Loneliness

'All the lonely people
Where do they all come from
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?'      Stanza from Beatles song Eleanor Rigby

According to the article below, 'They’re the outsiders: not just the elderly, but also the poor, the bullied, the different. Surveys confirm that people who feel discriminated against are more likely to feel lonely than those who don’t.'...'A key part of feeling lonely is feeling rejected, and that, it turns out, is the most damaging part.'

Read an intelligent article on the effects of Loneliness on Human Beings:  http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113176/science-loneliness-how-isolation-can-kill-you#

"we’ve known intuitively that loneliness hastens death, but haven’t been able to explain how. Psychobiologists can now show that loneliness sends misleading hormonal signals, rejiggers the molecules on genes that govern behavior, and wrenches a slew of other systems out of whack. They have proved that long-lasting loneliness not only makes you sick; it can kill you. Emotional isolation is ranked as high a risk factor for mortality as smoking."

"Loneliness, ....—and this will surprise no one—is the want of intimacy."

The article went on to say that this is becoming a Public health crisis -- with a third of Americans reporting they don't feel close to anyone at a given time. The numbers growing from 1 in 5 to 1 in 3 from 10 yrs ago to now.

I felt pleased with myself when I read one of the researchers presumably back in the early '80s, thinking of imagining the world from a gay man's perspective, that I recognised a qualitative study -- considering the subject's point of view.

'If we now know that loneliness, a social emotion, can reach into our bodies and rearrange our cells and genes, what should we do about it? We should change the way we think about health. James Heckman, a Nobel Prize–winning economist at the University of Chicago who tabulates the costs of early childhood deprivation, speaks bitterly of “silos” in health policy, meaning that we see crime and low educational achievement as distinct from medical problems like obesity or heart disease. As far as he’s concerned, these are, in too many cases, symptoms of the same social disorder: the failure to help families raise their children.'

'As nearly half of all marriages continue to end in divorce, as marriage itself floats further out of reach for the undereducated and financially strapped, childhood has become a more solitary and chaotic experience. Single mothers don’t have a lot of time to spend with their children, nor, in most cases, money for emotionally enriching social activities.

“As inequality has increased, childhood inequality has increased,” Heckman said, “So has inequality of parenting.”

The article mentioned that depression- set to become the largest Public Health disease in the future - may be a symptom of Loneliness but is not the cause  (http://gtobserver.blogspot.com/2011/11/depression.html)  but ended on a positive note that we can be masters of our fate and change the outcomes with a deterministic attitude. 

UPDATE 25-Nov-1013: Canada too:  http://m.theglobeandmail.com/life/life-of-solitude-a-loneliness-crisis-is-looming/article15573187/?service=mobile
 

Curvilinear Lines

Guyana television churns up the odd interesting program in the mish-mash of junk.  One such program I happened across was the ‘Looking at and Understanding Great Art’ series.

I caught the end of one recent episode which put up a picture painted by the German artist Franz Marc who preferred to paint animals, horses mainly, in bold colours and curvilinear lines. The lecturer narrating the series said that curvilinear lines are more pleasing to the eye and it struck me why men like looking at women’s bodies – ‘cos they’re all curvilinear lines!  

 I remembered being surprised that Page 3 of The Sun – a rubbishy newspaper but one of the most widely-sold in England when I was a student – pulled in wide sales because of the topless young girl it displayed with something trite — the girl in question purported to say something like – ‘this is for you Dad, because I know how much you like Page 3!’ (?!!?!)

So, the Saturday Woman’s Feature of Stella Says in one of the local papers, is entitled Blurred Lines and is talking about the objectification of women – being so widespread that the young impressionable women can see hundreds, even thousands such images per day so that they do not think it is wrong to put up ‘sexy’ images of themselves in social media and for the world to view generally. She then extrapolated the knock-on effect on the local men, who began to feel ‘entitled’ to pass comments on passing women and said ‘if a man thinks he has a right to treat a woman with such disrespect and aggressiveness in public, he will do far worse in private.’  This sadly referred to often violent response of men to the realization that ‘their’ women is/was planning to leave them after putting up with years of neglect and/or abuse;  the papers have practically reported daily a case of a man killing the children and woman before fleeing or killing himself. (The book I am reading has a great line- ‘Sexual jealousy is the greatest crazy maker we have.’) The article ends saying that ‘as long as society continues to objectify women, the violence against women will also continue.  Sadly, women play right into this trap. They want to feel wanted and they have been given a how-to manual on what they need to do to be wanted by men.’ She said that it is ‘sentencing ourselves and our daughters to more violence and death’.

Makes me wonder how things get taken out of context and get out of hand rapidly – the natural appreciation of curvilinear lines morphs in porn then exploitation (cos dirty old men persuading young attractive females to view their bodies as commodities could only be that!). The natural inclination towards sweet and fatty foods is then exploited when junk has high fructose sugars and artificial flavourings added to it to fool our senses that we are eating something good for our bodies. A Facebook post—always subject to exaggeration - found a fast-food burger had only 2% meat.

