Wednesday, July 29, 2015

My critical thinking and me

I like investigation as an activity.  It seems like the path to some pretty good truth.  Investigation requires questioning and doubts.  You read or hear (or think) an assertion: A is x.  Is it really?  Or is that just an illusion?  What is the evidence that A is x?  How long has A been x?  The assertion gets interrogated as the investigation proceeds.


My personality, my childhood, my family life, the qualities of the age - science, debate and dialogue, even the invention and rise of mass media and advertising with its assertions that this product is better than that one - all those forces contribute to founding and maintaining a habit of critical thinking.  Since the habit is a habit of mind, I can't easily take a break from critical thinking. In general, the more I care about an assertion, the more strongly and persistently my investigatory habits kick in.


It's true that when I meditate, I can and do stop critical thinking. During those ten minutes, I just listen and look.  I am just aware.  Minds are thought-producers naturally but when I do realize I am into consideration, thought production or critical thinking, which I notice fairly quickly since I am used to meditation, then I go back to just observing and listening and not thinking or imagining.  But the critical/investigatory stuff comes right in as soon as it is allowed.  "Who says?"  "How do we know?" Etc.


Schools often tout their emphasis on critical thinking, which is indeed important in today's world of political, advertising and scams, continuous scientific debates about emerging ideas and possibilities and a stunning set of choices for money, energy and allegiance.  However, teachers and parents who live with bright, questioning kids can tell you about the greater burden of working with critical thinkers, as can politicians, executives and physicians as the world increases its communication and consequent dialogues among differing thinkers and doers.


Am I a good husband?  A good citizen?  Am I led by the nose by showy displays and claims?  Maybe.  Depends on who you ask, what you mean and what evidence can be pulled together for and against.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

What happened to the old one?

He has never been impressed by computers and wanted to give them up when he retired.  People still want to email him, though, so they send the email to his electronically with-it wife, who tells him about his messages.  The other day, I said to him that he should get an iPad.  He said,"I have an iPad."  After picking my astonished self up off the ground, I asked when he of all people got an iPad.  He told me that his wife wanted a new iPad and gave her old one to him.  


That got me thinking about about the old version of things: old cars, old computers, old sewing machines, old cellphones.  You probably realize that the general trend in manufacturing has been toward greater and greater reliability.  Maybe you have heard of "Six Sigmas", just one of several programs to master and apply statistical, administrative and philosophical concepts that aim at making manufacturing and systematic mistakes, errors and mishaps rarer and rarer.  It is all part of the move toward higher levels of quality. Higher quality means things last.  Just look at the number of items shipped to less developed nations from our used supply of things.


As with my friend, you may be surprised.  You say you don't want the bother and expense of a smartphone but your son offers you his old with plenty of use left in it.  It was engineered to last ten years and it is only three years old.  Why not?  Your grandson's neighbor is getting rid of a jet-powered snowmobile, must have room for the new model coming in a few days and offers the boy and his parents a real bargain at $75.  It is worth $300 so it is a bargain.  They know it has been well cared for and they have a built-in contact with a good mechanic right next door.  It would be dumb to turn it down.


So, it goes.  You think things are based on price but it turns out contacts, friendships, aging, time and the push to bring out new models have all sorts of effects you wouldn't anticipate.  In my neighborhood, the white elephant exchanges to get rid of older, unwanted stuff have new broader appeal and usage.  In some cases, old models of husband or wives are on offer.  I am not sure how that is going to go.




--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Twitter: @olderkirby

Monday, July 27, 2015

The lure of bad boys

I could tell through high school and later that some boys and young men are attractive to some women just because the guys tend to be rebels, rule-breakers, daredevils.  I began reading "Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object" by Laurie Colwin, a novel about a well-off, upper class young man who died at an early age on his motorcycle, soon after he married.  The story is about the young wife left alone but it brings to mind the lure of bad boys.


I wouldn't say I was ever a great lover but I was definitely interested in women.  However, when I sensed or saw that someone I was attracted to was drawn to a derring-do kind of guy, I focused elsewhere.  I studied the Myer-Briggs personality test and I read about the derivative of it called True Colors.  I realize that a large section of humanity enjoys following the rules and looks down on those who don't.  I know that society tries to pressure everyone to follow the rules and most of the time, I like to go along with the rules and with proper behavior.


