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Saturday... Wow.

Today is Saturday, and there is not a helluva lot for me to say. It is just a day.

PipeTobacco

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Sad & Lonely



My wife was in a poor mood last night. She is attempting to eat better and perhaps lose some weight. I tried to be supportive and consoling as she had a difficult time where she ate dinner and was angry that she did not eat what the others were having but instead ate something healthier. I tried to listen and console her, but she ended up biting my head off.

So, after that, I tried to let my own feelings go about getting crabbed at when I was trying to be supportive. We went into the family room to watch television and to plan a menu for the upcoming week. We start to write out a menu, and then without saying she wanted to talk about something else, or without completing the menu with me, she starts talking about a whole different, unrelated subject about work schedules the next day. I sit there an listen but do not respond, as a) I don't know where this new discussion is coming from, b) I do not see any link between it and the menu we were working on so I wonder if there is some sort of hidden agenda that is linking these two topics, and c) frankly, I am feeling very cautious about saying ANYTHING after the response I received while trying to be supportive. I also do not respond because there was no question asked of me. My wife just started talking about what she was going to do the next day, not asking me what I was doing, not asking me any questions or requesting any sort of support or help. It was as if we were on another track of the same record... it seemed a wholly separate topic with no questions or anything.

So, after the getting snapped at earlier, and then having the conversation drift into topics that I did not understand why they were being brought up, I thought it best to be quite quiet as I was feeling I was on very shaky ground in terms of trying to avoid an argument or disagreement.

We watch two shows on television with minimal small talk. I am rather hoping my wife will simply go to bed and perhaps a good night's rest will make things back to normal in the morning. I felt good about not responding back to her in an angry way and thought that this would allow the situation to pass relatively easily.

Well, that is not what happened. My wife went upstairs for a few minutes, and then came back downstairs and started to act angry at me for a) being "mean" in the kitchen and not consoling her about her struggles with eating, b) for not responding in the subject of schedules, and c) for being "silent" while watching television.

Unfortunately, being accused of all that finally got under my skin and we then argued for about an hour. Fruitless, pointless arguing.

So, now I feel sad, lonely, and alone.

It makes me feel angry too. I tired very hard to be helpful and supportive and consoling as she angrily talked about being at her mother's and how she wanted to eat pizza and breadsticks. Instead, she ate a big, fancy salad and a chicken wrap. I told her that she should be proud that she resisted and did what she said she was going to do. And I also said that I understood how she was feeling, because I had felt similar struggles when I initially started to eat more healthily. So, I do not know what the hell it was that I said that triggered her to snap at me. And, in reality, there may *not* have been anything I said. It may be simply that she was mad at everything at the time. That is why I let it "go" initially and started to tread very lightly... because if my trying to be a good supportive friend and husband about her struggles with food in this instance were met with such rancor, then the reality was that I was at risk for receiving more griping and anger towards me. And, to be frank, I do not handle getting yelled at very well, so I thought it best to be quiet. And, yet, as you can see from the above, that did not work well either.

So, again, I guess that is it. I am sad, and lonely, and frustrated, and actually quite angry.

PipeTobacco

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Maybe We Should NOT Look Before We Leap



A recent published work on frogs is suggesting that many frogs may have learned leaping behavior independently of landing. Perhaps there is a philosophical/theological aspect to this story that needs to be explored? Perhaps there is merit in just living and doing what comes naturally.... instead of trying to think everything through before making a decision? If so, it sure as hell would be a pleasant change for me. I am beginning to wonder if I think and theorize about things too damn much (just like I am tautologically doing at this damn minute... Argh!).

Frogs Leapt Before They Landed : Amphibians Learned to Jump First, Then Mastered the Touchdown

By Sid Perkins

The Rocky Mountain tailed frog and others in its family learned to jump early in frog evolution, but have still not mastered a clean landing. Mike Jorgenson's frogs learned to leap long before they learned how to land smoothly, researchers suggest, based on the simple observation that the amphibians have been hopping around for hundreds of millions of years, but some species still have trouble sticking their landings.

Many people, and even many scientists, presume that frogs all jump the same way, says Richard L. Essner Jr., an evolutionary biologist at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville. Per the conventional view of a hop, a frog rapidly extends its hind limbs to launch itself skyward, rotates forward as it soars gracefully through the air, and then uses its forelimbs to efficiently absorb the force of its landing.

Would that it were. New studies reveal that some species of primitive frogs — especially the ones in a family called Leiopelmatidae — are good jumpers but are amazingly klutzy at touching down. Essner and his colleagues report their findings online July 13 and in an upcoming Naturwissenschaften.

