Impromptu Trip

We made an impromptu trip to Minocqua, a town 110 miles north.  It is located in the Northwoods and even has a Paul Bunyan restaurant with a statue of Paul and his blue ox, Babe. We shopped and bought a few things.  Had a very good bratwurst and cole slaw at Otto's.  Bought some napkins, dish towels and puzzles.  Nice drive, nice mood, nice trip all around.  Began the book The Midnight Library, which is highly rated by 89,000 raters.  

We packed and were prepared to stay overnight but decided we didn't want to.  We are back. 

"It is well with my soul"

From the Wikipedia article on the hymn "It is Well with my Soul" written by Spafford with music by Bliss

This hymn was written after traumatic events in Spafford's life. The first two were the death of his four-year-old son and the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which ruined him financially (he had been a successful lawyer and had invested significantly in property in the area of Chicago that was extensively damaged by the great fire).[1] His business interests were further hit by the economic downturn of 1873, at which time he had planned to travel to England with his family on the SS Ville du Havre, to help with D. L. Moody's upcoming evangelistic campaigns. In a late change of plan, he sent the family ahead while he was delayed on business concerning zoning problems following the Great Chicago Fire. While crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the ship sank rapidly after a collision with a sea vessel, the Loch Earn, and all four of Spafford's daughters died.[2] His wife Anna survived and sent him the now famous telegram, "Saved alone …". Shortly afterwards, as Spafford traveled to meet his grieving wife, he was inspired to write these words as his ship passed near where his daughters had died.[3] Bliss called his tune Ville du Havre, from the name of the stricken vessel.[4]

This strength to go forward and the words used to express it remind me of the words of Julian of Norwich.  I read that this woman, born in the late 1300's, is famous for her statement:

All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.

The hymn It is Well with My Soul is available in many versions on YouTube.

Insulated

This passage from "Breath by Breath" by Larry Rosenberg is one of the most important statements I have ever read.  Another important book, "Incognito" by Eagleman and its companion, "Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain" by Barrett have emphasized how much of me is not available to my conscious mind.  But what is available is much related to my attention.  A great deal depends on what I think about, what I pay attention to. 

There are limits to my attention.  I can get bored or tired.  I can want something different to look at or to attend to.  

Of course, drugs, including alcohol, can change my limits and my wants.  So, can music, both melody and rhythm.  The musical "Amandla!" shows the power, the armoring, hypnotic power of group chants, humming and singing.  If we stay with the beat and focus on the dance and the group effort, we can do a great deal.  I have been listening to Beethoven's 9th Symphony on repeat for more than a year but I recently switched to a CD of "America's 25 Favorite Hymns".  Since childhood, I have felt the power of a hymn with a good rhythm and a nice tune, regardless of my theology.  I can pay attention to the hymn in my head for a long time.  

So many things to do while looking at a blank wall

Actually, no wall is blank but I mean one of the walls inside, wallboard, painted uniformly in one color.  I think that is the typical thing to look at in Zen meditation practice.  The American zen teacher Karen Mazen Miller wrote about "staring at a wall" and she was referring to meditation.  I think that the use of "staring" can tempt a reader to think of a locked, tense sort of looking, as one might do when shocked or amazed or repulsed.  I am just referring to looking calmly and in a relaxed way at a wall.

The usual advice when sitting on a chair for meditation is to sit on the front edge, away from the back of the chair.  Sit erect but not stiff or tense.  One thing to do when sitting for meditation is to check your posture.  How about that string coming out of the top of your head?  Let it be pulled to your full height, again not strained but full. Check your shoulders.  Are they relaxed and down?  Sometimes, my thighs want to hang off the edge of the chair so that I am almost in the same position as sitting on a cushion.  Scan the body for tension and let any go.

Breath is often the main focus used on which to hang the attention.  Sometimes, people are reluctant to allow the belly to be pushed down and out by the diaphragm, when they worry about having a good shape.  For the time of meditation, put that interest aside and breathe fully and loosely.  I can inhale slowly and hold my breath while full of air.  Then, I can exhale fully.  A full exhalation almost never really expels all the air.  I am interested in what I can feel on my hand with a 2nd sharp exhalation without taking another inhale.  Sometimes, there is still a detectable air stream on the third exhalation, still without any inhalation yet.  Some people like inhaling to a  count of four, holding for a count of four, exhaling slowly to a count of four and waiting to inhale again to a count of four.  

