Flummoxology

There are many different paths to being rather flummoxed.  I guess a basic step into flummoxology is experiencing it.  Here is one procedure that may give a relevant experience:

1. Have a partner that you are frequently with go off on a multi-day trip.

2. Lose your usual method of connecting to the internet.  I did live for about 40 years without being connected but for a second 40 years, I connected and digit-ed regularly.

See?  With just two steps, you can experience a high level of flummoxation.

After completing those two steps, wait a while.   What?  Wait?  Do you realize that I am an American?  Americans are often handicapped when it comes to waiting, regardless of waiting for a long time, like an hour, or a rather short time, like 10 seconds.  So, if you are not an American, it may be easy for you to use your adult patience and understanding.  If you are a product of the US of A, grit your teeth, fret, re-grit, re-fret.  As with any skill, you will probably find that waiting in a tizzy eventually modifies the tizzy into a more relaxed ability to simply check the calendar every minute to see if the necessary time has finally elapsed.   Eventually, with luck, it will.

I am basically backI

I didn't post anything yesterday but now basically all the services and apps I use are back and usable.  That is very satisfying and positive!

CNN Photos of the week

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/25/world/gallery/the-week-in-36-photos

Computer & electronic problems here

I plan to have to be offline for a couple of days waiting for service.

Bowls

Lynn is a potter, a ceramisist.  She is a member of an artists' cooperative and has exhibited her work at Q Gallery and elsewhere.  Our greatgranddaughter is interested in art and has had her drawings in some student shows.

"What is the history of the future?"

We were playing tennis.  Well, he was playing and I was trying to.  The book The Limits to Growth had recently come out, published by The Club of Rome.  The authors were scientists at MIT.  The book more or less predicted plenty of difficulties for humans by about the year 2025.  At the time, it was the year 1972.  My friend, a historian of science, said that he wanted to know more about the history of the future.  He explained that he meant how well humans predicted their future in the past.

Since then, I feel I have learned that the answer is "Poorly".  With political speech flying all over just now, I see that we don't know much about what the future will be like but there are many signs that there will be problems. Water shortages, increasing heat from the sun, increasing crime, over-popluation are some problems that seem likely.  

That morning at the tennis courts led the two of us to go through the steps to launch a course.  We called it "Futures" and added a faculty member to our effort - a man from our College of Natural Resources.  We didn't know what the future would bring.  We couldn't teach students what their future would be.  The course was run for several years.  I don't think we counted carefully  but many of the students who elected to enroll were from that College of Natural Resources.

We have different amounts of knowledge about the future of this or that.  People who have expertise and experience in an area, such as problems of agriculture, or crime prevention or population growth or shrinkage often make predictions, some more or less guesses and some based on knowledge.  You can see some of what I have written about this topic before here: t.ly/9sXYe

"I couldn't put it down!"

The phrase "I couldn't put it down" is often used when praising a book.  We tend to hope that it does not mean the hand and the book fused, requiring surgery to allow normal use to return.  The structure of a typical thriller has been that a serious misdeed, such as a murder, has been committed and we get to follow along as brilliant Sherlock and his faithful assistant, Delila, work to figure out who did the dirty deed.  When a critic says she couldn't put it down, that she left phone calls unanswered, meals uneaten, bills unpaid, she is trying to indicate how gripping the story was.  She is trying to persuade me that I too would be gripped in a similar way.  Of course, she has no way of knowing that

1. I don't like to be gripped

2. I have a wandering mind that goes off on tangents, parabolas and conic curves and I enjoy those sidetrips.  So, please don't direct me to books that limit my excursions.

Why blog?

I try to write something every day.  I started to communicate with teachers in training about the value of meditation.  There are many ways to meditate but Americans often get into activities that develop mindfulness.  I could recite the names of many books that explain what that is and how to develop the sensitivity to one's honest mental moods and impulses.  Over time, more and better sources emerged and I could see that there were plenty of ways for students and others to develop a regular practice.

I didn't start blogging until I retired.  By the time I saw that there were many other sources for meditation instruction, I was in the habit of writing daily.  Just today, I have spent about an hour reviewing different themes and possibilities for today's post.  There is abundant advice to solve various word, number and jigsaw puzzles to keep an aging mind limber and alert.