Few scientists have studied leiopelmatid frogs, and none have analyzed their jumping behavior, Essner says. He and his colleagues used high-speed video to scrutinize these frogs’ leaps and landings and then compared those movies to others of more evolutionarily advanced species, including Lithobates pipiens, the northern leopard frog, and Bombina orientalis, the oriental fire-bellied toad.

Both L. pipiens and B. orientalis began pulling their hind limbs back toward their bodies mid-leap, a trait that allowed them to more quickly position their legs for another jump. These frogs consistently landed on their forelimbs, with L. pipiens landing within a degree or so of -24° (a body angle approximately pointed toward 4 o’clock, if seen from the side jumping from left to right).

But the leiopelmatid Ascaphus montanus, the Rocky Mountain tailed frog, didn’t withdraw its legs midflight and had wildly inconsistent landings, with body angles at touchdown ranging from a 62° leg-dragging belly flop to a -71° near-tumbling face plant.

There’s an evolutionary reason for this, Essner and his colleagues speculate. The earliest frogs probably used leaping as a way to escape predators and return to the water, he notes. In such a scenario — previously proposed by other scientists, he adds — how a frog lands isn’t important. But as some ancient species of frogs became more adapted to life away from water, efficient landings allowed hops to come in quick succession — good for both evading predators and chasing prey.

“Not much is known about [primitive] frogs,” says Sandra Nauwelaerts, a biomechanicist at Michigan State University in East Lansing. Because no primitive frogs are fully terrestrial, the findings make sense, she adds.

There’s a spectrum of landing performance in frogs, says Gary Gillis, a biomechanicist at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass. In toads, for instance, the feet and legs are typically the only body parts that touch the ground during or after a hop. “People rarely think of the role of the hind limbs in landing,” he notes. “Landing successfully is what makes the next hop possible.”

* * * * *

I would like to think that perhaps I *should* stop thinking about things less... but then deep inside me, I think that to think through and analytically examine everything in minutiae, that I may be acting irresponsibly and let my family down. It is a conundrum that I think is impossible to solve.

PipeTobacco

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Put That in Your Pipe...



As many of you are aware, I have been a very ardent pipe smoker and enjoyer of the hobby since I was a young kid. Yet, as of late I have been having a bit of emotional turmoil about my indulgence in the hobby. I am not sure what I should do.

Part of me thinks I enjoy smoking a pipe, I enjoy the art, the ritual, the flavor, the mental stimulation/relaxation, and enjoy the history of the hobby. Yet a part of me also feels more-and-more an outsider, worry about the hobby creeps in, and so, I am just not sure what I am thinking or planning at the moment... I just know I feel confused, isloated, and sad about either choice... continuing to smoke my pipes or to instead quit them.

I just do not know.

PipeTobacco

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Emotional....



This weekend found me becoming lost in a pit of sad emotions. The initial aspect of my sad feelings arose after speaking with my wife on Saturday. She has been feeling very emotional for aa few weeks now because her efforts to lose weight and exercise have not been fruitful. This has put her on edge for quite a while, but then she coupled it with worry about her work as well.

Unfortuntely, the two barreled approach to emotions broke through my own external skeleton protecting me from my own thoughts and worries. I know it may sound foolish, but I am just not interested in gearing up for the b*llsh*t that goes on at my work. Summer has been a decent repreive from probably 90% of the crap, and the idea that it is roughly only one month away came to my realization full force after seeing my wife become so emotional.

When I was in Toronto at a recent conference, I attended Mass at a cathedral in that city. The homily really struck home with me because it focused on BALANCE. Balance in all aspects of life. The idea that there needs to be at least in my case, a LIMIT for work, a GUARENTEE of adequate play, a GUARENTEE of adequate rest, a GUARENTEE of spending time with family, and a GUARENTEE of adequate spiritual/philosophical thoughts. I need to figure out a way to keep WORK at WORK this upcoming year. I need to use my time effectively for work, but then to LEAVE IT at the office so I can have a full and sustaining life that is NOT WORK.

Part of me wants the above and wants to strive to attain it and have the balance be my goal. But another part of me is so damn sick and tired of trying to adopt and acquire new goals every minute that I am also balking at the idea.

On another front, I am in the process of donating my mother and father's last car to a charity. It pains me to do so. I have kept the vehicle, perhaps driving it 6 or 7 times in the three and a half years since my beautiful mother passed away. But, the vehicle is taking up enormous space, it is cluttering my home when both my wife and I are struggling to declutter our home of so much STUFF. I feel such mixed emotions about getting rid of their vehicle. But I really think I must.