If my eyes are tired from looking at a computer monitor, I can do all of that with my eyes closed.  If I open my eyes, I can look at a point on the wall and without moving my eyes, I can become aware of what I can see in my peripheral vision about my focal point, to either side of it and below it.  No wonder 7 or 8 minutes zip by!

The rest of your life

A friend hears that you have enrolled in typing classes and asks "Do you want to be a typist for the rest of your life?"  I recommend noting that you don't know much about "the rest of your life."  At around age 20, you may not realize that you will be abducted by aliens and spend the rest of your life on one of the planet Jupiter's moons, cooking moonburgers and caring for your 17 children and their adorable children.  The rest of your life may take some twists and turns that just are not possible to see, maybe even to imagine, just now.

It is common for young people to ask impatiently how they will ever use the subjects schools and colleges require.  Was it really important for me to read Julius Caesar's "Gallic Wars"?  How much good did it do me to learn the names of Lincoln's cabinet members?  An old distinction in educational thinking is that of vocational vs. conceptual.  Being a good typist or coder or teller may get me a paying job but having a feel for historical tragedies and literary tragedies can broaden my vision and strengthen my ability to sympathize with others.  We can't tell at early ages what trials and tests we will face.  Every subject that you can find books and videos and courses about has shown itself to be of use. You can't learn them all but you can experience a broad array of subjects and experiences, plus you can develop a habit of exploring intelligently.  

I had a class of students preparing to be elementary school teachers and some of them expressed fear that they might not get jobs in that field.  I looked into the matter and found that previous graduates with energy and curiosity had been hired into a wide range of jobs on the basis of their promising traits and willingness to learn.  Life is considerably bigger and both richer and more challenging than just one's occupation.

Can I afford a subscription?

A bothersome condition is spreading all over and I am here to urge people to recognize and resist.  I refer to subscription-itis, also known as rentimia.  As I have mentioned before, some blogs are written to sell things.  Selling things is a human activity that has enriched people both by selling and by purchasing. If I buy a pound of rice from you, I get rice to eat and you get money.  Anything that can be used more than once, that is not consumed or exhausted by a single use might be rented.

I imagine our merchants and marketers can get quite imaginative about rentals and subscriptions.  Maybe you like our silverware.  You can rent it for a monthly fee which will be charged to the credit card account you give us.  Maybe you would like the shoes we sell.  You can rent them for a monthly fee that will be charged to the same account.  Come into the florist shop and we will furnish you with a nice bouquet for your table if you have a subscription with us.  We offer daisy subscriptions and violet subscriptions but you can upgrade to a rose subscription or to our premium all-flower level where you can have any flower in our shop.  

I don't want to rent an English-Finnish dictionary if I don't use it.  I am interested in a subscription to an internet signal but not in access to that high level space telescope or in a team of huskies.

Signal strength and reliability

What % of humans have internet?

65.6 percent

Summary: Internet Statistics

65.6 percent of the entire world's population has internet access. There are 4.28 billion unique mobile internet users worldwide, which makes up 54.6 percent of the global population.May 9, 2021

10 Internet Statistics Every Marketer Should Know in 2021 ...

We started using email in 1992 so it has been quite a while for us.  

The other day, I looked up programs on Acorn that are popular and "South Westerlies" was in the list.  We looked up a little summary and thought we would give it a try.  A native of an Irish village is sent to persuade it to accept foreign plans to build a wind farm there.  She happens to be shapely and the mother of a strapping young man in his 20's.  She is trying to be low-key, almost unrecognized, but she runs into people who knew her when.  

A couple of difficulties arise from the internet being down.  This is not the first time a story has depended on network failure to explain why we really don't have reservations or other snafus.  A computer and word processing or spreadsheet data manipulation can be heavenly.  Even smartphones are good when they work and they usually do.  However, it is quite possible that a summer storm or a bad guy attack or a flood or an earthquake or a fire can intercept an important message.  Even just an unexpected delay in message transmission and arrival can change situations very much.  

