I have had an inflatable globe for several years. It has helped me when searching for obscure countries described in the news. Or working out how the earth’s tilt affects seasons, just one last time before I forget again. Somehow the three dimensional view of planet earth is so much more interesting than those flattened impressions in books.

But, and here comes the problem, it lately started to deflate. A few days after blowing it up from the convenient valve in the north pole, my planet earth has begun to sag. And like all people who tend to think in metaphors, this elementary story made me explore in my mind how the real planet earth is beginning to sag. I mean, how much more damage can it take? After 2016 was measured to be the hottest in the last 800,000 years few can still support the argument against climate by saying change is normal. Of course change is normal; that is not what is being measured. What is apparent is a significant sag in the jowls. She’s looking like an old lady this wonderful planet of ours although she still has millions of years to live. The presence of these little things called humans is a thorn in her side and she is losing puff.

We can see this in many ways. One is the issue of ‘light pollution’. Photographs from near earth orbit taken of the parts of the globe in darkness, reveal a terrible beauty. Parts of Europe appear to be in the midst of fire-storms,. Cities and conurbations lurk in the centre of fibre optic pathways of light leading to phosphorescent coastal fringes. So much so that animals, insects and plants, living in those areas are confused in their diurnal cycles. Trees are coming to leaf too early.

And yet, of all the ‘environmental problems’ which land on ministers desks with an estimate or invoice attached, this is one of the cheapest to fix. We don’t need a lot of the light, for instance. It’s just light spilt from badly designed luminaires. Levels of light needed are assumed to be high, when in fact the human eye needs contrast rather than a lot of light. Many people feel unsafe in dark streets, and yet if they examined the situation more rationally, they might be safer in the dark. No one can see you in the dark. When I was in the army we learnt to operate in darkness. In training we had to polish our black boots in total darkness whilst maintaining an all round defensive position in a wood.

Getting used to less light is a small ask and actually, a cost saving measure. Until those who make decisions on our behalf can do the easy environmental fixes, how are they ever going to find the intention and the means to fix the big stuff? Trumpty Dumpty will have to maintain email links with his ‘climate change denial’ chums because it suits American big business.

I wonder if he was somehow propelled into space and looked down at a deflating earth, whether this change of view, would change his view on the global issue that generations of earthlings are spinning towards at astronomical speeds. Will he cry when he sees the half deceased Great Barrier Reef; the largest half living thing visible from spance?

Perhaps the scariest aspect of the dying earth scenario is the current plan to move to Mars.

The argument is that this is what man has always done. Explored. That is true in the historical situations when people could ‘go west’ into pristine, unspoilt lands. But that isn’t possible any longer. The people of Easter Island, knocked down all the trees and died out because there was nowhere else they could go. Mars is a similar Ocean away and unsuitable for sustained life. It is not heaven. Heaven is here on earth.

As a footnote I will say that at the north pole, we still have a quick fix. Pull out the stopper, blow into it and put the stopper back in tight. It worked on my globe for a few days.

Have you ever wondered what is the recipe for success? Well here is my recipe.

Ingredients

Two free range eggs – exploration, determination, potential

Half a pint of milk – love

1kg of organic home milled flour – substance, practicality

tea spoon full of brown sugar – happiness, optimism

pinch of salt – tolerance, compassion

Break the eggs into a mixing bowl. It is impossible to start any enterprise without losing something. Eggs are already perfect and contain the potential for life. However they must be broken before other processes can start, even if this is painful. The cook must be aware that the eggs begin a long journey of alchemical change and transmutation.

Next add the organic unpasteurised milk. It must be unpasteurised because heating to high temperatures destroys the life and goodness in the milk. So avoid any processes that involve destruction and negativity. However detached you are, processes that cause harm will always affect you. Organic means that it has not been treated artificially for the benefit of the farmer rather than the hungry. Beware of the motivations of others as they may not share your interests. Milk is a wholesome food, like eggs, at the beginning of a journey. As in life we all need as much goodness as possible to keep us nourished and expanding in body and mind as nature and the angels intend.

