An Apology To Stephen Hawking

photo courtesy Jack Allan

In April 2009 I wrote a futuristic verse. It was a contribution to meet
Bud the Teacher’s deal to write a poem a day for the whole of that month. The verse looked only a little way into our possible future.

In the last stanza I predicted that Stephen Hawking might never have had a chance to say what I assumed had been running through his mind.

“It’s been a long time since Cataclysm.
They said in the beginning it might be
quite a journey. And so we are all here
in one form or another. No one knew
it would be so simple to start it off.

Even Fermi didn’t, though more than most
he had the insight. ‘So where are they all?’
was what he put to them, knowing full well!

Fermi? He’s over by the supernova.
Can’t get him away from it. Addicted
they say – he always was fanatical.
Apparently he was among the first
to congratulate Hawking when he got here.

Hawking knew all along of course. It was
only a matter of time. And before
he let it all out it was far too late.”

I may have been wrong about Stephen's timeliness. I hope I was.
If so, I offer him my sincerest apology.



Let’s hope that Stephen’s advice is timely, to assist us to survive so our successors can tell a different tale a few hundred years from now.

November

It’s New Zealand’s last month of spring for 2009.

When I started blogging, one of the things I became attuned to was the sheer upside-downness of the rest of the world – compared to where I live, that is.

In the first few months, it was customary for me to wait overnight for the wave of blog comments to wash across a new post from countries other than those in the South Pacific, if it happened at all.

Most activity I observe on my blog takes place after daylight. Of course, there are always exceptions. There are nocturnal bloggers throughout the world and some who seem to be active 24/7!

Unsurprisingly, most people do not consider the time zones across the world when it comes to blogging. Last year I posted a Middle-earth time widget in my side-bar to help with this.

The academic year

There is as much disparity of alignment across the world when considering the education cycle. How many countries can enjoy an academic year that begins in January or early February and finishes in December? How many countries can claim that the (actual) year starts and finishes in summer?

The upside-downness prevails when reflecting on the seasons. While Canada was in summer New Zealand was steeped in mid-winter. Now, as Kiwiland warms towards summer, starting officially on 1 December, Britain chills into winter.

I receive regular communication from people overseas who are amused and surprised at the seasonal differences – till they think about the global cycles. It’s not something that can be easily summarised in a chart, for the seasons in each country progress and change.

video of northern hemisphere seasons (check out amazing videos)

November in New Zealand starts me dreaming of summer.

The hazy balmy days have come in fast,
A garden-loose late-blooming tulip yawns,
Limp petals soft from drooping roses cast,
And daisies flourish on the feathered lawns;
A cicada wakes from the nymphal sleep
Then sheds the fragile nut-brown pupal shell,
And so begins its steady skyward creep
To chant the long percussive choric spell;
The karo's darkened pods crack and expose
The cloying seed in clusters set to fall,
A blackbird swoops down keen to interpose
And sing his warbling chronicle to all;
With these the days I long for have begun,
The warm and lazy summer days of sun.

related post - > ( 1 )

Digital Natives? Digital Immigrants?

I wonder about the wisdom of perpetuating a craze that appears to have created a division where none exists. I read, hear and see a lot of evidence to suggest that young people born into this age are more accepting of its digital equipment and the development of this than some who were born decades before. This is entirely to be expected.

My personal experience is that the young don't necessarily have any better command of the use of the technology nor keener vision of its potential.

Innate tendencies

The terms ‘native’ and ‘immigrant’, used in a digital context, place unnecessary and unwarranted barriers between older people who have a command of present-day technology, and yet are labelled ‘immigrants’, and the similarly able individuals who are younger, and are labelled ‘natives’.

Humans have an innate tendency to isolate people into groups, through criteria that involve seemingly peripheral and irrelevant differences. These can be of gender, age, skin or hair colour, height, girth, voice accent, ethnic origin or religious belief. You identify it; a category will exist for it.

