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Last night and this morning were the first times in a while that I felt the weight of the coronavirus precautions. I know it has been months that measures, official and unofficial, have been in place. Various health authorities have warned that there is still plenty of chance for people to get sick. Roughly it has been about 125 years that the existence of viruses has been known to anyone. I imagine there are plenty of people who still have trouble believing in them. They are said to be about 1/20 the size of average bacteria. I have read of a public lecture that the French scientist Louis Pasteur gave to tell an audience about bacteria and microscopic life. They were shocked and disbelieving. Maybe you have heard of 'vapors', ideas associated with "bad air" that were used to try to understand and visualize how disease could spread before bacteria and viruses were understood.
When nearly all groups of humans are suspect and social distancing is recommended, the problem has a big effect on much of our activity. Many people have lost jobs or been placed on temporary leave because of Covid-19. Currently, about 183,000 U.S. deaths have been attributed to the virus and complications it causes. There are many reports of damage done, damage ongoing and lasting side effects from the virus. For a number of reasons, some people believe the idea of the virus is a plot, or a hoax, or a mistake.
Avoiding groups, wearing face masks can be a surprisingly bothersome practice. Voluntary quarantine can be tiresome. Forsaking meals out, only meeting online by Facetime and Zoom and other software can be irritating. Arriving at a grocery store only to find that I forgot the stupid mask when my intention is to wear one can produce a moment of fatigue and self-disgust.
I believe I have amazing tools to communicate and enjoy my life, virus or not, but sometimes those parts of me that like to do other activities can get mighty tired, frustrated and super-grouchy.
One reason I like the book "Incognito" so much is that it really makes clear how little of me is available to my mind. My mind does many things, for sure. But as David Eagleman makes clear in that book, the majority of my brain is outside the reach of my mind. At first, that message seemed to be low importance. But it has gained weight steadily as it grew more central to my immediate thinking.
One result of learning more about unconscious processes in me is that I realize more than ever that humans are miraculous. I am a human and so are you. We are miracles! We have already beaten the odds. It is weird that learning what I can't do with my mind has increased my respect for my brain and my electrical system and the wonders of me (and you).
A question that keeps popping up these days is "How can we change other people's minds?" It is often asked in connection with politics: why don't those other people THINK? I, of course, will know when they are actually thinking, carefully and well, when they see things the way I do. When we get to the subject of careful and smart thinking, we often talk about emotional thought or some sort of deeper analysis. This is where Incognito helps us. My thoughts, my spoken words, your thoughts and your spoken words, their thoughts and their spoken words are all oriented, fed into our minds by unconscious processes.
One way to get a sense of my parts that are brainy but not conscious is to watch what I do. Quite a few of the topics I think about and those I worry about come from habits. I have many habits, more that I realize. I get out of bed and get dressed in the morning. I tie my shoe laces. Dressing and tying laces is somewhat tricky but my balance, my goals of pants on here and shirt on here, are guided by habit that are old. Same thing with worries.
Meditation (sitting still until a timer says 10 minutes have passed and looking and re-looking at that spot over there) helps me notice what my mind wants to do when it doesn't have anything interesting to do. I keep thinking of a cup of coffee. Later, now back to that spot. What about a cup of coffee? Yes, in a little while. Has a little while passed yet? Not yet. Doing this sort of exercise shows me that I can think about the coffee or poetry or anything I want. I don't have to think hurricanes or absentee ballots or riots if I don't want to.
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We have tried the office, the bedroom and the living room. Like many other people, we are online with friends, groups, presentations and meetings. It is a cliche but it is not the same as meeting in person. I have heard of assemblies of 100 people or more on Zoom. I have only experienced ten or so but even that many results in tiny separate pictures of each participant. I can't imagine what it is like with far more.
I taught many classes online. I didn't have general education students, usually 1st and 2nd year college students. Normally, two years at the beginning of college for teachers are devoted to furthering general education and a year or two after that for the major area they plan to teach. Therefore, education students are more mature than early students and a year or two can make a big difference in maturity and focus. Much of my teaching was for experienced teachers who sought further education at the graduate level. Such students need very little guidance or motivation. At my school, they were seeking their master's degree.
