fear, fun and filoz

Philosophical treatise on wanting to complain

2012-02-12T06:36:00.001-06:00

Sometimes people who are working, pause to think about what retirement must be like. Why, it must be wonderful: not going to work each day! Similarly, people in the northern places look at the local temperatures, say 15 degrees vs. 50 degrees and think that too would be wonderful. Just imagine such bliss!

Well, I am retired and in a southern place and I am here to tell you that bliss has some holes in it. For one thing, as benefits retired people, I am older. That means shakier health and fitness and more delicate muscles and robustness. For another thing, as all sorts of people have said for centuries, many things in life are relative, not absolute. That means that when you have had the good fortune to experience temperatures of 75 and warmer, genuine shorts and t-shirt weather, 50 feels skimpy, as Lynn wrote, fraudulent.

I grew up in an atmosphere that has been described as "lawyer-like", where assertions and feelings were wrong or inferior unless they could be justified to the point where a reasonably prudent and objective person would accept them as justified. Given even a cursory inventory of my blessings, I am confident that I have no "right" to be in a down mood. I am too well-off, too healthy, too fortunate, too well-situated.

This temporary state (it's temporary since I will find circumstances, views and activities out of it) makes me think of the book of Job. That poor fellow was minding his own business and doing so rather well when the Devil taunted God into torturing him just to see how long it would take before Job cursed God and his life. Now I see that the story could be modified along the lines of "survivor guilt", the feeling of shame and guilt that one survived a death camp or a tsunami when other, wonderful and upright people didn't. The test of Job could have been to improve his situation to the most satisfying possible but at the same time, drop a pile of grumps on him, letting find fault with his past, his present, his future, his fortune, his achievements, his looks, his pets, etc., putting him in a pressure situation. He would want to complain, would be in an inexplicable and unjustified mood to complain but simply couldn't. It would be too mortifying.

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

unable to dismount

2012-02-11T06:49:00.001-06:00

My friend thought it odd that I am on vacation in a vacation spot and write about what there is to do. Others wrote about recurring needs, such as the laundry and the dishes, that we can't get rid of and continue to stalk us.

I have thought a lot about the Buddha's idea that our suffering comes from our desires. Mark Epstein's "Open to Desire" is a wise and full look at the tendency to try to stifle desire, eliminate it. He introduces the book with this tale

One of my favorite stories comes from the Sufi tradition of mystical Islam. It is a tale that tells us exactly what we will have to face if we endeavor to walk the path of desire. A man sits in the center of a Middle Eastern marketplace crying his eyes out, a platter of peppers spilled out on the ground before him. Steadily and methodically, he reaches for pepper after pepper, popping them into his mouth and chewing deliberately, at the same time wailing uncontrollably. "What's wrong, Nasruddin?" his friends wonder, gathering around the extraordinary sight. "What's the matter with you?" Tears stream down Nasruddin's face as he sputters an answer. "I'm looking for a sweet one," he gasps.

Epstein, Mark (2006-01-05). Open to Desire: The Truth About What the Buddha Taught (Kindle Locations 77-83). Gotham Books. Kindle Edition.

It is easy to laugh at Nasruddin but we are like him. I have noticed Lynn and I like to be in the center of a good book (Wife of the Gods) or show (Season 2, episode 4 of Foyle's War) but we don't like the feeling of being lost in the desert looking for another book or show that is good. We often ask each other as we move into a new book (The Man in Wooden Hat) what we think of it. Basically, we are asking whether the book is good enough to take shelter in or must we continue to plod on, searching and searching for a harbor?

Epstein makes clear that for us, for you, for his patients, for Freud, for the Buddha, there is no getting away from desire, from wanting comfort, ease, security, love, etc., etc. Before he reached his enlightenment, the Buddha-to-be followed a Hindu path of extreme deprivation and punishment of the body, in an attempt to burn away those bothersome and recurrent desires for an endless stream of wants and goals and achievements. He was young and strong and very determined but he found that he would kill himself before he would be able to eliminate all desires. We as living, breathing, eating, loving, fearing animals are astride the horse of desire with our feet tied in the stirrups. Might as well enjoy the ride.

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

Quaker meeting practices

2012-02-10T06:42:00.000-06:00

Lynn is a Quaker, a member of the Society of Friends. Most people know the Quakers from the movie ~~"Gentle Persuasion"~~ "Friendly Persuasion" (thanks, Marge) or the character pictured on the Quaker Oats cereal box. Like many Quakers I have met, she is not a "birth-right Quaker", that is, she was raised in a different tradition, a family that participated in Lutheran practices. Eventually, in her early 50's, she became disenchanted and was introduced to the Friends.

Over the last 20 years, I have become a practitioner of meditation. While there are clear meditative practices in all religions (see, for instance, "Lost Christianity" by Jacob Needleman or enter, say, "Methodist meditation" or "Jewish meditation" into Google), most people acknowledge the Buddhists as the champions at focusing on meditation. I was struck by the similarity of Zen sitting practice and Quaker unprogrammed meetings. Over time, I have gotten a better grasp of the difference and they are real but the similarities are very great.

The Quakers cite George Fox (1624-1691), as their founder. The basic idea of their religious practice is that all humans are connected to God, who speaks to us all. Therefore, in a meeting for worship, one sits in a group, quietly waiting for inspiration for God, without intermediary. As ideas enter a worshiper's mind, the person is to consider the import and applicability of the idea or message to the assembled group.

One important difference between Quaker practice and Buddhist meditation is this opening to God. Another is the obligation of the Quaker worshiper to stand and state aloud any inspiration that has come to the worshiper, which has been examined by that person and found to be relevant to the assembled group. The messages so delivered are said to be the ministry of the meeting.

When a person is moved to minister to the group, it is important to deliver the inspiration as it came, not in opposition or continuation of previous speakers. One waits for several full minutes before rising to speak after the previous speaker. The format is not that of a debate nor conversation. It is more of a series of reports. The format calls for patience and forbearance. It is not unknown for one's estimate of the relevancy and urgency of one's inspiration to change as one listens attentively to other inspirations.

Large groups of over 100 persons conduct a meeting for worship using this arrangement without any presiding officer or leader. Often, the spoken messages are very moving and authentic. Sometimes, a given speaker will go on a bit long. In an active meeting, speakers may pop up in all different parts of the meeting room, which is said to be a "popcorn" meeting.

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

Activities: what is there to do?

2012-02-09T06:22:00.000-06:00

Mothers know that as summer vacation ends, there are often plaintive complaints that "there is nothing to do". This complaint can be stated by someone who has not done his chores, has a bicycle and tons of games and amusements. It could often be edited to say "I can't think of anything that I want to do".

Senior citizens frequently state that they "are keeping busy." Such a comment may be their first answer to "How are you doing?" This comment arises so quickly and so often that it is easy to conclude that staying busy, being occupied with something, is the primary need for everyone. It is a basic need, for sure, for all animals. I wrote here about boredom before, just after I had heard on tv that zookeepers work to try to find activities or amusements for their captives to lessen boredom.

When my friend asked yesterday about our reaction to activities here, I thought of what seems like serious flight from any hint of inactivity. I feel that I would often rather suffer boredom than continue to engage in an activity that seems empty and repetitive. I try to find activities that are meaningful. Writing is one, reading is one, exercising is a third. I usually read aloud for about an hour each day. Good television is to be had by streaming movies from Netflix and Amazon. Roughly speaking, all of those activities are available in most of the US. By the time, we share cooking and cleaning, grocery shopping and staying in touch through email, texts and phones, there isn't much time for specialized local activities. There is a social night weekly and many other get-togethers, even though I don't play bridge or pinochle.

Because regular activities take so much time, I don't pay much attention to local attractions such as the nearby state parks, the world's largest penny, the mustard museum and glass-bottomed boats. They do matter sometimes. I am very glad we visited Ruby Beach in the state of Washington. It does help my mood and the set of possibilities if there is plenty of sunshine and not too much wind or ice.

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

Monetize

2012-02-08T06:45:00.001-06:00

My friend suggested I submit Burdens of Improvement to the Reader's Digest. I did look over some of their pages but I found that a true story submission had a limit of 1000 characters. I'm not adverse to publishing nor to making money. But they are not my goals. Writing daily gives me purpose and focus. Doing so gives me a strong incentive to regularly ask myself what is happening in my life and what I thinking about these days.

Google blogs (blogger.google.com) provides blog opportunities for free. Anyone can create a Google account for themselves. If you have a Gmail account already, you have a Google-in-general account and the same logon and password will get you into all Google services without further ado. I view my main blog, Fear, Fun and Filoz, as a daily column such as I might write for a local paper but blogs can be used from a wide variety of purposes.

Once you sign into Blogger, you can create a blog in just a few minutes. If you wake up tomorrow thinking it was a bad idea, you can delete the whole thing, forget about it or start over. One of the many setting options is "monetize", which is basically accepting ads on your blog, just like the New York Times or the Washington Post. Don't expect to be flooded with offers, though. In fact, with 100 million blogs on the internet, don't expect to even be noticed. But that is okay. Your writings will be there for people to see and you can direct family, friends and associates to the site when and if you want. You do have some control over who can view your pages.

The book "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely has a good chapter on the difference between social and financial credits and currency. The basic idea is the reaction you could expect if you had a good time in bed with your favorite lover and as you two got up, you held out a folded bill and said,"Thanks". Or maybe, "I had a good time" or "I will call you". If your lover really loves you, you can expect outrage. Switching a social event to a financial one can devalue it quite seriously. Here you think you are doing something from the heart and somebody tries to change the basis to the purse. Attempting such a switch may damage your relationship irreparably. It is not the same thing as offering to share resources with a loved one. Proposing that something based on affection, mutuality and sharing be instead put on a cash basis is proposing to make a relation less personal and more mechanical and calculating.

I write to see what I think and so far, I have to consider only the social aspects of my comments. I try not say that your political ideas are wrong or that my religion or choice of music are right. I try to say something fairly original and possibly useful clearly and succinctly. I think it is big advantage not to be selling or advertising beyond saying that my writings exist and are available.

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

How to be funny

2012-02-07T06:12:00.000-06:00

The idea I have heard that seems to hold up is that humor is often a surprise. It needs to be a fairly nice surprise, not a nasty one. We recently heard this joke told to a room full of seniors, some in their 80's and beyond. It drew a hearty response of laughter:

Jacob, age 92, and Rebecca, age 89, are all excited about their decision to get married. They go for a stroll to discuss the wedding and on the way they pass a drugstore. Jacob suggests they go in. Jacob addresses the man behind the counter:

'Are you the owner?' The pharmacist answers yes.

Says Jacob: 'We're about to get married. Do you sell heart medication?'

Pharmacist: 'Of course we do.'

Jacob: 'How about medicine for circulation?'

Pharmacist: 'All kinds.'

Jacob: 'Medicine for rheumatism, scoliosis? '

Pharmacist: 'Definitely.'

Jacob: 'How about Viagra?'

Pharmacist: 'Of course.'

Jacob: 'Medicine for memory problems, arthritis, jaundice?'

Pharmacist: 'Yes, a large variety. The works.'

Jacob: 'What about vitamins, sleeping pills, Geritol, antidotes for Parkinson's disease?'

Pharmacist: 'Absolutely.'

Jacob: 'You sell wheelchairs and walkers?'

Pharmacist: 'All speeds and sizes.'

Jacob says to the pharmacist: 'We'd like to register here for our wedding gifts, please.'

We were surprised at the ending but we also appreciated the list of items that might be of use. I bet several people in the room already used each item mentioned and we know that we might need one of them soon.

I am prompted to think about humor, which I love, by seeing an new book in a local bookstore. It is by the author of the book I finally selected for a friend who wanted to read more. I thought if we both read the same book and met a time or two to talk about our reactions, he might be moved to read a bit more. I looked over various lists of books I have read and "Big Trouble" jumped out at me. I remember finding it very funny. Later, I saw the movie and enjoyed the story all over again.

As an elementary school teacher and a great-grandparent, I have had chances to be part of an audience for a child who is trying to be funny. My experience has been that sometimes a kid can be very funny but almost never when he is trying too hard. A prideful gleam in the eye that says "Aren't I funny?" usually kills spontaneity, lowers barriers against cliche and encourages mere silliness. I think the same is true of adult funny people, even though they are usually better at masking their pride in their attempts at humor.

I suspect that the most useful rules are

Be honest and clear in both observation and description
Don't push for a laugh
Definitely avoid the modern young person's apparent fascination with profanity, which to an older person is merely sawdust mixed with the food and not appetizing.

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

Burdens of improvement

2012-02-06T06:54:00.001-06:00

There is a large grocery store near us and we visited it to get things we were missing. She made the dreaded request "Why don't we just go up and down each aisle?" The idea is that items we need but failed to list would get our attention, or at least, hers. There are so many items we don't need that such an approach seems wasteful to me but we did it anyhow.

We had a good-sized cart load in a pleasantly short time and arrived at the checkout booths. Fairly long lines at each that was lit up and being staffed. Accept, wait, that one woman was still standing out front, looking for customers. We went towards her. "Looking for business?" I asked. Yes, she was, as long as we were willing to use self-checkout. I could see many customers waiting to get to a real, living clerk and all the signs said to join them. Still, she was accommodating in manner and I could see that Lynn was attracted. I told her to go on with the self-check out while I went back to the lemon juice we had skipped.

The self-check lady had assured Lynn it was very easy and that she would even help her through the steps. I use self-check most of the time at home and I like it. But I didn't know these machines. Like those I had used, one gets set up and then scans a bar code or looks a code up. Once the machine recognized the item and its weight and adds it to your bill, it locks until it registers that item's weight added to the grocery bag being filled. It estimates the time it should take you to add the item to your bag and once it decides you are tardy, a voice says "Please place the item in your bag." The voice is a female one and speaks in a tone a mother uses to sooth an irritated or injured child.

I asked the self-check lady if she found the voice soothing and she snapped, "No!" She found quite a number of our items were without bar codes and were not listed on the look-up charts. She was doing her best and I was glad we had her to lead us through the work. Several times, the soothing woman's voice said,"Please wait for assistance from the cashier." A couple of times, patience worn thin, the nice lady said, "I AM the cashier!" Our leader had several tools at the ready, including some sort of handheld device but there were times when she had to go to her own workstation and a few when she needed to go to other people to check on an item. She did her best to remain calm and cheerful but it was a comedy in action. Finally, all items had been accounted for.

But wait! We were eligible for a $10 gift certificate for having spent more than ten thousand dollars! A look of steely determination came over our leader's face as she informed us of our good fortune and her resolve to secure that certificate for us. She butted into a line of previously patient customers and got assistance from a human clerk. Unfortunately, that clerk powers only extended so far and we were sent with several documents to the customer service station to get final papers and clearance. Our leader apologized for the complexity. I assured her that trying to replace humans with machines is a famously difficult task. Sometimes, the result is a genuine improvement.

