Everybody Loves a Good Story

I just read The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gotschall. The title caught my attention. We humans learn things more effectively if information—fictional or nonfictional—is shared in the form of a story or a game. That's one reason school is so boring; not enough storytelling going on. Factual information is no different than fictional information, it can be presented in a story format. We could argue that much of what is presented as history is actually fiction. But sidestepping that debate, even something as fascinating as history—a natural story—can be obliterated by pundits with stuffy presentations.

I'm interested in how to weave a good story. The Storytelling Animal gave several insights to the process, but also went down several loosely related tangents. Like how the human mind will fabricate stories from a limited amount of information in order to make sense of something that happened, or what dreams mean. Some of these tangents were interesting; some strayed farther from storytelling than was interesting for me. Gottschall addresses all areas of storytelling which includes eroticism. There may be some brief sections that are offensive to some individuals.

Here's To Your Health and to Your Self-esteem

The Food Lover

There was a guy that loved to eat. What could be better than eating really tasty foods? When he was at a restaurant, he was there for the food not the ambience.

He believed good tasting food didn't come from a package and so he would take the time and effort to make recipes from scratch. He had a subscription to America's Test Kitchen. He followed food blogs, and he liked seeing tasty-looking food dishes on Pinterest. In a pinch though, if it was late or he was tired, he wasn't opposed to eating prepackaged food. 

Over the years he slowly put on pounds. When he was out and saw another guy with a big tummy he would ask his wife, "Am I as big as that guy?" She tried to be kind. Finally he had to admit he was overweight, really overweight. He was not very physically active, it was too hard to pack all that weight around. Getting up and down took real effort.

You Shouldn't Have to Starve

He really believed you shouldn't have to feel like you're starving all the time to lose weight and keep it off. He knew any diet that required counting calories or keeping track of food consumption would not work over time. With those diets the dieter usually has a weight loss goal. If the goal is reached—and frequently it isn't—the dieter stops worrying about keeping track and goes back to old eating habits. The end result is always the same; the weight comes back. He didn't want that to happen.

A lifestyle change was what he was looking for. He reduced the amount of highly processed snack foods he ate, and he tried to cut back on his use of sugar. He managed to lose twenty-five pounds and felt good about that, but he had a long way to go and he had stalled. He wasn't really losing more weight.

Then he came across the book Eat to Live, by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. Dr. Fuhrman recommends natural foods and for the most part eaten in their natural state: leafy greens, vegetables, beans, mushrooms, and fruit. He recommends a strict six-week program to get your body off all unhealthy foods and to break addictions.  This was more radical than what the food lover was looking for, but he was sick of being fat. This book gave hope. He figured he could do the six-week program and then decide if he wanted to stay with it.

No Starving, Great Eating

The results were immediate and significant. At the end of the six weeks he had lost another twenty-five pounds. Best of all he felt great and he wasn't starving! As his taste buds recovered from years of being subjected to unhealthy foods and too much salt and sugar, food was tasting better all the time.

Hello out there. I know I'm getting visitors to my website, but I don't know if anyone is really reading it or if they just land, see what it is and fly. If you got this far, I figure you're reading it.  I'd love to hear from you. The story I just told is about myself and it's true.

Building Confidence

The point is, I'm losing a lot of weight and my self-esteem is improving. I've learned that self-esteem comes from accomplishing things for yourself. It comes from learning to be self-sufficient. So I'm also growing a garden, not just any garden, a square foot garden. I have five times the number of vegetables in my garden this year than usual, using less than a third of the space. Vegetables that will provide much of what I eat throughout the summer and into the fall.

I'm excited, but it doesn't stop there. I'm taking back my life. I feel more independent. I have cut out TV; I did that several years ago and what an improvement. I spend more time studying and I'm learning wonderful things. The more independent I become the more I want to do things for myself. I especially don't want to rely on the government to take care of me or solve the problems in our society. Independent thinkers, millions of them, are where the solutions to our problems lie, not with bureaucrats or power hungry politicians.

I'm looking for like minded people. As I learn and grow, as I become more independent, I look more closely at those who seek to govern and the direction they are taking our society.  I believe this is true of all independent thinkers. But as individuals we have no chance of taking back control of our society. As millions of independent thinkers we will have the power to change the direction of our society, regardless of what country we live in, and whether we all believe exactly the same way.

