Earthquake

Yesterday I felt a minor earthquake. At about 11:55, everything shook from side to side, just one shake. I soon discovered that this earthquake had been felt in many places along Israel's coast, that its magnitude was 4.2, and that its epicentre was about 40 km. west, out at sea. Experts say this is a rare location for earthquakes, which normally happen along the Syria-Africa fault line. If a more serious earthquake happens out at sea, this could cause extensive damage and loss of life along Israel's coast, the most densely populated part of the country.

This was not the worst earthquake I have experienced. I think I have felt 4-5 worse than this, and a few similar ones, over the past few years. None of these caused much damage. Israel is a place where there have been many serious earthquakes in the past, and the next big one is statistically likely to happen soon.

For years experts have been warning the government that the country is not prepared for a major earthquake. Most of the buildings built before the 1980s are likely to collapse. There could be serious damage to infrastructure, and the loss of life could be more significant than in any war or previous natural disaster. The short-sightedness of the authorities in ignoring this risk is staggering, and I can imagine the sort of commission of inquiry that would investigate the negligence after the fact. When experts give this sort of warning, they should be taken seriously. The regional security situation is not necessarily the greatest threat to this country. We may eventually make peace with all our neighbours, but there is no way to prevent an earthquake, only to prepare as much as possible to minimize the damage it might cause.

The idea that my home might well be destroyed in an earthquake, and that I could die or be injured in it, is just another of the background stresses in my life. I try not to think about it, just as I prefer not to dwell on the likeliness of another war, of another wave of terrorist attacks, and so on. But knowing that nobody is making the necessary preparations is frustrating and infuriating.

I can only wish that no serious earthquakes hit densely populated areas anywhere in the world, but I know that now and then it happens, and if it happens here, a great deal of preventable damage and deaths will result.

Caesarea National Park

Yesterday we visited the Caesarea National Park. Of course, I have been there many times before, on childhood school trips, on family visits, and sometimes with visitors from abroad. It is a place with a long history of habitation by various cultures: Pagan, Jewish, Christian, and Moslem. It is one of my favourite places to visit, and over the years I have seen the site grow and develop.

I remember on my earliest visits the main parts of the site were the Roman theatre and parts of the Crusader walls and city. Further north, parts of the aqueduct were visible along the beach. The site was sandy and there were a few facilities, such as bathrooms and a small cafe. Since then, additional sections have been excavated and opened to the public, including the Hippodrome and more of the harbour area. The site has been developed a lot, with better footpaths, lawns, and many more restaurants and shops in reconstructed buildings. It feels more hospitable, but at the same time less like an excavation and more like a tourist attraction that happens to have some ancient ruins lying around. It also feels more commercial, with many places to eat, souvenir shops, art galleries, and jewellery shops.

We went to see the new attraction at the site that we hadn't seen before, two short films about the site. One described the city's history, and another explained the various buildings from the different periods. These films were available in seven languages (Hebrew, English, Arabic, Russian, French, German, and Spanish), which I think is probably rare at most tourist attractions around the world.

The weather was hot and humid, so we didn't explore the whole site this time. I look forward to visiting the site again when the weather is better.

My office set-up

I work mainly at a desktop computer. My current set-up has a 22-inch monitor and a wireless keyboard and mouse. While my for many years I was a Mac user, as described in a previous post, I moved over to Windows four and a half years ago, mainly because most of my customers use it, and Office for Mac has not been localized for Hebrew. I use Firefox as my browser and Thunderbird for my email, and iTunes for my music and to sync my iPod Touch. I have an inkjet printer, on the shelf under my keyboard shelf, and I have noticed that I now use it almost exclusively for printing hard-copy invoices and receipts. I have a very old fax machine to the left of my desk, which I think might be 20 years old. I now rarely need to send or receive a fax, maybe once a year or so. To the left of my desk is a bookcase full of dictionaries and reference books, though it's usually easier to look things up online.

The most recent addition to my computing life is a netbook. This is a LG X170, and it has a 10.1 inch screen, which seems to be about a quarter of the size of my desktop monitor. This is the first laptop I have had, and it has taken me a long time to be able to justify needing a laptop. I hardly ever work when I'm away from home, but there have been times when I have wanted to check my email, which sometimes results with having to do urgent work, which is not always easy on someone else's computer. I also used to think laptops were too large and heavy for me to want to carry just in case I might need to use them. But the new netbooks seem ideal in size and weight. I hope to use it in other rooms around the house when I don't feel like getting up to go into my office just to check something online or see if I have any email. Now that I am writing novels and trying to blog more regularly, having another computer will help me write more often, even when I'm tired of sitting at my desk after a long day of translating or editing.

