How far back matters?

I have heard the universe is about 13+ billions of years old.  That is an estimate, of course, but it may be about right.  The sun and the earth aren't quite as old but still very old.  I read recently that life seems to have begun on earth as soon as it was calm enough for some basic processes to get started.  We humans seem to be related to everything on the earth that is alive so the birth and development of life, plants and animals both, are relevant to us.

You can look up the shared genetic code between us and the apes (chimps, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans).  There is no doubt that we are different with our more developed speech and writing, transportation, government, culture and science but try reading Franz de Waal's "Our Inner Ape".  At first, I doubted the relevance of any comparisons between humans and apes but by the time I finished, I could certainly see many connections.  I just heard yesterday that our mysterious blushing might be related to various ways apes appease anger or other upsets in each other.  In trying to figure ourselves out, other primates and their history and development can be relevant.

I have read that William James, a respected early philosopher-psychologist (1842-1910), thought a measure of the present might be 17 seconds.  We might feel that the present is that long and before the last 17 seconds, we can feel the past. I can see that any event that ever occurred might be relevant in an investigation or development.  The 100th year to the day since my father-in-law's birth just passed.  Since he was a major figure in my wife's life, I feel that anniversary was a reminder that for humans, 100 years can be a rather short time.  I have heard that in Swahili, we can sort people in the past into those alive now, those deceased but were known in person by some who are alive now and those deceased long enough ago that no one living knew them personally and directly.

As a child, I was impressed at how quickly my parents and grandparents could tell how long in the past events in their lives were.  It seemed they really knew their dates and could do subtractions very fast.  But I also know some dates, such as the year of my birth, that of my sister's birth, my graduation from high school and from college.  I can usually tell without doing mental math where an event falls in relation to many marker dates in my life.  Similarly, I know our country's birth year, the date of the War of 1812, the date of the Civil War, of the WW I and WW II.  That ladder of markers of the past helps me have a sense of a deeper past than that of my own life.

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

Twitter: @olderkirby

Trying in vain to store the past

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I recently read of the new Blogger gadget (aka app) called Featured Post.  I can insert it on my blog's web page and insert a earlier post as the feature, alongside the actual post of the day.  I used a photo of Lynn's recent bisque firing and then switched to my 2014 Christmas/ New Year's post.

I have 5 lists of prompts that I can use for writing a blog post.  When one gets too long and cumbersome, I start a new prompt list.  I noticed that a couple ideas on list 5 brought the total to 365. 

Hey, why not show some discipline and use each prompt in order until they are all used? 

I went back to list 1.  First prompt is on that list is about the names different people know me by.  It's no problem for adults.  They are used to first name, middle name, last name, nickname, relational name ("Mom", "Dad") and formal title "Dr.".  But the process for little kids is tricky.  Even adults can slip up.  A fully grown woman confessed the other day that she called out "Mom" in the big store and nearly every woman turned toward her.  It can be surprising for a child to learn that Grandad is called by many names he never knew about.

I suspected I had written about this subject before.  It is not a crime to write again on the same topic but I was intrigued.  I searched for "Grandad" and yes, on May 20, 2010, I did write "Who?"  Ok, why not write a new post for the next listed prompt and use Who? as the featured post.  I have 2309 posts, including this one.  That is probably more than the programmers allowed for but I finally found a way to insert that post into the featured area.  In doing so, I realized how many posts I have written for this blog.

The purpose of writing is not to make money or to attract readers but to note in an articulate, artful way what is happening in my life and in my head.  Using the various search windows and tools for layout, searching through my mind for ways to do something that makes sense emphasized for me that the slow steady accumulation of ideas and some pictures and diagrams eventually reaches such a volume that I may not be able to remember what I have done.  

One post for each 24 hours puts more into the statements than I have time or energy to read out.  I enjoy my waking up, my breakfast, my partner, my email, my list of appointments, my driving, but I can't put all that into a post.  Over time, I can't read back out all that was happening, all the distractions that stretched out the composition time.  I can see there is no way to have the past, to store the whole past.  And if I could, the index, the filing system itself grows too big and clumsy.

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

Twitter: @olderkirby

Response

​Prof. Mark Leary in his Great Course, "Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior", discusses what makes for rich, satisfying intimate relationships.  He said that a major factor in satisfaction is response.  He means that if he talks to her when she talks to him, responding makes for a good relation.

