^zhurnaly 0.9952

Howdy, pilgrim! You're in the ^zhurnal — since 1999, a journal of musings on mind, method, metaphor, and matters miscellaneous — previous volume = 0.9951. For the whole ZhurnalyWiki in experimental TiddlyWiki form, load https://zhurnaly.tiddlyhost.com/ (~20MB, may take a few seconds) – a backup snapshot is at http://zhurnaly.com/zhurnalywiki.html. For a static snapshot of the ZhurnalyWiki's 8,900+ individual pages, see http://zhurnaly.com/z/. For experimental insight-generation suggestions see https://insight.tiddlyhost.com ... Send comments and suggestions to z "at-sign" his.com — thank you!

And see Insight Dice for a new experiment in Mindfulness + Nonattachment + Oneness!

Empty Path

A path is just an emptiness
The gap between the trees
The missing grass, the hollowness,
A space in which to breathe

_{(cf Shul (2011-06-11), ...) - ^z - 2024-08-03}

- Sunday, August 04, 2024 at 06:43:06 (EDT)

A Ram Sam Sam

A delightful children's song, a chant to friendship, a shared experience: "A Ram Sam Sam Sam" is a silly bit of music, with gestures, for kids to sing in a group or as a round:

A ram sam sam, a ram sam sam
Guli guli guli guli guli ram sam sam
A ram sam sam, a ram sam sam
Guli guli guli guli guli ram sam sam
A rafiq, a rafiq
Guli guli guli guli guli ram sam sam
A rafiq, a rafiq
Guli guli guli guli guli ram sam sam

The words are not quite meaningless — guli = "tell me" and a rafiq = "friend" — but of course that's not the point. It's the sounds that count!

_{^z - 2024-08-02}

- Saturday, August 03, 2024 at 12:26:00 (EDT)

Hamsa, Abhaya, Awen

🪬

Hand of Mary, or of Fatima
Blessing, strength, luck
Peace, fertility, friendship

Like the mudra abhaya
And the Toki Pona awen
Protection, safety, waiting

_{(cf The Defenders (2002-05-27), Yoga and Mudra (2010-08-08), ...) - ^z - 2024-08-01}

- Friday, August 02, 2024 at 07:39:24 (EDT)

Thin Skinned

Fragile
Delicate
Thin-skinned
Easily broken
Slow to heal
Like some people
Like some societies
Like some worlds

_{^z - 2024-07-31}

- Thursday, August 01, 2024 at 06:58:18 (EDT)

Money in the Bank

Money in the bank?
Really, it's just a tally
Of favors done
For each other over time
Plus random lucky wins and gifts
Minus mistakes and sad losses

And in the end
Draw a line under it
And say, that's a life.

_{(cf My Ob (2002-08-28), The Meaning of Life (2008-07-24), Purpose of Life (2009-01-28), ...) - ^z - 2024-07-30}

- Wednesday, July 31, 2024 at 08:15:48 (EDT)

Spokesperson

"I don't have a Chief of Staff
Or a Spokesperson. Do you?"

What a wonderful weird world we live in —
Where some folks work three jobs,
Struggle to have enough food,
Can't afford safe shelter, or health care, or ...

While others have people to talk for them, and
To manage all the people who work for them!

_{^z - 2024-07-29}

- Tuesday, July 30, 2024 at 06:55:06 (EDT)

Memorizing Poetry

"How memorizing poetry can expand your life" by Jacob Brogan is itself a delightfully poetic hymn. Brogan tries to learn a new poem by heart every week. As he describes the process:

... revisiting words and phrases until they dissolve into mere sound, disassembling stanzas like a butcher carving primal cuts off a carcass, catching myself in error and laboriously struggling to correct it — has become my method. I have memorized poems on park benches and in bed. Sometimes I walk through the neighborhood in the morning, mumbling the words of a half-known poem to myself, sheepishly stopping when a dog walker comes around the corner.

Because the process is as simple as it is stultifying, memorizing a great poem always begins as a crime. The tedium of repetition reduces the hewn gemstone to a pile of gravel in which only the occasional dull agate stands out. But as you run your hands through the rock, the lines at last come together again, and the scattered text transforms back into a treasure, often a more valuable one than it was before. ...

and, he observes:

When you are memorizing a poem, a similar kind of noticing begins at the level of form. Demolition reveals the joints that articulate a structure, the way every part supports up every other, and attention begins to give way to understanding .... Because such details help to secure the poem in the mind, noticing them goes beyond the ordinary academic labor of close reading. You dissect the poem to graft it into yourself; in the process, its meanings become not objects to be discovered over there, on the page, like birds on a branch, but instead found here, within you, where the tree takes root.

Brogan concludes:

Some of the poems I’ve memorized are already fading, and that’s fine. I know that if I spend a little time with them, they’ll sing in me again. Others keep thumping in me like a new pulse. ... I won’t promise you that memorizing poetry will make your life better, but it will make you more: more in touch with language, with other minds, maybe with what you might yet become.

_{(gift link to article; cf By Heart (2001-11-28), ...) - ^z - 2024-07-29}

- Monday, July 29, 2024 at 19:21:44 (EDT)

Complementarity

☯️

Fitting together
... Acceptance + Nonattachment
Completing
... Seeing + Knowing
Perfecting
... Community + Individual
Healing
... Spirit + Body
Making
... Do + Be

_{^z - 2024-07-28}

- Monday, July 29, 2024 at 07:00:27 (EDT)

Patting the Earth

Patting the earth —
Footfalls like kisses
Glide forward —
A run in the park!

_{(cf Face Plant (2004-08-09), ...) - ^z - 2024-07-27}

- Sunday, July 28, 2024 at 06:37:38 (EDT)

Tickling the Spins

Electrons and protons
Wobble in magnetic fields
Quantum-flip and emit photons
Billions of light-years away
And inside a friend's body
Within the clanky MRI machine

_{^z - 2024-07-26}

- Saturday, July 27, 2024 at 07:37:27 (EDT)

Give It All Away

You can't keep anything forever —
Well, except for knowledge,
Which you can give away
And still have!

_{^z - 2024-07-25}

- Friday, July 26, 2024 at 07:22:37 (EDT)

Undo

"Undo"? What is that? The second half
Of a Do that mirror-flips the first?

But during each Undo
The rest of the universe glides
Forward into the future

Everything else changes
Including memories
Especially memories

So even if one could Undo
A broken window,
Or a broken promise,
Or a broken heart

It's Done

_{^z - 2024-07-24}

- Thursday, July 25, 2024 at 09:36:37 (EDT)

Mind Sky

Faster and faster, like a merry-go-round out of control,
Ideas swirl, association triggers association,
Executive regulation fails, feedback amplifies,
As buzzing swarms of thought-bees darken the mind-sky

_{^z - 2024-07-22}

- Wednesday, July 24, 2024 at 09:00:32 (EDT)

Clear

Carys Davies's little novel Clear (2024) is gentle and mysterious, surprising and loving. Some critical plot elements are difficult to accept (obvious examples omitted here, to avoid Spoilers). As it wrestles with words, however, Clear shines a brilliant light on how people communicate, and how diversely they slice the universe into concepts. An example from Chapter 26, as one character (John) learns vocabulary from another (Ivar) in Norn, a now-extinct tongue on the islands north of Scotland:

There was still a lot of repetition and pantomime and charades and back-and-forth between them, lots of trial and error and head-shaking and bouts of incomprehension and frustration, but there were also moments of clarity and understanding, and in the evenings John Ferguson sat down with his rough penciled lists and made a fair copy of them with his pen and what was left of his ink in the metal writing tin.

Certain words delighted him utterly. The one that described the condition of a ball of wool, for example, when it had just been started; that described its innermost beginning when a fine thread of worsted was being wound. Liki. When the thing was at the very start of what it would become.

At the round hill, Ivar pointed to the first peat he'd cut that had been damaged by the late frost. There was a word, he said, for this outermost, frost-damaged piece of peat that was different from the word for a piece further in and undamaged by the frost, and John Ferguson clapped his hands and said, laughingly, in English, "Of course there is!"

... and then there are further examples of how "for every new word Ivar gave John Ferguson, there always seemed to be another one that described a slightly different version of the same thing but which all too often—to John Ferguson—looked like exactly the same thing."

Languages as lenses on the world!

_{(cf Babel-17 (2015-10-20), ...) - ^z - 2024-07-22}

- Monday, July 22, 2024 at 08:35:59 (EDT)

Doubtful

Like familiar mountains glimpsed through fog
Like an ambiguous half-recognized scent
On the knife-edge of not-knowing
Every moment is the cradle
Of uncertainty

_{^z - 2024-07-21}

- Monday, July 22, 2024 at 07:53:31 (EDT)

Rest and Recovery

A lovely, heartfelt note from a thoughtful colleague, written in late 2020, expressing the perfect balance of respect and concern for a seriously ill colleague:

I have been holding myself back from checking in on S**** because I don't want her to feel any pressure of any kind, and I don't want to distract or interrupt her rest, recovery, and time with her family. I do have a lot of concern and personal best wishes for her, but I thought it best to wait and hear from her when she's ready. Since you are a friend of the family, I just wondered if you have any insight into how she's doing (if she or her husband want to keep everything private, I understand and respect their wishes). If you talk with her, please let her know M****, J****, and the whole team send our best. There is absolutely zero need for her to think about work or worry about returning — just lots of people sending thoughts of concern and wishes for her recovery.
v/r
James

_{^z - 2024-07-21}

- Sunday, July 21, 2024 at 10:18:41 (EDT)

Open All

Open eyes
Open hands
Open mind
Open heart

_{^z - 2024-07-20}

- Sunday, July 21, 2024 at 10:17:52 (EDT)

Loss of Signal

Like a steering wheel that has become loose
Or a marriage whose members no longer understand each other
Or a nation where people have lost their shared values
Or a pair of planets with orbits in unstable resonance —
When feedback adds noise
Tiny ripples grow into tsunami
And it all falls apart

_{^z - 2024-07-19}

- Saturday, July 20, 2024 at 05:52:40 (EDT)

Try It Again

Coffee, beer, tobacco, running, ...
What else is so intriguingly distasteful the first time,
Yet, somehow, becomes a joyful addiction?

Hmmmm — can we all think of one thing?

_{^z - 2024-07-18}

- Friday, July 19, 2024 at 08:36:37 (EDT)

Productivity

"You are not a product!"
So why try to be productive?
Hmmm — maybe, like a cough,
Producing only what must go away?

_{^z - 2024-07-17}

- Thursday, July 18, 2024 at 20:25:12 (EDT)

Infectious Verse

When a virus gets into a poem
And adds a meta-line that says,
"Copy this, and paste it somewhere else!"
Do you ignore it, or delete it?
Or watch it play its selfish game?

_{^z - 2024-07-16}

- Wednesday, July 17, 2024 at 07:54:52 (EDT)

toki sona - pilin pona

😊

Loosely, "Don't worry, be happy!" — literally, "Concerning times to come, don't feel bad; in this time, feel good!"

