Along the gum line

My friend is a retired periodontist, a gum specialist.  He told me to run my electric toothbrush right along my gumline, the place where tooth enamel and gum meet.  He said that is always the location where decay begins.

Dark chocolate

As a student, I read a book or two by Andrew Weil, professor at the University of Arizona.  He commented somewhere that ginger had a molecular structure that makes it a valuable food to people. I took up the practice of having a cup of tea in the morning with a bit of ginger.  Over the years, I added other items to my mid-morning habit.  Now, I have a date, 6 almonds, a teaspoon of pumpkin seeds and a handful of shelled pistachios.  A few years back, I looked up the benefits of dark chocolate and immediately found a page that said,”Eat more chocolate!”

Yesterday, I wondered if that page was just a come-on without real data behind it so I looked up “is dark chocolate healthy?”. I found a list of important and valuable nutrients in dark chocolate.  It seems that younger people often steer clear of dark chocolate in favor of milk chocolate.  I would not be surprised if older tongues naturally get a better taste for more intense chocolate.

Men, women and pockets

I am surprised at the difference pockets make.  One little slit and some cloth.  I have not had any strong desire to let my natural body curves and contours show through my clothes.  So, I can put what I use in my pocket and there is little chance I will forget one of the items I want with me all day.  I don’t have to lug a large, expensive bag around and try to remember to pick it up and carry it along.  I do have a fine bag if I need one but I call it a “case”, not a purse

60-80%

I read a couple of articles that today’s batteries in digital devices like tablets and phones last longer if they are charged to 60 or 80%.  I wondered how much longer and saw an estimate of twice as long.  To me, that is enough to matter.

I have found that charging Apple phones and tablets goes faster when I turn a device on, plug it up, see that it is charging and turn it off, still plugged in.

In league with the devil

I have been reading “A Place for Everything” by the imaginative Judith Flanders.  She is imaginative in the way Deirdre Mask in “The Address Book” is imaginative.  They both see value and intelligence where most people don’t. The names of streets and the numbering of buildings makes addresses.  These days, too, having an address is a valuable thing to have.  In a similar way, having a place for a book in a library, a place that is related to the identity of the book, makes it much easier to locate the actual book and even to check whether that book is available from that library.  

The subject of new kinds of library materials is important in our house.  My wife was a school librarian and a professor of school librarianship.  She wrote her dissertation about the problem of new materials and libraries, such as slide-tapes, visual slides to be shown along with a tape, discussing each slide in turn.

You probably know that the mechanical process of printing a book was not invented until the 1640’s.  When Gutenberg and his business partner took a load of Bibles to sell on a Paris street corner, each copy of that important book was sold for a much cheaper price than was typical for the previous hand-written copies.  Elizabeth Eisenstein reports that people reported the men to police for being in league with the devil since every copy showed EXACTLY the same on a given page, not possible in hand-copied books.

3 Books of note

I like to mention books that have mattered to me, hoping that they may matter for somebody else.  I send these posts to about 100 people but 2 or 3 times as many people look at the blog’s web page or get it from a friend or contact.

Two books that come to mind as influential in my own thinking are “Incognito” by D. Eagleman and “The 10,000 Year Explosion” by Cochran and Harpending.  Incognito is often used to mean “in disguise” but in this book, it means the unconscious powers of our brains and nervous systems.  The 10,000 Year Explosion is about what is sometimes called the human diaspora, the time of humans spreading around the planet.  I recommend them both.

A third book at least as valuable as those two is “The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat” by Oliver Sacks.  The book is a bit mis-titled in my opinion.  The man in question is reported to have touched his wife’s HAND and attempted to drape that on his head.  He mistook her HAND, not her whole body.  This Oliver Sacks book is a challenge to read, at least for me because it is about such odd mental worlds that can develop.

Updates

The two ice storms broke many trees and branches.  The community is still clearing up, with many very large piles of tree trunks and branches to be picked up from lawn edges.  

We once had nicely functioning phones in six locations around the house but with internet changes and aging electronics, things aren’t so peachy now.  One of the main changes is the dependence of our phones, including cellphones, on the internet.  Another is the shrinking or elimination of “broadcasting” and more reliance on that same internet. All of that takes time, often years or decades and years and decades are aging agents working on us and on our electronics.  Between ice storm damage and services changes and aging, we spend several hours in our internet supplier’s office, working with a nimble-fingered young man getting our accounts, our equipment and our credentials in order. 

Changed plans

We thought we would be gone but we aren’t.  I thought I wouldn’t write today but I am.

We did drive to another town but we found that we weren’t that interested.  We talked and decided to come home.  We did.

Blog pause

I have events coming up and will pause my blog, probably until Friday of this week. There are 5960 entries already, some of which are worth re-reading.  During the pause, you read some at fearfunandfiloz.  You start your own blog but if you do, I encourage you to make notes during the day of possible themes.  I also encourage you to make a blog comment every day, not just on the days that stand out.  You may be surprised to find the inner resources you possess to see and comment.

I can write

English is the only language I know well enough to use to write.  I am confident that my studies in Latin, French and German have been sufficient for me to use some app or program or digital tool to translate writings into one of those other languages. According to OpenAI, there are about 3000 languages that have a system of writing and I suppose I could find some tools to translate this blog post into most or all of them.

Writing and speaking are special for teachers and others who attend to the inner thoughts and feelings of others.  If I am feeling grumpy and grouchy, you might conclude that by seeing my facial expression but generally what I say or write is a more incisive guide to what I feel inside and why.

I used every page in my notebook recently and I am now on the first page of a new notebook.  I imagine that in ten centuries such documents will be sold for tons of money or jewelry or property.