Poetry

March 1, 2015 6:27 AM , Leave a Comment ,

No, this isn’t a poetry entry.  Just some thoughts on the subject.

I went to a poetry reading the other day and they had two poets reading from some of their latest books.  I regularly attend readings by a local group called Inprint, which brings notable authors to Houston.

One poet struck a particular chord within me.  His poems dealt with his relationship with his father who had recently passed away.  His words so eloquently expressed his feelings as he dealt with his loss with a minimum of diction.  Yet even though he didn’t write down all that much the few words that he did write down beautifully expressed his sentiments and the feeling of the moment.

It has always amazed me how poets can work with words and weave them so intricately and so expertly and even though I work with the same media that they can make something so elegant and so concise whereas I feel that my writing is at best a ham-fisted approach to distill and convey a message to my readers.

Their approach, their technique, can be likened to a delicate ballet whilst mine is merely clumsy clog dancing.  I have to admit that I have always been envious of that but not jealous.  I know deep down inside that I am no poet.  While I can admire their craft and appreciate what they have written I know it’s not something that I could ever do.  So I don’t resent their talent and ability to express themselves so eloquently.

My talent, if indeed I do have any talent, lies in clumsily expressing myself in a more pedestrian and unremarkable prosaic style.  Presenting the facts, all the facts, before the reader and lending them my sense of the scene as I see and guiding them through the action.

Hopefully some day, something that I write will be found worth printing and I will be able to share this with a much wider audience.  It won’t be a pretty dance of words like that of these poets but exhibited but I hope that it will be worth reading.

 

 

Posted in: life in general, thought, writing

War of the Worlds – Book review

February 27, 2015 6:18 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note:  I suppose that this is one of the first science fiction novels that most kids read. War of the Worlds is fairly straightforward but it contains many complex elements that only appear upon a second reading and a careful consideration of the text.  As always spoilers from here after so stop reading now if you don’t want to know.]

Many people consider this one of the first true sci-fi novels ever written even though the works of Verne predate this and the true first science fiction novel was Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Still the idea of aliens beings making contact with humans and traveling through space to invade Earth was original.

H.G. Wells, the writer, was a partly self-taught scientific enthusiast.  He read and studied several different topics and fields although he never really mastered any.  Later in life, Jules Verne reproached Wells for his sloppy research of scientific topics.  In some ways Wells was more the writer and Verne more the scientist.

Wells was also affected by the radical politics of his family.  His father was a radical freethinker and encouraged Herbert to explore different political systems.  Wells himself was greatly influenced by socialist and Darwinist writings at the turn of the century and this can be clearly seen in some of his writings.

War of the Worlds itself began as part of the discussion that Herbert was having with his brother about a news article describing the massacre of the Tasmanian native population by British colonists.  Wells wondered how humans might fare if a superior civilization treated the British empire as they treated the native Tasmanians.

The story itself is told from the narration of a witness to the invasion.  A series of gas explosions on the planet Mars is noted by telescope and garners no more attention.  But then a series of cylinders begin landing on Earth.  These cylinders release the Martian walking machines which begin slaughtering everyone in their path.  The British army is powerless to stop the invaders.

The narrator is forced to flee from town to town as the Martians employ all manner of advanced weapons including heat rays, poison gas, and the walking machines.

The narrator gets cut off and finds himself trapped behind the lines.  He and another survivor hide while some martians pass by.  The martians are capturing and gathering up humans.  The narrator’s companion eventually goes mad and is captured by the martians who drain his blood.

The narrator escapes and travels to London.  He notices that the martians are spreading some sort of red weed all over the landscape.  They are turning Earth into a second Mars.  But as he reaches London he finds that the martians have died.  The invaders could not handle the microorganisms of the Earth and are killed off.  Humanity barely escapes being conquered and is left suitably chastened by the experience.

The novel is of course a metaphor that tries to portray the British Empire from the perspective of the conquered.  Beyond this however there are other sub-themes.

Wells realized that science and modern industry would forever alter warfare.  The age of precision made machines made it possible to turn out high-quality weapons in large quantities.  Science meant that new forms of warfare were being invented and deployed before their implications could be fully realized.

