No Supermarket: Week 4 – The End!

So it’s over: 31 days without spending money in a supermarket. Before the post-mortem, some details about this past week.

Things I learnt this week:

  • Eggs are cheaper in my local shop: only £1.09 for 6, compared to £1.57 in Sainsbury’s.
  • Tesco Express (i.e. a small supermarket) stocks 26 different varieties of bottled water. You do know that you can get it out of the tap, don’t you? For free.
  • Sainsbury’s is very useful: for their extensive recycling facilities and the pharmacy where I get my (free) prescriptions. This month I have shamelessly used supermarket resources in exchange for nothing.
  • Expenditure at No Supermarkets: £17.00
  • Hypothetical expenditure at Sainsbury’s: £16.18.

The Final Score

  • Over the course of one month shopping at No Supermarkets I spent £89.94 on food.
  • The same stuff at Sainsbury’s would have cost approximately £80.28.

So what am I going to now it’s over?

Will I go running back to the fluorescent-strip-light warmth of Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Lidl? Hell no.

Was everything perfect about my month of No Supermarkets? Hell no (where the devil can I get decent, reasonably priced cheese?). Can I do it better? Hell yes. I promise myself every week that I’ll go to the local markets more often, rather than running out of food, panicking and buying soup and biscuits for dinner.

I’ve enjoyed visiting all my local and not so local shops. I’ve built up quite a rapport with a shop around the corner from where I study. Cherry flapjack: £1.05, thank-you very much.

But why do I like No Supermarkets so much?

  • I don’t have to queue, like I would in the Sainsbury’s just up the road. 
  • I don’t have to walk around six aisles just to find the flapjacks, like I would at the Sainsbury’s. 
  • I’m not paralysed by the choice of six thousand different oat-based snacks you can have from Sainsbury’s. Half the time my shop doesn’t even have any of the cherry ones left. So I have banana. Variety is the spice of life and all that.
  • I’m not advertised at.
  • I can have a little chat with the person who serves me and they say please and thank-you like they give a shit that I came into their shop. Because they own it.
  • It’s closer to the college where I study.
  • I like the fact that their prices are marginally cheaper than the other little shop just across the road. It reminds me that competition is alive and well. It hasn’t just been blown away by corporate supply chains.
  • I feel like the money I’m handing over for my flapjack is going to someone I know.
  • The lighting isn’t so bright. Not everything gleams. The floor might even be dirty. It’s human.

Yeah. I like it. In fact, I like it so much that I’d feel a bit wrong going into a supermarket now. Perhaps I will for some things. Perhaps I won’t. I no longer feel restricted in my shopping habits. I no longer feel compelled towards those glowing orange lights.

So here’s to much more No Supermarkets in 2011.

Progression

Do you know what an arithmetic progression is? Of course you do. Our lives are a finite arithmetic progression with a common difference of one: we live one year at a time. One follows one follows one – and so on towards infinity, until, one quiet news day, a bus brings a bloody end to your smug-faced progression. Or maybe it’ll be Gog, Magog and the Lake of Fire, Sarah Palin or a CBRN incident. Oh come on: Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear.

That’s an arithmetic progression. Fucking boring.

Now think of a geometric progression. Are you an optimist? I’m not, I say things get worse. I say we live in a nightmarish geometric progression with a common ratio of a half. We live one life, bad enough, but then we’re back again with a life half as long. After that: another life, half as long again. Then another, again half as long – and so on into infinity until we’re dead before we have a chance to be born.

Think of it like reincarnation. I’m going to live this life as a human, a squalid lump of rotting flesh with a heart that beats for a million ticks and then stops. One human life and then I’m dead and gone, cremated because I’m not worth the grave-space. Call it a hundred years before I’ve checked out – maybe I am an optimist; maybe I just want to make the maths easier for you. A hundred human years.

But then I’m reincarnated. I’m not so lucky, though: I’m on a geometric progression with a common ratio of a half, remember. So this time, maybe I come back as a chimpanzee and only get fifty years before getting smeared.

Then, before you can say “the transmigration of souls,” I’m back as a snake and only get twenty-five before kicking the calendar.

Next, I might return as a camel for twelve and a half years before popping my clogs. I quite fancy being a chipmunk for six and a quarter years and a mouse for three and an eighth, before eating another dirt sandwich.

I could add another eighteen months as an opossum, before rejoining our great majority. As a particularly resilient worker ant, I could manage nine months before being remaindered. I’d follow that up with a life as a worker bee, before turning up my toes to that too.

Then I’ll race through lives as a housefly and a fruit fly until I’m back for just five minutes as a female mayfly of the species dolania americana – and thence to meet my godless maker.

But even if I took all these reincarnated lives, from my fifty years as a chimpanzee to my five minutes as a mayfly of the species dolania americana, and added them together, I still wouldn’t get another hundred years in total.

That’s the nature of this hellish geometric progression. Even if you kept coming back after the mayfly: for two minutes, one minute, thirty seconds, ten seconds, five seconds, two seconds, one second – you’d still never match your hundred hypothetical years as a human.

Don’t waste it.

How to Persuade, in 59 Seconds

This is taken from 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman, a book that wants to make your life better – in 59 seconds or less. It is all based on scientific research. If you like that sort of thing.

Rewards Don’t Work!

  • Rewards don’t work. They sometimes show a short-term boost, but generally elicit the response:

‘I get paid for doing things I don’t like; therefore I must hate this.’

  • Occasional surprise rewards work for things that someone enjoys already. So does praise for their effort.
  • For something disliked, modest payment and feel-good comments about their behaviour works.

Quick Tips for Persuasion

  • Sit in the middle of a group. Important people sit in the middle.
  • If you are trying to sell something, keep the name of the product simple, in other words: easy to remember and straightforward to pronounce.
  • Use simple language, not fancy words to make yourself appear intelligent.
  • Make appeals personal, story based, not based on general statistics.
  • To get more donations, use the slogan: ‘Every penny helps’ and paint your collection box red.
  • Do a favour for someone and they’ll reciprocate. Don’t put the pressure on by doing too much to begin with. Ask for the return favour soon after – otherwise the other person will forget they needed you.
  • Put a photo of a cute baby in your wallet. WTF.

Getting Agreement

  • Getting someone to answer ‘yes’ to a series of minor questions will encourage them to say ‘yes’ when you ask the big one.
  • People like things that are introduced to them whilst they are eating a meal.
  • People are more likely to be swayed by controversial arguments if they have caffeine.
  • Save your time, persuade by rhyme.
  • Similarity works to persuade. People like people like themselves, even just sharing a first name is enough. Funny, eh? I can’t think of a Dave I didn’t get on with. And there are a lot of us around.
  • Use humour, lighten up the persuasion, get them in a good mood.

How to Nail Your Job Interview

Job interviews are all about persuasion and, unjustly, likeability is more important than qualifications or experience, so:

  • Find something you like about the organisation and let your opinion be known.
  • Give a genuine compliment to the interviewer.
  • Chat about a non-work-related topic that you and the interviewer find interesting.
  • Be interested – ask what type of person they’re looking for and how they’ll fit into the organisation.
  • Be enthusiastic about the position and the organisation.
  • Smile and maintain eye contact with the interviewers.
  • When you do have a weakness, announce it early to show your honesty
  • Leave something positive to the end to show your modesty.
  • If you make what feels like a major mistake, don’t panic. The chances are it is much more noticeable to you than them. An excessive response or apology will only draw attention to it.

How to Be Likeable

  • People like you more when they do a small favour for you.
  • The occasional slip up can enhance your likeability. Warning: this only works if you risk looking too perfect, like JFK.
  • Gossip positively – the traits you gossip about will come to be associated with you!

How to Persuade a Crowd

  • The more people who are around a person in distress, the less likely anyone is to do anything about it.
  • Break the crowd mentality by targeting one person and appeal directly with a specific request.
  • If you have a request of a group, ask each person individually, not all together.

How to Beat Stress, in 59 Seconds

This is taken from 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman, a book that wants to make your life better – in 59 seconds or less. It is all based on scientific research. If you like that sort of thing.

Focus on the Positive

Think about the positive aspects of the stressful event. Did you:

  • Grow stronger or become aware of personal strengths that you didn’t realise you had?
  • Appreciate aspects of your life more than before?
  • Become a wiser person or strengthen important relationships?
  • Become more skilled at communicating your feelings, more confident or encourage you to end a bad relationship?
  • Develop into a more compassionate or forgiving person?
  • Strengthen your relationship with a person who hurt you?

Write down how you have benefited from the experience and how your life is better as a result of what happened. Do not withhold anything and be honest.

Quick Tips to Beat Stress

  • Pray for other people.
  • Listen to Pachelbel or Vivaldi.
  • Spend 30 minutes outside in the sunshine (but don’t stay trapped indoors on a sunny day).
  • Laugh for 15 minutes a day.
  • Don’t shout and scream to vent anger – it will only make you more angry.
  • Get a dog. Owning a dog relieves stress. In part, this is because it promotes social contact, but even watching a video of a dog works!
  • The placebo effect works to help you lose weight and this weight loss reduces stress. All you have to do is convince yourself that you are doing more exercise in your daily routine than you thought!

How to Achieve Your Goals, in 59 Seconds

This is taken from 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman, a book that wants to make your life better – in 59 seconds or less. It is all based on scientific research. If you like that sort of thing.

4 Key Techniques for Motivation

  1. Have the right kind of plan.
  2. Tell friends and family about your plan.
  3. Focus on the benefits of your achievement.
  4. Reward yourself each step of the way.

The Right Kind of Plan

Wiseman’s got the plan, don’t worry.

1. Define your goal:

My overall goal is to…

2. Create a step-by-step plan:

Break overall goal into five steps, each with a goal that is concrete, measurable, realistic and time-based, e.g.:

Step 1:
  • My first sub-goal is to… write a blog post.
  • I believe that I can achieve this goal because… I’ve done the research and I’ve done this sort of thing before.
  • To achieve this sub-goal, I will… sit at the computer and write 500 words on how to achieve your goals.
  • This will be achieved by… today!
  • My reward for achieving this will be, er…a pack of Marylands?

3. What are the benefits of achieving your overall goal?

  • List three important benefits, focusing on how much better life will be for you and those around you.
  • Focus on the benefits of your desired future, rather than escaping the negatives of your present situation.

4. Go public.

Who are you going to tell about your goals and sub-goals? Maybe you could publish them on a blog or display them in your office or home?

1 Simple Way to Beat Procrastination

Start work on something for just a few minutes and your brain will want to complete it. Anyone can do anything for a few minutes. Just start.

Use Doublethink to Achieve Your Goals

Thinking about benefits and setbacks together will motivate you to achieve and help you persevere in the face of difficulties. Answer these questions about your goals to get the best motivation.

1. What is your goal?

2. Potential benefits and setbacks

  1. Write down one word that reflects an important way your life would be better if you achieve your goal.
  2. Write down one word that reflects a significant barrier standing in the way of you achieving your goal.
  3. Write down a second benefit.
  4. Write down another significant barrier.

3. Elaboration

  • Elaborate on how the two benefits identified above will affect your life positively.
  • Elaborate how the two obstacles identified above will hinder your achievement – and outline the steps you would take to deal with them.

How to Achieve Your Life Goals

  • Write your own eulogy (or obituary) in the third person (David Charles will be remembered as full of fast phrase, pace of prosody and poise of poesy…) to reveal your real life goals (that was a dumb example, by the way). What would you like people to say about you when you die? What would you like to have achieved?
  • Those who visualise themselves as others see them are 20% more successful than those adopting a first person view. Apparently. How do they find these things out? that’s what I want to know.

