P.S. A Column On Things

Doppelgangers

I do sometimes Google people from my life to see how they turned out, since I don’t do Facebook or other social media. It should not surprise you that common names are… common. When I went looking for Maija Meijers a decade ago, she wasn’t hard to find. But my Dad’s best friend, Jim Smith, was difficult to find as his name is so common he used to go to “Jim Smith Conventions.” It helps, of course, if you have a few markers; knowing the name of Jim’s wife (Rose), his hometown (Portland), his age (roughly the same as my Dad’s) and some of the other places he lived (New York) made it possible to find him, or rather his obituary (all too often the endpoint of searches for adult friends from my youth).

Of course, rare names which should be easy prove difficult because, in 2020, some people have a zero Internet profile.

I am somewhere in the middle. I doubt any of you have Googled me, but since I felt sure parents would, every year I taught I made a point of telling them, on back-to-school night, about the Paul Schindlers I am not.

• I am not the MIT graduate Paul Schindler who founded the Gay City News
• I am not the activist Catholic Priest.
• I am not Madonna’s attorney
• I am not the Broadway composer from the early 20^th century.
• I am no relation to the Schindler Elevator Company, although, like me it is Swiss. I am still ticked off that they beat me to Schindler.com, which is why I own Schindler.org (thanks Harrison Klein for pointing out that .org does not HAVE to be a non-profit).
• I am no relation to Oskar Schindler. I’d be proud if I was, but he was a Bavarian Catholic industrialist, while my people were Swiss Calvinist dairy farmers.

This and That

 Ceaseless self-promotion department

I was just rereading a sweet story of power exercised on behalf of love from my young life and decided to share it: 

Adjourning the Connecticut house so I could see my  girlfriend

  ...

Engineering Wisdom
As an undergraduate, I learned something important. When you are working on a project, select which two of these three characteristics you want, because you can never have all three: done right, done on time or done on budget.

…

Randy Rainbow on Kamala
KAMALA! - A Randy Rainbow Song Parody
To the tune, cleverly, of Camelot.

…

Time to Remember Normie
They say you’re not really dead until no one remembers you. Because I want my best man, my good friend and roommate, the smartest, best-looking man I have ever known, to live on, I will offer a periodic reminder that you should look at my Norman Sandler page. He died too young.

…

Can we be great again?
This from a journalist friend (an immigrant) who was asked whether America can regain its leading position and return to normalcy. His answer: “Call me overly optimistic, naive, even foolish. But judging from history -- America defeated the Great Depression, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, won the race to the moon, buried the Soviet Empire and became energy independent in less than a generation-- it can be ‘great again’ with proper leadership.”

…

Warning About China
U.S.-China rift runs real risk of escalating into nuclear war

…

Another Blessing
I am blessed with a plethora of brilliant college friends, each capable of turning a phrase. I shared one of my Vicki love poems with a woman I was fond of at MIT. She called the poem a treat, and then moved me by informing me that I had “won the lottery of love.” She’s right of course, but I’d never have thought of putting it that way. Amma says not to be jealous of the $10 million lottery winner, but to be grateful you have won the $1million lottery. I have no reason for jealousy; I won the $10 million lottery. And since I understand statistics, I know EXACTLY how lucky I am to have won. I am grateful every day.

…

Stopped Clock Department
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Trump posthumously pardoned Susan B. Anthony of her federal conviction (by an all-male jury) for voting in the 1872 election.

…

Fun Fact
I learned a half-century ago that it takes milk the size of a double bed to make cheese the size of a pillow.

…

Proof That Cats Will Be Cats, No Matter How Big They Are
A friend of mine sent me a bunch of cat pictures. Couldn’t find all of them but found most of them at 24 Hilarious Pictures That Prove That Cats Will Be Cats No Matter How Big They Are.

Save The Election

After our 2016 Presidential election, an international election observer wrote an article stating that if the election occurred abroad our State Department would have refused to certify the election was free and fair because of  official results far outside the margin of error of the unadjusted exit poll. The substantial probability is that someone tampered with the vote count. The same thing happened in three Senate races giving the Republicans Senate control.

    Per the unadjusted exit polls, Hillary Clinton won North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin where the official results were outside the margin of error at the 95% confidence level. With just the 44 electoral votes from North Carolina and Florida, Hillary Clinton would have had 271 electoral votes.