Many people dislike the prospect of writing daily but I am glad for the pressure and the habit.  I think having the custom helps me stay aware of my life and thoughts.  I developed the practice of recognizing ideas, irritations, gratitude for people and events and that important habit helps me notice possibilities for writing.  Normally, I burden myself to come up with five prompts.  Some days I have more and some days less than five.  When I have more, the prompt or short statement about the essence helps preserve a possibility for later use.  I don't want to go on too long but a list of notes and prompts often suggests a possibility that seems ok for use on other days.  

If you have or give yourself a Gmail address, that opens the door to over 200 services and products you can use, all for free.  One of those is Google Blogspot, which allows a blog to be posted on a web page for anyone to see. That web page has an address: mine is 

https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/

Gmail is also a good tool for mailing individual posts directly to email addresses of those who want a daily copy.  If I weren't sending to many relatives, friends and contacts, I would have less interest in blogging.

"You must not change!"

Much of the writing I see is aimed at getting me to do something.  Advertisements can be aimed at informing me of a business or a product that might be of interest.  Over time, the writing can take a different direction, explaining that a volcano might be ready to erupt near me and that I can buy anti-volcano insurance now!

I find Prof. Heather Cox Richardson, the writer of many columns and some books as well as Alexandra Banner, author of most weekly CNN columns, have a knack for relaying news without twisting my arm to believe this or do that.  This morning Prof. Richardson surprised me with the news that the Republicans are infuriated that Biden dropped out of the race for president.  She included the item that the Speaker of the House of Representatives is considering suing over the change in the Democratic ticket.  Wow!

Longevity changes a society

If you look up historical American people, you may find they didn't live as many years as people tend to these days.

https://www.seniorliving.org/history/1900-2000-changes-life-expectancy-united-states/

When people live longer, there are more old people around.  There are more retired people, more infirm and semi-infirm people.  Some thinkers have already written that age 65 is too young for our current situation.  Add to that, greater use of birth control and more young people electing to put off children for longer or to eliminate parenthood completely and you have a situation where the supply of young able people is reduced.

When you get tired of thinking about politics or climate change, you can wonder or worry about these factors.

Reading and writing

I read long ago that King Charlemagne (we call him Big Charlie) badly wanted to learn to read.  In the School of Education at UWSP, there are professors who specialize in teaching prospective teachers how to teach children to read.  Too bad he didn't have access to reading professors.  Some of his ministers could read but Charley had a hard time.  I read that he thought it might help him to keep a book under his pillow while he slept.

I write about him because I am trying to recall that at one time being able to make sense of those marks and making such marks to store information and impressions and words about unobservable emotions, fears and feelings was a rare skill.  Now, we have children using smartphones and reading a great deal of the time.

I don't think we are far smarter than people in those days, just different mostly.  But we do have tools and arrangements that allow us to communicate with others we don't know and have never met.  And, don't forget the people who died a long time ago. Writing and reading enable us to understand some of what Mark Twain and Eleanor Roosevelt thought and did.

Improvements and increased complexity

Like others, I am glad to read that a big computer problem that interfered with plane travel was not a plot or a result of malicious intent, but was an old fashioned boo-boo, an error.  As we keep researching and trying, nobly, to improve, we do research.  It is careful, arduous research.  We find a way to work better, faster.  An update is sent to all users.  It needs to be conveyed accurately and it needs to be applied.  What could go wrong?

What the US Constitution says

This document was written by Robert Artigiani, historian, my friend

As the conventions get underway, we can be sure there will be lots of talk about the Constitution. Sadly, very little of it will have much to do with the actual document. Orators will be claiming they are fiercely and uncompromisingly devoted to the core beliefs and behaviors enshrined in the Constitution. Yet the document which they pledge to defend and support prescribes no beliefs or behaviors. That is mostly because the Framers could not agree about "fundamentals." But divisions were tearing their Confederation apart, and they had to produce something Americans could rally around. So, the Framers settled for forging a tool Americans could use to define themselves by passing, applying, and adjudicating laws. In other words, rather than a blueprint laying out what America was supposed to be, the Constitution is essentially a set of procedures by which Americans could decide who they are and what they do.

