Book suggestions

Our local campus, University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point, has a learning in retirement organization called Learning is Forever and goes by "L.I.F.E."  Life sent out an email asking for book suggestions for group discussions.  I submitted the following titles:

Incognito by David Eagleman

She Has Her Mother's Laugh by Carl Zimmer

The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine, MD

Dead Water by Victoria Houston

The first three titles are non-fiction.  I don't know the tastes of the people who participate but I am strongly biased toward non-fiction.  I have read enough who-dunits and heart-throbs and I would rather read helpful books about your brain and mine.  

Eagleman focuses on the parts of us that influence or govern us but are not conscious.  Zimmer's book is about what we get into us from our parents and the long line of ancestors.  Brizendine focuses on hormones and the facts of life for a female human body.  

Victoria Houston has a large group of novels about the woman sheriff of a Wisconsin town and the work she and her boyfriend, a retired widowed dentist, do to solve crimes.

CNN photos of the week 3/30/25

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/27/world/gallery/photos-this-week-march-20-march-27/index.html?

It would be difficult to collect photos on as wide a range of topics as CNN photos of the week.

Resistance

A purple house finch and her red-headed mate have selected us for a nest.  Our front porch is roofed over and seems like a good place for a nest.  They are quite determined and return to try again repeatedly.  As I wrote yesterday, we get crippled babies who tumble down for the nest and egg stains on the porch and we want the parents to desist.

Me vs. birds

These are remains of nests I have removed from our porch.  Why pick on sweet little birdies?  Because they build between our porch light and the house, which is an unstable place for a nest.  Eggs and babies tumble out and litter our porch.  We object.  I guess because these birdies were born there, they want their babies to have the same blessed childhood.  The nasty grouch (me) keeps knocking the nests down, when he remembers to check the place.

Looking that up

While using a connected computer or tablet, I often get a notion to look something up.  I realize that foreign agents may be spending their time noting the subject of my computer inquiries, perusing their notes and searching for a pattern that reveals secret and valuable aspects of me.  The realization leads me to use the Firefox browser and not one of the more popular ones.  But when I am consciously looking for information, most of the time, I divert my search over to Duckduckgo.

I haven't read or otherwise collected evidence that Firefox and Duckduckgo are importantly safer or more secure but so far, I like the habits I have developed.  It may still be that the most basic software on a Windows or Apple computer is the browser, a program I think of as the car that takes me to various "sites" on the internet.  Of course, many, if not most, computers are used for specific business purposes.  When I was teaching, a spreadsheet was my most used software in recording grades and marks.

Mom, What's that stuff?

At this time of year, our weather is somewhat unstable.  We get warm spells and cold ones.  We had a heavy snow on Sunday but today we have a blue clear sky and 46°.  The snow is receding and we get that margin of lawn peeking out.  When our daughter Jill was about 5, she and Lynn took a walk around the neighborhood.  Jill saw that margin and said,"What's that stuff, Mom?"  Lynn said, "That's grass, Honey."  

It had been so long since any grass was visible, that Jill didn't recognize it.

Why do our cattle get sick?

When I was finishing my dissertation, I needed to apply for a teaching job.  I was a student at the University of Maryland but I read some statements of purpose at different state universities.  The purpose statement at many schools said that the university aimed to make students as wise as Socrates or some other philosopher of older times.  The one about the University of Wisconsin said that early settlers had wanted a public university that would figure out why the cattle got sick and crops failed.  The aims expressed were practical and modern and I like that statement.  

Some of my friends who had already graduated had gotten jobs at the main campus of large university systems and I was not impressed by their stories.  I had attended a smallish state-supported school and I felt I understood the difference between research campuses and smaller ones.  When I found that University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point had an opening, I applied.  We moved here after begging moving funds from her parents and my parents both.  That was in 1968 and we have liked it here. 

Astrid and Woo

The TV shows "Astrid" and "Extraordinary Attorney Woo" are both stories about neuroatypicals.  Some people might express the two women's special qualities by stating "they are on the spectrum."  I enjoy both shows and I feel strong respect for the two actresses who portray neurodivergents.  Astrid is a French woman who handles the police files for a French city.  Attorney Woo is a Korean woman lawyer. Except for one policewoman who sees the unusual powers that Astrid shows, many people who come in contact with her fail to detect and appreciate Astrid's special memory.  Other women in the Korean show pick up the vibes that Attorney Woo radiates and avoid her.

