No I'm not talking about the new Sky broadband deal, I'm talking about the new brain mapping research that has been done, which has resulted it the realisation that there is an actual physical change in the autistic brain that can be scanned and measured. (See http://t.co/3kpUUwKcg5)
Reading this report had me yelling "Yes! They have finally got it! Yes!" so many times that I lost count! They have finally found that the is an underlying reason why I can't seem to cope with crowded situations, why my control goes to peices under stressful situations, why I find meeting new people so difficult. It isn't just me, it isn't that I'm some sort of freak who is just poorly socially adept, there is a reason why my brain doesn't seem to work the same way as other people's. I'm not just some delotional freak, it's that my brain is so over wired that the areas that are meant to be seperated so that they can edit what they are processing before sharing it with the central hub are interconnected in ways that they are not meant to be.
Basically the normal human brain is meant to be like an office building with different offices dealing with their own share of the work and leaving the rest to the other offices (smell in one office, hearing in another and so on and so forth). The autistic human brain has all these extra wires so information that is meant to be dealt with in one office is leaking over into all the other offices, meaning the central processor starts to struggle and eventually crash.
I also loved the fact that the article pointed out the extremely close connection between genuis and autisim, suggesting that with the right training, therapy and help to over come the social struggle we experience autistics could do so much good in the world by applying our hyperconnected brains and their ability to hype-concentrate to science, mathamatics, music and the arts.
What I found odd was actually at the end of the article in the comments box. Many people where saying that there is no evidence that autistism is a genetic disorder because a 'genetic epidemic' could not happen as quickly as scienctists are claiming it has.
Well, I hate to break it to you but you are both right and both wrong. Austism has a genetic base -a base of at least one hundred and fifty genes (150 - and that's only what is known so far) and they are all recessive. That is why it has taken so long for autistism to be identified from a genetic basis. It is also why autistism has suddenly increased in the last three decades.
When you have only 10% of a population carrying the genes for autistism the chances of a cross match are negilable. When you get up to 40% then the chances are signifatantly increased. When you hit 50%, 60%, 70% carrying the genes then the chances of producing a generation of autistic children suddenly jumps through the roof.
It has been estimated that at least 80% of the human population now carries the autistic recessives. However, that is not the end of the story. Nearly every woman with an autistic child reports having either a traumatic or extremely quick birth. What many people forget is that an extremely quick birth is easy on the mother, it is extremely stressful and traumatic on the baby. Concentrate antibiotics during pregency also seems to increase the risk of having an autistic child. It seems that autistim is set off by both genetic and circumstantual events.
What is more you can be an adult before you become autistic. You have a head injury in the right place and to the right intensity and you will come out of the coma autistic.
So, unlike the tests for Down Syndrome which has resulted in 90% of Down Syndrome humans being murdered before they can be born, autism is here to stay. What is more the human race ought to be damn glad of that because we are going to make easier for the human race to adapt to a world where we came explote every resource down to the bones. We autistics are content to find a job that our brains can understand and with fewer pocessions than most. I for one wear my clothes into destruction before I buy new stuff. Very few of my pocessions wind up in the charity shops because by the time I admit that I need to replace them they are fit only for the recycling centre. In short, for an autistic less really is more and for the world that is a really good thing.
Friday, 28 June 2013
Angry!
This months Readers Digest features in The Maverick article Dr Sandi Mann, an anger management specialist who angers that though anger once helped our ancestors survive, these days in our 'easy' society, it is becoming a misfiring instinct that leads us to get cross about the smaller, inconsequential stuff. She argues that since we no longer face body-weakening poverty or genuine life-threatening injustice or mortal danger we have become a race of people who "like toddlers, we expect everything to be perfect, and when it isn't we stamp our feet".
In many ways I agree with her in many ways, we do seem to spend a lot of time being furious about non important stuff.
How ever I also disagree with her on other points. There are very many reasons why we should be angry:
"Singing the song of angry men,
Singing the song of the people
Who will not be slaves again."
However, it seems to me, from where I'm sitting, that we are not allowed to show that we are angry. If we let on to the fact than the injustices that still plague the world makes us angry we are told "Oh stop being so aggressive, there is no point in being angry about stuff that is happening out there, we can't do anything about it." It seems that it has become socially unacceptable to be angry. It is a taboo to be angry now. So we don't let the anger out, we hold on to it inside until something comes along that is just one little niggle too much, one little thing too many, whether it is someone carving us up on the road or a computer that doesn't want to get a move on and log into our e-mail and then we explode. We almost can't help it. We have so much anger built up inside of us from the days, weeks, months of coping with situations we cannot or are not allowed to do any thing about that it is like the magma chamber of a volcano, it has to come out of the weak point and we start yelling and throwing things.
What is more doctors have proved that living with so much anger stored up inside is actually physically bad for us, particularly our hearts.
It makes me wonder if one of the reasons the Italians seem to live so much longer with better health is not only because of the diet but because in Italy it is still socially acceptable to be angry. If a wife finds something wrong with her husband's behaviour then the whole street is likely to know about it. If the siblings are having a spat with one another then the whole playground will know. If two business men are having a disagreement about the price the market will probably hear the exchange. Anger is something to be yelled at the top of the voice and then it is done with. Flash, bang and then over and done with, no carrying that burden of unreleased anger around in the heart.
