Leveraged Intelligence

Half Truths

Welcome to a new Friday offering for the Loose Blogger Consortium, a wild, thoughtful, rambunctious, creative group of free spirits – all listed in clickable links on the left – who are just a joy to read.  Each Friday, we take a common topic and post on it more or less simultaneously.  Not everyone can post every Friday, but there are going to be some great posts out there to enjoy.

Of course, I want you to read this one first …

Truth is really hard to pin down with a definition.  Look at this from Wikepedia:

Truth can have a variety of meanings, from the state of being the case, being in accord with a particular fact or reality, being in accord with the body of real things, events, actuality, or fidelity to an original or to a standard, truth "behind" everything, the ontological truth. In archaic usage it could be fidelity, constancy or sincerity in action, character, and utterance. Various theories and views of truth continue to be debated among scholars and philosophers. There are differing claims on such questions as what constitutes truth; what things are truthbearers capable of being true or false; how to define and identify truth; the roles that revealed and acquired knowledge play; and whether truth is subjective, relative, objective, or absolute.

These types of definitions of truth itself, we usually leave to Philosophy.  Even though we can’t easily pin truth down and philosophy may seem a bit ethereal to the reader, truth in some sense is essential to almost all of our considerations.  Try to deny what I just said without telling me it is not true!

Truth is very powerful – and the definer of truth holds a mighty tool … or weapon … in her or his hand!  Where there is power, there is temptation.  Where there is temptation, the potential arises for corruption.  However, because of the need for action in the world, we don’t usually define truth philosophically, we usually define it through techniques, institutions and leadership.  Let’s take a look at a few of these.

Religion usually tries to give us unassailable truth, Holy Truth.  Yet, even here not all truths codified as laws are equal and this is why Christ railed against the Pharisees, telling them, "Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices — mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel" (Matthew 23:23,24) 

It is often due to the belief in competing “unassailable” truths that causes so many to lose sight of the camels entering their gullets leading to destruction of their fellow man and their world rather than uplifting anyone or anything to the divine.

Sales and Marketing are the economic siblings of these other methods.  You have a need.  No, listen, you have a need – let me show you.  I  have a solution that fulfills that need.  I’m telling you the truth.

Sales are necessary, for we live in a world of commerce.  As the consumer, it is up to you to be responsible for determining what you actually DO need, not simply what you are being told you need.

Debate tournaments require alternation between arguing one side of an issue then the other as the participants progress through the tournament.  Competing “truths” ultimately lead the participants to realize that in the big picture of the proposition being considered, they are alternating between half truths, that the whole truth obviously contains both sides they argue.  It would be kind of fun were there some way to apply some fuzzy logic to their scores; but, of course, the debate is hardly won simply with logic.

A trial is somewhat the same, with an attorney arguing for a client and avoiding as skillfully as possible arguments that contradict their position.  They are trying to elevate interpretation of provided evidence, testimony being part of that evidence, to the level of truth in the jurors’ minds.  The jurors sit as judges of truth.  The difficulty is, of course, that the wealthier clients have access to more skilled attorneys, giving their half of the truth a whole lot better chance.

This also is the main method of our public presentations by Congress.  They debate on the floor, but most of the time it is not really to convince one another, it is to convince the public to put pressure on the other side.

Observation and Reporting is another approach to truth, the approach supposedly being used as not only part of scientific data gathering, but also by journalists using various media.  As soon as a scientist or a journalist has a vested interest in the outcome, the observation is potentially tainted!  At that point, they may become conscious or unconscious promoters of specific outcomes.  Science best achieves the best outcome with control subjects and double-blind observations where neither observer nor observed can possibly connect the dots at the point of observation.  That is not an approach that can be applied to journalism, obviously, and we rely to a large extent upon the integrity of the journalist.

Commentary is really a journalistic cousin of observation and reporting.  The journalist’s perspective is added quite openly and can be considered as such.  Unfortunately, the compartmentalization of reporting and commentary, the compartmentalization that prevents the contamination of purpose and opinion, is becoming less and less observed as news media compete more and more for money via ratings and advertising on a 24/7 stage!

