Don’t most of us have trouble taking advice?
 
Dava Sobel tells the story of the British navy’s loss of ships and 2,000 sailors when they struck the rocks of the Scilly Isles on October 22, 1707.* The disaster, Sobel writes, could have been avoided had Sir Clowdisley and Admiral Shovell listened to an ordinary seaman who warned them that they were off course. Because only officers could address navigation issues, Shovell hanged the “impudent” man, ignoring his warnings that could have saved the fleet. Could there be a more blatant example of an officious bureaucracy failing because of its rigid structure?
 
Not all warnings that come from unexpected sources are correct, but there’s some sense in heeding them even skeptically. Julius Caesar learned that the hard way, but I think he got the point, especially from Brutus. However apocryphal the soothsayer’s warning about the Ides of March might be as a classical story, such a warning would have warranted Caesar’s outright skepticism. Unless the soothsayer knew what the senators had planned, he based his warning on a mere feeling. (Supposedly, President Kennedy was similarly warned though this, like the Caesar story, might be apocryphal)
 
Do you find it interesting that some people heed warnings that are based on nothing more than feelings or myth yet reject warnings that are based on quantifiable measurements? Some heeded the warnings of those who looked at an Aztec calendar and declared that the END was nigh in 2012. (It wasn’t) What, other than myth, was the source of the warning? But the warning of the British sailor doesn’t fall into that category. He had kept a careful navigational record, and in matters quantitative, it matters to check the quantities.
 
That British sailor does fall into the same category as Bob Ebling, a Morton Thiokol engineer who with other engineers in 1986 warned that launching the Space Shuttle on a cold January morning could result in disaster because the O-rings were temperature sensitive. Yet, no one in the bureaucracies of NASA or Morton Thiokol took their warnings seriously enough to postpone the launch, and seven astronauts died. Could there be a more blatant example of an officious bureaucracy failing because of its rigid structure?  
 
Obviously, someday someone will intuitively say, “The World is going to end tonight,” or “The volcano is going to erupt tomorrow” and be correct just by coincidence. But there are differences in warnings. Some, like the soothsayer’s, might be based on feelings; others might be based on almost certain probabilities. Volcanologists have learned much from the eruptions of Mt. St. Helens and Mount Pinatubo in 1980 and 1991. A volcanic eruption has precursor earthquakes, such as a seven-plus magnitude earthquake and thousands of smaller earthquakes that shook Luzon before that 1991 eruption. Heeding the specific warnings, military and civil authorities saved thousands of lives. They did not act on intuition. They had data that was associated with a high probability of an eruption. In contrast, NASA and Morton Thiokol’s upper management dismissed the warnings about the effect of cold temperatures on O-rings.

Is there a defense for not taking advice or heeding warnings that might save lives? Certainly, Sir Clowdisley and Admiral Shovell might have considered that an experienced sailor’s reckoning just might be accurate in spite of the rules against sailors questioning officers’ opinions. But then, if you let one sailor question your decision, you open that Pandora’s bottle.** Nevertheless, the officers had to deal with darkness and fog at a time when longitude was yet still just a guess (the subject of Sobel’s book), so, maybe just in this one instance…. But what about the NASA managers? Surely, since they were composed largely of engineers and scientists, such a group would consider matters rationally. Isn’t testing part of science? They had never really tested O-rings under such freezing conditions. Were they thinking, “The absence of evidence permits us to decide on the basis of an announced schedule.”
 
Just about all of us get advice and warnings for which we have to ask ourselves a fundamental question: Is there something measureable in the warnings? If there is, then such warnings are worth heeding regardless of the stature of the person carrying the message. But many warnings and bits of advice come from common sense.  “Don’t overeat. Exercise. Study.” What are we to do with those? When matters are personal, other matters don’t matter.
 
No one stands above the need for warnings and advice. Yet, we encounter dilemmas regularly, and the Valentine Day massacre in a Florida school is one of those instances. Those students who thought the shooter exhibited aberrant behavior might be akin to sailors who feared the consequences of speaking up, of telling the authorities they were off course. Look what happened to the one sailor that did speak up. In Florida, if any adults saw warning signs, they seemed to have ignored them or failed to act on them. The ship was headed for the rocks, and no one either offered advice or was willing to accept it. What defense? Well, it wasn’t a quantitative matter, unless one counted suspensions from schools. But who knows what transpires in the mind of another unless, unless that mind posted a number of telling images on social media.
 
Maybe we’re just all a bit too hardheaded to think that others can give us advice or warnings we should follow. Those 2,000 British sailors and those seven astronauts would not have died if those in power had minds open to warnings. And maybe those who died in a Florida school would simply go on to turn in their homework because they, unlike the sailors and the astronauts, could have safely returned home.     
 
