Monocle

Web Design

2012-02-29T06:49:00.001-08:00

That the internet has revolutionised how people (predominantly in the 1st world) interact with one another is now an accepted tautology. A website costs very little and allows an individual to create amazing connections with others. Web design is important. Search Engine Optimisation can replace a large marketing budget. Here are some particularly useful resources related to creating and publicising a website.

Domain Name Tools: http://www.domaintools.com

Setting up a Wordpress Blog. Gold: http://www.problogdesign.com/wordpress/the-ultimate-guide-to-setting-up-wordpress-after-an-install/

Wordpress Plugins: http://www.techlila.com/highly-recommended-wordpress-plugins/

SEO for Wordpress: Beginner WordPress SEO (Part 2): 9 Ways to Optimize Blogs for Search Engines

Copywriting Headlines: http://theryanmcgrath.com/2010/04/gary-halberts-favorite-ads/

Copywriting Tips: Best Copywriting Tips of All Time

On Page SEO: http://dailyblogtools.com/how-to-optimize-your-website-with-on-page-seo/

Online and Offline Marketing Thoughts: http://lifelearningtoday.com/2009/03/21/complete-guide-to-set-up-a-wordpress-blog-and-make-money/

Email Marketing: http://diythemes.com/thesis/email-marketing-everybody/

Facebook for Photographers: Facebook for Photogs – 10 Ways to Generate Business

What is Pinterest: http://www.digital-photography-school.com/pinterest-inspiration-for-photographers

When I create a new website, I usually use Wordpress now. After the install, there are a couple of steps to ensure that it's optimised:

Setting up Wordpress for SEO

Change the Settings/Permalinks to /%postname%
In Settings/General change the web address from http://... to http://www....
Delete the HelloDolly plugin. No idea why this is even pre-installed!
Install the SEO Ultimate plugin; it's better than All in One SEO
Install the Google XML Site Maps Plugin
Install PushPress plugin
Install a theme. Suffusion is the best free Wordpress Theme, InFocus is the best paid Premium Wordpress Theme
(Optional) Install Fast Secure Contact Form Plugin
(Optional) Install SEO Friendly Images Plugin
(Optional) Install W3 Total Cache Plugin to speed things up (and therefore help SEO)
(Optional) Install Google Analytics - best done later
(Optional) Install Disqus Comments Plugin
(Optional) Install Wordpress Mobile Edition - this is increasingly important
(Optional) Install SexyBookmarks Plugin - helps people share content
(Optional) Install WP Google Fonts - a design choice

Looking Back: Facts from the last English Century.

2012-02-01T12:12:00.001-08:00

I was reading through 'A Century of Change: Trends in UK statistics since 1900' available online at the UK government's website. A few things seemed interesting; take from it what you will.

We pay more at Retail and the buying power of the £ has decreased. But then we earn more.

Despite many more cars, deaths on the roads have decreased.

We haven't learned not to go to war.

There is either more crime, or the Police have got better at catching criminals. Probably both.

More people own the house they live in. This is due to 'credit' from mortgage arrangements and the Right to Buy from the 80s.

People used to be leaving England; now they are arriving. Overall population has continued to increase, but birth rates are down from about 3.5 children per completed family at the start of the Century to 1.7 at its end.


Cancer and circulatory deaths are more common. Why?

Consumerism: New Religion

2012-01-27T02:44:00.001-08:00

First day of the sales at an electronics store.

Who's Fiddling While London Burns?

2011-08-09T16:52:00.000-07:00

Consumerism as ideology. Before they rioted for peace and rights; now it's self-interested fun & plasma TVs. But who's fiddling while London burns?

Because judging by the time it's taking to sweep the streets clean and circumvent a dismal Olympics and a 'double-dip' into depression, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this is just a ploy to turn public opinion against violent protest.

Why? The emergency policing powers that will now be clamoured for, and are justified to stop London's stupid gangs, unemployed and school children running amok, will be used to curb reasonable disorder when the real news, that of the coming Eurozone and Dollar crash, raises its rotten inevitable head.

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." - Herman Goering; and things have moved on since WW2.

Should we underestimate the iron fist of the State, gloved and held behind the back by spurious human rights lawyers and future inquiries; or is this the thought through burning of a fuse?

