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The Space-Time Continuum: How Fact Meets Fiction to Make Faction

September 27th, 2011 | Add a Comment

 Faction: De Lorean Time Travel Car - WillMcC

To write creatively, factual knowledge is added to make ideas work. To make pure fact accessible, some fiction is called upon. Faction is the mixture.

A writer exploring an imaginary space ship needs to have facts to hand to make the fiction believable and interesting. When a drama or docudrama is made, people may know what a certain person did at a given time, like a crime, say, but not what was said before or afterwards. The artist adds the invented words to make the known facts believable and interesting to an audience.

Faction is not confined to science-fiction, it’s widespread in literature, drama and film. To take one illustration: people know the bare bones of what occurred when a young French girl received a vision to lead her soldiers against the English, ending in her being burned at the stake. What she said to anybody is not recorded, but in the 1999 movie Joan of Arc, writers Andrew Birkin and Luc Besson wrapped fictional dialogue round the handful of facts to make drama, just as all writers have to.

The Fourth Dimension

By consensus, the space-time continuum is in fact a mathematical model combining time and space as if they are parts of the same whole. If the space around people and things is in three dimensions, then the continuum is the 4th dimension. But it has been a useful piece of faction for many years.

This notion began with American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49), in 1848 when he said in a cosmology essay called Eureka: A Prose Poem, that ‘space and duration are as one’. Finnish Poe expert Petri Liukkonen writing on Poe’s life said: ‘Poe was not concerned with any specific scientific concept but mostly explored different realities, one of the central concerns of science fiction ever since… Poe usually dealt with paranoia rooted in personal psychology, physical or mental enfeeblement, obsessions, the damnation of death, feverish fantasies, the cosmos as source of horror and inspiration’.

US commentator David Grantz said that Poe in fact made a number of startling ‘modern’ discoveries ‘of current theories of the formation and destiny of the universe and the symbolic presentation of those theories in MS Found in a Bottle and A Descent into the Maelstrom’. In fact, Poe postulated the existence of black holes in space.

HG Wells: Original Time Thinker

English author Wells wrote in his novel The Time Machine (1895): ‘There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it. Scientific people…know very well that Time is only a kind of Space’.

Wells, regarded as the ‘father of science fiction’, produced fictions with some elements of fact (to make faction), such as The War of the Worlds (1898); Anticipations (1901), imagining the world in 2000; The Invisible Man (1897); First Men in the Moon (1901) and The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (1904).

Other writers used time machines, such as CS Lewis’ Cosmic Trilogy of Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943) and That Hideous Strength (1945) which described space travel to other planets, while his later Narnia stories had a magical transition into another dimension, dispensing with science altogether and relying on fiction and Christian allegory.

JB Priestley experimented with the writing of time twists and theories. He wrote several plays in the 1930s and 40s, each tackling a different time theory: Dangerous Corner has characters exposing dark secrets only for the play to restart at the end, so the revelations can be avoided. A theory of simultaneous time was published by JW Dunne in An Experiment With Time. Priestley used it in Time and the Conways.

I Have Been Here Before was built on Ouspensky’s theory of ‘eternal recurrence’; Johnson Over Jordan about trials in the afterlife and An Inspector Calls about a suicide yet to happen. Whether such theories work as theatrical events is open to debate, but again, some scientific fact or theory has to be wrapped up in fiction to make it work for an audience.

Not fiction, not faction, but theoretical fact, mathematically provable came in 1905, when Albert Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity, which, as explained by David M Harrison from the Physics Department of Toronto University in 1999, proposed what he called ‘spacetime’ as the essence of special relativity, two aspects of a unified wholeness, which he continued to develop during his life.

The long-running British TV series Doctor Who uses an old-fashioned police box, ‘The Tardis’, as a time travel machine. On the outside, it’s an upright box big enough to hold 2 standing adults; inside, it’s as big as it needs to be to represent the flight deck of a space liner. The whole concept of the periodically rejuvenated Doctor, one of the universe’s ‘Time Lords’ is a mash of fact and fiction.

Hitchhiking Back to the Future

The space-time continuum was the device through which the car and train travelled forwards and backwards through time in the Back to the Future movie trilogy (1985 and onwards). The fictional premise was that something past could be altered drastically enough to make a new future, accidentally or on purpose.

The Time Traveller’s Wife, novel (2003) and film (2009), exploited a unique time travel conceit: a medical/psychological condition at the mercy of which was the central character, rather than a deliberate act of time manipulation.

Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy and sequels in radio play, novel, movie and gaming incarnations (1978-92), as well as being wildly inventive comedy parodying science fiction and being perfect examples of faction, gave to the English language a bit more: ‘a freak wormhole opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum’.

These factions also gave the world, ‘life, the universe and everything’; the ‘ultimate Answer to the Question: 42’, and the ‘ultimate Question: how many roads must a man walk down?’ There is little more joyous in literature than a piece of juicy faction, marrying cold hard truth and grey half-truth, imagination/invention with something scientific.

First published on Suite 101, 25 August 2010.

Photo: Faction: De Lorean Time Travel Car – WillMcC

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Mighty Tamla Motown is the Great Survivor of Music Labels

September 23rd, 2011 | Add a Comment

Motown Museum, Detroit, Michigan - Blob4000
What turned one man’s recording label dream in Detroit, Michigan into one of the best-loved surviving musical and cultural icons from the 1960s?

While big 60s’ recording companies like Stax, Pye, Island, Decca, Chess, Fontana, Columbia, Bell are now recalled only by devotees and less frequently than mods versus rockers or hippies, Motown has remained one of the triggers into that controversial decade and since. The music, like other aspects of ‘the swinging sixties’ is subject to revision and the vagaries of faulty memories.

People either blame that period for the drugs, moral-sapping liberalisation behind the ills of today, or see it fondly through rose-coloured spectacles as a time of freedom, peace, love and ‘doing your own thing, letting it all hang out’. But there is widespread agreement that Hitsville USA, Motown, is an enduring legacy of high-quality, soulful music; memorable and relevant today.

The Genius of Berry Gordy

The Tamla Tigers are a UK-based group who lovingly recreate Tamla and Soul sounds. Their Roy Norris said: ‘the aim was to recreate those fantastic grooves that have made that music so enduringly popular. Even if you don’t dance, no-one can resist responding to Motown’s unique beat’.

In 1959 Berry Gordy Jnr borrowed $800 to fulfill his dream of a recording studio for black ghetto music. His location was 2648 West Grand Boulevard, Detroit, the home of Ford cars. A popular nickname was Motor Town, abbreviated to Motown. Tamla he added from the Debbie Reynolds movies, Tammy (1957-67), as Tammy Records already existed.

