The grass ain't greener, but the sky is!

So, after a week in Shanghai, oughtn't I have learnt something? Oughtn't I have done something remarkable?

Well to tell the truth, in between my social life and my Mandarin classes I've had precious little time (maybe this is why my blog entry is late this week) to do very much except complain about not having enough sleep. Most of what I've seen is the amazing night life here in Shanghai. Some of the best bars and clubs in the world are just 20 minutes away from me. Taxis cost a maximum of £4 and the tube is 30p a journey. Having said that I have spent a fortune since arriving. I'm going to learn to cook food like the Chinese do, because a lot of western vegetables are missing from Tesco's (yes there is a Tesco's here). My first attempt was a disgrace but it was a cheap disgrace. If I did decide to eat out everyday for every meal, I could manage that with about £3 in my pocket per day but I suspect that cooking would be even cheaper.

It is a place of subtle differences and it is remarkable how little culture shock I've experienced. If only I could speak Mandarin fluently I'm not sure I'd have any difficulty at all (apart from of course the squatty potty). Some of the food is fairly strange and my veganism has collapsed in on itself under the combined weight of being unable to communicate and wishing to try every single thing I see. It has been replaced with a partial drinking embargo in lieu of the fact that my heart is not beating like it should after a night out. I figure out of the two, alcohol will kill me much quicker.

The best part about living with a group of people in this way, all within a short walking distance from you, all with a shared goal and all with a shared isolation from the rest of the world is that very quickly you become a family. You develop intimate friendships very quickly and I can see that a few that are growing within me and I already have an invitation to a wedding in India. This city is constantly growing and I feel like I am too. It's ushering me along as it races ahead. It's a city that really is ripe with opportunity. It's a melting pot that's just getting started. Even though, or perhaps because the population is 95% Chinese, when you do meet a kinsman you have an immediate spark and connection beyond what you are likely to find in England, surrounded by English speaking, English thinking people.

The more of the world I see, the more clearly I see the 'Green Grass Fallacy'. The dream about thee grass always being greener on the other side. The grass here is by no means greener (although thanks to the pollution, the sky may be) and the sugar is no sweeter... but the food is better and I think there is more room for growth. Whether I stay after my 3 months remains to be seen, whether I enjoy my time here tomorrow the same way that I did yesterday remains to be seen. I'm keeping my eyes peeled and hoping to find some more answers. Or maybe just some more questions.

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The White Devil

So far I've drunk Bai Jiu, seen numerous fish tanks including several on the back of a bicycle and one full of sharks. I've been propositioned by a prostitute and yelled at by a woman behind the grocery counter in Tesco. I've spoken with Austrians, Australians, Canadians, Americans, Indians, Spanish people, Polish People, Irish People and British people. I've eaten foods I've never seen before and tasted tastes I didn't know could be achieved.

I am in Shanghai and I am having the time of my life. There is a certain friendly energy that permeates the smoggy skies in Shanghai and there is a group of about 20 of us drinking in every oriental scrap of it. Whether it's the street musicians playing home-made instruments or it's the warm cacophony of a busy restaurant, everything from the culture to the subway system is the same but different.

I've only been here for 3 days, and there is still a great deal to see, but this city has the buzz of opportunity about it and I wanna see it all.
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Dan Dan goes to China.

Sorry that I havn't posted these last two weeks, I've been saving my mental and spiritual energy for this, my trip to China.

It started today at 3 in the morning when I woke up. I was supposed to wake at 5 but I couldn't get back to sleep again. My 9 am flight has just ended, dropping me at Abu Dhabi Airport and courtesy of their free wifi, I am now writing this blog.

I'm in China for 3 months, 2 months of which will see me as a medical research intern at a company called Devon. The first month is an intensive course in Mandarin.

I'll keep you up to date on the interesting stuff I see and do.

This is a trip that I've been planning for about 7 months now. I really appreciate the support I've had from my friends and my family.

Stay cool!
Dan.

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The Problem With Adverts.

Everybody wants to be a better person.

Not everybody realises just how harmful the effects of advertising can be though. The fact is the advertising companies (for the most part) are against you. They are taking advantage of every scrap of psychology they know because they want you to buy something. Even the Oxfam adverts are selling something, the only difference is that they LOOK like the good guys. Personally I don't trust them.

Every time you watch an advert, there are hundreds of little tricks in there to make you insecure, to make you believe that you need something. To make you angry, or sad, or excited and to connect these emotions to their products or to connect the solutions to their products. Remember that trope of a sleazy salesman who is good at their job, but you wouldn't trust as far as you can slide them across the ground on a trail of their own slime? That's advertisers!

All they want to achieve, is to make you need them.

They do this at great cost to the viewer and advertisements are a source of a great deal of psychological disorders (the obvious example being body dismorphia).

I watch a lot of youtube. Youtube used to be a great place. No adverts, can watch anything you like (almost) and it was a place where I felt like I could escape commercialism. Not anymore however. There are some youtubers that I watch such as Nerd³ who make their living from their youtube videos. This is of course funded by advertisements and he says [paraphrase] 'It's a 30 second advert for the sake of a 30 minute video'. Of course this is better than TV or radio or spotify but I just don't want to see them at all. I remember when advertising on youtube first started. The advertising companies were small fries, they felt less like the bad guys and more forward thinking. Now however, every single advert seems to come from Footlocker or HMV or some record label or yaddah yaddah yaddah. It seems like the price of these adverts has skyrocketed and it has shut out the small businesses once again.

There are some youtube channels that I watch exclusively to learn something, or to grow, or to think about things in different ways. Do you know what stands in between me and enlightenment? Youtube adverts! Well... and a few other things. But it is Youtube adverts that irk me the most.

I understand one thing though. I understand that capitalism is driven by advertising. It is driven and accelerated and has been very effectively. For better or for worse (for worse) we live in a capitalist society and advertising is a simple symptom of a larger disease. I don't have any suggestions where we can go - although the sort of oligarchy discussed in Plato's Republic has always appealed to my naive political sentiments - all I know is that this is not the last stop. We have been here for a long time but we are just waiting for the drivers to finish their coffee and scone.

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What's a father?

What does it take to be a good father?

I'm young. Maybe you can forgive me for being idealistic. A good father teaches you what he knows. He guides you through troubles without being heavy handed and he looks to help you become who you want to and need to be.

For years now I've had this in the back of my mind with much of what I do. If I am a good person and I raise my kids well (assuming I have kids) then those kids will take the values I have learnt and keep them going in their lives and ideally will pass on modified and improved versions of those values when they have kids.

In this way, I can achieve that coveted human goal, immortality. Or at least... I can survive in some positive way. Through my children and their children. If you think about it, much of who you are is because of your parents, your grandparents, your great grandparents and even further back to people you have never even met, but who have taught those who taught you.