Sometimes, sets of rules are tyrannous or unfair or cruel.  Rules like that are meant to be disobeyed while being changed.  But playing "chicken" in a drag race or Russian roulette with a loaded revolver, doing things for the bare thrill has never appealed to me.  Whether it is a gift or a curse, I have never felt a need to get close to death unnecessarily.  I don't think I would be thrilled that a bullet just missed.  My imagination makes clear the great likelihood that another shot won't miss.  I don't think I would prove much to myself, or a girl I wanted to impress, by jumping my motorcycle over a canyon.  


I am often impatient to get there but trying to bury the needle of a speedometer doesn't draw me.  You bury the needle at 180 and tell me what it was like.  Try not to get mangled or mangle anyone else.



--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Twitter: @olderkirby

Sunday, July 26, 2015

Competition and comparison

I was surprised yesterday when an Oregon friend commented on the competition and discord post.  I hadn't meant to send it out until this morning, which is my usual time of day.  Sometimes, I make mistakes and click on the wrong thing without paying good attention. 

An additional side of competition is the lack of ways to measure ourselves except by comparisons with others.  Such relative measurement is clear in our words for high quality such as "excell-ent" and "outstanding".  If you try to create some labels that teachers could use to express very good work, you can see the basic approach of saying a student is good because he is the better than others.  In fact, when teachers try to avoid competition and comparison, the hard-driving parents sometimes ask about relative standing: "Is he the best in the class?" "Is she the best you have ever seen?"  It is often surprising to me how difficult it is to communicate high levels of talent, genuinely valuable ability without comparisons.  Even with a new sort of ability, it is the rarity or scarcity of the ability that gets our attention: "Your child seems to be able to read other students' minds [and by implication, that is unheard of in anyone else]".
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Twitter: @olderkirby

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Competition and discord

It seems part of being male to be competitive, to try to stand out, to win, to defeat others.  Walter Ong, a Jesuit scholar, in his insightful "Fighting for Life", discusses this basic characteristic.  If you think you know some men who are not competitive, you have probably overlooked some aspect of their lives.  Are they champion furniture restorers?  Do they know the football stats better than their friends do?


I used to think that competitiveness stays out of the lives of women but the more I watch, the more I doubt that it does.  Which Grandma gives out the best cookies?  Which young woman has the most boys vying for her attention? Who is the loving-est, most sensitive, best groomed?


We are in a contentious age, one where public and political partisanship and polarity are easy to find.  The presence of the internet, with its invitation for any and all to comment on any and all subjects, controversies and questions, makes verbal put-downs and insults easy. The structure of the internet makes it easy to see what comments, what good and not-so-good manners are out there.  


Besides the individual and personal contributions on the internet, the professional and semi-professional media are amplifiers of controversy.  In the year and a half before a presidential election with a large number of candidates, there is a spirit of energy and speed to out-comment, out-do, and out-audacious everybody else.  I think these conditions make it easier than usual to underestimate the value of clever cooperation.


Time magazine has a current cover depicting George Bush and Bill Clinton.  The story includes pictures of the two men in a golf cart and also pictures of George W and Clinton in a public event of some kind, shaking hands with the crowd.  I know that many people are repelled by bickering and backbiting.  It is difficult to be attracted to that sort of thing but I wouldn't be surprised if we see more evidence of friendliness, or at least respect, as the value of that sort of atmosphere shows itself.

Getting squashed

Lynn has two raised beds of vegetable gardening. One of them has only three kinds: zucchini, kale and Hubbard squash.  We bught a Hubbard squash in the past. That sort of squash can be a little scary.  The one we bought a few years ago was the size of milk crate, had bluish skin and strange bumps on it.  It looked like a Hollywood version of an alien pod, the sort that grows somewhere secret and ripens to burst with little green men.  


