Virtually Alone – Thoughts about Apple’s Vision Pro Headset

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It’s touted as the next big device, or class of devices that will become more available to mor people as the technology and prices come down (currently $3500). I don’t doubt the technology will get better. There will be extremely realistic depictions of even the most fantasical imaginings, and games. Also useful applications like displays, TVs, entertainments, etc.

But what none of these touted benefits point out is that wearing a headset or goggles or whatever, is a solitary activity. Because the output is only to one individual’s eyes. To share the VR experience, other people also need to be wearing the device. The irony is obvious: now we can be alone together! 

Why is that a good thing? Why is it better than two or more people watching a movie or TV screen, listening to music, etc? What about interaction? Could the technology replicate the same experience, and its benefits, as a live encounter? Why is it better for us to be in a stupor while our simulations have all the fun, as in The Matrix”?

Recent reports tell of an epidemic of loneliness, estrangement, isolation largely brought on by our devices. Other studies recommend social interaction as healthful, especially as we age.

I predict this and other VR devices will not only get better, but the improvement will not be good for us, but, rather, worse.

This Georgia voter's 2022 in-person vote

**After 8 days since Cobb Cty elections office says they issued our absentee ballots, they still hadn't come. Checking with  them, they advised to vote in person. We live 3/4 mile from the Gov't Center where they do "Advance Voting." Every time we've driven past it, there have been long lines and traffic congestion. Son Pete waited a long time a couple days ago. 

Today, about 9:15am we drove over there and saw that though there were lots of cars and a full parking lot, there were no long lines of people outside the building. I let Joan off to get a place in line while I went to hunt for a parking place. As I was waiting in the lot, a woman walked past and indicated she would be vacating the parking place ahead, 5 spaces from the entrance to the lot! 

As she backed out, I saw a Warnock sticker on her bumper. Good sign.

Went to the entrance and was admitted right away, where I joined Joan.  

A poll worker came by and announced that those over 75 should go to the front of the line and have a seat. 

Within 5 minutes we were getting our voting cards processed. 5 minutes after that we'd voted and acquired our stickers:

Even if I'd had my usual 11am swim time, I would have made it. I've got a couple more hours this morning, some of which I'm using to chronicle this easiest voting experience ever.

And, to give due credit, the process was smooth and cheery. At least at the Government Center on Lower Rowell Road in East Cobb.

Forking the Gullible

**  Finally listened to Life Lessons podcast with Gin Stephens. #104 "Healing with Vibrational Therapy with Eileen McKusick" - As I'd feared, this type of program is extremely susceptible to wu-wu. It's a skeptics's game preserve! Claiming to be "based in science," it is the classic selective collecting of evidence to support a pre-determined thesis. 

This woman sells tuning forks and therapies based on them and the hosts, Gin and Sherri, nod approvingly and gush with approval, neither of them being a scientist, nor apparently a skeptic. Hesitating to post this on one of her youtube vids: 

There is NO scientific basis for anything you sell or promote.Like acupuncture, crystals, tarot cards and the lot. I pity the poor saps who fall for your pitch. Like all scam artists, your "research" consists of selectively assembling scraps of real information in order to support your preferred thesis, while ignoring those that invalidate it.

A Blog for the Ages?

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Having passed my first year of practicing Intermittent Fasting as a lifestyle, I feel I've learned enough to offer support and information especially relevant to older people. While there are examples on other platform of elderly fasters having great success, it's a mixed bag. Many issues with older folks aren't addressed in those forums. I hope to provide that support, authenticated by my own octogenarian status and success with this lifestyle change. 

While weight issues are common among the elderly, there often are other issues with more urgency. These center around health and quality of life. A common mindset of the elderly is the sense of impending doom, which includes a variety of other factors, such as the absence of hope, and fear of the future, a yielding to resignation that often expresses itself as disregard for oneself, both in appearance and in health. I hope to counter this mindset with information on how Intermittent Fasting participates in the human body's own mechanisms for survival to reverse many of the debilities associated with the elderly. It's not a "fountain of youth," so much as a fountain for the hopefulness of youth. 

Can I do this indefinitely?

Writing long form pieces, whether memoir or novel or short story, is a relatively new experience for me. It’s only been since moving to Georgia from northern California that I’ve taken it up. Since then, craft has come under my serious observation, and I’ve sought to improve my writing in a number of ways.

