Brigadoon

If you missed it, just a few days ago, February 22nd, was Enchanting Day in celebration of the Scottish legend of Brigadoon.

"The legend of Brigadoon is the story of a mythical village in the Scottish Highlands.  The village became enchanted centuries ago remaining unchanged and invisible to the outside world except for one special day every hundred years when it could be seen and even visited by outsiders.  This enchanted day is spent in joy and celebration".

A story like that had no choice but to be made into a musical, "Brigadoon", written by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, who later made another legend - that of King Arthur - into one of the most successful musicals, "Camelot".

{Tommy Albright (Gene Kelly) and Jeff Douglas (Van Johnson) are on a hunting trip in Scotland and become lost in the woodlands. They happen upon Brigadoon, a miraculously blessed village that rises out of the mists every hundred years for only a day. (This was done so that the village would never be changed or destroyed by the outside world.)} 

The other more intriguing version of the legend is about a village who'd wake up one day, go about  celebrating the new day  until nightfall, then they'd go to bed. However, the next time they wake up  the following morning, a hundred years  of "our time" had elapsed. Of course, the villagers don't know that the next "outsiders" who might come around are generations away from the last ones who saw them last.   

In today's vernacular,   "What's up with all that?", Brigadoon!

Let me detour for a bit.

A man one day found the fabled magic lamp.  As stories like this go, he had no choice but to rub on it. Truth be told he just wanted to make sure the lamp was something of value as to be made of precious metal, like gold or silver.  Rough in demeanor, impertinent and insolently rude, he was none too pleased to see a genie, clad only in loin cloth, appear. The Genie, with little variation from his fabled behavior, as the story goes, he predictably offered the man one wish.  The man, in his usual disparaging manner of speaking, said, "So, you tell me I freed you from a thousand years of bondage. I'm sure a thousand, even a million years is just like a second to you because here you are apparently un-aged and unchanged. And a million dollars is just  like a dollar to you, right?"  The genie nodded in agreement.  "Aha!", said the jubilant man, "So why don't you give me a hundred million dollars".  The genie promptly replied, "Sure, give me a second."

Well, let me introduce a new term - scalar perspective. I just made that up but here's the definition.  Our perspective on everything is all based on the scale of one thing relative to another. A small fish in a small pond would seem better off than a larger fish in the ocean. A one eyed man is king in a village of the blind.  Someone with a dollar is far richer relative to a penniless beggar. Isn't it better to be the head of a mouse than the tail of an elephant?

So, I again bring in my favorite microorganism (from the prior blog to this) - the amoeba. 

Johnny goes to bed one evening. On a wet dish on the night table with leftover snack he was too lazy to clear away was a colony of amoeba  observing him. By the time he woke up in the morning, multiple generations of amoeba later, a fresh colony was there to greet him.  Also, a foul morning breath is brought on by a colony of bacteria far removed from a handful of them stuck between Johnny's teeth or gums the night before.  Several amoebic and bacterial lifetimes to one night of slumber; scalar perspective - it's all relative, isn't it?

Does the concept of Brigadoon still look too fanciful or outrageous?

First, just a little bit of physics; just a short, little uncomplicated bit.  Elementary subatomic particles live for just a mere trillionth of a trillionth of a second.

On the other hand, trees can live for a hundred years but the oldest one - The Great Basin Bristlecone pine - is dated to be 5,000 years old. The tree was a sapling right about when one of the pyramids in Egypt was completed, and perhaps over 2,000 years before the birth of Christ.

That tree, if it is tuned to what had gone on around the world since, had seen the growth of the world population, wars and pestilences, the shifting powers of conquerors and dictators, despots and notable leaders, beheld the plight of the enslaved and grimaced at the cruelty of the enslavers, and today is still a witness to what is going on in the Baltics, primarily what is happening in Ukraine and everywhere else.  Time may have stood still for that tree as generations upon generations of people had come and gone.

The tree, remaining standing still at one place, had witnessed the same theaters of war, protagonists of victorious conquerors and subjugated  peoples who fought over the same territories for centuries of repeated lessons unlearned, set aside and ignored. Of course, a hundred centuries is but a millionth fraction of a fraction of the age of the universe. 

The Genie had been out of the bottle, or appeared after a cloud from a lamp in so many ways but had man wished more nobly other than wealth and pleasure?  Had man wished of the Genie for peace and unity?  Or, not enough time had yet materialized for lessons of history to be learned, at last?