Red Worker

2011-07-28T16:57:00.000-07:00

Bilderberg Group 2011 Summer Camp, St Moritz, Switzerland

2011-06-12T19:05:00.000-07:00

This year's Bilderberg Group Summer Camp, held in idyllic Switzerland, has come to an end. It's a shame that their discussions are secret and still largely unreported. As any simple comparison of viewing figures for Youtube videos of pop stars and silly dogs vs. geo-politics and philosophy will tell you; hardly anyone cares. And those who do, probably can't do much about it. Therefore, discussions that include and engage more than an hundred 'successful', busy people over several days would be stimulating reading, the release of which shouldn't hinder subsequent efforts. JFK spoke of secrecy as abhorrent; Chatham House rules put forward a compelling case for its necessity.

The Royal Institute of International Affairs - Chatham House, London

The digital age has taken privacy, shrouded it as a concept, sensationalised it, and effected a fatal wounding. Facebook's 'why' wasn't about keeping in touch with friends; that was its engine. If I meet someone, in fact, even with just a name, I can peer into their past and keep my eyes on their present; and from a mobile device the size of a bar of chocolate. It is a perpetual, interactive database of more than 500,000,000 people; what they look like, known associates, habits and whereabouts, employment and education; an investigator's dream. With advances in facial recognition technology - see Google Goggles et al - it becomes a formidable raw data resource.

But it's not a bad thing. The utility outweighs, in the majority of cases, the trap that the increased visibility necessarily presents. It is a simple truth that the majority of the world's population are oblivious to your existence, and even those that do take an interest, do so fleetingly. It is the anonymity of a metropolis. Masturbate on Chat Roulette, if you wish; no one really cares, and nothing that you can ever do will make any appreciable difference on a timeline not measured in 30 minute sitcom episodes.

Therefore, it is not because I believe that there is some annual conspiracy afoot; people are too prone to blab, too impotent to effect far-reaching change. My interest stems from a natural curiosity, and is amplified by the 'Private' sign painted high above the door. To see these stirring fellows, for it is predominantly a boys' club, chat earnestly amongst each other in hotel conference rooms, would be interesting, a snippet of our time. From schoolboys on the games pitches to frail spectres with hacking coughs, they are shining happy in the middle of their lives, thrown together by success and circumstance.

They speak of Europe; the passed-down power of hereditary bloodlines mixing with the politicos of late nights in the library and surging business leaders. Take a Queen or two, arrayed in repeated facts and half-thought hearsay and set the scene with some young leader, cutting out an image of himself as he might cut the nostrils of a pack animal to drive her higher into the mountains than her nature would allow. Set the scene, start the banging on the pots; but lift the curtain up. The people are on the back rows texting and fucking, ignoring; but those who make themselves actors must expect a duty to perform.

Colour in Photography - A Study in Yellow

2011-05-30T13:37:00.000-07:00

Hephaestus - Catalan Blacksmith, Barcelona

2011-05-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

One of the oldest Catalan blacksmiths working in Barcelona, and the only chap with an open forge. This craftsman had learned from his father and practiced all his life. Apparently to master something, it's necessary to do it for 10,000 hours. In our culture, with the peaks of the mountains talent has built available online, do we appreciate true craftsmanship and the effort it takes to acheive?

Einstein on the importance of Mystery

2011-04-04T13:29:00.001-07:00

'The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed ' - Albert Einstein

Colour in Photography - A Study of Red

2011-04-02T13:22:00.000-07:00

Superstition; or Why We Must Not be Pigeons

2011-03-27T13:13:00.000-07:00

A psychological study (Skinner '48) showed that pigeons developed superstitions when food was released to them at random intervals. They ended up perfoming any number of actions that they were doing when the food was released in the belief that they had some sort of control over the process. Tellingly, it took a lot more 'failures' to stop the behaviours than 'successes' to create them.

The internet has brought access to the world's accumulated knowledge into the home, and we should be witnessing a dismantling of the superstitions that we'd built in harder, more ignorant times. Sadly, we are physiologically flawed and must make real efforts to overcome our inherent tendency to cling to comfortable fallacies. Logic seldom triumphs over emotion and belief.

One of our peculiarities is to search for an eternal and all-powerful father figure. Children at around 4 become resigned to their own limitations, and clutch to authority figures in their life doling out justice on their behalf. They will inform liberally on the actions of others that they judge to be 'bad' and recommend appropriate punishments. If something goes wrong, it is to these shining knights that they rush to. But even they fall short eventually.

The idea that we alone stamp our notions of 'right and wrong' onto an uncaring universe whose sublime size and timescales dwarf us and everything we'll ever do into insignificance isn't a particularly pleasant one. It does liberate our actions if we do not hide from this reality behind fantasies. Nietzsche announced the death of God, the concept underpinning our societies and moral codes, over a century ago. Our shared ethics and beliefs have yet to unravel however, and it seems that religious uptake is actually rising.