The third theme that Wells considered dealt with Natural selection.  Wells was a devoted Darwinist and in an age when the theory of evolution was being hotly contested he saw this as a perfect opportunity to expose his audience to this idea.  The technologically superior martian invaders had not evolved to deal with the simple bacteria of earth whereas the humans had and by dint of their evolutionary advantage they had come out the winners.  Survival of the fittest.

War of the Worlds began our continuing obsession with the planet Mars.  Writers from Burroughs to Moore can trace their works almost directly back to this novel and it can be argued that it has also influenced space exploration.  Currently most of our offworld research is focused on this planet and on the possibility of making this our first home off the Earth.

It would be fitting if the first offworld settlement were to be named after Wells.

Posted in: books, review

Empathy in business

February 25, 2015 6:47 AM , Leave a Comment ,

The cold season struck my house and I was at a local pharmacy picking up some cold medicine.  I picked up what I needed and headed to the checkout line.

Up ahead of me in the checkout line was someone who had worse problems.  A guy wearing construction gear was buying some gauze and tape.  He had his bloody arm up in the air.  He got to the front of the line and the checkout clerk started asking him if he would like to fill out an application to get a pharmacy loyalty card.  Poor guy is bleeding and wants to buy his stuff and tape himself up but this clerk wants to talk about filling out forms.  Was this clerk blind?  Could she not see that saving a couple of cents on his purchase wasn’t the guy’s prime concern right now?  Couldn’t she intuit the poor man’s situation and help him get on his way?

Unfortunately this is not something rare or just limited to checkout clerks.  Too often when talking with business professionals, with contractors, with other salesmen I get the same type of treatment.  People just going through the motions of doing their job and not really getting a feel for the other person’s situation.

We’ve instituted procedures, scripts, and ways of doing our jobs that take out most human thought and decision-making out of the process and taken the individual out of the equation.  Why have people if you’re just going to make them act like robots?

On the other hand I’ve been mildly amused and somewhat taken aback whenever I get praise from a client or potential client for “listening” and tailoring solutions to meet their needs.  I’ve always been somewhat shocked by this and thought to myself that I hadn’t really done anything special.  As it turns out maybe I had done something special without knowing it.

As I see it if you are in a position where you meet the public in any fashion whether you’re a salesman for a company, or a technician or even just a checkout clerk, part of your job description is to interact with the public and engage in an interactive give and take that actively tries to meet the client’s expectations.  You don’t just read from a prepared set of responses or follow set procedures.  You need to think, react, and maybe be a little proactive and actually think through a situation.

Posted in: business, communication, sales

The Summer solstice

February 23, 2015 6:38 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note:  This is a reprint from June 2007]    

We just passed the Summer Solstice.  The longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere.  In today’s hectic world it has little meaning to the average person living in this interconnected, instant communications, driven life

But once upon a time it was a deadly serious business.  No one knows exactly when or where humans began tracking sunrises and sunsets.  The neolithic peoples that built Stonehenge knew of it and probably built it to track the rise and setting of the sun, so surely its older than that 5000 year old structure

Knowing when the days became shorter or longer was key to a society that had just come out of hunting and gathering.  Crops would not grow in the cold dimly lit days of Winter so knowing that the days were getting longer would be essential to knowing just when to plant crops.  To mark the importance of this priests and shamans would encourage festivals to be held on these key days

Of course nowadays with calendars, satellites, and precision timing devices it’s just taken for granted but even so we cant shake these ancient pagan roots.

The Summer festival isn’t as important to us but look at the Winter festivals.  Halloween, originally the Celtic New year marking the beginning of the dark season.  Appropriated by the Christian Church into All Saints day, or All Hallows Eve.

Thanksgiving, a thoroughly american holiday, or is it?  The day of giving thanks for the fall harvest, yet another agricultural legacy that hasn’t left us.

Christmas.  Most probably Christ’s birth date wasn’t in December, probably it was closer to March or April, however the German and Celtic tribes celebrated the Winter Solstice on the 22nd and the Church appropriated this as well

Even in Texas traces of these Winter rites are seen.  We used to have a large bonfire at my university for the texas football game every year.  Large logs were cut and stacked and on the night before the game the huge pyre was lit, thousands would stand in the cold and rain and sing and chant.  Standing in this throng of people lit by the glow of a gigantic fire I couldn’t help but make the comparison to ancient crowds circling bonfires thousands of years ago chanting in the dark.

