It seems some time since I last made a posting which suggests that I have not had much on my mind.
Quite the contrary. There has been a lot going on, some good, some bad, some deeply disturbing, all of which I will talk of here in the fullness of time. There will be some who do not like what have to say or what I have felt. More of this later.
Today's thought struck me as I watched a toddler being handed from Mum to Dad and back again..... Will I ever be able to watch a family and not think about my children and all that I have missed in the last years of them growing up on a different continent to me?
Traci has often said that they need me and I know that they do. I can assure you that I need them too. I miss my children every day and ache for the times that I am able to spend with them. I will be with them again in less than a month and that always fuels me to be a better person. I cannot wait to see them.
Megan - I love you
Jesse - I love you
Jake - I love you
Wendy - I love you
My thoughts are with you always despite the distance, the time apart and the difficulties of managing around global time differences and so on.
I hope that in the years to come we will be able to spend more and more time together and that you will be able to get to know me better and vice versa.
I love you.
I am nothing without you.
Daddy
xxxx
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Marked
The tattoo on this soldier's back spells kafir, the Arabic word for infidel. He is a member of the 10th Mountain Division, serving in Wardak province, Afghanistan.
An interesting reflection of our times as we head to 2010
See more here:
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1946595_2010996,00.html
Friday, December 25, 2009
25 December 2009
The truth of today will unravel itself and show it for what it is.
No more Mr Nice Guy.
No more Mr Nice Guy.
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Tiger Woods admits "transgressions", apologises...
The truth, like a cork in water, ALWAYS rises to the top. Take note.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
A white Afrikaans bird........ who left the country for a better place!!
Unbelievable choice...
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/sports/45180-charlize-theron-to-be-leading-lady-in-world-cup-draw
CAPE TOWN, Dec 1 — South African actress Charlize Theron has landed the leading lady’s role in Friday’s draw for next year’s World Cup finals in her home country, Fifa announced today.
Theron will be joint host of the 90-minute show to be televised live to an estimated global audience of more than two hundred million people in 200 countries at 1900 local time (1700 GMT).
She will join Fifa general secretary Jerome Valcke to host the procedure of placing the 32 finalists into eight groups of four teams for the tournament which runs from June 11 to July 11.
The show will include an African musical spectacular, including gospel and jazz.
A host of sporting celebrities will also take part in the draw including Ethiopia’s Olympic champion runner Haile Gebrselassie, England midfielder David Beckham, South Africa footballer Matthew Booth and cricketer Makhaya Ntini and the host country’s rugby World Cup captain John Smit.
South African president Jacob Zuma will be in the audience along with Nobel Peace prize winners Frederik de Klerk and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Fifa will announce which teams will be seeded for the draw at a news conference tomorrow. — Reuters
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/sports/45180-charlize-theron-to-be-leading-lady-in-world-cup-draw
CAPE TOWN, Dec 1 — South African actress Charlize Theron has landed the leading lady’s role in Friday’s draw for next year’s World Cup finals in her home country, Fifa announced today.
Theron will be joint host of the 90-minute show to be televised live to an estimated global audience of more than two hundred million people in 200 countries at 1900 local time (1700 GMT).
She will join Fifa general secretary Jerome Valcke to host the procedure of placing the 32 finalists into eight groups of four teams for the tournament which runs from June 11 to July 11.
The show will include an African musical spectacular, including gospel and jazz.
A host of sporting celebrities will also take part in the draw including Ethiopia’s Olympic champion runner Haile Gebrselassie, England midfielder David Beckham, South Africa footballer Matthew Booth and cricketer Makhaya Ntini and the host country’s rugby World Cup captain John Smit.
South African president Jacob Zuma will be in the audience along with Nobel Peace prize winners Frederik de Klerk and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Fifa will announce which teams will be seeded for the draw at a news conference tomorrow. — Reuters
Sunday, November 15, 2009
The Very Reverend Jason Selvaraj
I heard the story today of how when the Reverend Jason (the Dean at St Mary's Cathedral KL) is called upon to visit a member of his congregation who may be ill in hopital, he will do so.
In doing so he reads to them from the bible and says a small prayer for them.
On opening his eyes he sees patients in the beds in the ward looking at him with 'longing in their eyes'.
Being the man he is and not wishing to impose, he always simply asks whether anyone else would like a prayer said for them.
Many hands always go up.
And many are the hands of non-Christians.
In doing so he reads to them from the bible and says a small prayer for them.
On opening his eyes he sees patients in the beds in the ward looking at him with 'longing in their eyes'.
Being the man he is and not wishing to impose, he always simply asks whether anyone else would like a prayer said for them.
Many hands always go up.
