We Regulate Ourselves

 

It is boring to say that, by definition, we give up something with every restriction we place on ourselves--whether individually, by consensus, or through our chosen government. Be they calories, speeds, alcohol, farm-animals-on-city-lots, loud sounds, awful odors, fire hazards, 2x3 stud walls, nudity, coal-fed fireplaces; we allowed them in the past. Yet, in many places we personally or collectively decided to restrict or disalow them because we thought the change would make ourselves and our community better. We thought speed limits and fire codes would save lives; they did. If we were to believe that a high percentage of people who have died from mass shootings in the last decade would be alive today if we had restricted our pleasures and traditions we might make the sacrifices and limit our pleasures and change our tradtions. This is what civilization does to itself for itself--in a terribly haphazard yet hopeful way. And, when experience and evidence show enough of us that our good intentions and hopes were misplaced (as with prohibition of alcohol, urban-egg-laying-hens, bare breasts) we reverse course and remove the restrictions--in a haphazard yet hopeful way. Folks will remind us of how good things used to be—of how pre-agriculture, pre-speed-limit hunter-gatherers had the good life. And, you know what? In so many ways it was good, but they never stopped trying to make it better. In a terribly haphazard yet hopeful way, they did.

CONFESSION: WHY I NEITHER WATCH NOR LISTEN.

 I can't remember how many years it has been since I watched a (let me call it) State of the Union speech. I will read about the latest one tomorrow. My enthusiasm for listening live has long since waned. Tonight I had an insight as to the possible when-and-why of the waning: the response speech. Whether my president is Republican or Democrat I believe he or she has the responsibility to speak to the Congress as president, and Congress has the responsibility to listen as Congress. Yes, I do accept that we have two parties and that Congresspeople and presidents speak and listen as members of parties. They also speak and listen for their constituents--should not every state and every congressional district be asked to respond live-and-immediately as to how the president's speech will impact its share of the land-and-people-scape? The response speech is a ceremony requiring an absolute opposition; an opposition that must be drafted before the president's speech is delivered. Whoever came up with this idea had, in my opinion, a ridiculous idea. It swears with our Constitution. Rather than merely accept the partisan content in the presidential speech, the ceremony begs for partisanship over statesmanship from the president. It also removes my sense of duty to watch and listen. I want to kill the ceremony. One way to do so might be for presidents to return, for a decade or two, to the tradition of reporting in writing to the Congress on the state of our union. Opposition parties, whichever, would be less likely to respond in kind knowing that few people would find a reason to read what they write. Amen.

MMT: Incompetent government will try that and impoverish the nation.

 The margin between success and failure can be very thin. Sometimes incompetents can be lucky, but sometimes competents can be unlucky. This ties right into Modern Monetary Theory and why it should not be dismissed with, "Well the government can just print money whenever it wants to." Incompetent government will try that and impoverish the nation.  Competent government will spend in ways that look to be good investments for the nation and will have a good chance that its investments succeed well enough to more than make up for failures and bad luck. It will enrich the nation. While both liberals and conservatives will be more competent (in my not-so-humble opinion) once they become converts to MMT, they will still argue like hell with each other.

no room for saviors

 Alas, only a god can know who qualifies as you might have them qualify, and I would wish they would qualify to participate in our democracy. I have known barefoot, illiterate people who I believe a god would judge to be wiser than I. The Constitution was prescient in dulling the knife of  mere humans in charge of making the cut as to who qualifies. We must remember that imperfection is in the core and the corps of us and of the biosphere.The incompetence of genes trying and occasionally failing to reproduce correctly has made us and other gene-based life in our biosphere what we are. Our failure to ever govern ourselves perfectly has made us strive again and again to form a "more perfect" (aka, 'better-but-still-imperfect') union". Without imperfection there would no room for saviors.

fantasy-a as harmless and fantasy-b as painful

 Modern Monetary Theory will not make budgeting easy. We will always have tough debates about how to expend/invest our resources. There will always be liberals and conservatives frustrating each other. However, we can hope the quality of the debates will improve because they will be based on knowledge of how national finance actually works.

