Cure for Learning Disabilities

A bold claim? Perhaps, but what if it is true? Various learning disabilities in children are easily cured. It doesn't take drugs or behavioral therapy, it just takes safety.


Think for a minute about a time when you were scared or uncertain. Maybe you felt physically threatened. Perhaps it was a more emotional fear. Whatever the circumstances, it is probably safe to say that all people have experienced fear. When you are afraid, is it harder to focus and attend to minute details? Do you feel the fight or flight syndrome begin and you take up an "on guard" position?

The sympathetic nervous system is a network of neurons that kicks into action when danger or threat is perceived. This is the scientific backing for the fight or flight response. When the sympathetic nervous system activates, it prepares your body to deal with the issue at hand, either shove a spear in the lion's face or run away from it (good luck on either proposition). Your body shuts down some activities, like digestion, and reroutes the internal resources to other functions, like moving your major muscle systems.

The whole purpose is to get you to a safer environment. Once resolution of the dangerous situation is accomplished, the parasympathetic nervous system takes control and returns your body to normal. Prolonged time in the sympathetically aroused state can lead to health problems. Is it far-fetched to believe that prolonged states of fight or flight mode could lead to diminished cognitive abilities?

Maybe you have already thought about this, but I haven't. I know there are a lot of kids out there facing uncertainty at home on a regular basis. One or both parents are neglectful or missing altogether. Or maybe they are present, but abusive. Economic troubles in the home lead to malnourishment and stress. Outside of the home there can be peer troubles. All of these variables can combine to make for threatening environment for a child. With their bodies at a constant state of fight or flight arousal, how can they focus on school work?

If this is the case with some children, then perhaps working providing safer environments ought to be the number one priority, leaving drugs out of the equation all together. Through TV and other media children are exposed to many worries and issues that may be more than they are capable of handling at a young age. With less than stellar parenting situations they don't have access to help in dealing with the information they are taking in. Children need time to be children. They don't need to know about the topics that so many Disney Channel and Nickleodeon programs are portraying. Parents need to be fully involved with the information their children are consuming, and offering explanation and assistance where necessary.

I think that if parents will get more involved with their children and provide a safe environment for their children, then the children will behave better and be able to learn better. They say you shouldn't corner a wild animal. If you have ever seen a frightened animal you know there isn't much hope of teaching it about the components of a sentence. This is a loose comparison, to provide a graphic image for your mind; I don't think children are like animals, not any more than I think there is an animal degree to all humans. The point is that as a society we need to be less willing to jump on the quick-fix express (such as pharmaceuticals) and more willing to make a concerted effort to help the people around us, especially our children and family members.

The Whimsical Revolution on Amazon's Kindle

I've done it! After a spontaneous search of the Internet to find out how to create an e-book to sell for the Kindle, I have published my blog to Kindle. In one sense I have failed miserably, as my intent when my search began was not to publish anything, especially not my blog. Then on the other hand, it is a complete success because I did something productive. Whether or not anyone will pay the $1.99 per month to have this blog mysteriously loaded onto their Kindle is up in the air, but this action about money, no sir, it was a sleep-deprived, impulse sale.

People always talk about impulse buys, so why not impulse sales? I'm sure it happens more than people are aware of. Why do impulse buys occur? It happens because someone is bored or depressed or manic and they have lost some of their impulse control. It happens to me all the time.

A week or so ago I had a phone conversation with someone about a job that I had been hoping for (have I ever mentioned that I count my chickens before they hatch, and keep all of the eggs in one basket, you know, for safe keeping... have I mentioned that?) and it turned out I didn't meet the expected education/experience requirements. It wasn't a major surprise that I wasn't the one for the job, that's the story of my post-college, job-applying life of the last 12 months. Really, not a big deal, but I was at the grocery store later that afternoon for a legitimate purchasing reason and walked out with approximately $9.00 worth of candy (meaning I spent $9.00 on candy, if I were to place value on the amount of candy I got it would be far less). It was an impulse buy directly related to my emotions of the day. It is easy to see how it could have been a sale that was made, that is, if I had anything worth selling and a venue to sell it through.

