Posts
Big shout out to the big-hearted people at SANCCOB!
I'm thrilled to let you know that Venessa Strauss, CEO of SANCCOB just wrote to me to tell me that our little penguin heroine, 'Ms 349', is still fighting.(See my article Penguin Rescue dated 18 August for pics and full story).
According to Venessa, Ms 349, as she has become affectionately known to my colleagues at Cambridge University Press, is still quite weak, but her chest infection has cleared up a bit.
She may be ready to move from what appears to be an intensive medical care ward for penguins, to a general ward, so to speak, within a week or so. I will write a further update then. The adoption papers and photo will be sent once she's ready for release back into the wild!
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Penguin rescue
The dry dock outside our offices received a rare surprise visitor yesterday – a female African Penguin (also known as a Jackass Penguin, due to its braying call). The conservation status of these engaging birds is ‘vulnerable’ or ‘threatened’.
It is very unusual for such a social species of bird to be seen on land alone and so far from their normal colonies such as the one located at Simonstown. It was obvious that the bird was in distress and weakened – even struggling to stand upright in the shallowest of swells. She also appeared to be badly wounded.
I immediately contacted the nearby Two Oceans Aquarium, who kindly collected the penguin and drove her to SANCCOB (The Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds) who are the leading local experts in the rehabilitation of coastal birds. According to recent research by the Avian Demography Unit at the University of Cape Town, the African Penguin population is 19% higher today than it would have been in the absence of SANCCOB’s efforts in rehabilitation.
I contacted SANCCOB this morning to see if I could get an update on the penguin, and was referred to Cheryl, who is caring for ‘Number 349’ – the name given to our damsel in distress. Despite sounding like she has a bad cold, Cheryl kindly gave me an update on 349’s condition – the poor bird has a hip injury, is badly oiled and suffering from pneumonia. On arrival at the centre, she was immediately placed on a drip and her condition has now stabilised. According to Cheryl, 349’s chances of recovery are quite good.
I have also spoken to Megan at SANCCOB and will ‘adopt’ 349 on behalf of the Cape Town office, which will help to fund some of the costs of her treatment. If you would like to find out more information about the great work that SANCCOB do, visit their website www.sanccob.co.za
Other notable creatures that I have sighted within our little dock area include our resident seal with her newborn pup, a rare Sun Fish, several baby sharks doing their best to look menacing despite being ruler-length, an octopus and a very large, furtive crayfish, scuttling perilously close to the nearby sea food restaurants.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Making connections
Perhaps I should explain my garbled Friday post.
My 40th birthday is coming up at the end of this month, and with this milestone in mind, many of my thoughts have invariably been reflective – the ‘taking stock of my life’ variety.
I’ve harboured this idea of jumping out a plane on or near to my 40th. In fact, I casually mentioned this idea to my work colleagues at our regular Friday afternoon get-together after work, and now a growing number of them want to join me! Perhaps the stress of locating markets for titles like The Large Sieve and its Applications has something to do with the number of volunteers, but I digress...
So you may be thinking that seems a pretty predictable reaction to a major birthday – do things you’ve always wanted to do, celebrate your longevity by hurling yourself out of a plane a thousand metres above the ground, have a midlife crisis etc. But stick with me a while longer, I normally get to the point – eventually.
One of the other things I’ve been thinking about, is the matter of being thankful for where I presently find myself on my life-journey, which raises the issue of giving thanks, thanksgiving. As I have no specific religious orientation, that becomes pretty interesting.
I come from a nominally Christian background, and my wife’s family is Hindu. In both these, and many other faiths, there is a common thread related to giving thanks, counting our blessings, making offerings, gratitude.
I have also been feeling something else, a desire to give back some of what has been bestowed on me. Without an obvious religious anchor both concepts; thankfulness and reciprocity; are problematic – bestowed on me by whom/what? Thankful to whom/what? Give thanks to whom/what? In what form – prayer, offering, sacrifice, ritual?
Lastly, I’ve been thinking about interconnectedness, the way we are connected to others. I went through a long period of disconnectedness when life took a bad turn, ironically while the world was busy connecting at a fast and furious rate via the Net. Having come from a family that kept few close friends, seldom visited or had visitors, and eschewed socialising generally, being insular was an easy, even natural state for me to withdraw into.
My wife’s Indian upbringing made her quite different. Her childhood life had been filled with family and friends who lived next door to one another (many for their whole lives). People didn’t ask if they could visit, they just rocked up at the door, and that was fine – even during meals, when another few plates would be brought out and the food shared without question or gripe. Everyone in the area knew each other’s names – and personal affairs. The place I’m describing is Rylands, an apartheid-created community of people designated as Asian, one of many such places in South Africa.
As soon as she was old enough, she left Rylands to live in the city bowl area of Cape Town. I’m sure she felt a sense of freedom, of lebensraum, being in a place where she could choose to be anonymous or not, and she slowly lost quite a few ties to her old community. Even so, she ended up creating her own community in the city, one of her choosing. Eventually she even met and married me there.
