I saw Anubis in my carpet this morning.  It happens to me all the time.  I'll be looking at some random texture or pattern and see images, particularly faces.  Others have told me that the same happens to them. 

    I guessing that it has to do with our brain's need to impose order and interpretation onto reality.  Our brain is always trying to make sense out of things, and will force interpretation when it can't.  And so we see Anubis in the carpet or Jesus in the clouds, or some such things.

    This tendency for our brain to impose meaning is a real flaw in human nature since there is no necessary commonality to the order that our brain likes to impose.  What we experience is constantly being interpreted by our brains through a filter of past experiences, emotions, prejudices and ideologies.  I often talk to someone, or watch two people talking, and realize that they are so far atuned from each other that they're talking about two different things and don't even know it.  Sometimes I feel that it is a miracle that communication works as well as it does, as people are more likely to misunderstand each other than understand.

    So, is this another arguement for relativistic nihilism?  No I don't think so.  Rather, I think that this points the way to greater understanding.  The misuderstndings that plague communication arise from the filters through which  we experience everything, -the emotional and conceptual baggage that we always carry around.  The trick, then, is to strip away that baggage to reduce the impact of the filters.  Is that possible, or is there no absolute truth or experience to find?  Perhaps all truth is relative, mediated by finlters and interpretations.  I don't think so. I think the goal of meditation and contemplation is to strip away the filters so that a more pure form of experience is available.  I like to call it Immaculate Perception.  As Lao Tsu says ``Knowledge is to add information while wisdom is to subtract it.``

    Just as one can realize that the face in the carpet is a product of your immagination, so can we come to see how many of our perceptions are a function of our baggage.  By understanding the trick and the true perspective, you come closer to seeing things as they really are.  (While it may not be possible to see an absolute truth, that doesn't mean you can't have degrees of truth leading up to it.)

    I`m just finishing up reading a great novel which illustrates this point superbly.  "Horns" by Joe Hill, tells the story of a young man accused of his girlfriend`s murder.  One morning he wakes up to find that he`s grown horns that force the people he meets to tell him the truth.  Through a series of interactions and stories told from different perspectives, we slowly find out the real story behind the murder.  We see the events through the presumptions of different characters, and realize that no events are explained simply.  It is a very dark, gothic novel, much in the style of Neil Gaiman.  Recommended. 

    With everyone having their own interpretations and investments in seeing things different ways, it`s a miracle that we understand each other at all. 

    Time for mid year music reviews.

    1. Gorillaz - Plastic Beach:  Although there are tracks on this album that fall outside of my musical tastes, I have to admit that this is one of the best albums I heard in years.  Albarn has created a work of well executed musical gymnastics, covering a wide variety of styles and tempos.  It's smooth, well produced and fun to listen to. 

    2.  LCD Sound System - This Is Happening:  On first listen this sounds very 80's, but that can be said of a lot of the newer music coming out right now.  Catchy melodies and interesting production grew on me very quickly.

    3. Gaslight Anthem - American Slang:  Good, solid rock and roll cross between Bruce Springstein and Green Day.  (OK, I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who want to shoot me for that one!) 

    4.  Band of Horses - Infinite Arms:  There's lots of new Psych-Folk bands out these days. Many are trying to follow in the footsteps of The Fleet Foxes, which I still regard as one of the best albums of the decade.  Many of these new folky bands are just bland, with droning, uninteresting melodies.  Not true of Band of Horses.  Infinite Arms is a collection of well perfomed melodies, each of which is unique and memorable.  It is colourful and stands out from its often grey contemporaries. 

    5. Peter Wolf - Midnight Souvenirs:  Peter Wolf is a veteran who has performed with everyone from the Velvet Underground to Kid Rock, but is probably most well know for his work with the J. Geils Band.  This new album is old school rock, but still stands up well against any contemporaries like the Black Keys.

    6.  Black Keys - Brothers:  Ya, more of the same.  When I first heard this album, I wasn't that impressed, judging it to be a bit too old school blues rock for my tastes.  Not that I don't like that style; it's just that it's been done.  But listening to it again recently, loud, I came to appreciate the excellent level of production and performance intensity.  The songs are interesting enough to seperate them from their influences.

    7. Jackson Browne - Love Is Strange (with David Lindley):  Nothing really new here and there's been a lot of live albums from Jackson Browne in the past few years.  But this one is a gem, with amazing performances, both instrumental and vocal.  Browne has been writing classic songs for the past 30 years and this set is a great collection of some of the best. 