The Miracles scored early with Money, (That’s What I Want), and it was lead singer ‘Smokey’ Robinson who talked Gordy into establishing his own label. Robinson was a classic songwriter as well as singer, and his own Shop Around became the label’s first gold single.

Gordy’s energy and drive developed sound, label and image, but his special skill was in recognising other truths about the music business at that time, which led to success. African-American music, local-blues, R&B, soul-based, partly gospel-inspired, dance-focussed, pop-tuned songs would always appeal to black youngsters, but he realised there was a crossover with white pop music. In other words, the potential market was open-ended and racial integration was helped.

The Funk Brothers

Gordy also grasped that it wasn’t only singers who made hits, so surrounded himself with teams of talented songwriters, producers and musicians. Groups like The Four Tops, The Temptations, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Gladys Knight & The Pips, Junior Walker & the All Stars, The Isley Brothers and later The Jackson 5 and The Commodores were attracted to the set-up; The Supremes were moulded in the Motown forge. Solo artists such as Marv Johnson, Little Stevie Wonder, Mary Wells, Marvin Gaye, later Edwin Starr signed up.

Holland, Dozier & Holland and Norman Whitfield led the teams of writers and producers who created consistent hits in assembly-line efficiency that was the studio hallmark. Sessions could be called at any time, so a team of musicians was on hand permanently. The Funk Brothers as they became known, were paid $10 a song until everything was deemed ready to release. Union rules of the time limited to four the number of songs that could be laid down in a single session, but as they were a house band, such rules were never applied.

In the documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown a clever play on the Four Tops’ classic hit Standing in the Shadows of Love, penned by Holland-Dozier-Holland, it’s quite clear that most of the surviving players acknowledge they did what they did through love of playing for at least some regular money, but that without their musicianship, Motown would not have taken off and lasted.

The Image, Style and Culture

Gordy started other labels recording soul and R&B beside Motown Records (itself a merger of his separate Tamla and Motown labels), but it was his attention to detail and careful control of his artists’ public images, stage costumes, manners and crafted choreography that enhanced the corporation and separated them from other artists.

Motown came to Britain via individual singles, but it was the first tour in 1965 that really opened up the British and then European markets. Also, they took advantage of the pirate/commercial radio ships to promote even further. In 1971 BBC Radio 1‘s disc jockey Tony Blackburn pushed Diana Ross’ album track I’m Still Waiting to make it a UK Number 1 single.

The Motown Museum describes ‘Motown as business and cultural force’. Many of the specially designed suits and dresses are on display along with Michael Jackson’s jeweled white glove and black fedora, at the museum, housed in the original Hitsville building. Then Gordy family home, the dining room table served as ‘shipping department’ till they moved out, when it became offices.

Long before computers and synthesisers, engineers created an echo chamber to make early reverb (a hole in the ceiling). The three-track recording console upgraded to eight-track is at the museum. Visitors get a sense of the 24-hour, 7 days a week feel of those early days, before Motown moved to a 10-story HQ in 1968, and then California in 1972.

From this stable of the music industry, came success matched only by Abbey Road and a handful of others. Some 70% of their released singles made the charts. While that speaks volumes for business, it says more about the fabric of 20th century musical history, in which Tamla Motown is an interwoven part.

First published on Suite 101, 24 August 2010.

Photo: Motown Museum, Detroit, Michigan – Blob4000

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Movies Echo Life’s Fantastic, Weird, Unusual and Bizarre Deaths

September 21st, 2011 | Add a Comment

Helicopter Decapitation Is Bizarre Death - Zack Clark
Many people lead unusual lives; some end in the strangest, almost unbelievable deaths. Hollywood loves them all: the odder, the better to feed new material.

As art often imitates life, people who’ve died from unusual diseases, accidents (boats, cars, planes, trains, industrial machinery), wars, disasters, murders, suicides, executions and quirks of fate are source material to film-makers. People rubberneck motorway accidents and flock to see where celebrities like Princess Diana or Elvis Presley died, as death is compelling on film or in situ.

People In Extraordinary Departures

Folklore claims in 401 BC, a soldier condemned for murder survived 17 days of scaphism (penned in a trough, head and limbs coated with honey, left to death by insects); and in 207 BC, Greek philosopher, Chrysippus is believed to have died of laughter watching his drunken donkey trying to gobble figs!

Sir Arthur Aston was beaten to death with his own wooden leg during the English Civil War in 1649. In Sweden in 1771, King Adolf Frederick, literally ate himself to death. In 1862, baseball player Jim Creighton died swinging his bat too hard and rupturing his bladder.

Franz Reichelt fell to his death from the Eiffel Tower in 1912, testing the ‘coat parachute’ he’d invented. In 1942, the British vessel HMS Trinidad accidentally torpedoed itself, killing 32 men; US Submarine Tang suffered the same mishap in 1944, killing 74. Kurt Godel died of starvation in 1978 when his wife was hospitalised and he refused to eat food prepared by anybody else.

In Toronto, Canada, Garry Hoy threw himself against a 24th floor window to prove it was unbreakable glass. It popped out of its frame, and he fell to his death. German Bernd-Jurgen Brandes was stabbed and partially eaten by Armin Meiwes who’d posted internet adverts for a person willing to be killed and eaten.

Sometimes only slightly strange deaths happen to famous people, but the effects have lasting, national and international repercussions. Abraham Lincoln (1865), John F Kennedy (1963), Martin Luther King (1968), John Lennon (1980), Sam Cooke (1964), Gandhi (1948) and the Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1914) whose assassination triggered Word War 1, were all shot dead.

Syphilis is believed to have taken Christopher Columbus, Al Capone and Scott Joplin (1917). Others such as Napoleon may have died from the effects of syphilis treatment. Celebrity Trivia Collection lists such gems as Attila the Hun expiring from a nosebleed on his wedding night; and trombonist Tommy Dorsey asphixiated in his sleep from food in his windpipe (1956).

The Bizarre and Unusual Make Fascinating Viewing

Just as some find war fascinating, so decapitation is popular and more frequent than one may suppose. Horror film maker Michael Findlay was decapitated by helicopter blade (1970); actor Vic Morrow died the same way making Twilight Zone: The Movie in 1982. Helicopter dismembering featured in 1970’s Catch 22. Welsh racing driver JG Parry-Thomas was decapitated by his car’s drive chain snapping in 1927.

