Chirality

Plumeria rubra cv Jean Moragne - Frangipani (Apocynaceae)

Note how the leaves overlap as they spiral anti-clockwise for want of a better term. The buds unsurprisingly also show folding in the same direction. The genus (family?) Apocynaceae interested me in a former life for its indole alkaloid content. One species, the common periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus) provided alkaloids for my thesis work. A colleague filled the lab with millions of red spider mites after a hurried harvest of Rhazia stricta at Jodrell Bank. Still fascinating 40 years later!

Botanic Garden

"How was it that before Niu-t'ou encountered the fourth patriarch Tao-hsin, the birds used to flock to him with flowers in their beaks, whereas after their meeting the auspicious phenomenon ceased?"

From Kōans of the Zen Masters Steven Heine, Oxford, 2002

Birthday

Today my mother is 85

New Year Greetings

In the Botanic Gardens this morning

Best wishes for 2010

Bygone days

North Pier Blackpool

"Designed by Eugenius Birch and commissioned by the Blackpool Pier Company, work commenced on the first of Blackpool's piers in 1862. The North Pier was opened on 21st May 1863 by Mr F Preston."

continued here.

Waiting at Broxbourne

Broxbourne Station

Overnight from Singapore and waiting for an early train at Broxbourne in a watery sunrise. These trees have become good friends over the years, rustling leaves on a warm afternoon on the way to Japanese classes, more often, waiting in a bitterly cold wind returning from Cambridge, and this morning, listening to a conclave of local rooks discussing rook plans while the sun was rising and the moon was setting. The world just "is" - simple really.

Financial literacy

I am financially "old-fashioned", illiterate if you prefer, but the response of the market to Dubai World's request for a 6-month hold on debt repayment seems typically overblown. Hedge funds call their lawyers, markets are in turmoil. I am always bemused by the "market" as if it were more than the sum of its parts, some uncontrollable behemoth with a life of its own. The editorial in yesterday's Financial Times was typical. "The economic crisis was caused by the build-up of leverage. As the crisis unfurled, policymakers rescued debtholders, rightly betting that the best escape route was to meet obligations to creditors and then rely on future economic growth to make debts manageable.
As a result, the financial system remains over-leveraged and under-capitalised."

Let that "remains" sink in. Nothing has changed. The crisis was caused by the uncontrolled and irresponsible build-up of leverage, not the build-up of leverage per se.

Manjusri - Korean

Rev. Master Mugo at JadeMountains highlights the "utter expansiveness" of Manjusri's Great Vow.

In that spirit, I offer a Korean image of the Bodhisattva Manjusri as a boy figure, tongja, from Sangwõn Temple on Mount Odae in Kangwõn Province. The temple was built in 1376 and restored in 1464. The image was commissioned two years later by Princess Uisuk and her husband in the hope of having a boy. I am not a scholar of Korean Buddhism and other accounts seem to differ. Nonetheless, the image is atypical for the Bodhisattva Manjusri.

National Treasure 221
Sangwõn-sa Munsu tongja, Manjusri-as-a-boy

"Manjusri represents the 'wisdom and realisation of all the Buddhas'. Accompanying Buddha Shakyamuni, he and Samantabhadra (Pohyõn Posal), who represents 'intrinsic principle, meditation and practice', would form a triad. His appearance as a boy with two top-knots is unusual, but as a Bodhisattva he is adorned with a pendant necklace and wearing bracelets. ... Manjusri in Japan always appears holding a sword, the symbol of wisdom in one hand, and a Buddhist scroll placed on top of a lotus in the other. But the Sangwõn-sa Manjusri shows a hand gesture that is more commonly associated with Amitabha Buddha. In the fifteenth century Korean Buddhist iconography was not strictly adhered to, and instead both mudra (hand gesture) and posture were more freely adapted to various images."

From "Handbook of Korean Art, Buddhist Sculpture," Youngsook Pak & Roderick Whitfield, Laurence King Publishing, London 2003. (Available in limited preview on Google Books).

Any copyrighted material on this page is considered to be "fair use", for the purpose of study and review, and will be promptly removed at the request of the copyright owner.

From the Genjō kōan

"At the end of his Genjōkōan, Dōgen cites a dialogue between a monk and Master Pao-ch’e of Mt. Ma-ku.

As Pao-ch’e was fanning himself, a monk came by and asked, 'The wind’s nature is eternal and omnipresent. Why, reverend sir, are you still fanning yourself?'
The master replied: 'You only know that the wind’s nature is eternal, but you do not know the reason why it exists everywhere.'
The monk asked, 'Why does it exist everywhere?'

The master just fanned himself."

Translated in Francis H. Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams: Enlightenment in Dōgen’s Zen – Translation of Nine Essays from Shōbōgenzō. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989.p. 69.

Cited by Miraldo in Journal of Buddhist Ethics, vol 13, 2006

"Body-mind cast-off" (shinjin datsuraku)

From the Genjō kōan (現成公案) of Dōgen:

"To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe. To be enlightened by all things of the universe is to cast off the body and mind of the self as well as those of others. Even the traces of enlightenment are wiped out, and life with traceless enlightenment goes on forever and ever".