It is my opinion that the two primary goals of everybody's life should be:

• Learn as much as you can about this world.
• Learn how to tell your kids what you have learnt.

 You always hear bits of advice passed down from your grandparents and parents. Little snippets of wisdom or clichés which may sound trite at first. You may dismiss them but the purpose of them is and always has been to attempt to teach your children what you have learnt. These proverbs are always quick and always memorable and most usually, they are very useful.

This is a call out to take a second look at those things your gran is always saying to you. To take a second look and to reassess its usefulness. To analyse the layers of meaning which exist within each phrase and hopefully, to learn some tricks for yourself.

I'll see you on the other side.

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A labour of love.

Ever heard of M. Scott Peck? He was a psychotherapist who wrote a book called 'The road less travelled'. It's a book about life, love and discipline (maybe some more stuff, I'm only half way through).

He talks at great length about spiritual growth and how only an action which enables or causes you or somebody to grow spiritually can be called an act of love. A labour of love is something which takes effort, but rewards you in kind. Something that you push all of your time into, but doesn't require any effort (something like television or in my case, tower defense games) is nothing but a time sink. It gives nothing back to you.

If it requires your effort, if it is an exercise of will then that is only half the requirements. At least, that's what M. Scott Peck says. He says the second requirement is that it somehow extends your boundaries. What I believe is that your boundaries are largely defined by the strength of your discipline and will, and by exercising your will, you strengthen it. In this way every act of discipline is an act of love. Love for yourself or love for another.

This blog is an exercise of will. I stumbled a couple of weeks ago when I did not post anything at all. The week before that I had written a blog entitled Gender roles in a broken world. It got just 7 views. I felt like I had failed because nobody had read my blog and this depressed me. I felt like my writing was not worthwhile and couldn't motivate myself to continue writing. I felt like I was not worthwhile and couldn't motivate myself to practice my guitar or my saxophone! It wasn't until two weeks later that I finally picked up the courage to write again and even longer before I picked up my instruments again. What I now realise is that my failure wasn't in writing a blog post which was not widely read, my failure was to let slip my discipline. To let such a thing as my number of readers affect me was to forget the true purpose of my blog, which is written for me.

I suspect everybody has their own reasons for writing. I write to solidify my ideas. To make sure that I understand what it is that I am saying and as a learning process. The reason I post them on the internet and show all my friends and family is so that I can stand by my beliefs no matter who reads them. I often write about overtly sexual or left-wing subjects. Things my parents and grandparents don't always understand or agree with. I sometimes write things which are overtly controversial like Was Adolf Hitler a Bad Man... Not sure how many friends that one bought me... but the fact is that my opinions and how I view the world is my ultimate labour of love, my search for the truth. It is this dedication to the truth that I will stand by my whole life if I can manage it.

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Robots will take over the world!

Give it 10 years and your breakfast will be waiting for you by the time you get downstairs. Your car will drive you to work and your cleaning lady will have found herself a new career.

There is a revolution coming and its name is robotics! We all know robots have been used on construction lines for years and years and we all know that a lot of people lost their jobs for it. It's only going to get worse. Whether it is Google's self driving cars or the creepy nurse's assistant, robots are increasingly able to work alongside humans. To interact with them directly and safely and this is really the key point.

Robots have always been able to do repetitive tasks but with the revolution in safety and the ability to understand their environment, robots have taken on new life and will begin to take on new roles. They are already being used extensively in the military for dangerous tasks such as mine sweeping and recon missions and there are future plans to use robots to repair nuclear facilities in ways that humans cannot without extreme risk. This is good.

There is however a more contentious result of the robotic uprising. As they begin to take over more and more roles that humans once will have filled, many people will be left jobless and without prospects. How can we resolve this? The only barrier I can foresee to this happening is cost effectiveness. But economically speaking, there is no reason for this to impede for long the march into the new reality that robotics will bring.

What sort of society will we live in, when half of us do not and cannot have jobs? There are only so many people who can work on maintaining the robots. Only so many people who can design and build them. What will the rest of us do? How will we survive without a paycheck and how will we stay sane without a job?

There are certain people who have foreseen this. Namely Jacque Fresco. In this video he talks about how humans will be displaced by robots and how they already are being displaced by robots (self-checkout anyone?). He also talks about what humans will be able to do in the future. How we will spend our time, how we will survive and how our quality of life will improve dramatically. If you enjoy your job (there are few enough of us that do) then there is no reason for you not to continue. Let's say you are a lumberjack and you absolutely love it. There is nothing in the world you would rather do! But there are all these robots who do the job faster than you! What are you going to do? Well... since you probably will be out of a job, like almost everybody, there is no reason you cannot continue to just chop trees down. You won't earn a wage from it but that won't matter. The move to a nanny state will become far more pronounced in the future as the money system collapses under the weight of robotics. (Nobody has any jobs -> nobody has any money -> nobody buys anything -> money itself is abolished under the threat of total and irretrievable economic collapse)

What we are talking about is not a restriction and it is not a loss. It is a massive gain. It is perhaps the greatest gain we have seen since the start of agriculture! We will get our freedom back! No longer strapped to a desk 8 hours a day, we can spend time with the people we love, with the things we love to do!

The future is bright! The future's robotic.

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Want to start programming?

I don't know who among you knows that I love to program.... but I love to program. And I think you might too.

Are you the sort of person who enjoys su dokus? Who is fascinated by Rubick's cubes and who loves puzzle games?

I think there are a lot of people out there who would enjoy and benefit from learning programming and using it, both in their everyday lives and at work.

My job right now is to copy and paste data from one spreadsheet to another. I have to make sure that all the data is in all the right columns and that all the relevant data is present. Sounds boring, right? Enough to put you to sleep? Well I can quickly write a program that will do the job for me. Now it doesn't matter if they give me 10 spreadsheets or 10,000 spreadsheets. I can do them all with little to no effort because I have written to program to do it for me. Aside from this sort of application, you can just use it for fun, or use it competitively (CodeJam, Some Challenges, Project Euler).

I'm not going to teach you squat about programming today. I'm going to leave that to you. I just want to show you how easy it can be to get started. I recommend Python because it is straight forward and easy to learn.

If you want to just jump right into the questions and learn it that way then by far the best place you can go is to LearnStreet. This is like programming with somebody patiently talking you through the process of learning to program. The code is all typed into the website so nothing needs to be installed. It does require you to sign up after the first few problems but it is definitely worthwhile.

The next best place to go is http://www.learnpython.org/. This website again requires no installation. Just go onto that website and type: print 'I am gonna be awesome at this'.upper() + "!"*5
The website is designed to teach you python in a modular style. You start with the basics and move on to the harder stuff. It's basically interactive reading.

