Here's to a year of slowing down!

A fascinating article in the Times yesterday offers some predictions as to what 2010 is going to look like in Britain. I particularly enjoyed the first section, titled "Constant partial stupidity", which talks about how "when you're constantly scanning mobile phones and computer screens, your attention is so fragmented that you can't concentrate on one thing." (hey, come back, I haven't finished... c'mon, can't that email wait a minute?...) Richard Watson, a professional adviser on future trends who apparently predicted the credit crunch, says: "Research will confirm that multitasking is a myth, we'll see phrases such as slow media emerge as people realise that if you read things on paper you are more relaxed, you register more, you reflect and see the big picture. This is why paper is not dead and why, while news will be mostly delivered online, serious comment and analysis and novels will largely stay on paper."

Hooray, say I! (yes, yes, you can go back to your Instant Messenger now...)

Lessons from a jar of mayonnaise and two cups of coffee

Got this on the email and thought it's too precious not to share. (though being the nit-picker that I am, I must point out that from my experience this is totally not the sort of thing you get taught in philosophy classes, it's the sort of thing you read on the email... but hey...)

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle,
when 24 hours in a day is not enough;
remember the mayonnaise jar and 2 cups of coffee.

A professor stood before his philosophy class
and had some items in front of him.

When the class began, wordlessly,
he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar
and start to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full.
They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured
it into the jar. He shook the jar lightly.
The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls.

He then asked the students again
if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand
and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else.
He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded
with an unanimous 'yes.'

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table
and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively
filling the empty space between the sand.
The students laughed.

'Now,' said the professor, as the laughter subsided,
'I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life.

The golf balls are the important things - God, family,
children, health, friends, and favorite passions.
Things that if everything else was lost
and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the things that matter like your job, house, and car.

The sand is everything else --
the small stuff.

'If you put the sand into the jar first,' he continued,
'there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls.
The same goes for life.

If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff,
you will never have room for the things that are
important to you.

So...

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.
Play with your children.
Take time to get medical checkups.
Take your partner out to dinner.

There will always be time
to clean the house and fix the dripping tap.

'Take care of the golf balls first --
the things that really matter.
Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.'

One of the students raised her hand
and inquired what the coffee represented.

The professor smiled.

'I'm glad you asked'.

It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem,
there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.'

Privacy problems on Facebook (stop me if you've heard this before...)

and this time, dear readers, we'll focus on photos and tagging.

Facebook very kindly gives us the option to choose privacy settings for each photo album. Nice, I thought. Except that they then totally ignore those settings if someone is tagged in the album.

Here's a live scenario I've got right now. (except that I'll change the names of the people involved, because, unlike a certain mark z, I do care about people's privacy...)

My live news feed tells me about one of my contacts, let's call her Elizabeth Hopkins:

Elizabeth Hopkins was tagged in an album.
It then shows me the photos in which my contact was tagged, and underneath that there is a live link to the album in which she was tagged.

I click on that album and get to see all the photos in that album, as well as any comments (by people I don't know) and the full info about who else was tagged there (again, mostly people I don't know).

Now, the album was posted by someone - let's call her Orla Edwards - who is not a contact of mine, in fact she and I don't even have any contacts in common, and she has set the privacy for this album so that I'm not allowed to see it. How do I know? When viewing this album - which I reached through the notice about my contact Elizabeth being tagged - there's a link at the top which says "Back to Orla Edwards' photos", and guess what happens when I click on that link? I get a message that says:

This content is currently unavailable
The page you requested cannot be displayed at the moment. It may be temporarily unavailable, the link you clicked on may have expired, or you may not have permission to view this page.

Seeing as I've just been viewing this album, my guess is that it's the last option: "you may not have permission to view this page."

So, Facebook, if I do not have permission to view it, why did you just show it to me?

and by the way, just to make double sure that I really do not have permission to view that album, I visited Orla's profile and, no, there are no photos viewable to me.

so, to sum up, what I have found is this: if person A (in my example Orla) posts an album and sets it for friends only, and someone then tags person B (in my example Elizabeth) in that album, each and every contact of B's can see the whole album which person A set for her friends only.

and they call this privacy?

Don't take it personally

I got a Christmas card today from someone I used to be quite close to in a previous existence, and was surprised to see that she had put three Xs by her signature. Goodness, I thought, I didn't think she liked me that much - I had the feeling she was just staying in touch on a minimal level, not very chatty, not emailing very frequently, only slightly warmer than mere politeness. So how come she signs my card with three kisses?

But then, some people do, don't they? Some will sign with three Xs as a matter of course, without even thinking that an X signifies a kiss and that a kiss signifies affection. And then on the other hand I know people who put a huge amount of thought into precisely how they sign each card or letter or email they send - am I close enough to this person to sign "with love"? should I just say "best wishes" or "regards"?

And once you know what someone is like in this respect, you know how to interpret what you receive from them. You know that for person A a three-X signature means nothing more than that they don't actually hate you, and you know that if person B signs "with love" they really like you a lot. The trouble is that a lot of the time we don't know, and it's so easy to misinterpret people's language.

