another 20 lives or another 20 minutes

In objecting to someone's new-age objection to a simple statement, I wrote something worth keeping.

My self is myself. That's what I was talking about in the first place. Live in a way so that you're being aware and honest. Integrity. No "true self" and some other self. Just the one, whole self. Whether you think I'm more evolved than you are or not doesn't matter to me OR to you. Whether you think what you're discussing is "a much deeper perspective" than mine or not, mine stands and yours wasn't the topic.

You probably assume I don't know about the whole astral plane, third level, spirit guide, children choose their parents, blahdeblah, but I've known quite a bit about it since 1967. References on request. :-)

I will state the idea that it is part of a bundle of wishful thinking that can and does distract people from being right here, right now. I don't recommend it. It justifies violence and ignorance. That is not helpful to ANYone's spiritual value, regardless of whether they think they'll live another 20 times, or another 20 minutes.

The original statement was addressed to a young man (teen) who was disturbed about a situation between others. I had originally written this:

Consider ideas. If something makes sense, good. Use the idea. Remember where you got it. Be honest. Live your life in such a way that you're not ashamed if someone quotes what you said, or tells something you did.

(Note to a young friend yesterday, but it seemed potentially useful to others.)

Don't know how long it will work, this link, but it's here: http://www.facebook.com/SandraDoddABQ/posts/193160007377934

Same and Different: easy answers and second looks

For young children, this might seem obvious. It's not about color, so that might be another way to look at what youngest children look at first.

The video is new at youtube, and the comments there include "the converse has laces and the rest of them don't!"

Many answers that seemed obvious to us in childhood look different in the light of years and experience. The uniqueness of any object, person, idea, plant or animal can be discussed, as can similarities to other things.

All of that reminded me of the game "SET." It's a game that seems easier for younger children than adults. When I play it, I think in words. Maybe people who are more visual will find it simpler.


In everyday comparison and contrast, there are many other factors past verbal, logical, size or color. Which of those shoes were made in the U.S.? Which fit? Which are stylish? How hot is it outside? Ah. but the question isn't about which shoes someone might want to wear. Shoe stores are about which shoes people want to wear!

The video is a good example of multiple choice questions, and a good toy for playing with how we sort and choose, how we name things, and how we interpret what we see. And the song is nice. It reminds me of when Kirby was little, and he'll be 24 later this month.

Much of the comparison/contrast that comes up naturally at our house is about musical styles and forms and versions.

Holly and I saw a quilt at an antiques mall, and I said "Stained glass window!" but I was pointing at the glass case it was in, so Holly thought I was talking about the glass (which was clear).

Patterns, patterns, patterns...

Old Age

"Kama Chinen, from Japan, was born in 1895 and incredibly lived through three different centuries.
She was born on May 10, 1895 — the same year as King George VI.

"France's Eugenie Blanchard now holds the crown of the globe's oldest person, aged 114." http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2958511/Worlds-oldest-woman-has-died.html

My favorite thing in that article is the United Nations prediction that by 2050 there will be nearly one million people in Japan over the age of 100.

The article that led me to this one was the 130th birthday of a woman in Georgia (former Soviet Georgia, not former Confederate Georgia). Her records have been long lost, so she can't win the international race, as it were... but 1880. She was born in 1880. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3046794/Oldest-woman-celebrates-130th.html



Anyway... the articles are from the racy, crazy SUN, in London, and the reason I get their e-mails is that they had an article on the letter I got from David Bowie, when Antisa Khvichava was only 87 years old. For a while there were letters in response to that, so I was checking in on occasion.

I had a grandfather born before the 1900's, but he died in the late 1970's or so. Here we are in the 1950's:



Holly and I visited my friend Beau the other day. Beau can start collecting social security when she's 62, because she was born before 1950. I'll have to wait until I'm 65, because I was born in 1953. All this information is patterns, patterns, patterns. It involves government finances, family relations, and future careers in gerontological fields.

Save the Date - Careers in Aging Week 2011
April 10-16, 2011

Optimism and Gratitude (KIND of...)

Below is a song from a musical that was never successful, but the song is good! Carol Burnett sang it originally, and if anyone knows where there's a recording online of her doing it, or a video, please leave a link to it! Thanks.

Claire Spencer, a friend of ours, sang it to us many years ago, and repeated it a couple of times just because we asked. She had it on an LP from her childhood. Unfortunately, I don't have a recording of Claire doing it, either.

This is Buddy Rich, a famous drummer, on the Muppet Show, not drumming. 1981:



Here's one of him drumming, same program, no drums:

The Muppet Show - Backstage with Buddy Rich

Nerd Pride Day (Día del Orgullo Friki)

Rocco Stanzione:

How did I not know about this holiday? I'm gonna write a nerd poem for my wife...

