TG’s WEBlog (Known
as a BLOG or Blogging)
Wanna discuss the
WEBlog content? Email TGtips@topica.com
or link to TGtips Discussion Place
for an open discussion group.
January
Blogs: Actions Speak
Louder than Words, Wordy Bullshit, Branding, Links Today, TV Heaven, Enemies Bring
Gifts, Debate on Dave Weinberger’s New Book, Change Now, Rant, What I did on my
Holidays, Fame and Immortality (Me and Bill Gates),e-business failures,
Parallels with my Father, Micropayments-The Future of the Internet, My First
Day at School, Football Memories and a Chance in Life, Rivers Link People,
Links, Design and Creativity, The Other Faces, 7UP, What is Voice?-Vision and
Action, Writing in Progress, Latest Virus Alerts, When is a Weblog a Weblog,
Hello 2002, Happy New Year, 2002 New Year’s Resolutions.
February
Blogs: Spike Milligan Dies, Camp It Up!, Cluetrain Savaged
(and the Nevilles), Goods Luck Elliot!, Monkey Brains, Busy and Thanks,
MindMaps and Walter Winterbottom, Radio 8 Blog and Micropayments, Morning
Pages, Women!, Jackson Browne Lyrics – Lives in the Balance, Let
the Consumer and Employee Revolution Begin, Life and Death, Corporate Rant,
Wilful Georgia!, Celebrity Blogs, United Internet, Friends Reunited at Work,
Immunisation?, Good Business Leadership, No Logo, Definitely No Logo, Missing
in Action, Paolo Di Canio.
March Blogs: Words Fail Me,
Losing My Religion, Bush Fire?, Fucking Telstra, Redflagsweekly, The Best
Companies to Work For?, Good to Be Back, Write On – Cling Sheets, Georgia,
Redundancy, Am I a Loser?, Google Image Searches, Sporting DNA, Corporate DNA,
My World has Changed, Internet Laugh, No Logo, Political Compass, Fark, Sex Sells,
Tourette Syndrome Barbie, Trailer Park (Trash?), Gauss Rifle, Bruce
Sterling, Deep Links and Google Scientology, Jimmy
Hill I love you because…,
April Blogs : Doctors-My Arse,
My Website Stats, FriendsReunited and Demography of Networks, Other People,
Today, Missing Days, Nothing Today, Aussie Humour, Come on England, Ethics,
Quality of Life, United Reject, I’m Tired, Israel, Vaccines, Computer
Addiction, Self Adjusting Networks, Website Redesign, My Website is Back,
Apologies for Telstra, Andrew Sullivan, Zipf’s Law, Fucking Telstra yet again,
Still a Snowboard Addict, and Logos, Redflagsweekly Again and The Queen Mum’s
Funeral, Game Addiction, Gravity and Science, Maglev and Political Power, Fark
Links, Lost Keys and High Hopes, Scientific Research Stinks, Big Companies,
Dangers of DHMO.
May Blogs: Georgia not sleeping, Georgia
not well, Sydney, QANTAS, Dave Portnoy – Friendsreunited, PC Cleanup, Cooking
Food is Killing Us, Printers and Designers, Telstra Update, Stupid White Men,
Fixit and Hoaxes, Website Nightmare, Blogging Time, ICL and British Invention,
Wedding Photos, Stressful Day, Good to be
Back, Crawling Daughter, Blue Peter, Anti-Gravity,
Mothers Day, Sven’s England Team, Man Yoo Mourning, Nothing and Tom Peters!,
Telstra yet Again and Broadband, Crawling!, Perth, Barbara Castle and Sliding
Doors, Enzymes.
June Blogs: Brazil, Tim Henman’s Serve,
David O’Leary sacking, Wheels come off WorldCom, Brazil beat Turkey, A Deeply
Frustrating Day, Sick, England Keep Falling Over, Oh No, England 1 Brazil 2,
America and Anthrax, Korea!, More USA and Football, Brazil here we come!, 3-0
to The Inger-land, England v Denmark, Dell, C’mon Inger-land, And just to prove
what crap Americans write, Isolation of the USA, Limitations of the Internet,
England, More Canberra Rex, Defer to your experts on the frontline, IBM PC
Visionary, Canberra Rex Hotel, Canberra, More Dyslexia, Dyslexia.
July Blogs: Laptop Troubles, Sense of
Direction, Rio, Miracles of the Mind, Sick and Tired, Lack of Fame – Janis Ian,
Fame, I want to live forever! Rod Steiger, Brisbane, Born in the USA.
August Blogs: Small Pieces Loosely
Joined, Wil Wheaton inspires me to Think
Big, Medina Apartments – Don’t Go There, Thank You QANTAS (Eventually), Strike,
Gold Coast Dreamin, Adversity, Queensland Taxi Driver, Chilean Taxi Driver,
Beckham’s Wiener, Founding Friends Reunited and Mark Purdey is a genius, I’m
Back.
September Blogs: Good Weather and Fast
Company, Dad, 25 Years Ago, Aussie Rule Grand Final, Banks and Mobile Phones (yet again), Just Back with Big Ideas, Nowt as queer as
folk (on the Internet), Roll on Wi-Fi, A Little Ray of Sunshine, Birthdays,
Lazy Sunday Afternoon, Calm Day Dreaming, Frustrating Day, Stuck, Raging Anger
with Australian Telcos, A Day of Contemplation, Death and Email, Leeds v Man
United, Taxi Drivers – Nepalese, Chinese,
Tanzanian, One Year On, Damn Modem Link, Double Bay, Corporate Rant, Greece,
Kurds, Literal Answers to Rhetorical Questions, Networking Challenge, Ecademy,
Wil Wheaton and the Power of The Internet, If you pray hard enough!, Size Is
Not a Strategy, Fathers Day, Roy Keane.
October Blogs; Georgie, Long Bets, Redflagsweekly, Getting
Hot and Micropayments, All time England
Team, Fantastic
Links, Clocks go Forward,
Car Design, Gravity of the Situation, Your Health – The Most Important
Thing You Will Read All Year, Anti War Rant, Health Rant, and Right Wing Rant,
Great Britains, Van Nistelrooy,
Wil Wheaton’s Aunt Val, Technology
Predictions, CNN
Disgust, Nice Ideas, Breast Cancer, Markets and George
Soros, Boeings, Webcams and Bali, Webcam, Bali, Child
Vaccines and Risk, More MLM and a few
ideas, Multi Level
Marketing is not pyramid selling, Who is Fredo?,
Happy Mondays, How do you say goodbye in an
email?, Thank You Rockhampton
and Cairns, Rockhampton Revisited,
Ind Tech-Bradford University, Education what
is it good for?, Cairns to Rockhampton,
Education fails us,
Thursday 31st October 2002
Today almost
ended up as a nothing day, and yet I got a few things done.
