SEVEN DAYS A WEEK.

 

Image credit: Pinterest - author unknown (emulating Charles Schulz).

As I come to terms with my recent retirement, one day at a time, searching for meaning and losing track of what day it is, I came to wonder why a week is seven days.  I did a little research, although I had an inkling that the Torah and then the Bible may have had something to do with it.

It seems that our seven-day week arose in Mesopotamia some four thousand years ago.  I quote from: Chronicles of chronology: The power of seven,” Economist, 2001-12-20: - 

"The Sumerians … worshipped seven gods whom they could see in the sky. Reverently, they named the days of their week for these seven heavenly bodies … For the Sumerians themselves, seven was a very special number. They conceived of a seven-branched Tree of Life, and of seven heavens … In spite of all that, Ur’s seventh day was not holy. On the contrary, it represented danger and darkness. It was risky to do anything at such a time. So it became a day of rest. Ever since the time when Abraham trekked westward from Ur, Mesopotamian influences had helped to form Hebrew traditions."

 My guess is that the Sumerians concept of time influenced the Hebrew Bible's creation story, and the Christian Bible.  No other religions' creation stories limit it to seven days, or six, if you will, plus a day of rest.

Anyone acquainted with the Christian bible knows about its version of the creation:  it starts with, "In the beginning", and goes on to say that God took six days to make the heavens and the Earth, and on the seventh he rested.  It doesn't say why God decided to create the universe and, apparently, he didn't have a beginning, which implies that time only started to exist when God took up the hobby of Creation.

With time, however, civilizations imposed the names of their own gods on days of the week, once seven days became the norm.  I could go into how each day of the week came to get its name in English, French or German, etc., but basically, they can all be traced back to gods, Roman, German, Norse and so on.

It is interesting that other segments of time, such as a month and a year, were not defined by the religious aspect but by the natural movement of the Earth's rotation around the Sun and the moon's rotation around the Earth.  That's what makes the number seven, a unnatural choice for a segment of time.  But woe to those in history who have tried to change it by making the 'week' longer, from the Egyptians to Napoleon.  They did not have long term success.  The seven-day week is, to my knowledge, now globally accepted and religion doesn't come into it.  Well, it does, in that different religions have different days of rest, but still incorporated into the seven-day allotment.

What I was also contemplating about the week, was the different feelings each day of the week elicits in us.  Each day has a different vibe for each of us for personal reasons and based on life experience.  I think that we all have favourite, and not so favourite, days.  This is, no doubt, because of the pattern of life, work and recreation that the seven-day segment of time creates.  I also feel that we pace ourselves according to this arbitrary slice of time.  Songs are dedicated to certain days of the week and the emotional effect they produce in us.

Monday has a bad reputation simply because it's the start of the working week, but it does motivate us.  We glimpse the shining lights of Saturday and Sunday in the distance and work towards them.  "Rainy Days and Mondays (always get me down)", by the Carpenters pretty much sums up most people's attitude to the poor benighted day.

Tuesday manages to keep its head under the radar of being typecast as we settle into the working week and put at least one day behind us.  Wednesday, I have only recently discovered, is known as Hump Day.  We've reached the top of the hill at mid-working-week and can now coast downhill.  Thursday we're almost at the finishing line but not quite.  There is a restrained sense of optimism about it, but by Friday, the horse has broken into a canter, and nothing will hold it back.

Friday has always been, Thank God It's Friday, even if you aren't religious.  It's like a fever that's broken after the 'flu.  It's time for whoopee.  

As a child, I loved Sundays.  Saturday was the weekend too, of course, but Sunday seemed special somehow.  Dad would drag me off to church on that day regularly, but it was our time together.  My mother was a Church of England but, basically, just Christian.  Dad, on the other hand, was the product of a devout Irish Catholic mother who died before I was born.  Dad was, simply, the nicest man on the planet in my estimation, and that remains my opinion to this day.

Once home, he would read the Sunday paper and would give me the comics section from the middle.  I would read this as I lay sprawled on the living room floor from the age of five.  Sunday would roll on in its salubrious and unhurried way and Dad would usually end up mowing the lawn, then napping on the sofa.  We would usually watch a matinee on television after lunch in winter.  In summer we might go to the beach.  My mother was a fabulous entertainer and, often, Sundays included guests to a barbeque that Dad cooked on the patio accompanied by salads, baked potatoes in their jackets and ratatouille cooked by Mum.  All this would be eaten overlooking the beautiful bay of Pittwater north of Sydney.

