Many, many years ago when the kids were still in high school I was a willing victim of their word-prank they called, "Deep but not Profound". The cleverness of it was that I participated in the whole thing oblivious to their plot that appeared to have all the innocence of playing among themselves to which I was lured into joining. It started with one of them saying, within earshot of course, "Deep but not profound". Then followed by another who said, "School but not playground". Everyone chimed in with approval of the pairing to say, "that's good". Then, "Steel but not iron". After listening to a few more of those word-pairs, I figured what they were doing, or so I thought. I said, "okay, I got it". I said, "Stool but not chair". Nope, that was not it. I came up with more only to be rejected with laughter over a joke only they understood. I came up with many different pairings of words that I knew for sure were in the same logical mold as "Deep but not Profound" only to be discounted again. How did the pairing like "Cheese but not syrup" made sense to them while everything I said with apparently similar connections and even cleverer alliterations did not? Then I blurted out, "Stool but not sofa" and they all burst into laughter because I got it right. But the joke was still on me because they knew it was a lucky guess since the rest of what I thought were equally clever successions of word-pairs did not make the cut. The more frustrated I was the funnier it was to them.
Do you get the connection from those examples? Why "Creek but not river" makes sense but "Pond but not lake" does not. I will pause here to see if you got it.
You'll find out at the end of this musing.
In ordinary every day conversations 99% of what we talk about are far from deep and even less likelier to be profound. Deep and profound subjects take a lot of effort to promote in a conversation, and much too hard to sustain.
"There are three great things in the world: There is religion, there is science, and there is gossip." ----------Robert Frost
It is understandable that during the time when the famous poet said that, he probably never thought politics was, or will ever be as pivotal as it is today. Granted, not every one is into it. But a good slice of the population does engage in it with confident punditry. Today we cannot ignore that politics plays a role in people's lives because running the government stems from political power, where politics determine who gets to wield that power. Be that as it may, all four - after we include a fourth to Robert Frost's three - have a potential to evoke deep sentiments and emotions and can have profound impact on society. And, yes, gossip, which is usually relegated to the shallowest part of the intellectual pond, can no longer be shushed because social media can easily fill that pond with clear water and as easily with mud. So, it is best to stay clear of politics and gossip. I already had my say on religion in my earlier blog, "Everything Happens for a Reason" at:
https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2018/02/everything-happens-for-reason.html
That leaves us with science which many may consider a deep subject but not necessarily always profound. For example, it takes deep understanding to fully know the physics of how water turns into ice and vice versa but hardly does the average person think profoundly about it. But I dare say that science is employed often by folks to promote an argument or push an agenda. And here I begin to argue the profundity of it. What does that mean? Well, science might be deep to English or history majors but it is sometimes profoundly lost to those who use it to advance a political argument as in, shall I dare to say, climate change.
Surprisingly, to those who remember one or two positions I have on climate change, this will not be to argue against but to agree with the popular notion. I will even go as far as to accommodate what ever is the latest alteration, that is, where it used to be global warming to what is most popular today - climate change.
We can even say we are in the midst of global warming. The debate, however, had always been about whether it is man-caused or nature doing its thing. We can also avoid having to do that. After all, it would require a very deep discussion into all the different models used to project temperature increases based on all the different scenarios that will have the most profound effect on climate, whether it is because of our activities or not.
Of course, the whole debate is about how bleak our future is going to be if we do not change what we do today and by our actions or lack thereof from hereon in. We will not even debate about how much had been done to mitigate a lot of the bad things done to our environment during the past several decades. There is even some serious projections that as early as ten years from today, there will be so much unimaginable devastation never seen before. We will not touch that either. Let us just say that future events are debatable but we will not even determine, for now anyway, who is right or has the right to absolute certainty.
Science is a unique human achievement that took centuries to accumulate, fathered by countless brilliant individuals from histories past, from not too long ago, and from the present day, and certainly from the infinite future to come. The sciences are either settled by rigorous experiments and collaborated by many, or conjectures with very solid arguments behind them, or projections based on presently known facts. Science had also been known to be revised when new methods of observation brought new or differing results.