• I joined a local writing group, one specializing in science fiction, because my novel is nominally "cli-fi," being set in a post-climate-catastrophe Earth with little high technology. This proved helpful on many fronts, introducing me to several useful standards for good fiction writing. Personality clashes and a blurt of hot temper, dislodged me from that group.
• I also listen to podcasts that focus on writers and writing, including The Book Review podcast from The New York Times. From these I’ve gleaned many writing tips, as well as interesting reading recommendations, from which I’ve benefitted.
• I use a Kindle e-reader for a couple of reasons: 1) it works best on my "desk treadmill," which is now my only form of exercise; and 2) because it enables highlighting and note-taking that I can later port into a text document so I get a collection of all my notes in one place.
• In addition, I keep a post-it and pencil handy for when I come across especially good turns of phrase or words that I may be able to use in my own writing. I then type them into a plain document I can quickly scan when I’m searching for a good word.
• I think my writing has improved measurably since last year, when I started writing my novel, tentatively titled, "The Lifeboat Chronicles." 

But my latest, and most drastic, trick is one I suspect few others will find acceptable, or think possible. It all came about after considering a critique of one of my SF group submissions. Someone noted I had used "the" several times in one long sentence. There’s nothing wrong with that definite article, other than its overuse in a sentence. But I wondered if I could write a long piece without using that word at all in anything where it is not part of a proper noun. To compound my constraint, I also committed to refraining from using "was" anywhere in my writing. (In fact, you will not find them in this very piece.) 

So insidious are those words that I resorted to creating a macro on my computer that beeps me every time I use them, because they sneak in. I’ve maintained this discipline in writing a chapter that as of this date has gone just above fourteen-thousand words, where "the" and "was" do not appear.

Not only have I demonstrated to myself, that it’s possible to write without those words, but I believe my writing has improved because of it. When I find that those verboten words naturally flow out, I have to stop and figure out a different way to express similar concepts. This slows my writing down considerably. I’ve already written about countering "efficiency" in writing. I still use an iPad and an Apple Pencil to hand print first drafts. But this discipline slows me down even more.

What I feel results is second or third draft quality in a first draft. I still go back and edit, but I never add those two banished words. I think my writing is better because it’s denser. You may not agree. But at this point it satisfies me that it’s a valuable discipline. I just don’t know if I can keep up not using that one definite article indefinitely! 

Short stories, short leash

As a kind of authorial therapy, I took the advice of someone and started writing short stories as a way to exercise my writing muscles and generate an oeuvre. Since January, I've written four stories. Quite prolix of me, I'd say.

But nobody is reading them. It's like extracting blood from a stone to get anyone to read the damn things. I'm tempted to just "publish" them here, on this exoplanet of blogs, where only aliens may drift by randomly over eons of time.

Here's the list:

A Dacha for DonRicco
9-1-2
Almost Adequate
The Glass

I work on these things as though it's my highly-paid full-time job. I refuse to think of it as a "hobby," as one of my writing group members calls it. At 79, I don't need any friggin' hobbies. Everything I do these days is part of my last rites. Fuck you, hobbyists, worthless time-wasters and foolish futurists.

Rejection by friendly fire

The withering effect of a rejection letter is something I've never experienced as a serious writer.

Two ways to accomplish this:

1. Have your first and subsequent submissions published

2. Submit nothing for publication

I just found a third way to achieve a similar effect: ask a friend who is a published writer to read something of yours that you like. Until his reply, I lived in painless privacy.

Now I am a man  — or at least I am a writer still aspiring to be published, posthumously or sooner. He is probably right, of course, about the short story and he took my imposition graciously, standing in for the agent I wish I had.

Not in defense, but as context, the story I showed him came about as part of an exercise routine I'd adopted recently that promised to strengthen my writing skills — kind of weight training for word-lifters. The advice was to write short stories even while working on a novel. I'm not sure how well I built my writing chops, but in writing the story, I had fun. A nice bonus. I'm close to finishing my second story, which I'll keep for when my agent-prince comes. So, my writer friend can relax.

Having recently turned seventy-nine, I'm envious of what my slightly younger friend has accomplished: "three early suspense novels," four self-published on Amazon, a new novel in the publishing process, etc.

One of the harsh realities of aging is having the realization sneak up on you that you have become useless. Not that I was so useful before (religious fanatic et al.), but at least I enjoyed for a while the illusion of fulfilling a purpose.

As someone bouncing along on the tailgate of life, writing prose has become palliative care, and, so far, the drugs are working fine —  except on my overworked tailbone. To get some serious feedback, I've joined a local writing group, which keeps me working on the cli-fi novel that'll probably never get finished. In the meantime, I'll keep writing short stories, for fitness, and possibly for a collection someday. But I'll keep them to myself.