_{(cf No Worries, Mate (2012-11-24), Mantra - She'll Be Right (2017-02-21), ...) - ^z - 2024-07-14}

- Sunday, July 14, 2024 at 08:03:28 (EDT)

toki sona - mi mute li wan

🪷

We are One

_{(cf Mantra - We Are One (2017-04-18), ...) - ^z - 2024-07-11}

- Thursday, July 11, 2024 at 07:23:25 (EDT)

Johnstone Advice for Improvisors

From Canada's Theatre Museum's 2017 interview (by Rebecca Northan) with Keith Johnstone (1933-2023), in response to the question, "Do you have advice for the next generation of Improvisers?", Johnstone's reply:

... Please, please try and be truthful and good-natured for God's sake, and stop being so damn competitive! Be average please — because I want your best work, and you can't get your best work when you try and do your best.

Try to do anything wonderfully well — go out and watch the sunset and write a great poem about it? No! Go write an average poem about it, and you have some hope for getting something good! ...

_{(cf Impro (2012-11-10), Yes, and... (2012-11-14), Keith Johnstone Improv Quotes (2013-12-26), Don't Do Your Best (2023-09-10), ...) - ^z - 2023-06-28}

- Friday, June 28, 2024 at 08:21:13 (EDT)

Spectra of Friendship

In the New York Times article "The Vexing Problem of the ‘Medium Friend’" (22 June 2024) Lisa Miller analyzes, thoughtfully and with nuance, the range of "Friendships". It's a longish essay that makes a host of good points along the way. Memorable tidbits:

• "Medium friends are genuine friends. You share history (such as the same alma mater), circumstances (an employer) or interests (rude jokes, the royals, thrifting or squash). Medium friends make you laugh, bring news, offer insights or expertise. But, unlike the closest friends, medium friends test the limits of your time, love and energy. There are only so many dinners in a week, so many people with whom you can be incessantly texting. Medium friends prove the lie in any naïve attempt to be all things to all people."
• "... Reciprocity is the foundation of every friendship: mutual sharing and caring in a context of trust. The tension embedded in medium friendship is this absence of clarity, allowing for the possibility of what Claude Fischer, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley, referred to in an interview as “asymmetric expectation”: You may like your medium friend less (or more) than they like you. ..."
• "Scholars who study social networks have attempted to classify the strata of friendship. “Best,” “close,” “good,” “casual” and “acquaintance” is one taxonomy they use. “Support clique,” “sympathy group,” “friendship group,” “clansmen” and “acquaintances” is another. ..."
• "... In a widely cited 1993 article, [Robin Dunbar] posited that humans have the brain capacity to maintain about 150 friendships, with five or six at the very core (including certain family members), 10 to 15 in the second tier, and 30 to 40 in the third tier. The fourth tier encompasses everyone else you are not embarrassed to greet upon meeting accidentally in an airport lounge in the middle of the night. The fifth, gigantic ring is composed of acquaintances."
• "[Dunbar's] research has shown that people move friends out of the innermost circle extremely slowly, about one per decade. ... But at the medium level, there’s a lot of churn. Young adults tend to turn over 30 to 40 percent of their medium friends annually, ..."
• "Some social scientists and even philosophers suggest a different vision of friendship, in which friendship is conceived not as a ledger of emotional debits and credits but as an organic creation — an artwork — built by the friends themselves. Conceived in this way, friendships are not ranked or stratified along a bright line from BFF to near stranger but are instead a perfect mirror of two people’s investment, reflecting their enthusiasms, commonalities, differences and limitations."
• "At its best, a medium friendship can be “almost freeing, without a big sense of obligation,” said [Beverley] Fehr, at the University of Winnipeg. She points to recent research showing that “in a lousy marriage, having good friends will sustain your well-being,” and other studies showing that a wide, diverse friend group composed of weak and strong ties is optimal. ..."

_{(cf Virtual Friendships (1999-11-05), How to Win Friends and Influence People (2008-05-17), Running Friendships (2012-03-06), It's a Big Beautiful World (2021-05-03), Secure Attachment (2022-09-08), ...) - ^z - 2024-06-23}

- Sunday, June 23, 2024 at 10:55:02 (EDT)

toki sona - tan sewi suli

🏔️

We've fallen from greater heights!

_{(cf Mantra - We've Fallen (2017-08-11), ...) - ^z - 2024-06-19}

- Wednesday, June 19, 2024 at 20:22:47 (EDT)

toki sona - o lukin e mun

🌒

Don't look at the finger pointing at the Moon — look at the Moon!

_{(cf Go for the Moon (2013-10-26), Mantra - Go for the Moon (2016-07-18), ...) - ^z - 2024-06-17}

- Monday, June 17, 2024 at 07:39:00 (EDT)

Mitsuko Uchida on Life

Some entertaining (and blunt!) bits from 75-year-old piano virtuosa Mitsuko Uchida in a 2024 New York Times interview by Javier Hernández:

How do you see your artistry in this phase of your career?

My artistry? Excuse me? I live one day at a time.

What do you mean?

Do you think I am navel-watching every day, or what? Excuse me, I am a musician. I am not anybody that important or anything. I just want to understand music. That’s all.

...

Did you change at all during the pandemic?

I bet I have. But I am not self-analyzing.

Did it change your routine?

I was so happy to be home. I love not to travel. For once, I could afford to waste my time. It was fantastic.

What do you do now in your free time?

When I am free, I am at home and I study or play music. I want to have time to think. And you need to breathe and to dream.

When you take time to dream, do you have revelations about life or music?

I never have revelations in my life. Or if I do, I won’t tell you.

- Saturday, June 08, 2024 at 07:23:45 (EDT)

Geometric Folding Algorithms

Geometric Folding Algorithms: linkages, origami, polyhedra by Erik Demaine and Joseph O'Rourke is a math textbook published in 2007. It's a somewhat formal-grandfatherly version of the 2011 book How to Fold It, with similar coverage and style. Both authors are professors of computer science, Demaine at MIT, O'Rourke at Smith College. Particularly fascinating are the discussions of how hard various computational geometry problems are to solve in the complexity hierarchy.

_{(cf How to Fold It (2024-05-18), ...) - ^z - 2024-05-18}

- Wednesday, May 29, 2024 at 17:20:01 (EDT)

How Minds Change

David McRaney's 2022 book How Minds Change unfortunately feels fluffy-anecdotal as it discusses, in ~300 pages, important philosophical issues of metacognition and belief. There are plenty of stories and lots of name-dropping. The bottom line, however, is a gem hidden in the midst of Chapter 9 ("Street Epistemology"), a path to help people think better, via one-on-one conversation:

1. Establish rapport. Assure the other person you aren't out to shame them, and then ask for consent to explore their reasoning.
2. Ask for a claim.
3. Confirm the claim by repeating it back in your own words. Ask if you've done a good job summarizing. Repeat until they are satisfied.
4. Clarify their definitions. Use those definitions, not yours.
5. Ask for a numerical measure of confidence in their claim.
6. Ask what reasons they have to hold that level of confidence.
7. Ask what method they've used to judge the quality of their reasons. Focus on that method for the rest of the conversation.
8. Listen, summarize, repeat.
9. Wrap up and wish them well.

The beauty of this approach, developed by Peter Boghossian, Anthony Magnabosco, and others (going back to Socrates and beyond!) is that it can help "promote critical thinking and respectful dialogue" – good throughout life, not just for politics, medicine, religion, technology, science, or other realms. As McRaney summarizes:

... street epistemology is about improving people's methods for arriving at confidence, not about persuading someone to believe one thing more than another. Maybe in the beginning it was, but today there's no belief they are pushing, no agenda, no policy on which they want people to vote yes or no. After all, if they've learned anything from the method, it's that [Anthony Magnabosco] or or anyone else in the community could be wrong.

That's intellectual honesty!

_{(cf Metacognition and Open Mindedness (2015-11-15), Seeking Negative Space (2016-04-21), Teach Yourself How to Learn (2018-03-05), Metacognitive Awareness (2018-05-19), Metacognitive Classroom (2019-09-06), Metacognitive Reading (2021-10-21), Metacognitive Experiences (2022-03-29), Clark Glymour on Epistemology (2022-07-21), ...) - ^z - 2024-05-21}

- Tuesday, May 21, 2024 at 21:51:49 (EDT)

How To Fold It

How to Fold It: The Mathematics of Linkages, Origami, and Polyhedra (2011, Cambridge University Press) by Joseph O'Rourke is a technical book that's also highly readable. There's deep math in it, but most of the discussion only requires high-school algebra and geometry to follow. Among the fascinating questions that O'Rourke addresses are:

• Linkages (idealized rigid bars connected at rotational joints)
  • what places can a multi-jointed "robot arm" (linear linkage) reach?
  • what angles do the joints of a robot arm have to be set to, in order to reach a chosen point?
  • how can a (non-linear, cross-connected) linkage be designed to change circular motion to straight-line motion, or to other shapes, or to scale one shape up or down?
  • how do angle constraints on a linkage (e.g., in an idealized protein molecule) affect the shape(s) the linkage can take?
  • how do "pop-up books" based on linkages work?
• Origami (idealized paper-folding)
  • what are the constraints required for folds to produce a flat configuration (like a folded map)?
  • what shapes can be made by folding a sheet of paper and then making a single straight-line cut?
  • what "rigid origami" shapes can be created when the faces between folds are not allowed to bend?
• Polyhedra (solid shapes with flat surfaces)
  • what polyhedra can be unfolded – to make flat (non-overlapping, one-piece) shapes – by cutting along some of their edges?
  • what flat shapes can be folded into what polyhedra?

Delightful discussions, grounded in physical reality and reminiscent of Z. A. Melzak's Companion to Concrete Mathematics.

_{(cf Applied Bypasses (1999-04-14), ...) - ^z - 2024-05-18}

- Saturday, May 18, 2024 at 22:36:18 (EDT)

Patterns in the Mind

Patterns in the Mind: Language and Human Nature (1993) by Ray Jackendoff is a captivating exploration of how people think and the patterns people use to express and share ideas. Many of the key concepts that Jackendoff analyzes overlap with those described by Marvin Minsky (Society of Mind, 1986) and Daniel Dennett (Consciousness Explained, 1991), and more recently, Anil Seth (Being You, 2021). In the poetic words of John Kabat-Zinn, each offers "a glimpse through one face of the multifaceted diamond ... related to each other by tiny rotations of the crystal". Their bottom line perhaps could be summarized:

• consciousness is built upon an invisible, unconscious scaffolding, not accessible to ordinary thought
• consciousness uses both innate (prefabricated, by natural selection) and learned (from social and individual experience) components
• consciousness (and its underpinning) optimizes sense-making and decision-making, across multiple conflicting simultaneous goals, using incomplete-noisy sensory data plus limited time and computational resources

Quite an awesome accomplishment for creatures evolved from simple chemicals over a few billion years!

Jackendoff begins with three "Fundamental Arguments" in Chapter 1 of Patterns in the Mind:

• The Argument for Mental Grammar: The expressive variety of language use implies that a language user’s brain contains a set of unconscious grammatical principles.
• The Argument for Innate Knowledge:The way children learn to talk implies that the human brain contains a genetically determined specialization for language.
• The Argument for the Construction of Experience: Our experience of the world is actively constructed by the unconscious principles that operate in the brain.

He expands and explains his "Fundamental Arguments" in the rest of the book, and applies them to music, sign-language, and mind itself. Fascinating!

