How indifferent are some of your friends to the censorship imposed by social media companies, major media outlets, government officials, and special interest groups? Are they asking, “What’s the big deal?” Did the German citizens not ask a similar question before Kristallnacht? 
 
Friends, the Inquisition is back. Konrad is back from the dead, and he’s brought along his two henchmen. He roams from village to village, from website to website, in search of heretics, that is, those whom he would cancel for not being PC or not conforming to the cause du jour. But all should be aware that no one, no matter how silently or verbally complicit with his methods and results, is safe. We’ve seen the dangers of fanatical condemnation in real life and in fiction. Those quietly complicit in malicious conformity often end up its victims, if not physically, then intellectually or emotionally. By the way, Konrad really doesn’t care if one currently agrees with him; he’ll turn on anyone in a moment. Think, as an example, of Salem, Massachusetts, 1692; his reincarnation was there, too. Think of the Portuguese auto-da-fé during which heretics were burned and also the gatherings of capirote-doffed members of the KKK during which the innocent were lynched. The Konrads of history have made their appearances in many forms and under many causes. 
 
“Who is or was Konrad?” you ask. 
 
In thirteenth-century Germany, Konrad of Marburg was the Chief Inquisitor. In short, he’s the guy who burned people at the stake. Anyone. From ordinary citizen, through Albigensian heretic, to nobility and religious, no one, understand, NO ONE, was safe once the accusation of heresy was out and once Konrad had heard it. Three years of terror in Germany! Konrad and two henchmen, Konrad Dorso and one-eyed, one-handed John, went unimpeded through Germany, killing the impure, the heretics. 
 
Here’s a passage from the Chronica Regia Coloniensis: 
 
            “In various parts of Germany it has happened that many people, nobles and non-nobles, monks and nuns, townsmen and peasants have been given to the flames by Brother Konrad because of their actual or suspected heresy after a trial which, if we may say so was far too hasty. For a man may be sentenced without opportunity of appeal or defense and thrust into the fearful flames on the very same day on which he is accused; whether the accusation is justified or no makes no difference.” (p. 217)*
 
Eventually, Konrad picked the wrong guy to persecute, a nobleman whom the Bishop acquitted. On the road after the trial, Konrad was murdered. But he’s baaaaaaaack. In fact, Konrad can’t be permanently laid to his unpeaceful rest. 
 
Konrad, Konrad Dorso, and one-eyed-one-handed John have arisen in the form of those who participate in today’s cancel culture and in harming those who simply disagree or fall into a group of personae non gratae. Those who silently permit the Konrads of their time to condemn, ostracize, and harm are very much like Pope Gregory IX; that is, they are blind to what they condone. At least, blind for now. Given the way Konrads work, the focus of persecution can swiftly and unexpectedly turn. 
 
Like the post-WWII Germans who gave silent permission to the persecutions of the late 1930s and early 1940s, those who silently accept the ruination of anyone or any group in the name of political correctness and political expediency, will probably one day realize like that medieval Pope the nature of what they indifferently accepted. Of course, by then it will be too late to reclaim the innocent from the ashes.
 
Cancel culture isn’t new. It’s been a part of humanity since Cain killed Abel, so to speak. Examples abound, but I think of President Jackson, whose marriage and wife became the target of nineteenth-century Konrads. No doubt you can think of numerous other examples, both historical and contemporary. 
 
All of us have an ethical dilemma. Do we become a manifestation of Konrad or a silent supporter of contemporary Inquisitions, or do we inform and even berate the Pope Gregory IXs of our time that they have unleashed an unnecessary and immoral terror upon the innocent? 
 
Labeling does little good in human affairs. Even positive labels have negative consequences. Calling someone “famous,” or “important” can elicit in the envious both derision and disdain. Labels are the stuff of ad hominem and ad populum attacks, both the tactics of people like Konrad of Marburg. Yet, I’m inclined to label as “Konrads” those who would impose a cancel culture and social Inquisition on the innocent and free thinking of our time. So, I propose a new expression: “Don’t be a Konrad.” 
 
 
*Heer, Friedrich. 1961 (translation, 1962). The Medieval World: Europe 1100-1350. Konrad (Conrad) was encouraged by Pope Gregory IX who was unaware of the atrocities imposed on the Germans until he received a detailed letter from the Archbishops of Cologne and Trier. Once aware of Konrad’s activities, the Pope then wrote, “We marvel that you allowed legal proceedings of this unprecedented nature to continue for so long among you without acquainting us of what was happening. It is our wish that such things should no longer be tolerated, and we declare these proceedings null and void. We cannot permit such misery as you have described.” 

Ever since we’ve known about Dark Energy and the increased rate of expansion in the Cosmos, we’ve realized that the End of Everything is far off, really far off, maybe a tredecillion years far off. That’s a one followed by 42 zeroes, as Americans reckon numbers. Go ahead, write it out: 
 
000,000,000,0…No, I don’t want to; if you want, you can write the number. And in doing so, keep in mind that it’s been about 1,000 since the Vikings, 2,000 since Augustus Caesar, 3,000 since the fall of Troy, 4,000 since… Get the picture? We’re dealing with only THREE ZEROES so far. The origin of our species? Maybe 250,000 years ago; add another zero for the rise of bipedalism, go back 65,000,000 years to the fall of the dinosaurs and the rise of mammals; and, going back, back, back, nine zeroes to the origin of Earth itself at 4.5 X 10^9, and by adding a few more nine-zero years, 13,700,000,000 to the origin of the Cosmos. Lots of zeroes. Billion has 9; trillion has 12, quadrillion, 15; quintillion, 18…tredecillion has 42 zeroes.  
 
Mind if I ask? How old are you in zeroes? Got one under your belt? Not too many of us have two. No one has ever had three. How many zeroes do you hope to have? The entire Inca Empire rose and fell in about two zeroes. Egypt, more or less an identifiable group of people from origin to today, have been around for three zeroes, at best in their specific origins along the NIle to four zeroes or 10,000 years ago. 
 
Am I trying to depress you? Sorry if that’s a consequence, but the numbers are the numbers. Should I draw some “feel good” lessons from them? 

1. Although humans don’t live long, they do, in fact, live lives of self-consciousness with knowledge of both past and potential future, such as that End-of-Everything some tredecillion years from now. 
2. Of the estimated 100 billion humans who have inhabited the Cosmos, you are among the fortunate ones who reached your present age. Many died younger; thus, the lower average lifespan of your ancestors. You might not reach 100, but you’re currently on your way, and barring bad genes, bad choices, and bad circumstances, you might make it.  
3. In just 13.7 billion years, just a tiny fraction of 42 zeroes in its expected lifespan, the universe produced you, a unique being with a unique history and unique future.
4. Given the conscious you have, you give meaning to an otherwise meaningless conglomeration of matter and energy. And, hey, look at this, you can manipulate that meaning and with certain limitations, use both matter and energy as you will. 
5. You can set the value of everything. Sure, the value you set will pass just as the value of wampum has passed, but for a zero or two, as long as you live, you can impose value and you might even pass on values to ensuing generations. 
6. You have the potential to shape the nature of the next zeroes. What’s keeping you from becoming the next Buddha, the next Christ, the next Plato or Aristotle? If you want to expend some of that energy you control in shaping those future zeroes, do so.
7. Maybe, and more importantly, you can make the zeroes under your control the best of those 42 zeroes. 

 
Some might argue that zeroes are nothing. I argue that zeroes are whatever we make of them. Make the best of however many you get. 

