Interior <--> Exterior

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

Groucho Marx

When I started this blog my vision was that anything I posted here would be in response to occurrences in the world which I was observing.

Imagine my surprise when I realised that much of what I had written more recently was more focused on my interior life - depression, spiritual issues and the like.

I think that heading into my late 50's has much to do with this, together with the growing list of death and serious illness among the parents of friends and family - the realisation of one's own mortality.

One can react to this state of mind in different ways. I seem to move between the 'Waiting for Godot' and the 'Carpe Diem' positions - the fatalistic wait for the inevitable personal end and
that which draws strength from the new experiences each day brings!

The 'trick' is to shift one's focus from the former to the latter approach... :-)

In the Burrow, but not down

After some time away I'm back onboard, nose to the grindstone and all that sort of thing. I'm in the burrow, but not down!

I've been consulting a psychotherapist for about 6 months, mainly dealing with depression-related issues. Now, for the first time in quite a few years I'm feeling that I'm getting my life on track. Please note the words I used - absolutely nothing passive here! I'm getting into the pilot's seat and taking charge of how I live my life. It's taken many years to get here, but at long last I can see a real improvement in my overall state of mind. I now have a real feeling of being in charge and having some sense of where I'm going...

Onward and Upward!!

Reflections on 'The Days of Awe'

This weekend marks the end of the Jewish High Holydays, also known as the 'Days of Awe'. This post is an account of my personal feelings about these very significant festivals and does not necessarily resemble traditional Jewish practise or ideas.

First off, I am basically a secular Jew, but with a spiritual twist. I am not particularly fond of going to any synagogue, whatever its religious orientation, and do not observe religious traditions in any formal sense. On the other hand, my basic moral code is generally in accord with many common Jewish ideas and I do, when possible, enjoy taking part in family-style celebrations of various religious festivals.

There are a number of different holydays observed during this period, but I will concentrate on just two of them: The New Year (Rosh Hashanna) and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur).

This time of year is a time of reflection on where ones life has gone during the previous year and where it is heading. A time to make decisions on directions and relationships with other people and, if one believes, the Divine. I use the term Divine here rather than God because I am not sure what it is that I am referring to; only that I believe in some power (or powers) which have a reality beyond that of each person and indeed of the physical world.

Rosh Hashanna starts this period and is concerned, not surprisingly for a New Year festival, with the idea of renewal (Tikkun Olam - literally 'repairing the world'). This concept of renewal is often interpreted by the less traditional as a call to look after our planet's ecology in all its manifestations. The more traditional interpretation refers primarily to spiritual renewal, but these different views are not necessarily inconsistent. The sense of renewal can be seen in the round challah (bread) which is part of the festival meal, in the eating of apples dipped in honey and of honey cake - the idea of a sweet new year to come!

With Yom Kippur, the main idea is to spend the day in a contemplative state, traditionally enhanced by fasting. The aim of this contemplation is to reflect upon ones relationship to fellow humans, the rest of the physical world and to the Divine. There is no concept of absolution, even if a person is totally contrite in their repentance. Each person MUST repair any problems with other people by themselves. On this day we are encouraged to admit our own shortcomings, not least to ourselves. The next step is, traditionally, to ask the Divine to help give one the strength and courage to face and negotiate issues with others and to help restore ones personal spiritual balance.

This is one of the things that I really love about Judaism: the idea that each individual is totally responsible for their own fate and that each of us must, in our own ways, work at our lives; tending them as a good gardener looks after their plants. This work involves, among other actions, fixing problems when they happen, apologising to others when we mistreat them and above all respecting the world around us. There is no intermediary between the individual and the Divine - it is a direct conversation. I believe that if we harm another person we also slight the Divine by this action. However, only we ourselves can right any wrongs we have inflicted on others; only those aggrieved by our actions can offer forgiveness, not the Divine or some agent of the Divine.

In a secular approach we should reappraise the way we live, our relationships to all around us and try to live a good, responsible life dealing fairly with all people we meet. If we approach this period of the year with a more religious mindset, the goal could be for each of us to live a more righteous life in the sight of the Divine.

The beauty of these ideas is that they transcend any particular religious tradition and can help each of us to work, in our own ways, at renewing the world in all its aspects.

I wish you and yours a healthy and peaceful year and the inner strength to achieve what you wish for yourself and others.

What we've got here is a failure to communicate

I recently received this picture from someone who I had perceived as a person with strongly held opinions but with an open mind, not blinded by prejudice. I am now not quite so sure about that perception of lack of prejudice.

I realise that the picture is meant to be a joke, a parody of the online dating services that many of us will have seen at some time or other. I am by no means a killjoy, but this sort of parody, based on ridiculing ethnic or religious ideas, behaviour or stereotypes can often be incredibly demeaning in its attitude towards the targeted group(s). I believe that this one oversteps the bounds of 'reasonableness'.