These were the happiest days of my life, and so I rate Sundays as my best day of the week.  They were also filled, eventually, with sadness as I had to return to my hated boarding school on Monday for the week until Friday and, for me, these days were a torment until I left school.  I no longer attend church on Sunday.  Nature is my church, and I haven't found one with as much God in it as the small one at Mona Vale, on the northern beaches of Sydney that Dad and I attended together.

It's now hard enough for me not working weekdays let alone trying to remember what day it is.  A rhythm has been removed from my life that I found quite satisfactory.  It's good when things have a beginning, a middle and an end.  It gives one an anchor, a map and a destination.  Time may not be tangible, but it sure feels like it, forgive the pun.  Perhaps that's an interesting thing to note about human nature; we can take something abstract and give it form.

I'm now trying to find something to fill the form.  I had a pattern to my life but now I need a passion to work on.  When I find it, I'm going to apply my pattern to it again so I can get my rhythm back.

Wish me luck.

END 

DREAMS: THE BRAIN'S SCRAPBOOK.

Credit: Dreamstime stock image

I am amazed at what my brain gets up to at night.  I'm also astonished at how creative it is.  Sometimes it comes up with amazing art and sculpture that I wish I could remember and recreate when I am awake.  It also creates places that recur regularly, with variations, in my dreams, and others that are exotic places I have never visited but must exist somewhere in some reality because they are so extraordinary.

I often wonder if we exist on different planes and visit them in our dreams.  I know one thing for sure, I travel in my dreams, which is just as well as I haven't traveled anywhere interesting on this plane for ages.

Many people don't remember their dreams, but I do.  I have the equivalent of a movie marathon every night and the plots are all different.  My dreams sometimes include my parents, who died many years ago now.  In these dreams I find them together, living in a different place each time.  Some places are variations of houses they did live in or of an apartment they once lived in.  I realize that they are dead, but in a living sense, when I am visiting them and glad to be able to spend time with them.  Sometimes they will take me on a vacation overseas or a cruise.

I often dream of my son when he was young.  In these, I am usually trying to protect him from something, or I am carrying him.  Whatever occurs, I am enjoying him being small again.  The major recurring theme of my nightly movies is my childhood home, which I loved.  I am so often there that I sometimes think that I have returned, and my parents haven't yet sold it.  A strange variation of this is that they have sold it but have remained as caretakers until the new owners arrive.  When this happens, I am trying to persuade them to buy it back.  One of the great regrets of my life is that they sold this house in its beautiful surrounds when I was in my thirties.

Last night I dreamed of it again but this time I saw a sign showing a future development with three, six-storey apartments was to be built on the huge block of land next door, which also overlooks the bay.  In fact, homes have been built there, but the land was subdivided into large blocks and the houses suit the surroundings.  In my dream, these had been bulldozed to make way for the units.  I was beside myself with horror but knew I couldn't do anything about it.  In the meantime, such is the way of dreams, I saw my first koala in the wild (as opposed to a zoo or wildlife reserve) in our huge jacaranda tree and was trying to take its photo.  I know from Google Earth that the tree is no longer there, but my dream is true to my history living in that spot.  The dream moved on from there to something involving possums and park rangers, with me trying to help them before I woke up.  I actually have never seen a koala in the wild even though, by odds, I should have as I live in Australia.

I have travelled to London a few times in my dreams, and once in actuality.  It's not that I am particularly impressed by that city.  I'm not, but recently I dreamed of a London that was fantastic.  It was obviously in the future and the buildings, roads and bridges, that I observed during my taxi journey to wherever I was going, were futuristic and stunning.  My inner designer and architect absolutely gob smacked me on this occasion.  If I could actually be this creative, I'd be rich and famous.  I'm not, but my brain sure is.  This leads me to wonder how my brain does this.  There are two potential explanations: 1. There is another plane of existence, and I am seeing an alternative reality, or, 2. There are parts of the brain we cannot usually access that are more creative, intelligent and that possess foresight.

I speak of foresight because I have had three definite premonitions during my lifetime.  I rule out coincidence because there is no way, in these three instances, that it could have been, nor were they based on fore knowledge.  One dream occurred when I was fourteen.  I dreamed of an event that made the news, and I dreamed about it before it happened.  I heard my father discussing an accident involving astronauts with another man outside church one Sunday and I almost froze to the spot.  When we were alone, I asked dad about it and when it had happened.  It had occurred three or four days after I had dreamed it.  I was really shocked.  I told my father about the dream, and he just said the something along the lines of: "You must have heard about it and forgotten."  I assured him I hadn't.  In fact, I was at boarding school during the week and didn't get news.  I also remember the dream, which was visual and upsetting.