Of course, I was leery of it as food but it turned out to be quite good.  This time, Lynn actually planted the magic beans and invited the plant to produce.  The plant has five or six squash  growing on it.  As is typical of squash plants, the plant is very aggressive and is sending thick, strong energetic stems the size of garden hoses out of the raised bed, out into our prairie plants and into anything it can.  


Garrison Keillor once said that during zucchini season, he found the long green squash everywhere.  He was reading the paper in his living room and put a section he was finished with on the floor beside him.  When he picked that paper up, there was a zucchini under there! We have been experiencing that same pugnacious oversupply and had had our share of zucchini dishes and it isn't even August yet. Some of the squash will no doubt find its way to our neighbors and friends.  Some of the zucchini will be shredded and frozen in small batches for later soups and such.  The Hubbard will be baked in the oven and the meat frozen in dinner serving sizes for use over the coming year.


Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Twitter: @olderkirby

Friday, July 24, 2015

Emotion, brains, women and science

When I read a good book, especially a good non-fiction book, I like to highlight notable comments, facts and incidents on my iPad in the Kindle app.  I use the device to send the highlight to Twitter.  The other day, I started reading "The Emotional Life of the Your Brain" by Richard Davidson and Sharon Begley.  Prof. Davidson is a world-renown researcher who persuaded the Dalai Lama to loan some monks who are advanced and experienced meditators to his lab at the Univ. of Wisconsin to study what happens in their brains when they meditate.  Sharon Begley is an experienced technical writer who has collaborated on several books and written for Reuters and Newsweek. She has written and co-written other books about the brain.


The book starts off explaining the weight of opinion at the time Davidson began graduate school against the subject of emotion as a suitable focus for scientific study.  I quickly found parts that I wanted to highlight and send to Twitter.


Here are some of those Tweets:

Real smiling makes you happy. "Only when both muscle groups participated did we see a shift toward greater left-s... http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7177753-only-when-both-muscle-groups-participated-did-we-see-a …

Feelings go along with rational conscious thought "Yet we had fingered the prefrontal cortex. This region was co... http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7177756-yet-we-had-fingered-the-prefrontal-cortex-this-region-was …

Actresses are important in scientific research "I didn't trust the film clips we'd been using to induce the emot... http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7177758-i-didn-t-trust-the-film-clips-we-d-been-using-to …

Babies are good participants in brain research "First, babies are very expressive emotionally, giggling or cryin... http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7177763-first-babies-are-very-expressive-emotionally-giggling-or-crying-or …


Because I am a male and have been all my life, I try to stay conscious of what I see and learn about the life I haven't lived, that of a female.  Stories like "Excellent Women" by Barbara Pym help me notice the quiet female presence in our lives, from the months before birth on.


Davidson gathered evidence that positive emotions tend to be on one side of the brain and negative on the other.  He found that this was true across cultures and nationalities.   Then, he wanted to study young brains to see if they did the same thing.  He was able to get 10-month old babies but to elicit positive and negative emotions in them, he recruited some actresses to make positive and negative faces and voice sounds.  The babies' brains reacted the same way his adult subjects' brains had.


I think it is notable that we are all born from women and both sexes tend to hear their first human sounds from women.  I have repeatedly seen that women can jump from one sort of emotional expression to another quite different one and back to the first quickly, smoothly and convincingly.  It is impressive that women's emotional, intellectual and vocal abilities can be an important scientific tool.



--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Twitter: @olderkirby

Thursday, July 23, 2015

My traffic stop and hers

I had my teeth cleaned at the dentist's and was on my way home.  Two short turns from the office and I faced a traffic light.  The light was red but the cross traffic had not started up yet and I made a right turn in front of it and took off.


As I did so, I noticed a police car in the next street take off behind me.  It followed me through my next turn and then I saw its red and blue lights flashing behind me.  I pulled over and was given a ticket for driving right through a stop sign.  The officer said that the city had erected stop signs at that intersection and others to prevent straight drives through, of the very kind I had just done.  He noted that section of highway is the most accident-heavy one in the area and I know he is right.


I read this morning that Sandra Bland, a woman in Texas, was arrested and jailed for changing lanes while driving without signaling.  She was later found dead in her cell.


