon's Miscellany as a place to file all those things I trip over while surfing.

This morning I was looking to see if I could find anything like these tumblers, which my sister liked very much when she saw them. That whole website is stuffed full of amazing stuff...but you need to be pretty well off to consider shopping there.

In searching for those I found these, and then on the same site, these drumstick pencils. I think they combine everything I am looking for in a gift for a man: they're practical, inexpensive, and have a touch of whimsy which indicates you think they are more than averagely interesting... the sort of person who doesn't simply write things with a pencil, which would be a boring sort of gift, but who may burst into song or percussive music at any moment . Potentially, a rock star.

It is quite a lot to pay for a pair of pencils, £4.95....

Minority Report computer lives!

2009-02-10T12:25:00.000-08:00

I'm not a person who really cares about what sort of car/computer/gadgets I have. If it does the needful, then I am not someone who minds about how it looks or how shiny. But... this page includes a video of a multi-screen computer that allows the sort of manipulation shown in Minority Report, and it is amazing.

Printable freebies

2009-02-02T07:23:00.000-08:00

I have had a newsletter from the Lisa Vollrath site for Altered Book work - and a lot more - offering free printables in return for links. It seems the least I can do! This is the link.

I love her sites, and her work... it has made me determined to turn some of my unwanted books into altered books.

Paradise Lost

2009-01-25T10:31:00.000-08:00

You may not know that I am a big fan of Anton Lesser, whose voice in the title role of Falco on BBC Radio 7 entranced and entrapped me. I can honestly say that I would enjoy listening to him reciting the London telephone directory (if such a thing exists any more) or endless shipping forecasts or something written in a language I neither speak or understand.

It was in that spirit that I downloaded a free lecture from John Carey (halfway down the page for Paradise Lost there's a link for the free download from Naxos books) on the poetry of Milton, because it featured live readings by Anton Lesser. I didn't expect to enjoy or understand the lecture, as I have only vague knowledge of Milton and do not know his work at all well. I suppose I should confess I had another - very slight - reason for having an interest in the content. The Quaker meeting I (infrequently, currently) attend recently celebrated its 350th anniversary and I discovered in my researches about its history that Thomas Ellwood, who prepared the accounts in a fantastically beautiful flowing hand for the first purpose-built meeting house in Uxbridge in 1693, was also Milton's amanuensis, needed as Milton's sight failed.

I had read Thomas Ellwood's journal, in which he takes the credit for the subject of Paradise Regained, and emulates his master in poetic form. I like him, and am interested in him and his time.

Being too sleepy to get down to work (the dog having kept me awake overnight, asking to go out) I decided to listen this morning to the free lecture I had downloaded some days ago, and I was surprised to find myself not only enjoying the accomplished and intelligent readings from Anton Lesser, but also the talk about the poetry by John Carey. I was intrigued that I knew so little about Milton's poetry, and that I hadn't realised how accessible it was - or seemed - with the readings and explanation. Some of it was so beautiful. The reading does make all the difference to that: I have always said that it makes an immense difference if the person doing the reading really understands and loves the words that they are saying. Even though the content remains the same in terms of the words, if Shakespeare or Milton are read by people who do not understand them, they will be gibberish, and convey very little.

Anton Lesser's reading is gentle and so full of emotion and understanding, that the sense of the words comes over even when sometimes if you stop and think about the individual words it is quite difficult to penetrate the meanings. And John Carey had chosen extremely well. The words do sing. I have found myself throughout the day returning to listen again.

I liked the fact that I am beginning to feel I know the period that Milton was writing in, having studied it in drawing up the history of my meeting, but I was surprised to learn that Milton thought he was writing new chapters of the bible in writing his works. That hadn't come across in the writings of Thomas Ellwood. Mind you, Ellwood wrote some execrable poetry in imitation of Milton. I like his prose writing very much, but his poetry is just terrible. I would be incapable of telling you why I think Milton's poetry is great and Thomas Ellwood's is not, but I feel that I know both to be true. Thomas Ellwood is an interesting journal writer, and a very human observer of some of the important people who lived during the founding of the Quakers. But no one would call him a great poet. The words of Milton, as read by Anton Lesser, sent my flying off to find the passage in Paradise Lost where Adam made the decision to follow Eve's fall:
.....
How can I live without thee, how forgoe
Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly joyn'd,
To live again in these wilde Woods forlorn? [ 910 ]
Should God create another Eve, and I
Another Rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no no, I feel
The Link of Nature draw me: Flesh of Flesh,
Bone of my Bone thou art, and from thy State [ 915 ]
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe....

As soon as I can afford them, I will buy the whole reading of Paradise Lost... for now repetitive listening to the lecture will have to suffice.

Altered books

2009-01-24T04:30:00.000-08:00

I am an absolute bibliophile, and so the idea of trashing books is something I find quite difficult, but I have been seeing more and more beautiful examples of altered books, and I thought that it would make a fantastic project for a home education group - or even a collaboration between home education groups. Especially if it uses a book which would otherwise be thrown away. It could be a great project for outgrown board books - a lot of artists have started with one of those.

The first site I found was this one, which includes some tutorials on how to go about preparing books, and which taught me that sewn bindings are more durable than glued ones - and how to distinguish the two.

Most people choose a book they dislike, or a jumble sale buy. The school nearby often throws a large quantity of books into a skip after jumble sales - they would be perfect rescues for this sort of project. Mostly they remove pages to make room for sticking things into the pages that remain, but some people do very complex things, adding drawers or envelopes or recesses for items to be kept inside the book. I think that if you have some skill with this art form, you could make marvellous mementoes of holidays or events, bringing together objects, tickets, photographs into one object that can be kept.

Some people work on books as a group. I have seen projects where each member of a group of four people decides on a season and then the books are circulated, so that each of the group of our artists contributes pages to each of the books in the set.

Sometimes a broad subject like peace, or women or christmas is chosen and everyone in the group starts a book and they are swapped every month to enable everyone in the project to contribute pages to all the books.

I think it would work very well in a home education group, or even with a group of home education groups, all swapping books and contributing towards them.

There are other techniques for altering books which do not involve adding things. I'd already seen Brian Dettmer's work featured on Boingboing. He must choose his books very carefully and then makes a work of art by cutting away parts of the pages to make something quite wonderful which is a book and...not a book.

Some people make a new book before they start, although how you get up the courage to write or stick anything to beautiful pages like these, I am not sure.

you can find a lot more by googling "altered books". Once you know about it, you see them everywhere.

Giles Ungpakorn protest

2009-01-23T08:19:00.000-08:00

Giles Ungpakorn is a Professor at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, who has written a book about the military coup in Thailand, which has come to the attention of the authorities. Giles, who has joint UK and Thai nationality has been charged with lese majeste, and his family are fearful that he may be prosecuted and imprisoned for his critical comments about the political situation in Thailand.

You can help to draw attention to his case by writing a letter as quickly as possible to:
The Ambassador
Royal Thai Embassy
29-30 Queen’s Gate
London SW7 5JB

(letter to start Dear Ambassador,)

***
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva,
Government House,
Thanon Nakornpratom Dusit,
Bangkok 10300 ,
Thailand

(Letter to start Dear Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva,)

**********

Dear ,
I am writing to express my dismay at the news that Ajarn Giles Ji Ungpakorn has been summonsed by the Thai Police Special Branch to answer a charge of Lèse Majesté.

I understand that Giles's work includes analysis of the political process and recently history of Thailand, and that it may be this which has brought him to the attention of the authorities.

It seems to me that all countries need to look critically at their history in order to learn from it and to move forward towards a future in which the best of the past and the best of the future can be joined together. I hope that in these fast-moving times, when things are rapidly changing, Thailand can allow academics to participate in this process without fear of prosecution.

Being free to look at the important events in a country is obviously an important part of the job of a lecturer in political science. I would ask you to please drop the charges against the Professor.

Yours faithfully

1911 census

2009-01-13T04:53:00.000-08:00

The 1911 census is released today, three years ahead of the normal 100 year embargo, which I have blogged about on my family history blog.

I have an uncomfortable feeling about the way in which government takes public data and makes us pay to access it. Ihave an even more uncomfortable feeling about the way in which they are quick to claim copyright on data, even data which was originated by other people and then donated to the national archives - which may be a copy and not the original document.

They have in the past few years sold access to the census returns to other commercial companies... so the information from your ancestors suddenly becomes an asset which you aren't allowed to reproduce or give to anyone else.

I have a similar sense of unease about national galleries which refuse to let you photograph national assets. It just seems wrong for them to be charging people simply to photograph artwrks - and claiming copyright in the photographs of things which are out of copyright. I hope that more and more follow the model of allowing free access to works which should be in the public domain.

Writing tips from Cory Doctorow

2009-01-08T01:26:00.000-08:00

Brilliant article from Cory Doctorow about writing in the age of distraction. Every word is pure gold, savour it!

I am a serial offender in this respect: I used to insist on the right environment long before the internet was around to distract. Thus I would find myself having to wash up before I sarted to write because the washing up would distract me; doing the washing, dusting, hoovering before I could start even though I didn't worry about those things being undone when I wasn't writing.