 
*Sobel, Sava, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. New York. Penguin Books, 1995, pp. 11-13.
**Yes, bottle: μπουκάλι 

In 1945 Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day coincided, a chance event that because of the orbits of Earth and moon occurs rarely; in 2018, they again shared the same day. The coincidence gives us a chance to note a connection between the underlying reasons for both days: Love and sacrifice.
 
Almost everyone realizes that love involves some kind of sacrifice and that sacrifice, for whatever purpose, involves some commitment bordering at all times on, and often deeply entrenched in, love. Maybe instead of flowers and candy, a more fitting gift would be ashes. But since the two days rarely coincide, maybe lovers should exchange ashes on Valentine's Day and candy and flowers on Ash Wednesday. 

Ever sought a miracle? Under what circumstances would you be willing to suspend the laws of Nature to effect one? Some, maybe all, of us have wished for a “miracle.” Possibly for ourselves; possibly, for others. Wishing for a miracle might indicate whether or not you are altruistic or egoistic or floating between the two, making you altruegoistic if I may coin a term. Wishing for a miracle might also define your understanding of the nature of the universe in which you live.
 
Fans might wish for a miracle comeback in a game, so the meaning of the word miracle varies with circumstances. A come-from-behind win does not require a suspension of physical laws. Gravity still works; actions have reactions; atoms combine in certain ways, and fire makes iron skillets too hot to touch with bare hands.
 
Buying a lottery ticket when the chance of winning is tens of millions to one, is not unusual. Many buy the ticket. Someone has to win eventually, right? Getting the winnings would certainly seem to be a miracle when the bills aren’t paid. But winning such a ticket is matter of probability and not a matter of suspended natural laws.
 
The sense that one can suspend natural law has probably run through the minds of many people under the influence of desire or despair. Maybe you have wished for a “miracle” in the presence of disease, injury, or imminent danger.
 
So, what constitutes your idea of a miracle in the sense of an event that defies the laws of Nature? Under what circumstances do you wish for a miracle? And what result—from winning the lottery to recovering from injury or disease—do you accept as miraculous? Do you discount miracles others claim because their miracles require the suspension of natural laws while simultaneously accepting your own “miracles”?
 
What does your position on miracles indicate about you?

Does Nature operate under a Principle of Self-Correction? Is there a determined path toward restoration of an altered ecology or landscape? Now, here’s the big one: Does self-correction govern human destiny?
 
Answering both questions about Nature gets us into a problem of logic. If we say “yes” to either or both, are we confusing correlation with causation? Let’s play with all three questions, first with Nature and then with humans.
 
But now another question: If I ask someone to pass the salt but in receiving it drop the shaker, should I blame the salt-passer? “See what you made me do.” Correlating the passer and the dropping isn’t the same as identifying a cause. Components of a circumstance are not necessarily a cause. There’s also probability: In the millions or billions or trillions of times people have passed salt shakers is there not a chance some passing will be unsuccessful? You play the lottery, don’t you?
 
Go to Oil City, Wildcat Hollow,* and Titusville, Pennsylvania. Forests and happy little bunnies cover an area once black with spilled petroleum and covered by derricks. “See, Nature can correct itself,” you’ll say. But correction implies that there is a correct environment, that what had been is what should be. That’s judgment. And destiny? Was the forest compelled to return once the derricks came down with the cessation of drilling?  
 
Does Nature “correct itself”? If we look at western Pennsylvania, we might say, “It does a little.” There were forests that the oil men cut down, and now there are forests again where there are no roads or buildings. Oil creek was once polluted with petroleum, but now it appears to be clear enough to see some of the pipes laid in its bed all those decades ago. And if we look anywhere on the planet and ask the question about correction, can we give the same answer? Correction seems to occur, but with modification. The number of extinct species so attests.  
 
Any “correction” is both relative and dependent on time, sometimes as long as centuries, sometimes over millennia, and sometimes great geologic periods. Take climate. Does it self-correct? You say, “There was a Medieval Warm Period that enhanced Viking explorations; then there was a Little Ice Age that enhanced the production of beer in lieu of wine, and then back to somewhat warmer temperatures. Sure, I say, ‘Yes’ to the question.”
 
But look at the time frame. You just summarized a millennium of climate in one hemisphere. The correction as you see it occurred over many lifetimes. Those who experienced the Little Ice Age did not live to appreciate a couple of hundred years of relative warmth. In comparison with the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum of 55 million years ago, such warmth is truly relative. Should Earth correct for the decline in temperature since that ancient period of warmth? It certainly has the time to make the correction. What are 55 million years compared to an overall planetary age of 4.5 billion years?**
 
What does self-correcting mean, anyway? The Appalachians are relatively low mountains, but they once stood as high as any current mountain range. The Rockies are highly elevated now, but like the Appalachians, they will erode away. Not, however, in your lifetime. And that brings me to the concept of self-correcting for humans on human scales, a concept that centers on the term “fariness.”
 