PipeTobacco

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Charles Dickens Quotes



As I did yesterday, I thought I would list some quotes again. This time it is of Charles Dickens who I seem to match best for my non-fiction style of writing. Please let me know what you think:

QUOTES:

A boy's story is the best that is ever told.
Charles Dickens

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.
Charles Dickens

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
Charles Dickens

A person who can't pay gets another person who can't pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don't make either of them able to do a walking-match.
Charles Dickens

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
Charles Dickens

Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.
Charles Dickens

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.
Charles Dickens

Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he's well dressed. There ain't much credit in that.
Charles Dickens

Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.
Charles Dickens

Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.
Charles Dickens

Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.
Charles Dickens

Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows - and china.
Charles Dickens

Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay.
Charles Dickens

Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.
Charles Dickens

Do you spell it with a "V" or a "W"?' inquired the judge. 'That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my Lord'.
Charles Dickens

Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.
Charles Dickens

Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.
Charles Dickens

Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.
Charles Dickens

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!
Charles Dickens

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.
Charles Dickens


Again, thank you for your comments!

PipeTobacco

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Vladimir Nabokov Quotes



As it appears my writing style for fiction is most like Babokov's writing, I looked for some of his quotes. Here is what I found. Do you see his style in my fiction writing?

QUOTES:

A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.
Vladimir Nabokov

A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past.
Vladimir Nabokov

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.
Vladimir Nabokov

A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.
Vladimir Nabokov

All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter. For me style is matter.
Vladimir Nabokov

Caress the detail, the divine detail.
Vladimir Nabokov

Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained.
Vladimir Nabokov

Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.
Vladimir Nabokov

Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.
Vladimir Nabokov

Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
Vladimir Nabokov

Happy is the novelist who manages to preserve an actual love letter that he received when he was young within a work of fiction, embedded in it like a clean bullet in flabby flesh and quite secure there, among spurious lives.
Vladimir Nabokov

I cannot conceive how anybody in his right mind should go to a psychoanalyst.
Vladimir Nabokov

I confess, I do not believe in time.
Vladimir Nabokov

I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it.
Vladimir Nabokov

I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.
Vladimir Nabokov

I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.
Vladimir Nabokov

I would like to spare the time and effort of hack reviewers and, generally, persons who move their lips when reading.
Vladimir Nabokov

Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much.
Vladimir Nabokov

It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.
Vladimir Nabokov

It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail.
Vladimir Nabokov

Thank you for any comments!

PipeTobacco

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Who I Write Like

I decided to take one of those computer generated tests... on my fiction efforts and on my normal blog writings. Here is who the computer says my fiction work is similar to:

I write like
Vladimir Nabokov

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

For my normal everyday blog writing, I write more akin to:

I write like
Charles Dickens

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Very interesting indeed. I would gladly and appreciatively read any comments you may have about the above two writers and my own writing style. I am going to go see if my father-in-law needs some help especially with my mother-in-law still in the hospital, today after I get done with my last minute preperations for the reserach presentation. Hopefully I will be out of here before noon.

PipeTobacco

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Preparing to Prepare

Today was an unusual day, as I really did nothing in my normal routines. I spent most of the day at home or running errands that my wife usually does as she was at the hospital with her mother who was having surgery. Luckily, everything has gone well.

PipeTobacco

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Yawn

Am I awake?

PipeTobacco

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Quiet, Yet Busy

Today was a quiet day on this blog, but I was busy building another talk for another meeting I am going to present at in a short while. While I enjoy traveling to meetings, and I enjoy giving the talks on my research, the nitty-gritty details and the minutia inherent in building my PowerPoint slides is not something I was excited nor interested in doing today. Thus it became the focus of the total of my day. But, I feel the end in sight and hopefully will have the damn thing in the bag by mid-morning on Tuesday.

PipeTobacco

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July Fridays



With work going acceptably, and my efforts on a new research presentation going smoothly, I think I will take a bit of rest and play hooky this afternoon. I will go to my elderly father-in-law's house, perhaps help him with gardening if he wishes, and then sit and talk with him during the afternoon with some pipes and libations. It should be a grand afternoon.

PipeTobacco

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Day 655



I have walked every day for 655 days now! It has been a very worthwhile activity for me in many ways. I am now 103 pounds (46.7 kilograms) lighter than I was at my heaviest (I now weigh 179 pounds (81.2 kilograms)). I have a normal BMI of 23.0. I have gone from wearing 44 inch waist pants (112 cm waist), my shirt collar size has gone from 18.5 inches (47 cm) down to 16 inches (40.5 cm) and my shirt size has gone from a 2XL down to a Medium. And, the best part of all is that I feel good!

I have also been lifting weights for upper body strength and bicycling (although not every day... I need to work on that). I need to figure out how to develop some sort of more consistent routine for that. The picture above shows hand grip strength exercise devices that I do use every day during the entirety of my walk. I have gone through four pair of these things because I have worn them out through squeezing and the tension coil eventually breaks.

