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Monday, February 29, 2016

Today is for time lapse


I won't get to write a blog on this day for another four years.  This is that special day of a leap year that makes the year a leap year.  It's the key ingredient for extending the year by 24 hours.

It's a bit funny sometimes how ideas linger much past their time.  I hear people, for instance, still saying "roll up the window," when modern cars press a button to raise and lower it.  But the "roll" action lingers.  Admittedly, it's used a little more by older people than younger people like "icebox" for refrigerator is.  The two older terms will soon die out, probably in another 20 years or so.

The keepers of the stock market were rather stubborn as well.  It was the 21st century, April 9, 2001 to be exact, before Wall Street changed from using fractions to using decimals.  That could have happened easily a decade prior to the change, maybe even two.  But, it's the result of conditioning people receive.

So, when it comes to Leap Year, it's time for an update.  We've just been conditioned to think in terms of a leap year.  We have the capacity to think a little differently about a true year, and we certainly have the technology to calculate it accurately.  Everything would work out without a leap year if our days were extended by .9856262833675 of a minute each day.  How hard would that be?  Simple.


And who would notice the extension.  Clocks wouldn't have to change anything.  There are already 1440 minutes in a day.  It would take nothing to have 1440.9883321894303 minutes in a day.  Only the timing mechanisms would have to adjust by 59.299 seconds every day to make the change.  Then, there would be no need for leap years at all.  I'm really all for this change.

We could change the calendar too while we're changing things about time.  Who needs to have short and long months?  We have the technology to precisely and accurately change to having our days completely equal.  Every month would be the same length every year, year in and year out.  That would much better mirror what is happening with the Earth's revolution around the sun.  We could even adjust for the Earth's slight movement closer to the sun and account for a new revolution time in nanoseconds as well.  I guess that is a discussion for another day.

Today's blog is in honor of Leap Day for Leap Year.  I hope people become reconditioned soon and that timing of years changes post haste.  But, until then... Happy Leap Day 2016.

Saturday, February 27, 2016

Brought to light


Nuances are the little things that change or add to the usual meaning of something.  Nuance can be applied to almost any situation.  A person can refer to nuance of color, taste, texture, art, photography, lighting, culture, and word meanings.  It's a flexible word in its application.

It's also a rather modern word, historically speaking.  It was nearly 1800 before the word broke onto the scene.  The French had used the word nue for a long time because it had derived from Latin.  The French had dropped a b from the word.  The Romans had used the word nube, but the French used a glottal stop for the letter b, so b dropped from its spelling.

The Romans were very superstitious about things that happened in the sky.  Clouds were a part of the sky and the presence or absence of clouds usually meant something.  The color of the clouds also changed the meanings of things.  The French made the same application and added an r to the word to make it a verb (nuer).  The French could cloud or shade things like situations or pictures when they painted them.  The term felt natural to use for a British man, then, to adopt the root of the word nu, take off the er verb ending of the French word and put a noun ending in its place, ance.


One of the greatest tools in detecting deception is to analyze something according to the nuances of a person's regular speech. Nuances of definition are important, so synonyms for adjectives, adverbs, and nouns become important in spotting lies.  Nuances in verbs also change the type of action that was used, so their meaning in particular is important.  And nuances can apply to sentence length and topic change as well.

Those who weave their dangerous webs in words love to shade the meanings of the things they say.  It's easy to spot, however, when the listener is paying attention to the meanings of words.  And if a person is able to read the words of what has been said and can compare to other words being used, then the web of dangerous words can be spotted and brought to light for what it really conveys.  Nuances play the role of cameras in catching all that people deny.

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Life's procedures

Yesterday I was listening to a medical doctor as she was speaking to my daughter.  She was trying to recommend a follow-up treatment, but she seemed a little uncertain.  She mentioned that there were a couple of different protocols for the follow-up as a reason for her uncertainty.  She had to review for a moment or two the two different treatments, then she recommended one.