For both the Haves and the Have Nots fairness is a potentially important character issue. The Haves might feel guilty whereas the Have Nots might feel envious—potentially, but not, of course, necessarily. Shouldn’t the world trend toward equilibrium for individuals or even for societies? Shouldn’t the Haves who feel no guilt reexamine their selfishness? And shouldn’t Have Nots similarly reexamine their envy because many of the Haves worked hard and incessantly to get what they have?  Shouldn’t the conscious organic world correct for fairness?
 
The Gambler’s Fallacy is a simple concept, and it applies here. You watch the roulette wheel and see red come up repeatedly. You say to yourself, “Good chance the next one is black.” Whether or not you are correct is, in fact, as much a chance as the ball’s landing again on red. Many consecutive reds do not mean that black is next, though an increasing number of rolls might trend toward a 50:50 ratio of color. That balanced ratio doesn’t have to occur during a particular visit to the roulette wheel. And an actual or perceived balance of wealth won’t necessarily occur during an individual’s or a civilization’s lifetime—even under laws that seem to guarantee “fairness” by imposition. Anecdotes of unevenness abound in the annals of any oligarchy.
 
Gambling presents us with a finite example of imbalances in our personal lives. A gambler will always have the potential for impoverishment and enrichment. Of course, short of total despair, the loser can always go out to earn or find more money to gamble. But in life, repetitive opportunities can be rare, and failures don’t always have follow-up successes. Blockbuster video rental company was strong in the 1990s but lost out to Netflix because the latter’s business model was superior to the former’s. Would fairness entail reestablishing Blockbuster so that you could go to the store to pick up your video on VHS tape under the dictum that a late return would incur a late fee? Or are you happy with your online Netflix subscription?  
 
By chance, insight, and work, some Haves who lose, lose only temporarily. When Have Nots envy the success of once-fallen Haves, they might correlate the Phoenix-like rise to some determinism: “Well, what do you expect? He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.” And if the Haves note a continued impoverishment in the Have Nots, do they not tend to correlate it with determinism: “Well, what do you expect? Look at his background.” From the perspective of both, determinism prevails. Correlation is accepted as cause.  
 
All having varies with time. Not having also varies, but neither one nor the other is guaranteed. Those who seek to establish some balance, some equilibrium in either Nature or humanity might be driven by either guilt or compassion. But neither of those feelings warrants the belief that what is balanced is sustainable or what is restored mirrors the past. A changed ecology is never the same in its restoration as it was, and a Have who regains “having” after losing it is not evidence of a determined equilibrium.
 
Sorry for making the point longer, but…
 
The distribution of resources is uneven for two reasons. One: Political boundaries limit access to a regional resource. Two: Nature does not distribute gold, iron, manganese, and rare earth elements evenly. Humans impose an unevenness on top of that imposed by natural processes. New York has imposed restrictions on drilling the Marcellus Shale; Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio have encouraged it, making a number of once struggling family farmers somewhat wealthy. The shale is distributed widely under all four states. Would you impose a balance in access to ensure a balance in revenue? But if you say you would, could you guarantee that equal quantities of the resource are available? And if you dwell in a town bordered by a farmer who with new found wealth suddenly trades in his 1975 truck for a luxury vehicle, would you envy? Would you think that the farmer should share his newfound wealth with someone or some group in an act of charity?
 
It might be good to be compassionate. Helping Have Nots seems to be written into some, if not all, moral codes. It is not, however, written into every heart. The desire for fairness, whether it springs from guilt or envy, from compassion or reason, or from any other emotional or intellectual well is always based on a judgment that derives from an assumed Principle of Self-correction. Nature’s apparent self-corrections can take eons. Human self-corrections might never occur in the lifetimes of those who seek some equilibrium in having. It’s the way of a world that isn’t self-correcting on demand.
 
The next time you engage someone in a conversation about fairness, ask whether or not he or she has ever blamed someone else for dropping a salt shaker, buying a farm before the sale of mineral rights, having a genetic defect, or catching the flu bug. Then ask whether or not the person has anything that another might envy. During winter, a sheltered space before a building doorway or next to a dryer vent might be the object of envy among the homeless Have Nots.
 
And sorry for mixing all the metaphors, but on the roulette wheel of life, your color might or might not turn up while you have money to gamble. Don’t fault someone else if you perceive a world that doesn’t self-correct as you judge it should.   
 
*Associated with the word wildcatter though not necessarily the origin of the term.
**1.2% in case you want the math

Do we economize our assumptions to explain the physical world and social relationships?
 
