Book clubs contribute to my life

Lynn is in a book club of all women and I am in one of all men.  Both contribute to my life.  Hers meets once a month and so does mine.  Mine alternates between fiction one month and non-fiction the next.  Hers deals with both kinds of writing but not in strict alternation.  Mine is all retired professors while hers is a mix.  

Sometimes I am not in the mood to read my club's choice but I believe it is worthwhile to attend a discussion of the book even if I have not read the book.  I gain insight into the members' personalities and thinking whether I have read the book or not.  There are quite a few organization's that produce summaries of popular books and reading through a summary can give me enough background on the book.  The summary is often quite a bit less expensive than that whole book.  I try to avoid buying a paper book and the availability of a summary helps.  Most of the time, if I try to borrow a book using Libby, the ebook app that loans out ebooks will already have quite a number of holds ahead of me. 

In our early years, I was reading a book by the witty writer Peter DeVries and the text took a funny turn.  I wanted to see Lynn's reaction so I read the book aloud to her. We have kept the activity of my reading aloud while she does a jigsaw puzzle or knits.

Back pain?

Back pain is a very common problem.  Here is something that has helped me.  Have your wife undergo a complex operation on her knee.  Then, have her suffer the same thing on her other knee.  She won't be able to drive for quite a while.  She won't even be able to walk for a few weeks.  You will have to take over many things that she does.  The constant up and down, the driving needed, including driving her to doctors and physical therapists will keep you moving and the pain will cease from the activity.

Gratitude

This is a day to appreciate things we are grateful for.   There is more than we can list.  We get tired of the activity before the list is complete.

I have read that gratitude is a healthy state of mind.  I thought I might already have some books about gratitude so I searched my Kindle library.  I found "A Grateful Heart" by M.J. Ryan.  I was surprised by the passion expressed in some of the dinnertime expressions of gratitude.  

"My whole being pulsates with the fire of desire for our everlasting union…."

I don't want to quote more out of fear you will think I have switched to a book about sex.

I guess I can say that I am grateful for every benefit and every pleasure and for a few of the obstacles and disappointments I experience.

Unconscious parts of me

When I talk about books that might be of interest, I often mention "Incognito" by Eagleman.  A related book is the one by Lisa Barrett Feldman called "Seven and a Half Lessons about Your Brain".  The book by Carl Zimmer called "Soul Made Flesh" is about the period when English scientists and anatomists knew there was a spongy mass in the top of our skull.  They wanted to locate the part of the body that was the 'soul" and they discussed whether that spongy mass was it.  We read it aloud, despite parts of it being long explanations about their theories that were off-base and wrong.  

One of the barriers to their better understanding was that they had no concept of electricity.  They knew and noted that there was an elaborate network leading into the body but they had a concept that "vapors" traveled that network.  This was the late 1500's.

Both "Incognito" and "Seven and a Half Lessons about Your Brain" emphasize the existence of parts of our brains that are important but not directly available to our conscious minds.  I think the words "habit" and "hormones" call to mind aspects of ourselves that we know about and are motivated by but can't see or easily change.

The horseshit hypothesis

When we were teaching "Futures" in response to the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth, I read about the "horseshit hypothesis", a rough prediction of what New York City would be like if horses had not been replaced by autos.  Of course, a large modern city, still depending on horses for transportation would have a terrible manure problem. My partner in "Futures" asked what is the history of the future and as far as I am concerned, I found that the success rate of predictions about the future is low. I guess basically futures have been pictured as grim or blissful. Naturally, if the picture is positive, we may not remember it as much as if it is grim and foreboding.