Slo-mo Retro-Techno Combo

Because you scrutinize every pixel on this author blog, you've encountered a strange, odd, different, rare, still life background image on the home page. It shows an iPad lying on the keyboard of a MacBook. There's an Apple pencil 2 resting on the iPad that is displaying some hand-printed text. And because you scrutinize every pixel on this page, you also notice the
MacBook is open to a grammar-checking app where the text from the iPad is being analyzed.

The photo illustrates part of my writing method: I first hand write the text on the iPad, then transcribe it by typing it into the grammar checker, rewriting along the way. After that, I paste the cleaned-up digitized text into a professional writing app, Scrivener, where I continue to edit.

Highly inefficient, you say, you scions of the digital age. I hear ya. Been there.

Some of you may remember that "word processors" were made by business machine companies and used to cost up to twenty-thousand dollars. They were clumsier than WordStar or WordPerfect, the neandertalic, yet vastly superior, PC programs that replaced those pricey clunk-o-matics.

Highly inefficient, you say, to take three passes at the text, when a modern "text editor app" would have sufficed. Yep, since the Eighties, such was my method of long-form, and even short-form, writing.

But I have changed my ways after hearing an interview with an author whose work I would probably never read, though I commend him for his perspicacity. And endurance. He spoke with a NYT interviewer on the occasion of the publication of his FIFTH volume of a biography about President Lyndon Johnson. Now, LBJ was a hero, in the tragic-comic sense, but I can't imagine reading, much less writing, five (out of a promised six) volumes of his story.

What turned my writing MO around, however, was his answer to the question: "Do you use a computer to write?"

The expected reply, from a writer of such arcana, would be something along the lines of "Oh, heavens, no! I prefer a pencil and paper, the traditional, more natural way." Something old fogyish.

He didn't. He said something I immediately recognized as true:
"No, computer's too fast."

If I'm writing a bit of fluff, like this post, fast is fine. The computer gets the job done quickly and adds checking tools that keep you from gagging on my typos.

But if I'm conjuring something out of the depths of imagination, I don't need quick. I need slow. Handwriting slow. But even slower than that, which I'll get to in a trice.

The iPad app I use, Notability (there are others), enables handwriting. It's mostly used for note-taking in classes or meetings, etc. At its base, it's a drawing app that records your scribbles. With my Apple pencil, I just draw words on the screen. It's analogous to writing with pencil on paper.

On most occasions when I relate this experience, this is when people usually ask if the app then digitizes the handwriting (there are apps that do).

NO! Absolutely not. I don't want it to. I really WANT to type it all over again. Why? Because I can make changes while I'm re-thinking what I've written. It's a way to knead the clay again. Because it's true, WRITING IS REALLY RE-WRITING. What's the hurry? Where would I go instead? Why do I need "efficiency?" It's not an odious job I need to finish so I can move on to something better. It's an artistic experience, enjoyable all on its own, not dull piecework in a widget factory. I need time to live with the words, the visions, the nuances, the overtones, the surprises.

So, I started handwriting my novel.

In cursive.

Failure.

Not only was my cursive illegible, but, like a computer, it was "too fast."

So I reverted to grade school-level handwriting. Early grade school. Yes, I PRINTED. Ah, now I had time to envision the words and pictures bubbling up from my whatever, imagination, I suppose. But here, in the midst of retro slow, is where faster is better. Using the high-tech Apple pencil 2, I can switch between the writing tool and an eraser and back with just light finger taps on the barrel of the pencil, allowing me to continue writing and obviating the hash of cross-outs and overprinting. It's faster than with a 3-D pencil and eraser. And no eraser crumbs.

Most of the seventy-five thousands words I've written so far for my current novel have been hand printed on an iPad first. Yes, further refinements have come from the digital tools I use to process those teased-out emanations. But to generate new material, I stick with a "by hand" process. It may take a lot longer, but I think the writing I produce is better than trying to keep up with the inane flurry of evanescent sparks that my brain produces constantly.

I'm not in a hurry to get something finished.  I want to witness the miracle of creativity that, at least for me, comes with slow-cooking the words.

Cricket generator

Whenever I need stunning silence, I ask people to read my latest bit of writing. It also happens when I'd like some intelligent response, with a hint of honesty. When I don't get it, this is my little space in the cricket cloud where I can complain. It's also an opportunity to ruminate about my new occupation as a full-time author. When I'm not working on a novel or short story, I probably will drift here and dump too many words, a better alternative to asking a beta reader for a response.

Imagine a world...