When we were forced through circumstance to move to Rylands several years later, it was quite surprising how things turned out. For the first time in my life, I was awakened to the concept of connectedness on a larger scale than my immediate loved ones. I finally appreciated the meaning of the word ‘community'. During Eid, I saw Muslims knocking on the doors of their Hindu and Christian neighbours to bring them plates of cakes, and during Diwali, Hindus knocked on the doors of their Muslim and Christian neighbours to bring them plates of sweetmeats. Oppulent mansions nestled amicably with cement block semi-detached council houses in the same street. I suddenly had to start remembering the names of vast numbers of neighbours who would greet me by name in the street or at the local shops. We both healed in this place, I connected, and my wife reconnected.
So, finally to the point
You know when ubuntu is there, and it is obvious when it is absent. It has to do with what it means to be truly human, to know that you are bound up with others in the bundle of life. Desmond Tutu
The African concept of ubuntu is helping me to tie these three strands of thought (thankfulness, reciprocity and connectedness) together, and about how best I can mark my 40th, which will be to do something for others. My work colleagues and I have been helping out forty kids from rural schools with shoes and other basics, in addition to the books donated by the publisher we work for. The astounding gratitude they show for these simple things is humbling, and I think doing what I can for them would be a good fit - it may even turn out to be more fun than jumping out of a plane!
I'll let you know how this idea pans out soon.
My 40th birthday is coming up at the end of this month, and with this milestone in mind, many of my thoughts have invariably been reflective – the ‘taking stock of my life’ variety.
I’ve harboured this idea of jumping out a plane on or near to my 40th. In fact, I casually mentioned this idea to my work colleagues at our regular Friday afternoon get-together after work, and now a growing number of them want to join me! Perhaps the stress of locating markets for titles like The Large Sieve and its Applications has something to do with the number of volunteers, but I digress...
So you may be thinking that seems a pretty predictable reaction to a major birthday – do things you’ve always wanted to do, celebrate your longevity by hurling yourself out of a plane a thousand metres above the ground, have a midlife crisis etc. But stick with me a while longer, I normally get to the point – eventually.
One of the other things I’ve been thinking about, is the matter of being thankful for where I presently find myself on my life-journey, which raises the issue of giving thanks, thanksgiving. As I have no specific religious orientation, that becomes pretty interesting.
I come from a nominally Christian background, and my wife’s family is Hindu. In both these, and many other faiths, there is a common thread related to giving thanks, counting our blessings, making offerings, gratitude.
I have also been feeling something else, a desire to give back some of what has been bestowed on me. Without an obvious religious anchor both concepts; thankfulness and reciprocity; are problematic – bestowed on me by whom/what? Thankful to whom/what? Give thanks to whom/what? In what form – prayer, offering, sacrifice, ritual?
Lastly, I’ve been thinking about interconnectedness, the way we are connected to others. I went through a long period of disconnectedness when life took a bad turn, ironically while the world was busy connecting at a fast and furious rate via the Net. Having come from a family that kept few close friends, seldom visited or had visitors, and eschewed socialising generally, being insular was an easy, even natural state for me to withdraw into.
My wife’s Indian upbringing made her quite different. Her childhood life had been filled with family and friends who lived next door to one another (many for their whole lives). People didn’t ask if they could visit, they just rocked up at the door, and that was fine – even during meals, when another few plates would be brought out and the food shared without question or gripe. Everyone in the area knew each other’s names – and personal affairs. The place I’m describing is Rylands, an apartheid-created community of people designated as Asian, one of many such places in South Africa.
As soon as she was old enough, she left Rylands to live in the city bowl area of Cape Town. I’m sure she felt a sense of freedom, of lebensraum, being in a place where she could choose to be anonymous or not, and she slowly lost quite a few ties to her old community. Even so, she ended up creating her own community in the city, one of her choosing. Eventually she even met and married me there.
When we were forced through circumstance to move to Rylands several years later, it was quite surprising how things turned out. For the first time in my life, I was awakened to the concept of connectedness on a larger scale than my immediate loved ones. I finally appreciated the meaning of the word ‘community'. During Eid, I saw Muslims knocking on the doors of their Hindu and Christian neighbours to bring them plates of cakes, and during Diwali, Hindus knocked on the doors of their Muslim and Christian neighbours to bring them plates of sweetmeats. Oppulent mansions nestled amicably with cement block semi-detached council houses in the same street. I suddenly had to start remembering the names of vast numbers of neighbours who would greet me by name in the street or at the local shops. We both healed in this place, I connected, and my wife reconnected.