If you understand English and I don't have my mouth full, I can speak to you in a face to face meeting and with high probability, you will receive and understand.  That high reliability can lure us humans into thinking our smoke signals, telegrams and text messages are received in a timely way and comprehended.  Maybe you remember the TV show "As Time Goes By" where the hero and the heroine wrote to each other but the letters failed to reach their intended recipients because of warfare.  For years, each of them thought the other simply didn't want to be friends.  Don't worry: things worked out in the end before too long.

Principal's wife, Dean's son

It is tough bookkeeping for schools these days.  Some enterprising students failed to tune in on Zoom.  They got a job at the store, the plant, the hospital making $13 an hour, better pay than attending school.  Now the educational clerks are tallying up and many students didn't get credit for history and geology.  They didn't take the test or do a project, much less attend class.  So what should schools do: require students who can't pass a test to take a class or forget the requirement.  

Cue the principal's wife and the dean's son.  The wife is well-educated, raised a family, is a pillar of the community and knows life.  She is a valuable citizen and a contributor to local life and events.  On top of that, she has kept the principal fed and in good health for 26 years.  Bring in the dean's son.  He graduated from high school and from college.  Now, he oversees development of handy phone apps.  Pay the wife and the son $56 each for their time and effort.  Show them the test that students take for history credit and for that geology credit.  Take the scores the two make and average them.  Any student who takes those tests and scores at the average or better gets special credit.

Going on and not

Living when you are in your 80's and beyond may be easier if you have a balance between working for a good life and accepting downsides and the ending.  I have read that a good portion of a person's lifetime medical expenses often come from one's final six months. In many cases, we don't know that we are in our final six months.  It can be natural to work toward staying alive but at some point, it may be clearer that life is ending.  

I think most of us get mixtures of messages: some that we are doing all right and some that we are aging, slipping, wearing out.  All life, whether plants or animals, have a very strong push to stay alive.  However, human minds can sometimes tell that life is ending, whether we have that tendency or not.  

I Googled "How many humans have died?" and found this:

100,825,272,791 people

Here's what I've got: Roughly 100,825,272,791 people have ever died. Let's call it 100.8 billion if you're struggling to read a number that long. That figure comes with help from Carl Haub, a senior demographer at the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit organization that studies population trends.Oct 14, 2015

What Are The Demographics Of Heaven? | FiveThirtyEight

There are about 7.8 billion people alive now so we would not be the first people to succumb to death.  You can see that more than 100 billion have died and about 8 billions have not, or roughly 92% have already undergone death. That estimate comes from the FiveThirtyEight group, a very successful and respected organization of statisticians.  

For a different and slightly earlier statement, here is one from the BBC amd Mona Chalabi, another professional statistician:

People also ask

How many total humans have existed?

107 billion people

There are currently seven billion people alive today and the Population Reference Bureau estimates that about 107 billion people have ever lived.Feb 4, 2012

Do the dead outnumber the living? - BBC News

It seems to me that we can strike a useful middle ground between appreciating the life we have and accepting its end.

We have cold just now

When I moved to Wisconsin, I was cautious about the winter.  The first few winters we spent here were colder than any since.  We experienced -40°F and windchills even colder.  Naturally, with today being the first day of summer and hearing about very high temperatures in the West and bad drought, I feel out of place to be experiencing actual cold.  But truthfully I didn't arrange the weather.  Right now, our thermometer says it is 60° and a weather app reports the feel is also 60°.  

This morning at 8:20, I biked to my friend's house in a windbreaker jacket and shorts.  At the time, the temperature was about 56.  But then and now, there has been a strong cold wind.  It seems that my wife is chilled if her legs are cold but if I am warm from my waist up, I am usually fairly comfortable.  

Just about everything I read about climate change is about increased heat and problems from that, not about deeper cold.  When we moved here, we knew we were moving to a place that experienced more cold but for me, the seasons here seem more pronounced and just fine.  We did find that winter driving seems less difficult if it gets ten or so degrees below freezing and stays that way.  The road crews do a good job of keeping the roads drivable.  The worst driving we have experienced was in a southern state that seemed to have zero road clearing equipment and to use the strategy of just waiting for the road surface to warm and improve.  

My aunt used to say that a person can put on enough clothing to be warm but can't take off enough clothing to be cool if the heat is bad enough.  So, despite high temperatures in other places, it is nearly uncomfortably cold in Wisconsin just now.