Simultaneously, unproven and unprovable discourse continues to billow forth from individuals worldwide to the general acceptance of ostensibly educated audiences. Most of this is harmless; but all of it should be refuted. Here's the grain of sand that initiated this post;

'The Pillow Book: put a book by, or about, one of your mentors, or the subject you are interested in, under your pillow. Occultists and energy practitoners believe that everything resonates with energy and information. To them words are actually living things and by sleeping with the book under your pillow you can absorb, contact, mingle with the energy and information in that book.'

I would love to believe that this is true. It would certainly make studying somewhat easier. But I don't have any faith that I would perfom any better in an objective test on the book's information, even if I slept with it under my pillow for a decade.

Likewise I have the same disdain for homeopathy treatments that use water which supposedly retains a 'memory' of a highly diluted active ingredient; which is often found in greater concentrations in tap water. Expensive and repeatedly proved to be no more effective than a placebo in controlled, unbiased tests, we see the same 'pigeons', pecking and flapping, for a miracle that will not happen.

It could be argued that beliefs should be in someway sacred if they are useful to the person who harbours them. Some of the strongest, most content people that I know put their faith in something that only faith can stand for. Likewise, perhaps if anecdotal evidence shows repeatedly that an unexplainable practice is valuable it should be left alone for those whom it benefits.

This is weakness and selfishness. Beliefs held by the individual should be routed up and examined by the society wherever they are found. If there is substance in them, then they should be probed and adopted, upheaving and superceding previously established 'facts' if necessary. 'Science' should not be immune either, tinged as it occasionally is with funding concerns and political bias.

The comfort of the individual should be seen only from the ship of society. We are all too easily lulled into believing the 'saving lie'. The Dark Ages are as close as allowing the prevailing discourse to become poisoned with prevarication. We must not fall into the trap of giving equal value to comforting, popular ideas based on nothing but 'faith' as the horrible, minority-held truths uncovered by individuals searching for verifiable facts. It is truth that will drive us forward; and it is lies that will drag us back.

Poems in English

2011-03-19T17:27:00.000-07:00

I've just started a new podcast, Poems in English. I'll be reading poetry I've enjoyed over the years, while Harry plays the guitar.

We've just been accepted by iTunes, so find us here; http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/poems-in-english/id427038896

Feel free to get in touch with any suggestions for what you'd like to hear next.

Artistic Photography Quotation

2011-03-16T12:33:00.000-07:00

“I believe that each artist, like everyone else, has strong views about the world: what it is, what it should be, and how it could be improved. As such, I think that most artists are not so much searching for the truth, but searching for a proper method of expressing the truth as they see it.”

Bruce Barnbaum, “The Art of Photography”

Why we Will Attack Iran: Or the link between Ivory and Fossil Fuels

2011-02-10T06:35:00.000-08:00

Why ‘we’ will attack Iran (Persia)

It’s repeatedly said that we’re addicted to oil; and it’s true. From air travel and the internet to creating the means to wean ourselves off our hydrocarbon addiction, our current infrastructure relies almost solely on a petro-chemical base. This hasn’t necessarily been a bad thing. The Earth’s water nourished us as primates and only recently have we begun to leave it undrinkable. It didn’t get us much further than an animal existence for millennia.

Since learning to use the poisonous oil and coal, we have enjoyed rapid and ever-increasing life expectancy, global travel, and effortless dissemination of ideas; we have even visited the distant moon. Through globalisation, even the billions for whom life has always been ‘poor, nasty, brutish and short’ are following us into longer lives lived well. Since striking Black Gold, our species has been able to outgrow nature itself.

But we are being told that ‘Peak Oil’, that time when our guzzling reaches its fullest, fast approaches; and that we should fear fighting over the dregs. It is also apparent that our Faustian pact has its own abrasive sub-clauses. Cancer has become common. Rapid population growth fuelled by oil has led to prodigious famines and wars; with more people, come more deaths. Our seas, sublime in their ability to slosh about indifferent to us, are in places polluted to the extent that they extinguish life.

Stand by a car’s exhaust to understand the choking cost of fast transport; sit in a bar to feel how far we have come, yet see that we are still animals. We are asked to set off on a course for change, embracing cleaner technologies that will allow us to extend our stay in the Garden. We shall not heed these calls; self-interest deals mainly in minutes, not months; in families, not societies. No leader exists at the top, nor is there sufficient will for change at the bottom. And nor shall it matter; the world will continue, regardless.

