tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78057162024-03-08T11:34:18.310+00:00KapitanoKapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.comBlogger2398125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-36537169194085446372018-09-02T10:43:00.000+01:002018-09-02T11:00:34.111+01:00<p dir="ltr">11:02 Saturday September 1st 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">Today, another short story about the future.</p> <p dir="ltr">-----</p> <p dir="ltr">The first generation of virtual reality was the written word.</p> <p dir="ltr">Scratched into dirt, chiseled into stone, stained onto paper, stamped onto books, and eventually projected through a screen - the recording of speech was second only to speech itself as a way to make thinking communal.</p> <p dir="ltr">And always among the first things recorded: Sex. Or rather, sex fantasy. Mankind is a social, political, speaking, thinking, imagining animal - one with an underlying need not to procreate, but to give and receive pleasure.</p> <p dir="ltr">Wherever there is sex and wherever there is technology, there are moral guardians. Eternally offended prophets of doom, predicting imminent "moral destruction", a coded term for their own loss of power, always somehow associated with economic collapse.</p> <p dir="ltr">Exactly by what mechanism this apocalypse was supposed to occur, and how a return to their favoured superstition could avert it, was never made clear. Likewise, the link between embracing religion and rejecting technology was kept vague. But the least understood fears are the greatest, and the least defined hopes the most alluring.</p> <p dir="ltr">The second generation of virtual reality was a wax cylinder.</p> <p dir="ltr">It recorded the waveform of a sound as the varying width of a groove, allowing a crude reproduction of speech and music. The wax became vinyl, which became ferrous oxide, which became silicon holding binary code, which became organic chemicals. To sound was added sight, first static on silver nitrate, then dynamic on celluloid, then on the same sillicon and chemicals.</p> <p dir="ltr">Again, people instantly saw the possibility of storing their own sexual fantasies outside of themselves. And again, the moral guardians did all they could to create panic at the new threat, offering their usual solution.</p> <p dir="ltr">The third generation of virtual reality dispensed with screens for vision and speakers for sound, plugging computers and data directly into the eyes and ears. Later, touch was added, with all the shades of hot and cold, rough and smooth, intense pleasure and subtle pain. Then smell, taste, and other bodily sensations for which no common words existed.</p> <p dir="ltr">The sex fantasies changed from edited highlights of reality, to dreamscapes programmed directly to software. The user was no longer limited to experiencing the possible, or the expressible. Sex with dragons and unicorns never became the vanilla end of the market, but experiences like cooking and eating one's own body could be had repeatedly, and on demand.</p> <p dir="ltr">The moral panic never evolved it's form, because it didn't need to. It always remained effective on the more backward of the population - who were of course also the most enthusiastic fantasisers.</p> <p dir="ltr">The forth generation of virtual reality bypassed the sense organs altogether, directly stimulating the brain - and not just the sensory centers. For the first time, the user was able not just to satisfy desires, but to create them. One who had no desire at all for a forbidden taste, could nevertheless temporarily induce that taste, and sate it, inside a brain augment.</p> <p dir="ltr">The guardians predicted the normalisation of the forbidden, as though this were in itself a problem. Some said the easily influenced (by which they meant anyone not themselves) would retain their new desires in the outside world. Others spoke of addiction, not to new satiations, but to the experience of attaining new desires.</p> <p dir="ltr">Others feared the induction of emotional states that the brain had always been capable of, but which the mundane world had never called for. What actually happened was, people developed real-world uses for these hitherto undiscovered emotions. Unsurprisingly, these included the sexual.</p> <p dir="ltr">It is true that natural reproduction dwindled as sexuality blossomed, but there is no evidence the link was causal. It was simply more convenient for a group to gestate batches of offspring in a fertility complex, as and when they decided.</p> <p dir="ltr">As we write, work is proceeding on diverse projects for a fifth generation of virtual reality.</p> <p dir="ltr">One line of research is into copying entire brain patterns to computer, so they can be manipulated simply as data, removing the need for wetware entirely. In this scenario, the already permeable distinction between sexual and non-sexual sensation can be entirely erased, making all experience erotic.</p> <p dir="ltr">Another is a revival of the hivemind notion, whereby many users can collectively experience the sum of their individual augments. Thus in an encounter between N individuals, there are 2^N simultaneous viewpoints for each to sense it.</p> <p dir="ltr">A third involves dispensing with the content of experience entirely, leaving only undifferentiated pleasure, inducted into nerve endings repaired and enhanced by nanobots. Some nirvanists even speculate that wetware can be mainained for centuries, or longer.</p> <p dir="ltr">The political opposition to all these developments was inevitable, and it only loses ground slowly. We can't predict which, if any of the current projects, will become the way forward - and we will only know in retrospect when it has already happened.</p> <p dir="ltr">It may be that sexuality has been transformed many times into unrecognisable new forms, and will be again. But it is our belief that, so long as the future is technological, the future is also sexual.</p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-28773903182265105782018-09-02T10:42:00.000+01:002018-09-02T11:01:51.538+01:00<p dir="ltr">21:45 Thursday 30th August 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">One of those days.</p> <p dir="ltr">When I was asked to come here, I collected a load of old TV shows, music, ebooks and software projects, so I'd always have something to do - or be entertained. Part of my philosophy of life is: I refuse to be bored. Another part is: The world is full of fascinating stuff.</p> <p dir="ltr">Now, Wessam is the learning disabled son of Jamal, my friend and host. And Jamal has employed Rana, a female therapist, to look after him. But it's part of arab culture that when you employ a woman like this, her husband and any offspring come along too. So there's Ibrahim that bullying 3-year old boy, and Anas, the husband, web developer, and completely functionless third wheel.</p> <p dir="ltr">And he didn't bring anything to keep him active or entertained. Presumably because he's an idiot. So he's bored out of his skull with nothing to do. He's also a judgemental, interfering arsehole, or "devout muslim" if you prefer. And he's taken a dislike to the other children, seemingly on the grounds that they cry too loud when his son hits them. And he's decided the whole family (ages 1 and upwards) are alcoholics, on the grounds that, well, see above.</p> <p dir="ltr">So, this moring, big stand up blazing argument. Lasted at least an hour, and every english-speaking person who heard it has given me a different, mutually exclusive description of it.</p> <p dir="ltr">So alhough I'm pretty sure I know what it was <i>really</i> about, everyone's got a different version of the excuses.