Beg, Borrow and don't Ask

This is a quick challenge.

If you frequently listen to illegally obtained music, whether downloaded through torrents or given to you by a friend - If you don't either have the physical CD in your possession or you haven't downloaded your music from the bands website of the iTunes store or something like that, then this challenge applies to you.

What I want you to do is to pick your favourite album from the list of your music, walk into a music distribution place, find it on the shelf, take it and walk out without paying for it.

Have fun

It must be said that I don't actually condone this activity and it is for illustrative purposes only.

Somaticism

Two things disappoint me with the current generation of men as a whole. Some things disappoint me about certain groups of men, but as a whole, there are two things that irritate me.

1. As a group, we are 'somatically incapable' (explanation follows)
2. As a group, we don't desire any change from this.

While we pride ourselves on our knowledge on everything from carpentry to cars, we are often completely unaware of anything besides the buzzwords. Which is where the term (which I made up), Somatically Incapable, comes in.
Somatically Incapable means that while we may know things, we are unable to convert our knowledge to ability. So while we all know the difference between a V6 and a V8 and can probably argue at length about the pros and cons of both we may well not be able to change a tyre, and while we may know the difference between a dovetail joint and a tongue and groove joint (admittedly they are similar) we have no idea how to make them. Don't argue with me on the definition of the phrase, I made it up so I can tell you what it means.

As males we pride ourselves on going down to the shed on the weekend and doing something - or we used to. Now, I'm only 19, but I can still remember being excited after coming back from the garage having forged something from the earth (or gluing a few pieces of wood together to make bookends). The somatic component of our lives has run away with the onset of technology. You may have noticed the effect - tradesmen are becoming less respected and conversely, more needed. We need them to do nigh on everything that goes wrong. As soon as there is anything that needs repairs, we go straight to the yellow pages and then complain that they overcharged us. And yet, we will have a pile of tools rivalling that found in the entirety of the UK - most of which, we won't know how to use (because almost everyone can use a hammer or a screwdriver).

Now we come to the issue of the second problem - we don't want to change this. When you asked someone for help to do something last time, did you have any idea how to do it for the next time? or did you just assume that they will be able to do it again? Most people want to specialise in their chosen field, whether it be criminal law or plumbing, and don't want to know anything outside of that (which I think is a subject for later) in case they become a jack of all trades and a master of none. So the idea is that you know nothing about anything else. An expert is defined as someone who knows more and more about less and less and everyone's ideal is to become an expert. While we can never be pantomaths and its still hard to get to polymath status, we can know other things.

The term man around the house probably originated from the man's ability to be able to do things around the house. Why can't we return to that?

Money and the Proverbial Mouth

At the University of Texas in San Antonio, an Atheist Group on campus has decided to do something about their beliefs. Now before I go into details, I want to make it clear that firstly, I respect that they have made a move, but secondly, I don't respect the particular move that they have made. To clarify, I respect it when people can say what they actually think without beating around the bush or hiding it all in a bunch of rhetoric - which isn't to say that I always respect what they actually say or do, similar to I may disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.

What they have done, is started an initiative in contrary motion to what religious groups on campus do. When bibles are handed out, they will find a prominent place, and trade bibles or other religious texts for porn. Given that I don't agree that porn should exist let alone be easy to find, you may find it surprising that I can respect this move. I don't - what I respect is that a move was made.

For too many people, the temptation is to stand back and just 'agree to disagree'. This is a stupid move - all that is decided is that I think you're wrong and you think that I'm wrong, which was already decided at the start. It was the reason that a disagreement arose in the first place. While I can understand the sentiment behind it (we don't want to alienate people from us or us from others) and I can see where it can be the right response in some cases (such as when discussing the merits of 1970's jazz vs 1930's blues), most of the time it is just a cop-out. If you can't prove your case over and above the other, then why did you make it?

Which is why I respect that the Atheist group on campus made this move. What they are saying is not, 'let's agree to disagree', they are saying "We are Right and you are Wrong", instead of capitulating they are taking a stand for what they believe. What is telling is that the Christian Group, as far as I've heard, hasn't made a reply or tried to get it changed or stopped they've merely said that they don't agree with it.

