There is something very ‘taoist’ in the title, “Odds Are, It’s Wrong“, an article in Science News. Right off the bat it reminds me of, ‘Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty’. The patient search for truth pales next to our hunger for ‘the answer’. Science is humanity’s best attempt to balance the two, but often fails, as this article points out. This is especially true for the ’softer’ sciences, e.g., social, physiological, medical. The eye-opening information here helps remind us that we are animals first, and whatever else we think or wish we were a distant second. Continue reading ‘Odds Are, It’s Wrong’
Monthly Archive for April, 2010
Bathtub Tai Chi
I have found that multitasking is generally inefficient. My desire to do more and more (rather than less and less) deceives me into thinking I can actually accomplish more and more doing various tasks simultaneously. This make is almost impossible to be as careful at the end as at the beginning, no matter what I am doing. Well, I finally have learned my lesson. I’m not sure it is learning that accounts for my increased wisdom in this matter. More likely it is because I’m older and have less energy to run around chasing after desires as in my youth. Continue reading ‘Bathtub Tai Chi’
Chapter 65 begins with, ‘Of old those who excelled in the pursuit of the way did not use it to enlighten the people but to hoodwink them’. Initially, I thought ‘of old those‘ were people, e.g., parents, politicians, preachers. On the other hand, ‘those‘ people seem often ‘hoodwinked’ by their own hoodwink. I now consider ’of old those‘ as pointing more to Nature itself. What is more ‘of old‘ than Nature? Nature, and her co-conspirator biology, hoodwinks living things to do their living.
Fishing gives a good example of the hoodwinking process, and clues on how to avoid being hooked. We’ve all heard stories of that big old lake bass that no fisherman could hook. Isn’t that old fish, the fish who quickly ‘gets it’? Once bitten, twice shy, as they say; the fish that soon sees the bait as hoodwink learns to avoid it. The dead fish is the fish forever hopeful that its desire will be fulfilled. Continue reading ‘How the Hoodwink Hooks’
My extended family
When is comes to human nutrition, it is a struggle separating the wheat from the chaff. Each era has its red hearing and blind alleys (or worse) of nutrition. What was once thought good for health may be found bad; what was once thought bad for health may be found good. In the 70’s I got ‘nutrition religion’ and wanted to find out the ‘truth’. I spent many hours at Stockholm’s main library searching for all information I could find on nutrition, great apes and tangential issues, e.g., biology, history.(1)
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