Now sift in the flour and stir into the milk and eggs. The sifting is necessary as not everything is as good as it seems. There will always be some lumps and bumps on the way that just have to be removed or avoided. This is not you but the flour at fault, and although it may feel wasteful, the interests of the final result takes greater precedence than avoiding waste. You may find some other use for the lumps if that really bothers you. The effect of the flour will be to bring the fluids into a more stable, solid state. It is good to be flexible but you can have too much of a good thing and the adding of a solid ingredient brings the mixture into a state of being solid and flexible. Much easier to work with and meet the desired result.

Now add a teaspoonful of brown sugar. The final mixture will be far easier to enjoy if it is done with the positivity and zest that we obtain from sugar. Anyone who is feeling down needs the boost that sugar provides. Go easy on the sugar though because too much can become harmful, even poisonous as ethanol.

Finally, add a pinch of salt. In this recipe it is vital that no dogmas are entered into. Following ideas and procedures blindly will produce consistently boring food. It will sustain for a while but eventualy the pattern becomes more important than the plate. When you see this happening to you, add salt to taste, even if you doctor has told you to avoid salt. All rules are made to be broken and in moderation will set a new and exciting direction to travel.

Now make the mixture into a ball and place it on a cold surface dusted with flour. Roll out the ball until it is a flat circle and place on a baking tray for twenty minutes at 180C.

Life is an alchemical process and we are transmuting base ingredients into something greater with every breath we take.

One final foot note. You might be feeling that this recipe could have been longer or shorter. It might have included some more exciting, interesting, unusual, bizarre ingredients. Of course it could. And I have jotted it down not so much as anything worldly or wise but lead up to an observation by the Chinese philosopher and mystic, Lao Tsu who said; a good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.

May I paraphrase him a little with the final ingredient;

The good cook has no fixed recipe and is not intent on eating.

A. A friend of mine, he’s a Tibetan Buddhist. He lived in a box for three years.

B. Three years!

A. Yes. Not a real box like a new television set arrives in. More like how a fire place has a low surround around the hearth. But that’s the deal. No movement.

B. I cannot imagine having my freedom taken away like that.

A. He was in search of an inner freedom. A spiritual freedom. Enlightenment. When you are no longer attached to things.

B. We live free country. That’s enough for me.

A. Really? You think you are free? And yet your thoughts have been conditioned since you were born. People, the environment, technology…they all take away your freedom don’t they?

B. How?

A. Well start with people. Your family. They all put in but at a price. Parents are always judging you and you are always trying to please them. Friends; they are fun to be with but hard work aren’t they? And then there is the rest of society; watching how you dress, drink, behave, consume.

Consider the environment. Books have been written on how the world into which we are born, stimulates and moulds us. We totally ignore our perceptions and information filters and think we are like cameras. But we are not. What we see is what we believe and most of the time we don’t see at all.

B. What do you mean?

A. Well, take this morning. Did you watch the sun rise?

B. No. I was asleep.

A. Well I stepped outside at four this morning and saw the stars against the great blackness. The moon was rising low on the horizon. A few hours later came the miracle which is sunrise. Have you ever thought how amazing it is that the sun rises every day?

B. Well it has to doesn’t it?

A. From our infinitely small perspective as human observers on the surface of a planet spinning at one thousand miles per hour, nothing guarantees the appearance of the sun each day. One day the earth will stop spinning and the sun run out of fuel. It’s an infinitely long way away but it will. And consider how the sun never actually sets or rises. That’s just because we are fixed to the earth, but if we could travel at th e same speed of the earth the sun would never set or rise again, depending on which side of the earth you are on.

B. That’s pretty amazing. I hadn’t thought along those lines.

A. All of our thoughts constrain or liberate us. We hold back from thinking and doing new things as much as possible out of fear. If we haven’t done it or been there, it’s going to cost us some emotional well being. But mountaineers don’t think like that. They do what they do because they are prepared to face their fears and if necessary encounter death. They know that the pluses of pushing to the extreme, greatly outweigh the minuses of sitting in the restaurant watching climbers through a telescope.

B. I guess I don’t all have what it takes.

A. You don’t have to climb mountains. That’s just an analogy. What I mean is that we need to face our fears, get out of our comfort zones in everything we do. When you drive to work, you always take the same route, yes?