How to Decide, In 59 Seconds

This is taken from 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman, a book that wants to make your life better – in 59 seconds or less. It is all based on scientific research. If you like that sort of thing.

Beware of Deciding in Groups!

Groups tend to:

  • Polarise an individual’s opinion and make them take more extreme decisions.
  • Be more dogmatic than individuals.
  • Be better at justifying irrational actions than individuals.
  • Be more likely to see their actions as highly moral than individuals.
  • Stereotype outsiders.

Furthermore, when strong-willed people lead group discussions they can:

  • Pressurise others into conforming.
  • Encourage self-censorship.
  • Create an illusion of unanimity.

How to Beat the Salesman

You can use these mind tricks for good or evil. Use them to persuade, or use knowledge of them to avoid the dodgy sales tactics of others.

  • Salesmen will often use ‘That’s not all…’ techniques, i.e. give something away for free, offer discounts or bargains. There’s nothing wrong with that – if you already want to make the purchase.
  • Another technique (often used, I’ve found, by people outside train stations incongruously desperate to call home…) is ‘Disrupt, then re-frame’ – in other words surprise a person and then make a request. Don’t ask for a quid, ask for 97 pennies. The unusual request will break through the other person’s automatic negative response.
  • Another good one is to ask for a small favour and then build up to the big favour/sale – get your foot in the door.
  • Or to start with a ridiculously big ask and so that your ‘reasonable’ offer looks like good value.

Use the Unconscious to Unlock Complex Decisions

When making straight-forward decisions, stick with the concious mind. Just think about the pros and cons and assess the situation in a rational, level-headed way.

But for more complex choices, try giving your concious mind a rest by following this simple technique.

  1. Outline exactly what decisions you have to make.
  2. Work through anagrams for five minutes. This occupies your conscious mind.
  3. Now without thinking too much, write down your decision. Hopefully your unconscious mind has come up with something!

When You Make the Wrong Decision…

Regret is surely one of the most painful emotions known to humankind. ‘No regrets’ is a great thing to strive for, but there’s nothing more human than making bad decisions. Don’t let it get to you by using these tips.

  • People tend to regret things that they don’t do, rather than things that they do do.
  • Prevent regret in the first place by adopting a ‘will do’ attitude. Say YES.
  • If you do regret something, see if you can correct it. Write a letter, mend that broken relationships, go back to college, etc.. Use regret as a wake up call for motivation.
  • If it isn’t possible to make things better, don’t dwell on ‘What might have been…’ Instead, spend time thinking about three benefits of your current situation and three negative consequences that could have occurred had you taken the decision that’s causing the regret.

Judgement

Good judgement is at the heart of good decision-making. So what happens when you are faced with a judgement call?

How to Beat Liars

  • Forget the clichés about liars staring to the left or whatever. It’s not true.
  • Liars tend to become static, they gesture less. 
  • They speak in less detail and increase their pauses.
  • They avoid the words ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘mine’ and increase their use of ‘him’ and ‘her,’ rather than using specific names. 
  • If someone becomes suddenly evasive, ask for a straight answer.
  • Try to establish an honest baseline for the person by asking simple questions that will get an honest reply.
  • Get them to email you their story. People lie in 14% of emails, 21% texts, 27% face-to-face, 37% phonecalls. Take note of that one yourself: emails can come back to haunt you!

How to Judge Time Accurately

We are very bad at estimating how long things will take. Improve your estimates by:

  • Comparing how long a similar project took before.
  • Unpacking the activity into its constituent parts and estimate how long each one will take individually.

Review: Infernos Nightclub, Clapham

The club was called Infernos. Because it wasn’t just hot, it was hotter. The name brings up some interesting theological ideas: not just one hell, but hells, each lovingly designed to its individual occupant’s worst nightmare. One man’s torture is another man’s pleasure, after all.

But I wasn’t there to be tortured and there were only two hells to choose from: House Party downstairs and Discotheque upstairs. I choose upstairs. Stairway fake curtains are plastered to the wall in chipped red paint, draped over a stair-length looking glass, screwed to the wall like in your cheap bathroom.

Hellish Thought #1: am I destined, forever more, to dance to the music from Grease?

Revellers don’t so much dance as simply coexist in the space. A girl, heavily made up, walks past me on the dancefloor, yawning. Two lads, one short, one tall, try to talk. Some laugh, some cry, some sing, some shout. But vacant looks dominate.

I find an open space on the busy dancefloor in which to jerk my arms and flail my feet as best I can. Then I realise: vomit is swilling around my ankles. The dance swells out from the caustic pool.

A girl sits alone, arms crossed, on a leather-effect sofa that shows signs of wear. She’s dressed up fine and her legs are bare. But she doesn’t look like she wants to be there. A security man perches on a low wall above the dancefloor, blankly watching the action below. One leg dangles. Menboys swing their shirts around their heads as the DJ hollers though the smoke puffing from his smoke machine, ‘Gonna switch the style after this one!’

Hellish Thought #2: are they having fun or are they comatose?

Impossibly, two aquariums shatter disco light in their water. Bemused fish, deaf, hoover up gravel with their bulbous lips, ignoring a girl and her boy who play hide and seek through the glass. In a mirror-image of excess and delight, a disco light revolves drunkenly above the convulsing crowd, its bulb gone.

The place to get your drink (of water) is called The Cocktail Bar and the girls’ toilet is called the Ladies Powder Room. No sign of a possessive apostrophe though. Singers sing in sound-proofed silence in the Popstars Karaoke Lounge. There’s a pool table in one corner, but no one is interested in playing games.

Empty beer bottles hit the dancefloor, where they are kicked and kicked again until ejected to the periphery, where a man carrying a red fire bucket picks them up. Boys hit the dancefloor, where they are kicked and kicked again until ejected the periphery, where a girl carrying a handbag picks them up.

Hellish Thought #3: I enjoy this.

How to Attract the Opposite Sex, in 59 Seconds

This is taken from 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman, a book that wants to make your life better – in 59 seconds or less. It is all based on scientific research. If you like that sort of thing.

How to Attract 101

The best strategy is to give the impression that, in general, you are hard to get, but you are really enthusiastic about your date: ‘I am choosy, and I choose you.’

The Touch on the Arm

This is really powerful, apparently. It will make people help you out. It also helps women find men attractive.

  • Deliver at the same time as a compliment or request.
  • Try the briefest of touches to the upper arm.
  • Be careful. Some people don’t like to be touched – and a millimetre the wrong way could get you a slap. 

Loving Styles

Psychological similarity is a good indicator of long term satisfaction in relationships. There are three basic types.

Eros:

  • Very strong ideas about the type of physical and psychological traits they desire in a partner.
  • Frequently experience love at first sight.
  • Engage in emotionally intense relationships, which falter as the love of their life changes.
  • Extroverted and giving, they feel secure in their relationships and get emotionally close to others.
  • Become infatuated during the initial stages and, in this stage, would not dream of infidelity.

Storge:

  • Value trust over lust.
  • Slowly develop a network of friends in the hope that affection will transform into deep commitment.
  • Intensely loyal and supportive. Only form one or two relationships in their lives.
  • Altruistic and trusting, often brought up in large families. Comfortable depending on others for support.

Ludus:

  • No ideal type in mind, they play the field.
  • Strive for novelty and thrills. Uncomfortable with commitment, many short-term relationships.
  • Enjoy the thrill of the chase, display little loyalty.
  • More neurotic and self-conscious than most, they have little sympathy for the feelings of others.
  • Fear of being abandoned by a partner – a situation they avoid by not getting too close to anyone.

Speed Dating Tips

  • Think of questions that get the people talking in creative, fun, interesting ways.
  • Mimic the way they sit, hands, speech patterns, facial expressions.
  • Only select the few people you had genuine chemistry with.

Sex and Sport

  • Women like men who do sports that show bravery – rock climbing, football, hiking. Not aerobics.
  • Men like women who keep fit – aerobics, yoga, gym. Not rugby or body-building.
  • No one likes anyone who plays golf.

The Perfect Date

  • Do something that will make the heart race. Thriller films, theme parks, cycle rides. Dumb humans easily confuse the fast heart rate of fear with the fast heart rate of attraction.
  • Play the sharing game to build intimacy. Ask questions like:
  1. Imagine you are hosting the perfect dinner party – who would you invite?
  2. When did you last talk to yourself?
  3. Name two ways you consider yourself lucky?
  4. Name something you have always wanted to do, and explain why you haven’t done it yet.
  5. Imagine your house has caught fire and you can only save one thing – what would it be?
  6. Describe one of the happiest days of your life.
  7. Imagine you are going to become close friends with your date. What is the most important thing for them to know about you?
  8. Tell your date two things you really like about him/her.
  9. Describe one of the most embarrassing moments in your life.
  10. Describe a personal problem and ask your date’s advice on how to solve it.

Quick tips for dating

  • Women rate men as more attractive if they see other women having a good time in his company.
  • Hungry men show a preference for fat women.
  • Disagree, then agree. Play a little hard to get for the first hour, then turn on the charm later. Talk about things you both dislike, rather than like.
  • Smiles crinkle around the eyes, not just the mouth. The most attractive ones are slow and involve a slight tilt towards the other person.
  • Love – leaning towards each other. Lust – licking lips.
  • Previous partners: Women like men to have two. Men like women to have had four.

No Supermarket: Week 3

No Supermarkets again this week (apart from my little tourism on Tuesday). It’s really a lot easier now than I thought it would be. It’s hardly even inconvenient, in fact it’s fun. When I go some place new I keep my head up for little shops, pop in, have a chat, browse and buy. Already my local shopkeeper calls me ‘a regular’, which is nice.

Here’s another thing. This week I met up with a friend for dinner. Normally we go down to Sainsbury’s, do some shopping and get cooking. Not this week. We went to a restaurant. Shock. More expensive, maybe, but it’s about more than just the chow – it’s the experience. That might sound like pure guff. It is. But hey, I enjoyed it.

So how was it price-wise this week? Not including the restaurant, just going on what I bought at shops and markets, here’s the comparison:

  • No Supermarkets: £23.07
  • Sainsbury’s: £18.91

As usual, there are a few discrepancies: I would have had three less avocados at Sainsbury’s – but one extra banana and a smidgen more spinach.

One thing I found is that I spend a good deal more on fruit and vegetables at local shops, compared to local markets. This explains a lot of the difference in price this week. I can get fruit and veg cheaper at local markets than at Sainsbury’s, but the shops tend to be a little more expensive. The key to getting good deals at No Supermarkets is to shop around, travel, investigate and explore. The French had it right when they called their supermarket Monoprix.

I won’t bore you with a great long list of things I bought this week, but here’s a good one:

  • 48 Ibuprofen tablets from New Cross Station Pharmacy: £2.25
  • 48 Ibuprofen tablets from Sainsbury’s: £0.84

Massive.

However, this might not be such a big win for Sainsbury’s as it first appears. The purpose of buying Ibuprofen is to kill your pain, right? It shouldn’t matter how much it costs, right? – Wrong. Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioural economics at Duke University, has shown that the more you pay for your pain-killers, the more powerful their effect. You can watch a short video of Ariely here.

It’s hard to tell if paying more has worked for me, but all I can say is that my foot is much better today than it was on Friday morning, when I started taking the tablets.

How to be Creative, in 59 Seconds

This is taken from 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman, a book that wants to make your life better – in 59 seconds or less. It is all based on scientific research. If you like that sort of thing.

