Mid-term elections

The death toll for US troops in Iraq for the month of October rose to 100. Brave men and women. Today a huge bomb killed 30 poor labourers waiting for work in Sadr City, and wounded over 60. War has rarely been this savage.

I don't think I have ever cared as much about the American mid-term elections as I do now - a desperate hope for change and extrication from a disaster. Time to re-group and re-think under better leaders, for this is a long-term struggle.

The Blind leading the Blind

I've long felt that the market wunderkind with their ever more arcane financial "instruments" run rings around their bosses — to the danger of us all. Unless trading is very simple (and it may be), I cannot understand how a man in his mid-twenties has acquired the experience to see beyond his year-end bonus and take the long view.

It seems my fears are not entirely misplaced.

From the FT (Thursday, 26th Oct.), a letter:-

"Even the Professionals don't know all hedge fund risks".

"...If competent authorities such as Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, tell us that they neither fully understand the new complex products nor have full oversight about the possible domino effects of collapses of larger sizes, how can we then be sure that bigger and more complex collapses can be carried by the regulated part of the market?
...it is questionable that professional and institutional investors know all these risks. Since they do not play with the money only of rich people, but also with the hard-earned money of pensioners and workers, we would be inclined to regulate and monitor these so-called professionals more closely, to prevent them from running after hype, and the super-profits conjured up to them."

Apophasis

Michael Sells in "The Mystical Language of Unsaying" (1994) in the chapter on Meister Eckhart:

Eckhart says, "Were it the case that a fly had reason and could rationally seek out the eternal abyss of divine being, from which it came forth, we say that God, insofar as he is God, could not fulfill or satisfy the fly. Therefore pray God that we may be free of God."

The capitalisation is not accidental. Sells gives the medieval German. I'm drawn back to this again and again.

No wonder Eckhart came close to being burnt: his contemporary, Marguerite Porete, was.

Sells, Michael A. Mystical Languages of Unsaying. (1994), University of Chicago Press

Earned income?

From the FT, Tuesday Oct 24th:

"Four investors, led by Goldman Sachs, stand to make paper profits of $9bn when Industrial and Commercial Bank of China's shares begin trading in Hong Kong and Shanghai on Friday."

Paper profits because they are locked in and cannot sell for 3 years. So that's OK then!

Unbowed

I have just finished reading "Unbowed" a memoir by Wangari Maathai.

"Wangari Maathai is a prophet for our time, and Unbowed is a call to arms for all of us who feel the planet is overwhelmed by careless, corrupt, or violent leadership. I have long suspected that the voice to lead us forward would come out of Africa, and it has — a voice of humor, sense, strength and compassion. Read this book and pass it on."
Alexandra Fuller writing on the inside cover.

In Wangari Maathai's words:

"There are also the millions of Kenyans of tomorrow, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who will either curse us, or feel deeply ashamed at the lack of foresight, at the magnitude of greed, and at the arrogance of those who are promising destruction and want to call it development."

Hope, so needed in the bleak news that is our daily fodder. Women the builders, men the destroyers. The world will change when people change, one by one, and not by G8 summits.

Try to read it.

"Unbowed - a Memoir", by Wangari Maathai, published by Alfred A Knopf, New York, October 2006. (A fittingly beautiful book in design and choice of font, printed on 100% recycled paper)

Stings sings John Downland

Ionarts has a review of a new CD of Sting singing John Dowland. What amused me was the comment:

"One professor substituted a Sting track on his "drop-the-needle" exam, instead of the performance from the anthology he had played in class, but was disappointed that the students did not even notice. It turns out that students in college in 2006 are too young to have a connection to Sting. He is just some old dude singing music by an even older dude".

A "drop-the-needle" exam — this old dude likes that!

The Breaking of the Fast

Tomorrow is a public holiday in Singapore, the Muslim Festival of the Breaking of the Fast or "Eid ul-Fitr" - the end of Ramadan. In Singapore or Malaysia, Eid is also known as Hari Raya Aidilfitri or Hari Raya Puasa.

What is a job worth?

Richard Grasso, the former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, has been ordered by a New York State judge to return up to $100 million of his fiercely contested $140 million payout. Needless to say Mr Grasso will appeal, and is further claiming that he had been "terminated", and thus due another $95 million.

Sounds reasonable to me: it's tough being a pensioner.

Source: International Herald Tribune Oct 21/22 2006

The energy cost of reading this!

It's known that processing information uses energy (well, strictly erasing bits uses energy), and your laptop may well be cooking your knees as you read this. The faster the clock speed, the hotter it gets. The roar of fans and forced air cooling are the first things that hit you when you enter a server room, and so-called "server farms", such as power the Google search engine, have to be located where power is cheap, and the fastest fibre-optic hubs are to hand. Few places meet both needs.