Also if I was having an Autistic day out in Italy, people probably wouldn't realise that there was anything unusual about me.
In many ways I agree with her in many ways, we do seem to spend a lot of time being furious about non important stuff.
How ever I also disagree with her on other points. There are very many reasons why we should be angry:
- Disabled people still being treated like freaks.
- Women being denied basic education.
- Children dying of starvation.
- Big businesses dodging taxes and the little people being squeezed for them.
- Politicians who wouldn't know the truth if it bit them on the butt.
- The NHS falling apart at the seems.
"Singing the song of angry men,
Singing the song of the people
Who will not be slaves again."
However, it seems to me, from where I'm sitting, that we are not allowed to show that we are angry. If we let on to the fact than the injustices that still plague the world makes us angry we are told "Oh stop being so aggressive, there is no point in being angry about stuff that is happening out there, we can't do anything about it." It seems that it has become socially unacceptable to be angry. It is a taboo to be angry now. So we don't let the anger out, we hold on to it inside until something comes along that is just one little niggle too much, one little thing too many, whether it is someone carving us up on the road or a computer that doesn't want to get a move on and log into our e-mail and then we explode. We almost can't help it. We have so much anger built up inside of us from the days, weeks, months of coping with situations we cannot or are not allowed to do any thing about that it is like the magma chamber of a volcano, it has to come out of the weak point and we start yelling and throwing things.
What is more doctors have proved that living with so much anger stored up inside is actually physically bad for us, particularly our hearts.
It makes me wonder if one of the reasons the Italians seem to live so much longer with better health is not only because of the diet but because in Italy it is still socially acceptable to be angry. If a wife finds something wrong with her husband's behaviour then the whole street is likely to know about it. If the siblings are having a spat with one another then the whole playground will know. If two business men are having a disagreement about the price the market will probably hear the exchange. Anger is something to be yelled at the top of the voice and then it is done with. Flash, bang and then over and done with, no carrying that burden of unreleased anger around in the heart.
Also if I was having an Autistic day out in Italy, people probably wouldn't realise that there was anything unusual about me.
Sunday, 16 June 2013
Fundamentalism
Why is it that words have their meanings twisted about? For example - Fundamentalism. It seems to mean "adherence to strictly orthodox religions" but if you look at the root word - fundamental - then that means "basic, serving as foundation; essential; primary; important". So how come adding an 'ism' to the end of the word totally changes the nature of the word? And more importantly, gives adherents to a religion the right to go out and kill people who believe differently to them? I thought true fundamentalism is a return to the basis tenants of a belief, a return to it's original simplicity.
In the aftermath of the actions of two so called fundamentalists there have been calls for anyone who is not a Christian to be ejected from Britain, as so-called Christian country. There have been Mosques attacked and damaged and calls for the death sentence to be re-instated. One that is hardly Christian, hasn't any one in this so-called Christian country heard of 'turn the other cheek'? Two that is just going to add fuel to the fire. Most Muslims just want to be left alone to do their jobs and raise their families in peace, rather like most Jews or most Christians for that fact. But going to of the way to make their lives difficult is just going to encourage a proportion of their youths to take up the fundamentalist banner. There we'll have another killing or another bombing. What's going to follow? More Mosque burning? That will just give rise to more so-called fundamentalists and soon enough we are going to be have our very own version the Northern Ireland/Southern Ireland troubles. Do we really want that? I sure don't, thank you very much for the offer but no thanks, particularly in the light of the fact that this 'fundamentalism' meaning that you go out killing people of other faiths is a misuse of the language any way.
If you start to read the Bible, particularly the gospel of John, in the Jerusalem translation, then you start to realise that Jesus was a fundamentalist but in the meaning of the word 'one who believes in fundamentals' i.e. a return to the basic tenants of the Jewish faith encapsulate in the Ten Commandments.
There are branches of the Christian faith that hold to the tenant of that 'if you have faith in Jesus Christ then you have no need of the law' (law meaning the rules and regulations laid down in the Bible). They normally back this up in the next sentence by saying that any one who does not believe in Jesus Christ can't get into heaven. To me that is only a short step away from becoming a crusader and really starting up the so called religious wars again.
However, a little research presents a very different view upon the above statement.
In the Letter to the Galatians (2: 15-21 for those who are interested) Paul writes: "So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no-one will be justified." This is the quote most of the Christian branches who say 'we don't need the law' use to justify their point of view that all you need is faith in Jesus to get into heaven, that if you believe in Jesus all your sins will go unnoticed. But if you do some research into the time and the events when Paul wrote that letter you find that Paul might have been writing about something slightly different.
When Christianity started out, to begin with it was only Jews who believed in him. Then it started spreading to the Gentiles (i.e. non-Jews). The Jewish Christians continued to observe all the holy days and feast days and food laws of the Jewish customs, the Gentiles, having no knowledge of them, did not. This led to division in the church because it is awful hard to invite a fellow Christian over to have a meal if you don't know how to prepare the food so he will eat it (Example, in strictly orthodox Jewish customs it is a damnable sin to eat cheese and meat in the same meal). That in turn led to a belief that there was a 'better' sort of Christian, at which point it wouldn't have been long before the forced conversions and killings started.