Things and activities that are accepted as everyday and ordinary may perplex or frighten either woman.  Co-workers that see either woman gripped by fear or puzzlement often don't understand what it is about the source of difficulty that grips the woman.  Attorney Woo is perplexed by a revolving door.  How does one approach the thing ?  Will it injure me?

Both women have very unusual memories and are able to remember important facts that most people don't grasp or quickly forget.

It seems that the two women live in a slightly different world from that of most people.  Thus the words "neuroatypical" and "on the spectrum" (the range of ability).

CNN Photos of the week 3/23

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/20/world/gallery/photos-this-week-march-13-march-20

Several of these are quite moving.

"The question is" or "A question is"

I guess more and more people are finding that the questions and comments of other people about a subject modify or extend one's own thinking.  I have been training myself to notice when somebody says "The question is…" to mentally change what I hear to "A question is…"  It seems that using the modification "My question is" would work, too.

It is rarely the case when only one question can be raised about a comment, a direction or some other subject.  One trick that people sometimes try when attempting to persuade others or deflect a discussion in a direction they prefer is to use the words "What about …?"  So, if high sugar prices are being talked about, I might try to get talk about education to switch to the irritating high prices if I say "What about sugar prices?".  I would be hoping that there is enough worry and interest in the price that the subject of education is shelved.

Man vs. persistent pebble

The dark spot to the left of the spoon is a tiny pebble.  It has been irritating my foot every time I slip on my leather loafers.  I tried various ideas but I could not find the damned little pest.  Today, yay!  Found it!

Fwd: Ah! Spring!

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From:
Date: Thu, Mar 20, 2025 at 8:17 AM
Subject: Ah! Spring!

Last day of winter

Today is March 19.  Tomorrow at 4:01 CDT, there will be a moment when winter ends and spring begins.  You may not notice much of a difference at first.

Suicide as a rational act

When I went to the doctor's, I was handed a questionnaire about my feelings and mood.  One of the items asked if I was depressed or had suicidal thoughts.  I realize that suicide during most times has been illegal, looked at as irrational, etc.  A government might treat a suicide as a sin as might a religion.  Life was provided by God and is too much of a gift to waste, etc., etc.  

I tend to more or less agree with such thinking but as I age, I can see that a person's body might deteriorate to a condition of too much pain and too little prospect of relief.  I have been told and I have read that some ancient societies had ways to apply for permission to commit suicide and avoid shame and various forms of social dishonor or estate penalty.

Irish?

As I think back, I see that my interest in human ancestry, my ancestry started with St. Patrick's Day.

There was once a map of my home state of Maryland and it showed a good-sized area of the Eastern Shore of the state with the name "Kirby" on it.  It turned out that the map showed family names of people who had gotten land from the British king.  I once looked up the name "Kirby" and found that it has once been "Kirkby", meaning beside the church.  It was a name from the area of England called Danegeld because Danish settlers had crossed the channel and controlled that area so there, one had to use Danish currency.

I also found references to northern Ireland.  I have heard of "the troubles", a time of strong strife between larger Catholic Ireland and northern Protestant Ireland.

Over time, my wife and I have both had our DNA analyzed, actually four separate times, twice by the National Geographic Society's "Genographic Project" (now closed down) and twice by 23andMe.  I conclude that I probably have Irish ancestors, as well as Scottish, Spanish, Danish and Nordic.

I owe my longtime marriage to the freshman class wherein the professor said after calling my wife's name, "That's Finnish, isn't it?" 

Being correct

I learned from the Columbia University linguist, John McWhorten, that a modern language like English is always changing.  I have also read that some linguists in the past, and maybe others, thought that Latin or Greek or Hebrew was somehow superior and that English would be better in some way if some rules or practices borrowed from such languages would improve or "raise" English.  

My wife is careful to answer the phone inquiry "May I speak to Lynn ?" with the statement "This is she."  Except for her, I don't hear such statements.  I hear "That's me" or "This is Lynn."  The other day I headed a blog post "It was me" and one or two people offered the correction "It was I." I like the wording I used but maybe I am just low class.

Algae and bugs

One of my favorite books about the human tree of life and our ancestors is "The 10,000 Year Explosion" by Cochran and Harpending.  

We had our DNA analyzed four times.  Lynn is descended from many more branches of the human tree than I am, according to 23andMe.

I think that people who are confident they are higher quality would be unhappy to grasp that all humans descended from Africans.  I think it is something of a joke on me to picture my biological forerunners being blue-green algae and cockroaches.  I admit that I haven't studied human development enough to know how possible it is that my biological development could, in fact, include algae and insects.  Deeply, I don't care.