I see my computers and gadgets as tools. They are both useful and fun, and my life would be different without them. I consider myself a sensible technophile, and a competent user of my equipment, but not as an early adopter of new gadgets.

Hannu Rajaniemi - The Quantum Thief

Hannu Rajaniemi, The Quantum Thief, Gollancz, 2010.

This is a far-future novel, and its characters are post-human. A warrior called Mieli rescues a thief from prison, asking him to steal something for her. Together they explore the complex society of the Oubliette, a moving city on Mars. Meanwhile, a young detective, Isidore, is hired to solve a mystery. The city is policed by a sort of vigilante group known as the Tzaddikim.

The themes of this work are time and memory. Time serves as a currency, and people who run out of time become Quiet, meaning that they are taken to serve in the maintenance of the moving city, in a different form, for a while. People's memories are constantly edited, and their interactions are controlled by a complex set of permissions, known as Gevulot. People can choose how, or even if, others will see them, whether to reveal their name or identity, and whether to allow the memory of an encounter to be stored. This inconsistency of memory makes people's perception of reality transient, allows privacy and anonimity to be taken to an extreme degree, and poses challenges for discovering the truth about anything.

Gradually, the thief regains some of his past memories. The different threads of the plot come together, with characters meeting and secrets being discovered. There are clever tricks, fight scenes, advanced weapons, and the development of real human emotions.

The story keeps the reader at a distance, with important aspects kept hidden until the reader learns about them when they happen, or when one of the characters reveals them, but not before. It is often difficult to identify with the characters when they are so much more powerful than us, but this is balanced by their human stories, gradually explored and revealed.

The ending leads to dramatic changes, and this is an interesting future I might enjoy visiting again in other books or short stories. I hope for stories set in this universe that introduce and welcome readers to the setting, rather than mystify them.

One thing that bothered me was the misuse of a Hebrew term. While the author uses the noun Tzaddik (singular) and Tzaddikim (plural) correctly, he employs the term Gevulot (= boundaries) as both a noun and an adjective, and seems unaware that it is plural (the singular would be Gevul). Readers unfamiliar with Hebrew would not notice this, but I think words from real languages should be used properly, where SF writers prefer not to invent new words for their new concepts. This may seem like a minor point, but it did irritate me, and I wonder whether it would be possible to correct this if/when the novel is reprinted.

I had mixed feelings about this novel. It appeals as an intelligent, literary, and aesthetic experience, but is somewhat unclear and distant. It may appeal to readers seeking an intellectual challenge, and to those who enjoy post-human settings more than I seem to.

Protests for social justice

Recent weeks have seen the birth of a social justice protest movement in Israel. People have started camping out in parks and public spaces to protest the high cost of housing and the cost of living in general.

On Saturday night there were large demonstrations in ten cities, with a reported total participation of about 150,000 people, with 100,000 in Tel Aviv, and 10,000 each in Jerusalem and Haifa. The Haifa demonstration was very close to where we live, and we could hear the speeches and the applause. I realized from the volume of applause that there were more people there than I have ever known to attend an event in Haifa, and it has been called one of the largest demonstrations ever in the city.

I have been following the story of this new protest movement with interest. For the first time, the movement is led by middle class professional people who still find it very difficult to reach the sort of financial security that would allow them to buy their own home, and even renting is becoming more and more expensive. I can attest to this difficulty. For twenty years we rented, and only when we inherited enough money, from my aunt and Ivor's parents and grandparents, could we consider buying our own place.

The reporting of the protest has involved several interesting comparisons between Israel and other developed countries, regarding salaries, working hours, the cost of various items, and the gap between rich and poor. Israel recently joined the OECD, and in most indices is at the bottom of its ranking. For example, if I remember correctly, Israel has the largest proportion of child poverty and the largest gap between the incomes of the richest and poorest.


One of the factors that must be taken into account is that in Israel, the citizens' contribution to the state is greater than in most other countries. Most Israelis are recruited to compulsory military service at 18, serve for 2-3 years, and some of them are required to participate in reserve military duty until the age of 40, sometimes for a month each year. Also, at times of war, the civilian population is called upon to stand strong, keep working, and not flee when Israeli cities are attacked from across the border. For these contributions, in addition to the taxes people pay, there is a growing feeling that the population is not being rewarded sufficiently.

What has been bothering me, though, is the distorted focus of the public debate and the attitudes displayed by some of the people opposed to the protests. At first, it was suggested that the protesters were spoilt, wanted to live only in Tel Aviv, and were unwilling to move futher away. This suggestion faded when tents sprung up in so many other cities, and when data about the cost of housing in all parts of Israel were published.

