Tendons

What connects the muscles of the economy to the bones of labour? It must be the tendons provided by financial structures.

But all this seems terribly mechanical. Locomotion and work.

Where is the brain in all of this? And in the brain, is there a mind?

Echology

The words are roundly distorted by the smooth walls we have placed around them, but their message is clear. The list of the faithless, of those who disdained the Dauntless, of those who mocked even our memories of him — that list is sealed unto the Lords of the Citadel who have received it in utmost formality.

We listen to the reverberations in the deep. From this day onwards, let the guilty beware. For though all have sinned, all have fallen, all are unworthy, those who continue to make use of their ill-won gains will be purged. We are all at drawn swords and daggerpoint.

If you are ignorant, confess it now. If you are unworthy, admit that. If you are lost, seek guidance; if in darkness, seek a light. For we are all sheep, but some have learnt to listen to the shepherd or allow themselves to be driven by his dogs.

Slowly, the shape of the new comes forth. There is still dishonesty, incompetence, nastiness. There will be recriminations and retribution. But light rises even without a sun, for light is beyond time and seasons. As it was in the beginning, so also through all time. Amen.

Agricultural Thoughts

Today I was chatting with Gnomus. We were bandying agricultural ideas, like 'the tree that outgrows its roots will fall over,' and 'if the coconuts are too heavy, the palm will sway; the man below will kena hoot.'

It was fun remembering our roots. In fact, we cling to them in very odd ways. Mine are so far away that I have to keep digging up history in order to fix them in place; his are so near and yet always seem precariously balanced. But one thing we have in common is that our parents spent a lot of time and effort reminding us of our roots, which makes them easy to remember and to remain connected with.

We continued exchanging lines like, 'the turnip does not fall down' and 'the sweet potato always remains rooted.' In all the jocularity, there was an element of sobriety. We both know many of our contemporaries, juniors, students and former students, who have turned away from their roots. They don't think they have; they think they have adapted or evolved to 'face the challenges of a new age'.

But when a plant has learnt to walk in order to pursue a different kind of water or soil, is it still the same plant?

200 Years of Education

In about a week's time, I'll be giving a talk on 200 years of local education. I've only been around for about a fifth of those years; so... what should I say and how should I say it?

I think that I've actually lived through one of the two great phases of local education, though. The first great phase was from about 1880 to 1920, when the missions and clans started sprouting the schools which are still the mainstay of local education. The second one is the modern era, perhaps beginning with 1987 and the idea that you could create quasi-independent schools.

Somehow, I shall have to convey a lot of peculiar ideas to the largely expatriate group I'll be talking to. They're very dedicated people who want to know about the history of local education so that they can tell others about it in great detail.

One of those ideas is that quasi-independent school (QIS) idea. How can you finance a school, lay down limits on its governance and its general direction, and then say the school is independent? Yet, somehow, these QIS-lings produce a range of responses from 'I am a national flagship' to 'I am a frigate' to 'I am a pirate king'.

It is a lot like how Britain gained an empire — by accident and deceit, coupled with the intrepid doings of some very dedicated men. It is a lot like Japan too, thumbing its nose at the Great Powers and relentlessly industrialising while they continue to denigrate the idea of a smaller power growing great.

And yet, the story lacks cohesion simply because the architecture is fantastic but the plumbing leaks. How to convey all that? It is a mystery to me, but let's hope it will no longer be a mystery in a very short while.

The End of a Month

We come to the end of a month. It is also the end of an era at the College of Wyverns. In the autumnal stirrings of this time, we sense a restlessness of the sort that comes when a coterie of pigeons realises that it is getting cold on the streets; there are no more crumbs of comfort and the sun is setting on the bleak tarmac.

In the morning, at the beginning, was light and life and the pursuit of legitimate aims. As we wind down to the end of this era, we peer into a steadily increasing darkness. It was not always so. It will not always be so. But it is indeed getting darker. There is often no individual to blame for this sort of thing. It is just the end of an age.

What are the signs? In every milieu, different signs are said to portend the passing of an era. It is said that if the ravens leave the Tower of London, then Doom is at hand. Likewise, when the last Elvish Historian leaves the realm of Middle-Earth to head across the sea. After that, as Tolkien might have said, it is all about men and the loss of magic as heroism and mighty deeds become legend and then dust.