Well, I guess I do have a product worth selling, and when I happened to stumble on a venue through which to sell it, and my impulse control was wonky based on my job-induced boredom, the time was right to impulse-sell. Have you noticed how many times I am using hyphens? I noticed it. And if you head on over to the Amazon Kindle store, you will see my very own blog for subscription.

Sure, you are wondering why you’d want to pay two dollars per month to read the very same material you are reading right now for free. Yes, that was the end of that sentence, it might have seemed like a “but” ought to have come up and then I tell you why you do want to, but the truth is, there isn’t any good reason for it. Maybe there is one reason, and that reason would be so that you can take the Whimsical Revolution with you wherever you go. But honestly, there’s the “but,” I don’t think it is necessary. Don’t let me talk you out of it, however. If you want to be able to get this blog updated to your e-reading device every day, please do.

I subscribed for the 14 day free trial. It is really cool to see my blog on my Kindle, but not $1.99 per month cool. It looks good though. It is readable and brings in the last 25 posts for viewing. There is at least one post in that span that includes an embedded video from YouTube, obviously you miss out on that kind of stuff with the Kindle version. Overall, I am pleased with having it on my Kindle, but like I said, I’m not paying for it. I wrote it all! I do like to read my blog, and I often go back and read through old posts, I’m just not going to pay for it.

One final point to mention, I am going to try to be more disciplined in my blog posting habits. If you look at the archive links on the right-hand side you will notice that some months I’m posting more than once per day (okay, only one month, March 2010) and other months I’m posting only a single time (again, only once, July 2011). So now I will be posting on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of each week, at minimum, but probably that will be enough. This means 12 posts per month, give or take, depending on how the days fall within a month. This also means that I will be typing posts well ahead of the time I publish them, in some cases. This might improve the readability of them as I hopefully won’t get so distracted and head off on so many tangents, but no promises.

I hope you enjoy the new regulated scheduling of this blog and continue to read it. Feel free to share it with everyone. If you have a Kindle or other compatible e-reader and would like to have the freedom of reading this blog anywhere at any time, go get a free trial subscription and see how it treats you. I won’t regret it. Yes, that’s what I meant.

I Am a Refined Particle

Three days ago - or two, depending on how you count days - I started a Master's of education program. It is all through the wonder that is the Internet. I will not have to get dressed to go to class, just like that lazy kid high school program I've seen commercials for on TV. The TV I was watching when I was being lazy. I don't know if it is for high school or college, actually. So maybe I just dissed myself. Do the kids say "dissed" anymore? Is that cool to say still? Never mind, it isn't important. Nor is it important to know the commercial I am referring to. Just know that I am doing a graduate program through the Internet, at my leisure. You really don't even have to know that, though, if you don't want to. Having read it you know it, but you don't have to put any effort into remembering it for easy recall later.

Online classes are nice. I have taken a few of them so far. Two, to be precise, which you know I want to be. Precision is my main focus in life, after eating and sleeping. Sleeping! O! There is something I would like to be able to do again someday. I got distracted again, but that's how this blog writing goes. I haven't slept much or well over the last two days, or three, depending on how you count days. The sleep trouble should hopefully be over soon, I have quit my job. The job that was overnight, forcing me into an unnatural life of being nocturnal. What's good for the raccoon is not good for the whimsical revolutionary. How am I ever going to explain the title of this post if I keep letting these paragraphs get away from me?

The main component of the online classes I have participated in has been the discussion board. The professor posts a question or a topic and then each class member is required to reply to the professor's post and then subsequently respond to several other class member posts. It can be a fun process, and you can learn a lot. I've been hitting the discussion board this morning and have run across some really great thoughts shared by my class members. The first discussion question for the week touched on the differences between the undergraduate and graduate experiences. My favorite response so far has been one that detailed learning as a progression of building upon what has already been learned.