The accident had occurred at Cape Canaveral on January 27, 1967, when there was a flash fire in the Apollo 1 crew capsule during a launch rehearsal and the three astronauts died.  My dream was slightly different.  I saw a rocket on the launch pad that was just starting to launch but failed and fell over sideways to the ground.  I knew the three astronauts in it were dead.  Then a little boy started to run toward the rocket, from where I was visualizing this, crying, "Daddy".   I also had no idea there was going to be a launch and, while the dream wasn't exact, it was timely, the rocket was on the launch pad and three astronauts died.  You can imagine me, at fourteen, never having had a premonitory dream and finding out about it from the discussion of a news item.  Needless to say, I never forgot.  

The second premonitory dream occurred in my thirties   and wasn't newsworthy but personal and stunned my husband when he found out.  He and I had separated for a few months and then got back together.  We were heading to his friend's place, who I also knew, but hadn't spoken to during the separation.  I told my husband on the way there that I'd dreamed that his friend had turned his carport into an enclosed room and written computer programs on the walls.  My husband was driving and actually turned quite pale.  He looked at me stunned before telling me his friend was starting up an I.T. business from home in his converted carport.  I managed to creep out my husband on a few other occasions with predictions I just got from 'vibes' rather than dreams.

The third involved our break-up and I won't include it.  There were others, not as memorable and having had these dreams, I'm not sure I want more.

In my youth through to my twenties, I would have a recurring nightmare that I was on a beach with my family and a huge wave was coming and we had to run from it.  There was no way we could.  I hated this dream and, thankfully, it hasn't repeated for decades.  The year before the 2006 tsunami, I had a tidal wave dream three times in a year.  It was different because I escaped the wave in the dream.

Another dream a lot of people have in common is that of needing help and trying to run, but not being able to, or to cry for help, but can't.  About twenty years ago, during a dream, while trying to scream for help, I finally managed to, but really screamed.  Ever since, I have been able to talk or scream out loud in my dreams.  Apparently, I could wake the neighbourhood.  Interestingly, since going off an antidepressant three years ago, I've stopped yelling.  I'm told that when I did, I sounded like the girl in The Exorcist.

I love flying dreams; that is, ones where I am able to fly, where I lift of the ground and float above everyone.  Every now and then, this dream convinces me I can fly and I'm very disappointed when I wake up.  My two least favourite dreams do recur with variations.  One involves toilets, the other Funnelweb spiders.

Toilet dreams involve me either having to go to the toilet where I am visibly seen or, even worse, using a really, really disgustingly dirty toilet.  The Funnelweb spider, one of the world's deadliest, is native to Australia, particularly around Sydney and its surrounding suburbs.  My childhood and young adult home was in Church Point near the Northern Beaches of Sydney.  We had Funnelwebs in garden rockeries and occasionally, one would wander across the yard at night when looking for a mate.  I dream that they find their way into my bedroom.  We try to kill them but there are more.  Happily, none ever got into my bedroom but, enough said, they terrified me and now, more so, in my dreams.  They are big, black, hairy and aggressive.  Also, happily, there is now antivenom for them but I now live in Queensland, which is free of them, except for a variety on Fraser Island (now called K'gari).

Dreams are completely out of our control to manipulate, and I'm always surprised that, night after night, they can surprise me with new plots.  I may be getting tired about the routine and ho-hum of everyday life and less excited about the things that used to excite me, but my dreams are capable of new and refreshing takes on life every night, sometimes scary, mostly not.  What I have learned, however, and it's taken me this long to realize it, is that a full moon brings nightmares with it.  I put up with these as long as I get the trip to the otherworld of my imagination, the side of me I do not know and who has a remarkable talent for inventiveness.  Either that or it's taken on an interesting twist on psychoanalysis.

END

HOBBIES, OR HOW TO BE BORED PRODUCTIVELY.

The top of my faux Marquetry box

When I was a child, I found it easy to keep occupied.  If I wasn't at school, I would play with dolls, play make-believe and draw prolifically.  Outside I would do headstands, handstands and cartwheels on our expansive lawn.  The rest of the time I was up our jacaranda tree, which had four trunks with numerous forks to perch in and pretend I was in a castle.  I climbed this tree for years, hung from its branches by my arms or legs and never, not once, fell from it.  We had another jacaranda, but it was larger, with a single trunk and not suitable for climbing.  It was too big and, when I did venture up it, I would receive large welts from hairy caterpillars that burned and stung.

