Storing things on unknown computers

I guess it started with the world wide web itself.  How about if we arrange wiring and coding and electronic signals so that information I write on my computer can be read from your computer.  If a large number of us make that sort of arrangement, we might have a Napster-like movement.  That was when people started sharing the music recordings they had purchased and I guess the practice had an enormous impact on recording sales.  On the other hand, I think the entire idea of the internet as originally conceived by the American government agency DARPA was to put copies of important documents in so many places that it would be unlikely they might all be destroyed.  

My documents are not very important but having them stored somewhere among Google's computers or Amazon's or Microsoft's or Dropbox's or somebody's might be a good idea.  It would probably mean the memory size of this computer or others I use is more or less irrelevant.  My own storage can be extensive and cheap, too.  I saw the other day that I could buy 2 terabytes of memory  storage for under $100.  1000 megabytes = 1 gigabyte and 1000 gigs = 1 terabyte so that is 2000 gigabytes for under $100.

But the deal is that I have to keep that little external hard drive with me and not drop it or submerge it in water or forget it in a hotel room, etc.  I get up to 15 gigs free from Google and you do, too.  I can retrieve it from Google from any computer or other device connected to the internet.  I keep all my blog posts on Google Drive and all 1600 of them and a few other things come to less than 1% of the 15 gigs.

I have begun putting my music from iTunes into Google Play.  I am not sure how it will work out but i like having everything available on all devices and computers.

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

powers of now

I have read that dogs answer the question What time is it? the same way every time: "Now".  It is fairly easy to assume that animals always live in the present and spend little or no time reflecting on the past or making plans for the future.  There have been discoveries and research recently that casts doubt on our understanding of animal thinking, which of course varies a great deal from species to species.  Still, it does seem that the other animals spend little time on nostalgia or planning and predicting.

Sitting still for 10 or so minutes is a very good prescription for what ails you, whatever that might be.  The purpose of meditation is to train awareness and attention so that one becomes more mindful of what one is doing with one's mind.  During that time of mind training, one seeks to avoid getting caught up in thoughts, daydreams, reflections and other mental activities and tangles.  Locating the present moment and focusing on, say, one's breathing and paying attention to it, even returning to it during those moments when the mind wanders off to replays of recent delights or fears of this or that strips away complex dialogue and storylines to just exist in quiet, to just be.

Eckhart Tolle's well known book, The Power of Now, focuses on the value of practicing awareness of the current moment, the current situation, the body's state, this moment, life as it is and feels and looks right now.  The usual advice combines deep relaxation with such awareness of now, to drop unnecessary tension in the muscles.  Being in a state of low tension does not necessarily mean being in a positive or friendly state, however.  I have noticed the possibility of being firmly in the now while regarding my neighbor, my friend, my pet, and the rocks and trees in my yard equally.

One of the powers inherent in awareness of the current moment is the power to regard all things and everything equally.  I can look at the notice of my jury duty, the letter saying I have been diagnosed with cancer and the notice that I have won the lottery with equal dispassion.  I can look at a loaded gun pointing at me and a delicious plum ready to be bitten with the same unruffled calm.  As I increase the depth of my immersion in the now, I can pick and choose what to react to, and what to ignore with more clarity and confidence.

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

Dandelion hunting in the darkest depths of our lawn

It's the season when the dandelion (dent de lion - lion's tooth, evidently from the shape of the leaf edges, but it ought to be from the long central root of the plant) bursts out on the lawn.  I like to watch the dandelions curl up and die before going to seed but Lynn says the chemicals that accomplish that hurt bees and other important life forms.  So, I have spent quite a bit of time using a dandelion puller.  It works pretty well and it is fun to hear that main root snap when I twist the whole plant in a spin and pull.

Like many other things in life, it can be tricky predicting which plants produce the most seeds to send out over the lawn.  Some, of course, are giant and full and have many seed-loaded stems.  But often there are as many stems with as full loads of seeds from a little splindly plant that is so skinny and lightweight as to be nearly invisible beneath the blades of grass.  

The plants try to trick me by sending the stem for a bright blossom off to the side of the plant.  With a little work, you can find the plant itself but it may be several inches away from the spot marked in yellow.  My puller has teeth that close in a circular grip around the plant and I twist the puller to snap the whole plant free of the ground.  A large knob is struck to release the plant from the puller and I drop it into a plastic tub.  I emptied a couple of tubs into our compost bin, where, given enough time, the whole plant and all of its parts will deteriorate into rich black gobs of nutrients for our gardens.