I haven't been paying much attention to the Bland case but being stopped this morning for was is probably a more serious violation than Sandra Bland committed got my attention.  I didn't know much about the situation but reading the novel "Superior Justice" by Tom Hilpert at the same time several serious or actually lethal instances of black citizens being stopped, arrested and later dying in police custody in other parts of the US has made me realize how much can happen during traffic stops by police.


Locally, we had a case a couple of years ago of a traffic stop that resulted in the officer being shot in the abdomen several times.  I think he survived.  The police don't know who they are stopping, what sort of mood the driver is in, what his or her record is like, nor what weapons and such are in the car.  I just read that the Bland cop told her to extinguish her cigarette as he approached her.  She asked why she had to extinguish her cigarette when she was in her own car.


A burning cigarette, a lighter and many other things can be weapons, or used as momentary distractions.  In the moments the officer approaches the car, I think it is best not to make sudden movements, not to get out of the car unless told to do so and generally to do what one is told when told.  The point is to present no danger or risk and not to appear to present dangers or risks.


On the other hand, my parents, grandparents, siblings, relatives, neighbors and friends have not been picked on or hassled by the police.  I read this morning that Sandra Bland was an activist and she may well have heard plenty about mistreatment of blacks by police.  It is easy in a secluded spot for words or actions from either party to insult and inflame and later to ignore or actually to forget what was done and when.


This matter of police handling of others is certainly undergoing scrutiny and I think it should.  I am pretty sure the whole business can be improved.



--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Twitter: @olderkirby

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Relaxed wren, calm chipmunk

I have had a few talks with our local chipmunk and wren.  It pains me to see them jerking around all the time, jump here, snap there.  I have emphasized that life is too full and too amazing and actually too fleeting to be in such a hurry all the time.  Like people, they let their perky little egos get in the way.  "So busy, so much to do!", the wren's body language repeats, here, there, over there and then right back to where it was a minute ago, all the while staying vigorously on the alert.


I have been trying to teach the chipmunk to S-L-O-W-L-Y turn its head.  Walk! Don't leap and leap and leap.  Just calmly walk across the deck.  No scurrying, no leaping.  At a slight slower pace, it could see better, learn better, enjoy better.  Despite my best efforts, both animals resist.  They explain that it is not them, but me.  My nervous system has longer distances to transmit impulses, my cavernous brain has so much stuffed in it, there are so many decision gates and verifications that have to be performed.  As a result, they say, I have a twisted view of life: move it!  It's a better way to live.


Don't worry, I will persist.  I will continue on with my lectures, my bribes, my attempts at persuasion.  If you come across noticeably relaxed chippies and wrens with equanimous attitudes, clearly taking life in stride and savoring it, credit my efforts, ok?



--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Twitter: @olderkirby

Monday, July 20, 2015

Money or more basic exchanges?

I have begun listening to Prof. Michael Salemi on the basics of money and banking.  In his 2nd lecture of his Great Course, he explains a problem with the exchange of actual goods instead of money.  I always thought it would be fun to actually barter my stuff for your stuff.  But Salemi says to think about it.  I have extra kale from (Lynn's) garden and I would like some tiramisu.  Unfortunately, you don't have any tiramisu you want to give away and you don't like kale, even Lynn's Russian red kale. So, no dice - there does not seem to be a possibility of an exchange between us.  By the time I find a tiramisu maker with a little to give away who also likes kale, I will be too old to carry out the deal.


That is the genius of money.  It is a great go-between.  I buy tiramisu with money and the tiramisu maker uses the money to buy a preferred vegetable, or goes to a movie or fills his tank with fuel. Using an indirect carrier of value basically allows us to convert anything into anything else.  I see now that I had always pictured the easy part, the part where my lovely fish is exchanged for your lamb chops.  Salemi quotes somebody on bartering that bartering requires a double coincidence: you happen to want my fish and I happen to want lamb chops.  I can see all sorts of possible difficulties.  I might think my fish is worth more than the number of chops you have.  You might think my fish is too small for even one chop.


Again, with money, we can adjust the deal and each get some of what we want.


