Odysseus was absent from home for almost two decades and held captive by Calypso until Zeus sent Hermes to demand she let him go. When he speaks to the goddess about his impending return journey to Ithaca, his kingdom, wife, and son, he has some trepidation: Without knowledge of Hermes’ visit, Odysseus believes that in releasing him the goddess Calypso has some potentially evil ulterior motive. She assures him that she has no such motive, and she pledges to give him wood for a raft and provisions for the voyage. Odysseus, having suffered after the fall of Troy the losses of both ship and men on the “wine-dark sea,” recognizes that even if she has no malicious intent, other potential dangers await in winds and waves. He says,
 
     “And if again one of the gods shall wreck me on the wine-dark sea, I will be patient still, bearing within my breast a heart well-tried with trouble, for in times past much have I borne and much have toiled, in waves and war, to that let this be added.”*
 
And, of course, as the story unfolds, Odysseus does encounter the wrath of a god on his voyage. Poseidon, who is more than a bit miffed because Odysseus blinded his offspring, the Cyclops Polyphemus, sends the four winds to raise the waves around his raft just as he is nearing land. He almost drowns, but eventually through his own efforts and the help of Athene, he swims ashore in the land of the Phaeacians.
 
Having been through “waves and war,” Odysseus is no novice to the trials of living. His experiences with trouble have toughened him, and, as his reputation runs even today, he has overcome obstacles by his cunning. He has a purpose: Get home to Penelope and Telemachus by weathering any storm, overcoming any obstacle, and using both body and mind to reach his goal.
 
All of us are subject to trouble, and some of us are “well-tried with trouble.” Some of us even have angry Poseidons stirring up hazardous winds around our life rafts in their attempt to sink and drown us. But as long as we can swim or float or grab onto any floating person or object, there’s the potential for reaching even the most distant shore. Having a “heart well-tried with trouble” is an advantage. It is because we have survived previous troubles that we have the potential to survive present and future troubles.
 
Everyone has to cross the “wine-dark sea” at some point. Yes, the voyage can be fraught with dangers, but the sailor on the buffeted raft has to ask the significance of the goal. Odysseus was personally driven to reach Ithaca, and he had the perseverance to make the long and arduous journey. When you are well-tried with trouble, build your raft, or, if you have to, plunge into the turbulent wine-dark water and swim to your Ithaca.   
 
* Squillace, Robert, Ed., translated by Geoerge Herbert Palmer, The Odyssey by Homer, Barnes and Noble Classics, New York, p. 62. 

Gotta love this headline: “Computers are starting to reason like humans.”* Imagine the eventual consequences. Computers, formerly relegated to simple reasoning tasks and computation, will supposedly be able to discern complex relationships that we take for granted. And, if they are lucky, they will be able to reason just as perfectly as we do.
 
But do we reason in a way computers could reason? An event on a June, 2017, morning in Alexandria, Virginia, might motivate us to rethink what “reasoning like a human” actually means. A man apparently obsessed with hatred for a political party decided that shooting Congressmen on a baseball field was a rational choice. Reasoning like humans is apparently more than logic and the recognition of moving shapes.  Do we really want to model computers on "human reasoning"?
 
Maybe computers reasoning “like humans” isn’t the valuable goal we reason that it is.
 
* Matthew Hutson for Science, June 14, 2017 for Science (online)
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/computers-are-starting-reason-humans

In high school chemistry classes students learn about “closed” and “open” systems. Just in case you were physically or mentally absent the day of the lesson, here are examples.
 
A sealed and insulated glass of water left in a climate-controlled, school lab for several days is a closed system: No energy goes in or out from the constant room environment, and no molecules of water enter or leave the container. Equilibrium prevails between water vapor (a gas) above the surface of the liquid water and the liquid water. Any molecules that leave the water in the container are balanced by gaseous water molecules entering the liquid state. The process inside the container is unaffected by any process outside the container. The balance in the closed container is the product of the Law of Mass Action.
 