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

Wit and sympathy

It can be a little embarrassing to admit that a trip to the states of Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina had as one of its finest features, an audio book.  We often listen to some audio book while we drive.  We don't drive very long distances, usually under 300 miles.  (If you have seen the film "Nebraska", you know what the cousins would think of that.)

But embarrassing or not, I spent so many hours laughing and smiling, that I want to pay tribute to the wonderful imagination and writing skill of Alexander McCall Smith in his 7th book in the 44 Scotland Street series, "Bertie Plays the Blues".  His series "The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency" is also a longtime favorite and we have listened to all 14 of those volumes.  We love the narration skills of Lisette Lecat in the Ladies books.

44 Scotland Street is the address of an apartment building in Edinburgh, Scotland and over time, we have come to know the residents of all the flats very well.  They all have character and they are all memorable.  So are their friends and relatives.  But the most important one is Bertie, who is almost 7 years old.

The writing is often quietly hilarious, one of my favorite kinds of funny.  Here, the staff of a hotel famous for its hydrotherapy is the scene of a convention of Elvis impersonators while a game of croquet is played on the lawn by a group composed of retired Church of Scotland ministers and North Berwick fund managers:

Croquet and Elvis were not an obvious mixture, but the hydro staff had seen even more surprising combinations before and were quite capable of coping with such contradictions . For a hotel that had at the same time hosted a party of American morticians on a golfing tour of Scotland along with the North Sea Oil industry's Gay Barbershop Quartet Singing Competition, the juxtaposition of ministers and Elvises was but as nothing.

Mccall Smith, Alexander (2013-10-08). Bertie Plays the Blues: A 44 Scotland Street Novel (7) (Kindle Locations 3783-3786). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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

Uses of old people

It's not easy to be sure who is an old person.  The AARP tends to offer membership to those around 50 years of age.  However, even being 80 or 90 is not so unusual these days.  People can be limited in physical or mental ability at any age but it seems that most people who are 70 or 80 can testify to some limitations that they didn't have at 25 or 35.  Mary Pipher in "Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders" wrote about being "young old" and "old old".  Those in their late 60's or beyond usually grasp the distinction easily.  Being old can be defined by age, by occupation or being retired, or by attitude.  Most of the people I know who can qualify as old assert that they don't feel old.  I often hear people of 70 or 80 state that they feel 20 or 25 years old.

As safer occupations and activities combine with better medicine, we can expect the longevity of everyone to increase.  But that is not always a good thing.  What about the need for younger people with younger bodies and younger ideas?  What about getting the old out of the way to make way for refreshing newness?

Here we have these older people, with experience, wisdom (in some cases, at least).  What good can they do?  To what uses can we put these people?

One of the most common functions is audience: listening, paying attention.  There is a great deal to listening well.  Some older people have natural ability to listen, to react mildly without undue negativity or preaching, with sympathy and tenderness fixed on a base of honesty and authenticity.

Another basic function that many older people can fulfill is language output: speaking and writing.  Expressing ideas, picturing situations or drawing on real experiences of travels, work challenges, relationship advances and failures, harrowing events related to crime or disasters such as fires, tornadoes, warfare, medical emergencies, births and deaths may all be part of old people's experiences.  Their life-long language use may equip them with good expressive abilities, with the patience to tell a story effectively and memorably.

Many excellent politicians are older than the average citizen.  Their experiences through the years and their dealing with a wide variety of people may give their intuition an edge at sensing the basic drift of a group's opinions and feelings.

Some jokes have it that all old people are good for is putting them on ice floes to drift out into the ocean and die.  I am confident that the astute imaginations in our people today are finding and will find much better and more effective ways to mine the treasure stored up in old people.

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

Fwd: Archer

Lynn showed me this on Facebook from Jyoti Chander.  Impressive, huh?

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Date: Sunday, May 25, 2014
Subject: Archer
To: Older Kirby

Her nuggets

Her nuggets

"I have a touch of paranoia." - They had a mentally ill daughter who died of brain cancer at the age of 45 after 20 years of suffering debilitating delusions.  They don't take mental illness lightly.  They know people who suffer from bipolar disorder but don't usually speak of having a "touch" of paranoia, as one might have a touch of a cold.  This remark is brave, clever but did not actually apply to her.  She doesn't like being picked on or slighted but then, that is understandable.