I'd make tea, get food, warm up or cool down the house... it could easily take three or four hours to get everything set up, and then the slightest thing - a phone call, a noise from outside, the washing finishing - would distract me.

I realise now it is the discipline of doing a small amount every day that I should be focussing on, and hope to make myself do it.

Happy New Year!

Floating designs for climate refugees

2008-12-13T22:29:00.001-08:00

Stumbled upon a site for a green architect, trying to design buildings that clean the atmosphere rather than polluting it, and saw this fascinating design for a floating city for climate refugees. If the predicted global rise in sea levels takes place, some places (Maldives for example) will disappear. If they still "own" the territory, then this may be a workable solution, who knows?

I heard Rachel Brett from the Quaker United Nations Office talk about the new discussions which are taking place about climate refugees and how this will differ from refugees displaced by war or famine. It hadn't ocurred to me that there might be a difference until she pointed out that the choices for someone whose homeland has literally disappeared (or become completely inhospitable to human life) would be somewhat different from those driven out of their homes for some other reason.

Remembering and Forgetting... a 21st century poem

2008-11-14T02:09:00.000-08:00

A poppy for a broken man
A butterfly for a child-shaped hole
A pink ribbon where my friend once was
and rosemary for remembrance.

A kiss for any broken skin
A hug for every child in need
A phone call for a friend who lives
and love can heal the world.
November 14, 2008

Obama the Builder

2008-11-04T22:10:00.000-08:00

Well, every blogger in the Universe will be blogging today about the American Presidential elections. I am afraid that I didn't stay the course, fell asleep about 2am, leaving my children following the wall-to-wall election coverage on tv. "Do the Americans watch coverage of our elections?" asked my daughter. Er, no.

I was still wondering whether Americans would be able to elect a black president as I fell asleep... I wondered whether the huge turnout for the elections indicated a late surge for Obama or a mobilization of those trying to prevent him from reaching the White House... maybe it was both.

To be honest I find it amazing that Americans will wait in queues for three or four hours in order to vote. If we had to do that here, I think there would be riots... I have never waited at all. It's strange to me that Americans can be so demanding and complaining in some respects and yet so accepting in others.

In the UK schools and community centres are turned into voting stations, and the system works to ensure that if you want to vote, you can, with a minimum of queuing or difficulty. I don't really understand why it is otherwise in the US. The other thing I found very surprising was a picture of people reading a four-page guide to voting which seemed amazingly complex. I know they don't just vote for president in the elections, but a four page guide seems... well, like it might be an obstacle to voting. And likely to mitigate against people with an aversion to paperwork successfully voting.

A turnout approaching 80 per cent in some area and a landslide victory seems to indicate that the American people were determined to have a change no matter what difficulties lay in their way... and so when I woke this morning it was to Obama making a speech of acceptance. My brother has been on duty all night at television centre in the UK. He hates night shifts, has to rely on a large dose of caffeine to help him through. He wonders if the Americans realise they have elected not Joe the plumber, but Bob the Builder for president. Can we do it? Yes, we can!

My son was the only one in the household who managed to stay the course and watch the coverage throughout. He is completely uninterested in UK politics, and yet has been very interested in the US election. That seems to have been universal here... I think people have come to see how much US actions have hurt the UK in the past eight years, and to realise that although most Americans have little interest in UK politics (or even knowing where the UK is, in many cases) they need to take notice of what the Americans do, because it will bite us in the pocket among other places if we don't.

I don't know what the future will hold. I hope that Obama will close down Guantanamo Bay, and will reverse the policies which have led to the homeland security oppression in the US. I hope that he succeeds in bringing peace and prosperity to the US, not simply because of the knock-on effects to the UK if the US experiences a prolonged recession, but because I think the ideals of America worth a damn... freedom and democracy and human rights... have been eroded over the past eight years and it is in the interests of everyone on the planet for that to be reversed.

Only connect

2008-10-26T23:34:00.000-07:00

Although of course I knew from a very young age that a baby has two parents, it wasn't until I was nearly middle aged that I understood the implications of what I knew. Family history taught me that my number of direct ancestors doubled as I went back each generation: two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great grandparents. It doesn't take a genius to work out the maths.

The working forward of that thought didn't come until later. I have twice as many ancestors as my mother...she had twice as many as my grandmother...who had twice as many as her mother. My children have twice as many as me. Their children will have twice as many as them.

The trouble is, that much like the old story of the mathematician's payment, where a ruler was asked to pay one grain of rice, or wheat (depending upon who tells the story) on the first square of a chessboard, and two grains on the second, doubling up with each square, you soon get into the realms where you feel as though someone is slowly tryng to turn your brain inside out.

Three greats: 32; four:64; five:128; six:256; and so on: 512; 1024; 2048; 4096; 8192; 16, 384; 32, 768; 65,536; 131,072. 17 generations back and you have one hundred thousand ancestors, and the numbers seem unimaginably huge. But actually, allowing for 30 years a generation on average, seventeen generations only takes you back to about 1500... and the beginning of a problem. The numbers appear to accelerate enormously quickly over the next few generations: 18 is 262, 144. 19 generations back comes to 524,288; and 20 comes to over a million... 1,048,576. So your total ancestry going back to around 1380, would be around a million people. Hold...on...though.

In 1377 the adult population (over 15 years of age) were subject to a poll tax, and so we have good records about the number of people in England at that time. There were 1,355,201. So go back another generation... to around 1350... you will have 2,097,152 ancestors in theory. Which is many more than the adult population of England at the time.

Even allowing for the ravages of the Black Death, which removed about a third of the population of London in the course of 1348-50, there are still too many ancestors for the number of adults.

Now it is already obvious from my own family that the same people turn up in the family tree over and over again. If cousins marry, then the lines of family ancestry will join together with the same couple appearing as grandparents on both sides of the family. This has to account for the conundrum that although you have in theory twice as many ancestors each time you go back a generation, the maths doesn't add up once you are in the 14th century.

My feeling is that anyone with an English ancestry is probably related in some unknown way to any other person with an English ancestry. We are all cousins, and family. Probably that's true of all people, everywhere, because once you go back a few more generations, you need the adult population of the world to account for all the ancestors.

I enjoy family history because it moves me in a way that political history never could. Initially I thought it was the thrill of finding out about my own ancestors... but it isn't, because I feel every bit as thrilled about researching other people's families. I think it is simply that history on a personal level; the history of people, their story, is touching because you can always project yourself into the person's place, and understand their lives in a much more empathetic way than the wars and machinations of government.

Family history research has convinced me that we are all connected, and that time is much shorter than we think. Where once I would have thought of 14th century England as a place far removed from my daily life, and the people as being a long way from the people of today, I see that there are no real differences: the people living then were not much different from the people living today. 500 years, in the context of the history of the world, is hardly an intake of breath, it is no time at all.

It always amuses me when I hear someone from a documented ancient lineage say: of course my family goes back to the time of the conqueror.... Yes, so does my family - and your family - and the next person's family. By dint of us being in existence, we all have ancestors who were alive back then, and the chances are, they were related. In fact the population of England must have been fairly static for a few centuries, because there are estimated to have been about 1,250,000 to 2,000,000 people around the time of the Domesday survey.

So next time you see a picture in a gallery of an illustrious 15th century merchant, or a peasant in the fields, don't look upon them as a stranger. The likelihood is, if you have English ancestry, that they are your grandfather or grandmother - or aunt or uncle, cousin or sister. We are all related, and all connected, and we should celebrate that.

Kiva: microfinancing entrepreneurs

2008-10-26T04:27:00.000-07:00

I had one of those web and virtual world connections-leading-to-a-connection things we all experience. Last night I went to the perfomance of the Wall in Second Life, and then to the after-show party. While there, I saw an avatar dressed in some great clothes, and followed the creator to her shop, To The Nines.

Looking for information about the creator, I found the LeeZu Baxter blog, on which she mentions that LZB makes a donation to Kiva. As I hadn't heard of Kiva, I followed the link and found a wonderful thing.

Kiva is a website which matches people who have money to lend with entrepreneurs who need microloans to enable them to grow their business. There are fantastic stories on the website which make the loans personal, show what a wonderful thing it is. Visit it!

Ecological living

2008-10-12T02:27:00.000-07:00

My son introduced me to stumble upon, and as I am currently suffering from back pain, I have spent a little time this morning stumbling over a variety of wonderful things. Go, sign up!

Among them is the story of this house in west Wales, built for £3000 in a farmer's field, with natural materials. I am sure that the article written by the mother of the family glosses over some of the difficult times which they must have experienced in the building of the project, but the result is just gorgeous, and I WANT it.

I have always loved buildings which have an organic shape... I like the buildings designed by Hundertwasser, by Rudolph Steiner and Gaudi. I think people respond to organic buildings and love them... which means the market isn't effective in producing what people want to buy, as new buildings are generally angular and ugly, not curved and beautiful.

