Jazz in F'sted and thoughts on common sense

 Common sense…that which is generally understood, universally acceptable to all. A sense that unites all others. 

Calvin and Hobbes had a quote: 
"I've got plenty of common sense! I just choose to ignore it."

Descartes stated that everyone has common sense but that it is rarely used well. Aristotle thought common sense resided in the heart. Hobbes thought man was no different from other animals and behaved likewise. 

Bacon describes normal human thinking and therefore common sense as being biased towards believing in lies.

Some claim common sense is built from shared experiences and shared emotions which may make it imperfect when trying to suss out the truth. 

But Vico came along and thought common sense came from the idea that the wisdom of the people evolves. 

Vico’s view of common sense puts it in a category that removes it from purely selfish motivations.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." Albert Einstein

At MIT there is an Open Mind Common Sense project whose goal is to build and utilize a large commonsense knowledge base from the contributions of thousands of people all across the Web. This data base which was started in 1999 is a repository for all the general knowledge most people possess.

The reason this project started is because computers lack common sense. The things we understand about our communities, ourselves, our family and friends still remains outside the scope of artificial intelligence. Computers have to be programed to understand how things look, feel and taste, how they behave, interact and the sensory knowledge we all share with out even thinking about it.

Although most of us don’t think about common sense it is that aspect of ourselves that provides us with the means to think like a person. We understand that giving a knife to a child can cause harm. We know how to get along and how to avoid events that might turn out negative. We use our common sense all day long to navigate our world. The physical matter residing in our skulls holds millions of pieces of common sense material. When you start adding up all the times we use our common sense it becomes mind boggling. 

Every human being all over the world is oozing with common sense….so why is it that when you watch politicians, predatory business and the extremes of behavior among the population does it make one wonder where it all went?

See ya next week

Poetry, pics and comments

Soul receives from soul that knowledge, therefore not by book
nor from tongue.
If knowledge of mysteries come after emptiness of mind, that is
illumination of heart.

Rumi

If thou wilt be observant and vigilant, thou wilt see at every moment the response to thy action.

Be observant if thou wouldst have a pure heart, for something is born to thee in consequence

of every action.

Rumi

Make yourself free from self at one stroke!

Like a sword be without trace of soft iron;

Like a steel mirror, scour off all the rust with contrition.

Rumi

Below was found while reading comments on an aging article:

Yep!

Polish yer shoes

and no soup stains on yer shirt

I love seeing the kids wear what I wear

theirs is retro

mine is original

Another comment:

I thought I was going to grow old gracefully…but then my grandchildren arrived on the scene.

I am now a budding wizard, a dragon tamer, and the holder of some very old books which are

all magic.

More than 2 billion people use the internet and its only 25 years old.

Being walkers with the dawn and morning,

Walkers with the sun and morning

We are not afraid of night,

Nor days of gloom,

Nor darkness-

Being walkers with the sun and morning

-Langston Hughes

Found in comments here and there

A life spent ticking off items on an ever growing to-do list is busy but ultimately futile.

Another found comment:

“A man walked around for several weeks with a hole in the toe of his shoe. When coming under criticism, he pointed out that if he had replaced them when the hole first appeared the new pair of shoes would now be a third of the way to being worn out.” 

One thing that is good about the war

is that it took one’s mind off the earthquake

which took one’s mind off the drought

which took ones mind off the homeless

which took one’s mind off of sex

which took one’s mind off

Mark Schwartz

According to a Norwegian Refugee study mega disasters such as typhoons and hurricanes drove 22 million people from their homes in 2013….three times as many people as war.

Some might respond that 22 million temporarily displaced by nature versus 7 million permanently scared by war is not reassuring. Others may say that war is avoidable and natural disasters are not.

Think about the entire world…see that blue globe hanging in space…globally August was the warmest month EVER since records began being kept in 1880 according to NASA.

1079. Written after thieves had broken into his hut, Monk Ryokan (translated by Steven D. Carter

At least the robbers

left this one thing behind—

moon in my window.

Death is an evil;

we have the gods’

word for it;

they too would die

if death were a good thing.

Sappho 

Thinking

Now that all thoughts have subsided

off I go, deep into the woods,

and pick me

a handful of shepherd's purse.

Just like the stream

meandering through mossy crevices

I, too, hushed

become utterly clear.

Rhokan

i’m just wondering are there people out there that don’t have bucket lists?