_{(see also jan Telakoman's delightful video essay "Language Learning and Your Inner Horse and (Telakoman's recommendation) "Jackendoff is not crazy! (Or about phonology and consciousness)" by José-Luis Mendívil; and cf Thoughtful Metaphors (2000-11-08), Marvin Minsky Speaks (2004-03-25), Being You (2023-11-01), ...) - ^z - 2024-05-12}

- Monday, May 13, 2024 at 07:15:19 (EDT)

Sapiens

At 400+ pages, Yuval Noah Harari's book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind isn't brief. It isn't historically accurate either. A quick skim encounters implausible anecdotes (e.g., in Chapter 15 a silly joke about the 1969 mission to the moon is offered as fact) and technical misunderstandings (e.g., in Chapter 16 a garbled description of fractional-reserving banking). Harari's attempts to convey key concepts from the physical sciences are likewise flawed (e.g., in Chapters 7 and 14 raw equations are displayed without context, to intimidate rather than educate). The "Scholarly Reception" in Wikipedia highlights further issues.

The world needs more good explanations of important big-picture long-term issues. Sapiens isn't sapient. Too bad!

_{^z - 2024-05-10}

- Friday, May 10, 2024 at 18:24:25 (EDT)

Other Significant Others

The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center, by Rhaina Cohen, is both wonderfully open and frustratingly narrow. It explores vast generational-societal issues, yet spirals down whirlpools of personal anecdote. It wrestles with vital questions of loving-kindness, then flips into selfish-childish clinging. Perhaps instead of a book it could have made an awesomely thoughtful essay?

Key themes that Cohen analyzes include:

• the importance of "platonic partnerships" aka "passionate friendships" in fulfilling human needs, outside of and in contrast to more-conventional romantic relationships
• the arguably unfair distinctions that current law and custom draw between marriage and other forms of interpersonal alliance
• the challenges associated with sexual, asexual, and non-traditional relationships
• the dilemmas spawned by break-ups, disease, ageing, and death

Cohen mentions the concept of mapping a person's "social atom" – drawing bubbles on a page, with "... the size of the circles and their distance from the center represent[ing] the space each person takes up in their lives and how close they are." She quotes studies that suggest most people can only have ~5 truly close friends at a time, that a romantic relationship may occupy ~2 of those five slots, and that the half-life of most friendships is ~7 years.

Fascinating! – and perhaps leading to testable hypotheses with important large-scale consequences. Hmmmm!

_{(see also Cohen's 2020 article in The Atlantic titled "What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life?", and cf Virtual Friendships (1999-11-05), Running Friendships (2012-03-06), Friendship and Meditation (2012-11-06), Stand by You (2017-01-11), Friend Sits by Friend (2018-07-04), Friendship (2023-09-28), ...) - ^z - 2024-05-07}

- Tuesday, May 07, 2024 at 16:59:07 (EDT)

Shrub Dryad

An extraordinary person who shares gems of powerful wisdom: "Shrub Dryad" (on Youtube & Bluesky). See, for starters:

• "Teach Your Kids about Sex and Gender!" — which concludes:

"You need to have somebody in your life who is trans, who you love. Even if it's parasocially. Even if it's somebody on the internet who will never know you exist. Because not having any trans people in your life is no way to live."

• "In which everyone learns Toki Pona for my personal enjoyment" — which summarizes the tiny language's superpower:

"Basically, the idea is that when you have so few words, you have to find very minimalist ways of speaking, and perhaps minimalist ways of thinking, and that can help you reduce the perceived complexity in your life, and it can help you just think about things in a new way, break them down to what are they, really?"

pona tawa sina

_{(cf This Is How It Always Is (2018-02-02), Live in the World with Grace (2021-08-10), ...) - ^z - 2024-05-07}

- Tuesday, May 07, 2024 at 08:47:43 (EDT)

Quick Strength for Runners

Jeff Horowitz's book Quick Strength for Runners: 8 Weeks to a Better Runner's Body suggests exercises and, even better, offers wisdom. Three gems:

• "Even a short workout is much better than no workout at all, so do not aim for perfection in each session." (Chapter 2)
• "Remember, there is no need to rush this process. As long as you are challenging yourself, at whatever level, you are improving." (Chapter 3)
• "Don’t make the mistake of leaving your day’s best effort in the warm-up." (Chapter 4)
• "Indeed, you can think of the fitness that you build by working your way through the exercises in this book as preparing you not just for better running, but also for a better, more active life. And that, more than anything, should be the real goal of all your training. Treat your life as an adventure, on the roads, on the trails, and wherever your imagination may take you." (Chapter 6)

Yes!

_{(cf Marathon Training Advice from Brad Hudson (2011-01-23), Inner Strength Training (2016-07-05), Build Resilience (2022-02-10), ...) - ^z - 2024-05-05}

- Sunday, May 05, 2024 at 15:06:51 (EDT)

toki sona - o pilin pona

❣️

Be Happy! — or, more literally, "Feel Good!"

_{(cf Optimist Creed (1999-04-16), Mantra - Happiness Is (2018-03-20), ...) - ^z - 2024-05-02}

- Thursday, May 02, 2024 at 08:15:35 (EDT)

toki sona - lon poki sina

🪺

At Your Side!

_{(cf Mantra - At Your Side (2015-09-18), ...) - ^z - 2024-05-01}

- Wednesday, May 01, 2024 at 07:55:58 (EDT)

toki sona - o pali lili

Do Less, Better! — or, more literally, "Do Little, Do Well"

_{(cf Mantra - Do Less, Better (2016-12-14), ...) - ^z - 2024-04-30}

- Tuesday, April 30, 2024 at 13:08:33 (EDT)

toki sona - ale li pona

💖

All is Good

_{(cf Mantra - It's All Good (2015-01-09), ...) - ^z - 2024-04-29}

- Monday, April 29, 2024 at 07:53:07 (EDT)

toki sona - o waso telo

🦆

Be a Duck, not a Sponge! — or more literally, "O, be a Bird of Water, not a Clinger!"

_{(cf Mantra - Be a Duck, Not a Sponge (2016-08-15), ...) - ^z - 2024-04-28}

- Sunday, April 28, 2024 at 19:00:23 (EDT)

toki sona - o kiwen pi kule ala

🪨

Be a Gray Rock! — or more literally, "O, be a Rock of No Color!"

_{(cf Mantra - Be a Gray Rock, ...) - ^z - 2024-04-27}

- Saturday, April 27, 2024 at 16:53:29 (EDT)

I Will Fail to Reject You

"... there is a fundamental disconnect between the kind of evidence that reassures human beings and the kind of evidence that the laws of statistics and science allow us to collect.

There is a joke among epidemiologists that encapsulates this disconnect: the marriage vow between two epidemiologists goes "I promise to always fail to reject you." There is a reason why this is funny (to at least some of us). ..."

... from page 248 of Denying to the Grave: Why we ignore the facts that will save us by Sara E Gorman & Jack M Gorman (2017).

Funny? As the parenthetical aside suggests, perhaps mainly to epidemiologists and statisticians (based on a non-representative sample of N = 5 taken yesterday). What's the joke referring to? It's about the non-intuitive process of testing a hypothesis against experimental data. In brief, thinking is hard – especially when doing rigorous analysis of noisy, incomplete samples. Most of the time the evidence doesn't tell us what we want to know, namely causal relationships; it tells us how likely we might have seen this result purely by chance.

And marriage is hard too!

_{(cf Medicine and Statistics (2010-11-13), Statistical Hypothesis Inference Testing (2013-12-01), P-Hacking (2014-09-20), Ten Common Statistical Mistakes (2019-10-14), ...) - ^z - 2024-04-27}

- Saturday, April 27, 2024 at 07:43:56 (EDT)

Mantra - Thoughts Are Not Words

... a comment by "jan Telakoman", from the discussion thread "Benefits of Toki Pona" (April 2024) ... and as translated into Toki Pona by "Markster94":

jan la, sona li nimi ala.
kala la, ale li telo ala.

... or in English:

To a person, knowledge is not words.
To a fish, everything is not water.

_{(cf This Is Water (2009-05-21), Zen, Words, and the World (2012-01-03), ...) - ^z - 2024-04-25}

- Thursday, April 25, 2024 at 07:32:54 (EDT)

It's Complicated

"The Most Important Thing I Teach My Students Isn’t on the Syllabus", a NYT op-ed essay by Frank Bruni, focuses on intellectual humility:

... I’m going to repeat one phrase more often than any other: “It’s complicated.” They’ll become familiar with that. They may even become bored with it. I’ll sometimes say it when we’re discussing the roots and branches of a social ill, the motivations of public (and private) actors and a whole lot else, and that’s because I’m standing before them not as an ambassador of certainty or a font of unassailable verities but as an emissary of doubt. I want to give them intelligent questions, not final answers. I want to teach them how much they have to learn — and how much they will always have to learn.

I’d been on the faculty of Duke University and delivering that spiel for more than two years before I realized that each component of it was about the same quality: humility. ... “it’s complicated” is a bulwark against arrogance, absolutism, purity, zeal.

_{(cf Wee Bit More Complicated (2007-08-29), Critical Thinking (2009-12-03), Riot Act (2010-07-07), Christensen on Humility (2010-09-03), Hanson on Humility (2013-03-28), Mantra - Love, Simplicity, Humility (2016-03-29), ...) - ^z - 2024-04-21}

- Sunday, April 21, 2024 at 08:03:21 (EDT)

Four Pillars of Investing

William J Bernstein's book The Four Pillars of Investing is a rational guide to lifetime financial success. His "Four Pillars" are:

1. Investment Theory
   • high returns can only come via high risks
   • successful stock picking and market timing are impossible
   • diversification across the stock market is the best way to maximize long-term returns
2. Investment History
   • over time, the stock market will experience irrational highs and lows
   • don't pour money into stocks when markets are booming and prices are high
   • increase purchases of widely diversified sets of stocks when market conditions seem bad and prices are low
3. Investment Psychology
   • however scary it may be, don't pull out of stocks when prices collapse
   • keep enough money in US Treasury securities and other low-risk investments to feel confidence for the long term
   • ignore data on short timescales (less than decades), and disbelieve apparent patterns in stock prices
4. Investment Business
   • ignore market advisors, broker recommendations, and financial "news"
   • pay close attention to mutual fund fees, and minimize them
   • "Stay the course"

Solid advice! And yes, the "Four Pillars" aren't independent of each other — but they do provide a framework for Bernstein's detailed explanations and analyses. Don't do anything crazy, don't trust people who are about to make money by telling you what to do, and don't underestimate risks. As Jonathan Clemens says in his Foreword, the future is uncertain and "... we get just one shot at making the financial journey from here to retirement — and we can't afford to fail."