B. More of less. It’s quicker.

A. That’s it. We justify our habits with rational statements, but never balance what we lose with what we stand to gain. If you deliberately found twenty different routes to work, you may have to start leaving earlier but you would be breaking free from your routines.

A. Seeing new sights.

B. Exactly and by analogy and literally, thinking new thoughts. A new environment can change our perception. That’s why we enjoy holidays. But some people go to the same place every year. They are not even beginning to be free. It’s just a replay of the year before. Just like our thoughts are replays. The same ideas we have had for years, since we were children even, stay in our heads and we repeat our ideas to those around us without ever realising how bored they are of listening.

A. But if your lived in a box or a cave wouldn’t that be boring?

B. To start with yes, but the mind is a cave in it’s own right. Prisoners in extreme solitary confinement will tell how after a while they began to hallucinate. They travel into their own minds and see, feel, experience things and places that those outside, could never imagine. Who then is really free?

I have a new App on my tablet called Earthquakes and Volcanoes. Do you know how many earthquakes there have been in the world in the last two hours? (at the time of writing!) Thirteen. None were over five on the Richter scale but still, measurable earthquakes.

Last night on the news we were watching the victims of the recent major earthquake on the Iran Iraq border in which over five hundred people were killed. Yet the media do not report the thirteen earthquakes in the last two hour. Why? Well obviously, minor earthquakes do not cause large loss of life and property and so, are not news.

It occurs to me that most ‘news’ is analogous to the reporting of earthquakes. Only the extreme stories are reported. It is not hard then to realise that by watching only news bulletins we can gain an extreme and unbalanced view of the world. No one intends this to happen (except in countries where the state control the media) but in the free press, only stories about the extreme are published.

There is an old saying that ‘one swallow does not make a summer’. We can all think of examples of the truth of this. Just because the new car has broken down once does not mean it is going to continually break down. Just because we had a bad day at the office does not mean we should resign. Aircraft do crash, but not often.

Mother Earth sustains these massive shocks on her tectonic boundaries constantly, but does not give up on keeping the lid on things. Imagine if we had had thirteen earthquakes the size of the one in the Middle East every two hours. We would change from living in a world where very occasionally horror and destruction hits communities somewhere in the world, to it being an hourly occurrence. The press would run out of superlatives.

In painting the occurrence of one unusual event in photographic detail, the press create two impressions at once. Firstly, that we live in a dangerous place and secondly that the risk to all of us is great. The first is true. The second is not. Newspapers do not provide each reader with a risk assessment for their situation. It would be impractical. But by not putting ourselves in the picture in a realistic way, we can become paranoid. Yes, earthquakes happen more frequently than we report to you, but most of them are harmless.

Consider crime and the fear of crime. The press in the United Kingdom report murders forensically but fail to point out how few happen each year. Neither do they reassure us that the victims of violent crime are generally young males. As people do not do their own research, elderly females ( the opposite of the real risk group ) live in fear in their own homes, don’t answer the door or go out at night.

If a political group has a message that is not being reported in the media, they might descend into extremism. Become a massive volcano and you are guaranteed world coverage. In the times of the Northern Ireland ‘troubles’ the UK government combated this by forbiddingthe  reporting of atrocities using what were called D-notices. The effect was to not throw petrol on the fire. Today however, I have to wonder how much the reporting of extreme news has contributed to misery, fear and at worst, depression.

The truth is that our houses are not going to fall down in an earthquake, we are not going to be murdered in our own homes, or die in a terrorist incident. And with that truth we should all sit back and agree with Louis Armstrong singing that song, ‘It’s a Wonderful World’. And you won’t read a statement like that in your daily paper.

It’s not often I choose to write about sport. I have never been able to whip up enthusiasm for competitive sports – which my games teacher at school chastised me for, more than once. I just happen to think there are more constructive things to do in this world than bish, bash bosh.

