Uncarina decaryi

Politics, Psychological Musings

We have had a Uncarina decaryi – I have no idea what it’s common name is or if it has one, but it is in the sesame family – growing next to a window, in a light corner of the house. We have had it for, about, ten years, keeping it warm, feeding it, and it has done nothing to earn its keep. This summer, we cut it back – it had become too fleshy and etiolated , and put it outside to fend on it’s own for a while. A couple of days ago, it bloomed in the strangest way. Now it has big yellow flowers peaking out from under the leaves. If that doesn’t make you want to be a Republican, nothing will.

 

Pedaliaceae or sesame family

Precious Mae and the Rabbit

Around home

The mythology at our home is that – because  of Precious Mae – we no longer have a rabbit problem. Precious Mae spends hours hunkered down on the bridge over our creek – really a sort of drainage ditch to cut-off water coming down the hill – guarding our home from rabbits and other varmints. This afternoon, when -without my glasses – I saw a rabbit in the garden ( I knew I was right because of the backlight coming through his, her’s, or its ears, but I wasn’t positive).

After a very short search, I found my glasses and then the camera – Shoot! no compact flash memory card in the camera – then a memory card, and then went out to take a shot. As soon as I walked out on the deck, Precious Mae, who had sort of been lounging around in the house, made a a beeline to the bridge. With my glasses, all I saw were quail for about three or four minutes, then I caught the rabbit hopping towards the path. Precious Mae was off. A killing machine at full efficiency.

There is going after the rabbit – any prey for that matter – and getting the rabbit. They are very different things. Once Precious Mae confronted the rabbit, everything sort of  fell apart. The rabbit may have only been one third of her size, but there was no question the rabbit had been trained in anti-cat tactics and locked Precious Mae in a Death-stare that she just managed to escape, leaving the rabbit – for the time being, only – in charge of the path.

 

 

 

 

Dinosaur extinction and Thomas Kuhn

Psychological Musings, Science

A couple of days ago – maybe a couple of weeks by the time I get this posted because I keep getting interrupted by going to Tahoe and Pussy Riot – The Guardian had an interesting article on Thomas Kuhn, or, more accurately, his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I have never heard of Kuhn, but I think he has been a major shaper of my world outlook.

To quote directly from the article, But what really set the cat among the philosophical pigeons was one implication of Kuhn’s account of the process of paradigm change…. imply(s) that scientific revolutions must be based – at least in part – on irrational grounds? In which case, are not the paradigm shifts that we celebrate as great intellectual breakthroughs merely the result of outbreaks of mob psychology?

YES!  That is exactly the case. We in the West, at least my generation, have been brought up to believe in the Scientific Method (not as an ideal, but as a reality). We have been taught that part of what made The West great was coming up with a theory, testing that theory with experiments and observations -facts – and then, and only then, accepting the Theory. We are told that it is the difference between Evolutionists and Creationists. It may still be the ideal but it is not reality. In reality, scientists use the facts to justify their position even if they have to twist the facts a little.

It is only when the crowd’s idea of reality changes, when society as a whole changes, when the paradigm shifts, that the Theory changes. In most cases, the facts are known to not fit the Theory for a long time before the Theory changes. When I was in college, we had a required two year course in the physical sciences including Geology. At the end of the Geology section, the teacher presented the theory of continental drift  by Alfred Wegener. They presented all the facts that teachers now use – continents fitting together, biological dispersion, blah, blah – and it all seemed so logical to me, but the teachers dismissed it as This wild theory by some crazy German who thinks the continents are floating around. Ha ha.

As an aside, I now know that I am a sucker for almost any new theory (or almost any new thing that comes down the pike for that matter). My experience is that I am almost always right because today’s hair-brained theory is soon conventional wisdom and the new thing coming down the pike is the future. But I am old enough to know that I am not always right: right when I feel in love with Ferraris when Cadillacs were the gold standard, right when I got a BMW and people were asking me in gas stations if it was Japanese, wrong when I thought  Peugeot was the next BMW, but right when I thought Continental Drift just seemed right. End aside.

About 30, maybe 40, years ago, I started noticing bumper-stickers that said Shit Happens. About the same time, scientists first started proposing the Asteroid Impact Theory as the reason the dinosaur extinction came so quickly. Scientists knew the facts but didn’t come up with the theory until the concept of Shit Happens became the dominant paradigm. Until then, scientists thought dinosaurs had died off because they were stupid.

