True Stories From My Life. Part 4: The Mystery of Electricity

My town is in the midst of an "arctic vortex" of unusually-cold winter weather. This afternoon, I drove my 2003 Saturn Ion 1 about half a mile from my home to the Salvation Army, to see a social worker about a pair of glasses. The Major was behind the desk, and he told me that the social worker wasn't in today. I said I was surprised they were open at all today, because of the weather. He said they were open today, with a skeleton crew, precisely because of the weather: in case someone needed to get indoors somewhere and warm up.

From the Salvation Army I drove to Kroger's, about 2 miles. After I had Kroger'd, my car wouldn't start. I went back inside Kroger's, searched my wallet, and found an AARP card. (My Mom had gotten me an AARP membership, and told me that roadside assistance was the most important part of the membership.) To my surprise, the card said that my membership was still active, until May 2019. After about half an hour on the phone, I found out that my membership had been cancelled.

I went back out to the Kroger's parking lot, and this time my Saturn started. I was not as surprised as I had been when a similar thing had happened in earlier years: drove my car to a parking lot, shopped, car wouldn't start, waited about a half hour, then it started.

Since this wasn't the first time, I wasn't completely surprised. But I still don't understand what happened. Perhaps my not understanding it just shows that I know laughably little about electricity. Maybe engineers who are reading this are shouting at the screen: "It's the condensation, you idiot!" Or something else if it's something other than condensation.

I've been trying to learn about electricity, because the world is converting from petrochemicals to electricity. I can't claim to have made much progress. I open books such as this one:

-- and am immediately baffled. it maik munkee brane hert. And there are other textbooks in physics and math whose equations make my brain hurt much more than the ones in this book. I stopped studying math in the mid-1970's at age 15, as soon as I was allowed to stop, and now I'm hopelessly behind. (Also: I still don't actually like math. That's why I stopped studying it: because I hated it.) I have heard that Einstein used tensor analysis to come up with the theory of relativity. I've heard that. I don't know whether it's true, or partly true, or a misleading statement, or what.

I do know that my 2003 Saturn Ion 1, if it doesn't start on a cold day, may start a while later the same day. I know this is so, but I do not know why this is so. There's an entire world of STEM -- science, technology, engineering and math -- which is mysterious to me. And yet I know that I know much more about such things than do many poets and artists. And I know that many scientists, engineers and mathematicians are just as woefully ignorant of history and philosophy and the arts.

And so for today, grateful to be back home and grateful that the heat is on, I shall be as one crying in the wilderness for geniuses of various kinds to become less ignorant about one another.

I hope you're not too cold out there, reading this.

True Stories From My Life. Part 3: The Past Few Days

(100% true.)

I began the day intending to look through my two volumes of Isidore of Seville's etymologariam, hoping I might get some sort of idea for a blog post about Isidore and other ancient compilers of knowledge into more or less the form of what we call encyclopedias.

Then I saw something which I had forgotten: that the first page of the praefatio editoris in vol I of my copy of Isidore's compilation was badly printed, so that the words were fainter than they should have been. It's just the first page, as far as I can tell, but it really threw me off.

I wonder how much my new glasses will help me with things like this faintly-printed page. On Wednesday I got a new eyeglass prescription, I spent most of Thursday in the hospital, on Friday I dropped off my prescription with a program that gave me a free pair of new glass years ago, and, I hope, will do it again, because I'm living on Federal disability benefits, and a new pair of glasses would be a big expense for me.

On Friday, and twice today, Sunday, I got calls from strangers who had been alerted about my hospital stay and called to see how I was and if I needed anything. Calls like that, and the free eyeglasses, are just two examples of the fine community in which I live, and its unusual commitment to giving help to people who actually need it.

The weather here has been very, very cold since before last Thursday, and I think that might be a big part of what happened to me Thursday: I just freaked out because I didn't have the psychological wherewithal to deal with the extreme weather, and with my anxiety about difficulties to which the weather could lead.

