Susan Boyle

I was the 20 millionth and one person to see this I guess. I heart this. She's 47, unemployed and looking for a job, recently lost her mother, sings in the church choir, and has spent the last year and a half doing community work with her church - visiting people in hospital and helping the elderly. She's like the lady next door. Did I mention she can sing? Can she ever. She's been singing since she was 12 years old. It doesn't matter whether she wins the competition or not anymore - she just won millions of hearts by being herself. This is a gift that wasn't buried in the ground because fast results didn't happen. She invested in it for years. She put time into practice and technique, and used her gift for others around her. She just turned the world upside down with it.

Easter Begins

I took this photo just after sunrise at a beach up on the east coast. At the time I couldn't take my eyes off the scene in front of me. I thought of it as majesty arriving. Later I looked at it and it seemed to picture a struggle, perhaps because I had been struggling with a major event that occurred in my life. Death and yet the promise of life. Looking at it now it seems to say that I may know the outcome, but there is a process getting there. I've been thinking of it today as Easter begins.

Slumdog Millionaire

Went to see Slumdog Millionaire recently and have been talking with people about it ever since. It's a movie that works on a lot of different levels, and it reminded me of a Rushdie novel in the way the elements are combined. There a fantastic fairy taleness aspect, a lot of gritty realism, and plenty to chew on regarding questions of responsbility, choices, and human nature. Personally I've had about all the game shows I can stand thanks to "reality tv", so I appreciated that the game show is not actually the real point of the movie. It's a device, a reference point really, to look back through the main character's life. On one level I did find myself wanting to know if he would win the game, and on another I thought it was a very clever comment on a global cultural phenomenon. Do we succeed through luck, or destiny? That is one of the questions the film tackles.

It is a violent movie, although not gratuitously so. And the love story is one of the main stories of course. I say one of, because although it gets billed sometimes as primarily being a love story, to my mind it was even more about how two brothers growing up in the same circumstances can make quite different choices. I was left asking a lot of questions about suffering and responsibility. Can we point purely to circumstances to justify our choices? The movie suggests not.

It is also not so easy to dismiss this as a story about one guy who gets a lucky break. Yes, there is that, but there are also some scenes which left me thinking about all those who didn't get any relief or escape from their slavery. The scene where our hero bumps into the blind beggar he shared part of his childhood with was one of the most powerful. We can enjoy the Bollywoodish fairy tale thread, but the film isn't going to let us off that easy. Religious hypocrisy and questions about fatalism are in there too.

Some have characterised this as a "good brother and bad brother" story. It isn't that clear cut or simple. The "bad" brother is sometimes good, sometimes his actions, even in his context, are pretty awful. Does he redeem himself at the end? I found his story the most thought provoking because it was the most realisitic in terms of his choices. It's tragedy in the classic sense: power, hubris, troubled conscience, nihilism, and a world disintegrating. Had he become as hypocritical as the villains that influenced his childhood? Were they the products of similar backgrounds?

One of the criticisms of the film from some quarters is that they consider it anti-Hindu. I don't think that's deserved. This is about human nature, and we wouldn't be hard pressed to find selfishness, greed, poverty, and exploited children in many other parts of the world. What it does do, through some frenetic camera work, is capture the innocence of the children and the impact of a swirling nonsensical world. I think one of the reasons this film succeeds is that it doesn't moralise every point of the story, but just presents it as is. The police officers attitude to the "slumdog" is an example - it is a given that one can look down on and mistreat another because of their social position. The movie simply presents this attitude, and leaves you to be impacted by it.

This film is funny, disturbing, thought provoking, and entertaining. It's about love and corruption, childhood and choices, depravity and responsibility. A game show might change one person's life, but does it change who they are? And what of all those who continue on without rescue. Is it circumstances that dictate character, or choices?

And for sure, there's some great music.

Note: The only link I don't recommend below is the Review. It's more like a comment thread and has been hit by spammers.

Have You Got the Conficker Worm & Techy Stuff

Wondering if your computer has been infected with the Conficker worm? Here's an amazing 2 second visual test, from the group working to defeat it, that let's you know: Conficker Eye Chart
Can you see all 6 images? Your system is hunky dory.

Twitter: I'm still on Twitter - the experiment continues. There's tons of different apps for Twitter. I've been using twhirl. If you download twhirl it may prompt you to download Adobe Air - which you need for it. Twhirl creates a nice little screen you can access from your desktop and flashes your latests updates when they arrive. It's relatively unobtrusive and easy to use. Easier than using Twitter on the web.