And many are the hands of non-Christians.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
I found this quite an interesting read today - the subject of racial stereotyping...
Marathon winner caught in American ‘race’ debate
NEW YORK, Nov 3 — As soon as Mebrahtom Keflezighi, better known as Meb, won the New York City Marathon on Sunday, an uncommon sports dispute erupted online, fraught with racial and nationalistic components: Should Keflezighi’s triumph count as an American victory?
He was widely celebrated as the first American to win the New York race since 1982. Having immigrated to the United States at age 12, he is an American citizen and a product of American distance running programs at the youth, college and professional levels.
But, some said, because he was born in Eritrea, he is not really an American runner.
The debate reveals what some academics say are common assumptions and stereotypes about race and sports and athletic achievement in the United States. Its dimensions, they add, go beyond the particulars of Keflezighi and bear on undercurrents of nationalism and racism that are not often voiced.
“Race is still extremely important when you think about athletics,” said David Wiggins, a professor at George Mason University who studies African-Americans and sports.
“There is this notion about innate physiological gifts that certain races presumably possess. Quite frankly, I think it feeds into deep-seated stereotypes. The more blatant forms of racial discrimination and illegal forms have been eliminated, but more subtle forms of discrimination still exist.”
There are few cases parallel to Keflezighi’s in American sports. Some are noteworthy because of how little discussion, by comparison, they generated over the athlete’s nationality.
For example, the Hall of Fame basketball player Patrick Ewing (Jamaica) and the gold medal gymnast Nastia Liukin (Russia) were born abroad, but when they represented the United States in competition, they seemingly did not encounter the same skepticism that Keflezighi has.
Richard Lapchick, the director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, said the argument about Keflezighi “tells us there are people that still have racial red flags go up when certain things happen.”
He added: “Many people think that with an African-American president, we are in a post-racial society. Clearly, we are not.”
The online postings about Keflezighi were anonymous. One of the milder ones on Letsrun.com said: “Give us all a break. It’s just another African marathon winner.”
A comment on The New York Times’s site said: “Keflezighi is really another elite African runner by birth, upbringing, and training. Americans are kidding themselves if they say he represents a resurgence of American distance prowess! On the other hand, he is an excellent representative of how we import everything we need!”
In a commentary on CNBC.com, Darren Rovell wrote, “Nothing against Keflezighi, but he’s like a ringer who you hire to work a couple hours at your office so that you can win the executive softball league.”
Keflezighi said yesterday that remarks about his heritage were not new. “I’ve had to deal with it,” he said. “But, hey, I’ve been here 22 years. And the US is a land of immigrants. A lot of people have come from different places.”
The last American to win the New York race, Alberto Salazar, was also born in another country. He came to the United States from Cuba when he was 2. When he won, though, he did not hear grumbling about whether he should be considered an American. He pointed out two differences between his case and Keflezighi’s: Salazar is Hispanic, not black; and when he won in 1982, the Internet, in its current form, did not exist.
The argument that Keflezighi is not really an American makes little sense, Salazar said in a telephone interview.
“What if Meb’s parents had moved to this country a year before he was born?” he said. At what point is someone truly American? “Only if your family traces itself back to 1800, will it count?”
The issue previously arose when Keflezighi won a silver medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics, said Weldon Johnson, a founder of Letsrun.com. So when the negative postings appeared Sunday, he said, “I did not like seeing them, but I was not surprised.”
Perhaps the passion over Keflezighi’s victory stems from the despair over the state of American distance running. Americans used to be the best, in the 1970s and 1980s. But their time of glory waned as East Africans began dominating.
The success of distance runners from Kenya and Ethiopia fostered a lore of East Africans as genetically gifted, unbeatable, dominant because of their biology. Scientists have looked for — but not found — genes specific to East Africans that could account for their distance ability, said John Hoberman, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies race and sports.
But, he said, “there is a difference between saying we don’t have a scientifically respectable conclusion and the very broad and perhaps mistaken claim that there is no physiological phenomenon here whatsoever.”
Regarding the question of whether East Africans have a genetic advantage, Hoberman said, “We don’t know.”
“The more relevant question is, who gets to represent the country?” he said, adding, “Only racists will insist that ‘our’ athletes meet specific racial criteria.”
Consternation over the race of elite American athletes is not new. A century ago, the notion of a “great white hope” emerged — a white boxer who whites hoped could beat the black heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson.
In running, as African-American athletes excelled in sprints, they were said to lack the endurance or the fortitude to prevail in longer distances, Wiggins said. Then, when East Africans started to thrive, the argument changed to one claiming there are special East African genes.
“From my perspective, it is racist thinking at its utmost,” Wiggins said.