In studying memory in my cognitive psychology class I learned that we are better able to remember and recall information that we are able to tack on to something else that is present in our memory. Anchoring, that's the way I wanted to say it, but "tack on" was all that came to mind. I think an example of this could be how everyone says certain animals taste like chicken. Someone eats rattlesnake for the first time and they say it tastes like chicken. It may or may not taste that way, I don't know, I've never had it, and my perception of chicken taste may be different than yours (I believe I am a super-taster, perhaps I'll write a post about that next), now I can't even control sentences, let alone paragraphs; this sentence is finished. I was attempting to suggest that by saying something tastes like chicken, they are creating an anchor point for this new taste. It will be easier to recall the taste of rattlesnake because they already know what chicken tastes like, and if the snake is similar, then... Never mind, the example is a magnificent failure! Splendid!

So, learning as a progression? Yes, first you learn letters, then you put them into words, then you group words and have sentences, then the sentences never end and you build paragraphs that run away from you in distracted garbles of thoughts, and then you click "publish post" and sit back to admire the wonder that is Ajax's Whimsical Revolution. It is a series of anchors, or foundations, and then chains or steps or walls or however you want to go with the analogy. Line by line, idea by idea. It is a good way to proceed. And that was my favorite thought posted by a classmate.

Now for my contribution to the discussion board. Not (solely) to brag about my brilliance, but to relay my thoughts about a topic, which is why I started a blog in the first place. As a quick aside, is it unprofessional to mention your own blog in your blog? I do it often, and I seem to be doing it even more often-er in this particular post. There it is again! Just wondering.

In my comparison between the undergraduate and graduate experiences I compared formal education to a filtration process. In a filter system there are often several barriers. The purpose of these barriers is to stop the flow of something that is mixed with something else. Whether it is contaminants in air or bacteria in water, there are usually multiple stages for the item to pass through where different unwanted particulates are halted. It might be the case that there are three screens as part of the filter. The first blocks large objects from passing, the second blocks smaller objects, and the third blocks or kills the microscopic objects. Take a water filter, for instance. There might be a filter to block pebbles, but it lets sand through. Then there is a filter that blocks sand, but lets microorganisms through. Finally there is a filter that blasts the microorganisms with some form of energy that kills them, allowing their dead organism bodies to float through into your drinking water.

I guess you probably could have figured out the filtration process on your own, you didn't need me to explain it so fully, but what's done is done. I compared education to a filter to highlight the difference between undergrad and grad students. In elementary school everyone is there. It's a big party and everyone learns. Attendance is just the way it is. High school is pretty much the same, only you can get out of it a little more depending on how attentive or burned out your teachers are. But everyone is there, again. Then you move on to the university. At the undergraduate level there are still a lot of people there, many of whom want to be there to learn, but some who are there for other reasons. There is a filter in place between high school and college, it is called financial security. Okay, that's not what I want to get into, the filter I was suggesting in my discussion board post was that of interest and desire to learn.

College filters out some of the people who aren't interested in learning, making college a better environment to foster learning. When you move on to a graduate program, this filter occurs again and hopefully makes the learning environment even better. That was the point I was trying to make. Because of the different levels of school, hopefully the ones who show up to grad programs are the ones who want to learn, and it is that desire that makes a person a student. But you don't need formal class structure to have that desire, and you don't need an accredited diploma after your studies to make you educated. The desire that drives some people through the filtration system of school to become a refined particle in a specific area of study is a desire that can manifest itself in any person capable of thinking. This means you. I encourage learning in every instance of life. Learn and think and challenge ideas and see what is good. As a revolutionary, whimsical or not, I must note that education always precedes the uprising. Get educated and rise up. The end.

(Coming soon: what is a super-taster, and why do I think I am one?)

Sleeping with the Pillows

You are most likely familiar with the Italian-American gangster stereotype. Perhaps you have seen any number of television programs or Hollywood movies depicting the mobber archetype. Having this familiarity allows me to present you with a comparison without needing further background information provided. I think that is nice because it makes it easier to tell a story. Here is my story.

