Please note The Green Man is usually accurate however he does tend to drift into the mischievous areas of satire and parody from time to time. Such is the nature of the Green Man. In fact he is not above complete fiction when the fancy takes him.
There are only 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
(via Ming)
Yes, one of the great photographers of the 20th century has fallen off his perch. Helmut Newton crashed his car in a brick wall, which is ever a good idea but when you are 83 it is an extremely bad one. He died some time later at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
He was born in Germany and, after spending some time in Australia, made a career for himself in fashion and art photography.
In 1967 he published a book of his work entitled "White Women". The photographs were sexually provocative and the book similtaneously scandalised society and skyrocketed him to prominance in the heady world of fashion photography.
His signature style however was portraits of tall naked women photographed against a stark white background and lit by head lights.see here.
It is good work if you can get it.
Find more examples of his work here.
Danish researchers announced that they have bred a plant that is capable of detecting landmines. The leaves of the genetically engineered plant turn red when the roots of the plant encounter explosives.
Now this is going to be a bit of an ethical dilemma for the rabid "anti-genetic engineering" crowd. Many of them are also members of the peace movement. Are they going to oppose the introduction of a plant that will save hundreds of thousands from preventable death and maiming?
If they oppose it then they are showing a disregard for the sanctity of life and safety of a significant percentage of the third world population. If not then they have fundamentally compromised their blanket opposition to genetically engineered plants.
Oh the hand wringing and angst. The high moral ground can be so slippery at times.
The Green Man has made a gross generalisation vis-a-vis the level of hanky-panky in the USA. Way back on October 29th last year The Green Man, in an entry entitled "America It's Good At Sex", quoted an OECD report that highlighted the reproductive acheivements of the citizens of the USA. As the only developed country to be generating enough babies to sustain its population most of its citizens can hold their heads high.
There is a fly in the lubricant however. Department of Public Health reports that, whilst the citizens of the state of Massachusetts love their outdoor activities, there is a, primarily indoor, activity on which the aforesaid citizens are dropping the ball. The teenage girls of Massachusetts are letting the side down terribly, resulting in an unprecedented decline in teenage pregnancies, a mere 2.26% of 15-19 girls are pregnant. Compare this with a national average of 4.29% and you will appreciate the extent of the crisis.
Health Commissioner Christy Ferguson, recognising the preference for outdoor activities amongst her citizens, is lauching a new "Savor sex in the sunlight" promotional campaign to more effectively utilise the labyrinth of walking and hiking trails that the state so generously maintains. Here is a group getting a lecture on the basics of sex in the outdoors. I think she is saying something like "You need to stay at least this far from the edge to avoid 'roll over' accidents."
You can read more about this innovative program at www.mass-vacation.com
Read more about Mass Teenage Birth Rates
Here is a photo of Ned Kelly from a not so recent film. It is from the 1906 classic Story of the Kelly Gang, believed to be the world's first feature film.
Films this old are rare and delicate. They were made using processes that were subject to deterioration of time and extensive efforts are being made to preserve them using the latest computer technology.
In the UK a 3-year initiative is being carried out at the University of Surrey, with funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to preserve the cultural heritage that in encapsulated in these ancient films.
"The techniques we are exploring may vastly increase access to films of major historical, cultural and artistic value. Ultimately, our work could benefit public service and commercial film archives, which are experiencing growing demand from new multimedia and broadcasting outlets".
says Dr Theodore Vlachos of the University's School of Electronics and Physical Sciences.
You can read more about the project here. If you are interested in this sort of thing you may also like to take a virtual trip to the ScreenSound Australia which is the latest incarnation of The National Film and Sound Archive which was established in 1984. It so easy to while away several hours investigating their fascinating collection.
You can see that tanks are typically designed by blokes and not your arty-farty blokes of questionable sexuality either. They are designed by real macho men who do a lot of grunting and farting as they walk around. This clearly accounts for the appalling colour schemes that you usually find in military weaponry of this type.
If you happen to be hopping off the tube (London underground) at Elephant and Castle station you might like to make a small detour to Old Kent Road to see a more creative approach to tank camouflage.
The project is the brainchild of Aleksandra Mir who, with some assistance, has recently completed the paint job.
You can see the work in progress here.
Those wacky Hollywood script writers, fancy thinking that truth in advertising would ever be successful. That, of course, was the theme of the 1990 film "Crazy People" starring Dudley Moore, who went downhill after separating with Peter Cooke in The Green Man's opinion, and the undeniably cute Darryl Hannah. Not long ago Professor Richard Tait, after a long day in the research lab, borrowed it on video.
Professor Richard Tait, who is Director of Centre for Journalism Studies at Cardiff University, UK., had been grappling with the problem of the declining voter turn out and general disengagement of the UK citizenary with the whole political process. Tucked up in his favourite armchair, wearing his beige cardi and watching his rented video, "Demented Dick", as he is rapidly becoming referred to in the halls of Westminster, decided that telling the truth might work for the UK polititians too. At this stage it was mere speculation because it was so long since a polititian had actually used this approach that it was a subject of research in the English History Department.
Should he have a degree of success in this endeavour to convince a polititian to actually tell the truth, the next challenge will be to communicate to the population of the UK. Turning to the mass media may not be that successful because they are distrusted even more than the polititians, with only 13% of the population trusting what they say, which makes the 19% polititians scored positively fantastic.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Security experts warned on Monday about a new virus outbreak that was spreading quickly across the Internet.
The new virus, dubbed MyDoom or Novarg, is a mass-mailing worm that arrives as an attachment with an .exe, .scr, .zip or .pif extension and can have a subject line of "test" or "status."
It mails itself out to addresses in the victim's computer and is clogging mail servers and degrading network performance at companies, experts said.
"Mailboxes at large corporations are infected and reporting multiple infections throughout their entire organizations," said David Perry, global education director at Trend Micro.
The worm was discovered on Monday afternoon and spread so quickly that Trend Micro, Network Associates, Symantec and other anti-virus companies were rating it a "high" outbreak.
Security experts said they were still analyzing the virus to discover what it does to the victim computers.
"It is easier to have freedom of thought in a concentration camp than in America today."
So said Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In 1970 he won the Nobel Prize for literature and is the author of a number of books that are insightful, both on the nature of the Russian political system and of the human psyche when placed in situations of extreme hardship. In 1974 he fled Russian persecution for the land of the free and the home of the brave. To his astonishment he discovered a land where freedom of thought was no greater than in Russia. There was a difference only in the nature of the restrictions on his freedom of thought not on the extent. Of course the natural response is to say “like it or leave it”, that is, if he thinks it is so crook then leave (which is actually what he did, returning to his native Russia after the fall of communism.) Our friends, however, are not the ones that tell us what we want to hear, but those who tell us what we need to hear.
He made this statement many years ago. It is interesting to consider whether it is more or less appropriate today. Are we more or less able to question the behaviour of our country’s respective leaders without being labelled UnAmerican/UnAustralian. Solzhenitsyn wrote in “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”
"The fellows at the top thought about everything for him, and it was kind of easier like that."
It is time for you to consider how much you are allowing the government of your country to think for you. You have the freedom to think for yourself, to question what is being done on your behalf. You have the right to stand up and say what you think without fear of persecution or of retribution, or do you? Take a look at how vocal critics of recent actions of the government have been portrayed. I will leave you with a quote from George W Bush.