Pioneers

This is the age of people that pioneer. We push the boundaries, we have more opportunities, we have more growth in most facets of our lives.
Sorry, but I'm going to call a bluff on this one.
When was the latest 'new thought'. All our our thinking is based on things that were decided years ago. The belief that we actually exist, when was the last time that you questioned that one, was probably proved by Descartes in 1637 (cogito ergo sum) and it hasn't been seriously questioned since then. We don't actually question any of the fundamental things, only the nitpicky little things that probably fall under the topic of Dogma, and then we claim that we are high level thinkers.

I would say that the closest that we get is accepting new innovations. Even then, will we accept things that are developed by people our own age? How many mid-50 year olds do you know that regularly use computers for anything more than sending emails (if that). Bill Gates is currently 54.
All of our thoughts are just re-hashes of what has already been said; the alternative medicine movement? Chinese or tribal herbal medicines, been around roughly since herbs. New age stuff? Celtic or Scandinavian religion with some eastern occultism, been around since roughly Celts, Scandinavians and East Asians.
We can't do anything that hasn't already been done for us.
Look at art; the stuff that people say is the biggest shift is either monkeys throwing paint at a wall, or dead animals. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't a lot of people believe that cave paintings fulfil both of these criteria. And what performance art? Vaudeville acting often with a few less clothes on.
Look at music; modern pop music is just a rehash of last years pop music, which was a rehash of last years pop music, which was a rehash of last years pop music, and so it goes. Styles may change slightly with the addition of a new innovation, but then it's first tried on a rehash of 80's and 90's music and then it spreads to last years music. You only have to listen to a bit of modern metal to realise how much of it was almost written by either Pink Floyd or Metallica 30 or 40 years ago.
In technology, most of the thinking was done by people early last century - Science Fiction writers. We look at that now and think, "Yeah that could be feasible, and so we'll try it out" when the original thought came not so much from an idea of this would be cool, but from an idea of this should work if that can happen. Usually that happened roughly 10 years later and we didn't bother to do anything about it

Look at our moral compass (which as a generation is so screwed up it's given up pointing in any direction let alone north). Even that isn't new. We're just asking for it all to be legal now. Most of it was seen in Ancient Greece nigh on 2500 years ago.

As a generation, we've regressed. It's not so much that we aren't able to do new things, it's more that we don't want to. Without a few clinically insane people blurting out some completely new thing, there will be no paradigm shifts in our thinking because we don't want to have them.

The only new thought that we've had is that sitting on a small dark box that we call a room can give us the same social experience as going out and actually talking to people. And I'll call bluff on that one too.

Procrasti............................................

Ok, firstly, there is a reason that I haven't posted anything recently - Yes, I have been busy with real life commitments like study and doing anything here would have been mostly for the purposes of procrastination. As I do enough of that already, I thought it would be a good idea to not take up half a day writing and re writing a page of something about something. So, my rhetorical question (which I will answer here myself) is How do we procrastinate and secondly, why do we procrastinate. {Editors note: check this one out for how to procrastinate properly. Alphonse has no real idea - he just bludges}

The first question is easy. Procrastination is possibly the easiest thing that we ever do. Procrastination is just not doing what it would be more beneficial or necessary for you to be doing at the particular moment in time that you are in. Whether it's watching a movie, reading a book, playing a game, going for a walk, having a nap, baking a cake. The list goes on almost forever.
This isn't to say that the activity that you are using to procrastinate is a bad thing, for example going for a walk is often a good thing; it gets your cardiopulmonary systems working, clears out your brain, stimulates the appetite, helps you sleep at night, provides you with fresh air, tops up your vitamin D reserves. But if you should be doing something else it isn't a good thing. The actual action isn't wrong, it's the motive or the justification that's wrong.

The second question is also easy (makes you wonder why it is that I even need to be writing this down). We Procrastinate, because we want to, or we don't want to be doing what we should.

Yep, that's actually all I have to say about that, but surprisingly, it's taken me well over two hours - I kept finding other things to do.