As I grew, I started roller skating on our, also, expansive concrete areas.  We had no fences in our neighbourhood and I would skate over to my cousin's house two doors over.  We did build a billycart to ride down the concrete driveway that led to the road by the bay, but it was long, steep and somewhat perilous.  We would also hike through the lantana to the abandoned house next door on the other side of our property.  We never encountered a snake but often ended up with ticks.

My father gave me an old box brownie when I was seven and taught me how to develop film and make prints in black and white.  I gave that up some years later when I was given an instamatic. 

The sad thing about adulthood is that, apart from drawing and photography, most of the activities I undertook are the preserve of children.  We must find other ways to occupy ourselves in our leisure time when we grow up.  Many people turn to creative pursuits, while others challenge their bodies with exercise, hiking, climbing, biking and different sports.

I'm not that into sports, although I love tennis and want to take up golf again.  The trouble is, now that I'm retired, I have to fill every day.  When I became an adult, I discovered that I had a propensity to extreme boredom, to the extent that I can be bored while actually doing something.  Plenty of people can be bored while they are working, but that depends on their job and the same goes for me, but I have to be really involved in what I'm doing to not experience boredom.

As such, over the course of my adult life, I have attempted numerous creative pastimes to fill the void in my leisure time.  Of course, if I am travelling somewhere, I am never bored, but I lack the money these days to go anywhere different often enough.  Only writing and travelling assuage my boredom.

The other day, I was pondering just how many crafts I have tried in order to find my passion.  I believe I started shortly after I married with macrame.  Then I tried string art.  I made a few nice gifts with these but then gave them up.  I also tried my hand at pottery.  It didn't excite me one bit.

After that I completely renovated a house: making curtains, wallpapering, painting, putting laminate on bench tops, making vanity units from scratch (former husband is a dab hand at carpentry, as his father was one, and he taught me the basics).  I tiled a floor and the kitchen wall above the benches.  I should have stuck with renovating, but I wanted a proper job.  Pity, we sold the house for twice what we bought it after one year and I did most of the work as husband was at his job.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I had become very good at drawing and portraits in pencil thanks to having a father who was an artist.  In my twenties, in order to get into a college to study Industrial Design, I did two extremely good portraits in pastel as they wanted an example of my artistic ability.  Strangely, they never asked to see them.  I got into the course, but soon dropped out, however, I still treasure the two portraits, one of which I have and the other belongs to my former husband.

Why, you ask, didn't I continue to do more?  Because I am like a Mexican jumping bean and can't settle.  Besides, I wanted to write, and it still took me ten years to get around to writing my first novel.  When I became pregnant, I took classes in watercolour.  I have really never been into painting.  I also tried floristry.  I should include sewing as a hobby, but I have been able to sew since I was a teenager, making some of my own clothes, and this has continued throughout my life.  I also used to knit.  I love knitting but I have jumpers, both bought and made, that are thirty years old because in Queensland, although it can get cold, it does not get thick jumper cold often enough to warrant it.

Through the years I have tried decoupage, folk art and fake marquetry using paint.  This has left me with some nice bits and pieces.

I have made simple loose cushion covers for chair seats and, after that, took the bit between my teeth and reupholstered the seats of my parents' dining chairs.  This required disassembly, new webbing, fabric, cording and a staple gun.  I was very proud of this achievement but don't wish to make it a pastime.  I have eyed my armchair recliner that needs recovering but, having read the mechanics of disassembly, don't want to lose my fingers or wreck my back.  This will have to be a job for a professional.

A reupholstered dining chair

Most recently, since retiring, apart from looking for lucrative, or any, employment, I have tried to learn a new craft so that I can sell something alongside my partner at craft markets.  He has become a masterful leather worker and makes truly beautiful leather handbags for men and women, wallets, and belts.  I feel ashamed that I cannot channel myself to a task with his sheer concentration and all-consuming passion.  He has learned everything he can and will work into the wee hours of the night.

In my quest to sell something beside him at markets, I have tried putting images on candles.  There are two ways to do this.  One way is easy if you can find the right materials, but then the plastic on which the image is printed may give off harmful fumes when the candle burns.  It looks great though.  The second way involves printing the image on tissue paper and attaching it to the candle using a hair dryer or a heat gun to melt it on.  No fume problem here but watch out for your hands under the dryer.  Looks good, but not as good as the other way.  I now have a surplus of white pillar candles.