I spoke with the Lady the other day; she left long ago and went across the Sea. She said that the Dark Lord had put his hand across the face of the lands, and the world was no longer the place it had once been.

But I remember how the story works out. At the end of every age, it seems as if all hope is lost. But the one thing that does not disappoint us is hope. Hope and steady endurance prevail, as long as the faith is defended and the heart is right.

I thank God that I have worked among the elves and had a hand in the crafting of wondrous things. I know now that even if the Dark Lord crafts a single ring of power and uses it as an instrument of fell control, the good done by the others does not completely pass away.

There is still good in Middle-Earth, and the light of the sun will return one day to the College of Wyverns.

Gryphon Rising (Part II)

The Old Road is a hard one, and we who wander it hear many things which are about as welcome as a sudden scream in the night. I was with the Padre when we heard the call of the heralds. They were announcing that the Gryphon would take back under its wings the Gryphlet that it had shed so many years ago.

What did not surprise us was that the High Mistress of the Gryphlet, that industrious and point-scoring madam who once ruled the Atlantean College, had been placed as First in the roll of those who would rule. I believe in her prowess. She is not quite totipotent, but she is valiant in war. She is also a darned sight more intelligent than many of those we have seen rising like winter gaslights in the realms.

What amused us was that the Mistress has been pursuing, it seems, an even higher status. The doctoral scrolls are poised to rack up another victim at the Educational Academy of the Southern Ocean.

All that taken together seems to express a stand explicitly denied by her. She will rise to rival her counterpart at the College of Wyverns, and she will have a well-oiled machine of undoubted vigour and size to help her in that endeavour. Will she come to reign supreme in every sphere? Only time will tell.

Making The Pond Bigger

I was a teenager not that long ago. Well, not that long ago. By that time, John McCain had entered the Senate. At that time, the internet was non-existent except in the highest levels of a small group of nodes. It was possible to look around me and take comfort in the false belief that I was really pretty smart compared to many people. Maybe even smarter than half the people around me, which would have made me one tiny spot above average.

The thing about statistics is that they are not easily mapped into properly meaningful ideas in the human brain. I use that word 'properly' for a reason – it is all too easy for them to be mapped into meaningful ideas with the wrong meaning. Take, for example, the last sentence in my first paragraph above. If I went around saying I was smarter than 50% of the population, I'd only be attributing slightly-above average intelligence to myself (however you measure that slippery concept of intelligence). But I'm sure it would be taken as some sort of elitist comment.

Let's be honest, though. I classify myself as 'pleasantly ugly' (i.e. a bit below average in looks), 'fairly intelligent' (i.e. at least about 1 standard deviation above the mean on most scales), 'normally fit' (i.e. within 1 standard deviation of the mean on most scales), and 'normally healthy' (i.e. within 1 standard deviation of the mean on most measurements of health).

All this self-assessment was not so easy to make when I was young. You only had the evidence of your immediate senses, and I had the disadvantage of going to a school in which lots of people seemed smarter and fitter than I did. As I grew up, however, I began to realise that the immediate population of my youth had been somewhat biased.

In other words, as the pond grew bigger, I realised that while there were amazingly huge numbers of people who were incredibly much smarter than I was, there were also perhaps more people who were not. This made me feel a lot better, although not that much better.

The point of all this really is that if you have spent your whole life in a small city-state, you should get out a bit. Look at as much of the whole pond as possible before you think of what kind of fish you are. This is increasingly important as access to the global pond opens up. This especially goes for people who are discontented with life after looking at their neighbours.

You know the kind: *grumble* *grumble* I only earn US$4000 a month and my monthly costs (after paying the bank and all the bills) are now US$3200 so I only save US$800 a month. My neighbour has US$16000 a month, so he can probably save US$12800 a month.

Well, that kind of pay probably puts you both in the top 2% of all wage earners in the world. In a small city-state, you can even determine very exact and accurate figures for what percentage of your pond-people earn more or less than you. What's scarier is that in this particular city-state which is the focus of my research into education reforms, it seems fair game to determine what the best primary schools are based on economic principles of supply and demand. That's not so bad, except that it might be true.