Tomorrow's weather is forecast to be much warmer, then there will be several extremely-cold days, then it will get much warmer again. I went to Kroger's today, and I was intending to shovel my walk after that, but I looked at it and decided it's fine. There isn't that much snow on it.

Coincidence?

Two headlines on the front page of Yahoo! First:

Washington Post Editorial Board Shreds Donald Trump: "Stark Incapacity For Leadership"

And then, immediately below that story, the next headline reads:

"America, Throw Out This Vegetable Immediately"

Allegedly, the 2nd headline has nothing at all to do with politics. Allegedly. It's about some "Leading Gut Expert" who is frequently on Dr Oz' show.

So what is this really about? Nutrition? Or what the leadership of Yahoo! really thinks of Trump, but doesn't have the guts to say clearly in a 2-inch-high banner headline?

Is this an example of Yahoo! almost having had the guts to do away with the horrible thing which has enabled Trump so much: "objective journalism"?

Another Hospital Visit

I was in the hospital again yesterday, until 2:30 this morning. Yesterday afternoon I suddenly didn't feel well, somebody called an ambulance, I spent most of the rest of the day in the ER, and then a few hours in the psychiatric ER. They didn't find anything wrong. It may have been a combination of fatigue and a panic attack brought on by winter. I'm 57 years old, and winter gets harder to take every year. The ice, yahhhhhhh, the ice.

I may start psychotherapy -- again. I may go to a sleep clinic.

Almost as soon as I was in the ER, I was powerfully reminded of how much I preferred to be free: free to stand up and walk around, free to surf the Internet, free to read my books, etc. Home has a lot of advantages. One thing it doesn't have is a lot of face-to-face contact with other human beings. As an autistic person, maybe I don't need as much F2F as most people do to stay healthy, but I do need some. I do have some F2F in my regular routine, as you may have guessed from my mentioning that it was someone else who called the ambulance. I have some. I could use some more. I could use different types of contact. If you'll excuse my language, I could use some "romance." I'm at the point where I would consider being set up on blind dates. I've never been at that point before. Just puttin' that out there into the universe.

I know, ewwwww, old-person "romance." Sorry.

So, I'm thinking that what happened yesterday was more psychological than physical, and may have more to do with loneliness than anything else.

I may start attending a church, purely for the social life. Please don't tell them I'm an atheist, unless it's it's a Unitarian church. A lot of them are atheists. Catholics have much better music and art, though.

Even though I'm an atheist, I like when people say they'll pray for me or are sending blessings to or what have you. I got a blessing from a Monsignor once. It was awesome. Just puttin' that out there too.

I don't want to turn into that weird old guy who stays all by himself in his house all the time -- if I haven't turned into that guy already, that is. One way or the other it's time for some transformation.

Preserving Culture

"Let one noble man bring fourth one noble author, and an other emprinte an other, to the conservacion of Englandes antiquities. In lyke case lete one ryche merchaunte brynge one worthye worke of an auncyent writer to lyght, and an other put fourth an other. Besides the Bryttyshe authors, whome I oft named afore, lete one bryng fourth Bedas de Oeatia Anglorvm, an other Willyam of Malmesbery de Geatis Pontijicum et Regum. Lete an other brynge fourth Simeon of Durham, wyth Rycharde and Johan of Haiigustalde, an other Aldrede and Wyllyam of RieuaU, wyth Marianus the Scott. An other Oiraldus CambreTiaia, an other Henry of Hwrvtyngdony an other Alphred of Beverley, an other Florence of Worceatre, and an other Walter of Exceatre. An other Roger Hoveden, an other Mathew Parys, an other John Bever, an other RaduLphus Niger, an other Radvlphua de Diceto, an other William Newhurg of Bridlington, an other John of Oxforde, An other ScaUe Temporum, an other Flores Historiarum, Aeserius, Osbemue, Oervaaivi Stephanides, and Ricardua Divisiensia of Wynchestre, wyth a wonderfiill nombre besydes."

