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TimeOver the last 10 years my job has allowed me to work with artists who have had a strong influence on my outlook. Two of these have something in common; their ability to set the pace at which they work. A cynic would say that their being rich and successful would allow this, but I found out that they had this trait long before they got the rewards, and that maybe the former fed the latter. I suspect that those rewards might have come because of their confidant ability to refuse projects, even the most lucrative work if it meant that they would be working beyond their normal pace and scope. This can sound like the truism of a simpleton, but it has taken me a long time to appreciate it and to try and follow a similar course. It does take a huge degree of confidence and bloody mindedness, but only because of the massive opposition you encounter on the way. The pace problem is one of speed (too fast) of course, not one of sluggishness. Gone are the days of Mathew And Son. The father who took his factory from A to G only to hand it down to a 'son' who may progress, with pride to Q. Our brains have invented ways of getting our new start-up 'ventures' from A to Z within 4 years, only for them to collapse and, curious to English Bankrupt Law, we are allowed to start at A again, not any wiser just with more cunning. A bit like the 'reformed' prisoner who leaves jail knowing how not to get caught the next time. I'm sorry, Monopoly rules clearly state that 'you go bankrupt you're out of the game'. This is not meant to sound like a paranoid conspiracy theory. I don't believe in Government Sponsored Progress Races. The speed-up is partly to do with a computer that can think far faster than I ever could, and a bank who is willing to take even bigger risks with some capital it has been given by some greedhead out for a fast buck. It comes from a school classroom system that puts pressure on my children to answer the question QUICKLY (and correctly too if at all possible) No time to think, less time to enjoy. The process in building the factory is the same but without the steady steerage that is gained by the owner who has invested his and his father's cash into an organisation that requires constant re-evaluation. Just as the unhurried artist can stand back from his work and realise what bits need changing after due thought over time. I have learnt that their are two kinds of people, they who only spend what they have, they who enjoy blowing others money, and, er, those who can't count. Biologically our bodies let us know when the pace is wrong. Nervousness, exhaustion, depression, anxiety all become the children of despair and ultimately end up spawning a stroke, a heart attack even cancers or total collapse. Given such alarming progressive internal signs you'd think that , that would be enough . Clearly not. The environment starts to give us similar alarms, the pollution and wastes from a manufacturing industry that resembles an incontinent grandparent unable to clean up after itself, the acceptance of the waste, the blind eye turned to the devouring of unreplacable natural resources and the mindless crime waves committed by the detritus caught in the sump of our society that feels that the only way to keep up with the Joneses is to jump the queue, mug the few and soil their own doorsteps. When did we ever see race riots in Hampstead? Many modern medicines are designed to help us to 'cope' with this, often they can replace the inability to cope with a manufactured confidence. If this isn't a medical valium thing than it can also be an illegal cocaine thing, another screen to shut out the obvious signs in our bodies and in the neighbourhood. I like it here in Suffolk. People move slow, people talk and think slow. It's taken me ten years to slow down and the quality of my time and work has progressed each year. Not because I have trained myself to 'cope' better, not because some crackpot management training scheme has taught me the tricks of the office environment, but because I fell off the back of the lorry that was already out of control at full tilt. (and has since crashed into a bus queue, killing many) Falling off early: you get bruised, but you get to walk home in safety and to smell the flowers on the way. Cally
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SlugsThe University of the West of England, Bristol, is developing a robot
to catch slugs. The design includes scrapers to remove the slime from the pincers. Slugs are put in a hopper and the robot takes them back to a base station where the idea is to use them to produce electricity to power the robot.
