There is a very special corner in hell, where the guy* who first thought of making white floor tiles is spending eternity.  He is responsible, in his little domain, for keeping two pieces of white-tiled floor, each measuring about 4×3m, clean.  Spotlessly clean.

A very fussy demon comes to inspect his handiwork once a day.  It can be any time of the day.  The demon never announces her visit in advance.  What’s the reward for keeping the floors clean?  Oh, nothing more than sitting down for a nice cup of tea and perhaps a biscuit.  And the punishment for something less than spotless is no more than having to keep the floor clean for another day, until the demon comes once more.

The problem is, these two pieces of tiled floor lie a few metres apart.  And they lie in the middle of a piece of wild garden, never too warm, never too cold, but with soft rain always sifting down.  To the east, no grass covers the red-brown mud.  To the west, the long, green grass grows in rich, dark brown mud.  No walls surround the white floors to protect them from the dirt.

Inhabiting this corner of hell, in an unprecedented act of cooperation between Satan and God, is every dog who ever liked to run around and roll in wet grass and/or mud.  They run around in a state of permanent delight, chasing each other to and fro.  When they’re tired – and they get tired, because how are you going to enjoy the nap of all naps if you can’t get nice and tired in preparation for it? – they are able to slip through to another spot of heaven, off limits to those from the other place, where they are instantly clean and dry, and a soft blanket waits for them in front of a quietly crackling fire.

In the meantime, the inventor of white floor tiles might experience a lull in doggy giddiness, might finally manage to mop both floors to a state of spotlessness.  He can almost taste that tea.  Oh, for a nice sit-down while he’s drinking it, his back is killing him.  He sees the demon approaching, clipboard in hand.  His heart climbs into his parched throat.  He’ll smile, hoping to soften that black heart, and step closer to greet the inspector.

“Tsk-tsk-tsk,” she’ll say, and shake her head.  And the inventor of white floor tiles will turn to see, horror-filled, his own line of muddy footprints crossing the floor.

Thank you, whoever had the wisdom and foresight to put beautiful floor tiles into our new kitchen.

Mottled brown ones that don’t show the dirt.

*I cannot imagine a woman thinking of anything as ridiculous as white floor tiles.  Really.  Unless she had loads of servants who did all her housework for her.

I found something on YouTube, or rather, Jonathan did.  He showed me this great little video, a rap song a guy made about his cat.

I know, I know.

Anyway, I had a look at some other stuff this guy had made, and came across this one.  Thought it was pretty hilarious.

Enjoy.

I’m pretty sure Akismet was right and this was, indeed, just spam.  But in case the comment asking about the layout of the blog was for real – wtf?  This is one of the simplest, most straightforward templates on WordPress.  Do you mean the banner?  If so, sorry, dude, it’s unique.  I made it myself.

Next question, please.

…it could have been worse.  Much worse.

Am I saying that because it’s worse elsewhere, we should be grateful for what we have and not moan about its shortcomings?

No!

Because almost everyone in the world can always find someone, somewhere, who is worse off than they are.  We should always strive for better, but at the same time I think it’s never a bad thing to realise what a privileged life we lead in developed countries.

I remind myself every day what a privilege it is for me to be here.

Anyone who now wants to gleefully throw all the warnings over Global Warming out the window, rush out and buy six SUVs which use fuel like a watermill uses water, just wait a minute here.  Read this first.

I’ve read a few of the leaked emails, and while there is definitely a problem here, I’m also glad that I’ve been reading about science and scientists, specifically their battle against those who call solid, undeniable science into question.  Complete morons can pounce on even the tiniest, most mundane and irrelevant crumbs and magically turn them into huge misconceptions which then take unbelievable effort from scientists to dispel.

Take this example: it will take me two seconds to type: “It’s a well-documented fact that Darwinism led directly to Nazism.”  Easy-peasy.  If I have some impressive-sounding title like Doctor Nadia Williams PhZ, Ft, MdSC, there are an awful lot of people who would assume without a moment’s hesitation that the letters I simply put together off the top of my head mean I know what I’m talking about.

