Bad news into gold

The best boss I ever had both supported and also contended with colleagues in a tough game for decades.  I got this statement in response to the post "Mishaps into art"

On creativity.  I have always thought of myself of creative generally, so I appreciate your examples.

I enjoy choosing a creative mind-set approaching problems of all sorts.  In fact, I now believe that, at least with the physical challenges of creating art, it is the challenge itself that pushes (or pulls) one to a new way of seeing things and that new way contains the seed of a new and creative way of responding to the challenge. Some of the best designs came from being stuck or facing a mistake, which demanded that I start all over OR find a new path.  New paths create new designs.

When I was an administrator I often remarked that I loved challenges, amidst all the wailing about the bad news of the day.  I think now that it was not the challenges themselves I loved, but the way they unleashed imagination and surprising solutions.  After all, what responses are possible?  Despair? Get used to it? Or see it as a door to new ways of thinking.  Gamester that I am, I almost always veered to the latter. That's why I never burned out. Except for a few thorny interpersonal sink holes, it was an enriching game.

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

Mishaps into art

My daughter once stepped on a doorstop that was in the baseboard.  Stepping on it caused a piece to tear out of the baseboard, making an ugly scar.  I told her I wanted her to fix it, not being entirely sure what she would do or how she make a repair.   She took a small rectangular piece of wood, painted a nice fern leaf on it and glued the wood over the break.  She screwed the doorstop into the patch and all done!

Lynn had a stain on some pants she liked.  She tried to remove the stain but no luck.  So, she got some fabric paint and painted a floral design on the pants, covering the stained area.  Sometimes people ask her where she got the neat looking pants.

A neighbor lost a tree to a storm.  It was leaning insecurely and efforts to assist the tree with ropes and stakes did not help.  So, they cut the tree down.  They bought a small lawn decoration and placed it where the stump was, surrounding it with attractively colored mulch and a further ring of white gravel.  

Maybe Mt. Rushmore was created to cover unsightly gashes in the side of the mountain and the Sistine Chapel had stains to be covered with the famous paintings by Michelangelo.  Art can be inspired by mishaps.

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

Red, white and blue shredders

Some writers and thinkers say that we Americans live in a materialistic culture and I think that is the God's honest truth.  It's natural, I guess.  If you are a Pilgrim who steps off a big landing rock with little or no equipment, training or ideas of what goes on in a North American forest in the winter, you naturally begin facing up to the increasing cold and lack of grocery stores.  If you are a pioneer trying to get a few goods and your family across the mountains, rivers, plains and deserts, you naturally wish for a good airline and car rental agency.  If you are an immigrant to a new land and after a long journey not all that pleasant, you find a muddy by-water, you naturally compare where you now are with the neat, well-kept, orderly town you left to get here.

So, yes, we think in terms of material goods.  Not just in those terms but we do think that way.  As C.S.Lewis said, God loves material, having invented it.  So, our material inventions put us, we feel, on the path God has chosen.  We not only have central heating but we have smart thermostats that are steadily getting smarter.  We have fans to cool our fans.  We have trucks to transport our cars.  And now, we have a new (admittedly minor) industry rising: shredders!.

See, we harvest trees, we squash and cook them and press them into paper.  We carefully design attractive letters with great font designs and lovely photos included and print that message onto the paper we just made.  We use up our oil and give employment to our postal workers to deliver those papers to our houses.  When a householder, me, for example, gets that paper, he immediately decides the whole thing was a waste of resources and time and effort and wants to get rid of what was delivered.  Meanwhile, other industries and accompanying materials have arisen, like computers, computer communication, computer duplicity and computer crime.  The clever message includes information that some misguided people might use to get a bank loan on my house while proving they are me using personal information gleaned from the messages.

So, like others of my friends, I have a shredder.  This one is my third shredder and in the great American tradition, it is the biggest and most powerful one yet.  Once I realized that the really big and manly ones, the ones that can reduce whole trees to directly into chips in an instant, require what I dread - maintenance!  Oiling, sharpening, cleaning, oh my!  I have vowed that this is as far up the road to shredder excellence I want to go.  I don't want to "kick it up a notch", at least not until a shredder comes out that also has a high-powered telescope and goldfish bowl included.  Then, we'll see.

