The Collapsing Narrative
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, Breakfast in the Ruins, Commentary, Environment, General, Gripes, Humour, The Destruction of History
A sign of our times is the constant harping on by the legacy media about things which are not really happening, and these are simply distractions.
The bizarre public conversation regarding apparently rising levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is a Will o’the Wisp, a phantasm. Common sense would suggest the opposite over geological time scales – that the combination of weathering and biological processes, which (as far as we know) are absent on other rocky planets, will eventually sequester all of the atmospheric carbon, at which point, plant growth will cease, and we will all starve to death.
If you pushed me, I would have to admit that there is so much Clown World activity these days that I often just sit back and laugh. This “climate science” farce, in which it is claimed that Armageddon is only years away, primarily due to the combination of burning fossil fuels and cow farts, clearly not only doesn’t coincide with observable facts, but is also hiding something that nobody ever seems to talk about. Now, it does seem strange to me that prestigious researchers don’t mention this, but it also shows that maybe well-educated and experienced people who should know better also don’t see it, even though it is right under their noses, and we might describe it as being part of “Chemistry 101”. Or maybe people are afraid to state the glaringly obvious?
What I am talking about here is the tendency of chemical reactions to proceed until they are no longer thermodynamically possible. Admittedly, this is somewhat difficult to illustrate and may seem somewhat obscure to many onlookers, but bear with me; this is real science, not journalistic gobbledegook. Remember: this is an experienced and world-published chemist and biochemistry graduate talking here, not the kind of “scientist” bemoaned by Thomas S. Kuhn back in 1962 (the year that I was born!) who spends his or her whole damned career trying to “verify” the theories of others rather than challenging them. Question everything.
Back to the chemistry…
Another thing we have to remember is that, for precisely this reason, Earth’s current conditions are nowhere near resembling what they were like when this planet was first formed. As we are talking primarily about the atmosphere and climate here, we should remember that, according to data from geological sciences, the atmosphere of this planet was originally unbreathable; it was toxic and contained components such as methane, ammonia and hydrogen sulphide, and it remained this way for millions of years because the dominant early lifeforms of the time – bacteria and their allies – produced these as the wastes from their respiratory processes.
All of that started to change when photosynthesis arrived, and a new waste – oxygen – started to be produced in vast quantities. The result of this was that the former kings of this domain – anaerobic bacteria – could not survive with oxygen diffusing into the waters, and they were forced to survive in places occupying the lowest positions in the oxygen gradient. Think of the dark, anoxic substrata of estuarine mud flats (and I know, because I went there sampling anaerobes when I was a biology student), and you will get the idea.
A big part of our current situation, then, is apparently due to an accident of nature – a transition from purely anaerobic chemical life processes to aerobic ones in geologically ancient and remote times, and resulting from the appearance of photosynthesis and the subsequent change of major atmospheric constituents from gaseous wastes such as methane, ammonia and hydrogen sulphide to gaseous oxygen, which is factually toxic to the surviving anaerobes.
We could illustrate this by referring to other rocky bodies in the Solar System to see how it might have been otherwise. On the one hand, we have Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, a frigid world with a thick, orange atmosphere composed largely of nitrogen and methane; on the other, we have a place like Mars, where the atmosphere is composed mainly of carbon dioxide, plus a few odd little components (such as methane). We are sometimes told in the popular scientific press that the former represents a primordial Earth, and from our discussion above, this seems to be true; from it we could conclude that the big difference is that the emergence of life made it more chemically dynamic. The same could be said of Mars: perhaps, if there were photosynthetic life there, the atmosphere would be strikingly different – much more like that of Earth is nowadays. It would still be quite thin, however, because of the relatively low gravity of Mars (compared with that of Earth, for example) – a factor overcome to some extent, in the case of Titan, by the frigid temperatures.
What I would suggest here is that the presence of life on Earth, and the dynamism it contributes to geological and atmospheric processes, has an additional effect: it slowly leads to the depletion of carbon dioxide by sequestering into other forms. For example, as carbon dioxide is soluble in water (a polar liquid in which it forms soluble carbonate anions, which can form solids with e.g. dissolved metal ions such as calcium, magnesium and copper), which is perhaps its most important characteristic from a purely chemical point of view, it is more immediately able to undergo reactions which can convert it into inaccessible forms; think of corals, for example. We won’t go into a discussion of the enzymes involved here, but simply remind ourselves that stony corals are “stony” because their polyps take carbon dioxide from the air (dissolved in seawater) and convert it into an insoluble carbonate. Some of this may return to the atmosphere when the polyps die and their calcareous skeletons begin to degrade, but if these are subsequently buried, the degradation would be prevented and eventually, the skeletons would become fossils in a rocky matrix, at least if the conventional process of fossilisation is correct. Since the primary source of carbonate for corals comes in the form of carbon dioxide dissolved in sea water, the long-term result of this would be the depletion of atmospheric CO2.