Now, if you want to undo the damage I might have done there in under one minute, it would take you writing an article perhaps twenty times the length of the paragraph up there.  You’d have to make sure the audience understands what Darwinism is, address the fallacy of the Darwinism-Nazism link, perhaps delve into the origin of this misconception.  You’d then have to explain the abbreviations for degrees, show that no university in the world (I bloody well hope) has qualifications such as the ones I claim to have, perhaps research the institution I might claim to have studied through to earn the right to call myself ‘doctor’.

In your refutation, you can’t just suck facts from your thumb, you will have to go and research and verify your claims.  That means my five minutes’ effort to do damage can cost as many hours to undo, and even then, three quarters of my audience will probably never get to read your thoughtful, well researched reply.  They all will continue to believe Darwinism caused Nazism, and not only that, they’ll believe this is a well documented fact. I mean, that Doctor with all the degrees said so, didn’t she?

And in the time you’ve written your excellent rebuff of my claims, I will have written six more articles spreading lies.

To my mind the leaked emails have exposed a worrying tragedy: scientists can be so easily frustrated, tied up in trying to prove to those who can’t smell that crap stinks, that to me it looks as if they have become paranoid with making sure there are no tiny, irrelevant details in their research papers which can become weapons in the hands of the kooks. I remember once reading a heartbreaking piece from a young scientist who wrote a well researched paper, got it published, and had it so cut and hacked by the publisher that it said something completely different from the original.

Could it be that scientists have closed ranks, gone into a mode of being under siege?  If they did go so far as to act unethically to protect their hypotheses, I would ask: was this caused by a gradual move away from sound scientific method by the frustration of having to guard against fringe dissenters who could bog them down so easily and so thoroughly that they’d spend their lives clearing mud instead of doing the research that is vital to humanity’s wellbeing?

I’m also quite puzzled by why these emails should now scupper Obama’s proposals re cap and trade, and other measures against the effects of climate change, as that seems to be what quite a few opinion pieces online think will be the effect.  Hopefully that’s just the extreme opinions, but perhaps that just proves exactly what I’ve tried to say.  From the article I linked to above:

But do these revelations justify the sceptics’ claims that this is “the final nail in the coffin” of global warming theory? Not at all. They damage the credibility of three or four scientists. They raise questions about the integrity of one or perhaps two out of several hundred lines of evidence.

Science has to work a hell of a lot harder to be believed than to be disbelieved.  If you had to constantly fight against that, perhaps you, too, would start cutting corners.

If there’s one thing that gets me a bit miffed in the scientific community, it’s a lot of people’s scathing and derogatory comments about natural medicines, those who are natural medicine practitioners, and those who turn to natural medicine.  While on one hand I understand and fully agree with the view that practices such as acupuncture and homeopathy sometimes don’t make scientific sense, I feel there’s a rigidness in the thinking of a lot of negative opinions about natural medicines I see online which doesn’t sit well with me.

I was raised with homeopathy, and took my first antibiotic ever in my life when I was eighteen.  As a mother of young children, I preferred natural medicines as that was what I knew, and knew to be safe.  Please don’t misunderstand me here, I mean if the child was overtired and couldn’t sleep, not if it was deathly ill.  My daughter went to hospital when she got pneumonia, I’m not at the level where I’ll watch my child die while I faithfully give it some drops.

I had the good fortune to meet a pair of brothers who practiced homeopathy in Pretoria, South Africa: Ryan and Sean Penny.  I have to add here that practice of homeopathy is more regulated there.  I was quite shocked to come to Ireland to get the impression any old quack can just hang out a sign and declare himself a homeopathic doctor.  In SA, you have to first get a university degree, as far as I know. It’s a five-year course.  Before any skeptic reading this says: “Hmph.  Five years studying fairy tales doesn’t make any difference,” let me just point out that I’m sure doctors don’t spend their time in training learning only about medicines.  It’s about identifying disease, isn’t it?  From a quick look, it seems the degree in homeopathy includes anatomy, physiology etc. The difference lies in what you prescribe once you’ve identified what’s wrong with the patient.

Anyway, Sean Penny became our family doctor, so to speak, and this man really, to me, represented the attitude a doctor should have who specialises in natural medicines.  He never hesitated to recommend antibiotics (the law in South Africa allowed a homeopath to recommend, but not prescribe, antibiotics).  This happened when I got tickbite fever, and when one of my children had an ear infection.

