Idling

From the Cambridge dictionary:

Idling definition: 1. present participle of idle 2. If an engine or machine idles, it runs slowly but does not move ..

From Merriam-Webster:

Idling can mean not being occupied or employed...

It is interesting, of course, that we commonly associate idling with machines not running at their maximum capacity or potential usefulness to do work and similarly when we think of our brain as in idling mode we are thinking of the not so flattering attributes associated with idle minds.

We've heard the expression, "An idle mind is the devil's workshop' and someone actually came up with twelve reasons why. I won't list all but some of them range from breeding ground  for negative thoughts to weakened self discipline and productivity to procrastination to disconnection from purpose and passion, etc. 

However, idle minds have proven to be the birthplace of some of the best transformational ideas and inventions ever produced by the human mind. That is because some thinkers and philosophers have argued that moments of idleness can be highly productive, leading to creativity, introspection, and even problem-solving.

"In his “Pensées,” Blaise Pascal famously stated, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Pascal suggests that idleness, far from being unproductive, can lead to a deeper understanding of oneself and the world."  Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, philosopher, all rolled into one. He pioneered probability theories, principles in fluid pressure but a proponent of the philosophy of religion and faith as well.

Albert Einstein's famous thought experiments have become his laboratories for his ideas on relativity and gravitation,  E=mc², the atomic bomb, etc. that gained him Time's "Man of the Century' accolade. He was famously idling his time, looking at the window washers outside his office building when he did his thought experiment on gravity.  Likewise, it could only have been through thought experiments when he imagined what the world would look like if he was streaming alongside or at the tip of a light beam.  No laboratory could replicate such a wild experiment but it was those thought experiments that were at the backbone of his ideas and theories that some took decades to be proven right when measurement technology  finally caught up.

Schrodinger followed with his thought experiment on a cat being both alive and dead as a witty but meaningful interpretation of modern quantum physics. As a result we are now aware of Schrodinger's cat although no actual cat was actually exposed to the danger of cyanide gas. Truth be told, there was no such cat, let alone being dead or alive.  But quantum physics is real.

Another thing that is real is that ordinary mortals like you and me not only will benefit from the idling of the mind, if we choose to be aware of them, or take the time to purposely set our mind to do exactly that - have the mind run on idle over one particular idea or thought.  The benefits we get will be infinitesimally negligible compared to those extraordinary folks mentioned above but in our own confined existence, we may find that indeed we may reap some rewards - miniscule that they are but rewarding just the same.

It was Sept. 10, 2014 when I first posted the very first musing of The Idle Mind and it was about, Mt. Rushmore and Chief Crazy Horse Monuments. 330 musings hence is when I realized the idle mind was rather busy, if we go by the number of days that have elapsed - 3,740 days. On average one musing every 11 days. They were not all great and there were some good ones, if I go by readership tally.  By geographic reach - readers from different countries - the landscape is sparse, considering the number of laptops, desktops and cell phones out there - but it is still something to ponder that someone can be instantaneously reached to share one's thoughts and sentiments considering that it took ten centuries since Johannes Gutenberg invented the first printing press for this to be possible.  My only regret is that it is not shared with some of my favorite folks - the Masai cattle herders in the Kalahari and those from the inner jungles of the Amazon rainforest, and a few others.

Then I must ponder this: The Idle Mind is being read when folks have some idle time to spare during one of their idle moments when there was nothing on TV or as a way to while away a few minutes when the mind is on low RPM - the mind, like an engine, that runs slowly but does not move, by Cambridge dictionary definition, above.

But you know what, idle time for the mind is not only beneficial but perhaps it is a requirement. Our brain seems to want to be kept busy. Is that perhaps why we dream? Dreams are the brain's calisthenics or stretching exercises, isn't that what some experts say?  Apparently, left on its own as we rest physically and even physiologically, the brain has a way to exercise itself and gets busy coming up with all kinds of crazy stories. Then, adding mild torture to the whole thing, it actually makes us remember some of the wackiest scenarios in our dreams only a prankster is capable of achieving.  Of course, in some cases the brain goes overboard and wakes us up with a nightmare.