Kim, Hee-jin. Eihei Dogen, Mystical Realist. Wisdom Publications, 2004.

Ācala

Ācala

"Destroyer of delusion and the protector of Buddhism"

Yesterday in the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple & Museum.

Manjusri

Manjusri

"The image of Manjusri is often seen holding a sword and riding on a lion which represents the Dharma. His right hand is holding a Vajra sword which ends the vexation of sentient beings, and the roaring of the lion awakens the obsessed sentient beings."

Buddha Tooth Relic Temple & Museum

For my father on his 86th birthday!

Bodhisattva Manjusri (2)

Bodhisattva Manjusri

Bodhisattva Manjusri at sunrise today

This being, that exists.
Through the arising of this that arises.
This not being, that does not exist.
Through the ceasing of this, that ceases.

A Corporate burden

From the Financial Times,

"...Goldman's pre-tax profit margins, at 29 per cent, were 10 percentage points higher than the average for other financial firms in the Fortune 500 this decade, and substantially higher than in other industries such as energy, healthcare and consumer staples.
The average for Fortune 500 companies was 8 per cent."

Goldman's 30,000 employees can look forward to an average of $650,000 in compensation.

I wish them well.

"When this is, that is.
From the arising of this comes the arising of that.
When this isn't, that isn't.
From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that."

Remembrance Day 2009

The last dawn

Manjusri at Sunrise

Cutting through illusion

Cambridge Pensioners

Onwards!

Monozukuri

From the Economist , November 7th-13th.

"Moreover, the knowledge about the technology is tacit, not formal. It cannot be transmitted by writing a manual or reading a patent application. Rather, it accumulates by working with colleagues over many years. This poses a barrier to entry for rivals. It also explains why firms try to maintain lifetime employment in specialised high-tech sectors, though it is ebbing elsewhere in the economy.
This belief that the strength of the company is stored in the collective mind of employees–rather than in the share price of the moment–also helps explain why Japanese companies disdain mergers and acquisitions. Firms resist takeovers, rather than viewing them as the natural combinatory process of business, as in the West."

The Rainy Season

Mind games

Headline from today's FT:

"RBS cautious after reporting £1bn loss"

and from the Wall Street Journal:

"RBS Posts Loss, Takes Dim View on Recovery"

But from the BBC:

"RBS downbeat despite £15m profit"

But then the BBC is not what it was.

Falling on swords

On a day when it is reported that RBS will post the biggest loss in Britain's corporate history and when its share price plunged 67%, the government increases its stake to 70%. Where are the swords, the shame, the apologies?

Mr Elster writing to the FT at the end of last year spelt it out:-

"Sir, I am deeply saddened to find that my newspaper of choice for more than 30 years is indulging in the same shabby rewriting of history as our prime minister. One expects this from politicians, not from the FT.

Your editorial "Why free markets must be defended" (December 27th) is grossly disingenuous (not to mention over-simplistic). To say that "incompetence, and is some cases outright fraud, had grown so quickly that by the time market participants woke up to the problem, the entire financial system was threatened" suggests that nobody saw the problem coming. Of course they did. I suggest you read some of the brilliantly prescient articles written five years agao by your own journalists, some of which you have featured recently in advertisements for the FT.....

The fact is that we failed to protect the financial system in the same way we have failed to protect so many valuable components of our society because of complacency, lack of accountability and the failure to attach value to anything. Opportunism, recklessness and fraud were bound to fill the vacuum this created.

That large numbers of people in the financial sector have made huge amounts of money while acting irresponsibly, recklessly, incompetently or dishonestly is beyond doubt. That huge numbers of "little people" are now going to pay the price for this is also beyond doubt. That this should not have been allowed to happen, and that politicians, bankers, regulators, economists and bit players such as financial journalists (with a few honourable exceptions) have been complicit in what has happened, is also beyond doubt...........

What has happened is rooted in incompetence, recklessness and criminality of such grotesque proportions yet of such a simple and obvious nature that to suggest this was a complex and unforeseen failure of the market is a gross and self-serving distortion of the facts....."


And more tempered but equally accurate:-

"Last week, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury...called into question many of the assumptions business leaders and financiers have made over the last two decades. He criticised the "endless spiral of accumulating wealth, which has nothing much to do with producing anything". He talked about creating "sustainable wealth", which supported "long-term welfare for populations" rather than putting extra noughts in the bank balance for [certain] individuals. We needed to consider wealth creation in terms of the well-being of society, he said."

Not too profound perhaps, but it needs saying.

Today's the inauguration. Let's hope for change, real change.

My Mother's Birthday

Today is my mother's 84th birthday.

Incense and turning of the great prayer wheel at the Buddha's Tooth Temple.

King's College Chapel

Henry VI laid the foundation stone in 1441. In 1471 he was murdered in the Tower of London. Glazing began after completion of the fan-vaulted ceiling in 1515 and took another 30 years.


