Nov 23 2024 - At What Age Should A Woman

 

The article asks:  Can aging stop women from wearing leggings?   First answer:  Absolutely not!  Age is no barrier to wearing leggings.  It's all about how you style them.  Second answer:  I think you can wear leggings until you are 100 yrs old. It depends what you pair it with. I bet there are more answers - and likely similar.  Good thing I am not the one answering the questions.  There's a fraternity of social indulgence.  You look fine.  Really. Maybe the question of leggings is better than who is the oldest body builder in the Guinness Book of Records. There are two - male and female -showing their muscles in their skimpy bathing suits. I had thought the bathing suits and muscles pictures were unpleasant with younger people and here we are faced with Ernestine and Jim smiling away with bulging arms and legs. This is Ernestine:  “I really don’t need an alarm clock to awaken me. I wake up at 2:30 every morning. I get up. I say my devotions. Then I’ll eat. I will eat ten egg whites. They’re scrambled, sixteen ounces of water, and a handful of walnuts. I have a certain song that I sing every morning...‘Oh I can’t sit down. Got to keep on rolling…Today I am happy and free…Nothing in the world is troubling me'.” So begins the day for the now 85-year-old Ernestine Shepherd, the world's oldest female bodybuilder.  She was named six-pack granny at the time.  Ernestine looks young - really young.  Is she a SuperAger body builder?  Or more likely these are pictures from 15 to 20 years ago when she held the record in 2010 and 2011 in her 60s.There are articles all through her career, so I expect they are using the ones from her favourite time period.  I I guess that as pictures of other younger female body builders look their age. And then our male bodybuilder Jim seems more real as he is over 90.  But then being more real over 90 isn't that pleasant to look at. And there's a picture where he doesn't even have the weird bathing suit on. That story concludes with "Every body is perfect." So I won't check out the headlines on the world's oldest bodybuilder - Manohar Aich - at 104 in 2016. Whether to wear leggings or not?  Ernestine and Jim have already answered.  No need to wear leggings at all. Come as you are.

I think our perceptions are like this picture of rain on the windshield in front of the Food Basics.  Pretty colours and patterns,.  Don't use the windshield wipers and see what's really there.

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Oct 20 2024 - Rain Ahead

 

Everyone has commented on the beautiful weather.  It has been late summer temperatures and we are rolling into November.  But by the end of the sentence of delight,  people take a breath of despair and "gloom" about the upcoming season of winter.    The weather forecast does not look gloomy at all - it shows rain in the forecast over the next week weeks, rather than snow.   Is it true that everyone has this gloomy projection?  Or just the people in my age group?  That's who I see the most.  I expect it is the case.  That is what makes for snow birds.  As one ages, the spectre of cold winter snow chases one down to Florida. For those who want to grimace,  there is a website named snowchance.com - with the headline "Chance of Snow Storms this Winter.  Enter Any Location.  Below that are the standard headlines - Abou , Contact Us, Help and FAQ, and then - oddly - Edmonton.  Of course there is a "chance of snow storms for Edmonton, Alberta covering the 2024-2025 snow season."   Grimsby is expected to get a snow storm in November.  Of course, we know that.  The lake effects are strong in November and so our great snowstorm a few years ago has given rise to the Snowvember Storm in 2014.

I've been processing images of water, particularly ripples and reflections.  I found this one from Victoria Harbour from a visit years ago. What an intensity of colour and wonderful lyrical shapes of the motion blur effects.

