Arrival in Malta - first impressions

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My Newsletter contributions






Robert L. Fielding
 
Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)
(TCM) Burt Lancaster, Karl Malden, Telly Savalas

The re-showing on TCM of what is now almost a classic film showed Lancaster at his best – playing a man capable of extreme violence, changed by an abiding interest.

The true story of Robert Stroud, interned in Levenworth penitentiary, where he conducted tests and experiments on canaries to discover remedies for the ills that afflict them, began with a dangerous man indicted for murder.

Finding a fledgling sparrow in the exercise yard one day, Stroud nurses it back to health, teaches it a few tricks – hopping onto his finger and flying, and his interest in all things avian begins.

Called ‘Birdman of Alcatraz’ by Hollywood, Stroud actually conducted most of his research at Levenworth, although he was transferred to the infamous island later.

Supported by his mother and then by a benefactor, Stella Johnson, whom he later married, Stroud became the leading authority on avian illnesses and their treatment, writing in the journals of the day on his findings.

Karl Malden (Harvey Shoemaker) played Stroud’s Nemesis governor, later to become a more understanding governor of the prison in which Stroud spent some of his early years, while a young Telly Savalas played Stroud’s cellmate as he nursed the birds to health, or to their death, until he started to cure them.

Science sometimes progresses accidentally, as Lister found with his discovery of penicillin. Stroud merely hit on remedies at first, but then became more systematic as his knowledge increased. The interest sustained him through his 50 odd years in prison.-
Robert L. Fielding
 
The benefits of dictation exercises to students and teachers

Robert L. Fielding

Most probably regarded as a somewhat old-fashioned, pedestrian technique with few advantages to the student, dictation actually has many benefits to both students and their teachers.

If done systematically and regularly, dictation exercises improve students’ ability to distinguish sounds in continuous speech as well as improving their spelling and their recognition of grammatically correct sentences and their production of them. Davis and Rinvolucri write that "Decoding the sounds of [English] and recoding them in writing is a major learning task" (1988)

Unlike a reliance on grammar exercises on the page of a book, language processed by students doing such exercises proceeds through more ‘processing steps’ and becomes more integrated into memory than is the case with sentences written down with no context to anchor them to facilitate recall later.

Frodesen writes that dictation can be "an effective way to address grammatical errors in writing that may be the result of erroneous aural perception of English.... Dictation can help students to diagnose and correct these kinds of errors as well as others." (1991) Our students’ inability to produce grammatically correct sentences is familiar to every teacher, and since our students hear or see little English outside the classroom, either between themselves in dormitories and hostels, and very likely at home, giving students dictation exercises could be looked upon as one way of redressing this.

The links provided below appear on the Dictation page of the Writing Centre website (URL here), so once students begin to become familiar with the use of dictation in the classroom, it is hoped that they will access some of these sites outside class time. The links provide interactive exercises (students listen – write – get immediate feedback on the substance of each dictation), and so can measure their own progress as they work their way through the exercises on these sites.

The benefits of dictation
Dictation makes the students and the teacher aware of the students' comprehension errors--phonological, grammatical, or both. In English, typical errors include the frequent omissions of bound morphemes such as:
The -s plural
The -'s possessive
The -s third person singular
The -ed ending for regular past participles.
The ability to distinguish and produce the items listed above come well down the list of things our students are required to have mastered, even at Level 1, yet we find repeated errors of this kind right up to and including Level 3 and ESP.

Dictation shows students the kinds of spelling errors they are prone to make.
Students seeing their own written responses next to the correct ones in exercises should provide invaluable guidance in the ways that their spelling can be improved. Of course, there in no guarantee that students will conscientiously work their way through such exercises once they are outside our jurisdiction, so to speak, it is hoped that they will react positively once the benefits are shown in the classroom. In any case, only those students who are really motivated to improve will do them anyway.

Dictation gives students practice in comprehending and transcribing clear English prose. This is important because we have all encountered awkward sentences in textbooks that are not good models of English writing, or raise grammatical, syntactic, or semantic questions that are not the point of the exercise to begin with. One example from a rather famous source: "When you receive a request like that, you cannot fail to obey it." This was in a textbook for a pre-intermediate class and came without a footnote to aid the student.

This point may only be marginally applicable to us, using in-house materials, as most of us do, but some of the English in our textbooks may sound awkward to native users without necessarily doing so to non-native users. It is important for students to hear as well as read a standard version of English, supposing there to be such a thing.

Dictation gives students valuable practice in note-taking. Students may already be in courses in which they must take notes of lectures delivered in English at normal speaking speed. While no one should take lecture notes that are exact transcriptions, learning to write spoken language quickly is an essential college skill.

Notetaking is a core competency and a valuable addition to a student’s inventory of sub-skills, and while we may teach techniques and strategies to recognize the signposting of information, students still have to comprehend what is said in situations in which both the language used and the information conveyed by it are unfamiliar. Regular dictation exercises will help students’ recognition of super and supra-segmentals in the lectures that attend.

Dictation gives practice in correct forms of speech. Note: We have all read student compositions with grammatically correct sentences that are not correct forms, for example - She is a surgeon of hearts or He is a good cooker.
Any attempt to improve our students’ grasp of vocabulary has to help; the comprehension of pronunciation of words in a foreign language, particularly in the English language, is problematic and difficult; the apparent lack of any regular correspondence between spelling and pronunciation of English words in isolation is compounded in connected speech. Students need to hear and understand authentic speech patterns in a systematized way that ensures full comprehension later in faculty.

Dictation can help develop all four language skills in an integrative way.
How many of the methods we employ can make that claim? Many of our lessons give scant importance to at least one of the four skills. A writing lesson may well employ texts to be read, but how many dwell on the spoken variety or its comprehension; at best, all a student gets in these is the teacher’s instructions before starting a particular task.

Dictation helps to develop short-term memory. Students practice retaining meaningful phrases or whole sentences before writing them down. Having given dictation exercises, I have been made to realize how little students can retain whilst listening is in progress. It is almost as though more water is being added to an already full cup; some has to be poured out in order to make room for more to be added. However, I have also found that as students are introduced to more and more dictation exercises, their ability to both forecast what is coming and to retain what has already been said increases rapidly and noticeably. Both abilities point to evidence of an increased familiarity with the language.

Dictation can serve as an excellent review exercise.
Once a passage has been dictated, much valuable work can be done in getting students to ‘notice’ their own errors on the page they have just written; what happens is that many students come to recognize their errors by virtue of the positioning of items in sentences – parts of speech, for example, as well as equally obvious things like verb tenses.

Dictation is psychologically powerful and challenging.
The concentration required to ‘keep up’ with the dictation exercises in class, together with the pressure to keep up with everyone else listening to the passage ensures that exercises are totally enveloping, meaning that once begun, they ‘take over’ the class, and thus at once become a challenge that all face together. It is my experience that students listening and writing to something being dictated become absolutely absorbed in the activity, a point which leads on to the next in this series.

Dictation fosters unconscious thinking in the new language.
Since dictation, even at its sometimes funereally slowest, forces students to engross themselves in the target language, not having time to go through native language equivalence to assist themselves. If the students do well, dictation is motivating. At first, if not paced appropriately, or if too much of the vocabulary is unknown to students, taking part in dictation exercises can be very stressful and too demanding. It is important, therefore, to grade passages for complexity and for the ratio of new, unknown words to known ones. Once students begin to get used to voice levels and speed, success follows, which, even partially is a great motivator.

Dictation involves the whole class, no matter how large it is.
It goes without saying that dictation exercises must involve everyone in the room, although with more advanced classes, a sort of mixing of passages would be very advantageous, particularly since much natural language heard in vitro, is not heard in isolation.

During and after the dictation, all students are active.
Activity is intense at every stage of dictation exercises; heads are down whilst students are listening, of course, but afterwards, in reviewing what has been written, and in striving to turn it into an acceptable form to teacher, written up on whiteboards for all to see and scrutinize.

Correction can be done by the students. This is vital; it is in finding mistakes and attending to them that students learn. Peers can help here and usually do, with a sort of instinctive class consensus operating to bring slower students up to scratch.

Dictation can be prepared for any level.
Dictation can be as complicated or as simple as is appropriate for the level of students. At elementary levels, single words can be produced, going on gradually to more connected speech.
The students, as well as the teacher, can get instant feedback if desired.
The feedback is built into the exercises (this applies to online exercises too), and indeed, students become used to actually wanting to know the correct form.

Dictation can be administered quite effectively by an inexperienced teacher. The nature of dictation exercises, although fairly simplistic in their operation, do make demands upon the teacher; oration must be loud and clear, but as importantly, must not proceed at an unnaturally slow speed since connected speech is disturbed and radically altered by too slow a delivery. Shortened forms, for example, are often removed if delivery isn’t paced at a ‘natural’ pace. Giving dictation is straightforward, in terms of procedure, but reading out loud is not as easy as it might sound.

While dictating, the teacher can (in fact should) move about, giving individual attention. This is a matter of opinion, although moving round the classroom could mean that students sitting in the far corners get more exposure to the dictation than would be the case were the speaker to stand on one spot.



Dictation exercises can pull the class together during the valuable first minutes of class. Once a dictation exercise has started, in my experience, latecomers quickly fall into step without the need to stop and disrupt the concentration of others.

Dictation can provide access to interesting texts. The variety of texts that can be used is virtually infinite; students of literature might benefit from hearing Shakespeare or Joyce, whilst students of the sciences would most definitely benefit from their hearing words that are rarely spoken in everyday speech – words that are common in certain disciplines might be rarities in common parlance.

Knowing how to take dictation is a skill with "real world" applications. Many jobs demand accurate understanding of spoken orders (phone agents, dispatchers, administrative assistants, etc.). Also, the U.S. citizenship exam requires examinees to take a dictation. The advantage of being able to quickly, easily and correctly comprehend what is being said in any given situation is obvious; all too often, people who profess to know the language fall down when it is spoken for longer than the simplest of utterances.

Dictation can be a good indicator of overall language ability; it can be used in testing. Dictation exercises lend themselves to standardization and repeatability; two qualities essential to the production of examinations that accurately test what they set out to do, and give reliable and verifiable results to examiners and examined alike.
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Alkire-Dictation.html

Links
1. Learn English Network - http://www.learnenglish.de/dictationpage.htm
2. Handouts - http://www.smic.be/smic5022/handoutsgrammarand.htm
3. Using picture dictation - http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Ieong-Dictation.html
4. Interactive dictation exercises - http://ressources-cla.univ-fcomte.fr/english/listen_index.htm
5. Real English Interactive Dictation Exercises (beginners) - http://ressources-cla.univ-fcomte.fr/english/dictations/realenglish/realindex.htm
6. Homophone spelling exercises - http://spelling.wordpress.com/2007/08/09/dictation-exercises-homophone-spelling-practice/
7. Dictation Practice - http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/hist455/dictation/index.htm

References

Davis, P. and M. Rinvolucri. 1988. Dictation: New methods, new possibilities. p. 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Frodesen, J. 1991. Grammar in writing. In Teaching English as a second or foreign language, Ed. M. Celce-Murcia. p. 268. Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.
Robert L. Fielding

The hidden treasure - Oxford English Reference Dictionary (ISBN 0-19-860652-4)

Pick up any tome in the bookshop in Al Jimi Mall and get it priced – you could be surprised – many prices have been slashed and not re-labelled. I picked up the Oxford English Reference Dictionary for a song recently.

Looking through it reminded me of being given an encyclopedia or an atlas when I was a kid. The Appendices at the back are an amazing collection of facts and figures – stuff to ponder over without the labour of committing anything to memory.

The full atlas right at the back is always nice to look at – Cairo is farther north than Lhasa – Edinburgh farther West than Bristol – that kind of looking!

Go to Terms for Groups of Animals on page 1747 and be delighted again by the novelty of English collective nouns – ‘a shrewdness of apes’ – ‘a blush of boys’ – ‘a drunkship of cobblers’ – and my favourite – ‘a superfluity of nuns’!

On the other pages, you can see how many US Presidents you can name, or Prime Ministers if you’re a Brit, learn Braille or the alphabet for the deaf, name the principle planetary satellites (Ganymede et al), thumb your way through the Periodic Table of Elements, or go down Victoria and her descendants, from the great lady right up to date with Wills and Harry!

Or you can use it as was intended to be used, as a dictionary. That’s the fun of a book like this – it knows so you needn’t!
Robert L. Fielding
242 words
 
Using Occam’s razor sparingly: exercising judgment in thinking


 You have been reading up on a topic, and you have to write an essay about it for homework.
 You are reading about an unusual event and you want to know why it happened.
 You are curious about why some people behave the way they do.

Deciding what to write about, what is important, and reaching meaningful conclusions about the causes of certain events, or coming to understand the human condition and what motivates people, are all difficult things to do.

There are so many theories, ideas, and slants. There seems to be so much information on any given topic, that reaching the right conclusions rather than jumping to them is difficult, if not impossible.

There are ways to reach sensible conclusions, and realizing that there may not be any right answers to complex questions is one such way. There are sensible, plausible answers, but most of the time, there is rarely just one answer that is absolutely correct.

The physical sciences seem to represent the closest we get to ‘right’ answers, but any scientists will tell you that what is considered correct only applies at a certain level of analysis.

In the mosaic of information in other subjects, much of the information actually conflicts, and we know that statistics can be manipulated to prove anything, don’t we?

A friend of mine was recently informed by a doctor that his apparent deafness was due to a spinal degeneration that was limiting the amount of blood getting to the ear. Another doctor examined him and told him he had an ear infection from swimming in water that may not have been chlorinated enough to prevent contamination.

He accepted the latter diagnosis. The question is: Was he right to do that? Was he right to accept the diagnosis that he most wanted to believe?

He accepted the simplest explanation. He used the principle known as ‘Occam’s razor’ to decide what to believe. He had a vested interest in so doing, and indeed, who wouldn’t want to believe the second explanation rather than the first?

Occam’s razor states that: ‘One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.’ It is similar to the principle of parsimony or the principle of simplicity, which is a criterion for deciding among scientific theories or explanations.

‘One should always choose the simplest explanation of a phenomenon, the one that requires the fewest leaps of logic.’
(Principia Cybernetica Web)

In plain language, the simplest explanation is most probably the correct one, given that all the facts have been dealt with, the logical principle put forward by William of Occam, a medieval English philosopher.

Here is a real life example of Occam's Razor in practice.

(1) Crop circles began to be reported in the 1970s. Two interpretations were made of the circles of matted grass. The first one was that UFOs had made the imprints. The second was that someone had used some sort of instruments to push down the grass. Occam's Razor would say that given the lack of evidence for UFOs and the complexity involved in UFOs arriving from distant galaxies, the second interpretation would be the simplest and therefore the one most likely to be correct.

Of course, both explanations could have been wrong, but again, the second was by far the simplest, and so, applying the principle of Occam’s razor, would be the one most likely to be correct.

More evidence would be needed before the first one could be accepted. In fact, two people later admitted that they hade made the circles, corroborating the second explanation.

For a given set of observations or data, there is always an infinite number of possible models explaining that same data. This is because a model normally represents an infinite number of possible cases.

Evidence is critical in judging competing explanations where otherwise inexplicable events are concerned.

We talk about reaching conclusions, and we talk about jumping to conclusions, and while it is true to say that the latter is usually applied to more day to day matters, it is also true to say that reaching conclusions based upon examination of sound evidence is always preferable to jumping to conclusions, or reaching a conclusion before any attempt at examining all the evidence has been undertaken.

Acceptance of a proposition based upon incomplete evidence is known as prejudice. To be honest though, prejudicial behavior is usually displayed in connection with issues that concern people rather than, for example, with scientific phenomena.

Nevertheless, if we were to invariably accept the simplest explanation as being the nearest one to the truth, or to reality, then we would be guilty of habitually ignoring potentially important data just because it complicated the issue or because it was not presented initially.

A complete, in depth understanding of complex issues or equations demands that we examine all the relevant data before we pass judgment or define something, or decide upon something.

The principle known as Occam’s razor is most helpful in helping us to limit the amount of data that is relevant to our understanding of a particular topic.

It is the awareness of the existence of other variables that is necessary, along with deeming them relevant or otherwise.

In this age of the information super-highway, the Internet, it is those who are able to select relevant data and use it sensibly who will be more successful, and a plethora of information increases the difficulty of being able to do that.
Robert L. Fielding












 
Drama in Education – a workshop for teachers
October 8th, 2008
The well attended workshop, ‘Drama in Education’ provided teachers with a lot of techniques to engage our students and immerse them in language in ways that are non-threatening.
Drama in education, surely a misnomer in this case, is always useful in the language classroom. Helen Wheelock and Steve Elm outlined and supervised many valuable activities, nevertheless.

Operating out of The City University of New York, Helen and Steve brought enthusiasm, knowledge and humor to the evening, getting teachers on their feet for a well-known ‘cross the street if you have done this’ warming up activity.
Addressing issues such as initial reluctance to use English, they showed how activities could be tailored to become non-threatening – the use of teams was one of the ways offered, and in general, the stress was on the whole group acting together in ways that drew out bolder students whilst encouraging those less so.

The use of storytelling activities was enlarged and illustrated and ended a very productive and enjoyable evening. Let’s hope the Creative Arts Team can be prevailed upon to return with some of the many other programs they deliver to educators.
Robert L. Fielding

 


Debating online
by

Robert L. Fielding

Debating issues is an important tool in learning English. Taking part in a debate, a person must have the linguistic ability to generate topic questions, provide answers to supplementary questions and move the debate along.

Students have to write essays, and although the discourse patterns of a debate are somewhat different from those of an essay, there are benefits to be had from speaking in debates that ‘spill over’ into writing about similar issues.

I recently attended a debate given by university students. The topic was, ‘The house believes that the increase of using celebrities in promoting products in television commercials has positive effects on the economy.’

Addressing the issue, the pro- team mentioned that sales of many famous products are increased because they are promoted and endorsed by celebrities, while the opposition moved on to question whether pop stars and footballers should really be offering advice on products that may be harmful to consumers.

The debate did go off topic at times, and would have been somewhat nearer, I felt, if the question had been specifically addressed at the beginning. It was very clear that some more preparation was needed, as well as definite stands on explicit grounds by both teams.

However, debating is not an easy thing to do and I felt that much was learned in the process. Even advanced ones like the students can benefit from practice and tuition.

Debatepedia (http://wiki.idebate.org) is a wiki encyclopedia project of the International Debate Education Association (http://www.idebate.org/ ), itself a useful site. Debatepedia allows users to improve their ability to think through complicated issues. The site is endorsed by the United States Forensic League, and provides anyone with a platform from which to debate any topic. The site is regulated by responsible moderators who inspect the content of any topic to ensure that appropriate, ethical standards are maintained at all times.

It is secure and requires users to log in and provide a valid email address (for administrative purposes only). The site provides users with the opportunity to both initiate debates as well as take part in existing ones created by other users.

Many topics in areas such as Global Priorities, Philosophy, Economics, and Education, Culture, and Science are featured and can be accessed easily. Such content should go some way to initiating students into some of the conventions of debating, as well as spurring them on to thinking issues through for themselves.

I do recommend teachers to take a look at it, work out how to use it fully and what it contains, and then introduce it to their students. Later, once groups of students have logged in, debates could take place between friends, as well as others, of course.

It is a useful, online tool that presents no dangers whatsoever, only seeking to open young minds to issues that are real ones that concern real people.
Robert L. Fielding
 
Avatar – not so much a film, more a movie experience
Robert L. Fielding
Go and see Avatar (162 mins) – don’t miss it. Ignore the hype – it is good – not just good, it’s almost a phenomenon – well, actually it is – the biggest box office receipts of all time – as soon as the cameras roll – if they are cameras that are rolling – like Strawberry Fields, nothing is real, but unlike them, there is plenty to get hung about, and the most visually fantastic film other reviewers have ever seen – apparently!

Set on the planet, Zog (who cares?) the ‘Sky people (US, who else?) are on the planet to mine some fabulously expensive mineral (whoknowsium), and boy do they have the stuff to get it - brain downloaders – human to humanoid (Avatar) – to do the demanding, highly dangerous work of extracting without being eaten.

Jake, a young man in a wheelchair, gets his mind transferred into his opposite number on the ground, who gets befriended by the chief’s daughter – blah – blah – blah – a shoot out ensues, and guess what, the hi-tech guys lose out – big time, and are politely escorted to their waiting means of leaving that particular galaxy.

It’s a film about colonization, exploitation, a foreign presence in a foreign/alien land, it’s a love story, it’s a cautionary tale of the future exploits of a global power with a need for something inexplicably valuable, but otherwise totally believably costly.

Not since the film about dinosaurs roaming Jurassic Park have I sat with my mouth agape for nearly three hours – now that’s remarkable.
Robert L. Fielding
 
The needs of partially sighted students: Special needs workshop
September 21, 2006
Led by Caroline White-Gottsche
UAEU/UGRU
Like any university or school, UAEU has some students who are partially sighted, defined as people with ‘best corrected visual acuity of 20/70 or less in the good eye (http://www.low-vision.org).

Beginning with a profile of a typically partially sighted student, Caroline mentioned that there are degrees of visual impairment in our students, from the totally blind, to those able to read with difficulty, with the help of specially designed equipment.

The University’s Zayed Centre for Special Needs Building 71 has such equipment. Open 7.30am - 4.0pm, the centre has many facilities: Clearview Spectrum, which enlarges print: Supernova: Ibsar - computer programs that read out text - both devices ably demonstrated Nouma and Salma.

Special needs students in UGRU are offered three hours teacher tutoring and one hour peer tutoring. Student Services had initiated a “mentor scheme”, still in its inception, involving students volunteers working with special needs students and teachers to help them prepare class materials.

Workin in smaller groups, teachers outlined their expectations of areas of teaching with students with special, visual needs, comparing them with students’ own stated expectations.

Every group reported that providing clear, written assessment of the specific nature of the needs of individual students before any teaching commenced would assist them.

Teachers added that little training was provided beforehand, and consequently felt that their students were not getting the help and assistance necessary in the classroom..

Some said there was little time to devote to such students at the expense of time for other students, and that such students often had to rely on classmates.

Caroline said that having partially sighted students integrated into normal classes was in fact much more preferable, because once in faculty, students were not given the support they receive in UGRU and often left alone to cope. Lisa Barlow said students also acquired social skills in the classroom; another reason to integrate them into normal classes.

Students often expected their teacher to provide everything, while others said partially sighted students were often too self-conscious to use their own equipment in class, or to be treated differently.

Teachers agreed that providing students and teachers with pre-course training would benefit all; that if such students are accepted into the university, they should be given clear guidelines on how they will be accommodated.

Dan Niles mentioned the Hadley School for the Blind - http://www.hadley-school.org/Web_Site/Hadley-School.asp which is free, with details of courses, fun events, support, resources, and useful links.

The Centre for the Partially Sighted at http://www.low-vision.org/ also carries services on counseling, rehabilitation, and low vision evaluations.


Normal vision Central field loss

Multiple field loss Tunnel vision

Blurred vision Distorted vision
http://www.low-vision.org/?dispage=10&PHPSESSID=03b5a3bf227280b0e1622a59053b95cc


Links to other very useful sites include the following:
1. http://www.paisley.ac.uk/specialneeds/support/visual-impairment.htm#student
2. http://www.as.wvu.edu/~scidis/text/vision_impair.html
3. http://www.unicef.org/teachers/forum/0300.htm
4. http://www.tsbvi.edu/math/
4. http://www.glc.k12.ga.us/trc/cluster.asp?mode=browse&intPathID=3366
5. http://www.swinburne.edu.au/stuserv/counselling/resource.html
6. http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1999/7/99.07.06.x.html#f

Much needs to be done to help students with special needs, to ensure that they do not suffer from our ignorance of those needs and how best to help them get the most out of university.
Robert Leslie Fielding
 
Differentiating instructions for diverse learners
A talk given by Dr. Sana Tibi
Dept of Special Needs
Thursday 12th October 2006-10-12


Beginning her talk by asking about the expectations of teachers present, Dr. Sana Tibi spoke about adaptation, adjustment, accommodation, modification and learning styles for teachers with diverse learners, as well as outlining strategies for teachers.

For example, dealing with teaching vocabulary, she spoke of providing multiple exposure to words, practice, focus on idioms and developing a word bank, as well as using visual organizers.

Dr. Tibi differentiated what is taught, from the process of teaching it, and testing students’ mastery of what has been taught, as well as their learning environment in the classroom; for students with hearing impairment, students should sit where they can best hear what is going on, without any other noises to distract them. For hearing impaired students, seating was also important, as well as lighting and quality of visual aids general.

Stressing that, “One size does not fit all!”, Dr. Tibi urged teachers to accommodate students by providing access to curriculum and instruction, although admitting that no changes in content can be expected at the university.

However, teachers could vary the amount of material covered, vary the format to
take into account students’ varying needs, supplement materials in more visual modes, for example, and use alternative materials where necessary and appropriate.


Dr. Tibi differentiated between low and high impact accommodation: the former included things like adjusting teaching methods, and implementing cooperative learning into classrooms, with the latter including changes in curriculum design, and adjustments in the structure of educational programmes.

Dealing with individual students, Dr. Tibi began by determining whether a student’s problems come under “I can’t” or “I won’t”, and added that changes in methods and materials should only be made when absolutely necessary.

Since there are cultural norms regarding people with special needs in any country, Dr. Tibi stressed the need to be alert to students who appear to have special difficulties, and be aware of students who may not have such needs.

At the moment, with knowledge about how best to provide tuition for such students, Dr. Tibi pointed out literature available as well as websites to help teachers in what can be a difficult area of their profession: differentiating their instruction and their materials, goals and objectives while maintaining academic standards for all students enrolled in courses at the university.
Robert Leslie Fielding

 
An afternoon in the Global Village, Dubai

By

Robert Leslie Fielding


The Global Village opens its doors at 4 in the afternoon. Getting there at that time is easy - the sun is still too high in the sky for most people. Still, a little crowd of people wait for the green uniformed security guards to nod and let them through.

The little crowd at the gate soon disappears in the morass of pavilions inside. The Pakistan pavilion is nearest the gate. We walk in but a lot of the stalls aren't ready for us - men are busy unpacking crates and setting out their stalls.

Next to the Pakistan pavilion is the Yemeni one - full of jewelry - most stalls displaying more or less identical stuff. Luckily, there are benches just outside the doors of each pavilion. I sit and wait for my wife and her friend - jewelry and women go together, don't they?

With time to look around, I watch the punters - two children facing each other in a wire shopping trolley - a worker with a pile of crates so high that he can't see where he's going - a man's hat blows off in the wind that has suddenly got up. The Global Village is located in the middle of the desert, and deserts are windy places - sometimes.

The pavilions have distinctive, very different styles - Doric columns for the façade of the Greek pavilion, a fortress for the Palestinian one, and a pagoda for Cambodia - painted polystyrene, I discover upon touching the brown wall of the Yemeni pavilion.

Each country proudly parades something of itself - dazzling photos of Iranian walled cities and holy shrines - elephant tusks twenty feet high for Kenya - a yurt (nomads tent) for the republic of Kyrgystan - Big Ben and Buck House for the UK - a giant maple leaf for Canada.

Music fills the air, and punctuates the call to prayer - the hum of conversation reminds us that the place is filling up as the sun starts to set - the temperature is dropping too - another reminder that evening has come.

Still the stallholders shout their wares in a panoply of colours and a hum of noise - the din that is the Global Village's last few days until next year.

Australia's pavilion without a "G'day, mate" to be heard anywhere. Languages mix in the heat that is slowly evaporating into night. Guttural sounds of Arabic, high pitched Thai, Chinese people talking naturally but sounding annoyed with everything in their frenetic sounding, furiously paced language.

Above our heads green flags flap, wishbone street lamps waver, ubiquitous Pepsi signs rumble as the wind blows in off the dunes that stretch out to the sea shore.

There are occasional glimpses of the world we have left. Between the stalls and the tents, over the heads of locals trailing whites and blacks, I see the highway that brought us here - still busy - bumper to bumper, fire hydrants, containers stacked two high, bins full of the rubbish of buying and selling - eating and drinking, the mayhem that is the Global Village a minute after the sun has finally set.

At 7, slightly hungry, the signs direct us to the restaurant area. International cuisine for an international event.
"I don't fancy noodles tonight."
"What about chicken tikka?"
"Sounds OK to me."

We go that way but the smells: kebabs, humus and mint tea tempt us into an Iranian place on the left

We ask for the menu from a waiter who appears as if he's never been asked for such a thing in his life - people know what they want without having to read about it, maybe, where he normally waits on tables.

Mint tea is a refreshing start to dinner that comes with a fresh lettuce stood up on end in the middle of whole green peppers, spring onions, mint, parsley and slices of carrot. The kebabs arrive, not half as appetizing to look at as they appear on the hoardings opposite. Everything is fresh and delicious though.

Making our way back to the Gate we think we used to enter, the pavilions that we missed tempt us.
"Shall we just…?"
"Why not!"

And all too soon the car is moving and we are out of here - for another year, when we'll
return to see some of what the world has to offer us in the Global Village.
Robert L. Fielding
 
Daniel Craig – the new James Bond: Casino Royale

In this remake of ‘Casino Royale’ (145 mins) Broccolli has given us almost a complete make over of the whole 007 genre. No big, lavish sets, no ‘wham-bam’ stuff from the great lover, just a more vulnerable, thoughtful agent than those before.

No savoir faire – well not much, as per Connery, the iconic Bond up until now, no eye-brow raising flippancy a la Roger Moore, the longest serving Bond, and no classic good looks from the ever immaculate head of Pierce Brosnan, but a more human Bond. Sure, he can still punch his weight with the hardest thugs on the movie planet, and he still appeals to token, sultry femme fatales, but a lot has changed.

For a start, a lot of the hallmarks of 007 are being threatened: the shaken, not stirred cocktail gets the ‘Hey, I’ll have a Babycham’ treatment as everybody round the card table orders one.

Later, after a particularly heavy mauling, Bond’s reply to the question, “Shaken or stirred?” is “Do I look like I care!” finally burying the old cocktail cliché forever.

Craig falls in love for real, has a meaningful dialogue with M (Judi Dench) and his badge is under threat from MI5. Broccolli gives us more, by leaving out more: no inane schoolmaster talk from Q, the gismo expert, few gismos, no Moneypenny waiting faithfully at her desk while James propels his headwear nonchalantly at the hat-stand, and no memorable villains.

No equivalent of Oddjob, or Jaws, and no Goldfinger, Bloefeld, Rosa Kleb, Dr. No – no super-villains to help us cheer our hero on to the inevitable end – no total destruction of the megalomaniac’s plans, no ending up on a remote island with the girl.

It’s not just that the Bond movie has another Bond – ‘Casino Royale’ was a noticeably lower budget production – no grand sets, no Nail Island scenes, no Monaco casinos, but instead, Montenegro, a chase through a building site that reminded me more of Tarzan and Harold Lloyd than 007.

Don’t get me wrong – the fights were as good as ever, the chases - through the cranes and superstructures of half built hotels, were heart stopping, lightning fast and spectacular, but they were not full of what we have come to expect – cars that turn into boats, volcano craters that hide rockets, underground cities full of monorails. But I liked it the better for that.

We saw the real Bond, superfit – tough as old boots - sometimes caring - but vulnerable too (he almost died) without being too smooth or verbose – he even had to win the Aston Martin in a card game, for goodness sake.

Some things don’t change – the baddies were current baddies – not cold Soviets, megalomaniacs with wild dreams, low life drug barons - thugs from pre 9/11 days - but blokes we could readily dislike – money launderers with connections to international terrorism.

Ian Fleming might be turning in his grave again, but at least they are not using him as a fan anymore.

Robert L. Fielding
 
Danny Deckchair – “d’yuh see it, mate?”

Proving more is not better, Rhys Ifans – the Welsh git in Notting Hill- stars in this Australian TV film that works - Danny Deckchair directed by Jeff Balsmeyer. This is not a genre I usually get on with – the American equivalent where everything is perfect where there is no peeling paintwork on the screen door – no rusting barbie in the yard - no ordinary people next door, Australian TV films seem to do it better somehow.

I think it’s because they leave the semiotics – the non-verbal language of the sign - to the viewer. American film producers try too hard to get it right and in getting it too right, get it all wrong. I don’t want to see immaculately coiffured, already belipsticked people just getting out of bed – not a tussled hair out of place. I want more of how it is first thing in a morning – an unconscious smear of toothpaste on the top lip – that kind of thing.

If the tussling is done by the hairdresser, you can tell it’s designer tussled – that’s how American TV films feel – this was different.

A crazy plot – an unlikely flying deck chair (actually it wasn’t a deckchair at all, but a tatty garden variety) that flies once enough balloons are attached, and Danny leaves his regular life and gets a whole new one two blocks over.

I like to be given the chance to suspend my disbelief willingly – rather than having it taken from me – that’s the American way. The Australian way lets you in to construct part of the meaning – it’s a more socializing event altogether.

The characters help too, you don’t have anything done for you – it’s there; men with brewer’s goiters, mutton trying to look like lamb, cross sections of communities – paparazzi photogs, local losers, manhunters, and Rhys doing what he does best – mistaking mayonnaise for yoghurt – or was that Notting Hill. See, British producers can do it too.

Rhys flying over the Melbourne suburbs was so obviously computer generated that it was fun – it wasn’t overgood.
“It’s obvious, let’s make it look ******** obvious,” you can almost hear the producer bellowing through his cheap loud hailer.

The malevolent, jealous cop never really succeeds, like jealous cops everywhere, I suppose – the sub plot doesn’t take over at any point – a bit unlike reality, but you can’t show everything that could happen. That’s why I enjoyed it.
Robert L. Fielding
 

The Windle map of Hardy's Wessex, 1906.Bertram Windle published a topographical guide titled The Wessex of Thomas Hardy.(This map, courtesy of The Thomas Hardy Association, has been chosen for its relative clarity.)
Thomas Hardy first used the term "Wessex" in his 1874 novel, Far From the Madding Crowd.In reprinting this story for a new edition I am reminded that it was inthe chapters of "Far From the Madding Crowd," as they appearedmonth by month in a popular magazine, that I first ventured to adoptthe word "Wessex" from the pages of early English history, and giveit a fictitious significance as the existing name of the district onceincluded in that extinct kingdom. The series of novels I projected beingmainly of the kind called local, they seemed to require a territorialdefinition of some sort to lend unity to their scene.--- from Hardy's Preface to the novel, 1895-1902

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://members.aol.com/thardy1002/Wessex.jpg&imgrefurl=http://members.aol.com/thardy1001/wessex.html&h=367&w=580&sz=82&hl=en&start=5&tbnid=WYmDtUs79ytlLM:&tbnh=85&tbnw=134&prev=/images%3Fq%3DHardy%2527s%2BWessex%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DG

The place Hardy called Wessex does not exist as an entity, political or otherwise. The area he used as a canvas for his works covers four counties, maybe five: Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, and Somerset.

Back in the days before the 'nanny state' did everything for us and to us, county boundaries would have had little meaning or significance to locals - in much the same way that borders in the Sahara Desert mean little to its inhabitants, continually following the rain to feed and water their herds and themselves.

Hardy's tales made much of origin, but kept it to the differences between town and country, city and market town, rather than between counties.

Since he was obsessed with things like fate and destiny - with the way our lives seem controlled and guided by forces beyond our control - within and without, the rustics and the landowners, gentleman farmers and shepherds of his day fell foul to pretty much the same things, regardless of their geographical origins - unrequited love, coincidence, the blind hand of fate, plus all the usual failings that man is heir to; unrealistic expectations, expectations that are all too realistic, greed, avarice, and passion. Hardy probably felt he had enough clay to fashion his characters from without going too much into anything more global.

His poems are awash with local names; places he would have known intimately, and he peopled these locales with men and women of his own design, and with himself, particularly in his poems.

He writes of Lyonnesse "a hudred miles away" - a name not found on any modern day maps - more likely to be known in the days of King Arthur than more recently.

He gives well known places his own names - Bridport is Port Bredy, Dorchester is Casterbridge, and The Vale of The Great Dairies, the broad sweep of water meadows and river leas to the north of the county town of Dorset.

Go there and pay a visit and you'll find everything you set out to look for: Wellbridge Manor near the village of Wool is still as impressive as it was when Angel Clare left his note under the door - missed, tragically by Tess.

And there is Higher Bockhampton - his birthplace, immortalised in his poem, 'Domicilium', and Max Gate, the house he built in his later, more prosperous days when he was a very famous man.
Robert L. Fielding

 
Lateral thinking - going mad in a sane way

By

Robert Leslie Fielding

Word puzzles give you the chance to exercise your grey matter – to think laterally - “to seek to solve problems by unorthodox or apparently illogical methods” (1)
– to go mad without losing your sanity.


Pop quizzes are sources of conundrums to drive you out of your tiny mind – one goes like this: “Find the well known catch phrases from the clues.”


And then you are given clues that appear totally nonsensical the first time you see them.

Actually, really going mad comes when you are given the solutions to the puzzles you couldn’t work out – you say things like;

“Oh, no, it’s so obvious – why didn’t I think of that?”

And that’s just it – why didn’t you think of it – because you weren’t applying your thinking skills to the real nature of the problem.

Let’s take one of the puzzles and try to define a plan of action. It will help if the solution is given.

So –1. achancen gives an outside chance - get it?


Looking at the letters -achancen – the word ‘chance’ comes out more or less immediately, doesn’t it? Then the letters ‘a’ at the beginning, and ‘n’ at the end strike us as odd – it’s clearly not an English word – verbs like ‘shorten’ and lengthen’ use that ending, but no other words do – I think!

No, it’s plainly not a word – so discount that – and if it’s not a word, what is it? Well, it does mean something, but not in the traditional sense that groups of letters have meaning – you have to look elsewhere for the solution. The ‘somewhere else’ has got to be something that is accessible – producing a phrase or a well known group of words of some kind. If it was not accessible, solving it wouldn’t be a systematic exercise – it would be one that depended on pure chance (pun intended) – on chancing on something – and so, it would be virtually impossible to solve without you chancing to stumble on the answer.

The solution is something that is obvious once it has been worked out – remember the groans, “It’s so obvious ….”

So, taking the word ‘chance’, we get the collocations:

 1. No chance (of)..
 2. Chance would be a fine thing
 3. Not much chance (of)…
 4. Chance your arm
 5. Take a chance (on)..
 6. By chance
 7. Little chance of..
 8. Jump at the chance (of)…..
 9. A thousand to one chance
 10. (Given) a second chance – the list goes on – try adding some more!
 11. ……………………………..
 12. ……………………………..
 13. ……………………………..
 14. ……………………………..

Now, scanning the collocations with the word chance in them, we find no connection between the puzzle and the phrases (1 – 10) – how about the four you provided?

At this point – assuming you go along this path, despair sets in – yet this is the right path – one of the right paths to follow. What you must not do is give up – not yet – you have a little way further to go before you feel you will go mad if you think about it one second longer.

The answer is out there, as they say – it’s just that you are lacking direction – time to use the other letters ‘a’ and ‘n’ in the clue.

The letters ‘a’ and ‘n’ spell out ‘an’ if put together, don’t they. Where does the word ‘an’ appear in relation to the word chance? At either side – yes, but where does that get us. Outside – yes, but – hey, wait a minute – isn’t there a phrase ‘ an outside chance’ - as in the sentence, ‘Man United have only got an outside chance of winning the League this season!’


The words, ‘an’ outside ‘chance’ read as ‘The word ‘an’ is placed outside the word ‘chance.’ in the compiler’s head, in the clue – that is his logic, and it is logical - don’t you agree?

Here are a few more tips:
• Remember that you are trying to find a common phrase – one that is repeated often enough to make it familiar.
• Look for the unusual and make sense of it.
• Consider spatial positioning of words and letters.
• Think of words and letters in ways other than those you are habitually used to thinking of them.
• Match words associated with position to the words in the clue.
• Allow for the possibility that words are spelled in reverse.
• Think of synonyms.



Find the catch phrases from the clues below.
• achancen Solution: …………………
• levi ever ever ever ever wrangler Solution: …………………
• bebushat Solution: …………………
• diaieihiriuioiy Solution: …………………
• tap
----
oak Solution: …………………
• erutuf eht Solution: …………………
erutuf eht
• CoUrt Solution: …………………
• fewfarfew Solution: …………………
• poster poster Solution: …………………
poster poster fa st Solution: …………………
• zero yrrow
yrrow Solution: …………………


Good luck.
Robert L Fielding









Chess: the old and the new

When you think of the game of Chess, you probably think of serious Russians facing each other across a board, their hands hovering over the clock at the side of the board.


The game of tactics so beloved by Russians, Americans, in fact people from every part of the globe was first played in China, India and Persia long ago.

When Arab Moors invaded Persia, they too learned the game and took it to Spain – from Spain it spread quickly though Europe.

Europeans gave the names to the pieces we use today – partly because they couldn’t pronounce the Persian ones. A thousand years ago, these names represented the way people lived.

Pawns represented serfs or labourers – we would call them workers today – there are more of them than any other piece and they are more readily sacrificed in battle, reflecting the hardships such people had to endure.
The castle represents the home or refuge as it did in medieval times. Just why there are two of them escapes me – maybe in the interest of symmetry.

The knight represents the professional soldier who had the job of protecting persons of rank, hence the close proximity to the King and Queen. The knights are more important than pawns but less important than bishops, which you would expect.

The bishops represent the church, of course, and so are central to the game. This is as it was in days of yore when the church was a force to be reckoned with after the monarchy.
The Queen, the only female represented on the board, is the most powerful piece – the power behind the throne, but very powerful in her own right. Alas for many of them, they could be set aside, imprisoned or beheaded. Capture of the Queen does not win the game.

That honour is reserved for the King – it is the job of all the pieces on the board to defend their King. Once he falls, the monarchy does likewise, as happened in reality in medieval times and since. The King is the most important piece on the board, but not the most powerful.
All that applies to this day – battle commences and is won or lost with the capture of the King. It is the playing of the game that has undergone some significant changes; chess has always been played by two opponents sitting facing each other. With the advent of the Internet, two opponents can be poles apart, or they can be in the next room. The online game is played in the vertical plane, one move at a time, remote and yet immediate, depending on your server and your connection to it.
http://scsc.essortment.com/chesshistory_rmct.htm

When you get home, log on to http://www.shockwave.com/gamelanding/emailchess.jsp#None
and follow the simple instructions and see if you can become the UGRU equivalent of the Grand Master. Robert L. Fielding
PATTERNS OF LIFE
by
RAMAZAN TURKOGLU

The pattern of life and I do not just mean the life of my wife, my children,
our family, but I mean the life of our people, this pattern is something bigger
than all of us. It is decreed by the will of Allah who is looking over us, and
so it is right that everything we do reflects his will, in the patterns of our
life.

Birth and death, the joining together of two people, the bringing into this
world of new believers, woven into this pattern of our lives.
Everything around us, above our heads, and below our feet, running through our
veins, coursing in our bodies, is the blood of our fathers, and their fathers,
our ancestry within this same pattern, and this goes on and on.

In our houses, on our floors, where our children play their games in the cold
nights of Anadolu, there are carpets covered with patterns, and these patterns
represent the patterns of our lives, our hopes, our wishes for the future, for
our children, and for their children, and also for this earth which nourishes us
and keeps us, by the will of Allah.

This rug is called by us, naklemi hali, and the symbols that represent the
reality of our spirit on this earth, are harmonious, they express the wish for
happiness, for fertility, and for protection. That is all. What is there that is
worth more than these few words, and what lies behind them? Here, in Anadolu,
where the ground is hard, and the soil rough and stony, the weather above us
cruel and harsh for us that live in this part of our earth, we measure our
happiness, not as some do, by the wealth of possessions, but by the fulfillment
of life, living under a sky, upon a stony land, watching the patterns of life
unfolding daily. A person dies, a baby comes to one of us, this is life,
together in something that is bigger than riches, bigger than personal ambition,
bigger than fine clothes, costly jewellery, but not bigger than a child playing
on a rug, warm, well fed, watching for its mother's smile, a pat on the head
from its father.

On this rug you will find the edges are filled with running water, dragons,
scorpions, and stars. Running water stands for fertility, and purification. It
is good for water to symbolize these things, for that is what water does for our
bodies. It purifies and cleanses, and being pure and clean, we are fertile. Our
womenfolk are fecund, and we, the men of our village are virile and strong. pure
in our love for the one woman in our life, and the children that she bears us.

Dragons and scorpions protect us, for even under the sky, willed by Allah, we
need protection from those who would do us harm. The wild beasts of the
mountains would tear us limb from limb, but being creatures of Allah's creation,
they are free from blame, shameless, and at least they do not defile our names,
that is left to our kind.

The wolves in their lairs, know that we are sad crawlers on the hills, and we
must sometimes go that way to feed our beasts, so that they in their turn can
feed us.

The stars look down, and they are looking even when we cannot see them in our
daylight. They are still watching us, so we find our happiness under the stars,
even under those we cannot see, and so they represent our happiness.

Our children play under the stars, and they play on our rugs, with stars all
around the edges, and with the will of Allah, they will be happy, as we, their
mothers and their fathers are happy.
*Ramazan Turkoglu is a nom de plume of Robert L Fielding
























Lecture by Dr. Rebecca L. Oxford PhD. ‘Learning Styles and LearningStrategies’

8th February Hilton Hotel, Al Ain, UAE

Dr. Oxford of the University of Maryland gave a very interesting and thought provoking talk on students’ learning styles and strategies to members of UGRU, University of the United Arab Emirates, in the Hilton Hotel, Al Ain this afternoon.

I am sure I speak for everyone present when I thank her for what for me was the perfect follow up to a pleasant lunch: some food for thought.

Dr. Oxford talked about learning styles, which she differentiated from learning strategies by saying that styles were largely descriptions of patterns of learning behaviour, whilst strategies she defined as specific actions that learners undertake when learning.

Linking styles and strategies, Dr. Oxford explained that learning styles can help predict students’ learning strategies: That, for instance, a learner with an auditory style - a style in which auditory communication is preferred over say visual, written communication - might practice the English s/he is learning by listening to audio tapes, adding that learning styles are on a continuum, rather than being fixed points of behaviour, as it were. Learning styles, she went on to explain, can change throughout one’s life.

Dr. Oxford identified several key learning styles: Visual/Auditory/Hands-on, Extroverted/Introverted, Intuitive-random/Concrete-Sequential, Synthesizing/Analyzing, and finally Open/Closure-Oriented. Dr. Oxford then outlined typical examples of each type of learning style.

While listening, I tried to locate my own students’ learning behaviour into a particular type, based upon my own intuition as their teacher, and knowing them as I do, and using Dr. Oxford’s terminology.

The question-answer session at the end was a lively one, and was the part that I personally found the most rewarding and enlightening. I am sure many others found it so too.

Many of the questions asked of Dr. Oxford dealt with what I would call the socio-cultural dynamic of our students’ learning environment. In particular, she expressed the idea that teachers should focus upon learning activities that are important to our students in a socio-dynamic sense, and in terms of their own culture.

My own view is that learning is not done in a vacuum, so to speak; that our students go to their classrooms with already learned behavioural patterns, and expectations of what it is they ought to do and what teachers ought to do in the classroom. Much of this is surely conditioned by the time they spend in school prior to coming up to university. We had already been told earlier by our Director, Dr.Abdullah Al Khanbashi, that pupils in schools throughout the region are taught to memorize data, and are probably encouraged by this to think that learning and remembering are the same thing. Of course, this is partly true; if one wants to apply what one has learnt, one must first be able to recall it. However, as is generally known, learning is much more than being able to repeat. To say that I have learned something is to say that I can apply that input to other areas, adapting principles learned to solve a variety of problems.

It seems to me now, with the benefit of Dr. Oxford’s talk today, that we as teachers at UAEU, or anywhere, for that matter, must attempt to remove from students’ minds the idea that learning is the same as merely remembering, and that the outcome of learning is not merely the ability to jump through hoops we place in front of them at the end of semester, and which we term examinations, important though those are.

We should, Dr. Oxford urges us, help students stretch their styles with strategies, help students become aware of their own styles, and honour different styles and strategies. This accords well with the mutual respect needed in our classrooms. We need to remember that even though students may adopt and use different styles to our own, they should not be punished for doing so.

However, for me, the most important point Dr. Oxford made was that learning styles and their different attendant strategies are not merely academic constructs, but are practical ways of getting the most out of a university education, and by this I do not just mean passing examinations, but are also ways of coping with the ever changing environment in which we all live, in and out of university, before, during, and after lessons. This for me was the most important lesson of the day from Dr. Oxford and her timely and welcome presentation. I was able to learn something, and the knowledge that my being a co-learner with my students in my classroom will undoubtedly help me in my efforts to demonstrate by example, that finding out about learning styles is important and worthy of our attention and time in the classroom.
‘That’s entertainment’: Making meaning in films

by

Robert Leslie Fielding

The cinema has become, perhaps after television, the most popular form of visual entertainment in the modern world. Every night, millions of people sit down to watch either a film on TV, a film on video, or else a film on the silver screen, at the cinema.

Cinemagoers walk away from film theatres satisfied with what they have seen, or disappointed, with some taking a sort of neutral view of the film’s quality. All, however, have been in communication with the messages put forward by the film.

Unlike printed text, which uses the word, or music, which utilizes sound, the medium of film uses several different ‘tracks’ to reach its audience. These are image, music, dialogue, noise, and written material. (Bellour) 2000

These five are mixed by the film’s producers to form a ‘language’, though this is not the language of the word, the sentence or the text, but the language of the sign. All five are projected out to the audience, and each of the five constitutes a sign, a signifier, for something else. The language of film is the language of semiotics, the language of the sign.

The term ‘signifier’ is used to denote the physical form of the sign. In a film, this could be a smile, a red traffic signal, dramatic music, a shout, or the words of a letter someone is reading. Each signifies something, represents something else.

A smile might signify happiness, joy or love, but it might also signify a triumph of some sort for the person smiling. Everyone knows that a red traffic light means ‘STOP’. Dramatic music could mean that something important is about to happen. A shout usually signifies danger or pain of some sort, but that might depend on the context in which the shout is heard. Finally, the words of a letter someone is reading on screen use the semantics of language, English, French, or Arabic, for example, in ways that we are familiar with. The word ‘dog’, for example, in the English language, represents the canine species so familiar to pet lovers, and that despite the fact that there is absolutely nothing ‘dog-like’ in the letters of the word D-O-G. The word is also a signifier.

These examples of signifiers and the things they signify, the signified, using real items, the referents, point to several important features of the language of the sign. For the signifiers to represent something to on an audience, they must be sufficiently universal to be fully and quickly understood by everyone watching. A green light that stops the traffic would puzzle everyone, a loud noise usually means that something violent has occurred.

However, it is worth noting that film makers can use these ‘universals’ to some effect. If a person who has just lost a race smiles into the camera rather than frowns, the audience may be alerted to the fact that something out of the ordinary is happening; that the person intended losing the race, for a reason that might become apparent later in the film. In a letter, the word ‘DOG’ might turn out to be code for ‘SPY’, for example, and this points to yet another facet of the sign, that the context in which it appears helps determines its meaning.

A shout heard at a local football match might mean only that a goal has been scored, in a battle, that someone has been mortally injured. Within different contexts, however, a universality must apply. If it does not, that particular use of the signifier would appear either inappropriate, or misleading.

Finding meaning from apparently meaningless events is a very human trait, and the effect discovered by Lev Kuleshov in the 1920s in the former Soviet Union, and after whom it is named, is that two shots shown in quick succession in a film, one after the other, are not interpreted separately in the viewer’s mind. They are interpreted as being causally related. A + B = C, in which A and B are the two shots, and C is a new value that is not originally included in the two shots. (Uhde) 1995.

So, for example, if the first shot is of one showing bombs dropping from a plane, and the second shows a village in flames, the audience will assume that the bombs hit the village and destroyed it.

This accords with that peculiar characteristic of humans; their quest for meaning in otherwise meaningless items. This has its equivalent in language too. Two sentences that appear one after the other will invariably be treated as being causally connected, even though there may be nothing to suggest that.

A: The bombs fell from the plane.
B: The village was completely destroyed..
C: It would be assumed here that the village was destroyed by the same bombs that dropped from the plane. What works on film sometimes works with language too.

In today's films, this is used to great effect, and is reminiscent of film director, Alfred Hitchcock's advice to would be film-makers; "Don't tell, show." This seems to suggest that the five 'tracks' of film language are more powerful when used together than merely the spoken word on film. Even Shakespeare commented that, 'the eye is more learned than the ear,' suggesting that we do indeed learn more from being shown than being told.

In the well known series of James Bond films, for instance, the utter ruthlessness of the villain, be he a megalomaniac or a drugs baron, is depicted not so much by words about him, but rather by scenes showing an unsuspecting former confidant of his coming to a grizzly end in a tank full of piranhas or something equally distasteful and spectacular.

That he is devious in the extreme is shown in the early sequences by the friendly and urbane hospitality he shows to the hero of the hour -007.

The scenes in which he shows his true colours, come as no surprise to an audience expecting some exotic, high-tec form of brutality from Bond's adversary.

Those of us who have seen all those films know exactly what to expect and are never disappointed. In a sense, the 'language' of the film extends a communication to us over several films, and to that extent, James Bond films may be said to be formulaic and predictable. Giving the public what they want, however, works at the box office; sequels sell.

In terms of what the audience bring to the film-theatre, I suppose by far the most important is expectation, the anticipation that what they are about to see on film is the same as what they expect. Trailers, adverts and the almost innate knowledge of the modern cinemagoer regarding the stars as well as the producers coalesce to ensure that all the industry's blockbusters make money.

More unconsciously, audiences bring what has been called the 'willing suspension of disbelief' to the performance and while this is more in evidence and more necessary for audiences watching live performances on stage, it is still a vital part of an audience's participation in the cinema. Some film theorists point to the fact that a three-dimensional image, with depth and field, is projected onto a two-dimensional screen and yet still perceived as being three-dimensional, as evidence that an audience is willing to suspend some of their disbelief. The technology of the film industry giants is so extraordinary though as to render this statement quite meaningless.

In the film 'The Lord of the Rings' for example, the appearance of enormous mammoths in the midst of thousands of fearsome looking orcs does not really require much suspension of disbelief; everyone watching this wonderful film is presumably aware that such creatures do not exist anywhere on the planet. Where disbelief must be suspended initially is in entering Tolkien's world of dragons, dwarfs and hobbits. The total universe of Middle Earth is more subtly projected. An inability to be fully engrossed in this world may interfere with any enjoyment gained from watching the film, or may prevent that person from seeing the film in the first place.

Art is not nature, art holds a mirror up to nature, or so we are told, but it is the holding and in the choosing what part of nature is mirrored that makes film so fascinating and meaningful. The people watching the film in the splendid isolation of the darkened cinema enjoy a form of entertainment in which this one-way communication operates, only bringing to the scene what they can: their participation in the culture in which they dwell, and their wish to know that they are not alone in this world.

It is this identification with the characters in the film that hinders their critical appraisal of it. Bertolt Brecht knew it and took steps to avoid it, but Hollywood revels in it. More identification with the leading character/s sells more tickets. Leave the critical theorizing to Media-studies courses at university. ‘Not a dry eye in the house’ is what every successful film director aims for.

Suspense, letting the audience know something that the person on screen does not know, is one of the many devices used by skilful directors. The screams heard when the woman is stabbed in the shower in the Hitchcock classic; ‘Psycho’ were probably nothing to do with the amount of pain being inflicted by the knife. Audiences cannot really imagine that. The screams were caused by the shock of the situation; the extreme levels of identification with the victim, the feeling of the powerlessness of either the victim on-screen, or the audience off, unable to stop the attack.

Why then do people go willingly to see a film they know, even hope, will terrify them? They are experiencing something out of their total range of experience, and doing it in comfort too. They are alone, even in a packed cinema. Cinema is not a community event, it is an individualized event. In the cinema, the audience is held enthralled, in a way that is rarely possible watching the TV or a video on TV. The film on the big screen cannot be stopped. The drama unfolds with or without your presence, and few people leave in the middle of a film. Now that’s entertainment!
Robert L Fielding
 
The Digital Future: Something to look forward to, or something to fear?

by

Robert L Fielding

Advances in technology produce patterns in the communities with which they interact and into which they become assimilated. Some facet of life is replaced, enhanced, or altered forever, sometimes for the worse. Our ability to predict which of these paths the advance will take on in our lives never seems to improve. What look on the face of it like huge benefits to society often turn out to be less so, to varying degrees.
The advent of the television into our lives, for example, gave us an opportunity to disseminate information, to educate the masses, and to entertain. However, the television, it has been said, is largely responsible for the atomization of society, the breakdown of family ties and traditional forms of entertainment in the home, and worse, the spreading of ideas detrimental to the well being of society in general. None of this was foreseen when John Logie Baird's flickering images first entered our lives.
Where formal education is concerned, the digital 'future' is already upon us. The Internet, we are constantly told, promises to revolutionize education, the laptop computer will enter classrooms changing forever the dynamics of the classroom.
There is no doubt in many people's minds that these advances have indeed the potential to radically alter that way we educate our children, and ourselves.
If, however, these particular advances in technology follow the patterns outlined above, the benefits might be outnumbered by the detrimental effects on our lives as educators and as learners. If computers are going to enter the classroom, will they enhance, replace, or change forever what traditionally goes on inside them ? Or will they have an effect none of us could have predicted beforehand ?
Before such advances are transferred into our lives in the classroom, our motives for wanting such changes should first be examined. Then the things that already happen in the classroom should be considered in order to ascertain whether in fact we want to change them. Do we, for example, want to replace the interaction between teacher and student, and that between fellow students with something else ? Do we want to reduce the importance of books in teaching ? Do we want to alter the individual's private domain ? And last but certainly not least, are we able to say with any degree of certainty whether these changes can be controlled ones ?
The personnel often charged with responsibilities in the decision making process when considering whether or not to adopt such technology in classrooms are usually found to be those people least affected by the changes they so eagerly and persuasively propose.
Technological determinism is not and does not have to be the route educational establishments take, and yet it often is. Having a modern outlook, or just keeping up with new technology, are all poor reasons masquerading as good ones when it comes to the way we talk ourselves into buying new gismos and installing them in places they probably ought not to be.
Consultation, a great deal of thought and research, common sense, and honesty should be the watchwords, rather than ones like fashion and modernity. How we benefit from today's wonderful advances tomorrow will depend on whether we ask the right questions to the right people, and most importantly, whether or not we have the will to say no.
The vexed question of how new technology is going to affect us, however, is not a new one though.
To return, two questions, I have said, need to be addressed. First, why do we want to introduce technology into our classrooms, and second, do we want to change the things that already happen in the classroom ?
The answer to the first depends to a certain extent upon the answer to the second. Part of the answer must surely be though, because we want to improve the quality of learning, and this will surely have implications for the type of learning too. If the answer is anything less than this wish to improve learning, then we should expect other things to be different.
What goes on in the classroom without digital aids? Teachers teach, and students learn, or at least that's what should happen. If this new interface replaces existing ones, can it perform the functions necessary for the conditions of learning to be improved? Here we would need to say that technological innovations would not necessarily replace all interaction in the classroom.
Of the four language skills taught in our classrooms, it seems to me that reading and writing could well be aided by the introduction of computers. This has already happened in many institutions, including our own. What seems to be lacking in many is some sort of check on whether CAL assists learning or not, and if it does, how much and in what particular direction. Does, for example, completing cloze-tests on computer screens improve a student's ability to use those structures in his or her own written work. Merely installing what appear to be learning opportunities does not ensure that they are really of value to learning.
The provision of a spell checker on a computer does not really mean that a student’s ability to spell correctly improves with the use of the device. It may only mean that the learner remembers to activate it at certain intervals in his or her writing. A good thing for one person is not necessarily a good thing for all. Time is saved for those who can already spell, but time is lost for those who cannot. Technological innovations in any field do not of themselves mean improvement in our lives. Remember the TV.
Students' learning styles and teachers' styles of teaching need to be catered for by applications of new technology in education. At present, I think it is fair to say that the former is encouraged by educationalists, while the latter is sometimes actively discouraged. However, if students have different learning styles, then teachers must be both responsive and versatile. Any change in interface between learner and educator would need to be similarly so. Such versatility and responsiveness should surely be possible using new technologies in language classrooms. If this does not happen, it will not be the fault of technology but rather the lack of will to want to install such versatility. For this seems to be a feature of current thinking on the issue, that
some believe that the introduction of computers in classrooms will enable greater control over what happens in them. I equate control with power, the power to impose one's views on others. If those views do not include a wish to retain diversity amongst teachers to facilitate diversity among students, the outcome may be an unintended one. Remember the TV. 1,145 words

Robert L Fielding











SOCIETY, SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE FUNCTION OF ART AND LITERATURE
by
Robert L Fielding

In Britain, as recently as the first half of this century, whole areas of our biggest cities were covered in slum dwellings. Fortunately, most of them have been cleared away, but in Victorian times, arguably the most prosperous period Britain has ever known, large numbers of people lived in conditions that would not have been out of place in some of the poorest countries on Earth. This anomaly, of a fabulously prosperous country in which many of its population lived in conditions of abject poverty, was seen by some as the failure of the system of government, of mercantilism, and of laissez faire politics in general. Out of such a society grew the British Labour party, which pledged itself to implement social reform, which it did on a grand scale; and the birth of the National Health Service, the 'envy of the world' grew out of such social mayhem.
As well as opinions voiced by philanthropic industrialists, some courageous and determined politicians, and the will of the people at elections, a vociferous opinion has always emanated from the field of the arts and literature. Many famous writers have voiced their discontent publicly at meetings and in their writing. Charles Dickens, George Orwell, Robert Tressell, D H Lawrence, H G Wells and George Bernard Shaw were just such writers. Although they lived at different times, came from very different backgrounds, and wrote in widely varying styles and genres, they nevertheless all shared a discontent with the status quo and the apparent inability of those charged with such things to change for the better the lives of those responsible for the country's wealth.
Dickens' 'Hard Times' showed the failings of a society organised along utilitarian and industrial lines, and its almost willful neglect and inability to feed, clothe and house its people properly, despite the vast wealth made by its entrepreneurial classes.
Orwell depicted the squalor of many people's lives in England in his 'The Road to Wigan Pier', while H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw wrote pamphlets and treatises on social, economical and political injustice in what was supposed to be the home of democracy; Britain.
Writers such as D H Lawrence were as much concerned with the spiritual wellbeing of industrial society as they were with the physical living conditions prevalent in industrial areas, while Robert Tressell's 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' did as much to raise awareness of society's ills as it did to encourage the birth of socialism. Many still regard that 'novel' as the major text extolling the virtues of socialism, and that despite it being ostensibly a work of fiction.
The point I want to make is that the literary figures of the day, arguably amongst the more sensitive portion of the nation's population, saw social injustice as a stain on that nation's accomplishments. They saw it as a devaluing of all that was great or good about Britain.
Works of creative fiction can touch people in ways that other forms of mass communication cannot. The messages they attempt to convey are more believable simply because they possess the quality of altruism and grace.
Perhaps more importantly, literature is able to undermine the intellectual base of dominant ideologies, by illustration and example, and thus remove the moral base upon which such ideologies are founded. Examples abound in popular literature; surely there has never been a finer denunciation of the maxim: The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, than Dickens' portrayal of Jo the crossing sweeper in 'Bleak House' nor a clearer condemnation of the love of money for its own sake than is shown by the fate of George Eliot's Silas Marner.
All such works are usually referred to as 'the classics', which is to say that the truths they extoll have stood the test of time. They are no less valid in the latter half of the 20th Century than they were when they were written, and while there is still injustice, social or otherwise, literature is able to confront it, and bring to our notice the fact that nothing is new in the world. Injustice has a history, as do kings and queens.
If a nation is to improve the life chances of its population, then those who are able to visualize alternatives are invaluable. The raising to public awareness of values that are essential to the healthy growth of a nation is vital if conditions are to improve, and one of the main functions of literature is the raising of that awareness in the public consciousness; the messages that literature in general is still capable of conveying.
The world of the visual arts has traditionally been no less critical of the status quo. Within the pre-Raphaelite movement, Holman Hunt's 'The Hireling Shepherd' presents a powerful visual criticism of the Church. The young shepherd disregards his flock for more earthly pleasures, and this image representing a clergy adrift from the values of the people it served had its parallel in poetry; Milton's elegy for 'Lycidas' used the same imagery of the shepherd and his neglected flock to portray a flawed clergy. And so it is that art, visual and poetic has been traditionally used as a means of voicing discontent and criticism of vested interest. Furthermore, this use of art has not been confined to the shores of the British Isles. The years of Stalinism in the Soviet Union had detractors from the world of art, notably in Dimitri Shostakovitch, whose music was denounced as being subversive by the political elite. More recently, Alexander Solzhenitzen and Andre Sakarov condemned the excesses of the regime in Soviet Russia in their writing. In America, Miller's 'The Crucible' provided an allegorical illustration of the folly of the McCarthy 'Witch Hunts'.
There is no doubt that literature and the arts have the ability to bring about change, by means of alternative values entering the consciousness of a people, and by influencing the powerful. The tolerance a nation has for its critics is surely a sign of its health, and that of its people. Doesn't the ability to withstand criticism show self-confidence in one's judgement, and isn't that judgement all the more carefully formulated once it is known that it will be under close scrutiny and subject to criticism. Political decisions that are subject to checks and balances are all the better for it; literature can provide that scrutiny and criticism, and those checks and balances.