We might also remember that the shells of molluscs and many marine algae, both geologically ancient and modern, are likewise composed of calcium carbonate (aragonite), sequestered biologically and presumably only slowly weathered away when their owner dies. Again, there are plenty of fossils of these creatures and again, once encased in a rocky matrix, the material is sequestered and chemically inaccessible. Think of the huge deposits of ancient microscopic marine algae such as we find on the south coast of England – and how many such deposits are not exposed to weathering due to still being buried deep under subsequent rock strata. They might not even go this far – if buried in mud, perhaps no further reactions are possible with these materials (concrete, anyone?).
An additional material for sequestering could be wood. Non-woody plants fix carbon into sugars via glycolate (mainly), and the plants may then transform it into sugars or oils. The sugars are partly stored and partly used for structural purposes – polymerised into amylose (starch) for future energy usage, or further polymerised into cellulose to create wood fibres. There would be an annual carbon dioxide flux according to how many non-woody plants die and decay, but less so in the case of woody plants, especially in the case of large trees in (for example) Earth’s extensive boreal and antiboreal forests. The boreal forests might be interesting here on account of their evergreen content – resinous pine needles again sequester carbon and rot away very slowly, unlike the leaves of deciduous trees. You do not see processes like these on Titan or Mars (or even on Venus).
Venus is interesting because it has an atmosphere composed mainly of carbon dioxide [1] plus a lesser amount of nitrogen and sulphuric acid; it is also much denser than the atmospheres of the other rocky bodies. Is Venus so hot because of the carbon dioxide? Perhaps the truth is that Venus is a relatively recently-formed planet (according to thousands of stories in global folklore; check out the works of Immanuel Velikovsky for more information), and what we are seeing is the remanent heat of its formation, which probably is being lost only slowly because of its closer proximity to the sun.
Our main point, however, even in the case of Venus, is that the one thing not present is life; the atmospheres of these other rocky bodies, according to conventional wisdom, represent possible primordial states from which our current atmosphere could have developed – if life were present. Left alone, the existing geological and atmospheric processes there would presumably stay the same, forever. On Earth, however, the geological/geochemical record, as it is currently understood, seems to indicate three basic phases: the initial, lifeless and anoxic, primitive post-formation atmosphere; a second phase, resulting from chemical life processes, and still anoxic and too toxic for modern-day life; and finally the almost-end stage which we have today, caused by plant photosynthesis and the global availability of oxygen, which is itself toxic for surviving anaerobes. However, if our hypothesis here of time-dependent CO2 depletion is correct (and it should be because it is thermodynamic at its heart), we are living in the end stages of survivability on this planet not because of pollution, but simply because the chemistry of carbon dioxide allows it to dissolve easily in water, which is where it becomes available to biological processes, either within the watery photosynthetic tissues of plants, or by being absorbable into animal tissues, where enzymes can transform it into a solid.
Our eventual fate, then, is starvation, as the levels of available carbon dioxide in the atmosphere decline past the point at which plant life can convert it into sugars and oils. If it falls to half its current level, plant life will start to die, and as animals depend upon plants to maintain the food chains, they also will become extinct – including ourselves. The end-point of Earth’s development is starvation of its inhabitants due to the irreversible mass sequestration of the original atmospheric carbon dioxide. We should note that during periods when the CO2 levels rise, plant life flourishes; we should also remember that when growers of crops, using greenhouses, want to enhance growth, they add CO2 to the closed atmosphere in which they grow the plants. You can visualise current CO2 levels compared to those of the geological past in the graphic, “We are in a CO2 famine”, in a previous entry here.