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

thoughts and ideas below the surface

2012-02-05T06:41:00.001-06:00

I have been reading and thinking about the subconscious. It bugs me that part of my mind is not accessible to me. How can that be? If it is not accessible to me, is it running all on its own? I have read several books about the subject:

Vedantam The Hidden Brain

Fine A Mind of Its Own

Wright, Timothy A.Strangers to Ourselves

Wright, Timothy A. Redirect

Herbert, Wray On Second Thought

I feel as though I am getting some insight into what the subconscious is, what it contains and what it does. Although the first couple of attempts to get into the Herbert book were not promising, now that I have read more, I see the value of what this author discusses. He refers to heuristics, rules or patterns we use to make decisions, usually faster or easier than some kind of deep analysis. One of the first he discusses is gravity and physical motion, as with a ball being thrown. The point is that we all work with gravity all our lives and have a good understanding of it. So, with more abstract things such as the "momentum" of a sports contest or a student completing an assignment, we easily apply words and concepts from gravity to non-physical things. Sometimes that goes without a hitch but sometimes, we could do better.

Of the authors listed above, Fine and Wright are scientists while Vedantam and Herbert are science writers. All have valuable ideas and approaches to the mystery of our minds. Wright's "Strangers" helped me understand the history of the subconscious. Freud is credited with concentrating on impulses and desires that his patients seem to feel without realizing those undercurrents were having an effect on their thinking and lives. However, modern scientists are aware of much more extensive areas of the subconscious than repressed desires. Understanding and noting the effects of Herbert's heuristics helps when trying to figure why a feeling or opinion comes out the way it does. Wright's book, "Redirect", helps with detailed discussion of dealing with fears or anxieties that anchor in the unconscious and come to the surface of our minds recurrently in a deeply upsetting way. James Pennebaker of the U of Texas has developed and tested an effective and inexpensive way of dissolving the grip of such fears. "Redirect" describes the process in detail. It consists of waiting until 3 or 4 weeks after some shocking stress to see if the experience really has a grip on our subconscious. Once it is known to be a serious bother, we sit alone for 10 or 15 minutes daily for three or four successive days and write about the event. Our feelings, memories, etc. are the subject of the writing.

Writing makes use of the subconscious and moves its contents into our conscious mind, where issues can be dealt with and dismissed.

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

Self-smithing

2012-02-04T06:29:00.001-06:00

Based on the words "blacksmith" and "wordsmith", maybe we should keep a category of tools, resources, projects and ideas labeled "self-smith". That folder would be for shaping ourselves as much as possible to our liking and to current conditions. Reality shows and novels may be interesting but the goings-on right in our own bodies and minds are at least as much so.

We can generally assume that everyone can think of some personal modification that seems desirable. Many people I know suggest they should lose weight. Many, especially older ones, agree that they should drink more water. Some think they should read more and others put more exercise at the top of their list of possible improvements.

It may be easier to think of body changes that seem to be improvements than mind changes. Still, the brain is the HQ of the whole deal and is worth considering for itself and in connection with the body. It may be simpler to think of ourselves as more or less permanent but the fact is that our bodies, minds, lives and conditions are always changing. Just when you fully grasp that you are not a teen any more, you find you have moved into the 40's. Just when you get yourself trained to be a parent, your children morph into adults. I think it is natural to assume that some desired change will be a permanent fix but in truth, any change is more a matter of both going with the flow and modifying its direction somewhat.

Selfsmithy involves several basic tools. Primary among them are meditation and exercise. Sitting quiet and still for 10 minutes a day is not expensive but it is very valuable for improving one's notice of one's thoughts. Once we notice what we are thinking (where are the potato chips?), we can bring the thought into the light of consideration and match it against our current goal or effort. Exercise, whether it's yoga, walking, biking, weights, elliptical strider, swimming, dancing or something else, has been said to be house-cleaning for both the body and mind.

Much of our lives rest on social foundations. Interpersonal relations keep showing up in studies of longevity and happiness as basic. So, giving a thought to how we interact with others can pay off. For most people, a letter (you know, handwriting on paper that is sent thru the mail - remember that?), an email (nice and fast IF your receiver looks at her email), a text message (I'm telling you: give Google Voice a try, even it is seems odd and dumb. It's free and you may be surprised), or a phone call (it is okay to make a heartfelt statement to voicemail - it will still be received, maybe even more so) -- for most people the dollars and sense cost of any such communication is quite bearable. It may seem odd to pay attention to the frequency and tone we use in our writing and speaking with others but it isn't. Human interaction is so basic to our lives that high schools and colleges always start with training and improvement in these skills.

A balanced and modest approach pays off, as usual. We don't need to achieve perfection and probably wouldn't recognize it as such anyhow. Just working a little at small improvements of our own self-gardens is a great way to spend time.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Szymborska

2012-02-03T06:17:00.001-06:00

The Joy of Writing
by Wislawa Szymborska

A wonderful poet died today. I urge you to take a moment to read some of her stuff available on the web. Evidently, she has only one Kindle book but you can urge Amazon to urge the publishers to convert more of them.

Her poem "The Joy of Writing" gets moves me but much of her poetry is memorable and lovely. The Nobel committee awarding her the 1996 prize in poetry called her the "Mozart of poetry". Like him, she created work that touches people of all ages or conditions.

Wislawa Szymborska was a Nobel laureate in poetry. She died today at age 88.

It is sometimes said that if you can read, you should thank the teachers who gave you that gift. Szymborska shows us that if we can think and imagine and write, we should thank our teachers and ancestors for the tools that enable us to perform that magic. She is also a case for saluting the world's increasingly important translators, who are a kind of poet too.

In honor of poetry and its clear observation of our lives and ways, in honor of attention to words and their flavors, I thought I would mention of pair of arresting phrases that I came across today. The first is from The Atlantic Wire, a free e-newsletter from the Atlantic magazine, quoting Michael Wolff in The Guardian. Discussing the rocky road ahead for Facebook as it faces new challenges, Wolff mentions "issue-hungry politicians". His language went right into my brain: of course! It doesn't matter what the issue is, so long as it is an issue, a politician can take a stand and show firmness or support or outrage or something else colorful, notable and hopefully, memorable

The 2nd comes from Wray Herbert's discussion in "On Second Thought" of needless complexity that we can get ourselves all balled up in. He describes a quite complex series of interconnected machines Rube Goldberg designed to create a "self-operating napkin". Wouldn't that be great? Just think if you didn't have to open a napkin and place on your lap! So much better! Life would be so much more beautiful!

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

Drinking a cup of their spirit

2012-02-02T06:44:00.001-06:00

It seems mysterious to me how older people can get such a lift from just seeing younger people. The lift feels immediate and visceral. I don't have to think about it or try to download their energy and spirit into me. I admit the effect doesn't happen all the time. Another couple at a restaurant table where both are on their phones ignoring each other and their own kids doesn't give me a lift. But when I see devotion, sacrifice, patience and forbearance, I get a lift. I feel more patient and devoted to others myself.

Think about Christmas. Grandparents enjoy the thrill of getting a new doll or set of Legos through the child with the delighted smile. Sure, we know that the thrill is temporary. We know that all thrills are temporary but the height of delight jumps from that person into us in a silent and invisible spark. The world seems brighter and more fun and more promising to us even though we won't play with the doll or the toy.

It is a sort of emotional cannibalism, really. We swallow bits of their joy and thrill, giving our own hearts some of that emotion, too. We aren't dependent solely on the young for good feelings. We do have some of our own and also get them from other sources besides younger people. Still, unwrapping Christmas presents or being part of a audience at a wedding resets our harmonies with the world and our lives. Maybe not cannibalism. Maybe more like that synchronizing jolt the doctor gives to a heart to re-set its rhythm and timing. We don't want the dolly and wouldn't play with the Legos but we are reminded of the joy of new possibilities and the fire that flares up when important achievements and milestones are reached.

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

Two to try

2012-02-01T07:23:00.001-06:00

We just moved into our unit and have boxes sitting around yet to be emptied. We have traveled about 2500 miles and made many visits but we are glad to be in one place for the next 6 weeks. Despite many hours in the car, we haven't had too much chance to read. However, I will mention two books that have been fun. One is Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey and the other is The First Rule of Ten by Gay Hendricks. Both are fictional detective crime stories.

Kwei Quartey is a physician living in California but his story is set in Ghana, the land of his birth. His hero is Darko Dawson and the problem relates to the practice of appeasing gods and countering spells by giving a daughter to the local fetish priest. She is "honored" at 12 or 16 or so and becomes yet another one of the priest's wives for the rest of her life but supposedly she is actually a wife of the gods themselves. The AIDS disease and health workers and a murder propel the story, which we listened to on an Audible.com recording. The book has good reviews and is worth giving a try.

Gay Hendricks is a psychologist whose writings have helped me for decades. He is an experienced guide in marital relations and self-knowledge. He knows meditation well and is a very clear, experienced and imaginative writer. I had no idea that he had branched out into fiction until recently. "Ten" is the nickname of Tenzing Norbu, a Tibetan detective member of a California police. He knows ways to keep himself calm and focused in the midst of tension, danger and confusion. He is investigating suspicious deaths as part of his first attempt to work as a private detective. This book we are reading aloud and have not quite gotten to the middle yet. I am betting things will work out.

Now that I am settled for a while, I will write more often and more regularly.

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

Dr. Atul Gawande get coached

2012-01-20T07:06:00.001-06:00

I keep my eye open for writing by Atul Gawande. He has three books and many articles. The most recent one I saw was in the New Yorker. Dr. Gawande is an excellent writer and focuses on worthwhile themes. This September one is on coaching, that is, having a coach for whatever you do and want to do better. Gawande is also a professor of medicine but most importantly, he is a surgeon. Surgeons seem to be the physical powerhouses of medicine, those who can concentrate and perform delicate, complex operations that may stretch over many hours.

His New Yorker article is not only of interest because of who wrote it and what it is about but because it relates to teaching. The main steps in getting certified as an approved teacher in the K-12 schools are taking courses and student teaching. In the latter, the student is somewhat of an apprentice in the classroom of an experienced teacher. In many teaching positions, observers may watch one's teaching and note items they think could be improved. So, having a professional coach is part of both beginning and some advanced teaching.

Gawande explains in quite clear terms the difficulties of including a coach in something like a surgical operation where there has typically been none. Actors and singers often make use of coaches but a coach for a surgeon is a new thing. He reports his patient did not seem especially comforted to hear that her surgeon has a coach standing by. We have life coaches and sports coaches. We don't expect that even professionals will be beyond benefiting from having a coach. It may be the coming thing and indeed lead to better performances and less burnout.

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

George's sore throat

2012-01-19T07:13:00.001-06:00

George had a sore throat . He was sixty-seven at the time. He was a pivotal figure in our country, being our first president. He had already participated in many important historical events and the infection was not to be allowed to hurt the man. His physicians knew that blood-letting was a fundamental treatment for nearly all diseases. Washington asked to be bled heavily and he was, 1.7 liters of blood. That is about 30% of his blood. He died shortly after.

In the late 1800's and early 1900's, much better more effective approaches to treating infections were developed and blood-letting was stopped, even though it has been practiced for more than 2000 years in many parts of the world.

Fast forward to this week's Time magazine. It includes an article on the growing dissatisfaction with the federal law called No Child Left Behind. I figured national unhappiness with the law would grow, in part because of the law's requirement that all children in all grades be at "grade level" by 2014. I suspect that without murdering or deporting many children, such an achievement is impossible. Besides if we did achieve that situation, we might well come to conclude sometime, that we did more harm than good.

Most of the educators I know have been frustrated and annoyed by the law. They feel it is too simplistic and too heavy-handed. Which brings up the age-old split between the toughies and the softies. The toughies generally feel that life is tough and we must all be tough to live life. Chin up! Shoulder to the wheel! No fear! No weakness! The softies generally feel that there is strength and ability in everyone but it is best nurtured by gentleness and love. More caring! More pleasantry! Way more compliments and emphasis on strengths!

In today's world, it is easy to see that education, knowledge and skills are extremely valuable. Americans tend to go up and down with emphasis on schooling, since we keep hearing that we aren't doing well but that we must if we want to live well. I predict that by the year 3012, we will be clearer about how to educate well for both national and individual prosperity and happiness. Maybe it won't happen until 4012, but it probably will someday.

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

web site blackout day

2012-01-18T06:51:00.001-06:00

Today is web-blackout day as part of an effort to highlight the SOPA/PIPA bill in Congress. I urge you to note the situation and decide what you think about it. I am not a scholar on the subjects of intellectual property or the Bill of Rights. I think copyright rights are basic and should be protected and at the same time, I believe in widespread freedom of speech.

You may want to take a look at www.google.com today. Here is what seems to me to be a good piece on the problem, rationally written in a balanced way.
http://www.informationweek.com/byte/news/personal-tech/digital-content/232500002

We will see what develops.

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

Sitting is the new smoking

2012-01-17T06:32:00.000-06:00

The AARP Bulletin has a headline for this article that says "Sitting is the New Smoking". It says that evidence is accumulating that sitting too much is bad for your health, even if you exercise regularly.

It is difficult to avoid too much sitting. We habitually sit to eat, to drive, to converse. My dean noticed the problem years ago and stood at her computer. My office is such that I can put my laptop on a bookshelf and my mouse and keyboard on inverted banker's boxes. It works out quite nicely. I have found that my painful back does not come to visit if I don't sit too much. Too much for me = more than 20 or 25 minutes at a time. Even when I read aloud, I set a timer to get up and move. I don't do that for tv watching and I find myself sitting too long. The nasty thing about is that I only find out that it was too long the next morning when I start to get out of bed.

I suspect that long bouts of standing more or less still will prove to be less than helpful, too. For some, a "treadmill desk" may be helpful. See this web site: http://www.treadmill-desk.com/

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

Writing from me to me

2012-01-16T06:16:00.001-06:00

I have been interested in parts of my mind that I don't know. I read Vedantam's book, tried Herbert's, have settled into Wilson's Strangers to Ourselves. I read erratically here and there and keep only a few notes and highlights in my Kindle or in Google Docs. I have had the idea that I have a purpose and a goal but it is just now becoming clear to me that Wilson's Strangers and his more recent Re-direct form the beginning of a clearer picture of my unconscious. Wilson cites research that shows the value of private writing to oneself with the aim of mentioning honestly what one thinks about matters of concern.

Wilson cites research and evidence that serious mental trauma has been found to be overcome better with four nightly sessions of private writing on one's own than intensive 3 or 4 hour sessions with expert debriefing psychologists. In fact, the effective writing approach to quieting the upset mind using private writing helped quite effectively while the intensive interviews were found to increase the trauma. The intensive interviews, part of a process called Critical Incident Stress Debriefing, were held as soon after the disturbing event as possible and are part of the standard procedure for many police and fire departments. The writing sessions are only advised if, after a few weeks, the incident is, in fact, haunting the mind of the person who experienced it.

Meanwhile, in other sources, the subject of writing to oneself has plenty of respect. The book Writing Down Your Soul by Janet Conner emphasizes the fun and value of private writing.

This kind of writing is easy. There's no one standing over your shoulder judging your grammar or punctuation or determining if anything you've said makes a lick of sense. But make no mistake, the practice of pouring your soul onto paper is profound, and, in the way of all things, profound, it can—and will—change your life.

Conner, Janet (2011-03-01). Writing Down Your Soul (p. 8). Conari Press. Kindle Edition.

The book Instant Self-hypnosis by Forbes Robbins Blair ($1.75 in Kindle format, immediately readable on your computer, Kindle or smart phone) says:

In a literate society, we often overlook the impact that writing down our thoughts, desires, and aspirations has on us. Writing is very powerful because it requires attention to our own words and ideas. It forces us to focus on what it is that we need to express. When we read, we are usually expressing someone else's ideas and thoughts even if they are congruent with our own. When we write, however, the source is always coming from inside us and our individual motivations. And because we see what we're writing as we write it, a boomerang-like effect takes place. It reflects thoughts back into our minds and further imbeds ideas or suggestions contained in the writing. It also forces us to organize our thoughts to a greater or lesser extent.