A few days ago I woke up from sleeping all day, which isn't lazy of me because I work all night. Anyhow, I was telling my wife that I think I was still in heavy sleep debt. You see, if you don't sleep the appropriate amount of time for your body each night, you end up owing your body sleep. You go into debt the same as if you don't pay your bills. The debt adds up and can do some real damage to your health. It is important not to go into sleep debt.

What does this have to do with mobsters? Nothing. As I was depicting my lack of sleep in these terms I pictured the Sandman as a mobster whom I was indebted to. I owed him some sleep and I hadn't paid up. I thought it was funny, to picture the Sandman in a Fedora coming after me to break my knees because I hadn't gotten enough sleep. Apparently this is one of those things that is less funny several days later.

Also, I am realizing that I don't really have a story, and my explanation of how I didn't need to give background information in order to make the comparison I wanted to make in the story that wasn't much of a story became highly anticlimactic. And then there is that last sentence that is out of control! The point is, you don't want to cheat the Sandman; he knows where you live and he has the power to make you sleep. Which aspect of the imaginary character works to overturn my allusion even more.

Why would the man who goes around making people sleep get mad at you if you aren't sleeping enough? It's like your barber getting mad at you because you haven't been cutting your own hair. So if the Sandman wants me to sleep and I am in sleep debt, meaning I haven't been sleeping enough, then he'd come to my rescue, right? I think I was going about this thing all wrong. If we look at it like the Sandman is giving me something in return for sleep, meaning I pay him back by sleeping, and then I'm not sleeping, I suppose then my logic lines up and we could say I am in sleep debt to him. In which case if he were part of the mob he might break my legs. But then we need to discover what it is that he is giving me that should make me sleep, only I take it and then don't sleep.

I suppose "being awake" is what he gives me. That's really the only cause for sleep that I can think of. If we are awake, at some point we will be asleep. That's just how it works. Maybe the Sandman makes it possible for me to be awake. Maybe he gives me something called "being awake" and I take it from him, but then I don't sleep enough to pay him back for it. If this were the case then I most certainly would be in a condition of default and I would owe him.

I suppose the comparison works after all. All it took was transforming a lovable mythical fellow from a Hans Christian Anderson poem into some form of monster. A monster who wants people to get enough sleep? Well, that doesn't make sense either. What's so bad about being asleep? Nothing. I love it. In fact I ought to be asleep right now. I got off work an hour and a half ago and it is definitely time to sleep.

Some Things You Don't Know...Yet

I'm not saying I know more than you, but in this case I do.

Item Number 1:

Happiness is on sale for $3.50/lb down at the Shaw's grocery store.

Item Number 2:

I found that generic "candy pieces" in store brand trail mix look a lot like M&M's, taste a lot like M&M's, but don't have the thermal functionality of M&M's. What I mean is that they melt in your hand! I was eating trail mix and the blue candy coated chocolate piece melted blue dye onto my hand skin, that is, the skin of my hand. It was alright though, I was wearing blue jeans. But I had an epiphany, the second M in M&M's stands for "mouth," naturally, the first M stands for "melts." Less naturally is the ampersand which stands for "in your," which doesn't make any sense, but you'll have to take that up with M&M/Mars.

That was ambiguous, the item was about what the M's stand for, not the similarity between the generic candy pieces and the brand name candy pieces, that was just gratuity for you for reading my blog.

Item Number 3:

We built this city on rock and roll. Just kidding, this city was built on a swamp, the real item 3 is that Pat Benatar invented the fist bump, although it really didn't become popular until some time in the last decade. I think sports players were using it for some time in the 1990's, but it didn't catch on to mainstream adolescent Americans until more recently. However, if you watch Benatar's "Love is a Battlefield" music video, and queue it up to 4 minutes and 53 seconds you will see that way back in 1983 Pat Benatar used the fist bump to congratulate her dancing gang for defeating the evil night-club-sleaze-ball-cocaine-dealer from Crocodile Dundee II. Mad props to Miss Benatar.

