Suicidal?

Jumped from the fifth floor?

Some of us think otherwise.

Defenestration!

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2008, T. A. Blood, Ph.D.

"Hypocrite /n./: a man who murdered both his parents, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan." - Ambrose Bierce.

"You can't kill me, I've got a magic... AAAARGH !" - Many a great king's last words, according to Terry Pratchett.

I have been collecting folders full of materials on such subjects as Electronic Health Records (EHR,) and how they may be used, government and corporate spying on various levels, the use of fear to keep the American People afraid to speak out against the obvious wrongs in out current society, the security of personal information, the use of technology to control our country's citizens, and generally being what I would refer to as "constructively paranoid."  I don't believe that the aliens are out to get us nor do I put much credence in secret societies, the Illuminati, and the like.  I favor the belief that money and power (quite likely interchangeable words) are a far simpler explanation.  By the rule of Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation is most often the accurate one.  There is no way that I can give enough information in a single post to do these subjects justice or even convey my opinions clearly.  Therefore, what is on my Spaces Live platter today is a series of links to YouTube videos which make statements more succinctly than can I, by or about about men who were killed for making them.  The first, by Dr. Marin Luther King, Jr. is long but bears such a stunning resemblance to today's political and societal realities that I urge you to take the time to listen.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Viet Nam"  (22:49)

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on Viet Nam  (8:30)

John F. Kennedy on the truth of 911  (4:33)

John F. Kennedy  "The speech that got John F. Kennedy Killed"  (1:45)

Robert F. Kennedy on the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Edward Kennedy's Eulogy for Robert  (8:40)

It has been 40 to 45 years and I'm afraid we haven't learned much.  Patterns are repeated. Let's not make it four more.

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2008, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom." – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The time is always right to do what is right." – Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am not certain from whence the expression "T'd Off" is derived.  I searched several places and was directed to golf-related sites.  That's quite understandable if it is a contraction or an alternate spelling of "teed off."  What I didn't find, however is how it became a description of a state of anger.  Possibly it took on that meaning as many golfers seem to become agitated following their first whack at the ball.  Again, it may be a shortened version of "ticked off," but then I am left with where that expression came from.  Possibly from MYST?

I suppose it doesn't really matter, because I am about to add still another definition.  It does have mild anger and puzzlement in common with the other meanings, but it can be interpreted a little more literally.  The "T" key top fell off my laptop's keyboard.  That was somewhat disconcerting as I like T's and use them quite frequently. 

Under the key top is a little folding plastic hinge with a hole shape cut out of the center.  A conductive rubbery "pyramid" fits into this hole and acts both to make contact with the PC board when the key is pressed, and to raise the key top back to normal position when released.  It is attached to the key top more permanently than to the PC board beneath it.  When the key falls off (or is pulled off, or gets so much junk and cat hair under it that it breaks, etc.,) one finds the T key in one's lap, along with its little plastic ironing board feet.  The problem comes when one realizes that the wee rubber pyramid has taken off for parts unknown.  They are tiny, elusive creations; small enough to hide almost anywhere and bouncy enough to travel much farther than one might believe possible. 

I have learned that a good way of finding small objects that have fallen to the floor is to shine a flashlight (on its side and on the floor) around to make small objects stand out more clearly from the surface.  The most worrisome portion of this process for me, is when the cats notice Dad lying on the floor, shining a light around, and decide that this is a laser game in which they expect to participate.  The problem then changes from finding the part to finding it before The Boys do.  I was lucky.  I found it first, sort of blending in with an oriental rug.  Yay for me!  Following the few milliseconds of elation after discovering the part, however, comes the realization that one is still left with a key top with broken "ironing board" feet, a small piece of rubber, and very little idea of how one might fix the problem.

