Sunday 25 September 2011

The dark half of the year....

The autumn equinox is passed, the point in the year when the nights are longer than the days. Across the higher latitudes of the Northern hemisphere many mammals are fattening up in readiness for hibernation, and whilst there is a part of me that craves doing something similar, there is a part that longs for the biting cold of the short winter days and long, dark winter nights. As the year turns from the equinox towards Samhain or Halloween and then on towards Yule and Christmas my mind turns inwards in contemplation of the year that is ending and the family and friends who have passed on through this life into the great unknown. The period around the end of October has long been associated with a transitional period between the living world and the world of the dead. It was the period in which Persephone began her six months in the underworld with Hades in the Greek legends and the time in which the Roman oracles would communicate with ancestors on behalf of prominent families.

Many belief systems involve a need to consider the feelings of the dead, the tradition of appeasing ancestors in Chinese traditional beliefs, the veneration of ancestors are stores of knowledge in australian Aboriginal life, even the mummification of peruvian, tibetan and egyptian leaders and their retinues and the re-visiting of burial sites and the prayers and magical practices found across the northern European bronze and iron age cultures. The idea that there is something beyond the live that we are aware of is almost ubiquitous, and seems to be largely unaffected by improvements in our scientific understanding of the Universe and our place in it.

It seems odd that so many of us live our lives as though there will be something more once we have finished this life, and that what we do in this life has some bearing on what follows. This seems a strange way of living a life. I suspect it would probably be better to live this life to the full, engaging with it completely and treating it as though it was the only chance we get, and leaving whatever comes next to it's own devices, but it seems for the vast majority of us, that just isn't an option....

Thursday 15 September 2011

The beauty of autumn days....

So, we are into September and the month has started well with bright, crisp sunny days and quite reasonable temperatures. Although it is still early in the season the quality of light in the early mornings is wonderful with just a hint of the autumn mists that will come through late September and October. The Summer was wet and largely cold, the coldest for some twenty five years and it looks as though Winter may come early this year, which suits me down to the ground. The sharp smell of ripe apples and the feel of cold dew under foot as I go out to let the chickens out first thing and take the hound for his first run is an absolute treat, and the run down to the dark half of the year seems to accelerate the nights getting darker and longer and the moon seeming to shine brighter.

I was out last night at just after midnight and the glow of the moon cast a full shadow of bright silver light making the garden glow and lending a real mystical feel to what was a simple wander about the garden. The season of cinnamon and apples and hot pies with clotted cream and long evenings in fromt of the fire, of digging the jumper out and dusting off the boots ready for winter, of harvesting the potatoes and the last of the runner beans and an excuse to start cooking thick, rich soups and stews and baking fresh crusty bread to dunk in it.

You can probably tell that autumn is a high point of my year, spiritually, emotionally, creatively and psychologically it is my time. The run up to All Hallows Eve, Halloween, Samhain whatever you choose to call it is a time when I feel at my brightest, my most energised and potent. Samhain is my most important spiritual festival, a time for the rememberance of ancesters for the drawing in of the past threads of the year, a consolidation of all that I have learned and experienced over the previous twelve months and a chance to set myself up for the Winter and my annual hibernation. To all of my fellow Autumn lovers I bit you Hail and Welcome, come sit round the fier, drink ale and tell stories of past glories and glories yet to come.....

Friday 9 September 2011

Happy Rugby World Cup!

So, as I write this the first match is well underway with a not unexpected match so far to start proceedings. The host nations first match against Tonga is into the second half with New Zealand comfortably in the lead and some stand out performances already. I think the support of the crowd will be a significant factor in New Zealands performance as even amongst the passionate Southern Nations, the fans will be even more vocal and consumed by the on pitch action than was the case in South Africa, and that is saying something. I love watching any sport played at the very highest levels, and this is I think going to be a real demonstration of World class sport with some spectacular matches to come.