Now, think of an uncovered container of water. Energy and molecules can enter or leave. If the room temperature drops, the energy from the container will enter the room. And gaseous water molecules hovering over the liquid water have a path alternative to entering the liquid water; they can enter the room. The container’s materials are no longer in equilibrium.
 
Although we think of those who oppose us with adamant stands on their beliefs as closed systems, we should realize that no mind is truly closed. Even the most “closed minded” people are exposed to subtle influences in their environments and the intellectual environments of their opposition. True, stubbornness is a stubborn mental ailment of a closed mind, but even people who live in a “controlled” environment and practically closed intellectual system have inklings that there’s something else “out there,” some molecule of thought that, though counter to their own thinking, is a potential reactant in the chemistry of the mind. And then there’s the problem of the energy required to maintain a “closed system” in a changing environment. A Second Law of Thermodynamics applies as energy flows from abundance to paucity, from hotter to colder as “container” and “environment” trend toward equilibrium. 
 
The Law of Mass Action in chemistry includes a “common-ion effect.” Stay awake for this one; there’s a big test at the end.
 
If I have a container of silver chloride both in solution (in a liquid form) and in a solid state at the bottom of the vessel, the Law of Mass Action will apply. Silver chloride molecules will interchange between solid and liquid state in equilibrium. But if I add common salt (sodium chloride), the chloride ions will change the number of silver ions in solution. Chloride ions are “common” to both silver chloride and sodium chloride.
 
Our best bet at a meeting of minds and an opening of closed systems is to introduce that which opposing minds share. Equilibrium in closed minds is inimical to cooperation and compassion. Disequilibrium is a product of open systems and of open minds. Although emotional equilibrium is more healthful for individuals than disequlibrium, in the long run, intellectual disequilibrium is more beneficial to people with antagonistic opinions. That Second Law also applies: Containers and environment trend toward equilibrium; balanced relationships result.
 
Now the test. Get out your pencil.
 

1. Can you recognize any aspect of your thinking that is in equilibrium because it occurs in a sealed container of thought?
2. Do you share any molecule of thought with your opponents?
3. How can you apply the Law of Mass Action and the “common-ion effect” to your life and your dealings with others?  

You’ve seen them stand around in shallow water at zoos or in documentaries. They are long-legged upside-down feeders that balance on a single leg without seeming to sway. Flamingoes. Try imitating their almost motionless stance on a single leg, and you will probably begin to sway. The gentlest of forces can disturb your balance.
 
A couple of researchers have discovered that the center of gravity of a flamingo lies within the body and that by comparison with you, the visible “leg” of a flamingo is just its shin, ankle, and toes. That’s the reason that the “knee” appears to bend the wrong way: It’s actually the ankle that most of us would interpret to be the bird’s knee.*
 
Keeping one’s physical balance depends on structures and processes that we can determine through observation and experiment. We now know, for example, what role our inner ear plays in our remaining upright. We also know that a redistribution of weight that can occur with age and a weakening of signals along a long leg nerve can jeopardize that ability to balance.
 
We have also observed that people can have difficulty keeping their emotional balance when external forces remove or influence part of their support. Unlike the physical balance of flamingoes and healthy young people, any person can sway when part of the support system of family and friends is no longer available. Human emotional balance is often difficult to maintain; there's always a potential of falling. 
 
Each of us needs some support for emotional balance. Standing on “one emotional leg” is difficult. We're just not built like flamingoes. That we recognize our own potential imbalance might be a reason that we often provide support that gives balance to others.You are surrounded by people swaying under emotional stress, people who have lost some support and who are dependent on others for balance.

To those teetering on total imbalance, say the words Bill Withers sings: “Lean on me.”
 
* https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-flamingo-balances-one-leg?mode=topic&context=76 Y-H. Chang and L.H. Ting. Mechanical evidence that flamingos can support their body on one leg with little muscular force. Biology Letters. Published online May 24, 2017. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2016.0948

Education is a bewildering process. Is it a “leading out of” or “away from” ignorance, derived from Latin ex (“from,” “out of,” “away from”) plus ducere (“to lead”)? Or, is education a process of “going toward” knowledge? Both?
 