You can also look at Dive Into Python for pretty much the same thing with less interactivity (read: no interactivity). For this you will need to install python. There is a blog dedicated to that here.

A great resource for you will be the Python documentation. Any programming language will have a documentation. It is like a dictionary for the programming language and it will have all the information you need. But, at the end of the day, the best place to look is always Google.

Good luck and happy coding.



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Gender roles in a broken world.

There  is a wonderful documentary that you need to watch, and you can find it here.

The documentary is called The Codes of Gender and it breaks down the gender roles dictated by society and how we can see exactly what those roles are by looking at advertisements.

Okay, so what is a gender role? More importantly, what is a gender?

Don't make the mistake of confusing gender with sex. A person's sex is defined by their biology. Their gender however is societally imposed. In England and the western world, there are two main gender roles, male and female. The male gender role is one of a strong, dominant, active person. The female gender role is one of a weak, submissive and passive person.

Watching this documentary has caused me to look at again and really think about the type of man that I am, the type of women I am looking for and to compare this to how men and women are represented in society. To an extent, how they are expected to be and to behave.

I would argue that the greatest cause of misery and confusion is when a person does not fit into the slot provided by society. Maybe they have a few knobbly edges or sharp corners and they don't fit into the nice round hole that they are told to fit in. It seems almost juvenile and the answer most commonly given is that you should just be yourself. This is a naive response because the situation is not always that simple. What if I as an individual happen to like walking around barefoot? What if I hate shoes so intensely that if ever I wear a pair I break out in hives? Is it convenient to not wear shoes when out in town? Is it acceptable? What if I want to go to a nightclub?

There are a million situations comparable to this. Some more serious, some less so but the fact still remains that the rules that govern this situation are arbitrary. Why shouldn't I walk around barefoot all day? So long as I don't go on a building site I should be fine!

These arbitrary rules are laid down by society. Without them we would each be free to do exactly as we please. I will not accept the argument that all would be chaos because people are not chaotic. In general people like routine. People like simplicity and predictability (so long as there are interesting people about). Nobody wants to be navigating a riot on their way home and if there is a riot, then it must be for a good reason.

The Buddhists say that all life is suffering but I must disagree. Civilisation is suffering.

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That creative spark.

I've started writing my poetry again... well, actually I've started writing lyrics.

I used to write a lot of poetry a couple of years ago (over 200 poems). Here is one of my favourites. Lately however I have been feeling without inspiration. I have written some truly awful poems whilst trying to get back what I once had.

This stuff that I'm writing these days looks like my old poetry. The stuff I thought I had totally lost! It makes me wonder where creativity actually comes from. In this TED talk, Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love talks about the creative genius, not as an individual, but as something which accompanies an individual.

A genius, in the original sense, is a spirit which accompanies an individual and supplies them with the right words at the right time, or points them towards the right colour for the next brush stroke.

I think that this way of thinking is shared by a lot of the greats. There are some people who have talent pouring out their ears. They get such a great deal of inspiration that they reason the only way it could be possible is if an outside force was helping them.

It raises the question of How can you push beyond your ordinary limits without some external pressure?

As a creative individual, how can you rely upon your creativity? What happens if it abandons you like what happened to Metallica?

I'm going to keep writing as if each blog post, each lyric, each line could be my last.

Oh and by the way, I kind of have a job now - so Friday is suddenly no good for me to post blog entries. Saturday is the day buzzword on this blog.

I'll see you next Saturday.

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Chloe

My dog died today.

We put her down because she has been ill for the past few weeks and the procedure is too painful and too expensive to justify.

I don't know how I feel about it. I saw myself begin to step through the 5 stages of grief. The bartering, denial etc. I don't know the order. I decided to shortcut it and jump straight to acceptance. Hopefully this won't have any dramatic implications on my psyche.

I wish I could show you a picture of my doggy dog but I don't have one.

Before you ask, I am okay.

I take comfort from knowing that it happens to everybody. It is not the end of life but a part of it.

To be honest it still hasn't quite sunk in.

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Are video games addictive?

I missed my Friday deadline! I apologise and come back to you with an interesting article on the addictiveness of videogames.

The culprit? Dota 2. This game has been tearing through Steam on the back of free gameplay and outstanding game mechanics. It is a joy to play... Kind of. It can also be stressful but never in a demotivating way. Mostly I just feel the need to prove myself after a bad game.

Dota 2 is a multiplayer arena game. It is two teams of 5 fighting head to head on a battlefield punctuated with defensive towers and neutral forces. The core gameplay is blah blah blah boring.

Don't get me wrong, the game is fantastic but I've played a lot of fantastic games. What is the difference with this game?

It's really about the social mechanics at play. It's less about playing for yourself and more about playing with or for your friends or teammates. There's no easy way to describe the feelings you get when everything is going well and everyone on your team is happy. Similarly when it's all going down the toilet because their Sniper has killed you for the 50 billionth time and he already has his Mjollnir, Butterfly and Shadow Blade and you are totally powerless to stop him from building Daedalus.

Let's take 3 examples of fantastic Role Playing Games.

1. Runescape
2. Skyrim
3. World of Warcraft

First, Runescape. Sure, it is an old game and many have described it as boring and repetitive but there was a time when I would play this game every waking hour that I could. Why? I had friends who would play with me. With whom I could compete. With whom I could share the joy of the good times and laugh with hindsight at the bad. Recently I have begun playing again and it is still the same game although much improved. I cannot however bring myself to play it all that much. I don't think about it when I'm doing other things. I don't obsess over how to improve at it. I play it for 10-15 minutes at a time and the log off to play Dota 2 (or go outside... one of the two).

Second, Skyrim. This game is again fantastic and I have played it an awful lot. But without any sort of community to get involved with, I see very little reason to actually play it. I really want to level my archery to 100 but I don't see any real reason to. Who would I tell? Who would care?

World of Warcraft. I'm sure this game needs no introduction. It has consumed the lives of countless people and even claimed a couple of lives. It is a wonderful game which is superbly built and has a sprawling community to keep it afloat. I played this game 14 hours straight for several days running at one point. I did nothing else. Needless to say, I was addicted. But why? I had an awful lot of friends (in the game and in real life) who I would play with. When I wasn't playing with them, I was playing for them so that when I did see them I could talk about what I had done and where I was up to. Recently I came back to the game. It is still the same game with the same mechanics and the same sprawling, vibrant community however I had no interest beyond a passing curiosity. My friends had stopped playing. Even signed into my old account, I could see that none of my old friends were online. I played for about 30 minutes before turning it off and uninstalling it.