Excellent Father's Day

We were given a gift stay in The Inn at the River

https://www.google.com/travel/hotels/the%20inn%20at%20the%20river/entity/CgsIg7rXm4K187POARAB

 in Weston, Wi. It is a truly lovely place: excellent design, beautiful.  Lynn likes to tell Apple Maps to give us a route that avoids highways and that is a good way to be directed along roads we haven't traveled before.  We had a leisurely and lovely drive there and back.  At a local restaurant, I had a fine lamb shank and a glass of cabernet while Lynn had a board, a real board, with small containers of fish, roe, vegetables and sauces.

We saw many wild birds and were impressed with the bird seed the Inn used.  We were directed to Wild Birds Unlimited where we bought more seed and feeders.

We got home about 1 PM and had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and coffee left over from yesterday.

Our family came over and we sat and talked.  We are going out to dinner later.  I recommend such a Father's Day to you, whether or not you are a father.

Briggs, Myers, Emre, and Me

A professor friend and I attended a couple of presentations about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator decades ago.  We found the ideas and procedures interesting and helpful for understanding ourselves, our family members and others.  We spent a good bit of time with the Myers-Briggs and the related "True Colors" simplification.  A couple of days ago, I began reading "The Personality Brokers" by Prof. Merv Emre, a history and the background to the development of the Type Indicator.

We were told in the presentations that Briggs was a woman and the mother of Myers, that they were prompted by the mass testing by the US Army preparing for participation in WW 1 and by the development of paper intelligence tests to try to develop a paper test for group use to ascertain personality.  So far, my reading in The Personality Brokers has emphasized the personality and ideas of the mother of the pair of women, Katharine Cook Briggs.  The unfolding story has reached the point where Isabel Myers is married and the mother of her own children.  

I am a retired professor of education and my PhD is in measurement, statistical analysis and experimental design.  I bet you wish you had a degree like that.  It might not be as much fun as it sounds but it does give a person like me ideas.  Most teachers develop an awareness of the importance of individual personality and unique aspects of each human.  

Those of us who incorporated discussion and exploration of the Type Indicator found that the categories and combinations were helpful in thinking about teaching style, learning style and student development.  The basic variables are related to Carl Jung's thought, theories and experiences.  They are introvert-extrovert, sensor-intuitive, thinker-feeler and judger-perceiver.  I have a fairly traditional chart of the 16 combinations of 4 binary categories on my web site here:

https://sites.google.com/site/kirbyvariety/life-classes/myers-briggs-types

I also have a warning that everyone shows all sorts of tendencies and the "type" or "personality" is just a superficial attempt to summarize typical tendencies a given person often shows.  It occurs to me that Briggs, Myers and Emre are all women.  I am not.  I am related to women.  My own mother was a woman, my only sibling is a woman, my wife, daughters and granddaughters are all women.  Just as health, diet, body type, age and many other variables matter in our lives and how we live them, gender does, too.  Prof. Emre's book emphasizes what emerging ideas of how a woman should live and what fulfilment for a woman probably looked like during the period of Briggs and Myers lives.

My friend and I knew that people are complex and show many sides and traits.  We found that the simplification of the Type Indicator usually called "True Colors" was faster, cheaper and more useful.  If you are interested, there is a summary of the four Colors here 

https://sites.google.com/site/kirbyvariety/life-classes/colors

and on related pages on the same site and in my blog Fear, Fun and Filoz.

For comparison, I am ENTJ and I am Green as grass.

https://sites.google.com/site/kirbyvariety/life-classes/colors

Note: no blog tomorrow.  Start a blog of your own, look up your favorite music on YouTube or read my old blog posts.

Dealing with it all

When I read the title of the Chinese author Mo Yan's book, "Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out", I laughed with sympathy and understanding.  I have a copy in my Kindle library and I may read the book one day.  

When I think of the question of human limits, the number 150 comes to mind.  I read that is somebody's estimate of the number of people that we can maintain friendships with.  My current Contacts includes 872 people.  Every once in a while, I spot a name in that list that I cannot identify.  I just heard today of a friend who now has dementia and has difficulty remembering his own name or retaining another person's name for more than a few minutes after being told, yet again, a visitor's name.

When I think that we are asking our executives, our politicians, our scientists, our physicians to stay connected and cognizant with issues from all over, even outer space, these days, I don't get surprised by panic, rage, fatigue, confusion and self-imposed isolation.  