**The story of how I lost faith in any religion because it finally occurred to me that there is no God, is detailed in posts here over the years. I know I should consider that subject closed, but it won't close completely because theism prompted and sustained some of the most devastating decisions I ever made. They tore up my life so deeply that I still feel the ravages of it, like a burn victim whose scars inhibit free movement. Yes, one can, and should, exercise effort to overcome those stiffnesses in areas of human life that come so naturally to most people. I suppose I can't lay it all at the feet of theism. There are plenty of other "nurture" and "nature" reasons why I'm a hobbling psychological wreck even as I approach the age of eighty.
I can—and have— wrung and washed my hands, and strode forth into what's left of my opportunities. So far, so good—and I'm surprised and pleased with how much good I've experienced as an atheist. But that doesn't preclude standing aghast at the magnitude of my error and its consequences, especially when I suffer a setback that challenges my self-worth. Then the enormity of the deception that commisioned me to be an evangelist for the right brand of religion, the right concept of God, and the foolish hope in the sublime harmony of a world filled with those who would accept what I hawked.
Around 2006, I encountered the writings of the so-called New Atheists, like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Chris Hitchens, and Paul Bloom. If my faith hadn't been already on the edge and sliding away, I might have withstood their arguments and hung on a little more. But down it all went, and I emerged from the rubble a stunned and wounded man. Some ten years later, a book came out that has had a more lasting impact on me, one whose arguments and language gain my continuing respect.

The Big Picture by Sean Carroll was published in May 2016.

I bought the book and made copious notes in it on my Kindle, but somehow forgot about it until about a year ago. I now listen to the audiobook every night when I awake—as we oldsters tend to do. It puts me back to sleep, not because it's boring, but because the ideas still intrigue and overwhelm me. If I should wake up again later, I'm usually surprised to hear a section I don't remember. So, it's like reading a new version of the book every night.
Today, I came across Carroll's itemization of why atheism is a more valid view than theism. I post them here as a reminder of how weak the concept of a God is, and how amazing it is that so many people, especially I, took that concept into some outrageously stupid extremes:

• So imagine a world that is very much like ours, except that evil does not exist. People in this world are much like us, and seem able to make their own choices, but they always end up choosing to do good rather than evil. In that world, the relevant data is the absence of evil. How would that be construed, as far as theism is concerned? It’s hard to doubt that the absence of evil would be taken as very strong evidence in favor of the existence of God. If humanity simply evolved according to natural selection, without any divine guidance or interference, we would expect to inherit a wide variety of natural impulses—some for good, some for not so good. The absence of evil in the world would be hard to explain under atheism, but relatively easy under theism, so it would count as evidence for the existence of God. But if that’s true, the fact that we do experience evil is unambiguously evidence against the existence of God. If the likelihood of no evil is larger under theism, then the likelihood of evil is larger under atheism, so evil’s existence increases our credence that atheism is correct. Put in those terms, it’s easy to come up with features of our universe that provide evidence for atheism over theism. 
• Imagine a world in which miracles happened frequently, rather than rarely or not at all. 
• Imagine a world in which all of the religious traditions from around the globe independently came up with precisely the same doctrines and stories about God. 
• Imagine a universe that was relatively small, with just the sun and moon and Earth, no other stars or galaxies. 
• Imagine a world in which religious texts consistently provided specific, true, nonintuitive pieces of scientific information. 
• Imagine a world in which human beings were completely separate from the rest of biological history. 
• Imagine a world in which souls survived after death, and frequently visited and interacted with the world of the living, telling compelling stories of life in heaven. 
• Imagine a world that was free of random suffering. 
• Imagine a world that was perfectly just, in which the relative state of happiness of each person was precisely proportional to their virtue. 
• In any of those worlds, diligent seekers of true ontology would quite rightly take those aspects of reality as evidence for God's existence. It follows, as the night the day, that the absence of these features is evidence in favor of atheism.
• How strong that evidence is, is another question entirely. We could try to quantify the overall effect, but we’re faced with a very difficult obstacle: theism isn’t very well defined. There have been many attempts, along the lines of “God is the most perfect being conceivable,” or “God is the grounding of all existence, the universal condition of possibility.” Those sound crisp and unambiguous, but they don’t lead to precise likelihoods along the lines of “the probability that God, if he exists, would give clear instructions on how to find grace to people of all times and cultures.” Even if one claims that the notion of God itself is well defined, the connection between that concept and the actuality of our world remains obscure. 
• One could try to avoid the problem by denying that theism makes any predictions at all for what the world should be like—God’s essence is mysterious and impenetrable to our minds. That doesn’t solve the problem—as long as atheism does make predictions, evidence can still accumulate one way or the other—but it does ameliorate it somewhat. Only at a significant cost, however: if an ontology predicts almost nothing, it ends up explaining almost nothing, and there’s no reason to believe it.
• There are some features of our world that count as evidence in favor of theism, just as some features are evidence for atheism. 
• Imagine a world in which nobody had thought of the concept of God—the idea had simply never occurred. Given our definition of theism, that’s a very unlikely world if God exists. It would seem a shame for God to go to all the trouble to create the universe and humankind, and then never let us know about his existence. So it’s perfectly reasonable to say that the simple fact that people think about God counts as some evidence that he is real.
• Imagine a world with physical matter, but in which life never arose. Or a universe with life, but no consciousness. Or a universe with conscious beings, but ones who found no joy or meaning in their existence. At first glance, the likelihoods of such versions of reality would seem to be higher under atheism than under theism. 