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Apr 14 2024 - What about Reddit

 

I consider Reddit to be some kind of social site of the American psyche. It is where people share their emotions unhesitatingly, unreservedly, and unrestrainedly.  It seems messy to look at visually and even messier to read.  What to think of it all.  Let's find out. It began in 2005 - started by college roommates - and bought by Conde Nast shortly after.  It is basically a bulletin board system.  Reddit is about the people who post there, so all the headlines about Reddit are actually Reddit posts - so are Reddit content.  With 430 million monthly users, there is a lot of writing going on.  This bulletin board site has 138,000 active communities.  The way the front page works is the content is ranked by upvoting and downvoting entries.  I checked out the site.  It is a shock to scroll through all that stuff on all kinds of content and particularly sports.  It seems random at first and then it really has a lot of sports entries.   There is one entry ABOUT Reddit - Wikipedia.  It says that Reddit has been a platform to raise publicity for a number of causes.  It lists a few.  And there are some notable publicity campaigns - one around Stephen Colbert.  It goes through the Reddit April Fools' Day jokes since 2010.  That year, every user was made an admin for 24 hours. That seems a bit scary to me.  Each year there's a new experiment - none of this magnitude, though. There's nothing past 2022.   What is well known is the Ask Me Anything - AMA in Reddit terms.  These are likely the best known Reddit entries - Bill Gates, Donald Trump, George Clooney, Margaret Atwood, and so on.   With decentralized moderation, user anonymity and lack of fact-checking, there is misinformation, distortions, pornography and so on.  It would be hard to keep control of that much stuff, but it does appear they haven't tried all that hard. Reddit does seem to be very much in charge of what we see in the internet feed on them.  Vast numbers of Reddit entries. Every search with Reddit in the terms retrieves Reddit entries.  Pick any topic and it is a Reddit community.  I had to hit the more results button 20 times before I got some headlines that weren't Reddit posts.  Wow!   So much rain on the windshield, that Food Basics became an abstract.

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Feb 25 2023 - Why I Like the Weather

 

The weather is in the more benign range of news these days.  It does have the disadvantage of a lot of ads - particularly windows that pop up and squish out the actual weather news.  And it does have that strange scrolling "news ads" section at the bottom.  But what makes it in the benign range is that it doesn't have the comments section where people with low levels of grammatical literacy and spelling plow their rows of opinion into mountains of emotion.  What makes news sites have comments sections given these toxic levels of comments? Wikipedia says: "The comments section is a feature on most online blogs, news websites, and other websites in which the publishers invite the audience to comment on the published content. This is a continuation of the older practice of publishing letters to the editor." Editors-in-chief say this about commenting:  "Too often they devolve into racist, misogynistic maelstroms where the loudest, most offensive, and stupidest opinions get pushed to the top and the more reasoned responses drowned out in the noise.” Take away the comments, and traffic declines on sites without comments.  The Pynter.orgwebsite says it might be worse to have no comment section than to have one.  They say the New York Times has actually invested in online commenting - moderating comments is a required activity if news sites are going to have comments.   Moderation isn't a simple activity.  Take a look at the Guardian's articles with comments HERE. i picked the article "Ten years ago I won a trip to New York.  If this happened today I'd delete the email."  I took a screen shot of the two Guardian Pick comments. It is tantalizing, isn't it? What better way to get you to sign in to read more. And there we have it - the difference between free-for-all and "managed".   Our comment less forecast: We've got snow and rain ahead in the next two weeks.  Here's a rainy day picture below.  Driving rain against the windows of the bus along a Toronto street.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Jan 22 2023 - Chinese New Year

 

