Many Roads

We chatted with a taxi driver recently, a Muslim from Ethiopia. Dorothy explained to him that Monday coming would be a holiday because of Easter so the taxis would not have as much business. He was interested to hear that we are Christian. We wished him Ramadan Mubarak and expressed the opinion that all the world's religions had much to teach us, and that they mostly agree on kindness. I passed on the idea we heard from our Syrian friend that there are many roads to the truth. Just as we arrived home, our driver expressed a dissenting opinion. I think my eyebrows raised a little. The discussion ended there. 

I'm not sure why a taxi driver would think there was only one way to get from here to there: as if you have to take Woolwich Street and Woodlawn Road to get to our place while Eramosa-Victoria is just wrong. Of course, insisting on one way will usually work, but give me a taxi driver who can find his way around accidents and construction sites. 

Antiquity is full of episodes in which people have changed direction and found a way. Looking back, the routes that worked were prophetic, while the ones that didn't were just mistakes. Stories we retell remind us what didn't work so we stop doing that. For example, don't start a war unless you are prepared to sacrifice your children in battle with no guarantee of winning. Tribal gods urging us to aggression prevail on average only 50% of the time. We may search for peaceful roads around the collisions of belief, custom, ambition, greed, pride, and hatred.

The driver helped us in with our groceries earning thanks and a generous tip. Our life journeys brought us here on different roads, but we met with mutual benefit, and for that we are grateful.

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For the Healing of the Nations: Beyond the Walls Choir

Think Zero Waste

Porridge is either breakfast or waste, depending on one's point of view. Mom used to say 'it sticks to the ribs', her metaphor for good food. It also sticks to the bowl, which is a problem as I load breakfast dishes into the dishwasher. The machine doesn't deal well with sticky porridge unless I help out. Porridge is either breakfast or waste, and what we do is either assimilate it or waste it. The difference is all in the head.

Get ready: March 30 is International Day of Zero Waste.

Nice? Well yes, but zero waste is less obvious than it seems. Anything, including your best friend, can be waste if it's in the wrong place. Consider these statistics (or skip to the end because numbers are confusing and I probably got it all wrong anyway).

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Current world human population is 8,099,640,493 plus about two more every second. 

The average weight of a human is 137 pounds (62 kg), which includes 130 pounds (60 kg) for Asians and Africans sweating in the fields and 180 pounds (82 kg) for North Americans munching chips on the couch. The number of deaths worldwide this year is estimated to be 60.95 million. Using these numbers, my calculator reports that there will be 3.76 million metric tons of human flesh and bone to dispose of in 2024. Lots of cremations and burials. We're running out of space. What are we going to do with all the dead people? We can't leave them on the couch in front of the TV where they expired. The house won't sell. They are waste.

Elon Musk might let us dump them in outer space for a nominal fee dependent on the price of rocket fuel. But wait. Are we going to waste the material in those bodies? How long will it take to run out of the stuff of which people are made? Water, for instance.

You saw what I did there? I began with waste as a noun, something unwanted to be discarded like broken appliances that Dad would leave at the curb for the garbage collector. I sneakily turned waste into a verb, to dispose of something of value, which Mom said was naughty, and you'd better eat what's in the bowl or there's no supper. Mom would bring in the broken appliances from the curb while Dad was at work. She knew that they would magically start working again someday if she waited patiently. So zero waste means either nothing gets discarded (nothing and nobody dies) or don't throw that good stuff away (we can use this: harvest the water in that body like the Fremen on Arrakis). We get so muddled by using a word in different ways without saying so.

We've been recycling bodies forever without saying so (because it's yucky). According to population geneticists, mitochondrial Eve lived in Africa 200,000 years ago. If she weighed 60 kg when she died, 60% of which was water, then 36 kg (36,000 g) of water returned to the biosphere from her body. The molecular weight of water is 18.  The number of water molecules in 18 grams (Avogadro's number) is 6.02 x 10^23. So Eve's body gave back (6.02 x 10^23 x 36,000 ÷ 18) = 1.2 x 10^27 water molecules to the world.

The volume of water on earth is 1.3 x 10^9 cubic kilometres  = 1.3 x 10^18 cubic metres. Since a cubic metre of water has a mass of 1000 kg, that comes to 1.3 x 10^21 kg, which means that a kg of water on earth contains, on average, (1.2 x 10^27) ÷ (1.3 x 10^21) = 1,000,000 molecules from Eve's body, assuming that the water on earth got well mixed in 200,000 years. 

*******************

For an 80 kg North American whose body contains 48 kg of water, that includes 48,000,000 molecules that were in Eve's body when she expired. They passed through a few other bodies first, and will be passed along again for sure. That's recycling.

