Game of unKnowns

On February 12, 2002 the then US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was giving a news conference at the Pentagon. Rumsfeld had an interesting way of phrasing things and many people used to make fun of his public statements. On the BBC Radio 4 programme "Broadcasting House" they had a section called "The Donald Rumsfeld Quote of the Week" where one of his sentences would be quoted without any context and we were invited to laugh at him. At the time, I was an avid BBC Radio 4 fan but it was a bit too esoteric for me and I didn't see the humour - maybe if I had gone to Oxbridge. However, I think it was here where I first heard what I later thought was something really profound, the concept of the "unknown unknowns". 

The full quote goes like this "there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult one" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns).  

As the years have passed, I am struck more and more at how correct Donald Rumsfeld was  It is the unknown unknowns that really make a mess of our lives. "If only I had known... I am sorry, I never realised... " are the epitaphs to many a venture, project or relationship. 

One day out of the blue, a wife/husband/partner walks into the bedroom and says "that's it, I don't love you anymore, we are finished" and when the other party has managed to recover his/her/its (gender neutral pronoun) composure to respond with a "whaa," then the immortal words are spoken "I had no idea". 

Change the setting to the business world. Imagine that you are a talented young adult. You have just finished your apprenticeship to become a Scrivener, borrowed money from your parents to set up your writing shop, you open for business and then one Mr Caxton opens his printing press next door. You are obsolete, your skills are no longer needed. If you had known, would you have invested all that time and effort in becoming proficient in penmanship? Of course not. But how could you possibly know? 

In the real world, it is not realistic to think that a human being can be all-wise and all-knowing. In a failing relationship it is another matter, your aggrieved other half, holds you responsible for every failing that happened both in the relationship and in the history of the universe since the big bang. "You SHOULD have known what was going to happen", is a common stick used by the unhappy partner to beat up the hapless other. As an English teacher, I frequently work with modal verbs, the ones that resonate most with me are: could have, should have and would have - very useful for mental self-flagellation.

So how do we make decisions? Do we base them on our accumulated knowledge and experience? Captain Smith of the Titanic was an experienced and knowledgeable trans-Atlantic Captain. Will we always have to be  second guessing ourselves and others? On what basis do we trust our knowledge? 

 In this era of "Alternate Facts", how do we know what we know is true? Do we trust the news? How much do you believe the picture of the world that is presented by Fox News or Russia Today? What about celebrities who Tweet? Julian Assange used to be a personal hero of mine. Why? Because I liked the image of him that was portrayed on the websites I used to look at. Then I discovered that St Julian was only human after all and it seems that he was taking money (quite a lot of money) from a political group to tweet propaganda (https://casoaislado.com/la-generalitat-pago-a-julian-assange-para-que-defendiera-la-independencia-a-traves-de-twitter/). So another one bites the dust. Add him to the ever lengthening list of people who I used to like/trust.  People like BIll Clinton and Barack Obama. Now it appears that Assange is to truth as Clinton is to marital fidelity and Obama to world peace (how many drone stirke deaths were authourised by the Nobel Peace Prize winner?). 

So who or what can we trust? The mighty dollar? Not if you know anything about the size of the US national debt. Bitcoin? It has all the hallmarks of a bubble about to explode - do the expressions "Dotcom" and "Subprime bubbles" ring a bell? Going back to the dollar for a moment, the official motto of the United States "In God we trust" appears on its currency. Given that many centuries of philosophical and metaphysical study have never produced any solid evidence of the existence of a supernatural being (I am talking about fact based evidence and not faith based), even though it would be a great personal consolation if there was, I can only say that in this case, I know what I don't know and just like the character Jon Snow in the TV series Game of Thrones, I know nothing.

Instead of going off on a tangent inspired by Immanuel Kant's theories of the knowable and unknowable noumenon, I will finish up by saying the as I get older and older, I trust less and less this world where as Robbie Burns puts it:

 "But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane [you aren't alone]
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley, [often go awry]
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promised joy."

As I get older and older, I agree more and more with the sentiments attributed to Mark Twain:

"The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog" 

You can keep your Dollar and Bitcoin, for me it's, "in dog I trust".

Ireland Walk and Talk Course August 2016

No news is good news.

Today is the 23rd of January 2016.

Three weeks into my "no news is good news" resolution. Three weeks without looking at a newspaper. 
Three weeks without listening to a news report on the radio or watching the ad bait programming that passes for news nowadays on TV.

"Three weeks"???? 
Yes, three, whole, long weeks.
So, how am I doing?

Surprisingly well. Is the answer.

I wrote "long" when describing how my news free weeks have seemed and I mean that in a positive way. I have more time to devote to other things now that I don't waste it looking at and reading "disaster porn" or stories about corruption here in Spain or in Ireland or in the US or the never ending war on an abstract noun "Terror".

How did this happen?