Many fields follow protocols.  Medicine is one of the most protocol-driven fields there is, but that is due to the high stakes of life-altering substances and techniques for conditions and due to resulting lawsuits.  The military is a protocol-driven field as well.  That's because order and danger from weaponry are paramount to life and death.  Psychology is a field full of protocols because of the various detrimental results that could happen from influencing or conditioning the way people think.  The field of education doesn't call their procedures protocols, but the procedures to follow come as a result of standardized curriculum and testing over that curriculum.  So, yes, they are protocols.

It would be nice if life adhered to protocols, but it doesn't.  There is no set system of procedures through life that yield "best results."  Religion would have people believe that there is a procedure for best results in life, but many times I hear double-speak because it also advises of the struggles of life even if following the procedures in place.  Countries like to legislate procedures for best results, but people are so different from each other that the morality arising from such legislation yields mixed results at best.

All of the fields mentioned above are in interim stages of development right now.  There really should be just expert training in known procedures and let the experts piece together other combinations for advancement than to have protocols established.  Protocol only produces status quo and mediocrity.  It has been nice for the interim as we have advanced.  But we're past that stage of development.  And it isn't a reflection of how life works anyway.

We really go through life with our best guess at how it should be lived.  If we follow the crowd's best guesses at life, we usually don't bother to distinguish ourselves from them in any way.  If we march to the tune of our own drummer or take less traveled paths, then we find ourselves going it alone in a lot of cases without support or trust.  It's more than a little difficult to navigate through life with any assurance that everything works out nicely at the end.

In fact, life is ragged, curved, back and forth, repetitive, harsh, and dilemma-presented.  Sometimes we find others who make their best guess in the same fashion that we do.  That's a beautiful thing when that happens.  And it's so beautiful because it happens so infrequently.  I recognize those infrequent beauties much better now.  But, there are so many that fight our best guesses, and they're hard to rid from our lives or from their influence on our life experiences.

By the end, I don't think I will say so much that I have figured life out.  There's really nothing to figure out since life happens rather randomly.  And I really don't want to say that I followed all the standard procedures.  I hope to say to those whose best guess was very close to mine, "I really enjoyed our walk together!"



Tuesday, February 23, 2016

All day rain affair

It's been an all day rain affair, a soaker.  It's a soft rain, pepper and salt style.  As always, it brings its refreshing aroma.


There's nothing to spoil it.  I have been sitting in front of a window watching it, and doing a few other things like writing this blog, as it peppers the cars passing by or parked outside this nicely tucked-away Starbucks in a new and beautiful section of town.

I don't frequent this area, but it's nice whenever I have to come to it.  New shops, new buildings, new cars and car dealerships.  The people here are early career to mid-career people, ambitious to have the best of the American Dream, hopeful that they will accomplish their goals and desires.  The two wealthiest areas are many miles to the north of this place, but in 20 years these people might achieve that status.

Rain brings with it hope.  I have felt that since the rain started last night and have thought about it the last two hours looking through the front window of Starbucks.  I like to deal in hope.  Like the rain, it leaves a refreshing aroma.  And, I like dealing with people who bring hope to my life.  They provide  a materialism to the soul like new shops and buildings do for people achieving their dreams.  They make life so worth the living.

Monday, February 22, 2016

Captivated


"Space - the final frontier."

Thus starts the introduction to one of television's most lasting and famous programs, Star Trek.

Of course, it's not the final frontier.  Space as we now know it consists of so much more than just a trip to the closest star or star cluster.  In fact, the Milky Way itself is thought to contain a couple of hundred thousand stars.  We hadn't really been able to look much farther than that when Star Trek first came out.

Now we know so much more.  Space is still fascinating.  There's just a whole lot more to it than just a fascinating frontier.  It conjures images to mind that we can only sketch out as an artist's representation at present.  It's fascinating, beautiful, inviting, full of splendor, and sacred ("set apart" from Earth views).

If I really think about it, I realize I have something like space in my own mind.  It's the place I can go to over and over and still enjoy and explore.  I can think of new frontiers or I can go to those really familiar places.  My favorite is a safely guarded memory that I conjure to mind.  It, too, is fascinating, inviting, and sacred.  It's familiar but it contains unexplored territory because I can think of what happened after that memory or what could have happened as a result of it.  I have it captured in the chambers of my heart and mind so that I can explore its uncharted areas at will.  Whenever I recall it, it is beautiful and full of splendor.  That particular stored image flashed before me today, unexpectedly.  I was captivated again by it, just like space.