In Salazar’s view, Keflezighi’s victory is another indication that American distance running is coming back. Keflezighi never ran competitively before he came to the United States, and he did all his training here.
“Can American-born guys and gals compete?” Salazar said. “I think we are starting to see that.
“Does Meb resolve that argument? No. He wasn’t born here.
“And neither was I.” — NYT
NEW YORK, Nov 3 — As soon as Mebrahtom Keflezighi, better known as Meb, won the New York City Marathon on Sunday, an uncommon sports dispute erupted online, fraught with racial and nationalistic components: Should Keflezighi’s triumph count as an American victory?
He was widely celebrated as the first American to win the New York race since 1982. Having immigrated to the United States at age 12, he is an American citizen and a product of American distance running programs at the youth, college and professional levels.
But, some said, because he was born in Eritrea, he is not really an American runner.
The debate reveals what some academics say are common assumptions and stereotypes about race and sports and athletic achievement in the United States. Its dimensions, they add, go beyond the particulars of Keflezighi and bear on undercurrents of nationalism and racism that are not often voiced.
“Race is still extremely important when you think about athletics,” said David Wiggins, a professor at George Mason University who studies African-Americans and sports.
“There is this notion about innate physiological gifts that certain races presumably possess. Quite frankly, I think it feeds into deep-seated stereotypes. The more blatant forms of racial discrimination and illegal forms have been eliminated, but more subtle forms of discrimination still exist.”
There are few cases parallel to Keflezighi’s in American sports. Some are noteworthy because of how little discussion, by comparison, they generated over the athlete’s nationality.
For example, the Hall of Fame basketball player Patrick Ewing (Jamaica) and the gold medal gymnast Nastia Liukin (Russia) were born abroad, but when they represented the United States in competition, they seemingly did not encounter the same skepticism that Keflezighi has.
Richard Lapchick, the director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, said the argument about Keflezighi “tells us there are people that still have racial red flags go up when certain things happen.”
He added: “Many people think that with an African-American president, we are in a post-racial society. Clearly, we are not.”
The online postings about Keflezighi were anonymous. One of the milder ones on Letsrun.com said: “Give us all a break. It’s just another African marathon winner.”
A comment on The New York Times’s site said: “Keflezighi is really another elite African runner by birth, upbringing, and training. Americans are kidding themselves if they say he represents a resurgence of American distance prowess! On the other hand, he is an excellent representative of how we import everything we need!”
In a commentary on CNBC.com, Darren Rovell wrote, “Nothing against Keflezighi, but he’s like a ringer who you hire to work a couple hours at your office so that you can win the executive softball league.”
Keflezighi said yesterday that remarks about his heritage were not new. “I’ve had to deal with it,” he said. “But, hey, I’ve been here 22 years. And the US is a land of immigrants. A lot of people have come from different places.”
The last American to win the New York race, Alberto Salazar, was also born in another country. He came to the United States from Cuba when he was 2. When he won, though, he did not hear grumbling about whether he should be considered an American. He pointed out two differences between his case and Keflezighi’s: Salazar is Hispanic, not black; and when he won in 1982, the Internet, in its current form, did not exist.
The argument that Keflezighi is not really an American makes little sense, Salazar said in a telephone interview.
“What if Meb’s parents had moved to this country a year before he was born?” he said. At what point is someone truly American? “Only if your family traces itself back to 1800, will it count?”
The issue previously arose when Keflezighi won a silver medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics, said Weldon Johnson, a founder of Letsrun.com. So when the negative postings appeared Sunday, he said, “I did not like seeing them, but I was not surprised.”
Perhaps the passion over Keflezighi’s victory stems from the despair over the state of American distance running. Americans used to be the best, in the 1970s and 1980s. But their time of glory waned as East Africans began dominating.
The success of distance runners from Kenya and Ethiopia fostered a lore of East Africans as genetically gifted, unbeatable, dominant because of their biology. Scientists have looked for — but not found — genes specific to East Africans that could account for their distance ability, said John Hoberman, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies race and sports.
But, he said, “there is a difference between saying we don’t have a scientifically respectable conclusion and the very broad and perhaps mistaken claim that there is no physiological phenomenon here whatsoever.”
Regarding the question of whether East Africans have a genetic advantage, Hoberman said, “We don’t know.”
“The more relevant question is, who gets to represent the country?” he said, adding, “Only racists will insist that ‘our’ athletes meet specific racial criteria.”
Consternation over the race of elite American athletes is not new. A century ago, the notion of a “great white hope” emerged — a white boxer who whites hoped could beat the black heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson.
In running, as African-American athletes excelled in sprints, they were said to lack the endurance or the fortitude to prevail in longer distances, Wiggins said. Then, when East Africans started to thrive, the argument changed to one claiming there are special East African genes.