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

Woman driving alone in US - part 3

Comments on women driving alone on multi-day road trips in the US

1. When she drove here over 1000 miles four years ago, she drove a moving van all by herself and did a great job.  She had no problems.
2. What a fitting topic - I love to travel alone in USA - since an early age every time I get a chance I take a road trip. I have favorite places ...I rarely use a map, know where to stop for coffee, and now free internet. What would any women be afraid of ... it's so carry a lead pipe under the front seat, about 2 foot long, I learned the trick while living in NYC, convincing for bums who walk up to the car, and comes in handy in changing a tire when the lug wrench is too short.
3. What a good idea!  There is one famous movie star who says she would rather travel alone.  Just driving myself 70 miles distance was a challenge at first.  When my husband was alive, he did almost all of the driving so I got out of practice re driving any distance-big mistake.
4. Wow!  What a great post!  I'm inspired.  Thanks for sharing the comments from these wonderful women.
5. Drive like us older people.  Only go 250 or 300 miles a day and do everything in the daylight.
6. Did drive to Austin, TX with daughter a few years ago to drop off my car for her (then flew back) but have only driven by myself on 'one day' trips because I'm afraid to do longer ones without someone 'there' for me. (I don't mind staying alone, just not comfortable driving long distances alone. This, from a woman who traveled on business alone for many years and never thought a thing about it)!  But, now, with no one at home, like a husband or parents, there is a feeling of true isolation on a trip...it's all 'on you'.  It does take some getting over.  Think this sort of information will do wonders for many TSU widows/divorcees, whatever...the 'alone ones', and perhaps, help us get over the fact that we do have to learn to do this if we don't want to vegetate in a 'cave' of our own making (of course, there are some of us who will think that's pretty cool)!  It's hard out there...but the info you sent shows that there are many rewards of single travel if we only knew how to do that without fear of being 'taken advantage of''?  So much to see and do, if we only could.
   

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

Woman on the road alone 2

Several readers responded to yesterday's request for statements about how a woman can take a road trip alone.  This statement is the longest and most detailed.  I will post again on this topic tomorrow with the others.

I travel across the country on my own several times a year, and have been doing this since I was in my 20s. (I am now in my mid-60s).

A few rules I follow are:

ONLY GET OUT WHEN THERE ARE AT LEAST A FEW OTHER CARS AND OTHER PEOPLE RIGHT IN THE VICINITY

This includes rest stops. There are cool, disposable, biodegradable devices now for women to relieve themselves that are sanitary and turn liquids into gels. I carry these and use them overnight and at other times if necessary.

BAG LADY IN PINK

I don't wear makeup or do my hair, and I wear really baggy old clothing that is not flattering in the least. So I look very unattractive.

But...I ALWAYS wear pink. I have done this for years. Research shows that when you are wearing pink, people think you are a sweet person (if not too bright) and are kinder to you. I learned this through much experimentation over decades. So if I have to ask for directions or help, people are inevitably nice.

When I was younger and traveling at night, I would tuck my hair up under a baseball cap so my silhouette looked more like a guy. I don't do that so much now that I am older.

WHOSE CAR IS THAT?

I strew things around my car, including several big plastic bags holding stuff. One says GOODWILL on it. I make sure the car looks really messy. While my car is always a little like that, on long trips, it is purposefully messy, like leaving a travel bag half open with clothes hanging out of it, although in truth everything is highly organized and I know where everything is. A perfect car with perfect luggage is a lure for thieves. My car is not a lure. Potential thieves don't know that I am often carrying not only thousands of dollars of equipment in computers, recorders, cameras, etc., but sometimes literally thousands of dollars in cash (when I have been paid in cash).

CAMPING

I do like to sleep on my futon in the back of my car, which is a station wagon. It is more comfortable than a motel bed! I just bought an exquisite memory foam topper to make it even more comfy, and can't wait! I have rules, however, that I got from a female truck driver. 

First, never overnight at a rest stop (except in Nebraska, where it is customary for a number of people & the rest stops are right off the highway). Go to a big truck stop where there is always 24/7 foot traffic. I always check to make sure it doesn't look like drug dealers are around; having traveled the same routes for years, I pretty much know which truck stops to avoid and which are brighter & better. 

Park near the big rigs; more foot traffic, and the truckers make me feel safer. I never get out of the car at night in a place where I intend to overnight, as I don't want people to see a woman alone is in that car. I cover all the windows with black plastic garbage bags (for the rear window, I have to pin them up and use big pins, like the kind you used to get for corsages). When I sleep, I keep the key in the ignition, and a knife, flashlight and cell phone within reach. Just before turning in, I always call my son to let him know where I am. 

I actually feel safer in my locked car in a trafficked & well-lit truck stop than I do hauling suitcases out of the car in a dark motel parking lot. Also, for daytime, truck stops have clean showers. 

I keep lots of disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer, etc., in my car on these long trips, too, as I am a borderline germ phobic. 