</p> <p dir="ltr">Then, to get away from the bad feeling and help everyone calm down, Jamal takes his four daughters to the swimming pool - and invites me along. The pool is in a hotel/resort that promisses relaxation, and Jamal has hurt his back, so my alloted task is to watch the children paddle in the pool, while he gets a professional massage.</p> <p dir="ltr">So once again, it's my job to watch the kids like a slightly paranoid hawk, making sure none of them drown themselves. Or each other. In spite of their oblivious incomprehension of risk, and determination to invite death by inhalation of water. And their refusal to do anything I say unless I shout it several times, sometimes grab them bodily to drag them out of harm's way - and occasionally slap them when they start hitting me. After which they cry and wail and screech for half an hour at the injustice.</p> <p dir="ltr">One girl twice jumps into water twice as deep as she is high, and does the crying routine when I pull her out. I strap them into floatation devices, and they swim around happily for a good 90 minutes, only occasionally fighting or pretending to drown and laughing at me.</p> <p dir="ltr">Then one decides she needs the bathroom. And can't go in the pool. And of course the toilets are on a different floor of the hotel. So I suppose I could take one to the little girls room, leaving the other three to possibly suffocate in chlorinated H2O. But not really. So I get them out of the pool, so they can make a group trip in the elevator and their swimming costumes, to the absurdly plush toilets.</p> <p dir="ltr">Except one flatly refuses to get out. And I lift her from the water. Cue weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, and dire threats that she'll tell her father what I've done.</p> <p dir="ltr">After a complex half hour in the bathroom, which they mostly spend arguing in the dark about which combination of switches turns on the lights for ten seconds at a time, they refuse to return to the pool. Instead, it's time to find father, and get Kapitano in the deepest of deep trouble for spoiling their fun.</p> <p dir="ltr">Father, as usual, gently explains that he doesn't want them to die, and they instantly accept it.</p> <p dir="ltr">In the car home, there are only a few grouchy arguments about how I'm holding the youngest to let her doze off, wrong.</p> <p dir="ltr">Then as we arrive, outside the house...is a police car.</p> <p dir="ltr">It seems that Anas had gone for a walk in the day, and called his mother on his mobile phone. Some locals had witnessed someone they didn't know incomprehensibly making a call, and told the police they'd spotted a terrorist. Who, having nothing better to do, had actually investigated.</p> <p dir="ltr">The police left, and Wessam started bawling his eyes out and furiously smashing the furniture, possibly for some reason. Or not. And his sisters tried their usual strategy of bellowing into his face even louder. This has never been known to work, on any child, ever. But after five years of Wessam, their hope remains strong that one day it might.</p> <p dir="ltr">Two hours later, he and they did it again.</p> <p dir="ltr">I have quite a lot of experience of teaching and taking care of children. But until now, all of my students - arabic, german, spanish and others - have been educated, dedicated, mature, intelligent and sensible people. Much better than your average adult, in fact. This is possibly my first experience with normal children. The kind smart enough to realise they don't have to obey, and dim enough to disobey on principle.</p> <p dir="ltr">I really don't like teaching children.<br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-9041173015920199352018-09-02T10:40:00.001+01:002018-09-02T11:02:26.985+01:00<p dir="ltr">18:57 Wednesday 29th August 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">Recognise the difference between "I want to go home" and "I don't want to be here anymore".</p> <p dir="ltr">Two weeks and three days to go, by current plans - always revisable. And after I've got home, had a little hug from mother, eaten a bacon sandwich, unpacked the laptop and had a doze...I'm absolutely no idea what happens next.</p> <p dir="ltr">Oh, there's lots of small things to do, and one or two big things. Some cables and USB things to get from ebay, a load of stories to record and upload to youtube, a few friends to catch up with, some three-month delayed sex to have, a diet to continue, an upgrade computer to research, and some entirely pointless bureaucratic meetings to attend.</p> <p dir="ltr">I could continue trying to be self-employed, searching for clients which don't exist. Or look for jobs working for other people - which also don't exist. Maybe find another school in another foreign country - which do exist but which mostly can't be trusted.</p> <p dir="ltr">That's the trouble with "one day at a time" - too many days and not enough time.</p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-1614378848564422182018-09-02T10:40:00.000+01:002018-09-02T11:00:33.151+01:00<p dir="ltr">22:16 Thursday 23rd August 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">Oh great, I'm depressed again.</p> <p dir="ltr">Not unhappy, not lachrymose, not even emotional. Just lacking in willpower, determination, motivation.</p> <p dir="ltr">I don't know why it happens, though I'm pretty sure blood sugar makes it worse, but I've had it recurrantly my entire life and I wish it would just go away. It's the flat batteries of the soul.</p> <p dir="ltr">Here's another definition: The inability to rise above it. "It" is any minor setback or frustration, of the kind which happens to all of us several times a day, which ordinarily we'd be able to get over easily. The weather is hot and sticky, your shirt won't wash properly, the cup of coffee has sugar when you asked for it not to, your friend said they'd be away for half an hour but it's actually two hours, there's a power cut when you want to charge your phone, etc. etc.</p> <p dir="ltr">Molehills become mountains. And you know they're still molehills, but you still can't climb them.</p> <p dir="ltr">It sounds like oversensitivity, but it's actually a kind of <i>in</i>sensitivity. You can't grapple with the handholds of the mountain, because you're wearing boxing gloves. You can't engage, which means you can't cope, and you can't solve.<br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-37856763114301336552018-09-02T10:39:00.000+01:002018-09-02T11:02:01.952+01:00<p dir="ltr">15:42 Tuesday 21st August 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">Today is Muslim Christmas. Specificlly, the bigger of the two Muslim Christmasses.</p> <p dir="ltr">At least, that's how it was jovially defined to me this morning.</p> <p dir="ltr">Eid Al-Athhar (Festival of the Sacrifice), also known as Big Eid, is the supposed anniversary of that time God told Abraham to kill his only son as a test of obedience, then at the last moment teleported a sheep into the son's place. This proving once again:</p> <p dir="ltr">(1) Religion is for those who've internalised their victimhood, and</p> <p dir="ltr">(2) Islam is just another sect of christianity. Which is just another sect of judaism. Which is a sect of zoroastrianism. Which no one knows much about because the jews, christians and muslims destroyed the evidence.</p> <p dir="ltr">Little Eid is Eid Al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan and "Festival of Breaking the Fast". But I really want to translate it as "Breakfast Party".</p> <p dir="ltr">If you're family on Big Eid, you put on your smartest clothes, exchange gifts, and spend time with family. And eat far too much. Yep, definitely like christmas.</p> <p dir="ltr">But I'm not family, and neither are the other guests in the house, so we get to do...absolutely nothing all day. Festival of vegitating in front of the TV, dozing, and emailing family. And eating far too much.