Engage the Unconscious Mind

  1. Address a problem. What is it you are trying to solve?
  2. Do a difficult crossword, word-search, sudoku – or any other task that fully occupies your conscious mind.
  3. Now, without thinking too much about it, jot down the various thoughts and possible solutions that come to you.

The Four Ps of Creativity

Classic self-help. The X-number of Y.

Priming

  1. Work feverishly on the problem.
  2. Then do something completely different: Feed your mind with new things: museum, art gallery, flick through newspapers, go on a train journey.
  3. Leave it to your brain to make the connections.

Put plants and flowers in a room. Green is good. Don’t fake it though – pictures won’t do. Avoid red. Prime people with green objects if you want them to be creative.

Perspective

  • Imagine how a child/idiot/friend/artist/accountant would solve the problem.
  • Think about analogous situations by applying the ‘is like’ rule – how is the problem solved by the analogous entity? Can this be applied to your situation?
  • Think about doing the exact opposite to what you are doing now.

Play

Have some fun. Being too serious constrains your brain. Take a 15 minute fun break.

Perceive

  • Don’t go onto automatic pilot. Become more curious.
  • Ask yourself an interesting question each week. Try to find out the answers. Not just by using Wikipedia.

Quick Creativity Tips

Richard Wiseman has some quick tips for us. How kind *pulls desk towards himself*.

Creative Brainstorming

  • Mix groups of people up to be more creative in brainstorming sessions. Put different kinds of people together, not bunches of friends.
  • Or better, allow people to be creative alone. It makes them responsible alone for coming up with good ideas. Quality and quantity of ideas improve when alone in most cases.

The Power of Art

  • Spend a few moments describing a typical musician or artist. List their behaviours, lifestyle and appearance.
  • Look at modern art to help produce original ideas.

Creative Body Language

  • When trying to be creative, pull the table towards you. Pulling things means you are comfortable with them and comfortable means creative.
  • Cross your arms to help perseverance in the face of failure.
  • Lie down to use your locus coeruleus against rigid thinking.

How to be Happy, in 59 Seconds

This is taken from 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman, a book that wants to make your life better – in 59 seconds or less. It is all based on scientific research. If you like that sort of thing.

Here is what he suggests to make you happy.

Write a diary

  • Don’t suppress negative thoughts – they will only come back stronger. So write about them.
  • List 3-5 things to be thankful for once a week. Appreciate things that go unnoticed.
  • Describe a wonderful experience you have had in life.
  • Describe a great future; realistic, but in which you have worked hard and achieved your goals. It won’t help you achieve it, but it will make you smile.
  • Write a short letter to a person you are thankful for. Imagine you have only one opportunity to tell them. Describe what they mean to you and the impact they have had on your life.
  • Think back over the past week and make a note of three things that went really well for you (this can be trivial, like stroking the cat and getting a purr in return).

Spending and Giving

  • Buy experiences, not goods. Experiences tend to be social and the memory of them will improve with age, whereas goods tend to look worse with time. Like my bike.
  • We grow accustomed to changes in our circumstances. So riches will become quotidian.
  • Giving will make you happier than receiving gifts.
  • For a cheaper boost, carry out five non-financial acts of kindness on a single day. Don’t dilute the effect by spreading them out over the week.

Act happy

50% of  your happiness is genetic, 10% due to general circumstances, but 40% is governed by your day-to-day behaviour.

  • Smile for 15-30 seconds. Imagine a situation that would make you smile to make it convincing.
  • Sit up in your chair – posture is important.
  • Swing your arms like a kid (a human child, not a goat).
  • Add a spring in your step.
  • Use more expressive, excitable hand gestures in conversation.
  • Nod your head when others speak.
  • Wear more colourful clothing.
  • Use a greater frequency of positive words and a lower frequency of self-references in your conversation. The film was incredible! Not average.
  • Use a larger variation in the pitch of your voice. Squeak and growl.
  • Speak slightly faster.
  • Arm yourself with a significantly firmer handshake.

Intentional change

  • Intentional change (i.e. pursuing a goal, starting a new hobby) will make you happier than circumstantial change (i.e. a change in circumstances – getting a new car, house etc..).
  • Make the effort to start a new hobby, project, sport – something new, not habitual.
  • Look at something you enjoy already and find something new that is related. For example, playing the clarinet if you enjoy the piano.

All this advice seems pretty cool to me. However, it does come with a ‘be bothered’ warning. Can you be bothered? Seems like a lot to remember for me – no, I mean, go for it!

No Supermarket: Air Miles and Bursting Aisles

I went to my local Sainsbury’s on Tuesday – no, don’t panic, I didn’t buy anything. I went there to do a little research. I wanted to know a couple of things:

  1. Where in the world does Sainsbury’s food come from?
  2. How much choice is there at supermarkets?

And here is what I found.

Where is Sainsbury’s Food From?

Answer: Spain.

I only looked at the Fruit and Vegetable section because that seemed a reasonable sample size: 119 products. Astonishingly, these products came from a total of 36 countries. The top five were:

  1. Spain (20 products)
  2. UK (19)
  3. Israel (9)
  4. Morocco (6)
  5. South Africa (6)

I was surprised to see Israel at number three I have to admit. We get tomatoes, peppers, herbs and exotic fruit like kumquats and Sharon fruit from there. The West Bank did also appear on the list with two products, the herbs dill and sage.

I guess one big reason for the reliance on overseas fruit and vegetables is the time of year. Traditional English Summer produce like cucumbers, tomatoes and spinach have to be shipped in from Spain or elsewhere.

More concerning, however, was the number of products that ARE in season in the UK, and yet it was still possible to buy them from abroad. For example: apples, pears, beetroot and mushrooms, as well as packaged herbs. It seemed that if you wanted herbs in a pot, then they had to be British, presumably because of the care required for potted plants, but packaged herbs came from abroad, presumably because they are cheaper there.

The full list of countries supplying Sainsbury’s New Cross Gate (in order of products supplied): Spain, UK, Israel, Morocco, South Africa, Egypt, Italy, France, Kenya, Mexico, Peru, USA, Brazil, Chile, China, Holland, India, Portugal, Senegal, Thailand, Turkey, West Bank, Argentina, Burkina Faso, Canary Islands, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Ireland, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Namibia, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia.

How Much Choice Is There?

Answer: Too much.

To focus my research, I examined just one type of product from Sainsbury’s 30+ aisles: soup. Here’s what I found.

There are, broadly speaking, four different kinds of soup product on sale at Sainsbury’s: tinned, potted, fresh and dried soup mix. Tinned represent the overwhelming majority of the market.

There are, in all, sixteen different brand labels on sale, including eight for Sainsbury’s alone: Be Good To Yourself, Sainsbury’s, Chunky, Basics, Microwave, Simmer Soups, SO Organic and Taste the Difference. Prices range from £0.17 for Sainsbury’s Basic tomato soup to £2.29 for some of the posh fresh soups.

This meant that there were, in total, on sale at Sainsbury’s… Wait for it – 138 different types of soup.

That, my friends, is ridiculous. Contrast my local shop, where I can purchase one brand in about six different flavours. Fine, considering I only ever buy cream of tomato! Prices there range from £0.89 to £0.89.

Is Choice a Good Thing?

Supermarkets rely on the idea that more choice makes us happier. But is this actually the case?

Malcolm Gladwell makes the case for supermarket-style choice in a TED video from 2006. He recounts a story of the psychophysicist Howard Moskowitz:

Vlasic Pickles came to him, and they said, “Doctor Moskowitz, we want to make the perfect pickle.” And he said, “There is no perfect pickle, there are only perfect pickles.” And he came back to them and he said, “You don’t just need to improve your regular, you need to create zesty.”

From this idea, pickles, spaghetti sauces, soups – everything – proliferated, all in the cause of making us happy.

You can see the full video here:

But Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, warns:

Beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures.

“In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis. And in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression.”

In other words: choice, generally-speaking, is good, but too much choice is toxic.

At my local shop I have the choice of about six different flavours of soup. That’s a reasonable selection, given that I could make my own soup if I wanted something a little more customised. But faced with an aisle of 138 soups?

I wouldn’t know where to start.

Good ideas without action are just bad excuses

‘Good ideas without action are just bad excuses.’

I’m not sure if this saying from 2009 needs to be explained, but I will anyway, with an example.

A lot of people say:

‘I’m gonna write a novel!’

but then don’t start writing, they don’t act on their words. So it turns into:

‘I’m gonnna write a novel – when I’ve got a bit more time, after the kids have moved out, after I’ve bought a new computer, after I’ve finished painting the Sistine chapel…’ 

etc., etc., etc..

Hence: good ideas without action are just bad excuses.

Death on a Sofa

It could happen right now. The ceiling could collapse on me, squashing my skull under the concrete. The radio could burst into flames and I could suffocate in the fumes. A thief could break in through my window and stab me to death. I could have already ingested a deadly bacteria from a tomato that I didn’t wash earlier. I could have a heart attack. The incense I am breathing in could be poison.

The whole point of death is its suddenness. That’s the game, that’s the framework. I need death to live and life to die. I need you to be me and you need me to be you.

The fluorescent light bulb on in my room could explode and kill me with noxious fumes. The floor might collapse underneath me, crushing me in the rubble. My computer could explode, sending shards of plastic flying across the room to sever my carotid artery and I could bleed to death on this very sofa, right here, as I write these very words.

Still waiting.

Better do something else.

The Age of Plastic

What’s left when the entire human race is dead?

Good question. Well, now we know: what’s left when the entire human race is dead? Fire alarms, that’s what.

There’s no one here to service them, there’s no one here to fix them after they go off. And, because they weren’t connected to the grid, they didn’t just shut up when the power went down. I know that sooner or later the batteries will run out, but I’ll probably be gone by then too.

It gets you to thinking though. Those fire alarms will last longer than I will. What does it say about the human race, when our warning systems outlive the ears they were meant to warn? It’s like the man who set his alarm clock for the morning, but never woke up. When the neighbours called the police, they found him there, the alarm clock still ringing, but his ticker gone.

When we’re all dead and rotting – and it won’t be long – the vultures (or whatever’s left) will get ear-ache picking over our bones.

Makes you wonder what else we’re leaving behind. What else seemed so important that we had to give it a life-expectancy ten times longer than our own?

Did you know that the first piece of synthetic polymer plastic wasn’t created until 1907? The plastic we used to make, before we started dying, had a life-expectancy of a thousand years. You’d have to go back to the Norman invasion of England to get an idea of how long a thousand years is. Just imagine if the Normans had made everything out of plastic instead of wood or metal or stone. Archaeology wouldn’t be so hard: it’d all still be here.

Except there wouldn’t have been any archaeologists around to find it. If the Normans had invented plastics, like we did, they’d have got themselves into this fine mess, like we did – and we wouldn’t have existed at all.

So should we be grateful that the Normans didn’t invent plastic? Grateful that we got the chance to live on earth, grateful that we were the ones who invented plastic? Grateful that – no matter that we wiped out fifty percent of the species on earth, including ourselves – at least we had the opportunity to live?

Maybe we should be. What difference does it make? The earth was bound to reject us sooner or later. No species lives forever. We’re not the first species to mine ourselves out of existence in an orgy of over-consumption either.

Maybe we are the first species to talk about it at dinner parties, though. Maybe we are the first species to know what we’re doing to ourselves as we’re doing it to ourselves – and then to pass around the port.