Robert L Fielding


 
The Golden Treasury
Chapter and Verse

Robert L Fielding

'Poetry makes nothing happen", wrote W.H.Auden in 1939. I think he was wrong, and I can prove it. If you read the words below, you will find out what I mean. My love of poetry and prose has led me from England, and its dark satanic mills, to explore the world as an English Language Teacher. My explorations have been geographical, taking me to many countries, but most of all they have taken me to literature, the works of the masters; Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, and they have helped me to discover and explore my own writing, my own style, and my own way of telling my own stories. Poetry made this happen. R L Fielding

This book of verse, once opened, leads me through a life that is half over. Innocent and hearty, I read Lewis Carroll, wondering if I would ever see the Jabberwock with eyes aflame on my way home from school on those winter evenings when ice and darkness enveloped my path up the hill to the dancing fire and the roasting smell of my mother's cooking.
Later, standing in rows, our neckties strangling us, we sang,
'Who is Sylvia, what is she?
without wondering in the slightest who Sylvia was, or what she was. We just presumed she was a girl and left it at that. Singing by rote, high and straining to reach Mrs. Smith playing the piano, her face grimacing at our reckless rendering of her favourite song.
And later, listening to 'I wandered lonely as a cloud', we started to hear the words and see the daffodils waving beneath us. All was forgotten though, when, as pupils in pride of place in Miss Schofield's English class, we had to read the words out loud to the whole class, listening and giggling till it was their turn.
With Dot Squash, and later with Fez, we trod the paths through Hardy's Wessex, waited on Egdon Heath with Eustacia Vye for her wild love, Damon Wildeve, come in secret from the tavern below.
Fez, Donald Radcliffe, Mr. Radcliffe to our parents, Sir to us who even adoring him and his booming voice, were petrified when we had somehow annoyed him, Fez made Weatherbury live, made Gabriel Oak a real person to us, and Bathsheba Everdene a real woman, vivacious with a mind of her own, headstrong, some said foolish, and passionate.
Dot Squash, Dorothy Schofield, Miss to us, apples of her scolding eye. She led us, walking alongside Tess to her doom, stopped us from berating Angel Clare for his purity and his foolish, pious pride, remonstrated with us for asking the question, "Miss, didn't Thomas Hardy ever write happy stories?" What did we know of Greek tragedy, or any kind of tragedy, save one of our number running under the wheels of a car one afternoon after school.
Years later, still reading, though with a more alert eye, enjoying less for not being taken in as much, but still enjoying, I traversed a purple moor, stepped through heather and ling, waist deep bracken to a little house on the edge of Egdon Heath, whistling Holst's tune of the same name, I came to Clym and Eustacia's house in the woods. Admiring it through the lens of my Minolta, shutter clattering up and down gaily in the late summer sunshine, a little head poked through a bedroom window, and apologizing for intruding, was invited in to see for myself, Alderworth, the house where the newly weds dwelt before everything started going wrong, Eustacia finally and tragically realizing she had fallen in love with a man who did not exist, the native returned to his heath, but now, after his wandering days were done, content to practise the work of a furze cutter, and the beautiful but willful Eustacia, her raven haired, proud head leaning into the wind coming off the English Channel, dreaming of lands she would never see.
Working up to examinations, looking at university entrance, Shakespeare in hand, the Scottish play, which, not being in the acting profession, we can call by name, 'Macbeth'. Selling petrol at weekends to stay at 'Tech' till I passed, memorizing the 'dagger soliloquy between cars, for Mrs. Christou, who encouraged us with her enthusiasm and her joie de vivre, and her laughing face.
Mr. McCann, a Scot, who did the Guardian Cryptic Crossword everyday whilst eating his sandwiches, leading us slowly through Burns' 'Tam o' Shanter', the words, the accent, the meaning, coming in his rich, ringing tones beneath his bristling moustache.
Discovering Kipling, Wordsworth, and Robert Service in the hushed, warm stillness of Stalybridge Municipal Library, the monologues of 'Nosmo King', Stanley Holloway breathed out on cold mornings cycling to work down Ashton Old Road, each word visible as if I had been exhaling smoke.
The trustees from the toolroom where I worked, wondering about a turner who read poetry in his breaktimes, instead of The soaraway Sun. Struggling with Thomas Mann, wondering if I should even be trying. A different perspective has its distractions and its detractors, all around me it seemed at times till my sister, Gill, reassured me that what I wanted to do was worth doing, and to Hell with the rest. My triumphs are yours, Gill, though I think you already know that, don't you?
And now, forging words of my own, the long journey still not half done, thank God, retracing my steps through Central Asia, recalled to life, Sultan Sancar, and the love of his life, Yasemin, mourning her father, newly buried beneath the hard ground of Mary, across the wastes of Turkoman country, to the land of Anatolia, high, stony, beautiful Anatolia, and to Nazan.
Robert L Fielding

 
The wheel and the microchip

by

Robert Leslie Fielding

Man's most important invention was the wheel, or so I was led to believe at school. In the years since leaving school the wheel has played a significant part in my life, as it inevitably has done in the lives of everyone.

Since the first wheel appeared, in Mesopotamia, some 5,500 years ago, its impact upon the lives of those who used it has been dramatic. Its first uses most probably would have been close to its primary uses today; aiding the movement of something or somebody over some distance, with other uses including the milling of wheat to make flour, for example.

Later, some 4,000 years ago, the henges (stone circles) of Britain were built and used to mark the days of the year, early calendars, and used to study astronomy generally with the portals marking the solstices and the stones arranged in a circle to mark important times in the year. In what was then becoming an agricultural world, seeds could be sewn with some predictability, and crop harvests increased because of the optimum use of the growing season.

During most of the 20th Century, and more particularly in the latter half of it, the wheel figured prominently in the developments that changed the lives of everybody. In the fields of science and technology, in mechanical engineering, the wheel was and still is instrumental in producing everything from the airplane to the knitting needle. Even flat surfaces, toothed racks and the teeth of gearwheels are all generated using the wheel, revolving as a cutter, milling flats and shapes into metal, grinding precision components to dimensions accurate to tenths of thousandths of an inch. The sleek profiled curves of automobiles and planes, and the round plastic surfaces of children's toys are all manufactured using the rotation of the wheel at some points in the manufacturing process. Presses and drop forges make their mark on huge, red hot billets of steel, and gleaming sheets of aluminium and stainless steel, die-casting machinery moulds hot, malleable plastic or alloy into familiar household containers, tubes, bottles and packaging, all using the rule of Pi and its circular derivative creations to complete the pressing into shape of the submissive and ubiquitous substances: iron, steel, plastic and glass.

In the shaping of our landscape, in the damming of rivers, culverting of streams and draining of swamps, and in the construction of bridges, motorway flyovers, canals and docks, the wheel has been and continues to be the prime mover.

Circularity is so pervasive today that is has become part of our thinking. We talk of circular arguments, vicious circles and the like, probably without always consciously realizing the extent that the geometrical shape influences our lives, but a shape approximating to the circle would have only been evident prior to the invention of the wheel because of the natural world: through the sight of the moon and the sun in the Heavens above, and in the shapes of flowers and in cross sections of felled trees.

Similarly, in the related fields of history and culture, the wheel, the circular shape, figures prominently. The myths surrounding Camelot, and King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table have become metaphors for justice and right; forums and meetings are ideally held around round tables. Theatres in the round dominate the cultural life of many British cities. There is something democratic and empowering about the circle, and its utility in the form of the wheel is inestimable; the round table has no corners, and everyone sitting at it has no more advantage due to their position on its circumference than anyone else.

As a concept as well as a shape, the circle is related to revolution, the overthrowing, often violently, of the social order. In Thomas Kuhn’s terms; “political revolutions aim to change political institutions in ways that those institutions themselves prohibit.” (Kuhn 1962) Essentially, in simpler terms, the coming to the top of those that were formerly underneath, the underlying principle of the circle and the wheel, and this suggests the principle of 'catastrophism' (Palmer 1999), which assumes that conditions on Earth during the past were so different from those existing at the present that no comparison is possible.

Similarly, in terms of scientific revolutions (Kuhn 1962), the concept of ‘catastrophism’ also seems to apply more closely to developments in the advance of scientific progress. In Kuhn’s own words, a scientific revolution occurs “when an existing paradigm ceases to function adequately in the exploration of an aspect of nature to which that paradigm itself previously led the way.” (Kuhn 1962)

Finally, in mathematical terms, the circle remains an unfathomable puzzle, with the ratio between circumference and diameter evading a truly definite, absolute value, pi.

Now, when half the world has moved away from primary industries such as mining, and even partly away from manufacturing, to tertiary, service industries, pride of place is given to the center of the technological revolution, the microchip. The wheel is still as useful as it ever was, but in a world where the movement of information is dominant, it has virtually no place. For in terms of anything substantial moving along the so called ‘information super-highway’ and telecommunications generally, little in the way of physical material actually moves. The advent of the microchip clearly marked new ground in terms of what had gone before it.

For Daniel Bell ('The Coming of Post-Industrial Society'), and other writers such as Alvin Toffler ('The Third Wave', 'Future Shock'), the tertiary/post-industrial phase is characterized, not by man overcoming nature (primary industry) or man overcoming the man-made world (secondary manufacturing industry), but by overcoming man himself, putting curbs and checks on ‘human nature’, and using it in fields such as marketing. In this last ‘conflict’ the microchip is arguably as important as the wheel was to those who invented it and subsequently came to use it.

There is something as mysterious in the microchip as there is in the circular form, particularly to the uninitiated. The chip is a marvel of miniaturization, and the functions it can perform are staggering, but the dimension that is truly amazing is the time taken to perform an operation. With miniaturization has come the furious pace of micro-processing.

Consequently, in terms of what has gone before, the spectacular changes in velocity and range, made possible by the advent of the micro-processor, amount to or will amount to, in retrospect, something more closely related to the principle of 'catastrophism' (Palmer ibid.), and while that notion is generally applied to the geological formation of the planet, it is a useful concept in any explanations relating to the history of the wheel and the micro-processor. Social and historical commentators looking back on the events that surround these two technological developments, viz the wheel and the microchip, may well come to view the history of them in precisely that way.

The other major differences between the two inventions are the visibility or otherwise of each event, and the dissemination of each. With the wheel, the concept of rotation would have been well known, visible and logical, and thereafter the wheel would have become freely available to those needing it, in the area in which it came into being. The introduction of the microchip, on the other hand, involved relatively small numbers of specialists with technological expertise and access to certain resources not freely available, and the invention would not have been 'visible' to those not involved, and nor was it freely available initially, being protected by patents and by secrecy.

The massive, almost cataclysmic change in the temporal velocity of the processing of data made possible by micro-processors is most easily demonstrated by the following comparison. At a time when England was most productive, the Victorian era, when manufacturing industry was in its heyday, and virtually everything produced had the words ‘Made in England’ stamped on it, the cutting of material into the shape of a gentleman’s jacket was dramatically speeded up by the introduction of powerful and accurate presses that had been modified to cut shapes in cloth rather than metal. Thousands of suits could be cut daily, removing the onerous task of cutting each one by hand.

By the time the micro processor had made its mark on the same process, different sized jackets could be cut just as accurately and far quicker one by one than the multiple cuttings of the heaving presses of Victoria’s age. Furthermore, the machine could be programmed to cut each length to different dimensions, a feat that would need a major re-tooling operation in former days. Many different sized jackets can now be cut individually much quicker than could a single stamping of say twenty uniform sized pieces of cloth.

This comparison of modus operandi may be a simple one, but it is one that can be readily comprehended by those only used to thinking in terms of mechanical movement and limited speed.

In the waging of modern warfare, from the horrors of the Great War in Europe, and more recently, to the ultra high-tech deluge of weapons raining down on those below, the wheel is still a force to be reckoned with. Tanks and guns, tank transporters, personnel carriers, helicopters and planes all rely on the predictability and certainty of the wheel. Shells and bullets fly more accurately and deadlier to their targets because of rifling in circular barrels. However, now, instead of a speeding bullet or shell going in a straight line, we have the so called ‘smart bomb’, which is directed to its target by computer, turning right and left as the need arises. The rifling in the circular barrel suddenly has much less importance.

For this is the nature of the world we inhabit, and in which the microchip holds sway; one in which a once productive sector of the economy has become virtually extinct, and with it, a significant proportion of the working population has found itself in a world it doesn’t understand, nor feels it will ever be able to.

The transition from a world where the wheel was the dominant form/icon to one in which a motionless piece of silica is dominant, has been a swift and unnerving one for many, and a welcome and empowering one for those who can adapt.

Wheels run on tracks, roads and lines, and have probably contributed to perceptions tending to be linear. The directions around which the micro-processor operates, on the other hand, are numerous and have causes us to challenge our ways of thinking, so that now, a more lateral rather than linear approach to the solving of problems is more usual and indeed vital. The old remedies and ways are giving way to a new, sometimes confusing plethora of answers and possible solutions.

Guns still fire bullets out of circular barrels, and four-wheeled tractors still plough land, but in the management and governance of people and how they spend their time, both in and out of the work place, more traditional modes of thinking have given way to what I will call a ‘multi-path approach’ to management.

Now, many more dimensions can be called up and utilized because of the speed and power of the micro-processor, and consequently, people have to attempt to ‘keep up’ or perish as others progress and succeed.

The development in information technology that has changed all our lives, of course, is the Internet. The World is a ‘global village’ and everyone is linked to everyone else. This is not quite true though; perhaps a majority of the people inhabiting the planet Earth still do not have access to clean, running water, proper sanitation or electricity, let alone a telephone connection to the Internet, or a pc to communicate with the rest of the world online.

For many of those unfortunate people crowding round the peripheries of our biggest cities, living in sprawling slums and ghettos, there is little use for the microchip or even the wheel. Manpower, or more usually womanpower, is still the dominant force; without roads or any sort of infrastructure, these poorest areas have little provision for the wheel, none at all for the micro-processor.

The Earth is round, but some of those living on its surface are differently positioned with regard to its wealth and opportunity. The true benefits of the wheel and the microchip have still not reached all four corners of the Earth.

References
Kuhn, Thomas (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions University of Chicago Press
Palmer T. (1999) Controversy: Catastrophism and Evolution Plenum
2, 100 words
Robert L Fielding
Al Ain,
UAE
January, 2004
 
Why we laugh at the things that make us laugh

by

Robert Leslie Fielding

Everybody likes a good joke. We like to be made to laugh, it seems, and we like to make others laugh. Since doctors inform us that laughter is good for us, it is fortuitous that we feel this way. However, just why we laugh, and what makes us laugh is difficult to say.
We laugh at visual jokes, which we call 'custard-pie' or 'slapstick humour', and we laugh at jokes that involve language. Hal Roach, the well known director of silent films was a master of what is termed the 'slow-burn', which is the equivalent in humour of suspense in more dramatic genres. With this form of gag, all the conditions for the outcome/punchline are steadily built up for the audience, with the final denouement happening at the most opportune moment, for audience and protagonist and, most important, the maximum amount of mirth.
'Slapstick', visual stuff, usually involves variations on the man slipping on a banana skin, and as long as nobody gets seriously hurt, we find it funny. Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplain and Buster Keaton were all masters of this form of silent humour. What is interesting about it is that it doesn't seem to wear thin with age. People still find Chaplain, and Laurel and Hardy absolutely hilarious, and that despite the fact that their films are often 'silents', and in black and white, and about things that have changed.
Humour based on language however, does seem to date, and we outgrow certain forms of it. For example, the type of joke appearing in a children's comic might not seem very funny to an adult reader. Here are two examples of this type of joke.

1st man: What do you have for your lunch ?
2nd man: I have a pie. If I'm hungry, I cut it into four pieces and I eat all four pieces.
1st man: What do you do if you're not so hungry ?
2nd man: If I'm not very hungry, I only cut it into two pieces.

And:

Good books: The Haunted House by Hugo First
Falling off a cliff by Eileen Dover

Similarly, puns that were once popular often lose their appeal in later life.

1st person: How did you get that black eye ?
2nd person: I walked into a bar."
1st person: "Did you get into a fight or something ?
1st person: No.
2nd person: Then how did you get your black eye ?
1st person: I told you, I walked into a bar.
2nd person: I still don't understand !
1st person: It was an iron bar.
That might not suit everyone's taste as a funny joke, but then that only serves to make my point; some things are just not funny any more. Here you might argue that the reason why they aren't funny is because they are such old jokes, or are what we call 'corny jokes', which seem to fall under the category of jokes that are unsophisticated, and therefore just not funny.
Jokes at other people's expense have come into vogue, or perhaps they never went out of fashion. Try the following.

"I went into a Turkish baths, took off all my clothes and sat on a chair and went to sleep. When the steam cleared a little, I woke up and discovered I was sitting in a busy Fish and Chip shop."

Some jokes are connected with some of the issues of the day.

Woman: When human organs come to be freely available for sale, I think a woman's brain will cost less than a man's brain.
Man: Why do you think that ?
Woman: Because the woman's brain will actually have been used.

Some are at the expense of certain minorities.

A man from Poloonia goes into a shop and asks for a packet of cigarettes. The person behind the counter says: "You are from Poloonia, aren't you ?" The customer says, "How can you tell, is it because I've got a different accent ?" The shop assistant says, "No, I can tell because this is a chemist's."

And:-

On the day buses in Manchester changed and had drivers who collected the fares from passengers, instead of conductors, a bus crashed into the front of a large store in the city centre. The Police came along immediately, and asked the driver how the crash had occurred. The driver replied that he wasn't sure because he had been on the top deck collecting fares at the time of the accident.

While some seem not to target anyone in particular, and have some charm.

The teacher of Class 2A asked her pupils to write a short essay describing their family pet. Robert and Gillian Fielding, twins in Class 2A submitted their descriptions the following day. The teacher said to Robert, "Your essay is exactly the same as your sisters. The words you used are identical to those your sister Gillian used. Can you tell me why ?"
"That's simple," Robert replied, "same cat."

Some are just plainly ridiculous and perhaps touch our funny bone because of that quality.

"A bandit bursts into a Chinese chip shop and demands the money. The Chinese woman looks at him calmly and asks, "To take away ?"

And we laugh despite the ridiculous nature of the proposition in the joke.

The three men lying in the morgue looked very different. One man had a look of pure agony on his face.
"What happened to him ?" asked one of the attendants.
"He was hit by the 2.15pm to London."
The next man also looked as if had died in some pain.
"How did he die ?" asked the attendant.
"He was involved in a car crash," was the reply.
The third man had a nice smile on his face.
"What about him," asked the attendant. "How did he die ?"
"Oh, him," said the other attendant, "he got struck by lightning." The other attendant looked puzzled. "Why is he smiling then ?"
"He thought he was having his photograph taken," replied the other.

Or:

A man went into the doctor's surgery walking with a limp.
"What seems to be the trouble ?" the Doctor asked. The man lifted his hat and showed the doctor a huge lump on his head.
"A bucket full of concrete fell thirty feet and hit me on the head," he said, in some pain.
"What about your foot ?" the Doctor asked.
"I was standing on a nail at the time, Doctor," the patient replied.

The question still remains the same: Why do people laugh at certain verbal conundrums ? And why do we find such jokes in certain formats funny ? Consider the following formulaic jokes.

How many surrealists does it take to change a light-bulb?
Answer: A fish.

How many psychologists does it take to change a light-bulb ?
Answer: Just one, but the light-bulb has really got to want to change.

Knock, knock.
Who's there ?
Felix.
Felix who ?
Felix my ice cream again, I'll get really angry.

Late arrivals: Mr. and Mrs. Butter and their son, Roland.

What do you call a woman who has just dropped her bus-fare ?
Answer: Ingrid.

Here is a news broadcast; A ship carrying red paint has collided with a ship carrying blue paint in the Gulf. Both crews have been marooned.

Did you hear about the man who thought Sheffield Wednesday was a Bank holiday?

Did you hear about the man who thought that Sherlock Holmes was the name of an estate agent's ?
These last two rely on the listener having some specific cultural background, while the one about the ships depends on one word having two meanings.
They strike us as amusing because they force us to change our frame of reference, or force us to think laterally in order to see the funny side. The fact that they are in many ways silly and yet still make us laugh, probably indicates that they appeal to a side of our nature that we so often deny in the world we inhabit; the child in ourselves. Now, the fact that some do not find these types of jokes funny, and would never be heard telling them may testify to the amount of self-alienation they have undergone in the name of 'getting on' in the world, and trying constantly to appear rational, sensible and thoughtful.
Interestingly enough, when an adult gets the chance to play with a train set, they often find it easier to excuse their behaviour if it is their own son's toy. Most adult males would probably never own up to enjoy playing with a toy train set, but would play endlessly with their own children's set, justifying it to themselves as showing their kids how to use it.
Humour, particularly the unsophisticated type illustrated above, probably illustrates a similar trait. They are the type of jokes we find hilarious with close friends and relatives, but nothing like as funny when we find ourselves with those with which we wish to create a certain impression.
Some jokes are peculiar to the male of the species. Among these are those jokes we call 'dirty jokes', and while laughing uproariously at them in male company in a public house, we certainly would not find them amusing were they to be told in mixed company.
Likewise, we may laugh till we cry at the type of humour that is made at the expense of a certain minority, and yet be totally embarrassed if that same joke were to be told in the presence of a member of that minority.
The type favoured by me are those that are not made at anyone's expense, but rather depend for their power to amuse on the unusual nature of their endings. A pun, a play on words, a formulaic joke, all fall into this category, and all have one very useful quality. They can be funny or not, but this depends as much on the listener's sense of humour as it does on the humour displayed in the joke. They invite the listener to participate. In the shared act of creating amusement, both find something in common.
Robert L Fielding
1,691 words

 
Do you think that electronics can ever replace man in different fields in the near future?



This question, or a variation of it, has been asked at every different technological age in the history of man on the planet Earth. Can machines replace man? Will man be redundant? Will machines take over?

From the earliest days of the inventions that used the power of water, then steam, and later electricity, and most recently, the power of the microprocessor, the answer has been and will be very similar; in many areas of our lives machines, in this case, computers, will do most of the work. If you visit a car plant in England or Japan, you will find that the worker is largely absent.

In the body plant, most of the work is done by machinery; parts of car bodies are transferred from one machine to the next by either conveyor belts or robots, which
play an important part in the assembly of the car body

Likewise, in the spraying of the body of the car, and in the machining of the different parts of the engine, computer controlled machines do most of the work.

These machines are controlled by computers, and all these computers operate using programmes written by computer engineers.

Computers can do anything, or so we are told. In the world in which we live our lives: whether we are shopping, withdrawing money, or writing to our friends in Australia, everything is helped by the use of electronics.

The answer to the question in the title is most definitely, "Yes, electronics will replace man in most fields."

However, computers cannot feel, cannot love, adore, worship, and nor can they hate, dislike, detest or get even near to having emotions. If they cannot feel, they cannot judge. They cannot decide between two arguments on the basis of right or wrong, at least not in any real, human sense of those words.

All machinery, electronic or otherwise is, as the English poet Kipling once said, "nothing more than the child of your brain." It is our servant, not our master.

Robert L Fielding
UGRU
October 2nd, 2003

Constellations of signification: the crossword compiler’s art

by

Robert L Fielding

The first crosswords appeared in the 19th Century, but the first appearance of a crossword in a British publication was in Pearson’s Magazine in February, 1922, and the first Times crossword appeared on February 1, 1930. Although crosswords appeared first in America, English crosswords developed their own style, and were and still usually are considerably more difficult than their American counterparts. Indeed, the type of crossword we know as ‘cryptic’ is peculiarly English, and so are many of the cultural references and encyclopedic clues in them. However, that is not to say that they cannot be completed by people from other places, and the vast majority of clues are sufficiently universal in construction to be accessible to any user of the English language from any community.

As users of words, we are used to dealing with their meanings, how they collocate with other words, their pronunciation and their spelling. However, when trying to solve cryptic crosswords in newspapers we are often called upon to look at other aspects of words: what they signify as a whole, or what each of their individual letters signifies, as well as their semantic meaning.
The confusion between semantics and semiotics, between meaning and signification, is at the heart of what the compiler does, how he confounds, puzzles, and misleads.

Edward de Bono has coined the term ‘lateral thinking’ to refer to ways of thinking that differ from more ‘normal’ ways. Categorizing items in ways that are unconventional and so leading us to think of alternative possibilities of thinking, is one such way.

For example, if we find the item ‘knife’ in the location ‘living room’ it sounds incongruous. That item is probably more often accompanied by the item ‘food’, or ‘lunch’ or a similar culinary term, and hence more often found in the location ‘dining room’. If neither of these is present, then it might be suggestive of other scenarios. Appearing in a play based on an Agatha Christie novel, for example, it might be associated with the words ‘stab wound’, ‘bloodstain’and labeled ‘murder weapon’. If it does not appear, it may be labeled ‘missing murder weapon’.

Considering the item ‘knife’, it may accompany the item ‘letter to be opened’ in the location ‘living room’, or something akin to ‘makeshift screwdriver’ in the event that the plug on the TV needs a new fuse. And it is precisely this alternative way of viewing items; words and letters that compilers of crosswords utilize to confound and puzzle us in the morning over our tea and toast. Instead of looking for meaning, which is one of the ways we view words, perhaps the main way, compilers use an array of means, more often closer to semiotics than semantics. They use the constellation of significations and associations as well as using ‘meaning’ in its traditional semantic sense, to lure us into their traps. As users of words, we habitually look for the meaning of a word, and it this that causes the delicious confusion in the mornings.

Academics traditionally look for some sort of order to the chaos that is their particular universe.
There is an order to the confusion in crossword clues that appear daily in the newspapers we read, and to substantiate my claim (something else that academics do) I have included a taxonomy of clue types with examples and explanations below. While it is hoped that would-be solvers and even would-be compilers like myself will find it useful and thought provoking, it is admitted that there is no real substitute for doing crosswords; trying to solve them, and looking at the solutions the next day in order to be able to complete one successfully some day.

Conventions, specific uses of terminology, and abbreviation are all common in any discipline. The discipline of the compiler is no exception, and accordingly a list of the more common conventions is provided to help newcomers.

Generally, anagrams are by far the most numerous type of clue to be found in most cryptic crosswords, closely followed by clues in which the whole word appears. Less frequent, but still popular are clues based upon encyclopedic knowledge, clues based around common collocations of words, and clues based upon the sound of a word or letter. Clues that use symbols other than letters, and those that cross word and syllable boundaries are much more unusual, but still worthy of comment and attention.

Conventions in crosswords

Crossword clues are liberally sprinkled with certain conventions, appearing again and again, making them noteworthy here. This list is not fully comprehensive, and you may find ones to add to it. The main thing to understand in thinking about conventionalized pieces of ‘information’ is that they must be sufficiently universal to be understood. Crossword compilers have idiosyncrasies, but they can be recognized with sufficient practice. If you can explain it in rational terms, any crossword clue or any part to a clue is valid; there are no rules except this one.

1. v/c/d/x as Roman numerals
2. weekend = K
3. dunderhead = D/fathead = F etc
4. Fourth of July = Y / air terminal =r
5. middle of week = EE/E
6. Ac = account or bill
7. R = Right/L = Left
8. North = N etc
9. E, G, B, D, F = Notes in music, thus ‘noted’
10. Sapper/engineer = RE (Royal Engineers)
11. Again = re
12. Navy = RN
13. Pound Sterling = L
14. Team/side = eleven
15. banker = river
16. The German = Der/Das

Items associated with the letters of the alphabet, including some common abbreviations associated with each letter.

All standard, well-known abbreviations can be and are used in crossword clues, but the associations of letters with other items are sometimes special, in the sense that they may not strike one as such immediately. Reading the solutions to crosswords does help in this respect. Here are some that readily spring to mind. Be on the lookout for others though.

1. A – article/A1 at Lloyds/A-grade/Grade -A
2. B – bee/spelling bee/B-roads/Bea for Beatrice/Grade B/Musical note
3. C – Hundred (Roman numerals)/ many/see/sea/circa=round about
4. D – old penny/exam grade/note in music/River Dee
5. E - =MC2/east/musical note/East
6. F – Fail grade/musical note
7. G – G-men ( Feds)/GI/musical note/Gee!
8. H – dropped aitches/Ho for house
9. I – eye/I/ego/one/1/upright/perpendicular pronoun
10. J - 1st of July/January/jay
11. K – Kay/Quay/thousand/grand/kg
12. L – pounds Sterling/Hell/
13. M – many/abbreviation of Emma
14. N – North/No/Nil/None
15. O – zero/duck/nil/hole
16. P – Pen/originator of writing (pen)/pea
17. Q – queue
18. R – Right/Aarr!
19. S –/South/plurals/ SS for ship/steamer
20. T – tea for two/to a T/T-junction/T-shirt
21. U – U-bend/corner/up/you
22. V – shape/V/VI/IV (Roman numerals)/V-bomber/V-neck
23. W – West/with
24. X – cross/ten (Roman numerals)
25. Y – fourth of July/last of January/you/Why?/Y-fronts
26. Z – last letter/omega/A to Z/Zoo


Anagrams
Anagrams are ‘signposted’ in many ways, but there is a more or less definable pattern. The words, ‘agitatedly’, ‘bad’, ‘broken’, misguided’, ‘upset’, and ‘possibly’ are used in the examples here. The alert reader will notice that all these words are broadly synonymous with the word ‘chaotic’ or ‘mixed up’, signifying that an anagram is called for. In the first example, it as anagram of the word ‘strode’ that is being asked for, with the words, ‘around the head of a bank’ supplying the letter ‘B’(See Conventions above) to complete the conundrum and provide the solution ‘DEBTORS’.

If we were to read the sentence from the traditional point of view of semantics, using the system we know as grammar, we would be able to paraphrase the clue as something like the following: ‘The people who had borrowed money from the bank surrounded the manager in a worried fashion.’
Appearing as it does in a cryptic crossword however, it means nothing of the sort. The remaining examples are similarly constructed, with some minor differences. See what you make of them.
Examples.
Borrowers strode agitatedly around the head of a bank 7 DEBTORS
When an East ender gets a bad cigar it’s not funny 6 TRAGIC
Something sticking a broken stapler 7 PLASTER
Gangs of assorted mates 5 TEAMS
It definitely shows one’s a poor misguided fathead 5 PROOF
If upset by the dog having no tail, it’s still a pet’s name 4 FIDO
Possibly useless harangues at the airport. 6 HANGAR

b) The word appears in the clue in full

This type of clue is probably the easiest to solve, but they do sometimes confound us.
Take the clue: ‘Capital city in Czechoslovakia.’ A colleague of mine gladly and quickly supplied his answer, PRAGUE, and was astonished when I told him the answer was ‘OSLO’.
The words in the clue that include the solution are usually phrased in such a way as to mislead, but the semantic clue is invariably given to assist in the solution, though as already stated, it may be ‘hidden’.
Examples.
No love from a stranger 5 ANGER
In the dictionary, a word meaning ‘ruling’ 5 EDICT
For me also loveless, they can be sustaining. 5 MEALS
Repair a bad situation in the Aleutians HEAL


c) Collocations

Were it not for the fact that much of what we say and write is idiomatic in the sense that it is heavily collocational, the job of crossword compilers would be far more difficult. All the clues point to well known collocates. With the clue for the word ‘duty’, the compiler could have used the other word that collocates with it; ‘free’, for example. Hence, the clue might have read, ‘Drinks are free of it outside the country.’ To take a dim view of something is quite a common utterance, though these things do go out of fashion.

Examples.
Piping? 3 HOT
One is obliged to do it or pay it 4 DUTY
Sort of view one may take of a power cut 3 DIM
Actor’s assistant, possibly Welsh 7 DRESSER


d) Encyclopedic knowledge

With General Knowledge crosswords, the trouble is that you either know the answer or you don’t. If you don’t, knowing where to find the answer is the next best thing. So it is with clues calling on one’s encyclopedic knowledge, and for that reason they are not as rewarding. You either know the answer or you do not, whereas all the other types of clues invite you to think laterally. Here are a few examples to illustrate my point. If you have never heard of Charles Dickens’nom de plume, then there isn’t much to be done except hope the other lines fill in the squares for you.
Examples
Spider on the snooker table 4 REST
Writer of Dickensian sketches 3 BOZ (‘Sketches by Boz’ is a series of short stories by Charles
Dickens.)
Moorish battle location 7 MARSTON (Marson Moor is the site of a very famous battle in English
history.)
South African boys 5 NATAL (Nat and Al are both boys’ names. NATAL is a province in South
Africa)

e) Collocations from encyclopedic knowledge

Again, if you do not know the name of the song known colloquially as Danny Boy, or The Londonderry Air then there isn’t much you can do about it. However, even if you do, you might not understand the conundrum, which is why the compiler phrased it in the way s/he did.
Examples
That boy with an air 5 DANNY (‘Danny Boy’ is in first line of the song ‘The Londonderry Air’)
Are they all named Atkins? 7 TOMMIES (Tommy Atkins-name of British soldier)
It’s deep in old Ethiopia ABYSS (Abyssinia is the former name of what is now Ethiopia)

f) Plays on letters

With these types of clues we are back in the realm of thinking about words and letters in a different way. The clue that reads, ‘White, like a layer of eggs’, the pun works several ways. The semantic clue is ‘white’, and the words ‘like’ provide ‘AS’, the words ‘a layer of eggs’ providing the remaining part ‘Hen’ giving the completed word ‘ASHEN’. Thinking of a hen as a layer of eggs, which is precisely correct, but not usually stated that way, provides us with the difficulty. Splitting the word ‘ashen’ into two parts also adds to the confusion.
In all the examples, the semantic portion of the clue is ‘hidden’ in a sentence or phrase written in such a way as to deceive. Having the solution does help though.
Examples
Speak rhetorically of the love for speed 5 ORATE
American soldiers method of operating a device 5 GISMO
White, like a layer of eggs 5 ASHEN
Trouble the medical officer just in case 6 MOLEST



g) Conundrums based upon encyclopedic knowledge

Examples
Mendelssohn’s cat 5 FELIX (The composer Mendelssohn’s first name was Felix, which is also the
name of a cat in a well known cartoon.)
Simple saint 5 SIMON (‘Simple Simon’ is the subject of a well known children’s nursery rhyme. Simon
was one of the apostles.)
When to make a start as PM 2,4 AT NOON (PM is the abbreviation for Prime Minister, and, in
lower case, post meridian.)
Game in which men get pushed around 5 CHESS (The pieces in a chess set are known as ‘men’.)
Conqueror written of as “Just” WILLIAM (William was the name of the incorrigible schoolboy in
Richmal Compton’s novel ‘Just William’.)

h) Clues based on sounds
Examples
.
When high suspicion is voiced, avoid being discovered 4,3 FIND OUT (Fine doubt=high
suspicion.)
She sounds Indian. 3 SUE (Sioux Indians)

i) Clues that cross word and syllable boundaries
Examples

Get away from the house adjoining the mine 3,2 HOP IT (Ho = house/pit = mine)

j) Clues that use symbols other than letters
Examples

Of these beasts, the wild one is about to get a cross 4 OXEN
Does it mean nothing chaps 4 OMEN
See a bar as smart C-LEVER


k) Combinations of types of clue
Examples

I leave the air terminal with a Russian 4 IGOR (air terminal =r)
Fear of an ancient deity, I see PAN-IC

l) Clues that use coincidence
Examples

A films star’s gratitude 6 T-HANKS (Tom Hanks)

m) Clues that use the different meanings of a word.
Examples

Concealing a bad defeat HIDING

n) Clues that use conventions
Examples

Sorceress accompanied round about WITcH

The compiler’s ‘constellation of associations’ for the word ‘damage’

The common enough word ‘damage’ provides the compiler with a mine of possible clues and their sources. Here are just some of them. Being aware of the possibilities open to the compiler helps the would be solver, but there is no real substitute for attempts, and looking up the solution the day after. In that way, it is possible to ‘get used to’ the way the compiler works, though well constructed crosswords are seldom simple, and that is their chief appeal, perhaps, that and the fact that cryptic crosswords, if completed, yield insights into certain facets and aspects of letters, words, and their meaning and associations. Above all, I feel that solving cryptic crosswords of the kind dealt with above is a valuable means of staying sharp, and seeing language for what it is, a system of manipulations of symbols that accords with certain of our cerebral networks, and a means of enlarging and increasing them.

Word damage (6 letters)
Parts of speech Noun (countable) Verb (transitive/regular/infinitive)
Colloquial use What’s the damage? = How much does it cost?
Collocation No damage/brain damage/extensive damage/fire damage
Collateral damage
Associations D = Grade/Capital of Denmark/4th letter of the alphabet/Delta/
Shape of letter
Dam---Reservoir bank/mother/sounds like the curse word
Am—morning/ante meridian/part of the verb ‘to be’ reversed Master
Age—Length of time/long time/adjective meaning to grow old
Conventions: d = capital of Denmark
d = head of Dudley
D =Name = Dee (Simon Dee/ Dee as first name)
D = dunderhead
D = first of day
D = last of the dead
D = third consonant in the alphabet
D = sound of prefix in ‘detoxification’/ ‘devalue’ etc
D = last letter in regular past tense verbs
D = Exam grade (ie. Just passed/lowest pass grade)
D = Musical note (Doe, a deer, a female deer)
Synonyms of harm, injury, destruction, hurt, abuse, vandalism, ruin, havoc,
of ‘damage’: accident, loss, suffering
Possible clues Era of the mother
based upon Mother’s years
associations: How old the reservoir is
Reservoir’s time
Length of time reservoir has been there
Anagrams: Made with the leader of Guernsey
Madge mixed up with Ann initially
Dunderhead with time in the morning
Dingus Magee first, initially
Clues that include anagram:
Hurt Madge and Ann initially. Dam(A)ge
Possibly meade in the capital of Germany, it’s destruction. Dama(G)e
Dunderhead with time in the morning to hurt D(am)age
Dingus Magea initially broken up to injure D(amage)
Sounds: Curse +Less quiet page (Page-p / Note convention of p for quiet/ pianissimo)
Dam(n) + page-p = age
Clues based on sound: Soundly curse less quiet page means destruction
Sound blasted era
Distortions-------------------dam + age— d + am + age





NB. If you are not aware that a particular word even exists, the constellation of associations and meanings surrounding the word will be unknown to you are unlikely to get the solution. The real beauty of this type of puzzle is that it is possible to work out what the word you need is by using the ‘logic’ I have outlined above. In this sense, crossword clues are not merely time fillers, but do exercise the mind in ways that are sufficiently unusual for them to be novel and appealing.

More often than not, compilers of cryptic crosswords use words that are in current use, it depends, possibly, on what sort of a fix they get themselves into doing the compiling. Crossword compilers are human too, you know.
Robert L Fielding











 
Euclid, geometry and ‘plane’ language

Robert L. Fielding

“Oh Euclid dear, please make for me,
Some sketches and some shapes – just three!
Draw a triangle, and a square ,
And call it g’ometree!”

Euclid quickly drew two shapes and then as quick, drew three
‘Tis much too hard, this work,” said he.
Finding names, he tried; but found not three.
Shapes, not words are best for me.

What shall I call these shapes, said he.
Call them what you like, said she.
But please use simple words for me,
So we can go and have some tea.”

“Don’t use words like vertices, please,” said she.
“They are so hard to say.
Use words like sides and corners, pray!
And do it just for me.”

Long he thought about what to call ‘em,
And how he would remembered be,
“I wish I’d never offer’d.
To start this g’ometree!”

“It cannot be done, not simply,
‘Tis math, not simple ABC
And if I call them corners
What will they say of me?”

Oh, bother that then, said she.
Let’s go and have some tea.
Just let your thoughts go dangle,
And call that corner angle!”

 
"I've been here before," I said, "I've been here before."
Repetition: The part it plays in our lives

by

Robert L Fielding

Our lives are full of repetition, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year.

Our lives are so replete with repetition, from breathing, from the beat of our hearts, to the things we eat, drink, say, watch and do, that the English language has a prefix to deal with it. Repetition in its varied forms figures heavily in how we use it to communicate, particularly in the written word.

In the repetition of letters, syllables and sounds we have alliteration, assonance, and consonance, and many more. When repeating words we can use anadiplosis, antistasis, and epistrophe among others and when repeating clauses and phrases we use mesarchia, repotia and isocolon.

Apart from the obvious physiological movements and workings of our bodies, which repeat processes thousands, if not millions of times a day, other facets of our existence are full of repetitive and repeated phenomena. The Italian philosopher, Vico proposed that history was cyclical in nature, and consisted of four stages; The Divine Age, The Heroic Age, the Human Age and the Ricurso, which brought us straight back to the Divine Age. Vico's view of history also presented James Joyce with a convenient framework for his novel, 'Finnegans Wake'.

In the world of art, for example, the phenomenon known as 'serial music' is…..

In music's grander forms repetition figures heavily; in symphonic tone poems, from Honegger's Pacific 231, in which an express train is depicted in sound, to Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique, in which the recurring theme, what is referred to as the 'idee fixe', runs through the whole symphony in a series of notes played on various different instruments.

In literature, masters of the written word all knew the value and effect of repeated themes, words and phrases on their readers. The memorable opening and closing lines of Dickens' 'A Tale of Two Cities', and the opening line of Waugh's 'Brideshead Revisited', used in the title of this article illustrate this point.

Repetition, at least partial repetition, is one of the devices writers and film makers use to show their audience that things have changed, or to illustrate how much things have changed, which is not quite the same thing. Macbeth's predicament is heightened by his words when he says: "I am in blood stepped in so far that to go back were as tedious as to go o'er."

Michael Henchard, 'The mayor of Casterbridge' in Hardy's novel comes himself to see how low he has stooped through a series of partial repetitions which begin with the chance meeting of his wife many years after his selling her in a tent at a show in Weydon Priors at the beginning of the novel. The reader is shown what he has become through an almost chance series of encounters , and his plight is made more trenchant by these 6 recurrences that Hardy marshals to make his point.

Repetition in the film industry


Children's stories, music hall songs, Gilbert and Sullivan's timeless operettas, are all full to the brim with repetition.

Repetition has always been an important part of storytelling, and in most stories told to children the major parts are repeated.

In the precision world of the hard sciences and technology, as well as in the social sciences, repeatability is one of the cornerstones of scientific validity and objectivity. If an experiment can yield similar results every time it is performed then it is deemed worthy of inclusion into the particular canon of scientific knowledge to which it belongs.

Sociological constructs are only held to accurately represent reality out there, so to speak, once they have provided repeatedly reliable findings.

In the field of commerce, manufacture, and trade, the ability of experts to repeat operations precisely, minutely and in a measured manner has given us the factory system, production line, and piece work.

From Sir Richard Arkwright to Henry Ford, from Isembard Kingdom Brunel to Bill Gates, repetitiveness has given the world scientific and technological progress, and has made the world what it is today.

Its largely unsung heroes have transformed manufacturing industry, for example, from little more than a cottage industry at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, to a highly integrated, automated continuous process at the end of it.

Both F.W. Taylor and Henry Ford were responsible for the breaking down of processes into simple tasks, effectively de-skilling processes that had formerly required skilled artisans to perform them. The principles of Taylor's 'Scientific Management' were used by Ford to produce cars on the forerunner to what is now the modern assembly line, and economies of scale together with repetition of tasks broken down to their simplest ensured that automobiles were made cheaply by largely unskilled labour. The Model T Ford was the result, and Henry Ford built his empire on Taylor's principles.

Ford once said, famously, that' "A customer can have any colour he likes as long as it's black."
While this is somewhat amusing and reminiscent of Sam Goldwyn in the film industry, it points to an important aspect of manufacturing, then as now; that lower costs in production are achieved through systematic repetition of tasks, components and products. More importantly, Ford's words also point to the fact that, perhaps for the first time since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, a manufacturer was able, by virtue of its position in the marketplace, to dictate to the consumer what his tastes would be.

Bringing that concept up to date, we have the fast food chain giants, dictating to their customers, not only what they can eat, but the packaging it will come in, the type of service that will be responsible for dishing it up, the types of chairs and tables it will be eaten at, and the general ambience of the facilities in which it is purchased and consumed.

This would be nothing new were it not for the monopoly such establishments have over consumers' tastes, in almost every country in the world.

When Ford was producing cheap Model Ts for the mass markets of his native America, he was placing his company in the forefront of car manufacturers such that if you didn't buy a T from Ford, you didn't buy a car, not at an affordable price, at any rate.

Today, if you want a quick fix on your hunger and you happen to be in a shopping mall in an urban conurbation, the choice open to you is more or less limited to one of the better known fast food outlets, and occasionally several of the lesser known ones. There is little difference in any of them. Choice is limited, as it admittedly is in any restaurant. The difference though, between one of these establishments and say a family run place on a street corner is that in the latter, the chef may be able to fix you something specially for your own dietary needs. He may be able to rustle up a lasagne without meat, a drink of some kind without sugar, or any manner of specific meal to suit the customer. That person, we were always led to believe, was always right, but these days, he takes what is on offer.

This doesn't mean that he has no choice. On the contrary, he has lots of choice. What it does mean, however, is that his choice must be made from a limited set of articles, and which no one in the establishment has the power, or indeed the will to change.

One swift glance behind the counter at any of these fast food outlets is enough to show you what has happened to the catering industry in this sector. It has been Taylorised, which means that it has been broken down into steps that do not require the presence of skilled chefs to produce what is on offer. The machine dictates the number of chips dispensed for the price paid, the size of the bun for the particular variety of burger, and the quantity of fizzy drink equal to the container into which it is poured. Everything is repeated, everything is quantifiable back at Head Office, and with that, costs are cut, profits are increased and tastes are dictated.

Even the youngest customer sitting eating her burger and her fries, and drinking her Cola knows exactly what she is entitled to and what she gets. Everything is that simple; a three year old can understand it fully.

For the ancient Greeks, however, repetition was impossible. Stepping back into the water, so to speak, involved change. For the person stepping gingerly back in, her frame of mind would have changed, and the water, the air and the whole atmosphere would not be exactly the same.

In modern times, though, we are too rushed and too prosaic to appreciate that point; repetition, for us, is ubiquitous and all consuming.

While this is reassuring on one level, it is less so on many others. Where will such 'engineering' end? Will it be applied to other parts of our lives in which the free ability to choose between many options is vital in a democratic, liberal sense? Has it already been so applied to some of those areas, and if so, who is doing the limiting of choices and for what reasons, and to what ends?




 
Using some educational psychology in our classrooms
I am sure we have all been deterred, at one time or another, from giving our students certain materials or tasks because we believe they will find them too difficult, only to find that they succeeded when we eventually did present such materials or give them such tasks. My own students (Level 3 Writing – 600s, 700s, 800s, and 900s) quite often pleasantly surprise me and excel themselves in what I ask them to do. It is almost as if my showing confidence in them pays dividends; they feel my assurance and they react positively. However, I am sure the reverse is also true; students sense they are judged to be below a certain ability, and lo and behold, they display traits that confirm that opinion.

There are names for this behavioural phenomenon – the well known term – ‘self-fulfilling hypothesis’, and ‘confirmation bias’. I would like to explain both terms in an attempt to determine whether or not we teachers can sometimes be ‘guilty’ of those.

‘A self-fulfilling hypothesis’ has been defined thus; ‘The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour which makes the original false conception come 'true'. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the person will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.’
Robert K. Merton

It is in the ‘false definition of the situation’ that we err, if that is what we do. Imagining students will not be able to do something set for them, may well be based upon a teacher’s experience of that class and its overall abilities. But is that always the case; teachers are continually called upon to make judgments about the nature of the ability of their students each and every day of their lives. Please do not infer anything from my words; I am most definitely not suggesting teachers make snap, unconsidered judgments, but rather that in the course of a busy day, those considerations might be coloured by


Robert L. Fielding



A short appreciation of the poet, Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894)

Christina Georgina Rossetti was born in London, the daughter of Gabriele Rossetti, an Italian patriot who came to England in 1824, and sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet. Christina was educated at home by her mother and showed early inclinations towards poetry.
Her other brother, William Michael Rossetti, edited The Gem, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood periodical, to which she contributed the poems An End and Dream Lane in the first number under a pseudonym. Her first major collection was Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), followed by The Prince's Progress (1866), Sing-Song (1872), A Pageant and Other Poems (1881), and Time Flies: A Reading Diary (1885).

Dogged by ill-health for a large part of her life, deeply religious and serious minded, much of her poetry has a wistful, spiritual quality but displays a high level of technical ability and sincerity.

Christina Rossetti has always been a favourite of mine, even though I only know one or two of her poems.

I suppose what attracts me to her poems is her use of language, and her sentiments, particularly in the poem 'Remember me' , which I find rather sad and poignant.

Here it is:- Christina Georgina Rossetti
Remember
REMEMBER me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

I also like the poem 'A birthday', which I have heard put to music and sung.
This poem is here:-
Christina Georgina Rossetti
A Birthday
MY heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a daïs of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
Aren't they both delightful poems? Her is another favourite of mine.
Bride Song
From 'The Prince's Progress'
TOO late for love, too late for joy,
Too late, too late!
You loiter'd on the road too long,
You trifled at the gate:
The enchanted dove upon her branch
Died without a mate;
The enchanted princess in her tower
Slept, died, behind the grate;
Her heart was starving all this while
You made it wait.
Ten years ago, five years ago,
One year ago,
Even then you had arrived in time,
Though somewhat slow;
Then you had known her living face
Which now you cannot know:
The frozen fountain would have leap'd,
The buds gone on to blow,
The warm south wind would have awaked
To melt the snow.
Is she fair now as she lies?
Once she was fair;
Meet queen for any kingly king,
With gold-dust on her hair.
Now there are poppies in her locks,
White poppies she must wear;
Must wear a veil to shroud her face
And the want graven there:
Or is the hunger fed at length,
Cast off the care?
We never saw her with a smile
Or with a frown;
Her bed seem'd never soft to her,
Though toss'd of down;
She little heeded what she wore,
Kirtle, or wreath, or gown;
We think her white brows often ached
Beneath her crown,
Till silvery hairs show'd in her locks
That used to be so brown.
We never heard her speak in haste:
Her tones were sweet,
And modulated just so much
As it was meet:
Her heart sat silent through the noise
And concourse of the street.
There was no hurry in her hands,
No hurry in her feet;
There was no bliss drew nigh to her,
That she might run to greet.
You should have wept her yesterday,
Wasting upon her bed:
But wherefore should you weep to-day
That she is dead?
Lo, we who love weep not to-day,
But crown her royal head.
Let be these poppies that we strew,
Your roses are too red:
Let be these poppies, not for you
Cut down and spread.

Robert L. Fielding
 
Abu Dhabi Classics on FM 105.2
“Interactivity will be a key factor in the success of Abu Dhabi Classic FM – and it will open classical music to a whole new generation of listeners.” Phillip Mathews, English Services Manager of Abu Dhabi Radio Network stated the aims of the network on its opening on 23rd October.

One month or so later, the service seems to be successful in the second of its aims – young people are tuning in and enjoying the panoply of music on the show.

Karim Sarkis, Executive Director of Abu Dhabi Media Company (ADMC) said, “Abu Dhabi Classic FM will complement the capital’s cultural events, with a programming line-up that is on a par with international standards.”

Listening to the station on my way to work, I can say that it truly is just that – like Radio 3 or Classic FM in Britain – without the talking or the insurance ads in between the music. Not only is it enjoyable to listen to – its charms soothe the savage breast was well – much needed in morning traffic, as I am sure you all know.

I don’t think anyone can be in a rush whilst listening to Rachmaninov’s ‘Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini’ or Delius’ ‘On hearing the first cuckoo of Spring’. Prolonging the journey a minute or two goes hand in hand with more careful, slower driving, and I do not think one’s attention is diverted while you are listening.

Music like the stuff broadcast on 105.2 FM in Al Ain, 91.6 FM in the capital, can only help drivers to get rid of some of the stress of driving. It works for me. It most probably will for you. Try it!
Robert L. Fielding
 
Elite classics – poems and comments by Robert L. Fielding
These poems and my comments appear on the website Elite Skills Classics (http://www.eliteskills.com/classics.php) on the pages mentioned below.
Under The Waterfall by Thomas Hardy
http://www.eliteskills.com/c/11447
Weathers by Thomas Hardy
http://www.eliteskills.com/c/18769
The Roman road by Thomas Hardy
http://www.eliteskills.com/c/16847
Domicilium by Thomas Hardy
http://www.eliteskills.com/c/14770
When I set out for Lyonesse by Thomas Hardy
http://www.eliteskills.com/c/14507

Robert L. Fielding


 
The Damned United: a tragedy and a love story

Robert L. Fielding
Brian Clough, the football manager everybody loved to hate – described as the best manager England never had, brought Hartlepool and later Derby County up from the lower divisions into the limelight before spending all of 44 tumultuous days in the driving seat at top club, Leeds United.
This short (1hr 35 mins) film chronicles those days and the events that lead up to them. Of course, Leeds United were the team to beat under their iconic manager, Don Revie, who later came to the UAE to coach the national team, but the lads wouldn’t play for Cloughie, with his abrasive style and forthright views on how the beautiful game should be played.

Timothy Spall (Sweeney Todd) plays Clough’s long time sidekick, Peter Taylor, who was an expert in spotting talent and bringing it to whichever team he happened to be coaching.

He brought Dave Mackay, the legendary former Spurs half-back, to bolster County’s defence, and it worked; Derby County soared up two divisions to pip United to become 1st Division Champions.

Derby’s aging, cantankerous owner/director, Sam Longson, played magnificently by Jim Broadbent (Moulin Rouge, Little Voice) had his cage continuously rattled by the boisterous Clough, particularly where ‘brass’ was concerned.

Michael Sheen (Queen, Frost and Nixon) was totally believable as the man who was always in the public eye, on TV or on the pitch. He had the famous mannerisms that got up everybody’s noses – the sneering smile, the sly laugh, but in this film we saw a side to the man not usually evident to outsiders – we saw the warmth and the humour of the man, as well as the belligerence and the unbridled ambition, and we saw his relationship with Taylor for what it really was, little short of a Platonic love affair between two men who loved the game and each other.

The relationship was threatened when Clough went to Leeds, and Taylor stayed with Brighton, but 44 days later, they were back together – glad to be reunited again.

David Peace’s amazing book of the same name has been brought alive in this production, and will delight all those who lived through those times and followed those events.
Robert L. Fielding

 


‘Taste the World’
The 1st International Festival Day
UAEU Social Club 7th December 2005
4.0pm – 10.0pm


One of my students at UAE University recently wrote that having teachers from other nations lets us learn about different cultures. The great entertainment and culinary surprises at the well attended 1st International Festival Day at UAEU’s Social Club managed to do just that.

Lecturer, Susan Schmidt’s additional reason for the event being that teachers meet each other in a social setting also came out.

As the sun lowered in the afternoon sky, the opening of this first event of its kind got underway, and by 10 left everyone who came hoping there will be another one soon.

Members of Faculty and staff at UAEU hail from far and wide across the globe, and wives and husbands extended the huge array of stalls and stands representing these locations.

With stands from places as far apart as Canada and Benin, Niger and Sudan, we were treated to local food, from the well known recipes of Kehk’s Kitchen (Thailand), through Portugal with Lecturer, Felicidade Van Vanacker, resplendent in her national dress, to the equally exotic food from Korea, to the more familiar cuisines from the region, including dishes from Lebanon, Turkey and India.

We saw stamp collections, displays of Afghan carpets, leather products from Pakistan, traditional Korean paper crafts and a Khubsurat beauty salon, to name just a few of the many items on display on the greens behind the Al Multaqa Building and base for the University’s Social Club.

At 5.0pm, students of Taekwondo gave us an energetic display of their arts, followed by a Filipino Bamboo dance.

After a selection of songs by our own Susan Schmidt (“she definitely ‘killed me softly’ with her song”) Abdurrazak Ben-Hamida, Head of Communications at UGRU, accompanied by an oud, shared his beautiful poetry with us.

A fine display of Emirati traditional dance by the ‘shebab’ indicated the truth of another of my student’s writing; that ‘technology and tradition can live side by side.’

Later, we were transported to the sub-continent with a display of Indian dancing, and then wowed by talented Lecturer, Zahida Chebchoub, taking us through her repertoire of Edith Piaf songs, reassuring us that she regretted nothing, and finishing with a haunting rendition of ‘Love Story’(“Where do I begin?”) sung in French.






















Continuing the hauntingly musical theme, Ms. Treva Himes gave us native American Indian & hammered dulcimer music, and then the evening air glistened with Egyptian music, before we were treated to a traditional Sudanese wedding, and again a performance of Indian music to round off this scintillating display of talent.

Prizes were awarded from the events’ sponsors; the main prize being an airline ticket kindly donated by Etihad Airlines.

With Kiddies Corner providing the face painting and the bouncy castle, bewhiskered lions and tigers jumped their way through the night and made everybody smile.

The whole evening was splendid indeed, and we should thank the organizers, Ali Majed Al Maraghi, Dolores Basilio, Khalifa Al Rubaiei, and Abdul Aziz Sultan Shames as well as Jodi Lefort, Course Coordinator of the Writing Strand at UGRU, who made a major contribution to getting Faculty and staff to volunteer country and bazaar stalls, and everybody else for all their sterling work, with the help of the numerous committee volunteers, and the various offices of the UAEU who all made this wonderful, hopefully soon to be repeated evening possible.

Robert L. Fielding
 



You’ve heard all the arguments a million times – the list of endangered species is getting longer, and we’re on that list – animals have rights too, you know, and they’re not ours to destroy. And all that is true.

But as we face the Aids pandemic, as bird flu threatens millions, as cancer in all its forms resists a cure, we have one more good reason to stave off extinction for those who share our planet – the cures and remedies for all our ills are probably out there waiting to be discovered – and they are probably in the most unlikely of places too.

Take the case of the saliva from the Gila monster, a lizard from the American Southwest – a new drug, marketed under the name ‘Byetta’ has been made from the lizard’s saliva, and is now being used to combat that omnipresent chronic ailment – diabetes.

It seems that the Gila lizard can survive on very little food – it is able to digest what it eats phenomenally slowly, and now the drug made from the creature’s saliva gland extracts has proved not only to control blood sugar for longer periods, but also to decrease appetite, which leads to weight loss.

Type 2 diabetes, sometimes known as ‘middle age onset’ diabetes (I suffer from it myself) can also be brought on by obesity at any age, and can and does afflict children who are overweight.

In America alone, 18 million people now have the ailment, with over 200 million worldwide. In the Middle East it is rampant, afflicting children as well as older people.

I am not sure of the fate of this monster, but my point is that prior to finding out about the life enhancing qualities of its saliva, nobody much cared whether it lived or died. Lizards are not particularly attractive – and they’re not particularly photogenic, which counts a lot these days. Everyone wants to save the Giant Panda – “those things are so cuddly, aren’t they?” but who cares about lizards and snakes, spiders and scorpions – what we used to call –‘creepy-crawlies’ – the world would be better off without them – right?

Wrong! Every creature has the right to be here – just like us – and there are other good reasons for believing so besides the ethical ones.

Robert L. Fielding
 
Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata
by
Robert Leslie Fielding

The well known poem, Desiderata’ written by Max Erhmann, the poet and lawyer from Indiana (1872- 1945) is surrounded by controversy, as well as its more inspirational qualities.

Erhmann said he was inspired by an urge to “leave a humble gift – a bit of chaste prose that caught up some noble moods.”

At one time, however, it was thought to have been found in a church in Baltimore in 1692, and to be very old.

The confusion over its authorship continued as it was handed from one friend to another. In 1959, the rector of St. Paul’s Church in Baltimore, the Rev. Frederick Kates, used the poem in a collection of devotional materials he collected for his congregation.

The confusion surrounding the poem and the church – a mistaken relationship as far as the poem’s origins were concerned, drove subsequent rectors of the church demented.

To top off the controversy that affected its copyright, the last lines of the poem fell foul of a publisher’s carelessness, and the word ‘cheerful’ was accidentally changed to ‘careful’.

However, despite the problems surrounding the poem, it remains as movingly beautiful as it did when Erhmann penned it.


Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.

But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.

Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.
Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, Copyright 1952.


Robert L. Fielding



 
How to become an independent learner: starting off as you mean to carry on

Robert L. Fielding
The Learning Process
Knowing what a bicycle is and how it works is not the same thing as being able to get on it and ride it. You need to be shown how to do it, and then you need practice doing it before you feel fully confident and able to ride it well.

Most activities are this way, aren’t they. You watch a famous tennis player serving an ace – it looks easy, doesn’t it? But when you try it, you find that it’s a lot more difficult than it looks.

You may have read what an independent learner is (see this site), and have understood what you have read, but that still doesn’t mean you know what to do to become one, does it?

Like learning how to ride a bike or swim or play tennis, you need to be shown a few techniques first, you need to think, and you need to try things out for yourself. After all, to be independent is to act alone, to follow your own intuition and to work out what works for you as well as what doesn’t. Enough said; let’s see what you can do first.

The Independent Learner
Are you the kind of person who wants to be independent?
If you want to do something with your life, want to really achieve something, enjoy life to the full – if you realize that there will be disappointments in your life, that not everything will go as you expect or hope, then learner independence is for you.

If you have some belief in yourself, can take criticism, or would dearly like to be that way, then again, learner autonomy is for you.

First and foremost, the desire to become independent, think independently and act in the same way, according to the dictates of your own conscience, your own feelings, and your own ambitions, is a state of mind. Once you think you want to become an independent learner, here are some of the characteristics you will need to develop and acquire.
Typical characteristics of the independent learner
You are unlikely to possess all these characteristics in equal measure or as outlined below. However, learner autonomy is more of a process – perhaps one without an end, rather than a state. Don’t mourn the fact that you do not possess these qualities in abundance, but rather work on each of them in order to increase your independence as a learner. Here are the categories.
• diligence
This means working hard and working with care and attention. It means caring about your work, which in turn means being honest and having pride in what you have achieved.
• ability to concentrate
Being able to concentrate on something isn’t always easy – in fact, more often than not, it is difficult; there are so many things to distract you. You need space and time, and your own willingness to concentrate. Concentrating on something that is interesting is not that difficult, providing you have time and space, but getting down to thinking about something that is not that interesting, but that has to be learned and understood is.
You need your friends and significant others to give you the space, the peace and quiet and the time to exercise your mental capacities, and you need to have the self-discipline, the tenacity and stamina to work things through until you know what they mean.
• motivation
Motivation; wanting to do the thing you are doing or have to do is everything. Being motivated can and will make all the difference to how independent you become, for make no mistake, achieving learner autonomy will require a lot of work, but it will be worth it in the end.
• conscientiousness
This is something like honesty, being honest enough to avoid shortcuts or easy ways out of something. Cutting corners, ignoring things that take a little longer to understand, are all things you should work at avoiding. If you cheat, or you are dishonest, it will quickly become evident. The first person to discover this will be yourself.
• an ability to reflect critically on what you do
Looking back at what you have just done is very valuable, and goes hand in hand with honesty and motivation. Stepping back from a task you are in the middle of and asking yourself certain questions is also of great value, particularly if you answer your own questions truthfully.
 Where is this leading me?
 Am I on the right path?
 Why did I do it this way and not the other way?
 Can I improve my methods?
 What have I learned?
 How will I know if I have been successful?
Questions like these should be uppermost in your mind as you work on solving a problem.
• an ability to correct oneself
If you are honest, motivated and can reflect on what you are doing, you should have no trouble correcting yourself. The act of stopping what you are doing, realizing it is wrong, starting again and this time doing it better is one of the most rewarding things you can do. It doesn’t feel rewarding to begin with, but once you work out the best way for you, the rewards will soon appear. Conversely, if you go blindly on even though a little voice in your head tells you that what you are doing is not the best way, you will also be rewarded, but this time with the disappointment of failure.
• an ability to choose tasks based on one’s language ability

Knowing your own level can be to your advantage, but not trying to raise your abilities because of your fear of failing can never benefit you.
• an awareness that different tasks demand a different type of knowledge
Ask yourself what it means to know a word. It means knowing a lot of things about it – some are obvious, but some are not.
 Spelling
 Meaning
 Part of speech
 Pronunciation
 Which words it normally accompanies
 How often it is used
 The register in which it is most commonly used
Can you think of any more? Now apply this feature of knowledge to other areas of your studies. Be aware – know the questions to ask, even if you don’t know the answers – yet!
Being able to formulate intelligent and necessary questions is one of the most important features of learner autonomy.
• an awareness of how you learn and how to progress: the learning process
The learning process isn’t merely finding the answers to questions, although it includes that. It is about discovering how to arrive at the answer, the solution to your problem by different means and in ways that stimulate your curiosity to go on discovering – once you start, you won’t want to stop – what you are really discovering is how your mind works.
Robert L. Fielding



 
It was a warm summer's evening in August, and I was walking up Lothian Road in the heart of Edinburgh. My destination was the Usher Hall, a superb Victorian building, which on this particular night was the venue for a performance of the aptly named Symphony of a Thousand, The 8th Symphony by Gustav Mahler. As I was walking up towards the Usher Hall I started to think about the composer, Mahler, who had been a hugely successful conductor in Vienna many years earlier, before his untimely death. He must, I thought, have walked to many such magnificent halls in Vienna on just such lovely evenings as this one. Thinking about Mahler, and the music I was about to hear, I began to whistle the opening bars of the symphony as my pace quickened.
I whistled away, oblivious to the noise of the traffic, and perhaps my whistling grew louder in response to the hooting of car horns and the revving of engines. Suddenly, I heard a voice, a woman's voice at my side.
"He's whistling our tune," she said to someone behind me. I looked round to discover that I was surrounded by women in long gowns.
"Your tune?" I enquired.
"Yes" said another to my left, "we're singing here tonight," she said, pointing at the grand building in front of us; the Usher Hall.
These were some of the thousand performers about to take part in the musical evening.
They had surrounded me, and they told me that they had all come down from the Granite City, Aberdeen. I asked them if they had rehearsed it up there, the thousand performers.
"Oh no," another woman said, "we rehearsed our bit of it, and other groups in other cities, Perth, Dundee and Glasgow, they did the same, and last night we all rehearsed it together for the first time." The performance I was about to hear was only the second time that they had all sung and played together under one roof. They laughed gaily, and told me how nice it had been to meet the other performers for the first time last night, and they laughed again when I asked them how on Earth they had managed to rehearse only their own part of something so vast, so grand and so long. They couldn't really answer, but one of the women said, "You'll see." They said they had all thoroughly enjoyed taking part in something which had to be built up bit by bit, and put together in one live performance. They asked me where I came from, and I told them that I had traveled two hundred miles to hear the piece. They had traveled down from all over Scotland. We had come from all over Britain to be there, to take part in one glorious evening of live musical entertainment. Music really does bring people together.