“From my perspective, it is racist thinking at its utmost,” Wiggins said.
In Salazar’s view, Keflezighi’s victory is another indication that American distance running is coming back. Keflezighi never ran competitively before he came to the United States, and he did all his training here.
“Can American-born guys and gals compete?” Salazar said. “I think we are starting to see that.
“Does Meb resolve that argument? No. He wasn’t born here.
“And neither was I.” — NYT
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
This amused me.....
Canada, asylum and the sprinkler salesman
Canada is a very large place, seriously in the market for more people. It was not, however, aching for the company of Brandon Carl Huntley, 31, late of Mowbray, a Cape Town suburb.
He was in the country illegally. His resume, according to newspaper accounts, included stints as a carnival worker and as a garden sprinkler salesman, positions Canada is manifestly able to fill from its current reserves of human capital and which would not classify his departure from South Africa as contributing greatly to any brain drain.
So Huntley had to find some other means of persuading the Big Empty to have him. He chose to seek asylum, claiming he had been persecuted by muggers back home because he was white and the local police had done nothing to protect him.
Among the logical holes in his story was his admission that he had never reported being mugged to the police. He said did not trust them to act. Evidence of their inaction was therefore lacking.
Assuming, in the absence of police reports, he truly was attacked six or seven” times – he had scars purporting to show it – he was also hard put to prove that the alleged attacks were racially motivated. We have only his word for it that the attackers used racial epithets if and when they set upon him. And even if they did use such language, that is hardly probative of his colour having been the decisive factor in their choice of target.
Canadian headline writers often play on the title of their national anthem, O Canada, when their countrymen do something particularly embarrassing. The ruling by William Davis, sole member of the immigration tribunal that heard Huntley’s case, surely qualifies for the Oh, Canada!” treatment. In granting Huntley refugee status, Davis agreed that the applicant would stand out like a sore thumb in any part of South Africa”. The evidence” showed a picture of indifference and inability or unwillingness by the government and security forces to protect white South Africans from persecution by African South Africans”.
This is ignorant on so many levels. Merely to have visited South Africa is to know that black people do not persecute white people there. It runs counter to everything that makes South Africa special to all of us who love it. Yes, crime is a serious problem. Dealing with it is in the top tier of the government’s agenda. By a huge margin, the majority of victims is black.A final verdict on Davis’s ruling must await the release of the full text. At this writing, we only have the bits Huntley’s lawyer, Russell Kaplan, a South African expat who has been living in Canada for 20 years, shared with the media. Still, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this was a most peculiar proceeding. Davis relied in good measure on horror stories told by Kaplan’s sister Laura, herself a recent immigrant. Well, there can’t have been an ounce of bias there, can there?
The case might well have passed unnoticed had not Kaplan, or his client, decided to let the world know about it. Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board, home of the tribunal that heard the matter, renders more than 40 000 decisions are year. The proceeding was closed to the public. There is as yet no mention of it on the board’s website, no press release was issued and IRB officials have studiously declined comment citing privacy concerns.
Some if not all tribunal decisions are eventually published on the internet. Three of Davis’ rulings from 2007 can be found there. In one, he granted asylum to a former member of the Peruvian armed forces who feared reprisals for atrocities that occurred while he was on active service against the Shining Path in the 1980s.
Two other applications Davis rejected. One was from an Albanian who claimed his wife’s brothers were out to kill him after he was photographed having gay sex. Davis was not convinced he faced persecution. The man merely came to Canada to find a better life”. The second was from an Afghan who said the Taliban were after him. Davis found the timing of this application suspect. The claimant made his refugee claim on the very same day his status in Canada expired.” And yet Huntley’s claim, made long after his visa expired, was somehow not so suspect.You have to know what you are looking for to find these cases. Kaplan and his client might have done themselves a favour by simply shutting up, but no, they wanted their 15 minutes of fame.
Huntley would not have been missed in South Africa which, like Canada, faces no shortage of carnival workers or sprinkler salesmen. South Africa would not have had to publicly respond to the shameful distortions contained in Davis’s decision.
As it is, the Canadian government may well decide to reverse the decision and Huntley will be back to square one.
This is not, incidentally, the first case of its kind. In 1997, a Durban couple, Michelle and David Thomas, came to California with their two children on visitors visas. A year later they petitioned for asylum. They said they had endured and would continue to face reprisals because David’s father, Boss Ronnie”, was a racist thug who threatened and abused his black workers back in South Africa. Their case made it all the way to the Supreme Court which finally upheld its initial rejection by an immigration judge.
At least they had the good grace not to claim they were the victims of anybody’s racism other than Dad’s.