For a long time, gold served as money or stood behind money.  No medieval alchemist ever found a way to make gold and its rarity seemed to make it a good sort of money.  Like paper money, like silver coins, gold, in and of itself, isn't basically that helpful for human life.  But if we can guess that other people will accept gold so they in turn can trade it for what they want, we can go with that guess and do exchanges that accumulate gold.  Or something else of value.  If money is greenbacks, paper dollars no longer backed by gold, it is an example of "fiat" money, money that Salemi says is valuable because "the government says it is valuable."  However, he emphasizes that money is a social contract  and the people must believe that the gold or silver or rubles or dollars will be accepted by others for the system to work.



--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Twitter: @olderkirby

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Food or higher thoughts?

How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and woodlot! The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh. But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.

Thoreau, Henry David (2009-10-04). Walden (1854) (pp. 2-3). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.


Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorance—which his growth requires—who has so often to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him. The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly. Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time,

Thoreau, Henry David (2009-10-04). Walden (1854) (p. 3). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.

Smith, Adam (2012-05-16). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) (p. 6). University Of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.


As a child, I knew nothing about photography, and even if I had I couldn't have afforded to have my picture taken. So I am able to piece together an image of my childhood based solely upon historical photographs and my own recollections, although I daresay that the image I conjure up is real to me. Back then, five- or six-year-olds like myself went virtually naked all through the spring, the summer, and the fall. We threw something over our backs only during the bitterly cold winters. Such tattered clothes are beyond the imagination of today's children in China.

Yan, Mo (2012-01-05). Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh: A Novel (Kindle Locations 36-40). Arcade Publishing. Kindle Edition.

During those times, we had an amazing ability to withstand cold. With our bottoms exposed, we didn't feel that the cold was unbearable, even though feathered birds cried in the freezing weather. If you had come to our village back then, you'd have seen plenty of children with their bottoms exposed or wearing only a bit of thin clothing as they chased each other in the snow, having a wonderful, rowdy time. I have nothing but admiration for myself as a youngster; I was a force to be reckoned with then, a much finer specimen than I am now. As kids, we had little meat on our bones; we were sticklike figures with big rounded bellies, the skin stretched so taut it was nearly transparent — you could just about see our intestines twist and coil on the other side. Our necks were so long and thin it was a miracle they could support our heavy heads. And what ran through those heads was simplicity itself: all we ever thought about was food and how to get it. We were like a pack of starving dogs, haunting the streets and lanes sniffing the air for something to put inside our bellies. Plenty of things no one would even consider putting into their mouths these days were treats for us then. We ate the leaves off trees, and once they were gone we turned our attention to the bark. After that, we gnawed on the trunks themselves. No trees in the world ever suffered as much as those in our village.

Yan, Mo (2012-01-05). Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh: A Novel (Kindle Locations 43-52). Arcade Publishing. Kindle Edition.


In the spring of 1961, a load of glistening coal was delivered to our elementary school. We were so out of touch we didn't know what the stuff was. But one of the brighter kids picked up a piece, bit off a chunk, and started crunching away. The look of near rapture on his face meant it must have been delicious, so we rushed over, grabbed pieces of our own, and started crunching away. The more I ate, the better the stuff tasted, until it seemed absolutely delicious. Then some of the village adults who were looking on came up to see what we were eating with such gusto, and joined in. When the principal came out to put a stop to this feast, that only led to pushing and shoving. Just what that coal felt like down in my belly is something I can no longer recall, but I'll never forget how it tasted. Don't for a minute think there was no pleasure in our lives back then. We had fun doing lots of things.

Yan, Mo (2012-01-05). Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh: A Novel (Kindle Locations 56-62). Arcade Publishing. Kindle Edition.



--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Twitter: @olderkirby

Saturday, July 18, 2015

What is that music?

I have read that Franz Joseph Haydn moved to London for a while to compose and present music to crowds of followers and enthusiasts.  He is quoted as saying that when composing for the English, "you have to hit them in the ear."  That is, one needs to present music with a strong beat.  I have lots of English ancestry and the lack of appreciation for the delicate and the sophisticated is in me.