</p> <p dir="ltr">We may be the lucky ones, as you're supposed to, in memory of Abraham, get a sheep from somewhere, cut it's throat, let all the blood drain out...and give the carcass to someone who <i>doesn't</i> have far too much to eat.</p> <p dir="ltr">But, what what is it makes christmas special? The junk gifts in the shops, the terrible music in the shops, the terrible shows on TV? No, I think christmas is a special time simply because we agree to call it one.</p> <p dir="ltr">Which is why I feel that today <i>is</i> special. But unless I'm here again for the next one, that one won't be. By which process, you can turn any day into a special day, and in result it will be genuinely special, so long as you and your circle agree to designate it as such in advance.<br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-4429249568289933252018-08-18T20:44:00.000+01:002018-08-18T21:49:10.500+01:00<p dir="ltr">20:43 Saturday 18th August 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">Today, a short story.</p> <p dir="ltr">-----</p> <p dir="ltr"><b>AI: A Brief History of a Failed Dream</b></p> <p dir="ltr">In the 1950s, computer scientists confidently predicted that within 25 years, they could could produce working artificial intelligence. Specifically, computers that could do our thinking for us, but faster, better, and for longer than we could.</p> <p dir="ltr">They wrote optimistic books about how the computers of the future would combine the rigour and reliability of algebraic formulas, with the subtlety and sophistication of creative human intuition.</p> <p dir="ltr">By the 70s, they knew they were wrong. More importantly, they knew why they had been wrong. It wasn't just "The Hard Problem" of consciousness, nor "The Mysterious Problem" of creativity - it was that they couldn't define what qualities they were trying to distill.</p> <p dir="ltr">Terms like "consciousness", "self-awareness", "thought" and even "reason" as distinct from "logic" - these are concepts from folk psychology. They had no direct neural corellates, and to describe them as "emergent" was simply to push the problem of definition one stage back.</p> <p dir="ltr">Through the 1990s, multivalent "fuzzy" logic systems, smooth non-granular logics, and probabilistic randomisation were tried to mimic the spark of creativity which they thought distinguished "real" from "artificial" "intelligence". This was however to conflate indeterminacy with ambivalence, and tangential connectedness with unconnectedness.</p> <p dir="ltr">In the 2000s, a new generation of computer scientists made the same confident predictions as half a century before, this time about neural networks. The problem would be solved within 25 years, they said, because humans didn't need to solve it at all.</p> <p dir="ltr">Rather, each net would try trillions of decision trees, eventually finding the best one through brute force and dumb luck. However, it would do so more systematically and more thoroughly than any slow and ideosyncratic human could manage.</p> <p dir="ltr">By the 2020s, they once again knew they were wrong. Their nets could indeed perform single menial tasks, without boredom or fatigue. But they required intensive expert training, on timescales and costs which expanded exponentially with the complexity of the task. </p> <p dir="ltr">More than that, the notion of "the best solution" proved elusive. Much like "simplicity" which turned out to be extremely complex, "good" was different for every researcher, for every task, often every day.</p> <p dir="ltr">The result was not the apocalyptic scenario of a computerised medical doctor concluding that the way to reduce cancer rates in patients was to commit genocide. Nor was it the pulp sci-fi plot of the machine doctor which exploded in a shower of sparks when told "I feel like a pair of curtains".</p> <p dir="ltr">In the event, it was more like a doctor which concluded it could cure one patient's cold by persuading every fourteenth ginger cat to spell the word "coffee" with three Fs.</p> <p dir="ltr">The new computers were insane. But it was no human kind of insanity where irreconcilable imperatives are reformulated and partitioned to achieve mental balance but real-world chaos.</p> <p dir="ltr">Computer insanity was a meticulously plotted blind alley, a billion kilometers long, deriving from operational ambiguities and vaguenesses so subtle they were not expressible in ordinary language. Attempts to disambiguate and clarify inevitably had their own ambiguities and vaguenesses. The solution was therefore part of the problem.</p> <p dir="ltr">Around the same time, other scientists turned their optimism to data mining. If, they thought, a human-but-better brain was impossible, a computer-but-bigger system might be the next step. They collected ever more vast quantities of raw data, feeding it through ever higher bandwidths of integration and model building.</p> <p dir="ltr">The results were surprisingly similar. Applying massive amounts of complex logic to a small set of badly defined axioms might give us a cat-fixated doctor. Applying a little simple logic to vast amounts of badly defined data isn't so different.</p> <p dir="ltr">The obvious answer was to increase the dataset even more, clarify it, and make the logic both expansive and clean. But increasing the resolution of an image is not the same as making it clearer. A detective looking for clues will see nothing but clues, even when there's no crime. The Pentagon's paranoid search algorithms showed that.</p> <p dir="ltr">By 2050, it had become possible to scan the operations of a living brain, and even simulate small sections of it on an ordinary computer. Futurologists decided we would be able to keep our best and brightest alive for ever, as immortal wise advisors. When asked what was the point of recreating a single brilliant thinker as an office block that was only brilliant for one hour a day - as opposed to training a thousand students who could take their work further in a thousand directions - they had no answers.</p> <p dir="ltr">At the same time, techniques were perfected of culturing real human neural tissue, in an organic support system. A "superskull" could be several square meters, living in a nutrient vat, being fed with constant multiple data streams, like an infant which grows up watching a thousand TV channels all at once. As "book geniuses", they were impressive. As willing slaves, they proved to be neither.</p> <p dir="ltr">The "Back to the Brain" movement of the 2070s sought to hack the natural nervous system with implants that stimulated emotions toward problem solving, replaced sleep, auto-drilled learning, and linked to external information sources. Early successes led to excessive implantation, and burnout. With the ambition scaled down implantation is now a common part of education and employment.</p> <p dir="ltr">As the 21st century draws to a close, there are projects to simulate brains which could not exist in the physical world. These "paraminds" operate in virtual universes with different laws of chemistry or physical dimensions. The researchers running these projects hope their creations can provide workable answers to real world problems that humans could literally never produce.</p> <p dir="ltr">Others use languages and systems of logic that humans can design and define, but which the human mind is unable to use. Thus we are making for ourselves a council of alien friends who we can never hope to understand, but which can see problems we could never grasp, and solve them in ways we could never imagine.</p> <p dir="ltr">Thinking is hard work. Technology lets us work harder by making the hard work easier. But we don't really want to work harder. We want someone else to do it all for us. We want someone who'll know what we need, and do it better than we could, without us even knowing what it was.