We’re like the villain in a Bond film, who, with masochistic relish, informs 007 of the precise mechanism of his death and then walks away. Of course, that was always just a plot device to give James Bond enough time to escape from the villain’s snare. It’s not going to work that way for us. We’re doing it to ourselves, pressing the gas mask to our faces as we talk. We can’t walk away.

Strangely enough, though, I don’t care. And I’m not alone. Well, I am alone, but I wasn’t alone, clearly. No one cared, before they started dying, because it wasn’t real. No one could get a grip on the scale of the problem. I can’t blame any one else either. No one understood what we were doing in the age of plastic. And then, when we did understand, no one could control themselves.

We choose this, we wanted it.

Funny that, as the earth burns up, the only sound I can still hear is the sound of fire alarms.

No Supermarket: Week 2

Week 2 and I still haven’t been to a supermarket – or even so much as a High Street chain. I have to say, it’s going rather well. The Suma order arrived on Thursday with 12.5kgs of oats for our house at only £8. I also got a load of Jasmine tea, raisins and eggs. Cue massive omelets.

Yesterday, I went to another local co-operative, Fareshares, who sell organic, mostly fair trade food and other household goods at the right price. Here’s what I bought:

  • 1l washing detergent @ £2.96
  • 250g sunflower seeds @ £0.50
  • 100 rooibos teabags @ £2.83
  • 500ml Aspall’s balsamic vinegar @ £2.83
  • 680g sauerkraut @ £1.67

And I made an incredibly generous (!) £0.21 donation to make it £11.00 in total.

The same stuff at Sainsbury’s would have cost me £10.34, but I would have had 500ml more detergent, 50g less sunflower seeds and 20 fewer teabags. [Incidentally demonstrating there the way you use ‘less’ and ‘fewer’ in the English language. I’m educational too!] If I’d been able to buy the exact same quantities, Sainsbury’s would have cost me a theoretical extra £0.05, so it more or less evens out.

However, as I’ve said before, it’s not all about price with No Supermarkets. The stuff I would have bought at Sainsbury’s probably wouldn’t have been fairly traded and certainly wouldn’t have been organic. I also wouldn’t have met the lovely people at Fareshares or ended up with some random sauerkraut!

Fareshares

Fareshares is a food co-operative near Elephant and Castle in South London. They buy their stuff from wholesalers and then sell it on to us little people at near wholesale price. The people who work there are volunteers and the only major overheads are for the building.

They sell all sorts of stuff. There’s lots of dry foods: seeds, rice, millet, oats, nuts and dried fruits. They also sell tinned things like tomatoes, bottled things like oils and sauces, cartoned things like soya milk. There’s also a small stock of fresh fruit and vegetables and bread (on Thursdays only) – and I’m sure much much more.

It’s a co-operative so try and turn up with a bag or some cartons for your stuff. Then go around picking and packing your own shopping, totting up the total as you go on a piece of scrap paper. Then head to the till and pay. It’s an honesty system, so be honest!

Opening hours: Thursday 2-8pm; Friday 3-7pm; Saturday 3-5pm
Address: 56 Crampton Street (near Walworth Road), London SE17 3AE

Go – it’s brilliant!

An Alcoholic in a Country Village

We see him, now and then, shuffling along the road leading out of the village. Sometimes we see him in the local shop, his head unsteady, tilting at the sweet stand. But most often we see him in the pub, The King’s Head, on the left as you come from the green.

His name is Steve and he drinks lager. Sometimes he plays on the fruit machines, but most often he drinks lager.

The King’s Head is split into two parts, separated by a wall. The larger part of the bar is on your right as you come in and there’s always half a dozen locals here, whiling away the country hours. The left hand part of the pub has only a few seats and is where you can find the pool table, a couple of dartboards and, lately, me and George.

And Steve.

We go there to relieve the tension of unemployment. At the pub we can relax, shoot some pool and talk about jobs and how they’re for mugs and how we could make a whole stack of money in some scheme or other.

But we don’t drink. Oh no, we don’t drink, not like Steve.

I wonder about Steve a lot. He’s not employed either. I don’t see how he can be. He’s there, already drunk, when we pop in for a quick game of pool at lunch time and he’s still there when we leave. He drinks slowly, but steadily. Lager.

But then he does seem to go home for the evening. I wonder what he meets there. A wife? His mother? A housekeeper? Or the lonely click of his key in the lock, the tired creek of his old front door and the empty tick-tock of the hall clock…?

The Hostage

The men with masks tied us up. They tied us up, back-to-back on the floor of the bank vault, and then they left. For two days we breathed each other’s breath, felt each other’s hearts, beating through our rib-cages. For two days we starved and suffocated together.

On the morning of the third day, the men with helmets came and cut the cord. The vault opened to the agoraphobic world and I lost you in the crowd. You were relieved, but I? I am still in that vault, bound alone to my memories.

Facing Disaster In the Middle East: Do We Have Only Bad Options?

This is a review of a talk given by Stephen Kinzer on the 10th of January 2011 at LSE. I should make it clear at the start that Kinzer was talking specifically about US foreign policy. He was talking, not of justice, but of what would be in the interest of the US.

The Bad Attitude of US Foreign Policy

When the US took over the dominant position held by the British Empire in the Middle East, they learnt the wrong lessons. One lesson they didn’t learn was: if you can’t adapt to changing conditions, you’ll lose your authority, both political and moral.

In the dying days of British influence in the Middle East, they hauled Mohammad Mosaddegh, Prime Minister of Iran, before the UN Security Council in a dispute over British oil interests in Iran. It didn’t work.

The US have shown a similar attitude in their dealings in the Middle East. “We don’t like to take advice,” Kinzer says. The US like to think that they, uniquely, “get it,” and that other countries, including countries in the Middle East, just don’t get it.

This attitude was effective during the Cold War. The US exerted immense influence and were able to coerce other countries into doing things in the interest of the US – even when it was against their own interests. That time is OVER – but the policy hasn’t changed and it doesn’t work anymore. We can argue about the details, but the Middle East is not going the way of the US. It’s a worse place for the US now, no doubt.

One thing we can learn from history is that empires rise and fall; and they only survive if they are able to adapt. If the US is unable to adapt then their time at the top will soon end.

Partners

If the US is unable to dictate any longer, what should they do? Stephen Kinzer argues that they must look for partners with whom the US can act in concert and to whom the US can turn to for expert advice in the region. The US must abandon the idea that they alone know what is right for the Middle East.

So who are those partners? There are two criteria that the US must look for in potential partners:

  1. A society that looks like the US. In other words: not the Saudis!
  2. A states whose long-term strategic goals are similar to theirs. In other words: not the Saudis! The brand of radical Islam funded by the Saudis all over the globe are turning out a generation of “lost boys, chanting the Qur’an and hating America”. Incredibly, the US are financing their own assassins.

The Problems with the US-Saudi Relationship

Social similarities and like-minded long-term goals are not the only things that determine foreign policy. The US and Saudi are inextricably linked by oil and defence contracts. The US gets 11% of its oil from Saudi. The Saudis spend a huge amount of money in the US. They recently negotiated a $60bn deal for arms.

They also spend their money very cleverly, splitting it between many different states. This means that Congress or the Senate find it hard to oppose Saudi policies because so many states have a vested interest in Saudi. Massachusetts, for example, has 100,000 jobs reliant on defence. No Congressman would dare oppose the Saudis for fear of losing those jobs. In this way, the Saudis wield influence over the US political system.

Stephen Kinzer identifies two other countries that do satisfy both of his conditions for partnership with the US.

1. Turkey

Firstly, Turkey have been a NATO ally for over 50 years. In the last decade, though, Turkey has also adopted an intriguing role in global geo-politics. They are trying to be deal-makers and peacemakers. They are friends of both Iran and the US; friends of both Georgia and Russia; friends (perhaps until recently) of Israel and Hamas.

How have they managed this?

  • Through the success of their capitalist system.
  • It’s a role reminiscent of their Ottoman history.
  • The recent rise of devout Muslims in government increases their moral position in the Middle East.
  • Significantly, they have challenged US foreign policy recently, over Iran and Gaza, for example. This greatly increases their political legitimacy in the Middle East; they are not just NATO’s lapdog anymore.

And all of this is good for the US. It makes Turkey a credible voice in the Middle East.

Instead of supporting Turkey in their new deal-broker role, the US killed a Turkey-negotiated deal with Iran. The US gave Turkey a slap on the wrists and said that the deal was full of holes. No doubt that it was, but they shouldn’t have killed it dead, they should have accepted the help and used the flawed deal to build something better.

Turkey has an ambition to be in the top ten economies in the world. They are currently at number sixteen. If they want to get into the top ten, they need a stable neighbourhood. 80% of foreign companies in Iraq are Turkish, for example. It is firmly in Turkey’s interest to broker these peace deals and the US should use that interest. If the US don’t do more, then Iran and Turkey could form their own geo-political block without the US, possibly with India as well. There is no golden rule that says that only the US can form economic blocks.

However, Turkey does have serious domestic challenges to face: problems assimilating minorities; historical grievances; and ultra-nationalism. These domestic problems will necessarily restrict their influence in the region, but their rise has been a great story.

2. Iran

This was Kinzer’s curve-ball and he knew he had to justify his choice for more than Turkey.

Iran’s social affinity with the US

  1. Iran has a vibrant, dynamic democratic civil society, in contrast to most of the rest of the Middle East.
  2. They’ve had a constitution for a hundred years.
  3. If you can peel away the religious rule, Kinzer says, they could be more democratic than Turkey.
  4. Iran is “the most pro-US country in the world,” Kinzer says, referring to US popular culture. The people of Iran are as open to US influence as the regime is closed.
  5. Farsi is the fourth most popular language on internet, incredible considering the size of the nation and the supposed “closed” nature of the society. Kinzer told an anecdote about Sean Penn visiting a market in Isfahan and an old market-trader, who spoke no English, asked him what it was like to be married to Madonna!

Iran’s long-term strategic goals

Iran also has strategic goals very closely allied to the US – if you ignore emotions.

  1. Iran is a big enemy of radical Sunni groups, like the Taleban. These groups are in fact funded by our current supposed allies, Pakistan and the Saudis! Iran would be a natural ally of the West against this type of terrorism.
  2. Iran has a huge ability to stabilise Iraq. In fact, Iran could be our ticket out of Iraq – if they are reassured that a stable Iraq would not be used as a launchpad for a US invasion of Iran.
  3. Iran could have the same influence in Afghanistan also.
  4. Iran also wants to keep Russia out of the Middle East.
  5. The Iranian oil industry needs massive investment of the kind that only the US can provide.

Kinzer goes further and says that there is no US goal that can be achieved without Iran: the Palestine-Israel conflict, a nuclear-free Middle East, ethnic conflict in Lebanon, etc..

The problems with Iran

Of course there are great problems facing any potential US alliance with Iran.

  • The US have their policies set.
  • The US and Iran have had a dysfunctional relationship for a long time.
  • The US still feel wronged after the 1979-1981 US Embassy hostage crisis. The US are feel that Iran got one over them and they’ve never been able to hit back. This is a clear example of emotion getting in the way of sound diplomacy.
  • The current regime in Iran is also a concern for the US. Kinzer points out that we don’t fully understand the machinations of the Iranian political system, but that Ahmadinejad doesn’t hold the final decision and power. 

    Rapprochement might not be easy, but the US could at least try.

    The problem with current US policy is that it is restricting Iran down to one issue only: their nuclear ambitions. The US want Iran to surrender their highest card, but that’s never going to happen – it makes no sense.

