Syahidah on motherhood.

Pithiness is a gift: the ability to capture something of life, in a simple phrase. My wife, Syahidah has a tendency to make pithy remarks. Quite often they are whimsical, too, but not always.

A couple of weeks ago, Syahidah was reflecting on motherhood.

She observed: “The best mummies in the world are guilty mummies – they always feel they don’t do enough.”

I was, struck, at once by two things: the motivational truth of this view – and the fact that, it seemed most clear, to me, that this statement would apply to Syahidah herself (even if she wouldn’t label herself in such a way).

Syahidah is a good mummy. One need only look at her kids for a while to realize this. I think her remark embodied her own motivations. There is, it seems, a guilt within her, driving her to do ever more and be an ever better mummy to her kids. Of course, the sad part about this, is that she most probably never allows herself to believe that she has done enough or done it “right”. She will always believe she could have done better or done more. Yet, I think, that is a more productive attitude, than self-satisfaction – even if it is not so easy on the heart.

Thank you, Syahidah for being the mummy you are to our sons.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.htmland here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

The price of agelessness.

Everyone would like to be ageless – or so they might think to themselves. However, agelessness comes at a price.

Now, anyone who has ever viewed a photograph of my wife, Syahidah, cannot but be struck by how young she seems. Yet, she is much older than people think. The fact is, though, that she hasn’t aged since I met her: she got stuck in her late teens and seems essentially unchanged, since then. Fourteen years have passed, since we met but not one of those years appears on her face or body. It is as if she were a latter day Dorian Gray (though without the dissolute behaviour!)

Of course, this strange stasis leads to much confusion.

A few days ago, Syahidah took her three sons, Ainan, 11, Fintan, 8 and Tiarnan, 5, to the cinema to see the latest Transformers film, Dark of the Moon.

As she queued up to buy the tickets, Syahidah overheard an enthusiastic voice behind her –
“Look at her! Isn’t she a good sister, to be taking her brothers to the cinema!”

A quick look around revealed no-one else but Syahidah who could be described as a “sister” with her “brothers”.

Syahidah was too embarrassed for words, even though this kind of comment had been heard before.

She bought the tickets and took her “brothers” into the film.

It would be funny, were it not the source of much puzzlement on the part of others. You see, those fourteen years have seen me change, whilst Syahidah has stood still. So, now, the apparent age gap between us seems greater than it was, when we first met – yet, of course, it is the same, to the very day. What makes this situation more acute, is that it is Asians who judge Syahidah to be so young. How young would she seem to Caucasian eyes? No-one but myself and her immediate family know the truth: that Syahidah stopped any outward aging, in her late teens and looks the same now, as she did then. Yet, people who see her now, mentally subtract the age of her children, from her, now, and conclude that she must have looked much younger in the past: not so. She looked the same when I met her, as she does now. I can’t help but wonder what strange things people think, when they appraise her present appearance and make such age calculations. They have no idea how wrong they are.

Of course, I do wonder how long Syahidah will maintain this stasis of appearance. Her great grandfather was famous for not having aged much (relatively speaking, that is) – despite reaching 104. So, it seems, she takes after him. If this carries on, the day might come in thirty years time, when people think she is my granddaughter!

I am left to wonder how much our sons will inherit this curious attribute: are they going to be seemingly ageless, too? Will they look like spritely teenagers, well into their thirties? How odd it would be, for them, if this turns out to be so. We shall see.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.htmland here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Borders' closure and the end of the book.

The end of the book, may not be far off. Borders bookstore are closing all remaining 399 stores in America, and are liquidating the company. For those who grew up, browsing the shelves of Borders this may come as a shock – but it is probably only the beginning of the end, for the traditional bookstore and, even, the traditional book.

The closure of Borders will have multiple effects on books and book buying. Firstly, by reducing the number of stores available at which to buy books, it would increase the average distance to a bookstore, for the average American. This makes the buying of books more inconvenient. This will have an obvious effect: American readers (or those that still read, anyway), will seek a more convenient alternative – the ereader, most probably the Kindle, but it could be the Nook (by Barnes and Noble), too, or any of the other ereaders. Thus, instead of travelling further for a bookstore, many former book buyers, may just download their reading material with an ereader. They may become habitual ereaders, once they see its convenience, and may never again return to bookstores, on a regular basis. So, the closure and liquidation of Borders bookstore, is likely to provoke an increase in the rate of exodus from the traditional book, to ebooks.

However, the end of Borders, will relieve pressure on their competitors, to some extent, meaning that it might, for instance, save Barnes and Noble from a similar end, at least for the foreseeable future.

Yet, the long term picture for the traditional book is not a healthy one. Ebook readership is growing fast and looks set to grow faster still. As word of its convenience spreads, so too will the take up of this new medium. The cost basis of traditional publishing is not going to go away – yet the breadth of distribution is in decline. This means that fewer and fewer traditional books, will be able to turn a profit. Thus, publishers will become ever more conservative in whom they publish, greatly restricting the type of book that gets published traditionally. This would mean an even greater focus on big name authors, bestsellers and celebrity “authors” (ghostwritten, usually). This could mean that the traditional book becomes the preserve of those who have no real taste, or whose taste is that which is most common and conventional in the culture. This would alienate, further, those whose tastes run to the more eclectic (once served by bookstores) – again accelerating the flight to ereaders and ebooks.