One of the least interesting of these time wasting activities is called ‘football’. Why? Because this is one of the few sports which is capable of producing a nil, nil score. The mere thought of sitting in one place for a couple of hours watching colourfully clad people kick a round thing and not even scoring, fills me with righteous conceit. Surely the idea of a sport is to create a thrill, an excitement, a feeling of mutual accomplishment. Two scores rise in competition with one another, as time ticks away. Such a situation has the ingredients of entertainment and is apparent in tennis and cricket and many other sports. However football stands on it’s own in being able to totally frustrate it’s players and spectators.

Imagine then that you are Italian and watching the World Cup Qualifiers Second Round Game 2, 2017. There are your players – magnificent in Italian blue, pink, orange whatever it is, against Sweden. Up and down they all run and at half time nothing has been achieved. Well, you think, as you down a couple of pizzas and beer or wine or whatever stimulant they sell at football matches, in the next half we will score. But as the effect of the half time refreshments has dulled into a sleep producing paralysis, the football is having the same effect. Nil Nil. Nil Points as they say in the Euro Song Contest. Now’t put in and now’t taken out. Zilch Zilch. Nada, Niente. As King Lear would have said if he was there, ‘nothing comes of nothing, speak again!’

So the Italians are out of the World Cup this time around. Oh dear. Not much left to hold the country together now. Watch out for Catalan-style rebellion in Italy!

My mind starts to look for solutions when I see an obvious problem like this. Why is football so boring? Clearly, it is too hard to score a goal. If the final score was 10-12, you can imagine that some pretty skilful dodging and kicking had been going on. Thousands of people would be crowding into bars and restaurants with the satisfaction that they had spent their fifty Euros wisely, whoever had won.

The rules need tweaking. That’s the answer. Change the rules and reduce the skill needed to put the ball in the back of the net. As Eddy Waring used to say, Well Jim, it’s all about putting the ball in the back of the net. You can see I am drawing on his knowledge of the game.

With this premise, one can imagine widening or raising the goal, or both. Or if a normal size goal is too hard a target, then get rid of the goalie. Wait…and give all players inside the penalty area the ability to touch the ball and do goalie dives and stuff. What a lot of fun that would be!

I am not saying I have the perfect solution. It’s just that someone needs to burst the rules that are constraining the game. You could have two footballs in play, for instance. Players and spectators would have to keep their eyes on two moving objects. And if you see active sports as analogous to war or hunting, that is closer to a battlefield or wood full of wild boar. Life is complex and rule setting for a game, is no more than reducing the variables of life to make activity simple and measurable.

So come on football! For all the interest that you generate internationally and all the money that swills around, go back to basics. Have good look at what you are doing. Be open to the idea that perhaps, just perhaps – as my games teacher used to write on my school reports – you could do better.

I am introducing a new word to describe a new problem – Vaugism. It means being deliberately vaugue in order to lead someone on. It is happening more and more and normally I can spot it, but some times, only after I commit.

It happened to me first when I went to a dating agency. This was some time ago, before computers. It was the first and last time I considered using such a service. I met the proprietor who took my details and then handed me a list of suitable suitors. Against each name was a space with a description of that person. The words filled only one third of the space available and immediately I saw what was going on. The less information I am given about the prospective partner, the more likely I am going to want to meet them. Why, after all, would you not want to fill that space? Most people could fill an A4 sheet of paper about themselves. Some would go a lot further. But once you have the detail, are you going to like them more or less? Well, obviously the more detail, the less likely you are going to want to meet them and less likely to pay a fee. The company was in this for fees, not to make people happy, and therefore, best business practice is ‘vaugism’. I spotted the business strategy, decided not to waste my time and others and left without paying a bean.

But with the coming of computers, vaugism is on the rampage. I bought a bike on e-bay. I was keen to buy an aluminium bike and this bike was described as ‘an aluminium bike’ in the heading. What could go wrong? Well after I won the bid it emerged that this was a steel bike, not an aluminium bike. The lady said she was selling it for a friend. She argued that if I had read the questions and responses I would have seen that it was steel. I argued that I had no reason to read the Q and A’s as all I wanted was an aluminium bike. I did the honourable thing and refunded her advertising costs, which made her think I was admitting guilt and she kept being annoyed at my ebay style. I replied that I had never submitted a false selling description on ebay, and she shut up.