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Spoiler alert: the future

**I admit to being a snob. I manage to control it somewhat but I get extra snobbish when I read a book that requires some thought, some re-reading, some dictionary or knowledge base inquiries. But overall, one that requires time, a resource few people I know—and would recommend a book to—have.

I came from immigrant parents with scant education who yielded me up to the educational establishment of their time like good Catholic wannabe Americans, to educators who applauded me for every micro-fathom of comprehension into the complex, context-rich arguments they exposed me to; which education—even just the fact of it—set me apart from the ignominy of my lower-class origins, indeed, apart and above and OUT of that bland ghetto resting on its prodigious accomplishments. Yes, though I long ago eschewed the theology, I retain that old-time Jesuit hubris, am a snob who instinctively disdains those who cannot, will not, read extended treatises of urgent importance, like "The Uninhabitable Earth," by David Wallace-Wells. I am also a fool, hence, this post.

I fear that most of the educators of Gen-X, abetted by technologists, did not train them to be patient as they faced books layered with information and nuance; in other words, that lifelong they have subsisted on scraps of wisdom from the bumper sticker, the headline, the tweet, the 2x-speed podcast, the mantra—in other words, that their minds have dined mostly on the polished rice (so-called high points) of complex issues sans their hard but sustaining husks—in other words, because they think skimming is enough—in other words, because they don't have the time or inclination for such—in other words, that they will not understand and therefore will not contribute to resisting the ineluctable flaming grindstone that is rolling toward them—in other words, that they will not read the deeply context-rich arguments that stir me, and therefore be themselves stirred. They will make a snap judgment and go on heedless, rushed, preoccupied with vamping into an obsolete future. Even so, for the curious, I've plucked and polished a few grains of rice from the book and strewn them at the end of this screed.

It does not gladden me to know I will not have to endure the consequences of my (and their) generation's ignorance and inaction. Even if I live the vaunted "long" life," I will not suffer as Gen-Xers will, won't have to stand aghast as the foundations of their lives crumble and the superstructures cave.

It should sadden them, too, but more keenly. Because they have kids and grandkids who will have so much to cope with that they may deem themselves unlucky to have survived the catastrophes, even as they adapt to roles in a dusted-off diorama of primitive human history. Life does not necessarily go on, and that could be a good thing.

Review of The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells. In addition to the engaging urgency of the content, the book is masterfully written. It's not an easy read for those used to the leniencies of something like "ZIP reads," but it's a good workout for the brain, maybe even for one's character. If these tidbits induce anyone to take it on full-strength I will have succeeded. In any case, I will get back to dying my way out of the spoiled future.

Quotes:

• This is not a book about the science of warming; it is about what warming means to the way we live on this planet.
• The majority of the burning has come since the premiere of Seinfeld. 
• The earth has experienced five mass extinctions before the one we are living through now, each so complete a wiping of the fossil record that it functioned as an evolutionary resetmore than half of the carbon exhaled into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels has been emitted in just the past three decades.
• Unless you are a teenager, you probably read in your high school textbooks that these extinctions were the result of asteroids. In fact, all but the one that  killed the dinosaurs involved climate change produced by greenhouse gas.
• A hotter planet is, on net, bad for plant life, which means what is called “forest dieback”—the decline and retreat of jungle basins as big as countries
• the optimists have never, in the half century of climate anxiety we’ve already endured, been right.
• technocratic faith, which is really market faith 
• in the coming decades many of the most punishing climate horrors will indeed hit those least able to respond and recover. This is what is often called the problem of environmental justice; a sharper, less gauzy phrase would be “climate caste system,” environmental apartheid.
• mosquitoes carrying malaria and dengue are flying through the streets of Copenhagen and Chicago
• We have all already left behind the narrow window of environmental conditions that allowed the human animal to evolve in the first place, but not just evolve—that window has enclosed everything we remember as history, and value as progress, and study as politics. 
• That has been the work of a single generation. The second generation faces a very different task: the project of preserving our collective future, forestalling that devastation and engineering an alternate path. There is simply no analogy to draw on, outside of mythology and theology—and perhaps the Cold War prospect of mutually assured destruction.
• In folklore and comic books and church pews and movie theaters, stories about the fate of the earth often perversely counsel passivity in their audiences, and perhaps it should not surprise us that the threat of climate change is no different
• Marshall Islands and Miami Beach, each sinking over time into snorkelers’ paradises;
• The project of unplugging the entire industrial world from fossil fuels is intimidating, and must be done in fairly short order—by 2040, many scientists say
• Species individuated over millions of years of evolution but forced together by climate change have begun to mate with one another for the first time, producing a whole new class of hybrid species: the pizzly bear, the coy-wolf. The zoos are already natural history museums
• Because the planet is as big as it is, and as ecologically diverse; because humans have proven themselves an adaptable species, and will likely continue to adapt to outmaneuver a lethal threat; and because the devastating effects of warming will soon become too extreme to ignore, or deny, if they haven’t already; because of all that, it is unlikely that climate change will render the planet truly uninhabitable. But if we do nothing about carbon emissions, if the next thirty years of industrial activity trace the same arc upward as the last thirty years have, whole regions will become unlivable by any standard we have today as soon as the end of this century.

