Journal

On Being a While Since the Last Update, and Beers That Go With Marketing!

So I realized last night, as I was looking at some updates on here, that I hadn’t posted any content for more than six weeks. That’s a lifetime! Or at least, it used to be…

It’s not that I’ve run out of things to say, or lost interest in blogging/podcasting. Far from it.

I’ve just been busy in all areas of my life – work, personal, some little creative stuff I’ve been tinkering with, and such as. And that’s pretty much kept me away from this blog.

Sure, I could have just reposted stuff I’ve done elsewhere, but that’d be unfair to you, as it’d feel I was just mailing something in, which is one thing I’d never do.

Aren’t We All Nerds in Some Form or Other?

When I was eight years old, my aunt used to take me on weekly train rides in the summer to Burntisland, across the Forth Rail Bridge that connected Edinburgh to the Kingdom of Fife.

It was always something I looked forward to.

From the train ride itself to traversing the majestic rustic bridge, to the little cobbled path that took you from the train station to the main street, and then down to the seafront where the annual fairground would reside.

It was moments like that that made my otherwise fairly shitty childhood fun, and I lived for them.

Yet I also recall seeing trainspotters for the first time and wondering why they would find trains so fascinating. After all, ii’s just a piece of metal that takes us from one place to another, and nowhere near as cool as space rockets.

As I got a little bit older, probably just before my teen years, my adolescent friends and I would take our own train rides to whatever adventures awaited us.

And this time, whenever we saw trainspotters, we wouldn’t limit our curiosity to our minds.

Instead, we’d yell insults and call them sad, and why do’?t they get a real hobby instead of acting like a kid playing with train sets? The fact that we were kids ourselves escaped our common sense.

Common sense is the best distributed thing in the world, for we all think we possess a good share of it. ~ Ren Descartes.

It was only years later that the mindset of appreciation found me, and I realized what it was that the people that braved the wind and the rain to follow their passion saw in their beloved trains.

Everything is Amazing

When I was 15, I developed a love for the museum.

Because I was only a short bus ride away from my home city of Edinburgh (my family moved to the Scottish Borders when I was 11 years old), I’d hop on the bus every weekend and travel to the capital.

There, I’d maybe watch a movie, or visit the Sci-Fi Bookstore for my comic book fix, or even take in a football match (real football, my North American friends!).

Mostly, though, I’d continue the love affair I’d discovered with the Royal Scottish Museum (now the National Museum of Scotland) in one of my pre-high school field trips taken before I left Edinburgh for the Borders.

There were many exhibits there that I loved – the dinosaurs, the history of flight, and the Native American artifacts being just some.

One that always brought me back, however, was the story of how the Forth Rail Bridge had been built, and what it took to maintain.

For example, the bridge is painted by hand every year, and it takes so long to paint that by the time it’s done, it needs a new coat of paint.

This particular exhibit had a little movie that you could watch, that showed how the bridge came together, and the dangers of building it across the mighty River Forth.

While the video below isn’t the one from the museum, it does give an idea of the scale involved in the construction of the bridge in 1833.

As a complementary part to the history of the bridge, you could also learn about the history of the trains that crossed it upon its opening.

At that time, they were the steam-powered trains that would be the forerunners to the legendary Flying Scotsman.

It was during these mini history lessons that I finally found the appreciation for the trainspotters that my friends and I had teased in years past.

And I felt like an idiot.

These lovers of industry and workmanship weren’t sad geeks – they were aficionados of a time and invention we could never have imagined.

They were respecters of history, and determination, and – when all is said and done – things of beauty and amazement.

After all, could you build a steam engine that could travel from one end of the land to another? Me neither.

We All Need to Be Trainspotters

As that realization hit me, it opened me to a new level of determination to find out more about the world around us, and the amazing things we take for granted because they’ve always been with us.

For example, did you know the simple zipper that keeps our pants and dresses held together is over 100 years old?

Up until 1906, buttons and clasps ruled the day, when Swedish-American electrical engineer Gideon Sundback decided there must be a better (and less expensive) way.

The modern zipper was born, and we’ve never looked back since.

Or did you know that despite our advancement in space exploration over the last 50+ years, and the new species we find on a daily basis on this blue dot we call home, we’ve still barely touched what we know about the waters that surround us?

Our knowledge expands to less than 7% of the world’s oceans.

The point is, we have amazing things around us. Some we think are cool. Some, we may think less cool. Some, we may even think of as “sad” and “nerdy”.

But aren’t we all nerds in some form or other? Aren’t we all sad in some form or other?

Just because we don’t find appreciation in the passion and life goals of someone doesn’t mean our own passions and life goals are so good.

Everyone has a different place to be, and takes a different path to get there.

Instead of finding fun in that, perhaps if we found appreciation for their love of what they’re passionate about, we might just truly appreciate the thing we’re trying to find, too.

It can’t hurt to try. Can it?

The Destination is Never a Place

When we finally reach the end of whatever path we’re on in life, there is one guarantee for all of us, regardless of race, religion or culture.

No matter the paths we took to get there, and the people travelled with or against to traverse these paths, we all meet the same end point.

Often, as the realization hits that this is the end, and the path runs out of areas to tread, we think back on what we’ve accomplished (or haven’t, depending on your point of view).

The problem with this is we leave ourselves no time to take the paths untravelled, or journey the adventure unfound.

Instead, we reach a destination that has no other direction. Or do we?

One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things. ~ Henry Miller

If we see the destination as a place, then our lives will be one big collection of untapped potentials.