I guess the great thing about access to the whole pond via the Internet is that it's easier to find data about where you really are in life, if you need such things. I know a highly accomplished person who was #1 in everything, but ranked very poorly in the big pond; at the same time I knew one who was thought to be pretty low-ranked, but whose data when compared with the rest of the big pond made a big splash.

In the end, I suppose that the economically-minded fish will do the economically-minded rational thing and migrate to the parts of the pond with more food. Then they will grow bigger and fatter until the fishermen figure out where the big fish are.

Conclusion: somewhere between 1 and 2 standard deviations above the norm is fine; don't push your luck. Heh.

Jewellers & Master Craftsmen

I'm sitting at my desk today, deliberately with all the doors and windows closed and with no ventilation. It's like some sort of sweat lodge but not as hot and humid.

The reason for this is to attempt to breach the barriers of discomfort in order to actually get some work done. I realise that, even though an environment can be inimical or caustic or painful to the mind or body, personal discomfort can actually trigger creativity and productivity. It's something one tends to forget.

In the area of the mind, the key thing is to seek cognitive dissonance. I think that teachers tend to spoonfeed because it is easy to do. If you relent and give students ready answers, they tend not to show growth in their neural networks. Rather, they learn the wrong thing; i.e., that if you wait the teacher out, you will get answers without having to think from first principles.

This is why from the beginning, the master teachers have always taught in parables. (The 13th chapter of St Matthew's Gospel has quite a bit to say about it, if you are so minded.) The point is that unless you make people realise what they don't know, unless you unsettle their secure underpinnings and foundations, you actually aren't going to shift them into a new place and thus educate them. Education is literally a 'drawing-out', not a 'putting-in'.

This is why master teachers make carefully-crafted disturbing remarks. Jesus said, "I came not to bring peace, but a sword," and then proceeded to outline the kinds of division that his legacy would provide. The point is that all students have preconceptions of how they want the teacher, the class, and the subject to behave. A good teacher will break all those preconceptions first, not work with them as some people recommend. It's a bad teacher who relies on bullet points and direct process teaching from the beginning.

After much thought about the present state of education in Atlantis, I've decided that maybe 90% of the teachers I've seen are good at 'putting-in', 'grinding and polishing' and 'metal shaping' – all the skills necessary to be a good jeweller. Some institutions are also very good at 'stone selection', which always ensures a minimum value (since you can always re-cut a good stone later on).

But there are very few who will take otherwise unvalued or undervalued pieces, and point out how good they can be, and what the fundamentals of value and worth really are. Most will cater to the mass market, and not to the collectors who can really make the difference. A true education is one that changes perception and moves it to a new and better place.

As Jesus said, "For these people's hearts have become callused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes... Blessed are your eyes because you see; blessed are your ears because you hear." The heart is easily callused, made callous, especially when it is young and tender. This leads to cynicism and discontent. But if the calluses can be abraded with sufficient violence or skill, the heart can be made to burn with a passion for outrageous levels of learning and understanding.

Gryphon Rising (Part I)

It was inevitable that the College of Gryphons should rise to the challenge. Long considered the premier institution of lore on the Isle of the Sea-Traders, they must have been miffed to see their green glory eclipsed by the Wyvern's children last year. "We are not now that strength, which in old days moved Earth and Heaven," they must have lamented then.

But they have just decided to take to the wine-dark seas again. They will offer what ever the Wyverns offer, and more. They will bring their three-times greater strength to bear. And the scales, fur and feathers will fly. It will be interesting to watch.

Elective Agriculture

Sometimes you keep planting the same stuff in the same place. It wears out the soil by consuming the same nutrients until the rate of replenishment falls below the rate of extraction. Then the crops start coming out 'weeny, weedy and weaky', as that great Roman once said.

This is the same kind of phenomenon as can be observed when an institution begins to feed on itself. If the same structures and powers have been in place too long, the amount of profitable divergence begins to drop. Like the crops, the gene pool is too small for adaptation; the same resource burdens begin to consume ever-decreasing resources, and the crop starts coming out tainted with mediocrity.