FOOD

I bring my own food, just got a cooler that keeps ice frozen for five days in summer heat(!), and have a wonderful organized system for my meals. You & Lynn probably have your little systems for travel down-pat, too. I do love my own organic, free-trade, shade-grown gourmet coffee! Turns out in truck stops that boiling water is free. Out of courtesy, I always ask, though: "Do you charge for hot water?" They always say no. So in the morning, I fill my insulated mug with super-hot water, come back to my car and use my own little one-cup Melita filter system to make fresh coffee that tastes wonderful. Yum! 

DIRECTIONS

I rely completely on the little man in my Garmin GPS! Wow, has he saved me! I also have an up-to-date road atlas and lots of maps for backup, and Triple A with 100-mile towing. My cell phone is a very old, very inexpensive Tracfone where I prepay. The calls themselves are expensive, but this phone is only for emergencies and to check on messages from home. Don't you also have Tracfones? I have been all over the USA, often in the boonies, and with one exception in ten years, have NEVER failed to get a signal, since Tracfone pays other companies for their signals!

I should write a book for older women traveling alone! The wonderful thing about these trips is that everybody always agrees on whether or not we want to listen to the radio & what we want to hear, and everyone in the car is always in a good mood!

Woman on the road alone

A woman is considering a long car trip alone.  Well, alone is one possibility.  That reminds me of my mother, who told me that some restaurants would not seat a single woman.  I am not sure that many restaurants follow that practice today.  It seems an unwise policy but I can see that many places would not want to become a sex market.  I have zero experience with sex markets.  But today, the interest in how a woman alone can comfortably travel about seems high and the topic is clearly relevant, what with late marriages, plenty of divorces and women living longer lives in greater health, often more their husbands.

I thought I had seen books on Amazon about living alone so I put "women alone" in Amazon and got 65,000 hits.  Amazon will throw everything available into search results but the first few results do seem quite relevant to physical safety and comfort aspects of traveling alone, as well, of course, to the emotional and social aspects.  I am reminded of a book that Lynn found inspirational called "I'm Not As Old As I Used to Be".  That woman lost her husband, who wasn't big on travel.  After his death, the woman satisfied her interest in foreign travel quite satisfactorily.

I realize that for many people of either gender, a good companion trumps solitude.  But sometimes not.  As I look over the many books on adult female travel alone that seem as though they might help with ideas, tips and encouragement, Go Your Own Way seems like a possibility.  Even it that one doesn't appeal to you, others that come up from Amazon as suggested alternatives might.

The famous Catholic wit, G.K. Chesterton, said,"Whenever I get the urge to exercise, I lie down until it goes away."  As we age, we are more familiar with the temporary nature of all urges and itches.  So, if you are interested in saving money and effort, just wait until the urge to travel goes away.

A good number of the regular readers of this blog are wise, witty, healthy women.  I am interested in tips and ideas from them that I can post on this subject. 

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

Is email obsolete?

It is a rage now to announce the death of ____________.  Doing so is dramatic and gets attention.  Oh, no, not my favorite!  As is often the case, it is wise to take all such announcements with a big grain of salt.  Maybe there is a decline, maybe not.  If there is a decline, maybe that is actually better than I suspect right now.  Maybe.

Recently, I began to realize how some of my friends respond immediately to text messages sent to their phone but rarely to email.  One said that sometimes she doesn't get to the computer.  Another said she didn't like her computer.  The situation reminds me of experiences I had in teaching courses online and other distance education arrangements.  Many people have a favorite channel or mode of communication.  If you want to communicate with them, it helps very much to use that mode, whether it is fax, voice phone calls, text or whatever.  Some people do best with old-fashioned conversation in face-to-face situations.  Finding out how a given person most likes to communicate can make an impressive difference in how much information they accept and create as well.

Cell phones are usually with the user, text messages are inexpensive and reasonably unobtrusive.  Using Google Voice to create a message is quite easy and convenient on a computer and the program keeps all messages, in and out, in an orderly file, copies them into email if so desired and allows them to be easily re-sent or replied or forwarded by email.  It is more or less polite to misspell and to shorten "wrds 2 use fewr karactrs."  (Some people are offended by that practice and fear for the future of our language, our society and our personal discipline.)  Another thing I like about Google Voice is that it lets me know if I send a text message to a phone that cannot receive and display such messages.  They are quite short and not good for something like this paragraph.

Email on a computer is quick and more or less unlimited, does not require such a tight contract deal and is basically rather inexpensive.  Inserting links, changing fonts, adding colors and highlighting and attaching all sorts of documents is easier.