Couple of emails,
good meeting, which then prompted me to develop PowerPoint slides articulating
what it is I do!
Also put up some
more photos of Georgie.
Found another
link from John Moore reiterating the bets on big things what was in Wired
magazine a few months ago.
Redflagsweekly is getting better and better with it’s
articles and I’m sure it must be gathering pace and turning more and more
people to the evil of current medicine dominated by the pharmaceutical industry
and hence big money. If it was about
making people better and preventing illness I’d support it, but much of science
seems to have lost its way. It needs
money, and guess who provides the money.
Or put it this
way, “He who pays the piper, calls the tune.”
Wednesday 30th October 2002
For the first
time in I can’t remember how long, the weather in Melbourne has produced two
consecutive warm days!
Yippee! Except I haven’t been out in the sun.
Just got some
photos back of Georgia, which we had developed.
You can also
order a CD of the photos as well so it saves a lot of time scanning photos.
They’re
great. Annie took them in black and
white.
Just one
problem. My PC CD Drive won’t recognise
the CD, but my laptop does. Bizarre.
I remember now
what I was going to link to.
Micropayments.
If this thing is
as good as it looks then this is very very big.
One of my first
Weblogs was on Micropayments.
If this works and
you can charge 1 cent per transaction then that puts many many websites in
business charging 1 cent per viewing or per page.
It means that
writers and artists can charge very small amounts for very large numbers of
people viewing their offerings.
This is massive
and has huge potential. It will keep a lot the top bloggers and websites in
business.
Very small
transaction, very large number of people.
Tuesday 29th October 2002
Here it is, my
all time England team from 1966 onwards.
Shilton
Anderson
Pearce
Moore Adams
Coppell Robson Gascoigne
Charlton
Lineker
Shearer
I’m writing the justification
today for this website.
Mainly justified by which
defenders would I not like to play against as an attacker.
Who can score goals for
England?
Some of the players pick
themselves with no argument.
Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton,
Stuart Pearce, Bryan Robson, Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer.
I have to justify Steve
Coppell, Tony Adams, and maybe Viv Anderson.
And also why I’ve not
included Gordon Banks and Jimmy Greaves.
Try it for yourself, go and
look at all the players who’ve played for England (and there’s not that many),
and choose a great team from 1966, or as far back as you can remember. We’ve never had great full-back so who would
you choose instead of Viv Anderson and Stuart Pearce?
I open to persuasion of
someone other than Tony Adams. Jack
Charlton, Norman Hunter, Terry Butcher (maybe Sol Campbell or Rio Ferdinand,
but not yet).
Robson is easy to choose and
Paul Gascoigne is proven abroad (when he wasn’t injured).
Do you think Beckham is
better than Coppell? I think Beckham is
good but overrated. I’d have him over
Coppell for free kicks but I have Gascoigne and Pearce for that.
It may be better to include
other goal scorers like David Platt and Martin Peters, but I want some width.
Goals Goals Goals. Charlton sits behind the front two and holds
the ball up. Beardsley or Sheringham
could almost be in there.
Lineker and Shearer may trip
over each other but they can both play wide.
Interesting to look at the number
of goals the players have scored, and the number of caps they’ve gained and
goals per cap.
Jimmy Greaves may have to be
in, and David Platt, and Martin Peters, Kenny Samson, Ray Wilkins, but
definitely not John Barnes are close.
Weak on the left side as per
usual, and not very creative in defence.
At first I didn’t think this
side would set the world on fire but the more I look at it the better I think
it is.
Hard to get past, creative in
midfield and plenty of goal scoring players.
I’m not sure about Coppell
though! Beckham, Peters or Platt!
Monday 28th October 2002
There’s some
fantastic links in David Weinberger’s Newsletter JOHO
- October 24, 2002
Pulse Veepers A
spooky way of delivering low bandwidth video.
http://persci.mit.edu/gaz
These are unbelievable optical illusions, and I still don’t believe them!
Picasa: The best home
for your pictures A great way to keep track of your digital pictures and
also set them up for the web.
And another
scathing article from Nicholas Regush on how bad things are medically. We have to do something.
Redflagsweekly.com ARE MEDICATIONS, SUCH AS
PAINKILLERS, ANTIDEPRESSANTS,
CHOLESTEROL DRUGS AND BETA BLOCKERS CONTRIBUTING
TO NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASE, HEART DISEASE, DIABETES, CANCER, ARTHRITIS, AND
OTHER DISEASES?
Oh, and finally, I’ve jumped up again to 369,254 on the Alexa ratings
Sunday 27th October 2002
So first things
first. The clocks went forward down here
in Melbourne last night.
Yippee, it means
that instead of Georgia waking up at 5-30 in the morning, she’ll start waking
up at 6-30 in the morning.
So what does she
do this morning? She wakes up at 5-15
new time. That means with the same light
she’s effectively woken up at 4-15 am!
How the hell does
she do that? How the hell does she
know? Her body clock should have said
6-30, it was darkish at 6-30, but oh no, not my little daughter.
Next, something I
wondered about yesterday. The two most
strikingly designed cars currently are the Volkswagen Beatle and the New Mini.
Anyone
disagree? What I can’t understand is why
do the best two designs have to be retro-designs? Why are most car designs so dull and
mediocre?
Why can’t they
design great looking cars? Okay for
there’s a few good looking cars out there, but very very few.
And come to think
of it, my very first blog last November was about the perfect car.
Why doesn’t a car
company come along and design and deliver the perfect car, fully speced.
Come to think of
it why don’t they design a car from scratch and not a relic from 100 years ago.
Go on someone,
shift the paradigm, be brave. A new
radical car.
Next, I was
thinking of my people who don’t reply to my emails again.
And I’ve refined it
into a friend and business thought.
I don’t want to
do business with, or have friends who don’t email me back!!
Sounds a bit
extreme doesn’t it, but I’ve thought about it and realise that those who really
care as friends respond.
Those who have
drifted can’t be bothered, so it’s self adjusting. Think about it.
It’s the same
with business emails.
I sent emails to
10 different people from the same company.
All people I’ve dealt with and done business with in the past.
Only two
responded, to say no thanks not right now.
And they’re the best ones I had as clients.
They’re also
likely to be the best performing. No
coincidence is it that those who politely take the trouble to reply are doing
the best business.
Those who don’t
reply, either don’t use the technology very well, are disorganised, don’t want
to talk to me, forgot, not right now but don’t respond.
That says it
all. If I can gather enough people who
use email a lot, who reply quickly, and are organised and use the technology,
aren’t those the type of people I want for clients and friends.
I look at the
pattern, and it’s amazing how people stand out as being good with email, and
the ones who aren’t there’s something going on.
It’s not as
though there’s one forgotten email. It’s
a consistent pattern of me badgering and chasing and putting in more than I
ever get back.