Even Easter.  Named after the Anglo Saxon goddess of Spring Ostern.  Possibly Ostern herself was a corruption of ancient near east goddesses like Ishtar or Astarte, both goddesses of fertility and new life.

Ostern’s festival was the vernal equinox or the start of spring when crops could be planted.  The Anglo Saxons would perform a ritual on that date.  They would take out a cage made out of wheat stalks they had harvested the year before containing the corn spirit.  They would set this on fire and release the spirit to bring the world back to life after the long Winter.  A recognition of the cyclical nature of life.

We have co=opted many of the traditions of these ancestors.  The rabbit and the eggs.  The rabbit was the totemic animal of the goddess Oster.  A small bird laid its eggs in wheat fields, when hunters saw rabbits in the fields and chased them, they often found these eggs and assumed the rabbit had laid them, thus the tradition of hiding eggs was born.  The church explained the egg as a symbol of new life.  The corn spirit was left out but the idea of the rebirth of the world after a long cold winter was maintained.

The summer solstice itself may have lost much of its importance in this modern world but though we have covered ourselves with a hard veneer of technology and draped ourselves with our modern point of view we are not all that much removed from those ancestors that once lit bonfires and chanted in the middle of the night.

Posted in: myths, thought

The real vs the ideal

February 21, 2015 6:57 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Something that I thought might be fun to compare would be how I want to spend my week versus how I actually spend it.  This won’t be a minutely detailed exposition of my entire week but to give some generalized idea of how it goes and how it’s supposed to go.

Part of it is to give some insight into my daily activities but also for me to review how I tend to spend my time and to see where I might refocus or reinterpret the way that I spend my time.

Monday through Thursday

Ideally – Waking up at 3:45 and getting suited up to run my 7 daily miles and finishing up just in time to catch a quick shower and begin the workday at 5.  Getting on the phone and on Skype to chat to clients in the middle east and Asia as their workday comes to a close. Lunch at 11 and finishing up by 2 so I can hit the gym for an hour’s worth of swimming or free weights.  Come home for a couple extra hours of office work till 6.  Spend some time writing this blog or working on some fiction.  Wind down the day with a book and get to sleep round 9:30

In reality – Waking round 2:30 or 3 or 3:30 and trying to convince myself or negotiate with myself into going out to run.  Running somewhat panicked to get back home before 5 to start work.  Dealing with a half-dozen “emergencies” that have cropped up overnight while I was asleep and not getting any actual work that I’m supposed to be doing till about 9 or 10.  Lunch at 11 or 11:30 or 12 or when work allows. Aiming to finish at 2 but in actuality closer to 3 or sometimes 4.  Taking care of relatives or household chores that need to be done.  Hitting the gym if and when possible and then coming back to do more office work till 7 or 8.  Writing bits and pieces here and there.  Feeling too wound up to read anything substantial and instead trying to finish the day with some silly YouTube videos or some light magazine articles to fall asleep round 10 or 11

Friday

Ideally – Similar to the regular work week but at the end of the day letting things rest over the weekend and preparing to go out.  Everything in its time and place, right?  Going out but not too late so as to work out Saturday morning.

In reality – This is the day when everyone wants everything done and done right away.  It most definitely cannot wait till Monday and no we don’t care what plans you made already.  It will get done no matter how late it gets.

Saturday

Ideally – a good workout to begin the day and then relaxing.  Noontime nap and then using the afternoon to write or create or plan.  Hopefully with friends at some coffee-house.  Enjoying Saturday evening at some event.

In reality – Trying to find any least excuse to stay in bed.  Working out and trying to make up for lost time during the week.  Grocery shopping to do, things to be repaired, things to be mended.  Running late as usual and the afternoon blurs into the evening.  Trying to find something to do since you haven’t had time to plan ahead

Sunday

Ideally – Sleeping in a little longer.  Stretching and taking a calming run.  Looking over the paper and some bills and having  leisurely breakfast or even a brunch.  Starting up the computer to read over some work emails, and then napping in the afternoon.  Making an early night of it to start fresh on Monday.