Next, I learned how to make lampshades.  Not just to recover lampshades, but to make them.  This took some research and Youtubing, and then the more difficult task of finding a certain product to stick the chosen fabric to in order to stiffen it.  It turned out that this wasn't a cheap hobby, but I have two beautiful new lampshades for my exquisite Chinese red, ginger jar shaped lamps bought in Hong Kong forty years ago.  Making lampshades to order, however, may prove problematic, and I'm still thinking about it.

My lampshade

Meantime I have made three little, simple leather frog stuffed toys for my grandchildren.  They managed to damage a cotton one I had that they played with, so I copied it in leather and stuffed it with rice.  I've also sold two at markets, but they are very unwieldy to make.

The list of things people take up as hobbies is endless, and one person's passion is another person's yawn.  The list of hobbies is endless but the ones I haven't tried, I wouldn't want to try as I've thought of every possible one so far and ruled out those that don't appeal to me.

I'm taking a short break from hobby seeking to push my latest novel to literary agents and publishers.  I really need another house to renovate.

END

RIBBIT

THE SELF AND WHERE TO FIND IT.

 

Around seventy years ago, someone I call Me was born.  As far as I'm concerned, I'm still that same person; the same self-aware person that I've been since, well, since I've been aware of myself.  The memories I've stored up for all those years, although they may not be exact and full replicas of events, are still mine and don't vary too much.  I have memories that I'm very fond of, and others that I'm not so fond of.  Nonetheless, they're all there in the melting pot that is my brain.

One of those memories, or titbits of learning that I've picked up along the way, is that the cells of our body die off regularly and are replaced.  Now that's a pretty broad statement and lacks any academic parameters, but it made me think how, if the self is contained in cells, it remains the same when the cells it is made of are constantly regenerated.

Dash it, I decided, this means research and so I began, and, what started out as a simple exercise, became complicated.  Now I don't read full tomes to do research, I like to glean pertinent facts, and, in my research, I discovered that different types of cells have different life cycles.

According to Scientific American: "About a third of our body mass is fluid outside of our cells, such as plasma, plus solids, such as the calcium scaffolding of bones. The remaining two thirds is made up of roughly 30 trillion human cells. About 72 percent of those, by mass, are fat and muscle, which last an average of 12 to 50 years, respectively. But we have far more, tiny cells in our blood, which live only three to 120 days, and lining our gut, which typically live less than a week. Those two groups therefore make up the giant majority of the turnover. About 330 billion cells are replaced daily, equivalent to about 1 percent of all our cells. In 80 to 100 days, 30 trillion will have replenished—the equivalent of a new you."  April 1, 2021

Which is exactly why I wonder why Me hasn't had numerous incarnations, but remains the same old Me.  This meant that I had to study neurons, which I thought is what makes up the custard of our brain.  But it's not just neurons.

Next, from the Dana Foundation, Authors: Elizabeth A. Weaver II, Hilary H. Doyle, August 8, 2019:

"The brain is a mosaic made up of different cell types, each with their own unique properties.  The most common brain cells are neurons and non-neuron cells called glia.  The average adult human brain contains approximately 100 billion neurons, and just as many-if not more- glia.  Although neurons are the most famous brain cells, both neurons and glial cells are necessary for proper brain function."

But that's not all.  The interesting point to note about neurons comes from The Harvard Gazette and a talk given by W.A. Harris and Joshua Sanes, director of the Center for Brain Science at Harvard, May 11, 2022:

"Adult neurons survive a lifetime and remain malleable for several years."

However, "New brain cells are continually produced in the hippocampus and subventricular zone, replenishing these brain regions throughout life."  Fred Gage, PhD, president and professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. 15 April, 2020.

So, enough excerpts taken from respected sources and brilliant minds, from which I've produced a soupcon of pertinent facts regarding cells and their lifespans.  It certainly wouldn't do for a thesis but gives me something to go on.

I wonder how many cells, of whatever kind, make up the self in our brains.  I suspect they must be lifelong neurons, but as yet, no one has pinpointed the region in the brain in which our self hides out.  Perhaps it isn't in one region but is comprised of a number of regions networking with each other.  It is a very odd thing that we cannot figure out the location of our very ego.  I feel that mine is somewhere towards the forefront of my brain in the frontal lobe.  I don't feel like I'm coming from the sides of my brain or the rear but, of course, I may be mistaken.  When you think about it, the retina of the eye sees the world upside down and then the brain turns it right side up for us.  In the same way the self may be in hiding somewhere else in the brain and, somehow, beamed to our frontal lobe.