Granted, I agree
with putting out and it comes back on other ways, but I’d rather put out to
people who give a damn.
A few links from
the last few days surfing.
Drilling
for Freedom is an interesting take on Arab democracy.
Dull Men's Club just found
the link again and revisiting it made me laugh out loud at some of them.
Business 2.0 - Magazine Article - Did Newton Get It Wrong?
I’ve said before that we don’t’ really understand gravity, so someone coming along
defying gravity is a bit like someone coming along and telling us the earth is
round. It defies all belief, but how
exciting that something one day will come along and completely change our view
of the world. Maybe this is it. When did that last happen in the previous 50
years? Nuclear Power? The microwave oven? Mobile Phones? Searching for Pamela Anderson on the
Internet? A calculator? IVF? It’s rare for us to say WoW, about
something. Look around your house, what
has changed in 50 years? The car in the
drive is a bit better, we have a microwave, a video/CD recorder, PC connected
on the Internet and a printer, a mobile phone, a cordless phone, most of those
are derived technology which like a the receiving and transmitting of radio
waves has hardly surprised us. We
expected that to happen.
So what is going
to surprise us?
Thursday 24th October 2002
What’s the most
important thing in your life?
Your Health?
If there is one
thing and one thing only that you read all year and take on, read this.
An Introduction to Dr. Mercola's Healthcare Approach and Vision
10/23/02
Dr Joseph Mercola
lays his philosophy out in one article.
He’s right, and
time will prove him right on almost everything he claims.
He’s trying to
shift the health paradigm, but it’s bloody default when you’re up against the
food and pharmaceutical industry who brainwash us.
Read it, take it
in, and read it again.
You don’t have to
go off and follow it 100% word for word, but if you want a blueprint for being
healthy and living longer then this article is it.
I’ve known a lot
of this stuff for over 7 years. The idea
of as much raw food as possible, but a few other things have been added as
well.
Sometimes you
come across things that make total sense and stand the test of time. Most of his stuff will stand the test of
time. This isn’t a fad diet.
Element of many
diets are correct, but this brings it all together. It’s not absolute or even a diet.
Just good common
sense advice the same as is given by Allen Carr’s Easyweigh to Lose Weight, and Dr Joel
Robbins.
And Yippee, up
from 418,000 to 388,855 on the Alexa ranking.
Still an upward
trend but slowing. I might have to start
promoting porn!
Wednesday 23rd October 2002
I’m anti
war. Aren’t we all? At least most of us are anyway.
The question is
how best to go about preventing war and the threat from other countries.
Not with this
idiot! An uneducated dickhead who takes all the propaganda fed to him. And
what’s with his obsession with Israel, and smoking a cigarette?
Sure many of us
doubt the what motives lie behind the Bush administration, but come on, what
would you have done with Hitler, waved a piece of paper?
It is clear what
Saddam Hussein’s intents are and a leopard does not change its spots.
What gets me
about Right and Left wing politics is that you have to take the whole package,
and support all the items on the agenda.
That’s why Andrew Sullivan is interesting because being a gay,
catholic, pro Bush, pro Blair, kinda guy makes for an interesting mix, and
anyone who writes,
“What is 'self-evidently bizarre,' however, is that
Sullivan seems to be publicly losing his mind. It happens to a lot of people
with AIDS. Dementia sets in, eventually, and, no matter how many drug cocktails
they take, in the end virtually all succumb to mania and mental
deterioration." deserves to be shat on by Andrew
Sullivan and a few other people.
And thank you Andrew Sullivan for pointing out the results of The Dilbert Weasel Poll.
Tuesday 22nd October 2002
Nicholas
Regush is spot on with his health rant about the Food and Drug Administration -
Redflagsweekly.com
And Andrew
Sullivan is ranting about Anti-Semitism and War. Good on yer Andrew.
www.AndrewSullivan.com - Latest Posts
Monday 21st October 2002
The BBC is
running a survey on the Greatest Britains of all time.
The nominated
list so far looks very ropey in some areas in terms of what’s fashionable and
who was immortalised by death.
Set me thinking
about my Great Britains. I’ll need to
think some more on this but some of the names are ridiculous.
David Beckham and
Diana Princess of Wales. I guess she has
had a powerful effect on the UK and World.
How do you
measure great? And isn’t it people who
appear most in the public eye and have the right image.
So Van Nistelrooy is injured.
I’ve predicted this for over a year.
United are stuffed and how did they and Alex Ferguson let it happen that
they only have Solskjaer as a striker.
Forlan and
Scholes don’t count as strikers because they don’t score goals and can’t hold
the ball up. It’s disgraceful that a top
club has got in this state.
Wil
Wheaton’s Aunt Val. I always get
inspired when I read Wil Wheaton’s website.
This time, he’s shown he could write a novel if he wants.
Sunday 20th October 2002
Just read an
email talking about and asking for technology predictions.
I’ve always
thought I’ve been quite good at this.
I could see PDAs
and handhelds coming along a long time ago when I used to read Computergram in
the late 80s. GO and all that.
I was tempted in
the early 90s to join a company selling wireless LANs, so I could see that one
coming very early on.
It’s more about
timing than technology.
Most technology
is there already it’s just a matter of predicting when and if it will break through.
Mind you, I
predicted the demise of Apple and Sun and that’s never happened, and also the
growth of Telcos which isn’t happening right now!
Wireless
definitely, the question is in which form.
Wi-Fi, 3G, Bluetooth, or something else.
Wi-Fi is looking the most likely.
The next part is
the most difficult to predict. Battery
technology is restricting what we can achieve with mobiles, laptops and PDAs.
Will a new form
of technology come along? New type of battery,
new power source, this fuel cell thing?
Let’s assume
we’re stuck with current battery technology which will improve.
Lower powered
chips is the best one to predict, leading to all in one portable
Laptop/PDA/Mobile with a few more things added.
PC tablet probably.
Will it be
keyboard or voice recognition?
I’ll go for both
with flexi-keyboards and/or projected keyboards. We might even have some kind of projection
instead of a screen.
The one
prediction I’ve got wrong over the years is screen goggles.
Glasses you wear
which project the image so that it looks like a large screen but they’re on
your nose.
That still hasn’t
happened yet.
The demise of
Microsoft and rise of Linux/Apple etc.
Can’t see it happening. The
offering has to be equal or better. And
it isn’t currently.
Unix has been
around for a long long time and has never cracked it yet on the desktop. Not through any technical deficiency.
Just the
technology moves which is more trends and marketing than what’s technically the
best.
There just aren’t
the applications that people want to use en-masse. Now if Linux was stable and easy to use and
Office applications sat on top and worked easily then we’re talking. The one Achilles that Microsoft has is that
all their applications run in different ways and use different file
formats. They’re working on uniting
their applications into a single stored format, but I bet that will take
time. Now if the open source movement
came along with stable easy to use applications fully featured and using the
same file format.