Dota 2 has been a running obsession for me and for a lot of my friends. We first met when I was fourteen. She was just known as DotA back then or Defence of the Ancients. From humble beginnings as a custom game type for a popular game called Warcraft 3, the game was picked up by a company called Valve (developers of the Half Life series, Team Fortress 2 and the Portal games) who developed the game professionally and released it through Steam (an online game store) as Dota 2. My friends and I have never really stopped playing. The most significant breaks being due to lack of stable internet connection or due to examinations and degree pressures. I find myself constantly returning to this game whenever I get a chance. The reason I had not written my article in time was because I was playing Dota 2 for about 6 hours today. I actually completely forgot about my promise to publish every Friday. My addiction, I believe, stems not from well crafted gameplay elements or reward systems in the game. My addiction stems directly from the social aspects of the game. It is a chance and an excuse to spend time with my friends who are physically separated from me by over an hour's drive. It is the hearthfire that we all gather around to discuss the weather. It is my way of staying connected.

This sort of social addiction spreads beyond 'hardcore gaming' into the world of casual gaming. Who would play Candy Crush if everyone they knew didn't play as well? How does farmville even work without a social aspect? These games are hardwired to have a strong social dynamic because the developers know that this is what gets people to play their games and then to come play and play again. Every game gets boring if you have nobody to tell about it.

We do not become addicted to games. Games become boring as the challenge decreases. We instead become addicted to the social rewards we get from playing them.

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Let's eliminate poverty!

Good morning John! It's Friday and today, I'm going to talk to you about poverty.

First off, is poverty relative or absolute? Is there a certain absolute poverty line below which is poverty and above which is prosperity? Some sort of permanent threshold? I don't think so, I think it's more like that poverty is comparative. As an example I'll talk two different imaginary lower class families. Both are below the poverty line in the UK but both have different outlooks. The first looks out of the window and complains about not having enough, about living in poverty and how hard it is. The second watches the news and reads the papers and looks at third world countries and is thankful that they do not live in such poverty.

I'm going to introduce you (or re-introduce you) to The Bell Curve or Gaussian Distribution.

It figures that the first picture I put in a blog in the past 3 months is a graph.

Before we continue, you must understand that when talking about poverty, about resources, about wealth distribution... this curve is god. Let's say that there are 100 people in the world and they are represented on that graph. We can see that 68 are in the blue area (the areas are separated according to something called standard deviation). These 68 people are neither exceptionally rich, nor are they exceptionally poor. They are the white collar workers. If we step out further from the peak, we come to the red areas, together counting for 27 people. The people in the rightmost red region are the wealthy ones. The lawyers, the doctors, the businessmen. In the leftmost region are the labourers. The builders and binmen. The store staff at Tesco's. Go further afield and we hit the green areas. On the right are the fabulously wealthy. We are getting into the ranks of investment bankers, venture capitalists, CEOs of multinational corporations. On the left we have the unemployed, the people living off benefits etc. If you really want to push it out to the 0.1% tail end we hit both the homeless and the FTSE CEOs.

The economy is a self correcting system. There is a famous quote about the economy concerning an invisible hand and the point is if we raise the income of every one of these 100 people to the same level, the myriad mechanisms guiding the economic system, this invisible hand, would soon re-establish a Gaussian distribution. 

Eliminating poverty is no more possible than eliminating death and disease. Both are laws of nature. The Gaussian distribution is a law of statistics. To eliminate poverty would be to subvert the laws of mathematics. Mathematics is more than just the universal language, it is also the language the universe itself uses to write the rules.

There is one thing that I am sure of. Eliminating poverty within capitalism is impossible. Within another type of societal structure it may be possible, but I lack the knowledge to really say.

Just as some supporting evidence, here is a graph of estimated incomes across the globe.

You can see that not only does each individual sub-population have a Gaussian distribution of income, but the world as a whole (the light purple line) has a Gaussian distribution. How do you like them apples?

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What does it take to be a leader?

I attended a leadership course this week called Frontrunner for disabled students and met an awful lot of amazing people. All of us had different backgrounds and different goals and, seemingly, a different idea of what a leader is and should be.

We can all basically agree that the perfect leader has a certain set of characteristics (considerate, thoughtful, just, strong, resilient, intelligent, strategic, personable, charismatic etc.) but as individuals we all lead differently.

What is the goal of a leader? Is it a constant path towards identifying which qualities they posses and then learning how to use them or improve upon them? Is it picking which of these qualities they want and drawing that quality into their repertoire?

For me, being a leader is keeping an open mind, throughout all things you might experience. It is trying to gain something from every encounter. It is the day in day out struggle of every person to decide where they want to go and what they want to do.

I'm glad to know that there are 36 talented, ambitious and inspiring leaders stepping back into the real world to testing their strength; because without leaders where would we be?

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Does structure aid creativity?

Here I am; Friday. I have no idea what to write for my blog today... nothing amazing seems to have happened. A couple of weeks ago I promised to write a new post every Friday. Some of my favourite things to do are regularly updated (that sounds a little odd...). Things like Ctrl-Alt-Del which I haven't read in years. Things like the vlogbrothers. In other words, creative work. The idea is twofold. Since I'm updating regularly, you no longer need to see my post on facebook to know I have a new blog entry, you just have to check back on Friday. The second part is that it pushes me to write and to come up with interesting content even when I'm perhaps not inspired to. It's a step towards more professional creative work and I hope it works out for you and for me.

In other news - I'm now the proud owner of a physics degree :) Yay me! Now what?

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What's wrong with sex?

We live in the tennies and ever since the sixties, we have been reminding starch collared conservatives that, "Hey man, it's the sixties.... relaaax!" and we have! We have calmed down and become more accepting. Interracial couples, gay marriage and mens' cosmetics. There is a whole new climate of sexuality, gender identity and individuality which is now allowed and accepted by the majority of people.

So I'll take this moment to congratulate everybody on being more accepting, more diverse and more open minded than perhaps we have been for thousands of years. It is wonderful to live in a time like this.... but we are not finished yet.

There are still stigmata to be tackled, feminism is still a developing movement and the LGBT movement can now be known by FABGLITTER to include a whole range of orientations.

One serious stigma is the sexual assault stigma. The quiet murmur that somehow, the victim wanted it, that somehow they are to blame. This is a view pushed forwards by ignorant people who presumably have never been raped themselves. It is almost a Christian viewpoint, the whole guilt complex surrounding sex in many sects of Christianity is deeply ingrained in society and underlies a lot of our opinions on sex. The point is that, although most people disagree with this viewpoint, it is still being said and THAT ALONE is enough to spring the question in the victim's mind - "What did I do to deserve this?". I believe this doubt is the reason so few rapes are reported, particularly when the victim is assaulted by somebody they know and I believe that this doubt is the reason why so many sexual assault victims seem to take it out on themselves. Just as a disclaimer, I am not saying that every rape case is the same, that every case is black and white. I am just saying that every time somebody shouts out this opinion, ignorantly waving it around like a dead rat in the city centre, everybody is affected.