The RAF captain, but not as we know it

2008-10-01T01:05:00.000-07:00

I've always liked Alexander Armstrong, but I particularly like his Armstrong and Miller sketch show, and of that I REALLY like the RAF sketches.

For those who haven't seen them, these feature two archetypal RAF pilots, with authentic backgrounds, who happen to talk the street-talk of contemporary teenagers. The juxtaposition of the black and white visuals and the audio has a very comic effect. This is an official trailer from the BBC, but there are a lot of these sketches on youtube.

St Nicholas, Lower Oddington, Gloucestershire

2008-09-30T00:13:00.000-07:00

Looking towards the side gate across the churchyard at St Nicholas

Hannah Lardner's gravestone

Leah Lardner's gravestone.

Gravestones in the churchyard

More gravestones

...and still more gravestones

Gravestone for Amy Rose, 1890

I spent a very pleasant weekend with my aunt and uncle in Gloucestershire, to celebrate my recent birthday. In the course of my stay, we visited the Church of St Nicholas in Lower Oddington. It seemed to be semi-abandoned, which is a shame, as it has some very unusual wall paintings, which may be being affected by the damp.

Always mindful of the fact that I may be walking where other family historians would love to walk, I took a few pictures around the church and the churchyard, which may be of interest. Feel free to use these for your family history... please let me know if you find them useful!

Gravestone for Ann Harbert.

In the churchyard there are some very clear gravestones. I honestly wish I had had time to record all of them, but even as it was, my family were waiting for me in the car.

More Lardner gravestones in the churchyard.

Campin gravestone, St Nicholas churchyard.

Memorial for the Gardner children. As far as I can work out, this says the following:
John Gardner ? ?
Children
Anne dyed September ye 4 etaet 2 y
John dyed Septemberye 14 etaet 7 y 1697
Edward? dyed September ye 16 Etaet 19 y
Margery Gardner Dyed April ye 3 etaet ?9? y 1696
grandmother to these children

Just before this place wee lie in
hope of a joyful resurrection

John Gardener, father
of these children
Dyed November the s? 1704
etaet 60 years

Detail of the Gardner memorial

Entrance to the porch

Next to the door is a socket for a stick, and gradated lines, a wall sundial for telling the time, when the sun was bright enough

Inside the church is the doom painting, a coat of arms, and a damp smell. I had no idea the church and the paintings were so significant, until I came back and read this page.

My aunt Hilary, uncle Geoff and mother Diana, looking at the wall paintings inside the church

Coat of arms for William IV, one of only two known instances, apparently, and painted over earlier work.

Hilary and Diana look at the memorial for Charlotte Rice, who died after having 10 children.

Memorial for Charlotte Rice
Light streaming through a side window

We didn't know what these strange groves and hollows were for, in the porch of the church. They look like they may be for liquid, but what, and why? Randi tells me in a comment that these are marks where people have sharpened swords and arrows. I had forgotten that archery practice was compulsory for every man over seven for many years. I had also forgotten that people very often used the porch of the church more than any other part, for weddings, will readings, business and trading.

Side window and side door from the other side of the wall

Townsend gravestone
Yew in the churchyard, one of many

Infinite variety

2008-09-23T08:38:00.000-07:00

I love the new Dr Marten's t-shirt contest. I think this is a well-designed way of using the internet to advertise without making people want to hurl their computer out the window. i just think it is amazing that you give people the same tools and the same starting point and they make such different things.

I'm addicted to designing them, I love the tools they have provided. I've done a few... feel free to go and vote for them. OK, what I mean is go there and vote for the ones you like.

Oh dear... people are voting negatively against designs. I can't help feeling that there's some big gaming going on. The 4th rated boot now has 32 positives and 26 negatives. I know one man's meat is another man's poison, but one of my designs has attracted two positives and two negatives... my entries in the last contest didn't attract any negatives at all over the whole course of the contest. I'd have to feel pretty strongly to vote anything but positively for any design. I've voted positively for the ones I like, without worrying about whether they are above or below me... I'd never do anything else.

Dead but not gone....

2008-09-18T23:13:00.001-07:00

OK, so I can't quite remember what I was looking for, when I found a post which is called "top 10 incorruptible corpses". I was transfixed by it. And the comments after it.

The news that the Catholic Church has a policy of digging up the corpses of those who have been recommended for sainthood, 50 years after their deaths, was a bit macabre. Imagine having that as a job! "Oh yes, I was chief exhumator for the Catholic Church for many years...."

Quite apart from the fact that one or two of the incorruptibles seem to be fairly corrupt - well blackened, at the very least - it appears that some may have been vaccuum-packed. And covered in wax. Or enhanced in some way. Still, the oddity is just what we look for here. St Silvan (above) is in pretty good shape for 1600 years, although it is interesting that he is canonized despite the fact that he was killed for his faith is the only thing anyone knows about him. Oh and that his body does seem remarkably preserved. I'm wondering what other weird top 10s I may find if I put my mind to it.

Machinarium

2008-09-16T23:59:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, I discovered Samorost. My daughter adored it, and played it a lot.

Now it seems that the Amanita team which brough us Samorost and Samorost2 is working on a full length adventure game, Machinarium. You can see screenshots and a couple of previews here.

Arachnophilia

2008-09-08T13:00:00.000-07:00

If you don't like spiders... then beware this link. Actually, you probably saw the illustration, screamed and shut the browser. Thanks to BoingBoing for the link.

Cool desktop pet type thing which you can feed and play with. Strangely enchanting as long as you aren't phobic.

Tunng

2008-09-07T15:20:00.000-07:00

My brother pointed me towards a new band he's started listening to, called Tunng. You'll find them here and here and here... and their own website is here.

I've been unable to stop humming the song, and keep going back to play the youtube versions of Bullet. Hope you like it too.

National Portrait Gallery Copyright... the gift that keeps on taking...

2008-08-01T10:46:00.000-07:00

I am currently engaged on collecting together materials for my Quaker meeting's 350th anniversary. As you can imagine, Quaker paintings for the 17th and 18th century are a bit thin on the ground, so I was delighted when I found a picture which is apparently in the National Portrait Gallery, of Benjamin West the celebrated painter, and his father, John West, who was an Uxbridge Quaker at the beginning of the 18th century.

I contacted the National Portrait Gallery to find out about the cost of having a print of the painting and also to ask about permission to reproduce in the leaflet that we will be producing. This is likely to have a short print run, and be handed out to a few people during our open days in September and October.

I really expected that they would tell me that as the artist died in 1814 and the painting was first published in 1779, there was no copyrght payable. Not so, however. Unlike the US where you are unable to claim copyright in a photograph which only includes a work which is out of copyright, the National Portrait Gallery would like to charge me the cost of a black and white print for the painting and then £25.10 including VAT for the coyright fee.

It is possible for me to go to the National Portrait Gallery and take pictures myself, but if I do, they claim copyright on my photographs too! As it outlines on their web page (my italics and emboldening):

Copyright and the National Portrait Gallery
As a National Gallery, we have a public duty, not only to display and conserve the works in our collection, but also to ensure that the works are correctly represented in reproductions and publications of these works. As a result of continuing research, from time to time, adjustments are made in the attributions of both artists and sitters for paintings. It is also extremely important that pictures are represented in their most recent state of restoration. There are, in many other cases, issues for the artists, sitters, donors or lenders of works in the collection, to which, as an institution, we have to be sensitive. For these reasons, we need to control very tightly the circumstances and quality of reproductions from the collection.

In order to do this, we have a very active picture library and licencing department, which loans transparencies for the purpose of reproduction. We also exert strict controls on all photography in the Gallery, which is allowed only on the understanding that copyright rests with the us and that any further reproduction deriving from the resulting photographic materials is subject to our written permission.

The National Portrait Gallery is a strong supporter of free entry - we do not think visitors should have to pay in order to see the collection. Those who may never be able to visit us can still enjoy and learn about the collection through the images published in books, magazines, on the television and the Internet. The Picture Library raises money by licensing such reproduction, which supports the 'free entry' policy and the Gallery's main functions in looking after its paintings, drawings, etchings and sculptures, and in teaching people about the works.

I have written to protest about this abuse of their position. It looks as though I may be able to obtain the images without copyright fee from American museums, and if I can, I shall.

I will await the National Portrait Gallery's response with interest.

Bosnian Pyramids

2008-07-31T14:16:00.000-07:00

Looking at the age of this stuff, I am astonished that I haven't seen it before.

As usual, I came by the story in a roundabout way. I was searching for free stone textures or pictures of stone to make into textures. I found a picture of a huge round ball, which was apparently found in Bosnia after an earthquake. I was struck by how similar they were to the south American balls that no one has ever explained.

Then I saw an article about the finding of a pyramid in Bosnia... and saw the pictures of the mountain looking very even and man made. There's even an Indiana Jones-like archaeologist in charge of the excavatation.

Anyway... dig around and see what you think....ah...I should have checked it out with wikipedia... they disbelieve the pyramids... have seen nothing about the balls,

London Bodies

2008-07-24T08:18:00.000-07:00

Happened across the exhibition in the Wellcome Institute on Euston Road in London about London bodies. Skeletons from two thousand years of the city's history lie laid out in glass cases, with tantalising notes beside them.