Ever tried to
back up and retrieve Outlook Express and Outlook files? You’d think that as email is the application
that most of use the most, the back up of individual emails, folders, and the
whole damn thing would be easier to back up and retrieve. Am I missing something? Are the features there? If they are they’re difficult to find and
use.
Wireless in the
home yes. Wireless in the car, not
yet. Development in car computing has
been very slow, companies and drivers are very conservative.
As long as car
companies treat technology in the car as a cash cow charging way over for it,
it ain’t going to happen. It also goes
obsolete very quickly.
Remember the dash
display on the Astra GTi? What happened
to Windows CE dashboards?
Something has to
give with the Internet and bandwidth. It
has improved greatly. Of course
broadband will be everywhere. Internet 2
at 1000 times the speed of the current internet. Well it’s happening in the same way the
Internet started in the 60s.
From my own
experience technology trends move much slower than what is possible. Not much has changed in 50 years!
The car has
hardly changed for 100 years in its concept.
Sure the style has changed, the engines have got better, electronics and
reliability, but fundamentally it’s still the same iron/steel thing is has been
for decades. Ever tried driving a
Ford. I swear that our family Ford 25
years ago is not much different from a Ford today. Will someone break the mould and come out
with a car which is radically different?
I doubt it. Not in the next 10
years.
I reckon video is
the biggest thing. We have seen 40 years
of improving quality of TV. We expect
that quality on the Internet and in Video presentations. So either bandwidth or compression will
improve to deliver quality. Content has
to be as good as TV though. The
technology for Video phones has been there for decades but has never taken off.
So some
predictions.
I’m going to
think some more about this and make some more predictions.
Friday 18th October 2002
Read this article today about CNN.
Just how far will
CNN go to compromise its reporting in order to have reporters in every country.
If the article is
true, it’s terrifying how biased or economical with the truth news reporting
is.
Hot day today
here in Melbourne. The wind is coming
from and unusual direction straight of the outback, 30 Knots+ wind and 30ºC+.
One of my dreams
from doing an exercise yesterday and answering the question, “When I daydream,
what do I see myself doing?” is sitting on St Kilda pier having coffee with Mark.
Well today, I was
sitting on St Kilda pier having coffee with Rob. So there you go!
Thursday 17th October 2002
Street Cards - create your own cool business cards online
Just plain weird http://www.skumpy.com/eha
Getting back to
normal after so much time away from home.
Clearing up,
gathering my thoughts, photos and website.
Oh and found this
article by Clive James, Thank you Andrew Sullivan.
“The consensus will die hard
in Australia, just as it is dying hard here in Britain. On Monday morning, the
Independent carried an editorial headed: "Unless there is more justice in
the world, Bali will be repeated." Towards the end of the editorial, it
was explained that the chief injustice was "the failure of the US to use
its influence to secure a fair settlement between Israelis and
Palestinians." I count the editor of the Independent as a friend, so the
main reason I hesitate to say that he is out to lunch on this issue is that I
was out to dinner with him last night. But after hesitating, say it I must, and
add a sharper criticism: that his editorial writer sounds like an
unreconstructed Australian intellectual, one who can still believe, even after
his prepared text was charred in the nightclub, that the militant
fundamentalists are students of history.
But surely the reverse is true: they are students of the opposite of history,
which is theocratic fanaticism. Especially, they are dedicated to knowing as
little as possible about the history of the conflict between the Israelis and
the Palestinians. A typical terrorist expert on the subject believes that
Hitler had the right idea, that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a true
story, and that the obliteration of the state of Israel is a religious
requirement. In furthering that end, the sufferings of the Palestinians are
instrumental, and thus better exacerbated than diminished. To the extent that
they are concerned with the matter at all, the terrorists epitomise the extremist
pressure that had been so sadly effective in ensuring the continued efforts of
the Arab states to persuade the Palestinians against accepting any settlement,
no matter how good, that recognises Israel's right to exist. But one is free to
doubt by now - forced to doubt by now - that Palestine is the main concern.”
And
my Alexa rating has gone up yet again to 418,914. Top 100,000 websites here I come!
Wednesday 16th October 2002
Wise AndrewSullivan
Andrew Sullivan talking about his website and the paradox
of being successful and no money coming in.
He’s taking a very pragmatic approach to it.
Tuesday 15th October 2002
Two great
articles which support my sentiments
Breast
Cancer awareness month - Sham
The breast cancer
article is from a woman who has survived breast cancer but questions what is
happening to all the money and that no-one know the cause of breast cancer but
it is rising and in young women, so the claim that because we’ve eradicated
other diseases, cancer is showing up, is spurious.
And George Soros
talking about markets and that they’re not pure and self adjusting and need
government intervention
Markets are not
pure and self adjusting, and George Soros bets on the psychology of markets as
opposed to Warren Buffet who is there for the long run.
It confirms my
own view that stocks and shares are traded commodities largely isolated from
the company they’re supposed to represent on the markets, and move, sometimes
randomly, based on psychology rather than facts. I guess it smoothes out in the end and the
cream rises to the top, but how can companies and countries for that matter
survive on short term planning and expectations.
Monday 14th October 2002
I’ve always wondered what happened to the Boeing
717.
In my childhood there was the Boeing 707, 4
engines, the workhorse.
Also the 727 tail engine, and 737 2 engines (I
think), and then along came the 747, Jumbo.
And for years I wondered what happened to the 717.
Well either they were never in Europe or they
started them much later, because I keep seeing them around Australia. My curiosity is now satisfied.
Two rear jet engines, like the BAC 1-11 used to be.
Shame really because I can no longer say as much,
“Look there’s a little Fokker!”
Webcam
Got my webcam working and now you can’t stop me, I
went to show all, to everyone.
Connected with my family in Europe and displayed my
daughter for them all, upside down of course because it’s Australia. Hell, I’ve just realised I could have turned
the camera upside-down instead of my daughter, but then she wouldn’t have had
so much fun!
Bali
I’ve been thinking some more about the events of
Bali.
Am I right in thinking that most of the
perpetrators of this type of evil, haven’t been directly affected by the people
and countries they’re doing this to?
What I mean is that whoever commits these
atrocities or suicide bombs; were direct members of their family killed at the
hands of the governments, armies, countries and people they murder?
Do the Palestinian suicide bombers come from
families where a brother or father was killed?
Did any of the 9/11 terrorists lose a direct relative?
Has whoever planted the bombs in Bali, lost a
direct family member?
I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.
If they haven’t lost family members, then in whose
name are they doing this?
Who has asked them to do what they do?
Why do they think it needs doing?
Perhaps those who have lost relatives in war and
acts of terrorism, know how painful it is and whilst they want revenge, they
don’t perpetrate it against innocent people.
Sunday 13th October 2002
Trying to work
out how my webcam works.
