Mindflight

“F” for Effort

A friend of mine has a daughter. He told me how she just won a foot race at school. She got a trophy for her win. There was a problem though. “It doesn’t mean anything that I got a trophy,” she said. “Everyone else got one too, even the ones who walked for half the race.”

I know why we do this to these kids – it’s out of the desire not to leave anyone out. But it also takes away the desire to succeed! If everyone gets the same reward, what’s the point in trying? We don’t want the kids who lost to feel bad. Isn’t a little bit of that good for them, though? Feeling bad when they don’t win will help them try harder next time. We don’t have to rub it in, we can be encouraging, but giving them a reward for losing isn’t going to make them want to try any harder.

If we remove all competition, all we are doing is taking away the joy of those who tried hard and won. We aren’t making the losers feel any better. They still know they lost, only now they feel pitied and talked down to. Ultimately, not only does this backward thinking kill the drive to succeed, but it drives everyone down, successful people and failures alike. Lack of competitiveness has hampered me throughout my life, made me less able to succeed. Now that we’ve looked at what the real result of our actions is, why would we want to do this to our future generations?

Why science is not a religion

Science and Techology

I’ve seen several articles and opinion pieces about why science is a religion and a belief structure. It is not. That’s bunk! Here’s why.

Science is simply the process of testing ideas to see if they are true or not. It is the search for objective truth. A true scientist does not consider belief as part of the equation. They observe measurable facts, form an idea based on those facts, then test that idea to see if that idea might be correct. They make sure their findings are repeatable and accurate and if they are not the researchers throw it out and try again.

Here’s the important part: if they are proved to be wrong, they form a new idea, or adjust the old one, and try again. A true scientist doesn’t cling to ideas that are false. They don’t say “maybe this could disprove my theory, but I’m going to believe it anyway.” If they did, they would be engaging in religious thinking. Religion is when you believe in something without hard evidence.

The real problem here is people who claim to be scientists, and make all the right noises, and wear labcoats and everything, yet cling to their beliefs and preconceived notions even when they find evidence that disproves their claims. It is that subset of false scientists that gives the whole scientific method a bad name. Luckily, there is a good way to tell a false scientist from a true scientist.

Ask a question.

The true scientist will say “I don’t know for sure but there is evidence pointing to this.”

The false scientist will say “I definitely know, and I will argue with you if you disagree.”

America’s first Transcontinental Airline

Thoughts About Life

Written November 1, 2014

With everyone thinking so much about the news about SpaceShipTwo, I thought it would be nice if we looked back at the history of another group of pioneers. The early days of commercial air travel.

Transcontinental Air Transport was originally founded by Clement Melville Keys in 1928. Keys was a financier, sometimes referred to as the Father of commercial aviation in America. He worked closely with Charles Lindbergh to design routes throughout the continental US, founding several airports and building vital infrastructure such as markers for pilots along the way.

In those days, passengers flew in Ford Tri-motors, and traveled by train during the night time part of the journey. The trip from New York to Los Angeles took 51 hours and cost $338 one way. Of course there were many who made fun of the idea, saying that TAT stood for Take a Train. There were setbacks, including a crash in New Mexico in September, 1929 that killed all hands and happened only months after the airline started offering transcontinental service. That made many doubt the safety of air travel.

This was one of the first airlines that specialized in passenger travel. Previously, many had focused on air mail. It was also one of the first to serve meals in flight. TAT merged with Maddux Airlines in 1929, then with Western Air Lines in 1930, eventually becoming TWA.

Now, there are other, older airlines, such as the Dutch KLM, founded in 1920. But TAT was the first transcontinental airline in the US. People made fun of it, said it was too expensive, said it wasn’t practical and no one would use it.

I think the same is true for private space flight. Aviation did very little till it was privatized and opened up to competition. That’s when it truly bloomed.

Are compliments always lies?

Art of Womanhood, Personal Growth

I sometimes wonder what is going through people’s heads. I see one person give a compliment, then the person being compliment thanks them, then the person who gave the compliment says something like “I was just telling the truth.”

Think about that. Could this point to a belief that a compliment is empty flattery? Put more bluntly, do many of us believe that compliments or positive statements are lies? Perhaps it is an attempt at humility. Isn’t it an insult to the person who is recognizing something positive?

Next time I get a compliment, I think I’ll try something different. “Thank you.”

I was Rickrolled by Yahoo!

Jokes and Humor

Today I was cleaning up a link list on a writer’s website I maintain. I had an old Geocities site on there so I went to it in order to see if it was still up. I went to the site, and found that it had a note from Yahoo that said “Geocities closed in 2009” and had a video of the 1987 Rick Astley song, “Never Gonna Give you Up.” I laughed so hard! People used to do that all the time as a prank. They’d trick others into clicking on links that led to that song.