On a slight, but relevant, detour; I once had a wonderful doctor, a general practitioner.  She studied Medicine in England and then specialized as an anaesthetist.  She eventually moved to Australia and, to practice her specialization, would have had to retrain here so she decided to work as a general practitioner as Australia accepted her level of training for this.  During one of our conversations, I must have mentioned brain surgery, I no longer remember why, and she wrinkled her nose at the thought.  She then said something to the effect that she couldn't have stood being a brain surgeon, that the brain is like custard and, I deduced, this made it a very difficult thing to deal with.

So, somewhere in this custard, the self and all its minions reside.  Basically, I think of it as a chemical and electrical soup, or custard if you will.  In fact, it's a fatty custard, being made up of at least 60 percent fat and fatty acids are crucial to our brain's performance.  No wonder we often get cravings.  We are being driven by an ego that doesn't care how it looks.  It just wants fuel.  It doesn't care about our hips or waist.

Given the brain's custardy nature, it is also no wonder that neurologists and surgeons have to stick electric probes into it to discover what part of it is doing what to which.  It is rather interesting that the part of us that thinks, at this stage, defies our ability to analyze it.  I mean, we're in the thick of it, it is us, but we don't comprehend how it works.

All power to the brain, I say, because, when we do figure it out, we (not me personally) are going to try and copy it or fiddle with it in ways not to do with its health.  Humanity has a bad habit of thinking that its level of progress indicates that it has the ability to interfere with a system way smarter than it is and based on millions of years of evolution.  It's fine if they're trying to save a life; it's not so fine if they're trying to alter things for the sake of it.

It will be a bit like giving your seven-year-old some tools and telling him/her to tinker with your car's engine, find out how it works and try and improve it.  Personally, myself and I will be happy to hide out in the labyrinth of my custard and see out my time before this happens.

END

ADVENTURE: IS IT WORTH THE RISK, OR EVEN ENJOYABLE?

Today, June 23, 2023, begins with news that a submersible carrying five adventurers to view the wreck of the Titanic deep in the Atlantic Ocean imploded on its way down, killing all on board.  They not only paid a very high price to go on the expedition, they paid the ultimate price.

All were wealthy people who could afford to follow their dreams but, honestly, why would anyone want to stuff themselves inside an uncomfortable death trap to view the remnant of a one hundred-and-eleven-year-old disaster lying so deep that no natural light can't reach it?  Obviously, these people did, and it is terribly sad that their quest went so awry.

This is the second tragedy in the last three weeks resulting from people trying to accomplish the extraordinary.  Last month an Australian man succumbed to altitude sickness after summiting Mount Everest.  Seventeen years earlier he had suffered spinal cord injuries in a car accident and had to learn to walk again.  Three years ago, he had another spinal procedure followed by rehab and wanted to prove he was still capable of doing anything he wanted.  He certainly succeeded, but at what cost?

I'm not here to judge.  Such people are entitled to do what they want and they show extraordinary motivation, but I wonder what their real quest is.  For some reason, I suspect that they are their own Titanics or mountains.   What is this need to push the boundaries?  We can all benefit from a challenge, but why do some people feel they have to outdo the challenges other people set themselves?

It is a strange thing, nay ludicrous, to see photos of recent ascents of Everest where there are climbers, over fifty or so of them, literally queueing for their turn to reach the summit.  Now, how special do you feel accomplishing something that involves queueing in a long line such as at a theme park, not to mention that you are paying around $50 thousand dollars for the privilege?

Queue to summit Mt Everest

Since the year 2000, we've seen people trying to break all kinds of records.  Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian, jumped from a hot air balloon 39 kilometers above the Nevada desert with a parachute and not only broke the record for the highest ever freefall, but the sound barrier as well.  Such an exercise requires a lot of money as well as a lot of skydiving experience.

Steve Fosset, an American businessman, held world records for five non-stop solo circumnavigations of the world in both a balloon and fixed wing aircraft.  He sadly died in a light plane crash in 2007.

There are people who walk tight ropes between skyscrapers and, also, people who free climb skyscrapers.  There seems to be no end to the way thrill seekers seek their thrills and this leads me to the obvious question.  Why?

Of course, I don't have the answer, but I do have a couple of theories.  One thing I felt that they all must have in common is outrageously good health; that was, until I read about the mountain climber who had suffered spinal injuries and then used his regained health and fitness to test his body to the limit.  I feel that, if you have enough obstacles in your everyday life, you won't have the need to create them.  In his case, I was wrong.