Knowing they had to get the Constitution approved by the people, the Framers were careful about what procedures were constituted. The people were rightly concerned about that because the laws and their applications would create and preserve the American society in which they lived. Thus, the rules for making rules had to be fair, for the laws they produced would only be obeyed if every kind of American had a say in their content. Although the Framers fell far short of this goal by our standards, they at least planted the seed. Regardless, it is these procedures – not particular beliefs or behaviors – that we swear or affirm to support and defend.

Realizing this should take some of the passion out of contemporary politics, for the Constitution commits no one to an uncompromisable outcome. Laws may bring outcomes closer to factional goals. But since commitment is to the practice of making, applying, and adjudicating laws, results produced by Constitutional procedures can always be revisited. No loss has to be permanent. Nor can a winning faction impose a transcendent set of beliefs to institutionalize a fixed societal state. Regardless of particular outcomes, all can still support Constitutional procedures because they give contestants an even chance. 

Because the rules of procedure were written by the Framers, Originalists should play by them. And since those rules enable change, Living Constitutionalists can support them as enthusiastically. Moreover, the Framers thought people are shaped by the tools they use. Thus, using the Constitution's procedural rules should produce people who believe in playing fairly. But for their vision to unite us, we need to realize the nation is more important than the party, the general welfare matters more than individual profits. As the NFL puts it, regardless of how much teams want to win, the game itself must be protected. To parody Jefferson's inaugural speech: by realizing what the Constitution is, we can all be Originalists and all be Living Constitutionalists. Even partisan convention orators should be willing to agree to that.

Repetition

I wrote a blog post entitled "Again??".  It is about irritation with continuing needs of eating, dusting, laundry and such.  My wife emphasized that SHE was the person who had carried the burden of my repetitious needs and I was just a beginner at stomaching the drain, the burden, the boredom, the dullness of facing repetitious duties and family needs.

I realize that we are not the only people to feel and recognize the repeated drumbeat of day after day needs.  I tried various philosophical remarks, based on science actually about the fact that this moment is unique and not identical to the last moment but I was rebuffed, strenuously.

https://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=99 Link to the poem "The Pessimist

Computerware I like

Note that I am writing about computerware.   Remember computers?  They are nicely powerful and they have keyboards with sizeable keys.  Don't underestimate them.  When I go to the college weightroom, everybody in the room is holding a smartphone.  Even if a person there remembers what the room is for, they still interrupt their weight work to use the smartphone.

I like Asus computers and the last several computers I have bought have been relatively low priced laptops by Asus.

You know that as you age, it is important to take breaks, to use a good chair and a desk surface of the right height.

I use Firefox browser for most computing but I recommend giving Duckduckgo a try to information searches.  It prides itself on keeping tracking but those who would love to inundate your mailbox with ads about whatever you seem to be interested in.  

For interesting and current topics, the Firefox service "Pocket" is free and collects interesting articles for writers all over.  Google has a great many services and I use the main ones like Gmail and Docs.  For news, I use CNN Five Things, Google News and NPR Headline News daily.

I’m having trouble

 I will send and post when I can.

Perception first

As a graduate student in psychology, I wasn't enthusiastic about a course in psychophysics.  It was mostly about perception: eyes, ears, touch and how they work.  I was told that perception is the basis of our impressions of the world and that perception precedes and strongly affects our thinking.

We wore distorting lenses, tested the relative sensitivity of our hands and our backs and learned about what we can and cannot hear.  I can see now that perception is fundamental.  I am reviewing some of the ebooks I bought, having too many that I have paid for but never read.  On top of not reading, there is the C.S. Lewis matter of the fun and worth of re-reading something read years ago.

I am looking through 

A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theatres of the Brain by John Ratey, MD. He is a good writer and he gets my head going.  Much about perception these days is about people with strong modifications in their perception processes.  The book "A Mind at a Time" by Mel Levine is a good one for learning and thinking about what perception difficulties can do to distort and limit learning and development in children.  The book by Ed Yong, "An Immense World", did a memorable job on my picturing the better or more limited sight, hearing, sense of smell that some animals have that I don't.  