Sean used a variety of natural medicines, importing herbal preparations from China in some instances, if I remember correctly.  I therefore don’t know if it is strictly correct to call him a homeopath – he used a variety of homeopathic and herbal medicines, but also prescribed dietary changes.

The difference I’ve found between him and the medical doctors I’ve dealt with, is that Sean tended to be much more holistic in his approach.  He didn’t just look at you, trying to match a medicine to your ailment, he tried to match a cure to your ailment.  And there is a difference there.

So the first point I want to make is: not all practitioners of natural medicine are anti-mainstream.

The second thing that comes to my mind is this: yes, clinical trials have had mixed results, often showing that homeopathy specifically has worked no better than placebos.  That’s fine.  What do I do now, then, with my own experience of trying natural medicine at times when I really just didn’t think it would work, and finding it did? That its efficacy exceeded my expectations?

Do I dismiss the experience of a friend who was very anti-natural medicines, but in desperation went to a Chinese herbal doctor when repeated courses of antibiotics just wouldn’t stop her son getting ear infections again and again and again.  She didn’t hold out much hope, it was a last-ditch effort as she was out of options.  Next time I visited, she was a believer: the ear infection the child had suffered from had cleared up, and not returned.

Another friend, a gifted and highly trained, qualified physiotherapist (no, not a chiropractor, a physiotherapist) told me once that she used a set of magnets applied in accordance to acupuncture principles.  The term she used was ‘acu-pressure’.  She shrugged (very down-to-earth, I love her to bits) and said: “I know there’s a lot of debate over the whole acupuncture thing, but all I know is, it works.  How, I’m not sure, but it does.”  Bear in mind, it wasn’t as if she announced loudly to the patient that she would now apply acupuncture-based treatment.  She applied good physiotherapeutic practice, experimented with this added treatment and found through applying it quietly that when she did, she got better results.

I know this is not by a long shot scientific evidence on which we should now rely unquestioningly.  However, I feel personally affronted when those turning to natural medicines of whatever description are ridiculed as gullible idiots.  There are instances where mainstream medicine simply does not work for some people, or for some illnesses.  Individuals try natural alternatives and find, often to their enormous surprise, that it works FOR THEM.  Why now attack them as morons like a pack of dogs?

Focus on those places where these things go wrong, such as when people are allowed to practice natural medicine without being properly regulated or qualified.  Focus on fanatics who encourage people to go off life-saving drugs in favour of natural medicines.  I am with you in condemning this.  To my mind, natural medicines should be seen as a support of mainstream medicine, and an alternative treatment for smaller ailments.  My regular doctor has remarked before that my body responds well to antibiotics, and I believe this is partly because I use it only when natural medicine is not appropriate or effective.

If you don’t feel the same, that’s your prerogative.  But don’t make me out to be an idiot just because I disagree with your views.

So… I’ve been thinking about this for a long time now, because it’s a favourite objection of people opposed to the concept of evolution: how, in the framework of evolution, can one explain things like morality, or altruism?  Surely that’s one of the major proofs for the existence of a god.  Selfless acts make no sense against the backdrop of ’survival of the fittest’.  Only a god-instilled quality can explain such things.

I don’t think so, and here’s why.

First, shaky ground: according to people much smarter than me, the whole association of ’survival of the fittest’ with evolutionary theory is a mistake.  Here is how I understand evolution:

Life on earth (and how it arrived there is not yet fully understood, that’s true) started as simple forms.  The process of reproduction often causes slight changes in the offspring to occur.  Most of the time, these changes are detrimental to the offspring, and they die before procreating.  Sometimes, however, these changes make the offspring better able to survive and thrive.

As a result, offspring with advantageous mutations have more successful offspring of their own, and in greater numbers.  It also happens that different offspring can have different mutations which in both instances give an advantage, but in different ways.  Differences in environment also influence which mutations give offspring the edge.  Over millions of years, small changes accumulate, resulting in big changes when they’re all added together.  Big changes as in different species.  Voila: evolution.