Chinese New Year this year brings the year of the rabbit.  I wonder if we will be present to this after today.   There are a lot of traditions - more than I imagined. And a lot of time to celebrate them in - since the mid-1990s the Chinese have been given seven consecutive days off work.  As there are 15 days of  traditional celebrations, they will need to double up..  What are the celebrations? I took a look to find out and realize how little I know about the traditions and legends.  Just the first few days: It says the first day is "Birthday of Chicken" where the oldest and most senior members will be visited. The second day is "Birthday of Dog" where people will burn the picture they welcomed on the New Year's Eve, and traditionally married women will visit and pay respect to their birth parents. Since the day is characterised by the birthday of the dogs, pets and strays will be fed well. The third day is "Birthday of Pig" where families who had an immediate relative deceased in the past 3 years will not go house-visiting as a form of respect to the dead. The third day of the New Year is allocated to grave-visiting instead. Some people conclude it is inauspicious to do any house visiting at all, as it is believed that evil spirits roam the earth this day and hence it would be bad luck to be outdoors. We skip ahead to Sheep, Ox, Cattle, Horse, and at day 7 are at the "Birthday of Men". This is the day when human beings were created.  We still have to get to Day 15, so there are lots of celebrations yet to come.   Some of the traditions are taboos such as no hair cutting, no using scissors, knives and other sharp  things, no arguing, swearing, saying unlucky words (death, sickness) and no breaking things.  And then there are articles on what to wear, typical Chinese New Year greetings, and so on.  One in five people in the world is Chinese. Shouldn't Chinese New Year be a part of our lives in some way more than a one day celebration around the world. Its traditions seem so separate from  "western culture."   Raindrop s on windshield pictures. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Jan 1 2023 - Predictions this year

 

What are the predictions for 2023?   Our great psychics are listed as: Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, Jeanne Dixon, Ingo Swann, Sylvia Browne, John Edward, Doreen Virtue, Chip Coffey, VBaba Vanga and Esther Hicks.  That's according to the best psychics.club.  Today  it is Nostradamus' turn.  He's still making the news after all these centuries with over 6,300 prophecies: Predictions 2023  World War  Nostradamus wrote, "Seven months the Great War, people dead of evil-doing." Mars landing  The French mystic cryptically referred to a "light on Mars falling", suggesting that humans could possibly visit the Red Planet in 2023. New Pope  Nostradamus' third prediction for 2023 is a new Pope succeeding Francis. He suggested that Pope Francis will be the last true Pope and that the next Pope will create a scandal. New World Order  Nostradamus' final prediction for 2023 talked about the new alliance of two great powers coming together. The new alignment will potentially be between a strong man and a weak one or even a male and a female leader. However, the alliance's good effects will not be long-lasting. While there are more details for each one, his language is strange and vague  so I left most of it out.   Here they are with another author's own comments.

Our pictures today are abstracts - rain on the windshield in the foreground and a lamp post in the background.

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Nov 18 2022 - Tempers Rising

 

Remember the lip readers for the Royals?  Similarly at the G20, there are the news journalists and camera people at the ready for something special.  And it happened.  Xi Jinping got temperamental with Justin Trudeau and scolded him, caught on video.   "At the G-20 summit in Indonesia, Chinese President Xi Jinping chided Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over what he described as a media leak of an earlier conversation. Trudeau expressed the importance of transparency and a desire to work together."  That quote from the Prime Minister's Office/Reuters. That "leak" was the standard readout that the Prime Minister's Office issues after leader-to-leader conversations.   The Toronto Star's comment on this was:  "Getting a lecture on secrecy from the Chinese leader was a little like getting lessons in diplomacy from Trump." Another verb for the interaction was "rebuke".  That was the headline in Wall Street Journal. But the summary paragraph decided it was "chided".  From the Independent, it was "Awkward exchange between Xi and Trudeau caught on camera.  "The Canadian prime minister was seen responding sharply to the remarks by the Chinese president.  The verb in this one was "confronts".  There we are with a relationship that consists of "scolding" "tantrum" or "slams" and "criticized", chided.  And the last part is the real story: "Xi then added that there could be consequences for Trudeau — but he did not say what those might be. The translator did not convey this remark to the prime minister, but Global News confirmed the translation with three Mandarin speakers." “It’s this last phrase which has a threatening aspect to it, the way it was phrased in Chinese,” said Charles Burton, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa, who speaks Mandarin and previously worked at the Canadian embassy in China. “He normally leaves those kinds of menacing statements to members of the foreign ministry who seem to specialize in this kind of thing.” The phrase Xi used, Burton added, is the kind of thing “a mafia thug might say to someone to intimidate them.” "The comment from Xi translates to “or else,” or “I don’t know what the consequences will be” of Trudeau sharing the information about his conversation with the Chinese president, Burton said." So there we are with what might seemed to be a straight-forward story. And our picture today foretelling of the darkest day of the year yet to come. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