Blair, Forbes Robbins (2004-03-01). Instant Self-Hypnosis: How to Hypnotize Yourself with Your Eyes Open (p. 144). Sourcebooks. Kindle Edition.

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

Waking up

2012-01-15T06:37:00.000-06:00

With no evidence other than my experience, I divide people into those who awaken gradually and those who do so abruptly. I suspect that people may get along better if they can at least sometimes use the same awakening style as each other.

All my life, I have felt strongly that full, deep sleep is important. As a 5th grade teacher, I felt that having a good sleep was the single best preparation for the day that a student could have. I realize that not everyone can manage good sleeping conditions but they do matter. So, when possible, I like to let everyone, including me, wake up naturally, on their own, without an alarm clock. I used an alarm for years so I would be on time and I have nothing against them. But, to me, it is better if I wake up on my own five or ten minutes before it is set to go off.

That means that if someone is sleeping late, I like to be so quiet that I am not the cause of their wake-up. I doubt if is ever possible to be completely certain what sounds might lead the ears to signal the brain to come out of it but I like to try being very quiet. Very quietly putting my foot down and then slowly and gently putting my weight on that foot. My biggest difficulties are the sound of flushing toilets and running water. Our coffee-maker is quiet to use but the smell of coffee can awaken sleepers, too. For some sleepers, light itself can awaken, even though the eyes are closed.

Technology has helped. I like to turn my modem off at night but I have it plugged into a remote control switch that allows me to turn it on from the other end of the house. Similarly, we have a lamp that can be turned on when one of us is awake to signal that noise is ok. It too can be turned on remotely.

I have read that for most of the time there have been people, they tended to sleep in a mass. I picture a litter of puppies asleep in a box in various states of body overlap. A friend introduced me to the interesting book The Head Trip by Jeff Warren, about all the various ways we can be conscious. That book elicited pictures of people living before candles or electric light bulbs. Most of time, adult humans can't sleep as much as the hours of darkness there are each day. Thus, people typically awoke in the midst of their sleep, became quite awake, and worked on small tasks or simply stared for a while, before resuming sleep. That pattern meant more than one waking up each night.

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

Trio: poop, work, text messages

2012-01-14T06:48:00.001-06:00

Poop

There is a lot to say about poop. Yes, human excrement. The best book I know on the subject from a social point of view is The Big Necessity by Rose George. The title refers to a toilet, which will have more respect from you after you look at the book.

The Tao of Poop by Vivian Glyck is about the more challenging aspects of raising a baby. An acquaintance of mine wondered about her ability to face a dirty diaper when she was younger. Now, many dirties later, she is fully acquainted and unafraid of a little poop.

If we lose control of our bowels, we will probably feel embarrassed and like we are babies again. Control of our elimination of body waste is one of the primary signs that we are grown-ups and civilized, as opposed to being animals.

Work

The application of computers, communication and digitization has changed and continues to change many aspects of our lives. I saw a talk on the web the other day that said we are now in a time when we have flying computers (modern airliners, drones), computers who operate surgically on people, computers that send out movies in streams.

When Napster came along and people exchanged files of their sound tracks, that had a big effect on the music recording business. When the digital camera came along, it has had a big effect on photography and firms such as Eastman Kodak. (Kodak just filed for bankruptcy.)

Just as albums can be separated into sound tracks, many jobs can be separated into sub-parts. Amazon's Mechanical Turk is a web site that allows small jobs to be assigned to those willing to accept them and earn money for completing them. The article by PC magazine lists 20 sites on the web they feel are good ones for seeking a job. I read several years ago about a man living in Latvia or one of the Baltic republics who earned a good living, not from the local economy but from Elance (like 'freelance", catch-as-catch-can job acceptance).

Text messages

People can get email on smartphones and they can get text messages. What's the difference? In some ways, not much. Because of the small keyboards and modified keys that stand for multiple symbols on some phones, there is a strong tradition of communicating any way one can. Similarly, text messages carry no voice quality, only symbols and are cheaper. Indeed, free in some parts of the world. Thus, "u" instead of "you" and things like "how r u?" for How are you?

I keep advocating that people try Google Voice, which does both voice and text but I have had little success. I have never used the free service for voice but I do all my texting through it. It gives me access to texting on my computer keyboard, allows my inexpensive Tracfone to signal me that I have received a text and allows me to forward such messages to Lynn or others.

I am impressed by friends who are nearly instantaneous at responding to a text message sent to their phone but rarely pay attention to their email. Teen-agers are especially like to be more responsive to texts, which are short and to the point.

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

Being in the cloud these days

2012-01-13T06:26:00.001-06:00

Our friend got a new computer. She found that she was not clear about what a USB connection was but when her friend wanted to share some pictures via a USB thumb drive, her old computer had not USB slot on it. The friend said that the computer must be quite old. So, she got a new one.

There was a time when PERSONAL computing meant something along the lines of writing (word-processing), math and accounting (spreadsheet) and filing (simple databases). My wife bought me the package called "Appleworks" in 1984. I wanted it very much because I had seen an article about those three activities and I wanted to be able to do them. Notice that version of computing does not involve other people, email, connections between computers or anything called "the internet".

These days, if a computer isn't connected to the internet, it feels more or less useless. It can do the three activities of writing, math and accounts and filing in stand-alone mode with the right programs (often called "applications") on it but there is no Google, no blogging, no news or weather, no checking your own bank funds, no Facebook. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Google are three companies with plenty of reputation, staff, ideas, energy and money. One of the attractions these companies face is more interaction and more business flowing to, and through, them, by greater use of their own computers. They can achieve that increase if they offer some of the capacity of their zillions of computers (and specialized computers called "servers") for storage of people's files.

A common term for "somewhere on the internet" or "somewhere in company X's computer capacity" these days is "in the cloud". I am composing this post on a (word-processing) form supplied free by the Google company in its Google Docs section (docs.google.com). I advocate using Google Docs since it is free and ubiquitous. I can get back to this composition from any computer that is hooked to the internet. The web page form that makes what looks like a page is build to save my typing frequently. I don't know where it saves the little electronic blips that make up my message and I don't care, so long as I can get it back when I want it. That's cloud computing and it is rather nice.

Because so many capabiliites are available on the internet, it has been increasingly attractive to make a specialized computer that does nothing much but connected to the internet. Some tablets are more or less that way. An alternative to Google Docs and Microsoft Office "suite" of programs is OpenOffice. For my money, it is still worth having Microsoft Word and Excel on my computer for when I want them and I want them every day. Both are terrific tools but there are many free alternatives these days. They might not be quite as good in some ways but they are very handy to try and to know about.

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

Event, duration, dose

2012-01-12T06:24:00.001-06:00

Human attention is fundamental to living. What we notice, deliberately or automatically, is most of our experience. In fact, our bodies are built to bring to our notice things we should probably pay attention to. Big bills, aches and pains, lovable people, arresting sights - all come to our attention without effort. Taking a moment to be grateful for the good things, nearly always far more numerous than we have time to count, is not so automatic but still important and feasible. As with our breathing, attention can be directed purposely but also without conscious intention by our wiring.

When planning our day, our routine, we may have certain commitments and intentions. Many of those will involve events, tasks to be done, things that can be checked off once accomplished. For such events, we don't have much of a measure. We either went to the bank or we didn't. But some events do have a duration or dose connected to them. How much money should we deposit? How long should we walk? Still, later, we can either check off that we withdrew $67.19 or we did not. We either walked for 30 minutes or we didn't.

The difference between checking off that we walked and recording how far or how long is the difference between event recording and measurement recording. Events are probabilistic and discontinuous, either happened or not. Measures are continuous, smoothly flowing and answer "How much?"

One of my sources of inspiration and insight has been Dr. W.E. Deming. This colorful man took ideas associated with the theory and logic of manufacturing, many invented by Walter Shewhart and related to work by Joseph Juran and carried them forward in imaginative and exciting ways. He was creative but possessed solid common sense. I learned from him to be quite suspicious of numbers, especially in rules and directives. A very large portion of the time, any number in a rule or directive is not necessarily the best one. Often, little or no research has been done on the number and it may be out of date, too high, too low or just plain wrong.

My sturdy friend has warned me that in some cases, even a short time or a small amount can upset metabolism or plans disproportionately. I am fascinated by the effect of a much smaller dose or shorter duration of many things in my life. I use the rule of thumb to lift a weight 8 to 15 times. But, I know that lifting 1 to 3 times will have an effect, too. It may take longer to achieve a strength goal but I will improve.

I believe many people make false assumptions about serving size. They tend to say that if three bites of excellent steak are good, 9 bites would be better. I believe that we frequently underestimate the value to ourselves of the event's occurrence and overestimate the pleasure associated with a given "dosage" of steak, meditation, exercise, reading something difficult.

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

Big hit from mystery author

2012-01-11T06:11:00.001-06:00

Dalya Alberge writes in Britain's The Guardian:

(Here is a link to the whole article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/08/hawthorn-tree-zhang-yimou-ai-mi)

A novel by an anonymous Chinese author living in America, which started life as a blog, has become a worldwide publishing sensation. It has been snapped up by publishers in 15 countries who have been impressed by the fact that it has sold more than a million copies in China and inspired a film by an Oscar-winning Chinese director. Some publishers even bought it before reading a translation. Yet none of the publishers, translators or editors knows the author's identity.

Under the Hawthorn Tree, a tragic love story set during the Cultural Revolution, is written under the pen name of Ai Mi. All that is known about the author is that she leads a reclusive life in Florida, having gone there to study. She is thought to be in her fifties or sixties, if only because her insight into the Cultural Revolution suggests someone who experienced first hand the political and social persecution of Mao Zedong's last decade. She tells her readers that it was inspired by a true story. Her central character – a young woman from a "politically questionable family" who falls in love with the son of a general – is based on a real person with names and places disguised.

In a publishing world where an author's identity is often more important than their talent, it is striking that publishers as far afield as Italy, Norway, Brazil and Israel have responded to the writing alone. Lennie Goodings of Virago bought it without knowing a word of Chinese – and was relieved to discover that it lived up to her expectations when she commissioned an English translation. She said: "It's a beautiful love story, almost like a Romeo and Juliet. It has that real simplicity about people trying to love each other across class. [Set] against the Cultural Revolution, it shows the startlingly intimate reach of politics in that period [which] even affects – and infects – their love."

Goodings asked someone from Shanghai who works in Virago's accounts department to read it: "Her face fell and she said, 'I'm not interested in the Cultural Revolution. It's my parents' generation.' The next day she was at my shoulder, eyes brimming, saying 'it's so wonderful and I cried'. On the basis of that, I bought it blind." Although the original blog was serialised on a website that was blocked by the Chinese authorities, an admirer had passed it to one of China's state-affiliated publishers, which has been overwhelmed by its sales.

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

Danica McKellar ("Winnie" in "The Wonder Years")

2012-01-10T06:27:00.000-06:00

I like to find a tv series that I enjoy. It is even better if the episodes are 30 minutes, which often means that after the series has aged, the episodes are about 24 minutes without the ads. So, streaming "The Wonder Years" from Amazon just fits the bill. If a man over 70 can enjoy a show about the trials of being a 7th grade boy, it has to be well-written. It is well-written.

Kevin is in the 7th grade in 1968. I remember my own 7th grade in fits and starts. But I certainly remember feeling as Kevin does about girls. My thoughts were more carnal that Kevin's are depicted but when we come in the story to the subject of Winnie, I am quite in tune with the show, made in the 1988-1993 period.

The other day, I came across a tv interview of the actress who plays Winnie on the show. She is Danica McKellar, now married with two children of her own.

Winnie reminds me of a real 7th grader that I knew from the 6th grade, which in the US, is quite different. Grade 6 was the highest grade in a school that ran from kindergarten and grade 1 through the 6th. After 6th grade, the trip to school was longer and the school was much grander. In the 6th grade, you are the oldest kids in the school, the top of the heap. In the 7th grade, you were the youngest, the newbies.

McKellar, (a.k.a. Mrs. Mike Verta), is an interesting example of the world today. When I see her playing the quiet girl on The Wonder Years, I would not expect that girl to grow up to be something of a pin-up queen. But take a look. Then, when I realize she is a vibrant beauty, I wouldn't expect her to be one of three mathematicians after whom a mathematical theorem is named. It is shocking to my stereotypes that such a quiet 7th grade sort of beauty grew up to be a sex kitten, a vibrant young mother and a high-level mathematician. But then, I find that she is the author of three New York Times Bestsellers urging girls to shine in math!

How can that be? How can one woman be all those things and more? Time, talent and new thinking in my little mind. There are always twists and surprises in life. One that gives me a kick is that Danica's professor, the one with whom she and another woman developed the Chayes-McKellar-Winn theorem, owned no tv and was not a viewer. So, he had no idea who "Winnie" was and probably didn't care.

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

Dr. Kelly Mcgonigal and increased willpower

2012-01-09T06:39:00.001-06:00

I learned about Dr. Kelly Mcgonigal quite by accident. I like to listen to something in my car, an audiobook or a Great Course. I've had several on the shelf for a year or more and have been slowly going through them. I still have quite a few, plus several in my iPod. It is fun and stimulating. By the way (texters write 'BTW'), just as many libraries are loaning books electronically onto computers and e-readers, they are also loaning audiobooks onto the same tools.

Anyhow, it is when I finish a book or a course, that I have to start working: searching, browsing, exploring and re-examining what we already have. It is not only a matter of what I have a taste for but also of what subjects are on my mind. You know, which-way-is-the-universe-guiding-me sort of thing. I don't want to threaten my well-being by searching my iPod while driving and when I get to my destination, I don't think of remaining in the car to search through what I have on it. So, one thing and another, I am in limbo for a while, searching and deciding.

Lynn emphasizes the value of Wisconsin Public Radio and listens often. It is just one of the amazing resources available to people these days. We often catch Dr. Zorba Paster, a physician and Dr. Patricia McConnell, a veterinarian and dog specialist, even when far away if we can pick up the signal. Just as Lynn says, the many planners and hosts, as well as the regulars, are expert at finding excellent topics and people who know about them. When I do listen to books and courses while driving, I often wonder what I am missing on the radio. I restrain myself from switching to check, but as men with tv remotes demonstrate, it isn't easy.

I had not heard of The Peoples Pharmacy show but that was playing when I tuned in. Dr. Kelly Mcgonical was the guest talking about how to increase willpower. Like quite a few others, I was just deciding on trying, for the nth time, to lose some weight. She gave some good hints and mentioned a class she teaches for her local community on willpower and what science has to say about it. She and others I have read recently say that evidence exists that our willpower can get fatigued, so that after resisting several temptations, we are more likely to give in to something.

One tip was to give myself mental points each time I resisted something I am trying to avoid. Show myself that I am putting 'money in my account', so to speak. That has definitely been helpful.

She mentioned the same two pillars of health and happy living I have found repeatedly in many different fields and with many different thinkers: exercise and meditation. Anybody who pays attention to those two areas gets some of my attention right off. Eventually, I will get my fill of them but not yet.

