SA's population decline affects advertising

Interesting that half the death toll in South Africa is due to preventable degenerative disases (causes by lifestyle choices, how we consume, what we put into our bodies...)

from bizcommunity.com:

The South African Advertising Research Foundation (SAARF) has found that the general decline in the South African population will affect every aspect of the economy and society, both on a micro and macro level and has significant implications for the media industry.
Statistics from the Bureau of Market Research (BMR) of the University of South Africa (Unisa) reveal that both immigration and emigration have increased dramatically since 1990 and continue to grow. People in Africa migrate to South Africa for better economic opportunities and South Africans go abroad for the same reason.

HIV/AIDS has significantly impacted population growth in South Africa with 38.7% of the adult population diagnosed HIV positive. It is estimated that 9 million South Africans would have died from AIDS by 2021.

Life expectancy in two race categories is decreasing, the death rate in South Africa driven by HIV/AIDS (50%) and degenerative diseases, such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

If there are fewer people to watch television or read magazines/newspapers, the face of media will change. With entire sectors of the population 'missing', there will be publications/programmes that become superfluous and advertising spend wasted.

South African Advertising Research Foundation (SAARF) annually produces the SAARF All Media and Products Survey to be released mid-November 2005. The survey provides the 'common trading currency' for advertisers and their agencies to select and buy appropriate media space and time. It assists media owners to market their media, and strategise editorial and programme content. The population forecast is of vital importance to these strategies.

Question: who is South Africa's largest media owner? Possible Rocketboy investor...

Learn how to write a book in just one week

from bizcommunity.com:
Issued by: The Write Co.

Have fun, reconnect with your creativity and meet interesting people as you learn how to write a book.
Writers Write is one of South Africa's Favourite Writing Courses.

"15 Students have gone on to receive publishing contracts," says Amanda Patterson, founder of The Write Co. The Write Co is now offering a December special on this course. "We have introduced a once a year offer to people who find it impossible to come at any other time of the year."

The course will run for 5 consecutive mornings from 5 - 9 December 2005. Just in time to get organised for a December Writing Spree. The Company has also introduced a version of the course for young adults to run from 5 - 8 December 2005.

If you've ever dreamed of writing a book, take advantage of this marvellous opportunity. The course covers Story Ideas & Plot, Viewpoint & Genre, Setting & Description, Scenes / Beginnings, Middles and Ends, Dialogue, Characters, Pacing/Rewriting & Research and Manuscript Preparation and Advice on Publishing.

The course is run by inspiring published author, Amanda Patterson. Other facilitators include Sue Adams, Tiffany Markman & Rana Eschur and Natalie Lubbe.

For more information or to find out how to enrol, please call Rana on 011 666-4766 or mail info@itsallwrite.net

Visit www.itsallwrite.net

Window in Oxford. Photo courtesy: topleftpixel.com 

 

 

 

Global oil exploration, production spending to hit record high in 2005 - study

The good thing about higher oil prices is that it make further exploration viable. Unfortunately, it's very unlikely that anything substantial remains to be found.
10.10.2005, 11:58 AM

PARIS (AFX) - Global investment in oil exploration and production will increase by 13 pct this year to reach a record level of 170 bln usd, owing to expectations of a lasting increase in prices for consumers, according to a study from French oil institute IFP.

A further 8-10 pct spending rise is expected in 2006, the IFP forecast. In 2004, exploration and production spending rose 8.5 pct to 150 bln eur.

Since 2002, the price of oil has more than doubled from about 25 usd per barrel to over 60 usd per barrel today, but investment has lagged behind, IFP said.

The institute cited ownership restrictions in oil-producing countries such as Russia and some Gulf states, higher taxation and a skill shortage as reasons for the delay between higher prices and investment.

Oil services companies specialising in upstream development operations such as geophysical analysis, drilling and offshore oil rig construction are set to benefit strongly from this spending increase, seen up 15 pct in 2005 for these activities, IFP said.
 

 

Woman Booted Off Plane in T-shirt Censorship

10/10/2005 10:28:27 AM

A Washington state woman intends to press a civil-rights case against Southwest Airlines for booting her off a flight in Reno after fellow passengers complained about a message on her T-shirt. Lorrie Heasley was halfway home on a flight Tuesday that began in Los Angeles, wearing a T-shirt with the pictures of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a phrase similar to the popular film, "Meet the Fockers."

Heasley said she wore the T-shirt as a gag. She wanted her parents, who are Democrats, to see it when they picked her up at the airport in Portland, Ore. "I just thought it was hilarious," said Heasley, 32, a lumber saleswoman. And she felt she had the right to wear it. "I have cousins in Iraq and other relatives going to war," she said. "Here we are trying to free another country and I have to get off an airplane in midflight over a T-shirt. That's not freedom."

 

SA enters era of growth

The good news is that South Africa's energy infrastructure, including home heating, is largely produced through hydro-electric sources. Many poor people though, continue to purchase paraffin for heating and lighting, and this will soon no longer be affordable.
Furthermore initiatives like Sasol and Cape gas exploration initiatives will mitigate some of the effects. What remains though are our own massive fleets of vehicles that drink nothing but petrochemicals. It's global transport infrastructures that stand at the root of our dilemma, and the suburbs and cities that function along these arteries of energy.

High fuel costs will especially hurt the vulnerable open economies of large countries, with cities separated by hundreds of kilometres. This means Australia, South Africa and the USA. Desert cities like Alice Springs and Tannant Creek in Australia, and Phoenix and Las Vegas (currently booming, and the fastest growing American cities) will become the quickest to wheither, as long haul truck companies pass on the mounting fuel price shock. South African towns like Beautfort West, and Kimberley, that are essentially large water-deprived transport hubs, will also struggle. Remote Desert states like Namibia, Ethiopia, Bolivia, Chile, Tibet, and Pakistan will bear the brunt of the crisis, as these countries are dependent on food being hauled through vast deserts or difficult terrain.

Gold will reach its zenith, which will do well to offset what would otherwise usher in a more severe currency crisis for South Africa's Rand. Companies in South Africa like SASOL will do superbly well over the next few years (their business is the synthesis of oil from coal), and public railroads, companies like TRANSNET, will become more important than they are today. ESKOM, South Africa's (and in fact Africa's) enormous energy utility, will become an even more sought after company, and it may well continue to expand its wind turbine, and nuclear facilities further into Africa. Hydro electricity is at 100% capacity even in many developing countries.

