Bingo and uncertainty

Last night, we played bingo.  In a room of 50 or so quite senior seniors, the visiting little grandson stood out.  He was excited to be able to sit at a table between his grandmother and his mother and have a card of his own.  He could see that he understood how to play and he began playing with high enthusiasm.  Exuberantly, he cried out,"I'm going to win!"  He wasn't trying to show off, he was just in very high spirits with the intoxicating certainty that victory was his.  He didn't win but he exclaimed that he would win on the next game.  His cheerful delight at the prospect of a win that would soon be his continued on for maybe 6 games.  Then, suddenly, he began to bawl loudly.  He had reached total dejection.  Where was that delicious victory that he could almost taste?  Something was badly, badly wrong.

I was reminded of several instances when my own great-grandson played games at an early age and was also deeply hurt at fate, the world and anyone in his vicinity for conspiring to keep the rightful winner, him of course, from victory.  It took maybe two or three years of opportunities to compete and lose before he developed a feeling that playing without winning wasn't so bad.

David DiSalvo in "What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite" writes nicely about our mental desire for certainty, our automatic desire to end uncertainty,  Wray Herbert in "On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind's Hardwired Habits" (and author of the preface of DiSalvo's book) emphasizes "scripts", "stereotypes", and "heuristics", habits of thought and decision that human minds grow and use all on their own.  

One of these habits is to lessen or eliminate uncertainty.  Daniel Gilbert in his excellently written "Stumbling on Happiness" reports that people have much lower enthusiasm for watching a football game tape than for watching a live game.

Why isn't it fun to watch a videotape of last night's football game even when we don't know who won? Because the fact that the game has already been played precludes the possibility that our cheering will somehow penetrate the television, travel through the cable system, find its way to the stadium, and influence the trajectory of the ball as it hurtles toward the goalposts! Perhaps the strangest thing about this illusion of control is not that it happens but that it seems to confer many of the psychological benefits of genuine control. In fact, the one group of people who seem generally immune to this illusion are the clinically depressed, who tend to estimate accurately the degree to which they can control events in most situations.

Gilbert, Daniel (2006-05-02). Stumbling on Happiness (Kindle Locations 470-475). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

As he makes very clear with humor and sympathy, we postulate what will happen when we don't know and our inclination is to postulate something good.  Increasingly, it is being recognized that doing so may not be good prediction but it is healthy and fun and that's what we do.

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

Coaching computing and electronics

Last night, we tried to help those who showed up with questions and problems related to computers and electronics

1. Can you get a free connection to the internet?  Probably at your local public library or favorite coffee shop.  Maybe as a visitor on a local campus?
2. The Calibre program for changing ebook formats
3. Sharing a Kindle archive between devices - if two Kindles use the same credit card and Amazon account, they can share the archives, too
4. Sound on a Kindle - having it read text aloud, for some texts anyhow.  Press the Symbol key while holding the Up-arrow key
5. Moving music onto an iPod - use latest updated version of iTunes
   
6. the map app on an iPad
7. trying one local network after another to find one that works
8. the best clue that people still ignore: put the problem in Google and look over the results.  If you don't get a useable answer, choose a rewording and try again.  This is my best source for guidance at low cos

As at my university, helping adults with their computing is a high-variety undertaking.  Some have Macs and others have Windows machines.  Some are interested in an iPad and some in the Kindle.  A mass approach will probably miss everyone.

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

Advanced aging clinic being planned

I've been having so much fun as an older person that I am opening an aging spa.  I can no longer in good conscience keep all the treasure and prestige to myself.  Spend an afternoon with me and you will look 70 years old.  You will immediately be offered the famous senior discounts.  You will never be carded by those stores that card everyone who appears to be younger than 40.  I can permanently crinkle your skin and age your posture.  True, I am rather expensive but I'm the best if you want to be taken for older than you are.

It has been noted that a line of products that aim at something impossible may well produce the best income.  So far, we have not found a way to reverse time so we all age steadily, if not sporadically.  Therefore, the emphasis on the attractiveness of the young promotes many efforts to make ourselves look young and function as young people.  That fact that doing so is impossible tends to be ignored and that sets the stage for repeated efforts.

I read the other day that even though the earth's human population has reached 7 billion, the current group of living humans is only 17% of all the humans who have lived, depending, of course, on the definition of "human".  There are 5.88 seventeens in 100% so think of how the earth's crowdedness and evironment would be if we had 7 billion x 5.88 or 41.18 billion.  You can see that mortality is wonderful and we can all be grateful to the earlier humans for not extending their lives too long.  Do a good deed, then, and come to my aging clinic (when it opens).