"Best thing I ever learned was how to use a fork."  - I might have asked her what the best thing she learned was.  It was a dumb question since at later ages, one can't remember what was learned and what was figured out on one's own.  I think learning to feed oneself, using accepted implements, is indeed valuable and is certainly used often.

"You are my laxative, no, my diuretic." - Each time they go out together, he asks if she is ready to leave.  She says,"Oh, I have to got to the bathroom."  So, she admitted that he was her diuretic.

"I tolerate myself." - She respects herself but you probably couldn't say that she loves herself, just tolerates herself.

"I am not on speaking terms with our weather." - Sometimes the weather really misbehaves and one withdraws normal social relations.

"That's all I know - maybe it is more than I know." - What do we really know for certain, anyhow?

He: "My wife is a delight."

Her: "There you go, labeling me again." - Clearly, it is hard for a guy to win.

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

Karen Maezen Miller's special elixir

Maezen gives us a drink of courage and calmness:

Yes, yes, I know. What happened before wasn't your fault. It was too soon. It was too late. It was too much. They didn't ask. They didn't tell. You didn't know. It was unfair. It hurt. They lied. You cried. It was a mistake. It was a crime. But that was then.

We forgive because we can. And we forget because we must, or we condemn ourselves to lifetimes of pain.

So forget the story you tell yourself about your parents, the story you tell yourself about your childhood, the story of absence and lack. Forget the birth story, the death story, the divorce story, the story you keep repeating, the story you'll never forget. Forget that story, and do not replace it with another.

Forget what might have been and what might yet be. The past is gone and the future will arrive on schedule. Forget what you thought. Forget what you felt. Today is the tonic for yesterday. Now is the only cure for then. Forget, and you will know genuine gratitude. Gratitude is the fruit of letting go.

Miller, Karen Maezen (2014-04-15). Paradise in Plain Sight: Lessons from a Zen Garden (pp. 113-114). New World Library. Kindle Edition.

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

We all came from mothers

Emma Thompson plays a scientist in "Junior" who is very annoyed that the team has managed to impregnate Arnold.  "This birthing is something that is women's and nobody should be messing with it or including men in it", she says.

On Mother's Day, we take a moment to recognize that our mothers participated in our conception, carried us, bore us, raised us and we thank them.  By the time, I am old enough to appreciate more fully what my mom did, many of the answers to my questions are lost or forgotten.  Was it a happy thing to find out I was growing inside?  Did I kick and toss often while you carried me?  Did you feel supported and loved during the pregnancy and parenting?  Was Dad appropriately attentive, not too much and not too little?

We have been watching the riveting and moving "Call the Midwife" on PBS and streaming sources.  There probably couldn't be a show that any more clearly reminds us of what human motherhood is all about.

Thanks, Mothers!  We thank you from the bottom of our lives, from the beginning of our lives.  We thank you for our lives.  And, we thank our mothers' mothers and all the dads, too.

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

Biographies by interesting authors

I recommend you try the link below.  If you are at all like me, it is best to do it when you have 30-60 minutes.  It goes to Time magazine's selection of 100 highly influential people.  It is very likely that you won't approve of them all but each essay is written by a different author.  I think it is touching to see who wrote about whom.  I would like more information about the author selection and the process of agreeing to write about a given person.  Were there many rejections that refused from busyness or lack of interest? Were the writings edited very much or are the words pretty much original with the cited author?  It took me quite a while to get through them all.

http://time.com/time100-2014/

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

Let's rest our voices

The human world, or at least my area of it, is filled with talk, speech, human spoken language.  If I felt the need, I can find myself a steady stream of speech for all my waking hours.  I could do so during my sleeping hours, too.  Scientists and historians say that humans existed as more or less recognizable humans for the last 100,000 to 200,000 years but that spoken language may only developed more or less fully in the latter part of the period.  