So, finally to the point
You know when ubuntu is there, and it is obvious when it is absent. It has to do with what it means to be truly human, to know that you are bound up with others in the bundle of life. Desmond Tutu
The African concept of ubuntu is helping me to tie these three strands of thought (thankfulness, reciprocity and connectedness) together, and about how best I can mark my 40th, which will be to do something for others. My work colleagues and I have been helping out forty kids from rural schools with shoes and other basics, in addition to the books donated by the publisher we work for. The astounding gratitude they show for these simple things is humbling, and I think doing what I can for them would be a good fit - it may even turn out to be more fun than jumping out of a plane!
I'll let you know how this idea pans out soon.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Bad blogger
Being stricken by wicked flu I'm a poor blog-poster at present. I am researching some aspects of life: kindness/offerings/ubuntu/thanksgiving/, as I near my 40th birthday. I love the spirit of adventure, but there are other emotions looking for a toehold in my life journey.
Best
Alan
Best
Alan
Monday, June 1, 2009
Hypnos and Thánatos
Sleep and his Half-brother Death: Musings on a cyber future...
On Saturday night my wife and I met up with an old friend in Cape Town, at a restaurant that we had frequented over the years. While we chatted and caught up on each other’s lives, we couldn’t help watching a group of early twenty-somethings with some bemused interest.
There were six of them sitting together, oozing trendiness from the tops of their spiky-gelled heads to their custom ‘kicks’ (sneakers or takkies). Though they were sociably huddled together on two leather couches, they were completely oblivious to one another.
With faces illuminated by ghostly pale LCD glows, they were largely immobile save for random convulsive hand twitches, being completely absorbed by the laptops in front of them. Each was involved in their own little cyberworld – one was downloading music, another tweeting on Twitter and so on. None of them even ordered a drink the entire time we were there, let alone spoke to one another.
We wondered why they even bothered to get dressed up and leave their homes in the first place? Perhaps some latent desire for actual human company compelled them, but, at the last, they were unable to part from their umbilical connections to the Net.
Being fascinated by long-term trends I wondered where this is heading. When I think of the massive technological leaps I have witnessed in computing, and my own long-standing love affair with computers, I’m certain it will be a stranger world than we can imagine, but with some vague similarities. To illustrate how far we’ve come in such a short space of time, a little trip down memory lane is required...
In the beginning...
About twenty five years ago, after saving money I earned working after school in a video store (one that stocked Beta, Philips and VHS video tapes) I bought my first computer. It was a marvel of personal computing - a sleek little black Sinclair ZX Spectrum, boasting all of 16K of RAM.
It plugged into an ordinary TV set, and you could program it in BASIC. You saved your data onto cassette tapes, which you played via a normal tape recorder. The original 1982 advertising boasted it’s ‘high speed load and save capability’ as being 16K in just 100 seconds, and ‘the ZX Spectrum comes in two versions – with 16K, or a really massive 48K, of RAM’. When you loaded the files, by pressing ‘play’ on the tape recorder it played sqauwks and beeps just like you used to hear on computer modems when connecting to the internet. It was an amazing sound to me then - the primal screech of the future being born.
The plucky little computer processed data using 3.5Mhz and had an 8 colour display with resolution of 256x192 pixels, and had a built in speaker and integrated keyboard. It weighed around 550g and was only 23cm by 14cm in size.
There were even a few computer magazines available, which came complete with pages and pages of BASIC code, which, if you painstakingly typed it in and recorded it on a cassette, you then got to play a full game in resplendent, clunky graphics and beepy sound effects. If you mistyped just one character, you could spend hours checking for the typo before you got to play your new game. Sometimes there was an error in the magazine itself, which would be really frustrating. On the other hand, you could fiddle with the code to make your games do some offbeat things – kind of a prehistoric cheat code or hack.
Friends would record copies of their games, as well as stuff they had made themselves and then get together to swop tapes and stories with each other. (I was really proud of the little program I made which produced randomized coloured circles that got increasingly larger on your screen, while it played a little tune.) These meetings all took place in the real world, as email and the internet were virtually unknown, and cell phones were something you saw on a Star Trek movie!
So where are we headed?
In the near future, neural interfaces will mean that we won’t just Twitter about what we’re doing, we’ll Thunker about what we’re thinking. That however is just to kick it off...
We will create virtual worlds that defy the laws of physics, providing us with godlike possibilities. These cyberworlds will be so entrancing, so powerful and vivid that the real world will seem to be a poor, primitive reflection. We will become ever-more reluctant to use our frail physical bodies in an environment that will be viewed as increasingly alien and hostile, with its frightening possibilities of illness, injury and death.
As machine intelligence develops, we could choose to create our own perfect artificial companions, and shun the unpredictable motivations, desires and needs of other human beings altogether. Many of these AI’s would reside entirely in cyberspace.
Apart from creating artificial sentient beings, we will also use this technology to divest ourselves from our physical bodies, achieving immortality in the process. Groups of us may choose to merge our collective consciousnesses to create super-beings – meta-organisms, dedicated to particular avenues of thought, interests and research. Periodically these might split via a sort of cyber-meiosis to create separate, but related beings, much like scientific disciplines form today. Hybrid human-AI beings will emerge with vastly alien characteristics.
