See Ourselves as Others See Us

"O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!"
Robert Burns - To a Louse

When I first read these words by Robert Burns, I thought he had really nailed it. Why can't people see themselves as others see them? Then as I have thought about this over the years, I realize that the words apply to me rather than to someone else. Why can't I see myself as others see me? If you pursue this type of introspection long and hard enough, you will find some very highly evolved dimensions of deception and self deception that are difficult to admit and accept. You will also get closer to the truth, where it is very lonely.

A great song and great performance. Too bad Michael can't see the man in the mirror any better than the rest of us.

Messing our Nest

One thing that puts me in an instant rage is littering. I suppose our species has always been guilty of littering. In fact, archeologist learn more about previous cultures by sifting through their litter than any other means. Every morning when I walk out to get the paper I pick up a beer or soda can, or a fast food bag, or sometimes even worse. It seems that littering contnually gets worse. Another symptom of too many people on the planet.
I was slightly encourage this mourning when I was driving to Louisville and seen several groups of young kids and teenagers picking up trash as part of Operation Brightside. These young people are doing a great public good and hopefully learning a good lesson about how harmful littering is to our planet.

Vernal Equinox Ritual

One of Spring rituals is to burn all the seed catalogs that I have received over the winter on the Vernal Equinox fire. I have usually perused these all winter and have ordered my seeds, so it's time for a little housekeeping. This year I only had 32. Last year I had over 40. I like the fertility symbology of fueling the fire with "seed" catalogs.



Another of my Spring rituals is to fly a kite. We had a perfect day for kites and the kite that my great niece and I made 7 years ago still flies great.

Planting Potatoes

I have always planted potatoes on or close to Good Friday. However, this year due to the very early Easter and the cool damp weather, I am not going to be even close to getting my potatoes in the ground. I guess I'll plant after the next full moon in April. Until then I will just have to enjoy the photo of last year's crop.

Eostre

Eostre, Ostara, Easter or whatever religious myth of rebirth you believe in, it is a great time of the year. The air is warming, the grass is greening, the first flowers are bloomimg, trees are budding, birds are nesting and new animals are being conceived and born. Such brightness, vigor, enthusiasm and hope abounds. You can see, feel, smell and hear all the seasonal glory.
All these signal the Vernal Equinox meaning there is equal daylight and darkness. This is the official start of Spring. The amount of daylight will continue to increase until the summer solstice. It is the time to plant and prune away all the old to make way for the new. The symbols of eggs and rabbits abound from jellybeans to chocolate bunnies. These represent the fertility of the season. You can't help but feel a renewed vigor, even as the toll of the years weigh on you.

In Memory of Arthur C Clarke

The death of Arthur C Clarke is regrettable news. I have read all his books and 2001 Space Odyssey is one of the all time great movies. But I most remember him for the Clarke Belt which he proposed in science fiction and became science fact with asynchronous orbits for satellites. If you owned one of the old "C" band satellite systems where you had to tune in your own birds with a 3 meter or larger dish, you learned about the Clarke Belt - sometimes the hard way.



Now we all have Cable or Dish Network/Direct TV with a small stationary dish, but they still get their signals from the Clarke Belt.

The same evolution is now happening with the space elevator and hopefully someday it will be science fact.

St Patrick's Day

Since I am partially Irish, I enjoy much of the Irish culture and symbolism. Here is a photo of my version of a "shillelagh". It is made from an Persimmon tree limb and I have decorated it with the Celtic Tree Ogham alphabet. The runes on the handle spell my name. You can almost feel Celtic when you walk around with this cane. And, like a good shillelagh the head is heavy enough to fend off any unfriendly animal or person. St Patrick's day is a good time to reflect on part of my heritage and enjoy the good things that are Irish. Including the music of Celtic Woman.

Beware the Ides of March

Ides of March was not good day for Julius Ceaser, but I'm not sure what it meant for Warrior Princesses. Not a video for the homophobic.

Afterthought or Warning

With the river up, this sign was more of an amusing afterthought than a warning. How high is the water Moma?

Bitstrip

I was playing with this new bitstrip feature. My first strip isn't very exciting, but perhaps I can some future uses for this.

Desk Drawer Meme

Normally I don't pass along tags, but this one seemed to be more fulfilling to the one going through the desk drawer than it would have value to anyone else. At least it was for me. Thanks to the Gods are Bored blog.