If there is one fact about us humans that matters, it may be that we differ, from one to another.  You can add to that our changing from birth to old age

CNN Photos of the Week

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/11/world/gallery/the-week-in-29-photos

Hobbling and lurching

I have been wanting to write about hobbling and lurching for a while.  I got onto the topic when I found a willingness in myself to adopt a limp easily when I could just as easily avoid that and walk normally.   I wondered with no physical need for walking differently, where did the impulse to do so come from?  I can understand the influence of a mental picture but I didn't seem to have a picture that urged me to alter my walking.  

When I find myself acting out or even starting to alter my walking in favor of a modification, I try to wave away the impulse and walk normally.  I can tell that sometimes I succeed.  I am confident my appearance and my gait do not look like I am 25 but I haven't found any reason to adopt a more limited style yet.

You know what's even better?

What I'm selling!  Way better!

What I believe!

What I am telling you!

You know me.  You know I would not steer you wrong.  No way!

Buy this product!  Hurry!

Accept my touted belief as yours!  Now!  Before it is too late!

Soccer in Kansas

A greatgranddaughter and a greatgrandson have good records as soccer players.  Their dad is a coach and they are intelligent and energetic.  So, it seems natural that teams they play on win.  If a team wins often enough, they qualify for an end-of-season playoff.  My greatgranddaughter's team has already won a tournament played not in Wisconsin but in South Dakota.  This weekend, that win has boosted them to a national tournament in Kansas.  

It can be easy to overlook what goes into a sports tournament.  Travel, sometimes for multiple days, rooms, meals are all basics.  For my high school and college years, I didn't have multiple households traveling to tournaments.  I can certainly understand the excitement and awe involving a child that the two of you created turning out to be marvels.  Plays, concerts, sports, parades plus dances, debates can keep parents and relatives quite busy.

Bring her home

I have written before about my sister and I trying for private school scholarships when we were children.  She got a scholarship but I didn't.  For a year or two, I continued to live with my parents while she lived at the private boarding school for girls.  Then, we found out that my sister was unhappy at the school and wanted to live at home and attend public school.  She was a 4th grader or so at the time.  She decided to take action.

She tied some bedsheets into a makeshift line and used them to climb out a 3rd story window to lower herself and run off.  While hanging off the side of the building, the sheets came apart and she fell into a bush.  She was not hurt but the incident convinced my mother to move her back home.

My sister is a nice, calm lady but can be determined to take action.  I dreamed about her fall last night so I am relating the story again.

Again??

Sometimes, I get angry at the sheets and pillowcases.   We just laundered them but  now they are calling again!  When I list repetitious needs, I find quite a number.  Sleeping!  Trash pickup!  Dinner!  Grocery shopping!  Even little things like noting the date.  What ?  A new date?  Again?  Our recurrying needs make sense and are justified but that doesn't mean that I am always happy about them.

Not the same left side

My mother had only one sibling, a sister 6 years older.  What if my grandparents hadn't had a second daughter six years after their first child?

I have heard that it is very hard for people to imagine themselves not around after death.  But what if I hadn't been born?  What if one of my parents had been a different person?   I can see that if both of my parents had been somebody other than who they were, ok, no me.  That situation is what applies to you right now?  You had different parents that I did and you are different from me.  But suppose I was still my father's first-born but he had been with some other woman?

I guess I would have the same right hand, the same right shoulder, the same right hemisphere of the brain but the whole left side of me would be different.

CNN Photos of the Week

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/04/world/gallery/the-week-in-39-photos

Tape on a Kindle

I have four Kindles that I am using: lavender, aqua, and two black covers.  I am slowly reading four books: 

1. Tru Bix by Sara Novic, a novel about deafness and Deaf culture

2. The Cold Dish by Craig Johnson - Men's book club choice, the first story in the Sheriff Longmire series

3. A User's Guide to the Brain by John Ratey, MD, purchased in 2008, part of my review project

4. The Kingdom, The Power and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism - men's book club choice (I am behind)

I have several thousand Kindle books.  They are weightless, can be read on many sorts of devices, are instantly available, can be adjusted to different print sizes and other advantages. But I spend impatient time opening the reader, getting to the currently loaded book, finding that isn't the one I am looking for at the moment, etc.  Amazon is very proud of its ability to find my place in a book but I am tricky and shifty.  Thus, the tape, making that reader a close relative to a copy of the print book with a bookmark.