Of course I immediately resorted to one of the universal repairs for nearly anything - duct tape.  After an incredible amount of experimenting and positioning the broken pieces, it worked (intermittently.)  During this repair, I found that using an opaque tape, I could not see the keys on either side of the T.  For a two-finger typist like me, this is a big problem.  I couldn't see the R or the Y.  Had I thought of it, I could have simply written the letters on the duct tape with a Rub-A-Dub laundry marker.  Somehow, simple solutions frequently elude me.  The tape was changed to a clear version, the parts repositioned, and the T again worked (intermittently.)  At least it now works well enough to use.  As I view it, I now have three choices as to how to repair it more permanently.  First I will try to buy a replacement key kit (if such are made,) Then I may simply interchange the T key with the "pg up" or "pg dn" keys as they are all the same size and I never use those keys.  If all else fails and I have to spend money, I'll replace the keyboard.  Why couldn't it have been the "caps lock" key?  I hate the caps lock key.

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2008, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"Angry Statement: Master if you repair me in this pathetic manner again I will Destroy your planet!  -  HK-47 (Star Wars Assassin Droid)

My regular readers will remember the story of the cat enchilada, "I Didn't Know They Did That," from last February.  Well, The Boys are at it again.  For a little while I believed that they were past the point of being able to do anything really strange enough that I wouldn't at least know what to expect or where the behavior originated.  I was wrong.

Bittle, my 10 year old feline has decided that when I go to bed, the bed becomes his, also.  During the day, Stinky, the three year old, sleeps at the foot of the bed.  Very rarely, they will agree to share the accomodations with me, but so far as I have observed, only if I am in the bed.  As the evening progresses, Bittle tires and tends to just go on into the bedroom and sleep at the foot of the bed until I come in. 

Stinky stays up to patrol the premises, sniff the outside air through the screen, and occasionally jump straight up into the air to catch a flying moth.  He is deadly accurate in his these hunts and has certainly earned Ace status several times over.  This is in part due to the "catch the laser dot" he loves to play, and partly due to the joint moth defense strategy we have developed.  If I happen to see a moth before he does, I point it out to him with the laser.  Sometimes when Stinky is across the room, I have to begin by shining the light on his foot and lead him to the general area of moth.  If the offending insect is on the wall or ceiling, we work together as an attack team.  I move the light beam up the wall, and possibly to the ceiling, as Stinky follows it with rapt attention.  When he spies the bug, it's game on!  I learned that I could assist by acting as both a spotlight to help him keep the moth in sight and, twice now, blinded the bug such that it fell halfway from the ceiling.  I truly mean halfway, as Stinky meets it halfway, paws "clapping" together with amazing accuracy.  This was actually a digression, but I find that it fits the title quite well.

Recall now that we are dealing with two neutered males with a combined weight of approximately 40 pounds.  When I go to bed, Bittle reverts to a behavior he displayed as a kitten and wants to sleep very close to my head.  We have agreed upon the non-word "flump" to signify that he is welcome to come sleep under my right arm; "OK, Bitty.  You want to flump now?"  He is usually in position before I finish the sentence.  On the rare occasions that I go to bed while he is in another room, he will hop up to his spot, and if I chance to be trying to sleep on my side, he will tap my side with his right paw until I turn over onto my back.  If I am unresponsive, he escalates to walking on me until I submit.  Now we have the stage set for the actual four feet of zoom.

Bittle and I were in sleeping position, I on my back and Bittle settled in under my arm.  As I was drifting off, I heard the sound of a beast charging down the hallway.  Stinky jumped onto the far right edge of the bed, launched himself in an arc over Bittle and me, and bounced from the left edge of the bed to the floor.  I was both startled and laughing at this unexpected cathleticism when Stinky repeated the action in reverse.  Jump onto left edge, leap over those attempting to sleep, bounce off the right edge, and bound down the hall.  Bittle and I discussed the incident briefly and came to the mutual conclusion that it was, indeed, unusual.  We settled in again and were headed for dreamland when, about two minutes later Stinky repeated the run, jump to the left side, leap over us, bounce off left side, and land on the floor sequence.  This time I was ready for the reverse double back bounce and was even poised to try to catch Stinky midair.  I remained in that state of heightened vigilance and was ready for action for nearly 15 minutes.  That is when I heard the "meow!" from the living room.  I swear that Stinky is not only learning how to play games, but how to play quite effective head games.