It then becomes time to practice elective agriculture. This is like elective surgery but applied to plants. You need to prune plants that can survive it; remove or rotate crops that are leaching out the last resources, so that the soil can recover; and if you are desperate, cut down and burn some plants to return the resources to the soil.

I've always believed that self-selecting cabals (such as the College of Cardinals, many political parties with a cadre system, some administrative teams in some corporate entities) can be very focussed and powerful. However, if the talent pool begins to thin out, this essentially propagative strategy can become self-defeating. That's because limiting your choice to a small pool in a social context normally results in a fall in memetic diversity. The same people say the same things, and 'thinking outside the box' becomes 'thinking more fantastically within the same box under the illusion that it is becoming larger'.

The result is that you begin with powerful leaders who are replaced by shadows of themselves who are then replaced by shadows of shadows. If the powerful leaders outlive (or purge, or otherwise eliminate) their shadows, they will be replaced by the shadows of shadows. A simple and crude mathematical analogy is to consider a 'shadow' as the 40% version of its original. Then the 'shadow of a shadow' is a 16% version of the original. It will take about six of these to replace the original, and that will still only be 96%, assuming that these shadows are additive and do not overlap.

This is why elective agriculture must be practiced. Crop rotation and the selection of new strains must be de rigeur for any organisation seeking to retain its growth potential. At the same time, that selection process is difficult. You can't be choosing new strains for the sake of having something new; you might plant weeds instead. Or the shadows of the shadows of crops.

From crops to outcrops – that is what will happen when wrong-headed replacement policies (either poor or no replacement) are followed. It's always a good thing for the farmers to have a look now and then at their livelihood, before it's all gone.

Data-Mining

The sheer amount of data that human observers can accumulate just by watching a single moderately-sized environment is staggering. Supposing your observation unit is a small state of five million souls. Already, the number of theoretical interactions beggars the power of any computer on the face of this earth. You can record simple things like power consumption, water usage, tonnage of rice imported, stuff like that.

But to use the data to prove that people are happy (and how much so), that people are moral (and how much, and in what way), that people are kind or gentle or emotional, or relaxed or stressed — this is not so easy, even though it might seem so at first glance. In the scientific paradigm, it is best to have questions that give you some idea of what kind of answer is sought, and how certain those answers might be, and why.

People trained in such disciplines can make assertions, and test them. Sometimes, however, the training is misapplied. When scientists ask whether God exists, the question is a bad one. How would you know? Given the proposed characteristics of God, why do you think that the data we have access to can define His existence or lack of it? What level of evidence would you require to prove God existed, and if you knew, would God allow you to prove His existence? Why would He; why would He not?

The thing about assertions, I suppose, is that if you were to present your evidence to a panel of reasonable human beings, and then contrary evidence of superior quantity and quality were presented, you should be able to reject your hypothesis. If you cannot reject your hypothesis, you're not being very scientific. On the other hand, this is asymmetric. Presenting refutations in advance without knowing what is to be refuted is slightly odd. Not that it cannot be done, but it isn't often done.

In the end, the huge mass of data will be interpreted by those who mine it best, who extract the ore carefully, reduce it to its true metal, and make useful implements from it. As I sit here, I sometimes find myself at a loss as to what the eventual fate of this data should be. I try to be as painstaking as possible. I try not to make statements I can't support with the full burden of data. It kills me, sometimes. But it is useful to marshal the facts in neat formations before sending them out to do battle against the unknown.

The Promise Of Rain

Yesterday, someone said casually to me, "Ah well, within months they'll all have forgotten you anyway. The young never remember such things."

I don't think that's entirely true, but I don't hope that it is entirely false either. Making an impact is not what education is about; rather, it is more about influence. Quite often, people forget that the two are not normally interchangeable. An impact may have influence; influence may have an impact – but one tends to think of impact as singular and brief, while influence is a multiplex and has prolonged effect. In a world of soundbites, it is too easy to confuse the two.

'Education' means 'a drawing-out'. You cannot use an impact to draw things out; the response of a substance to impact is either malleability or brittleness, not ductility or flexibility. 'Influence' means 'a flowing-in'. When you contribute, there is more to draw out; that is all there is to it. My philosophy of education has always been tripartite: 1) identify what each student has in terms of 'capital'; 2) identify areas in which it can be grown (painful or not); 3) contribute to those areas. The important thing is that it is not 'the philosophy of me doing the education'; I much prefer it when the persons undergoing education learn to do it to themselves.

