More Science but less math

Last night, as I was failing to sleep, I wondered if human evolution, a process which rewarded those species members who had mutations which were advantageous to survival, could be the result of sociological developments. As I lay there, I considered where to put my arms and I noticed that their length was less ape like than, for example, ape arms. They fall, with the slight change in angle because of the natural bend in the elbow (note, if your elbow doesn't bend, you should probably consult some sort of professional) naturally resting on the genital region. Why would humans have developed to cover their private bits? I have a number of theories which range in their level of appropriateness, so please choose accordingly:

1. innocent: We, as a species, are the only one that has evolved to play soccer

2. innocent but informed: We, as a species, are the only one that includes a free kick in our version of soccer

3. more realistic but less appropriate: We are the only species on God's green earth to have unlocked a sense of humor that celebrates the nut shot

So less math in this version of science but it seems to me that we should do some field experientation. Would someone who is friends with a large number of apes of all sorts please arrange to hit one in the private parts and see if the other apes laugh or if they just go back onsides and prepare for the resumption of play? You know, I was about to call them "primate parts" but that would make light of this serious scientific endeavor.

As a control, please hit the apes in other parts of their bodies and check for laughter or signs of rugby. Then try it with lions. We aren't evolved from lions but I suspect that they have fully developed, but latent senses of humor. Report back on your findings when you recover.

NYIJ!

If you haven't seen it on the news or heard the whispers in the streets, I'll fill you in -- I'm moving to Israel in a few months. I'm excited, scared and frightened. Also, possibly afraid. But just so you know, my apprehension results not from any existential concern. No, I just don't like change and don't like it any more when there are essential and uncontrollable variables. I have no job, no apartment, and no sense of where I should settle within the country. It is the size of New Jersey but do I want to be in AC or Woodcliff Lakes? Or even Cherry Hill? Dare I dream? Well, I'm dreaming of having a plan but I have no plan. So, yeah. Scared.

But I'm also excited. I'm excited because next week, when I finish up the Seder, I will be able to say "Next year in Jerusalem" and mean it.

That, however, is a cop out. I have been saying that same line for years and I haven't done anything to make it happen. But I could have. Every year, as I sang it wistfully, I could have decided that I wanted to be in Jerusalem for Passover. I'm a big boy. I can buy a ticket. But I didn't. I sang it like I meant it but then I swept up the crumbs and forgot about it for another 354 days.

And I'm still feeling guilty.

So now that I'm actually going, I will sing with a gusto supported by a plan. And I run the risk of copping out again. You see, when we sing it, we don't just say "Next year in Jerusalem" -- we say "next year in the rebuilt Jerusalem." So when I sing this, am I going to pat myself on the back and put the song away because next year I'll be there? No, because I would be avoiding the same thing I was avoiding when I did nothing to make the first part happen. Sing it and store it. Do nothing in the meantime.

I need to sing the song and make it happen -  every day I need to bring about the rebuilt part; that is within my grasp daily and I can't rest on any laurels and assume my job is done. Just because I will fulfill the first part doesn't absolve me of the obligation to work for the second part.

So let's let this new year celebration be when I make a resolution. I want to work harder at getting the "rebuilt" part done so that I can sing and mean it.

Notes as social media eats itself

Sometimes, I indulge in social media, feeding on silly videos and mindless memes. I came upon these videos in which someone engages with something from outside his or her cultural foundation. English kids eat fast food from the US? I love those. Americans confused by Monty Python? Bring it on! Now I'm watching a guy who has never heard anything by the Beatles (or anything about them) listen to the second side of Abbey Road.

I grew up listening to the Beatles. I guess I should explain how pervasively I mean this. My parents had the entire discography as I figured every house must. When I got home from school I would often put on a Beatles album and lie on the floor listening. Really listening. Trying to feel the music, hear the layers, imagine the actions. I was enveloped in the songs, knowing when to breathe, when to play air piano and and when to flail about wildly in celebration. There I was, an 8 year old (probably also when I was younger but memories fade), lying on the floor listening to Revolver. Again. Then I was up, conducting the score to Yellow Submarine but not with too much gusto because if I stomped too hard, the record would skip and some parent, somewhere, would yell at me, solely out of concern for the well being of the LP.