I went into a restaurant with a list of meals on a chalk board. I chose one. The waiter said that was not available. As I continued through the menu it became apparent he had very little on offer at all. Instead of creating a new menu, they prefer to get customers in, sell them a drink and then disapoint them.

Artificial intelligence is based on algorithms. A restaurant menu is just a small algorithm with yes, no answers in respect to availability. That is fine for websites and business models designed to get the money, before disappointing the customer. Algorithms have no shades of grey, no ‘maybe’, ‘perhaps’, ‘sometimes’, ‘subject to this and that’. It either is or is not. Artificially vaugue.

So when I booked a hotel for this weekend, I knew that above all else, I wanted to be able to park at the hotel. I selected the search filter for hotels that offered parking. I chose rooms in a hotel out of the busy city centre because most hotels in town had no parking. I paid my money. All booked and happy. Then along comes a confirmation email saying that I need to pay extra for parking and book it in advance. This was suprise! Ok, I will pay anything to park, so book it. Then comes the reply email, ‘please ask at reception on arrival who will see if a space is available.’

I have been cleverly moved through a series of options from ‘parking available’ to ‘maybe parking available’. If the second option had been presented at the begining, then I would have chosen somewhere else. Well done vaugism, you just caught another unsuspecting customer.

Friends rented a house claiming, accurately, to sleep nine people. It omitted to state how many bedrooms there were. Yes, that hits the ‘vaugism’ alarm! It turns out four of the beds are in one room. It’s a three bedroom house, not four, cleverly disguised by ommision. I slept on a mattress in the living room.

I have health insurance as I live in Europe. It says that the health insurance covers the cost of an ambulance. So on the day when I think I am dying and call an ambulance using 112 the european emergency number, an ambulance came. But later, when it thankfully emerged to be a scare only, the health insurance people refuse to pay for the cost of the ambulance. Why? Because they know something you don’t. In this country there is a system of private and public ambulances. I didn’t read that in the policy summary? Even if the public ambulance is three kilometers away and the private ambulance is twenty, you have to wait for the private ambulance and take your chances on not dying in the meantime. If you are unconscious, and an ambulance is called on your behalf, no one is going to know or ask if you need a private ambulance.

I find it hard to believe that such an unethical and unfair system exists in any European country, but it does in Spain. If you are selling health insurance, you need to keep this information under wraps, which means write it ‘terms and conditions’. To draw customers into buying a policy, be vaugue in the summary and just say, ‘ambulance included.’

Vauguism is sometimes unconcealed stupidity, sometimes concealed cunning. It is down to the customer to read the small print in every contract. If the contract is vaugue, and new information comes along after you have paid, reach for the feedback button. Let all the other unsuspecting customers that the vaugism virus is endemic.

There is a regular piece in a local magazine called ‘Useless Facts’. To indulge you, here is a taster; ‘The collective noun for a group of Wombats is a wisdom’.

We live in an age of abundant trivia. Our desire for it appears in the game ‘Trivial Pursuit‘, crossword puzzles and game shows on TV. We strain our memories for obscure facts as ageing weight lifters reaching for one more cerebral lift. The sight is rarely inspiring. So why are facts so useless?

I was inspired by T.S. Eliot many years ago when I read the following lines in his poem ‘The Rock’;

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

He was perhaps one of the first thinkers to formulate these distinctions, back in the 1930’s.

Later, an extra level was added which is ‘data’ and is a subdivision of information. He might have written; Where is the data we have lost in information? This idea is sometimes abbreviated to DIKW – just in case you ever get asked what this means a quiz.

I am personally less interested in ‘data’ because it is the same as my definition of information; ‘the smallest subdivision of thought’.

So I shall start considering information. We know that it is fundamental to every thought process. With bad information, we make bad decisions. Science depends on being able to measure and repeat experiments until the information is correct.

With the unimaginable amounts of information being collected now in the Information Age, it is fundamental that it is processed rationally. We need to see the wood for the trees. Processing is the step we take to find knowledge. The process is analogous to the game of ‘joining the dots’ to allow an unseen picture emerge.

The military have always been good at finding ‘intelligence’ (knowledge) in the maelstrom of information. They grade it on a continuum between that which is not likely to be true and that which is. Not only that but the source is graded between ‘reliable’ and ‘unknown’. In this way any picture emerging from the dots can be graded as likely of unlikely to be true.