Many of our biological survival requirements will become obsolete – air, water, nutrients, gravity, warmth. Energy will be the key factor, and vast amounts of it will probably be required to power our cyber worlds. The planet’s surface might be abandoned for deep, geologically-stable subterranean vaults powered by energy from the Earth’s core. Colonies may take to space itself, not necessarily in the traditional sense of exploring or colonising the universe, but for efficient energy and resource collection.
Questions...
As we removed ourselves from the physical world, how would we treat the needs of other terrestrial life forms – for instance would we care about pollution, conservation, the environment?
Would we retain our emotional capacity, or would these be replaced by selective e-motions, eliminating the ‘deadly sins’ that shackle us but also make us human?
As completely different realities could be created limitlessly, would wars end? Would there be the need to fight wars over resources, ideologies, religions? If so, what would these wars look like – would they even take place in the physical world?
If we existed in cyberspace, would we continue to evolve? If so, and we created multiple realities, would we evolve into distinct species completely alien from one another?
Conclusion
Humankind’s long-standing preoccupation with transcendence - a theme found in even the most ancient of religions - could well be reaching a climax. As we stand at the threshold of making it a (virtual) reality, will we be able to retain our humanity?
References:
Second Life
Wikipedia (Hypnos)
Science Horizons
Wikipedia (ZX Spectrum)
Wikipedia (meiosis)
Principia Cybernetica Project
1982 ZX Spectrum advertising flyer
Friday, May 29, 2009
The cure is the cause
Have you watched the heartburn remedy adverts on (South African) TV with the morphing firemen? There’s one version where a pregnant woman, who appears to be in some discomfort, is asking an equally pregnant pharmacist for something to relieve heartburn.
After expounding the merits of the featured remedy for some time to the suffering woman, including how safe it is to use during pregancy, the pharmacist finally produces a bottle of the stuff. The stoic customer, who seems on the verge of collapse at any second, then gratefully swallows a spoonful of it.
The scene cuts to somewhere inside of her, where a little white fireman is hard at it with his hose, spraying her innards with the miraculous white liquid, while his buddies stand by to assist...
Could neither of these women figure out that having little white guys ferretting around inside them with their hoses is probably what led to the whole damn mess in the first place?
The final, ‘seminal’ image in the ad is of the (presumably sated) fireman waving his oversized hose at a suggestive angle, as a large drop of white liquid exudes from it in a distinctly biological way – quite different from what one would expect from a high pressure firehose.
Having penned these weighty thoughts, I wondered if it was just me, or did anyone else read this ad the way I did. After Googling the name of the remedy together with the word ‘fireman’ I was relieved to find that I’m not alone – though disappointed not to be quite as ahead of the curve as I first imagined. Other ads featuring the lucky lads are the subject of these articles, but the gist remains the same.
Verdict – either the copywriter urgently needs to get laid before his/her next brief, or is a genius of Freudian proportions.
After expounding the merits of the featured remedy for some time to the suffering woman, including how safe it is to use during pregancy, the pharmacist finally produces a bottle of the stuff. The stoic customer, who seems on the verge of collapse at any second, then gratefully swallows a spoonful of it.
The scene cuts to somewhere inside of her, where a little white fireman is hard at it with his hose, spraying her innards with the miraculous white liquid, while his buddies stand by to assist...
Could neither of these women figure out that having little white guys ferretting around inside them with their hoses is probably what led to the whole damn mess in the first place?
The final, ‘seminal’ image in the ad is of the (presumably sated) fireman waving his oversized hose at a suggestive angle, as a large drop of white liquid exudes from it in a distinctly biological way – quite different from what one would expect from a high pressure firehose.
Having penned these weighty thoughts, I wondered if it was just me, or did anyone else read this ad the way I did. After Googling the name of the remedy together with the word ‘fireman’ I was relieved to find that I’m not alone – though disappointed not to be quite as ahead of the curve as I first imagined. Other ads featuring the lucky lads are the subject of these articles, but the gist remains the same.
Verdict – either the copywriter urgently needs to get laid before his/her next brief, or is a genius of Freudian proportions.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Trimming the sails
This weekend, I’ve concentrated on adding a few features to this new blog, after taking a fresh look at what far more experienced bloggers than I are doing out there. I’m blogging about these to help fellow newcomers out there – maybe even elicit some helpful advice from other bloggers. I’ve also listed some helpful resources at the bottom of this post.
Picasa Web Albums. I added a collection of photos of our glorious cat Stinker into a free online photo album on Picasa. This now runs as a thumbnail-sized slide show in the left hand column of The Good Ship Venus. Picasa has many great features that I will enjoy tinkering with, and provides 1GB of free storage.