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

It's nice to have ape relatives to watch

2012-01-08T06:33:00.001-06:00

It's nice to have the ape relatives because their behavior in the wild gives us a bit of a baseline against which to compare ourselves. As we move into an age of machines and symbols, some of our difficulties stem from still being ape-ish in this different world. Here, we want to remember, decode, be self-aware and have self-insight and be aware of others and their ways, too. There are similarities and differences between our goals and the goals we were built to accomplish. With patience and imagination, we can probably do just fine in this connected, computerized world but it is indeed a bit different from searching for food in the wild.

Even the last 50 to 20 thousand years were spent as hunter-gatherers, not as lab technicians, help desk workers or web page coders. The mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, is reported by the BBC to have enrolled in a class on coding for web pages. The BBC has a related article, "Coding: The New Latin". These highly symbolic activities are not the hunting, eating, mating and sleeping that we animals were built for. True, we have found a way to live longer and with more ease. But when we have troubles with our motivation, our tempers, our interpersonal and intrapersonal relations, it could be our basic wiring that is part of the problem.

The modern geneticists say that the similarity of our genetic information and that of the chimpanzees is very great. We don't need to worry. Language, writing, commerce and modern plumbing and electricity are ours and we aren't going to lose them. Still, it is thought-provoking to see how much is identical.

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

Right enough today but maybe not tomorrow

2012-01-07T06:22:00.001-06:00

I had the following note to myself relating to my graduate school experience of studying psychology:

Our determination to avoid falling into error was itself the cause of our falling into error: the behaviorists as an example of scrupulous effort of be scientific and not fall into mere language and myth that leads us astray.

When I was growing up, I almost never heard the word 'liberal', especially not related to US politics. Even when I was eleven years old, I was primed to hear the word because my church minister, Dr. Waldemar Argow, had written a book called "What do religious liberals believe?" I knew the book and gave a short presentation to my Unitarian Sunday school on it.

Then, maybe 20 or 30 years later, "liberal" became a word snarled by some politicians who wanted support from those who yearned for order and dependability in life. The word sometimes had a dirty or despised aura among some people. I had had training and experience with rigorously-held belief systems and knew that sometimes people cling to beliefs and want to stay away for those with different beliefs and from those who question. Even as a youngster, I felt that the question mark was my "shield and buckler ", my motto, my charm, my talisman. Being male, I understood competition, even though I rarely won anything, but I was used to be on the other side. I didn't balk at the role but I noted that "liberal" was even more on the outs among some.

In graduate psychology classes, we usually heard that we were among "experimental psychologists". I wondered why the adjective. I found that another label of "clinical psychologists" was applied to those I had heard of, those who sit with someone with a mental or emotional problem and try to help them. But this latter group was the one I was interested in as a teacher and education doctoral student.

Over time and with meditation experience and aging, I have more respect and sympathy with those who adhere tightly (or think they do) to a plan or a scheme or a set of principles. Still, it is clear that we humans pay a price for a strict plan. Statisticians often say that most things are linear in the short run. They mean that a straight line - a nice simple model - is often a good model of a complex curve that wiggles this way and that IF a short enough segment of the curve is modeled. Just a different way of saying that most things get more complex or go haywire eventually.

So, now behaviorism (very strict adherence to the dictum that we don't try to understand anything much about people other than what we can observe them DO) is seen as limited and not so valuable an approach.

Teachers try to understand people but that is not the main goal. The goal is to have students learn, mature, develop, flourish. Teachers will use all sorts of approaches to make those things happen.

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

More fluid knowledge these days

2012-01-06T06:09:00.001-06:00

Sometimes, people who have had plenty of education and have read many books, tend to think that life is about explanation. I have been like that most of my life. When I was six or so, I got my first library card in the large and impressive Enoch Pratt Free Library main branch in downtown Baltimore. Much of typical schooling involves knowing about books and written, documented explanations. While students are in college, they tend to get the idea that the way to learn is to take a course.

College students training to be teachers naturally have their minds on teaching activities that will increase understanding of ideas and principles that are part of necessary adult knowledge. So, when I ask them how many credits the President has in president-ship, it sometimes takes them a second to realize the answer is "None."

Whether it is getting elected to public office, landing a good job, having a good marriage, it is much easier to remember what happened along the way that to explain how one succeeded or failed, what the "errors" or the reasons one did all right. Much is written these days about changes in handling knowledge, the first one being the Google search engine and related changes in knowledge construction and handling. We used to learn that this one or that one was a great leader or thinker while those others weren't very good. We used to learn things that we were supposed to know.

We still do, of course, but there are changes. It is more likely now that the first thing we do when considering Grover Cleveland or the Aztec civilization, is to look for CURRENT thinking on the subject. New information gets uncovered, new ways of analyzing old information, new syntheses of this view and those facts emerge quickly and sometimes stand old views on their head.

The book "Everything is Miscellaneous" by David Weinberger has such a powerful and radical message that, as often happens, with totally new ideas, it is a little difficult at first to grasp what he is saying. Still, he shows that the habit many of us learned in school when thinking and searching is often obsolete now. Interested in Grover Cleveland? Let's see - he was a president so look in the president section.

Nowadays, we have a search window that can look everywhere very quickly and bring back results from all the sections. We have found that no matter how we organize our knowledge, there are other ways we could have done it. Modern methods often enable us not only to find all mentions of Grover and his colleagues, enemies, hobbies, etc. but we get very speedy access to all the sources without moving from the keyboard. No hauling, no elevators up and down. We can copy relevant sections or construct a link to them on the spot.

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

Kindle, schmindle

2012-01-05T06:25:00.001-06:00

(For those who have no current interest in Kindle or related matters -

If you are looking for something of interest, try my blog page itself since it is fed the latest posts from a variety of interesting blogs on diverse subjects: http://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/. Alternatively, there are dozens of other profitable ways to spend your time.)

There is more about the Kindle that didn't get mentioned.
Reading is usually thought of as a solitary activity and of course, it is. Still, somebody wrote what you read and somebody contributed to getting to you so that is two other people already. If you aren't in the mood to be with others, you can read by yourself. To increase your pleasure, note powerful sentences. Highlighting them and sharing the set from a book with others, either by yourself or more publicly can increase your grasp of the book, your own thinking, and that of others.

The Kindle sound abilities. It can read text aloud in a computer-generated voice (that isn't too bad, as such things go these days.) It can contain and play music and audio books.

Much of the time, Kindle books are cheaper than paper. However, this is changing. With the proper equipment, the eformat is handier than paper. So, more people want it, raising the demand. You know what's next. The price rises. It is easy to find instances now of the price for eformat being higher than paper.

A related topic is that of sharing an account. If I buy a book, I can read it my Kindle but my wife can read it on hers. Either of us can read the book on either of our computers. One copy open in four places at once.

No Kindle? No problem. You can install free Kindle software on your computer, buy Kindle books at often-better prices than paper, get them on your computer instantly and read them there. If you get a Kindle later, you can see all the purchased books there. If you have access to a computer connected to the internet but no permission or ability to install software there, you can open the Amazon Cloud reader in a free browser (Firefox, Chrome, Safari) and read your books there.

If you really want to pay 99 cents a month for this blog of mine, you can have it delivered daily to your Kindle instead of getting it free on the internet. I actually pay that fee so a bedridden friend with no interest or ability or equipment to use a computer can get the blog daily. He sometimes actually reads it. Many blogs, newspapers and magazines are available on the Kindle. I get The Atlantic, which I started for the experience of a periodical on the Kindle but now look forward to getting it.

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

Kindle review

2012-01-04T06:21:00.001-06:00

Facts
    Old business: the Kindle holds about 1500 books and weighs about 10 oz. A whole library fits into a small, easy-to-care-for package.
    There are several forms of the Kindle, currently from $79 to $379, that is for the most stripped down (with "special offers" ) model to the DX, which is larger than the others and may be ideal for newspapers and magazines. Books can be acquired by transfer from a computer they are sent to, through a local or home wi-fi hotspot and by special cellphone-like call from Amazon to your Kindle.
    The main competitor to the Kindle is Barnes and Noble's Nook. Both are successful and have good reviews. Both can be purchased in stores like Wal-Mart, Staples and Best Buy or by mail. Both have good reviews and the facts of the Kindle apply pretty well to the Nook, too.

Opinion
    Book lovers often fear e-format and missing the touch of paper pages. My experience, going on 4 years and more than 500 books later, is that these fears are not valid for many types of books. However, charts, maps and pictures may show up poorly in the Kindle itself, not counting the model called "Fire". However, any computer can be used to read Kindle books and most computer displays are excellent for Kindle. Ours certainly are. Our iPad is really an excellent display of all books and their photos and charts.
    Some book lovers, especially academics and researchers, like to annotate and highlight important parts of a book as they read. They are often convinced that only paper books are good for such note-taking. I urge all Kindle owners to visit https://kindle.amazon.com/. On that site, you can see the highlights and notes you have taken for any of your Kindle books and look at what others have highlighted. When you write your doctoral dissertation or your family history, you sure don't want to have to go through a source of information more than once. Good highlighting is the key to picking it all up in one sweep. Maybe you have had the experience of highlighting the good stuff but needing a list of the highlights and their locations. The Kindle provides a user-friendly list of your highlights complete with live links to each. The list is in the order the highlights occur in the book for easy locating, copying, re-checking, etc.

If you like to read, or want to like to read, try a Kindle. It is getting more popular, as is the Nook, all the time. Confessions of a GP sold 8500 copies in Britain in the paper form but 100,000 copies in Kindle form.

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

It's mine! But, you can have it

2012-01-03T06:28:00.001-06:00

A friend of mine taught copyright considerations to education majors for 30 years. He has stated repeatedly how disgusted he is with very long copyrights in the US (sixty or 70 years after the author's death). The Korean-born economist Ha-Joon Chang stated in The Bad Samaritans that long copyrights were an impediment to economic progress for developing nations. The higher education institutions of those nations need textbooks but often can't get them because of copyrights.

I am guessing that the two biggest goals of a copyright holder are money and fame. There is a difference between releasing the copyright and making the material available for free. In today's world, one's online identity, email address, name, etc. are valuable and it is not unknown for people to supply a free copy of material IF one "registers" one's identify information. I got on to this topic from the O'Reilley Radar post by Nat Torkington that mentioned a talk given recently in Berlin on why all general purpose computers could be a target for those who want to hold tight to copyright.

As far as I can tell, the fascination with "free" as a price point is quite widespread. The book by Chris Anderson, an high-level editor at Wired, "Free: the Future of a Radical Price Point" (2009) give this example of what can happen when things are free. This is a notice from the comedy group called Monty Python

"For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It's time for us to take matters into our own hands. We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we've figured a better way to get our own back: We've launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube. No more of those crap quality videos you've been posting. We're giving you the real thing—high quality videos delivered straight from our vault. What's more, we're taking our most viewed clips and uploading brand new high quality versions. And what's even more, we're letting you see absolutely everything for free. So there! But we want something in return. None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years."

Anderson continues:

Three months later, the results of this rash experiment with free were in. Monty Python's DVDs had climbed to No. 2 on Amazon's Movies and TV best-sellers list, with increased sales of 23,000 percent.

Anderson, Chris (2009-06-22). Free: The Future of a Radical Price (pp. 1-2). Hyperion. Kindle Edition.

Similarly, the book "Confessions of a GP" sold 8500 copies on paper in Britain but 100,000 copies in Kindle format.

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

Review, now, and soon

2012-01-02T06:29:00.001-06:00

review of main events of 1959

reviews of any year can take place at any time
I am always suspicious of them: what's seems big at their end might not 10 years later. In fact, there is no "maybe" about it. One of the fascinating things about past events is that they change over the years in their importance and their implications. I do applaud the practice of taking time to think back over memories and records, which do not always agree.

A potpourri of ideas and prompts, since I have so many waiting and aging

I often get an idea for a blog post and I have a file of notes of possibilities. Just now, it has 125 entries. They are kept in the order of their birth. If they get too old, they lose their shine. Here is a selection.

old:

I am a planner as are many people I know. Plans are guides but they also restrict. However, avoidance of plans has a price, too. Wadda ya gonna do? It is one of the fundamental human dilemmas and one of the most basic in this age of opportunity and related stresses.

middle age:

Winter is fallow time in an agricultural community. Things rest, die, renew. Don't forget that for all our sophisticated science, we still eat plants or things that eat plants. We still need plants to live.

young:

Evolution is a hot topic, partly because we feel we are too noble to be crude relatives of chimps and partly because we are curious to know how this whole business came about. But a related hot topic is emerging: "evo devo", evolutionary development or how babies develop in the womb and later, in all species and how the process has changed over the eons of time.

just born:

I've fallen in love with pressure cooking. The whole subject of cooking with greater than normal atmospheric pressure is interesting. I asked for a pressure cooker for Christmas a couple of years ago and used it a few times. Then, it just sat in our cupboard for months. I have been thinking of taking one of my cooking-dinner days to use it again. Cabbage, apples, onion and ham reading in four minutes of 15 lb pressure. Neat! Tonight it's lentil curry. Once it gets up to pressure, three minutes but then natural cooling as opposed to running cool water over the cooker.

In the middle of February or thereabouts, I will have written 1000 posts for this blog. I intend to print them all out in a book for my own satisfaction. That is counting each dated entry separately even though some are only a link to something else and a few were not posted on their own days but on the same day as another post.

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

Willpower Science blog added

2012-01-01T07:11:00.001-06:00

Happy New Year! I hope it is a wonderful one and that you enjoy each blessing fully.

I have added the blog The Science of Willpower to the blogs listed on the page of my own blog. The writer has a new book on the subject that you may be interested in.

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

I and We

2011-12-31T06:39:00.001-06:00

One underlying difference between cultures is a culture's location on the group-individual scale. I have read often of the greater emphasis on group identity and group decision-making in some other cultures than mine. The book The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar is a good one on the individual and group because she is an articulate explainer of her experience of being a girl growing up in a highly organized Indian religion with many rules and obligations. She enthusiastically followed them all. Then, her family moved to the US and she attended public school here. She learned of new and quite different obligations to make good decisions and choose her own paths. The contrast was startling. And, formative.

Another eye-opening book on this subject is The Geography of Thought by Richard Nisbett. He contrasts basic thought processes in the East and the West and finds the East often finds a way to picture things in cycles, rising and falling, like the clock face or the months of the year. The West is more likely to think in terms of a line, a ladder, a progression, like a single life from birth to death. Both ways of organizing a picture pay and both are learning more and more about using the other's methods.

Since the underlying orientation of our thinking can be quite subtle and quiet, we don't tend to notice it or the depth of allegiance we feel toward it. Americans are used to appeals to this or that in the name of freedom and individuality and SELF development, both of the self and by the self. Iyengar makes the interesting point that the majority of marriages on this planet are arranged by the parents or brokers or others than those who marry each other. Yet, a central theme of my life has been the importance of choosing the right partner for marriage. So, the idea that it might be better for someone else to choose is shocking.

True, in real life, my parents and friends definitely let me know what they think of a likely candidate. In romantic movies, meeting the parents is taken as a big sign of strong interest. So, as usual, one type of thinking or one way of doing things might not be as different from another as it first appears.

The recent surge in "iPhone", "iMac", "mySpace" and other advertising and product-naming strategies may emphasize the possibility of the individual. My God-given (??) right to choose my brand of car for myself is emphasized in one or more tv ads these days. Still, what my wife, kids, and friends say matters, too, even in the land of the red, white and blue. It is still the place of "e pluibus unum".