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2008, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"Of all domestic animals the cat is the most expressive. His face is capable of showing a wide range of expressions. His tail is a mirror of his mind. His gracefulness is surpassed only by his agility. And, along with all these, he has a sense of humor."
-- Walter Chandoha

Does that read too much like a scare headline from the Far Left?  It isn't.  Wired News online reports that the US Air Force itself has made it.  In an April 13, 2008 article by Noah Schachtman, it is stated that:

The Air Force wants a suite of hacker tools, to give it "access" to -- and "full control" of -- any kind of computer there is.  And once the info warriors are in, the Air Force wants them to keep tabs on their "adversaries' information infrastructure completely undetected."

The US Air Force Cyber Command is already being developed.  Its website has many articles, pictures, FAQ's, and a countdown timer to "phase one stand up" on October 1, 2008. 

I have included links to both the Wired article and to the Air Force website to allow readers to judge for themselves where we are headed.  Most of my regular readers know that I border on the paranoid in my responses to be watched by recording cameras at stoplights, at toll road transponder lanes, and on our streets and intersections.  I strongly object to being listened to, phone tapped, having my mail read, or just generally being observed in any manner unless someone has reason to believe I am committing a crime or am planning one.

On the other side of this topic, I want my government to protect me - from criminals, from street muggers to multi-national corporate muggers, from enemies foreign and domestic, to preserve our constitution, and defend our land.  I appreciate the brave people in the military services and in the public sectors who serve us and take care of us so well and who we too often take for granted. 

At a deeply frightened level, I know that a current "World War III" would be fought like no other.  China has demonstrated to us their ability to blind and disorient our spy and navigation satellites by shooting down one of their own.  In turn, our "accidental" transport of six W80-1 variable yield live nuclear warheads From Minot AFB in ND to Barksdale AFB in LA was given much more publicity than I would expect any military organization to allow the media.  I do not see these incidents as unique, or even highly significant in the bigger picture, of which the public sees only tiny fragments through a glass, darkly.  If an enemy had unfettered access to any of the Internets or grids that control our distribution of electricity, natural gas, vehicle fuel, traffic and transportation flow, food and water distribution, public and military communications, financial tractions (commercial, investment, and banking,) ... well, you get the picture.  Our nation would be brought to its knees in a grinding, chaotic halt.  In a much more localized manner, the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) of a conventional atomic weapon or an "E-Bomb" destroys MOSFETs, FETs, transistors, and the like if not Faraday shielded, thus disabling electronic devices in the area of the explosion.  The government and Military knows this in infinitely greater detail than do I. 

On a personal, much less significant level, I have been affected wrongly by the same type of capabilities as are needed to defend our nation.  I sold a car to a friend who ran through four "I-Pass" toll stops without paying.  I received a ticket for four infractions, complete with a very clear picture of the back of the car with my plates still on it, and a statement that not being the driver was no excuse for not paying the tickets.  In another incident, Medicare gave the Veterans Health Administration all of my personal and business information (including SSN, EIN, bank routing numbers, addresses, etc.) without any notification to me.  I found this out when the VHA notified me that a portable hard drive with this information on it was missing.  At least they had the decency to notify me and provide for one year of credit fraud alerts.  I have no doubt that, despite the precautions I take personally, this type of information has been lost, discarded, or stolen far more times than I am aware.  As a simple example of the laxity of transactions in the area of credit, I have written "Require Photo ID" on all my cards, along with my signature.  It has been checked only once in approximately 10 years.

So what do we do and where do we go with this sort of information?  I honestly do not know.  The same technology that protects us can destroy us.  The same types of devices that allow surveillance of criminals, terrorists, and enemy actions are easily able to be turned on a country's own law abiding citizens.  It is, after all, so very much easier to listen in on our own cell phone conversations and take pictures of our own license plates than it is to definitely identify what is happening in an enemy's hardened military site or know if a satellite is armed and has military capabilities.

*sigh*

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2008, Thomas A. Blood Ph.D.

"We realize our dilemma goes deeper than shortage of time; it is basically a problem of priorities. We confess, We have left undone those things that ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done." - Charles E. Hummel

This post is not about the Village of Elburn Illinois.  It is not about the Mayor's Blog, not about Building and Zoning, not about the Staff Directory, or even Living in Elburn.  Most especially, it is not about the Elburn Police Department which sets up speed traps enforcement zones on IL Route 38 or Route 47.