_{(cf Money Wisdom (2001-05-20), Bubble Busters (2002-02-06), Harry Browne Rules of Financial Safety (2019-12-24), Shiller Price Earnings Ratio (2021-03-29), Bogleheads (2024-01-28), ...) - ^z - 2024-04-19}

- Friday, April 19, 2024 at 19:41:39 (EDT)

Classical Virtues

Calling all fans of lists and virtues! David French's NYT op-ed "The Atmosphere of the ‘Manosphere’ Is Toxic" offers three alternative visions of the Good Life:

• "... being a lifelong learner, with a commitment to practicing the daily habits that lead to character improvement, self-mastery, flourishing and growth."
• Benjamin Franklin’s list: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquillity, chastity, and humility
• Aristotle’s four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, temperance, and courage

_{(cf Ethical Fitness (2000-12-15), Franklin's Virtues (2008-05-23), Righteous Mind (2020-07-12), Various Virtues (2023-08-24), ... ) - ^z - 2024-04-14}

- Sunday, April 14, 2024 at 19:44:15 (EDT)

Middle Manager Magic

David Brooks in his NYT column "The Quiet Magic of Middle Managers" writes movingly about the foundations of "ethical leadership":

• Knowing that moral formation is part of the job. — "... if you help your people become the best versions of themselves, the results you seek will take care of themselves."
• Creating a moral ecology. —"... Morally healthy communities habituate people to behave in certain ways and make it easier to be good."
• Being hyperattentive. — "... The leaders we admire are paying close attention to those who work with them. They are not self-centered but cast the beam of their care on others, making them feel seen and lit up. ..."
• Generativity. — "... the capacity to guide and foster the next generation ... mentoring with respect, not condescension ... walking “with” and not doing “for.”"
• The absence of a heroic sense. — "... the willingness to do the uncelebrated work, day after day."
• Preserving the moral lens. — "... Ethical leaders push against the creeping pressures of utilitarianism, so that the people around them remember the ideals that drove them into their work in the first place."
• A posture of joy. — "... Ethical leaders communicate a joyfulness in what they do and attract followers in part by showing pleasure. ..."

_{(cf Ethical Fitness (2000-12-15), BuckMantras (2001-04-13), Principles of Ethical Power (2007-12-16), Ethical Issues Aside (2013-05-16), ...) - ^z - 2024-04-12}

- Friday, April 12, 2024 at 18:26:11 (EDT)

Your Place in the Universe

If Bill & Ted wrote a book about cosmology it might be Your Place in the Universe: Understanding Our Big, Messy Existence – provided whatever the silly slacker duo said was technically accurate, based on modern (2018) observational astronomy and theoretical astrophysics. Author Paul M Sutter, a professor at Ohio State University, spices his writing with wicked puns and parenthetical asides as he explains the Big Bang, stellar evolution, quantum fields, general relativity, and the ultimate fate of the universe. He's delightfully meticulous in his emphasis of the unknowns in our current understanding of the cosmos. From Sutter's bottom-line summary near the end of the book:

... I'll be the first to admit that this picture is a bit hard to swallow, but we should remember that, well, the universe doesn't care what we think about the issue, and it's the (extreme) logical conclusion if we're to take our most modern theories at face value.

Or maybe we're just wrong about all of it. It's not like it hasn't happened before.

We don't know if inflation is correct. We don't know how the rules of quantum mechanics can be extended to incomprehensible timescales. We don't know if the technology of entropy can be applied to the whole entire universe, let alone over the course of an exceedingly exponential number of years.

And don't even get me started on braneworld cosmologies or string theories or whatever the kids are calling it these days. The more hypothetical the physics, the more room for creative explorations of the end state (states?) of the universe.

Our knowledge of the universe at 10¹⁰⁰ years isn't much different from our knowledge at 10^-100 seconds: woefully incomplete. In both cases it's the energies involved. In the young cosmos, the temperatures are so high and pressures so extreme that the physics of the familiar are melded together into some strange chimera that eludes understanding. In the remote future, temperatures are so low and processes so agonizingly slow that the statistical rules that govern our daily lives lose their identity. In both cases the universe is extreme, exotic, and potentially unknowable. At its core, after centuries of searching, we don't know how the universe began or how it will end—or if those are even reasonable scientific questions to ponder.

But at least there is symmetry.

_{(cf Cherished Beliefs (2000-04-19), Universal Knowns (2002-06-13), Little Book of Cosmology (2023-03-31), Little Book of Aliens (2024-01-28), ...) - ^z - 2024-04-04}

- Thursday, April 04, 2024 at 07:16:54 (EDT)

Black Hole Blues

Janna Levin's book Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space is a history of the building of LIGO, the first gravitational wave observatory. It's readable and meticulous in its physics, and also artfully precise in the portraits it sketches of the primary participants behind the massive venture, a diverse set of scientists including Joe Weber, Robbie Vogt, Barry Barish, and "The Troika": Rai Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Ron Drever.

Bottom Line: scientists are human beings – insightful yet fallible, brilliant when not blind, charming and often petty. The search for gravitational waves was a huge challenge in multiple dimensions:

• theoretical — computing the parameters of never-before-seen cosmic sources and never-before-built apparatus
• technical — designing, fabricating, debugging, and running some of the most delicate devices ever imagined
• personal — forming alliances, smoothing ruffled feathers, and orchestrating teams of workers over decades
• financial — acquiring and investing the resources to actually make it all happen

Impressive – Black Hole Blues the book, as well as LIGO!

_{(re my personal involvement in estimating cosmic sources of gravitational waves as a graduate student of Kip Thorne in the late 1970s, cf Kip the Dragon (2000-03-25), Relativity plus Astrophysics (2000-03-29), Cherished Beliefs (2000-04-19), Pulsar Waves (2000-04-06), Spinning Sources (2000-04-11), Quantum Nondemolition (2000-02-05), Soft Outside Crunchy Center (2000-05-01); and see also Gravitational Waves - Thirty Years Later (2011-07-15), 2018-01-27 - Slow French News, 2021-05-20 - Conservation of Physics, ...) - ^z - 2024-03-25}

- Monday, March 25, 2024 at 17:26:11 (EDT)

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

"How to Stop Worrying and Start Living" is Dale Carnegie's 1948 book on developing peace of mind. It's long and fluffy, full of self-help anecdotes. Most of the advice is either blinding-obvious or easier-said-than-done exhortation. That's not bad – just a bit disappointing, perhaps. It's remedied by good Bottom Line summaries at the end of each chapter and section. Samples:

• Shut the iron doors on the past and future. Live in Day-tight Compartments.
• If you have a worry problem:
  1. Ask yourself, "What is the worst that can possibly happen?"
  2. Prepare to accept that if you have to.
  3. Then calmly proceed to improve on the worst.
• Worrying can hurt your health.
• When you have a problem that is causing you to worry:
  1. Get the facts.
  2. Analyze the facts.
  3. Arrive at a decision—and then act on that decision.
• Keep busy
• Don't fret about small things
• Consider the likelihood of bad things happening
• Cooperate with the inevitable
• "Don't try to saw sawdust"
• Think and act cheerfully

_{(cf How to Win Friends and Influence People (2008-05-17), ...) - ^z - 2024-03-24}

- Sunday, March 24, 2024 at 06:41:57 (EDT)

Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality

Physicist Frank Wilczek's 2021 book Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality is beautifully-written, technically precise, fast, and fun. It's deep and wide, practical and philosophical, objective and kind. Wilczek's "Ten Keys" are, briefly:

1. "There's plenty of space" — the universe is vast compared to humans, and humans are vast compared to the fundamental particles that comprise us: "The world is large, but we are not small. It is truer to say that there's plenty of space, whether we scale up or down."
2. "There's plenty of time" — the universe has been around vastly longer than humans have existed, and subatomic events happen on time scales vastly shorter than human perception
3. "There are very few ingredients" — the universe is built using only a handful of types of particles (photons, electrons, quarks, gluons, and a few more exotic ones) with only a handful of properties (mass, charge, spin) and only a handful of forces (electromagnetism, gravity, strong and weak nuclear forces)
4. "There are very few laws" — everything is explained by quantum fields, which produce particles
5. "There's plenty of matter and energy" — more than enough to meet all foreseeable human needs for billions of years
6. "Cosmic history is an open book" — there's excellent observational evidence, back to near the origin of the universe
7. "Complexity emerges" — simple physical laws and plausible initial conditions produce the extraordinarily complex universe that we live in today
8. "There's plenty more to see" — new technologies will continue to extend the boundaries of perception
9. "Mysteries remain" — not everything is understood about the universe, at both the smallest and the largest scales
10. "Complementarity is mind-expanding" — things viewed from multiple perspectives can exhibit diverse and seemingly-contradictory properties — "The world is simple and complex, logical and weird, beautiful and chaotic. Fundamental understanding does not resolve those dualities."

_{(cf Mr. Wizard (2008-01-15), Einstein on Self (2010-01-31), Circle of Concern (2012-07-18), ...) - ^z - 2024-03-18}

- Monday, March 18, 2024 at 20:47:06 (EDT)

Tzedakah

Tzedakah — as described by New York Times columnist Bret Stephens recently:

... In Hebrew, the word for charity, tzedakah, is also the word for righteousness. Tzedakah is not simply about giving money away. It’s also the obligation to help others learn to help themselves. ...

... and as summarized in the Wikipedia article, the "Eight Levels of Giving", starting with the best:

1. Giving an interest-free loan to a person in need; forming a partnership with a person in need; giving a grant to a person in need; finding a job for a person in need, so long as that loan, grant, partnership, or job results in the person no longer living by relying upon others.
2. Giving tzedakah anonymously to an unknown recipient via a person or public fund that is trustworthy, wise, and can perform acts of tzedakah with your money in a most impeccable fashion.
3. Giving tzedakah anonymously to a known recipient.
4. Giving tzedakah publicly to an unknown recipient.
5. Giving tzedakah before being asked.
6. Giving adequately after being asked.
7. Giving willingly, but inadequately.
8. Giving "in sadness" (giving out of pity) ...

... an excellent taxonomy!

_{(cf Concerning Charity (23003-12-22), Philanthropy and Charity (2010-03-28), ...) - ^z - 2024-03-04}

- Monday, March 04, 2024 at 08:09:15 (EST)

How Are You Doing

"How Are You, Really?" by Dana Smith (NY Times 28 Feb 2024) poses important questions to ask oneself about emotional health:

• Mood
  • How would you describe your mood most days?
  • Is it generally positive, generally negative or a mix?
  • Do you tend to feel more positive or negative emotions throughout the day?
• Self Talk
  • Is your inner monologue more self-critical or self-compassionate?
  • When trying something new, do you think you’re going to succeed, or are you sure you’re going to fail?
  • If you make a mistake, do you beat yourself up afterward, or do you give yourself the benefit of the doubt?
• Physical Health
  • How is your physical health, generally?
  • How often do you sleep for seven to nine hours a night?
  • How much physical activity do you do each week?
• Relationships
  • Do you feel like you have strong relationships with family, friends, neighbors or co-workers?
  • How often do you see people socially every week?
  • Do you have someone you could call in an emergency?
• Meaning and Purpose
  • Are there things in your life that give you a sense of meaning or purpose? (This could be through work, volunteering, hobbies, a religious community or caring for others.)
  • Do you have a sense of responsibility to something or someone other than yourself?
  • Do you feel that your contributions matter?
• Competency
  • Do you feel like there are things in your life that you’re good at?
  • Are there parts of your life that give you a sense of accomplishment?
  • Do you feel like you are generally a capable person?
• Flow
  • How often do you feel completely absorbed in what you’re doing?
  • Do you ever lose track of time while you’re working or doing a hobby?
  • Do you look forward to participating in those activities?
• Control and Autonomy
  • Do you feel like you are generally in control of your life?
  • Do you feel like you have autonomy and agency, at work and at home?
  • Do you make the major decisions about your life, or does someone else?
• Money and Resources
  • Do you have enough financial resources to support yourself and your family?
  • Do you ever have to worry about necessities, like food or housing?
  • Do you have the resources and support you need to do your job well?
• Fairness
  • Do you feel like the world is generally a fair place?
  • Are there systems that stymie you?
  • Do you feel like you have as many opportunities as the next person?
• Life Satisfaction
  • Generally speaking, how satisfied are you with your life?
  • Have you achieved, or are you on the path to achieve, most of the important things you wanted?
  • Are there major aspects of your life that you would change?

