A book fell off the shelf

Tags

All and Everything, Channing Club, Churchillized text, Gurdjieff, Identifying foolishness, New Year's Resolutions

Winston Churchillized line spacing for easy reading aloud.

As I was standing there at Dudley’s Bookstore, a book fell off the shelf.
 What could I do but stoop and pick it up?
  My reflex was to put it back where it came from.
That response
 comes from my self-training of sixty years
  to instantly do the right thing.
It was a New Year’s resolution
 made in 1968
  when I was studying Gurdjieff’s philosophy.
At that time I was living in Berkeley, California,
 and my closest friends were from the Channing Club.
That is a Unitarian college-age discussion group
 I had been a member of for several years at WSC.
Most of these grad students were reading G’s book
 ”All and Everything”
  and participating in a separate discussion group
   where they practiced self-observation.
I decided not to join that second group
 until I had read the book.
That turned out to be a BIG mistake, because
 the book is almost impossible to read.
The author G insists in the introduction that
 you be willing to read the book three times
  or put it down
   right away
    and walk away.
Because my friends spoke so highly of it
 I decided to read it the required three times.
  BIG mistake!
But it was a choice that made a huge impact on my life.
G wrote that we should read the book
 the first time
  like we would read any other book,
  and that we should read it the second time
   out loud,
    like this post is designed to be read.
We should only attempt to understand it
 on the third reading.
The problem was,
 and it would still be a problem for any reader today,
  it is nearly impossible to read the first time.
Well,
 I did follow G’s instructions, but
  it took me about six years
   to finish reading it the first time.
It only took about two years
 to read it the second time,
  and two months to read it the third time.
The reason it was so quick and easy
 to read it the third time
  is easy to say
   but impossible for you
    to understand
     without reading it.
The book is a pure comedy on the third reading!
It is filled with sarcasm,
 scorn and pity at the human situation.
It isn’t until the third reading
 that you realize you have been led
  down a path that seems
   perfectly logical and reasonable at first, but
    what is to be learned from
     each of the stories the third time is
      quite different from what was learned
       on the first reading.
On the first reading the people in the stories
 learned valuable life lessons
  and they applied those lessons
   to their daily lives.
On first reading, these lessons are promoted
 as valuable wisdom.
On the third reading, they are understood
 to be the wisdom of
  absolute fools.
Therein lies the comedy
 to be understood in the third reading,
a sardonic comedy, and
 perhaps it could be thought of as
  a cruel comedy.
But one comes out of the whole process
 a sadder and a wiser person
  because you learn to see human foolishness more clearly.
I never did join one of the G self-observation groups.
 but I feel that I am much better off
  for reading All and Everything three times as instructed
   and for not joining a group
It was my habit cultivated long ago
 to instantly do the right thing.
And I reflexively stooped over and
   picked up the book
    and put it back on the shelf.

The Gift of the Gab – David Crystal – book review

Tags

David Crystal, Public speeking, The Gift of the Gab, Winston Churchill

I am barely literate in English, compared to David Crystal and to review the acknowledged leading public linguist of England is clearly beyond my pay grade and uppity in the extreme. So I won’t attempt a critique, but just say how much I enjoyed having Debbie read this to me as my bedtime lullaby.

I have near zero experience in speaking to groups of people gathered together on some subject. Some classroom experience, yes, but that is easy and formalized by routine. David Crystal, in The Gift of the Gab, gives advice based on decades of personal experience on how to speak to specific groups and situations: introducing speakers, thanking speakers, presenting awards, receiving awards, toasts, weddings, political, debates, broadcasting, podcasts, impromptu, and more.

My personal group experience is in coffee shops, and that is always a free-for-all, with little formalized control. Now that I think of it, I wish Crystal had given some of his wisdom on how to talk in coffee shops, bars, street corners, at home, at dinner, dinner with friends, and lots of other daily speaking situations. How to butt in when others are talking too long, how to retreat gracefully when wrong about something, how to depart cordially from a venue. How to relate to panhandlers, policemen, café waitresses, and loads of everyday situations. Well, those situations are outside of the scope of this present book, and perhaps if he writes another one, those multitudes of social interactions will be given some consideration.

