Research shows that ....

Chatting to young Ruben about how the Japanese don't go in for casual social touching, unlike the Italians, but (in my experience of working with them) do tend to come up behind co-workers and give unbidden shoulder and neck massage.

Conversation moved on to how all humans need physical contact, and I remembered various bits of TV I've seen on the importance of touch. The first one I recall was in black and white, so it goes back a way. Over the years I've seen various bits and pieces that I recall confirming this, so I believe as a matter of course that humans (and primates) need physical contact to flourish.

However my recollection of the research is vague to say the least. I have no idea how rigorous it was, where it was carried out, what the specific findings were and what more has happened on it. The only thing I can say is that the research found contact is necessary for neural and social development.

Now, following the thinking of Alan Steven's VAK blog supposing I decided to firm up my knowledge of the subject. Thanks to the Internet I could spend a few hours researching the subject, hoping that relevant research has been done and published and is accessible. To do the job properly I would have to look hard at all the papers and not just the abstract and discussion (tip from the Prof at UCLA). I would have to make up my mind whether they designed and conducted the research properly and whether they reported it accurately. Then I would have to find out if any research has been done that comes up with different results, and duly evaluate that.

I could go on to read more widely on the subject, carefully selecting reputable and reliable sources rather than "write-a-quick-book" repackagers of others' materials.

Having come to some well-founded conclusion about "physical contact is good", I would then need to write it up with key names and findings - otherwise I would be back to my original vague belief in a few months.

I would then be in good shape to have a crack at other beliefs that I have picked up as "scientifically proven" facts along the way, e.g.
- abilities in maths and music are often correlated,
- bullets fired into the air in celebration come back to earth at the same speed they went up
- more people in the world are bilingual than monolingual
- tannin (e.g. tea) prevents the full absorption of fats in the diet
- the brain continues to be "plastic" throughout adulthood
- children grow during their sleep, so plenty of sleep => better growth
- if what we see contradicts what we here, vision wins

And that's just for starters.

I realise that an awful lot of what I think I know is actually vague "bottom line" impressions leading to a conclusion and an opinion on a subject.

Epistemology, anyone?

What's the point of music?

Last week I was talking with my friend Rob, whose son is doing a music course in Guildford.  It's tertiary education and essentially equips Jack to make a living as a musician, doing sessions, weddings and anything else that pays.

However, most people who study music will never make a living at it, or even earn any money at it.

That doesn't matter so much when it's a bit of fun.  It doesn't take a huge sacrifice to learn some chords to knock out some tunes, or indeed to bang a drum in time in a samba band.

On the other hand, it takes thousands of hours to achieve even basic competence playing composed music on any instrument.  Over the year I see various student performances around the area, where youngsters bravely put themselves to the test in public on whichever instrument they're learning - violin, cello, piano, trumpet, clarinet and guitar have featured this year.

Perhaps the point of youngsters learning music is to assist the development of various skills and competences that are apparently stimulated by the process.  And if they go on to perform in public in any capacity, then they are arguably adding to the common good - although the public is often restricted to their parents turning up dutifully to provide an audience.

Maybe some of the same applies to adults learning music. Last I heard, 50-something Professor Tom Kirkwood of Newcastle was learning to play the piano: " One is never too old to take up a new challenge or acquire a new skill. My own latest challenge has been to start learning to play the piano, something that brings me enormous pleasure."

From close up, learning an instrument and listening to music is obviously an end in itself; otherwise, why would people do it?

Nevertheless, standing back from it and looking at the bigger picture of the world's needs, isn't it just self-indulgent frivolity?  Wouldn't all those hours spent practising for personal pleasure be better and less selfishly devoted to useful public service of some sort?

Shallow people or just shallow habits?

According to my sources, the superstar Greek philosopher Socrates said: "The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being". What a recipe for navel gazing, I hear you say. Spare us, please! The world needs fewer self-appointed thinkers and more people who just get on with things and make them happen, right?

Lighten up, Harris!!