It is nearly certain that I own more books right now than I will ever get read.  Besides, you can be sure that those I have might not appeal to me as much as a new one or several that I hear about.  You know that Ecclesiastes 12:12 says "Of the making of books, there is no end."  You also know that is really true and ever so much more so today, with all those literate people running around with pens and keyboards.  And, we need to save some waking hours for streaming and touring.

Not what I had in mind

The Buddha put his finger on it when he said that my desires, my wants, my plans, my expectations set me up for disappointment when I don't get what I want.  I have learned that one of the main reasons I don't get want is that the universe is not under my control.  Another biggie is that I want to see my friend but I forget to specify that he should be in a good mood, he should still be alive and in good health.  When I put more effort into specifying what I want, my expectations are often still inadequate or simply ignored by the universe, traffic and other oblivious forces.

Lately, I have found the title of Tara Brach's book "Radical Acceptance" a handy motto to assist in guiding my daily life.  I wanted a sunny day but I get an overcast one.  Ok, try fully accepting the different outcome.  Overcast has its advantages, I have dealt with overcast skies before, I can do it again.  I often drift into a discussion with myself about the advantages that I know can come from overcast skies.  I am getting to be like a slippery lawyer (if there is such a person), who can argue for any case or against any case.

Pilgrim

Solitude

Quiet

Physical exertion

A starting point and an ending point somewhere distant

Seeking an improved inner self

Looking for purification and absolution

When I retired, we had already taken a trip or two with Elderhostel/Road Scholar. At retirement, we wanted to be away long enough to make a difference to ourselves and mark a new period in our lives.  We drove and visited relatives, took an Elderhostel trip into Mexico, stayed in a nice hotel in southern California and stayed in a University of Southern California field camp that did research on marine life before heading home.  In 1976, I biked with others on a UW-Stevens Point trip through Luxembourg, Belgium and Germany.  Lynn traveled with other women interested in children's literature to meet English authors of children's books.  As a Boy Scout, I had walked some of the Appalachian Trail with my troop on several George Washington birthdays.

I have never tried a pilgrimage like the Camino de Santiago.  We just finished reading aloud Two Steps Forward by Graeme Simsion.  I read the three Rosie Project books by Simsion and liked them.  Starting here and walking many days to there, seeking better understanding of oneself, of life, of my own life limitations and strength can be an appealing experience for anyone.  There are pilgrimages conducted in all religions, often to visit a place important in the life of a religious person.  You may remember that Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are told by members of a pilgrimage group while they walk.  

How to get older

I read a couple of years back that the woman Byron Katie said that she was having the time of her life watching her body fall apart.  I admire that statement and the idea of paying interested attention to just how life, the body and its use unfold.  Yesterday, I read that Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court justice answered a reporter's question "What is wrong with you?" saying "What's wrong with me?  I am old and I am coming apart."  Today, I learned of the Nina Lorez Collins book "What Would Virginia Woolf Do?" subtitled "And Other Questions I Ask Myself as I Attempt to Age Without Apology".

I benefit from Marshall's picture of "coming apart" and Collins' "aging without apology."  I haven't actually done much coming apart but I have had a little of that, what with a few operations and surgical removal .  It seems more likely that parts approach failure or partial failure, like an engine that doesn't run as well as it used to since it has worn and torn.  I like reading of "aging without apology".   I want to be accepting of increasing limitations and decreasing capacities.  

Aging happens rather quietly and many of the effects are easily noticed until they add up a bit.  Birthdays may bring former abilities to mind when it becomes clear they have modified.  Wrinkles, balding, slumping posture, increasing weight seem to be decreasing my attractiveness.   I think I can quietly take pride in these achievements of aging but maybe I should apologize for not being young and spry.  It seems like a hard choice: keep aging or die.  I haven't died but it doesn't seem very promising so I guess I will continue to wrinkle and fatten.

Where's my fiction?

When my friends get interested in poetry, I send them a link to my poems that have been online for quite a while.  My poems are nothing to rave about.

https://sites.google.com/site/kirbyvariety/bill-kirby-poems

Between the website, the blog and these poems, I have plenty of stuff online.  But my friend said,"What?  No fiction??" Right, no fiction.  I tried it about 60 years ago.  I wasn't good at deciding what should happen.  I told him that I spent too much time deciding whether the bad guy was hiding in the basement or the attic.  He advised me that basements are scarier and that I should drop bad 'guys' and switch to bad 'girls' who, he wrote, are scarier than bad guys.  