It is said that we have grown so accustomed to instantaneous response that a delay of 1/20 sec is now all we will tolerate. Next time you click, reflect on the extraordinary events that happen more-or-less instantaneously as your request flickers through an undersea cable, is switched, disassembled, routed to several servers, the responses assembled and back it comes.

But it comes at a cost - increasing electrical demand. It is said that "the total of electricity consumed by major search engines in 2006 approaches 5 gigawatts" and that we are on track by the end of the decade to have the global computing machine consuming half of all the world's output of electricity.

Wind turbines are not going to solve this one!

Source: Wired Oct 2006 "Cloudware"

Shakyamuni Buddha

Sotheby's Hong Kong autumn sale includes this beautiful statue of Shakyamuni Buddha. Tibetan in style, it was commissioned by the Ming emperor Yongle in the early 15th Century. Tibetan script prayer rolls are sealed inside the bronze. It last changed hands in France, and it hoped it will attract a Chinese buyer and return home. Bids exceeding $US7.7m (£4.1m) are expected. Prior to auction it had been on show in Shanghai and Beijing.

What a wonderful piece!

From the FT October 7/8 2006.

Note added: it sold for just under $US15 m, acquired by an Asian collector. Another picture is here.

Exuberance

Filing out after morning service at Kong Men San Phor Kark See Monastery
***

Shaded reporting

I read the on-line Guardian with amusement: it is too easy to see why it remains the most popular broadsheet in Universities! I can now only read Simon Hoggart and Polly Toynbee, the rest reminds me too much of academic sandals and corduroy orthodoxy.

Overnight I observed with increasing incredulity how one story evolved. The case of the veil (niqab) now rocking the British nation: first the headline read "teacher wins veil case" (curious I thought as she had lost three of the four actions), then it shifted to "teacher loses veil case" (closer I thought), now it is a sub-story to David Cameron's pronouncements on not making pronouncements, with the lost actions not mentioned at all.

I expect a slant from the Guardian, but the evolution of this short story over 24 hours is closer to taking a position.

Why can we not report those many positive things that happen each day instead of this relentless aggression and cynicism: responsibilities to each other as well as rights, care and compassion that might just lift us a bit?

Some things the Singaporeans have got right.

Customer inertia

Sometime ago I read in the FT that mobile phone companies make about 40% of their profit from customer inertia - in other words customers not knowing that they could be on a cheaper tariff. Sadly I fall into that 40%, but have been rudely awakened by a 50% increase in the monthly charge for a UK phone that has now been switched off for many months! So dear Vodafone, you will now lose me completely.

I thought about getting a mobile phone in Singapore, but the surreal phone shops in the malls don't cater for oldies who just want a prepaid tariff for an existing phone. No video, no camera, no ring tones, no Bluetooth, just a vanilla phone. Chinatown I have been told will hold the answer.

We'll all go VoIP within 18 months anyway - and then their revenue stream (I too know the jargon) will evaporate. I shall shed no tears.

Frozen in Time

When you tire of Wikipedia, try the 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, now free from copyright and available here. I was surprised to see that Building Societies had an entry. Buddhism is less surprising though quite different in style to what one would read today.

I should make it to "C" by next year!

Writing

Robert Brady at PureLandMountain comments on the demise of handwriting. People no longer write, they print - in Block Letters. My 80-year old mother's handwriting is beautiful to the eye (and a joy to read), and I confess to being obsessive about the pen I use. Here technology has made great progress, no more blobs from a ball-point pen, but real ink from a precision made yet disposable gel-ink Pilot HI-TEC.

There's a natural link between the hand and eye, a pace conducive to thinking while the hand does the writing. It's the same with fonts – I get carried away by beautiful fonts, and have even been known to buy a font or two for my laptop from a proper foundry - none of this Microsoft Comic Sans nonsense.

I noticed a shop-assistant writing the day's special deal with a brush pen, quick care-free strokes that looked good. But a Japanese colleague thinks computers will be the death of written Kanji, you forget the strokes and stroke order. I doubt it – once learned never forgotten – but I'm not Japanese.

One of the bigger shocks I faced in University life was marking essays - some handwriting was more-or-less illegible, yet all my wiser colleagues would say was "you get used to it".

I never did.

Deepavali

Singapore's "Little India" celebrates Deepavali (as do my neighbours which prompts this note). Little India is an extraordinary district at any time, traffic chaos, women in traditonal dress, much gold, temples, food - wonderful place!