Here is the meme and my results.
10 RANDOM THINGS FROM YOUR DESK DRAWER
Open the drawer closest to your computer, pull out 10 things, and say what they are.

1. Duckhead letter opener. I used to be an avid duck hunter.

2. Three pack of superglue. You never have enough superglue, but of course I didn’t remember this was here.

3. Cheap plastic compass. It tells directions, but I wouldn’t want to navigate far with it.

4. “Bullshit” stamp. I used this at work when I reviewed drafts of staff papers.

5. Cigarette lighter. I smoked for over 40 years. Wish I still did, but haven’t smoked in nearly 4 years.

6. Stereo plug adapters. To hook up different type of audio cables. Something I thought I might need someday but I think for the most part they are now obsolete.

7. Turkish worry beads. A former boss gave these to me. He said I worried too much.

8. Nametag. From before I retired, so clients knew who I was. Now it's so I won't forget who I am.

9. Box of .22 Cal rifle shells. I guess I bought these for that old .22 rifle of grandad's which is upstairs in one of the closets or somewhere.

10. A plastic plumb bob. Not sure why this here except even the new lazer tools can’t beat gravity at getting things level.

Escaping Biology

Humans have since the time we came down from the trees been on a quest. That quest has been defined in many different ways, but my personal description of this quest is “escaping biology”. My views have been shaped by almost two thirds of a century of reading, observing and thinking about what I see in humans.
Biologically, we are a mammal that evolved from primates. In fact we are genetically 98 percent like other primates alive today. What distinguishes us from the other biological species is our quest to go beyond the boundaries of our biology and not to be limited by our genetic code. This is evident in some of human's very first innovations such as taming fire and using the hides of other animals to protect us from the environment.
Our bodies are biologically designed to survive in a tropical climate for about three generations (about 40 years or so). This is long enough to mature, raise offspring and pass along the what we have learned in the process. Biologically, sometime around 40 we become obsolete and serve as a liability to the species. However, our quest has been to try to escape these biological bounds by not only surviving beyond our biological limits but thriving outside them.
We have been so adept in this quest, that our problem has become not one of our biological limits, but one of recognizing how far outside those limits we are existing. Very few of us will spend most of the day hunting or gathering our food. In fact some of us have never even seen the flora or fauna from which our food has been processed. Unlike any other species we escaped biology by removing ourselves from the food chain. We even find the act of killing other animals as repulsive, but we still like those hamburgers and pork chops.
In 1900 the average life expectancy was 47 years which is close to our biological limit. Today, with our prosthetic eyewear, hearing aid, artificial hip, knee, bypass surgeries, chemotherapy, blood pressure, cholesterol medicines and hundreds of other pharmaceuticals, we expect to live nearly 80 years which far exceeds that which we are designed. We have escaped the biological age limits.
We have become so insulated from our biology, that we fail to recognize how much it still drives our behavior, particularly in the first 40 of our 80 years. Technologically, we may have escaped biology, but behaviorally we are still bound. All the sexual, aggressive and deceptive things we do have biological roots. We have behaviorily evolved very little over the past 10, 000 years. This may be the demise of our species.
But our biological escape continues. Science fiction and science fact has all kinds of cyborgs, androids, downloaded brains, etc around the corner that have little or no biology to them at all. The issue is can our behavior adapt to our non biological becoming?

Daylight Savings Time

I live on the western edge of the easter time zone. It's about 9 miles to the central time zone. So I am almost an hour ahead of suntime on standard time and when we switch to DST I am almost two hours ahead. There are counties to my south and east that are on central time.













As far as I am concerned the whole world should be on Greenwich Mean Time. Then schools, farmers, businesses, governments, etc could set and change their hours whenever they wanted around amount of daylight. I think we all could adjust to this much better than crossing imaginary time lines and changing our clocks twice a year.
All this can be very confusing so here is a link that explains all you ever wanted to know about daylight savings time and more.
If that don't work for you maybe Golden Hawn's explanation of time zones will at least give you a chuckle.





And, finally, Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?

Bird homes

Time to get the birdhouses out. The birds are moving and looking for their spring homes. I put out 40 birdhouses this year. Most of them are recycled plastic coffee cans like the one below.

















Some of my birdhouses are gourds like the flourescent orange one below. I grow a big crop of gourds every year for this purpose.