The excesses of our era will be regarded by the generation that follows as both vulgar, and stupidly short sighted. They will look on the Cheap Oil Era as we regard the hippie era of the 60's - with a certain amount of nostalgia and contempt.
But the bottom line is that the era for growth for South Africa, and the world, ought to come to an end next year (2006) and end forever. It's unlikely that we'll see these ludicrous levels of meaningless, valueless consumption or environmental destruction (other than through nuclear holocaust) ever again. There is some comfort in that. But that's likely to be all comfort to be had in the increasingly uncomfortable world that's coming.

From Bizcommunity.com:

South Africa's economy, with a more fairly valued Rand, low inflation rate, higher growth path and increased consumer spending is enjoying one of its most healthy periods for many years. This was the message from Rudolf Gouws, Chief Economist for Rand Merchant Bank at the seventh Consumer Goods Council/Efficient Consumer Response conference in Sandton.

Gouws says: "We have entered a new era of lower inflation and higher economic growth. Growth is being driven by fixed investment which is one of the most positive indicators of a healthy economy."

Business confidence, he claimed, was at a 23-year high: "We are seeing the longest recorded economic upswing that will move along a fairly horizontal band underpinning the private sector investment we are experiencing."

The data also indicates that in terms of job creation, South Africa is breaking into positive terrain.
Gouws notes that the strong growth rate displayed by consumer spending would slow down during 2006: "The consumer confidence index indicates historic highs, and it is this confidence that is driving spending."

He cautioned, however, that much of this spending is funded by credit and will be one of the factors expected to slow down consumer spending.

Interest rates might possibly experience a slight rise in 2006: "We do not expect the rand to rise more and there will be no repeat of major import price windfalls."

The recent strength of the Rand is attributed to the Dollar (US) weakness and will continue to level out with considerably less volatility Gouws claims.

Global oil prices and a more competitive Rand would lead to higher domestic fuel prices. However he stressed that the Reserve Bank had stated clearly that it was committed to ensure that gains against inflation would not be forfeited and that its monetary policy would not allow fuel prices to develop into an inflationary spiral.

 

Kunstler: Land Of Make-believe

Photo courtesy: www.quarlo.com 

from www.kunstler.com:

October 10, 2005
For the moment, it's back to business-as-usual for Easy-motoring Nation.
Yet 73 percent of oil from the Gulf of Mexico remains "shut in" or unavailable because of hurricane damage, and about 63 percent of natural gas production. Prior to the hurricanes, 24 percent of the nation's non-imported supply of crude came from the gulf. There are also eight refineries still shut down representing 2.1 million barrels a day of refined product capacity (900,000 barrels a day of gasoline, 500,000 of diesel and heating fuel, and 200,000 of jet fuel).

For the past month, the European Union has been sending two million barrels of crude a day to the US out of its own emergency reserves. The original deal was made in the brief lull between Katrina and Rita. It took a while for those tankers to get here. The EU imports over 15 million barrels of oil a day itself, somewhat more than the US did in pre-hurricane times.

The Federal government has loaned the oil companies crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The SPR contained 700 million barrels of crude when the hurricanes hit. The US uses 20 million barrels of oil a day, of which we produce altogether about seven million barrels ourselves. It is unclear how much oil is coming out of it now, but the last time a president tapped the SPR (Clinton) one million barrels a day were released.

These actions have beaten down the price of crude oil on the various futures markets. At the same time, gasoline pump prices have leveled off from the refinery squeeze. I doubt that the motoring public is driving a whole lot less. The commutes haven't magically gotten any shorter out in Dallas and Denver over the past month. The national fleet of SUVs has not been changed out either.

What's happening, therefore is that we have entered an eerie hiatus. Some band-aids have been applied to our oil and natural gas supply injuries and the bleeding seems to have stopped. But the truth is that our energy supplies are badly compromised and at the worst time of the year -- just as we slide into the home heating season. Here in the northeast, we have barely had to turn on the furnaces yet, but that will change in a week or two.

In the background of this scene, the global oil production peak lurks -- meaning that there does not seem to be any surplus production capacity anywhere in the world, including OPEC's big gun, Saudi Arabia. So all we have here in America is a temporary appearance of normality. When the furnaces go on, the WalMart aisles will be empty. If there is any reduction in car trips, it will be because Americans are making fewer visits to the Big Box stores. There will also be fewer trips out to visit the model homes in the new subdivisions.

Another unpleasant truth about the situation is that the US public wants to pretend that everything is okay as much as its leaders do. The public is not so much being misled as demanding that its leaders in government, business, and the news media continue a game of make-believe -- that we can still run a cheap oil economy without cheap oil.

Photo courtesy: www.quarlo.com 

Korea: Let's Get Cynical

Earlier I alluded to the notion that many of the people in South Korea, especially the foreigners, are a very bizarre bunch indeed. Here's why.

After only a few days in this country, a newcomer will become aware that things are a little upside down and inside out. And then a lot.
Korea, you'll soon find, has its attractions (see above).
The western guys run after the Korean girls (and who can blame them), almost from the get go. But most of the Korean girls don't understand much English, and because most of them are very conservative anyway, they tend to run in the opposite direction. Most, but not all.

The western girls run after their western men (and who could blame them), who suddenly seem preoccupied with everything but them. Then comes a sort of bitter envy, as they find they are no match for the novelty the Korean girls apparently provide. Attention turns inward, and outward, and inward again. The idea of slimming down, in order to be more competitive in this new environment, blips like a landing light on a Boeing.

And then some of the braver Korean men, which isn't a few, try their luck with the western girls (they really should know better). The 'Russian prostitute' stereotype that many drunk Korean men infer on the white women they meet in the streets doesn't help their case. You'd think the western girls would respond some of the time. It is quite exceptional when they do - many profess to simply not being attracted to Asian/Korean men.

Everyone herethinks a white guy is an "American." When you turn out to be neither American, nor Canadian, not Russian or Australian or from anywhere else, the record gets stuck with a loud SKKKKKRRRRrrrrrrrgjjjjk.

So adding the foreigners to the Korean population, creates this silly sort of treadmill effect, where everyone is running after someone who is running after someone else.

But it's not only a funny novelty game that's going on between the foreigners and Koreans, but also between the Koreans themselves and the foreigners themselves.

The Koreans have more massage parlours than Coca Cola signs. There are two in my building, a few more on my way to work, and another one in the basement below my school.
These are to provide relief for the highly conservative lifestyles they like everyone to think they're leading. I'm sure there are many decent and well meaning Koreans but the thousands of twirling candy striped barber bubbles do reveal the balance of human nature...or rather, the imbalance here.

I'm not making any judgments. I don't think massage parlours are bad. They're merely symptomatic of the level of stigma, hypocrisy and frustration in a society. Paying for sex is a bit like buying bottled water. You shouldn't have to, and if you do, well, so sad and too bad.

