Getting sidetracked

While I was thinking about the matter of wholesale printing just now, I though how strange it is that while books are increasingly appearing in digital form, junk mail is just increasing, full stop. I guess there's a digital equivalent of junk mail - it appears in borders and columns and banners on our web pages, for starters, and is surprisingly easy to ignore.  But the curious thing I can't quite get my head around is why junk mail on paper should be increasing.  Is it because the long-established form of advertising is at a crisis point, and when crises arrive, the lemmings often start heading off in the wrong direction - like over the cliff.  The equivalent in junk mail terms is that instead of there being less junk mail there's more than ever.

At a tangent, for a moment, it must be pointed out that lemmings are much maligned in terms of being a species that jumps over cliffs.  Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I had the thought that it was a myth that lemmings commit mass suicide, and a bit of quick checking on the Net confirms that, on the whole, it is.  Many lemmings live too far away from the sea, for one thing, to go hiving off committing hari-kari as a group.  Those that do live near water are perfectly capable of surviving in it - they're very good swimmers, apparently.  The reason they swarm to a region that's not their home area, is because food becomes scarce when there's a large increase in the population; the tribe splits and numbers of them go somewhere else to live.  Makes sense.

Seemingly the Walt Disney 'documentary' White Wilderness in which lemmings were seen diving off cliffs, and which may be an important source of much misinformation about lemmings, was faked.  White Wilderness was one of the Disney True-Life Adventure series, which, rather than showing reality, often misdirected viewers by mocking up scenes that had more effect than the real thing would have.  (We see the same thing in reality TV these days.) The trivia section of imdb.com on this film, states: This picture was filmed in Alberta, Canada, which is not a native habitat for lemmings. They were imported from Manitoba for use in the film, and were purchased from Inuit children by the filmmakers. The Arctic rodents were placed on a snow-covered turntable and filmed from various angles to produce a "migration" sequence; afterwords, the helpless creatures were transported to a cliff overlooking a river and herded into the water. The entire sequence was faked using a handful of lemmings deceptively photographed to create the illusion of a large herd of migrating creatures. 

Now I don't know who wrote this, so it can't necessarily be taken as gospel, but you can find more information about it on the Wikipedia article,where there's some background to the discovery that something underhanded had taken place in the filming.  Further information about it can be found on the Wikipedia article on Lemmings, in which we learn that Disney and co weren't the only ones perpetuating the myth of lemming mass suicide.

This is all a bit of a sidetrack from printing and junk mail, but like so many of my blog posts, one thing leads to another and often the 'another' is a bit more interesting.  How many other nature documentaries are faked in some way?  How often is the urbane voice of David Attenborough telling us something that in fact isn't what we're seeing at all?  (See the paragraph about Attenborough towards the end of this article.)  I watched a nature film not long ago in which the narrator (it wasn't DA, for a change) insisted that some particular thing happened because evolution had decided that it should; and if it isn't evolution doing some mythical decision-making, then it's the species itself deciding that life as it is isn't good for the long haul and somehow making its physical features change. The fact that this isn't science at all but speculation is never mentioned: we all know that Evolution is the answer to everything so just throw it in whenever you want it to be the convenient explanation.

See, I'm getting sidetracked again...onto a hobby horse.

Photo courtesy of Sunday Mercury Net, where there's an interesting and positive article about lemmings.

LEDlight

One of the rooms in our house has the world's worst light bulb.   It's environmentally-friendly, lasts forever (unfortunately) and cost far more than it's worth.   It's also incapable of giving off much in the way of real light.  And it takes about five minutes to warm up to its full strength.

So much for being nice to Nature.  We've reverted to old style light bulbs in the rooms in our house where we actually live (the room mentioned above is a spare bedroom) because it's almost impossible to read by the ones that e-f (environmentally-friendly).   I like to use 150 or 200 watt bulbs in the main rooms, but do you think I can find them in the supermarkets, or lighting shops?   Occasionally they turn up, but for the most part the range of light bulbs of the e-f kind barely goes over 100 watts - or what it claims to be 100 watts.   And every so often they literally burn themselves out.  Creates a stink, and isn't particularly safe.