What stimulated me into writing all of this (and it took a few days of cogitation for it to all crystallise in my mind) was an article at ZeroHedge by our friend, “Tyler Durden” [2]. According to an article in The Washington Post (inaccessible to we plebs due to their paywall, but reported on X as well), the corrected geological record for the past 500 million years shows unequivocally that mean global temperatures are in steep decline and have been for the last 50 million years. Essentially, temperature measurements have been compromised for a long time by the change of local temperatures resulting from increasing urbanisation, so that formerly isolated measurement stations (which used to be in the countryside) show incorrect temperatures resulting from being caught up in the heat bubbles surrounding cities:
“WaPo journalists cited a new study about Earth’s global surface temperatures over the last 485 million years. In 2023, Earth’s average temperature reached 58.96 F (14.98 C), well below the average 96.8 degrees F (36 degrees Celsius) the study showed around 100 million years ago. The trend shows Earth’s temperatures have been sliding for 50 million years. ” [2]
The interesting thing about this is that, if CO2 is an effective “greenhouse gas” (and it is often said that water vapour is more effective, not least because the cloud cover on Earth represents a self-correcting system; ditto for methane), it would actually make sense that mean global temperatures should decline in tandem with declining CO2. However, we might then have to ask a question like: “… but the atmosphere of Mars is almost entirely made up of carbon dioxide, and it’s freezing there!”, and according to authorities such as NASA [3], a good day on Mars would be barely temperate; nights there would put Antarctica to shame. Clearly, the whole “Global Warming” hypothesis is unsupported by any available evidence.
Personally, as I suggested earlier, I tend to find all of this amusing, but it is for precisely this kind of reason that I also gave up on a career in science long ago; I even left the UK and changed careers because after graduating, it proved impossible to get a post in my chosen area of study, and you can’t live on air and promises. Essentially, however, there seems to be no evidence whatsoever that establishes a causative link between increasing CO2 levels in Earth’s air and rising atmospheric temperatures; what evidence there is indicates that it has been declining over geological time, and that on the same timescale, global atmospheric temperatures have likewise been falling, and that this decline continues despite widespread deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels which are alleged to have the opposite effect. Whole spurious areas of pseudoscience and lucrative careers have been built upon this foundation of sand.
Remember, folks: all of this is just gaslighting and it isn’t really happening. Nothing in the foregoing discussion needed any great leaps of logic or mathematical analysis; all of that has already been performed at various locations in academia. We have merely linked together a few salient points, most of which were apparently produced by that same collective academia long ago.
A final caveat is as follows: we only know what we can see right now. We can’t jump into a time machine, like Doctor Who’s TARDIS, and go on a jolly romp through time seeing exactly what happened in the remote past. Our experience of time is purely one-dimensional: we have no idea how this planet formed, how many planets there were originally in total, what happened to them or even how they were arranged around the sun; take the Electric Universe theory seriously (and indeed, I do), and the first thing you realise is that we don’t even know whether the planets that we see today even belong to this one sun, or whether they wandered or were snatched in from elsewhere; the surprising heterogeneity of the visible planets is very suggestive of this. If the EU adherents’ accounts (based upon legends and traditional stories handed down from those who were there) are anything to go by, both our primary (sun) and the arrangement of the original planets were probably very different. We have to tread carefully because we are at the end of a long set of processes, plus we have to be careful when we try to apply analogies from our observation, as the analogies may be incorrect.
Real science is a pursuit in which a hypothesis must be falsifiable in order to be supported, at least until it is either fully or partially disproven by new research or evidence; everything in science is therefore purely provisional. Only a nitwit politician can stand up and assert without evidence that “the science is settled”. Science is never settled; it’s a cat on a hot tin roof, and a healthy science is one in which different hypotheses compete to see which one(s) better represent(s) reality. When only one hypothesis is presented and, as so often in this particular case, others are deliberately excluded from public discussion or subjected to public ridicule, you know that somebody is up to no good. Two or more options are healthy competition; a single option is propaganda.
References:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus : “Venus’s atmosphere is composed of 96.5% carbon dioxide and 3.5% nitrogen, with other chemical compounds present only in trace amounts.[1] It is much denser and hotter than that of Earth; the temperature at the surface is 740 K (467 °C, 872 °F), and the pressure is 93 bar (1,350 psi), roughly the pressure found 900 m (3,000 ft) under water on Earth. The atmosphere of Venus supports decks of opaque clouds of sulfuric acid that cover the entire planet, preventing optical Earth-based and orbital observation of the surface.”
[3] https://science.nasa.gov/mars/facts/ : “The temperature on Mars can be as high as 70 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) or as low as about -225 degrees Fahrenheit (-153 degrees Celsius). And because the atmosphere is so thin, heat from the Sun easily escapes this planet. If you were to stand on the surface of Mars on the equator at noon, it would feel like spring at your feet (75 degrees Fahrenheit or 24 degrees Celsius) and winter at your head (32 degrees Fahrenheit or 0 degrees Celsius).”
Tags: chemistry, farce, gaslighting, geochemistry, global warming
The Few Real Goods: Treasures of the Ages
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, Art, Breakfast in the Ruins, Commentary, General, Lost Geographies, Retrovision, The Destruction of History, Uncategorized
What follows arose from a morning reflection upon Ryan Holiday’s “The Stoic Journal” and “The Daily Stoic” for April 20th.
