• What Rough Beast Comes?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    26 83%  28% 2mph NNW  bar 30.15 rises windchill25   Yuletide

                              Waning Gibbous Cold Moon

    The assassination of Benazir Bhutto chilled me, chilled me more than the air temperature outside.  My reaction surprised me since I have no Pakistani friends, feel no special affiliation with the Pakistani people and know only a little about Ms. Bhutto.  Yeats comes to mind:  The center will not hold.  This targeted political violence is the rough beast that slouches toward the Bethlehems in every country and toward the calm in our souls.

    There is no place on the globe any longer that does not affect us, no matter how remote from our understanding or apparent sympathies.  This is good in a general sense and perhaps bodes well for the long term future when these kind of strong links bind us together even more strongly; but now, in the short term, the ripples will have unexpected consequences.

    The material below is interesting.

    From Scientific American Online: 

    People who describe themselves as being politically liberal can better suppress a habitual response when faced with situations in which that response is incorrect, according to research that used a simple cognitive test to compare liberal and conservative thinkers. Tasks that require such “conflict monitoring” also triggered more activity in the liberals’ anterior cingulate cortex, a brain region geared to detect and respond to conflicting information.

    Past research has shown that liberals and conservatives exhibit differing cognitive styles, with liberals being more tolerant of ambiguity and conservatives preferring more structure. The new paper “is exciting because it suggests a specific mechanism” for that pattern, com­ments psychologist Wil Cunningham of Ohio State University, who was not involved with the study. In the experiment, subjects saw a series of letters flash quickly on a screen and were told to press a button when they saw M, but not W. Because M appeared about 80 percent of the time, hitting the button became a reflex—and the more liberal-minded volunteers were better able to avoid the knee-jerk reaction.

    The study’s lead author, psychologist David Amodio of New York University, emphasizes that the findings do not mean that political views are predetermined. “There are a lot of steps be­tween conflict monitoring and political ideology, and we don’t know what those steps are,” he says. Although the neurocognitive process his group measured is so basic that it is most likely in place in early childhood, he notes that “the whole brain is very malleable.” Social relation­ships and other environmental factors also shape one’s political leanings.


    📂This entry was posted in Politics 📎and tagged

  • Will Reading Continue to Dwindle?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    17  909%  25%  0mph W bar 29.99 steady windchill17 

    A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions–as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.
      – Friedrich Nietzsche

    The Twilight of the Books offers evidence of a decline in reading.  Here are a few excerpts to prove their point:

    “In 1937, twenty-nine per cent of American adults told the pollster George Gallup that they were reading a book. In 1955, only seventeen per cent said they were. Pollsters began asking the question with more latitude. In 1978, a survey found that fifty-five per cent of respondents had read a book in the previous six months. The question was even looser in 1998 and 2002, when the General Social Survey found that roughly seventy per cent of Americans had read a novel, a short story, a poem, or a play in the preceding twelve months. And, this August, seventy-three per cent of respondents to another poll said that they had read a book of some kind, not excluding those read for work or school, in the past year. If you didn’t read the fine print, you might think that reading was on the rise.

    In 1982, 56.9 per cent of Americans had read a work of creative literature in the previous twelve months. The proportion fell to fifty-four per cent in 1992, and to 46.7 per cent in 2002. Last month, the N.E.A. released a follow-up report, “To Read or Not to Read,” which showed correlations between the decline of reading and social phenomena as diverse as income disparity, exercise, and voting. In his introduction, the N.E.A. chairman, Dana Gioia, wrote, “Poor reading skills correlate heavily with lack of employment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities for advancement.””

    The rest of the article provides further evidence to support these contentions.  One hypothesis is that reading will return to its pre-modern era state as an activity of a specialized reading class.  Back in the 19th century that class had some caché, this article suggests that may not be the case in the future; reading will be arcane.  Fine by me, but bad for a democracy relying on an educated electorate.