From Wikipedia on the origin of langauge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language

The time range for the evolution of language and/or its anatomical prerequisites extends, at least in principle, from the phylogenetic divergence of Homo (2.3 to 2.4 million years ago) from Pan (5 to 6 million years ago) to the emergence of full behavioral modernity some 150,000 - 50,000 years ago. Few dispute that Australopithecus probably lacked vocal communication significantly more sophisticated than that of great apes in general,[31] but scholarly opinions vary as to the developments since the appearance of Homo some 2.5 million years ago. Some scholars assume the development of primitive language-like systems (proto-language) as early as Homo habilis, while others place the development of symbolic communication only with Homo erectus (1.8 million years ago) or Homo heidelbergensis (0.6 million years ago) and the development of language proper with Homo sapiens less than 200,000 years ago.

chart showing what hearing ranges include which language sounds:

http://www.phonak.com/com/b2c/en/hearing/understanding_hearingloss/types_of_hearing_loss.html

As a professor, I have had many hours in a classroom in which few of the students had opportunity or interest in speaking.  So, I am accustomed to grasping the difference between a person's silence and that person's lack of understanding.  Speech can certainly be the most helpful thing there is to understand what another is thinking and feeling but there are other tools.  Since silence between people provides a chance for talk, it is easy for that chance to slide into feeling like an obligation.  When we have silence, we can wonder if we should be talking.  Does the other person find the silence oppressive?

Being silent together is a great way of tasting the vibes of each other's presence.  Being able to trust that silence is ok helps friendships and relationships.  Zen practice, mindfulness meditation and Quaker practice all call on the value of silence.  Of course, in all the crime shows, people are forever asserting that they will not speak until they see their lawyer and falling for expert prodding or insults or frightening statements that lure them into speech.

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

A moment of my time so you guys can improve yourselves

Who will watch the watcher?  The high watchers.  Who will watch the high watchers?  The highest watchers.  Who will watch the highest watchers?  This is getting to be too much. 

You bought something.  Please fill out our survey about your experience shopping with us. 

You filled out our survey.  Please answer a few questions about your experience filling out our survey. 

You answered a few questions about our survey.  Please tell us... 

Raise your hand if you can see where this is going.

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

Medical directions mentioned in CNN, 60 Minutes on life after 90

Here are some interesting directions in medicine that might be of interest.  Lynn put me onto this set of articles from CNN.

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/04/health/the-cnn-10-healing-the-future/

Friends told us about the 60 Minutes program http://www.cbsnews.com/news/living-to-90-and-beyond/

focused on "The 90+ Study", a research project connected to the University of California - Irvine studying a group of people over 90 years old. 
http://www.mind.uci.edu/research/90plus-study/

Some of the study's major findings are:

Some of the major findings are:

• People who drank moderate amounts of alcohol or coffee lived longer than those who abstained.
• People who were overweight in their 70s lived longer than normal or underweight people did.
• Over 40% of people aged 90 and older suffer from dementia while almost 80% are disabled. Both are more common in women than men.
• About half of people with dementia over age 90 do not have sufficient neuropathology in their brain to explain their cognitive loss.
• People aged 90 and older with an APOE2 gene are less likely to have clinical Alzheimer's dementia, but are much more likely to have Alzheimer's neuropathology in their brains.

- See more at: http://www.mind.uci.edu/research/90plus-study/#sthash.Ia1UZw7K.dpuf

Finally, respect for and insight into traffic accidents, especially pedestrian-vehicle ones http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/nyregion/how-being-hit-by-a-vehicle-changed-times-colleagues-lives.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1&referrer=

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

Contentment and satisfaction are un-American

We studied our Zen and we meditated.  We recognized the beauty of life and the marvels our bodies are.  We soaked up happiness and gratitude.  But then we realized we weren't doing our duty.  We were letting our civic responsibilities slide.  We hadn't spent money.  We hadn't purchased knickknacks in quite a while.  Even worse, we were cheerful!

We realize that the baby boomers are retiring at the rate of something like 10,000 a day.  We realize young people are full of zest and ideas and want to start small businesses that blossom into multi-billion dollar enterprises.  We realize it is better to go to the doctor two or three times a week to stimulate the US health and medical spending.  Sure, we lead the world in medical dollars spent but if we all try a little harder, we can in fact spend even more.

We are working on being less satisfied with our lives and more interested in new apps, new gadgets, new and exotic foods and other ways to clutter our houses and our time.  We have had a long, tiring winter and that has led to the discovery that if we carefully note the comforts of a rainy day, with tea and crumpets in a cozy house and also carefully note the comforts of a warm, sunny day with open blue skies, we are ready.  Fully prepared, we can provide complaints about any sort of weather and blame those south of us, east and west of us and north of us.  

We promise to avoid contentment and satisfaction in the future, to continue to do our part for the US and world economy and to clutch a dour, sour, grumpy outlook tightly from now on.