‘Survival of the fittest’ does, in a way, describe evolution, but I think in the human mind it has taken on a sinister meaning.  The fittest don’t survive by destroying the unfit, they survive simply because they are able to get away from a predator a little faster than the poor sod who wasn’t born with this weird fin-like mutation that just happens to help the little globalami swim a bit faster.  Fit means, here, suitable, not fit as in Olympic athlete.  There is no malice in this concept.

That’s already a spanner in the question, as far as I’m concerned.  When you don’t see this whole thing as a race with ruthless competitors, but just a collection of bewildered life forms all doing their best to live another day, it’s difficult already to understand the problem with morality.

However, it can still be argued that the organism whose brain had some kind of quirk that made it put itself at risk for no individual gain, would be at greater risk of being killed and therefore not reproducing.

To me, a kind of A-ha erlebnes happened when one day I fell over my own brain and got up to see it had tripped me on purpose to give it time to write on that blackboard in my head: HUMANITY ITSELF IS AN ORGANISM.  Herds, flocks, species: they are also organisms, just as individuals are.  The concept seems, to me (bear with me here, I can get really excited over stupid things) absolutely brilliant, yet so simple I am embarrassed I didn’t understand it sooner.

If the herd is an organism, a mutation which leads an individual to put itself at risk in order to protect the herd is an advantageous mutation for the herd.  The self-sacrificing individual will not necessarily get killed, or may have already reproduced, and its sacrifice gives its offspring (carrying the selfless mutation) a better chance of survival.  In the next generation, several individuals will act in the best interest of the herd, which makes the herd even more likely to survive.  Within a few generations, the selfless mutation herd will be stronger and more numerous than the herd filled with individuals not inclined to self-sacrifice.

The human herd benefits from morality, because immoral acts are usually those which cause harm to others.  A society where theft, murder, violence and so on are rife, is not one where humans as a group will most likely survive and thrive.  A billionaire giving his fortune away to charity benefits humanity as a whole. Altruism is good for the herd.

To me, it makes perfect, wonderful, simple but brilliant sense.  Please tell me what you think of all that!  And if anyone who’s studied anthropology (oh, gods, would that even be the right field for this kind of subject matter?) can tell me more of this herd-as-an-organism concept and perhaps a book or two where I can read more about it, I’d be very grateful.

And yes, I am a little chuffed that I took the difficult route and thought this up all by myself instead of just reading up on evolution etc. and finding the answers there.  But it could be I read this somewhere and it didn’t quite sink in until a few weeks ago. Now my brain claims this as my own discovery…

Whatever.  I rock. (c;

Edit: Or not.  Duh, I stopped googling ‘herd as organism’ and instead googled ‘evolution of morality’ and came up with 1 930 000 further reading suggestions.  I am such a dunce, lol.

This morning I listened to the Ray D’Arcy show on Today FM.  He read an email from a listener, who responded to a comment Ray had made yesterday that we should stop trying to lay blame for the current economic crisis and instead focus on working together, pulling together and getting through it.

I don’t think the text of the email is available online, so you’ll have to go by my memory here.  This lady’s father had run his own business for 45 years.  When the crisis struck, his was one of the operations that were hit badly and he had to let his eight staff go.  Weeks later, he was diagnosed with Lymphoma (I think it was that, it was a form of cancer, in any case) and he had no choice but to stop working altogether, and close his business down.  His insurance didn’t cover all his medical costs, and the whole family helped as much as they could to pay the bills.

A month after his diagnosis, he received a tax bill resulting from the closure of his business (WFT?  Someone’s business goes down and you then screw them for yet more tax?  But let me finish the story before I start ranting).  They sold their car, their son and daughter both sold their cars as well, and with that money settled part of the bill.  With the help of both an accountant and a solicitor, he made an arrangement to repay the balance monthly.

He’d paid a few months’ instalments, on time, the agreed monthly amount in full, when one night at 11pm, the sheriff arrived, waved a warrant under the wheelchair-bound man’s nose and started taking everything that was not cemented down from the house.

The writer’s father showed the sheriff the letters from revenue agreeing to the monthly payments, he asked for 24 hours grace so that he could contact Revenue and find out what the hell was going on, but he was, to use her word, “rebuffed”.