That's the remarkable John Bale, writing in the mid-16th century, one of the first to recognize the worth of the writings of the Medieval English historians, and to urge that their works be preserved, printed and published. The passage above is quoted by Frederic Madden in the Preface of his 1866 edition of Matthew Paris' Historia Anglorum, also known as the Historia Minor to distinguish it from Paris' Chronica Majora. I was paging through this Preface while watching Henry Rollins on YouTube, telling an audience at a German music festival about how he has loaded up a terabyte flash drive with music and taken the flash drive to places like Iran and Sri Lanka, where people have trouble sometimes accessing Western music, and spreading it, one young Iranian or Sri Lankan with a laptop at a time, meanwhile loading up on things like underground Sri Lankan death metal, which Rollins says is awesome, and bringing it back to the West.

New Songs

"Stupid Head Fred" (Words & music Copyright 2019 Steven Bollinger)

I'm Stupid Head Fred,

That's what I said.

I'm Stupid Head Fred,

That's what I said. (and so forth)

"I am a Little Kitty" (Words & music Copyright 2019 Steven Bollinger)

I am a lit-tle kit-ty,

You are a lit-le kit-ty,

I am a lit-le kit-ty,

You are a lit-tle kit-ty, (etc)

Forged Ancient Literary Works

Many of the best-known ancient literary works in Greek and Latin, scholars now agree, have long been presented as the work of authors who did not write them.

Gradually, the findings of scholarship about ancient literature make their way toward the consciousness of the general public in the West. The findings about one ancient compilation, about which the West is particularly obsessed, make their way more quickly than all others to the public, and to wider circles of the public: those having to do with the Greek New Testament. If someone believes that all 13 of the books of the New Testament traditionally attributed to St Paul were actually written by Paul, it may come as a shock to learn that scholars now believe that Ephesians, First and Second Timothy and Titus were written by someone else, and that the authorship of Colossians and Second Thessalonians is debated.

This is less shocking for those who have a broad knowledge of ancient Greek and Latin literature, because, among the ancient "pagan" authors, such forgeries are quite common. Take the case of Homer -- well, Homer is a special case to begin with, because there is absolutely no agreement among scholars about whether a writer named Homer ever existed, or whether, if this writer did exist, he wrote the Iliad or the Odyssey or both -- however, it is almost universally agreed now that, whoever wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey, the works known as the Homeric Hymns, and attributed to Homer by the time of Thucydides at the latest, were written by someone else.

No one doubts that Plato existed, or that he wrote many philosophical works centering around Socrates -- but he didn't write all of the dialogues he was once thought to have written. In the collection traditionally thought of as the work of Plato, First Alcibiades, Clitophon, Menexenus and the Epistles are now controversial as to whether or not Plato wrote them, while Second Alcibiades, Epinomis, Hipparchus, Minos, Amatores and Theages are all now generally agreed to have been written by someone else. That's a total ten of the thirty-six works traditionally attributed to Plato, and this does not count nine more works attributed to Plato which were already seen in antiquity to have been spurious: Axiochus, Definitions, Demodocus, Epigrams, Eryxias, Halcyon, On Justice, On Virtue and Sisyphus.

Vergil, on the strength of his works the Aeneid, the Georgics and the Eclogues, is considered by many to be the finest poet ever to have written in Latin. For a long time, an additional collection of poems, the Appendix Vergiliana, were thought to have been poems Vergil wrote in his youth. Now almost no-one believes that Vergil wrote them.

Julius Caesar wrote commentaries about his experiences leading Roman troops in the Gallic and Civil wars. Many editions of Caesar's work have also included commentaries on the Alexandrine, African and Iberian wars, originally presented as works by Caesars, now considered not to have been written by him.

