Negativity and reality

Let me tell you what she's really like! Take a quick look at your thoughts right now. You don't know what I'm going to say next, but you are sure of one thing -- I am going to be dishing dirt. And why do you know that? Because you know, I know, everybody knows, that the dirty stuff is the real stuff. Good humour, charitable donations, devotion to family, talent: it all pales beside the dirt. That's what's real. Right? And yet it's a funny thing. None of us wants to be judged on those terms. When it comes to ourselves, we want the positives to weigh heavier in the balance. We want people to define us by our virtues, not our faults. And so I'm asking you -- and yes, I've done my own soul-searching on this matter -- how do you define the people closest to you? What would you say your husband is really like? Your boss? Your kids? Which are you more afraid of: being hopelessly naive or unjustifiably cynical? The chances are very, very good that the one you are the most afraid of is the one you are least in danger of. Try tilting the other way for a while. The perspectives you gain could be invaluable.

Two sides of the same coin

But have you ever tried to look at both sides at once?  Go ahead, I'll wait.

No, I can't either.  I can carry that coin in my pocket, wear it on a chain around my neck, pull it out and contemplate it as often as I like, I can still only actually SEE one side at a time.  The other side is always there, I always know it, but...  All I can do is flip it over regularly.

And when you think about it, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I pulled out the manuscript of my first novel the other day to get an idea of how hard I would have to work to bring it up to publishable standards.  And I fell in love with the darn thing all over again.  I kept saying, "I wrote that?" And glowing a bit. For a while I believed I actually had some talent.

Then I tried to work at my current manuscript.  And I felt like it stunk.  Granted, it's still at first draft stage and the first manuscript has been through several rounds of editing.  And there you have it, the two sides of the coin.  When I feel like I can't produce anything worth reading, I need to flip the coin and remember the proof that I can.  When I feel like a genius, I need to flip the coin and remember how hard I struggled to produce something worth reading.

And this applies to a lot more than writing or even evaluating our own capacities.  I'll bet you can think of two or three ways you can apply this in the real world, in your creative endeavours, wherever.  Tell me about it.

How bumblebees fly. And how to be a flyswatter virtuoso

Well, there's another one for the history books. Another trope is dead. For years people have been pointing to scientists' inability to explain how bumblebees could fly, given their bulk and small wings, as the outstanding example of how much we still had to learn.

But Edward Willett of Hassenpfeffer tells us that Michael Dickinson has now illuminated that particular mystery.

More recently, Dickinson combined robotic modeling with slow-motion video to at last answer the question of how honeybees, heavy insects with short wing beats, generate enough lift to fly, in apparent defiance of the calculations of aeronautical engineers.

Dickinson found that bees have an incredibly complex wing beat. The wing sweeps back in a ninety-degree arc, then flips over as it turns, all this happening astonishing 230 times a second. Like the rotation of a propeller, this generates more lift than the ordinary wing beats of larger insects.

This is an impressive accomplishment. Dickinson has also studied the flight pattern of flies, and has used his studies to tell us how to better yield a flyswatter.

“It is best,” says Dickinson, “not to swat at the fly’s starting position, but rather to aim a bit forward of that to anticipate where the fly is going to jump when it first sees your swatter.”

Well, for those of us with bad hand/eye coordination, that is not highly useful advice. But never fear. The Walrus comes to the rescue.

Killing flies is a very easy thing. Like the proverbial frog in the pot, flies do not react to slow change. Position the flyswatter over a resting fly very slowly until it's just a few inches away. Then a sudden swat, and the fly is history. They just can't fly fast enough to get out of the swatter's airspace in time.

Technorati tags: Bumblebees, Killing flies

The fallacy of binary thinking

Binary thinking has become my newest pet peeve. No, wait! Don't run away. It's not as eggheady as it sounds.

Binary thinking is the kind of thinking that says: "If you aren't A, then you are B. End of discussion." Or: "If you don't do A, then you must do B. End of discussion."

It raises its ugly head all over the place, but most especially in politics. It is the thinking of division, of facile labels. It is highly effective for pressuring or bullying someone who has not recognized it for what it is.

It is doubtful whether it qualifies as thinking at all, seeing as it falls short of even one dimension in its complexity, let alone the three (if you're normal) or four (if you have pretensions to scientific thinking) or ten (if you're a confirmed physicist) that the rest of the world lives in.

