Mind

July 30, 2020

Ages ago, there used to a fiddler who’d stand outside the west entrance of the racetrack, sawing away at his instrument… the open violin case in front of him, ready to catch the loose change offered by fortune-seeking horseplayers. Because that’s how Karma works, right? You magnanimously throw a dime at a beggar, and you’re sure to hit the Trifecta for $780.

A lot of people must have thought that way, because the guy did ok. He was always there on the way in, and he was certainly there on the way out, to catch the loose change… or hopefully, bills… of the actual few winners who managed to cash in on that last race. As per every racetrack or casino in the world, the trick isn’t winning; the trick is leaving the place with your winnings still in your pocket. And when you manage to do that, you’re usually feeling pretty generous.

I’d wondered what the guy did with all that change… did he go home and meticulously roll it? Show up at the bank with bags of change? Did he just spend it, and make people wait at the cashier lineup while he carefully counted it out? It turns out the answer was much simpler.

One day, I happened to be standing at the bottom of the entrance ramp just moments before the last race of the day… and down the ramp came fiddler guy, holding his case wide open.

At the betting windows, all of the mutuel clerks (ie. tellers) saw him coming, and all of them instantly slammed their [Closed] shingles in front of their windows. Well, all but one unlucky teller who’d been busy, looking down… and didn’t notice his impending arrival. The guy made a bee-line, straight to her, and, just as she looked up, he dumped the entire contents of the violin case… probably more than $20 worth of quarters, dimes, nickels… but mostly pennies… on the counter and floor and everywhere else.

“All of it to win on number 6!”, he screamed at her.

“I told you not to do that!”, she screamed back.

Number 6 didn’t win, which might mean the guy wasn’t too good at picking horses. But you can’t really tell with a sample size of one. However, what he also wasn’t good at was… playing the fiddle. And that sample set was a lot bigger. Back in those days, racing was 5 days a week, from mid-April to mid-October. Let’s do the math… 24 weeks x 5 days = 120 days, and he was out there at least 8 hours a day… so close to 1,000 hours a season. And for at least 10 years, there’s 10,000 hours… that magic number that Malcolm Gladwell claims in his bestseller “Outliers” is the number of hours needed to master anything. Ironically, he mentions music – specifically violins – as a good example. Anyone can pick up a violin/fiddle (they’re the exact same musical instrument, by the way…) and master it by just putting in the hours.

Well, horseshit. If you, having never picked up the instrument, walked into a music store and just tried it, gingerly sliding the bow across the strings, making some sort of squeaky sound… that’s what that guy sounded like. Always. It never changed. He never improved. More than ten thousand “wasted” hours.

Which just proves the point, it’s not all about the hours. I’m not sure what the right number is, but that’s not even the point. The point is – quality time versus quantity time. Quantity means nothing if the quality isn’t there, and I’d venture to guess that 100 quality hours of practice beats out 10,000 hours of doing it wrong.

We can forgive Gladwell, because his sample set of musicians were from an actual music academy. That’s not a random sample set, and it certainly doesn’t include some degenerate gambler/Charlie Daniels look-alike.

This all came to mind while banging away at the piano, on a difficult piece I’ve been working on for… well, not yet 10,000 hours, but it’ll likely take that long. Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor has probably had far more talented musicians bang away at it for far less time… yielding far better results. Nevertheless, I’m enjoying it… and maybe that fiddler enjoyed his fiddling too.

And these days, this pandemic is going to keep us pretty isolated for a while. Lots of time to put in the hours… you can draw, write, sculpt, paint, cook, plug away at the piano/violin/clarinet/trumpet/harp/whatever… just be sure you’re enjoying it, and not just putting in the hours.

Quality… not quantity.

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By |2020-10-08T01:10:33-07:00July 30th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Business & Economics, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , |7 Comments
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July 29, 2020

I’ve written a lot about “the big picture”. I pride myself on what I consider to be my ability to see things from a bigger perspective, and guide my life accordingly. Life is lived in incrementally small steps, but you need to at least be heading in some version of a “right direction”, knowing full-well that the course-correcting along the way will make that path anything but straight.