Television, web pages, online videos are all handy methods of delivering information. Discussion boards, elicited and/or required comments by students can make a stimulating addition to online instruction. The instructor can still email or phone individual comments if needed.
There have been several cartoons about wearing pajama pants and a dress shirt and tie to attend an online session. It is fairly easy to slip into the bathroom or the kitchen and return to an online gathering. Or have a cup of coffee. And think of the wardrobe savings in work clothing!
Over time, advantages of Zoom, Meet, Duo, Hangout, Facetime and many other online multi participant software products start to stand out. More and more people are reporting that they like working and meeting at home. There is nearly zero travel time and gasoline use. No car accidents on the way to work, less wear and tear on the car and the roads. There have been reports of less air pollution and even less seismic vibrations into the planet. With the wide dispersion of the internet, friends and contacts far away are just as close as the people at nearby desks.
My favorite book about modern and semi-modern communication is Tom Wheeler's "From Gutenberg to Google". From the printing press to YouTube with the ability to transmit images with accompanying sound, we have more tools all the time to discount distance and increase valuable and energizing contacts.
I lived in summer camp several times. I left the important girl in the city. Some wrote, some didn't. No email, no texts since there was no internet. Recently, the young man in the comic Better or Worse went off to live on his uncle's farm and help out. He, too, left behind a girl he cared about. He wrote to her several times and got nothing back.
He thought she cared for him but she never wrote. Each day, sadness struck at mail time. He really had thought they cared about each other. Each time, she didn't write, more pain. Finally, summer was over and he went home. He went round to her house. She was home and she was happy to see him.
Why had she left him in pain so many days? She was ashamed of her writing!!! She couldn't write like he was writing. She was in pain too but she just suffered. Suffering can get a person points in paradise but here's the thing: If you want to write but you just can't, SAY THAT!! Find a way. Have your friend right. Call his cell. Visit. Ask a pigeon to deliver a flower. Have your brother drive there and tell him you are suffering and longing for his return.
I am advising based on experience. She and I had the strongest sort of magnetism. We had excellent times but a blank page paralyzed her. I can still feel the sad. These days, it is easy to send a picture. Send a photo of the dog, the garden, fried eggs, Grandma, whatever. Try saying "I am thinking of you." Try saying "I wish you were here." Try saying "When are you coming home?" If you are embarrassed about your writing, say "I am embarrassed that I don't write better." Put a piece of your hair in the envelope and mail it. Send some sort of signal about your caring.
P.S. Lynn is happy that girl didn't write and asked me to say so.
The other evening, four of us played "Password" after dinner. It is surprising how much quiet there can be and still be having fun. You probably know the game. You and I can be partners and those two can be but we sit across from our partners, not with them. We take a small card that has a short list of words on it but it is very difficult to read the words and the game is designed that way. If you have good light, you can read the words on the card when it is inserted in a special reader that blocks out the redactions and lets each word in the list show, one at a time.
The person sitting beside me is the part of the other team. That person gets to say one word, something chosen to make the partner say the key word from the card. If the key word is "black", maybe the speaker will say "dark". In the different game called "Taboo", there is a list of words that cannot be used as a prompt but in "Password", there is no explicit list. However, a speaker is not allowed to use a proper noun, so I couldn't say "Ford" hoping you would be motivated to say "black". Nobody is going to think the key word is black if they hear Ford so I wouldn't say it anyway.
There is a limited number of tries per word and sometimes neither speaker manages to get the partner to say the key word. We had the word "gallant" the other night and all attempts failed. After we had used up all the tries, I asked for an example of gallant and was immediately told of Sir Walter Raleigh placing his (lovely? valuable?) cloak across a muddy puddle to enable the Queen to walk without getting dirty. [I just looked up the event and found that Raleigh was a court favorite but spent a surprising amount of time locked up for one thing or another in the Tower of London.] I guess he was rather gallant.