What is it about, then?  It is about my plans for arranging the various antiques, furniture, oriental rugs, book cases and books, pillows, lamps, roll top desks, and other items such that they do not look worse than the piles of boxes and plastic containers that they are now replacing.  How does one display an antique Leitz Wetzlar black and brass microscope, a current flat panel TV, assorted wooden model boats, brass candlesticks, a working 1940's radio, three metal U-Needa Biscuit boxes, a small Waterford table lamp, along with a modern 12 foot sofa, drop-leaf coffee table, and monster leather recliner chair and make it "work."  Oh, yes.  I forgot to mention the antique three-wood oriental triptych style mirror I acquired yesterday. 

As a male who is visually oriented and a linear thinker, I would likely try to fit everything against a wall and fill every flat surface with important "stuff."  My main concerns would be which floor lamp should be placed next to the recliner, which rug should line up squarely with what other large thing, and now, where to hang the three paneled mirror.  I have found out within the past six hours that this is not to be.  I have gotten to be quite good friends with the couple downstairs despite the 3:00 a.m. cat crazies during which The Boys chase each other around the apartment at full speed and at top decibel level until they tire of it.  I am very thankful that they are animal lovers, and especially that The Boys are on their best behavior and are extremely friendly when these neighbors visit.  I believe that it is clear to the cat people, and to the people people, that we all like each other.  Bittle even managed to acquire a particularly comfortable flannel shirt during one of their visits.

Now, onward to the part of this experience about which I am both thrilled and a bit frightened.  In addition to one spouse being the assistant manager of the apartment complex, one has been a professional interior decorator for a number of years in the past, both for corporations and for individuals.  I have been informed that they both have a day off Wednesday and that "we" are going to decorate!  I have no belief whatsoever that this will be limited to moving only the microscope or the dealer showroom model of a 1953 Plymouth station wagon.  I know both that the result will be wonderful and also that I will be well beyond my usual state of anxiety for the next two days.

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2008, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want." - Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

~

Mother died - I live

Mothers gave me all

Mother last is gone

~

Many hands held me

Mother Earth caresses them

More than I can do

~

Preserve memories

Heritage and legacy

Offspring then may know

~

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2008, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

It should.  I've had over six months to make it that way.  I believe that I am much better at planning how things should be done than actually doing them.  I've been slowly working away at all the sorting, pitching, donating, giving away, and repressing "stuff" that I only accomplished minimal things.  "Ah, that (insert odd thing here) should be in the (insert semi-appropriate room here.)"  And I'd take it there, usually bringing something from room number two back to room number one, if appropriate.  The piles were very slowly receding in the living room and the dining area, but I felt no real pressure to rush.  I thought that about a year seemed to be a reasonable goal to set for myself.

That was until I received the notice from the apartment complex management that "the inspection" was to occur Thursday at 10:30 a.m.  I quickly started carrying more than one thing from room to room in my wanderings.  When that didn't seem to be working quickly enough I tried armloads, with possible multiple destinations.  "Stuff" was no longer being sorted neatly into appropriately sized boxes and compulsively labeled as to the exact contents.  By Tuesday I was feeling more than a hint of anxiety that I might be requested to go away, even though my rent checks had been willingly accepted up to that point.  By very early Wednesday morning I realized that going into warp drive would be necessary.  I remained in that state for 32 hours straight and, other than a few minor incidents (knee going out of joint repeatedly, disc and back ailments hurting more by the hour, frightening the cats with my flurry of activity, carting boxes to the dumpster at 2:00 a.m., etc.) made excellent use of my time.  Four rooms/areas looked just as they were supposed to, did not smell of cat activities, had the furniture and area rugs arranged, and there was only one room, the door to which could not be opened.  Yes, I used the correct words, could not, not should not.  I believe that the vacuum cleaner tipped over against it when I was hiding storing it appropriately.  Thankfully, no cats were trapped or harmed in the process.  I even had almost 10 minutes to shower before the manager and the maintenance man arrived.  I was fearful that I might have to answer the door in my underpants, but I was rewarded for my frantic efforts by being able to finish dressing.