The Garden

We harvested the first vegetable from our garden: radishes. The radishes are for my wife; I'm not a big fan, but we all had to try one. It was a fun event.

Ahhh! Save the Square Foot Garden

The first big test

There is an alert for a hard frost in my area tonight, May 1, 2013. I hope my tomatoes and peppers survive the night.

Here are my plants two days ago.

Spinach on the left radishes on the right.

Green pepper upper left, spaghetti squash lower left, and a Roma and cherry tomato lower right

Red pepper upper left, peas lower left, and two Early Girl tomatoes lower right

Last night, April 30, 2013, it got down to around 36 degrees Fahrenheit. Here are the covers I had over the boxes, the one on the right blew off during the night. I went out early this morning and put the cover back on.

This morning we celebrated the first day of May with a spring snow storm; it was typical, by 9:30 a.m. there was no sign of snow, but the cold left its mark. The tomatoes in the box where the cover blew off were looking wilted, but the pepper plant looked ok. In the box that didn't lose its cover, the pepper plant was looking wilted. The tomatoes looked at least better than the ones that were fully exposed to the cold.

The cover material is see through, but the manufacturer says it will protect against frost. After last night I wasn't convinced. So, with freezing temperatures in the forecast, I'm taking extra precautions tonight. I left the covers in place and put tarps over them. 

For the third box, I took the cover off and laid down a plastic tarp. This box is almost completely planted with vegetables that are supposed to tolerate the cold. All the plants are still quite small and shouldn't be damaged by the tarp. There's a little space under tarp because of the wooden grid.

At least with my square foot garden boxes the area is small enough I can easily cover them. 

My fruit trees are another problem.

All the trees are in bloom except one peach tree that always blooms later than the others. The trees cover a much bigger area than the garden boxes. I put sheets over parts of each trees, but I have no idea if that will help at all. Here are my fruit trees.

Apple

Pear

Peach

Every year freezing temperatures get to the fruit trees. Some years blossoms survive and I've had a good yield; some years I've lost everything. Last year I got no fruit from my favorite apple tree. Tomorrow brings a brighter dawn, I'll see if any of this paid off.

Square foot gardening - Soil mix and what really makes a garden a square foot garden

Weight Loss

I've lost sixty pounds! I got on the scale this morning and my weight has fallen below 200 pounds  (And, for the record my blood pressure this weekend was 103 over 75.) While most people my age—let's just call it over sixty—are gaining a few pounds each year and have resigned themselves to weight creep as a natural part of growing old. I have countered that.

I have my body back. I feel great, more independent, and healthier. Although I still have forty pounds to go, I know how to lose weight and I can do it. Now I want to learn how to grow the foods that help me lose weight. That's why I'm so excited about square foot gardening.

Vegetables In Our Garden

On March 30th we planted radishes, carrots, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, peas, and green onions in our first square foot garden box. I've never planted this early before. My garden is too wet to till on March 30th, but with Mel's mix I don't have to till the ground. Mel's Mix is always light and fluffy and ready for planting. Today is April 26th, we should have radishes in about two weeks and two varieties of lettuce within two more weeks. Radishes aren't my favorite vegetable, but my wife likes them. I'm going to eat a few when they are small; I'm sure they will be good in a salad. The other vegetables have all sprouted. I'll be harvesting by the time I'd usually just be planting.

Mel's Mix - from the All New Square Foot Gardening Book

There are only three ingredients in Mel's Mix:  compost (with at least five different ingredients in it), peat moss, and course vermiculite. The mix is equal parts of each: 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 vermiculite. Sounds easy doesn't it? But this part was a little tricky. Compost and peat moss are carried at garden centers or home improvement centers. Vermiculite, especially the course type, may be harder to find. I found some at a large nursery. Later when I was wandering around a big-box home improvement store I saw a couple of dusty bags on a top shelf in the back corner of the garden department. Don't confuse vermiculite with perlite; you need course vermiculite.  Here is what I bought.

The ingredients are forrest humus, chicken manure, worm castings,  bat quano, gypsum,  kelp meal, oyster shell, etc.  Delightful stuff! and plants love it.

You can make your own compost, but that takes a while. I didn't want to wait to start my garden so I bough compost. The close up above shows the list of ingredients.

