Patterns (22 November 2011) (Read this blog)

It is in the nature of humans to see patterns, even where they do not exist, and assign meaning to those patterns. Average people see obvious patterns and assign popular meaning to those patterns. These meanings might be based on what they see on telly, read on the Internet and are told by their friends.

As a result, sometimes incorrect and even absurd meaning is assigned to patterns. For instance, children with autism are often diagnosed not long after receiving childhood vaccinations. Hence, many people see a pattern and assign a meaning: vaccinations cause autism. This has never been clinically proven, however.

Scientists also look for patterns and assign meaning to them as hypotheses. However, they test these hypotheses before assuming them to be true.

Highly creative people often see patterns that no one else sees. This is because their minds often interpret the world differently than averagely creative people. Highly creative people also often experiment with different possible interpretations of these patterns. These interpretations can go on to become the basis of creative work such as books, paintings or music.

Comedians tend to do the same thing, but look for unexpected and humorous interpretations of patterns. The unexpectedness of these interpretations is what makes them funny.

Insane people often see patterns that no one else sees and assign illogical meaning or interpretations. Clearly, they are not far removed from creative people.

How about you? How do you deal with patterns? The fact is, interpreting patterns is so ingrained, we do not realise we do it -- at least until our interpretations are proven wrong.

Some questions for the Tea Party about abortion (09 November 2011) (Read this blog)

1) If you could tell that a foetus would turn be born and grow up to be a gay young adult, would it then be ok to abort the child?

2) What if you knew the foetus would grow up and eventually commit horrendous capital crimes? Assuming you are in favour of the death penalty, might it make sense to abort early on and save the money of expensive trials?

3) What if a poor woman without health care is raped and becomes pregnant? If she cannot afford pre-natal care, would it be reasonable to offer state funded health care on behalf of the foetus? Or should we expect the lazy pre-human to get a job and pay for its own health care?

Belgium's divorce and Brussels (11 October 2011) (Read this blog)

If you know Belgium at all, you will know that it is a small country divided by a socio-linguistic divide. In the Northern part of the country, you have the relatively wealthy Flemish whose economy is rolling along rather well as far as economies can roll along these days. In the South you have the French speaking Walloon community. Their economy, originally built upon manufacturing and mining, is currently in rather a poor way.

For much of recent history, it was the other way around. Wallonia was wealthy and Flanders poor. As a result, and for many other reasons, the Flemish have a collective chip in their shoulder regarding the Walloons. The feeling is that they are being supported by Flemish tax money and yet, they have the audacity not to speak Dutch in Flanders. Indeed, they seem to have a certain disdain towards the Dutch language.

A growing segment of the Flemish community feel they have had quite enough and are talking of splitting Belgium, along the linguistic divide, into two separate countries. This has gone from wishful thinking to serious consideration. Indeed, the only thing holding up the divide, say many, is Brussels.

Brussels sits in Flanders and historically has been a part of Flanders but its population is largely French speaking. It is the economic centre of the country and is legally bilingual. All street signs, all official documentation and everything else provided by the government must be available in both languages. Hence there would be no easy way to deal with Brussels. Both sides of the country have a reasonable claim to the country’s capital city.

Not long ago, I heard a government official talk of the potential split between Flanders and Wallonia as being a “divorce”. The moment I heard this, the solution became clear to me. You see, in most divorce cases in Belgium, both parents are given joint custody of (and responsibility for) the children, with mother having them one week and father the next. Surely, if Wallonia and Flanders are getting a divorce, Brussels is the child and it is only fair to provide joint custody.

Hence, my solution (as a recently Belgianised person) is that every Sunday at midnight, Brussels would switch from being a French speaking Walloon city to being a Dutch speaking Flemish city. Electric signs across the city would switch over. “Rue de Loi” would instantly become “Wetstraat”. “Grand Place” would become “Grote Markt” and even “Bruxelles” would be spelled “Brussel” – at least until next Sunday at midnight.