    A way forward: The Shanghai Communiqué

    Instead of demanding this, the US should do something like they did with China in 1972 in the Shanghai Communiqué. This was a short document that contained:

    1. Everything the US didn’t like about China.
    2. Everything China didn’t like about the US.
    3. A promise to negotiate over these issues rather than use force.

    This kind of document clears the air and opens the agenda for progress in negotiations. There is one further block to US negotiations with Iran: human rights. Perhaps the Helsinki Accords are a better model than the Shanghai Communiqué.

    The US need concessions from Iran, but that will only happen if Iran feels safe. Turkey have advice for the US here: compromise. India is also saying this. These countries want to help the US, but they don’t want to listen.

    Kinzer admits that closer ties with Iran would not be an easy sell. He argues that, although the US would prefer to wait for evolution in the Iranian regime, the need for negotiations is too urgent to wait, so they should try anyway.

    Why would Iran promote stability, when it is against their interests?

    Kinzer points out that stability is in the eye of the beholder. What is stability for the US in Iraq, for example, strikes Iran as destabilisation. The US handed Iran the great prize of Iraq; they would never have been able to take Iraq without the US invasion. But the US must now recognise the reality that Iran is the regional power.

    Why would Iran change its anti-US stance?

    Kinzer gave a number of reasons why they might:

    1. Iran needs security, like any country. That is the reason Russia negotiated the Helsinki Accords.
    2. A change in stance could increase the current regime’s popularity.
    3. The popular Green Movement has only bad options at the moment. The best they can hope for is the current regime to become less isolationist. So such a move would have widespread support.

    Kinzer warns that the problem with making these kind of deals with the elites is that they are usually unpopular with the people, so any deal transfers some of that unpopularity to the US as well. The most important thing that the US must avoid is doing anything that would make it harder for the US and Iran to negotiate in the future!

    Will it happen? Confronting “Pathologies”

    One potential problem with Kinzer’s vision of US partnerships with Iran and Turkey is that both Iran and Turkey have a history of dominating the Arabs. Because of this, the Arabs of the Middle East might react badly to perceived influence from those countries.

    However, Kinzer points to the fact that Iran and Turkey support Hizbollah and Hamas, popular Arab movements in the Middle East. The US, on the other hand, have bet on unpopular despots, like “Pharoah” Mubarak in Egypt. The Iranian and Turkish approach simply has to be more popular.

    Unfortunately, the kind of rapprochement needed with Iran will only happen if the US can face other “pathologies” in their political mindset. Kinzer is talking here of the “pull of Israel.” Israel is what separates the US from all its allies, he says, even the UK. But, at the moment, Kinzer can’t see this political mindset changing.

    The relationship between the US and Israel, Kinzer says, is like that between “me and a drunk-drive friend.” We want to help him steer better. Kinzer says that the US should tell Israel, you must change or:

    • Either we’ll recognise the state of Palestine. 
    • Or we’ll recognise the sovereignty of Israel over the whole territory and Jews will become a minority in their own land.

    Only the President can decide this sort of change in foreign policy  – and it is the kind of thing that would only happen with a second term president. Obama, however, is not looking like he wants to make any changes to US foreign policy. Obama himself has little experience with foreign affairs and the people around him are very conventional.

    The Problem of Israel

    Israel, Hamas, the blockade of Gaza, the West Bank settlements are all fundamental to the problems in the whole Middle East. All of the region’s problems are interwoven, which might make you think they are too complex to untangle. But it could be that a break in one place might cause others to break through.

    Israel and the radicalisation of the Middle East

    The West Bank Israeli settlements and the Israeli treatment of Gaza have radicalised the whole of the Middle East – in fact Kinzer is surprised that Palestine hasn’t radicalised MORE. This is why Turkey has become so popular in the region recently; for their response to the Gaza blockade, particularly during the Gaza flotilla debacle. It is not anti-Semitism, it is a response to an injustice.

    Hamas have to be involved in any negotiations. The US aren’t good at facing hard truths, but they must face this. The truth is that Hamas are in trouble from even more radical groups who are asking, “Why are you not attacking Israel every day?” The longer the US fail to negotiate, the worse things will get. And why don’t they do anything? The US government’s intimacy with Israel, which distorts what should be a rational diplomatic decision.

    Israel on self-destruct

    Israel has been pushed in a self-defeating direction by its own policy. Through their own actions they are destabilising the region, but it is impossible for them to defend their position with force forever. Geographically and demographically they are in a losing position. Their only chance of long-term survival is regional stability and normalisation of diplomatic relations with their neighbours.

    The Israeli and Iranian relationship

    Kinzer considers an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities to be unlikely. Iranian nuclear capability is further off than previously thought. During an off-the-record conversation with an Israeli chief of intelligence, Kinzer was told that, while everyone thinks Israel is scared of Iran nuclear weapon because Iran might bomb Israel, that is only half right. Israel do fear Iran getting nuclear arms, but not for that reason. The true reasons are that a nuclear Iran might set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and that Iran would gain immense intimidatory power.

    Kinzer’s response is that nuclear armament will happen; perhaps not in Iran just yet, but other countries around the world will get nuclear weapons at some point. Given that inevitability, we must learn how to deal with it when it does happen.

    He suggests that Iran could approach Israel themselves, instead of trying to negotiate through the US or the UN. Iran, Kinzer says, are better placed to approach Israel directly than any of the Arab nations. Most Iranians, despite the rhetoric of their government, have tremendous respect for Jews, tremendous respect for their history, their education and their contributions to world progress.

    Conclusions

    The US must change their current foreign policy. Their “global management” role is not economically sustainable. The Global War on Terror, farcically renamed “Overseas Contingency Operations,” is extremely expensive. The US spends $1 trillion a year in Afghanistan alone; there are 75,000 US soldiers stationed in Germany – why?

    The US political “pathology” is possibly changing. The Israeli blockade of Gaza and the West Bank settlements are changing US public opinion, led by US Jews scared that these actions are fuelling global anti-Semitism.

    Kinzer expresses his frustration with Israel over the case of Jonathan Pollard, convicted of spying for Israel. Israel wants the US to pardon him; “they want a favour, after kicking the sand in our faces!” This perhaps illustrates the frustration that the US intelligentsia feel towards the perverse political decisions of the Israeli government.

    Kinzer states the questions facing US politicians today:

    1. What should the policy be? Kinzer likes to think he has outlined one set of options.
    2. How do we sell it to the people? A much harder proposition.

    Stephen Kinzer finished with a challenge to the US political leadership, taken from Rumi, the Persian poet:

    “Why do you stay in prison, when the door is so wide open?”


    This was an excellent talk, covering a complex topic with clarity and humour. It was particularly strong for the solutions that it offered. It was good to hear a US commentator who was able to see a future that served both US interests and also the interests of peace.

    How to Prevent Jet Lag

    I love the logic of this trick!

    The brain has two body clocks: one in the “old” and one in the “new” brain.

    • The new brain body clock works on natural light patterns. This clock can only shift about 2 hours a day. That’s why it gets thoroughly confused when we cross the planet and the sun is rising at half past midnight.
    • The old brain body clock, however, works to make sure you are awake when food is around. If we were always asleep at dinner time, we wouldn’t live very long.

    Normally, the new brain is in charge, but there is a way to switch over to the old brain: by throwing our bodies into survival mode.

    How do we do that? By starving ourselves.

    Okay, that’s a bit dramatic, but apparently it takes about 16 hours of fasting before the old brain body clock will take over, believing food to be scarce.

    So if you’re flying from San Francisco to London, take a meal at the usual time in San Francisco, say, breakfast at 8.00am, then don’t eat anything at all until the next appropriate meal time in London, say, breakfast the next day at 8.00pm. Your body will switch onto the old brain and register the body clock time as “breakfast”: exactly what you want.

    Secular Jews, Religious Jews and Arabs: The Zero-Sum Game of Israeli Multiculturalism

    This is a review of a talk given by Professor Menachem Mautner, a political and legal theorist from Tel Aviv University, on the 1st of February 2010 at Oriel College, Oxford. Again, apologies for the lateness!

    I would like to make quite clear at the beginning of this review that Professor Mautner discusses Israel exclusively. He does not refer to the problems between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. His concern is the problems facing Israeli society.

    Israel’s Multicultural Society

    Since the 1970s and the end of Labour’s hegemony in Israeli politics, Israel has been a multicultural society. But there is a war of cultures going on, the society is divided in two ways.

    The War of Cultures 1: Secular Jews vs Religious Jews

    Secular Jews, by which Professor Mautner meant “liberal western” Jews and religious Jews, by which he meant “traditional, Judaism” Jews have twice come close to civil war.

    1. First when settlers were withdrawn from Gaza and Northern Samaria. There was a lot of opposition to this move: 20,000 police and soldiers faced off against the settlers.
    2. Secondly, during the al-Aqsa intifada riots, in the face of retaliation by the Arabs.

    The Jewish enlightenment of mid-19th century Germany marks the beginning of the opposition between the secular and the religious Jews. From the 1930s to the 1970s secular Jews, represented by the Labour movement, were in political hegemony. Their values were secular, democratic, modern and western.

    By the end of the 1970s their power had waned and in 1977 there was a political turnabout in Israel and Labour lost control. Since 1977, there has only been 6 years that Labour were in hegemony. In the 1980s Labour institutions lost power and they have never properly recovered.

    The War of Cultures 2: Jews vs Arabs

    20% of Israeli citizens are Arabs. By 2020 it will be 23%. Israel is clearly bi-national, but Jews deny it. The 1992 constitutional laws describe Israel as Jewish and democratic only. Arabs are allowed rights as individuals, but not collectively.

    • Arabs are excluded from significant political decisions on foreign policy and defence.
    • Israel doesn’t recognise any Arab holidays as public holidays.
    • There are separate cities, neighbourhoods, institutions, newspapers, schools etc. for Arabs in Israel.
    • In all indices – literacy, development, life expectancy, etc. – Arabs rank significantly lower than Jews in Israel.

    This is an explosive mixture, Professor Mautner says, that could lead to a violent struggle.

    But solutions are on the table. In 2006/07, Arab-Israeli intellectuals produced a policy paper, ‘Arab Vision,’ outlining a bi-national state like Switzerland, Belgium or Canada.

    A Zero-Sum Game

    But there is a connection between the two divides: it is a zero-sum game.

    • If the secular Jews move towards the traditional Jews, the Arabs suffer.
    • If the secular Jews move towards the Arabs, the traditional Jews will revolt.

    And this situation will only get worse. The demographics are changing: 50% of school children are from either ultra-orthodox or Arab groups. Israeli society is becoming more polarised between the two groups at the extremes.

    There is nothing unique in the Israeli multiculturalism. What is unique is that the pressure on the system comes from the centre, not the fringes. The problems faced by Israeli society are more like those faced by Turkey, Egypt or Algeria, not Canada or Belgium.

    Although secular and liberal, the government funds ultra-orthodox groups who oppose these values. As a comparison, the Bob Jones University in the USA was stripped of its tax-free status by the Supreme Court because of their racist admissions policy. Israel will never do something like this, Professor Mautner says: it would cause a revolt by the religious Jews.

    The Outlook

    There are essentially two types of religious Jew in Israel: the ultra-orthodox Jews and the religious Zionists.

    • Ultra-orthodox Jews reject Western values and ideas including democracy and liberalism. They would support a theocracy which excludes women entirely.
    • Religious Zionists, on the other hand, take their ideas from the West as well as from tradition. They go to universities, the theatre and opera. They are democratic and have a religious feminism. They would object to a theocracy and would support liberal politics. They hold the key to the future character of Israel – but which way will they go?