If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists.
There may be many reasons for not clearfelling the Amazon basin but using global warming as an argument is spurious. The real key to the global warming crisis is Phytoplankton. These microscopic green plants that float in the oceans of the world. They are capable of binding extremely large quanitities of CO2, which is the main contributing factor to the looming global warming crisis.
The trouble is that to do this they need iron, which can be in short supply in the worlds oceans, in spite of the number of battle ships that we so conveniently sunk during that last world cufuffle.
Alfred Wegener Institute of the Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany is experimenting with "seeding" with large qualities of iron to promote the Phytoplankton's ability to bind CO2. This just the first step, the Phytoplankton then have to die and sink to the ocean floor, which seems a bit of a big ask. There is also the problem of the collossal distruption to the ocean ecology that may have a dramatic and negative impact on many species.
The Green Man is not buying any property on Kiribati just yet.
It spite of feminists claims to the contrary it has been know for some time that woman are less able to cope with stress and trauma than men are. Stress-related mental illnesses occurs at least twice as often in women as it does in men. Becca Shansky, a graduate student in neurobiology at Yale School of Medicine has found that, unsurprisingly, this is probably due to estrogen, the hormone responsible femaleness.
Adverse reaction to stress was measured by increasing memory impairment. She found that females susceptibility to stress matched the cyclical nature of estrogen levels within the body. As estrogen levels peaked so did the female's impairment when placed in mildly stressful situations. Males on the other hand showed no such impairment.
Extremely stressful situations induced memory impairment in both sexes.
Ever wondered what a lung looks like. I am sure your butcher can oblige if you want to see one out of the flesh, so to speak. If that is too biological for you perhaps a bit of reality web might be more acceptable, click here.
If you are someone who counts smoking amongst your vices then your lung will look more like this. (Gross out alert, it is pretty disgusting)
It is enough to make cut down on the fags. Don't bother it won't do you the sligtest amount of good apart from saving you money of course. Recent research by Stephen Hecht of the University of Minnesota Cancer Center has shown that when smoker cuts back on the number of cigarettes they compensate by inhaling deeper and absorbing more carcinogens. Even those who cut down the ciggies and used patches still compensated by inhaling deeper and showed little drop in the harmful chemicals in their body.
The message is simple, you need to give up completely.
Read more in Nature.
Did you know that
George W. Bush caused the Cubs to lose to the Marlins in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series so that SUV owners could oppress minorities.
I don't know who the "Cubs" and "Marlins" are but it sounds pretty serious to me. You would have to have a very credible source to go quoting such scandalous allegations you would think and, in fact I do.
It is the George W Bush conspiracy generator. Why bother to think up your own George Bush conspiracy theory when, at the click of a button you can have one generated for you.
It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations are in a conspiracy to under-value them.
The observation of a modern day pundit perhaps? Nope, it is a quote from Henry James in 1895. He was an American but end up living and writing in the UK.
It is hard to shake elements of a national psyche and you can still see evidence of this belief in American psyche today, particularly in American foreign policy.
Through the millenia countries that are powerful enough have been invading other countries without worrying about their standing in the world arena. These countries believe themselves to be great and righteous without reference outside their borders. As we now know, George Bush wanted to invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein long before September 11, 2001. America has the might it could have just done it without the need to leaverage off 9/11, cook up cock and bull stories about WMD or engage in all that argy bargy with the UN. America's objectives may have been entirely honourable but it was its desire to have itself seen as righteous by the rest of the world that forced it into all this game playing.
Here are some British sperm happily seeking an egg. They are smiling as they wriggle their way across the petrie dish in the IVF lab, but almost all are doomed to failure. With a bit of luck one will succeed, fertilizing an egg and going on the form a human being.
Give it about 18 years and the person that arose from that serrendipidous moment when one little wriggler climbed the sperm equivalent of Mt Everest will start wondering about the half of their genetic inheritance they know nothing about, the male sperm donor who is their biological father. New laws in England mean that they can now legally find out who that man was.
"I firmly believe donor-conceived people have a right to information about their genetic origins that is currently denied them, including the identity of their donor. There is a growing body of opinion, which I agree with, that donor-conceived people should not be treated so differently from adopted people. Today's new regulations will align their positions,"
British Health Minister, Melanie Johnson told the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) Conference in London. She said, in drafting the legislation, that the rights of the donor conceived child were considered to be paramount.
There are other rights at stake here of course, those of the donor and of the couple that were the fortunate recipients of the sperm but The Green Man wholehearted supports the right of a child to find and make contact with its biological father.
He/she may be in for a bit of a let down if they do discover and meet their father. Particularly in the early days of IVF, sperm donorship was approached with a degree of flippancy that is not present today, donors were often medical students coopted in by their lecturers who were conducting the research. Not all of these men will be happy to see the results of some light hearted student escapade arrive on their doorstep. It is to be hoped that an IVF child and it's environmental parents are well counselled and supported during this process.
Still The Green Man believes it is important to know and understand your biological father. The Green Man wishes them luck in their search and hopes that they are acknowledged and greeted warmly by their father should they find him.
Image courtesy of Dave Henniker
Those of you who are regular visitors to The Green Man will have noticed a certain obsesiveness on the hot topic of "Cows". The Green Man does not own any cows although he has known some on a social basis.
Dave Haxton, on the hand, is fortunate in that he knows quite a few at a very pesonal level. Let's face it, to be involved in the whole birthing process is a very personal and bonding sort of thing as, in fact, he was with Wolfie a Scots Highland cow that gave birth mid last year. You can see a picture of Wolfie here and with her offspring here. Wolfie is 17 and Dave looks much older than that but The Green Man is not judgmental about such things, as long as they have a mature man/cow relationship which I am sure they do, given that Dave has shown the good taste and maturity to be a regular reader of The Green Man.
The World Health Organisation has released a plan to tackle global obesity rates. The plan includes acheiving cuts in salt, fat and sugar intake in diets across the world.
The initial focus of the campaign is to encourage a reduction in the amount of fat and sugar used in the food industry in the production of packaged food items. This is to be supported by changes to advertising and tax policy to promote healthier diets.
It all sounds very positive however one country is proving to a the blow-fly stuck in the low calorie jam. It fundamentally objects to the singling out of fat and sugar in food for reduction. "Now which country would that be?" I wonder. Possibly the country that gave us the big Mac and the Whopper perhaps. Possibly the country where 50% of its teenage girls and 47% of its teenage boys are obese or overweight. Possibly the country where the mighty dollar holds sway over all domestic and foreign policy matters even the health of its own citizens.
Yep it is the USA. The country that is charging headlong into an generation long obesity driven health crisis. Call me a cynic but I suspect the gym and dieting sectors are joining with those well known hamburger chains to scuttle this important WHO initiative.
Ruth Webster had a baby daughter Ellen who died in Leeds General Infirmary in England. Unbeknown to her, following the autopsy, the hospital retained the baby girls organs instead of replacing them for burial/cremation with the rest of the body. She says she wants £5,000 in compensation, the hospital has only offered £1,000 compensation.