I read along with the Sgt. Pepper lyrics trying to interpret them and find all the clues. I forced myself to listen to all four sides of the White Album and stared at the poster while trying to make the albums make sense. And every time I listened to it, I felt myself choke up at the end of Abbey Road side 2 because to me, learning to appreciate music after the band had already broken up, I felt that "The End" really felt like the end for the band (yes, I know about the recording dates and the Let it Be sessions...I'm talking about the emotional response of a sub-10 year old in a pre-information superhighway era. Sheesh) and I always felt about to cry. That chord into Her Majesty saved me, over and over). And I would almost always then go back and listen With the Beatles or something else to help me start the journey over. My relationship with their music was a relationship with them. I felt I knew them and understood what they felt in the music. They were MY thing. I knew others were big fans and that was great -- the Beatles could be THEIR thing also. Sharing in this subculture wasn't a competition; it was a celebration.

I went to the festivals and collected bootlegs. I watched the movies. I became a staunch Rutles fan and can hear a musical reference to the Beatles if it is out there to hear. So, yeah, I'm a pretty big Beatles fan. Now why did I bring that up? Oh, yeah. The internet

So I decided to watch a gentleman listen to music. That's exactly the kind of behavior that I previously would have considered stalking or at least an unhealthy obsession, but in the age of the web, this is normal -- watch other people play video games. Watch other people watch other people play video games. Spectating is now the sport. But this reaction was to his first interaction with Beatles music and I wanted to see his reaction -- half expecting him to pan them and I would sneer and demean his tastes and knowledge and feel superior and half expecting him to recognize their genius, thus validating my opinion and pushing me to feel superior. So I watched.

First and foremost, of all the albums to have be his first Beatles' album, Abbey Road second side is a crazy choice. An experienced Beatles fan would look at the combination of styles and voices and say "this one isn't for beginners...start slow." And then there is the issue of the medley. But hey, this isn't my channel. I'm just the rube who stumbled upon it.

I found that my watching him helped me relive my earliest memories of listening to the albums for the first, second and hundredth time. I got into his place and heard the lyrics as if I didn't already know them. What must he think about a band which has a song about a mass murderer? He didn't like the song, but he was suitably surprised when he realized what the words were saying. I recall my early confusion (though I remember really immersing myself in the music of Maxwell and not listening to the lyrics for a while, and then I learned the verses in reverse order) and my roller coaster of emotions going from a soaring bittersweet high of Something to the goofiness of Octopus' Garden to the emptiness of I Want You and the profound joy in Here Comes the Sun. Lush harmonies, sudden starts and stops, tempo shifts, recurring themes and all that after (and sometimes before) a day of 3rd grade.

The gentleman in the reaction video was only able to engage with the music on the most superficial level. Geez -- reading back that sentence, I realize I sound like a Grade A tool. But the truth is, I really do "feel" the music and part of getting into the Beatles is letting it get into you and drive your movements. The viewer was already doing that unconsciously as he swayed to the beat and wiggled his fingers to the bass fills. But I can tell you that the dances that I did while alone in the living room wearing brown corduroys and a yellow turtleneck from Sears were a lot more expressive. 

Jumping in at the end of a career presents other challenges. He doesn't have the foundational knowledge of the players so he can't appreciate the growth or the individual voices or styles or the history, easter eggs, politics etc. I wasn't alive when the albums were released, but I did try, from a young age, to engage with them in a logical order. I really immersed myself in the early albums before I started mixing the later ones in. I listened to how voices change, writing styles shift and songs call to each other across time and space. Song orders mattered. Song writers -- how contributed what? I felt like "Only a Northern Song" was a dirty secret that only I and a select group of fans understood. Glass Onion? Wink Wink! The Walrus was Paul! I read up on the band so I had a clue to the socio-political backdrop. I am a fan of rock music so I studied the era as well, recognizing the influences and the impacts, seeing the band in a broader social context. My parents encouraged all of this and though they didn't lie there on the living room floor with me, knowing that they liked the same music as I did made me feel closer to them.

As I grew and studied music, I was able to put a few feelings into words, understanding why the Beatles' music had such an impact on me. It has taken hundreds of listens and I'm just now starting to get it. I hope that this guy (whose name I do not have, nor did I follow him) decides to spend a few more hours listening to Abbey Road side 2, and then he clears a weekend, turns off his phone, starts with Meet The Beatles and just goes.

Doing Science

People who know me, I mean really know me, know that I'm not much on math and science. Those who don't know me, often confuse me with the greats, like Tesla and Newton, because we share a taste in coulots. Who knew? They didn't wear coulots...I don't wear coulots...twinsies!