The concept of an Eternal God, a Being whose eternal clock has been ticking with no beginning nor end, is no longer the product of our ancestor's superstitions but one that transcends the concept of time. This will require an explanation.  There is one.

The idea that the passage or flow of time is all relative is no longer in dispute.  Photons of light do not experience the passage of time. A photon of light does not age.  Not even by one second. Time and time again, no pun intended, Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity has been proven at every turn - time slows down for any object as its speed increases. And, time will stand still for particles of light. Lest we forget, it is always one relative to another.

Light, ancient readers would have quickly noted, was introduced immediately in the third verse of the book of Genesis, before all the other creations were fulfilled.  Is there another meaning - a deeper one - of, "Thus spake Jesus again unto them, saying I am the Light of the world .." John 8:12, KJV. 

Is there hope of a Brigadoon, miraculously blessed that may no longer  change or be destroyed?

I threw in a lot of things here but that is in keeping with the goal -  "to ponder with me some of the un-ponderable and the whimsical and lightly thought provoking issues you did not have the time to consider but now you may want to look into because you have a moment or two to spare or you just want some of your brain cells to be tickled out of slumber".

Anatomy of a Scam - A First Person Account

Nothing can be more ego deflating, stomach churning, or profoundly embarrassing than to be a victim of a scam, a con, or a  fraud. While my initial reaction is to be quiet and keep the embarrassing experience to myself, I gave in to an overwhelming compulsion to share it for the benefit of many. Thus, the choice is to open up the anatomy of a scam.

There was good news and there is quite a bit to be learned because, as we all know, the scammers are always a step ahead of everybody.  Even though the shelf life of a scam is short and quick for the most part, the scammers are always thinking of three or more different ways up ahead to further their malfeasance in some other different ways. And fraud is, of course, one of the oldest tricks man had perpetrated over another since Biblical times. 

Until this episode, I believed I had immunity to it because I thought I knew all about it.  I even blogged about, "If It is Too Good to be True .. on September 2, 2019.  My fascination with the story of, "The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower (Twice)" and stories of extraordinary con artists and the Academy Award winning movie, "Paper Moon", assured me that I will never fall for any con.  But, never say never, and rest assured it can happen to the best of us, including learned and sophisticated folks who fell for the Bernie Madoff and Elizabeth Holmes of the world.  Count Lustig fooled the most sophisticated business people in Paris when he "successfully" sold the Eiffel Tower, once at least, and would have done it again almost the second time (the first victims were too embarrassed to report it the first time).

I am not embarrassed to write about this little misadventure although I have already stopped asking, "How could I have fallen for it?"  Now, my dear reader, don't be too confident either but at least try to heed this one other teachable moment you may rely on and serve as one more shield toward partial immunity.

Rather than go through another method of narrating the scam, let me just include below, the summarized write up I submitted to my credit card company, after a couple of conversations with them, which resulted in my getting a full but provisional credit, for now, anyway (hoping it will be permanent). It is the good news part I mentioned early on above.  For obvious reasons, I X'ed out the sensitive information.

February 14, 2022       

Cardmember Service

P.O. Box XXXXX

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Case No. XXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXX:

I would like to provide a full explanation of the above case that is outside of the standard form that I was sent to fill out, sent Feb. 4 which I received today, Feb. 14. To explain best about how the fraud was done, I will detail it via an actual timeline in sequence.

Feb. 2, 2022, 8:25 a.m.:  I received an email, addressing me as an Amazon customer. purportedly advising me that I was debited a purchase of an item, quote:

“ORDER NUMBER:                    DHA2022AM

PRODUCT NAME:                    IPHONE 12 PRO MAX

ORDER DATE:                           2nd February 2022

------------------------------------------------------------------

AMOUNT:                                  752.60 USD

PAYMENT METHOD:              Direct Debit

If you wish to claim a REFUND then kindly Contact our Billing Department as soon as possible

You Can Reach Us On:  +1(855–607–3088)”

I called the number. The lady on the other line informed me that my credit card, via Amazon, was hacked and being misused by people – one in Ohio, one in New Jersey, and China. She knows that there is a CVS nearby and instructed me to go there.  When I got there, I was told that she had just deposited $500 to my Amazon account but that I need to purchase a Target gift card for that amount.