In his popularization of physics, Clarence E. Bennett writes that “explanations are only relative to [ a person’s] background.” He made that statement in the context of Bohr’s model of the atom, the familiar one we see in textbooks that makes atoms look like little Solar Systems. “Although today this picture has been more or less replaced by abstract mathematical representation in the mind of the theoretical physicist, many of the Bohr features are still useful….” Bennett then says that this raises the “question of how a picture can be accepted if it is not correct…In other words, there can be any number of ways of explaining anything…It is not a question of which is the correct one; it is rather a question of which is the better one for the purpose, i.e., which explains the most with the fewest assumptions….”*
 
Do you agree? Surely, you have either provided or received such explanations. Think explaining the death of a pet or a favorite uncle to a toddler. Practically all of us gear our explanations to the background of the person, and that’s why textbooks have labels, such as “Introductory,”  “Intermediate,” and “Advanced.”   
 
As I have said elsewhere, all of us think axiomatically. We live mostly by “self-evident” truths; assumptions underlie everything. Certainly, you, for example, aren’t spending your current energy on anxiety that your screen will go blank. You assume no power outage even though you know such events occur, and you assume your chair and the floor beneath it will hold you. All of us have our own version of Occam’s Razor: Operate on as few assumptions as we can in the moment, and keep explanations simple. Many have extolled the virtue of simplicity in explanations, including Newton, Einstein, and da Vinci. Is there a similar virtue in the fewest possible assumptions, in the fewest axioms?
 
We just can’t get around our assumptions very easily because they’ve been incorporated into our education. And I don’t mean education as in what you learned in school though I can’t discount it. I’m thinking life lessons, those experiences that have added up to a world that doesn’t contradict itself, that, for example, fire is both hot and dangerous. Performances by fire-eaters tend to make audiences believe that there’s somehow a “cold fire” because the entertainer suffers no burns. Magicians, too, play on assumptions about a non-contradictory world. We assume what we witness is a trick because we can’t reconcile our assumptions with a disappearing elephant or a gravity-defying person.  
 
To identify some minerals in the field, mineralogists use an unglazed ceramic plate that serves as a kind of “chalkboard.” Certain minerals leave a “streak” with a characteristic color much the way a piece of white chalk leaves a white line or green chalk leaves a green line on a piece of slate. You do the same with an ordinary pencil whose “lead” is actually a mix of graphite and clay. The graphite disintegrates on the paper, leaving a gray-black streak. You assume by experience that the color of an object will be the same as its streak. But brass-yellow pyrite (fool’s gold) leaves a greenish-black streak on the unglazed ceramic. That’s counterintuitive and amazes most people on first witnessing it. Something gold in color leaves a dark streak?  Imagine going to a chalkboard with a piece of white chalk only to find that the line you draw is red. Recognize that our assumptions lead to representations. Maybe that’s why we favor those Solar-System models of atoms in textbooks even though we have long determined their scientific limitations. Of course, as Gödel noted, even our formal, mathematical representations, though non-visualizable, also rely on assumptions.  
 
Almost any explanation that fits our axioms also fits our emotional, if not also our mental, needs.
 
So, we accept representations that confirm our assumptions in our personal and professional relationships. That is particularly the case in our explaining the attitudes and behavior of those who differ from us. Did you ever listen to a political discussion between two people with differing viewpoints? (That’s almost unavoidable when you channel-surf) The speakers present you with two images or two representations that stem from a limited number of assumptions, often just two assumptions: One that underlies a favored perspective and another that underlies an un-favored one. On occasion, you hear someone argue from multiple assumptions, but that usually turns into a cacophony.
 
Think Euclid. Apparently, he thought just five axioms and five “common notions” made a sufficient basis for understanding shapes and relationships. Remember high school geometry? You spent an entire year on those five axioms and how they underlie geometric representations of shapes in our world. It wasn’t just a high school math course that made us Euclidean thinkers; we started our training as babies reaching for fire.
 
Every political discussion seems to follow the same process of representation that makes sense in the context of one or two assumptions, first about one’s own perspective and second about any alternative perspective. And just as we accept the faulty Bohr “Solar System” model of atoms, so we accept or reject representations of attitudes and behaviors because they fit our assumptions about a world that can’t in our eyes contradict what we base on those assumptions. Fire-eaters just have to be eating “cold fire.” Fool’s gold must have a dark color just underlying the brassy color on the surface: How else can it defy the representations we have? And electrons just make sense if they carry a charge and somehow orbit a nucleus like little planets.
 
And those with whom we find ourselves in contention certainly fall into the geometry that underlies our lives. They have to because, as Euclid told us, just a few axioms are necessary. They have to because, as Occam, Einstein, da Vinci, and others have told us, the simplest explanation is the best. As Clarence E. Bennett writes, “In other words, there can be any number of ways of explaining anything…It is not a question of which is the correct one; it is rather a question of which is the better one for the purpose, i.e., which explains the most with the fewest assumptions.”
 
 
*Bennett, Clarence E. Physics without Mathematics. Barnes & Noble, Inc. New York, 1970. P. 25.

