Why No Smoking in Public is Good.

No-one should be allowed to smoke in public, anywhere in the world. Smoking should be a private pursuit only allowed in places where no-one else but the smoker - or other smokers - can be affected.

Now, these might seem harsh statements. They might even seem like an interference in the basic rights of people to pursue the lives they choose. Yet, they are not. You see by smoking in public, smokers are deletriously affecting the lives of others and that should not and cannot be allowed.

Associated Press has recently carried a story about a city in Colorado, called Pueblo, which instituted a workplace smoking ban. Two neighbouring towns did not institute such a ban. Three years later, Pueblo's hospitals have noted a whopping 41% drop in heart attacks. Neither of the two neighbouring towns (in which workplace smoking is still permitted), noted such a change. It seems, from this evidence, that smoking is far more dangerous to bystanders than had previously been supposed. That secondhand smoke that you find so irritating, could, in fact, be killing you.

Far from newly healthy Pueblo, lies Singapore. Here, a new kind of smoking restriction is being brought to pass. Smoking will no longer be allowed within five metres of public buildings. This, in my view, is a welcome change. Too often have I had to endure the wafted noxious fumes from smokers clustered outside buildings. Now, that we know of the Pueblo study, this issue is about far more than the unpleasant smell - it is about life itself. It is a good step forward to reduce the health risks to Singaporeans of secondhand smoke. It is probable that the national rate of heart attacks will fall, as a consequence, as it has in Pueblo - and that can only be a good thing.

I realize that smokers will grumble. Smokers will feel that their "rights" are being eroded. However, no-one has the right to harm others - and that is what smoking does. If a smoker chooses to smoke, knowing that they are foreshortening their own life, that is fine. That smoker, though, does not have the right to inflict a shortened life on others. Thus, it is most reasonable that smoking should, step by step, become something only possible where there are no innocent bystanders.

This is one piece of legislation with which I agree. It is actually legislation that will save lives. Well done.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

On the non-appearance of the future.

Where did the 21st Century go? By this, I mean, where is the 21st Century futurists and even everyday scientists and technologists, promised the world, in my childhood? None of it ever happened.

I look around, for signs of the technological prophesies I not infrequently read as I was growing up...and it just isn't here. We don't live in a world of flying cars (the ultimate cliche of a future that will probably never happen, since they may always be just too dangerous); we don't live in a world of permanent space colonies, or holidays on the moon; we don't live in a world of vast life spans of virtually immortal humans - in fact, all the most interesting predictions of the future have just never happened. Instead, we have got the mobile phone: just great.

Robert Anton Wilson was a writer (The Illuminatus Trilogy is his most famous, though I confess to not having read it), whom I once read of in an interview. He was convinced, in the early 1970s that he would live for hundreds of years (I believe he estimated 400 years, as "average" in what was to come), given the "pace of technological development", then current. Well, guess what? Robert Anton Wilson died in 2007 at around 75 years old. Optimism is not enough to make the future happen: it needs a lot of concerted work, too, work that just isn't being done.

Robert Anton Wilson was not alone in his belief. A lot of very smart people also had similarly optimistic views about the future. They looked at the pace of change in their own lives and then made what they thought were fair estimates of future progress, based on that. Even Nasa thought, in the seventies, that they would have permanent space colonies, by now. Perhaps they should have read the kind of disclaimer that investment funds generally have: "Past performance is no guide to future returns." Indeed, the past is no guide to the future - for between one and the other, anything can happen - or nothing at all.

Looking at my own life, I note rapid technological change in the first twenty years - and then not a lot of change in the second twenty. It is as if, all over the world, scientists stopped doing science and technologists stopped doing technology, once I came of age. Indeed, there is some truth in that. They have stopped doing science and technology in the same way. There is less basic science now and more short term research aimed at immediate products. There is less risky, open-ended research and more conservative research that isn't really research (it is called development, really). So, in a way, Man seems to be pulling away from the future, where once we were rushing towards it. My views on what is happening in technology are based on personal observation - and on discussions with people working in large technological concerns: a basic summary of their discussions (which I shall detail more at another time) is that not a lot is happening. The "future" may not happen at all, given what I have learnt - or, if it does, it will be a lot later than it would have needed to have been.