This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened, Alder Hey children's hospital in Liverpool offered £5,000 in compensation to parents when it came to light that they had been indulging in a similar practice. Ms Webster is using this as the precident.
In Australia, The Royal Childrens Hospital in Victoria has retained up to 1,000 hearts without consent, for education of young doctors - a practice it claims has been standard across the world for decades. Before you get too outraged, reflect on the fact that the RCH is a world leader in research in congenital heart defects and that the knowledge and skill that they have acquired through this practice has save the lives of thouands of children.
It is inappropriate not to seek consent of the parents before retaining organs but it is equally clear that it is an important and necessary practice for education and research which is vital to the ongoing provision of quality care at the hospital. The National Health and Medical Research Council has released strict guidelines to manage the practice into the future.(click here to see them.). In Victoria the Department of Human Services has released guidelines stating
. If it is proposed that whole organs or other parts of the body be kept after the post-mortem examination for testing, this needs to be explained to the next-of-kin and informed consent obtained
How sad that our society has got to a stage where it thinks that everything can be compensated for with money, even our children. I have not experienced the death of my child so I can only speculate on how I would feel but asking for money from the hospital would seem to me to be profiting from the death of my child which I would regard as highly inappropriate and distasteful. I think/hope my response would be to tell them to keep the £1,000/£5,000, put it into research into child health, and place a small plaque as a memorial to my child somewhere appropriate.
Read more in The Guardian here.
Meet George Jetson, err sorry Paul Muller. Here is a picture of the latest version of his "sky-car", the closest we have to George Jetson's snappy little get-about. It seats 4 and is capable of speeds of up to 380km/h.
Paul has been working on this project for around 20 years and his latest model looks like it has legs, or more correctly wings.
He is accepting orders at the moment and one will set you back about $1,000,000. For a mere $100,000 deposit you can ensure that you are one of the first on the block with one of these rich kids "must have" new toys.
Visit his site to find out more about this high tech get-about. Click here.
An artistic image is concerned with form and the flow of the eye through the image. A good painting or photograph engages the eye.
Here is a painting of Brighton Beach by John Constable (click here to see a bigger version)Notice how the artist is taking your eye on a journey that follows a path through the painting, in this case along the beach and then out to sea. This is not accidental, it is the way the artist designed and constructed the painting. If you can look at a painting and take it in at a glance then it is a poorly constructed painting.
The same goes for photography and it is what distinguishes great photographs from the pictures that The Green Man is currently taking with his digital camera. You may find them interesting because they are supported with a written story. Great photographs tell their own stories.
Edward Burtynsky has taken the fundamentals of creating a visually intriguing and thought provoking image and applied them to some scenes typically associated with visual unpleasentness.
Here is a tire pile presented that demonstrates that even scenes that seem an eyesore can be presented in a manner engages the eye and the mind.
Visit Cowles Gallery to see more of his excellent work.
You can tell that Darren at Livingroom is a young whipper snapper. The first topic in blogger idol is "the 80's". Really! Those of us who were there know that the 70's crapped all over the 80's as a decade. The seventies was the decade of flower power, peace and love. Of course we were napalming Vietnamese children in order to keep from falling into the evil clutches of the communists but we will overlook that.
We were hippies in those days; all long hair, embarrassing clothes and idealism. Sadly, it was not to last. Peace guided the planets and love ruled the stars only for the briefest period. We had ascended the spiritual heights, meditated with a guru, listened to whale song on the reel-to-reel tape player, attuned ourselves to the cosmic realm but, as the song says, "You'd better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone for the times they are a changin"
Change they did and sink we did. PCs and Microsoft arrived like a firestorm in the IT marketplace. That elegant piece of assembler that ran on a mainframe in 64K of memory, instead of being viewed with awe by junior programmers, was now an anachronism. It was the same throughout industry, "executive" and "over 35" were mutually exclusive terms. Commerce and industry were the domains of the young corporate high-flyer. They grabbed the joy-stick and, after a few loops, plowed our economy into "the recession we had to have" You see they had stopped making things and started making money. Sooner or later someone was bound to open a door and allowed in a gust of common sense. The "house of cards" that our economy had become collapsed.
If that wasn't bad enough, the 80's saw the first outbreaks "economic rationalism", a disease that afflicts industry to this day. Like any disease that is not managed it has spread through the corporate community to the extent that, like herpes, it is ubiquitous.
The 80's has a lot to answer for really, perhaps I'll just drag out the beads and the tie-dyed shirt and meditate on it. If only I could still fit into the matching pants.
There are some picky picky people amongst the readership of The Green Man. You know the sort. Those ones who think the articles on The Green Man should be speld correctly. How are great minds, like the one that The Green Man keeps telling himself he has, supposed to keep exploring the intrickacies of the magnificent universe around them if they keep getting dragged back to the mundane by people pointing out spelling errors.
And another thing, how would anyone find out about the hippocratic oath if The Green Man had not misspelt it in an early post. The number of hits on that page is enormous, clearly noone else can spell it either.
Anyway to the point at last. YourDictionary.com has produced a list of the 100 most commonly misspelt words. The Green Man is proud to say that he has misspelt almost all of them. See them here.
It has been a big strain for The Green Man to be serious for a whole week. What is needed now is a bit of complete frivolousness and what better than to turn The Green Man's attention to the sacred cow that is haute couteur. (Damn is that how you spell it. I can't be bothered looking it up. It is good enough for this post.)
It seems that a fashion statement that has been going strong in Australia since the 1970's has suddenly attained fashion icon status across the pacific thanks to an airing on the Oprah Winfrey show. The humble ugg boot as made it at last.
The ones in the picture don't do ugg boots justice really. They need to be slobbed around in for a year or two by which time the heel area begins to collapse and they attain their more recognisable shape.
Ugg boots are sort of daggy prerequisite for Australian citizenship. The Green Man understands that new Australian citizens, after they have taken the oath, are handed a pair, along with a cootamundra wattle seedling to plant in the back yard. Now it seems anybody who's anybody wants a pair. Reuters reports that Serena Williams, who is out here for the Australian Open, has specified that the chilled water flown in from the southern alps is to be delivered to her suite by bronzed Aussie surfer boys clad in not much more than the afore mentioned uggs. (Well actually she just ordered the uggs, but what sort of story is that?)
Australia has many gifts that it could share with the world but the quintessential dagginess of the ugg boot has to put it right up near the top of the list.
Actually it is really just begining but it is the conclusion of Manhood week. I hope those of you who stuck with it for the week feel that you have had an opportunity to review how you are living your lives from a slightly different perspective from the one you normally take. Some of you will have found some things during the week that challenge the safe facade that you have built for yourself. Take heart in the fact that it has been challenging for me as well. I have been in tears writing at least one of the pieces.
It takes a great deal of courage to question some of the fundamental tenets by which we define ourselves as men but, like all things that require great courage, the rewards are great too.
Please do not live your life in such a manner that, at its inevitable conclusion, you think to yourself, "Is that all there is?" Money does not matter, pride does not matter, the respect of macho louts does not matter, the only thing that matters is that you became the best man you could possibly become and that you connected with men and women in your life; that you loved them openly and unconditionally and received and acknowleged their love graciously.