Between Lynn's club, my club, reviewing and catching up, four at one time is plenty.

We are surprised

Both Lynn and I are surprised by the amount of diminished meal capacity we have.  We find that we cannot eat what has been normal amounts of food anymore.  We sometimes find that we are somewhat hungry sooner that we used to be after a meal.  I guess that is part of the "reductive and extractive" process of getting old that the MD author of "Man Overboard" was referring to.

Happy birthday, U.S.A.!

We moved here at this time of year over 50 years ago from a city about the population of Milwaukee. We had young kids at that time and we were rather young ourselves.  Our feelings about Point and the Fourth are rather different in our present circumstances.  Our daughter is quite a bit older than we were at the time.  We are less attracted to fireworks and hoopla.  This Fourth, this birthday of the US, makes clear we have changed since then.

Re-reading and re-watching

As I might have made clear, I reached the realization that several thousand books make a large personal library.  Further, I faced the fact that many of the books that attracted me, I bought but haven't read.  

I want to emphasize again C.S. Lewis's point that a book can often be read a second or Nth time for a good time and a refresh.  My graduate course for teachers, "Personal Reading for Professional Development" was offered with the idea that teachers in their 50's might enjoy seeing how they felt currently about books they remembered enjoying years earlier.  I never took a poll but my impression is that what I more or less thought would happen generally didn't.  I thought re-reading a book that had been "sexy" or an exciting mystery would seem more mundane.  I got the impression, though, that re-reading a book that was enjoyable ten or more years back was enjoyable again.  

Part of the reaction to re-reading came when we re-watched "You've got mail". At one time, email was a new, exciting and mysterious tool.  The movie is set in that time and re-watching it, emphasized how mysterious it actually still is.

Stretch your memory back and find some book (or movie) that got to you and try it again.  Doing that may be surprising.

From a male-ish point of view

First, let's get the letters straight.  I am writing from a MALE-ish point of view.  An elderly male, at that.  The second letter is "A", not "U".

I add the "ish" because I am not a typical human male.  I am a bit small compared to many other examples.  I am not exceptionally aggressive or outstandingly athletic.  But that is not my topic.

My topic is about what I have experienced, observed, and read about the females of my species.  I have been interested in the females of my species since way, way back in my life.  I have a very clear memory of our family car pulling up in front of our house, probably primed by my grandmother, with my mother bringing our new family member home from the hospital where my little sister was just born.  See, I found out that people say I have a sister because her little body was different from mine.  I found out that she was destined to make other humans inside her body while I was not!

I found out in kindergarten that girls were sometimes more fun than boys, and were generally noticeably nicer and friendlier.  That finding has been extended and verified repeatedly since.

I got my eyes opened even more when we recently read "The Female Brain" by Louann Brizendine, MD. (available in Kindle format right now for $2.99) They got opened again when I read about what I think is a rather basic female experience of Not Wanting Anyone Anywhere to Not LIke Me.  That is a stark contrast to what I read years ago was a typical male hope that all other males feared him. Dr. Brizendine makes clear the enormous influence of hormones on all humans but especially the females who get strong hormones that pull in opposite directions every month for years and years.

Small times

Sometimes, I get interested in the exact time.  Today is July 1, 2024   My computer says it is now 2:46 PM CDT.  Sometimes, we say that a year has 12 months in it and we can name them.  After months 1 to 6, half of the 12 are past.  But this is a leap year so it has an extra day, for a total of 366 days.  So, we have passed through 182 "days" but more than half of this day, Monday, has already gone by.  At the risk of earning a sloppy reputation for accuracy, I will stop poking this topic.  I guess I have been nerdy enough for now.

Don't be too surprised when we discover the year has gone by and we finish with "2024".  I did admit that I have considered this topic before:

https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/search?q=small+time