There are still futurists at work, making great promises about the future that all of us, who are middle-aged (I hate that term) or younger, shall live to see. One of them is Ray Kurzweil. He is predicting superhuman machine intelligences in twenty years time, believing that a computer will pass the Turing test (be indistinguishable in thought from a human) in 2029. He also believes that by 2050 radical life extension will be possible, making humans effectively immortal. His other ideas including augmenting humans with machine intelligence to make us into "superhuman cybernetic organisms".

I am not sure I like the future Kurzweil portrays. It sounds like a future that would distort what it means to be human, should it ever occur. After all, if your thinking is being done by a machine implant, are you really human anymore? What have you become?

Looking at Ray Kurzweil's predictions reminds me very much of Robert Anton Wilson's predictions of three decades before. They are very similar in time frame, too. Both are looking ahead two or three decades and seeing an utterly changed world that will bring them everything they have ever dreamed of. Yet, the future has a stubborn habit of not happening according to plan. Robert Anton Wilson is dead - so, too, might Kurzweil be (he is 60) before his dreams come true.

Robert Anton Wilson spoke of space migration (it hasn't happened); intelligence increase (it hasn't happened) and life extension (it hasn't happened). In a sense, Wilson's vision is a better one for Humanity - for Wilson's vision did not include the diminishment of Man, implicit in Kurzweil's view that machines will surpass us.

I, personally, hope that Kurzweil is wrong about machines and right about life extension. I fear, however, that it might be the other way around (the worst possible outcome).

Whatever the future may hold, it is unlikely to happen as readily as Kurzweil believes. There is much work to be done to make his dreams come true - and the drive forward, in creative science, is not what it once was.

I think the best thing to do, in the face of futurists who paint amazing visions of the future, and the reality that such predictions have proven wrong in the past, (though they might not in the future!) is simply to look at the world as it is and not to expect more from it, than that. Yes, things will change. Yes, new things will come to pass. But, you know what...I think it is all going to take a lot longer than many people imagine. So, we might live to see Kurzweil's future. However, it is more likely that we will live to see Kurzweil's passing.

We are almost a decade into the 21st Century and it is nothing like what was promised. I wonder whether the "future" will ever come? When it does, will it at all resemble the prophesies of the futurists of today?

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

Happy New Year

With a suddenness that is rather surprising, in a way, a year has passed, once again. Someone, somewhere, is surely shortening them!

Happy New Year, everyone, everywhere, however you chose to celebrate it.

This year is particularly notable for one reason: it is the last year, to the first decade of the only new Millenium any of us are likely to see. Not only did the past year zip by, but, from my point of view, the whole decade has almost zipped by, too. However, I can't say a lot hasn't happened since it began (how about three sons...?)

I hope we all have a better year ahead, than the one pundits say we all face.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

On being matter of fact.

People are funny - if you like sick jokes.

I shall explain. Occasionally, I get very indignant comments (which I tend not to post), from people who accuse me of being "arrogant" and "proud". When I read their tortured words, I find myself quietly puzzled. It seems strange to me that someone who has never met me, never heard my voice, never listened to my words, never seen my expressions, never known my handshake, never had a chance to converse or discuss ideas with me, can come to a conclusion about my nature.

Usually, they base their assumptions on the fact that my posts speak of my children. They read in my simple descriptions of their doings and beings "arrogance" and "pride" - yet, I have neither. I am actually a very straightforward person of no pretensions whatsoever. Anyone who knows me, well enough, would agree. Strangely, however, these indignant posters find the means to make a character judgement of me, without actually ever having met me, or having any first-hand information to go on, at all.

I find it interesting that people who have no real information can come to clearly what are firmly held conclusions, on someone else's personality. I think what is happening here, to a great extent, is that they proceed by assumption. They assume that a person whose child happens to be gifted in some way will be "proud" or "arrogant" about it - and then project this assumption onto the writer who describes such a child. Perhaps, indeed, what they are projecting is themselves: if they were in the same situation THEY would be "proud" and "arrogant".