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

Filtered, personalized information

A bubble can be something short-lived and insubstantial.  It can also be a plastic shield that encloses, as when someone is being protected from an alien atmosphere or threatening germs, the "boy in the bubble" situation.  Some people have expressed a worry that so much information about me will be collected by Google, Microsoft, etc. that only very tailored information streams will be directed at me.  Maybe I will never be exposed to views and ideas not in line with my search history and expressed tastes and convictions.

Having thought a little bit about this concept, I have decided I have more important things to worry about.  I use Firefox for most web browsing and I have the options set to delete cookies and browsing history when I close the Firefox browser.  When I do use Chrome, Google's browser, I delete all collected information it lists using the choice provided that says "from the beginning of time", which is really a long way back and well before my birth or computers.

However, I use Google's free email "Gmail" and their free blogging site, "Blogger", and their free web site creation and hosting service, "Google Sites".  Google has advanced staff and thinkers and tons of money.  I am sure they can hire programmers and private investigators and find out where I go and what I do quite easily.  It seems that the alumni offices of various schools are themselves pretty darned good at tracking me down but they may not know I subscribe to the Discover magazine.  Actually, Google and others may not care about me.  Scary but true.  They may have little interest in me.

As my businessman relative says, stop and think what demographic I am in.  I am not between 25 and 45.  I am not making babies or investments.  I don't want a Porche or other enhancements to my "look".  So, I am probably not worthwhile.  

In these months of what many people feel are unusually uncivil, unmannerly arguments between various men who want to be elected to run the country, one does wonder if those who are passionately in favor of some idea and those who are passionately against it have heard much of the other side's point of view.  I wonder if I have stumbled onto the underlying obstacle to more understanding of others: we all need to delete our cookies more often!  Empty our caches so that we start each day from scratch.

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

Two topics: computers, meditation

Circumstances have made me think that maybe a basic web page or two might help in discussions with people who want to make more use of their computers and related electronics.  Similarly, I wanted to make an updated, better and more direct set of directions on meditation.  Throughout today, I have added two pages to my kirbyvariety web site.

Basics of personal computing: https://sites.google.com/site/kirbyvariety/Home/basics-of-personal-computing

How to meditate: https://sites.google.com/site/kirbyvariety/meditation-1

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

Discussing the book we have all read

Not easy to collect the marked passages of a book
All the student-marked passages constitute a great basis for comparison and contrast

It is quite possible to read a book, enjoy reading it, and learn from doing so without marking it, or copying any passage.  It is surprisingly pleasant to just read each word with little additional effort.  Just as much so to see afterwards that various passages and ideas are in your memory and mind.  On the other hand, if you are planning to make a presentation or a blog post about a book, it relieves anxiety, though, to mark interesting passages on which to comment or question.  Using a bright yellow or green highlighting pen makes the parts stand out and easily seen while paging through the book.  

If the members of an interested class or group all do that independently, the books used might be set aside if the marked passages were all assembled.  A list of them could be arranged in the order in which the passages come up in the book and the names or initials of the group members who selected a given passage could be placed at each passage.  Paging through each copy to find each of the marked places would take time and might be both somewhat tedious and error-prone.  

Not so much if all involved use a Kindle, the ereader from Amazon.  That technology, using a Kindle, is fast, easy and accurate to mark a passage, transfer the file of all marked passages to a computer and print or display them.  Amazon already does this on the web site kinde.amazon.com.  There a Kindle user can see his own highlights and the popular highlights, sections cited by many readers.

Amazon Kindle ebooks can be read on smartphones and anywhere on the web and on any PC or Mac.  The ability to highlight, correlate and copy or quote appears to differ from one sort of device to another.

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

1000 posts

The earliest post in this blog is dated March 29, 2008.  Today is Feb. 25, 2012 so this blog has been around for 1428 days.  This post today is the 1000th one.  So, in a way, I am 428 posts behind.  Whose way?  Nobody knows.  A little division shows that I have averaged .7 posts a day.  As that first message says, this "Fear, Fun and Filoz" (ophy) blog is actually my 2nd one.  In the first try, I was interested in writing down the idea of meditation in a form that could be understood and used.  Over time, that got to be a somewhat limited topic.  At the same time, I realized that many thoughts came to mind during day, from events and observations around me as well as ideas and reactions to books and movies and news events.  