Defining an Identity

In the movie Fight Club, there is a scene where a convenience store assistant is asked at gun point "The question, Raymond, is what did you want to be?" In the movie Hitman, Agent 47 tells us he is going off to do "What I do." Both of these approaches to life are interesting, especially when you consider that in both cases, we are finding out about their job. In the case of Raymond K Hessel (Fight Club) his identity was bound up in the job; he was going to be a Veterinarian. In the case of Agent 47 (Hitman) his job was merely a job, an almost all consuming job at the start of the movie, but by the end, just an unwanted job.
The difference is in how it's referred to. In the first case, it was what he was, in the second case, it was what he did. We all understand both of them to be the same and yet there are major differences that go beyond the syntax. One happens when it is your source of identity and the other happens when it impinges upon what your source of identity would rather be; no prizes for guessing which is which. Both can be dangerous.

We all understand 'working for the weekend'. This is a danger that we can fall into all to easily when a job is what we do. It comes with an attitude of TGIF and can lead to almost medical cases of Mondayitis, a serious condition through most of Australia.
However, on the other hand, along with different fingers, it is also true that when a job description is what you is, that's all you are. At this point you lose track of other things that happen - like life.

The Rules

As far as I know, Isaac Asimov has come closer than any author to creating a, for lack of a better term, code of conduct. This code is called the "Three Laws of Robotics". The absolute brilliance of this is implied in the name - the entire code is wrapped up in three small rules that manage to cover almost every circumstance.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Basically, the rules come down to 'people can't be allowed to be hurt', 'orders must be followed' and 'look after yourself', three rules that most people themselves try to live by which makes it even more incredible that Asimov thought of them. He synthesised altruistic human nature into simple rules.

Democracy is...

A youtube person/Blogger called Lyla put up a video as part of the Democracy Challenge, a competition put forward by the American Government. In it she puts down how she sees democracy.

Democracy is understanding
Democracy is loving others as you love yourself
Democracy is patience
Democracy is choice
Democracy is faith
Democracy is perspective
Democracy can be evil
Democracy can be good
Democracy is seeing the world for the way it is

I would like to answer some of these and maybe put forward some of my own.

Firstly, in and of itself, Democracy simply a choice. In our day and age is a choice over who becomes revered. It is usually considered as this in government, but has spread to things like awards (The Logies, Australian Idol). In Western Society, we have decided that we need almost absolute autonomy. We need the choice over things that don't affect us in the slightest as well as over the things that will affect us in the highest. However in this case we will be discussing democracy as the political system.
The rest of Lyla's list therefore is what she sees the outworking of democracy to be and therefore to discuss these they will be as opinion and will be compared with opinion.

Democracy is patience (with people rather than a situation is implied). I personally agree. The problem with this is that through democracy we demand to be able to do something now. We can see this with the campaign led by Sydney Morning Herald to 'Reclaim Your Vote'. Basically it is trying to enable people to not have to wait in a bad enough situation. Then we get a situation like in the US at the moment. Obama's call was for change. So people in their infinite wisdom decided that they wanted change now even when he said that it would take time and not be all done in one term let alone one year.
Democracy requires patience, but it invites impatience.

Democracy is faith (that things can get better). Yes it is. But it is also faith that things can get worse. In the book Looking for Alibrandi, one of the main characters gets up and says that the only reason that he will vote is to keep the worse guys out. Democracy has the faith that no matter what, things can and will change. Our part in democracy is deciding which parts will change.

Time for me to add one more.
Democracy is not an excuse. You can't claim that because you were voted for, you can do whatever you want. You can't get yourself voted in through democracy and then allow yourself to become a dictator.

Post Australia Day

Today is the 27th of January. Yesterday was Australia Day. In the past Australia has managed to get itself a bad reputation as the day that bogans come out to play, either getting completely drunk by 10 in the morning and then working up to pickled from there, gang bashing other Australians that happened to be of a different cultural or racial background as your group, or both. This year by all accounts, it seemed to be that people went out, had a few drinks with mates, had some fun down at the beach, but didn't cause trouble, and so it was a lot nicer than it has been in the past (think last year in Manly). The question that has to be asked in light of these sorts of things happening is, what is the national identity that Australia actually has? There is a stereotype of being either Crocodile Dundee, or Farmers, or Surfers and Beach bums that we have overseas. While this might not be completely accurate, we tend to play to these stereotypes. But is this our national identity. It used to be an identity as a convict nation but we've grown past that and while we might, albeit counter-intuitively, be proud of that, it isn't what we are anymore and thus can't be what we base our national identity on. So what is it that we can identify ourselves as?

