Science

O is for Oil in Science Fiction…

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  My goal in the 2021 A2Z Challenge was to complete a novel I started a few years ago but which has languished for lack of love (writing!). Each Post, daily in April (Sundays excepted), was to consist of some aspect of the novel plus a chapter from it. I hope that the Alphabetical items will give a bit of extra background, muse on the writing process, but most of all, help me develop certain ideas to improve the novel. I had 12 chapters already written at the beginning of the month but my day job has taken too much time and I have only completed another two. So although I hope to complete some more chapters before the end of April, I will continue with these posts for sure. If you have been following the novel and would  like to receive the balance of the book then please leave an email in the comments…

Oil refinery at night looking very futuristic…

This post considers the oil industry and whether it would exist in any future setting.

If we had the chance to start over on some pristine planet (such as Hawaii 2 in my book “Train Wreck”) would we have an oil industry.

Firstly – this begs the question, would there be oil on other planets?
There is, in geology, a Principle of Uniformitarianism which says, in a nutshell, that processes that can occur in one place and time, can occur anywhere. So that means that all planets can evolve according to the same rules and whilst they might be different due to their size, composition, and distance from their star, all things being equal, a planet like Earth could very well exist and support carbon-based life forms including those that lead to the formation of oil deposits. If there are tree-like forms, there will be coal, if there are plants, algae and bacteria equivalents (and there almost certainly will be – at least bacteria) in seas, then there will be oil. In the course of Earth’s geological history, there have been many different ages – long periods of stability then sudden changes to quite different climate and conditions. Certain ages favoured the creation of coal (the Carboniferous period) and others that of oil as that organic material sank to the bottom of the oceans and was eventually buried and transformed into oil.

Secondly and more importantly, would we want or need to use that oil if we found it?
Crude oil is a thick, sticky substance – it can be seen at the surface at the La Brea tar-pits where it has trapped and preserved many hapless animals over time. When refined, broken down into it’s constituent parts (fractionated), crude oil yields a plethora of chemicals, from the lightest, most liquid such as petroleum and kerosene, it yields lubricants (oils), through the substances used to make plastics, to the bitumen we use to make tarmac roads. Which was handy for the evolution of the age of the motor vehicle – crude oil gave us the fuel, plastic for components as well as the material that binds the roads vehicles run on.

When I was a boy, oil reserves were synonymous with “energy” reserves, but now that we understand the consequences (unintended), of burning all those fossil fuels, we are having to regard oil as “stores of locked up carbon” – the burning of which, release carbon, as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, back into the atmosphere. This is not new – humans have been contributing to climate change for millennia by cutting down trees either to burn for fuel, or to clear land for agriculture since trees remove CO2 from the atmosphere and lock it up.


In “Train Wreck”, the Earth, original home to the human race, now scattered across three planets, was destroyed as a habitat by a combination of climate change and other forms of pollution. The colonists are painfully aware of what human activities are capable of doing to something as large as a planetary ecosystem and ecological sciences are some of the most advanced that they carry with them to their new homes. Hence the greening of the deserts on Hawaii 2 by using tree planting and irrigation to produce a self-sustaining climate change of a positive kind!

So back to the question – if they found oil deposits on a new planet, would the use them? Well the plethora of chemicals found in oils have so many applications beyond simply using them as fuel that it is hard to resist the idea of using them. Other things besides internal combustion engines need lubricating and plant oils do not always meet the specifications. Burning fossil fuels to a limited, could be off-set by planting trees. Plastics are not he devil, but some of the uses of plastic are! The phrase “Unnecessary Plastic Objects” has never had greater resonance as we start to see micro-plastics turning up in the oceanic food chain (of which we partake) and even in the deep oceans.

If motor vehicles had not been invented at the beginning of the 20th Century, then our cities would not have sprawled such that, for those living in the suburbs, life without a car is difficult. on a new planet, planning could obviate the need for cars which besides their polluting fuels, are a huge waste of resources and more energy just to produce. But we have always had vehicles and I hardly think the new ecology of future planets would involve a return to donkeys and horse-drawn carts! What are the alternatives? Motor cars began around the same time as universal electrification, but electric cars were not a missed turning on the road to the present. In fact even in the present, electric cars are still at the expensive new tech stage and the pressure to create better batteries is intensifying – eventually they will become better and cheaper through greater mass production. But just as control of, or access to, the best oil resources has led to wars and defined the political geography of Earth in the 20th Century, so access or control of the Rare Earths needed for the new tech may occupy a similar place in the 21st Century. China recognised the possibilities of the deposits within its territories and developed the industry so that it now supplies 55% of the world’s current demand. It turns out that these “rare” earths are actually quite common at the bottom of the deep oceans but you can imagine the environmentalist alarm at the suggestion that mining those would obviate dependence on China…

So there you go, the skinny on oil in science fiction because I cannot remember any science fiction book which referred to oil production (please correct me if I am wrong) – generally speaking, science fiction writers prefer futuristic magical thinking – flying cars, for example, that defy the laws of physics as we currently understand them. It has given me peculiar pleasure to use “Principle of Uniformitarianism” as a tag…



G is for Gravity Well and Greening the desert

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Apologies to any Early Birds yesterday, I posted Chapter 3 again but spotted the error later in the day…

For the sake of pairing some of these adjuncts to the novel alongside their respective chapters, I am taking liberties with the Alphabet for the next couple of days and so we come to G and not E…

My goal in the 2021 A2Z Challenge is to complete a novel I started a few years ago but which has languished for lack of love (writing!). Each Post, daily in April (Sundays excepted), will consist of some aspect of the novel plus a chapter from it. I hope that the Alphabetical items will give a bit of extra background, muse on the writing process, but most of all, help me develop certain ideas to improve the novel. Some 12 chapters are already written so I have a bit of a head start…