This is a lesson… a concept… that I try to teach my kids continually. Think big picture. Put yourselves in someone else’s shoes. Look at it from their point of view. Look at it from all points of view. Consider the implications not just for the immediate future, but medium and long-term as well. Add that into your mix before you make decisions… etc etc.

I have countless examples – from myself, from people I know, from the world… but the following example came up in conversation last night, so that’s the one you’re going to get. It was from when my son Oscar was in grade 5.

It was Sports Day of that school year, so he was 10 years old. One of the last events of the day was a race for the entire grade… 800m… a couple of laps around the track.

The race started off with everyone at the starting line, all at once, but it became evident pretty quickly who the standout athletes were, who the average kids were, and who was really going to struggle.

Oscar is not an elite athlete, but he was holding his own… somewhere in the top third, in a group behind the future track stars.

But at some point, he looked back and saw one of his friends a little further behind. So he slowed down till he was even with him, and they ran together for a bit. And then he noticed another friend, even further back… so he eased off the gas pedal and slowed down to match that friend for a while. That happened yet again… and then, one final time, with a friend who was struggling all alone at the very back.

So Oscar dialed it all the way back, and ended up walking it in, tied for dead last. That friend was huffing and puffing. Oscar had barely broken a sweat.

I went up to him after the race… and I wouldn’t say I was mad, but I was pondering how to ask the obvious question without sounding angry.

“Hey… so… do you really think that’s the right way to run a race?”

“Who cares, dad. Nobody cares. Nobody’s going to remember who won that race. And anyway, I just felt bad for my friend.”

Hmm. Yeah, true… grade 5 Sports Day. Nobody, except perhaps those elite top-3 athletes at the front – will remember who won. Nobody will care, not even those three because one day they’ll go on to real high-school track meets, where it really counts… and possibly college scholarships. Today, this? Irrelevant.

I had some version of “you might not be expected to win, but at least try your best” or “all that’s asked for is an honest effort” or “you can’t just phone it in when you feel like it”… I don’t really recall, because I didn’t actually say anything other than… “Huh. Yeah… ok. Well done.”

Yet, big picture… those friends, especially that last one, might remember it. Oscar remembers it, but when it came up last night, he remembered it as no big deal.

This whole post is a bit of a counterpoint to yesterday’s, where, in response, some people said things like “keep an open mind”.

There is “big-picture thinking”, and there is “open mind”… but I also do draw the line at “doctors”, quoted by no less than The President, saying things like… there’s already a cure, but it’s being hidden from us… and that alien DNA is being used in medical treatments… and that some medical conditions are the result of people having sex with demons.

In the grand scheme of things, most certainly keep an open mind and be open to possibilities. As per my Sports Day example, sometimes we’re too narrowly focused on what’s typically expected, maybe because it’s all too familiar… and it prevents us from seeing the big picture. Keep in mind… no matter what nudges you into that way of thinking… the big picture always has a lot to offer. And so does common sense.

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By |2020-10-08T01:10:34-07:00July 29th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , |11 Comments
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July 25, 2020

Forest Gump is a great movie, well-deserving of the Oscars it won… in a year that saw three of the best movies of the 90s all drop at the same time (1994), the other two being Pulp Fiction & The Shawshank Redemption.

Forest Gump is the village idiot who makes good – very good, in fact… as a result of some inherent talent, fortuitous timing and just plain old good luck. The charm of the movie is how innocent and well-meaning he is throughout it all, like he’s an actor just playing a part in his own life’s movie, a life that carries him to loftier and loftier places… and he barely recognizes it.

There’s one particular scene I want to talk about… it’s near the end, when Forest has taken up running, and he’s been running for over three years. Like, literally running… back and forth across the U.S. at least twice, probably close to 20,000 miles.

He’s running from pain and heartbreak… but nobody really knows that… they just start to follow him. Like, clearly… someone with that much passion and dedication; there must be a lot to the story. There isn’t, but that group of followers doesn’t know that, and as time goes on, the group that’s following him, running after him – continues to grow.