Not the physical
workings of the camera, but how to connect it to other people and let other
people see me.
There seems to be
a number of options, but I’m not sure how and why they work.
Firstly there’s
Microsoft NetMeeting. Most of us already
have that installed on our PCs without realising it.
It lets you
connect using voice or a webcam over the internet.
But how does it
work? Does it have to go through a
server? Are we effectively both
accessing the same webserver?
When is says
“dial” another person what does that mean.
Does it mean we dial
modem to modem directly?
What if I have
cable? How can I dial if I have cable?
Very confusing.
Next. Yahoo Chat and IM seems to have a webcam
option which enables people to connect, either both ways or just one way. I haven’t had the chance to test it yet
because every chat group I go into fill me with dread and mistrust. If you go into the techy groups are they not
more likely to do something bad to your PC.
I tried the romance groups (well that’s my excuse anyway). There is a vast group of adult webcams but
they’re mostly honeypots for porn. I
didn’t try any, just looked at a few profiles to see if anyone was
legitimate. Whilst doing this I noticed
two women chatting in the group about what fun they’d had with their
webcams. I looked at their profiles
which seemed fine, except the seemed to look very similar. Only then did I realise that this was somehow
a fake computer generated conversation (I think) to make it look like two women
were IMing. So what do you do? Ask the
techies? Ask the women in the groups,
ask the men cruising in the groups? Just
to test that my webcam works on Yahoo!
Finally managed to contact someone I trust and the webcam is working. Yippee!
There’s also the
Intel directory. Since it’s an Intel
webcam, I tried to get it working, but it drove my firewall mad. The firewall just didn’t like it, and I was
reticent to turn my firewall off or let the programme have open access. I wonder why other programmes aren’t
affecting my firewall so much. A bit
worrying really!
Bali. WHY?
What purpose does
it serve to kill all those people and ruin an economy?
Makes me think
that there’s more to this one than meets the eye.
I don’t mean a
conspiracy but why Bali?
It’s devastating
to those killed, those injured, those who witnessed what happened, and of
course the families, friends and colleagues affected by this devastating
murder.
Please stop!
What is it you
want?
I know that you
perceive your enemies as causing you grief but these are innocent people.
Take it up with
the armies and governments of these countries you are so against. We didn’t all vote for our government.
What world would
you like to see if you had your way?
Saturday 12th October 2002
Georgia’s 1, and
it’s time for her next round of vaccines.
These decisions
are every parents’ nightmare.
No-one seems to
be able to give any good common sense advice because no-one seems to know the
relative risk.
She is due to
have her Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR), Hepatitis B, and Hib B (one form of
meningitis).
It’s about
relative risk isn’t it.
Is the vaccine
more risky than the chances of serious disease or the other way round?
I have no doubt
that the MMR vaccine is causing damage to some kids, but that’s not the issue
for me.
The issue for me,
is the risk from the MMR vaccine greater than the risk it’s protecting Georgia
from, and does it offer the protection it claims?
Also, what is the
risk from the vaccine? There’s the short
term reaction, the long term known damage and what does any vaccine do to a
kid’s health?
Oh sure, your
average doctor who sees kids doesn’t notice any or many serious case, but are
they linking some of the other things they have seen a rise in like asthma or
eczema?
So to my simpler
brain it’s simple. What’s the relative
risk of a vaccine?
And when I ask
the question, I don’t want the drug companies’ answer which is tainted by money
and interests. I want the real answer.
I suspect that
whilst there is a risk from the MMR vaccine, what it protects against probably
has a higher risk, though when I was a kid, getting measles, german measles and
mumps was the norm, and I’m not aware of anyone being permanently damaged from
those child diseases thought I’m sure doctors did see the worst case scenarios.
Anything we do
carries risk, from the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and
the things we do. The question is how
much risk?
And besides do we
really take risk into account. I refuse
a vaccine for Georgia, but I still drive her around in the car.
That’s probably
more risky, it’s just that children injured in a car seems to be an accepted
risk.
Nevertheless,
here’s my take on it. I’m guessing that
Measles Mumps and Rubella carry a greater risk than the vaccine itself which
I’m guessing has damaged some kids.
So let’s go for
the MMR. It’s Russian Roulette really;
at odds of 1 in 6 that’s pretty good, at odds of 1in 100 that favourable, and
odds of 1 in 1000+ even better (unless you’re the 1 of course!).
This is how I
coped with the last round of vaccines for Georgia even though I was opposed to
them, by just saying to myself that odds of 1 in 100 or better favours Georgia,
and she does seem to be a healthy resistant child.
That leaves the
Hib B and Hep B. Hib B we don’t hear
much about. It’s the preservatives and quality of the vaccine that concerns me
more than the Hib B content, but let’s have some faith in the medical
establishment. Also, she’s had the Hib B
before with no reaction.
Finally Hep
B. Well by coincidence, this arrived
today, Dangerously Misguided Universal Infant Hepatitis B Vaccination
Policy 10/12/02.
That just about
says it all. Why are we injecting kids
with a vaccine that may carry a greater risk than what we’re protecting them
from?
And besides, the
more injections we can stop them having, I reckon the better the chance of them
dealing and coping with the ones they are having.
Maybe it doesn’t
work that way, but if many kids have a minor reaction to the MMR, then why load
them with the Hep B, even if you want to “get them out of the way.”
The whole medical
policy and establishment stinks, see the link from yesterday.
We wonder why the
level of breast cancer and osteoporosis and disease goes up.
I can hazard a
pretty good guess at most of the common diseases: and the food and drug
industry together with electromagnetic radiation in some of its forms has a lot
to answer for. And that’s even before we
look at chemical pollution.
It’s a terrible
brainwashed world we live in, where we believe what our government tells us and
they believe what the medical establishment and the pharmaceuticals tell us and
no-one is any the wiser.
When will this
nightmare stop?
How many
injections into a child is too many?
If every
pharmaceutical company got their way, how many vaccines/injections would a
child be having?
What does your
common sense tell you about that?
There must come a
point where there’s a toxic overload.
Have we hit it
yet? If not when?
Friday 11th October 2002
The Death of Medicine
This is a
stunning article and vilification of medicine.
Want a laugh? www.mnftiu.cc
| get your war on | page fifteen
Oh, and I’ve just
jumped another 100,000 in the Alexa rating to 551,028!
Thursday 10th October 2002
MLM is a mathematical pyramid, it's just that people confuse that with
pyramid selling which involves marking the product up until there's no more
suckers.
A few examples I can think of in using employees, is distributing
PCs. Having worked for ICL/Fujitsu, the
number of people who asked me to get them a PC.
I couldn't do it and yet there was a market out there. Though we had an
employee scheme, it just seemed a means of getting rid of ex-stock and you
couldn't get the latest PCs at cost price (If it was cost it wasn't matching
other suppliers!). Why not, let all
employees have a PC at cost, and I mean cost and not stuffing the employee
channel, and then allow each employee to sell on 2-5 PCs/Laptops per year. Happy employees and happy family and friends
and isn't ICL/Fujitsu wonderful.
