Adrian Baker
I am happily retired to the Devon coast in the UK. I walk the dog, look after the garden and I am a 'serial learner' - this will be my 24th varied FL course in the past 5 years.
Location United Kingdom
Achievements
Activity
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Thank you for all the tutors for the effort and planning that obviously went into this course. I have learned a lot and will keep up with the exercises that I feel are most helpful. Thanks also for the effort you have put into the course whilst also fighting the Covid pandemic. Good luck to all the tutors and learners.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
I have completed 5 Mindfulness courses with FL (one twice and the other 3 times) and have been delighted with this course because it extends to self care and invites us to acknowledge that both good and bad experiences can be treated with compassion and gentleness. In particular, we need to treat everyone, including ourselves, with gentleness, understanding...
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Diane. I agree that the Ukraine situation is the latest of the seemingly inevitable conflicts we humans have to endure and that the meditation, although short, was like a breath of fresh air.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Very good exercise and I will try hard to show compassion and not to give advice or comment when someone is clearly in need of a kindly person to just listen to him/her.
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Adrian Baker replied to Yvette Wilson
@YvetteWilson Yvette. Yes, it's so easy to fall into bed and then worry about what problems have occurred during the day and what may be going wrong tomorrow. All of the techniques we have been given should help to concentrate on good quality sleep and happy dreams.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Dr Graham. I admire your honesty for sharing your horrible experience and making the technique available for everyone studying this course. I will certainly be using the technique in stressful situations. Thank you.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Some very practical suggestions for how to stop going on with the 'flow' of work until we are in a very bad place, which helps neither the individual nor the organisation. It's a good lesson to kick back sometimes and take a short break or exercise to restore the body and the brain and, of course, to ensure the work is done properly....
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Adrian Baker made a comment
I started this course feeling quite 'down' (I think due to Covid crisis and endless cloudy, dull days this winter). As usual, this Future Learn course has refocused me and made me think very hard. I would say that the focus required for this course (I have never studied the mind or the brain before), has given me a massive insight into what is going on in my...
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Adrian Baker made a comment
12,000 years is such a short time and we've already created pollution and rubbish and global warming which threatens the planet. Perhaps we can survive until we grow up and start to value our unique planet. PLEASE!!!
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Adrian Baker replied to Amanda J
Thanks Amanda - a very succinct and powerful presentation and definitely a good lesson for the next time I'm faced with a very close choice.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Thank you Mark and the question setters - these questions and answers certainly help me to understand a little more of what we are studying.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
We all look for the best/cheapest shops in all categories, we look for the best Schools for our kids, we adopt favourite pubs and restaurants, select the most interesting walks and drives and try to gather true friends of all ages for mutual support.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
It's surprising that 95% of our acts are likely to be unconscious. However, it makes sense to leave room for the new experiences and any problems, such as injuries or dangers. I'm really enjoying this course now. Thank you.
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Adrian Baker replied to Stephen Newton
This section (3.4) is a revelation to me. I had never heard an explanation of emotions described in such a clear and succinct way. Thank you - I believe that this knowledge will enhance my understanding of emotion for the rest of my life.
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Adrian Baker replied to Stephen B
@DianneFegan It's always the victors who put their spin on what actually happened, as they get to write the stories. So it appears that the 'goodies' always win but we know that can't always be true.
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Adrian Baker replied to Jilleon Bristol
Jilleon. Yes, it is amazing and I guess that there are more surprises to follow and probably fewer provable answers than most of us would like....
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Adrian Baker replied to Adrian Baker
Thanks Angela. I am going to have to work my way through a lot of new concepts, new words (aboutness and unpleasure), etc. but will definitely stick with it. I'll probably do the course again in a year or two, as it's certain that there will be a lot of updates to do. I am certainly finding the course mentally stimulating already and hope to gain an...
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Hi. I have completed 20 Future Learn courses in the last 12 years or so. I am 65 years old and have recently had problems in retaining information, especially day-to-day things that I have been told. My analytical mind is still OK, as I keep a series of spreadsheets up to date. I think the barrage of bad news relating to Covid has affected all of us to...