I looked up the origin of the word “Well” when paired with the word “Gravity” and found no better explanation than the idea that wells are holes that things can fall into. There is a demonstration of the idea of the Gravity Well here. In “Train Wreck” – there is considerable reference to why gravity wells make space travel very awkward and likely to remain so unless somebody handily invents an “anti-gravity” engine…

On Hawaii 2, the problem of getting into space without using rockets or jet plane mother ships to carry small capsules aloft, is solved by building a space lift or as Americans call it – a space elevator. The book will come to describe the workings of a space lift eventually since it plays a pivotal role in the final act – suffice to say at this point, that here on earth, the materials necessary to build a space lift, do not yet exist but a competition exists to encourage their development. Development that is much more feasible than that of an anti-gravity engine…

P.S. the Space Lift was first posited as long ago as 1895 – boy did those Victorians have imagination!

One thing which is mentioned in today’s chapter, is some major environmental modification that was done in the early years of the settlement of Hawaii 2 and just today, I came across an article describing just such a project to “green” the Sinai Desert right here on Earth – what are the chances! Well the only question it raised for me (my having written this bit some time ago) was why there was desert on Hawaii 2 without the destructive input of man. Because in the Sinai and the Sahara, we know that they were once green and it is possible, if not probable, that the activities of man (to wit – cutting down trees), either caused or exacerbated the climate change leading to desertification. I will not go into what is covered in the article but suffice to say that it is very exciting and hopeful for not only the Sinai desert, but it seems, for the climate and weather of a much wider region if the scheme can be implemented and it suceeds!

The Loess plateau, in China, in 2007,
The Loess plateau, in China, in 2007, left, and transformed into green valleys and 
productive farmland in 2019. Composite: Rex/Shutterstock/Xinhua/Ala


The following chapter deepens the mystery of the train wreck and also tells us more about life on Hawaii 2. Please comment with any opinions good or bad – you have no idea how much I value feedback at this stage…

Chapter 5
Investigations

The investigator was conspicuous by the plainness of his outfit. He wore a grey, casual suit with a crew cut T-shirt beneath which was in such contrast to the exuberant fashions typical on Hawaii 2 for virtually everyone outside of specific work-wear, that it alone marked the man as almost certainly an off-worlder. Furthermore, he was pale of complexion and while he could have been from the far north or south of the Continent he was certainly not from the capital or anywhere near it’s latitude, and yet was clearly an urban creature.

“Thank you for seeing me Mr Gulliver and I am very sorry for your loss, although I understand you are to be congratulated on becoming a father!”
“Thank you, Mr…?”
“Inspector James, External Affairs for Hawaii 1.!
Jack responded curtly but within the bounds of politeness.
“What can I do for you Inspector James.  Actually, I wasn’t expecting you till tomorrow.”
“Yes indeed, that was the original plan, but I hope this is not inconvenient to you?”

“It might as well be now as tomorrow.” said Jack. Come in and sit down but we will have to keep our voices down as my son is asleep just there.” Jack indicated the cot where Douglas had just gone to sleep.

“I am sure it must be very painful to contemplate the events of seven months ago, although for you, it can only seem like what – five weeks, for you.”
“From when I regained consciousness you mean.”
“Indeed Mr Gulliver it must have not just a terrible shock but well, a whole series of shocks!”
Despite his reluctance to poke around in his feelings of loss, which were allowing him a little more space each day, for, if not exactly happiness, then at least some degree of calmness, Jack started to warm to the inspector his appearance was softly open and his demeanour evidenced by the tone of his questions, seemed genuinely sympathetic
“You’re right, a series of shocks.”
“I don’t want to stir up memories more than I have to, but we are really stuck over the bomb on the train, I mean as to who might have planted it and why.”
“A bomb!” exclaimed Jack “But I thought it was a gas explosion in the kitchen of the Buffet Car!” Jack lent back in his armchair, his hands and arms rigid and outstretched gripping the armrests until his knuckles were white.

Despite the softness of his approach the investigator was shrewdly appraising Jack’s reactions. It was a subject of much debate amongst his colleagues as to whether it was possible to judge reliably, whether a person was lying or not. The investigator believed that it was not. He did believe however, that many unconscious elements of body language did not lie and he had deliberately dropped this bombshell on Jack to see how he would react. He was able to observe Jack freely as in his rigid pose he was looking straight ahead but gazing internally rather than at the view beyond the window where is unfocused eyes appeared to be looking. The investigator judged that this was a complete surprise to Jack which confirmed what his background research had indicated – there was no motive or means for Jack to have been the bomber. Quite the opposite in fact. Going to the space lift to meet his lovely young wife after a separation of some months, their whole lives in front of them – very long odds! Besides it was more or less a miracle that the two of them had survived at all let alone in a coma, so close to the blast had they been that if one of them were the bomber, it would have been a suicide mission and would a suicide bomber not have self-detonated a bomb to be sure of instant, painless oblivion? No, he had early in the investigation ruled out Jack and Anna as suspects as well as dismissing as unlikely, the possibility of suicide bombers, although it was possible the bomber might still have been on the train. There was nobody in the Buffet Car since it had closed except for Jack and Anna who were in the toilet. This was a tricky case in no mistake – a bombing with no apparent motive and responsibility for which had not been claimed by any organisation or individual, nevertheless if one could eliminate any possibilities then it brought one closer to the truth or, as they might be forced to accept in the end, the probability of some other solution. As the investigator reached this point in his thoughts for what seemed like the umpteenth time in the last seven months Jack turned to him and asked

“Why did the newscasts say it was a gas explosion if it was a bomb and how do youknow it was?”

