Funny Wonderful Life

Funny Wonderful Life Physics equations? Are you sure you want to be a cartoonist? A Comment on Insight & Humor As a small tribute to Gary Larson & Stephen Jay Gould

"Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood.

It's one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition."

Stephen Jay Gould

Insight & Humor The wit and humor in the recognition of a truth are often important inspirations and by-products of scientific insight (and other areas of human endeavor). Humility like science has a tendency toward self-correction. I've always believed you should take your work seriously, but not necessarily yourself too much. We often laugh at jokes or cartoons because of the surprising insight it points to, or to hidden faults in logic it reveals, especially by turning stale ideas on their head. The right twist will get you hooked. Being able to communicate these insights with wit and humor goes deeper than mere entertainment. In my opinion there are no better communicators of  joyous science (and life) insights than Stephen Jay Gould and Gary Larson.  Both obviously passionate about science and life as well as masters at the art of communication. One by words and the other by images (with captions), they put forth revelations about nature, science and especially ourselves with warmth and humor. Sharing with us their precious view of our funny wonderful life!

Jokes can't be explained. The enjoyment comes from just "getting it".  However, when it's rendered with great talent what you get are hilarious perspectives.

Why THE FAR SIDE is a masterclass in storytelling

Gary Larson Species: Garylarsonus (beetle) Serratoterga larsoni (Ecuadorian butterfly)  Strigiphilus garylarsoni Clayton, (owl louse) "I considered this an extreme honor. Besides, I knew no one was going to write and ask to name a new species of swan after me. You have to grab these opportunities when they come along." Gary Larson  The Far Side

My Personal Favorite Strigiphilus garylarsoni

From the Foreword of Gary Larson's Far Side Gallery 3 "...I also think I know why Gary Larson is numero uno by a mile among my colleagues - and that gives me something to write about. Being funny is surely a criterion, but simple chuckles do not explain why we have spontaneously chosen Gary Larson as national humorist of natural history. He has won by informal acclamation because he understands science so well. And I don't mean factual knowledge (this is available for the asking from textbooks and courses); I refer to the subtle nuances and insights - hundreds of them, sometimes several per cartoon - showing that Gary Larson knows the intimate details of our daily lives and practices... Gary Larson is a natural historian. The foibles of human relationships with the natural world, and the bad habits of culture and society thus reflected, provide his central theme... Everyone has a favorite based on his own career- and I expect that the items on doors of my colleagues are personal statements. I think we all feel that Gary made one just for us. In mine, a group of Protozoa are watching a slide show, and one says: "No wait! That's not Uncle Floyd! Who is that? Criminy, I think it's just an air bubble!" Why did this put me supine in the aisles? Well, when I took embryology in college, we had to make serial sections through a chick embryo. I made a technically perfect set of sections; I was so proud. But when I put my product under the microscope, I discovered that I had made a perfect serial section through an air bubble, and caught the embryo at some useless angle. I abandoned laboratory work and became a paleontologist. One final comment that says it all. It is the caption of another Protozoan cartoon, but take it more generally as the real reason, not only for Gary Larson's success, but for the deep respect that he has won from us: Two amoeba are watching television, and one says to the other: "Stimulus, response! Stimulus, response! Don't you ever think!" Most of us live like the amoeba, but Larson won't let us. There is no more important intellectual lesson, however it be taught." by Stephen Jay Gould

1986 Gary Larson interview on 20/20

You might also like: What Theories Need  / Punctuated! Economics? / The Median Is The Message /
A Gould-en Heart

Enjoy

© 2012 MU-Peter Shimon

The Quiet Gardener

or Universal Responsibility

Business Lessons From A Quiet Gardener This post is an excerpt from the speech by William Rosenzweig On the occasion of his receiving the Oslo Business For Peace Award in 2010 A gardener sees the world as a system of interdependent parts - where healthy, sustaining relationships are essential to the vitality of the whole. "A real gardener is not a person who cultivates flowers, but a person who cultivates the soil." In business this has translated for me into the importance of developing agreements and partnerships where vision and values, purpose and intent are explicitly articulated, considered and aligned among all stakeholders of an enterprise -  customers, employees, suppliers, shareholders, and the broader community and natural environment.

The garden has taught me about patience and persistence and the ethical principles of generosity and reciprocity. It has illuminated the importance of appreciating the cycles of life and decay. For the gardener, composting is a transformative act -  whereby last season's clippings (or failures) can become next year's source of vigor.

I've learned that it's not just what you plant, but how you plant it that brings long - term rewards in life, work and the garden. Gardeners know that once strong roots are established, growth is often exponential rather than linear.

Also gardening, like business, is inherently a local activity, set within an ever - changing and unpredictable global climate. Showing up in person, shovel - and humility in hand is essential.

Gardeners, like entrepreneurs are obsessed with latent potential - and can be known to be  pathologically optimistic. We can vividly imagine the bloom and the scent of the rose even in deepest of winter. As the American naturalist Henry David Thoreau once wrote: "I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders."