The mother phoned her daughter (the writer of the email) at work in tears, distraught.  She went immediately to try and help, but was flatly ignored.  Neighbours tried to intervene, and the Guards (police) were called.  They warned neighbours to back off or be arrested.

These arseholes took everything, except the fridge, though they wanted to and checked to see how much food was in it.  They took the wheelchair-bound man’s buggy which he used to get around outside.  They took the small gifts the grandparents had bought for their granddaughter’s eighth birthday, which was the next day.

As soon as their office opened, the shocked family phoned Revenue to ask what the hell was going on, and how it could be fixed.  They were informed that the matter was out of Revenue’s hands now, and in the hands of the Sheriff.

Her father just gave up after that.  He managed to raise two thousand Euro more from what he had left, paid it over, and fell into decline.  He is now dead, only a short while after this ordeal: not from his cancer, but from a stress-induced heart attack.

It doesn’t end there.  Revenue still sends letters demanding their money to this day.  The outstanding amount remaining?  One thousand Euro.

Way to go, Revenue.  That money was certainly worth someone’s life.

There are so many times when people can follow the rules, go by the book, and use that to inflict despicable, inhumane, cruel treatment on fellow human beings.  I’ve said in a previous post as well that there are times when someone can do things to another which can be made to sound as if it’s not such a big deal, but if you step back and just use your brain, embrace the fact that whether or not this world is a good place to live in is up to YOU, you will realise that such behaviour is unspeakably cruel.

There were many texts and emails sent in response to the story, most expressing shock and outrage.  What was more worrying was that there were numerous people confirming that this kind of treatment is not some freak accident, some exception to the rule, terstifying that they made arrangements to pay their bills in instalments and were still handed over to the collectors.  That the agreed amount was constantly and arbitrarily changed for no discernable reason.  That collectors used intimidating tactics more in line with some Mafia operation than a government institution.

The head of the Revenue Service, whose name I can’t remember now and can’t find quickly, gave a phone interview on the show to respond to this story.  It was just outrageous to hear him trying to avoid admitting that he is ultimately responsible for what these thugs did, and still do, to those who are in financial trouble.  Like a fucking eel.

But was it outrageous?

In the purest meaning of the word – causing outrage – I suppose it was.  But in the sense of this being something out of the ordinary?  No.  So a government man (would this guy be a politician?) is a slippery, slidey arsehole who is like a quadruple-covered teflon pan is to an oiled pancake when it comes to taking responsibility for something bad.

What else is new?

And this is the question that weighs me down right now: how will this ever change?  Democracy is somehow broken.  Governments are cumbersome, creaky, inefficient, unfriendly, bloated, sick institutions the world over.  We, the people, choose who governs us, but what choices are there for us?  In my frustration I think that only people attracted to power and privilege are attracted to politics, not those who want ot make the country run better and more efficiently.  Election time seems to give us the marvellous choice: do you want arsehole A or arsehole B to call the shots?

What I find even more exasperating is that people still admire those who have screwed them over with a giant cucumber.  Charles Haughey stole MILIONS from this little country when it could ill afford leaking money from every pore.  Bertie Ahern looks in many ways to have lined his pockets as best he could.  And they are loved and admired.

In Britain, politicians across the board made use of every possible opportunity to suck every penny they could from legitimate allowances, doing the wrong thing again because hey, it was sort of possible to read the rules that way.  What about common sense and decency, for heaven’s sake? What about not just grabbing everything you possibly can because in your heart, you know it’s not right?

Ireland and Britain, at the very least, seem infested with politicians who are parasites.  And Africa… oh, gods, let’s not even go there.

How do we change this?  For all our right to vote (well, except for us immigrants, hehe), we are powerless to fix the festering, distended monsters that are our governments.  Politicians promise whatever they have to, in order to gain the power they crave.  And then?  Then they set about enriching themselves as much as they can for as long as they can.

Okay, I’m cooling down a bit now.  I will be happy to concede that there probably are loads of people in politics who are in there not for the thrill of the power, for the adrenaline rush of getting away with murder.  I know there is at least one politician in Ireland who said no thank you to her luxury, top-of-the-range government car, reasoning that her Toyota Camry is perfectly capable of getting her from point A to point B.  I realise that possibly the view I expressed above is very much mistaken, that politicians in government might be doing a difficult job with the best of intentions.