The world certainly seems to be full of people who would rather run a marathon dressed as Rupert Murdoch or spend the evening arguing about the relative merits of iPhone OS vs. Android or who should win the next talent show ... anything rather than engage in thought and conversation that go beyond the surface.

Being pro-human in most things, I tend to think that most people have a capacity for reflecting on their experience, whether it's the experience of watching Avatar or listening to Beyonce or looking a some Banksy graffiti. The fact that so many people don't do it is because they've never tried or they feel uncomfortable doing so. They have the habit of being shallow.

So I'm happy to lighten up by all means, but shallow up? Never!

Recession and worrying reality- how are YOU building resilience?

Greece, retail, deficits, public sector etc.

Looking round, there's a lot to worry about. Shit hitting the fan. People losing their livelihood. Potential for serious civil unrest.

During a previous high-anxiety period (Nov 2008-March 2009) that really got to me, my wife wisely warned me: "Stop worrying about the world - you have things to be getting on with". That helped me to stop seeing everything happening around me in terms of imminent threat. Even so, now is looking dicey.

It may be that the world economic system is about to undergo massive convulsions, which may serve us right for being greedy and heedless etc.

It may be that some massive catastrophe will come along and do for us all. Next year even.

It may be that there is some cosmic force at work, about to visit hard lessons on us.

It may be that we just got lucky for a bit and rode our luck too hard.

Right now, I'm aware that I (and maybe others too) am more inclined than usual to feel a surge of anxiety with every new headline - to catastrophise wildly. This may be an appropriate response in terms of the magnitude of the threats - always bearing in mind that billions of people are now and will always be far worse off than me.

Whatever the objective reality is now, some people will interpret it in a way that tends to weaken or even incapacitate them. Others will interpret it in a way that enables them to get on with their lives more or less effectively.

I'm interested in hearing how you are "framing" the situation and - equally important - some concrete examples of what that means in terms of your behaviour.

Twitter and super-injunctions - technology undermining the status quo

This blog entry was prompted by the reflections of Andrew Curry in his blog "thenextwave" in a piece entitled "Twittering about the law".  Andrew's thoughtful piece does not entirely convince me of its stated premise: "The story of Twitter and the super-injunctions isn’t about technology. It’s about power, fairness, and history."

It seems to me that the super-injunctions issue is part of a larger range of issues that are very much about technology and its effects on every aspect of life, including power and fairness.

One major effect is on jurisdiction - the sphere of authority of a legal system and the limits within which its power may be exercised, or within which a government or a court has authority.

In the instance of super-injunctions, once foreign-based technology is involved, this quirky piece of British legal practice is confronted with the legal systems of other countries.  Any attempt by British courts to extend their rulings abroad will run up against the principles and practices of foreign jurisdictions such as the First Amendment in the United States.

This is a relatively trivial instance of jurisdiction vs. technology.  More serious examples abound wherever governments (e.g. China, countries involved in the "Arab Spring") invoke or indeed enact legislation that intends to limit their citizens' access to information and their ability to exchange information.  Assertions that popular uprisings have been driven by social media - "Twitter revolutions" - are all too often hyped up, but they are not without foundation.  Whether or not technology has played a decisive role, it has most certainly played a significant role because, in many cases, the technology has been located outside the jurisdiction of the country concerned.  This has limited the ability of the rulers to control information. It has enabled citizens to access channels of information and communication not controlled or approved by their rulers.

This leads on to the effect that technology has on the spread of ideas and its effect on norms, which in turn affect how citizens perceive the legitimacy of the laws and norms governing them.  This is fundamental to the notion of "social contract" that Andrew highlights in his piece.

A recent example is the arrest of IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn in New York on May 14th.  In reporting the events, the French media were caught between their customary discretion in reporting the private lives of politicians, and the intense interest of some French citizens visible on social media.  In the days following the arrest, the #DSK hashtag on Twitter created a stream of several tweets per second, most of them in French and many linking to reports in foreign media.  In particular many French tweeters commented on the photos of DSK in handcuffs doing "the perp walk" - an indignity totally foreign to powerful people in France.

