Billboards on the Highway of Life

Recently a letter-writer to a local paper chose to commemorate the anniversaary of the bombing of Hiroshima, an act that he described as inhumane and stupid. I replied:

I agree with Paul Hockey's ideals of peaceful co-operation between peoples. I also agree that the use of nuclear weapons against the Japanese was an act of inhumanity. What Paul conveniently overlooks is that all war is an act of inhumanity.

It may be an indication of our advancing age if we grumble about what has been lost. Personally I think the second half of the Twentieth Century abandoned the concept of Quality. Just one aspect of that huge concept is genuineness. We moved into a fast-paced disposable superficial age of insincerity.

Talking to the electrician today about how hard it is to get good service, he said "I'm convinced a third of the public is incompetent". Well ... yes.

Most examples of intelligent design don't do it for me. I understand evolution. I don't need to see an eyeball as a product of a cosmic watchmaker: I can grok how it evolved. But the International Date Line is another matter. How is it that the only longitudinal gap on the whole planet with sod all along it is precisely opposite Grenwich?

I think the conversation in Celestial Creations went something like this:

In the middle of the motorway, between the lanes, nestled against a barrier post, a lone little bush hangs onto the concrete against the Wellington winds. The first people who came here were like that.

In the plant world, the toughest, woodiest plants get into a crack and cling on to marginal life, or not, depending on chance. In their shelter and around their roots, life builds up. Soil and humus hold moisture. The wind goes over the top. More delicate plants move in to lead a more complex and comfortable life, creating a complex interlock of dependency we call an ecosystem.

There is no doubt in my mind that psychology is at about the same stage as medicine was when they believed in humours flowing in the body, i.e. ignorant quackery. Psychiatrists practice the fad du jour, messing with people's lives in blind ignorance of what they might actually be doing to them. I don't talk from personal experience - I'd never let a trick cyclist near me - but these musings are triggered by the most wonderful article sent to me.

Enjoy this http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~rbell/EncyclopediaOfInsanity.html

I've given up cleaning paintbrushes. And rollers. I'm doing it to help Africa.

In the kitchen cupboard is a teapot. A nice simple white china teapot. I drive the economy by not using it.

Sometimes I miss Melbourne... I miss the cheap and cheerful Vietnamese restaurants, the big fat eastern-European women selling sausages in the market and the Greek guys with their oysters and fish, the Italian boys parading in their V8s on Lygon St past pasta-to-die-for, the big Tongan bouncers at the Espie hotel, fish and ships on the marina, Kenyan cabbies, and barbequed kangaroo in our backyard.

This is the future, and certain large nations better get used to it.

Any time I get feeling down about not being able to help our in-laws in their developing-nation struggle, or afford the new deck on the house, or take Jack on a trip to ride steam trains in South America or drive the new Millau Viaduct in France, I comtemplate where I come on the dung-heap that is the human race.

On the back of an envelope:

The internet is the largest place in the world. It is so densely packed and tightly interconnected that it should be thought of as a city not a country.

Over a billion webpages, billions of web searches performed per day, billions of emails. Staggering size and activity. And yet you can see virtually all of it with a few clicks on Google and go there in a second, and talk to all of it via email. So I don't think it can be thoguht of as a parallel or virtual world: it is a city. And a city like Hong Kong not like Houston. Piled high, packed tight, seething and stinking.

If you are like me and you cannot stand the rudeness of someone attempting to survey you over the phone, read on. I have found a - so far - foolproof way of seeing them off.

I carried four bits of wood and it hurt. They were four long planks and I carried them over a kilometre round the track to our mountain hut. What made this interesting - and not just a whine - is that my Dad and some friends carried the whole damn hut in. Back then they walked five times as far and climbed a thousand feet with it. Sheets of metal, fibreboard, glass, corrugated iron. Rafters, stumps, concrete, a cast iron wood stove, lino, beds, a sink. On their backs, across rock faces, in the wind. For fun.

Good service providers are hard to find: tradesmen, shop assistants, professionals. You pass them on to friends like some priceless artifact. The good ones stand out not because they are brilliant but just because they do the job right. They don't screw up.

This is rare at the turn of the millenium. Once it was considered the minimum level of service; now it is a marvel to be treasured.

Ever watched a dog hanging his head out of a car window? I think he is off his nut. Tripping out on sensory overload.

A dog's nose is approximately a hundred thousand to a million times more sensitive than a human's". The environment is filled with an endlessly changing kaleidoscope of scents that is fascinating to a dog at the best of times. Imagine it being blasted up both nostrils at fity miles an hour.

My wife had breast cancer. It had got into the lymph nodes and come within three millimetres of the chest wall when Burton took a knife to her and cut her breast off.

We drove over a saddle and looked down on the valley. A hundred and twenty years ago it was thick forest and swamps. Now it is rolling farmland, with wind-breaks and fences and drains and irrigation and flood control and roads and towns. Have you ever built a landscape feature in the garden: a wall, a terrace, a path? How much effort did that take? Now look at the place you live in. With your little project as one unit of effort, how many units can you see?

There has been recent research suggesting that the attributes of good corporate leaders and those of psychopaths are very similar.