_{(cf Social Wealth (2005-05-18), The Meaning of Life (2008-07-24), This Is Water (2009-05-21), Models of Happiness (2012-01-05), Best Self (2013-12-14), Resilience Skills (2020-12-14), Retirement Mental Health Advice (2023-05-25), List of Questions to Generate Gratitude (2023-06-16), ...) - ^z - 2024-03-01}

- Friday, March 01, 2024 at 06:44:13 (EST)

Free Book Time

... thoughts about openness and choice and joy, via the metaphor of found books, in Sam Dolnick's essay "Discarded Gems" for the NY Times morning newsletter of 24 Feb 2024:

I have found a secret antidote to all that structure, a magic portal that has no clock or key. It is a neighborhood stoop, or rather, the discarded books that gather there. For you, maybe that translates into a bargain bin or a giveaway pile; wherever you can find books that are weathered, dog-eared and inscribed to someone else. They call out to me like porch lights to a bug.

Why do I love other people’s books? Because they carry no obligation and no expectations, unlike that novel weighing down my night stand, from a friend who insisted that I love it. Or that other one, that won an award I should care about. Or the one I’ve been halfway through for a year. If you’re not on guard, your free time can easily become someone else’s.

Found books, meanwhile, are blissfully dislocated from any hint of duty or “discourse.” They are deserted islands. Population: one.

_{(cf David Copperfield Book Escape (2006-05-15), Portrait of the Artist (2007-02-08), Dirda on Books (2013-09-17), ...) - ^z - 2024-02-24}

- Saturday, February 24, 2024 at 07:18:09 (EST)

Mantra - Community, Health, Adventure, Purpose

Be a good CHAP!

• Community
• Health
• Adventure
• Purpose

Help others, be physically fit, seek novelty, and make a meaningful life – especially as one gets older – as suggested by author Caroline Paul, in her book on "How Outdoor Adventure Improves Our Lives as We Age". As Paul notes, "... we need these aspects of adventure, like vitality, exhilaration, exploration and a little bit of danger and awe in our lives ..." – and her recommendation that people strive for "... health, novelty, community and purpose ...".

_{(see Caroline Paul in "Why Adventure Should Be Part Of Your Healthy Aging Plan" and "My Mother Got on a Bike. It Changed Her Life."; cf CompactLiving (2007-03-18), No Goal (2015-03-01), Mantra - Safety, Health, Insight, Peace (2015-10-30), Happier and Healthier (2020-07-08), Scandinavian Health (2021-05-24), Good Life (2023-01-15), Designing Your Life (2023-08-08), Recovery to Health (2023-09-18), ...) - ^z - 2024-02-18}

- Sunday, February 18, 2024 at 07:43:37 (EST)

Love for Imperfect Things

Haemin Sunim's book Love for Imperfect Things (2016, English translation with Deborah Smith in 2018) is gentle and kind, with lovely artwork (by Lisk Feng) and short essays followed by shorter prose-poetic aphorisms. Among the most touching-memorable bits:

... in Chapter 1, "Self-Care"

"Be good to yourself first, then to others."

and

It's okay not to be ranked first, second, or even third. Compare yourself not with others, but with the old you. Like yourself for making an honest effort. And continue to have faith in yourself.

... in Chapter 2, "Family"

If you love someone, rather than doing what you think they need, do what they themselves ask you to do. Though it comes from a good place, doing what you think someone needs can be the seed of wanting to control them, to make them a certain way to please yourself.

and

With a little planning, you can continue to enjoy your life while looking after someone close to you. Sacrificing yourself completely won't be good in the long run, not even for the person you're taking care of. Only if you yourself are reasonably well will you be able to look after someone properly.

and

If you want to help your child, your partner, or your friend, simply listen without offering advice or your own interpretation. And empathize, imagining that you yourself just had that experience. Don't turn away from difficulties, but endure them together. That is how you can be of greatest help.

and

If you give something your full attention, whatever it is, and examine it closely, it will come to attract your interest and care. Just as the face of your child is the most familiar and the loveliest thing in the world, constant attention will turn an ordinary object into an extraordinary one.

... and perhaps most important of all, "the quiet space between thoughts" as described in Chapter 7, "Enlightenment"

As my practice of mindful breathing deepens, the door of wisdom begins to open. People typically equate the mind with thoughts, as if thoughts are the only things there. However, once experiencing the peaceful silence that lies in the gap between one thought and the next, I see how a thought appears from that silence and also disappears into it by itself. Consequently, I don't attach too much importance to each thought but pay more attention to the quiet space in between thoughts. The space of silence then gradually expands, and I begin to feel that even a good thought is not as pleasant as the peaceful silence. Eventually I come to realize that this peaceful silence exists not only inside my body, but outside it as well, as it is impossible to pinpoint precisely where the silence begins and ends. The conceptual division between the self and the world collapses, and I come to realize that the silence is the mind's unshakable true nature as well as the unmanifested ground of the universe before its creation. I finally come to understand the Zen proverb "There is no difference whatsoever among the mind, the world, and the Buddha."

And there are jokes! — e.g., in Chapter 6, "Healing":

"Is it appropriate for a monk to use email?" "Sure, but only if there are no attachments!"

Sweet, thoughtful, and full of goodness!

_{(cf Coming to Our Senses (2009-01-01), Embracing Imperfection (2019-04-13), Tips for NQTs and Everybody Else (2020-06-24), Self-Care Matrix (2020-10-15), ...) - ^z - 2024-02-12}

- Monday, February 12, 2024 at 21:30:14 (EST)

Drops Form an Ocean

Tom Hanks, interviewed in 2022 ("Tom Hanks Explains It All") by David Marchese, discusses why individual efforts for justice are essential:

... What is the point of trying to do the right thing when it’s just a drop in the ocean? But what is an ocean but a multitude of drops? Things get better when a multitude of drops form an ocean and sweep things away. World War II: The Nazis were defeated, as was a Japanese empire, because enough good people said no. Civil rights came about because of, I think, an American belief that our responsibility as citizens is to work toward making a more perfect union. I don’t know if I’m answering your question but “There’s Hanks, he’s got a nostalgia for the way America used to be”: No. I have a fascination with the progress that America has made in all these incremental moments. That is an American sense of what is right and what is wrong. ...

_{(cf Human Nature (1999-12-05), Foam on the Ocean (2000-07-23), Constant Effort (2013-08-05), ...) - ^z - 2024-02-12}

- Monday, February 12, 2024 at 20:36:06 (EST)

Modesty and Good Manners

A beautiful description of the young Isaiah Berlin's style of debate, in Michael Bonavia's (1990) London Before I Forget:

... The rapid, even flow of his ideas, the succession of confident references to authors [of] whom most of his contemporaries had never heard, left them mildly stupefied. Yet there was no backlash, no resentment at these breathless marathons, because Berlin's essential modesty and good manners eliminated jealousy and disarmed hostility. ...

_{(as cited in Wikipedia's current biographical article about Sir Isaiah Berlin; cf Isaiah Berlin (2005-11-24), Systematic Overestimate (2009-01-30), Good Manners and Taiji (2014-04-03), Inimitable Sir Isaiah Berlin (2019-04-11), ...) - ^z - 2024-02-06}

- Tuesday, February 06, 2024 at 08:09:18 (EST)

Mental Landscape

Melissa Kirsch in her New York Times newsletter "The Morning" of 4 Feb 2024 muses about an Alastair Humphreys essay "A Single Small Map Is Enough For A Lifetime". British explorer-author Humphreys asked himself:

... With the climate in chaos, I can’t justify flying all over the globe for fun anymore, burning jet fuel and spewing carbon for selfies. It feels particularly inappropriate to write books that encourage everyone to get out and explore. If I love wild places so much, I’ve begun to wonder, am I willing to not visit them in order to help protect them?

And so he sought adventure closer to home:

What if this bog-standard corner of England was actually full of surprises if only I bothered to go out and look? Maybe the things I’ve chased from India to Iceland — adventure, nature, wildness, surprises, silence, perspective — were here too?

It's in the spirit, he said, of the late Terry Pratchett's philosophy, "The Importance of Being Amazed about Absolutely Everything". So Humphreys walked around the land within a seemingly-featureless square on a local map, and sees a "common reed":

... Family: grasses. Class: monocots. Kingdom: plants. Domain: eukaryotes. The sprawling immensity of life, too complex for me ever to grasp, had been ordered and tidied and simplified for this single plant in front of me: Phragmites australis.

There I stood on a damp path atop deep layers of late Mesozoic and Cenozoic sedimentary rocks, gawping at a common reeds, surrounded by multitudes. I could glimpse wonder and the connection between everyday observation and the curiosity that spins off into wider exploration of the cosmos. ...

This lead Humphreys further into the history of the area and its marvels. Melissa Kirsch concludes her morning commentary on the Awareness Enterprise with a leap into the mind:

A high-resolution map provides a satisfyingly orderly way to make sense of the environment, to catalog what’s here now and what was here before, to pay close attention to what’s going on in the world. Is there some kind of analog we could apply to our interior lives, territory that feels far more vast and ungoverned and in need of organization? Is there a way to shine a flashlight upon the disused bridleways of the mind?

Meditation suggests it might be possible, but the rapidity with which our internal terrain changes makes the possibility of any definitive guide all but impossible. This necessitates, I suppose, close attention. A commitment to visit and revisit our intimate landscapes, mapping and remapping the contours of home.

_{(cf What We Know (2006-08-15), Full Moon Metaphors (2007-10-29), Verlyn Klinkenborg (2008-07-11), Abject Reptile (2008-07-29), Specificity (2009-05-31), Turning Attention Inward (2011-04-17), Pay Attention (2013-12-05), Sound of a Wild Snail Eating (2015-10-24), Mantra - Attention, Attention, Attention (2017-05-27), Attention Means Attention (2019-09-18), ...) - ^z - 2024-02-04}

- Sunday, February 04, 2024 at 12:39:20 (EST)

Little Book of Aliens

Adam Frank is creative, kind, delightful, and precise (to borrow some of the words he uses to describe his teacher, Bruce Balick). His The Little Book of Aliens leaps into some of the biggest and most important (and least understood) questions that humanity faces. Are we alone in the universe? What other forms of life could there be? Where are they? How can we know? What would the existence (or nonexistence) of alien intelligences tell us about ourselves? Why are we here?

Little Book is great fun; there's at least one beer joke every chapter, along with silly self-deprecating asides. Prof Frank is accurate in his science and artful in his explanations. Chapter 7, for instance, offers a lovely nutshell-dense explanation of chemistry and biology. And as an example of Frank's style, consider this fragment from Chapter 6:

OK, now on to planetary atmospheres.

By analyzing starlight that has traversed an exoplanet's atmosphere, astronomers can nail down exactly what the atmosphere is made of. If there are absorption lines of water in the starlight's spectrum, then there's water vapor in the planet's atmosphere. If there are absorption lines of carbon dioxide, then there's carbon dioxide in the planet's atmosphere. This process is called atmospheric characterization. It is even more of a scientific miracle, and I'm not letting us move on until we properly genuflect at its awesomeness.