It has been difficult for me to return to the habit of writing, as my life in Korea has been rather chaotic over the last few years, but enforcing upon myself the semi-habit of writing a daily Stoic journal has, partly at least, rekindled the desire and pointed to the need, for the writer, of suitable “prompts”, which is the essential purpose of Ryan’s Journal: Pose a question to the reader, who then writes a response.
In truth, of course, some questions are difficult to answer in the moment, and sufficient perspective to frame a reasonable response may actually follow much later, in my experience, when something unexpected happens in your life and the idea suddenly crystallises into clarity in your mind. This happened to me again today.
One question which the Stoics dealt with was the real worth of things, bearing in mind that they were mortals, having a finite lifespan, living in times when death was a commonplace phenomenon, seen daily on the streets, at home and of course, for the Roman citizen, on many battlefields during the lifetime of a single individual. Therefore, given the desire of the ordinary mortal to acquire as much wealth as possible during one lifetime, the question arose as to whether increasing one’s personal fortune was an automatic guarantee of happiness, and the answer seemed to be a negative one.
This was not meant to be a remorseless statement of fact in the face of the inevitable; after all, what the Stoics were seeking was a more joyful and at the same time virtuous life. They simply observed that increasing wealth did not guarantee a life that was happier or more virtuous, and since financial wealth in those days was a material thing (precious metals, property), it was something that you could not take with you when you died (I need hardly point out that, having come close to mortality myself a couple of times in recent years, my mind often dwells on these things nowadays…). Many of them did indeed achieve (or inherit) sufficient wealth to understand that it could be a less-than-perfect experience, so they were in a good position to comment.
Noting that Ryan names wisdom, self-control, justice and courage as “virtues” (quoting from Marcus Aurelius) and that people will work hard all their lives to achieve it, and also that though desirable, “wealth” itself is not a “virtue”, one has to ask two questions:
1: If the acquisition of wealth is not a “virtue”, then what kind of “wealth” could be considered a “virtue”? What have past commentators had to say about this?
2: If wealth can be acquired by a life of hard work, what, then, is required to acquire wisdom, self-control, justice and courage? What kind of “work” or “study” is required to obtain these things?
Marcus Aurelius named these four latter as “things that are unquestionably good” – in other words, things which are undoubtedly beneficial to obtain. Financial “wealth” can be seen as being a more dubious “benefit” because it does not automatically guarantee happiness – it is, perhaps, a liability because those who do not have it always want to take it from you – including, of course, governments. However, in the civilisations that we have had, the value of money (which is more nominal or virtual than real nowadays) allows us to obtain at least the necessities that we need on a daily basis, such as food, clothing and utilities; a necessary evil, perhaps, but a useful means of value exchange.
Maybe we should take Marcus himself as an example. His times were very different from ours: he knew well that he was mortal (in his position, he probably had someone whispering “Memento mori!” in his ear several times each day) and understood better than anyone that he couldn’t take the wealth of the Roman Emperor with him when he passed on. In Marcus’s case, the inheritance that he bequeathed to posterity (in other words, ourselves) was not the gold and silver of Rome, but the philosophical wealth of his “Meditations”; the physical riches of Rome have been lost to time, but the wealth of Marcus’s (and other individuals’) thinking was preserved, and there is a lesson in this.
Realising, as I did today when I sat at my desk for the morning meditation, that the whole question related to the transitory nature of life and that material wealth (such as accumulated financial savings and other property) is therefore only a temporary pleasure at best, I was reminded of some hymns that we used to sing during morning assemblies at school in Leicester; in particular, I recalled a children’s song about natural treasures – experiential pleasures which we can only appreciate precisely because we are alive.
Therein lies the point that we are making here, which was the point that Ryan was trying to make: material wealth can only be enjoyed or appreciated while we live; hence, since we are mortal, material wealth is as fleeting and temporary as other living things, which have short lives and pass before us each year, according to the seasons.
I had some difficulty finding copies of that particular hymn, but what follows is taken from a *.jpg picture [1] and a simple PowerPoint file which you can download [2] (see “References” below). This was “Daisies Are Our Silver” by the English writer Jan Struther (Joyce Maxtone Graham, Joyce Placzek) [3], and I quote it here in full:
Daisies Are Our Silver [4]
Daisies are our silver,
Buttercups our gold:
This is all the treasure
We can have or hold.
Raindrops are our diamonds
And the morning dew;
While for shining sapphires
We’ve the speedwell blue. [3]
These shall be our emeralds,
Leaves so new and green;
Roses make the reddest
Rubies ever seen.
God, who gave these treasures
To your children small,
Teach us how to love them
And grow like them all.