Of course, molecules are tiny, so 48,000,000 molecules doesn't amount to much. But it makes you think. Eve's body may have been waste for a short time until they put her in the ground. But Eve's water wasn't wasted for long because water is readily assimilated by other organisms and dispersed in air, ocean and fresh water, glaciers and ground water. What, then, is waste?

It's just a state of mind. According to the mindless planet, nothing is waste. Zero waste is the way things work here on earth. If you want to belong, think zero waste. 

Otherwise, the end won't be pretty, so you can sign up for the colony on Mars where you will learn to reuse things.

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788 words including the math. Too much. I was going to toss it in the basket like the note I wrote last week, but that isn't how we do zero waste. 

You could reuse this as your home screen, or forward it to the mayor. Or print it and shred it and use the confetti in your compost heap. I'm going to send it to the company who made my lawnmower because they ignored my email asking about repairs.

When Cemetery Space Runs Out: CBC Radio

Geologic History of Earth: PBS, Youtube

Fossil Fuels Put the World at Risk: David Suzuki Foundation

Plastic Waste and Pollution Reduction: Government of Canada

Plastic-Eating Bacteria: LiveScience

Happiness

We just came in from a walk in the park. While we were there, three boys arrived on bikes and began pedaling the loop the other way round. This happens quite often. Sometimes the kids haven't been on wheels for very long and you can't tell which way they are going to wobble, so we get off the path onto the grass until they have gone by. These boys were different. When they saw us doddering along, Dorothy with her walker and me with my walking poles, they got off the path and let us pass. They must have gracious parents.

That got me thinking. Sorry. Nothing else to do this afternoon.

There are just a few thoughts that I claim as my own. Among them is the dimension of social currency which I call the 3Gs: Grace, Gratitude and Generosity. When I say this thought is my own, I mean I didn't read it or hear it in a sermon. The 3Gs are standard equipment with this model of mind. You've got them too. Check inside and see how they work.

Or you can read this note to get a hint of what I am thinking.

We are born into a state of grace, helpless and needy, worthy of care only because of the love of our parents and their response to our crying. As we grow, learn to look after ourselves and become productive adults, we are less needy. But the neediness is always there even when we are most capable and productive. 

We may imagine we are independent, but that is never quite true. I got out of bed at 18°C this morning. It was 3°C outside. We needed that heat pump to keep us warm all night. There would be no heat pump without the engineers, factory workers and office staff that kept that business going, and the schools that prepared them to do their work. 

You don't want me to recite the chain of supply behind breakfast, lunch, supper, garbage collection, TV, internet, medical and emergency services, pension, clothing, building construction, military, OK that's enough. We are absolutely dependent on each other. Some degree of autonomy is what we get in return for doing our part in caring for the endlessly needy world. But we remain needy all the time for nearly everything because we can't do very much alone.

Still not convinced? It's easy to imagine that we are capable, self-sufficient people who need to be left to our own devices and not hampered with petty laws; like Haiti, for example, and many other places where civilization is unravelling while I write this little note all warm an cozy at my desk sheltered in a democracy at peace. If we don't get what we need or want from living together, our default instinct is to look after ourselves. So just send $250 and you can triple your investment in a month. That's what Vladimir did, and look where he lives.

No, don't send money, please. I'm just making the point that if we don't take the 3Gs seriously, we enable the sociopaths, and then it's extortion and fraud, or guns and street gangs, or drones and missiles, or mysterious death in prison. Without the 3Gs we are in constant danger and our children go unfed.

So part of the recipe for happiness is the 3Gs.

Grace: know that life is a gift unearned.

Gratitude: practice thanksgiving.

Generosity: be gracious.

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That's 575 words. Too much time on my hands.

Hedonic Adaptation: more words about happiness by Elizabeth Scott, Verywell Mind

Historic First Nations Donations to Irish Famine Relief: CBC News

WYS + 3R

You've probably noticed this old man being all analytical about life. When I was young and too busy to think about it, I just muddled through doing whatever with the occasional guidance of parents, teachers, elders and pop psychology books. Then I became parent, teacher and elder. It's time I figured it out and wrote my own book. (Just kidding. 500 words or less.)

3R is my mnemonic for a neat little set of virtues that make it possible for us to live together with mutual benefit: Respect, Restraint and Reciprocity. It seems that the 3Rs are supported by nature (an instinct for fairness) and nurture (being sent to my room until I apologize). Social imperatives are often in conflict with egoic motives, so life is lived in tension. How much do I owe to others and what do I get in return? This question deserves a balanced answer, or we wind up in chaos. So there is a lively debate ongoing.

For example, Virani defends Online Harms Bill after Margaret Atwood warns of the slippery slope towards 'thoughtcrime' and imprisonment without trial. 