The fan-vaulted ceiling by John Wastell, constructed between 1508 and 1515. A similar ceiling is in Peterborough cathedral.

The Sentinel

In Cambridge yesterday, cold and clear as befits the winter solstice. My friend looked over his kingdom from his vantage point at Senate House. Nearby Dicky Deegan played the Uilleann Pipes. Good bread was to be bought in the market. King's College Chapel was open. What more do I need.

Dark times

From yesterday's Financial Times, closing paragraphs of Modern History's Greatest Regulatory Failure by Robert Altman,

"This will come to be seen as the greatest regulatory failure in modern history. The degree of leverage that these institutions took on is indefensible. The average large securities firm was leveraged 27 to one in mid-2007. They were not regulated by any prudential supervisor. In effect, they regulated themselves. The lack of transparency was stunning. Many big lenders did not disclose off-balance-sheet risks. In some cases, they did not understand these risks themselves. More fundamentally, we allowed a second, huge financial system to develop outside the normal banking network. It consisted of investment banks, mortgage finance companies and the like. It was unregulated, not transparent and way too leveraged. But with nine separate and mostly ineffective financial regulators, these risks were ignored. That is, until this second system crashed.

We will be climbing out of this financial hole for a long time. Three or four years may pass before normal lending functions are resumed. In the interim, our economy will not have access to all of the credit it needs and may underperform, at great cost to our society. All of this could have been prevented".

I'm on my way to London tonight.

Stop-Loss

On the flight to London I watched "Stop-Loss" a harrowing film revolving around a group of soldiers lured from their checkpoint in Tikrit to be ambushed in a narrow alley. From one moment to the next, alive young men are dead, dying and horrifically wounded, as are a man and his son, in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's the back-cloth.

The substance of the film is about the complex mixture of duty and despair that overtakes the soldiers back home in Texas. If you have come through an American airport and seen soldiers welcomed home and others departing - whatever your politics, you know that this is not black-and-white nor election sound-bites.

Then at the weekend the violent death of 9 US soldiers in a prolonged firefight in a forward base in Northern Afghanistan.

And Stop-Loss? The right of the military to involuntarily extend the term of service for another tour of duty. In the film, Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe), having done tours in Afghanistan and Iraq is ordered back. It's a sobering film.

Quiet Dawn

UK dawn
04:30 - jetlag has its virtues

Robust Zen

The trick is to practice while crossing the street, dodging people and cars, and immersed in noise and heat.

I can see Bodhidharma cussing drivers and whacking boot-lids with his staff. He's out there somewhere.

Back to London tonight for a few days.

(Bodhidharma, British Library, non-commercial use)

The Fifth Noble Truth

From the Financial Times, June 17th 2008:-

UK becomes biggest weapons exporter
By Stephen Fidler, Defence and Security Editor

Britain became the world’s largest arms exporter last year, according to government figures released on Tuesday, overtaking the US, which normally occupies the top slot.
The UK won £10bn of new defence orders in 2007 from overseas, giving it a 33 per cent share of the world export market, according to figures released on Tuesday by the Defence and Security Organisation, set up to promote Britain’s defence exports. Export orders totalled £5.5bn in 2006.

Fire

Timeless

The sun has started its journey back across the sky, though only two weeks on from the solstice, the change in direction is barely discernible. The cloud was low but the high clouds were lit up long before sunrise. Resonates deep in the collective unconscious this daily renewal.

Colour of a different kind in the splendid Buddha Tooth Relic Temple. The chanting was particularly fine yesterday, if incomprehensible to me. Maybe the better for being just that.



Then a concert of old music from Southern China, in the afternoon - "Soul Journey" was the concert title. More later on this extraordinary music.

From the BTRTS

From an upper level at the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple (henceforth BTRTS as on the website).

No words needed

As the solstice approaches (24th June?) a picture of the rising sun - I never tire of watching it rise. It now must be close to its most westerly position and will soon begin the trek back for the winter solstice. The angular movement seems far more pronounced in Singapore than ever it was in the UK.


Of late I have been preoccupied with renewing my lease (with a 31% increase, so sharply has the price of property risen since I came here two years ago) and my employment pass, so I am set-up for the final year of my contract. Writing has therefore not been as frequent as it might have been.




I have been spending time in the Buddha's Tooth Relic Temple in Chinatown, a very active Pure Land Temple in the heart of a very busy area. Pictures to follow as I get them together. This reclining Bodhisattva I take to be Guanyin (Avalokiteśvara). It is behind glass and in subdued lighting, but the grace and calm come through.

Phoenix Lander

Ten kilometers up and three minutes to landing, the Phoenix lander drifts down to the surface of Mars. This extraordinary photograph was taken by the high-resolution camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Looking at the simulation of the landing I'm even more amazed at the achievement.

3 minutes to landing

The Mars orbiter presumably "knew", if that's the right word, that the landing was successful before we did on earth. It takes 15 minutes for the signal to arrive on our blue planet.

The strangeness of it all should keep us humble - we exist not by right but by accident.

Arvo Pärt

Listening to Litany by Arvo Pärt, based on the 24 prayers of St. John Chrysostom - one for each hour of the day.