Foreingers have their own unbalanced, out of whack mentality. You'll sometimes have an entire subway filled with Koreans, and then one foreinger will walk by another and avoid eye contact. What's with that? Are they embarrassed or ashamed? Can they see that you can see through them, or have they decided that you're the loser, that they're better than you are? Who can say? I've sometimes gone so far as to force open this impasse.
Sometimes, you can greet someone who stands right in front of you in the elevator, and they'll just plain ignore you. In my book, you greet someone and they don't greet you back, well that person ought to crawl into a little hole, or drop anchor and not go home until they learn some manners.

Perhaps the shock is simply too much for them - at having their bubble burst again.
The bubble I'm referring to is sometimes created...especially where the foreigner is reasonably good looking...by the Koreans themselves, who swoon over this person, and fuss over them, treating them like a VIP. What these same inflated egos forget, is that if you got them speaking Russian, Spanish or Italian, they'd be rendered instantly invisible. The appeal is English. Not the person, the language.

Nevertheless, many Asians admire the West. They imitate it. They buy the clothes, go to western movies. But it's a confusing thing, because although they want the things of the West, they clearly still have some reservations about us, and seem to intend to maintain much of their Eastern philosophy and its rituals. What they want and admire, I have to say, is not very admirable after all. Where does it end, this endless consumption? It's never enough, and happiness becomes associated with appearance and things, suddenly making these things into some or other commodity, with each subsequent purchase bringing in diminishing returns.

Western fry pits are now in Korea, feeding unhealthy grease to people who want to eat first, think later, buy now, pay later - these are accoutrements of the Western Way.
Too much of the West, in my book, is about immodesty, vulgarity, ignorance and grease.

Korean women seem very modest when you first meet them. Their feminine wiles are charming at first. Fluttering eyelids, hands covering a twittering smile. Many of the women are as slight as fairies. What they gain in posture, they lose in silhouette. But there is a remedy. There aren't many countries that offer such vast collections of padded bras as Korea. It's part of The Big Hoax.
You have these very modest girls, who fuss over padded bras, while their western counterparts, typecasst as prostitutes, don't need them, but continue to vie for attention by becoming less and less modest.

When these same foreign guys return to their original countries, do the Asians there still seem so special and so beautiful?
I would have thought so. I know when I went back to my country, after being away for two years, I was confronted with a blue eyed blonde girl in a bikini, my eyes almost popped out of my head. It suddenly felt like all the juice and color was returning to the grapefruit. And more than that. Health and vitality, and being natural. Korea is a different world yo all those things. There seems something obsessive about the country - the way it blocks of everything from Colgate, to Disprin, to Toyota. It's not all bad, Lord knows it has its delights, but it definitely has much growing up to do, along with the people who fly far to work there. For one thing, if they ever intend to make the Top 10 again, Economically, they'd better get over their grudge with Japan.

The main question to ask any foreingers caught wandering around the ROK is this one:
Why did you come here?
They might tell you that they've come to pay off a debt, or that they couldn't find work in their own countries. They will have majored in nice but ostensibly useless fields like archaeology, literature, history, art, philosophy, or idealistic...nature conservation, marine biology.
They'll explain, over throbbing music, that they came here to save. And later they'll describe weekends in Shanghai and Vladivostok, or show you a ludicrously expensive handphone that is also a videophone that won't work when making overseas calls.

When you go home after a night out you'll realise that none of the people, bar one, made much sense. You'll decide that it was probably because they were drunk, or you were. Eventually, or possibly not, you'll find that no one makes sense (not even you), and no one is really listening to you, or to themselves talking. Maybe you're not even listening yourself. If you look carefully you'll see they are not even looking at you. Their eyes are glazed and sort of pass over you with that unfocused looking-at-my-computer-monitor mode. Everyone is asleep and distracted. Everyone's looking to fill a need, and every day that need is different. Each need is some or other kind of nonsense. It might be a new gizmo, a new restaurant, another party, or a new movie - all the sorts of things professional adults need to be preoccupied with. It's based, for the most part, on a lonely desperation and not wanting to admit to being lost, and a refusal to grow up, to delay some of those everyday gratifications. One you've recognised this, no one, bar none, is making sense any more.

Up to here, I've dealt chiefly with the mating game in Korea. But the ridiculous extends into other areas too, like work. But to be fair, not all Asians or foreigners deserve these indictments. They apply only to the ESL Sham and its Shamdrunks.
Unfortunately ESL in Asia seems to attract some of the worst of both worlds. A university graduate does not necessary make an intelligent life.
There are obviously exceptions, and these are good to see. More often than not, you'll find the pick of the crop on TV.
The other talented teachers don't stay long. Why should they? You can only be a bullshitter for so long, doing a bullshit job, and living a bullshit existence. Some, I'm sure, can probably do so indefinitely. But not me. So farewell, good luck to you, and God bless.

Disclaimer: All characters, allusions and suggestions are of course entirely fictional. Any similarities have no foundation in reality or are intended to refer to actual persons. Thus persons responding to criticism will be deemed fictional. Only individuals no longer living in South Korea, will be taken seriously, as they should be.

4 The Finger

I felt invigorated after today's exertions. Unfortunately, many of my students didn't. I poured out a lot of energy today and got rewarded in my verry first class with 'Fuck you.'
I let that one go, didn't even respond to it. In my very last class I caught a kid giving me the finger, a little pipsqueak. I called him to the front and had him stand with both arms in the air for the rest of the class. None of that stuff bothers me much now, possibly because I have other, more important fish to fry. On the other hand, it's fine that they do that because they will, one fine day, be the recipients of an almost 6 foot 'up yours', in the form of an invisible man.

Not all my kids are sons of Satan. I have some darlings, and sometimes the kids take my hand and walk me to my classroom or hug my legs or something. But there's a whole echelon who jabber away in Korean the second I look away, or focus on another student, even if I have yelled at a million decibels inches from their faces to SHUTUP. It just has no effect. Another trick is, if I am sitting down, to ignore everything I say until I get up off my seat.
Fortunately, there are enough worker bee students for me to feel that some of them are learning something. In my third class, all the students are attentive and there's a lovely vibe in that class. Same in two others classes, but one of those two is bigger, so it's not as easy to get everyone walking the English tightrope.