I would argue nothing. We can't identify our nation as anything besides a group of Australians. Our country has moved beyond anything that would hold us together in any capacity except for the fact that we are currently from Australia where ever we may have been from in the past. It used to be that we were a country based on our 'belonging to' and then later, our loyalty to England. If you say that you are loyal to England these days you are dismissed as an idiot or put in the same group as the whinging poms. Looking historically at England, it is an amalgam of virtually every east European nation. Even the language is an amalgam of Greek and Roman with a few others added in for good measure and Australia now is like that, a 'bitsa' of a country, with no more loyalty to 'the Motherland' than a dog has to the petshop.

The only thing that we can Identify ourselves as, our national identity, is Australia. We need to embrace this instead of being afraid of being ourselves or trying to keep the status quo that ran away for the last time fifty years ago.

Why music is important

This comes from a poster I have seen around in a few places, mostly places that teach music. Thus, it is more appropriate for teaching music, but the conclusions that it makes are still good for everyone.

Why Do We Teach Music?

Music is a science
• It is exact, specific; and it demands exact acoustics. A conductor's full score is a chart, a graph which indicates frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody and harmony all at once and with the most exact control of time.

Music is mathematical
• It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions which must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper.

Music is a foreign language
• Most of the terms are in Italian, German, or French; and the notation is certainly not English--but a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas. The semantics of music is the most complete and universal language.

Music is history
• Music usually reflects the environments and times of its creation, often even the country and/or racial feeling.

Music is a physical education
• It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lips, cheek, and facial muscles, in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragmatic, back, stomach and chest muscles, which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets.

Music is all these things, but most of all music is art
• It allows a human being to take all these dry technically boring (but difficult) techniques and use them to create emotion. That is one thing that science cannot duplicate: humanism, feeling, emotion, call it what you will.

That is Why We Teach Music!
• Not because we expect you to major in music
• Not because we expect you to play or sing all your life
• Not so you can relax
• Not so you can have fun
• Not Because we expect you to major in music
• BUT--so you will be human
• So you will recognize beauty
• So you will be sensitive
• So you will be closer to an infinite beyond this world
• So you will have something to cling to
• So you will have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more good--in short, more life.

Of what value will it be to make a prosperous living unless we know how to live?
That is Why We Teach Music!

Armageddon

The doomsday clock is a clock intended to show how close the human race is to annihilation by nuclear weapons. The way it works is that the closer it is to midnight, the closer we are to mutually assured destruction. It is affected by the worldwide political climate and so the closest it has been to midnight was in 1953, ten years into the cold war. At that stage it was set at 11:58, meaning that nuclear annihilation was probably just around the corner and it stayed at this level for roughly 7 years. The lowest it has been set was at 11:43 in 1991, the end of the cold war. It has now been set at 11:54 following an agreement to try and reduce numbers of nuclear weapons world wide.
I wonder if you can you figure out my problem with the doomsday clock. I have two.

The first is that it is a self fulfilling prophesy. The first thing that people do when they find out that they might be under threat is they try and find ways of reducing that threat. And what is the best defence? a good offence. Meaning that if a country thinks that another country means to attack them with nuclear weapons they will try and acquire more for themselves. If you set-up a worldwide threat meter like the doomsday clock, everyone looks at it and says, "wow, it's getting bad, time to get some/more of them ourselves and make sure we can all strike back." We saw this effect during the Cold War. Russia and the USA were at a standoff . This in turn would push the time up closer to midnight. This is just me saying it, but it's coming from my experience of human nature, take it or leave it as you will.