In this age when everyone gets a trophy, trying is as good as doing. And we keep trying, all kinds of trying, not just in sports, but in academia, government agencies, and professions. And one “try” with no “do” is achieving the universal Good, that is, all-inclusive egalitarian good. And fair warning, this is a critique because I don’t have any answer on how to provide equally for all. I do know that all previous attempts have been little more than attempts because there are always some people who are “more equal” than others. I’ve written about this before, giving brief accounts of attempts like Brook Farm, the nineteenth-century American Transcendalists’ failed “utopia.” But given the history of failures of communes like that and Marxist states, people still pursue “good for all,” to make just one more attempt to bring everyone into the fold of sustainable prosperity.
 
Let’s see how close we are to achieving Good for All.
 
Erasmus University Rotterdam lists among its research goals the pursuit of “initiatives” on the “Dynamics of Inclusive Prosperity.” In their own words, they mean “enabling as many people as possible to benefit from increasing prosperity, whilst minimising [sic.] the negative consequences.” Could there be a more noble humanistic cause? The research institute wants to find ways to “organize society and companies to be better equipped for [a sustainable] future.” Surely, that’s praiseworthy. And speaking of inclusiveness, the initiatives bring together philosophers, technologists, lawyers, anthropologists, entrepreneurs, and executives to reach the projected goals. It’s one big happy family of academically led altruists, I’m guessing. The DoIP (yes, they have an acronym for Dynamics of Inclusive Prosperity) either falls under the aegis of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or meshes with it. 
 
Do I live in a world of platitudes and unrealities? A world where ideals exceed reals?
 
You’re thinking, “Is this guy a pessimist or nihilist? Is he a medieval nominalist? Doesn’t he recognize the existence of universals? Aren’t there ideals toward which we should strive? Is he thinking we shouldn’t provide the ‘Best for the Most’? Must be one of those capitalist types. Disgusting self-centeredness.”
 
Contrary to the charge of pessimism an self-centeredness, I’m optimistic, but not Pangloss optimistic, and I believe voluntary charity is an ethical and moral Good. I’ve seen an abundance of altruism, of people helping other people share in the common wealth. Heck, I live in Pennsylvania, technically not the “State of…,” but rather the “Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.” I live in a political entity where the largest city is Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love—ignore the murder rate and stay out of those 15 neighborhoods known for crime. Yes, Pennsylvania is a true commonwealth. Shouldn’t the DoIP researchers start their research in PA? Doesn’t PA have the answers they seek, the methodology that sustains the maximum benefit to all? Look, during the pandemic of 2020, the PA government shut down as many businesses as it could in its desire to ensure the greater good. Who needs to keep his business open anyway or hold a job if there’s a contagious disease? Especially during a pandemic when the chance of survival is only—according to the CDC—in the range of 94.6% for people over 69 and over 99% for everyone else. Shades of the Black Death that reduced the populations of Hamburg, Bremen, Florence, and Paris by half! For the Greater Good, for the Commonwealth, “Individuals” in charge of Pennsylvania determined what is in the best interest of the people. (Look at the states that are not “commonwealths,” like California, where the mayor of LA and the Governor proclaimed what is the ideal for the people yet practiced a real individualism, quarantining others and closing businesses while attending social gatherings and living on the wealth of the collective, that is, on tax-dollar salaries. Wait! What’s that you say? “PA’s officials have also ‘gathered’ during shutdowns.” Maybe they have, but I’m sure they have everyone’s welfare in mind. The officials in medieval cities did nothing of the sort, and look what happened in the 14th century)
 
Okay, let’s take the Erasmus U’s researchers seriously and stop the sarcastic recriminations. They fall into a long western European tradition that harks to the fall of monarchies and the rise of democratic principles colored by remnants of split Christianity—you know, both Catholics and Protestants maintained the moral efficacy of that “love your neighbor as yourself” commandment (as long as the neighbor wasn’t a member of the other sect). And the Erasmus researchers also fall under the influence of Bentham and Mill’s utilitarianism. Give me a moment for another digression here. (Isn’t life full of digressions, anyway?)
 
Ask yourself if you agree with this statement: “The only ethical act detrimental to the life of another is the act of self-protection.” Or what about this statement? “The ultimate ethical goal is the equality of all.” I’m pretty sure that John Stuart Mill, a guy with a purported IQ of 200, held both statements as true. I’m guessing that even if you would like to modify them, you don’t find those two statements repugnant. That 200 IQ of Mill aside, his notion of the greatest good for the greatest number of people seems to be a concession to the impossibility of total equality. Someone is always left out. So, even a world filled with Panglosses isn’t the Best of All Possible Worlds. Some people, even in the most egalitarian of societies and political systems, become “more equal” than others. There’s the bit of reality that seems to have crept into the mission statement of Erasmus University: “enabling as many people as possible.” That “as possible” suggests the impossibility of including everyone in “inclusive prosperity.” And yet, there are people who still try. Jolly good. Nothing attempted, nothing gained. Maybe all those previous attempts to achieve ideals failed because of the individuals involved. 
 
I wonder whether the researchers simultaneously accept and reject “universals” like some nominalist philosophers. Are they the product of medieval nominalism that rejected the “universals” represented by monarchic rule and Church dogma and authority? 
 
The fall of medieval European social and political structure and the advent of the Renaissance, of schisms like Protestantism, and of parliamentarian representative government meant that voices once unheard gained an audience. No longer did the elite born-to-rule nobility control the destiny of the masses. Mercantilism flourished and individuals became important for no other reason than that they were individuals, all supposedly of “equal value”—though not of equal economic worth. Aren’t the Dutch inheritors of that individualism, of that entrepreneurship. The Dutch are known for their avant-garde individual lifestyle and thinking, that is, free lifestyles and thinking. Think Amsterdam as much as Rotterdam’s Erasmus university, where serious people like those well-intentioned researchers dream of a better life on a sustainable world. The Dutch gave us Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek who started us on the road to microbiology. They gave us Hans Lippershey whose telescope started us on the road to astronomy, and van Eyck, who started artists down the road to perspective painting. They explored the world, built up global trade, and provided opportunity at home and abroad. The list of Dutch individuals who started us on the road to our modern world is long. Praise the Dutch for helping usher in the modern world. Their twenty-first century intellectuals seem poised to usher in the sustainable future in which the greatest good goes to the greatest number.
 
Now, the Netherlands seems to be a pleasant enough country for tourists. Tulips and windmills, canals and dikes, shops that offer all kinds of stuff: Licorice, wooden clogs, delftware, bikes, Heineken, and Leiden cheese. One might think Dutch towns are the epitome of Pleasantville. They don’t even allow cars in Utrecht where people walk or bike. And the readily available drugs? Oh! The drugs. These are not an ultraconservative people, not to mention the famous red light district with prostitutes displayed behind street windows. And yet…Things must always have been occasionally unpleasant. Why else is Zuid Holland known for a one-ear painter?—And why do they pronounce his name vahn Hochhff (my best guess at the sound)? 
 
I don’t have access to the most recent statistics, but the Netherlands in 2016 had over one million people at or below the poverty line in a country of 17 million. Do the math for the percentage. And economists have predicted that 250,000 children in poverty during that year would remain in poverty throughout their lives. Come on, Erasmus guys, charity begins at home, the neighbors to love are the actual neighbors.  
 
