Voyeurism

Photography has always been fascinating, but now it's even better.

Read about the photographic exhibition at

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/24/arts/gefter.php?WT.mc_id=newsalert

Air Supply - Without You

One of my perennial favourites, and the version by Air Supply, not Mariah Carey.

Air Supply - Without You
Uploaded by Zerenodo

the lonely planet story

If you like travelogues, then this will appeal to you because this is the story of travel publishing's biggest name. You read about the start of the Lonely Planet, its growth into one of the world's most successful series of travel guides, and you get to learn of the authors' initial travels that gave birth to their first guidebook. As a bonus, you also get a little glimpse of the family struggles of traveller-publisher parents that are Tony and Maureen Wheeler. Someone cleverly observed the significance of their name: Wheeler. With a name like that, no wonder they are doing what they are doing.

As the writers would like us to believe, Lonely Planet started as a bit of an accident. They were responding to questions like "How do you get from here to there? And not get sick?” And spend only shoestrings? Thinking they might as well get paid for the advice dispensed, they wrote a guidebook on Asia based on their first UK-to-Australia trip that ended up with them migrating Down Under.

In turn, this book also is a response to the question: "How did two backpackers with twenty-seven cents to their names end up running a multinational company?" Well, if I might be allowed to add to their story: with a lot of courage, passion, spontaneity and just sheer blindness - blindness to the difficulties that lay ahead, that was. In life, we always have to choose to focus on certain things and ignore others. The Wheelers had chosen to ignore the difficulties of being the pioneer and going where not many people had gone before.

The book starts as a straightforward travel story with them deciding to spend one year making an overland trip from UK to Australia to "get travel out of [their] systems..."before they settled down to a 9-5 routine. It transforms later into an insider account of their rough-and-tumble trial-and-error process of publishing. You get the feeling that it was all an experiment starting from conceptualising the first book, to deciding to write the second book, to publishing their own and finally to doing it full-time. The book also makes you realise that like all start-ups, the Wheelers had their fair share of problems. You also get the feeling that they had never left the unstable period of starting up, as they face crisis after crisis. That is when, halfway through, the book loses its central plot, and Tony goes into an issue-by-issue recount of challenges in all the various facets of business as they arose and got tackled: printing, advertising, copyright and so on.

Furthermore, Tony’s personal voice helps the reader find a personal connection with the couple as they tackle the problems. For example, in the beginning there was always a struggle to find the money to pay for everything, so that even a trip to Europe to participate in a book fair had to be sponsored by a business partner. In a way, when we are employee, we never think about how everything is to be paid for. We rest assured that expenditure is to be reimbursed. But the owners recognise that reimbursements and travel expenses come from their own money! This is a particularly relevant insight presently as I extricate myself from permanent employment, so that I am employed on 'casual contracts'. This means that I'm pretty much independent: I get paid only when I work, I don't get annual leave, no medical benefits, and no expense account. My bank account is my expense account. The good thing is I get the illusion of independence.

So the book traces the development of the company, and parallels it with the growth of the family, allowing readers more than a glimpse into their family life. Gradually, Lonely Planet became financially stable, and it expanded overseas, but it also became corporatised and impersonal. At the same time the family also grew, as they acquired two children, Tashi and Kieran, both of whom became experienced travellers as they accompanied their parents overseas practically as soon as they were born. The writers even shares with us a period of difficulty in the marriage (and of course growing-teenager problems with their children Tashi and Kieran). What is pretty surprising to read about (I'm not an Asian chauvinist! Maybe just ignorant) is that the Wheelers actually called back home to their parents in the UK to report on where they were as they moved from country to country on that first trip around the world. And their parents actually became worried when they neglected to call (you can't find phones easily in some places).

It is a pleasant read. If you have enjoyed reading their easy-to-read guidebooks, this book provides another guide - into greater insight into the company’s growth and the Wheelers' family lives.

Sounds cancel each other

Sounds cancel one another out.

At the bus stop, with all the buses and cars and motorcycles thundering past, I couldn't hear the phone at all.

I could only see the LED light flash as the sms came in; it was like a silent movie.

The clicking tone of the sms alert was drowned out by the traffic. Amazing.

Here Is Love

And another song that's very beeeautiful! (But strangely similar to the previous one...)

Amazing, all coming in one service! More!

HERE IS LOVE (C)
C F
Here is love vast as the ocean
C G
Loving kindness as the flood
C F
When the Prince of life our ransom
C G C
Shed for us His precious blood
C G
Who His love will not remember
Dm7 C
Who can cease to sing His praise
F
He can never be forgotten
C G C
Throughout heaven’s eternal days

On the mount of crucifixion
Fountains opened deep and wide
Through the flood gates of God’s mercy
Flowed a vast and gracious tide
Grace and love like mighty rivers
Poured incessant from above
Heaven’s peace and perfect justice
Kissed a guilty world in love

Let me all Thy love accepting
Love Thee ever all my days
Let me seek Thy kingdom only
And my life be to Thy praise
Thou alone shalt be my glory
Nothing in the world I see
Thou hast cleansed and sanctified me
Thou Thyself hast set me free

In Thy truth Thou dost direct me
By the Spirit, through Thy word
And Thy grace my need is meeting
As I trust in Thee my Lord
All Thy fullness Thou art pouring
In Thy love and power in me
Without measure, full and boundless
As I yield myself to Thee

I Know Who Holds Tomorrow

A very beautiful song that I just heard today. Or do you prefer to hear someone sing it?

I Know Who Holds Tomorrow
by Ira Stanphill (1950)

I don't know about tomorrow;
I just live from day to day.
I don't borrow from its sunshine
For its skies may turn to grey.

I don't worry o'er the future,
For I know what Jesus said.
And today I'll walk beside Him,
For He knows what is ahead.