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

Not aware of myself

2011-12-30T06:32:00.000-06:00

(I had Prof. Wilson's name wrong and have corrected it.)
I am slowly reading more about the unconscious mind. Right now, I am in Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious by Prof. Timothy D. Wilson. Wilson starts off distinguishing Freud's version of the unconscious from more modern conceptions. It can help to sort out the fighting and squabbling from simple expressions of the view. Basically, the late 1800's view related to repressed feelings and desires, especially sexual ones and double especially forbidden ones such as incestuous feelings. Wilson makes clear that a great deal does go on in our minds that we are not conscious of. He advises thinking of our minds as a collection of city-states or modules with different functions. Some engineer can probably calculate how much of our physical energy is consumed by processes such as intelligent governing our body processes, our creation of continuous speech and ideas versus how much is consumed by our conscious awareness and deliberate thinking. Wilson gives me the idea that the conscious deliberation is just a small portion of the total energy used by the mind.

Freud's focus was the patient's feelings, not the other, less dramatic operations of the mind. Wilson uses the example of a woman recently engaged to a man who had never actually faced the fact that she did not love the man. Her friends thought it was obvious but she had not paid attention to her actual feelings.

The first book I read on modern thinking about the unconscious mind was The Hidden Brain by Shankar Vedantam. I have also read A Mind's of Its Own by Cordelia Fine.. All three of these books emphasize that we normally carry prejudices or heuristics, as they are referred to by Wray Herbert in On Second Though: Outsmarting Your Mind's Hard-Wired Habits.
The term "heuristics" has many different types of usage but it includes the rough rules-of-thumb that the mind uses to make decisions. These basic rules can be somewhat simplistic or irrelevant to a given situation without our noticing it.

Our bodies are complex structures in a weight-distribution and engineering sense. Sitting or standing, we are constantly adjusting our muscles and bones to hold ourselves in a given position. Only lying down in a stable position, such as "flat on our backs", would we experience little or change, fall or drop were we to suddenly lose consciousness. Parts of the mind govern this use of muscles, normally without our being aware of the nerves and muscles. Wright discusses a case where nerve damage robbed a man of this proprioceptive function. He could only walk with totally continuous conscious thinking about what to make his body do.

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

Cultured, uncultured

2011-12-29T06:37:00.001-06:00

Listening to the dialogue of the wonderful movie "Enchanted April", I hear the old aristocratic lady, played by Joan Plowright, says that this or that is "in poor taste". Whatever she was complaining about, I had just the moment before thought how clever and insightful the remark was. Being brought up short by the poor taste remark, I realized much of what I approve or disapprove in human actions is related to what I have absorbed from my family and other cultural forces. Of course, I thought of HER cultural prejudices first but then it came to me that my food choices, my music and book tastes, my dress habits, possibly the way I walk even, are all related to the culture(s) I grew up in.

When I try to see what culture does, I can tell that the usual suspects are important. Gender relations, age relations, relations between neighbors, between friends - all relations are likely to be guided by what culture says one does in them, what is allowed, what is appropriate, how positive and negative feelings are expressed. Of course, what foods are served and how they are prepared is affected by culture. What is good driving and appropriate walking/strolling behavior is affected. As someone said, in some religious places, one must not be bare-headed while in other, one must be. Similarly, no shoes allowed in some places but required in others. Generally, we realize that many of the 'right' things are arbitrary and could just as well be different. Regardless, doing what is customary makes one's acceptance deeper and smoother. Trying to do the right thing when it differs from one's habits is not easy. I forget sometimes and I feel uncomfortable.

A pair of German college students visited a restaurant with us. This is a place where one is served peanuts in the shell. The nut is cracked open with one's fingers and correct procedure is to toss the shells on the floor. These well-brought-up students were somewhat horrified and very reluctant to follow protocol. Eventually, they were persuaded to try the wild primitive side of life. We took their picture simultaneously tossing the shells.

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

No worries, Mate

2011-12-28T06:45:00.001-06:00

A friend wrote advising me to think of the expected number of years of life I have left when deciding what to select to read and watch.

Just a suggestion: Start thinking about coming to the end of your life - and your reading. THEN pick the books to which you wish to give your precious time......btw, I've found this works at any age, but becomes even more effective after 60. :)

Loving the gift of simplicity from imminent mortality accepted.

This is sound and famous advice. Be ready to die, accepting of death, in order to have a good life while you are still alive. Too much time, fear and fascination spent on one's mortality can be a big waste of the energy and opportunities still left.

It is another one of those balancing things: too blasé an attitude toward staying alive and we could get careless around stoves, busy streets and such places where we need to stay alert. But, too careful and cautious and we can't allow ourselves to get out of bed for fear of risks waiting to ambush us.

I thought about it and realized that I do feel accepting of the end of life. Why shouldn't I when quite few relatives and friends have already come to the end of their lives? I've had some good examples. I recently learned of The Book of Dead Philosophers by Simon Critchley, a collection of the views and statements about death of 100 or so famous philosophers. Those I have read agree: be friends with one's mortality to greatly lessen worries and fears. The end will be ok. Remember Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's comment: "Dying is easy. It's living that's hard."

However, if there is one thing I feel sure of, it is that I can't predict what will happen inside or outside of me. I do have some ideas of trends and likelihoods but I can see there are always surprises. I do try to be as clear-eyed as possible about what is currently facing me. I can see that what seems best can become boring, that I need to stay open to changes and variety.

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

Gem-ettes

2011-12-27T06:30:00.001-06:00

Here are some interesting short snippets

net-wrapped Xmas trees - some tree vendors have a machine that that can wrap a tree in a net-like material for easier transporting in or on a car

camera that snaps only when you smile - some smart cameras will wait to snap the picture until the subject smiles

some smart cameras warn the photographer that the subject blinked during the shot

vocal fry entering speech - "vocal fry" is a kind of sound made with one's vocal chords. If the voice is used to utter a very low note, the vibrations can heard almost separately. Near the beginning of this Britney Spears song, you can hear her make a low more or less guttural sound. That sound has been noticed in typical speech more often in New York women. Here Spears uses it to imply deep desire but in the science snippet I heard, it was used to imply deep fatigue

women's orgasms might = men's nipples in the way we got them (more or less by accident and early in developmental sequence) - evolutionary biologists argue about the value to the species and the individual of the female human orgasm. Science News reported a woman biological theorist examined all the current theories about the evolutional source/purpose of female capacity for orgasm. After careful comparison of all current theories with current evidence, the only one that holds up is that its evolution is exactly parallel to that of men's nipples. That theory concludes there is no purpose and that both develop in the body before the sex of of the individual develops.

disloyalty cards - some Singapore coffee shops are reported to be using "disloyalty cards". A customer gets a free coffee after each of the participating 8 shops stamps his card as having been a paying customer there.

color-blindness occurs, too - despite the joys of color in our lives and choices, it is well to keep in mind that something like 8% (nearly 1 in 12) men have some form of color-blindness. The linked article mentions many different types of color-blindness or color vision deficiency

talking African drum - I finally got around to a bit more exploring of what the Roku "channel store" means and is. I wanted to stream movies. So, we bought a Roku player after one of the Netflix ads in the paper container mentioned them. When exploring a new area, I like to read and compare but I find I also benefit from some simple expenditures that provide the basis for experience. Roku's channel store is an offering of different channels not available locally or from my cable company. After my experience with cell phone charges and cable charges, I try to be cautious about taking on subscriptions or ongoing expenses. But a few of Roku's channels are free. One of those is Yale University and another is Missouri State U. Missouri State offers include a course in World Music taught by Prof. John Prescott. I thumbed through the lectures and found there are sets on Asian, African, East European and Latin American music. I picked the first of three on African music.

Prescott showed African instruments, including the "talking drum". I thought it was especially interesting. I was a drummer in a marching band in my all-boys high school. I like drumming and rhythm. This drum can be seen on the link. It is held under the left arm and struck with a unique curved stick. It is constructed in a way that the drummer can press on side cords, increasing the tension on the drumhead. That is exactly the principle of the tympani, the king of drums in an orchestra, since different tensions produce different notes, hence "talking".

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

MyPlate for Older Adults - nutrition recommendations

2011-12-26T07:26:00.001-06:00

Tufts University has a long-standing place in human nutrition. They took the government's recommendation for daily food called MyPlate and modified it somewhat at "MyPlate for Older Adults". I realize that many readers of this blog are not older adults but for those who are or are caring for someone who is, here are some relevant links.

http://now.tufts.edu/news-releases/tufts-university-nutrition-scientists-unveil-

http://hnrc.tufts.edu/images/MYplate_OlderAdults.pdf

Some comments and criticism from a registered and practicising dietician:
http://blogs.bellinghamherald.com/healthyeating/?p=454

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

Best wishes for you and everyone

2011-12-25T06:27:00.001-06:00

Have a good Christmas time and a wonderfilled 2012!

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

Now, for later

2011-12-24T06:52:00.001-06:00

Suppose I go into a first class restaurant for a lovely lunch. The waiter gives me the menu and it is 500 pages of small print. Wow! What a forest of choices! Each item is accurately described and hundreds sound delicious. This is a modern place with good service and offers tiny samples of some of the foods. I do try a few and they are truly wonderful. The lunch hour, the afternoon, the evening all go by while I read and think. That is what I call "all menu and no meal".

I wonder if I will get sleepy and ready for bed before having a meal.

I find myself in this position more and more. I have 538 items in my Kindle archives. Those 538 are "in the cloud" and can be downloaded to any of my devices. My Kindle has 293 items on it. Any of those can be read at any time. Each of those items is promising and seems like a good bet for me, my tastes, current interests, background, etc. I chose each and I paid for each. Yet, when Amazon lets me know about a "great sale", I browse through what is offered. My sister once told me,"Bill, 70% off! You have to buy!", meaning that now or later, I would be happy to have one or more of the items on sale and now was the time to get them at a lower price than later. I wasn't interested in clothes but I am interested in books.

So, I spend time many days looking through the offerings at Amazon. I realize that books for 99¢ are often about a lovely male chest on a dashing and handsome officer that will not interest me at all. However, some of the books that haven't sold well are just what I have been looking for.

So, I spend more time, I'm afraid, shopping and purchasing and squirreling away 'for later' than I do reading. I think the problem is spreading. There are more and more channels of tv and more and more caches of old shows that I might want to explore. There are too many You-Tube videos for me to watch in this lifetime but some of them are not to be missed. More and more podcasts, music, places to go, other restaurants to try, recipes to cook, ways and places to exercise.

The discipline of a job and career, the physical limits of the number of books I could carry used to help me stay within sensible limits. Now I wander more, much more. I may fall asleep to escape all the possibilities.

Modern hustle

2011-12-23T06:28:00.001-06:00

We hustle and bustle and are steadily reminded to de-stress. A good idea but we have solid reasons for speed and striving, rushing, hurrying, excitement.

We have more opportunities than we can even comprehend. My Roku player is quite good. I can spend an hour just sampling what it can bring me. What the heck is a Roku player?

I want to get a device for my computer. I am thinking of something that plugs into the USB port on the computer and brings a useable wireless internet connection to my machine. I know this device exists because I used to rent one by the month. I see them in the stores and online. Part of the problem is that I don't know what to call it. Without a good name, one that is in wide use, it is difficult to search or inquire.

Quite a few people, including my wife and me, wonder if they will be bored to death in retirement. Check with them a few years after retiring. You usually find they are very busy. What happened? They weren't able to tell, while working, how many attractive opportunities there are in our world today. As time has gone on, however, this possibility and that one were recognized. Now, the to-do list, the to-learn list, the to-try list is very long.

Opportunities to make money, be friendly, enjoy others, travel, learn, and develop are beyond counting. Just in the area of what is called "social media", there are tons of possibilities. Re-connect with old friends, strike up conversations with new ones, find groups in common, translate messages between your favorite language and those of others, on and on.

I agree that taking a cell phone call in the middle of a party can be rude and is to be avoided. But you can see what happens. The caller is just as busy as the call recipient, who has been trying to get a crucial bit of information from the caller for days. Now, the call means both are available right now! At least, answer the call. But it is so engrossing, the party person forgets where he is. No wonder, he hasn't been able to talk to his brother since he landed, since he proposed, since the operation. Now is the time! Of course, he is excited and focused on actually speaking to him.

There is just too much that is delicious and exciting and fantastic and immediate to slow down!

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

Exercise and cramps

2011-12-22T06:22:00.001-06:00

It is important as we age to eke out all the exercise that we can. Tensing any muscle for 6 seconds will strengthen it. Moving any muscle through as much of its range of motion as you can helps you, your brain and your body stay in contact with that muscle. Concentrating on the sensations we feel as we exercise increases the effectiveness of the movements in keeping us alive.

As we get closer to the end of our lives, there will be less that we can do. There will probably be less that we want to do, as well. Still, walking, biking, swimming, exercycling, using an elliptical strider (where the feet stay in unbroken contact with the footpiece, lessening knee impact) all help at keeping the body unified and in touch with all parts of itself. Stretching, yoga, Pilates, dance all help keep muscles, joints and balance in better shape.

Balance can be improved with practice. Good balance lessens the chance of damaging falls.

A friend told us that she had been seized by leg cramps and was advised that the water in her aquatics exercise class was too cold for her. That may be so but it is important to make use of all the tools we have if we want to stay as spry and lively as possible. Many people do not drink as much water and equivalent liquid as they should. Newer evidence seems to suggest that the best tool is the color of one's urine. Pale = adequate hydration while deep color means more liquid is called for.

It seems that most Americans get adequate or an oversupply of sodium but a person can be short of magnesium or potassium. All three of those substances are important for good health and muscle function.

Leg cramps can be very painful. A year or so ago, I had a cramp in my calf so severe, it tore the muscle and took a while to heal. Various medical people (physicians, physical therapists, chiropractor) have told me in a rather off-hand way that cramps are a sign of too little hydration or too low a level of potassium. I have found four things helpful in keeping cramps down or gone:

A banana most days
Adequate water. For me, 5-10 oz. in the morning with blood pressure pills, a pint at 10 AM and one at 2 PM and 8 or so oz. at dinner. It used to be taught that we all need 8 oz. 8 times a day. Now, that rule had been modified and more respect is accorded the water we get from caffeinated drinks, vegetables and other sources, thus the urine color indicator.
Being aware that extra exertion is often going to result in mini-cramps as my muscles, especially leg muscles, adjust to increase load or duration
Sleeping with the blankets over me but completely untucked so that I can simply swing my legs out of bed and stand to resist the progress of any cramp that tries to get started.

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

Customs, pink and behavior

2011-12-22T06:21:00.001-06:00

A friend writes more about colors, clothes, pink and behavior:

I wanted to share an experience with the color pink. As you may recall, we went to the Kentucky Derby in 2010. The race day before the Derby is called Kentucky Oats and spectators are encouraged to wear pink in support of the ladies. For us, Kentucky Oats was our favorite day at the famous Churchill Downs. The weather was beautiful and the crowd was pleasant and subdued. Perhaps some of that civility could be credited to the color pink. As we were walking among the crowds, I noticed a tall, muscular black man wearing the most beautiful pale pink suit. The suit was of exquisite fabric and clearly had been tailored to fit this gentleman. My assumptions were that he had to be a professional athlete to be that size and toned and to afford a luxury suit in pink. Against his dark skin, the pink suit was stunning. That is my favorite pink memory.

