Freedom of speech does not mean freedom to say whatever the fuck you want without consequences. It means you can say whatever the fuck you want without going to jail. Is Alan Jones in jail for what he said? No; he has freedom of speech. Is he experiencing a tirade of objections? Yes; what he said was foolish and unjustified and he should face the consequences.

I can say that because to judge a person’s capacity to do any job on the basis of some group they belong to is foolish and unjustified. Gender, religion, sexuality, cultural background or other spurious grouping are demonstrably not criteria for an individual’s capacity in any respect-this is unjustified. To make a judgement about a person on any of these grounds is guaranteed to attract criticism and rebuke-this is foolish.

As trite as it may sound, freedom does come with a responsibility. When you are free to make a choice, you must be prepared to accept the consequences of that choice. Some very few people are in the privileged postion of being able to avoid the consequences of their choices. This is a problem and should not be allowed beause when those people avoid the consequences someone else pays for them.

An important part of nearly every story is it’s sense of place. How different would Lord Of The Rings be if it were set in New York? What if Winnie the Pooh lived in Sydney? You see, the place or setting of a story makes a big difference. So, as this is a study tour for writing students, we will be expected to write a creative piece set in Scandinavia and it needs to capture the ‘genius loci’. The wha’? Genius loci. See what fancy words we learn at uni?

According to the Oxford dictionary it means

the prevailing character or atmosphere of a place.

What makes your town distinctive from anywhere else? It’s the landscape, the architecture, the weather, the people and much more. If you were blindfolded and tele-ported elsewhere, barring asking someone where you were, how would you find out? You could use the clues of the genius loci. Is it hot or cold? Mountainous or flat? What language are people speaking? What food do they eat? Is it city or country? All these things tell you about the place. They add up to the genius loci.

So, when I’m in Scandinavia I will do as the Scandinavians do… and between now and then I will grow my beard in honour of the Vikings. Or at least our clichéd version of them. With any luck it might end up like this:

Figure 1: How I might end up looking. Cool!

But I’m genetically semi-Chinese so I’ll probably end up looking more like:

Figure 2: Hey, still cool.

How long can I grow my beard in under three months? Probably not much. If you take a look at Figure 3 below, you’ll see my facial features in their default state.

Figure 3: How I look now. (Mar. '12)

As you can see, I’ve got a long way to go to catchup with either of these models of manliness. Check back later and we’ll see how’s it’s going.

Disclaimer: The author reserves the right to cut his beard back to normal in the event that he or his wife dislike it. Or in the case of any other event deemed by the author to require back pedalling.

Amongst the earliest podcasts I came across, it’s still the one I listen to most. Escape Pod publishes sci-fi short stories every week – for free. It’s great. Such a frequent cycle ensures diversity. While it means some episodes are more entertaining than others, it also means there’s no shortage of stories to listen to. Over 300 of them for your off-planet pleasure. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve heard but only a small few have left me flat and there’s none that I would describe as clangers.

Of course there are other sci-fi podcasts. Some include news and reviews, which is great, but what’s good about Escape Pod is that each episode is simply a story. Preceded by a short intro and followed by a bit of reader feedback of previous episodes, they are typically from thirty minutes to an hour in length.

The audio quality is very good, which is important when listening to them in transit. Road and engine noise can make comprehending speech on a cheap car stereo somewhat challenging. Narrators change regularly between episodes which is a nice touch but is also the fly in my interstellar ointment. Sometimes I struggle with the reader’s accent . This is not a criticism, it’s just a fact of life with globalised media. Escape Pod is a North American production and science has yet to find a babel fish that fits the Aussie ear canal.

I listen to and read so many stories that I confess to struggling to remember which were my favourites but here’s a few from Escape Pod that I loved enough to be able to recall: EP280: Endosymbiont; EP294: The Night Train; EP304: Union Dues – Sidekicks in Stockholm

These days, hearing the theme music by Daikaiju, gives that same feeling of anticipation and excitement as the theme from Doctor Who, or True Blood, or the HBO studio promo.

Edited by Mur Lafferty, who also happens to be my favourite narrator, Escape Pod is a remarkable achievement and a credit to the whole team. Give it a try and if you enjoy it, then make a donation to help keep it going. Escape Pod pays their writers a humble fee for their work.

Enjoy the Escape.