When the Gestapo my guests arrived, I was ever so helpful, relating that I had already changed one of the sensor batteries about three weeks ago, offering a chair to stand on rather than have the maintenance man leave to get a ladder, and easily relating to the male sorts of things.  I had to resort to a bit more trickery and misdirection with the manager, however.  As I could not allow certain closet or room doors to be opened, I offered her Stinky (in one of his most loveable poses) to be petted, showed her the corner that had the collection of my grandfather's medical bag, contents, black and brass antique microscope, my newly framed picture of my mother, and anything else I could think of.  I even gave her an open hanging file rack for the complex office.  I not only passed, using this "treachery and deceit" approach, but was complimented on how nice things looked.  Truthfully, it actually does look pretty good and will look even better now that I have seen the possibilities of moving a few things around to delimit the living room and leave the largest wall in the entire apartment free to decorate as I wish. 

I do so hope that the unsettling sound of "stuff" settling in the room behind the door which cannot be opened will stop soon.  For the nonce, I have taken enough medication for my back pain that I probably do not yet fully realize the enormity of the tasks awaiting me behind "that door."

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2008, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

Happy Mothers' Day to all out there in blogland to whom that wish is appropriate.

While cleaning, sorting papers, and generally avoiding washing the dishes, I happened to run across some poetry I wrote somewhen between 1964 and 1968.  It was upsetting.  I was better at it then!  Ah, well.  I'll pull the old memory loss trick and tell you I must have only saved the best.  Yes, that's the ticket.

A Happier Time

The image of a star-lit night

Embossed upon my heart

Calls to mind the other times

When we were not apart

A fullness of life remembered

A depth of love untold

Memories remain with me

More precious now than gold

When I see that poem now, remembering Annie's death three years ago, I feel the hairs on the back of my neck standing out.  Surely I could not then have seen what would occur nearly 40 years in the future.  Or could I?  I suspect that it is more related to my lifelong fear of abandonment than it is to what a 20 year old predicted would happen in his life.  But they might well have been the same.

Some of the haiku I found even resembled the true spirit and intent of the form better than those which I now compose.

~

In a great city

I saw a blind man sitting

And I felt deprived

~

The thing - perfection

Hovering beyond our reach

Still we try to grasp

~

Whispering breezes

Arousing the sleeping earth

In the pre-dawn glow

~

Paths of particles

Shortly running parallel

Diverging at length 

~

There were more, but I think that these are a sufficient number to inflict upon my readers in a single post.  Or perhaps upon myself.  I'll now quit stalling on the dishes, and neaten up the place a bit more.  As friendly and accepting of my eccentricities as they are, I don't believe that the downstairs neighbors would appreciate my good intentions if they include vacuuming at 4:00 a.m., however.

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2008, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"Youth gets together with their materials to build a bridge to the moon or maybe a palace on earth; then in middle age they decide to build a woodshed with them instead." - Henry David Thoreau

Although I hold fairly strong political views, I hardly ever mention them in this blog.  Politics and religion tend to be quite important topics for most people and seem to me to be far too easy to be either misunderstood or to be understood exactly when written about.  Today I bring you a simple quiz from newsletter I receive from a very neutral and politically passive group (MoveOn.Org) which determines your ability to differentiate the views and actions of President George Bush and Senator John McCain.

"Dear MoveOn member,

On Friday, we launched The Bush-McCain Challenge—a fun new online game. The reaction has been AMAZING. 300,000 people have already played, and most of them aren't even MoveOn members!

The Challenge is simple—you just have to tell the difference between Bush and McCain. It's trickier (and more fun) than you'd think! ...

Start the Bush-McCain Challenge by clicking here:  http://www.Bush-McCainChallenge.com/

... McCain's close ties to Bush are his biggest liability, and the Challenge is a great way to spread the word that there's not much difference between them.

So enjoy and share!

Thanks for all you do.