    Individualism represents a real danger for the multicultural state. It could polarise opinion and the common good will suffer. Professor Mautner proposes that republicanism could prevent this, if all citizens are able to deliberate over the common good with no exclusion. Labour republicanism has been strong, but it excludes the Arabs. Now it is weak and they can’t cultivate a shared idea of the common good.

    Israel needs to actively pursue a Rawlsian liberal regime representing pluralism and tolerance, an inclusive liberalism, not a universal liberalism.

    Specific Measures for the Future:

    It contrast to some of the theorists I’ve heard speak, Professor Mautner outlined seven specific proposals to bind Israeli society closer together and to make the country a safer and more democratic state for all its citizens.

    1. Establish a constitutional court

    The constitutional law is currently developed by the Supreme Court, but this is now viewed as biased. A new constitutional court would be staffed by lawyers representing the major cultural groups so that it is no longer divisive.

    2. Reshuffle the education system

    Currently there are five types of schooling, secular, religious zionist, Arab, Ashkenazi and Sephardic. They rarely intermix. Israel needs mixed schools, some already exist, but it needs more.

    3. Change the 1992 laws about the nature of Israel

    It is a nation for all Israelis, not just Jews. Israel should become a “Jewish, democratic and Israeli state.”

    4. Include Arabs in national symbols

    Including the flag and the national anthem.

    5. Include Arabic as a national language

    On a level with Hebrew.

    6. Acknowledge the implications of multiculturalism

    Respect for a people means a respect for their culture. Most Arabs are versed in Jewish culture, but not the other way around.

    7. Use the example of 10th and 11th century Spain

    Where the Jews enjoyed a golden age under Arab leaders.


    It was a blessed relief to hear someone put forward concrete, rational proposals for the better integration of Arabs into Israeli society. It’s going to be a long and hard road to travel – overturning institutionalised racism, such as that outlined by Professor Mautner, does not happen overnight – but it will be worth it, for all concerned.

    The Making of Modern English Anti-Semitism

    This is a review of a talk given by Dr Anthony Julius, author of Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England, at Oriel College, Oxford University on Monday 1st March 2010. Apologies for the lateness – it’s been lying dormant in my notebook for almost a year now!

    This talk was given as a warning. Dr Julius was keen to point out rising anti-Semitism in left-wing universities. This talk was given at the beginning of “Israel Apartheid Week,” in which many British universities, including Oxford, took part. Students and their professors are dangerous because, presumably, they are intelligent and their words and opinions carry great weight. This new rise in anti-Semitism, Dr Julius says, has developed with the recent rise in anti-Zionism, particularly after the invasion of Gaza in 2008.

    The Four Types of English Anti-Semitism

    Dr Julius referred to the “amnesia of Anglo-Jews,” they have forgotten the long history of anti-Semitism in this country. There are four types of anti-Semitism to be found in English history.

    1. Medieval anti-Semitism

    Medieval anti-Semitism reached its zenith (or nadir?) in England in 1290, when King Edward I ordered the total expulsion of the Jews from England. This expulsion was an utterly original English idea, lethal and exterminationist in conception. It was the first national expulsion of Jews and other European nations followed suit (France in 1394 and Spain in 1492, for example). However, Dr Julius does say, in “defence” of the English, that the idea had reached its moment and could have happened elsewhere.

    2. English literary anti-Semitism

    Dr Julius argues that only in England has literary anti-Semitism reached canonical status. He cites the examples of Chaucer (The Prioress’ Tale), Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice) and Dickens (Oliver Twist). The plot of each of these dramas, Dr Julius says, is basically the same. There is an innocent (usually a child), who is tricked by a conspiring Jew, there is usually murder or blood involved, but then a “miracle” saves the innocent and the Jew is punished.

    Dr Julius argues that this English literary anti-Semitism continues to the modern day, with writers like Tom Paulin, most notably his poem Killed in Crossfire published in The Observer newspaper in 2001. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/feb/18/poetry.features1]

    3. Quotidian or social anti-Semitism

    This type of anti-Semitism flared up in England in the 17th century and limps on today. It takes the form of condescension toward and disregard for Jews. It is something one can live with, Dr Julius says, but is demoralising.

    4. Anti-Zionism polluted with anti-Semitism

    This developed in England from 1967 onwards. It is when opposition to the Zionist project of the Jews, i.e. the state of Israel, becomes tainted with anti-Semitic, i.e. racist, views. It can be secular, Christian, Muslim or Jewish.

    The purpose of all this anti-Semitism, Dr Julius says, is for its function. It is a useful tool, it gives an answer to any problem: just blame it on the Jews.

    The Problem of the Holocaust

    “The Holocaust has blinded us to modern anti-Semitism.”

    The Deborah Lipstadt trial, in which the right-wing historian David Irving lost a libel case for denying the Holocaust, seemed to show that the threat to Jews still comes from neo-Nazi right. Dr Julius emphatically denies that this is so. The Holocaust, he says, has distracted us from the real threat – the left.

    Dr Julius cites five reasons why the Holocaust has given us an entirely incorrect image of the average anti-Semite:

    1. The Holocaust totalised anti-Semitism

    The Holocaust defined antisemitism as wanting the elimination of all Jews. Today, however, anti-Semites recognise “good Jews” (those running Israel Apartheid Week, for example) and “bad Jews” (those who still who cling to the Zionist project).

    2. The Holocaust was state-sponsored

    This is not the case with anti-Semitism today – in the West, at least.

    3. The Holocaust spoke German

    Anti-Semitism became associated with a particular national source or paradigm. The Holocaust equated anti-Semitism with the Nazi genocidal type.

    4. The threat came from the political right

    This is not the case today; the threat is also from the left. Liberals find it hard to understand the national character of Judaism, which leads to anti-Semitism.

    5. The Holocaust made us think anti-Semitism was genocidal

    That is, thankfully, not the case with English anti-Semitism today.

    Anti-Semitism in the UK today

    Dr Julius sees 1967 as critical in the resurgence of anti-Semitism in the UK. The increase in Israeli settlement of the Occupied Palestinian Territories between 1967 and 1973 led to the famous / infamous 1975 UN Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with racism. The 1982 Lebanon war did little to enhance international opinion of the Zionist project and concomitant with the rise in anti-Zionism, Dr Julius detects a rise in anti-Semitism.

    This anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism gained strength after the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the growth of radical Islam in the UK, empowered by the fatwa declared against Salman Rushdie in 1989. The fall of the Berlin wall in the same year marked the final collapse of the socialist project and led to increased hatred of the US and Israel from the political left.

    Dr Julius sees the response of the political left to Israeli actions in Gaza, particularly the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement of the trade unions, as “exorcising deep-rooted anti-Semitism.” He also warned that, if the Conservatives won the 2010 UK elections, then things could get worse, as Labour are pushed to the left, back to their traditional power base.

    In the discourse of the political left, Dr Julius sees Jews portrayed as having a demonic quality. The boycott movement characterises Jews as Nazis, a characterisation that is familiar from medieval times, when Jews were called “pigs”.

    But, believe it or not, Dr Julius is optimistic. He says that the dominant English norm is pro-difference, and against any divisive racism, such as anti-Semitism. He says that the empowerment of Muslims is very recent, only since 1989, whereas Jews have a history in the UK going back a millennium.

    Conclusions

    Dr Julius says that historiographical battles have to be fought. He cites the book Palestine Betrayed by Efraim Karsh as important for undoing the “Nakba narrative” of the Palestinians. This book essentially blames the Arab elites for betraying the Palestinian people by refusing all negotiations with the Zionists.

    Dr Julius believes that the boycott movement should be fought, in general politically, but where necessary using the unions’ own rule book to block racist policies.

    Dr Julius also argues that Jewish anti-Zionists have got it wrong. Jewish anti-Zionists are a feature of contemporary Jewish politics. From the 1800s to 1945, Jews fell into one of three political camps:

    1. Assimilation: Jews should be individuals in individual states.
    2. Revolution: through socialism, Jews will find equality.
    3. Zionism: the Jews need their own state.

    Dr Julius says that after the Holocaust there was “no politics” until 1967. Then the question became: what is Israel’s future? That is when Jewish anti-Zionists really came to the forefront of Israeli politics. But Dr Julius argues that their diagnoses and prognoses are wrong and because of that they are unwittingly colluding with the anti-Jewish project.

    One of the proposed solutions to the Israel-Palestine conflict is to reform Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories into one state, not as it is now, “a Jewish and democratic state”, but as simply “a democratic state”. Dr Julius describes this proposal as “rubbish”.


    This was an interesting talk. I must confess that I don’t subscribe to his opinion that anti-Zionism goes hand-in-hand with anti-Semitism. Perhaps it is a generational thing. Anthony Julius was born in 1956, only 8 years after the birth of Israel. He was 12 in 1967, a very impressionable age.

    I’m not saying that some anti-Zionists aren’t also anti-Semites. However, the state of Israel has been around long enough now for most people to be able to distinguish a Jew from an Israeli and, importantly, an Israeli from the state and government of Israel.

    No Supermarket: Week 1

    Well that was resoundingly successful. I haven’t been to a supermarket since 2010.

    Here’s what I bought this week:

    • 3 loaves of sesame bread @ £2.67
    • Le Figaro newspaper @ £1.70
    • 20 bananas @ £3.18
    • 2 cucumbers @ £1.00
    • 15 tomatoes @ £2.25
    • 1 loaf seeded white bread @ £0.97
    • 2 tins of Heinz tomato soup @ £1.78
    • 125g tube of Aquafresh toothpaste @ £0.99
    • 1 punnet of red seedless grapes @ £1.00
    • 200g feta cheese @ £1.69
    • 350g jar of Ajvar sauce @ £1.29

    Total: £18.52

    So what would it have cost at my local Sainsbury’s? Obviously you can’t get quite the same things – what the hell is Ajvar Sauce anyway?

    So, if we exclude that from the list:
    My No Supermarket shopping cost me: £17.23.
    The same stuff at Sainsbury’s would have cost: £16.88.

    So I spent £0.35 more than I should have done. Tsk.

    There are a few differences in the shopping basket to note:

    1. I would have had 24 bananas, not 20 (Sainsbury’s Basics bananas come in packs of 8).
    2. I would have had only 12 tomatoes, not 15 (Sainsbury’s Basics tomatoes come in packs of 6).
    3. I would have had only 100g of toothpaste, not 125g (I couldn’t find 125g at Sainsbury’s).
    4. I would not have bought Heinz Tomato Soup, I would have got Sainsbury’s own brand Be Good to Yourself Tomato Soup, saving me another £0.30.
    5. I would not have bought feta from Sainsbury’s. I normally get mature cheddar on special; this week it would have been Cathedral City Mature Cheddar 400g for £1.99. Ouch. It hurts to see that.

    I think those things more or less even themselves out (apart from the cheese).

    It doesn’t just come down to cost though. It can’t. Even if you include the extra £0.30 saving from the soup, I would have saved only 3.8% on my week’s shopping by going to Sainsbury’s. That is a much smaller saving than I expected.

    The Lessons of Week 1

    If it’s not about cost, then what is it about? I have no idea, but here are some things I learnt this week:

    1. No Supermarkets are less convenient

    My ‘local’ shops are further from me than Sainsbury’s – and the markets are even more of a walk. This shouldn’t have been a problem, but turned into a complete disaster when I developed a debilitating foot injury which meant I couldn’t walk for most of the week.

    2. I need to learn how to shop again

    Without a supermarket crutch to support my dietary habits, my diet has been all over the place.

