Eternal youth!!!!
No, this is not a cynical attempt to manipulate search engines to get more hits on my site, although a few more hits might certainly be welcome. Actually, it confronts a major issue that has preoccupied mankind, and womankind in particular, ever since the first human being put pen to paper, or stylus to clay tablet if you prefer.
It is generally accepted that most people (though certainly not all people) would like to look younger than they actually are. This may be a simple question of vanity or, perhaps more commonly, a reluctance to face up to old age. However, trying to look younger is not just a cause of constant frustration but is also the basis of a multi-billion dollar industry that has endured for several thousand years (allowing for inflation). And yet the really strange think about this quest for youthfulness is that we all know that it will ultimately be unsuccessful. Okay, you can push back the tide of old age for some time by a judicious use of cosmetics, the occasional slight facelift, a dozen or twenty infinitesimal botox injections, a carefully positioned toupee or a handful of shoe-polish rubbed into your hair, but beneath our skins we all know that time’s winged chariot is hurrying ever nearer. And breaking all the speed limits on its way. So we’re talking about a temporary solution at best.
And meanwhile, we will gladly…well, perhaps not gladly but at least acceptingly…spend thousands in our lifetimes on trying to camouflage the effects of age.
Doesn’t this seem a teensy weensy bit illogical? After all, when confronted with other signs of old age – failing eyesight and falling teeth, for example – most of us will shrug our shoulders and resign ourselves to spectacles and a set of dentures. Obviously, we need the spectacles to see and the dentures to eat so we don’t have much choice – we have to bite the bullet, as it were. So why don’t we do this when it comes to a few wrinkles?
I think the answer is that we believe – or have been led to believe – that wrinkles can be eliminated somehow. All it takes is a few centimetres of makeup, or, if you’re to be authentically Egyptian, white lead, and nobody will know that really you’re old enough to be Cleopatra’s grandmother. Or grandfather, if I’m to be uncharacteristically politically correct.
And talking of political correctness, isn’t it strange that, in spite of saving the whale and corporate social responsibility, wrinkled faces are still not generally accepted? I mean, have you ever taken a close look at the Southern Right Whale? It’s got more excrescences than Oliver Cromwell. And, corporate social responsibility or no CSR, what would you give for your chances of landing a well-paid job in a major corporation when the interviewer notes that you have a face like an elephant’s backside?
I can see two solutions to this.
The first solution calls for two major mindshifts: one on the part of the wrinkler and the other on the part of the wrinklee. Firstly, the wrinkler, being the person possessing the wrinkles, has to come to terms with the fact that wrinkles are not only inevitable but also acceptable, and not only acceptable but also beautiful. The same really applies to the wrinklee – the person viewing the wrinkles.
To demonstrate how this can happen, let’s take two major figures of world literature. The first is the celebrated poet W.H. Auden (1907-1973). Now here was a man who was not only one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century and a professor of poetry at Oxford University but also someone who possessed a face from which a thousand ships had been launched. You can clearly see the slipways.

W.H. Auden (Getty Images)
The other major literary figure is the novelist Barbara Cartland (1901-2000). Well, let’s be honest about the ‘major literary figure’ bit – she rarely deviated into literature - but she was extremely prolific with the book that she wrote. And we have to show her due respect because, not only did she live to be almost 100, but she also fought doggedly against the onset of old age every step of the way.

Barbara Cartland
Now my question is this: Age and gender apart, who would you rather share a glass of fresh orange juice and a boiled egg with? In my view, one face radiates honesty and integrity while the other reflects secrecy and subterfuge. One face suggests that age is irrelevant and the other that it’s all-important. One face is beautiful and the other is not.
And the faces of old people really are beautiful. You just have to recognise the beauty and lay aside your established notions of smooth skin.
The other solution to the problem of eternal youth is much easier to achieve.
I think we would all agree that without light we can see nothing. What we see is simply light reflected from a surface and interpreted into an image in our brain. It might therefore follow that the less light there is, the less interpretation goes on but, paradoxically, this does not appear to be the case. At low levels of light, our brains fill in the missing details. They paper over the cracks, as it were, or in this case, the wrinkles. I’m sure there are many of you who have chatted to some apparently delightful member of the opposite, or perhaps same sex in a dimly lit bar or club, only to be rather shocked in the cold light of day. Or have been totally misled by the artistically out-of-focus photographs of hopefuls on Eastern European dating websites (oops).
The brain fills in the missing details.
So the secret of eternal youth is obvious. Lighting. If you’re fifty-plus and really do want to pick up some nice young thing at least twenty years younger than yourself, you will have to ensure that you are seen in dim lighting at all times. And I mean at all times. There must be no question of ‘the cold light of day’, for example. Pretending to be a vampire might help in some cases, but the Goth idea will eventually give way to something less gothic and then where are you? Claiming an allergy to ultra-violet light is safer but be prepared to take all your holidays in northern Greenland in the winter with a parasol in your hand at all times.
The really cruel aspect of getting older is that the older you get, the younger you feel. Until you look in the mirror, of course. So, to conclude, a couple of useful tips.
Always have dim light in the bathroom. You may hack yourself to pieces shaving but you can console yourself with the idea that a few more wrinkles have gone west. Remove mirrors everywhere else in the house except for the basement or attic (if dimly lit).
Having resigned yourself to wearing spectacles or contact lenses, don’t wear them. This has the same effect as dim lighting. However, do be aware that many other people do not wear spectacles or contact lenses. So be prepared for that holiday in sunny Greenland.
Grow old gracefully.