Whether or not all this has prompted real soul-searching and "A Change in French Sexual Views" remains to be seen. What is beyond doubt is that technology is giving citizens the tools to exchange opinions on a large scale, in a compressed time frame, and to channel them into the online equivalent of a crowd (using hashtags, for example).  The online crowd, like a mob, is not immune to disinformation and stampeding, but it does have rapid access to higher quality information than mobs had in pre-technological times.  When enough people use online tools to spread forbidden information (e.g. super-injunctions) or to spread information and opinions normally kept outside public discourse by those who control it (e.g. the sexism of French institutions), then technology is proving to be a significant factor in de facto challenges to the legitimacy of laws and norms.

This leads to another important issue, which is that technology raises thorny moral questions in every sphere it touches.  Challenging the legitimacy of laws and norms seems to be on the side of the common good in some cases such as super-injunctions and institutional sexism.  However, there are plenty of instances where technology enables deliberate or de facto challenges to legitimacy where the common good is arguably not fostered.  

Access to extreme pornography, paedophilia groups. and racist or terrorist "how-to" manuals are obvious cases.  Less extreme but  thornier cases are access to suicide groups and to sites that enable users to break Intellectual Property laws by hacking software and swapping files.  

And so to power, fairness and history.  Whether it's Twitter and super-injunctions, social media and popular uprisings, or simply people getting hold of stuff they want, technology most certainly shifts the balance of power away from those who hold it by virtue of money or institution, and towards the citizens.  In this sense, technology is a factor promoting greater "fairness".  However, it's a morally-neutral fairness.  It means that ordinary citizens have greater power than they ever did to pursue their own ends.  As with the rich and powerful, the ends of ordinary citizens may be moral or immoral, good or bad, fair or unfair.

Oh no, it's Doomsday again!

There's a group in the United States led by Harold Camping who believes that the world will come to an end this weekend, on May 21st and the faithful will be swept up to heaven in rapture >>>>>

As the group says on its website: JUDGMENT DAY is feared by the world and is the day that God will destroy the world because of the sins of mankind. The world is correct in believing that Judgment Day will come. The Bible gives us the correct and accurate information about that Day. 


The Bible is the Holy Book written by Holy God who is the Creator of this beautiful world. The Holy Bible is without question a very ancient book, having been completed about 1,900 years ago. In its original languages (mostly Hebrew and Greek) it has never been changed, and each and every word in the original languages is from the mouth of God

Now I don't believe a word of it.  The same guy predicted the same thing in 1994.  It's all too easy to make fun of this sort of person.  Nevertheless, millions of people to believe it.  In fact, around two and a half years ago at a time when I was feeling particularly anxious, I came pretty close to taking seriously similar "end of days" talk by a sincere and kindly Bible literalist.

So we may chuckle as the day passes and nothing happens.  But supposing a major seismic event occurs, such as the Yellowstone supervolcano starts erupting this weekend. They've happened in the past and geologists say it's about due again, give or take a few thousand years. Would even resolute sceptics wonder whether there was maybe something in the doomsday talk?

The time in which we humans have evolved has been an unusually stable period in the turbulent geological history of the Earth.  There's plenty of evidence that a whole range of events could happen at any time and snuff out most if not all of human life.  It's pretty terrifying stuff, way beyond the imagination let alone the comprehension of ancient prophets.

Given each individual's human tendency to put oneself at the middle of everything and the tendency of human groups to put themselves at the centre of everything, I guess it's par for the course to interpret massive geological and cosmic events as divine punishment for the sins of human beings.  And it's certainly par for the course to regard the current era as more sinful than any other.

Will humanity ever get over this childish perspective?  Assuming of course that we aren't wiped out next weekend ;-)

KISS - Keep It Samba Stupid

Between 30 and 40 people, with 7-8 different types of percussion, from big sordo drums to little agogo bells.

Six different rhythm patterns (batucada, maracatu etc.) - each type of percussion plays its own different part in the the pattern.  And each pattern has several "breaks".