Actually speaking with someone "live" on the phone is better than a one-way message like either email or texting.  Gauging voice tone and feelings as well as working with complex situations involving rapid changing communication, as when arranging a meeting between people with full calendars.

Some technologists have a saying "Old technologies never die; they just fade."  We still have blacksmiths and horse-drawn vehicles, we still start outdoor campfires with matches or even older means.  I suspect that email will be with us for a while.

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

Zoom, context, quantity

A big reason for becoming aware of what my own mind is doing is that people's minds are a major determining factor in their overall life.  Last night, Lynn fixed mango peach tea for herself and peppermint for our guest.  He wasn't blown away with the mintiness of his tea and she was wondering if there was really any mango in her tea.  Then, she realized that she had accidentally switched the cups: her "mango" tea was really peppermint and his "peppermint" was really mango.  

A month ago, I posted some original computer art, a drawing of "The Kiss" by Rodin seen from a really great distance, and a drawing of the same famous statue seen from very, very close up.  I did not get many offers of purchase of that art but I really didn't expect to.  Still, I love to find where I have been influenced by my assumptions and surroundings without realizing it.  When I see something, I rarely take into account the zoom level, the amount of magnification of the image,  my distance from the sight.  Similarly, I am rarely aware of the type and intensity of the lighting in which I am viewing something.  Yet, no light (as inside a deep cave) or very, very intense light, as in trying to view a bird against the sum, as well as the hue and steadiness of the light very much affect my impression.

Ten minutes a day of meditation help me remember to think of my mind, of the context, of influences that might be at work in forming the impression I am carrying in my mind.  It wasn't until my wife thought of the context, the situation that might be contributing to the odd teas that she was able to clear her mind and taste her tea and smell his, that she was able to verify the cup mix-up.

Related to the variables of distance and light and similar properties that affect our other senses, is the matter of quantity of thought.  Throw in the quantity of speech, writing and all the intake of all our senses and we get a large amount of data.  Computer and statistical scientists are getting better at analyzing large, I mean LARGE, quantities of data.  When I got my first computer, it had a memory of 125 kilobytes.  My brother-in-law bougt a 2 terabyte hard drive for about $80.  That single object has an information capacity of 2,000 of my original computers (in 1984).  Some day, older people may have their thought patterns and error patterns from their previous decades analyzed to see into their own minds and habits better.

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

The comparison business

Claims and strategies relate to any aspect of society.  We tend to claim that our form of government is best.  Someone thinks that a given treatment or remedy or practice is best.  Even thinking about "best" reveals further details and questions.  How long ago was this the best and have conditions changed since then?  Was this best for someone like me?  Now that I am choosing, should I select this?

One of the fundamental beliefs in our society is that competition (of certain types) leads to improved products, services and practices.  Yes, XX is best now but by tomorrow, my new version will be out and it will be even better.  Competition (of certain types - no fair killing the opposition or slandering them or kidnapping them, etc.) leads to multiplicity, to plurality.  So, we have many types of tvs, cars, soft drinks, hard drinks and just about anything else.

You may be able to remember when "web sites" were a new, weird thing.  Then, we started seeing paid ads that said visit our web site at blahblahblah.com.  Pretty soon, the search engine called "Lycos" came along and made searching for things possible.  Now there are something like 30,000 search engines, maybe more.  You may also remember when the big question was how could a web site make money, since if it didn't somehow, the expense of having it would eventually be too great and the web site, its coding, its connection to the rest of the internet would be removed.  Then, came the two computer science doctoral students at Stanford, Brim and Page, with their faster, more powerful, more useful searcher, "Google".  Within about a decade, Google became one of the richest, most successful companies there is.

Of course, many people are looking for a way to make the world wide web pay them, too.  There are many approaches.  One is comparison.  Now that you can find cameras at many places from your computer or smart phone, it would be nice if you could have a nice, perhaps tabular, comparison of several candidates for your choice.  Enter the comparison site which will do just that for you.  

Ever since Facebook reached numbers like 500 million users and open source computing that asked everybody to contribute their brain power to a design or a plan or a document, companies have turned to "social computing" and greater participatory computing.  But some are hoping to be the first choice for comparison shopping.

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

Yay for sensitivity, balance and American education

In honor of all the effort, care, worry and brainpower that goes into American education and its honest attempt to prepare all for everything, please visit Dear Mountain Room Parents from the current New Yorker, written by Maria Semple.