The new teacher, Jessica, and I have become good friends. She's really attractive, and even though she's married, she's very open and friendly towards me. She has a beautiful mouth, and is a very graceful young woman otherwise.
Suji looked like she'd walked out of a graveyard today. I think she's battling with flu. She looked very tired and unhappy today. Shame.
And the director was almost shouting at his fiance today. I was in the room and he was really giving it to her. Not screaming, but speaking in a loud voice. After he left I asked her what he was angry about, and she said, "He doesn't like the student's schedules."
He also shouted at some of the students. That's not something you should be doing if you're trying to create Neverland School, where no one studies, there's no punishment, the desks are made of chocolate and the pens and pencils are pepperos (biscuit sticks covered in chocolate).

I did get paid, I checked just before catching the bus.
I'm going to try to not waste money this month, and that includes going out drinking. Going to eat a lot of toast, and avoid Outback, TGI's and other more expensive restaurants. My sister has been nagging me for some money, and my father asked me yesterday if I'm planning to buy a car...it's just an inkling of the cash outflows to come.
So not going to do too much boozing or bar flying. I'll say my goodbyes at something convenient, like Corneli and So Young's birthday party. Don't think I'm going to socialise much beyond that, other than a last Club Day in Hongdae.

I'm going to pick up my passport tomorrow.

Start Running

 After a productive, but frankly, dull weekend (I didn't set a toe outside my bulding since coming back from work on Friday night), Monday morning dawns bright and beautiful.

Went for a run in the clearness of the morning, holding my iPod as I made my way around Lake Park for 1 lap. It's a lovely day to be out and about.

Run: 5.5km
Time: 33 minutes
Heart rate: 159 average (maximum 170)
I think I still have the flu, as I felt unusually tired.
Kcal: 610

Also did pullups, taking a bit of strain. Felt kind've dizzy afterwards.
Pullups: 10

At home did a little stretching, and some 'alternative superman's on my bouncy ball.
Pilates: 5 minutes

It's about 6 months to the SA Ironman, and less than a month to the next marathon. I'd like to slowly start getting into a fitness regimen.

Corneli just called and shared some gossip. Must say, I'm not sure if I'd ever understand the people here, including the foreigners. We're really a funny bunch of people.
While running in the park I spotted a woman wearing a black visor, which shaded her well over her nose, and then under that were two styrofoam or foamy cardboard face masks. Not sure what the point is of going outdoors if you're going to dress like that.
Today's warm again, so going to wear knee length khaki green cargo trousers and a thin army-styled brown jersey...will just roll up the sleeves.

On my way to school I need to check whether my school paid me last month's salary. I'll go and do that now.

 

 

Deadly Bird Flu Less Than 24 Hours Away

At the end of the First World War, soldiers on ships unwittingly carried a virus back to America and other countries, finally infecting a fifth of the world’s population. More people, says author John M. Barry, died from this bird flu in 24 weeks, than the number of people who have died from Aids, in 24 years.

Tests: Indonesian boy has bird flu
From CNN's Taffy Santiago
JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) -- Preliminary tests indicate a 4-year-old boy in Indonesia has been infected with the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza, according to officials from the national Department of Health's bird flu monitoring center.

It would seem as though the next step of this virus – where it transmits itself easily from person to person – is imminent.

It can be conveyed to any country on this planet. We live in a world with enormous populations, and a tremendous flow of people between the major centers. All it takes is a single long haul flight with an infected person into a major centre.
Have you spoken to your local medical authorities yet? Have you learned what preparations are being carried out, and what you can do? Do it today.

From Businessweek.com:

Here's key information about the potentially deadly disease that has governments and scientists on high alert, since it may spread around the globe

Suddenly the news is filled with dire warnings about avian flu, a potentially deadly disease that may -- or may not -- sweep the globe in the next few years. Infectious-disease experts have been warning for years that the virus that has killed tens of millions of chickens and waterfowl in Asia since 1997 could mutate into a form that would infect humans. If that happens, it could produce a devastating flu pandemic such as the Spanish flu of 1918 that killed as many as 50 million people worldwide

Now Washington is taking the threat seriously: Health officials from 80 countries met with the State Dept. on Oct. 7 to discuss coordinating strategies to address a possible pandemic, and the White House met with vaccine makers the same day to see if production of a potential vaccine could be ramped up.

Here are some facts about avian flu and the risks it poses to humans:

What is avian flu?
In birds, the disease is caused by one branch of a family of microbes called Type A influenza virus. The viral subtype that scientists have been anxiously watching since 1997 is called H5N1, and it originated in water birds, primarily ducks. Ducks can usually withstand this virus, making them ideal carriers -- especially since they're migratory. Chickens have less resistance, and once one is infected it can quickly spread the virus through an entire flock, killing nearly all the birds.

How do humans get avian flu?
So far, virtually all the 100 or so avian-flu cases identified in humans can be traced directly back to contact with live chickens. Infected birds pass the virus through feces, and it affects humans that breathe in the fecal dust. The virus is not passed on in the meat or eggs, so there's no danger from eating cooked chicken.

How deadly is avian flu to humans?
In its current form, very. So far, about 65 people have died from the disease, resulting in a mortality rate near 70%. By comparison, the SARS outbreak of 2003 infected 8,098 people around the globe and killed 774, for a 9.6% death rate.

The disease can kill within a week, destroying the lungs and other organs. If it's anything like the Spanish-flu outbreak, its main victims will be otherwise healthy adults. The World Health Organization has warned that an avian-flu pandemic could kill as many 150 million people worldwide, and the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention estimates that about 25% of the U.S. population would fall ill.

How can the virus mutate into one that can be passed from human to human?
Viruses are notorious shape-shifters, able to constantly rearrange their genes and swap genetic material with different strains. Virologists are watching carefully for evidence that the microbe has begun swapping genetic material with a human virus -- that's when it could turn deadly for people. One worrisome sign: This summer there were reports out of Indonesia that the virus was found in pigs, which often act as incubators for human infections.

Are we sure that avian flu will turn deadly for humans?
No. The virus may never mutate into a form that's harmful to people. Or it could change into a relatively benign bug. Infectious-disease experts fret that the world is overdue for a flu pandemic since for hundreds of years there have been four every century.

In the past 100 years, the world has seen three, of varying deadliness: The Spanish flu of 1918, which killed 500,000 Americans; an outbreak in 1957-1958 that killed 70,000; and the Hong Kong flu outbreak of 1968-1969 that caused 37,000 deaths.

Most experts, however, believe H5N1, if it does end up threatening humans, will probably be quite deadly because of its similarity to the Spanish-flu virus. Also, doctors have noticed that more people are surviving the infection recently than they were when H5N1 was first discovered. That's not necessarily a good thing. It could mean that the virus is mutating into one that is easier to carry -- and spread. Ominously, the Spanish-flu virus, which also started in birds, followed a similar evolutionary path.