Another stigma is men who are attracted to fat girls, chubby chasers, often being mocked in films or television. This is tied in to a whole body image thing that both women AND men have to deal with. Women are more obviously affected by body image problems with bulimia and anorexia running rampant in certain circles however men are also affected by it. It's a pet theory of mine that the emo movement sprang up as a direct response to the apparent need for a man to be masculine and manly. The reality of the world is that people come in all shapes and sizes (Hello cliché!) and so do sexual preferences and attractions. The sooner we can admit that we ourselves have some esoteric attractions (I know a man in Israel who finds women more attractive if they don't shave their legs and armpits) the sooner we can accept our own bodies and minds for what they are and not constantly punish ourselves because we are not what we think we should be.

The last stigma I will discuss is the stigma associated with having many sexual partners. Why is it a bad thing for people to have a lot of sex? There are an awful lot of reasons for people to chase sex like the hour hand chases 12 o clock. When we judge a person for how many partners they've had we are reaching back to archaic ideals of purity and virginity. The fact is that sex is the most important part of your life because it defines the relationship you have with your partner and by extension the way you relate to the world around you. Mastery of sex is much more important than many people realise and many people admit. There is a reason the karma sutra and tantra have survived for thousands of years... There is no objective reason that I can see why it is advantageous to have sex with few partner many times as opposed to many partners few times. If you know a reason, please tell me in the comments...

Well that's my lot. Have a good Friday!

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Why do people thing being gay is a choice?

So, hopefully you are one of those people who believe being gay isn't a binary thing, it is a spectrum of gay and everybody sits somewhere on the number line between 0 and 1 (see fifty shades of gay).

A lot of people find themselves in a position where they have the power to make a decision about how to live their life. They may decide to ignore the gayer parts of themselves and only date heterosexually and hook up heterosexually and for all intents and purposes, 'BE' heterosexual. These people have chosen to 'BE' straight. Similarly I imagine some people choose to 'BE' bisexual and 'BE' gay based on a multitude of reasons.

There are two problems that can arise from this.
1st.
Some people will take offence. In my eyes, it is a simple miscommunication. When people say that being gay is a choice (under this explanation) what they really mean is having gay relationships is a choice, as per the argument outlined above. Actually being gay A.K.A. being attracted to the same sex is no more a choice than liking blue cheese or preferring Art Garfunkel to Paul Simon; it might not be the most common preference but it is both your prerogative and part of your identity, not a choice.
2nd.
Some people use this to put down gay people and try to deny them rights. This is hateful and childish and I will say no more of it.

This is by no means a tried and tested theory, it's just my experience and my understanding. If you have another explanation, please let me know in the comments.

When I really think about being gay in terms of a spectrum, the words gay and straight start to lose their meanings except in terms of a decision people make. Every man and woman who is out of the closet has made the decision to associate with the LGBT community and in this respect they are LGBT. Outside of that context, does it make sense to call an individual lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans? Maybe we should employ a number system. You could introduce yourself as L1G2B8T9 depending on how much you associate with each facet of lgbt?

Labels have their uses. We use them to associate with each other. "Oh you're a fan of Metallica? Me too!" is much easier than saying "Your list of songs that you like by Metallica matches with my list with 73% accuracy! That's cool!". The dark side of labels always have to be handled carefully and, when exploited, the whole community has to stand and be exploited together, to fight against it together, rather than let one of their number fall (I may have gotten slightly off topic here).

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People get too defensive...

We live in kind of a strange world. Yesterday somebody said to me "No offence if you're religious" after mocking religious people for believing in an invisible man who controls the world.

There is a certain culture these days which looks down upon and mocks religious people but at the same time is so afraid to offend anybody that they have to backtrack just in case. Maybe it's just British people being afraid of conflict or maybe it is a more general fear of retribution. There is a powerful theme of political correctness underpinning most social interactions (maybe you noticed). It almost seems like they're (the government, the illuminati, the skull and bones society, the masons, the gardeners, the hairdressers, the newscasters, the orang-utans and the bonobos) trying to whitewash everybody - to eliminate any difference between one culture and another, one way of life and another.

It seems to me to be a terrible shame that we are afraid to talk about this kind of thing. If I just meet somebody, typically the question I'm most interested in asking is "What is it like being you?" but even a question like this is laboured and weighed down by the fear of retribution, the fear of causing offence.

Sometimes, I like to imagine a perfectly safe place, where we can talk, not without emotion and not without fear, but with clearness of intention. Where you can understand why I am asking the questions and I can understand why you are answering them. The conversations are always useful, always interesting and always beneficial.

Some news, a cool book and a completed degree!

First off, the news. I'm going to be, from now on, uploading a new blog entry every Friday (maybe more often if I feel like it). So you can expect regular updates from now on. If I fail, you can yell at me in the comments ^_^.

Nextly there is a really cool book I've been reading (very slowly) called Reality is Broken, by Jane Mcgonigal. Aside from causing me to sing Everything is Broken by Bob Dylan every time I read the book's title, it is a great book because it talks a lot about computer games. The basic premise of the book is that games are more fun than real life... by why should they be? Jane talks a lot about how to implement the same mechanisms used to make World of Warcraft like maple syrup infused with heroin into our every day lives. Mechanisms like effective feedback, epic worlds, substantial goals and levelling up. When I finish the book I'll write a "Reality is Broken: The greatest book I've ever read" where I'll go into detail on the book. It's shaping up to be a brilliant book full of innovations that could shape the future (and I hope they will).

Lastly I've finished my exams and, by extension, my degree! I am not yet a Master of Science because I havn't graduated, that's in about a month. Still though, I'm happy to have finished. If any of you have just finished too, congratulations! We are free! Whooo! Let's go get a real job! :D Or..... maybe there's no point...

Happy Summer!

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The Human Supremacist

So, this documentary is an animal rights documentary wearing the skin of an anthropology documentary. It's a real tongue in cheek look at the idea that humans are the most superior life form on Earth. It coins the phrase "Human supremacist" and absolutely rips to pieces any argument that dogs, cats, birds, bees, trees, fleas and chicadees are inferior to humans.

The best part of the whole documentary is the part where a sophisticate is arguing with a bear about which is the superior animal. Apparently, the human is superior because it has superior intelligence, wears clothes and uses tools, however in opposition, the bear is superior because it has superior strength, has a full coat of fur and has no need for tools.