Item Number 4: When the men who weren't wearing pastel colored homespun shirts were defeated in the dance battle on Seven Brides for Seven Brothers I was slightly embarrassed to be a man...a man that doesn't wear pastel shirts and participate in dance battles. Hang on, my logic is flawed. I forgot how this was supposed to go. Never mind it, just stick with the first 3 items and you'll be fine.

Now you know!

But wait, there's more! For a limited time only (I just thought of another thought to share) here is item number 5 of things you don't know yet:

Agatha Christie is a famed murder mystery author. She has been popularized by her plays and novels, many of which have been converted into movies. Two of her popular characters, Miss Marple and Detective Hercule Poirot are immediately recognizable to fans of the BBC. Christie is one of my favorite authors, but I have realized recently that she hasn't written nearly as many books as the publishing company claims she has. They say 80, I say maybe half that. The rest of the books are simply rewrites. This summer I have read 4 Christie titles: The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), Curtain (1975), One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (1940), and Black Coffee (adapted from a play). Each book features the famed Poirot. Three of these four books feature Poirot working with his friend Hastings. Each of these books features a poisoning. Three of them feature a poisoning at a rural England mansion-estate. Two of them at the same mansion! I don't mean to detract from Christie's story writing, I love her books, but some of them are just the same story. I think there was a paragraph or two copied word for word between The Mysterious Affair... and Black Coffee. Incredulous! Whatever; they are great books to read. Lots of fun. Peace out.

Now I Know How the Apes Took the Planet

Taylor and I watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rupert Wyatt, director, 2011) last night. It was a fine movie, very emotional. It is sad when friends get separated, and that happens back and forth in this movie. If you haven't seen it yet, I don't want to ruin the ending for you, but if you are familiar with the original Planet of the Apes (1968) movie, starring Moses, then you can probably guess where this new movie ends us. Seeing as that it is a prequel (meaning that after having made the remake and it wasn't as much of a success, they thought they could try telling the back story and have a better go at it). Continue reading or don't, I won't be giving away crucial storyline details, just alluding to one aspect of the ending.

You see, I had a dream last night after watching the movie. I had a lot of dreams, actually. The one where I seemed to be part of the family on Full House was rather odd; Michelle had apparently run away at some point and learned about smoking while she was gone, now she was back and Danny was talking to her about her encouraging her friend and his grandfather to smoke. She was the 4 year old Michelle. Very odd. Jesse and Stephanie were trying to cover up a plumbing leak where water was spraying through the wall in a very Three Stooges fashion. I ratted them out to Danny because I didn't want to get blamed for the water mess. I digress.

At one point in the Apes movie we see Will and Caesar at a crucial decision making point. They are in the woods. Caesar is with a lot of other primates and Will is alone. Will is the scientist working on the drug that lead to Caesar's advanced intelligence and ability. Will is inviting Caesar to return home with him, as Will acted as a surrogate father for the chimp. Here is where I picked up the storyline in my dream. Will invites Caesar to come with him and Caesar denies. Then in the background you see something behind a tree that looks like a dinosaur tail. Will gets a stupid grin on his face and says that the Apes weren't the only thing he had been doing research on, and he leaves. Just then dinosaurs come out from everywhere and attack the apes.

I was left to believe that Will had previously done experimentation on dinosaurs, was able to recreate them, and then placed them in the redwood forest to live peaceably away from humans. Now he was bringing the hyper-intelligent apes to do the same thing. It didn't make sense, but it certainly changed the storyline of the movie. It also turned Will into a villain in some ways, thereby making it easier for me to accept Caesar not wanting to return with him, but at the same time, it makes it worse because the apes all were eaten by dinosaurs. I almost thought there was some closure in there for me, but turns out there isn't. So much for that. It is interesting that I dreamt an alternate ending for a movie I had only seen a few hours prior.

In the end, the movie was entertaining, if not terribly sad. But like I said in the title, I now know how the apes took over the planet. I Have never seen the original movie or it's Mark Wahlberg remake from 2001. I've seen a few minutes of both on television, but never devoted the time to either one fully. I am interested to do so now. This movie was able to answer all of the how and why questions very easily. There is the overall genetic therapy drug that is being created, which is how the apes become intelligent and how so many humans die. Then there are the two news headlines that come up kind of in the background about a mission to Mars that gets lost in space. And there you have it, apes take control of Earth.