I read that "it is not a story until something bad happens."  I see that is basically true.  If everything is rosy and there is no challenge or emergency, things get sleepy fast.  I realize that what I think about matters.  I don't feel like changing my gender and putting myself in a dank, dark basement so I can murder a nice old lady who lives in that house.  I do read fiction and I like a good story but most of the books I read myself are non-fiction.  

In fact, as I get older, I find fewer and fewer works of fiction of interest.  I have been reading a long time and have found the guy and the girl do manage to get together and live happily under many imaginative circumstances, despite big obstacles.  I have found that the space invaders turn out to be friendly or easily dispensed with using light sabers or salt. 

Understanding ourselves and others

Various books and experiences have shown me the power and joy of communicating with others. I don't mean that talking and writing with others always results in fun experiences.  But in the long run, others add to life in a way that makes them the best part of living.

I have gotten good insights from "The 10,000 Year Explosion" and from Tom Wheeler's book "From Gutenberg to Google". Nothing new comes without some downsides and some fears.  A couple of my friends are leery of "surveillance capitalism", the combination of internet use and big data that results in capture of my electronic data and its sale to buyers and manipulators.  

I guess the recent revelation that the FBI used an app to see into criminal activity.  I guess it was thought by criminals in many different countries to be a good tool to plan and carry out activities while it actually opened them up to scrutiny by law enforcement.  I like to think I am clean and law-abiding but I suppose a good prosecutor could convict me of something.  I have read of Cardinal Richilieu's saying that if a man will write but three lines, the Cardinal and his aides can find a way of using those words to convict the writer of treason.  

From what I have experienced and read about the human mind and memory, we all have strong limits on what we can remember, how many details we can deal with at a time, and how accurately we can imagine some future action.  It seems possible that in addition to memory limits, mental capacity limits and imagination limits, we are getting a little better at recognizing what our wiring and emotions push us into.  I don't just mean rage or depression but also such "heuristics" or shortcuts and rules of thumb as discussed by writers such as Wray Herbert, Robert Ornstein and Adam Grant.  Our wiring makes recent events more important whether or not they are, exciting events dominate our attention and habits, and feelings of routine affect our thinking.

Getting an unexpected ebook

Yesterday, I called Amazon customer service.  I wanted better search tools on my computer for looking at ebooks I have sent as gifts.  I learned that the ability I sought and more was already available on the Amazon site.  The situation reminds me of my lack of exploring the abilities of my car to handle electronic devices.  I have read that among other things, Amazon's AWS is the largest web services company in the world.  So, I imagine Amazon has the people to accomplish just about anything in computing and cloud storage.

I like the Kindle reader.  I like that I can get a book for a low price in a way that is like a cell phone call.  I click or touch a screen and I have the book in a minute.  Ok, many books are not in Kindle form.  They pre-date the Kindle (2007 or 2008) or the potential readership is too low or some other limitation.  But the number and variety of books that are available is steadily growing.  The speed of delivery, the variable font size, the lack of weight or need for bookshelf type storage and the fact I can create a highlight with my fingertip and get all my highlights in a single computer file - all assets.

I can send a copy of an ebook to a friend if I have an email address for that person.  Yesterday, I learned from customer service how to find lists of books I have given as gifts that have not been accepted and those that have been.  I had about 200 books as gifts sent since 2014 that have not been accepted.  The existing software allows me to resend an invitation to accept a gift book I paid for but was never accepted. 

Some friends got an email explaining that I had sent them a gift of a particular book.  They might think it is a scam.  They might be irritated by my sending an ebook, whatever that is.  They might be very busy at the time and not remember to ok receiving it later.  Whatever the story, they didn't ever accept the book.  Then, today, here I am resending an invitation to accept a given book.  Who do I think I am?  

I am just a guy trying to clear up accounts.  You can probably contact Amazon and say you would like the cash value instead of the book.  You don't need a Kindle reader to see the book and read it.  You can put a Kindle app on a phone, tablet or computer to see the book.  Various friends have accepted an old gift hanging fire.  Just another day in the new, confusing world of modern computing and communication.

