the evolving mind

[It's Saturday. To hell with science and skepticism.
I'm in a different sort of mood. And so this . . . .]

Perhaps a half-dozen times in my life I have pondered the question, “If, after I die, I could come back as any type of animal, what would I be?”

My answers have included “eagle” and “dolphin.” Funny, I never considered “centipede.” During my speed-obsessed boyhood years I may have responded “cheetah.”

It has recently dawned on me that underlying the question is a sort of global recycling notion. You spend your days in one shape and then, presto, are re-formed into another. Is Hinduism thus “the greener religion?”

There is some truth to the reincarnation-as-global-recycling idea. All large mammals such as ourselves, however, go through the crucial step of becoming microbes and worms in our first turnaround before we eventually wind up as grass then rabbits then coyotes.

Today, as I think about what I’d like to come back as, I know I wouldn’t want to be an eagle. Though flying would be a thrill, I wonder if birds find it thrilling or merely a way of getting from here to there.

Flying aside, I’m afraid I would miss having hands. What if I got the urge to read a book? Just opening it would be a difficult task with a forearm that terminates in feathers.

Furthermore, the thought of cold carrion for breakfast or fish guts for lunch doesn’t do much for my present set of taste-buds.

Then there’s the problem of celebrity. The eagle is virtual royalty in the animal kingdom. I’d hate being pursued far and wide by the National Geographic paparazzi.

In my next life I also wouldn’t want to come back as a dolphin.

Continue Reading »

Technorati Links: humor, reincarnation

Since hitting mid-life I have done some thinking about how I want to age. Age? Do I have to?

Hair starting to go gray . . . needing reading glasses of increasing strength . . . muscles that respond to work-outs less like they are pep rally sessions for growth, more like they are a form of torture . . . a metabolism that seems much more capable of converting food into not energy, but mass. So no, I won’t have a second piece of pie. In fact, I better skip that first.

How do I want to age? Well, to continue being happy tops the list. Maybe “content” is a better term. That one I have quite a bit of control over. For me, making progress on projects gives me quite a bit of satisfaction. Heck, I even do quite a bit of work on weekends. Pure leisure seems a bit pointless to me. Fortunately, my projects do not involve heavy lifting. I should be able to persist at them until very late in life.

Active? I have some control over this, too. If I keep active now, chances are better I can remain relatively active. But my muscles and, more so, my joints may have some say about just how active that will be.

And . . . fat? But I’m not fat now, and for the first few decades of life I was on the opposite end of the spectrum. A bean pole, if anything. But that bean pole has added some padding over this past decade. Not a lot, but enough to notice. It’s been unintentional, and has occurred despite some effort to prevent it.

Maybe I’ll do less to prevent it in the coming years. Intentionally.

Huh!? Let myself get (relatively) fat? Though my social self recoils at the thought (and my self-concept will likely say, upon looking in a full-body mirror, “Who dat heavier dude?”) it could actually be good for me.

But wait, fat is bad, right? Maybe not. At least not always. Again we are discovering that black-and-white thinking misses a more nuanced reality. New research suggests that being overweight during your seventh decade and beyond is actually good for your health. All other things being equal, of course.

Here’s the results of research published yesterday in the Journal of The American Geriatrics Society:

The study began in 1996 and recruited 4,677 men and 4,563 women. The participants were followed for ten years or until their death, whichever was sooner, and factors such as lifestyle, demographics, and health were measured. The research uncovered that mortality risk was lowest for participants with a BMI classified as overweight, with the risk of death reduced by 13% compared with normal weight participants. The benefits were only seen in the overweight category not in those people who are obese. [source, bold added]

Wow. That’s interesting. But no, I’m not going to buy a dozen donuts anytime soon. Question is, will I ever feel differently about the appearance of excess weight? As a member of our thin-obsessed culture, shaking that bias isn’t going to be easy. If the research holds up, however, perhaps my future focus should change from shedding pounds to dropping an unhealthy bias.

Technorati Links: aging, mid-life

Just another flower. Just another Monday. Just.

Technorati Links: flowers, photography

I feel for the people of Haiti. A tragedy. Can any good from this disaster? Sure, if human beings choose to do something. Will it outweigh the bad? Not by a long shot. At least in the short term and on the individual level for those who have lost loved ones.

On a much, much smaller scale, I feed a tad of sadness for the destruction in our backyard. Not brought by an earthquake, but by that recent rogue week of hard freezes. I surveyed the damage yesterday. Come spring gardening time, it’s almost going to be like starting over.

Starting over. There is hope in that. In the wake of loss, what better response is there than to roll up your sleeves and do something?

Technorati Links: loss, psychology

First, a wacky cartoon, “Self-Description” from xkcd -

Second, a news-parody from the “local” section of the Onion -

Gay Teen Worried He Might Be Christian

LOUISVILLE, KY—At first glance, high school senior Lucas Faber, 18, seems like any ordinary gay teen. He’s a member of his school’s swing choir, enjoys shopping at the mall, and has sex with other males his age. But lately, a growing worry has begun to plague this young gay man. A gnawing feeling that, deep down, he may be a fundamentalist, right-wing Christian.