If it does turn deadly, when might that happen?
It could be in the next few months, or in the next few years. No one's sure. Once it does turn, the pandemic will likely sweep around the globe over several weeks and last for about a year. Although, again, no one can be sure.

Can anything be done to prevent a pandemic?
Not much. The WHO and other international groups would like to increase surveillance and monitoring in Asia, so that a human outbreak can be quickly identified and contained, with quarantines and aggressive treatment. But Thailand is the only country in Southeast Asia with a comprehensive pandemic plan, so international efforts would have to be put in place rapidly.

Once the virus starts to spread, most likely carried by an international traveler, quarantine will likely do little good. Unlike SARS, which could only be spread by close personal contact, flu is transmitted by sneezing and hand contact, and carriers can be infectious up to a week before they start showing symptoms.

What about a vaccine, or treatment?
No vaccine exists right now, although there was some early success this summer with a potential candidate. The National Institutes of Health is racing to develop one, and the White House is talking to vaccine manufacturers about increasing production capacity. However, if a pandemic does break, it could take six months to produce a vaccine for that particular strain.

As for treatment, Tamiflu, made in Switzerland by Roche Holding's (RHHVF ) Hoffman-La Roche, is the only antidote for flu. However, the U.S. has only stockpiled enough for a few million patients.

Photographed in Oxford, England. Source: http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/ 

 

 

Old Habits Die Hard

Anticipating high fuel prices would mean more expensive airline tickets, I bought my ticket weeks ago. Even in August, the South African Airways office in Seoul was quoting the ticket price plus 'fuel quota'.
On MSNBC Americans preparing for the Christmas holidays are finding that there are no cheap tickets left. Some airfares have already doubled. Airlines are shedding flights to save fuel costs, which means there is less and less capacity. People who wait for prices to drop will find themselves unable to buy tickets at all.
Right now the expenses are being quietly absorbed. The airlines are living lives of quiet desperation.
But even as this reality sets in, countries like India order 50 new Boeings for their fleet.
In Beijing, 30 000 new cars are added to the streets every month. That's 1000 each day.

The first casualties in the airline industry will be budget airlines like South Africa's Kalula.com, and others like Easyjet. More will follow in 2006.
The first casualties on our roads will be the big trucks. Trucking goods over long distance is one of the most wasteful activities people do today.

Countries and cities with good railway networks, and subway systems, will fare better, but in many cases, these same countries also support topheavy populations that already use these systems to capacity.
A country like South Africa needs to develop its railway infrastructure. Those cities that once used streetcars (trains in cities) may well resurrect them by 2010 when the reality really sets in.
The later changes are made the more expensive they will be.

In Cape Town, the use of water canals is already under development. It's likely that the original goal of this development will soon be superceded by the economic benefits. Could Cape Town emerge as a sort of Cape Venice, with the Waterfront spreading seawater arteries under the whole city?

South Africa in recent years has suffered from a strange mixure of severe flooding and droughts. Last year in the Western Cape, clouds burst over towns, flooding the streets up to the height of windowsills.
The country has just experienced one of its warmest winters in decades. Last week, when large parts of the country were about to unpack their swimming trunks, snow fell on the Drakensberg. They were the first snowfalls of the year, and they fell in the middle of spring. The town of Harrismith experienced its coldest maximum day temperature (5 C)for any day of the year since 2001.
On the flip side of the planet, South Korea has experienced one of its hottest summers in history. And in the Gulf of Mexico, the Hurricane Season has been catastrophic, by the end of November it will more than likley be the busiest Season ever (the Hurricane Centre currently has only one name left for Tropical Storms - Wilma - before switching to the Greek Alphabet - something that has never happened before.

The way we respond to our changing climate, with resistance and hopefulness, provides a mirror image for our attitude towards the impending catastrophes: Energy, Economic, Worldwide Disease.

The first half of the first decade of the 21st century has gone by in a fairly stable and orderly fashion. The world economy has hummed along pretty much like it did in the 20th century.
But landmark changes are on the way. The next 5 years will set the trend for the decades that follow.

In The World Is Flat, star New York Times writer writes convincingly about the merits of the American economy, providing many insights and support for a world that can only improve (connect, flatten, grow closer) in the coming years. He pays special attention to oil, but only to show how the countries who drill for it, have no responsibility towards their populations, because they don't need tax from their citizens. They get their government funds through oil revenues directly.
What he and millions of intelligent people have failed to appreciate is that all the interesting effects will reverse and become meaningless once an Energy Crisis, the extent of which the world has never seen, hits home.

The question no one has asked is this: What will countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia do when the oil powered engine that drives their economies (and the world's) begins to breakdown? Saudi Arabia's largest oil field, Ghawar, which produces 5% of world oil, is already in decline, at a rate of 8%. Iran's fields are also past their peaks.
What will happen to these entire countries and their populations, who produce very little else, and grow none of their own food? The answer is this:
These countries may be invaded or annexed before they themselves disintegrate, probably in the same way that Iraq was. Iraq may become an enormous staging ground, as military conflicts on either side converge. If America is struggling now, one wonders what an even broader conflict will engender. The answer is that other countries bearing the brunt of the Oil Crisis, like China, India, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and Germany (the G8 essentially)will involve themselves more deeply, and more fully, in these conflicts too.

But that would be a conventional conflict. We already know that countries are no longer willing to engage in conventional warfare. They know an assymetrical approach, which is essetnially terrorism or guerrilla warfare, offers better odds for survival. This ushers in what Dick Cheney has called The Infinite War. We have already seen its preview, on a small scale:

9/11 > Iraq Invasion > Insurgency/Resistance > Military Operations and ongoing Occupations > More terror plots.

The Western World continues to operate in denial. We already know that we have found no new reservoirs of oil. We're exhasuting what we have, and extraction and consumption is accelarating. Now all substantial remaining oil resources are in countries that hate America.

America reminds me of someone diagnosed with cancer, or a terminal disease. It's immediate response is aggression and denial, and in some, in very few cases, a Lance Armstrong Event, does happen. More often than not, sad to say, peaceful acceptance is the better alternative. America has been diagnosed with energy addiction, and it needs to respond by rehabilitating itself, changing its energy infrastructure, adopting massive energy/consumer-related conservatism.
That won't happen because Americans, most of us, have not evolved enough. We have entertained ourselves into beliefs that will not serve us in the coming years. Unfortunately, the lessons we need to learn will cost us dearly.