Parents of gifted children sometimes encounter such reactions in person, face to face, when they unwittingly annoy another parent by simply telling a story, as an act of sharing, about their child. It usually never occurs to the parent of a gifted child that the other parent might be annoyed by such a story - because the child described is doing something their child cannot. Basically, a lot of this assumption of "pride" and "arrogance" comes down to pure jealousy. The jealous person projects negative qualities onto the gifted parent, so as to justify their own negative feelings towards that person. They don't see that the origin of the negativity lies in themselves. Were their jealousy to go away, so would their belief in the other's "pride" and "arrogance".

In this, rather dumbed down world we live, all a gifted person or gifted parent has to do to cause offence to others, is to think, in public. Nothing is more sure to cause offence than an intelligent utterance. To think, is to be damned. You see, many people...usually not very bright people, find it very hard to actually acknowledge that a bright person is not being "arrogant" or "prideful" when they speak with evidence of a working mind. They are simply being authentically themselves.

For a bright person, it would be inauthentic not to speak, as if thought were in action. It would be a lie not to be clear and lucid in verbal expression. It would be untrue to pretend not to know or understand. Yet, many people expect an absence of thought in the conversations they hear; expect a cumbersome lack of clarity or just an ever present simplicity, in expression; expect others not to know or understand. All one has to do to offend such a person is to think, to know or to understand.

In many societies, being bright, is socially unacceptable. In Singapore, the best way to be is to be just like everyone else (see prior post). However, in the best societies (which may be hypothetical) the best way is just to accept others as they are and value them for themselves. Few, though, seem to practice this ethos.

I write in a matter of fact way about everything: the things I understand, the things I appreciate, the doings of my children, memorable moments in their growth. There is never a moment when I feel "prideful" or "arrogant". In fact, I have never really understood the need for such emotions. We are all human beings. We are all living the one life that we shall ever have. I think we should be more accepting of each other.

I write about giftedness (and many other things). Giftedness, as an issue, does not get the attention its innate importance deserves. I think, therefore, that it is important to write of it and perhaps do something to increase awareness of the issues and problems involved. All other areas of life have their advocates, spokespeople, writers and communicators. I don't see why I shouldn't be one for giftedness - for such people are needed. Every community needs a voice. I voice the concerns of a particular segment of the population that is often afraid to speak out too much, lest it attract the negative attention, sometimes very aggressive, negative attention that is customarily hurled at the gifted and their parents.

No. In my experience, gifted children and their parents are not "proud" or "arrogant" - they are just simply trying to make the best of what they are, in the hope of offering something to a, perhaps, undeserving world. (For a deserving world, wouldn't accuse them of "arrogance" or "pride" in the first place.)

By the way, the latest person to accuse me of "pride" and "arrogance" was a Singaporean (IP address). It is a pity that people such as him/her cannot accept others as they are, without assuming them to be what they are not. Such sentiments don't make one feel entirely welcome, here...but you know, it is a big world out there. There are many places that are more accepting of people who have something to offer.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

The Mass Psychosis of Modern Life.

Singapore is a mad place...according to a leading academic. However, it is not just Singapore, for he would consider many places in the world, utterly bonkers.

In 1985, Dr. Burkhardt wrote a paper (the original of which I have yet to find), in which he observed that modern life is possessed of a "mass psychosis" that requires "uniformity and sameness from everyone". He said that this went against the basic human right (as he termed it) of allowing all people to be "unique individuals".

Basically, Dr. Burkhardt is convinced that modern societies are completely mad - particularly those that go in for uniformity.

Now, I happen to be living in a society that goes in for uniformity and sameness in a big way. I can't say that I find myself disagreeing with Dr. Burkhardt's assessment. In fact, his words rang true the moment I read them. It IS mad to insist on uniformity and sameness from everyone. It is completely insane to build a society on conformity. People are unique, by nature...so they should be allowed to be unique in society. Any society that does not allow individuals to blossom and be individuals is, according to Dr. Burkhardt, utterly insane.