See ya next week.

Fusion of reality and pictures

“Half of all the food produced worldwide goes to waste.” Wall Street Daily

Chikungunya, car jackings, bank robberies and will she or won’t she be on the November ballot are just a few of the local happenings on island.

There is a device in Sweden that you put your hand into and it uses your vein patterns to verify your identity. The unit can secure’s each individual’s payment patterns after an initial registration at a Quixter terminal. Seems like the ultimate way to keep your money yours.

“It’s overwhelmingly clear what the citizenry wants: fed up with a system in which the super-rich and giant corporations are effectively able to buy politicians and policy, the American people are rising up and demanding a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and restore our democracy,” explains Robert Weissman,

Sixteen states and more than 600 towns, villages, cities and counties demand an amendment to the constitution over Citizens United.

“One Million comments submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission have called for requiring companies to disclose political donations in their shareholder reports.” Nation

3,000,000 Syrian refugees are being housed by neighboring countries and an additional 6.5 million are displaced within Syria. Same thing is going on in Iraq. Why does no one discuss the fact that all these millions of people don't support ISIS?

One in three according to a Global Poll frown on investing in gun manufacturers.

Based on all the data statistics from 2007 to 2013 McAfee has determined that all this data would cover every inch of our Earth.

Formaldehyde is in some of your cosmetics, soaps, lotions and baby products. It is also a known cancer causer.

It is not only people that are stressed…50% of our birds are facing extinction all across North America because of human induced climate change.

Finally…after months of trying to get a decent picture of one of the most handsome but oh so illusive Bridled Quail Dove's one literally knocked on my house…recomposed himself in the grass and allowed me to snap away. He is fine and flew off but not until i got a few pics.

A list of the things i found in a comment thread somewhere that could do the world in starting from least likely to more likely. 1. Universal Phase Shift 2. Extraterrestrial invasion 3. Grey Goo 4. AI singularity hard takeoff 4. Supernova or rogue planet 5. Gamma Ray Burst 6. Super volcano 7. Asteroid or comet impact 8. Critical pollinator extinction or biodiversity loss 9. Pandemic 10. Nuclear War 11. Global Warming

i love thinking about all that stuff but in the mean time wouldn't it be nicer to invite your friends and family over for a good long chat.

See ya next week.

Curiosity...it's good for you

This week i was reading a piece on empathy and it had six habits we could try to make ourselves more empathetic. i’m not going to list them but they did make me ruminate on a few things that stood out for me.

A key empathy habit was listening and i think listening is one we all have trouble with because we can’t wait to get our own point across. Most people only half listen the minute something has been said that they want to respond to. Non stop talkers are probably the worst at not listening. Their story is always much more important than yours ever could be and they will interrupt you with no thought for your feelings. They don’t want to listen…they just want to talk. They can't ever be as empathetic as a real listener because they never learned to stop caring about themselves long enough to think about someone else.

But the empathy habit that really called to me was curiosity about strangers.

Apparently curiosity was high on the list for people that were empathetic.

How many of you study other people, wonder about their lives, observe complete strangers with delight, and will even start conversations with someone you have never been introduced to?

My mother used to tell me curiosity killed the cat. She would admonish me to stop asking so many questions and just keep my mouth shut. But over the course of my life the stories i have heard from complete strangers have opened up my life in ways that are hard to explain. It is kind of like riding along on a train, a bus, or in a car and catching a fleeting glance through a window of a person moving through their life. You have just connected with them even though they aren’t aware of it…they came and went in an instant but their aura stays with you for a while and you wonder…or at least i do…who they were…they have no idea they changed your life for that moment. They have no idea you had a fleeting interest in them...but you know and you are different because of it. The stories i hear make me different.

People from all over the world fascinate me…the good and the bad. i guess you could say that i have taken curiosity to a higher level. i cultivate it because i believe that all of us human beings need to live in groups to feel full-filled. We need connection to others, we need face to face encounters, we need to argue and love, we need to cry and laugh and be vulnerable, we need to feel close to really be complete human beings.

When we separate ourselves we suffer loneliness, anger, and even bad health. We need each other, we need social activities, we need connectedness, and curiosity helps us achieve that. Being curious helps us to leave our comfort zones and interact with those we know nothing about. We learn from them, we open up to their worlds and they open up to our own. 

Healthy curiosity is not morbid or bad…it is good for you.

See ya next week