​Some of my tweets are probably inane, but even the inane can precipitate meaningful meditation. If you are a regular visitor, you might see this entry as a departure from my (ab)normal almost daily ramblings, but you might also be of a mind to use almost any thought as a point of departure for your own insights. Motivating you to expand any kernel of thought I might suggest is my primary goal, even when your "expansion" might mean rejecting what I have to say. I have listed them from most current to most ancient.

Try applying the same accuracy to the measurement of your life that you apply to others’ lives.
 
Does your reliance on clock and calendar hint at a need to connect in a disparate society?
 
Regret and pride vie for control of the past. Anxiety and eagerness vie for control of the future.
 
Youth never comprehends the passage to age through experience.
 
A gas gauge indicating empty isn’t necessarily precise. Keep going to discover the next station.
 
Want to be called Homo sapiens sapiens? Earn the designation.
 
Most of the architecture of our lives is an agglomeration of lean-tos.
 
Predicting actions caused by human faults is more complex than predicting seismic events.
 
Directly or indirectly, we set in motion more than we can possibly foresee.
 
Ask yourself how (and why) you conform to your culture’s conventions.
 
Confidence is the product of self-reliance. “Ne te quaesiveris extra,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson says.
 
We overlook our common value when we deem others to be less significant.
 
Scapegoating is the first refuge of a frightened mind.
 
Bolting faulty perspectives to feel secure inhibits accepting a constant flow of ideas and information.
 
Anticipate what you can, and deal the best you can with the rest.
 
What we anticipate is rarely a problem.
 
Alternative truths aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
 
Cultural simplification inhibits individual diversity.
 
Ask yourself whether in following, you are relinquishing leading.
 
Complexities make long-term weather forecasts chancy at best, human forecasts even more so.
 
In the morning ask, “What is it that I don’t want to ‘leave out?’ to avoid a night of regret.
 
Be careful not to conflate attribute and person in your effort to simplify others.
 
The greatest gift we can give the world is peace: Focus your energy on becoming a peaceful presence for others.
 
Experience does not guarantee the validity of truths to which you obstinately cling.
 
Try making commitments without caveats.
 
If you insist on judging your life by comparison, at the very least, ignore your first impressions.
 
Pride causes us to mistake knowledge for wisdom.
 
In comparing our falls to the falls of others, we don’t see an equivalence.
 
As word alchemists, do we seek to turn “base metal” to “gold” or “gold” to “base metal”?
 
Don’t’ mistake shadow for substance.
 
To understand yourself, analyze the forces that shaped you.
 
Looking for a Loch Ness monster or an ancient alien? No belief turns speculation into fact.
 
With regard to opportunity, saying. “Yes” offers no guarantee; saying  “No” guarantees failure.
 
Say “Thanks” to someone today.
 
Affinity for a group doesn’t provide an ethical reason for defending its wrongs.
 
Why is inexactitude a virtue in defense of our ideas but a vice in others’ defense of theirs?
 
Rather than fear them, consider our differences as manifestations of cosmic complexity.
 
Is there an innate penchant to destroy beyond necessity?
 
In contrast to our biological cosmopolitanism, we often exhibit an ideological parochialism.
 
Success is never guaranteed, but hard work makes it possible.
 
Can we solve others’ personal problems or only offer procedures to reach solutions?
 
Perseverance is a practical virtue.
 
Pride, the “root of sin,” is also the root (and the rot?) of individualism.
 
The Web houses spiders of accusations whose toxins make mobs dance in a trance.
 
There is no better time to thank those who cared for and about you.
 
We memorialize what we deem significant in a particular place and time.
 
Replace your Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) with Distraction Deficit Order (DDO).
 
Do you find it strange that anarchists organize rallies?
 
Does your “moral field” shift just as Earth’s magnetic field shifts? Check your moral compass.
 
How fast you recover from insult defines your character.
 
Our predispositions can turn hallucinations into harmful realities.
 
Ideological perspectives tinged with emotions foil rational discussions.
 
If you want to keep your privacy, abandon your addiction to the Game of Phones.
 
To make progress in a canoe of disagreement, people must face the same direction when they paddle.
 
Knowledge of natural phenomena and processes is a key to a safer and more secure life.
 
Like toddlers rejecting a spoonful of medicine, adults refuse to open up for alternative reasoning.
 
Beware lest you believe mere wish or will can alter unalterable realities.
 
Chill out. Your life isn’t as complex as you lead yourself to believe.
 
When the astounding becomes commonplace, make the effort to renew.
 
Within any society individual drives drive individuals.
 
Like medicines, every choice comes with side effects.
 
Eliminating ennui doesn’t have to involve unnecessary risk.
 
We’re always sure until we discover than we aren’t.
 
Your ideological adversaries are not disembodied avatars on social media, but rather real people.
 
For the purposeful, a heart well-tried with trouble powers the drive to succeed.
 
Provide support for those teetering n emotional imbalance.
 
Individuality protects us from mob mentality.
 
How confident are you that you can interpret minds and motivations correctly?
 