This has opened me up to charges of being a 'bad teacher' who walks into class armed with nothing but a drawing instrument, with lessons which are alternately described as 'complex' and 'vague'. Well, if I had 20 clones in a class, lessons would be easy: I'd only need to teach a single thing in a single way. But here I would like to defend myself.

Firstly, I think that this style trains the mind to rehearse and think through what is being taught so that some kind of framework is retained in the teacher's mind without further recourse to external sources. This is how examinations are run; why should teachers be allowed to refer to notes when their students won't be allowed to in exams? Secondly, why should education always be piped in via multimedia when in real life people don't always receive input (or produce output) that way? Thirdly, why should one eschew the complex for the simple when the complex is the truth and simplicity is just reification?

Please note that I do not necessarily espouse complexity over simplicity. I simplify when it is justified. I don't think I am a perfect teacher, but I do think that on average I raise the game for most students. They have to learn to think for themselves; at the same time, I show them how I think for myself and offer suggestions as to how they can improve in certain ways. Often, the process is not simple. It is a constant (sometimes seemingly random) barrage of tricks, tips, oddities – all woven into a big tapestry which seems as messy as real life. Yet, I am confident that I have provided some structure, some substance to the overall process of learning.

But that is the promise of rain. The rains fall where they may; you can predict their general behaviour but not their specific behaviour. The influence of rain is not in a single impact – that would be a crop-killing flood. The influence of rain is subtle, long-term, integral to the drawing-out of a crop's potential. I would rather be like rain than like hailstones. I would rather be grey and amorphous in form but life-giving in substance, than lively in form but grey and amorphous in substance. At the same time, I hope I have provided sufficient liveliness of form to help the crops absorb the substance.

My educational model has always been that of the Teacher, who taught with authority, with only His voice and with the occasional illustration. He taught in parables, and was able to say, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." Nowadays, He'd probably be hauled up for being a bad teacher in not providing earphones for His students and in teaching by metaphor and quotation rather than by direct input of factual substance. It says a lot about the system of the world, which we are not supposed to be conformed to, but which we tacitly allow to take root in our lives.

The Family

I sat in the park. It was a warm, bright, humid day. The trees and grass and flowers provided a beautiful, very restful backdrop. The Emissary sat down next to me. Where there was old scarred wood and a touch of age, an elder statesman in smart casuals now sat. I gave a little start, waking from the daydream of the afternoon.

"Well, young wolf, will you stand forth in the hour of need?"

I was silent. It is hard for a wolf to break clan just for clanship. It is an odd and contrary thing for wolves, even the lone ones.

"You do not ally with the bear just because he claims to have nurtured you."

"I don't; I make it a point to tell the bear that I don't treat him as my defender or my nurturer or my personal ifrit."

"Then take up the cause of the family. Be a leader. And be the master of the bear."

"It is nothing new that you say to me. But to be what you would have me be, I will have to give up the nurture of young wyverns."

"Not really. Slay the bear and you can have all the wyverns you want."

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It was a warm, bright, humid day. I sat up with a start. I was still sitting alone on my bench. Nothing had changed. Really.

All Things Made New

The flesh I live in is beginning to show its age; I am reminded constantly of the fate of the meat I inhabit – connective tissue disconnects, circulatory systems choke, respiratory systems expire. Everything dims, fades. We are indeed 'not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven'.

But I realise that my duty is not to this flesh, or to the pattern of this world, but to what the flesh can do in this short span of time. Man, since the Fall, has always had to work; it has become the means by which he lives out his redemption and the means by which salvation can be glimpsed (though not attained, since that is by the grace of God). And that is why there is nothing better than to work with one's hands and lead a quiet life.

I remember the days in which power burned bright and attracted us, as moths to a flame. But the power doesn't last, the glory does not glow, the only things left are the strong metals left after the refiner has done his job. It is the fate of men to strive for the useless and worthless, only to realise that they grieved the God they claimed to serve. It is a hard thing, that.