</p> <p dir="ltr">Perhaps it's fortunate that all our attempts to create an obedient god have failed. They failed because we can't really imagine what such a god would look like, and can't imagine how we could make one even if we could.</p> <p dir="ltr"><i>Anas Malik, 21/06/2198</i><br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-4296316850172565882018-08-18T20:43:00.001+01:002018-08-18T21:49:09.733+01:00<p dir="ltr">19:34 Thursday 16th August 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">Ah, the joys of watching young girls chase black cock.</p> <p dir="ltr">What? No, someone in the street keeps chickens, which tend to roam, and that sometimes includes straying into our garden, where the girls are kind-of terrified but also kind-of fascinated by them. So sometimes you're not quite sure when it's the black-feathered rooster chasing after the screaming girls, or the other way around.</p> <p dir="ltr">What did you think I meant?</p> <p dir="ltr">Besides, I've never chased chickens, even when I was one. And if you, dear reader, are not a british middle aged gay man in around 2018, you probably won't know that "chicken" is what we called "twinks" back when I was...well, a chicken. Or twink. In the 1980s. I never chased roosters either. And I was certainly never into chicks.</p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-16737646909007909202018-08-18T20:43:00.000+01:002018-08-18T21:49:09.171+01:00<p dir="ltr">18:23 Friday 17th August 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">Some things people expect you to be able to teach, things they expect everyone should know without special research. Things like:</p> <p dir="ltr">* What do we mean by Nth cousin?<br> * What do we mean by Nth cousin at Mth remove?<br> * Are there gendered words for cousins?<br> * Is there a gender neutral word for nephew or neice.<br> * Is there a difference between a step-sibling and a half-sibling?<br> * If your sibling marries then divorces, is their former partner an ex-in-law?<br> * If Fatima is my great-aunt, am I her great-nephew or her grand-nephew?</p> <p dir="ltr">The answer to all of these is "I'm not sure". Sometimes it's "I've looked it up on Wikipedia and sort-of understood it, but then forgot. Several times".</p> <p dir="ltr">I don't really do families.</p> <p dir="ltr">UPDATE: According to my mother, half-siblings share one parent, and step-siblings are adopted by remarriage. Neither of which concepts exist in Arabic. In Arabistan (yes, they do use that word) your half-sibling is legally an equal sibling, and remarriage doesn't entail adoption. In fact the rules for adoption are absurdly stringent.<br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-62947944516334024372018-08-18T20:42:00.001+01:002018-08-18T21:49:51.920+01:00<p dir="ltr">11:44 Tuesday 14th August 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">There are two classroom skills I've never been able to aquire. Warming, and timewasting.</p> <p dir="ltr">Warmers are short classroom activities that serve no pedagogical function, but get the students "warmed up" and "in the right frame of mind" for the lesson proper. And I can't do them. I can't invent them on the spot, and I can't perform them from a book. My pattern is just to jump in and revise the previous lesson.</p> <p dir="ltr">Timewasting is more important. If you've got 60 minutes assigned, and you're finished at 50, the sensible thing to do is finish at 50. But the all-powerful timetable (blessed be the holy schedule) says you've got to keep going, doing <i>something</i>, for another 10 minutes. And everyone's got the pretend, to themselves and each other, that the extra 10 minutes is spent in useful drilling, practicing, revision etc.</p> <p dir="ltr">And I'm no good at that either. It's part of a general tendency - I can't make small talk, do makework projects, or shuffle the papers on my desk pretending to be catching up on some filing.</p> <p dir="ltr">I'm fascinated by fakery - art fraud, lies, magic tricks, propaganda, ideology, even optical illusions. And I'm repulsed by deception - pranks, bloviation, empty rhetoric. But I can't <i>do</i> any of it.<br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-40713052005690033672018-08-18T20:42:00.000+01:002018-08-18T21:49:07.141+01:00<p dir="ltr">14:46 Monday 13th August 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">Captain Obvious is Obvious.</p> <p dir="ltr">Happy Chair is Happy</p> <p dir="ltr">And stupid thief girl is stupid enough to steal an entire double-pack of chewing gum this morning, hoping I wouldn't notice. Also stupid enough to leave the wrapper behind. Then stupid enough to deny it when asked. <i>Then</i> stupid enough to try blaming someone else. <i>And</i> stupid enough to blame someone who wouldn't do anything like that.</p> <p dir="ltr">Then smart enough to confess.</p> <p dir="ltr">Then stupid enough to think we believe her promise to never enter my room and never steal again. Oh, and stupid enough to not notice the two timelapse cameras pointing at the non-hidden of the sweet caches, since I woke up this morning.</p> <p dir="ltr">Only real question: Am I smart enough to not give her a damn good thrashing when she does it again? Dad says she's shamable - like all bullies, she's easy to bully. Okay, we'll see.</p> <p dir="ltr">UPDATE: Minor mystery solved. What accounts for one stupid 8 year-old girl stealing random objects, and also taking sweets but leaving the wrappers? It's one stupid eight year old girl, and one normal three year old girl who doesn't grasp the concept of other people's property.<br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-43558265946619946872018-08-12T12:59:00.000+01:002018-08-12T13:49:32.377+01:00<p dir="ltr">14:02 Sunday 12th August 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">"A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell." - GB Shaw</p> <p dir="ltr">There's a notion in psychology that each person has their own optimim stress level. Go significantly far below that, and you're not motivated to act. Go above it, and you get a whole range of results, none of them good.</p> <p dir="ltr">The level and quality of your work suffers. You may panic, resulting in undirected, randomised action. Or you may feel strained, resulting in a progressive shut down, lock up, indecisiveness, paralysis, freeze.</p> <p dir="ltr">The idea is that stress itself is just another word for motivation. But get the intensity wrong, and the result is de-motivation.</p> <p dir="ltr">So here's a thought: Being trapped is similar.</p> <p dir="ltr">Having a social group ... negotiating an incoherent, shifting web of interpersonal agendas. Owning a home ... being tied down to one place. Having clear rules ... getting crushed by the system.</p> <p dir="ltr">Jail is by definition a trap. And punishments in jail consist in reducing freedom even further. But some people <i>like</i> it, the same way some sign up to the army for the rigid discipline. Marriage is a trap. It's also called "a stable home life", "the warmth of close family", "having someone you can rely on".</p> <p dir="ltr">So if you want to be happy, figure out how trapped you want to be.<br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-13306874540399992852018-08-12T12:58:00.002+01:002018-08-12T13:51:07.192+01:00<p dir="ltr">18:41 Friday 10th August 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">I keep well stocked with chewing gum.</p> <p dir="ltr">It's an effective supplement to teeth brushing, it's a substitute for eating when you're not actually hungry but feel like chewing and tasting something, and it's probably good for breath too.</p> <p dir="ltr">A week after I arrived, suddenly the girls were chewing gum too. Quite a lot of it - some of it they asked for and received from me. But my stocks dwindled faster than I expected. And one girl - the one who asked the most often - was always late for lessons, as though she always had somewhere to be in the 15 minutes between my leaving my room, and finishing setting up the whiteboard and screen.