Arvo Pärt in Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin, 2008
(from the Wikipedia entry)

"In the Soviet Union once, I spoke with a monk and asked him how, as a composer, one can improve oneself. He answered me by saying that he knew of no solution. I told him that I also wrote prayers, and set prayers and the texts of psalms to music, and that perhaps this would be of help to me as a composer. To this he said, "No, you are wrong. All the prayers have already been written. You don't need to write any more. Everything has been prepared. Now you have to prepare yourself.""

Arvo Pärt

Another Day

I sit in my humid 7th floor eyrie — the air-conditioning is off overnight — and watch the sun appear. It speaks of times we do not remember, nor need not remember. Each day is new.

Then the faint noise of the air moving from the ceiling.

Financial Spin

From today's on-line International Herald Tribune referring to UBS making another 5,500 redundant:-

"The Swiss bank wrote down $19 billion in soured U.S. subprime mortgage securities and other investments in the first quarter, bringing its total write-downs since the beginning of the credit crisis to about $38 billion."

"write-down", "soured", "sub-prime" — splendid euphemisms, unless you're one of the 5,500.

Long-term storage

An archivist will tell you that hand-writing on good acid-free paper stored well could last 500 years. I doubt that my digital records — text, music, images — will last 10 years. I can still read my microscopic handwriting written over 40 years ago, but have lost endless amounts of digital data through software becoming extinct or media changing, or just not having the motivation to move it on.



I'm always on the lookout for a decent pen, and prompted by a Yorkshire man via a Japanese blog, I found these Mitsubishi liquid ink pens in Kinokinuya. Cheap too.

With my Moleskine notebook, I'm set — I'm training myself to live without a computer. It may take a while, but I can try! Then such irrelevant connections need not concern me.

Then and now

The old shop houses in front of high-density public housing.
From Prinsep Street.

The washing poles retain a touch of stubborness - washing is supposed to be hidden as you may see if you look closely. It's not unknown for things to fall from great heights, and from time-to-time there is an advertising campaign to remind people to be careful. The pole is likely more dangerous than the washing.


HDB public housing must rank as one of the successes of Singapore, given the constraints of space, and certainly anyone familiar with high-rise living in Europe cannot but be impressed.

Land prices have increased sharply over the past year, and housing is now as expensive as in any major city. I am currently negotiating a new lease and find rents have increased 30% to 40% in two years. New land has been released for building and some tax incentives for speculators removed, so it is hoped that prices will stabilise.

Londoners, what have you done?

The election of Boris Johnson as Mayor of one of the world's great cities is depressing, but that's democracy. Maybe he'll rise to the challenges ahead. Ken deserved better.

Humid Day Ahead

While you sleep in the UK, the sun rises in Singapore through the City haze - another humid day ahead.

Oil reaches $120 a barrel — chilled air spills from the department stores cooling those passing-by.

Greed

On the screen was a page never seen before when logging into the bank. Wary of phishing I looked carefully, and it seemed to be OK, secure connection, etc. But you never know, and I noticed in the small print the usual rip-off telephone rate should I be unfortunate enough to need to call and listen to the 100 options at 4p a minute. But what really annoyed me was the set-up charge. What on earth do they do — plugs into switchboards?

"Calls from BT landlines will cost a maximum of 4p per minute and a 6p call set-up fee."

I remind myself that this mischief originates, not with some abstraction "the bank", but with an individual. Maybe they brainstorm new ways of ripping-off the customer.

I must be getting old!

Grain shortage?

Today's on-line edition of the International Herald Tribune (IHT) suggests genetically modified crops may get a better press in this time of rising prices, saying:-

Soaring food prices and global grain shortages are bringing new pressures on governments, food companies and consumers to relax their longstanding resistance to genetically engineered crops.

But The Economist is direct: "The changes reflect changes in demand – not problems of supply such as harvest failure."

Never take what you read at face-value – nothing in this world is simple. Nor are ad hoc solutions sustainable policy.

Hunger

"Last year wheat prices rose 77% and rice 16%. These were some of the sharpest rises in food prices ever. But this year the speed of change has accelerated. Since January, rice prices have soared 141%, the price of one variety of wheat shot up 25% in one day"

"The changes reflect changes in demand - not problems of supply such as harvest failure. The changes include ...the sudden, voracious appetites of western biofuels programmes, which convert cereals into fuel."

From The Economist April 19th 2008, "The new face of hunger"

"The middle classes in poor countries are giving up health care and cutting out meat so they can eat three meals a day. The middling poor, those on $2 a day, are pulling children from school and cutting back on vegetables so they can still afford rice. Those on $1 a day are cutting back on meat, vegetables and one or two meals, so they can afford one bowl. The desperate - those on 50 cents a day - face disaster.

Roughly a billion people live on $1 a day."

The Economist, Leader "The silent tsunami" April 17th 2008

Changing Skies

I have an east-facing office on the 7th floor and can enjoy the beautiful skies that often precede the sunrise. One morning last week there was a striking cloud – maybe from a fire somewhere – back-lit by the rising sun.