Our technologies form a wafer thin barrier, at this moment. We are still conducting our lifestyles the way we did yesterday, moving to where we want to be, buying what we want to buy, eating and drinking for entertainment, and in the interim, placated by television, inspired by glossy commercials and shiny new toys. Gradually each of these accoutrements will be deleted from our lives. The silence on the other side will soon erupt in collective uproar.
That feeling you get when you find you have to pay more money for the things you did yesterday, that feeling will intensify over 2006.
2006 will see the beginning of New Limits set on our consumption.
The article below will seem deluded, in the new context.

It may seem strange to offer this peacefilled philosophy,given the above context, but here it is anyway:
There is nothing to fear but fear itself.
Bear that in mind, and then, without asking permission, get to work in meaningful ways. Do things you know you need to do - that form part of the Great Work that stands before all of us.


Full-Serve Lingers in Self-Serve World
By Elizabeth Douglass Times Staff Writer
Sun Oct 9, 7:55 AM ET

Like many motorists, Albert Menaster has watched with alarm as gasoline prices zoomed past $3 a gallon.

But when he drives his 1998 Ford Windstar into Silverlake 76, Menaster stops at the lone full-serve nozzle, where customers can bark a command heard mostly in old movies: Fill 'er up!

In a world gone self-serve, Menaster belongs to a pool of full-serve holdouts who pay as much as 50 cents more per gallon than their self-serve brethren. If he pumped his own gas, Menaster could save $4.50 with each fill-up. But he and others say not even the unrelenting rise in gasoline prices can force them to the cheaper, do-it-yourself pumps.

Paying the higher price assures them of an oil check, a clean windshield and some special attention. And in a city where people complain of feeling disconnected, it also provides a human touch.

"Yeah, it costs more," said Menaster, who heads the appellate branch of the Los Angeles County public defender's office. But "Paul, he and I became friends because of it…. Now it's as much a social event as anything."

Menaster was referring to station owner Paul Sawan, who is often there waiting for him. They joke and talk about world events, court cases and, on one recent day, about the book "Freakonomics" — a bestseller that uses statistics to help explain human behavior.

It's a ritual that grew out of Menaster's misbehaving gas tank, which shut off the pump before his tank was full. After Sawan found a way to fill the minivan's tank without spilling, a friendship blossomed.

Menaster, 56, said he had no intention of letting soaring gasoline prices ruin it now.

Visit a local station that offers full-serve and you get a good sense of who uses it: Seniors. People who should read "Auto Repair for Dummies." People with company cars and expense accounts. And others who can't stand the thought of dripping fuel on their clothes or having their hands reek of gasoline.

Dawn Josef, among the 15 to 20 motorists who buy full-serve each day at manager Gurnam Singh's Chevron in Encino, said she began paying extra to have attendants pump her gas while she was pregnant. She got hooked and never went back to self-serve.

Silver Lake resident Bridget Arian, 83, has been going to Sawan's 76 on the corner of Glendale Boulevard and Fletcher Drive for the last 25 years. Her loyalty is underscored by the "76" ball on the antenna of her Nissan Sentra. She became such good friends with the former owner that they still call each other.

On a recent Friday morning, Arian called out, "Hi, Carlos, it's already open."

The longtime attendant, Carlos Campuzano, returns the greeting, starts the pump, then lifts the hood.

Full service, Arian explains, is easier for a woman her age.

Because her driving is limited to local shopping, she comes to the station once a month. Arian spent $14.05 to buy four gallons at $3.199 each — 22 cents a gallon more than self-serve.

After getting her change, Arian waves and drives off.

Nationwide, about 20% of the nearly 169,000 gas stations still offer full-serve to customers, according to trade publication National Petroleum News, which doesn't break the data down by state.

Finding one can be a chore, except in places such as New Jersey and Oregon, where statewide bans on self-service have been in place for decades despite periodic attempts to remove them.

Under California law, all gasoline retailers must provide fueling assistance to the disabled at self-serve prices. Exceptions include stations with a single employee.

Full-serve is still the norm in San Marino, 12 miles east of Los Angeles. City officials dumped a self-serve ban five years ago but still limit gas stations to one self-serve island — unless stations get a special permit.

In its heyday, full-serve was the core function of every gas station. When cars tripped the station bells, attendants dashed to the pumps, said John Jakle, a professor at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and author of "The Gas Station in America."

"There was the uniform, the manner in which the customer was greeted and served, the wiping of the windshield, the free air, the checking of the oil," he said.

The demise of full-serve started in Los Angeles in 1947, when an independent operator named Frank Ulrich opened the first self-serve gas station with the slogan, "Save 5 cents, serve yourself, why pay more?"

Ulrich stunned naysayers when his station, on the corner of Jilson Street and Atlantic Boulevard, sold 500,000 gallons in the first month.

By the 1970s, self-serve was permitted in 42 states. The energy price shocks of that decade hastened the trend, persuading oil companies to experiment with convenience stores, in which stations would cut staffing and make money from snacks and soft drink sales instead of fuel and car repairs.

When a 10-cent gap developed between the cost of full-serve and do-it-yourself fueling, business plummeted at full-serve pumps.

In an unscientific online poll earlier this year, gasbuddy.com found that 93% of those surveyed would choose self-serve instead of full-serve.

Most dealers can't afford to set aside pumps for the trickle of full-serve customers. With oil companies hiking their rents, operating costs on the rise and per-gallon profits squeezed to pennies, "it created a situation where if you didn't do the volume, then you just couldn't make it," said Dennis DeCota, executive director of the California Service Station & Automotive Repair Assn.

At his 76 station, Sawan said he loses money keeping the full-serve pump open for a handful of regulars. Even that group has been dwindling. "With the price of gas going up, people are trying to save money by going selfservice," he said.

Sawan acknowledges the business folly of hanging on to full-serve. But, he said, "when you see older people coming in and they have been coming for 30 or 40 years, you feel bad not to give the service."

Menaster said he resists pleas from his children to ditch self-serve. He reminds them of the gas tank problem, and that it takes an experienced hand like Sawan's to fill it properly.

What happens if he gets a new car? Menaster admitted, a tad sheepishly, that he might stick with full-serve.

Otherwise, he added, "I'd have to come up with a way to still hang out with Paul."

 

Death Toll Now 30,000 in South Asia Quake

By SADAQAT JAN, Associated Press Writer
Sunday, October 9, 2005
(10-09) 05:10 PDT BALAKOT, Pakistan (AP) --

Villagers desperate to find survivors dug with bare hands Sunday through the debris of a collapsed school where children had been heard crying beneath the rubble after a massive earthquake killed more than 30,000 people in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir alone.


"I have been informed by my department that more than 30,000 people have died in Kashmir," Tariq Mahmmod, communications minister for the Himalayan region, told The Associated Press.