By Simon Barber
Simon Barber is the US country manager of the International Marketing Council
Source: www.mediaclubsouthafrica.com
Canada is a very large place, seriously in the market for more people. It was not, however, aching for the company of Brandon Carl Huntley, 31, late of Mowbray, a Cape Town suburb.
He was in the country illegally. His resume, according to newspaper accounts, included stints as a carnival worker and as a garden sprinkler salesman, positions Canada is manifestly able to fill from its current reserves of human capital and which would not classify his departure from South Africa as contributing greatly to any brain drain.
So Huntley had to find some other means of persuading the Big Empty to have him. He chose to seek asylum, claiming he had been persecuted by muggers back home because he was white and the local police had done nothing to protect him.
Among the logical holes in his story was his admission that he had never reported being mugged to the police. He said did not trust them to act. Evidence of their inaction was therefore lacking.
Assuming, in the absence of police reports, he truly was attacked six or seven” times – he had scars purporting to show it – he was also hard put to prove that the alleged attacks were racially motivated. We have only his word for it that the attackers used racial epithets if and when they set upon him. And even if they did use such language, that is hardly probative of his colour having been the decisive factor in their choice of target.
Canadian headline writers often play on the title of their national anthem, O Canada, when their countrymen do something particularly embarrassing. The ruling by William Davis, sole member of the immigration tribunal that heard Huntley’s case, surely qualifies for the Oh, Canada!” treatment. In granting Huntley refugee status, Davis agreed that the applicant would stand out like a sore thumb in any part of South Africa”. The evidence” showed a picture of indifference and inability or unwillingness by the government and security forces to protect white South Africans from persecution by African South Africans”.
This is ignorant on so many levels. Merely to have visited South Africa is to know that black people do not persecute white people there. It runs counter to everything that makes South Africa special to all of us who love it. Yes, crime is a serious problem. Dealing with it is in the top tier of the government’s agenda. By a huge margin, the majority of victims is black.A final verdict on Davis’s ruling must await the release of the full text. At this writing, we only have the bits Huntley’s lawyer, Russell Kaplan, a South African expat who has been living in Canada for 20 years, shared with the media. Still, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this was a most peculiar proceeding. Davis relied in good measure on horror stories told by Kaplan’s sister Laura, herself a recent immigrant. Well, there can’t have been an ounce of bias there, can there?
The case might well have passed unnoticed had not Kaplan, or his client, decided to let the world know about it. Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board, home of the tribunal that heard the matter, renders more than 40 000 decisions are year. The proceeding was closed to the public. There is as yet no mention of it on the board’s website, no press release was issued and IRB officials have studiously declined comment citing privacy concerns.
Some if not all tribunal decisions are eventually published on the internet. Three of Davis’ rulings from 2007 can be found there. In one, he granted asylum to a former member of the Peruvian armed forces who feared reprisals for atrocities that occurred while he was on active service against the Shining Path in the 1980s.
Two other applications Davis rejected. One was from an Albanian who claimed his wife’s brothers were out to kill him after he was photographed having gay sex. Davis was not convinced he faced persecution. The man merely came to Canada to find a better life”. The second was from an Afghan who said the Taliban were after him. Davis found the timing of this application suspect. The claimant made his refugee claim on the very same day his status in Canada expired.” And yet Huntley’s claim, made long after his visa expired, was somehow not so suspect.You have to know what you are looking for to find these cases. Kaplan and his client might have done themselves a favour by simply shutting up, but no, they wanted their 15 minutes of fame.
Huntley would not have been missed in South Africa which, like Canada, faces no shortage of carnival workers or sprinkler salesmen. South Africa would not have had to publicly respond to the shameful distortions contained in Davis’s decision.
As it is, the Canadian government may well decide to reverse the decision and Huntley will be back to square one.
This is not, incidentally, the first case of its kind. In 1997, a Durban couple, Michelle and David Thomas, came to California with their two children on visitors visas. A year later they petitioned for asylum. They said they had endured and would continue to face reprisals because David’s father, Boss Ronnie”, was a racist thug who threatened and abused his black workers back in South Africa. Their case made it all the way to the Supreme Court which finally upheld its initial rejection by an immigration judge.
At least they had the good grace not to claim they were the victims of anybody’s racism other than Dad’s.
By Simon Barber
Simon Barber is the US country manager of the International Marketing Council
Source: www.mediaclubsouthafrica.com
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Day 32...
Just in case anyone thought anything different..... day 32 is here.
I stopped counting at Day 10 which was the breakthrough milestone for me.
Weight: Holding at 96kg. STRONG!! But realising that my appetite is twice what it was - amazing. I do have to be careful until that settles down.
Lungs: Did 80m underwater at the weekend. For those that think that is not far - try it!!