Afrigator. I added my blog to Afrigator, a ‘social media aggregator and directory built especially for African digital citizens who publish and consume content on the Web'. See the logo on the left hand column. This is a great way of locating African blogs, and of letting people know about your little stake in the blogosphere. It also provides statistics on traffic to your blog. Immediately on signing (for free), my blog appeared in their listing of new blogs on their home page.
Subscribe button. I added a ‘subscribe’ feature to make it easier for people to follow the blog (working on the assumption that someone is actually reading it).
Updated my Profile. I added several blogs onto my ‘Blogs I Follow’ list, more books that I have enjoyed reading, and some more personal interests. These can be found on my 'View My Complete Profile link'. By clicking on say, ‘Merry Christmas Mister Lawrence’, I can see who else in the Blogger world rates this fairly obscure movie (436 people). Click on ‘cats’ and you get 391,000 people’s profiles. Interestingly, ‘female nudes’ only generates four profiles including mine, and two of these are women’s...
Webmaster tools. Google provides some tools to help ensure your blog has some chance of being noticed, and does not contain errors that prevent search bots from locating you. This is a user item and is not visible on the blog.
Gmail. I’ve added an email address for people to be able to contact me off-blog without cluttering my work or private email. Using Google’s free Gmail service I created an online email account. Find this on the ‘View My Complete Profile’ page: see ‘contact’.
Other bits and bobs. Google has a useful interface called a Google Account. By signing on to my account all Google affiliated products that I use can be accessed simply, using a single password. From my account I access my Gmail, Google Reader (creates my very own aggregated magazine composed of new articles posted by the 60 or so feed-enabled websites and blogs that I try to keep up with, Webmaster Tools, Blogger, i-Google (a customizable webpage), YouTube, Picasa and even a very useful online Calendar (this will even email you to remind you about your anniversary, meeting etc. An instant messaging chat service called Google Talk and a document storage and viewing repository called Google documents add even more functionality.
Recommended Offline Reading (you know, actual books)
• The Rough Guide to Blogging, by Jonathan Yang. Penguin Books Ltd. 2006
• The Bookaholic’s Guide to Book Blogs, compiled by Rebecca Gillieron and Catheryn Kilgarriff. Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd. 2007
Recommended Online Reading
Blogging Pro
Daily Blog Tips
Copyblogger
Bloggerhelp on YouTube (good video tutorials for new Bloggers)
Picasa Web Albums. I added a collection of photos of our glorious cat Stinker into a free online photo album on Picasa. This now runs as a thumbnail-sized slide show in the left hand column of The Good Ship Venus. Picasa has many great features that I will enjoy tinkering with, and provides 1GB of free storage.
Afrigator. I added my blog to Afrigator, a ‘social media aggregator and directory built especially for African digital citizens who publish and consume content on the Web'. See the logo on the left hand column. This is a great way of locating African blogs, and of letting people know about your little stake in the blogosphere. It also provides statistics on traffic to your blog. Immediately on signing (for free), my blog appeared in their listing of new blogs on their home page.
Subscribe button. I added a ‘subscribe’ feature to make it easier for people to follow the blog (working on the assumption that someone is actually reading it).
Updated my Profile. I added several blogs onto my ‘Blogs I Follow’ list, more books that I have enjoyed reading, and some more personal interests. These can be found on my 'View My Complete Profile link'. By clicking on say, ‘Merry Christmas Mister Lawrence’, I can see who else in the Blogger world rates this fairly obscure movie (436 people). Click on ‘cats’ and you get 391,000 people’s profiles. Interestingly, ‘female nudes’ only generates four profiles including mine, and two of these are women’s...
Webmaster tools. Google provides some tools to help ensure your blog has some chance of being noticed, and does not contain errors that prevent search bots from locating you. This is a user item and is not visible on the blog.
Gmail. I’ve added an email address for people to be able to contact me off-blog without cluttering my work or private email. Using Google’s free Gmail service I created an online email account. Find this on the ‘View My Complete Profile’ page: see ‘contact’.
Other bits and bobs. Google has a useful interface called a Google Account. By signing on to my account all Google affiliated products that I use can be accessed simply, using a single password. From my account I access my Gmail, Google Reader (creates my very own aggregated magazine composed of new articles posted by the 60 or so feed-enabled websites and blogs that I try to keep up with, Webmaster Tools, Blogger, i-Google (a customizable webpage), YouTube, Picasa and even a very useful online Calendar (this will even email you to remind you about your anniversary, meeting etc. An instant messaging chat service called Google Talk and a document storage and viewing repository called Google documents add even more functionality.
Recommended Offline Reading (you know, actual books)
• The Rough Guide to Blogging, by Jonathan Yang. Penguin Books Ltd. 2006
• The Bookaholic’s Guide to Book Blogs, compiled by Rebecca Gillieron and Catheryn Kilgarriff. Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd. 2007
Recommended Online Reading
Blogging Pro
Daily Blog Tips
Copyblogger
Bloggerhelp on YouTube (good video tutorials for new Bloggers)
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Amberguity
I've just been doodling in PowerPoint. Used part of an anatomical study by da Vinci dated between 1509 and 1514, and part of a 2005 Hubble Telescope image of cold hydrogen clouds in the Carina nebula. My own words and attempt to draw a piece of amber added.