That still doesn’t change the fact that things are not the way I’m sure most people would want them to be.  We still have several million Euro inquests into wrongdoing so sneaky and so tangled that it takes years to unravel.

And there is no prospect of alternatives that give me even the slightest hope that things might change.

Just a reminder that I’m offline again until 19 November, but I’m at least going to try to check email and so on daily from a wifi hotspot.  Why am I in this pickle again, when we’d just been reconnected after our move?  Well, here’s why:

We’d moved from the house where we’d lived since arriving in Ireland to another place which we hoped to buy.  The estate was beautiful, the house was fantastic and well built and the view of the Cooley mountains was to die for.  However, in the three months we lived there, Jonathan got beaten up three times, Nicholas had money and sweets taken off him, all three the kids had fireworks thrown at them, our babysitter’s parents witnessed a firework being thrown under a passing car (with a whole family in it) and exploding under it – the underside of the car was a mass of flames, according to our friends.  If there had been even the tiniest leak in the petrol tank…

We had ‘bangers’ set off near enough to our house to inspire us to call the Guards (Gardai [pronounced gaar-dee] is the Irish word for the police, also referred to as the Guards), one time it was set off right on our doorstep.  Don’t know what a banger is?  It’s a firework which does nothing but make noise.  No pretty colourful explosion in the sky, no frizzy flower of sparks.  No other possible explanation for its purpose than noise.  When one of these goes off on your doorstep, it sounds as if a bomb exploded in front of your house.  Come to think of it, that’s exactly what it is.

As a result of all this unpleasantness, Lara became a nervous wreck.  She’s a highly strung child at the best of times, and though we’re handling it, it was hard to comfort her when there was real cause for concern.

Our rent agreement was a rent-to-buy thing, which meant the rent was very high, but the idea was to save a deposit over a period of eighteen months.  We would have gotten every cent back.  Because we withdrew from the contract after only three months, we lost the deposit.  Taking in consideration with that the money we would have saved in lower rent if we’d just rented somewhere, we lost about €1 900 on this deal.  However, the huge relief to feel we are safe, to not stress myself to death when the children are out of sight, to have Lara sleep soundly and not be nauseaous with tension all the time, is worth every cent.

So we moved again this past weekend, and though it was bloody awful, it was so worth it.  We now live in a very small estate, in a nice four-bedroom house, in a good neighbourhood.  I am hugely relieved.

But internet-less again for a while, unfortunately.

Now to the reason for the title of this entry.  A post inspired by the recent Ford Hood shootings which gives a lot of food for thought on war in general.  I’ll let Stonekettle Station speak for itself.

After three months of living in a house we’d planned to buy, we’re moving again.  I don’t really want to go into the reasons, suffice to say we’re just not happy here.

This means another upheaval: packing, arranging the transfer of utilities… but it will be worth it in the end.  Even if I have to go almost two months without internet again.  Hopefully, though, that will not be the case this time.

That’s also an explanation for why I’ve been so tardy with new posts: we decided on 19 October to move, I gave notice here on 20 October.  I started house hunting right away, and found us a place in Blackrock, Louth.  However, last week Thursday I discovered that the owner intended to put the house back on the market after a year.  We really don’t want to deal with living in ahouse that’s being shown, and we also very definitely don’t want to have to move again any time in the foreseeable future.

That meant a mad rush to find another place, as we’d arranged to move on 7 November.  I was frantic and depressed, as it’s not easy to find a house to rent when you’re a family of nine (five people, four cats).  I was just starting to despair when on Friday afternoon, I was showed a lovely four bedroom house with a landlord who is, according to the agent, a very nice guy.  He doesn’t mind the cats and is prepared to give us a long lease – he works and lives on the continent (that is, somewhere on mainland Europe) and the house is a rental property with no foreseeable prospect of becoming anything else.

So.  I’m packing.  And cleaning and stuff – thank the gods we were only in here a short while, there’s some stuff I haven’t even unpacked from the previous move yet.