A long long time ago in London, when I was at a very vulnerable point because I had come out of an extremely unhealthy relationship, I met an Irish guy and fell head over heels in love. In his company I felt as though I was the centre of his universe, so it was a bit of a let-down when I found that no, he wasn't leaving his girlfriend for me, he'd been perfectly happy to take me out and enjoy my company, he was happy to take me to his bed and to bring me a fresh chocolate croissant from the local bakery for breakfast, but that was it, nothing more. I was stunned. But then, through talking to other women, I learned that Irish guys simply have that gift of exuding warmth and making a woman feel as though she is the centre of their universe - it's nothing personal, it's not that there's something special about you, it's just the way they behave with women. Which, when you are surrounded by English guys, who tend to be much more reserved, can feel really nice, and can mislead you...

On the other hand, at the same time I was living with someone who was seeing an English guy and we joked between us about the card she got from him (a birthday card? I can't remember what the occasion was) which he had signed "with best wishes" - she was English but even by her standards that was a bit tepid for the level of intimacy between them...

Life seems such a minefield at times...

the true meaning of Christmas? give me a break

just got the newsletter from a lovely Christian retreat centre that I know and love, but...

one retreat they're advertising is titled "the true meaning of Christmas" and I'm afraid I've got rather fed up with this well-worn phrase, along with phrases such as "it's all about Jesus" and "Jesus is the reason for the season" and all that stuff which attempts to imply that this festival is purely a Christian festival and that it's all about celebrating the birth of Jesus. (something which, incidentally, probably happened in autumn and not "in the bleak midwinter"...)

in an item about another December retreat they say: "Somewhere along the way, modern day society hijacked Christmas. The consumer-driven world urges us to find our happiness by spending more, eating more, drinking more." - sorry to spoil the fun, guys, but eating more and drinking more were part of the 25 December pagan celebrations long before modern-day society and long before Pope Gregory in 597 decided to "Christianise" the pagan celebration of the "rebirth" of the sun god and start pretending that it's the birthday of the Christ.

so no, modern-day society has not hijacked something that is Christian, it's actually the Christian church that originally hijacked something pagan, and as a Christian I do wish the church would do the sensible thing and just hand it back.

How accurate is your watch?

So... the clocks go back tonight, and these days I do tend to remember... unlike one year, when I managed to spend the whole day out of synch with the world around me...

First, you'll need a bit of background to follow this story.

It was sometime in the early 90s. I was living in a small town in Surrey, and attending the main Anglican church there, called St Andrew's. They had a smaller sister church called St John's, and evening service was sometimes held there. (In those days I used to get up in the morning and go to the main service - I guess I had more energy when I was younger...)

Oh, and the other detail that is crucial to the story is that the time of evening service was 6.30 for about half the year and 6pm for the other half.

Okay, now that you've got all that, sit comfortably and I'll tell you what happened...

I woke up one Sunday morning in autumn, and thought, oops, I've overslept, I can't make it to church this morning. So I stayed in, I don't remember what I did all day but it didn't involve switching on the television or the radio at any point.

Seeing as I'd missed morning service, I decided to go to St John's in the evening. So off I go to St John's, but I find the church shut and dark and there's absolutely no sign of life. Strange, I think to myself, but maybe I made a mistake and it hasn't changed to 6pm yet? Maybe we're still on 6.30? Okay, I'll go for a walk and come back.

So I go for a walk around my little town. I go through the high street and see that the Chinese takeaway is closed, which is strange because I know they open at 5.30pm on Sundays. Then I get to St Andrew's, the main church, and the church clock is saying the wrong time! I'm beginning to get a weird feeling, like something terrible must have happened locally today and I'm the only one who hasn't heard.

I go back to St John's for the 6.30 service but it's still dark and shut. Now what do I do? Okay, I'll go home then.

So I head home, and on my way I bump into the two elderly sisters who hold the keys to St John's. They're just on their way to open up for the 6pm service.

And so, at what I thought was nearly 6.30pm, I discovered that I'd been an hour out for the whole day.

And what I learned from this for life was how easy it is to walk around being absolutely sure that your watch is right and the church clock is wrong... to be certain that if everyone around me is saying something different, then they're the ones who have got it wrong...

For some people, though, there's an opposite lesson - some people, because of the hard knocks they've had in life, have such low self-esteem that their immediate assumption would be that they're wrong and the other people are right. If you're one of those people, then the lesson I learned is not for you. Because the truth, of course, is somewhere in the middle: we all get some things right and some things wrong.

At that time I was at a stage in my life when I needed to learn humility. This lesson came to my mind a few years later, when God was challenging me to review my thinking on a pretty big issue, and I realised that I had been refusing to accept that others around me may have been right about it whilst I had been wrong.

This hasn't stopped me from swimming against the tide at times... as those who have been reading my blog know very well... (in fact, there's one post coming soon...) but I know I'm only human and fallible, and even though I may feel 101% sure about something, I may have missed a point somewhere... I know from experience that there have been plenty of things I have felt 101% sure about but then later changed my mind pretty drastically - so somewhere in the corner of my mind, even as I stand bravely on my soapbox, I know that my watch may be... well... at least a few seconds out...

Pet Peeve #43.7

Emails with just a link to somewhere on the web. Do you get those? I don't mean spam, I mean an email from a friend, with something non-descriptive in the subject line and the body of the email containing just a URL.

Why do people think I'm likely to click on a link if they haven't bothered to tell me anything about it? Is it something they have found useful? interesting? annoying? amusing? something they are pleased about? something that made them angry? is it something they're sending to the whole world, or did they particularly think I might find it of interest?

Sorry. If you want me to click on a link, tell me why I should.