Great sites to visit:
HubbleSite - spectacular space images, info and more.
The Web Gallery of Art - virtual art museum of European art from 1100 to 1850 CE. Even has a selection of classical music you can listen to during your visit!
Martialling my thoughts
One of my great interests is reading about aspects of warfare. Military history and strategy, the philosophy of war, and the experience and conduct of the combatants themselves have much to teach us about the nature of people, ethics and business.
Asian books on military strategy and the waging of war, such as Sun Tzu’s Art of War, or Miyamoto Musashi’s The Book of Five Rings, which centres mainly on honing the skills and strategy of individual warriors and developing a warrior-ethic and psyche, are also of keen interest to me due to the influence of Taoism on their authors.
The Art of War was written well over 2,000 years ago in China, and
The Book of Five Rings was written in the 1600’s in Japan, but there is a common thread between the two due to the influence of the Way on their thinking. For Sun-Tzu, the ultimate art of war is obtaining victory without going to war itself, and Musashi writes about developing an implacable, unwavering directness of action, whilst still remaining able to assess and adapt to rapidly changing conditions by cultivating an ‘empty’ mind.
Though many translations and adaptations exist today, I have come to view the most rewarding and helpful translators to be Thomas Cleary and William Scott Wilson, who both have great insights to offer both from their particular translations and interpretations as well as from the comprehensive introductions they make. Due to the pregnant meaning contained in the characters used to write the original Chinese and Japanese texts, there is no such thing as definitive interpretations of either of these works, making it enjoyable to also read other interpretations too.
A word of caution: don’t approach these books by skimming through them to search for independent powerful quotes or sayings. If you do, not only will you lose much of the value that they contain; you can easily trivialise what you read or entirely miss concepts which are only apparent over a number of paragraphs. This, sadly, is the frequent treatment of The Art of War, due to its popularized reputation of being a powerful business tool. Read these books for their own sake, as instructions in the Way of war, and read them start to finish.
In the Water Chapter of The Book of Five Rings, Musashi himself points out: ‘This Way is, in all regards, difficult to write about in detail with the mind just as it is. But even if the words do not seem to connect, you should be able to perceive its principles naturally. You should deeply consider what is written in this book, word by word, character by character. If you think about it indifferently, you are likely to diverge from the Way many times.’ 1
Having read and re-read these books, I find them to be valuable well-springs from which I am able to draw inspiration for developing effective marketing campaigns, tactics for overcoming problems and obstacles, and for perceiving many overlooked opportunities.
References
1 Kodansha International: The Book of Five Rings published 2008, Miyamoto Musashi, translated by William Scott Wilson
Image from Wikipedia: Miyamoto Musashi in his prime. Scanned from Japanese manuscript.
Asian books on military strategy and the waging of war, such as Sun Tzu’s Art of War, or Miyamoto Musashi’s The Book of Five Rings, which centres mainly on honing the skills and strategy of individual warriors and developing a warrior-ethic and psyche, are also of keen interest to me due to the influence of Taoism on their authors.
The Art of War was written well over 2,000 years ago in China, and
The Book of Five Rings was written in the 1600’s in Japan, but there is a common thread between the two due to the influence of the Way on their thinking. For Sun-Tzu, the ultimate art of war is obtaining victory without going to war itself, and Musashi writes about developing an implacable, unwavering directness of action, whilst still remaining able to assess and adapt to rapidly changing conditions by cultivating an ‘empty’ mind.
Though many translations and adaptations exist today, I have come to view the most rewarding and helpful translators to be Thomas Cleary and William Scott Wilson, who both have great insights to offer both from their particular translations and interpretations as well as from the comprehensive introductions they make. Due to the pregnant meaning contained in the characters used to write the original Chinese and Japanese texts, there is no such thing as definitive interpretations of either of these works, making it enjoyable to also read other interpretations too.
A word of caution: don’t approach these books by skimming through them to search for independent powerful quotes or sayings. If you do, not only will you lose much of the value that they contain; you can easily trivialise what you read or entirely miss concepts which are only apparent over a number of paragraphs. This, sadly, is the frequent treatment of The Art of War, due to its popularized reputation of being a powerful business tool. Read these books for their own sake, as instructions in the Way of war, and read them start to finish.
In the Water Chapter of The Book of Five Rings, Musashi himself points out: ‘This Way is, in all regards, difficult to write about in detail with the mind just as it is. But even if the words do not seem to connect, you should be able to perceive its principles naturally. You should deeply consider what is written in this book, word by word, character by character. If you think about it indifferently, you are likely to diverge from the Way many times.’ 1
Having read and re-read these books, I find them to be valuable well-springs from which I am able to draw inspiration for developing effective marketing campaigns, tactics for overcoming problems and obstacles, and for perceiving many overlooked opportunities.
