Yeah, I thought my previous posts @ Novel Spaces were too tame, so I take gentle umbrage with über-nice agent, Nathan Bransford, and talk about my take on first novels over at Novel Spaces. Have fun!
Archive for August, 2009
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As you may know …
… I don’t write any of the really popular sub-genres (slash, menage), so still have to keep an open mind about additional revenue possibilities. I’m considering this one (via Skepchick). What do you think? If I play my cards right, I might even be able to head their Asia-Pacific regional headquarters.
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Something to chew on for a while….
NOTE: I’m away for the next week and a half on vacation, so posts will be sporadic at best. Until I get back into the swing of things, here’s something extra meaty for you, gentle reader, to digest.
On Wednesday, severely running out of time, I provided a link to an article in The Age which talked about how a “white witch” was able to cheatearn AUD$800K+ out of Note Printing Australia and AUD$600K+ out of the City of Port Phillip several years ago. I thought the incident was blackly funny, until I was reminded of the case of Rebekah Lawrence, a woman who committed suicide by jumping from the top of a Sydney office building after attending a “self-help” course that, as part of its program, included childhood regression sessions.
The link between these two stories is psychology.
I’ll be honest with you, I have no time for a lot of New Age stuff. I find most of it to be positive stroking wrapped in incense and dubious mythology and executed incompetently at best. So why do people fall for it? I believe one reason is because the actual, serious treatment of human emotional problems carries a huge stigma.
Only a couple of weeks ago, I overheard two people talking (yes, I’m shameless like that), and one told the other that, while doctors had diagnosed her son as being autistic, he was really “cursed” by a jealous relative, and she was putting the medical diagnosis to one side while she consulted bomohs (shamans or medicine men) to find a cure. In this part of the world, it is a lot less shameful to admit to mental victimhood than it is to admit to mental distress or illness.
That’s the first problem, which I’ll probably tackle again in future posts — the sleight-of-blame. The second problem is cost. Which can you better afford? A two-week course that “uncovers your inner potential, increasing your personal energy and leading to greater insight and focus when confronting the problems of today”, or an open-ended series of weekly sessions that turns you into a weeping pretzel because it forces you to confront your own weaknesses? In addition, the two-week course may cost a couple of thousand dollars; who knows what the open-ended counselling will entail? The more positively-spun propaganda of the first combines with its relatively low cost to offer a deal almost too good to turn down. And most people don’t.
The third problem is that a lot of the alternative psychological therapy is being handled by people who either have no clue or no respect for the people they’re treating. I’ve been in more than a dozen New Age workshops, initially as a wavering sceptic, then a believer, then later on to sceptically analyse once again. I’ve also been through an extensive course of psychological counselling … as the patient. The difference — and the results — are startling.
I think the most hideous example of prurient exploitation occurred in a large New Age counselling session that I attended more than twenty years ago. We were all broken up into small groups and encouraged to share our deepest, darkest fear (just one; we only had limited time before afternoon tea, doncha know?) with the bunch of strangers we were arbitrarily lumped with. Oh, shall I begin alphabetically with the reasons why this was such a Bad Idea? And I shall never forget one elderly man who, when it was his turn, broke down and confessed that he’d been sexually abused by a priest as a child. He started to talk about it, tears running down his face, and I stopped him and told him that he had to go see a qualified counsellor about this. And I got shouted down by three other members of the group. To this day, I remember the glittering eyes of the others as they crowded around him, shutting me out, telling him to tell them everything about what went on. That incident disgusted me. When the breakout session came to an end, I pulled him to one side and told him, quietly and urgently, that he had to talk to someone qualified about what had happened, but he had a glazed expression on his face and I really don’t know to this day whether he even heard me. One of the others grabbed his other arm and steered him away from me, and that’s the last I ever saw of him.
So, don’t get me started on childhood regression therapy, which is the equivalent of putting explosive charge bullets into a revolver and telling you to play Russian roulette with it. Add shallowly-trained incompetent facilitators and hurried schedules to the mix and all the chambers might as well be filled.
People have problems, and whether they’re big or small, they should be entitled to the best care available in order to help them with whatever ails them. This holds true whether we’re talking about physical issues or mental ones. Just as the focus of a pneumonia case is treatment, so should the focus of a depression case be treatment as well. There should be no difference in how we perceive the issue (physical, mental, who cares?!), nor in the resources available to help the sufferer deal with it.