Good luck on your journey and remember that when you arrive at a fork in the path it is always a good idea to take the path less travelled.
Obviously The Green Man will continue to post on men's issues but it will drop back to into the eclectic mix of topics that this the usual style of The Green Man.
We are at the final stage of the intellectual journey towards a more fulfilling and rewarding life as a man. Your real journey, should you embrace the task, will probably take you a number of years. You don't rid yourself of a lifetime of negative conditioning overnight.
The final stage in the journey is to gather some of the real friends you have developed on the way and go wild, in the truest sense of the word. Head off into the wilderness, on foot and carrying those things you need to survive, if you are capable. Go fishing and hunting, even if it is with a camera. Enjoy the companionship and bonding that arises amongst a group of men when they are out in the wilderness together, relying on one another, supporting one another.
As Walt Whitman so elegantly put it.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world.
It is time for you to find a suitable mountain top or precipice give air to your barbaric yawp. It is a scream of sheer exhilaration and triumph. Standing on a summit surveying the wilderness laid out before your feet you are a master of the universe, revel in your maleness.
On second thoughts, bugger waiting till the end of your journey, find every opportunity to be wild. Men are not built to sit at desks and worry; men are built to be immersed in wilderness.
The image is of the Routeburn Track in the South Island of New Zealand. One of the greatest wilderness walks in the world in The Green Man's not so humble opinion.
Addendum: (in response to Jonathans comment)
Those of you not acustomed to the traditions of bushwalking may be unaware of the fact that remaining clothed seems of far less importance to bushwalkers than most, swimming costumes for example are unheard of.
You could speculate that it arrises because you are
1. with people that you know and trust and
2. enjoying the privacy of being the only people for many miles.
Skinny dipping with your group in a mountain lake or on a deserted beach is one of the undeniable pleasures of going wild.
It is a fact of life that most of us need to earn money on which to live. That being said there are ways of earning your money that you know, in your heart are worthless, appologies to any stockbrokers amongst the readership, but your profession springs to mind.
You spend at least half your waking life at work. If, in your heart, you know that you are not doing what men have traditionally done, which is contribute to the wellbeing and support of the community in which they live, then it is time to find a job where you do.
There is a reason that people volunteer their time to community service have better psychological and physical wellbeing. It is because they feel good about themselves. You have an opportunity to do good and earn money at the same time, it is simply a matter of finding the correct job.
It is hard to overstate the importance of this. It is fundamental to your wellbeing that you are contributing to the wellbeing of your society and I am afraid trading in shares just doen't cut the mustard. Stop kidding yourself and look seriously at how you are spending your life. If you are not spending it in a meaningful and fulfilling way then the time to change is now.
You have the potential to be a great man but each day that you spend in a job that you know does not contribute to the greater wellbeing of your community diminishes it.
Here is another small vingette for you to consider, it is real not fictional.
I was attending the awards presentations at the local junior football club, I was there because I consented to my son playing for them. The "best and fairest" is the premium award in Australian Rules Football and the winner for the under-17s was announced. The recipient went up to the podium, accepted the award, and said, without a smile, "Yeah, err thanks. Oh and thanks to the coach" and makes his way back to his seat.
This is the most prestigous award that this boy could receive and, by 16, the club had taught him so effectively that he feels it is inappropriate and a sign of weakness to look happy or excited at receiving it. What are these men teaching our boys?
I had grave doubts about the wisdom of allowing my son to associate with such a disfunctional group. I spoke to him about it and, although I let him stay, I was never really comfortable with it from then on. It is something that one must be vigilant about when raising a son.
Let us cast our mind back to one of the scenarios that I outlined in the post on Monday. Your son is dead, he commited suicide and you had no idea there was even a problem. You are crippled with grief, guilt, self-doubt and fear that your whole life is a failure. You have a group of men that you regard as "friends". You have known them for years and at the pub great tales are told about previous conquests, young passing females are compared in a ribald fashion accompanied by much laughter, the sport that is in season is discussed with much intensity. It would be a completely fabricated story if I suggested that, in your time of emotional need, you approached these men for support. They wouldn't give it, of course, they have no idea how to, but you would know better than to even approach them. It would be a gross breach of the "male code of silence" on matters emotional and you would never do it.
It is about this time that you realise that, even though you have stacks of male friends, you are completely emotionally alone in the world. There is not a sinlge man in the world who you know that you can turn to for support in your time of greatest need. Sounds far fetched? Then you are probably a woman reading this because men know that, for most men, it is the reality. Even those men who are not in this perilous boat recognise that it is the reality for most men.
If you are a man, here is a test. Picture yourself in a state of utter grief being held and comforted by another man as you cried your heart out. Do you have a male friend who would be comfortable playing that role for you? For the most part the answer is emphatically "No". Not that it matters at one level because most men would never be capable of expressing their emotions to that extent anyway. Most men live in a world of emotional black and white, happy and angry are the only two emotions they allow themselves.
So you consider yourself a go getter, an acheiver? Well acheive this. Search out and establish friendships with some real men who are further down the path to becoming complete men than you are. Men who understand that it is not a sign of weakness to grieve, to be excited, to be scared, to be uncertain, to be apprehensive; men who do not have to compete with you or belittle you to prop up their own fragile egos. They are out there and you can find them if you look.
Here are 7 steps to male friendship (courtesy of Steve Biddulph)
1. Weed out any kind of competition from your friendships beyond the playful kind.
2. Stop trying to prove you are a man. Just be one.
3. Be affectionate. Give straight compliments from time to time and mean them.
4. Listen to your friends problems without trying to minimise them. Help your friends find their own solution instead of providing advice.
5. Join a men's group where men talk about their real lives and discuss the important things as well as the trivial.
6. Don't be afraid of grief, despite what you have been taught, it is a natural emotion for men too and not a sign of weakness to experience it.
7. Have fun with other men. Be noisy, wild and safe. Be proud of being a vibrant human male.
In primitive and agrarian societies men did work that a boy could understand. From a relatively early age boys accompany men and assist them with tasks concerned with the wellbeing of the tribe/extended family. During these periods boys get an opportunity to learn through observation and imitation what it is to be a man, how to behave, how to interact with other men. If your son sees you only for a brief period each night when you are tired from a stressful day where is your son learning how to be a man. The simple answer is the television and from older boys who learnt it themselves from other boys in an extended game of "chinese whispers"
Let your child choose what they usually watch on TV and take some time to cast a critical eye over the father images that are portrayed on these shows. Is the kind of father that is portrayed the kind of father you want your son to become or your daughter's husband to be.
The simple fact is that you are probably not spending enough time being a father to your children and why? So that they can have a bigger TV set through which to absorb all the wrong types of images of what it means the be a mature man and a father.
You have a role to play in the upbringing of both your sons and your daughters and it is not that of surrogate mother when your wife is not around. For all your children, you are, or should be, a protector both from the real world and the virtual world. As much as they complain about not being allowed to watch some things, or go some places, if they understand it is being done because you care for their wellbeing it will reaffirm in their minds your love and commitment to them.
Protecting your son means more than protecting him from physical harm. At three/four/five your son is probably talkative, happy, excited, loving, caring. He is destined to get most of that knocked out of him unless you do something about it. Sadly, female teachers can be the worst offenders, they bring their own agendas into the classroom. You need to be alert to this and take affirmative action to protect your son. He has the right to be himself.