Each package tells how many cubic feet are in the bag. Unfortunately each bag has a different volume so you can't take one bag of each and mix them together and be done with it. You have to do some figuring to get the proportions right. And the peat moss is compressed so when you open it up and fluff it out it doubles in size; you used the fluffed stuff when measuring.

The compost was the smallest bag so I used it as a measuring container. I dumped the compost out on a big tarp then filled the compost bag with vermiculite and dumped it on the tarp. I did the same for the peat moss making sure to break up the compacted chunks before they went in the measuring bag. With all three ingredients on the tarp I pulled one side of the tarp over the top like I was going to tip the whole thing over, but I stopped before the mixture spilled onto the grass. Then I took the opposite side of the tarp and did the same thing. So the ingredients rolled around on the tarp. It didn't take long to have them thoroughly mixed together. The I slid the tarp up to the garden box and actually did pull the tarp until the mixture rolled into the box.

I built a four foot by four foot garden box and per Mel Bartholomew's instructions—more at my post— it is six inches deep. If the garden box were one foot deep it would take sixteen cubic feet to fill it (4 ft x 4 ft x 1 ft), but since the box is only six inches deep you need half that, eight cubic feet, to fill the box.

Mel's Mix is great. It's full of nutrients that plants love and it really holds a lot of water. The soil stays moist and creates a perfect environment where vegetables can sprout and grow.

A Square Foot Garden

Using this system, you really do garden in square feet. This is important because it keeps you from over planting. With traditional gardening you make rows and plant your seeds. I always had great plans for planting part of a row with something like carrots and staggering the planting so the carrots didn't all mature at the same time. But with row planting techniques—sprinkling the seeds along the row—the seeds are so tiny, I'd end up planting a whole package before I got very far down the row. That's a lot of carrots! I might use another seed pack and plant more a few weeks later, but by then my interest was already waning because I knew I was going to be out there on my hands and knees thinning the crop a few weeks later. And by then I'd be combatting weeds too.

With the square foot garden it's completely different. Here is what my square foot garden looks like before I put in the soil. I used one inch lath strips connected with zip ties to make the grid.

The grid is removable. I took it off before I filled the box with Mel's Mix. Then I put the grid back; it stays in place through the entire growing season. Each square foot is like its own little garden. You plant a different vegetable or flower in each square. Depending on the vegetable, you may have from one to sixteen plants in a square. For large plants like cabbage, broccoli, tomatoes (vine type only), cauliflower, peppers, or kale you have one plant per square. For small vegetables like radishes, carrots, or green onions you have sixteen plants per square. For medium vegetables like spinach, beets, or onions you can put nine to a square. And for some what larger plants like leaf lettuce, Swiss Chard, or arugula you put four plants per square.

The great advantage of a four foot square box is you can reach into it from the edges; every square is accessible without stepping into the box. Once you have the Mel's Mix in the garden box you should never step on the mix. Next up planting vegetables and protecting them from the cold.

Free to Fail

Of all the freedoms we enjoy the one most overlooked is freedom to fail. Fail?! That's not, really a freedom is it? We don’t like to talk about it and, truth be known, we really wish it wasn’t there.

Still, this little backwater freedom is under major attack by government officials with encouragement from every side: liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, economists, journalists, businesspeople and citizens at large. Heck, we’d give away the freedom to fail in a heartbeat—if anyone would take it. Who wants to fail? Not me!

What we learn from our failures though—our mistakes—is often more meaningful than what we learn from our successes. Part of human nature is making mistakes. Humanity is full of emotions. We push things to extremes: up and down. Small failures help us learn to avoid big failures. We become more cautious, more observant. We back away from ideas that don’t work and pursue ideas that do work.

When government steps in and saves us from economic turmoil it adds to a feeling of euphoria, a feeling that government really can control things and make life better through economic planning and social programs. However, even when done with the best of intentions, government programs such as loosening financial standards, creating too much money, and acting quickly to keep the economy from experiencing its normal ups and downs delay, but do not eliminate economic corrections.

My biggest fear is that those who want to run the government are too willing to take control and solve our problems. Just sit back and relax. They won't let anything bad happen to us. Poof, our freedoms are squandered along the road to a better society.

You say I'm paranoid and overreacting to the situation? In the last year, we have witnessed many government seizures of control I never dreamed could happen in my lifetime. In some cases the profligate business people begged for government help.