The unfortunate use of the terms ‘native’ and ‘immigrant’ tends to bring to mind times or situations when these were used commonly in derogatory contexts. Their use can provoke prejudice. I’ve actually seen this happen. It isn’t pretty to watch.

A + B = C

Criteria for distinguishing so-called digital natives from so-called digital immigrants, some of which is seriously flawed, have been drafted since the beginning of this century. And they continue to be refined. I see more references to their mythical existence every day. The recognition of that is as if it were something clear-cut like 1 + 1 = 2.

This is despite recent and not so recent findings and reports that clearly indicate there is more to becoming digitally savvy and acquiring acumen with present-day technology than being born close to 1990. Just check out some of the references cited in Sharon Stoerger’s article, 2009.

One thing that’s clear from my experience as a teacher of both children and adults, is that young people, new to present-day technology, are no faster at understanding it and getting useful command of it, than newbies who are mature and perhaps decades older than they.

Those who are born into a digital-technology-rich environment are familiar with it, certainly. But it is in a way similar to how all of us in the western world are accepting of a 24/7 electricity supply, the technology to record sound and ‘moving pictures’, or the capacity to be able to make a direct call – Skype with video if you wish – from one side of the globe to the other.

I make no apology for this rant. It’s been a long time coming.

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Taupo

photo courtesy Jack Allan

Paul C's GPS theme for July is simple: "reflect upon a time when nature provided you with comfort, beauty, or inspiration."

In the centre of North Island, New Zealand, rests one of the world’s largest extinct volcanoes. About 26,500 years ago, the volcano erupted, ejecting over 1,170 cubic kilometres of material.

Over time, a series of smaller eruptions occurred, including the Hatepe eruption in the year 180. It was the most violent eruption of any volcano in recorded history. What remained after that cataclysm was a caldera that filled with water to become what we now know as Lake Taupo.

I visited Lake Taupo with my family in April 2004. We were privileged to stay at my wife’s aunt’s cottage on the northern shore of the lake, literally a stone’s throw from the waterside.

One afternoon, while returning from a walk along the lake shore,
I scribbled a dozen or so lines of verse. Here, after some minor tinkering, is the essence of what I wrote:

Taupo

The land was green once more before the lake
Was deep, its contours filled too well to mark
A place by: layer upon layer of ash-cake.
No bird looped near the waves that scoured the dark
And sintered shore-line. Fire had signed its will
And held its peace. And but for some release
At vents and fumaroles, the land was still,
With Earth and Sky well set to take their ease.
A crystal lake in a crystalline setting;
A billion waves; a billion inheritors.
No way is it a seeing and forgetting;
Truly, it’s a beauty fit for royalty.
Its enriched and well privileged visitors
Stand in awe of Taupo, and bow in fealty!

video and photos courtesy Jack Allan

A Green Pen Society contribution

Winter Solstice

Today is the shortest day.
Despite the post date, the time of publishing is Sunday 21 June 2009, New Zealand.

This time of year, some creatures hibernate. Many travel to the equator. Others consume what they’d hoarded in time of abundance. The last reserves begin to fade, like dying embers in a cooling fireplace.

My thoughts move to a phase of reflection. Hibernation becomes more understandable. Resourcefulness is a priority.

My skin puckers in a light wind. I begin to look out warm thoughts with the thick socks and woolly singlets.

Memories of spring mature with age. I look for jonquils in the scrub.
A few nod for me to accept their friendly arrival and shake out their piquant scent.

I write haiku, and chide myself for still thinking of winter.

The chill that's winter
blows a hole in the wood-pile
I stacked in summer.

Ah! Summer! Do you think the birds will come when it’s here?
They’re silent now. Will the sweet blackbird sing for us again?
Will grey warblers warble at noon? Will fantails twitter at sunset?

Radiating possibility. That’s it.
Perish a notion of winter.
Cherish warm thought till spring.