Sciences that look back at history, at this point in time, after all the corrections and examination of data, have established a pretty good baseline with evidence that are still around today. The science of geology has given us layers upon layers of evidence about what earth was like thousands and millions of years ago. For example, along the walls of the Grand Canyon and many similar formations around the world are layers of stratified evidence that, on average, represents several hundred or up to a thousand years each.
Today, plate tectonics still continue to play an active role in continuing to reshape the continents. Earthquakes occur with regularity, volcanoes erupt in diverse places and mountains continue to rise. Mount Everest is still growing. Climate will continue to change as it had done thousands of times in the past. Montana and Minnesota were once tropical forests and so were France and Belgium and Equatorial Guinea and Sumatra were temperate locales comparable to the Mediterranean today. Of course, all of the aforementioned places were not shaped the way they are today. Actually, these locations as we know them today are merely place holders on top of very dynamic moving, almost malleable, plates over the earth's crust that is being manipulated by a smoldering, super hot mantle.
If that were not enough to make us totally helpless, the earth had switched its magnetic poles a few times before - North and South Poles reversing their locations. The earth's tilt changes or wobbles a couple or so degrees from its axis affecting geographic temperatures as sun exposure varies. But even that little bit of variation is enough to dramatically alter climate. The sun itself is not exactly a model of consistency on how much sunlight and heat it puts out over a calendar period measured in millennia. Every eleven years it goes through a tantrum by ejecting more solar material, increasing solar radiation, changing the severity and frequency of solar flares and sunspots, etc.
Lastly, ice ages and warming of the earth had occurred several times in earth's recent history. And we're talking just thousands of years, not millions. So, the last ice age was 14,000 years ago. Obviously, we're not in that now and, in fact, agreeing with almost everybody, we are in the midst of a changing climate that is warming. The warming of the planet is not something we are experiencing just recently. Tell that to the woolly mammoth, mastodons and saber tooth tigers. They're no longer here but they were around during the last ice age. Let's see and transport ourselves back to that time. Canada did not exist because its verdant fields and tree covered hills were under ice two miles thick, its mountain peaks today were hilltops above an ice sheet. There were no Great Lakes in North America. Iceland is unidentifiable and animals - those that were suited to arctic weather - could have walked or migrated back and forth over all the places we know today to be Denmark, Sweden, Norway, including Iceland. etc. Since much of the water was in the form of ice mostly at the poles, Japan, The Philippines and other island-nations detached from Mainland Asia presently were all within land migration routes. Animals and people went back and forth along land bridges. I can keep going but let's not do that.
To sum it up, if not for global warming, much of the countries we know today will not exist. Island nations that are now beach and vacation destinations were not as enticing then. We are likely to be covered with fur, or at least we will have fur for apparel, except those at or very near the equator. Siberia would not have become The Gulag because, well, The Soviet Union may not have been the country it was in late 19th to early 20th century. It would have been all ice from one to three miles thick. But then, without Russia we would not have had ballet, vodka and Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 or The 1812 Overture.
Am I making lemonade out of lemons? Maybe. Suffice it to say, we are presently humanity's latest reincarnation - a successful survivor of climate change, of global warming. And the good news is that we still have in us the genes of Neanderthals and Cro Magnon and other ancestral cave dwellers to prepare us for the next ice age, as it is bound to re-occur again. Given that, our ability to adapt had a very good track record. Let me digress for a bit. The macaque monkeys are a species common in Africa, Asia and Gibraltar. During the ice age some of them migrated to Japan and those that survived up in the cold mountains have evolved to become the Japanese snow monkeys. They have much thicker fur and are highly successful in a snowy habitat on the highlands of northern Japan. All human races have pretty much shed the thick fur of their ancestors but have evolved by adapting to suit their environment by modifying their skin pigments. The darker skin is able to block much of the harmful rays from the sun but absorbing the proper amount of vitamin D, while those who live in temperate zones where the sun's rays are inclined away from the vertical, hence less intense, developed paler skins so they can absorb the much needed vitamin D. The brown skin adapted well within the halfway range since their habitat is between the equatorial ring and the temperate zone. It took thousands of years but the adaptation is nature's gift to all living things. For most of us it is The Creator's Gift.