Feb. 2, 2022, 9:23 a.m. I purchased the gift card

A few minutes later, the same lady asked for the gift card no.  I gave it to her because that was one way to “ping” and clear the hack, she said.

I realized then, but only after I already gave her the gift card no. and Pass code, that I was a victim of a scam.  I immediately hung up and turned my phone off completely.

Feb. 2, 2022, 10:14 a.m.  I drove to the nearest Target store to report a possible hack and presented the target gift card I purchased from CVS.

The Target representative swiped the card to check the balance.  The $500 was still there (intact) but she instructed me to call 1-800-XXX-XXXX.  I called the number while still at the store. By the time the Target representative came on the line the gift card balance was zero.  I explained that I was likely a victim of a scam.  He provided me a reference no. XXXXXXXXX

I explained to him that given the short amount of time that had elapsed, I requested that Target can still put a stop to it by intercepting all online orders made on that gift card – Gift Card No. XXXXXXXXX.  My point was that the purchase had to have been via online.  If the purchase was done in person, the card had to be presented.  Furthermore, if the purchase was done miles away from where I was, it was not me making the purchase.

The representative instructed me to get a police report.

Feb. 22, 11:30-12:00 a.m. I called the Sugar Land Police Dept.

Feb. 22   mid-afternoon.  Officer XXXXXXXXXX of the Sugar Land Police Dept. called me back.  I related the whole case to him.  He provided me with a case no. XXXXXXXX

That is what happened.  I did my level best to stop it.  I know too that the Target representative understood the point I made about stopping the orders made on the gift card.

Sincerely,

(Attachment: copies of the Target gift card (back side with the number), CVS receipt, Target Card Balance Inquiry receipt):    All time-stamped

The most crucial part is, of course, after one realizes the fraud is to act quickly and keep as much information, time stamped, if possible.

The thing about is that it was all explained in the most recent issue of Consumer Report Magazine, which we have as a subscriber.  The magazine had been sitting there on the coffee table but I didn't read it until after.

The lesson: (1) Don't get duped in the first place;  (2) Once victimized, act immediately because time is of the essence.  Most scams like this are online, so given a quick action, the scam can be stopped.  Consumer Report recommends it (including a police report).

How did someone like me fall for it?  The are  three different ways we can be induced - all functions of human nature: (1) The "too good to be true" appeals to the softest part of human nature in the mistaken belief that certain things can be had cheaply or with little effort ; (2) Fear that stokes alertness or concern if we don't do something right away to correct a perceived or induced danger (IRS, police and other coercive fraud); (3) Sympathy, kindness, pity that reaches to our human tendency to help total strangers (we give to panhandlers or anyone reaching out online begging for help, contributions, donations, etc).

In my case, it was no. (2).  They had enough information, or at least they knew enough to make me believe in the story they were telling me. A hacked credit card account was something - also serious - we hear so much about.  Fear or sense of alertness can get us into a state of almost near hypnosis that gets to our sense to follow rapid-fired instructions, almost mechanically. Fortunately, I realized just in time, almost as if I woke up from a trance. The police officer who wrote up the report told me that other individuals lost in multiples of what I went through and never got their money back.

What to do?

1. Never respond to unsolicited emails or phone calls about correcting bad orders or IRS or other threats from government or private institutions. Exception: your credit card company may call to verify or alert you to a suspicious transaction.

2. Once you realized you were a victim, act immediately. Write things down and have as much information as possible.  Contact your credit card company or other financial institutions right away. It is not uncommon for the credit institutions and sellers to be already familiar with the issues. They can and will help. I was lucky I had time-stamped documents.

Well, if this wasn't a teachable moment, I don't know what is. I was just fortunate and so I wanted to share this one embarrassingly stressful episode.

(P.S. I did get full credit refund from the credit card company two weeks after this musing.  I can only infer that by acting quickly, Target must have put a stop to shipping the orders made with the gift card. I am one of the few lucky ones.)

The Significance of Our Insignificance

 

 

Let’s face it. In the context of the vastness of the universe, we, the whole human population, are about as insignificant as a colony of amoeba in a puddle of water at somebody’s backyard after a rainy day.  The significance of our existence would then seem like a thin invisible thread in an unimaginably infinite fabric of space. Should we then give in to the futility of our role in the world we live in? Does our life as individuals have any meaning? Or, are we destined for something far greater than the mere biological evolution of our species?  