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Thanks to Hedda and Daniela and, as ever, to the delightful crowd of learners trying hard to understand. Like many of the comments below, I have been lost in places with the new terms and, at times, I think, some nuances will have passed me by. I may need to repeat this (if it's available) another time. Perhaps talk again then.
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Richard. Thanks for your insights over the last 3 weeks. I agree completely that the semantics are very difficult (as the quiz proved to me!).
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Adrian Baker replied to Teboho Mochaoa
Good points. I agree that we need to study the history to put today's societies and cultures into their proper context.
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Adrian Baker replied to David Poulton
@BarbaraIngram-Monk You are right of course but Columbus apparently still insisted until his dying day that he had found and explored the East Indies and not the Americas.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
He was, I think, really writing his experiences as a comedy book e.g. "Souvenir sellers....have learnt that white men will buy anything as long as it is overpriced." Presumably, he gets more serious once he gets started on the fieldwork.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Apart from the comments below, I was taken by Hedda's listening skills and how she teases out further comments with careful questioning. She clearly loves her work!
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Margaret. I couldn't improve on your statement.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Things not already said: - Q1. Barley thought that his fieldwork should be new and exciting but those with their hands on the cash wanted basic ethnography. Q2. Good advice was to make a will and Evans-Pritchard advised to "Get yourself a decent hamper from Fortnum and Mason's and keep away from the native women." Q3. Very dismissive of the whole...
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Adrian Baker replied to David Poulton
David. Yes, and we know that, for example, Columbus exaggerated the wealth of the Caribbean and Mexico coast because he wanted to go back and find more fame and more gold.
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Judi. Very well done with the OU degree and don't worry about the cream and jam.....
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As a new Devonian (living in the County of Devon UK) within the last 11 years or so, I believe that the cream should go on the scone first with the jam on top. Cornish people insist the jam goes on first with the cream on top. How can they get it so wrong?!?! Only joking, but it just goes to show it doesn't take much to build barriers with 'others' over...
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Adrian Baker replied to Jayde Corner
Jayde. And Barley seems to have very little time and patience with his fellow anthropologists, perhaps regretting his chosen courses and profession?
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Adrian Baker made a comment
What a great way to show us how we often don't understand that other cultures have other silly ways of doing things - just like we do from their point of view. We always assume that our crazy way of doing things is best, even when it's polluting the seas and causing global warming etc, etc.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
I usually just smile and say Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening as appropriate when meeting new people. I was brought up in a very kind and generous family but all the grandparents were very old fashioned and hugging was very rare. When I met my first wife, her family hugged me from the start. Eventually, I was happy to hug my own parents and they seemed to...
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Adrian Baker made a comment
I usually say Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening when meeting new people.
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Adrian Baker replied to Mathilde van den Berg
Mathilde. Your comments are very helpful. In particular, religious beliefs, rituals and practices are used by many to keep their culture alive, even when they are thousands of miles from their original families' homes and decades (even centuries) after they arrive in a new country.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
I was born in Somerset, England and there were no ethnic minorities, except in a few restaurants and takeaways. I wasn't aware that many people in the world were dark-skinned until Diana Ross and the Supremes came onto the Top of the Pops TV show when I was about 8 years old!! I have since lived in various parts of Southern England, some with many ethnic...
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Good morning from Devon, UK. Very pleased to be expanding my (almost non-existent) knowledge of Anthropology. This is (I think) my 20th Future Learn course and i have enjoyed them all, including some repeats. Look forwar dto getting to know some of you better.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
I would like to detect the 'ingredients' required for life as we know it. Michael D. Lemonick, writing in National Geographic in June 2014, said that we would need to find sunlight and/or redox chemistry, the 'right' temperature, water, the absence of something to kill life (e.g. excess radiation), nitrogen (to build amino acids) and (probably) oxygen.