Sitting here on Earth, an astronomer can figure out exactly what's in a planet's atmosphere even if that planet is tens, hundreds, or thousands of light-years away. Thanks to this radical new method, we can see exactly what's floating around in the atmospheres of planets that may never, ever be visited by a human. It is totally insane and amazing that we Homo sapiens, basically just a bunch of hairless monkeys, have figured out how to probe distant alien atmospheres. If nothing else, this achievement should make you a little bit proud of us as a species in spite of all the other horrible stuff we do.

Now let's get back to the story.

Atmospheric characterization is a big deal by itself because ...

_{(cf Edge of the Universe (1999-06-08), Fast Forward (2002-02-21), Ron Bracewell (2004-01-21), What We Know (2006-08-15), Little Book of Cosmology (2023-03-31), ...) - ^z - 2024-01-28}

- Sunday, January 28, 2024 at 19:30:23 (EST)

Bogleheads

John Bogle (1929-2019) founded the Vanguard Group of low-cost mutual funds and popularized index funds for simple, efficient investing. His wisdom is shared by "Bogleheads", an informal group of investors. Their forum offers excellent advice to help optimize a life well-lived, with safety, comfort, compassion, and grace. In a nutshell:

• Prepare to invest
  • Live below your means
  • Develop a workable plan
  • Never bear too much or too little risk
  • Invest early and often
• Create a portfolio
  • Diversify
  • Invest with simplicity
  • Use index funds where possible
  • Minimize costs
  • Minimize taxes
• Maintain discipline
  • Never try to time the market
  • Stay the course

_{(cf Money Wisdom (2001-05-20), Bubble Busters (2002-02-06), Second Largest Investment (2005-08-09), Shiller Price Earnings Ratio (2021-03-29), ...) - ^z - 2024-01-28}

- Sunday, January 28, 2024 at 08:21:40 (EST)

Getting Unstuck

"Feeling Stuck? Here Are 5 Ways to Jumpstart Your Life." by Christina Caron suggests:

• Do a ‘friction audit’: ... by identifying the things that create obstacles and add complications or stress ... To get started, try asking: Am I repeating certain patterns that are unhelpful? Are there certain things I do regularly that I don’t enjoy? The next step is to either trim away or smooth out each friction point ...
• Reframe negative thoughts: ... [be aware of] “catastrophizing,” or thinking the worst will happen. Or [being] overly harsh with yourself [or] a case of “the shoulds,” as in: “I should have gotten more done at work,” even when you accomplished a good amount. ... Try to reframe your thinking. ... For example, instead of “I’m going to fail at this project,” you can think, “I’m going to do the best I can, and if I’m struggling I will ask for help.” Finally ... aim to evaluate your thoughts objectively: “I’m having this thought. What’s the evidence for it? And what’s the evidence against it?”
• Try ‘futurecasting’: ... Imagine a future life where you are unstuck. ... What does it look like? How do you feel? Then think about the specific steps that would help you work toward that vision. Write those steps down — ideally by hand. ... Do at least one step each day if you can — but be kind to yourself if you cannot. If you skip a day or two, just start again tomorrow.
• Share your goal: Telling other people about your plans can also be helpful. ... “Just the force of putting the words into the world now makes you believe — makes you commit.” ... The added benefit is that people may want to help you out.
• Do something meaningful: Spending time on activities that align with your values “moves you forward if you feel stuck in completely unrelated domains of your life.” ... “We need meaning more than ever when we’re feeling stuck.”

... good thoughts, especially the second and the fifth!

_{(cf My Business (1999-05-20), My Religion (2000-11-06), Purpose of Life (2009-01-28), Beginning Mindfulness (2013-09-22), The Heart of Buddhism (2015-01-10), On Good Form (2015-02-08), Equanimity and Magnanimity (2015-02-19), ...) - ^z - 2024-01-27}

- Saturday, January 27, 2024 at 21:48:56 (EST)

Awe and Wonder

Awe is big these days. The Los Angeles Times article "Feeling drained? Here’s how to rediscover your childlike wonder" by Julia Carmel summarizes half a dozen good ways to shrink self and expand the universe, with many citations to Dachel Keltner's book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life:

• Look for awe in the mundane — attend to the "eight wonders of life":
  • moral beauty (witnessing the virtue of others)
  • collective effervescence (often experienced in large groups like those at weddings, rallies or sporting events)
  • nature
  • music
  • visual design (beautiful buildings, paintings and the like)
  • spiritual and religious experiences
  • life and death
  • epiphanies
• Don't forget to appreciate wonder in unsurprising places
• Allow yourself to be more playful
• Fill your life with people who expand your universe
• Slow down to appreciate things you take for granted
• Create new daily rituals, like "awe walks"

... good suggestions, with some similarities to Meik Weiking's The Art of Making Memories ... and to comments by Ralph Waldo Emerson

_{(cf How Great Thou Art (2005-03-16), Seeing Nature (2005-07-19), Miracles and Wonders (2007-03-31), This Is Water (2009-05-21), Mantra - Help, Thanks, Wow (2015-01-06), Numinous (2020-08-09), Awe Walk (2020-10-04), Awesomeness (2023-02-25), Seek Out Awe (2023-07-01), Art of Making Memories (2024-01-17), ...) - ^z - 2024-01-18}

- Friday, January 19, 2024 at 17:57:10 (EST)

Art of Making Memories

The Art of Making Memories (2019) by Meik Wiking feels thin despite its thickness (288 pages, but small format and lots of pictures). Its advice is reasonable, and is summarized in the chapter titles and the two page cartoon "The Memory Manifesto: 8 Ingredients for Happy Memories" on pps 14-15:

• Harness the power of firsts. Seek out novel experiences and make days extraordinary.
• Make it multisensory. Go beyond sight. Memories can also have sounds, scents, touch and tastes.
• Invest attention. Treat your happy moments like you would your date. Pay attention to them!
• Create meaningful moments. Make meaningful moments memorable moments.
• Use the emotional highlighter pen. Get the blood flowing.
• Capture peaks and struggles. Milestones are memorable, but the struggle to reach one is unforgettable.
• Use stories to stay ahead of the forgetting curve. Share stories.
• Outsource memory. Write, photograph, record, collect.

_{(cf GeoMemory (2001-05-17), Plastic Memory (2001-07-10), Medallic Memories (2004-08-22), Fond Memories Remain (2008-11-25), Magazine Memories (2012-12-17), Thinking, Fast and Slow (2013-10-24), Mantra - Good Moments and Good Memories (2015-08-09), ...) - ^z - 2024-01-17}

- Wednesday, January 17, 2024 at 21:03:37 (EST)

Red Queen

The Red Queen, subtitled "Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature", by Matt Ridley (1993), is a general-audiences book about evolutionary biology. It focuses on the "Red Queen Hypothesis", a theory named for a line in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass: "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." Similarly Darwinian evolution, in competition with one's fellow creatures, often seems to be an escalating series of moves, countermeasures, and counter-countermeasures.

Ridley's book has many powerful ideas in it — along with occasional poor statistics, just-so stories, a somewhat parochial Northern European focus, and dramatic claims. He slips up, for instance, in Chapter 4:

... For example, merely by ceasing to breed once they have a boy—which those interested in dynastic succession might do—people would have male-biased sex ratios at birth. ...

_{(cf Light of Evolution (2006-04-24), Brief History of the Female Body (2023-10-29), History of Sex (2023-11-20), ...) - ^z - 2024-01-16}

- Tuesday, January 16, 2024 at 14:00:11 (EST)

How to End a Toxic Relationship

"How to end a toxic relationship" by Gunnur Karakurt and Rachel Croce has thoughtful suggestions about awareness and action when someone is in a bad situation. Their summary:

1. Learn to distinguish healthy from toxic relationships. A healthy relationship involves feeling accepted and secure. A toxic relationship causes chronic emotional and/or physical harm.
2. Take stock of your own relationship. If you have a nagging feeling that something is seriously off, it’s important that you slow down and look at what’s going on.
3. Know the red flags. These range from microaggressions to financial control to gaslighting to violence.
4. If you’re worried, ask these questions. If you think your relationship might be toxic, dig deeper by asking yourself questions such as ‘Who says “no” to what in your relationship?’ and ‘Does your partner seem too good to be true?’
5. Do something about your situation. If it’s safe to do so, speak up clearly and honestly about your concerns, develop coping strategies, and prepare to deal with feelings of guilt.
6. If you need to get out, create a safety plan. If your partner is volatile, take the risks seriously and plan your exit carefully. This includes having a safe place to go and stay.

_{(cf When Someone You Love Is Unhappy (2011-05-29), Relationship Repair (2022-03-09), You Are Brave (2022-03-30), ...) - ^z - 2024-01-14}

- Sunday, January 14, 2024 at 07:33:33 (EST)

How to Embrace Uncertainty

"How to embrace uncertainty" by Prof Arie Kruglanski is a useful discussion of psychological issues around ambiguity, openness, optimism, "cognitive closure", and a constellation of related topics. The author's summary:

1. Uncertain situations are inevitable. From waiting for a call back to anticipating important test results, everyone faces situations with uncertain outcomes. Not knowing what will happen can be challenging.
2. Uncertainty doesn’t have to be so daunting. Many people worry intensely about or try to escape uncertain situations. But developing a more optimistic outlook and learning to tolerate uncertainty can make these situations easier to face.
3. Be your own defence attorney. Reflecting on past failures or disappointments, identify reasons for each outcome that were unique to that situation — rather than reflecting a permanent problem.
4. Develop a ‘can do’ attitude. Think of situations with uncertain outcomes as challenges to be met — and list specific ways to overcome the difficulties they pose.
5. Devise alternatives. Reduce your emotional dependence on the outcomes of uncertain situations by listing alternative courses of action that you can take if the worst were to happen.
6. Practise mindfulness. Take some time to simply observe the thoughts and feelings that an uncertain situation brings up. Cultivate a more relaxed state of mind with regular mindfulness meditation.

_{(cf Optimist Creed (1999-04-16), Negative Thinking Patterns (2015-08-28), Power of Optimism (2016-02-23), More Optimism (2023-05-27), ...) - ^z - 2024-01-13}

- Saturday, January 13, 2024 at 16:53:27 (EST)

When We Cease to Understand the World

Madness ... mirrors ... murders ... and maybe a prose-poem about the mistakes and masterpieces of modern mathematics, physics, and chemistry? Benjamín Labatut's 2020 short novel When We Cease to Understand the World has elements of all those. It's a dreamlike depiction of historical and fictional events. Wonderful writing, confusing and cautionary. Scary in spots. Increasingly crude as it progresses into insanity. Amazingly accurate in its scientific sections. Better if it had been half as long?

_{(see reviews and commentary in the New York Times, the Guardian, the New Yorker; cf Quantum Nondemolition (2000-02-05), Power Distortion (2001-02-12), Prophetic Uncertainty Principle (2004-05-29), Schrodinger's Catastrophe (2008-01-26), Alternative Paths (2017-01-15), ...) - ^z - 2024-01-10}

- Wednesday, January 10, 2024 at 08:54:11 (EST)

Animals and Language

"The Animals Are Talking. What Does It Mean?" in the New York Times magazine (20 Sep 2023) by Sonia Shah features lovely illustrations by Denise Nestor. The article's theme is language — and whether (or to what extent) humans differ from (other) animals in communicating and thinking via symbolic abstraction.