Let’s look at that amoeba.  Imagine one in a patch at the water’s edge of Lake Michigan.  With it were countless others that are each an exact copy of itself after countless cell divisions in a blink of an eye - by human chronological reference, that is. But the amoeba was proud of what it had achieved.  So one moonless night it looked at a faint glimmer of light that was on the other side of the lake.  It knew it was far away but it was curious.  It decided that it must go to where that light is. It is a challenge it couldn’t resist.

We scale that story up many, many millions of times to our level and within the context of just the last few hundred years of human history.  Have we not contemplated reaching for a similar distant glimmer of light? Our ancestors would look up at the glowing moon each nightfall, and with their naked eyes pondered even more at the thousands of faint lights farther out. Just like the amoeba we had let our unfettered leap of imagination soar to the high heavens – reaching for the stars.  Our evolutionary path has taken us not only to great physical wonders of anatomy but to levels of intelligence that gave us calculus, the languages, powdered milk, powered flight and a few other things.  That is the good news. However, the amoeba has a better than fair chance of reaching the other side of the lake than our reaching the nearest star.  It is a practical impossibility for any human to reach Proxima Centauri, least of all in one’s lifetime.  A journey undertaken by multiple successive generations of space travelers is a fantasy.  Let’s put this one to rest.  It takes four years for light from that star to reach us (at a staggering speed of 186,000 miles per second).  The laws of physics will not allow any object to attain that speed.  Let’s assume we can multiply our current launch capability for spaceships from earth at hundreds of times, it will still be a fraction of the speed of light, so it will still take future astronauts hundreds and hundreds to thousands of years to get to the nearest star.  Then there is the issue of cost.  There is not enough wealth and resources, let alone the international will, to finance such a voyage.  As population grows the future world economy will be no better and people will not pay for something they will not see completed in their lifetime.  No one plants a tree that will bear fruit beyond the grower’s lifetime.  We cannot also ignore the possibility that before such an adventure we will have destroyed our world through war, natural depletion of resources (food in particular), various geological catastrophes and diseases, etc. And let us not forget the inevitable asteroid strike – an event that has occurred with recurring regularity in earth’s history.  One strike actually changed the entire makeup of how life evolved on this planet over sixty millions years ago.

Current estimate puts the number of galaxies in the observable universe to be at 2-3 trillion, each galaxy with 100 to 300 billion stars.

So what is the meaning of our existence?  Here we are in a middle orbit of a solar system lorded over by a small star that is one of billions of others that make up a pinwheel-shaped averaged size galaxy. From the perspective of our own Milky Way galaxy alone, planet earth is a grain of sand on a beach along an infinite shore line.  Then we find out our galaxy is an average size island of stars scattered around with billions of other galaxies that we perceive as the known universe. We are therefore as significant as a billionth of a grain of sand trying to determine the shape of a sand dune. True. So, should we then lead our individual life with purposeless futility?

Let me bring in the amoeba again.  As organisms go, the amoeba is about as simple as it gets.  It feeds on other simple organisms that could be harmful to us.  In turn the amoeba is also food for other slightly larger organisms and the process cascades upwards to more complex life forms.  The bad news is that this type of protozoa also causes amoebic dysentery that kills thousands of people and sickens millions more, particularly in under developed nations, around the world every year.  It is not as insignificant as we might think.  Meanwhile, at our level, the pages of history are filled with individuals who have left indelible marks, good and bad. Pages of our history have been soiled with the likes of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and many more.  On the brighter side of history we were given Aristotle, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein and Mother Theresa. And let’s not forget ordinary folks around us - everyday people - who volunteer at the hospices, do rescue work, serve at churches, etc. 

Significant or not there is quite a lot to think about as to our place in the universe.  We may not reach the stars but we now know so much about them. All the heavy elements we have here on earth were made from exploding stars.  That led one cosmologist to declare that we are literally made of stardust.  

Iron, potassium and sodium, etc. that are in our blood could ONLY have come from a supernova explosion billions of years ago.  Our sun, in fact, could be one of the third generations of stars created by such an explosion.  Are we then a product of chance, a random roll of a cosmic dice? 

It would take a series of lucky rolls of the dice to make a habitable planet. 