    I’ve eaten a lot more bread than I normally do, simply because it is filling, tasty and widely available. At times in the week, I confess, I was hungry. I’ve eaten everything that was lying around in my cupboards – including muesli that was over a year old, yum!

    I expect my diet to stabilise as I learn where to buy what I want to eat. And as I learn to walk again.

    3. I can pay by credit card at my local shop

    …if I spend more than £5. This is a nice bonus because the nearest cash machine around my way is… at Sainsbury’s.

    4. There is an awful lot less choice at No Supermarket

    This is a good thing, I reckon. Although it cost me on the soup and the cheese front, it did mean that I got to try Ajvar Sauce! See also #7.

    5. There is a lot less packaging involved in No Supermarkets

    The fruit and vegetables that I bought were either in recyclable paper bags or were loose. This is a good thing because it means I don’t have to lug all my plastic packaging back to Sainsbury’s for recycling.

    6. Fruit and veg at No Supermarkets is a lot more variable

    You actually have to look at what you are buying. Once I’ve got over the shock, I’m sure this could turn into quite a pleasant thing. It might make me less of a shopping machine.

    7. I spent a lot less money at No Supermarkets

    Not item for item, but in total. There is very little opportunity for impulse buying at No Supermarkets because there is a lot less choice and so a lot less to tempt you with. A lack of availability also means that you have to make do without. Things I didn’t buy this week include: a ball of string, a rubber and porridge oats.

    Well, it’s been a promising start and I’m looking forward to increased mobility in Week 2!

    Sleep, Meditation and Dreaming

    The Rise of Meditation in the West

    Meditation in the West has seen a burst of popularity since the 1960s. An Australian survey in 2002 found that 11% of people in Western Australia have practised meditation at least once in their lives. A 2007 government study in the United States found that 9.4% of people there had practised meditation at some time.

    The positive medical benefits for meditation have also recently been documented. The BBC (all hail!) have reported that meditation can reduce blood pressure and ease heart disease as well as actually changing the physical structure of the brain. Cool.

    So why is meditation not more a part of Western life? Why is it still seen as an Eastern technique, most often associated with India? Could it be something to do with our sleeping patterns?

    What?

    Yes, our sleeping patterns. Specifically, our sleeping patterns since the Industrial Revolution.

    Before the Light Bulb

    In Britain (in the south, so the best case scenario) we spend over half our time without the sun. Roughly 51% of our hours are night. 250 years ago that meant almost total darkness.

    Of course there were candles and we could light fires, but open fires were dangerous in our expanding wood-built towns and candles were expensive for most people. Gas lighting was still to be developed.

    In the summer, we have about 8 hours of darkness, if we put sunset at about 9.00pm and sunrise at about 5.00am. In the winter, however, we have about 16 hours of darkness, with sunset around 4.00pm and sunrise at 8.00am.

    If you can imagine this time 250 years ago, you would be in darkness from the mid-afternoon to the morning. What could you do? You couldn’t read or write, you couldn’t watch television, you couldn’t go outside for a walk to the pub. You couldn’t really do much at all (unless you were a thief) except go to bed or sit around in the dark and chat. For 16 hours a day.

    Industrial Sleep

    Since the industrial revolution and the explosion in light bulb usage, sleeping patterns in Britain have changed. Sleeping seven or eight hours a night all year round is the norm now – but it never used to be.

    When the sun went down, it used to get dark. Now we have lights in our houses, on our streets, we like to relax in the evening with a film. And all this light has done something a little funny: we think it’s summer all year round.

    Remember the 8 hours of darkness we get in summer? Isn’t that suspiciously similar to the hours most people sleep? You could call it the minimum that humans have evolved to live with; and that’s what we regulate ourselves to have by using electric lighting in the evenings.

    As the chronobiologist Charles A. Czeisler says:

    “Every time we turn on a light we are inadvertently taking a drug that affects how we will sleep.”

    Pre-Industrial Sleep

    Without the miracles of electric lighting, our ancestors spent 51% of their lives in darkness. They couldn’t do much, but they could at least sleep properly.

    In fact, there was so much time to kill, that people would have two sleeps: first sleep and second sleep. The first sleep might be from evening until after midnight and then second sleep from the early morning until sunrise – or when the farmer came a-knocking.

    But what happened between first and second sleeps? Well, that’s where the meditation comes in. There wasn’t any reason to be fully awake (except to go to the toilet or have sex) so people drifted into this twilight zone of “meditation”. I put it in quotation marks because no one deliberately induced this state: it happened naturally.

    First sleep was deep, restful sleep with a burst of dreaming before waking for the first time. Then it was followed by a period of quiet “meditation” before second sleep, which was characterised by more dreaming.

    And that was natural.

    Can We Still Do This?

    Yes we can. Even today, if we are deprived of light for fourteen hours a day, we start to sleep in two shifts. Dr Thomas Wehr did an experiment to test this. After four weeks of acclimatisation to the regime, this is the sleep pattern his subjects showed:

    1. Lie awake in bed for two hours.
    2. Sleep for four.
    3. Awake again for two to three hours of quiet rest and reflection.
    4. Fall back asleep for four more hours.
    5. Wake for good.

    The question now is: why would we want to do this? Who’s got fourteen hours to waste on sleep?

    The Power of Dreams and Meditation

    That middle segment of wakefulness is not just sitting around in bed. It is characterised by an altered state of consciousness, neither awake nor asleep, where confused thoughts wander at will, like dreams, and people feel content. This brain-state is very similar to the state reported by people who meditate regularly.

    That period of “meditation” allows the sleeper to examine their dreams without the pressures of the day to worry about. How many people these days lounge around in bed, pondering their dreams – if they can remember them at all? No, most people have to get up and go to work, which breaks the spell.

    But dreams and quiet meditation are powerful tools. Half-controlled, half-random, dreams offer easy access to suppressed emotions and unexpected thoughts. We can visit old friends, talk to dead relatives, travel in foreign lands, have new experiences and remember old ones.

    This period of quiet meditation allows new thoughts to come to the surface, it allows our minds to shuffle through the events of the previous day and to put everything into perspective. “I’ll sleep on it,” is a common saying that reflects this.

    The night-time also has a reputation as the “mother of thoughts”. Many artists and creative thinkers report that dreams or sleep in general is the best time for generating new ideas. With a double shift sleep pattern, dreaming, waking and meditation is built in to the system. Twice over.

    A Experiment in Double Shift Sleep Patterns

    So I tried it (of course). I know that Dr Wehr’s subjects needed four weeks to get into this pattern, but that didn’t stop me trying. The idea that our sleep is supposed to be broken also takes the pressure off. If you wake up in the middle of the night, it’s no bad thing. It’s natural.

    So last night I tried it. I went to bed at about half eight in the evening and didn’t get out of bed until about nine in the morning. A good solid twelve hours of rest.

    And I did sleep in two shifts. The first was until about three in the morning. Then I simply lay in bed (after checking the cricket score…) pondering the dreams I’d just had. Then I fell asleep again after a while and woke at about half past eight. I then stayed in bed just thinking about the night’s dreaming and got out of bed at nine.

    I won’t bore you with my dreams, but suffice to say that I remember them still, twelve hours later. They were dramatic and exciting and perhaps even revealing. I’m going to try again tonight.

    Conclusion

    On average, we spend 10% of our lives dreaming between 100,000 and 200,000 dreams. That’s an awful lot. I can’t remember too many. One reason for that is that I sleep through too many of them. If I start sleeping in two shifts, like my ancestors used to, then I’ll remember way more. I really appreciate my dreams and the alternate reality that they allow me. Maybe I’ll understand them better, maybe I’ll understand myself better. Maybe I’ll just get a few more stories out of it.

    “Let the Night teach us what we are, and the Day what we should be.”

    Thomas Tryon, Wisdom’s Dictates (London, 1691)

    References

    Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-industrial Slumber in the British Isles by A. Roger Ekirch:
    http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/106.2/ah000343.html

    Modern Life Suppresses An Ancient Body Rhythm By Natalie Angier, March 14, 1995:
    http://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/14/science/modern-life-suppresses-an-ancient-body-rhythm.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

    Various BBC reports on meditation:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1847442.stm
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/410003.stm
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7319043.stm
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8363302.stm

    No Supermarket: Suma Co-operative

    I live in a housing co-operative. Which is awesome, not least because the people I live with try to do things together.

    What that means is that every month someone from the co-op orders in bulk from the ethical retailer Suma. Suma is also a co-operative, which means that the business is jointly owned and managed by all the staff. Everyone is paid the same and they work collectively to do all the jobs that need doing (I discuss this mode of business here).

    So today (for the first time ever, I’m ashamed to admit) I ordered some food from Suma. This is my shopping list:

    • 80 jasmine green tea bags @ £4.95
    • 1kg of raisins @ £2.95
    • 6kg of porridge oats @ £6.99
    • 12 eggs @ £2.62

    Compared to Sainsbury’s, this isn’t bad. You can get 20 jasmine tea bags at Sainsbury’s for about £1, so that’s a touch cheaper at the supermarket. The eggs and the porridge come out at about the same cost. I normally buy Sainsbury’s Basics currents, which are dirt cheap at about £0.60 for 500g (I think), so Suma’s raisins are an expensive upgrade.

    Anyway, that should be my breakfast covered for the rest of the month. Now I’ve just got to wait for the delivery on Thursday. At least I don’t have to walk to the shops.

    The Lamp

    It was my birthday today. My girlfriend – of six years, mind you – gave me a lamp. A lamp. I don’t like lamps. Why did she buy me a lamp? Does she know me so little? Six years! Has she not noticed my aversion to mood lighting?

    It’s not even a lamp with a purpose, like a bedside lamp or a desk lamp – it’s one of those funny little ornamental lamps, shaped like a stone. And the light – such as it is – is a feeble puddle of sick yellow. Useless. It just sits in the corner, like a disease.

    I haven’t the heart to tell her I hate it though. I wonder if it was meant as a message, that she wants to shed some light on our relationship or something. I’ve never been so disturbed by a gift in my whole life. I mean, I’ve received plenty of crappy presents before, but this is supposed to be from the love of my life. A sodding lamp.

    I think I’m going to have to break up with her.

    But what can I say? I can’t tell her the truth. I can’t say that we’re splitting up because she gave me a lamp for my birthday. That would look superficial – but it’s not superficial, is it? How can she have gone out to buy me a nice present and come back with a lamp? What does that say about us?

    But still, I can’t blame the lamp. She’d tell all her friends that I broke up with her over a lamp and then I’d never get with Suze, would I?

    Nah – there’s no option but to blame our break-up on something else. I guess I could use Jon. They’ve been shagging for months.

    Then I can dump the lamp.

    Technology in Sport: Justice vs Drama

    Day 3 of the Fifth Ashes Test between Australia and England:

    • Alastair Cook on 99 not out. Michael Beer bowls and Philip Hughes takes a low catch at short leg. Out.
    • Ian Bell on 67 not out. Watson bowls and Bell nicks a catch to Haddin. The umpire raises his finger. Out.

    Except both men called for a TV review and both were successful. Cook went on to make 189 and Bell 115.

    Without those 138 runs, England would be on 350, only 70 ahead of Australia’s first innings score, instead of being more than 200 runs ahead. Those reviews mean this series is over: England will win the Ashes.

    Is This A Good Thing?

    Not England winning the Ashes, of course that’s a good thing – but is the use of technology in sport always a good thing?