References
1 Kodansha International: The Book of Five Rings published 2008, Miyamoto Musashi, translated by William Scott Wilson
Image from Wikipedia: Miyamoto Musashi in his prime. Scanned from Japanese manuscript.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Rasterbation gives me that warm fuzzy feeling
One thing that I have a love-hate relationship with is software that has about a billion options, gizmos and features that require virtual monastic retreat to study and perhaps if you are worthy, eventually master.
OK, I’m from a generation where your new toaster didn’t come with an instruction manual – you put bread in it and out popped toast... unlike the over-teched modern one smugly lurking in our kitchen, with its three LED lights, three buttons, and a switch with five settings. Thankfully the good old lever is still there, though I’m kind of surprised that it hasn’t been replaced with a front-loading electronic option – seeing the bread disappearing CD-ROM style into the infernal device would be pretty cool I must admit, (as long as you use a recognizable bread format.)
That may explain why I’m really impressed with a little web-gem that I first saw mentioned in a pithy, lateral thinker’s marketing newsletter called Damn I Wish I’d Thought of That! by Andy Sernovitz, CEO of GasPedal.
The Rasterbator is a great freely-downloadable application that allows you to create rasterized versions of images from your PC or the web. It subsequently converts the image into multiple A4-sized (or custom-sized) segments in PDF format, which can then be printed.
Allow me to start over: this is a cool, free programme that allows you to make giant posters from image files that you can print on an ordinary A4 printer (some assembly required.) According to the website these can be up to 20 metres in size (the ones I’ve made so far are about 2 metres wide.)
An amazingly easy to use programme, The Rasterbator will have you rasterbating your sweaty little palms off in seconds, and has a few nifty, equally simple to use options. It can be found on a whacky, possibly Finnish website, The Sect of Homokaasu. There is also a great gallery of rasterbated images submitted by fans of the programme.
The website is also the host of The Kill Everyone Project, which had as its noble goal, the virtual killing of all human beings, one click at a time. According to the TKEP page, the project was completed on 26th of April 2007, taking 2179 days (about six years) of mouse-clicking a button simply called ‘Click here!’ Apart from my long-held suspicions being confirmed that I have been virtually dead since at least 2007, I’m also pretty taken by the ease of use of this errr... killer-app.
Right, it’s time to enter meatspace once more, as I’m flying to Durban really early tomorrow morning to talk to booksellers - back on Friday.
OK, I’m from a generation where your new toaster didn’t come with an instruction manual – you put bread in it and out popped toast... unlike the over-teched modern one smugly lurking in our kitchen, with its three LED lights, three buttons, and a switch with five settings. Thankfully the good old lever is still there, though I’m kind of surprised that it hasn’t been replaced with a front-loading electronic option – seeing the bread disappearing CD-ROM style into the infernal device would be pretty cool I must admit, (as long as you use a recognizable bread format.)
That may explain why I’m really impressed with a little web-gem that I first saw mentioned in a pithy, lateral thinker’s marketing newsletter called Damn I Wish I’d Thought of That! by Andy Sernovitz, CEO of GasPedal.
The Rasterbator is a great freely-downloadable application that allows you to create rasterized versions of images from your PC or the web. It subsequently converts the image into multiple A4-sized (or custom-sized) segments in PDF format, which can then be printed.
Allow me to start over: this is a cool, free programme that allows you to make giant posters from image files that you can print on an ordinary A4 printer (some assembly required.) According to the website these can be up to 20 metres in size (the ones I’ve made so far are about 2 metres wide.)
An amazingly easy to use programme, The Rasterbator will have you rasterbating your sweaty little palms off in seconds, and has a few nifty, equally simple to use options. It can be found on a whacky, possibly Finnish website, The Sect of Homokaasu. There is also a great gallery of rasterbated images submitted by fans of the programme.
The website is also the host of The Kill Everyone Project, which had as its noble goal, the virtual killing of all human beings, one click at a time. According to the TKEP page, the project was completed on 26th of April 2007, taking 2179 days (about six years) of mouse-clicking a button simply called ‘Click here!’ Apart from my long-held suspicions being confirmed that I have been virtually dead since at least 2007, I’m also pretty taken by the ease of use of this errr... killer-app.
Right, it’s time to enter meatspace once more, as I’m flying to Durban really early tomorrow morning to talk to booksellers - back on Friday.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
If you are feeling down, jump!
About five years ago, I finally lost the fight to keep an insurance brokerage business that I had started going. The final nails in the coffin were a devastating burglary and a motorbike accident that happened almost at the same time. In the process, my wife and I lost everything - except for a few suitcases of clothes that is. For a long time afterwards, I felt paralysed by despair and a sense of failure.