From the entry in Wikipedia:

"Diwali (also called Deepavali, दिवाली or दीपावली) is a major Hindu, Jain, Sikh and Buddhist festival / celebration. Fireworks are associated with the festival in some regions of India. Known as the "Festival of Lights," it symbolises the victory of good over evil, and lamps are lit as a sign of celebration and hope for mankind. Celebrations focus on lights and lamps, particularly traditional diyas."

Opportunity on Mars

Since coming to Singapore, I had not kept up with the progress of the two Mars' rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, but recently I rediscovered the site that has raw images as they are uploaded each sol (Martian day). Expected to have just a three month mission, the two rovers are now coming up to three years continuous operation, having survived two Martian winters, a drive wheel failing, getting bogged down in soft terrain, and several communication and software glitches. I'm amazed at the skill and resourcefulness of the mission controllers in keeing the small craft alive. There is now little doubt that Mars had plentiful water, if not oceans.



After what seemed like an endless trek across a montonous flat landscape of blowing sand and treacherous drifts, Opportunity has now arrived at the vast crater "Victoria", and with the help of high-resolution images from the newly arrived Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the controllers back on Earth are exploring ways of entering it. The excitement is in the exposed rock strata that should give many clues as to the early history of Mars.

(The lower image is a composite taken through filters that approximate the actual colour. A rover has been added to the image to give a sense of scale - and is mostly likely what a martian would see!)

If we could only think a little more about our insignificance (and paradoxically, our likely uniqueness), then we might be more respectful of each other and of our small blue planet.

Offered for those whose life ends violently.

"OM Retreat"

Kong Men San Phor Kark See Monastery will hold a 100 Million Mani Recitation Retreat led by their Eminences Drubwang Konchok Norbu Rinpoche and Tritsab Gyabra Rinpoche from December 24th to December 31st. Known as the "OM retreat", referring to the recitation of the six syllable "Om Mani Padme Hum", the mantra will be recited 100 million times over the six days. It is described thus:

OM closes the door to the suffering of being reborn in the gods’ realm. The suffering of the gods arises from foreseeing one’s fall from the gods’ realm.
This suffering comes from pride.

MA closes the door to the suffering of being reborn in the warring gods (asuras) realm. The suffering of these asuras is constant fighting.
This suffering comes from jealousy.

NI closes the door to the suffering of being reborn in the human realm. The suffering of humans is birth, sickness, old age, and death.
This suffering comes from desire.

PAD closes the door to the suffering of being reborn in the animal realm. The suffering of animals is stupidity, preying upon one another, being killed by men for meat, skin, etc, and being beasts of burden.
This suffering comes from ignorance.

ME closes the door to the suffering of being reborn in the hungry ghosts’realm. The suffering of hungry ghosts is hunger and thirst.
This suffering comes from greed.

HUM closes the door to the suffering of being reborn in the hell realm. The suffering of the hell is heat and cold.
This suffering comes from anger or hatred.

Daily sessions are from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm, and the full sesshin must be attended.

Dharma vessel

The Hall of No Form at Bright Hill. Offered to Reverend Master Mugo in gratitude for her teaching.
*

Does it matter?

I like the idea of having things on which I am working available on-line, with someone else looking after their backup. So, when Google launched GMail, I was an early adopter, and it has become my principal mail account. I like its different organising principles and its accurate spam filter. When they acquired Writely, I quickly adopted that as I did the Spreadsheet. It's convenient to work from a computer anywhere irrespective of it being Microsoft or Linux or Mac. You can even keep Firefox on a memory stick so not even the host browser need be used. Fresh on the heels of their purchase of YouTube, Google today consolidated Writely and the Spreadsheet into "Google Docs". I'm not convinced this is a step forward, partly because I like small and simple applications (unlike Microsoft Office) . But it's free, does what I want, and the collaboration option of Writely is useful - two or more people can work on a document at the same time. You can also write directly to your blog!

But I remind myself that Google is not a charity and has the world's most powerful indexing service that can instantly pull together any number of tiny snippets of information that alone mean nothing but in aggregate may say more about you. Does this matter? I have always worked on the precautionary principle that the internet is not secure, and if you don't want something to be known, don't have it on a networked computer. This includes any computer on broadband.

Perhaps we are still enjoying internet freedom because the media barons have yet to work out how to "monetize" it. They will, so I enjoy it and learn while I can. Then I'll go back to pen and paper and writing letters. The hand and eye better coordinated.

I've added the link "Living in Japan" to the sidebar. Recommended.