Therefore, it is now believed that what Paul meant by 'by observing the law no-one will be justified' is that the Jewish laws of food-laws, sacrifices and so on, which where just leading to divisions and arguments within the church, rather like the divide between Christian and Jew that exists today. By church I mean the people who share a belief in God. It has been speculated that the reason the Gospel of John is rarely used in many of the Christian branches is because John's gospel emphasises the church to mean not some fancy building or power structure but to mean the people who share the belief in Christ. In other words church as not a place to go to but a thing to be.
Also, it has been taught, maybe without realising what was being taught, that God is our loving Father (fitting, don't you think, that I'm writing this on Father's Day) and it is said, I believe in either the Psalms or Proverbs: "don't be angry when God disciplines you. God only corrects those he loves." It is said that "that greatest cruelty is to deny a children discipline" and I agree with that. I have many people say that they don't realise at first when they meet me that I am Autistic. I can say now that it is because of the discipline that my Mother gave me when I was a child. I learnt that if I threw a temper tantrum then life became painful. Mother never left a bruise but she could make my butt sting like the billy-o. I learnt that there were boundaries that I should not cross. Disciplining me like that meant that I could grow up into the self disciplined adult I am now.
However, how are you to discipline a child if there are no boundaries? Would not God have given us a few boundaries so that we don't hurt ourselves, if he is the loving Father we are taught he is? In that way Jesus Christ was definitely a fundamentalist, in that he encouraged a return to the basic tenants, the Ten Commandments, of the Jewish faith and summed all ten up in the Commandment 'love one another as I have loved you'.
As for the belief that only Christians can go to heaven? Well, I'll quoted a bit of the Bible there as well: "that we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men and especially of those who believe." (First letter to Timothy 4: 10 if you want to look it up) Not 'Only of those who believe' or 'exclusively of those who believe' but 'especially of those who believe', which says to me that all good people have the chance of good to heaven, it's just those who believe have a slightly easier time of getting there. And I count any one who believes in God as a believer, after all Christ said 'my Father's house has many rooms' and if God wanted us to all be the same he would have made all as tins of baked beans.
In the aftermath of the actions of two so called fundamentalists there have been calls for anyone who is not a Christian to be ejected from Britain, as so-called Christian country. There have been Mosques attacked and damaged and calls for the death sentence to be re-instated. One that is hardly Christian, hasn't any one in this so-called Christian country heard of 'turn the other cheek'? Two that is just going to add fuel to the fire. Most Muslims just want to be left alone to do their jobs and raise their families in peace, rather like most Jews or most Christians for that fact. But going to of the way to make their lives difficult is just going to encourage a proportion of their youths to take up the fundamentalist banner. There we'll have another killing or another bombing. What's going to follow? More Mosque burning? That will just give rise to more so-called fundamentalists and soon enough we are going to be have our very own version the Northern Ireland/Southern Ireland troubles. Do we really want that? I sure don't, thank you very much for the offer but no thanks, particularly in the light of the fact that this 'fundamentalism' meaning that you go out killing people of other faiths is a misuse of the language any way.
If you start to read the Bible, particularly the gospel of John, in the Jerusalem translation, then you start to realise that Jesus was a fundamentalist but in the meaning of the word 'one who believes in fundamentals' i.e. a return to the basic tenants of the Jewish faith encapsulate in the Ten Commandments.
There are branches of the Christian faith that hold to the tenant of that 'if you have faith in Jesus Christ then you have no need of the law' (law meaning the rules and regulations laid down in the Bible). They normally back this up in the next sentence by saying that any one who does not believe in Jesus Christ can't get into heaven. To me that is only a short step away from becoming a crusader and really starting up the so called religious wars again.
However, a little research presents a very different view upon the above statement.
In the Letter to the Galatians (2: 15-21 for those who are interested) Paul writes: "So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no-one will be justified." This is the quote most of the Christian branches who say 'we don't need the law' use to justify their point of view that all you need is faith in Jesus to get into heaven, that if you believe in Jesus all your sins will go unnoticed. But if you do some research into the time and the events when Paul wrote that letter you find that Paul might have been writing about something slightly different.
When Christianity started out, to begin with it was only Jews who believed in him. Then it started spreading to the Gentiles (i.e. non-Jews). The Jewish Christians continued to observe all the holy days and feast days and food laws of the Jewish customs, the Gentiles, having no knowledge of them, did not. This led to division in the church because it is awful hard to invite a fellow Christian over to have a meal if you don't know how to prepare the food so he will eat it (Example, in strictly orthodox Jewish customs it is a damnable sin to eat cheese and meat in the same meal). That in turn led to a belief that there was a 'better' sort of Christian, at which point it wouldn't have been long before the forced conversions and killings started.
Therefore, it is now believed that what Paul meant by 'by observing the law no-one will be justified' is that the Jewish laws of food-laws, sacrifices and so on, which where just leading to divisions and arguments within the church, rather like the divide between Christian and Jew that exists today. By church I mean the people who share a belief in God. It has been speculated that the reason the Gospel of John is rarely used in many of the Christian branches is because John's gospel emphasises the church to mean not some fancy building or power structure but to mean the people who share the belief in Christ. In other words church as not a place to go to but a thing to be.