Curses from ancient tombs stemmed from George Herbert, Earl of Carnarvon, among the 1923 openers of Tutenkhamen’s tomb being bitten by a mosquito while shaving which led to blood poisoning. The film Invincible was inspired by the blood poisoning death of Zishe Breitbart, circus strongman who drove rusty spikes through oak boards with his bare hands, but pierced his knee.

Ballet dancer Isadora Duncan broke her neck when a long scarf caught in the wheel of an open car in 1927. Playwright Tennessee Williams died choking on an eye-drop bottle cap in 1983.

British comedian Tommy Cooper had a heart attack in 1984 performing at Her Majesty’s Theatre, London. The audience laughed, thinking it part of the show. While filming The Crow (1993), Brandon Lee was shot by a malfunctioning prop gun. Neither crew nor cast realised, assuming he was acting.

Into the Wild (2007) was inspired by 1992’s death by starvation of American survivalist Christopher McCandless. Open Water (2004) was the true story of scuba divers abandoned on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef after a faulty headcount of divers. In 2001 a homeless man in Fort Worth, Texas was hit by a drug-taking driver and became lodged in the windshield before dying hours later, which inspired Stuck (2007).

British comic Rod Hull died falling from his roof trying to improve television reception in 1999. In 2006, Australian naturalist Steve Irwin expired filming a documentary, Ocean’s Deadliest, from a stingray barb in his heart.

Hollywood Loves a Good Death

The 1986 movie, 8 Million Ways to Die was an American crime film. The notion of many exits from life is the heart of the shock and spectacle that is cinema. Saw (2003 onwards) is about ‘Jigsaw’ trapping victims in games/tests of physical and psychological torture. Hostel (2005) is the sadistic torture/death of backpackers.

Some argue that torture today is acceptable. A generation ago, Marathon Man (1976) featuring a dentist probing a man’s weak tooth’s nerve ending was shocking. Final Destination (2000 & sequels), ‘you can’t cheat death’, is thriller-horror with strings of mysterious freak accidents wiping teenagers, one by one.

Death En Masse on Film

Death by Armageddon and imagined end of the world are Tinseltown cliches. The demise of millions from earthquake, volcano, fire, flood, war echoes what happens regularly, yet still counts as escapist cinema. Stories hang on survivors coping. Flawed personalities, ambitions, relationships make drama.

Waterworld (1995) showed aggressive peoples clinging to floating debris on a flooded earth, before finding dry land. 2009’s The Road followed a father and son escaping dangers to find life on a coast. The Book of Eli (2010), The Day After Tomorrow (2004), On the Beach (1959, 2000), Testament (1983), I Am Legend (2007), 28 Days Later (2002), 28 Weeks Later (2007), Children of Men (2006) and 2012 (2009) variously showed unlikely/fantastic survival after mass death and mayhem.

Horror suits directors looking for the bizarre, unpleasant, demonic or gruesome. Ghost (1990), What Dreams May Come (1998), The Sixth Sense (1999) and What Lies Beneath (2000), for example, shed new light on death. Trinity Education suggest featuring the dead helping/influencing the living, makes them a serious art-form sub-section.

The movie industry has yet to exhaust ten most bizarre ways to shuffle off this mortal coil, listed at How Stuff Works, which include death by getting stuck head-first in a storm drain, a beard catching fire, a flock of hungry sheep overturning a hay trailer onto the driver, lightning striking metal wiring in bras, cardiac arrest from playing video games, unexplained explosion of a molasses tank, death from excessive junk piles and suicide by jumping off the letter H of the Hollywood sign!

First published on Suite 101, 23 August 2010.

Photo: Helicopter Decapitation Is Bizarre Death – Zack Clark

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How Second World War Still Fascinates, Horrifies and Educates

September 18th, 2011 | Add a Comment

 Nazi Death Camps: Visit for Historical Lessons - Logaritmo

People love historical battle re-enactments, but WW2 has unique appeal. There are vast quantities of artifacts to stir memory and teach the next generation.

There are lots of aphorisms about people learning from history, including that people don’t learn from history; that people learn about history not to make the same mistakes, and that those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it. True or not, the fact remains, people are endlessly fascinated by the Second World War’s history; and many feel that younger generations need to know it too.

It’s guessed that the length of time devoted to footage of and about that War on British television alone has already exceeded the length of the actual conflict, 1939-1945. That’s without counting movies, diaries/recollections, historical books and novels that have been and still are inspired by it.

That such a complex war should prove fascinating over 70 years after it ended, is perhaps not a surprise, as there are almost 40 conflicts going on around the world at present ranging from civil wars, drug wars and territorial disputes to insurgency.

WW II Museums and Memorials

Most places have war memorials, commemorating locals killed in and by war. Coastal areas in Britain still have concrete pill boxes, intended to slow an invasion. Ships sunk at sea in war are designated memorials; cemeteries around the world are filled with foreign combatants. The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial is one such.

Yad Vashem, the Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem, Israel, heads the world’s centres of remembrance, memorial, reconciliation and education, bringing people of all ages, all cultures to a numbing sense of loss, waste and horror, which all wars bring in the end.

However, every museum, each place of tribute has its own unique contribution to the human need to remember. National WW2 Museums list 46 from the USA alone, from Airborne and Special Operations Museum, North Carolina; American Battle Monuments Commission, Arlington, Virginia; Atomic Heritage Foundation,Washington, DC; Battleships Cove, (Massachusetts), Texas, North Carolina and Alabama, right through to US Army Heritage & Education Center, Pennsylvania.

These cover every aspect: army, navy, air force, veterans, ships, tanks, weapons. The Museum of the Marine Corps displays over 1000 artifacts from tactical aircraft to a small field ration can-opener. The Museum of World War II, near Boston is described by London’s Imperial War Museum as ‘the world’s most comprehensive display of original WWII artifacts.

Original uniforms; spy & sabotage weaponry; letters/documents/manuscripts from Hitler, Roosevelt, Churchill, Eisenhower, Patton, Montgomery, Stalin, Mussolini and Josef Mengele, for instance; Hitler’s first sketch for the Nazi flag and a Sherman tank from North Africa’s campaign and an original landing craft from the Pacific. The Wright Museum’s brief is to mark the significant and lasting impact of the war on American life with a similar range of artifacts.

WW II Around the World

In France there’s the Airborne Museum,Tank Museum at Saumur, and Le Mémorial de Caen. Australia has one at Canberra; Canada one in Quebec and the Maritime Archive in Newfoundland. In Britain there are Churchill Archives at Cambridge, Imperial War Museum’s Duxford airfield, Churchill Museum and RAF Museum in London, while Malta has Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna (Malta Heritage Trust), Luxembourg National Museum of Military History and Guam has War in the PacificNational Historical Park.