    Something the article touches on only obliquely is the degree to which we may return to an image intensive culture, much like the middle ages where architecture, painting and other image creating crafts were primary teachers of the illiterate.  The article does talk about a second orality, a return to the type of communication common among pre-literate cultures where memorization and story counted for a great deal.  A potential downside of this return is diminishment of critical analysis since writing allows for side by side comparison of two ideas where in an oral culture only one notion at a time can hold sway, making critical thought difficult.

    There are, however, contradictory trends not covered in the article.  The explosion of blogs, in the tens of millions, certainly represents a degree of literacy and creative writing not explained in the dismal statistics.  It also doesn’t cover the unusual merging of image and words in manga and graphic novels, nor does it expand on the second orality which in this case will have a cultural context supportive of critical analysis and, therefore, presumably available for transmission in more oral friendly forms like you tube, tv news, podcasts.   Still, a provocative look at tomorrow. 

    Wouldn’t you know, just when I get down to serious writing…


    📂This entry was posted in GeekWorld Politics 📎and tagged

  • Techno-Lust Satiated: For Now

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    26 82% 26% 3mph WNW  bar 29.97 steady  windchill25  Yuletide                       Waning Gibbous Cold Moon

    A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions–as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.
      – Friedrich Nietzsche

    2007 saw the Ellis-Olson household become late adopters in two of the more dynamic techno-revolutions abroad in the land.  Last month we got a, wait for it, second cell phone!  That means we now have, like many, three phones: A daddy phone, a mommy phone and a just because we trust Qwest so much phone.  Then, this morning I went over to Ultimate Electronics and after some back and forth over price bought a plasma TV, a receiver, five speakers and an HD-DVD player.  Due to some weirdness about Money Market checks it will be a week or so before it arrives in our house, but then it will be 24/7 movie watching for this electro-cowboy.  Of course, that conflicts with all those hours I spend writing and working out and giving tours and eating and such, so I’ll have to pick something to give up.  Sleep, maybe?

    Next post will comment on an interesting article, Twilight of the Books, a New Yorker piece on the decline of reading and the rise of what they author calls, the second orality.  Some disturbing implications.


    📂This entry was posted in General 📎and tagged

  • Time Slows, Becomes Sacred

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    25  93%  26%  0mph  NNW bar 30.05 steady  windchill25  Yuletide

                            The Full Cold Moon

    Go now, Christ’s Mass has ended.  This day devoted, on the one hand, to the infant who would become a world changer, and, on the other, to a joyful orgy of celebration, much like the Roman Saturnalia, comes to an end in 45 minutes.  It came and went without the usual hullabaloo here and that seemed to keep the whole season leading up to today calmer, less stressful, especially for Kate.  A good thing.

    I have felt few tugs of nostalgia for a tree, presents, even the gathering of family which I now associate with birthdays and trips to Colorado and Thanksgiving more than with Christmas.  This all helps me refocus on the Yuletide and, now, on the Useless Days at the end of the year.

    Time continues to go slow, snow comes down, as it has all day; and, the long dark has 3 more days yet to run before the sun once again stays a bit longer, headed toward spring and the glories of summer.

    Kate and Anne and I ate dinner at Sofitel.

                    kate-and-anne-and-me600.jpg

    It was a pleasant way to spend a holiday meal.  It also meant Anne had to drive only half as far as when she comes to our house.   The top Kate wore came from Singapore via my sister Mary.  Mary’s hard at work right now putting together the literature review on her doctoral dissertation.  Not big fun, but necessary.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality 📎and tagged

  • A Quiet Christmas Eve

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    16  88%  23%  0mph E  bar 29.99 falls  windchill16   Winter

                               The Full Cold Moon

    Lydia brought some gifts over from the Perlicks, a bottle of wine and two first day covers and whole sheets of stamps, Kate’s with a dreidel and mine with Dell Superheroes.  Got us pegged.

    Finally, I’ve found a combination of Core Performance workouts that combine strength training, flexibility and balance with demanding cardiovascular.  Feels good to have a solid base and now a new workout.

    Kate and I ate a nutrisystem dinner, read for a couple of hours, then she went off to bed. 