Was that too deep but not quite profound to be meaningful today? It is not because if we are looking at a hundred thousand years condensed to a calendar year, we are worrying today about a mere minute of it.
Now, about that word-prank. It will take two or more conspirators and a hapless victim for it to work. Notice that deep but not profound are two seemingly connected words where the first, ,deep, has double vowels like "ee", and it is one syllable. Profound is two syllables but no double vowels. That is why "stool but not chair" did not work for me but "stool but not sofa" did (both pairs seem properly connected). It is silly but not so when you are the only one who does not know what is going on. That is why we have to be careful when we confront subjects like my favorite - global warming. We cannot be too deep but we must find profound ways to advance our argument.
You'll find out at the end of this musing.
In ordinary every day conversations 99% of what we talk about are far from deep and even less likelier to be profound. Deep and profound subjects take a lot of effort to promote in a conversation, and much too hard to sustain.
"There are three great things in the world: There is religion, there is science, and there is gossip." ----------Robert Frost
It is understandable that during the time when the famous poet said that, he probably never thought politics was, or will ever be as pivotal as it is today. Granted, not every one is into it. But a good slice of the population does engage in it with confident punditry. Today we cannot ignore that politics plays a role in people's lives because running the government stems from political power, where politics determine who gets to wield that power. Be that as it may, all four - after we include a fourth to Robert Frost's three - have a potential to evoke deep sentiments and emotions and can have profound impact on society. And, yes, gossip, which is usually relegated to the shallowest part of the intellectual pond, can no longer be shushed because social media can easily fill that pond with clear water and as easily with mud. So, it is best to stay clear of politics and gossip. I already had my say on religion in my earlier blog, "Everything Happens for a Reason" at:
https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2018/02/everything-happens-for-reason.html
That leaves us with science which many may consider a deep subject but not necessarily always profound. For example, it takes deep understanding to fully know the physics of how water turns into ice and vice versa but hardly does the average person think profoundly about it. But I dare say that science is employed often by folks to promote an argument or push an agenda. And here I begin to argue the profundity of it. What does that mean? Well, science might be deep to English or history majors but it is sometimes profoundly lost to those who use it to advance a political argument as in, shall I dare to say, climate change.
Surprisingly, to those who remember one or two positions I have on climate change, this will not be to argue against but to agree with the popular notion. I will even go as far as to accommodate what ever is the latest alteration, that is, where it used to be global warming to what is most popular today - climate change.
We can even say we are in the midst of global warming. The debate, however, had always been about whether it is man-caused or nature doing its thing. We can also avoid having to do that. After all, it would require a very deep discussion into all the different models used to project temperature increases based on all the different scenarios that will have the most profound effect on climate, whether it is because of our activities or not.
Of course, the whole debate is about how bleak our future is going to be if we do not change what we do today and by our actions or lack thereof from hereon in. We will not even debate about how much had been done to mitigate a lot of the bad things done to our environment during the past several decades. There is even some serious projections that as early as ten years from today, there will be so much unimaginable devastation never seen before. We will not touch that either. Let us just say that future events are debatable but we will not even determine, for now anyway, who is right or has the right to absolute certainty.
Science is a unique human achievement that took centuries to accumulate, fathered by countless brilliant individuals from histories past, from not too long ago, and from the present day, and certainly from the infinite future to come. The sciences are either settled by rigorous experiments and collaborated by many, or conjectures with very solid arguments behind them, or projections based on presently known facts. Science had also been known to be revised when new methods of observation brought new or differing results.
Sciences that look back at history, at this point in time, after all the corrections and examination of data, have established a pretty good baseline with evidence that are still around today. The science of geology has given us layers upon layers of evidence about what earth was like thousands and millions of years ago. For example, along the walls of the Grand Canyon and many similar formations around the world are layers of stratified evidence that, on average, represents several hundred or up to a thousand years each.
Today, plate tectonics still continue to play an active role in continuing to reshape the continents. Earthquakes occur with regularity, volcanoes erupt in diverse places and mountains continue to rise. Mount Everest is still growing. Climate will continue to change as it had done thousands of times in the past. Montana and Minnesota were once tropical forests and so were France and Belgium and Equatorial Guinea and Sumatra were temperate locales comparable to the Mediterranean today. Of course, all of the aforementioned places were not shaped the way they are today. Actually, these locations as we know them today are merely place holders on top of very dynamic moving, almost malleable, plates over the earth's crust that is being manipulated by a smoldering, super hot mantle.