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Adrian Baker replied to Tony Glover
Tony. This omission is probably because this excellent video was made around 2013 - Ian Crawford says that the Opportunity Rover arrived on Mars in January 2004 and "it's been active now for nine years."
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Adrian Baker made a comment
I think we need a Moon base first (on our Moon) to take missions away from our gravity and provide supplies of water, rocket fuel and oxygen to breath. Then I would suggest we look at the two moons which seem most likely to have had recent life in any form - Enceladus and Europa. Perhaps there's still life somewhere else and we need to find it.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
26 extra moons to explore and other great discoveries - not bad for a couple of flimsy probes!
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Adrian Baker made a comment
An important point that has not been made yet is that future astronauts may be able to take just enough fuel and water to get to the Moon and then, hopefully, replenish their resources at a 'pit stop' on the Moon. This would make the space missions cheaper, as the subsequent take off from the Moon would be less fuel intensive (because of the lower gravity).
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Adrian Baker replied to Susan Tyler
Susan. Thanks. That's a very good article but I don't think I know enough to make a guess with any hope of being even only a few noughts wrong.
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Adrian Baker replied to [Learner left FutureLearn]
@StephenDrinkwater Stephen. Yes, I first completed the course at the end of 2017 but always intended to update from time to time but it's incredible how much has happened that is not seriously reported in the mainstream news. I'll probably do it all again in another few years (if I'm still able to!).
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Persistence clearly pays - this is a major step forward for exploration of the Solar System.
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Michael. I think the water-ice in the craters must be H2O, otherwise it can't be "water-ice." I think the Hydroxyl is locked into some of the basalts. Again, I'm always happy to be corrected.
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Adrian Baker replied to [Learner left FutureLearn]
Hi Stephen. I like a succinct answer!
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Adrian Baker made a comment
I assume that the radioactive decay is a precise measurement of the age of rocks, but the extent of craters is a relative measurement of age, rather than a precise measurement?
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Adrian Baker made a comment
I love looking at these wonderful pictures but I'm struggling to understand all the new vocabulary. I'll probably go through this week again once i finish and try to nail down the meanings of the terms.
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Adrian Baker replied to Beate Doerre
@BeateDoerre See you there sometime soon.....
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Adrian Baker made a comment
And, to the credit of the astronauts and the good folk on the ground, even Apollo 13 got back safely.
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Adrian Baker replied to Beate Doerre
Beate - but you'd have to stay there forever.....
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Its Moondance by Van Morrison for me.
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Adrian Baker replied to Beate Doerre
Beate - that's a very funny clip!
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Hi Melvin. I'm guessing that newer ice is brighter than old ice. Someone might want to shoot me down on this!
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Michael - sounds like a good theory to me.
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Adrian Baker replied to Adrian Baker
Thanks Geoff - I just wanted to be sure i understood.
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Adrian Baker replied to Melvin Hurst
@KevinTipler Good point, Kevin.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Paul Schenk says that the 4 Galilean moons are in resonance. Does this include Callisto?
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Adrian Baker replied to Melvin Hurst
But the conspiracy theorists still insist that the Apollo landings were faked. Whatever happened to good old common sense?
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Adrian Baker replied to Adrian Baker
@JoeStormer Thanks Joe. I thought I could annotate my 2017 notes but there are so many important changes that I'm now making new notes on most of the topics. Hopefully, I can come back in a few more years and do it all again...
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Ours surely can't be the only Solar System with life, especially if we find any life on any other planet or moon or comet or whatever? I like to believe that, however tiny and simple, any finding of any other life in the Solar System outside of Earth must point to a Universe that teems with life. Of course, with the universe still accelerating away, we may...
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Adrian Baker replied to Adrian Baker
Thanks - I'll check that out.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Could a bigger but lighter moon orbit a smaller but heavier planet? If so, would it be a moon or would it be called a binary or double planet?