    8.  Paul Weller - Wake Up The Nation:  Wellar has been experimenting with musical sounds for over 30 years, from the early punk of the The Jam to The Style Council and through a spectacular solo career of Pop and Folk music.  Wake Up The Nation is the Modfoather's "Sgt. Pepper's", delving into more experimentation and diversity in one album that he's ever attempted in the past.  The result is a bit eclectic and sometimes a bit strained.  At the same time it is really refreshing to see someone of Wellar's experience trying so hard to break new ground and take chances. 

That's it for now.  Looking forward to any comments you may have.

    Teachers have a unique perspective on people.  No other profession has such intimate contact with a large number and variety of individuals, both students and families.  Plus, the contact tends to be longitudinal, meaning that often you see development over many years.  More than doctors or lawyers, where contact is narrow and fleeting, teachers are in a position to observe, digest and comment on social trends. 

    This week the decline in hockey enrollment by Canadian boys became a news item.  It seems that over the past decade the number of boys actively playing hockey has dropped below 10%, and the Canadian Hockey Association is wondering why.

    As a teacher who has watched families engage and disengage from hockey, I think I can provide a pretty simple answer.  Hockey takes itself too seriously and has become this big mega-production.  Even recreational players have weekends away at tournaments and multiple games per week, some in the early hours of the morning.  This creates both economic and scheduling stress.  Boys who are better players and who graduate to "rep" teams are even under more stress, with elaborate tournaments all over N. America, and the expectation that missing a game is a cardinal offense because the team has to take precenence over family, school and being a kid. 

    The group that we've come to view as "hockey boys" are unable to do anything else in their lives.  I can personally think of several boys I've taught in the past 10 years whose hockey schedules were so stressful that it was hard for them to stay awake in class.  As a youth group leader, trying to get boys invlolved in outdoor wilderness and camping initiatives, more often than not, a boy's participation in hockey will eliminate the possibility of his participating in any other activities.

    In my 30+ years of teaching, I've known many boys who were great hockey players and who had realistic dreams of professional hockey careers.  They put in the time, were seriously scouted, ...and I can't point to one who was successful.  Perhaps if the hockey clubs didn't take the whole thing so seriously, more parents and boys would enjoy getting involved.  Reduce the expense and the time committment, making it a game that can be played just for fun.  That's the way to reach more people!

        Since I was a kid, my preference for books, movies and TV shows has always been in the Science Fiction genre.  Reviews may make up a significant portion of this Blog.  If the reviews don't interest you, just skip ahead to the other stuff.  But I think that reviews of SciFi material is a great jumping off point to other topics.  It's part and parcel of the appeal.
     In a recent review of Avatar, Ken Wilber did a concise job of summing up that appeal.  Avatar has often been compared to Dances With Wolves.  But, as Wilber points out, there is a very important difference.  When watching Dances With Wolves the viewer has historical perspective and so knows that however noble the natives may seem in the movie, in the end they are crushed by western civilization.  Most normal fiction contains this historical perspective that limits possibilities.  In Avatar, we don't know what the Na'vi will do next.  Their future is one of endless possibilities. 
     That's true of most SciFi stories.  Take for example a book by John Sclazi with I've just finished.  Scalzi is the writer of one of the original and most well known blogs, "Whatever".  (Yes, the phrase evidently originated from this blog.)  In recent years he's turned into a formidable SciFi writer.  "Old Man's War" is a good example of open-ended, unpredictable possibilities.  In this story, which takes place in the near future, Earth is colonizing the stars, but is in competition with other species for the few habitable planets available.  Hence the need for an army.  Scalzi presents an army recruited from 70 year olds who volunteer in exchange for being transplanted into new bodies.  Everyone wins.  The army has experienced humans instead of young punks; the seniors don't have anything to lose and everything to gain.  The characters and ideas in this book are reminiscent of Heinlein.  The science is realistic, with the alien species being exactly as bizarre as Stephen Hawking recently said they'd have to be.  This was a refreshing, exciting and enlightening read, and I'm looking forward to the sequels. 
     Only in SciFi can authors explore such limits of human ability and unusual questions of morality. 

     CFTR, 680 News Radio often deals with thin news days by adding stories about interesting surveys, studies or other statistical nonsense.  The inability of most people to properly analyse statistical studies means a constant flow of misinformation.

     Take for example last week's story about Canadians and their use of profanity.  The big story was that 56% of Canadians admitted to using profanity on a "regular or occasional basis".  This is compared to 51% in Britain and 46% in the U.S.   Conclusions?  Canadians are less poite and more profane than in other countries.