How many others remember “Rickrolling?”

Inventing Worlds

Tips for Artists, Tips for Writers

When I was younger, I read a book that absolutely fascinated me. I checked it out from the library again and again. It was all about creating imaginary kingdoms and building them in miniature form with old cans, oatmeal containers, cardboard boxes, and such. I loved that book. I remember turning a big table into my “kingdom,” and all the people who lived there worshiped the Great God Tagamet. They were somewhat inspired by ancient Egypt, as I recall.

I still enjoy creating worlds, though usually I make maps of them or write stories, rather than creating miniatures. When I wrote my novel, “The Dice of Fate,” I had a lot of fun figuring out how things would be. What climate was I going to choose for the area my story was in? What type of plant life? What type of animals? As it happened, I chose a mountainous area with a wide valley and a river running through it. The trees were mostly deciduous, though there were some conifers too, and there were ancient ruins and a mysterious Road that had been there for ten thousand years or more.

Once you know what kind of place you are imagining, you can have lots of fun deciding about civilizations, trade routes, where resources are, how people get from place to place, what kind of agriculture they have, what kind of technology, and on and on. The possibilities are literally endless!

What to do with this information? Write a story, draw a picture, create a roleplaying scenario, make a miniature, or just dream. Imagination keeps the mind young.

Meter is like the recipe for a beautiful poem

Exploring Poetry, Tips for Writers

It seems to me that meter and rhyme in poetry is like a recipe for beauty. It’s like saying “although a poem can take any form, if you follow these rules you have a greater likelihood of writing a nicely structured poem that will be pleasing to the ear.” I used to think of the rules of the various kinds of poetry as useless and arbitrary, and perhaps they are, but there are some distinct advantages as well. For example, it’s really easy to love a well structured sonnet.

One of my favorite forms of sonnet uses three quartets and a couplet, and iambic pentameter. I haven’t had the guts to write one, but I will one day. I like that form of sonnet because I understand it and because it really sounds good to me. So much of poetic structure is really fairly understandable once you break it down. It’s remembering what is called what that always trips me up!

Here’s an example. “Iambic pentameter” just means a line where there are five beats to it. The “beats” are made by the stress on the syllables. Example:

the BEATS are MADE by ALL the STRESS in WORDS.

If you stressed the syllables as shown, that would be pentameter. “Pent” just means five, like pentagon. That is the foundation of a lot of poetry and quite a bit of what Shakespeare wrote. Maybe I’ll try writing a sonnet now!

The Case of the Oddly Egglike Yogurt

Jokes and Humor

When I was young, my family and I prided ourselves on recycling by reusing old containers for odd purposes. I still do this to this day. Hummus tubs and cottage cheese containers make admirable substitutes for Tupperware. However, I can remember one time when it also made for a really funny story.

At the time we had hens, who laid heavily in the summer, far more than a family of three could eat. So we froze them. Those single serving yogurt cups made the perfect sized container to freeze two or three shelled eggs in and at one point our freezer was full of them.

Enter my friend, who was more conventional in his upbringing. He said “I’m hungry,” one day, and for some reason started digging through the freezer. “Can I have some yogurt?” he asked.

“That’s eggs,” I said.

“No, it’s yogurt,” he maintained. He opened the container, looked inside.

“Ew! Eggs!”

Told you.

Tales From the Desk Side: 2

Jokes and Humor

Sometimes I have to deal with a certain amount of confusion.

—

Me, doing greeting: May I ask your name please?

Member: (first name)

Me: may I ask your lastname please? Member (after pause): (…last name)

—

Me: how may I help you?

Member: I need more.

Me: May I ask what medication you need?

Member: I need more.

Me: In order to find the medication, I need to know which one…

Member: um…. medication name (finally).

Me: would you like me to bill you, or put this on your card? Member: Yes.

Me: I gave you two options, which would you like?

Member: um… the card…

—

Oy!

Lentils a la Roh

Food and Cooking, Healthy Living

This is really easy, nourishing, and flavorful.

1 pound brown lentils 1 pound chicken hearts and/or gizzards 1 Roma tomato per serving a bunch of water olive oil 2 or more caldo de pollo chicken bouillon cubes (the oily kind, not the dry salty kind) lemon pepper spice olive oil

Start the lentils cooking in pot with two or more large cubes of bouillon.
Lightly fry gizzards and hearts in olive oil with lemon pepper to taste. Let meat cool and chop, then add meat and remaining oil to cooking lentils. Cook lentils thoroughly and let cool a bit. Chop one Roma tomato per serving and add to bowl of lentil and meat mix.

Save rest for lunches.