I meditate 10-13 minutes a day and I find I cannot convince myself that I don't have the time each day to do that.  It has turned out to be a valuable addition to my life, one of the very most valuable ever.  Similarly, writing a blog post each day has also turned out to be fun, inspiring, and literally eye-opening.

I read somewhere that the French author Guy de Maupassant said that any difficulty can be borne if a story can be told about it.  I have or had a book on study skills translated from the French that said all generals fight their battles twice, once on the battlefield and once in the apartments of the ladies.  Psychology and related disciplines in medicine are converging on idea that anything which distances pain, confusion, fear, and related threats and challenges, anything which gives us a chance to see our lives, actually both the good and not-as-good parts from a bit of a distance, anything like that increases our ability to accept problems and losses, bear pain and fear, and enjoy what comes.  Writing and other arts do exactly that.

As Thich Nhat Hanh says, looking deeply can enrich our minds and lives.  Asking myself "What's up with me right now?" gives me a chance to step back from the day and review.  What stands out from recent moments?  What gave me a lift? What was difficult?

I appreciate all readers, both intermittent and steady, and I thank you for your attention and comments.



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

"I will take the plunge"

A man I respect says that he will "take the plunge" and give meditation a try.

(If it is good for me, I must TRY HARD.  

Anything worth doing is worth doing right.

If it is to be valuable, it must be difficult.)

These are common ideas about life and are often true.  But the trick is such a stance does not always apply.

Counselors, healers and theoreticians wrestle with the best approach to get people to do what is good for them.  Sometimes, people trying to stop drinking or losing their temper or buying too much or whatever verbalize an idea about what they should do about the problem and yet they don't follow up on their own idea.  

One of the best insights I have heard is from Prochaska's "Changing for Good", where his team of researchers found that one good predictor of successfully giving up smoking (one of the toughest of addictions to break, I have heard) is that the person tried and failed to manage to give up smoking previously.  I think most people would predict that a previous failure would predict that the person is a "loser" and would not ever be able to stop.  But that is not what the data showed.  It showed that later attempts were more successful.  In other words, this was a case of trying repeatedly for pay-off.

Another approach that seems valuable to me is that of appraisal theory.  The appraisal often takes place extremely rapidly.  I look at a shirt and I decide I like it or I don't like it extremely quickly, in just a few seconds.  Then, my mind cascades through its typical, habitual pathways into thinking how happy I would be if I had that shirt, which gets me to thinking how unhappy I am with my wardrobe, my whole life - bang!  I'm in a bad mood.  The whole chain begins with that appraisal of the shirt.  The better we know our minds, the better we can question the appraisal.

A third is heuristics as described by Wray Herbert and David DiSalvo.  These are thinking shortcuts that our brains can use without notice and that often speed up our decision-making but that may need us into errors.  For instance, our familiarity with Earth's gravity makes us extrapolate its pace in other areas such as waxing and waning fashions.

Some things are good for us but are easy.  Meditation is an example.  It is difficult to fail at meditation since you are only looking at where your mind is.  It is an easy thing to do for 30 seconds or 1 minute.  We are rarely unable to spare that much time out of a day.  Try it again tomorrow or in a day or two.  Avoid judging whether you like it or if you do it well.

You can plunge in or just put a toe in.



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

Confess! Repent!

I am writing this on Shrove Tuesday, the last day of Carnival, also called "Mardi Gras", which is French for 'Tuesday Fat', meaning something like 'prosperous Tuesday'.  Tomorrow, were I part of the right group and persuasion, I would begin a penitential fast.  Well, just of meat.  My advisor in graduate school regularly sacrificed for the 40 days of Lent but instead of giving up meat, promised to forgo "all candy from Egypt that comes in a bag."  He had a French-sounding last name and may have been a little conscious of the meaning and tradition of Lent.

At the right time in history, I think people had many things to be afraid of.  Not that we don't have our share, too, but just the invention and application since about 1937 of antibiotics has given us a sense of better understanding and less helplessness about disease.  I can imagine that last days of winter, dreary and seemingly endless, being a very good time for religious authorities to try to lift peoples' energy with a challenge.  Besides, by then, the supply of smoked meat was running low so it would be a good time to save.