The end.

1,688 Word Free Write

Once again I have been inspired to write by my old friend Harris Crazyhorse Jackson. That isn’t his real name. His real name isn’t important here, maybe it is, but I don’t typically include last names of real people into my blog, I usually use code names or simply exclude the last name altogether. My friend Harris keeps his own blog, however, and I’m all about advertising for my friends, so I will link to his blog. If you find his last name there, well then, that’s all the better, if you were so interested to know his name in the first place, which you weren’t, but perhaps have gathered enough interest now to actually click over to his blog. Now is when you should do that, here.

Now that you have read the post I have linked to (go do it now if you haven’t) you will see why I am writing. Harris called me out. His intention was to free write 800 words. Somewhere along the line he lost interest or something, and said that it only takes 400 words to expend your mind’s capacity, unless you are Ajax. When I read that, I was quite surprised…pleasantly. I was honored to be mentioned in the blog, and took the challenge to see if it really does take more than 400 words to drain my thought bubble. I tried to leave a comment saying as much, but for some reason the blog didn’t think my Google credentials were sufficient to allow me to leave a comment. Luckily I have my own blog and can leave the comment mixed into the body of this post; mission accomplished.

It doesn’t take much to get me going on one thought or another. Sometimes a TV commercial, sometimes overhearing a conversation in a store, or perhaps a cereal box, but whatever the medium, my mind will spin off like an errant Frisbee at the beach. Eventually that thought gets caught (maintaining the Frisbee analogy) and redirected, lands in the sand, splashes into the tide, bonks someone unsuspecting in the noggin, or drifts weightlessly into the breeze and is carried away into the clouds of oblivion. Typically it’s the first one, or maybe a figurative expression of the second two. Oftentimes it might be the third, and hardly ever is it the fourth. But that’s not true; it’s probably all of them equally, but only figuratively. The only one that could be figured literally would be the first one. Sometimes my thoughts are “caught” (attended to) and redirected, or processed, as in the writings of my blog. I like the idea of something I write bonking someone in the noggin.

Well, I’ve had some ideas lately, and I could blitzkrieg them all here for you, but I won’t because I don’t remember them. I have been struggling to get back into the night shift routine for work. After having half the month of July off for traveling and wedding celebrating, it was difficult to return to the overnight shift. Difficult doesn’t do it justice. I was in pain trying to stay awake. The only way to fix it is to switch completely to be a night person, but I don’t like what that does to people. Think about it, who do you know living on a night schedule that is a healthy and normal individual?

Spiderman tries to do both, be a regular day person as well as a night time super hero. His life certainly isn’t normal, look at how messed up all of his personal relationships are. Batman can go into that mix as well. I think Batman has the luxury of sleeping in and becoming only a night person, thanks to his money; a luxury that Spiderman can’t afford. With being only a night person Batman has the advantage over Spiderman, but it still doesn’t make for a nice life. Seriously, the guy is getting burnt out. Who else? Well I can’t think of anyone else. Except one fellow who I was working with and it didn’t turn out well for him, you can take my word for it. I think it is best for humans to be awake during the day and asleep at night. Unfortunately for many people they have to work at night due to the nature of their job. In these cases I am extremely happy that there are people willing to make the sacrifice, because I am not. However, there are a lot of people working night jobs that probably aren’t as necessary as others. But I don’t know. Work whenever you want I guess. I don’t really care. The point is that I don’t want to be awake at night and asleep during the day, and trying to do both makes you unable to think well, and by you I mean me.