Also, it has been taught, maybe without realising what was being taught, that God is our loving Father (fitting, don't you think, that I'm writing this on Father's Day) and it is said, I believe in either the Psalms or Proverbs: "don't be angry when God disciplines you. God only corrects those he loves." It is said that "that greatest cruelty is to deny a children discipline" and I agree with that. I have many people say that they don't realise at first when they meet me that I am Autistic. I can say now that it is because of the discipline that my Mother gave me when I was a child. I learnt that if I threw a temper tantrum then life became painful. Mother never left a bruise but she could make my butt sting like the billy-o. I learnt that there were boundaries that I should not cross. Disciplining me like that meant that I could grow up into the self disciplined adult I am now.
However, how are you to discipline a child if there are no boundaries? Would not God have given us a few boundaries so that we don't hurt ourselves, if he is the loving Father we are taught he is? In that way Jesus Christ was definitely a fundamentalist, in that he encouraged a return to the basic tenants, the Ten Commandments, of the Jewish faith and summed all ten up in the Commandment 'love one another as I have loved you'.
As for the belief that only Christians can go to heaven? Well, I'll quoted a bit of the Bible there as well: "that we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men and especially of those who believe." (First letter to Timothy 4: 10 if you want to look it up) Not 'Only of those who believe' or 'exclusively of those who believe' but 'especially of those who believe', which says to me that all good people have the chance of good to heaven, it's just those who believe have a slightly easier time of getting there. And I count any one who believes in God as a believer, after all Christ said 'my Father's house has many rooms' and if God wanted us to all be the same he would have made all as tins of baked beans.
Wednesday, 12 June 2013
Infamous
No I'm not going to try and rob a bank (although part of me says they deserve it after mucking up our ecomany), 'Infamous' is the title of an astonding show I went to see on Monday with my friend at the Theatre Royal, Norwich.
Derren Brown is an illusionist, hypnotist and mathmatical genius. I can't go into too many details of the show because he asked us all to not spoil the surprises for future audiences. I'm not sure how many of the audience is going to hold to that plead but I am so, sorry, no spoilers here. Having spent my childhood as a fellow member of that most abused club 'The Goofballs Obvious', I'm not going to betray a fellow goofball.
I will say, however, if you can get to a ticket to see the show then get one! It is amazing in every sense of the word! I can't go into details but I have no idea how he makes some of those acts work, considering he prepared the props months ago.
This in it's own way brings me to a fascinating point. Derren Brown doesn't believe in psychics. My agreement with his point of view depends on what meaning he is giving to the word 'psychics'.
If he is talking people who claim to talk to the dead then I most definately agree. Even if the dead, against all current scientific evidence because our science still can't explain everything, wanted to contact the living they would not do it through a people who was taking money from their loved ones for the privaledge of a conversation.
If he means things like telepathy then I am not so sure I can agree. I agree that if the talent truely exists then it is very rare in humans but how else can a wolf pack successfully co-ordinate their movemets in the middle of a white out storm? The other things that point to it, in my mind, come from Derren's own show. I'm not sure how much I can reveal without spoiling it but I'm going to have a go. At one point he invited the audience to participate in a mass hypnoses experiment. I thought I'd give it a go to see if hypnosis really is possible. I then had to fight to get free of it. It is not that it was a scary experience in the normal sense of the word but having had people controlling how I behaved because I had no way of fighting them for years, I was not going to surrender control of my mind. However, as I said, I had to fight to get free of it and it was a struggle. Therefore is not hypnosis a form of telepathy? Controlling another persons mind with a few key words repeated over and over?
There other thing was he's various acts of predicting what people were going to say before they said it. I would say that either he's a telepathic who doesn't realise what he is or he is reading body language on such a minute level it is almost on the subconious and what is that if not telepathy? Either way it convinced me of where Frank Herbert found the inspiration for the Bene Gesserit method of reading people.
I suppose the only way you could make up your mind as to what you think is to go and see the show.
Derren Brown is an illusionist, hypnotist and mathmatical genius. I can't go into too many details of the show because he asked us all to not spoil the surprises for future audiences. I'm not sure how many of the audience is going to hold to that plead but I am so, sorry, no spoilers here. Having spent my childhood as a fellow member of that most abused club 'The Goofballs Obvious', I'm not going to betray a fellow goofball.
I will say, however, if you can get to a ticket to see the show then get one! It is amazing in every sense of the word! I can't go into details but I have no idea how he makes some of those acts work, considering he prepared the props months ago.
This in it's own way brings me to a fascinating point. Derren Brown doesn't believe in psychics. My agreement with his point of view depends on what meaning he is giving to the word 'psychics'.
If he is talking people who claim to talk to the dead then I most definately agree. Even if the dead, against all current scientific evidence because our science still can't explain everything, wanted to contact the living they would not do it through a people who was taking money from their loved ones for the privaledge of a conversation.
If he means things like telepathy then I am not so sure I can agree. I agree that if the talent truely exists then it is very rare in humans but how else can a wolf pack successfully co-ordinate their movemets in the middle of a white out storm? The other things that point to it, in my mind, come from Derren's own show. I'm not sure how much I can reveal without spoiling it but I'm going to have a go. At one point he invited the audience to participate in a mass hypnoses experiment. I thought I'd give it a go to see if hypnosis really is possible. I then had to fight to get free of it. It is not that it was a scary experience in the normal sense of the word but having had people controlling how I behaved because I had no way of fighting them for years, I was not going to surrender control of my mind. However, as I said, I had to fight to get free of it and it was a struggle. Therefore is not hypnosis a form of telepathy? Controlling another persons mind with a few key words repeated over and over?