The second is a bit more complicated because it involves psychology and that always messes things up. To start with, yes, if nuclear war does eventuate, then it will be effectively mean the end of things on earth. And yes, if someone does start wholesale nuking other countries then everyone else will start nuking back. The rules of engagement for any type of weaponry or warfare are as follows: if you hit me, I'm allowed to hit you back and with nukes, I can start to hit you before you finish hitting me. Then all of my friends will get in on the act and start hitting you and all of your friends will help you out also and starting my friends; nuclear war. This will never happen. Call me an optimist, but I can't see this ever happening.
In the Art of War by SunTzu, the seminal work on anything military, we read "IV:I, The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy." You only fight unless you are assured of winning and in a situation like nuclear warfare, you can't assure your victory will be greater than the enemy's victory. This is the first reason that no leader of a country or military wants nuclear warfare.
Leaders of countries have another reason as well. Say you win, what do you get? a blasted wasteland who's surviving population will hate you until they die and global condemnation for the result. This is not a victory. Militarily you may have won, but in all other facets, you have lost.
The final, and perhaps most convincing reason that I have, is an effect that can be best described in terms of torture. Torture is always the last resort of interrogation because up until then your motivator is fear. During torture, the motivator is pain and the alleviation of it. People can survive pain, they can not survive fear. As soon as the pain starts, people can think, this will be over, and I can deal with it; fear means that they 'know' that they can't. How is this related? People won't start nuclear warfare for fear that it will start. Once it has started, people think, I have to see this to the end.Until then, people won't want to start anything because the certainty of them dying is playing on their minds. This is called a survival instinct and it is hard wired into our brains. People fear death, and will in most cases do anything to avoid it. This means that only someone who either doesn't care if they die (suicidal) or is convinced that they won't die (delusional and idiotic) or doesn't care about the lives of anyone else (psychotic and sociopathic) will be willing to start nuclear warfare.

So you see, I feel optimistic about nuclear warfare, not something that most people will actually do, but something that I think is fair. The doomsday clock is nothing more than a gimmick left over from a time when this was a new technology and people had itchy trigger fingers.

Conclusions: a fun place to stay

In the newspaper the other day, there was an article about the use of cosmetics in ancient times, and by ancient times, I don't mean ancient Greece of Egypt sort of ancient times, I mean prehistoric times. Now, it may be surprising, but I don't actually want to talk about the article at all. "Why did I bring it up then?" I hear you ask. The answer is what happened in the pull out quote. They quoted an archaeologist as saying essentially that the conclusion that they had drawn was the only feasible one that could be had. Do you see what he did there? He made a conclusion based on minimal information, some evidence, and his interpretation of these two. This is what I want to talk about.

In the book The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, the three main characters all come to conclusions quite independently. This results in them literally jumping to a place called Conclusions (due to the nature of the book, this makes sense). Nothing can possibly go wrong now, We have plenty of time, and It certainly couldn't be a nicer day are the three conclusions in question. These seem to be fairly minor, but it's worth noting that even these are unprovable claims; conclusions that have been 'jumped to'. Things like a man sits down at a piano, you make the conclusion that he can play it or a woman holds a baby on her own you assume that it is hers.

This is a danger that we all succumb to. We twist facts to fit theories instead of twisting theories to fit facts. This means that we give ourselves blind spots in regards to facts that have been proven wrong (because they once 'proved' the theory) and won't allow ourselves to accept facts that don't fit our theories. In this case, mineral pigment was found in 2 half oyster shells therefore, they must have been used for cosmetics. Now aside from the fact that they have only found two or they might have been used as paint palates for the much touted cave paintings, there is still the fact that we don't actually know and yet, it obviously means this. Like I said earlier, minimal information, even less evidence and an interpretation.

This often happens with history. In the future, archaeologists will jump to the conclusion that all anyone ever did now was to sit on the internet watching cats and talking about not sitting on the internet (even though this is fairly true). This is because they weren't here, they don't know but they have some evidence that points to these facts.

The saying goes that "when you assume you make as ass out of u and me" and this holds in most cases like this one. The problem with assumptions is that most times once it is made, it is much harder to change your mind about it later.

Now there is a danger that is less prevalent and in most cases not as bad, but can still often have negative results. This is the danger of NOT drawing a conclusion despite the fact that there is only one possible conclusion to make. The theory behind this is that there could be more information that will have to change the theory. While I can understand this, it also is a problem. The issue between the two is finding a balance, not jumping to conclusions too soon, and not getting left behind the three corollaries of the aforementioned (correct) conclusion.

What is evil

One of the Forums that I occasionally haunt, often has very interesting discussion topics. One of the most interesting of these recently was the question "What is Evil?" Being curious as to what other people thought about the nature of evil I had a look and was genuinely surprised at the sophistication of some of the responses. You had the usual troll answers such anything christian, athiest, muslim etc, and then you had some well thought out definitions. Some of them were amusing, some of them were quite intelligent and fairly easily defendable.
I think the biggest divider between "everyday evil" and "truly evil" is motive. Everyday evil has some justification, some rationalization to explain their actions. True evil is evil for the sake of evil.

