Newsletter, Perception

Mathematical Landscapes Of My Childhood And Their Loss

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Mathematical landscape with girl flying over it

When I was a kid, I slept in my grandparents’ bedroom. First in a crib, then on a little couch in the corner of their room. My grandfather taught me math every night before I fell asleep. He drilled me on addition, subtraction, then multiplication. He used large numbers; and I always got the right answer. It was easy for me. Numbers formed a complex landscape that I could fly over. In the darkness, my grandfather would rattle out a problem — 337 + 781, for example — and I would fly over the beautiful hills and valleys until the answer would be right there. I loved that game. I then I would try to fall asleep really fast because my grandfather snored so loudly that if I didn’t I would never be able to due to the horrific noise. We played that game for years, until I was displaced from my grandparents’ room by my younger sister. I am currently reading a popular book on neurology, “The Man Who Tasted Words: A Neurologist Explores the Strange and Startling World of Our Senses” by Dr. Guy Leschziner. It explores many human variations in sensory perception either from birth or as…

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Background Knowledge, Book, book promotion, Cultural Bias, Newsletter

Natural Selection of Manmade Objects

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Gilgamesh

Can natural selection and evolution work on man-made objects and structures? Can it work on the stories we tell ourselves as a society? Products, architecture, and stories are continually evolving and selecting for traits that we and our influencers find more useful and appealing. Unfortunately, lots of interesting designs and solutions get overlooked along the way. Like evolution, luck is a major component of the force that decides what stays and what goes.

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Ethnographic & User Data, Newsletter

Generational Wealth in the Animal Kingdom

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AI-squirrel with acorns

What other species of animals accumulate wealth over several generations? The other day, my husband and I were watching birds and squirrels dig around in our garden. “They are just trying to make a living,” my husband said. And it got me thinking — squirrels and birds have to find food and shelter everyday to survive. If they don’t find food, they go hungry. If they don’t find shelter, they suffer the elements and predators. Humans used to live the same day-to-day existence in our distant past. But now, we work hard to pass on the fruits of our labor to the next generation. But are there other animals that do the same? The largest known colony of ants is Linepithema humile, the Argentine ant. It has a contiguous colony from Northern Italy to South of France to the coast of the Atlantic in Spain — about 3,700 miles. It’s been around in Europe for about eighty years and is believed to have started in South America some 100 years ago. If there’s power in numbers and years, these 2 millimeter ants have it is spades. [https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/largest-colony-of-ants] The largest colony of termites, another social insect, is over four thousand years…

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book promotion, Cultural Differences, Newsletter

We Are The Heroes

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scifi hero

We are the heroes of our own journey through life. That’s true whether or not we are basically good. No matter what kind of actions they took, Hitler, Putin, Jack the Ripper, or the Unabomber always viewed those actions as heroic nationalist, political, or social necessities done for the glory of “their” people. Their life choices were, in their minds, necessities of the moment. Even if people died, it was for the greater good.

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book promotion, Newsletter, Perception

Finding Happiness in Someone Else’s Happiness

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Return to the Convent, by Eduardo Zamacois y Zabala, 1868

The Dutch have a word for a feeling that encapsulates “finding happiness in someone else’s happiness:” gunnen. This would be the opposite of a German word: schadenfreude — a pleasure derived from another’s misfortune. Slapstick comedy depends upon schadenfreude. Two-year-old children have been observed to enjoy the mishaps of others. Tom and Jerry, The Road Runner Show, The Pink Panther and many other kids’ cartoons use schadenfreude as the engine for their comedy. The use of the word schadenfreude took off (exponentially) around the 90s. The use of the word gunnen, on the other hand, has been flat since the turn of the previous century. We can speculate on whether this means that we would rather pleasure ourselves with the tragedies of others rather than get joy from seeing people happy, but that’s not really here nor there. I’d rather live in the gunnen world than the schadenfreude one, but perhaps slapstick and cartoons would have suffered for it. I often write that reading books helps develop empathy. I’m witnessing this development now first hand as I observe the blossoming of my granddaughter’s full repertoire of feelings. She is about to turn four. We read a lot together, and she…

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book promotion, Cognitive Blindness, Newsletter

Thanksgiving and College Applications Stress

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Spilling Thanksgiving Gravy

Thanksgiving is almost upon us. It is always a stressful time — too much travel, too much food, too many people in one room, too much family. But it is also a time for forming memories. There will be moments, good and bad, that will become part of family lore, retold long after everyone goes home and the dishes are finally cleaned. And while horrible in the moment, disaster during times like these make for the most interesting stories going forward: do you remember that time when Uncle Bob spilled all of the gravy on the brand new rug? High emotions make for long lasting memories. Spilled gravy makes for a more memorable story than delicious gravy. It’s just how we are built — we remember the insane stories better than quiet ones. And when we retell those stories to our children, we try to turn them into teaching moments: Uncle Bob shouldn’t have been trying to carry hot dish without gloves, even if he tells everyone he has asbestos fingers. Thanksgiving is not only family togetherness time, it is also the time for filling out college applications — double stress. I’ve helped a lot of kids with their essays…

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Book, My Books, Newsletter

Epigenetics of the Soul

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Flying Raven Witch by Sergei Chudanov

I know I’m being provocative with the title. Epigenetics is the study of the influence of environment on the expression of our genes. Epi is the Greek word for ON or ABOVE. And I am using soul to designate the essence of who we truly are. Thus I want talk about the environmental conditions that shape up, that makes us into us. If I was born into a different economic, cultural, or/and social situation, would I still be me? Or would I be some different version of me?

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