In reality – Getting called at 2AM on a Sunday morning by a grad student from India who tracked down your home phone number and demands free data for his dissertation due in 2 months time.Staying awake for the rest of the night and feeling slightly worse than death for the rest of the day.  Being shocked by all the bills due for payment.  Doing office work and seeing 5 emails from the same grad student in your inbox. Staying up late and wondering if it’s all worth it.

Posted in: activities, habits, life in general, schedules

The real pleasures of life

February 19, 2015 6:26 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Cold and rainy days are perfect for trying out quiet and meditative pastimes. I mean there’s nothing wrong with a good healthy athletic activity.  Getting the blood circulating, moving, doing something that requires hard exertion is great too, but quiet meditative moments are meant to be appreciated too.

In the past, cold and rainy days meant just logging into some online game and trying to kill a couple of hours doing some game activity that I’d done a thousand times before.  “Level grinding” is what we would call it in online circles.  Just trying to accumulate more points to get to the next level by doing the same thing over and over again.  In many ways just like running on a thread mill and eventually just as monotonous.

But there are more satisfying and profitable ways to spend a cold dreary day.  Spending time with friends and just catching up is always good.  Doesn’t require any particular space and doesn’t have to be preplanned or special preparation.

Catching up on work.  Odd I know but I’ve caught myself actually enjoying spending time on weekends trying to get ahead or trying to catch up on those projects that would be “nice to do if I had the time” and lo and behold here we are.

Spending time alone at a tea or coffee-house and instead of going for your old reliable blend (ginger green in my case) exploring and trying some of the more exotic varieties or just sitting next to a window and watching the rain fall as you contemplate the tea leaves in your cup.

Letting a lazy afternoon drift past as you get lost in a good book and not realizing or caring how time has past until you can no longer read by natural light. Something that every person should do at least once in a lifetime.

Letting the muse strike and painting or composing a new song or writing a story or whatever creative activity that you enjoy take over your focus for an afternoon.

Point is that rather than doing the same old thing during this seeming waste of time, think of this as an opportunity for you to engage your more creative and intellectual instincts.

You may just find some hidden inspiration that you never knew existed.

 

 

Posted in: activities, life in general, thought, time

Supporting players

February 17, 2015 6:31 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I attended a play the other week.  It was a musical comedy with the main character also acting as a narrator.  All the cast members were brilliant and played off each others lines and really made the play come together.

One thing I noticed was how well the supporting characters filled in the details and made the story come to life as the main character narrated the action.

When writing either a short story or a long novel it is always tempting to give the best lines or leave most of the action up to the main character.  Some writers put something of themselves into the main character and it’s tempting to give this character the best lines and most action.  But think about it.  Does this really happen in real life?  Of course not!

If you really want to write a more realistic and more in-depth story then spread the action around some.  I don’t mean totally dilute what your main character does but think about how situations and how conflicts begin, evolve, and are resolved in your real life.

News comes in from some sources, others add more details, you make decisions, you explain these to others who in turn make their decisions, everyone talks about it and then either take action or not and the event gets resolved.

The other thing about supporting players is that too often they are merely props that are not fleshed out.  They serve to deliver one or two lines of dialogue but are never fully explored.  Look into their background almost as closely as you would for your main characters.  Sometimes the backgrounds of these supporting players can be even more interesting than your main character.

Same thing goes for villains as well. The better your villain is developed and fleshed out the better your hero will look and your story will be that more interesting because of it.

I think if you take this advice you will not only end up with a more interesting tale to tell but you will find that you will enjoy the writing process more.

Posted in: writing

Is beauty necessary?

February 15, 2015 11:21 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note:  This is the next in a series of writing challenges first proposed to me by Leslie Farnsworth.  Leslie has organized and expanded the challenge to include a larger group of excellent blog writers.  Once per month, one member of the group will propose a topic and we will all give our own unique take on the subject.  This latest installment was proposed by Rebecca Harvey.  You may want to look at the other bloggers listed below to see what they came up with:]

My thinking on this topic began with meditating on the topic of beauty itself.  Why does it exist in the first place?  Why are some things beautiful and some things ugly and how do we make the distinction?