What Choice Have We Really Got - 2

So there was a minor scare of sorts as apparently the country ran low on Petrol. I noticed the Shell Gas Station on Vissengen Road shut and it is sad to think I just assumed it got robbed!
Apparently there was a delay in uplifting fuel from the Venezuelan refineries.
So this is very interesting -- my cousin sniffed his nose and informed me that the fuel was poorer quality from the Government managed Petrol Stations but now we discover that all fuel-- Shell, Rubris (formerly Texaco) and the humble Guyoil all get their petrol from THE SAME PLACE!
My recent foray with economics says that for perfect competition to exist, the product must be the same --check; the buyers must be so informed --check; many sellers-- check; therefore the perfect price should exist - right-- nope-- the sellers organised themselves to jack up the prices so that the Government was forced to open and run Guyoil to sell about $22 cheaper to keep the prices down-- mind you better yet would be to turn a blind eye to fuel smuggling from Venezuela and get really serious competition for low fuel prices-- in the midst of all that is not working it would surely be better for the country to buy from people willing to sell across the border??

Why It's Exhausting To Live In Guyana -7

Because it makes you feel like a small insignificant piece of humanity who don't matter. My long-suffering mechanic woke up to find his yard flooded and having not invested in ramp that lifts the vehicle in the air or not having the space to construct a concrete ramp as the other out-of-town mechanics do, due to lack of space; his work ground to a halt.
City Hall apparently can't find the City Engineer's Plan for drainage and the Lands and Survey Department was equally unhelpful and advised him to check City Hall.  So basically the poor man is going around in a circle seeing that the other side of the street is not flooded and his side is!  Apparently there are drains/culverts but the guard to stop clutter from going in and blocking got removed-- either by those people paid to clean and never replaced or one of the numerous madmen on the road. So he has to shell out of his pocket to find someone to go and clear out the gunk (my friend in Canada says, Guyanese only run to fix the roof when it rains- my defence was that you only KNOW the roof is leaking when it rains!)
So the knowledge that the new wing of the Hospital has been built on some of the drains that were meant to drain his area does not help; neither that the current flooding of a few selected streets, mine included, is not due to overnight rainfall but rather the accumulation of water from other areas as this area of Cummingsburg is just before the final destination of the Demerara River. Most fustratingly, the Lamaha Canal isn't looking flooded/overtopped and apparently in 2005 after severe flooding of the City, a pump was installed which has since stopped working. So what's the solution? The super-rich, that is- not money earned through the formal economy, generally buy a property and raise their buildings about a foot from the road so it's not their immediate problem, the rest go line up for a visa out of here.

What choice do we really have?

 So came across this list courtesy of Facebook:

http://www.realfarmacy.com/printable-list-of-monsanto-owned-food-producers/#!prettyPhoto



..and it stuck me that we really have limited choices-- and what was the rationale for having Boxed Cake Mixes-- my pet peeve as it is so popular in Guyana and one of the highest in bad fats -- in Betty Crocker, Duncan Hines, General Mills and Pillsbury all under the same umbrella? Did they start off as different companies, then were bought over and surely then it would be cheaper to have one large central producing factory-- considering the economy of scale and why bother to repackage in four different Brands? Same shit-- different box?
And why have Healthy Choice and Lean Cuisine, giving a nod to healthy eating while promoting 'bad' eating with the rest of the companies? I remember asking the local trendy cafe down the road from my office to start doing fresh squeezed juices and was told Guyanese don't like the healthier options when I pointed out most things for sale had white refined sugar and flour-- the healthier options are not even available and apparently not profit making enough!
And the world-wide competition between Coca-Cola and Pepsi is what-- some executives playing a profit -making game with themselves to see how much sugared-water they can sell?
Sadly Guyanese are now heading to convenience foods - even down to the humble coconut milk as it seems housewives prefer to open a tin from Thailand with perservatives for $200 rather than buy a fresh one locally for $80 and go through the hassle of grating it-- I found the Juice extractor did a good job to save me grating my fingers but a bitch to clean the different parts.

Interesting views on Water

Caught the ending of this BBC radio program with the grim statistic that currently, 40% of people living in urban areas have no piped water to their accommodation

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b036w3b6

So for those of you too unable to listen to the half-hour discussion, here's a summary and some food for thought:
Currently 50% of the world's population live in urban areas, and with a projected further 2 billion people by the year 2050, the projected percent of the world's population living in urban areas is reckoned to rise to 75%.
Currently only 2.5% of the world's water is freshwater, of which 70%  is locked into the Arctic, Anarchic and mountainous areas, which is inaccessible for consumption and means that currently 40% of the world's population are living in a water-scarce area.
So to control/manage this resource, one can reduce Demand and/or increase Supply.