A physician, Dr. Sood, at the Mayo Clinic, asked readers to compare the Wright Brothers plane that made the first successful flight through the air with a modern multi-passenger long distance airplane to see what improvements and research and search for comforts and profit can do.

t.ly/7z_Fr

t.ly/-ZhUr

Life Presentation on books

I gave a presentation on books to L.I.F.E. today.  As far as I know, only a few people paid attention to it.  It was a "hybrid" program, that is available on connected devices thru Zoom and in person if you traveled to the Chem-Bio building on the UWSP campus. In the past, I have often made a list of main points of the presentation and had that projected.  This time, I made a web page of books and topics.  I think I like the web page better since I can add and subtract words to it easily and right up to the last minute.

https://sites.google.com/view/kirbyvariety2/kirby-books-life-11252024

I often encourage people to start a blog, a "weB LOG", somewhat like an online diary.  It can be interesting and helpful to give yourself another tool, a website.  You can make one with Google Sites.  It can serve as an online filing cabinet that you can put web pages on what will stay there as long as you think it may be useful. 

The value of kid thinking

I taught 5th grade for four years.  I hadn't planned to teach at that level but I changed my mind when I discovered I had more choices of my own for what courses I took if I got a degree in elementary teaching instead of middle levels.

I have found repeatedly that I benefit from occasional examination of child thinking and language.  I enjoyed talking and explaining ideas and facts to 5th graders.  They are fairly mature humans and have good and fresh minds.  Over the last year or so, I ordered kid-level books on human anatomy, mindfulness, menstrual periods, death, vaginas and meditation.  They are priced lower than books aimed at adults, too.

Recently, we watched the series The Bureau of Magical Things on Netflix. It is a child-level series.

This whole business reminds me of the result of reading other people's search words and phrases they used in a computer search on roughly similar topics and questions as I use in a search.  Almost all search apps show such alternative terms others have used

Magic number plus or minus

I saw an article titled "41 best reality shows on Netflix".  We do watch Netflix, Amazon, Wisconsin PBS, Acorn and Max.  We know there are good programs on other channels, too. I actually have never watched a reality show, which I think means a family or some other group that are filmed on video while living their lives or doing their business, all without a script.  I am confident that 41 shows are far more than I will watch, ever.  Thinking about what I am likely to watch, I remember the academic paper by George Miller of the Harvard Psychology department I learned about in grad school.  It is titled "The magical number 7 plus or minus 2".  It is about the number of items people can hold in their memory easily.

When you take into consideration plus or minus 2, you get the range 5-9. You can find more about the 1956 paper here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two

When I find an article explaining the 1,000 books I must read before I die or the 5,000 American restaurants I must eat a dinner in, I think of my poor old brain and sigh.

Computers and AI

My friend is a professor of philosophy and religious studies.  He sent a link to the other three members of our discussion group leading to an article published in the British newspaper The Guardian explaining that a Catholic church in Lucerne, Switzerland installed the necessary equipment in a confession booth so that people could perform confession with Artificial Intelligence hardware and software instead of a live priest.  I imagine you have seen articles about Artificial Intelligence.  I haven't consciously tried using any Artificial Intelligence but I imagine it is doing some good and will continue to improve.  

My life has been strongly influenced by computers.  I read a Reader's Digest article about computers while I was still teaching 5th grade.  When I began graduate school, our professor introduced us to Fortran, a computer "language" for doing calculations.  We did a project with Fortran, which took us a couple of years to complete.  When I started teaching in grad school, my experience attracted some attention.  Campus authorities offered me the job of director of academic computing.  I served in that job for a short time while they found a man who was willing to take the job on fulltime.  In 1984, we bought our first home computer and I began teaching an introductory course for education undergrads and grads.

Lynn got her PhD in educational computing and was given awards for her design and creation of something new called "web pages"

So far, I haven't dived into AI but I imagine it is coming.  I have found that Google and other "search engines" that show related searches that other humans used provokes thoughts and new angles in my mind.  I am impressed by the stimulation and new thinking that comes from suggestions and related questions that others have used.

Snow

We have been Wisconsinites for over 50 years and today is November 21.  We had our first snow last night and today.  It was quite light.  This is the last first snow of a winter since we have been here, I am rather sure. I realize that it isn't "winter" yet but it is the time of year we get snow.  