Charismatic Leadership tends to cast an aura of truth.  Danger Will Robinson!  Quite often we believe not what was said, but WHO said it.  Up to a point, that is necessary, for we haven’t the expertise, resources or time available to observe all evidence firsthand.  All that we can do is keep our eyes and our minds open and watch out for signs of adoration in ourselves that can be blinding and examine all evidence we can garner.  In other words, when it comes to charisma, be as aware of yourself as of the leader!

It is equally damning to reject their presentation simply because they are charismatic.

Propaganda had a brutal master, the Nazi Information Minister, Joseph Goebbels!  Read some of his views of truth and be chilled:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”

“Intellectual activity is a danger to the building of character”

“Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state, for every form of power politics and any dictatorship-run state has its roots in the street.”

Propaganda did not disappear with the Third Reich!  It still has many adherents although most don’t reach the level of Nazi ruthlessness.  We will all agree that propaganda is still out there in abundance and we even will agree that it sprouts wherever there is power to be gained.  The tough part is that we will disagree about which part is truth and which part propaganda!

Art.  Don’t forget art.  Just because you don’t have words for it doesn’t mean it doesn’t fill out truth.  This is an original artwork, Foxes by Franz Marc (on the left) next to a reproduction of it that Carly did in art class (on the right):

After each student copied the original of their chosen artist, they were asked to do the Mona Lisa in the style of that artist!  Look at the result Carly produced!

That teacher, Tracy Michelson, is magnificent!  TRUE art.

Individual Research and Education is probably the last, best hope.  The conclusion I come to is that truth can only be decided by the individual and I encourage each and every one to stay on top of issues the way only you can.  It is better that we have aware people informing themselves as best they can than that information be squelched or censored.  It is a messy path filled with bumps and potholes, but it sure seems to beat anything else.  The danger is selling yourself on a half truth, not trying to cover all the bases at all and then ignoring new input.  Be sure you can argue the opposing viewpoint(s), even if you only think they are 35% true.  One of the great inoculations against half truths seems to be input from a variety of sources!  It takes courage to discard beliefs in the face of new knowledge, especially if you seem to be alone in doing so.

Don’t always be alone, though.  One of the essential parts of finding truth is what you share with friends and loved ones – even when you are wrong!!

Fuzzy Logic … is a Good Thing!

Say what?!!  Just what kind of lever are we trying to apply to intelligence here???

Fuzzy logic is a recognition that truth is not just polar extremes.  In other words, most truths are not absolutely 100% true in many real world instances, just as falsehoods are not.  The world has shades of color and of gray.  Simple ones and zeros do not map many ideas and systems that we try to formalize.

What do I mean by formalize?  Well, as a programmer, this is the typical truth table that I would deal with:

Let me explain the table.  If I make a proposition, that proposition is either true or false in our example.  So, we have two propositions, P and Q, that we are making.  I know Shackman and Deb personally.  I know their heights approximately and let’s say that I decide that if their height is greater than 5 feet 9 inches (about 175 centimeters) that it is true the person is tall, false if they are of lesser height.  Therefore, my first proposition (P) is that Shackman is tall.  My second proposition (Q) is that Deb is tall.  In this case, P = True and Q = False.

Reading through our table, we notice the first two rows have P = True.  The second row also has Q = False.  Therefore, if I say that Shackman AND Deb are tall, that will be False as we read going to the right under P and Q.  If I say that Shackman OR Deb is tall, that will be True reading to the right under P or Q.

Now, let’s throw Maynard into the mix (have you guys ever noticed that throwing Maynard in always leads to complications??).  I am not sure whether, by our criterion, Maynard is tall or not.  Let’s say he is not tall just to irritate him.  Well it doesn’t matter when we ask whether Deb and Maynard are tall or whether we ask whether Deb or Maynard are tall – it would be false in both cases.

However, it doesn’t tell us very much about their heights, does it?  This is kind of the way people talk, but not quite.  If someone asked me about Deb and Maynard and Shackman’s heights, if I knew their heights a bit more precisely, I might say Deb is about 5’3”, Maynard is about 5’9” and Shackman is about 6’3” or so.

That is infinitely more satisfying and shows us the real world much more accurately, but how do I formalize a truth table for that???  Let’s throw in Deb’s hypothetical grandson, Billy as the shortest person we will consider and Kareem Abdul Jabbar as the tallest.  Well, Fuzzy Logic comes to the rescue when we start setting up truth tables.