An elderly man with evidence of rickets in childhood and another bone bending disease in adulthood. A baby with smallpox. A prostitute with syphilis. A young woman with no obvious disease.

The light is low, the skeletons all look roughly the same at first glance, and only the careful and brief notes with them distinguish one from another. Then, a shock. William Wood, exhumed from his grave from the 19th century. How would I feel if one of my 19th century ancestors had been laid out in this way for all to see?

The Institute is of course a temple to science, and scientific methods. It looks at the human and sees only the flesh and the bones... the things which can be measured, touched, documented and studied. But the remains of human bodies, these skeletons... once they were people, and they loved and lost and lived and died... maybe it should make no difference whether they are a nameless man from a Cluniac monastery from six centuries ago or a beadle from the 19th century, but somehow... it seems disrespectful, wrong, to bring someone out of the grave after so short a time in it. How would I feel, similarly displayed, in 2170?

We looked at them with interest, tried to compare the teeth of the Romans who ground them down, and those of the 18th century Londoners... rotten. I wondered what sort of lives these people represented... mostly hard I guessed, with broken bones badly mended, and signs of vitamin deficiencies.

Mostly I felt uncomfortable in a world which ignores our deeply spiritual nature, which cannot be neatly filed away in a box, in favour of the material witness to our existence, numbered and stored away for future reference.

However, it's very interesting - more detail here.

Keith Barry TED Talk magic

2008-07-24T07:08:00.000-07:00

Indebted to BoingBoing once again for a link to an interesting Ted talk... Keith Barry seems to be from the same school of magicianship as Derren Brown.

I just had to add it to my mysterious miscellany.

Communicating dishonesty

2008-06-25T00:12:00.001-07:00

Clicked on a banner on BoingBoing this morning that purported to be about a marathon chat using the IM system, which apparently raises money for good causes while you chat on Windows Messenger or Windows Live.

There was a character called Parker...here's what he apparently says about himself:

who am I & why am I doing this

My name is Parker, and I’m just a guy with a computer and good intentions. A couple of months ago, I found out about the i’m Initiative.

It’s a Microsoft program that gives to a social cause every time you use Windows Live Messenger or Windows Live Hotmail. I saw an ad that said, “The more you talk, the more we give.” So I thought, if I get a bunch of people talking for 30 days, how much will they give?

I hope you join me. Thanks for checking out the Talkathon!

So I started looking around the page, and it didn't take much intelligence or diligence to find this message at the bottom of the page:
Disclaimer:

If you’re reading this, your BS detector is chirping like a smoke detector with a dicey 9-volt. As you’ve probably guessed, this blog is fictional, but the causes, and the i’m Initiative most certainly are not. The purpose of this blog is to raise awareness of the i’m Initiative and the worthy causes it helps. If we rubbed you the wrong way in the process that wasn’t our intention, so “sorry, our bad.” The alternate was something called an “e-mail blast.” But, believe us that’s not nearly as exciting as it sounds. A herd of well-compensated legal professionals in Redmond, Washington, says we also need you tell you something:

The Parker Whittle character depicted herein is fictitious and his activities are described for illustrative purposes only.

Rubbed me the wrong way in the process?? RUBBED ME THE WRONG WAY IN THE PROCESS??

YES you rubbed me the wrong way in the process. The marathon is supposed to be about communication - people talking to each other. How, pray, am I supposed to communicate with a fictional character? This initiative illustrates all that is wrong about old marketing and why it is going to be really bad for companies if they don't think more carefully about how they communicate with their customers. Pages of negative comments, interspersed with a few people who seem to have traded in their bullshit detector for an ass-licking course (and are they real, or undercover Microsoft employees desperate to put in some positive comments?).

Everything in the who am I and why am I doing this is a lie, fabrication, artificial. Why couldn't they have wheeled out the truth? Presented the marketing man or PR company employee who came up with the idea and pitched it to Microsoft? Or found someone who could sign up to the idea with their own name and personality intact? Of course, it is true that I am terribly suspicious of any person purporting to promote anything nowadays... but this just seems so tacky and so artificial it is really not just annoying but insulting.

Whoever came up with this, didn't think about the impact it would have on the sort of people who signed up to the IM campaign in the first place. People who hope they are contributing to something by signing up. Genuine and caring people... the last people any company should wish to annoy. It's only day 2 and they have already managed to diminish any respect I had for the company... which is at an all time low anyway, as I am struggling with problems caused by Windows Vista fighting with Second Life (vista is winning).

I'm wondering why the site blog has gone blank and what will appear there now.

Update: Even stranger... I have found a real person, maybe, maybe not, called Parker Whittle on myspace. It's beginning to mess with my head all this... is he and his myspace page real or not? If he IS real and not a figment of Microsoft's imagination, is he just being paid to do the Talkathon thing or will he see them in court? I think we should be told....

It seems likely they pulled the blog posts to be able to pull the comments which were pretty negative. I wonder if they will return when they fix up the posts? Any fule know that you don't pull posted posts unless desperate - or sober after an alcohol-fuelled ranting.

Blogs and writers

2008-05-26T05:31:00.000-07:00

Two new blogs came to my attention in the past week. When I say new, I mean new to me, both seem to have been going for some time. It's odd, I was listening the other day to someone on the radio talking about how the photographs we take nowadays are mostly hidden away on desktops and in cameras, rather than being printed and shared with other people. It occured to me a long time ago that there is more and more stuff being written, but less and less of it is worth keeping.

Writing a blog is a special thing, so different from writing a journal which is for yourself and posterity only, there for your surviving family to read and possible burn. A blog is a living document, one in which it is possible to have a dynamic conversation with the readers, and within which you learn who those readers are, what they like and dislike about your blog and your writing.

The trouble is, the dynamic nature of the blog changes you. It has to. I didn't realise this when I first started my first blog, 10 years ago. I was a pioneer, blogging with a handful of other UK writers, when the BBC site was mostly unobtainable because it was more or less the only commercial site in the country, and on a dial up connection, more often timed out than not.

I was ignorant of the differences between journal writing and blogging, thought it was just an online journal. Ot was some time before I realised that a web log whould have details of your travels across the then much smaller web, with active links.

I wrote it initially like my diary, with names and places more or less unchanged. Soon I realised there was a dilemma between being honest and being able to say what I thought about people and places, and being identifiable. It meant that I wasn't just confiding incidents about my day, but the days of my friends and family. That I might hurt or enrage someone inadvertently...or advertently.

I tried to conceal my identity, but that too is fraught with dangers and deceit. If you are a middle manager living in a large town and enjoy the odd drink in the pub and watching your favourite football team at the weekends, I have no doubt you can probably blog away with a John Doe pseudonym and no one would find you out. But the combination of being a Quaker, being a home educator, working in Second Life and doing genealogy is a pretty unique one.

So... I could turn from a Quaker to a Buddhist, write my children out of the picture and mention no work and no genealogy... but then, would that still be me in there? It would cut out huge swathes of my life, and make the blog so much less interesting.

So... I could simply ensure that I don't say anything to embarrass or upset my nearest and dearest, and blog about safe things. Well yeah, that's more or less what I have done, apart from the occasional rant about commercial companies in SL. But it also cuts out that part of my life where I feel upset, angry, happy, frustrated or just plain bored, where I want to confide in my computer or my reader, and can't, in case I upset someone.

I'd have thought the same problems may beset the two blogs I have found this week. Bitchy Jones is a blog by a dominant woman, and is very definitely full of not-safe-for-work content. I don't agree with a lot of what she rants about, but the ranting is interesting and intelligent and fiery and alive. She's sometimes not very elegant, often badly spelled or typed, but it sparks and flashes, and is full of challenging and thought provoking ideas about dominance and submission and society.

The Grace Undressed blog was BoingBoinged which led the writer to withdraw most of the posts for a day while she checked through them with a fine toothpick to see if she had left identifying information which might lead the crazy posse to her doorstep. She is simply a fantastically brilliant writer, and I will be sad if she doesn't find a way out of stripping (her current job) into writing, which she does elegantly, poetically and with an honesty and authenticity that shines through the bleakest of posts. She is a truly gifted writer, don't let the stripper thing hoodwink you into thinking she has nothing to say... she speaks to me, and obviously to many people, because of the wave of people who followed the link from BoingBoing to her blog. I wish I had written the following, which she wrote about a 12-year-old who ran away from home and ended up in a strip club:

"I don't know what that girl had seen or felt or thought or done before she ran away. I know a lot more about what her life was like after. I can say for sure that the club was dark, and that it smelled of damp carpet and upholstery saturated with 15 years-worth of cigarette smoke and sour bodily excretions, and blizted over with a hundred cheap body sprays scented like would-be flowers and would-be musk. I know that the customers sat against the wall heavy-lidded, impassive, impenetrable. I know the other girls walked past her in a sweep of sheer fabric and high-heels and straight-ahead stares."