There you have it, 800 words, and the explanation for why I haven’t blogged much lately. But I’m not going to stop there because I had a few lead in paragraphs that cut into my 800 word count of draining my thoughts. I’ll mention one idea I’ve had recently, and then maybe one or two other ideas. But first I’ll mention the one and see where that gets me. Although this one thought really deserves its own post, complete with creative title. I will only mention it as follows, and hope that I will someday soon devote some real thought and energy to it as a unique blog post, the idea is that rather than worry about reducing our “carbon footprint” we worry about reducing our “human footprint,” a term I have made up in my head to represent our individual impact on the people around us. Human footprint isn’t bad, it is life. We all impact the lives of others, just as their lives impact us. Some people have a larger human footprint when they rely on others for everything. Some people have a smaller human footprint when they exercise self-reliance. There needs to be a balance between the two. I think that a lot of the problems in the world could be reduced or solved if we would focus on the impact we have on other people and try to do more for ourselves first, thereby reducing our impact on others, and secondly doing more for others, thereby reducing their impact on us. That wording might not make perfect sense, it doesn’t really to me, but I get the idea I’m trying to convey. I’ll mull it over a little more and devote a full posting to it. I think there is something in there that can be fun to philosophize about. Of course that does nothing for anyone unless someone puts it into practice. We’ll see.

That was a long “only mention” of the idea. So be it. It is a fun thing to think about and it’s got that buzzword worthy language, so even the distracted people who focus on getting an advantage over everyone else can understand. I’ll continue on with my other thoughts, as the well is seemingly still full.

I was thinking about making a chain saw that worked with pulleys. It could be a small housing that you would wrap around a branch or a tree trunk and inside would be a saw chain and a series of pulleys, with cords extending from both sides. You would just pull back and forth on each cord and it would spin the chain. I hadn’t given this much thought up to this point, so I didn’t realize that I have no idea how this would actually work. There was a branch fallen in the backyard that was slightly attached to the tree still, too high for me to climb up and cut it down. I thought it would be nice to have some sort of saw I could throw up there like a rope and cut the branch off. Now that I type it out I don’t think I am the one to invent such an object. Moving on.

What about a rain gutter water filtration system? It wouldn’t be any good for low rain places, but I live in a heavy rain place. Even still, I don’t know that the rain volume collected from a house roof would make much of a dent in the expenses of extracting water from a well or the public water system. People already use barrels to collect rain water from gutters to use on gardens or flower beds, this is just adding in a system of filters to make the water more palatable. I’ve never collected rain water enough to drink it. Maybe that should be the first step in my research and development. Maybe rain doesn’t taste so bad. The survival TV show guys always drink it. I guess I never thought about that either. Why would rain water need filtration? I guess just from running across the rood and collecting debris from that. Really you wouldn’t need much. I don’t remember when I came up with this idea; it might have been late at night, or early in the morning.

I envision pipes running diagonally across one side of a house, two pipes, each one coming from a corner of the house. All of the water collected in the gutters is sent through these pipes into a collection area or into a pipe where it can be used. Inside the pipes would be a series of filters. Gravity would be the force to press the water through. Either the water could then be stored in a tank to use in an emergency or it could run directly into your refrigerator water fountain. I don’t know. Maybe there is something to it, but I guess so long as there is electricity and water being pumped into a house then this isn’t really necessary.

We are now at 1,650 words. I hope you have enjoyed this exhibition of draining words from Ajax’s thought reservoir. Thank you to Harris for the honorable mention of my capacity. I must now work on thank you cards for wedding gifts. The end.

Filler Filler Filler

I'm still settling in after recent life events. It is all good. There is a post I want to do, but I'm not prepared to put it together yet, so I've been not posting anything. Here are some bits and pieces of stuff I've pulled from Facebook conversations with Muffin Man, he said some of this and I said some of it. Enjoy!

-Penguins, those guys will never fly, but the silver lining is that they can do cool belly slides on the snow, ice, or any other slick surface. It's much cooler to evade blood thirsty polar bears via belly slides, than to just fly away like a coward. The more I think about this, the less majestic eagles become.