Of all the pleasure gardens bring,
The handsome pied Red Admiral
Must touch the zenith of the spring
With form and grace ephemeral;

To see these patterned wings full spread
In all but a fleeting glance,
Fine lace veil in feathered thread,
Enraptured eyes in trance

Will follow with a languid gaze
The soft hypnotic flutter,
Through the soporific haze,

Near honey scented bower,
Gliding with a liquid ease
Above the blood-red wallflower.

Countdown. Nearly two months to go.

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Creativity, Space and Time

Okay, okay, okay, okay!

We have a lot of things happening in our lives today. We are expected to multi-task to cope with all that comes at us from every direction at work: emails that we’ve to respond to dropping in at a pace per minute, phone calls interrupting our daily routine, txt messages arriving on our mobiles with an incessant beep, new-post announcements hitting the RSS Reader at a digital rap, never mind the twitter and tweets.

And then there’s life itself.

When ever do we have time to think?

I was wondering about all his while listening to John Cleese on creativity. He spoke of boundaries of space and time.

He said it like this:

"Boundaries of space."

"Boundaries of time."

And I thought, “Yeah, right!”

The biggest barrier is getting the space to build the boundaries and the time to plan the building. And it goes on and on and on. And we’re told that knowledge will be doubling every three days by 2020. How to keep pace with it all and still have time to think - that’s the question.

Cleese mentioned that a lot happens when we’re asleep. Well thank goodness, I say. There’s not much time to catch up with it all while we’re awake.

Or is there?

Late last week I was asked to give a talk at work on cybersafety. I’d no time to sort out what I’d to do over the weekend. Monday was a shambles. I’d barely enough time to look out the PowerPoint on the topic that I’d put together, in a rush, at the end of last year.

And there I was, Tuesday morning, sitting on the 7-o-clock bus heading into work wondering what the heck I was going to say at the 9-o-clock session, and what did I have to check before I started, and did I get the version right when I copied the .pp file to my memory stick the previous evening, and what would I do if there’s no sound system for the vids, and could I remember what the vids were about anyway?

Thing is, there’s little to do on a 30 minute bus ride at that time of the morning. The bus was less than half empty. Traffic was light. There was the space. And there was enough time to reflect on my talk and mind-scan over notes I’d downloaded from the server the night before.

It was a very satisfying morning session to facilitate. Well attended, with just the right number of active participants to keep the discussion firing on relevant issues. All in all, a session that I should not really have worried about - at all.

So how did that all come together when it all seemed to be coming at me with so much of a rush?

Boundaries of space.

Boundaries of time.

Those precious minutes on the bus. With no other thing to do but think.

It is a facility that I often put to use - the bus. I travel to and from work with an average time to spend of about 50 minutes every day doing absolutely nothing – about a twentieth of my waking hours. I seldom read on the bus for I get travelsick. So I use it to think.

Space and time to keep me in the pink. No phone ringing. No mobile beeping - I can switch it off when I need the space. No emails to read and reply to – I don’t carry a lap-top. So no RSS Reader to chase. Nothing.

Boundaries of space.

Boundaries of time.

How do you find the space and time to do your thinking in a day?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y70nbDJI5Uk

Long, Long Time Ago

On this day, fifty years ago, the life of a young singer-songwriter ended tragically. The end for this brief and brilliant artistic career was a supernova in the pop music galaxy that continues to reverberate with the shock.

Early in the morning (3 February 1959) a light plane crashed shortly after take-off, near Mason City Municipal Airport, Iowa. All passengers died: pilot Roger Peterson, Ritchie Valens, J P “The Big Bopper” Richardson, and Charles Hardin Holley, otherwise know as Buddy Holly.

Holly’s life was short - too short for him to commit mistakes enough to influence, in the slightest, his inevitable place in the history of music.

Don McLean’s famous line on the event, “the day the music died”, is a conundrum. What Holly gave, in the few years before then, had a colossal influential effect on the music of many singers and musicians. Millions of people throughout the world have been touched by Holly’s artistry, and through their appreciation of the momentum of the music that's still evolving from it.