Another theory is boredom, after you have become a wealthy individual and have run out of ways to get your thrills.  I mean, you've gained total financial freedom so now what is there to conquer?  There's a lot to be said for conquering that mortgage or overcoming illness to keep a person gainfully occupied.  It may be less exciting but, at least, there's usually light at the end of the tunnel.

My final theory is also based around those with enough money.  Having conquered the material world, there is one last enemy to face: death, and you don't have to be afraid of death to want to make its acquaintance.  You may just want to know how you'll feel when confronting it and if you have the guts to deal with it.  So, what do you do?  You take part in an activity that brings you as close as dammit to the edge to test your courage and, by the time you've done this a few times, I bet it becomes addictive.  It would sure get your endorphins and adrenalin pumping.  I guess that's what such people are after, having lost the ability to get a thrill from more mundane situations.

If I wanted to seek a thrill such as those poor souls who perished in the submersible, locked into a small, uncomfortable space for hours, all I would need to do is book an economy class ticket on a commercial airliner going from Australia to Europe.  That would take twenty-three hours in a cramped seat.  If I wanted to make it worse, I would just lock myself in the toilet for an hour or two after ten or so hours in the air.  Honestly, what could be worse?

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CAFES: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GRILLED HAM, CHEESE AND TOMATO ON TOAST?

Credit: Andrewgen, iStock

 

Here I go again.  Yes, I've waffled on about restaurants before but there is no limit to my disappointment and the amount of complaining I can manage.  I don't think it's because I'm old(ish), I think it's because cafes, especially after surviving during Covid, don't want to take chances and they all offer the same menu choices in order to compete with other surviving cafes.

Smashed Avocado on Sourdough Toast topped with Feta and, sometimes, a poached egg, is a delicious breakfast or lunch.  It has, however, become 'de rigeur' in almost every cafe.  That's fine if you can handle sawing apart toasted sourdough.  I've given up and just pick it up in my hands.  If you've read some of my other posts, you'll know I have Essential Tremor in my hands, making eating in a restaurant akin to frisbee throwing, that is, for my nearby neighbours.  It is best if I eat with my hands.  That, however, is not why I complain about the sameness of cafe menus.

Although cafes offer a plethora of breakfast and lunch menu options, there is a noticeable absence of some good old staples.  I suspect that if a cafe offered these, they would be considered below standard, a laughingstock or drummed out of the corps.  I refer to the simple dish of open faced, grilled cheese and tomato on toast, perhaps with ham, or even a toasted croissant with the same ingredients.  By toast, I mean the stuff that comes out of supermarket packet.  I don't buy such for home use, but it is much easier to cut with a knife than toasted sourdough.  You can also make two vertical cuts and have three nice strips to eat by hand for those of us with questionable hand movements.

So many things have improved in what is available in supermarkets, but other, simple things have faded into obsolescence.  Previously I have bemoaned the disappearance of Chicken Maryland and Steak Diane in restaurants, although some steak restaurants will offer steaks with your choice of sauces.  A couple of years ago I went with a friend to a steak restaurant at the Gold Coast.  You almost needed to take your bank manager with you to afford a steak.  I ordered prawns, not to be cheap, but because I love them.  They came cooked in their shells.  I have never experienced such a messy meal with so little to show for it.  If the place was that expensive, they may at least have peeled them, plus add a dozen more so I didn't leave needing a Macdonald's hamburger.

I honestly feel that I haven't had a decent meal since I lived in Hong Kong forty years ago.  I recently had a Chinese meal that my friend and I picked up for dinner.  We've used the restaurant many times and it is adequate.  This time it sadly disappointed.  Maybe the usual chef was away or had simply given up all hope.  Chinese is expensive these days and, recently, I have learned to cook a really good Chinese chicken stir fry.  It is so good, the takeaway meal paled by comparison.  What's wrong with that, you ask?  It's because I'm tired of cooking and, it seems, I cannot go out and find a meal equal to anything I cook at home.

There is only so much pizza, cooked chicken or hamburgers I can stomach for takeout.  I need someone who can cook like me, but instead of me.  I'm so tired of trying to figure out what to do with the corpses of cows, chicken, pigs or poor lambs.  I feel guilty enough eating them without having to ponder over what to do with their dead flesh.