To be Truely Evil... One must have style. Do you want to destroy the city with an easily accessible nuke? NO!! You want to destroy it with a large (cumbersome) robot. That is what seperates regular crime from someone that is Truely Evil.

First, everything true evil must understand the conceptions of "good" and "evil". Second, everything true evil must willingly walk down the path of "evil". Third, everything true evil must act in a manner of "evil" in a conscious condition, regardless what´s the outcome. No takebacks, no regrets, no exceptions, no excuses.

To corrupt a thing. To ravage and defile, to twist it into a mockery of what it once was. It seems to have the highest potential for inflicting suffering on an individual who valued the original.

It shouldn't be so stupid or short-sighted that it will self-destruct, so Evil should be ruthlessly selfish, except that it won't kill what it uses/needs to survive.

Evil does not want to self destruct, however by its very nature it cannot create, evil can only destroy. This is not to say all destruction is evil, but it is to say that evil cannot create it can only make a mockery of creation. Evil propagates more evil, that's always important.

But isn't "true evil" basically just being unethical to the n^th degree? Where do we draw the line then?

I would argue that a misunderstanding of good and evil is almost required for something to be evil, few villains consider themselves evil, rather they will view their actions as positive. Sure, Darth Vader caused millions (likely trillions, actually) of deaths, but he did so to advance uniformity and justice throughout almost the entire galaxy, whether the galaxy wanted it his way or not, so he was clearly not evil. [at least in his head]

or as one person put it
The most pure representation of evil I have come across is Iago from Othello. He is astoundingly manipulative, utilizes Machiavellian concepts constantly (and not in a good way), is amazingly deceptive, and does it all in iambic pentameter.

The end result of all the to-ing and fro-ing was this list.
1. It must know good and evil and choose to be evil, consciously committing evil acts.
2. Intelligent enough not to engage in self destructive behaviour or exhaust it's food and/or power.
3. Selfish
4. Malicious-Sadistic.
5. Deceiving/providing false hope.
6. Viral
7. Forcing/deceiving others to do it's will.

However, possibly the most interesting response was
Describing evil, to me, is a little like describing God or unicorns. I don't really believe it exists. I mean, sure, there are people and organizations that have caused untold suffering and death for millions of people, but that does not mean that said entities were/are invested with some sort of metaphysical quality of Evil.

Probably the most well known definition comes from the DnD universe. Here they give 3 variants of evil; Chaotic, Neutral, and interestingly, Lawful Evil. These 3 give you a fairly broad spectrum under the banner of evil based on their work in society. A Lawful Evil person will follow a set in order to get what ever they can get for themselves, probably best defined as Machiavellian. They will be methodical and intentional in their evil. The Neutral Evil person will do evil purely for the sake of it. They will have no honour in their evil as the Lawful person will but also won't vary in their evil. Finally the Chaotic Evil person. These people will do what ever their destructive nature leads them to do.

Any hoo, that was just something to think about during your new year holiday thingos.

A new year. A new leaf?

Traditional at this time of year is the laughable activity of making resolutions, things that you will or won't do in order to make yourself a better person. Traditional activities for a weeks time therefore include things like forgetting to go the the gym, smoking, eating out, what ever it happens to be.
The theory behind this is that with a new year comes a new chance to make things anew - to stop doings that you don't think you should be doing or to start doing things that you should be doing. This is ridiculous. The only thing that a new year really brings is a new number and a new excuse for the retail industry to 'lower' prices again (excuse my cynicism). It must be noted here that I have nothing against the resolution itself, the thing that I object to is the idea that these things must be undertaken at the new year.

In the movie Fight Club, a main character says that self improvement is worthless, and that self destruction is a better path to yourself. The theory behind this is the engineering theory that when you take anything that is unessential, you are left with something that is essentially perfect. This is in one sense true. However, what it fails to take into account is that humanity and human life is not some engineering project, it isn't a great finished work. Every human is a work in progress, but every human is a work in progress that hasn't found its exhaustive list of purposes yet. What I mean is that every person living will almost definately have to change what they are doing at some future stage in their lives, and that will probably require adding something, not taking something away.
But that's not what I wanted to discuss. Stop making me digress people or I'll never get to the point.