Where’s the sharing? I’m sure one of those comfortable DoIP academicians could share some Gouda and Edam, you know, give a kid a sandwich. Or maybe the Dutch government should keep behind some of that 100-billion-Euro’s worth of food that the country exports from its ports every year, $10 billion of which the Dutch grow on their fertile lowlands. Surely, when the researchers meet in one of Rotterdam’s 900 restaurants to discuss how the world can become better for as many people as possible, they can save their doggy bags of excess for some poor kid. Sorry, I forgot, we’re looking at the Big Picture here, the ideal of universal equality. Those who run the floating “sustainable” farm project in Rotterdam intend to use leftovers collected in electric vehicles from local restaurants for livestock feed. No doubt the poor kids will get to see on a school field trip the wonders of that farm and the well-fed cows munching on leftover stoopwafels.
 
Anyway, sarcasm aside, I see the conundrum the researchers face and why they won’t reach total parity among any population. How does one balance the individual against the collective? How does one prevent the individual from desiring to distinguish himself or herself and declaring, at least in his or her mind, a greater beauty and intelligence, ownership and economic success, and social status and happiness. Is utilitarianism that seeks the greatest good for the greatest number just another form of Marxism? Is it all just an idealistic pipe dream in the minds of well-fed academicians who accept the idea of a “universal” while personally practicing a specific and personal reality funded by a guaranteed job in an ivy-covered ivory tower? 
 
Is there a comparable group in the United States, people that practice individual aggrandizement while proposing “equality” that they interpret as the ideal? 
 
Can there be a social ideal, a universal, without individual sacrifice? What does one do with all those misdirected and unintended consequences of a utilitarianism that stresses equal results over equal opportunity? Look at the consequences of the well-intended Affirmative Action legislation in the United States. Someone in control determines arbitrarily who has opportunity and who doesn’t. Someone, an actual individual, makes the decisions for the many. Isn’t that the very evil that the proponents intended to avoid? Should everyone be entitled to enter Harvard and consequently be admitted? What’s that, you say, “There’s not enough dorm space”? Think online courses, silly. 
 
Equality of outcome is an ideal implied in the DoIP. Yet, the real dynamic of individuals that make up a collective always results in inequalities. 
 
Look at all the good that the search for equality has produced, like taking kids out of their neighborhoods on buses bound for other schools. No unintended consequences there, right? And after years of pumping trillions of dollars into Johnson’s War on Poverty, the United States has eliminated poverty, right? 
 
Overriding the ideal is the real. The Dutch taste for raw herring and bitter-balls isn’t universal. It’s an acquired taste. And the definition of poverty is also acquired. Are members of an American family living “in poverty” with only one television and an ageing car the “ideal” poor?
Are the homeless on the streets of San Francisco the “ideal” poor? Is the family living on $55,000 poor compared to one living on $65,000. Is poverty an absolute or sliding scale? 
 
“No,” you say. “There are absolutes. No one should be as rich as Croesus, I mean, Bezos.” 
 
Let’s say we rail against the rich. “Rich people should share.” Okay, that’s noble if they do. It’s ideal even. And, fortunately for those less fortunate, many “rich” people do share. But then, what of those who are “less rich” but who still have more than an ancient king by way of comfort and luxury, a TV, for example, a Big Mac, radios too numerous to count, and shoes, Oh! the shoes! Have a guest room in their houses? Is it empty? Do any of those participating in the DoIP project have an extra room they could share with the less fortunate? Any extra stoopwafels to hand out? 
 
You say, “But I drive an electric car, not a Tesla, mind you, but a Volt. I reuse store bags to save on plastic consumption. I even compost and take recyclables to the recycling center. I’m doing my part for sustainability and equality. I love my neighbor, too, and I can prove it because he has my lawnmower. I treat everyone with respect, and I don’t overbuy at Costco things that will go to waste. I take the clothes I don’t want any longer to Goodwill centers, where I get a receipt for tax purposes (I’m charitable, but not stupid).”
 
Pat yourself on the back. What you do individually no amount of research on ideals can ever do. Governments have tried imposing the “greater good” on entire populations only to find that in making some things equal, they inevitably generate inequalities. Look at the pandemic lockdowns, where in California the number of COVID cases has surpassed two million while small businesses have gone belly up. In saving the most, officials have condemned the many to near or complete poverty.
 
“But look at the lives they have saved!”
 
Maybe. That 99% survival rate tells me that 99% survive regardless of any measures taken for the common good. The disease is serious, indeed, given the belief in the worth of the individual. One percent death rate from a single virus can decimate a specific family. But the ideal of keeping everyone safe or of limiting the infections has also driven officials to condemn families to bankruptcy, with some business owners committing suicide and others turning to drugs and alcohol. It’s disrupted a generation of school kids. It’s changed interpersonal relationships. It’s sparked universal distrust and fear as much as any other “universal.” 
 
As I said at the outset, I have no grandiose ideas that would achieve the greatest good for the greatest number, the best for the most. In that, I’m not a pessimist, but rather a realist. The only solution I can offer is that which Christ offered about a couple of millennia ago: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If everyone did…   

As you open the Web, you will occasionally see a picture with a catchy tag for a series of photos on a related subject. I came across one that had a slideshow on green screen movie effects, so I did what exactly what the creators wanted me to do; curious, I clicked * Of course, it’s a way to put advertising into a brain, even subliminally—the corners of the eye take in the advertisements posted near, above, or below the “Next Slide ==>” bar. One tries not to look, but…
 
After going through a half dozen photos of Hollywood’s use of green screens, I decided to wake from my stupor and click myself back to reality. I just wonder now whether or not I’m too enamored of green screen reality to see the world as it “really” is. And what of those undeveloped minds that accept green screen reality as “reality”? Will they form their knowledge of the world through green screen technology? 
 
What I saw by clicking was for a few moments at least a fascinating slide show. I had wondered how the big ships, harbor, and people were placed in the Titanic’s opening scenes or how those spectacular waterfalls were placed onscreen for Rivendell. Yeah. Green screens. Ah! The reality of unreality! Does it then make me view reality as unreal?
 
“Don’t worry about the young minds,” I say, “they will face realities as they occur. Reality with consequences forces itself on everyone at some time. Give the kids a break. Let them enjoy a green-screen life. Didn’t I in my youth accept a low-tech science fiction of Buster Crabbe’s Flash Gordon, Forbidden Planet, The Day the Earth Stood Still (the original), and even the first Star Trek series? Everyone has suspended disbelief at times. Our brains do it every night when we dream.”
 
Do you remember the opening lines of Emily Dickinson’s “There Is No Frigate like a Book”? No?
 
                There is no Frigate like a Book
                To take us Lands away
                Nor any Coursers like a Page
                Of prancing Poetry –
 
The best “unreality” Emily had available occurred in books. She did, however, pose for a daguerreotype portrait now held by Amherst College. So, I assume she knew that images could transport people across the planet. What, it occurs to me to wonder, would she think about the green-screen reality of Cameron’s Titanic, a ship whose size dwarfs a 19th-century frigate by as much as that frigate dwarfs a rowboat? There is no frigate like a green-screen ship in a 200-million-dollar film!
 
The modern “frigates” of green screen technology outpace the coursers Emily knew. We can race into unreality and immerse ourselves in it in our living rooms. Our familiarity with suspended disbelief is so ingrained that we speak of Hollywood’s productions as though they “are” reality. Film characters “are” characters regardless of their unreal nature; thus, the Marvel and DC movie successes and the frequency of terms like “hulk” and “superman” with their movie nuances. We have to suspend our belief to accept Bond-like spies and detectives swinging perilously from skyscrapers green-screened into our view. 
 