And yes, some may wonder... I did walk EVERY day while out west too. I have walked when I am sick, I have walked when it has been nearly arctic, I have walked during rain, during blizzards... every day OUTSIDE.

Please do not think I am trying to be a braggart... for I am not. I am just stating what I have done and what has happened because I am happy about it and proud of my consistency in doing it every day. I have never been able to garner up enough stick-to-it-iveness ever in my life to consistently exercise. It has been a major breakthrough for me.

PipeTobacco

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Botox Affects Behavior



This report was in Science News and is interesting. It suggests that the Real Housewives of Orange County may have lost much of their ability to interpret other's emotions. Seriously... the idea of Botox injections affecting a behavior is truly amazing and remarkable. Read and see:

Botox Injections Put a Crease in Emotional Evaluations: Freezing the Frown Muscle Slows Appraisals of Angry, Sad Sentences

By Bruce Bower

Web edition : Friday, July 2nd, 2010

Botox treatment to erase unsightly frown lines may cause unforeseen emotional wrinkles. First-time Botox patients become slower at evaluating descriptions of negative emotions, possibly putting the patients at a social disadvantage, a new study indicates.

For more than a century, scientists have posited that facial expressions trigger and intensify relevant feelings, rather than simply advertise what an individual already feels. Botox patients provide a novel line of support for this idea, as well as for the notion that facial expressions activate links between brain regions responsible for emotions and language, says psychology graduate student David Havas of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Botox is short for botulinum toxin-A, a neurotoxic protein that causes temporary muscle paralysis beginning one to three days after an injection and lasting for three to four months.

Two weeks after their first Botox injections, 40 women took an average of about one-third of a second longer to read sentences describing angry and sad situations than they did immediately before the procedure, Havas and his colleagues found.

Critically, Botox patients show no decline in the speed with which they read sentences about happy situations, Havas’ team reports in an upcoming Psychological Science.

“These findings suggest that facial expressions are involved in assessing specific emotions or emotional situations,” Havas says.

Havas hypothesizes that Botox-induced paralysis of the frown muscle — which runs across the forehead just above the eyes, allowing it to pull the eyebrows inward and down — may gradually weaken brain circuits that coordinate negative emotions.

A 2009 fMRI study, led by German neurologist Andreas Hennenlotter, supports that idea. Women attempting to mimic images of angry and sad facial expressions displayed weaker activity in emotion-related brain areas two weeks after receiving Botox injections to the frown muscle, Hennenlotter’s group found.

Banishing frown lines with Botox can indeed have social repercussions, remarks psychologist Nicolas Vermeulen of Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. Previous studies indicate that mimicry of facial expressions critically aids in understanding others’ emotions, intentions and behaviors, he points out.

“Botox patients who are interacting with others behind a locked face might be at risk to react in the wrong way to, say, an angry driver or an angry customer in a pub,” Vermeulen says.

In the Wisconsin experiments, volunteers displayed no losses of sentence comprehension. That may partly reflect the fact that they had an unlimited amount of time to peruse sentences. But real-life conversations involve exquisitely timed banter, and seemingly small disturbances in evaluating emotional statements may foster misunderstandings, Havas suggests.

In the study, volunteers read 20 happy, 20 sad and 20 angry sentences presented on a laptop computer just before undergoing the Botox procedure. They pressed a computer key to indicate having finished reading each sentence. Comprehension questions were administered at random after one-third of the sentences.

Two weeks later, participants performed the same task with a different set of emotionally evocative sentences.

Havas’ team recruited Botox patients through cosmetic-surgery clinics in the Madison area. Participants received a $50 credit toward the cost of treatment.

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This is showing a link between the ability to express emotion and the ability to interpret emotions. So fascinating. Behavior is truly the basis upon which other parts of biology can be judged... at so fine a level it is more powerful than many other methods.

PipeTobacco

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Hiatus Is Over





I am glad to be back to writing now upon my return from the West. It was a grand experience, but I am still in the process of recovering a bit... and recovering from the July 4th celebrations as well. I could not have asked for a better time on the trip out West except for one thing... I unfortunately caught someone's upper respiratory infection from the plane ride. My wife caught it too and is about two days behind me in recovery. It has been a wild, mucousy adventure.... from my nose, from my chest, and recovery from a dual ear infection. Yet, I would not trade the experience of being out West.

The Grand Canyon and Zion National Park were highlights of the trip... but there are plenty of other grand adventures as well in various small towns. We even spent a few days in Las Vegas.... and a few days is plenty... if not too many! {grin)

PipeTobacco