Being a father also means participating in your childrens lives at a meaningful level and that is not taking them to team sports and watching from the sides. It is finding things to do together where they can talk to you and learn from you.
When someone says "Tell me about yourself" perhaps, instead of saying "I am an accountant" you can say "I am a father" and mean it.
There is a women's magazine in Australia called "New Idea". It contains the usual mix of light weight trashy stories that are so popular about celebrities, human interest stories, Princess Diana, that sort of stuff. It also contains a regular feature called "Mere Male" where readers write in and retell vignettes of silly things their husbands have done. It is harmless enough in itself but it plays on the image of the husband as harmless bumbling fool in the relationship. Look at many of the adverts for household cleaning products or baby care needs and you will see further examples.
It is a role that men find easy and comfortable to conform to. It takes responsibility away from them in the household and in their relationship with their wife. It is however a sign of a deeply flawed, but not beyond repair, relationship. Many of these men are managers of groups of individuals in the workplace; strategic thinkers; go getters. Yet at home they conform to a role that allows them to disengage with their wife on almost all levels.
It is time to look at your relationship with your wife and ask yourself "Am I guilty of taking the soft option and letting her 'rule the roost'?". If you are then you are cheating both yourself and your wife.
There is also a dark side to this marital structure. Ironically, it is too often accompanied by violence. The scene is all to common of the compliant submissive man who periodically "explodes" because he
1. can no longer handle that his values, beliefs and needs are being ignored
2. does not know how to talk to his wife about how he feels and what he needs from the relationship (I am not talking about sex here.)
3. is so emotionally withdrawn that his wife, out of desparation, provokes him to get at least some type of response.
So what happens. As well as the obvious damage to his wife, the man is even more disempowered. He now has feelings of guilt to add to the firestorm of emotions that he is unable to understand or resolve, mainly because he does not have a wife or any true male friends in which he can confide to help him sort them out.
The Solution
1. You are an equal partner in the relationship who is entitled to have your beliefs, values, needs and wishes respected. (Your wife is equally entitled to this.) Of course you cannot expect these things to be respected if you do not tell your wife what they are, she is not a mind reader. It may sound stupid but even in a marriage of 10 or 20 years this is still important particularly if you have not been doing it along the way. You are entitled to say "That is how I feel. I am not asking you to understand it, just accept that that is the why I feel."
2. Your wife has a set of beliefs, values, needs and wishes which are not the same as yours and you are entitled and obligated to find out what they are and respect them, even if you think they are stupid.
3. Your wife is not always correct she can also be obstinate, misguided, perverse and irrational just like you can. You don't have to accept everything she says. On some matters you can disagree entirely and still have a happy and fulfilling relationship.
4. If you are angry about something then your wife is entitled to know. How do you think that adopting the "cone of silence", and giving yourself a stomach ulcer by quietly fuming over it, is going to fix the problem.
A marriage is a relationship between equals. If yours is not then it is time to fix it. If you have been together a long time then it will be a difficult task that will need to be undertaken with tenacity and in the knowledge that you both will need to change, which is never easy.
Here is a picture of Anna for you to look at. It is not workplace safe she is naked. If you are a heterosexual male then you will probably find her sexually attractive. The reason that you do is because she is young, healthy and has the hallmarks of being fertile. As a male animal you are built to find that attractive in a female it is nothing to be either ashamed of or particularly proud about it is just the way you are.
If you haven't clicked on the link yet you should. You will see from the photo that she was clearly unconcerned about having her photo taken and why should she be. It shouldn't bother you either unless you are uncomfortable with the fact that you may find her sexually attractive.
Here is the rub, as heterosexual males we find the female body appealling and a pleasure to look at and it is time to grow up and acknowledge to yourself that that is part of being a man. It is nothing to be ashamed about. You are a sexual being and you are sexual in a uniquely masculine way that your wife will never truely understand simply because she is not a man.
A key component of male sexual exploitation of women is failing to see them as a human being with thoughts and feelings and emotions. Part of your sexual exploitation of yourself is to deny yourself your sexual thoughts and feelings and emotions. This does not mean you are going to dump the wife and kids and run off on some wild orgy of sexual indulgence. It means that you acknowledge as well as being an intellectual person and a caring person you are also a sexual person. It is not a grubby little secret it is part of who you are, be proud of it.
As babies turn into young children they begin to make sense of the world around them. For children growing in the usual heterosexual household they begin to understand that their mother is the primary care giver, she is afterall breastfeeding them and the most common attendant to their needs. A fathers relationship with his young child is usually somewhat more distant.
In our culture, as the child grows, the father is too often relegated to the role of dispenser of discipline, he becomes a distant, aloof, god-like figure to be feared when wrong doing has occured.
So what happens when a boy becomes a man? At least at an intellectual level he clearly no longer sees his father as a god-like figure but the distance remains. Here is a quote from Manhood by Steve Biddulph. For many of you it will resonate.
A man anwsers the phone, it is his son on the other end.
"Hi Dad, it's me."
"Oh, uh huh! Hi Son! I'll go get your mother"
"No, don't get Mum. It's you I want to talk to."
A pause
"Why? Do you need money?"
"No, I don't need money"
And the younger man starts on his, somewhat rehearsed, but still vulnerable, speech...
"I've just been remembering a lot about you, Dad, and the things you did for me. Working all those years to put me through college, supporting us. My life is going well now and it's because of what you did to get me started. I thought about it and realised I'd never said "Thanks"
Silence from the father... the son continues
"I want want to tell you ... Thanks ..... And that I love you"
"You been drinking?????"
It is poignant because it closely reflects the state of relations between so many adult men and their fathers. The father may be incapable of expressing any outward acknowledgement of the deep impact that such an interaction has had on him. He may at the time dismiss it as "foolishness" but in his heart he now knows what, at the times when he is most vulnerable and scared, he hoped but did not know before. So many men go to their grave falsely believing that they were inadequate as fathers simply because their adult son has not disabused them of their feelings of inadequacy.
The problem that you will have as a man seeking atonement with your father is that they have been subjected to the same disfunctional masculine upbringing that you have. In fact that is where you probably learnt a lot of it from. Some of you will be fortunate in that your approach to your father will be something that he has been wanting for many years and the flood gates will be open. For most of you, your experience will be like mine, you will be greated with an awkward silence or embarrasment but rest assured your relationship with your father will have changed. Whether he knows or admits it, or not, he will now be a more complete man than he was before, that is a gift that only you, as his son, can give him.
For your sake, you will have taken a major step along the path to becoming a more emotionally complete man.
There are many men who have lost contact with, or never known, their father. For you the journey of atonement is fraught. You may have been raised to believe that he is a terrible person, and sadly it may be true, but your view of your father is the one that your mother has given you. As a man it is time to track him down and form your own opinion.
Whoever he is it is important for you to know him because he gave you life and you would not be who you are without him. There will have been times in your life when you would have been curious about who he was. The answers given may have been satisfactory at the time but they do not cut the mustard now you are an adult man. You may be angry with him but you don't know his side of the story, it is time to find out what it is.