For a beginner it's baffling and overwhelming - earplugs are essential. It all sounds incredibly complicated, so it's vital to reduce things to the simplest possible elements - the "thinking brain" can't handle too many conscious instructions at once.  KISS!

Get the alternation of hands in the right order - and ignore the left handers!
Count the beats and make sure to get One
Watch the leader.

Staying focused on critical variables also helps cut out distracting thoughts and makes the whole thing work better and feel more satisfying.

An a-theist comes out of the closet

I went to a church school where we had a school service in the attached church every Tuesday morning.  I learned a lot of words that I later found out were Latin ("credo in unum Deum" etc.) and Greek ("Kyrie eleison" etc.).  Later on I sang in the church choir.

Visiting Bali in the 1980s and 1990s, I felt deeply touched by the religious devotion of the people and the way their religious practice was so naturally part of everyday life.

More recently, I attended weekly raja yoga sessions, where the teacher was steeped in the Sanskrit texts and gave lucid, persuasive accounts of The Divine.

And much more recently, I have had serious discussions with Bible literalists, and seriously wondered about their view that we are approaching "the end of days" as predicted in the scriptures.  One of my best friends, an outstandingly intelligent and erudite Irishman, converted to the Russian Orthodox Church a while back, and we have conversations on the subject.

The evidence suggests that I'm open to, and searching for some kind of spiritual home.   I certainly value experiences that transcend the mundane.

However I am now coming to realise that nothing I have seen, read or experienced convinces me that religion - any religion - gives a definitive, factual basis for understanding the natural world that we inhabit, or how we come to inhabit it.  The great religious texts may be works of literature, moral philosophy, history or psychology but their stature, for the people who follow them, depends on believing that they are the word of God. 

I've suspended my disbelief on this point for most of my life.  I've "fudged" the issue, but no longer.  I cannot say in truth that I know with 100% certainty that there is no divine force at work.  But I'm pretty close to 100% convinced that the various versions of god out there, in all religions, are figments of the human imagination, and the great religious texts are works of more or less inspired fiction.  This throws a very sobering light on all the things that human beings have done to each other "in the name of god".

Credit to some of the best radio journalism around

If you care to understand the ways of money better then I heartily recommend the Planet Money podcast from National Public Radio in the US.

Twice a week they approach money issues with a fresh, creative, professional approach that is both entertaining and informative.  It's the sort of programme that could inspire people to become journalists.  For example, others have talked about Toxic Assets.  They actually went and bought one with their own money, and went to the trouble of tracking down some bad loans and meeting the people behind them.

They are a credit to the profession of journalism and my admiration for them is very high indeed. 

Revolution in the air - even the Bank of England and the FT

After 41 years some of the people in Libya have decided they've had enough of Colonel Gaddafi.  After more or less putting up with his antics all these years, many in "the international community" have come to the same conclusion.  It had to happen, sooner or later.  Nobody really liked him except the people he bankrolled.

More surprising are the recent musings of Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, speaking to the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee on March 1st 2011.  As the Daily Telegraph wrote, "He laid the blame for the financial crisis, the bailout and subsequent austerity cuts directly on banks."  Quoting him, the paper wrote "Now is the period when the cost is being paid. I'm surprised the real anger hasn't been greater than it has,"  

I could find any reference to this in the Financial Times.  But I was surprised to see a video discussion on the FT website between Lex column stalwarts John Authers and Edward Hadas in which Hadas said current levels of bankers' pay were too high.  " Most investment banks aim to earn a 15% return on equity, well above the last quarter’s 10-11%. Quite bearable pay cuts for bankers would get them there."

Even Morgan Stanley's CEO John Mack has said said investment bankers are overpaid.

So it's not just the plebs and rabble rousers and lefties who are worked up about pay in the financial sector.  However, the system as a whole is unlikely to change of its own accord, any more than the "international community" was going to say "enough's enough, Colonel Gaddafi.  Time for a change."  There were too many vested interests in keeping things stable and keeping the oil and the revenues flowing. 

Now it has changed in Libya.  What will it take for the financial sector to have its own Gaddafi moment?