Then again, her experiences aren't my experiences. I can't write her life any more than she can write mine. But you can see, her writing is exquisite.

Picture of water affected by emotions

2008-05-19T01:07:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I visited the HADO site, the wonderful world of Water. Dr Emoto discovered that the same samples of water behaved very differently when they had different words written on them. Sample of water from different places showed different results too.

There is a video about the preparation of samples of water, pictures of frozen water crystals, but most interestingly, a page of links to articles which show how "love" anbd "demon" written on a bottle of water changes its crystalline form.

I don't know what's going on, or what the research shows, but I find the results fascinating and beautiful.

Amazing interactive disaster map

2008-05-16T23:01:00.000-07:00

In looking for pictures of the lightning storm around the Chaiten volcano in Chile, I discovered this amazing interactive disaster map.

The map does not distinguish between a small accident involving 17 people and a collapsed fairground ride, and a disaster like the China earthquake involving thousands, and shows the most recent events as radiating circles in red or yellow.

If you click onto any of the icons on the map, you will get a page which offers a description of the event, updates, photographs and location details.

I think this is most useful when you want to get updates on events which have slipped from the mainstream media, like the Chaiten Volcano, although that volcano icon, which should be in southern Chile, occasionally appears in the middle of the Indian ocean, for reasons I don't understand.

Doc Martens design competition

2008-05-15T01:46:00.000-07:00

Found a fun advert for the Doc Martens design competition and made a simple but attractive design I hope.

Go vote for me. Or make your own design and let me know so I can see and vote for it!

Oil pulling for keratosis pilaris diary

2008-04-16T22:27:00.000-07:00

I must preface my remarks with the information that I am not medically qualified, and i am not advising anyone to do anything. I am all in favour of people in general taking control and responsibility for their own health.

About 50% of the adult population suffers from keratosis pilaris to some extent. Also know as chickenskin, it looks like permanent goosebumps, sometimes red, sometimes not. There is a whole collection of relation conditions, which all have their own impressive latin name.

Some people will hardly think of this as a condition, and others are severely depressed by it. Of course, the severity and the impact that it makes upon your life are affected by how important your appearance is, where your tolerance for imperfections lies, etc. I have it, as do two of my children, one of whom has it pretty badly.

Anyoldhoo, having found the support forum and message board for KP, I discovered a discussion about oil pulling, which is apparently as well-known technique in various parts of the world. Put simply, it consists of using pure oil, like sunflower, sesame (untoasted) or coconut, and first thing in the morning, taking about a tablespoon, swilling it around the mouth for 20 minutes and then spitting it out.

People on the forum have reported mixed results from the method. Some claim to have seen a reduction in their KP, others report side effects such as a reduction in neck pain, or whitening of the teeth.

Few people seem able to explain how it can help. One postulates that it may remove toxins from the system somehow, because some toxins are fat soluble while others are water soluble... others that it kills bacteria. However, I am always in favour of things that don't harm but may help health, and so I decided to give it a try for myself, and record the results here.

I have often wondered what benefit the Roman got from covering themselves in oil and having a slave scrape it off again. Maybe this is an internal version of that....

Day 1
I do not have sunflower, untoasted sesame oil or coconut oil, and I wondered why people didn't use olive oil. Having tried it this morning I think I know the answer. Extra Virgin cold pressed olive oil has a strong, bitter, flavour, which may be tasty in salad dressings, but is quite hard to deal with when the undiluted oil is swishing around the mouth.

It was quite thick, too, even after I had swished it around for 20 minutes. It seemed to be doing something, because my tongue and gums were tingling quite strongly, although I was pulling it through my teeth quite slowly and gently. Tomorrow I will find a less flavoured oil.

At the end, I spat out the oil, and swilled my mouth out with salt water, which I also spat out. I then brushed my teeth. They do look whiter to me. There was something about the activity which woke me up and made me feel more alert... but maybe that was just the knowledge that I needed to observe the effects.

Day Two
I have sunflower oil, but it isn't cold pressed or organic. It's very easy to use for the oil pulling, hardly any flavour, not thick, but my mouth didn't tingle as it did yesterday with the olive oil. I managed 20 minutes, rinsed and brushed my teeth.

My tongue is less coated, my gums look pinker and my teeth whiter - though that could be expected I suppose, from the unaccustomed workout they are getting first thing. This is making me think about what I put into my mouth during the day... and making me more alert too.

Day Three
Decided to go back to olive oil. Although it tastes much more strongly than the bog standard sunflower, it also seemed to be more... hmmm hard to describe... seemed to have more active ingredient I suppose. Managed only 16 minutes before I started to gag and had to spit it out.

Gums and teeth continue to improve. It certainly wakes you up in the morning! Concentrating on a mouthful of oil is an unusual method for waking I I grant you....

My tongue is definitely a lot less coated, and my skin seems smoother. I do think that simply the attention that you pay to yourself in the course of doing this may be effective... also that the pinkness of the gums may be responsible for the apparent increased whiteness of the teeth.

New soup track

2008-04-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

Soup posted a new track to his Myspace profile. I like it a lot, although it is a bit inconvenient to have to go to MySpace everytime I want to hear it....

Money programme on email

2008-03-07T02:16:00.001-08:00

Today's Money Programme (on BBC2 at 19.00 for UK viewers), is on the subject "Email is ruining my life". The BBC website carries an outline of the programme which includes these top tips from Loughborough University's Dr Tom Jackson.

He has spent the last nine years researching and developing better e-mail practice and has five tips he believes can help you take control of your inbox:

* Invest in a spam filter. You shouldn't open a spam e-mail, because as soon as you open the e-mail up, it notifies the organisation that has sent that, saying this is a valid e-mail address. They know how long you've looked at it, when you looked at it and did you go back to it.
* Target your e-mail. One of most annoying things about e-mail is the sheer number of messages we receive that aren't addressed primarily to us. Does everyone in the cc box really need to be copied in on your words of wisdom? Basically, a cc is there for information purposes only, and you should only use it for that purpose.
* Write more carefully. The reason to write carefully is crystal clear. It just vastly increases the chance that whatever it is you want to get done will get done. If you don't write carefully, there's room for misunderstanding.
* Reduce interruptions. I think it does start to stress people out. Simply by changing the way they have their e-mail application set up, they can start to reduce some of that stress.
* Get training. E-mail seems like common sense. Anyone can write an e-mail. But the issues we're having are that many people are struggling with e-mail communication - and training can really help with that.

New material gets floppy when wet

2008-03-06T23:54:00.000-08:00

So? I hear you say. I can think of a few which get floppy when wet... cardboard, paper etc. This is a new material based on a sea cucumber, which the New Scientist reports has a unique ability to go floppy in water and rigid when dry. Developed by Stuart Rowan and Chris Weder of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, US, the material is a polymer made from two different compounds and shot through with microscopic cellulose fibres. "It's directly inspired by the sea cucumber," Rowan says. It is the precursor of materials which may be able to form soft clothing which will then morph into armour with the addition of a current or some other trigger.

As the developer of the new material says categorically that it was based on the abilities of the sea cucumber to go rigid in defence, which is known as biomimicry, it reminded me of the talk given at TED in which Janine Benyus talked about biomimicry: the ways in which we can learn from nature.

Brian Protheroe

2008-03-01T16:46:00.000-08:00

I bought Brian Protheroe's album Pinball in the Notting Hill Record and Tape Exchange in the 1970s... and loved it. He's recently had a revival of interest and so tracks with accompanying video have been appearing on youtube.

There's the title track from that album Pinball, and others like Fly Now from the Pinball album too.
Although I didn't come across before youtube featured it, CitySong.

I know it's the kiss of death for an artist if I say I like them... but I like Brian Protheroe. His songs are great to sing along with, and to listen in the early hours of the morning.

Lasseg and Soup

2008-03-01T16:14:00.000-08:00

I have written in other places about how I came across the Lasseg music edit "Amateur" on youtube, which lead me to other films by lasseg, such as the cello music by Giovanni Sollima and his other fantastic films.

I am grateful that I found Soup's reply to the Lasseg film Amateur, because it was through that I found his music, which I love.

Losing my (comment) virginity

2008-02-26T03:44:00.000-08:00

One of my two readers left a comment yesterday. It seems the way to coax the lurkers into commenting is to mention them by name! Now I am left wondering if the reason my other reader is slacking in the comments department is because I haven't mentioned him.

I already knew the swiftest way to find out whether anyone reads what you have written is to misspell their name. Thus calling someone Angela Smith instead of Andrea Smith, or Robin Braggs instead of Robin Baggins will elicit comments, or complaints or letters from a solicitor much MUCH faster than claiming that the world is flat, or evolution an illusion.

Open the book of Life

2008-02-26T02:52:00.000-08:00

The BBC reports the opening of the book of life, a vast encyclopedia which aims to record all the species on the planet.