June 11 2022 - I haven't been the same since

 

I am intrigued by Frank Epperstein's elusive statement:  "And I haven't been the same since."  It sounds sad, depleted, reduced, and melancholy.  There's no indication from the definition that this might be the case.  What is of concern with the definition is whether it is inclusive or exclusive of the time before referenced.  It is inclusive.  But somehow since has become an anthem - a marker of a catastrophic event.  There are a number of songs lyrics that include  line and substantiate the idea:  I haven't been the same since I lost my bro I haven't been the same since I loved that hoe Things haven't been the same since you got back from Italy Things haven't been the same since we left (Explicit)  They all seem to extend the phrase into the realm of the "cynical absurdist".  It is the disdain rather than despair that stands out, along with the mocking quality.  Here's the sticker/t-shirt on eBay:   I haven't been the same since that house fell on my sister I had to scroll through a lot of jokes to find some to share.  I thought there would be lots but what is there is mostly demeaning sex jokes.  Here are my chosen few: The Supreme Court has changed dramatically since Justice Ginsberg died. It has become Ruth less. Ever since I became the new produce inspector I've been visiting local grocers and supermarkets; but they're always surprised to see me. It seems nobody expects the spinach inquisition Ever since the storm started, my husband won’t stop looking through the window. If it gets any worse, I will have to let him in And this one - not in the time sense of the definition, but definitely in the cynicism club: Devil: This is the lake of lava you will be spending eternity in Me: Actually, since we're underground, it would be magma Devil: You understand this is why you're here, right?   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Mar 14 2022 - Basking in the Spring Weather

 

Can you see us "basking in the spring weather?"  That's the Weather Network's headline for our weather this week.  The definition of bask seems quite humorous: lie exposed to warmth and light, typically from the sun, for relaxation and pleasure. "sprawled figures basking in the afternoon sun" I don't think there will be much "sprawling" in Florida today.  The temperatures yesterday varied between a high of 10 degrees down to -3 degrees.  That's not goo for our fruit crops at all.  What a reversal for the Spring break vacationers.   So if we are to bask in the weather this week, I assume we won't be having rain.  Seattle, on the other hand, has a  lot of weather jokes about rain, so basking wouldn't happen there very often. Q: What does daylight saving time mean in Seattle? A: An extra hour of rain Q: What do you call two straight days of rain in Seattle? A: A weekend A newcomer to Seattle arrives on a rainy day. He gets up the next day and it's raining. It also rains the day after that, and the day after that. He goes out to lunch and sees a young kid and asks out of despair, "Hey kid, does it ever stop raining around here?" The kid says, "How do I know? I'm only 6."   A curious fellow died one day and found himself in limbo waiting in a long, long line for judgment. As he stood there, he noticed that some souls were allowed to march right through the gates of heaven. Others were led over to Satan, who threw them into a lake of fire. Every so often, instead of hurling a poor soul into the fire, Satan would toss him or her to one side. After watching Satan do this several times, the fellow's curiosity got the better of him. He strolled over and tapped Old Nick on the shoulder. "Excuse me, there, Your Darkness," he said. "I'm waiting in line for judgment, and I couldn't help wondering why you are tossing some people aside instead of flinging them into the fires of hell with the others?" "Ah," Satan said with a grin. "Those are Seattle-ites. I'm letting them dry out so they'll burn."

Trains yesterday, followed by rain today.  This is montage image of the National Gallery in Ottawa overlaid with rain on the car windows. This seems appropriate to Seattle weather. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Dec 29 2921 - Shaking Off Santa...At Least for a Year!