Gross TV - I'm jumping off the juvenile bandwagon

The other evening, having watched two more episodes of the dark and gripping Danish crime thriller "The Killing" on BBC4 (highly recommended), we caught some of a Charlier Borker show.  And before we knew what was happening there was a clip from a "comedy" series in which the bloke came in from giving himself some manual stimulation and announced he was going to make a nice post-w**k sandwich.  Cue gross jokes.  hahaha.

I've had to reconcile myself to the fact that some of my favourite comedians (e.g. Eddie Izzard) are addicted to effing left right and centre and yes of course comedy always pushes boundaries (Lenny Bruce etc.).  So I guess that sooner or later, through a process of fractional distillation, different people reach the limits of their tolerance and cut off. 

There are now several programmes on TV I just find obnoxious and won't watch.  Does it mean I'm an old fogey? Possibly.  Should I try harder to bear them and even enjoy them, to avoid becoming a superannuated "Outraged of Bradford-on-Avon"?  Pass. If I'm going to make an effort to do something I don't like, it will be for something more rewarding than developing a tolerance for low-grade juvenilia.

Please explain Business Speakers to a Martian

They come, they talk, they hand out books/CDs/notes, they get paid, they go.

I guess many have day jobs - CEO, media consultants etc and it's good PR to stand in front of people and give a good talk.

I don't really see the point from the audience point of view - except for entertainment, or maybe hoping for a bit of "touching the hem" effect, hoping that some of the magic will rub off.

But maybe I'm a Martian. I have seen quite a few business speakers in action, I've done a bit of business speaking myself.

What do you get out of going to see a business speaker, apart from the networking opporunity?
What specific changes in your life/business do you attribute to seeing a particular business speaker?

Facebook, the Ring That Binds Them All

In the past couple of weeks I've signed up to two service that I really like. One is LastPass, which generates and manages passwords. it's a paying service that took over the almost defunct Foxmarks/Xmarks. I'm happy to pay them and I hope to see them do well. I'll stick with them as long as the service works, and as long as they don't start trying to manage other parts of my digital activities.

The other service is DropBox. I had used it as an FTP share service before, but then the other day I saw Don MacAskill raving about it on Twitter. So I responded asking what's so great about it and he said try it and you'll see. So I did, was raving within half an hour so my office mate checked it out and got it too. It's a free service up to 2GB and then $9.99 for up to 50GB. I'm happy to entrust lots of fairly confidential files to them and pay for the service, again as long as they don't start trying to manage other parts of my digital activities.

I knew that if Don MacAskill was raving about it, it would be good. Don is co-founder and co-owner of SmugMug, a paying photo share site that's been profitable since it started over 10 years ago. I've seen how the site operates, I've seen Don interviewed by Scoble, I've interacted with him on Twitter and all in all he's the digital entrepreneur I admire and trust most in the whole world. Unlike Flickr he hasn't sold out to the creep Yahoo! that's also trying to play the own-its-subscribers game.

I don't know Mark Zuckerberg and I never will, but what I see of him rings alarm bells. The thing he has created risks being like The Ring in the Tolkein books - so powerful that it attracts the corrupt and corrupts those who are attracted to it at a corporate/investor level.

One of the big risks of our modern world is putting all our eggs into one basket - one economic model, one global financial system, one strain of corn, one family of antibiotics.

Long live diversity. Long live digital entrepreneurs with passion and integrity who are dedicated to creating an outstanding service and have no ambition to take over the world.

Soundbite Traps #1 - Less is NOT more

If you had a dollar or a euro or a pound or maybe a yuan for every time you've read or heard "less is more" you could probably go out and buy an iPad, or maybe donate some money to a good cause, right?

There are a few instances where less of one thing equates to more of another.  For example, if you're overweight then less weight is likely to equate to more years of life.  For people with cashflow problems, less cash probably equates to more worries.

HOWEVER, in the way that this phrase is normally used, Less is NOT more.  Less might be better, but it's not MORE.  "Less is better" has a nice asonance as well.

"Less is more"sounds smart but it's actually a "1984" lie.