That’s a hilarious twist on things.

Technorati Links: humor

The above NASA photo is of Mars. Specifically, layered hills with sand “sculpted” by wind. Wind on Mars?!

My eyes are drawn to the photo, as if my sight had legs and could explore it. Speaking of which, in a few moments I will be pulling on boots and a coat to venture out into the snow. I will take along my camera and snap my own photos of more transient wind-blown formations. Amidst that “art” I will happily explore.

Technorati Links: art, cosmos, photography

My trip to the north country (VT and MA and back to VT) is nearing its end, and I have yet to see a show of the Northern Lights (aurora borealis). Oh well. I have, however, enjoyed vistas nothing like what enters my vision in Florida. Namely, mountains and snow and ice. Different architecture too. To name a few.

Sure, it has been damn cold for this sun loving soul. But when dressed in heavy clothing, heavy gloves, and heavy boots, I feel like an explorer in an alien land. And how great is that!?

[photo thanks to NASA]

Technorati Links: cosmos, inspiration, travel

Once in my life, many years ago, I was fortunate enough to view an episode of the “Northern Lights” (Aurora Borealis) that just about knocked my socks off.

It would have had to knock my heavy winter boots off, first, for I was standing in the middle of a snow-crusted cornfield in northern Vermont. So intense was the display that I half suspected someone had slipped a hit of LSD into my maple syrup.

Alas, I no longer live in Vermont. No more northern lights for me. But wait. I am heading to the Green Mountain State this x-mas season. There is hope for me yet. In the least I’ll get to sample some very fine syrup. At best, I’ll have my socks knocked off.

[photo thanks to NASA]

Technorati Links: cosmos, Northern Lights

[And now for something different. I composed this piece a few years ago as an exercise in creative writing. It fits here to the degree it reflects my skeptical outlook.]

GOOD CITIZEN SAVES 1.6 GALLONS OF WATER

When we bought our house in Florida, we had only a well for water. Our property sat on the very edge of the closest incorporated city. The water was high in rust, but after installing a sediment filter, we liked it just fine. So did our plants and the fish in our goldfish pond.

Sadly, the well was old and soon went the way of old wells. We had to go on city water. I drove to the city utilities department, and there I paid the impact fee, the meter fee, the initial fee, and the water deposit. The secretary handed me a receipt and a poorly photocopied page titled, “25 Things you Can do to Save Water.” On the list–a list obviously put together by some national agency–was such sage advice as, “Keep a bottle of drinking water in the refrigerator. This puts a stop to the wasteful practice of running tap water to cool it for drinking.” In Florida the tap water never gets cold.

There was also, “Stop using your toilet as an ashtray.” This advice is as relevant to me as, say, “stop using your refrigerator as a paper weight.”

The suggestions did get me thinking about my water use, however. Which is spare, to say the least. I don’t even water my lawn. I don’t much care for fence-to-fence outdoor carpeting. Especially a carpet you have to pay to water, fertilize, insecticide and mow to keep looking lush. I like our tidy, little weed patch just fine, thank you. And so do the bugs and lizards and birds and butterflies.

Anyway. I got to thinking about other ingenious ways to save water. Here’s what I came up with.

1. Drink espresso. Coffee is, after all, mostly water, so cut down on the mostly part. Just take smaller swallows so you get the same dose of caffeine and flavor.

2. Break your spitting habit. Whether you play baseball or not, spitting causes you to lose bodily fluids. And it sometimes causes other people to see you losing bodily fluids. Bodily fluids have to be replaced. Which wastes water.

3. Buy condensed soup. Then don’t un-condense it. Instead of having a bowl of cream of tomato soup for lunch, have a pile of tomato pudding.

Continue Reading »

Technorati Links: critical thinking, humor

When in high school, and still going through the motions as a Catholic, I once got in a quarrel with the girl I was dating. What was the quarrel about? The Pope.

The girl and I had recently met at a youth bowling outing put on by our church. We hit it off and enjoyed a few weeks of good clean fun together.

One of the things that precipitated our break up was the scheduled visit to our state by the Pope. My girlfriend was very excited and planned to attend come hell or floodwaters. While I was okay with her excitement, she wasn’t okay with my ambivalence. No, I didn’t plan to waste a full day of my precious youth to go see “some guy.” I probably said, He lives in a castle and wears a fancy costume . . . big deal.

Decades later, this current Pope is likewise “just some guy” to me. Oh sure, he’s a politically important figure. But don’t expect me to revere his opinion an anything more than the opinion itself warrants. Ad hominem arguments — whether they reflect uncritical rejection or acceptance — are logically flawed. And I prefer to steer clear of such pitfalls.

[comic thanks to atheistcartoons.com]

Technorati Links: atheism, logic