If that were not enough to make us totally helpless, the earth had switched its magnetic poles a few times before - North and South Poles reversing their locations. The earth's tilt changes or wobbles a couple or so degrees from its axis affecting geographic temperatures as sun exposure varies. But even that little bit of variation is enough to dramatically alter climate. The sun itself is not exactly a model of consistency on how much sunlight and heat it puts out over a calendar period measured in millennia. Every eleven years it goes through a tantrum by ejecting more solar material, increasing solar radiation, changing the severity and frequency of solar flares and sunspots, etc.
Lastly, ice ages and warming of the earth had occurred several times in earth's recent history. And we're talking just thousands of years, not millions. So, the last ice age was 14,000 years ago. Obviously, we're not in that now and, in fact, agreeing with almost everybody, we are in the midst of a changing climate that is warming. The warming of the planet is not something we are experiencing just recently. Tell that to the woolly mammoth, mastodons and saber tooth tigers. They're no longer here but they were around during the last ice age. Let's see and transport ourselves back to that time. Canada did not exist because its verdant fields and tree covered hills were under ice two miles thick, its mountain peaks today were hilltops above an ice sheet. There were no Great Lakes in North America. Iceland is unidentifiable and animals - those that were suited to arctic weather - could have walked or migrated back and forth over all the places we know today to be Denmark, Sweden, Norway, including Iceland. etc. Since much of the water was in the form of ice mostly at the poles, Japan, The Philippines and other island-nations detached from Mainland Asia presently were all within land migration routes. Animals and people went back and forth along land bridges. I can keep going but let's not do that.
To sum it up, if not for global warming, much of the countries we know today will not exist. Island nations that are now beach and vacation destinations were not as enticing then. We are likely to be covered with fur, or at least we will have fur for apparel, except those at or very near the equator. Siberia would not have become The Gulag because, well, The Soviet Union may not have been the country it was in late 19th to early 20th century. It would have been all ice from one to three miles thick. But then, without Russia we would not have had ballet, vodka and Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 or The 1812 Overture.
Am I making lemonade out of lemons? Maybe. Suffice it to say, we are presently humanity's latest reincarnation - a successful survivor of climate change, of global warming. And the good news is that we still have in us the genes of Neanderthals and Cro Magnon and other ancestral cave dwellers to prepare us for the next ice age, as it is bound to re-occur again. Given that, our ability to adapt had a very good track record. Let me digress for a bit. The macaque monkeys are a species common in Africa, Asia and Gibraltar. During the ice age some of them migrated to Japan and those that survived up in the cold mountains have evolved to become the Japanese snow monkeys. They have much thicker fur and are highly successful in a snowy habitat on the highlands of northern Japan. All human races have pretty much shed the thick fur of their ancestors but have evolved by adapting to suit their environment by modifying their skin pigments. The darker skin is able to block much of the harmful rays from the sun but absorbing the proper amount of vitamin D, while those who live in temperate zones where the sun's rays are inclined away from the vertical, hence less intense, developed paler skins so they can absorb the much needed vitamin D. The brown skin adapted well within the halfway range since their habitat is between the equatorial ring and the temperate zone. It took thousands of years but the adaptation is nature's gift to all living things. For most of us it is The Creator's Gift.
Was that too deep but not quite profound to be meaningful today? It is not because if we are looking at a hundred thousand years condensed to a calendar year, we are worrying today about a mere minute of it.
Now, about that word-prank. It will take two or more conspirators and a hapless victim for it to work. Notice that deep but not profound are two seemingly connected words where the first, ,deep, has double vowels like "ee", and it is one syllable. Profound is two syllables but no double vowels. That is why "stool but not chair" did not work for me but "stool but not sofa" did (both pairs seem properly connected). It is silly but not so when you are the only one who does not know what is going on. That is why we have to be careful when we confront subjects like my favorite - global warming. We cannot be too deep but we must find profound ways to advance our argument.
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