Person    Height    degree of tallness
--------------------------------------
Billy     3' 2"     0.00
Deb       5' 3"     0.52
Mayo      5' 9"     0.65
Me        5' 10"    0.67
Shackman  6' 3"     0.77
Kareem    7' 2"     1.00

Notice that we have taken the smallest extreme available and said that = 0.  The largest extreme available = 1.  Everything between is a percentage of that.

How did I get that Mayo was .65?  Well, 7’2” = 86 inches.  3’2” = 38 inches.  The range of heights is 86 – 38 = 48 inches.  Maynard is 5’9” = 69 inches.  69 – 38 = 31 inches which is 31 inches / 48 inches up the range of the scale.  In other words, it is 65% true to say that Mayo is tall in our example, while it is 77% true to say that Shackman is tall.

If I ask whether Shackman AND Mayo are tall, I take the minimum value and say that it is 65% true that Shackman and Mayo are tall.  It is 52% true that Mayo, Shackman and Deb are tall.

If I ask whether Shackman OR Mayo are tall, I take the maximum value and say that it is 77% true that Shackman or Mayo is tall.

If I want to speak to the truth of the idea that Mayo is NOT tall, I say that it is 1 – .65 or 35% true that Mayo is not tall.

This is pretty simplified, but it works.  A more practical example would be determining the truth of the idea that Maynard is tall and old … but setting old on a scale puts ALL of us too close to a truth value of 1!

Editor’s Note: I will be using this as a bit of a reference later in the week! 

Aggressive Ignorance Abounds!

“The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.”~Winston Churchill

Right you are, Winnie!  Yet, generation after generation, ignorance mounts its attack, ever waiting to attack from the backwoods of fear where thought never penetrates.  Angry, perverse … it attacks.

This is one of the more outrageous modern examples I’ve seen.  The Conservapedia coughed up this misleading piece of work: http://conservapedia.com/Counterexamples_to_Relativity#cite_note-10

To a non-physicist, or to an armchair physicist like me, the arguments seem fairly sophisticated.  However, to a real physicist, it seems less so:

http://physics.about.com/b/2010/08/17/conservativesandeinstein.htm?nl=1

Take this opening salvo and footnote connected to it, bolding added by me:

The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.^[1]

↑ See, e.g., historian Paul Johnson’s book about the 20th century, and the article written by liberal law professor Laurence Tribe as allegedly assisted by Barack Obama. Virtually no one who is taught and believes Relativity continues to read the Bible, a book that outsells New York Times bestsellers by a hundred-fold.

A similar attempt was made by the Nazis to discredit Einstein’s work, unsuccessfully, because he was a Jew.  Now, it appears that he is to be discredited because he supports liberals and is somehow associated with Barack Obama.  I, for one, was taught and believe Relativity, yet I continue to read the Bible.  I am also aware, because of my training in the Theory of Relativity, that it is not really about the relative at all, but rather about the totally irrelative, fixed, spacetime continuum.

These hatchet jobs should not go unnoticed or without objection, not because Einstein or Einstein’s theories are sacrosanct, but because these are not truly attacks on those theories, they are attacks on a cultural and political perspective based upon misinterpretation that is almost wholly intentional.  History is replete with these types of attacks on scientific thought.  Ultimately, they fail as long as people continue to pursue knowledge and do not give in to intimidation.

What does it come down to if you really want control?  You make those who believe a point of view out as anti-Bible, anti-Church, opponents of God.  It is a very old strategy.  Just ask Galileo.

Human Response to the Mind Control Attacks

Like so many human responses, it solves nothing – but it makes our followers feel better.

So … Minds Are Being Controlled …

The title seems so obvious as to be ludicrous.  But … what is doing the controlling other than political and religious manipulators, gangs, the media and corporations?

Read the following:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38747237/ns/technology_and_science-science/

You won’t sleep well tonight.

Paranormal Experience

What does a fish know about the water in which it swims all its life?

– Einstein

The following stories are true and factual accountings of my experience:

My Grandmother at Woolworths

Woolworth department stores had their heyday and I suspect they were experiencing it in Denver, Colorado when I was about ten or eleven years of age.  Denver had a large, five-story store back then and my grandmother took me with her for some shopping.