Exercise: Imagine a world in which everyone believes that the science of global warming is fundamentally sound, now laugh at yourself as you try to believe that in that world there would be neither anguish nor argument over what to do about it. 

A second exercise (a) Fantasize that pranksters take all the taxes gathered by U.S.A. government this year and throw them into the caldron of an active volcano. (b) Fantasize that pranksters take all your after-tax income income for this year and toss it too into the molten lava of a volcano. If you see fantasy-a as harmless and fantasy-b as painful you have seen what Kelton sees.

Thrill of Deomocracy: Turrialba, Costa Rica ... 1986

Turrialba, Costa Rica; 1986. An election by people celebrating democracy that happened to lead to a Nobel Peace Prize.

Changing Modes: & Master Plans?

Can we agree that dominant modes of transportation have had over history and prehistory a profound impact on land-use and the the form of our "villages"? 
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How do we update our cities' master plans when battling for our hearts and souls are: electric cars, and bicycles, and scooters and wheel chairs, self-driving automobiles; 'conventional' cars, ordinary bicycles, scooters, motorcycles, skateboards; light-rail, heavy rail, buses, taxis; and the old-one, walking; and how about gawking and writing, and smart phone talking? Each of these (if dominant) will have a profound affect on urban and rural form. Each can provide profound opportunities (if made prominent) to sculpt our landscapes and cityscapes. The battle is on, but nobody knows who nor who-all will win--should win. .
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Again, how do we update our master plans? Should we? Should we wait and, thus, ignore the opportunities?

Berlin

As somebody who has wanted for decades to visit Berlin and has not, I found a report in “Economist” (2/Dec/17) on the city's dysfunction surprising. Berlin makes wealthy Germany more poor. Quote: “Astonishingly for a capital city, Berlin makes Germany poorer. Without it, Germany’s GDP per person would be 0.2% higher. By comparison, if Britain lost London, its GDP per person would be 11.1% lower; France without Paris would be 14.8% poorer. “Berlin’s economic weakness is unique among European capitals”, says Matthias Diermeier of the Cologne Institute for Economic Research.” https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21731837-unlike-other-capitals-germanys-drain-rest-country-why-berlin-so

MVC 1975

This first week of June, 2016 
I have the unpleasant task of cleaning out my office-studio so I can convert it into our new bedroom. I came across a 1975 copy of Petroleum Today. Puzzled, why would I save such a magazine? Clue, the cover displays a photo of a whale boat in front of a gallery: Martha's Vineyard! I opened it to the related article and this picture:

One-o-Cat

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Please help me (and ask your friends to help as well).

If you played baseball or softball as a youth, help me figure out where and how long the name survived from a game that pre-dated "baseball." Leave a comment at this blog.

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http://one-o-cat.blogspot.com
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a not-so-old Old Saw

Since I found this  proverb of competence-and-consciousness on a web-forum discussing construction nails, I think it best to call it by the synonym, Old Saw. Because I wish to remember it, I post it here:

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1) Unconsciously Incompetent: He knows not, and knows not that he knows not. He is a fool. Shun him.
2) Consciously Incompetent: He knows not, and knows that he knows not. He is simple. Teach him.
3) Unconsciously Competent: He knows, and knows not that he knows. He is asleep. Wake him.
4) Consciously Competent: He knows, and knows that he knows. He is wise. Follow him.

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Note, however, I have no reason to doubt Wikipedia that this old saw is far younger than I:

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Initially described as “Four Stages for Learning Any New Skill”, the theory was developed at the Gordon Training International by its employee Noel Burch in the 1970s.^[1] It has since been frequently attributed to Abraham Maslow, although the model does not appear in his major works.^[2]

The Four Stages of Learning provides a model for learning. It suggests that individuals are initially unaware of how little they know, or unconscious of their incompetence. As they recognise their incompetence, they consciously acquire a skill, then consciously use that skill. Eventually, the skill can be done without consciously being thought through, and the individual is said to have unconscious competence. ^[3]

Several elements, including helping someone 'know what they don't know' or recognize a blind spot, can be compared to some elements of a Johari window, although Johari deals with self-awareness, while the four stages of competence deals with learning stages.