In every endeavour, if you do not progress or advance, you recede. This is what a resolution is. It is an attempted advancement or progression to what you deem as a better you. The problem is that in general we either pick something that is only a minor change, I will wear my underwear for less than two weeks at a time before washing them, or we pick something that is so hard we will never be able to do it, I will finish the last three years of my medicine degree while picking up a degree in law for thursday afternoons by the end of January. This way we can either feel good about doing something, or we can placate ourselves by saying "well, you never really had a chance did you".

My call is for you to decide to make a change, and then another one, and then another one, and then another one until such time as you don't think about them anymore, but don't make this the resolution. If needed, make small changes, I will have only 17 servings instead of 18 at desert time, but keep making changes, otherwise you go backwards.

I'll leave you with a list of resolutions over time. See what you think.

• 2009: I will pay off my bank loan promptly.
• 2010: I will pay off my bank loans promptly.
• 2011: I will be totally out of debt by next year.
• 2012: I will try to pay off the debt interest by next year.
• 2013: I will try to be out of the country by next year.

The family friend

This is possibly one of the greatest social curses you can inflict upon a child (after red hair, an Irish accent or a name like Richard Phlop). The family friend will always wait in a corner expecting you to remember them and then feel gravely insulted when you fail to put a name to the vaguely familiar face in front of you in less time than it takes them to tell you that they've known you since you were this big (always being slightly lower than their hip). And this is the ones that you keep in contact with, that you see every couple of days. Invariably however you will meet the more insidious family friend - the friend of grandparents. These are the ones who don't live anywhere near you, don't remember which one you are (despite being six or seven years older than the other one) and insist that you've grown at least 4 inches (10cm for those non ancient people out there who make up most of the Interwebs) despite not having grown for the last few years due to the fact that you're now over 25.

If you're unlucky you will see this particular species once a year, for granny's birthday. If you're exceptionally unlucky or you've irritated more than a few leprechauns in your time, they will live near your grand parents and so you will see them every few months shortly after you make the arduous 6.5 hour odyssey, crammed in the back of the non airconditioned car that your dad has decided isn't quite broken enough to warrant a new one, when all you really want to do is either find a small dark corner and rock back and forward like you're suffering withdrawal, or find a wealthy person to adopt you and ensure that you never have to deal with 80's mix tapes again. That is when this most cunning of beasts will strike.

"How's school going (great, I wish I was there right this very instant)... I knew you when you were this big (that's because you knew my parents when they were that big too)... Do you remember me (yes, is there a way that can be changed?)..." and on it goes. You can't get a word in edgewise though so they just yammer on about how good it is to see you and how their second cousins nephew has just got his first job and how Mrs Betty Stein (you know her, from Brightly, her son babysat you once when you were 3, remember) just got a cataract out again and it's about time she started looking after herself, she's not 93 anymore you know. All this leads up the inevitable finale, "Do you have a girlfriend yet, you're getting old". The appropriate answer to this of course is "No I don't. All of the girls I know get scared off when they find out that I spent half of my Christmas holidays being talked at by a seventy year old with rheumatoid halitosis"
Don't try to complain about it either because parents are in on this too. "She's just interested in you (I wish she wasn't)... well just talk to him (about what? he only wants to talk about arthritis treatments)... It's only for a little while (you can die in less than a second; a week is a long time)... - or my personal favourite - just be nice, it isn't often they get to see young people (because they're old, they're not supposed to see young people)"

The only way that this can be made worse is by adding both a large group, and a few people of your own age who all know each other. This means that you're stuck wandering around trying to fend off vicious comments regarding your young age or your above average IQ unable to escape into the only possible place that there is to hide because the second you try, all conversation in the circle ceases and eight pairs of slowly narrowing eyes all point at you.
You gravitate to the back wall and look around at everyone you do know at the party (your siblings, next to you counting bricks, or your parents, easily mingling with all their old friends from before time began) and then compare this small number with the number of people of you don't know (all of whom are happy and laughing, except the fat guy with arthritis and rheumatoid halitosis who wants to talk to you about your Great Aunt Ethel). You realise that this is like a school reunion for your parents - you shouldn't be there.

Just in case you detected no hint of sarcasm here, I'll warn you, there was a bit; it's the only way that I can talk about this with out running to a small dark corner and rocking back and forth like I'm suffering witdrawal.