We went up the escalator to the third floor and saw a guy on a stage about halfway back, with a microphone, selling books.  The books were astrology books.

As we approached, the man turned toward my grandmother, paused asking if she would please join him onstage.  She considered, agreed, and stepped onto the stage.

He asked to hold her hands, stood silently for a bit, and then asked her a couple of names which were not quite hers, but close.  Then he said, “Is your name Lola?”, to which my grandmother replied in the affirmative.

He then proceeded to tell her that my grandfather was ill, that he had a problem in the mid to lower abdominal area, that he would be having surgery – and that he would be just fine!

He then thanked her, she thanked him, and she stepped down from the stage.  Pretty ordinary hucksterism it would seem and many would say that he had his henchmen in the crowd, that they had engaged her in conversation getting her name and what was on her mind.  He would have learned her name was Lola and that her husband was to have surgery the next day on a duodenal ulcer.

The only problem with that scenario is that I was with her from the house all the way to the stage.  She spoke with no one, because we went straight up the escalator and directly over there.

As we left, my grandmother was truly stunned by the experience – and my grandfather came through the surgery just fine.

Meditating With a Friend

Leslie and I had been practicing meditation as well as studying consciousness for awhile around 1975.  We were part of a group of people exploring that aspect of our perception and the two of us decided to try meditating together.

Almost immediately, I found myself immersed in an experience unlike any I’ve had before or since.  I was in a room and it was like the air itself was thick, a heavy fluid.  I was floating and could move by directing myself intentionally, but in a manner of focusing that is hard to describe.  It was almost like a focus of my will.

I moved around the room and examined it and then found a door to exit.  I was able to move around the edge of a building and into some other areas and more rooms.  It took me more effort to move than would normally be the case with imagination, though.  I had to really work at it.  I also noticed that everything persisted, that I could not rearrange it, only travel through it.

A few months later, we took a trip together, about five of us from our group, in Leslie’s car, going to her grandfather’s ranch in Colorado.  As we got out of the car, I realized where I had been in my meditation.  I had been here!

To validate the experience as fully as possible, I stopped everyone and said I wanted to describe what we would see, what the arrangement of rooms, etc. would be like, before we went in.  And … I was right on the money.  It looked just as it had in my meditation.

My Beliefs on the Paranormal

One succinct definition of the paranormal is “beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation.”  So, I see the paranormal as simply a temporary condition.  An automobile would be paranormal to someone from the 15th Century, but we certainly see it as quite normal now.  Science always has things it can’t yet explain.

The most difficult things to explain are those things which are universal.  If something is fundamentally woven into the fabric of experience, people have a great deal of trouble discerning it.  Much of therapy is helping people realize that which is so pervasive in their experience that it becomes invisible to them.

I believe this is the case with the instances of paranormal experience recounted throughout history, that someone simply was able to see the water in which we as fish swim.  Don’t get me wrong, I think hucksters abound and I don’t particularly like to discuss the paranormal with most people, because the ones who seem most interested in it are often cracked gourds.  Many others tend to be the skeptics who discard ALL of this experience as crap and are very ready to attack.  That narrows the group considerably with whom I wish to share ideas.

I have not come close to recounting all my experience here and most of it is of a non-dramatic and externally unverifiable nature anyway.  In fact, I would say that my normal experience is simply on a continuum with “paranormal” experience and it seems that there is no significant distinction.  Over the years, it has become very much integrated with what I am.

I think the paranormal is simply the base upon which the normal manifests.  And, I think it is available to anyone.

This is my Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium offering on the topic suggested by our prodigal son, Ashok.  In his tradition, he may refuse the fatted calf, but hopefully he will accept our glee at his return from the legal wilderness he has entered – as a barrister, not as a criminal! – for his presence and insight are always a joy!  I look forward to his views on this topic as I do all the other members.  I encourage you to click on their links in the list of Loose Blog Consortium members on the left!

Measure With a Micrometer, Mark With Chalk, Cut With an Axe!

When they first planned this oil exploration, they really didn’t think it would go this way in the Gulf.  The plans were beautiful!  Trust me!

Engineers laughingly recognize the reality in the title of this post.  All too often, things are laid out in meticulous detail in the planning stage.  Down to the proverbial gnat’s ass.  Then, it comes time to implement, and you find that reality often intrudes and the plans begin to find themselves carried out in a slightly looser fashion – but, still close.