Robert L Fielding
Edinburgh – At the Festival
 
KNOW YOUR DIAMONDS – INVEST WISELY- MAKE MONEY

by

Robert L. Fielding

1. Investing in gems
Diamonds are forever, they are a girl’s best friend, and they are precious. But the terms ‘precious’ and ‘semi-precious’ have little meaning in reality. ‘Investment grade’ is a better guide to the value of gems. It may surprise you to know that ‘precious’ gemstones are not as good an investment as ‘semi-precious’ stones; they often appreciate in value more and are easier to ‘liquidate’ – sell, to me and you.

You can make money investing in gemstones, but you need to know what you are about – don’t expect to buy from retailers and increase your investment in a short time.

‘Primary’ dealers offer the best prices – they mine and cut the stones

‘Secondary’ dealers buy from wholesalers and ‘primary’ dealers and sell to retail outlets – still well below retail prices.

You can find ‘pre-owned’ gems at flea markets, pawn shops and estate sales, but again you have to know what you are looking for and what you find.

Look on the Internet, and in trade magazines for listings of dealers.

Beware! Low priced gems get a higher price markup than expensive gems – up to three to five times higher.

Cut gemstones are not the only things to look at – rough gems, mineral specimens and finished jewelry also have potential for investors.

Selling your gemstones is the next step – realizing their value in places like jewelry stores, auction houses and online auctions.

The greater the difference between wholesale and retail, the more chance you have of making a profit – but everything is relative – you would surely accept 10% profit on a $40, 000 stone, but might not be prepared to accept that on a more modestly priced item.

A lapidary can turn low value into high – buy rough and allow enough markup to justify the work you put in.

Gem cutters can up the price of your gemstone – if you do your homework, this is one of the best ways of adding value to your gemstones.
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2. Diamond buyer’s guide
The 4 Cs – Clarity, Colour, Cut, Carat and of course, Cost, are the main considerations when buying diamonds.

Clarity
Diamonds invariably contain ‘inclusions’ – natural identifying blemishes, known as nature’s ‘birthmarks’ or ‘fingerprints’. The greater clarity - fewer inclusions, the more valuable the diamond.

Inclusions that are visible to the naked eye affect the flow of light through the diamond – sparkle can be lost.

Diamonds with inclusions visible to the naked eye are graded 11-12 – those with small inclusions are graded S11-S12, and those with very small inclusions are graded as V11-V12, or smaller still, VV11-VV12.

Rare diamonds with no inclusions are ‘flawless’ (FL) or internally flawless (IF)

Colour
Diamonds seem colourless, but many have faint colouring – the more colourless the diamond, the more valuable it is.

Set in gold, warmer colours are better, in white gold, silver or platinum, white or near colourless diamonds look gorgeous.

Carat
Gem weight was once done using the weight of a carob seed – hence the term, ‘carat’.

One carat weighs one fifth of a gram, and a carat is divided into 100 points – a .33 carat diamond is the same weight as a 33 point diamond.

The larger the carat, the more valuable the diamond, but two diamonds of the same weight can have differing values because of their Cut, Clarity and Colour.

Cut
The word ‘cut’ refers to the physical shape of the diamond, to the angles and the proportions a craftsman creates to release sparkle and fire from within the diamond.

A diamond’s cut allows light to be dispersed and reflected from one facet to another. Well cut diamonds allow the greatest amount of fire and sparkle to be reflected from one facet to another, and of course, this will increase the value of the diamond.

A well cut diamond is more valuable than other diamonds of the same colour, clarity and weight.



Cost
The cost to you, the buyer, will increase because of any one of these (Colour, Clarity, Cut), but what is beautiful is really a matter of taste – but value is a function of the three, plus its setting, which must also enhance the diamond’s qualities.
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3. Choosing a diamond
Diamonds are graded into many categories, which can be a source of confusion for the uninitiated, but are generally graded on the ‘4 Cs’ – colour, clarity, cut and carat.

Colours D, E, and F designate the highest grades – colourless
G, H, I, and J are next down – ‘near colourless’ or ‘white’.
K to Z are tinted – ‘yellow’ or ‘yellowish’
K, L, and M are “set white” – they will appear white if set in gold.

Along the alphabet, tinting gets stronger and value lower, until you reach extreme colouring – a ‘fancy coloured’ diamond – the price of these goes up again.

Colour grading is simply a matter of comparing diamonds’ colours and seeing which is closest. This is relatively expensive though.

More commonly, batches of similarly coloured diamonds are grouped together as GH or IJ – the diamonds are in those ranges.

If you have a verty expensive diamond, you could have it graded (grading can cost over $100), but this is not cost effective for the majority of diamonds.

Clarity is determined by size and number of inclusions in it.
Clarity grades use the letters V, S, and I (Very, Small, and Inclusion)

Flawless diamonds are graded: VVSI1 (Very, Very Small Inclusion One) through VVSI2, VSI1, VSI2, and SI1 and SI2.

Down the scale, there are: I1 and I2 – ‘eye’ visible inclusions but still gem grade diamonds.

Grades P1 and P2 are not usually considered gem grade because of the fact that little light passes through them.

Caveat emptor. “1 carat diamond rings costing $299 – may not be a gem but an industrial grade of diamond.

Cut can be a hard property to judge. Watch out for:-
 Brilliance of the gem
 Terms – “Single Cut” or “Old Mine Cut” (These may only have 17 facets – a brilliant diamond has 57!)
 Shape of the gem (ideally symmetrical, not lop-sided)
 The girdle of the gem is the widest part seen from the top and the thinnest viewed from the side (if cut too thin, it will have a weak area that may give trouble later)
 If two diamonds are the same grade, but one is brighter than the other, the cut is different.

Carat is the easiest to fathom – smaller diamonds are commoner than larger ones – smaller ones cost less.
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Robert L. Fielding
 
KNOW YOUR MEDICATIONS
Medication Safety Week – 1st –6th January 2006
by
Robert L. Fielding

Medication Safety Week, running from 1st – 6th January, is a campaign to raise public awareness and offering free public consultations on safe medication usage all this week in Al Ain Hospital, Tawam Hospital and in Al Ain Mall, and organized by the Pharmacy Council & Medication Sub Committee at the General Authority for Health Services for the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.

And it’s working already – around 200 people have been helped to realize that they or their children have been taking medication in the wrong way, relative to things like meal times and time of day.

Advice on how to ‘sweeten the pill’ for young children on medication has also helped many kids get used to pills they need to take but would rather not.

Advice comes from well-trained, helpful staff, and useful leaflets are also provided as a reminder later.

The knowledge that trained pharmacists have an important part to play in preventing medication errors is the first of a string of useful facts. Here are the others to help you stay on the right track.
 Keep a list of all medications (prescribed and nonprescription drugs, herbal and/or home remedies and medical foods)
 Share that list with your doctor – she will help you to avoid taking things that counteract each other, or worse, are dangerous.
 Question anything you don’t understand or that doesn’t look right – watch out for dosage changes and different strengths of medication.
 Tell your medical-care provider HOW you take your medication and WHEN you take it – taking things incorrectly might be causing you more harm than good.
 Show that you have understood how to take your medication by repeating information back to your doctor or pharmacist.
 Learn the names of medication you are prescribed or given, along with dosages, strengths and times when they should be taken.
 Seek help from someone close if you are too ill to get help yourself.
 Ask if there are any foods you should avoid while on your medication.
 Remember to talk to the pharmacist about dosages – she is probably the last care provider you will see before you take your pills.
 Ask about any written information on the packet or bottle – pharmacists are only too happy to help.

Sound advice is also given on antibiotics, alternative and herbal medications, and poison prevention – catch them this week – but if you do miss them, this is only the first in a series throughout the country. It’s free and it’s vital – talk to them soon.
Toll Free phone #: 800 424 www.health.ae/pdic
Robert L. Fielding




 
Lit

by

Robert L Fielding

A book of verse, once opened, leads me through a life that is half over. Innocent and hearty, I read Lewis Carroll, wondering if I would ever see the Jabberwock with eyes aflame on my way home from school on those winter evenings when ice and darkness enveloped my path up the hill to the dancing fire and the roasting smell of my mother's cooking.
Later, standing in rows, our neckties strangling us, we sang,
'Who is Sylvia, what is she?
without wondering in the slightest who Sylvia was, or what she was. We just presumed she was a girl and left it at that. Singing by rote, high and straining to reach Mrs. Smith playing the piano, her face grimacing at our reckless rendering of her favourite song.
And later, listening to 'I wandered lonely as a cloud', we started to hear the words and see the daffodils waving beneath us. All was forgotten though, when, as pupils in pride of place in Miss Schofield's English class, we had to read the words out loud to the whole class, listening and giggling till it was their turn.
With Dot Squash, and later with Fez, we trod the paths through Hardy's Wessex, waited on Egdon Heath with Eustacia Vye for her wild love, Damon Wildeve, come in secret from the tavern below.
Fez, Donald Radcliffe, Mr. Radcliffe to our parents, Sir to us who even adoring him and his booming voice, were petrified when we had somehow annoyed him, Fez made Weatherbury live, made Gabriel Oak a real person to us, and Bathsheba Everdene a real woman, vivacious with a mind of her own, headstrong, some said foolish, and passionate.
Dot Squash, Dorothy Schofield, Miss to us, apples of her scolding eye. She led us, walking alongside Tess to her doom, stopped us from berating Angel Clare for his purity and his foolish, pious pride, remonstrated with us for asking the question, "Miss, didn't Thomas Hardy ever write happy stories?" What did we know of Greek tragedy, or any other kind of tragedy, save one of our number running under the wheels of a car one afternoon after school.
Years later, still reading, though with a more alert eye, enjoying less for not being taken in as much, but still enjoying, I traversed a purple moor, stepped through heather and ling, waist deep bracken to a little house on the edge of Egdon Heath, whistling Holst's tune of the same name, I came to Clym and Eustacia's house in the woods. Admiring it through the lens of my Minolta, shutter clattering up and down gaily in the late summer sunshine, a little head poked through a bedroom window, and apologizing for intruding, was invited in to see for myself, Alderworth, the house where the newly weds dwelt before everything started going wrong, Eustacia finally and tragically realizing she had fallen in love with a man who did not exist, the native returned to his heath, but now, after his wandering days were done, content to practise the work of a furze cutter, and the beautiful but willful Eustacia, her raven haired, proud head leaning into the wind coming off the English Channel, dreaming of lands she would never see.
Working up to examinations, looking at university entrance, Shakespeare in hand, the Scottish play, which, not being in the acting profession, we can call by name, 'Macbeth'. Selling petrol at weekends to stay at 'Tech' till I passed, memorizing the 'dagger soliloquy between cars, for Mrs. Christou, who encouraged us with her enthusiasm and her joie de vivre, and her laughing face.
Mr. McCann, a Scot, who did the Guardian Cryptic Crossword everyday whilst eating his sandwiches, leading us slowly through Burns' 'Tam o' Shanter', the words, the accent, the meaning, coming in his rich, ringing tones beneath his bristling moustache.
Discovering Kipling, Wordsworth, and Robert Service in the hushed, warm stillness of the Municipal Library, the monologues of 'Nosmo King', Stanley Holloway breathed out on cold mornings cycling to work, each word visible as if I had been exhaling smoke.
The trustees from the toolroom where I worked, wondering about a turner who read poetry in his breaktimes, instead of The soaraway Sun. Struggling with Thomas Mann, wondering if I should even be trying. A different perspective has its distractions and its detractors, all around me it seemed at times till my sister, Gill, my sister, reassured me that what I wanted to do was worth doing.
And now, writing words of my own, the long journey still not half done, thank God, retracing my steps through Central Asia, recalled to life, Sultan Sancar, and the love of his life, Yasemin, mourning her father, newly buried beneath the hard ground of Mary, across the wastes of Turkoman country, to the land of Anatolia, high, stony, beautiful Anatolia, and to Nazan.

Robert L Fielding

 
Having an abiding interest: the hallmark of real success in life

by

Robert L. Fielding


The hallmark was and still is the sign stamped into silverware that shows that it is genuine, and not some cheaper imitation. The word has also come to mean the sign of success – in sport this is silverware – cups, in hunting it is trophies – a lion’s head or an elephant’s tusk, but in the world the majority of us inhabit this role is played by money – the acquisition of wealth – large amounts of money – the larger the better, has always been and still is the hallmark of success.

Of course, other things can signify that person’s success: high office in politics, a large mansion in its own estate, a personal fleet of cars, a private jet, or a title – Sir before your name will suffice to let people know that you have made it to the top of your particular ladder.

In educational achievement, a diploma, degree or certificate, designate those that have been successful.

For the majority of us lesser mortals, we are left with money, a big house, and a nice car to let others know we have arrived at the top. For the more ostentatious, large diamonds, tiaras and expensive furs are indicative of success.

For some though, it seems that these traditional trappings are not enough. Fabulously wealthy pop stars are hospitalized for their addiction to what are euphemistically and dangerously called ‘recreational drugs’. Footballers lie in intensive-care wards of expensive, private hospitals while their livers rest from alcoholic poisoning. Suicide and divorce are probably no lower in the titled, wealthy classes than they are in the waged, and unwaged ones.

Every status of person in society is likely at some time or other to fall foul of acute depression, low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence and ill-health generally.

Envy and greed - two troublesome bedfellows, go around together and afflict those who, on the face of it seem to have everything they could possibly want in life.

So what is it about the hallmarks of success that still leave some bereft of that real hallmark of success – happiness?

Success as it is traditionally defined and accepted is something like rising to the top of the tree in some area of life- the big one is business – the acquisition of money, power and influence by means of trading in commodities. A close second is the world of entertainment – the popular diversion of the masses by music, theatre, film, and art. Other spheres are politics, education, and the caring professions – medicine and social welfare, and law enforcement.
















Now, these areas of life appear to debar most people. After all, it seems as if I am saying that if you are not an entrepreneur, shopkeeper, company boss or accountant, if you do not at the very least hold some office in public life, are not a professional footballer or tennis player, a musician, writer or painter, if you are not an actor, pop singer, or broadcaster, if you are not a doctor, nurse, dentist or social worker, or if you are not a policeman, judge or barrister, if you don’t hold a degree or are not a PhD then you are not successful and nor are you ever going to be.

A colleague of mine recently interviewed me and wrote up what he found out about me as part of an assignment for a course in journalism on which we are both enrolled.

Reading a draft of his assignment, I found myself thinking that had my name been omitted from the title, that had I not known the writer, I would have said that the subject had led a very interesting and successful life – that he had been moderate healthy, had a fairly unenviable financial status, had his share of personal and emotional trauma in his life, but was living his life around the organizing principle, not of the acquisition of money, but around what chiefly interests him – understanding people, and writing about them.

Of course, being a teacher during the daytime, a reader and a writer some of the time and a husband, son, uncle, cousin, brother, and friend all of the time does help him to follow his own particular carrot that occasionally feels like a stick at times.

In traditional terms, he is not a success, although he has two degrees to his name, the same number of books published and commands a fairly respectable salary that allows him to live at a reasonable standard of living – and he is beloved by those mentioned above.

Very little separates him from the rest – in a crowd he wouldn’t stand out at all.

What separates him and demarks him as a success are not the epithets and rewards given him by society, but rather that he is aware of the source of his success – that he knows what obsesses him, what fills his head and his day, he knows his own particular addiction, and why he is single-minded about it, sometimes infuriatingly so. It is his abiding interest in people and writing about them: what moves them to tears, what threatens them, pleases them, thrills them, dismays them, what they cannot stand, why they do the things they do and why they prefer not to do the things they do not do.

His real success though is that in everything connected with his fellow man and his writing he remains and will always be a student – a perpetual learner. Finding something he can always improve on is the real success of his life.
Robert L. Fielding
 
The Twelve Days of Christmas

by

Robert Leslie Fielding

It sometimes seems that Christmas lasts for only about two days - Christmas Day and Boxing Day. It’s over before it’s really got the chance to get going, and Christmas Eve isn’t even one of the twelve, though it does seem important, leaving New Year’s Eve/New Years Day aside for the moment, with apologies to the Scottish who always make more of Hogmanay.

But no, Christmas consists of twelve days; starting on Dec 25 and lasting until June 5 – twelfth night before Epiphany starts on Jan 6, which has special significance too, being the time when the Magi came bearing gifts to the infant Jesus, still wrapped in swaddling clothes and laying in a manger. In Latin American culture, Jan 6 is Three Kings Day. Should we have the thirteen days of Christmas – perish the thought.

The song though most definitely has only twelve days in it, and twelve gifts from ‘my true love’ to ‘me’. Most of us can reach the ‘five gold rings’, and remember the ‘four calling birds’, the ‘three French hens’, ‘two turtle doves’ and last but not least the ‘partridge in a pear tree’. It’s when we try to go beyond five that we come unstuck, with the ‘lords a leaping’ and the ‘ladies dancing’ conflating into eight of the latter and nine of the former, or is it the other way round. The point is made. We have to hear someone sing it to be able to remember all of it.

It wasn’t always that way though; the song, or so some believe, was really an ancient (16th Century) mnemonic device to help children learn the catechism in times when owning up to being a Christian wasn’t always sensible. And like finding out that an old friend has a wardrobe full of skeletons you didn’t know existed, so the Twelve Days of Christmas has these hidden significances and meanings.

To skip through them; ‘my true love’ is held to be God, ‘a partridge in a pear tree’ Jesus Christ, and even ‘me’ – so integral to the song, is the Christian flock or mankind if you prefer, and we’ve hardly begun.

The ‘turtle doves’, of which there were two, signify the Old and New Testaments, the ‘three French hens’ the three theological virtues: faith, hope and love. It gets easier – the ‘four calling birds’ are the gospels, but again more obtuse as the ‘five gold rings’ represent the five books of the Old Testament - the Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy – the children of those times needed all the help they could get.

‘Six geese a-laying’ are the six days of creation, ‘seven swans a-swimming’ the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation, giving, leading, and compassion, according to Romans 12:6-8.

The eight beatitudes: Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and last but certainly not least, those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake are labeled the ‘eight maids a-milking’ in the song.

The ‘nine ladies dancing’, it is nine and not eight, you see, represent the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:2)

Easy again; ‘ten lords a leaping’ must be the ten commandments, ‘eleven pipers piping’ the eleven faithful apostles, excluding Judas Iscariot, and lastly, the ‘twelve drummers drumming’ take care of the twelve points of doctrine in the Apostle’s Creed.

Rarely has indoctrination sounded so melodic, but if the children of the day learned nothing else over the twelve days of Christmas, they would have been well served by the song and its lighter, pictorial side that we usually hear several times at this time of year.
(633 words) Robert Leslie Fielding
 
Ways to get your stress levels down if you’re a teacher

by

Robert Leslie Fielding

Teaching is a wonderful profession; it can be and usually is very enjoyable and rewarding, but it can be the worst job too – frustrating and stressful.

Teaching is also like appearing on stage; when you’re on, you’re on – there are no easy days – no days when the students leave you alone – why should they –you’re their teacher, right!

Teaching is stressful most of the time, but there are ways of coping – not just coping, but dealing with stress and getting it down to acceptable levels.

Here they are:-

1. Drink plenty of water
Good advice everywhere – not just in hot climates.
2. Don’t skip meals
Going without food should not be an option when time is tight. If your blood sugar levels get too low, you’ll feel tired very quickly, compounding your problems in class.
3. Take vitamins regularly
Taking multivitamins regularly helps you fight off colds in winter (Vitamin C) and keeps you calm (Vitamin B)
4. Eat iron-rich food
Women are more prone to iron-deficiency than men are – eat dark leafy greens such as spinach and lean red meat
5. Cut out caffeine
Coffee and some soft drinks contain this stuff that keeps you awake at night – too much caffeine is definitely not good for you
6. Don’t smoke
This one is obvious – the evils of smoking are well documented and should be known to everyone – if you smoke but can’t stop – get help
7. Do some physical exercise
Swimming is the best, it doesn’t jar your bones like jogging does. Cycling is good but where can you do it safely. Make time for a daily work out – it pays off.
8. Don’t sit for too long
Energy levels will drop if you sit for too long – get up – walk about – take regular breaks from sitting at your desk – walk about in the classroom too
9. Have more fun
Laughter is the best medicine – so is having fun, which leads to laughter. Having fun makes your heart light, puts bad times into perspective – have fun and then have some more – every day
10. Try to be cheerful and happy
You are a child of the Universe - you have a right to be here – all that! Be happy, live longer and better.

Follow these 10 tips and notice the way your life changes – your students will notice it too – they’ll react more positively to you – you’ll do the same to them and your stress will vanish and stay away for longer and longer. Teachers, teach yourself something for a change.
Robert L. Fielding
 
What your children are reading
by
Robert L. Fielding

We’ve been reading recently what children should and shouldn’t read (Ref), and looking at the top ten list of books for children, it seems that fantasy is fairly high.

Whether that is a bad thing or a good thing, I leave parents and the experts to decide.

Here is a précis of that list.

Fantasy is every child’s number one, with guess who – Harry Potter the best known of these. Here are some more:-
 “The Tale of Desperaux”: the story of a mouse, a princess, some soup and a spool of thread By Kate DiCamillo (illustrated)
 “The Conch Bearer”: A boy, a girl and an old man go on a hazardous journey from Calcutta to return a shell with magical properties to the Himalayas. By Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
 “The Day the Babies Crawled Away”: a small child saves other small children when they escape a fair and head for danger. By Peggy Rathman
 “Elvis the Rooster Almost Goes to Heraven”: Finding that the sun can rise without him, this rooster tries to find out who he really is. By Denys Cazet
 “George Washington’s Teeth”: A tale told in verse about the first US President’s dental problems. (illustrated). By Deborah Chandra and Madelaine Comora
 “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”: Harry’s pain and frustration as an adolescent in his fifth year at Hogwart’s.
 “Harvesting Hope”: Rousing stuff about a man who organized farmworkers in California (illustrated). By Kathleen Krull
 “The Man Who Walked Between the Towers”: Tells the story of the man who tightrope walked between the World Trade Center twin towers in 1974 (illustrated). By Mordicai Gerstein
 “The River Between Us”: Set in the American Civil War, this story recounts how a family’s life changes after being visited by two mysterious women from New Orleans.
 “The Spiderwick Chronicles”: A story about children fighting their way through unfortunate events in a scary, old house.
www.sfgate.com
The value of fantasy in children’s literature is that readers can find scenarios that go outside their own realm of experience, and in so doing expand their minds to realize that the world out there is full of possibilities and also that everyone is special in their own special way. From literature, children can learn tolerance and creativity, solutions to problems, and new ways to express themselves – all that from fantasy – sounds good to me!
Robert L. Fielding
 
The Four Faces of Fagin

by

Robert L. Fielding

Fagin, the most notorious character from the pen of Charles Dickens, has been portrayed many times on the silver screen – and each one has shown a different side to the cringing, devious petty criminal.

Alec Guiness played Fagin in David Lean’s version of Oliver Twist, hook-nosed and vulture like, picking on his prey – the boys of the streets of London, who in turn picked on theirs – the gentlemen strolling about, oblivious to the gang of pickpockets working for Fagin.

Robert Lindsay gave us a different Fagin - circus performer – a magician from Prague, more wily than cringing, but utterly defeated in his final moments before the gallows. Lindsay’s Fagin could pull rabbits out of hats, but preferred to pull wallets out of gentlemen’s coats.

George C. Scott’s Fagin looked altogether too prosperous and well fed to fit with the images from the book – he didn’t look as Jewish as Guiness, or as impoverished as Lindsay, but he brought real power and menace to the part, more like Bill Sykes than the old Jew.

Ben Kingsley, in Roman Polanski’s version, brought a quite different Fagin to the screen – more genial and pleasant to the urchins, his charges, less deferential to Dodger, more kindly to Oliver, basically the old hypocrite from Dickens’ original creation.

In the musical version, ‘Oliver’, Ron Moody played the old rascal, devilishly lyrical, singing -
“In this world, one thing counts,
In the bank, large amounts.
I’m afraid these don’t grow on tree,
You’ve got to pick a pocket or two,
You’ve got to pick a pocket or two!”

Moody’s best attribute was his face, his scheming, conniving face, and his nose, hooked like an eagle, with eyes that flitted birdlike from one boy to another as he examined the day’s ‘takings’.-

Each portrayal of the old devil that ‘befriends’ Oliver Twist is slightly different – showing each actor’s reading of the part, his own variety of acting skill, as well as the scope that such a character allows actors – but which one would Charles Dickens have preferred?
Robert L. Fielding
 





Today is Lucy Elizabeth Lesley Hindley’s birthday – she is one year old, so she probably – almost certainly will NOT be enjoying the basic ingredients vital for any great birthday party.

But she’ll have all the other stuff that children everywhere get on their own special day – birthday cards, jelly and ice-cream and a birthday cake (with just the one candle to blow out)

And so it has always been – the three other vital ingredients will surely come to her later – especially if she comes to live in the United Arab Emirates – though perhaps not in her native England – well not the pool bit anyway.

Birthday parties were first celebrated in Europe because it was feared that evil spirits were particularly attracted to people on their birthday. Parties were thrown to ward off evil spirits, and giving birthday presents was a further way of adding cheer.

Before that kings were the only people thought important enough to celebrate birthdays.

The birthday tradition is worldwide – and there are many different traditions associated with a child’s birthday. Here are just a few.

- pulls on the earlobe – one for each year (boy, I’m glad I’m not Brazilian)

- greasing the nose with butter or margarine – a greased nose make them too slippery for bad luck to catch them.

- birthday bumps – one for each year, plus one extra for good luck.

- on the special years of 5, 10, 15 and 21, the child receives a specially large gift on a ‘Crown Year’ birthday.

- birthday pies instead of birthday cakes, with a birthday greeting baked into the crust.

- a pound note and a soft smack – a pound for each year, plus one for luck (Gee, I wish I was Scottish)


Families all over the world also have their own versions of the birthday tradition –


hidden gifts with poems to tell where they are hidden
bobbing for apples
favourite colours worn by the child all day long
water fights
birthday posters
restaurant, zoo and a light show
gifts all week
health check-ups
breakfast in bed
smearing cake on the face











 







puppet shows used to be a regular part of our holidays. Children crowded around the ‘fit-up’ – a booth of striped material with an opening like a stage for the appearance of Punch – hooked nose, hunchback and wearing a pointed cap. Judy (once known as Joan), his long- suffering and nagging wife soon appeared, and then the baby and the dog, Toby, and the most important object, the ‘slapstick’, from which we get the term ‘slapstick comedy’. Later came the crocodile and the policeman, and, of course, the string of sausages. Everything was complete and children sat and watched, shouted, laughed and probably cried too as Punch did horrible things to his wife and the baby and then escaped the jaws of the crocodile and the handcuffs of the policeman.

Today Punch and Judy shows are still common, but the venue for them has changed – they are usually hired for children’s parties rather than seen on beaches and peers in resorts around Britain. Today they have websites, are the subject of blogs and chat-rooms, appear as jpegs and logos - Punch and Judy are still very much with us.

Punch – the name is derived from the Italian – ‘pulcinella’, originated in commedia dell arte (improvised popular comedy in theatres in Italy in the 16th to 18th Century) and soon became popular throughout Europe – in England, the shows began as Victorian street entertainment before finding their way to seaside resorts - Punch and Judy’s traditional home in places like Blackpool, Morecambe and Southport.

In France, he is known as ‘Polichinelle’; in Russia, ‘Petroushka’; ‘Kasper’ in Germany, where Judy is ‘Grete’; Dutch children laugh at ‘Jan Klaassen’; Danish children at ‘Mester Jackel’, and Romanian children at ‘Vasilache’- Punch is universal.

In his various names though, Punch remains the same; he speaks in a bizarre rasping voice, produced by the puppeteer – the professor as he used to be known - by shouting through a ‘swazzle’ or ‘swatchel’, which the professor holds in his mouth to produce the delightful and characteristic cackling, “That’s the way to do it!”

The audience or at least the parents of the audience of Punch and Judy show their appreciation in the traditional way – joining in with their children, as well as by dropping coins into a receptacle traditionally known as ‘the bottle’ called so because bottles used to be used in order that less than honest helpers (bottlers) might be tempted to extricate money from within while the professor was busy with his hands in the glove puppets.

Actually, Punch and Judy and the others started life as stringed marionettes but soon gloved puppets were used and were found to be much more suited to the vigour of a typical Punch and Judy storyline.

Back in the 18th Century, the tales revolved around Punch strangling his infant child in a fit of jealousy. Judy tries to exact revenge on her husband but meets a gory end, with an exasperated Punch flinging the two dead bodies into the street. The Police are alerted and Punch is locked up only to escape by using a golden key.

The crocodile and the string of sausages came much later, as did Jack Ketch, the hangman/devil who is also thwarted.

Today this tale is watered down to more politically correct dimensions, but it is easy to see how such a show would find favour with the gin-soaked population of places like Whitechapel in London’s East End, where Jack the Ripper had been the terror of the darkened streets. Macabre tastes go hand in glove with macabre deeds, it seems; the shows probably suited the English with their love of making light of their troubles by ridiculing them.

Former ‘professor’ John Harold Varley, and once a teacher through the week, actually earned more money entertaining children than he did in front of a class teaching them. His daughter, Isabel Varley, who teaches English at UAE University in Al Ain spoke of the fun the whole family used to have while Dad was professor. Mum was the bottler and made sure that those who had laughed contributed.

After the performance, the whole family counted out the pennies, three-penny bits, tanners, bobs, florins and the odd half crown, emptying out the bottle onto the kitchen table and putting the silver, copper and the bronze coins into little piles to take to the bank or the corner shop.

Isabel’s father worked weekends and bank holidays (see photo), and right through most of the school summer holidays in Drayton Manor Park in Staffordshire, setting his mini-theatre on ‘Punch and Judy Hill’, a place reserved for the show and its young audience. Mr. Varley did this for fifteen years and earned enough money from it to buy a bigger house in a better part of town for his growing family - “that’s the way to do it.”






 

NERVOUS SYSTEMS

By

Robert L. Fielding

From: Hypothalamus@RFielding.com
To: Pancreas@RFielding.com
What are you guys playing at down there? We've decided to curtail your supply potential. You want anymore, you ask. No more of this opening up the taps and letting it flow like water. I warned the toes, the eyes, and the mouth that things are going to get rough for a while till you get your act together and take it easy with the insulin. That stuff is difficult to make, 51 amino acids in two cross-linked chains, the building blocks of protein, it doesn't grow on trees, you know. Just watch what you're doing, or we'll update again.
From: pancreas@RFielding.com
To: hypothalamus@RFielding.com
We got your message pal, but let me tell you, a lot of things are going to go downhill fast if you don't loosen up some. First of all, this guy's going to become a human siphon, a conduit, a water pipe, with a never ending supply of water at one end to help keep him from getting a dry mouth, and one continual trip to the bathroom, morning, noon and night at the other. He needs his moisture, you turn off the insulin and he's going to burn up in a fever. He's not that old. Give him a break. He behaves himself these days, eats plenty of food with a low glycemic index, plenty of pasta, beans, lentils and fruit, all the foods that have a slow, prolonged effect on raising the blood sugar level. He leaves out the other stuff, alcohol, fatty food, and sugar, and this is how we repay him. Look around you, most guys his age have got a girth like the Equator, a drinking habit that plays havoc with their liver, and a lot of them are still smoking cigarettes. This guy's given all that stuff up, and this is how we treat him. Come on, have a heart.
From: lungs@RFielding.com
To: cerebral.cortex@RFielding.com
Hello up there. I know you haven't heard from the two of us for a long time, but we're still down here doing our job as per normal, except these days it's better than normal. Somebody up in the auditory cortex got him to listen to somebody giving out good advice, and now things are looking up down here. We were all but getting near packing everything in, I mean, the place had become so filthy; there was so much tar about. I'll grant you it was low-grade tar, but that stuff is pernicious. It was getting like the state of Texas down here, all we needed were derricks, and we would have been in business.
These days the place is so clean. Give the guy a break, will you. You go and make him give up sweet things like chocolate and ice cream, he’ll take up his old habits, and before you know it we'll be back finding it difficult to give this guy the oxygen he needs to stay alive.
From: hypothalamus@RFielding.com
To: Pancreas@RFielding.com
Cc: lungs@RFielding.com
Cerebral.cortex@RFielding.com
Now hear this. The failure of the pancreas to produce insulin, thereby leading to high blood sugar, known in the trade as hyperglycemia, and altered fat and protein metabolism, is not entirely due to things going wrong, but is actually a milder form of the disease known as diabetes, which can occur naturally in men of his age. It has more to do with the double helix than with anything we can do. He's a bit overweight, the auditory cortex recorded as much the last time he went to see a doctor, but we all know he has it in his own hands to keep his diabetes in check and live a normal life. If he takes regular exercise, and watches what he eats and drinks, he'll be able to get his blood sugar back to acceptable levels so that his toes, eyes and saliva glands will operate properly again. He won't have to drink so much water as he does at the moment, and he won't have to visit the bathroom quite so often as he does now. Things aren't as black as you tried to paint them, and with all your help we'll get him to a ripe old age, and let him live a good life. As for beer and cigarettes, who needs them?
Robert L. Fielding
 
Dracula's birthplace
by
Robert L Fielding

"Sure, this is no sort of place for you to live, let alone write a book. I mean," he went on, "the place is full of gloom and I don't know what else." He bunched his shoulders against an imagined cold blast of air. "It gives me the creeps, I can tell you." It was my turn to gesture with my shoulders. I shrugged them, to say, "What do I care about how you feel, I'm living here, not you." "I mean," he continued, "what sort of stuff are you going to be writing in a place like this ?" I shrugged again by way of answer. I knew exactly what kind of stuff I was going to write, but I wasn't just ready to tell him. My friend left me alone. He left me to get on with what I had to get on with. Several days later I bumped into him again, just round the corner from my totally unsuitable abode.
"And haven't you moved yet ?" he asked me. I shook my head, it was true, I hadn't. I had no intention of moving. I told him so too.
"This is the place for me," I told him, "this is the place I'm going to write."
"Soft in the head is what you are," he said, and left, walking down the street, shaking his head. He didn't look back.
Getting back to Number 2, I brewed up and settled into my routine. That's what you've got to have. I found out quickly that I had to have a routine if I was going to write a novel. None of your dilettante stuff for me, I thought. I'm going to get on with this and finish it. After all I owe it to myself. I'm making my way. I need something more than blether to back up my claims, or that's all they'll be, claims and nothing else.
And so, for the next month I did very little but write. The ideas, the words, the sentences, the letters, they drove me on, and if I'm honest with myself, they, the words and the ideas, all that, they took over my life, till all I could do when I lifted my head off the pillow in the morning was write. After my ablutions, I wrote and wrote, never caring for anything. What did I care for sustenance, especially of the mind. I had my words, at back and in front. The words I had already put down, somewhat laboriously, for I'm no scribe, the words I had already written were like so many stepping stones across the widest river I ever wished to even think to try to cross. But once in mid-stream, so to speak, I had to go on. I did. I had to go on. No stopping, not for any thing. And from those stones behind me, and from the one I was standing on at any time, I could see other stones lying waiting for me further out in the water. My path, for it was a path, across that river, wasn't there till I came to cross at that particular point. I furthered the crossing every time I wrote a word. After every word I would see a chance to make it, leap to another stone I hadn't been aware of until that last word went down. That's how I wrote the book. I wrote daily, hourly journals. I made myself Harker, and I became him, let me tell you. And that was no trick, what I'm telling you. I truly became him. I felt the coldness of that man he had gone to do business with, and the blackness and the evil of that castle. Evil overtook me. I forgot, almost, what he had gone there to complete. I forgot the transaction, his place in it. I never forgot his great love, waiting for him, writing anxious letters, losing sleep for the lack of him. I never forgot her, thank God, and I never forgot God, through all that blackness, that stony silence, and that face. Dear God, how could anyone forget that face, the power and the evil behind it.
Walking around Clontarf for a breather, I came to realise that something was happening to me. Here I was, writing sometimes day and night about a young man entering a Count's castle somewhere out in the Carpathian Mountains. A castle owned by none other than Count Dracula, whom I had made the epitome of evil. But what did I know of such things, of such places, of such men ? What did I know of the forces of evil, the forces of darkness, I mean what did I really know about all that ? Well, I thought I knew nothing, but in writing I found that I knew a lot more than I had imagined I would. That act of putting words down on a blank page, just that, the act of writing, allowed me to find somewhere in my head I didn't know existed. Clontarf, and my house on The Crescent grew misty before me as I contemplated what I had started. I stopped, had to lean against a wall for a second or two. The question I was now asking myself was whether I was being actually taken over by those same forces of darkness I was so eagerly writing about. That knocked the stuffing out of me, and my legs buckled imperceptibly. Someone noticed it though.
"You all right, Mister ?" A woman carrying some shopping in a pram was facing me, looking into my eyes. I didn't answer. I couldn't. My power of speech had deserted me. I nodded, but she wasn't having any. She took my arm and beckoned to a gate, and a footpath up to a front door. I was standing in the Crescent, but this wasn't my own door, not Number 2. This was somebody else's door. I faltered crossing the threshold of this home, inhabited by someone I didn't know. I thought of Harker being driven through Bergau Pass, a dark defile, full of the portents of evil. I thought of the huge man driving the carriage speeding Harker to he knew not what. I thought of Harker entering the Count's castle, entering that house of evil. Heaven knows, this was no castle, but in my fear and dread of being taken captive by evil my fear and trepidation upon entering gripped me, and I stumbled headlong into a room full of children, their little upturned faces blanched with fear. I had stumbled in amongst their play. I was an intruder, despite being invited. Again I thought how Harker must have felt, invited but feeling unwelcome. I thought of it dawning on him that the huge man and Count Dracula were possibly one and the same man, that there was nobody he could turn to in this strange, dark land among the mountains of Transylvania.
Thanking the woman for her kindness, and stepping back into the road, I felt the strength returning to my legs. I was well again, but those thoughts had shaken me, visibly shaken me.
The room I did my writing in was dark and uninviting. I turned from it and stepped into the kitchen. I made myself busy. I didn't feel hungry, but I made myself something to eat. That act of doing something, something that needed little thought, got me back on track.
I ate, took the things to the sink for rinsing, and returned to my room. It was still dark, but had lost some of its sinister atmosphere. The sweetness of raspberry jam on my lips kept me in the realm of the living, it saved me from going back into that lair, for that is how I had come to think of the Count's castle now, an animal's lair, from which Harker had to escape. The Count I had brutalised into something less than human, but something more than human too in the sense of his prodigious strength, and, ironically, in the pronouns I used to refer to him. He was still a man, but had the strength of a bear, the cunning of a fox, the sight and hearing of a bird of prey, and, I thought, the heartlessness of a wolf, or a pack of wolves, to be nearer to the way I had come to think and feel about him. I had come to live his life, in my head, of course, for how could I write about him without doing so. He was my own creation. Oh, he was based on historical characters who walked the Earth, but this single man, this apparition, this evil, I had created, upon the page, and worst of all, in my head. He had entered my head, had been there all the time, had needed only the Trojan Horse of an inquiring mind like mine to find my gates open, my senses susceptible to his presence. He was me, and I was him. Where was I to go, what was I to do, how was I to exorcise him from me ? I knew of only one way. I sat down and wrote, and wrote, and wrote until I had destroyed him, removed him utterly from the face of God's Earth.
I had to destroy this evil, but I was his author, into my brain came his birth, and into my thoughts came his own inviolate existence. I had made him into a man who it was impossible to destroy, but I had given him an Achilles heel, and I rejoiced, for in that were the seeds of his own destruction. In the wise mind of Van Helsing I implanted these seeds, and gave that same man a goodness and a belief not usual in mere mortals. That man, Van Helsing, also a person I alone had created, that man, with the help of others with whom I peopled the story, would effect the evil one's undoing and eventual destruction. In that destruction lay my own salvation, my own redemption, and my own extrication from the jaws of Hell. And indeed, that is how I had come to think, that I was being gripped, albeit almost imperceptibly at times, by the forces of evil. With that knowledge in my head, that I, the author, was being gripped by the very evil I had bent myself to illustrate in Count Dracula, with that knowledge I thought I knew how this story of mine would come to be received by the public when the time came for it to be read. I knew I would be cursed by some, misunderstood by others, and yet adored and revered by still more. And I believe that that is the fate of authors of works of fiction in general; that the words once being in print and readily available to the reading public at large, that the interpretation is theirs and theirs alone, that if they think it allegorical, then it is so, if they think not, then so is it not. In the writing, and in the thinking on what I was writing, what I had already written, and on what I was about to write, I came to understand this dialectic relationship between the reader and the words on the page, and between me, the writer, and the words I set down to be read later. I understood the import of what I said, but now understood too, the import of what I had omitted to say in words, that the reader would become involved in the act of creating, and that the ultimate meaning, or I should better say meanings, would reside, not in the book I had written, but in the minds of those who had read it.
This thought was somehow a burden to me, for I imagined myself to be the author of a brand of original sin, which, being first shown the light by me in words, would come to flourish and bloom afterwards, without any further necessity of having to put pen to paper, and becoming so, would be an immutable force that would tarnish everyone who came in contact with it.
I was creating a devil, and it was that thought that was constantly a burden to my soul.
From you who in later years will sit under electric lamps burning far into the night, reading my work in possibly the millenium to come, from you I ask forgiveness and forbearance as you are also taken in, enveloped in this evil, even with the death of Count Dracula at the hands of Van Helsing and the others, you who have been unwillingly, mentally coerced and deceived into your own undoing in waking nightmares that will never cease, from you I ask forgiveness, even though I am fully aware you are unable to give what I most desire, being as you most assuredly are, complicit in the machinations of the undead.

I wrote this story in response to two things: the fact that my friend was brought up in the very house that Bram Stoker was living in when he wrote his famous novel, 'Dracula', and my recent rereading of the novel, and although that is ostensibly what the story is about, I also wrote it to examine some issues connected with writing, and with reading too.


Robert L Fielding


 
SOMETHING TO READ - SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT - SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT

It is essential for students taking IELTS examinations to develop their critical thinking, to understand and discuss current issues, and be able to write about them in essays and in Task 2 of the IELTS Writing examination.

Here are -- topics for students to read about and study. Essays and articles have been provided to help students their critical thinking and their understanding of complex current issues.

There are References used in essay: for each topic to help students search for their own reading, and there are also other references that students might find useful.

Read as much as you can on each topic and make notes to help you remember what you have written.

Comprehension questions and answers have been provided for each essay and each article.

A glossary of important vocabulary has been provided with each section to help you understand the words that have been used and which you will be required to use when writing your essays and examination papers.

TOPICS (1- )

1. Family breakdown
a) References used in essay:
AUTHOR/S DATE TITLE OF PUBLICATION PUBLISHER CITY









DATE TITLE OF PUBLICATION WEB ADDRESS /URL AUTHOR/S


























Essay:

b) Articles





2. Internet addiction
a) References used in essay:
AUTHOR/S DATE TITLE OF PUBLICATION PUBLISHER CITY










DATE TITLE OF PUBLICATION WEB ADDRESS /URL AUTHOR/S











b) Essay:
2. Topic: Internet
Essay # 2. Many are of the opinion that the Internet is inundating our children with dangerous information. There is, however, no doubt that the Internet represents great advances in communication and the dissemination of information. Discuss the pros and cons of the Internet.

OUTLINE

A. Introduction
i) A brief history of the Internet
ii) The reach of the Internet
B. The advantages of the Internet
i) Communication
ii) Convenience and speed
C. The disadvantages of the Internet
i) Security
ii) Addiction to the Internet
1. Common causes of stress
2. How to find out if you are addicted to the Internet.
iii) 12 disadvantages of the Internet
D. Conclusion
i) The Internet as a force for good or as a potential force for evil
iii) Personal responsibility

F. References






A. Introduction
The Internet represents the most astounding development in technology in modern times. The telegraph, telephone, television and radio preceded it and set the stage for its unprecedented capabilities in the integration of global communication. [1]

For the people who had a hand in its development, people like Barry M. Leiner, Robert E. Khan, Leonard Kleinrock, and Stephen Wolff, to name but a few, and for us, the users of the Net, it is, ‘one of the most successful examples of the benefits of sustained investment and commitment to research and development of information infrastructure.’ [1]
In laymen’s terms, the Internet has brought us ‘the enormous growth of all kinds of “people-to-people” traffic. [1]

The influence and interest that the Internet has generated worldwide, and is still continuing to generate is pervasive. On a recent trip to Tokyo, 14 magazines devoted to the Internet, and written in English, were seen in one bookstore alone. Now, sending emails instead of letters is so convenient and so fast that conventional surface postal mail is known as ‘snail mail’.

i) A brief history of the Internet
It all started, as they say, as early as 1966, when researchers based at MIT developed what was to become the forerunner to the Internet. In 1969, Kleinrock from UCLA and others, who had been working on developments in the field, made the Network Measurement Center at UCLA the first node on ARPANET. [1] Shortly afterwards, the first host-to-host message was sent. Subsequently, further additional nodes were added and a network of interconnected computers was created.

By the end of that year, other host computers were connected, and the ARPANET, the infant Internet had come into being.

Since those early beginnings, the words of J.C.R. Licklider of MIT; that he ‘envisioned a globally interconnected set of computers through which everyone could quickly access data and programs from any site’ have materialized; the Internet is up and running and provides its millions of users with those facilities.

However, probably the most important issue related to the future of the Internet is not how technology will change, though that is undoubtedly important, but how the process of change and evolution itself will be managed, and how and whether the Internet can be controlled and policed so that it continues to live up to the ideals that its initial designers had in mind when they took the first steps in creating it.

ii) The reach of the Internet
The reach of the Internet is global, not restricted to any particular geographical location. The only proviso is that a potential user has a computer and a telephone link. Of course, this does severely limit access to the Net, and currently, the online population of the world is estimated to be in the region of 729 million people. [2]


35.8% of these use the English language, 14.1% Chinese, 9.6% Japanese, 9% Spanish, and 7.3% German, reflecting, broadly, the distribution and scope of language use globally. [2]

Expressed in economic parlance, the Internet is responsible for 31.3% of world economy in European languages other than English, which translates to a massive Gross Domestic Product of $12, 968 Billion. Even in a small country such as Iceland, the Internet generates $6 billion of that country’s GDP. [2]

In advertising alone, the amount of revenue spent on the Internet totaled nearly $2.3 billion during the first three months of 2004. [3]




B. The advantages of the Internet
i) Communication
Apart from the advantages to trade and advertising indicated by the figures given above, the Internet has speeded up methods of communication. As stated earlier, email users now refer to conventional surface mailing systems as ‘snail mail’, meaning that it is funereally slow in comparison to electronic mail.

ii) Convenience and speed
The speed of the Internet is measured in bits, which can travel at the speed of light. [8] Early modems could transfer information at speeds of 300 bps (bits per second). However, recent advances mean that data can now be transferred at 56,000 bps. Still, there is the limitation of the phone line network. Every user knows that the speed of the Internet varies with the time of day one is trying to get online. During peak hours, access can be infuriatingly slow, while at other times it can be surprisingly rapid. [8]

C. The disadvantages of the Internet
i) Security
Despite the numerous advantages of the Internet, there are many disadvantages too. Would-be Internet users need a computer, of course, and a telephone link to a server, although the Internet can be accessed in certain areas in towns and cities without a line. Most people need a telephone line, however. One of the main worries people have about using the Internet, though, concerns issues of security, particularly when divulging credit card details when purchasing on line, for instance. Web sites can learn a lot about you when you cruise the Net. [4]

Hackers can obtain information you send online, and forms you fill out, credit card details and any other personal information can be the subject of ‘sniffing’ by hackers. However, most sites that allow you to make credit purchases are secure; your message and their message back to you are both encrypted, making it practically impossible for someone ‘listening in’ to decode the transmissions. [4]

Cookies - little bits of information deposited on your computer – are generally good for you, though some can sometimes be a nuisance, returning over and over again to enable web sites you have visited to recognize you and to keep track of how you like things. Sometimes though, cookies are made to save information that you do not necessarily want other people to have, an example being your email address. Divulging this can mean you get junk mail from other sources. In newer browsers, a cookie can only be retrieved by the web page that deposited it, though that is not the case with some older browsers.

The publicizing of recent events has made more people aware of the dangers to children posed by the Internet, particularly if children access the Internet without supervision. Several things need to be made clear here. First of all, there are some sites online that are not suitable for children, to put it mildly, and adequate supervision and checks are needed to ensure that children do not access such sites. Unfortunately these days, many children have computers in their bedrooms and can access sites without their parents knowing. Only proper instruction and trust can eliminate this problem, although computers do record which sites have been visited, and many severs now block sites that are deemed to be unsuitable for access by users.

Divulging their complete identities in ‘chat rooms’ has led children to be abused by persons pretending to be friends. “The Internet is like life in the city, there are nice neighbourhoods and not so nice neighbourhoods.” It is impossible to tell who is who through a computer link to the Internet, and parents and teachers should inform children of the dangers they face by giving away such information. [4]

Identity theft is ‘the deliberate assumption of another person’s identity, usually to gain access to their credit or frame them for some crime.’ 5
This kind of offence, it is said, is the fastest growing type of misdemeanor in North America today. [5]

Even though credit card identity theft costs American businesses a staggering $5 billion per year, companies are loath to make credit card information secure since that would make it more difficult for buyers and would probably discourage them from purchasing online. [5]

This being the case, it makes sense to limit how often you use your credit online, and keep a close check on accounts that are used for online purchases or at ATM machines. Regular checking is much more efficient than waiting for your monthly statement from the bank.

Finally, to reduce the possibility of your becoming a victim of identity theft for whatever reason, limit the amount of personal information you publish on the web.
ii) Addiction to the Internet
Addiction to anything is harmful, and the Internet is no exception. Using the Internet, like other activities such as writing, is a lonely use of one’s time. Apart from the dangers formerly mentioned online, too much time spent in front of a computer may damage your eyesight, and it will certainly reduce the time you spend with others.

1. Common causes of computer stress
Although computers are useful, and the Internet can be a valuable tool in helping you to organize your life, both can nevertheless be a great source of stress. In fact, it is said that stress from working with a computer is the same as stress from any other facet of life. [7]

Doctor Morton C. Orman M.D. suggests 10 common causes of computer stress. [7]
Failing to anticipate problems
By not using backup files, you are heading for a fall when crashes occur.
Trying to get by on the cheap
Saving money buying sub-standard equipment usually does not help.
Failing to ask for help
Trying to go it alone and not asking for help and advice from others adds to your exasperation with the problems you encounter through your own inexperience or lack of know-how.
Failing to relate stress as feedback
Instead of blaming the technology when things go wrong, be both philosophical and practical. Things can and do go wrong, and it is invariably the users fault. Realize that and you are half way there.
Trying to cut corners
Using hardware without even looking at the manual is one recipe for heartache later. The new “Plug and play’ mentality doesn’t help.
Unrealistic expectations
Expecting everything to work the way you want it to do is hardly realistic.
Blaming yourself unnecessarily
When you make mistakes you are showing that you are human. Everybody does it.
Conflicts with other people
Sharing a computer is often stressful, as is waiting for replies to ‘urgent’ emails.
Failing to do your homework
More research means better results. Less means worse.
Compromising your own or others’ integrity
Using without buying or acknowledging is wrong, and you know it. Why do you do it when you know it will lead to problems later? [7]

Finally, the more you understand and concentrate on the real, underlying causes of computer related stress, the more you will come to terms with it, understand it, and suffer less from it.

2. How to find out if you are addicted to the Internet
An Internet Stress Survey is available online, and you would be well advised to take it, if you think you are at risk of being addicted to the Internet. [6]

Questions range from: ‘Do you think you are spending more time than you should surfing the Internet?’ to ‘Have you tried, unsuccessfully, to curtail you use of the Net?’ If you answered ‘Yes’ to 7 out of the 9 questions asked, you may well be addicted. [6]

Dr. Orman [9] suggests there are certain basic elements all addictions have in common, and addiction to the Internet is no different.

Denial
All addiction involves a certain amount of denial, which seems to be a vital ingredient, for without denial no addiction would become established. People tell themselves they don’t have a problem, and that’s when there is a problem.
Failing to ask for help
Denial, of course, is accompanied by a failure, or at least a reluctance, to ask for help. “I can beat this thing myself,” is a commonplace here. Asking the wrong kinds of people, and not taking advice from the right sort is also common with addicts. Professional help is often the best, chiefly because it is the best informed, and also because it is given disinterestedly.
Lack of other pleasures
People who lack other stimuli in their life are at risk from becoming addicted. People who spend a lot of time looking at their computer screens are often described as ‘nerds’. What is important is to have something to replace the addiction, something that will give you pleasure or interest or both and which is not addictive.
Underlying deficiencies in coping and life management skills
Addictions are usually symptomatic of other deficiencies, which may be the reason why many addiction therapies are not successful; they treat the addiction in isolation, when it is really part of something bigger. Attempts to overcome loneliness lead many people into repetitive behaviour that can turn into addiction. The addiction stems from another problem in a person’s life. Dealing with one without the other will invariably be ineffective.
Giving in to temptation
When giving anything up -‘cold turkey’ – makes a return almost irresistible. Anyone who has given up smoking knows the truth of that statement. Mastering your thoughts means resisting urges, and overcoming temptation. Like people giving up smoking, staying clear of the stimulus is vital. Get rid of the cigarettes from your lounge and you lessen that chance that you will be tempted back to smoking. Not turning on the computer, or going out whenever you feel the urge to go online coming on will help you cope with the difficulty of resisting temptation.
Failing to keep your word
This is similar to not giving in to temptation; it is not deceiving yourself, not making excuses for yourself, and keeping your word. Lying to others may be easy for some, but lying to oneself never is.
Failing to do what may be necessary
Setting a schedule for action to be taken is the key to beating an addiction to anything. With Internet addiction, they might range from setting an absolute time you spend on the Net daily, placing self-imposed restraints on certain types of service that you find ‘pleasurable’, and often not of vital importance to your life, applying these restraints until you are out of danger, finding other things to do besides spending time on the Net, asking for help from others, to avoiding the environments that encourage you to return to your addictive behaviour. This last one could, for instance, involve going shopping in a mall that does not have an Internet café, rare as that might be.
Failing to anticipate and deal with relapses
Finally, situations will inevitably arise, after you appear to have kicked the habit, which drive you back to the addiction. Overcoming loneliness to remove the root cause of an addiction might not be permanent. Relationships fail, and have to be dealt with so that subsequent and dependent problems do not re-occur. [9]

iii) Other disadvantages of the Internet
Apart from the problems of addiction to the Internet, issues of security and the propriety of some material broadcast over the Net, twelve other disadvantages of the Internet have been suggested, and these are given below. [10]
It is slow
The physical distances between servers in the U.S. and users in Europe, increase in Internet traffic, and the number of intermediate servers can all help to slow connecting time and make browsing intolerably tedious.
Time consuming authoring
Whereas writing for the Internet was a slow and laborious process, it has been speeded up immeasurably by the provision of WYSIWYG dedicated web design applications, and support from software packages which can save as HTML, which although admittedly fast to operate, nevertheless do not all support options available in each HTML specification.
High expectations
For students and learners becoming familiar with multi-media/ hypermedia, their expectations regarding their finished product are often too high. Polished looking websites of companies look the way they do because time and money is spent getting trained experts in the field of website design to produce them.
Access requires a computer
Compared with reading text on paper, looking at a screen can be and is extremely tiring. Whereas books can be read anywhere, within reason, pages on the Internet can only be read sitting in front of a computer screen, and while this is obvious, it is still a huge disadvantage to users.
Meta-cognitive skills
Traditionally, Internet users obtain little or no training in the meta-cognitive skills that are involved in browsing the Internet and using it effectively.
Computer/Internet literacy
Learning how to become computer literate, it has been suggested, [10] should be given the same weighting in tuition as traditional literacy and numeracy. The fact that it usually isn’t means that many users lack basic skills such as, for example, using two windows at the same time.
Lost in hyperspace
It is all too easy, whilst being immersed in one’s use of the Internet, to become ‘lost’ – not realizing that you are an entirely different site from the one you imagined you were on. On some sites, you can easily be led away unwittingly onto others. Things like clear navigational buttons on sites designed to facilitate certain task fulfillment help users avoid facing this difficulty.
Judging scope is difficult
Getting lost on a site is made more probable if the user is not aware of the size of the site. Some sites can be gigantic and this can help to make a user become disorientated. This problem, of course, does not exist with printed matter, but websites are subject to entirely different, often bewildering limitations or lack of them.
Limited formatting
Web formatting capabilities do not match up to the sophistication of desktop publishing software, although this situation is improving. [10]
Consequently, it is often difficult to get a site to look as polished and sophisticated as one might wish. Again, expert web designers have ways of getting around this problem that are not available to amateurs creating web sites.
Never complete
Like any new technology, the Internet is perpetually in a state of flux. Web sites can be perilously out of date. It is important that you are aware of new and most recent developments in your field before relying on any one specific source of information.
Inconsistencies in browser support
Different browsers interpret and support HTML, and JavaScript differently. Some effects cannot be handled by certain browsers, which can pose problems for designers of educational programmes.
Cultural differences
Although the Internet is universal and international, conforming to certain national and/or ethnic variations in certain rubrics does not happen, and while the reason for this may be ignorance of these, it may still cause confusion to users whose conventions differ from those online. [10]

D. Conclusion
i) The Internet as a force for good or as a potential force for evil
Like all technological innovations, the technology itself is neutral with regard to its uses. It is an inanimate object. No blame can attach to it. It is ultimately the uses and abuses man puts it to that are right or wrong in a moral sense. Unfortunately, the universality of the Internet means that no single body, be it a national government or an internationally recognized body such as the United Nations, is able to exert any meaningful control over what goes onto the world wide web.

ii) Personal responsibility and accountability: the ultimate answer
Like the world in which we live and in which the Internet exists, the forces of good and evil are ranged on either side and no amount of pontification will alter that fact. Where it is possible to encourage good in people, it should be done, and where it is feasible to discourage bad in people, that should also be done. However, and be that as it may, each and every one of us using the Internet has a duty to ensure that our children and our young adults, and the most vulnerable in society, do not suffer because of it.
























c) Articles





















d) Illiteracy
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3. Urbanisation
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d) Extinction of species
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4. Polarity of wealth
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5. Corruption
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d) Wars
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6. Intense nationalism
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d) Crime and violence
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d) Water pollution
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7. Air pollution
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e) Industrialisation
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d) Population explosion
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f) Racism
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8. Sexism
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d) Desertification
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d) Drug abuse
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e) Disposal of waste
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d) Depletion of ozone
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f) Acid rain
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9. Loss of rain forests
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10. Education
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d) Cultural differences
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11. Drying up of rivers
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d) Excessive TV watching
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27. Pandemics
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d) Threats to democracy
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12. Unemployment
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Dealing with tpical questions in IELTS Task 2 Writing examinations

Understand the question
The key to writing a good answer to an examination question is understanding the question before you start to write.

Here are 11 different questions that are fairly typical of the different way in which questions are asked in examination papers.

For each of these 11 questions, a guide to their meaning and what you are being asked to write is provided.

Examples of IELTS Task 2 questions and some help understanding them.

1. What are the pros and cons of co-educational schooling?




















2. Single sex education is better than co-educational schooling. Discuss.




























3. Compare the benefits of a vegetarian diet over a conventional Western diet.




































4. Forests are the lungs of the earth. Their destruction will accelerate extinction of animals and ultimately mankind. For this reason, logging in the world’s rain forests should be phased out over the next decade. Discuss.
























5. Aquariums and wild life sanctuaries are seen as sources of education and entertainment for families. They are also essential for conducting life-saving research. However, there is opposition to confining animals in this way. Discuss some of the arguments for and against the maintenance of zoos.




















6. Society is experiencing an increase in many problems such as crime and drug abuse due to urbanization. Give some suggestions to control this trend.



















7. Discuss the possible causes for the worldwide increase in crime and violence. What has been the effects of these trends in society?



















8. Since World War 2 there has been an increase in co-operation between many Easter and Western countries. This had led to a desire among students to undertake studies in foreign countries. Write a brief account of the advantages and disadvantages of studying abroad.






















9. Pollution is a very serious problem today. What level of pollution should we tolerate? Discuss examples of the different types of pollution.














10. What are the effects of global warming? Suggest some recommendations to minimize these effects.




















11. How can we address the problem of the increasing illiteracy trend in many highly developed countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom?
















 
Of bygone days


Gaze at the screen of your laptop, text a friend a quick message on your mobile phone, park your car in an underground car park, turn on the TV, walk into a shopping mall – be constantly reminded that you live in the modern age – the most modern age, but remember it was not always thus.

In days of yore, olden days, days of old - life was different – it went at a different lick, as they say (sorry, used to say) – and was a foreign country where things were done differently.

Try to imagine life without electricity – street lights- neon signs – traffic lights – without computers – without TV – what would we do in the evenings?

Port out- starboard home – instead of “Window or aisle?” Deck quoits not in-flight movies – dining at the Captain’s table – not pre-packed dinners!

Books on our shelves like ‘The Weekend Book’, first published by Random House in 1955 – not that long ago – with sections on all manner of things.

What great weekends to be had – setting forth early, a well shod party – prepared for all and any eventuality – a downpour of rain – a grazed knee – unidentified flora and fauna all around.

Picnickers ready to greet travelers, landowners, gamekeepers, rustics, landed gentry, maidens, sprig-muslin dressed – out in all weathers – aware of differences in stately homes and farm buildings, public houses and hotels, porticos, Regency and Georgian, “the Babel of styles which characterized the reign of Queen Victoria.”

Children recognizing a pied wagtail, and calling it a trotty wagtail, polly wash-dish or Devil’s Bird, and knowing it as ‘a duodecimo editions of the magpie, both in its plumage and the inconsequence of its ways’.

It went without saying that if it was January, the farmers would be carting muck and ploughing; March, sowing oats and barley; April, planting potatoes and spring wheat; May, sowing turnips and swedes and so on and so forth till year end – December, when they would be carting muck and ploughing once again.

Even small boys could look at cultivated fields and divine forage crops like kale and clover, lucerne and vetches, from grain-crops like wheat, oats, barley and rye – would know what a water-vole or a stoat looked like, or could tell a Fresian from a Jersey, a shortwool Oxford or Dorset from a longwool Leicester, Lincoln or Wensleydale.

Children enjoyed the taste of a Cox’s Orange Pippin, a Laxton Superb, or a Newton Wonder. They knew that no season is dead; that weeds are merely flowers out of place; that the gold under the hedgerows is the groundsel; the tiny white stars are chickweed; and that hazel catkins picked now – in January – will soon treble their length and be spilling gold dust in a warm room.

Voyaging aunts and uncles knew the signs of the coming weather – and having sayings to foretell it – would say to the younger members of their party cheerfully:

‘Between one and two.
See what the day will do.’

Or if the morning was wet, they would cheer up the children in their midst by saying,

‘Rain before seven,
Fine before eleven.’

Or warn that,

‘Mackerel skies and mares’ tails
Make great ships carry low sails.’

If the weather did persist and a room somewhere had to be sought, the party might have played the game of Telegrams, and from a twelve letter word like CHIMNEY-PIECE would come up with the telegram that read:-

Churchill Has Influenza, Malenkov Neuralgia, Eden Yellow fever, Please Inform Eisenhower (signed) Conference Executive.

Time to eat, and cook has remembered that ‘however witty the talk, however shady the garden, however original the cottage and its furnishings, it won’t be by these things alone that the weekend will be judged, but also by the food you offer.

Think how delicious and mouth watering are sandwiches filled with cream cheese and grated walnut, English Cheddar with slivers of green pepper and chopped pimiento, minced corn beef and mustard butter; and later, coming home hungry after a long walk to oxtail with haricot beans, Irish Stew or Lancashire Hot-pot, Red cabbage with chestnuts or Veal matelote, and to finish off , a banana whip or an apple muesli.

After dinner, the children would play games, while the mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, friends and neighbours would while away the remaining hours in talk of this or that; devour wit and argument, discuss a turkey and a chine, know instinctively that a lady must never sing a song that is of a decidedly masculine character; and, following advice in The Ladies’ Pocket Book of Etiquette (1840), decide against that anti-English dance, the waltz.