When we care only to rest our mind, it does not only go into idling but it makes sure we are a participant - willingly or not. Indeed, idling is  a slow idyllic moving stream.  Once that stream becomes a screaming rapid or a waterfall, the mind is no longer idling.  So, we need to take advantage of our idle mind because often that is when clarity is achievable. No wonder, some of our best moments at finally achieving that aha! moment is when we were quietly pondering something in isolation (you solitarily and pondering one problem at a time isolated from others).

In my woodworking hobby, most of the solutions or ideas I have for a project  do not occur in the workshop but somewhere else and when my mind is idly whiling away seemingly unconnected moments. Woodsmith magazine had published five of those woodworking tips that I've come up with and is about to publish another one. They are all simple tips but somewhere out there some woodworker has benefited from it. If nothing else the editors of the magazine somehow thought they were useful tips.

I struggled on this one project until that one aha! moment when I found a way to actually put this one together from eight separate parts without using glue or screws, yet for them to be rigidly held together tightly and snugly. I began the project but scrapped the whole thing for a few days until one day I sketched one idea out of the blue and voila, there it was from one idle moment.

 

How I made these knife stands reliably indestructible despite the seemingly fragile assembly only came about after a few failed trials; then from one idle moment later came the idea of construction never tried before.

Infinitesimally small ideas made possible only during idle moments of the mind brought on by a slow moving stream and not by a rapid hair-pulling rapidity of a quest for a solution. 

When idling we are urged to pay attention and make note of the slow moving stream of consciousness and taking care not to be distracted by thoughts that are circling around the periphery to disrupt and blur the solution or inspiration that one is looking for. Care not to make the idle mind the devil's workshop of distraction. This is the biggest challenge but not an insurmountable one.

And always remember, the idle mind should be a companion best allowed to tag along especially during moments of isolation.

Is There Such A Thing as Perfect?

What about flawless? And, isn't near perfect good enough? "It depends", would seem like the perfect answer to the question.

Or, we can settle with, "I strive towards perfection; until then I'm okay with being adorably incredible, in the meantime".

Before we get into finding the pathways to perfection, we actually have examples where perfection may have already been attained.  With some caveats, of course.

There is perfect pitch in the world of music or musicality. But it is an ability individually defined from one musical talent to another. A perfect game in baseball is  a no hit, no run game but achieving it is as varied as the ridges on different fingerprints. Is a 6-0, 6-0 tennis victory a perfect rout?  It depends because the winner could have been a college varsity player beating a junior high school champion. Ball bearings need to be perfectly manufactured for machines to run perfectly, but are they?  Let's go somewhere else, shall we?

In mathematics, 6 is a perfect number. You see, 1+2+3 = 6, is perfect because it is equal to the sum of all its proper positive divisors, namely 1, 2, and 3. You'd think that it should be common, but it's not. After the first four perfect ones, it gets rarer than observing a supernova.

1+2+3=6; 1+2+4+7+14=28; followed by the next perfect number 496, then 8128 (by the fourth, all the divisors are too lengthy to write them all down). For a very long time only the first four perfect numbers were known to the early Greeks since Euclid (the father of geometry) from 300 B.C.  That is because the next three perfect numbers are: 33,550,336; 8,589,869,056; and 137,438,691,328.  Imagine coming up with all their divisors (and adding them!}  By the time we get to the 31st perfect number, we get an astounding number of digits.

31st perfect number is 278327...880128  has a total of 130,100 digits !!

Perfect, nevertheless. It must be noted that the reason that after the 4th perfect number  modern computers with plenty of computing power were needed to calculate and enumerate the digits, based on an algorithm. 

And curiously, each perfect number ends with either a 6 or an 8 (even numbers, both).  The sixth perfect number notably ends with a 6. Biblically, we note that God created the universe in 6 days - the lowest perfect number - because that was all the Creator needed.  Numerologists point to the fact that the moon revolves around the earth in 28 days (just a coincidence, of course).  Yet, the typical workweek has 6 days, then we rest and repeat the cycle all over again. Unless you are like so many others, retired like me who now has time to ponder perfect numbers that for all intents and purposes mean little or nothing.  Or, do they? At least now you know what a perfect number is.  Good, because in our normal everyday world, that is about as good as we can get to anything that is perfect. Naturally, we don't just want to settle with that. 