Suspending disbelief is a longstanding practice of the human brain. We’ve been telling stories for a long time, all of them using metaphors and similes to project a verbal slide show onto our brains. * Why? Are “they” right when “they” say there’s a need for escapism? Is reality too real to handle without some relief we find in suspending disbelief? Or is life so boring and one world or universe so limiting that we’re driven, like Tennyson’s Ulysses, “to strive, to seek, to find…” any substitute reality, even one projected onto a green screen? Was the slide show I viewed this morning my voyage on a “frigate”? Or, rather, was my clicking on “Next Slide ==>” my desire to see how the frigate works? If I want to suspend belief, I board the green screen frigate; if I want to know how the green screen frigate toys with my sense of reality, I click on the slides. But now, having seen how Hollywood uses green screens to create reality, I have lost a substitute reality I was comfortable with in my suspension of disbelief. Losing “unreal reality,” I’m forced to face “real reality.”
 
Since I know that I have suspended my disbelief to participate in unrealities in both books and films, I had a desire to understand why I would do so. Was “reality,” that is, the “real reality,” calling me back?
 
And when I enter a green-screen world, does my suspension of disbelief indicate an immaturity I can’t recognize? Are there more mature people who refuse to participate in such suspensions? To some degree, yes, but only “to some degree.” 
 
I know someone who doesn’t like science fiction. The same person watches dramatizations of  murders, romance, and political intrigue. Is there a difference between a brain that accepts the “realities” of science fiction and one that accepts, say, the realities of Pride and Prejudice or some “based on a true story” portrayal shown on Lifetime or Netflix? I might argue that to throw a single adjective into any story makes an unreality shaped by the author's personal green screen. 
 
If one looks at the so-called basic plots, one sees that regardless of green screen or actual setting or the fictional form as short story or novel, we are rather limited when it comes to suspending disbelief. The characters in green screen films still emote as “real people” emote, still face dilemmas as “real people” face dilemmas, and still think in the manner humans are inclined to think, logically or illogically.
 
All this because I chose to click on a slideshow! Now, I’m not sure why I perceive “reality” as “real,” or why I accept “unreality” as “real.” Don’t I naturally green-screen all the events of my life by providing a context that might not be factual? Don’t I see everything before me against a background of homegrown attitudes, accumulated knowledge, and desires? Now that I come to think about it, all I observe appears against a personal background. Maybe I’m the green screen.  
 
 
 
*https://www.history-a2z.com/green-screen-photos-show-us-how-hollywood-really-works/
 
**The Conversation Online. The world’s oldest story? Astronomers say global myths about ‘seven sisters’ stars may reach back 100,000 years. Online at:   https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-oldest-story-astronomers-say-global-myths-about-seven-sisters-stars-may-reach-back-100-000-years-151568   Accessed December 23, 2020.  

I suppose each of us has a turning point, some moment when our lives take a different direction. Probably, each of us has multiple such points or moments: The birth or death of a loved one, a life-altering natural disaster like a flood, a fortuitous economic change or its opposite, or…
 
The categories of turning points are numerous and varied, and they aren’t all mutually exclusive. The hypothetical “flood” of the previous paragraph might have wiped out someone’s personal finances and simultaneously provided some entrepreneurial opportunity. Regardless of its seeming significance at the moment of occurrence, each turning point gains both recognition and importance in retrospect. “When I look back, I see that I would be a different person today if….”
 
The conditional, the “if,” is the mere conjecture that one’s history might have been different had the turning point not occurred. It is an unreal condition because one moment leads to the next as we go down one path and reject the Frostian “road not taken.” Life doesn’t always clearly present a bifurcating moment, but when it does, we take one, and not the other, path; thank you, Yogi Berra.* Not always doing so consciously, we nevertheless take that “first” step onto that new path. Sometimes, however, we recognize the significance of the moment, like Einstein’s recognizing “the happiest thought” of his life that became the gateway to his two papers on Relativity, international fame, and a new understanding of the Cosmos. And like the Spacetime Einstein defined, some turning points aren’t angular. They are segments of curves or radians around which life’s paths bend; every point’s mass warping personal Spacetime, with some points warping more and others less.    
 
I suppose I could classify my youth as one lived at the bottom of the Middle Class or the top of the Poor Class. We weren’t flush with money, but we always had food. Money, as we know, is the antithesis of mass: The less one has, the more it pulls one down. Whereas mass creates a well down which objects fall in curved Spacetime, money has an opposite effect: The more one has, the higher one rises in a straight line through society’s hierarchy. As a baby and toddler during the Second World War, I lived with my mother in her parents’ house while my father served in the Marines and fought on Okinawa. Upon his return, we moved into one side of his mother’s house, the other side being occupied by my aunt’s family, with my grandmother living in a kitchen and bedroom/sitting room on the second floor with other bedrooms. For someone who had already lived the earliest years in a house crowded with grandparents and some of my mother’s siblings during the war, the new digs were expansive: I had my own small bedroom; we had a kitchen and living room on one side of the hall, and my aunt and family had a similar setup on the other side. The railing of the steps in the entry hallway between the two “apartments,” by the way, was wide enough and sturdy enough for sliding—my version of a Disney ride very like the sliding board at the local playground.  
 
Okay, you have the setting. Now, what about a “turning point”? 
 
You might say, “Well, I’m guessing that moving into the new house was the turning point.” And you would be right because all “new” experiences or lifestyle changes are turning points in some way. But in retrospect, I see that move to have had less “path-bending mass,” less “warping mass,” than another point. 
 
The turning point did, however, take place in the kitchen of that house, and it forced me to see a world larger than the unpaved alleys and backyard where I played with cousins and some elementary school friends. It was a brief breakfast-time moment centered on a short comment and a photo on the front page of the local newspaper. 
 
The daily paper and the larger world was of little interest to me before that moment. Sure, the paper was always readily available as it is in many households, rich, poor, highly or barely literate. In our kitchen its presence was almost mandatory. For a while, my father, a linotypist,** worked for the Tribune Review before switching to work for a private printing company. I now suppose that in addition to his interest in local, national, and international goings on, he wanted to see that his work bore no flaws, no noticeable typos from his night shift on the linotype. Every morning the paper was always on the table, where I ate my bowl of Wheaties. The paper’s presence was neither unusual nor special; its placement was not for a nine-year-old an inducement to read. Except for the comics section, the accessible newspaper was never the focus of my attention. And then one morning in 1953…
 
One morning just shy of my tenth birthday, my mother, standing in the kitchen at the ironing board, said, “See that picture in the paper? That was a very bad man who died.”*** That was it; I can’t remember any elaboration. The picture, a rather famous one shown round the world, was of Stalin in his casket. And that “turning point” for Stalin became one of those unnoticed-at-the-time turning points in my life. Suddenly, the world was larger than the house, the yard, the alley, elementary school, and the local neighborhood. Suddenly, there was something larger. And, unfortunately, something a bit more ominous. I found myself unknowingly on that curved path, the one bent by the gravity of the news and the weight of the world. 
 
If you were born into the television age, you’ll probably have to use your imagination to understand how a black-and-white newspaper photo could become a turning point. But before the current age first of network and then of instantaneous 24/7 news, even highly educated adults depended for news on whatever newspaper editors chose to report. Imagine a world without TV and the Internet. Today’s freedom to roam world news stories over the Web gives an amazing perspective and one that theoretically everyone can use to assign value to phenomena, including events thousands of miles distant. 
 