If you are really going to do a good job of sacrificing, you need to cleanse yourself in preparation. It is a very strong rebuff to offer a sacrifice that is rejected as unworthy.  One way to cleanse the mind is to confess.  I'm sure you can think of sins, transgressions and trespasses, little unkindnesses and big, that you should admit to your confessor.  If you can't, you can just sit there until you do!  (You know the logic: you aren't perfect, are you?  Of course not!  If you aren't, you have flaws.  Confess them and repent of them!  Maybe they won't be held against you on the Last Day.)

"Shrove" is an old word, the Wikipedia says, that means 'confess'.  All this confession, repentance and sacrifice is a bit scary so first let's have a party and a parade and a cotillion, a big dance, which will also give us a chance to have our son meet the daughter of our friends.  It would be great for the estate if those two became a couple.

Yes, many different traditions and purposes, not to mention business and sales, are involved.

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

Karen Maezen Miller makes one work!

I like to keep an eye on some blogs.  The RSS feed arrangement allows me to 'subscribe' to a blog.  What that does is allow the latest post to show up someplace I can look and see if that message is of interest to me.  I generally subscribe a blog I want to track in my Google Reader and go through it every now and then to see what I have missed.  But some of the more steadily interesting ones are posted in snippets on my main blog page where it is even more likely I will look them over.  Just yesterday, Peter Duesterbeck, an interesting man who is retraining himself into a new career as a teacher posted a report on his latest student teacher experiences. His most recent post popped up on my blog page and I immediately checked out what was going on with him.

Karen Maezen Miller has written some of the very best words I have ever read and that's saying a lot.  I've been reading nearly all my life.  So I follow her lead pretty closely.  So, this morning when my feeds showed me she had a new post, I read it.  Typically Zen, quiet and stripped down, the file has a link at the bottom she advises readers to use to listen to a podcast (sound file, computer version of a CD).  Since Miller is valuable and a little different from your average bear, I was primed to pay strict attention.  I saw right away that the file plays for 30 minutes, a very long time for me to stand and listen before breakfast and all.  It takes a long time for a nerd ex-academic to get through 30 minutes of a wonderfully rich sound file.  In fact, it took me more than twice the recorded time to stop and check each new person introduced in the story.  I simply must check to see what the internet through Google and printed books through Amazon have to say about this expert or that.  All this with an iffy internet signal that requires re-signing on at random times.  

It is a good Zen exercise in self-observation to listen to the whole thing from Miller's site or this link from its originators, NPR's Radio Lab. It definitely seems worthwhile and you needn't check all the references. It is a much broader subject than you might think.

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

"The Strange Case of Mr. Donnybrook's Boredom" by Ogden Nash

I am a big fan of Ogden Nash, who said different things in a different way.  I admire a man who creates strange cases and characters who wind up scouring the globe in mad pursuit of boredom.  This post is in honor of Prof. Peter Toohey, a native of Australia who is professor of Greek and Roman studies at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Prof.Toohey is the author of "Boredom: A Lively History".  I am interested in boredom from all angles, including that of Eastern and Buddhist studies.

The Strange Case of Mr. Donnybrook's Boredom by Ogden Nash

http://treasuryoflaughter.blogspot.com/2011/03/ogden-nash-and-cs-lewis-spare-bedroom.html

Once upon a time there was a man named Mr. Donnybrook.

He was married to a woman named Mrs. Donnybrook.

Mr. and Mrs. Donnybrook dearly loved to be bored.

Sometimes they were bored at the ballet, other times at the cinema.

They were bored riding elephants in India and elevators in the Empire State Building.

They were bored in speakeasies during Prohibition and in cocktail lounges after Repeal.

They were bored by Grand Dukes and Garbagemen, debutantes and demimondaines, opera singers and Onassises.

They scoured the Five Continents and the Seven Seas in their mad pursuit of boredom.

This went on for years and years.

One day, Mr. Donnybrook turned to Mrs. Donnybrook,

My dear, he said, we have reached the end of our rope.

We have exhausted every yawn.

The world holds nothing more to jade our titillated palates.

Well, said Mrs. Donnybrook, we might try insomnia.

So they tried insomnia.

About two o'clock the next moring Mr. Donnybrook said, My, insomnia is certainly quite boring, isn't it?

Mrs. Donnybrook said it certainly was, wasn't it?

Mr. Donnybrook said it certainly was.

Pretty soon he began to count sheep.

Mrs. Donnybrook began to count sheep, too.

After a while, Mr. Donnybrook said, Hey, you're counting my sheep!

Stop counting my sheep, said Mr. Donnybrook.