Each of choreographs a dance of life.
 
Let no one choreograph your dance of life.
 
What do you consider to be the center of your life?
 
New ideas lie at the limiting boundaries of what we believe.
 
Breaking free from the inertia of culture is a matter of mind.
 
We fail to assess the personal meaning of others’ “strange” behaviors while accepting our behaviors as “normal.”
 
What will you do today to consecrate a place by work nobly advanced?
 
We hybridize ourselves as we adapt to the changing nature of place.
 
All issues aren’t issues for all. New golden rule: see others’ issues as you want them to see yours.
 
Grass on your side of the fence might be “greener grass” from another’s perspective.
 
Resilience is a chief characteristic of successful people.
 
Every stress provides an opportunity to experiment in the lab of life.
 
It’s a good day to acknowledge the work others do to ensure your successes.
 
Launch a rescue boat from your island of Self to help those foundering in nearby rough seas of emotional pain.
 
If you want a more peaceful world, be judicious whenever you decide to hit “Forward” or “Retweet.”
 
In a frenetic and cacophonous world make smoothing sounds the earworm to which your pulse dances.
 
Those who bicker are like fan blades. Relative positions don’t change even during the fastest spins.
 
Change the expression “Have a great day” to “Make a day great” or “Make your day great.”
 
Ability is important, but persistence gets the job done.
 
Today’s question: “How will you influence the future?”
 
Negative behaviors are litter on an otherwise clean and beautiful beach. Keep your beach clean.
 
Filter your input before you cause contention by your output.
 
What we do we own.
 
There is a way to eliminate hate: Just don’t think it.
 
During the blackness of grief, we continue to absorb light. In time, color will return.
 
Cherish mystery in relationships; you can never objectify why they work.
 
Variance is a principle in the lab of life.
 
Dry the tears of those in pain.
 
Our life-pendulums swing between being a part of to being apart from.
 
As authors of our lives, we always have the potential to revise.
 
Human variability doesn’t negate a common humanity.
 
Following a beaten path? Do some intellectual off-roading today.
 
In crossing life’s barriers, we change, and we also change the barriers.
 
Only our pride makes us think we are multidimensional, but our intellectual opponents are only one-dimensional.
 
It’s time to see the substance, not the appearance of others.
 
All humans experience hurt Consider that when you think you see greener grass.
 
No wall is stronger than one built by self-knowledge, integrity, and belief in one’s own worth.
 
If you can, exude peace rather than impose it.
 
Daily you build the edifice of your life.
 
Without you, the universe would be a different place and have a different destiny.
 
Sometimes an apparent “evil” or hardship is just an opportunity to learn who we are.
 
Feeling unappreciated? Recognize your self-worth and ability to stand alone.
 
Our mental maps are templates for behavior and attitude.
 
Your destiny is an expanding perspective. Don’t limit yourself.
 
No personality is a singular entity.
 
Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean there’s nothing in it worth your effort to understand.
 
Worth repeating: What we anticipate is rarely a problem.

In his TV series on the connection between mathematics and both the inorganic and organic world, Marcus de Sautoy spends a segment on π. Speaking of Pi, Sautoy says, “Luckily, we only need the first 39 [decimal places of Pi] to calculate the circumference of a circle the size of the entire observable universe accurate to the radius of a single hydrogen atom” (34:35 min mark).*
 
“So?”
 
Nothing in our lives seems to be that accurate. Generally, we prefer the general. Figuring the circumference of the universe to the accuracy mentioned by de Sautoy isn’t what we do in our daily lives. We are more likely inclined to something akin to 3.1, or 3, and not to the dizzying 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197.
 
Again, “So?”
 
Maybe cosmologists and astrophysicists need the kind of accuracy de Sautoy mentions, but our rather crude measurements in daily life never seem to require it. That both saves us trouble and gives us trouble. Inaccuracy or imprecision keeps us from being overburdened with details when they contradict our beliefs. And, inaccuracy or imprecision keeps us from being overburdened with details when they contradict our beliefs. Yes, what saves us trouble also gives us trouble.
 
Rarely do we make the effort to pursue our self-contradictions to a high level of accuracy. In fact, most of the time we don’t even recognize our own contradictory nature. We accept the measurement of our own personal universe to the lowest level of detail. We apply more decimal places to the contradictions and hypocrisy of others. We love accuracy when it comes to the mistakes of others. Can’t be too accurate in the measurement of someone else’s universe, but in the measurement of our own?
 
Here’s a thought (in case you were looking for one): Think “π” the next time you spend time measuring another person’s life. How many decimal places do you use to take the measurement?
 
*The Code, Season 1, Episode 1. Available on Netflix.

