Category: Porch Ponders

Thoughts from conversations on the porch

I Counted the Years

“I counted my years and found that I have less time to live from here on than I have lived up to now.” Thus begins a poem by Mário Raul de Morais Andrade. He was a Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, photographer. One version ends, “We have two lives. And the second begins when you realize you only have one.”

Of course if you are a reader, you live many lives and visit many worlds, real and fictional. But, in the end those will all dissolve into worm food. All except that which we pass on to other minds.

The poem reminds me that, “life is too short to drink bad wine; or bad coffee.” And causes me to reflect on the age-old questions of “who am I” and “why am I here.”

As I work with the chatGPT instance of Artificial Intelligence, it strikes me those questions are becoming more important. Robotics will provide tools for building things and AI will design what they build. What is the role of humans in this new world. A favorite view of this of mine is explored in the animated movie, WALL-E. Sitting in a recliner with a laptop arguing with people we don’t know and exchanging pictures of puppies seems to be the beginning of that trajectory.

I sit on the porch, look at the moon, and wonder.

Tags life

my thoughts Porch Ponders

Stories

“No story lives unless someone wants to listen. The stories we love best do live in us forever. So whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.” – J.K. Rowling, author

I think it is critical that we learn to really read. It is critical that we learn that as soon as possible. However, I am coming to the view that storytelling is the key to learning. Every teacher I know, including me, will say they learned more from teaching than from being a student. I believe we all have at least one story to tell; we need to learn to tell it well.

When I was teaching, one of the most difficult things for my students to do was to restate a problem in their own words. I believe if you can’t tell a story, in your own words, you don’t own the idea. And perhaps the issue is with both the author and the reader as captured in quotes by Einstein and Feynman.

“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself” – attributed to A. Einstein

If you can’t explain an idea to an 8 year old, you don’t understand it. Can you explain basic logic to me in 5 minutes (about 500 words) in a way that 8 year old could explain it back to you? – R. Feynman

When we tell that story, we provide a listener, a reader, the opportunity to see an idea in a different way.

A quote I have used, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.” ― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

Porch Ponders

Guess What?

You have a brand new week ahead of you to slay dragons, achieve goals, sweat more, gripe less and ditch the fear! Go! — found on the internet

Not everything on the internet is false and useless; discernment required.

“Promise me you’ll remember, You are Braver than you Believe, Stronger than you seem, and Smarter than you think”. — A.A. Milne

And, of course, A.A. Milne and Eeyore were way ahead of their time and the internet when Eeyore said, “The sky has finally fallen. Always knew it would.”

environment Porch Ponders

Bird Migration

It appears our hummingbirds have departed for warmer climes. The hummingbird migration is a fascinating story. I did notice our hummingbirds were spending a lot of time at the feeders just before they disappeared. According to the information at Hummingbird.com they engage in a feeding frenzy to store energy for the trip. We have enjoyed our humming birds and look forward to their return in the spring. One thing I find interesting is that they seem to return to feeders after this migration. How do they find their way back?

For a general picture of bird migration visit the Migration Dashboard. Migration patterns of birds and even butterflies are amazing. I have found the Cornell Lab of Ornithology a good source of information about birds. I found them when I visited a bird feeder camera on explore.org.

Bird migration is an interesting subject to start your exploration of our environment. It is popular to talk about saving the environment. I submit it is important to understand the environment, before trying to ‘save it.’ Understanding starts with observation. Complex systems may behave in unexpected ways when prodded by ignorance; the earth’s environment an extremely complex system.

Porch Ponders

Now, about writing

For years I have talked about writing. I have read about writing. But this blog is the closest thing to writing I have done. I suppose its rather like my teaching experience. I talked and read about education, but until I finally had the opportunity laid out before me I didn’t take that step.

So, what about writing. They say,” write about what you know.” It’s clear to me many people know far more than I do about everything. What do I have to contribute. However, when I read, I find most books are someones version of something that has been said in many ways many times before. Therefore it seems adding my voice to those thousands of voices would not be so bad.

It seems to me a story contains at least two versions. The author has a view and the reader has a view. Sometimes, I think the written word takes on a character of its own which surprises the author and the readers. I’m not sure what that means, except from my reading of “Sophie’s World” in which the characters in the book had a life. Do we bring characters to life each time we read a book? Are we inadvertant world builders?