Bilingualism is, indeed, good for us.

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If you doubted whether bilingualism is good for us beyond its obvious practical benefits, read a piece by:

Yudhijit Bhattacharjee for the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html
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... The key difference between bilinguals and monolinguals may be more basic: a heightened ability to monitor the environment. “Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often ...
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Spanish Tips

CLICK for Some Tips to the Student of Spanish Who Has the Opportunity to Speak Spanish

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Energy One Two Too

March 6, 2012, Weld County Colorado

near Grover and Pawnee Buttes

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http://komivesiangraphics.blogspot.com/2012/03/pawnee-buttes-2012.html

1968. Guatemala

1968. Guatemala

a new family of F-WORDS

Midst the discussion of problems and potentials for “fracking” oil and gas out of deep oil shale deposits there is an opportunity.  

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We are going to fight about this process and care about the fight. On a lighter-higher note, however, we can use the notoriety of this drilling technique to market a linguistic methadone.

“ Frack! Did you hear that fracking Belgium finally has a fracking government ?! ” 

One can be either for or against (or who-gives-a-frack about)  the fracking fracking process and still enjoy the new f-words.
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If you know anything about this new-tech, you will see that the image and metaphorical substitutions are every bit as strong as the phonetic.

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Note: Lacking such robustness, poor “Jiminy Cricket”  failed in his/its linguistic cleansing effort.

New Humanism, The Second Age of Enlightenment

 I wrote this to friends recently:

I wonder, if we were to manage to reduce measurably the negative outcomes of our age, if the age of turnaround might come to be called, "The Second Age of Enlightenment." That would give more credit to the way we learned to think than to the consequent way we  learned to live. I'm an it-is-a-lifestyle-problem guy myself, but I am uncomfortable with how much anti-intellectualism seems to have permeated all sides of the debate (if debate is possible between anti-intellectuals).

March 7 2011: David Brooks delves more deeply.
I encourage you to read it: [Click}   
What I had started to conceive of as "the Second Age of Enlightenment." Brooks' would call "The New Humanism"--better I believe.  He certainly describes it well, though I would add that a level-headed respect for science over pseudoscience will be part of it. After all, it is science (as Brooks explains) that is opening the pathways to the new humanism. No matter what we call the age envisioned, we should hasten out from our redoubts to welcome its arrival.

Bubbly Water Towers In A Pond

If you click on the topic "phenomena" in the right column, most of the posts and comments you will see are about tilting icicles--from a few winters ago. Now, from odd habits of ice hanging down I share a report of the odd world of ice that bubbles up. Friends Marge and Dick have a small pond in their back yard. Marge just sent photos and their thoughts on the how-and-why of bubbly ice towers that have formed on the pond this winter.

First her photos, then her words, then a couple more photos.

March 5. from Marge Boehner

During the winter, a "bubbler" sits on the bottom of our pond and helps to aerate it when it freezes over.  Since we began using the bubbler, fish in the pond have not died over the winter.  This year, for the first time, formations have been forming above the bubbler.  They seem to consist of foamy water that bubbles up and continually freezes during the night, building odd shapes that then melt away during the day.  The first two pictures are fairly typical, but we often see multiple and taller formations.  The third picture shows the tallest formation that we have seen. We don't know the cause, but suspect that the foamy nature of the water may be due to decaying matter in the pond.  Though it is cleaned out each fall, this year we think more leaves than usual fell into the pond after it had been cleaned.

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March 6. from Marge Boehner

Here are pictures of today's creation; I just saw it "spit" a bit of foam into the water about a foot away.

Thoughts and Theories?