    We’re due for more snow on Thursday and Friday.  The ole snowblower’s getting a workout and we haven’t even the new year.  This snow fall was light and fluffy, powder.  A pure joy to blow and shovel. 


    📂This entry was posted in General

  • Death, Disaster and Deck the Halls

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    10  80%  24%  0mphESE  bar 30.02 steady  windchill 10   Winter

                             The Full Cold Moon

    Since Kate came back from a disaster preparedness event at work in May, we’ve had a manila folder marked death and disaster.  After a couple of postponements (and, I’m glad to say, neither death nor disaster), we got around to it today.  An odd choice for Christmas Eve, but it fit our schedule.

    We now have a plan and a kit with those things they always tell you to have somewhere.  You know, matches in a waterproof container, blankets, first aid material, things like that.  It’s a large kit, stowed in a plastic container and destined to live in our coat closet until that moment.  My own analysis tells me that fire, tornado and lengthy power outage are the most likely disasters to hit us here in Andover.  I have a hard time imagining Al Qaeda having an interest in Anoka County.  Any of it.  We’re on the high point for some miles, on sand, and far from any body of water that acts up.  Minnesota has no history of hurricanes; but, the folks that did Kate’s event claim we have a moderate risk of earthquake.  Geologically I suppose that’s true, but it seems improbable.

    We also have insurance documents, financial papers, wills and power of attorney stowed in our safe. (No, I won’t tell you where it is.) 

    While Kate dug out the stuff we needed for the kit, I spent time looking up material on cremation and donating a body to the U of M Medical School.  Cremate or donate.  I’m leaning toward donating my body since it seems like a worthwhile thing to do and I do have some anatomical oddities, my ear bones in particular, that my ENT asked me to preserve.  This raises another question though and that is where do kids, grandkids, friends go to remember?  Haven’t solved that one yet, but it’s on the list.  Hope we get to it before its necessary.

    And a merry christmas to you, too!


    📂This entry was posted in Family 📎and tagged

  • Winter Well and Truly Begun

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    8 78%  25%  0mph SW bar 29.86 steep rise winchill 8  Winter

                            Full Cold Moon

    Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.  Christmas will come to a snowy world here in Andover, a white landscape for the celebration; the moon on the crest of the new fallen snow does give a lustre of mid-day to objects below.

    We spent a quiet evening at home, reading and watching the Vikings, frustrated again.  Perhaps they’ll pick their game up next week.  We’re into the the second week of the nutrisystem and I’ve gotta say it seems like a good plan.  The only negatives so far are that some of the food isn’t great–not bad, but not great–and I still get hungry late in the night.  Like right now.  The upside is that Kate has lost 4 pounds and I’ve lost enough to not feel squished into my jeans anymore.  I’m going to weigh myself at the end of the 1st month and the end of the 2nd.  I do feel lighter, better.

    After Christmas we come to our version of the Mayan’s five useless days at the end of the year.  These have always been days when I’ve chosen to focus research on a topic of special interest.  This year it will be immortality.  There is this novel that keeps trying to get born and it has something to do with immortality although what I don’t know.

    This is a special time for me, a time to think, to consider the year past and the year to come.  I love the snowed in , cold outside feeling.  It’s just right for this kind of inner work.


    📂This entry was posted in General 📎and tagged

  • A Snow Day

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    14  83%  25%  3mph  WNW  bar 29.60 steep rise  windchill11  Winter

                                          The Full Cold Moon

    Snow began in the early morning and it has kept on steady since then.  The winter brown where grass had begun to peak through our first snow cover is gone, replaced with a carpet of white.  Most of the boulders in our garden tiers have disappeared.  It is quiet.

    From where I sit as I write this the magnolia, the grey dogwoods, the red and white oaks have changed from their summer green clad to a seasonally appropriate white.  These days, the essence of what it means to live in northern latitudes, change the landscape from the faded browns of late fall to a soft and fluffy world of unexpected joys.  The bird feeders have small caps of snow. 