For you it is a journey into the unknown. You have no way of knowing how you will be received, or even if you can find him. It is a quest for which you will need to be well prepared because it is a perilous one and may end in rejection. Great quests are not abandoned, however, simply because they are perilous, when the risks are great then so is the potential for gain. If you can get to know and understand your father you will be more complete and satisfied as a man.
Sadly, if your father is deceased, it will never be possible for you to seek atonement with him. You owe it to him and to yourself, however, to understand him more fully than you do now. This is important because who he was is partly who you are. By understanding your father and accepting him for who he was you move closer to understanding yourself and who you are.
It is time to seek out people who knew him not as a father or husband but as a person, people he went to school with, his friends and work colleagues. Seek them out and say to them "Tell me about Bill, what was he like."
It comes a poor second to getting to know him yourself but it is valuable never the less and the best option available to you.
This weeks journey is based on the magnificent work of Steve Biddulph in his book Manhood, An Action Plan For Changing Mens Lives . Over this week we will be exploring an plan for self actualisation, that is being the fullest and most complete man that you can be. Here is the roadmap for the journey and the weeks curriculum:
1. Establish a proper, meaningful, loving relationship with your father.
2. Cast aside the dysfuntional myths and understand and accept your sexuality.
3. Establish a relationship with your partner that is honest and where your needs are respected and fulfilled.
4. Stop being a bread-winner and start being a father to your children
5. Establish some real male friends
6. Find meaning in your job or dump it and find one that has some
7. Go wild, in the wilderness the male spirit soars.
Steve Biddulph, in his book "Manhood" writes
Most men do not have a life. Instead we have just learned to pretend. Most of what men do is an outer show, kept up for protection.
Here are two scenarios for you to consider:
Scenario One:
After 45 years with the one company a man retires and within 3 months he is dead from suicide. If you had asked this man a question like "Tell me about yourself" the first thing he would have said is "I am a clerk with ???", most men respond the same way, they define themselves by their work. (Ask yourself how you would answer that question.) When work ended his life ended. Over the years his reason for being had turned into being a meal ticket for the family.
This man was undoubtedly a vibrant imaginative child, as most children are. After 45 years of attending a job which, for the greater part of this time he hated but pretended to like, he had turned into a shell of a man struggling to find a meaning for existance. He grabbed onto the only thing available, his work. Ultimately everybody failed this man, society, his family, his male friends. They all conspired to keep him from really living and by time the time came when society gave him permission to live there was nothing much left. This story is a tragedy but the bigger tragedy is that his story is commonplace. His reality is the the reality for the bulk of men of his age in our society. It is why this group has one of the highest suicide rates.
Scenario Two
Andrew is 18 doing his University entrance exams. His father has said he is capable of getting into Medicine at Melbourne University and that he doesn't want a looser for a son. The pressure of the exams is great and, even though he has studied hard, his nerves get the better of him. His results come back and his marks are far above average but he just fails to make it into Medicine. He drives to the families hobby farm where he has enjoyed some of the most care free and happy periods of his life. He takes a rifle that is stored there and climbs to the top of a hill on the property, it is a place where as a child he used to imagine he could see forever. He places the barrel in his mouth and pulls the trigger.
The sad irony is that he never wanted to be a doctor anyway. That was what his family's dream was for him and what his father told him he should want to be. He actually wanted to be a teacher in a small country school, possibly owning a little farm on which his kids could enjoy growing up. He shared this dream with his father, once, who ridiculed him saying "Those who can - do, those who can't - teach". He resigned himself being a doctor. His failure to get in was the final straw. He thought "I am not allowed to do what I want and I can't even get into what I am supposed to do, my life is a failure." His story is a tragedy but the bigger tragedy is that thousands of boys are trying to attain stupid and pointless qoals set by fathers and suiciding when they fail. The rate of suicide of teenage boys and young men is highest of any group in our society.
At Andrew's funeral his father was stoic as he delivered the eulogy. Not a tear dampened his cheek. Even though inside he was a maelstrom of emotions of grief, self doubt, guilt and failure there was noone he could turn to. In the family he was expected to be the strong one and his mates, uncertain how to deal with the situation, avoided him at first and when they did eventually see him the topic was reduced to the banal, something like "Bad luck about Andrew".
Over this week we will be looking at the failure Anglo societies (Australia, USA, Canada, NZ and UK), to address the needs of boys and men. What you can do as a man to make your life more fulfilling, so that the end of your working life is not the end of your life. What you must do as a father to empower your son so he grows into well rounded, confident and complete man who has a full, rewarding and happy life. What greater gift could you give your son?
It is manhood week next week at The Green Man. If you are a man then be prepared to have some assumptions about who you are and what your life really means challenged.
Every now and then we all need to take a step back and challenge the assumptions by which we lead our lives. For the male readers of The Green Man this will hopefully provide such an opportunity.
If you are a woman then you are welcome to drop by and perhaps gain a glimpse behind that big macho fasade behind which most men live their lives, even if they don't realise it themselves.
Running a blog is an essentially egotistical thing to do, assuming that you are assuming that someone will want to read what you write. (This does not apply to The Green Man of course because he is full of ancient wisdom that he knows you will all want to share.)
Well having got the vehicle for your ego up and going you need to look at ways to expand the ego stroking that you can derive from it and what better way than to publish it in your own hand writing.
Fontifier is offering a service to create a true type font from your handwriting. Simply create a gif of a sample of the alphabet written in your own inimitable hand and send it to them. They will return your ttf file.
Of course for people to see your blog in your own hand they will have to install the font on their machine. Imagine that, your handwriting style installed on millions of PCs around the world. Now there is an ego trip.
Time to start planning your Science Fiction/Fantasy reading for 2004. It is a large domain with a few gems to be found amongst the garbage, like most creative writing genres. Rather than troll through garbage to unearth the gems why not benefit from the work of others and focus on these gems from 2003. Here is the list, courtesy of Locus Online.
Ilium, Dan Simmons (Eos)
The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem (Doubleday)
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla, Stephen King (Donald M. Grant)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J. K. Rowling (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Books)
Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood (Doubleday/Talese)
Pattern Recognition, William Gibson (Putnam)
The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger (MacAdam/Cage)
Here is a photo of Nicole Kidman. If you are thinking the high life in Hollywood is taking its toll then you are probably correct but this photo does not reflect the actual state of Nicole. It is a photoshop creation submitted to a competition at Worth1000.com. Click here to view the original image from which this image of Nicole Kidman was created.
Worth1000 is a photoshop site that regularly runs competitions and the current one is to "un-airbrush" celebrities. There are some creative efforts, some taking the competition literally and simply reapplying the natural blemishes that are likely on a face and others embracing the challenge more enthusiastically and advancing the ageing process to predict how stars will look as age. Click here to view them.
Two that took The Green Mans attention were of Michael Jackson and Michelle Pfeiffer. The Michael Jackson one simply because it was completely superfluous, he has succeeded in making himself into a caricature of his former self in real life nothing more needs be done really. You can look him up for yourself on their site if you really need to see.
The one of Michelle Pfeiffer I include here because it struck me how beautiful she looked. One of the myths that many women seem to cling to, and is reflected in many cosmetic adds on television, is the men find the types of facial wrinkles present in this photo unattractive. At 30 Michelle Pfeiffer was a beautiful woman and she will still be beautiful at 50 so long as she resists the temptation to try and look like she is still 30.