But as long as culture, stigma and cost interfere with how we tackle the very real problems people face, there will continue to be Rebekah Lawrences … and there will continue to be sweet, trusting people who have been pushed beyond endurance and who finally put their lives in the grasp of unfeeling raptors concerned with only self-serving ends, whether it be godhood, entertainment, or money.
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An extensive to-do list today…
… is keeping this post short and sweet. Too much on, so I’m afraid I can’t devote my usual energies to putting together something toothsome for all my lurking readers out there. However, here’s a news item from the country that, I believe, is #2 on the Least Corrupted Countries of the World list. (Behind Sweden, or somesuch.) Enjoy.
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The US dollar and bond market
I’ll admit I’m a dilettante. I don’t have a degree in economics or commerce. I just find world finance an incredibly fascinating subject. Take the US financial market. (Please!) There have been two problems bothering me for the past couple of months. Problem Number One: If the US Federal Treasury has been printing and distributing literally trillions of dollars, why hasn’t the value of the US dollar tanked? And Problem Number Two: With the major US creditor nations making noises about how they’re reducing their holdings of Treasury bonds, why did the sale of US bonds in mid-June increase by 60%?
Because I’m a naive socialist, I also believe the capitalist rhetoric. That is, the only thing guiding the market is its “hand”. Little or no regulation, bountiful unrestricted free trade, etc. etc. You know, the basic US economic line. So, let’s take my questions one at a time and blow my little assumptions.
Q1: The value of the US dollar. Man, that Ben Bernake is smart. Despicable, but smart. You see, instead of doing what every other government has done, which is print new money and then flood the market with it, he’s been printing new money … and then giving it directly to the banks. The banks then use the money to play the share market and, instantly, you have three golden results: (a) the banks essentially “laundering” Federal money, (b) a stable US currency, and (c) a complicit financial industry. You also get lots of noise about a “recovering market”. In fact, if you add the US$400b that’s moved from the international money markets to the US equity market to the US$1.8+trillion that Bernake is handing to the banks as part of the bailout and his “quantitative easing” program, that comes close to a recent injection of US$2.7 trillion into the share market that has got all the newspapers exclaiming what a wonderful day it is! Green shoots! Recovery! Confidence!
It also shows, quite clearly, that what is sauce for the goose (the US) is not sauce for anybody else, buddy! Can you imagine the headlines if India, for example, did something similar? They would be drawn and quartered in every financial news section from here to Burkina Faso.
Q2: And what about those bonds sales? Ah yes, because China and Japan in particular have been making noises about reducing their holdings of US Treasury bonds. In such a climate, bond sales have increased by 60%??? Are you kidding me? What’s going on? The answer is simple. Reclassification. Remember how I told you a long, long time ago that the calculation of the Consumer Price Index (most probably in your country) has been constantly rejigged over the years to remain an artificially low figure? In much the same way as Rudi Guiliani got the NYPD to rejig its crime figures to show that serious crime under his watch was severely reduced? Well, on the first of June, the US Treasury fiddled with the definition of “indirect bidders”, or investors buying bonds on behalf of third-party accounts. Up till now, “indirect bidders” had been code for foreign central banks, but with the US Treasury changing the definition …. You see where I’m going with this. Suddenly, from a decline in sales, we get a great upsurge. What was it C&C Music Factory said? Things that make you go mmmmmmmmm.
Anyway, look, you might find everything I’ve written to be completely boring but, even if you do, there’s still a valuable takeaway point here. If something important is announced in the newspapers, and it smells funny to you, it probably is. And if it is important, go digging for other information from multiple sources. Cross reference. When Counterpunch starts saying the same things as the Wall Street Journal, for example, you know you’ve hit paydirt.
On the other hand, if you’ve found everything I’ve written to also be interesting, check out one of Mike Whitney’s latest (I always perk up when he has an essay out) and Dave Lindorff. But — and here’s the thing — don’t believe them either. Use what you glean as a foundation for your own reading. And may the Truth be with you.