“Two good questions Mr Gulliver. I’ll answer the second one first as it’s easy. Forensics! A gas explosion would have been a slower explosion a rolling wave with a different pattern of destruction and burning not to mention different chemical residues. The residues are consistent with the Gelnex, a common enough explosive in mining, quarrying and civil engineering projects – but also simple enough to make from innocuous, easy to obtain ingredients, so it could have been a terrorist home-made device or could have been stolen from a legitimate user such as a quarry. Forensics are good but in this case not good enough to tell the difference between home-made and manufactured so we have had to resort to old-fashioned legwork. The thing is, no thefts of Gelnex have been reported anywhere on Hawaii 2 and the Rangers have gone over the inventory of every registered user with a fine-tooth comb. Nada! Actually, it very nearly could have been a gas explosion as the bomb was planted right next to the gas bottle If that had gone up I’m afraid that you and your son over there,” he gestured at Douglas asleep in his cot, “would certainly not be here today. Luckily those gas bottles are very tough, and it blew away from the bomb but didn’t rupture.”

As always with technical explanations. Jack glazed over slightly and in any case he was more interested in the human aspects of the story.

“So why did the newscasts get it wrong then?”
“Because that’s what we told them,” said Inspector James quietly. ”Firstly, when the preliminary investigation by the Rangers here on Hawaii 2 gave no clues as to why or who, and as no person or group had claimed responsibility, your President and the Rangers decided to call for external help – that’s me – and to put out the gas explosion story partly to alleviate public fears but also in the hope that by putting out a falsehood, it might tip the perpetrators into claiming responsibility after all.”
“But if someone set a bomb, then it was presumably for a purpose, like – like blackmail or extortion or to make a political point. Why wouldn’t they announce it?” send Jack who it appeared, was becoming gripped by the whole mystery. Not surprisingly, thought the investigator – who wouldn’t want to know how and why you lost your wife and six months out of your life!
“That is the million credit question Mr Gulliver.”
“Jack! Call me Jack!”
“Okay Jack. You’re right, you would imagine that if the motive was political, religious or ideological, that the terrorists would have claimed responsibility. In fact, in the very few instances of terrorism on the homeworlds, typically more than one group claim to have done it. Like your late wife, I also study the Earth Data Matrix for the information on my own field and it is very rare for a group to commit an act of terrorism and then chicken out or decide that for some reason they won’t take the credit for the act. By the time they commit the act they have too much invested in the whole plan including the follow-up.”
“Okay so it’s not terrorists – what about criminals?”
“Well Jack we still can’t completely rule out terrorism but we are looking at other lines of enquiry more strongly. Now if someone wanted to blackmail the rail company to extort money from them then this would have been pretty effective, a ‘Look what we can do!’ statement. We have thoroughly questioned the rail company and in fact they not only deny being approached with any demands, but they are in dire straits with regards to insurance. The insurance company will not pay out on a terrorist incident although strangely an act of God, whatever that might be and which this definitely is not, would qualify. We had to let them know on the promise of keeping it secret, that it was a bomb but unless a blackmailer comes forward which again, they will cover well – they, let’s just say they prefer the idea of a terrorist as it let’s them off the hook.” The investigator paused for a moment as if gathering his thoughts.
“Jack the reason I am telling you all of this, especially the truth about the bomb, it’s because we are desperately hoping you might be able to help us move this investigation along.”
“Me, Inspector – how can I help you?”
“Well firstly, we were hoping there might be some details you remember from before the explosion.”
“I’m sorry but I don’t remember much at all.”
“Why did you go to the Buffet Car Jack?”
“Well Anna was thirsty so although I said we would soon be arriving back at Grand Central she wanted a bottle of water, and we were only in the next but one carriage so we went to try, but when we got there, there was nobody behind the counter. I would have climbed over to get a bottle for her but then Anna said to wait till we arrived.”
“I see, and you didn’t see anyone in or leaving the Buffet Car?
Jack thought hard.
“Actually someone did leave as we went in. In fact, I think it might have been the attendant because I remember he had a white jacket like a chef.”
“Well that ties in with what another passenger said. He asked the attendant how long it would be till Grand Central. Unfortunately, as he was still walking towards the rear of the train when the explosion happened he was among the dead. We don’t know why he left his post. So then what happened, how did you end up in the toilet together?”
Jack blushed slightly.
“Okay, so after we found the buffet car closed Anna suddenly said she needed the toilet – it was only two or three steps away and I pushed in behind her and slapped the door lock. She was cross and asked why I haven’t waited outside?”
“Lucky for both of you that you didn’t!”
“It doesn’t feel lucky when she died anyway.” Jack suddenly collapsed inwards under a wave of remorse.
“Well they say that your body was between Anna and the blast and although she hit her head badly you cushioned her body from the explosion and probably saved the life of your son.”
“Yes, they did tell me that in the hospital.”
“So why did you go in with Anna if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Oh it was silliness really. We had just been apart for three months and I didn’t want to be apart even for a moment and besides I wanted to kiss her – and not the way you can do in front of a carriage full of people. I knew she didn’t mind having a pee in front of me but she then said she felt sick and that is something she didn’t like doing in front of me or anyone else, so I turned to go out again and that’s the last thing I remember!”
“Thank you Jack, that has cleared up a few blanks in my timeline of what happened on the train.”
The investigator sat quietly for a few minutes looking out at the view from the treehouse. Eventually he said “You know one hears a lot of imaginings on the other home-worlds about life on Hawaii 2 – mostly wrong! Like the idea that nobody has to work, so people imagine you all sit around doing nothing. That’s because they do have to work otherwise they don’t get paid, no pay – no food or rent or heating. They dream of retirement or winning the lottery so they won’t have to work anymore. It’s only when you come here that you see the truth, which is actually so much better than those fantasies. In fact, my first impression was of even greater industriousness – people working longer hours than the standard week because they enjoy their work so much and if someone finds they don’t enjoy the path they have chosen, then nobody criticizes them for wanting to change jobs. Nobody considers the training and work time wasted – the chances are that when the person enters a new occupation, they will bring transferable skills even new insights that they might not have had if they hadn’t worked in the other job first. Sorry – you know all of that anyway, but you may not realise what it’s like elsewhere. On Hawaii 1 you get your college course paid for upfront, but you have to pay it back when you are working and woe betide you if you don’t enjoy the job that it leads to, because you won’t be given a second chance with a different course. They know that people will take years to pay back one set of fees let alone two.”
“That sounds terrible!” said Jack.
“It’s not just the work choice or all the extra productivity because you enjoy your work that’s let you build such a beautiful world. Take the treehouse that you’ve built – the only thing remotely like this on Hawaii 1 are luxury hotels where the very rich can go for holidays and even fewer homes for the super-rich. How do you finance something like this anyway, at your age? If it’s not too nosey, I am curious as to how things work here.”