In conversation, following Sir Walter Scott, each would know that,
‘Conversation is but carving
Give no more to every guest
Than he is able to digest
And that each may have his due,
Let your neighbour carve for you.’

Moving now to farewells, the adults of the party would comfortably observe the niceties of the handshake; the high-official (body erect, rapid, short shake); the mortmain (the flat hand introduced into your palm); the digital (one finger held out- much used by the clergy); the shakus rusticus (betokening rude health, warm heart, and distance from the Metropolis); and perhaps worst of all these, the pisces (the damp palm like a dead fish).

Excusing the vigour of the children, they would say, ‘Caroline’s still got to learn there are things one doesn’t say’, or ‘has just been promoted to grown up dinner’, or ‘has never been able to resist a moustache’.

And finally, in a letter of thanks for the whole experience of a glorious weekend in your company, they would have written, ‘Back in my little flat in town, I realize how right my doctor was when he said I should enjoy life again after a complete change. Thank you a thousand times for that change’. The past is indeed a foreign country.
Robert L. Fielding






‘

 
Having the grace to apologize


Nobody likes apologizing – it seems like confessing that you are in the wrong – that’s probably why people dislike it!

Not liking it is probably also partly to do with our sense of self-worth, the esteem that is vital to our personality – to our standing with others.

Apologizing can be seen as a weakness looked at this way - when it is seen as little more than a confession – an admission almost that you are less than perfect. An apology in this light seems to be saying that you are weaker – not as good – not as intelligent or able as the person you are apologizing to. Apologizing means losing face.

Yet the ability and the willingness to apologize for having wronged someone or done something wrong is more a sign of strength than weakness. After all, everybody makes mistakes – nobody’s perfect, and admitting that you are only human after all is surely a reaffirmation of one’s strength – a statement that says that you are proud to be human, or at least that you are not ashamed of it.

And yet apologizing is rarely done, and when it is done, it is often because someone in a more influential position thinks you should or has told you that you should. Actually, apologizing because you have been told to is no apology – not a real one – not an apology from the heart, which is where all valid and honest apologies must originate.

No, an apology that has been forced on a person is no apology at all. Or if it is, then the person apologizing has come to realize that one was necessary after all – that the forcing itself was inevitable – that the person forcing you to apologize was right to do so.

An apology from the heart – if it really is from the heart, has a tremendous effect on the person being apologized to, unless the offence is so great that no apologies can ever atone for the wrong done.

A sincere and timely apology has the effect of a sort of metaphorical bowing to the other, an elevating of the person being apologized to, and, on the face of it, at first at any rate, of a lowering of the person apologizing.

Remember sitting in a motionless railway carriage in a station when the train on the next tracks begins to move forward. For an instant, it feels as if you are moving backwards. It is an illusion, of course, and when you look at the platform after the other train has gone, you quickly realize that it was just that; an illusion.

So it is when apologizing; at first the elevating of one feels like the lowering of the other, but that too is an illusion - of a different sort. What is really happening is that both are being elevated in each other’s mind.

Apologizing means that everybody wins – it is the opposite of a zero sum game – where nobody wins, which is what happens when offences are left to fester – when no one apologizes despite one being needed.

In some cultures, losing face is the very last thing to do – so situations where an apology is necessary are avoided – people try hard to make sure that they don’t transgress – and for a while this works – a society in which people try not to offend others must be a pleasant one. However, and unfortunately, no such society exists, for no collection of human beings can be without them. Apologies are needed in any society if it is going to run along smooth and peaceful paths.

An apology, particularly one made in a society where apologizing is a rarity, is either taken as a sign of weakness, or as a sign of strength. It is up to both to work on which way it is to be taken; for the person apologizing should know that having the honesty and self-confidence to say he is sorry for what he has done amounts to a huge affirmation of his humanity; for the person being apologized to, the other person’s apology amounts to what is in effect a tribute from the other – a laying at his feet of the thing the other one holds most dear: his self-esteem.

When a person apologizes sincerely, he is paying the other a great complement, and sometimes new friendships – apologizing makes us more human. (727 words)

Robert L. Fielding


 
Everybody get stressed

First of all, you’ve got to realize that stress is everywhere – and it’s here to stay - deal with it. Second, there is good stress and bad stress. The good stuff – though it doesn’t feel so good when you get it, keeps you alert, buoys you up for the things you really need to get through – examinations, speaking in public, that kind of thing, and we have words and expressions for the kind of feelings that kick in at such times. We have ‘butterflies in the stomach, the hot flushes, blushing, and more unpleasant feelings that have you running for the bathroom.

These kinds of stresses keep you going, get you ready for a big event. If you didn’t experience them, you probably wouldn’t be normal.


The late Roy Jenkins MP, former Chancellor of the Exchequer in Britain said that he always got butterflies before making a big speech in the House of Commons – he regarded it as part of the performance – and would probably not have performed so well had he not felt that way. Stress can be a positive thing.

The negative stress – the bad stuff – is the stuff to avoid. The big stressers are the death of a close friend or relative, getting divorced, getting fired, moving house, but there are a lot of others that while not sounding half as serious, can nevertheless still make you miserable, and the worst thing is that many of them are permanent features of our lives.

With most of them, finding someone you can trust and confide in helps. You could try your partner or your best friend. It’s difficult to tell you as an individual who you should be able to trust and who you can talk to.


The biggest stresser is often fear, but fear can be overcome, or it can be groundless and based upon your own ignorance of the world around you. One of the biggest things that helps is knowing that most people go through what you are going through – that in fact you’re not that different from the rest of us – that your troubles are not especially yours and yours alone – that we’ve all been there – that we’ve all got over them, and that you will. Knowledge is power, it is said; power to get on with life by coping with your problems without them getting on top of you and stopping you having fun.
Robert L. Fielding
 
Removing anxiety on the road: reacting to the car not the driver


Traffic accidents on the roads of the UAE are caused by drivers, cars, hazards and speed, and sometimes by pedestrians.

Short of having an accident though, most drivers experience near-misses, hold ups, potentially dangerous situations every time they go out onto the road in their vehicles.

Now, it has been argued on these pages (Aggressive driving on UAE roads – ibid) that responsible drivers do not treat driving as if it were a game – a contest between themselves and other drivers, do not imagine they are the victims of personal vendettas, and certainly do not imagine they are isolated and under attack – they do not believe that other drivers are conspiring against them.

The corollary to this is that irresponsible drivers do these things – although not all drivers and probably not all the things mentioned. The truth is more likely to be that many drivers do some of these things some of the time, with those drivers that act most irresponsibly doing most of those things most of the time.

This doesn’t exonerate any of us; we are all responsible for each other’s safety whilst driving. However, what we can all start doing is thinking more rationally, controlling our irrational thoughts and the fears and anxiety that ensue, using positive tactics to minimize the time spent fantasizing and fretting.

Put yourself in a familiar situation; you are driving from Al Ain to Dubai, traveling at 120kph (the speed limit on that road). You are in the outside lane. In the middle lane ahead, a driver is indicating that he intends moving out to overtake a slower moving vehicle in front of him.

Now think what you do in such a situation; you speed up to get past the car before it pulls out into your lane. The driver indicating that he intends to move out sees you have increased your speed and waits – even though at the time of his first indication there was enough time to move out safely, overtake the slower vehicle and move back again long before you were inconvenienced in any way.

But now, as the driver in the rear has increased his speed, everything is happening at once – so somebody has to give way. The driver in the middle lane slows down to let the other pass, and the danger subsides. What is left in its place however, is a feeling of malice toward the speeding driver.

Whenever I am in the middle lane wanting to move out, I indicate well ahead of time, making the other driver behind me speed up and get out of my way so that I can move out when the time is ready to safely do so. I anticipate the other driver’s reactions to my indicator – rightly every time, but in a positive way that increases everyone’s safety.

In England this doesn’t work, and neither is there any need to do it or think this way. When a driver in front indicates, the driver behind slows to let the other in – both feel neutral about the situation – they are thinking rationally and driving better and more safely because of it.

Here’s another familiar scenario: a driver is approaching a roundabout in Al Ain – he intends going straight across it, and looks in front of him to see if it is clear for him to progress. He glances to his left to make sure that nothing is turning in front of him, but then he sees another vehicle at the next entry point waiting to go onto the roundabout.








The driver shoots his car forward well before he crosses the white line, and he moves so quickly that the other driver waiting at the next entry has not time to progress safely.

In effect, he treats the whole roundabout as if it is his to do as he likes with, whereas he should really approach the white line without undue speed, allowing those in front of him to cross their line before he gets to his. He is in effect queue jumping by ignoring the fact that a queue exists.

This driver is playing a game – he is putting one over on the driver waiting ahead. This is an act of aggression that forces the other to give way despite the fact that he really does have the right to go first since he got to the line first.

Again, no accident ensues, but feelings are running high – one feels resentment, the other feels resented and rationalizes his actions by telling himself that he has the right because he is quicker, because his car is newer and faster, because he did it without sanction – he got away with it.


THINK ACT √

NOT →→ FEEL →→ ACT ×

My point is that in dealing with the other driver’s motives instead of the other driver’s position on the road, the offending motorist doesn’t get away with anything – what he does do is store up a stock of inbuilt resentment in the other driver – he teaches the other driver to be that way himself in future. Everybody on the road suffers sooner or later, and more and more because one driver thought he could outwit another, thought he could deny him his rights as another road user, thought he could get away with it. No one gets away with anything on the roads in the long run – all we really do is store up trouble until we say that other drivers are, “Accidents waiting to happen.”
Robert L. Fielding

































Aggressive driving on the roads of the UAE
Robert L. Fielding

Every day we read of more people dying in road accidents bin the UAE (100 so far since the beginning of Ramadhan) and every time we drive, we see examples of terrible driving, we have near misses and come home feeling upset and nervous about the state of the traffic on the roads. This is the invisible side of the problem; the stress each of us feel before, during and after taking a journey.

Aggressive driving appears in every list of indicators of stress: it is both a cause of stress and a result of it; we drive more aggressively when we are under stress, and other’s aggressive driving gives us stress. Here are some factors that affect us all when we drive.
1. Immobility
Exercise gets rid of stress – lack of exercise produces stress – driving doesn’t involve enough movement to be stress free.
2. Constriction
The confines of traffic lanes and other road markings mean that drivers feel hemmed in – this leads to the desire to escape and escape quickly –constrictions have implications on times of journeys
3. Regulation
Disobeying regulations is punished – this leads to rebellion and further transgressions.
4. Lack of control
Control is ultimately out of the driver’s hands – this leads to feelings of
powerlessness and impotence – drivers react by taking control
5. Being put in danger
Danger causes fear – fear leads to anger – anger leads to stress – stress leads to dangerous driving.
6. Territoriality
Having a car means having the freedom to move around at will –
when this freedom is infringed or impeded people react adversely.
7. Diversity
Predictability is reduced by the different abilities of other drivers to behave in ways that are expected and normal.
8. Multi-tasking
Doing several things at once impacts upon our ability to do one thing absolutely
correctly – driving on busy roads leaves no room for error
9. Denying our mistakes
Self-esteem makes us feel we are always right and the other driver
is wrong – but is this always true – indignation leads to anger
10. Cynicism
Driving is surrounded by criticism – we learn to think of ourselves
as experts when this is highly unlikely
11. Loss of objectivity
Needing to find fault with others is part of the experience of driving
in congested streets – drivers are biased in disputes or when apportioning blame
12. Venting
Venting one’s anger breaks out into ever more severe forms of hostility that
threaten normal modes of behaviour whilst driving
13. Unpredictability
Competition for space and different abilities in different situations lead to high
levels of unpredictability on our roads – this leads to frustration and hostility,
anger and accident
14. Ambiguity
Practically every situation involving other drivers can be regarded in different ways
– negative views of others prevail
15. Lack of emotional intelligence
Drivers are only trained in driving skills – developing sound judgment or emotional control in difficult situations is not taught at any driving school
Now, we are getting close to knowing what is happening on our roads. Every driver, if he is being honest, should easily see that some of these factors affect his driving at times.

Add to these factors the ones that can often bear down upon every individual getting into a car.

 Physical discomfort
Being hungry, tired, unwell or unfit generally will all have negative effects on driving ability and judgment in most situations
 Mental agitation and discomfort
Domestic difficulties, trouble at work, financial problems – any or all of these will mean that one’s judgment and ability are impaired in situations in which alertness and calmness are required qualities
 Punctuality
Accidents are much more likely to occur when time is at a premium – in rush hour or when the driver is in too much of a hurry for the surrounding traffic to allow undue speed
 Vehicle quality
Old or poorly maintained vehicles become unreliable and dangerous, but new, overpowered vehicles can also be dangerous in inexperienced, young hands
 Externals
The state of the roads affects driving – empty, fast roads are temptations for young drivers – delays due to road works test patience of drivers
 Cultural norms
Aggressive driving is learned behaviour – each act of aggression teaches someone else to do the same – film and TV portray dangerous driving as good driving – the pain felt by accident victims is never shown and nor can it be

Basically, a lot of problems on our roads are caused by drivers’ lack of self-awareness, as well as their own self-esteem as people who drive.

Look at this self-witness script that someone recorded whilst driving.

“Right now I feel scared, anxious, fearful, panic-stricken, agitated, bothered, irritated, annoyed, angry, mad. I feel like yelling and hitting. I’m thinking, ‘Oh no, what’s he doing? How could he do that?’ And I hear myself saying out loud: ‘#%*@ stupid guy!’ I’m breathing fast, gripping the wheel, perspiring, sitting up straight and slightly forward, my eyes are wide open and looking straight ahead.” www.drdriving.org

Now look at the difference between a responsible driver and the driver previously quoted. Can you imagine a responsible, sensible driver saying those things to himself whilst driving?
Responsible drivers:
I. Accurately predict the consequences of their actions or other drivers’ actions.
II. De-dramatize or neutralize their own negative feelings in any driving situation.
III. Make up emotionally intelligent scenarios that are protective of people and property.
IV. Analyze sequence of decisions by other motorists.
V. Re-assert their commitment to safe driving.

Responsible drivers:
I. Do not attach game like significance to exchanges.
II. Do not make up self serving, self-deluding driving scenarios..
III. Do not imagine they are being personally singled out for attack by other drives.
IV. Do not denigrate other drivers for their car’s appearance or age.
V. Do not imagine they are isolated or under attack.

Lastly, responsible drivers do the following:-
I. Apply a moral or religious tone to their driving, their thoughts and their actions.
II. Are fearful of causing damage or injury to someone.
III. Care about other people’s feelings
IV. Want to be supportive and helpful to other road users.
V. See driving as involving the human rights of others on the roads.

It is strange that in a country where people will normally go out of their way to be friendly and polite, where people will open a door and insist that others go through it before they do, where people greet each other in a friendly and hospitable fashion, where people will readily apologize if they think they have transgressed against others in any way, that many drivers from different nations often behave so inconsiderately on the roads.

If self-image is the problem; if the person screaming through heavy traffic, speeding, cutting in front of people, running red lights, tailgating, imagines himself to be masculine, worthy of emulation,
brave or hip, then he should read this – read this and think again about his actions and their possible results.

Reacting to other drivers in that way really only means that the person is immature, most definitely not worthy of emulation, and is a poor example of whichever community he represents. That is what a bad driver really is.
Robert L. Fielding


Positive steps to safer driving


Knowing why you do something is not the same thing as knowing how to change – though it is a beginning. Realising why you drive the way you do – dangerously – is the first necessary step to changing how you drive.

Here is what I find works for me – maybe it will work for you – try it out before you discard the idea.

Experts in the psychology of driving (pathologically bad driving) have found that self-witnessing (describing your driving to yourself) works.

If you are really being serious about this, you can fix up a recording device in your car so that you can replay everything you say whilst driving.

Start the car, back out of your garage or car port and begin – talk your way through a few kilometers of driving – over a couple of roundabouts, through a few intersections and round a couple of turnings right and left.

How to do it and what to talk about – go step by step through everything you see, do and feel. By the time you have talked your way to your destination, you will know a lot more about yourself as a driver and why you get excited and act the way you do.

It is as if there is somebody you feel you have to answer to for your actions driving. The difference is that this ‘somebody’ is unforgiving, truthful and openly honest – this is yourself – for however much you justify your faults, your inner self will help you to deny those justifications. Everybody feels the need to feel good about themselves – you are no exception.

My self-witness went something like this:-

“Right, I’m pulling into the road, there’s a car but it’s right back – I’m alright to go – keep signaling left – I’m in the outside lane – that other car is in the next lane – going over the line – let him - waiting – now it’s us – watch him cut me up – oh, surprise, he didn’t – now he’s going right, byee.”

“A busier roundabout now – cars moving into empty lanes – no rush – no indicators – more dangerous – stay back and let them go – watch this car coming in, crossing the line but he’s seen me – waiting – in behind me – no problem.”

Everything is calm, and any tensions that might have been caused by the other cars dissolves before it can take hold and distort thinking.

Listening to replay of my own ‘self-witness’, it soon becomes clear that the main source of trouble is when I cross lanes or someone crosses mine,; that is when a sort of interaction takes place.

In distorted egocentric thinking, these interactions are like arguments, whereas in more rational modes of thought, they are merely people going about their lawful movements on the road. Taking the ‘him’ out of the equation and replacing it with ‘that car’ means a lot.


It means less chance of feeling threatened or singled out. It means more rational decision making when maneuvering, which leads to safer driving, fewer accidents and a healthier driving psychology for all.
Robert L. Fielding
 
CONTENTS
i) Foreword
PART ONE
1. Achieving self-actualization: The real value of education 
2. The Digital Future: Something to look forward to, or something to fear? 
3. Using ‘Occam’s razor’ sparingly: Exercising judgment in one’s thinking. 
4. Thinking creatively 
5. Having an inquiring mind: Making new connections. 
6. Train for the future – not the past. 
7. Fiction: The Eskimo Widow 
8. Opting for the alternative: Making little decisions to make your life better. *
9. Avoid using fallacies: don’t come to the wrong conclusions *
10. Prose poetry: The Golden Treasury: Chapter and Verse 
11. Why we laugh at the things that make us laugh 
12. The wheel and the microchip 
13. ‘Repetition: The part it plays in our lives 
14. Fiction: ‘Reactions’ ***
15. Light or Left? Which are you? 
16. ‘That’s entertainment’: Making meaning in films 
17. Driver, Mind, and Environment: The Elements of Danger for Road Users
18. Accidents waiting to happen – driving on auto-pilot *
19. When ignorance is bliss: The public's perception of danger  *
20. Sleep: A necessary ingredient for a healthy life 
21. Relaxation: Giving your mind and your body a rest **
22. Talking things through: Finding solutions through discussion **
23. Fiction: ‘Unstable equilibrium’ ***
24. Speed reading: **
25. Diet: Eating for happiness **
26. Having fun **
27. Motivation and stamina: Reigning in the urges **
28. Peer group dynamics versus being an individual **
29. Being organized: One of the keys to academic success **
30. Exercise to succeed: A healthy mind in a healthy body **
31. What art teaches us: Seeing the beauty of life **
32. What science tells us: Limitations and opportunities on Earth 
33. Lessons from history: Repeating mistakes **
34. The laws of nature: Leaving something to pass on **
35. The university of life: Finding meaning in everything **
36. The wisdom of age: Learning to respect experience **
37. The exuberance of youth: Appetites and hunger **
38. Youth, energy, and experience: Learning from our mistakes **
39. Using the Internet as a research tool: Making the infinite finite ** (see P. Davidson)
40. Finding space: Having room to breathe and still keeping in touch **
41. Fresh air: Free refueling for everybody **
42. A sense of balance and a sense of purpose **
43. Puzzles  *
44. Keeping a vocabulary notebook *
45. Annotated Word List ***
ii) Appendix A: Glossary **
iii) Appendix B: References and acknowledgements **
* = unfinished
** = not started yet.
***= not included yet.
PART TWO - IELTS ESSAYS
SOMETHING TO READ - SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT - SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT

It is essential for students taking IELTS examinations to develop their critical thinking, to understand and discuss current issues, and be able to write about them in essays and in Task 2 of the IELTS Writing examination.

Here are 29 topics for you to read about and study. Essays and articles have been provided to help you develop your critical thinking and your understanding of complex current issues.

There are references used in essays on each topic to help you search for your own reading, and there are also other references that you might find useful.

Read as much as you can on each topic and make notes to help you remember what you have read.

Comprehension questions and answers have been provided for each essay and each article.

A glossary of important vocabulary has been provided with each section to help you understand the words that have been used and which you will be required to use when writing your essays and examination papers.





TOPICS (1- 11 )

13. Family breakdown
a) References used in essay:
AUTHOR/S DATE TITLE OF PUBLICATION PUBLISHER CITY









DATE TITLE OF PUBLICATION WEB ADDRESS /URL AUTHOR/S























































Essay: Children are no longer respectful or well behaved because they are not disciplined in the home. Discuss.


A. Introduction
According to a report published by the Institute of Psychiatry, ‘today’s teenagers are much more likely to lie, steal or defy authority than previous generations.’ Khaleej Times (15.9.04. page 38)

The figures quoted in the report compare today’s 15 and 16-year old boys with those of the 1970s and 1980s. Today’s teenagers, the report says, have a much greater chance of having a range of behavioural difficulties than their parents’ generation. Rising crime figures have confirmed that the great majority of offences are committed by teenage boys.


Another significant statistic is that the rate of divorce in England and Wales has dramatically increased, pointing to a link between the two trends. If there is a link between the two, it suggests that there are significant differences in the way children are being brought up.

B. Problems faced by children
The difficulties of growing up today could be a factor contributing to this increase in crime

Growing up without two parents in the home can and does mean that children, and particularly boys, do not get the right amount of discipline. That is not to say that mothers do not discipline their children, but traditionally it is the father who metes out discipline to sons, for example.

If parental involvement is equated with care and attention of children, and there is evidence that children often view even handed discipline in this way, then it is little wonder that many children today suffer from low self-esteem, lack of confidence and the need to feel valued by their parents and the need for their parents’ involvement in their young lives. When children lack self-esteem they often become aggressive and easily angered. Christle et al (2000)

Similarly, parents who take an interest in their children give them self-confidence, meaning that when parents show little or no interest in what their children are doing, they come to lack self-confidence. Having self–confidence means that children become more resilient. Resilience has been defined as, ‘the ability to recover strength and spirit under adversity on both internal (self) and external (family, school, community) factors for a positive outcome.’ Christle (ibid) Resilient children are less prone to becoming aggressive or easily angered. Resilient children have fewer behavioural problems.

Another difficulty children face, and one that may not be fully understood by parents, is the pressure exerted upon a child from its peer group. Children are often bullied at school if they appear different in any way to other children. This may take the form of being made fun of, or of being physically abused, or both. To avoid being bullied, a child may change his or her behaviour so that it is more in line with what is considered normal in the child’s peer group. An example of the way peer group pressure can force children to act in certain ways is illustrated by smoking cigarettes at school. Many children, usually boys, start smoking because their friends smoke. Pressure in the form of bullying or just a need in a child to conform to what is expected by friends can make children take up smoking cigarettes at an early age.

C. Problems faced by parents

As well as the difficulties faced by children inside and outside the home, parents also face difficulties. First of all, the social conditions in which people live militate against high levels of involvement in a child’s life. Today, millions of single parents, invariably women, have to balance the need to provide for their children with a need to become more involved with their families. At times when children are off school, for example, a mother may still have to go out to work every day, leaving the child unsupervised, and alone with other children in the same position. It is easy to see that children can get into mischief in such situations.

The age we live in brings additional difficulties for parents: most children have computers these days, with access to the Internet. As is well known, there are all sorts of temptations online for the unwary. The incidence of physical abuse taking place after a child has got to know someone through a chat room has increased, and is a constant cause for concern with parents whose children regularly access the Internet without supervision or their parents’ knowledge.

Today children are continually exposed to temptations that were much less in evidence even just twenty years ago. The selling of illegal drugs in schools is widespread these days, despite all attempts by the authorities and by parents to stop it, and children can become addicted much more easily. With this comes secrecy, as the child fears being found out. Petty criminal activity follows, to pay for the habit, and the cycle of substance abuse (illegal drugs, tobacco, and alcohol) and criminal activity becomes strengthened.

On a more psychological level, parents often do not really know the best way to bring up their children, often using violence or threats of violence to stop children behaving badly. However, several things need to be stated here. The first one is that violence or the threat of violence is not an effective way of ensuring a child behaves in an acceptable manner. Child abuse and neglect bring on the early onset of anti-social behaviour in children. McEvoy & Welker (2000)

In addition, using physical forms of punishment teaches children that hitting is an acceptable way to express feelings of anger and disappointment. Children mimic their parents’ behaviour, albeit often unconsciously, but nevertheless, it is a fact that a child’s main role model in life is his or her parent/s.

Lastly, and for the reasons just mentioned, mothers and fathers bringing up children, do so in the only way they know how: somnetimes in the same way they themselves were brought up. If children are physically abused by parents, there is a good chance that when they become parents, they will physically abuse their children in lieu of other forms of parental discipline. Christle (ibid)

D. Solutions

First and foremost, a realization by parents that there is a problem in the home, that the child’s life is adversely affected in some way is vital, for without that realization, without admitting to oneself that one’s child is suffering, no attempt to change can take place.

Counseling is one form of action that can help parents cope with bringing up a child. The ability and the opportunity to talk to skilled and experienced counseling personnel can be instrumental in showing parents more effective and loving ways to treat their children. As stated earlier, many of the ways parents discipline their children, can often have completely the reverse effect intended. Violence in the home does not stop violence outside the home. On the contrary, it may exacerbate the problem. Parents need to know what effects their behaviour is having on their children, and more importantly, that there are alternatives to the ones that have already been tried.

Lastly, a willingness to want to change is a vital ingredient in any improvement in a child’s life. Parents, no less than children, must really want to change. Being the adult in the relationship, it should be the parent who takes the initiative in instigating changes in the way children are treated in the home.

As for the children’s willingness to change; being shown more love and respect, seeing that their parents are more interested and involved in what they are doing, and having a better role model to look up to, should ensure that their wishes are the same as their parents.

E. Outcomes

If this willingness is translated into real and lasting changes in family life, inside and outside the home, there will be changes at many different but related levels. First of all, levels of trust between parents and children should increase. This means that parents will know that their children are behaving well, even in their absence at school holiday times, for example. They will know that their children can be trusted, and this works both ways; children know that they are being trusted and this makes them live up to that trust.

Being trusted and trusting others brings other advantages and benefits to a child’s sense of well-being; the child so treated will feel valued by her parents, and this will lead to increasing amounts of self-confidence, which in turn will serve to bolster the trust that has been established between parent and child.

Increasing trust in a relationship leads to more ‘bonding’ between parents and children. Seeing the other’s point of view is one such way bonding takes place, and this is vital to both parent and child; it is akin to bridging the generation gap. Knowing what a child is going through at school, for example, and realizing that it is not the same as one’s own experience of school, will give a parent empathy with her children. Understanding is enhanced by trust. Empathy is increased by understanding.

Trust, bonding and parental empathy must surely lead to changes in a child’s resilience to disappointment and adversity. A child’s behaviour is often a product of her reaction to events and the people who help to cause them. If a child knows she is valued and trusted, she is more likely to have what it takes to refuse to go along with what she knows is wrong.

Having succeeded in resisting pressure means being more self-assertive, and this can only lead to an increase in self-confidence, which in turn must lead to deep-rooted happiness. Children who know what is expected of them, and who live up to those expectations and feel valued for it, quickly learn to behave responsibly; they behave responsibly to those around them, to their families, and most of all, to themselves.

Being seen to be acting in a responsible manner earns respect. If it does not earn the respect of those who formerly encouraged the child to act irresponsibly, then so much the better. A child will more quickly learn to shun the acceptance of such individuals if he is held in respect by a majority of more law abiding people, including his own family members.

F. Conclusion

In conclusion, it is easy to see that for society to benefit from having better behaved, respectful and responsible people in its midst, changes in how adults view their role as parents, and how they view their children, and how children view themselves and their parents, and how everybody views society as a sort of social contract in which changes in one person’s life affects everyone, must be worked on until they form a habitual part of life.


References

Christle, C.A. & et al (2000) Youth Aggression and Violence; Risk, Resilience, and Prevention www.ericec.org
Institute of Psychiatry Report In Khaleej Times 15.09.2004
Mc Evoy, A., & Welker, R. (2000) Antisocial behaviour, academic failure, and school climate In Journal of Emotional and Behavioural Disorders, 8, p130-140

























Family matters: Essay # 1.

Children are no longer respectful or well behaved because they are not disciplined in the home. Discuss.
Fill in the gaps in this outline by reading the article.

A. Introduction
B. Problems faced by children
i) ___________________
ii) ___________________
iii) ___________________
iv) ___________________
C. Problems faced by adults
i) ___________________
ii) ___________________


D. Solutions
i) ___________________
ii) ___________________
iii) ___________________
iv) ___________________
1.
2. ___________________


E. Outcomes
i) ___________________
ii) ___________________
iii) ___________________
iv) ___________________
v) ___________________
vi) ___________________


















Family matters: Essay # 1. (ANSWER KEY)

Children are no longer respectful or well behaved because they are not disciplined in the home. Discuss.


F. Introduction
G. Problems faced by children
i) Lack of self esteem
ii) Lack of self confidence
iii) The need to feel valued
iv) The need for involvement
H. Problems faced by adults
i) Parents’ own upbringing
ii) Not knowing what children need


I. Solutions
i) Counseling
ii) Training
iii) Willingness to change
1. Children
2. Parents

J. Outcomes
i) Increases in trust
ii) Bonding
iii) Behavioural changes
iv) Happiness
v) Responsibility
vi) Respect

K. Conclusion


















b) Articles






14. Internet addiction
a) References used in essay:
AUTHOR/S DATE TITLE OF PUBLICATION PUBLISHER CITY










DATE TITLE OF PUBLICATION WEB ADDRESS /URL AUTHOR/S




























b) Essay: Many are of the opinion that the Internet is inundating our children with dangerous information. There is, however, no doubt that the Internet represents great advances in communication and the dissemination of information. Discuss the pros and cons of the Internet.

OULTINE

A. Introduction
B. The advantages of the Internet
i) A brief history of the Internet
ii) The reach of the Internet
iii) Communication
iv) Convenience and speed
C. The disadvantages of the Internet
i) Security
ii) Addiction to the Internet
1. Common causes of stress
D. Conclusion
i) The Internet as a force for good or the Internet as a potential force for evil
ii) Personal responsibility

F. References




























A. Introduction

The Internet represents the most astounding development in technology in modern times. The telegraph, telephone, television and radio preceded it and set the stage for its unprecedented capabilities in the integration of global communication. [1]

For the people who had a hand in its development, people like Barry M. Leiner, Robert E. Khan, Leonard Kleinrock, and Stephen Wolff, to name but a few, and for us, the users of the Net, it is, ‘one of the most successful examples of the benefits of sustained investment and commitment to research and development of information infrastructure.’ [1]
In laymen’s terms, the Internet has brought us ‘the enormous growth of all kinds of “people-to-people” traffic. [1]

The influence and interest that the Internet has generated worldwide, and is still continuing to generate is pervasive. On a recent trip to Tokyo, 14 magazines devoted to the Internet, and written in English, were seen in one bookstore alone. Now, sending emails instead of letters is so convenient and so fast that conventional surface postal mail is known as ‘snail mail’.

i) A brief history of the Internet
It all started, as they say, as early as 1966, when researchers based at MIT developed what was to become the forerunner to the Internet. In 1969, Kleinrock from UCLA and others, who had been working on developments in the field, made the Network Measurement Center at UCLA the first node on ARPANET. [1] Shortly afterwards, the first host-to-host message was sent. Subsequently, further additional nodes were added and a network of interconnected computers was created.

By the end of that year, other host computers were connected, and the ARPANET, the infant Internet had come into being.

Since those early beginnings, the words of J.C.R. Licklider of MIT; that he ‘envisioned a globally interconnected set of computers through which everyone could quickly access data and programs from any site’ have materialized; the Internet is up and running and provides its millions of users with those facilities.

However, probably the most important issue related to the future of the Internet is not how technology will change, though that is undoubtedly important, but how the process of change and evolution itself will be managed, and how and whether the Internet can be controlled and policed so that it continues to live up to the ideals that its initial designers had in mind when they took the first steps in creating it.

B. The advantages of the Internet

ii) The reach of the Internet
The reach of the Internet is global, not restricted to any particular geographical location. The only proviso is that a potential user has a computer and usually, a telephone link. Of course, this does severely limit access to the Net, and currently, the online population of the world is estimated to be in the region of 729 million people. [2]


35.8% of these use the English language, 14.1% Chinese, 9.6% Japanese, 9% Spanish, and 7.3% German, reflecting, broadly, the distribution and scope of language use globally. [2]



Expressed in economic parlance, the Internet is responsible for 31.3% of world economy in European languages other than English, which translates to a massive Gross Domestic Product of $12, 968 Billion. Even in a small country such as Iceland, the Internet generates $6 billion of that country’s GDP. [2]

In advertising alone, the amount of revenue spent on the Internet totaled nearly $2.3 billion during the first three months of 2004. [3]

ii) Communication
Apart from the advantages to trade and advertising indicated by the figures given above, the Internet has speeded up methods of communication. As stated earlier, email users now refer to conventional surface mailing systems as ‘snail mail’, meaning that it is funereally slow in comparison to electronic mail. The Internet has been responsible for the greatest improvement in communications since those other inventions, the telephone, television and radio.

iii) Convenience and speed
The speed of the Internet is measured in bits, which can travel at the speed of light. [8] Early modems could transfer information at speeds of 300 bps (bits per second). However, recent advances mean that data can now be transferred at 56,000 bps. Still, there is the limitation of the phone line network. Every user knows that the speed of the Internet varies with the time of day one is trying to get online. During peak hours, access can be infuriatingly slow, while at other times it can be surprisingly rapid. [8] There is no doubt though that the Internet provides its users with an incredible diversity of services available online, and all at the click of the mouse. Practically anything from an airline ticket to a take-away meal for two can be ordered and paid for online.

C. The disadvantages of the Internet
i) Security
Despite the numerous advantages of the Internet, there are many disadvantages too. Would-be Internet users need a computer, of course, and a telephone link to a server, although the Internet can be accessed in certain areas in towns and cities without a line. Most people need a telephone line, however. One of the main worries people have about using the Internet, though, concerns issues of security, particularly when divulging credit card details when purchasing on line, for instance. Web sites can learn a lot about you when you cruise the Net. [4]
Hackers can obtain information you send online, and forms you fill out, credit card details and any other personal information can be the subject of ‘sniffing’ by hackers. However, most sites that allow you to make credit purchases are secure; your message and their message back to you are both encrypted, making it practically impossible for someone ‘listening in’ to decode the transmissions. [4]

Cookies - little bits of information deposited on your computer – are generally good for you, though some can sometimes be a nuisance, returning over and over again to enable web sites you have visited to recognize you and to keep track of how you like things. Sometimes though, cookies are made to save information that you do not necessarily want other people to have, an example being your email address. Divulging this can mean you get junk mail from other sources. In newer browsers, a cookie can only be retrieved by the web page that deposited it, though that is not the case with some older browsers.

The publicizing of recent events has made more people aware of the dangers to children posed by the Internet, particularly if children access the Internet without supervision. Several things need to be made clear here. First of all, there are some sites online that are not suitable for children, to put it mildly, and adequate supervision and checks are needed to ensure that children do not access such sites. Unfortunately these days, many children have computers in their bedrooms and can access sites without their parents knowing. Only proper instruction and trust can eliminate this problem, although computers do record which sites have been visited, and many severs now block sites that are deemed to be unsuitable for access by users.

Divulging their complete identities in ‘chat rooms’ has led children to be abused by persons pretending to be friends. “The Internet is like life in the city, there are nice neighbourhoods and not so nice neighbourhoods.” It is impossible to tell who is who through a computer link to the Internet, and parents and teachers should inform children of the dangers they face by giving away such information. [4]

Identity theft is ‘the deliberate assumption of another person’s identity, usually to gain access to their credit or frame them for some crime.’ 5
This kind of offence, it is said, is the fastest growing type of misdemeanor in North America today. [5]

Even though credit card identity theft costs American businesses a staggering $5 billion per year, companies are loath to make credit card information secure since that would make it more difficult for buyers and would probably discourage them from purchasing online. [5]

This being the case, it makes sense to limit how often you use your credit online, and keep a close check on accounts that are used for online purchases or at ATM machines. Regular checking is much more efficient than waiting for your monthly statement from the bank.

Finally, to reduce the possibility of your becoming a victim of identity theft for whatever reason, limit the amount of personal information you publish on the web.
ii)Addiction to the Internet
Addiction to anything is harmful, and the Internet is no exception. Using the Internet, like other activities such as writing, is a lonely use of one’s time. Apart from the dangers formerly mentioned online, too much time spent in front of a computer may damage your eyesight, and it will certainly reduce the time you spend with others.

1. Common causes of computer stress
Although computers are useful, and the Internet can be a valuable tool in helping you to organize your life, both can nevertheless be a great source of stress. In fact, it is said that stress from working with a computer is the same as stress from any other facet of life. [7]

Doctor Morton C. Orman M.D. suggests 10 common causes of computer stress. [7]
Failing to anticipate problems
By not using backup files, you are heading for a fall when crashes occur.
Trying to get by on the cheap
Saving money buying sub-standard equipment usually does not help.
Failing to ask for help
Trying to go it alone and not asking for help and advice from others adds to your exasperation with the problems you encounter through your own inexperience or lack of know-how.
Failing to relate stress as feedback
Instead of blaming the technology when things go wrong, be both philosophical and practical. Things can and do go wrong, and it is invariably the users fault. Realize that and you are half way there.
Trying to cut corners
Using hardware without even looking at the manual is one recipe for heartache later. The new “Plug and play’ mentality doesn’t help.
Unrealistic expectations
Expecting everything to work the way you want it to do is hardly realistic.
Beating up on yourself unnecessarily
When you make mistakes you are showing that you are human. Everybody does it.
Conflicts with other people
Sharing a computer is often stressful, as is waiting for replies to ‘urgent’ emails.
Failing to do your homework
More research means better results. Less means worse.
Compromising your own or others’ integrity
Using without buying or acknowledging is wrong, and you know it. Why do you do it when you know it will lead to problems later? [7]

Finally, the more you understand and concentrate on the real, underlying causes of computer related stress, the more you will come to terms with it, understand it, and suffer less from it.

2. How to find out if you are addicted to the Internet
An Internet Stress Survey is available online, and you would be well advised to take it, if you think you are at risk of being addicted to the Internet. [6]

Questions range from: ‘Do you think you are spending more time than you should surfing the Internet?’ to ‘Have you tried, unsuccessfully, to curtail you use of the Net?’ If you answered ‘Yes’ to 7 out of the 9 questions asked, you may well be addicted. [6]


Dr. Orman [9] suggests there are certain basic elements all addictions have in common, and addiction to the Internet is no different.

Denial
All addiction involves a certain amount of denial, which seems to be a vital ingredient, for without denial no addiction would become established. People tell themselves they don’t have a problem, and that’s when there is a problem.
Failing to ask for help
Denial, of course, is accompanied by a failure, or at least a reluctance, to ask for help. “I can beat this thing myself,” is a commonplace here. Asking the wrong kinds of people, and not taking advice from the right sort is also common with addicts. Professional help is often the best, chiefly because it is the best informed, and also because it is given disinterestedly.
Lack of other pleasures
People who lack other stimuli in their life are at risk from becoming addicted. People who spend a lot of time looking at their computer screens are often described as ‘nerds’. What is important is to have something to replace the addiction, something that will give you pleasure or interest or both and which is not addictive.
Underlying deficiencies in coping and life management skills
Addictions are usually symptomatic of other deficiencies, which may be the reason why many addiction therapies are not successful; they treat the addiction in isolation, when it is really part of something bigger. Attempts to overcome loneliness lead many people into repetitive behaviour that can turn into addiction. The addiction stems from another problem in a person’s life. Dealing with one without the other will invariably be ineffective.
Giving in to temptation
When giving anything up -‘cold turkey’ – makes a return almost irresistible. Anyone who has given up smoking knows the truth of that statement. Mastering your thoughts means resisting urges, and overcoming temptation. Like people giving up smoking, staying clear of the stimulus is vital. Get rid of the cigarettes from your lounge and you lessen that chance that you will be tempted back to smoking. Not turning on the computer, or going out whenever you feel the urge to go online coming on will help you cope with the difficulty of resisting temptation.
Failing to keep your word
This is similar to not giving in to temptation; it is not deceiving yourself, not making excuses for yourself, and keeping your word. Lying to others may be easy for some, but lying to oneself never is.
Failing to do what may be necessary
Setting a schedule for action to be taken is the key to beating an addiction to anything. With Internet addiction, they might range from setting an absolute time you spend on the Net daily, placing self-imposed restraints on certain types of service that you find ‘pleasurable’, and often not of vital importance to your life, applying these restraints until you are out of danger, finding other things to do besides spending time on the Net, asking for help from others, to avoiding the environments that encourage you to return to your addictive behaviour. This last one could, for instance, involve going shopping in a mall that does not have an Internet café, rare as that might be.
Failing to anticipate and deal with relapses
Finally, situations will inevitably arise, after you appear to have kicked the habit, which drive you back to the addiction. Overcoming loneliness to remove the root cause of an addiction might not be permanent. Relationships fail, and have to be dealt with so that subsequent and dependent problems do not re-occur. [9]

D. Conclusion
i) The Internet as a force for good or as a potential force for evil
Like all technological innovations, the technology itself is neutral with regard to its uses. It is an inanimate object. No blame can attach to it. It is ultimately the uses and abuses man puts it to that are right or wrong in a moral sense. Unfortunately, the universality of the Internet means that no single body, be it a national government or an internationally recognized body such as the United Nations, is able to exert any meaningful control over what goes onto the world wide web.

ii) Personal responsibility and
accountability: the ultimate answer
Like the world in which we live and in which the Internet exists, the forces of good and evil are ranged on either side and no amount of pontification will alter that fact. Where it is possible to encourage good in people, it should be done, and where it is feasible to discourage bad in people, that should also be done. However, and be that as it may, each and every one of us using the Internet has a duty to ensure that our children and our young adults, and especially the most vulnerable in society, do not suffer because of it.

References

1. www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml
2. www.glreach.com/globalstats/index.php3
3. www.weboptimiser.com/search_engine_marketing_news/6010399.html
4. www.scs.nevada.edu/cs/tutorials/nettutor/17-security.html
5. www.wikipedia.org
6. www.stresscure.com
7. Orman M. C. (1996) Common Causes of Computer Stress In. www.stresscure.com
8. www.crews.org/curriculum/ex/compsci/articles/internet/speed.html
9. Orman M.C. (1996) What to do if you are (Or fear that you may become) addicted to the Internet In. www.stresscure.com/hrn/iaddict.html
10. Disadvantages of the Internet In. www.nottingham.ac.uk/~brzsw/internet4education/disadvantages.html





























e) Articles





15. Illiteracy
a) References used in essay:
AUTHOR/S DATE TITLE OF PUBLICATION PUBLISHER CITY









DATE TITLE OF PUBLICATION WEB ADDRESS /URL AUTHOR/S












b) Essay:

















Topic 3: Illiteracy

Essay: How can we address the problems of the increase in illiteracy in the world?

OUTLINE

A. Introduction: A review of the situation
i) Definition of illiteracy
ii) Size of the problem
1. The statistics and the definitions used by government organizations
B. What is already being done
i) Projects
1. Case study: Nepal – The Seti Project
ii) Schooling
iii) Training
1. The Freirean approach to adult literacy education

C. Improving the situation still further
D. Conclusion
E. References






























Introduction: A review of the situation

Adult literacy is a worldwide problem, with no country escaping it, though the extent of the problem does vary from region to region, from continent to continent. In the developing areas of the world the percentage of the adult population that is considered illiterate is vast. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, approximately 43% are considered illiterate. [1] In Latin America and the Caribbean, the figure is much lower at 13.4%, but this figure still means that 42,900,000 people are considered illiterate. The area with the highest number of people considered to be illiterate is Southern Asia, with a massive 415 500 000 people, representing almost half the population of that region. [1]

Adult literacy though, is not confined to the developing world. Despite compulsory education and high percentages of Gross National Product (GNP) being spent on education in the developed world, a significant proportion of the population of the developed world still has difficulties with reading and writing. [2] A recent survey revealed that young people in Britain are less well qualified for the world of work than their counterparts in other industrialized countries. [3]

The survey also reported that at least 15% of adults in Britain have only the simplest of literacy skills making it difficult to cope with demands of the age they live in. [3]

Definition of illiteracy
Any data on any situation is only ever as good as the definitions it uses to convey the severity of the situation. Of course, where counting heads is concerned, a lot of other varieties of problem rear their heads to render much information and many statistical analyses not altogether valuable.

Determining the extent of the problem of illiteracy among the adult population of the world is no exception.

Here are some things a person should be able to do to be considered ‘literate’.

• able to sign his/her name
• able to read and write a simple sentence describing his/her daily activities
• able to read and write by his self report (not based on a test)
• able to pass a written test of reading comprehension at a level comparable to that achieved by an average student at grade 4
• able to engage in all those activities in which literacy is required for effective functioning in his/her community [2]

According to some experts in the field (Fingeret 1982) [4] “our understanding of literacy has changed from a focus on individual skills, separated from meaningful content, to seeing that literacy is connected to the social, political, historical, cultural and personal situations in which people use their skills.” [4]

Sissel (1996) further states that, “the ‘one-size-fits-all’ programming” for adult literacy students cannot continue in the future if practitioners are to be responsive to learners’ need.” [5]

When asked to state what kinds of skills they needed, students on adult literacy programmes responded by outlining 4 kinds of skill.

 Literacy for access and orientation – to have access to information and to orient themselves in the world.
 Literacy as voice – to state their ideas and opinions vocally and to have the confidence that what they say will be heard and taken into account.
 Literacy as a vehicle for independent action – to solve problems and make decisions on their own, acting independently as a parent, citizen and worker, for the good of their families, their communities and their nation.
 Literacy as a bridge to the future – to be able to keep on learning in order to keep up with a rapidly changing world. [7] (Stein 1955)

Educationalists have discovered that large numbers of adults with literacy problems choose not to take advantage of Literacy Programmes in their areas, seeing such programmes in terms of conventional schooling, and not meeting their needs as adults living and working in a community. [7]

Since most adult literacy schemes look the same as school [8] (Quigley 1997), it would seem sensible to change the way programmes are structured and delivered if participants are to be attracted to them and attend them. [7]

i) The size of the problem

In spite of advances in the field of adult literacy training over the last 50 years, it is estimated that 20% of the world’s population (861 million people) still cannot read or write or participate fully in their societies. [9] (UNESCO) Two thirds of these are women, and another 113 million children are not receiving schooling despite being of school age.[9]

Furthermore, this problem is not confined to the developing world. Recently the International Adult Literacy Survey reported that in 12 industrialized countries (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA) 25% of adults failed to reach minimum standards of literacy proficiency considered necessary for coping with the demands of everyday life and work in the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) [9]

1. The statistics and the definitions used by government organizations
The definition used by many countries when reporting on the numbers of people with problems with literacy, is that a person is literate if s/he has completed 5 or more years of schooling. [2]. However, the problem with this definition is that it either assumes that people are either ‘literate’ or ‘illiterate’, or that people with less than 5 years schooling are functionally literate, which in fact is not always the case. [2] However, the fact that using this definition provides cheap and quick estimations of a country’s population’s literacy problems in perhaps the main reason why so many governments use it [2]

Such methods however, do not provide very reliable results; those require more money and more time. All assessments involve sacrificing either quality and reliability, or time and finances.

Another factor is that because literacy rates for women worldwide are lower than for men, and because mothers’ literacy and education levels are often of vital importance in ensuring children’s health and education, government agencies target females in their efforts to increase literacy rates and hence their economic viability in the global marketplace. [10]

F. What is already being done
i) Projects
1. Case study: Nepal
Nepal, described as “a country of villages” has 95% of its population living in rural areas. [10] Most of these people live with illiteracy, poverty and disease despite various attempts by the Nepalese government to alleviate these problems.


The Seti Project targeted young girls and women in poor rural villages along the banks of the Seti River, but rather than focusing just on literacy, the project included other matters such as health and hygiene. In an area where girls were not encouraged to attend school, the outcome was surprisingly successful with whole families benefiting from what daughters and wives learned.

Women in the adult classes were introduced to basic medical procedures like re-hydration of children suffering from dysentery, and the importance of disposing of waste in latrines and garbage pits.

The Seti Project was a success. Here are some of the yardsticks that were used to measurer that success:-

• More than 8000 out-of-school girls attended, increasing their awareness of health and hygiene while increasing their own standards of literacy.
• Over 150,000 schoolchildren were reached by regular education initiatives.
• 30,000 adults, many of them women, attended evening classes.

Because health and hygiene were the major themes of the Project, the whole community benefited from what had been learned, and improvements in literacy were achieved in the context of what were of real and lasting importance to the participants as well as to the community as a whole. Adult classes had strong learner input related to course themes and materials to that the most pressing felt needs were addressed. [11

ii) Training
1. The Freirean approach to adult literacy education
This approach to adult literacy education takes its name from its originator, Paulo Freire, and has been variously named since as the problem posing approach, and the learner-centred approach. [12]

Because, Freire argues, unjust social conditions are the cause of illiteracy in many parts of the world, ‘literacy for social change’, the purpose of such education, Freire believes, is “to enable learners to participate actively in liberating themselves from the conditions that oppress them.” Freire (1985) – [12]

Working with anthropologists in Brazil, Freire developed his approach in what was to become the ‘Brazilian literacy plan’. [12] A team conducted an extended period of research in the areas where the scheme was to take place. Members of the team spent time in communities and learned about the social life of the community and the issues and problems that beset its members. The vocabulary of the local language was studied as well as recurring words and themes to be included later in the literacy programme. In this way, learners w to use language to generate discussion about real problems experienced in the community. Freire believes that generative words should have special affective importance to learners and should evoke the social, cultural and political contexts in which learners use them. Freire (ibid) – [12]

The Freirian approach to adult literacy education firmly rejects what it calls the ‘ banking concept of education’ in which educators decide what should be taught and how it should be taught and then ‘deposit’ it in the minds of learners. Freire (ibid)

Rather, Freire and others like him see education as a genuine two-way thing with both teacher and learner facing each other as ‘knowledgeable equals’, the teacher having knowledge of language systems and the learner having knowledge of the social, cultural and political context in which learning is to take place.

G. Improving the situation still further
Realising the enormity of the problem posed by adult’s relative lack of adult literacy skills at a level that allows them to function properly and fully in society, the British government has launched the ‘Skills for Life’ initiative for improving adult literacy and numeracy skills. [13]

The scheme targets several priority groups:-
• People who need help with basic skills
• Unemployed people
• Minority ethnic groups
• People with disabilities
• Lone parents
• People over 60 not involved in learning [13]

The scheme hopes to tackle several integral problems, and acknowledges that “ the largest single cause of poor vocational achievements is failings in literacy and numeracy.” [13]

Similarly, the UK government has launched a new initiative aimed at 19 – 75 year-olds throughout England. [14] Using the world-wide-web, via waytolearn.co.uk the scheme links people to the best information available online.

Again acknowledging that learning offers many benefits to adults, the site provides a ‘one-stop’ source of learning information to all adults in England. [14]

waytolearn.co.uk co-ordinates a plethora of sites related to adult literacy and adult learning generally and presents it in meaningful and useful ways. [14]

Examples of reading material for teachers working with people with literacy and numeracy problems include the following:

• AVID – a teachers’ resource for teachers working with women in prison
• Basic Skills for Life series – Materials for adult learners, designed for teaching literacy and numeracy by focusing on subjects that learners can relate to [14]

H. Conclusion

The whole thrust and direction of literacy programmes these days is that of integrating literacy and numeracy with other life-enhancing skills and knowledge, rather than merely teaching people to read and write.

As far back as 1970, the British Cohort Study and the National Child Development Study found that individuals who improve their basic skills also improve in the following ways:-
• Improving their life chances in the labour market
• Suffering less from poor physical and mental health
• Being less likely to have children experiencing difficulty at school
• Being more likely to become active citizens
• Being more liberal and less discriminating in their attitudes [14]

Improving people’s literacy and numeracy skills gives benefits to everyone: to the individuals who participate in schooling and educational projects and schemes, to their families, to the larger community, and to society generally. Having healthier, more well-balanced, literate and numerate individuals in our midst is bound to benefit all. Helping people overcome their difficulties with literacy and numeracy is a worthy challenge for educators, for government and non-government organizations, and for teachers.

















































































No. Word or phrase from page 1 Synonyms and paraphrases
1. extent range magnitude amount scope
2. region area
3. illiterate unable to read and write
4. vast extensive
5. are considered are thought to be are treated as
6. not confined to not limited to
7. compulsory
8. significant Important
9. proportion Part
10. counterparts People in the same position
11. at least 15% Not less than 15%
12. to cope with To deal with
13. data Information
14. definitions
15. variety of problem
16. to render
17. statistical analysis
18. determining
19. no exception
20. daily activities
21. self report
22. reading comprehension
23. an average student
24. engage in
25. effective functioning
26. focus
27. separated
28. ‘one-size-fits-all’
29. repetitive
30. responsive
31. responded







No. Word or phrase from page 2 Definition Synonyms and paraphrases
1. access
2. orientation
3. to orient themselves in the world
4. to state their ideas and opinions vocally
5. taken into account
6. a vehicle for independent action
7. rapidly
8. conventional schooling
9. adult literacy schemes
10. the way programmes are structured and delivered
11. participate fully in their societies
12. not confined to
13. standards of literacy proficiency
14. necessary for coping with the demands of everyday life
15. assumes
16. functionally literate
17. sacrificing either quality and reliability
18. another factor
19. of vital importance



















No. Word or phrase from page 3 Synonyms and paraphrases
1. economic viability
2. global marketplace
3. rural areas
4. poverty
5. alleviate
6. targeted
7. matters
8. basic medical procedures
9. re-hydration
10. dysentery
11. disposing of waste
12. latrines
13. garbage pits
14. yardsticks
15. awareness
16. initiatives
17. major themes
18. in the context of
19. the most pressing felt needs
20. problem-posing approach
21. learner-centred approach
22. to enable
23. participate
24. liberating
25. oppress
26. anthropologists
27. an extended period
28. the issues
29. beset
30. recurring words and themes
31. generate







No. Word or phrase from page 4 Synonyms and paraphrases
1. generative words
2. special affective performance
3. rejects
4. the ‘banking concept of education’
5. deposit
6. genuine
7. enormity
8. relative
9. launched
10. unemployed people
11. minority ethnic groups
12. people with disabilities
13. lone parents
14. integral problems
15. acknowledges
16. poor vocational achievements
17. a ‘one-stop’ source of learning information
18. a plethora
19. prison
20. thrust and direction
21. integrating
22. life-enhancing
23. skills and knowledge















No. Word or phrase from page 5 Synonyms and paraphrases
1. the labour market
2. more liberal
3. less discriminating in their attitudes
4. the larger community
5. literate and numerate individuals
6. a worthy challenge



































References
1. http://literacy.org/explorer/regsworld.html
2. http://literacy.org/explorer/defliteracy.html
3. http://www.literacytrust.org.uk
4. Fingeret H. A. (1992) Adult Literacy Education: Current and Future Directions Ohio State University In.
http://www.ericfacility.net
5. Sissel P.A. (1992) Reflections as vision: Prospects for future
literacy programming In. A community based approach to
literacy programs quoted from: http://www.ercicfacility.net
6. Stein S.G. (1995) Equipped for the future: A customer driven vision for adult literacy and lifelong learning Institute for National Literacy Washington DC (July 1995 – ED 384 792) In. www.ericfacility.net
7. www.ericfacility.net/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed402475.html
8. Quigley B.A. (1997) Rethinking adult literacy: The critical need for practice-based change In www.ericfacility.net
9. UNESCO (2003) in United Nations launches Literacy Decade
In www.reading.org/publications/rty/0304_Undecade.html
10. www.literacy.org/explorer/seti_back.html
11. http://literacy.org/explorer/seti_over.html
12. Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the oppressed New York The Continuum Publishing Corporation In
www.cal.org/ncle/digests/FreireQA.html
13. www.dfes.gov.uk/readwriteplus
14. http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/Database/adultres.html

c) Articles:
























16. Urbanisation
a) References used in essay:

AUTHOR/S DATE TITLE OF PUBLICATION PUBLISHER CITY









DATE TITLE OF PUBLICATION WEB ADDRESS /URL AUTHOR/S












b) Essay: Rapid urbanization is causing crime levels to increase. Give some suggestions to control this trend.
OUTLINE

A. Introduction: The urban background to criminal activity
i) What is urbanization?
ii) Effects of increases in urbanization
1) Overcrowding
a) The case of Sao Paulo, Brazil
b) The case of ‘commuter villages’ in UK.
2) Crime
i) Crime in Hong Kong
B. Priorities in urban areas
i) Primary causes of criminal activity

F. Priorities in rural areas: giving people a chance by improving life and lessening the appeal of the city.

G. Breaking the link between urbanization and criminal activity

G. Conclusion
A. Introduction; The urban background to criminal activity

The world we live in is changing: the effects of globalization – the urbanization of Less Economically Developed Countries (LEDCs) – is being felt in ways that are not always beneficial. The splitting and separating of communities and the isolating of the individual within huge, new, urban conurbations has led to increases in crime that are unacceptable in civilized, democratic societies.

i) What is urbanization?

Urbanization is the increase in the proportion of people living in towns and cities. [1] In many countries, this increase is due to the migration of people from rural areas to towns and cities. In any migration that is not forced by mandate, what are known as push-factors and pull-factors exert influence over those moving to the city. Included in the so-called push-factors are things like extreme poverty, desertification and general environmental degradation, which make farming more and more difficult, ethnic pressure, and lack of resources and facilities in rural areas.

Pull-factors include the attractions of full time employment; better living conditions; more facilities such as schools, hospitals and clinics; increased security; and opportunities that are perceived to be present in urban areas but absent in rural ones.

Finally, there are factors that are neutral and regardless of push or pull-factors. Decreasing death rates and increases in the birth rate of a country, or a city contribute to increases in population in urban areas. [1] Population growth in rural areas often forces people into cities.

ii) Effects of increases in urbanization

1. Overcrowding

Since most migration to towns and cities in Less Economically Developed Countries (LDCs) is unplanned, a large proportion of those coming to live and work in cities have no accommodation arranged beforehand and furthermore, often cannot afford it, if it is available. Such people, invariably poor people, are therefore forced to build some sort of shelter to protect their families, and since local authorities have no way of knowing how many people need to be housed, they are not in any position to be able to provide even temporary accommodation for newly arriving families. The result is an enormous increase in overcrowded, poorly built ghettoes, with few amenities and virtually no sanitation or clean water supply. [2]

a) The case of Sao Paulo, Brazil

Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, and home to approximately 25 million people, has grown in size mainly because of the migration of people from the Brazilian countryside. 65% of the growth of the city is due to migration, the remainder being the result of the birth rate being higher than the death rate; the natural growth of the indigenous population. [2]

The rapid growth of the city has led to a severe shortage of housing, and is typical of how such cities are wholly unable to cope with such a huge and rapid influx of people. Similarly, the newly arriving people find shelter by building their own houses. ‘Shanty towns’ spring up on the outskirts of the city, and of course, these are unplanned and consequently have no amenities and are massively overcrowded. In such areas – called ‘favelas’ in Brazil, things like provision of fresh drinking water and sewage disposal are practically non-existent. [2]

The areas chosen by these settlers are on the edges of the cities, often close to industry: transportation in such areas is minimal; hence the need to be close to places offering employment. In Sao Paulo, some of these areas are up to 40 or 50 kilometres outside the city, and only connected by a single main road. However, whereas planned ribbon development is common in most cities, these unplanned dwellings crowd steep hillsides, principally because no one has a claim on the land there.

The Brazilian government is providing assistance by setting up ‘self-help’ schemes and by providing materials with which to construct pavements and fairly rudimentary roads, leaving other vital resources for the provision of water pipes and waste disposal facilities.

The case of San Paulo is fairly typical of cities in LDCs. In developed countries, the migration to cities is much less common, with people moving out of town as the improving of arterial roads makes living in pleasanter, rural areas and commuting every day to work a much more attractive proposition, though this too presents problems for rural districts; the number of facilities rapidly becoming inadequate for the numbers of people who live in so called ‘commuter villages’.

b) The case of ‘commuter villages in UK.

In developed countries such as England, the migration of people to other areas does occur but it is far more controlled and the numbers involved are fewer. As people become better off financially, they move out of the city and buy property on the outskirts of urban areas and in villages outside city limits. Then, different kinds of problems present themselves.

The demand for housing in rural areas pushes house prices up, making it virtually impossible for young, ‘first time buyers’ to purchase a home in the area where they grew up. In these cases, a sort of reverse migration happens with the more affluent people from the town moving to villages, and the less affluent, often younger villagers moving into the towns and cities where house prices are within their reach.

When villages become inhabited by cars owners, local shops suffer from a lack of trade as those with their own transport choose to shop in supermarkets in other areas, where prices are cheaper.

In addition, poorer, indigenous young adults are often marginalized, or at any rate feel that way, and this variety of alienation becomes a breeding ground for activities such as substance abuse and petty crime to finance it.

Problems associated with urbanization are not exclusively peculiar to LDCs, though such problems occurring in developed countries are different in nature, and of far less magnitude, though still very serious for those directly involved. In both types of country though, urbanization can and often does lead to problems other than those of housing and the provision of facilities.

ii) Crime

Unplanned urban areas are difficult to police, and in countries like Brazil, the more affluent sections of the population protect themselves by living within guarded and fenced compounds. Crime proliferates, though, in spite of siege-like conditions in the more prosperous parts of the city.

Even in countries like Australia, for example, factors such as economic decline resulting in migration have contributed to an increase in crime. [3]

In cities in LDCs, though, a vicious circle is set up. It is generally acknowledged that societies that are stable and have low crime rates, secure and safe environments and rational means of dealing with conflict and ‘rule-breaking’ attract investment into their economies, with the corollary to this also being true; those countries which are relatively unstable, with environments that are insecure and unsafe, do not attract investment and this lack of financial resources impacts upon the poorest sections of population who are subject to high rates of unemployment and poor housing conditions. In poor areas, crime flourishes as more conventional means of earning a living are denied to more and more people. [4]

1. Crime in Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, for example, which is ranked sixth in the world in terms of the ratio of police to number of inhabitants (640 police per 100,000 in 1994- [5]) criminal activity is increasing in this former British colony. Increases in various types of crime: violent crime against persons, and crime against property have pointed to the fact that, “the effects of industrialization and urbanization weaken social control.” Dobinson. [6]

The effects of industrialization and urbanization, viz. the weakening of social control and an increase in crime rates, occur in Hong Kong despite what have been termed ‘the protective value of cultural and ethnic homogeneity combined with the preservation of traditional Confucionist values and extended kinship structures.’ [5]

Once such cultural norms and values have been breached or destroyed, they are hard to re-establish. Urbanization can be and often is responsible for the relocating of families and individuals, which means that any normalizing relationships such as extended kinship structures become under great strain or rendered ineffective. The policing of densely populated areas seems to be in danger of becoming similarly ineffective as a deterrent against crime or as the enforcement of law and order.

D. Priorities in urban areas
i) Primary causes of criminal activity

Need and the opportunity to commit crime do not make people commit crimes. In some extremely poor areas of the world, crime is virtually unknown. In other, more affluent areas, crime is rife. What makes one area crime free and another crime ridden? Studies related to children’s behaviour, have found that setting influences behaviour. [7]

According to Whiting (1986), there are three relevant aspects of a setting: the space and contents of the space; the characters who are present, and the activities that occur in the setting. For children living in overcrowded, poor ghettoes on the edges of massive cities, it is easy to see how this might be true. In studies of six populations, which include children in Okinawa, Japan, the Philippines, Northern India, Kenya, Mexico City and the United States, Whiting and her colleagues found that the characteristics (ibid) of the setting evoke and reinforce habits of social interaction, which become the “core of a child’s behavioural profile.” [7]

Living in the midst of what is often deviant social behaviour, a child’s contact with altruistic, self-reliant models becomes diminished, preventing him from learning helpful and responsible behaviour. On the contrary, such characters in such settings force the child to increase his egotistic behaviour and his covetousness, and resort to the use of aggressive techniques when interacting with other children. [7]

Particularly vulnerable are children who leave home to live ‘on the street’. According to studies 8 there is a circle of experience which links street migration and behaviour on the streets to the way children are treated in the justice system. Causes of street migration are primarily poverty, ruptured family relationships, urbanization, and in certain parts of the world, HIV/AIDS. [8]

It is said ([8]) that rapid urbanization of the type discussed and described earlier, is associated with an increase in crime rates, and the disruption of social support networks. As migrants to cities move into ghettoes where identification is lost and a postal address unknown, it is easy to see how people become removed from the types of support they are most in need of.

Children who leave rural areas for urban ones end up living on the street, and then fall prey to criminal elements that exploit their anonymity and their vulnerability. [9]

“Municipal restructuring [including rapid urbanization] contributes to a spatial exclusion, which inhibits the socialization of the youth that live in this space and leads to specific patterns of crime.” ([9]) The socialization that young people do receive may come from the members of gangs that ‘control’ such areas and exploit the young.