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

my own software

One hallmark of modern life is a greater awareness of the influence of the investigator, the teacher, the actual situation.  A saying in Buddhist thinking is "Don't confuse a finger pointing to the moon with the moon."  You might think that such a confusion is nearly impossible but in language and thought, confusions like that can sneak up on us and cause trouble.  The famous Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics, postmodernism, scientific experiments that seek to eliminate or lessen the influence of judgment and feelings on evidence, and historians in nearly any branch of history are some examples of such efforts.  Efforts to recognize that the investigator, the writer, the humans involved in any endeavor often influence results and records.  They may select camera angles, words, timing, spacing that create impressions that are only some of what is possible and honest.

I continue to be interested in highlighting clearly the essence of mindful practices.  Such practices can be described in many ways, from simple directions to sit still and focus the mind on one's breath to broader statements to look at what is in front of you and face deeply the present moment, looking at this computer message, seeing and feeling what is happening right now.  

The benefits of doing so regularly are incredible.  As outlined in the amazing book, "The Mindfulness Revolution" by Barry Boyce (ed.) and nearly every important author on the subject in this country,

When we learn how to use this simple tool and find for ourselves what it can do, it seems miraculous. It can transform boredom into curiosity, distressed restlessness into ease, and negativity into gratitude. Using mindfulness, we will find that anything —anything—we bring our full attention to will begin to open up and reveal worlds we never suspected existed. In all my experience as a physician and a Zen teacher, I have never found anything to equal it. -Jan Chozen Bays, MD

Boyce, Barry; Barry Boyce; Jon Kabat-Zinn; Daniel Siegel; Thich Nhat Hanh; Jack Kornfield (2011-03-15). The Mindfulness Revolution (A Shambhala Sun Book) Shambhala Publications. Kindle Edition.

Mindfulness practice improves my awareness of my own mind: what I am doing with it, what sort of thoughts have arisen, what I am attending to.  That mind of mine is always a factor in what I sense, what I think, and what I feel.  I am richer when I can see how it is behaving.





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

Cremation

I am impressed with the difference between a cremation and a burial.  My mother was cremated, our daughter was cremated and my mother-in-law is being cremated.  It is considerably less expensive than burial and it seems to me that the pain of a loss of someone to death is not lessened by a large bill.  One down side is that there is not a grave nor a grave stone so there is not a location where one can feel the loved one is or is especially present or remembered.  However, a burial urn can be placed in a site in a graveyard or mausoleum if desired.

We still have a good portion of my mother's 2005 ashes (sometimes referred to as "cremains") and of my daughter's.  So, the urns are a sort of location and reminder.  All coffins eventually deteriorate and the expense of slowing that deterioration down does not seem worthwhile to me.

Depending on one's ideas, seeing the body lying in an open casket and seeing that casket lowered into the earth may be helpful in making the change in the deceased's status very clear and meaningful.  Our experience has been that seeing the urn and understanding its finality does a good job of fixing the new absence in our minds.  We have found that a service of some kind, where people who loved the deceased person get together and remember that life and its meaning, has been valuable.  We sometimes hear that much of the ceremony we perform in connection with a death is for the benefit of the living.  A memorial service accomplishes that, too.

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

Google Voice

This blog is for my friends and anybody else who wants to read it.  This is my motivation to discuss Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Apple products that I use and like.  I also mention Honda and other products that seem good ones to me, such as Thera-Bands for quick and convenient exercise.  Amazon is the largest online retailer in the world and so has zillions of products.  Google has many products, too, and the great majority are quite useful and free.

There has recently been publicity about Google Earth having been downloaded over a billion (1000 millions, you know) times.  Anything downloaded that many times probably deserves an examination.  I have tried it and I don't really know much about using that "product" but I will probably get around to it eventually.  I use Google Maps and find it very convenient but Earth is much more powerful.  I understand it can show the bottoms of the oceans and the mountains that project up from the ocean floor and much more.  Being the bookish type, I look up books on using a Google product if I get serious and have difficulty.  I will say that many Google products have not been all that intuitive for me to use.

The Google product that I meant to write about today is Google Voice.  I have posted a little about it before, but I continue to mention it to friends as worth looking into.  We get good service from our Tracfones and they are quite inexpensive, relative to other things we have tried and heard about.  However, on a limited keyboard, text messages are difficult and bothersome to compose.  So, finding that I can create, send and receive text messages on my computer using Google Voice and send them at no cost (to me) is great.  The HP laptop I use has a pretty good keyboard but I find the HP USB-pluggable auxiliary keyboard is still more convenient.  I use it to compose and I can do text messages using it, the computer and Google Voice.  