He illustrated a method of writing and speaking which I had never encountered. It was how Winston Churchill typed out his speeches. For example, his speech ending “If this British Empire and Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour’” is laid out in an indented style that helps clarify the intonation and verbal flow of the words. I liked that so much I wrote it out for yesterday’s blog post. The day before I wrote a short essay called, Just “Who will you be?” in that layout format. Today I read it to five writer-friends. They responded well to the various quips and subtleties that were written into the Churchillized text. Those subtleties are usually missed when reading from normally written text. Subtle intonations and emphasis make a huge difference in spoken presentations. Thank you David Crystal for showing me that technique.

It feels good to have a hearty response to a bit of writing from a group of writers.

Unprecedented by David Ray Griffin – book review

Tags

CO2 crisis, David Ray Griffin, Solutions to CO2 problems, Unprecedented

Unprecedented: Can Civilization Survive the CO2 Crisis?, by David Ray Griffin, is filled with important and well-documented information. The arguments are compelling and convincing to those already convinced. The blizzard of facts will be ignored by those who don’t want to admit that global warming is happening, or that human-introduced CO2 has any part in any problems. The physical problems are what the scientists are revealing in compelling ways, but the economic, social and personal problems are what make even modest solutions difficult and long-term human solutions impossible.

This book is refusing to face the real issue, the one that most of the pro-ecology books choose to ignore. That is, there are far too many people for the planet Earth to support for very long at the current rate of resource consumption. If humans were living and consuming Earth’s resources as they did back in 1825, we could continue as a species for a very long time. Back then there were only a billion people, living with only a little fossil fuel consumption. Now there are seven and a half billion of us, with many consuming vast amounts of fossil fuels both directly in our daily lives and indirectly in the consumption of things created with fossil fuels.

The unfortunate bias in the book is demonstrated by the fact that the words population and overpopulation don’t appear in the index. Human population was never discussed even though it is the present multitudes of humans that create the CO2 problem. But, there would be no problem if there were only a hundred million humans, and that’s a lot of individuals compared to the numbers of individuals of other species of our physical size. A hundred million is the global population about the time of the Classic Greek civilization, and they were getting along quite well, but it’s one-seventy-fifth of our current population.

The processes of nature will play out in the end and will bring us into alignment with that reality. Only time will tell what that will be, but stir in tens of thousands of hydrogen bombs in the control of contending humans, and the intervening events are obvious. This book ends on a positive note that coal, oil and gas as energy sources will soon be replaced by solar and wind, and that China and the US are beginning to move in that direction.

There is hope for humans for a few more years.

Change the Story Change the Future by D. Korten – book review

Tags

A financial robot seeks money!, human survival, People seek a good life., The reason for existence.

“The fact that we humans seem naturally drawn to know, learn, and create is a source of hope for our common future. We need not know where creation’s journey leads, or whether a final destination is even a meaningful concept. It is sufficient that we discern and celebrate its trajectory toward ever greater complexity, beauty, awareness, and possibility. Our reward for our contribution is the inherent joy of living and the thrill of participating in life’s quest to know, to reach beyond, and to become. Our future is ours to choose. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” That is the concluding statement in this fine book, and one which I really like. If you like that kind of sentiment I highly recommend this book.

Change the Story Change the Future by David C. Korten is a book that creates a path that leads us away from a culture based on money to one with a higher value, maximizing the life force of living beings. He balances bottom-line economics based solely on money against making our world a bountiful place for human beings and all other living creatures. He shows us how our current world is owned and operated by financial robots that move vast amounts of money around at the speed of light. That may make sense for investors trying to game the system, but it is totally devoid of any human motive for making this a better world for humans. It, without the slightest whim of conscience, will destroy anything to make a tiny profit. Money is everything to the robot, nothing else matters! Your life means nothing to the robot if it can show a penny of profit. Korten proposes a Living Economy that:

• maintains a co-productive balance between humans and nature;
• provides a healthy, meaningful livelihood for all based on a just and equitable sharing of real wealth; and
• gives every person a voice in decisions on which their well-being and that of the whole depend.