In deprived peri-urban areas (areas on the periphery of towns and cities) there is a shortage of amenities that promote appropriate leisure activities and so children hang around in groups and fall prey to older youths in street gangs.

In such peri-urban areas where petty crime proliferates, the young on the streets become criminalized often before there is any evidence that they have committed an offence. [10]
Just being on the street at night often means being taken away and locked up for the night. Once inside a lock-up, children become abused, beaten up and generally ill-treated. Is it any wonder then that such children turn to ways to escape capture and join gangs for some form of protection.

From there it is only a short step to substance abuse and crimes that are associated with selling and using drugs.

According to the Undugu Society of Kenya, 60% of boys living on the streets have health problems associated with taking drugs. The most widely used substance being glue mixed with petrol. [11]

To then further add to the plight of poor street children, they are usually all assumed to be drug addicts, which has the effect of restricting their access to basic services such as health clinics, while still rendering them susceptible to verbal abuse and humiliation at the hands of the police and the general public, and this is regardless of whether or not they are actually involved in substance abuse. [12]

The circle of experience becomes complete as children become victims of the criminalization of homelessness. [8]

ii) Removing the causes: the role of education in urban areas

Poorly educated parents invariably have poorly educated children, either because the schools in their areas are poor, or because children do not do well at school and are not encouraged to do well, or because of truancy, or due to all three.

Truancy – the staying away from school without good reason – is rife in urban areas. Children that play truant meet other children who are also staying away from school, and boredom together with lack of supervision become the prerequisites to children misbehaving.

The reasons why children play truant are various and range from issues that affect particular individuals, and those issues that affect most children. In the case of the former, a child may dislike a particular teacher or lesson; he may be due for some punishment on the day he is absent, or some pressing need at home may keep him from going to school that day. As far as the latter is concerned; truancy having more generally applicable reasons, such things as a lack of any aspirations to do well, or peer group pressure by which a child comes to think that staying away from school is normal or beneficial, or more insidious reasons such as gang activities in the daytime may be the causes.

It is easy to see that children who come from deprived areas in which opportunities to achieve something real and lasting are scarce or practically non-existent, are drawn into petty crime and deviant moral behaviour. To behave otherwise in such communities is often to invite censure and punishment.

A child faces exclusion from school if truancy continues, or isolation from his peers on the streets and in the playgrounds if it doesn’t. Faced with such a choice, a child might well opt for the former, particularly when education is perceived as a waste of time.

A study of the links between truancy, school exclusion and substance abuse has been conducted by the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transition and Crime and reported by Lesley McAra. [13]

The key findings of the report were as follows:-

• Truants have a significantly higher drug use, underage drinking and smoking than pupils who do not play truant.
• Long term truants exhibit a higher incidence of all forms of substance misuse in comparison with other categories of truant.
• Illegal drug use and smoking significantly predict truancy, taking into account other variables such as school experience, victimization, parenting, and a range of personality characteristics such as low self-esteem and impulsivity.
• Pupils who have been excluded from school display higher incidence of illegal drug use, underage drinking and smoking than do pupils who have not been excluded.
• Substance abuse is less strongly associated with exclusion than it is for truancy.
• Early intervention targeting health risk behaviour plays some part in lessening truancy rates.
• Substance abuse is only one part of a complex set of behaviours and adverse circumstances associated with both truancy and exclusion.
• Future policies need to take into account gender differences: early truanting is predominantly a male activity, while in secondary education, girls truant more than boys. However, where exclusion is concerned, boys form the overwhelming majority of those excluded from schools. [13]

The study also found that truancy and exclusion are closely connected to low educational attainment, and are particularly prevalent amongst children from deprived areas. Again, this has the ring of a vicious circle with low achievers coming from deprived areas, and being either excluded or truanting from school and thereby significantly lessening their chances of attainment at school, which means that ultimately they have less chance of finding employment later on. In short, the very children likely to go wrong before, during, and after schooling, are those same children who are placed in the position in which they are most susceptible to getting involved with criminal elements in society.

The vexing question of how to break this cycle; perception – action – reinforcement of perception can only be achieved by educationalists working with parents and community leaders, and sponsorship by local and national government in the form of the provision of financial resources and expertise.

The ‘truancy and exclusion’ study ([13]) concurred that policies are likely to be effective when aimed at discipline in school, and fostering pro-school attitudes among young people as well as their parents with the aim of increasing parental involvement in school.

In addition, some form of community policing seems to be the best way of tackling the problem of children committing petty crimes outside school when they should be sitting in a classroom. Recognizing that one thing is symptomatic of another rather than just something to incur punishment for would surely be a helpful way of beginning the sensitive policing of such areas. [13]

Of course, a greater involvement on the part of parents would be a necessary prerequisite too. Initiatives in which parents are encourages to become involved and discover the roots of problems in their own way and using their own language (rather like the Freirian model of tackling problems of adult literacy) are more likely to be successful than those schemes where parents are told what to think and how to bring up their children.

Of course, any educational programme must, if it is to be effective, be tailored to the context of those being educated. In developing countries, such educational schemes invariably include a large amount of practical assistance, particularly where women are concerned. Typical goals of such schemes include:-
• Learning to b assertive
• Learning to form their own opinion and express it
• Learning to listen to others
• To build a stronger self-image
• To achieve competence in human relations and practical knowledge [15]

In such course, for example, women are empowered; encouraged to tackle things they haven’t done before. [15]

Of course, in an urban context in, for example, Newcastle Upon Tyne, some of the things women haven’t done before might include standing up at a parent teacher evening and making a point in public. This type of learning would typically involve all or at least most of the categories outlined above.

In Khartoum, Sudan, it might involve learning how to recognize and treat the early stages of malaria or dysentery, with the practical knowledge taking priority over issues such as gaining self-esteem.

C. Priorities in rural areas: giving people a chance by improving life and lessening the appeal of the city.

If life in the situation in the large urban areas we call cities, but which now might be termed something else, several things have got to happen. First, the numbers still migrating from poorer rural areas will have to diminish considerably. Already stretched social services and amenities could not cope with more people arriving to be housed, fed, and generally looked after. Second, the situation for those already living in these urban areas will have to improve if crime is not to increase. Lastly, life in rural areas will have to improve to the temptations the city holds for many rural dwellers; the ‘push’ factors will have to be reduced. The massive problem of poverty in rural areas means that city life appears more attractive, even though reality does not bear this out. Education and the provision of facilities like clinics will go some way to helping people feel less likely to want to uproot and move to the city.

G. Breaking the link between urbanization and criminal activity

In urban areas in which people are susceptible to criminal activity, increasing the involvement of parents in schooling, home education, and monitoring children’s behaviour on the streets seem vital if the criminal activity of the young is to be stopped.

As far as children who live on the street are concerned, closer ties between communities and police and security forces would seem to be the answer. In some cities curfews have been authorized in an attempt to ensure that children do not break the law under the cover of darkness.

The setting up of supervised hostels for homeless children and mandatory schooling to educate such children into more socially acceptable patterns of behaviour would surely alleviate the problems encountered by children on the street.

Lastly, re-educating police and security officials and a changing of attitudes towards children at risk would be a necessary prerequisite to a more humane way of dealing with children whose only crime may be that they do not have a roof over their heads or a family to share it with.

H. Conclusion

The measures outlined above: educational, social and attitudinal, would have to become part of government initiatives in areas where criminal activities are linked closely to the conditions in which people live. Such schemes need financial resources and planning; they need trained personnel and facilities, and they need time for implementation and sustained effort that will yield results that enhance the lives of everyone in our cities.

However, if nothing is done in rural areas to remove the temptations that living in the city is perceived to offer, then any work in urban areas will be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of those still migrating to our bigger cities.

References

1. www.geography.learnontheinternet.co.uk/topics/urbanisation.html
2. www.geography.learningontheinternet.co.uk/topics/urbanproblsedcs.html
3. www.gov.au/publications.html
4. www.hku.hk/crime/rb-crimetrends.html
5. www.hku.hk/crime/rb-crimetrends.html
6. Dobinson I. (1994) ‘The Measurement of Crime’, in Gaylard M.S. and Travers H. eds. Introduction to the Hong Kong Criminal Justice System, Hong Kong University Press Hong Kong
7. Whiting B. (1986) Effects of urbanization on children’s behaviour From
www.culturalsurvival.org
8. Petty C. and Brown M. (eds), Justice for children Save the Children June 1998
9. Urbanization, social exclusion of youth and street crime. From
www.belspo.be/belspo/fedra/acrobat/seD301_en.pdf
10. Human rights Watch, Police abuse and killing of street children in India,
November 1996
11. www.homelesskids.org/kenya/street_kids.htm
12. Human rights Watch, Children of Bulgaria: Police violence and arbitrary
confinement, September 1996
13. McAra L. (2004) Truancy, school exclusion and substance abuse
Centre for Law and society. University of Edinburgh
14. Making learning attractive and strengthening links to working life. In
www.europa.eu.int/comm/education/policies/2010/doc/making-learning-more-attractive_en.pdf
15. Preventing crime and creating safer communities in www.environment.uwe.ac.uk














e) Articles



17. Extinction of species
a) References used in essay:
AUTHOR/S DATE TITLE OF PUBLICATION PUBLISHER CITY









DATE TITLE OF PUBLICATION WEB ADDRESS /URL AUTHOR/S











b) Essay: The list of species that are facing extinction is increasing. What can be done to make the list shorter and save humanity?
OUTLINE
A. Introduction
i) How serious is the problem?
ii) How many species are facing extinction?
B. The causes of extinction
i) Man’s activities
1. Industrial activity
2. Agricultural activity
ii) Natural causes
iii) Natural causes exacerbated by man’s activities
C. Removing the causes
i) Man’s activities
1. Industrial
2. Agricultural
ii) Natural causes
iii) Natural causes exacerbated by man’s activities
D. Conclusion
E. References

b) Articles




18. Polarity of wealth
a) References used in essay:


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b) Essay:









d) Articles

b)


19. Corruption
a) References used in essay:
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b) Essay:







e) Articles




20. Wars
a) References used in essay:
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DATE TITLE OF PUBLICATION WEB ADDRESS /URL AUTHOR/S











b) Essay:







b) Articles




21. Intense nationalism
a) References used in essay:
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DATE TITLE OF PUBLICATION WEB ADDRESS /URL AUTHOR/S












b) Essay:







g) Articles




22. Crime and violence
a) References used in essay:
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b) Essay:







e) Articles



23. Water pollution
a) References used in essay:
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b) ay:











b) Articles










24. Pollution
a) References used in essay:
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b) Essay:







b) Articles















25. Industrialisation
a) References used in essay:
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b) Essay:







e) Articles















26. Population explosion
a) References used in essay:
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b) Essay:







b) Articles















27. Racism
a) References used in essay:
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b) Essay:







b) Articles















28. Sexism
a) References used in essay:
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b) Essay:










g) Articles













29.
30. Desertification
a) References used in essay:
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b) Essay:







e) Articles













31. Drug abuse
a) References used in essay:
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b) Essay:







b) Articles
















32. Disposal of waste
a) References used in essay:
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b) Essay:







e) Articles















33. Depletion of ozone
a) References used in essay:
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b) Essay:







b) Articles















34. Acid rain
a) References used in essay:
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b) Essay:







b) Articles















35. Loss of rain forests
a) References used in essay:
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b) Essay:







c)Articles















36. Education
a) References used in essay:
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b) Essay:







e) Articles















37. Cultural differences
a) References used in essay:
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b) Essay:







b) Articles















38. Drying up of rivers
a) References used in essay:
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b) Essay:








e) Articles














39. Excessive TV watching
a) References used in essay:
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b) Essay:







b) Articles
















27. Pandemics
c) References used in essay:
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b) Essay:







e) Articles
















i. Threats to democracy
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b) Essay:







e) Articles
















ii. Unemployment
b. References used in essay:
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b) Essay:





d) Articles

















Dealing with tpical questions in IELTS Task 2 Writing examinations

Understand the question
The key to writing a good answer to an examination question is understanding the question before you start to write.

Here are 11 different questions that are fairly typical of the different way in which questions are asked in examination papers.

For each of these 11 questions, a guide to their meaning and what you are being asked to write is provided.

Examples of IELTS Task 2 questions and some help understanding them.

12. What are the pros and cons of co-educational schooling?




















13. Single sex education is better than co-educational schooling. Discuss.














14. Compare the benefits of a vegetarian diet over a conventional Western diet.




































15. Forests are the lungs of the earth. Their destruction will accelerate extinction of animals and ultimately mankind. For this reason, logging in the world’s rain forests should be phased out over the next decade. Discuss.












16. Aquariums and wild life sanctuaries are seen as sources of education and entertainment for families. They are also essential for conducting life-saving research. However, there is opposition to confining animals in this way. Discuss some of the arguments for and against the maintenance of zoos.




















17. Society is experiencing an increase in many problems such as crime and drug abuse due to urbanization. Give some suggestions to control this trend.



















18. Discuss the possible causes for the worldwide increase in crime and violence. What has been the effects of these trends in society?



19. Since World War 2 there has been an increase in co-operation between many Easter and Western countries. This had led to a desire among students to undertake studies in foreign countries. Write a brief account of the advantages and disadvantages of studying abroad.




















20. Pollution is a very serious problem today. What level of pollution should we tolerate? Discuss examples of the different types of pollution.

























21. What are the effects of global warming? Suggest some recommendations to minimize these effects.


















22. How can we address the problem of increasing illiteracy in many highly developed countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom?























FOREWORD
If you are a student studying university courses through the medium of the English language, exposure to authentic, written English is critical.
WHY?
LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES –
WHAT KRASHEN HAS TO SAY ABOUT THE BENEFITS OF READING
(PD has something here. Has Krashen been discredited? Ask Nick, and possibly Peter.)
All the articles in this book will provide you with examples of real language in use, as well as providing you with topics that will enhance your education. The articles and stories included in this book were written with students in mind. However, nothing has been abridged to make it simpler to comprehend, and the only addition catering for you as a student of English is the provision of a glossary to explain the vocabulary used in the texts, and an annotated word list to help you with your reading, and your writing.
OUTLINE THE ARTICLES – CLASSIFY THEM – EXPLAIN WHY THEY ARE INCLUDED
A glossary has been provided for each article and story in the book, and this appears as Appendix A.

References and acknowledgements appear in Appendix B.

The series of articles in this book, together with the Glossary, and the Annotated Word List provide you with a resource to draw upon while you are studying at college or university.

The Annotated Word List consists of the most common words used in an Academic Register. ****




Achieving self-actualization: The real value of education

There are times in every student’s life when it seems that education is just the worst thing on Earth. In the middle of revision for examinations, or worse, during exams, it seems like a great idea that has gone awry. Everybody knows the value of education, but, like youth, it seems wasted on the young sometimes.

It’s easy to say that education is valuable from your armchair, smoking your pipe, wearing your comfortable slippers, whilst watching TV. It’s actually taking part; being a student that is difficult. Knowing that it is for your own good just isn’t enough sometimes.

You feel like getting someone to tell you how it really is good for you. Will it get me a better job, you ask yourself. Will it make my life that much better? What exactly will it do for me?

The answer is that it should get you a better job, although a lot of young graduates will tell you otherwise: it is still difficult getting a good job these days, with or without a good education.

It should make your life better, but that’s really up to you as much as anything you learn at university.

What exactly will it do for you? I think I can answer that question, but it will take me a little longer than you might expect.

First of all, if you want to know what your education will do for you, you have to ask yourself what you are prepared to do for it.

This is no riddle, just a question that raises the issue of your own motivation and how hard you are prepared to work for something that will change your life.

If you are serious about becoming educated, getting an education, you will have to put into it what you hope to get out of it: a lot.

You must get involved in your subjects. Immerse yourself in them, for that is the only way you will really feel the benefit later.

Right, now that we have established that you are serious, let’s begin trying to explain what your education is going to do for you.

To do this, I would like to look at the work of Abraham Maslow, who is best known for establishing the theory of the hierarchy of personal needs. (1954)

He tried to explain what energizes and motivates us. His hierarchy was grouped into two sets of needs. He said that a higher level need is sought after lower level ones have been satisfied.

The first four levels are:
1) Physiological: hunger, thirst, bodily comforts
2) Safety/security: the need to be out of danger
3) Feelings of belonging and love: the need to affiliate with others, be accepted by others.
4) Esteem: being competent, gaining approval and recognition
According to Maslow, these first four needs must be met before the so-called growth needs are ready to become initiated.

These are:
1) Cognitive: to know, understand and explore
2) Aesthetic: symmetry, order and beauty
3) Self-actualization: to find self-fulfillment and realize one’s potential
4. Self- ascendance: to connect to something beyond the ego or to help others find self-fulfillment and realize their potential.

Maslow though that as a person becomes more self-actualized and self-transcendent, that person becomes wiser and more able to cope successfully with the wide variety of situations and dilemmas that face us in life.

He believed that human beings are basically trustworthy, self-protecting, and self-governing. They gravitate towards growth and love. He believed also that violent or evil behavior is a manifestation that some human needs are not being met.

This view of human nature is opposed to that put forward by people like Freud and Skinner, who believed in determinism, that man is driven by urges over which he has little control.

Maslow’s view of human nature was more optimistic. Choosing between the two is
something like deciding whether the bottle is half full or half empty: it depends upon what motives you aspire to, and what you think others aspire to.

The physiological needs constitute our very basic needs for food, air, water, sleep etc. If these needs are not met, we feel sick, irritable, discomfort or pain. It is easy to see that for many people in the world, the satisfaction of these needs takes a great deal of their energy, whereas in a modern, well ordered society these needs are relatively easy to meet.

The so-called safety needs have to do with achieving some kind of stability and order in what can be a frenetic world. Traditionally, our home and our family give us this. Without strong family ties people can sometimes drift into activities that represent the opposite of order and stability.

Unfortunately, it seems that the need for safety and security, for stability and consistency, are often the highest priority for sections of our society. Rising crime levels do nothing to alleviate this concern.

The need to love and to feel that you belong is the next up the hierarchy. Human beings are essentially gregarious. We join groups throughout our lives, and we need love, acceptance, kindness, and consideration.

If you give your mother a bunch of flowers, it is the thought that she really appreciates: that you were thinking about her enough to want to show it. The flowers are pretty, and look nice in a vase, but it is the thought that counts.

The need for esteem is two-fold. Self-esteem comes from being able to do something to one’s own satisfaction. The esteem of others comes from the acknowledgement of others that you are doing well. The next time you see someone admiring their new car, think of this need, the need to gain the esteem of others.

Higher up the ladder, the need for self-actualization becomes activated. This can be summarized by the modern slogan: “Be the best you can be!” What that is, is out there for you to find, and in my experience of life changes, naturally.

I wanted to be a train driver when I was a little boy. That is the very last thing I want to be these days. Nevertheless, the desire to become something and to do something has always been with me. This is often disparaged these days by the label: ‘wannabe’. This is to miss the point entirely.

The thing that points me to my ambitions is not success, but interest. A concentration on ultimate success is an obsession with the result, whereas being absorbed by a subject or activity is to enjoy and be motivated by the journey.

The successful writer Terence Higgins once said that he wished his first novel hadn’t been the big hit that it was, because after the fuss had died down, he felt as if he didn’t have anywhere to go. There is an expression: “Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it!”

Interest is the seeking of knowledge, and using it to create. That is the essence of self-actualization. Education, particularly higher education can help to put a person on that path. I would say that this need probably comes to be felt after childhood. In childhood, this need most likely becomes subordinated to lower level needs. Reaching maturity in life has as much to do with one’s need to find something beyond subsistence. This ties in with the need for self-transcendence; to go beyond oneself, to connect with others, to reach a point where empathy is achieved by awareness of the plight of others, of the needs of others, and what is usually termed, “the bigger picture”.





Write down the dictionary definitions of any words you didn’t know below. There are 91 words.
If you learn what these words mean, you will have increased your knowledge of the English language by a significant amount.
All the words listed (1-91) below occur reasonably frequently in texts to make most of them useful in the future.
1. ABLE ____________________________________________________________________________________________
2. ABSORBED _______________________________________________________________________________________
3. ACCEPTANCE ___________________________________________________________________________________
4. ACCEPTED ___________________________________________________________________________________
5. ACCORDING ___________________________________________________________________________________
6. ACHIEVED ___________________________________________________________________________________
7. ACHIEVING _____________________________________________ _____________________________________
8. ACTIVATED ___________________________________________________________________________________
9. AESTHETIC ___________________________________________________________________________________
10. AFFILIATE ___________________________________________________________________________________
11. ALLEVIATE ___________________________________________________________________________________
12. ASCENDANCE ___________________________________________________________________________________
13. ASPIRE ___________________________________________________________________________________
14. AWARENESS ___________________________________________________________________________________
15. AWRY __________________________________________________________________________________________
16. BASICALLY ___________________________________________________________________________________
17. CHILDHOOD ___________________________________________________________________________________
18. CHOOSING ___________________________________________________________________________________
19. COGNITIVE ___________________________________________________________________________________
20. COMPETENT ___________________________________________________________________________________
21. CONCERN ___________________________________________________________________________________
22. CONNECT ___________________________________________________________________________________
23. CONSIDERATION _________________________________________________________________________________
24. CONSISTENCY __________________________________________________________________________________
25. CONSTITUTE __________________________________________________________________________________
26. CONTROL __________________________________________________________________________________
27. COPE __________________________________________________________________________________________
28. COUNTS __________________________________________________________________________________
29. CREATE __________________________________________________________________________________
30. DESIRE __________________________________________________________________________________
31. DETERMINISM __________________________________________________________________________________
32. DILEMMAS __________________________________________________________________________________
33. DISPARAGED __________________________________________________________________________________
34. DRIFT ____________________________________________________________________________________________
35. EGO ___________________________________________________________________________________________
36. EMPATHY __________________________________________________________________________________
37. ESSENCE __________________________________________________________________________________
38. ESSENTIALLY __________________________________________________________________________________
39. ESTABLISHED __________________________________________________________________________________
40. ESTEEM __________________________________________________________________________________
41. EVIL ___________________________________________________________________________________________
42. EXPRESSION __________________________________________________________________________________
43. FRENETIC __________________________________________________________________________________
44. FREUD __________________________________________________________________________________
45. FUSS ___________________________________________________________________________________________
46. GRADUATES __________________________________________________________________________________
47. GRAVITATE __________________________________________________________________________________
48. GREGARIOUS __________________________________________________________________________________
49. HIERARCHY __________________________________________________________________________________
50. IMMERSE __________________________________________________________________________________
51. INITIATED __________________________________________________________________________________
52. IRRITABLE __________________________________________________________________________________
53. MANIFESTATION ________________________________________________________________________________
54. MATURITY __________________________________________________________________________________
55. OBSESSION __________________________________________________________________________________
56. OPTIMISTIC __________________________________________________________________________________
57. PLIGHT __________________________________________________________________________________
58. POTENTIAL __________________________________________________________________________________
59. PRIORITY __________________________________________________________________________________
60. RECOGNITION __________________________________________________________________________________
61. REFERENCES __________________________________________________________________________________
62. RELATIVELY __________________________________________________________________________________
63. REPRESENT __________________________________________________________________________________
64. REVISION __________________________________________________________________________________
65. RIDDLE __________________________________________________________________________________
66. RISING __________________________________________________________________________________
67. SAFETY __________________________________________________________________________________
68. SECURITY __________________________________________________________________________________
69. SEEKING __________________________________________________________________________________
70. SELF-ESTEEM __________________________________________________________________________________
71. SELF-FULFILLMENT______________________________________________________________________________
72. SELF-PROTECTING _______________________________________________________________________________
73. SELF-TRANSCENDENC E _________________________________________________________________________
74. SERIOUS __________________________________________________________________________________
75. SETS ___________________________________________________________________________________________
76. SLIPPERS __________________________________________________________________________________
77. SLOGAN __________________________________________________________________________________
78. SOUGHT __________________________________________________________________________________
79. STABILITY __________________________________________________________________________________
80. SUBORDINATED _______________________________________________________________________________
81. SUBSISTENCE _________________________________________________________________________________
82. SUMMARIZED _________________________________________________________________________________
83. SYMMETRY _________________________________________________________________________________
84. TERMED _________________________________________________________________________________
85. TRANSCENDENT ________________________________________________________________________________
86. TRIED ________________________________________________________________________________________
87. TRUSTWORTHY ________________________________________________________________________________
88. TWO-FOLD _________________________________________________________________________________
89. ULTIMATE _________________________________________________________________________________
90. VASE __________________________________________________________________________________________
91. WISER _________________________________________________________________________________
Notes on GLOSSARY 1.
i. (90) vase and slippers (76) are words that are not generally found in academic English.
ii. Freud (44) is the surname of an eminent scientist.


References














2

The Digital Future: Something to look forward to, or something to fear?

Advances in technology produce patterns in the communities with which they interact and into which they become assimilated. Some facet of life is replaced, enhanced, or altered forever, sometimes for the worse. Our ability to predict which of these paths the advance will take on in our lives never seems to improve. What look on the face of it like huge benefits to society often turn out to be less so, to varying degrees.

The advent of the television into our lives, for example, gave us an opportunity to disseminate information, to educate the masses, and to entertain. However, the television, it has been said, is largely responsible for the atomization of society, the breakdown of family ties and traditional forms of entertainment in the home, and worse, the spreading of ideas detrimental to the well being of society in general. None of this was foreseen when John Logie Baird's flickering images first entered our lives.

Where formal education is concerned, the digital 'future' is already upon us. The Internet, we are constantly told, promises to revolutionize education, the laptop computer will enter classrooms changing forever the dynamics of the classroom.

There is no doubt in many people's minds that these advances have indeed the potential to radically alter that way we educate our children, and ourselves.

If, however, these particular advances in technology follow the patterns outlined above, the benefits might be outnumbered by the detrimental effects on our lives as educators and as learners. If computers are going to enter the classroom, will they enhance, replace, or change forever what traditionally goes on inside them? Or will they have an effect none of us could have predicted beforehand?

Before these advances are transferred into our lives in the classroom, our motives for wanting such
changes should first be examined. Then the things that already happen in the classroom should be considered in order to ascertain whether in fact we want to change them. Do we, for example, want to replace the interaction between teacher and student, and that between fellow students with something else? Do we want to reduce the importance of books in teaching? Do we want to alter the individual's private domain? And last but certainly not least, are we able to say with any degree of certainty whether these changes can be controlled ones?

The personnel often charged with responsibilities in the decision making process when considering whether or not to adopt such technology in classrooms are usually found to be those people least affected by the changes they so eagerly and persuasively propose.

Technological determinism is not and does not have to be the route educational establishments take, and yet it often is. Having a modern outlook, or just keeping up with new technology, are all poor reasons masquerading as good ones when it comes to the way we talk ourselves into buying new gismos and installing them in places they probably ought not to be.

Consultation, a great deal of thought and research, common sense, and honesty should be the watchwords, rather than ones like fashion and modernity. How we benefit from today's wonderful advances tomorrow will depend on whether we ask the right questions to the right people, and most importantly, whether or not we have the will to say no.

The vexed question of how new technology is going to affect us, however, is not a new one though.
To return, two questions, I have said, need to be addressed. First, why do we want to introduce technology into our classrooms, and second, do we want to change the things that already happen in the classroom?

The answer to the first depends to a certain extent upon the answer to the second. Part of the answer must surely be though, because we want to improve the quality of learning, and this will surely have implications for the type of learning too. If the answer is anything less than this wish to improve learning, then we should expect other things to be different.



What goes on in the classroom without digital aids? Teachers teach, and students learn, or at least that's what should happen. If this new interface replaces existing ones, can it perform the functions necessary for the conditions of learning to be improved? Here we would need to say that technological innovations would not necessarily replace all interaction in the classroom.

Of the four language skills taught in our classrooms, it seems to me that reading and writing could well be aided by the introduction of computers. This has already happened in many institutions, including our own. What seems to be lacking in many is some sort of check on whether CAL assists learning or not, and if it does, how much and in what particular direction. Does, for example, completing cloze-tests on computer screens improve a student's ability to use those structures in his or her own written work. Merely installing what appear to be learning opportunities does not ensure that they are really of value to learning.

The provision of a spell checker on a computer does not really mean that a student’s ability to spell correctly improves with the use of the device. It may only mean that the learner remembers to activate it at certain intervals in his or her writing. A good thing for one person is not necessarily a good thing for all. Time is saved for those who can already spell, but time is lost for those who cannot. Technological innovations in any field do not of themselves mean improvement in our lives. Remember the TV.

Students' learning styles and teachers' styles of teaching need to be catered for by applications of new technology in education. At present, I think it is fair to say that the former is encouraged by educationalists, while the latter is sometimes actively discouraged. However, if students have different learning styles, then teachers must be both responsive and versatile. Any change in interface between learner and educator would need to be similarly so. Such versatility and responsiveness should surely be possible using new technologies in language classrooms. If this does not happen, it will not be the fault of technology but rather the lack of will to want to install such versatility. For this seems to be a feature of current thinking on the issue, that some believe that the introduction of computers in classrooms will enable greater control over what happens in them. I equate control with power, the power to impose one's views on others. If those views do not include a wish to retain diversity amongst teachers to facilitate diversity among students, the outcome may be an unintended one. Remember the TV. 




































3
Using Occam’s razor sparingly: Exercising judgment in one’s thinking
1. You have been reading up on a topic, and you have to write an essay about it for homework.
2. You are reading about an unusual event and you want to know why it happened.
3. You are curious about why some people behave the way they do.
Deciding what to write about, what is important, and reaching meaningful conclusions about the causes of certain events, or coming to understand the human condition and what motivates people, are all difficult things to do.
There are so many theories, ideas, and slants. There seems to be so much information on any given topic that reaching the right conclusions rather than jumping to them is difficult, if not impossible. At
any rate that’s how it must look at times.
There are ways to reach sensible conclusions, and realizing that there may not be any right answers to complex questions is one such way. There are sensible, plausible answers, but most of the time, there is rarely just the one that is absolutely correct.
The physical sciences seem to represent the closest we get to ‘right’ answers, but any scientists will tell
you that what is considered correct only applies at a certain level of analysis.
Water boils at 100 degrees Centigrade, and every schoolboy knows that. A closer look at water boiling, however, reveals that only pure water boils at that temperature, and then only at sea level. Add some impurities, and try the experiment at an altitude above mean sea level and you will find that in fact, water doesn’t behave in that way.
In the mosaic of information in other subjects, much of the information actually conflicts, and we know that statistics can be manipulated to prove anything, don’t we?
A friend of mine was recently informed by a doctor that his apparent deafness was due to a spinal degeneration that was limiting the amount of blood getting to the ear. Another doctor examined him and told him he had a an ear infection from swimming in water that may not have been chlorinated enough to prevent contamination.
My friend accepted the latter diagnosis. The question is: Was he right to do that? Was he right to accept the diagnosis that he most wanted to believe?
He accepted the simplest explanation. He used the principle known as ‘Occam’s razor’ to decide what to believe. He had a vested interest in so doing, and indeed, who wouldn’t want to believe the second explanation rather than the first?
Occam’s razor states that: ‘One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.’
It is similar to the principle of parsimony or the principle of simplicity, which is a criterion for deciding among scientific theories or explanations.

‘One should always choose the simplest explanation of a phenomenon, the one that requires the fewest leaps of logic.’
(Principia Cybernetica Web)
Or in other words, and to quote from ’Principia Cybernetica Web’ again:
‘A problem should be stated in its basic and simplest terms. In science, the simplest theory that fits the facts of a problem is the one that should be selected.’
In plain language, the simplest explanation is most probably the correct one, given that all the facts have been dealt with, the logical principle put forward by William of Occam, a medieval English philosopher.
Here is a real life example of Occam's Razor in practice.

(1) Crop circles began to be reported in the 1970s. Two interpretations were made of the circles of matted grass. The first one was that UFOs had made the imprints. The second was that someone (human) had used some sort of instruments to push down the grass. Occam's Razor would say that given the lack of evidence for UFOs and the complexity involved in UFOs arriving from distant galaxies, the second interpretation is the simplest and therefore the one most likely to be correct.

Of course, both explanations could have been wrong, but again, the second was by far the simplest, and so, applying the principle of Occam’s razor, would be the one most likely to be correct.

More evidence would be needed before the first one could be accepted. In fact, two people later admitted that they hade made the circles, corroborating the second explanation.

For a given set of observations or data, there is always an infinite number of possible models explaining those same data. This is because a model normally represents an infinite number of possible cases. (1)

Evidence is critical in making judgments regarding explanations for otherwise inexplicable events is concerned.

We talk about reaching conclusions, and we talk about jumping to conclusions, and while it is true to say that the latter is usually applied to more day to day matters, it is also true to say that reaching conclusions based upon examination of sound evidence is always
preferable to jumping to conclusions, or reaching a conclusion before any attempt at examining all the evidence has been undertaken.

Acceptance of a proposition based upon incomplete evidence is known as prejudice. To be honest though, prejudicial behavior is usually displayed in connection with issues that concern people rather than, for example, with scientific phenomena.

Nevertheless, if we were to invariably accept the simplest explanation as being the nearest one to the truth, or to reality, then we would be guilty of habitually ignoring potentially important data just because it complicated the issue or because it was not presented initially.

A complete, in depth understanding of complex issues or equations demands that we examine all the relevant data before we pass judgment or define something, or decide upon something.

The principle known as Occam’s razor is most helpful in helping us to limit the amount of data that is relevant to our understanding of a particular topic.

It is the awareness of the existence of other variables that is necessary, along with deeming them relevant or otherwise.

In this age of the information super-highway, the Internet, it is those who are able to select relevant data and use it sensibly who will be more successful, and a plethora of information increases the difficulty of their being able to do that. 






























4
Thinking creatively

Daydreaming, called ‘random inspiration’ by some, thinking without cause or immediate direction by others, is probably very valuable to us. Our imagination is one of the things that makes us human, after all, and is a way of utilizing the creativity we all possess but probably use only sparingly, at least in any conscious way.
“Daydreaming is the spontaneously recalling or imagining of personal or vicarious experiences in the past or future. Daydreaming can improve efficiency by enabling us to exploit free processing time learning from past experiences and prepare for future tasks. Positive daydreaming improves creativity by generating fanciful scenarios and facilitating the discovery of analogies among seemingly unrelated tasks Positive daydreaming helps us regulate emotions.” www.dailywriting.net

Daydreaming can be considered a special form of conscious awareness because it reflects a state in which “conscious awareness is to some extent decoupled from the current situation” (Smallwood et al in 200

The extent to which daydreaming is 'decoupled from the present situation' represents the potential for creative thought to be creative. Our own limitations, and the limits set on us by logic, and the limits of the real world are sidestepped, as it were, by this removal of our thought patterns from the reality of the present.

In the 'unreality' created in a daydream, possibilities extend outwardly, and things that might have once appeared unthinkable, become real and possible. It is this becoming real that shows us that more conscious modes of thought are sometimes incapable of giving us the whole picture. In this stepping outside the frame, we can come to realize that there are other scenarios, other ways, other modes of behavior - other solutions to the worldly problems that beset us.

Visualizing personal or vicarious, imaginary experiences in the past or future amounts to our gaining insights into things beyond our own immediate and personal experience. In a sense, it is our minds being creative for us. It is the synthesis of the totality of our knowledge from whatever source, be it things we have heard, conscious or not, or things we have seen but which our conscious thought hasn't yet brought into the realm of our conscious memory, or it may be recalled knowledge: things we have been told about past events, but have forgotten.

Daydreaming uses that much. I am reminded here of the advice given to new, would-be authors from well known, well-published ones: "If you get an idea for a story, sleep on it, let your subconscious work on it."

Daydreaming often begins with wondering: ‘What if…?’ ‘If only I could….’ ‘Suppose….’ ‘Wouldn’t everything be better if….’

It often has a focus, and that is natural and normal. It is in the ‘generating fanciful scenarios and facilitating the discovery of analogies among seemingly unrelated tasks’, that we come to be creative, to make connections that are innovative.

That kind of thinking has been responsible for some of our greatest creations. The subsequent planning and working through the logistics of many daydreams may well have rendered most of them totally impossible, but if a few get through, daydreaming has been worthwhile.

Very often films play out the fantasies of writers, and audiences everywhere enjoy watching something that might well have started as a daydream.

Take the blockbuster film, ‘Forrest Gump’ starring Tom Hanks. The writer/s surely entertained their wildest fantasies when creating their character and the things he did. Where else but the cinema could you have your central character actually witness the events in the Watergate Hotel, show Elvis Presley how to move his legs, bought shares in Apple thinking it was a fruit company, and was the only person left with a shrimping boat after the worst storm in living memory – leading to Forrest and Bubba monopolizing the shrimp market and making themselves millionaires.

Think of many, many other films where daydreaming and then lots and lots of hard work lead to box office success.
Think of:
‘Star Wars’
‘Secondhand Lions’
‘Jaws’
‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’
‘Jurassic Park’
‘Face-Off”

And while it is true that most of these films started out as successful paperback novels, the original ideas probably started from a glimmer of an idea, originating from the speculation and fantasizing that is normally referred to as daydreaming.

In the world of civil engineering, think of the Eiffel Tower, Burj al Arab, Jumeirah Palm Island, and the Millenium Dome in London. In more idiosyncratic constructions, think of Mount Rushmore, USA, the terra-cotta armies in China, the sphinx and the pyramids in Egypt: the ancient and modern wonders of the world.

The revolutionary shape and design of the Burj Al Arab, Dubai’s iconic masterpiece is a good example of what I am talking about. To design the Jumeirah Beach Hotel on the shore, in the shape of a gigantic wave, and then build an even more enormous wind-sail of a hotel overlooking it offshore is nothing more than sheer creative genius.

Planning and putting such amazing concepts into steel, concrete, plastic and glass is a feat in itself, but it is a task that runs along logical, civil engineering principles once the original idea has been brought to light.

The beauty of daydreaming or doodling is that it costs nothing, involves no one, need never be outwardly stated to anyone but the person daydreaming or doodling.

Such daydreams and doodles that come to fruition, however, can be earth-shattering, ground-breaking achievements once they come alive in plans and blueprints in the hands of skilled engineers, designers, draftsmen and builders.

I once wrote about a new way to get students to think of ideas for an essay they had to write. Conventional brainstorming techniques involve a bubble on a piece of paper, and then branches out of it with words on the end. This sometimes works, but more often than not it doesn’t particularly help and the teacher ends up labeling the diagram. My way involved writing a word that was central to the subject of an essay they were writing, in a new way on the board.

I wrote the word, Pollution, vertically. Like this:-

P
O
L
L
U
T
I
O
N

I asked a bemused class of university undergraduate students to copy this into their exercise books. The next thing I did opened mouths with incredulity. I started writing words next to the vertical capital letters on the board. Like this:-

Poor controls of companies and then--Pressing problem
Ordinary people cause pollution Out of hand
Students then added --Life is not good because of it Life is threatened
Lots of animals die because of it Living creatures suffer
Up to us to stop it Untold damage to Earth
Terrible future for mankind Time to stop it
In our rivers and seas If not, it will stop us
On television every day Ordinary people can stop
Nothing can stop it Nothing can stop us

Now, instead of a blank page in front of them, my students had a series of capital letters, and as everyone knows, the letters of the alphabet constitute the primary association of words in language. Give someone a capital letter and a concept to think about and I guarantee that they will come up with a word, an idea, a phrase or a sentence in a matter of seconds. Sometimes our daydreaming needs a kick-start.

Shapes, colors, numbers, letters, words, signs all achieve significance if they are allowed to. All you need to get going is a concept.

Here goes: Concept = New hotel

Shape: Tall lozenge (doodle) High
Color: White or silver (like a sail) Overlooks Dubai
Number: 1 (an upright figure) Tower
Letter: D (the shape of the tower) Easily remembered
Word: Arab (In the name) Leader in the world of hotels
Sign: Icon (Symbol of Dubai)

Result: Burj al Arab Hotel, Dubai

Now, the last think I want anyone to think is that using your creative powers is something that only ‘clever’ people can do. Anyone can be creative.

To begin with, you need the will to do it and a little bit of control over your thought processes. When I say ‘control’ I really mean introspection: the examination of one’s own mental thought processes. This is necessary to get things started.

The next thing needed is an object upon which your thoughts can settle and over which your mind can ponder. Remember the chopsticks earlier? They became the object of my thoughts, and then I applied questioning. I applied reasoning to the questions I posed myself.

My object stimulated me to wonder, then to ask questions, and finally to apply reasoning to provide me with reasonable answers to my questions.

An object gives your thoughts a direction, something to focus on. Without that, without that object to focus upon, I would have wandered aimlessly, possibly onto different objects, but never stopping on one long enough for me to apply my mental powers of reasoning to the objects.

I think finally, one has to have something of an inquiring mind to make this work. The only way I know of keeping an inquiring mind is by constantly marveling at God’s creation: our whole world and everything in it. In that sense, exercising the creative faculties you possess is a joyful experience, and one that ensures that you stay young at heart. Our children are the most inquisitive human beings on Earth, are they not? 

References
Jean Piaget, Malcolm Piercy (2003) The Psychology of Intelligence (Routledge Classics)
www.dailywriting.net
Smallwood JM, Obonsawin MC, & Heim SD (2003 A). Task Unrelated Thought: the role of distributed processing. Consciousness and Cognition
Fielding R. L. (1996) Preparing students to write In: Teaching English Winter 1996 #3. Oxford University Press Istanbul














































5
Having an inquiring mind: Making new connections

Having an inquiring mind means having the ability to make connections which are not always immediately apparent’ It is akin to having intelligence: the ability to form sensible conclusions based on incomplete evidence. ‘Intelligent behaviour is that which involves reasoning, judgment, planning, inferring and other generalized and complex mental or intellectual activities.’ ( Piaget, 2003)

To a greater or lesser degree, we all have it. We all possess the quality of intelligence.
Exercising those faculties that contribute to and are part of our intelligence is something that we do to a certain extent automatically, every day of our lives. How many of us make a conscious effort to exercise those faculties creatively?

Those mental faculties: reasoning, using our judgment, planning, and inferring, are not unlike the muscles of our limbs, in that if they are not exercised readily they lose some of their power.

Exercising your creative powers does not have to be Earth shattering. It can start from thinking about the most seemingly insignificant things. Concentrate on the process rather than the end product. If you do that, your thoughts will flow in all directions. If you try to force the issue by thinking purely about your ultimate destination, the journey will be spoiled. Here is an example of what I mean.

Sitting in a restaurant, trying to use chopsticks for the first time in my life, recently, I came to wonder why some people use them while other people use the knives and forks.

I remembered thinking that it probably had nothing to do with their effectiveness as utensils: Chinese people can remove food from their plates just as quickly as I can with my metal knife and fork.

Of course, tradition has something to do with it. I was taught how to use a knife and a fork at a very early age, and have used them ever since. No doubt the same is true for those people who use chopsticks every day of their lives. The answer to the question lies somewhere else.

It surely has something to do with the materials they are made from, and the way they are made. A couple of straight shoots from a bamboo plant will suffice for chop sticks, whereas knives and forks are made of steel, usually stainless steel, or chrome plated steel, and so can virtually only be made using heavy presses and precision-made press tools, in factories, by skilled craftsmen.

Chop sticks tie in with rural economies, knives and forks with industrial ones, which almost certainly means chop sticks predate metal utensils, and probably by many thousands of years too.

The exercise of thinking involved in reaching that conclusion was not anything brilliantly intelligent, but it did include reasoning, judgment and inferring, though not planning, but it did involve combining known facts with a certain amount of reasoning until something new emerged.

Without planning, without direction, mental activity of that kind is usually referred to as daydreaming. I was always being ticked off for doing it at school, I remember.

Considering problems logically without jumping to conclusions that cannot reasonably be supported by evidence or rational judgment is what having an inquiring mind is all about.

The corollary of this proposition is its opposite: considering problems without full recourse to reasoned judgment and jumping to conclusions that cannot be supported by evidence is prejudice. That is reaching conclusions that are based on incomplete or unsubstantiated evidence.

On the face of it, this doesn’t sound very different to the definition of intelligent behavior outlined above. In fact, the main difference is in the absence of the word ‘sensible’ in the second definition.

‘Sensible’ is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as: ‘Having or showing good sense – reasonable – judicious – moderate – practical’.

The word ‘reasonable’ is defined thus: ‘In accordance with reason – not absurd – having sound judgment – within the limits of reason’.

And in turn, ‘judicious’ is defined as: ‘sensible – prudent – sound in discernment and judgment’.

‘Moderate’ is: ‘Avoiding extremes – temperate in conduct or expression’.

There seems to be a certain amount of circularity in working out what intelligent behavior consists of, but that circularity is mainly semantic.

In more practical terms, intelligent behavior is that which has a large component of what we refer to as ‘common sense’.

Reaching sensible conclusions based on incomplete evidence must be tempered with common sense. If the conclusions are reached are based on factors such as personal bias and motivation then the chances are that they will not be reasonable, judicious, moderate or practical.

This is not to say that emotions have no place in rationality, in making reasoned judgments, but rather that an undue amount of emotional input can be detrimental to an argument one is putting forward or that one is defending.

Instead, exercising one’s rational judgment is nearer reaching those conclusions that any other reasonable individual would reach, armed with the same knowledge. It is rather like utilizing the intelligence of other intelligent people in order to verify one’s own thoughts on a particular matter.

The largest organism in the world is a grove of some sort of shrub in the state of Colorado that botanists thought were unconnected. They subsequently found that all the shrubs in the grove had root systems that were, in fact, interconnected.

In terms of mankind, perhaps we constitute an interconnected state too. What reasonable people would call reaching reasonable conclusions based on common sense would surely constitute some kind of interconnectedness, wouldn’t it?

Set in a historical framework, and taking into account the fact that Western modes of thinking constitute only a fraction of the totality of modes of rationality, having an inquiring mind is tantamount to no less than inheriting the critical faculty of one’s predecessors, and passing it on to those that follow. 






















References
Jean Piaget, Malcolm Piercy (2003) The Psychology of Intelligence (Routledge Classics)




















6
Train for the future – not the past

The speed of change in the economy is too fast for some organizations, and too fast for most of our educational programs.

‘The new economy: strong growth in the service sector, increased levels of productivity growth and globalized markets, means that the nature of work is different from the past. The diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICT) has changed the ways firms do business and create value, it has increased the flexibility of capital goods, making capital investment more productive and encouraging firms to substitute capital for labor. This trend contributes to the globalization of markets and has changed the nature of work and has implications for workers’ education and training. www.dest.gov.au

Who will benefit from changes in education and training?

Education and training helps improve employee job performance and the quality of goods and services firms offer. Individuals who take advantage of training get higher wages and increase their chances of promotion. It makes sense to upgrade your skills and change.

If companies don’t get the workers they require, they will:

• Go somewhere else to get them
If companies go abroad for workers, or relocate entirely, those jobs will be lost to the economy forever
• Do without them
So, some companies will do without the right kind of worker with the right kind of skills, some will go out of business because they do not have workers with those skills.
• Have to train people themselves
Training their own workforce is a possibility, but could be too expensive for some.
• Get other organizations to train people for them
Getting other organizations to train people for them could be another option for firms, but this can also prove too costly for many firms.

Training needs to take into account that the workplace and what goes on in it has changed.

“In industries where a large proportion of the production process has been computerized, workers need a broader underpinning knowledge to effectively manage the production process, and the capacity to solve problems of a diverse nature.” www.dest.gov.au

Change is the only thing that you can depend upon.
Work changes, and then everything else has to.

• “Basic clerical skills and basic computer skills appear to be a minimum requirement for most jobs.”
• “Workers need the capacity to learn about new products and processes as they are introduced.”
• Communication skills are increasingly valued in all occupations due to the increased complexity of interactions between workers and suppliers, colleagues and clients.” www.dest.gov.au

Research organization in the UK have already identified skills needed for most jobs.
• Teamwork
Working in teams builds loyalty, strengthens commitment and one’s sense of responsibility.
• Problem solving
Problems come from many different sources and so solutions come from accessing different disciplines, ways of thinking about the problem, and changes in attitudes to problem solving.
• Communication
This is the big one; if you can’t communicate, you can’t operate, be effective, adapt to new situations, or pass on your knowledge or air your views.
• Management
This doesn’t just mean what CEOs do. Everyone has to manage; manage time, finances, resources, and interpersonal relationships.

Research has found out what small businesses want:-
• Entrepreneurial attitudes
This is a major change in thinking. Traditionally, people leaving school or university expect companies to employ them in ways that the company determines. This is still true, but employees now have to think as if it was their own business, take risks and create wealth.
• Capacity to identify and exploit employment and wealth possibilities
Again, instead of looking at the business world as a given, workers are expected to think laterally, creatively and in ways that often overturn norms and values.
• An ongoing capacity for learning
The idea that you stop learning when you leave school, graduate, or get promotion is long gone. Everyone in an organization is faced with continual change and has to adapt or become redundant.
Large businesses want:-
• Skills in oral and written communication
Communication channels include email, fax, telephone, video-interviewing, oral presentations supported by Powerpoint, for example, face to face dialogue, and written report.
• Skills in interpersonal relations
Informal/formal communications require different skills; cooperation and congeniality, firmness and warmth are the new watchwords.
• Numeracy
Every business has the need for skills in math, accounting and all forms of numerical data.
• Economic literacy
Being aware of economic best practices, the financial constraints associated with capital ventures is paramount in the ‘new economy’.
• Understanding of cultural values
The world is a village, cross cultural exchanges are much more common and tact and understanding are top priorities for companies operating in global markets.
• Worldliness
Being ‘street-wise’ has found respectability in trade and industry. A knowledge of how the world turns is vital.
• The ability to apply knowledge
Merely knowing is not enough: Being able to adapt and apply knowledge to changing and changed circumstances is at a premium.
• Ability to recognize, accept and constantly seek opportunities for change in the context of world best practices
Opportunities don’t necessarily merely present themselves, they have to be looked for, and they have to be recognized. Recognition of opportunities is as vital as searching for them. www.gradlink.edu.au
Action-planning
To face changes in the workplace, you need to be pro-active, you need to initiate change right now. Ask yourself three questions:
• Where am I now?
Deciding where you are now requires honesty and courage. Realising that you are not anywhere near your personal frontiers can be a shock. Be prepared to be shocked. If you are prepared, it won’t come as too much of a shock, but you may need something to jolt you out of your complacency.
• Where do I want to be?
Again, honesty, self-awareness versus romantic notions and idealistic ambitions. Those last two are not completely useless. Dreams can and do lead to fulfillment in life.
• How do I get there?
Take advice from those who are there to assist you, from those who have done it, and from those who have your very best interests at heart. Listen, listen, listen.

You need a roadmap.
START
• Organize your time effectively
Time is always at a premium, you just don’t realize it all the time. Keep notes, keep diaries, use anything that works for you but manage your time more effectively than you are doing. Be brutal with your time, but leave yourself some quality time for those personal things that matter, friendship and family, they will sustain you when you most need it.
• Identify steps needed to reach your goal
Be informed - Be careful cutting corners – Be constantly aware of consequences.
• Prepare ‘just in case’ plans
Have other plans just in case things don’t work out – Keep to your main plan, but recognize failure too. The tragedy of failing is failing to know you’ve failed or are about to fail.
• Monitor and evaluate your progress
Watching your progress carefully will help you avoid failing to recognize that you are not succeeding along the lines you planned.
The most important thing is:
DON’T STAND STILL, EVERYONE ELSE IS MOVING
In 1997, the Dearing Enquiry recommended students to received structured opportunities to become:
• More aware of themselves
Know your strengths and your weaknesses – Listen to others, and listen to your own instincts; they are often the most reliable facets in knowing yourself.
• More aware of how to learn
Self-reflection in all things, particularly in learning – Knowing what doesn’t work for you is equally as important as knowing what does.
• More aware of how to improve personal performance
Set yourself standards – Be proud of your attainments and your successes – They are worth as much as gold in the world you want to be a part of.
• Better able to cope with the transition to their chosen careers
All change, even change for the better, even voluntary change is stressful and can sometimes threaten your sense of worth, of who you are and of what you want to become. 






































7
The Eskimo Widow
1
This is my story. I am Nana. I used to live here where the sun only shines for half the year. My dead husband, drowned off an ice floe, and frozen solid or else food for the fishes.

Now that I am too old to work, too old to go out for food, too old for anything really, the people in the huts about here sometimes bring me everything I need. I eat but little these days, and my poor hut is rarely lit, and poorly heated. I sit in my bed, remembering my youth, going to school in Anchorage, skipping through the streets on my way home. Now there is only ice, cold and six months of dark.

Things changed in my little hut one morning when I heard something moving across the ice. I know the sound of my neighbours, tramping heavily across the snow. This was a different sound.

Moving towards the noise, a murmuring sound an animal might make, I found a decrepit bundle of matted ice and fur. It was a polar bear cub, still too young to fend for itself, but still too heavy for me to lift up and carry back to my hut. I could only drag the bundle, a few feet at a time, but we eventually made the door of the hut. I dragged it indoors, brushing the ice off the cub's face, seeing its eyes moving slowly, feeling its heartbeat.

Since I had no oil for a lamp or my little stove, all I could do to warm it was to wrap it in oilskins and put it under my blanket on the mat I use for a bed. It worked, the cub thawed out and slowly began to move. After an hour, it was dripping wet. The ice had melted, and so I dried it quickly to prevent the cub from freezing. In these sub zero temperatures, even during the daytime, any moisture is death. Sweating has to be avoided, although it is almost impossible to sweat except when doing hard, physical work. The moisture freezes quickly and toes and fingers get frostbitten, turn black and have to be amputated at the hospital in Anchorage.

Dry, warm, and later fed with scraps I was going to eat, Chinga the cub moved around the hut to look at his new surroundings. There was no doubt he felt strange, sad and lonely for he called long, plaintive wails for his mother, who I guessed would have been killed by hunters. His crying awoke my own maternal instincts that had lain dormant for so long in these frozen wastes where there is little time for anything else except surviving the long, long winters.

I called the cub, my cub, Chinga after my own dead child, dragged from me stillborn, back when I was much, much younger, when my husband, Nanook, was fit and strong.

Chinga grew bigger and leaner, stronger and taller until he occupied the same space as Nanook had done. When Chinga rose from our hut and came back with fish, I felt so proud of him. I called him Chinga, my child in the privacy of our hut. Chinga was the child I had never had, the child I had longed for through the cold, lonely nights since Nanook went out one day and never returned.
2
We were all used to the hardships winter brought. We sat in our huts uncomplaining, huddled together to share the warmth of our bodies. This winter was a particularly hard one. I knew Chinga would not have survived it alone. Chinga instinctively knew it too.
As food got scarce, the people of the village got restless from hunger. Some of the younger ones were looking for a scapegoat, for something to blame, as well as for something to eat. One night, I heard a group of young men coming quickly across the ice, talking heatedly; approaching my door. I looked for Chinga, but the cub had gone out some time earlier. Suddenly, there was a loud rapping on the door of my hut.
"Open up, old woman," they shouted. I peeped through the cracks in the side of the door. I saw cold, angry faces.
"What can you want with me at this hour?" I asked, scared and somewhat distressed.
"Open up, we will tell you what we want."
"And what if I don't want to open the door?" I shouted, summoning up some courage from somewhere. The answer came loud and clear.
"It will be the worse for you if you don't," shouted one. I recognized his voice.
"What do you want, Yorger, son of Olaf?" The young man answered sheepishly.
"We only want to talk to you."
"Then talk," I said, still bold.
"Where is Chinga?" another asked.
"In a place you can't find him," I said, "and thank God for that." I heard the men mumbling and grumbling in the cold air. "Come," said one, "we have no work here."

I allowed the sound of their heavy footfalls to die on the evening air before I dared open the door. Looking out I listened for Chinga's step, much different from the sound of any human movement. There was none. The night was chill and the air was frozen into stillness. No sound came to my ears. I shut the door and knelt and prayed for the safe return of Chinga, and for the coming sun to bring life back to normal.

In the morning, I arose to another sound. Pressing my ear to the door, I heard what sounded like people, a lot of people, and I heard the sound of Chinga too. I became terrified for Chinga's safety. I flung the door open. Already the light was becoming stronger, but it was still icy.
"Old woman," shouted a neighbour, "come out and tell us what your Chinga is trying to say to us." Chinga was beckoning to the people. Chinga was telling the people to go with him, but to where?

Outside, Chinga was waving his paws, clutching his white belly, pointing yonder, over the mountains of ice to the north of the village.
"Chinga wants you to go to where there is food," I cried with joy in my heart.
"Food, there is no food, he is the only food there is for us," shouted the same young man who had knocked on the old woman's door.
"I know what he is saying," I cried, pleading now. "See!" I shouted. "See how he is clutching at his belly. That means he has eaten and there is more to be eaten."
"Let us at least go to see," said a woman, reasoning to the others.
"Yes, let us go," said another, "and if there is no food, we can kill him and eat his flesh."
3
" Now, forty years later, the old widow woman is dead. She died happy. She died in the arms of her beloved Chinga. Chinga pined away and died shortly afterwards, in the arms of the villagers, who revered him as their saviour after he took them to the huge bull seal he had fought and mortally wounded, lying bleeding on the ice-pack.

That was the year of the hard winter, children, that was the year Chinga the Great saved the village. That was the year our fortunes changed. That was the year that we were taught something about the life that surrounds us. We learned in those hard days that dumb animals are not really dumb, it is just that we cannot hear their words, we cannot always understand them. They speak to us, nevertheless, and now, after Chinga the Great, the bear I once wanted to kill for its meat, Chinga, brought us to life giving food and fuel, and now, we listen to all living things." 


































8
Opting for the alternative: Making little decisions to make your life better.

‘Going with the flow’, ‘doing what everyone else does’, ‘conforming to the norm’, are synonymous with playing safe and in many cases, with acting without really thinking.

Examine your behavior: everything you do and everything you say. How much of what you do is an automatic response? How much of what you do is done without really thinking it through?

Let’s examine a scenario and then examine your response to it.

You go to a buffet dinner at a 5-star hotel. You pay what you consider to be a lot of money for the dinner. The buffet is extraordinary though. It has all your favorite food, cooked the way you like it, and it has many dishes you have often heard about but never tasted. You are hungry, and you have lots of time to sit and eat. You feel well, and are in good company. You take an empty plate and go to the food.

Question: Do you aim to get value for money at the buffet?

The answer to this is surely in the affirmative.

Question: What do you think is getting value for money at a buffet dinner?

If your answer is to eat as much as you can for as long as you can, then you are with the majority. Most people would agree with you: that is getting value for money at a buffet dinner.

If, however, your idea of getting value for money is to eat just as much as will make you walk away from the table feeling comfortable, and feeling that you have enjoyed tasting many of the different foods that were on offer without having overeaten, you are probably in the minority.

The fact that everybody at your table, indeed, everybody in the restaurant, is tucking in and aiming to eat as much as they possibly can, will probably make you feel that you tucking in and eating as much as you possibly can is the right thing to do.

Conversely, if you are only eating moderate amounts, you probably feel that you are slightly at odds with everyone around you in not piling up your plate.

This feeling slightly at odds with those around you might either make you act like the rest, or it might have the opposite effect: it might reinforce your belief in the correctness of being a bit more fastidious.

The popular way of doing things is not necessarily the right one – for you, or for anyone, for that matter.

It is equally true though, that the less common way of doing things is not your way either.

The point is that the more you do as others do, the more you act automatically, without really thinking about what you are doing, the more likely you are to not be doing the best for you. Opting for the alternative could present you with that best way for you.

In fact, in this case, it is absolutely true. Binge eating can and does lead to obesity in many, which can and often does lead to ill health.

The second way, the alternative way is the best. Let’s see if this notion can be extrapolated to take in other aspects of your daily life.

Here’s another situation for you: You are on a three-lane highway, driving in the outside lane at the speed limit. You are not in any great rush to get where you are going, but you want to get there reasonably early to catch the shops.

A car in h middle lane up in front of you indicates to move into the lane that you are in: the outside lane.

Do you:
A) Speed up to get past the other car before he can pull over into the
Lane that you are in?
B) Do you ease up on the accelerator and let the car into your lane?

In my experience of driving in the region, I would say that most drivers would go for (B). They would immediately speed up as soon as they saw the driver indicating.

The questions I now want to put to you are these:
a) What effect does your speeding up have on your own sense of well- being and safety, and on the other driver’s?
b) How much time do you think you save by driving like this?
c) Do you think you put anyone’s life in danger by doing this?

If you think about your reaction to the two questions, and to the situation, which gave rise to the questions, you might come to realize that by speeding up you are doing one of these things:
1) You are endangering yourself, the people in the car with you.
2) You are endangering the other driver and the people in his car with him.
3) You are putting yourself through unnecessary stress and increasing your impatience.
4) You are acting in a way that displays a certain amount of hostility and disdain for other road users.
5) You are acting in a way that is at odds with how you would probably like to be thought of by others.

Opt for the alternative – feel good about yourself – make a start to acting more courteously to others.

Third situation: You sit down and switch on the TV for an evening’s viewing. You know there are none of your favorite programs on for another hour yet. The channel that comes on the screen has just started showing a film.

Do you:
A) Stay with the film to see what it’s about?
B) Switch channels until you find something you like?
C) Switch channels without staying on any of them longer that a few seconds?
D) Ask your friend or partner what they would like to watch?


































9
Avoid using fallacies: don’t come to the wrong conclusions

We are often told not to believe everything we read or everything we are told. But
in this age more than any other, we are deluged with information, opinions, statistics, and ‘facts’.

Most arguments and opinions are full of inconsistencies, some of which we term fallacies. A fallacy is an error in reasoning. It is not a factual error. A factual error is simply wrong
An example of a factual error is the following: New York is the capital of USA.

A fallacy, on the other hand, is an argument whose premises do not provide enough good support for its conclusion.
“An argument is a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition."
http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html

A premise is a statement that supports a claim.

Once a claim is seen to be valid, it is called a conclusion.

Example of an argument

Premise 1: Smoking can cause heart disease.
Premise 2: Bill smokes.
Conclusion: Bill has heart disease.

This argument is clearly fallacious. Bill does smoke, but he doesn’t have heart disease.
This argument is a fallacious one; the premises do not support the conclusion.

To make this argument a valid one, it would have to be worded something like this:

Premise 1: Smoking can cause heart disease.
Premise 2: Bill smokes.
Conclusion: If Bill continues to smoke, there is a possibility that he may get heart disease.

OR
Premise 1: Smoking can cause heart disease.
Premise 2: Bill smokes and he has heart disease.
Conclusion: Bill’s heart disease may be linked to his smoking.

Inductive and deductive arguments

A deductive argument is an argument in which the premises provide (or appear to provide) complete support for the conclusion.

An inductive argument is an argument in which the premises provide (or appear to provide) some degree of support (but less than complete support) for the conclusion. If the premises actually provide the required degree of support for the conclusion, then the argument is a good one.

A good deductive argument is known as a valid argument. If all its premises are true, then its conclusion must be true. If all the argument is valid and all its premises are true ones, then it is known as a sound argument. If it is invalid or has one or more false premises, it will be unsound.

A good inductive argument is known as a strong (or "cogent") inductive argument. It is such that if the premises are true, the conclusion is likely to be true.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
“An argument is a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition."
http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html
Knowing what fallacious arguments are and how to see through them should help us to stop using them, and understand when they are being put forward or used against us.

There are many types of fallacy. Here are some of the most common.













10
The Golden Treasury:Chapter and Verse
'Poetry makes nothing happen", wrote W.H.Auden in 1939. I think he was wrong, and I can prove it. If you read the words below, you will find out what I mean. My love of poetry and prose has led me from England, and its ‘dark satanic mills’, to explore the world as an English language teacher. My explorations have been geographical, taking me to many countries, but most of all they have taken me to literature; to the works of the masters; Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, and they have helped me to discover and explore my own writing, my own style, and my own way of telling my own stories. Poetry made this happen. R L Fielding

This book of verse, once opened, leads me through a life that is half over. Innocent and hearty, I read Lewis Carroll, wondering if I would ever see the Jabberwock with eyes aflame on my way home from school on those winter evenings when ice and darkness enveloped my path up the hill to the dancing fire and the roasting smell of my mother's cooking.

Later, standing in rows, our neckties strangling us, we sang,
'Who is Sylvia, what is she?
We never wondered in the slightest who Sylvia was, or what she was. We just presumed she was a girl and left it at that. Singing by rote, high and straining to reach Mrs. Smith playing the piano, her face grimacing at our reckless rendering of her favourite song.

And later, listening to 'I wandered lonely as a cloud', we started to hear the words and see the daffodils waving beneath us. All was forgotten though, when, as pupils in pride of place in Miss Schofield's English class, we had to read the words out loud to the whole class, listening and giggling till it was their turn.

With Dot Squash, and later with Fez, we trod the paths through Hardy's Wessex, waited on Egdon Heath with Eustacia Vye for her wild love, Damon Wildeve, come in secret from the tavern below.

Fez, Donald Radcliffe, Mr. Radcliffe to our parents, Sir to us who even adoring him and his booming voice, were petrified when we had somehow annoyed him, Fez made Weatherbury live, made Gabriel Oak a real person to us, and Bathsheba Everdene a real woman, vivacious with a mind of her own, headstrong, some said foolish, and passionate.