Remember the days when Apple was wholesome? No, neither do I.
The fact is, Apple has never been entirely wholesome. They even ripped off their name from the Beatles’ company and there have been at least two court cases to my knowledge between the Fabs (or the surviving Fabs) and Mr Jobs’ company, one of which ended up in a weird form of gentleman’s agreement in which Apple agreed to refrain from dabbling in music (hello iTunes) and a second that was decided in favour of Apple Corps and not Apple Inc (for the subject of this, see earlier parenthetic comment). So when people say that Microsoft ripped off Apple, you might remind them of John, Paul, George and Ringo.
I recently translated a book, or parts of a book to be more exact, about 25 leading Dutch businesspeople and what had made them successful. At the end of the interviews, each was asked who they thought was the most successful marketer. Most of them replied ‘Steve Jobs’. And there can be no doubt that the real power in Apple lies in its marketing. After all, if you can charge a whopping great price for your products and get it, your marketing must be nothing short of phenomenal.
And what do you get for this whopping great price? Let’s take a look at one of Apple’s latest offerings – the MacBook Air – because I believe it to be exemplary of their marketing style. And, in line with being The Opposite, let’s first take a look at what it doesn’t have.
It doesn’t have a DVD drive or even a CD-ROM drive, so no low-budget in-flight movies for you. It doesn’t even have an Ethernet port, much less a serial port. It has only one USB port. It has no user-replaceable parts. The first version came with an 80 GB hard disc, which, considering that OSX Leopard was pre-installed, left you with a thumping 71 GB. If that.
But there must be some plus-points to counterbalance specifications not seen since the Sinclair ZX. Surely?
Well, there’s its…erm…extreme thinness. It’s practically anorexic. Yes, astutely realising that producing the world’s fattest laptop (with three 500 GB hard discs stacked vertically and a Sony CRT monitor bolted to the chassis) wouldn’t be a great commercial success, Mr. Jobs and Co. opted for the thinnest. And it’s certainly thin. I’ve seen fatter pancakes.
And it’s also light, so don’t use it in high winds. It’s even lighter if you wipe the hard disc.
And, of course, it looks beautiful. Which is the whole point of the exercise. You see most Apple laptop users aren’t really too bothered about its lack of specifications. They’re more concerned with aesthetics. And snob value. After all, you’re sitting at your pavement café, sipping your latte with around 1,200 pounds sterling of equipment floating serenely on your tabletop. You could buy two complete PCs for that price although that wouldn’t leave much room for your cup. It’s a bit like having a Ferrari parked in front of you – equally stupid in a 30 m.p.h. zone and no room in it for more than a small suitcase, which aptly sums up the Air.
Apple is, and always has been, about the image of using an Apple. It has long been regarded as the acceptable face of the computer industry. A sort of plastic Mother Theresa without the wrinkles. But does this company, which earns billions in profits every year, really deserve this accolade?
As primitive as the MacBook Air sounds, it can all be upgraded at a price. You simply have to buy the optional extras. And that iPod comes with a veritable host of optional extras, either manufactured by Apple or not, to enhance your listening/watching/tactile experience. You can even download iTunes to your iPod, at a price. And what about the software that you’re going to install on your Mac. Well, it has to be Mac-compatible for a start, and there’s a hefty price tag on that too. So we’re not exactly talking about digital equipment for the workers here, are we? More like dispensable gadgets for the over-privileged.
And yet Apple continues to blossom. While Microsoft is widely regarded as a monopolistic, monolithic corporate giant intent on world domination, Apple is still seen as sweet, innocent, beautiful and small.
But beware. Sometimes opposites not only attract but also change places.