During the Christmas period I was off-line for a week while I went home to Ireland to visit family and friends. When I got back online, I went to Facebook and started scrolling through my accumulated non-read stories. I used to be a News Junkie, I suppose it is a by-product of having grown up listening to BBC Radio 4/World Service and working in Radio News for 96FM in Cork. 

I had this need to be "up to date", to know what was happening in the world. It made me feel good to know that I knew things about events happening to people in remote parts of the planet. I am afraid to think about the number of days of my life I have spent in front of a computer screen scanning headlines from the NY Times, Huffington Post, El Pais, El Confidencial, The Irish Times, BBCnews.com France24, Bloomberg, etc, etc, etc,.This is only a partial list, look how long it took me to write it. Imagine how much of my life time I have lost in looking at these sites!

Getting back to Facebook. I started scrolling down the page on my wall, scanning the unwatched cat videos and unread news stories and suddenly I had a feeling of being overwhelmed by it all. 

I saw so many negative stories coupled with negative photos. Stories and photos that have been manipulated just as much as junk food is, to provoke certain responses - in the case of modern "news/entertainment" to make me angry, scared or indignant. 

Modern news is not a transmission of facts or information, it is a cynical  exercise in manipulating the stories of unfortunate victims and the emotions of an audience who are watching while sitting at their kitchen tables. It is a symptom of the modern age, where image is more important than substance. Tragedy is trivialised to sound bites and eye candy to hold an audience's attention until the next ad break (and hopefully beyond). 

So much of the "news" we read, see and hear really isn't. It is a ritual recycling of banalities. I remember this from my own days sitting in the newsroom in "Silly season" August, praying for a plane crash somewhere while rehashing tired, old stories to fill the 4 minutes until the sports report and weather. 

To further illustrate my point, I can cite two examples from novels and one from cinema. In "A Clockwork Orange"(1962),  Anthony Burgess writes a brilliant parody of the contents in a typical daily newspaper, one which is accurate even to the point of the country be paralysed by the thought that professional footballers might go on strike the following weekend. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), J.K. Rowling gives us a brilliant parody of a typical TV news bulletin where 29 minutes of death, destruction and dastardly deeds are ameliorated by a "And Finally" story, in Rowling's case, a 30 second clip of a water skiing budgerigar. 

And finally in this part of my eviscerating exposition of the News industry, I want to talk about a great but now forgotten film from 1979, The China Syndrome. Jane Fonda's character is a newbie TV reporter doing a live report from the street. Her bosses and colleagues in the studio are unhappy with her report because it lacks "umph". They start making critical comments and question her ability until suddenly the tone of the story changes and a gyrating belly dancer appears in shot to whoops of joy and appreciation from the watchers in the control room. It was a visual comment/condemnation on and about the dumbing down of news and its merging with entertainment. 

As I started clicking on and unfollowing all the different news feeds to my FB page, I had a feeling of release  like when you start to throw out junk that you have stored in boxes for 10 years and never used. The sense of a weight lifting off your spirit is amazing. I know that it might seem that I am uncaring or selfish by not immersing myself and wallowing in the tragedy of other people's lives and sharing their emotions (oh how I hate the eternal journalistic question "tell me, how did you feel when...you saw your wife/children/mother, killed/maimed/disfigured (delete as necessary) - and if possible cry for the camera or wail for the radio microphone. What a stupid question. If someone kicked the reporter in the groin and asked "how did it feel or "what was your reaction when my boot connected with your nether bits?" I wonder what the response would be? Would the viewers/listeners feel moved by the tears rolling down the reporter's face?

All of the above thoughts flashed through my mind as I had my moment of epiphany. I suppose it is like when you have been binge eating on popcorn at the cinema. You buy a big carton of the unhealthy stuff and keep munching and munching and then there comes a point when your body says "enough", I can't or don't want any more of this junk / toxic crap.

At the start of the year I made a resolution  connected with detoxifying my body, to "eat clean" and do more yoga and meditation.

On the 3rd of January I added a second one, to "read clean". By "clean" I mean not wasting my time on silly, improbable, spy/thriller/police drama novels - though I must admit I like Ian Flemming's 007 books and  Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid series. Maybe I am being a bit too  puritanical in my born again zeal to purify my mind so I will read Iron Druid 8 when it becomes available here.

So at the end of three weeks, how am I doing? Well, the changes are happening but not at a uniform rate. My running while listening to Buddhist monks chanting "Na myoho renge kyo" is having an effect, my expansive waistline is a little less vast. My sleeping is better (listening to the same monks singing a different version of the same chant) and I have more energy. 

However, the biggest change I have noticed is in my thinking and attitude. I am less worried about the economy, less angry about the endemic corruption in the system here in Spain and at home in Ireland and not feeling so bludgeoned by the constant negative stories about things, places and situations I can do nothing about. What difference is it going to make to the latest attempt by mediocre, corrupt politicians attempting to fracture this country by turning their parts of Spain into tin-pot dictatorships if I start frothing at the mouth while reading the headlines before I go to bed?  