Why, the very idea, said Mrs. Donnybrook.

I guess I know my sheep, don't I?

How? Said Mr. Donnybrook.

They're cattle, said Mrs. Donnybrook.

They're cattle, and longhorns at that.

Furthermore, said Mrs. Donnybrook, us cattle ranchers is shore tired o' you sheepmen plumb ruinin' our water.

I give yuh fair warnin', said Mrs. Donnybrook, yuh better git them wooly Gila monsters o' yourn back across the Rio Grande afore mornin' or I'm a-goin' to string yhuh up on the nearest cottonwood.

Carramba! Sneered Mr. Donnybrook. Thees ees free range, no?

No, said Mrs. Donnybrook, not for sheepmen.

She strung him up on the nearest cottonwood.

Mr. Donnybrook had never been so bored in his life.


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

"The Young Victoria"

We watched "The Young Victoria" the other night on a Netflix DVD.  It was surprisingly moving.  Imagine being an 11 year old girl and being shown charts and given explanations to make clear why you live and are treated the way you are.  Not only are you an heir to the throne of Britain but you are related to nearly every royal family in Europe.  So, that's why you are required to hold an adult's hand every single time you descent a staircase.  Falls must be prevented because you are so valuable.  

That same value makes you a natural target for all sorts of adult and complicated conspiracies.  The most bothersome of these is pushed by your mother's private secretary, depicted as an ambitious man of high energy and limited intelligence.  The idea was that during Victoria's child and teen years, she might become queen, were the right deaths and cases of childlessness to occur.  As a child and young teen, Victoria's mother would be regent, overseeing her daughter.  The mother's private secretary would be in the perfect position to wield power and influence.  As things turned out, the private secretary lost influence and position and Victoria became a queen in her own right at the age of 18.

Imagine what would happen if the US suddenly chose an 18 year old very sheltered girl, not allowed to read novels or attend the theater except for operas, to head the country.  People were not stupid then, as now, and used all sorts of controls and ideas to make things work out.  The royal power was limited and Parliament did most of the governing but as far as the mass of people were concerned, the Queen was a somewhat sacred person, the honor, force and continuity of the nation incarnate.  The Queen had limited knowledge of people, power, economics, politics and nearly everything else.

With luck and pluck and some good support from her first cousin, soon to be her husband, Albert, this woman became the longest reigning British monarch (the current Queen, Elizabeth II, may surpass this record) and the longest reigning female monarch in history.  She was born in 1819 and died in 1901, a period covering a great many important events and innovations in our lives.

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

Horrors - Yum!

I'm not sure why they do it.  I ought to be because I do it, too.  I get in the mood for a little vegging in front to the set and turn on something.  I'm not a fan of unreality shows and there are several comedies that haven't appealed so I bet on The Goods vs.The Bads.  You know, the show where all the hard-bitten guys are both heroic and stoic but models of male beauty.  They have a couple of female colleagues who are experts at karate and shooting guns and bazookas.  There aren't many women who have devoted time and energy to mastering such skills and there are only these two who are also ex-models for lingerie, which they still wear while catching baddies.  Helps distract low-level criminals who eye the bosoms and thighs instead of tending to business.

So far, not good but ok.  Things heat up and a team is sent to a crime scene.  This is the part I have trouble with.  The crime scene writers, make-up artists, sound men and related contributors are in a competition with similar members of the casts of other shows.  Whoever makes more of the audience vomit or seek psychiatric relief from nightmares wins the industry prize and gains enormous prestige.  Therefore, the crime scene turns out to be especially gruesome, shocking, bloody, sick, horrible, upsetting, and other industry-sought adjectives.  It is never just a victim stabbed or shot.  It is much worse than that.  In fact, you won't believe it is so bad.   Here, let us show you.  See how, in the background there, the young inexperienced agent who hasn't see that much make-up and stagecraft before is sitting on the curb with his head in his hands.  Isn't it delicious how horrified he is?

There are times when I have the fortitude to turn the set off and just sit or let the notes of The Elixir of Love wash out my brain.  But sometimes I keep viewing.  Why do I do it?  Why expose my frail mind to depictions of horror as a pastime? I guess I am glad I am not (yet) the victim and haven't experienced the pain and horror that the victim did.  I guess grasping the extra care the bad guy put into being bad and evil and malevolent and cruel helps me feel even happier when he is captured and put away on the frying hallway until later in the decade.  I do understand that I am wired, actually evolved for difficulties and challenges.  I've tried the knitting channel and it doesn't hold my interest.  As I age and my experience with crime scene writing and photography and sound effects grows, I am more able and willing to sit quietly in a corner doing nothing.  I always pick a well-lit corner.