Here is a little insight into the male mind for those female readers of The Green Man. Men can tell the difference between a 30 year old woman and a 50 year old woman with a face lift. A man who has never really matured into a well adjusted adult male will try to cling to his youth by dumping his wife for a younger model no matter how many face lifts she has had. A mature well balanced man appreciates that the characteristics of a womans natural beauty change with age but that does not mean that her beauty diminishes.
There is nothing more off putting than a 50 year old woman with a permanently surprised expression on her face telling you how her friends say that she looks 10 years younger. The challenge in life is not to stay young, noone can do that, but to look beautiful at whatever age you are and that has more to do with being comfortable with how you look and being healthy and confident.
The Washington Post reports that, in the lead up to New Years celebrations, there have been nuclear scientists roaming the streets of major American cities sans white coat and carrying sophisticated radiation detection equipment hidden in briefcases and golf bags. They were searching for evidence of the presence of dirty bombs. These are not ordinary bombs that have got a bit muddy, like the one to the right, but conventional explosives designed to spread radioactive material rapidly across a wide area, say several city blocks.
These are "weapons of terror" in the true sense of the word because, in all likelyhood, they would be relatively harmless, biologically speaking. The CDC (Centre for Disease Control) states
at the levels created by most probable sources, not enough radiation would be present in a dirty bomb to cause severe illness from exposure to radiation.
The purpose of the bomb is not to kill, or even cause illness, although I dare say the terrorists would not be disappointed if these were spin offs. The purpose of the bomb is to cause terror in the population. To undermine confidence in the ability of the state to protect it's population. This was the real acheivement of the September 11 attacks, the killing of the 3,000 people was incidental. The terrorists shook the confidence of the US population. Most American citizens up until then would have viewed America as fairly invulnerable, not too many now hold that view.
At the moment, it seems, the terrorists are acheiving their objective. The American authorities are scared, with good reason, as is a significant percentage of the population. The free and open society that America once was is being eroded. On the day that Saddam Hussein's capture was announced new draconian legislation was passed by US parliament that fundamentally undermines American's rights and gives the FBI new and sweeping powers with few checks and balances.
The real battle in the "war on terror" is to allay the fear and vulnerability that al quaeda has succeeded in implanting in the American psyche and return America to the free and open society that it used to be.
The suicide of a teenager is always a tragic event and sadly it is mainly boys who suicide. Ironically, most of the support effort in schools tends to go to girls. This is, in part, because they are more receptive to the forms of assistance available. Boys, I am afraid, often fall into the "too hard" basket.
New research by Ohio State University highlights the fundamental and significant difference between the way teenage boys and girls organise their respective social frameworks and how this organisation is reflected in their risk of suicide. These differences mean that there must be dual approaches to suicide intervention to address the needs of both the boys and the girls.
Teenage girls typically have close friends in whom they confide almost everything, including thoughts of suicide. Girls with few or no close friends are less likely to confide their thoughts in others and, as such, are less likely to receive the suicide intervention assistance that they need. Similary problems with these relationships greatly affect girls mental health.
For girls, those who felt isolated and friendless were at as great a risk for considering suicide as girls who knew someone who had committed suicide.
(The risk of a person suiciding increases by a factor of 30 if a close friend or relative suicide. It seems that someone close to you suiciding somehow makes it much more acceptible for you.)
The situation is quite different for boys who do not establish these types of relationships during their teenage years, many men never develop them. The social structure for boys in school is a more loosely structured "gang" type organisation. For boys the suicide risk is reduced where large dense networks of friendships are maintained. Boys typically do not discuss their suicidal thoughts with anyone but in these large dense organisations it is more likely that someone will realise that suicide is being contemplated and facilitate intervention.
For both sexes a major factor in reducing suicide and suicidal thoughts is the joint participation of parents and adolescents in activties. Your teenage child may bitch about it being uncool to do things with you but it is remarkably good for their mental health.
Attending church regularly was also found to be a reductor in suicidal thoughts, possibly because of the extended support structures that are typically provided by the church community.
Fathers you can help protect your adolescent boys from suicide by
- Doing things with them and participating in their lives
- Enroling them in a number of clubs and societies
- Taking them to church (if that is right for you)
I told you earlier that a career in science can be a lonely profession and none more so than that of an astronomer, pursuing their profession lost amongst the stars. How appropriate then that when The Green Man typed in www.space.com , his preferred site for matters astronomical, this popup appeared.
Of course there is a major problem with the pop. It fails to allow the said lonely astronomer to specify his/her belief, or otherwise, in the "big bang" theory of the creation of the universe. It is a divisive issue and the first hurdle that any romantic astronomer is going to have to straddle in his/her quest for true love.
The Green Man supports the "big bang" theory by the way, but only because he loves fireworks.
Oh and you can see the first images from the Mars explorer at www.space.com which is why The Green Man went there in the first place.
Further to yesterdays entry on obesity in adolescents, Great Ormond Street hospital reports a 97% success rate in significantly reducing obese children's weight by at least 10% through education and therapy.
The approach categorises food into three major groups and ties them to the traffic light colours. Red foods such as, crisps and chocolate, may only be consumed once or twice a week as treats, yellow foods, including protein, carbohydrates and dairy products, are consumed in "healthy portions" only and green foods, fruit and vegetables can be consumed freely.
Children attend weekly therapy sessions and the whole family follows the same rules as the child, including introducing exercise into daily activities.
More info on obesity here
Latest figures released by National Institute of Public Health in Copenhagen, Denmark, in a study of 15 industrialised countries, show that the USA is leading the way in the Adolescent Obesity and Overweight Stakes. For girls there are no near competitors to the USA, with almost 50% of teenage girls being overweight or obese.
For boys the race is a lot closer with Greece, Portugal, Israel and Ireland in hot pursuit.
And if you are wondering what happened to the numbers for the other countries, I couldn't get them without forking out US$15 for the article in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. (Hint: If I start getting some donations I might spend some of it on these sorts of things.)
More info on obesity here
For the last seven years Chloe has been the most popular girls name in Britian. In Britian there are Chloes everywhere but in Melbourne, Australia the name "Chloe" brings only one thing to mind - painting of a naked 19 year old girl that is hanging on the wall of Young and Jackson's pub situated on one of Melbournes busiest intersections. It has hung there for nearly 100 years. Chloé was purchased by Henry Figsby Young, an ex-gold prospector turned publican, for the 800 pounds in 1908. That was a lot of money back then! His wife was not at all pleased with the purchase and relegated it to the public bar where it has resided ever since.
The story goes that, in 1895, the real Chloe was in love with painter Jules Lefebvre and agreed to pose for the painting. When Lefebvre married her sister instead she was heart broken and committed suicide by drinking a poison made from boiled up phosphorous match heads. The painting spent some time in the National Galary but was removed after an outcry from prudish socialites that were characteristic of the period.
There is nothing like a slur on his fertility to undermine a man's self esteem. History is littered with examples of fertility insults and curses to be used by aggressors to undermine the confidence of their foes in battle.