-What it all comes down to is that your support makes me feel better than a monkey in a banana tree. You are the Mickey to my Rocky in Rocky I and II and part of III, and then you are the Apollo Creed to my Rocky in the rest of III and Rocky IV. I’ve only seen Rocky V once so I don't know who you are in that one in relation to my being Rocky. I’m also not very familiar with Rocky Balboa, but I suppose in that one you are Rocky and I am the light bulb he replaces outside of the apartment of his lady friend. I realize that in each of these comparisons you are being compared to an old, washed-up boxer, and I am compared to the in-his-prime-boxer/light bulb, but it is of no disrespect to you, I simply mean that it is your encouragement and support and suggestions that give me even the least hope of being the champ.
I wonder why my attempts at compliments always end up slighting the person I intended to praise, and then make me look good. My id (not ID) must have tied up my ego and then beat my super ego over the head with the tied up ego. Even though the comparison could be interpreted to make you sound like a skinny old man and a buff, but out of prime man, and then an almost past prime, but still unrealistically buff and coherent man, even though that could be the interpretation, you are the bounce in my step and song in my head, all in a non-Brokeback way.

-I think my eyes are sunburned. My neck, face and arms are. My eyes were out as long as the rest of them, so why not? Plus they hurt a bit.

-All of my socks are the same, black Hanes. Only, I bought two packages at different times, so some of them are less black than the others. They are more of a “blue steel.” It makes it slightly difficult to pair them off. I have to get in the right light. It’s even more difficult when my eyes are sunburned.

-If I could perfectly imitate anyone's way of speaking it would be an old Jewish man from New York, like Uncle Leo, or Kramer's polar bear club friend, "what, you don't want to be a polar bear anymore? It's too cold for you?"

-I didn't get the smoker (Ed: backyard BBQ structure for smoking meat) built today, I don't know how I’m actually going to do that, but I did prep some apple wood so if I get the smoker built and functional, I’ll apple smoke some bacon, and then go to Wendy’s and say "what's up now, Wendy’s?"

-Here’s some fun reading for you, my homework assignment for ethics. We read a chapter about cultural and subjective relativism. It’s a blog type submission, so I read the three posts that were done before mine; they all disagreed with the two things, so I decided to agree with them. But I do feel the way I said, so I wasn't just playing the dickens (Ed: dickens used to be a euphamism for the Devil, I think i mentioned it in a blog post before, must have been around the time of this conversation between Muffin Man and me) advocate.

The question: What are some reasons that you agree or disagree with cultural relativism and subjective relativism? (Ed: the following is directly copied from the student responses, I have not edited spelling or grammar)

student response 1: I disagree with cultural relativism and subjective relativism because no matter whether people believe them or not, moral claims are still objectively true for everyone. It doesn't matter what anyone thinks of them or even what I think of them, there are moral truths that are objectively true no matter where you go. If morality was relative depending on the culture you were from, or if it was subjective, then it would cease to exist if our species ever becomes extinct, this is not the case. Morality will always exist.

2: I do not agree with either theory, mainly because I believe morals to be objective. Two disagring persons cannot both be right just because they are entitled to their own separate sets of morals. There needs to be some underlying principle to go by that is not subjective.

3: I disagree with both because it forces us to say that if a person or a culture says that it is right we cannot say a single thing about it. People or cultures can do whatever they like and that is morally right. It seems to me like a cop out. "Do whatever you want and that is morally right" doesnt fly with me.

And from your humble servant, namely Ajax: Personally, I believe in objective morality, but it can't be proven. My perception of reality is all I have. The people I meet are nothing but what I belive them to be. The same goes for everything I am aware of. Likewise, I am to others only what they think I am. All any of us have is perception. If we experience similar events then we might have similar perception, but it still won't be identical. All we know is subjective; therefore we can't proclaim objective laws. Cultural and subjective relativism have to be the way it is. I can't prove that murder is always wrong, but I can prove that certain cultures and individuals believe that way. I prefer cultural relativism over the author's definition of subjective relativism because it represents a group's opinion. That itself isn't always safe, but I'd rather go along with laws prepared by a group of people trying rather than be subject to one person's folly. If we go down it might as well be together, just like if we rise it is nice if we rise together.