A . A . A D . D . – Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.

This is how it manifests:

I decided to water my garden.

As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I looked over at my car and decided my car needs washing.

As I started toward the garage , I noticed that there is mail on the porch table that I brought up from the mail box earlier.

I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car.

I lay my car keys down on the table, put the junk mail in the garbage can under the table, and notice that the can is full.

So I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the garbage first.

But then I think, since I’m going to be near the mailbox when I take out the garbage anyway. I may as well pay the bills first.

I take my check book off the table, and see that there is only 1 check left.

My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go inside the house to my desk where I find a can of coke that I had been drinking.

I’m going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the coke aside so that I don’t accidentally knock it over.

I see that the coke is getting warm, and I decide I should put it in the  refrigerator to keep it cold. 

As I head toward the kitchen with the coke, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye– they need to be watered.

I set the coke down on the counter, and I discover my reading glasses that I’ve been searching for all morning.

Then I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I’m going to water the flowers.

I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container with water and suddenly I spot the TV remote.

Someone left it on the kitchen table.

I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, I will be looking for the remote, but I won’t remember that it’s on the table, so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, but first I’ll water the flowers.

I pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on the floor.

So, I set the remote back on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill.

Then, I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do.

At the end of the day: 

—-the car isn’t washed,

—-the bills aren’t paid,

—-there is a warm can of coke sitting on the counter 

—-the flowers don’t have enough water, 

—-there is still only 1 check in my checkbook,

—-I can’t find the remote, 

—-I can’t find my glasses,

—-and I don’t remember what in the word I did with the car keys ! 

Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I’m really baffled, because I know I was busy all day long, and I’m really tired.

I realize this is a serious problem, and I’ll try to get some help for it,

but first I’ll check my e-mail.

Don’t laugh– if this isn’t you yet, your day is coming ! ! !

Growing older is mandatory.

Growing up is optional.

Laughing at yourself is therapeutic.

P.S. I just walked outside and SOMEONE LEFT THE WATER RUNNING IN THE DRIVEWAY !

I don’t remember if I wrote this or someone else did.

In an attempt to clarify another widespread misconception, I am exerpting only a small part of Stephen Pinker’s major article in a 1913 issue of the New Republic:

The humanities are the domain in which the intrusion of science has produced the strongest recoil. Yet it is just that domain that would seem to be most in need of an infusion of new ideas. By most accounts, the humanities are in trouble. University programs are downsizing, the next generation of scholars is un- or underemployed, morale is sinking, students are staying away in droves. No thinking person should be indifferent to our society’s disinvestment from the humanities, which are indispensable to a civilized democracy.

Diagnoses of the malaise of the humanities rightly point to anti-intellectual trends in our culture and to the commercialization of our universities. But an honest appraisal would have to acknowledge that some of the damage is self-inflicted. The humanities have yet to recover from the disaster of postmodernism, with its defiant obscurantism, dogmatic relativism, and suffocating political correctness. And they have failed to define a progressive agenda. Several university presidents and provosts have lamented to me that when a scientist comes into their office, it’s to announce some exciting new research opportunity and demand the resources to pursue it. When a humanities scholar drops by, it’s to plead for respect for the way things have always been done.

Those ways do deserve respect, and there can be no replacement for the varieties of close reading, thick description, and deep immersion that erudite scholars can apply to individual works. But must these be the only paths to understanding? A consilience with science offers the humanities countless possibilities for innovation in understanding. Art, culture, and society are products of human brains. They originate in our faculties of perception, thought, and emotion, and they cumulate and spread through the epidemiological dynamics by which one person affects others. Shouldn’t we be curious to understand these connections? Both sides would win. The humanities would enjoy more of the explanatory depth of the sciences, to say nothing of the kind of a progressive agenda that appeals to deans and donors. The sciences could challenge their theories with the natural experiments and ecologically valid phenomena that have been so richly characterized by humanists.

https://newrepublic.com/article/114127/science-not-enemy-humanities

WHEN  OUT  OF  SORTS

Anger gets boring

after a while,

like milk gets sour.

So, spend more time

with your pet.

If you don’t have

 one,  get one!

I want to write dog,

not pet, but that word

has been sullied into bum

and a bitch.

Don’t you believe it!  Some

of my best friends

were Trixie, Shorty, Boots,

Gracie and Cleopatra.**

They make eye contact,

have empathy, mirror your

mind,  are warm and wag their tail.

What more could you ask for?

**and Buttons and Sinbad

Nan  10/8/22

Reply

Quora has some interesting questions, at times… For instance:

Mark Ross

Former Programmer (Retired) at Washington State Patrol (1986–2015)Jun 14

If Donald Trump got arrested, wouldn’t the next Republican president just pardon him?

If it was for a Federal Crime, then, yes, the next Republican president could certainly pardon him.

If Trump was arrested and convicted of a State Crime, then he would be SOL (Shit Outa Luck). Only the Governor of the State in which his crime was charged could pardon him. So, if it happens, let’s hope it happens in New York, not Florida. Although, DeSantis might have an incentive to not pardon Trump, since that would keep Trump out of DeSantis’ way.

From <https://www.quora.com/>

That’s what it seems to boil down to.  A Legal Services attorney is quoted as saying that “Missouri already has an extreme shortage of housing for people with low incomes. This legislation [hidden into H.B. 1606 on political subdivisions] will reduce access to housing and criminalize the unhoused in the middle of our affordable crisis.” See Public Citizen News September/October 2022 by Rhoda Feng.

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…And I vowed to not get upset over politics, like how I felt over the disparity of negative responses to Biden’s September 1 speech in front of  Independence Hall.  On one hand he was “being too damn nice,” softening his statement about the “near fascism” of MAGA Republicans while on the other being vociferously accused of spreading hate for even mentioning it….And on January 1, 2023  it will be against the law to toss your tent or even lay your sleeping bag down on public land in Missouri, unless a Legal Services suit disempowers the law.

_________________________________

And I’m speechlessly puzzled (almost speechlessly, anyhow) ) that a self-professed Worshiper at Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)  (1966–present)  could state (share? accuse? report?) the following on Quora recently in an answer to the question  “Trump looked very shaky and slurred his words badly in North Carolina recently. Is he unwell?”  My answer, after pulishing but then sleeping on it, was…Changed my mind and deleted it.  It’s difficult to be of two minds on things these days…: So solly–Guess I’ll have to wait until I sleep on my posts.