Shah's summary of the subject:

But the rudimentary skills of mice suggested that the language-critical capacity might exist on a continuum, much like a submerged land bridge might indicate that two now-isolated continents were once connected. In recent years, an array of findings have also revealed an expansive nonhuman soundscape, including: turtles that produce and respond to sounds to coordinate the timing of their birth from inside their eggs; coral larvae that can hear the sounds of healthy reefs; and plants that can detect the sound of running water and the munching of insect predators. Researchers have found intention and meaning in this cacophony, such as the purposeful use of different sounds to convey information. They’ve theorized that one of the most confounding aspects of language, its rules-based internal structure, emerged from social drives common across a range of species.

With each discovery, the cognitive and moral divide between humanity and the rest of the animal world has eroded. For centuries, the linguistic utterances of Homo sapiens have been positioned as unique in nature, justifying our dominion over other species and shrouding the evolution of language in mystery. Now, experts in linguistics, biology and cognitive science suspect that components of language might be shared across species, illuminating the inner lives of animals in ways that could help stitch language into their evolutionary history — and our own.

Other creatures share key genes that enable human speech (e.g., FoxP2). They have common anatomical structures to generate and modulate air vibrations. They have similar neural circuits "to learn and produce novel sounds".

Squabbles continued over which components of language were shared with other species and which, if any, were exclusive to humans. Those included, among others, language’s intentionality, its system of combining signals, its ability to refer to external concepts and things separated by time and space and its power to generate an infinite number of expressions from a finite number of signals. But reflexive belief in language as an evolutionary anomaly started to dissolve. ...

Experiments with symbol-codes "... suggest that language’s mystical power — its ability to turn the noise of random signals into intelligible formulations — may have emerged from a humble trade-off: between simplicity, for ease of learning, and ... 'expressiveness,' for unambiguous communication."

And there's room for strange syntax:

Seems like we're all One on this funny planet ...

_{(cf Key to the Treasure (2004-04-23), Other Minds (2023-10-12), ...) - ^z - 2024-01-08}

- Monday, January 08, 2024 at 09:13:48 (EST)

Seven Keys to Longevity

Dana Smith's article "The Seven Keys to Longevity" summarizes great wisdom for health at any age:

1. Move more — keep your body active – "... The best exercise is any activity you enjoy doing and will stick with ..."
2. Eat more fruits and vegetables — and don't worry too much about weight
3. Get enough sleep — "... especially important for brain health ..."
4. Don’t smoke, and don’t drink too much either
5. Manage your chronic conditions
6. Prioritize your relationships — "... strong relationships are the biggest predictor of well-being ..."
7. Cultivate a positive mind-set

Bottom line:

If you had to pick one healthy practice for longevity, “do some version of physical activity,” Dr. Moore said. “If you can’t do that, then focus on being positive.”

_{(cf Optimist Creed (1999-04-16), Happier and Healthier (2020-07-08), Ikigai (2020-07-18), Awe Walk (2020-10-04), Scandinavian Health (2021-05-24), Retirement Mental Health Advice (2023-05-25), Longevity List (2023-09-17), ...) - ^z - 2024-01-04}

- Thursday, January 04, 2024 at 08:37:54 (EST)

Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation

Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation (2023) by George Musser is subtitled "Why Physicists are Studying Human Consciousness and AI to Unravel the Mysteries of the Universe". It's a bit first-person, a bit physics-arrogant, a bit anecdotal — and also appropriately skeptical about recent technical work on "the Hard Problem" of understanding how matter and mind can coexist. Along the way, there are marvelous asides, like this glimpse of how Karl Friston (professor at University College London) thinks about things:

... Friston's daily routine harnesses a psychiatrist's awareness of how brains work. Before bed, he reviews his notes on whatever problem he is working on, so that his subconscious can turn it over in his sleep. In the morning, he sits for two or three hours with his pipe, no paper, no phone, just thinking. Confining the problem to his working memory allows him to focus solely on its essence. Only when he has a solution does he pick up a pencil. "You really have to drill down deep to what you can solve," he said. ...

Musser discusses two leading theories of mind, "predictive coding" and "integrated information theory":

... Both theories are mathematically meaty, built on simple principles, and grand in scope—in a word, physics-y. Both view the brain as a special type of neural network and, like theories of neural networks in general, are based as much on physics as on biology. Both draw on physics concepts such as energy and causality. Both look beyond the particulars of human biology to seek the qualities of consciousness in other animals, in machines, in collectives, in inanimate matter—in anything, really. Both theories make debatable philosophical assumptions, but they align with most physicists' gut feeling that consciousness is a collective or emergent property.

Both, too, invert our usual conception of ourselves. It may seem to us that we have direct, unfiltered access to the wider world, but, in truth, each of us lives in a world of our own making. What we see and sense is a hallucination; it is actively generated by the brain. We recognize it as a hallucination only when it slips its leash—when the brain somehow fails to recalibrate our private world to match the evidence of our senses.

Both theories also have plenty of skeptics and could be utterly wrong. ...

Putting Ourselves Back also reviews quantum mechanical theories, cosmological speculations, and other physics-centric approaches to explaining consciousnessness. All likely incorrect; many likely to offer insight. Good!

_{(cf Man of Mystery (2004-08-12), Hard, Hard Problem (2021-03-21), Being You (2023-11-01), ...) - ^z - 2023-12-20}

- Wednesday, December 20, 2023 at 09:41:29 (EST)

The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye

A. S. Byatt's The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye: five fairy stories overflows with magical metaphorical mysteries. It's a delight to read, like Lewis Carroll, like Peter Beagle, like Richard Adams, like (early) Salman Rushdie. From the title novella, an example:

... She took it out of its wrappings — it was really very dusty, almost clay-encrusted — and carried it into the bathroom, where she turned on the mixer-tap in the basin, made the water warm, blood-heat, and held the bottle under the jet, turning it round and round. The glass became blue, threaded with opaque white canes, cobalt-blue, darkly bright, gleaming and wonderful. She turned it and turned it, rubbing the tenacious dust-spots with thumbs and fingers, and suddenly it gave a kind of warm leap in her hand, like a frog, like a still-beating heart in the hands of a surgeon. She gripped and clasped and steadied, and her own heart took a fierce, fast beat of apprehension, imagining blue glass splinters everywhere. But all that happened was that the stopper, with a faint glassy grinding, suddenly flew out of the neck of the flask and fell, tinkling but unbroken, into the basin. And out of the bottle in her hands came a swarming, an exhalation, a fast-moving dark stain which made a high-pitched buzzing sound and smelled of woodsmoke, of cinnamon, of sulphur, of something that might have been incense, of something that was not leather, but was? The dark cloud gathered and turned and flew in a great paisley or comma out of the bathroom. I am seeing things, thought Dr Perholt, following, and found she could not follow, for the bathroom door was blocked by what she slowly made out to be an enormous foot, a foot with five toes as high as she was, surmounted by yellow horny toenails, a foot encased in skin that was olive-coloured, laced with gold, like snakeskin, not scaly but somehow mailed. It was between transparent and solid. Gillian put out a hand. It was palpable, and very hot to the touch, not hot as a coal but considerably hotter than the water in which she had been washing the bottle. It was dry and slightly electric. A vein beat inside the ankle, a green-gold tube encasing an almost emerald liquid. ...

_{(cf Nimbus Halo Glory Aureole (2001-11-15), Oceans of Notions (2001-12-10), Ankh Micholi (2002-07-12), Last Unicorn (2007-05-18), Alice in Wonderland (2008-03-22), Winter's Tale (2014-10-24), Golem and Jinni (2016-06-10), ...) - ^z - 2023-12-19}

- Tuesday, December 19, 2023 at 15:56:55 (EST)

God, Human, Animal, Machine

The 2021 book God, Human, Animal, Machine by Meghan O'Gieblyn — subtitled "technology, metaphor, and the search for meaning" — is a heavily first-person extended musing about mind, religion, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. It's well-written, thoughtful, and raises excellent questions, especially about overly-simplistic transhumanism and other popular positions among folks who haven't looked far into the history of these topics. The newest New Idea isn't always (or even often) the Last Word! O'Gieblyn is fun to read, quirky, and full of things to argue with, or about.

_{(cf Thoughtful Metaphors (2000-11-08), Mind Children (2003-04-17), Limits of Introspection (2011-10-27), Conceptual Metaphor (2012-06-19), Being You (2023-11-01), ...) - ^z - 2023-12-19}

- Tuesday, December 19, 2023 at 06:10:12 (EST)

Scooter - by Ed Covannon

I had seen it done
on television.
An episode of “Little Rascals.”

A roller skate.
An orange crate.
A two-by-four.
A hammer.
Banging and, voila.

I found:
a roller skate,
an orange crate,
a two-by-four,
and a hammer.

I banged like crazy.

They had not shown
nails.

Film editing for comedy is not
the same as editing for instruction.

I could not hammer the pieces
into a scooter
without the nails.

I could only hammer the pieces
into a heap.

Watch for the absences
in every conversation, article, and essay.
In them hide tears.

_{by Edward Covannon, Creative Commons Attribution - ^z - 2023-12-15}

- Friday, December 15, 2023 at 12:04:05 (EST)

Wolves - by Ed Covannon

The wolves prowl.
Never far.
Two of them
A black male
A white female

They are not mine.
But I feed them
daily.
Even when the Arctic winds howl
and the sky is black
with blizzard.

As long as I am fearless,
only
as long as I am
fearless,
they accept
my gifts.

They come to me.
They leave.
This makes me smile.
Except for them,
I am alone.

The black
I can fight and perhaps
win.

The white
is always watching.

They will decide.

They will sense
what I cannot.

That it’s time.

_{by Edward Covannon, Creative Commons Attribution - ^z - 2023-12-15}

- Friday, December 15, 2023 at 12:02:34 (EST)

Treasures - by Ed Covannon

The village knew the invaders were coming.
They dug pits big as coffins...

Beneath the pits, they dug deeper holes,
Into these holes, they poured their treasures.

This being a village of magicians, the treasures were all enchanted.
The very earth seethed with their power.

They covered these deeper holes.
Above them, they placed plain, empty, wood coffins.

They left.

Every one.

Not a dog, cat, cow, horse, goat, pig or bird was left.
Every single one — gone.

The invaders came.
Happy, at first, at the silence.

At first, but as they marched, someone noticed there were as many coffins as invaders.
Just as many.

Not one more.
Not one less.

