The word of the week is ratiocinate.
Feb 19 – Spaceship Park!
Well this is a blast from the past:
an old stomping ground of mine!
Actually, it's a twin-once-removed
from an old playground I used to frequent as a kid, which until now I thought
was unique. Behold - the Enterprise Two:
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| Seems they've let a few things slide... |
The above is a playground in current
use in Australia, on Frew Street in Milton, Queensland. It's of a different
design than the original playground set that was at the 'Spaceship Park' when I
was young, smaller too, but it's of the same basic design - so cool!
Below is the current image of the
Enterprise-inspired play equipment that was installed in 1972. It was removed,
sold, cleaned up and installed at Safari Niagara in 2002 and is as you
see it now, very similar to the unit above. It has two slides descending, one
from each nacelle, and a stair leading up to the enclosed 'bridge' which has
two reclining steel 'gravity chairs' inside. There's a 'transporter cage' below
the bridge, and the engineering hull is hollow while open at both ends to let
kids climb through it. Tons of space fun!
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| The ol' girl's looking spiffy! |
There's even an article about the
installation and history of the 'Playground Enterprise' of 'Spaceship Park' as
the kids referred to it! It's also worth noting that the bridge often stank of
spilled beer, urine and cigarette butts, as it was in a public park and teens
loved to sneak in there after dusk.... which made it not a lot of fun to play
in as a kid, I can tell you. Here's a snap of the original from the 70's:
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| I like to think that's my sister and I playing! |
It's too bad that 'theme playgrounds'
like this were only around for a few years, before cities went full-on over to
'safety first' designs that were quite functional, but lacked any of the style
we see in both of the above designs.
Maybe in a few years we'll see a
hybrid of the two show up somewhere?
If so, I'll dub it the
'Enterprise-E' and let you know here first!
Feb 19 - Spotting Fake News
As it turns out, I'm pretty good at this sort of
thing - mainly through practice.
For those of you out there who tune out
completely: good for you! I've yet to be able to turn to that 'social media
survival method' but it may come down to it soon, if I can't manage to stop
caring as much about the world.
For those of you somewhat bewildered and/or
overwhelmed by the preponderance of fake news out there, take heart. There's
several ways you can go about sorting the shite from the shiny, such as using
this short list:
Six Steps to Evaluate
Contrarian Claims
- Identify the claim: First, identify as simply as possible what the actual claim is.
- Construct the supporting argument: An argument requires premises (those things we take to be true for the purposes of the argument) and a conclusion (effectively the claim being made). The premises together give us reason to accept the conclusion.
- Determine the intended strength of the claim: Determining the exact kind of argument requires a quick detour into the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning. A claim is definitive when it says something is definitely the case, rather than being probable or possible.
- Definitive claims must be supported by deductive reasoning. Essentially, this means that if the premises are true, the conclusion is inevitably true.
- Check the logical structure: We can see that in the argument from step two — that the climate change is changing because of natural processes — the truth of the conclusion is not guaranteed by the truth of the premises.
- Check for ambiguity: The argument mentions Xin its premises and conclusion. But X can change in many ways, and the phrase itself can have a variety of meanings. The problem with this argument is that the phrase is used to describe two different kinds of X.
- Check premises for truth or plausibility: Even if there were no ambiguity about the term 'X' the argument would still fail when the premises were tested. In step four, the third premise, “If something was the cause of an event in the past, it must be the cause of the event now”, is clearly false.
Lastly, you can always use a 'cheat
sheet' like this lovely bookmark, to help:
Feb 21 – The Secret To Life?
Oh, I could write for days about this
subject...
But I won't subject you to that sort
of rambling. Instead, I'll simply present you with this: the Japanese concept
of Ikigai ...
I like that the concept of Ikigai
isn't a 'rarefied' one, but rather grounded in the ordinary thoughts and goals
that we all carry day to day. This means that it's achievable by anyone who can
put some thought into what they want out of life, using a simple framework that
doesn't disconnect you from reality.
Given how INTO reality many of us are
these days with social media, I'm all for that!
Feb 22 – Me: Effing up...
Apparently, I can be an asshole, without realizing it, as I learned this week.
I made a comment on a friend's post that they didn't take well, as I could have worded things better... that's what you get if you let your stress take over your tongue, or in this case, typing fingers - it's a first for me.
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| Charlie Brown gets it... |
I'm disappointed in myself, as this
is something I thought I wasn't capable of doing: I think about what I do,
constantly, so that my emotions don't get ahold of me, especially through the
keyboard where it's all too easy to snap off a response in seconds.
Being an adult is a work in progress:
for ME that means holding oneself to higher standards, ALL the time, and any
slip means I'm not doing a good enough job of looking in the mirror each day.