On this date in 1349, 6,000 Jews died in the town of Mainz, Germany, after being accused of causing the plague known as the Black Death. The 14th century witnessed an infectious disease epidemic of apocalyptic proportions: bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic plagues wiped out an estimated 20 million people — 30 to 35 percent of Europe's population — between 1347 and 1350. Over a three-month period in 1349, 800 people died every day in Paris, 500 a day in Pisa, and 600 a day in Vienna. The plague would rage in a region for three to six months, and then seemingly depart on a whim; it struck like a tornado, without rhyme or reason, wiping out whole families save for the youngest member or the oldest, for example; or killing everyone on one side of the street but leaving the other side untouched. People began looking for reasons, and looked upon each other with fear and suspicion. The epidemic was blamed on a planetary alignment; an earthquake in Italy that had split the earth open, releasing noxious vapors; or the wrath of God. They also blamed the Jews, accusing them of poisoning the water and trying to destroy Christendom; beginning in 1348, fueled by confessions that were obtained through torture, villagers began dragging Jews from their homes and throwing them on bonfires. The Jewish community in Mainz mounted a resistance in 1349, killing about 200 Christians and setting fire to their own homes rather than be subject to torture.
We now know that the plague was caused by a bacillus, Yersinia pestis, which was spread through flea bites. The fleas came to Europe and North Africa by ship across the Black Sea, carried on the bodies of plague-infected rats from the central Asian steppes.
Maybe the best book I have read on male human life is "Fighting for Life" by Walter Ong. He was an American Jesuit priest and an expert explorer of the impact of writing on humans. But this book is about the views and experiences of being a modern human male.
It is well-known that mammals, growing their young inside female bodies, only need males for reproduction for a short time. After that participation, what is there for males to do? In high parlance, defend the families. In lower language, it is to fight, to strive, to compete. It can be done with firearms or edged weapons but in situations where they are frowned upon, sharp words, witty remarks and edged comments can be used.
I suppose there is less competition to be outstanding in female groups of talkers. I looked up Google:
I think it was Loren Eisley who explained in one of his books that male primates like men and gorillas may tend to get grumpy and surly as they age. reWhen men are older, they may question the value of their lived life: was anything important achieved? I haven't amassed big money, I don't own much property, I haven't written any best sellers. I might worry about having accomplished too little. Maybe I am a failure.
If I even suspect I haven't amassed much that is admirable, I may look around to see who is to blame. Without self-awareness and inner courage, I may never think to blame myself, if blame there is to be. It's probably those who have "succeeded". Maybe they rigged things so the odds were against me. Those bastards! Ah! A chance to get riled and over a good cause, too.
It is natural to wonder at one time or another where you came from. It is not easy to get a good answer. At some age, you understand that you came from Mommy and Daddy. Uh-oh, the question arises: Where did Mommy and Daddy come from? I find it surprisingly difficult to remember my grandmother came from her mommy and daddy. All the people came from their parents, who came from their parents, and we are back to the formula 2n
That is the formula which gets very big quickly and was mentioned in the blog post for 8/18/2020. It is the formula for the total number of selections possible from any set of N items. It is also the formula for the number of ancestors I have N generations back. 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 greatgrandparents, etc. How far back can I go? I think the short answer is that nobody knows. Part of the problem is deciding what we mean by "parents", and by "humans". I tend to jump over the details and confess to being descended from cockroaches and algae.
About ten years ago, I paid for the services of the National Geographic Society's Genographic Project to analyze my DNA. I learned about ancestors leaving Africa, scooting generation by generation around the eatern end of the Mediterranean and moving north, north, north. Eventually, they turned south, according to this account and traveled down the west coast of Europe, dropping off cousins and settlers. My DNA markers are similar to Irish and Spanish men. The Genographic Project allowed participants to transfer one's results to the Family Tree organization. I have been getting emails from Family Tree about their finding people related to me for years.
Today, I downloaded the list of relatives they found. I read decades ago that "Kirby" was the 511th most common last name in the US. So, I knew they would find people related to me in different degrees of closeness. Today's download lists 1836 people that Family Tree has identified as related to me according to their definition of "related".
In Botswana, farmers don't like it when lions kill their cattle, and can retributively hunt the big cats. Conservationists wanted to diffuse this situation — keep the cattle alive and keep the lions alive — and a new study details a low-tech, highly successful strategy to ward off predators, namely by stenciling eyes on the butts of cows. The study painted 14 herds with 2,061 head of cattle with either a set of eyes on the backs of cows, a set of crosses, or nothing at all. Of 835 unpainted cows, 15 were killed by lions over the course of four years, of 543 cross-painted cows just four were killed, and none of the 683 cows with eyes on their butts were killed.