The official languages of Malaysia are Bahasa Malaysia and English, but the country's citizens speak numerous languages. Among those languages is Mos, which has under 500 native speakers. Unless those few are especially fecund, their language is doomed. If they don't produce more speakers soon, they might as well name their youngest Uncas, or maybe Chingachgook, after James Fenimore Cooper's character in the Leatherstocking Tales, you recall, the series of novels that includes The Last of the Mohicans.

Consider that you speak a rather widespread language. You're reading this, so I assume you know English, and you have little concern about being the last speaker of your language. With almost 400 million people for whom English is the native tongue and another billion or so for whom it is a second language, the language you speak provides a commonality for people of every continent. But Mos, now there's a different story. It's way down on the list of popular languages. Can you imagine? "If you speak English, press one; ¿hablas español?...” You get the idea. What number would Mos be on the phone? "If you speak Mos, please enter 6,909"--the current count of languages according to the Linguistic Society of America.*

Mos will probably pass out of use as so many languages have. I'm guessing that you aren't even willing to help Mos-speakers preserve their heritage by learning the language so you can pass on the culture to your great grandchildren.

When you pass away, somewhere there will be a record of your existence though fewer and fewer people will be interested in reading it. For the foreseeable future, however, the record will be understandable: “She was really special. Blah, blah, blah….” Put your physical attributes aside and think of how intimately your identity is tied to your language. If that language goes, you go unless you’ve done something of “historic value,” a dubious assignation since that might put you in the company of Timur the Lame.
 
Other than physical attributes like shape, size, and color, do you think it is possible to have an identity outside language? I’m not talking about your ability to speak or write or even think. I’m talking about the context in which you live, a context of language-speakers who know you and who have words to identify you, from your name to your characteristic attitudes and behaviors. Do you find it interesting that we say, “She will live on in our memories”? That might be true for those who knew her personally and for whom she is a collection of memories attached to feelings, but for those who are on the periphery, such preservation is short and down the line of a few generations is only a matter for historians who understand the language. Is it because there have been too many humans, so we remember only a few who had either fame or notoriety.
 
Quick! Name one current speaker of Mos. Can’t? Maybe I have the wrong name. It’s also called Ten’edn and Tonga, you know; it’s similar to Kensiu. How about someone in the history of Mos-speakers? Are you telling me that the Mani people (also, Maniq) of Thailand have no internationally known members like Princess Diana? Yeah, I heard of her. Or Frank Sinatra? Wasn’t he some famous American singer whose voice fills the background of Maggiano’s Italian restaurants and still can be heard over Sirius/XM. Enrico Caruso? You got me there. Wait! An opera singer from a long time ago, but I’m sure he wasn’t Maniq. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria?** Covered him in history class, I think. Er wurde erschossen. Again, not a Maniq.

Entire cultures have come and gone to be remembered only by some writers, linguists, anthropologists, artists, and historians. And the more geographically limited the group and its influence, the harder it is to find something to remember about them. The people who speak Mos have been around for a long time, possibly since the Neolithic Age. Interesting: 10,000 years and yet you can’t name one of them! Yes, I’m guessing we are witnessing another extinction event. What with five major extinctions since the Cambrian Period, who wants to focus on the thousands of other extinctions, those extinctions of language and the memories of all whose identity was framed by those languages?

Think about people in North America, a few hundred million who haven’t been on the land they occupy since Neolithic time. How many of them can speak the language of their ancestors as those ancestors would have spoken it? What about you? Even if you are genetically English, you probably don’t speak Anglo-Saxon or even Middle English. The original Beowulf is impossible without study. Chaucer’s lines are difficult at best. Heck, you probably have trouble with some of Shakespeare’s lines.***
 
So, what will become of Mos-speakers and their “Chingachgook”? There are still more than 3,000 descendants of the Mohicans, Mahicans, Muheconneok, Muhhekunneuw, Mohiingan, Mohegan—or whatever they might wish to be called—so, Uncas and Chingachgook, though fictional, weren’t the last though descendants of actual Mohicans might be called Stockbridge-Munsee. But only 350-500 Maniqs. Ten thousand years in the vicinity of Malaysia, and for the Maniq it’s all not only dwindling away, but also, apparently, coming to a rather abrupt end in the context of 10 millennia.  That end might not come in your lifetime, but rather in a few generations. Lost with the loss of a language, subsumed first by a local culture and second by a widening globalism, Maniq culture might exist only in some article or government report, but not in the minds of the living.
 
Feeling compassionate? Think you want to do something if only for nostalgia’s sake? Here’s a CNN report from January 20, 2017: “ISIS destroys façade of Roman theater in Syrian city of Palmyra.” And then there’s the story of Mahammed Sa’im al-Dahr who in his fanaticism damaged the Sphinx in 1378 A.D. (the locals supposedly killed him for the crime against the ancient structure). And Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” was attacked several times. The point is a question: Do you think many care that both a language and a culture that hark back 10,000 years might disappear? And even if they did care—as, no doubt, you most certainly do—could they or you do anything about the demise of Maniq culture? No one can stand around forever keeping watch over artworks, graveyards, and ancient cultures. How far back do the mementos of your ancestors go? You can’t keep that old stuff around forever even if you are a nostalgic hoarder. That’s why we have antique shops, museums, libraries, and eBay.
 