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Be Careful What You Wish ForAs we pass into the 21st century, with all its potential for dramatic and profound change, please be careful what you wish for. An observation of Buddhist scholars is that ‘Actions have Consequences’ which is commonly taken to mean that what you do will inevitably have some impact on something somewhere. Less commonly understood is that it is also meant to include thought i.e. that thoughts have consequences. When I first came across this idea I understood it to mean that thoughts lead to actions which lead to consequences, but I now know this to be wrong. Thoughts themselves have consequences. The idea being that our intentions (unspoken or even unarticulated in ‘thought’) manifest as consequences all around us. The ability of intentions to directly effect the physical world has been dramatically illustrated by recent experiments. In one experiment, people were asked to play a random ball machine in which ball bearings ran down a maze dropping left or right at the bottom. The number of balls that went left and right was even over many hundreds of balls proving that the machine was randomly balanced. Then the people ‘playing’ the machine had to will the balls to go to one side. When they did this the number of balls going to that ‘intended’ side was significantly greater than by chance alone. This effect was only visible over thousands of balls by hundreds of people. This is interesting because the humans involved could not wish a specific ball to go in a specific direction but they could influence the probability of balls going the way they wanted. In a second (perhaps even more mind-blowing) experiment, a simple turtle-like robot was
programmed to roam around randomly within a room, bouncing off walls and re-directing
itself according to a random-number generator that selected direction. The electronic
trail it left after many hours showed complete random coverage of the room as we might
expect. Then the scientists put newly hatched chicks in with the robot so that they
imprinted on it as their ‘mother’ and would want to follow it around. When these
imprinted chicks were put in a cage at one end of the room although they could not follow
the robot around the robot stayed up their end of the room! As the robot could not have been making such a ‘decision’ the scientists knew that the chicks were somehow influencing the random number generator of the robot and effecting its movement - somehow ‘pulling’ it towards them. When cages of non-imprinted chicks were placed at one end of the room the robot moved randomly all over the room (see diagram on next page). The conclusion the researchers came to was that somehow the intention/ emotion of the chicks was influencing the robot by increasing or decreasing the probability of directional movement. These experiments suggest that intention (and not just human intention) can influence the likelihood of things going your way. It doesn’t mean that you can dictate exactly what happens to you, detail by detail, but that your intentions can influence the probability of what comes your way. Big ‘New Age’ stuff, eh?! If you want to know how intention can reach out and influence things outside your brain, quantum physics may provide an answer. Unfortunately I’m not sure many of us would understand it. A simplistic explanation is as follows: If a laser light is fired into a non-linear crystal so that the beam splits in two, two separate photons of light are created that act as one -- even if separated by millions of miles. If one photon is manipulated or changed in some way the other changes simultaneously wherever it is in the universe and without any physical means of contact. This phenomenon, known to physicists as ‘photon entanglement’ was described by Einstein as "spooky" and has no explanation at present. So scientists acknowledge things can influence each other at a distance without any explanation. Until they find that explanation, topics like psychokinesis and telepathy will remain off limits for most scientists but the day when physicists and psychics talk the same language is not far away. So I would ask you to be careful what you wish for - not just for yourself but for the world. If you are secretly wishing that the whole thing goes down the drain because horrible people deserve to get their just desserts.. .please don’t. Try focusing your intentions on making the world a better place and wishing well to all things. Try seeing the future as better than the present. Try seeing solutions rather than problems. Be careful what you wish for.
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From the Ground UpI recently came across this organisation and thought others might be interested. Here is what they say about themselves - "From the humblest to the grandest, our gardens are home to a diverse variety of plants. Each year many will freely produce large quantities of viable seed, most of which is usually destined to be disregarded and lost. This abundant and easy to harvest resource is too precious to waste. FROM THE GROUND UP exists to help exploit this natural resource by encouraging a network of gardeners to save and share their surplus seeds." We are a small non-profit organisation, with members from the UK and Europe. Our main purpose is to collect and exchange seeds from our gardens. We produce an annual catalogue, from which subscribers can choose up to 60 packets per year. The first allocation is sent out between December and January, with second and third allocations being offered with the Spring and Summer issues, finishing off with a random selection in the Autumn. The first issue of our quarterly magazine went out in November 1995. Our early publicity came from recommendations, free publicity in Gardeners World, Gardens Illustrated, Bloemen en Planten, Amateur Gardening and Radio Kent. I did try a mail-shot, sending copies of the magazine to gardening societies etc., but this was a long and expensive exercise and I did not keep this up. Our best publicity has, however, come from the Internet. Our website ( http://website.lineone.net/~margaretb.ftgu) attracts about 5 to 6 enquiries a week. This is inexpensive and regular and keeps us in the "limelight". Our method of operation has changed a few times. Some of the changes were not liked, others were! Our present system is now more or less based on the way other societies work, and it seems to me a sensible (tried and tested) way to go about things. A recent addition to our magazine has been "YOU SAID", which provides a forum for discussion between members and myself. As all comments are anonymous, it enables all sorts of matters to be discussed, good points and bad, without upsetting anyone. We have a Correspondence Group (for email and snail-mail!). This enables members to correspond with each other. Anyone interested in joining our organisation can email me (margaretb.ftgu@lineone.net) their postal address and I will forward a free copy of our Autumn issue, which gives full details of our operation. If you would like any further information, please let me know.Margaret Barton, From The Ground Up
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Rediscovering our RootsFrom: International Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine, November 1991 by Gabrielle Hatfield. This interesting and informative article has not been included on-line for copyright reasons
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