–Noah, Karin, Lenore, Daniel, and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
  Tuesday, May 6th, 2008"

Be sure to stick with this lengthy quiz (five items) to get to the bonus questions.

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2008, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it." - George W. Bush

Well, the post about reality really got a diversity of comments, opinions, and observations.  I saw philosophy, psychology, theology, spirituality, teleology, cosmology, dreams, alternate and/or coexisting realities, truth, the unattainable Platonic ideal, single entity dictatorship (some call that being a Republican) and mob-rule (others call that democracy or being a Democrat,) commenting simultaneously on each other's spaces being spoooooky, a belief that what is, is, and a wonderfully cryptic comment about cheese.  This is very clearly a topic that I will follow up with further posts.  Although the comments are all related to reality, they take such differing perspectives that I'm not at all certain that I posed the question correctly.  Just to take that piece of rose quartz as an example, is it real even if nobody anywhere is consciously perceiving it?  Does "something" have to be perceived by a conscious intelligence to be real or a part of reality?  If it has no sentience, is it real to itself or to another aspect of reality?

This is a slightly strange question, but if Puzzle drops by again,would she please tell me how many syllables there are in Oberammergauralpenkrauterdelikatessenfruhstuckskase, which, as coincidence would have it, is a type of German cheese.  If it isn't 17, is there another word that means the same thing that does have 17 syllables?  Many of you will immediately recognize my secret reason for asking that question, but I won't tell others, just so they might drop back to find out the answer.

It's a good thing that these are musings.  I don't have to stay on topic and that's getting a little difficult at 5:15 a.m.  I also have the excuse of becoming a bit looser in my thoughts with sleepiness as I age.

In the previous post, I used an example of breaking a Waterford crystal bowl.  It was being used as my cats' water bowl.  Pampered.  I went out to my local "everything-store" yesterday evening and found a glue specifically formulated for mending glass.  The makers claim that when it cures properly, one cannot see the break lines and that the repaired object can be cleaned in a dishwasher (not that I have one here.)  I approve of that for two reasons.  I really like the bowl and, being lead crystal, it broke very cleanly which should make it much easier to repair.  Even though it loses its resale value, its beauty will continue to exist, in my reality, and that will please me when I look at it.  Secondly, Bittle and Stinky were pissed off at me for putting their water in an ordinary cat bowl.

With another hop and a skip along the space-time continuum, I will warn "No Name" to knock off the "If you have bought (WoW) gold from others before ... " spamming that you have been doing all over my site, I will attempt to do bad things to you.  I have been successful in doing these bad things to others in the past.  "Nuff said.

While out shopping, I also bought a cartridge of labeling tape such that I can now place little signs on the neater and smaller pile of boxes that will at least allude to what might be in them.  While I was at it, I also bought four of those hard plastic and fuzzy stuff "carpet protectors."  I don't really need to protect this carpet, as Astro-Turf would be a step up from the carpeting which came with the apartment.  I need to raise the bed about 1/4 inch because the plastic bin on rollers I bought about a week ago to roll under the bed, is brought to a halt by a part of the bed's frame, leaving just enough sticking out that I have already tired of stubbing my left great toe upon it.  That is the same appendage I dropped a trophy on earlier in the moving process, and I don't believe it has forgiven me yet.

As a final note of explanation, I have received over 40 requests to become Friends with visitors in a very short time and haven't acted on most of them.  In the past, I have had some serious problems with people who were then "friends" by links, were involving me in a game in which I did not wish to participate, or who were unknown to me.  A few months ago I did two posts about the issue of what I felt being Friends on Spaces meant, and that it differed from MySpace, Face Book, and other specifically social groups.  The first was About Friends, Messages, And Why I May Appear To Be A Cantankerous Old Poop.  The post immediately following that one was Old Poop Rant: Part II.  The short form is that I believe the great majority of you are fine people, but I have had to require that we at least exchange comments or messages a couple of times before I will agree to be friends, and I must be able to see your blog entries and your space.