Nazi prison camps were numerous and varied, spread across Europe. For example, there was a labor camp in Alderney, CI; transit camp & prison at Amersfoort, Netherlands; extermination camps at Belzec, Chelmno and Majdanek Poland; concentration camps at Banjica, Serbia; Bredtvet, Norway; Jasenovac, Croatia and Vaivara, Estonia.

Most have long gone, but visits to just three that are open to the public: Dachau, Auschwitz Birkenau and Sachsenhausen explain why this war is still remembered and taught to each new generation. The evidence of experiments carried out of vulnerable peoples gets no less shocking with the passage of time.

Other WW II Actual Sites of Historic Interest

The Cabinet War Rooms a short step from Downing Street are the actual secret bunkers used by war-time Prime Minister Winston Churchill during the dark hours of the blitzing of London.

The Keroman U-boat submarine base, Lorient, Brittany, France built to protect the Nazi attack capabilities against supply vessels in the Atlantic, survived Allied bomb attacks because of its double-skinned concrete construction, and is open to public viewing.

The Channel Islands, closer to France than England, were the only British territory occupied by the Nazis. Jersey War Tunnels are preserved, showing how from 1941-1944, thousands of slave laborers, mostly from German-occupied countries, built ‘Hohlgangsanlage 8’. Daily life during the occupation is graphically recreated.

The actual secret annex hideaway where Anne Frank and her family hid for two years from the Gestapo is open to the public every day in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The warship HMS Belfast is anchored in London’s Thames, open for viewing. Labrador Park, Singapore is a war battery used to defend Keppel Harbour as the Japanese invaded.

As long as war persists, there will be monuments and remembrances for the victims, their bravery and endurance. The sheer number of Second World War artifacts shows that educational-tourism is here to stay.

First published on Suite 101, 5 August 2010.

Photo: Nazi Death Camps: Visit for Historical Lessons – Logaritmo

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Plain Language is the Holy Grail of Communication

September 13th, 2011 | Add a Comment

Officials are Urged to Use Plain Language - US Office of Insular Affairs
If people would say what they mean, instead of speaking/writing/hiding in cliches, jargon and obfuscation, might understanding be greater?

The Free Dictionary gives meanings of the little-used but useful word, obfuscation. To obfuscate is to make so confused as to be difficult to understand, to dim, to darken, make indistinct or obscure, often used of the truth. Expanded definitions include bafflement, befuddlement, bemusement, disarray, mystification and confusion. All the nuances can be wrapped up in how some people and organisations communicate written/oral information/instruction, and how many people respond.

Plain English, Plain Language

The Plain English Campaign is a commercial editing and training firm based in the United Kingdom, ‘fighting for plain English in public communication’. They oppose ‘gobbledygook, jargon and legalese’. Once, the language they oppose was found mainly in legal documents; nowadays it seems to be everywhere, partly driven by political correctness, and partly by us-versus-them attitude.

Founded in 1979, they work with companies to improve their language and present awards, like the Crystal Mark to show approval of official documents which have the clarity needed to be grasped by their audience; and their Foot in the Mouth Award for ‘baffling comment by a public figure’ (winners include George W Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and the Golden Bull Award for the ‘worst examples of written tripe’.

UK’s The Times January 2010 reported a Plain English Campaign push about ‘regular coffee’. Because ‘regular’ is meaningless and confusing and not readily understood, they want all coffee to be sold in ‘small, medium or large’. They just want it simple.

In USA, it’s Plain Language rather than Plain English and as evidence of some increasing determination to get to grips with better communication across the government machine, the Securities and Exchange Commission now produce a Plain English Handbook requiring ‘a new style of thinking and writing’. These simplifying ideas are spreading.

Business and ‘Professionalese’

The Plain English Approach to Business Writing (1997) by Edward P Bailey about which William A Donovan writing in Library Journal, said: ‘Stressing the value of using plain (i.e., similar-to-spoken) English, he presents a simple model for organizing most business writing and supplies tips on style, punctuation, layout, and writing methods for oneself or one’s staff’, is one of a legion of books designed to teach people how to simplify language.

Daniel H Pink, writing in the UK’s Daily Telegraph, July 2010, challenged readers to ‘only speak like a human at work’. He argued that just when customers crave openness and honesty, companies ‘talking professionalese keep customers and colleagues at a distance’.

He said that businesses which take responsibility for major inconvenience to paying customers (like airlines, travel companies, service providers) and merely ‘apologise for any inconvenience caused’, are fobbing people off with mealy-mouthed, unfelt words devoid of any sincerity. Even the way people are treated held in a queue waiting on the phone is indicative of off-hand disrespect.

He believed that with the world awash with consumer information and choice, clarity itself is now a source of competitive advantage. Local authorities, the world of education, medicine and any professional grouping have their own language of codewords, jargon, in-jokes and cliches that exclude non-members from their inner circle, but as Pink said, it’s time to experiment. ‘Don’t say anything to your boss, your staff, your teammate, your supplier, your customer that you wouldn’t say to your spouse or friend’.

Politics, Cliches and Jargon

As long ago as 1946, George Orwell (Eric Blair) recognised a problem in political prose that was formed ‘to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind’. His essay Politics and the English Language condemned poor language as a ‘contagion’; he advocated simple, plain English.

Leelefever writing on Common CraftJanuary 2009 reported a 12-month study of 1,214 American homeowners and investors that showed huge demand for simple, plain English communications. 84% were more likely to trust a company that uses jargon-free, plain English and President Obama should ‘mandate clarity, transparency and plain English to be a requirement of every new law, regulation and policy’.

Cliche.com have examples of some of the cliches that people love to hate, but use. They include: at the end of the day; thinking outside the box; at this moment in time; buy into something; push the buttons or tick all the boxes; ‘the ball is in your court’; ball park figures; it ain’t over till the fat lady sings; Rome wasn’t built in a day; when it rains it pours, and ‘hot enough for you?’

Many of these come from sports, but whether it’s sports, politics, business, healthcare, education or local authorities, somebody, somewhere will be trying to pull the wool over somebody’s eyes; anything but tell the plain truth.

First published on Suite 101 on 5 August 2010.

Photo: Officials are Urged to Use Plain Language – US Office of Insular Affairs

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The Arts and Mathematics Are Sometimes Close Relations

September 12th, 2011 | Add a Comment

UK's National Gallery Uses Geometric Artistry - Fabio Alessandro Locati
From the Geometry of Innocence to Mondrian’s abstracts to Mozart’s Effect to Minimalist music & painting, the arts owe a debt to the science of mathematics.