One of the logicians at the University of Aberdeen in the nineteenth century finished his career as a book-writing emeritus professor. And here’s where education becomes bewildering. In a collection of his writings called Practical Essays, Alexander Bain takes on a variety of topics that have to do with how we become what we become.*
 
Bain argues for an inborn inclination of interests. In practical terms, he says that if one person is intensely interested in, say, botany, another might have to force the interest at the expense of some other interest. In other words, your obsession with your hobby can’t be mine unless I were born into it like you. (You can’t teach an old dog new tricks) Bain argues for an innate likemindedness. If I were to attempt to become the expert that you are, I would have to sacrifice something of what I am “naturally.” I could, therefore, educate myself (or be educated), but it would come at considerable expense of time and effort and probably never rise to the level of expertise you have. That seems to make some sense, but the underlying premise might be amiss. Should I assume that you were born to be whatever you are? If not, then I have to ask whether or not you had to be led into you interests (or I into mine).
 
This might seem just so much speculating from a nineteenth-century mind who wrote his works before the rise of modern psychology and neuroscience. But we are still pondering the relationship between “nature” and “nurture” more than a century later. Ask yourself, “Why do I have the interests I have? Is it because my brain was wired to be what it is and that I am innately talented in certain, but not in other, ways? Am I the product of nurture? Is my experiential background the reason for my hobbies and interests, for my attitudes and emotions, and for my passions for certain kinds of information?”
 
Further, ask yourself about your education. In one of his essays, Bain addresses the relationship between learning from “book-reading” and “observation of the facts at first hand.” He writes, “From want of opportunity, or from disinclination, many persons have all their information on certain subjects cast in the bookish mould [sic.], and do not fully conceive the particular facts as these strike the mind in their own character.” How do you weigh your experience against your book-learning? What is the extent of your practical, out-in-the-field “education.” There does seem to be a difference in expertise between those who couple practical experience with their book-learning and those who rely on one at the exclusion of the other. That’s the reason, I suppose, for internships or apprenticeships of any kind at the end of a “formal” education.
 
Obviously and for various biological causes, we aren’t all similarly capable. You and I might, however, question whether as “old dogs” we can learn “new tricks.” If we can learn new tricks, we might then ask, “to what extent and at what cost to our practice of our old tricks?”
 
Bain could not have known much about neurons in his time and could not have known that we can make new connections among even old neurons, that the brain is capable of “growth” throughout our lives. You and I have till the end of our lives or the onset of some debilitating brain injury or disease to decide whether or not we are “trapped” in a singularity of talent or interest or whether or not we might put effort into (or even force ourselves into) mastering something new, something no one around us would expect us to master.
 
Is your future education from or toward? What if our word education had derived from a different Latin prefix, the preposition Ad (toward)? Would we then express a difference between our education and our "aducation"?
 
* Alexander Bain, LL.D., Practical Essays, London, 1884. Online at
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17522/17522-h/17522-h.htm

Robert Fulton was an interesting fellow. As he kid he learned to paint and draw, and he actually made enough money to buy his mother a small farm. Always interested in mechanics, he had—as we all know—an inventive mind. It was supported by a brain curious about anything that crossed its neurons. In Europe he studied both sciences and languages, and he started inventing on grander scales. Eventually, he made a steam-powered boat, freeing sailors from centuries of dependence on oars, winds, and currents.
 
Fulton dreamed of a steam-powered boat in the late eighteenth century, and while in France he designed and built a working vessel to run on the Seine. However, as he built the steam-driven Clermont in 1806 and 1807 in the United States to run on the Hudson River, a good many people scoffed at his project. Financial backers were few.
 
But at the launch of the 5-mph Clermont, people who had doubted his invention suddenly realized how insightful and brilliant it was. As Scientific American reports in 1846, “The jeers of the ignorant, who had neither sense nor feeling to suppress their contemptuous ridicule and rude jokes, were silenced for a moment by a vulgar astonishment, which deprived them of the power of utterance, till the triumph of genius extorted from the incredulous multitude which crowded the shores, shouts and acclamations of congratulation and applause.”* The offices of the magazine were, by the way, appropriately located on Fulton Street in New York.
 