I am willing to use three levels: no response, dull response, genuine response.  If things have got to a point where one or both people in a relation have decided to always ignore comments, to let conversation die, you have an arrangement where nothing much is going on.  You can't expect it to be satisfying, any more than talking to a stone.  If you have a relation where there is technically some sound made in response, things aren't much better.  When one person is highly motivated and chattering on about the amazing score, the complete upset they just witnessed, that level of excitement might be so high that not only is a minimum response all that is needed, it may well be all that can be slipped in at all. That's when you see the role of the stereotypical psychiatrist enacted, where the doc just says "Wow!" and "You don't say" and "Go on".

But under normal, calmer circumstances, it works better for both people if genuine responses happen. That's when a response is crafted just for that occasion, a personal question or a honest and more or less unique comment.  A response might be about a memory that has been brought to mind or a surprise at some contradiction.  It might be genuine puzzlement at how the speaker can manage to feel that way.  When there is real engagement with the speaker and the message and the life of the responder, you are getting a genuine relation, whether between lovers, family members, seat mates on a flight or whatever.

One way to construct genuine responses on the fly is to avoid cliches and give what you might normally respond a twist.  It can be very truthful and focused on the moment: "I want to say "Not that again" but it seems that it did happen again".  Knowing what the off-the-top of your-head comment would be but modifying it or adding to it can brighten the talk.  Careful observation of the response to the response, the tone used, the body language can tell if further exchange is welcome or if the laundry or newspaper or the sudoku calls.

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

Twitter: @olderkirby

A way to be a pain

I love the movies "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming" and "In the Spirit".  They are both witty and captivating.

How can we be afraid of the Americans?  By being members of a foreign naval force that has no business being in the US, but is.  We are members of a crew in a Russian submarine.  The captain has never seen America and he orders his crew to keep approaching the US so he can actually lay eyes on a bit of it.  Uh-ho!  The vessel gets stuck on a sandbar and they can't get it off.  The captain selects a few men to sneak ashore and "borrow" a motor boat of some kind that is strong enough to pull the sub free.  Things unravel more as time goes on.  

In the Spirit uses a script written by Elaine May's daughter, Jeannie Berlin.  Two rather different women start getting unwanted attention from unknown sources that is frightening and mysterious.  When you put two actresses like Marlo Thomas and Elaine May together with the witty and tricky Berlin, throw in some Peter Falk and zip out very funny lines at top speed, you get a wildly under-rated movie.  Warning: this movie includes bad words and concepts that are just as bad, such as why a porn star explains proudly at the dinner table with older staid diners that she "never swallowed anything." You can find a cleaned-up version of In the Spirit on Amazon but the cleaning removed much of the zip. The original version is free on YouTube.

I like every moment and every line of both of these movies.  My dream is to show them to some innocent group but stop the show after each line and explain why I love that last remark, what it makes me think of and ask for comments from others.  I imagine if we start at 9 AM, those of us still there by 5 PM will have gotten to the end of one movie.  This way of going through a movie I love would be slow and suffer many interruptions but we would cover all the laughs.

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

Twitter: @olderkirby

What day is it?

I began studying Fortran, a computer language in the first semester of graduate school. We had a computer department on the campus and people to staff it.  As far as I could tell, the people in the department were developing their curriculum and department as they went along.  This was the mid 60's.  Our teacher was openly developing his knowledge of Fortran and computer use at the same time we were.  There were six of us in the one-credit class.  The teacher gave us one assignment but it ran for three years.  In the end, I finally got the one credit I have in computer science.

That one assignment was to write a computer program which would take any two dates as input and give the number of days between them as output.  At first, that seemed straightforward and easy.  But our teacher was very tricky.  He was also inventing twists, turns and extensions as time went on.  Researching possible challenges he might give us, we learned that in1752, all British lands, including the American colonies, agree to accept the calendar adjustments created much earlier under Pope Gregory XIII to correct the calendar.  The Pope's astronomers had calculated that the calendar needed to omit 11 days for better adjustment and different countries adopted the correction at different times.  The British lands had riots over the correction, where some workers feared the shortened month would result in less pay.  It seems that the calendar riots resulted in full pay for that month's work.

We just recently had the winter solstice here on earth, the moment when the earth's north pole is tipped as far away from the sun as it ever gets (we hope!).  I carry in my head the dates of the 21st of December, March, June and September for the change of the seasons but I have seen that the calendar sometimes says the 22nd of the month is the pivotal change for a given year.  I have read that the exact moment of the solstice can happen on any day from the 20th to the 24th.  This year, according to various web sites, the winter solstice occurred at 10:49 PM Central Standard Time.  After that time, for about 6 months, we will get longer days and shorter nights.  The longer days, with more sunshine, will give us spring and blooming plants.  We still have many days to go before the winter days are noticeably longer and brighter but we are on our way.