Make us bright as silver,
Make us good as gold;
Warm as summer roses
Let our hearts unfold.
Gay as leaves in April,
Clear as drops of dew –
God, who made the speedwell,
Keep us true to you.
Though intended for children rather than adults, this has always been one of the most powerful memento mori that I have ever known – powerful enough for me to remember throughout my whole life. I will return to the works of Struther again in the future.
This is, however, one of so many cultural reminders that the works we undertake during our lifetimes are the things by which we are remembered: and that the achievement of wisdom, self-control, justice and courage originate in our Socratic reflection upon our own lives and experiences, putting them into perspective, adding them to our existing experiential schemata and, perhaps, using that knowledge to create things that naturally outlast our own existence. This work, this study in search of the virtuous, is lifelong, and it only ends when we end.
It is not without reason that we are able to wonder at the great works of the past – pyramids, bridges, ancient Roman and Greek buildings, paintings and sculptures, and of course, Homer and Shakespeare. Our bodies are only temporary shells which we inhabit, by means of which these things are realised and become part of the public inheritance: the treasures of the ages.
References
[1] https://www.pinterest.com/pin/83879611794491343/
[2] https://www.slideserve.com/yli/daisies-are-our-silver-buttercups-our-gold-this-is-all-the-treasure-we-can-have-or-hold-powerpoint-ppt-presentation
[3] Speedwell: Or Veronica, perennial flowering plants with small blue flowers, e.g. Veronica spicata; see https://www.woodlands.co.uk/blog/woodland-flowers/blue-flowers/speedwells/
[4] There is a collection of Struther’s works available to read at https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/struther/struther.html
The CO2 famine
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, Breakfast in the Ruins, Commentary, Environment, General, Gripes, The Destruction of History, Uncategorized
It’s quite incredible that, despite the use of different chemical proxies to determine the carbon dioxide in past eras which demonstrate that over vast amounts of time, atmospheric CO2 was vastly higher than it is now, there are people that insist that we need to not release it into the air.
Increasing the carbon dioxide in the air allows plant life to flourish; that’s why growers add it to the air in their greenhouses – with other conditions normal, higher carbon dioxide allows the deposition of more biomass.
However, this graphic suggests that we are in danger precisely because we listen to Chicken Little so much. Those California Redwoods weren’t made in a day, and they needed carbon dioxide. Maybe that’s why they took so long to grow!!!
I just saw this on Twitter… read it and weep:
The End of Cash… Maybe…
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, Breakfast in the Ruins, Commentary, General, Gripes, Health, Living in Korea
Sitting here in what might laughingly be called a “living room” on a Saturday morning after a painful and traumatic week, when everything seemed to go wrong… but as I was practising some bodily manoeuvres this morning for the alleviation of leg pain, something interesting suddenly dawned on me…
Last Wednesday, I started to have trouble with what now appears to be a sciatica-related condition (I spent this morning digging up videos about this and applying the knowledge, and surprisingly, so far at least, I have not yet felt the need to reach for the analgesic and muscle relaxant pills I was prescribed this Monday). By Friday night last week it had become excruciating, but as it could hardly be described as “life-threatening”, I decided to wait until Monday morning before trying to hit the San Carollo Hospital and see if a consultant could enlighten me.
As it happened, by that time it had proven possible to mitigate the pain, but this basically meant staying in bed, and even then I would still get painful sessions. Clearly, something had to be done, because I had to be back in work on Tuesday. However, it represented an opportunity to re-acquaint myself with my collection of Elric novels, which my sister had sent to me from England previously…
The trouble was that I had already had a minor disaster in the form of the expiration of my debit card. Calling (eventually) Nonghyup representatives and also hitting a local small branch of the bank a couple of times, I discovered that, firstly, I could not have the card reissued until I started a new E2 visa renewal (!) and secondly, the local branch could not even issue a new ATM card because they were only a small local franchise office; therefore, I had to basically travel halfway across Suncheon, by taxi, of course (because there is no direct bus route there), on a late Friday morning, to the branch where my replacement debit card (replacing the one that I lost shortly after arriving here) had been supplied earlier last year. Obviously, they had no problem at that point because I had just signed a new contract and extended my visa. However, I had also to be in work by about 1:30 that afternoon, at the latest, and what a surprise, there were only two clerks behind the counter (complete with those unnecessary plastic screens due to an unscientific, superstitious and factually unprovable concept of disease transmission), and progress was painfully slow. I think I had to wait almost an hour before more clerks came back to their desks, and then things changed; but there was a preponderance of older customers who needed to undertake certain financial tasks and they all seemed to be taking forever; one elderly female customer, at the desk right in front of me, kept jumping up and down all the time, for no apparent reason, and I swear that everyone else there was feeling the same; impatient. I took a ticket and sat there waiting, and there were eleven other customers waiting before me…
Thankfully, everything was smoothed out rapidly: first a new ATM card was issued, then I got my Nonghyup phone app reactivated (because a damaged battery forced me to get a new phone recently, which turned out to be a whole other story on its own), and finally, halleluyah! – I was able to get a new bank book… why? Well, it turns out that when Times Media took me back in 2019, they asked me for my current bank book to get my account details… and I never saw it again. As a result, for the last four years, I have been conducting all of my finances through a set of ATMs, never needing the clerks at all; at the same time, in transiting between various locations, it also looks like I lost my old ATM card as well!
