The water in a river does not flow at equal speeds. Nowhere along a stream’s path is the variable speed more evident than along the inside of a meander. Water on the outside of a bend travels faster than water on the inside because the circumference of the turn is longer than it is on the inside. You don’t need a current meter to discover this principle. The river reveals it in two dramatic ways.
 
First, the faster moving water on the outside of the meander erodes the river’s banks more efficiently than water on the inside. The result is an “undercut” slope, usually an almost-to-virtually vertical bank, whereas the slope of the bank on the inside of the turn is a usually gentler “slip-off” slope. Second, scouring work on the outside of a meander is countered by a crescent-shaped deposit of sediments on the inside. A faster current has the energy to move objects and erode more efficiently than a slower one. The crescent-shaped deposit is a point bar.*
 
In some ways cultures are like streams meandering through time. Fast-moving controls, such as political and religious movements, coups, and wars, undercut the containing barriers of tradition and alter its course. But every erosive event is accompanied by a slower movement, a flow that cannot carry its burden efficiently and that shapes the channel of time not by cutting, but rather by depositing little by little what it cannot carry away. That accumulation of cultural sediment migrates into the stream channel, gradually filling in a place that one brief moment of undercutting had eroded.
 
Erosive events capture our attention. They are dramatic shapers of culture, and they highlight our history books. But all of us are equally shaped by the slow accumulation of culture, the gradual changes that leave their deposit on the landscape of our minds and alter our values and behavior. And, although you might believe you ride the faster current of rapid change, you also play a role in establishing a point bar. Even when you think not much is happening, you and your contemporaries are contributing to the buildup of cultural sediment that manifests itself after the flow has passed it. Yes, there is undeniable variability in currents, but the channel carries water identifiable as a single stream.
 
https://offtheshelfedge.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/geology-on-the-wing-4.jpg  

We heed the advice “Eat your veggies,” and chomp on a carrot or celery, maybe on some parsley. We use caraway, anise, and coriander, cumin, dill, and fennel to enhance flavors. By the quantities of their consumption and the statements by food scientists, we assume eating from the family Apiaceae is a healthful practice at its best and a seemingly neutral health practice at its least. We also munch on members of the plant family Asteraceae that includes artichokes, lettuce, and endive.
 
Generally, many of Apiaceae and Asteraceae species are harmless, possibly even beneficial to human well being. However, not all members of those two plant families are healthful foods. Apiaceaens also include hemlock, the poison of choice for Socrates. And the Asteraceaens include toxic members. Wild feverfew, or congress grass (Parthenium hysterophorus) is known as the “scourge of India,” a designation derived from a 1956 outbreak of dermatitis caused by a mixing of its seeds in a humanitarian shipment of grain.* Thousands of people were stricken and some died.
 
So, a plant family can be generally harmless or helpful, but there’s always that exception. In this regard such plant groups are analogs of many human families. Someone seems toxic. But there’s always some hope, and a paradoxical model of a toxic plant with potential benefits belongs to the family Apocynaceae, specifically Nerium oleander.
 
Nerium oleander, the “desert rose,” can be deadly, but there’s another side to the toxic flower. Medical researchers have experimented with the plant as a cancer cure. Even ancient Mediterranean cultures recognized its potential as a remedy. There might be a lesson in this: The proverbial “black sheep” or “bad egg” in a family can be ostensibly toxic, but have underlying curative power. We give toxic plants a chance to prove their benefits. Why not give some seemingly toxic human family members a chance to mimic oleander’s dual character? A little experimentation—granted, under safe guidelines—might reveal a surprising beneficial property lying within a toxic flower.
 
 
* Donald G. Crosby, The Poisoned Weed, 2004, Ocford University Press, p. 7. Online at: https://books.google.com/books?id=W4D1H1PEL-AC&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=Asteraceae+poisons&source=bl&ots=I93AMhMh19&sig=ivEpKnRxk3ExJnjrgRVrX0l-Lz4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjM05rF6LzOAhXM2SYKHbZWDuMQ6AEIKzAC#v=onepage&q=Asteraceae%20poisons&f=false

“What custom’s sword has divided” is Schiller’s take on that which has separated people, what has disrupted, as he might word it, the “brotherhood of man.” If the German poet had lived into the twenty-first century, he could see how correct he was. The genetic connections among us, connections that are irrefutable, are broken by custom, by culture. We know the human genome; we know we are all related. Yet, we fight, family member against family member (the closest genetic tie) and neighboring tribes or nations against one another. We might hypothesize that those who divide by the sword of custom are ignorant of genetic ties, but going all the way back to stories of Cain and Abel and Romulus and Remus, we see symbolic examples of divisions between obvious relatives.
 
