Artificial hydration

The doctor said to drink more water.  Since then, we both have drunk more water but we find that doing that makes us have to visit the bathroom every time we stand up.  When I was told to drink more water, I had allowed myself to just fall from a walking position into a full-bodied collapse while thinking that I need not bother keeping upright.  It was a false but dreamy feeling that I could just stop trying and fall, as one might do onto a mattress. It may seem like a small demand but I suspect my body is actually ready to stop living but I am taking measures to continue anyhow.

Fall tomorrow late in the day

8:05 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time / 7:05 p.m. Central Daylight Time.

Universal Time (UTC): 00:05 UTC on Wednesday, September 23, 2026.

Meaning: The Sun crosses directly over the Earth's equator heading south.

Season Shift: Marks the official astronomical start of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere and spring in the Southern Hemisphere. [1, 2, 3]

In the words of the internet item: “the length of day and night are nearly equal”.  According to my results, sunset here will be 6:56 PM.

Correlate, not cause

One of the factors human minds sometimes are misled by is correlates that are not causes.  Let’s say that we find that pickpockets are more often ambidextrous than the general population.  So: does favoring the use of both hands equally lead one into pickpocketry? 

That idea might be the focus of research for a while.  I am not trying to start a rumor about ambidextrians.  The internet says that genuine ambidextry occurs in about 1% of people.

One sentence

These days, I can open a book, read one sentence and wrestle with it, ponder it, oppose it, support it for quite a while.  The other day, something that Garrison Keillor wrote included these words:

“We live in interesting times, which sometimes are so absurdly interesting repeatedly day after day that a person gets tired of all fascination and takes a keener interest in the ordinary, such as I did last week …”

It may be the times but I think being older and having digital and electronic communication all have some effect, too

My first ride in a self-driving car

Friends picked us up for dinner last night.  They gave us our first ride in a Tesla self-driving car.  It was a little weird to see the steering wheel turn and twist with no hands on it.  The car had to take us through a busy intersection with a tricky traffic signal and then immediately turn left across a lane of traffic coming the other way.  It was smooth and impressive.  I am grateful for the experience.

"Incognito" by Eagleman

About ten years ago, I read “Incognito” by David Eagleman.  No other book has stayed in my mind as much since then.  There are many books with that title but this is non-fiction. It’s about our minds and our unconscious intelligences.  It made me see how my brain does many things “on its own” without me even noticing.  Breathing, using stairs, moving me out of the way of trucks, forming useful things to say - I use many skills without trying.

Big guy in the sky v. complex me

When I learned a little about Eastern thought, I didn’t see the properties of God explained or worshipful practice involving kneeling and supplication.  I am confident there is some of that, but I was impressed with the exploration of my use of my own mind and other aspects of my body and me.  I have written before about seeing in the campus schedule of classes, a class about relaxation.  I thought what do students do?  Relax for the whole period?  I have since learned that achieving genuine relaxation can be  difficult, given some circumstances and conditions.  Socrates is famous for his principle “Know thyself”, which is a big aspect of Eastern practice.

New types of mechanical devices

If you watch “The Closer” or “Major Crimes”, you see a team of LA police officers investigating.  One of the members of the group is “Buzz”.   He is not the usual officer but more of an equipment technician.  He takes various types of pictures and can modify, enlarge, slow down or speed up their showing. He is in steady demand, both at a crime scene and later back at the station.  In several fields of work, new and valuable equipment can assist in the analysis of events in ways that unaided police cannot.  In many fields, new types of technology accomplish things faster, more completely, more minutely with fewer errors than unaided humans can.

Look it up with Google

I probably look up some little thing in search.google.com four or five times a day.  I know this is the age of emerging artificial intelligence but so far, I find the power of the “search engine” much more applicable to my thinking.  What is Anthropic?  Do upper or lower teeth cause more trouble?  What is Mozart’s Queen of the Night so enraged at her daughter?  See ?  This is the type of deep, important question that comes to my mind and can be answered by Google Search.

Famous opera arias

Twice I have searched for the most popular opera arias and listened to them.  Nearly all the recordings are on YouTube.  The second time I did that I experienced an odd feeling, one of almost being drunk.  Elation, joy, happiness.  They are not all depictions of love or positive feelings.  Mozart’s The Magic Flute has a famous aria by the Queen of the Night.  It is beautiful and very memorable but it turns out the woman is enraged that her daughter refuses to murder a man the Queen deeply hates.  The Queen has commanded her own daughter to take this dagger and kill Sarastro. When the daughter, a grown woman, refuses to do so, the Queen flies into a deep rage, threatening to disown the daughter.

Who's tense?

One day, I was paging through the campus schedule of classes and I saw a class entitled “Relaxation”.  I had just finished a class that I had planned and lectured in.  I thought it must be much easier to teach students to lie down, be quiet and still and relax.  That was the beginning of my being aware that for some people in some circumstances, relaxation can be difficult to achieve.