This group has written to universities warning them against offering courses in complementary or alternative therapies including traditional Chinese herbal medicine, chiropractics, homeopathy, naturopathy, reflexology and aromatherapy. http://www.smh.com.au/national/tertiary-education/scientists-urge-unis-to-axe-alternative-medicine-courses-20120125-1qhtm.html They also want to stop private health insurance funds from providing rebates for these types of therapies.

When scientists disagree with something, the scientific approach is to do some research and publish papers providing evidence for their point of view. However in this case, their actions are tactics in a political strategy designed to rock the foundations of these therapies. Like the crusaders of the middle ages, they want to suppress independent and alternative thought. Make no mistake, these guys are at war.

They present themselves as defenders of evidence based science but I wonder if one of the group’s co-founders, Emeritus Professor John Dwyer, of the University of NSW, understands what this means. He describes these therapies as “quackery” and “nonsense”. Really Professor? Where’s your evidence? There is a phrase that goes, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”. Scientifically speaking there is no evidence that these therapies do not work. The bottom line is that western science doesn’t know if they work or not.

ADDENDUM: As Karen has pointed out in the comments below, there is actually a growing body of research “confirming that herbal medicine and nutritional therapies (amongst other things) do Work.” In which case, the Friends of Science in Medicine must be either speaking in ignorance or out of a desire to hide the truth.

One wonders if these might be the same people that claimed that acupuncture doesn’t work when there was no scientific evidence for that. Now that there is scientific evidence and The World Health Organisation lists diseases and disorders that can be treated with acupuncture, they’re using the same arguments to make the same unjustified claims. They’ve just changed the target, slightly.

Let’s for a moment run with their notion that there is no evidence for these therapies while not forgetting that they’re speaking about a specific type of evidence. There’s actually thousands of years of evidence but they dismiss that as irrelevant. So we’re a bunch of scientists saying, “hey there’s no evidence for this and it’s growing in popularity, what do we do?” Why of course that answer is to dismiss it, discredit it and insult the intelligence of the people that have used it for generations. That guy down the back of the room suggesting we should apply our scientific method to it should shut-up or leave now.

The fact is that these alternative and/or complimentary therapies are growing in popularity. Universities didn’t just decide for no reason to offer these courses. Health insurance companies didn’t include these therapies in their cover just for a giggle. People want this. People are using it and have come to their own conclusion that it works for them. So how do the Friends of Science in Medicine respond to that? “Well you shouldn’t have it and we’re going to try to stop you because we know best.”

So why do they want to stop this? For our own good, no doubt. Well thank-you very much. However I prefer to decide for myself what’s good for me but please do continue to tell me what you think that is. I happen to believe that evidence based science is one of the greatest and most valuable intellectual tools we have in our toolbox and thank goodness that we have it. But, as a tool it is there to serve us, not to dictate to us. These scientists have set themselves up as the new orthodoxy and now they’re raining down their wrath on those who would dissent.

We all know that the knights of the crusades were pious defenders of the faith. Their wars had nothing to do with wealth or power whatsoever. Honestly.

Using a tone of voice that forewarned customers of his care factor, or lack thereof, the young guy behind the counter instructed me to stand against the wall while he got the camera. With my back to the wall, I watched him – his head bowed – as he watched the camera in his hands. He shifted his weight. There was an air of expectancy as we waited for the flash to charge up. Keen to cut off any tension before it arose, I broke the silence by suggesting he try new batteries. But, determined to play the game his way, he didn’t move until he had made that decision for himself. This shop, the size of a walk in robe, was his home ground after all. Finally he determined that the batteries needed changing. I guess he won that round.

He cracked open the flash and tipped out the spent cells. Then he produced a small basket brimming with batteries and dropped the old ones in with the lot. Perhaps they recycle them, I thought with a mixture of surprise and respect. However, the warm fuzzy feeling was short lived because the next thing he did was to fish around in the basket until the batteries were well stirred and draw out four similar batteries. I say similar because I couldn’t tell if they were the original batteries or not.

To be honest, I wasn’t terribly surprised when then flash failed again, even with the batteries replaced. By the third set of batteries, the imminent demise of my patience triggered another advance on his territory. I suggested he breakout a fresh set of batteries from one of the packets on display on the wall. But once more he resisted my approach and decided in his own time how he should handle this matter.

I felt quietly victorious when he reached for a fresh packet of batteries. A rush of adrenaline slowed time as I watched the four brand new batteries drop from his hand like an Olympic diver into the aforementioned battery pool. Again he started to fish around in it before pulling out four randomly selected batteries as if he was determined to ensure fairness in a competition draw. Why should these new batteries receive an unfair advantage? Everyone had to do their time in the basket, like it was some sort of apprenticeship or rite of passage. A couple more draws later he did find some winners and the photo was taken.