</p> <p dir="ltr">Yes. She's smart enough to work out when I'm not in my room. And stupid enough to leave the wrappers lying around. Three unopened packets mysteriously turning into empty wrappers.</p> <p dir="ltr">A few other things have gone missing and turned up in strange places - cups, cutlery, electrical adaptors, a towel. This is the girl who bursts into outraged tears when stuck in a cramped car, panics and starts hammering the doors when the elevator halts between floors for 30 seconds, and thinks the best way to stop the world inconveniencing her is to shout a single sentence at steadily increasing volume for ten minutes solid.</p> <p dir="ltr">So, kind of crafty, but unable to recognise or adapt a losing strategy, unable to think things through. And hasn't learned a single thing in class for six weeks.</p> <p dir="ltr">Probably the best thing for me to do is hide the gum, ignore her attitude, and leave life to teach her a few hard lessons - except she'll refuse to learn them, as a matter of pride.</p> <p dir="ltr">Her father advises me to "treat her like the wall". And <i>he's</i> the one who calls <i>me</i> wise.</p> <p dir="ltr">I can only promise to hide the gum.<br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-6706481234255711042018-08-12T12:58:00.001+01:002018-08-12T13:49:33.497+01:00<p dir="ltr">01:39 Sunday 12th August 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">You haven't lived until...</p> <p dir="ltr">* A three year old girl wets herself while sitting on your knee.</p> <p dir="ltr">Twice. On a car journey with half an hour to go. And so, to save the upholstry, and because moving her wouldn't really help anyway, you sit and feel the moisture creep around your right leg until you arrive.</p> <p dir="ltr">You spend the time using google translate to help you work out how to explain your wetness, in your very basic arabic, when you arrive. Say "Bint Saghiir, Hamaam.", while pointing at the wet patches, and trying to look rueful.</p> <p dir="ltr">The same three year old girl can't quite manage to climb onto a toilet seat. So she goes into the garden, very neatly and carefully takes down her pyjamas...and does an improbably large poo, next to the swings. In front of everyone.</p> <p dir="ltr">This might be called lateral thinking.</p> <p dir="ltr">* You've spent an hour in the morning walking to the local place of worship, locked yourself in one of its cubicles to give yourself a standing-up bed-bath with a cold, wet flannel, then dried yourself before getting dressed with the fleeciest bit of laundry you've brought with you.</p> <p dir="ltr">Then done the laundry in the sink with a bar of baby soap, while a man behind you fills three 5-litre water bottles from the tap intended for foot-washing.</p> <p dir="ltr">And meanwhile you keep yourself un-bored by imagining how you'd explain the difference between a Procedure and a Protocol, should an upper-intermediate level student ask.</p> <p dir="ltr">Current answer: You can have a procedure, a series of steps to achieve a goal, for (say) washing your face - forehead, nose, mouth, chin, cheeks, ears, neck. And you can vary the order and the repeats, so long as you get the job done. But certain world religions have a <i>protocol</i>, just for the ears - right ear, insert wet little finger, wiggle around, do three times, repeat for left. Because if you deviate, there's a penalty - imaginary in this case.</p> <p dir="ltr">Cookery has procedures, chemistry protocols. Calculating tax a procedure, filing it a protocol.</p> <p dir="ltr">Procedures are defined by pragmatism. Protocols by authority.</p> <p dir="ltr">* You realise your host has a doctorate, and you have a masters degree...which means The Doctor and The Master are living together.</p> <p dir="ltr">Just like we always suspected.<br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-79869957499299726282018-08-12T12:58:00.000+01:002018-08-12T13:49:31.836+01:00<p dir="ltr">00:07 Wednesday 8th August 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">There's just no one to talk with.</p> <p dir="ltr">And seeing as most thinking is done by talking, thinking gets hard too.</p> <p dir="ltr">Of course, there's Jamal. I speak with him several times a day, occasionally about things more profound than how well his children can speak with me.</p> <p dir="ltr">And of course, there's me. Specifically, my imaginary audience who I can explain things to - great for working on, and working out, and working through, programming problems. Did several of those today.</p> <p dir="ltr">And there's these diary entries. Not an imaginary audience, but a distant one. Which includes me of the future.</p> <p dir="ltr">But if living life requires batteries full of...whatever it is human interaction charges them with, my batteries have been flat for several weeks. And as one who's had intermittant depression their whole life, I can't think of a better analogy for depression than flat batteries.</p> <p dir="ltr">This life - this job, this work - requires emotional self-sufficiency. But no one's completely self-sufficient.</p> <p dir="ltr">Tomorrow it will be exactly six weeks. Half way through.<br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-25482001739189890492018-08-12T12:57:00.000+01:002018-08-12T13:49:29.553+01:00<p dir="ltr">12:11 Tuesday 7th August 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">We watched Blink yesterday.</p> <p dir="ltr">The children screamed at all the right parts. Then asked for more.</p> <p dir="ltr">Today it was Midnight, and tomorrow we might do Dalek. But I'm inclined to try a two-parter - Silence in the Library/Forset of the Dead, or The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit.</p> <p dir="ltr">I've shown Dr Who to almost every group I've taught, and every time...well, I'm not sure they retained any of the vocabulary, but they certainly enjoyed it.</p> <p dir="ltr">Which means, in the long run, it works. Just not exactly as a teaching tool, but as a priming tool. And most teaching is really priming.</p> <p dir="ltr">Occasionally a student will have a specific or difficult question, and the teacher is expected to be able to give a specific and detailed answer. But most of the time, our job is to give the basics and a vague outline of the more advanced stuff, giving the students a grounding for their own, more advanced study - from books, experiment, field work etc.</p> <p dir="ltr">Not that most students actually <i>do</i> any more advanced study, but it's not my job to make them. Just like it's not my job to get them to class.</p> <p dir="ltr">But that means the vocabulary I taught and hopefully they learned for Blink - Gate, Climb, Weep, Angel, Move, Fast etc. - will be quickly forgotten <i>but</i> more easily relearned, if/when they get taught it in school later, or come across it in real life.</p> <p dir="ltr">Priming is pre-teaching. It's sketching a map of major landmarks, which is only useful when they draw their own better map.</p> <p dir="ltr">If I can inspire them to draw their own map, that's good, but a separate task.<br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-68312446996569968252018-08-02T12:40:00.000+01:002018-08-02T12:46:51.211+01:00<p dir="ltr">12:39 Thursday 2nd August 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">The western way of raising children is...confused. If it's based on anything, it's based on telling lies. Lies to children, lies about children, lies about lies. That and treating children as brain-damaged adults to be rehabilitated, with no clear notion of what a rehabilitated adult would look like. And it doesn't generally work.</p> <p dir="ltr">The arabic way is clear. It's based on shouting. Shouting orders, making threats, and occasionally dishing out violence. And when that works, giving out treats. And it doesn't work either.