There will always be doubters and scoffers. Build your boat.
 
* Scientific American, Vol. 2, No. 1. Online at  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27867/27867-h/27867-h.htm#spring

In 1852 Charles MacKay published Volume I of his Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. In the work he writes, “We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.”*
 
Is he wrong? Look at our own time. Make a list of political, social, aesthetic, and religious foci. Which of those appears to be all consuming at the moment? How does each focus compare with past similar foci? Which focus on the list is a pendulum swing to an earlier focus with slight modification? Which foci lead to hysteria? And which are injurious to the innocent few while satisfying the emotions of the manipulated many? Finally, which foci are blatantly built on 1) rumor or falsehood, on 2) non sequiturs and cross categorizing, and on 3) vengeance and self-aggrandizement? The political world seems especially driven by those three foci.  
 
In MacKay’s time both delusions and madness were spread by word of mouth, pamphlets, newspapers, and even official proclamations by political and religious leaders. In the twenty-first century almost anyone can incite “madness in a crowd.” We can spread madness and delusion at the speed of electromagnetic radiation.
 
I won’t give you specifics; if you examine our times, you will have your list. I will ask, however, “Have you ever been caught up in the ‘madness of crowds’ or ‘popular delusions’?” MacKay hints at our susceptibilities: Greed, power, and longevity. Money, authority, and prophets guide us. Don’t we desire, for example, security ensured by knowing the future? That’s why MacKay includes alchemy and prophecy among the drivers of crowd madness. As for money, MacKay tells what happened in Holland in the seventeenth century.
 
When tulips became the rage in Holland, collectors and growers assigned them great value. The Dutch became obsessed with tulips. In the 1600s Holland had a stock market devoted to them, and people became both wealthy and impoverished on tulip speculations. “Nobles, citizens, farmers, mechanics, sea-men, footmen, maid-servants, even chimney-sweeps and old clothes-women, dabbled in tulips.” Tulip madness had captured the minds of the crowd. Tulip varieties had names and established values. MacKay writes:
 
     …an amateur botanist [an English traveler] happened to see a tulip-root lying in the conservatory of a wealthy Dutchman. Being ignorant of its quality, he took out his penknife, and peeled off its coats, with the view of making experiments upon it. When it was by this means reduced to half its size, he cut it into two equal sections, making all the time many learned remarks on the singular appearances of the unknown bulb. Suddenly, the owner pounced upon him, and, with fury in his eyes, asked him if he knew what he had been doing? “Peeling a most extraordinary onion,” replied the philosopher. “Hundert tausend duyvel!” said the Duchman; “it’s an Admiral Van der Eyck.” “Thank you,” replied the traveller, taking out his note-book to make a memorandum of the same; “are these admirals common in your country?” “Death and the devil!” said the Dutchman, seizing the astonished man of science by the collar; “come before the syndic, and you shall see.” In spite of his remonstrances, the traveller was led through the streets followed by a mob of persons. When brought into the presence of the magistrate, he learned, to his consternation, that the root upon which he had been experimentalising was worth four thousand florins; and, notwithstanding all he could urge in extenuation, he was lodged in prison until he found securities for the payment of this sum.
 
 
Of course, one could argue that the owner had lost a valuable Admiral Van der Eyck bulb, and that his response was just a matter of economics. But what about the “mob”? One might also argue that since the seventeenth century tulips have become a mainstay of the Dutch economy. They certainly make for pretty pictures against the backdrop of a windmill by a canal. But MacKay’s point is the mob mentality, the being-swept-up-in-the-hysteria-of-the-moment. Causes and fads pass. Hysteria is temporary.  As MacKay writes, “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one” [italics mine].
 
Remember you are “one.” You don’t have to go “mad in herds.” But, should you find yourself caught up in a cause of the moment (political, social, religious), think of the mob railroading a curious English tourist to the magistrate and jail because he didn’t understand that a tulip bulb was not an onion.
 