The book lays out his general plan for implementing the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF RIGHTS OF MOTHER EARTH.

The plan is for creating an idyllic living situation for everyone, but it seems to be based on a technology more in agreement with the lifestyle of the Classic Greeks than our world. That old way might be a more human way to live, but the world population back then was only a hundred million, and now it is 7.5 billion. That is 1/75th our present population, and that would mean 7.4 billion people would have to go. One of the characteristics of the system based on money is it functions to grow the population of consumers; thus it functionally seeks to feed more people. Of course there are limits to how many people the earth can support, and support well, but the financial robot isn’t concerned with that. Just –

MAKE MONEY !!!

This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin – book review

Tags

Daniel J. Levitin, Evolutionary theory, Steven Pinker, THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC, Why music evolved

This is essential reading for people who listen to music, and that means almost everyone. It gives considerable scholarly detail on what music consists of, as understood by a professor of music presently at McGill University. It is authoritative and meaningful. Get the book at Amazon – THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC by Daniel J. Levitin. Here is a 16-minute video of Levitin that gives a quick introduction with some suggestions of how music can help your life.

The last chapter of the book brings up a scholarly argument based on some comments made in a lecture on the evolutionary origins of music given at MIT in 1997 by the Harvard linguist Steven Pinker. Those twenty-year-old comments asserted, “The cognitive mechanisms that we, as cognitive psychologists and cognitive scientists, study, mechanisms such as memory, attention, categorization, and decision-making, all have a clear evolutionary purpose.” He said that “Music is auditory cheesecake,” “It just happens to tickle several important parts of the brain in a highly pleasurable way, as cheesecake tickles the palate.” Those were fighting words for scientists, and sure enough they rose to the challenge. The last twenty pages of this book prove that music does have an evolutionarily valid reason for existing. The concluding sentences cap Levitin’s contention that music has an evolutionary foundation. “As a tool for activation of specific thoughts, music is not as good as language. As a tool for arousing feelings and emotions, music is better than language. The combination of the two—as best exemplified in a love song—is the best courtship display of all.”

A psychedelic day.

Tags

Heavenly Blue morning glory seeds, LSD, Pot, UC Berkeley

It hasn’t been since my fifty years back in Berkeley, that I have heard such an impassioned talk on psychedelics. I attended as a sober person the very first LSD party back in Berkeley, in 1962, before the Free Speech Movement, anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, the Berkeley Barb newspaper, and the People’s Park conflicts.

A close friend of mine, Charlie Brown Artman, had purchased a large bag of Heavenly Blue morning-glory seeds, and it was said that eating two rounded tablespoonfuls of these seeds would get the famous hallucinations. The party was attended by about twenty Cal Berkeley students at someone’s private home, after a folk-dance event on campus. I don’t know for sure if anyone got high, but they were acting strange for a couple of hours, and most of them got sick to the stomach and barfed the seeds about a half hour after eating them. Not long after this event real LSD in the form of blue sugar cubes came on the scene, and by about 1964 pot was becoming common. My dates may be a little soft, because I wasn’t really into drugs of any sort, even beer, but I was and still am addicted to cigarettes, although I quit for over a month many times. I finally admitted I was an addict and had to totally avoid smoking for thirty years, because after a single cigarette my experience was that I was back up to a pack a day in a month. I do drink alcohol, but only a single drink at an event, and never more than two per day. The science is in that one or two drinks a day of alcohol is associated with longer life expectancy than no drinks or more than three.

It is with that background experience that I listened to an hour lecture today about the virtues of psychedelics. Quite frankly I tried hard to be open-minded, but my mind automatically quibbled at many fine points. There were about thirty people at the lecture and most appeared to be receptive, and the after-lecture questions were reasonable and polite. There were two individuals who had had deadly events associated with psychedelics, when their high friends did incredibly stupid things and got killed. I spoke briefly to the speaker after the lecture and supported and encouraged her quest for higher truths.