It suggests that the creation of this resource may be as great as the invention of the microscope. Not sure how, exactly, as one was a tool for seeing things never before seen and the other is a record of them. That's not to underplay the vast job of work which is being undertaken. Oh wait. Having visited the first pages, I see... I see. It will be possible to submit pictures and information, seek out information about a species... if you are passionately fond of butterflies or cormorants, you will be able to submit information to the people responsible for curating those pages. Even the pages with no information except a title, already provide links to historical papers and books mentioning the species. Thus a quick search for Green Woodpecker brings up Cambridge University papers, books published in the 19th century, reviews from the British Museum. What a fantastic resource this is!

Those who watch the TED talks from the TED conferences will be aware that one of the inspirations for the EOL project was the TED talk by E.O. Wilson in outlining his TED wish. That was in March 2007. That the first volume is opening now, and that it is being curated all over the world, is a marvellous thing.

New Ops

2008-02-25T01:25:00.000-08:00

Despite not being American and not really caring who becomes president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy writers' of America (SFWA) association, I go here to the blog of John Scalzi on the say-so of Cory Doctorow from BoingBoing. I have to admit that it is very unusual to read such an open and scathing run down of someone's opinion of another, and that even though I know nothing of the people involved, it was gripping.

What really caught my attention, notwithstanding the brilliance of the prose in the piece above, was one of the comments below in which Gianluca at comment 18 suggests that Mr Scalzi, should he give up the Science Fiction could make a living as a professional ranter. Like, that's a *job*?

I so want to be a professional ranter! I wonder what the qualifications are? And who gives out the jobs? If anyone knows, do tell. I have such good qualifications: I have ranted about Second Life, Education, Old People's Homes, charging for Genealogical information....

And another thing... with all the millions of people on the internet, (230 million on laptops alone, figure courtesy of another story on BoingBoing this morning about the laptop for every child campaign - note to campaign, as they keep reminding me, my children are still waiting...) isn't it odd how you bump into the same people over and over? I saw Pete Darby on the comments list for the John Scalzi blog. *waves*

The Machine Stops

2008-02-24T04:52:00.000-08:00

I have posted in other places about the E.M. Forster story, The Machine Stops. I read it as a teenager in the 1970s and felt that it was as far-fetched in 1975 as it had been in 1909.

It's a funny thing... my children greeted Ray Kurzweil's reported predictions of blood cell sized computers with general derision. "Yeah, yeah, yeah... and in 1975 they believed we'd have personal robots by the year 2000, or be flying to work by jetpack!"

I had no trouble believing that we might have a personal R2D2 to do the hoovering or collect the dirty laundry. I had no difficulty accepting that we might have surveillance outposts on the dark side of the moon by 1999. But the idea that we might all be linked by a machine, and have friends around the world we hadn't met, that didn't ring true at all in 1975. It didn't seem likely.

To see how prescient E.M. Forster was, I recommend reading the story. I wonder how dependent we will become on our machines over the next 100 years. I wonder whether books will withstand the march of progress or gradually get filed under obsolete objects and be relegated to museums.

Currently I resist the march of progress coccooned in a library of thousands of volumes, and I love the touch, look and reading of books. I cherish the ones with history, I see them as friends and companions in many cases. But even I would hesitate, with the availability of reference material online, to buy a new encyclopedia or dictionary.

I think writers have a big part to play in considering the shape of the future... and maybe we should heed their warnings.

Bill Bailey

2008-02-24T02:49:00.000-08:00

I can't believe I have got this far into my miscellany without mentioning Bill Bailey, a gifted comedian, actor, personality. He is revered in my house by everyone for different things: his status as one of the team leaders in Never Mind the Buzzcocks, a regular tv show which has a vaguely anarchic musical theme, his appearances in Black Books, and his stand up routines.

He has a wonderfully mad and buggy website, and so I am informed by one of my offspring that if you pause video and then replay it, all the audio you have listened to plays at the same time, but it is worth it. He is someone to be cherished, who appears to be able to be funny without being nasty, erudite without making anyone feel stupid, and entertaining.

The website seems to be a rather odd mish mash of steampunkery and googie, with a lot of games which will be interesting and entertaining the first time you visit but a PITA the second, third, fourth and fifth time. Anyway... enjoy!

"Virtual reality is real reality"

2008-02-22T00:41:00.000-08:00

The BBC website reports that Ray Kurzweil predicts that there will be a merging of virtual reality and reality in the next 25 years.

He says: "In virtual worls we do real romance, real learning, real business. Virtual reality is real reality."

He added "Games are the cutting edge of what is happening - we are going to spend more of our time in virtual reality environments. Fully emergent games is really where we want to go. We will do most of our learning through these massively parallel interactions. Play is how we principally learn and principally create," he said.

I have no idea whether he is right that we will have tiny computers and huge worlds, but I think that the promise of virtual worlds for enjoyable learning is immense.

Bow Street Runner game

2008-02-21T01:01:00.000-08:00

As often is the case, I am indebted to BoingBoing for a link to Channel 4's Bow Street Runner game, released to coincide with a new series.

In the tradition of Myst and Riven exploring games, this is a flash game in which you are a new recruit assigned to a murder case. Your esteem and rank depend upon the way in which you handle the case. Mousing over scenes leads you to clues and information.

I'm impressed by the quality of the game and the graphics and design generally. My only real criticism would be that the wigs and costumes let down the high production values from time to time. Old fashioned wigs would not have the gloss of man made fibres, and the finishing on some of the clothes looks poor. It's otherwise splendid, although the dire warnings of adult material don't seem justified by the one "sod off" that I encountered.

Rupert Sheldrake

2008-02-17T23:40:00.000-08:00

Rupert Sheldrake is an anomaly in the modern world... a scientist who is using scientific method on things which are mostly dismissed by scientists, like ESP.

It is always instructive to see how the rest of academia treats people who think outside current paradigms, and it seems that "with general derision" is the answer. That always astonishes me, when there are so many paradoxes and unexplained conflicts in the current understanding of physics and quantum theory.

However, I think there is a lot of interest in the Sheldrake research and site, not least the experiments with N'kisi, a grey parrot.

Look what can happen if you close your eyes and turn away

2008-01-30T08:27:00.000-08:00

Serendipity brought me to a web page which led back to the BBC's report on RESPECTacles, the Holocaust memorial set up in the Town Hall in Liverpool for Holocaust Memorial Day.

It's hard to look at, because it is moving and eloquent. It seems appropriate, and thought-provoking, these piles of spectacles donated by people around Liverpool, some with messages attached, some from survivors, some from celebrities.

It's painful to look back and see what happened to the people sent away for concentration camps. It's easy to think that it was a problem of a different age, and that it wouldn't happen again.

Some years ago I watched a very moving documentary which was being filmed in the former Yugoslavia... it started with two neighbours, lifelong friends. One had hidden the other's son during the Second World War. You would have said that they would be friends forever, come what may. By the end of the film, they found themselves on different sides of the conflict. It made me realise that the strongest bonds can be broken when you are in fear for your life, even the bonds to your own integrity, to the beliefs and dreams that make you the person you are.

Only by becoming alert to any attempt to dehumanise people, to put other people into a different category of humanity, can we prevent this happening to other people in the future. It's one of the reasons why I think it is important to close down Guantanamo Bay, and to use one standrard of human rights for all.

Fortune telling

2008-01-29T15:34:00.000-08:00

I have a skill which I don't often tell people about. It tends to make them look at me as though I am an unexploded bomb that may go off at any moment. The world divides into skeptics who think that anyone who talks of clairvoyance is deluded, and those who will beg for a reading.

Not that I go in for that sort of thing: I have prophetic dreams. Sounds impressive, eh?

It isn't though. Usually what I see is a section of a tv programme I am going to see, a chapter of a book I will read, or headlines on newspapers. Nothing useful... on the occasions that I see something of more importance I usually don't realise until afterwards. And what use is a vision of the future that you only understand once you are in that future? I have no unfair advantage over those people who do not have such dreams.

Ah, but it's just like that cold reading the mediums do... I hear you say... you've seen the tv programme and forgotten it. Or read a review of the book, or the headline is one of those the papers drag out from time to time. Maybe, maybe that IS all it is, and I am deluded.

If I can see a pattern in my life, can see meaning in the small and insignificant things that happen, I don't think that can hurt anyone unless I start to believe I am God and try to entice people to gather on the white cliffs for a leap into eternity. And I don't plan on doing anything like that. Not this week, anyway.

The incident which impressed me the most was a dream I had, some years ago, which seemed completely entrancing and marvellous - so marvellous I told people I knew about it in minute detail. I don't usually inflict my dreams on others, there is nothing quite so boring than someone who recounts their dreams in detail. The wonder and the richness of the experience always melts like snow in sunshine, and you are left with a wet patch where the brilliance was.

A week later, I was away from home, and visited the magnificently potty Martello bookshop in Rye. It was owned then by Cynthia Reavell, who had a very eccentrically English way of running a bookshop. Instead of bothering with the critics from the national newspapers, Cynthia used to read the books herself and write her own terse review of the books, which was placed upon them on a card.