“You’re welcome Inspector James, I’m glad you like it. Well as you probably know we each get paid a basic stipend whether we work or not. Once Anna and I started living together there were some economies of scale and we were able to save a little. Then friends would come and do a bit of work and the “professional” help we needed was minimal, and in any case, you don’t pay for their labour because they to get their stipend too which goes up with age and skill levels. We get grants for the materials – everybody has to live somewhere after all and they are age-related – you can’t get enough to build a palace when you’re only 20 years old but you go on getting increasing grants so we, I mean I, will be able to add more to the house over time if I need to.”
“And you don’t have to pay those grants back at all?”
“No and we don’t even pay it back through taxation, we get paid what we need and we work as hard as we like!”
“What if there is a job nobody wants to do say cleaning up the sewers?”

“That doesn’t seem to happen very often, I suppose people know those jobs have to be done and someone just seems to come forward. Sometimes there is a shortage of a particular skill in one area and a surfeit in another so people are made aware on bulletin boards and somebody decides to move and fill the gap. It all seems to work out.”
“Fascinating!” said the investigator. “You know there is just one aspect of the train wreck that I still need to ask you about. How much do you know about your wife’s research?”
“Anna’s research! What could that possibly have to do with the bomb?”
Jack had been lulled by the conversation about life on Hawaii 2, into thinking that the investigator had finished his questioning, but this idea shocked him like a bucket of cold water. The investigator noted how raw Jack’s reaction was and proceeded carefully.
“I am not saying it has any connection to the bomb, it’s just that we are seven months on and none of the avenues of investigation I have told you about have yielded anything. We are no closer to understanding the who orthe why of it and believe me – we have been thorough. This is an atrocity that would have been serious on any of the home-worlds but here on Hawaii 2, especially once one has been here and experienced the life, well it’s even more unexpected and incomprehensible and that’s why we can leave no stone unturned in the investigation. Your wife’s research may not have anything to do with the event, but we have to ask I’m afraid, and I am deeply sorry to trouble you so with it, Jack!”
Jack who had tensed up again, relaxed slightly and thought about what the Inspector had said. Eventually he replied.”
“I knew she was very excited about the idea of ramjets – you’ve heard of them?”
“I have read her application for the research grant to travel to Hawaii 1. Did you know that’s her work had been classified as secret?”
“Secret!” Jack parroted, shaking his head in bemusement. “Secret from whom?”
“Secret from everyone, even you, but I’m guessing she must have told you something about it even if she didn’t mention it had been classified.”
“No, no, not at all! I do know she was excited by it and that she thought it could change everything for Hawaii 2”
“She told you that, but she didn’t say that you should not mention it to anyone else?”
“No she didn’t and, well, yes, she did tell me how it could change things, but I didn’t think much about, it, I had a lot of things on my mind. I wanted to finish the house completely whilst she was away so that we could start a family and she wouldn’t ever go away again for so long. Then too I was thinking about what work I might want to do when the house was finished. You can get a house ninety-eight percent finished in a year but that last two percent can take you years to get done – I am quite a perfectionist I find, and Anna being away was a good chance to get everything completed. You know how it is, you can leave your tools out overnight if a job is not finished and please yourself what hours you keep!”
“I am afraid I am not much of a DIY person Jack and I am very impressed that you have achieved this incredible house as your first major project – I wouldn’t know where to begin!”
“Thank you Inspector, I did find I had an aptitude for the work and the design aspects and it was the direction I was thinking of taking when Anna got back and we start a family. Now I am responsible for Douglas, I don’t know what is going to happen…”
“You have not had much time to come to terms with things, but whilst I am no builder, I do have a family. The children are nearly grown up now but I can tell you that these early months are ones that men often miss out on especially on the other home worlds where the demands of work are more rigid you have had a terrible loss but at least Douglas has his father to look after him and you will treasure this time I promise you,”
Tears were running down Jack’s face and he said nothing for a bit before apologizing as a host and taking himself off to the kitchen area around the other side of the great tree trunk that was central to the living area to make tea for himself and his guest. His mother and Anna’s Sister Chloe were keeping out of the way whilst the investigator talked to Jack although keeping an ear out in case Douglas awoke and they needed to relieve Jack of dealing with his son. When Jack returned with the tea and a plate of small cakes that his mother had made, he found the investigator standing at the bounding balcony wall looking out into the canopy and down to the forest floor. He thanked Jack for the proffered mug of tea but made no move to return to his seat and the two of them stood looking out in silence for a few minutes. It was the investigator who spoke first.
“You know I still can’t shake the feeling that I am dealing with a rich man – the owner of a luxury house instead of a young man who didn’t attend much college and built his own home with grants and help from friends!” he said shaking his head in gentle disbelief.
“Rich and poor don’t mean much here on Hawaii 2 – at least in money terms. I suppose in terms of experiences friendship and opportunity then we are all rich here.” Jack said thoughtfully and when you lose someone like Anna you realise just how rich you were.” His voice had choked up a little but he held back the tears this time.