I just looked up “are more men or women too tense” and found “Women experience anxiety disorders at nearly twice the rate of men. “ I also read that there comes a moment in a girl’s life when she realizes she is being looked at by a man.  The sort of looking could be judgemental, evaluative and the result could be negative!

Old news

I found out today that I am not in the popular wave.  I am not surprised nor uncomfortable.  I have been nerdy and out-of-fashion often.  Who else would buy an expensive watch and not wear it in favor of an older, cheaper watch?  Who else continues to email when texting is IN? Who else uses Google, Firefox, Duckduckgo and others several times a day to ask about tiny or weird issues? Who else prefers a low-cost laptop over a pocket-handy smartphone?

Mary Roach books

Bonk - human sex and reproduction

Gulp - eating and the parts of the body that treat food

Replaceable You - emerging practices and technology that replaces or substitutes worn-out part of the body

Stiff - adventures of the body after death

Mary Roach writes unusual non-fiction books about humans, their bodies and their lives.  The titles listed above are some of my favorites

Starting, stopping and re-reading

C.S.Lewis wrote a book called “An Experiment in Literary Criticism”.  His proposed experiment deals with re-reading.  He pictures a middle-aged reader in a library trying to recall if this book is one that she has read or not.   He was a professor of literature and knew plenty about books and reading. He emphasized that a well-written book may repay re-reading, in part or in whole.  He wonders whether the quality of a book should be figured by how often it is re-read. 

Is there coffee?

My wife does not like interruptions.  That trait and others have gotten me to be the coffee-maker in our mornings.  But we are both aging.  That enabled me to forget to deliver a cup to her after the coffee finished brewing.  I don’t think I have managed to do that before.  About an hour after the drip stopped, she asked if the coffee was ready.  It had been ready for quite a while.  I promise to stay alert to the coffee situation.

Saint Monday

I am reading “The Week” by David Henkin.  He wrote about “Saint Monday” and lost me.  I looked up “Saint Monday” and found that as people moved into the industrial age from the agricultural age, workers invented “Saint Monday”.  Such a saint drew reverent absence from a job after a weekend of too much alcohol.  Shades of Labor Day!

Clay by Guest Blogger Dr. LS Kirby

As out-of-season as this seems, I am getting a lot of things made for Christmas. But really, it takes a lot of  time to get everything made, dried, fired, glazed, fired again, listed in the gallery's inventory, labels made (by someone else at the gallery) and put on the pieces (by me), everything packed up to take to the gallery, take down the last display, move all the pedestals to different spots for the next show, and set up the display.

"Everything in moderation"

Another version of the idea of keeping moderation in all areas of life is “nothing in excess”.  I am wondering if the saying is well-applied to length of life.  Living can be a pleasure and I have heard that once life is abandoned, it cannot be resumed.  So, it follows that one should be cautious about giving up on life.  My wife often said that she wanted a long life provided it was also a reasonably healthy one. I think it is possible to enforce a number of provisions and demands that life meet.

Participation

If the book club’s selection doesn’t appeal, you can still “participate” (in a way) in the club’s discussion of the book without taking time to read the book.  AI can summarize the book for you.  You can buy a summary of the book from Amazon or other sources.  You can make interested comments or general questions during the discussion of the book.  You can just nod occasionally and smile once in a while thereby getting credit for being a participating member without interrupting your own schedule.

Talk! Write! Communicate!

When I try to examine what makes for educational success, I often see communication from the student as a major focus.  You can imagine that if lectures and books and educational films were totally memorized but a student never took any tests, wrote no papers and never spoke in class, teachers would have no way of seeing the mastery that student had achieved. Of course, some students could speak or write on and on about difficulties with the material or the tests’ format or getting papers written and not show any mastery of the curriculum. But in general, students who speak and write well master the work and show they have done so.

Our supply of gasoline is running out

Our supply of gasoline is running out.  But 1.5 MILLION electric vehicles are sold in the US annually.  In addition, we have more and more things we can do digitally.  It’s true that we are bipedals and we need to move.  We have many ways of putting muscles to work and more of us are learning to keep moving.

Old characteristics

As a person getting nearer the end of his 80’s, I wanted to list some of the older person’s phenomena that I have experienced.

Newly shrunken food capacity - we often had standard sizes for meals and now we can only eat maybe half or ⅔ thirds of that much.  

Words, especially names, don’t come to mind as quickly, or even at all.  Relatedly, my speech recognition is much more erratic than it was.  It is bad enough that I often ask Lynn what she said when I find that I did understand her but my recognition of that is slow.

I have habituated myself to a half hour nap every day.

Fiction books and movies are too repetitious.  It is always a bad guy with a gun or knife or it is a slow awareness of attraction between her and him.