It's never happened yet.
Does anyone else know of a PC supplier or any other company for that
matter which has a genuine employee scheme (and not an ex-stock product stuffer
channel), which enables employees to buy at genuine cost, with an option on a
few more to distribute?
Think about it. Corporate MLM
with the employees benefiting and actually using the products that the company
makes. Come to think of it, don't Ford
do it with cars for employees? And of
course they attempted a home PC or laptop for everyone but it got canned with
the CEO getting canned.
"We joke about nerds vs
suits, and sales vs delivery. There is an element
where every employee is in
sales and should be working to extend the
company's network when
opportunities present themselves. Reality is that
usually only a few high
flying managers do this, while 90% of the
organisation switch off and
stop working the moment they leave the
company building."
And guess what I'm doing in Australia.
Sales Training. And what's the
biggest market? "every employee is in sales". And you're so right about the 9 til 5 mentality,
and why should it be any different if the company treats its employees like
shit. People no longer care about their
company because their company doesn't care about them. Tom Peters says (but I can't find the page in
Pursuit of WoW!), the customer doesn't come first, the employee comes
first. How true. If a company treats its employees well, then
it will treat its customers well.
When I was kid (I'm rambling on now) my mum always said to me,
"Marks and Spencer is a good place to work because they treat their
employees well." I believe Marks
and Sparks' troubles stem not from out of date product or stores, but when they
stopped treating their employees as well as they did. If I go to complain to an M+S person now (a
little difficult in Australia) what do they care, they have no pride in the
company any more, because the company has no pride in them. They look at the
clock whilst I'm complaining and want to get away at 5-00. Believe me, I've seen it happen.
Wednesday 9th October 2002
Let's knock this pyramid thing on the head.
Amway and other Multi Level Marketing and Network Marketing companies
are not pyramid schemes.
Pyramid schemes are illegal.
Pyramid schemes sell a product worth $1 to someone for $2 who then sells
it for $3, and so on. The Pyramid
collapses because the price becomes too high.
MLM products have a fixed retail price.
They pay commission on the products sold. How do they do this?
The overheads of distributing the products are lower than usual means of
distribution, so more of the $1 can be set aside for commission. MLM companies have lower distribution
overheads, less spent on packaging, and next to nothing spent on marketing and a
sales infrastructure.
They use the network of people to distribute the product and hence pay
commission to them. If I find 3 people who in turn each find 3 people, who find
3 people, and people at the bottom of my network buy a product, I get paid a
fixed percentage say 5% of everything that anyone in my network buys, down to
say 5 levels below me. The person who is
1 level below me also gets a 5% commission for anything sold in their
network. So, 25% of the sale of the
product is set aside and 5 people at 5 levels all receive 5% each in commission. Does that make sense? See me after class if you don't understand.
Generally that's how MLM works; it does away with the overheads of
running a company and pays that saving out in commission. Of course like in any business there will be
organisations that are corrupt and there will be scams.
There are two things to be wary of in MLM. First, paying a high upfront charge to buy
product for distribution. Many MLM
companies ask you to buy an amount of product to test your commitment. It's your choice what you think is too much
or too high. There are also some schemes
where you pay a very high up front cost, say $1500 and recover it by finding 3
people who you get $500 commission from when they sign up. This isn't a pyramid but I'd say it's bordering
on high risk!
If you think about it, and you take the cynical approach to MLM, it
works independently of the product. As
long as you can find some people to pay you, and they in turn find people to
pay them, it doesn't matter what the product is!
The crunch with MLM and why it doesn't work for most people is that we
won't get off our arses and do something!
I will guarantee any of you a passive income of $50k per annum in 5
years time, on one condition (all MLM companies say something that don't they!),
all you have to do is make 4 contact per week every week for 5 years. Simple really. The trouble is, most of us give up after 3
months (including me!). So it's not the
product or the scheme that's the issue, it's our inability to make that level
of commitment. In the meantime, many MLM
companies have made their up-line money by overloading new joiners with too
much product, so beware. If you put that level of commitment into anything (say
growing Ecademy!) then you'd make a damn sight more than $50kp.a passive, in 5
years time!
MLM is excellent. More
traditional companies should try using it for some of their products, instead
of flushing advertising money down the drain.
If a company who employees 10,000 people launched an MLM scheme for the employees,
they could have many of their employees using the product and recommending it
to their contacts. This works very well
with a new product especially new technology which needs demonstrating.
Tuesday 8th October 2002
Alexa
ranks websites in terms of popularity and links.
I’m currently
ranked 665,276 for my website.
The best thing
though is someone called Fredo wrote a review about my website!
“Tony tells it as he
sees it. Not like so many blogs that just waffle on about other people, this
one tells us all about his ideas and feelings. With real passion.”
Thank you Fredo whoever you are!
Monday 7th October 2002
Just formed a new
network of people in Melbourne, tonight.
10 people for the
first group, thank you to those who came.
I really enjoyed
it, especially as it was the first one.
We’ve booked the
second meeting for November, found a great venue overlooking the sea, and we’re
having the meetings on Mondays and calling it Happy Mondays!
We asked people
at the end what they wanted next time, and as with most groups there was a
spectrum of opinion.
The drift is to
some structure, maybe a speaker and some structured time for networking and
time set for 18-30 to 20-30 and those that want to carry on can.
We also need to
broaden the fields of play by getting people from more varied backgrounds, so
we all committed to bringing at least 2 people each next time.
This is fun,
let’s see what happens.
More butterfly
wings flapping to create things.
Sunday 6th October 2002
I realised today how much I struggle with the right goodbye in an
email.
Work colleagues = Regards
Family and Close Friends = Love
But I really struggle with some male friends, a "Love" goodbye
doesn't quite cut it, does it?!
Cheers (I don't drink), G'day (more a greeting than a signing off), See Ya (too
old for that), Bye (bit prompt)? Take Care (why is something going to go
wrong?) Love to you and your family (my wife's suggestion), Hugs (might as well
be love), All the best and best wishes (it's not a birthday card you know), Go
Well (almost).
Does anyone else struggle with this male bonding thing and what to put at the
end of emails other than Regards or Love?
TTFN
Tony
Saturday 5th October 2002
Just back late
last night from Queensland where I’ve been training a group in Cairns and
Rockhampton.
They seem so much
more chilled and laid back than the bigger city people. They don’t take it all so seriously.
Also, I had the
delight to be invited to a Cairns night out, and better still a Rockhampton
bowling evening at the Rockhampton Bowling Club.
Now that was an
experience I’ll never forget. What is it
about bowling and golf that I hate? I
don’t think they’re aggressive enough sports for me.