Since we cussed and re-punched our computer cards to try to meet the tests of our teacher for three years, I have great respect for the scholars, calculators, thinkers, and debaters in many lands for many governments and organizations over several millennia to try and find a humanly useable system that combines in a fairly simple and straightforward way, the days, the weeks, the months and the seasons. Three cheers for the calendars!

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

Twitter: @olderkirby

Exertions of Christmas

Sometimes I wonder about roles.  I am pretty sure that without my wife's drive and urgings, much less would happen in our lives.  Our greatgrandson is in middle school and doesn't have much money.  About four years ago, the chief cook in my house and he got together to make cookies which could serve as Christmas gifts from him to those he loves.  Every year since then, they get together and make cookies and candies.  This year they continued their 4 year run. They worked without stopping for more than 4 hours, measuring, mixing, baking, tasting and cleaning over and over again.

If I were doing it, I would conservatively keep the plan limited but others see things differently.  I actually suspect that each additional recipe that sounds good or unusual and deserving of a try gets added to the planned menu, regardless of the additional work involved.

Last weekend, the two of us wrapped gifts for the other ten members of our nuclear-ish family.  We packed some large plastic crates with the wrapped gifts.  Of course, this activity was conducted in the basement, requiring the crates and leftover boxes that wouldn't fit in them to be carried up the stairs in shifts this morning.  Each shift means jiggling the doorknob while balancing the gifts to get into the garage and then into the car.  Whew! Nothing was dropped down the stairs, nothing was stepped on or in.

Only one of us was available to carry gifts.  The chief cook was engaged in making an asparagus and leek quiche and a bacon and cheddar cheese quiche.  I slept late today, which meant there was limited time to put together and bake two quiche but we made our family gathering on time.  Last night, on the same roads, a deer was spotted so we are on the alert to avoid crashes and such.  But we got there, unloaded and later got back without incident.

Of course, the activities reported here are just a small part of the trips out of town, the searching for just the right color, the irritation of being informed that the gift is bogged down in the warehouse line and all the other exertions that are part of the season of love and warmth.

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

Twitter: @olderkirby

Recycled from Dec. 25, 2013 - still very useful

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Reusable Holiday Reviewer and Appreciator:

1. Focus on the dark shape above

2. Be aware of your body and surrounding without moving your eyes or body

3. Continue for 3-4 minutes

Reuse daily​

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

Twitter: @olderkirby

Things are just right

The name "Goldilocks" often comes up when discussing how things are.  It can be surprising that our situation on just about any variable can be too high or too low.  Want to be liked?  Yeah, but not that liked.  Not as liked as the scene in the movie "Love Potion #9", where a young woman with high levels of need and adventurousness inadvertently attracts several hundred lustful guys all at once and literally runs while they give vigorous chase.  In most things, as we have been told for more than 2000 years, a middle way is best, like Goldilocks: not too hot and not too cold but just right.

We learned in psychophysics that any of the body's detection senses can reach a level of pain, too high or too strong or too much light or smell or noise.  Similarly, any sense can be unable to detect stimuli that are too low, too weak, too dark.  Only in a given range, can we tell there is something there to detect.  We use our minds to settle questions of judgment on many other things that are not directly sensed.  Is our car running all right?  Is the situation in the Middle East all right?

I think it is possible for some people to simply decide that things are all right, just as they are.  If I decide that, it might be difficult for anyone else to convince me that they aren't.  I guess one of the most famous characters who seems utterly committed to optimism is the tutor of Candide, Dr. Pangloss (="all talk") in Voltaire's novel in the mid 1700's or the endlessly cheerful girl called Pollyanna in a 1908 children's book.  Such a philosophical or personal outlook can be a bother to others, it can be ridiculed and jeered but held to strongly enough, it seems very like being drugged.  Whether I am high on some drug or drunk or a beserker Nordic warrior, I can get into a mental state where I refuse whatsoever to recognize limits, difficulties, pains or dangers.

The woman religious leader Julian of Norwich, who lived in the 1300's, is known even today for her pronouncement that "all will be well and every manner of thing will be well".  During the time of the Black Plague, facing the obstacles in pioneer life of the settlers of the US, or bearing a life with heavy tragedy in it, as did the author of the hymn "All is well with my soul", people will sometimes simply decide that things are all right.