 

Santa is such a delightful visual icon.  The white curly hair and beard, rosy cheeks, beautiful elves and fur "suit"... always so charming.  But the keeping of lists for naught and nice is a nasty underside to this soft, warm cozy visual experience.   These are 'substitute' or 'stand-in' words of naughty for bad, sinful, evil, and nice for good, ethical, virtuous. Such a moral framework within the guise of candies, cookies and presents.  No wonder philosophers have looked at Santa carefully and wondered about what moral framework was used or invented to guide him.  CBC took a look at philosophical frameworks to explain how describe how the framework might work.  Consequentialist? Deontologist?  Virtue ethicist? I've summarized the interview that can be found in full HERE. Santa as a consequentialist - The Total Score Consequentialism determines whether an action is good or bad based on the consequences of that action. This is also known as modern utilitarianism. Jeremy Bentham an 18th-century English philosopher is the founder of this philosophy.  It is an addition and subtraction framework with a final score of right vs wrong.  "If you, as a kid, are constantly doing things that cause harm to other people and cause them to be in pain, that seems bad. And we might intuitively understand why Santa would judge you as naughty in that case,"  Bentham created  a way of assigning a numerical value to an action — by considering questions like: How much pleasure or pain might your action cause? For how long? How many people are you going to affect? "You add up all the pleasure and you add up all the pain and you take the pain away from the pleasure. And if your action results in more pleasure overall for more people, this is a moral thing and you were nice, not naughty." There are a few issues with consequentialism.  "You might be pretty moral overall," said Fellows. "So that's one problem ... For example, what if a child is generally kind to many people and does favours for them, but keeps a frog in a jar at home to torture it?  Consequentialism also doesn't take a person's intentions into account. For example, a child who wraps the family cat in blankets to make it cozy may think they're doing a good thing, even if they're actually causing harm. Santa as a deontologist - The Stickler or One Strike and You're Out! One school of ethical thought that does account for intentions is deontology, best represented by Immanuel Kant, an 18th-century German philosopher and one of the central thinkers of the Enlightenment. "He said that you must always try and follow your duty, and your moral duty is to follow what's called the categorical imperative."  His concept is categorical because it applies in all places at all times, and it's imperative because you must follow it without exception. "Whereas we thought of Santa with Bentham as being like Santa the Mathematician, Santa for Kant would be maybe Santa the Stickler, because Kant says you have to follow this rule."  "In other words, allowing other people the freedom to make their own choices," said Fellows. "And maybe they choose to help me achieve my goal, and that's great. But I also have to [show] respect if they choose not to help me." For example, if a parent asks their child if they ate all their brussel sprouts before they're allowed to have dessert, a child who lies would not be respecting their parent's' rational autonomy.  "They're manipulating their parents into trying to get the ice cream. So they're not telling all the truth and they're not giving the parent a free choice."  On the other hand, a child who admits to their parents that they gave their vegetables away to the dog would be acting morally. But when it comes to making it on the nice list, there's a twist. For Kant, the only way to be truly moral is to follow the categorical imperative because you've chosen it as the right thing to do, and not because you're trying to get a reward out of it like a Christmas present. "If you are only following the categorical imperative because you want the treats and you don't want the coal, then you aren't doing it properly either. You've already failed. In fact, you need to take Santa out of the equation and not worry about his approval at all." So with Kant, it could be "one strike and you're out!" Santa as a virtue ethicist - The Soul Observer - Improbable Decisions for a Four-year-old If Santa the consequentialist only cares about the end results of your actions, and Santa the deontologist only cares whether you're respecting other people's rational autonomy, then Santa the virtue ethicist only cares about looking into your soul to see if you're trying to be good. Virtue ethics, a branch of philosophy that goes all the way back to Aristotle, is concerned with individual moral aspiration.  "Rather than focusing on this specific situation and what should I do in this specific situation, virtue ethics asks: Overall, over the course of my lifetime, what kind of person should I try to be?"  According to Aristotle, to become virtuous people, we have to identify the virtuous course of action. For him, virtues can be found at the midpoint of two extremes, what he calls a "golden mean." For example, if your little brother draws a not-so-pretty finger painting, and proudly shows it off to you, do you lie and say it looks great, or do you tell the truth, which could hurt his feelings?  "Truthfulness is at the golden mean. It is at a midpoint, but it's a midpoint between deception — that is, lying, which is a vice of deficiency — and what Aristotle calls kind of a boastfulness or a hard truth… truths that hurt people."  "Part of achieving the golden mean of truthfulness would be learning when to tell the truth, how to tell the truth, and when it might be best to keep silent." Virtue ethicists like Aristotle also acknowledge that while people may aim for the golden mean, they're bound to make mistakes, and that's OK. "The real point of virtue ethics is that morality is a skill that you have to practise until it becomes second nature. And when it becomes second nature, you actually remake yourself into a moral person."  "So in some ways I like virtue ethics because it is a very positive theory. No matter how naughty or how bad you are, you can work to make things better, to make yourself better."  Under an Aristotelian model, Santa would be an observer, watching what you did over the course of a year. He would ask: What habits did you acquire? How did you practise the skill of morality?  "The reward is that you will actually be a happier, better, more well-rounded person, and that you will have less regrets at the end of your days."   "So you will kind of give yourself the present. You won't need Santa."   Let's all explain that one to a four-year-old.  What moral habits did a four-year-old learn besides name some colours, count, remember parts of a story, draw a person with 2 to 4 body parts, use scissors, and so on. I rest my case on Santa - at least for another year. That's likely why he only comes around once a year.  There's too much to explain, too much "Santa's watching" threats to invoke and then moderate, keep score on how things are going with motivation and so on.    As we come to the conclusion of 2021, we look ahead to 2022.  We hope for a better year ahead.  Can we pass through the keyhole of the pandemic and climate change urgency in one year?