Now, back to the real world. What about a perfect marriage?  Not in the real world, a skeptic might say.

Let's see .. if no one admits to be perfect, any pairing between two imperfect people will often bring about imperfect marriages, right?  But how about this? Shouldn't two half perfect people who marry each other be the proverbial perfect whole? Well, the problem is finding the two "right"  perfect halves to meet. In a small city of 150,000 people, the probability is low; out of almost 8 billion people from around the world the two halves ever meeting can be infinitesimally low in probability. However, this has not been a cause for discouragement because there are those who claim to have found their soul mates - thus scaling the height of positive thinking. Or, have they?

One estimate - I don't know how, but we leave it to the statisticians - there are 115,000 weddings everyday around the world. In the U.S. alone 2.1 million get married each year. Let us not spoil it by asking, "how many get divorced each year". Or, how many of the 2.1 million are for the second or third time; or, how many are trying to get in the Guinness Book of World Records for most number of  trips to the altar or justice of the peace.  

A perfect marriage depends on who is defining it. Someone claimed a mathematical definition: The strength and bliss of every marriage between two people is inversely proportional to the number of years the couple have been together.   Put another way, the longer that couples have been married the less likely  a marital Nirvana can occur.  Now, that is where the depth of negative thinking has sunk.  But no, we ought not agree with that. There were and still are marriages, though not exactly made in heaven, that sparkle like starlight in the night sky. 

What about a perfect life? I say that a perfect life is the sum of all the overwhelming number of perfect days over imperfect ones. We have to admit that we go through life made up of good days and not so good ones. The idea being that our definition of what is perfect or imperfect is wholly our own. Not by anyone defining it for us. What is humanly possible, short of achieving Nirvana (whatever that means, although I've mentioned it twice now in this musing) is the potential for our ability to amass an overwhelming number of good days over not-so-good ones.  

It was not a good day over two years ago when my wife was diagnosed with Parkinson's. Before that we've had innumerable good days that far exceeded the not so good days then. If we begin another count after the diagnosis, I will have to say that good days still continue to outnumber the not so good ones. And, this is important because no matter how small good things occur for as long as there are an overwhelming number of them over the not-so-good ones, the count is  valid and it is a beautiful thing to behold. How so?

Each morning I wake up and get out of bed. It counts as a good day. The aroma of a freshly brewed coffee and listening to soft morning music as I crack an egg over a skillet, or hear the crackling of bacon, or washing blueberries over a strainer, or preparing slices of papaya, comprise  tiny perfect moments. Moments later when I nudge my wife and she is ready to get up on her own and do her morning routine before coming out to the breakfast table count as the morning's perfect blessings while syrup over French toast and whatever the fruit of the day is  make up the preamble for a good day. For over two years now I make it a point to do this routine if only to get her day to start right; and mine too.

When I make the bed like she used to do thousands of times during her "able days" that is a perfect moment. When breakfast is finished I'd put one lubricating drop into each of her eyes that helps prevent dry eyes. Compression socks for both legs follow but I make it a ritual to powder her feet and massage both legs before putting the socks on. Morning rituals that they are, each counts as a good moment both for her and me.  These are simple, uncomplicated moments. We do these things because that's how days are supposed to be filled with - lots of simple but good moments.

It is a perfect moment that even with Parkinson's my wife still takes care of making sure her medications are well laid out for each day, including the ones that I have to take myself. It is a perfect day when the printer works so she can print out every financial record. It is a good moment that she still balances our checkbook and make sure all the charges and bills are in perfect order.

If we can manage to view life this way  and keep in mind the idea of perfect numbers (above) - the sum of their positive integer-divisors - we realize that good days are not rare but quite numerous if we take the time to notice.

Today snow had fallen over Texas. This event and the freezing temperatures are rare indeed. It is a good day because we have water and heat and are comfortable indoors.  Together with the multitude of people yesterday,  I was one among them at the grocery store to prepare because to go out and drive today would be one foolish bad day. It was a good day then and even better today to be preparing corned beef for soup and having something to grill indoors. Little things like these will make the tally sheet lopsidedly in favor of good over bad things.  Come to think of it, there is not a bad thing so far.  Did I just answer the question, "Is There Such A Thing as Perfect?"