Farting in the wind

**My friend, Stu Forman, runs climatchangegazette.com where he regularly posts thought-provoking articles. His latest is about AOC, Cows, and the Green New Deal where he cites the contribution cows make to global warming from their "enteric fermentation." I wrote the following in response, though the links and formatting might not carry over, owing to the comment tool on his site,

People tend not to believe scientists as readily as they believe novelists. Scientists thrill to facts. People thrill to stories. That's just the way we are. But that doesn't mean people can't be reached by facts. Of course, novelists have been writing on the subject of climate catastrophe since before it became fashionable as a topic of conversation, sermons, and political platforms. You've mentioned a few in this space. I recently finished "New York 2140" by Kim Stanley Robinson, and I heartily recommend it, not only for its riveting writing but for how it makes climate issues real.

Today I came on a piece by the novelist Jonathan Franzen, but it isn't a novel. It's an article in the New Yorker, that expresses the opinion that I, a novelist, have quietly held for a long time:

What If We Stopped Pretending?The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it.

Though Franzen lauds efforts to fight climate change, he does so for reasons other than their effectiveness.

If you’re younger than sixty, you have a good chance of witnessing the radical destabilization of life on earth—massive crop failures, apocalyptic fires, imploding economies, epic flooding, hundreds of millions of refugees fleeing regions made uninhabitable by extreme heat or permanent drought. If you’re under thirty, you’re all but guaranteed to witness it.

For those of us in neither category—face it, we're invisible—it's sad and scary. Sad for what our kids and grandkids will have to go through. And scary because we're so old we'll only foresee it and not have to live through it. Or much of anything.

So yay for AOC and the GND and all the greening going on. But the salvation train left the station a long, long time ago. There's something to be said for the preppers who at least recognize the futility of stopping the ignition of our earth-size furnace, though I wonder to what extent even they can survive it.

Crazy about Climate Change

**Once again, the South provides me with a like-minded friend. This one is also a neighbor, living within a couple miles of our place. This never happened in ten years in northern California (Bay Area). Stuart Forman is a Climate Change activist of my generation, who runs a website with deep thoughts and information about the existential crisis facing the globe. He's in my blog list so check it out.

Stu's most recent post is about "Mental Health and the Climate Crisis." It struck a responsive chord in me (more like a leaden thud) and I wrote the following comment to his post:

Your post points out a salient and intractable issue with anyone trying to comprehend the current climate crisis. I’m sure climate change is just one of the factors generating the depression to which you refer. Speaking for myself, other factors include: the insanity that spawned the present US (and UK) governments; the ascendency of monied interests in compromising the quality of life—and this includes the travesty that is our health care system and its evil twin, the pharmaceutical mafia. Add to those global issues, one’s own increasing physical limitations of function and energy and the measurement of all predictions against the actuarial tables.

And yet, here we are, each in his own sphere fighting back, or attempting to. We’re doing something.

Not sure of your personal motivation but I’ll tell you mine; it mitigates the horror. Never has the entire human race faced the prospect of imminent catastrophe. It’s one thing to have to cope with personal bodily insult, say, a dire medical diagnosis. It’s quite another to have to include oneself in the “body politic” whose condition has been pronounced “terminal.” It’s… it’s…well, depressing, to echo the theme of your post.

If there’s a bright spot,—and it’s not so bright—it’s that we who have been labeled “The Silent Generation, will not have to bear the terror of full global ignition. We’ll succumb to our own age-related extinction before the race itself feels it as a whole. Small consolation.