I have wandered off the theme of this post, but it sent me down a perilous road of disappointing eating out and takeout experiences.  The man in my life actually gets cross if I ask him what he'd like for dinner.  After all, it's such hard work to decide.  I remind him that he doesn't actually have to go out, find an animal, kill it and bring it home.  All he has to do is eat it.  If you haven't cooked nearly every darned day of your life, I guess having to make a decision about food must be extremely tedious.

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: I think, therefore I find humans just seem to be an annoying waste of space.

 

(Cartoon credit: timoelliot.com)

I love the fact that no one has yet figured out what makes humans self-aware.  We have it, we're terrified of losing it, but we haven't a clue what, in the brain, causes us to have this capacity.

Now, of course, the media is full of talk about Artificial Intelligence, or AI.  Well intelligence is different to self-awareness.  Intelligence is defined as 'the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills', whereas the definition of self-awareness is, 'conscious knowledge of one's own character and feelings'.

A computer acquires knowledge in the form of data in a stream of binary input.  In fact, you can't really call it knowledge because the very word implies knowing or knowingness, which to my way of thinking is allied to consciousness.  The computer's memory, or registers, hold banks of data and a program held in other registers tells it what to do with the data.  Now this explanation is pretty simple but then so are computers, no matter how large or complex their programming becomes.  What computers are, however, is really, really fast; speed of light fast.

With a sufficiently complex program, i.e. set of instructions, created by a human, computers can 'solve' problems, mathematical and logical.  But remember, it's the program that tells it how to do that.  The computer has as much awareness of what it's doing as your average toaster, or toothpick, for that matter, so don't get the idea that AI is anywhere near self-conscious or aware.  However, one day, just maybe, given that we don't know how self-awareness comes about, perhaps a computer program and an enormous data bank might create some kind of fusion, fission or whatever, and come into a state of awareness.

I seriously doubt it because I feel that somehow biology and chemistry come into it, but I, like everybody else, don't know.  I asked a friend the other day, "What happens when they can upload my self-awareness and memory into a computer?"  To be able to do so is called 'singularity'.  I then added, "Will I be able to see, touch, feel emotion and all the important aspects of being human?"

His reply was that it would be a 'virtual' existence, but that would be a program, not real.  In order to be real, biology and chemistry must be involved, not just metals, electricity, printed circuits and silicon chips.  Anyway, we've got a long way to go before that happens, but it will happen eventually, I believe.  You're not going to be able to stop scientists doing it either because, once those who can are on a roll, they'll all be trying to make it happen first.  It seems to be human nature to invent something before worrying about the consequences, which does make you wonder about our level of intelligence, in the sense of real intelligence, which is wisdom, and our ability to create it in our own likeness.

In the Bible it states that, "God created mankind in his own image".  Well that's a worry in itself, isn't it?  That leaves this highly imperfect species at the point in its evolution where it's about to try to play God, so if a self-aware, artificial being pops out of this innovation, we'd better watch out.

Think about it.  Humans are very high maintenance.  We eat and that requires agriculture and slaughter.  We need a lot of space, in the form of residences.  We move around continually, creating air pollution.  Oh yes, and we need air.  We are perishable and rot once dead.  We reproduce with gay abandon without thinking of all of the above.  We require medicines, surgery, prosthetics and psychological counselling.  Some are prone to killing others willy-nilly, even at the international level of war.  We covet and we create inequalities amongst ourselves by gender, race and religion and then we deify such unworthy types as film and rock stars.  Many people are corrupt.

How is this going to improve if we create beings similar to ourselves?  Or are we going to create beings without emotion and only logic?  I doubt that too.  Once the powers that be start, they're not going to stop at emotionless, self-aware beings, because these beings would find us totally illogical and therefore a pest and therefore, according to the logic programmed into them, something to be eradicated.  Of course, you could put stop gaps in their programming to avoid this, but your logic circuit boards would have to be pretty bug free or your AI being may put two and two together, or in their case, 10 and 10.

Another problem is that if these beings can physically function with limbs and a know how of how to build themselves, they can do their own self-improvements.  Eventually the food consuming, air absorbing beings that age, become decrepit and need care will become a roadblock in the path of progress.  Perhaps the AI could be programmed with a sense of beauty or with lust for the physical, because they'd have to appreciate what is physical to tolerate us, but I honestly don't think that those things can be programmed.

Frankly I think it's going to be pretty boring world without humans and I also don't imagine the AI beings are going to appreciate our varied fauna and flora, care for them or wonder at creation, but if humans do make the AI beings anything like us, eventually they'll get bored and start doing all the illogical things we do to stave off madness.

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