    It may be, at our house,  a year without Christmas, but it is not a year without joy or holiness.  Both have come today, the second day of winter.   Blessed be.


    📂This entry was posted in Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • Art and Snow at the Beginning of Winter

    Posted on by Charles Comment

                                jjwsolstice250-0.jpg 

    A Winter Solstice shot by Jim Johnson from the plains near Hecla, South Dakota

    18 73% 28% 0mph windroseWNW  bar 29.87 steady windchill17   Winter Solstice

                              Winter began at 12:08 AM this morning

    A bit of refinement on the arts and literature ideas from yesterday. The overarching idea is this:  some works of art included literature, usually poetry but not always.  In those instances it is clear that for the artist the written material had critical importance to the piece, otherwise, why include it?  In other instances, the image or sculpture gives form in print, painting or three-dimensions to a specific moment, either in story or in history.  Again, for the artist the textual base for the piece has to inform the work, so knowing the work, especially as it was known in the artist’s time and to the artist seems as important as understanding the piece itself.  Also, painting and sculpture and prints were never the only art form of their day; insteady they existed in an artistic milieux that not included fellow workers in the plastic arts but also poets, novelists, musicians, architects.  We often see reference to architecture in art history books, but very little reference to literature.  This last point becomes even more important as we move into the impressionist era and beyond when artists often wrote proclamations, began to intentionally blend their work with poetry and some moved into performance.

    These are ways in which literature is important to the field of art history and therefore our job as docents.  The use of other books, about artists and movements and particular works, is another intersection between art and literature.

    A light snow.  The snowblower moved out of the garage with its usual growl and eagerness to eat snow, then throw it.  Temperatures have begun to trend down again after a brief warmup.  I’ve done some additional moving, but I think today, certainly tomorrow will see the end of the bookcase/exercise equipment reshuffle.  That means I’m ready to move onto learning about hydrponic gardening and planning the vegetable gardens for next year.  Looking forward to it.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture General 📎and tagged

  • The Sun Stands Still

    Posted on by Charles Comment

                                         jjwsolstice250-0.jpg

     A Winter Solstice shot by Jim Johnson from the plains near Hecla, South Dakota

    23 88% 30% 0mph windroseWNW  bar 29.86 steep rise windchill21   Winter Solstice

         Winter Solstice began at 12:08 AM this morning

    While doing some reading and meditating late last night, I came across something new to me.  Solstice comes from the word solstitial, to stand still in Latin.  This explains a phenomena I noticed in the day and night lengths on the calendar for the next 5 to 6 days, that is, they remain about the same; the sun seems to stand still, to pause at it’s northern apogee, then slowly begin to slide more toward the south, granting a slighter longer slice of daylight with each arc of change. 

    In the same reading I also discovered that the Zuni and the Hopi both have men whose duty is to mark the reemergence of the sun.  The Zuni man does it with a low, deep moan.  When I read this, it gave me a chill.  Imagine a situation where the sun begins to hide longer and longer each day; the days and nights grow colder and the plants are long dead.  The only food comes from stores and animals caught in the hunt, but they are leaner too for their food sources have diminished.  The longer dark brings families together around fires, the smoke spiraling toward heaven emphasizes the blackness outside; the  fear the sun may never return.  A priest who knows the heavens climbs to the peak of a village structure or a sits on a mesa one night late in this season.  Based on faith and knowledge, his familar voice fills the air, a wailing that recognizes the grief in your fear, yet its persistence, its calm creates hope within you.  You know he has seen, in his spirit life, the promise of the sun to rise and rise and rise, bringing again the warm days.  What a moment.

    Last night I also realized that this is my holinight, not a holiday, or even a holiseason, but a particular night, a special night, a night filled with holy wonder.  As John Matthews said in his book, The Winter Solstice, the quiet of Christmas, that moment in the dawn when commercial activity has ceased, children shiver eagerly in their beds and no one moves, is the later adaptation of the Christian community to the stillness of this Solstice night.  It is a calm we need all year, one we can drink in with our senses in these 6 nights while the sun stands still.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality Great Wheel 📎and tagged