Saturday's magnitude-7.6 quake also struck India and Afghanistan, which reported hundreds dead.

Pakistan's army called the earthquake the country's worst-ever disaster and appealed for urgent help. Rival India, the United States, the United Nations, Britain, Russia, China, Turkey, Japan and Germany all offered assistance.

Sun Oct 9, 2005 4:43 AM BST

By Mian Khursheed
MANSEHRA, Pakistan (Reuters) - The death toll from a huge south Asia earthquake rose to 18,000 in worst-hit Pakistan alone on Sunday, as rescuers dug out hundreds of dead children buried under their schools and found villages reduced to rubble.
Teams laboured with cranes and earth-moving equipment or used their bare hands in hopes of finding survivors trapped beneath shattered masonry from Saturday's quake.
Striking out from the forest clad mountains of Pakistani Kashmir near the border with India, the quake was the strongest to hit south Asia in a century.

"When the earthquake came it was like Judgement Day," said villager Fazal Elahi, recalling the horror of houses collapsing around him as he grieved quietly next to the body of his 14-year-old daughter.
A Pakistani military official said 18,000 were dead, confirming a figure given to CNN by President Pervez Musharraf's spokesman, Major-General Shaukat Sultan.
A further 40,000 people were injured in the 7.6 magnitude quake that struck nearly 24 hours ago, Sultan said, calling it the worst devastation in Pakistan's history.
"There are many villages that have been wiped off the face of this earth," Sultan said.

Pakistan's side of Kashmir, the Himalayan region disputed with India, was expected to be worst hit.
Many areas had not been reached because landslides triggered by the quake had wiped out roads, Sultan said.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the tremor occurred at a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles). It struck about 95 km (60 miles) northeast of Islamabad and was felt across the subcontinent, shaking buildings in the Afghan, Indian and Bangladeshi capitals.
The first quake was followed over the next 18 hours by more than 20 aftershocks with magnitudes of between 4.5 and 6.3.

SCHOOLS CRUSHED

Some 400 children were killed at two schools in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province.
Damage in Pakistani Kashmir's main city, Muzaffarabad, was believed to be severe.
"Indications are that almost 50 percent of the homes have been destroyed," Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told BBC World television, referring to Muzaffarabad and neighbouring towns.
Private Geo TV reported that some of Muzaffarabad's main buildings, including a military hospital, had been destroyed, and that injured people were lying in the courtyard of the one working hospital waiting for attention from doctors struggling to cope.
A military spokesman said 215 Pakistani soldiers were killed in the hardest-hit areas.

Indian Kashmir was also battered by the earthquake. Police said more than 300 people had been killed and hundreds injured.

Half of the Indian deaths were in Uri, the last big town on the road connecting the two sides of the violence-scarred region. The dead included 15 soldiers, some in bunkers close to a military cease-fire line.

Landslides blocked the 300-km (190-mile) road that connects Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir, to the rest of India to the south. The Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road linking Indian and Pakistani Kashmir, reopened to traffic this year for the first time in nearly 60 years, was also blocked.
Ghulam Rashool, an official at the Pakistan Meteorological Department, said it was the strongest earthquake in South Asia since the 1905 Kangra earthquake that killed 20,000 people in India's Madhya Pradesh state.
In the Pakistani capital Islamabad, 82 survivors were recovered from two multi-storey apartment blocks that were reduced to rubble. A government official said rescuers also found 14 bodies, including those of at least three foreigners, an Egyptian and two Japanese.

Pledges of aid from around the world came within hours.
President George W. Bush said U.S. aid was on the way and Britain said it was sending search and rescue experts, sniffer dogs and aid workers.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan sent condolences to Pakistan, and a U.N. Disaster and Coordination Team in Geneva was on standby to be deployed. Oxfam and other aid agencies planned to coordinate their response with the United Nations.
Turkey, which has suffered major earthquakes in the past, said it had sent two military planes carrying aid, doctors and rescue workers. Japan sent a team of 49 aid workers.

In a further sign of easing tension between India and Pakistan, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to offer assistance.
(Additional reporting by Robert Birsel and Suzanna Koster in Islamabad, Kamil Zaheer in Baramulla, Y.P. Rajesh in New Delhi)
 

 

Eleven

Flight

I love this moment. You have come alive, your eyes shine, your whole being glows with a peace and a sense of place in the universe.
You are going home, and you journey now towards it, across the sky, as I have done for an eternity.
I wonder what you will find at the place you call home? Will there be stone walls, and bare rooms, or sunwashed lawns and merry swimming pools? Who will you share it with, and what will you put in it? Will you fill it with memories or dreams? Will you live in it, or labor after it? Will having a home move you anywhere else? Will having a home be the end of the road, the beginning of a quiet life of desperation, and endless more dreams of love and escape?
You have struggled for a long time to be here, and now the light of the sun has lifted over the great continents of Asia and Africa. Below you is the vast soft sigh of the sea, that spreads between them. This light beams over the blue and comes to you over the wingtips, through the sleepy window, to touch your face.
All the people share this heavenly vault with you. All face forward, as you sweep in this machine, across the sky.

My ball of twine is unraveled. My silver thread fades to gray. You know my presence in this life is not strong enough to hold me in it. My resistance and fear fills up my emptiness, and darkens the void in me. I did not learn to see the colorless light of my life. When I died that water of life, that cloud of love and light and wisdom, disseminated.
Here in this life after life, although I have learned so much, and loved so well, my presence here fails to hold itself together. It is an act of will that allows me to leap between the Heaven and Earth, as I do. I am an underwater spirit, holding its breath, because I never learned to swim. Swimming, you see, is something we need to know in our lives, because we will need it again and again.

Now you know that I have been swimming in your ocean, spending the dying breath of my soul in search of you. Even in my eternity, I came to you.
I understand all that is, and where I, the microscopic broken piece of this enormous floral whirlpool, where it fades like fairy dust into darkness.
I know that I failed to know myself, in my own life. I am fascinated by the lives of others, and finding the truth about who other people are. But here, as I sit with you, wisps form in the footless blue halls outside. And I know what we are here for. We are here to explore it all, and let it all go; all of it. All the beauty and tragedy must move through us like air through a jet engine. All the sights and sounds unfolding before us…we must unfold with them.