     Nonsense.  What it more likely means is that Canadians are more honest than those asked in other countries.  Or it may mean that Canadians have a different concept of what constitutes "occasional" use.  No real conclusions about Canadian behaviour is really justified. 

     Statistics are powerful things because they command validity, but without a proper understanding of basic statistical theory, abuse of statistics is rampant.  That's why, as a teacher, I always felt that the statistics portion of the math program was essential.  Almost every statiescal story I hear on the radio has flawed conclusions.

     If you were looking for a positive example of world politics and human nature, chances are that you would not look to Kenya.  Yet recent developments in that country are a "shining example" to the rest of the world.  (Info from Macleans, Aug 23) 

     Kenya has over 40 diverse ethnic groups with a history of conflict.  But it recently rearranged its political system by way of a new constitution resulting in a new era of peace, -all through non-violent action.  This is not what we normally assume is happening in Africa, or anywhere in the Third World.  If they can do it...

     Possibly the secret has been leaving them alone to develop the solutions to thier own problems.  Ironically, interference from American fundementalist (anti-Islamic) religious groups made an attempt to support the opposition to the new constitution.  Supporters of the new constitution still outvoted the oponents by a margin greater than two to one. 

     http://www.zeleza.com/blogging/african-affairs/birth-kenyas-second-republic

I look at today's kids and society in general and just have to coment on negative changes and the deterioration of civilization.  It's expected of me.  I'm an old retired guy now.  However, I just can't accept the line that "Oh, you're just getting old and out of touch with things."

So here comes a "when I was a kid" story.

When I was a kid, I had a paper route that included caring for a newspaper box in front of the apartment building where I lived in North York.  Let me describe this box to you.  It was a metal box with a top and a bottom and three sides.  The front was wide open.  On one side of the box was a small metal box about the size of a deck of cards, with a coin slot in the top. There was a small lock on the bottom which could be removed to empty the coins out of the box, which I did each day. 

In the several years that I had this route, there was only one time where the number of missing newspapers did not tally with the amount of money in the payment box.  On that occasion, when missing money suggested that someone had taken a paper without paying, the newspaper company sent a representative to investigate. 

Transpose that scenerio to modern times and put that box of papers in a suburban or urban area, filled with papers.  What would happen?  I don't think thre is any question.  At very least many of the papers would be stolen and likely the money box would be smashed and stolen.  Nowadays we have the closed, locked boxes where you have to put in your money in order to get at a paper, and there are still people who put money in for one paper and take several when it's open. 

When people tell me that things haven't really changed, I think of this one tangible example which proves to me exactly how much things have really changed.  I'm sure there are other similar stories.  The feeling that many things have changed for the worse is not just old folks grumbling.  It is very real.

   A few weeks ago I posted an entry about customer loyalty not being valued and all of the perks being given to new customers to attract new business. 

   Yesterday I had to contact Rogers.  My mother had just gotten a new HD TV and box and I was confused about which plan she was on when I examined her bill.  After talking to a service representative for a while and not getting anywhere, I asked to be transfered to the magic department called "Customer Loyalty and Retention".  These are the people to talk to as they have the power to check anything and make any adjustments to your account.  Every business has a comperable department.  You just have to find it.

   A couple of things really surprised me.  First, when she bought the digital box, Rogers seems to have automatically upgraded her plan, thinking that, of course, she would want to get the maximum benefit from her new equipment.  I explained that she really had never authorized that and that she didn't really watch enough of a variety of channels to warrent that.  I also played the Senior Citizen card, pointing out that she was on a fixed income and didn't need unnecessary expenses.

   Rogers, to their credit, responded very favorably.  The person in "Loyalty & Retention" was willing to sign her up for a promotional package aimed at new customers, which resulted in a significant discount of her fees.  She stated that as a "long time loyal customer" my mother should be entitled to this benefit. 

   One one hand I was impressed with the results.  On the other hand, I learned a valuable lesson or two.  The perks that are offered to new customers can also be claimed by existing customers if you make enough noise.  -And you have to make it in the right place.  "Customer Loyalty & Retention" is aptly named.  That's where customers have to make the noise, and likely most do not, -a situation that the businesses are more than happy to leave alone.  We often say that true competition is dead in modern Capitalism, but, no, it is not.  It is the customers, thinking they have no power, who allow businesses to just chug along in the status quo, railroading customers into whatever plans and payments they feed them over time.  Making a little noise will often bring interesting results.