And yet, there is the promise of a newer time, not necessarily a better age, but a time for peace and the breaking of spears. Rain and tears, blood and fire, ethanol and poetry, tea, coffee, chocolate, mercury, ruthenium, stone and glass, steel and pain. All these things run together and are one. One day we shall sit in the Eternal City, wondering why we thought of Rome as such. One day we might be elevated to a state besides which our current state is mephitic.

I look out of the window and see the rain that has not come and the fire that is yet to come alive. The exultation of angels is in the air, and the exaltation of the lowly things is on its way. I am happy, glad, makarios. The best is yet to be.

Extension

When I was a far younger person, I was taught to follow a parry with an immediate riposte, with extension if necessary. This is fine with bladework. But the thing to note is that sports are not always the best metaphors for life; and sports may sometimes be the worst metaphors for life. We talk of 'moving the goalposts' or 'overcoming hurdles' or 'running with the ball', not realising that 'covering your bases' and suchlike can actually lock us into patterns of inappropriate behaviour.

I remember that as I grew up, and even later, when the Eternal Hoodlums gathered, that I used to parry with immediate riposte all the time. In social conversation, this tends to lead to the feeling that your tongue is sharper than necessary, that you are too 'quick off the mark', that you are glib, affectless, demanding, rude. I have never had a stutter. I have often listened to others in the same way that a duelist observes an opponent.

It is not the best paradigm for conducting one's social affairs. And over the years, I adopted that paradigm less and less. Then I became a teacher, only to discover that being a teacher is sometimes like putting a target light on over one's midriff. There were always junior versions of the hellhound I used to be, all trying for a chunk. To my horror, the old skills came back. Like bicycling or swimming, when required, they returned with a semblance of the old facility.

I learnt to suppress the urge – to not parry, bind, riposte in response to every innocent or ignorant jab. And there came a time when I learnt to listen without sporting metaphors running through my head. The problem, perhaps, is that most men do indeed have those metaphors in a dominant role, whether they like it or not. Other kinds of listening tend to be thought of as feminine, or unnatural, or manipulative, or deceptive.

It's a problem indeed. But again, as the years go by, I become less and less concerned. I am me; this blog an extension of my hand, of my mind. What I show is part of what I am; it is never the whole simply because one is never wholly and fully committed along exactly one dimension of movement. But it is I who am here, displaying his ignorance and his laziness, his charm and his strength, his faith and his weakness, his learning and his folly.

What that makes me, I don't know. I care about what it might really make me, but I care not so much about what people think it makes me. I don't need assurance about who I am, or speculation as to who I might be – what mythic stereotype, what Freudian type or Rorschachian inkblot, what Jungian archetype best symbolises me – I am amused by it, sometimes confounded or rebuked. Most of all, I am me, human in weakness, steadfast in duty, simple in virtue.

It isn't what I grew up with, but it is what the good ladies taught me in the very beginning of my career. I never forget, though, that sometimes I am horrible in arrogance, dangerous in wrath, blind in obstinacy, erratic in execution. I can always try to be better, and I can always hope that God judges mercifully. And I rest in that, not because my conscience is clear, but because my conscience is satisfied; satisfied with the idea that some day I will receive both just reward and just punishment, modified by whatever grace is given to this poor soul of mine.

Serengeti

I was looking through this grand account a short while ago when I came across one particular post which reminded me briefly of the savannah and the smell of the wild and open lands. And through it all runs that immortal, omnipresent entity – the River.

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The River runs through the Land. Huge herbivores wallow in the mud along its slower banks. This is the home of Hippo, the bulky eater of reeds. You find little birds grooming her. These little birds eat parasites and groom the mighty beast. The mighty creature booms lazily, a warning to nearby rivals and predators. Little hippo calves snuggle nearby, happy in the knowledge that big hippo will protect them out of pure genetic imperative.

The River gives rise to pools of water, pools of life and death. A herd of horned ruminants (springboks, wildebeest, whatever) is normally found at one of them. While the more paranoid and dutiful elements look out for a predator, the rest drink, demudifying themselves and remudifying themselves as the great spirit takes them. There may be a gazelle, sleek and graceful but ready to bolt at any opportunity; there might be a rugged old kudu or eland or gnu.