In essence, the gardener's work is a life of care.  We cultivate abundance from scarce resources.  We nurture, encourage, fertilize - and prune when necessary - while being respectful of the true and wild nature of all things. We know that creating enduring value requires vision, passion, hard work and the spirit of others.

I am just coming to understand this work of business gardening - and investing in keeping people healthy - as an act of universal responsibility. His Holiness Dalai Lama reminds me: "Each of us must learn to work not just for one self, one's own family or one's nation, but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace.

The Man Who Planted Trees Story by Jean Giono, Film by Frederick Back

Enjoy

© 2012 MU-Peter Shimon

You may also like to see: My Hut in Spring / Evolutionary Economics / One Starfish / The Jar of Life

The Times They Are a-Changin'

It's Over for Business As Usual?

The Times They Are a-Changin'

Bob Dylan - 1964

Come gather 'round people Wherever you roam And admit that the waters Around you have grown And accept it that soon You'll be drenched to the bone If your time to you Is worth savin' Then you better start swimmin' Or you'll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin'

Come writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide The chance won't come again And don't speak too soon For the wheel's still in spin And there's no tellin' who That it's namin' For the loser now Will be later to win For the times they are a-changin'

Come senators, congressmen Please heed the call Don't stand in the doorway Don't block up the hall For he that gets hurt Will be he who has stalled There's a battle outside And it is ragin' It'll soon shake your windows And rattle your walls For the times they are a-changin'

Come mothers and fathers Throughout the land And don't criticize What you can't understand Your sons and your daughters Are beyond your command Your old road is Rapidly agin' Please get out of the new one If you can't lend your hand For the times they are a-changin'

The line it is drawn The curse it is cast The slow one now Will later be fast As the present now Will later be past The order is Rapidly fadin' And the first one now Will later be last For the times they are a-changin'

Enjoy

© 2012 MU-Peter Shimon

Nature vs Nurture?

or Nature AND Nurture

Nature AND Nurture Changing the Nature of How We View Nature The Story Of Christian The Lion Somehow, in the those groovy Austin Powers days of England 1969, at Harrods of London, Australians John Rendall & Anthony Bourke  bought a lion cub they called Christian.

The Documentary of Christian the Lion

Christian's Story Here is the remarkable story of 2 friends buying a lion cub that Harrods of London acquired from a defunct zoo park. Raising the cub in the city and then releasing it as an adult into the wild and returning for family reunions in African. Amazing, yes. And calling into question the popular notion of nature "red in tooth and claw". Obviously things are not pre-determined to be that way. Animals can moderate instinct when given the right environment to develop innate capacities and of course, given the motivation to care. It seems they can actually know, and care. The question then becomes... When will we know and care?

Nature and Nurture...  They have a relationship but its not versus.

"Animals have intelligences different from ours; they are not just primitive models of our achievements."

Stephen Jay Gould

Yes, this will appear as attributing human qualities to a non-human animal. And yes to some, this will seem to be pandering to our own emotions... However, this appearance alone shouldn't be a reason to ignore it.

Because awareness and emotions are precisely the point.

Yes, I want scientific rigor but I don't think we need to lose science in the process of examining our presumptions. On the contrary, we may gain what we lost from a priori blocking or ruling certain things out. Or in other words eliminating our prejudice. I think the fear of anthropomorphism can be blinding or confounding too. Is it possible that some of the "human characteristics" we see in animals are not projections of ourselves after all? We share evolutionary conditions, history and ancestry with other creatures. Can we be blinding ourselves to characteristics we call uniquely human but that may be capacities shared by our ancestors and still today with our living relatives? Taking a big picture view, another point is that evolution also converges to certain useful adaptations. That too shouldn't be ignored. Perhaps even distantly relatived animals may have developed parallel systems. So... is it possible we have been guilty of evolutionary hubris? Are we really the only ones to be conscious and feel?

I don't think humans invented emotions but for the longest time we denied any other species this capacity. An arrogance that saw animals as no better than souless machines, automated by instinct alone. Animals were even denied feeling pain. The atrocities visited on them by this view really does whittle away at our claim to be human(e). It has also distorted our view of their nature, as well as our own.

The extremes on both sides of the issue have not been helpful. I find neither animal activists nor animal abusers, are right. It seems to me that both argue in the name of a human superiority, one moral, the other divine. A balanced, more empirical and less ideological perspective on our relationship with our fellow creatures may be called for. We interact and share the planet with other animals who share a common evolutionary origin, in an ecological whole. Humans are omnivores, we have evolved to eat some meat, we need to live with other animals either directly or indirectly. We are also social with them, have pets and have an emotional or psychological reliance on them. While engaging in these behaviors and interactions, it is not necessary for us to be overly guilty but it's also not necessary to deny that animals have feelings and to treat them with disrespect or cruelty. While we need to eat and live, we do not need to make animals suffer unnecessarily... We may find out that in treating them with compassion and respect they may just respect or even love us back.