   It's something I plan on trying with my Insurance Company this Fall.  Now there's a formidable challenge. 

   Ya, I did say something about shrinking brains a few days ago.  The comment came from a great article in the September issue of Discover magazine, called "The Incredible Shrinking Brain". 
    It states that , after increasing in volume for a million or more years, over the last 20 00 years it has actually shrunk by a significant 10%.  The data has been replicated across gender and across every continent where paleoanthropology has been able to do comparative studies. 
    One of the explanations provided reminds me of the movie, "Idiocracy" (2006, by Mike Judge) which suggests that selective breeding in our culture favors the unintelligent, as they are more likely to reproduce in larger numbers than the wealthy or more intelligent.  In the movie's story, the main character is accidentally sent into hibernation as part of an experiment and wakes 500 years later to find the world populated with stupid people. 
    This theory states that in the past 20 000 years humanity has had to use it's brain less to insure survival, as communities and civilization make life easier.  Civilization requires less problem solving, less memory and less need for people to be generalists in their range of skills.  Hence, less need for brain power and volume.  Oh, but you protest that our society is far more complex and our brains must be far more sophisticated to have created all the wonders of the modern world.  That may be true, but when it comes right down to it, how many people really understand the way things work?  If the top 10% of our society's brain power were to drop dead tomorrow, it would not be long before our society deteriorated to a medieval state.  How many people out there know how an electric motor works, never mind how to build one?  How many people even know how to change the oil on their car?
    Another interesting fact from this article is that it claims that if Cro-Magnon cave men had been raised with the same education and toys that we have enjoyed, they would likely be just as smart, if not smarter.  Our civilization and technology is an accumulated event, with each generation building on the achievements of the previous one.  We've not become smarter over the past 20 00 years (in fact, the article suggests that we may be actually dumber), and a modern human's civilization is totally a product of his environment.  Without the benefit of modern technology and social structures, we would quickly degenerate into savages.  (Hence the idea of "a thin veneer of civilization" that I mentioned in the "Girl Next Door" review.  Or "Lord of the Flies".)
    This idea also brings to mind arguments by Jon Young at the Wilderness Awareness School, that how much of our brain that we actually use is determined by the amount of time we spend outdoors.  He says that the peoples that exhibit the greatest efficiency in brain use on this planet are the Bushmen of the Kalahari, because they are constantly struggling for survival.  Our safe and protective environment, with safety codes that allow crippled or blind people to navigate in most places with minimum difficulty, does not encourage problem solving or brain use.  In his book, "Last Child In The Woods", Richard Louv claims that we are producing a generation with "nature-deficit disorder".  Modern society is discouraging children from experiencing the outdoors, branding it dirty and dangerous.  The result is obesity and attention deficit, ...and yes, less brain use, which will lead to decreased size, one way or another.  (Evolution doesn't work that way?  I beg to differ, but that's a different story.  Besides, the evidence to the contrary is evident from the past 20 000 years.)

    The current buzz in American news is the comment made by Obama when he was asked about his views concerning the building of a mosque near "ground zero" in New York.  His response was that America was a country that believed in freedom of religion and that a specific religion should not suffer prejudice.  Immediately, the political machine of the Republicans began to try to change this statement into something it was not, criticizing the insensitivity in allowing an Islamic mosque to be built near the site of 9/11 terrorism, thus showing the willingness of political expedience and opportunism to consider itself superior to any degree of decency or correctness.
    Even to regard the building of this mosque as "insensitive" is to promote a hateful and despicable lie.  It is to affirm that the terrorism of 9/11 should be attributed, not to extremists, but to the Islamic religion and people in general.  There are still people trying to equate Islam and terrorism.  That would be like examining the history of the IRA and concluding that Catholicism should be equated with violence and terrorism. 
    America has a long history of prejudice.  To appeal to this unfortunate, deeply ingrained quality in the American people for the benefit of a few votes exposes the moral bankruptcy and inhumanity of those that are so eager to twist facts in a way that fans hatred and stereotypes.  Unfortunately there is no shortage of people willing to swallow this drivel because it allows them to feel comfortable, smug and superior. 
    We see the same thing in Canadian politics.  Often a comment or action is attacked with total disregard for whether it is appropriate or correct, but solely as a political opportunity.  It would be nice to believe that the public was able to see through these lies, but not only are we a slave to our own perceptual biases, but those biases are actually encouraged and nurtured by the media.  Whether it b e Canada or the U.S., prejudice and bias are commodities to be used by advertisers and politicians.