Soon the upper winds were spreading it out, and within an hour it was gone.


It's very humid at present with almost daily thunderstorms – often timed for when I want to go home.


An umbrella is pointless against this.

Not a ThinkPad - for once!

My latest "toy" is the Asus eeePC. It's a low cost and lightweight "sub-laptop", with in-built wireless, perfect for travel. What is most striking is the very fast boot time (at least for the Linux version), well under a minute. It has no hard disk, but 4GB of solid-state memory and uses the cards common to cameras for expansion.

Asus eeePC

Cost, about S$600 (c. GBP200).

The New Casinos

Wall Street knows no excess. The International Herald Tribune today reports that:

"Combined, the top 50 hedge fund managers last year earned $29 billion. That figure represents the managers' own pay and excludes the compensation of their employees."

That's $580 million apiece, though some "earned" more, some less. The median earnings for an American family over the same period — $60,500.

Jade Mountains

As it's – unofficially – "Blogger Appreciation Day", I'll thank my good Sangha friend and teacher Rev Master Mugo at Jade Mountains for kicking me back into life – without trying to. That's how it works. Moving Mountains is even better in the new format of Jade Mountains, well laid-out and better spaced. It all works!

"Train as though your hair were on fire", she said.

The Lift

My train tonight stopped just opposite the lift, so in lazy-mode, I got in to go down one level to the concourse. Only it didn't. Two gentle drops of foot or so, and we stopped, looking at little more than eye-level along the platform, to the bemusement of waiting passengers. It was one of those lifts on a hydraulic ram so we were not going to plunge anywhere and we were released after ten minutes.

Lift logic interests me. Our laboratories have three lifts at the end of the building, and from the 7th floor, I have come to realize that getting the first lift down to ground can be a mistake, if one seems likely to follow. The first will make several stops, (maximum number seems to be three), whereas the later lift will go straight to ground. Of course, it's a gamble. There must be a whole arcane science of lift programming. What I need is a code to override all settings, something like Ctrl-Alt-Del, but in numbers — straight down, no stops. Maybe it exists?

View from afar

Can we destroy what sustains us?


Sometimes I think we are sleep-walking into disaster, no-more so than with "global-warming", or "climate-change" as the spin-doctors would have it. I was struck by this picture of the earth and moon taken from by an imaging satellite orbiting Mars that trained a camera on its home planet. Strikingly blue and home to a sometimes destructive species, H. sapiens.

I watched a short video clip of Al Gore talking about the crisis we face. He confronts what could easily become despair and offers everyone a challenge. 15 minutes clip - recommended.

London

I was in London last week for a much-needed few days out of Singapore. London may be scruffy in places, people put their feet on the seats and chewing gum is everywhere, but it is alive. I cannot remember a time when Tottenham Court Road was not being dug up, but that inevitability is my landmark. Likewise the deafening sirens from ambulances or the fire service – just ten minutes walking along Euston Road provided an unmarked police car at speed and an ambulance in quick succession. Unlike Singapore, they don't hang around waiting for the lights to change but push through the congestion on the wrong side of the road if necessary.

Euston Road may be an arterial route but has many treasures, including the British Library, The Wellcome Trust and the splendidly renovated St Pancras Station. The Wellcome Trust is now housed in a modern glass and steel building while the renovated original home houses the Wellcome Collection. I was there one day too early for the current exhibition "Life Before Death", a striking topic for our age of permanent distraction. As Rev. Master Mugo comments at JadeMountains, a must-see meditation.

The Wellcome Collection has links to some of the images as does the Guardian.

Further down, past the British Library, is Barlow's great train shed, St Pancras Station, a wonderful example of restoration and remodeling. The cost must have been eye-watering, but the results are stunning. I traveled to Sheffield during the re-construction and saw at least the top-side of a massive civil engineering project.

And it shows the correct time!

William Henry Barlow must be well-pleased with his great train shed.

Return of the Native

From 5th November New Yorker book review section:

"There are nine personal vehicles per thousand eligible drivers in China and eleven for every thousand Indians, compared with 1,148 for every thousand Americans. ~ Were India and China to increase their rates of car ownership to the point were per-capita oil consumption reached just half of American levels, the two countries would burn through a hundred million additional barrels of oil a day".

Just as oil hits almost $100 a barrel, without seemingly anyone caring too much.

Big Sur

Maybe Mars once looked like this!

From a colleague currently in California.

A Vesak reflection

Vesak commemorates the birth, death and enlightenment of the Buddha, more simply "the Buddha's birthday". It is traditionally celebrated on the first full moon of the fourth month of the Chinese lunar calendar. In 2007, there are full moons on both 1st and 31st May - Malaysia chose the former, Singapore the latter. Today is thus a public holiday in Singapore. A much-needed cool breeze is blowing through the open window after a short afternoon storm.