    The substantial probability is that there was tampering with the vote count between the time the ballots were marked and the time the result was certified. Those responsible are unapprehended and free to steal elections in 2020.

    There are means to deter and/or prevent deliberate tampering with the vote count. These means will require document and information gathering and possibly court action before and after Election Day

    I have given money to the CICJ County Election Project, which is implementing these means now. I have given money; I hope you do too.

   Here's what you do to donate

    Visit the CICJ Donation Page and make a donation
   

Send an email to [email protected] with the subject Election Software Project, telling him your name, your amount, and your wish that the donation be used for the Election Software Project.

 

Some Things are Impossible to Know, but it is Impossible to Know These Things

The extremely observant reader will have noticed the reappearance of this column’s tag line after a years-long absence.

In the weird and scary fall of 1970, my freshman year at MIT, the urge of students to write on the walls of the Infinite Corridor produced a decision by MIT to put white paper on the wall to facilitate graffiti, as well as its easy removal.

I was starting the first edition of P.S. A Column in Things at Ergo, MIT’s Objectivist weekly newspaper. One day, I spotted a graffito (yes, graffiti does have a rarely-used singular) on the wall: “Some things are impossible to know; but it is impossible to know these things.”

Because objectivists share Ayn Rand’s fetish about epistemology, I thought a quote about the nature of knowledge would be cool. When I took the column for a brief spin at The Tech in the spring of 1971, the tag line disappeared. Since I restarted the column on the Internet 22 years ago, I have put the tag line at the top intermittently.

For this item, I googled the phrase to see who first said it. Imagine my surprise when all the references came from my column, except for one mention by a management consultant.

If you know where the phrase came from, please let me know.

Perfect Films

I had this fun exchange with a long-time friend this week:

-------------incoming message---------
 David Mamet named Dodsworth as one of four perfect films. (The other three are The Godfather, A Place in the Sun, and Galaxy Quest).

Must be true, I read it in an online review for Dodsworth!

I’ve seen Galaxy Quest (Loved it), and now I want to see A Place in the Sun. Have you seen them?

---------my response-----

Thanks a million for passing this on. I love and respect Mamet, second only to Stoppard as a playwright.

 

I’ve watched Galaxy Quest a dozen times. It is second only to Space Balls in terms of a science fiction spoof. I, too love it. 

 

Saw Godfather once in the original order, once in the special “chronological order” version. Liked both, preferred the latter; less confusing. The film confirmed my extremely high opinion of Diane Keaton. If I weren’t already married...

Never seen Dodsworth or place in the sun, but they are on my list now.

 

Of course there is a fifth perfect film... Groundhog Day, as described at groundhogdaythemovie.com

Nature at Home

Just outside our pantry window... (the lighting is terrible; the bird is wonderful)

Clare Horner Aphorisms 2

As I noted last time, I admit Horner was a misogynist and a homophobe, although an apparently successful marriage slightly reduced the former. Don’t Trudge on the Fudge was written just before he died. As I expected, I found his form as an aphorist was good to the end.

 “You’ve passed all my tests,” she said. “Here I am.” “Sorry,” he replied, “but the woman you aren’t has already turned me off, so I’m not ready for the woman you are.”
---
Hysteria repeats itself
---
You may as well live with the facts; they’ll live with you.
---
Everybody dies, and everybody’s surprised.
---
Some things are so silly there is no room left for parody.
---
How terrible to fit anywhere.
---
Those who talk long, listen short.
---
(Perhaps old age is reached when a sigh of pleasure is replaced by a groan of relief)
---
The loneliness of superiority is worth it.
---
(Unjustified hope is about the saddest thing there is.)
---
Life is so sad it is a shame to pass up any chance to laugh.
---
(Most everything is the other way around.)
---
(I’m always ready when I need me.)
---
HORNER IN HAVEN
[This is a modified version of his previous parody of the Lord’s Prayer. The references are to Ashland, Oregon where he spent the last years of his life, and Venice, California, where he spent his youth]
Myself, who is artful in Ashland,
Spoken is my name.
I’m the king that comes
and I will be done
In Ashland
As it was in Venice.
I’ll give this day my garden surplus,
And be untempted by smokers’ lungs,
Though smoker’s lungs be tempted by me.
I’ll deliver myself
From What I see as spooky,
For my brain, energy and ideas are mine,
Till my arteries harden,
Ah, me.
---
I’m really marvelous. It’s a pleasure to be me.
---
People who are afraid of life, imitate it.
---
(It’s usually either too early to tell, or too late to matter.)