The following day and the running of the Derby, pink was no longer the color and the graciousness of the Kentucky Oaks was replaced with rowdy, brawly, falling down drunkenness. It was a rainy, and therefore, muddy mess. We went from the sublime to the foolish. It was enough to make us enjoy the Derby on television in the future.

Colors

2011-12-21T06:15:00.001-06:00

Lynn wrote about colors. An interesting subject in many ways. I have been watching a DVD Great Courses course on genetics, taught by Prof. Lee M. Silver. He shows that scientists can make a fluorescent dye which has the chemical properties to bind to a particular gene. When they use it on DNA, the portion that is, say, bright blue is a given gene. So, it is easy for the eye to see where the blue is, and relatively how much blue there is.

Similarly, Excel can be programmed to turn every entry in a column red if it is greater than a given number or is a given word, such as "credit". That makes searching with the eye much easier.

In "The Demon Under the Microscope", Thomas Hager tells the story of the incredible amount of research German chemists did trying to find what we call today an anti-biotic. Hundreds of compounds were tested using dyes without the workers realizing that the dye was more important anti-biotically than what they thought was the main chemical.

In a book by a Japanese woman, I read that men in her time were against wearing red, yellow or pink as they were colors that were too feminine. Even today, using pink as a main color to denote support for research to cure breast cancer is notable in that we have professional football players wearing pink, a color they would normally not wear.

I have seen research that showed that pink was a calming color and a good one for jail cells and similar sites where it is desired that people should be calmed. I have also seen research that sports uniforms that are black or mostly black have been more often associated with victory in the game.

I added the extension ColorfulTabs in my Firefox browser. It gives me different colors for the open browser windows, tabs, and the tool to color the tab whatever I want. I often use right red for the page I am concentrating on at the time.

As a kid, I learned that pink and red "don't go together" and neither did blue and green. Now I see many fabrics, items, uniforms, web pages, brochures, etc. that combine those colors together. I do see that each hue comes in many shades of intensity and can vary widely. I still am reluctant to wear red with green except to a Christmas party or blues and blacks together. I bought a new mug the other day. My 16 oz. one led me to drink too much coffee to sleep well. The new one has a glaze of what is a light blue and almost a black except it is actually a deep, deep brown. Doesn't sound that good but it is. Lynn, with a sharp eye for color, has complimented it twice.

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

How to criticize the schools

2011-12-20T06:56:00.001-06:00

Criticizing schools is easy. Just follow these simple steps.

1.    Think of something you consider basic knowledge. The most common way to do this is to remember the sorts of things you have seen in elementary school classrooms, such as the names of the letters in our alphabet.
2.   Find a child currently participating in school.
3.   Ask the child to name the letters of the alphabet.
4.   Listen carefully and note with satisfaction, if the child doesn't know any of the letters. Any faltering or error means that you are right! The schools are failing!

We can ask some questions about the procedure. Probably the most fundamental of them relate to the connection between answering the question correctly and the effectiveness of the schools. The most basic question is probably "Were the schools charged with teaching the knowledge to this child at this age?" Then, did the schools attempt to do that teaching?

Even if the child cannot name the letters or the vice-president or the smallest continent, it still may be that

the school was charged with that teaching,
did attempt the teaching and that
the child could and did answer the question yesterday.

When we consider the number of facts and skills the schools are charged with teaching, we see that the curriculum is not continuous or linear. That is, a child may know some items and not others. Any selection of known and unknown items is possible. We can also see that knowing is not a permanent state. We all knew the names of the states' captials at one point in school but don't know them now.

Another large set of questions relates to other sources of knowledge than the schools. We know several little children who have never attended schools but can already name the letters and give examples of words beginning with each. If one of those children is tested using the steps above, we may get a false result from the test because of knowledge possessed but not learned from school. Since humans are a curious species and often enjoy learning, more and more books, tv and computer activities relate to learning. So, we have more and more opportunities for non-school learning to occur.

A final area of questions is the all-important one of what is most valuable for the schools to teach. I was nearly 70 years old before I learned to operate an iPod. I was nearly 30 before learning to use a computer. I learned to send text messages 6 months ago. I learned some basic yoga when I was more than 50 years old. I learned to meditate at 55. Should my schools be criticized because they didn't teach these valuable subjects to me?

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

Rapidly changing

2011-12-19T07:58:00.001-06:00

Things I do with my body will not affect the design of my living children's bodies. They got all my contribution to their physical make-up at conception. Thinking otherwise is sometimes called Lamarckism. Of course, behavior and emotional pathways may be adopted by children as a result of the parents' behavior so that religion, politics and preferences are the sort of things which can be passed along after birth. But childhood takes a long time and we are used to biological evolution showing its effects little by little.

Contrast that with commercial, machine and computer evolution. Especially in today's world of programming, things can change very quickly and basically. In the beginning of modern computing, there used to be 'boards', like pegboards or circuit boards. They were all the same size and could be inserted into a computer interchangeably. If we wanted to change what the machine did, we took the board out and inserted another. Then, the method moved to punched cards. Different punch patterns produced different functions of the machine. Then, we got computer languages, such as COBOL, Fortran and Basic. Now, there are many programming languages, well over 1000 of them.

The general idea is that words or symbols are used to assemble steps in a procedure. The machine uses the code to translate the directions into the desired operation. Of course, if we give the machine different instructions, we get a different procedure, even though the machine looks the same as before.

It is sometimes said that everyone should have some experience programming, since a feeling for the difference between human thinking (often conceptual and visual) and machine completion of directions helps in today's world. I admire the concentration programmers exhibit but I don't enjoy the work I have experienced programming.

As we get more aware of the way minds work, we have a stronger tendency to create change just to keep attention alive. Beyond that, there is a huge competition to machines that are both smarter and more convenient. Also, less expensive, if possible. One of the features of a particular Sony camera is that it won't snap a picture until the human subject smiles. My friend's car won't lock the doors with the wife's purse in the trunk. It balks at what might be locking the user out of the car. Programming could change the duration of the smile required or allow a signal that the owners know there is a key in the trunk and want to doors locked anyway.

Too much change too quickly can make us very grumpy or disoriented. So far, I haven't heard of programmers changing the way my car operates just to keep up my interest in the vehicle but it could probably happen sometime. If OnStar can unlock the doors with a signal from a satellite, the company might someday make a game of which action or series of beeps will start the car this time. Fun!

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

Cheerleading, smile-ology, and smile-istics

2011-12-18T06:25:00.001-06:00

The way I see it, you have your cheerleading, your smile-ology, and your smile-istics. Cheerleaders, whether pretty young women or somebody else, try to raise spirits but that includes rousing a crowd to screams for blood or physical damage. Smile-ologists carry a clipboard and observe outcomes and results of activities. Your smile-isticians are your technologists and they try to engineer smiles. Of course, I am using "smile" here to mean actual happiness and buoyant spirits.

You may have noticed over the last five years or so, a run of books on happiness. Some people give the credit for the current wave of such books to Martin Seligman, a psychologist at the U. of Penn., who felt that science had over-emphasized investigation of depression and other unhappy emotional states. Religion takes different stances on happiness at different times and places, from the position that our job is to obey God and let happiness fall as it may, to saying it is our job to be happy. There seem to be some people who feel that anyone (else) who shows signs of too much happiness or too steady a stream of it lacks intelligence or knowledge or sobriety or virtue.

Some people say that happiness is best achieved indirectly. Help other people, eat your vegetables and brush your teeth. Happiness with sneak up on you but not when you search for it directly.

As we age and have more difficulty hitting home runs or acquiring a 2nd yacht, we tend to look around to see what we can do that might be fun or valuable or both. We do observe that an unexpected bouquet of bright flowers or a friendly text that we are thinking of someone can sometimes bring a deeper smile than another necktie or birthday card. What produces a spurt of good feeling might not be what we expected. John Stuart Mill asserted that it is better to be a human being unsatisfied than a pig satisfied, although we have no record of his actually trying pighood.

We do see that sometimes progress, steps toward a goal, produce more happiness than its actual achievement. Climbing and knowing that we are rising can be as good as being at the top.

Drugging ourselves with music, mantras or chemicals so that everything seems continuously peachy doesn't seem to be the answer either. Your best smile-isticians don't flinch at letting a few scrapes and bruises happen because they really do emphasize the joy of attaining genuine love or achievement.

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

Emotionally rich

2011-12-17T06:21:00.001-06:00

Socrates gave famous advice to know yourself. Good advice but hard to do. Especially as we become more aware of how much happens to us, in us, and from us that is not under our conscious control or is only partly so. Our muscles send messages that they, that is, we, our body, is tired. The lungs can tell us our body needs to gasp and gulp air. Suddenly, we can think of Aunt Martha and how long it has been since we called her. But we didn't make a decision to start thinking of Aunt Martha.

Thought production especially seems mysterious to me. When I am speaking, I think of the words to say and they are relevant to the message I want to send. When I am mentioning my favorite cookie, words like 'cement' or 'diplomacy' do not get spoken or come to mind. Words like 'delicious' and 'nuts' and 'raisins' do but I don't consciously pick from an array of words.

I wrote my dissertation on applications of a semi-formal theory of decision-making. It was fun to think about rational decision making, where all the possible choices are laid out, weighted as to utility (value) and probability of happening. But I was fully aware, even at the time, that real decisions, especially dramatically inspired ones, are not made like that. Most of the time, we have little or no idea of all the choices we could make. A totally terrific idea is often one that suddenly hits us, like the famous cartoon light bulb turning on suddenly, and it is likely not to be an idea we ever had before.

Even though "rational" has been a favorite word and idea about the best human thinking, we discover that reasons alone are not at the basis of decision-making and choice. The celebrated case of Phineas Gage supports the notion that we need our emotional equipment to care enough to choose. Gage (1823-1860) was a railroad construction worker who was the victim of an accidental explosion that drove an iron rod through his skull but did not kill him. His case and later ones show that when the brain is deprived of its parts needed to have emotions, it is also rendered unable or nearly so to make a decision between alternatives. When buying an item, I may choose the blue one because I like blue or think it would go well with the room colors or whatever. But "like" and "go well" are likes, not weighed, validated, external facts.

We may wish to be able to experience our emotions and respond to them, rather than being too much controlled by them. But, our lives would be much poorer without them.

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

information world

2011-12-16T06:22:00.001-06:00

I was excited and informed by Faster : The Acceleration of Just About Everything by James Gleick, a book that takes a broad and well-written look at humans and their production of speeds, in travel, work and elsewhere. I had seen his book "Chaos" for years before that but I guessed that I had read enough about that subject of scientific mixing and disorder in systems. It's an idea related to the importance subject of randomness, which is basic in statistics . However, when he recently came out with "The Information", I thought it might be a book I would enjoy reading.

A couple of weeks ago, I began watching "The Science of Self", a Great Course taught by Professor Lee Silver. It is about genetics. Silver explained that DNA merely conveys a code, information, not particular chemical substances. He illustrated his point by stating that a woman on one planet and a man on another could have a child together without meeting or touching or exchanging substances if the code for the man's genome and that for the woman's were used to create an embryo on a third planet using their genetic codes.

The idea fascinates me. I realize that I am the current result of my parents' codes as well as what I have eaten, breathed, performed and experienced over the years but in a sense, I am information. So, information got back on my hot list of topics. I am interested in the inexpensive, brief "Very Short Introduction" book series by Oxford University. I remembered one about information and just started it a couple of days ago.

Information: A Very Short Introduction by Luciano Floridi is an eye-opener. I take some of his statements with a grain of salt, especially when he makes statements about basic changes in humans from their computerized and internet information streams and activities. But he talks about the infosphere and distinguishes that from cyberspace, which is a term he uses, like most people, to mean the collection of information on computers and their cousins. Infosphere is his term for the total of interconnected organisms related to each other by means of information exchange. So, I guess a mosquito that has sensed my presence and I and my friend reading my text message are all members of the infosphere.

I remember that Steven Hawking, the astrophysicist and some colleague had a disagreement about whether or not information could escape from a black hole. I am not clear what they meant but there is that term again. Duncan J. Watts in "Everything Is Obvious, Once You Know The Answer" is a good example of a further development of data mining, text mining, where conclusions about peoples' behavior, ideas and feelings are derived from tweets and related text data. Scientists, investigators and theorists are more aware of the presence of information, how to search and 'mine' it, and derive insights from it these days.

Floridi emphasizes that things we call "objects" are getting to be part of the infosphere. Doors that open as I approach and lamps that light up when the sun goes down are examples of objects that are not quite as inanimate as a hammer or pair of pliers.

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

Expressing

2011-12-15T06:50:00.001-06:00

Fundamentals of life: getting a new car? Thinking about a new car? Don't forget the first move: new bumper stickers! After all, first things first. See, we try to live the fundamentals: good diet, exercise, enough sleep and bumper stickers!

Not too many! That is a lesson from the success of Google: as with good eating, you can do more if you keep a rein on the quantity. A bumper sticker or 2 but no more per car, please. Otherwise, it becomes a jumble of stuff and not a message extolling whale song or whatever you care about enough to tell the world (at bumper level, of course, and only fleetingly).

If you also care about the joys of pepper in chocolate, there are other spaces to advertise your sentiments and advice. I saw a short article or comment where someone got interested in wireless network names. Like the use of vanity license plates, people decide to use more interesting names for their networks. When your computer or smartphone or iPad or Fire needs a signal from a wireless network, you can see a list of such networks that it can detect. One might be called HarryNetwork but why not name it ChocolatChiles or HotCoco or PabloNeruda ?

There are, of course, the names used on auto licenses, those 'vanity' plates. Some can be quite tricky to decipher. When just the first letter of a phrase or sentence is used, the result can be even more encoded: WWJD and WYSIWYG are two examples of such usage, although not from car plates. The first, about Jesus as an example, doesn't have a pronunciation, as far as I know, but "wizzywig" is the pronunciation sometimes used for "what you see is what you get".

Most any name can be given a sexual slant by those who wish to do so but otherwise all sorts of names and reminders to be a good person can be built into our naming opportunities. One of my favorite passwords was the first letters of "many opportunities to see what comes next", reminding me to stay alert to new things that come along and offer excitement, fun or pleasure. Passwords can be good moral or health reminders but can't be shared safely. Network names are sometimes more advertisable.

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

Plea for more colorful winter wardrobes

2011-12-14T06:24:00.003-06:00

My wife is on a campaign to get more colorful clothes worn during winter. She writes:

A friend recently told me about a home that had black floors and white walls and furniture. It was memorable because of its starkness, I guess. I lived in Florida when I was 19, and my bedroom was black and white with a few red accents. I really liked it. But the thought of such décor here in Wisconsin wouldn't work for me at all. Winter days are very short here: the sun isn't up until after 7 and sets at about 4:30. A large proportion of our days are cloudy, and it gets dark even earlier then. We have snow on the ground from November or December until sometime in March or even April. We see enough black and white in nature! We certainly don't need it to dominate in the house, too.

Several years ago we went to Dallas for spring break, and Bill's sister took us to the Dallas botanical garden. We had been there for about a half hour when I noticed that as I walked, my feet weren't touching the ground. I was floating on happiness. It took me a few minutes to realize that the reason was the colors of the flowers—yellows, pinks, reds, purples, ranging from pale to bright. It was glorious. It was then that I realized the power of color.

Some people I know suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD). They battle their winter depression by sitting in bright, full-spectrum light for a couple of hours daily. I think (with no scientific evidence) that the problem is caused not just by the lack of natural sunlight, but is exacerbated by the drabness of the season's colors.