A stressful and painful morning, to be sure, but I got all of the results that were possible, if not actually desirable. I will discuss what I think will be the ultimate sequelae of this briefly later, but for now, let me add that as the new academic year approaches, my manager has been rearranging students between classes according to language level, and it has been chaos. While all of this has been happening, I have been in agony, as repetitive strains have exacerbated my condition; even the powerful analgesic prescribed for me by Doctor Choi at San Carollo, plus his prescribed muscle relaxant, could not alleviate the pain completely, but at least it was not as bad as the previous Friday.
However, this succession of misfortunes has made me recognise something: there is a lot of talk these days about how banks and governments want to transition to all-electronic finances in order to avoid the need for physical money (and thereby, also, conveniently control people in a way that cannot be resisted). I have seen several flaws in this here in Korea, the first being that when I was living in Daegu and using a travel card before receiving my first Nonghyup Bazik debit card; it didn’t seem to be possible, at the subway station, to reload the travel card electronically, but the machine had to be fed cash, and this meant, of course, paper money… which was strange because I had had a number of these RFID devices for some years and never had any problem paying for them at, say, a local convenience store using the Bazik card; no problem.
Now, a second idea has struck me: how will a universal, purely electronic system be possible when banks have rules which prevent the issuance of the cards necessary to use that system? Admittedly, my case is different because I am not a Korean national, and the process is therefore affected by the need for a sufficiently long visa, but does this not start to take on the appearance of an unexpected showstopper? Will this result in prosecutions, as customers will easily be able to demonstrate that the refusal to issue is unreasonable? Personally, I do not think that the idea of having a glass-coated RFID device subcutaneously is a particularly good idea (although some people, particularly in places like Sweden, seem to like the concept of having the Mark of the Beast on their bodies; I think these people are more lefty mind-slave types), and the practicalities of such systems (in terms of there being a necessary minimum transaction size for any payment to be practical) seem to suggest to me that either the system cannot be one hundred per cent. penetrant, or alternatively, that certain types of transactions will become impossible (due to a lower limit on transaction size imposed by overall cost) and will actually disappear because notes and small change will no longer be available for them… or perhaps this is actually what “somebody” wants?
The Disaster of November 5th
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, Breakfast in the Ruins, General, Gripes, Humour, Lost Geographies, Odds and Ends..., The Destruction of History, Uncategorized
Ah, November 5th… the day some of us recall the failure of G. Fawkes et al. to blow up the old Houses of Parliament with the King inside – discovered, according to legend, as he was literally about to light the taper on the charge.
The irony, of course, being that a couple of centuries later, they burned down almost of their own accord (having been built from wood)… the Office Keeper and Yeoman Usher of the Receipt of the Exchequer, who had held that position for some time, was one William Godwin, dissenter and anarchist. His responsibilities* included the sweeping of the chimneys at the Palace of Westminster, and this little disaster came one night during his tenure.
After the flames had died down, a contest was held for the design of the new buildings, the ones we see today. I read elsewhere (many years ago) that it happened because he was asleep on the job (as he was granted rooms on site).
Alas, poor Guy… but the bonfires and fireworks were good. 
* See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Godwin, “Later years and death”: “Literary critic Marilyn Butler concluded her review of a 1980 biography of Godwin by comparing him favourably to Guy Fawkes: Godwin was more successful in his opposition to the status quo.”
The Return to Writing
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Art, Breakfast in the Ruins, Commentary, General, Living in Korea, Lost Geographies, Odds and Ends..., Uncategorized
For some time, it has been apparent to me that I need to return to writing. By this, I mean not embarking on some unfinishable science fiction novel, but more the reflective type of stuff which I used to post on a weekly basis on my old blog, say ten years ago, before I went north to work in Gyyeonggi for a year (and which, like so many jobs here, led absolutely nowhere).