Which leads me to led light bulbs. (I mean LED light bulbs, but the link won't accept the capitalization, for some reason.) Supposedly, for various reasons these are a lot more efficient and cost-effective than incandescent lamps (the kind I still prefer).   On Wikipedia the comparison between an incandescent lamp and an LED is firstly cost ($2 versus $20); electricity usage (60 watt compared to 9 watt); lumens - ie the amount of light given out - is 660 compared to 900; which should make them a much better deal for our spare bedroom, you'd think: the spare-bedroom guest might even be able to read in bed.
Lumens per watt is 11 compared to 100.  Lifespan is 2,000 hours versus 25,000 hours.  I'm not sure that we ever get 2,000 hours out of our incandescent lamps, but let's assume we do.  Bulb cost over ten years - $22 compared to $20.  Energy cost over 10 years at 15c per kilowatt hour: US$197.10 vs $29.57.  Which means the total financial cost is US$219.10 compared to $49.57.

All sounds good.  The initial problem is that I have to believe, when I see a light bulb in the supermarket that costs $20 (nearly $24NZ) that it's going to be worth my while to buy.  These figures would seem to indicate that it is.  I'll let you know in ten years, when my LED one finally gives up the ghost....(the one in the spare bedroom will probably still be going as well, because we hardly ever use it!)

Simon Barnes....again

For the past six weeks or so I've been reading Simon Barnes' book, How to be Wild. The following quote comes from section 63.

Science cannot replace religion, still less. God. That is not the job of science, despite all the fuss made by Dawkins, the proselytising atheist. But science can at least address the God Questions; and give us a deeper and more vivid understanding of life. And as I read about life, and as I walk along my own entagnled bank, I can feel very deeply that there is grandeur in the deep, puzzling, buzzling, complex nature of life that these great books have shown me.

The reason I'm taking so long to read the book is that it's very much one that you pick up in an odd moment and put down again after a couple of its short chapters, unlike The Prestige, which I devoured in a few days. (More on that book in a later post.) So I've just got Barnes' book out of the library for the third time, and hopefully will finish it on this round.

And speaking of Dawkins, I came across this quote about him and other atheistic popularizers in a blog I read most days, The Website of Unknowing. Carl McColman's referring to a book by Becky Garrison, called: The New Atheist Crusaders and their Unholy Grail: The Misguided Quest to Destroy Your Faith.

He writes:
Basically mimicking the fetish for intolerance that has come to characterize religious conservatives in our day, the new atheists have made it fashionable to dismiss religion as not only “untrue,” but unworthy of even the right to exist.

Gonna struggle no more!

Well, you learn something every day – or should, since there’s a vast amount of information out there in the world!
The Dr Kellogg who developed Kellogg’s cornflakes, and other well-known cereals, began in a little place called Battle Creek, in Michigan. Kellogg wasn’t just a cereal man, but believed deeply in the benefits of holistic medicine, that is, medicine that wasn’t primarily drug-focused, but based in the normal healing of the body and other natural resources. He thought saunas were great for healing, and having spent even a few minutes in a sauna each time I go to the swimming pool, I can only agree. Although it’s bloomin’ hot to get into for starters!
Battle Creek is around five miles from the Stone Hawk drug rehab centre – or perhaps it’s more accurate to say it the other way round: Stone Hawk is around five miles from downtown Battle Creek. And Stone Hawk is also a place that believes strongly in a drug-free treatment of addicts. (Apparently many drug centres continue to use drugs as part of their treatment.) I read through a good deal of the information on their site: apart from being one of the best rehab centres in the US, with a 76% success rate, they’re situated beside a private lake called St Mary’s Lake. Have a look at the photo: just looking at it makes you feel better!
I’ve never had an addiction problem, thank the Lord (the first cigarette I was offered by an uncle years ago did nothing but make me cough and splutter – to the amusement of my assembled relatives – and that put me off smoking entirely), though like most human beings, no doubt, I’ve struggled with various things that want to take over my life at times. But the people at Stone Hawk are all ex-addicts, so they know the difficulties, and know that it’s possible to break free. Sounds a bit like Christianity, really!
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