I support people in their life quests, but personally I know that I am an outlier psychologically, so I do my best to keep my brain straight. One of my guiding principles in life is:

“Not to be smart, but to avoid being stupid.”

Bend, Oregon, is a wonderful place to own a house.

Tags

Home ownership in Bend, Rentals in Bend Oregon, To rent or to own a home

In this best of all possible worlds, Bend, Oregon, is certainly among the best of the best places to live on Earth. Great weather year around provides a wonderland of outdoor activities, and friendly people give this small city a safe hometown feel. There are many activities for tourists, many of whom love our city and say they want to move here. Also, the open political situation makes it possible for the voting public to make really stupid decisions and refuse to spend the money to fill our vast number of potholes in the streets. We will live through this okay because there are reserves, but it is a symbol of things being so good here we don’t have to do anything, even fill potholes.

The real problem is home rentals. Because our city is so desirable, there are large numbers of people moving in, and rental homes and apartments have vanished. Because of the potential for higher rents, the owners of rental properties are evicting current occupants, so they can upgrade the premises and charge much higher rents. Apparently all that is legal, but about eight of my friends have been or are being squeezed out of their living space—and there is no place for them to go, except away. One friend moved all the way to London, England, another to San Francisco. Many people in nearby Prineville are living in tents, at least for the summer, while building a massive Google server farm. Come winter and their housing needs will place even more stress on the current rental situation.

Five years ago, Bend was a relatively cheap place to live and to buy a house, but according to the Zillow.com housing site the price of homes has doubled, and so too the rentals. If you wholly own a house that’s great, especially if you want to sell it, but it is terrible for renters. People who were getting by just fine five years ago on their income are now being priced out. Also, there is a new University campus now under construction that will attract thousands of students next year, and where will they live? There are no dormitories being built at present. Fortunately for us, we were ahead of the boom and bought at a low price. Of course the prices of homes back in the Bay Area, where I came from, are much higher, so people who own property there can sell it, move to Bend, and have money left over. My personal opinion is that home prices will rise to match the Bay Area’s as people there retire and seek a quieter life, so even though prices are double what they were five years ago, now is still a good time to buy a home.

For the time being Bend is a wonderful place to own and a terrible place to rent.

 

 

Perhaps a new look is needed for this Probaway site.

Tags

Charles Scamahorn's Darwin Award, Darwin Awards, Reanalysis of Probaway postings, Wendy Northcutt

There is little interest in nearly all of the 3171 posts on this Probaway site. The only consistent interest has been in health posts, such as:

How to do a deep cough to clear inhaled food.
Colonoscopy – and how to enjoy drinking the foul tasting purging fluids.
How to stop broken ribs from hurting when you sneeze.
Migraine cure – an aura event appeared to respond to an ice pack and tapping.
A migraine prodrome aura cure with a strange eye exercise.
A trick for opening a ziplock bag.
A cure for the common cold using 105° F baths.
Spider bites can be fun to watch.
Preventing Alveolar osteitis, a dry socket, after losing a tooth
Light from many lamps – Quotes on mature actions

These are today’s top ten favorites, and they are almost all medical observations I have made. I have put in a thousand times the effort on other more important subjects, but there are nearly zero hits on them. These medical things worked for me when I had some particular problem, and these posts have no more scientific backing than that they worked for me.

It’s time that a reanalysis of the subject matter in this blog is in order, and perhaps a new photo too. Here is an old photograph that might be appropriate. It illustrates clearly that Wendy Northcutt, the creator of the Darwin Awards, was easily convinced back in 2009 that I needed one. As far as I know this is the only one she has given to anyone who wasn’t out of the gene pool because of their foolish behavior. A few minutes talking to me was enough. From this photo you can see why.