Changing the Nature of How We View Nature No one is advocating that you adopt a lion cub. The point is the assumption that it will end in tears...  It did... but in tears of joy. Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals —  have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and 'animals' is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1992) (Carl Sagan co-written with Dr. Ann Druyan) While I don't think anthropomorphizing is necessarily a good thing. What I'm saying is that the other extreme... a professional paranoia of recognizing and calling a spade a spade dates back at least to Descartes and his idea that since animals (viewed mechanically) don't think therefore they don't feel either. Ridiculous logic and not science. But a underlying metaphysics that has been guiding science perhaps for too long. It is an illusion to believe that instinct, thought and emotion aren't intrinsically related. Both consciously and unconsciously they intimately interact. Separating them out may be a handy logical trick only in your head, with very little support from empirical reality outside of it. While humans have a very high level of consciousness could it be that as far as awareness or capacity are concerned, things are little more shared and less exclusive? While nature provides capacity, does nurture (experience) provide the choices or alternatives? Nature and nurture interact. I think this is especially true of primates, perhaps all mammals and it may also apply to other animals. Evolutionary ancestry and convergence make it entirely possible. "The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states..." From The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness When studied closely unexpected creatures with radically different kinds of brains such as octopuses and cuttlefishes provide plenty of support to the idea of awareness in other species. But even they get eaten... The amazing Australian giant cuttlefish is eaten by Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins. The dolphins by the way have been observed (in Spencer Gulf, South Australia at least) to have developed a technique for removing the ink and cuttlebone from a cuttlefish before eating it.

The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness "On this day of July 7, 2012, a prominent international group of cognitive neuroscientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists and computational neuroscientists gathered at The University of Cambridge to reassess the neurobiological substrates of conscious experience and related behaviors in human and non-human animals. While comparative research on this topic is naturally hampered by the inability of non-human animals, and often humans, to clearly and readily communicate about their internal states, the following observations can be stated unequivocally..." From the opening passage The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness Click the link to read the entire script Humans have the whole pre-frontal cortex thing over other mammals. We have executive function, however, there is still the seat of our emotions that everything is inevitably tinged with. Every thought has some value. We like or dislike. The limbic system in our brains is, evolutionarily speaking, one of the most ancestral (oldest) parts. It's also known as the paleomammalian brain. Emotions are sourced there, and so are many related functions, such as motivation. The discovery of mirror neurons in primates raises possibilities for understanding empathy, and not only in humans. Of interest, especially in hominids is a region of the brain bridging the cortex and the limbic system like a belt over the corpus callosum and connecting both of them by spindle neurons. Spindle cells are also found in the brains of the humpback, finback, killer, sperm and beluga whales, bottlenose and Risso’s dolphins,  as well as African and Asian elephants. Studies of these spindle cells suggest a convergent evolution. This area is called the Anterior Cingulate Cortex. The ACC is area of the brain for decision making. That's right, decisions are a blend of reason and emotion. Perhaps it's time to accept that there is no value-free thought. Logic is not separate from value. Our experience is not separate from our thought. Our bicameral brain functions as one mind.  Were we viewing animals the same way we humans view many other things? Namely, through the prism of our preconceived notions and biases? These "hidden" biases are bankrupt and not of much good use. There's a litany of archetypes. Lions are always ferocious, poisonous snakes will bite if given the chance (That's false, they are not hunting humans, they are defending themselves and bite humans only as a last resort). Animal references are often used in personality tests as well as in far too may insults and put downs. We might want to re-think some of that too. The basic experience of life in most creatures and certainly those with close evolutionary ancestors to ourselves may be fundamentally the same. "Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors." The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness

I Wonder Where The Lions Are - Bruce Cockburn

 ‘The brain itself is multidisciplinary, and should therefore be studied as such.’
Lorenza Colzato

Enjoy.
© 2012 MU-Peter Shimon

You might also enjoy: / Spontaneous Discovery / Multi-colored Smarties / Cerebral Cephalopods /

The Jar of Life

or A Labor Day  Lesson

The Jar of Life A back to school lesson  even if it's the school of hard knocks

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, When 24 hours in a day are not enough, Remember the mayonnaise jar and the two beers.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar  and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was. The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full? The students responded with a unanimous 'yes'.

The professor then produced two beers from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed! 'Now,' said the professor as the laughter subsided, 'I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things--- your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions--- and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.. The sand is everything else---the small stuff. 'If you put the sand into the jar first,' he continued, 'there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life.

If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room  for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18 holes of golf. There will always be time to clean the house,  fix the disposal or deal with things from your job. Take care of the golf balls first--- the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the beer represented. The professor smiled and said, 'I'm glad you asked.' The beer just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of beers with a friend.

Enjoy.

© 2012 MU-Peter Shimon