People begin to be antsy if they are the ones being controlled , so efficiency can be increased by controlling leakage-- this problem bigger than you think!-- reducing demand and/or changing behaviour.
The latent right-winger in me nods when they said that increasing the price would reduce demand but then the Brazilians rioted the other day when their Government tried to increase bus fares and the Venezuelan government dare not increase fuel prices from ridiculous.  So the panel discussed the introduction of meters as a way to change people's attitude to waste-- if their pockets feel it then they would be more inclined to change their behaviour. Education plays a part in changing behaviour also but not as effective as making people pay-- where Australia found a 15-20% reduction in demand by introducing 'block charges', presumably following vertical equity principles.
Leakage is a big source of wastage, about a quarter being wasted in Europe and 10% in efficient Singapore. Tokyo and Amsterdam claim 5% wastage.  Unfortunately the cost of fixing the leaks is about the cost of savings so far as many pipes need to be dug up to replace fittings. One way is the reduce the water pressure but again the pesky consumers might object,  water pressure can be varied according to demand so that people wouldn't notice as much in off-peak hours.

The other solution is to increase Supply. The cost of desalination has been reduced considerably in the past fifteen years and is common in Australia and the Middle East and gaining popularity in Portugal and Spain, however it is quite energy intensive but with the introduction of better solar power maybe that can be balanced off.

Recycling is the other option in conservation but the difficulty is persuading people not to contaminate by adding hydro-carbons like waste oil: one drop of motor oil can contaminate 50 litre of water!  Canada's Vancouver has a sensible water system separating recyclable water directly in the drainage system from the houses-- very smart.See pgs 3 +4 of  http://www.metrovancouver.org/region/teachers/k12education/Resources/WhenIFlushBrochure.pdf

Can only hope the Guyana Government incorporates some sensible ideas out there-- however bearing in mind the uneducated population I wouldn't hold my breath! They run the risk of increased vector-borne diseases in the long-run apart from the side-effects of a polluted water supply like in Madhia.
Finally to end, a email petition in Florida to discontinue the addition of compounds to add fluoride to the water as the people thought the compounds were waste products from industry and the tooth-cavity delaying stuff is better accessed from foods; also the addition of fluoride compounds in iodine-poor areas can have a the effect of causing further childhood development.... just some food for thought!
Check out: http://www.realfarmacy.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-fluoridated-water/
Also important are the comments-- asking for the sources and scientific/literature reviews like this one:  http://www.ijdr.in/article.asp?issn=0970-9290;year=2009;volume=20;issue=3;spage=350;epage=355;aulast=Dhar

Appreciating our Dutch-built heritage

In the lecture given at Moray House last evening -

The first point of note was that they introduced the use of bricks in construction in Guyana back in the 1600’s when the ifrst Dutch structure/building was constructed at Kykoveral – which translated to - - "See-over-all"( I thought afterwards there is a strong argument for renaming Georgetown, Kykoveral at the rate we and Global Warming are going but from a pun point-of view- Sea-over all!). Some of the bricks got removed as recent as 2010 by people re-using them in their own personal construction, however the National Heritage is now in charge of the site and hopefully will stem the flow.  For those who didn’t know—Kykoveral on the Mazaruni river is located just beyond the junction where the Mazaruni and Cuyuni River intersect and join into the Essequibo. It is probably the first Dutch construction in the Caribbean region.

The Dutch then moved a few times and finally built a more substantial fort – Fort Zeelandia on the aptly named Fort Island.  However it was never actually used in active duty and is currently being captured by the encroaching river as those who may be interested do not have the wherewithal to do anything about it! The lecturer then went on to spend a longer time than was necessary to discuss Fort Nassau in the Berbice river, believed the be the one destroyed by the revolting slaves in 1763. Whatever remains also falling apart and being reclaimed by the Land.

At this point I was joined by a drains enthusiast who fidgeted when the ‘old boys’ moaned about the filling in of the canals in Cummingsburg in Georgetown by the English.  So interesting to hear about any subject from someone passionate about it—even Drainage in Georgetown!  So apparently what the English engineers did was fill in the irrigation canals while creating additional drainage trenches, as Georgetown was originally envisaged as a few very large plantations under the Dutch – hence names like Middle Walk.  As the City assumed more importance, the English engineers catered for drainage to cope with the expected rainfall—making the assumption that the drains would be maintained and kept clean at all times. Then the coloured/decolonized people took over and filled in some of the drainage trenches – like throwing up a new wing of the Public Hospital over one of them - and didn’t maintain keeping drains clean, leading to flooding in parts of the City with a few hours of rain.  Independence is great isn’t it – you get to screw up all by yourselves, however I note that with the wisdom of hindsight the Caricom heads have decided to ask the West, deep in financial trouble themselves, for reparation - to do what I wonder?