Maybe in my
latter years.
Rocky bowling was
fun. I just couldn’t get the hang of it;
I kept bowling too hard and sending the ball to the back. No Patience and no interest in learning until
of course one of the old timers started giving us hot bowling tips.
Rockhampton
bowling is one of things I’ll never forget.
How did I end up in life bowling on a Thursday night in
Rockhampton?
If you’d asked me
that 4 years ago I’d have said you’re off your rocker.
It was great to
be part of a small town evening, and best of all was the raffle and
presentations by the old-timers after the bowling.
Very funny and
done in great spirit with a knowing twinkle in their eye.
Thank Rockhampton
and thank you Matthew for a memorable and enjoyable time.
Friday 4th October 2002
I am assured that there is more to Rockhampton than meets the eye.
Although the town lies on the south bank of the river, where the town is
somewhat deserted, 70% of the residents, wealth and health lies on the north of
the river.
So apparently the best bits lie on the north bank.
Following on from my views on education and my own experiences of school
letting me and others down, the day I took my destiny into my own hands instead
of those idiot teachers who failed us, then I ended up on a degree course which
for its time was different to everything I fight about in education.
I didn’t know it at the time when I chose to do Industrial Technology and
Management at Bradford University, but the course was way ahead of its time, in
1979.
We did things one takes for granted now, but think about it, this was
well before the age of the computer and PC.
The course was founded by a Marxist Chemical engineer. That explains a bit of why it was so
different!
It was a thin sandwich course, which at the time wasn’t so rare but it
meant we all as students did 2 placements in industry, so it wasn’t just
theoretical.
We learnt to type. Yes, we had
typing lessons on our degree course!
Remember, this was before computers hit the mainstream.
We learnt to programme on the University computer, using punch cards to
compile our programmes. We didn’t have a
clue what we were doing but it gave us the confidence to not fear technology
and computers. I stress again, this was
before computing hit the mainstream, but admittedly was at the start of
personal computing.
We learnt presentation skills.
Unheard of in its time. We take
presentation skills for granted now, but not then in 1979, on a degree course?
Industrial Technology and Management, Ind Tech, gave us a grounding in
many skills for industry, we did maths, statistics, accounting, chemistry,
physics, material science, mechanical engineering, economics, sociology,
history, 2 projects mine were magnetic levitation (MAGLEV) and “Is advertising
necessary?”. Our exams were open book,
in other words we weren’t being tested on our parrot brains but how we could
use information in an exam. We were
often sneered at by other courses. We
had our own building on the campus, and every one knew about the course Ind
Tech. I still meet people today who were
either on the course or who know people who did the course. And when those who attended meet up we have
fond memories of the lecturers and their cranky idiosyncrasies. I thought this happened on all degree courses
but clearly not.
Though not perfect, Industrial Technology and Management was way ahead of
its time and groundbreaking. If I could
do it all again, I think on that fateful day in August 1979, I’d chose
Industrial Technology and Management at Bradford University, except I’d change
the ratios of women to men on the course and at the University. It was a bit dire with a ratio of 1:5 in the
University and 5:40 on the course.
That’s my excuse anyway! And I
didn’t like curries at the time.
Thursday 3rd October 2002
I’ve been thinking some more about education.
When you meet someone, can you tell what level they were educated to?
Can you tell what subjects they were educated in?
No? Then what’s the point?
Of course educationalists would say it’s not what you learn at
University, it’s the fact they you demonstrate you can learn to that level.
Crap I say. What it shows is that
you can learn in the narrow confines of those ways of learning for ‘O’ Levels
(CSEs) ‘A’ Levels, and Degrees.
I look at my skills now and the job I do now, and the job I did before
and those skills are, talking, listening, writing, designing PowerPoint slides,
using a word processor, using the phone, email, persistence, organising,
creating. I didn’t learn any of those
skills in the education system, except the basics of reading, riting and
rithmatic up to aged 7. Nothing beyond
that has been put into use.
Given that 99% of the humans can walk and talk, with a vocabulary of
1000+ words, and that we only use 10% or our brains, there’s a lot of potential
there for everyone, in spite of what the education system may tell the likes of
Smithy (see 1st October).
We put our trust in teachers and the education system, and they let us
down.
Check out my two rants on my school Physics teachers in Rimmer Shit.
Wednesday 2nd October 2002
I looked at my plane ticket this morning and I couldn’t understand why it was going to take me 3 hours to travel down the Queensland coast, longer than it took me to fly across most of Australia to get here from Melbourne.
I found out in the taxi to the airport!
The taxi driver told me that the plane stopped at other airports on the
way down to Rockhampton from Cairns.
Oh No!
We lead such a rush around life we think everything has to go at speed,
the fastest.
Actually, I loved the flight.
It was along the Queensland coast, along the Barrier Reef.
How many people can say they’ve flow along the Barrier Reef for 3 hours?
The plane was a two-engined prop.
A Dash 8 if you really want to know, seats about 30.
At first in this modern age you fear a propeller plane, kind of think
it’s old, but actually it feels safer.
You’re more in touch with what’s happening instead of being fed through a
tin can and then locked up in a tin can.
You can see it all working including the undercarriage coming up and
down.
Besides, I was in row 11, the emergency exit!
The plane took off, climbed to a level of 15,000 feet, lower than a
commercial jet aircraft, which meant you could see the whole coast in detail.
Mind you there was broken cloud all the way so it wasn’t perfect
visibility.
But my oh my when you can see the sea there were some magnificent sights.
A couple of, I think they’re called atolls, underwater islands almost, a
front edge of sand, then a very light blue, fading into the most dark lush
aquamarine blue colours I’ve ever seen.
That was Cairns to Townsville.
Townsville down to Rockhampton via Mackay didn’t look so beautiful, maybe
it was because the tide was out but it looked very flat and dull and I couldn’t
see the reef.
I should have known what I was letting myself in for when the welcome
notice at the airport said “Rockhampton, Beef Convention 2003”
And on leaving the airport it said, “Rockhampton, Australia’s Beef
Capital”
Well I called Canberra, Milton Keynes but without the buzz.
Rockhamton is like Milton Keynes without the buzz, concrete cows and very
big bomb has hit it.
It didn’t get much better after that, in fact it’s the worst most
depressing town I’ve ever been in. I
hope they don’t read this until I’m gone!
Firstly, if I say Rockhampton what does it conjure up? To me, beautiful town by the sea.
It’s not by the sea, it’s set inland on a river. The surrounding area is flat and colourless.
The town reminds me of the mid-west town you get in the States, when
driving from say Denver up to Breckenridge, but without any mountains.
It is so dull.
I thought I’d have a walk around just to give Rockhampton a chance.
I couldn’t find the town centre, because I don’t think there is one!
What purports to be the centre I think, had been dug up. I kid you not, the whole centre of town has
been dug up and left!