The investigator returned to his chair and Jack followed offering him one of the little cakes which he sampled and pronounced delicious before returning to the investigation.
“So you were very busy whilst Anna was away?”
“Yes I was. I didn’t go out much except to do some shopping and Anna had stocked up the cupboards before she went. I can cook for myself but I hate shopping!”
“So you didn’t talk to anyone about the work Anna was researching?”
“No I didn’t share her enthusiasm for the history of technology and neither did any of our friends – they are more into the Arts.”
“Maybe that’s why she didn’t mention that’s it was classified or tell you not to discuss it with anyone.”
“I guess you’re right, I mean if she had said that I might have taken it more seriously. I heard her say it could change everything, but I didn’t think that much about it, I suppose I was waiting to hear more about it when she got back, after all the was no guarantee she would find any more details about it at all.”
“That’s true. So did she say anything to you when you were on the train?”
“She said she had a lot to tell me but she wanted to wait till we got home. I assumed that was about the work at the time and that didn’t interest me much. I wanted to get her home for other reasons!” Jack blushed again although this older man was somebody who made it easy to talk to about even the most intimate aspects of life.
“Since I woke up again I thought it was probably the pregnancy she was talking about and when I remember those last minutes I imagined that was why she was feeling sick and I haven’t even thought of her work until now, I suppose we will never know now whether she succeeded.
“Well. there was no sign of a computer amongst other belongings on the train. Could someone have taken it when you went to the buffet car?”
“Oh no she didn’t take a computer with her it would have been far too much weight for her allowance on the space lift.”
“Of course silly of me but then what about her work, how did she carry it with her?”
“Oh, she had a memory chip. I bought it especially for her it was concealed in a pendant. Anna hated carrying a computer around, even here. So when she went to the university, I bought the pendant and she brought her work home on that.”
“Really Jack, and have you got the pendant?”
“Well yes, although I very nearly left it around her neck when we buried her last week. I took it off her at the last minute because I thought there might be some pictures of her on Hawaii 1 and although I couldn’t face looking for them at the time, I thought I might get round to it eventually. Besides although she was touched by my gift as a way of saving carrying her computer around and it was perfect for the trip into space, it wasn’t her favourite pendant, so we swapped it for the one she liked best,”
The investigator could see that emotion was clearly threatening to overwhelm Jack again but he himself was struggling to suppress his excitement at the news of the pendant. Eventually he asked, “Could I see the pendant please?”
“Of course!” Jack said, “I will go and fetch it.” It only took a minute or two for Jack to go up to his bedroom and retrieve the pendant, but by the time he returned Douglas was waking up and handing the disguised memory chip to the investigator, Jack went to pick Douglas up before he entered full crying mode. Thus distracted, he barely registered the investigator’s remarks.
“Do you mind if I take this away to be analysed Jack, I will return it to you tomorrow, albeit with any classified material removed.”
Douglas had had an unusually long sleep whilst his father and the investigator had talked, and he was now both hungry and the wearer of a soiled nappy. In short, he was not a happy baby and he let Jack know in time-honoured fashion at the top of his powerful lungs. Jack’s mother appeared and relieved Jack of Douglas but in the confusion, the investigator made excuses and left without ever getting an affirmative answer to his last question of permission and Jack did not really register the fact till the next day.

 ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

 “My name is Inspector James you must be Jack! Thank you for seeing me,” Said the man at the entrance the next morning.

“What!” Said Jack. “You can’t be! Inspector James was here yesterday! Show me that ID!” Jack gestured at the photo ID card hanging from a ribbon around the visitor’s neck. He proffered it to Jack who compared the picture to the stranger and looked at the computer complex security holograms on the card.
“I think there’s been some sort of mistake…” Jack said.

The Rational and the Belief of a Spiritual Humanist…

humanist55

Terms

Humanist

Despite the fact that the word Humanism is applied to many different movements such as Christian Humanism, Atheist Humanism, and Ethical Humanism – I still chose to describe myself as a Humanist because I can find no better word to express what I am. 

I am not merely an Atheist because although I don’t believe in God or gods because that would be to define myself by what I don’t believe in instead of those positive things which I do believe in.

I am a rationalist, I believe that the scientific method is the only way of approaching the world in order to understand it. Science cannot know everything about the universe and what it knows now may be subject to change later, but whilst you cannot prove anything to be absolutely true, you can more easily prove what is not true by conducting experiments and each time you disprove something, you move, by elimination, nearer to the truth. Whatever status quo science has brought us to is acceptable until there are discovered to be too many flaws in it and someone new can suggest a new view that, for the time being, cannot be disproved.

I am a materialist in the sense that I believe there is only a material world, not a dualistic world in which there are spirits waiting to pop into newborn babies and return to the other realm at the death of a human being, no heaven or hell, no reincarnation. Whenever I use the word “believe”, that means I can’t prove it to be the case, but like the scientific status quo, I find it acceptable for now – so I am atheist (don’t believe in gods) rather than agnostic (don’t know the answer about gods) but I accept that this is a matter of choice as to what I believe.