We all have our preferences in life.  No matter what the subject is, no matter how public or personal, we know what we like and what we don’t like.  Generally these things have to do with the more basic and primal aspects of our being.  Those aspects that determine our survival.

Throughout evolution the beauty aspect has helped the individual find that member of the opposite gender that presented the best possible chance that one’s offspring would not only survive but prosper.  As environmental conditions change or a species moves into a new territory sometimes the requirements for surviving changes and beauty standards may change as well.  As a tangent line of thought, this may also be where fashion originates, but that’s something to think about another day.

For humans and our immediate predecessors, beauty standards dictated that our potential mates be in generally good physical condition, be larger than other potential mates, and have some advantageous adaptation to the local environment.

Of course this standard varied from situation to situation and from time to time.  Cultural norms have come to play a huge role in what we consider to be beautiful.  Some cultures will accentuate or even exaggerate some body part that is considered desirable.  Those cultures would use clothing, make up, or body modification to achieve the desired look.  These practices can of course be carried to extremes.  In certain cultures around the world being fat and having poor or no teeth was considered beautiful as it meant that the particular individual had access to excess food supplies and in particular access to sugar which for a very long time was a luxury food item.  Even though having poor dental hygiene is in fact a sign of bad health the practice continued on until the improvement of economic situations in these cultures made this a less desirable beauty trait.

As I said previously culture plays a big role in what we consider to be beautiful.  Wealth is an aspect of culture that can dictate how we or other people live their lives.  Whether we measure wealth by number of farm animals we own, or land we control, or pieces of paper we have in a bank.  Money represents power and power has always been beautiful whether we like it or not.

But do we still need the old beauty standards of good health and attractive features?  In the urban situation where most humans live,  where we no longer have to hunt for food or run away from predators or scavenge and go hungry for weeks or months at a time and where physique is no longer as important, is it still valid to judge others with those old beauty standards?  Surely if you are searching for a potential mate and you take into consideration their ability to earn wealth then a potential mate is to be judged by their ability to think, plan, and create content and thus participate in the idea economy rather than by their physical development and their ability to chop wood, or plow a field, or hunt.

That would be true in an ideal world but one thing we have begun to discover is that this human built environment has its own challenges.  Sedentary lifestyles now represent the largest danger to those living in cities.  We have access to too much food and little need to exert ourselves as vigorously as we once did.  Heart disease, diabetes, and cancers are the biggest killers of all these days.  Diseases that were previously kept in check by harder and more physical lifestyles.  Those individuals that work out and keep fit are still considered beautiful as they seem to reject the sedentary lifestyles that lead to these diseases.

A secondary consideration relating to our new economy is that you may have the best ideas in the world but if you can’t convey those ideas to large groups of other people then your idea won’t be successful.  As our means of communications are becoming more and more visual and as our minds respond better to beautiful things, even if just sub-consciously, then  we turn again to the old beauty standards.  We trust the beautiful, we listen to the beautiful, we envy the beautiful.  The ugly, not so much.  One famous example was the Kennedy-Nixon debate.  Those that listened to the event on radio gave the debate to Nixon as the more persuasive speaker but the vast majority of the population that saw the event on TV gave the debate to the younger and more attractive Kennedy.

So is beauty necessary?  I wouldn’t call it necessary as I would call it a factor to be aware of and something to take into consideration. I think we have to be aware that beauty does play a factor in our lives however much we may eschew this and even think this a banal consideration it does exist and does have the power to alter our decision-making process.

Posted in: blogs, culture, fashion, genetics, ideas, life in general, psychology, relationships, thought

An all out effort

February 15, 2015 6:12 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Pressure builds and keeps on building.  That’ just the way that life is.  The more you do, the more you have to worry about and the more reactive and proactive you have to become to keep everything going at the same time.

More than once in a while things will blow up.  I think it’s inevitable.  Then of course you have to scramble to assess the damage and to try to fix things.  Nothing is ever easy.