Here the 'cartoonist' shows the idea that the Moslem male regards women as less than human in status, on par with valued animals, maybe even hinting at a sexual side of this attitude, invoking the stereotypical jokes about Arab men and camels, etc. Then there is the mocking of the idea of Moslem women covering themselves with the garment called the burqa. Whether any of us agree with the wearing of this garment or not is irrelevant. For a significant number of Moslem women this is what they wish to wear. The covering garment may not necessarily be as totally encompassing as the burqa, but rather a variant such as the hajib, or head scarf. The list of ideas mocked is greater than this, but I think that by now you will understand what it is that I am concerned about.

I wonder, for example, what the reaction would be to a similar web page targeting Jews. It might have a heading of "Diamond Joe's Blackhat Dating Service" with a photograph or caricature of a certain widely known Australian Jewish ultra-orthodox religious identity. Instead of the women in burquas we could have pictures of unattractive women with large noses wearing ill-fitting wigs, etc. This web page would exhibit a range of ethnic/religious stereotypes in the same way as the one which I received - Shades of the virulently anti-Semitic cartoons in Julius Streicher's newspaper, 'Der Sturmer', during the Nazi period in Germany.

The creators of such cartoons or writings are very clear what it is that they want to communicate - ideas which foster ethnic & religious intolerance. For the rest of us, I think we often overlook the serious implications of the ethnic joke, wanting to only see the 'funny' bits. This is not good enough! If ordinary people do not want to encourage intolerance and hatred between various groups then now is the time for them to take a stand. All of us who are offended by racism must clearly stand up and say to others that racism is never OK, regardless of what form it takes. Here I am including all manifestations of racism, not just that of 'Westerners' showing lack of respect for other ways of looking at the world. I am offended by many actions of groups like the Taliban in the same way that I am offended by people in this country abusing Moslem women who wear the hijab. The attitudes are similar - total lack of respect for the rights and beliefs of others, and the idea that it is OK to ridicule, marginalise or commit violent acts against 'them', the 'other', the 'not us'.

The 'them' and 'us' attitude that such material fosters is something that all decent people should become aware of and thus be able to counter in whatever community they live. This can be through comments made to friends about the lack of desirability of such material as the web page I have displayed here. It can also be voiced in the political sphere by not supporting organisations which by their policies encourage these divisive attitudes - at home or abroad!

As for my perception of the person who sent this web page to me, I hope that they have acted from a position of 'seeing the whole thing as a joke', not perceiving the darker aspects of such material.

Open Source Software and the State of the World

Today I want to talk about open source software in connection with the 'them' and 'us' feeling that I believe is widely felt all over the world.

Initially you might think that these two topics have nothing to do with each other but hopefully by the end of this post you will understand that these two topics are actually connected in many complex ways.

Whether the 'us' mentioned previously refers to some European-style culture and 'them' to another culture with significantly different values OR the reverse position OR even between nations or peoples of more similar cultural style, the sense of a conflict in cultural values still remains. Does this feeling reflect reality? Yes, but the propaganda on all sides has, I believe, made the problem appear larger than it is. Terrorism is very real, but those who are the actual perpetrators are a small minority in any culture - most people just want to be able to get on with their lives, raise families in safety and make a reasonable living. These ordinary people also want a sense that others do not denigrate their cultures. This is not meant to imply that everyone must accept all values that a given culture embraces, but rather that any dialogue must be respectful in approach.

I believe that much of the distrust by non-European cultures towards cultures based on various European models is that the former feel that the latter devalue their cultures and maybe even wish to destroy them. In many cases this may be based on experiences when their lands were colonised by various European-style nations. This distrust can also exist between more similar cultures, such as between Japan and a number of her neighbours or minority language and cultural groups in various countries. The distrust may also be engendered by a feeling of being overwhelmed by various societal changes related to the push towards economic globalisation.

Imagine that you could get an office suite, Internet browser and other major software categories with all menus, help information and more in your local language. If your local language is a form of English, French, Spanish, Portuguese or Chinese this is most likely readily available even with commercial software, but if you speak Basque, Catalan, Vietnamese, Lao or some other language with a relatively small population profile then this is far less likely. Add to this the issue of many people not being able to afford computer software which can often lead to wholesale piracy of commercial software in an understood major language. With major commercial software, the creation of versions translated into less dominant languages would make little economic sense.

Consider now the relatively new class of software known as 'open source'. This includes many different types of software, including office suites, graphics programs, e-Mail clients, Internet browsers, games and even operating systems (eg. Linux). These are mostly available free of charge (in an executable form), but what makes them really special is that their source code is readily available for anyone who is interested. Most computer users will have absolutely no interest in that, but what it means is that the source code can be altered to, among other things, display the user interface in a different language. In fact, many open source programs are written in such a way that changing the displayed language is a relatively straightforward task.

I read somewhere that one of the worst things that can happen to a person is to lose their sense of identity. One such situation I can readily think of is that group of Aboriginal Australians generally known as the 'Stolen Generations' where Aboriginal children of mostly mixed racial descent were taken from their parents to be raised in a white environment and thus eventually fully assimilate into the predominantly European-based culture. Similarly where minority or non-dominant cultures and languages have been actively suppressed.