Many people are still arguing that the economy here is good, that the protesters could live more modestly, and that they are "just trying to bring down the government". These claims can be answered by first looking at the economic data, which show the protest is based on fact rather than feeling. To say that the middle class should live more modestly implies that the vast majority of the population should actually be working class rather than middle class. Telling your population to lower its aspirations does not seem to me to be a good way to improve the economy and morale. Finally, peaceful protests are a legitimate form of expressing the population's opinions about the government between elections.

There is a call for the restoration of the welfare state and an end to privatization. This is a point of ideology that raises some serious arguments, but also some very emotionally charged claims. I have observed that many of the supporters of the more extreme market freedoms, who claim the state should have a minimal intervention in the economy, are self-made wealthy people. They like to present their prosperity as evidence of their hard work, and to argue that anyone can become wealthy given enough hard work. This seems to me to be a form of blaming the victim - claiming that the poor brought their poverty upon themselves through laziness. These self-made people refuse to acknowledge the importance of luck in their success. Their careers have been helped along by contacts they made, and often by chance factors that gave them an advantage over others who worked just as hard. In some cases, such people have advanced by bending the rules, while more honest people who studiously avoid corruption end up falling behind.

The current proposals being negotiated by the protesters and the government may lead to some compromise steps being taken. Ultimately, I do not consider it likely that life in Israel will be made much easier for the working and middle classes, or that the gap between the richest and the rest of us can be reduced significantly. But an outcome I would like to see would be an improvement in the level of public debate, where people looked at the facts and listened to each other with open minds, rather than prejudging those who disagree with their ideology.

What does age mean?

Today is my birthday. This makes me wonder what our age really means.

Age denotes the time a person has been alive. However, people develop and learn at different rates, so it is a poor indicator of where an individual is in the journey of discovery that is life.

Children place great importance on their age, and each year makes a big difference in their life. As adults, we generally stop thinking so much about the differences between one year and the next, except for parents watching their children grow up.

When we are young, we spend our time busily observing and learning how things work, how people communicate and interact, and what things mean. As we mature, we have a framework of the knowledge we have acquired, and we can place into this framework any new thing we learn or experience. We have context for many of the new things we encounter, and can compare them with similar things from our past knowledge.

For some, growing older means a loss of the excitement and pleasure of youth. Nothing is new any more, and familiarity breeds contempt. This seems to me unfortunate, since novelty in itself is not the most important aspect of any experience. Those who can no longer enjoy a sunset because they have seen thousands are losing some of the joy of life.

In general, older and more mature people tend to be more responsible and balanced, and less extreme, than the young. This is partly because over time they have seen things from different angles, learned to see in shades of grey and not just in black and white, and have had time to discover that the world and human situations are complicated.

I see my life so far as a process of growth and development. I have worked hard to overcome some of the problems I experienced when younger, and I am much happier than I used to be.

I am now in the best years of my life. I have reached a level of maturity and stability that I find comfortable, but I still see myself as young, in that I am constantly learning, open-minded, and creative. I hope this state lasts for the rest of my life.

New challenge: Blog every day in August

After I spent July writing a novel, with a daily word count target, I have decided to set myself a new daily challenge: I am going to write a blog post every day in August 2011.

I have been writing this blog for three years now, and most months have failed to reach my intended target of 4-6 blog posts. Sometimes I think of a good subject for a blog post, but then never get round to writing it. There have even been several books I read and planned to review, but by the time I remembered that I hadn't written the review, I had already read something else and had sometimes forgotten what I had planned to say.

This month, I hope to find enough interesting subjects to blog about. It will be an experiment in discovering the sort of topics I would enjoy writing about, and if I get any feedback from readers of this blog, this will help me learn what you would like to read.

Doing something every day for at least three weeks is considered one of the best ways of forming a new habit. I know this has worked for me in several instances. A few years ago, when I started visiting the dentist regularly after years of neglect, I learned to start using dental floss in addition to brushing my teeth. At first, this extra step seemed like a burden, but now my routine is not complete without it. I think it became a habit after I managed to floss every day for three or four weeks.

Habits are mental shortcuts. When we do things habitually, it saves a bit of mental energy on thinking and deciding what to do. Habits become automatic, part of how we behave almost instinctively. Here are some good habits to adopt: Brushing and flossing teeth, looking both ways before crossing the road, getting ready to pay while still waiting in the queue (line), always checking emails before sending to make sure they are addressed to the right person, checking the spelling of everything you write (not just using the automatic spellcheck, but by reading it again), and keeping water with you to drink frequently throughout the day.

The habit of writing something every day is very important to me, as I have always wanted to be a writer of both fiction and non-fiction works. This blog is part of my non-fiction writing, and by getting into the habit of writing something here every day, I hope to acquire the habit of writing every day for the rest of my life, which should improve the quality of my writing as well as the quantity. 

If any readers have suggestions for blog topics, or wish to share stories about acquiring habits, please comment below!