One of the most surprising things about Google Voice is that I can receive the text messages I get in it and forward the text to an email address.  Another thing is that I chose to let Google Voice give me a separate new phone number.  However, I get a menu of all the phone numbers I control and decide which of them or all or none will ring if someone calls my Google Voice number.

Of course, the application is actually about voice transmission and has full capabilities in that area.  It makes a printed copy of voice call speech and a audio file, too.

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

Calm, beautiful ad-libbing

One of Lynn's favorite movies is Strangers in Good Company.  It is an odd movie that has had more than one title.  It was first titled "The Company of Strangers".  We have watched it several times.  A student told me once that a course in film advised watching any movie three times: for plot and then for more details and awareness of the whole thing.

This is not a competitor to "Silence of the Lambs" :( or "True Lies" :).  Nothing gets blown up and there are no murders or sex scenes.  Like real life among older people, it just rolls along.  I learned recently that the all-older-woman cast are not professional actresses and that they used a very loosely written script and ad-libbed much of the dialogue, telling their own life stories mostly.  It is meant to be quieting and gentle and it really is.  

The women discuss the kindnesses and cruelties they have given and received, from others and from events and chances.  The sound track includes the 2nd movement of Schubert's String Quartet in C Major, opus 163.  If that music doesn't move you, probably nothing will.  It is the same music used in the movie "Carrington" starring Emma Thompson, a sad movie.  "Strangers" is not sad but definitely reflective.

We are still enrolled in Netflix, both for DVD's by mail and streaming and we stream from Amazon.com.  We have an Amazon Prime membership, which equals free shipping and many movies and tv shows from the past streamed to our tv without additional charge.  

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

Say he's dead. I need his liver.

George Bilgere has poems every now and then on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac.  Whenever his name pops up, I take a look and read the poem.  So far, they are up-to-date (for a 70 year old, at least), modern, succinct and thought-provoking.  Today's poem depicts a man who is habitually observed in the coffee shop, working on his science fiction novel.  

When I read "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein, I was struck.  It was the first or second science fiction novel I read.  I was about 40 at the time and I had heard many times that some science fiction is riveting but I had not been much attracted to the subject.  The first really dramatic moment in "Stranger" did rivet me and I still remember it.  

In my work, having a specialization or two was a big help in developing enough weight in a subject matter that one felt comfortable writing and speaking about it.  One area of focus for me was the future, the future in a general broad sense.  I had read enough to know that medical science was doing some new and surprising things, such as being able to prolong life in a body much past the time when a given person would normally die.  As science fiction writers saw what was happening, they began to take notice.  As the same time, heart transplants and liver transplants and other uses of human organs were tried and tried again, until they are more successful now.  

A book I have mentioned, "Everything is Obvious, Once You Know the Answer," discusses volunteers to donate organs upon their death and says that roughly 15% of Germans volunteered while 90% of Austrians did.  Brian Christian in "The Most Human Human" makes clear what the area of organ donation and medical science can mean in the future, in just the way some science fiction writers have predicted decades ago.  If he needs a healthy liver and I have one, then if I could be declared dead without too much damage to my liver, he might get to have mine.  

Since you might not have anything to worry about, here's something.  If he has a brother or relative who loves him, to say nothing of plans to make money from "unwilling harvest", friends or suppliers might work so that I meet a definition of being dead, so that my liver can be extracted and given to him.  Thus, the general interest in the definition of "dead."

Well, it is getting toward Halloween so maybe this is timely.

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

Five notable ideas

I like to listen to Great Courses on my iPod.  It is quick, convenient and inexpensive since the audio downloads are the least costly form of their courses.  The biggest inconvenience is that I have to remember to shut off the iPod separately or it will just keep running, losing my place in listening. I own several Great Courses that I bought before I had an iPod and used audio downloads.  I want to listen to them and catch up.  I just began A Brief History of the World by Peter Stearns.  Listening on CD's is more convenient in that when I turn off the motor, the CD stops immediately and will pick up right where I left off.

What history to study - Stearns explains that most people my age had courses in Western history and American history but not in world history.  He mentions that 1994 hullabaloo over the creation of high school history standards, which were disapproved off by the US Senate with a vote of 99 to 1.  I was surprised at the time that the history standards could be the subject of heartfelt objections, which tended to center on inclusion of disapproved subjects and insufficient praise for the Red, White and Blue.  Stearns explains that similar unhappiness is expressed by European historians with Americans getting a dose of history that does not pertain to Europe and might weaken the emphasis of America's European heritage.