At the time of Stalin’s death, I had no television; in fact, I don’t think I had ever seen one outside the few stores that began to sell them. FM radio was still a long way from popularity; AM radio was my ordinary link to the “outside” through music and evening radio shows that we sat and listened to in the living room. I did see black-and-white Movietone Newsreels before the start of double features of cowboy, comedy, and detective films on Saturday mornings at the Palace Theater, but they appeared as “a curiosity” generally irrelevant to my life. **** My cousins and I were in the theater to see the likes of Lash LaRue, Gene Autry, the Cisco Kid, Batman, the Bowery Boys, and Abbot and Costello. Fidgeting in our seats in anticipation of the quick-draw gunfights and slapstick comedy in Saturday morning films, we paid little attention to the “news” narrated by Lowell Thomas though no doubt some images must have penetrated our bobbing skulls*** My association with a larger world was thus quite limited, so there was no way that I could at the time understand either my father’s wartime experiences half a world away or the politics of a foreign power. In such a context, my mother’s little comment on a black-and-white photo of a “very bad man” who died became a turning point.
 
Shortly after Stalin’s death, we got a TV, one with a small black-and-white screen. Connected to an antenna on the chimney, it gave me a scratchy view of a broader world. I had stepped onto the path of “virtual” reality beyond the Palace Theater, though obviously in retrospect a rather primitive experience by today’s HD video and Web standards. Those once-a-week world stories from Movietone at the Palace and limited TV coverage of worldwide events didn’t have much mass.
 
One could argue that I simply followed the normal path to reason and discovery, a path that everyone takes from childhood to adulthood. One could also note that there were children at the time who were far more sophisticated than I, better educated, more widely traveled, and better informed, children who even had their own collection of books. Although my linotypist father could read and correct reporters’ sentences on pieces of metal upside down and backward, he did not have any reading materials in the house save the daily newspaper and maybe Life magazine. “Who,” I might have asked at the time, “is rich enough to own his own books? They’re in the public library.” I owned Little Toot, my favorite book as a toddler and had access to my school texts, including the arithmetic book with those dreaded multiplication tables. Otherwise, a once-a-week visit to the town library was my avenue to the outside world, and I began to pay some attention to it there after Stalin’s death. Lowell Thomas’s Movietone narrations also began to make more sense on Saturday mornings, and the newspaper, I discovered, had more than just comics and sports sections.
 
Trying to parse a turning point is much like trying to understand light’s dual nature. Is a point really a “point,” a discontinuous unit, or an uninterrupted wave defined by a crest and trough? No matter how discreet the turning point, it always meshes with life’s personal continuum and spreads out through time. “Collapsing” the continuum to a point never really infuses us with complete understanding; rather, the point just draws us to some curvature, no part of which is the whole “curve.” Understanding any turning point requires a broad perspective, the perspective afforded by time and the experiences on many curved paths.
 
I could argue that I’m making too much of Stalin’s picture and my mother’s comment and that I’m attributing more to radian than to completed curve. In that—in fixed and completed curves—I think of the Saturn’s icy rings and their many shepherding moons like Pandora and Prometheus that exert a gravitational influence on the F Ring. Maybe that’s an appropriate image for a turning point’s influence on a curving path because those moons, while shaping the rings’ curvature, also move. And, for me, at least, there’s significance in the composition of the rings. They appear to be solid from a distance, but are composed of individual particles, each of which is shepherded in its own coincident orbit with other members of the ring. What should we imagine? Every little moving shepherd moon is the analog of a major turning point, and by exerting its own tiny gravitational influence, every moving particle within a ring also serves as a turning point. All those points appear to have a common ring identity by seeming to make up a single object. That’s the way my life might seem to others. That’s the way my life might seem to me unless I focus briefly on a turning point. 
 
Is it thus? Has Stalin’s picture, has the picture of a “very bad man” traveled like Saturn’s shepherding moon Mimas on the curving paths of my life? Am I making too much of a tiny point? Possibly, but I might be onto something. Turning points aren’t fixed. They travel the curves of life that they shape, just like those moons of Saturn. 
 
Do I think of that incident in kitchen often? No, just as I don’t often think of other turning points. Like you, I’m on a curving path, seen more as wave than point, more as radian than as discrete location. Only occasionally, I see one of those shepherding points that exerted and still exerts an influence. The day Stalin died has largely been an unnoticed influence that opened my mind to a larger world; the picture probably started my transition from childhood to adulthood and from relative ignorance to relative knowledge. In perspective, I see the reason that turning points continue their shepherding influence. Movable points maintain identity. Saturn’s rings stay in their orbits. I am who I am because of those points. I know what I know because of them, and I’m driven to follow paths as they shepherd me. 
 
 
*“When you come to a fork in the road, take it!”—attributed to iconic Yankee catcher Yogi Berra, but possibly falsely so. See his book I Really Didn’t Say Everything I Said, p. 48.

**The introduction to computer-driven printing tech eliminated the need for linotype machines, so my father, a bright man, mastered the company’s newer tech to become foreman. The linotype my father used was essentially the same as those used in the nineteenth century. Wikipedia has photos and an explanation of the machine’s complex operation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine  
 
***Photos abound on the Web. See here: https://www.thoughtco.com/body-of-stalin-lenins-tomb-1779977

****https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iWQzQBcc8k​ 

Wheezer: “Maybe it’s the American diet. Uh…Sorry, I was just thinking of all those antacid commercials on TV. Acid reflux. Gurd. You’d think Americans are the Gurdians of the Galaxy. Sorry, again. Couldn’t resist the pun. Anyway, from the number of commercials and the numbers of related OTC products, I assume this is almost a galactic problem.”
 
Ralph: “Diet and lifestyle, I’d say. Probably the reason so many of us could lose a few pounds. But what’s the big deal? Want some hot wings? There’s a commercial about and remedy for the heartburn. Feel free to eat at will, to eat what you will. It’s the American way, and maybe, who knows, the galactic way. There could be aliens scraping MgSO4·7H2O off cave walls in the belief that it can cure some stomach ailment just as people scraped epsomite and other deposits off the walls of Mammoth Cave thousands of years ago in the belief that they found a cure for all digestive tract ailments. So, Wheezer, your ‘Gurdians of the Galaxy’ isn’t too big a word stretch. We see; we eat. We suffer the consequences and then scramble for a cure. Fortunately for us today, the lengths to which we go to find a digestive tract cure are shorter and less hazardous than those taken by that famous mummy found in Mammoth Cave.”
 
Wheezer: “Mummy? …Oh! That ancient guy found crushed beneath a giant boulder. Died when the boulder fell as he scraped the walls for minerals, right? But isn’t it a disappointment that in the entire history of humanity we haven’t come up with a way to determine ahead of time the effects of what we eat so that we don’t have to suffer from reflux?”
 
Ralph: “What are you talking about. We know that if we eat this or that we’ll benefit or suffer. Tell me you didn’t know that all that pizza you ate last night would affect your night’s rest. You knew. You ate anyway. It’s what we humans do. Damn the torpedoes; full eating ahead. There’s always an OTC cure. Everyone has one stashed in a medicine cabinet or kitchen cupboard. People are prepared to counter their eating choices; that way, they can eat as they desire and lessen the effects.”
 