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

Planning a massage

I am considering launching a company that surveys people.  I think there is a lot of competition in the field and organizations such as Gallup and Pew Research have experience, staff and money so it will be tough.  I think there may be a future for a less prestigious enterprise that gathers odd data and massages it into headlines in large print.

 

My idea is to ask a sample of people who have no special reason to know technical and advanced information what they think about it.  Something like "What is your opinion of France's position on the Russia-Ukraine matter?"  or "Do you think gene therapy or laser methods are the tool of the future?"  With a little work, we will find the line between too everyday and too advanced and arcane.  Questions that treat the obvious (Do you buy gasoline for your car?) will turn people off or confuse them.  When I raise my hand in front of a group and ask "What is this?", some will say "Your hand" but others just look confused.  The question is too easy and is either a trick or about something they don't understand.  If the questions are too technical and elaborate, they will shrug and say they don't know.

Of course, the exact wording matters, too.  "Should the US send troops to the Ukraine?" will get different responses from "Should the US interfere in the Russia-Ukraine troubles?"  We are after results that allow us to get away with shouting "Hey, shocking news!"  What we find may not be all that shocking and it may not be news but it will seem so when we get through.

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

The problem of women's libido

We watched a pair of grizzlies mating on a PBS Nature film.  As the narrator said, they looked like they were romping and wrestling.  In the afterglow, they nuzzled each other.  But after the few days together, he goes off and usually doesn't come near her again, while she carries the cubs, gives birth to them, nurtures them for a couple of years.

I have noticed other signs that mating is different for humans than for many animals.  It seems typical of humans to try to extract the pleasure they get from sex without using it for its purpose or for paying the price, which is reproduction.  I think people are so deeply into living their own way, not nature's way, that they can't stop and be as natural as the birds, bees and beasts.  So, I can't see us giving up clothing, agriculture, cars, writing, and Downton Abbey.  We might be wise, though, to try to keep in mind that we are playing our own versions of life, not nature's unchanged way.

We make a whole lot more of a deal of mating that wrestling each other for a while in a meadow.  We dress for sex, think about sex, fight over sex, and argue about its higher meaning.  It turns out that sex leads to parenthood and motherhood seems a much bigger deal than fatherhood.  Some fathers really get into child care and rearing but many don't.  I wonder how many mothers are mothers without realizing it while fathers can easily be fathers without knowing they are.  Like the grizzly moms, human mothers care for their young but for a much longer time than grizzlies or other animals.  21 years is just a start and mothers may contribute to the lives of their children for more than twice or three times that number of years.  A human mother may also contribute to the lives of her grandchildren or greatgrandchildren in ways that other mothers know nothing about.

Both fiction and nonfiction are full of stories about the newborn whose preciousness so captures the new mother's attention that she more or less forgets about the male who contributed to the conception.  Human females don't have a period of estrus or "heat" annually so humans normally aren't like some other male mammals.  They don't kill babies to put the mother into a period of heat.  Human males normally like sex, though, and bemoan what is often a decrease in interest in sex among women.  Women enjoy pleasing men and having their admiration and attention, up to a point.  Men are so wired that a woman's voice, skin, hair, shape and personality can easily arouse their interest and more.  So, men are walking around getting turned on all the time while the mother may get less and less interested in the men and their desires.

This situation can be called the problem of women's libido.  True to today's way of doing things, we can not only identify a problem, but it turns out to be women's problem, not men's.  Further, chemists are striving daily to find the right pill to return women to their youthful state of high lust. So far, little luck but work continues.  Someday, we may face that fact that sex is great but it is actually for making babies and we have enough babies while some of us are too old, too forgetful, too slow for further parenthood.  Someday maybe, but not yet.

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

Abrupt endings and sudden scene changes

What sort of abrupt endings or basic scene changes seem understandable?  One of the most famous is awakening from a dream.  Our hero is swinging from vine to vine when suddenly one of them snaps off.  He is plummeting toward the rocks far below, when we hear a mother's voice calling "Andy, are you still in that bed?  Come on!  You will miss your bus."  The vines and the rocks were in his mind and don't matter now.

In story-telling, another abrupt change is a scene shift.  In print, we might read "Meanwhile, inside the fort…" or "Back at the farm..." or "At the same time, in the Defense Department meeting…"  We realize that while one thing is happening in one place, something else is going on in another place. In the most professional stage production I ever saw, a lonely young woman in a dark and dirty alley sang a poignant song.  At its end, ZAP!  We were immediately taken to a sun-dappled glade that was mostly due to lighting changes.

