When Joan Baez recorded that song, the fear was that the testing of nuclear weapons was releasing so much radioactivity into the atmosphere that living things (including humans) would be adversely affected. We don’t yet know, of course, the degree to which living things might have been (or are being) influenced by the radioactivity, but—so far, at least—we haven’t had any major biological disasters (that we know of). The current fears about the climate are based primarily on what has been global climate change” or Global Warming And it certainly seems as though our climate has been . . . → Read More: What Have We Done to the Rain?
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 Comments are closed  Blog  atmosphere, California, centuries, climate change, climatologists, cold weather, College of Wooster, dinosaurs, Florida, furnace, global mean temperature, global systems, grandchildren, Ice Age, Joan Baez, large systems, life on earth, living things, Michigan, Midwest, nuclear weapons, October, Ohio, planet Earth, radioactivity, summer, summers, temperatures, the University of Redlands, University of Florida, University of Illinois, Western Michigan University, What Have They Done to the Rain, window fan, windows, winter This is Reality? I am old enough to remember when the U.S. government was being run by adults. That was also true for most of the governments in the so-called civilized world—we had International differences of opinion about forms of government and territorial concerns. Most of us agreed with some of them and disagreed with others, but we were fairly certain that most countries were making decisions about government by relatively rational means, with military conflict being a last resort. Lewis Carroll’s classic, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, describes an alternative universe in which nothing is what it seems. Alice had . . . → Read More: Down the Rabbit Hole (Redux) Comments are closed Blog China, climate, climate change, corruption, Democrats, dinosaurs, Eisenhower, elections, enemy, environment, gerrymandering, government, humans, insects, Lewis Carrol, lions, Lord Acton, make the rich richer, mammals, monarchy, North Korea, oceans, plastic, Pogo, politics, power corrupts, rabbit hole, Republican Party, Russia, the few and the many, vote, voting, Walt Kelly As everyone who ever read 1984 knows, George Orwell understood the importance of truth. In these times of Trump, it is worth revisiting what Orwell had to say about societies where “truth” is what the government says it is. For some relevant quotations, see George Orwell on truth. Verifiable honesty on the part of politicians is rare. I am old enough to remember . . . → Read More: 1984 Redux Comments are closed Blog 1960s, 1984, ancestors, Apian Way, Civil Rights, climate change, crucifixion, fossil fuels, George Bush, George Orwell, gerrymandering, gladiator, global mean temperature, global warming, government, political purpose, protests, resistance is futile, Richard Nixon, rising sea levels, Rome, sit-ins, Spartacis, Tennyson, The Borg, Trump, truth, Ulysses, War in Vietnam All major human conflicts are essentially what Jonathan Swift called the war between the “Big Endians” and the “Little Endians” in Gulliver’s Travels. In Swift’s novel, Lilliput and Blefuscu are island nations ruled by emperors. Those from Lilliput broke boiled eggs on the larger end, while those from Blefuscu broke their’s on the smaller end. Swift’s readers at the time would have recognized that his metaphor suggested that the British political parties at the time, the Whigs and Torys, were fighting a war based on minuscule and inconsequential differences. That appears to be a common theme in human history: Most . . . → Read More: The Faces of Humanity Comments are closed Blog animals, Ark, begats, Buddhists, Catholics, city-states, climate change, Denisovans, evolution, global warming, Gulliver's Travels, history, human conflicts, humanity, humans, In Memoriam A.H.H., Jonathan Swift, last straw, life force, metaphor, Neanderthals, Noah, oral transmission, original face, political parties, pollution, Protestants, record keeping, red in tooth and claw, religious war, Tennyson, tribes, war, written records, Zen Koan The original impetus for this article was the North Carolina Bathroom Bill. I am writing this from the perspective of a male who has been sharing bathrooms with women all my life—not always at the same time, of course, but most of the time, people use bathrooms one at a time. There are exceptions, of course. Public bathrooms (airports, highway rest stops, restaurants, and other public places). If you have ever flown anywhere with a woman, you know that when people exit the plane, men enter the men’s room, take care of business, and exit. In all likelihood, the female . . . → Read More: Stuff That’s On My Mind Comments are closed Blog Ally McBreal, American way of life, Chinese Revolution, Christian metaphors, clean air, clean water, climate change, conservation, conservatives, cutting apricots, democracy, education, Eisenhower, environment, European invasion, fear, food production, fracking, French revolution, Gangs of New York, GOP, Interstate Highway System, Irish, Italians, Julian Barnes, LGBTQ, literalists, metaphorical truth, Mexicans, Noah's flood, North Carolina bathroom bill, Old Testament, postmodernist, Rachel Dolezel, redwoods, Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, Russian revolution, sharing bathrooms, the environment, the less you fear, the more you know, Trans-Blackness, Unisex bathrooms, wildlife By now, you undoubtedly know about the devastating earthquake in Nepal. You may not have heard, however, about the earthquake in SW Michigan. Earthquakes come in all sizes, from the huge and deadly to the minor shake-ups. Michigan’s earthquake was a minor shake-up. When I was growing up in California, we had numerous minor quakes. Even though they always came as a surprise, we learned to recognize them for what they were. After I had grown up and left, California