I like marches, waltzes and emphatic classical music.  Give me a simple line and emphasize the beat, please.  I was the drum sergeant in my high school drum and bugle corp.  Is it by chance that the drum sergeant was also responsible for training the majorettes and flag twirlers from the girls' high school across the street?


A tune and a nice rhythm kept coming in my head but I couldn't place it.  Today, I tried Google Play Music and the first album that showed up was Baroque Trumpet Concertos by the super excellent French trumpeter Maurice Andre (1933-2012).  The piece that played was exactly the one I have been trying to identify.  It is the trumpet voluntary by Jeremy Clarke, evidently also called The Prince of Denmark's March.


It is very clear that one arrangement of a piece of music is not the same as another.  The link above goes to an arrangement with Andre playing and no organ parts inserted.  The "Trumpet Voluntary" by Clarke was written about the year 1700 and it very well known, except by me. Here is another majestic rendition, worth listening to and watching the accompanying slides.  I have often felt that a nice bit of music can be as satisfying as a cold drink, a good joke or a witty and helpful comment.


I know there are pieces of software that can "listen" to music and identify the tune.  I knew the tune, or my version of it and I tried to sing it to one of the programs but it didn't help.  Lynn is way more experienced in music than I am but she couldn't get the program to help us either.  Now, by chance, I know I have it in my own collection and I know two names for the piece, when it was written and the name of the composer.  Getting a tune more or less stuck in your head is sometimes called "having an earworm".  Usually, if I get annoyed by an earworm, I can just listen to one of my other favorites and get a new one.  Meditation, with its serious and concentrated quieting of the mind, helps, too.



--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Twitter: @olderkirby

Friday, July 17, 2015

Horoscope power

I have never been a big fan of Bill Watterson's cartoons of Calvin, the little boy and his friend, the tiger, Hobbes.  But that is changing.  I saw that the book "The Days Are Just Packed" of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons was on sale.  The drawings show up pretty well on a regular Kindle reader, such as a Paperwhite but even better on an iPad.


Like many little boys, Calvin has a vivid imagination.  There are times when his ideas and his vocabulary seem suspiciously appropriate to the mature man drawing the strip and quite a bit beyond the reach of a primary school pupil.  But the emotional highs and lows seem quite right, although come to think of it, my emotional highs and lows in my 8th decade might not be all that different from what they were in my 1st.


The other day, Calvin found his horoscope in the newspaper and was convinced that he was going to have an especially good day.  There was the upsetting line about him being irresistible to women that day and the prospect of engendering affection in his girl neighbors and schoolmates was yucky and off-putting.  Suppose they kissed him!!!


But the rest of the prediction was about how well his plans would develop that day.  He looked forward to that with happy enthusiasm.


But, whoa! All sorts of things did not go as planned.  The day ended with yet another bath before bed.  In a funk, he vowed that he would pay no further attention to horoscopes, having clearly established that they lacked basic validity.

Communicating with a cartoon character who is no longer being drawn is stumping me right now but I do have a message for Calvin.  The day in question seemed like a typical one to me.  Granted it wasn't spectacular but it was normal.  I want to bring up the question: What if the horoscope was correct?  What if the gods, the stars, the spirits had all sorts of malevolent plans for the little guy but were prevented from real damage by the power of the horoscope?


That's the thing about a day.  You can't live it several times over, under varying experimental conditions.  A day that seems low on the quality scale might be rather good, given what could have happened, what nearly happened.  Similarly, a lovely, shining, stellar day might have actually had the potential to be far better except for various factors that dampened things down.


It is not only all relative but it is all mysterious.




--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Twitter: @olderkirby

Thursday, July 16, 2015

More reading, more worrying, more serenity

More and more, we are realizing that the answer is machines. Since our lives are short, we need help getting all the things done that we want to do in only 9 or 10 decades or even less.  But!  If we build machines that can get some of our tasks done while we do some at the same time, we will be more efficient, more powerful.  So, why not?


Let's start with reading.  Reading books, web pages, magazines, email contributes to our knowledge.  With good reading, we are more in tune with the whole world, including our own bodies and personalities.  It ought to be possible to write an app or a short program that downloads books and copies every page of each book and stores them in the cloud.  I am not talking about a mass zap of the whole book at once but an actual copy of each page.  The machine will "look" at each page just as I do with my eyes.  I think with a few programs working on a few computers I could multiply my reading by ten.