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Très weird on climate
Before I begin, I just want to make a general comment on scepticism. You’ll come across sceptic groups around the intertubes. In fact, I subscribe to a couple of sceptic feeds myself. And one thing I’ve noticed is that it’s okay to be a sceptic … except when it’s not. So, for example, you can question the link between the MMR vaccine and autism, but you can’t question the unbelievable quickness of the WTC building collapses of 9/11. You can question the efficacy of homeopathy, but you can’t analyse the Blue/Red Book data with a view to finding out if we really have been visited by extraterrestrials. You can question the claims of chiropractics, but you can’t research rumours of a government using its own population as chemical weapon guinea-pigs by injecting them with radioactive substances masquerading as vaccines.
Do any of the first in each sentence and you’re a true blue sceptic. Do any of the second and even the sceptics will call you a conspiracy nut. Whether I believe in any of these things (first or second parts) is irrelevant, but the point I want to make is this: if you’re a sceptic then shouldn’t it be the case that you’re sceptical of everything? That you shouldn’t take anything at face value because you are, y’know, a sceptic?
As I’ve said before, even when a leftist writes an essay on a particular topic, and even though I’m unabashedly politically a leftist, I still research the arguments that person is presenting. To blindly accept a fact because it comes from a source that I believe is ideologically (or economically or psychologically or socially) close to my own views negates the very ideal of scepticism completely, turning it instead into dogma. Dogma is something we vilify religion for, but it would do well for sceptics to remember that the charge can be equally made against members of our own group when they side blindly with one argument due solely to ideological proximity. Or to a fear of being ridiculed.
All this is a long-ass introduction to a topic that I’ve touched on several times before. That is, climate change. Now, I don’t know what the deal is with climate change. I remain a sceptic about the whole issue, which means that I don’t believe the case has been made ozone-tight for either side of the argument. Plus, I’m not a climate scientist, so a lot of data just flies over my head tbh, and — judging by the papers I read, appropriately cross-referenced, natch! — I really don’t believe 80% of what the mainstream media screams in its headlines.
I’d like to believe that all the noxious by-products we’re pumping into the atmosphere is making some kind of change to the way our planet operates. But that private view (still a postulation, not even an hypothesis in my mind) is not helped when I read the latest on climate data.
Let me introduce the Climatic Research Unit of East Anglia, which unabashedly tells us that it is:
widely recognised as one of the world’s leading institutions concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change.
The Reg tells me that “the CRU Global Climate Dataset, is the most cited surface temperature record by the UN IPCC.” Is it? Well, if you can be bothered to go to Chapter 3 (Observations: Surface and Atmospheric Climate Change Supplementary Material) of the IPCC publication “Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change“, published by Cambridge University Press, and start at p. 241, Section 3.2.1 onwards, you will see that data from the CRU was used predominantly as the basis for changes in temperature of the surface climate. So yes, it’s true.
(As an aside, it also tells you why being a sceptic is such damn hard work. You have to do so much checking. But that is my, heh, cross to bear. Onwards.)
Enter Steve McIntyre and the blog, Climate Audit. Steve and his fellow bloggers at Climate Audit are scientists. Statisticians, but mathematical scientists nonetheless. So they do what scientists do, which is take raw data as presented and try to construct reproducible test cases. This is the essence of science. Not blowing things up, but making sure that the underlying model of Something is robust enough that anybody around the world can come to the same conclusions using the same data. To bring back that tired word, it’s the difference between science and dogma.
So what happens when McIntyre et al. request the raw climate data from that most august institution, the CRU? I’ll go back to the Reg here, which has a useful summary, although you can always go to Climate Audit for the full blow-by-blow account, if you’re so inclined. Well, the CRU has multiple responses, essentially boiling down to:
1) It lost all its data from the 1980s onwards, and/or
2) It destroyed all its data from the 1980s onwards, and/or
3) nobody (including other scientists) has a right to see any of its data.On (3), to whit:
Professor Phil Jones, the activist-scientist who maintains the data set, has cited various reasons for refusing to release the raw data. Most famously, Jones told an Australian climate scientist in 2004 [admittedly not referenced in The Reg, but there's a trail at Climate Audit if you go looking, and my emphasis on the following]:
Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.
Um, because it’s the basic of scientific enquiry, which is the cornerstone of human civilisation?