In the 19th century, many humanist groups were set up as an alternative to the religious. They might have been called Atheist, Humane or Ethical Societies and often they were as dedicated to “doing good work in the world” as any religious group. In humanism, what you do and how you live mater in exactly the same way as they do to people of religion, you have just arrived at motive differently, not because God told you to live in a particular way, but because it is obviously right to do so for and by, the good of humanity.

I believe (choose to believe) that human beings can be better rather than worse in the long run. I most certainly can’t prove or disprove this assertion and the Covid 19 crisis is a very good example of why not. On the one hand, there are right-wing politicians who are seeking to increase their power and its longevity under cover of the response to the crisis and on the other, millions of people have donated in excess of 30 million pounds to Captain Tom Moore’s charity fundraising event to support the National Health Service workers during the crisis. The former RAF pilot who served in WW2 and who turned 100 last week, crystallized the generosity of people who were already grateful to the NHS workers for their heroism and altruism in the face of personal danger from the virus. How could you possibly devise a way of weighing up the efforts of right-wing dictators against the efforts of Captain Tom and the NHS workers and those who have donated to them – you can’t and so my belief that people can be better rather worse, must remain an untestable belief – so once again, that is what I choose to believe.

Because the values of humanism are so great, so obviously right, that is why the term can be appropriated even by Christianity in it’s depiction of the values of Jesus as sent into the world by God, the son of God made human to bring God’s love to humanity – this does make the term humanism confusing given all the things I have already said about it…

If I don’t believe in a dualism of material and spiritual realms, then why Spiritual Humanist?

Spiritual

The word spirit is often conflated with the word soul and although they both come from an ancient word for breath, they are quite different. The soul is a word for the dualistic idea of an immutable essence that passes into the body at birth and returns to some spiritual realm at death. Breath is most certainly the first thing that enters the body at birth and the last thing to leave it at death bur the what are we to call the memories and personality of a person, which as a humanist, I believe must cease with death – what are we to call all that?
We often refer to a person’s spirit without meaning their soul in the religious sense as in “they have a kindly spirit” or we stay someone is “very spirited” – so I refer to that bundle of memories and personality, contained in the mind of a person, perhaps reflected in the appearance of their body as they develop, so easily damaged or destroyed by a blow to the head, and which makes the difference between a living person and a corpse, as their spirit. Just as the term humanism carries baggage and ambiguity, so too does the word spirit, but once again, I can’t find a better word – so here I am – choosing to call myself a Spiritual Humanist…

Spiritual Humanism – the Ripple effect

At this time of existential crisis, brought on by the Covid 19 pandemic, many people who have not previously thought about their own mortality, are doing so, in lockdown, without their normal support networks or the distractions of normal life. Very often, when say, a parent dies, the next generation find themselves contemplating their own mortality, and if their parents were in any way religious, they may find themselves in a church service for the burial or remembrance of their parent. Very often, I believe, this may strengthen either their own religious roots, however dormant they might have been, or else prompt a search for some other meaning, beyond the daily grind. my version of Spiritual Humanism is a way of seeing meaning in life and beyond the death of the individual which does not depend on a dualistic belief, and as such, this might be a good time to give it another push out into the world.

When a person dies, it is not as if they had never lived, not ever!

I remember there was a tramp, a homeless person who spent their life walking between my town and the next village – you would often pass him if you were going that way. Every time I saw him, he made me thankful for the home and the life I had, and I would wonder how he came to his point in life and what would become of him. If one day, as would inevitably happen, one way or another, he were not to  be seen again by people driving that road, I suggest that the memory of him would linger on, they would wonder if he had died or been taken into some sort of care –  either way, the memory of him would probably continue to make people glad for what they had in their own lives.

A child is stillborn and though they had no life beyond the womb, they have already filled their parent’s life with anticipation – good or even fearful – it is not as if they had never existed, their life, such as it was, has changed the world.

Everybody changes the world to a greater or lesser degree. Think of Florence Nightingale whose story got another boost by the temporary hospitals created in Britain to help fight the pandemic, they were called Nightingale Hospitals. Florence was white, Victorian and a woman. You might be black, born in Africa in the 21st century, and a male, but the first thing you will learn about if you choose to go into nursing might be the history of Florence Nightingale. So the work of Florence Nightingale, the energy, insight and impact of her spirit, not only affected her Victorian world, it continues to resonate to this day – like a ripple through the minds and institutions of humanity.

Not everybody is as famous as Florence Nightingale, but they can have as great an effect even without anybody being fully aware of it. Imagine village baker – he is a good kind man – everybody recognizes that but nobody knows the full extent of it. He gives a job to a man who has been in prison and helps him to turn his life around. He lends some money to a person when they have nowhere else to turn. He always slips, wordlessly, an extra bun into the single mother’s bag. He is very modest and none of these people ever share the story of how they were helped by the baker, not even after he dies, not because they are not grateful, but because they know he would have wanted it that way. Yet that baker changed the course of the whole village, the ex-con became a fine member of the community, the lender developed a business that employed many villagers and the children of the single mum grew up healthy and strong and one of them found a cure for one type of cancer.
The Ripple effect from that baker was strong!