But we cannot. ‘We’, the fortunate few descendents of those closest to the fire, have grown accustomed to a lot more than an equitable share; because we’ve earned it, fought for it. It’s made us soft, and we will squabble terribly about sharing the embers with our harder, larger group of brothers who are clawing their way in. We may have the rough-hewn flint knife and the power to douse the whole party; but our will is fractured across a thousand voices.

Our fathers preached Equality; we have forgotten their provisos and exceptions. Now, there is a long way to fall to reach parity with the rest of the World. Giving money to help an orphan or two in a far-flung place was fine. Signing a Facebook petition to end a war was easy. Endorsing protectionist policies to save local jobs was a stretch. And living a frugal, sustainable existence at the cost of all past luxuries would be downright hard.

Riots abound about austerity. Retirement, once a year or two spent shuffling off this mortal coil, is now a sacred, ‘earned’ couple of unproductive decades that has to be paid for. Those same corporations that cause such popular angst are likely invested in by pension funds struggling to accommodate payouts to can’t-work, won’t work people kept alive by easy living and expensive healthcare. In France, mass riots accompanied the increasing of the age at which the state begins to pay people to live.

The young demand a full quarter of life as dependents, enjoying panem et circenses on expensive laptops created by their industrious ‘equals’ in the Far East. Witnessing student riots, we see public bills driven up further by the actions of the bored youth playing out the riots of the previous generation for short-lived Youtube fame. Shouldering more of the cost of spending three years in creation-less consumption ought to be less contentious.

We started providing aid to appease populations while we plundered the raw resources that we lacked; we carry on now at least in part because we started to believe the lie that we were helping. We excessively reward individuals not for the proper allocation of capital so we can keep up the Ponzi scheme of pensions, but for gambling with other’s money. And we don’t take anything back when some of the bigger bets are lost, staking the bills ourselves.

We have been comfortable enough to create a beautiful ideality; that same will be our downfall in the arena of the wolf where ruthless always wins. Already environmental concerns gave China, which looks set to surpass America, a monopoly on the rare earths so necessary for the teeth and bones of Western society. Tellingly, this imbalance is quickly being addressed.

In the last decade, we have killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq. We have killed hundreds of thousands in Afghanistan. We have done this with contraptions purpose-built to kill, and profited well from it. In a worrying step ‘forward’, we have begun to kill by proxy from the other side of the world using drones controlled using an interface almost identical to the games we buy our children. This has been perpetrated under the guise of a war against terrorism.

The same catch-all concept has been misused to impinge civil liberties and create laws that are open to abuse. The Icelandic banking assets were frozen using UK anti-terror legislation, for example. In many Western countries the right to fly has become inseparably linked with an agreement to have one’s dignity and privacy invaded. A lot of these new rules are counter-intuitive. Mothers must open and taste a fortnight’s worth of perishable baby food; relatively unchecked baggage handlers are often free to go as they please about the same planes. The main terrorist danger to aviation is through explosives secreted in the hold, not through passengers armed with nail clippers.

This is a moot point, or we would check buses and trains; but the illusion of safety is enforced, albeit in a particularly unpleasant way. Terrorism then is addressed through a rationing of scaremongering and reassurance. Photographers cannot use tripods in many places due to an abstract ‘terrorist threat’, but Google is permitted to photograph every street in high-resolution for the free and private (?) use of interested parties.

The same degree of state intervention was not seen however when terrorist action was more ubiquitous; when P-IRA bombs regularly exploded on the British mainland, or during ETA’s campaign for Basque independence in France and Spain. Terrorism is ever a political tool. Of course, the weapons that we have worked so hard to create are far more devastating now, and offer the force of destroying civilisations to a single person. Unfortunately, humankind has not managed to advance as far, so strong locks must keep these horrific toys from our brutal, foolish nature. But in considering the need to keep apocalyptic power out of insane hands, we should bear in mind that 'those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.'

The terror threat has been properly used however. It has allowed us to ride roughshod into foreign countries in which we have significant strategic interest. Our reliance on fossil fuels to fund our heady lifestyle and continual growth is not the only justification for recent calls to arms. Saddam Hussein, leader of a major OPEC member, had opted to be paid for its oil in Euros instead of the traditional US dollars due to US currency manipulation and high trade deficit. Venezuela joined him, as did Iran. Since coming off the gold standard, the US was keen to see that the value of the Dollar remained rooted in oil, especially due to their voracious appetite for the latter. Iraq was invaded and the interim and subsequent governments have returned to using the US dollar. Only after our invasion of Afghanistan did we discover more than a trillion dollars worth of mineral wealth there.