Free markets are made up of millions of people acting on their own behalf; economic engineering and social programs deny us of lessons we as individuals must learn to ensure sound economic growth and development. If we don't learn from our small mistakes as we go, then the let down when it comes is worse, sometimes catastrophic.

Our current situation has grown out of many years of government engineering of the economy and the money supply. The lessons we haven’t learned put us further out on the limb than is reasonable or prudent. We will never know what our economy might have been like if we had grown stronger by learning from our mistakes.

Billion dollar bailouts are a last ditch effort to save us from the harmful and often wrong decisions of economic planners over the past 30 years. Lessons we should have learned in those years have been postponed, but not avoided.

Unfortunately, the price we pay to avoid the pain is more than monetary. We give up the chance to take care of ourselves and do things in better ways, in ways that are more personal. We give up the freedom to choose.

Solving our problems won't be easy. A space ship off course by only half a degree will miss its target by thousands of miles. Because of government meddling our economy has been moving off course for many years. Then when government officials decide to embark on a plan to save us, and throw billions of dollars at it in the process who can stop them?

To be sure, there are other factors contributing to our being off course: greed and big business seeking and receiving favors from government are two, but the lessons we haven’t learned apply here also. And the culprit is also the same: Government granting favors to select groups and encouraging reckless actions on the part of individuals in the name of accomplishing some social program.

Those who would run the government believe we are not capable of taking care of ourselves. They don't have faith in us. They earnestly believe only they can provide the solutions to our misery and woe.

However, people like to do things for themselves. We are capable of figuring out solutions to challenging situations; even situations that are unpleasant and thrust upon us. We have the energy and enthusiasm to meet challenging tasks and overcome them. Our history is full of examples. Our energy and enthusiasm grow when we take care of ourselves.

Relying on government to solve our problems—or worse, wanting government to do so is a recipe for loss of freedom, and I believe for failure on a large scale. We may be learning that unnecessary lesson right now.

There is no substitute to taking responsibility for our own well-being.

What to Do With Wikipedia; A New World Is Before Us

There is a revolution ahead. Some would argue we are already well into it. One thing seems certain, we are much closer to the beginning than the end. This is not a religious war, though some may see it that way; this is not a war of political ideology, though some will try to impose their political orientation; this is not a war for geography, we are moving past that.

This is a war for the World Wide Web and how it is used.

William Badke in his article What to Do With Wikipedia does an exceptional job of addressing several issues that are key to the information age and the way people learn in this new era. The article is worth reading. My perspective on this issue follows: The first issue--creative destruction--was popularized by economist Joseph Schumpeter and more recently articulated by Harvard Professor Clayton M. Christensen in his book The Innovator's Dilemma. When creative new methods or technologies come forth those entrenched in the established methods, most strenuously resist the new ways. Early on at a time when new ways could be adopted the established organizations resist change; the old way works just fine and they are in control. Later when the threat of destruction looms on the horizon the establishment seeks to embrace. Second, to the old guard knowledge is power; something that must be controlled and only imparted (through scholarly journals) to those who are qualified or to those who pay (students). Control does ensures a certain level of discipline, but does not always keep out bias. To the avant-garde knowledge should be freely imparted. In every field, knowledge thus shared brings to bare the intellectual force of all who are interested. This is blasphemy to the anointed scholars, but beyond them are thousands of intelligent people who have significant contributions to make, but in the past were disregarded. When more people get involved ideas are tested and refined in ways that would otherwise not be considered. (James Suroweicki in his book The Wisdom of Crowds proposes the idea that a group of people with varying intellectual abilities often finds a better solution, because experts tend to view things in similar ways.) Discipline is maintained because those involved have a vested interest in making sure it does; perhaps discipline even improves because so many unbiased eyes are watching. Third, the new ways will prevail if for no other reason than the old guard will die. More and more, new academics will innovate, contribute and collaborate in the new medium. Fourth, even some who are accustomed to the traditional academic methods question one of academia's products. Career counselor and author Marty Nemko sees eroding value in the traditional four year college degree http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i34/34b01701.htm. Fifth, as the cost of a college education and advanced degrees continues to skyrocket, as the volume of information even in narrow fields continues to explode, and as the knowledge gained may be very important, but have a short shelf life one must question the viability of the traditional academic format. A system that teaches students--who have no intention of becoming "experts"--vast amounts of information that has no application to the students' needs. Sixth, for years George Gilder has held out the idea that what we have in abundance should be wasted; what is scarce should be preserved. Transistors are a good example. In the 1950s they were rare and expensive, today because transistors are made of silicon they are everywhere and cheap. Knowledge is taking a similar path. Wikipedia is not the new way, it's the current way. Innovators will continue to forge ahead developing new tools and finding ways to use them. What the Internet and the academic environment will look like in another decade is anyone's guess. To be sure it will be someone's guess or more likely the thinking of many.