It is certain that Dr. Burkhardt would identify Singapore as one of his "mass psychotic" societies, were he to consider it. What, however, can we do about it, as individuals? Unfortunately, I fear that nothing can be done by any particular individual - given the strength of the insistence on sameness around here - apart from what a lot of people do, in fact, do: they emigrate to places more given to allowing individuals to be individual.

It would be interesting to learn what Singapore's leaders would think of learning that, by the standards of a respected academic, their society is mad. Would they take efforts to change the emphasis on uniformity if they knew? Or would they reject the thesis (as one, of course, being uniform in their response and nature), thinking that uniformity and sameness are the ideal by which their society should live by?

I would welcome comments, from around the world, about the extent to which your own society allows you to be an individual, allows you to be whatever and however you want to be. Or, conversely, perhaps you might like to comment about the extent to which your society wants you to be the same as everyone else.

Thanks.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

The triviality of modern medicine.

So much about modern life is trivial - even, it seems, at times, medicine.

I will explain. There is a glaucoma drug called Lumigan which had an unusual side effect (well, more than one unusual effect, but I will get to that). Commonly, users of Lumigan noticed that their eyelashes grew longer and thicker than before. So, being alert to any opportunity to make money, the pharmaceutical company behind Lumigan has remarketed Lumigan, the glaucoma drug, as Latisse, the eyelash-lengthening-plastic-surgery-in-a-pill-drug.

On hearing this news, I found myself quietly astonished. Now, there is a drug to lengthen eyelashes...and people actually want it. Journalists in the news piece I saw, interviewed women who said that they would "take the drug for the rest of their lives". The estimated cost of the drug, by one doctor, was over 100 US dollars per month, for the privilege of elongated eyelashes.

What kind of world do we live in, in which companies would actually develop drugs to lengthen eyelashes - and people would actually buy them? To my, perhaps old-fashioned way of looking at things, this preoccupation with minor details of appearance seems appallingly trivial. I cannot imagine anyone or anything more superficial than the lifelong consumption of a medical drug purely to lengthen one's eyelashes.

Interestingly, this drug, Latisse, has another side effect that its consumers might not be so keen on. Users of Lumigan, for glaucoma, also noticed that their irises tended to darken over time: light blue eyes, would darken and become brown, for instance. This is a permanent change in iris colour that cessation of the drug does not reverse. However, progression of the darkening stops once the drug is no longer consumed.

I wonder how many people are going to start consuming this drug? If it becomes popular, long eyelashes might become universal - and everyone would have dark eyes: blue eyes would become something only young children have, before they lose them to Latisse.

I would like to think that it is just my own sensibilities becoming more demanding, as I get older, but, it seems to me, that the world we live in, is becoming one of the most trivial Ages there has ever been. People are preoccupied with matters of such triviality (and superficiality) that not one thought should be devoted to them - yet they are major matters of attention, for so many. People devote their lives to pointless activities; people spend money on useless commodities - and people actually take drugs to change the length of their eyelashes. It is all mind-bogglingly stupid.

As for medicine...you know, the Ancients may not have known much, but I rather think they were trying to address serious issues, and did not overly concern themselves with the length of eyelashes.

Which would you rather have? A cure for a major illness...or long eyelashes? The same research and development funds that are committed to nonsense like "eyelash extending drugs" could have been committed to matters of greater import. When the trivial is allowed a voice, it tends to crowd out matters of more substance. No drug company should be devoting funds to trivial projects, when there are so many untreatable, or inadequately treatable, illnesses in this world that need attention.

Once, medicine was a serious calling and drug manufacturers were serious businesses engaged in matters of great importance to us all. Not anymore, however: now we can look forward to a plethora of drugs for every trivial issue that ever concerned the most trivial of people. However, I bet you one thing: the serious diseases will still be incurable - and enough attention will fail to be devoted to them.

Perhaps it comes down to one thing: more people have eyelashes than have cancer - so why not treat "short eyelashes" and make money, rather than "treat cancer" and save lives (and make money, too)? It seems that triviality is an infectious disease and the pharmaceutical/medical establishment has caught a serious case of it. Perhaps it will be fatal. Let's hope so. Perhaps the doctors and pharmacologists who replace them will be a serious bunch, instead.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)