I would grind away at my job until the weekend, and on the Saturday or Sunday, take a bus down to Nopo (when I was living in Yangsan) and/or the subway to Haeundae, and descend upon the Wolfhound to have a meal, and then sit alone with a glass of dry cider, physically writing in my old B5 note folder. Especially when the weather was inclement or the customers already there were few and far between, it was a good time and place for contemplation, and let’s face it, ‘contemplation’ is something you start to do more and more as you get older and your life experience increases. The Wolfhound was a great place for this, for which I am grateful; it was generally quiet before the multitude descended upon it, and people mainly left me alone to think and write.
Interestingly, I could do the same at the Wolfhound in Itaewon while I was working for the KDLI in Icheon; alas, however, Itaewon has also changed, including the loss of another regular watering-hole there, the Seoul Pub. It would be nice to revisit a few places there some time; I have experienced so many ‘lost geographies’ since I first arrived in Korea.
It would have to be said also that there is an aesthetic quality in the physical act of writing, on paper with your favourite pen, to be able to take the time required in a comfortable place, which is somehow lacking when using modern media, as I am doing now, writing this. Of course, publication would eventually be on a web site, so we are not talking about abandoning technology – after all, one of the great benefits of having a computer is that the intermediate steps of editing and revision are so much easier and faster, and besides, how else would you finally upload and finalise it? If there is WiFi available, you could do this (with difficulty, perhaps) using the likes of a tablet, but the natural spatial and temporal separation between the writing location and the editing/uploading location was helpful in itself, as the time for reflection upon what was written was thereby extended, and additional ideas could be incorporated into the whole before finishing. In any case, there was no pressure with regards to time because what I was writing was (mostly) personal.
Fast forward some ten years (as I transitioned temporarily back to the elementary school in Yangsan following a year at YBM in Seomyeon, and then off for a year in Gyyeonggi), and I had already had to transition to a private blog (on server space in Singapore, no less) because Opera, the browser company, had decided to dispose of their social media and I already had to move years of blogs and pictures between servers. I had settled on using WordPress as a publishing platform after the loss of Opera’s own, and that has also had little ‘issues’ caused by the kind of ‘improvements’ that one might expect more from the likes of the GNOME desktop… and the aesthetic and emotional need for physical writing, on paper and using a pen rather than my more customary keyboard, has reared its head again.
Predictably, this was where the problems started. Last time, I had my favourite (and factually rather cheap) three-hole B5 folder which doubled as my schedule planner for the daily lessons, something which I still do. However, it has proven surprisingly difficult to find a similar three-hole B5 folder with pleasing aesthetic qualities, and so, this afternoon (a Sunday, of course), I lashed out on a new, black one… but this time, the paper has nine holes. Again, neither difficult nor expensive to procure, but annoying, since (as far as I am aware) I will only be able to order such things online for the foreseeable future. Despite the cost, it did seem to me that the aesthetic and emotional aspects justified the expenditure; last time, I never thought about the costs involved, which were cheap, but that was because I was co-opting materials which had an existing use, which mitigated them. Plus, as suggested above, although much of this process might be possible on (say) my latest tablet, it could in fact be more difficult than simply writing it out in the first place.
Another odd consideration is the actual writing implement itself. Way back when I had to wear a two-piece uniform with a shirt and tie five days a week, and school gravy was a penny a slice, I developed a passion for ink pens, meaning, of course, fountain and cartridge pens; at one point I had a small collection of red Shaeffer No Nonsense pens, as all of these things (including refills) could be purchased locally at a reasonable price. Later, I changed over to fibre pens, which seemed to glide nicely over the paper, although in both cases I was writing so much that I wore the nibs down quite rapidly. More recently, I have changed back to ball pens, although I note that the “Rolly” type with 1mm balls no longer seem to be available; everything else now seems rather ‘scratchy’, which I think has a lot to do with the state of my finger joints these days… maybe I should go back to Shaeffer?
However, what I am really talking about here is a transition to journalling, rather than straightforward ‘blogging’. This practice is wonderful for a number of reasons, not least because it allows the writer to organise both thoughts and actions, gives him or her time to think and perhaps even get out of an otherwise claustrophobic Korean apartment and even meet people. Well, who would’a thunk? I was surprised to discover that this particular area is huge on the Internet, although the kind of dedicated materials (i.e. writing notebooks) often on sale are rather smaller (A5 or less) than I would prefer, largely because I have always found that physical writing becomes cramped on small pages, and of course, crossing-out, rearrangement and other general editing is so much easier on a bigger page, although a page size as large as A4 might be somewhat intimidating, so B5 represents a kind of ‘happy medium’ for me, personally.