Wheezer: “Then look at how we choose to live. We’re aware that we will suffer by doing something, but we do it anyway because we believe we’re immortal, that there’s always a way out of what we get ourselves into. ‘Yeah,’ we say, ‘I’m not going to feel well in the morning, but this stuff is irresistible. Give me another one. What’s one more drink or one more serving? I can take something.’”
 
Ralph: “So, we live the hedonist’s life. And we chase after fads, probably the result of effective advertising. I guess we’re all a bit guilty there. We’re told. We eat. We’re told. We do. Eating and doing in search of the new and exciting, the promises that draw the hedonist as the flame draws the moth. Only, we’re burned by heartburn. But knowing that our choices are harmful and making them anyway seems just plain stupid. I know we can’t always make those perfect choices and that we get bored with the same-old-same-old, but sometimes a little boredom is prudent, not that I want to live the life of a tree. No, I guess, what I’m saying is that we sometimes do what we know is imprudent or has wretched consequences like retching. And that applies to other choices we make, like whom we choose for public office. Seems that no matter whom we choose to put in, we soon seek some emetic.”
 
Wheezer: “But that’s our history. Everyone wants a leader with wisdom and integrity, someone above reproach, but then we discover that our choice gives us the gurd. And then we suffer and pop temporary remedies we find in the dark recesses of cupboards and medicine cabinets.”
 
Ralph: “Yeah. But that’s the problem. Temporary. And sometimes the temporary remedy begets other problems. Take too much Epsom salts, and you suffer from too much magnesium. Sometimes the cure is just as bad as the ailment. Sometimes the cure takes a generation, so the sufferers get no relief. Don’t get me started…”
 
Wheezer: “I think I’m going to go check my medicine cabinet. Maybe everyone should check the cabinet. The country has just swallowed something that might make us Gurdians in our collective Galaxy.”

You might be right in thinking that no one is listening to your warnings about what you perceive to be some coming disaster. Of course, disasters are relative, ranging from kids gone wrong to countries gone wrong and from leaky roofs to erupting volcanoes. Regardless of the seriousness of the coming disaster and its immediacy to those in its path, in being ignored, you aren’t alone. You are just one more in the long history of minor and major prophets whose voiced concerns were dismissed as silly worries. You might, however, be the next in line to see warnings become realities and doubters become believers. “We should have listened.” Getting through to adults is, you find, as difficult as getting through to sophomoric teenagers.  
 
We have many examples of “We should have listened” and “They should have listened.” People still build and live beside dormant and active volcanoes whose explosive eruptions are inevitable. Think Naples, Seattle, and Kagoshima, and Antigua Guatemala, where residents no doubt justify their choice of geography and of complacency with “It won’t happen in my lifetime” or with the question, “Really, how bad could it be?” Think of those who died on the flanks of Mt. St. Helens, one Harry Truman in particular. Harry, if you recall, was the irascible old guy who scoffed at the seismologists’ warnings before dying in the eruption. And he wasn’t the only one who failed to heed the geologic prophecy.  
 
Of course, there are degrees of regret over ignored prophesies, all dependent on the nature and intensity of the prophesized phenomena. And there are degrees of consequences for the sundry ignored prophets. As everyone knows, prophets often have a hard time convincing anyone, and their rejected prophecies have led to exile and even, sometimes, to death. A good example comes from British naval history. In her popular and entertaining book Longitude, Dava Sobel recounts the destruction of the British fleet on the rocks of the Scilly Isles because the admiralty dismissed the warnings of a bright, but ordinary sailor. * Since the seaman wasn’t an officer, he had overstepped his station in predicting a potential shipwreck because of faulty navigation. Such an act was considered mutinous, even though he was trying to save the fleet, and Admiral Shovell had him hanged. Shortly thereafter, on October 22, 1707, the fleet—off course as the sailor had predicted—hit the rocks, and 2,000 British soldiers and sailors died along with, I might add, their captains and admirals. 
 
And here you are more than three centuries later warning others about society, economics, or politics, all that you are prophesizing falling on deaf ears. You might not be an official navigator like that unfortunate British sailor, but you see that the fleet is headed in the wrong direction. And like that British sailor, you have good intentions. But those in command are like those in command of the ill-fated British fleet. Ill-fated? Is it silly to use the term with regard to the destruction on the Scillies? That’s exactly what prophets try to avoid, disastrous fates. The British admiralty had the choice to listen and to “alter fate.” They chose not to, to their own peril. To say they had no choice is to yield to fatalism in its worst form: Tragic destiny. Prophets of every stripe prophesy on one fundamental assumption: If people fail to listen, they choose tragic fate over mitigating alternatives. The prophet cries, “If they will only listen….” The doomed say, “We are modern Caesars.”
 
Take the warnings of a number of people about a country’s trending toward socialism, the economic and eventually tyrannical system that destroys individual freedom, impoverishes whole populations, and, in all instances so far, imprisons and often kills dissenters. From the twentieth century the ghosts of 148 million dead, those killed by socialist governments, rise as unheeded prophets. 
 
Apparently, the ship of state has sailed, and its fate is sealed. It doesn’t matter to the admiralty that the well-intentioned, but ordinary citizen might prophesy a disaster in the making. Always, those in command know they know better. Always, like the admirals of the British fleet, they rely only on precedent authority and judgment steeped in arrogance. And what choice do the seamen have in this? Mutiny? Risk being hanged at worst and ostracized at best? Making polite pleas? That eighteenth-century British sailor deferentially called the officers’ attention to their potential doom. 
 
But if only a few among the entire fleet of sailors recognize that rocks lie ahead and those at the helm won’t listen to their warnings, won’t those prophetic dissenting voices, no matter how loud, be lost among the louder sounds of crashing waves? Most prophets’ voices have been drowned out, so to speak, and the prophets, like those they warned, eventually drowned.
 
Don’t be surprised if no one listens.
 
*Sobel, Dava. 1995. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. New York. Penguin Books. Pp. 11-13.

Here’s what Regina Valkenborgh did. She punched a tiny hole in a beer can and used it as a lens/aperture for a long-term exposure of the sky, capturing on photographic paper over a period of 2,953 days the apparent path of the Sun. The duration of the exposure was the result of Regina’s forgetting about her experiment. Remember that because I’ll mention it again.
 
Class Review Notes: The Sun’s path across the sky at any place is the product of Earth’s tilt and that place’s latitude. Because the tilt remains the same throughout the year, the position of the Sun on anyone’s “celestial dome” changes. I used “apparent” above because the Sun’s path across the “apparent dome” that covers every location differs by latitude.
 
For example, I live at 40 degrees, one minute, 12 seconds north latitude. So, for my geographic position, the noon Sun reaches its apex on the summer solstice (avg. June 22) at a zenith angle (i.e., from overhead) of 16 degrees 28 minutes and 48 seconds when the people directly south of me on the Tropic of Cancer can see the noon Sun directly overhead. At no time during the year is my noon Sun directly overhead. And on the first days of spring and fall, I see the noon Sun at 40 degrees one minute and 12 seconds from overhead, the result of my latitude when the overhead noon Sun appears at the Equator. In the winter, my noon Sun is much lower, reflecting the 63 degrees 31 minutes and 12 seconds from my latitude to the Tropic of Capricorn at 23.5 degrees south, where the noon Sun occurs on or about December 22, the first day of my Northern Hemisphere winter.  
 