Charles Scamahorn of Earthark getting a Darwin Award sticker from Wendy Northcutt

To understand why the creator of The Darwin Awards gave me one while I’m still alive, go to Darwin Awards are coming humanity’s way. Or alternatively, you can read my 3,171 posts, or more easily click the dates along the top of every post for a summary.

Charles Scamahorn getting a prehumous Darwin Award from their creator, Wendy Northcutt.

Perhaps this freaky photo will be more attractive to people than the more sane looking ones.

The Power Paradox by Dacher Keltner – book review

Tags

Dacher Keltner, Paradox doesn't help., Paradox is confusing, The Power Paradox

“At its core, power is about altering the states of other people.” (page 27) That idea is linked to some of my favorite people like Stephen Colbert or the Saturday Night Live cast. Those entertainers are influencing our attitudes and perceptions and responses to current reality. People like Presidents Obama and Putin and members of Congress are legally controlling our realities.

I had a lot of problems with this book because it presents obvious contradictions and then asserts that I don’t understand, because I guess I don’t understand the paradox behind the cognitive dissonance. It’s some kind of doublethink. The author lived in a disenfranchised neighborhood during his high-school years and found the people to have the traits of underclass people. But, the traits he describes are contradictions, such as these people were kind, open-hearted, with an open door, come to supper with us on one page and close-minded, alcoholics, agoraphobic and secretive, angry, physically combative people a few pages later. Whereas successful people he claims were lying, cheating, destructive people who rose to positions of power because they appeared to be aware of their power and pretended to be humble, friendly and helpful towards others, and respectful too, but they were in fact hypocrites. He then covers over the contradictions by calling it a paradox. … which I am too dumb to understand.

Being a scientist at UC Berkeley, he must be held to some standards of objective scientific method, but his experiments were on small numbers of people, mostly students under artificial conditions. The experiments may be pointers to some newer and better ideas, but I was disappointed with this book, and don’t want to waste any more time on it, even writing this brief review. If you want some sound research and operating principles read Good to Great by Jim Collins.

The book The Power Paradox was too paradoxical for me.

Algorithms to Live By – by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

Tags

Algorithms to Live By, Brian Christian, Get it done!, Suggestion based on computer strategies, Tom Griffiths

How to live your life based on what works is at the core of wisdom, and it makes sense that any source of what works should be consulted. Algorithms to Live By explores the human world from the experience derived from computers and mathematical algorithms. Here is a sampling of the strategies found in this book.

Any human activity has an element of random risk that can affect the outcome, and methods are developed in this book that put constraints on the risks. When you have a good understanding of the risks and their consequences you can make decisions that are more likely to bring about desirable outcomes. When in a given situation the risks and rewards are high, and you decide in favor of taking the risk it makes sense to act in such a way that losing the bet doesn’t take you totally out. “Even the best strategy sometimes yields bad results—which is why computer scientists take care to distinguish between ‘process’ and ‘outcome.’ If you followed the best possible process, then you’ve done all you can, and you shouldn’t blame yourself if things didn’t go your way.”

It’s easy to become fixated on outcomes, but processes are what we have control over.  The objectively right act is the one which will probably be the most fortunate, it’s the wisest act. It’s computational Stoicism. But sometimes it’s a waste of time to find a better solution to a problem when a workable one will get the job done quicker. Sometimes a problem is just too difficult to cope with, but we can complete an easier one that is okay. If we know the limits of acceptable, then do an acceptable job promptly, and then buff up the results later if needed. Good enough is good enough if done on time, and perfect is not good enough if it’s done too late, or not at all.

Many, probably most, human problems have so many complex variables that it impossible to produce a best answer, in part because it is impossible to know exactly how to please another human being. Offering them a few choices constrains the problem and makes finding an acceptable overlap easier. Often we can make our problems mentally easier without disturbing the social balance. In most cases the best solution to a problem is the one that can be done most quickly, and time is a problem that we can usually work with. Often the quickest way is simply to get started now. That’s what the Brits call muddling through, and it usually gets the job done.

We are usually better off trading off the costs of error against the costs of delay. Get it done!