The human belief in human superiority of course comes along with the same baggage that any prejudice carries. I'm not sure that dehumanization is the right word here, but the same degradation and disrespect has been exercised on the animals, but on a larger scale. 70 billion farm animals housed in factory farms worldwide. This outnumbers the human population by tenfold. We would have to enslave everybody on earth for 10 lifetimes to match the injustice brought down upon just the animals that are alive today. This is of course not counting animal research (I personally know biology students who have spent days at a time cutting the heads off of rats), poaching, hunting and general domestication.

You might call me a bleeding heart (I am) and you might call me a tree hugger (I quite literally am) but the fact is that a healthy respect of the animal population is the only way towards a stable ecosystem. I remain thoroughly convinced that the misconception that we have the right (there's that word again) to kill, torture, maim and claim as property any animals which we happen upon is the root of the troubles of modern man. I would rather live in a world with no humans, than a world with no animals.

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Was Adolf Hitler a bad man?

I ran into this 'amusing' little thing earlier, asking me a few hypotheticals. Such as - out of three candidates with limited descriptions, who would I choose to be president. I decided upon the vegetarian man who doesn't smoke because I figured he would be a good figurehead in today's cancer riddled world. Anyway it turns out this character thing person was based on Adolf Hitler. Which got me thinking.... (of course it did)

Hitler was only a man, like anybody else and to empower him by putting too much on his shoulders is an injustice to those who died under the Nazi regime. Hitler, like any other politician, was primarily a people person. He was a fantastic motivator - as can be seen from his (what I assume are) forceful and dynamic public speeches. I hope I havn't offended anybody, but sometimes it is wise to step back and ask "Why is it bad that I picked Hitler over Teddy Roosevelt and Winston Churchill?". Is our knowledge so complete that we know that Adolf Hitler, placed in a different context (containing fluffy bunny rabbits and sugar gum drops) may not have committed atrocities ?

Having said that there is a hot coal in my stomach as I try to type "All were highly effective leaders." and I find I can't really justify saying it. Is a catastrophic and brutal legacy the mark of an effective leader? Probably not, although I am reminded of a character called Logen Ninefingers who is a brutal man, tearing up every situation he is in leaving a river of blood and a path of death everywhere he goes, yet people follow him and those closest to him take wisdoms from him and respect (fear?) him. My point is, just because a person is a bad person, doesn't make them a bad leader and just because a leader commits actions which, when done by an individual are atrocious, maybe do not stand in the same light when done by a leader representing a government.

Anyway I bought a copy of Mein Kampf impulsively. For years I have harbored this fear, this anger, this hatred and I want to be done with it. So this is me finding my balance within a highly unjust and controversial injustice that has always haunted me. Wish me luck.


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Exam Fear - FILDI

We all know it. It's that fear that we get when we have been working towards something for an entire year and it's culminating in front of our eyes in a matter of hours. It's that pervasive fear that we are not good enough, that we will not arrive at our planned destination. That our lives will not work out as planned. It's the fear that somehow, no matter what we do, we will still fail and we will look foolish doing it.

I'm feeling this fear particularly sharply right now as my next exam closes in. This is shaping up to be the most difficult exam, and I don't feel prepared and I don't feel like I have the resources to tackle it properly. I am afraid and I am paralyzed by that fear.

So the question hangs in the air like a foul odour, "What do I do?".

The answer stares you in the face, holding you in its beady eye and relentlessly shouting at you, "Just do it!" but your fears have deafened you and you don't trust the answer. You think he is out to make a fool of you and that there must be another solution.

I'm borrowing a phrase from Ze Frank - F.I.L.D.I.

The only way to push through the fear is to face it. To look the answer straight in the face and say Fuck it, let's do it.

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A little light philosophy -I'm trying to sleep!

So I was sat in my garden the other day - I started off practising T'ai Chi but after admitting I'd forgotten the steps, I sat down and meditated for a while, looking at the garden. I noticed some litter in the grass. A can of coke, an old plastic wrapper and an empty tea candle. I stepped carefully into the grass and picked up the tea candle and that got me thinking (like I always do after T'ai Chi). What right do I have to remove this tea candle? What if the micro environment created by this tea candle had enabled some insect to survive and create a home there? Just because I see it as litter, does not objectively make it so and therefore I returned to my question, what right do I have to alter my environment in this way? In any way?

What are the indelible human rights? What does it mean to have a right to something at all? Do we have a right to the air that we breathe?

If we assume that we do have the right to the air that we breathe, what gives us this right? Is it our lungs? The fact that we can use the air to breathe gives us the right to use the air? Or is it an indelible right for any living creature to continue its own life?

This may seem unimportant, the ravings of a madman or both but the fact is we are stepping closer and closer to what the ancients would have considered the domain of the gods. We can create and destroy so much of the world at a whim - and not just corporations or kings or countries but the individual also has this power in a growing respect. These mundane or nonsensical ramblings about whether I had the right to move that empty tea candle extends beyond such trivialities and into the realm of the tangible, the significant and these questions of what right do we have are going to become more pervasive as the years go on and technology lifts us in its hands and carries us into the future.

1000 page views - disqus and more!

First the 'and more'. I'm finally on google searches! I'm so happy a tear is welling in the corner of my keyboard! Check it out yourself, go to google and type - "Write drunk; edit sober" -Ernest Hemingway - and I'm like the 5th result! (is it the same for everybody?) Anyway it feels like I've made it now that I've shown up in a Google search somewhere :)

Secondly the disqus - if you scroll down to the bottom (and please do :D), you'll see a new comment widget which allows you to comment with facebook, with twitter or any number of different ways including registering for a disqus commenting account if somehow you don't have facebook, twitter, g+ or  (takes seconds and you don't have to leave this page!) - Anyway you finally have a voice! Use responsibly ;P

And finally the 1000 page views - I've been plugging away for just over two months with this blog and I've resisted posting every 100 page views but I feel like 1000 is a nice milestone to brag about a little :) Now I promise you won't hear from me on the subject again until at least 5,000 or 10,000 (I havn't decided yet)


Okay okay, I'll leave you in peace now, but thank you for reading, I hope you've learnt something, or laughed at something in my blog these past few months. Or maybe you've just enjoyed watching the train wreck that is my degree flying past while I focus on this blog too much!

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Turn off the air conditioner, go outside, love thy neighbour!

HOW MANY "LIKES" CAN I GET FOR THIS IDEA - Writing.Com

Follow the link - I ran into this post (article?) on writing.com and it's really sensible - give it a good read if you have time, it's not too long.

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A Nymph Beneath a Wishing Tree

Can you mend a broken heart?
My pain will cause the leaves to part,
Revealing solely unto me
A nymph beneath a wishing tree.