    Technology in sport is a controversial subject. India are currently refusing to play with a referral system in their series against South Africa. But that kind of stand is the exception: the use of technology is widespread at the highest level in cricket, rugby and tennis. It is currently being tested for use in football.

    But who’s driving the change? Do we really need technology? Who is it for?

    These are questions that get to the bottom of what sport is and what it is for. Here are my observations:

    1. Technology is only used at the top level of sport

    During the 2010 Ashes, at least 99.93% of people were spectators, not participants (33,000 average daily attendance at the Ashes, 22 players – not including the millions of people like me listening on the radio or watching on TV).

    • Therefore the injustice of a wrong decision is only directly felt by a tiny minority of people involved in the sport. Of course fans are passionate about their team – but so are the opposing fans. We cancel each other out.
    • And therefore the purpose of the sport is not to be just to the players, but to entertain the overwhelming majority of people involved in the spectacle: the spectators.

    2. Technology is used to correct bad decisions by the officials

    These bad decisions could be the result of incompetence, the extreme difficulty of making the decision or dishonesty (throwing the game one way or another).

    • Sport has an integrity that should be protected. Dishonesty of all kinds, at all levels, should be policed.
    • Therefore technology can play a part in protecting the sport from outside manipulation.

    3. There is often still an element of human judgement required

    Take the Bell ‘dismissal’ last night. The review pictures was inconclusive so the umpire on the field had to make a judgement call. He decided to change his decision and gave Bell not out. In fact, a technology unavailable to the umpire, the snickometer, appeared to show that Bell had nicked it and should have been given out.

    • Therefore, even with technology, wrong decisions are still made.

    So Why Use Technology?

    Given these observations, before using technology in sport, we should ask ourselves the following questions:

    1. Given the fact that most of the people involved in the sport are spectators, watching for their entertainment: does the technology add or detract from the drama of the spectacle?

    2. Given the fact that the integrity of sport should be protected and that technology can be used to monitor the decision-making of officials: are the officials at risk from outside manipulation (i.e. match fixing)?

    3. If wrong decisions are possible, is “justice” still a valid argument for using the technology?

    The Logical Conclusions

    I expect a lot of people will disagree with these, but hey! This is what logically follows from the statements predicated above.

    1. If technology doesn’t add drama for fans: don’t use it

    The only people to benefit from the limited justice it provides are the players and the purpose of their sport is to entertain, not to be fair to the participants.

    2. Use video replays after the event to monitor sport integrity

    Football has the right balance at the moment. (2019: Oh shiiiiit…*) The FA use television reviews after the game to ensure the integrity of the game by punishing players who got away with offences during the match, or by striking out unfair punishments.

    This not only protects the integrity of the sport, but also means that the players (who are, after all, professionals) get fair treatment from their employers. What happens on the field, however, is entertainment. They still get paid, whatever happens.

    After the event reviews can also be used to check up on the integrity and capability of officials. There’s nothing wrong in trying to make sporting officials better at their job.

    3. If technology increases the drama of the spectacle: use it!

    Tennis is, by nature, a very stop-start sport and the Hawk-Eye review system is arguably quite exciting for spectators. So use it, by all means.

    But remember that justice has very little to do with it. The Hawk-Eye review system is 75% drama and perhaps 25% justice.

    Why? Not only can the technology (occasionally) be incorrect or unhelpful, but players are also only allowed three incorrect challenges. I understand this is to stop abuse of the system, but this rule doesn’t match the idea of “justice” in the real world. If you have been correctly convicted at trial for theft three times, it doesn’t mean you should be jailed without trial for a fourth theft.

    I think the jury is still out on whether the review system in cricket is a good thing or not. Cricket, like tennis, is also a stop-start game, but almost ALL of its drama is compressed into those moments when the umpire raises his finger and gives a batsman out. The review system takes that drama away as soon as the batsman calls for the big screen.

    And that’s a real shame for the spectacle, even if England have profited recently!


    * UPDATE, October 2019: Football has totally screwed things up with VAR. There is no aspect of its implementation that is satisfactory for the game, according to my logic.

    The only fair (to players, referees and fans) use of technology in football is the use of goal-line technology, where the decision is (more or less) black-and-white and (more or less) immediate.

    Every single other decision in football is your interpretation of various shades of grey: ultimately, it’s an opinion, even offside. All that VAR has done is add another layer of disagreement, while stripping the immediate drama and enjoyment from the game.

    For what it’s worth, James Milner agrees with me.

    No Supermarket: Deptford High Street

    Yesterday I went to Deptford High Street for my first No Supermarket grocery shopping.

    And it was rather good fun. This No Supermarket business forces you to pay attention to your surroundings. You can’t just go to the shelf, you can’t just look for the own-brand stuff because you know it will be cheap, you can’t very often even know the price of what you’re buying until you’ve handed over the goods. It forces you to look, to ask, to say no, to negotiate – in short, to connect?

    A couple of traders just said hello to me, for nothing. Can I help you? Aright, mate? Another looked for a smaller ball of string for me. I didn’t have to ask, he saw from my face that it was too much.

    In all, I went to two fruit and veg shops, a bakery and a newsagents – instead of one big supermarket.

    This was what I bought:

    • £1.18 6 bananas
    • £1.00 2 cucumbers
    • £1.25 6 tomatoes (on the vine)
    • £0.97 Loaf seeded white bread (sliced for me by the bakers)

    Total cost: £4.40.

    I reckon at Sainsbury’s I would have spent about the same, or perhaps slightly more. I wouldn’t have spent so much on the tomatoes, but these ones are very tasty. I normally buy Sainsbury’s Basics, to be honest, at about £0.80. But the cucumbers were much cheaper – saved me about £0.50. So it evens out.

    I have to say, pleasurable though this shopping trip was, it was not convenient. It’s a longer walk to Deptford High Street than to Sainsbury’s and I didn’t buy any string, an pencil rubber, porridge oats – or the dreaded toothpaste.

    No Supermarket January

    New Year Resolution: I’m not going to use supermarkets during the whole month of January.

    For me, that’s quite a big deal. I am accustomed to going to my local Sainsbury’s at least four or five times a week, sometimes just for the walk or the simple pleasure of picking up a value bag of sultanas.

    Well, no more. From the 1st of January I pledge not to purchase a single thing from any supermarket, be it Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda, Lidl, Aldi, Costcutter, Iceland, Netto, M&S, Waitrose, Morrisons – or any of the other behemoths that bestride our consumer culture.

    Why?

    1. I don’t like being too dependent on anything – and supermarkets definitely fall into that bracket of dependency at the moment.
    2. I fancy seeing a bit more of the world – or my local community at least.
    3. It’s embarrassing coming home with a pile of plastic-wrapped food of dubious quality.
    4. Somewhere inside me there’s a vague sense of unease surrounding the operation and supply tactics of supermarkets.
    5. I guess it will support local economy a little bit.
    6. It might be a good way to meet more people in my community.
    7. It might be cheaper, you never know.
    8. It might help me eat better, you never know.
    9. It might reduce impulse buying of sultanas.
    10. It’s something to write about!

    The Toothpaste Test

    At the moment my shelves are looking pretty bare so I’m looking forward to getting stuck into the wonderful (so I’m told) markets in my local area. But, to be honest, I’m a little concerned about where to find toothpaste. I know I can get toothpaste at pretty much any corner-shop or mini-mart, but Sainsbury’s toothpaste is about £0.30 or something ridiculous. I like that: it’s good value.

    The thing is, I’d like to turn this experiment into a long-term life choice, but I’m not going to cut off my nose to spite my face. Sourcing affordable, minty toothpaste could well turn into the acid test of my No Supermarket January. Wish me luck.

    The Country Game: Official Rules

    The Country Game is a highly contentious parlour game played by travellers all over the world. These are my rules, developed in association (and in great disagreement) with the Cholsey Country Club.

    What is a “Country”?

    NB: “Country” has no specific legal definition. Therefore we can call it what we want, to satisfy the needs of the game, which should reward travel, not politics. So:

    A country is an entity which AT THE TIME OF VISITING satisfies any of these conditions:

    1. It is a member state of the UN.
    2. It is an observer member of the UN AND is EITHER a non-member state OR claims statehood.
    3. It is on the UN list of Non-Self-Governing Territories.
    4. It is recognised as a state by at least 10% of the full membership of the UN.
    5. It is an overseas possession of a country satisfying 1, 2, 3 or 4 above AND is outside the Exclusive Economic Zone (which extends 230 miles overseas) of that country.

    At the time of writing, this means that there are:

    1. 192 members of the UN.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_member_states
    2. 4 observer members of the UN: Palestine, The Holy See (Vatican City), The Cook Islands and Niue.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_observers
    3. 16 Non-Self-Governing Territories.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_list_of_Non-Self-Governing_Territories
    4. 2 further states recognised by at least 10% of the UN membership: Kosovo (38%) and Taiwan (12%).
    5. Many other places, including Puerto Rico (US), The Canary Islands (Spain), Réunion Island (France) and Greenland (Denmark).
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_Economic_Zone

    Notes:

    • This definition is deliberately broad because the world is a very big place. I want to break it up as small as possible. We’re all different, aren’t we?
    • For ease of implementation, I’m taking the EEZ of every country to be the maximum 230 miles, rather than going by the official extent, which is frequently less.
    • I’m also applying this 230 miles overland. Basically: if it’s within 230 miles of the possessing state, it doesn’t count as a separate country. I think that’s fair. If it’s that far away you must be travelling specifically to visit that place. You deserve a point.
    • It is important to note that the definition is made AT THE TIME OF VISITING. This means that if you visited Yugoslavia in 1972, you visited Yugoslavia. You did not visit Croatia.
    • That might seem silly, but it would be even sillier for your list to be changing every time there’s a war. It also means that you can have visited countries that no one else will ever be able to again – caché!

    How to Score

    Okay, so that’s just the definition of what counts as a country. Now we can start counting them.

    A player scores one point (and one point only) for each country (according to the definitions above) they have visited in their lifetime IF:

    • They spent at least 24 hours in that country (see note below). 
    • They did something ‘of cultural interest’ during their stay.

    And that’s it – simple!

    Notes:

    • There is one exception to the 24-hour rule: The Holy See (Vatican City). This is the ONLY exception because it’s impossible to spend a night here. Score a point for any visit.
    • It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve visited a country, you will only EVER score one point for it.
    • ‘Cultural interest’ is defined with common sense. It is there to prevent sneaky travellers from counting a transit stay in an airport hotel. If you haven’t left the airport / train station / bus, it’s not interesting.
    • This is a stupid game. There are a lot of things wrong with it. I don’t care.

    How to beat Hormonal Changes with Exercise

    The Theory

    Exercise is particularly important for women to tone down negative consequences of hormonal changes. Exercise balances the system. Boosted levels of serotonin in the body regulates mood and aggression, which can be affected by hormonal changes such as the pregnancy, PMS and the menopause.

    Physical activity increases levels of tryptophan in the bloodstream and therefore the concentration of serotonin in the brain. It balances dopamine, norepinephrine and BDNF. And keeps glutamate and GABA (too high in PMS sufferers) balanced as well.

    The Workout

    • You can exercise while pregnant, but keep it fairly light. 30 minutes at 65-75% of your maximum heart rate per day.
    • For PMS, try 1 hour of aerobic exercise 4 times a week before your period.
    • In general, women benefit from moderate intensity workouts, but go with how you feel.
    • Remember that we evolved for long distance walking, not for sitting around in front of computers! Exercise is nature’s way of regulating chemicals in the body.


    Information from this article is taken from Spark! The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John J. Ratey and Eric Hagerman.