_{by Edward Covannon, Creative Commons Attribution - ^z - 2023-12-15}

- Friday, December 15, 2023 at 11:59:08 (EST)

Imagine a Poem - by Ed Covannon

imagine a poem
imagine it’s called “Yevtushenko”

imagine it’s in the form of a table
imagine columns

a null column and a null row
the row at the top and null columns separating all the columns for:

names - gender - gender behaviors - languages - beliefs - disabilities - races - interests - ages - cultures - countries - locations - …

imagine as many columns as you like
imagine as many rows as you like

imagine rules next
imagine a rule being you must draw horizontal lines through the cells in all the columns

this is not the poem
what you feel looking at the lines you’ve drawn is the poem

the poem is as small as one person
the poem is as big as the world

the poem is joy
the poem is grief

imagine another poem
imagine a column of all the things you’re feeling making the first poem

imagine a column of all the things you’ve felt
imagine a column of all the things you will feel

imagine a line through what you felt with each poem you create
imagine how you would feel looking at this line

imagine
imagine

_{by Edward Covannon, Creative Commons Attribution - ^z - 2023-12-15}

- Friday, December 15, 2023 at 11:52:12 (EST)

Three Prayers - by Ed Covannon

In the spirit of sharing a benediction before a special dinner:

Thanksgiving Prayer

O' holy and merciful i hope, Lord:

Please help all of us open our hearts and just be grateful for our family, friends, neighbors, country, and our world.

Lord, in whose sight all life is equal.
Amen

Christmas Prayer

O' holy and merciful i hope, Lord:

Please keep me from all forms of burnout.

Please make me smarter, wiser and more imaginative.

Open my heart to love and respect for everyone and closed to fury — except those who earn something different —

Please keep me from hopelessness and end times despair about the human race.
Remind me always that the decision is, and always will be, yours and yours alone,

Don’t let me forget that “change” is the law.

Keep me from being an asshole

Lord in whose sight all life is equal
Amen

New Year's Prayer

O' holy and merciful i hope, Lord:

Please, remind me that any way that honors and worships you is — honoring and worshipping you.

Help me remember that a smile and affability do not balance out my being an asshole other times.

Help me remember that incorporating my faith in government, though I believe it is the “True Faith,” only leads to offense and oppression.

Help me remember that those unlike me still have the same protected freedoms, liberties, and rights I enjoy — until they break the law.

Help me choose evidence-based decisions — and not cherry-pick the evidence.
Please keep reminding me that belief doesn’t fix cars or countries.

Give me strength to not waver from allegiance to God, duty, honor, country.

Lord, in whose eyes all life is equal.
Amen

_{by Edward Covannon, Creative Commons Attribution - ^z - 2023-12-15}

- Friday, December 15, 2023 at 11:44:59 (EST)

Emptiness, Hope, Silence, Humility

"The Mystical Catholic Tradition of Jon Fosse" is a fascinating discussion of themes in the writings of the 2023 Nobel Prize winner for literature. Author Christopher Beha describes Jon Fosse's work in terms of emptiness, hope, silence, and humility — e.g., this quote from Septology:

“… life isn’t something you can understand, and death isn’t either, actually to put it in other words it’s like in a weird way both life and death are things you can understand but not with thoughts …”

Beha concludes:

“… It may be that those who feel most powerfully the presence of God in their lives likewise feel most powerfully the impossibility of adequately capturing that presence in words. And it may be that those for whom God is not a symbol or a cudgel but a lived reality find this reality most mysterious. …”

Much to ponder in this.

_{(NYT gift-link; cf Tolerance and Pacifism (2001-10-08), Place of Conversion (2020-08-07), Michael Gerson, R.I.P. (2022-11-19), ... ) - ^z - 2023-12-09}

- Saturday, December 09, 2023 at 20:12:36 (EST)

Quiet and a Less Full Plate

... what a dear, wise, fragile friend suggested would do the most to help her ...

_{(cf Finding the Quiet (2009-12-05), Calm Technique (2011-05-07), Mantra - Without Effort, Analysis, or Expectation (2015-02-21), ...) - ^z - 2023-12-05}

- Tuesday, December 05, 2023 at 15:16:05 (EST)

Helped, Heard, or Hugged

The New York Times essay by Jancee Dunn, "When Someone You Love Is Upset, Ask This One Question", suggests that "Helped, Heard, or Hugged?" is a skillful way to characterize what somebody needs:

• thoughtful, solicited advice
• an empathetic listener
• physical reassurance

... since sometimes people want assistance in problem-solving, sometimes they need to vent, and sometimes they just crave a reminder that they are loved!

_{(cf Twenty Second Hugs (2023-08-15), ...) - ^z - 2023-12-01}

- Friday, December 01, 2023 at 12:46:14 (EST)

Book of Animal Ignorance

Trivia tidbits on a hundred species of beasts – that's what The Book of Animal Ignorance is about. It's by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson, who offer a couple of pages of factoids on creatures alphabetized from aardvark to worm. There are cute cartoons, sidebars, historical anecdotes, asides on husbandry, and lots of mildly risqué details of reproductive physiology and practices. Entertaining, light, well-written, fast, fun.

_{(cf Abject Reptile (2008-07-29), Rural Life (2009-08-26), Ayotochtli (2022-10-09), ...) - ^z - 2023-11-25}

- Saturday, November 25, 2023 at 20:55:02 (EST)

Perpetual Aspirations

• Pause 🐾
• Do Less, Better 🫙
• Say "Thank You!" 🙏
• Use fewer First Person pronouns & perspectives 🕊️
• Be Open, Soft, Balanced, Kind ⚖️
• Listen, Learn, Love ☯️

_{(cf Pause and Breathe (2014-07-25), Aspiration, not Expectation (2014-12-12), Learning to Pause (2015-08-10), Aspire without Attachment (2015-12-28), ...) - ^z - 2023-11-21}

- Tuesday, November 21, 2023 at 08:08:20 (EST)

History of Sex

Some fascinating books about zoology, the biological evolution of gender, comparative primate physiology, human culture and customs, sexual selection, sociobiology, and other aspects of life on this planet:

• The Seven Sexes: The Biology of Sex Determination (2013) — Elof Axel Carlson — a textbook of medical discovery by an entertaining, meticulous teacher who delves deep yet doesn't forget to include amusing asides. For instance, in Chapter 12:

... as well as more general musings about complexity and fragility:

Chapter 17:

Life can be resilient and vulnerable at the same time. We rejoice at stories of Olympic medalists who overcome severe injury or a childhood marked with tragedy. At the same time, nature can dish out genetic disorders resulting in births incompatible with life — severely limiting in organ function or leaving an adult with chronic illness. What makes life so vulnerable is the nature of genetic material. Something as simple as altering or removing one nucleotide pair out of some three billion present in a sperm or an egg can result in one of those debilitating or lethal genetic conditions. That doesn’t happen if one pulls a single brick out of a multistoried building. It won’t collapse no matter where that brick is removed. ...

• A brief history of the female body: an evolutionary look at how and why the female form came to be (2023) — Deena Emera — on natural selection and the forces that drive it
• Vagina obscura: an anatomical voyage (2023) — Rachel E Gross — a popular science exposition of sex and social context
• Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist (2022) — Frans de Waal — entertaining comparative zoology
• Curvology: The Origins and Power of Female Body Shape (2015) — David Bainbridge — evolutionary biology, psychology, and sociology

... what wonders exist on this Earth!

_{(cf Light of Evolution (2006-04-24), Darwin on the Face of Nature (2006-09-01), Darwin on the Tree of Life (2006-10-01), Darwin in Conclusion (2007-01-05), Herodotus Misunderstands Evolution (2007-06-02), Brief History of the Female Body (2023-10-29), ...) - ^z - 2023-11-20}

- Monday, November 20, 2023 at 20:57:08 (EST)

Financial Functions

How to think better about long-term budgetary issues? Maybe define a couple of simple financial functions. Let A = assets ($), I = income ($/year), and S = spending ($/year). Then:

• Burn Rate = A/(S-I) — the number of years it will take to deplete all resources
• Breakeven Point = (S-I)/S — the fractional cutback in spending to stabilize cash flow

Thus, one might estimate, "We can keep spending at our current rate for 5 years, after which we will have to cut back to 80%." That puts things into a more useful perspective, and clarifies the timescale and amount of thrift needed during temporary tough times. It doesn't consider changes over time in price levels, varying tax brackets, interest rates, etc — but for most purposes, in ordinary circumstances it gets into the right ballpark. Useful!

_{(cf Money, Mechanism, Meaning (2001-02-15), Money Wisdom (2001-05-20), No Retrenchment (2002-08-25), Improving Trend (2010-02-08), Shiller Price Earnings Ratio (2021-03-29), Harry Browne Rules of Financial Safety (2019-12-24), ...) - ^z - 2023-11-15}

- Wednesday, November 15, 2023 at 11:00:23 (EST)

Bookshops and Bonedust

Like Legends and Lattes, Travis Baldree's prequel novel Bookshops and Bonedust follows orc-warrior Viv as she grows and learns and becomes a better person. There's beautiful prose, plot twists aplenty, and characters who come alive. Echoes of Terry Pratchett ricochet through some scenes; others are delightfully unique. A bakery and a bookstore — along with monsters and wizards and a bit of obliquely hinted passion — what's not to like?

_{(cf Legends and Lattes (2023-04-05), ...) - ^z - 2023-11-10}

- Friday, November 10, 2023 at 22:45:03 (EST)

Wilmer Mills, R.I.P.

Poet Wilmer Mills died in 2011 of liver cancer. Poetry magazine editor Don Share eulogizes him in "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning":

Wil was many things: a carpenter, songwriter, husband and father, poet. He made things with his hands, and he made a life with his spirit. I met him because he made poems, and when I saw him last year in Tennessee I took it for granted that I would see him again, and hear his beautiful voice again – and that there would be more poems. ...

Wil was gentle and serious, but he was also – it helps to remember at this sad moment – a poetic wit in the most classical sense, capable of poems that are rueful and well-wrought, but also wry. The last poem of Wil's that we published, "Nigella," is a poem that, wherever I go, readers mention to me with great pleasure. ...

She minces squid and a marinated scallion,
Mixes rice with shrimp and olive paste. . . .
Hope for the English meal, though half Italian
With her jet black hair and her elastic waist.

Unlike the other television cooks,
She brings to life a lobster that was dead
With common spices, her exotic looks,
And recipes she dreamed about in bed.

In "A Gift for Adoration: Celebrating the life and words of poet Wilmer Mills" Jeff Hardin, a friend of Wil, reveals the secret origin of that poem:

Aware of my crush on Nigella Lawson, the cooking-show host, he delighted in writing a poem about her, just to poke fun at me, provoke a reaction. When the poem was published by Poetry magazine, I feared he might write a whole series of poems about my other crushes, beginning, of course, with Salma Hayek.

_{(cf Chronos and Kairos (2022-04-06), ...) - ^z - 2023-11-10}

- Friday, November 10, 2023 at 08:48:20 (EST)

On Borrowed Time

Wise thoughts, well stated: Anne Lamott's "It’s good to remember: We are all on borrowed time" (in the Washington Post, 30 Oct 2023). Some short samples:

So many indignities are involved in aging, and yet so many graces, too. The perfectionism that had run me ragged and has kept me scared and wired my whole life has abated. The idea of perfectionism at 60 is comical when, like me, you’ve worn non-matching black flats out on stage. In my experience, most of us age away from brain and ambition toward heart and soul, and we bathe in relief that things are not worse. When I was younger, I was fixated on looking good and impressing people and being so big in the world. By 60, I didn’t care nearly as much what people thought of me, mostly.

And anyway, you know by 60 that people are rarely thinking of you. They are thinking about their own finances, family problems and upper arms.

_{(cf Headlights and Decisions (1999-06-27), Help, Thanks, Wow (2013-02-25), ...) - ^z - 2023-11-09}

- Thursday, November 09, 2023 at 10:51:53 (EST)

Cheerful Toki Pona