The final frontier seems far away, as do memories for that matter.  But, I get excited thinking of exploring the ice oceans of certain moons, the volcanoes of others, the remnants of life from dried up oceans, and the energy producing craters of others.  I get equally excited seeing the familiar red dirt and strewn rocks of Mars and the ice patches of Pluto.  And, it's just as sensational to explore again the representation from that sacred chamber of my heart.  I just love what that exploration brings.

Thursday, February 18, 2016

That's cool, Gramps


One of the most interesting research studies I have been a part of was the study of intergenerational conversations.  Before that involvement, I hadn't really thought too much about how conversations happen exactly between younger and older generations.  But, the study  revealed a definite process.

Astoundingly, to me (but I admit to being a little naive on the subject), conversational skills are not learned much from parent to child.  The parent-child conversational model is one of question and answer or rhetorical questioning mostly.  Sometimes instructional conversation takes place, but not a lot of skill building for regular conversations happens.  Children see their parents model the skill by observation of their parents in conversation with their friends, but not so much from parent to child.


Thus, teenagers learn their conversational skills from their peer group.  That model of learning how to speak conversationally sets up real problems related to dating and marriage, but it is the model currently followed in the U.S. today.  But, it also sets up the need for a learning process in the laboratory of real life speaking occasions.  Teenagers, generally, expose themselves to other teenagers by choice and to people older than they are by force or by necessity.  They learn from their own, but have to learn how to talk to people outside their age group by experience.

Often, teenagers have to find by trial and error how much of their conversational patterns and vocabulary are acceptable in a more adult world.  This makes them tentative when talking to older people.  The more they talk to older people, the more they find out about vocabulary acceptance, attitudes toward certain expressions, turn-taking, and amount and types of information to give and receive.  They find that many times the experience of intergenerational conversation is a little bit taxing on their ability to communicate.  So, they have to learn to converse little by little.


My favorite conversation illustrating the truth of the process was a conversation between a grandmother and granddaughter.  The granddaughter mainly listened, at first, then the grandmother had to involve her granddaughter with leading questions.  Finally, the granddaughter began commenting on her own.  It was the consummate tutorial on intergenerational conversation.

I suppose this happens in general in life in a lot of different areas, but to actually see the evidence for what happens under the surface of conscious awareness, was a great exercise in awareness for me.  It should make me much more of a tolerant person.  I'm not sure that is the case, but it should be.

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Spot on

My cousin put a picture up on Facebook not long ago depicting the river and surrounding land where our dads grew up.  It was a beautiful shot of a wide river at the point where it bends across a two-mile spread of land.   The bend is appropriately named for the most common animal in the area in the days when the bend in the lake was only a bend in a river.  Many of my cousins still live in that area today.
The picture conjured up a feeling of serenity in me.  It took me to some of the memories my father had told me about when he and his brother used to roam the hills barefooted, killing possum and squirrel to eat, camping on the bluffs overlooking the lake, and spending the night cooking their supper and resting for the next day's adventures.



On one of those bluffs rests a nice get-away place for weekends or a spot to rest for a week during a vacation.  At one point in my life I used it as a refuge from a place I lived during hostile times.  It just represents good times with relatives, good memories of being an ascetic for a while, and an ongoing place to rest my head for shelter from a storm or for kicking around having a good time.

It's just a "spot" on the Earth, but it's an important spot for me.  Heritage and very pleasant memories are bound up in that spot.  Hopefully, everyone has a "spot" somewhere, even if it's not land or houses that he or she owns.  People just need a spot to go to physically and mentally to make it through the insanity of life when it rears its ugly head.  And people need a spot to constantly create the next memory for the times when life goes from good to bad.

I'm headed there at the crack of Spring this year, and again as it Spring closes out.  It's my refuge.  "Spot on," I tell myself when I go.  It's spot on for a lot of reasons.