In life, abrupt changes can come from a heart attack but the locale is what it was.  When I watch The Closure, an abrupt change comes when the heroine, an expert interrogator, is talking with her husband or her mother and the heroine suddenly looks up and to the right, often with slightly squeezed eyes.  We know that a chance remark has just triggered The Closer's mind into seeing how the murder was committed and by whom.  We know that she will pick up her purse and make apologies for suddenly leaving and leave.  But again, unlike story scene changes, the location is more or less continuous.

Any sudden emergency can happen and make enormous changes in a flash.  Last night we watched a news video of a line of parked cars and a section of railroad tilt and then fell into the earth, softened and weakened by too much rainfall.  A tsunami or a bomb or an earthquake can rearrange things very quickly and dramatically.  A meteor or falling debris from a plane could change the scene instantly, too.

On modern urban streets, various sorts of car or truck crashes can change things in an instant, too.  I once saw a scene on Candid Camera where a young woman was given a new job at a desk in a bank.  Suddenly, a sports car came through a specially built pivoting wall and stopped right beside her desk.  The driver asked, "Is this the drive-up window?"

So, the best I can tell you is "Stay alert!" "Be prepared!"  "Be ready for anything!"  but also, of course, hang loose and stay relaxed and don't get uptight.

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

Go with the right mixture

I have the idea that expert chefs and food scientists can band together with marketers and make a combination of sawdust, sugar, fat and salt a best-selling product.  These days, a little jalapeno or cayenne would probably be added.  Recently, I saw that to be really in these days, one leaves OUT bacon.  This human vulnerability to manipulation reminds me of other openings in our line of defense.

I get Nutrition Action newsletter from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (Michael Jacobson, who I have followed since the 80's).  The most recent issue talks about the emergence of pro-fat, my word, not his.  The May 2014 issue reports statements by Martijn Katan, a reknown food scientist in Amsterdam.  He says that the world dairy industry met in Mexico City in November 2008 and adopted the goal of "neutralizing the negative image of milk fat by regulators and medical professionals."  Katan expresses his respect for scientists who work for the dairy industry. He says if they want to get something done, they do.  I can just see how some research, some marketing terms and images, some raised questions and innuendo can be brought to bear on the subject of fat and successfully get people to question the need to eat less fat and lower their body weight.

For most people, it is very difficult to lose much weight and keep it off.  Katan says the cause of obesity is having food that is delicious around all the time.  Given the difficulty, it is easier to take the position that a few extra pounds and then a few extra more are not very important.  Anyone with a knack for words and a high-level degree and reputation who utters doubts about the health importance of body fat will be remembered more easily since it is easier to keep munching and forget about warnings and weight loss failures and challenges.  Couple that with the truly terrible agony of serious anorexia and one can thank one's lucky stars that there are still a few snacks left in the bag.  Might as well gobble them up in gratitude.

You can see in the modern world with images, campaigns, slogans, coupons, sound tracks with a captivating beat, catchy little ditties, a little word war here and a little word war there,we may be able to achieve the newspeak of 1984 and beyond. We may be able to get these overworked, underpaid, sleep deprived, fear ridden people to believe just about anything we want them to.

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

Sweet and earthy

She likes to look good, which may well be a natural human drive, similar to male puffing out a mighty chest and looking fierce.  Even when she changes into rougher clothes for an hour or two, she likes to look clean and neat.  She descends into her pottery studio but before that, she needs to spread icing on a batch of cupcakes to be served at a meeting later in the day.  She goes downstairs after that and wedges her heavy clay, a vigorous activity akin to kneading bread, which mixes the clay but more importantly, gets air bubbles out of it.  A pocket of air trapped in the clay will heat up in the kiln and explode, shattering the piece and ruining her work.  Then, she uses the wheel to pull a bowl from a spinning lump of clay.  The bowl must be removed from the bat and allowed to dry but not too much.  She has plans for further decoration and manipulation of the clay so it can't be too soft nor too hard.

When she finally climbs back up the stairs, she asks me to witness her previously clean clothes. True, she looks like she much be a cement worker. "These smears are clay from using the wheel but these here and here are icing from the cupcakes.", she says.  I test them out and she is right: these here and even here (!) are sweet but the others feel squishy and ceramic.

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