In celebration of the reunification of Germany with the fall of the Berlin Wall, Leonard Bernstein directed a performance by musicians once divided by custom. They played Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, a composition based on Schiller’s poem “Ode an die Freude.” Now, you might, if you are a reader of this blog, think I am a bit obsessed with Schiller’s poem and Beethoven’s composition since I have already written about both. I believe both are worth some attention.
 
In the context not of the end of the Cold War, but rather in the context of any contention in any time or place, the poem and the symphony offer an alternative: Joy in the knowledge that we are all related, that paupers and princes are genetically tied, and that even those who believe their differences are irreconcilable stand on common molecular ground.
 
Alle Menshen werden Brüder. But, like Schiller, Beethoven, and others before and after, no repeated declarations of universal brotherhood seem to overcome the pressures of custom. Yet, genetic research reveals an undeniable universal brotherhood among members of our species. As Lynn B. Jorde and Stephen P. Wooding explain in Nature Genetics, “Fortunately, modern human genetics can deliver the salutary message that … there is no scientific support for the concept that human populations are discrete, non-overlapping entities.”*
 
Our “brotherhood” is not just the wishful thinking of poets and composers. There really is a “brotherhood,” or, as Schiller expresses, “All men are brothers.” Now, what can we do about that sword of custom that divides us? 

Is your scabbard empty?
 
* http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html

The little things do matter as the Butterfly Effect attests. Take DMRT3, a gene associated with movements in animal limbs as an example. Evidence reported online by Ben Panko* suggests that hybridization of horses by Vikings about a millennium ago led to more comfortable horseback rides through the gene's mutation. Relatively rapidly, the little mutation spread across the world.
 
Little ideas spread in even less time than hybrid horses because they give people “comfortable” mental rides. What little ideas and what comfortable mental rides? Well, of course, we can count cultural biases, political notions, and stereotypes. But among the most inhibiting little ideas that have shaped modern culture is the one based on “expertise.”
 
The roots of expertise grow in the dirt of early educational systems, the universities. The keepers of knowledge became increasingly more specialized. There is, of course, justification for specialization. No one can “know it all,” and with the spiraling increase in detail, people “concentrate” in “fields” of knowledge. So, a naturalist who knew something of geology in the eighteenth century gives way to someone who specializes in geomorphology. And the geomorphologists, for example, take on further specializations, such as coastal geomorphology. The same can be said for other intellectual endeavors, all those various areas of concentrated studies college students pursue on their way to a career. From undergraduate to graduate to post graduate work, specialization progressively dominates.
 
So, why do I say that “expertise” is limiting? Am I not aware of the significant work done by particle physicists at CERN or virus researchers at the CDC? Allay your doubts. I am aware, and I know that specialists contribute in very practical ways. But the danger of the little idea of “expertise” is that only specialists can contribute and that all others, the LAITY, have little to say on matters that increase our understanding.
 
Specialists rely on a scientific method for advancing knowledge. That’s the good news. So, Christopher Chabris and Joshua Hart “scientifically” refute the work of “outsiders.” The two Union College professors studied the “Triple Package” of success proposed by Yale professors Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld. Briefly, that “Triple Package” postulates success on: 1) A belief that a person’s group is innately superior to other groups; 2) A successful person is insecure; and 3) A successful person has great impulse control. “In this case, our [Chabris and Hart] studies affirmed that a person’s intelligence and socioeconomic background were the most powerful factors in explaining his or her success, and that the triple package was not — even when we carefully measured every element of it and considered all of the factors simultaneously.”
 
Back to the little idea. Even though they do refute the “Triple Package,” Chabris and Hart make an important point about the work of “outsiders” and “non-specialists.” In any specialization a culture of “only us” permeates members’ ranks. Yet, anecdotally, we can report numerous instances of “amateur” discoveries and propositions the “specialists” failed to consider and that appear to be valid even after scientific testing. As Chabris and Hart note:
 
Outsiders can make creative and even revolutionary contributions to a discipline, as the psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman did for economics. And professors do not further the advancement of knowledge by remaining aloof from debates where they can apply their expertise. Researchers should engage the public, dispel popular myths and even affirm “common sense” when the evidence warrants.**

​Why should I have made you wade through this? You don’t have to be a specialist to have a valid idea or novel approach to any aspect of life. “Specialists” can fall into the same pit that all of us stumble into, the pit of “acceptable” knowledge. Once a specialist enters that pit, he or she might find it difficult to see some stranger standing outside the pit of habitual thinking, an amateur offering an extracting hand or at least a periscope that provides a new perspective to consider. One thousand years ago Vikings who were not geneticists or veterinary scientists with advanced degrees changed horseback riding forever. You, too, might provide some comfortable ride through a field of knowledge for which you have no “expertise.”
 