Political Briefs

A former colleague at UPI wrote this great blog post: Trump AWOL on Coronavirus as well as a good one on Trump’s Fake News.

…

I am pleasantly reminded of Murphy Brown Vs. Dan Quayle by this snippet, brought to my attention by Daniel Dern: Marge Simpson Speaks Out on Name Calling.

…

These tweets make sense to me:

As I’ve said previously, the opposing nominee’s campaign should consult with a team of psychologists and psychiatrists to figure out how to do precisely this. It shouldn’t be too hard to trigger the final meltdown.

twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1

The Hoarse Whisperer

@HoarseWisperer

Prominent Democrats should be pushing Trump’s buttons every single day. Letting him build up a head of steam is a complete failure. He is an insanely insecure man. Prominent Dems should be poking at his insecurities every single day.

,,,

And then there is this think piece:

Trump - Messiah, Donkey, or Armageddon? By Shlomo  Ben Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister.

This and That

Was just reminded of my brief Objectivist/Libertarian period at the MIT newspaper Ergo, which reminded me of a quote I love and would like to share. Attribution is difficult; the Internet basically has no idea whether it was Burke, Churchill or some French dude. Regardless, it has the added charm of being true… except for the second part. I was a yellow-dog Democrat when I was 12, when it was an inherited political view. I am still one now that it is an adult choice.

“Anyone who was not a liberal at 20 years of age had no heart, while anyone who was still a liberal at 40 had no head.”

…

Great quote from a college friend of mine (see his full blog post):

Sometimes patients complain when they discover a doctor’s views are out of date, even in the face of evidence. Well, that’s not new: here’s a quote from the guy who won the Nobel Prize in physics, in 1918:

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
~ Max Planck (Wikipedia)

This quote was cited by Thomas Kuhn in his incredibly important book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

 

In The Zone/Flow

First, let me say I hope you have been “in the zone” at least once in your life. And it you haven’t been I sincerely hope you will someday have that magical experience. It is breathtaking and transcendent. And, of course, a little weird, unsettling and creepy. You’ll find it is literally true, “time flies when you’re having fun,” however fun is defined for you.

I am going to separate the useful from the merely interesting in this item, about being in the zone and how to be there more deeply. This part will be about Tamara Levitt’s advice on how practices from meditation can improve your flow. The next item, Paul in the Flow, explains how I got to this item and the way I have experienced the phenomenon over the years.

The Daily Calm clearly prefers Tamara’s talks to be evanescent; they disappear from the website at the end of the day and they are not transcribed. I occasionally transcribe them when they touch my heart, as did the one on flow.

Tamara’s talk began, “From time to time you've probably tapped into a state of flow. You might be strumming your guitar, writing a song and the music just pours out of you without thought. You might be playing basketball and [it is] almost as if the game is in slow motion.”

She described flow as complete absorption in an activity.

Wikipedia says: “In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.”

Tamara said the key to achieving the state is to be focused yet relaxed. “It takes just the right amount of Gentleness and Firmness to hold our mind in place to stay focused on your task. We achieve a flow state by finding just the right balance.”

She teaches meditation and advises using the “skills of your practice to access the state of flow.” Specifically, “Allow your breath to slow. Allow tension to soften, and heart rate to calm. With practice you'll achieve better and better performance. And you'll enjoy the process far more deeply.”

I plan to see if she’s right. You should too.

She quoted a world champion Formula One driver; I looked up the exact quote on the Internet.

Describing the 1988 Monaco Grand Prix, Ayrton Senna said, "I felt as though I was driving in a tunnel. The whole circuit became a tunnel... I had reached such a high level of concentration that it was as if the car and I become one. Together we were the maximum. I was giving the car everything and vice versa... Suddenly it was as though I woke up and noticed that I had somehow been on a different level of consciousness. I was really shocked, and I went straight back to the pits - and I didn't drive any more that day. I realized that I had been in a kind of unending spiral. Faster and faster, closer and closer to perfection... But also more and more vulnerable, with less safety margin...”

What a blessing!