The collapse of the USSR led to a race to tap the oil and natural gas deposits of the Caspian Sea but the logistics of doing so remain challenging due to lack of infrastructure and the political situation in the region. Several large tankers were created in situ in order to achieve this, but this was a small solution and concerns with Russian control over a portion of European gas exports prompted a to be sought. Putin’s suspension of Ukrainian supplies exacerbated the situation.

Turkmenistan, formerly ruled by an eccentric, has attractive gas fields. In 1995, a pipeline was proposed that would pass from the Dauletabad gas field in Southern Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and India; the TAPI pipeline. The Chinese-financed Pakistani port Gwadar allows Western markets access to the region’s gas while circumventing Russian channels. Those interested in Turkey’s flirtation with EU membership should be aware of the BTE pipeline from the Caspian ending up at the port of Ceyhan on Islamic Turkey’s Mediterranean coastline. Russian pressure on Georgia, through which the pipeline runs after Azerbaijan, necessitates additional channels to Western markets.

For Afghanistan, this looked to be a positive proposal; it was the largest foreign investment project since the Cold War by proxy under the Russian invasion. However, part of the conditions on the Afghan side were that the security of the multi-billion dollar pipeline be assured, and the then Taliban government didn’t have the far-reaching control over the tribal areas to guarantee this. While an Argentinian competing company bidding for the contract was able to secure a number of commitments from tribal leaders, the US company Unocal was not. In addition, requests that US soldiers be deployed in country to protect the investment were met with insurmountable opposition by Taliban leaders.

Delays dogged the project, and it was only in 2010, with Western soldiers on the ground routing out the ‘insurgents’ and a new and rather more malleable government in Kabul that the pipeline has finally taken a firm step towards fruition. The cost, in money and lives, has been steep; and with political will faltering in a domestic climate of austerity and disgust at the loss of life, a number of the Afghani fighters are playing a waiting game until the Western armies are recalled. Not for nothing has mountainous, tribal Afghanistan been called the ‘graveyard of Empires’.

But there is a better route for the addictive substances that fuels our ‘growth’. And that is through Iran. In fact, a proposed IPI (Iranian, Pakistanian and Indian) pipeline does just this, connecting at intervals with the TAPI pipeline. Quite serendipitously, it also looks set to provide easy access to the South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf. Western military bases now already exist in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan surrounding Iran. But this is not the only way in which Iranian occupation would benefit the West. Iran is second only to Russia with regards to the sheer size of its natural gas deposits, and third for oil deposits.

In 1953 the US and Britain stepped in to guard their interests in Iranian oil by deposing the democratically elected popular Prime Minister Mossadegh after he nationalised the petroleum industry and oil reserves. Prior to this, the Shah was effectively deposed and afterwards the West aided the Iraqis in a territory grab that led to some five hundred thousand Iranian casualties, one hundred thousand of which were killed using chemical weapons; so it is natural that a distrust of Western manipulation lingers in Iran. The creation of Israel from British Palestine is particularly contentious, and Iran does not recognise that state. Without going too far into any religious aspects, Iran is a functioning Islamic Republic whose population is 95% Shi’a and only 3% Sunni.

Wikileaked documents indicate that several other important countries in the Middle East have repeatedly pressured the US to act against Iran. Ahmadinejad meanwhile pursues an inflammatory nuclear program, which he insists is for energy supply only. It wouldn’t be difficult to believe that a weapons program would be appealing to the Iranian regime, proving regional clout and a deterrent against invasion. Israeli politicians have recommended pre-emptive strikes on Iranian facilities, and the Mossad have been tentatively linked to assassinations of nuclear scientists.

But it is not the nuclear situation; that is equally concerning in North Korea, and perhaps even in Pakistan. But it does complicate matters for it sets a time limit on any military action; as the Ayatollahs know. It is worth noting that Iran has the lowest proportional defence budget among the Gulf States, whereas the US and Israel spend heavily. We should consider Iran’s two thousand, eight hundred years of rich history before we act rashly.

Is there any way to prevent this? It used to be that the ivory and fur trades were accepted and lucrative business. War has often been a business; see the fortunes that change hands and warnings about a Military Industrial Complex as evidence for this. But by broadcasting graphic and often disturbing images of wounded rhinos with tusks sawn off or animals killed for a skin and then left, the Western consciousness was informed, and repulsed. We have all seen images of war, and who can forget the photograph of a charred, devilish figure of a former Iraqi soldier, burned to death?