Let me illustrate. Binary thinking reduces everything to two points, thusly:

A. .B

In politics, especially of the American variety, this means you're either a bleeding-heart, pinko, atheistic commie or a flinty-eyed, redneck, heartless fascist.

This, of course, ignores the possibility of a complete first dimension, which looks like this:

A................................B

There are lots of intermediate points (an infinite number, if you want to get picky) between A and B. There are a lot of gradations of colour, even between the pinko and the redneck.

And all of this conveniently ignores the fact that there is more than one dimension. (No, I am not going to try to illustrate this with a keyboard. You are going to have to draw your own mental pictures.) There is a point C above the line and a point D below it. Now we are dealing with an embarrassing number of points. Because there are, yanno, God-fearing liberals and atheistic conservatives. And generous conservatives and skin-flint liberals.

It gets better. Between you and the line AB, (Yes, I know it's a square now. Don't get difficult.) there is a point E. And on the other side of AB there is a point F. Because there are, yanno, authoritarian liberals and libertarian liberals. And authoritarian conservatives and libertarian conservatives. And the vast majority, who fall somewhere in the muddled middle of what is now a cube.

In all the vast space of the cube, it seems beyond childish to try to pile every single issue into a box on point A or another on point B. I would be greatly in favour of scrapping the terms "liberal" and "conservative" altogether. They generate more heat than light, and obscure thinking more often than encouraging it.

Please note that binary thinking is also a handy tool of salesmen and advertisers the world over. If you don't buy car seat Brand A, your children will die horrible deaths. (Of course, they are a little more subtle about it, but that's the message they want you to get.) Because a couple of cars have been broken into in your neighbourhood, you had better buy my security system, so you won't be facing a raving lunatic with a knife in your dark living room. (Yes, this one was used on me recently. He put lots of sentences in between Point A and Point B so that I wouldn't catch on to the absurdity. It didn't work.)

Reality can almost never be reduced to an either/or situation. Be suspicious of such simplistic analysis whenever it comes along. And look for the intermediate points, because out on the extreme edge is rarely a good place to be.

ETA: After posting this, I found this quote in my Quote of the Day box:

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
- Kurt Vonnegut

Technorati tags: Binary thinking, Extremism

What I learned in Italy, Part 2

Venice is better on cold, windy days when the water doesn't stink and you can still see the buildings through the tourists.



Always pack extra batteries. Your batteries will run out sooner than you expected, it will be harder to find them than you expected, and when you do find them, you will pay more than you expected. I know, dear, it was my fault. You're a hero for not saying "I told you so." (Picture taken with said expensive batteries.)



Poor taste is not restricted to religious icons. Mind you, they were offering cheaper prices than on nice days. Good day to bargain. (No, we didn't.)



Whenever you are in possession of a clean bathroom, use it, whether you think you need to or not. Public washrooms in Italy - unlike the private ones - are often disgustingly dirty. And for North Americans, bewildering. The entire county seems to be playing an elaborate game of "Guess what novel way of flushing we've come up with for this toilet." (No, I don't have a picture. I forgot. So this is an excuse to throw in an unrelated, but beloved, picture.)



"When in Rome, do as the Romans do" extends to Episcopalian churches. San Paolo dentro le Mure (St. Paul's Within-the-Walls, as opposed to St. Paul's Outside the Walls) was the baby of a Pennsylvanian Episcopalian in the late 1800's. He tried hard to fit in.



Continuation from Part 1.

Technorati tags: Italy, Venice

No offense, but...

There are two kinds of people who offend us. We should allow neither of them to succeed. (Please forgive me while I move into wise-old-sage mode. I'm just in the mood. And I'm almost 50, so I'm allowed.)

There are the people who really aren't looking to punch our buttons. Let's face it, they're usually just clueless. There's no point in getting angry with them. If you can enlighten them gently, do so. Otherwise, just forget it. Life is too short to waste getting angry at people for being socially inept. There's even less time to spend getting angry at people who have accidentally stumbled on one of our many buttons that we have studded our surroundings with so that anybody coming near will stumble across them. In that case, we should try disconnecting a few buttons.

And then there are the people who are just aching to get a rise out of us. Think about it; do you really want to reward them? 'Nuff said.

Technorati tags: Musings