Sleep: The biggest surprise of all is that I sleep better than I have for 30 years. If I wake, it is NOT to the urge of wanting to smoke, which I must admit, I used to. 24/7 it was for me. And best of all, that last cigarette of the day that used to be SO important...... Well, it no longer pushes my pulse rate up to clearly NOT a resting rate, because I no longer need the drug!!
All good!! And smiling.
I stopped counting at Day 10 which was the breakthrough milestone for me.
Weight: Holding at 96kg. STRONG!! But realising that my appetite is twice what it was - amazing. I do have to be careful until that settles down.
Lungs: Did 80m underwater at the weekend. For those that think that is not far - try it!!
Sleep: The biggest surprise of all is that I sleep better than I have for 30 years. If I wake, it is NOT to the urge of wanting to smoke, which I must admit, I used to. 24/7 it was for me. And best of all, that last cigarette of the day that used to be SO important...... Well, it no longer pushes my pulse rate up to clearly NOT a resting rate, because I no longer need the drug!!
All good!! And smiling.
Friday, July 17, 2009
The Meaning of Life
NEW YORK — What’s life for? That question stirred as I contemplated two rhesus monkeys, Canto, aged 27, and Owen, aged 29, whose photographs appeared last week in The New York Times.
The monkeys are part of a protracted experiment in aging being conducted by a University of Wisconsin team. Canto gets a restricted diet with 30 percent fewer calories than usual while Owen gets to eat whatever the heck he pleases.
Preliminary conclusions, published in Science two decades after the experiment began, “demonstrate that caloric restriction slows aging in a primate species,” the scientists leading the experiment wrote. While just 13 percent of the dieting group has died in ways judged due to old age, 37 percent of the feasting monkeys are already dead.
These conclusions have been contested by other scientists for various reasons I won’t bore you with — boredom definitely shortens life spans.
Meanwhile, before everyone holds the French fries, the issue arises of how these primates — whose average life span in the wild is 27 (with a maximum of 40) — are feeling and whether these feelings impact their desire to live.
Monkeys’ emotions were part of my childhood. My father, a doctor, worked with them all his life. His thesis at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, was on the menstrual cycle of baboons. When he settled in Britain in the 1950s, he had some of his baboons (average life span 30) shipped over, ultimately donating a couple to the London Zoo.
Upon visiting the zoo much later, he got a full-throated greeting from the baboons, who rushed to the front of their cage to tell him they’d missed him. Moral of story: Don’t underestimate monkeys’ feelings.
Which brings me to low-cal Canto and high-cal Owen: Canto looks drawn, weary, ashen and miserable in his thinness, mouth slightly agape, features pinched, eyes blank, his expression screaming, “Please, no, not another plateful of seeds!”
Well-fed Owen, by contrast, is a happy camper with a wry smile, every inch the laid-back simian, plump, eyes twinkling, full mouth relaxed, skin glowing, exuding wisdom as if he’s just read Kierkegaard and concluded that “Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backward.”
It’s the difference between the guy who got the marbleized rib-eye and the guy who got the oh-so-lean filet. Or between the guy who got a Château Grand Pontet St. Emilion with his brie and the guy who got water. As Edgar notes in King Lear, “Ripeness is all.” You don’t get to ripeness by eating apple peel for breakfast.
Speaking of St. Emilion, scientists, aware that most human beings don’t have the discipline to slash their calorie intake by almost a third, have been looking for substances that might mimic the effects of caloric restriction. They have found one candidate, resveratrol, in red wine.
The thing is there’s not enough resveratrol in wine to do the trick, so scientists are trying to concentrate it, or produce a chemical like it in order to offer people the gain (in life expectancy) without the pain (of dieting).
I don’t buy this gain-without-pain notion. Duality resides, indissoluble, at life’s core — Faust’s two souls within his breast, Anna Karenina’s shifting essence. Life without death would be miserable. Its beauty is bound to its fragility. Dawn is unimaginable without the dusk.
When life extension supplants life quality as a goal, you get the desolation of Canto the monkey. Living to 120 holds zero appeal for me. Canto looks like he’s itching to be put out of his misery.
There’s an alternative to resveratrol. Something is secreted in the love-sick that causes rapid loss of appetite — caloric restriction — yet scientists have been unable to reproduce this miracle substance, for if they did they would be decoding love. Because love is too close to the divine, life’s essence, it seems to defy such breakdown.
My mother died of cancer at 69. Her father lived to 98, her mother to 104. I said my mother died of cancer. But that’s not true. She was bipolar and depression devastated her. What took her life was misery.
We don’t understand what the mind secretes. The process of aging remains full of enigma. But I’d bet on jovial Owen outliving wretched Canto. I suspect those dissenting scientists I didn’t bore you with are right.