The softest skin I ever saw.
I've stood here in this place before.
I'm holding on, I fear too much!
Your fearless face I dread to touch.

For what, I fear, will come to me?
Devoured 'neath a wishing tree.
Alas, my fear, it was in vain
And here I stand, eyes filled with shame.

As I am forced to watch you leave
As gently as the forest breathes.
I turn my back and fairly step
Down from this stage where I once slept

And wonder, almost willingly,
"What waits for me beneath the tree
I visit next". My strength is sapped
Yet here I only feel trapped.

So I must go, make haste, set tread
And power onwards through the dread.
Until I find a place of hope,
With endless travel, I must cope.

I'll wander almost wilfully
To seek a place where I can be,
To drown my fears in icy pool
With waters still and forest's rule.

War isn't caused by religion

Whenever you go to that dark corner of the Internet, where atheists get all sanctimonious and start yelling at Christians, you'll find somebody saying something like "Without religion there would be no war" and swinging it around like a cricket bat.

I'm just here, to quickly say that you (Mr Irrational Atheist) are completely wrong. War is economic. Every single time, it is a response to the Malthusian principle that human population grows faster than growing agriculture can support. We start getting claustrophobic and being crushed up against our neighbours and so we lash out, we push them away (or kill them). Religion has to carry the burden of this blame because for years every time a country has had to go to war, they have used religion to rally the people under one banner. In this instance, as every other, religion is a tool. If we had no religion, we would use a different tool, war would still happen, and you are, now and forever, wrong.

Sex at dawn - the best book I've ever read!

Sex at Dawn

Sex at dawn is a book about the prehistoric roots of mankind's sexuality and the conclusions it comes to are staggering. I have rarely felt so vindicated in my life and it is truly liberating to have read this book. It gives me a new and much more open view of my innate sexuality - that quiet (sometimes loud) voice in my head telling me what I like and don't like, what I want to do and who I want to do.

Monogamy is a lie.

The Standard Narrative

This book covers a bunch of topics, starting with the standard narrative of human sexuality.

• Man
• wants to impregnate as many women as possible
• wants to ensure that he only raises his own kid.
• Woman
• wants to be impregnated by the highest quality male
• demands commitment
• demands monogamy - to ensure that all the mans resources go to her and her kids.

This leads to the conclusion that a woman will grab a man to raise her kids, while looking for a better man to have an affair with, likewise a man will sleep around with anybody he finds and both will constantly be on the lookout for infidelity. 

Humans are born to be promiscuous

Sex at Dawn goes on to prove the standard narrative wrong in myriad ways and show that this standard narrative flies in the face of almost all the evidence on human sexuality. The book presents a theory that human sexuality evolved as a method of social bonding and that we are  much more like the sexually promiscuous Bonobo (whose evolutionary path separated 5 million years ago) than the monogamous Gibbon (separated 22 million years ago).

Some Biological evidence in support of our promiscuous past

A Baboon's butt while estrous

• Our testicles and penises are HUGE compared to monogamous or polygynous (1 man many wives) apes like the Gibbon, Gorilla and Orangutan. A Gorilla's penis is about 3cm.
• Hidden or discrete ovulation cycles, shared with Bonobos. E.g. Chimps and Baboons are famous for having bright red butts, which flare up when the time is right. A hidden cycle encourages round the clock mating. Because we can't know the right time, we do it all the time.
• Female humans shouts and screams during sex will turn the heads of all men within earshot. What purpose could this serve? Promiscuous Bonobos share this female copulatory vocalisation (FCV) trait but the monogamous Gibbons do not.

There's a bunch more including face-to-face mating and all the social aspects of love making like kissing and eye-gazing which adds strength to the argument but if you want to know more, you gotta go to the source.

The solution?

The take away solution to married life's problems - be open about and willing to discuss your desires with your partner. Allow yourself to look away from societies accepted path of marry, cheat, divorce, marry, cheat, divorce, marry, cheat, divorce, die and instead consider an unjealous polyamorous (many lovers) relationship. It may help strengthen your relationship and - god-forbid - allow you to be happy within yourself.

The Bottom Line

This is a controversial topic tackled in a way that lets you take it less seriously and have some fun with the idea. This book will open your eyes to the world and make you really think about how you live your life. Highly recommend - I give it a rating of 5/5 penises.

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Read around the world!

I was just looking at my blogger audience stats - which I only do like... 3 times a day, and I noticed that I'm getting almost a third of my traffic from the US! I didn't realise I had so many friends overseas :)

The rest of my traffic is from the UK with a couple from Brazil, Israel, Germany, France and Malaysia for some reason.

Just wanna thank you for reading, it really makes my day to write these posts.

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Random music is wicked

So after that long post I'm writing a really short one saying that random music is cool - check out these facebook groups where people post random songs they like - its mostly drum n bass or trance or house or something like that I still can't tell the difference - but it's really cool when you don't want to listen to anything you know.

So here's two groups, there are probably more but I havn't looked too hard.
EDIT: The tune stop is a secret group - sorry - but drop music is open :)
The Tune Stop Drop Music











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This sentence is false - what? A logical work through

So - spending my time today very well - just handed in my final piece of coursework for my Masters degree! woohoo!

Anyway I was stumbling and ended up wikipedia - looking at the liar paradox and in particular how it can be resolved. There is one argument on there that goes like this.

Since any statement can be preceded by 'This whole statement is true and...'

The liar paradox is the sentence 'This statement is false.' The paradox is that the sentence talks about itself and you end up in an infinite loop - which I just found out is the address of Apple HQ.

So back to the resolution!
The sentence you are now looking at is 'This whole statement is true and this statement is false.' I know it's a really unnecessary thing to even talk about - it doesn't matter, but I disagree with the conclusion drawn.

In the wikipedia article, the writer states that since the paradoxical statement contradicts itself, it is therefore a false statement, but I believe it is a null statement - it is a statement which states nothing.

The purest form of logic is maths - IMO... and in maths, if you write a sentence like A and B is C,
you could rewrite it as A+B=C and this would mean the same, much like 1 and 2 is 3. So in this example A is This statement is true and B is this statement is false. So what is C?

Well if you stand back and say that A and B are basically the same except one has the word true and the other false. I'd argue that true and false are opposites of each other, or the negatives of each other. Take two falses and you have a true, just like negative numbers. Therefore A = -B and B = -A.

So now our equation looks like A-A=C. So C = 0 or a null statement.

If you agree with my arguments, then you can see, I have just logically proven that the liars paradox is so completely unimportant, it is nothing at all.

Or maybe you say that the negative of 'This statement is true' is 'This un-statement is untrue' in which case my whole argument falls apart! but anyway...