Some books

Many of these blog pages concern books.  Here are three lists that may suggest something of interest.  There are many others.   I have two web sites: Kirbyvariety and Kirbyvariety2.  Here are some basic lists but exploring the web site pages will turn up more, if you are interested. I have two book lists in my blog and a list I will use on Monday, 11/25.

1983 https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/2008/04/kirby-1983-reading-list-of-good-books-i.html

2011

https://sites.google.com/view/kirbyvariety1/recent-reading-2011

Now

https://sites.google.com/view/kirbyvariety2/kirby-books-life-11252024

Expanding myself

I write something on my blog (FearFunandFiloz) most every day.  Every now and then, I take stock of why I do that and what it does to me.  I have 5,452 posts written and on the web since April 2008.  Most people I know that tried writing a blog drift away from it after a while.  I believe that most people have something in their day, some reaction or thought or memory or question, that is "worth" mentioning.  It is pretty well established that as babies age, they enter a stage in which they are receptive to language in the form of speech: speaking and hearing.  Our species found out that speech is good but that writing and reading are also quite valuable so they created typical childhood education that starts early with training in writing and reading.

My friend has been standing firm on the idea that the professor of writing, Percival Everett, is an outstanding writer.  Today, preparing for a discussion of Everett's novel "James", I came across a quote that grabbed my interest in writing.  The quote is 

"With my pencil, I wrote myself into being."  

My wife is a member of the artists cooperative Gallery Q of Stevens Point. I have tried to emphasize with her that most important arts are nicely represented in their gallery but one of the most important of all is missing: writing.  Writing and collecting ideas for my blog has been a valuable part of my life since retiring.  Maybe yours, too?

CNN Photos of the week 11/7

CNN Photos of the week 11/7

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/14/world/gallery/photos-this-week-november-7-november-14

Don't miss Mrs. Bates kissing her husband mid-air.

On our table

We often have pastries for Saturday morning breakfast but today Lynn made us "French toast".  We each had two slices of multigrain bread.  I have read that olive oil is especially good for our health and so our "butter" has olive oil mixed in it.  But it was the French jam and the Stevens Point maple syrup that got my attention.  One from France and one from here, sitting beside each other and both contributing to our breakfast.  Impressive evidence that the world is interlocked and cooperative.

Walking pens

When I come out of the grocery store, I can sometimes see my car parked right over there.  As a kid, I watched cowboy movies in a movie theater.  Sometimes, the cowboy would whistle and his horse would pull himself loose from the hitching bar and trot over to where the cowboy was. I have been on the lookout for ballpoint pens that will roll or fly to where I am, conveniently getting to me instead of making me come to them.  Same deal with that car of mine parked right over there.  I am confident that with smart cars, there will be an app installed on the internal radio/ electronics that will enable the car to hear me call, start up and safely drive to where I am.

Lynn is healing from her 2nd knee surgery

Lynn is healing from her 2nd knee surgery.  She can walk without a walker or cane but when she sits down, she needs to keep her right leg elevated and straight.  It is painful otherwise.  There are many places such as restaurants or theaters where she can't do that.  Her right foot is needed to drive for the brake and the accelerator.  So there are still some rather important limitations to her abilities and I am still driving her to everything.

Special circumstances

https://abcnews.go.com/US/inside-life-sets-identical-twins-now-live-work/story?id=115638942&utm_medium=email

The link goes to a story I learned about in Pocket, an article collection service available to Firefox browser users.  The story is about women twins who married male twins, live near each other and interact often.  That arrangement made me think of what I got out of reading the book called "Tru Biz".  That book is about communities of hearing impaired and deaf Americans, their communities and culture.

One of the important parts of such communities is how each individual communicates.  Some members can hear a little, some can lip-read, some use hand language. Especially when children or teens, the favorite mode of communication can separate the community into sub-groups that favor or reject some modes.

More than once while a member of a college wrestling team, our guys rode a bus to the well-known college of the deaf, Gallaudet.  We were quite aware that the wrestler out on the mat sometimes communicated during the match with the coach by hand signals.  

The article linked above brought my attention to the experience of growing up with an identical twin.  I am confident that such a condition has some pluses and minuses that I have not experienced. 