Dot Squash, Dorothy Schofield, Miss to us, apples of her scolding eye. She led us, walking alongside Tess to her doom, stopped us from berating Angel Clare for his purity and his foolish, pious pride, remonstrated with us for asking the question,
"Miss, didn't Thomas Hardy ever write happy stories?" What did we know of Greek tragedy, or any kind of tragedy, save one of our number running under the wheels of a car one afternoon after school.

Years later, still reading, though with a more alert eye, enjoying less for not being taken in as much, but still enjoying, I traversed a purple moor, stepped through heather and ling, waist deep bracken to a little house on the edge of Egdon Heath, whistling Holst's tune of the same name, I came to Clym and Eustacia's house in the woods. Admiring it through the lens of my Minolta, shutter clattering up and down gaily in the late summer sunshine, a little head poked through a bedroom window, and apologizing for intruding, was invited in to see for myself, Alderworth, the house where the newly weds dwelt before everything started going wrong, Eustacia finally and tragically realizing she had fallen in love with a man who did not exist, the native returned to his heath, but now, after his wandering days were done, content to practise the work of a furze cutter, and the beautiful but willful Eustacia, her raven haired, proud head leaning into the wind coming off the English Channel, dreaming of lands she would never see.

Working up to examinations, looking at university entrance, Shakespeare in hand, the Scottish play, which, not being in the acting profession, we can call by name, 'Macbeth'. Selling petrol at weekends to stay at 'Tech' till I passed, memorizing the 'dagger soliloquy between cars, for Mrs. Christou, who encouraged us with her enthusiasm, her joie de vivre and her laughing face.

Mr. McCann, a Scot, who did the Guardian Cryptic Crossword everyday whilst eating his sandwiches, leading us slowly through Burns' 'Tam o' Shanter', the words, the accent, the meaning, coming in his rich, ringing tones beneath his bristling moustache.

Discovering Kipling, Wordsworth, and Robert Service in the hushed, warm stillness of Stalybridge Municipal Library, the monologues of 'Nosmo King', Stanley Holloway breathed out on cold mornings cycling to work down Ashton Old Road, each word visible as if I had been exhaling smoke.

The trustees from the tool-room where I worked, wondering about a turner who read poetry in his break-times, instead of The Soaraway Sun. Struggling with Thomas Mann, wondering if I should even be trying. A different perspective has its distractions and its detractors, all around me it seemed at times till my sister, Gill, reassured me that what I wanted to do was worth doing, and to Hell with the rest. My triumphs are yours, Gill, though I think you already know that, don't you?

And now, forging words of my own, the long journey still not half done, thank God, retracing my steps through Central Asia, recalled to life, Sultan Sancar, and the love of his life, Yasemin, mourning her father, newly buried beneath the hard ground of Mary, across the wastes of Turkoman country, to the land of Anatolia, high, stony, beautiful Anatolia, and to Nazan. 









11
Why we laugh at the things that make us laugh
Everybody likes a good joke. We like to be made to laugh, it seems, and we like to make others laugh. Since doctors inform us that laughter is good for us, it is fortuitous that we feel this way. However, just why we laugh, and what makes us laugh is difficult to say.
We laugh at visual jokes, which we call 'custard-pie' or 'slapstick humour', and we laugh at jokes that involve language. Hal Roach, the well known director of silent films was a master of what is termed the 'slow-burn', which is the equivalent in humour of suspense in more dramatic genres. With this form of gag, all the conditions for the outcome/punchline are steadily built up for the audience, with the final denouement happening at the most opportune moment, for audience and protagonist and, most important, the maximum amount of mirth.
'Slapstick', visual stuff, usually involves variations on the man slipping on a banana skin, and as long as nobody gets seriously hurt, we find it funny. Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplain and Buster Keaton were all masters of this form of silent humour. What is interesting about it is that it doesn't seem to wear thin with age. People still find Chaplain, and Laurel and Hardy absolutely hilarious, and that despite the fact that their films are often 'silents', and in black and white, and about things that have changed.
Humour based on language however, does seem to date, and we outgrow certain forms of it. For example, the type of joke appearing in a children's comic might not seem very funny to an adult reader. Here are two examples of this type of joke.
1st man: What do you have for your lunch ?
2nd man: I have a pie. If I'm hungry, I cut it into four pieces and I eat all four pieces.
1st man: What do you do if you're not so hungry ?
2nd man: If I'm not very hungry, I only cut it into two pieces.
And:
Good books: The Haunted House by Hugo First
Falling off a cliff by Eileen Dover
Similarly, puns that were once popular often lose their appeal in later life.
1st person: How did you get that black eye ?
2nd person: I walked into a bar."
1st person: "Did you get into a fight or something ?
1st person: No.
2nd person: Then how did you get your black eye ?
1st person: I told you, I walked into a bar.
2nd person: I still don't understand !
1st person: It was an iron bar.
That might not suit everyone's taste as a funny joke, but then that only serves to make my point; some things are just not funny any more. Here you might argue that the reason why they aren't funny is because they are such old jokes, or are what we call 'corny jokes', which seem to fall under the category of jokes that are unsophisticated, and therefore just not funny.
Jokes at other people's expense have come into vogue, or perhaps they never went out of fashion. Try the following.
"I went into a Turkish baths, took off all my clothes and sat on a chair and went to sleep. When the steam cleared a little, I woke up and discovered I was sitting in a busy Fish and Chip shop."
Some jokes are connected with some of the issues of the day.
Woman: When human organs come to be freely available for sale, I think a woman's brain will cost less than a man's brain.
Man: Why do you think that ?
Woman: Because the woman's brain will actually have been used.
Some are at the expense of certain minorities.
A man from Poloonia goes into a shop and asks for a packet of cigarettes. The person behind the counter says: "You are from Poloonia, aren't you ?" The customer says, "How can you tell, is it because I've got a different accent ?" The shop assistant says, "No, I can tell because this is a chemist's."
And:-
On the day buses in Manchester changed and had drivers who collected the fares from passengers, instead of conductors, a bus crashed into the front of a large store in the city centre. The Police came along immediately, and asked the driver how the crash had occurred. The driver replied that he wasn't sure because he had been on the top deck collecting fares at the time of the accident.
While some seem not to target anyone in particular, and have some charm.
The teacher of Class 2A asked her pupils to write a short essay describing their family pet. Robert and Gillian Fielding, twins in Class 2A submitted their descriptions the following day. The teacher said to Robert, "Your essay is exactly the same as your sisters. The words you used are identical to those your sister Gillian used. Can you tell me why ?"
"That's simple," Robert replied, "same cat."
Some are just plainly ridiculous and perhaps touch our funny bone because of that quality.
"An armed thief bursts into a Chinese chip shop and demands the money in the cash register. The Chinese woman looks at him calmly and asks, "To take away ?"
And we laugh despite the ridiculous nature of the proposition in the joke.
The three men lying in the morgue looked very different. One man had a look of pure agony on his face.
"What happened to him ?" asked one of the attendants.
"He was hit by the 2.15pm to London."
The next man also looked as if had died in some pain.
"How did he die ?" asked the attendant.
"He was involved in a car crash," was the reply.
The third man had a nice smile on his face.
"What about him," asked the attendant. "How did he die ?"
"Oh, him," said the other attendant, "he got struck by lightning." The other attendant looked puzzled. "Why is he smiling then ?"
"He thought he was having his photograph taken," replied the other.
Or:
A man went into the doctor's surgery walking with a limp.
"What seems to be the trouble ?" the Doctor asked. The man lifted his hat and showed the doctor a huge lump on his head.
"A bucket full of concrete fell thirty feet and hit me on the head," he said, in some pain.
"What about your foot ?" the Doctor asked.
"I was standing on a nail at the time, Doctor," the patient replied.
The question still remains the same: Why do people laugh at certain verbal conundrums? And why do we find such jokes in certain formats funny? Consider the following formulaic jokes.
How many surrealists does it take to change a light-bulb?
Answer: A fish.
How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: Just one, but the light bulb has really got to want to change.

Knock, knock.
Who's there ?
Felix.
Felix who?
Felix my ice cream again, I'll get really angry.

Late arrivals: Mr. and Mrs. Butter and their son, Roland.

What do you call a woman who has just dropped her bus-fare?
Answer: Ingrid.

Here is a news broadcast; A ship carrying red paint has collided with a ship carrying blue paint in the Gulf. Both crews have been marooned.

Did you hear about the man who thought Sheffield Wednesday was a Bank holiday?

Did you hear about the man who thought that Sherlock Holmes was the name of an estate agent's ?
These last two rely on the listener having some specific cultural background, while the one about the ships depends on one word having two meanings. They strike us as amusing because they force us to change our frame of reference, or force us to think laterally in order to see the funny side. The fact that they are in many ways silly and yet still make us laugh, probably indicates that they appeal to a side of our nature that we so often deny in the world we inhabit; the child in ourselves. Now, the fact that some do not find these types of jokes funny, and would never be heard telling them may testify to the amount of self-alienation they have undergone in the name of 'getting on' in the world, and trying constantly to appear rational, sensible and thoughtful.
Interestingly enough, when an adult gets the chance to play with a train set, they often find it easier to excuse their behaviour if it is their own son's toy. Most adult males would probably never own up to enjoy playing with a toy train set, but would play endlessly with their own children's set, justifying it to themselves as showing their kids how to use it.
Humour, particularly the unsophisticated type illustrated above, probably illustrates a similar trait. They are the type of jokes we find hilarious with close friends and relatives, but nothing like as funny when we find ourselves with those with which we wish to create a certain impression.
Some jokes are peculiar to the male of the species. Among these are those jokes we call 'dirty jokes', and while laughing uproariously at them in male company in a public house, we certainly would not find them amusing were they to be told in mixed company.
Likewise, we may laugh till we cry at the type of humour that is made at the expense of a certain minority, and yet be totally embarrassed if that same joke were to be told in the presence of a member of that minority.
The type favoured by me are those that are not made at anyone's expense, but rather depend for their power to amuse on the unusual nature of their endings. A pun, a play on words, a formulaic joke, all fall into this category, and all have one very useful quality. They can be funny or not, but this depends as much on the listener's sense of humour as it does on the humour displayed in the joke. They invite the listener to participate. In the shared act of creating amusement, both find something in common. 

























12
The wheel and the microchip

Man's most important invention was the wheel, or so I was led to believe at school. In the years since leaving school the wheel has played a significant part in my life, as it inevitably has done in the lives of everyone.

Since the first wheel appeared, in Mesopotamia, some 5,500 years ago, its impact upon the lives of those who used it has been dramatic. Its first uses most probably would have been close to its primary uses today; aiding the movement of something or somebody over some distance, with other uses including the milling of wheat to make flour, for example.

Later, some 4,000 years ago, the henges (stone circles) of Britain were built and used to mark the days of the year, early calendars, and used to study astronomy generally with the portals marking the solstices and the stones arranged in a circle to mark important times in the year. In what was then becoming an agricultural world, seeds could be sewn with some predictability, and crop harvests increased because of the optimum use of the growing season.

During most of the 20th Century, and more particularly in the latter half of it, the wheel figured prominently in the developments that changed the lives of everybody. In the fields of science and technology, in mechanical engineering, the wheel was and still is instrumental in producing everything from the airplane to the knitting needle. Even flat surfaces, toothed racks and the teeth of gearwheels are all generated using the wheel, revolving as a cutter, milling flats and shapes into metal, grinding precision components to dimensions accurate to tenths of thousandths of an inch. The sleek profiled curves of automobiles and planes, and the round plastic surfaces of children's toys are all manufactured using the rotation of the wheel at some points in the manufacturing process. Presses and drop forges make their mark on huge, red hot billets of steel, and gleaming sheets of aluminium and stainless steel, die-casting machinery moulds hot, malleable plastic or alloy into familiar household containers, tubes, bottles and packaging, all using the rule of Pi and its circular derivative creations to complete the pressing into shape of the submissive and ubiquitous substances: iron, steel, plastic and glass.

In the shaping of our landscape, in the damming of rivers, culverting of streams and draining of swamps, and in the construction of bridges, motorway flyovers, canals and docks, the wheel has been and continues to be the prime mover.

Circularity is so pervasive today that is has become part of our thinking. We talk of circular arguments, vicious circles and the like, probably without always consciously realizing the extent that the geometrical shape influences our lives, but a shape approximating to the circle would have only been evident prior to the invention of the wheel because of the natural world: through the sight of the moon and the sun in the Heavens above, and in the shapes of flowers and in cross sections of felled trees.

Similarly, in the related fields of history and culture, the wheel, the circular shape, figures prominently. The myths surrounding Camelot, and King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table have become metaphors for justice and right; forums and meetings are ideally held around round tables. Theatres in the round dominate the cultural life of many British cities. There is something democratic and empowering about the circle, and its utility in the form of the wheel is inestimable; the round table has no corners, and everyone sitting at it has no more advantage due to their position on its circumference than anyone else.

As a concept as well as a shape, the circle is related to revolution, the overthrowing, often violently, of the social order. In Thomas Kuhn’s terms; “political revolutions aim to change political institutions in ways that those institutions themselves prohibit.” Essentially, in simpler terms, the coming to the top of those that were formerly underneath, the underlying principle of the circle and the wheel, and this suggests the principle of 'catastrophism' (Whewell 1837), which assumes that conditions on Earth during the past were so different from those existing at the present that no comparison is possible.

Similarly, in terms of scientific revolutions (Kuhn 1962), the replacing of those scientific paradigms that can no longer satisfactorily include and account for new data, the concept of ‘catastrophism’ also seems to apply more closely to developments in the advance of scientific progress. In Kuhn’s own words, a scientific revolution occurs “when an existing paradigm ceases to function adequately in the exploration of an aspect of nature to which that paradigm itself previously led the way.” (Kuhn 1962)

Finally, in mathematical terms, the circle remains an unfathomable puzzle, with the ratio between circumference and diameter evading a truly definite, absolute value, pi.

Now, when half the world has moved away from primary industries such as mining, and even partly away from manufacturing, to tertiary, service industries, pride of place is given to the center of the technological revolution, the microchip. The wheel is still as useful as it ever was, but in a world where the movement of information is dominant, it has virtually no place. For in terms of anything substantial moving along the so called ‘information super-highway’ and telecommunications generally, little in the way of physical material actually moves. The advent of the microchip though clearly marked new ground in terms of what had gone before it. It can be looked upon as “a new phenomenon emerging without reflecting destructively upon any part of past scientific practice.” (Kuhn ibid) It replaced but did not destroy, in a similar way that the invention of the wheel per se merely replaced more laborious means of transportation without actually destroying anything.

For Daniel Bell ('The Coming of Post-Industrial Society'), and other writers such as Alvin Toffler ('The Third Wave', 'Future Shock'), the tertiary/post-industrial phase is characterized, not by man overcoming nature (primary industry) or man overcoming the man-made world (secondary manufacturing industry), but by overcoming man himself, putting curbs and checks on ‘human nature’, and using it in fields such as marketing. In this last ‘conflict’ the microchip is arguably as important as the wheel was to those who invented it and subsequently came to use it.

There is something as mysterious in the microchip as there is in the circular form, particularly to the uninitiated. The chip is a marvel of miniaturization, and the functions it can perform are staggering, but the dimension that is truly amazing is the time taken to perform an operation. With miniaturization has come the furious pace of micro processing.

Consequently, in terms of what has gone before, the spectacular changes in velocity and range, made possible by the advent of the micro-processor, amount to or will amount to, in retrospect, something more closely related to the principle of 'catastrophism' (Whewell ibid.), and while that notion is generally applied to the geological formation of the planet, it is a useful concept in any explanations relating to the history of the wheel and the micro-processor. Social and historical commentators looking back on the events that surround these two technological developments, viz the wheel and the microchip, may well come to view the history of them in precisely that way.

The other major differences between the two inventions are the visibility or otherwise of each event, and the dissemination of each. With the wheel, the concept of rotation would have been well known, visible and logical, and thereafter the wheel would have become freely available to those needing it, in the area in which it came into being. The introduction of the microchip, on the other hand, involved relatively small numbers of specialists with technological expertise and access to certain resources not freely available, and the invention would not have been 'visible' to those not involved, and nor was it freely available initially, being protected by patents and by secrecy.

The massive, almost cataclysmic change in the temporal velocity of the processing of data made possible by micro processors is most easily demonstrated by the following comparison. At a time when England was most productive, the Victorian era, when manufacturing industry was in its heyday, and virtually everything produced had the words ‘Made in England’ stamped on it, the cutting of material into the shape of a gentleman’s jacket was dramatically speeded up by the introduction of powerful and accurate presses that had been modified to cut shapes in cloth rather than metal. Thousands of suits could be cut daily, removing the onerous task of cutting each one by hand.

By the time the micro processor had made its mark on the same process, different sized jackets could be cut just as accurately and far quicker one by one than the multiple cuttings of the heaving presses of Victoria’s age. Furthermore, the machine could be programmed to cut each length to different dimensions, a feat that would need a major re-tooling operation in former days. Many different sized jackets can now be cut individually much quicker than could a single stamping of say twenty uniform sized pieces of cloth.

This comparison of modus operandi may be a simple one, but it is one that can be readily comprehended by those only used to thinking in terms of mechanical movement and limited speed.

In the waging of modern warfare, from the horrors of the Great War in Europe, and more recently, to the ultra high-tech deluge of weapons raining down on those below, the wheel is still a force to be reckoned with. Tanks and guns, tank transporters, personnel carriers, helicopters and planes all rely on the predictability and certainty of the wheel. Shells and bullets fly more accurately and deadlier to their targets because of rifling in circular barrels. However, now, instead of a speeding bullet or shell going in a straight line, we have the so called ‘smart bomb’, which is directed to its target by computer, turning right and left as the need arises. The rifling in the circular barrel suddenly has much less importance.

For this is the nature of the world we inhabit, and in which the microchip holds sway; one in which a once productive sector of the economy has become virtually extinct, and with it, a significant proportion of the working population has found itself in a world it doesn’t understand, nor feels it will ever be able to.

The transition from a world where the wheel was the dominant form/icon to one in which a motionless piece of silica is dominant, has been a swift and unnerving one for many, and a welcome and empowering one for those who can adapt.

Wheels run on tracks, roads and lines, and have probably contributed to perceptions tending to be linear. The directions around which the micro-processor operates, on the other hand, are numerous and have causes us to challenge our ways of thinking, so that now, a more lateral rather than linear approach to the solving of problems is more usual and indeed vital. The old remedies and ways are giving way to a new, sometimes confusing plethora of answers and possible solutions.

Guns still fire bullets out of circular barrels, and four-wheeled tractors still plough land, but in the management and governance of people and how they spend their time, both in and out of the work place, more traditional modes of thinking have given way to what I will call a ‘multi-path approach’ to management.

Now, many more dimensions can be called up and utilized because of the speed and power of the micro-processor, and consequently, people have to attempt to ‘keep up’ or perish as others progress and succeed.

The development in information technology that has changed all our lives, of course, is the Internet. The World is a ‘global village’ and everyone is linked to everyone else. This is not quite true though; perhaps a majority of the people inhabiting the planet Earth still do not have access to clean, running water, proper sanitation or electricity, let alone a telephone connection to the Internet, or a pc to communicate with the rest of the world online.

For many of those unfortunate people crowding round the peripheries of our biggest cities, living in sprawling slums and ghettos, there is little use for the microchip or even the wheel. Manpower, or more usually womanpower, is still the dominant force; without roads or any sort of infrastructure, these poorest areas have little provision for the wheel, none at all for the micro-processor.

The Earth is round, but some of those living on its surface are differently positioned with regard to its wealth and opportunity. The true benefits of the wheel and the microchip have still not reached all four corners of the Earth. 

References
Kuhn, Thomas (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions University of Chicago Press

































13
Repetition: The part it plays in our lives

Our lives are full of repetition, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year.

Our lives are so replete with repetition, from breathing, from the beat of our hearts, to the things we eat, drink, say, watch and do, that the English language has a prefix to deal with it. Repetition in its varied forms figures heavily in how we use language to communicate, particularly in the written word.

In the repetition of letters, syllables and sounds we have alliteration, assonance, and consonance, for example. When repeating words we can use anadiplosis, antistasis, and epistrophe among others and when repeating clauses and phrases we use mesarchia, and repotia.

Apart from the obvious physiological movements and workings of our bodies, which repeat processes thousands, if not millions of times a day, other facets of our existence are full of repetitive and repeated phenomena. The Italian philosopher, Vico proposed that history was cyclical in nature, and consisted of four stages; The Divine Age, The Heroic Age, the Human Age and the Ricurso, which brought us straight back to the Divine Age, and looking at our own times it is not difficult to see that we are perhaps in an age between the democratic and the chaotic. Vico's view of history also presented James Joyce with a convenient framework for his novel, 'Finnegans Wake'.

In the world of art, the phenomenon known as 'serial music' is, ' the harmonic successions resulting from controlled juxtaposition of various row forms giving serial pieces their coherence. These forms are the prime, retrograde (pitch order reversed), inversion (interval direction reversed), and retrograde inversion'. (Bartleby.com)

In music's grander forms repetition figures heavily. In symphonic tone poems, from Honegger's ‘Pacific 231’, in which an express train is depicted in sound, to Berlioz' ‘Symphonie Fantastique’, in which the recurring theme, what is referred to as the 'idee fixe', runs through the whole symphony in a series of notes played on various different instruments and provides a ‘leitmotif’ for the whole symphony.

In literature, masters of the written word all knew the value and effect of repeated themes, words and phrases on their readers. The memorable opening and closing lines of Dickens' 'A Tale of Two Cities', and the opening line of Waugh's 'Brideshead Revisited', used in the title of this article illustrate this point.

Repetition, at least partial repetition, is one of the devices writers and film makers use to show their audience that things have changed, or to illustrate how much things have changed, which is not quite the same thing. Macbeth's predicament is highlighted by his words when he says: "I am in blood stepped in so far that to go back were as tedious as to go o'er." There is no turning back for Macbeth. The mistakes he has repeatedly made ensure this.

Michael Henchard, 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' in Hardy's novel, comes to see how low he has stooped through a series of partial repetitions which begins with the chance meeting of his wife many years after he sold her in a tent at a show in Weydon Priors at the beginning of the novel. The reader is shown what he has become through an almost chance series of encounters, and his plight is made more trenchant by these recurrences that Hardy marshals to make his point. The denouement of the novel reinforces Henchard's fall from grace.

Music hall songs and monologues, and Gilbert and Sullivan's timeless operettas, are all full to the brim with repetition; the favourite, 'A policeman's lot is not a happy one', illustrates the use of repetition to advantage, as do many, many more of the songs of W.S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan.

Repetition has always been an important part of storytelling, and in most stories told to children, the major parts are repeated regularly. Children learn through repetition. In schools, children were once taught their multiplication tables through rote learning; the forced continual, verbal repetition of Items to be memorized, in this case multiplication.

In the precision world of the hard sciences and technology, as well as in the social sciences, repeatability is one of the cornerstones of scientific validity and objectivity. If an experiment can yield quantifiably similar results every time it is performed then it is deemed worthy of inclusion into the particular canon of scientific knowledge to which it belongs.

Sociological constructs are only held to accurately represent reality out there, so to speak, once they have provided repeatedly reliable findings.

In the field of commerce, manufacture, and trade, the ability of experts to repeat operations precisely, minutely and in a measured manner has given us the factory system, production line, and piece-work.

From the work of Sir Richard Arkwright and Henry Ford, from Isembard Kingdom Brunel to Bill Gates, repetitiveness has given the world scientific and technological progress, and has made the world what it is today.

Its largely unsung heroes have transformed manufacturing industry, for example, from little more than a cottage industry at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, to a highly integrated, automated continuous process at the end of it.

Both F.W. Taylor and Henry Ford were responsible for the breaking down and repetition of processes into simple tasks, effectively de-skilling processes that had formerly required skilled artisans to perform them. The principles of Taylor's 'Scientific Management' were used by Ford to produce cars on the forerunner to what is now the modern assembly line, and economies of scale together with repetition of tasks broken down to their simplest ensured that automobiles were made cheaply by largely unskilled labour. The Model T Ford was the result, and Henry Ford built his empire on Taylor's principles.

Ford once said, famously, that' "A customer can have any colour he likes as long as it's black." While this is somewhat amusing and reminiscent of Sam Goldwyn in the film industry, it points to an important aspect of manufacturing, then as now; that lower costs in production are achieved through systematic repetition of tasks, components and products.

Bringing that concept up to date, we have the fast food chain giants, and the worldwide repetition, of not only what they can eat, but the packaging it will come in, the type of service that will be responsible for dishing it up, the types of chairs and tables it will be eaten at, and the general ambience of the facilities in which it is purchased and consumed.

This would be nothing extraordinary were it not for the monopoly such establishments have over consumers' tastes, in almost every country in the world.

Today, if you want a quick fix on your hunger and you happen to be in a shopping mall in an urban conurbation, the choice open to you is more or less limited to one of the better known fast food outlets, and occasionally several of the lesser known ones. There is little difference in any of them. Choice is limited, as it admittedly is in any restaurant. The difference though, between one of these establishments and say a family run place on a street corner is that in the latter, the chef may be able to fix you something especially for your own dietary needs. He may be able to rustle up a lasagna without meat, a drink of some kind without sugar, or any manner of specific meal to suit the customer, who, we were always led to believe, was always right, but these days, he takes what is on offer.

This doesn't mean that he has no choice. On the contrary, he has lots of choice. What it does mean, however, is that his choice must be made from a limited set of articles, and which no one in the establishment has the power, or indeed the will to change.

One swift glance behind the counter at any of these fast food outlets is enough to show you what has happened to the catering industry in this sector. It has been 'Taylorised', which means that it has been broken down into repeatable steps that do not require the presence of skilled chefs to produce what is on offer. The machine dictates the number of chips dispensed for the price paid, the size of the bun for the particular variety of burger, and the quantity of fizzy drink equal to the container into which it is poured. Everything is repeated, everything is quantifiable, and with that, costs are cut, profits are increased and tastes are dictated.

Even the youngest customer sitting eating her burger and her fries, and drinking her Cola knows exactly what she is entitled to and what she gets. Everything is that simple; a three year old can understand it fully.

For the ancient Greeks, however, repetition was deemed to be impossible. Stepping back into the water, so to speak, involved change. For the person stepping gingerly back into the water, her frame of mind would have changed, and the water, the air and the whole atmosphere would not be exactly the same.

In modern times, though, we are too rushed and too prosaic to appreciate that point; repetition, for us, is ubiquitous and all consuming.

While this is reassuring on one level, it is less so on many others. Where will such 'engineering' end? Will it be applied to other parts of our lives in which the free ability to choose between many options is vital in a democratic, liberal sense? Has it already been applied to some of those areas, and if so, who is doing the limiting of choices and for what reasons, and to what ends?

However, whether it is motivated by altruism or otherwise, repetition is and has become perhaps the most ubiquitous concept in our lives. It fulfils several of our most basic needs; the need to make meaning of our lives, and the need for stability and permanence. One might almost say that repetition keeps us sane.































15
Light or Left? Which are you?

Knowing which is your dominant side will help you to work on your non-dominant side and balance things out, and although both sides of the brain work together a lot of the time, each of the different hemispheres processes information differently and has a different function.
Remember what we talked about last time: Most people have a dominant side. While the left side of the brain processes written and verbal information, usually focusing on the details, the right side of the brain interprets information visually, emotionally, and in a more global manner. The right side of the brain focuses on the big picture, while the left brain focuses on the parts. To get the most from your brain, you need to be aware of and use both sides. Since most forms of the education you have received to date were most probably geared to the left side of the brain, it will take a special effort to develop the strengths of the right side of your brain.
Which one are you? Is the dominant side of your brain the right or the left? Try these simple checks.
Hands
Try doing something with one hand then the other. Which feels more comfortable? Of course, you write with either your right or else your left, and will not be able to switch easily or quickly, so don’t even think about it – you might be able to try using your non-dominant hand for activities that require one hand rather than both: -

painting using a brush using a knife to cut something
drawing using a ruler using a trowel
using a comb striking matches using a cigarette lighter
turning pages sharpening a pencil hitting the buttons of a calculator


Which hand do you do these with?

Use a paintbrush Hold a cigarette
Throw a dart Brush your teeth
Pick up a cup of tea Wave to a friend
Pat someone on the back Put your hand up for attention
Point with Switch off a light
Hold your chin when thinking Tick off when you’re counting

Now some of you might use either hand equally easily to do these things – you might prefer right to left or vice versa – you might not do some of these things anyway.

What matters is knowing if you have a preference - and changing so that you use your non-dominant hand – and being aware that you have changed.

Thumbs
Try this: Quickly clasp your hands together - intertwining your fingers - which thumb rests on top of the other?

Feet
Go outside and kick a soccer ball around - which foot do you naturally use to kick the ball?

Side
Which side of the bed do you sleep on – which side of anything do you normally prefer – monitor yourself if you aren’t sure – most of the time you will be unaware that you are choosing one side in preference to the other – but that doesn’t mean you aren’t doing.

You will find that like changing the hand that you write with - changing the foot that you kick a ball effectively with is very difficult – some things can’t be changed.

The more you naturally do with your right hand - the more the left side of your brain dominates - the more you do things with your non-dominant hand - the more you will change sides.

Don’t change for the sake of change though – if you think you do something better with your non-dominant hand or foot – use that one in future – if you feel more comfortable using your dominant side – stay with it.

For a short while – maybe a couple of days – or the next two or three times you do something – use your non-dominant hand/foot/side – how are you going to shake hands with the left hand – remember where you are and who you are shaking hands with.

From birth we have been conditioned to use right or left for certain things.

Using knives and forks – shaking hands – using scissors and many other right side designed utensils and tools – changing gear and operating the hand-break in your car – using the mouse on your computer.

Does it run in your family?
Who is left-handed in your family – mother and son is a common combination – it is fairly common for everyone to be right-handed – do you think you influence or are influenced by anyone who uses the same hand as you – if you are then how?

How much do we inherit from our parents - left-sidedness is almost certainly handed down. (no pun intended)

Which hand depends on habit – design – peer group pressure – imitation - a need not to look different (not always the same thing) – and comfort – real or imagined amount to the same – using your preferred side is comfortable and comforting – you know who you are and where everything is relative to right or left – none of this is meant to impair your judgment – your movement – and nor is it meant to make you feel uncomfortable or too self-conscious about yourself – it is about helping you grow.

This time – a more detailed look at the side you are happy with – but also learning that you may not be using the side you are happiest with – if you change for that reason your non-dominant side will develop – you will start to use both sides of your brain – you will start to develop as a more rounded, more effective person.

Next time – we will look at the results of your efforts to change the dominant side you use to get through your normal day – we will look out for symptoms of change – ways of recognizing that you have changed – and the advantages that will certainly come your way when you master using both sides of your brain.

































16
‘That’s entertainment’: Making meaning in films


The cinema has become, perhaps after television, the most popular form of visual entertainment in the modern world. Every night, millions of people sit down to watch either a film on TV, a film on video, or else a film on the silver screen, at the cinema.

Cinemagoers walk away from film theatres satisfied with what they have seen, or disappointed, with some taking a sort of neutral view of the film’s quality. All, however, have been in communication with the messages put forward by the film.

Unlike printed text, which uses the word, or music, which utilizes sound, the medium of film uses several different ‘tracks’ to reach its audience. These are image, music, dialogue, noise, and written material. (Bellour) 2000

These five are mixed by the film’s producers to form a ‘language’, though this is not the language of the word, the sentence or the text, but the language of the sign. All five are projected out to the audience, and each of the five constitutes a sign, a signifier, for something else. The language of film is the language of semiotics, the language of the sign.

The term ‘signifier’ is used to denote the physical form of the sign. In a film, this could be a smile, a red traffic signal, dramatic music, a shout, or the words of a letter someone is reading. Each signifies something, represents something else.

A smile might signify happiness, joy or love, but it might also signify a triumph of some sort for the person smiling. Everyone knows that a red traffic light means ‘STOP’. Dramatic music could mean that something important is about to happen. A shout usually signifies danger or pain of some sort, but that might depend on the context in which the shout is heard. Finally, the words of a letter someone is reading on screen use the semantics of language, English, French, or Arabic, for example, in ways that we are familiar with. The word ‘dog’, for example, in the English language, represents the canine species so familiar to pet lovers, and that despite the fact that there is absolutely nothing ‘dog-like’ in the letters of the word D-O-G. The word is also a signifier.

These examples of signifiers and the things they signify, the signified, using real items, the referents, point to several important features of the language of the sign. For the signifiers to represent something to on an audience, they must be sufficiently universal to be fully and quickly understood by everyone watching. A green light that stops the traffic would puzzle everyone.

However, it is worth noting that film makers can use these ‘universals’ to some effect. If a person who has just lost a race smiles into the camera rather than frowns, the audience may be alerted to the fact that something out of the ordinary is happening; that the person intended losing the race, for a reason that might become apparent later in the film. In a letter, the word ‘DOG’ might turn out to be code for ‘SPY’, for example, and this points to yet another facet of the sign, that the context in which it appears helps determines its meaning.

A shout heard at a local football match might mean only that a goal has been scored, in a battle, that someone has been mortally injured. Within different contexts, however, a universality must apply. If it does not, that particular use of the signifier would appear either inappropriate, or misleading.

Finding meaning from apparently meaningless events is a very human trait, and the effect discovered by Lev Kuleshov in the 1920s in the former Soviet Union, and after whom it is named, is that two shots shown in quick succession in a film, one after the other, are not interpreted separately in the viewer’s mind. They are interpreted as being causally related. A + B = C, in which A and B are the two shots, and C is a new value that is not originally included in the two shots. (Uhde) 1995.

So, for example, if the first shot is of one showing bombs dropping from a plane, and the second shows a village in flames, the audience will assume that the bombs hit the village and destroyed it.

This accords with that peculiar characteristic of humans; their quest for meaning in otherwise meaningless items. This has its equivalent in language too. Two sentences that appear one after the other will invariably be treated as being causally connected, even though there may be nothing to suggest that.

A: The bombs fell from the plane.
B: The village was completely destroyed..
C: It would be assumed here that the village was destroyed by the same bombs that dropped from the plane. What works on film sometimes works with language too.

In today's films, this is used to great effect, and is reminiscent of film director, Alfred Hitchcock's advice to would be film-makers; "Don't tell, show." This seems to suggest that the five 'tracks' of film language are more powerful when used together than merely the spoken word on film. Even Shakespeare commented that, 'the eye is more learned than the ear,' suggesting that we do indeed learn more from being shown than being told.

In the well known series of James Bond films, for instance, the utter ruthlessness of the villain, be he a megalomaniac or a drugs baron, is depicted not so much by words about him, but rather by scenes showing an unsuspecting former confidant of his coming to a grizzly end in a tank full of piranhas or something equally distasteful and spectacular.

That he is devious in the extreme is shown in the early sequences by the friendly and urbane hospitality he shows to the hero of the hour -007.

The scenes in which he shows his true colours, come as no surprise to an audience expecting some exotic, high-tec form of brutality from Bond's adversary.

Those of us who have seen all those films know exactly what to expect and are never disappointed. In a sense, the 'language' of the film extends a communication to us over several films, and to that extent, James Bond films may be said to be formulaic and predictable. Giving the public what they want, however, works at the box office; sequels sell.

In terms of what the audience bring to the film-theatre, I suppose by far the most important is expectation, the anticipation that what they are about to see on film is the same as what they expect. Trailers, adverts and the almost innate knowledge of the modern cinemagoer regarding the stars as well as the producers coalesce to ensure that all the industry's blockbusters make money.

More unconsciously, audiences bring what has been called the 'willing suspension of disbelief' to the performance and while this is more in evidence and more necessary for audiences watching live performances on stage, it is still a vital part of an audience's participation in the cinema. Some film theorists point to the fact that a three-dimensional image, with depth and field, is projected onto a two-dimensional screen and yet still perceived as being three-dimensional, as evidence that an audience is willing to suspend some of their disbelief. The technology of the film industry giants is so extraordinary though as to render this statement quite meaningless.

In the film 'The Lord of the Rings' for example, the appearance of enormous mammoths in the midst of thousands of fearsome looking orcs does not really require much suspension of disbelief; everyone watching this wonderful film is well aware that such creatures do not exist anywhere on the planet. Where disbelief must be suspended initially is in entering Tolkien's world of dragons, dwarfs and hobbits. The total universe of Middle Earth is more subtly projected. An inability to be fully engrossed in this world may interfere with any enjoyment gained from watching the film, or may prevent that person from seeing the film in the first place.

Art is not nature, art holds a mirror up to nature, or so we are told, but it is the holding and in the choosing what part of nature is mirrored that makes film so fascinating and meaningful. The people watching the film in the splendid isolation of the darkened cinema enjoy a form of entertainment in which this one-way communication operates, only bringing to the scene what they can: their participation in the culture in which they dwell, and their wish to know that they are not alone in this world.

It is this identification with the characters in the film that hinders their critical appraisal of it. Bertolt Brecht knew it and took steps to avoid it, but Hollywood revels in it. More identification with the leading character/s sells more tickets. Leave the critical theorizing to Media-studies courses at university. ‘Not a dry eye in the house’ is what every successful film director aims for.

Suspense, letting the audience know something that the person on screen does not know, is one of the many devices used by skilful directors. The screams heard when the woman is stabbed in the shower in the Hitchcock classic; ‘Psycho’ were probably nothing to do with the amount of pain being inflicted by the knife. Audiences cannot really imagine that. The screams were caused by the shock of the situation; the extreme levels of identification with the victim, the feeling of the powerlessness of either the victim on-screen, or the audience off, unable to stop the attack.

Why then do people go willingly to see a film they know, even hope, will terrify them? They are experiencing something out of their total range of experience, and doing it in comfort too. They are alone, even in a packed cinema. Cinema is not a community event, it is an individualized one. In the cinema, the audience is held enthralled, in a way that is rarely possible watching the TV or a video on TV. The film on the big screen cannot be stopped. The drama unfolds with or without your presence, and few people leave in the middle of a film. That’s entertainment! 


























17
Driver, Mind, and Environment: The Elements of Danger for Road Users


































As the number of serious accidents on our roads increases, it is useful to understand the factors that contribute to them. Understanding what is happening is the first step in planning action to prevent accidents from happening.

Study after study point to four groups of factors that are always present in varying degrees in typical road accidents.

THE VEHICLE

Of course, the vehicle type, the age and condition of the vehicle, and its power are all relevant factors that affect the outcome of any accident on the road.

Basically, the older a vehicle is, the more likely it is to be a significant component in the events leading up to an accident. Older vehicles are less well maintained, and are prone to failures: efficiency of braking systems are often suspect, steering linkages are often worn, and things such as wheel balance, and condition of tires are all liable to be below minimum standards for road safety, as laid down by local licensing authorities. Annual checks help, but failure can and does occur at any time and in any situation. Factors such as metal fatigue ensure this. No inspection is 100% reliable.

The type of vehicle and its power are both considerable factors in any road hazard. Traditionally, powerful sports cars or large saloon cars are driven at speeds in excess of any local limits, and despite local conditions. Generally speaking, the faster, more powerful the car, the more likely it is to be involved in an accident, particularly one involving speeding.

THE ENVIRONMENT

Some environmental factors are out of our control. The weather conditions that prevail, along with the road surface and the road type are among these. Local authorities can improve bad road surfaces, but that takes time, and is of no consequence at the time of the accident.

The volume of traffic, its speed, and other road users are all factors that are outside the driver’s control. All the driver can do is react to them in ways that ensure his and other road users' safety.

The driver’s attitude and condition

Perhaps one of the single most important things to affect a driver’s chances of having an accident is the purpose of his journey. Dashing to the bedside of an ailing friend or relative in hospital, taking someone to hospital for emergency treatment, or any severe personal crisis, can be enough to make a driver go faster than is good for him or others.

However, those events are happily rare enough to be of little importance as the cause of most accidents on our roads. Most journeys are far less critical, the most common factor in speeding surely being punctuality: being late for an appointment, a meeting, or work.

Those elements that focus on the driver himself are to do with his age, gender, and peer group. Statistically, young, male drivers are the group most at risk on our roads. Unfortunately for the rest of us, one young, male driver may leave any number of other road users injured and still walk away from an accident: the community of road users is an intimate one, we are all closely linked to each other, and can all adversely affect each other. No man is an island, particularly at the wheel of a fast car in heavy traffic.

Just why young, male drivers constitute the most dangerous, at risk group on our roads has more to do with psychology than with physical condition. The eyesight, hearing and general levels of fitness and hence alertness are probably significantly higher in that group than in any other. Young men are fit, agile, alert, and have excellent vision and hearing.

The trouble with youth, someone once said, is that it is wasted on the young. My own youth was full of daydreaming, imagination and urges, like yours, probably.

A teenager with a fast sports car has no image problem. The problem becomes ours once he lets the clutch out and sets off. Self-image and perceptions of danger are probably in inverse proportions in young drivers. Speed and youth go together; everybody knows that. Considerations of real urgency are irrelevant to a young man’s propensity to drive beyond the speed limit.

A friend of mine in the ‘car trade’ once told me that painting a car red automatically lifts its retail price by several hundred pounds, adding a line down the car’s length lifts it further. For young people, driving is never just a matter of getting from A to B. Pop culture, Coca Cola culture, call it what you will, is perpetually in a hurry to get somewhere, and to be somebody.

The driver’s attention

The converse of what I said about the physical shape of youth applies to us older road users; we have failing eyesight, hearing and have slower reactions, and we get tired quicker too.

At the time of any journey, though, several factors affect us all, no matter how young or how old we are.

The effect of alcohol in our bloodstream upon our ability to drive safely is well known. What is less well known is that tiredness can be lessened by having something in your stomach while you are driving. This is particularly relevant on longer journeys where the effects of hunger will kick in.

How many of us have difficulty sleeping after a dinner that was too large, and too late?
The converse of that is that if the stomach has something to digest, one is less likely to sleep.

Now, I can almost hear some people say that they feel sleepy after eating food. The answer to that one is that they are probably eating the wrong kind of food.

There is a great deal of difference between banqueting, and having small snacks to keep oneself awake. Drinking water and eating fruit help, but something as easy and seemingly trivial as chewing spearmint gum can help a driver to maintain a level of alertness. Chewing gum means releasing saliva in the mouth, which sort of fools the brain into thinking the stomach’s enzymes have to be got ready to digest incoming food.

By far the biggest cause of tiredness at the wheel, of course, is the length of time in the driving seat. Every report and recommendation on avoiding traffic accidents cites the length of a journey as an important contributor to accidents on our roads.

Truck drivers have the ‘spy in the cab’ the tacograph, to persuade them to step down and take a rest. Private car owners have only themselves to tell them that it’s time to stop.

Traffic police can generally understand that a driver has fallen asleep at the wheel; there are no skid marks leading off the road to where the car is lying in a ditch.

Luckil,y no journey need be that long or unpunctuated. Still though, driving can be difficult if you are already very tired. If the driver has just flown in from London, he’s already going to be too tired to negotiate the heavy traffic between the two Emirates in safety. If that is you, let someone else do the driving.

Having music playing, or better still, a talking book to listen to, or having friends to talk to, all help you to avoid falling asleep at the wheel.

People with their own disabilities will always have problems coping with them whilst they are driving; being aware of them is half the battle.

The lethal cocktail

We can list all the individual components that contribute to traffic accidents. By far the most devastating is SPEED. Fender benders in locked up traffic jams amount to no more than an inconvenience. The same amount of contact between two vehicles traveling at high speeds, however, can prove fatal to one or both drivers and their passengers, and other road users can also become involved.

Although you might be the healthiest, most safety conscious driver in the world, the person in the next vehicle might not be. The benefit of eternal vigilance on the roads can mean not getting involved in an accident.

For those who do nothing to prevent themselves causing danger to other road users, and to themselves and their nearest and dearest, there is education, and if that fails, there is punishment in the form of fines, a ban from driving, or imprisonment.

Fines, no matter how large, a ban from driving, no matter for how long, or imprisonment, no matter of what duration, are as nothing compared to a life spent in a wheelchair. This issue is too important to be left to the legal authorities. It is up to everyone to realize that we all depend on each other on the roads. 


































18
Accidents waiting to happen – driving on auto-pilot

Driving around the Emirates can be an education. The behavior of drivers is remarkably similar in similar situations; it is dangerous, and it seems to be automatic rather than based on any thinking.

Let me illustrate this claim: motoring along in the middle lane of a three-lane highway such as the one between Al Ain and Dubai, I have noticed that if I put my left hand indicator on to move over into the fast lane, the drivers in that lane always speed up to get past me. None slows down to allow me to move over.

Now, while on Cruise Control at the speed limit of 120 kph, and approaching a slower vehicle in my lane, I see that there is a vehicle well behind in the fast lane. I calculate that if I wait for the car in the fast lane to overtake me, I will have to come out of Cruise Control, to slow up for the car in front.

Rather than come out of Cruise Control, I indicate left to make the vehicle behind me accelerate and go past me, allowing me plenty of space and time to go past the vehicle in my lane, and thereby allowing me to remain locked into my Cruise Control setting of 120kph.

Putting on my left hand indicator always has this effect on the driver coming up in the fast lane. He never slows to let me in. Why should he? I hear you ask.

It is a good question. Ask yourself what you would do in his position.

You are traveling in the fast lane and you see a car in the middle lane indicate to come into your lane, and there is ample room for him in front of you. Do you

a) Speed up to get past him before he can move in front of you?
b) Slow a little to allow him to move in front of you, letting him overtake a much slower vehicle on his right?

I might make a guess here and say that a majority of drivers would always go for (a).
I don’t need to make this guess. I observe it every time I indicate left on a highway.

Indicating left recently between Sharjah and Dubai, my car was scraped by a Land Cruiser coming up. When I indicated, I estimated that he was traveling at a slightly slower speed than I was, hence my thinking that it was safe to move out. It was while I was getting ready to move out that he accelerated, resulting in his vehicle scraping the side of mine. He scraped the rear bumper and my door, indicating to me that he was traveling faster than I was. He had undoubtedly accelerated upon seeing my indicator flashing. He had behaved like every other driver that I observe whilst going about my business in the Emirates.

The question you might now feel you need to ask me is this one: If you knew that he would accelerate when you indicated left, why didn’t you wait until he had passed you before moving out?

Another good question. The answer is that I was following a friend who had also pulled into that lane, and I was temporarily diverted by this to make the mistake I made.

As it happened, I told the policeman it was my fault. The other driver was a youngster. I felt that I had precipitated his behaviour, and had I not indicated left, he would not have felt the need to accelerate; there would have been nothing to report to the police.

But, my mind was made up in that instant, that what motivates many drivers is not safety, but the desire to get there first, to rush, the wish not to have to slow down for anything. I put myself in that class of driver from time to time, by the way.

Everybody I talk to about drivers in the UAE agrees that this insistence on beating the other driver to the line is what causes accidents.

If drivers realized the risk they are taking by driving like this, they might stop it. The youngster in the Land Cruiser had his journey prolonged by a good twenty minutes or so while we both waited for the police to arrive and write the report we both needed to claim off my insurance. He will be without his car later when he comes to get it repaired.

Luckily, this time, it was only a lick of paint and a wait, but next time we might not be so fortunate. What is worth the heartache of injury or worse? Certainly not getting to your destination several minutes quicker.

A car is a lump of metal traveling very fast. The consequences of it crashing into anything else are dire indeed. Patience when driving is invaluable. Speed and impatience together are killers. The most impatient group on the road probably consists of young men under the age of twenty-five. A twenty-five year old male has his best years to come.

Those people he leaves behind on his death will never forget him, and will be unhappy for the rest of their days.

Young people driving powerful cars, think before you decide to speed up. The person in the car in front of you has nothing personal against you, and he is not being nasty to you by moving into the left lane. He has every right to do so, provided he does not endanger any other road user.





































19
When ignorance is bliss: The public's perception of danger


Seeing is believing. Hearing about something or reading about it is also believing, or so it seems. Not hearing or reading about it is close to not believing it, or at least, not having to believe it.

More and more people are ‘shutting their eyes’ to events that threaten their world view of tranquility and normality. ‘Make the World go away’ goes the song, and there is something in people’s desire not to want to know that smacks of that sentiment.

The media in all its forms, however, is intent on keeping us up to date with the latest news and developments in everything under the sun. Never before have we been so saturated with information.

Is this the worst time anyone has ever lived through? People from every era throughout history have probably believed that their time was the most dreadful. The answer, though, is 'Yes' for some and 'No' for others. It depends on who you are and where you happen to be when the question is asked.

As far as the majority of people on Earth are concerned, the nightmare is happening now. Those unfortunates living in war zones, or in suburban hell in the unplanned parts of the world's biggest cities, the nightmare is most definitely now. Yet, statistically, most of us do not live in either of those places. For us too, though, the nightmare is in the here and now; not actually physically, but in our perceptions, in our minds. It is put there by the media, and by our relationship with it.

Living in a country foreign to us and not reading the local newspapers, my family and I were lulled into believing that the whole country was devoid of criminal activity. We felt entirely safe wherever we were and at any time of the day or night.

And yet there was criminal activity; there were murders by the score in and around the capital area. There were drug related crimes in plenty. Because we weren’t told about them, however, they didn’t impinge on our daily routines, and we lived our lives happily oblivious to some of the evils of the society in which we lived.































20
Sleep: A necessary ingredient for a healthy life

Sleep is as essential to life as food and water. Everyone knows when to eat and when to drink. When they are hungry, they eat, and when they are thirsty, the drink. The trouble with sleep is that it is not just there in the fridge to get when you feel tired, and yet getting enough sleep, and getting the right kind of sleep is a sort of closed book to most people.

Some people get enough sleep, and some do not. Nevertheless, whether you get enough of the right kind of sleep, you are still expected to function normally at work or at school or college.

Using your health as an excuse can only be done when you have either broken a limb, for example, or undergoing some recognized medical treatment for an ailment that everyone recognizes.

Ailments that are not easily visible, and that includes lack of sleep, usually receive little or no attention from bosses or tutors, or even from colleagues.

In extreme cases, a person’s lack of sleep can be clearly visible. Someone who has just flown in from Australia, for example, will probably display many physical signs that point to their not having had enough sleep in the past 24 hours.

Unfortunately, if you are one of those people who just does not get enough sleep during ordinary times, then the only signs displayed will be only known to yourself. You may feel irritable, listless, or inattentive. Indeed, not getting enough sleep may give you symptoms of depression. It’s difficult to feel on top of everything when you aren’t sleeping well.

However, take heart; there are things you can do to ensure you do get to sleep every night.
Here are 10 tips from sleep experts to help you get a good night’s sleep.

1. Going to bed early and getting up early works. One’s natural biorhythm is to sleep between 10pm and 6am. Of course, the advent of the electric light and television make this difficult to do. If you go to bed early, you probably feel that you are missing out on life. This is not so, you will be enhancing your life, making sure you get more out of life, and enjoying your life more generally. According to Debra Skene of the University of Surrey in Guildford, sighted people with normal ‘body clocks’, levels of the hormone melatonin in the blood peak at approximately 4 in the morning, while with blind people, these levels peak at different times each day, causing them to take naps during the day to compensate for not having slept well during the night.
http://www.mercola.com/2000/oct/8/melatonin.htm

2. Prior to settling down for the night, try to decrease your mental activity. Whilst studying at university, I often wrote parts of my assignments late at night. It seemed to make good sense; it was quieter and I could concentrate. I remember that I found it difficult to go to sleep right after I had been working though, and usually paid the price the day after, missing early lectures and feeling sleepy during later ones.

3. Getting any preparations for the following day out of the way early leaves you free to relax your mind without worrying about tomorrow.

4. Having a hot bath before you retire to bed may help you to sleep better. Put oils such as lavender, sandalwood, and vanilla into your bathwater to assist relaxation. Listen to soft, soothing music too. Providing it isn’t too loud, it should help you relax.

5. Many people read something in bed before they put the light out. Studies have shown that this is not as beneficial as it seems. Of course, if I works for you, then it’s OK, but if you are reading in bed to catch up on something you should have read earlier then it might prevent you from sleeping.

6. With the light off, lie on your back and focus on your mind and your body, and on your breathing, which should be light and even.

7. Some people recite something over and over to get to sleep. This is rather like a verbal equivalent of counting sleep. If you have a favourite thing to say, then you might try repeating it until the act of producing the sound, and the sound itself soothes you to sleep.

8. Variations in temperature can prevent you from sleeping. An old fashioned hot-water bottle can help if your feet are cold. You need to remember though, to have it covered with something so that it doesn’t burn you or cause you discomfort. Placing a lightly warmed hot-water bottle between your navel and your rib-cage should aid restful sleep.

9. Waking up during the night can cause sleep to be disturbed so much that you may find it difficult or impossible to get back to sleep quickly. This probably depends on the nature of the thing that woke you. A loud noise might disturb you mentally, whereas having to go the bathroom may not. If you do happen to wake, then repeating some of the things already mentioned might help you to get off to sleep again.

10. Finally, if you find it difficult to sleep in your bed, or in your bedroom, pick another area to go to sleep in, or change your bed. Someone once said that you should be very careful when buying a bed, and a pair of shoes, because you are going to spend most of your time in one or the other. Generally, a good, firm bed is better than a very soft one, and if your bedroom window is next to an irritating, flashing neon light outside, then invest in some good thick curtains, or a pair of blindfolds similar to the ones airlines give you to help you sleep on long haul flights.
http://www.mercola.com/2003/oct/22/cancer_sleep.htm
‘Creating a sleep debt’
Anyone who doesn’t get enough sleep (at least 6 hours a night) may be building up what is termed a ‘sleep debt’, which is to say that a person’s normal cognitive abilities may be adversely affected.
Normal sleep occurs in four different stages, involving two major sleep states: rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM, which is classified by overall brain wave slowing. Deep sleep is low wave, occurring in stages 3-4. During this type of sleep, brain activity is similar to when people are awake, but they are really deeply asleep.
American Journal of Psychiatry (1998;155:192-199)
http://www.mercola.com/1998/archive/sleep_pattern_indicates_depression.htm

During psychological testing, those who were not getting enough sleep stated that they only felt slightly sleepy when performing at their worst. Anyone who has their sleep regularly impaired or lessened runs the risk of serious threats to their ability to function normally.

In comparisons of the effects of different amounts of sleep over a two-week period, people who had only slept for four hours a night showed a decline in performance similar to subjects who hadn’t slept for an incredible 88 hours. Their abilities were impaired so much that they were put at risk while driving, and would be much less able to fulfill various tasks effectively.
http://www.mercola.com/2003/mar/29/sleep_debt.htm
Finally, sleep problems can often be associated with depression of some sort. How people cope with bouts of depression can determine whether their sleep is affected.

Coping mechanisms that are detrimental include drinking alcohol to excess, and those that are more successful in combating depression include taking regular exercise and keeping fit generally.

The more physically fit you are, the less likely you are to suffer from bouts of depression, and the more likely you are to sleep well. Regular exercise is extremely beneficial at any age, providing it is done with a degree of common sense, and with sound advice from one’s GP, if there is a history of any physical disability or ailment, however slight they might be.

Thee is a degree of circularity about sleep problems that are related to depression. Being depressed can lead to sleeplessness, which in turn can exacerbate feelings of depression.

With the pressures of studying and working late, and with pressure to do well in examinations, it is not uncommon for students at colleges and universities to experience both bouts of depression and sleeplessness, neither of which helps students get through tough courses and pass them.

Succeeding is often about breaking the cycle, choosing coping mechanisms that actually do work rather than those that merely temporarily alleviate some of the symptoms.

Regular exercise, fresh air, the right kind of food, and lasting, sincere friendships all help. 

Lists










































Puzzles

Start solving crossword puzzles in your spare time. There are usually three kinds of crosswords in a newspaper: cryptic crossword puzzles, general knowledge crossword puzzles, and synonym crossword puzzles.

If you begin by doing the ‘synonym’ type of puzzle, you will do three things.

You will:
a) Increase your word power
b) Develop your ability to understand English
c) Share an enjoyable recreational pastime with a lot of people.

Try the straight synonym crosswords first. These usually take the form of providing the reader with a synonym.
A synonym is a word that has a similar meaning to another one.




Here are some examples of clues and their solutions.

1 across: space (3 letters)
SOLUTION: air

5 down: account (4 letters)
SOLUTION: bill

8 across: correctly (7 letters)
SOLUTION: rightly

This type of crossword has the advantage that it is fairly easy to do once you understand what is required, and if you look at the solutions in the following day’s edition of the same newspaper, you will get better. If you take it seriously, you will enjoy it and increase the number of words you know and can spell.


This type of crossword, the synonym crossword, actually gets easier as you fill in the squares.

This is easily demonstrated.

17 across: feeling (7 letters)
SOLUTION: em-t-on = emotion

This points to another aspect of the kind of help you will get from completing crosswords: Identifying nouns, adjective, adverbs and verbs by their endings is a useful thing to be able to do, particularly when you meet unknown words in a text.
Knowing what part of speech a
word is can sometimes help you to work out what it means.
If you are given a noun in the clue, the answer must be a noun in the solution. Likewise, if you are given an adjective in the clue, the solution must be in the form of an adjective, and so on.

Now, many nouns and adjectives have very distinctive endings, like the following, for example.
~tion – emotion information organization (Noun)
~ness – happiness sadness unhappiness (Noun)
~ment - argument arrangement (Noun)
~ity – entity gratuity uniformity (Noun)

~ive – active subjective objective native (Adjective)
~less – colourless tasteless senseless (Adjective)

~ly – sadly happily gradually (Adverb) Note the spelling of these words.

~ify – liquefy specify quantify (Verb)
~ate – vegetate agitate (Verb)
~ise/~ize – energise organize (Verb)


One final point: Be sure to look at the solution to the crossword in the edition that comes out on the following day. That way, you learn from your mistakes, and increase your vocabulary at the same time.

You could note down some of the words you learned from the crossword in your Vocabulary Notebook. 



See the next page






































Keeping a Vocabulary Notebook

When you are traveling to a foreign country, you take with you either a phrase book or a dictionary to help you communicate with people in their own language. Very few people would take a grammar textbook with them, unless they were going to stay much longer than a couple of weeks.

Words matter, vocabulary is the stuff language is made of. Grammar is the set of rules that defines how words connect with other words to give meaning, to form sentences, questions and phrases.

Students’ language progresses by learning words, their meaning, how they are spelled, how they are pronounced, and how they connect with other words in the language.

The main difficulty with new words is remembering them and using them when they are appropriate and necessary.

By far the best way to remember new words is to use them as soon as possible. This is not always possible, however.

A vocabulary notebook is another way, a longer lasting, more permanent way. Writing words in a notebook helps you to remember them, and records the fact that you have met them, and that you are beginning to learn how to use them and what they mean when you do use them.

The chief difficulty with keeping a Vocabulary Notebook is the way the words are arranged in it. After all, words you can’t find are no use whatsoever.

Different methods of organizing your Vocabulary Notebook















What science tells us: Limitations and opportunities on Earth

There have been many calculations of the age of the world, ranging from Archbishop James Armagh confident announcement in the 17th Century that the world was created in 4004BC, to the more likely calculation by modern astronomers that he was wrong by some 5000 million years. (Lewis, 2000)

The human race, of course, has existed for a mere blink of an eye, compared to that length of time. Sumeria, the first great river civilization, began in about 3,500 BC, when the people of what has now come to be known as the ‘Fertile Crescent’, between the two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, developed an agricultural system capable of supporting relatively large scale population levels. (Lewis, 2000)

From that time to the present, man has learned to adapt Earth to his needs, rather than the other way around. People still live in harmony with Mother Earth in a few places while the majority of us live in environments that are entirely man made. In that sense, the lives most of lead are pre-ordained, but we can still opt to live life in our own way, albeit within very narrow parameters.

We have found out, sometimes to our cost, that those parameters, those limits, can only be widened at a very great cost to the very thing that supports us.

It has been estimated that in 30 years time, 55% of the world’s population will face severe water shortages, that most coastal regions will be clogged with pollution from massive urban growth, intensive farming, and other related factors, and that emissions of carbon dioxide will rise, doubling air pollution and accelerating global warming even further. Ward (2002)

Any fight with Nature can only ever have one winner – the same winner – Earth, and we would do well to learn that lesson before continuing to fight. As Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the UN Environment Program (UNEP) says, “The choices made today are critical for the forests, oceans, rivers, mountains, and other life support systems upon which the current and future generations depend.” Ward (ibid)

There is room for the improvement of man’s time on Earth, only if it does not involve compromising the natural environment. Advances in science and technology do not have to devastate our planet. It is usually our commercial interests in them that force environmental pressure to its limit.

Ecologist Mark Clayton reports that people inhabiting some areas on the Earth’s surface are consuming more than their local ecosystem can produce, finding support from ecosystems in other areas. As Clayton puts it, “These areas are being subsidized by other ecosystems. They’re on a form of life support.” Such areas are nearing or have reached what is termed their ‘ecological budget deficit’. A World Wildlife Fund Living Planet Report recently stated that each human being, on average, has a need for the material that can produced by 2.28 hectares of land per person, while Earth only has a bio-capacity of 1.9 hectares per person, leaving a 0.38 hectare deficit. This problem is most acute in the highly populated countries of South East Asia. Clayton (2004)

It seems more and more these days that what is thought of as ‘the good life’ is linked to how much money we earn and how many things we own and consume, and it is in consuming, especially in consuming without need or necessity, that we threaten the ecosystems that support us.

However, fulfillment in life does not come merely from consuming, from devouring mindlessly, but by thinking and creating, by relating and being, by acting and by doing, by finding interests that absorb our time and our energy, by loving and moving, not by exploiting and destroying.

One writer maintained that having an interest or interests in one’s life was the way to living it in a healthy and fulfilling way. He penned these wise words.

‘Interest is the key to life,
Interest is the clue.
Interest is the drum and fife,
And any God will do!’
Source?
This is not meant as sacrilege; we all find God in our own separate and different ways. What is important is that we actually do find God in our lives, to temper the practical side of our lives with the spiritual one, to make our lives whole.

William Wordsworth, living in what later was to become the most powerful, most affluent nation on Earth, saw that a concentration in one’s life on acquiring and having was not the way to happiness. His poem, ‘The world is too much with us’ makes this point quickly.
‘The world is too much with us,
Buying and selling, we lay waste our powers,
Little we see in Nature that is ours.’
William Wordsworth
The World is indeed too much with us, as the Lakeland poet pointed out hundreds of years ago. Unfortunately, it is still true for many today. Here are the opinions of some other people who concur.
‘It is good for man to try out new changes,
To explore all his capacities
Not to go down the dinosaur’s way,
And it is also good for him to know,
That his needs and nature are no more changed in fact,
In ten thousand years, than the beaks of eagles.’
Robinson Jeffers
Here the American poet, Robinson Jeffers is saying that although modernity presents us all
with new challenges, which we should confront, man remains a creature that depends for its existence on values such as love and sincerity, dedication and devotion, intellectual pursuit and thoughtfulness.

French author and Nobel Prize winner, Anatole France observed that man finds relaxation in the labour of his own choosing and devising, that having hobbies or interests that involve physical and mental activity have their own intrinsic rewards. One only needs to see the joy Olympic athletes find in their real dedication to sport to realize the truth of this statement.
‘Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labour by taking up another.’
Anatole France
Lastly, philosopher, Bertrand Russell’s comment below makes the point that few of us fill our spare time with activities that are worthwhile and worthy of our time and attention.

‘To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.’
Bertrand Russell

No one is suggesting that money does not play an important part of our lives: money is necessary, of course; one cannot live without having some of it. However, knowing how much is enough and not coveting it above everything else is quite another thing.

Similarly, a focus on acquiring things rather than on doing things with one’s life means that most people’s potential creativity and flair is rarely realized or tested.

As stated above, the key to the good life, a fulfilling, happy life is dependent upon faith and interests, and on the love of others: family and friends. The traditions that have quickly and easily been almost put asunder in modern life in the West: family values, standards of decency and respect between people, and a faith in God, should have been cherished and nurtured, as they still are in many other, more fortunate societies.

It is usually said that there is no going back for the West; no return to the days before our relative affluence. In a sense that is true. We cannot expect people to accept less per se.

For those people though, the realization that spending their lives getting and spending is indicative of a greater malaise: alienation, is vital if society in those nations is to improve the quality of life for those who live within them.

Using an allegorical example, some unfortunate people try to eat their way out of psychological depression. They never succeed, however. More often than not, they compound their psychological problems with sociological and physiological ones: their health suffers, as does the quality of their interpersonal relationships, and life in general as their ability to remain active and healthy becomes impaired. So it is with those who indulge in what has come to be known as ‘retail therapy’ – ‘shopping to beat the Blues’. No amount of buying – getting and spending – can compensate for a live wasted in behaving in this way. In addition, the environment is put under pressure as this false need for goods is transformed into the plundering of our natural resources, and the subsequent creating of waste products that complete the vicious circle of spending to get better.

The signs of the massive amounts of waste produced by our consumer society are seen everywhere. Not far from my home in England, on the side of the hills and only a mile and a half away from my door, old quarries are being filled in with the waste created by the consumer spending of the hundreds of thousands of people who inhabit the area. These massive quarries are rapidly being filled up with rubbish from hundreds of thousands of households. Plastic, tin, and organic material are being buried in huge quantities. Some of the waste being dumped will inevitably contain things like old rechargeable batteries from phones and computers. Such products contain substances that are some of the most deadly toxins known to man. Cadmium, for instance, used in the manufacture of rechargeable batteries, does not disappear without trace into thin air; it leaches down with rainwater into the water table and pollutes drinking water. The time scale for this to happen is probably unknown. What is known is that it will happen and when it does the effects will be catastrophic.