So, stay focused on this point: What a mob thinks of as a valuable “bulb,” someone that doesn’t belong to the “crowd” might think of as an edible onion.
 
*London: Office of the National Illustrated Library. Gutenberg Project, online at
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24518/24518-h/24518-h.htm
​

Notice anything about our neighborhood. It is apparently sparsely populated. Lots of emptiness. But farther out? There’s a different story. Lots of galaxies clumped along “filaments.” Think of breakage lines in a pane of glass. Those distant galaxies lie along those lines. We, strangely, lie between the “cracks” in an untouched, unbroken segment. In contrast with the rest of the universe, we belong to a small group of outcasts in a region two billion light years in diameter.*
 
B. L. Hoscheit and A. J. Barger report that our galaxy doesn’t lie along a filament like so many others. The Milky Way is, by comparison, somewhat isolated. True, we have neighboring Magellanic Clouds and the great Andromeda Galaxy, the latter destined to collide with our own star system (but not during your lifetime), but in general, we are isolated, and our future mergers will be violent. Our sparsely populated neighborhood doesn't have a promising future of peace, but rather just more turmoil.
 
Is it because the only intelligence we can identify in our galaxy is a foolish, self-destructive species? Do we have some planet odor we can’t wash off even though we are the only body with surface water aplenty? What is it about us that led to this isolation? Why don’t the 2 trillion other galaxies want to include us in their cliques?
 
We need some sort of galaxy counselor, some objective mind to assess the cause of our isolation. But, of course, it might be too late for that. The other galaxies are already parts of filaments, already grouped, already far off. Seems we have already made our mistakes, and we are victims of self-inflicted ostracizing.
 
Whatever we did long ago set us apart. We can’t get that moment back obviously. And out there in the distance there are newer galaxies that are just, because of the speed of light and the stretching of space, getting information about who we are. Word of our foolish nature is spreading.
 
I guess the lesson is clear for any newly forming galaxies. Don’t do the things that isolate you. Don’t appear to be foolish, or self-destructive, or whatever can be perceived as inimical to the health and standing of others. And, if you have some oceans, wash.
 
* B.L. Hoscheit and A.J. Barger. Large local void, supernovae type Ia, and the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect in a lambda-LTB model. American Astronomical Society, Austin, Texas, presented June 7, 2017. Science News online at
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/milky-ways-loner-status-upheld?tgt=nr

Ghana, once called Gold Coast, has a problem with gold. It has too much. And you know historically what that means: People want the gold, and they will do just about anything to get it, including murder. They will also pollute without compunction streams and rivers with toxic elements like arsenic and mercury. So, it’s not surprising that a citizen of that country should write about the practice of galamsey and its degradation of the country’s environment and threat to its potable water supplies.
 
As Elizabeth Ohene writes in an article published by BBC online, galamsey is the illegal, widespread mining of gold in small mining operations.* Ghana’s Minister of Lands and Mineral Resources banned the practice. You can guess: Galamsey continues. The mining is altering the quality of water in the White, Red, and Black Volta rivers, and the Volta and its giant lake are in jeopardy. Streams are turning different colors as muds and chemicals from galamsey wash into them.
 
Mozambique has a different kind of gold problem, but it, too, involves small mines—very small mines. Apparently, there’s a powerful myth that bald men have gold in their heads. Yep! You guessed it. Men have been killed by those seeking gold in their hairless decapitated skulls. Head galamsey.
 
And now comes word that our species is older than its formerly estimated 200,000-year history. Very human-like skulls have been found in a Moroccan cave and dated to 300,000 years ago.** The discovery is an archaeological “gold mine.” No, not one of the skulls in the cave had gold inside, but those skulls are valuable. They demonstrate that our species or a very closely related species populated Africa much earlier than we had thought and had a longer evolutionary run toward becoming Homo sapiens.
 
One more: You can buy gold painted and actual gold skull jewelry and gold skull knickknacks online or in stores. You can even wear your gold skull jewelry as you show friends your collection of gold skulls spread around the house. "Look, here's my gold skull paperweight." 
 
