QWERTY spells God.

The QWERTY keyboard was designed by a man (C. Latham Sholes to be specific). I could stop there and say that so was God and that would do. But that actually wasn't my point. But it IS a good one!!

The arms of the old typewriters had an annoying tendency to jam. If you typed too fast or used letters that were too close to each other they would clash with each other. This was a major stumbling block for the typewriter. In 1874, C. Latham Sholes designed the QWERTY layout (named after the first six letters of the top row) for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and this design was sold to Remington in the same year. It became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878. Had these issues not been overcome the typewriter may never have been as much of a success as it was.

So QWERTY saved the day. The ingenious design of this keyboard layout slowed down the typing speed by putting commonly used letters apart from each other as much as possible. In doing this the clashes and jams were reduced.

With the advent of golfball typewriters and electronic typewriters that no longer had an arm that clashed, the QWERTY configuration was no longer needed. With computer keyboards there is not even anything physical striking any page. But we still have QWERTY.

Why? Well here is why. It's called the Network Effect. We needed it once. There once was a very valuable reason for having it and it served a very important function. It became more and more popular and was in use so many places. But as with all things, we progressed beyond the original need for it. But like an appendix we still have it. It would be too difficult to change now. Too costly. And why bother anyway? We all grew up with it and we are all very used to it.



There was once a time when people needed a God. They needed him to give them comfort and to calm them when they were faced with things they did not understand, things that scared them, things that they could not control. A time when there were many more unanswered questions about life and the world than there are today. God was the answer. To have an answer even though it was always the same answer, even though the answer did not always make sense, was a solace.

With the advent if scientific discoveries, a lot of what used to be mysteries are now explained. We no longer need to use a deity to explain them. The gaps are getting smaller and smaller. Our knowledge is getting greater and greater. We can now find comfort in our understanding of how we know the world works. We don't need to live in fear of the unknown because we can be confident of our abilities to shed light on these areas, and that which we can't control we can often predict. God is superfluous in the modern world.

But God is a QWERTY keyboard. We grow up with it. We just accept it. And very often, don't even question it.

But unlike QWERTY we have very good alternatives to God, that need to be explored and shared.

When we do, we can finally rid ourselves from something that slows us down and holds us back.

Book Review : 59 Seconds - Richard Wiseman

This is the second Richard Wiseman book I read (the first being Quirkology) and it was as good as I expected it to be. Now that can mean any number of things so let me just clarify that I really enjoyed it.

I am a big fan of science and psychology and love discovering weird and wonderful aspects of the way we behave, act and react and this book was perfect as it was full of very interesting stuff. But where 59 Seconds differs from Quirkology, is that in this book there is practical advice given on the strength of the studies and experiments that are explained in the book.

The chapters are broken into various aspects of human behaviour/experience, like Happiness and Motivation. And there are also social based chapters like Relationships and Parenting (for me the Parenting chapter was especially eyeopening).

In each chapter, common self-help myths are debunked and shown, not only to be incorrect or inaccurate but also explanations as to why. This last part is key as otherwise it would be one just another book pushing another point of view. But this book has science on its side. The advice in this book is not waffle from a puffed up, overpaid guru, but is advice as a result of detailed studies.

The 59 Seconds refers to the amount of time you need to apply the findings from these studies to help you. I did feel that this was stretched a bit for some aspects and for some ideas (i.e. The Big Five Personalities) I would have liked to have had a 'further reading' or 'more information' section at the back as there is so much more to it than could have been covered in the book.

Richard was also very good in making it clear that in some studies, the results could not be taken at face value as they may not be a result of causation but of correlation. In some cases, he followed up with another study that tried to test these and remove the doubt. This not only highlights an important aspect of the scientific method but also shows that Richard (and the scientists involved in the studies) is being careful to avoid letting bias influence the results.

Richard clearly has a big interest in these topics and has covered a lot of ground so that we don't have to. Like I said I would have liked a further reading type section but there are extensive notes and I'm sure I will be able to get more details from there.

It is a good book, from a practical point of view (I have applied some of the tips already to great effect) but also from a purely intellectual point of view. After the reading the book, it is clear from what Richard has told us, we are a strange bunch of people and regardless of what we already know about ourselves, there is much more to learn.