I was too young to fully appreciate Buddy Holly’s music before he died. But in the years since, I have come to understand how his light is such an amazing guiding beacon to so many in the music world:

Linda Ronstadt:



The Beatles:



The Rolling Stones:



Cliff Richard:



John Denver and David Essex:



Don McLean:

video American Pie

A Symbol of Peace

This has been a week much in need of peace. Our contributors have done well to embrace their thoughts on this theme in a sentence.

I put their words in a Wordle blimp.
It didn't quite come out looking like a dove of peace. Perhaps nearer to the shape of a dove's egg - some nice word-combinations hatching.



Karen whispered...
Peace: a feeling, a statement, a goal.

Murcha murmured...
Peace is a word that has been on my mind lately - world peace that is - as I am about to go to Qatar with three students from my school to look at some of the issues we face as a globe, and as our globe 'flattens', how we can work together to achieve and maintain world peace.

Paul breathed...
Peace is enjoying an 'Alberta Clipper' sprinkle an additional five centimeters of snow on twenty.

Eric murmured...
Reminding myself to breath and listen this week has provided glimpses of peace.

Karen S whispered...
Peace is one child helping another, a smile of friendship, a sparkle of understanding and relationships that are the foundation of learning and living.

Ken sighed...
A blackbird’s unforgettable chronicle graced our garden today, but the gentle bird-song they heard in Gaza will not be remembered.

Kevin breathed...
It was a peaceful, easy feeling that came over me this afternoon as I realized that I was going away on a four day weekend to a warmer environment with only my wife (kids, left behind).

Diane whispered...
I am at peace with myself, no matter the tempest that at times surrounds me.

Mathew sighed...
Wishing peace for the world and the probationary teachers in my district who may be losing their jobs.

Amy rippled...
Falling snow is always peaceful to me no matter how much my friends complain about the driving and the shoveling.

Shaun murmured...
Letting go of old things has allowed a sense of peace to seep into me this week.

Cynthia sighed...
Tramping through the woods in front of my house this afternoon, avoiding the limbs and briars that reached out to stop me, I finally found the bed of native daffodils that always bring me hope and peace.

Gail murmured (after the second Wordle blimp was cast)...
I'm watching a beautiful sunrise here in the Sierra foothills - and hoping to hang on to this peaceful moment as I return to work next week and learn how California's budget woes will play out in my district.

Paige sighed...
The rain falls steadily from the dark sky in shades of grey; drinking coffee and gazing through the window, I am at peace.

And Bonnie breathed (out two contributions)...
Peace for this week is peace of mind as I immerse myself in learning for my digital creation. And by Monday I will be on the road to Washington with warm clothes, to celebrate a hope for peace beyond myself.

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Peace in a Sentence

Kevin Hodgson (aka Dogtrax) is an amazing teacher, blogger and friend who continues to impress me with his energy, enthusiasm and inventive ideas that are put into action; this man walks the talk.

He was the first person ever to post a comment on my blog. He reads 500 blogs a day on his RSS Reader. I awarded him the Fantastic Commenter Award during my first month of blogging because of the ubiquitous way he permeated the blogosphere posting relevant comments everywhere I looked.

He involves his students in some of the most remarkably innovative activities and he and his students are well known for their claymation movies.

He started his own published cartoon series, Boolean Squared. He has also been running a blog activity called Day In A Sentence for years and it gives me a lot of real pleasure to host Kevin’s ‘Day In A Sentence’.

This week’s challenge, true to Kevin’s principles, is to use the theme peace in your day/week in a sentence.

So get your thinking furnace roaring, forge your sentence, and post your words in a comment here. Your innovative product will be posted
E O T W.

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And Now, For Something Completely Different . . .

Last week, being in the middle of New Zealand’s summer holidays,
I looked for something out of the ordinary. Whatever I was in search of, it had to take me and my kids away from the melee of technological society - away from TV, play-stations, mobile phones, blogging, elearning. You name it: I wanted to be away from it!