Pi Day

The ratio between the radius of a circle and its perimeter is 3.14159, The same mathematical constant appears in other formulas and relationships.  The important number is often represented by the Greek "p", the Greek letter called "pi". Today is March 14 so it can be represented as 3/14.  Therefore, today is "Pi" day! 

https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?hspart=iba&hsimp=yhs-3&type=teff_10019_FFW_ZZ&grd=1&p=Pi

The symbol on the pizzas shown on this page is the Greek letter.

Here is a link to further information about the number.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=what+important+formulas+include+the+constant+%22pi%22&atb=v423-1&ia=web

Have some "Pi"!

Two web sites that I like

They are both government sites, one for weather and one for time.  

radar.weather.gov

https://time.gov/

The weather site shows the whole country.  Especially in the spring, when temperature gradients are fighting it out and changing back and forth, I find it can be handy to have a wide view.   Of course, more local apps such as Yahoo Weather and Accuweather give the local temperature and more.

There was a time when the world was not divided into time zones but it is basically convenient to get accurate time readings from the different parts of the country.

Going out to dinner

Lynn did paperwork and travel to be the guardian of the person for her brother who suffers from dementia. We are planning to take him out to dinner today to celebrate his birthday.

Entering reproductive season

I saw one bird fly away as another approached.  I read that many animals have difficulty, one way or another, with the necessary closeness of mating.  I guess some species just cast the male contribution into the water (or maybe the air) and it is up to a female to find some and make use of it, if she is interested and ready.  The website "Reptile Knowledge" said that latitude has an effect.  Where there are seasonal effects, spring is a heavier time.  Nearer the equator, the value of the different seasons is more equal.

Converting work into virtue

I am retired but I live by the clock (and watch). I have found that using Google Calendar keeps appointments straight, if I remember to look at it.  My phone and iPads are Apple products and not very welcoming to Google anything but the Google products are free, they are well laid out and available on anything that is connected to the internet.

I am a habitual person.  Habits are easy for me to develop.  We go to bed at 10 PM and wake up at 6 AM.  I usually eat breakfast at 7:30 and so it goes, by time all day.  At the end of a day, when I have met all the times squarely, I know I am a good boy, just what my mother wanted.

Was I her teacher?

Our health insurance company uses "home visits", where an employee comes to our house, takes some vital signs and gathers information and impressions about us and our ways of living. We have had two or three of them, one a year.  This last one had some vague recollection of maybe having a course with me.  

My wife asked her about the memory and the visitor described taking a statistics course where she watched on tv at 6 AM on Sundays.  Neither of us consulted any records.  How many education professors had a basic stat course broadcast at that hour on that day of the week?  It was me!

Not working means try again

I started using computers in 1965 as part of my graduate school.  I have rarely had reason to wish the machines were faster.  I realize if I had some deeply complex task or some enormous amount of data to churn through, I might wish for more speed.  But lately, living where I do, I have been finding that services and tasks fairly often don't work, especially in the early morning.  I have gotten so that when something doesn't work, I try again.  Sometimes after three or four attempts taking the same steps, I have success. I realize that something might not be turned on somewhere along the line.  If I took a failure to mean an impossibility, I would have quite a few more complaints.

S1 Episode 3

I have been touting the excellence of the TV series "Call the Midwife" for a while.  "Popular" is a section of London.  Nonnatus House is a Catholic charity that includes both trained midwives and nuns. A real woman wrote memories of events there and her notes are the backbone of the TV episodes.  

As World War II ended and the world began to change, there was often some difficulty or problem with a pregnancy.  The experienced midwives were often called on to assist with pregnancy or a birth.  Popular is not an area of wealth but sex goes on, in all sorts of situations and often results in desired or in unwanted pregnancy.

The two of us have been re-reading books we once read and re-watching movies and tv shows we have watched in the past.  The series is available on Netflix and to my mind, is the best tv I see.  The other night, we watched the third episode of the first series.  I didn't remember having seen it but this time, I am older and quite aware of the likely good an attractive young femme can do an older gentleman whose life is rather lonely and boring.  Wow!

My blog and my website

Normally, I post a comment on my blog every day.  I started writing to explain how meditation could calm a teacher but over time, so many sources became available that explained meditation, I could see I wasn't needed. So, Fear, Fun and Filoz  

https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/

came to be a place where I could write whatever I was thinking about.  I now have over 5500 posts from 2008 to now.

I made up the word "filoz" to try to say "philosophy"without being too explicit.  I later found a reference to an Indian pancake by that name.  

I email copies of the day's post to the blog page provided by Blogspot, Google's blog service, and to about 100 recipients.