Sallust, an historian and contemporary of Caesar's, is known for works on the Catiline and the Jugurthan War. Editions of his work also contain letters which he ostensibly wrote to Caesar, and a speech against Cicero and one by Cicero against him, which are considered to be forgeries.

An enormous amount of prose survives which was written by Cicero, whom many have called the greatest of all Latin authors. Collections of his works have also included Rhetorica ad Herennium and Commentariolum Petitionis, both almost certainly written by someone other than him.

Ovid is one of the most beloved ancient Latin authors, known for several humorous volumes of what today might be called dating advice, as well as for the Metamorphoses, an extraordinary re-telling of many traditional myths, and the Fasti, a book on Roman holidays which is better than you might think a book on Roman holidays could possibly be, and for other works. Additionally, several works not written by him have circulated along with his works: Consolatio ad Liviam, Halieutica, Nux and Somnium.

There are many, many further examples. Many of these works continue to be of great interest to Classical or biblical scholars, for one reason and another, even after they have been shown to be fakes. One is almost tempted to say that no Classical author can be considered truly great before a spurious work has attached itself to his or her oeuvre.

The authors of such spurious works are often referred to by putting the prefix "pseudo-" in front of the name of the author who is being imitated. More and more, separate editions are dedicated to the work of the forgers, rather than including them in the editions of the forged authors as a sort of afterthought.

Perhaps, as these widespread, and often well-respected forgeries become better-known, the shock of the layman at things like pseudo-Pauline epistles will become somewhat less.

Stupidity and Global Warming

There's a meme going around: a picture of some Country & Western-looking German woman playing a guitar, with the claim that she said (in German),

"I don't think that global warming is nearly as dangerous as human stupidity."

There are several things wrong with this statement, whoever said it.

For one thing, the cause of global warming is human stupidity. It makes no sense to say to people who are battling global warming to say, "Don't worry about global warming -- human stupidity is much more dangerous!" when they're battling a direct product of human stupidity. If you say to researchers who are looking for a cure for AIDS, "Don't worry about AIDS -- viruses are much more dangerous!" all you've accomplished is to demonstrate that you don't know nearly as much about AIDS or viruses as the people whose very important work you're interrupting in order to say stupid things to them.

A statement which in itself is very stupid is not necessarily the best course against stupidity. Not every single time. Not in my opinion.

Also, asserting that global warming is less dangerous than human stupidity goes directly against the record of human life, which shows us thriving for many thousands of years despite many thousands of years' worth of very widespread and uninterrupted stupidity. Stupidity has certainly made our lives less pleasant in many ways, but it hasn't killed us yet. On the other hand, if it were not dealt with at all, global warming would kill us all in much less than a thousand years.

Global warming is now being dealt with, on an ever-larger scale, at a rate which just might possibly save our lives. But this is happening, not because people suddenly got smarter, but because energy generation which doesn't generate deadly levels of carbon and other toxic emissions suddenly got much cheaper, and continues to get less and less expensive.

If alternative energy saves us from killing ourselves off -- and it looks as if it just might -- then it will not have been our wisdom which saved us, but our greed. We will have remained just about as stupid as we were, just about as stupid as if, for whatever combination of economic reasons, alternative energy had never become cheaper, and, therefore, it never made the headlines nearly as much, and so it wasn't able to prevent us from killing off our own species with fossil fuels. Once again, our stupidity will not have been enough to kill us.

Yes, I think it's very important -- and almost hopeless -- to struggle against human stupidity. But if, for example, I and another person were stranded somewhere in a vehicle, and a grizzly bear was attacking the vehicle, trying to open it up so that it could eat me and the other human inside, and the bear was making progress, gradually making bigger and bigger cracks in the glass in the windshield and windows -- Ah say Ah say if I were in a situation like that, and the person next to me inside the vehicle said to me,

"I don't think that that grizzly bear is nearly as dangerous as human stupidity."

then that person would be showing a profound lack of a sense for what is urgent and what is not. Yes, it may very well have been human stupidity which got us into that predicament. But solving the problem of human stupidity -- assuming we were somehow able to solve it, there inside that stranded vehicle -- would not save us from that predicament. The problem we would have to solve, in such a situation, is the bear. If we didn't solve that problem, we would never be able to solve another problem.