Anyway, I did some science this morning which is against my nature (both science and mornings, and don't get me started on "did"). I got myself all natural and such and stepped on a scale. It read 86.4 pounds (the numbers have been changed to protect the waistline). Then I took a shower. After emerging and drying myself off, I stood on the scale a second time -- 86.4 el bee esses. Exactly the same, to the tenth of a fraction of a kilogram.

I have developed a couple of theories to explain this:

1. I was actually not at all dirty when I got in to the shower, so nothing needed to be washed away. Perfect in, perfect out.

2. I was dirty with exactly the same amount of dirt as water that was retained by my body during the course of the shower.

Neither of these seems even reasonably realistic so I am going with option numero three

I actually did not take a shower -- I stood next to the shower and zoned out for a few minutes, then I reweighed myself, nothing having happened in the interim, and I therefore weighed exactly the same.

Now I need to do a series of experiments on these phantom showers I keep hearing about.

Just Hear Me Out

 I have an idea and I'd like your feedback on it. I haven't checked to see if this exists but I'd like to assume it doesn't, and an idea that popped in to my head at 10PM on a Tuesday is a world beater.

I like being lulled to bed by noise and rhythmic movements. This is why I fall asleep as soon as I get into a car or a train. When I'm driving this is undesirable, but as a passenger? Gold, Jerry. Gold.

So I was thinking about those kids' beds that are shaped like race cars and I decided that that doesn't go far enough in terms of marketability. So imagine this: a bed that looks like a berth on a train. It has computerized springs that can simulate the feeling of the moving of a train. A slight sway, a lot of clicks and such. Plus, the bed would have speakers that play a synced up audio track of the sounds of a train chugging through the forest, so you lie down and get the entire experience of being in a train -- how it feels and how it sounds. Do the same for a plane ride (the sounds of a pressurized cabin, the vibration of a plane ride without turbulence) or a boat, with the rocking of the waves and the sounds of the ocean.

The bed should provide a complete sensory experience and advanced models can have you choose between modes and customize the experience!

That's my idea -- a fully integrated sleeping experience.

Send me your money, please.

Instant Expertise

 Once upon a time, in order to have an opinion that mattered, you had to spend years studying, arguing, researching and developing ideas based on a steady trickle of ever changing input.

Fortunately, that is no longer the case. Along with our stunted attention spans and our belief that the most cogent and cutting social commentary derives from anonymous voices on internet platforms, we have the advent of Instant Expertise. You don't even need to add water!

Because we have the accumulated mass of human intelligence at our fingertips and can see anything and everything from the last couple of thousand years, we can establish positions and craft lines of thinking without all that mucking about in the process of learning. We can read all the documents, or get them summed up for us, so that we can find the voice in the wilderness which supports our pre-existing point of view. Everyone can swim in the pool of unvetted claims and bob for the one which best validates our already-thinking.

But expertise is not about knowing or even having access to data. Expertise develops over time and is equal parts fact-accumulation and judgment. Some sources are less useful than others. Some times of year engender certain types of information. Words have subtleties of meaning and use that need to be contextualized and understood. Claims are proven, unproven and disproven over time so a snapshot in the middle era won't present the ultimate understanding. In brief, though we can read everything a real expert can, though we can see anything that the great historians saw, we should not consider ourselves experts because a singular data dump does not equate to the gradual growth of an informed opinion.

Consider the AI that's figuratively sweeping the nation (I have looked and still see dirt everywhere so it is only metaphorical). It has access to everything but still knows nothing. Looking up a claim on google and then insisting that you are right and substantiated because one of the top results includes a sentence which parrots that claim is not the same as being able to construct a persuasive argument. It just means that a computer search of a fixed database of words matched a serach term. That's not "knowing," -- that's a muscle reflex. Just because the doctor can make my knee unbend doesn't mean that being hit repeatedly with a rubber hammer is the same as my exercising my knee.

Go to a debate website. People will be citing webpages, historical documents and recent news clips as if every source is equal in utility and validity. Quotes will be mined and bits, combined with pieces to make what appears to be a coherent whole, but which is more a castle in the air. Old people don't just know more -- they have seen all that stuff ripen (and in some cases, rot) so they have more of an expansive world-view in which to consider it.