My website "Kirbyvariety" is a collection of information from my teaching and my reading.  When the first website reached maximum allowable size, I added a 2nd so there is a Kirbyvariety1 and a Kirbyvariety2.

https://sites.google.com/view/kirbyvariety1/welcome-to-my-home-page

Books and movies over again

I guess it was from re-reading parts of C.S. Lewis's book "An Experiment in Criticism" where he gets strident over literary and non-literary people, according to his thinking.  The main difference between the groups is that his version of literary types doesn't reject reading a book if it has been read.  The book "On Repeat" by Judith Margulis explores repetition in music listening.

From that theme, augmented by my interest in what people generally remember after reading a book, the two of us have purposely redone a book and a movie.  We will probably repeat again.  The book was "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert and the movie was "9 to 5".  Both are excellent and of course, we are older, wiser and more broadly thinking now than on our first exposures.

I asked myself what books do I tend to recall often.  I think the number one such book is "Incognito" by David Eagleman.  Number 2 is probably "The Female Brain" by Louann Brizendine, MD.  Incognito is a good book for emphasizing how complex we all are and how our often simple linear notion of a thought followed by an action is quite different from how we actually operate.  The Female Brain emphasized for me how marvelous a woman is.  I think it is a hoot how every human comes out of a woman and yet men puff up and pride themselves on how terrific they are.

Today is 3/4

I think it may have been the novelist Tom Robbins who introduced me to the idea that the 4th of March can be considered a day on which the date itself issues a merry challenge to "march forth!"  I used my favorite search software, Duchduckgo, and am impressed by how many people and organizations use the 4th of this month as a marker for optimism, boldness and initiative.  So, if you haven't mentioned your affection for him to your nephew or your admiration for his father, this might be a good day to March 4th and send a note of appreciation.

What about loudmouths? What about climate change? What about very attractive people?

I am interested in my friend's mind and thoughts.  Her thinking, her principles, her background remind me of my vague notions of those of my mother, at least what I think I know of my mother.  This friend is in the midst of the book by Chris Hayes called "The Sirens Call".

The book is about attention: what we do with it, how we use our ability to focus on a subject or source.  It is possible to get all worked up about attention that kids, teens and others pay to their smartphones.  Of course, it is possible to get all worked up about most things.

I minored in psychology and in philosophy in grad school.  The first course I was required to take in psych was Psychophysics, how human senses work, especially sight and sound.  I have had experience with written worries about too much television watching, too much sitting, too much eating, too much worrying, too little worrying.

One strategy that is sometimes used is to find another worrisome or possibly worrisome topic and ask "What about ……?"  So, what about shrinking governmental support for medical research?  What about sexism?

Our trip

We left one Saturday and came back the next.  We had been to St.Simons Island off the coast of Georgia before.

Lynn has a stronger desire for trips that I do.  She often selects a destination and asks if I'd like to spend some time there.  Her parents were born in Ironwood, Michigan.  Ironwood grew up on mines.  Her father's family is Finnish and the town of Ironwood now is listed at about 5,000 people.  Her dad had a strong desire for education and arranged to get a master's degree.  He met Lynn's mother in high school.  With a few stops in between, he found work and interest in Washington, D.C.  Relatives in Detroit and Ironwood were a continuous draw for Lynn's family during her childhood.  

Another aspect of trips and thinking of elsewhere was the background of Lynn's mother, the daughter of a Cuban sister who had accompanied her sister out of Cuba as the wife of a Swedish mining expert from Ironwood who met his wife on a special trip to fix problems in a Cuban mine.  There are few Cubans in Ironwood.  

It is also true that Lynn keeps house carefully and rigorously so a trip to some place with less housekeeping is a pleasure. 

My family is split between New Englanders and rural Marylanders and I have not developed the desire for trips that Lynn has.  My first major trip was early in my college teaching when my university accepted me as the leader of a Semester Abroad group to England.  

I have been accepting my quiet, lazy attitude toward less trips and the two of us have been wondering if she is going to have to satisfy her travel drives without me.  She has done some of that before and could repeat the practice.  But I can see that some disruption and travel and relocation can be helpful prods for me, too.  Flight times and required waits of hours, not having something left at home, there are always little differences that can be a pain,

CNN photos of the week 3/2/2025

You can't expect me to be able to put a whole week in a different locale AND the impressive photos of CNN for a week into just one blog post.

A post this afternoon and meanwhile a link to CNN's Photos now:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/27/world/gallery/photos-this-week-february-20-february-27/