Most of us have progeny who will feel the teeth of the onrushing Tiger with its orange and black hunger. I recently became a (not so) great grandfather, ancestor of someone who will probably look back at the map of his family tree and plant a dagger beside my name. I have no defense—other than lack of attention (caused by the exigencies of life as a citizen, parent, employee, slow-evolver.) I have known for decades that the planet is being sabotaged in the interests of “the economy, stupid.” And “peace.”

So, you and I, and our ilk are off the hook, ignominiously, but still sentient (more or less). Sentient but almost flat-line depressed. My children, grandchildren, and now, greatgrandchildren, are inheriting our legacy of burning coals. From us. Dammit FROM US!

I know you’re going to meet a lot of environmentalists next weekend in Minneapolis. Do us a favor, Stu. Take the psychic temperature of those attending, especially those giving presentations. Tell us what you detect in their psyches. Are they optimistic, and if so, why? My guess is that if they’re honest they’ll be pessimistic. Like me, and maybe you. If so, should we at least shut the door and mumble into our beards (virtual or not), that we give up? Tell us, if you have evidence (as opposed to rhetoric) why we should not be depressed, why we should not slam the door on hope. What skyhooks are out there that will lift us out of this cauldron and its attendant depression?

While it may make some of us feel virtuous, even proactive, to recycle our trash into the seven or ten categories the recycling companies desire in order to make a go of their business, we know these individual efforts—from a limited number of individuals anyway—are not what’s going to produce the kind of change that will turn around the mega-ship of earth. It takes a strong arm of global proportions to do that. Any observer of human history and psychology knows that the most effective motivator for humans is FEAR. And the only way to attain the level of fear that will lead to even the feeblest counter to the effects of today’s pace of climate change is outright catastrophe. People won’t act until they’re scared, damned scared—scared shitless. When you’re in the jaws of the Tiger, you have no alternative than to act, even futiley.

So, thanks for this post, and its diagnosis of my persistent foul mood.

What a novel idea

**I just published my book. It's available in ebook, print, and audiobook formats.

Sicilian Gothic - The Convergence of Carmelo and Nellie

Website

Images & Insights about the book

Here's the description from the Kindle and other stores:

"Novels don't have footnotes," said a friend. True, but most novels aren't overtly based on real people. This one is. Carmelo and Nellie Tosto were my parents.

Why is it a novel, a work of fiction? Because there wasn't enough documentable evidence about them to constitute a typical biography. Unlike today, with its surfeit of personal data – photos, videos, correspondence, diaries, and the like – the period between 1901 and 1939 afforded few opportunities, especially for lower class immigrants, to leave tangible evidence of their presence on earth. 

Before converging in an arranged marriage, the lives of Carmelo Tosto and Nellie Cascio were on divergent paths. 

Carmelo's history is particularly sparse as his documentation originates at an institution for abandoned infants in Catania, Sicily in 1901. He grew up in a nearby fishing village and at the age of fourteen went to work as a merchant marine sailor until 1925 when he jumped ship in Baltimore to escape Mussolini's naval conscription. 

Nellie was born in Sicily but grew up from infancy in America with serious aspirations to become a Catholic nun. There's much more evidence of her early life, but her character and story need some enhancement. 

After diligent gleaning using today's powerful internet search tools, I amassed a trove of facts about them. I added to those findings whatever I could collect from personal reminiscences, family lore, and some artifacts. It was exciting to see the early days of my long-gone parents taking shape in my mind. But also frustrating. Like scrapbooks retrieved from a flood, the tide of time had dissolved much detail about them. 

As the first fruit of their convergence, I didn't know them personally until they were well into their thirties. By then, like most of us, they had changed markedly from their youthful personas. I felt the best way to present their story was to assemble my collection of fact fragments with the connective tissue of fiction. So I invented much of the material, most of which is based on plausible inferences from the facts. 

That's why a "NOTES" section is included at the back of the book. Some of these notes will resonate with my family. Some will add more dimension to the narrative. And, for those interested, some will identify most of the differences between fact and fiction. I hope none are necessary for the advancement and enjoyment of the story. 

In writing this book, my parents became more fascinating and more charming to me than when we made each other miserable in the 1940s and 1950s. I hope this book will help you appreciate them better than I did then, and as much as I do now. 

ALERT: There are some Italian words sprinkled into the story, especially in accounts of the earliest times. Don’t be stymied by these. To me, they evoked the worlds of my parents and kept me in the mood. To translate each of them would be interruptive and tedious, and none are essential to understanding the meaning of the context in which they are used. If you’re interested, look them up – I often used collinsdictionary.com — but be advised that many of these words may be a bit “spicy” for some palates. Otherwise, just think of them as flecks of red pepper in the sauce. Buon appetito!