France and the French

Lynn has not usually been very interested in the Great Courses catalogs that come in the mail.  The company used to be The Teaching Company but they changed their name and what they do.  The Audible.com app for phones and tablets allows listening to many of the 828 Great Courses.

  

When a catalog came recently, Lynn got interested this time.  We have been running low on good tv to watch in the evenings and a set of DVD's about something of interest seemed a smart idea.  She was interested in a Tour of France, How Jesus Became God, and Ancient Civilizations of North America.  We have watched thirteen of the 24 lectures about modern France, its sights and delights.  Last night, we had a tour of Corsica, the Mediterrannean island that lies between France and Italy.  

Prof. John Greene explained that tourism of the island has been increasing in recent years.  It has history, sights and culinary assets.  

If you have a Roku streamer, you can watch Great Courses on the Great Course channel on Roku for $150 a year or $45 for three months. You also watch on a computer or on a tv hooked to a computer with an HDMI cable.

Amazon's Sidewalk service

Amazon Sidewalk is a new deal from Amazon.  It is a specialized branch of the internet available to anyone and anything close to an Amazon device if its Sidewalk service is turned on.  Lynn asked a useful question: why are they offering it?  I looked that question up in Google and got an answer about IoT, the "internet of things".  That is the expanding network of smart devices that assist us.  The wikipedia says this about IoT:

The Internet of things describes the network of physical objects—a.k.a. "things"—that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies for the purpose of connecting and exchanging data with other devices and systems over the Internet. Wikipedia

I deal with the Amazon Kindle reader often.  It is a "thing" that I am glad to have but it can misfire.  I am a rather weird fellow and am old enough to have learned that, as my brother-in-law said, I "don't fit the demographic".  That is, my tastes, interests, background, beliefs, history, etc. are not typical.  So, at this point, I am not too interested in being assisted by "smart" or not-so-smart things, devices, machines, etc.  I imagine that machines may get so smart, handy, helpful and quick that they will indeed be a genuine help, but I suspect they have a way to go.

Being careful and science-based

The other day, Amazon suggested I might like "The Why Axis" by Uri Gneezy and John A. List.  If you have spent much time around data analysis, you know that the horizontal axis of many graphs is the X axis and the vertical is the "Y" axis.  The "Why" axis is a clever phrase and got my attention.  The book costs $3.49 to download, another good sign.  Reading the intro, I found a mention of the university where I taught for 37 years.  How many good signs do I need?

The main author discusses holes and traditions in economics that have held the subject back.  He explains that they found surprising ignorance, knowledge gaps, suppositions and traditions and habits instead of current, convincing data.  It is very clear to me that we all operate more by intuition and habit than we realize.  It is expensive and difficult to experiment, even just to plan a good experiment and we have to.  If I want to check to see if blondes really do have more fun, I have to get some blondes to try a version of fun.  That is going to take time and money and patience and skill and luck.  No matter what I do or fail to do, there are dozens of questions, objections, and alternative arrangements and samples I might collect to run an experiment.  Just one of dozens of difficulties is the passage of time.  By the time I get funding, set up and run the experiment, analyze the data and reach a conclusion, the nature of blondes and non-blondes may have changed so that I and my data are already out of date.  

This whole subject came to mind at lunch when the business of knowledge transmission came up.  Upper grades of school and advanced learning in college and beyond often depend on reading.  "Read the chapter on blondes and fun for a discussion in our next class."  Let's set aside the question of whether the information in the reading is good stuff.  A further question is how can we be sure that a reader who reads it knows, remembers, understands and digests the information on blonde fun.  Truth is, we can't do an exhaustive job of checking knowledge acquisition and retention.  We do the best we can, and so do learners and blonde-makers, but we of necessity have to go by guess, habit and intuition much of the way.

Years flow by

When I was in graduate school, our major professor taught a little course to us.  It was in the use of Fortran, a computer language.  He wanted us to produce a computer program that would take any two dates and immediately tell us how many days they were apart.  The man was tricky and would change the details of the assignment whenever he wished.  We realized he might furnish days that were very far apart.  In researching the history of the calendar, we found that Pope Gregory had adjusted the calendar on the advice of his astronomers.  In 1582, he declared the day after October 4 would be, just one time only, October 15. Over time, some people have been very upset to "lose days" of their lives because of a calendar adjustment.  