Likewise, government services and documentation would change language for the week. Shopkeepers would be encouraged to switch from “Bon jour” to “Goeie Dag” and so on.

On one hand, it is messy. On the other hand, it would be so cool. Moreover, I am sure it would give a boost to tourism as people would flock the city to watch it change over linguistically. Wouldn’t you want to see that? I mean if people will travel to London to watch the changing of the guard, surely they’d come to Brussels to witness the changing of the languages.

Twitter is like a massive, insane cocktail party (27 July 2011) (Read this blog)

Twitter is like a massive, insane cocktail party with deafeningly loud music playing in the background and not dozens, but millions, of guests. Moreover, most of these guests are shouting at each other in order to be heard over the noise.

Rather than conversations, the noise is mostly monologue which from time to time is met with a short reply. It's just too much effort to try and carry on a dialogue when you have to shout in order to ensure your part of the conversation does not get lost.

And like a massive cocktail party, there are a handful of people who are worth listening to, because they are clever, knowledgeable or famous. Crowds of people gather round these individuals, repeating (or retweeting) their cleverness.

Like a cocktail party, Twitter can be fun for a while. You can meet some interesting new people there. You can possibly even make a contact or two. But if you hunger for real, productive conversations, it quickly becomes dull.

A Big Sneeze (10 March 2011) (Read this blog)

"Achoo!" "Lord love a duck that stings like hell!" I exclaimed following the massive sneeze. But it got worse. I looked down and saw that I had sneezed my soul out and that it had shattered into a thousand tiny pieces splattered across the lovely marble floor of the room. This was a disconcerting situation to say the least. Who does one call if one has sneezed one's soul out, I wondered. A doctor? A priest?

Just then, the door burst open as the penguin and the angel bounced in, each with a bottle of Bordeaux in hand (or flipper in the case of Trudy, the penguin).

"Hey Jeffrey, we've got some marvellous 2000 Bordeaux," said Trudy.

"Unfortunately, we had to kill a man to get it," said the angel in her soft French accent.

"Is it a good Bordeaux?" I asked.

"Oh yes," said the angel, "it's a Lynch-Bages, the most wonderfully sophisticated Bordeaux."

"Well," I considered, "Perhaps a 2000 Lynch-Bages is worth taking a man's life."

"My thinking exactly," said the angel.

"And it was painless for the victim," explained the penguin.

"Holy fuck!" the angel suddenly exclaimed, looking down to the floor. "What happened here?"

"I've sneezed my soul out," I said.

"I can see that. It must have hurt," she said.

"For a moment it did. But the worst thing is, I feel very empty now."

"That's not surprising," she said

"I expect a glass of wine would help," said Trudy, walking towards the table where several wine goblets stood.

"It would certainly be a step in the right direction," I said. "But watch out that you don't step on any pieces of my soul. They look sharp."

Trudy poured us each a generous glass of wine as we surveyed the situation. A warm breeze wafted in from the windows and the sounds of waves gently crashing onto the beach below were soothing, though I expected they would be more soothing had I still had an intact soul.

Halfway through the second glass of wine, I spoke. "I believe it would be best to sweep up the bits and pieces of my soul and put them into a bag or something. Then I can just keep it with me until a solution is found."

"A bag is no good!" said the angel in disgust. "I will go to the market and buy you something beautiful for your soul. You must keep your soul in a place of beauty until it can be fixed."

"Thanks awfully," I said. "In the meantime, I'll sweep up the pieces."

The angel walked towards the open window and, as she drew near, leaped through it. In a fraction of an instant, before she had a chance to fall more than a few centimetres, her wings began to flap, slowly and gracefully. She hovered for a moment, looked around and then flew off towards the town centre and market.

"Speaking of beautiful," said Trudy in awe.

"Indeed," said I, looking for a broom.