There other thing was he's various acts of predicting what people were going to say before they said it. I would say that either he's a telepathic who doesn't realise what he is or he is reading body language on such a minute level it is almost on the subconious and what is that if not telepathy? Either way it convinced me of where Frank Herbert found the inspiration for the Bene Gesserit method of reading people.
I suppose the only way you could make up your mind as to what you think is to go and see the show.
Tuesday, 4 June 2013
Proactive Society - Water management
O.K. dig this for ridicious. (I'm sorry if my spelling is not top form, my post writing page seems to have covered up the spell checker with the 'post settings' label and I can't make it go back).
I say again, dig this for ridicious. It is legal for you to, if you have a bath, to empty said bath with a bucket and use it for things such as flushing your toilet or taking it outside to water your garden. However, it is illegal, if you have a shower, to tap into the down spout that carries the waste water away and have that water run into a water butt. Reason for this? The water supplier would not be able to accurately charge you for waste water processing.
So if you have a shower it is illegal to save dirty water to water your garden, or perhaps your lawn when there's a hose pipe ban or maybe even those vegetables you've been growing so you don't have to buy stuff that has been smoothered in cancer causing pesticides.
Excuse me but is this the same government that promised to be the greenest government ever? Is this the same government that has been encouraging all the water companies to send out leaflets about 'love every drop' to get us ready for the water shortages that they are predicting?
I have to admit that there isn't much the little guy can do about the whole stupidity of the down spout law, which is made even more stupid when you discovery that they are using the down spouts off peoples roofs to provide clean, easily reachable drinking water in some parts of Africa. However, there are other ways of saving water around the house.
For example, if you do not have a dish washer and therefore still wash your dishes by hand then, instead of letting the cold water in the pipe run down the drain before the hot water comes through, gather it in a bowl and use that to fill your water butt. Or, if you don't have a water butt, simply set it to one side and use it later to water the garden. The same could be used when letting the water run hot in the shower.
One that takes a little money is a tumble drier with a condenser unit instead of a hose. Not only do you not have a hose dragging across the floor being mauled by the pets but the water in the catchment tank can be left to go cold and then poured on the garden. I have also found in gardens that have heavily clay soil pouring the contents of the catchment tank down a partly done post hole aids in the digging as it softens the soil right up.
Another, which is a way around the whole stupidity of the down spout law, is that it is perfectly legal to attach guttering to an out building or shed and run that into a water butt or a buried garden hose, as long as the out building is not attached to the residental building. I know it sounds silly, you can have it on an out building but not on a house. The reason for that? Most people just left the roofs of their out buildings drip on to the soil so the water companies cannot claim to be loosing out on profit if you start adding guttering to them because they never had the water that is now flowing into your water butt flowing through their pipes.
And then they wonder why the little guys are trying to take back the ability to put things right without the help (or is that hinderance) of the big companies?
I say again, dig this for ridicious. It is legal for you to, if you have a bath, to empty said bath with a bucket and use it for things such as flushing your toilet or taking it outside to water your garden. However, it is illegal, if you have a shower, to tap into the down spout that carries the waste water away and have that water run into a water butt. Reason for this? The water supplier would not be able to accurately charge you for waste water processing.
So if you have a shower it is illegal to save dirty water to water your garden, or perhaps your lawn when there's a hose pipe ban or maybe even those vegetables you've been growing so you don't have to buy stuff that has been smoothered in cancer causing pesticides.
Excuse me but is this the same government that promised to be the greenest government ever? Is this the same government that has been encouraging all the water companies to send out leaflets about 'love every drop' to get us ready for the water shortages that they are predicting?
I have to admit that there isn't much the little guy can do about the whole stupidity of the down spout law, which is made even more stupid when you discovery that they are using the down spouts off peoples roofs to provide clean, easily reachable drinking water in some parts of Africa. However, there are other ways of saving water around the house.
For example, if you do not have a dish washer and therefore still wash your dishes by hand then, instead of letting the cold water in the pipe run down the drain before the hot water comes through, gather it in a bowl and use that to fill your water butt. Or, if you don't have a water butt, simply set it to one side and use it later to water the garden. The same could be used when letting the water run hot in the shower.
One that takes a little money is a tumble drier with a condenser unit instead of a hose. Not only do you not have a hose dragging across the floor being mauled by the pets but the water in the catchment tank can be left to go cold and then poured on the garden. I have also found in gardens that have heavily clay soil pouring the contents of the catchment tank down a partly done post hole aids in the digging as it softens the soil right up.
Another, which is a way around the whole stupidity of the down spout law, is that it is perfectly legal to attach guttering to an out building or shed and run that into a water butt or a buried garden hose, as long as the out building is not attached to the residental building. I know it sounds silly, you can have it on an out building but not on a house. The reason for that? Most people just left the roofs of their out buildings drip on to the soil so the water companies cannot claim to be loosing out on profit if you start adding guttering to them because they never had the water that is now flowing into your water butt flowing through their pipes.