Hello again, Blogger

**Well, that didn't work out. First, I didn't keep blogging. Then, Tumblr took a tumble in the news, so it looks like it's not the right site for this material. The posts here record a significant part of my life in the 2000s so it has some possible historical value. I don't know if I'll continue blogging but if I do, it'll be from this site. Until I find another option.

Taking the Tumbl

**mt_space is now on Tumblr

Hi there, lonesome blogspotters. When I started this blog in 2002, blogging was a hot new publishing option, and Blogger by Google was one of the hot new venues for those creations. So I started writing about stuff that was in my head at the moment and kept it up for a number of years, though with some long lapses. As a matter of course, mt_space became a chronicle of some of the most important changes in my life, the major one being my break with theism in general and with the CS belief system and institutions in particular. A perusal of these posts shows that it was a time of great stirring and some might say trauma.

My interests always included politics, technology, and (real) science, as well as events in my life and the lives of friends. Though I wasn't as faithful a blogger as I was told I should be, I didn't mind because I knew hardly anyone was interested in keeping up with my thoughts. So it became a somewhat safe nook on the Web to vent. Plodding along this way, I managed to go fourteen years without noticing that not only had I changed, but the blogosphere had also changed.

I got invited by a friend to participate in a blog she was setting up. It was on Tumblr. I asked, why Tumblr, and she replied it was the hip new blogging venue that came with a larger potential audience. This made me think about whether I want a larger audience. It was nice having a semi-private room to noodle and doodle about things in the space that is my consciousness. On the other hand, why not try something new? And if it gets too rowdy, I can always crawl back to the boonies of Blogger and indulge in semi-private writing.

I haven't yet been able to get the 450 entries of this blog to transfer to Tumblr so until I do, I'll just continue there.

I've also moved my collection of poetry from Blogger to Tumblr

Discovery at the White House

**Lots of time to spend (waste) while minimally mobile awaiting surgery.

Twenty Chapter Headings on Tyranny

** This is a most provocative book that every American should read, even those who were deceived into voting against their own best interests in 2016. I hope I can be forgiven for quoting these chapter headings because my intention includes inspiring readers to buy the book, which is quite inexpensive at $3.99 Kindle, $6.15 paperback.

Each heading is followed by incisive lessons from twentieth-century history and their striking parallels to the present moment in the US. I must confess that some of the topics are difficult for me, i.e., "Make eye contact and small talk," but at least I know that the effort is worthwhile.

“Timothy Snyder reasons with unparalleled clarity, throwing the past and future into sharp relief. He has written the rare kind of book that can be read in one sitting but will keep you coming back to help regain your bearings. Put a copy in your pocket and one on your bedside table, and it will help you keep going for the next four years or however long it takes.” – Masha Gessen

1 Do not obey in advance.

Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.

2 Defend institutions.

It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about— a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union— and take its side.

3 Beware the one-party state.

The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start. They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents. So support the multi-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections. Vote in local and state elections while you can. Consider running for office.

4 Take responsibility for the face of the world.

The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

5 Remember professional ethics.

When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important. It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor.

6 Be wary of paramilitaries.

When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.

7 Be reflective if you must be armed.

If you carry a weapon in public service, may God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no.

8 Stand out.

Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. Remember Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

9 Be kind to our language.

Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.

10 Believe in truth.

To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

11 Investigate.

Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on the internet is there to harm you. Learn about sites that investigate propaganda campaigns (some of which come from abroad). Take responsibility for what you communicate with others.

12 Make eye contact and small talk.

This is not just polite. It is part of being a citizen and a responsible member of society. It is also a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down social barriers, and understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.

13 Practice corporeal politics.

Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.

14 Establish a private life.

Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your computer of malware on a regular basis. Remember that email is skywriting. Consider using alternative forms of the internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges in person. For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble. Tyrants seek the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have hooks.

15 Contribute to good causes.

Be active in organizations, political or not, that express your own view of life. Pick a charity or two and set up autopay. Then you will have made a free choice that supports civil society and helps others to do good.

16 Learn from peers in other countries.

Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends in other countries. The present difficulties in the United States are an element of a larger trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your family have passports.

17 Listen for dangerous words.

Be alert to the use of the words extremism and terrorism. Be alive to the fatal notions of emergency and exception. Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.

18 Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.

Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.

19 Be a patriot.

Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.

20 Be as courageous as you can.

If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.

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Snyder, Timothy (2017-02-28). On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (p. 117). Crown/Archetype. Kindle Edition.