If you believe in God or gods, then I will never try to dissuade you of your beliefs, but if in this time of crisis, you are seeking a way to reconcile yourself with your mortality and you can’t believe in a supernatural being, then think of your life in terms of the Ripple effect. How have you changed the world, have you left it a better place and who will remember you? Maybe you feel you have not contributed much, or even been a negative presence in the world. It is not too late, the story of the baker shows that you cannot tell which of your actions will have the greatest effect. Maybe you are mourning someone who has died, if so then you are demonstrating the Ripple effect, for you are carrying the memory and the particular energy of that person’s spirit with you already, now and for as long as you live. If you build whatever memorial is appropriate to that person’s life, you will pass their story on to others…

If contemplating life in the world as illuminated by these strange times leads to re-assessment and change for individuals or institutions, if it brings changes to their spirit, then that can only be for the good…

Please leave a comment so that I know you have been here, and stay safe…

Give us our daily bread..

humanist55
I managed to get all the way through a month of the A to Z 2020 Challenge without once posting about food and one of my two favourite foods – bread in particular. (The other is Apples!)

Today I am going to redress that with two things, the first reprising a piece I posted on my first blog “Ripple” on Mo’time. This brilliant collection of bloggers were on a small Italian blog run as a testbed for new bloggery for a larger Italian blog. Unfortunately, the company was sold and after a few months, Mo’time was no more and all the posts disappeared, albeit, not before the chance to download them. Firstly I am doing the reprise and then for something new…

When I first started Ripple, we had been living in a cottage on the west coast of Ireland with no felt in the roof so freezing in the winter and no place, not even an airing cupboard, to rise bread. So, with foreboding, I bought a bread machine that would do its own rising. However, whilst it did exactly what it was supposed to do and made nice tasty bread, it didn’t offer the possibility of more creative experiments so I worked out how to do it and the following is a verbatim quote from Ripple which I have come to think of as 

How to Break All the Rules with Your Bread Maker!

“1. The first rule I broke was the inclusion of dried milk powder. It didn’t seem logical to put water and milk powder when you could just put milk. So I did, and then, since I make a kind of drinkable yoghurt called kefir (another story but ask away), I used that too and found that it worked even better. After all, Ireland where I was living at the time, has long used buttermilk in its soda bread.
If you mess around with the liquids though, you will have to abandon the total convenience of putting all the ingredients in, setting the timer and walking away. It is vital that the dough be not too dry and not too sloppy and so if you havent measured ingredients precisely as per machine instructions, you need to keep the lid open and maybe make adjustments to the mix during the first five minutes. How will you know what is right? Ultimately, an experienced eye coupled with a gentle finger prod. Before that though, its the same instruction as for hand-making bread – when the dough pulls away from the side and providing it isn’t thudding round like a burnt Christmas pudding, then its probably right.
Now if you want the bread to be freshly baked when you get up in the morning, you can at this point switch the machine off, set the timer and it will wake up and knead the dough again at the appropriate hour and be so much the better for it! More kneading means more bubble trapping gluten develops which means a lighter loaf.

2. Yeasts and sourdoughs.
Bread machine manufacturers advise against using fresh yeast and offer no recipe for sourdough starters. In the former case, it is because the fresh yeast may rise too much, spillover and fall on the heater elements, form big bubbles in the top of the loaf which may collapse and generally not form the perfect loaf which a machine is duty-bound to turn out! Even the salt which all recipes include is not there for seasoning but to keep those puffed up yeasts in order! You can break these rules and use either the hyperactive fresh yeast or the slow off the mark sourdough starter. The latter is after all yeast, just naturally occurring and variable rather than the mono-cultural brewers leftover yeast which may be the source of your fresh stuff.
You just need two different tricks. Horses for courses.

For sourdough, run the cycle twice, stopping the machine as near to the baking time (usually the last 60 minutes) as possible and starting it over again. This way the yeasts get twice the time to grow and develop, feeding on the flour itself as well as any sugar you have added. This is what makes sourdough bread so tasty and factory steamed bread so tasteless (near-instant yeast that puffs up the bread in minutes). I won’t go into making sourdough starters here but ask if you want.

3. Become a Slasher
For fresh yeast bread, it is a case of another intervention that rules out leaving the bread to do overnight, you must slash the bread at pretty much the exact right time. Slashing bread, as well as making it look pretty, does two things, it makes sure there are not lots of big bubbles hiding near the top of your loaf ready to mess up your slices in that annoying way. Slashing at the right time. about 30-20 minutes before the actual baking, pricks the bubbles and lets the loaf rise to fill any collapse occasioned. In the case of a denser bread which might be struggling to rise, such as sourdough or a bread using a less gluten-developing flour like rye, the slashing opens up the crust which may have dried a little forming a restrictive skin, and the bread is free to expand again. With these breads slashing can occur earlier, as long as the last kneading cycle has taken place.

Once I managed a restaurant with a wholefood shop on the side and our baker up the road supplied the bread. Not so knowledgeable in those days I described the kind of brick-like dense loaf which I knew would be expected by wholefooders. He couldn’t quite grasp it and so we arranged to visit The Neals Yard bakery in Covent Garden. So little was my interest in the technicalities I regret I stayed outside, but afterward, I asked him if he understood now, having seen their product. He said he did, and that it was on account of they didn’t use their proving racks properly. They didn’t put water in the tray in the bottom that moistens the warm air in which the loaves in their tins do their final rising. Accordingly, a crust formed and restricted the bread from rising. the baker supplied us with his normal offering – big and squeezable and, made from exactly the same dough but stunted by drier proving, a denser “wholefood” loaf. Each loaf had its adherents and both camps, if let in on the secret (in the event say, that one type had run out), refused to believe that the bread was made from the same batch of dough!

A last word on yeast, I also make a drink of fermented tea called Kombucha and I save the yeast at the bottom to add to my bread simply observing the same precaution as for fresh yeast.