Slowly, very slowly, I began to look at my old life and began to wonder, how the hell did I end up in financial services anyway? I'd always wanted to be a writer, journalist, entrepreneur - never a banker or insurance salesman! What a waste of years I thought, I've blown my chances and there's no going back.
After close to a year of unemployment, my wife found work in a publisher, and every now and then was able to swing some freelance work my way. Another year passed, and I was getting work from two publishers and a freelancer. Dull, monotonous stuff it was, called datacapture, which is essentially retyping manuscripts into a format for typesetters to use to lay out text, as well as much more interesting, but infrequent PowerPoint presentations for book fairs and exhibitions. Though it gave me back a sense of self-worth to be at least partially economically active, I still saw little by way of a future for myself.
At this point, a friend of ours invited us to go with her and her young daughter to Knysna, which is situated on the scenic Garden Route in the southern Cape. Along the way we passed Gouritz Bridge, a metal span bridge some 68 metres above the Gouritz river. I noticed there was a bungee platform on the bridge.
Though I'd never wanted to do it before, something inside me told me I had to jump, I must jump, this act of calculated insanity will teach me something, and allow me to release something (other than my bladder). Somehow, I convinced my wife that I must do this thing, and she, who is dreadfully afraid of heights actually accompanied me onto the bridge, ashen-faced, along with our friend and anxious daughter.
The moment, I call it the Zen moment, is when you are buckled up and standing on the edge, with your hands behind your back holding the railings hard enough to crack bone, and you then have to will your hands to let go and put your arms straight out on either side of you, before leaping off the edge towards what seems certain death.
It is the moment that all other fears, doubts and perceived inadequacies are at once crystallised and condensed into a tiny, insignificant point. You see them all, even those that you hadn't even been able to acknowledge before, and you see that they are puny things in comparison to The Fear that is confronting you. In a strange, ironical way, you realise that if you don't face The Fear, all those lesser fears will regain their significance and perhaps have even more power and control over you in the future.
So I jumped...
Two months ago, I jumped again - this time off a 100m cliff in Zambia, near Vic Falls. I jumped to celebrate that first leap into the abyss, the one that I haven't completely landed from yet.
You see, my inner strength came coursing back in the skies above the Gouritz, I realised that I can overcome anything - especially self-imposed limitations. More importantly even than this, I regained the belief that I can achieve anything that I set my mind to as well. Within a year of that first leap, I started working full-time in publishing; doing work that I completely love together with a group of highly dedicated, professional people.
Slowly, very slowly, I began to look at my old life and began to wonder, how the hell did I end up in financial services anyway? I'd always wanted to be a writer, journalist, entrepreneur - never a banker or insurance salesman! What a waste of years I thought, I've blown my chances and there's no going back.
After close to a year of unemployment, my wife found work in a publisher, and every now and then was able to swing some freelance work my way. Another year passed, and I was getting work from two publishers and a freelancer. Dull, monotonous stuff it was, called datacapture, which is essentially retyping manuscripts into a format for typesetters to use to lay out text, as well as much more interesting, but infrequent PowerPoint presentations for book fairs and exhibitions. Though it gave me back a sense of self-worth to be at least partially economically active, I still saw little by way of a future for myself.
At this point, a friend of ours invited us to go with her and her young daughter to Knysna, which is situated on the scenic Garden Route in the southern Cape. Along the way we passed Gouritz Bridge, a metal span bridge some 68 metres above the Gouritz river. I noticed there was a bungee platform on the bridge.
Though I'd never wanted to do it before, something inside me told me I had to jump, I must jump, this act of calculated insanity will teach me something, and allow me to release something (other than my bladder). Somehow, I convinced my wife that I must do this thing, and she, who is dreadfully afraid of heights actually accompanied me onto the bridge, ashen-faced, along with our friend and anxious daughter.
The moment, I call it the Zen moment, is when you are buckled up and standing on the edge, with your hands behind your back holding the railings hard enough to crack bone, and you then have to will your hands to let go and put your arms straight out on either side of you, before leaping off the edge towards what seems certain death.
It is the moment that all other fears, doubts and perceived inadequacies are at once crystallised and condensed into a tiny, insignificant point. You see them all, even those that you hadn't even been able to acknowledge before, and you see that they are puny things in comparison to The Fear that is confronting you. In a strange, ironical way, you realise that if you don't face The Fear, all those lesser fears will regain their significance and perhaps have even more power and control over you in the future.
So I jumped...
Two months ago, I jumped again - this time off a 100m cliff in Zambia, near Vic Falls. I jumped to celebrate that first leap into the abyss, the one that I haven't completely landed from yet.
You see, my inner strength came coursing back in the skies above the Gouritz, I realised that I can overcome anything - especially self-imposed limitations. More importantly even than this, I regained the belief that I can achieve anything that I set my mind to as well. Within a year of that first leap, I started working full-time in publishing; doing work that I completely love together with a group of highly dedicated, professional people.
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