Free 1913 book immediately delivered We are having a dinner modeled on one we had ourselves at the Baldpate Inn in Colorado last fall.  That Inn has a room covered with keys because Earl Derr Biggers, creator of the character Detective Charlie Chan, wrote a novel about the then newly-opened Baldpate Inn.  It was titled "Seven Keys to Baldpate".  Lynn mentioned last night that she wished she had a copy of the book. This morning, it was on her Kindle for a price of $0.00.

Understanding relativity The O'Reilly Radar blog had a link to a simplified explanation of Einstein's Theory of Relativity.  I used it and liked what I found at Muppetlabs.  I feel as though I do understand the theory better but not enough to answer questions about it.

Voice-driven search I hadn't used Google Chrome lately.  I gave it a try this morning and was impressed with the regular Google search window, which in that browser can received a spoken search term and immediately search for it.  It worked pretty well on my HP laptop but it had trouble understanding some of the search terms I said. 

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

Complete, perform, rather than surpass

Byron Katie is an interesting woman author/thinker who has an interesting scholar/writer for a husband.  She and Dr. Wayne Dyer made recorded a session together.  During a Q&A period Katie said that she was having the time of her life watching her 60-something body fall apart.  I feel the same way, so far.  It really is interesting to see what goes first, how much loss there is in this sense, that muscle group.

I am interested in fighting aging, resisting it but I am also interested in doing so in appropriate moderation, with appropriate acceptance.  What is appropriate?  What I decide is right.  I am the best judge.  I don't want to be too slack, nor too rigorous.

I have had relatively tight hamstrings for at least 10 years.  Some of my friends have said," Of course, you are tight.  Look at you!  You are not a relaxed sort of person.  You are very focused and hardly ever laid back."  When I took my first couple of yoga classes, I saw many women in the class who could sit on the floor with their legs in a V shape out in front of them and completely fold over, putting their upper body against the floor.   If I sit like that, I can bend a few degrees forward and that is absolutely all I can do.  

A physical therapist asked me to go through the set of exercises I use to keep my back healthy and limber.  She warned me that she saw a tendency to "go ballistic", her term for determinedly making my body stretch.  She said I was using a good method for tightening myself over and over.  

I am entering an age where being able to move is the goal, moving itself.  I have never been a big competitor but I am even less so now.  I don't care how many people pass the finish line before me.  Just getting to the line is satisfaction for me.  Just accomplishing the movement, doing the exercise is an important achievement.

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

goal vs. feelings

We have a truce with each other and we do love each other but Good Grief!  When will (men, women) ever open their eyes?  There are other things in the world besides (sports, relatives)!  It rather seems as though they just can't see the (goal, feelings) involved.  Why can't they understand that (the goal is what we are aiming for and our purpose, feelings of fear or jealousy or superiority or hopelessness can always undermine absolutely any activity)?  Why are they always so fixated on (irrelevancies, the stupid, arbitrary, temporary "finish" line)?  If they would just see things our way once, they would see that (happiness comes from winning, winning is produced by happiness)?

Since half of my ancestors were women, I feel as though I can see both sides of the issue.  It is clear that any goal has a better chance of being reached if focus is kept on that goal, if progress toward goal is noted or measured and if effort is paid toward reaching it.  It is clear that none of us can do everything and neither can all of us.  But it is also clear that cheers, songs, pledges, and feelings of desire and of loyal commitment matter, along with many other feelings that may not related to goal achievement.  Sorry, fellas, but good cheer, optimism and hopefulness also help, even though feeling them, much less showing them, can seem weak and vulnerable.

I was impressed the other day when two different highly intelligent men made the same gesture when women in their presence said something deeply felt by the women but not by the men.  They both rolled their eyes and looked exasperated.  I am pretty sure that women feel exasperated by men at least as often as the reverse.

Sometimes one hears the Rodney King question: why can't we all just get along?  There are multiple answers but one of them is that each group wants to play their game their way and nothing else.  So far, we humans have staggered along in almost separate lines, with some of each group understanding and using the other group's approach but not many.

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

Ethnic photo exhibit

One of our European-American neighbors once attended a backyard cookout at the house of an Asian-American neighbor.  Seeing the steaks on the grill, he said,"I didn't know you people ate steak."  I never knew if the hosts took offense or even saw any reason to.

A few weeks ago, in our farmer's market, a European-American said to an Asian-American, "Are you from this state?"  She politely said that yes, she lived here in this county.