Today, I read about an event in 1894 in which an explosive device badly injured a man near the Greenwich Observatory in England.  The injured man had made the device but it exploded in his hands.  It isn't clear what the man intended but it may be related to another misunderstanding about the nature of time and what, if anything, can be done to control time's flow.

Today is June 7 and is the anniversary of the day I landed in this town over 50 years ago to start teaching.  I had taught 5th grade for 4 years, then earned a PhD in testing, measurement and experimental design and was ready to begin teaching undergrads and graduate students.  

Time flows on and I suspect it is better that way.  I am not clear about what might be an improvement.  It could be that aging and having time pass as it seems to do quite nicely on its own is the best arrangement.  I was younger and it was a good time.  Now, I am older and it is a good time.  I am very confident that even clean living will not result in my living another 50 years. 

Happiness: not too much, not too little

Voltaire's "Candide" was published in 1759.  The book is sometimes called The Optimist or Optimism.  You may know that various authorities as well as research studies point toward an optimistic life as a healthy one.  

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19942/19942-h/19942-h.htm

The link goes to the Gutenberg Project, a collection of files that can be read online or downloaded.  

Candide is taught by a learned man that "all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds."  Many people have yucky experiences of death, destruction, deception and destitution that makes them feel that idea is clearly wrong, wrong and also wrong.  Meanwhile, with drugs, including the famous alcohol, and dance and music and the company of the right sexual companions, people can sometimes learn to stay in an upbeat mode steadily, keeping themselves convinced of the glory and fun of life despite all.  I have a book (don't I always?) called "Get High Now - without drugs" by James Nestor, who is also the author of a more recent popular book, Breath.  

A good recent book about overdoing optimism is "Bright-sided" by Barbara Ehrenreich.  It is a good read, I think, and shows some good examples of organizations and businesses that have really over-bought into "the power of positive thinking", way past the boundary of good sense and judgment.  

With practice and commitment, a person can train himself to be steadily positive, even when such thinking is inappropriate.  The right emergency, the right misbehavior and it makes sense not to accept the event as wonderful.  It is possible that the consequences will eventually include genuinely good things but within reasonable judgment, there seem to be times and occasions that call for negative thinking.

Blogging

As with many subjects, it is a good idea to try 2 or 3 sets of search terms into Google or another search engine such as Duckduckgo.  Ideas and possibilities will turn up.  I have used Google's Blogger for more than 10 years.  It has been fine.  It, like many things, is aimed at those who want to make some money and I am one who doesn't.  I was impressed when Pocket, a service on the internet especially related to the Firefox browser, showed me an article I might want to read about how much money is enough:

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-much-money-is-enough-this-simple-thought-experiment-gives-you-an-exact-number-to-aim-for

I have had varied reasons for blogging but much like reading to explore and appreciate the world and life, writing about one's thoughts, feelings or experiences seems like a good way to increase awareness of what is happening as life parades on by.  

People tend to get a copy of my blog posts in one of two ways: the web page on which posts appear https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/ or emailed to an email address they use.  I email about 85 people with each post but Google or individual internet providers don't like messages with too many recipients.  Usually, I can use BCC ("blind carbon copies") to about 20 per mailing.  I use five separate lists with numerical names to try to keep track of what I am doing.  

I create a post most days by noting things that happen or I observe or think.  I avoid politics since it, investments and many other subjects have plenty of information about them.  I use Google Drive to compose and keep copies of my posts, a service that many of my friends who have Gmail addresses don't pay attention to.  I have 4,233 posts but they tend to be rather short and they fit into my allotted Google Drive space quite easily.  

Blogging was begun picturing a blog (word comes from "web log" and in actual practice works like an online journal) on a web page and when a blog is begun using Blogger, there are controls and settings that assist in composing the post and what a visitor sees.  There are apps such as the layout one that enables an archive to appear beside the posts at the above web link.  Another part of the settings shows where people were who looked at the posts during the last 7 days:

United States

224

Canada

63

Russia

11

France

7

Romania

7

Portugal

6

Indonesia

2

Belgium

1

Spain

1

Other

5

Google says there are over 600 million blogs so your friend might be too busy to look at anything you write or photograph.