Each of the trillions of perfect individual snowflakes made our backyard a rare scene of winter wonderland.

The front of our house carpeted with perfect snow.

This mourning dove is having a perfect moment at the bird feeder in our backyard.

So did this cardinal, one of many morning visitors to make one freezing morning to be made up of many perfect moments for these creatures.

So, you see it does not require a lot to make our day to be filled with simple, perfect moments like these.

Come To Think Of It ,,

At one time or another the reader has used this idiomatic expression, a phrase we use  when suddenly we remember something to add to an ongoing subject of conversation.  It would be awkward to begin a sentence out of the blue, so to speak, if one were not trying to segue with a current topic. And just like that we are introduced to another idiomatic expression; first used by a columnist in The Spectator, a London paper, in 1879. The writer made reference to a rare event and completely unexpected, like a lightning bolt occurring out of a clear blue sky.  And so we've managed to segue one idiomatic expression to another in one paragraph.  But wait. How do we pronounce segue? Seg-way is how it is pronounced and often some folks actually spell segue as "segway" but that would be incorrect.  However, 'Segway' is a proper noun (with S in upper case) that refers to a U.S. made self-balancing motorized vehicle on two wheels. Pronunciation and spelling notwithstanding, segue has Italian origin which refers to how movements in music would transition from one mood to the next.  Now you know.  It too is a way to connect the image of the brain above to the subject "Come to think of it".

You see, you were able to follow, that for non-English readers would look to be like seemingly jumbled characters, and put context to them because your brain - the seat of human thought - makes it possible for you to comprehend the whole paragraph in so little time that gives us all the impression of a lightning speed process by which we are able to discern the meaning to both written and spoken words; even more incredible for the latter, which makes instantaneous vocal conversation possible.

For centuries, from the moment scholars and linguists started to conceptualize our ability to use both vocal and written language to communicate, we marveled at the capability of human thought and the incredible speed by which the brain is able to process information. Now, come to think of it, how fast is human thought? 

Two researchers at Caltech claim to have quantified how fast we "think". Well, as a result of their study, relative to today's technology, human thought is molasses-slow at 10 bits per second when compared to the average of the slowest download speed in computer processing of 93 megabits per second (Mbps).  That is in millions of bits per second.  I just signed up to a new internet service provider recently when a fiber optics company just finished laying down fiber optic cables in our neighborhood for a stupefying 5 Gigabits per second  of download speed (in billion bits per second).

Wait, wait for just one long minute.  What are we talking about here? We read that in computing, your laptop or desktop computer and cell phones transmit information digitally - namely the digits of zeroes and ones, representing the switching of electric current from on and off. In other words, for analogy, zero and one are words if they were  written down on paper, on and off or as yes and no if they were spoken. Is that how close we can get for an analogy?

A bit, in computer speak, is either a one or zero, an on or off. So 10 bits per second is fast enough. As in the expression, in the blink of an eye, which is fast, we cannot blink  ten times in a second, therefore 10 bits per second is quite fast, by that comparison. Of course, we are talking apples and oranges. Now you know where this is going. It is another come to think of it moment.  It is apples and oranges because we are now talking about muscle reflexes involved in blinking  as opposed to our thought processes. When you are able to pull away your finger instantaneously from a hot stove at lightning speed, it was not via a thought process that saved your day from a serious injury but by some autonomous reflex that your brain is responsible for.

According to the researchers, 10 bits per second is fast enough for our survival as a species. So, why do we need 1 or for that matter a 5 Gig download capability with our computing and streaming services? Is it our impatient nature? Perhaps. Or, or is it because we are merely instinctively programmed to be attracted to the next shiny object. Some behaviorists think that is exactly what explains our attraction and fascination with gold and diamonds - shiny objects. It is neither here nor there, I think. But then I am not a behaviorist.  

Moving on, the researchers are puzzled by this phenomenon: "Our brains are constantly bombarded with sensory data at an incredible rate, estimated to be 109 bits per second, and yet our conscious thoughts process information at a far slower rate".