And then they wonder why the little guys are trying to take back the ability to put things right without the help (or is that hinderance) of the big companies?
Friday, 31 May 2013
STOP PRESS!!!
Alright! Is it only me but doesn't feel that every time we turn round we found out that if the government can't gorge us one way they are trying to get at us by gorging our children?
I am refering to the new curriculum that is now being circulated around the UK parliment. Apparently climate charge has suddenly upped and disappeared so we no longer need to teach our children about it until after they are eleven years old. Eleven!?! Have they no idea that by that point children have already laid down the basic framework of how they are going to view the world? The human affect upon our world has to be discussed from the moment a child starts learning science so that cause and effect, the consquences of our actions can form part of that framework.
What is more they don't even bother to make up for lost time between the ages of eleven and fourteen in the proposed science and geography curriculum. No, climate change and the wild weather it is causing is something to be swept under the carpet and then maybe it will go away so the people will stop asking their government awkward questions, such as "What happened to your promise to be the greenest government ever?"
To cap it off sustainable developement and global citizenship has also been downgraded on the draft of the new curriculum.
It appears that the government would love to raise a generation of young people who will continue pillaging the world resources with no mind for how it poisons the very air that we breath and will not care that people in Africa, Central and Southen America and Asia starve because climate change has caused floods/droughts/the movement of disease ranges that has destroyed their crops for decades at a go. After all they are not in England so why should we care?
We should care because they are human beings!!! They bleed red the same as we do. We share ancestory, genetics and a common human community! A common human family! Climate change does not just affect animal species, it also affects us!
Not only does the proposed curriculum fly in the face of the sense of common human decency, it is also in complete denial of the, and I quote, "Expert Panel's clear recommendations". It appears to me that the current government only takes note of the recommendations of the expert panels it SETS UP ITSELF if those recommendations fit the governments preferred view of the world - i.e. the world resources will never run out so we will encourage the people and therefore businesses to continue pillaging them for all they are worth so we can keep taxing our wage pack out of them.
It seems that on top of all the other responsibilities a decent parent has the government is going to add teaching them how to be well rounded, considerate people who understand how they consuming habits affect people on the other side of the world, people like the workers in that factory that collasped in Bangladesh.
However, I would say that this new curriculum is just the unavoidable result of the past changes to the curriculum. Having gone through the education system within the last twenty years (and still struggling to recover from the scars that it left me with) I know for a fact that, not only has the standard dropped from the standard expected of my parent's generation who were learning algerbra when they were eleven years old (I didn't start until I was fourteen), but the whole purpose of education has drastically changed between my generation and theirs. When my parents where going through school the emphasis was not on what you knew but rather on how you learned it. For example, in the mathematics O-level you could have a totally different method for, say, calculating percentages from what the curriculum had proposed. However, if the examiner, who would be a mathematical professor, could see that your method was sound and accurate you would still receive full marks for that question. What is more the examiner was more than likely to start teaching your method as an alternative to the curriculum method to those students who could not grasp the curriculum method.
These days you must use the curriculum method, even if you cannot understand and therefore misscalculate the answer because if you use a different method from the curriculum state one, even if you calculate the answer correctly, the examiner, who might be a English teacher if you are lucky, will still not give you the marks that question was worth. Why? Because they compare your answer to what is written on the answer sheet and are not allowed to award points to method that devate from the curriculum method, even if the answer is correctly calculated.
These days the emphasis is on what you know, not how you learned it and heaven forbid a child being taught to work out how they can apply their knowledge to a field different from the one they were taught in. That simply will not do. Why, if we encourage children to actually be intelligent then they might be able to see the parellels between history and the current situation. Such as the fact that the first thing any tyrant does when they are building they power base is to constrict education because ignorant people are easy to drive. If people are left ignorant then they will believe whatever you wish to tell them through the medium of mass media. However, if people are educated in an education system that teaches them how to learn a new thing every day then they will ineverably start asking questions. Once the questions start then the tyrant cannot answer them. When the people realise that there is no answer forth coming they start looking for answers and when they find them that is when revolutions start.
And I beg to differ with the point of view that says that revolutions are violent, evil things. I propose a new revolution:-
1.We disagree with how our government is exploting the natural world - revolution = research the origins of the products you buy. If they come from unsustainable sources don't buy them.
2. We disagree with how our government is encouraging pollution - revolution = walk, bike, catch the bus, car share on every journey that we can.
3. We disagree with how much pesticide is sprayed on our food - revolution = dig for victory! Grow your own! As much of your own as you can manage and buy organic food that is grown in your own country.
4. We disagree with how the meat industry treats animals - revolution = if you don't want to go vegetarain then buy your meat from your local butcher. They can't afford to buy meat from animals that have been transported live over hundreds of miles. What is more, if you walk to the local butcher you save in fuel the slight, and I do mean slight, increase in price.
There are a hundred and one things we can do, each and every one of us, to revolutionize the way we live and the world we live in and more importantly, the world we leave for our children. However, to do that we have to be able to learn about them. Tell me, who does it benefit if we are unable to learn?