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2008, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

“To rove about, musing, that is to say loitering, is, for a philosopher, a good way of spending time” -Victor Hugo

There are many definitions and interpretations of reality.  I would contend that there are many realities, all happening at the same time, and that they all have their own validity.  This reminds me of the concept of alternative realities, about which I read and wondered since being deeply immersed in science fiction novels 50 years ago.  To some degree, the current crop of subatomic physicists have begun to explore this concept (which I do not pretend to completely understand) and seem to believe that it may have some truth, even if only as a working hypothesis or "explanatory fiction."

My thoughts for this post are much more simplistic than the origin of the cosmos, however.  They are more on a level of whether a dream is as real as waking thought, or whether an instant message has the same reality as a face to face conversation.  In large part, much of this revolves around the phenomenon of consciousness.  Our conscious perception of our world makes a huge difference in how we think and how we behave.  We all behave "as if."  As if our thoughts, perceptions, and interpretations are the truth and we would be acting "insanely" if our actions did not match these perceptions.  There are over 100 definitions of "normal," and the most commonly used is "like me."  The more you are like me, the more normal you are.  (My regular readers will quickly recognize that this is a terrible example for me to use, as I am half-a-bubble-off-plumb, but usually harmless.)

There is also that confusing question of whether a thing exists if we aren't aware of it or can't prove it.  When I was thirty, I knew nothing about "Top Quark." By age 45 I had learned how it was necessary to reproduce this tiny particle to give "reality" to a particular theory of subatomic physics.  Apparently it is so heavy (as terrifically tiny things go) that it required more energy to demonstrate than any of the accelerator laboratories could produce.  It had to be there, we just couldn't prove it.  In my mid-fifties, Fermi National Laboratory, about ten miles from where I live, reproduced it.  Ya know, I suspect the little bugger was there all along, whether I knew about it, whether it could be reproduced with current technology or not, and after it was "discovered."  I also suspect it was laughing at us (but that's only my reality.)

The real intent of this post is to urge you to think about what your own reality is at any given point in time.  When we are asleep and dreaming, the dream is our reality, and if not physiologically prevented from moving, we would likely act on the dream content.  That is surely different than our usual daily reality, but by how much?  We give a friend a ride or enjoy a hobby.  That is real.  Is just thinking about doing the same things real?  Yes, but differently.  A twinkling bit of rose quartz in our garden is beautiful when we look at it.  Does it lose that characteristic when we look away, or is its reality different when another person looks at it and appreciates it differently?  What about the the realities that we realize are out there somewhere but are not in our consciousness at the moment?  Do people stop dying in Iraq or do gas prices stop changing simply because we are momentarily unaware of them? 

What about my two cats' perceptions of the world?  From outside observation, they seem quite different; one is older, more sedate, and a bit afraid of everything until reassured.  The other is younger, very inquisitive, playful, and appears to know little fear.  I can't know what they are "thinking," but whatever it is, their reality influences mine as I react to them, treating them differently.  Stinky explores bags and boxes with apparent pleasure.  Because Bittle got a leg caught on a plastic grocery bag when he was a kitten, and raced about in a terrified manner with the bag acting as a drag 'chute, he remains so afraid of them that he will leave the area at the sound of one being opened.  I simply view the bags as something to carry groceries in and then re-use as a waste can liner.  Which of these three realities is right or true?  All of them.

How real are we to one another on the Internet?  I would have to say, "It depends."  Some people have been my net friends for years.  I feel that I know them better than I do many of the "in real life" people around me, even though I have never heard their voice, never touched them, nor do I know their feelings about stale marshmallow Peeps (yeah, I love them.)  Do I evaluate who or what to trust or believe on the Internet in the same way I do in "real" life?  No.  There are overlapping criteria and both situations are real, but my evaluation process is different.  Am I real, here?  Certainly, but not in exactly the same way I am real immediately after having broken a Waterford crystal bowl or just after I have acquired genealogical information or pictures for which I had been searching.  Additionally, I am likely real in a different manner to each reader.  What I choose to reveal about myself here is probably too accurate for my own good.  I also know that some other "people" I interact with on the web are largely fictional or "partial-people."  As an expression of my younger days stated, "Its been real!"

A virtual man

Existing only to type

His virtual life

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2008, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one." - Albert Einstein