Until one day, in the middle of nowhere, Forest’s simple mind just clicks into a different gear. OK, he thinks, I’ve had enough. I’m done. And he stops. And the whole group stops with him, with baited breath and anticipation… “Shh!! He’s gonna say something!!”

Clueless to the moment, and irrelevant in his mind, Forest simply says, “I’m tired. I’m going home.”

And with that, he turns a 180 and starts walking home. And the group that’s been aimlessly following him… now stand around dumbfounded, and one of them yells out, “What are we supposed to do now?”

Indeed, a valid question, when you find yourself rudderless and confused, having realized the ship you’ve been following all this time… also has no compass.

Such is now the emerging dilemma facing a large percentage of the American population who themselves, for over three years, have been following a leader who also has no clue. And so, when that leader did a 180 on certain topics a few days ago, it left a lot of people asking that same question… what about us? Now what?

Yeah, the guy who was feeding you the bullshit about how it’s not serious, how it’s going away, how masks may be evil and, either way, it’s your choice… blahblahblah… how testing is broken because even though we have the best testing in the world, our testing is the best, world leaders are calling me up asking how we do it, they can’t believe our testing, I tell you, it’s a beautiful thing our testing. Experts tell me our testing, they’ve never seen anything like it.

Anyway, as great as the testing is, notwithstanding said leader’s mixed message that perhaps they’re doing too much testing, too good testing, and therefore that’s why there are so many cases… there’s something nobody can argue or justify, and that is the number of deaths. People in the U.S. are dying in record numbers of C19, and there’s no way to avoid telling it how it is. Their leader continually pushed for no masks and ill-timed re-openings, and the emerging results are now laid bare for everyone to consider.

So… it’s caused the fearless leader to backtrack significantly. Perhaps this is worse than I said. Perhaps masks are a good idea.

This is not news to most people, but it’s eye-opening to the sheep who’ve been following him blindly.

“Now what are we supposed to do?”

Well – there’s an answer to that rhetorical question, but I’m as curious as anyone else as to what exactly *will* happen. Stay tuned, I guess.

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By |2020-10-08T01:10:35-07:00July 25th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |9 Comments
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July 24, 2020

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (rhymes with “peachy”) said a lot of interesting things in his life. You’ve certainly heard some of them, even if you don’t know their origin… things like:

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

“When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.”

Less commonly known, here are a couple of other quotes:

“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.”

“Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”

Those latter two quotes are pretty relevant these days, in light of the ever-widening wedge between reason and insanity.

Interestingly, Nietzsche also said, “There are no facts, only interpretations.”

Here, Mr. Nietzsche and I may have to agree to disagree. Or perhaps he was thinking super-big-picture when he said that, as in when dealing with topics that don’t actually have factual basis. You can discuss things like the merits of democracies vs. benevolent dictatorships, thinking you have all the “facts”, and therefore your opinion, and only your opinion, is “correct”. I think that’s the sort of thing he had in mind, and with that, I don’t disagree. Philosophical “facts” are meant to be discussed and challenged.

But people who feel strongly about the “facts” that they’re defending will rarely change their minds, even when the facts are indisputable… and, for some reason, the less “factual” those facts really are, the more they’re stuck to those opinions. It’s like being right is a necessary part of their existence, and challenging that opinion is basically challenging that person’s right to exist. Go try have a rational discussion with a moon-landing-denier or flat-earther; I dare you. If someone is convinced that two plus two is anything other than four, you need to understand that mindset before challenging it. And in doing so, you might realize that you’re wasting your time.

Such is the mindset of the anti-vaxx, anti-mask, anti-lockdown crowd that’ll insist that “it’s a hoax”, “vaccines are poison”, “vaccines are crowd control”, “masks cause more damage than they prevent”, “things are going great”, “nothing to worry about” and so on. If you’re going to bother trying to engage in an intelligent conversation with any of that on the other side of it, you’ve been warned. I’m speaking from experience here.

A final quote from our friend Nietzsche:

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well, the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.”

Agreed.