Made to Stick

Why is it some ideas lodge themselves in our societal memory and others--even good ones--don't? Sometimes, the idea that sticks isn't even true. The Great Wall of China is the only man made structure visible from space; Coca Cola will rot your bones; razor blades in Halloween candy have all been part of our culture for years. True or not almost everyone knows these stories.

What is it that makes these stories memorable? Are there any common themes to ideas that stick? Will these themes help our ideas stick?


Chip and Dan Heath in their book Made to Stick have done exhaustive research on what makes ideas stick and as it turns out there are several common characteristics that may be applied to any idea or course of study.

So what helps an idea stick? The authors identify six concepts that make ideas more stickable: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and in the form of a Story. The book develops each of these concepts. A stickable idea may not use every element, but the more it uses the better.

Most text books and lectures have not been particularly strong in using the Made to Stick principles. As we move into the Information era this will surely change. If you think about it, how information is presented makes all the difference, regardless of the idea or subject matter.

With the Internet virtually everything we know is available or will be available on-line. Unlike the classroom setting the Internet gives people a choice. Information presented in the simplest, most understandable and most attractive form will get top priority. People will learn rather than be taught much of what they know. Today knowledge can be broadly categorized in two forms: that which we know and that which we know where to find. As mankind's knowledge base continues to expand, knowing how to find information we need will become increasingly more important.

Our school system was developed during the Agricultural era and most of the teaching methods are still from that era. Back then most people did not continue on with advanced learning. Only the brightest and highly motivated continued to learn. Information presenters--teachers--had very little incentive to wrap their knowledge in an attractive format. Presenters of today and tomorrow will compete for the minds of the learners. Presenters who employ the principles in Made to Stick will have the advantage.

The Big Picture

If you heard only of Ben Carson's childhood you would be amazed to learn he is now the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.

The inner city of Detroit, Michigan was his home and as a youth he gained the nickname of "Dummy." He looked destined to live the fate of too many that grow up in such circumstances. His mother had other ideas; she curtailed TV watching and required her boys to read two books a week and write reports on them. (They didn't know it at the time, but she couldn't read the reports.)

There are at least three ways to learn: visual (seeing things in writing), auditory (lectures, audio-tapes), and kinesthetic (learning by doing, hands-on). At school Ben had been in an auditory environment and things weren't sinking in. Reading turned out to be his strong point and a new world opened up to him. Within a year he went from the class dummy to the top of the class. He graduated from high school with honors went on to Yale University and then received his medical training at the University of Michigan.

At the outset of his medical schooling he again struggled to learn the material. His councilor even suggested that medical school might not be for him; he knew better. He stopped attending most of the class lectures and immersed himself in his medical texts and any other related texts or materials he could get his hands on. In addition, he made a point of attending all lab sessions to get the hands-on experience. His dramatic improvement shocked not only his councilor, but himself as well.

The Big Picture is not about Ben Carson the neurosurgeon, it's about what was required to take Ben Carson from what was--by all outward appearances--a no account black kid in the slums of Detroit to the top of his field in the medical profession and then beyond.

The principles he used will help us all succeed in whatever we do in life. These principles transcend race, religion, personal background and political correctness. We don't alway like to hear them, but they are indispensible just the same: working hard; accepting hardships and working through them; refusing to accept the "I'm a victim someone should do something" mentality so prevalent in our society; doing things differently if the established way does not work for you; being nice to people and doing good things for them just because you can; and, if you are a parent, accepting the responsibility and realizing that being a parent is more important than anything else you may do (even brain surgery).

Finally, Ben Carson is a Christian he has no reservations about that and he has a deep abiding faith in God and believes it has made all he does possible.