The availability of computer software in many non-dominant languages is a way for cultural groups to strengthen their identities, allowing their children to not only be involved in a wider world through the Internet, but to be able to do so via software which recognises their heritage and indeed celebrates it!

It would be naive to suggest that having software available in many different languages will solve all the problems related to cultural tensions between different groups of people. Where these clashes do cause people to feel that they are in real danger of having their own cultural identities crushed, perhaps having such software will help them to repair some of these feelings and allow them to move forward in the knowledge that their heritage can be seen and felt both by their own people, but also by a much larger world.

Many people can express themselves eloquently in their own language, but may appear far less confident when expressing themselves in another one. Now, using these multilingual tools, many different cultural groups can get their ideas out to a larger world on their own terms. Hopefully people gifted in their ability to translate from their own languages to more widely used ones will make the best of these ideas available to much larger audiences.

This after all is one of the main planks of the open source philosophy: To promote and celebrate freedom of expression in both the cultural and technological realms.

Office Software and Freedom of Choice

This post is not just another attempt to slam companies such as Microsoft for abusing their monopoly or close-to-monopoly market positions. What I want to talk about here is the issue of real freedom of choice for computer users in how they are able to use the data that they create in the course of going about their daily lives. This data could well include word processing documents and spreadsheets.

There is a growing split in the computer software world between organisations that make the format of data stored by their products conform to open standards and those that insist on using proprietary data formats.

Why should this concern the average computer user?

The reason this issue is important is that when proprietary data formats are preferred, the user is locked into having to continue using a given organisation's software. This can lead to complications on a number of fronts:

• The software producer goes out of business - then there is no way to ensure that the data can be used anymore if the software becomes unusable for other reasons. For example, if software was written for Windows 3.1 or 95 it may not run correctly, if at all, under later versions of Windows. On the other hand, if you are lucky then the software will continue to run without problems.
• The software producer changes the data format when a new version of their product is released. This is most often a reasonable state of affairs, but it can mean that older data needs to be reformatted for it to be used by the new version of the software. The software producer would normally include a method of data conversation in their upgraded software. You could upgrade if the newer version gives you additional benefits. This might be an expensive choice if continued software usage requires further payment.
• In the above two cases, your needs may change and the software you have no longer meets your real requirements. What then?
• What do you do if someone sends you a spreadsheet? If the data format is proprietary, such as with Excel xls files, then if you don't have a copy of Excel you have a major problem. Even if the sender had put the data in a text format like CSV there would be difficulties. Any embedded formulas would have been lost.

The answer to all the above problems is for software producers to use open standard data formats. This would mean, for example, that the received spreadsheet could be correctly viewed using an entirely different program from that which was used to create it. This other program would understand any embedded spreadsheet formulas and the opened spreadsheet would behave as its creator(s) intended.

Until fairly recently there have been few choices, particularly in the area of office software, which did not lock the user into the trap of proprietary data formats. The emphasis in this post is on office software because that where the locking-in of users to specific software publishers seems to be the most prevalent. By comparison, in the area of graphics software, most programs seem to be able read and write the data in many different open formats.

Now programs like OpenOffice and AbiWord are able to read and write various Microsoft office document formats, among other formats. Unfortunately neither product can use Microsoft VBA macros, but OpenOffice can preserve them in non-running format. On the positive side, the OpenOffice spreadsheet product, Calc, can use embedded formulas in Excel spreadsheets. At present the conversion procedures for the common Microsoft data formats are generally very good, but not perfect. This means, for example, that a Word document created or amended using OpenOffice may not look exactly the same when opened in Word itself. From what I have read, this sort of problem is far more likely to occur if the documents concerned are more complex. My office type documents tend to be relatively basic in format although I do use formulas in my spreadsheets and have written some VBA macros.

The move towards the goal of data being independent from the program which created it has now taken a major step forward with the creation of the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) specification. This OASIS format is expected to become an industry standard for sharing documents. It has currently been adopted by the OpenOffice/StarOffice software suite and the AbiWord and KOffice developers are, as I understand it, in the process of adding OpenDocument support to their products. I suspect that as time goes on the OpenDocument standard formats will be generally accepted as the standard office document formats and more software developers will incorporate them in their products. Currently many government organisations around the world have adopted or are examining the adoption of these open standards.

If you don't have a need to exchange office documents with others in Microsoft data formats, I would urge you to seriously consider those products which store their data in non-proprietary formats. OpenOffice is as feature rich as any Microsoft Office product and not that different in day-to-day usage. AbiWord is significantly simpler than current versions of Word, but it has many if not all of the features that the average office software user requires. In addition, some of these alternate office programs are free to use and can be freely downloaded from the Internet.

We now have an Official Blog Song

As a counterpoint to the generally serious topics covered in this blog, I have decided that it is time to come into line with such august institutions as football clubs and declare an official blog song.

The obvious choice is Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan.

And, yes I know that the lyrics of this song really have absolutely nothing to do with this blog's contents, but the song's name is just so perfect a fit that I couldn't resist.