Señor Buebo, organizador del Día del Friki. (Foto: Antonio Heredia)

Roses are red, violets are blue
All my base are belong to you

Marilyn Olowe:

LOL, Rocco. How about this:

Roses are #FF0000
Violets are #0000FF
All my base
Are belong to you ♥

Tracing back from that, I found this by Erin Rose O'Brien:

While rummaging across the internet for wacky holidays, I found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerd_Pride_Day

Apparently, it originated in Spain. You go Spanish nerds. In addition, it falls on the anniversary of the original Star Wars film.

In 2008, Geek Pride Day came to America and in 2009, Canada. So let's rock our nerdiness. Let's get a large number of people to party it up with us.

Irreverent Haiku

Meanwhile, for the past several days, other nerds have been writing other poems, on a Facebook page created by Jeff Sabo. As those who don't have a part-time home on facebook won't be able to see it, I've brought some of my own, and the promise that there are many more and better there.

People are playing with long words. This is my 5-7-5:

Procrastination's
counterintuitively
inspirational.

And before that,

Why do we think it?
That big thoughts will not fit in
Small words of one sound.

and what started me with the five-syllable situation:

In Beowulf's age
Haiku all angled to be
Alliterative

One of my favorite geek-poetry things of all is the error message haiku which have been going around for years. There's no one definitive set, I don't think, as they're passed around as office humor, but here's one site with a collection:
http://www.strangeplaces.net/weirdthings/haiku.html

testing, dancing, Muybridge, physicality

http://sandradodd.com/physicality

Edith Cavell, long division and other trivia

Because of watching this: As Time Goes By...

...I read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Cavell. There was just a passing mention of Edith Cavell, in the sixth episode of the third season, and I wanted to understand the joke.

And so I learned a fair amount about WWI that I hadn't known, and how people were being recruited with a story that turned out to have much exaggeration and some denial. But still it was heroism, and had I know this before I was in Norfolk last summer I would have wanted to see this monument. I might have passed right by it, but didn't know the story.



There are roads, schools, hospitals, buildings, people, a pub, a mountain, a bridge, a rose, a radio station, a YWCA camp, and a hill or something on Jupiter named after Edith Cavell, in the U.K., Belgium, France, Portugal, South Africa, Canada, the U.S., New Zealand and Australia. And Jupiter. Okay, well not all those named things are in all those places. One in each, at least.

If considering the difference between knowledge and trivia, consider this, by Ronnie Maier.

Wrapping the point in silk
Each of us is born with a crazy passion to learn.
Each of us craves knowledge of our world and our place within it.
We learn because we want to learn, because it’s important to us, because it’s natural,
and because it’s impossible to live in the world and not learn.
Then along comes school to mess up a beautiful thing.
~ Peggy Pirro, 101 Reasons Why I'm An Unschooler

MJ helped one of my nieces with her long division homework the other day. Hearing that she had done this got me thinking again about what a waste of time and brain cells it is to learn long division.

#1 - As Pam Sorooshian pointed out in her math talk at Good Vibrations last year, the precision of long division is just not what we need out in the real world. Think about when you use division in real life: calculating the best value at the grocery store, figuring gas mileage, seeing how many of something you can use in a given time period or distribute to each person, and so on. And how do you do it? In your head, using estimates. "258 miles on 7.8 gallons, um, that's a little better than 30 mph." Done. Typically, we don't need to know that it was 33.07692 mph. And if we do...

#2 -Most of us carry calculators with us all day every day. We have calculators on our computers, in our phones, in our PDAs, in our watches, magnetized to our dashboards, clipped to our grocery carts, whatever. With a little practice, we can use these faster than we can estimate in our heads.

So, why are they still teaching long division in schools???? It is but one example of how schools have failed to adapt.

Once upon a time, it was vital for a certain group of people to know that wearing a silk shirt under armor might save your life, since the silk makes it easier to remove an arrow if you get shot. Somebody figured this out, and the word spread, and it became part of the standard warrior curriculum. Back then, knowing this technique was a matter of life and death. Nowadays, it's a quaint little factoid.

I'd rather have my kids learning about that than long division. Long division is a dead end, an exercise in tedium, a compelling bit of evidence that "math is hard" (not to mention unpleasant), or worse, that "I am stupid."

That little silk tidbit, though... Now that's interesting. I don't remember where I learned it—probably in a romance novel—but I looked it up on the Internet. It led me to Mongols and absorbency and sutures and animal rights for worms. And it led me to wonder: Who figured this out and how? Can you imagine the circumstances...? Chloe and I laughed together as we talked about it.

In other words, that little tidbit is fun. It opens doors. It engages my brain and reminds me that the world is full of things to discover.

That is what learning should be. I wonder why our schools haven't figured that out.