Eventually, though, you will face one of the Big Five (really, the Big Six, but one is almost extinct).

The African lion is the first on any list. The male of the species is a heavyweight, massing at least 180 kg and sometimes reaching a quarter-ton. Occasionally he is assisted by a junior male, and a large pride can have up to six males in it. Male lions defend territory but never hunt; the females form a cooperative sisterhood which hunts and nurtures the young. When you meet a male lion, with his distinctive mane and posture, recognize that his thoughts about you are: 1) Are you a threat? 2) How big a threat are you? 3) How do I dispose of this threat? – in that sequence. By 'threat', he means 'an entity which will take territory and food supplies from my pride'. However, if he thinks you are food and not a threat, he will leave you to the womenfolk.

The African elephant is famed for its huge ears and invulnerable appearance. The adult elephant is a grazer with an excellent sense of smell, but with poor sight and hearing. Predators take advantage of this fact to harass and kill the smaller elephants from the downwind zone. No serious animal predator goes for the adult; the record for an adult tusk mass is about 103 kg and each tusk is a deadly weapon somewhat akin to an entrenching tool on steroids. Remember that typical adult can weigh five tons or more.

The leopard is one of the Big Five by virtue of ubiquity. The most striking of the lot, it is an opportunistic hunter which goes after any prey presenting itself as somehow being injured or having lost its way. It isn't a very nice beast, or a very clever one, but it will drag down and kill smaller animals and be very happy about it. The leopard won't take on larger prey; it knows only too well the dangers of having to defend a kill after expending too much energy. The lion might just come along and appropriate the food without a struggle.

The buffalo is the fourth of these great animals. Massing 800 kg or so, this squat-looking monster ruminant with terrifying horns is actually surprisingly light on its feet. They're odd animals, being gregarious and able to form herds of non-productive singles. When unsettled, they become nocturnal. The main thing to note about the buffalo is that it gets angry, and when infuriated or injured, it will attempt to utterly destroy the perceived source of its discomfort. It takes little to infuriate one, and many hunters have shot and injured the buffalo without killing it – to their subsequent discomfort and eventual demise.

The last (two?) of the Big Five (Six?) is the rhinoceros. The rhino comes in two varieties. The black rhino would be extinct without the excellent care of national parks. It is small (well, only up to 1400 kg), shy, solitary and nocturnal – it is almost a ghost presence. It is secretive and will browse in bushy and wooded riverine areas, using its hooked lips to great effect as it selects, strips, and consumes various plant munchies. The white rhino is a far bigger and more common animal, massing up to 2500 kg and able to strip entire areas bare. The white will eat anything (and looks like it too) – it has a square jaw and a belligerent attitude. Both species are notable for their large nasal horn, a slashing and stabbing weapon which can be used to slice through vegetation or spear a predator.

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I have always been enthralled by the idea of the veldt, the vast sea of grassy plains and the shrubby woodlands around them. The savannah to me is typified not so much by Kruger National Park, but by the Serengeti. Yet, it is neither. The idea of the huge tapestry of animals interacting in their vast and savage ecosystem is great enough for me. It echoes in my head.

Many, Many Cows

It's one of those evenings on which you realise that, sometimes, the old jokes really are the best jokes. For many years, I collected versions of the infamous 'Two Cows' political jokes. Today, for the first time in years, I am putting a short selection online. Enjoy them, especially you out there who have just finished the HL History paper. Bear in mind that tomorrow is the Fourth of July. And laugh a lot. Have yourself a cow. Or two.

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Two Cows (And Friends)

FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You then have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and as many eggs as the regulations say you should need.

FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

NAZISM: You have two cows. The government takes the brown one away and you never see it again. The white one milks you.

PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Your neighbours help you take take care of them, and you all share the milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.

TOTALITARIANISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.

MILITARISTIC DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you, saying, "Every citizen must do his or her duty."

PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbours decide who gets the milk.

ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your male, rich, slave-owning, cultured and intelligent neighbours decide that they should have your milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbours pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair "Cowgate".

BRITISH DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. You feed them sheep's brains and they go mad. The government doesn't do anything.

KOREAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows, and your neighbours clash with riot police outside your home for three weeks because they might be *foreign* cows.

INDONESIAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows, and someone bribes you to put a yellow t-shirt on one of them, and a group of thugs intimidate you into putting a green t-shirt on the other.

SINGAPOREAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment. Then they realise they can make you ballot for the right to pay for a certificate allowing you to own cows of different capacities. This is where the fun starts...

BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. After that it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

ANARCHO-CAPITALISM: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbours try to kill you and take the cows.

HONGKONG CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell three of them them to your publicly-listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows' milk back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because the feng shui is bad.

ENVIRONMENTALISM: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.

FEMINISM: You have two bovines of politically indeterminate genitive status seeking special concessions for the nature of their chromosomal arrangements.

CRYPTO-FEMINISM: You have two cows. They get married and adopt a veal calf.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: You are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is a symbol of the phallo-centric, war-mongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.

COUNTERCULTURE: Wow, dude, there's like... these two cows, man. You got to have some of this milk.

SURREALISM: You really have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

ANARCHY: Keep the cows. Steal another one. Shoot the government.

CONSERVATISM: Freeze the milk. Embalm the cows.

LIBERALISM: Give away one cow. Get the government to give you a new cow. Now give them both away.

40

It's the hill that all men reach; in Psalm 90, the years of our life are three-score-and-ten, and if by reason of strength they are four score, yet all their days are trouble and sorrow. Forty years is the mid-point of the titration that separates the 'growing up' from the 'growing old'. I will be at that mark in fewer days than I think. Perhaps, in fewer days than anyone else thinks. I give myself about two months.

I suppose what makes this particular year so rich and powerful in all its nuanced and secret ways (like Tim Powers's Drawing of the Dark) is that I've had so many brilliant and unusual co-stars. If this were a soap opera, it would be far more eloquent and action-packed than anything seen on the silver screen or the plasma screen. I've felt a lot like Harrison Ford though, with only two facial expressions at times: pained, and more-pained-than-usual.

After this year, there will be no such confluence of factors. The ladies will no longer be compared to those I met in my years in the convent on the hill; successive generations will have to bear the burden of comparison with the excellent quality of those who have graduated before. Arthur will no longer sit sleeping, awaiting the call of his country, a once and future king. Neither will clever Hans make light work. Evanescence will be the order of the day, and the numinous qualities of butterflies will no longer ennoble the assemblies of dawn.

And in days to come, the 370 men and women I have come to know with pride and humour will become legends in their own days. They don't personally feel like legends now. They may not ever feel they have deserved that right. (And I am somewhat limited in my capacity to extol their individual virtues without sacrificing whatever is left of their private lives.)

But from my hill, I look out upon the plain where ignorant armies clash by night and I see that what they have written in the water will still illuminate the shadows. I will remain, locked in one place and time of their perception and memory, while they go on to other things. As the years go by, everything fades.

As often before, I feel the ghost, that spirit of portrait-painting poets once named Robert Browning, looking over my shoulder. But there are no unkind words from this wraith – only a benediction of sorts. Rather, I head downhill into the valley of shadow knowing that my eternal Guide has nothing but the best for me.

Hobgoblins

The problem with having a synthesizing mind is that you tend to see parallels in everything. For example, here is the latest Order of the Stick online comic strip. It portrays an interesting scenario; a preoccupied commander with his pet monster/associate, ruthlessly sending half his hobgoblin forces to their doom while waiting for the other half to win glory.

It is the logical result of cost/benefit analysis when applied to people instead of things. But the turnaround moment is interesting, and it begs the question, "Does it always take a really great rock to change things?"

Quizzical: Extremely Small

Yes, I succumbed to the lure of the quizzical. it never ceases to amaze me how silly I feel doing these things, while falling headlong into some orgy of self-revelation triggered by somebody else. I laugh at myself. And I ponder what has been revealed with some measure of odd... anxiety? No... it can't be that, surely.

What kind of subatomic particle are you?

Tachyon — Extremely rare and extremely frenetic, many people believe that you aren't real. You really are, though — and you move through tasks at incredible speed.

Take this quiz?