Item from today's Numlock News

Love Songs

By some metrics, we're in a declining age of love songs. Of the 5,100 Billboard Top 10 hits from 1958 to 2023, 1,040 of them could be called "serenades," or songs about love and devotion sung from one person to another. These are indeed in decline, going from 23 percent of hits in the 1960s and up to 27 percent in the 1990s to a sharp drop to 12 percent of hits in our current era. It's less that love songs overall are in decline, but rather that they're changing in nature. A similar decline is seen in songs about heartache (15 percent of hits today, down from 22 percent in the '60s and 20 percent in the '90s), but songs about other, more ambiguous kinds of love — complicated love, sexually confident songs, love songs about the self, songs about pursuit — have gone from 18 percent of hits in the '60s to 42 percent of hits today. By that metric, once you consider the whole ecosystem, the rate of love songs is flat. 

David Mora and Michelle Jia, The Pudding

___________________________________________________________________________________

I thought this Numlock News item was interesting and unusual.  In my opinion, the authors use some helpful words where twice they refer to "metrics" used.  As with argument and discussions, the measures and evidence collected and not collected can deeply affect the final result.

Start a blog

I am surprised at how much this blog and the questions Storyworth asks come to mean to me.  I started with the purpose in mind of having something that college and graduate students could read to promote the idea of meditation as a valuable practice, even if just done for ten or so minutes a day.  I am impressed where it has lead and what it makes me aware of.

When I retired, I wanted an email address that did not depend on my former job.  My nephew had just gotten a master's in computing and he had a Gmail address so I got one, too.  I didn't know at the time that Google has 240 different apps and computer programs.  Many of them are quite helpful in writing a blog, such as Docs and Drive.  They are free and good to use.  I think the spell and language checker in Docs is the best I have ever used.  

My blog is "Fear, Fun and Filoz" (https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/).  I started it in 2008 and it now has 5445 posts in it.  They are searchable using the search window on the indicated web page.  When a person has lived for quite a while, memories accumulate and it can be fun to recollect them.  In addition, writing uses typing fingers and word selection, both good for me.Google's "blogspot" blog harboring service offers the blogger information about readers, such as this list of countries where a reader had looked at the blog:

Hong Kong	2,008
United States	156
India	42
Singapore	36
France	5
Brazil	4
Bangladesh	3
United Kingdom	2
Israel	2
Australia	1
Canada	1
Switzerland	1
Ukraine	1
Other	277

Hong Kong

2.01K

United States

156

India

42

Singapore

36

France

5

Brazil

4

Bangladesh

3

United Kingdom

2

Israel

2

Australia

1

Canada

1

Switzerland

1

Ukraine

1

Other

277

CNN Photos of the Week 10/31

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/07/world/gallery/photos-this-week-october-31-november-7

There are some emotional ones, of course.  Flooding a house in Spain, leaping over a potential tackler, the madness of running in the NYC Marathon.

Accepting and, yes, appreciating yuck

It seems that most Americans are glued to optimism.  I say: Relax and feel bad, down, annoyed or related emotions once in a while.  Many of our pictures of desired states are too golden, radiant and cheerful for our natures to sustain.  Accept an occasional frown, pain, loss as a gift.  Such gifts are a bother but we need such bothers to help us recognize beauty, harmony, kindness and cheer when we get them.

A, B, and so on

If you are going to marry someone, or go into business with someone, or travel with someone, it is wise to "get to know" that person beforehand.  It makes sense to recognize that people change, sometimes slowly and sometimes instantly and sometimes both.  So that means that when I get to know what kind of person you are, you might change and become different.  To make matters more complicated, all that uncertainty applies to me all the while, too.

I taught the 5th grade for four years.  Then, I went to graduate school for three years and then I taught undergraduate and graduate courses for 37 years.  During all that time, I was quite aware of the issues cited about.  Another aspect of people is that they may show somewhat different tastes and personalities depending on the others around them.  

