Cosmologist Max Tegmark says “consciousness is the way information feels when it’s being processed.” This Ted Talk runs about 15 minutes and is one of the rare discussions of consciousness that I can almost follow.
Aliens parody (Nothing is sacred)
How religion spread
Learfield affiliate conference call
In 1984 I went to work for Learfield Communications. At that time the company operated state and regional radio networks and had recently switched from delivering that audio programming by satellite (from land lines). Among other responsibilities, I did affiliate relations which meant keeping our affiliate radio stations happy. One of the big technical challenges in those early days was the quality of our satellite audio feeds. Really bad with some of our networks. In an effort to address these concerns I set up a closed circuit conference call — sometime in the late ‘80s — during which engineers from our affiliate stations could call in and ask questions of our technical staff. Kent Malinowski was head of our satellite division (Mark Lucas and Cathy Zeiler worked with him); and Charlie Peters, Learfield’s chief engineer)
I’m archiving the audio of this call here for posterity. No idea who might ever listen to this bit of Learfield history (or why).
Part 1-30 min
Part 2-23 min
Hattie with shoe
Left his Big Boy camera in the car
What’s going on here? Can you really get credentials to photograph the national championship game with just your smart phone
Pneumonia
I’ve never had a serious illness. I had most of the childhood stuff (measles, chickenpox, etc) but never more than a bad case of the flu as an adult. Three or four days of feeling shitty.
In November (2015) I came down with some kind of upper respiratory thing and after a week I went to see a doctor who said I had something called parainfluenza. Different from garden variety flu and not prevented by my annual flu shot. This dragged on for a few weeks before an X-ray showed I had “a nasty case of pneumonia.” They gave me a serious antibiotic which helped but a followup X-ray two weeks later showed I still wasn’t out of the woods. New/different antibiotics did the trick and as I write this I believe I’m out of the woods. Feeling much better.
Seven weeks. Better part of two months. According to Wikipedia, it can take as long as 12 weeks for folks over 65 to fully recover from pneumonia. That is a long fucking time to be sick. I like to think there is something to be learned from every experience, especially the bad ones. But it’s too soon for me to say what that might be with this one. I’ll let you know.
New Breaker Panel
In the course of our recent remodel, we discovered we needed to replace our 25 year old breaker panel.
Best interview of a president. Ever (Seinfeld and Obama)
A couple of thoughts. One, this is easily the best interview of a president I’ve ever seen. Two, while common sense tells me Jerry Seinfeld prepared questions, some were so spontaneous (seemingly) I can believe they were off the cuff. Finally, it’s difficult for me to watch this without trying to imagine the GOP knuckleheads doing one of these. I suspect it will be a long time before we have another president with the comic timing of Obama.
My Give-A-Shit bubble is shrinking
I think I’m sliding off the back side of the culture bell curve. The list of pop culture events about which I give a shit is shrinking. Fast. Star Wars? Yawn. Super Bowl/World Series. No relevance to my life. Of late I’ve noticed it isn’t just pop culture. I’ve stopped caring about ‘important’ stuff.
ISIS seems to be a big deal these days. I know they’re doing bad things to innocent people but my level of shit giving is directly linked to how much I can do about the problem and the answer is, not much.
Gun violence in America? Bad. Very bad. But I don’t care as much as I did a year ago. Or a month ago. I get that this kind of apathy (?) contributes to the problem. Maybe if we had 1,000 people slaughtered every day that could move my meter again but what could I do about it? Climate change? Please. I’m kind of in car-going-over-a-cliff mode. Is there really any reason to keep my hands on the steering wheel?
Pretending (or really caring, for that matter) to care about seems to be important mostly to people who run things. Those in office and those who want to be. Making me care enough about the ‘right’ things can be very helpful to a politician or a political party. People at Trump rallies care. Same for the people lining up to see Bernie.
But Steve, you say, you’re looking at this from too high a level. There are lots of things you can do close to home to make a positive difference. To change things. And you’re right. That I’m not doing much of that suggests that I don’t much give a shit at all levels.
Let me assure you (too late?) that I’m not depressed for hopelessly forlorn. I’m surrounded by things that matter to me. My dogs. My sweetie. Good books. The view from the deck. So maybe my Give-A-Shit bubble is shrinking (as am I). Appears to be about 100 feet in any direction.