Maths is popularly thought definite, absolute and provably true, while art is the exact opposite, often defying logic. However, there are few certain realities, and some of the greatest works of art have drawn on mathematics to demonstrate that.

Geometry as Artistic Fundamental

Albert Einstein said: In so far as statements of geometry speak about reality, they’re not certain, and in so far as they are certain, they don’t speak about reality.’ Geometry is the essence in architecture and design, but is also a powerful image-maker.

The Geometry of Innocence is a book (2001) by US photographer Schles, about which Library Journal says: ‘his critical eye brought him to the extreme (e.g., police helicopters, operating rooms, death row) as well as the everyday (e.g., birthday parties, weddings, construction sites). From each, he extracts strangely humanizing views to address his apprehension with the ragged, noisy isolation of the modern urban experience. The result is a calamitous and visceral journey through a kinetic, disturbing, vibrant America’.

It is also the title of an abstract watercolour painting by Mark Ari; and The Geometry of Innocence Flesh on the Bone: The Body as Souvenir in Beatrice Grimshaw’s Travel Writing by Clare McCottera from the Department of Languages & Literature, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, published in Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change.

There is also Bob Dylan’s Tombstone Blues: The geometry of innocence flesh on the bone/ Causes Galileo’s math book to get thrown/ At Delilah who sits worthlessly alone/ But the tears on her cheeks are from laughter.

The Mozart Effect & Music/Maths Links

Statistician Jeffrey Rosenthal from Toronto University writing in +plus magazine, said: ‘The astronomer Galileo Galilei observed in 1623 that the universe “is written in the language of mathematics”, and it’s remarkable the extent to which science and society are governed by mathematical ideas. It is perhaps even more surprising that music, with all its passion and emotion, is also based upon mathematical relationships. Such musical notions as octaves, chords, scales, and keys can be demystified and understood logically using simple mathematics’.

Dave Rusin, Associate Professor of Mathematics at Northern Illinois University, studies mathematics/music interplay. For example, as to why there are 12 tones in an octave, Rusin says it’s to do with the nature of sound and human perception of it. He refers to the ‘Mozart Effect’, which claims exposure to early classical music early in life can lead to improved performance in test scores, spatial visualisation and abstract reasoning, all of which feature in arts creativity.

He considers mathematical proofs set to music, sharp and flat, tuning & interval patterns, the shape of instruments like the harp, defining musical styles mathematically, beat frequency & trigonometry, and sums of series, which would support the reasoning that music theorists often use maths to understand music.

Ancient Chinese, Egyptian and Mesopotamian people studied mathematical principles of sound, while the ancient Greek Pythagoreans investigated musical scales in terms of harmony arising from numbers. It’s this harmony that is fundamental to music theory and artistic creation. Some teachers argue that maths is a language, and if that is understood, then it’s part in artistic endeavour is clear.

Other Branches of Learning Are Fundamental in Music

Abstract algebra can analyze music. ‘Rhyme’ and ‘rhythm’ are from same root; musical terms like ‘metre’ (linked to measure) reflect historical links with music, astronomy and physics. Music is extended by a plan of its musical form, as is architecture, taking account of function/purpose, repetition and order and pleasing artistic perception.

Sound experiments from historical traditions/cultures continue, often fusing styles. Either harmonious or discordant, regular/non regular pitches, frequencies, scales, rhythms, traditional orchestras, minimalist materials, eastern instruments, African sounds, Arabic or oriental variations, voices, even junk as in the work of Stomp: the rich variety of musical lifeblood demonstrates how the arts has absorbed scientific underpinning of music, and how the arts feed off one another.

Technology to amplify and record sound has long been around, but nowadays can twist, distort and change perception. Airbrushing photography, adding people to a scene who have been dead for years, is not not just a touch of postmodernism, but a genuine attempt to push arts’ boundaries, using every device yet known to man.

The Mathematics of Art

Traditionally painting employs mathematical techniques. Most artists, including Picasso are fine draughtsman. According to Math Central at University of Regina, people who like maths want to see patterns, angles and perspective, like Degas employed. Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is drawn on what is known as the golden ratio: 1:0.618, aesthetically pleasing and reflecting the proportion of the human body. His painting has golden rectangles throughout, as does his The Last Supper.

M.C. Escher produced mathematically challenging artwork, as stated by Math Central, ‘His polytypes cannot be constructed in the real world, but can be described using maths’. Ascending and Descending is a staircase of mathematical impossibility, but the drawing makes it seem real.

Math Central says: ‘In art, mathematics is not always visible, unless you are looking for it. But there is much symmetry, geometry, and measurement involved in creating beautiful art. Perhaps math and art are quite intricately linked’.

First published on Suite 101, 4 August 2010.

Photo: UK’s National Gallery Uses Geometric Artistry – Fabio Alessandro Locati

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Love-Hate Relationships are Normal, Understandable and Common

September 9th, 2011 | Add a Comment

Love-Hate Relationship With Shopping & Fashion - Til Niermann
Most people have ambivalent, contradictory feelings ranging from love to hate about other people, things, places, sounds and smells. It’s part of life.

Some psychologists believe a love-hate relationship between couples, where conflict is used to strengthen love, is better than a straightforward one. Neil Warner, author of Turning Conflicts Into True love argues that people change, as ‘conflict is to help you learn the basic truth about how to deal with each other. It takes two to dispute, but only one to repair a relationship’.

The range of people’s love-hate relationships cover all aspects of life. For example, blogger Karen Fredricks has one with Amazon, not for books, but how it reviews non-book products.

Love-Hate Shopping and Style

Anna North, writes on Jezebel, a women’s opinion blog about keeping women from hating their shopping experiences. She says that men, citing market research, claim women want ‘cleanliness, control and considerateness’ from shopping. She rejected the male, gender-polarising view.

She added that to enhance the experience: ‘decent lighting, more mirrors, not being followed round stores as if they are all thieves, accessible products, not being treated like idiots if buying cars or electronics, not being ignored if shopping with a man, more careful thought given to sounds and smells inside shops and less hard-push selling’.

Michelle Lee wrote Our Love-Hate Relationship with Dressing, Shopping and the Cost of Style (2003) which Publishers’ Weekly says ‘scrutinizes co-conspirators who make up a $200-billion business: designers, manufacturers, fashion press, garment workers, unions, retail outlets and, ultimately, consumers’. Lee was overall critical of the genre.

She suggested Ten Commandments (good analogy where shopping has become a religion) that slaves to fashion endure, for example: ‘thou shalt pay more to appear poor; thou shalt be a walking billboard’. A tongue-in-cheek tone didn’t alter serious issues behind shopping: exploitation of clothes makers, damage to environment, credit abuse, ethical production of materials, unattainable female body-image role models and addiction.