I rarely admit errors in judgement( a
failing of mine )because I see myself as striving to correct them BEFORE
they happen through forethought and practice, but if I don't make them, then I
can't learn from the experience. In hindsight, I see that I could have done
BETTER when it came to many of my choices, which while not counting as
mistakes, mean I didn't learn as often or as quickly as I should have living
life.
Handling stress always comes at a
cost, and I believed I knew most of the ways that it affected me. In this case,
I wasn't seeing how subtle the slip could be: one picture pushed a button and I
rushed to 'correct' what I perceived as someone else's mistake... instead of
seeing it as an opportunity to discuss WHY my friend posted it, and what it
meant to me.
Fortunately, my friend and I worked things out after a fair bit of back-and-forth communication, which wouldn't have been possible if they hadn't been both gracious and open-minded about talking things over. I was able to make the Why of my comments clear, as to where they were coming from within me, and we've patched things up, though I still feel like crap.
For now I'm stepping back from social media somewhat to re-examine what I'm really accomplishing there, and in
balance as to what it's doing to me.
Feb 23 – Really, ReBoot..?
Oh, man... this is so disappointing, and par for the course this week.
ReBoot is returning to the airwaves
after nearly twenty years, and I have no desire to see it, because.... well,
have a look for yourselves:
What were the creators THINKING, to make a bad 90's Power Rangers clone - .. that's the best they could do with 17 years work? It'll vanish as quickly as it appeared, and unmourned by any, including most every fan of the original ReBoot, as many are already saying.
What were the creators THINKING, to make a bad 90's Power Rangers clone - .. that's the best they could do with 17 years work? It'll vanish as quickly as it appeared, and unmourned by any, including most every fan of the original ReBoot, as many are already saying.
Compare the 'rebooted' show to the
old ReBoot and you'll see why I'm passing... there's not a whiff of
originality, character, effort or passion in the new, while the old has them in
spades:
Tragic, and Game Over... what a
waste!
Feb 24 – Wheel Of Time: Found~>~!
Many years ago, I found a website,
and lost it again.
While it's not uncommon for that sort
of thing to happen, even with the extensive bookmarks I've retained through
various backups, it happened to be a site I VERY much wanted to peruse, as it
involved the Wheel Of Time series by Robert Jordan.
Specifically, the site in question
had a 'tracker visual,' which allowed a reader to track all the main
characters, plots and sometimes places through EACH novel of the series by
chapter. Meaning you could follow the development of any main character or plot
throughout the entire series, which is an incredible thing!
And until this week, I thought I'd
lost it forever.
Incredibly, I happened to mention my
frustration in a WoT FBook group, and a member there responded with a site
name: Encyclopaedia-WOT.org! Excited, I pulled up the site immediately and
indeed, it WAS the site I'd been looking for!
Now all I have to do is find the time
to re-read the entire series... but when I DO get around to it again, I might
just track through chapter by chapter instead!
Feb 25 – Working to Type
My girlfriend and I went for a
too-short drive this morning after breakfast to enjoy a bit of the sunshine
while it lasted, going along a few back roads here and there in the northern
parts before we had to part ways again before lunch. She's got to finish her
move from her old digs to her new( MUCH closer to me AND her work both,
which is amazing! )while I had to dig into writing... and having to miss a friend's birthday party to do so. Suckage.
I spent a good part of the rest of
the day working on two writing projects: fleshing out the rest of the short
story I'll be submitting for a contest in 3 days, and talking myself up in the
other project for a temporary( and better! )position at work as a
trainer. I'm excited about both projects, but lamenting the time it's taken to
work on both in the last week: there's never enough energy to concentrate more
than an hour or two after work, so that's been challenging.
This week's been challenging to me,
as I've had to come to grips with my opinion being at odds with other people,
such that I've had to wonder if MY opinion is the correct one... or if it is,
then how to remain respectful of other's opinions while still remaining
friends? How can I 'stick by my guns' without feeling crappy about it, when
other people tell me that I'm wrong, or otherwise disagree with my stance on a
topic? There's surprisingly little information out there about exactly HOW to
navigate this kind of relationship minefield, which doesn't help. Knowing the
line where you cross over from having an opinion you can back up( good )to
being an opinionated jerk( bad )is rather difficult, especially as I'm
coming from years of just wanting people to get along... leading too often to
being a milkquetoast-spined lump of Agree-With-Anyone - which I'm not.
It's something I'm consciously not
going to be devoting much energy to in the near future, as I've got too much
ELSE on my plate to take on THIS overlarge mouthful.
When I do, I'll let you know what I
find.
I'm actively working NOT to dwell on my self-disappointment this week, to turn it into a learning experience, as all mistakes should be. I make as many as some, but I hope that I make fewer than most as the years pass, as I learn and don't repeat my errors... and sometimes even see similar ones coming so I can avoid them too. Moping about mistakes is a waste of energy, and while my Shiny Image Of Smartness has taken a ding, the rest is still shiny, and I can probably buff things out with more hard work. Onwards.