Resolutions

New years resolutions are not going well. I have not written as much as I planned. I suppose you could say that since this is my second blog entry today that I am at least writing something. But I want MORE.

I am one of the millions of people who think they have a book in them. But I am actually right. I DO have a book. It's all about getting a plan in place and making the time to put the effort in.

Maybe I am biting off more than I can chew cos I have also started training for a marathon in June. But there is no reason why I can't do both. If I do little and often I should be ok (which is how I managed to lose all that weight last year).

I made a start to it last year by making out some character sketches and writing half a children book. I reconnected with an old collegue of mine who has illustrated a childrens book and she has offered to illustrate my so that will have to be my motivation.

So I'll keep you posted and all going well I will be as to pot a link to my boom here at some point on the future.

I would say I can dream anyway but I have spent took long dreaming about and it about time I started doing something about it.

Is IS 2010 isn't it???

As if the ravings of Stephen Baldwin on Celebrity Big Brother ("If my daughter was threatened by a gun man and had to say 'Jesus Isn't Real' to survive, I'd tell her not to say it and I would see her in heaven") weren't jaw dropping enough, I recently came face to face with an evolution denier!!

This never happened to me before and I was genuinely taken aback!! That was supposed to only happen to Americans when the stumbled into Creationist territory. I live in Ireland, where although there is a strong(ish) Catholic contingent, evolution is happily taught in schools and there is never even the suggestion that there might be a hint of a reason why anyone in their right mind might even begin to doubt it.

I kinda had a feeling things were going in an odd direction when he said “But how can there be Global Warming when we have had the coldest winter in 10 years?” I had made a joke earlier in the week to someone else that I was waiting to hear that, but I never ACTUALLY thought I would.

But as we were discussing global warming, I used the word ‘Theory’. As I was talking he said “I don’t believe in theories, only facts. And I can prove the theory of evolution is wrong too”. I thought I misheard (as you do) and so I asked him did I hear correctly. He said yes and then proceeded to explain that as man evolved faster than chimps, evolution is wrong because this cannot happen in evolution. Also this situation where one animal evolved faster from a common point has only ever happened to man.

I told him that environmental factors dictate way each animal evolves and the differences between one animal and another. I also pointed out that birds and reptiles evolved from the same ancestor and that the alligator hasn’t evolved in millions of years but the birds have evolved much faster but it fell on deaf ears.

He said but there are lots of holes in the theory of evolution. I said yes. And that is OK. That just means that everything isn’t fully understood yet. But I said the important word is yet. Scientists have been working on evolution for 150 years and I am confident they will find those answers at some point. But for now I am comfortable with the gaps.

At this point he made some disparaging comment about Scientists being in it together and suggested there was a massive cover-up and that they are controlled by the government.

In some way this last comment made the rest of the conversation easier to take. Added to the previous comments he was making about Global Warming (and an earlier one again about another supposed Government cover-up) I realized that there was a bigger picture going on here. That his focus is more anti-government-it’s-all-a-big-conspiracy-they-are-all-out-to-get-us rather than an evolution is wrong thing. At least I hope so.

But it makes me sad (and a little angry) to hear people make statements about evolution that they have heard somewhere, from what they believe to be a trusted source, that are clearly wrong. But they are repeated so often that they just accept them (because they wish it to be true?). At no point do they verify or validate them. It’s the straw man. It’s easier to counter false arguments and evidence for evolution than the actual facts so they stick with them. This ‘proof’ was one of those.

Like I said I was flabbergasted to hear this being said. I admit I wasn’t prepared for it in the slightest. I’m not sure if this will EVER come up again. If it does I can only hope that I can set him straight or at the very least give him something to think about. But it was a sad day to think that in 2010 we are still having conversations like this.


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New Year - New Start

I made it to 2010 and so we have a new year.

SO....for this year I resolve to blog more. About stuff. That's what the world needs. More blogs about stuff.

I have made my new years resolutions (using Joe's Goals) and one of them is to focus on my writing for the year.

As suggested by Richard Wiseman, I need to tell people what my goal is to GUILT myself into keeping them.

So buckle up peeps....My moods swings are going to find an outlet and rants will be ranted upon!!

You have been TOLD!!

Churs.