Apparently, even though information from our visual cortex (from what we "see") to our neocortex, we (our brain) ignore a lot of that data and we focus only on a sliver of data we deem important. That reminds me of the lyrics from "Some Enchanted Evening" (from the Broadway musical, South Pacific):

"Some enchanted evening

Someone may be laughing,

You may hear her laughing

Across a crowded room

And night after night,

As strange as it seems

The sound of her laughter

Will sing in your dreams.

Who can explain it?"

Who can tell you why?

Fools give you reasons,

Wise men never try.

Emile, the character who sung it, exhibited nothing more than someone who is able to ignore all the extra information that was streaming through his neocortex in that crowded room, except for the one - a stranger - who captivated his attention, from across the room.

Now, you see how "come to think of it" would segue itself into almost anything our thought processes will take us?  

Then we hear "come to think of it" moments that are clearly off-tangent. This will definitely be off-tangent but it came right out of the blue.  See!?

In my oil business days from almost two decades ago, cpg meant nothing more than "cents per gallon". Now in upper case, CPG is Canada, Panama, Greenland.  See? Current events, but not to have politics intrude in the conversation, the news cycle inevitably makes our thought processes go whichever way, either inevitably or consciously, that we allow it to occur. 

So, come to think of it, the U.S. purchased the lower Mississippi basin, that is now Louisiana, from Napoleon Bonaparte's French empire in 1803. Sixty four years later, in 1867, Russia sold Alaska to the U.S. Then in 1917, for 25 million dollars in gold, the same USA bought  three islands, now known as the U.S. Virgin Islands, from Denmark.

You see, how this segues into what sounded like an incredulously silly idea of the U.S. buying the largest island in the world - Greenland? 'Come to think of it', why is it called Greenland when it is mostly white ten months of the year? Supposedly, it was called that to encourage adventurous Danes to migrate and develop the island. Apparently, even up to this day, the enticement did not work so well because for its size there are only no more than 57,000 Greenlanders who live there - a mix of Danes and Inuit. The latter, who do not want to be called Eskimos are actually related to the Alaska indigenous population - in physical appearance and similarity in language.

The big island is now front and center, not just for the potential opening bid by the newly elected U.S. President, but because of its oil and rare earth mineral deposits. 

But what about Canada and Panama? In the case of the northern neighbor, there really is not a visibly demarcated border. There is no language barrier either, except for those Canadians from Montreal and Quebec who to this day insist on speaking French.  Come to think of it, Louisiana has pockets of folks who speak Cajun, a kind of French derived dialect that those from Quebec and Montreal look down upon.  But Come to think of it, Cajun actually comes from the language spoken by citizens of Acadia, Canada that used to be a French colony way back when. Many Acadians from way back when did migrate to Louisiana when it was still a French territory. As much as the Cajun dialect is derided  by those from Quebec and Montreal, Parisians or French language purists in France don't look too kindly at how French Canadian is spoken either. Come to think of it, the British think the same way about American English. From My Fair Lady, Henry Higgins  said this about the English language, "In America, they haven't used it for years".

Come to think of it, why can't Canada join in and we call the entire region, "The United States of Northern America - USNA.  There would be a slight problem because USNA is already taken, as in United States Naval Academy (Annapolis).  No problem, it can easily be changed to USNAA. As a bonus, Canadian bacon will be called ham.  Oh, come to think of it, there will be no need for Niagara Falls to have a Canadian or U.S. side.

Imagine that, Northern America's gross domestic product (GDP) combined will outshine the entire commercial galaxy that for now is being contested by China.  As a combined geographic and military whole, the US, Canada and Greenland combined, will be something to behold, especially if the Panama Canal comes with the entire package - completing the acronym CPG as one grand acquisition.

A man, a plan, a canal – Panama - is one of those clever palindromes and a great symbol for how ships go back and forth through this grand waterway.  Come to think of it, although the Panamanian official currency is called a balboa (PAB), the country does not print it, instead it uses the U.S. dollar as its legal tender.  For currency exchange purposes, a balboa is equivalent to one U.S. dollar.  It is something to think about.

I can segue to so many more but come to think of it, I cannot ask for any more of the reader's time. I just hope I have provided you with a bit more to think about.