Yet war persists, despite popular domestic protest. An ‘us or them’ mentality is understandable; if by occupying and fighting in Afghanistan we are able to prevent mass bombings in our own cities then this is a price that many would accept is worth paying; yes, even if civilian casualties are unavoidable. We remember the Wars, and the necessity for action against the formidable German war machine. Appeasement didn’t work. But to suggest that the terrorist threat is on a par with international threats, assuming the enforcement of a strict and effective control of weapons proliferation, is debatable. Our way of life faces a greater existential threat from domestic factors, the misapplication of capital and the lobbying of a military industrial complex.

With the amount of money spent on recent wars, a far more surgical combination of propaganda and assassination could have been adopted. Our psychologists ought to be able to create a wholly compelling ideology that would spread widely and encourage devotion to the point of self-sacrifice; it has been done several times before, most notably about two thousand years ago. Perhaps any such ideas could take into account how the world has changed, including our individual ability to disperse ideas globally and to cause mass destruction. But no, beyond a mortgage, inflation and consumption, not enough exists in this domain; spirituality cannot be completely reasoned away, as Kierkegaard realised.

Could we propose greater honesty with the voting population (and greater emphasis on the responsibility of informed voting)? I share Kant’s opinion that the truth is always better, allowing the requisite silences. If a war is predominantly for control of natural resources in another country, then this reasoning should be offered up for consideration. If we don’t want to pay foreign workers too much due to the economic consequences of currency export, say so. If a small group of individuals are getting disproportionately wealthy by their actions, let us know about them. Like the ivory, it is our own demand that causes this.

If we cannot live without constant hot water, individual cars and absolute personal safety in our home country, then we should realise that this comes at a cost; and we should see this cost. Wastefulness is easy when prices are cheap, but prices are cheap only when wages are low. Flights are cheap when jet fuel isn’t expensive; but refineries are dirty and their cost is both human (see Nigeria) and environmental (see Deep Water Horizon) as well as financial.

Cigarettes now have accompanying photographs of the diseases that smoking them will lead to (and that will be paid for by society). Perhaps products that rely on fossil fuels or corporate malpractice to satisfy consumer expectations should be linked to a similar advisory notice. Like the huge black market in addictive drugs has led to such bloodshed worldwide and especially in Latin America, our own addiction to the products of fossil fuels has created an insatiable demand. Let us see clearly what the consequences of this demand are; and let us then choose if the more flippant luxuries of our lifestyles are worth the atrocities that are routinely carried out to provide them. ‘Knowing when enough is enough is always enough.’ Lao Tzu.

Are You Helping?

2010-12-27T16:13:00.000-08:00

John Stuart Mill: "As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another."

Charity is quite a commitment. Doing what appears to be the 'right thing' may in fact lead to greater suffering in the long term. The unsustainability of rapid population growth in Ethiopia ought to be a more ready example of this than it currently is; there are now more than 80 million people there, compared to 40 million twenty-five years ago during their last famine.

This is due to well-meaning Westerners saving starving children's lives, but not building sufficient infrastructure for those children to mature into productive, globalised adults who can import the food without recourse to usurious loans or long-term contracts for the export of useful natural resources. In essence, it is due to the brutal nature of life and death on that Continent. With high infant mortality and a lack of sex education/ facilities, there are just too many new mouths to feed.

We should not be so appalled. I remember being particularly moved by a population graph showing the relationship between foxes (predators) and rabbit (prey). As the number of rabbits increased, so the number of foxes followed. When they had made a significant dent on the bunnies, so their own numbers dwindled. This is not to quite debase a people to parity with animals; my point is to highlight our inherent tendency to keep pushing the graph higher and higher, forgetting that resources are necessary limited.

The link with the economy and capitalism's demand for constant growth is an obvious one. How fast are we able to produce and consume in order to support an ever-growing population still fast being dragged out of its natural animal state? How long can we expect for this to continue? And how willing are we to face the natural fall? Will it be the oil that's allowed this that runs out first? Or will the incredible number of people without access to clean drinking water grow larger, and closer to home?

If you are reading this, then take a moment to reflect on the abnormality of your existence. Are we an evolutionary blip, a Catalan tower of people destined to tumble solely by virtue of having been built on frail, frail people? It is disappointing to cast an eye around and see that destructive tendencies perpetuate. Maybe money is food aid fueling unsustainable growth? At least Mr Bernanke et al can conjure money out of nothing; maybe one day there will be quite enough to go around without the money itself losing its meaning, and therefore its value; but maybe not. In any case, now that you're doing your bit at Christmas/ Whenever, remember that charity is always a personal thing, and as such best starts at home, face to face.