Police Forces use a similar process in order to target their resources. They need to know what is going on and who is doing it, where and when. The computer has been the answer to a prayer for the police. The information comes streaming in to their computers every second of everyday and is stored there, for a rainy day. The day comes when someone, somewhere wants to know everything about a particular villain. His favourite brand of cigarettes matching a packet found at a murder scene is not significant, but adds another dot in the process of knowing what happened.

Just as information forms a picture, so does knowledge. When you begin to piece together some knowledge of life as you age, you might be regarded as becoming wise. Wise because you are seen to connect different areas of knowledge to form a bigger picture. This picture has a certain ‘universality’ about it. The patterns, the laws, the philosophy, the truths, the traditions, the ‘old wives tales’ – are true for this time and place in a way that almost goes beyond time and place. They are so true that even when the facts change and the knowledge on which they are based changes – even then, wisdom does not decree another course. It is so broad, that it can maintain a course, a straight path, to achieve an aim. And it knows what that aim is – whilst those who process information may have no idea.

Those facts you learnt in school cease to mean anything as you get older, for the world becomes a larger place and wisdom operates in a totally different way. Facts cannot change by definition. If they do they become a new fact. Wisdom has the option to self evolve; to set a new aim and method of achieving it. It can be subtle or radical because it never digs itself into so deep a hole that it is reluctant to dig somewhere else. Wisdom is liquid, like an ocean and operates in the way that tides flow this way and that.

So when you watch a world leader who cannot change their mind or cannot make up their mind, or know their mind – you are watching someone engrossed in facts and knowledge. Even when they glimpse an aim or voice once someone else suggested, they have no idea how to achieve it. They have forgotten, as T.S. Elliot so elegantly puts it, wisdom.

Do you remember those maps in school history lessons showing how sailing ships used the trade winds to deliver human cargoes from Africa to North America, American to Liverpool and then back to Africa? The Slave Triangle.

Looking today at weary eyes in a photograph of black Africans crowding a fishing boat bound for Europe, I was reminded of the inhumane and cramped conditions on the slave sailing boats in history. Then they were forced on board, now they are desperate to get on board. Ironic.

After the abolition of the slave trade, many stayed on in the Caribbean and North America. Even in modern America, this once cheap labour force is now a thorn in it’s side, demanding not unreasonably, equal rights. They were, after all, a driving force in making the United States of America. The America Civil War dead might have made the victors value what they fought for more.

Odd too, that after the slave trade, the European nation states, carved up Africa for their own. Instead of being transported, which was clearly wrong, Africans became slaves in their own countries. On the positive side, the Colonial powers replaced the mineral wealth they stole, with roads, railways, schools, hospitals, churches, law, government. Even today, some Africans recognise the old colonial state boundaries rather than tribal or other delineations, when voting.

When the colonial powers left Africa in the middle of the nineteenth century, new national flags fluttered proudly above public parties that went on for several nights. And yet, and yet, in the decades leading up to the present day, Africa and African States have failed in most respects to bring prosperity to Africans. That’s a generalisation I know, but the impact of the colonialists and their status as an easy focus for blame when things go wrong, has allowed African politicians to not try too hard. That last phrase is instead of saying what they have really done since. Even where brutal and unlawful white regimes have been replaced by black majority governments, such as the African National Congress in South Africa, during their decades of government, living conditions have hardly moved on, promises forgotten.

And all of this in a land mass bigger than Europe, the United States of America and China. Why is not Africa the wealthiest and healthiest continent? It even avoided communism – and has had so much free money donated by the rest of the world that a new phrase of ‘donor fatigue’ is being heard.

Whatever has been going on, the stretched out lines of bodies in the rubber boats heading for Europe, show that some Africans are desperate enough to leave their homelands and risk their lives in that attempt.

It’s a continent consisting of diverse nation states, diverse tribal loyalties, unworthy leaders, disease, extreme weather and environments, all inhibiting it’s human and animal populations to prosper. And yet it has so much potential, natural wealth, rich farming, education and emerging liberating technologies, that it’s future has to be good.