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By |2020-10-08T01:10:35-07:00July 24th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , |17 Comments
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July 21, 2020

It was Arthur C. Clarke, notable author, inventor and futurist, who’s quoted as saying, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Very true indeed. We all take for granted technology these days that would baffle even the brightest minds of not-so-long ago. The little phone you carry around (and perhaps with which you’re reading this) is a prime example. We get mad at it when “the stupid thing isn’t working”, but you’d think about it differently if you considered the complexity of the underlying infrastructure that makes it all work. Imagine someone 50 years ago watching you take a picture with your iPhone. OK, fancy tiny camera… very cool. But not impossible. And then they watch you AirDrop™ that picture to the person next to you. That’d be nothing less than magic.

I’ve been around long enough to see true innovative technology arrive, explode onto the scene, and then slowly drift from relevance as newer, more advanced technology took over. For example, CDs. They appeared literally overnight (from a consumer point of view) and took over the world. They were, for a time… magic. And they have since drifted into obscurity.

One interesting thing in the early days of CDs was both the marketing and technology of what was called “oversampling”. There’s more to it than what I’m going to describe, but basically it was this – the laser that’s reading what’s on the surface of the disc has about a zillionth of a second to bounce itself off a particular spot and decide whether it’s a one or a zero. And it’s not always right. Since that’s happening 44,100 times per second, it’s not a huge deal if it gets it wrong once in a while. But, that depends how wrong… your music quality would tend to degrade, and if it’s data, it has to be perfect. Data inherently is stored with what are called “CheckSums” – that verify the integrity of the data. For example, a simple version might be that after every 1,000 bits, it tells you how many zeros there were. And also how many ones. If those two numbers don’t add up to 1,000… there was a problem, so read it again. Credit card numbers also have a built-in sanity check… VISA numbers start with 4, MasterCard with 5… but not just any random string of 15 digits after that will work. In fact, only one in ten.

But music isn’t stored that way… it’s just sample after sample. So what they did is this… they’d get the laser to sample each bit more than once. 2x oversample. 4x oversample. 8x oversample!! If 6 of 8 of those reads say it’s a one, go with that.

If this sounds just like adding more and more blades to your razor, you’re right. At some point, the diminishing returns no longer make sense. How many blades do you need to get a perfect shave? I don’t know, but I know that two blades are better than one. Four is perhaps better than three. But I’m not sure 27 blades on some 6-inch razor are better than 26.

With CDs, I once saw a model boasting 96x oversampling. Come on.

This all comes to mind when reading numerous articles about COVID-19 testing. Rates of false positives. Rates of false negatives. People who’ve tested negative then positive then negative then positive. Good tests, bad tests, expensive tests, cheap tests.

In some cases, it’s a threshold… you could have it, but not in a high enough concentration to test positive. This is exclusively a problem for asymptomatic cases; I have yet to read about a test that reports a false negative for someone with symptoms.

Just thinking out loud… it makes me wonder… what would happen if you treated testing the way those CD players used to it. Do 8 cheap tests on someone all at once… instead of a far more expensive single test whose failure rate is lower, but not zero. Like I said, just thinking out loud… but one path of managing this involves testing; lots of it. And if you form a triangle of “cheap, fast, accurate” and have to pick two at the expense of the third… perhaps “cheap and fast” is the angle to go with. This is just simple statistics… not magic.

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By |2020-10-08T01:10:36-07:00July 21st, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , |8 Comments
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July 19, 2020

A note about the numbers… B.C. hasn’t published numbers since Friday, so tomorrow I will update my guesses and align them with reality. Also… it’s like magic… ever since the White House took control of the numbers away from the CDC, the U.S. numbers have been dropping. It’s like magic.

You know, there’s a good reason why rain dances always work… 100% effectively, and it’s that when you do them right, you don’t actually stop until it starts raining. It could happen right away… or it could take weeks. Maybe months or even years. Either way, it doesn’t stop until it “works” – and then everyone is happy and congratulates each other on a job well done.