Here’s the thing. If you want the entire world to believe that the sky is falling down around our ears, wouldn’t it be in your best interests to release all the data associated with it so you can convince other people that the atmosphere is indeed descending? Especially if you purport to be a scientist while doing this? What gain can possibly be made in behaving like a spoilt prima donna, withholding the very information that you base your sky-breaking conclusions on?
To sceptics like me, behaviour of that ilk is more likely to drive me away from the IPCC’s conclusions, because it smacks of hidden agendas and, yes, dogma. So I can now say that, whereas before I was a firm believer in climate change, now I have turned into a sceptic. And it’s all thanks to the IPCC.
ADDITIONAL: I’ve written about my doubts on climate change before. See this post on a Japanese report, and the last item in this one on weather station placement, which mentions that other august body mentioned in the IPCC report, the GISS. I don’t think we’re done with this topic by a long shot.
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Freedom burqinis
Oh. Good. Freakin’. Grief.
I am no fan of Nicolas Sarkozy. Or the normal French attitude to bathing. (About on par with the British, from what I’ve seen and heard.) But this entire banning a woman because she’s wearing a burqini thing is getting seriously out of hand.
First, a recap. A Lebanese Australian by the name of Aheda Zanetti designed a hazmat suit for Muslim women to wear when swimming. Because it covers one from the head to the toe, leaving only a whole for the face to peek through, Zanetti called it a “burqini”. Cute name.
Problem is, some French swimming pool stopped a woman wearing a burqini from swimming. And now we’re in the middle of HumanRights Fail.
I hope you know me well enough by now to know that I’m not afraid to call people out on certain personal perceptions of failure. But, people, this ain’t one of them. This hasn’t stopped Zanetti from saying:
The Australian creator of the “burqini” says she is not surprised a woman wearing a full-length swimsuit was turned away from a Paris pool, saying the French have a fear of the unknown. [my emphasis]
The French? The dudes who brought us that marvel of bleeding edge technology, the guillotine? The dudes who killed their aristocratic class just to see what would happen next? The dudes who conquered almost all of Europe behind a short Corsican with scant knowledge of Central Europe weather patterns? Those dudes “fear the unknown”? You just have to look at the way the men dress to see this is patently untrue. Just one glance at their wardrobe is enough to tell you that the average Frenchman fears nothing, least of all good taste!
However, in the interests of balance, I’ve done a bit of digging about this particular issue and have uncovered (ha!) the following:
1. This supposedly exclusive “French” attitude is actually a Europe-wide one going back literally decades. The reasoning may sound a bit strange to us but is essentially this: swimwear carries bacteria. The more swimwear you have on, the more bacteria you can potentially carry into a swimming pool. Therefore, the onus is on less material rather than more entering the water.
2. To go one better, Poland — for one — even had a colour ban! Only white swimwear was allowed. I remember J and I having an hilarious discussion about this back when we first got married because I’m dark-skinned with dark, um, bits and wearing a white swimsuit might not be the best option for me, if you get my drift.
“For God’s sake, why white?” I demanded. “So the officials can tell if you’ve got a dirty swimsuit on,” J replied calmly. “Germs, you see.”
3. J was refused entry into a Polish swimming pool once because he was — shock! horror! — wearing shorts. Not because he was Muslim. But because the male swimwear de rigueur was DTs (Dick Togs aka Speedoes). No further correspondence to be entered into.
So, as much as I’d like to pile on Nick baby and France in general, I can’t — in good conscience — do it this time.
This is general Euro-pernickety policy, people, not HumanRights Fail, although perish the thought that I should stand in the way of a good lynching. Fire up the bonfire and full speed ahead!
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Over at Novel Spaces today
I’m over at the Novel Spaces blog today, talking about yucky, horrible sex scenes. Why do authors even put them into books? Is it to pad out the length? To give themselves some titillation? To boast about their own sexual escapades? I have an opinion on that particular subject (no surprises there, right?), but go right ahead, have a read and add your own opinion. I’d love to know what you have to say.
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On blood parrot cichlids
There seem to be few balanced opinions on this fish. One segment of the fishkeeping enthusiast community think it is an abomination, a man-made species that is sterile, with swim bladder problems, mouths that don’t close, and artificially dyed skin. Because of these deformities, it can’t eat properly, is ugly, and aggressive.