Three hundred thousand years. Let’s sum up. We’re interested in ancient skulls because they tell us something about our long evolution toward wisdom (sapiens). Because some skulls supposedly contain gold, we’re willing to kill their owners, robbing them of their individual chance for wisdom. Some of us would rather have gold than potable water, the dominant (three quarters) substance of brains. Sapiens?
 
Any glittering thoughts in your skull? Any nuggets of wisdom? Any vein of truth about what it means to be truly wise?   
 
 
*  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-40092641
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-40185359 
 
** http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40194150

Larger context: The WOW! Signal (1420MHz) discovered by SETI researcher Jerry R. Ehman on August 15, 1977 that remained unexplained for decades appears now to have been narrowband radiowaves from a comet’s hydrogen cloud.* Looks unlikely that Earth crossed the path of alien communications, some TV show on Planet Orz about two crazy glimphicytes frolicking on their spring break. For a long time the WOW! Signal provided hope that someday, just someday, we might communicate with aliens. Antonio Paris appears to have dashed that hope in his identifying a possible natural cause for the signal. Even if we could identify alien communications or meet ET, could we truly understand the minds and motivations of aliens?
 
I would not pretend to be an Alien Whisperer. Apparently, as you will see, I’m not even a Dog Whisperer. I have only a little sense of what dogs want and what motivates them. I do know that they appear to have emotions and concerns that I recognize. But I don’t know whether or not I’m just projecting my human traits onto another species. How could there ever be a meeting of the minds?
 
You might ask why I bring this up in the context of the WOW! Signal. I was dog sitting for a couple of days. Left with me while the owners vacationed, the Golden Retriever had visited me before. She, called ‘Shine,’ but formally ‘Sunshine,’ is a very pleasant dog.** She offers whatever is in reach when I enter a room, sometimes it’s a shoe, maybe a glove, she simply puts it in her mouth and walks over, presenting her ‘gift.’ She never barks, just wags her tail and leans in for some petting. I know. Dog story. Boring. But then, she did something I didn’t expect. After taking her on a little excursion in the car and an ensuing walk, I wanted her to enter the house for the evening. She wouldn’t move. She refused to move. She parked in the driveway. No coaxing worked. No treat worked. A gentle shove didn’t work. Immobile, sitting dog.
 
You’re thinking, “Get to the point.” Okay, so I couldn’t get the stubborn creature to move to the door. Then I tried something else. I walked her to the front door, a door she never entered because she had never been anywhere but in the floor off the driveway, a furnished floor and spacious.  At the front door she waited, and I interpreted the wait as her wanting to go in through that door. “How does this dog know that this door goes into my house?” I thought. She’s never been to this point. But somehow she had seemingly reasoned that this was another entrance. When I opened the door, she happily entered. No more stubbornness. No resistance. I had been played by a dog. She outsmarted me. She wanted, I assume, to go into the house through a doorway she had never entered. She got her way. If she were human, I could say with some confidence that she satisfied her curiosity by manipulating me. But she isn’t human. So now what should I think?
 
How far into the depth of encompassing species are there human traits? We know that birds can use tools, that raccoons can open garbage can lids, and that dogs and dolphins have saved lives. Although we keep looking to outer space for species with whom we might some day communicate, an unknown world of mind and motivation surrounds us.
 
True, there are Dog Whisperers—and Dolphin Whisperers. There are people in labs and natural settings watching like Jane Goodalls the actions of animals, testing their skills, and recording their every interaction within and outside their species. There are even people who teach language to great apes. But what do we know that we do not know in the context of our own behavior?
 
So, if aliens were to arrive, how would you interpret their motives? Could you be an Alien Whisperer? How would you explain and predict their actions? I had trouble understanding a familiar dog’s actions.
 
WOW? No, Bowwow!
 
* http://www.wow.com/wiki/Science_News ; see story on Antonio Paris at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/wow-signal-explanation-explained-experiment-astronomy-antonio-paris-a6985466.html
**See my previous blog “Through the Unopened Door” reposted on October 16, 2015