I bought a new clipboard and I have had 50 copies of a rating sheet made. Well, I am strongly considering doing that. Just like Big Pharma, Big Money, Big Corp. and others, we here at Fear, Fun and Filoz (also trading as Fears and Fun) are always interested in improving. Plus, we would like you to believe that we are interested in Big Improvement. This is the 21st century, right? Here in the 21st, we are interested in your comments and in your perception of our work. We are prepared to use advanced statistical calculations and deep algorithms to analyze the blazes out of comments and ratings of our product.
So, on a scale from 9 to 10, how do you feel we have done so far?
Good writing?
Clear expression?
Timely topic?
Fine! Thank you for your time and attention.
Just about all readers will know what a covid mask and what it is for. A few months ago, that wasn't so true. The business of covid face masks puts me in mind of my wife and of Dr. Amit Sood. Sood is at the Mayo Clinic and aims patients at better living, less stress, more understanding and sympathy with themselves and others. He wrote in "Mindfulness Redesigned for the 21st Century":
Every good product or idea that has helped us humans has been helped in turn by our ingenuity and transformed beyond its original version. Almost everything good comes with a promise that it can be made better. The earliest computers weighed nearly thirty tons and had eighteen thousand vacuum tubes. The first airplane flew for only twelve seconds and covered 120 feet. We thankfully didn't stop there. The same innovation and growth will and must happen to contemplative practices, including mindfulness.
Sood, Amit. Mindfulness Redesigned for the Twenty-First Century: Let's Not Cage the Hummingbird: A Mindful Path to Resilience (p. 50). Kindle Edition.
Note: to modern citizens, especially Americans, improvement can and does happen but don't get too excited over every hoot and holler about "new and improved."
So, what about face mask technology? My wife can sew. She has a big heart and she reads. That all adds up to her sewing many facemasks, about 75 or so. Over the years, she has developed a special sewing vocabulary which includes some "bad" words and is used to express frustration with slip-ups, oversights, misunderstanding and broken needles.
She has learned a great deal about the human face, cloth and paper masks to intercept viruses in the breath, what people can stand to have across their nose and mouth and many other aspects of covid mask making. Being near her and listening to her, I have picked up the need for mask pleats in some masks if they are to fit along the curvature of the face.
I have also learned that many masks include some sort of stiffener across the bridge of the nose and that despite stiffeners of all sorts being available from various sources, the best stiffener seems to be the flexible strip that can be used to keep a bag of coffee closed. That sort of strip seems to be called a "tin tie."
It seems that a quick and inexpensive mask can be made from paper with elastic loops that fit behind the ears and hold the mask across the nose and mouth. Of course, being across the mouth can interfere with speaking audibly and more so with eating and drinking.
Some people work with plastic shields that cover the entire face, objects reminiscent of some welding masks. Masks that have an elastic band across the back of the head and laces from the bottom to be tied behind the head are my favorite so far. Lynn makes them with a layer of cloth for the front, a different layer for the back and she likes to launder them after some use.
On this date 100 years ago, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. It stated that"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."
The first national constitutional amendment had been proposed in Congress in 1878, and in every Congress session after that. Finally, in 1919, it narrowly passed both houses of Congress and was sent to the states to be ratified. Most Southern states opposed the amendment, and on August 18, 1920, it all came down to Tennessee. The pro-amendment faction wore yellow roses in their lapels, and the "anti" faction wore red American Beauty roses. It was a close battle and the state legislature was tied 48 to 48. The decision came down to one vote: that of 24-year-old Harry Burn, the youngest state legislator. He had been expected to vote against it, but he had in his pocket a note from his mother, which read: "Dear Son: Hurrah, and vote for suffrage! Don't keep them in doubt. I noticed some of the speeches against. They were bitter. I have been watching to see how you stood, but have not noticed anything yet. Don't forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the 'rat' in ratification. Your Mother." He voted in favor of the amendment.