Angel by the Side of the Road (18 February 2011) (Read this blog)

The ancient Bentley was racing down the deserted highway at a steady 150 kmph, yet still felt as solid as a living room, albeit one exceeding the speed limit. Trudy sat in the passenger seat, working on a Times crossword puzzle from the late 1930s. Something by Bob Dylan was on the CD player and filled the old car. "A funny thing happened to me this morning," I said to Trudy.

"What's that?" she asked.

"Nothing," I said.

"Now that is odd," she replied, never looking up from 14 down.

We continued along the endless highway, listening to the music and barely sharing a word. But it was cool. Neither Trudy nor I are particularly talkative and Trudy is, after all, a penguin.

We raced past stunning rock formations, odd trees, abandoned stone buildings and an Angel. All but the last item were predictable for this road. The angel was an oddity.

"I say, Trudy," I said.

"So it seems," said Trudy. "What precisely do you say?"

"I believe we've just passed an angel," I said.

Trudy craned her neck around and looked out the car. "It could be," she said. "I cannot make her out clearly from here."

I slammed on the brakes, yanked the steering wheel hard to the left and then spun it to the right, executing what I felt to be a lovely u-turn, albeit one that left a considerable amount of rubber on the tarmac. I hit the accelerator and we drove back towards the angelic creature.

"I don't believe that is how one should normally drive a Bentley," remarked Trudy.

"Probably not," I said, "But it was jolly good fun."

"For you, perhaps," said Trudy, patting down her ruffled feathers with a wing.

We approached the angelic creature who became ever more angelic the closer we came. I pulled up beside her and rolled the window down. She looked like an attractive, if skinny, young woman with dishevelled, dirty blond hair, a rumpled, yet clean white dress and two astonishing wings sprouting from her shoulder blades.

"Sir," she said in a soft, seductive French accent, "Your penguin is an imposter."

"And you are no angel," said Trudy, calmly.

"We can settle this later. Where are you going," I asked the angel.

"To hell," said the angel.

"I believe we are heading broadly in that direction as well," I said. "Hop in."

She tossed her bad in the back seat and climbed in. "Nice car," she said, stretching out across the seat.

"I like it," I said, turning the car around and heading once again broadly in the direction of hell.

"But he drives it without respect," said Trudy.

God, who does not exist.

Hotel Room (13 January 2011) (Read this blog)

Ladies and gentlemen, I have lived a life of sin and debauchery. I have seen, tasted and performed evil on multiple continents. I have tasted the sin and it was good. My life was in a downward spiral led by Satan. There seemed no hope. I was destined for hell. And I was enjoying it. Then one morning, hours before dawn, I woke up sweaty and naked in the sheets of a cheap hotel bedroom, next to me was a girl whose name I knew not. Outside was a screaming highway of cars, trucks and more whizzing past even at this hour.

And then. And then, my children, I heard the words of God who spoke to me from the cheap television set in the room. His voice rumbled with the depth of omnipotence and the authority of a supreme being of unimaginable power. The voice of the Father. A voice that could never have come out of a tinny speaker on a cheap hotel television.

I got down on my knees, my children. Yes, I got down on my knees and prayed to the good Lord, for I knew he was about to speak to me, to me, the ultimate sinner.

And His voice rumbled out of the television and rolled into my ears as tears streamed down my cheeks.

And His voice said unto me, "Jeffrey,"

"Yes, my Lord," I cried with all my heart.

"Jeffrey, I have a message for you," said His voice rumbling in my heart and echoing in my soul.

"Yes, my Lord," I cried even louder.

"You must take my message and shout it out to the world,"

"Oh yes, my Lord," I exclaimed.

"Jeffrey," He said again, pausing. I waited. "Jeffrey, my message is this."

"Yes, my Lord," I shouted.

"I do not exist."

"Yes, oh yes, my Lord," I said, tears forming puddles at my knees.

And then it sank in.

"I'm sorry, my Lord," I said. "I believe I've misheard you."

"I do not exist. Never have. Never will," said the voice, still deeper than deep.

"What?" I said, feeling rather foolish I was, after all, naked, on my knees and crying in a cheap hotel room.