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

Twitter: @olderkirby

Parameters

A parameter is a central underlying amount, figure, number such as the normal body temperature of a hummingbird, which is 107° F.  Often, parameters are a sort of human mathematical myth.  We measure the body temperature of 10 or 20 hummingbirds and take the average.  That average is our estimate of the "true" or "typical" or "normal" hummingbird body temperature.  It may well be that none of the birds had that average temperature.

Besides that, if you have read "How to Lie with Statistics" by Darrell Huff, you know that we might figure the average in several ways.  The figure that occurs most often (mode), the figure that is below half of the readings and above half (median) or the figure obtained by summing all the readings and dividing by the number of readings taken (mean).  In the end, we THINK that a hummingbird has something like an appropriate body temperature or a day has an appropriate high temperature.

One of my heroes, W. E. Deming, the man who put new emphasis on better quality in goods and services, had a rule to watch out for parameters, for numbers, especially in goals, and plans.  Maybe you have heard about the body mass index or the correct number of hours of sleep per night.  Deming cautioned to look behind such numbers.  Ask why that number?  What happens if the number is higher, lower, much higher or much lower?  What research, what reasons, what experience supports the number given?  How long has that number been the figure given and have conditions changed?  Has our thinking changed to where we should use a higher or lower number?

Back in June, I wrote a post about a Brookings Institute study that attempted to put a dollar figure on how much attending various colleges could be expected to add to a person's lifetime earnings.  As I read the study, I had to keep reminding myself that it was based on AVERAGES.  I kept thinking that there is variation around any average and that some of the figures being averaged were much higher or much lower.  I had to keep reminding myself that the averages concerned were, of course, related to what happened in the past.  As some markets emphasize, past performance is no guarantee of future success.

Make a note to yourself: when you spot a number being touted, question its accuracy and its justification.  You may have heard the saying: 98% of statistics are made up on the spot.

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

Twitter: @olderkirby

What's new?

I asked my friends what is new in their lives.  I wanted to know what was new besides uses of computers.  They didn't protest that there is nothing besides computers.  I appreciate their overlooking for the sake of talk the fact that there is just about literally nothing in my daily life that is totally untouched by computer use of one kind or another.  But aside of ubiquitous mechanical, electronic presence, what is new and different since childhood and early adulthood?

The first answer was grocery shopping, with the newfangled supermarkets over just the last 100 years and some of us are still just getting used to it.  In case you are interested, here is Wikipedia, which is looking for donations, BTW:

In the early days of retailing, all products generally were fetched by an assistant from shelves behind the merchant's counter while customers waited in front of the counter and indicated the items they wanted. Also, most foods and merchandise did not come in individually wrapped consumer-sized packages, so an assistant had to measure out and wrap the precise amount desired by the consumer. This also offered opportunities for social interaction: many regarded this style of shopping as "a social occasion" and would often "pause for conversations with the staff or other customers."[1] These practices were by nature very labor-intensive and therefore also quite expensive. The shopping process was slow, as the number of customers who could be attended to at one time was limited by the number of staff employed in the store.

The concept of an inexpensive food market relying on large economies of scale was developed by Vincent Astor. He founded the Astor Market in 1915, investing $750,000 ($18 million in 2015 currency) of his fortune into a 165' by 125' corner of 95th and Broadway, Manhattan, creating, in effect, an open air mini-mall that sold meat, fruit, produce and flowers. The expectation was that customers would come from great distances ("miles around"), but in the end even attracting people from ten blocks away was difficult, and the market folded in 1917.[2][3][4]

The concept of a self-service grocery store was developed by entrepreneur Clarence Saunders and his Piggly Wiggly stores. His first store opened in 1916...

What else is new?  Streaming.  With broadband internet, we watch movies and shows that are sent in a stream.  After it is over, we have no copy of what was seen but we have a large selection of items we can watch.

Government and big business snooping has reached new heights and new sophistication.  I think that J. Edgar Hoover would be very interested in the ability of businesses to listen to conversations, to read messages, to collect security tapes from tiny, hard-to-notice cameras placed here and there.  

It may be harder to notice what is no longer here: milkmen!  What's a milkman?  Well, boys and girls, he delivers bottles of milk to your front door, glass bottles, not waxed cartons and usually quarts, not gallons. We don't have newsreels.  What's a newsreel?  A short movie showing the latest world news to a movie theater audience before the main feature is shown.  In the days before television and internet, that was often the best way to see pictures related to recent world events and sports.  Party lines are missing.  Many people had a telephone setup that allowed a few lines to be connected to several homes.  When anyone anywhere on the line had a conversation, anyone else also on that party line could pick up the handset (look it up) and listen in on the conversation.  They could comment too, and the talkers could hear them, welcome or not.