I worked with a guy in the 90s… a real contrarian, who was sure the markets were going to crash and burn. The NASDAQ composite index was around 800 in those days. It slowly crept up over the months and years, and every time it would slip a bit, he’d say “this is it!!”… and he was wrong. Until one day, in early 2000, I guess he was right… the NASDAQ, which had crept up to close to 5,000… crashed. It never came close to the lows of 800, but it fell steeply enough that I’m sure he went around saying (and I can’t confirm, because I was out of touch with him by then)…. “I was right!! See?? Told you!”

I guess if you wait around long enough and refuse to be wrong, perhaps in your mind the world eventually catches up with you. And sometimes it’s real.

For those who follow baseball, the name Bartolo Colón might ring a bell. He’s retired from MLB, but still playing in Mexico (if any playing is going on these days…)

Bartolo is famous for many things, but here are a couple… one, he broke into the league in 1997 and was the last remaining player who’d played for the Montreal Expos. And two, while playing for the Mets in 2017, almost 20 years after he’d been at it, he hit his first career homerun, at the fine old age of 42. Even if you’re not a baseball fan, that’s worth finding on YouTube. His team went crazy. The announcers went crazy. Even most of the fans, notable because it was an away game.

So yeah, like a broken clock… wait around long enough, and it’ll be right. Twice a day, in that particular case.

This all comes to mind as Donald Trump, not known for ever admitting he’s ever wrong, continues to double-down (it’s at least a quadruple by now) with his “It’ll all just go away” thing. Like, magically, one day, COVID-19 will disappear.

So yeah, as per my examples, it’s true. One day it will be gone, and Donald Trump will be saying… “See!! Told you!!”

Of course, the question is… how many people will needlessly have suffered or died, while he waited around for his miracle to kick in?

And speaking of rain dances… I’ve spoken before about the driest place on earth, the Atacama Desert, where it never rains. But back in 2011, it did… in fact, it snowed. And I’m sure there may have been some group of Changos who’d been at it for decades, dancing away… and who went around after that, telling everyone… “See?! Told you we could make it snow!!”

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By |2020-10-08T01:21:22-07:00July 19th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Humour, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , |5 Comments
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July 13, 2020

Those who haven’t had the unfortunate displeasure of dealing with an actual narcissist might be surprised at the continually baffling attitude of Donald Trump. Those who are familiar with the typical attitude and behaviour of a narcissist are not the least bit surprised.

One fundamental aspect of narcissism is the binary way in which the world appears. Good or bad. Black or white. You’re with me or against me. There is no middle ground.

Almost without exception, the crappy CEOs of the world are textbook narcissists. They rose to their position of power by trampling and clawing and stomping over others, on their way to the top (laughing while doing so), and will never relinquish that power. And one effective way of doing that is simply surrounding themselves with people who agree with everything, and getting rid of them when they don’t.

The White House has had a revolving front door since 2016, and we’ve all become familiar with the pattern of people going in “he’s the greatest, tremendous, the best, my people tell me they’ve never been more impressed”, and then one day leaving… with the expected presidential barrage of infantile insults.

Dr. Fauci has been around since the Reagan administration, and his list of credentials, publications and awards simply don’t fit in this little posting. Feel free to Google him, and prepare to be impressed.

There’s another tell-tale sign of narcissists… they like to surround themselves with “great” people… only because it elevates the narc to the same level (in their mind).

Interestingly, this strategy of surrounding yourself with people “better” than you is a good one. If you do that, and let those great people do their thing, it’s often a good path for success. That's when you let them do their thing, as they do best.

But in this case, nobody can outshine the president, and these very intelligent and capable people, many of whom have been skating on very thin ice, at some point simply can not sit around a tow a party line that’s actually going to kill people.

Close to that chopping block may now be Dr. Anthony Fauci, but it’s not so easy for Trump…

Interestingly, Trump can’t fire Dr. Fauci… for reasons that go back to the guy that assassinated President James Garfield in 1881 (shoutout to Meri, his great-granddaughter – who’s reading this). The guy who shot Garfield wanted a job – which Garfield refused to give him. And to clarify things, after the assassination, it’s become impossible for a president to hire or fire a career federal employee without a damn good reason. And a difference of opinion certainly doesn’t qualify.