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Adrian Baker made a comment
I understand that anything less than 30 cms across is referred to as 'dust' or 'debris' and anything between 30 cms and 1 km across is referred to as a 'moonlet.' But I may be out of date.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Good morning (or whatever time of day it is for you). I am retired and live in Devon (UK). This is my 21st course since giving up the day job and is one I have done before but, as this was in 2017, I thought an update would be good.
Good luck to us all. -
Inga. Let's hope that the court can see through the lies and send the two Professors back home with no stain on their character. Sadly, we may not hear about the outcome in the UK on mainstream media (too obsessed with Covid) but I will put the 9th February on my calendar and try to find the result on line. Wishing you the best of luck in all you do.
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Adrian Baker replied to Adrian Baker
@JanetE Yes, Janet. Briefly, the Protocols were a Russian invention, fabricated and then published in 1903. The Protocols were a major cause of further pogroms in Russia and included a supposed Jewish plan for world domination. The Muslim Brotherhood, from the late 1920's, translated and adopted the Protocols, which sparked aggressive antisemitism in the...
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Adrian Baker replied to Judith Hatton
@SueW Yes, thank you, and 'the establishment' is fighting back with arguments that, hopefully, the general public will see and agree that vaccines are very safe and not all Hollywood 'A'-listers eat children........
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Thanks to all the contributors and fellow students for another excellent course. I have learned a great deal and will hope to put into practice the 'kindness to strangers' principles which we need to use every day, whoever we are meeting.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
It was very good to hear the thoughts of the Archbishop and the Imam as well as the senior Jews in this section. It shows that there is goodwill out there, as well as a lot of distrust and hate. Courses like this educate thousands and can change minds for the better. Thank you.
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@INGAMARCZYNSKA Hi Inga. I feel your pain and hope that your commitment to democracy, equality and decent behaviour will be an example that many, many others will follow.
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@JaneWhitehead Karl Marx was from a Jewish family which converted to the Protestant faith. Engels was from a rich manufacturing family and was also a Protestant.
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Adrian Baker replied to Judith Hatton
Judith - another excellent summary. I have a relative who carefully selects his websites to be full of crazy conspiracies. He believes all of them and even has a search engine which gives the craziest content at the top of the list. All of them are full of wild assertions and astonishing made-up 'facts' with no attempt to back anything up with checkable...
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I think you have hit the nail on the head. Because it is a youthful country, based on the Jewish faith, it should always adhere to Old Testament values, including the Ten Commandments. How can a modern country, surrounded by enemies, be expected not to defend itself on the Sabbath or not sometimes to kill? We shouldn't be expecting higher standards of...
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Anyone who denies that the Holocaust took place or disputes that it killed millions of Jews is antisemitic. Someone who suggests that the violence sometimes meted out by Israeli troops on unarmed Palestinians is legitimately entitled to that view, which is not antisemitic.
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Adrian Baker replied to Adrian Baker
@SueW Yes, you're right - a lazy piece of research this time by me.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
The basis of academic discussions should be proven facts and not simple assertions, faked texts and proven lies. It's that simple.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
The Muslims needed an 'excuse' for the creation of the State of Israel, their loss of much of their power, territory and influence and relative economic stagnation. Although the Protocols were exposed as fraudulent by the Times of London and the Frankfurter Zeitung in the 1920's, Muslims needed to believe that their problems were caused by someone else, and...
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Sorry, Elizabeth, I don't always get notification of comments for some reason. I simply went to "To Do" on Monday and there it all was. Hopefully, one of the technical team will read this exchange and try to help if you still can't access Week 5.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
How do the Islamists distort Islam and how do they misuse the Muslim sacred texts? Firstly, they invented the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to use these faked documents for antisemitic purposes. Secondly, the Quran had both positive and negative things to say about the Jews, who Muhammad respected as they were believers in only one God. The Muslim...
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Adrian Baker made a comment
It was odd that the Sultans undermined their own Empire by adopting nationalism at the expense of the Jews and Christians, who were likely to protest and either move away to more sympathetic countries or even fight to stay where they had previously been safe.