Saturday, February 13, 2016

Others' decisions


The story made local news first, then regional, then state.  I read it first on USA Today, a national news agency.  What could be such a big story?

The article was about a school district that was going to have a four-day student week for instruction.  The article was a lengthy one by news standards.  It didn't really deal with the impact of that decision or the academic reasons specifically for causing the decision.  There were two reasons given for the change and nothing about the future impact.  One reason was that too many students needed individualized instruction from tutoring services because of failing test scores.  The second reason was that the four-day week could attract more people to live in the town.

That drove me to want to find more out about the town.  What town would have so many students using tutoring services that it would alter the school calendar?  What town needed to move to a four-day school week for attraction of denizens?  So, I looked up Olfen, Texas.

The 175 people or so that live there don't even comprise an incorporated town.  The number of students in the district is 28.  The median income is $11,000 less than the national median income.  The average house costs $92,000, about $30,00 less than the national average.  

Everything about the community is less than.  Who really would be wooed by such a place to live there even if they had a one-day school week?  I don't know what kind of number for required tutoring services out of 29 students was "too many," thus triggering a change in schedule, but even if tutoring was 100%, what is hard about accommodating that number of people?

I thought there might be something of interest in a news title about a four-day instructional week, but no, there's not.  I'm not sure why the story became a story of national interest.  I'm really not interested in reading about a less than town having any influence at all on how to handle education, so far for them, in a less than manner.



And, yet there's something that resonates here.  We do let people with a lot of values, money, talent, ambition, or connections less than us, dictate how we should think or live.  We shouldn't.  Fortunately, we as humans, get better at living and limiting undue influence on us to control or even slightly alter our lives.  We get better at employing our talents, our values and money, and at focusing our ambitions and connections to further the cause that makes us productive and happy.  We don't let the Olfens, the less thans, dictate what we become.

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Effects of "out there"



The more one studies and observes the solar system, from the vantage point of other planets and probes filming them, the more one is painfully aware that time, location, and space is all relative. Speeds on Earth, for example, are negligible on other celestial bodies.  Gravity is different on those planets, so travel with vehicles is also different.  When people have been on the moon, they usually walk to different places.  They did have a wheeled vehicle available, but it had limited use since fuel and traction were problems.  The same has been true for the wheeled vehicles on Mars.  Atmospheric conditions and chemical make-up also alter the way movement happens on a planet.

So, as we humans go about our daily activities all bound up with schedules and apps that tell us time estimates on freeways to get places, events that are coming up, sleep times, heart rates, calories burned, and amount of water consumed on our wrists, we should know that our routines and outlooks are relative to our position in an orbit around the sun.
  

If we lived on Mars, Europa, or Titan, or if we lived outside of this solar system, what would our perspectives be?  I have to believe they would be much different.  They would be relative to our location in the time and space of that planet.  The films Interstellar and the Martian have helped us see a different perspective since they had characters that lived outside of the Earth's location in time and space.  They helped us see the relativity, the fragility, and the minor importance of existence here on Earth.

I consider that from time to time.  Whenever I do, my mind usually releases the stresses that have built up.  I treat people better.  I feel less ambitious and more apt to act out of a sense of what the long-term benefits are rather than the shorter ones.  And I cherish my memories more because it could have been extremely different if I had been born in another time and in another place "out there."

Monday, February 08, 2016

From a jack to a king

The year was 2014.  He had been fired at the end of 2013.  He was used to working 80 hours a week.  Now he was on the couch on Sundays watching NFL afternoon football games.  He had made good money, so he wasn't too worried about running out.  But, still it was a difficult mind game to play.


People knew of him and his abilities.  He didn't have a low profile.  But, in 2014, 25 times he was passed over for a job.  His resume was not a slouchy one.  It included two stints as a head coach and a number of assistant coaching and coordinator jobs.  Still, 2014 was a very silent year for him.  

I don't know what kind of resolution he made for January 1, 2015, but it could have been to enjoy retirement.  Then the end of January happened.  The Denver broncos' coach called.  It was his boss from 2013.  They had been fired together in that year.  But, now in 2015, his boss wanted to rewrite their story together.