Someday, hopefully for the sake of your identity in the long distant future, a descendant of yours will say, “Why are we keeping this old stuff? I need room for my holographic projector.” And your urn or tombstone might be the subject of teenage or fanatic vandalism similar to the 2017 attacks on statues of George Washington (one of those characters who seems to have escaped the anonymity under which so many Maniq have slipped from lasting memory over the past 10,000 years).
 
Anyway, today when you look in the mirror, imagine having an identity void of language in a world of forgetfulness under the pressure of time.  
 
 
*Linguistic Society of America. How many languages are there in the world? [As though the Society could count languages elsewhere in the universe!] Online at https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/how-many-languages-are-there-world
 
**Er wurde erschossen: “He was shot.”
***Beowulf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K13GJkGvDw  
     Chaucer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0ybnLRf3gU
     Shakespeare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i3J17Jp0ag
 

Got a call from the dentist’s secretary. Monday morning, February 5, at 8:45. Six-month cleaning and checkup. I’ll go, of course, after brushing and flossing 400 times over the weekend and not eating Oreo cookies just before I enter the office.   
 
What if I were a member of the Tiv of central Nigeria in the 1940s and 1950s? What would the secretary have said? According to a report in The Southwestern Journal of Anthropology by Paul Bohannan, she would not have referenced a month, date, day of week, or time of day. Instead, “When it is necessary to place an incident in time, as it often is, Tiv do so by referring it to a natural or a social activity or condition, using solar, lunar, seasonal, agricultural, meteorological, or other events. Tiv ritual is not associated with a calendar, and for this reason ritual events are not usable as time indicators as they are in many societies.”*
 
So, I guess in Tiv society a dentist’s secretary might have said my appointment would be shortly after the sun rises on the day after the Super Bowl and three days after Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow. That seems awkward to you, doesn’t it? Of course, we do have something a little similar, but no one really uses it. That’s the date for the moveable feast we call Easter. It falls on the first day named after the sun after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. See. You don’t use that.  
 
And that’s because you have a rather abstract way of thinking about time that you learned. In a society run by a cesium atomic clock tied to the digital clock on your smart phone, numbers and time are bound together. You correlate events and numbers. In contrast, the Tiv in the study correlated events and occasions.
 
Probably the closest westerners come to the Tiv notion of time is embedded in the future perfect tense: Before the train arrives, I shall have bought my ticket. Isn’t it interesting that in using language, even in using it to express a fundamental dimension of our universe, we really don’t think about how our use relates to phenomena.
 
Bohannan says that “Tiv are much less specific about time during the night.” For example, “The time between dusk and about 10 o’clock is called ‘sitting together’.” Do we have some similar way of thinking? In a way.
 
“I’ll meet you at the Irish Festival.” “I’ll see you at the party.” But even those might have a quantitative element. We have the general “showing up late to make an entrance” that we joke about, but showing up late implies that we know when, numerically, we should show up to be early or on time. And meeting someone during a three-day art festival in South Florida is chancy. Would we meet when the sun is higher in the sky? Just about to set?
 
Why should we even bother to think about how we measure our personal and social lives? In western culture we exert a strong pressure on ourselves that might derive from there being so many of us in so many disparate societies with merged backgrounds. Do you know the details of your neighbor’s profession? Live in a suburb? Watch all the workers depart for points only generally known to do jobs only generally understood? Do you think at seven A.M., “It’s the Leaving” and at six P.M. “It’s the Returning”? Those numbers on the clock and calendar connect us. I’d like to say more, but, sorry, appointment. I have to meet the hygienist at the reclining beneath the dental pick.
 
*Bohannan, Paul. The Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 9 (3), 1953, 251-62.

“Just a thought, a very brief thought; well, maybe a question at the end.”
 
“What’s your hurry?” you ask. “I’ve come to this website before and have actually waded through your ramblings—some of which I find quite intriguing—even when they take me away from perusing web stories about astronomers and starlets. Go ahead. I’m already here on my lunch hour.”
 
“Well, I was thinking of now. Actually, of NOW. Every day I see tweets telling me carpe diem in some form. Then I have to stop thinking about getting and doing. I have to think about being. I have to live in the present—whatever that means. So, I recall Wittgenstein, who says, ‘If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration, but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.’ That’s similar to Paul Tillich’s Eternal Now. The past is gone, and the future is yet to be. Now is now. And it’s always now. Hey, does that mean there’s no choice in choosing ‘to live in the here and now’?
 
“Regret and pride vie for control of the past. Anxiety and eagerness vie for control of the future. Can you think of any competition vying for control of the NOW?”