Love-Hate Mobile and Cell Phones

Herb Weisbaum MSNBC’s Consumer Man says (2010) ‘250 million American cell-phone subscribers need to be connected but are annoyed with service providers’. He calculates in the past 3 years, more people complained to Better Business Bureau (which tracks over 3800 industries) about phone companies’ service than any other.

In the UK, dissatisfaction with one company (Google’s Nexus One, touchscreen smartphone, disparity between US and UK provision and the way complaints were handled) hit BBC News in January 2010.

The industry is sharpening up, addressing disapproval levels among customers about billing & contracts, troubleshooting, applications and reception, yet still phones become must-have items for all ages. A survey (2005) by the University of Michigan showed 80%-plus of cell phone users claiming the device had made their lives easier, but 60% felt public use ‘disturbed or irritated’.

Writing in E-Commerce Times 2006, Keith Regan argued that mobile phones ‘are a love-hate relationship with staying power’. He acknowledged that as technology matures, in the hands of ‘businesspeople and teenagers alike, mobiles hold a unique and unenviable position in the world of technology, loved and hated as intensely as any’.

He reckoned ‘people around the world have developed such a close, personal relationship with their mobiles, and increasingly, other devices, that the chances of ever going back to the days when people would be truly out of reach, voluntarily or involuntarily, seems impossible’.

In the same article, Syracuse University Professor of Media & Culture, Robert Thompson confirmed that population penetration of the wireless revolution means the many disadvantages are less than perceived benefits, and soon mobile technology, ‘warts and all’, will be completely accepted. Many people opposed the start of the automobile revolution similarly, on grounds of noise, smell and nuisance to others.

As phones become increasingly personalised with more applications, total acceptance may be inevitable. Whether the majority will learn to love them, time only will tell.

Love-Hate Almost Anything

People love-hate virtually everything in life, from computers to the Apple store, from airplanes to garlic, from universities to towns. Automotive Atrocities: The Cars We Love to Hate by Eric Peters (2004) lists famous and infamous cars that somebody somewhere has decided people love and/or hate.

Song preferences can often be somebody’s guilty secret. Movies We Hate to Love lists ‘corny, silly, hokey movies’ that people love but hate to admit it. Most Mel Brooks’, sci-fi stuff, family films, rom-coms, horror flicks, even Sherlock Holmes and Alfred Hitchcock is rated love-but-hate.

Jeffery Ingram writing in Library Journal, explains that Consumed: Why Americans Hate, Love and Fear Food (1995) is a study of America’s ‘neurotic love-hate relationship with food’, from Puritans to ‘low-fat, low-cholesterol present’, examining the paradox of food as ‘both fat-laden killer and sensuous sustainer of life’.

Contradictory love-hate relationships with oil (deep-water exploration, spills, safety, petrol, plastics) are understandable, as is any political issue. In fact, politicians themselves arouse the strongest voter ambivalence. From 2005 – 2008 the Canadian Museum of Civilization presented a showcase exhibition called Love ‘em, Hate ‘em: Canadians and Their Politicians, which showed how public opinion is shaped/expressed by personalities’ images and styles of political leaders.

People often have a mixed view of celebrities, too, from celebrity worship syndrome to hating or stalking them. In love-hate relationships there appear to be few happy mediums.

First published on Suite 101, 3 August 2010.

Photo: Love-Hate Relationship With Shopping & Fashion – Til Niermann

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Old Codes and Symbols Reinvented Through Modern Technologies

September 6th, 2011 | Comments Off on Old Codes and Symbols Reinvented Through Modern Technologies

Post/ZIP Code Technology in New Uses - Irate
New technologies mean most old ways of doing things end in museums. However, some flourish with fresh applications and vital restyling for modern times.

Technology for playing music has long been digital, consigning records (singles spinning on a turntable at 45 revolutions per minute, or long-players at 33 rpm) to history. Cameras with film developed in dark-rooms are by-gone curiosities.

However, many people enjoy old film processes, including black/white, and prefer background crackles from scratched records. While the retro-nostalgia market is alive and many things are naturally recycled in music, film and the arts, others are absorbed into Now.

Post Codes and ZIP Codes Have Modern Applications

British Postal districts were named in London and large cities from 1857, refined in 1917 to include numbered subdivisions, extended in 1934 and incorporated into the UK post code rolled out nationally from 1959 -1974. There are approaching two million post code units, unique identifiers of around 28 million addresses.

Electronic sorting for mail delivery depends on post coding; Royal Mail have decided to phase out counties as part of addresses. They find any residence by building name/number, street and post code alone.

Among other uses,the post code has been given a new lease of life in satellite navigation systems to locate specific addresses. The codes are used by insurance companies to assess premiums and risk for motoring and domestic policies. Crime rates can be matched to them, as can socio-economic groupings for data research and marketing.

Mary Bellis in a history of Post Office Technology, describes how increasing mail volumes, rising manpower costs, transportation changes and new technologies made the USA’s ZIP code essential. Zoning Improvement Plans began in July 1963, responding to rail declining, moving from agricultural to global industrialisation, overtaking of social mail by business correspondence.

Other delivery services like DHL, UPS and FedEx require ZIP codes for routing of packaging, indeed, cannot deliver without them. ZIPs gather US geographical and census statistics, and their use by companies in-store and on-line is widespread.

The Ampersand: Long History & Big Future

According to webdsigner depot the ampersand is ‘one of the most unique typographical characters out there, and designers can exercise artistic freedom’. It’s a strange surviving quirk of history; & is a logogram representing ‘and’.

Traced by some observers to the Roman first century AD, it was originally a ligature of the letters E and T (Latin for ‘and’ is ‘et’), and in some designs, separate E and T can be made out. Over the years, there have been graphic and printing changes, but it’s basically unchanged, its meaning transparent and universally understood in written English.

The word itself reached a dictionary in 1837, made up from ‘and per se and’, meaning: ‘the symbol which by itself is’. Historically, as webdesigner depot explain, ‘and per se’ preceded any letter in the alphabet that was also a word in its own right (‘I’, ‘A’), and was the last character in the alphabet.

It has dropped out of the alphabet, but is still used in contemporary expressions, like business titles ‘& Sons’, or other titles: ‘Dungeons & Dragons’. Text messaging and on-line shorthand use it widely, and it’s common in programming, like MySQL, C and C++, XML, SGML and BASIC.