Many things about tomorrow
I don't seem to understand
But I know who holds tomorrow
And I know who holds my hand.

Every step is getting brighter
As the golden stairs I climb;
Every burden's getting lighter,
Every cloud is silver-lined.

There the sun is always shining,
There no tear will dim the eye;
At the ending of the rainbow
Where the mountains touch the sky.

Many things about tomorrow
I don't seem to understand
But I know who holds tomorrow
And I know who holds my hand.

I don't know about tomorrow;
It may bring me poverty.
But the one who feeds the sparrow,
Is the one who stands by me.

And the path that is my portion
May be through the flame or flood;
But His presence goes before me
And I'm covered with His blood.

Many things about tomorrow
I don't seem to understand
But I know who holds tomorrow
And I know who holds my hand.

Jumping the Gun

There's a discovery that when we read our eyes don't read the whole word. Our eyes fix on two points in a word and the brain processes that word so we understand it.
The article can be found here:

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyid=2007-09-10T083524Z_01_L07935239_RTRUKOC_0_US-EYEMOVEMENTS-READING.xml&src=nl_usmorningdigest

And the intelligent scientists' reaction is to want to teach children to read like that.

Wait a minute, this is NOT a reading strategy employed by just any reader! This strategy is used by efficient readers! And efficient readers are able to do this because over the years, after using all the strategies of slowly reading, their eyes and brains have discovered and assimilated into instinct what are redundant strategies. And thus intelligent scientists observe what seem to be simplified mechanical movements associated with superior reading abilities.

No, these are not simplified mechanical movements. These are movements of increased efficacy born of years of practice, not a short cut!

How do they imagine they can teach children - and children with reading difficulties - to read by locating spots?

Just as you can't teach someone to punch just by teaching the mechanics of movements, angle of fist, height of the arm in relation to the body... No, a punch is more than angles and movements. It also involves speed and strength born of years of practice - the muscles of the arms, wrists and hands, at the very least, must grow to be strong so that the arm can throw the punch fast and strong. And be deadly.

A perfect punch - in terms of angles and posture - is useless if there is no power in it. Perfect mechanised eye movements in reading is fruitless without the internalised ability to sum up the meaning of words that the eyes take in just through glancing at print!

News article

Here's the article which triggered the previous entry, just in case it gets archived or shifted or deleted or whatever it is that online papers do to old articles.


Eyes lock on different letters when reading

Mon Sep 10, 2007 4:35 AM ET
By Michael Kahn


YORK (Reuters) - When we read our eyes lock on to different letters in the same word instead of scanning a page smoothly from left to right as previously thought, researchers said on Monday.


Using sophisticated eye tracking equipment, the team looked at letters within a word and found that people combined parts of a word that were on average two letters apart, said Simon Liversedge, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Southampton.


The findings could lead to better methods of teaching children to read and offer remedial treatments for those with reading disorders such as dyslexia, said Liversedge, who presented his work at a meeting organized by the British Association for the Advancement of Science.


"What I'm trying to understand is the relationship between the physiological processes that underpin human written language comprehension and their relationship with eye movements people make to read sentences," he said in a telephone interview.


Over the past 40 years scientists have studied eye movements and reading, with a general consensus that people look at the same letter within a word with both eyes, Liversedge said.


To test this, Liversedge and colleagues measured the reflections of a low-intensity infrared beam shone into a volunteer's eye when reading. This allowed the researchers to pinpoint exactly where the eye had fixated on a word.


Then they ran further tests to see why people did not have double vision from picking out individual letters and found that the brain fuses the two signals that come in from the different eyes into one clear image, Liversedge said.


"It had always been assumed that both eyes moved in perfect harmony and you looked at a word with just one fixation," he said. "Because of this assumption scientists looking at reading behavior have just measured one of the eyes because they assumed the eyes were doing the same thing."


The findings also add to a wealth of information about eye movements that scientists have built up over the years as they seek a better grasp of how we understand written language, Liversedge said.


They also help paint an overall picture of language comprehension that can one day benefit those with reading problems and disorders, he added.


"In order to fully understand what is going wrong in people with reading difficulties, we first need to understand what is involved in normal language comprehension," he said.

Hide and Seek with books

There seems to be a new game being played at public libraries nowadays. It's called Hide and Seek with Books. Here's how it is played: you take a book from the shelf and place it in another shelf. And you continue doing this with all the books you fancy. The end result is books with new homes on new shelves.

The benefit of this game is that it makes it more exciting for readers when they are looking for books they want to read. Now, where's that book by Virginia Woolf? No, it's not under WOO, it's under LUD! But what's this book under WOO? Harry Potter by JK Rowling? Now that's a bonus find! It makes finding a book such a joy, since no one can find what they were looking for in the first place.

It also provides work for the librarians who have to spend time putting these books back on their correct shelves. Why else do we need librarians, but to put books back and spoil the fun of the hide-and-seekers?

Or it just shows that people are simply incapable of putting books back where they found them. What's so hard about that, you'd wonder? Pick the book up from the shelf, flip through it, don't like it, put it back.

But no, people go:
1. Pick the book up.
2. Flip through it.
3. Don't like it.
4. Back on the end of the shelf.
4a (to make it more exciting) Place it on the next shelf!

If you can pick up a book between two others, you'd assume you can put it back in the same place? Why take the trouble to place it in another spot? Surely that will take more time: "Now, where should I place this? at the end of the shelf? the shelf above or the shelf below?"

And oh yes, have we mentioned the ultimate benefit? Greater creativity! Doesn't it generate the kind of variety and buzz that everyone is looking for? Why should books conform to shelves and labels? Just like people, books are independent, and should be allowed to go anywhere they want. Why follow rules when you can be free indeed?