I foresee some very early mornings over the coming weeks as the time difference takes its toll, but I'm pretty certain I'll cope with that. There are times that insomnia and being used to minimal sleep has its advantages. Not often, but sometimes, and this is one of those times. Tomorrows matches start at 2.00am and run through till 12.30ish including Englands first match against Argentina. The run up to the tournament has been interesting with some surprise results and some less than inspiring performances from the home nations teams. If England can produce a big first match performance then I think they have a genuine chance, but only a chance.

This World Cup could well come down to strength in depth as some of the minor teams have some pretty heavy hitters to deal with in the tackle area and up front, and it is unlikley that England will be able to rely as they have in the past on a dominant pack controlling the game. My prediction is that although New Zealand will be tough to beat with home territory advantage and a supremely skillful squad of players, it may well be that they are overpowered by a rampant South Africa and, if they play to their potential, a surprisingly successful French side. Of all of the teams out there, my money if I am honest, is on South Africa.....

Tuesday 6 September 2011

Taking ownership of lifes little challenges

A key part of my belief system is that everything that I do and say, even everything that I think is my responsibility. This may sound a little harsh or extreme, but it goes further. By extrapolation if that is true, which for me it is, then everything that happens as a consequence of my actions, or indeed my inaction is also my responsibility, so in the office environment, when the broadband goes down because the extension cable to the router is too long, that is my responsibility on two levels. Firstly because I am best placed within the company to deal with that situation, but also because as someone who knows a little about computer networking I should have spotted that a six core telephone extension cable was unsuitable to run to a broadband router and I should have replaced it with an four pair ethernet cable before it went down.

I use this example to highlight that there may be a flaw in my logic. The reason that the router was connected with the lower grade cable was because the company didn't have the right cable, which is not something that I can fix so the failure of the cable is not particularly a consequence of anything that I can change, but I still blame myself. Perhaps I shouldn't but it isn't something that is within my power to control. I beat myself up over all sorts of things like this and it can be detrimental to my mental health, but it also keeps me productive because I am constantly monitoring my environment and my actions and thoughts and trying to establish the best course of action in any given situation.

I wonder how many other people spend their time in self-flagellation over thoughts like these? Personal gnosis, or self awareness can be a tricksy thing sometimes, as can taking personal responsibility for things which are fundamentally outside your control. I know I should stop, but then I wouldn't be me I guess, so I'll just keep plugging away, doing what I do, thinking what I think, and see what happens next....

Monday 5 September 2011

Lack of sleep and its effect on creative writing....

So, after a disturbed weekend of rest and sleep I come into work this morning with a task list of creating original content for a variety of projects that require some research and background reading, and then trying to put a creative slant on subject areas that have already been covered in books and articles for many years. Not the easiest mission at the best of times, but there is something about the creative process that lends itself to working under pressure, to tight deadlines and when tired to the opint of exhaustion. I'm not sure whether it comes from an internal drive combined with the changes in neuro-chemistry that comes from sleep deprivation but there is something invigorating that draws out some of my better work.

I think part of the reason is that as I become more and more tired I find myself becoming more focused. It seems that the distractions take on a lesser significance and have less of an impact than they do when I am well rested. My mind in its rested state tends to run multiple projects simultaneously which can mean that my attention on any one thought wavers periodically, but with having to concentrate more, and having to really get to grips with just one subject area in order to keep going, the end result seems to be better. It would be interesting to spend a couple of days wired up to an FMRI scanner to see what is actually happening in my brain as I go from fully rested to exhausted.

Of course this could just be an inaccurate perception in part brought about by the tiredness and the change in intellectual capacity and performance, but it doesn't feel that way. It feels as though there is a downward step change in what I am intellectually capable of but the upside is that any individual project gets better attention and consequently a better end result. We will have to see how it develops as the tiredness increases over the coming week, because it is alreday shaping up to be a very busy week.... 

Sunday 4 September 2011

Does evolution predispose us to a belief in God?