Many of us older citizens have grown up with images and habits that make us believe we know what a native-born American looks like.  I have wanted to assemble photo exhibit of portraits of authentic citizens of various countries.  I am very confident that I could get a photo of a man who wears a turban who is a citizen, if not a native, of Canada or Sweden.  I would like a nice portrait of a very dark skinned person who is a native of Germany or Denmark.  I have seen photos of Alexander McCall Smith and I have read that he was born in Rhodesia or Zambia.  Some other native of that country who did not move to Scotland would be a good addition to my exhibit.  

You see the idea: in this age of intermarriage, where people meet on campuses from all over the world, where they meet in airport and at conventions, where they meet online, what was once maybe a rather reliable correlation between facial structure/skin color/hair color and texture is now much scrambled.  Humans are built, I think, to very immediately try to read personality, character and background from others' faces.  However, that is increasingly difficult since experience, travel and education, both self and formal, are very powerful forces changing who and what we all are.

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

Murky ahead

In case you are wondering about the nature of this blog's author, here is an email I received lately:

You seem to attract positive attention. You instinctively know where to go, what to do, who to spend time with. And our Supper Club is happy to be part of your entourage. Let us lay a little love on you with this Reward Certificate. It's our Supper Club's way of saying, "Thanks for making us part of your posse!"

Like horoscopes and Chinese fortune cookies, there are almost always people around who will tell us about our character and our future.  Lynn has kept an eye on predictions and found that the same source, say, Harry's crystal ball, will say this is a good time to launch a business today and then say in three days time, that one should definitely not launch a business.  

We can usually depend on there being a group of predictors who are convinced that something or other is going to be the death of America if not all of human life.  We recently read this article by one of my favorite authors, Adam Gopnik, on authors and thinkers, nearly always 60 years old or older, like the famous Oswald Spengler, see the coming decline of this or that.  Personally, as a member of the age group that is home base for Gopnik's "declinists", I am very cautious about grumbling about the soon-to-fall sky or any other future but scary dangers.  Socrates is supposed to have warned against that encroaching new invention called "writing" and what it would do in the future of human mental capacity.  

There are a number of ways to make predictions that turn out to be correct.  One way is to make a sure-to-be true one: The xxx team will win.  Don't say when or by how much or in which game or against which opponent.  You can also make the statement ambiguous: The Greeks the Welsh will defeat.  

There is the interesting additional problem of "So what?"  He predicted the 1929 stock market crash.  But will his new prediction be correct?  Does the prediction include a date?  How can we be sure ahead of time that we can rely on his prediction working out?  We get right back to the same old slippery procedure of using judgment, calculation and information to guess whether events will work out as predicted.  There is the famous 1956 book When Prophecy Fails, explained in the article in the Wikipedia.  When the "end of the world" doesn't occur as predicted, how will those of us who gave away our clothes and houses and cars feel?  Will we be able to get them back?

If you are interested in this topic, you may be interested in Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers, the story of being left behind after The Rapture has taken millions suddenly off to Heaven.

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

Brain and feelings but also Others

Sheena Iyengar, professor of business at Columbia University, was born in India into a highly religious Sikh family.  What would you say are the odds that an obedient and devout young Indian woman, who goes blind in childhood, would wind up a professor of business in New York City?

She describes her upbringing, her cultural surroundings as a child, and the big change in her thinking wrought by schooling in America in her book, The Art of Choosing.  The possibility of individual choice in life, even the moral force that one ought to make one's own choices is not universally accepted in all parts of the world.  Having been a full participant in a religion that specified a great many rules for the correct way to live and being part of a different society where the individual is usually assumed to be the locus of that person's major life decisions gives her a wonderfully valuable perspective on human life.  Iyengar doesn't mince words as she takes apart some of our most commonly accepted principles, such as forces that focus on each person being able to decide where to live, how to make a living, whom to marry and much more.  She asks, "What kind of freedom is it when one is forced to choose?"

Iyengar has increased my sensitivity to matters of choice but so has the current rage for social networks, social connections and awareness of people's relations to others.  I listened to an ad that was trying to sell me a vehicle.  The message was clear: you make the decision and we will provide you will all the information needed to do so.  But Iyengar and Facebook have alerted me to more factors in our lives than our minds and our reasoning.  Her example of her own mother and father meeting each other for the first time in their own marriage ceremony grips me.  (I have since read that there are fewer divorces among arranged marriages than self-chosen ones.  That is certainly not the only measure of the success of the two ways of getting married but it seems surprising.)  

As I listened to that ad, I could picture a man weighing and calculating re-sale value, MPG, safety and other important matters and then buying the car that comes in the color his wife likes.  I can certainly picture a father saying to his son that the dad will be deeply disappointed if the boy chooses some other college than Old U. 

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