</p> <p dir="ltr">When adults fail at raising children in the west, the result is aimless children. Maybe creative, intelligent, curious, and sometimes happy, but the self-discipline is missing. When adults fail in the arab world, the result is... children who don't grow up at all.</p> <p dir="ltr">The problem with shouting is it creates an arms race. You get children who require ever louder shouting and wilder threats and more beating to even register a simple imperative. A calm, polite request can be simply ignored. An instruction needs to be backed up by an implicit threat. Hence the fertile ground for religion.</p> <p dir="ltr">I don't know how to raise chiren either. The closest I get to a method for turning children into adults is to treat them like they already are adults. But that's the western notion of adult - one who can make their own decisions. The arabic notion of adult is one who's internalised their sense of duty - one who does their own internal shouting.</p> <p dir="ltr">My father always tried to shame me. Thus I quickly learned to ignore shaming. Which came in very useful later. Mother tried to sit me down and deliver a seminar. Thus my habit of resisting notions delivered from on high.</p> <p dir="ltr">Arabic children are generally speaking a lot happier than western counterparts. The same may be true of adults. They just regard education as something to be passively received and mindlessly regurgitated. Rebellion is not independance but withdrawal. They seek sinecures in management, but refuse to manage.</p> <p dir="ltr">Everyday problems are incomprehensible acts of god to be magically solved by the authority of others. I see this here in innumerable small ways. Can you imagine a ten year old child who doesn't know how to turn the TV on and off - and doesn't ask? A twelve year old who never considers trying to paraphrase a difficult idea into simple words - so doesn't try to speak? A 17 year old who disguises his own decisions as inviolable orders from his mother? This is commonplace.<br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-12391640644577634532018-08-02T12:37:00.000+01:002018-08-02T12:48:15.226+01:00<p dir="ltr">19:04 Tuesday 31st July 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">We have a housekeeper. She's a very good cook and a very good nanny. She's also about six foot tall and approaching 300 pounds.</p> <p dir="ltr">We also have a bathroom. It has a non-working toilet, a broken-but-working shower, and an intermittantly working washbasin, this last with a nifty extensible arm for holding a shaving mirror. We flush the toilet by filling a bucket from the tap - on the occasions when there is water flowing. The room is also used as a temporary store for any clothes waiting to be washed.</p> <p dir="ltr">The housekeeper has decided she doesn't want any adult males in the house to use the bathroom. On the grounds that some of the clothes waiting to be washed are her own undergarments. Suitably sized for a hefty lady intent on keeping herself fully covered, in several layers.</p> <p dir="ltr">Because if we catch sight of them, we might become inflamed with lust.</p> <p dir="ltr">Yes, that's her worry.</p> <p dir="ltr">So, although she's the one being employed and taking orders, we've agreed to stay out of the bathroom. We use the separate toilet and/or the washroom of the mosque down the road instead.</p> <p dir="ltr">Except when we need a shower, because we can't get that elsewhere.</p> <p dir="ltr">So. The only time I'm allowed to be in the presence of the intoxicatingly suggestive feminine underthings... is when I'm naked and covered in hot soapy water. And presumably heterosexual.</p> <p dir="ltr">This is called Morality.<br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-42247070480484458552018-08-02T12:36:00.000+01:002018-08-02T12:48:11.583+01:00<p dir="ltr">17:18 Tuesday 31st July 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">I think I know how I survived childhood. I didn't know any children.</p> <p dir="ltr">In nursery school, I didn't speak to anyone. My parents thought I was deaf, so they sent me to a doctor to have my hearing tested. They said I had good hearing. Maybe I'd be a musician some day.</p> <p dir="ltr">In primary school, I talked to myself. My parents thought I was retarded, so they sent me to a therapist to have my emotions tested. They said I was advanced.</p> <p dir="ltr">In middle school - actually the same school - I occasionally talked to the teachers. I failed every single exam except "General Knowledge", where I was "exemplary". Had to look up the word.</p> <p dir="ltr">In secondary school, I read books. So long as they weren't the ones I was supposed to be reading. I got sent to another therapist. They said I was highly intelligent. And eccentric. And egotistical. And emotionally detatched. The kind of person who writes a blog about their life, in fact.</p> <p dir="ltr">In university...I read the wrong books, failed all the exams, talked to myself, and made music. Eventually qualified to run a museum.</p> <p dir="ltr">And right now I'm a teacher in the morning, and a babysitter in the afternoon. Not a great deal of difference between the two - you let the smart kids take care of themselves, scream at the bullies till they cry, and hug the victims till they stop.</p> <p dir="ltr">They would all be a lot happier if they didn't have each other.</p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-29317722957436081552018-08-02T12:35:00.000+01:002018-08-02T12:46:49.640+01:00<p dir="ltr">18:45 Monday 30th July 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">Well, that was at least a mercifully short midlife crisis.</p> <p dir="ltr">Two days of vague romantic dreams - not even sexual, really - then I wake up and feel suitably ... uncrushing. Crushless. Unencumbered by crushiness.</p> <p dir="ltr">Nice fellow, who need never know.<br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-34595113708485576002018-07-29T14:44:00.000+01:002018-07-29T15:09:07.382+01:00<p dir="ltr">10:43 Sunday 29th July 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">Don't you just hate it when:</p> <p dir="ltr">* There's someone you fancy the arse off.<br> * You also like them as a person.<br> * They make you smile with their silly sense of humour.<br> * The impressive bulge in their jeans doesn't hurt matters.<br> * They also like you as a person.<br> * You make them smile with your silly sense of humour.<br> * And it's a totally adorable smile.<br> * But they're less than half your age...<br> * You've got basic arabic and they've got basic english, but there's still a language barrier...<br> * They're completely oblivious to how you feel...<br> * Because they're a sheltered innocent...<br> * And their dad is a close friend of a close friend of yours.</p> <p dir="ltr">Yeah. Last year Mustafa was my unrequited mid-life crisis. Looks like I've got one for this year. Ah well.<br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-47972782653303026552018-07-29T14:42:00.000+01:002018-07-29T15:10:42.039+01:00<p dir="ltr">13:58 Thursday 26th July 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">This house has three front doors. Demonstrating the dangers of not thinking though your priorities.</p> <p dir="ltr">I should explain.</p> <p dir="ltr">Turks are very security conscious. That's "security" as in "feeling protected" rather than "being secure". All the windows have bars - though not all have glass. All the doors are metal - and some have two locks, both opened by the same key. Which is a tiny bit of insanity, all on it's own.</p> <p dir="ltr">The driveway has a large, sliding metal gate. Nearly impossible to climb over, and you'd need an armoured truck to break through it. But it's too much trouble to keep locking and unlocking the padlock, so you can just slide it open.