What Trump can do – or at least, try to do… is to silence Dr. Fauci. He’s no longer part of the TV briefings, he’s not heard from a lot… sort of being kept away from the action. Kudos to him though, for still being able to get his message out, even if it’s no longer through official channels.

Needless to say, if you’re hearing two diametrically different things being said… one from Trump, one from Fauci… and still, for whatever reason, you’re not sure who to listen to… I dunno, let’s randomly pick a strategy. How about alphabetical? Let’s see… F comes before T. Perfect. Let’s go with that.

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By |2020-10-08T01:21:24-07:00July 13th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: , , , |7 Comments
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July 10, 2020

We’re heading up to Whistler today, so this space may be emptier than usual for the next little while…and I’ll update the charts and graphs to the proper size eventually…

In the meantime, a couple of somewhat-related words that come to mind as I watch the world, and its contents, spinning around me…

Sonder (noun) The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.

Onism (noun) The frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time.

It’s kind of mind-bending when you try to step outside your “existence” – in other words, to truly try to visualize things from any other point of view, other than your own. I don’t just mean trying to understand someone else’s opinion; I mean literally, through their eyes. Stop and consider that every single experience and memory you have is from your own, unique point of view. But it’s more than that; all of reality is only what you’ve experienced. There is literally nothing of existence outside of your experiencing it. If you’ve never seen it or heard of it, until you do, it doesn’t actually exist.

Elon Musk thinks we’re all living in a simulation, and the longer it all goes on (life, in general), the more I get the idea that it’s true. The complexity and vastness of the universe, in both directions… infinitely big or small, feels a lot like the way these vast worlds of online games work… there’s a big map (like our universe), but until you actually need to go somewhere, it doesn’t exist… the game just creates that place when it needs to. It would take way too much memory and disk space for it all to be there. What’s the point of generating all of that for some distant galaxy we can barely see? We’ll create it when we get there… which we never will.

Closer to home, as per the words above… this vivid version of reality you hold in your mind; 7.8 billion other people have their own, unique version of it. It’s mind-blowing to think about, and it’s cool that there are words for it. I have this sonder every time I feel onism.

And if this is a simulation, I get the impression someone found some cheat codes and is trying them out on us. Threat of nuclear war? Killer hornets? Pandemic? Massive political upheaval with the world’s biggest superpower? Something new pretty-much every day. Today it’s a new virus in Kazakhstan, potentially worse than COVID-19. Gee, I wonder what this sequence of buttons does…

This unfortunately has the feel of when someone gets bored with a game. You spent some time building villages or planting crops or whatever… you’ve been doing it for a while, but the game has gotten stagnant or boring… so you throw the crazy at it. Storm the villages, burn the crops. Let’s hope that’s not what we’re dealing with… let’s at least hope that if whoever is running the show got bored, there’s that guy behind him watching… and now, saying, “Wait.. wait… seriously, wait… I got this… here, give me control.” Let’s hope… because then we should be good for another 65 million years… before that guy gets bored and sends a big meteor. Or whatever he needs to deal with his own onism at the sonder he sees on earth.

 

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By |2020-10-08T01:21:25-07:00July 10th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Interesting Words, Humour, Sports & Gaming, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |17 Comments
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July 8, 2020

I’ve never been a high-school teacher, but like most people reading this, I spent 5 years on the other side of it. And, like most people, experienced the entire spectrum of really good ones to really bad ones. But one thing they (and we) all knew; there’s an inherent power struggle between the teacher and the class, and it’s delicate. A teacher has to be very careful about playing that balance, especially as it’s twenty-plus students vs. one. Too strict or too mean, and they will lose the respect of the class. On the flip-side, too casual and buddy-buddy and they will also lose the respect… and control.

If you’re a teacher and you’re going to fail, it’s probably better to be over-strict and tough and not care what the students think. At least you’re likely to get results, and who cares about the bad-mouthing that goes on about you outside of class. I had many teachers who were that type. I also had a few, the best ones – who managed to skirt that fine line. They were friendly, relatable and fair… and received the respect due to them. They also got excellent results.