Architects' Offices

Architects always have the most beautiful offices, with the most spectacular views. At least, my experience has always, without exception, been so. The question: "Who has the best office in this city?" is equal to the question: "Which of the architects in this city has the best office?"

Mayors' offices and governors' offices are nice, but architects' offices are simply in a different league. Even the offices of architects who aren't particularly good. Perhaps they all share the ambition to get ONE thing right; and some of them, after securing the right office space with the right views and fixing the place up correctly, simply don't have any energy left over for things like designing spaces for other people. I can understand that.

And seen that way, there are really no architects who are failures. Because: what could be more important than the space in which one works? Possibly the space in which one lives away from work. But if you work for most of your waking hours, and do little at home besides sleep?

And nothing has ever made me imagine wanting to spend a lot of time at work more than architects' offices. ("Honey, I --" "No time to talk, work work work, love ya bye!") And then off to the office, where you do great things, if you're a great architect, or just put your feet up and have a great life, if you're not.

Slammin'

This is my 45lb slam ball:

There are others like it, but this one is mine.

It arrived via the US Postal Service the day before yesterday. I had been wondering how they were going to deliver it. I didn't think they were going to send it by the usual carrier. Sure enough, a separate truck pulled up to my place. I came outside and said to the man who'd slid open the side panel of the truck: "You've got a heavy package for me, don't you?"

The man chuckled and said he did, indeed. Amazon had packed it in a box twice as wide as the ball and three times as long, which made it much easier to carry. (Leverage: it's what's for dinner.)

Yesterday, I took it outside and slammed it 5 times on the sidewalk. A slam is lifting the object high over your head and then throwing it straight down to the floor or ground as hard as you can. Some people -- a lot of people, to judge from what I've seen on YouTube so far -- keep their legs pretty much motionless with their knees bent and their feet flat on the ground when they slam, and just concentrate on doing reps as fast as they can. I, however, saw a YouTube video in which a personal trainer said that this was entirely wrong, and that what you want to do is extend the entire body before the slam: stand up on your toes, straighten your legs, stand up as tall as you can, reach up as high as you can with the ball in your hands, and THEN slam it down. This trainer says that this is the proper form for slamming, and that proper form is much more important, and gives you much bigger returns for your effort, than the very popular approach of doing as many slams as you can in a minute, or in 5 minutes or in some other given unit of time.

I have no idea whether this trainer is right about that and all those other people are wrong. But for now I'm acting as if he's right. In part because he's thin but very wiry and seems very strong, and I want to get thin and remain strong.

My slam ball did not immediately split open under its own great weight and become ruined upon being dropped to the sidewalk for the very first time, as I had irrationally feared. Irrationally, because it is made to be slammed thousands of times.

Yesterday, 5 slams left me wiped out, huffing and puffing. I didn't notice the ball making a sound yesterday when it hit the sidewalk, but that was because I was expecting a huge echoing slamming sound, like the sound of a basketball hitting a sidewalk, but magnified many times, and this huge echoing sound was entirely lacking.

Today I paid closer attention, and heard a distinct solid thud when the ball hit the sidewalk.

Today, just like yesterday, 5 slams wiped me out. But today I just took a couple of breaths and then kept going. I lost track of how many reps I did today, but it was at least 10, maybe 15 or more. Lifting the ball all the way up before the slam was very difficult after several reps. I feel it now in all 4 limbs and my shoulders and back. No doubt I will feel it more tomorrow: "the feeling of weakness leaving the body," as we lunks say. And the plan is to do a lot more than 15 reps tomorrow.