Today's anchor point

Presentiment

I am like a flag surrounded by distances.
I sense the winds that are coming, and must live them,
while the things down below don't yet stir:
the doors still close softly, and in the chimneys there's silence;
the windows don't tremble yet, and the dust is still calm.

Then I know the storms already and grow embroiled like the sea.
And spread myself out and plunge deep inside myself
and cast myself off and am entirely alone
in the great storm.

from "The Book of Images"
Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Edward Snow

Nuclear madmen

If, as seems certain, North Korea tested an underground nuclear device, two thoughts cross my mind - three if we include the failure of diplomacy. First, some individuals, companies, nations must have supplied the precision machine tools, the chemical engineering plant, the alloys and stainless steels for processing spent fuel, the electronics, the timing mechanisms, the computer software and hardware, even the tunneling machinery, or second, and this is more worrying, it is really not too difficult to assemble such a nuclear device. The latter has long been rumoured.

One day the earth will shrug off our hubris and the dolphins will inherit this beautiful blue planet again.

Haze-2

Walking down the hill tonight, I noticed a small orange ball in the sky, nothing like the fierce sun that normally cooks me on my short walk to the station. The haze is from the slash and burn fires in Indonesia, and air pollution in Singapore is said to be the worst since 1997.
When you want to feed your family you don't much care about global warming.

"After The Fire"

Last weekend I bought a book of poems "After the Fire" by Boey Kim Cheng, a poet from Singapore, now in Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Still reading it, but very moving and resonant - not the right words, but it will have to do for now.

From "Bear":

...

I remember my childhood bear;
it was coarser fur, but like hers
and most other bears, China-made.
My father won it shooting bottles
at a booth in Great or Happy World,
those fairs of dizzy rides and shows
that lasted the whole of your childhood
and have exited into the country's past.
I sat it, walked it, bedded and hugged
it like a raft in the stormy winds
of my parents' quarrels. When
my father left, Bear held faint promise
that he would come back,
and be sensible like Bear.
...

"After the Fire" by Boey Kim Cheng, New and Selected Poems, published by Firstfruits Publications, Singapore, ISBN 981-05-5873-2

Loss

Blessed with long life, one-by-one you lose your friends and the familiar world dissolves before your eyes: you say nothing, that is the way of your generation, but the pain is there. I know it and for all my worldly skill, feel powerless before it. Sometimes I think all the ancestors are there to care for you, other times I think there is nothing. It makes no difference what I think. May the compassion of the Bodhisattva enfold you both.

Haze

I thought it was my eyes, but the haze over Singapore and the Malayan Peninsula is real. It's from forest fires in Southern Sumatra!
Source: Channel News Asia.

The wisdom of the taxi driver

Coming home in a taxi I had to tell the driver I was deaf as, from his puzzled expression in the rear-view mirror, my guessed responses to his conversation were obviously off the mark. Then I noticed his hearing aid so he shouted more and I improved my guessing, and we had a fine conversation about deafness for the rest of the journey. Like mine, his appears to be familial. I gave up with the hearing aid fearing the sharp cracks and distorted racket more, but he assures me things have got better with digital technology. But it's becoming a serious handicap to my work, even talking in small groups, so I need to do something.

Sometimes you get help in strange ways. Thanks.

Gozen cereal

When you look at organic food, and put it back on the shelf as too expensive, console yourself with the thought that 40 - 60 percent of all the nitrogen in your body comes from ammonia synthesised by the Haber Bosch industrial process. Well over 160 million tonnes per year are produced, largely for fertiliser. Paying a premium price for the other 60 - 40% of your nitrogen seems rather pointless.

But the freedom to be irrational is an important freedom.

House friend

I share my place with a few insects, the thankfully rare cockroach, and my friend the gecko who lives behind one of the air conditioning units. They are considered welcome guests as they eat insects, and as it is a time of year when getting bitten by mosquitoes and ticks is a daily hazard, my friend is most welcome to stay. They talk too!

Last week I interrupted a trail of small ants marching upwards on an outside wall of the small services balcony. Where they were going was ant business, but they had come two floors with twelve more to go.

So far no parquet-floor eating termites.

I think my body clock is missing autumn: I need to make a trip to Europe.

Krill

The waters of the Antarctic oceans may be cold but teem with life. Among this abundance is the tiny Antarctic Krill part of a complex and self-sustaining ecosystem. Of course we can't just leave it alone! The International Herald Tribune (Sept. 16th - 17th) informs me that a new type of factory ship using powerful pumps will harvest up to 120,000 metric tonnes of krill per year: two such monsters will take the current annual catch of all krill fishing. And for what? To feed factory farmed salmon.

We are a frightening species.