Please contact me if you have any enquiries about this story.

“So don’t fall in love, there’s just too much to lose. If you’re given the choice then I’m begging you please to walk away, walk away”.

It made me sit up. Maybe they like the source of the quote but I found the sentiment so wrong that I felt compelled to respond.

Human beings are social animals. This means that we are stronger and more successful when we work together. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. A loving relationship between two people is the most powerful, most beneficial society we can have. A functional, loving relationship makes us stronger than we can ever be alone.

The reasons are many but let’s name a few. Being in a loving relationship raises your average level of happiness which makes you more immune to the inevitable bad times. And, when those lows do hit, you can support each other through them. There is no better panacea for hard times than the support of a loving partner.

A loving relationship is a common gateway to having a family, regardless of your persuasion. Okay, so not everyone wants kids. Even so, that’s a whole world of benefits, too long to go into here and too big to be left out.

So what’s to lose? A lot, as the quote suggests. Nothing comes for free and something as profound and beneficial as love comes at a high price. The risk of love not being returned is a big risk but another successful strategy for life is risk taking. The only way you get to live life large is to take a few risks. Another risk is the loss of love after having found it. To that, I’ll simply quote Tennyson;

“Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.”

The risk of pain is not the only price to pay. A loving relationship requires work. It’s more than just chemistry. You need to let go of a part of yourself and give it to the relationship to make it work. By this I mean you need to give at least as much consideration to what your partner needs as to what you do.

You need to be prepared to suffer blows from your partner, (emotional, not physical) to be able to work through the relationship’s difficulties. Being in a relationship is hard work and sometimes you will feel battered by it; but if you can find it, it will make you happier and stronger than ever before.

It’s a question of what kind of life do you want to live. If you want to play it safe, take it easy and avoid getting hurt, be prepared to check everything carefully and constantly look over your shoulder. If you’re prepared to do some hard work and take a few knocks then your life can be sublime and easier than you think.

One last quote. I don’t know where it came from but my darling wife shared it on her Facebook status:

“Life’s journey is not to arrive safely in the grave in a well-preserved body but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting ‘holy sh*t, what a ride’ “

• You must use only words from the recipe page, except,
• you can add small words like; the, and, when, a to make sense of the poem and
• you can change the tense or the form of words, e.g. make singular plural, and
• you can reuse words as often as you like.

Here’s what I came up with from my recipe for Peach Pocket Dumplings.

Turnovers, Tarts & Dumplings

hearts combine to seal warmth
find time to reduce chill
sugar coated dumplings bring warmth
brush
    pinch
        roll
and turnover
peaches peeled
    cut by nuts
        coated in butter
blended in equal amounts
divided
simmer
spoon together over remaining minutes
softened

Then I read James Killick’s blog post Five reasons why blogging makes you a better writer. Well, I was humbled. Really, his are the best reasons to write a blog and it reminded me of my first post. (James; do you see? Once upon a time I did have my eye on the ball.) Now I’d like to expand on James’ post with a cautionary tale.

Having setup a blog I created a facebook page to help promote it. This might sound a little dirty but like most writers, I wanted readers. Once you’ve got a facebook page you want to collect Likes. Trying to collect Likes requires making the facebook page valuable to those who Like it. So I started trawling the net for useful links about writing. There are heaps of useful links about writing. Just checkout my facebook page to see a few. But there are at least one hundred times as many not-so-useful pages about writing and I had to filter them to make the links I provide valuable. Can you see where I’m going with this?

That’s just facebook. Add twitter to the mix and a variety of other ways to promote your blog and yourself and you’ll soon find that you’re not spending any time on the real task. The one that is never ending. Developing your craft.

I believe it’s exactly this mentality that James was writing against. There are many blog posts for writers expounding the virtues of blogging as a tool for publicity and self promotion. Have a look at what Patty Jansen has to say in her post Five thoughts about writer publicity. She is right. Personally, I believe self-promotion is a part of any career and these benefits of blogging should be kept in mind. But, they should be kept at the back of your mind because what’s more important – writing or selling yourself?

I bow down to you James, in thanks for the kick up the arse your post gave me. I’ll still be posting useful links for writers to my facebook page and twitter stream but priorities and balance have been addressed.