Also new are some types of cloth, such as permanent press and polyester.  Drones are new, especially military drones and the idea of delivery of purchased goods by drone.

Depending on the time frame and the definition of "new", there are probably many other things I haven't mentioned.

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

Twitter: @olderkirby

A few horny men

I am still listening to Prof. Mark Leary of Duke U in his Great Course, "Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior".  He shocked me yesterday when he said that if we draw out our family trees, we will find that two thirds of our ancestors are women and only one third are men.  What?  No way!

Yes, way!  Maybe you already grasp that men can do their part of a baby making operation several times a day for most of their lives.  Women have a more limited time to do their part.  Besides, once a woman is pregnant, she basically has to wait quite a while to get going again, much of the time, about 9 months.  A guy can make many babies in nine months.  The basic idea, is that without birth control and without monogamy, over historical time, a few men have taken a large share of the available women.  So, those horny powerful wealthy men had many wives.  The large group of resulting children had the same daddy.

You may have seen the record, according the Guinness book of world records, the record for children of one woman is 69.  A Russian woman in the 1860's had 27 pregnancies and bore multiple births, resulting in 69 children.  But a Moroccan ruler had 867 children with the help of many wives. He had more than 10 times the children of the record-holding woman!

I have seen references to Genghis Khan and other Asian rulers who have been found to be ancestors to an inordinate number of people alive today.  One of the things that Prof. Leary says is that in all societies, women tend to be interested in men with resources, wealth.  So I can see how a woman would be likely to be interested in being one of the wives of a rich and powerful ruler, both for her sake and for that of her children and their future.

I imagine we will hear more about the contributions of a disproportionately small number of men to the gene pool and the resultant advantages and disadvantages we have inherited in our bodies.

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

Twitter: @olderkirby

Carried aloft

​We went to Mark's funeral today.  It was very crowded.  I wasn't expecting to be transported into the stratosphere by the choir but I was.  The choir was a special mixture of singers who had sung with Mark both in his church and in the special advanced secular choir here in town.  I had no idea that I would be intoxicated with a type of sound that lifted me past care.

There were three songs that really hit me.  To get the same effect, I need a good recording of that advanced choir and their accompanist, which I don't have.  I have listened to many versions on YouTube, which is probably available to most people around the world.

For "It is well with my soul", I will link to this version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GHDatWhJpo

For "On eagles' wings", a more recent composition, I link to this Asian choir

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbvKP-loj5Y

For the Gospel piece;"Soon and very soon", the link ought to take you to a Black choir with the right beat, the right articulation and the right sound

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC2wQme5kEM

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

Twitter: @olderkirby

Sacred living

​More holy moments, all holy moments - eat, kiss, drink, stand, sit, run, walk, flex

Two of my friends died rather abruptly recently.  They seemed ok in the morning but by evening or the next day, they were gone. Of course, they were both over 70 so death is not a complete surprise but such rapid losses are a strong reminder of the mortality of us all.

They are also strong reminders to me that I am alive. Alive, capable of movement and thought!  Pretty cool!  I am grateful for the good fortune. It is possible to be appreciative of the ability to raise a hand, to close and open a hand, to use fingers individually.  Building a machine that can do what my hands do would be beyond me. How about sight?  How about being bipedal and having the ability to carry things while balancing a complex body on just two feet?

I spend much of my time reading, writing and speaking.  Knowing what those three activities are, how to do them and getting the benefits personally, internally and socially externally seems to be beyond the birds and squirrels outside. When my in-laws were in a senior living home, they didn't ever lose their obvious appreciation of chocolate and coffee.  A piece of good chocolate or a well-made cup of coffee with the right temperature and the right strength is a treat but only for those of us alive to their value.

As we get older, just seeing each other, before any hugging or kissing gets going, just seeing another and being seen by that other is a joy.  I can recognize, remember and empathize with a friend that is precious and lovely and joyful. Standing up, swallowing, driving, going for a walk, texting - so many things to be thankful for.

Just take a deep breath and exhale slowly to feel the power of the living body, to participate in being alive.  What a great miracle!  Take a moment to appreciate the holy gift your life is.  You have to devote some time to paying your taxes, figuring what to make for dinner, brushing your teeth but spend some time appreciating what you have and what you are while you can.