"You heard me," said the voice.

"But, if you do not exist, how is it possible..." I began.

"DO YOU DOUBT ME," said the voice with Godlike authority.

"No, no of course not, my... um... no of course not," I said.

"And you must pass this message on to mankind," continued the voice. "And womenkind too."

"Yeah, ok." I said.

"Cool," said the voice, still Godlike, but a bit less omnipotent, if you know what I mean. At the same time, the young woman in the bed began to wake.

"Hello? What's up?" she asked, crawling to the edge of the bed and seeing me on my knees before the television.

"Jolly good question," I said, climbing back into bed. "But God doesn't exist, it seems."

"Of course not," she said. "Now let's go back to sleep."

The Roadside Cafe (11 January 2011) (Read this blog)

I drove the ancient Bentley at speed along a grey road that pierced a dusty landscape. From time to time a splatter of stone ruins interrupted the desolate landscape while the blood red sky above moved North-East at ferocious speed. Something by Bach, possibly Brandenburgish played on the car stereo and filled the old salon. Trudy, the penguin, sat in the passenger seat reading something by Nietzsche.

"This situation is way too surreal," I said to Trudy.

She nodded in agreement while turning a page.

I turned my attention back to the road ahead. The speedometer claimed were were doing 150kph, which was an insane speed for an old road like this. But I pressed on nonetheless. The ancient Bentley was never happy doing anything less than 130 on an open road.

We passed the burnt out wreck of an America SUV and I slowed down briefly. However, there were only skeletons amidst the wreckage. There was nothing we could do, so I pressed down on the accelerator, and with a distinct down-shift the old car gathered up speed once again. All the while, Trudy concentrated on her book.

A half hour or so later, we passed a café. I hit the brakes, turned hard and we screeched into the empty car park.

"Let's get a beer," I said to the penguin.

"Are you out of your head, man?" shouted Trudy. "You know I don't drink."

Trudy always gets aggressive when reading German philosophers and I was having none of it.

"Fine," I said. "You can wait in the car while I get a beer." I shut the door and walked to the café. In a moment, I heard the patter of Trudy's flippers as she raced to catch up with me.

"Of course, I might have a tea," she said.

"I thought you might," I said.

Inside, was a dingy bar with cheap, worn tables and chairs and a bamboo decorated bar. Various bottles labelled in a dozen languages lined the wall behind the bar where an elderly man was drying glasses.

"Has the bird got an ID?" he asked.

"What?" I asked.

"I said, has the bird got an ID? I ain't servin' no under-aged birds in this bar," he said.

"Firstly, the bird is a she. Secondly, she's only having tea," I said.

"Well, I don't know," the man drawled out. I reckoned he just wanted to be difficult to prove a point. "What kind of tea does she want?"

"She wants a green tea," said Trudy.

"I expect I could do you one of those," said the old man, raising an eyebrow.

"And a beer for me," I said. Have you got anything Belgian?

"Nope, just Stella," he said.

"That'll do," I said hiding a smile. There was no point in arguing with him.

Trudy and I took seats by the window, overlooking the road and the dessert beyond it. Overhead, clouds continued to race across the red sky.

Mary Hopkins singing "Those Were the Days" began playing on an old jukebox in the corner.

"Today is clearly going to be one of those days," I said to Trudy.

"It always is with you," she replied.

A police car raced past, siren blaring.

I suppose she was right. I couldn't recall a day that wasn't one of those days.

In the Beginning (10 January 2011) (Read this blog)

I drove the ancient Bentley along a dusty road towards the silhouette of an astronomical observatory against the star-filled sky ahead. A sign asked me to kill the lights and I did so, slowing the car to a crawl while following dim lights in the road. I parked in front of the main building adjacent to the observatory and walked inside. The main room was lined with computer gear and a single, attractive middle aged woman who was delicately moving a computer mouse. Next to her stood a large glass of red wine. I tapped on the door and walked in. Lena smiled at me and stood up. We embraced the warm embrace of friends who could have been, but somehow never managed to be, something more.