It is therefore not a difficult thing to say that, indeed, we - all of us - are here for a reason because to think otherwise would mean we relegate ourselves to the seemingly insignificant existence of an amoeba.  But as you read above, that amoeba is not so insignificant after all, is it? For that reason we therefore ought not believe in our insignificance. Instead, we must marvel that we have a mind, or rather that we were endowed with a mind that is more powerful than the most massive computer system ever built. Just the last few seconds that you pondered that, no computing power can match the breadth and scope of what you just thought about. Everything else would then seem insignificant. Once we set our mind to think that, we are significant.

"For Kindness Begins Where Necessity Ends"

That quote stood out, for me anyway, from the thousands of words and word combinations in a 571-page novel, "The Lincoln Highway".

Sally, one of the characters in the book, a most adorable, virtuous and no-nonsense young lady uttered those words, as she lamented about one facet of human nature or certain habits or behavior of those she encountered in her young life.

One is most prevailed upon, as I was when I read that quote, to ask what it meant. First, I wondered why the author wrote that sentence,  which made up the entire last paragraph by itself, at the end of a chapter on page 104.  

The best selling author, Amor Towles, also wrote another best seller, "A Gentleman in Moscow". In "The Lincoln Highway", he employed a storytelling technique that involves multiple points of view; that is, the entire book is woven seamlessly from the perspective of all the different characters, sometimes in the first person and at other times it is done in the third person. From chapter to chapter, a character is the story teller or the story is told from the perspective of the character when he or she is the focus of the chapter. The characters emerge in and out, as the chapters unfold with the developing story.

When it was Sally's turn it was in the first person, so we, the readers, get to know what Sally felt and thought.  And, it was she who said those words. Having lost her mom at a young age, and a married sister who moved out of state, she takes care of all the household chores  in the home she shares with her dad, who works the farm and ranch.  Though not the main character in the story, Sally has the maturity and clear thinking of an intelligent, yet practical young woman.

Her piety begins with what is clearly a good working Biblical knowledge mixed with a pragmatic view of the world.  In her mind, it is not kindness when one does what is necessary.  Here is a quote:

"And I do it because it's unnecessary.

For what is kindness but the performance that is beneficial to another and unrequired?  There is no kindness in paying a bill. There is no kindness in getting up at dawn to slop the pigs, or milk the cows, or gather the eggs from the henhouse.  For that matter, there is no kindness in making dinner, or in cleaning the kitchen after your father heads upstairs without so much as a word of thanks.

Nope, I said to myself while climbing into bed and switching the light, there is no kindness in any of that.

For kindness begins where necessity ends".   (The chapter ends with that).

In Sally's mind, she considers kindness as doing something good to someone or others even when it is not required. More so when it is neither necessary nor expected. 

If we go by that, it is kindness when one adds to his or her tab after a meal at the restaurant a 20% up to 30% tip to the server if the conventional rule says 10-15% is all that is necessary.  When upon seeing a delivery truck about to stop by the front of one's home, one hurries to the refrigerator to get a bottled water and hands it over to the delivery person or postal worker in exchange for the package, because it was such a sweltering summer day, one dose of kindness was just dispensed.  Even if the dose of kindness was never completed because the delivery person was in such haste, perhaps because he or she was running behind, preoccupied with the prospect of not making his or her delivery quota for the day, so that by the time one opened the door, the truck had already lurched away to the next stop, the intent to offer the bottled water was kindness just the same. 

Now, we all know that kindness is never always about money; in fact, hardly is it ever about money.  And, though it is returned, it never is owed. Think about that for a minute. 

Hardly will kindness be explained by science. It will, however, defy it.  Take Isaac Newton's third law of motion, also known as the law of action and reaction, which states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Where kindness "defies that law" is that a single dose of kindness is most certainly but in very unexpected ways returned with multiple doses of kindness or circumstances that almost always come from somewhere else, often not from the recipient of the first dose.

Unfortunately, there is another human condition that is also well known to be true.  It is the direct opposite of the effects of kindness and if a dose of it is dispensed, unexpected doses will be returned with the same certainty. The ancient, though now extinct, language of Sanskrit gave us the one word that describes that ancient principle that we  know as karma. (Of course, from the original Hindu philosophy, karma comes as either good or bad, while today, we commonly associate it only with bad connotations).

That sentence from a fictional character named Sally stayed with me and I know that the reader of this musing will come to know and understand as well. I hope that those six words will resonate with you as it had with me.  More importantly, I hope that more than resonance will come out of it because if life were a piece of music, kindness ought to be reprised over and over by all of us.