None, zip, zilch, nada de nada. So the best thing is to avoid it and all the other stories that I can do nothing about. I have two kids, a mortgage and I am self employed in a country that is still waiting to see the famous "green shoots of economic recovery" - more than enough things to worry about. So for me as far as my Facebook page is concerned, as of today 23 January 2016, even though I am still going to look at the occasional silly cat video, no news, really is, good news.

UPDATE - in November 2018 I stopped using personal FB completely. 

Tony Horton, a love hate relationship with my personal guru and saviour (sort of)

I have a love hate relationship with Tony Horton. "Who he?", you might ask. For those of you who have never suffered from insomnia and had access to late night cable TV you may never have heard of him. He is the front man/star/designer of a series of get fit infomercial videos that have heavy rotation on cable stations during the wee small hours. If you want to know more about him, here are two links you can look at:

http://www.tonyhortonlife.com and 

https://plus.google.com/+tonyhortonfitness.


OK, so, what's the story with Tony and why am I thinking about him this morning?. Well, I have to say that Tony is in the back of my mind most of the time, he has that sort of personality that makes his message very "sticky" (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUF1GUaOV38 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_to_Stick for more info on "sticky ideas").


Tony has a simple message about fitness and achieving goals. In fact, he has two main ones, "Bring it" and my personal favourite (UK spelling) "Decide, Commit, Succeed". This is a sort of mantra of his that he uses at the end of one of his Yoga training videos. The video is called "Fountain of Youth Yoga" from his "One on One" series. If you look for these on Google it will make more sense to you.


Getting back to the point, near the end of the yoga video (about 35 minutes), we, the students, are sitting in a pool of sweat, our sides heaving, gasping for air and Tony, calm, cool and collected as ever, is doing some hamstring stretches. He tucks one leg in, stretches the other one out and proceeds to place his head on his knee, easy. Easy? Is it hell. The first time I tried doing this, my back and hamstrings protested and I got to an angle of about 45º. While he is doing this, Tony starts talking about the importance of consistency. "Do your workouts, Keep turning up, and soon you will be hanging out on the floor with me". Then he utters the magic words "Decide, Commit, Succeed".

Three little words, so easy to say, so difficult to follow. There are many times when I "fall off the wagon" so to speak and I go through weeks/months of not joining Tony on the floor sitting in a pool of my own congealing sweat. However, his voice eventually penetrates the fog of apathy, frustration and lethargy that occasionally envelops me like a Dementor from Harry Potter, 
(http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Dementor), and I start again and again and again and again (you get the message).


I was reflecting on Tony and what I have achieved with him over the last 4 years. Thanks to the yoga videos my core strength and flexibility are very much better. I have to add here that I am now 54 and since the age of 28 I have been suffering from the effects of two herniated discs - thanks to my time in the 12th Infantry Battalion. For years the doctors and physios told me that I had to in the wonderful Spanish expression "Agua y Ajo" - something like "suck it up and f*** you". And so I did, getting more and more unhealthy, overweight and miserable.


Today I am still overweight (not training for 4 months) but I am in much better shape than before (I just ran 10km for the second time in 3 days - without pain, stress or discomfort - thanks to "natural running" https://youtu.be/zSIDRHUWlVo. I can almost get my head to my knees, I can get my leg WAY up over my head during Kickboxing training - much to the amazement of the trainers and the other students, all of whom are years/decades younger than me.


So all in all, I am doing OK. Of course I could be a lot better. Tony Horton is 57, I don't think I will ever achieve his levels of fitness or look as good. This isn't why I hate him, it is his voice that speaks to me at 06:00 in the mornings to get out of bed and drag on the running gear. "Bring it, bring it, bring it". In many ways he reminds me of one of my NCOs who used to wake us during our recruit training by hitting our metal lockers with a large stick. "Yes Tony", and up I get. I hate you but I love the results.

Facebook updates

Today is a very quiet day, of course, not only is it Sunday, it also an extended long weekend here.

If people are bored, you can always check out some of the latest things I posted on my  Ingés con Alan facebook page. 

I have uploaded some more photos from the 2014 and 2015 summer courses in Ireland (more pending - waiting on permission from parents), and some interesting articles in Spanish about Irish literature and some political/historical information about the the differences between the UK, and Ireland, Scotland and England (always a great source of confusion for people here).

https://www.facebook.com/Ingl%C3%A9s-Con-Alan-1100018310022074/

Happy reading and enjoy the rest of the long weekend.

Inglés con Alan

Taller sábado 12 diciembre 2015

12:00      Welcome – objectives / plan for workshop

12:10      “Icebreaker” activities – asking for and giving personal information presenting others to the group, revision of ‘Wh’ questions, “this/that/these/those,

pronunciation of ” /s/ /z/,long and short “i”sounds.

             Pronunciation drills “ship or sheep”.

12:30      Introduction to conversation techniques / eliciting and expressing opinions.

12:40      Break

12:50      Pair work, practising question phrases.

13:00      Group discussion on a chosen topic

13:25      End of workshop and feedback