* http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/mutation-made-it-easier-ride-horses-evolved-more-1000-years-ago   
**http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/opinion/sunday/how-not-to-explain-success.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FSociology&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=collection&_r=0

Are you beside yourself with distractions? Is your focus split? Do you really want your mind occupied with all the clutter? No? Then why all the self-imposed distractions? You have radio, TV, all sorts of electronic communication and game devices, digitized music—Oh! You’re way beyond a mouth harp and a phonograph. Then you have the cultural distractions of your own choosing: Be concerned about this. Be concerned about that. Never mind this or that. Speak this way or that. And the social stuff, the incessant balancing of people in constantly changing settings that you choose to enter, places, in a sense, of your making. Are you “beside yourself with distractions”?
 
You need some time alone. But then, how do you forget all those distractions? Aren’t they already in your mind? How do you focus a distracted mind? Yoga? Meditation? Quiet music? Babbling brook or ocean waves? Watching clouds in a bright blue sky? What can I do to help save you from all the distractions?
 
Give you a meaningless line? ___________________________________  
A dimensionless meaningless point?  .
 
The emptiness of ellipsis? …
 
Speak of wholeness holistically?
 
Hum ‘omm’?
 
Breathe slowly? A few slow, very slow—innnnn, outttt, innnnn, outttt—deep, deep deep breaths?
 
Para (beside) nous (mind)! Interesting that those two Greek words combine to make paranoia. Interesting also is the way we use that word. It seems to have no isolated, official meaning, even for psychologists, except as an abbreviation. Professionals associate the word with some other word, as in paranoid schizophrenic. In everyday language, we laity just say “paranoid.” Mostly, we mean a person believes that others are personal antagonists who observe and judge. But in the sense of all the distractions, in the sense of “being beside oneself,” many of us are “paranoid,” self-judging, distracted.
 
The Beach Hole Approach: Imagine filling a hole in beach sand with ocean water. As the water drains through the sand, you go back to the ocean to get more. You repeat the process only to find the hole empty upon each return. As you run to the next distraction, picture yourself on that beach, making repeated trips to fill an unfillable hole. The distractions, the seas, if not endless in supply, are seemingly indefinite as is the permeability of the sand. No matter how many distractions, no matter how much water you think you need to fill the hole, you will never succeed in the task.
 
It’s all right for you to pause for a while by the empty hole just to appreciate its ever-renewing capacity. In that sense you can quietly contemplate nous as you sit beside it. “Being beside oneself” or “being paranoid” will take on a new meaning.

Your phone gives you the opportunity to delete messages that you don’t want, statements that are no longer relevant to your life. You can also delete statements you might find embarrassing or those that might implicate you as a gossip or plotter.
 
Life offers you two delete buttons: Forgetfulness and Forgiveness. Neither button works, however, when obsession is the operating system. Stuck with obsession? Update your operating system.

A chief problem in quantum mechanics is measurement. There’s a famous uncertainty in the process that leaves most, if not all, of us baffled. In the macroworld of our everyday lives, we can pull out a tape measure, wrap it around our waists, and say, “Oh! No!” By using the tape, we’re certain that something has changed, and we either start some abdominal exercises or, in reconciling to what the numbers indicate about a personal expansion, drink another beer. And, if we make comparison measurements with a very close friend by measuring waistlines, the measurement of one doesn’t change the measurement of another (“My waistline has gotten bigger while yours hasn’t changed since high school”).
 
In the very tiny quantum world, measurement isn’t so simple. Measuring one subatomic particle can lead to a disrupted measurement of another. As David Z. Albert writes in Quantum Mechanics and Experience, “Measureable properties [like the spin of electrons] are said to be ‘incompatible’ with one another, since measurements of one will…always necessarily disrupt the other.”* Seems we have to accept the superposition of entangled particles and our inability to know simultaneously both position and motion. Quantum measurements are different from those made on expanding waistlines whose position and outward movement can be known.
 