My 98-year-old grandfather had a party trick, making crisscross incisions into a watermelon, before allowing it to fall open in a giant red blossom. It was as beautiful as a lily opening — and, still vivid, close to what life is for.
When my father went to pick up his baboons at Heathrow airport, he stopped at a grocery store to buy them a treat. “Two pounds of bananas, please,” he said. But there were none. “O.K.,” he said, “Then I’ll take two pounds of carrots.” The shopkeeper gave him a very strange look before hurriedly handing over the carrots.
I can hear my 88-year-old father’s laughter as he tells this story. Laughter extends life. There’s little of it in the low-cal world and little doubt pudgy Owen will have the last laugh.
By Roger Cohen, published in the New York Times 15 July 2009
The monkeys are part of a protracted experiment in aging being conducted by a University of Wisconsin team. Canto gets a restricted diet with 30 percent fewer calories than usual while Owen gets to eat whatever the heck he pleases.
Preliminary conclusions, published in Science two decades after the experiment began, “demonstrate that caloric restriction slows aging in a primate species,” the scientists leading the experiment wrote. While just 13 percent of the dieting group has died in ways judged due to old age, 37 percent of the feasting monkeys are already dead.
These conclusions have been contested by other scientists for various reasons I won’t bore you with — boredom definitely shortens life spans.
Meanwhile, before everyone holds the French fries, the issue arises of how these primates — whose average life span in the wild is 27 (with a maximum of 40) — are feeling and whether these feelings impact their desire to live.
Monkeys’ emotions were part of my childhood. My father, a doctor, worked with them all his life. His thesis at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, was on the menstrual cycle of baboons. When he settled in Britain in the 1950s, he had some of his baboons (average life span 30) shipped over, ultimately donating a couple to the London Zoo.
Upon visiting the zoo much later, he got a full-throated greeting from the baboons, who rushed to the front of their cage to tell him they’d missed him. Moral of story: Don’t underestimate monkeys’ feelings.
Which brings me to low-cal Canto and high-cal Owen: Canto looks drawn, weary, ashen and miserable in his thinness, mouth slightly agape, features pinched, eyes blank, his expression screaming, “Please, no, not another plateful of seeds!”
Well-fed Owen, by contrast, is a happy camper with a wry smile, every inch the laid-back simian, plump, eyes twinkling, full mouth relaxed, skin glowing, exuding wisdom as if he’s just read Kierkegaard and concluded that “Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backward.”
It’s the difference between the guy who got the marbleized rib-eye and the guy who got the oh-so-lean filet. Or between the guy who got a Château Grand Pontet St. Emilion with his brie and the guy who got water. As Edgar notes in King Lear, “Ripeness is all.” You don’t get to ripeness by eating apple peel for breakfast.
Speaking of St. Emilion, scientists, aware that most human beings don’t have the discipline to slash their calorie intake by almost a third, have been looking for substances that might mimic the effects of caloric restriction. They have found one candidate, resveratrol, in red wine.
The thing is there’s not enough resveratrol in wine to do the trick, so scientists are trying to concentrate it, or produce a chemical like it in order to offer people the gain (in life expectancy) without the pain (of dieting).
I don’t buy this gain-without-pain notion. Duality resides, indissoluble, at life’s core — Faust’s two souls within his breast, Anna Karenina’s shifting essence. Life without death would be miserable. Its beauty is bound to its fragility. Dawn is unimaginable without the dusk.
When life extension supplants life quality as a goal, you get the desolation of Canto the monkey. Living to 120 holds zero appeal for me. Canto looks like he’s itching to be put out of his misery.
There’s an alternative to resveratrol. Something is secreted in the love-sick that causes rapid loss of appetite — caloric restriction — yet scientists have been unable to reproduce this miracle substance, for if they did they would be decoding love. Because love is too close to the divine, life’s essence, it seems to defy such breakdown.
My mother died of cancer at 69. Her father lived to 98, her mother to 104. I said my mother died of cancer. But that’s not true. She was bipolar and depression devastated her. What took her life was misery.
We don’t understand what the mind secretes. The process of aging remains full of enigma. But I’d bet on jovial Owen outliving wretched Canto. I suspect those dissenting scientists I didn’t bore you with are right.
My 98-year-old grandfather had a party trick, making crisscross incisions into a watermelon, before allowing it to fall open in a giant red blossom. It was as beautiful as a lily opening — and, still vivid, close to what life is for.
When my father went to pick up his baboons at Heathrow airport, he stopped at a grocery store to buy them a treat. “Two pounds of bananas, please,” he said. But there were none. “O.K.,” he said, “Then I’ll take two pounds of carrots.” The shopkeeper gave him a very strange look before hurriedly handing over the carrots.