To circle back, I would postulate that good science only works because of mob psychology.

Neil Armstrong RIP

Americana, Current Affairs

 

Neil Armstrong died today and it has almost no emotional meaning for me. He was the first man on the moon and, somehow, he always seemed like he was a cog in a bigger program. He was a Navy pilot, became a test pilot – including flying the F101 Voodoo which I feel in love with when we were both at Hamilton AFB – he flew combat missions in the Korean war, got shot down1, and he always seemed like he wasn’t real to me.

Even his “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind” quote seemed so perfect as to be plastic (a favorite term of disparagement in the 60s). Part of it was the over-choreographing, by NASA, of all the Astronauts (this was the height of the Cold War and it was – in a major way – the Christian west against the godless Commies, it was important that we look good and that only included, for some reason, white men). Part of it was the complete inaccessibly of something so outside our normal, daily, life and part of it must have been watching  the whole thing through a low-resolution, black and white, TV camera.

So, while I can remember every detail of my watching the moon-landing and Neil Armstrong walking on the moon and my emotional experience, I never felt emotionally connected to the guys on the otherside of the fuzzy, black and white image. The Apollo astronauts never had their Right Stuff movie to make them real. So, it was only when I learned that Armstrong had manually landed Eagle and that it was getting low on fuel – with the Low Fuel light flashing as I remember reading much later – that the enormity of what he had done really hit home with me.

I imagine, driving home from San Francisco – late at night – when the low fuel light comes on and the effect it has on my stress level. Then I imagine that light coming on with no gas stations for the next 240,000 miles: with only enough fuel, not to mention battery power, cooling water, and breathing oxygen to return to lunar orbit, and now the fuel gauge is showing “low fuel”. I imagine not ever having flown a real lunar lander before and having the presence of mind to switch to manual control to find a place to set down.

In a way, taking huge risks right on the edge of oblivion – like the lunar landing – is what the entire Man-on-the-Moon program was about and Neil Armstrong was the Poster Child. What a guy!

 

1 technically he got shot up, lost the outer six feet of his wing while evading more fire, and managed to fly back to safety.

Pussy Riot

Current Affairs

Richard Taylor took exception to my post on Pussy Riot and, because I think he is right and I was wrong, I am posting his comment on the front page (so to speak).

I agree that protest comes at a price. The goal of protest is to call attention to extremism and prompt criticism from outside. And, protesters take a chance that what comes form the outside will not be criticism, but instead support for the system. I appreciate the disclaimer of any affinity with Putin but am saddened to see this space being used to support a verdict that is based not on breaking and entering or for injuring anyone but for “offensively violating public peace in a sign of flagrant disrespect for citizens.” (http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=9734) Oh, and because the song was also blasphemous from the point of view of the church. And this a verdict handed down with very little of what we would call due process.

So, being offensive or blasphemous in the eyes of the church can get you 2 years in jail? Not a system I want to defend. I think it is a system that should be questioned if not condemned. While I view them as mainstream, I’m sure the occupy protesters (http://tinyurl.com/93vscou ) offended a good portion of the public and I’m certain the Gay Pride Parade (http://tinyurl.com/8rwnh7n) is both profoundly offensive and blasphemous to many. Yes, the Pussy Riot actions were offensive to many devout members of the Russian Orthodox church (and bravo to the Church for asking for clemency for PR), but I’m not sure that offensiveness alone (there was no damage to property, nobody injured) should land someone in prison for two years.

I do want to add – and I hope it is not just because I want to be argumentative – that because of their arrest and prison sentence, Pussy Riot is now one of the most famous girl bands in the world (and, certainly the most famous that has never sold a recording or given a real concert). Russia, by arresting Pussy Riot, trying them while they are in a guarded glass box  – like they may infect the court or make a mass jailbreak – and then giving them a two year sentence in prison, had made itself look foolish.

It is amazing how Russia couldn’t help but act self-destructively in this case.  I think that all governments have that tendency, but the tendency to do stupid things is worse in direct relation to the level of autocraticness. (There must have been dozens of people in power in Russia who knew the jailing of Pussy Riot was not a good idea, that it would not make the state look powerful, it would just make the state look scared of three young girls.)