I blame the brain for the complexity and flexibility of people.  These days, we have smartphones, computers, tablets, phones, email,texting, personal visits, social media, US mail.  The alphabet and writing and typing are all useful in explaining to others what we are thinking about.  Words, photos, drawings all help convey what is going on inside my head.  I am glad I can speak, hear, read and write.

"Returns" from Numlock News 11/5

Returns

Last year consumers in the United States returned $743 billion worth of merchandise, which was 14.5 percent of all the things they bought. That's up, an increase from 10.6 percent in 2020 according to the National Retail Federation. Given that there are costs to a business of returning an unwanted good — including shipping, sorting, warehousing, and then all the work of selling off the returned product to a discount wholesaler or the trash — based on the type of good that people are trying to return, some retailers are occasionally just refunding them and instructing the customer to dispose of the item as they see fit. Calibrating when to give a refund, when to insist on a return, and when a customer might be abusing the system is now a new area of consternation and financial modeling for retailers.

Haleluya Hadero, The Associated Press

Started twice

Three and a half weeks from today, I am scheduled to give a presentation for the UWSP campus group called Learning is Forever but known by its initials L.I.F.E.  I have given presentations to LIFE members before.  I like to get started well before the date and I did.  However, unusually for me, I can't find the durned notes I made.  So, yesterday, I started over.  I now have a web page of more book titles than I thought I would discuss.  Life presentations are often offered both in person and by Zoom.  However, if you want to get a headstart, look here:

https://sites.google.com/view/kirbyvariety2/kirby-books-life-11252024

Tunes and lyrics in me

Lynn had been enthusiastic about watching South Pacific again.  I agreed because of her.  I didn't remember the story or the music.  The movie gets to the singing of "There is nothing like a dame" very quickly.  I was surprised at how I responded deeply and viscerally to that song.  "Some enchanted evening" and "Dite Moi" are also wonderful.  We found the movie on Amazon Prime streaming.  It's also on Apple TV.

Wrong one!

We got a notice that Honda wanted to replace the fuel pump in Lynn's CRV.  But when I got to the service desk and the woman looked up the vehicle sitting beside her, she said there are no repairs, tests or services needed for that car.  Huh!  Clerical error.  They do happen.  When I tried to park the car in our garage, the vehicle I wanted to take to the service center was already in there.  I was sitting in the wrong car.  I had taken the wrong car.  Took the right one and all is well.

November 3, 2024

I am busy later so here is a blog post earlier than usual.

It is a busy time.   I am just getting rested from all the trick or treating I didn't do and here comes the end of Daylight Savings.  I think I have the clocks correctly reset.  I like the devices and systems that correct themselves.  If you want to get into time, check out time.gov

You may have heard there is an election in a couple of days and we may have some "action" in the days after.

Lynn is recovering at a good pace from her 2nd knee surgery but there is still plenty she can't do. She gets irritated sometimes and I can understand that.

I looked at CNN Photos of the Week but I am not too impressed. If you want to see them, look them up.

Movies of interest

As a child and a teen, I saw plenty of movies.  Today is still part of the celebration of The Day of the Dead.  I remembered the Disney movie "Coco", a story much involved with the Mexican holiday.  

Lynn has been wanting to see the movie "South Pacific" again.  We watched about half of it again.  I didn't realize how gripping and excellent the music is.  The film opens quickly to "There is nothing like a dame".  She is also after another viewing of "The Red Shoes", about youth, ballet and romance.

Just looking up the title of a movie in any browser or the app, Just Watch, can clue you into where you can see an old movie.

Bacon-wrapped scallops

Sometimes, I go to the seafood refrigerated cabinet in our Walmart and buy bacon-wrapped scallops for about $10.  Scallops, as served, are small cakes of seafood from inside a bivalve (two -shelled creatures from the sea).  The ones I buy take 18-22 minutes of baking.  They come with a strip of bacon wrapped around them.  My family is from Maryland, also known for crabs.

I used to scorn my dad for ordering seafood in a fancy restaurant with an extensive menu of good food but now I do the same thing.