The use of the term ‘journalling’ however, implies a sense of privacy rather than preparation for publication, which may not be a bad idea. Previous experience showed that the relaxation factor plus the time factor were helpful in improving both the quality and the content, although space for mind maps, schemata and concept diagrams on the physical page might also be valuable; and the very fact that I am considering these things now shows that I have acquired new and useful ideas in the course of the intervening ten years, especially ideas which came from my time as a TESOL trainer.
We might ask whether there will be any change in topic areas, and my answer might be ‘no, but there will be greater depth of consideration’, especially with regard to historical and computing-related topics, and also new ideas which I have been considering for the future, which would involve other technologies which I expect to interface well with those where I already have experience. Clearly, it is a major error to rush a piece of writing through without sufficient consideration and research; also, we should perhaps consider that things which (in the past) might result in a Saturday night rant are really things which either deserve no emotional or physical reaction, or if they do, perhaps a sideways glance, a wry smile and some verbal rolling of the eyes. Not everything in life deserves a response. Seriously.
With regard to the computing side of things, I note that we are actually coming up to version 9 of Mageia Linux very soon, which I transitioned to (again) literally ten years ago, when Mandriva dismissed a whole load of their devs, who, in a huff, got together and created Mageia 1 by forking Mandriva, and the transition was completely trouble-free. Linux has turned out to be much more productive, not to mention less hassle, than the Windows environment, and has a host of free apps which have proven great for my workflow.
Another odd development was that over the last few years, but especially during the more recent times of Covid idiocy, I made inroads into screenshot videos, both on Mageia and even on Win 10 (although I had to spend money to do the latter). Most of these were intended for my students when I was working for Times Media, but I did make a few others which can be seen in various places. I now have equipment for virtually every possible kind of media, so there may be a lot to learn there, too, as I ended up with some cheap voice recording equipment.
All of which means that I will be out for an exercise walk later tonight (after doing a bit more cleaning) and pay for the purchases at the local ATM (as phone-based payments are temporarily in need of being transferred to my new phone); the new materials should then be here later in the week. Thereafter, I will be looking for suitable places for scribbling on a Saturday or Sunday (because somehow, the Starbucks across the main drag there seems too easy a target), which will undoubtedly be a good thing, as this particular area could hardly be described as ‘interesting’.
Who knows, with a little contemplation and focus, maybe my weekends will be more productive in the future?
More Wisdom from the Late Mr. McKenna
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, Breakfast in the Ruins, Commentary, General, Lost Geographies, The Destruction of History, Uncategorized
Always interesting to hear from the late Mr. M. … shame he’s not with us any more!Brought to you by YouTube via our dear friend, Mr. D. Icke (for it was he).
Alternative Social Networks to Try… 1: MeWe
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, Breakfast in the Ruins, Commentary, Computing, General, Gripes, How-To, Odds and Ends..., Uncategorized
With all the little issues and niggles I am having lately with our first official online session, it has been hard to do much of my own online stuff, so I decided to do a series of brief introductions to alternative social network platforms.
Hi again everyone,
My attention was grabbed today by a link on Gab (of which more in a later article) to a piece over on ZDNet about MeWe, so that’s as good a place to start as any… I have been on MeWe for a couple of years now and it really seems to be a place where anything goes, which is fine with me.
It has a typical three-column interface which (in its basic form) is rather bright, but the good news is that they will sell you a different skin for a couple of dollars. I don’t often spend money on social web sites, but after a few months on MeWe, it seemed like a good idea, and I have never looked back.
You have completely free speech here plus 8Gb free storage. They are constantly asking you to upgrade when you log in, but I am ignoring this (for now).
A point to be made here is that many of the people you know from FB are already on here, “just in case”. If not, perhaps you could persuade them?
You are invited to MeWe: http://www.mewe.com/i/andrewholmes2
You can also see MeWe on FB: https://www.facebook.com/mewenetwork/
It Pays to Be Solitary
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, Breakfast in the Ruins, Commentary, General, Odds and Ends..., Uncategorized
This article from Disclose.tv was so close to the mark, I had to link it here:
Interesting article and I agree wholeheartedly with the comment by Spaghetti_Monster_02 below… shame about the TEDx vid (someone feels a suicidal need to associate themselves with arbitrary authority), but hey, there y’go…
https://www.disclose.tv/people-who-prefer-to-be-alone-are-total-badasses-new-study-shows-333939
Bang on the Button
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, Breakfast in the Ruins, General, Lost Geographies, The Destruction of History
Came across this on FB randomly this evening, and I agree with him all the way… so I’m sharing it here, too:
Max is saying precisely what I am trying to adumbrate in these pages.