</p> <p dir="ltr">Set into the gate is a door. You open it from the inside by pulling on a short horizontal chain, which pulls out the catch, equivalent to turning an ordinary door handle. You open it from the outside by pressing a lever which operates the same mechanism, and you can keep people from letting themselves in by disconnecting the chain, while still letting yourself out by pulling the catch directly.</p> <p dir="ltr">But they can still slide the gate open if the padlock isn't fastened. Which of course they do because of course it isn't.</p> <p dir="ltr">Yes, someone put a lot of thought into making sure no one could get in if you don't want them to. And then someone else put a lot of thought into finding ways to let yourself in if you've locked yourself out. And then a third person put a lot of thought into making sure it's only you who can do that. Etc, Etc.</p> <p dir="ltr">Result: A pointlessly convoluted way to operate a pointless door set into a pointless gate. But wait, there's more.</p> <p dir="ltr">The front doors can only be opened from the inside, or by someone with a key on the outside. Or more usually, by banging loud enough that someone already inside can let you in. That's the simple part.</p> <p dir="ltr">The first front door leads into a hallway, and stairs leading to the second and third floors. The second front door is next to the stairs, leading to the main living areas - kitchen, TV room doubling as children's bedroom, downstairs non-children's bedroom, western style bathroom, and traditional arabic style toilet, this last complete with facilities for you to wash yourself at both ends.</p> <p dir="ltr">And you can't open it from outside without a key. Which it why people are constantly locking themselves out when the wind blows it shut. Which is probably why there's an extra little mechanism which can be used to prop the door open ajar from the inside, or configured a different way, from the outside. Except the first way actually locks the door ajar, and is an absolute bugger to unlock.</p> <p dir="ltr">So what do you do when you've locked youself out of your own home, and the holder of the single set of keys has driven off on business, incidentally leaving the gate wide open?</p> <p dir="ltr">Easy. Because there's a third front door, leading into the kitchen. It's barred and covered with metal gauze, and can only be opened from inside. Unless you've made a hole in the gauze specifically for reaching through and turning the key on the inside. Which is precisely what we do.</p> <p dir="ltr">This is what happens when you need to feel like there's security, but you also need to use doors.<br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-91918496572590903792018-07-29T14:41:00.000+01:002018-07-29T15:09:06.832+01:00<p dir="ltr">20:37 Tuesday 24th July 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">Just how early is the pattern set? At what age is the template formed for a person's personality?</p> <p dir="ltr">I remember the precise moment, at age 4, when I decided to try talking to myself. I'd been told it was "the first sign of going mad" by varied relations, which never made sense to me, so...I wandered around the playground for half an hour, asking myself questions and trying to come up with answers.</p> <p dir="ltr">And seemingly, I didn't go mad as a result. Thus proving my family didn't know what they were talking about. Just as I suspected.</p> <p dir="ltr">But where did the suspicion come from? When around the same age I asked my mother what happens to you after you did, and she said something about "paradise", and I realised she didn't believe a word she was saying...what observation prompted the realisation, and what temperament prompted the observation? Presumably the same one that prompted the question.</p> <p dir="ltr">For the first week or so, my oldest student was Ryaan, age 17. Liked to talk about how much he loved Islam and believed in the literal truth of the Qu'ran. While being intensely curious about why people chose not to follow the muslim path of prayer, marriage and children. Also curious about drugs, alcohol and shameless sex. So basically, your average teen covering severe doubts with overconfident bluster.</p> <p dir="ltr">Bushra. I think she was 14. Enters the classroom and immediately goes into zoneout mode. Not rebellious, not dumb - just enters a dream world at every opportunity.</p> <p dir="ltr">Next in age was Nau'ura - or Nora, if you prefer. She's 13, dresses like a partygoing 18-year old, loves pop music, tries to play the mature and sensible adult taking care of children, and isn't remotely interested in learning english.</p> <p dir="ltr">Then Yusef, Bushra's brother, a 12 year old boy who combines wanting to be gregarious with social awkwardness. Good grasp of basic english, quick to learn new words and grammar, much happier in the classroom than the outside world. Watches violent war films but doesn't seem to actually like them. The Turkish Sheldon Cooper, and I like him.</p> <p dir="ltr">Malika. She's 10, knows every meme going, loves flowers and memorising lists. Without a doubt the brightest of the lot, and has worked out the way to remeber stuff is frequent repitition. But can't manage to generate sentences. By which I mean, she's the only one to even try, but she just can't. Could probably memorise the dictionary, and do it well, and enjoy doing it, but putting three words together in a row is a paradigm shift away.</p> <p dir="ltr">Aya is 8 and... there's not much to say about her. Dutifully does the tasks, but has no curiosity or passion. Like her older sister, she probably could memorise the dictionary, as a purely mechanical exercise, never asking why she was doing it. One of nature's civil servants.</p> <p dir="ltr">Almassa is (I think) 7. And she's fiercely independant, impossible to dominate. Unfortunately she's also stupid and lazy. Stupid as in "It simply didn't occur to her that jumping up and down on a trampoline while holding a baby, whiplash might not be good for the baby's head". Lazy as in "never does anything unless she's asked". Stupid and lazy as in "hasn't mastered the alphabet of her native language".</p> <p dir="ltr">Wessam is 5, but with a mental age of 2 or 3. Almost zero language, and a habit of taking off his clothes whenever he feels like it. And vaguely toying with his errect penis in front of his sisters. He's got two kinds of crying. First, the outraged howl of frustration when he doesn't get his own way. But second, an entirely different sound, that he can turn on and off at will, as a way to manipulate adults. Yes, he's got strategy, and tactics, planning, and possibly fallback positions.</p> <p dir="ltr">Almaha is an absolutely adorable 3 year old girl. Endlessly chatty with basic Arabic and bits of English mixed in, takes every opportunity to get herself picked up and/or hugged by anyone. She's got something in common with Wessam - an absolute refusal to wear underwear and a habit of, um, displaying the fact in class. It seems only the teacher is bothered by this. But her crying is a simple response to anything she can't handle - being hit by a sibling, not being able to climb down stairs, or her schoolmarmish finger-wagging at some minor rule-breaking ignored.</p> <p dir="ltr">The youngest person in the house is Emir. He's one, he loves being hugged by everyone except me, and he shows signs of problem-solving intelligence - untying simple knots, and planning which toys to use in which order.</p> <p dir="ltr">So I think I know who will be what in 25 years time. Almaha probably won't be a flasher, but the gregarious innocence is there. Almassa will be amoral and selfish, but too disorganised for real crime, Bushra will float through life, Ryaan will call himself a muslim but will find excuses to break the rules - but only the minor ones. And Malika will follow her father into academia, probably something high up and medical.