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Internet Advertising

I know how wildly popular my blog is and I'm sure you've all been wondering - 'Why doesn't he advertise? He'd make a small fortune!'
Welllll not exactly.

I'm pretty proud of my 500 odd views in a month - I think it's an achievement and I'm glad there are so many people who care enough what I have to say to pay a few clicks homage. But my 500 views would have earned me about 10p from internet advertising using some modest guesswork... (500 visitors, 1% click-through-rate at 2p per click)

Sure it makes sense now how Google makes its fortunes, sellings adverts to every other website ever but for little old me it's not worth the hassle of signing up for the account, nobody clicks on adverts.

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Revive the baby eating frog?

So, here is a brilliant TED Talk on de-extinction, by Stewart Brand. So de-extinction is exactly what it sounds like - cloning extint animals to return them to life (think jurassic park but real, though hopefully we learnt out lesson already).

The idea of de-extinction as a method of reversing some of the damage done by humans is noble and I support it in principle... but when it comes to reviving creatures like the baby eating frog which gives birth through its mouth, I start to wonder if these creatures were unfairly extincted or if they simply couldn't keep up with natural selection.

If you agree with me or even if you don't, you have to ask the question, where do you draw the line? At what point is it no longer worthwhile to revive an extinct species?

My T'ai Chi isn't real?

So I was reading a book The essence of T'ai Chi by Waysun Liao - who would have a link if there was any information on him. I think he is a T'ai Chi master in Chicago. Here are some people talking about him if you are interested.

Anyway the point is I have been practicing Tai Chi for almost 2 years on and off now and Waysun Liao states in his book that 'most of the T'ai Chi practiced today is not the original T'ai Chi, and it is devoid of meaning.'.

The fact is I've been practicing T'ai Chi Chuan - or the T'ai Chi exercise routine. This is not a spritual practice and merely facilitates strength, agility and balance. The real stuff is called Temple Style T'ai Chi or Family Style T'ai Chi. From what I can tell, studying this requires a very serious commitment that I'm perhaps not willing to make.

Anyway, I'm sad now and I thought I would share what I'd learnt. :<

Write drunk, edit sober - Not Hemingway

I don't know if you have heard the phrase 'Write drunk, edit sober' which is not a Hemingway or Twain quote (see comment by Davida) but it always seems like good advice.

With blogging, your work is mostly read during the first hours after publishing - after publishing there's not much point in rewriting or editing... So be careful writing drunk because you might just be drunk enough to publish!

Agriculture - why aren't we doing it?

In bygone times - when a landowner owned a patch of land, most likely he would hire a bunch of people (or order, I'm not sure) to farm the land. Today we all have a little patch of land - probably more than enough to give us each our fill of veggies. It'd be much cheaper to actually eat the crops we grow ourselves (and arguably healthier!). This is also a favorite tactic of those trying to survive the economic collapse of a country such as the US or UK.

The problem is to do with motivation and long term benefits versus short term payoff - a problem described excellently by this funny looking Israeli psychologist. Basically, you just need to attach something you love to the act of gardening - for more information check his video - very informative.

So if it's just a matter of incentivising, I say we do it, because hell, this is England - we don't even need to water the buggers!

The death of spirituality.

I feel like I've spent my whole life looking for a spiritual home and, sorry dad, I didn't find it in Judaism.

I'm watching Wade Davis' video Dreams from endangered cultures about the loss of cultural diversity and the spiritual beliefs that these cultures hold. This stuff really speaks to me. I've always thought that spirituality is a more powerful and pervasive force than logic (and I'm a scientist?) and I think that the state of the world today is a result of too many people ignoring that spiritual side and disregarding it as superstition, arrogantly disregarding the guiding force of their ancestors as stupidity and naivety.

I still havn't found myself, but when I do I want to bring as many people with me as I can.

Here is another video Wade Davis: The worldwide web of belief and ritual

200 views - aw yeah!

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it!

My previous work online got moderate responses (see my writing.com account or my youtube channel,) but I feel like my blog is a different ball game.

I really enjoyed writing and I hope keep reading.

Dan

Going Vegan

Welcome one and all to this wonderful event where I officially declare my (temporary? strict?) veganism (again).

This comes as a direct result of watching too many TED talks on plant based diets and the benefits for obesity and diabetes etc. I just want to be healthy and I feel that this is the direction the world will take in the future (probably won't but I can hope).

Aside from the obvious benefits of not eating animals who spend most of their lives ankle deep in their own shit, it kind of just doesn't make sense to eat meat. It's pretty expensive for the individual and it's also unsustainable globally.

The evidence is clear that the sheer quantity of meat and dairy that we eat is problematic. This video highlights the fact that the most long-lived cultures in the world have plant based diets (and an active lifestyle etc) and these videos (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) talk about what is so good about plants and bad about animal products (no word on honey... I really hope I don't have to give up honey!)

In conclusion - cows are cool, don't eat them!

I'm a poet, I know it, hope I don't blow it.

Quick post to give a shout out to my writing.com profile Yertle on Writing.com and my newest poem I can and I will, but when?

True beauty is found in hardship.

 There are very rarely occasions when I find myself listening to or watching something of such heart-wrenching beauty as this video. Please take some time to watch it.

Shane Koyczan's heartchild - learn more here

I don't know if everybody can really relate to this kind of content - but I do know that everybody can hear the amazing skill and passion in Shane's voice.

Real men fail.

This is my first blog post! Yay! I might be about 8 years late onto the blogging scene but I'm sure happy to be here. My first blog post is about failure. Well it's about the word to fail. Fail has become a bit of a dirty word on the Internet. It's something you yell at people to mock them or floating text you put over the head of the guy who just faceplanted a tree. But when you step into the entrepreneurship scene (and it is as much of a scene as hipsterism or emo culture or whatever in that it's a lifestyle choice with which people identify themselves) you hear time and time again that you need to fail as many times as possible and as quickly as possible in order to succeed. Now perhaps the guy with a face full of bark and very few remaining teeth hasn't returned to the slopes in a hurry, but when he did, he probably gave the trees a wide berth.

Don't worry, I'll get it right next time.

I'm not arguing about the virtues of failing with dignity or whatever, I'm here to talk about psychology. We all know that the people around us have a profound influence on our emotional state, and we all know that the internet is so pervasive as to be unavoidable. Ergo, the internet has a profound influence on our emotional state. Using the word 'fail', which the internet has shamelessly stripped of all its glory, to describe your route to success is just inviting those negative emotions into your life. Life is hard enough without, thanks. I say it's better to focus on the minutia of your unsuccesses that give you cause for hope and seeds for learning, rather than branding the whole endeavor a failure.