And then there were the few – some that lasted less than a year – that lost the class very near the beginning, and from there, they were doomed. There was no fixing it.

One such teacher that comes to mind was my grade 8 math teacher. He was new to the school, as were we all. But unlike all the other grade-8 teachers, this guy wanted to be our friend… and it didn’t take long for that to melt down, into an hour of anarchy every math class. Those 55 minutes were about 15 minutes of us all yelling “Boring!” in unison every few minutes, 15 minutes of him telling us to shut up… “Quiet guys. Quiet please.”, another 15 minutes of him handing out detention time, and maybe 10 minutes of actual teaching.

His technique for handing out detention was unique; he dished it out 5 minutes at a time. Every noise infraction would net someone 5 minutes, 10 if it was really bad, and he would dutifully write it down in a notebook before continuing to teach… only to be interrupted again moments later. And on Friday, he would read out the list of names and how many minutes everyone had earned. I’m not too proud to say that I was usually on that list, often near the top.

One particular day, we were playing rugby… this teacher had also managed to earn the coaching role for some of the grade 8s; the second and third-tier athletes. In my school, everyone had to play rugby, so… like the whole spectrum of great to awful teachers, there was also that spectrum of rugby players. All the way from world-class down to “he shouldn’t even be dressed to play, let alone out on the field”. I was somewhere in the middle, and on this day, found myself running with the ball, unimpeded, toward the goal line. I rarely found myself in that situation and was already celebrating in my mind… when, out of nowhere, I got tackled… hard.

I should add… in rugby, there is exactly one right way to play, and that is… hard. If you don’t go in as hard as the other guy, you will get hurt. This applies at every level, assuming everyone is pretty-much the same weight. There’s a reason why the world-class players are all monstrously large and very fit; they need to out-class the other guys. In fact, one of my classmates went on to play for the Canadian national team and then professionally, in France. He’s probably reading this, and if he is (hey Rich, what’s up), he’d tell you the same thing – you go in hard.

Except when it’s a full-grown adult vs. a 13-year-old. Said teacher probably could’ve taken a bit off the gas pedal… but he didn’t. And, so… instead of scoring a try, I ended up with a broken arm. It happens, and the teacher felt awful about it, but the rumour that made the rounds was that he’d done it on purpose, to sort of get back at me for ridiculing him in class so often. I don’t believe that for a second; he was a good guy. Too good to be thrown into the wolves with the likes of us, to be honest.

But… that cast on my arm earned me a bit of a free pass for a while. I didn’t change my behaviour in class at all, but when he’d spin around to dish out 5 minutes and see it was me — at that moment casually scratching my head with my broken arm, or making faces like I was in pain — he’d pause, roll his eyes, and turn back around. Until one day, either I overdid it or he’d just had enough… this was maybe 6 weeks later. He turned around angrily, and said something like “OK, Kemeny, that’s enough of this. That’s an hour.”

What? You can’t give me an hour all at once. That’s not fair!

Fair or not, he did… but, I should add, it did little to earn back any respect; from me, or from the rest of the class. He did not return the following year.

Like I said, there comes a tipping point when the respect is gone, and it’s never coming back. And so, as usual, as seems to happen with a lot of what I’m writing about these days, I look south of the border and am noticing something that perhaps is new; perhaps that wasn’t there before. A lot of people – who still have some — are losing respect for the sitting president. It’s important to make that distinction… there’s a huge difference between the actual president… and The Office of the President. This has nothing to do with Republicans vs. Democrats. Or the office of the president. We’re just talking about the man himself. Is he worthy of the respect he feels he’s earned? Worthy of a second term?

Trump is slowly losing his core… his unshakable supporters. After his niece’s book comes out, he’ll lose more. My personal view is that the U.S. can certainly survive another 4 years of a Republican-led government; Democrat too, for that matter. But what it perhaps can’t survive is another 4 years of Trump. The country is pretty fractured at the moment, and it’s telling that it’s taking steps to fix itself in spite of the president and his desires, not because of them. He’s lost the majority of the people, and the people realize what they need to do to fix what’s broken.