Religion is a beautiful thing, it is also a terrible thing. At once glorious and destructive, the apex of mans creativity and the depths of the pit to which mans creativity can sink, and yet it seems that it is something that we can not do without. Of the six billion or so people on this tiny planet, almost 80% profess some believe in the divine with a range of systems and structures that boggles the mind. From Shamanism through Hinduism and Shinto, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Polytheism, Monotheism, Spiritualism the list goes on and on. Believers range from peasant farmers to quantum physicists and despite the incredible efforts of political leaders in Russia and China, scientists in the Western World and community leaders of many different backgrounds at many different times there seems to be no way of limiting the spread of religious belief.

Hence the title of the post, and the source of the question. It seems to be the case that we, as a species are built to believe. Not necessarily in any one thing, but simply to believe in something more, something other, something "out there" but why is this the case? It could be that the reason is that there truly is something to believe in. Some divine essence, some spark that in it's influence on the human race has left a nebulous sense of itself in each of us that we try to understand in ways that vary as a consequence of our background and societal upbringing giving rise to competing and conflicting belief systems as we each try to explain or feelings in our own way, each of us right, but at the same time, none of us having a complete answer, perhaps because a complete answer is impossible without actually becoming divine. But is this the only possible answer?

If we think in terms of Occams Razor, the best answer being the one that makes the least assunptions, isnt there a more likely scenario? What if we suggest that humanity began to develop beyond basic animalistic urges as a hunter gatherer? There is pretty good evidence that this is the case, and was a key earlier differentiator in our development as a species. As a hunter gatherer we would have to develop skills of pattern recognition, in order to track game, harvest fruit and nuts at the right time and so on. As our skills at PR developed we began to perceive patterns in more and more of our surroundings, the shapes of rocks and trees and clouds, the patterns of stars, the changing of the seasons, and as we started to communicate we needed ways of passing on the patterns that we saw that were useful to us so we started to draw and paint on cave walls, we started to tell stories. Over time these stories became more and more stylised and developed and ingrained, and the patterns took on significance and meaning.

As the stories developed and the world took on more complexity as societies grew and merged and swapped different stories perhaps there was a need to explain things that affected day to day life but weren't explicable without technology. It is hard to explain why a village suddenly dies if you don't understand about siting the latrines away from the well for drinking water, so you tell a story to explain it, and maybe that story suggests moving the latrines away from the village because villages were that is done don't die, but maybe that story says that you should move the latrines because the spirits of the ancestors want it moved, or because it should line up with a pattern of stars in the sky. Whatever the real reason there is a good chance that our current belief systems may be more of a function of our development as a species than any fundamental understanding of reality, but then again, maybe it was an alien super-race that implanted these ideas to keep us subservient to our lizard hybrid overlords..... ;) sleep tight.....

Saturday 3 September 2011

Another weekend of relaxation through competitive gaming....

So, once again the weekend is here, top class athletics, rowing and cycling on the TV, weather still good enough to get out and about for a bit of a run, and most importantly of all, less than a week now to the kick-off of the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. It is going to be a fabulous tournament, with one of the Worlds greatest teams on home turf at a time when they are not performing at their very best, England struggling, Australia and South Africa resurgent and Argentina pushing for global recognition. It all looks sets to be a real epic battle. Closer to home, and yet still global, my online gaming relaxation sessions are getting very exciting as I approach level 100 in War Metal, and there have been two significant developments that look to be very interesting for the future of the game.

The developers of the game have added a new combat system, Factions where groups of players band together to battle each others groups, awards being made for combat performance and battle statistics and the group having to work collaboratively in order to achieve success. As a low level player it will be a while before I am much use in faction play but it looks pretty good fun for the future. The second development is that a perceived need for changes to the Player vs Player game system raised by players is being explored by the developers. It is good to be involved with a gaming community where the people designing and developing the game play and the game engines are involved with the wider community, particularly where they involve the wider community in the decision making process.