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

Mental illness is murky

This morning I read a wide-ranging article on schizophrenia and related diseases.  It was mentioned on the Mind Hacks blog, headlines of which appear on my blog page. Robin Murray is a British psychiatrist and researcher and discusses in an interview his views and experiences with research and patients.  Since our daughter Jill was debilitated by mental illness for decades before her death, we have an interest in the subject.

One of shocking things that emerges when a relative is struck by serious delusions is how little can be done about the problem.  When a bright young woman informs her parents that she has a new boyfriend named Adam and she means the famous male founder of the human race, the one from the Garden of Eden, at first the parents have difficulty comprehending her statement.  Once they understand her, they doubt her, naturally.  They tend to have questions.  These can be handled in a variety of ways, no doubt.  Her way was to be dismissive, with pity for such mundane matters from such primitive thinkers.  Over time, the parents learn that acceptance of the statement without further ado tended to get the item off the conversational table more quickly.  Not accepting the literal truth of her assertions, which would be impossible, just moving on to something else to talk about.  

One of the most surreal parts of my experience was the speed and seeming comfort with which this intelligent young woman accepted our acceptance and readily moved on to discussing the weather we had been having of late.  I am pretty sure if you were really going to be awarded a special Nobel prize for contributions to humanity, you would want to mention quite a few details of your work, the thrill of being contacted by the prize committee, etc.  You wouldn't be comfortable or happy with me too quickly asking you to discuss the recent high humidity.

Dr. Murray makes clear that the voices schizophrenics hear are internal signals that arise in Broca's area of the brain just like normal thoughts that seem to be internal speech but that some brains send the signals through the very nerve channels used by external sounds coming in the ear.  He notes that families of such people find it very helpful to learn that the afflicted actually cannot distinguish between "the voices" that speak to them and voices they hear from other speakers.

Trying to understand what we could of our daughter's condition, we found her diagnosis would vary.  Murray says that he has sometimes met with a patient who was a very clear example of a schizophrenic.  "Who were the idiots that labeled this person bipolar?" he would ask his assistant.  The assistant would page through some notes and look at the psychiatrist and smile.  Murray found he himself had made the earlier diagnosis.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Rah! Rah! Phooey!

It seems to me that a big strong country like America might be able to select the head of its government with more insight and less hoopla. News organizations use about the same language for elections as they do for football games and boxing matches. When I think of the trials and contradictions the president must face, I feel confident that a "hard-hitter" who can gain yardage is not the leader most needed.  I understand that good speaking ability, not just delivery but sensitivity to timing and audience tone matter, too.  Good thinking and a good memory have got to be important.  I know that intelligence is difficult to gauge and there are different sorts of intelligence.  Yes, physical, emotional and social endurance have to be important, too, for the first lady as well as the president.

But the macho, the thrill, the exciting pulse-pounding contest are distractions and invitations to the very stubbornness and narrowminded rigidity that are in turn complained about.  We could do better with more calmness and less thrill. You would think that clever writers could come up with quieter metaphors.  How about "Vote for our guy because he is a champion gardener"?  Something along the lines of he lets no weeds pass him by and he won't let wasteful projects stay in the budget.  He keeps his projects properly watered, neither drowning nor parching them.

Maybe cooking metaphors, where we picture the great man masterfully combining ingredients and seasonings with just the tantalizing amount of pepper.  Properly constructed, his skill would appeal to men, his facility to women, his seasonings to Hispanics and others usually not satisfied with blandness.  "Our guy will satisfy your appetite for variety while raising issues to the right temperature, not burning, not serving them cold."

You may remember that Cyrano de Bergerac was a man of passion, an excellent writer and poet and the best swordsman in France.  His enemies hire an athletic sword-wield-er to challenge him publicly and demolish his body.  The poor guy is no poet and approaches the Count at the opera.  "Sir, your nose is very...It is very big!"  Our guy is dismayed.  "That's it?  That's your idea of an insult?"  He goes on to list 19 categories of possible metaphor, including ornithological ("I see you love the little birdies and provide them with a perch.")  Let's get off the gridiron and into the parlors, the gardens, the labs, the classrooms, the concerts.  With a little effort, we could be both more civilized and more colorful.

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