more of the clown show and thought provoking reading

The crepe myrtles all over town are in full bloom. These are along the side of the barn.

I don’t know how many of you follow Jeff Tiedrich but if you want to laugh while crying and shaking your head in total dismay about the incompetence posing as the US government, really, read his Tuesday report of Trump and his not peace deal between Israel and Iran.  

I wrote the above yesterday. Today Trump gave a press conference at NATO. When asked why he hadn’t been able to end the war in Ukraine he responded that it is “more difficult than people would have any idea”. No Donny, it is more difficult than YOU had any idea. Everyone else with half a brain cell is well aware that peace in Ukraine isn’t possible because Putin has no intention of giving up until he absorbs all of Ukraine and Ukraine is just as determined to remain Ukraine. 

The ceasefire between Iran and Israel seems to be holding though, for now, but not because of Trump's all caps ’truths’ on his echo chamber but because Qatar negotiated. Despite Trump’s continued claim to the contrary of all evidence, Iran’s nuclear program was not destroyed and only set back by a few months or at most perhaps a couple of years, none of their nuclear material was lost, and it seems likely that the Iranians also moved whatever equipment they could. But Trump got to feel like a big bad ass and he will never admit that his strike was ever anything but a total success. If I was Iran I’d be lying my ass off claiming that the facilities were destroyed, because for Trump it’s not really about the result but the optics. Besides, he knows he's right because he said at the press conference that two Iranians went down there and took a look and then called him to say, yep, you did it, totally destroyed.

More rain Tuesday afternoon, another 2” on top of the almost 9” from the week before last and might get more today (we did). At least it’s giving us some respite from the heat since our highs for the next few days will only be in the 80s. Tuesday was also my semi-annual teeth cleaning and the practice has a new hygienist. My previous hygienist was a Trump supporter and while it didn’t leak out every time it did once in a while. She did a competent enough job even if she tended to rat me out to the dentist because I wouldn’t follow all her recommendations, like getting one of those water jet things, so I’m really glad she has moved to a different practice. This new young woman gave me good marks for keeping my teeth clean, said she didn’t have to do very much.

I might have mentioned I led the yoga class last Wednesday. Abby has been having some hip pain for about a year now and it finally got bad enough to go to the doctor. Turns out she has a tear in her hip and she will probably need surgery but before that the protocol is to do some kind of injection to deal with the pain. So she had the injection but it hadn’t kicked in yet and it turns out after she researched the diagnosis that some of the yoga asanas we do helped but others aggravated it so she’s going to have to modify what she can include in the class. Anyway, Monday she was still having significant pain so I led the class again. It’s possible I might be doing that more often depending on how the treatment for her hip goes.

I know I mentioned I get a daily newsletter from Nautilus that gives links to some fascinating reading on "thought provoking science stories" and while I’m not a paid subscriber which you have to be to get access to the all articles they do provide one free link in every newsletter. One recent newsletter was about the nature of consciousness and the free article was Is Matter Conscious? by Hedda Hassel Morch published March 31 2017, and yes, very thought provoking reading. It seems that consciousness is not the result of our brain activity but rather that the brain is the mechanism that our consciousness uses in the material world to navigate it and thereby not limited to humans as we like to think. It brings to mind the concept of cosmic consciousness and a small publication I read years ago published by the Theosophical Society titled The Consciousness Of The Atom which proposes that everything is conscious albeit in varying degrees and an excerpt from an article by Evan Thompson published on the psychology today blog that thinking isn’t generated by the brain, it just facilitates it, that Barbara Rogers posted on her blog Inner Workings.

The other free article in an issue devoted to intelligence is titled Another Path to Intelligence by James Bridle published August 17, 2022 focused on cephalopods whose brains and bodies are nothing like ours and yet are highly intelligent. Octopi particularly are fascinating. Their brains are not centralized like ours but extend through their bodies and into their limbs with their arms having the ability to act as independent minds. They demonstrate their intelligence whenever we humans try to keep them captive or study them as illustrated with anecdotes of their successful escape attempts, their ability to manipulate our environment, that they can recognize individual human faces. Their behavior in captivity and in the wild has shown that they learn, remember, know, think, consider, and act based on their intelligence. Clearly, “The tree of evolution bears many fruits and many flowers, and intelligence, rather than being found only in the highest branches, has in fact flowered everywhere.“.