The end result of this will be that books become a very modest niche in the world’s – or at least America’s - reading culture. Ebooks will dominate and relatively few bookstores will remain. Indeed, it is possible, one day, that there might be no bricks and mortar bookstores – the only ones might be online ones, like Amazon.

Living in Asia, though, I do note the present popularity of books and bookstores here. I rather think that the book might last longer in Asia, than elsewhere, since books are popular, and ereaders are not. Indeed, Kindle doesn’t even work in Asia and Pacific, according to the Amazon website (unless you trick them).

So, in a sort of reverse Gutenberg, we might see the book retreat from the West, with America leading and seek a holdout in the East. Would it not be strange if the twilight of the book, saw its last stronghold, the Orient? What would Johannes Gutenberg have thought of that?

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.htmland here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Wikipedia: suppression of the truth.

Wikipedia is touted as an encylopaedia that anyone can contribute to, thus sourcing knowledge, potentially, from all human beings. Yet, it doesn’t quite work that way because, just as anyone can contribute knowledge, anyone else can also remove it. Sometimes, people just don’t want a truth to be known.

Recently, I have tried to contribute to Wikipedia, in the entry about George Magazine, the defunct political magazine, started by the deceased John F. Kennedy Jr. and a few of his pals, before he managed to pilot a plane into the sea. My contribution sought to create awareness of a curious coincidence that can only be explained by plagiarism, or imitation by Kennedy and Matt Berman (the “creative” director on the project). I wished to alter the article to point out that my performance art character Lord Valentine the Misplaced, an 18^th Century Dandy living in the 20^th Century world, began to appear in the media about a year before the first issue of George Magazine. You may recall that George Magazine covers consisted of dressing 20^th Century people in 18^th Century costume, in the context of a 20^th Century magazine cover. The first cover consisted of Cindy Crawford as George Washington (an 18^th Century person). Clearly this “idea” of Matt Berman was not new. The simplest explanation is that he took the idea from me, since I had been on CNN, NBC News and Reuters, among other media outlets, as Lord Valentine the Misplaced, in the year leading up to the first issue of George Magazine.

At first I cited my blog entry on George Magazine in support of my change to the article. That blog entry in turn cited CNN, NBC and Reuters. I also mentioned in my “edit summary” that further proof was to be found at CNN, NBC and Reuters, as well as the Observer newspaper and Time Out magazine. This first attempt at alteration was reversed by one “Pinkadelica” from the US, within fifty minutes. Her reason for doing so: “blog not reliable source”.

About a week later, I reversed Pinkadelica’s reversal, and added a new source: my IMDB page (see: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3438598/bio)

I also pointed out that Pinkadelica had not consulted the CNN archives, where proof was to be found. This time my change lasted a few hours. However, it was again deleted, by persons unknown, this time in a non-reversible fashion (I would have to retype my entry again, instead of clicking a button).

I find this very rapid defense of this page curious indeed. Is it being defended by people who support the Kennedys or perhaps Matt Berman? Is this page being watched by those with a direct interest in it? Are they suppressing any truthful statements that might make “their people” look anything less than wonderful?

My changes have cited CNN, NBC news and Reuters – as well as several other sources – yet, still, they are reversed in a very short time. There is proof out there that what I am saying is true – yet still, they reverse the changes. This amounts to willful suppression of the truth. The writers of the George Magazine article would like you to believe that Matt Berman had a creative idea. He did not. He stole a creative idea and made it his own. What he did on the front cover of that magazine, had already been done for a long time, by me. It had also already been covered in the global media. Yet he won acclaim for this second hand idea. I am still puzzled as to why. Were there no people in the media in the US, able to connect a prior CNN news item and Matt Berman’s supposed idea? Does no-one think in the media there? Have they no memories? The connection is obvious between my prior work and his subsequent covers, yet no-one made that connection, in the media, at all. Now, when I try to draw attention to the connection on the George Magazine Wikipedia article, it is almost instantly reversed and my truth suppressed.

It has become clear that it will not be possible to have the truth known, on Wikipedia. There are too many defenders of untruths working on maintaining their lies, in the Wikipedia space. Wikipedia is too easily undermined by those with political interests, who can use articles to support the reputations of particular people, to the detriment of the truth about those people. All they have to do is rapidly remove any appearance of the undesired truths, no matter how well corroborated they are by citations – or reinsert their own untruths, if they have been deleted. The contents of the Wikipedia come down to who is more determined – or has more time and resources – to maintain their particular viewpoint. Thus, it is that Wikipedia is not impartial. Its views are driven by those with the most energy to maintain them.

It is only the word of mouth from those who read my articles on my blog, that stands to counter the truth suppression of Wikipedia. So, please tell others of the background to the George Magazine covers. They were not the invention of Matt Berman – they were his deliberate imitation of my prior performance art work, Lord Valentine the Misplaced.

Of course, my experience of a truth being suppressed by Wikipedians does call into question the whole edifice of the Wikipedia. What other truths are being suppressed on Wikipedia? What other viewpoints are being denied us? Are these manipulations purely from political sources (as the George Magazine edit changes might be) or are the suppressors of the truth more general in kind and source?

Have you had experience of a truthful statement being suppressed on Wikipedia? Have you had problems posting an alteration to it, even though you had sourced your change and it was justified? Do write your experiences below. Thank you.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.htmland here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)