Then you get people like me. Okay, so I started to put together an Amazon rainforest aquascape, and I filled it with South American species of tetras, angel fish, some corydoras, a couple of algae-eaters and two gorgeous black ghost knife fish I call Patch and Zappy. And, even though they are as far away from the Amazon as you can get, I also stocked three blood parrot cichlids.
Now, if I had read the articles on the internet about the fish, akin to the spawn of Satan, I probably wouldn’t have done it. But we have some parrots in the koi pond outside and they’re very curious and bright animals, always coming up to gently “kiss” me on my legs while I’m doing my semi-regular pond maintenance. They have no problems swimming. They come to the surface of the pond to eat. They are quite happy milling about, around the koi, gourami and school of tiger barbs we have.
Their sociability is what I noticed in pet shops too. The parrots are the ones who’ll come to the front of the tank as you walk past and watch you, gently waving their fins about, genuinely curious about you and what you’re doing. How could I resist?
Here they are, coming to the front of the tank the moment they notice me holding up one of their containers of food.
And here they are keeping an eye on me after I took the container away.
So, in my four-foot tank, I have three lovely parrots and two of them decided to spawn. This began with annoying, yet compulsively watchable, terraforming of the substrate, followed by commandeering an old metal sports water bottle that I had originally placed at the back of the tank for Patch. (She was quite jealous of Zappy’s abode and a couple of fights had broken out, so I was quick to come up with an alternative for her.) However, after one look, the parrot pair decided that this would make an excellent home for their family and poor Patch lost out again. (She and Zappy seem to have come to some amicable agreement, though, because Patch is now happy to stay in her half of the tank, and Zappy is happy to stay in his.)
It’s like having a documentary unfold in my own office. I can just turn my head and observe the mating behaviour of the parrots and can readily attest that they’re extremely protective potential parents. Their “bite” feels more like a metal file vibrating against your skin. It’s startling, doesn’t hurt, but uncomfortable to tolerate for any length of time. I eventually had to use a long stick to shift the bottle to the front of the tank so I could observe their behaviour more closely. Having said that, though, they don’t seem to have the same antipathy to the other fish, beyond a quick run-off. In fact, Patch almost poked her tail into one of the parrot’s eyes yesterday, while she was backing out of somewhere, and the parrot didn’t even react. So, aggressive? Not so much.
They’ve laid eggs in the bottle but have unfortunately eaten most of them as the eggs developed a fungal disease common to this breed of fish. With more attempts at breeding, I’m hoping the success rate goes up.
There’s something joyous and, at the same time, humbling about watching the fish breed. I see it as a way for them to confirm that the environment is healthy, safe and comfortable enough for them to consider bringing up the next generation. Forgive me while I bask in pride while figuring out how to tighten my maintenance regime and maintain quality ….
Oh darn, that didn’t last long. You’ll have to excuse me. Some naughty aquarium resident has pulled up a couple of plants and I need to go reseat them.
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Hari Raya lights
So we did it. Okay, the process isn’t complete, but we took an important first step. We started pimping the car. We picked the car up on Saturday, sank into the plush leather seats, flipped the cockpit DVD screen up and down and generally behaved like teenagers. From the back, The Wast and Little Dinosaur declared themselves Well Pleased with initial efforts as they tried to make themselves heard above the revamped audio system, now pumping out Klaus Schulze at volume.
(As an aside, I’m wondering what kind of rebellion they’re going to indulge in as teenagers? Considering that we have an extensive collection of Pop Will Eat Itself, Metallica, Led Zeppelin, Devo and Black Sabbath, to name a few, that we tend to play (ahem) quite loud, I don’t know if music is going to be an option for them.)
We also installed some running lights on the underside of the car doors. When they were first demonstrated (a strip of groups of 3 LEDs, all programmable with different colour and timing effects), I grinned. “It’s like Hari Raya!” I told them, naming the big Muslim festival in these here parts (the end of Puasa month, or Ramadan). The pimpers look startled for a moment, then grinned back.
Well, they’re using that term now, referring to the strips as “Hari Raya lights”. Now, I don’t know if anyone else has referred to them as such before but, in lieu of opposing opinions (anyone?), consider “Hari Raya lights” to be my gift to the world. And if you see a pimped out truck travelling around Malaysia and Singapore with a light show along its length, wave and say hi. It’s probably us.
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