Whatever you say, Margaret, unless you are using hyperbole in unreasonable opposition to reasonable legislation implemented by a fair, independent judiciary. Do you choose to live in a society that permits online hate speech, abuse of children, and incitement to violence? If not, we need a law and a justice system that can enforce that law. If you want to criticize government, complain about the recruitment crisis of the RCMP and judicial vacancies at the federal level. Understaffed agencies can't enforce laws. Then it's like traffic without stop signs. Look out.

Margaret's pronouncements are always good for discussion, and she didn't break any laws, but I don't buy her censorship paranoia. She seems to be advocating liberty without responsibility. The World Wide Web is Woefully Wild and Wayward because it is only 35 years old and the laws haven't kept up with the mayhem: extortion, fraud, propaganda, political interference, sexual exploitation, disinformation, slander and aggression. It's happening now in this aspiring democracy, not in a hypothetical future controlled by Atwood's malignant autocracy.

We earn freedom by respecting the rights of others, restraining our own behaviour, and treating others as we expect to be treated. If we can't behave on our own, there is law. Autocracy will fill the vacuum after law fails and we tire of anarchy.

So let's play WYS + 3R:
Whatever You Say 
with Respect, Restraint, and Reciprocity. 

The only losers in this game are those who won't play by the rules.

**************

That was 427 words. Here are some more if you want them.

Debate on Internet Content Regulation: Chris Wick, Opinion-Canada

A World Without Rules: Nick Chater, BBC

Et tu Brute: Gretta Vosper

Lets Play WYSYM

Back in 1964, the year I finished university and got married, Eric Berne published a book called "The Games People Play". He described how interactions between people could be analyzed as games, providing insight into our motivations and strategies so we might get along better. I read a couple of his books on transactional analysis and continued getting it wrong for sixty years. Ask Dorothy. She's got stories. It's one thing to know you are wrong and another to practice getting it right. 

To simplify the task for us busy (lazy) people, Berne gave games memorable names like "Ain't it awful" and "See what you made me do" and "Why don't you -Yes but" and "NIGYSOB" (you'll have to look it up) and "Blemish" (my favourite). Since I have forgotten most of Eric's insights while I've been busy playing, I just make up my own games and try to get people to play by my rules. As it happens, that is another game which I have dubbed "I'm the king of the castle and you're the dirty rascal", or ITKYDR for short. 

That's maybe why so few people comment on my blog. They want to be the king (or queen), but it's my game so I'm the king. 

OK. Anything to get comments. New game: "Whatever You Say, Your Majesty", WYSYM for short. This game works best when we are all royalty. You WYS me and I WYS you. Everybody wins. 

Let's play WYSYM. Your move. 

Paving Paradise

You've likely heard that scientists have voted against defining a new epoch called the Anthropocene. Too soon, they say. They will change the name when they can look back in ten thousand years or so and find evidence of us in the rocks. They must have missed the news about plastic rocks. So according to them we're stuck in the Holocene which will be over when it's over. Of course, there isn't going to be anyone looking at those rocks when it's over. 

Never mind the rocks. Take a look around. Nothing you see or touch or breathe has escaped the careless influence of humanity. This is our scene and we've been making a mess. The scientists just won't use a new word if it doesn't fit their rules.

We poets will bend a word to make a point, and Anthropocene is too good a word to throw away. I think we need a new season of documentaries; call it The Anthropo-Scene. We should do episodes on the global temperature record, microplastics in unborn babies, land use, habitat destruction, population growth, climate tipping points, loss of biodiversity, and on and on and on, enough information to take us to the end of the epoch.

If you're going to yes-but me until I confess that I'm a woke, leftist, green, tree-hugging anthropophobe, it's OK, I understand. Calm down. I get it. We all have opinions. But what we need at this point is less opinion and more thoughtful appreciation of what we've got before it's gone. Let's stop paving paradise.

Be a Butterfly

I recall looking up the long term weather forecast on the Environment Canada website. That was decades ago. As I recall, it said spring that year would be mild and that their forecasts were right 51% of the time. I thought that was a joke, like this: if you want to know the weather, flip a coin. Maybe they were bragging, because groundhogs are right only 40% of the time. Environment Canada was 11% more reliable than groundhogs, and a whole 1% better than a coin toss.

With improvements in data collection and modelling, this year the prediction for March to May is that the Toronto temperatures will be above average 77% of the time, below average 19% and normal 4%. The prediction is a comparison to data from 1991 to 2020. They expect that prediction to be moderately accurate, reporting a skill of 57%. 

Conclusion: if you want to continue using groundhogs you should buy a new swim suit and carry an emergency snow shovel. Also allow $10 a month for groundhog feed. They are less reliable when hungry. (That's a joke.) 