So, the Sun traces different arcs across my sky, its daily midpoint being “noon,” but never for me at about 40 degrees north latitude directly “overhead.” And it rises and sets progressively farther to the south each day from the summer solstice to the winter solstice, and then progressively farther to the north during the ensuing six months. Valkengorgh’s long exposure photo reveals that path for the University of Hertfordshire’s Bayfordbury Observatory, located north of London at latitude 51 degrees, 46 minutes, 30 seconds north, about eleven degrees farther north than my location.
 
As I look out the window next to my computer this December morning at 7:42, I see the Sun near its farthest southern rising position over the nearby mountain. I’ll be able to see its rise, occurring later each day and a bit more south until the winter solstice, when the point of sunrise will make its way northward, marching across my horizon progressively away from my library window and toward its summer appearance out a kitchen window on June 22. Pretty regular pattern. Heck, one could set a clock…
 
The old saw “a picture is worth a thousand words” applies here—in this instance the picture is worth the 406 words in the “class review notes” you just read. Regina’s long exposure captures that changing celestial path over eight years. She hasn’t made any discovery, of course, but she has done something that in the minds of the ancient Druids, the Egyptians, through the minds of Eratosthenes and everyone leading up to Ptolemy, Copernicus and Tycho Brahe took years to measure. Imagine those Druids setting up Stonehenge or the Egyptians aligning their pyramids with their latitude’s annual solar paths without the precise observations they made over decades, centuries, or maybe even millennia. Regina did in eight years what our ancient ancestors did over the courses of their civilizations. And she did it with a pinhole in a beer can!**
 
Obviously, there’s something to be said for beer in this, such as its imparting in three cans or steins a belief that one can see more clearly and solve the world’s problems more astutely on the drink. There might also be something to be said for cheap simplicity. A can of beer is far less expensive than a smaller quantity of wine or an even smaller quantity of Scotch, both obtained in bottles that wouldn’t serve Regina’s purpose. We don’t have her direct account of her motives, but we can without harm assume that she might have begun the experiment in student poverty. That she was a university student suggests she was “not unfamiliar” with beer or with sources for empty beer cans. With regard to the simplicity of her apparatus, we might note that Regina placed her pinhole can camera at the site of expensive and sophisticated telescopes, so she needed neither money nor advanced and complicated technology for her revealing photo. 
 
Most college-age students would have serious questions, of course. “What did you do with the beer, Regina?” “Who cares about the Sun’s position during different days of the year?” “Do you have any full cans left?”
 
Try explaining to those who make no specific observations of their world that what they believe to be so and accept as true, isn’t, in fact, reality. I have, for example, attempted to explain to college students the angle of the Sun (which ephemeral tables catalog for anyone using a sextant to navigate on the ocean) only to find that many who live north of the Tropic of Cancer believe the noon Sun occurs overhead. And I have supposed that university professors in the Southern Hemisphere south of the Tropic of Capricorn encounter the same faulty perception. Have students never looked up at noon? For many heads that have never turned skyward to check, a noon overhead sun is the supposed reality. 
 
What could be more evident than the Sun? And yet, most people go through a lifetime without considering that what they believe about the Sun really isn’t true. Is it a big deal that most people probably don’t know that the noon overhead sun occurs only between 23.5 degrees north and 23.5 degrees south? For the particular fact of Sun angle, no. Not knowing the ephemeral tables has little effect on daily lives save those sailing in pelagic waters before the age of geostationary satellites. But having a false perception might be indicative of the way our brains, and by extension, our minds work.
 
We live complex lives in a complex world, so we pick and choose our foci, many of which are obtained through pinhole apertures. Literally, all of us have some limitations on what we look at or on what we understand about our world. All of us see through pinholes at times. That there’s more to see than we focus on observing is inevitable. We choose consciously at times and unconsciously at others to see the world we want to see, a world visible through a tiny pinhole, one observable through a “camera” fixed for years like Regina’s beer can. It’s largely a passive system. Like Regina, once we put the can—the perspective—in place, we forget about it for years, thus getting the same view over and over.
 
On occasion, we rediscover the pinhole mind cameras we set up years ago and the images those cameras have taken. To our surprise, those images reveal a world we hadn’t noticed. 
“Does the world really look like this?” we ask. “How could I not have seen this? All those years I assumed a different world. I guess I merely accepted rather than observed.” 
 
 
*Pappas, Stephanie. 14 Dec. 2020. Longest-exposure photo ever was just discovered. It was made through a beer can. LiveScience online at
https://www.livescience.com/longest-exposure-photo-discovered-beer-can.html?utm_source=Selligent&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=9160&utm_content=LVS_newsletter+&utm_term=2816625&m_i=RD%2B8X5LAVr4CYkLZO3KdGV3M5rrCh9iUNaNzJ_mcOLpS6U0zBrmhqDqLEaMtgYsKMZ9ZrWKO3ShvwydrwU3LEddnIE1qXkG6A6RnbO%2BRR9
 
**The ancients would have marveled at the beer, its container, and, of course, Regina’s photograph. They might have designated her the “queen” of science: Regina Regina. 

Let me assure you that you’re safe. Whew! I know. That’s relief from the big weight of possible global extinction. And my assurance? How can you trust that I’m right, that you should have no worries about a major extinction event? That is, no worries barring runaway pandemics that spare no member of our species.
 
Well, you’re not a tetrapod. Yep. Walking bipedally exempts you. And I say that in light of a recent finding by Rampino et al. (2020) that non-marine tetrapods undergo an extinction event with a periodicity of 27.5 million years. * We’re talking over the last 300 million years. Eight of the last ten extinction events occurred simultaneously with massive outpourings of flood basalt. And bummer. Three of the extinction events associated with the formation of so-called Large Igneous Provinces (like the Deccan Traps in India) were also associated with comet/asteroid impacts. Double whammy. Flood basalts erupted onto the surface with attendant bad-for-you gases accompanied by some mountain of material from outer space crashing onto the planet. Some critters just weren’t born under the right stars. But you…
 
You don’t have to worry. If the average time between non-marine tetrapod extinctions is 27.5 million years, and the last such extinction occurred about 16.6 million years ago, feel free to walk Fido, a tetrapod. Although there is always considerable volcanic activity, there are no currently recognizable massive eruptions of flood basalts, such as that of 252 million years ago, the time of the Great Dying. And if all outer space has to throw at us is that Chelyabinsk meteor back in February, 2013, or the suspected near miss of 99942 Apophis nine years from this writing, you really don’t have to put extinction level event (ELE) on a plate already covered by a hefty serving of pandemic. ** If you don’t have the virus or if you’ve had it and survived, you can breathe easy. And you have that added measure of your not being a tetrapod. (Don’t tell tail-wagging four-legged Fido who is happy to be out for that walk in the park)
 
So, 1) No great outpourings of flood basalts at this time, 2) No imminent threats from outer space, and 3) No extra set of legs. You’re okay—for now. Of course—and I don’t want to put in that proverbial fly—the Rampino study identifies an average periodicity, and we all know that averages, such as the average human lifespan for a place, come from a range of numbers: Someone dies young; someone dies old; a bunch of people die between young and old. Not that I want to frighten you after telling you that you are safe from an extinction event.
 
Just remember in case I am wrong that personal extinctions aren't global extinctions and that THIS IS NOT YOUR PRACTICE LIFE.
 
 
*Rampino, Michael R., Ken Caldeira, and Yuhong Zhu. 10 Dec. 2020. A 27.5-My underlying periodicity detected in extinction episodes of non-marine tetrapods. Historical Biology: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08912963.2020.1849178
 
**And be assured that if you are around in 2036 or 2068 the chances of Apophis hitting Earth are really quite small, maybe 1 in 150,000—of course, there are people who win the PowerBall lottery against odds of 1 in tens of millions (just sayin’).