Instead of the culmination of a life experienced to its fullest, we’ll have a book full of chapter-sized regrets.

Yet it doesn’t need to be this way.

The Destination is Never a Place

To Henry Miller’s quote, looking for a “place” as the destination where we’ve finally “arrived” is missing the bigger picture.

For some, the place may be a bigger house. A bigger job with a bigger office. A bigger parking space at the exclusive golf club.

For others, the place may be a better car than the neighbour’s, or a trophy wife/husband to parade at the next corporate event.

But these places are simply material destinations.

Do they make us feel better? Perhaps in the short-term. But longer term, what do they actually mean?

Cars rust, houses crumble, jobs disappear, external beauty fades. So the journey begins again to scratch an itch that just won’t quit – because the journey to these destinations is always the same.

We need to change the destination.

For ourselves. For those around us. For those no longer with us. For those yet to be with us.

Our journey until now we can’t change. It’s done, for good or for worse. Decisions we made until now we may not be able to reverse.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t change their outcome. It all comes down to whether we want to, or not.

It’s time to choose your destination.

How We Work

If I’m a barman, I use a bottle opener to open a bottle of wine.

If I’m a hairdresser, I use a comb to style.

But this is simple – this is using tools for their specific use. We can all do that.

I can also use a bottle opener with my kid to pretend we’re drilling for oil at the beach.

Or I can use a comb with a sheet of paper and make a musical instrument.

Tools are what we teach them to be. Imagine the possibilities if we all took up teaching…

Why the Real Fake News is Being Driven by Social Media

“There’s nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.” ~ William James.

When you want to believe something is true, often you look for the validation of numbers to make the case for your argument.

After all, the more someone says something, and the more people add their voice to the chorus of that belief, eventually it has to be true, right?

No smoke without fire, and all that.

The problem is, if we subscribe to that line of thinking, then pretty much anything can be true, absurd or not.

You only have to look at the rise of a certain U.S. President to see how that logic bears out and is lapped up by those eager to replace facts with revisionism.

And that’s a dangerous place to be.

Sweeping Statements as Pieces of Fact

Over on Facebook, I got involved in a discussion following the posting of the meme below.

One of the commenter’s on the meme came back with this counter-argument:

“Second highest rape rate in the world now thanks to Syrian refugees, which might be a lot less if guns were in citizens hands.”

Now, this isn’t the first time this argument has been used. The growing right-wing parties in Europe are using such language of fear as their rallying cry to stop refugees coming into their country.

Add that to the recent terror attacks on France and Germany, and you can maybe see why there’s such fear of non-European immigrants/refugees.

But that would be to miss a very important fact, especially when it comes to the meme in question, and the commenter’s statement that Sweden is suffering from a rape epidemic engendered by Syrian refugees.

It’s true – Sweden has one of the highest reported rape incidences in the world and bears the unenviable title of rape capital of Europe.

Sweden has also been one of the leading European countries when it comes to receiving refugees, with 153,000 in 2015 alone.

So, for anyone looking to connect dots and blame refugees for the Swedish rape crisis, the correlation is right there.

Except it’s not.

The reason for Sweden having the highest reported rape incidence can be traced back to 2005 when Sweden’s Social Democratic government introduced a new sex-crime law that defined rape with the most expansive definition in the world.

For example, if a work colleague rubbed against you in an unwanted way every week for a year, this would potentially be a case of sexual assault in Canada. In Germany, it would be zero cases.

In Sweden, it would be tallied as 52 separate cases of rape.

If you enjoyed six sex acts with your spouse, then later you felt you had not given consent, that would be seen as separate six cases of rape.

While the law was (rightly) changed to protect women and encourage them to come forward and report rape more, as opposed to being fearful of how they were treated, it’s led to a skewed ratio being used as statistical data.

Following the change in the law, reports of rape doubled through to 2009.

However, the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention reported no indications of an increase in the actual number of people who fell victims to sexual crimes between 2005-2008.

Instead, what wasn’t classed as rape before 2005 – and now was – was being reported.

Now, it’s clear that Sweden has an issue with sexual crime. But to say it’s all down to “the Syrian refugees”…. not so much.

The Ignorance of Groupthink

The problem with generalizations is that it often – arguably, always – misses the bigger picture, one that tells a far different story.

Take the crime of kidnapping, for example. If I were to ask you which countries had the highest rates of kidnap, you may reply with somewhere from South America.

Given the drug wars in that part of the world, you might think it’s a safe bet to suggest Mexico or Colombia.

But what if I told you the highest rates of kidnap were in Canada and Australia? Yes, Canada – the country that defines friendliness.

However, much like the reason behind Sweden’s rape stats, the reasons for Canada and Australia’s “kidnapping crisis” comes down to the definition.

If a separated/divorced parent takes a child for the weekend, and the other parent objects then calls the police, that’s classified as a kidnapping.

That’s right – a parent can change their mind on weekend access, and the child’s other parent is now classified the same as a drug cartel warlord.

And people use these “damning statistics” to further their argument and promote their own agenda – and we let them!

Thanks to social media, and the ease in which we can find a statistic that supports our point of view, we no longer feel the need to validate that point of view with actual facts.

Instead, we beat down the other point of view with increasing hostility and even more questionable facts until the lines have been so blurred, the truth no longer matters.

When generalization and popular opinion trumps (no pun intended) context and singular research, we fall just a little closer to history becoming a blinkered version of the truth.

Something only a certain section of humanity could ever celebrate.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” ~ Joseph Goebbels.