And rewrite the story they did!  Denver won gracefully with aplomb and command last night in the nation's largest sporting event.  The game was not a fantastical performance by a spectacular aerial bombardment.  Quite the opposite.  The points scored for Denver were the work of the defense.  You could have guessed that though.  This defense was the number one defense in the NFL this year and has often been compared to a few of the other history-making defenses.  Denver won because of a coach who recognized players' abilities and meshed eleven talents to form an ironclad defense.  The result was holding the NFL's highest scoring offense this season to 10 points.


There were some other media-catching stories in the game and after.  Everyone saw those stories.  But, this story of Wade Phillips wasn't touted.  It was mentioned during the game, but in a small 8 seconds of time.  It deserved much more than that.  Wade Phillips, you inspire us!  You embodied the attitude of never giving up, and even more so, the attitude of being the best with what we've got.  Here's my grandest "THANK YOU!" for leaving us this picture of yourself.

Tuesday, February 02, 2016

Headshake


What happens in language is generally what happens in people's attitudes toward life.  Here's a great example using English.  A noun is a person, place, object, or idea.  We learn that definition in elementary school.  A noun functions in two places, first as subjects of to a verb and second as an object of various constructions such as, object in a verb phrase, object in a prepositional phrase, and object in a verbal phrase.  It also answers the question "Who?" or "What?" in all of its functions.  Easy enough, right?

It's easy to cite an example for each sentence above.

Subject - The volcano erupted.   (What erupted?)
Object of verb - The tourist saw the monuments.   (Tourists saw what?)
Object of preposition - All of us talked for an hour.   (for an what?)
Object of a verbal - The principal called a meeting to give us our assignments.   (to give what?)

Still easy enough.  It's simple application and recognition.  Then a grammarian steps in.  "What about the following?" they say.  "The secretary is right.  What is right?"

I reply, "Easy. The secretary is 'what?'  Right.  Right is a noun."

"Oh, no," the grammarian says.  "The verb is isn't a normal verb.  It's a verb that shows existence or state, not action.  It's different.  So all the rules change for what follows it."

"What?" I say.  "The secretary is 'what,' doesn't make sense to you?"

"Not in this case," the grammarian answers.  "Because is shows a state, then the word right tells that the secretary exists in a condition of being right.  So, right is an adjective.  Right also answers the question 'What kind of,' which is an adjective question.  What kind of secretary? A right secretary."

"Wow," I say.  "I suppose you are going to tell me that in the sentence, 'The toast tastes good,' that the word good also tells a state for the toast, so it also is an adjective?"

"Exactly.  Now you have it!" the grammarian exclaims.

"But the toast tastes what?  Good!" I retort.  By way of concession, and to confuse the issue, I add, "Maybe the toast tastes 'how,' but certainly the toast doesn't taste 'what kind of.'"

The grammarian never misses a beat.  "No, the verbs for the senses like feel, taste, look, smell, and so on, function as verbs of being like is.  So adjectives follow them.  Good in this case is an adjective.  It asks, 'What kind of toast?'"

Seriously?!!!  I don't know what planet grammarians get their training on, but it's not on the planet I live on.  This is exactly the kind of conversation you would have with them if you ever engaged them in matters of grammar.  And it's the kind of rationalization that people use when they solve problems for themselves in real life.  People say, "The rules are this.  And it may look like I'm breaking the rules but really I'm doing it for the right reason, so the rules don't apply."

Rules by the government or corporations are just as bad.  If a company checks your credit score, it will receive one, but tomorrow when you check your credit score for yourself, the score is lower because the company checked it the day before.  What?  Or the IRS has a standard deduction for each person - unless you're married.  Then, the deduction is different.  What?  People make money for their time all the same, whether time in McDonalds or time in Goldman Sachs.  But, the tax tables say the McDonalds employee is taxed at one rate and the Goldman Sachs employee is taxed at a different rate.  What?  I work hard to increase my value for a rate of service and the government says its value also increases commensurately with mine?  What?????


I'm telling you - Watch out for life's little magic tricks.  They're everywhere from the language you speak to the money you owe to the score that buys you a car.  Are you just shaking your head like me?