experienced at least two serious quakes with extensive damage and some deaths, one in northern California and one in southern . . . → Read More: Earthquakes Comments are closed Blog airplanes, Aldous Huxley, Alexander the Great, Amish, assimilation, automobiles, bats, bees, belief systems, Big Enders, birds, Brave New World, butterflies, California, carbon paper, Catholics, Chiffon margarine, climate change, Denisovans, drought, earth, earthquake, electronic communication, elimination, evolution, floods, forest and trees, genetic modification, Genghis Khan, geology, GMOs, God, GPS, Gulliver's Travels, herbicides, horses, Islam, Jonathan Swift, Julius Caesar, letters, Life, Little Enders, long distance, Mother Nature, mules, natural disasters, Nature, Neanderthals, Nepal, news, news weeklies, newspapers, northern California, pesticides, phone calls, plate tectonics, Protestants, radio, rear-view cameras, red in tooth and claw, seatbelts, Shia, southern California, Sunni, survival, SW Michigan, Tennyson, tornadoes, trains, tribes, TV, typewriters, volcanic activity, volcanoes, wagons, Western U.S. An old story whose origins are unknown to Google is about a relatively newlywed couple who wanted to divide chores evenly having weekly arguments about whose turn it was to mow the lawn. Other household tasks weren’t a problem. The husband had his responsibilities, the wife had hers, and each was comfortable with the assigned tasks with the exception of lawn mowing. They had agreed to take turns but had trouble tracking whose turn it was from week to week. After months of arguing about whose turn it was to mow the lawn, the wife blurted out, “In my family, . . . → Read More: In My Family… Comments are closed Blog air pollution, behavior, beliefs, Christel Nani, climate change, Copernicus, Crimea, disease, Elijah, English, Europe, family, fish, follow the money, following one's path, French, french fries, Galileo, global warming, hammer, heliocentric universe, homeopathic, Hundred Years War, income inequality, Joan of Arc, let there be peace on earth, medicine, nail, Nani, pizza, Pope, poverty, profit, remedies, right and wrong, river, Russa, Sacred Choices, school lunches, settled science, Shiites, States, still small voice, Sunnis, surgeons, surgery, tribes, Ukraine, vaccinations, vaccines, vegetables, war, warfare, water pollution, wealth In some ways this blog entry ties back to my previous posts on Choice Points: “Forks in the Road” and Evidence Procedures. One of the things I have been noticing about recent political debates is how often people, and perhaps especially politicians, seem to be absolutely sure of so many things. Bell Curve In statistical terms, when we measure most populations on most scales (such as height, weight, IQ, education, age at death, etc.) the result is the familiar bell shape of Pareto’s Law. It make sense: Some people are really tall, some are really short, and . . . → Read More: Yes, No, or It Depends? Comments are closed Blog absolutist, advanced civilization, age of the earth, antibiotics, bacteria, bell curve, bimodal distribution, burning issues, certainty, choice, choice points, climate change, complexities, double down, evidence, evidence procedures, extremes, failure, forks in the road, gambling, genetically modified organisms, GMO, ideas, insecticides, investment, modern life, new, NLP, opinions, Pareto, Pareto's Law, pesticides, possibilities, question, Richard Bandler, solutions, statistics, success In NLP, one of the central Metamodel questions is, “How do you know?” An honest answer to the question provides information about a person’s “model of the world,” which is essentially a “reality strategy”—the way people decide what’s real. In most cases, what we think of as “real” is more accurately a “belief,” in some cases with very little in the way of supporting evidence. Most beliefs begin, of course, with some evidence in the external environment. Through the natural processes of deletion, distortion, and generalization, beliefs that have a logical beginning can become increasingly distorted over time. One of . . . → Read More: Evidence Procedures Comments are closed Blog Africa, Amish, behavior, belief, belief systems, beliefs, Bible, breasts, cancer, cancerous, change, Christian, climate change, Copernicus, disasters, drought, economic policy, economics, Europe, evidence, evidence procedure, evolution, false positives, flood, floods, follow the money, food, fossil fuels, fuel, Galileo, geophysical, global warming, government, Greece, health care, history, hockey stick, human activity, human influence, interconnection, long-term, mammography, metamodel, Mideast, perspective, prosperity, PSA, PSA test, public education, public schools, real, reality, regulation, relief, Richard Bandler, risk, scarcity, science, scientists, short-term, Spain, strategy, survival, tax policy, technology, the world, thermography, time, U.S., X-ray In a recent article, Spencer Critchley discussed the difficulties a number of “conservative” Republicans are having coping with the complexities of the modern world. The part of his essay that caught my attention is the following: The truth, as usual, is complex. But complexity is what the right-wing historical revisionists don’t like. They prefer to reduce it to binary choices of right-wrong, good-evil. We see this on the extreme left, too, where some argue that because the founders did not extend full rights to slaves, women or Native-Americans, they were no better than any other white, male oppressors. For . . . → Read More: Coping with Complexity Comments are closed Blog argue, arguing, binary choices right/wrong, climate change, complexities, complexity, conservative, Critchley, debate, economics, economy, evolution, Fiorest Gump, fundamentalists, good/evil, intelligence, Islam, Islamic fundamentalists, Korzybski, macro-economics, mental maps, modern world, NY Times, Paul Krugman, reality, Republicans, Richard Bandler, sanity, science, slaves, territory |
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