</p> <p dir="ltr">Some would be tempted to ascribe this to genetics, by which they mean predestination, not heredity. Because we've got five people here from the same parents, and little else in common. But it does seem that when we say the childhood sets the pattern, it's very early childhood indeed. And the influences are as mysterious as they are powerful.</p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-9215924972386860552018-07-29T14:40:00.000+01:002018-07-29T15:09:06.111+01:00<p dir="ltr">22:37 Monday 23rd July 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">We're were supposed to be having a Philipino maid. Which is to say a young woman staying for a month, traveling from Dubai on a tourist visa, doing a little housework and a lot of remidial work with Wessam.</p> <p dir="ltr">Small problem: She accepted that Jamal pay for her flight out...but said she didn't need a flight back. Which means not only was she planning to take the flight out and disappear, she was also stupid enough to telegraph the fact.</p> <p dir="ltr">Which is why the authorities at Dubai picked her up at the airport. Which is why we don't have help in helping Wessam develop basic language and social skills.</p> <p dir="ltr">That's social skills such as "not climbing on top of the car and jumping up and down on the roof". And "not climbing on top of the kitchen sink and crying in panic when he realises he can't get down".</p> <p dir="ltr">It seems the latest fad in training children with developmental delays is: Behaviorism. Going under various three letter abbreviations and some technical-sounding terminology to make it sound both newer and more complex than it really is, it's the old model of "punishment and reward" to form patterns of emotional response.</p> <p dir="ltr">Paranoia about middle eastern terrorists, strippers jumping out of cakes, and long discredited psychological theories returning. It seems the 1970s are back in style.<br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-63891634408555993672018-07-29T14:39:00.000+01:002018-07-29T15:09:05.082+01:00<p dir="ltr">13:11 Thursday 19th July 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">Next to the rural town of Iskanderun, is the seaside resort town of Arsuz. And that's were I was yesterday.</p> <p dir="ltr">Now, there's two things I don't like: Mountains and sea. Which is to say, the vertigo of mountains and the enormous wide turbulence of the sea. Not exactly phobias, but I get nervous. So it's somehow inevitable I spend three months living in a Mediterranean paradise that's got lots of mountain's, and lots of sea.</p> <p dir="ltr">So, yesterday we went to Arsuz, and I got persuaded to try a boat ride. An hour in a slightly rickety-looking, slightly petrol-smelling boat, with my host, and the pilot who speaks tourist vocabulary in several languages.</p> <p dir="ltr">I didn't so much mind the dry heaving over the edge. Or the splashing of seawater all over our clothes. Or even the occasional big wave which knocked us and our cans of beer over.</p> <p dir="ltr">(Oh yes, I got persuaded to try beer. Didn't like that either.)</p> <p dir="ltr">No, it was just the vast...unsolidity of the water. You can't walk on it, I can barely float in it, you can't breathe in it, you can't reason with it and you can't even predict it. Two thirds of the earth's surface is trying to kill you.</p> <p dir="ltr">But I did have an idea. Maybe it's not vertigo. Maybe it's something akin to agoraphobia. I can control my emotions enough to prevent panic or freezing, so it's not a classic phobic reaction, but I think I really, really don't like open spaces.</p> <p dir="ltr">Jamal of course loved every minute. He even enjoyed getting soaked by spray. I have to admit the cold water was welcome, as a counteragent to the sun.</p> <p dir="ltr">There then followed the routine round of eating too much excellent food in bizarrely cheap restaurants, sitting and digesting while Jamal smoked the shisha ("hookah" in Turkey), failing to blag our way into posh hotels...and then eating even more too much excellent food.</p> <p dir="ltr">And I don't care if that sentence wasn't quite grammatical.<br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805716.post-18673148580761082042018-07-17T13:09:00.000+01:002018-07-17T17:12:12.014+01:00Turkish Bath<p dir="ltr">19:35 Monday 16th July 2018</p> <p dir="ltr">If I'm ever mad enough to do this again, a few things to bring next time:</p> <p dir="ltr"><b>A small towel</b></p> <p dir="ltr">As opposed to the large face flannel stuffed into my luggage. You never know when you'll need to wash - face or body - and you also never know when you </i>can</i> wash. When you can, even when you don't stictly need, do. And when you do, have something on hand to dry yourself.</p> <p dir="ltr">The reason you can't always wash is: water isn't always trivially available from taps. For the last two days, we've been without water. Today, a man from Turkmenistan came, towing two megaton (he said) water tank with a tractor. As I write, his water tank on the ground is filling our water tank on the roof, by a hydrolic process I don't quite understand.</p> <p dir="ltr">And yes, the Turkish for "Hydrolic" is, more or less, "Hydrolic". But probably spelled "Hidrolik".</p> <p dir="ltr">When the man from Turkmenistan isn't available, the mosque down the road manages a constant supply of water, which an hour ago I used to give myself an improvised cold shower - by taking a deep breath and pouring a jug of water over my head - and then washed two shirts in the sink.</p> <p dir="ltr">They're hanging on the line now, so hopefully tomorrow I can change out of this stickily sweat-infused shirt I've been wearing for three days. Why have I been wearing it for three days? Because all my other shirts are in the wash. But they haven't been washed. Because we've been out of water.</p> <p dir="ltr">You can also get it damp, and use it to cool yourself off.</p> <p dir="ltr">And you can clean the whiteboard with it.</p> <p dir="ltr">Douglas Adams was right.</p> <p dir="ltr"><b>A Long HDMI Cable</i></p> <p dir="ltr">For connecting the laptop to the TV, when the electricity is working, for showing videos to children, sneaking in a bit of English tuition.</p> <p dir="ltr">But if you use your own cable, disconnect it when not in use. Because, as we found out yesterday, children have the magical ability to destroy anything. Including furniture, toys, and computer peripherals.</p> <p dir="ltr"><b>A Spare Mains Power Converter</b></p> <p dir="ltr">...in addition to the non-spare one. Because not only do children destroy things, but non-children lose things.</p> <p dir="ltr"><b>Knife, Fork, Spoon</b></p> <p dir="ltr">One of each, because they won't always be provided. To be cleaned with the towel.</p> <p dir="ltr"><b>Laptop Recharging Battery</b></p> <p dir="ltr">One of those batteries you recharge from the mains, so you can recharge your laptop, phone etc. from <i>them</i> when the mains electricity isn't working.</p> <p dir="ltr">Also, when you're not using your phone for calling or internetting, keep it in airplane mode. It's a small hassle to switch it out of and back into airplane mode once or twice a day, but you use less data, and it <i>really</i> saves the battery.</p> <p dir="ltr">Switch on data, download emails, switch off data, write replies to be sent next time you switch data on.</p> <p dir="ltr"><b>Sandals</b></p> <p dir="ltr">For preference lightweight, possibly slip-ons, but durable. I brought tough trainers for walking the mountains, and carpet slippers for everything else that I can't do barefoot. They both work well, but a single good pair of sandals would cover all bases.<br> </p> Kapitanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647896216499813443noreply@blogger.com1