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

Twitter: @olderkirby

Speech: free or not?

I read in the New Yorker about Bangladeshi bloggers being murdered.  I am interested in the concept of free speech and restrained speech and polite speech and abusive tirades.  I realize that psychologists tell me that I can have control over my emotions but when people I love or respect tell me that I am a filthy pig who makes them want to puke, I often let my emotions go negative. So, I have a concept of free speech and I also have a concept of restrained speech.

I read the other day that a man in another country faces the possibility of a long jail sentence for insulting the king's dog.  The New Yorker article says that Bangladeshi minister of information believes that the government has a duty to prosecute those that "offend the sentiments of the faithful."  That seems like a very broad duty to me.  I am not of that country but I imagine that for people in most countries, speech and ideas will flow better if sentiments can at least be questioned or opposed without getting prosecuted for questioning or opposition.

I meet with two groups of educated, senior men weekly.  They discuss difficult and complicated matters and they don't insult or provoke each other to attack physically or set gangs on each other.  It is likely that we follow social and biological protocols that keep things from breaking down.  It is possible that we just don't care enough about sets of beliefs or the opinions of others in the group to get riled up.  I watched this Monty Python skit along with more than 7 million other people.  It brought to my attention the concepts of verbal abuse and of mere contradiction of the ten-year-olds sort repeating "did" and "didn't" alternately ad infinitum.

I have read that if a husband frequently emphasizes his version of his wife's faults, his right to free speech and his choice of language can damage his marriage and his wife's health and her life.  The same can happen if it is the woman going on against his worth, his accomplishments and his ideas and attitudes. I have been listening to Prof. Mark Leary, a professor of psychology at Duke.  He listed five basics of human life starting with a need to feel accepted by others.  His 2nd characteristic was a desire to influence others, which we all mostly do with various sorts of talk.  The recent presidential debates are an example of a complex speech act where each person tries to be intelligently aggressive and outstanding while staying within the bounds of an undefined civility.

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

Twitter: @olderkirby

Food, sex and us

Most of the people I know have more than enough to eat.  Most have more than they CAN eat, at least in a single day.  Further, most of the people I know are interested or actively working on losing weight.  About six weeks ago, I wrote about fasting. We had heard of the 5:2 diet (sometimes called the Fast Diet) and we have been trying it.  The basic idea is eat in the usual way 5 days a week but eat only 500 calories two days a week, 600 if you are a man.  That is not a complete fast but on the Monday and Thursday we try this deal, those calories taste very, very good.

The book we have used the most is The Fast Diet by Mosley and Spencer but there are many other books on the subject, many of them free or very low cost.  There are, of course, variations on the 5:2 diet, such as just one day of fasting if you want the health and brain benefits but are already at a low weight and don't want or should not go lower.  That is the 6:1 diet.  We got new insight and inspiration from Caitlin Collin's "The Fast Diet Magic Book".  It isn't really magic but sensible and intelligent advice on fasting and good eating.

Ever since I attended a talk on nutrition and watched a TED talk on human evolution, human brain development and cooking, I have been reading "Catching Fire" by Richard Wrangham.  Just as" Marriage: a History" by Stephanie Coontz really delves into the logic, uses and history of marriage, "Catching" really delves into what cooking does to our bodies, our daily schedules and our sex lives.  Not that cooking makes for more time in bed directly but in the way that cooking makes things happen in human groups, families and societies.  Cooking food gives the body more calories in less time, enabling longer and more extensive hunts.  Wrangham points out that raw food can just be popped into the mouth with little outward signs.  But cooking requires fire and time and that means that hungry men can beg or steal or appropriate food that is being cooked.  So, there is speculation that she cooks and he guards to the betterment of both.

We have been inspired by the Collins book to try longer and more severe fasts.  We have learned that exercising while in a fast, can be more effective for losing weight that usual.  While walking during a fast in a state of strong hunger (which I am learning to tolerate and sometimes even enjoy and take pride in), I can see how a couple of young hungry human males might be motivated to go over to the single or divorced lady's fire and steal a steak or take one of her pancakes.  Wrangham quotes evidence that who beds whom has maybe not be a big deal in early and primitive societies but who feeds whom and who offers food to whom has been a very big deal.  In some hunter-gatherer societies now, if either of us takes food from the other and eats it, we are BINGO! married.  Food and cooking are a big deal.

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

Twitter: @olderkirby