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Judith. Wikipedia says that the text was dictated by God directly to Muhammed between 609CE and 632CE, when Muhammed died. Not sure that this helps very much, as the quotes are so much at odds with each other, despite being relatively close together in time.
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Elizabeth - each week starts on the Monday, so you should be able to access Week 5 today.
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Of course, all lives matter, but the Jews were stripped of their citizenship, their possessions and then their freedom. They were forced to work for the Nazis in horrible conditions with almost no prospect of release or even decent food and medical help. Eventually most were killed in the most inhuman ways by gas or burning in crematoria or just from...
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Odd that the Soviet union was "anti-imperialist" when it controlled Poland, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, The Baltic States, Ukraine etc, etc. Methinks they doth protest too much.....
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Adrian Baker made a comment
It seems the Jews can't win. If they are poor and have little education, they are celebrated by the far left (but they will remain poor). If they are successful, they are pilloried by the far left as 'pulling the strings' of governments, banking and big business.
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Subtlety was never Donald Trump's most obvious attribute.....
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Sadly, they clearly don't have anything better to do. They can shout a lot, wear a smart uniform and beat people up, verbally and/or physically. So much more fun than joining the 'soft' mainstream parties and they don't have to think for themselves at all - just peddle the the rubbish they are told.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
Apart from all the natural revulsion in the earlier comments, the thing that really shocks me is that someone was sending this home as a 'holiday snap.' Wish you were here?
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@JennyBarrow That's a very good point. Sadly, it's unlikely to change anytime soon.
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Judith. The trouble with conspiracy theories is that they get more and more unlikely as they are discussed over the decades. The given 'facts' become more and more unlikely to be true and the conclusions, therefore, are also likely to be inaccurate. However, what do I know?
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Adrian Baker made a comment
The Jews had no homeland to go to and, whatever they did, Hitler would never accept that they were 'being constructive' for the good of Germany. There is no real chance of staying safely in Germany and, if they leave the country, they would lose most of their possessions and not necessarily be welcomed elsewhere. They must have felt helpless.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
It appears to me that the Germans had suffered defeat on the battlefield, harsh terms in the Versailles Treaty and then economic collapse in the early 1920's and again from 1929. It appears that many German people were indifferent to the Jews, and many more actively disliked them. They were perfect scapegoats that the Nazis could use to get their Aryan...
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Adrian Baker replied to Mizuki Kobayashi
@MizukiKobayashi Yes, thank you. And it's also useful to look at the political spectrum as a circle, rather than from extreme right wing to extreme left wing. Communists and Nazis speak very differently but the effect on the common people is always to be exploited by the elite (who hold all the power and the vast majority of the money) , whatever they claim...
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Adrian Baker replied to Mizuki Kobayashi
Mizuki. It's because common sense and logic go out of the window when, deep down, you hate a section of the community for whatever reason. Anything they do will be criticised and the critics don't care if their contradictory attacks are completely incompatible and illogical. Sadly, it's how we are 'wired.'
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Adrian Baker replied to Judith Hatton
Judith. Another excellent summary. I would just add that the impact of the influenza pandemic just after WW1 must have also contributed to the economic and social problems.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
I think that the excitement of the Revolution and the huge enthusiasm for a new way of governing (i.e. everyone has a vote and no-one can be an all-powerful king), enabled people to co-operate together for the change that they agreed they needed. However, the 'truce' between the Jews and the antisemites did not stop the Jews being Jewish or the antisemites...
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Marilyn - good point. The Jews were getting 'promoted' into the middle classes because many understood more languages than the 'locals' and were expert in commerce and finance. How ironic that these capitalist tendencies counted against them as well as the worry that many were thought of as Communist agitators.
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Adrian Baker made a comment
it's strange how people often resent the 'others,' even when everyone can benefit from the redistribution of some of the power of the nation state down to the peasants, factory workers etc. It seems many would keep the minorities down, even if those keeping them down also suffer from their own prejudice i.e they don't get the open democracy that they want...
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@EileenRogers You're right - sorry to show my naivete.