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Dec 28 2021 - Santas Existence

 

To be or not to be - that is the question.  Did Shakespeare have to deal with the existence of Santa? Seeing as the story "stretches all the way back to the 3rd century", one might think he too had the dilemma of deciding how to represent Santa to his children.  But I doubt it. I also doubt my parents had a philosophical discussion on Santa's to be or not to be.  Things were simpler then - less sophisticated education, more engagement with pleasure and fun wherever it could be had, particularly the consumerism that got hold of the 20th century. And of course, simpler parenting methods - physical rewards and punishments to train behaviours.  The migration of Santa into naughty vs nice was unlikely to be thought about then.   Think of naughty and nice as a conversation starter for Santa in Malls or at events...who would have considered where this might go?   Think of this:  if the Wright Brothers had foreseen that the airplane would have caused more casualties in war rather than the elimination of war itself, they would not have invented the airplane.  So here we are today- I found this 21st Century example of the Santa to be or not to be question.  This is a Toronto Star article on the philosophical meaning of Santa Claus HERE. "My son had a play date to the zoo in December and his friend’s mother called and said there will be reindeer at the zoo. “Reindeer will prompt a discussion of Santa and since your son doesn’t believe in Santa and my son does I don’t want my son to be skeptical, so I don’t think your son should come along.” I thought, “That is weird,” because she seemed to be sacrificing a relationship with someone who is real, my son Ari, with someone who isn’t real, Santa. Then I began to think: how do I know Santa isn’t real? Just because I haven’t seen him? I haven’t seen that Israeli model Bar Refaeli but I know she exists. And that is the start of a deep dive into an examination of Santa from a philosophical viewpoint.   No worries - he pulls up quickly with this conclusion:  "We need to have things in our lives, certain things. Maybe Santa is one of those ways to teach children about gifts. You tell the kids there is a magical evening when Santa comes down the chimney and it allows them to participate in gift-giving."   Our existential questions in pictoral form today.

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