Been tidying up the blog. I noticed Ron at northern 'burbs has the latest JS Tracker and I added it here (right sidebar under Global Surfing). Great way to instantly see how many users are online. Very simple, just add a small piece of code to your template. On the subject of blogs, I'm a firm believer in having a blogroll. That's how we let people know our favourite reads, foster more interaction and conversation, and help each other in the search engine rankings.


I'm really enjoying the seamlessness of Google applications. I switched from Bloglines to a Google Reader to get my favourite blogfeeds. This means I can access my email, my blog, syndicate my feed, and read my feeds all from one page, with one sign in. Advantages - Google is less cumbersome, more user friendly, and quicker. It's also much easier to find and add feeds. Even with Windows Vista and upgraded RAM, Bloglines is still slow and clunky. Sign up for a Google account first, then get the apps you want.

On the subject of RAM. You've come up clean on a virus scan but your computer is still slow, freezes, or times out on the web. Check your RAM. In simple terms, RAM (random access memory) is the amount of memory your computer is using in real time. More RAM means you can do more, have more screens open at once, run more programs at once etc. I upgraded mine recently. Here's a simple explanation of how adding more RAM makes your computer faster.

Ok, I'm tech geeked out. Now I'm going to kick back.

Is God Just Another Guy?

Been hearing a bit about this lately so I enjoyed The Last Psychiatrist's post To The Brain God Is Just Another Guy. In a nutshell, a scientific study was conducted comparing brain activity with thinking about God. Result - brain scans showed that when thinking about God certain brain areas commonly showed activity. Some of these are areas we use when empathising with people. That really does summarise it. What's missing is any understanding of what "God" means to any individual person. Who are they thinking of? A spiritual being, their fave from American Idol, a football hero, Neo?

So firstly the data input isn't necessarily uniform for each subject. Let's say all the subjects in the experiment were thinking of a spiritual being. This still leaves a lot of room for subjectivity. Did they interpret what was said to them exactly the same way, or were some thinking of the bible and others of Darth Vader? Secondly, at best you show that when thinking about "God" certain areas of the brain are involved. What is missing is exactly what each person is thinking in response to the data. i.e. what is really going on in that brain activity? Is the person thinking God, or Darth Vader, or Neo, is just another guy? Or is their brain responding to ther own individual subtext added in? To put it another way, the input is verbal (language). The output is measured by neuronal activity (somatic). If you feed generalised language into subjects with the complexity of human beings you really can't be reductionist and rely purely on a type of somatic (body) imaging. That only allows one interpretation of what has happened, within very limited parameters. Unless you already presupposed there was only one way to collect data and interpret the results. Which is along the lines of what The Last Psychiatrist said. Although not everyone gets it - which kind of proves the point in another way.

Earth Hour 2009

"There is a time for the evening under starlight
A time for the evening under lamplight"
- T.S. Eliot, East Coker

Well that was enjoyable! I did Earth Hour last night. I came home from work a little early on Friday as I felt unwell. Saturday I picked up, but I was just in the mood for a quiet hour Saturday evening. Combine that with a glorious sunset prelude, and switching off the lights for an hour and sitting in candle light was just what I needed.

It got me thinking that I'd like to do this more often. One reason being the ridiculous attitude the power companies have here. We're in a recession and my power company recently sent us a letter advising us of their latest unnecessary price hike. Fine - I'll buy less power. But the bigger reason is that I really enjoyed reflecting in the candle light. As if everything stopped for an hour and the street was at rest.

We are biologically hardwired to need rest. Sleep deprivation makes us act weird. So does over-exertion. Spiritually we're the same - since everything about us is connected. We need to stop, give pause, slow down, and reflect. I have my times of reflection, but there was something about turning off the lights last night that reinforced it for me. I was making a special appointment.

Not everyone will be reflecting at 8.30 pm of course. It could be fun. Eat something together, talk, tell stories. That sounds so obvious, but the reality is we don't always make the time to just be with each other. Without distractions, without tv, internet, ipod, radio, or whatever else. It wasn't the absence of electricity that made Earth Hour enjoyable, it was the peace. The opportunity to focus on one thing at a time. The sense that just for an hour the street, probably a large part of the city, was still.

We keep trying to beat the law of diminishing returns. The shops open for trade seven days a week to try and make more money, but make less. Spiritually we can be the same. Earth Hour was promoted as a response to climate change. In my hour I thought about the climate within, and how rest can effect a change for the better too.

More on Earth Hour in NZ here. We were the first country to take part. And check out this panoramic photo by Ben Myall of Sydney's Earth Hour. Awesome.