People now love authority not because it is definitive and stops argument, but because it is personalizable and can become a source for an equally valid but ridiculous position. We stop being interested in ultimate truth because we can find that we are not alone in our personal truth, so we surround ourselves with cherry picked support and insulate ourselves from opposition. We dig in. That position is all we need to establish -- no one needs to rethink anything because the position was innovated in the light of "everything" so there will be nothing new to shake that foundation.

We are instantly, as informed as the most erudite scholar and our research assistant (the internet) has instant access to the wisdom of the ages so I can find the opinion I need. Who needs years of tempering and reconsidering? I can ask the google and it can tell me not just what to believe, but it can reassure me that holding that position is the only valid way to live.

Put me in front of a piano -- every note is there, every postential song, right in fornt of me. But access doesn't make me a piano player. And using a series of lights, guiding my fingers just means that I can copy what a computer decides is right. A real piano player struggles and learns WHY and HOW and WHEN and more importantly, WHEN NOT.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. Or just walk in and refuse to leave because you are just as important as a ticket holder.

28 hours later

 Today is (insert actual day here) and it has been some weird number of hours since I landed. It might have been 20 hours ago, Celsius, which is 5 minutes and spin around 14 times in Imperial Measure. I always assumed that Imperial Measure what a section of that Darth Vader song. Whatever. I'm back in New Jersey again, and ready to sum up the last and fleeting moments of this momentous visit. So here we go.

When you last left your intrepid explorer, he was sitting at a cafe in Ben Gurion, ready to kill 8 hours. That actually went really well. The airport never really shut down -- flights were still coming in and by the time the last flight departed, people were already checking in for the first morning flights. I saw that some people were going through security so I asked when I could, as well. The gentleman said I could actually go through at 3AM (not 5AM!) and also that I was on the wrong level of the airport. So up to level 3, to the C group. When I approached the security people there they confirmed 3 AM so I sat there and waited. At 3:01 (hey, I was in the middle of something) I went through and made it quickly to the front of the ine so I could check my bag in. At the counter, the woman said that everyone else was wrong and that I would have to wait until 5AM but since I had already been through the line, I could go into the next room and sit at a coffee shop or something and then come back when it was 5. I went through and saw no coffee shop, but I did see a McDonald's. Yes, it was 3:30 in the morning but who am I to waste such an opportunity? I didn't see anywhere to wash so I eschewed bread based meals and went with nuggs, fries and onion rings. The nuggs were what I could get in any freezer section, the fries mere mediocre but the onion rings made my night. I began to wonder how anyone could have access to these and still remain remotely svelte.

A few minutes later, I found the answer and hurried to the nearest bathroom, all my bags in tow. That was harrowing. But it did help kill most of the time until I could return to the front of the line and check my bag (5:05AM). Then through various other security lines at a leisurely pace. I wandered through the food court which was lively as ever, and walked to D8. There I sat, early (but not the first one -- truth!) and relaxed. I paced, I davened, I paced some more. I even took a survey in Hebrew about my trip. She asked in Hebrew and I answered in English. At 8:10 it was time to board so I popped an anti-histamine and got to 35K on the Herzeliya plane. We lifted off at 9:05 and I think that I, wrapped in 2 jackets, a blanket and a scarf and gloves, was asleep. The next 12 hours were full of shifting around, waking up, nodding off, napping and such. Part of the problem was that my seat was next to the emergency door and there were slight drafts coming through. When outside is -62 F, a little draft is very cold. Also, at some point, I realized that my kippah had fallen, so I spent time annoying everyone while looking for it. Eventually I gave up and had visions of myself going through customs with a scarf on my head. I then realized that my left shoe (I took my shoes off when I fell asleep because my feet were swollen and warm, but some time later, I put them back on because my feet were freezing) was still tight and I checked. My kippah had fallen into my shoe. Hilarity ensued and I fell back asleep. I ate nothing on the flight because I was still burping up flavors of foods I have never even eaten. Lotsa burpin and uncomfortableness and nausea and that's without eating any of the in flight meals. I believe that burata cheese and Mickey D's was a potent combination that brought my digestive track to its knees (which are my kishkes).

Landing, deplaning, passport control (no human interaction -- it takes your picture and says "OK, cool") and waiting for bags (mine was NOT the last one out...WINNING). Racer drove me back and I have been stumbling through life since then. I did just have Dunkin for breakfast so there's that.

We will now resume the rest of my life, already in progress.