We are all in the process of being, of being created. We are expanding, moving, and need to travel light. We must not hold on to the world or its belongings when we know that we’re woven into the fabric of the universe, and the universe shines in each of us. The light of the world that falls below you now, you know, and all of us, shimmers like diamonds and dew, flashing the smallest sparks on the swinging, cycling chandelier of the cosmos. I have seen it. I have seen the furious beauty and the liquid calm of the Heavens.
I want to hear you say my name.
I want to hold your hand for one moment more.
But now even I know that we must not hold on to any thing on this Earth. Have you ever seen a person hold his own hand, or keep his eyes in his face? I look at the piles of luggage below your feet, filling the belly of this flying brute. The body and soul do not need us to hold, or keep so many things in our lives, or to hold things we don’t need or even things we do need, as we run the race of our lives. There is joy in living and lightness and being that you can not find in things, and nothing can be owned, or kept forever. Let ourselves change as all things do. Everything is connected to our being and our being with God.
We must not hold on to anything because we are part of everything.

I allowed myself to live through my memories. You, my boy, have always been a dreamer. Your wide open eyes, drinking in the liquid world around you. Never blinking, forever staring. Do you remember when I told you that you are a dreamer?

You are awake now, watching the people around you eating and murmuring over trays of airline food. I don’t want you to think about tomorrow, or what the future will be. I don’t want you to think far ahead. I want you to stay in the place where you are right now. Remember this confidence in yourself. Remember this wisdom that brought you here. Remember who you are.

I want you to awaken from the dream that waits for you on the other side of every goal, every new target reached. Make each day your destination, each hour your landing. Dreams are better than memories, but dreams are no match for an inspired imagination like yours that wakes up each day and inspires every moment with knowing what to do. You need to do that. You need to learn how to do that. Practice. Live your dreams in every day of your life. Lift yourself up to where you belong. If you can do that then this life, this death, will have meant something.
 

 

31/6 The Writer's Life

 Before leaving the school yesterday evening, some of my students followed me into the teacher's room. While I asked my colleagues to translate a Korean word, one of my students discovered the small pocket in my khaki backpack and pulled out some bright orange business cards. A melee of grabbing ensued, which I didn't try to stop. I have at least 900 more. The cards describe me as a Writer (first and foremost), Teacher, and Triathlete. That's intended more as a definition of identity than anything else. Am I likely to find work as a professional triathlete?

I turned down an invitation to a birthday party last night in favor of writing a business concept for a contact closely linked to the billionaire, Mark Shuttleworth, the South African entrepreneur who became the world's second space tourist. I inserted a logo at the top of the page, and then blew up and embedded the logo as a watermark on the document I was producing.
Research, to back up ideas and insights, can add hours to a work in progress. Google facilitates quicker and easier access to useful material than writer's have ever had before.
In the early hours of the morning I received an email from a magazine editor asking me to look at his edits to an article I wrote. By 12am I was still awake, and still working.
Outside the sun was sparkling, the morning seemed unusually crisp. After two phone calls I found a pillow, until the bleating phone dislodged me at 5pm. A friend of mine was in town and wanted to know what I was doing.
"Sleeping," I said.
I offered to meet him for dinner in a few more hours, but a few more hours was too late for him, so we arranged to meet again later in the month.
So my last 24 hours has been one person in one room, tapping keys on a keyboard and sleeping. It's a lonely life, but I choose it because the ideas are compelling, the visions are exciting, the conversation, above all, meaningful.

There is a payoff for all this suffering. It's at the end of a very long road, but a good writer can work anywhere in the world, and most countries are happy to provide VISAS for writer's an artists. Writing and art, you see, when it's original, is an act of creation. It brings value and resources to the community it serves, and sometimes the greatest legacy of art is that it inspires our imaginations. The best art, whether written or painted, allows us to focus not only on our memories but on our dreams, and on the dreamweaving magic in the universe that exists around us right now.

The implications of the Writer's life are not always appreciated by people aspiring to be writers. In my experience, a number of people who see themselves as writers or even call themselves 'journalists', should not. You either are or you aren't. A real artist spends a terrific quantity of time fiddling with his craft, and achieving little. It is only after enduring an age of experiments at various forms of expression, that the writer finds his voice, the artist finds his palette. What separates the real artist from the pretenders is, I believe, the willingness to devote all those hours to lonely investigation and earnest searching. To do so again and again, throughout one's life.
It is a rare condition, or even an affliction, to be the real thing. Writing is about suffering; expulcating the writer from his own existence and explicating what's left. That's the craft of writing. Anything else is fanciful and without value.

This means that the writer has to endure dark corridors and loneliness, and hours and hours spent hunched over a key board, running after ideas or straining to reach a slipping-away-thought. If there's an on the job injury writer's suffer from most, I'd guess it's backache. Stiff necks and eyestrain, and headaches, are the runner ups.

For me the simplest reason for writing is to avoid the dull banter of real life, especially in some circles. If talk is cheap, writing is perhaps a little more expensive. And once it's written, as Virginia Woolf herself pointed out, it exists.
From the point of view of the Reader, writing represents an act of kindness, outreach and forgiveness, but also a gentle call for the restoration of respect, meaning and sensibility to our lives and to our world. When it does not, the writing condemns itself, because it will be filled with errors and lack logic and cohesiveness; it will be filled with the writer's own vanity and all of her or his weaknesses.

Conversations with drunk, half drunk, or soon to be drunk people, are an awful waste of time, unless we're in need of lighthearted distraction, or being flippant.
I think it is also the lot of the writer's life to be more intellectually curious and serious than the average person, because the writer perceives the world in details, with distinctive sensitivity, and in high definition, that others do not. This is both blessing and curse: it's being offered a treasure, but no map, and then having to draw one up to a crowded room full of drunks. The gift of writing is a blessing, but the process of imparting it may not be.

Even famous writers have to revert to their lonely windows to draw on the light that reaches into the darkness. They have to turn their backs on warm and cozy company and invitations in order to reflect what is genuine in them.
Writers are like lovers who leave the warm sheets and stirring S in their beds, and plunge themselves into a frigid and dangerous landscape. Except their world is indoors, and the best writers risk death or madness if they expose themselves to these torments for too long.

"The image of the writer as a doomed and sometimes tragic figure, bound to die young, can be backed up by research," Mr. Kaufman wrote in his study, "The Cost of the Muse: Poets Die Young," published in the journal Death Studies in November 2003.

The writers of nonfiction live longer, perhaps because their dedication to what is real (as opposed to writing dreams about what is real, or dreams about dreams)can bring about a more practical and affirming existence.

I have consciously dedicated myself to writing this year, and I have sacrificed the high levels of fitness that carried me through the Ironman. That is lost, but it can be recovered.
At the end of the year I will have two articles published in a tangible magazine. One is a travel piece (on Thailand) and the other bears the important implications of Peak Oil. That is more valuable to me than a hangover, or the empty echo of a drunk voice in a dark alley.