Ethiopia Population Growth: http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_pop_totl&idim=country:ETH&dl=en&hl=en&q=ethiopia+population+graph#met=sp_pop_totl&idim=country:ETH

Caga Tió - Catalan Tio de Nadal custom

2010-12-07T10:09:00.000-08:00

This is quite possibly the strangest custom I've come across in Barcelona, Catalunya. The Catalan people have a Tió de Nadal in their house at Christmas. It is literally just a log. They feed it , then beat it with sticks on Christmas day until it shits presents, singing;

caga tió,
caga torró,
avellanes i mató,
si no cagues bé
et daré un cop de bastó.
caga tió!"

shit log,
shit nougat,
hazelnuts and cottage cheese,
if you don't shit well,
I'll hit you with a stick,
shit log!

and

caga tió,
tió de Nadal,
no caguis arengades,
que són massa salades
caga torrons
que són més bons!"

shit log,
Christmas log
don't shit herrings,
which are too salty,
shit nougat
which is much better!

Say What? Wikileaks publishes US diplomatic cables, and Julian Assange wanted for alleged Swedish sex crimes.

2010-12-01T15:29:00.000-08:00

This week has seen the release of confidential US Embassy cables by the website, Wikileaks. How terribly exciting. US diplomats forewarned countries worldwide, the site came under several DoS attacks, and the move has been lauded and condemned in relatively equal measure.

Have we been lied to then? Not really. It is reassuring that in the main, the candid assessments by American diplomats land well within our expectations and, with a pinch, also within the implied area cast by official diplomatic announcements. Much of the Arab world worries about Iran, and has prompted the US to act. The US hasn't. We're all worried about the safety of Pakistan's nuclear facilities based on that country's challenges.

Nothing has so far knocked us for six. But this does not mean that these cables can be discussed briefly and forgotten. Unfinished as many assessments were, they have provided us with a candid, agenda-free picture of how the world appears to Americans in country. In itself, this is a valuable historical record from a prevailing discourse.

We have been treated to a fleshing-out of facts. Kant believed that to show due respect to humans as rational, moral agents, the truth must be told, allowing them to act as they see fit with any available facts. This appears to us to be a uniquely philosophical perspective. ‘No darling, you look wonderful tonight...’

In reality, it is obvious that it takes a lot of digging to uncover a whole truth. While actual lying seems rare, massaging of figures and important omissions are commonplace. This is why Wikileaks disturbs us. Here are the ostensible facts, free in so many senses of the word, for us to do with as we please. We will doubtless do nothing. Criticised leaders condemn the act of unauthorised dissemination; the public tut over supper.

But this cynical view, so typically British in its sense of inevitability, is increasingly challenged. The Iraq and Afghanistan war leaks led to real concern and proper inquiries. This new release will again raise important questions, and despite Palin’s politically expedient fury, the outing of truth is important, and appears to have been done with the mitigation of the very real risk of losses directly due to disclosures borne in mind.

Technology has allowed this. Downloading thousands of documents onto a USB stick is considerably easier than photocopying them; propagating them online is easier than having them printed. The internet has changed everything. Wikileaks has been set up in such a way to circumvent national jurisdictions. This allows them to publish what could not be mentioned in a ‘free’ press. Interested parties ought to take note of the D-notice served to the UK media establishments and read the original cables online.

This is not to assume that anything published on this extraordinary ‘free’ platform is true, or even complete. There is something of Baudrillard’s Hyperreal in the project; the single, unbiased form of truth, outshining all others. Are we to imagine that among such leaks the lack of really damaging disclosures that would actually change anything can be expected? Putin has voiced concerns; so have others.

This is not to detract from the mission embarked upon by the Wikileaks team. With little support, they have used their platform to inform on the goings-on of so many murky areas off-limits or unknown to battalions of journalists and bloggers. Their scope surpasses that of the citizen journalism seen on Twitter during the Iranian elections.

Chief among them is the Australian Julian Assange who, in a rather well-timed move, has been forced into hiding in the UK after Swedish rape allegations. I doubt many people believe the charges. Some will be glad that something is being done to put pressure on him; others will sigh at the blatancy of the attempt to stifle him after traditional channels of law proved unfit for the digital age.

Others may amusingly point out that the Australians have always been keen on the beautiful Swedes, and it’s again convenient that the majority of the world is gunning for him, guilty or not. Perhaps ‘gunning’ may be too far a double-entendre here.