Cynthia, for those who do not follow such things, was a leading fan of the writer E.F. Benson, who was determined that, despite all evidence pointing to his having been gay, no one should actually label him as homosexual unless there was independent evidence from witnesses under oath. I will save Fred for another time. Cynthia used to write enraged letters to editors when E.F.B.'s books were reprinted, (having come briefly out of copyright when the law changed and they went straight back in again) and they'd put a foreward on which implied or said E.F.B. might have been gay. I should say that the circumstantial evidence for the whole family being gay is quite strong: and those that weren't gay were rather odd. His father told his mother that he planned to marry her when the mother was still a child and the father was an adult, and the mother, after her husband's death, took up with the daughter of another Archibishop and slept in her bed.

Anyway, I whiled away a little while browsing the bookshop, and came across a book called Destiny, by Martin Heald. It looked interesting, and promised a story of reincarnation. So, I bought it, and a little while later began to read it. And there, in black and white, was the substance of my dream, in detail.

I have often wondered what the message for me was in that experience. I know, I know, you will say it was coincidence, and that there is nothing of significance to be learned from it. But I don't know. I like looking for the meaning in the things which happen to me. And I like to think that E.F.B., or Fred as he was known to his friends, who wrote stories about reincarnation and was interested in the beyond...as the dutiful son of an Archbishop of Canterbury should surely do... would have approved.

Psychic Crosswords

2008-01-29T04:14:00.000-08:00

I find myself, via BoingBoing on the Daily Telegraph's online site, reading the answer to a conundrum that I have come across from time to time: the mystery of how many of the words associated with the D-Day landings came to be in the Daily Telegraph crossword.

For years it has seemed that the crossword compiler might have been a gifted psychic, equipped with an internal radar which picked up many of the code words chosen by the powers that be for the invasions of Normandy. I had read on many occasions about the mild-mannered headmaster, questioned closely to discover how he had come to insert those codewords into the grid. Was he a spy? Was he clairvoyant?

The truth, it seems, is much more pedestrian. The boys at the evacuated school used to fraternise with the English and American soldiers in an encampment nearby, and picked up all the secret codewords by eavesdropping or asking questions. They were often asked for help in filling in the answer grid for the headmaster, who was one of the Daily Telegraphs commpilers. Thus those with their heads full of the planned invasion were more likely to use the words they had been hearing.

It seems likely that all Hitler would have needed to gain a thorough advance knowledge of the invasions was a 14 year old boy in cadet uniform.

Derren Brown

2008-01-23T17:03:00.001-08:00

I sorta love him and hate him, but there is no one like Derren Brown. He is shown above in a Wikipedia photograph from Olz06. His programmes have sometimes worried me, in case the oh-so-clever manipulation of other people's psyches may come back to bite him - and them - in the bottom at some stage in the future.

He's cool and creepy, arrogant and then strangely vulnerable when one reads his autobiography, but one has to assume he is able to look after himself.

I have noticed that he bears a remarkable resemblance to the hypnotist met by Dr Paul Brunton in his tour of Egypt, Dr Eduard Ades. Of course, one of Derren Brown's well-known allergies, is to anything considered supernatural or occult, and I presume reincarnation might also be included in that broad area. So he would hate hate HATE any suggestion that he might be a reincarnated Dr Ades, returning to the profession which brought him success in his last life....

The wonderful Eddie Izzard

2008-01-23T16:51:00.000-08:00

I've been a member of the Eddie Izzard (seen above in a wikipedia creative commons photograph by Dave Morris) signed up fan club from the moment I saw his first performance... unfortunately using an old email account I can no longer access. But it is the thought that counts.

He's able to ramble in a most creative and wonderful way. If you haven't seen his recorded shows, beg, borrow or barter for them. This is his website.

Adel Hamad freed today

2007-12-13T13:28:00.000-08:00

I am overjoyed to tell you that Adel Hamad has been released from Guantanamo Bay today and is back with his family in the Sudan.

I can't imagine what five years in jail can be like when you are not allowed to know what the charges are against you, and you aren't allowed to know even when your release has been agreed.

I am happy for Adel Hamad, and hope that the other people in Guantanamo Bay are either given the due process of a trial, or released back to their countries, too.

Sex with a bike earns a place on the Sex Offenders Register

2007-10-30T04:13:00.000-07:00

The Daily Telegraph carried a story so weird that I reported it to BoingBoing yesterday. A man who was staying in a hostel in Scotland, was engaging in rather odd sexual behaviour in a private room. When he didn't respond to knocks at the door, the staff from the hostel used a master key to enter the room, found him allegedly having sex with a bicycle, and the matter was reported to the police.

He hasn't yet been sentenced, but he has been placed on the sex offenders' register. He has been found guilty of a sexual breach of the peace - whatever that is.

It seems funny at first, to be prosecuted for sex with a bicycle... but once you stop laughing you realise what a serious infringement of civil liberties this is - and how nonsensical. This man was using an inanimate object for sexual pleasure - something which high sales of vibrators and dildos indicates is not a minority activity. He wasn't hurting anyone, and he was doing it in the privacy of his own room, if the reports in the Telegraph are to be believed.

It is a matter of some amusement in Accident Emergency departments around the world, that people are endlessly creative in their ways to get into trouble while using inanimate objects for sexual plasure. People with their penises stuck inside things, or things stuck inside them. Objects "lost".... Why was this poor guy singled out for punishment?

I regard it as my right to find sexual fulfillment in any way I chose, as long as I hurt no one else, and don't do it in the middle of the highway. Or to the middle of the highway... if you reach the end of the article and see that the last person prosecuted for something similar was abusing the pavement!

Write a letter to Adel Hamad

2007-10-30T04:04:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has read my postings on blogs the web over, knows that I have been supporting Project Hamad from the moment I learned about it. I received an email yesterday asking me to exhort everyone to write to Adel Hamad, who has been kept at Guantanamo Bay since 2004, as long as I have been in Second Life.

The most recent letter makes grim reading: people kept locked down for 22 hours a day, kept incarcerated even when the orders for their release have been agreed. Adel hamad was apparently approved for transfer to his home country TWO YEARS AGO... but no one has told his defence team, or done anything to get that achieved. This man is in prison, but did nothing, nothing to deserve it. I'm ashamed to be British frankly, because we have had nationals incarcerated at Guantanamo, and yet we are still talking to and supporting America in her war on terror.

I don't believe in war - any war. I certainly don't believe that you can defend democracy by arresting people on spurious charges and throwing away the key. I can't understand why everyone is so quiet about it.

READ the webpage! Join the cause if your heart tells you it is right! And compose a letter to lighten the darkness for at least one prisoner.

Comet watching

2007-10-30T03:59:00.000-07:00

I am unfortunate enough - from a sky-watching point of view - to live in the outskirts of London, where light pollution reduces the number of visible objects in the sky by a considerable amount. I will never forget the day I ventured out in the dark in the countryside alone, and found the sheer number of stars in the sky, and their brightness, overwhelming.

My children and I have watched the skies for Geminids and Perseids and either the weather has been dull and cloudy or the light pollution has killed the experience. But I think that even we have a hope of being able to see the Comet Holmes, by the look of things. You'll find instructions here for finding the comet in the night sky, and it should be visible for at least a couple of weeks, weather and light pollution permitting.

Funny Food

2007-10-29T07:49:00.000-07:00

I've been online since 1998 and never cease boring family with the tale of how there were less than 10 UK bloggers when I did my first blog, which was Nuda Veritas, on FortuneCity... I found a few pages with the WayBackMachine.

I have forgotten some of the wonderful tghings I stumbled over, delighted in, shared with friends and then forgot. One I rediscovered this morning was Candyboot's Weightwatcher Cards from 1974. Read it and weep... with laughter. Follow her links to the Gallery of Regrettable food if you haven't seen it before.

My favourites have changed over the years... if I was forced at pain of eating some of this stuff, I would choose the chicken liver bake - "enjoy it with the ashes of a loved one". A few months after seeing this I found a pile of recipe cards of my own, not weightwatchers, but still very odd. I can confirm that writing funny captions isn't as easy as it sounds.

Josie's Lalaland

2007-10-28T03:14:00.000-07:00

Eelco drew my attention to this short film, which appears to have been made as a memorial to a young girl who died of Leukaemia.

People talk of others with illnesses being courageous. It doesn't take courage to live through illness: you just have to keep breathing and life does that for you. What takes courage is taking control of your destiny, and having the strength to realise that more treatment isn't going to help.

I am surprised that the film maker didn't give more details about the young girl who is the subject of the film. She had a courage which many adults do not find... the courage to take the months of life she had left, and to make the best of them.

Last Supper in 16 billion pixels

2007-10-28T03:12:00.000-07:00

Found something marvellous on the BBC website: a link to a 16 billion pixel version of the Last Supper, which you can find here.

It takes a while to resolve, but you can look at details, and get closer to Da Vinci than would be possible in RL.

Shortcomings of Sculpties

2007-09-22T02:17:00.000-07:00

There is an intersting essay on the shortcomings of sculpties by authors including Francis Chung and Neil Protagonist here.