In the course of all of this effort you might suddenly find that you’re not feeling all that great.  Maybe one morning you will wake up and you can’t quite pin it down but you know you’re not up to 100%.  The rest of your day is thrown off by this and over the next few days and weeks you start going downhill.

This type of generalized fatigue is common.  It’s the sort of thing that can’t be pinned down and will slowly but surely seep in and affect all aspects of your life.

So what can be done?  You obviously have to address this before you can continue on with any of your other activities.  But you can’t just stop everything.  Luckily you don’t have to.

The problem lies in the way you live your life and how you are living your life and the solution is also found there.  Not in one aspect of your life or one activity but in all of it.

Stopping one activity or one part of your life will not get rid of your fatigue.  I mean maybe one part may be more directly responsible than others but I think it has to do with your life as a whole.  You have to modify everything you do to cure this disease.

So in no particular order.

Exercise – Maybe it’s time to cut down one part of your exercise regimen or change it up so you focus on another exercise.  Then again maybe you’ve not been getting enough exercise.  Add up all your weekly exercise hours and think to yourself “Is this too much or not enough?”

Diet – We all eat crap.  Sometimes it’s unavoidable.  You get invited out to too many meals with clients or family or friends.  Sometimes we indulge in a little treat and before you know it that treat becomes a regular meal.  Sometimes you find yourself eating “lunch” at 3PM and dinner at 10PM.  Try to exercise a little diet discipline.  On the other hand eating the same healthy foods all the time may make your system acclimated to a certain energy level.  Shake up your routine.

Work – The 40 hour work week is a poor joke to those who want to get ahead.  But 80 or even 100 hour weeks?  Come on!  Realize that there are only 168 hours in a week.  At some point in each day the line has to be drawn and that line cannot be crossed for anything.

Other work – You may have some outside interests or some other venture going on outside of work.  The same advice from above applies.  Remember that this was supposed to be a side project not the main focus of your life.  Treat it accordingly

Personal life – The main problem here is lending too much weight to this aspect of life. Sometimes you may have a problem in this aspect of your life and this bleeds over into other parts of your life.  You have to either address this problem or compartmentalize it.  Although I don’t advise doing the latter too much as it will inevitably escape out.  The other problem concerning personal life is that sometimes you don’t have one.  Focusing on work or exercise too much will over time lead to a hypnotic like state where you really don’t what you’re doing.  Break up the monotony.  Take time to do something pointless just for the sake of doing something pointless.  See some friends, talk to complete strangers.  Get another point of view in your life.

None of these suggestions will work on their own.  Rather it will be a combination of efforts in several different fields at various levels of intensity all working in concert to keep you balanced and working at the optimum level of efficiency.  There’s no one solution or one single therapy that will work universally.  What worked last year may not work this year.

All that I can advise is to keep vigilant and constantly reassess your personal needs with relation to your life.

 

Posted in: diet, environment, exercise, health, illness, life in general, rest, thought

Altruism

February 13, 2015 6:58 AM , Leave a Comment ,

7th grade spelling bee competition.  I get the word Altruism and misspelled it.  The proctor gives me the definition of selfless concern for the welfare of others and told me “you will never forget this word”.

Well she was right in that respect although I still maintain that I did spell it correctly.  I’ve tried living my life altruistically as possible in all aspects.  In some aspects perhaps too much in other aspects perhaps too little but overall I think I’ve done a decent job of it.

I haven’t done this in expectation of rewards.  To me this just seems the way to live my life.  Volunteering for something, donating to a charity, or even just giving a couple of bucks to some beggar on the street.  None of it really benefits me in any way yet I feel the compunction to do it.

Several years back I read up on George Price’s work on the Price equation which seem to suggest that altruism was in reality a long-term evolutionary tactic developed to insure species survival and increase the odds of reproductive success.

Interestingly enough Price himself spent the remainder of his life trying to disprove this theory by looking for examples of truly altruistic behavior.

Is it really all just an elaborate tactic that we all play?  That on some deep sub-conscious level we plot and strategize to increase the survival of the species and we try to insure our own reproductive success or improve the lot of our offspring?

Can we find that one example that turns this all into a lie?  Can you look in your life and find that one true altruistic experience?

Posted in: charity, life in general, thought