Ok, worrying.  As I get older and do gain more knowledge, I have more things to worry about.  Bill Bryson says there are 90,000 cosmic bodies whose orbits intersect with that of the earth.  It seems only a matter of time before another large asteroid or space rock smashes into our planet.  My luck has been pretty good up to now but malevolent spirits may balance all that by putting my house or my car or my favorite restaurant square in the path of some big squasher.  Kathryn Schulz, author of "Being Wrong", has an article in the current New Yorker, about big dangers of long overdue earthquakes in the northwest of the country that could bury us in ash and cause all sorts of disruptions.  Of course, we all worry about the next election and about climate change.


I am not sure how to build a machine that can worry for me but it will be a big help when I figure it out.  Once I know my Worriers are on the job, I can focus on greater serenity.


In that area, I am already doing pretty well.  The key to serenity is stillness.  See Eckhart Tolle's "Stillness Speaks."   I have several serene rocks.  I let them practice serenity for me.  You should see how still they can be!  I am telling you, I can sit watching those rocks for hours and not a twitch from any of them! By having those rocks sit serenely for me, I am getting far more serenity hours in than I have ever been able to.  It is really great.  I know it is a little hard to believe but as usual in this modern world, the answer is technology.  Look around. Take a short walk.  When you come across a likely rock, take it home and give it a try.  I can spare a couple of my own better ones, for say, $7.99 each, if you are interested.




--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Twitter: @olderkirby

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Teaching in college

I read a statement the other day by a young man who is a writer about technology and a PhD student at Harvard.  He has just begun his first teaching experience and he was unpleasantly surprised at how difficult it was to teach.  He asked a professor friend how to teach and was told that it was quite easy and that just relying on previous experience as a student would be a sufficient guide.


Teaching is a rich subject, full of twists and turns.  Most people find themselves at various times and places in the role of teacher.  There are always exceptions but usually teaching involves three elements: the teacher, the student and the subject matter, the material or skill to be learned or the experience to be had.  All three points of that triangle can involve many variables and odd conditions.  The usual notion of a person who knows is a professor, a word associated with colleges and universities.  In this country, a professor can be expected to have a PhD, a graduate school degree involving three or five or more years of study.  Some specialties involve other degrees, such as an Master of Fine Arts or  Master of Library Science.


It often comes as a surprise to education majors planning to be teachers in the public schools that their professors may have little or no training in being a teacher.  Traditionally, in old universities, maybe dating from roughly the year 1000 or earlier, the idea was that if a person knew the material to be taught and that person was dealing with a well-equipped student, one with an appropriate background and desire to learn, teaching was not something to worry about.  Many people in our culture can grasp the old idea by thinking of the relation between a master and an apprentice.  The master (a male) might be gruff and uncommunicative, he might do a poor job of explaining and of demonstrating but eventually the apprentice would learn.  It would be assumed that any psychological damage to the apprentice, or the master for that matter, would be minimal and negligible.  This whole paragraph is based on an assumption of a male teacher and a male apprentice, a picture that supposedly minimizes extra-curricular relations of a sexual or personal nature between them.


Any adult human is likely to realize from the start that such an assumption cannot be made when we change the picture to involve young children of both sexes, an age when children are easily confused or discouraged or frightened.  The traditional approach then is to rely on maternal feelings, intuitions and tools.  A female voice and a female gentleness, coupled with a sensitivity to the nature and personality of a young child go a long way, in most cases, to guide kids into learning and augmented growth over what they experience merely playing by themselves near their mother, or being put to work in fields and industry.


Surprisingly, along with these approaches, there developed a basic disdain for ability in explanation or organization of the curriculum.  That disdain historically carried over to looking down on anyone who tried to analyze teaching ability or classroom effectiveness.  Only recently, as population growth stalls, have more traditional colleges and universities begun to get serious about finding and building good teachers.





























































--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Twitter: @olderkirby

Popular Posts

Follow @olderkirby