Steiner: the world expresses itself through every human being

2007-09-06T23:40:00.000-07:00

When I first tried to research the life and work of Rudolph Steiner, there was very little to be found about him on the web. Nowadays there are a growing number of pages about him and many Steiner Schools.

I see no point in trying to regurgitate an objective assessment of his life and work, which is what you will find at the end of some of the links. The things which appealed to me, were his idea of the four levels of consciousness: he said that stones and rocks had one level of consciousness, plants had two, animals had three and man had four. He believed in the one-ness of all, which is something I have believed in since I had a mystical experience a few months after the birth of my youngest child. For a short time, I experienced the one-ness of all, and understood how it was possible to be uniquely myself, and yet part of a whole. I felt overwhelming love for it all, and immense peace and happiness. Right there, in the middle of an ordinary day in Uxbridge.

That experience has made me look for other people who have had similar experiences, and I was interested by the ideas that Steiner came up with. I love organic architecture, and he felt it was important too.

The educational ideas he came up with seem bonkers in some respects, but I think some of them may become mainstream eventually. His idea that children have a physical phase initially, and ought not to be taught academic subjects until their milk teeth fall out, which seemed nuts to me at first, may turn out to be one of the most insightful things he said: it has been found that children with dyslexia and dyspraxia need to be taught to jump and spin and swing, and these things are now regimented into a regime for trying to recover the skills they have lost.

We may well discover that the most important thing we can do for a child's academic development is to ensure that they do not enter into academic study too early.

As to his ideas on religion and philosophy, I apply the same test to him as I do to everything: does it speak to me? I find with some things I recognise a spiritual trust for myself in things that he says, and with others it takes some time and experience to recognise the truth. I leave you to discover if it speaks to you too.

TED talks

2007-09-06T23:32:00.000-07:00

Until this year I hadn't heard of TED (technology, entertainment, design), which is an annual conference of interesting people held in the US. They started to publish ther talks from the conference on the web, and I was hooked, although sometimes I think it is a shame that the talks are so short... often listening to them makes you want more, more, MORE.

I particularly like Sir Ken Robinson's talk on education.

The organisation is growing, and this year held another conference in Africa.

Reincarnation

2007-09-06T10:50:00.000-07:00

When I was in my twenties, I was in a pub quiz team. The team and I played home matches in the Three Tuns in Uxbridge, and travelled around the Greater London area playing other pub quiz teams. Sometimes we won.

On this occasion we went to a pub in Harrow that I hadn't been to before. I went into the bar, and almost immediately caught sight of someone who triggered in me a recognition and cascade of memories. The odd thing was that having had that flash of recognition, and a picture show of me, my sister and this person going to clubs in what I guess was the 1950s... I realised that I could not recall his name/I hadn't been to clubs with my sister and a man/there was no substance behind the memories.

I can still remember how it felt sitting there and trying to recall the detail from the pictures which had flashed passed me inside my head. The rooms I remembered were not rooms I have ever lived in. I was groping around for names and dates and something firm to back up the instant slideshow I had seen, but there wasn't anything there.

I was young and embarrassed and so I didn't go up to the guy and tell him that I had the strangest feeling that we had met in another life, and I have regretted that since.

Years later, I went to Rye and bought a book in the Martello bookshop on the High Street, called Destiny, by Martin Heald. As I read the book, I realised that I had dreamed about one chapter in it, and had described the dream almost exactly as it was described in the book. I was so struck by this that I corresponded with the author for a while.

I try to keep an open mind... it seems to me that the lessons of nature, the cycle of the seasons, the circle of birth and rebirth, lean towards the possibility of reincarnation. I have read that the bible once contained much more material about reincarnation, which was cut out of the bible at the behest of Constantine and his wife. Certainly there are still places in the bible which talk about people having returned in another form.

I do not have any facts which a scientist would accept, to prove that reincarnation is a fact, and personally I do not need them. I am happy to keep my mind open to the possibilities and aware of the improbabilities.

One area of research that has fascinated me in this relation, is the idea that people's appearance may be affected by their previous life. Ian Stevenson did some research with children, and various other people have asserted that this is true. There is a huge collection of photographs of possibly reincarnated individuals which are very interesting indeed, if your mind is open to the possibility.

Finding the website with those photographs led me to look for connections myself. So far, I think I have identified three. You will see above Antoni Gaudi, the artist and architect and Hundertwasser have very similar outlook and interests and appearance. The death of Gaudi was in 1926, and the birth of Hundertwasser in 1928. Their appearance was similar both as young men and as older men.

The other link in appearance is between the singer Eva Cassidy, and a little girl who captivated audiences at the recent Britain's Got Talent event: Connie Talbot. There is also the coincidence that not only do they bear a striking resemblance to each other but Connie chose to sing "Over the Rainbow", a song Eva used to sing.

The final couple are Nikola Tesla and Levashov.

Organic architecture

2007-09-06T10:26:00.000-07:00

There are links to pages for Gaudi and Hundertwasser, who are the most famous organic architects, but there are many more. Rudolph Steiner believed that people needed organic architecture, and decreed that the schools which bear his name should have organic shaped windows.

I found this link by accident, which shows a very interesting desert house.

Gaudi

2007-09-06T10:17:00.001-07:00

Gaudi is the artist and architect who made wonderfully organic and amazingly complex designs using mosaic and bright colours. Barcelona is full of his designs, which I little appreciated when I visited there some years ago.

There are some fantastic pictures of his work available around the internet.

Hundertwasser

2007-09-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, you read about an artist, and their life is disappointingly dull, or full of beautiful music and unkind acts. Sometimes, however, an artist rewards one's investigation into their life with rich detail and beliefs consistent with their art. Hundertwasser is a most interesting man, probably more famous for his views and his remedial architecture than for his art.

He believe that people were made sick by uniform environments, and that the secret was to allow people to personalise their windows. His buildings, where every column is different and he used colours and differences to allow people who lived in them to point out their homes, have become tourist attractions in their own right. He called straight lines "the devil's tools".

I thoroughly recommend a study of his life, his thoughts and his creations. I will collect any good links I find for Hundertwasser here.

This is the wikipedia entry for Hundertwasser.

Honest Ponzi

2007-09-06T09:04:00.000-07:00

I note a new addition to the Resident Run websites, in the SL forums today. Ponzi Benazzi posts about a new website PonziMoney, and announces new financial products.

I am not sure at this point whether this is an elaborate attempt at satire, or someone who hopes that if he is honest from the outset there is a chance that there will be a group of SL people daft enough to invest money in nothing.

I will watch and wait... knowing that anyone astute enough to peruse my blog will be too clever to fall for this.

Cheap, but not cheerful

2007-09-06T07:50:00.000-07:00

There was a furore on SL Exchange yesterday, caused by Anshe Chung's introduction of a few changes on the way that the search works. She was launching her new cut-price range of furniture, and as part owner of SL Exchange thought it was rather a good wheeze to pull all her new items to the top of search.

Several things happened at once: people buying the new 10Lindens range discovered that, contrary to her previous assurances that she would not use Craig Altman's animations full perms, her furniture range contained them full perms, and strangely enough the other sellers on SLX were just a tad peeved that Ms Chung thought it was ok to replace the most popoular items with her bargain basement stuff.

The items were pulled for the perms to be fixed - personally I'd like to know whether her creators of the furniture paid full price for the animations, like the other honest furniture makers in Second Life - and Apotheus calmed the gathering hordes threatening to defect to On Rez, the Sheepish ecommerce rebranding of SLBoutique, by assuring the customers that Ms Chung would no longer come top of every search.

It seems that Ms Chung just found a way to increase the community's dislike of her, managing to offend the creators of Second Life en mass, forgetting that nearly every long-time resident becomes a creator of some sort.

But hey it's all for our own good, as she asserts here, that the new vision of "don't ask the price, it's ten lindens" will be good for us all. I wonder....

A collation of Steampunk links

2007-09-03T22:41:00.000-07:00

Weird and wonderful constructions here.

A most pleasing steampunk blog lies here.

Samuel Pepys

2007-09-02T22:16:00.000-07:00

Samuel Pepys was a diarist from the 17th century, who famously wrote about the Great Fire of London, and is very well known in the UK, but less well known elsewhere, I have found.

He wrote in shorthand and took the precaution of using a strange composite language within the shorthand when describing his encounters with young ladies - although most of that has been decoded.

This is a site about him and his diary.

Nikola Tesla

2007-09-02T21:35:00.000-07:00

Interview with Tesla from Pearson's magazine of 1899. Article here.

How to build a tesla coil from trash.

Ancient artefacts

2007-09-02T21:26:00.001-07:00

The mysterious spheres of central and south America. An article here.

Welcome

2007-09-02T21:24:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my new blog, which is to be a collection of links to things which interest me, and occasional postings about Second Life.

My intention is to make pages for a variety of subjects, and to add links to those pages as I find - or rediscover - them. I reserve the right to be rude about any government and their outrageous policies, including my own, to preserve freedom of speech and be as eccentric in my choice of subjects as I jolly well please. You've been warned.