The sad thing about creativity is that it tends to be in the hands of people who aren’t the slightest bit creative. Painters are in the hands of gallery owners, who can’t paint. Writers are in the hands of publishers, who can’t write. Actors are, all too often, in the hands of directors who can’t act.
This situation becomes even more bizarre when you look at advertising. In advertising, those responsible for creative input are imaginatively called ‘creatives’. To many people, advertising and creativity might seem to be a contradiction in terms but in fact nothing could be further from the truth. In fact some of the greatest creative endeavours of the past hundred years have taken place in the field of advertising.
Unfortunately, advertising is one of the very few areas where people are directly employed – on a salaried basis – to be creative. From nine to five, five days a week. And sometimes seven.
Can you imagine any other artist being required to turn up at the desk/workshop/atelier at nine o’clock on a Monday morning and told to be creative? Can you imagine Leonardo da Vinci rolling into his studio, bleary from a weekend of serious Chianti tasting, to be told to come up with a new Mona Lisa by yesterday but this time without the castle in the background and painted for a property developer in Birmingham with a lovely wife who is solariumised, siliconised and can’t smile because of the botox injections ?
I think not.
So let’s not stigmatise advertising ‘creatives’. Leonardo would have had a much harder time coming up with a slogan for fresh dried peas than a design for a helicopter. And this is simply because he could take his time over the helicopter. There was no one to say, “Hey Leo, I want a helicopter by next Tuesday” for the simple reason that nobody knew what a helicopter was. At the very most they might have said something like, “You know those sycamore seeds that spin when they’re falling? Maybe you could come up with something that spins and rises instead”. However, history suggests that this was not the case.
Which leads one to conclude that creativity cannot be understood by people who are not creative. For a non-creative mind, trying to understand what it means to be creative is akin to a common newt (not the palmate newt, of course) struggling to understand quantum mechanics. You can see the black hole, of course, but it turns out to be just another piece of frog spawn.
This is not to say that creativity is the be-all and end-all. Creative people have just as much difficulty in understanding non-creative people. The significant difference is that non-creatives are the majority and truly creative people (as opposed to the self-deluders who firmly believe that ‘everyone’ has at least one novel/poem/painting/sculpture/work of environmental installation art in them) are by far, far, far the minority.
Perhaps the real truth is that most of us have lost touch with our primeval desire to express ourselves in favour of the stark reality of putting bread on the table. Can you imagine a financial speculator painting a dollar bill on the wall of his room to assure victory in the next takeover? Or a property developer fashioning an intricately carved concrete and glass amulet? But I believe that there was a time – long ago – when the creative impulse was closer to all of us than it is now.
For those of us that remain from those prehistoric times, the creative impulse is often more a hindrance than an advantage.
To be continued, naturally….

For those of you who are a bit slow on the uptake, or perhaps it’s just one of those slow days anyway, ‘golb’ is, of course, ‘blog’ spelled backwards. This is intended to summarise the intention behind this site: to offer an alternative point of view and challenge accepted ideas. To deal in opposites. To be an opposing site.

Great.

Of course, like all good intentions, it’s not going to last very long, is it? I’m quietly confident that within a month, or maybe even less, this fine intention will have degenerated into yet another egocentric rant, of which there are depressingly many on the mighty electric Internet.

I’m new to blogs. Not new to reading them of course but certainly new to actually pasting one of them onto the Internet. There’s a lot more involved than you think. Until recently, I might have guessed that PHP meant Professor of Philosophy but it turns out to be a scripting language, and like all languages it has to be learned. The hosting company and the providers of the blogging software (take a bow WordPress) make it all sound so simple but the few clicks that it takes to put your site online are only the start of a much longer process of making it look good and work well.

So if this site doesn’t live up to either of these criteria, sorry. Come back in a couple of weeks and it might be better. At least that’s the good intention.

Naturally, I made a quick search on Google to find any other golbs out there. There are several. For instance, there’s Norman Golb (1928- ) who is, apparently, the Ludwig Rosenberger Professor in Jewish History and Civilization at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Take a bow, Norm. I wonder if he has a blog, and, if he does, what he calls it. Perhaps he calls it ‘The Opposite’ too – or Norman Golb’s blog.

Then there’s the golb that ‘is a piece of software which searches a directory recursively for mp3 and m3u files and creates an SQLite database out of the information found’. Amazing. Why would anyone want to do that? I can’t think of a more useless waste of time. Unless, of course, you happen to be an mp3 file desperately in search an SQLite database. Not the sort of thing you usually see in a Lonely Hearts column, is it? ‘Mp3 file seeks friendly, intelligent, considerate SQLite database with a view to procreation. Must be fond of children and a non-smoker’.

According to the Urban Dictionary, golb is ‘kinda like gold but then black’. I think there’s a point that I’m impressively missing there.

And as you scroll faithfully down through Google, old Norm pops up regularly. For a Ludwig Rosenberger Professor in Jewish History and Civilization, he certainly gets around.

But how much do you really want to scroll through Google? And why? Isn’t it enough to have a golb site without wanting to research its ancestry? I’m proud of its golbiness. But, of course, this is all part of the good intention, and we all know that it won’t last.