In any case, long may it last. The real problems are elsewhere, powerful tides and currents compared to choppy waves. Floating on our rafts, we’ll worry about the latter, but be moved by the former. It makes interesting reading, and has something of that illicit thrill of blundering through a door marked Private. But no, ‘humankind cannot bear very much reality’ and we shall soon see the World, who has momentarily sat up to pay attention, slump back down into a lukewarm diet of digital distraction, happiness and woe. More leaks please!

Bonita in Richmond Park

2010-10-20T12:07:00.000-07:00

A Barbour jacket is an institution, and the three Royal Warrants are well earned. They are cold when it is cold, and hot when it is hot because they are thin and don't breathe, but they are also tough, and look better with a few rips and scars. The pockets in my own Border jacket are gargantuan, and quite comfortably accomodate magazines, lenses and any other bric-a-brac with which I feel inclined to stuff them. Resting comfortably on a shoulder, they cover the largest camera and are as such the perfect security. There is nothing quite so perfect or English as fighting the wind through fields on a blustery day with a warm Shetland jumper and a windproof Barbour jacket, ideally with a dog and a gun. They've also drifted in and out of fashion in Town, and here Yuliana sports one as we stroll past the stags and deer in Richmond Park.

Surveillance in a Democracy

2010-09-22T13:14:00.000-07:00

Any government, corporation or organisation is composed of a turnover of people. People are fallable. Some people ain't no good. Surveillance increases the power that these unseen individuals have over me by increasing my visibility. Visibility is a trap, said Foucault, despite the idea that those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear.

I act according to what I believe to be right. But I may be penalised for actions that another individual may believe to be wrong. Were I to criticise and ridicule the idea that there is an all powerful man in the sky prelonging patriarchal prejudices and inflaming opinions, there could be a majority without access to our education that would disagree and may act against me.

It is quite widely known that the German government had conducted a census after the First World War in order to aid the rebuilding and to help with welfare. It listed large amounts of Jews. When the political environment swung further right, the same lists were put to a horrible use.

Therefore, I disagree with extensive surveillance not because I do not think that I act rightly, but because I believe that there is a majority who still do not understand the difference between right and wrong, and I do not want to be at their ignorant mercy.

The Thames Festival

2010-09-22T11:52:00.000-07:00

A huge amount of people watched the fireworks that marked the end of this year's Thames Festival. After photographing the parade, I got in place for the fireworks at a vantage point on Hungerford Bridge. Deciding that there was a better view from the stone balcony on the bridge, I went past a barrier and set up my tripod. To my dismay, I was moved by a constable of the Health and Safety brigade, keen to see that I would not choose this momentous occasion to leap into the chilly Thames, or be pushed in by the surging mass of a couple of cold individuals. With no possibility of setting up now, I turned my camera on those people watching the fireworks, who stood universally transfixed. With the fireworks outside of the frame, this otherwise empty space in London's heart now is scattered with silent watchers.

Wikileaks Truth in Politics

2010-07-30T19:15:00.000-07:00

It's been an interesting week. Got more of an insight into the Afghanistan war after Wikileaks published another variant of 'truth'. I once met a journalist who said that all the photographs in the world can't really change politics; sure, they may make us mad, horrified or incensed to revolt, but nothing really comes from it. A scuffle with men who are just like you bar a uniform, and nothing changes. I'm not sure that this is true, and if it were, if it is such a bad thing anyway. Everyone ought fear a powered majority.

London - By the Thames

Paris - Indeed where else?

Wiltshire - Army Polo

Yuliana, St James Square and Venezia

2010-07-12T17:01:00.000-07:00

Ben Evans Photography.com Updated

2010-06-21T17:48:00.000-07:00

Just updated www.benevansphotography.com - a complete, arduous overhaul that I think is much better. Get in touch and let me know what you think!

Ben

2010-05-17T17:48:00.000-07:00

Interesting to think that the whole hill would be white underneath, evidenced by a crude horse-scrape.

2009-11-22T16:37:00.000-08:00

Thinking about The Wheel today. So much depends on being still!

www.benevansphotography.com

2009-10-10T14:45:00.000-07:00

2009-10-10T14:11:00.001-07:00

Pascoe

2009-10-10T14:03:00.000-07:00

2009-10-06T18:00:00.000-07:00

And I have plugged in...

2009-02-02T16:19:00.000-08:00

A blog. Because the part of me I try to hide wants to try to shout.