Environment Canada budgeted $2 billion in 2020-2021. That's $117,647,058.82 for each percentage that meteorologists estimate better than groundhogs. They threw in a daily weather report as a bonus. You're going to need a swim suit. (That's not a joke.)

The atmosphere is a chaotic system. When science gets involved with a chaotic system, the conclusion is reported as a range of probabilities. If you have noticed me saying anything different, it is poetry rather than science, and I have said it to motivate rather than inform.

For example, I have invoked the butterfly effect to assert that individuals are not powerless to make things better even if there are billions of others making things worse. We have a solar array on the roof not because that would save the world from climate disaster, but because we want to be part of the growing wave of concern that has a hope of making things better. And even if that wave does not save the world, we choose to do what we can rather than participate thoughtlessly in making things worse. You see, the butterfly effect is not about the science of weather. It's about free will and responsible choices making a difference. 

Of course collective action by governments and corporations is absolutely necessary, but that will not happen until enough individuals choose to put the future of the planet ahead of their personal wealth, comfort and safety.

Life is a chaotic system.
So, join the conversation,
pick a project.
Get it done.
Enjoy success.
Learn from failure.
Then do it all again. 

Be a butterfly.

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Energy storage using liquid air: Just Have a Think

No Pressure

If have just begun reading "Determined: a science of life without free will" by Robert Sapolsky. Even a page into Sapolsky's book, I can feel the yes-but reflex twitching. I am going to give it some thought.

I think Sapolsky may be guilty of equivocation fallacy since the term free will can mean different things. He claims that free will is an illusion. I think he's pretending we mean one thing when most people mean something else.

First, can we agree that the universe is particulate, that it consists of local clumps of material sufficiently distinct that they can be thought of as discrete objects, and that I am such an object? Label me Dennis. (That's all I will say about that other idea that the self is an illusion.) 

Next, can we agree that time may be divided into intervals of various durations encompassing particular events: the precambrian period, recorded history, my lifetime, last year, today, this moment. What will Dennis choose in this moment? Will he write a note about the objection to free will being an equivocation fallacy or will he watch reruns of The Big Bang Theory?

The argument of hard determinism is that everything is cause-effect dependent and the dependencies stretch back to the beginning and throughout space. This argument is seductive because things that have already happened are settled, and a plausible cause-effect narrative can be invented to explain them even though almost all the causes and the causes behind the causes behind the causes are unknown and many are unknowable. 

The future is not so certain. Particular futures are more or less improbable. We do science so that we can imagine possible futures, choose a future we want, and do something to make it more probable. Knowing some of the important causes behind events (determinism) can help with that. On the other hand, hard determinism says whatever we do, it was decided already in the first microsecond of The Big Bang. So, why bother with science? Why bother making a choice? Why bother?

Whatever happened on some exploding star long ago to create the elements in my body, I here in this moment choose, using my brain in its current state, to write this note. Just as Dennis is the label I use for this bit of flesh and bone and brain, free will is the label I give to the motive behind this choosing process. I make a choice, not bothering with most of its antecedents because all of that is too complicated.

We can argue about whether  free is a good word for this idea, but it boils down to how much of the universe we include in the explanation and how far back we want to go in time. Instead, let's clarify using a different term. Here and now, I made a thoughtful choice to write this note. Once the choice has been made, we can supply a few reasons that show it was determined. But before the thoughtful choice was made, the vast field of determining causes was too complex for us to predict the choice. Being thoughtful is how we deal with impossible complexity. So when we say we have free will, we mean we may thoughtfully gamble and sometimes win in spite of our ignorance of the incomprehensible complexity of our situation. Of course, thoughtfulness is relative. We are also free to be not so thoughtful, as when we say it is all predetermined, so why bother.

Now we have this blog note. You can thoughtfully imagine that an accident 13.8 billion years ago involving a bunch of quarks was the primal source of this note, and then what...  On the other hand, I've got this. My choice is to write this note.

You can thoughtfully choose to email me with the message "Stop" because you are tired of deleting my nonsense. Or you can comment below objecting to my naive reasoning because Sapolsky is about to destroy this argument in the next chapter. Or you can email me asking a question. Or you can watch reruns of The Big Bang Theory. Or whatever. Your choice. That's as free as it gets.

No pressure.

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How the Brain Makes Decisions: Psychology Today

Curious

we question,
listen and explore,
look where we will,
with clever tools
to probe the dirt and depths,
the private heart and distant stars,
what was and is
and what may be,
until we glimpse the Mystery.
If in the moment
we believe and speak,
we soon will question,
listen and explore,
once more
curious.

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 2-million-year-old DNA in Greenland: PBS

fMRI Neuron Monitoring: news.MIT.edu
James Webb Telescope Findings: Space.com
Free Will: The Conversation
The Boreal Forest on the Move: Quirks and Quarks