One of the good acts one can do on this day is to liberate caged birds and animals. A time to reflect on some startling figures:-

"Killing for meat takes place on a scale difficult to comprehend. Britain alone killed 883 million animals for food per annum at the end of the century, made up of 792 million chickens, 35 million turkeys, 18 million ducks, 18.7 million sheep, 16.3 million pigs, around 3 million cattle, 1 million geese, 10,000 derr and 9,000 goats. The United States kills 8 billion chickens a year." In Britain that is about 2 million chickens killed every day.

(Source: The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900. David Edgerton, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 174).

In related vein, "as we multiply, so do all the things associated with us, including our livestock. At present there are about 1.5 billion cattle and domestic buffalo and about 1.7 billion sheep and goats. With pigs and poultry, they form a critical part of our enormous biological footprint upon this planet." In addition, it is estimated that methane production by ruminants contributes more to global warming than does transportation.

(Source: International Herald Tribune, editorial, Dec 28th 2006)

No easy answers.

Silence

"Came up to the hermitage at 4 a.m. The moon poured down silence over the woods, and the frosty grass sparkled faintly. More than two hours of prayer in firelight. The sun appeared and rose at 6:45. Sweet pungent smell of hickory smoke, and silence, silence."

From the Journals of Thomas Merton, March 27, 1964

Holy Week (2)

Timeless Orthodox Chant.

"The Divine Liturgy of St John Chrystostom"

Holy Week

Continued carnage in Iraq: last week the bombers surpassed themselves, slaughtering over 150 and wounding hundreds more, women and children, in Baghdad's crowded the markets. And in this week's New Yorker, under the heading "Betrayed", a grim reflection on the fate of the Iraqi interpreters and others who work for the Americans. Not good.

Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age,
More fortunate, alas! than we,
Which without hardness will be sage,
And gay without frivolity.
Sons of the world, oh, speed those years;
But, while we wait, allow our tears!

From "The Grande Chartreuse" by Mathew Arnold (1822-1888)

From the wonderful Ionarts' piece called "Into the Great Silence", a review of a film about the Carthusians, which unfortunately does not seem to be available on DVD.

La Grande Chartreuse

On asking for permission to film:

"Since the pace of modern life does not mean much within a cloister, the monks considered the request and ultimately gave their approval -- 16 years later."


That seems about right to me.

New Year

Today is the first day of the Chinese New Year, the year of the Pig, especially propitious because it is the year of the Golden Pig, which occurs every six decades. I had not realised that I was born in the year of the Golden Pig six decades ago.

Almost all shops are closed, which is saying something for Singapore, and the next two days are public holidays. The festivities continue for a further fifteen days.

A Happy New Year to my Sangha friends.

Bracing times again

I am always amused by UK journalists "bracing" you for one calamity or another. Last week the poultry industry was bracing itself for a cull of birds, now according to the BBC,

"England is bracing itself for wintry weather with a blanket of snow forecast to fall across much of the country".

Must be in the training dictionary for young reporters. Drive safely!

Rational ignorance

“The world is large, information about it seems infinite, and even the most capacious minds must stringently limit their acquisition of information to matters that interest them either in the abstract or, more centrally, that they find otherwise useful to have on hand. Beyond this point, information costs are not worth paying, and ignorance is rational."

"Rational ignorance" – my excuse from now on!

From an issue of Critical Review on "The Nature of Belief Systems", (vol 18, no. 1–3, this by P. E. Converse, p. 300, via Shtetl-Optimized.

Bird Flu

Perhaps the problem begins in the Book of Genesis:-

1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

The UK outbreak of the Asian strain of the H5N1 flu virus reminds us, if we need reminding, of how we use living creatures for our ends — food making machines. No doubt we have always used animals for food, but now we can do it on an industrial scale unthinkable to our ancestors. Mr Matthews lost 159,000 turkeys, gassed within hours and "rendered" (what a word). But in commenting on the cost to the £400 million UK market, Charles Bourne, chairman of the NFU's poultry board, revealed that we produce 60 million chickens a week in the UK. (Guardian on-line).

The population of the UK in chickens killed each week.

End of the month

The clock really does tick more quickly as you get older. That the first month of 2007 has already passed I find almost unbelievable. As I get older I know less and less about more and more. Not good.

Robot vision

It affects me in a way I can't quite explain, looking through the eyes of this robot vehicle on Mars, wondering whether there is any sound in the thin atmosphere or do the rocks fall silently into the crater as nightime cooling cracks off another piece? Was there really a time when waves lapped on this far away shore and life was in its oceans? We are part of something very big that touches us but may be outside our understanding in the deepest sense. And that's nothing to do with religion!

Taken by the Opportunity rover on Mars at about midday local solar time on Sol 1071.

On earth "global warming" has been massaged by the spin-doctors into "climate change".

The same but different?

OK, not much of an image - taken through an open window with a compact digital camera - but what I cannot remember is whether the moon is so much on its side in the UK. I think not. That might imply that in, say, New Zealand, it might be a mirror image of what it is in the UK.

Maybe someone could take a look?

Back from the brink.

The Mars Exploration Rover "Opportunity" has been exploring the edge of a large crater "Victoria" on Mars, and is currently looking for a way to enter the crater. This image from the navigation camera was taken recently on Sol (a Martian Day) 1064, after three earth years on Mars.

