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.  

Podcasts - the crowning glory of the Internet

About 25 years ago the grumpy professor Neil Postman wrote an influential book called "Amusing Ourselves to Death", Part of his contention was that people now have lost the capacity to listen, absorb and engage with large serious chunks of information presented verbally. Conditioned by the magic lantern of movies and TV, people's attention spans are shorter and they want everything presented as snappy, fast-cut entertainment.

With the Internet now there is a constant flood of "content" pouring through the pipework - amusement as "information". Smart people are thinking up smart strategies to manage the flows so that they can keep on top of all the "information" - so that they can drink at the fire hydrant without drowning in all the "information" - latest updates about which latest gadget has totally transformed everything again this week, which hot new opinion is a must-read, which video has scored X million hits on YouTube, what's the latest must-think thought.

All that information pulsing through the web has certainly helped me earn my living over the past 15 years but it's also kept me strapped to a keyboard and fixated on a screen for far too much of my life. However the Internet that enslaves also provides liberation. What I love most about the Internet is what I get through it when I'm away from the keyboard and the screens: podcasts.

In a world gone crazy with scanning "content" for key words and images and gobbets of information, rushing breathless past what is now in a frenzy for what's next presented in bite-sized chunks, pandering to our neurotic mania for MORE, FASTER, NOW, good podcasts give us the opportunity to take things at the speed of human speech; they invite us to engage critically with unfolding ideas and arguments, rather than speed-shopping for them; they challenge us to raise our game and become more intelligent rather than merely faster; with no need to provide eye candy, they allow us the pleasure of tuning in to voices - the subtle nuances of pitch, timbre, rhythm and pace.

I've been raving about podcasts for several years now but today's paean was prompted by discovering Chicago Public Radio's wonderful The American Life. If you need your "information" short and snappy, don't bother. If you need jingles and puns and other little tricks to hold your attention, it's not for you. Every week TAL takes around an hour to explore a subject in rich depth, with real-life stories professionally researched and presented by intelligent adults: Unconditional Love, Toxic Assets, Cry Babies and hundreds of others that I look forward to hearing.  It's a gold mine.  It makes me proud to be an intelligent adult.  It makes me appreciate living in 2010, where I can hear a well-crafted piece of radio from another country and several years ago while I do the dishes.

Do you do awesome?

Listening to my 11-year-old and his friend talking about various things - mostly Warhammer - this weekend, I heard plenty of "awesome" and "immense". They also use the High Rising Terminal inflection a lot - making statements sound like a question. My daughter (15) also uses awesome and HRT a lot, but my son (14) doesn't.

As a keen student and observer of language, I noticed a couple of years ago that my wife (mid-40s) uses the High Rising Terminal too. She said she picked it up from her fellow students, who were mostly in their mid-20s. What she didn't pick up was "awesome". In fact she never says it. In fact I don't know any adults who do, apart from a woman in my Twitter feed who hoped we all had AWESOME weekends.

These are just a few examples. My current hypothesis is that mature adults (30+) who want to sound in tune with the times can feel okay using the High Rising Terminal but don't feel so comfortable using "awesome".

Newsletter dinosaurs - pushing in the age of pull

In an era where news is pouring out of every media orifice, where newspapers are struggling, where news is cheap as chips, do you need another newsletter?  Really?

Newsletters as advertising by another name - a variant on advertorials. The sender may have the highest intention to provide high-quality information, but the format and form of delivery is purely promotional. Fair enough, except that it's push in a world that's increasingly moving to pull. It's broadcasting.

From the user/receiver perspective, I see two main modes with regard to information. One is specific need and the other is general curiosity.

If I need information on a particular subject, I'll seek it out when I need it and look for the best sources  available. And sorry folks, whatever area of expertise the newsletter covers, there are none that I need regularly enough to warrant even skimming a newsletter.

For general serendipitous curiosity, I go to high-quality sources that consistently hit the mark - podcasts from the BBC and a few others, a few newspapers online or on apps, social media sites and Twitter.

I do receive "newsletters" - maybe a dozen or more - but 99% of the time I bin them immediately on receipt.