For more information about the propsed curriculum see:
www.wwf.org.uk/blog/campaigns/national-curriculum-shouldnt-hide-the-truth-about-climate
One final note:
"In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists." Eric Hoffer
I am refering to the new curriculum that is now being circulated around the UK parliment. Apparently climate charge has suddenly upped and disappeared so we no longer need to teach our children about it until after they are eleven years old. Eleven!?! Have they no idea that by that point children have already laid down the basic framework of how they are going to view the world? The human affect upon our world has to be discussed from the moment a child starts learning science so that cause and effect, the consquences of our actions can form part of that framework.
What is more they don't even bother to make up for lost time between the ages of eleven and fourteen in the proposed science and geography curriculum. No, climate change and the wild weather it is causing is something to be swept under the carpet and then maybe it will go away so the people will stop asking their government awkward questions, such as "What happened to your promise to be the greenest government ever?"
To cap it off sustainable developement and global citizenship has also been downgraded on the draft of the new curriculum.
It appears that the government would love to raise a generation of young people who will continue pillaging the world resources with no mind for how it poisons the very air that we breath and will not care that people in Africa, Central and Southen America and Asia starve because climate change has caused floods/droughts/the movement of disease ranges that has destroyed their crops for decades at a go. After all they are not in England so why should we care?
We should care because they are human beings!!! They bleed red the same as we do. We share ancestory, genetics and a common human community! A common human family! Climate change does not just affect animal species, it also affects us!
Not only does the proposed curriculum fly in the face of the sense of common human decency, it is also in complete denial of the, and I quote, "Expert Panel's clear recommendations". It appears to me that the current government only takes note of the recommendations of the expert panels it SETS UP ITSELF if those recommendations fit the governments preferred view of the world - i.e. the world resources will never run out so we will encourage the people and therefore businesses to continue pillaging them for all they are worth so we can keep taxing our wage pack out of them.
It seems that on top of all the other responsibilities a decent parent has the government is going to add teaching them how to be well rounded, considerate people who understand how they consuming habits affect people on the other side of the world, people like the workers in that factory that collasped in Bangladesh.
However, I would say that this new curriculum is just the unavoidable result of the past changes to the curriculum. Having gone through the education system within the last twenty years (and still struggling to recover from the scars that it left me with) I know for a fact that, not only has the standard dropped from the standard expected of my parent's generation who were learning algerbra when they were eleven years old (I didn't start until I was fourteen), but the whole purpose of education has drastically changed between my generation and theirs. When my parents where going through school the emphasis was not on what you knew but rather on how you learned it. For example, in the mathematics O-level you could have a totally different method for, say, calculating percentages from what the curriculum had proposed. However, if the examiner, who would be a mathematical professor, could see that your method was sound and accurate you would still receive full marks for that question. What is more the examiner was more than likely to start teaching your method as an alternative to the curriculum method to those students who could not grasp the curriculum method.
These days you must use the curriculum method, even if you cannot understand and therefore misscalculate the answer because if you use a different method from the curriculum state one, even if you calculate the answer correctly, the examiner, who might be a English teacher if you are lucky, will still not give you the marks that question was worth. Why? Because they compare your answer to what is written on the answer sheet and are not allowed to award points to method that devate from the curriculum method, even if the answer is correctly calculated.
These days the emphasis is on what you know, not how you learned it and heaven forbid a child being taught to work out how they can apply their knowledge to a field different from the one they were taught in. That simply will not do. Why, if we encourage children to actually be intelligent then they might be able to see the parellels between history and the current situation. Such as the fact that the first thing any tyrant does when they are building they power base is to constrict education because ignorant people are easy to drive. If people are left ignorant then they will believe whatever you wish to tell them through the medium of mass media. However, if people are educated in an education system that teaches them how to learn a new thing every day then they will ineverably start asking questions. Once the questions start then the tyrant cannot answer them. When the people realise that there is no answer forth coming they start looking for answers and when they find them that is when revolutions start.
And I beg to differ with the point of view that says that revolutions are violent, evil things. I propose a new revolution:-
1.We disagree with how our government is exploting the natural world - revolution = research the origins of the products you buy. If they come from unsustainable sources don't buy them.
2. We disagree with how our government is encouraging pollution - revolution = walk, bike, catch the bus, car share on every journey that we can.
3. We disagree with how much pesticide is sprayed on our food - revolution = dig for victory! Grow your own! As much of your own as you can manage and buy organic food that is grown in your own country.
4. We disagree with how the meat industry treats animals - revolution = if you don't want to go vegetarain then buy your meat from your local butcher. They can't afford to buy meat from animals that have been transported live over hundreds of miles. What is more, if you walk to the local butcher you save in fuel the slight, and I do mean slight, increase in price.
There are a hundred and one things we can do, each and every one of us, to revolutionize the way we live and the world we live in and more importantly, the world we leave for our children. However, to do that we have to be able to learn about them. Tell me, who does it benefit if we are unable to learn?
For more information about the propsed curriculum see:
www.wwf.org.uk/blog/campaigns/national-curriculum-shouldnt-hide-the-truth-about-climate
One final note:
"In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists." Eric Hoffer
Tuesday, 21 May 2013
Growing a Wanted Future
I was advocating in my last post owning and digging an allotment. However, you could fore go that expense and simply start on your own garden. Growing your own food can be really easy and you can even grow stuff that will help protect the rest of your crop.