Former US President, Jimmy Carter, commissioned a report on global environmental problems and forecasts when he was in office. ‘The Global 2000 Report to the President’ made chilling reading when it came out before the end of his term in office. It showed that environmental disaster is almost upon us in many areas of our life.

Today, several years on, many of its pronouncements and forecasts must already have come to fruition: forecasts and extrapolations that might have seemed unlikely at the time of writing will by now already have occurred. Something has to change if other, similar disasters are to be prevented. Being aware is a start, but we were made aware by the report itself and yet nothing changed.

Liberal democratic governments attempt to practice ‘laissez faire’ politics; endeavouring to keep government out of most decision-making, particularly where trade, and certainly where consumer spending is concerned, though some governmental fiscal policies go some way to prevent economies from ‘overheating’. However, public taste in what people spend their money on never comes under scrutiny apart from for considerations of safety and public decency. On the contrary, governments invariably encourage people to spend, and the economic growth that stems from consumer spending is taken as a sign that the country is prospering.

In fact, economic growth is probably just as much a sign that the environment is being harmed as it is of anything else. The environmental side effects of producing consumer durables are probably hardly ever included in economists’ models, and are discounted as exogenous variables; factors to be left out of economic equations. The customer is never charged for the deleterious side effects on the environment of his purchases at the point of sale, but there is a price to be paid nevertheless. It is paid by everyone, but is not always visible, and in fact is usually invisible. Groundwater is polluted by industrial waste; a nation’s health is slowly but inevitably compromised and life is threatened.

It is fortunate that we are at the end of the food chain. Were we lower down it, we would have felt the impact of such pollution by now, just as many species of plants, animals, birds and fish already have. We may be at the end of that chain, but we are in it nonetheless and that cannot be altered. We are pointing a loaded gun at our own heads.


References
Clayton M (2004) Voracious Earth lives beyond its means In Christian Science Monitor reported in Gulf News Friday, September 3rd. 2004
Lewis J.E. (20000) Eyewitness History 2000 Carroll and Graf New York
Ward O. (2002) Planet’s future at stake Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd. May 23.

















Lessons from history: Repeating mistakes






References

From: Lewis J.E. (20000) Eyewitness History 2000 Carroll and Graf New York


















Fresh air: Free refueling for everybody




















Strategies


Dilemmas


Numbers


Appropriate behavior


Focus & direction


Self-image


Teachers


Webstuff.










































Appendix A: Glossary
Achieving self-actualization: The real value of education

The Digital Future: Something to look forward to, or something to fear?

Using Occam’s razor sparingly: Exercising judgment in one’s thinking

Thinking creatively

Having an inquiring mind: Making new connections

Train for the future – not the past

Fiction: The Eskimo Widow

Opting for the alternative: Making little decisions to make your life better.

Avoid using fallacies: don’t come to the wrong conclusions *

Prose poetry: The Golden Treasury: Chapter and Verse

Why we laugh at the things that make us laugh

The wheel and the microchip

‘Repetition: The part it plays in our lives

Discover Creative Writing

Plotting a story

Fiction: ‘Reactions’ ***

Light or Left? Which are you?

‘That’s entertainment’: Making meaning in films

Driver, Mind, and Environment: The Elements of Danger for Road Users

Accidents waiting to happen – driving on auto-pilot *

When ignorance is bliss: The public's perception of danger *

Sleep: A necessary ingredient for a healthy life
Relaxation: Giving your mind a rest **

Talking things through: Finding solutions through discussion **

Fiction: ‘Unstable equilibrium’ ***






































Appendix B: References and acknowledgements

Achieving self-actualization: The real value of education

The Digital Future: Something to look forward to, or something to fear?

Using Occam’s razor sparingly: Exercising judgment in one’s thinking
(1) http://pesmc1.vub.ac.be/OCCAMRAZ.html
(2) Principia Cybernetica Web

Thinking creatively

Having an inquiring mind: Making new connections

Train for the future – not the past

Fiction: The Eskimo Widow

Opting for the alternative: Making little decisions to make your life better.

Avoid using fallacies: don’t come to the wrong conclusions *

Prose poetry: The Golden Treasury: Chapter and Verse

Why we laugh at the things that make us laugh

The wheel and the microchip

‘Repetition: The part it plays in our lives

Discover Creative Writing

Plotting a story

Fiction: ‘Reactions’ ***

Light or Left? Which are you?

‘That’s entertainment’: Making meaning in films

Driver, Mind, and Environment: The Elements of Danger for Road Users

Accidents waiting to happen – driving on auto-pilot *

When ignorance is bliss: The public's perception of danger *

Sleep: A necessary ingredient for a healthy life
Relaxation: Giving your mind a rest **

Talking things through: Finding solutions through discussion **

Fiction: ‘Unstable equilibrium’ ***
Exercise to succeed
Benefits of Exercise on Cardiovascular Risk Factors:
Regular physical exercise can:

Help you lose weight, especially fat weight.

Improve your body’s ability to maximally uptake oxygen and deliver oxygen to your working muscles (defined as your VO2 Max). This measure is generally regarded as the best measure of your physical fitness level.

Lower your resting heart rate, by allowing your heart to pump more blood per beat. This means your heart is not working as hard when you are at rest.

Lower or help control your blood pressure, both systolic and diastolic. This is especially important for people with high blood pressure-hypertension.

Lower your Body Mass Index (BMI). This is the ratio of body weight (in kilograms) to height (in meters). Increased BMI is associated with an increase in morbidity and mortality.

Reduce total cholesterol. This includes lowering LDL-the bad type of cholesterol, and increasing HDL-the good type of cholesterol.

Reduce circulating levels of triglycerides. This is the amount of free fatty acid found in the blood.

Improves the functioning of your immune system.

Reduce the risk of heart disease.

Increases insulin sensitivity to prevent against type II diabetes (adult onset diabetes).

Reduce the risk of having a stroke.
Benefits of Exercise for Mental Health and Well-Being
Regular physical exercise can:
Reduce your level of anxiety.
Help you manage stress more effectively.
Improve your positive self-esteem and confidence.
Help alleviate depression.
Improve your appearance.
Help you relax.
Combat the likelihood of many degenerative problems.
Improve your overall quality of life.
Teach you about goal-setting and dedication.
Can assists in efforts to stop smoking.
Help to relieve and prevent migraine headache attacks.
Can help you sleep more restfully.
Help improve your immune system.

http://www.discoverfitness.com/why_exercise.html

The Psychological Benefits of Exercise
The psychological benefits of exercise are often overlooked. Today’s society greatly focuses on the physical benefits of exercise, such as weight loss, toned muscles and “six-pack abs.” Although these are remarkable benefits, the psychological benefits can be just as, if not more significant than the physical benefits dependent on your needs and goals.

How Does Exercise Cause Psychological Changes?

Many theories about the psychological benefits of exercise have surfaced from exercise physiology and sports psychology. One common area of study is neurochemistry. Scientists believe that when exercising, chemicals called endorphins are produced in the brain and released into the body. The word endorphin is abbreviated from the phrase “endogenous morphine” which means morphine produced naturally by the body (www.biotech-usa.com). Endorphins are thought to relieve stress and pain naturally, giving one an euphoric and invigorating feeling. This is also known as “runner’s high.” Other theories focus more on the indirect effects of exercise. A popular opinion is that exercise may create a distraction and provide an “outlet” from everyday sources of stress, therefore positively enhancing one’s mental condition. Also, another thought is that muscle tension tends to be reduced after a good exercise session and this can promote a feeling of relaxation and calmness.

What are the Psychological Benefits of Exercise?
There are many psychological benefits of physical activity. The most common are listed below:

Decreased Daily and Chronic Stress: Exercise is one of the best ways to decrease stress. As stated above, exercise can help relieve stress by the release of endorphins and/or by creating an outlet from daily tension and anxiety. With less stress, many individuals will begin to feel more energized and alive. An exercise session is a great time to watch television, listen to music or read a good book or magazine.

Improved Self-Confindence and Body Image: Today, many people are unhappy with their physical appearance. By exercising regularly, most people will begin to see positive physical change. When individuals start seeing these results, they tend to be proud of their success and feel good about who they are. Many times this enhances body image perception and self-confidence.

Enhanced Moods: Exercise makes most people feel good and when people feel good, their moods seem to elevate. Whether this is due to the release of endorphins or providing a distraction from daily stress, many studies show that regular exercisers have a more positive outlook and are happier overall in comparison to the inactive population.

Alleviate Depression: Studies show that regular exercise can greatly alleviate and in some cases prevent the symptoms of depression. The exact physiological reason is unknown, but scientists believe that enhancing body image, elevating moods and improving one’s health and physical appearance can all help boost self-confidence and create a feeling of success, therefore alleviating depression symptoms.

Increased Mental Alertness: Stress and fatigue negatively affect concentration, comprehension and memory. Since exercise is a great way to alleviate stress and increase energy levels, a regular exercise routine will enhance mental alertness and can improve overall mental health.

Feeling Great Overall: One of the best psychological benefits of exercise is just feeling great overall. One could argue that this is a physical benefit of exercise, however the psychological benefits greatly contribute to this overall great feeling. The combination of increased self-confidence, decreased stress, better moods, less depression and increased mental health in addition to all of the physical benefits should make anyone feel great.

Regardless of why or how the body psychologically adapts to exercise, the main point is that exercise not only improves physical health, but also mental health. Uniting the physical and psychological benefits of exercise will definitely help enhance the quality of life.


Stephanie M. Vlach, M.S.
http://www.honoluluclub.com/pulse.php?ID=30

EXERCISE: Psychological Benefits of Exercise In today’s modern world, we often hear individuals who exercise make statements about how they feel better then they did before they started exercising. If you were to ask these people to clarify what "better" means, most people would focus on the physical benefits. There is no doubt that engaging in activity has many physical benefits including weight management, improved cardiovascular fitness and control over diabetes and osteoporosis. However, there are also many psychological benefits to exercise which include positive effects on memory & thinking and improvements in levels of depression and anxiety. Let us take a closer look at each one of these.
Memory and Thinking
Many researchers have examined the effects of aerobic and anaerobic exercise on memory and thinking. The results have been mixed but for the most part indicate that moderate levels of exercise (regardless of type) improves performance on memory and thinking tasks including addition problems, recall of numbers and words, perception & discrimination of geometric figures, and organization. It is important to note that both high and low levels of exercise have been found to either have no effect or actually impair performance on the tasks. The reason for this is unclear and is currently being studied. Depression Clinical depression is one of the most common psychological problems in our country. According to data from the President’s Committee on Mental Health, one of every four Americans suffers from depression at any given time. Depression is characterized by withdrawal, inactivity, and feelings of hopelessness and loss of control. By acting on each of these symptoms, physical exercise can be a useful therapeutic intervention for depression. Indeed, people who are physically active, have lower rates of diagnosable depression. One study conducted over a twenty year period found that those individuals that were most physically active at the beginning of the study were less likely to develop depression at a later date. Researchers have even examined exercise as a treatment for depression. Individuals who had been diagnosed as depressed were put into three groups: time limited psychotherapy (10 weeks), time unlimited psychotherapy, and a running treatment group. The runners met with a running therapist and would stretch, walk and run for thirty to forty-five minutes, and discuss issues while exercising with little emphasis on the depression itself. Results indicated that 6 of the 8 patients in the running treatment group were essentially well at the end of three weeks, another at the end of the 16th week, and one that neither improved nor deteriorated. This should not be taken to mean that depressed individuals should drop out of traditional forms of treatment, just that running is a useful adjunct to traditional treatment. Anxiety One generally accepted benefit of exercise is anxiety reduction. In other words, people who exercise just feel less stressed or nervous. In general, research has supported this notion. In one study, subjects were placed into one of three groups: jogging, stress inoculation training, and waiting list. Individual’s self-report statements indicated that both the jogging and stress inoculation groups had lower levels of anxiety then the waiting list group immediately following the intervention. Furthermore, this finding held true when the researchers followed up one month and 15 months later. It is important to note that the joggers only continued to experience lower levels of anxiety if they continued to exercise (which was about 40% of the original group). The reasons for improvements discussed above are unclear. Some people feel that various exercise strategies serve to divert or distract subjects from anxiety and depression-producing stressors. In addition, if you are working out at a gym or park, social contact works to reduce the isolation typically associated with depression. Another reason for the improvements in psychological well being is that exercise alters various neurotransmitters within the brain (norepinephrine and seretonin) which is precisely the function of medication that is prescribed by psychiatrists. This should not be confused with the unsubstantiated theory that the release of “morphine-like” chemicals within the pituitary gland and the brain serve to reduce the painful effects while also enhancing the euphoric effects. Conclusions From the above discussion, it is clear that there are many benefits on psychological functioning that result from exercise. However, it is important to note that the relationship between physical activity and mood should be thought of as correlational rather than causative. That is to say, they are related but exercise should not be thought of as being the sole cause for the improvements in mood. Although some studies featuring highly anxious patients have shown that exercise reduces both anxiety and depression significantly more than a placebo treatment, others have found the reverse to be true. More specifically, one group was told that their regimen was specifically designed to facilitate psychological well-being and no such intervention was made with the control group. The results showed improvements in fitness for both groups; but, the experimental subjects improved significantly on a measure of self-esteem when compared to the no intervention control group. This means that just thinking that something is good for you, is enough for it to have a beneficial effect. So how should exercise be used to improve mood? If you have been diagnosed with an anxiety or mood disorder, probably the best approach to take is to use it as an adjunct to the treatment you have discussed with a mental health professional. Always use follow the guidelines that they set forth for the treatment of your particular disorder and be sure to voice your interest in using exercise as an adjunct to treatment.
http://www.psychedonline.org/Articles/Vol2Iss2/PsychExerciseBenefits.htm
Lack of exercise leads to psychological setbacks
Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist
People with lung disease who gave up exercise lost both physical and psychological benefits.
In chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), there is a progressive and disabling decline in lung function. But people with COPD can be helped by exercise – as is true for other chronic diseases. Researchers at Ohio State University looked at a group of people with COPD who followed a supervised exercise program for ten weeks to see what happened over the follow up period.
Directly after the program, the participants were enjoying gains in cognitive, psychological and physical functioning. But, a year on, those who did not continue to exercise had lost all of these benefits, returning to the pre-study level. The 39 per cent who carried on exercising at home did, however, continue to enjoy the benefit. The researchers wonder if they might have gained even more if they had increased the intensity of their workouts. It may also be that the same loss of physical and psychological advantages would occur in healthy people who stop exercising. So the take-home message is, as ever – keep moving!
Source
Ohio State University 16th April 2004
http://www.healthandage.com/Home/gid1=5748
Exercise and Anxiety
Exercise has long been regarded in popular culture as a good way to relax when a person is feeling anxious or nervous. However, the manner in which exercise and anxiety reduction are related is not simple or necessarily obvious. How does a person maximize the anxiety-reducing benefits of exercise? Should a person jog, lift weights, or swim? How hard should he or she exercise? Some information might help to clarify some of these questions, though it must be noted that some disagreement remains in research about these issues.
1. 1. Single bouts of aerobic exercise have been shown to reduce anxiety for several hours afterwards. This appears true whether the intensity of the workout is low or high, although it seems that with high intensity workouts there may be a “lag time” immediately following exercise (some research would indicate around 20 minutes) before the reduction of anxiety is felt.
2. 2. Bouts of resistance exercise have not been shown to reduce anxiety in the short term. While it cannot be conclusively said that no such benefit exists, present research has failed to show such benefits.
3. 3. Chronic aerobic exercise has been shown to decrease the amount of anxiety a person typically experiences in his/her daily life. It appears that low to moderate intensity exercise is best for such a benefit, while an exercise intensity level that is too high may not be of as much (if any) benefit. Such an impact on anxiety has not been demonstrated for resistance exercise.
4. 4. The impact of chronic aerobic exercise on the amount of anxiety a person typically experiences in his/her daily life is even greater for those who have diagnoses of anxiety disorders. This appears to be true regardless of whether or not a person experiences any increases in physical fitness. It also appears that this benefit is noted when the intensity of exercise is low to moderate.
Exercise and Depression
Exercise has also often been considered to be a good way to help a person get out of a depressed state. Although this section addresses depression and dysthymic disorder, bipolar disorder is not included. As many people feel unmotivated, sluggish, tired, and lethargic when they are experiencing a depressed mood, it would seem to make logical sense that exercise could help them “get going”. While research does show benefits related to exercise, it is important to realize that not all types of exercise are equal in terms of providing benefit. The following information can help to clarify some of what research has demonstrated about the impact of exercise on depression.
1. 1. Aerobic and anaerobic exercises have both been found to lead to improvements in mood. This seems to be true in the short term, although immediate reductions of depressive symptoms following a single bout of exercise do not seem to be as apparent as they are in the case of anxiety reduction. It does not appear that an increase in physical fitness level is necessary to achieve a reduction in depressive symptoms. These results have been found across different types of people who differ in physical fitness level.
2. 2. Chronic exercise does seem to be somewhat effective in reducing the likelihood of a relapse into a depressive episode when a person with a diagnosis of a depressive disorder is not experiencing symptoms.
3. 3. Research regarding the effectiveness of exercise amount or intensity has been less clear. However, research does seem to indicate that mild to moderate intensity exercise may be more effective in reducing depressive symptoms than more intense exercise.
4. 4. Exercise has been shown to have antidepressant effects for those diagnosed with mild to moderate levels of depression. However, those with no such diagnoses do not seem to experience the same effects for occasional depressed mood that everyone experiences in their lifetime.
5.
http://www.psc.uc.edu/SH/SH_Exercise%20-%20Mental%20Health.htm






Relaxing and being relaxed

By

Robert L. Fielding

Relaxing is what people do when they have finished their work. They put their feet up, have a cup of coffee and generally take it easy.

Being relaxed is something else. You can be relaxed while you are driving, while you are working, and while you are sitting down, having that cup of tea, of course.

Both are important, and for some people, both are difficult. The CEO who finds it difficult to stop working hard, the student who feels she does not have time to take a break from her studies, the housewife who always has something else to do before she sits down and takes it easy for a few minutes, find relaxing and being relaxed difficult if not practically impossible.

Finding time to stop and have a break from your busy schedule should be easy. After all, you are the boss. You are a student who doesn’t have a boss. You are a housewife on your own in the house with nobody telling you what to do. Why isn’t it easy?

It’s not that you need anyone’s permission. There’s nobody there to ask except yourself. That’s the trouble; you deny yourself permission to pause. The one person who can allow you to take a break tells you that you haven’t got time.

There are always a hundred and one things to do, and they are all urgent. Ask yourself this: If I don't do them, who will? Will the world stop because I don’t do them right now?

Now I hear the CEO saying that everything he does is of the utmost urgency, and that if he doesn’t do them, the company will lose orders.

I hear the student saying that she has deadlines to meet, essays to write, and examinations to take. Nothing can wait.

Likewise, the housewife says that the kids will be home any minute, and that if she doesn’t get her work done before they get home from school then she’ll never have the time to complete it afterwards.

All they say is absolutely true; the company would lose orders, the student would fail her Part One exams, and the beds would have to stay unmade.

What is being overlooked here is the idea that time spent having a cup of tea, reading the paper, or chatting in a café is time wasted. The urgency of the day is real, no doubt, but the passing of time and one’s effectiveness in utilizing it is a function of a person’s feeling of being at the centre of everything. No one is at the centre of everything.

What you are at the centre of is not your situation, but your own mind. Your sense of responsibility, of self-importance, your ambition, your work ethic, or whatever else dominates your mind, all combine to hurry you through the day. There are a hundred and one things to do, so make it a hundred and two; one more won’t make any difference to that impossibly large number, will it?

That last thing you have to do; taking a break, is arguably the most important thing you will do all day. It will affect all the other things you have to do. It will increase your performance, however minutely.

If you multiply that minute increase in your performance over your career, it will make an incredible difference; to your ability to function in your chosen profession or activity, and more importantly, to you as a person. You are not a machine. A machine needs a little bit of oil and it can go on running for the rest of its working life.

Notice though that even machines wear out eventually. If they do not get their oil, or get properly maintained, their life is shortened considerably, as is their efficiency while they are working.

To a certain extent, human beings are very similar to machines; if they are not maintained, or if they are not provided with the right input, they stop functioning properly or slow down to a complete halt.

What makes you think you are any different from the rest of us? You might be the chief executive of a giant corporation, you might be a brilliant student, or a good mother and wife, but all that is encased in flesh and blood. You are mortal, just like everyone else. The laws that apply to the tramp asleep in the gutter, apply to you.

What has happened is that your persona has been overlain with layer upon layer of egotism, sophistication, and feelings of invincibility. You think you are indispensable, so now you feel that the world will not turn unless you do what it is that you do.

No one is indispensable, and no one’s time is at such a premium that they cannot stop what they are doing and take a breather; sit down and relax for a while.

So, now that you have sat down, let’s think what you can do to feel the full benefit of the time you have to relax.

Robert L. Fielding
 
Wondering and discovering: Applying knowledge to practical problems

By

Robert L. Fielding


Walking the hills around my home in the north of England as a boy of fourteen, I found myself wondering about my height above sea level compared with the height of the hills in front of me. I wanted to know how high I had to climb before reaching the top of the next hill.

I had a map, and I had found the hill in front of me on it. What I didn't always know was my exact position on the map, and so I didn't know how high I had to climb to reach the summit.

I walked up to the top anyway, but I always wondered how I could determine my height relative to my destination.

The hills around my home had strange and wonderful names. I can still remember them. Alphin, dark and massive, looking across Chew Valley at Alderman frowning back, two giant sworn enemies, and more gentle Noon Sun basking in the afternoon sunshine.

Further into the moor, names like Black Hill, Laddow Rocks, and Kinder Scout conjured up images in my young head. I still love those names.

Although their names intrigued me, it was their heights relative to me, or to each other that really fascinated me. Standing on Laddow Rocks, Black Hill several miles away looked much higher. Bleaklow Hill in the distance looked lower, and yet I knew from the map that it was quite a bit higher.

The television aerial on Holme Moss dominated that part of the skyline, and Crowdon Great Brook fell away from my feet.

On some days, the wind buffeted us about, and we had to find shelter among the rocks to eat our lunch in comfort.

Paper was easily blown away, and we knew not to leave litter anywhere. I wanted to make a gadget that would help me determine the height of each hill, but I knew it would have to be made of something more substantial than paper to withstand the blustery Pennine weather.

So, I set about making a sort of template from the only kind of material I had: cardboard. In the days before plastic bags, in the days before supermarkets, Clifford at the Co-op put the things my mother bought into cardboard boxes.
"Do you want a ride on the bacon-slicer before you go, lad?' he would say cheerfully.
I had to carry the groceries home. By the time we reached our front door, my arms were dropping off, as we used to say.

Mum emptied the box, putting the things she had bought into their proper places. Meat and dairy products went into a kind of meat safe that was always a bit cooler than the rest of the kitchen. Tinned stuff, of which there was very little, went into the pantry with the rest. Last of all, came the potatoes. These weren't new ones. New potatoes came from my father's allotment at the back of the house. These were old potatoes, and they were dusty and brown. It was my job to take out the spuds and put them where they wouldn't get damp. My father had made some shelves with spaces between them so that the air could circulate and keep them dry.

When I had carefully placed each potato so that it wasn't touching another potato, I turned the box upside down to empty the dust and the dirt.

Sometimes, the boxes would be so dirty that they were only good for making compost to grow more potatoes, but sometimes they were practically spotless on the outside, and I used one such side to make my template. I had to make sure it was absolutely clean, otherwise I couldn't bring it back into the house. This particular day I had a nice flat piece that was clean and it wasn't creased either. It was perfect. I cut it from the rest of the box with a sharp knife my mother used to cut up vegetables. The knife was dry and it was clean. I made the cut and then used my mother's best scissors to clean up the edges.

I had a square of good, clean, stiff cardboard to work on. The next thing I had to do was to work out what I wanted to draw on it. I knew from my arithmetic teacher that a circle could be divided into 360 degrees, so a semi circle had to have 180 degrees. The semi circle I wanted to draw had to be no bigger than my pair of compasses could stretch to. They would open to about a five inch maximum. They were quite big.

I drew myself a semi circle with a base line ten inches long. Now I had to divide it up into degrees. I had to decide how many degrees between each division. I decided upon ten degrees.

This was my way of finding out how to calculate the height of the next hill. I knew a little about trigonometry, and although I didn't like it very much whenever I had to do it at school, I knew enough to be able to use what I knew to construct this template.

I divided the semi circle up into 10 degree sectors, and then used the other side of the cardboard to construct a table of numbers: distances in miles, height in feet, one for every angle on my template.

It was a bit difficult and took up all my time that evening, and the next.
I remember bedtime coming up quickly on those evenings.

I did finish it though, and showed it to my Mum and Dad. They both smiled at it as I showed them how it worked. I explained about sines, cosines and tangents. How you could find the unknown length of the side of a right angled triangle if you had either the lengths of the two other sides or one length and one angle. At least that's how I remember it.

I remember that I wrote the values down from my little red book of mathematical tables, which included trig ratios and values. At least that is what I can recall now.

After the longest week, I took my gadget, as my Dad called it, up onto the moor. I remember that it was a bit misty as it could often be that high up, about 1,700 feet above sea level, and facing the prevailing weather from the Atlantic Ocean via the Irish Sea. Anyway, visibility wasn't perfect, but the cloud cover was patchy, and every now and then a corner of clear blue sky would appear, a bright patch from the quilted autumn sky.

The brief window was enough to try the thing out. I took it out of my rucksack, and my friend, John held it steady for me as I lined it up with Pule Hill about four miles away. I got John to stand back a little to tell me if I was holding the thing level or not. I adjusted it and then took a reading. In fact, it was really quite difficult to do that, to take a reading in the wind, wondering whether the thing was really level or not. I took the reading and then we sat down in the heather and entered the numbers we had in our little notebooks. We had both made charts, with ruled lines to make it easier to enter the numbers.

We worked out that Pule Hill was either higher than Mount Everest, I think, or something ridiculous like that. We were both a bit disappointed, but laughed at our results too. There were problems with the device. We knew that. We had known that before we set out, but like the lads we were, we tried to ignore them, and convinced ourselves that they wouldn't make any difference.

Back home, I did try to think how it could be improved. I thought it might need my Dad's old spirit level sellotaping to the bottom, but I didn't dare take his tools up onto the hills. We could have done something with a pop-bottle half full of water, John said, but we both knew that it would make the thing too cumbersome and clumsy, so we didn't try it. It was a good idea but it had its faults. However, the principles behind it were sound, we both agreed.

I still have that bit of cardboard somewhere at my parents' house, and I take it out and look at it sometimes. Looking at the markings on the front, the tables and numbers on the back, and reading my junior version of my handwriting, much clearer than today's scribble, I remember that tall gangly lad I must have been. I remembered my freckle faced pal John, now a surveyor for an oil company somewhere, and I am grateful for those days, for that bit of cardboard, for the hills, the heather and the wind and rain, and most of all for the making of who I am now, up there with the wind in my face, and an idea in my head.

Robert L. Fielding
 
Having an inquiring mind: Making new connections

By

Robert Leslie Fielding


Having an inquiring mind means 'having the ability to make connections which are not always immediately apparent’ It is akin to having intelligence: the ability to form sensible conclusions based on incomplete evidence. ‘Intelligent behaviour is that which involves reasoning, judgment, planning, inferencing and other generalized and complex mental or intellectual activities.’ ( Piaget, 2003)

To a greater or lesser degree, we all have it. We all possess the quality of intelligence.
Exercising those faculties that contribute to and are part of our intelligence is something that we do to a certain extent automatically, every day of our lives. How many of us make a conscious effort to exercise those faculties creatively?

Those mental faculties: reasoning, using our judgment, planning, and inferring, are not unlike the muscles of our limbs, in that if they are not exercised regularly they lose some of their power.

Exercising your creative powers does not have to be Earth shattering. It can start from thinking about the most seemingly insignificant things. Concentrate on the process rather than the end product. If you do that, your thoughts will flow in all directions. If you try to force the issue by thinking purely about your ultimate destination, the journey will be spoiled. Here is an example of what I mean.

Sitting in a restaurant, trying to use chopsticks for the first time in my life, recently, I came to wonder why some people use them while other people use knives and forks.

I remembered thinking that it probably had nothing to do with their effectiveness as utensils; Chinese people can remove food from their plates just as quickly as I can with my metal knife and fork.

Of course, tradition has something to do with it. I was taught how to use a knife and a fork at a very early age, and have used them ever since. No doubt the same is true for those people who use chopsticks every day of their lives. The answer to the question lies somewhere else.

It surely has something to do with the materials they are made from, and the way they are made. A couple of straight shoots from a bamboo plant will suffice for chop sticks, whereas knives and forks are made of steel, usually stainless steel, or chrome plated steel, and so can virtually only be made using heavy presses and precision-made press tools, in factories, by skilled craftsmen.

Chop sticks tie in with rural economies, knives and forks with industrial ones, which almost certainly means chop sticks predate metal utensils, and probably by many thousands of years too.

The exercise of thinking involved in reaching that conclusion was not anything brilliantly intelligent, but it did include reasoning, judgment and inferring, though not planning, but it did involve combining known facts with a certain amount of reasoning until something new emerged.

Without planning, without direction, mental activity of that kind is usually referred to as daydreaming. I was always being ticked off for doing it at school, I remember.

Considering problems logically without jumping to conclusions that cannot reasonably be supported by evidence or rational, sensible judgment is what having an inquiring mind is all about.

The corollary of this proposition is its opposite: considering problems without full recourse to reasoned judgment and jumping to conclusions that cannot be supported by evidence is prejudice. That is reaching conclusions that are based on unsubstantiated evidence.

On the face of it, this doesn’t sound very different to the definition of intelligent behavior outlined above. In fact, the main difference is in the absence of the word ‘sensible’ in the second definition.

‘Sensible’ is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as: ‘Having or showing good sense – reasonable – judicious – moderate – practical’.

The word ‘reasonable’ is defined thus: ‘In accordance with reason – not absurd – having sound judgment – within the limits of reason’.

And in turn, ‘judicious’ is defined as: ‘sensible – prudent – sound in discernment and judgment’.

‘Moderate’ is: ‘Avoiding extremes – temperate in conduct or expression’.

There seems to be a certain amount of circularity in working out what intelligent behavior consists of, but that circularity is mainly semantic.

In more practical terms, intelligent behavior is that which has a large component of what we refer to as ‘common sense’.

Reaching sensible conclusions based on incomplete evidence must be tempered with common sense. If the conclusions reached are based on factors such as personal bias and motivation then the chances are that they will not be reasonable, judicious, moderate or practical.

This is not to say that emotions have no place in rationality, in making reasoned judgments, but rather that an undue amount of emotional input can be detrimental to an argument one is putting forward or defending.

Instead, exercising one’s rational judgment is nearer to reaching the same conclusions that any other reasonable individual would reach, armed with the same knowledge. It is rather like utilizing the intelligence of other intelligent people in order to verify one’s own thoughts on a particular matter.

The largest organism in the world is a grove of some sort of shrub in the state of Colorado that botanists thought were unconnected. They subsequently found that all the shrubs in the grove had root systems that were, in fact, interconnected.

In terms of mankind, perhaps we constitute an interconnected state too. What reasonable people would call reaching reasonable conclusions based on common sense would surely constitute some kind of interconnectedness, wouldn’t it?

Set in a historical framework, and taking into account the fact that Western modes of thinking constitute only a fraction of the totality of modes of rationality, having an inquiring mind is tantamount to no less than inheriting the critical faculty of one’s predecessors, and passing it on to those that follow.
Robert L. Fielding
References

Jean Piaget, Malcolm Piercy (2003) The Psychology of Intelligence (Routledge Classics)
Oxford English Dictionary

 
Opting for the alternative: Making little decisions to make your life better.

By

Robert Leslie Fielding

‘Going with the flow’, ‘doing what everyone else does’, ‘conforming to the norm’, are synonymous with playing safe and in many cases, with acting without really thinking.

Examine your behavior: everything you do and everything you say. How much of what you do is an automatic response? How much of what you do is done without really thinking it through?

Let’s examine a scenario and then examine your response to it.

You go to a buffet dinner at a 5-star hotel. You pay what you consider to be a lot of money for the dinner. The buffet is extraordinary though. It has all your favorite food, cooked the way you like it, and it has many dishes you have often heard about but never tasted. You are hungry, and you have lots of time to sit and eat. You feel well, and are in good company. You take an empty plate and go to the food.

Question: Do you aim to get value for money at the buffet?

The answer to this is surely in the affirmative.

Question: What do you think is getting value for money at a buffet dinner?

If your answer is to eat as much as you can for as long as you can, then you are with the majority. Most people would agree with you: that is getting value for money at a buffet dinner.

If, however, your idea of getting value for money is to eat just as much as will make you walk away from the table feeling comfortable, and feeling that you have enjoyed tasting many of the different foods that were on offer without having overeaten, you are probably in the minority.

The fact that everybody at your table, indeed, everybody in the restaurant, is tucking in and aiming to eat as much as they possibly can, will probably make you feel that you tucking in and eating as much as you possibly can is the right thing to do.

Conversely, if you are only eating moderate amounts, you probably feel that you are slightly at odds with everyone around you in not piling up your plate.

This feeling slightly at odds with those around you might either make you act like the rest, or it might have the opposite effect: it might reinforce your belief in the correctness of being a bit more fastidious.

The popular way of doing things is not necessarily the right one – for you, or for anyone, for that matter.

It is equally true though, that the less common way of doing things is not your way either.

The point is that the more you do as others do, the more you act automatically, without really thinking about what you are doing, the more likely you are to not be doing the best for you. Opting for the alternative could present you with that best way for you.

In fact, in this case, it is absolutely true. Binge eating can and does lead to obesity in many, which can and often does lead to ill health.

The second way, the alternative way is the best. Let’s see if this notion can be extrapolated to take in other aspects of your daily life.

Here’s another situation for you: You are on a three-lane highway, driving in the outside lane at the speed limit. You are not in any great rush to get where you are going, but you want to get there reasonably early to catch the shops.

A car in h middle lane up in front of you indicates to move into the lane that you are in: the outside lane.

Do you:
C) Speed up to get past the other car before he can pull over into the
Lane that you are in?
D) Do you ease up on the accelerator and let the car into your lane?

In my experience of driving in the region, I would say that most drivers would go for (B). They would immediately speed up as soon as they saw the driver indicating.

The questions I now want to put to you are these:
d) What effect does your speeding up have on your own sense of well- being and safety, and on the other driver’s?
e) How much time do you think you save by driving like this?
f) Do you think you put anyone’s life in danger by doing this?

If you think about your reaction to the two questions, and to the situation, which gave rise to the questions, you might come to realize that by speeding up you are doing one of these things:
1) You are endangering yourself, the people in the car with you.
2) You are endangering the other driver and the people in his car with him.
3) You are putting yourself through unnecessary stress and increasing your impatience.
4) You are acting in a way that displays a certain amount of hostility and disdain for other road users.
5) You are acting in a way that is at odds with how you would probably like to be thought of by others.

Opt for the alternative – feel good about yourself – make a start to acting more courteously to others.

Third situation: You sit down and switch on the TV for an evening’s viewing. You know there are none of your favorite programs on for another hour yet. The channel that comes on the screen has just started showing a film.

Do you:
E) Stay with the film to see what it’s about?
F) Switch channels until you find something you like?
G) Switch channels without staying on any of them longer that a few seconds?
H) Ask your friend or partner what they would like to watch?
 
Achieving self-actualization and a sense of worth: The real value of education

By

Robert L. Fielding

There are times in every student’s life when it seems that education is just the worst thing on Earth. In the middle of revision for examinations, or worse, doing exams, it seems like a great idea that has gone awry. Everybody knows the value of education, but, like youth, it seems wasted on the young sometimes.

It’s easy to say that education is valuable from your armchair, smoking your pipe, wearing your comfortable slippers, whilst watching TV. It’s actually taking part; being a student that is difficult. Knowing that it is for your own good just isn’t enough sometimes.

You feel like getting someone to tell you how it really is god for you. Will it get me a better job, you ask yourself. Will it make my life that much better? What exactly will it do for me?

The answer is that it should get you a better job, although a lot of young graduates will tell you otherwise: it is still difficult getting a god job these days, with or without a good education.

It should make your life better, but that’s really up to you as much as anything you learnt at university.

What exactly will it do for you? I think I can answer that one, but it will take me a little longer than you might expect or want to wait.

First of all, if you want to know what your education will do for you, you have to ask yourself what you are prepared to do for it.

This is no riddle, just a question that raises the issue of your own motivation and how hard you are prepared to work for something that will change your life.

If you are serious about becoming educated, getting an education, you will have to put into it what you hope to get out of it; a lot.

You must get involved in your subjects. Immerse yourself in them, for that is the only way you will really feel the benefit later.

Right, now that we have established that you are serious, let’s begin trying to explain what your education is going to do for you.



























Using Occam’s razor sparingly: Exercising judgment in one’s thinking

By

Robert L. Fielding


1. You have been reading up on a topic that you have to write an essay about for homework.
2. You are reading about something that happened and you want to know why it happened.
3. You are curious about why some people act the way they do.

Deciding what to write about, what is important, reaching meaningful conclusions about the causes of certain events, or coming to understand the human condition and what motivates people, are all difficult things to do.

There are so many theories, ideas, and slants. There seems to be so much information on any given topic that reaching the right conclusions rather than jumping to them is difficult, if not impossible. At any rate that’s how it must look at times.

There are ways to reach sensible conclusions, and realizing that there may not be any right answers to complex questions is one such way. There are sensible, plausible answers, but most of the time, there is rarely just the one that is absolutely correct.

The physical sciences seem to represent the closest we get to ‘right’ answers, but any scientists will tell you that what is considered correct only applies at a certain level of analysis.

Water boils at 100 degrees Centigrade, and every schoolboy knows that. A closer look at water boiling, however, reveals that only pure water boils at that temperature, and then only at sea level. Add some impurities, and try the experiment at an altitude above mean sea level and you will find that in fact, water doesn’t behave in that way.

In the mosaic of information in other subjects, much of the information actually conflicts, and we know that statistics can be manipulated to prove anything, don’t we?

A friend of mine was recently informed by a doctor that his apparent deafness was due to a spinal degeneration that was limiting the amount of blood getting to the ear. Another doctor examined him and told him he had a an ear infection from swimming in water that may not have been chlorinated enough to prevent contamination.

My friend accepted the latter diagnosis. The question is: Was he right to do that? Was he right to accept the diagnosis that he most wanted to believe?

He accepted the simplest explanation. He used the principle known as ‘Occam’s razor’ to decide what to believe. He had a vested interest in so doing, and indeed, who wouldn’t want to believe the second explanation rather than the first?

Occam’s razor states that:
‘One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.’

It is similar to the principle of parsimony or the principle of simplicity, which is a criterion for deciding among scientific theories or explanations.

‘One should always choose the simplest explanation of a phenomenon, the one that requires the fewest leaps of logic.’
(Principia Cybernetica Web)

Or in other words, and to quote from ’Principia Cybernetica Web’ again:
‘A problem should be stated in its basic and simplest terms. In science, the simplest theory that fits the facts of a problem is the one that should be selected.’
In plain language, the simplest explanation is most probably the correct one, given that all the facts have been dealt with, the logical principle put forward by William of Occam, a medieval English philosopher.

Here is a real life example of Occam's Razor in practice.
Crop circles began to be reported in the 1970s. Two interpretations were made of the circles of matted grass. The first one was that UFOs had made the imprints. The second was that someone (human) had used some sort of instruments to push down the grass.(1)

Occam's Razor would say that given the lack of evidence for UFOs and the complexity involved in UFOs arriving from distant galaxies, the second interpretation is the simplest and therefore the one most likely to be correct.

Of course, both explanations could have been wrong, but again, the second was by far the simplest, and so, applying the principle of Occam’s razor, would be the one most likely to be correct.

More evidence would be needed before the first one could be accepted. In fact, two people later admitted that they hade made the circles, corroborating the second explanation.

For a given set of observations or data, there is always an infinite number of possible models explaining those same data. This is because a model normally represents an infinite number of possible cases. (1)

Evidence is critical in making judgments regarding explanations for otherwise inexplicable events is concerned.

We talk about reaching conclusions, and we talk about jumping to conclusions, and while it is true to say that the latter is usually applied to more day to day matters, it is also true to say that reaching conclusions based upon examination of sound evidence is always preferable to jumping to conclusions, or reaching a conclusion before any attempt at examining all the evidence has been undertaken.

Acceptance of a proposition based upon incomplete evidence is known as prejudice.

To be honest though, prejudicial behavior is usually displayed in connection with issues that concern people rather than, for example, with scientific phenomena.

Nevertheless, if we were to invariably accept the simplest explanation as being the nearest one to the truth, or to reality, then we would be guilty of habitually ignoring potentially important data just because it complicated the issue or because it was not presented initially.

A complete, in depth understanding of complex issues or equations demands that we examine all the relevant data before we pass judgment or define something, or decide upon something.

The principle known as Occam’s razor seems most helpful in helping us to limit data that are relevant to our understanding.

It is the awareness of the existence of other variables that is necessary, along with deeming them relevant or otherwise.

In this age of the information super-highway, the Internet, it is those who are able to select relevant data and use it sensibly who will be more successful, and a plethora of information increases the difficulty of their being able to do that.

References
(1) http://pesmc1.vub.ac.be/OCCAMRAZ.html
(2) Principia Cybernetica Web

 




-1-
Writing is discovering
We learn how to write at school and then most of us write very little afterwards. We write letters to our friends and relatives but few of us write for pleasure. To be able to write well means practicing writing, and it also means reading more.

Writing for pleasure is a good way of finding out about ourselves. We write what we know about and in writing we also find out some things we didn’t know we knew. Reading what others have written allows us to learn about them and about writing itself – how to use words/sentences/paragraphs to communicate.

Perhaps you have recently felt the need to write something down. The act of writing a letter to a friend to say what you have been doing will make you think - make you remember something you thought you had forgotten, and make you relive it and enjoy it once more. For unlike speaking to someone, which is also therapeutic, writing is permanent; you can reread it and rewrite it. And while you are writing it you can discover new meaning, find new significance in what you have done. That is how writing teaches us something about ourselves.




Writing about something we know about but haven't actually done, or writing about somebody we know about but haven't actually met - this kind of writing - to be read by ourselves or sometimes by others, is called creative writing. You create a person, an event, an idea or whatever, and what you have created remains yours. Someone said that our mistakes are the only things that we can truly call our own, but I reckon we can claim our ideas put down in print are our very own too.

You might say that there is nothing new, that someone has written it all before, but is that really true? Shakespeare wrote tragedies, comedies and historical dramas, Agatha Christie wrote ‘whodunnits’, Charles Dickens wrote about the times he lived in, but that still doesn't mean everything's been covered; your thoughts are still unique, as unique as you are.

The things inside your head, your thoughts and our feelings, are what can make you vulnerable, and if sharing your innermost thoughts can be threatening, how much more intimidating is it to have those thoughts on paper, for all to see and confront you. Creating in writing is a bold step, but once taken can be the way to increasing self-confidence. Making a commitment to your views will bring confidence; the confidence to say what you believe. But take heart, at first, it's not vital that anybody else reads your early efforts at writing. The act of writing is the thing, it's a beginning, a start to finding out something you didn't know about yourself. Sharing that new knowledge with a partner, friend or confidant is a step in the direction of greater psychological health, for you and the people in your life, for your relationships, and for your own life.

Like you, every writer has felt a need to write. Dickens had to write to prevent himself and his family going the way of his father, into prison for debt, and because he felt compelled to comment on and criticize the world he had been born into. Hemingway was driven by his sense of adventure, expressing the things he experienced in perhaps the only way he could, and in the way only he could.

Jane Ellice Hopkins said, 'Gift, like genius, means an infinite capacity for taking pains.' Dickens, Hemingway and Shakespeare had this infinite capacity, but maybe they weren't aware they had it until they started writing. Another better known aphorism is that there's a book in everyone. Those who have already started to write have realized the truth of this, and have started to discover their infinite capacity for taking pains.
The exercise I recommend you today is to try to identify some of your needs to write, which may not always be your openly stated reasons for wanting to write. Above all, be honest with yourself. Write a dialogue between you as a writer and you as a reader. It may sound strange, but you will find out something about yourself that you weren’t fully aware of.









-2-
Learning from reading
To write well, you need to read, but having read something you enjoyed, the thing is not to copy but to develop your own style of writing, or should I say, styles, for different genres (types of writing) require different styles.

Within the genre of the short story, for example, it is obvious that a tale about the gold rush in the Yukon will be written in a different style to a story about a suburban dilemma in England.

I prefer to use the term 'voice' when talking about any particular style. As you write words down, you will hear them in your head, and if they sound right, and are consistent your audience will attune to them whilst reading. In the same way, whilst reading a short story by someone else, you will get used to the writer's 'voice' in the words s/he has written. The more you read, the more 'voices' you will hear, and your repertoire of 'voices' will increase.

I have no intention of telling readers which books to read. We all have our favorite authors and subjects; some people prefer detective novels, some sci fi, and some horror stories. The point in reading to improve your writing is not to necessarily move away from the kind of things you enjoy, but to notice things while you are reading them.

There are several things you will already have noticed whilst reading, and some other things you may not have noticed. The structure of the novel or short story is one thing to notice, although the structures of short stories vary enormously from those of novels, and for a very good reason; the novelist has much more space and time to develop characters, for instance, or to describe scenes and events.

The question of who is telling the story is an important one. In the marvelous novel 'Cold Mountain' by Charles Frazier, the story is narrated by two characters, Inman, a soldier returning from the American Civil War, and his former love, Ada, and the story switches from one to the other until they meet at Cold Mountain after the journey Inman takes to get back to her. This is not an uncommon way of telling a story; Dickens uses a similar technique in 'Bleak House'. But there are plenty of other ways of narrating the story, and the distance from the action can also vary with whoever is telling it. The all-knowing author is one, and this is characterised in the work of writers such as Jane Austen, or Sir Walter Scott. In these novels it is clear by the end what the opinion of the writer is.

More usually, in modern novels, the writer gives clues to the reader, rather than stating in overt terms what the reader's conclusions must be. In 'The Bonfire of the Vanities', Tom Wolfe never really offers an opinion on the central character, Sherman McCoy, but rather, through the things he says and does, the writer gives the reader pretty clear indications that the man is heading for a fall, despite his own feeling of invincibility, and the title helps too. However, plot is something I wish to deal with later in this series, so let's leave it there for the time being.

The point about who does what in anything you happen to be reading is that you notice it, notice and remember. For then you will have choice, and that is what ultimately gives a writer freedom; the freedom to tell the tale in the way she wants, to create an impression on the reader. The impression readers get from reading is their own business. There are as many interpretations of any particular piece of fiction as there are readers of it. I would say that the best a writer can hope for is to keep readers interested, and keep them turning the pages.

Besides the structure of the novel; the plot and the identity of the narrator, the next thing to notice, but probably more difficult to do is to notice the language the writer uses. At sentence level, for example, it is easy to notice that Hemingway uses much shorter sentences than Jane Austen, but within sentences, the words writers use will be different too, as will the structuring of each sentence, and this will, of course, vary from sentence to sentence. There is a great deal of difference between:
'The cat sat on the mat.'
and
'The mat was sat on by the cat.'
using a very simple example. But the writer could write,
'The cat matted down.'
or
'The cat flopped matward.'
The main difference as far as grammar is concerned is that the first two sentences are conventional, whereas the second two are not; the former uses what appears to be a new word, 'matted', and the latter, a ‘portmanteau word’ matward of my own coining. Either way, the same thing happened ; the cat sat on the mat, but all four sentences have a different feel about them, a different 'voice'. Noticing the linguistic tricks writers use is one of the steps to becoming a better writer, and a more alert reader. The different ways writers use words cannot be just put into the simplistic pigeon-holes; formal and informal. Better is how salient is the action being described, or how incidental? In the examples above, the first two sentences seem to give the cat's sitting itself on the mat some kind of prominence, whereas the second two treat the cat's action as something incidental to something else that is going on, making it sound less important.

Which way the writer chooses may depend on this salience rather than on any aspect of grammar, but more of grammar later.

A useful exercise now might be to pick up any four novels at hand, and open them at any page to read and notice any differences in 'voice' you can identify, and then, having noticed that there are some, to examine what it is that makes them different. To read through the words to get at the action is one thing, to stop at them to see how your attention is being manipulated is quite another.
























-3-
Everybody has a story to tell, have you got one?

Whether this question can be answered positively in your case, doesn't really depend on a reply like, 'It depends if you've got what it takes.'

In a sense, everybody's got what it takes, the discovery of what 'it' is, is a journey you must take. That journey might be arduous, but it should be enjoyable. It will be tiring, but it will also be rewarding, so take it. If you don't, you'll never know, will you?

You could do a lot worse than by starting with a short story, not because this is any easier than writing a novel, but because it is a shorter process; two thousand words takes less time than two hundred pages. You need to be determined, not discouraged, and although it is certainly true that the two require different skills, some learnt in the writing of shorter pieces can be transferred in the writing of longer ones.

Some schools tell their would be authors to start with what they know, and this is good advice. The pitfalls in this approach are that you might know your subject so well that you unconsciously assume the same of your readers. I once wrote what I thought was a hysterical monologue about the place I was brought up, only to find out when reading it aloud to my friends, that the references were incomprehensible, removing the comedy for them.

Mentioning enough, but not too much versus not mentioning nearly enough always sees the first the victor over the second, a poor third being mentioning too much. It's the same way when you tell a joke; overdoing it kills the humor, underdoing it cuts out the humor altogether.

Trying out your efforts on a disinterested party will have the effect of bringing you up short if you are guilty of either.

So, you have an idea for a story. You could do a lot worse than starting by trying to imagine who you are writing for.

And by this, I do not mean, just Fred and Lilly next door, but rather, adults or children, or adolescents, and then sharpening your focus; Fred and Lilly wanting something light to read whilst waiting for their flight to be announced on an airport monitor screen, Fred still wanting light reading while dinner is cooking, or heavier stuff to be read when there's more time, say at weekend.

If you are intent on teaching your reader something, forget writing and become a teacher. Like the readers' impressions, any lessons to be found in your writing is up to them.

Generations of avid readers of Tolkien's 'The Lord of The Rings' have doubtlessly read all sorts of things into that marvelous book, but Tolkien himself once said that he 'cordially disliked allegory'.

If a person reading your work finds allegorical meaning on every page, that's up to her, but trying to put it there could be perceived as an imposition on a reader, and readers so imposed on usually stop reading.

Don't try to do too much. A small incident you remember may be enough. The very fact that you have remembered it at all may mean that it has enough in common with the human condition to render it interesting to those who are only being told about it.

Make a start, but don't start too early; what you had for breakfast this morning may only have significance if you happen to vomit before lunchtime. Remember the evils of mentioning too much. And remember your limitations; 2000 words come up very quickly, even quicker than your fried breakfast, if that's what you are writing about. Initially in writing, you are the only judge; writing is a lonely pastime. Once you've put it down on paper however, it becomes everybody's property, to disembowel, poke fun at, or just throw away unread. I said that writing for others can be intimidating, and I meant it.

The exercise today then could go something like this; search your memory for an incident you think would stand being written about and read. Don't start writing straight away, dwell on your thoughts, turn them over in your mind, talk to anyone else who can recall them with you; you might have forgotten an important part. Sleep on it, then try it out. Once you have written even part of it, reread it to see if it's going where you want it to go, and if you're feeling brave, let somebody else read it.



-4-
Getting started
So you've already started to write about the incident you remembered, and now you've dried up, you've run out of things to say, and the blank page in front of you is a constant reminder to you that you haven't got what it takes. Wrong. The best writers have all gone through what you're going through right now. How you cope with it is up to you. How do I cope with writer's block? I keep writing through it, which sounds facetious, but that's one way. And when you've found your touch again, throw away the rubbish you wrote getting through your block and start again. Writers' rubbish bins are full of false starts. Above all, do not despair. The loneliness of writing means you can't turn to anybody for help. You're on your own. And coming through it on your own will boost your self-confidence, and remove your doubts. We're not talking about performing open-heart surgery here. If you mess it up, start again.

I believe there's such a thing as the story leading the writer on, which is an approach I sometimes try when I get stuck.

Consider the opening sentences:-
The man entered the building.
Now if we substitute words, and add words, we get the beginning of a scenario. Here goes:
1. The man entered the room. (add your own adverb)
2. The woman entered the room.(change 'room')
3. The child entered the room nervously. (continue with 'because'
4. The Minister entered the conference hall confidently.(continue with ‘but soon....’)

If you added the word 'happily' to the first sentence, you have already committed yourself to something that has already happened, or is about to happen, and so it is with most adverbs you choose. Similarly, if you chose to replace 'room' with 'doctor's surgery' in the second, then you have placed yourself in a certain array of scenarios, it's up to you.

A word of advice though, don't reveal everything too early unless you feel the need to; you have to have somewhere to go with your story.

Now you can play with these sentences forever or until you hit on something that stirs something in you. This might seem like child's play, but it serves to illustrate what I'm talking about; getting your head in gear and your pen in your hand.

Of course, you may be one of those fortunate people for whom words trip gaily from your pen. A word of warning here too; dashing down anything and everything that comes to mind may well work for you, but then again, you may find in the rereading that you have wandered off course. It's so easy to do, and no less enjoyable for that either.

Re-reading and re-writing is your safety net; you can do what you please, with the proviso that what you do gets you some way towards where you want to go.

The words you write constrain you, but they also give you direction. I spoke earlier about the story leading you on, and that is how it happens.

The alternative to this, and one that the novelist must use, is the planning of a story. You leading it, rather than the other way round.

An exercise here might go along the lines of trying both approaches; firstly using sentences similar to the ones above for the story that leads, and for the planned approach, to jot down ideas, do some thinking, then some writing. This will leave you having written two stories, not a bad start.




























-5
Be a master of the universe! Writing is an art, or at least it can be, and in art anything is possible. Anything can be used in any way, as long as it intensifies the image it seeks to create, and it is the same with writing.

Becoming a writer means seeing significance in what most people regard as insignificant. Try to notice things in your everyday world as well as noticing things in your reading. Start to be more aware and jot things you notice down on paper for use later.

Significance can be used to intensify meaning or lessen it, but like all good things it should only be used sparingly, and with thought. Overuse probably has the opposite effect to the one intended by the writer; overuse numbs, anaesthetizes, and deadens the reader's sensitivity.

However, finding significance, and using it well can replace half a page of description, and so is invaluable to the short story writer, who is limited by space.

Have you ever seen one of those balancing toys; a trapeze artist on a unicycle, that can balance on a washing line because his outstretched arms hold poles with weights on the end, lowering his centre of gravity to a point just below the line on which he cleverly balances.

I saw one recently and I thought it could be used to emphasize something significant.

This week's exercise is to choose a variety of referents for this cleverly designed toy. Think about it; in choosing an object, which would be the most appropriate, think of a situation, or a person in a situation, and apply it to that.

Here is my application.

'John, feeling that his life had come to a standstill, contemplated the little man balancing on the line in front of him. The toy was incapable of movement; up or down, right or left, forwards or backwards.
"That's me," he said to himself, and shrugged his shoulders involuntarily.'

The toy has one fairly clear characteristic with which 'John' can identify with, and perhaps more importantly, which the reader can recognize. And he remarks upon it, which is a quick, easy way of telling the reader.

But that is by no means the only way the toy could be used, nor is it the best way; that depends on your person, the situation, predicament, or whatever, but most of all it depends on your imagination, your ability to focus the reader's mind on your way of thinking about a situation in a story.

Anything can be used in this way, and it doesn't have to be an object either, an action would do equally well.

Two exercises here; the second being to choose an object or an action, or anything, and use it to signify something, some emotion, somebody, whatever. My limitations are yours; three sentences, in which to mention the object, the person, and a hint of the situation.










































-6-
Your resources There's a world out there, and there's one inside your head too. Strange as it may seem, there's probably a bigger, more wonderful world in your imagination than exists spinning through space.

And in your writing you can choose either the world out there, or the one in your head. Writers choose both, one or the other, but more likely a mixture of both. Tom Clancy, the writer of thrillers, uses his painstaking research to flesh out the world of his imagination. James Elroy uses his knowledge of certain sections of American society to give his crime thrillers authenticity.

I wrote earlier about writing about what you know, writing from the world of your experience, which needs only a minimum amount of research, but something merely narrated is not telling a story, it's writing a diary. To make it into a story requires something else, that something else is your imagination and your choice of significant events. The event you focus on may have occurred in real time; A preceded B, or did it? Maybe somebody did something, or said something, but that doing or saying was preceded by thought, or was it? And what is time anyway, if not elastic. You can go to and fro through it as you wish, taking your readers with you using signposts to tell them where you are. Your imagination can ask the question: What if? Plant that question in the reader's mind and you open up a vast cluster of possibilities, you get the reader to ask the same question, to think, to apply those thoughts to her own life, and that makes for good reading.

The realm of pure imagination in fiction is the world of sci-fi, but yesterday's sci-fi can become today's reality as was with the novels of HG Wells and Jules Verne. Perhaps a better term would be 'i-fi'; 'idea-fiction, which could then include the works of Tolkien, Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Richard Adams and many, many more.

All genres of fiction impose their difficulties; the world of human drama involves the problem of what I would call 'believability'; calling on your own understanding of human nature must accord with
that of your readers’.

We are all bound by earthly laws, and although our thoughts can develop along lines that are illogical, the reader needs a system of consistent signs to help fathom the logic, or the apparent lack of it.

With sci-fi, the writer can impose logic, overturn gravity, people a planet with strange beings, travel faster than the speed of light, but is still compelled to bring the reader along into this 'new world', thus allowing attempts at forecasting, understanding the future by referring to what has gone before in the story.

Writing 'i-fi' means no less dedication, probably more. To understand the strange, convoluted world of 'Gormenghast' in Mervyn Peake's trilogy, is to more fully enjoy it. It is to lose oneself in a world created only by words. If you can do that in your writing, you're on your way to becoming a great writer.

A lot to take in here, so a variety of exercises. One: take your remembered event and put a time scale on it. Decide what comes first, the thought or the deed. If what happened caused an effect, is there something in the outcome that could have been foretold before it?

Two: create a small world of your own. You don't have to go too far. Imagine your cat can tell you about his day, describe the things in your lawn at people level, or any minute world, which is not ordinarily open to us humans.

Whichever one you undertake, the main thing to do is to think. Think and imagine, the forerunners to good writing.



























-7-
Language; words, grammar, and convention
The artist; the poet, the painter, the sculptor, and the writer of fiction, can all use 'poetic licence'. The poet uses assonance, the painter and the sculptor, proportion, and the writer; the writer has all sorts of devices she can use.

Linguists have recently realized that grammatical structure, and what they call lexis; words, are much more closely related than was formerly thought. Grammar and lexis, plus punctuation – language - is the medium the writer works in.

With structure, writers are 'free' within broad and clearly defined boundaries; they must be grammatically correct, which sounds rather stifling and somewhat old-fashioned. Actually, many writers write in ways that are not always grammatically correct. E. Annie Proulx, the author of ‘The Shipping News’ uses
‘sentences’ in ways that are innovative, to say the least. Her way of writing, however, is brilliantly effective at conjuring images for the reader’ s enjoyment.

It is within the realm of lexis that writers find real freedom, coining their own words, which includes all parts of speech, with the possible exception of articles and prepositions.

Hamlet says, "it out-herods Herod", Dylan Thomas regularly uses words in his own unique way; 'jellyfishing', 'Bible black and starless', and 'viper through her', and many more in his panoply of language, 'Under Milkwood'.

Notice the parts of speech replaced here; Hamlet uses the name of Herod, the tyrannical king of Judaea, as a verb with 'out'. He could have said, 'outdoes Herod'. 'Jellyfishing' is not fishing for jellies, but is a verb that Thomas used to replace something like 'flooding over', 'Bible-black' is a compound adjective to describe the darkness of the night, and 'viper', a noun, is used here as a verb to denote how a downtrodden husband imagines the poison he is about to put in his wife's tea will pass through her body.

Here is the mixing of structure and lexis the linguists talk about. But is it English? It is – creative English. The days of absolute correctness in prose are gone, if they were ever here.

The point about being creative with language is not being clever with it, but using it to heighten meaning.

Lewis Carroll showed how words that don't exist, could do, if our 'rules' of spelling were applied further. He used portmanteau words like 'slithy', and purely non-existent words like 'vorpel' and 'mimsy' to relate the tale 'Jabberwocky', making Alice puzzled but certain something horrible had happened.

The coining of entirely new words seems to belong to the world of sci-fi, but was their a word 'hobbit' before Tolkien wrote about one?

To be honest, coining new words, or using old ones in a new way, seems to be moving nearer to poetic language, and so care should be taken. You could get away with it in a fantasy but perhaps not in a social drama.

Using pronunciation creatively is far more constraining, but can be done. The word 'yes' could be written as, 'Yes!' or 'Yes?' This is not entirely creative, for the word is frequently used in speech in this way. It takes a little more mental gymnastics to write 'No?', but it is authentic nevertheless.

But what can easily be done in speech is more difficult when writing. Remember the little girl, who is asked by her mother to go next door to find out how old Mrs. Smith is, returning with the reply, "She said, 'Mind your own business'"? Making sense of the written version of what the girls mother actually said would be the business of the reader, unless the girls question, "My mother wants to know how old you are" were to be given as well, which defeats the joke somewhat. There is practically no way of indicating intonation other than perhaps by italics or bold type, or by the written reaction of the listener.

Exercises here could go along the lines of turning nouns into verbs or adjectives, and putting question marks behind utterances that are not normally questions to see if they make sense as such. If they don't work, you'd be stretching the reader's patience by using them.

This is all about giving you more choice, more freedom in your writing, and again, it's about making the reader do some work too.

































-8-
Style:what you want to say the way you want it to sound
Grammar, words, punctuation, sentence length, and repetition all combine to contribute to style. You might read about what style consists of and yet still be unable to manipulate your own, in the same way that you might read how to ride a bicycle and then fall off immediately you try to do it. By far the best way of learning about style is to read different ones. But that still won't enable you to develop styles of your own. You will already have one style, of course, but it might not suit the writing you want to do, and style can make the difference between being read and not.

As you read, you might notice that there is a relationship between style and what is being written about. I think style acts upon the reader in a disguised form, or let's say that the reader is unconscious of a style until it's perceived as the wrong one for the subject. This might sound to you like being confronted with five closed identical doors and being asked to open only the right one, but there's more to it than that. I have already hinted that attentive readers make better writers, and it's true, they do.

Let's look at the styles in the made up extracts below:-

1. 'Cyd oozed out of the limo, delicious syrup from an upturned jar.
"Hi, honey," she purred, "wanna dance?"'
2. 'Margaret, the secretary, got out of the taxi carefully.
"Would you mind holding these for me, please?" she said.'
3. 'The car screeched to a halt, and the kid shot out like a cat from a backfire. "You want sump'n'?" he menaced.'
Three people getting out of cars and asking questions.
My questions are:
a) Tell me something about Cyd, Margaret and the kid.
b) How do you know the answers to (a)?
c) What helped you; words, grammar or what?

Very simple, but if you have answers to a, b, and c, then style, and the words I used gave them to you. Now you try it with a situation. Feeling what the characters are like will help. Be careful with cliches, there's one in (3) above.

Now for places.
1. 'The space he now crept into was totally black. A movement of air across his face told him he was in an enormous gallery. His breathing, irregular from exertion, cascaded round the walls and rushed back at him like a series of throaty explosions.'
2. 'After the cool of the morning, the library felt stiflingly warm, and the fusty smell of unturned pages made John's breathing short and soft.'
3. 'The steam, clamming up nostrils, damping a clean shirt down till it felt soiled, made getting undressed easier.
"Is it always this way?" Replies came in puffs of cloud, lighter than steam, from mouths that couldn't be seen. "Hotter".'
And actions:-
1. 'Deadening inertia bent his legs, his back strained, but slowly the lid came off. The wheels moved, imperceptible to the eye. Tom felt the car inch forward, two feet and the engine roared through the tailpipe, a puff of blue smoke made him cough.'
2. Walking at Jack's pace instead of his own meant that he couldn't get up his own rhythm. The pavement blurred out under his feet, the cracks that would have sounded out a tune in his ears evaporated in this hurrying to get home.'
3. 'The pages flicked past his eye, p-p-p-p- sounding dry and uncreased,
proud p-p polyanthus p-p phonetic. What was the word? 'Parlance: way of speaking as regards choice of words'. That was what he wanted.'

Exercises? Yes. With 'places' find some adjectives I could have used, and with actions, have a go at describing the same ones in a different way. Maybe you could do that with all of them?
























-9-
The plot thickens

The essence of good drama is conflict: 'The King is dead', is a report, 'The King was shot dead', is the beginning, or end of a drama.

'The King was shot dead, and the Queen pined away with grief' is a plot, according to the author, M Forster.

But who shot the King? Somebody with the means and the motive, if not a madman with a gun. Either way, as your story about the assassination of the King unfolds, someone mentioned earlier must have done it. If it happens to be someone who comes in at the last page to do it, then what you have is an imperfect plot, and unsatisfied readers.

Suspense, so we are told by Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense, occurs when the audience know something the characters in the film do not.