Sometimes we need to look upwards to get a perspective on our own planet.

The Feta cheese sandwich.

From time-to-time I have dreams that leave me emotionally drained. Such was last night. Consciousness, the fifth skandha (or is it the sixth?).

BBC World Service

I tried the radio built into the iRiver mp3 player, and quickly found the BBC World Service: what a contrast to the "dumbed-down" news on the BBC web-site where, in a week when 70 or more young students were blown up at Mustansiriya University and 200 injured, I was offered day-after-day the mindless irrelevance that is Big Brother.

How teachers and doctors carry on their work in Baghdad is beyond me.

The UN estimates that 35,000 Iraqi civilians met violent deaths in 2006.

New Blogger

I am ambivalent about the new blogger. I have moved over, but have not implemented changes to the template as I don't see them as an improvement, certainly not without time spent recovering what I already have in place. The archive post changes are too computer-like for my taste, though I will have to do something soon as my archive list gets longer and longer. I had thought of moving wholesale to WordPress, which has some real advantages for scientific work, and that remains an option. I shall think more about this as my annual ISP contract comes up for renewal.

I read somewhere an estimate that 11% of the world's computers host 'bots', unseen pieces of software that can be woken up by their unseen masters to route spam or denial of service (DoS) attacks.

Science for communication

Tonight a Japanese colleague flew in, to work with me as a Visiting Professor for three months. This was his first trip outside Japan, and I'm pleased to be the means of achieving that. But, neither of us are sure how we will communicate. As a scientist he reads English with some effort, but speaking English will be tough. My Japanese is equally primitive and most of my lessons are forgotten. But I am saved by two things: first, science is a universal language believe it or not, and second, a very interesting student has joined me for a few months to do his final year project. He speaks some basic Japanese, and is already brushing up what he knows. He is a young man of unusual calm and maturity, most likely acquired (or enhanced) by his love of back-packing alone through SE-Asia. Last year he was in Tibet, well off the beaten trail, seeing one car a day at times, finding accommodation in private dwellings. After his exams and before joining me, he took two weeks in Cambodia and Vietnam. I'm looking forward to this, however it evolves - two very good (in the human sense) people.

I often feel my posts should end with the sound of a small bell or gong - not for their content, but that it ends a short meditation.

Home or lodgings?

I signed a two year lease when I moved here, after a week of looking, and so far, although big for my needs, the 2nd floor apartment overlooking much greenery and the pool, has served me well. Quiet and pleasant especially when a breeze blows through, and space for guests. It's in a condo(minium) (as the Americans and Singaporeans would say), is well-maintained and is convenient for my work (15 minutes), the MRT (train), and the City (30 minutes). Not bad, as these things go. But my landlord, a doctor, decides to sell and I have an stream of potential buyers which at first I could live with, but after three months it is becoming tiresome.

I don't attach much to the place, but I do value the peace, which seems generally undervalued in Singapore. Something will come up, it always does.

Meister Eckhart on Suzuki's fly.

Shunryu Suzuki's "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind", opens with the memorable line "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."

Meister 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."

Reflecting on a post and comments at Moving Mountains today.

USB memory sticks

Sooner or later it was bound to happen! I have lost or mislaid a USB memory stick, which although it contained nothing important, does serve as a reminder that you can lose a lot of data in this way. I always copy from disc to USB, so fortunately no data is irretrievably lost. USB sticks can be encrypted, but there are always more urgent things to do. TrueCrypt may be what I need - it's Open Source too! I read a detailed "how-to" description recently, but where? In a perverse way it is good timing, as I was planning to move a lot onto a large capacity USB memory stick for travelling. So password protection at the very least, and encryption even better!

How complicated we can make our lives. A pen and a notebook used to be enough.

"What are you optimistic about?"

The Edge can be an interesting read, and this year the editor John Brockman poses the question "What are you optimistic about?" It's a challenging question, and pessimist though this blog may cast me at times, I am actually "Dancing in the Water of Life" (the title of vol. 5 of the Journals of Thomas Merton).

I should return to this topic.

It's tough at the top

Corporate greed renumeration: "The good news is that Robert Nardelli, the imperious chief executive who had presided over a difficult, stagnant period for the company, has resigned. The bad news is that he'll be taking $210 million worth of compensation with him, one of the highest severance packages ever, which is saying a lot in this era of runaway executive pay".

As the editorial says, golden handshakes on joining, golden parachutes on being fired, and golden cushions to sit on during your tenure.

It's important not to take this stuff too seriously!

Editorial in IHT, Saturday-Sunday, January 6-7, 2007.

Corn for your SUV.

Under a picture of a combine harvester and clouds of dust "Farmers expect to send half of the bumper crop of corn crop forecast for 2007 to ethanol plants, which are being built at a record rate". Of course it is all about money, "For now, however, in anticipation of high potential returns, ethanol plants that rely on corn are being built by everyone from farmers to Bill Gates of Microsoft to a mix of Wall Street investors".