I think it might be complete for the 2003 beef convention next April!
And it gets worse. I had a walk
round, and one in five of the shops are closed and up for lease, rent or sale.
This is a town in depression. I
couldn’t find a single franchise shop except a Subways and a drive-in McDonalds
in the dim distance.
And guess what? I’m training the business bankers tomorrow, to sell to
small to medium businesses.
There doesn’t seem to be much business here or people for businesses to
sell to!
How depressing. This one’s going
to be a challenge to remember.
Anyway let’s not judge the book by its cover, let’s wait and see what
happens tomorrow.
Help get me out of here!
And just my luck, I’m reading the QANTAS in-flight magazine and it’s got an
article on native Australian tarantulas, the most deadly in the world.
And yes, the rarest, hairiest and ugliest ones live just outside
Rockhampton!
I hope they don’t find out my room number and come visit tonight or
attend the course tomorrow.
Yuck.
Maybe the cows will revive things tomorrow.
“Cattle replaced sheep in the area that was to become the beef capital of
Australia, with about two and a half million cattle within 20km of Rockhampton”
Hardly surprising the sheep got out, they had more sense.
And when we were coming into land I saw one cow in a field.
Where are the other 2,499,999?
Tuesday 1st October 2002
There’s a story I relate sometimes when I’m training people who’ve taken psychometric tests.
There’s filters put into a test to check if people are answering
randomly.
When I was about 15, my class took a multiple-choice test for physics.
The teacher announced the results of the test,
“Bartindale, you came top with 19/20, Ashworth 18/20, Dunham also
18/20….Goodson 12/20…. and finally we come to you Smith with 4/20.
Now Smith, a well trained monkey answering randomly would have scored
5/20 and you Smith managed to score 4/20.”
We laughed, it was funny at the time.
It’s amusing now, Smith scored less than a well-trained monkey answering
randomly.
But it’s also sad. The education
system let Smithy down and so did the physics teacher, who I hasten to add, let
me down in a very different way several years later.
Smithy struggled with academic subjects and he struggled with sport. He was great to have around because you knew
you were never going to come last.
And there were others in my class who usually protected me from a bottom
3 finish.
I remember another classmate who joined us for one year. Again he really struggled with academic
subjects but had a brilliant spatial mind.
He loved chess and spatial games, his enthusiasm rekindled my love of
chess, which we’d discuss for hours.
But academically he lasted 1 year, thrown on to the failure heap at the
end of the year.
Out of school, Smithy could swim a sub 60-second freestyle, and yet in
school he was useless at sport.
Why had the school not nurtured his talent, encouraged him instead of
humiliating him?
I couldn’t believe it when I found out what a good swimmer he was and his
enthusiasm for out of school activities.
Our western education system is a sham.
Who decided, and when did they decide what we learn at school?
It favours a particular type of brain.
Someone who likes words and can write.
Someone who can memorise but not understand or think.
Someone who has the discipline to revise and then recite things parrot
fashion.
But who teaches us how to learn?
Who teaches our children the different types of skills?
Who decided that sitting exams is the best use and measure of a child’s
talent?
Think about it. From aged 5 to 18, what do we learn that is possibly of
any use later on in life?
Is there anything I learned from 5 to 18 that I use now?
Those years were wasted. I learnt
to be afraid, to hide my light under a bushel, to settle for second best, to
cut corners in order to survive they way they wanted me to survive.
What level of maths do I, or most of us need in day-to-day living?
To what level to we need to read or write?
I feel very strongly that all kids should be able to read and write and
do arithmetic to a basic level, and schools should make sure that those who
struggle with that are helped.
But the rest of the crap they teach us?
They should teach us to learn. Learn to Learn, Mindmaps, Accelerated
Learning. Appreciate and grow the skills
we have, not be punished for the skills we don’t have.
To think broadly and out of the box, to shift paradigms.
I survived. I have the handwriting
of a 7 year old, the spelling capability of an 11 year old, the vocabulary of a
15 year old, and I really struggled.
It took me until I was around 35 to stop having to survive in an
education system I wasn’t suited to, and play to my strengths and skills
instead.
Others are less fortunate.
I met a talented guy yesterday who feels his lack of ‘O’ Levels and
higher education have held him back and yet he’s very clearly talented.
He carries the scars and stigma of no ‘O’ Levels. For God’s sake this has got to stop.
And of course there have been experiments with ‘alternative’ education methods,
but these end up being seen as cranky and limiting in a world that has a very
narrow view of what a good education is.
And it doesn’t seem to be getting better, it’s getting worse. It’s not as though the next generation are
any better.
Science is letting us down. It’s
becoming reductionist, it’s teaching us to narrow everything down to find and
isolate things, and then combat the isolated object or feed the isolated
object. It narrows and narrows instead
of taking a holistic approach, an interconnected approach.
We see more and more drugs and vaccines developed to “cure” these
isolated objects and not taking into account what effects these drugs have on
the rest of the body.
How many vaccines do you think a baby can take before its body packs up? How many times can we inject a child before
you make all children terminally ill?
There must be a limit mustn’t there?
Is it 10, 20, 30, 50, 100?
As long as the drugs pass trials on short-term effects then that’s ok
isn’t it? As long as doctors prescribe
drugs and order investigations that don’t have short term affects then that’s
ok.
1 million Australians have undetected osteoporosis. Of course if they detect it and feed us with
drugs then that will ‘cure’ it.
But has anyone stopped to ask why so many people are getting
osteoporosis?
I know why, but we’ve been brainwashed into thinking if we drink enough
milk and take enough drugs we’ll be ok.
We will look back on our current day medical practises in 100 years time
and laugh with tears of sadness for what we’ve done to ourselves with our food,
drugs, X-rays and electromagnetic pollution, let alone the chemical
pollution. Just as we scoff at practises
and beliefs from 100 years ago and longer.
Do we think we’re any less restricted in our thinking than 200 years
ago?
And what’s the connection with education.
Well the doctors and scientists and pharmaceutical companies who
dominate our society are the top of this narrow education system, they think in
very narrow terms. The education system
has rewarded them for their narrow thinking.
But when you look at the people who make the real breakthroughs in any
generation it’s the non-conformists, the rebels, the lateral thinkers, the
hypothesisers who have the mental capacity to think beyond and in spite of what
they’ve been educated in.
When you look at where the real breakthroughs occur it’s the multi-educated, the people who have several dimensions and talents and skills, to think beyond the narrow confines of our education system.
I have a 1-year-old daughter. What hope is there with the injections and drugs we pump her full of, the food we feed her, and education we feed her brain.
Do I rebel and hold out against all this brainwashing. Do I supplement her lack of education for when she finishes her conventional and narrow education which helps her to pass exams and go to university to she can get a ‘good’ job. Do I let her suffer because I rebel?
I guess the best I can do is to add to her life as her father, and do my best.