Ummagumma

Time once again for a wrap-up of various things in 2021 that were part of my life that I chose not to blog about. Jennifer got a new birding app for her iPhone.  You simply record whatever bird sounds you hear and the app will identify each bird with a thumbnail photo and brief description.  The app was fun to use as it allowed us to guess what birds we were hearing and then either confirm or not whether we were correct.  Most birds we already knew but there were some surprises.  Through the use of this app I learned about several new birds on our property, primarily the blue-gray gnatcatcher and the hermit thrush .  This fun app added a new dimension to my walks. Speaking of which, six deer (one fawn) took up residence in my woods this year.  I never tried to take a photo of them.  Kudo has become so sweet and manageable on our walks.  I have taught her to freeze and not approach the deer.  After we make eye contact we both freeze.  I usually whisper something to Kudo, reassuring h

 

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he does not become a monster.  And if you gaze too long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” - Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future   Over the past few months, I've watched a YouTube history channel about the fall of the great empires and civilizations.  Assyrian.  Egyptian.  Byzantine.  Indus.  Mayan.  All sorts of civilizations and empires have come and gone.  In watching these documentaries, I was more interested in what brought each new one about, how did each of these vast collection of societies emerge as a new power?  Ultimately, each one fell and it sometime seemed to me they fell for similar reasons. Also over that same period of time, I watched a couple of Jordan Peterson videos that left me enraged at him without initially understanding why.  I respect the man immensely.  I even agree with most of what he is saying.  But there's a underlying attitude, and unspoken “obvious

The way the night sky appeared last night through my Star Chart app.  Earth's horizon has been removed as well to open up the sky.  I've turned off a bunch of features to make the planets more distinct. There is a slight lens flair effect (that I wish I could turn off as well) in my app. Throughout most of this year, I have enjoyed watching Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus aligned in the night sky over my house just after sunset.  By this time of the year the three have shifted to the west but are still clearly visible to the naked eye on cloudless nights.  Mercury is too low on the horizon for me to see now and Mars is below the horizon from my perspective before the Sun sets.  But, for the first time since I've own my Star Chart app , all the planets are more or less strung together in the night sky. Last night was clear and

Going into the 2021 SEC Championship I knew all too well that Georgia had not beaten Alabama in their last six match-ups.  I have blogged before ( here and here ) about my lifelong support for “them Dawgs.”  About the heartbreak of losing to the Crimson Tide twice in 2018, both games close, both games with Georgia blowing halftime leads.   When the 12 – 0 Dawgs at No. 1 in the country faced 11 – 1 Alabama at No. 3 I found myself in a familiar state of mind.  It was the same apprehension as when the Atlanta Braves entered the 2021 NLCS against the LA Dodgers, all hope tempered by a gnawing sense of impending doom by an arch nemesis.  At the same time, I realized that this could be my greatest year of fandom in my lifetime.  The Braves won the World Series.  Could the Dawgs win the National Championship in the same season?  That would be incredible.  My two favorite teams at the apex of their sport.  Too good to be true. But the National Championship was a ways off yet.  First, Kirby

Image credit. Some assorted thoughts on the enframing process currently transitioning humanity out of the Western Enlightenment into the Modern.  These are as a result of some recent and not-so-recent reading/viewing. "We Need to Remake the Internet. "  This is a great TED talk and I am late in mentioning it.  Basically, this Virtual Reality pioneer, Jaron Lanier , sees one major aspect of the enframing process.  Of course, like other brilliant minds I have previously mentioned, he does not realize what he is seeing.  He's right only he's got it backward.  The internet is going to remake us.  This is an old Vox article that I came across early this year. Along those same lines of futurism, " In a First, Most North American robots last year didn't go to automotive plants. " So it has started.  Robots are really entering society at large in a big way.  This is only the beginning.  Who's going to stop it?  Specifically, "Orders by life sciences,

  Proof of purchase.   I am not a “grunt” military history enthusiast.  That is, I have only an abstract interest in tactics.  I am interested in strategy and operations far more than I am about the detailed stories of soldiers.  War is terrible everywhere it is fought.  It is not difficult to find heroic and horrifying grunt stories to tell but that is not the perspective of military history that I prefer.   The work of authors like Keith William Nolan and Mark Bowden are exceptions.  The former wrote many interesting accounts soldiers fighting in campaigns of the Vietnam War.  The latter has most famously written Black Hawk Down , which is a fine read (and was later made into a good movie ). I bought a first edition of Bowden's Hue 1968 when it was published back in 2017.  But it has sat on my book shelves until recently.  I bought it because I figured I would get around to reading it sometime.  That time turned out to be just before my recent trip to Destin .  I had finished