The @ Sign May Have a Financial Origin

Used globally to denote the location of an email address, in some countries the typographic sign @ simply means ‘The Internet’ itself. In fact, it was the advent of the world wide web and early emails that gave new life to a virtually moribund symbol.

The 1885 keyboard of the American Underwood typewriter had it, mainly for accounting and commercial invoices, for example: 9 items @ 15 cents = $1.35. Some think the mercantile shorthand began from abbreviation of an ancient Greek preposition meaning ‘at the rate of’, or later Latin ‘per’. Medieval monks transcribing documents sometimes put it next to numerals, to indicate ‘about’ or ‘by’.

A Spanish document about wheat in 1448 and an Italian one from 1537 about the price of wine are believed to carry @. In Spanish & Portuguese it’s long been a symbol for a unit of weight. In 17th century France and Sweden it may have also meant ‘at’. Today in Iberian tongues, it can be used as a gender-neutral ending to words, for example, ‘amigos’ (friends). If the friends are both men and women, it can become ‘amig@s’, though not all native speakers accept that.

Through online forums, blogs and microblogging and text messaging, it’s use is evolving. It can be a substitute for other symbols or meanings, and in computer programming it has become part of the vocabulary, without attaining universal agreement on precise usage.

In chemical formulae, genetics and some science data/technical literature, it’s used. In some journalism, it replaces ‘aka’, itself an abbreviated ‘also known as’ to describe somebody’s alias.

Different languages have different words for it: Italian, ‘snail’; Dutch, ‘monkey tail’; Hebrew, ‘Strudel’; Chinese, ‘little mouse’; Swedish and Danish; ‘elephant trunk’; Finnish, ‘meow, meow’ and Russian, ‘dog’.

Whatever it is called, it’s here to stay: a code-symbol from the past meeting the present and being valid for the future.

First published on Suite 101, 1 August 2010.

Photo: Post/ZIP Code Technology in New Uses – Irate

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The Arts, Science and Technology Fuse Together for Mutual Benefit

September 3rd, 2011 | 2 Comments

Movie Science-Fiction Can Become Fact One Day - Soren Lundtoft
Normally thought to co-exist in splendid isolation, science and the arts can work with technology in perfect harmony to push artistic boundaries.

The arts have always been at the forefront of technological and scientific advances, from the latest in cave paints to computerised/digital film making/theatrical effects that cause some to wonder if real human actors will be needed at all in the future. Technology in the Arts explores the intersection between arts management and on-line technology. Many universities run joint department programs, conscious of the synergy between arts & sciences.

When Science Fiction Becomes Science Fact

There is a growing genre of stories and movies that started out as far-fetched ideas, but gradually found reality as science advanced. HG Wells’ 1898 story War of the Worlds doesn’t seem impossible today. While life may be reborn from DNA fragments, are prehistoric creatures envisioned in Jurassic Park (1993) yet possible?

Laser technology is already in object-destroying beam weapons, if not like in Star Wars (1977) or Independence Day (1996). High-frequency dispersal weapons against youngsters have been used in city centres; USA has tested ‘Active Denial System’, firing microwaves at crowds.

AI, Lost in Space and I,Robot are among movies dreaming of a robotic future; 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) had a cognizant robot, Hal. Robotics is now so advanced that robots may soon be major players in caring/serving, medicine and education professions.

Addictive virtual reality, flying cars, time travel and teleportation are arriving, modified from fiction, but becoming a form of fact. Tom Chivers, writing in July 2010 in the UK’s Daily Telegraph suggests toys and gadgets up to full-scale battle-ready hardware that started life in creatives’ minds, but found science caught up.

Art Evokes; Science Explains

Tim Love, (1995; 2009) published Science and the Arts, saying that science reveals the underlying reasons and purposes of the world described as beautiful, harsh, random, volatile, unfair by artists in all genres. In fact, he suggests, science enhances art.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was an Italian who knew much about many disciplines (polymath). Art historian Helen Gardner said the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent, ‘his mind and personality seem to us superhuman’. Others have shown how his world vision was logical rather than mysterious. Nonetheless, a painter, sculptor, cartographer, mathematician, engineer, inventor, botanist, writer, musician, anatomist, architect and scientist: he was rare. Most people are talented in few areas.

Isaac Newton (1642-1727) ‘received a mixed reception from poets’ as the scientific revolution he inspired took off, and Romantics (art, writing, painting) protested against science’s ‘mechanistic abstractions’. This argument has polarised and run ever since, despite a poet like Tennyson being well-read in the sciences.

CP Snow, British scientist and novelist, published, The Two Cultures (1959), arguing that breakdown of communication between sciences and humanities was a major hindrance to solving the world’s problems. It was widely discussed on both sides of the Atlantic, yet still there’s continued separateness between the two ‘extremes’.

Technology controls and changes, and has ‘entered all aspects of our everyday lives’. Artists are more aware of contemporary science than scientists are of modern art, which Love sees as an opportunity to build understanding between the `cultures’.

Both Science and Art Seek Truth

Love argues that people appreciate art and approach science from the basis of how truly either relates to their lives. Science breaks the whole into parts, as does art; in neither is the past entirely discarded. Some believe science, art and mathematics are languages. He cites San Francisco-based poet Jon Corelis: ‘poets like scientists use perceptions as sense-images (observations) to which they give value by poetic imagination (scientific theory)’.

He discusses the view that science has truth values denied to art, and scientific theory has a limited lifespan. However, truth in science, like art, is subject to culture, context and the zeitgeist. Things like subjectivity, symmetry, interaction can come in and out of favour affecting truth and beauty. The 2010 movie Inception takes reality and turns it on its head with a plausible premise that not only can somebody invade another’s dreams to steal or implant ideas, but can induce dreams within dreams.

Some believe science gives more to art than vice versa, from innovations like TV/cinema, computer-technology and science-fiction. The Matrix (1999) depicts a future in which reality as perceived by humans is simulated by sentient machines to pacify and subdue the human population, while their bodies’ heat and electrical activity are used as an energy source.

The Truman Show (1998) followed a man born and raised in an artificial world, created by and for television. Science only made this possible, and the very concept throws light on how both technology and science engage with the arts, driven by a mutual benefit in cross-fertilisation.

The City University of New York Science & The Arts is just one cultural-educational centre that creates and presents programmes in theatre, art, music, dance and film which bridge art & science. The Science and Arts Academy is a school majoring on education of the gifted & talented with a differentiated cross-integrated curriculum, problem solving and creative thinking with an arts emphasis.

Finding links and parallels across performance/expressive arts with the world of science and technology is not exact science; more of an art form.

First published on Suite 101, 28 July 2010.