Have you noticed that clothes available in stores reflect the colors of the season? We wear bright colors in the spring and summer, but in the winter, when it is very drab seasonally, we are supposed to wear dark colors—dark brown or green, navy, maroon, black, gray. In fact, it seems to be expected. My winter coat is Kelly green. When I wore it the other night, someone mentioned that my coat was really bright. Wow! He could really see me coming!

I really don't understand why designers make winter clothes so dark and why people buy them, when winter needs brightening up so desperately. In my opinion, the drabness of winter is not worth replicating, and I make a special effort to wear as many brightly colored clothes as I can. Unfortunately, they aren't as easily available as dark garments, but I mention that in every store when I shop for clothes. Maybe someday everyone will see how colors can affect moods.

On the other hand, I do not suggest for one moment that summer clothes be darkened up. Imagine wearing only dark clothes when the sun is beating on you and the absorption of all that heat. Not such a pleasant thought, either. So I guess what I want is bright colors and pastels year round. Save the dark colors for accents, in clothing, or in my home.

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

Turning aside from Auden

2011-12-14T06:24:00.001-06:00

I recently mentioned "Poetic Justice" by Amanda Cross (pen name of Carolyn Heilbrun). The story is actually about politics in an English department but the main character, Prof.Kate Fansler, knows a great deal about the poet W.H.Auden. The book has many Auden quotes and references. I don't know much about Auden or his time or achievements. I did read that he is considered a great poet.

Great poets and authors usually turn me off. My perception is that they are so busy being "good" that they fail to be interesting or what is usually called "accessible", meaning understandable. But I did enjoy the recitation of "Stop all the clocks" in the movie "Four Weddings and a Funeral". The poem is a lament over a death and is striking. I have seen the movie several times and enjoyed "Stop all the clocks" each time. So, I checked some Auden out of the university library. I have been reading the poems a few at a time.

My favorite so far is The Model, a depiction of an 80 year old woman who sits with serenity and strong composure for her portrait to be painted. The poet says that at her age, the cheers and bruises she has experienced throughout life are "all one". She knows life's ups and downs and has faced them. (I would post all or part of the poem but evidently someone is carefully controlling dispersion of his words.)

As I read the poems in the Modern Library volume, I find that most are too complex for me to understand and refer to Greek and Roman gods, goddesses and figures from writings of the ancients that I don't know about. Auden was born in 1907 and so grew up with the aftermath of World War I. It was a terrible, bloody conflict and set the stage for WW II. I was born at the beginning of WW II and had little understanding of that war or its predecessor.

As far as I can tell, many of Auden's poems have to do with death and tragedy. I can understand a sensitive soul's feeling the pain of loss from war, the threat of death on the front lines, the fear that the world will never be safe and a general intuition of gloom everywhere. But my life has not been like that and I don't want to spend effort to get in the mood to experience art that is.

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

Tension in stories and in life

2011-12-13T06:33:00.001-06:00

When I was a kid, I had a good feeling when the main characters "were happy ever after." I used to wonder if that was the desired state, why didn't the story teller just make that happen at the beginning? The idea makes me think of a little boy I love who sometimes enjoyed being read to but sometimes, he didn't. In the latter mood, he would reach over and slam the book shut, saying,"The end". I guess like most things, seeking happiness can be overdone or mis-aimed. I can just imagine how the sales would go for a book that had a fancy cover, was very inexpensive but had a single page reading "And they all lived happily ever after."

I came across the book "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life" more or less by accident. The title intrigued me and I bought the book in audio form and listened to it. (That book and "The Dog Says How" by Kevin Kling are two good ones for seeing into the life and times of contemporary young men, especially in audio form.) Million Miles is actually about the author's study of the elements of a good story. Of course, a main element is plot and a main element of plot is tension, dramatic uncertainty. Will the girl be asked to the dance by the guy she is hoping for? Will they find water soon enough to survive?

I suspect that serious writers (for example, those trying to earn a living by writing) study the subject of introducing tension in detail and have more complex vocabulary and ideas about it than I do. To see what I found, I put "tension in story" in Google and chose this page from AbsoluteWrite.com. The page lists several concepts for thinking about and introducing tension into a story.

Buddhist meditators often have a difficult time answering what is meditation for? One way of seeing it as a purposeless but valuable activity is to consider the tension between victory and success. Or, between tension and its absence. Looking into ourselves, we can see that we want there to be tension and we want to win. Would anybody be happier if the Raiders had just said to the Packers, "We know you are a very good team and we don't think we can perform well against you so we just forfeit"? Looking into ourselves and facing the whole business in its entirety, we can see that we want tension loss but we don't want it.

Since we really are built that way, we can see how every problem is both a burden and a gift. Oh, no! Not another problem! Oh, good, maybe we can beat it!

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

Does poorer hearing = greater wisdom?

2011-12-12T06:30:00.001-06:00

I have begun a third run through the Brain Fitness Program. I did the whole series of 40 lessons five years ago. It was eye-opening to find how much I expected to excel. The program is built to keep challenging the user by keeping the success rate about 70%. That is not very high and people who got used to being above the 90% level may be frustrated. I was.

But now I am older, wiser and more experienced. Posit Science has two software programs, Brain Fitness Program for hearing and Insight for vision. I am redoing the BFP because I spent a lot of time wondering what people said. I do wear hearing aids and the audiologists tell me that giving my ears a better input quality will help my brain's ability to decode sounds into meanings. Maybe so, but I can often tell a person said something but not what they said.

I went to my great-granddaughter's 3rd birthday yesterday. When we came home, we watched a recorded version of The Mentalist tv show. Both events gave me plenty of chance to listen and to watch faces and body language to try and grasp what was said. I think I succeeded most of the time in getting the message.

I used to pride myself on grasping each spoken word and on evaluating the voice tone. Then, as I aged, I tried to augment my grasp of the message by inquiring "What did you say?" I had a more detailed strategy of pointing out the word that I missed by saying something like "You are going to buy a red what?" I soon got even more pesky than I usually am with too many checks, verifications, and inquiries. It is too much of a chore to talk to an inquisitive interrogator instead of a person. Lately, I have been just skipping most of what I didn't get.

One result is that people can tell me something they are worried about or are ashamed of. Maybe I don't even hear what they said. They get a worried expression on their face and I know we are discussing something frightening or sad or shameful. I don't know what and I am not going to interrupt with questions. They've confessed their feelings, I have accepted them and served as a wise listener. They have experienced a wise, older person listening to the problem and reacting with little or no shock. Maybe life is not so bad, after all.

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

A cleaner desk

2011-12-11T06:37:00.001-06:00

A change in my thinking happened a couple of years ago. Ever since I graduated from college more than 50 years ago, I tended to resist spending time putting things away. All that time, I had a desk. I did believe in file cabinets and putting papers in some order. I could see I would not be able to find them unless I filed them some way. Teachers need records and in those day especially, paper held all the important ones. It still tends to.

But three-dimensional objects can't be filed easily in stand-up folders. Even museums have drawers of bones, insects, and mineral samples and such in drawers. They tend to be sturdy, large and opaque. So, a good list is needed if you aren't going to open each drawer and search. Putting an object such as a stapler or a magnifying glass away, only to get it back out when needed seemed less interesting that paying bills or writing a lesson plan. I thought a desk properly laid out, with handy objects just where they would likely be needed was best. I kept telling myself that all through the years.

A couple of years ago, I decided to try to keep my desk and our kitchen table totally clear. I thought it might be helpful. I had no idea that seeing nothing, no papers, no objects, no handy tools would be so inspiring. I think I am not very sensitive to inspiration from sights but I do seem to benefit from a clear, clean work surface.

I put "clean desk is a sign of" in Google and got "clean desk is a sign of a sick mind" in many references. There are actually 52 million according to the information at the top of the results. I never really believed more neatness on my part meant I was sick but I did suspect too much obsession with keeping the surface clear was probably a waste of time and energy. Now, I feel differently because I find all that space is a strong invitation to write, organize, think, record, and generally create.

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

Harlan Coben and Amanda Cross

2011-12-10T06:14:00.001-06:00

In a recent meeting with other older people, a man my age said with enthusiasm how much he enjoyed Harlan Coben's books. I had seen the name but had not even looked at the books. I don't hear such a recommendation from men very often so I took it seriously. I downloaded "Deal Breaker" since it seemed to be the first in a series by Coben that features the character of Myron Bolitar.

Myron was an outstanding college basketball player and was drafted into the Boston Celtics. But before he got to play, he was injured in a practice. The injury prevented him from playing pro ball but not from enjoying a full life. He graduated with a degree from Harvard Law School. He worked with the FBI for a while but became an independent sports agent representing all sorts of athletes. "Deal Breaker" is about football players. We are now reading "Drop Shot", the 2nd Myron Bolitar story where he represents top tennis players.

I feel that I have found a special treasure when the library shelves reveal books that are not new but are very good. Every now and then, I take a look through the shelves which can be a bleak experience of doubting that anything good will ever be discovered. Our local public library has a large section of just mysteries. I find that titles that have resonated with me pop into my head, especially books that I have long thought might be good but that I either never found or tried but didn't get into.

The title "Death in a Tenured Position" sticks in my mind so I looked at Amanda Cross books. That is the pen name of Carolyn Heilbrun, a professor of English at Columbia who wrote many books, including those featuring Professor Kate Fansler. I didn't want to try "Tenured Position" again so I borrowed "Poetic Justice" and I am glad I did. The book is filled with quotations from W.H. Auden, sometimes said to be the greatest poet in English of the 20th century. I don't know much about Auden but I am reading him more because of "Poetic Justice".

I really enjoyed "Poetic Justice" taking me back to times when I was with professors who really know and live their subject but tend to be rather ignorant of their students or of the world of technology and other subjects not on the list of things they think about.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

world history

2011-12-09T06:23:00.001-06:00

I have been listening to Prof. George Stearns lecture on "world history". You might think that all histroy is world history and, in a sense, it is. However, the subject of world history is evidently a new one. As a species, humans go back several million years but we can probably say that the last 100,000 or so years covers the period where people were recognizably like us.

Depending on the evidence one uses and the definitions of interest, just the last 50,000 years covers a great deal more than we tend to learn about in school. No wonder, since there is so much than might be of value to know and the first 20 years of life are, after all, a limited time. Certainly, not all of it can be devoted to learning and much of that learning takes place at home, church, and other places besides school.

It comes as no surprise to find that a well-educated person aiming at seeing the truly big picture can find trends, facts and patterns in a long look, an attempt to cover the planet, that we wouldn't see or grasp or understand or even detect, were our vision limited to American or state history. My experience was that historians and teachers often said that history could not cover times before the invention of writing, since before that time, there were no clear records of events. Again, what is meant by "writing" matters in such thinking but increasing scientific and intellectual effort at validating hypotheses about who did what when and why extends the time period scholars are comfortable discussing.

A really interesting aspect of courses in world history is that the push to create them came from students in American universities from non-Western backgrounds. Complaints and questions from them lead professors to get to work at creating a long-range look at history over the earth. I guess the effort is about 20 years old.

When we stop and think about the population of the earth, currently at about 7 billion people, the approximately 400 million Americans make up less than 1/14 of the whole, that 93% of people are not us. Our country is roughly 200 years old. Of course, there are older and bigger countries than ours and some of the ideas, habits and customs in them are of great interest. Clearly, not everything we do and think is superior to everything they do and think. Thinking about what has happened to people can be eye-opening and comforting.

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

Snuggling, rather than sledgehammers

2011-12-08T06:30:00.001-06:00

I listened to a smart, daring thinker I know discuss paths to happiness. I thought the guy had good things to say. However, as with lots of things American, I felt there was a bit too strong an emphasis on happiness all the time, at any cost, so to speak. I have been impressed with the basic Buddhist emphasis on the unavoidability of mishaps, errors, tribulations, disappointments and the like. Of course, all religions and all humans of any years realize that things will "Gang aft agley" as Bobbie Burns said a couple hundred years ago. Our plans and intentions "go often awry".

If we grit our teeth, deny any feelings of disappointment or unhappiness, we fall right into the trap discussed by Freud, Dr. Mark Epstein, Jack Kornfield and many others. Such a strategy can lead to a record of nothing but 'happiness' but it is a record containing many errors and fake entries. We get a set of cooked books, not the real experience of life.

Can anything be done? Yes. We can observe. We can look at, from a little distance, our reaction to tragedy, pain, confusion, loss. As we become more confident and more competent at such observation, getting to know, tasting, sampling, examining, we become better able to know and accept, sometimes even benefit from, the very events that we didn't want, the events that are negative and unpleasant. It requires balance to accept the negatives without being negative, to accept them and still enjoy the good things.

Pema Chodron is a American-born Canadian Buddhist abbottess, a grandmother and a former elementary school teacher. She is very well known and has several books and CD's and conducts workshops and retreats. She publishes a weekly note about Buddhist practice and basically offers advice and comments that are useful for American and Western audiences. Today she sent this message.

GET CURIOUS

Rather than going after our walls and barriers with a sledgehammer, we pay attention to them. With gentleness and honesty, we move closer to those walls. We touch them and smell them and get to know them well. We begin a process of acknowledging our aversions and our cravings. We become familiar with the strategies and beliefs we use to build the walls: What are the stories I tell myself? What repels me and what attracts me? We start to get curious about what's going on.

To me, this is the key: moving closer to the mental barriers and pains, giving them gentle, honest attention. "We begin to acknowledge" our own aversions and fears rather than either fighting or becoming them.

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

My group salutes your group

2011-12-07T06:52:00.001-06:00

One of the principles of Buddhism is that there is no self, nothing that is THE SELF. That can be helpful, I imagine, but to me, going through the routine of admitting that my leg, my face, my memory, my feelings, etc. are not any of them ME, just shows that I am a collective, a group. Bill Bryson mentions at the beginning of his book "A Short History of Nearly Everything", which is a history of the last few centuries of science, that we are a collection of atoms that cohere until they don't, until we dissipate after arriving at death.

Western scientists, all the way back to the Greeks, sought the fundamentals, the bits of which other things were compiled. It seems logical to seek the bottom, the building blocks. I didn't think much about the subject until one day I came across the book title: "A Different Universe: Revising Physics from the Bottom Down". How can you go down after reaching the bottom?

I think that is just the question that the author wanted me to ponder. Robert B. McLaughlin is a Nobel prize winner. That credential impressed me enough to assume he knows about physics. The book is an exploration of the concept of "emergence", the nature of some properties to "emerge" from a collective, a group, an assemblage. The subject of emergence seems much the same as "espirit de corps", what educators usually called "atmosphere".

As animals, we may believe that what we can see is more basic than what we can't but as humans, we are quite aware of inspiration, enthusiasm or its opposite, depression. When the team is aroused, it is different from when it isn't. A nation can be inspired. A classroom or a business can be a rather happy place or it have an oppressed, heavy atmosphere, analogous to air that is too humid and polluted. We know that a productive feel to a place, in an organization, is much more powerful and productive than fear or listlessness. American Zen writer and teacher Charlotte Beck wrote that "New Jersey does not exist", meaning that when she flew over the state's area, she saw nothing any different that marked out the location of the state. Jonah Lehrer is quoted in Susan Greenland's book "The Mindful Child" that our brains are a collection of neurons and that there is no single brain.