A front-page article in Wellington’s daily, splashed a picture of an activity I thought might just do the trick. So early next day, Catriona and I hurriedly bundled ourselves into the car with a lunch hamper, and off we set.

An early start:

At that time on a Saturday morning, it was only half an hour’s drive away. We arrived at Harcourt Park, early enough to stroll round and breathe in much of what we would experience while the day matured.

The natural beauty of surrounding bush, pristine sweetness of the air, simplicity of being on foot, softness of cropped grass, gentle medieval music tinkling up from the valley, brought us into another age and atmosphere.


This is 2009! On these hallowed grounds, there are to be duels fought - and battles! There are to be archery competitions, mounted skill-at-arms contests, and the pageantry of jousting!

Callum Forbes and The Order of the Boar Jousting Club, the network of medieval clubs from all over New Zealand including The Company of the Dragon, and the welcomed participation by jousters from, Sweden, Belgium, USA, Canada, Australia and Holland, are set to make this a day to remember.

The Upper Hutt City Council is the sponsor of a two day World Invitational Jousting Tournament.


The parade of the participants is colourful and it is splendidly different.





If it weren’t for the digital cameras poking eagerly from the appreciative crowd, and the quality Tannoy commentary, I’d believe that the twenty-first century is a memory of things past! All this is happening - with today’s technology – now!

The most skillful jousters, riding the bravest steeds, are wearing the finest suits of armour at the tournament.


But warm up contests are necessary to whet the skills of horse and rider. Armour is not required. Besides, carrying 40 or 50 kilograms of extra steel must not tire a trusty steed too early in the day.


There are archery competitions to watch and siege engine displays to see. Activities of foot combat and swashbuckler combat rouse the interest of all, anticipating the main event, the jousting.


Round one, of three, begins at noon. The day is a sizzling pizza, warming in summer’s oven.


Let the pageant commence.



With such splendid displays of sport and ridership, it was difficult to cope with the connotative action from the Tannoy when its music started up. We were pulled sharply back into the twenty-first century.



As the last jousting run of round 3 came to a close, the sizzling pizza, hot from the oven of summer’s kitchen, cooled in a humid afternoon.

A Sign Of Peace

This year, the musician and visionary, Benjamin Zander said,

“I can imagine a conversation between a Jew and an Arab which says, ‘It is a privilege to share this land which we inherited from our forefather, Abraham, and just think what we have given to the world in art and culture and knowledge and mysticism and religion, and what we could teach the world about living together.’ That is something! Now, that conversation hasn’t actually taken place yet. If it did, it would transform the world.”

On 29 December 2008 my daughters called me to the living room window to see a magnificent rainbow. It was indeed magnificent, and as all rainbows in the evening, it circled the east.

When I posted a picture of it on Flickr, Bonnie Kaplan said,

“What a great sign of good luck for all of us.”

I hope she is right. My hope is that it is a sign from the east that there will be peace in 2009 and for all time.

About Suffering

The Myanmar cyclone disaster is no doubt the worst natural catastrophe this century.



Yet when I looked up Google News (NZ) this morning, what featured on my screen was the impending trial for the corruption allegedly committed by an Australasian politician and the political economic shocks that are likely to affect Myanmar in the near future.

I then flicked to Google News (World) to find that future political economic shocks for Myanmar had taken first position and Hopes For Dream Ticket As Obama Praises Clinton was second. Myanmar Holds Poll Despite Post-cyclone Chaos was a close third on both bulletins.

In a desperate attempt to redress my initial personal issue with Internet news, I switched to Yahoo.com to find that Myanmar’s poll and Obama’s political issues were the top features.

As I write, the estimated death toll in Myanmar is over 100,000, and expert opinion is that the eventual death toll could reach many times that figure.

Here is a society that is committing self-genocide through restriction on aid by its military and the billboards of the world post local corruption issues and political rhetoric. Such as it is, it looks as if the disaster is almost being overlooked in favour of more attractive political issues.

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Musée des Beaux Arts - W.H. Auden