Photo: Movie Science-Fiction Can Become Fact One Day – Soren Lundtoft

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National and International Days, Weeks, Years Around the World

September 1st, 2011 | Add a Comment

United Nations: Designates Times for Awareness - Pensiero
The UN designates special days, weeks and years to celebrate something or somebody, or raise awareness about a cause. They’re not alone. Others cash in too.

The United Nations designates dates ‘to draw attention to major issues and encourage international action to address concerns of global importance and ramifications’. For financial reasons and to avoid ‘trivialization’, they don’t name every year or day, but when other organisations do it too, their impact may be diluted.

UN ‘Years’ Since 1959

First, was 1959/60, World Refugee Year; 1965 was International Cooperation Year; 1967, Tourism and 1968, chiming with the political zeitgeist, International Year for Human Rights. Then followed 1970 with Education; 1971, Action to Combat Racism & Racial Discrimination; 1974, Population; 1975, Women; 1978, Anti-Apartheid; 1979 was Year of the Child; 1981, Disabled Persons. 1982 was politically overt: Mobilisation for Sanctions Against South Africa.

1983 was styled World Communications Year and 1985 Youth Year. 1986 was Peace followed by Shelter for the Homeless. 1990 was Literacy; 1992, Space and 1993 Indigenous People. 1994’s double label: Family and Sport & Olympic Ideal, was followed by 1995’s Tolerance, 1996 with Eradication of Poverty.

1998’s focus was Ocean; 1999’s Older Persons; 2000, Culture of Peace plus Thanksgiving; 2001 had Volunteers, plus Dialogue among Civilisations plus Mobilisation against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. 2002 saw Mountains, plus Culture Heritage plus Ecotourism. 2003 was Fresh Water, 2004 commemorated the Struggle Against Slavery & Its Abolition, plus Rice.

2005 had Microcredit plus Sport & Physical Education; 2006, Deserts & Desertification; 2008, The Potato, Planet Earth, Sanitation, Languages. 2009 was Human Rights Learning, Reconciliation, Natural Fibres, Astronomy. 2010 is Biodiversity, Rapprochement of Cultures, Youth Dialogue & Mutual Understanding, Forests, Chemistry.

International Days and Weeks

UN agencies or programmes lead promotions, like World Health Organisation (WHO) or Educational Scientific & Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). In January there’s Holocaust Victims Memorial Day (27); 20 February, World Day of Social Justice, followed by International Mother Language Day.

March has Day for Women, Women’s Rights & International Peace (8th), elimination of Racial Discrimination (21st) and a week of Solidarity with Peoples Struggling against Racism and Racial Discrimination, World Water Day (22nd) and World Meteorological Day (23rd). 4th April is Mine Awareness; 7th, World Health; 23rd, Book and Copyright.

May is busy: Press Freedom (3rd), Families (15th), Information Society (17th), Cultural Diversity (21st), Biological Diversity (22nd), UN Peacekeepers (29th), No-Tobacco (31st) and a week of Solidarity with Peoples of Non-Self-Governing Territories. June sees Innocent Children Victims of Aggression (4th), Environment (5th), Combatting Desertification & Drought (17th), Refugees (20th), Public Service (23rd), 26th is Against Drug Abuse & Illicit Trafficking and Supporting Victims of Torture.

First Saturday in July is Cooperatives; 11th, Population. August has World’s Indigenous People (9th), Youth (12th), Slave Trade Abolition (23rd); while September promotes Literacy (8th), Democracy (15th), Ozone Layer (16th), Peace (21st) and Maritime in final week.

1st October is Older Persons; 5th for Teachers; 4th – 10th for Space; first Monday for Habitat; second Wednesday for Natural Disaster Reduction. There’s a week for Disarmament and days for Post, Mental Health, Poverty Eradication and Food, beside UN Day – 24th.

November has Preventing Exploitation of Environment in War & Armed Conflict (6th), 14th for Diabetes, 16th for Tolerance, third Sunday to remember Road Traffic Victims, 20th for Children & African Industrialization, 21st for Television, 25th for Elimination of Violence Against Women and 29th for Solidarity with Palestinian People.

December is crammed: AIDS (1st), Abolition of Slavery (2nd), Disabled (3rd), Economic & Social Development (5th), Civil Aviation (7th), Anti-Corruption (9th), Human Rights (10th), Mountains (11th), Migrants (18th), Human Solidarity (20th).

Decades and Long Awareness

On-going internationally-declared decades include Industrial Development for Africa, Asian & Pacific Disabled Persons, Combatting Racism & Racial Discrimination, all 1993-2002 or 2003. One for Indigenous People began in 1994. 1995 began Decade for Human Rights Education; 1997, Eradication of Poverty; 2001, Culture of Peace & Non-Violence for Children, Eradication of Colonialism, and Rolling Back Malaria.

World’s Indigenous People, Education for Sustainable Development, Water for Life decades began in 2005. Since then, regions affected by Chernobyl disaster, fight against desertification and more on poverty have started. As one decade ends, another is designated, since highlighted problems are stubborn to solve.

National Designations Are Important

Some public holidays are unique to USA. Thanksgiving Day (fourth November Thursday) dates from 1621 when the Pilgrim Fathers thanked God for safe arrival. Fourth of July commemorates the birth of the United States as an independent country.

There is also Martin Luther King Day (15 January, or third Monday); Presidents’ Day (third Monday in February); Memorial Day (fourth Monday of May) and 11th November in US and UK celebrate all war deaths; and Labor Day (first September Monday).

Groundhog Day (2 February) is rural tradition about length of winter; UK’s St Swithin’s Day (15th July) supposedly predicts rainfall for 40 days. All countries celebrate patriotic and historical anniversaries. It’s an evolving custom.

In Australia, a calendar marks events like National Nannas Day, Tree Day, Don Bradman’s Birthday and Australia Day. In the UK, the patron Saints of Scotland and Wales are celebrated (Andrew, 30th November; David, 1st March). Ireland marks St Patrick’s Day on 17th March, while Shakespeare’s birthday and St George’s Day in England, 23rd April, are celebrated sporadically.

Another commercial calendar has a range of themes to suit their business, to take January, for example: Hobby Month, with 3rd as Festival of Sleep Day, 5th is National Bird Day, 21st is Squirrel Appreciation Day, with fourth week, Celebrity Read a Book Week.

In short, organisations (public or business), can designate any time fragment they choose to highlight anything they wish to promote, stop, change or sell. It’s a successful branch of political campaigning.

First published on Suite 101, 24 July 2010.

Photo: United Nations: Designates Times for Awareness – Pensiero

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