Giving readers information that you withhold from your characters places you in the position of all knowing author, that is unless you make another character let the cat out of the bag for you.

Dragging your readers along through the darkened room without telling anybody that a masked man with a gun is about to pounce on your hero, is another way, but why not use suspense and leave the hero to his own thoughts, to work it out for himself. In that way the reader can join in working it out, leaving his opinions confirmed, or moved in another direction.

The first person narrative style of telling a story can still contain elements of conflict. Place doubts in that person's mind and there's your conflict. She doesn't know what she's going to do next, and neither does the reader.

Your event from your own experience, mentioned ages ago, should have an amount of conflict in it, and by conflict, I do not necessarily mean that blood has to be spilt. A mother expecting her son home by ten and then having to wait till 2am has conflict. A resolution, even better, an unexpected resolution, is what you need for the event to be worth relating in the first place. The main trick with plots, after devising one that is, is to remember it and keep on course. You don't want to back yourself into a corner you can't reasonably get out of just because you forgot what you had planned.

In longer work, you'll need sub-plots too; stories within your main story, but this isn't necessary in a short story; there just isn't time.

One of the main problems writers of short stories have is that they often give themselves too much to do in the space available. A baffling array of plots and sub-plots will be too much for you to handle, and far too much for your readers. A sensitive treatment of one conflict, with a satisfying outcome, is much better than a super complicated one that is haphazardly resolved, involving weird and wonderful inventions to accomplish it. An intricate plot in a short story may leave the reader with the feeling that it has been heavily contrived, and thus unrealistic. Be fanciful, but not in ways that are overtly so.

Think your way through a conflict. Think about each element; a promise broken, or about to be, help not returned, a reaction that wasn't quite the one that was desired or expected, something you have lived, something you maybe haven't. Jot it or them, down, play with it, think about it, decide who tells it, or if two sides of the same coin will do it better, and remember human nature, whatever you perceive that to be.






























-10-
“Dialogue, you say!"

No kitchen sink drama involves everything that is ever said in the kitchen, or anywhere else for that matter. Dramatists don't report conversations, they invent them. They leave out everything that doesn't contribute to the unfolding drama. Were this not so, kitchen sink dramas would go on all night.

Conversational analysis, the transcribing and dissecting of each and every word, every pause, false start and noise made by two or more interlocutors, is incomprehensible to all those except the analyst. Even the persons whose speech has been recorded and transcribed wouldn't recognize the transcription as their own, at first glance. And transcribing conversation is the most time-consuming, tedious activity I can think of. So forget that amount of 'realism', it isn't worth it, and would drive an audience to distraction, not to mention the actors toiling with such a script at rehearsal. The same goes for a story.

For drama, on the stage, or in the pages of a book, is not reality, it is art posing as reality, and that is quite a different thing altogether.

I would say that brevity, clarity of meaning, and precision are what makes good dialogue. But a moment to reflect on what people actually say will help. People don't talk in sentences. That's the first thing. They interrupt, talk at each other while the other person is talking, do not talk when they are bidden. To be masterful at writing dialogue is to be masterful at handling silence, and that goes for actors too.

Brevity, saying enough, and no more is a good watchword, both in writing dialogue and narrative. A character that goes on and on will only be tolerated if that is the personality you give him and make others react to it, otherwise he'll just sound tedious. Jane Austen often gives Mrs Bennett in 'Pride and Prejudice' lots of words, but little to say, and that is how we come to know what she is like. Hemingway's characters are often taciturn, but what they do eventually say has meaning. Clarity of meaning; using words that have salience to the reader, which means being as brief as it takes, is another important characteristic of good dialogue. There might be misunderstanding between your characters; there should be none between them and the reader.

Lastly, precision; by which I mean writing dialogue that has the right amount of meaning. Don't forget that people use many different ways to convey the same meaning. We often say something other than what is expected, as a way of avoiding the subject, often changing the subject. Done sensitively, it can still have meaning.

All the feelings known to man can be insinuated through words: blind terror, unhappiness, hate, love, sarcasm, comedy, can be written into dialogue. Every type of response can too; truthful ones, deceitful ones, open- hearted ones, love, hate, any kind you care to name.

So, exercises for this section will be to listen more acutely, even if that means eavesdropping. Listen to the way people refuse, and acquiesce, to the way they give permission, and refuse it, and to the way they change the subject as a way of denying a proposition.

Write a short dialogue that contains an element of conflict, and don't use the words, 's/he said', after every line of utterances. Try to give your characters something to do while they are speaking; people rarely sit still while they are talking unless they happen to be on a train or as bus, and even then they might read a newspaper or unwrap sandwiches. Doing this will make your dialogue less artificial.

Reading dialogue in novels and short stories will give you clues to how it's done, remembering perhaps, that a character from Dickens will not use words in the way they are used today.





























-11-
The things to have round you

The things I have round me when I'm writing? Well, I have a cup of tea, that's essential, and some music, that's essential too, but it may not be for you. I should say that the most important thing to have is space, your own space where you can be quiet, where you can talk to yourself, and where you feel comfortable. Things to have near you; some kind of machine that retains what you've written; a word processor, or a computer. I clung to an old typewriter for years until I discovered the convenience of the micro-chip, but a pen and some paper will suffice if times are hard.

I can put my right hand on a dictionary, a good one, an encyclopedia, my left hand on a book of quotations, a thesaurus and the Writer and Artists' Yearbook, and that's it. I use a pocket dictionary for spelling and quick checks, and a larger one for more detailed definitions. My encyclopedia gives me detail that can't be found in a dictionary. You could use the Internet, but that might mean leaving your text, and an encyclopedia is quicker anyway; surfing the Net might be enjoyable, but it stops you writing.

My word processor has its own thesaurus, but it is nothing like as comprehensive as a Roget’s Thesaurus.

A book of quotations comes in handy sometimes; I've used it two or three times writing this.

The Writer and Artists' Yearbook is really only of any use when the thing's finished, more of that later.

Everything else I need is between my ears, or in a novel in my bookcase.

When I'm not writing, when I'm out and about, I should carry a notebook and pencil, but I don't. I've tried it but it was empty after the first week, and by the second I'd forgotten where I'd put it. I don't work that way, but you might, so try it.

One technique I have when going somewhere different, somewhere interesting, is to try to notice two or three things about the place in some detail, and if you happen to notice I'm not in the conversation at one point, that's probably what I'll be doing.

To write with any serious intent is to live and breathe writing. It becomes an obsession. I once asked a prolific author friend of mine how he kept at it. His reply was that writing had got to be a habit he couldn't give up; he had to write. That is how I feel about my writing, and that is how you'll feel if you give it a chance.

Don't go anywhere or do anything without remembering what you are; a writer. Being more aware of your surroundings, your actions, what you say, and what others do and say, is the way to a fuller, more enjoyable life.

It might sound a funny thing to say, but remember to keep yourself fit as well. Sitting at a desk writing isn't the best way of taking exercise, and you'll feel a lot less tired, and a lot more alert if you take exercise regularly.

Forget the image of a room full of cigarette smoke, a whisky bottle half empty, and a writer hard at it creating a masterpiece. That's pure fiction. Surround yourself with everything you need to suit you, get a good night's sleep every night, be joyful, and your writing will be the better for it, suffering for your art went out with Vincent van Gogh.

No exercises. Just get yourself organised, and kitted out with what you need to write. Don't forget paper.




























-12-

Online help for writers

There is an abundance online of help of all kinds for writers.


Go to any site and follow the links for what you need.

One of the best is WritingFix.com which provides help with

 Finding ideas
 Tools for writers
 Games for writers
 Simple punctuation lessons
 Simple grammar lessons
 On-Line publishing and contests

Writingfix.com provides an interactive Instant Plot Creator.
 Setting
 Character
 Conflict

Logical and structured writing ideas
 Left-brained prompts
 Step-by-step Mini-Workshops
 List write prompts
 Playing with language
 Structured paragraphs
 Structured poetry

Recklessly creative writing ideas
 Right-brained prompts
 Story starters for writers
 Great sentence creators
 Who/What/When/Where Games
 Visual sparks for writers
 Alliterative sparks for writers

Idea Development
 Writing from experience
 Sharpening details
 Encouraging unique ideas
 Original ideas within a structure
Voice
 Imitating authentic voice
 Point of view experimentation
 Figurative language play
 Audience awareness

Word choice
 Playing with language
 Using strong verbs
 Adjectives with depth

Organization
 Writing strong introductions
 Linking leads to conclusions
 Paragraphing and sequencing
 Titling your work
Conventions
 Grammatical rules in context
 Punctuation in context
 Grammar terms in context
Sentence fluency
 Sentence rhythm
 Varying sentence beginnings

WritingFix.com also provides links to the following useful resources for writers
 Online dictionaries
 Roget’s Thesaurus
 Rhyming dictionaries
 Bartlett’s Quotations
 Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations
 Published poetry Searching Tool
 Writers’ Handbooks
 Encyclopedias

General tips for writers include:
 20 Writing Tips
 Writing tips, tools and ideas
 Poetry writing tips
 Marketing and freelance links

ReadersRead.com is linked to WritingFix.com and provides a lot of very useful material for readers and writers who want to read:
 Author Directory
 Book Blog
 Book Excerpts
 Book Giveaways
 Book Resources
 Book Reviews
 Book Searches
 Books to Film
 Discussion Forums
 Features
 Future Releases
 Newsstand
 Publishing Industry
 Readers’ Roundup
 Author Interviews
 Essays and Articles

There are also links to individual writers’ websites.
www.sallyannsheridan.com provides:
 The Magic of Writing Things Down
 Open Events
 Friends and Links
 Books and CDs

Really, there are literally millions of sites devoted to the writer and her craft. Some are better than others – some are pay sites – some are freebies – most are well linked to related sites. It pays to look around, but the sites mentioned are wonderful!!














-13-
Getting it into print

Well, that's the easy part done; you've written your story, and now you want to see it on a bookshelf.

Where you see it published may depend on whether you've targeted it's destination thoroughly. If you've been writing the kind of story that normally appears in a woman's magazine, you should familiarize yourself with the content, type and length of stories that regularly appear in it. Check also with an up to date copy of The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook, which will tell you if the magazine you have in mind accepts unsolicited material; some do, some don't.

If you've written a collection of stories and want it to be published, your best bet is to get in touch with an agent. Again you'll find details in TW&AY, which also gives good advice on: submitting material, writing for newspapers, writing magazine articles, as well as invaluable stuff on self-publishing, vanity publishing, marketing plays, writing for broadcasting, and copyright laws, as well as a lot of other vital information, plus names and addresses of editors, publishers, literary agents and broadcasting companies. At about $12 a copy, it's great value.

It seems these days that publishers and their agencies are more interested in making money than art. Maybe it's always been that way, I'm not sure. But if a publisher or an agent can be convinced that there's a follow up, or better still, several follow ups to the book you've just written, you might have a better chance of getting it published, provided that is, that it's good enough to warrant reading in the first place.

For unusual one off stuff, it might be worth your while going to a literary magazine rather than to a publisher of books.
'Stand Magazine' takes short stories, poetry, translations and literary criticism, as well as taking entries for its biennial short story and poetry competitions.

'Staple' takes the same kind of material, but doesn't offer competitions.

'Raconteur Magazine Short Story Competition' at 44, Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8LR, and the excellent 'Writing Magazine', 'Writers's News', 'Writers' Monthly', and 'Writers' Forum' offer advice to new writers, plus details of short story and poetry competitions. You'll find all the details in The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook.

Just the act of entering writing competitions, let alone winning them, provides great incentive; at least somebody is going to read your story.

Not hearing whether you've won or been short-listed probably means you haven't. You shouldn't be disheartened. Hemingway, it was said, could paper the walls of his room with rejection slips at one time. Don't give up, you need determination, and a belief in yourself and your writing. You need self-confidence, and you'll get it writing. Good luck!
Robert L Fielding


 
How an ant learned to spell

by

Robert Leslie Fielding


Once upon, in a staff-room in a school, there was a desk – it was a teacher’s desk. There was a computer on the desk, as well as a lot of paper and things like paper clips, drawing pins and pens, pencils and a pencil sharpener. Robert, the teacher who sat at this desk liked to eat sandwiches as he tapped away on the keyboard of his computer.

As he was eating his sandwiches, a few crumbs of bread fell onto the keyboard, and soon, the spaces between the keys all had little pieces of bread stuck between them.

Now below the desk, under the floorboards, lived a colony of ants. These ants were usually hungry and so they spent most of their time looking for food. They searched the staff-room. They went up every chair leg and onto every desk in search of something to eat. They hardly ever found much to eat on most of the teachers’ desks in the staff-room, but one of the places they found a lot of food was on Robert’s keyboard on Desk 18.

Robert always had sandwiches for lunch and crumbs always fell onto his keyboard whenever he ate his sandwiches. The crumbs that fell onto his keyboard were very, very small of course, so he didn’t notice them, but there they were, waiting for the ants to come and find them.




As soon as the leader of the ants’ search party noticed them the other, hungry ants came up from below and carried the crumbs off to their caves under the floor beneath Desk 18. The work was heavy, but as everybody knows, ants are the strongest creatures in the world, for their size and weight. They carried the crumbs of bread down the legs of Robert’s chair and down through the gaps in the floorboards.




As time went on, and as Robert continued to eat his sandwiches and crumbs continued to fall, and the ants became well fed. They moved a little nearer to Desk 18 so that they wouldn’t have to carry the crumbs of bread very far.

Every day, a group of ants climbed up one of the legs of Robert’s desk and then helped each other up onto the keyboard the look at the food that was waiting for them.

It was as if they were farmers and were looking at waving corn in their fields. They smiled at each other when they saw the new crop of crumbs. Robert had eaten his sandwiches, and there were crumbs all over the centre of the keyboard, around the letters, R-T-Y-U and D-F-G-H-J-K and C-V-B-N-M. One or two of the ants found crumbs next to the letters Q and W, and around the keys marked Backspace, Enter, and Shift, and one ant found a few crumbs at the back of the long space bar right at the front of the keyboard. No crumbs were found around the numbered keys 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0 or the keys marked ESC-F1-F2-F3-F4-F5-F6-F7-F8-F9-F10-F11-F12, and the keys marked Insert – Page Up-Home-Delete-End-Page Down were all as clean as a whistle.





Very quickly, the ants picked all the crumbs from between the keys. They found Robert’s toothpicks and used them as long tools to help them remove the crumbs from between the keys.





Sometimes, someone, probably another teacher, or one of the dreaded cleaners, walked past Desk 18 and the ants quickly stopped what they were doing, put the toothpicks down in between the keys and dived headfirst down to the bottom of the keyboard.





This didn’t happen too often but when it did, all the ants knew what to do, and they dropped the toothpicks and dived for cover into the keyboard. The keyboard was an old one and it had a few cracks in it. One day, one of the ants dived for cover and fell down a crack, right inside the keyboard. Everything was dark and the ant was a little scared, but ants are used to darkness and so after a short time, the ant stood up and looked around him. The inside of the keyboard was a wonderful place with strange shapes everywhere – there were little pads to sit and rest on – more than a hundred in fact – most where the same size – little squares – some were bigger and some were different shapes. The ant looked everywhere inside the keyboard, and soon saw that there were quite a few cracks where the light from above shone into the inside.





Everything was quiet, but soon the ant heard noises – his friends above were trying to find him and were shouting his name.
“BORIS – BORIS”, they shouted. Boris laughed. He knew his friends couldn’t find him and so he went to the bottom of a ray of light let in by one of the cracks in the keyboard and crawled up, back into the light.





Boris smiled when he saw his pals looking down between the keys and along each row. They looked worried. They knew it was Robert’s time to come to his desk, sit down, switch on his computer and begin work.

“Where is he?” shouted one ant – Cuthbert.
“I don’t know!” cried another – Evans.
“He isn’t here”, cried a third –Fred.
“He must have gone back down home”, shouted yet another –Gilbert.
“Let’s all stay calm”, said Alfred, their leader, “he must be somewhere.” All the ants nodded their heads in agreement. It was true. He must be somewhere. Just as they were all nodding their heads in agreement, Boris shouted from the far end of the keyboard.
“Hey”, he shouted, “don’t worry, I’m here.” The others all looked around quickly. They were all surprised and stood with their mouths open, looking at their pal Boris.




“Where did you go?” Denis shouted angrily
“Yes, we were looking for you”, said Gilbert and Horace together, “And we were worried about you”, said Horace. Horace and Gilbert went everywhere together, with their friends Susan and Cuthbert, and sometimes with Penny and Trevor.

“There was no need to worry about me,” said Boris, “I was fine.”
“But where have you been?” asked Alfred, his face still red from standing upside down with his head between the keys as he looked for Boris.





“Come on, I’ll show you,” said Boris, “I’ve found a place for us – a nice restaurant where we can eat and then have a rest afterwards. Come on!” he said and he suddenly disappeared.

The others scrambled over the keys to find out where Boris had disappeared.





All the ants finally reached the place were Boris had been seen last. They peered down between the key marked Enter, and the one marked Backspace. They looked down but they couldn’t see anything or anyone. Boris had simply disappeared off the keyboard.




Then a sort of muffled sound came from below the key marked Enter. It sounded like somebody was saying something.
“I’m down here”, the muffled voice said.
“WHERE?” shouted all the ants together.
“DOWN HERE!” came the reply, a bit clearer now.
“He’s down there”, said Gilbert.
“Who is?” said Evans.
“Boris, if course, who else would be shouting up to us from inside the keyboard of a computer?”
“Well”, Boris said, “are you going to come down here or not?”
“HOW?” they all replied.
Boris lifted himself up just far enough up for the others to see him.
“Just come down, like I did,” and he disappeared again.




One by one, they slid down the crack until they were all standing inside the keyboard. Their eyes opened wide with surprise.




“Wow,” said Evans, “this is great.”
“Yeah,” said Fred, “it sure is.”
Gilbert and Horace didn’t say anything. They just stood there with their mouths wide open, staring at the inside of the keyboard.
Lucas suddenly shouted out, “Hey, this is better than our place!”
“Yeah,” said Marlon nodding his head, “It’s much better than our place>”
“I know,” shouted Ursula, “why don’t we move in here?”
Everyone looked at Ursula.
Alfred, their leader, was the first one to say anything after Ursula’s outburst.
“Because we couldn’t, that’s why,” he said.
“But why?” asked Trevor, “ it looks great.” Everybody was nodding in agreement except for Alfred. He was looking around. His head was moving up and down, and from side to side.





“We just couldn’t, that’s all.” Again, the others asked, “WHY?” but together this time.
Alfred looked at everyone and then he said, “We don’t belong here. We don’t know what it will be like when it’s being used. As he said the words, the whole place lit up like fairy lights on a Christmas tree.
Everyone jumped.




“WOW,” they all said.
“This place is the best,” said Gilbert and Horace together.
“Yeah, the best,” added Ursula and Trevor both together.
“Now wait a minute,” said Alfred quickly, “let’s not hurry into this.”
“Why not?” said Boris, “we’ve got free food and lighting, and we’re sheltered from the cleaners and all that stuff from green bottles they put down to make us move.”
Everybody nodded and shouted out, “LET’S MOVE IN!”
Alfred threw up his hands in despair.
“OK,” he said, “if you really want to.”
Everybody cheered. As usual, it was Alfred who thought of the practical difficulties of living inside the keyboard of a computer.
“What do we do if somebody moves this thing somewhere else?”
“We just go with it,” said Horace quickly before Gilbert could say it.
“I mean,” said Gilbert, “ where would they move a keyboard to except another office?”
“And what difference would that make?” said Fred.
“Just think about it a minute,” said Alfred, “if Robert’s not sitting at his keyboard, if it’s somebody else, we might not…”
“We might not get anything to eat – remember what made us come here.” Everyone suddenly nodded in agreement.
Gilbert spoke up. This time it was Horace who was quiet as his pal spoke.
“Why would anyone want to move the keyboard? It’s working OK, and Robert seems to like it here.”
“Yeah,” said Horace, “he’s always whistling while he works away typing his letters.” Again everyone nodded in agreement.
“That’s settled then.” Everyone nodded again.
“Just one thing,” said Ursula, “where is everybody going to sleep, I mean when Robert’s not typing?” They all looked around them at the inside of the keyboard.
“Alfred had the answer, “We could sleep on these pads just below the keys.” Everyone looked at the pads.






“But wouldn’t that be dangerous?” asked Boris, “ I mean when he’s typing a letter or something?”
Alfred spoke up sharply, “Not, it’s not dangerous down here, everything is low voltage, just small electrical impulses, to signal that a key’s been pressed.”
“What do these keys do?” asked Gilbert and Horace, now speaking together again.
“Don’t you know anything?” It was Cuthbert’s time to speak. “The keys are all labelled with letters of the alphabet and...”
“And numbers too,” added Ian, “and when Robert presses a key, one of the letters...”
“Or a number,” added Cuthbert.
“Or one of these letters of the alphabet…
“What’s an alphabet?” chimed in Wallace.
“You don’t know what an alphabet is?” It was Sally’s turn to speak and everybody turned to look at her because she never usually said anything.





“No, I don’t,” said Wallace a little red faced.
“Nether do we,” said Gilbert and Horace together.
“Nor us,” said Trevor, Xavier and Zilla, “ what’s an alphabet?”
“I’ll tell you what an alphabet is,’ said Sally.
“Crikey,” said Boris, “twice in one day, she must know something.” Everyone listened to what Sally had to say. They all sat down on the pads, Alfred on the A, Boris on the B, Cuthbert on the C, and Gilbert and Horace next to each other on G and H, right up to Zilla on Z, down in the far corner.






“An alphabet is a set of letters which are used to write a language,” she said thoughtfully, her eyes looking up into the space above her head as if she was reading something up there. She continued.
“For example, English as 26 letters and this is an English keyboard,” she pointed at Alfred immediately to her left, and to Doris, right next to her on her right, “You are on the first letter, Alfred, the letter A, and Doris,” she turned to face Doris, “you are on the fourth letter, the D.”





“And do all alphabets have 26 letters?” asked Trevor.
“Of course not,” replied Sally laughing a little, Arabic has 29, Russian has 31, and Turkish also has 29, like Arabic.”
“We understand,” said Gilbert and Horace in unison.
Sally doubted it. “Good,” she said, “can we move on?”
“Please do, Sally,” said Alfred anxious to get the explanations over before Robert started his day’s work. They noticed that he usually came to his desk, switched his computer on and then while it was warming up, he made himself a cup of tea. He was a creature of habit, was Robert, as they all were.
“An alphabet has 26 letters, right?”
Ah!” said Boris, “only an English alphabet.” He looked round at the others triumphantly.
Sally started again, “This keyboard has an English alphabet, 26 letters, right? Are we all agreed?”
“AGREED,” everyone replied.
“Right, so let’s learn them in the right order, shall we?” Everybody nodded vigorously.
“ A is for Alfred.” Alfred stood up quickly and banged his head on the underside of the A key directly above him. Boris shouted out, And B is for me.”





“No, Boris, B is for Boris,” shouted Gilbert and Horace laughing.
“And C is for Cuthbert,” said Cuthbert just in time.
“D is for Doris, isn’t it?” said Doris.
:Yes, that’s right, Doris,” said Sally approvingly.
“E is for Evans.” Sally nodded her approval again.
“F is for Fred and..”
“G is for Gilbert and H is for Horace,” chimed in Gilbert and Horace cheerfully.
“I is for Ian,” said Ian.
“And J is for Jon, said Jon.
“K is for Kevin.”
“And L is for Lucas,” said Lucas. Everybody laughed.
“M is for my name, Marlon.” Sally nodded smiling.
“N is for me.”
“N is for No, Norman.” Everybody laughed at Sally’s little joke.
“O is for Olivia, isn’t it?” asked Olivia a little shyly.
“It is,” said Sally still smiling.
“P, what is P for?” asked Boris.
“P is for Penny.”
“Of course it is, Penny, quipped Ian.
“Penelope to you, if you don’t mind,” said Penny a little gruffly.



“Of course I don’t mind,” said Ian a little red faced.
“Can we get on, please?’ asked Sally.
“Q is for Quentin.” Everyone giggled.
“Who everybody knows can’t go anywhere in English without..”
“YOU everybody shouted and laughed loudly.
“That’s U,” said Sally, a little angry at being interrupted.
“R is for Reginald,” said Reg. “and S is for Sally.”
Sally blushed a little. Everybody saw Sally |blush and smiled. Everybody knew Reg liked Sally and Sally liked Reg. It was nice that they could be not far from each other at the left hand side of the keyboard, Reg, fourth from the end in the top row and Sally two from the end in the second.
“T is for Terry,” said Tel.
“And U is for you, Ursula,” said her friend Yollanda next to her.
“But I’m next, said Vye, a little jealously.
X is for Xavier, Y is for Yollanda, and..”
“Z is for ZILLA,” shouted all the others gaily.
“And that’s the alphabet,” cried Sally, finally.
Poor Doris was confused, “But what does it all mean? What are the letters used for?”
It was Alfred’s turn to look clever.
“They are used to make up the words.”
“What are words?” cried Doris.
“Shall I explain what words are?” asked Yollanda standing on the space bar.




“What are words?” said Yollanda, loudly as if the was talking to a large crowd in Trafalgar Square. Everyone held their hands over their ears, so she got the message and spoke softly.
“That’s more like it,” said Xavier.
“I can’t hear what she’s saying,” said Lucas.
“That’s because she isn’t saying anything at the moment,” said Fred.
“Ah, here she goes again. Watch her lips if you can’t hear her,” said Fred, looking across to his far left.
“Let’s see,” she began, “well, Doris is a word..”
“I’m not, I’m an ant, just like you,” said Doris and pulled a rude face at Yollanda.
“Of course you’re an ant, everybody knows that, Doris.”
“Yeah, but you just said I was a word, everybody knows that too.” Nobody felt like agreeing or disagreeing. They just wanted Yollanda to get on with her talk.
“If you had been listening, you would have heard that I said ‘Doris is a word’,” said Yollanda a little crossly.
“There,” said Doris, “she just said it again. I am not a word!”
“No, but your name is,” said Lucas.
“Exactly, that’s what I meant,” said Yollanda quickly, “your name is a word, my name is a word, everybody’s name is a word.”
“That still doesn’t tell me what a word is,” said Doris looking puzzled.
“A word is a sound, something we say when we want to mean something – now do you understand?” asked Yollanda hopefully.
“I think so,” said Doris, “tell me a little bit more about what words are – then I might understand.”
Yollanda thought. “Say something!” she said to Boris who was standing right in front of her.
“Like what?” he said a little puzzled, and wishing his name began with a W or a Q so he could stand further back and not be asked stupid questions.
“Again,” said Yollanda, “repeat what you just said.”
“What?” asked Boris, now really confused.
“You said, ‘like what’ if you recall,” said Vye who was standing next to him.
“Did I?”
“YES, YOU DID,” everyone shouted from behind.
“OK,” said Boris, “like what?”
“Right,” said Yollanda, “’like what’ is two words – ‘like’ and ‘what’, now do you understand?”
Doris nodded. “I think so.”
“THAT’S THREE MORE WORDS,” shouted a few ants from the back row.
“Now, here comes the tricky bit,” said Yollanda.
“Oh, dear!” said Doris.
“The word ‘like’ has four letters; L-I-K-E, and ‘what also has four, F-O-U-R.”
“D-O-R-I-S.” everybody clapped. Doris laughed.
Suddenly something happened. Lights were coming on all around them.
“It’s Robert, “ said someone, “he’s had his cup of tea and he’s going to start work.
The whole inside of the keyboard lit up.
“Wow!” said Marlon at the front.
“Ssh!” said Yollanda brushing past Boris and going between Gilbert and Horace to get to her own place – the Y in the back row, between Tel and Ursula.
“Watch what happens,” said Alfred, taking charge from the end of the middle row.
“He’s going to type in his password – here we go – B-U-Z-Z-W-O-R-D, I think it is.”
“Yes, here it is,” said Boris jumping up as a little flash of electricity lit up his pad. Next it was Ursula’s turn to jump up.
“Ouch!” she said, and then, “hey, this is fun.”
First it was Boris, then Ursula then Zilla – twice – then Wallace – Olive- Reg – and finally it was Doris’s turn to jump up.
“Did you feel it?” asked Alfred.
Everyone shouted, “YES, WE FELT IT!”
“But it didn’t hurt, did it?” Alfred was looking along the rows of letters.
“No,” said Sally immediately in front of his as he turned to his left to face the others.
“On fact it was quite pleasant – a sort of tingling, tickling feeling,” Sally said, laughing quietly to herself.
“So nobody is frightened, are they?” asked Alfred quickly before Robert started to type.
Doris-Evans-Alfred-Reg, and then Sally-Ian-Reg all jumped slightly as the letters were typed.
“He’s typing a letter,” said Alfred.
“But how do you know?” asked Doris.
“Because he’s just typed ‘Dear Sir’, “ said Yollanda.
“How do you know?” said Marlon feeling a little out of things.
“Because Doris, Evans, Alfred and Reg jumped, and then Sally, Ian and Reg jumped a little – ‘D-E-A-R S-I-R, easy!” said Fred, hoping he would be chosen soon so that he could join in the fun.

“I wonder what he will write next,’ said Ian hopefully.
“Well,” said Alfred, “I think he will start by using your initial – I.”
“Why?” asked Ian.
“Just wait and see,” replied Alfred.
Alfred was right. Robert punched the letter I- capital I.
“You’re right,” said Ian, “but how did you know?”
“Because most people begin letters with that word I.”
“But we thought I was a letter,” said Doris loudly.
“It is,” said Yollanda, “and it’s also a word – I , and it means ‘me’ the person writing.”
“So ‘I’ here means Robert,” said Ian nodding. He understood. Doris, however, was still a bit puzzled.
“So I means ‘me’ for whoever writes it, is that right?” she said.”
“Yes,” said Yollanda – I stands for Ian, but on its own it means me.”
“Or me!” dried Doris happily, “What a wonderful word.”
“He’s typing again,” said William, “I just felt a tingle.”
“And me,” cried Olive.
“Me too,” shouted Ursula.
“And me,” cried Lucas.
“And finally me,” cried Doris.
“There you are,” said Yollanda, “he’s just typed the word ‘would’. W-O-U-L-D would – William – Olive – Ursula – Lucas – Doris, and now he’s on to the next word. I wonder what it will be.”
“Ow,” cried Lucas, “he’s using my initial letter again.”
“Now mine,” said Ian.
“And mine,” said Kevin.
“Mine next – ow!” said Evans.
So what letter has he spelled this time?” asked Doris.
Let’s see,” said Yollanda, “L – I – K – E.”
“Like,’ said Doris quickly, “he’s just typed the word ‘like’.”
“That’s right,” said Yollanda, “so what has he typed so far?”
“Dear Sir,” said Horace and Gilbert together.
“I would like… Oh, he’s typing again- T,” said Tel.
Olive felt a tingle too, “Now he’s typed an O.”
“That reads ‘TO’ said Doris.
“Well done,” said Yollanda, “you are getting good at this, aren’t you, Doris?”
Doris blushed, “Yes, I am,’ she said, “I like it.”
“C,” said Cuthbert, “he’s just typed a C.’
“Now an H,” said Horace still tingling.
“And an A,” said Alfred, “that’s C-H-A - what word is he going to type?”

Suddenly, everything went black – all the little lights went out and everyone blinked.
“What happened?” said Doris.
“I think the power has gone off,” said Alfred, “I hope Robert saved what he was writing.”
“Why?” asked Lucas.
“Because he will have to type it all again, if he didn’t save it,” said Ursula, “that’s why.”
“I’m sure he’ll carry on when the power comes back on. Let’s see, what did he type?”
“I’ve written it all down, just in case he forgets,” said Ursula. “He wrote –
D-E-A-R S-I-R,
I W-O-U-L-D L-I-K-E T-O C-H-A and then everything went black.”

“What shall we do now?” asked Gilbert and Horace together.
“Why don’t we just sit and wait,” said Alfred, “it’s bound to come back on in a few minutes.”
So they sat on their little pads and waited.
“Let’s play a game,” said Yollanda.
“Ooh, I love games,” said Doris, “what shall we play?’
“Let’s play a game we’ve never played before,” said William.
“Any ideas?” said Alfred.
“Plenty!” said William. “Let’s play a spelling game. Each of us takes turns to say the letter that starts our name – if you think you have the next letter to a word – say it.’
“That sounds simple enough,” said Doris.
Sally wondered if everyone would be able to understand what was going on.
“I’ll start,” said William, “W.” he said loudly.
“H” said Horace.
Quickly Evans jumped up and said, “E”.
Norman thought he knew the word, but Reg said “R” before Norman could say anything.
“E:, said Evans, “spells where, W-H-E-R-E.”
“Great, well done, Evans, hard luck Norman. Your turn to start,” said Alfred.
“E!” said Evans.
“V,” said Vye.
“E, again,” said Evans quickly.
Norman wasn’t going to be second this time, “N”, he said, spells even – E-V-E-N.”









He typed the words -
D-E-A-R S-I-R,
I W-O-U-L-D L-I-K-E T-O C-H-A-N-G-E M-Y K-E-Y-B-O-A-R-D
“Oh, dear,” said Gilbert and Horace, who could both spell and read quite well by now, “Robert wants to change his keyboard.”
“Thank you,” said Alfred a little crossly, “I can read.”
“What does he want to change it for?” asked Doris.
“Another one, “ said Gilbert and Horace.
“No,” said Doris, “O didn’t mean that, I meant why does he want to change his keyboard.”
The others all looked puzzled.
“HOW SHOULD WE KNOW,” shouted the others.
Wait a minute, just think!” said Alfred.
“Yes,” said Ursula, “there must be a reason, but what can it be?”
“I’ve got it!” cried out Cuthbert from the front row. Xavier to his left and Vye to his right both turned to face Cuthbert to see what he had got.
“Well?” said Xavier.
“What exactly have you got?” asked Vye looking a bit impatient.
“Now calm down everyone,” said Alfred.
“I mean,” said Cuthbert standing up on his pad and nearly banging his head on the underside of the C key, “I think I know why he wants to change his keyboard.”
“Go on then,” said Vye and Xavier also standing up on either side of him, “tell us what you think.”
Cuthbert somehow pushed his head further out of his shoulders and made himself look a little taller than both Xavier and Vye. He coughed, “ahem,” he said, “he wants to change this keyboard because something isn’t working properly.”
“And what would that be?” said Vye losing her patience altogether now.
“How should I know, I’m only an ant – what do I know about keyboards and computers.” He sat down.
“I thought so,” said Vye, “you don’t know anything, you’re just a …”
“Wait a minute, Vye,” said Alfred. “He’s got a point. If Robert wants to change his keyboard, there must be something wrong with it.”
“But what?” cried Vye, now totally exasperated by the talk.
“Let’s think,” said Alfred.
“Could it be a letter that’s not working?” said Cuthbert standing up again.
“But we’d know if a letter wasn’t working, wouldn’t we?” said Horace quickly before Gilbert could speak.
“Not necessarily,” said Wallace.
“What do you mean?” asked Doris.
“Well, my key is W and I am only used in words like W-H-E-R-E and W-H-E-N, W-HO, W-H-Y, and W-H-A-T.”
So, what’s your point?” said Doris also losing her patience.
“Well, maybe my letter key isn’t working or something, maybe that’s why he wants to change his keyboard.”
“You might be on to something there,” said Alfred.
“What about the other letter keys he doesn’t use so often?” asked Gilbert not to be left out.
“Do you mean letters like J, K, Q, V, W, X, Y, and ..”
“And Z,” said Zilla, lighting up after her short nap. Zilla slept a lot. She never seemed to feel any pulses these days, but she didn’t say anything until now.
“Are you sure?” asked Alfred, “I mean, how do you know he’s not using the letter Z – you’re always fast asleep. Even if he did use it, you wouldn’t notice.”
“That’s true,” admitted Zilla, “but it’s worth thinking about.”
“IT sure is,” said Yollanda, “and I don’t hear any better ideas.”
“That’s right,” said Xavier and Vye.
“We think so too,” said J, Kevin, Lucas Quentin, and Wallace speaking altogether in one voice.
“So,” said Alfred, “how are we going to test that theory, I mean,” he said, feeling a little under pressure now, “how are we going to find out?”
“That’s better,” said Boris, standing up in the centre of the front row, “now we’ve got something to think about instead of just wondering.”
“I know,” said Horace again, “when he starts typing again, we’ll get those of us who aren’t used as often as some of us, to stay awake and report in every ten minutes. He’s sure to want to use some of those letters sometime, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he is,” said Alfred feeling that things were moving again.
“I mean,” said Horace, feeling more and more independent as he spoke, “those words – WHAT, WHERE, WHY and…”
“WHEN,” Gilbert reminded him, a little jealous that his pal had something to say without him.
“Thank you, my friend,’ said Horace smiling, “I wondered when you were going to speak.”
“It’s OK,” said Horace, “I’m not used to speaking without you speaking.’
“Me neither,” said Horace, and they both laughed.
“Come on,” said Alfred, let’s get onto this, we may not have a lot of time.”



Soon, Robert was sitting in his chair ready to type again.
“Here we go,” said Alfred, “Zilla and the rest, get ready.”
“OK!” said Zilla, “We’re ready.”
“D-E-A-R W- “
“Ouch!” said Wallace, the W is working’.
“W-I-L-L-I-A-M.”
“And so is the M,” said Marlon.
“OK!” said Alfred, “here he goes again.”
“F-O-L-L-O-W-I-N-G M-Y L-A-S-T L-E-T-T-E-R..” He paused to think.
| “Olive, Lucas, Ian, Gilbert – are your letters working?” asked Alfred quickly while Robert was still thinking about what to write next.
“Yes!” said Olive and the others, “everything here is fine.” Robert started again.
“I H-A-V-E C-H-A-N-G-E-D M-Y-“
Suddenly everything went black inside the keyboard.
“Oh, no, not again,” said Doris groaning to herself.
“I’m afraid so,” said Fred who was sitting next to her. “It looks like the electricity has gone off again.”
“Now what shall we do?” asked Doris, who sounded a little scared.
“What we always do when the electricity goes off,” said Wallace.
“SIT AND WAIT!” said Gilbert and Horace together very loudly.
“And we can use the time to think about what Robert is going to type,” said Ursula.
“Yes, let’s do that,” said Gilbert and Horace more softly this time because they could see how scared Doris was.
“If we think about it rationally,” said Alfred, “we might be able to forecast what Robert is going to say next.”
“Sorry?” said Wallace looking puzzled.
“What I mean is,” explained Alfred, “I..”
“What he means,” interrupted Ursula a little rudely, “is that we could try to work out what Robert is going to say by looking at the words he’s already written. Isn’t that what you meant, Alfred?”
“Exactly, yes1” said Alfred still cross at Ursula’s interruption.
“HOW?” asked Gilbert and Horace, turning up the volume again.
“That’s easy,” said Doris.
Everyone looked at Doris.
Alfred was the fist to speak, the others just stood and stared at Doris, “Go on,” said Alfred.
“Well,” said Doris, “of we look at the words that could possibly follow his last words, then we might be able to guess what he is going to write when the electricity comes on again.”
“GUESS? Did you say GUESS?” asked Ursula a little annoyed.
“Yes, I did, nothing is certain,” said Doris calmly.
“OK, you go first,” said Ursula a little quieter and a bit calmer.
“Right, I will!” said Doris. “What did he write?”
“He wrote DEAR SIR,” SAID Wallace, “he always begins letters with those words.”
“Or DEAR MADAM, said Gilbert.
“Or DEAR SOMEBODY ELSE,” said Horace. Everybody laughed. Horace went slightly red. “What I mean is...”
“We know what you mean, old friend, “said Fred.
“Then he wrote; FOLLOWING MY LAST LETTER.” said Doris, “which must mean that he had already written one letter to that person.”
“My!’ said Ursula, “aren’t we the bright one today?”
“Let’s get on, please,” said Alfred.
“And then he wrote; I HAVE CHANGED MY - that’s all he wrote,” said Doris looking glum.
“That could be enough,” cried Alfred.
“What do you mean?” said Doris brightening a little.
“Well,” said Alfred, What has he changed?”
“KEYBOARD!” shouted Gilbert and Horace, both excited.
“No, not that,” said Alfred calmly, “he hasn’t changed that, has he?”
“No, he hasn’t, but he wanted to change it, he said so,” said Doris.
“He could have changed his mind!” said Fred quickly as if a light had suddenly been turned on in his head.
“That’s right,’ said Doris, “he might have changed his mind”
“Changed it to what?” asked Zilla a little impatiently.
“The words ‘ changed my mind’,” said Alfred, “mean that he has had second thoughts, he has decided upon another course of action.”
“Speak English, man,” said William Wallace angrily at his English friend, who he always called ‘King Alfred’, or ‘Cake-burner’, when he was angry with him.
“Sorry, William,” said Alfred apologetically, “I forgot you were here.”
“Where else would I be, man?” asked Wallace still sounding annoyed.
“He might have changed his mind,” repeated Alfred.
“Or is socks,” said Fred laughing.
“Yes, that’s true,” said Ursula, “but he would hardly write a letter about it, now would he?”
“Right,” said Doris, “what would he change and then write about?”
“I have changed my desk,” said Cuthbert.
“Or my job,” cried out Boris.
“Or his opinion about something,” said Evans who was always reading books.
“Or his…I don’t know what.” said Ian.
“That’s not too helpful, Ian, “said Alfred.
“Sorry,” said Ian, “I couldn’t think of anything.”
“’His mind’ seems the favourite, doesn’t it,” said Trevor who was always reading about horse races.
“Yes, it does seem more likely than the others,” said Alfred.
“Especially more likely that his socks,” said Zilla.
“The next question is,” said Alfred.
“I knew there would be another question,” moaned Doris.
“The next question, thank you, Doris, is what has he changed his mind about.”
“ABOUT CHANGING THE KEYBOARD,” said Gilbert and Horace.
“But we don’t know that, do we?” said Zilla, “I mean, not for certain.”
“No, we don’t,” agreed Xavier, Zilla’s neighbour on the front row of the keyboard.
“Then what else can he have changed his mind about?” asked Zilla.
“He could have changed his mind about almost anything,” said Doris sounding depressed.
“But would he write about anything?” asked Alfred.
“I was just going to say that,’ said Gilbert.
“Great minds think alike,” said Alfred.
“Fools never differ,” said Zilla quietly. Xavier and Sally laughed, but Alfred didn’t hear them.
“He wouldn’t write about just anything, would he?” said Alfred, choosing to ignore Zilla’s remarks.
“I know,” said Ian.
“This should be good,” said Ursula sitting next to him.
“Why don’t we try to find out who he is writing to, then we might find out what he has changed his mind about.”
“That’s a great idea,” said Alfred, smiling at Ian.
“But how do we do that?” said Ursula, still doubtful.
“Simple,” said Ian, who was always reading about computers in magazines left lying around on Robert’s desk. “We look at the address at the top of the page.”
“But he didn’t write an address at the top of the page, he’s writing an email message, and you don’t write an address at the top of the page like you do when you’re writing a letter.”
“That’s right,” said Alfred, “you only write the address - the email address – in the box marked ‘To’.”
“But maybe he hasn’t written anything in there yet,” said Doris.
“We’ll just have to wait until he starts again,” said Alfred sensibly.
Suddenly the lights all came back on again.
“There we are,” said Alfred, “he’ll be typing again soon.”

But Robert didn’t start typing again for a while.
“I think he’s gone to lunch,” said Doris.
“He’ll be back soon,” said Alfred again, “and when he does, we’ll find out who he is writing to.”
“Here he comes,” said Doris, looking through one of the cracks above her head.
“He’s sitting down,” she said, “he’s typing.”
“B!” said Boris.
“U!” said Ursula, “He’s typing his password. B-U-Z-Z-W-O-R-D!”
“Okay!” said Alfred. “Everyone stand by!”

“He’s opening his email, everyone,” cried Alfred. “Right, he’s going over his words in the letter.”
“D-E-A-R S-I-R,
F-O-L-L-O-W-I-N-G M-Y L-A-S-T L-E-T-T-E-R, I H-A-V-E C-H-A-N-G-E-D M-Y - everybody ready?” asked Alfred.
“READY!” replied everybody quickly.
“Ouch!” said Marlon, “he typed an M.”
“And an I,” said Ian.
“Now an M,” said Norman.
“And a D,” said Doris, “Hurrah, he’s changed his mind.” Everybody cheered wildly.
“But what has he changed his mind about?” asked Alfred loudly.
Robert continued to type. He wrote:
“A-B-O-U-T C-H-A-N-G-I-N-G M-Y K-E-Y-B-O-A-R-D!”
Everybody cheered again, but this time Alfred cheered as well. They could stay in the keyboard and the keyboard was staying on Robert’s desk, and Robert would continue to type letters everyday of his life, except for Saturdays and Sundays, when he stayed at home and typed letters there on his own keyboard.


Y-O-U-R-S S-I-N-C-E-R-E-L-Y

R-O-B-E-R-T L-E-S-L-I-E F-I-E-L-D-I-N-G


T-H-E E-N-D
How an ant learned punctuation
How an ant learned grammar
How an ant learned to write (and read)
 
TIME BENDS

by

Robert Leslie Fielding


“What time is it?” – the question we all ask ourselves and others many, many times every day. Few people go out without some means of answering that question – most have watches, but mobile phones also display the time accurately. Lives revolve around the time of day.

Farmers – people who look after animals, are perhaps less dependent on exact time, more on time indicated by the rising of the sun, and on time in its wider sense – in the months of the year and the seasons.

The rest of us – tied to office desks, machinery, and bus timetables, have to know the time to the nearest minute – sometimes nearer than that.

But time in the sense of the years lived and experienced also affects our lives – in ways we are probably not always aware of.

The passing of the beginning of the new millennium, for instance, means that when we want to refer to a time in the 19s, we are forced to say something like “in the last century”, when in fact that century still holds most of us in its grip. Most of us were born in that century, grew up in it, got educated in it, got married in it, had our children in it and saw the greatest changes in the world in it too. Yet it is the last century, not this present one, and that word ‘last’ sounds odd.

Before January 1 2005, the last century really was the last – one that none of us lived through- one that seemed remote from our lives – the ‘Victorian era’, with all the connotations of meaning that that phrase holds for us.













I was born in the first half of the last century – in 1949, which makes me sound ancient in 2005. My formative years were the 50s and 60s – they also sound very dated nowadays. As a middle aged man, I use as anchors to hook the rest of my time on, events like my graduation day and the day I got married. My father used more cataclysmic anchors like the beginning and end of World War 2, and his return home from overseas, as well as the more usual ones such as the ones already mentioned.

The remoteness of something that happened before I was born – the 2nd World War, is equaled for me by events that were significant in my life – recent for me, distant for others.

People talk of the ‘generation gap’, and at times it seems unbridgeable – too wide to ever be overcome. In your teens, somebody over 30 seems ancient – old fashioned – past it – no longer with it – whatever phrase is used in the modern idiom.

Only a look at history books puts all of this into any perspective that can be shared – we all live in the modern era – the age of the information superhighway – the constant threat of terrorism – of the AIDS pandemic – of drug abuse – war – global capital – we all live in the same age. How we refer to our lives now seems to have less relevance than how we see our future.

Again though, the generation gap seems wide. To people older than say 60, this world is a puzzle – one that will go on its way without the need for them to become involved or worry about the outcome. For people who still have a stake in it, but who have their feet firmly rooted in the last century, there is still much to be done. For the young – people born in the last quarter of the 20th Century or the early part of this one, life is out there – to change, to adapt and to adapt to. The 21st Century is truly theirs. Although they won’t see its end, they will live though more than half of it.


















And when they reach the time when the main direction to look is back, they too will feel that the young have a different outlook.

In these terms, nothing changes – babies come into the world – older people leave it. For the time that we share together on it, we are all part of a chain – a human chain, that passes from the newly arrived to those about to depart, and as the strength of a chain is its weakest link, we all benefit from being stronger – healthier – saner – and more willing to consider each other as links in the same chain than anything as divisive as young and old.
Robert L. Fielding
 
A collaboration between Al Ain Secondary Schools and UGRU:
‘Motivation – issues and solutions’
Al Multaqa Bldg.
University of the United Arab Emirates
Thursday, 7th April, 2005


In a 2-hour long session that could easily have run to double that time, 20 instructors from UGRU and the same number of teachers from High Schools in the UAE joined together to pool ideas in a forum centred around the issue of motivation of students in secondary and tertiary education.

Two speakers, Rizq from ___ and Dan Niles from UGRU, gave us two interesting talks to start the proceedings and to bring us up to speed on the issues involved.

Rizq spoke about motivation generally, giving us a definition of what motivation is, to get the ball rolling. Gleaned from different perspectives, psychological and otherwise, Rizq defined motivation as ‘an internal condition or state (sometimes called a need, a want or a desire) that serves to energize or activate behaviour and give it direction.’ Moving on from that, Rizq discussed the general concept of motivation, asking what motivates us – the likely answer being goals. However, by providing various analogous situations, Rizq made us aware, if we were not already, that a car won’t start without a key – without the ‘key’ of motivation, students fail to achieve.

Interest, Rizq stated, is another very important factor, and one which came out very clearly when groups of teachers tried to identify problems and their solutions later in the session.

Rizq held that students should be honest with themselves and ask themselves if they are genuinely interested in gaining a college education, and ask similar questions related to the setting of realistic goals – that when it comes to motivation – “knowing is not as important as doing.”

Urging students and teachers alike to plan for motivation, Rizq advised teachers to modify teaching strategies, and help students realize the relationship between what they are learning and their interests and needs in daily their lives – again, this came out later in group sessions.

Rizq concluded by claiming that it is the teacher’s responsibility for the creating of a motivational classroom environment, both socially and emotionally, to get students’ trust.

Dan Niles, representing UGRU Curriculum Committee, and in particular those teachers who recently conducted a survey of UGRU students and their motivation, spoke first about the points considered in the survey. These included demographic variables- former schools of students, for example; student’s home study atmosphere – whether or not students were actively encouraged by their parents and the family background as it generally related to the subject - whether parents were graduates themselves, for example; the students’ high school experience – their efforts and abilities in schoolwork, their attitude and experience of learning; their experience of learning English - both in and out of school; and their general attitudes towards teachers.

Dan then went into a comparison of features that highly motivated students exhibited, and ones exhibited by students whose motivation was not so high.

Lists of these features were given to participants, and lively discussions and question and answer sessions proceeded from them. In the area of demographic considerations, for example, the survey found that the more highly motivated students came from larger urban conurbations in the country, with less highly motivated students coming from more rural areas and smaller towns. The best marks were achieved in ‘Science subjects’ for the higher motivated students, and in ‘social sciences’ for less highly motivated ones; a teacher’s skills were deemed more important than his/her personality for the former group, and vice versa for the latter.



With 40 participants divided into groups, the problems and solutions regarding motivation or lack of it in schools and university were dealt with in more depth, and despite the time constraints, all eight groups came up with interesting and pertinent points in the form of problems and solutions.

Issues such as the following came out in the feedback stage. These were:

• Class size
• Classes of students of mixed ability
• Fixed courses
• Time constraints
• Lack of students’ goals
• Unattractive subject matter & materials
• Class environment
• Learning skills in isolation
• Lack of cultural input in choice of what to teach
• Too much material to get through
• Low interest
• Discipline
• Social background

Rounding up the session, teachers expressed opinions that ranged from concerns about the curriculum to teachers focusing on what they can do to help, as well as what can be done outside the classroom.

Assured that change is very often initiated by the determination of small interested groups such as the one gathered, it became clear that there would be future meetings similar to the very productive one of the day. The issue of students’ motivation and how to help them acquire the attitudes to achieve excellence in their studies and hence in their lives generally means that all such future meetings will be equally productive.
Robert L. Fielding











Professional Development Day: Wednesday, June 8th. 2005

A full day of talks, workshops and lectures began with Dr. Brian Bielenberg, standing in for Maxine Gillway, in the auditorium of the university Social Club on the Maqam Campus.

Entitled, ‘Working together for effective learning’, the talk began with Dr. Bielenberg outlining who should work together: teachers within a course or subject; teachers and administrators, teachers and students; or students and other students; and teachers across institutions and from other disciplines.

This set the tone for the rest of the talk, in which it was suggested traditional barriers be lowered in order that, “teachers teach students, not their subjects,” thus uniting the disciplines under the rubric of ‘Curriculum Competencies’.

Learner Training, Thinking Skills, Application of Knowledge, Information Literacy and Communication constitute these competencies, and each in turn was outlined in detail.

Under the heading of ‘Thinking Skills’, Dr. Bielenberg, drawing upon work undertaken and completed by Maxine Gillway, listed those skills that students need to tackle problem solving situations in their academic lives, and which will be invaluable in their lives after graduating from the University.

Generally, the thrust of the initiative begun by Ms. Gillway, is that ‘education must have an end in view, for it is not an end in itself.’ Sybil Marshall (1913) That rather than compartmentalizing subjects as though they applied to different parts, rather than to the whole person, we should be giving our students the skills they will need to meet the challenges of the coming years.

In particular, that the application of knowledge from one situation to another, be it from inside the classroom to outside it, or vice versa, or from one course to another, should apply to the learning experience at this university.

Specifically, that students can recognize the need for information, know how to access it in all its ambient forms, are able effectively to analyse and evaluate information, and then to use it effectively and ethically.

Dr. Bielenberg gave a full house of teachers, the details of a Pilot Project, which involved and included three Advanced Maths Sections on Women’s Campus, a team of teachers from Maths, IT, and English, and undergoing preview, implementation and a debrief support cycle, working towards a full implementation in Fall 2005.

The aptly named ‘UGRU Problem Based Learning Experience’, with the stated goal of ‘developing the UGRU Curriculum Competencies’, brought various comments from the teachers involved. These ranged from the very positive, “One of the best things about this is making the students think for themselves and others”, to the evidently less than positive comment, “All fluff and no substance.”

However, ‘biting on the bullet’, as it were, the last comment was used to flesh out the project to those who still remain unconvinced. “The ‘fluff’” consists of the four language skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening, the use of technology (not merely computers), thinking critically and creatively, and dispositions, all of which add up to academic literacy – ‘A tool chest for the ongoing discovery and construction of meaning rather than a junkyard of isolated facts.’

Examples of students’ achievements in this enterprise included several posters and power-point presentations that addressed real problems such as solving congestion in car parks adjoining a specified shopping mall. I am sure we can all concur on the usefulness of that attempted solution.

As the audience consisted exclusively of English teachers in UGRU, the role of English teachers was outlined: to raise awareness of academic literacy, provide students with the opportunity to use the language, share pedagogical strategies across disciplines, and build bridges between teachers in secondary schools in the region and UGRU and faculty personnel.

Asking us the question, “Why should we care?” , we were given one answer by the University’s Chancellor, Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, who urged us to “Focus on the importance of leadership – in all aspects of teaching languages.”

Since any country’s graduates are looked to and expected to rise to leadership in all fields, the learning and combining of a full range of skills, and their coordinated application to the solving of problems in all spheres of life is a worthwhile course of action, and one that should see student motivation rise as teachers get involved in the real role of educaters: to equip citizens with the wherewithal to live better lives.

Robert L. Fielding






 
Jebel Hafeet – island peak

Looking down Jebel Hafeet from the poolside terrace of the Mercure Hotel – 5000 feet below- a patchwork of orange peel sand, dark green squares of trees and arrow straight lines of dual-carriageways, punctuated by pink-roofed, white villas, and farms.

Jebel Hafeet, rising straight out of the plains of the desert in the north east of the Abu Dhabi Emirate, is surrounded by huge capital projects – horizontal ones, unlike their vertical equivalent in Dubai – forests of young saplings, recently planted, watered by miles of pvc pipes siphoning water from desalination plants inland to a million thirsty trees – cement factories fuelling the multitude of buildings flying upwards around the country.

Jebel Hafeet, a recumbent monster trailing a jagged ridged tail – a spur of mountain stretching like the petrified vertebra of a huge marine mammal – nudging into the town of Al Ain, dividing neighboring suburbs, forcing detours around football stadium size boulders, or else dynamited right angular defiles through living rock – cordited canyons with sides fluted like cathedral walls of pink, yellow and white limestone.

Black, freckled squares of young trees, spaced by the precision of machinery – row upon row like so many aces stretching out in a casino table of forest to slow the desert’s unceasing, unrelenting crawl over everything.

The far distance obliterated by the heat haze that won’t go away much this side of darkness of evening. Night falls – humidity rockets without the sun burning it – desert vistas become clear and sharp – colonnades of street lighting – red tail lights of endless taxis and Toyota Land Cruisers burning into the retina of nightfall.

A twinkling of house lights, a waft of the faded remnants of the half-imagined roar of the city floats up on the cooling air.

“Did you hear that?”
“No – what?”
“Nothing – I just thought…”

A feeling of coolness – so rare at this time of the year as a breeze that has picked up the fragrance of an orange grove flows over us – nature’s air-conditioning that has a little moisture still left to enter grateful nostrils and wet arid eyelids.

Without the sun to limit the climb of the humid air up the sides of the mountain, a trip in a car beckons, promises some airy relief from the hot stillness after the refreshing zephyrs have slowed almost to a standstill.

The day at the top of the mountain is over and only lizards and night watchmen on security rounds enjoy night air on the island peak of Jebel Hafeet.

Robert L. Fielding
 

The World in a Word

by

Robert Leslie Fielding

The word 'invention ' - "the act or process of inventing" has many synonyms, and these can be listed under the headings - creation, creativity and fiction.

Under 'creation' we get the words - brainchild
contraption
contrivance
design
device
discovery
gadget
instrument
and of course - creation

Under the heading 'creativity', we get genius
imagination
ingenuity
inventiveness
originality
resourcefulness
and creativity
Under 'fiction' the following appear fabrication
falsehood
fantasy
forgery
lie
untruth
yarn
and fiction

The world (of language, at least) in the word 'invention' and its semantic family conjures up a fascinating list.

First take the world of people - famous people - and think about the qualities shown by the illustrious.

Sherlock Holmes was well known for his ingenuity and resourcefulness, Edison for in inventiveness, Mozart for his genius, and Heath Robinson for his contraptions. The discovery of penicillin was Alexander Fleming's doing and the originality in James Joyce's work is also well known.

We have designs on things without designing anything, tell complete fabrications in court, spin yarns in pubs, forge documents and lie in our teeth in court and perjure ourselves, and we bear false witness without it being necessary to mention the word 'falsehood'.

Things can be figments of our imagination, or else we let our imagination run away with us on occasions. We are asked to use our imagination, exercise it, but not be a product of it. We either lack imagination or have a fertile imagination. Our imagination is captured or else something beggars the imagination or stretches it, and occasionally, it doesn't take much imagination to come to some conclusion or other

Lastly, The Creation is either the oratorio by Haydn or more properly, it is God's handiwork. Our creativity is perhaps what distinguishes us from lower orders of creatures

Everybody knows that Mozart, Einstein and Picasso had the quality of genius in abundance, and there is the well known genius of the English for gentleness and anti-militarism, and respect for liberty and the rule of law. Oscar Wilde once famously remarked that he had nothing to declare but his genius, and his plays have been variously described as works of genius or even pure genius.

The world is reflected in the language we use to describe everything in it and everything we do. The word represents a microcosm of that world.

Robert L Fielding
 
Writing as therapy


Sure writing is therapeutic - haven't I always told you that. Well it is. I think writing on the computer or word processor is also therapeutic, plus it doesn't make your hands ache like using a pen does. Maybe it's that way with me because I'm getting a bit older - who knows?

I have recently been thinking about what happened to me when I started work as an apprentice at Glover Bros in Mossley. Engineering excites me - it did then and it still does - just seeing those machines making other parts for other machines makes me recall the good times I had in that industry.

However, those good times came later. I had bad times at Glovers. The only half decent times I had through the week were my lunch-breaks when I would go on my motorbike to meet Pete up at Heytops or somewhere between where he worked in Carrbrook and where I worked in Mossley, on Egmont Street - a part of that town I still dislike.

Anyway, as soon as I began working in Glover Engineering, my life became miserable. I had to go to the shops for the men three times a day and they made my life difficult, I can tell you. Some - probably most - of the men were OK, I suppose, just kidded me a bit, but some were nasty and tried their hardest to get me upset. Coming from a village. I wasn't used to having to deal with townies and I found them very different to the men I knew nearer to home.

I remember Keith Shaw, who is probably dead now, being one of the nastiest men I have ever met. There was nothing in him you could find to like. He was relentless in his nastiness and since then I have come to realize that it was he who had the problem rather than me. I was the butt of his ill-humour but I wasn't the source of it. That was somewhere else - probably in his home life or his health or in his past life as a child. He may have had a hard time when he was a kid and so if that was the case I can forgive him. See, that is what I mean when I say that writing is therapeutic - I have never found it in my heart to forgive Keith Shaw until now, and thinking that his nastiness was the product of something nasty in his life has meant I can let go at last. I can stop hating him and that has freed me. Hate really is a wasting disease, isn't it? From now on, I am not going to indulge in it and I don't think you should either, even though you may have excellent reasons for hating, let them go - write it out of you - do it now.
Robert L. Fielding
Learning through personal experience

Learning is something we do from the cradle to the grave, although some of the time we are unaware that it is taking place, whilst at others we are all too painfully aware that we have a lot to learn.

Learning about life is something that goes on all the time - even when we are ostensibly learning other things - algebra, French or trigonometry, for example. Learning about life entails learning about people - how they behave towards us and other people, and it also includes learning about oneself and the world in which we live.

Learning specific subjects takes up only a small proportion of our lives - whilst learning about life takes up all of it. At school, college and university, we learn how to become doctors, engineers, lawyers, and geologists - but no matter what we learn to become, we all have to learn about life.

Interestingly, the sum total of our formal knowledge of life, captured in subjects such as philosophy, politics, sociology, and linguistics, has moved on very little since the days when Aristotle and his peers broached the subjects. In contrast, subject areas such as medicine, chemistry, and biology have progressed much, much more.

A student of Aristotle's coming back to attend a lecture in philosophy at a university would quickly feel comfortable with what was being discussed, whereas a student of maths, physics or chemistry would feel utterly clueless in a modern laboratory or classroom of a university.

It seems that what we have learned about life over the centuries - the living of life - has not progressed as much as we could have hoped. The world is still full of disputes - wars, strife, divorce, and crime. However, this fact is perhaps not as surprising as we might first imagine; for being taught about life is not the same thing as ensuring that everyone behaves in ways that are always acceptable to others.

What is acceptable in one culture may not be in another. The assumptions that we develop concerning how we expect people to react to us are conditioned by various social, psychological, physiological, geographical and cultural elements.

It is sometimes only apparent to us that this is so when we move out of our spatial and social milieu.

Living in a foreign country, one becomes constantly aware that 'they do things differently there' - rather like the past in that respect. Fortunately, the human being is a forgiving species and what appears to be a faux-pas is often overlooked or pardoned.

We all learn about life in one way or another, and the more we learn, the more we are made to realize that there is more to unite people than there is to divide them.
Robert Fielding
 
Getting through examinations

Having been a university student a long time ago means that I think I can remember what it was like being a student. However, one's memory plays tricks sometimes. For instance, I can never remember it raining when I was on holiday from school when I was a boy, but since I come from one of the wettest parts of England; the North West, I think it must be my memory that is failing me rather than the weather being much, much drier at that time.

So it is with my remembering being a student at university; I can't recall there being any bad times. There were bad times, of course, it's just that I can't quite recall them without thinking harder.

After a little thinking harder, I can now remember that I always got worried when the exams were approaching. There is nothing unusual in that, I hear you say, and you are right, there is nothing unusual in a student worrying about examinations - that is what students do - they worry about examinations.

I can remember too, that I channeled my worries into action - instead of laying awake at night worrying, I attempted to tackle what I considered to be the reasons why I was worried.

Examinations at universities are awesome - they are difficult and they test your knowledge, and your ability to write down what you know in a way that answers the questions put to you by the examiners. If you know your stuff, I reasoned, then examinations shouldn't be a problem. Examinations also test your nerves - they test your 'metal' as we say. University finals are not for the faint- hearted and revising for them only seems half the battle.

Revision, sometimes called cramming - students try to 'cram' their heads with as much information about different topics as they think will be asked for on the exam paper, is traditionally done one or two nights before the examination - that's why they call it 'cramming'.

I thought that if I could go one step further than 'cramming' and keep revising important topics more or less continually after learning about them, then I could more fully prepare myself for the exams and in so doing cut down on the worrying.

Of course, on the day, my nerves started going haywire, like nearly everyone else's, but I managed to deal with them by various means - before the exams started, for instance, I made sure that I had had a good meal - my nerves seem to jangle more when I am hungry for some reason, and recognizing that fact and dealing with it helped me get through. The other factor was the amount of rest I had had before the examination. If the exams were in the morning, and they usually were, I made sure that I went to bed reasonably early the night before. If they were in the afternoon, I made sure that I had a reasonably restful morning prior to going in after lunch to sit my finals.

All this sounds as if I put myself before my knowledge when I was preparing to sit an exam - both physical well-being and knowledge are important. If you have one without the other, you will probably fail, or at least not do as well as you would have liked. Enough knowledge but not enough sleep and you don't do yourself justice. Enough sleep but not enough knowledge and you are never going to do well.

A balance of both is required, it seems to me - a certain amount of confidence from the certainty that you know your stuff is invaluable, as is the right mental and physical state.

If you can take care of both, your worries are over, or else if they are still around, they are within manageable proportions.
Rob