I can hear my 88-year-old father’s laughter as he tells this story. Laughter extends life. There’s little of it in the low-cal world and little doubt pudgy Owen will have the last laugh.
By Roger Cohen, published in the New York Times 15 July 2009
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Day 5
Tick tock.
The cravings gnaw at me.
Powerful and overwhelming urges to smoke.
To light one up.
To draw in that lungful of poison and because I think it will make me feel great.
But I will not.... I will NOT.
The cravings gnaw at me.
Powerful and overwhelming urges to smoke.
To light one up.
To draw in that lungful of poison and because I think it will make me feel great.
But I will not.... I will NOT.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Day 3
Who would have thought that I would make it to day 3?
I bet no one!
I have and have avoided one or two crises this morning during which I could have set myself on fire to have a smoke..... got through them though and so far have been smoke free for 69 hours.
No more Carbon Monoxide in my body.
No more Nicotine in my body.
I bet no one!
I have and have avoided one or two crises this morning during which I could have set myself on fire to have a smoke..... got through them though and so far have been smoke free for 69 hours.
No more Carbon Monoxide in my body.
No more Nicotine in my body.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Day 2
09h40 Sunday morning. I have been through the Friday night and Saturday night of a weekend.
On both nights I was out with friends, some of whom are smokers, and I must say that it was not as bad as I thought it would be.
I do have to be careful not to gulp gallons of alcohol down my throat every time I feel the urge to grab someone by the neck and steal their cigarettes from them!
By no means out of the woods yet, but a damn fine start.
Tick tock tock tock
Thanks you those of you who have been encouraging and supportive. Much appreciated.
On both nights I was out with friends, some of whom are smokers, and I must say that it was not as bad as I thought it would be.
I do have to be careful not to gulp gallons of alcohol down my throat every time I feel the urge to grab someone by the neck and steal their cigarettes from them!
By no means out of the woods yet, but a damn fine start.
Tick tock tock tock
Thanks you those of you who have been encouraging and supportive. Much appreciated.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Day 0
It has started. I extinguished my last cigarette at 14h52 today local time in Kuala Lumpur.
31 years a smoker fool.
3 hours and 50 minutes a non smoker....
Nic Benson - you are a scholar and a gentleman for your words of support.
31 years a smoker fool.
3 hours and 50 minutes a non smoker....
Nic Benson - you are a scholar and a gentleman for your words of support.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Monday, June 08, 2009
What is wrong with people???
Honour (from the Latin word honos, honoris) is the evaluation of a person's trustworthiness and social status based on that individual's actions. Honour is deemed exactly what determines a person's character: whether or not the person reflects honesty, respect, integrity, or fairness.
Accordingly, individuals are assigned worth and stature based on the harmony of their actions, code of honour, and that of the society at large. Honour can be analysed as a relativistic concept, i.e., conflicts between individuals and even cultures arising as a consequence of material circumstance and ambition, rather than fundamental differences in principle.
Alternatively, it can be viewed as nativist — that honour is as real to the human condition as love, and likewise derives from the formative personal bonds that establish one's personal dignity and character.
Dr Samuel Johnson, in his "A Dictionary of the English Language" (1755), defined honour as having several senses, the first of which was "nobility of soul, magnanimity, and a scorn of meanness." This sort of honour derives from the perceived virtuous conduct and personal integrity of the person endowed with it.
On the other hand, Johnson also defined honour in relationship to "reputation" and "fame"; to "privileges of rank or birth", and as "respect" of the kind which "places an individual socially and determines his right to precedence."
This sort of honour is not so much a function of moral or ethical excellence, as it is a consequence of power.
Accordingly, individuals are assigned worth and stature based on the harmony of their actions, code of honour, and that of the society at large. Honour can be analysed as a relativistic concept, i.e., conflicts between individuals and even cultures arising as a consequence of material circumstance and ambition, rather than fundamental differences in principle.
Alternatively, it can be viewed as nativist — that honour is as real to the human condition as love, and likewise derives from the formative personal bonds that establish one's personal dignity and character.
Dr Samuel Johnson, in his "A Dictionary of the English Language" (1755), defined honour as having several senses, the first of which was "nobility of soul, magnanimity, and a scorn of meanness." This sort of honour derives from the perceived virtuous conduct and personal integrity of the person endowed with it.
On the other hand, Johnson also defined honour in relationship to "reputation" and "fame"; to "privileges of rank or birth", and as "respect" of the kind which "places an individual socially and determines his right to precedence."
This sort of honour is not so much a function of moral or ethical excellence, as it is a consequence of power.
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