The French have been past masters at this and the direction in which the insults are usually hurled is England. Well may you say that curses are mere superstition but new evidence coming to light suggests that the centuries long hurling of gallic fertility curses across the English channel is at last bearing fruit.
New Scientist cites new evidence that suggests that the average sperm count of UK men may have fallen by as much as 29 per cent over the past 12 years. Naturally, being scientists, they are blaming environmental toxins such as pesticides for the declining sperm counts. A study published in July 2003 showed that chemicals mimicking the action of estrogen and found in some foods can impair the normal functioning of sperm.
Of course a sperm doesn't just have to be there, it has quite a swim if it is going to fertilise an egg. This is called motility and British sperm motility is also under a cloud. British men are just not what they used to be.
It is an ill wind that blows no good, however, and the beneficiaries of this slump in British male fertility are the men of Finland and the discount airlines with the recently introduced "fertility holidays" that woman can take to visit the most fertile men in Europe, the Finnish.
Fidel Castro celebrates the 45th anniversary of the coup that ousted the Batista Regime and installed him as "el comandante en jefe", a term by which he is still known with affection within Cuba and a term to which I was to become familiar during my stay in Cuba. Sporting a Castro-esque beard during my stay, it was not uncommon, of an evening, to have Cuban men informing me in drunken spanish that I looked exactly like "el comandante en jefe". It means commander-in-chief for you spanish illiterates.
The revolution had such huge potential, the Batista regime was corrupt and exploitation of the working classes was appalling. Little, however, of that potential has been realised. As Lord Acton so sagely observed
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
and so it was with the Castro regime. Free and fair elections, which was a major plank in the revolutionaries platform began to loose significance once the regime held power. Elections were something that held appeal when they were trying to attain power. When they had it, elections were seen as a destabilising threat and in the 45 years there has not been one election. People who were regarded as "enemies of the state" were arrested and held without trial, presumably many were ultimately executed because they eventually disappeared.
The socialist ideal has, like Havana's buildings, been slowly decaying in the hot tropical sun for the last 45 years. A country that could be a tropical paradise with a vibrant economy sinks each year further into squalor and apathy. The Cuban public believe Castro's assertion that the US embargo of Cubas is responsible for Cuba's ills. It is a fallacy however, as dominant as the US is, it is still only 22% of the global economy. That leaves 78% of the worlds economy for Cuba to trade with, more than enough for a small tropical country to prosper on.
Castro has succeeded in making most people equal in exactly the wrong way. Instead of raising the standard of living for the poor he has reduced the standard of living of the middle classes. Old men befriend tourists to cadge food to supplement the US$4 a month they receive in pension, teenage girls prostitute themselves to get money or to get out. It is a depressing place to visit unless you take a packaged trip to one of the big resorts where you are shielded from the reality of Cuba in 2004.
Here is a site that everyone should visit. Consumer Psychology is a site dedicated to the analysis of the way people shop and consume products.
Do you think you are saving money by buying the bulk value packs? No way, they are probably costing you money.
Larger package size increased product usage between 7% and 43%.
Do you think you are saving money by buying "no name" or generic brands. Nope your not.
Consumers poured 9% to 36% more from a sale-priced bottle of liquid cleaner (lower per-unit cost) than a full price bottle.
Why do you think stores impose a "Limit of 12 per customer", you buy more when they do.
When consumers shop for groceries, such as soup, they determine how much to buy based on how many they normally buy. For example, a customer might normally buy 2 or 3 cans of soup without giving it any thought. In effect, they "anchor" on the number 2 or 3 when they decide how many to buy. If you could increase that anchor number through marketing, purchase amounts would rise as well.
This site makes fascinating reading.
Each day a party of Rainbow Lorikeets comes to visit our bird feeder. Of the variety of birds that drop by, they are not only the most vibrant but also the most gregarious and noisy.
They squabble amongst themselves as they jostle for the best bits of food for that day, their swearing at one another intrudes on the normal daily activities of the household and draws our attention to their colourful presence.
As I move out to photograph them they fly up onto a nearby branch ready to either fly off or return to the food fight depending on my actions.
That should attract some visitors (if you are one of them have a browse around, I am sure you will find some things to interest you)
Google reports the top searches for 2003 as follows:
1. britney spears
2. harry potter
3. matrix
4. shakira
5. david beckham
6. 50 cent
7. iraq
8. lord of the rings
9. kobe bryant
10. tour de france
It has The Green Man intrigued, sure Britney Spears is a bit on the cute side, but you would hardly call her the most devastatingly beautiful woman in the world. She must, however, have that something that keeps the geekdom searching google for new and tantalising images of her.
Whilst we are on the general topic of most popular things of 2003 we will take a dip into the mind of the scientist and see what they are most interested in. Any guesses? Well unsurprisingly it is sex, same as everyone else, although with a slight twist (so to speak).
New Scientist reports the most popular topic for the year was Horrific venereal disease strikes African baboons , closely followed by Masturbating may protect against prostate cancer. Yep it can be a lonely life as a scientist.
You can find the full list here.
The cliched beauty of a scene on Japtan Island is diminished by the knowledge of the reality of this falsely tranquil scene. The temporary sun silhouetting these visitors to the island is the outcome of the detonation of a 360 kiloton atomic bomb on the nearby Eberiru island on July 3, 1956.
It can be difficult to separate the brutality and death arising as a consequence of the act from the beauty of act itself however there is a natural elegance and drama to a nuclear explosion. It is the quintessential fireworks display and captivates us for exactly the same reason that we find the fireworks at New Years so entrancing.
Reaching back across the millennia man took control of his environment through his taming of fire. He was no longer at the mercy of the vagaries of nature but began his journey to 
become the master of the environment in which he found himself, where once he had been a slave. Fireworks, once the stuff of wizards, are a dramatic demonstration of this mastery over nature and the atomic bomb is its most potent symbol.
The term “Shock and Awe” has diminished the value of the word “awe” lately but the photos contained in the book “100 Suns” are awful in the original sense of the word. Put aside your knowledge of the use and consequences of the atomic bomb and be in awe at the sheer majesty of the spectacle that is a nuclear explosion; that is recorded in these photographs.
See more photos, and possibly purchase of copy, of 100 Suns here.
Happy New Year! (I know I posted on the 1st but I couldn't think of anything witty and imaginative to say so I have been reduced to the banal. Still it is strangely in context with the rest of the blog, now that's a worry)
Anyway it's time to work on that list of things you want to acheive in 2004. This can be a challenging task, fortunately Tim Dowling of The Guardian has given us a bit of a helping hand with a generic list.
I think my favourite is
Wake up every morning and say to yourself, "Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of California." This will serve to remind you that you are living in a surreal dream world where your actions have no consequences.
Remember the good old days. Things were a lot safer then weren't they? It seems like law and order are under threat with violent crime on the increase or that is what the media would have us believe. But is it that bad?
Well no actually, violent crime is lowest its been for 30 years. Here is a graph put together by the US Department of Justice on serious crime in the USA.
Not only the rate of crime is dropping but the rate of successful prosecution is increasing. The US is experiencing much less crime and successfully solving more of those that do occur.
Perhaps it is time to recognise that the media has a vested interest in scaring people; it keeps us watching afterall.
For more detailed info on statistics click here.