But healing takes time. My arm took two months. The U.S. will take years… but it needs to be given a chance.

For those who don’t want to see a second term, and can actually do something about it… and are politically strategizing their next moves… my advice: Go in hard. It’s the only way to win and not get hurt.

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By |2020-10-08T01:21:26-07:00July 8th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |15 Comments
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Day 99 – June 23, 2020

I’ve written before about how sometimes, new words are needed…. to capture an essence that’s only describable by a lengthy paragraph. It’s great to see that such words often already exist.

Here are a few:

Vemödalen: (noun) The frustration of photographing something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist.

On the surface, this comes to mind when you’re at the Leaning Tower of Pisa or Niagara Falls or any other world-class tourist trap… I suppose these days it doesn’t matter; digital pictures cost nothing. But for those of us who’ve been around long enough to remember that pictures came in expensive packs of 24 or 36, it’s a different story. You used to put a lot of thought before pressing the shutter button. And once those pictures were taken, it was several days before you could see the results. As you might imagine, taking pictures of your food wasn’t really a thing. Neither was taking 150 selfies to get the perfect one. Photography is a totally different experience these days, one we take for granted. But there’s more depth to that definition, and it touches on the entire experience that ends up being encapsulated in that photograph. Especially in an aforementioned tourist trap… where we’re trying to capture something we’d hope is unique to us, but deep down you know you’re just one of the insignificant many trying to capture the same thing so many others have tried. It’s an interesting duality, trying to be unique in a sea of similarity.

Occhiolism: (noun) The awareness of the smallness of your perspective.

I’m a good example… I’m here, happy to share my thoughts, but I’m aware I have a unique point of view; it makes sense for me, and I can defend it to the death, but there are those who’ll disagree and have their own points. I can probably argue their sides too, because I often understand them; I just vehemently disagree with them. But I’m well-aware it’s my unique perspective… one that’s the result of my own life experiences… and if I were able to visualize that, perhaps snap a picture of it, no doubt I’d feel a bit of vemödalen… because there’s nothing so special about it.

Liberosis: (noun) The desire to care less about things.

Everyone has their list of what’s important and what isn’t. The tops and bottoms of those lists are easy to define, or at least… should be. Your close family, top of the list. The idiot who cut you off and caused your blood pressure to blow up and caused you to yell a profanity… near the bottom. It’s the stuff in the middle, the stuff that could go either way, that often confounds us. Maybe we end up worrying too much or wasting a lot of time on something that ultimately isn’t so important. I try to apply a rule… don’t spend more than N minutes right now on something that won’t matter in N months. Easier said than done, perhaps due to my occhiolism — and the inability to be truly objective.

Combining all three of those is a good summary of my thinking these days, as I watch the world in what could only be described as a bad movie script. The sort where the writer walks into the meeting with a potential producer, and is laughed out of the office, being told to either write something that’s truly real, or pure science-fiction/fantasy. You can’t have both. A president too narcissistic to see or care that he’s destroying the fabric of his country? A global pandemic that many people aren’t taking seriously? Come on man… why not throw in some out-of-control wildfires in Australia, a near nuclear war with Iran and, for a bit of extra seasoning and comic relief, murder hornets. Get real.

So here we are… I think like many of you, I shake my head at what I’m seeing around me and am frustrated that the people who are supposed to be responsible and in charge and making such a mess of it. It’s not a movie I’d like to see, let alone be a part of. This whole thing is certainly not playing out like a Hollywood movie; maybe one of those dark foreign films, with a lot of black-and-white cut scenes of the past, hallucinogenic, colourful dream sequences, and, of course, lots of fancy, obscure words. The whole thing sometimes adds up to a worthwhile experience. In this case though, when we’ve come to the conclusion that the movie sucks, we can’t just walk out.

One last word:

Énouement: (noun) The bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self.

Yeah, let’s all learn that one… you think it’s relevant now… just wait a few years. Or maybe weeks.

 

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By |2020-10-08T01:22:24-07:00June 23rd, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Science of COVID-19, Interesting Words, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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