I'm not sure that it is necessarily the best way to get the best game, being more of a fan of benign dictatorship when it comes to the decision making process in these situations, democracy being to prone to corruption, generally for the Lulz, but we will just have to see how things develop. It's a great way to unwind after a hard week though, good exercise, good sport to watch and good fun with friends.....

Friday 2 September 2011

The end of a long week....

This working lark is quite tiring at time. It's been a week of good progress overall, with some positive developments within the team, building towards where we need to be in terms of production, but the cost in terms of physical and mental exhaustion is significant. It is interesting that, from the perspective of managing a production process it feels like the harder you drive efficiencies and the more progress you make, the more you can see clearly how much is left to be done. And there is a lot. In the drive for a perfect set of processes there will inevitably be the discovery of new and interesting bottlenecks that have to be understood and opened out to smooth the flow of projects from inception to completion. Being responsible for the overall system brings both benefits and drawbacks, but one of the biggest frustrations is in having to rely on external factors.

I guess one of the indicators that perfection is being reached will be the point at which external factors have only a minor impact and one which is easily resolved. Once we reach a point that we are not having to resort to fire-fighting every time something beyond our control happens, we will be able to become truly proactive rather than having to temper that with a good dose of reactivity. I guess a big part of this process is in understanding the processes themselves and how they inter-relate and how they influence one another. I think you could liken it to the difference in a manufacturing process between "just in time" production techniques and the rather more troublesome states of "not quite in time" and "not at the right time at all" which at times seem to be where we are currently at.

Only time, and effort and better awareness and responsiveness and understanding will bring the benefits of not having to be constantly flat out and under tremendous pressure, and it is a case of ploughing through the tough times as best you can whilst still maintaing a steely gaze on the prize and the route to it without being distracted and sidetracked dealing with incidentals. Perhaps this is why many of the very best business leaders are sociopathic by inclination.......

Thursday 1 September 2011

An interesting day for forensics......

News reoprts today from Australia are full of the news that Ned Kellys bones have been identified using modern forensic tests from amongst 33 individuals buried in a mass grave on the site of a former prison. Kelly was executed in 1880 for multiple crimes including robbery and murder, key amongst these being the killing of three policeman who were trying to ambush Ned Kellys gang. The forensics used included DNA analysis as well as CT scans of the bones and comparisons to living relatives. The bones are being released to the family for appropriate reburial. This is interesting in its own right, highlighting the technological developments that have been made in the interveing period. It also ties in with another timely case, as it is 123 years ago today that Londoners were waking up to news of a grizzly find in the East End. In 1888 on 31st August one of the Worlds most famous killers began his or her murderous rampage.

This was also one of the earliest expressions of a media based conspiracy theory with all sorts of characters being suggested by the press and public, and many suspects questioned by police. In the modern era it is considered unusual for a killer to go undetected for long, and certainly not if the victims are found within hours of the crime, but back in the 1880's forensics was a relatively new science and analysis of crime scenes was rudimentary at best. What is clear is that the attacks were vicious and savage in the damage and mutilation caused to the bodies, and based on standard psychological profiling techniques looking at victims and patterns the killer was almost certainly male, probably in his mid 20's to mid 30's and almost certainly had a history of violence towards women.

Of course, given the time, violence towards women was commonplace so his earlier crimes may well have gone unreported, particularly if they, like his murders were carried out against prostitutes, violence being considered a hazard of the profession. It is extremely unlikely that forensic evidence will ever be found now to establish beyond doubt who Jack the Ripper really was, but for me, the mystery and the possibilities make interesting folklore and add a certain frisson to coffee table discussions comparing violence and crime then and now. Was Ned Kelly an anti-establishment revolutionary hero or a viscious criminal killer? Was Jack the Ripper a figure so prominent in London society that his exposure would have rocked the nation to its foundations? I guess we each have to make up our own minds about these things.....