There was a strange beast some 500 million years ago. Its fossils have been found in Canada and Australia, and they have been a mystery of sorts for paleontologists. The mystery centered on unanswered questions: What exactly did an Anomalocaris * look like, and further, did it look? Of course, there’s also the question about what Anomalocaris did for a living.
 
When one has only a flattened form, reconstructing a three-dimensional critter requires both painstaking work and a bit of imagination. The late Stephen Jay Gould covers both that work and imagination in his retelling the story of Canada’s Burgess Shale in Wonderful Life.  ** In early paleontological studies Anomalocaris was a strange creature, variously grouped with sea cucumbers (starfish relatives), jellyfish, and shrimp, all imaginative guesses made in the absence of a complete fossil. What? A creature belonging to three different phyla? Linnaeus would have turned over in his grave! But who could blame anyone for imaginative reconstructions? The circular mouth, for example, was assumed to be a part or the whole of a jellyfish because it “looked” like a jellyfish, though an unusual jellyfish with a central “donut” hole. The feeding appendages on the front of Anomalocaris looked like the tail end of a shrimp. So, the front of the fossil was by some accounts the assumed backend of the fossil.  
 
As you can see from one of the reconstructions shown online, Anomalocaris apparently had eyes as big as the Big Bad Wolf’s. In the Cambrian seas, when so many life-forms were eyeless, the eyes gave the predator a decided advantage—if the interpretation that it was a carnivorous predator is unshakably correct.
 
But those eyes. In one species of Anomalocaris, the eyes are fixed to the head. In another, they are on stalks much like a crab’s eye stalks (J. R. Paterson, G. D. Edgecombe, D. C. García-Bellido, 2020).*** What do those eyes reveal? What did they see? And why bring up the subject of those eyes? Hasn’t the fossil been subjected to enough scrutiny since the 1880s? Are we supposed to draw some lesson from its eyes?
 
Whatever it saw, Anomalocaris saw through compound eyes: Thousands of hexagonal individual lenses grouped together in a most efficient structure, the structure found in snowflakes, beehives, and columnar basalts, all examples of Nature’s saving energy when it constructs similar adjacent units. Energy-saving and space-saving in a beehive means more cells for more bees in less space. Early on in life’s history, evolution appears to have chosen efficiency and simplicity as a survival mechanism. Why not beehives of circles? Aren’t circles known for their efficient ratio of circumference to area? If bees made hives of circles, there would be gaps among adjacent circles. Adjacent squares would eliminate gaps, of course, but they wouldn’t incorporate as many cells as hexagons that, in a beehive, appear to be just the right size to accommodate a bee. Try it out: Draw touching circles, then touching squares, and finally touching hexagons. Hexagons: They’re the reason Anomalocaris had thousands of lenses.
 
Seeing. It’s role in life can’t be overestimated. And we use the idea of seeing for more than just visual acuity. Think insight. Think foresight. Think of Tiresias, the mythological blind “seer.” Seeing is understanding. Seeing is knowing. For doubting Thomases, seeing is believing.
 
Of course, none of our meanings had any meaning for Anomalocaris. Such seeing required the evolution of consciousness. Our own vision isn’t just a matter of a lens through which light travels to the fovea. Our brains do the seeing. Circular eyeballs contain a blind spot, so the brain fills in the missing part of an image. We don’t see that blind spot unless we look for it, easily observed with two separated dots on a sheet of paper. And our eyes don’t move smoothly as they scan the world around us. Those saccades by which the eyes jump as they scan a line of prose or a field of vision let us know that much of what we do isn’t what we think we do. Eyes bear in their form and function a lesson about the way we understand personal worlds.
 
The compound eyes of insects and Anomalocaris can detect light and dark, maybe even color or wavelengths that we can’t see, as bees, for example, see more of the blue end of the spectrum than we see. What they see, instinct interprets and then initiates action. What we see, brains infuse with meaning and enhance or distort with memories, expectations, biases, and motivations.
 
In that “primitive” Cambrian world of the Burgess Shale, life evolved compound seeing, but not complex meaning. But with the rise of consciousness, that is, the rise of complex meaning, came an accompanying rise in misinterpretation and in seeing what isn’t really there. That monster predator of the Cambrian seas saw and acted. We sometimes see and doubt. We sometimes say, “I can’t believe what I am seeing.” Or, in the sense of the brain’s “seeing,” we sometimes refuse to acknowledge what we see is, in fact, reality. Such, for example, is the way we see our own financial circumstances, our social lives, our political leanings, and our environments.
 
Seeing has been around for a long time. It’s been efficient for a long time, also, performing its important survival function. But foreseeing and embellishing are relatively young on the Phanerozoic Time Scale. It’s the human seeing that put ayes in eyes. It’s the human seeing that also put nays in eyes. We’re always centered on seeing that with which we agree as opposed to that with which we don’t agree. We see what is agreeable. We see what is disagreeable. And it isn’t the physical eyes that do such “seeing.” It’s a brain fixed or flexible, like the sessile or motile eyes that characterize two different species of Anomalocaris.
 
But let’s not leave the subject without mentioning those tightly packed hexagonal lenses one more time. Each of the lenses revealed a blurry “pixel” of the total image, the coverage dependent on the proximity to and angle of the observed object. Thousands of lenses cannot see with the clarity of the human eye. But without advanced consciousness and its attendant pitfalls, all those ancient critters saw the world in exactly the same way. They placed no preferential value or meaning beyond their basic needs for survival. Interesting, isn’t it. We believe we see clearly because we have clear, focused images of a smooth fields of view. Yet, our mental “seeing” is almost always blurred by the brain’s lenses of preference that turn external reality into the reality we want to see.
 
 
 
*Anomalocaris is pronounced variously with a long or a short final a. Ah NOM’ alow car’iss, the “car” being either just the word car or with a longer a as in the word care. Various speakers also change the place of the major accent. Or, Ah nom’ ah LOC’ care iss. See an animation here for the short a sound and a major accent on nom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ice47loNmsc  and here https://www.howtopronounce.com/anomalocaris  and here and for a pronunciation that puts the major accent on lo or on loc, go to: https://www.synonyms.com/pronounce/anomalocaris
See the drawing by Aaron John Gregory at https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=drawing+of+anomalocaris&fr=yhs-Lkry-SF01&hspart=Lkry&hsimp=yhs-SF01&imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fimg07.deviantart.net%2F4a32%2Fi%2F2015%2F257%2F4%2Fa%2Fanomalocaris_by_aaronjohngregory-d5k7bu1.jpg#id=0&iurl=http%3A%2F%2Fimg07.deviantart.net%2F4a32%2Fi%2F2015%2F257%2F4%2Fa%2Fanomalocaris_by_aaronjohngregory-d5k7bu1.jpg&action=click
Drawings: https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=AwrEeR7zutpfGEAA2AUPxQt.;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Nj?p=anomalocaris+images&fr=yhs-iba-syn&hspart=iba&hsimp=yhs-syn 
 
**Gould, Stephen Jay. 1989. Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. New York. Norton & Company. Pp. 194-204
 
***J. R. Paterson, G. D. Edgecombe, D. C. García-Bellido, Disparate compound eyes of Cambrian radiodonts reveal their developmental growth mode and diverse visual ecology. Sci. Adv. 6, eabc6721 (2020). https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/6/49/eabc6721.full.pdf