But there is an uncertainty in the macroworld of human measurements, and that is the one associated with comparative living. When humans live by comparison, their measurements of another’s life can affect both the measurer and the measured. Envy is a measure, and it is often an incompatible one. Taking the measure of another’s life can affect measurer and measured when they become as intertwined as entangled subatomic particles.
 
Envy is rarely an isolated, private phenomenon. The envious usually share envy or attempt to disrupt any objective measurement of the envied. (“He isn’t THAT rich, and he just fell into money”; “Nobody her age could look like that without a visit to the plastic surgeon and the beauty salon”) Incompatible quantum measurements of tiny subatomic particles appear to have an analog in macroworld measurements by micro-minded individuals. But, then, maybe my measure lacks certainty.
 
*Harvard University Press, 1992, p. 7. 

With Pokémon Go we have entered yet another kind of reality. Places that are significant for whatever previous reason have now become overlain with another reality. There’s a superposition of place, a new kind of layering of reality, a virtual reality that takes precedence in the minds of the game’s players.
 
Case in point: Jeffrey Marder of West Orange, New Jersey, has sued Niantic Labs, Nintendo, and the Pokémon Co. Basically, the suit says that Pokémon Go players have trespassed on his lawn, but on a higher level, “Defendants have shown a flagrant disregard for the foreseeable consequences of populating the real world with virtual Pokémon without seeking the permission of property owners.”
 
Imagine, there you are, ready to fire up the barbeque. You go outside to the back yard, and as you walk onto your grass, you trip over a virtual character occupying a place once reserved for family, friends, and an occasional and real squirrel. Or there you are in a place deemed to be special by virtue of what it commemorates, such as the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, only to find players acting in total disregard of those visiting the site for its intended purpose. Superposition.
 
And then there are the violent consequences: Fifteen-year-old Arthur Digsby followed the game to a yard where he walked around the grass and surprised a widow by seemingly trying to enter her house to find the virtual character. Frightened by the intruder, the woman shot Arthur, killing him. More: Stabbings on the grass in a German park. A fight near the courthouse in Sherman, Texas. You can research other incidents easily enough.
 
You know Carl Sandburg’s anti-war poem “Grass”? It’s worth a read:
 
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work--
                                          I am the grass; I cover all.
 
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
                                          What place is this?
                                          Where are we now?
 
                                          I am the grass.
                                          Let me work.
 
So now we can add to the sites of wars past the sites of wars future: Injury and death over grass that isn’t even there.

The 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil is an attention-getter. It should be. Just about everyone in the world has a representative, a dog in the fight. Pride’s at stake. Honor, too. Olympic competition is newsworthy. As a result, even those who can’t afford to go to the games, who pay only passing attention, and who profess disinterest will have received some information about Olympic activities during and after the events.
 
Scores, records, and winners seem to be the heart of Olympic news, but something else goes on that shapes our minds about place, in this instance, Brazil in general and Rio in particular. The billions of people who cannot make a trip to the venues rely on literally thousands of reporters stationed both in Rio and elsewhere. In filing their reports, they become the avatars of personal experience. They determine the focus of attention. They project mental maps into the minds of everyone not present.
 
Think of how information has changed. Generals in ancient wars had to rely on scouts whose reports of invading armies took days to receive. Explorers’ reports in the Renaissance took months to reach home. In contrast, we live a life of almost instant information-sharing. Yet, as incomplete as any centuries-old and slow system of communication about the nature of a place might have been, so our own rapid conveyances of information are also incomplete, simply because individual media outlets focus attention they deem worthy of coverage.
 
Are you a reporter? Want to spend time talking about Zika in Brazil? Go ahead. Use a couple of news segments; show someone spraying insecticide. But consider the consequences of your news reports. The sweep of a camera isn’t the sweep of moveable eyes in a swiveling human head. There is no accompanying touch, smell, or taste, and sound is limited by what a microphone picks up and a sound editor allows. And the limited focus of your report is all the viewer has as a basis for a mental map. (“Brazil! No not me. Did you see those reports on Zika?”) Regardless of news coverage, place becomes a caricature drawn by the preferences and needs of reporters and their employers.
 
In short, though we acquire information faster than anyone could have received it from runners or horseback or camel riders, we still have incomplete information. Yet, just as those from centuries ago mapped places that they never visited on the basis of reports, so we do the same. And as they trusted their reporters, we often trust ours to give us a sense of place. But in a highly competitive world where a daily Olympics occurs as the competition among news organizations and their reporters from every nation, we focus on what both reporters and cameras tell us is important about place.