"Have a glass of wine," she said.

"Have you got a spare sofa or cot in which I can spend the night?" I asked. "I can't drive the old wagon if I've had a couple."

"Of course, of course," she said. "Or perhaps we can arrange something nicer."

"Then pour away young lady," I said.

She did. We toasted

"Italian?" I asked.

"Yes."

"But not Tuscany, is it?"

"No."

"Naples?"

"No.

"Sicily"

"Yes."

"That's as far as I dare go," I said. "I don't know the Sicilian wines at all.

"Poor thing. It's a Nero d'avola from a small estate."

"Jolly decent of it to make it's way all the way out here," I said.

"And jolly decent of you to join us, Jeffrey."

"My pleasure," I said. "You said you had something to share with someone whom you trusted and whose grip on reality was tenacious at best."

"That I did," she said. "We've been doing some work on measuring the speed of light over time."

"Ah, yes, I read about that." I said. "I gather it has been shown to have decreased slightly in the past few hundred years."

"Yes," she said. "We've been able to measure it much further back and find that it is fluctuating in a curious but possibly predictable way."

"I see," I said, "Although I could see this conversation would go in a direction that would take it out of my sphere of comprehension soon. Lena was a genius and sometimes just needed to bounce ideas off mere mortals like me in order to get a different perspective.

"What is more interesting and of some concern is that Planck's constant appears also to be changing." she said.

"So, it is not so constant after all," I said.

"Indeed not," she replied. "But our fundamental reality requires Planck's constant to be roughly what it is. If it is something else, that reality could change completely."

"How so?" I asked.

"In ways we cannot even begin to imagine. Possibly reality might not exist. Or it might not be recognisable. Perhaps, well, we just don't know. But the thing is, the patterns suggest that it could change rather significantly and abruptly very soon."

"Oh dear," I said, lacking anything more intelligent to insert into the conversation. "What does that imply?"

"I don't know. We don't know. That's why I wanted to chat with you. You've always seemed to be only partway in this reality and partially in another," she said.

"Perhaps, if our reality does suddenly change, our perception of it will also change to the extent we won't notice it changing," I said.

"I hadn't thought of that," she replied while topping up our glasses.

"Or perhaps we did not exist until a second ago, when we flashed into existence as the result of a substantial reality change," I said.

"And we came with memories of our previous existence," she laughed.

"Indeed," I said.

The conversation soon drifted towards other topics and we slowly, but pleasantly finished off her bottle of wine.

We eventually fell asleep in each others' arms, but never breached the friendship. In the morning I kissed her on the forehead and walked out to the aged vehicle. A penguin awaited me, which would have surprised me rather a lot. But then the animal started speaking – which really surprised me.

"Your friend is right, you know," it said. "Reality is changing. You've got to help me prevent it from getting too weird."

"Are you talking to me?" I asked in disbelief.

"Who else would I be talking to? But forgive my manners. My name is Trudy."

"I see," I said not necessarily seeing but desperately trying to do so. "Forgive my confusion. I've never seen a talking penguin."

"Perfectly understandable," said Trudy. "Now, let us get going. We've a lot of driving to do."

"We do?" I asked.

"We do. And I've not got a driving licence," said Trudy.

Jeffrey

Prelude: a New Beginning (10 January 2011) (Read this blog)

The Conversations with God (But Not as You Know Her) blog sort of ran into a brick wall. I started it in part to understand some painful emotions I was feeling at the time and in part to start a cult religion. But as I got past my emotional challenges, I found that the conversations also stopped. I expect She reckoned I was capable of coping without Her. Whether or not that is the case remains to be seen. In the meantime, I have saved the conversations to a manuscript and may one day turn them into a book ' a second go at starting a cult religion, if you will. Then again, I may go no further with them.

In the meantime, I have decided to do what a blog what one is expected to do with it: keep a log of my very ordinary life.