It can be a shock to realize that we ourselves are a walking, talking, breathing cooperative team of atoms, molecules, cells, tissues, and organs. We may be taken by a sudden worry that the mysterious cooperation that makes us will cease but really, we are quite used to dealing with teams and groups and organizations.

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

fun from the past

2011-12-06T06:24:00.001-06:00

I don't really qualify as old, quite yet. Lynn read Mary Pipher's "Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders" quite a few years ago. That is where she learned of the distinction, evidently in wide use among those who work with aging, between "young-old" and "old-old". Doing a little searching on the web, I find that Bernice Neugarten, invented the idea that some of the elderly are rather like younger people in their abilities. At any time, physiology or accidents or disease can change the picture and the older person is then frail (an excellent term for both the condition and the perception) and limited in physical and mental abilities.

Older people, "elders" is a convenient term, are well-known for telling others about their physical problems. often at greater length or in more detail, than others really want to hear. I have already admitted on this blog that I have changed from being impatient with body-ache talk to being interested in it. I realize that is a clear sign I am different from what I was 50 years ago but my hair, skin and other parts of me had already clearly indicated that much.

My mother's vision and hearing were quite poor in her late years and I have been thinking about arriving at the same state. I see that talk about senior years and experiences often refers to memories. Again, as with pains talk, I have considered memories a poor substitute for actual experiences. Sure, I am aware that I have never really seen but only decoded nerve impulses sent in from my eyes nor heard anything other than my brain's decoding aural impulses. Still, I though reminiscence a watery, unsatisfying pastime.

Then, in thinking about little kids' reaction to repeated story readings, I got a new respect for the experience of remembering. I have known that going back to a neighborhood I lived in could be very satisfying. It was upsetting when I saw that my childhood local public library had been changed into a church. But when I could see that the house in the country had aged and was painted a different color but basically was indeed what I remembered, it felt good.

When we tried taking index cards for the major event of each year we have been married, we could immediately recite and agree on some major events and the year they happened. Some whole years, 365 days, were lost. Something happened in that much time that was a strong plus or minus but what? When we did find a note or diary entry that provoked a memory, it again felt good. I don't plan to note every little thing that happens. I am willing to toss many old letters and scribblings but I do know that re-experiencing a triumph or a love or an achievement can be great. I am there again but I also have the satisfaction of knowing that the event actually happened, that is has been good all the time since it happened. Like a cool event in a thrilling movie, it is exciting and admirable but in these memories, I am the hero, the winner. No wonder I like going there.

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

Again!

2011-12-05T06:13:00.001-06:00

The opening scene in C.S. Lewis's non-fiction "Experiment in Criticism" describes a woman in a library standing with an open book but gazing upward, trying to remember whether or not she has read the book. She doesn't want to lug it home, sit down with it in happy anticipation and then recall the entire story as she gets to page 3 or so. Clive Staples makes the point that really good literature calls out to be re-read.

Many pre-college teachers emphasize the value of reading as an educational and developmental activity. I think it can be but it is not an unalloyed good. Probably nothing is. In schools and in life, science, history, mathematics, art and sports can all make a very good claim to be as valuable or more so than reading. True, if I cannot read at all, the pursuit of any of those alternatives will be much impeded, just as being able to decode "Start" or "Enter" helps in using a computer. But in this age of movies and special effects, I have felt there is a little more to the story than the simple approach that all paper pages are good and nothing else is.

The other night, we watched the movie "Enchanted April" with a friend. That is one of Lynn's favorite movies and we have seen the whole thing at least 8 times. I probably wouldn't have watched it just then since I am one of C.S. Lewis' lower type of readers, those who tend to dismiss a book that has already been read. Still, she suggested it as one that our friend would like and I knew she was 100% right. Actually, I underestimated how much complexity, subtle power and charm the movie has. If a person is astute and pays attention, the photography, the personalities, the meanings and the feelings are genuinely nourishing, satisfying.

I am always intrigued by how deeply little tots care to have a story re-read, right after they have just heard it read aloud. Most parents have heard the shout "Again!" when they have come to the end of a children's book. It has to be deeply pleasurable for the child to be so interested in hearing the words read aloud that 2nd, 3rd, and Nth time.

Conducting a course for graduate students that invited a step back from reading and a review of one can recollect and reconstitute from notes and attics, I have seen adults try re-reading. They remember a book from their teens or see the title on someone's recollected list and remember a thrill. Sometimes, the book is embarrassingly trite or ordinary when re-read. Sometimes, the older reader sees how much was missed or unappreciated in the earlier reading.

It doesn't matter whether it is an opera, a film or a book, experiencing it again can open one's eyes to what the past self was like and what the present self is about. And, of course, it can be really fun, too.

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

Reading aloud

2011-12-04T07:07:00.001-06:00

A couple of days ago, I wrote about reading aloud, a great pleasure. It gives a chance to act, concentrate on producing emotional voice tones that convey what the character is showing. The reader gets a chance to talk good language, carefully crafted by the writer. I wondered why more book clubs don't read books of interest aloud to each other.

A friend responded:

The Epiphany Party

Each year, on the Saturday closest to January 6, a couple who lived in the next block would invite colleagues from their respective law offices, friends, and neighbors for a multi course dinner. They would hand deliver the invitations and say, "We really want you to be there!" (The husband reminded me of my brother in looks and in personality.)

Their home was large, basically an open-style, and sported one of those shiny indigo stoves that weighs more than a car. In one section, chairs were arranged in rows similar to an old time mini classroom. At what would be the front of that space, there was a lectern where throughout the evening, the husband's friends took turns reading aloud Dickens' A CHRISTMAS STORY. Each man read a chapter and while the audience rotated, the oral delivery progressed. Not everyone went in to listen; some who did, stayed for a few minutes and others left only when a new food course was announced. By the time the reader completed the final line and closed the book, it was almost midnight and everyone began thanking the host and hostess. The party was over and everyone had had a wonder-filled time.

Another wrote:
There's a group in this area that does readings of plays with each person doing a different part - similar idea to reading aloud at book club and something I think would be very entertaining.

I suspect that some drama experts have noted that much of the pleasure of attending the play or the movie must come from experiencing the story's up and downs, its laughs and tears, quite together, along with others. I used to doubt the idea that laughter is, among other things, a social event. So, even a poorly written show can lift our spirits when a laugh track is supplied, at least for a while.

Are there You-Tube clips showing an excellent paragraph or two being read aloud? What is the maximum allowed length of a You-Tube clip? Got time to listen to a whole book? Oops, I suppose that would constitute a violation of copyright, at least some of them. I have read that in the days before the invention of

punctuation and

space between words and

UPPER and lower case letters,

people used their voices and ears to tease out what the letters said and the meaning of the words.

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

activating myself

2011-12-03T06:21:00.001-06:00

Watching a presentation on habits that lead to happiness, I saw a clip of Shawn Achor on YouTube. He spoke of "activation energy", a concept borrowed from chemistry and biology. Basically, it is the needed build-up of energy before there is enough to trigger a reaction. Achor used the example of his desire to play his guitar more frequently. He realized the 20 seconds needed to go to the closet, get out the cased guitar and be ready to play were an obstacle that kept him from playing. He decided to keep it out of the case and handy and found he played 28 of the next 30 days.

I have been thinking about a similar concept. You may have heard of the paradoxes of Zeno, the ancient Greek who said the hare could not ever catch the tortoise with a head start. Zeno said that no matter how fast the hare was, while he was covering part of the tortoise's lead, that beast would use his time to get further ahead. Zeno could see how the hare might lessen the distance between but argued the tortoise would always be an infinitesimal amount in front. Ever one knows the hare can and does catch and surpass the shelled one but they had a problem explaining the flaw in Zeno's statement.

When I was doing lots of online teaching, I often caught myself avoiding something I should do with my keyboard keys because I could imagine how many steps the system needed to take before my goal would be reached. It was like sending an email to China in a very short time but if I let myself imagine the electronic packet reaching the next state, then the next, moving later across the ocean, reaching Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan, western China and finally eastern China, I might hesitate to send something I should. My little human brain is not really equipped to accurately imagine inner electronics. Email works quickly as does all sorts of things in my computer and on the internet. I am better off not letting the physics I have experienced with my body guiding me in areas that are quite different.

Concepts can slow me down and require more activation energy than I want to spend. Getting on with it while keeping an experimental eye open for helpful shortcuts can move me into areas I have been unwisely avoiding.

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

My ears and hearing

2011-12-02T06:17:00.001-06:00

I don't think our ears get enough respect. I understand that the fetus gets the ability to hear before it gets other senses. Hearing and scent are "surround" senses, unlike vision which is more uni-directional. Sure, peripheral vision actually gives us a swath of awareness but we can hear a sound from any angle. I have heard that cats have especially acute hearing, that they can hear a mouse swallow in the next room. In one of our Great Courses, our senses and aging, the incident is told of research on conditioning cats by showing a series of lights on a panel. The experimenters were amazed to find that the best performer was totally blind! That cat could hear which light sequence had occurred.

I paid new attention to hearing from reading the ads and promotion material for the Brain Fitness Program, computer software by Posit Science. They make practice and training software for both hearing and vision but they started with hearing. I've been wondering about hearing and longevity: what is the correlation? Putting the underlined words into Google brings up the point that those who can't hear are subject to dangers they may be unable to detect, such as approaching cars at the street corner.

But that is just the sort of thing I am thinking about. Not hearing as a tool but hearing as a big part of life. In college, I wrestled against Gallaudet University, founded by Congress and Abraham Lincoln, the only university in the world specifically for deaf and hard-of-hearing. Going there was impressive and informative. I never attended any classes but several times, I wrestled in their gym and saw what life was like for those students. Some differences but I was probably left with the impression that being deaf doesn't matter and affect us as much as it really does.

Fast forward about 50 years. Now, I wear my 2nd set of hearing aids. My wife is burdened by a guy who constantly asks what it was that she just said. I know it is irritating but I don't want to lose contact with her. She is patient but we both find little endearments lose something when repeated a 2nd time, more clearly and distinctly. Explaining that we need "bread" not "lead" can be amusing but it can get tiresome, for both of us.

Just as we learned in psychophysics, there is a difference between detection of sounds (I know when she speaks and can hear that she is speaking) and recognition (I don't know what words she said). I learned from Posit Science materials and listening to Dr. Michael Merzenich on public tv that the part of my brain that decodes the sounds into meanings works more slowly than it used to. Posit and the audiologists I see tell me often that my hearing would fade faster if I didn't wear hearing aids and if I weren't trying to understand what is said. I also learned from working with the Posit software on exercises where I must choose which of two similar syllables was said, that I can sometimes tell what was said a tiny bit after I have already decided I couldn't. That is, sub-conscious and slower processes are at work in my brain.

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

Reading aloud

2011-12-01T06:31:00.001-06:00

Lynn and I started reading to each other years ago. My main reason, besides the fun of narrating, which is big, was that the jokes and fun of the novels of Peter DeVries were simultaneously available to both of us when we listened to the text aloud. Usually, I am able to read something funny without too much interfering laughter. Some of the DeVries lines and plot events did make me spurt out in a laughter, which I don't like to do since it can create something of an obligation to find the joke funny in the listener. I did have trouble with "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid" by Bryson.

Narrations such as Boris Karloff reading the Just So stories by Kipling, Lissette Lecat reading the No. 1 Ladies Detective Stories, Ian Mackenzie reading the Love Over Scotland series are magical. It is true that the Kindle can read text out loud (if that ability has not been turned off by the publisher - who should listen a few times and then heave a snicker at the non-contest between a professional narrator and a flat computer voice). Similarly, Microsoft Word can also read aloud but with similarly low-level results.

One of the main reasons that print is king is that all sorts of books can be located in print but far fewer have been narrated. One little book, Kindle or paper or Nook, is all that is needed for a great hour. When one of a couple gets tired of reading or of driving, the other can take over. The story unwinds off the page and twines around the listeners, linking them in a new way. With glances into each other's eyes, they can validate their appreciation or disgust with the story and the language.

We just finished The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta, maybe his best so far but could be better. The premise is promising: how would we feel when we find people disappear randomly here and there, all at the same time. Was it the Rapture? Why were we left behind when we have lived so uprightly? Why were X and Y taken when we know the one was a bad sinner and the other not even a believer?

There are tons of book clubs and they are quite valuable, I know. However, I haven't heard of any where the book is read aloud by a human who is present. There could be one narrator through the whole book or the group could take turns. Our ears get too little attention but research shows they lead right into our brains. Listening to a good friend read can be valuable at all ages. Reading aloud keeps the eyes, voice and brain lively, too.

Meeting challenges for fun and profit

2011-11-30T06:32:00.001-06:00

The 5th grader I am closest to has been having trouble in math. He can count out basic facts pretty well, especially in addition. But not in the other basic processes. More troublesome, the more complex operations of multiplication and division require many applications of the basic single digit facts, calling on basic them rapidly and often.

Meanwhile this video game warrior deeply loves getting to new levels in several types of games: actual computer games, Wii games with special equipment and a wand that allows physical action affect the game, games on a Nintendo DS, a pocket-sized game console. Most of all, he loves the iPad and games on it. Those games require just finger use, no mouse, no wand.

The very popular and successful Angry Birds has swept onto the scene. The link leads to a Wikipedia article that says more than 3.3 million hours of playing Angry Birds occur EACH DAY on the planet. My guy likes the game very much but he likes other games as well. When I pick him up after school, he is quiet and subdued about the day in school but then his memory supplies the latest goings-on with his game adventures. The detail and energy he puts into the games and into such activities as finding You-tube videos that supply playing hints contrasts strongly with his desire to learn his math facts and do long division.

He is a sharp thinker. I asked him how I could get some of his energy and delight shown for video games re-directed toward math. (One of his teachers, who knows him very well, predicted that someday math would be a deep interest for him but it hasn't happened yet.) He thought for a minute and suggested he needed a video game that requires math to play.

Lynn loaded Math Ninja onto her iPad and he spent a steady couple of hours playing it. He was delighted that he "sailed through" many levels of the game and announced that he was beginning to consider trying it on the medium difficulty instead of easy.

The books Everything Bad is Good for You by respected science writer Steven Johnson and Reality is Broken by gamer and game theorist Jane McGonigal PhD are examples of serious thinkers who see increasing value and application of games. University departments of gaming, in this country and abroad, show the recognition of the potential of games for entertainment, education and training. Today's games involve psychology, computer science and business methods as well as mathematics, art and music.

fear, fun and filoz

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unable to dismount

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Monetize

How to be funny

Burdens of improvement

thoughts and ideas below the surface

Self-smithing

Szymborska

The Joy of Writingby Wislawa Szymborska

Wislawa Szymborska was a Nobel laureate in poetry. She died today at age 88.

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Two to try

Dr. Atul Gawande get coached

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Writing from me to me

Waking up

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Cultured, uncultured

No worries, Mate

Gem-ettes

MyPlate for Older Adults - nutrition recommendations

Best wishes for you and everyone

Now, for later

Modern hustle

Exercise and cramps

Customs, pink and behavior

Colors

How to criticize the schools

Rapidly changing

Cheerleading, smile-ology, and smile-istics

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Expressing

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Tension in stories and in life

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A cleaner desk

Harlan Coben and Amanda Cross

world history

Snuggling, rather than sledgehammers

My group salutes your group

fun from the past

Again!

Reading aloud

activating myself

My ears and hearing

Reading aloud

Meeting challenges for fun and profit

The Joy of Writing
by Wislawa Szymborska