Source: IHT, Saturday-Sunday January 6-7, 2007

Our planetary footprint

We forget that "as we multiply, so do the things associated with us, including our livestock. At present there are about 1.5 billion cattle and domestic buffalo and about 1.7 billion sheep and goats". It is likely to be even higher for pigs and poultry which are reared more intensively.
The report continues, "Global livestock grazing and feed production use '30 percent of the land surface of the planet'. Livestock – which consume more food than they yield – also compete directly with humans for water. And the drive to expand grazing land destroys more biologically sensitive terrain, rain forests especially, than anything else."
As if that were not enough, "even more striking and alarming, is that livestock are responsible for about 18 percent of the global warming effect, more than transportation's contribution". The principal culprit is methane produced by all ruminants, a more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Source: International Herald Tribune, December 28th, 2006. quoting the "Livestock's Long Shadow" by the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

When least expected..

An extraordinary find, the Nei Xue Tang museum of Buddhist Art, essentially a private collection in a private dwelling (also of great interest). This must be one of the most under-stated gems of Singapore. The effect on entering is tangible.
Sadly no pictures or catalogues, but perhaps the better for that.

Reverend Mugo said it perfectly in a comment on her last post of 2006 "May there be many more years of practice that we can share in together".

Best wishes to the Sangha from Singapore.

Communication recovering

Yesterday's International Herald Tribune had more detail on the disruption, leading with front page headlines "Asia communications in chaos after earthquake jolts Taiwan", "Telecom links: Fragile yet resilient" and "Asia wakes up to a life without modern technology", and pages of detail inside. A map showed dense clustering of fibre-optic cables south of Taiwan routing traffic from all over SE Asia to S. Korea, Japan, and of course the US. Asia's "painful reliance" on the US was noted.

But, I am impressed by how rapidly traffic was rerouted over remaining cables and how fast recovery ships were dispatched to haul damaged cable to the surface for repairs. There can't be that many cable-laying ships lying idle just waiting for such incidents.

It has also been raining, more-or-less continuously: last week was some of the heaviest on record in Singapore causing flooding in low-lying areas. Singapore has an advanced infra-structure and massive storm drains, but many other SE Asian countries have fared badly. As always the poor suffer most.

Communication disrupted

Yesterday's earthquake off Taiwan has disrupted communication over SE Asia. Several undersea cables have been damaged, and repairs could take some weeks. For a while there was limited connection to the outside world, but it is getting better by the hour. I imagine technicians are working round the clock to re-route traffic and stabilise the network. In a way it is good to test systems which were originally designed for resilience in the case of a nuclear attack. Now we take this connectivity for granted and use it as part of our daily lives.

It is two years since the Asian Tsunami that claimed over 250,000 lives.

Rain without end...

It started raining 36 hours ago, and has not stopped since. When I asked how long this might last, "Oh, it should be over by Chinese New Year" was the reply. Chinese New Year is in February! Welcome to the rainy season. At least it is cooler!

Disconnected?

The chief executive of Morgan Stanley, John Mack, will receive "the biggest bonus for the head of a Wall Street firm ever" being awarded "$40 million as the company headed for the best profit in its 71-year history. Mack was granted shares valued at $36.2 million as of Tuesday and about $4 million in options". $57 million in bonuses goes to seven other executives. A well-deserved and generous helping from the ladle.

Police found 55 bodies on the streets of Baghdad on Saturday, 3 American GIs were blown up by a road-side bomb. The UK press no longer mentions this daily slaughter. The BBC has "Leona crowned winner of X factor" as a "top story".

It rained a lot today, and I thought felt how purifying and life-sustaining water is. I have to hold on to some good thoughts.

Sources: International Herald Tribune, Saturday 16th December and Juan Cole, Informed Comment.

A bigger ladle?

Yesterday's International Herald Tribune reports that Goldman Sachs quarterly earnings "left jaws agape on Wall Street". Profits rose 93%, $3.15 billion on revenues of $9.41 billion. That's $9.5 billion profit for the year. Much of this is driven by "building and trading complex derivative products". Of course, they don't actually make anything. Maybe as my friend says, the world is awash with money, some have just worked out how to use a bigger ladle than others.

The air is cool in the morning - it's the rainy season. Flowers on the trees, new growth.

Ecclesiastes

I dipped into Ecclesiastes today, oddly enough for a reason of science, though I confess to often visiting that prophet simply because the words resonate, especially in the King James Version. So today I have been brooding on the following:

Ecclesiates1:18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

I've been chewing on this all day. It's nothing to do with mis-use of knowledge, deeper than that.

Noise and the deaf

Being asymmetrically deaf, I have a heightened sensitivity to noise, most likely because I cannot place anything or anyone in the formless noise. Traffic, crowded places, voices all wear me down, but even alone and quiet, my deaf ear has loud tinnitus and my left (and hearing ear), some tinnitus. I am reminded of all this by my upstairs neighbour who every evening drags chairs across the tiled floor, my ceiling. I have been putting off reminding them that their floor is my ceiling. Sometimes thinking about taking an action is out of all proportion to the action! Note to self: just act and let go!