Rhubarb leaves can be boiled and the resulting liquid, once cooled, used as a 100% bee friendly pesticide (as long as you don't spray it directly on to a bee). The stalks of said leaves can be cooked and eaten as stewed fruit, crumble or fruit tarts. The leaves themselves, once boiled, go on the compost heap. A word of caution! Never pick rhubarb that you or someone in your family has not planted! Wild rhubarb is poisonous all over and can kill an adult human if ingested.
Beetroot, although not to everybody taste, if planted next to cabbage or lettuces, will cover their existence with their smell and help keep away butterflies and their resultant caterpillars.
Marigolds will do the same thing as beetroot and can be picked, boiled, strained and their resultant liquid used as an anti-fungal on both plants and people. You spray it on effected plants and in cases of Athlete's Foot, use it as a foot bath on humans.
Sunflowers, although not a direct effectuate, draw in song birds in the winter by providing seeds and those song bird will come back in the spring and summer to collect the pests you don't want eating you crop to feed their own young. However, it is a good idea to cover soft fruits such as raspberries and strawberries with netting during the summer and autumn. Birds like soft fruits just as much as we do.
For the bees you want to attract to pollinate your crops and make them grow then the best hedge is an even mixture of rosemary, lavender and sage. These can be hedged really easily by cutting back three quarters of the years growth in October. This will result in a slow growing hedge but one that is super thick. The cuttings, in the case of lavender, can be dried and placed inside clothing drawers and wardrobes to keep away clothes moths. Rosemary and sage can be used either fresh or dried in cooking and make for excellent roasts when you sprinkle them over the meat.
Rosemary blooms in the spring and provides food for the early bees. Lavender blooms in the summer and in a good flower year, will literally hum with bees. Sage blooms in the autumn and feds the bees that are up late.
I understand that some of the crops I'm suggesting up above are not to every bodies taste so, if there is not any one in the family who likes them, then my suggestions would be a little table at the end of the drive and an honesty box. It might not make you much but it is money you wouldn't have if you didn't try. The boxes can always be bolted down and locked if you are worried about theft.
The up swing of all the hard work that it takes to make a cottage garden work is two fold in my mind. One you don't have to pay for a gym membership, you will have plenty of wait lifting in the back garden. Two you will have food on the table that you will know 100% where it was grown, what is in it and what was sprayed on it. Considering the side effects of some of the pesticides they use now, I say a reward like that is well worth the effort.
What is more it sticks two up at the industries that would take everything from our planet until she has nothing left to give and put nothing back in it's place. I'd say that growing your own food, also grows a future where the little man actually has a say in what is important in this world. Who doesn't wanted that?
Rhubarb leaves can be boiled and the resulting liquid, once cooled, used as a 100% bee friendly pesticide (as long as you don't spray it directly on to a bee). The stalks of said leaves can be cooked and eaten as stewed fruit, crumble or fruit tarts. The leaves themselves, once boiled, go on the compost heap. A word of caution! Never pick rhubarb that you or someone in your family has not planted! Wild rhubarb is poisonous all over and can kill an adult human if ingested.
Beetroot, although not to everybody taste, if planted next to cabbage or lettuces, will cover their existence with their smell and help keep away butterflies and their resultant caterpillars.
Marigolds will do the same thing as beetroot and can be picked, boiled, strained and their resultant liquid used as an anti-fungal on both plants and people. You spray it on effected plants and in cases of Athlete's Foot, use it as a foot bath on humans.
Sunflowers, although not a direct effectuate, draw in song birds in the winter by providing seeds and those song bird will come back in the spring and summer to collect the pests you don't want eating you crop to feed their own young. However, it is a good idea to cover soft fruits such as raspberries and strawberries with netting during the summer and autumn. Birds like soft fruits just as much as we do.
For the bees you want to attract to pollinate your crops and make them grow then the best hedge is an even mixture of rosemary, lavender and sage. These can be hedged really easily by cutting back three quarters of the years growth in October. This will result in a slow growing hedge but one that is super thick. The cuttings, in the case of lavender, can be dried and placed inside clothing drawers and wardrobes to keep away clothes moths. Rosemary and sage can be used either fresh or dried in cooking and make for excellent roasts when you sprinkle them over the meat.
Rosemary blooms in the spring and provides food for the early bees. Lavender blooms in the summer and in a good flower year, will literally hum with bees. Sage blooms in the autumn and feds the bees that are up late.
I understand that some of the crops I'm suggesting up above are not to every bodies taste so, if there is not any one in the family who likes them, then my suggestions would be a little table at the end of the drive and an honesty box. It might not make you much but it is money you wouldn't have if you didn't try. The boxes can always be bolted down and locked if you are worried about theft.
The up swing of all the hard work that it takes to make a cottage garden work is two fold in my mind. One you don't have to pay for a gym membership, you will have plenty of wait lifting in the back garden. Two you will have food on the table that you will know 100% where it was grown, what is in it and what was sprayed on it. Considering the side effects of some of the pesticides they use now, I say a reward like that is well worth the effort.
What is more it sticks two up at the industries that would take everything from our planet until she has nothing left to give and put nothing back in it's place. I'd say that growing your own food, also grows a future where the little man actually has a say in what is important in this world. Who doesn't wanted that?
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