Porch Ponders

World View

“Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.”– Sir Arthur Eddington(1882-1944)

I found this as I was rummaging through my thoughts. Thoughts is the name of the nodes in the mind mapping software TheBrain. I think it was written after watching and marveling at the web of a spider on our porch.

Is my world view any better than that of the spider weaving its web? Is the universe so far more complicated than we can know that we should just content ourselves with weaving webs? Of course the difference, I think, is that the spider doesn’t ask this question. Or, perhaps it does and we don’t know it? Perhaps spiders, or mice, really are the intelligent species on earth; or perhaps the cockroach? How would I know; I only listen to other humans.

I think nature’s imagination is so much greater than man’s, she’s never going to let us relax. —Richard Feynman

Porch Ponders

Growing Old

I think one grows old because we don’t have anything else to do. I think much of growing old is because we think about how old we are. I think we really should quit observing birthdays at age 70; unless, we just reset the counter to about 12. Conversations seem to center around grandkids and visits to doctors. Sometimes there will be ‘conversations’ about a favorite TV show.

At age 70 everyone has a wealth of experience that must be passed on to the young. To me now, young is anyone my daughters’ age or younger. Often we hear, “I wish I were 21 and knew what I know now.” So, why not? By 70 one often has resources to do the things we wish we had done when we were 21; travel, read, and so on.

If we don’t have those resources, we still have knowledge(wisdom) to pass to the young so they will arrive at 70 in better shape; physically and fiscally than we did.

Conversation adds more to that. Here in reality we live only one life in our world on our timeline. However, we can add at least one more life to someone by relating ours to them(oh yes, and theirs to us).

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”

― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

Porch Ponders

History in Geneology

By association with the National Grigsby Society and my studies of the history of science and technology, I have come to the view that history could be made far more interesting. When I was a kid, I thought history was very boring; that has changed.

History is described by some as follows:

“History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren’t there.” – George Santayana

“History is a set of lies agreed upon.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions. -Ted Koppel

The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down. – A. Whitney Brown

“History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.” – Alexis de Tocqueville

“History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.” -Percy Bysshe Shelley

“I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” -Thomas Jefferson

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” – H. G. Wells

The question becomes, “how does one really understand history; can one?” Education is crucial but one must be on guard against the foibles described above. Back to the genesis of this thought, I think the study of the history of one’s family can make history far more inviting and interesting.

Porch Ponders

Blogs are Boring

“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.” ― Socrates

I value conversation. Blogs don’t provide that. I suppose it also shows that most folks are not interested in my ideas. When I text, some feel an obligation to respond; but would rather not.

That is also, perhaps, a reason writing a book or even short stories is difficult for me; I am not in dialogue.

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions. Their lives a mimicry. Their passions a quotation.” — Oscar Wilde

my thoughts Porch Ponders

Computer, Science?

“Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation– the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the “impossible,” come true.”

―F. Scott Fitzgerald,The Crack-Up

Please, dear reader, remember these are thoughts for discussions. How, one might ask, is the above quote relevant to the subject of ‘Computer Science’. What do you think? These mental meanderings are just that; open ended thoughts. There are those who consider that any topic whose study includes the label, “science”, isn’t.

When this tool became available in the first half of the twentieth century, programmers were not professional programmers. These were scientists and engineers who had questions to address and this was an additional tool. Perhaps computer programming is to software engineering as soldering is to electrical engineering.

There is little doubt the computer has added a critical tool to contemporary science. And, like all science studies, some results are useful and some are interesting but may not be relevant to current questions. Also, as with other studies, these may be solutions looking for a problem. I am of the opinion that learning how to use computer enhanced skills for problem solving should not be left in the hands of computer scientists.

Applying labels to people and activities is convenient, but often misleading.

“The philosopher F.W.J. Schnelling introduced the distinction between ‘Apollonians,” who favor logic, the analytical approach, and a dispassionate weighing of evidence, and ‘Dionysians’ who lean more toward intuition, synthesis, and passion. These traits are sometimes described as correlating very roughly with emphasis on the use of the left and right brain respectively. But some … seem to belong to another category: the ‘Odysseans,’ who combine the two predilections in their quest for connections among ideas.” – from “The Quark and the Jaguar” by Murray Gell-Mann