To conclude, you can experiment in many ways not even hinted at in your bread-machines manual providing you are prepared to make the odd intervention during the process, get the initial dough mix just right and get slashing near the end, before the baking starts.

There are those who throw up their hands in horror at the idea of a machine making bread, not at all Zen! But I feel that the machine offers a consistent environment, even in the coldest house, in which the variations you experiment with are more easily judged. So far there is no type of bread I have not been able to produce.”

Ripple – 22nd May 2006

Now if that hasn’t been too much bread and you are not feeling bloated:-

No-Knead Bread

During the Covid 19 Crisis, it has been impossible to buy flour, let alone strong bread flour – I surmise that the Great British Bake Off has made aspirant bakers of us all – or perhaps people thought it would be good to do with the kids…( just picturing kid bombed kitchens…)
Anyway, recently I saw something about No-Knead Bread and was immediately intrigued since the central process of making bread is alternating a number of rising or proving sessions of the dough, with vigorous kneading and this kneading is what develops the gluten. Gluten is the protein part of the flour and the leading gets it to develop and form a stickiness that traps the carbon dioxide which is produced by the yeast (feeding on the sugar) and that is what puffs up the bread. Looking on the internet, I found numerous recipes (and I will let you do the same) but none of them explained how bread could rise without kneading being involved! 
I turned to the goto book when a scientific question about food arises – “McGee on Food and Cooking” – it’s the bible!


Mr. McGee didn’t disappoint! It turns out, that if you use a very wet dough – which all the recipes did – then the protein chains which are the gluten, instead of having to be forced together by kneading, join up of their own accord – magic! (Or rather, science!)
So that was the secret of no-knead bread and by all means, give it a go! It comes out of the oven with a very dry crust because it is baked even hotter than normal bread but there is so much moisture within that it softens and gives you a ciabatta like loaf.

Well, I hope I have presented my credentials as a serious foodie and I have made up for the dearth of food during the challenge.

Please comment – especially if you try any of these ideas so I know you have been here…

C is for Covid 19

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. Since I didn’t discover the challenge till April 1st. – the first day of the challenge, I missed the pre-challenge post where you let readers know what theme your A to Z will be outlining. As this is day three, I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!


What is the point of a virus?

Our lives have been turned upside down by a virus, an object so tiny it is invisible to the naked eye. I say object, because although some commentators have referred to Covid 19, a Coronavirus, as “living” on different surfaces for various lengths of time, a virus is not really alive in the usual sense – it is a parasite that cannot exist long outside its host cell nor reproduce on its own. Scientists still debate whether the many viruses should be included in the “tree of life” for they do contain DNA and/ or RNA which are the building plans for all life and the chances are that they have accompanied us closely on our evolutionary journey. But if they are not really alive and their only capability is replication – in the process, damaging or even killing their hosts – what is the point of them?


Darwin, who gave us the Theory of Evolution, was originally training to be a clergyman but far from debunking the ideas that geology was spreading about the Earth being millions of years older than the Bible indicated, Darwin disappointed the devout Robert FitzRoy, Captain of HMS Beagle by postulating the theory which would explain the progression of life to be found in the rocks. After the voyage of the Beagle, Darwin settled down to marriage, family and working on his theory, holding back from publishing his work until the last minute, when others threatened to get there first, out of a touching desire not to upset his friend FitzRoy’s religious sensibilities. But during this period, Darwin’s beloved daughter – Annie, died of Scarlet Fever (a bacterial rather than viral) and Darwin’s own belief in God took a terrible knock. The final nail in the coffin for Darwin’s beliefs was his learning of species of parasitical wasps that lay their eggs inside a living caterpillar so that when the eggs hatch, the wasp young feed and grow – eating their host from within. For Darwin, the idea that God could create such cruelty not to mention take the innocent life of his daughter, was too much to bear.


So Darwin would have been fascinated but appalled had he been around to see how the development of our understanding of the parallel evolution of viruses and animals, reveals something so pointless and so potentially devastating for the animal kingdom. We sit transfixed by daily news broadcasts announcing death tolls reaching and exceeding thousands in different countries but this is nothing compared to the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. We think that 50 million people died worldwide but it could have been up to 100 million – our means of recording the deaths in that pre-global village world was simply not adequate enough to know. Given the ease of the spreading of the virus by modern transport and mass travel, we might think that we are doing very well to have contained the pandemic as well as we have, government failure to act notwithstanding…

So what is the point of virus? Well there simply is no point, they just are because they are. They hone our immune systems but if they didn’t exist we wouldn’t need such defenses. They are not living organisms such as bacteria (though we could do without some of those little critters too). If you believe in God, you would have to ask yourself why he would create such a thing. If you don’t believe in God then and you accept evolution as the roller-coaster ride that has brought species and their attendant parasites, including viruses, to the place we are today, then, ironically, something which is arguably “life”, is a metaphor for life itself. Life appears to have been, likely, accidental though probably inevitable given the inconceivable multitude of planets that exist in the universe. Life, apparently, exists for no purpose other than to exist and reproduce and as the mathematician  Augustus De Morgan, said in his short rhyme “Siphonaptera”, from his book A Budget of Paradoxes (1872), (Siphonaptera being the biological order to which fleas belong)

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.
(Wikipedia)

If that analysis seems a little negative, stay with me, it’s not the whole story…

Now to the technical stuff:-
If you want to understand what a virus is, there is a good article here. This excellent article explains the body’s defence mechanisms – in particular B-cells and T-cells. A very technical article explains the body’s immune system over-reaction called the Cytokine Storm which is mostly the cause of death with Covid 19.