By the time the job is done, though, you find that life a mile down is more than a mile from the drawing board!  Nature is powerful.  Nature is brutal.  It is amazing that so many of these operations go as well as they do.

The problem is that, eventually, nature will catch up with you.  Complexity will catch up with you.  And human nature will catch up with you.  You can count on it and – eventually – there will be a catastrophic failure if it was possible in the first place.  NASA is the best at what they do that you can find, but astronauts have died.  The oil rig engineers may be the best, but this happened before in the Gulf in 1979 and it took nine months to cap.  Some beaches received 18 inches of sludge!  But, a huge tropical storm came very soon after, the ecology of the beaches was simpler, most of it happened at Mexican coastline, it recovered in three years – and we conveniently forgot.

Let’s at least not forget this time.  This will happen again.  Complex ecologies – and economies – like Louisiana has will not recover as quickly.  I’m not looking for simple answers, for we have far too many pundits supplying those.  For each solution, there are risks and side-effects.  For example, I hear we are raping Canadian wilderness to get the heavy metals for our current battery technology as I speak, the batteries that go into our hybrid cars and possibly the batteries that will be used to store solar energy.  Solutions don’t come simply or easily.

What I am saying is that we need to address this in an unflinching way and start a VERY aggressive dialogue about what can be done to create solutions.  Experts, tell us the bad with the good.  Not only can we take it – we demand it.  I believe we can do much better if we try.

Next time, be honest about where we will no doubt need to bring out the axe …

If I could travel in Time, I would …

This is the Friday offering of the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a list of the members with links to their blogs on the left.  We write on the same topic each Friday without knowing in any way what the others have written.  This should be VERY interesting to see what the different members come up with and I want to personally thank Judy Harper, the Creative Writer in Progress on the left for such a delightful suggestion.

How many of you have seen the Will and Grace show when Jack met Cher?  This clip is so funny, because Jack always imitated Cher – and you will see by the end of it how it fits in with our time travel theme.

Jack meets Cher

If I could turn back time … what the heck would I do with it?

I put this together with certain assumptions.  First, I assumed that I would not be visible to anyone in the circumstance, would not be able to interfere, just observe.  Second, I assumed I could not be harmed by events or the environment.  Third, I assumed I could place myself anywhere in space as easily as I could in time.  In other words, I would be kind of a ghost!

Then I decided to just start free associating.  My interests are always so eclectic, as anyone who has read this blog for awhile knows.  I knew that if I had this ability, I would have a large number of interests that would be continually changing.  In fact, what I can’t actually put in place here is how my next target would change depending upon the experience at the current and last place.

Also, note that none of my travel is to the future!  I would only want to learn things from he past … but I wouldn’t want to screw up my present by knowing anything of the future.  Besides, I think that any future would be a probable outcome anyway.

So, enough with the prelims.  Here is the list of times / places that flowed out of me.  And, let me tell you, this list would just grow and grow and …

• Go back to see how the pyramids were constructed!
• See if I could find Jesus, Joseph and Mary, John the Baptist, the Disciples.
• Check out the events surrounding Moses at various points!
• Check out the first humans at Olduvai Gorge.
• Go see the Founding Fathers, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin.
• Go to the School Book Depository in Dallas to see if Lee Harvey Oswald really did do it alone.  Also, I might have to multiply locate to the Grassy Knoll.
• Visit Einstein in his study at the point that he boiled the essence down to E=mc²
• Return to the Renaissance and watch Michelangelo at work on David, on the Sistine Chapel.
• Go to the moon to watch the first landing, the first steps.
• Watch Mozart and Beethoven compose.
• See how Shakespeare wrote and directed some of his plays.
• Watch Krakatau explode and Vesuvius erupt!
• Watch DaVinci painting the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.
• Watch Babe Ruth and Satchel Paige, each in his prime.
• Watch and listen to Lincoln deliver the Gettysburg Address.
• Watch Orson Wells and crew create War of the Worlds for the radio.
• Go to China and observe the life and surroundings of Confucius.
• Go to old Tibet, with one of the early Dalai Lamas – or, at least the Dalai Lama in early incarnations – at the Potala.
• Check out some of my early ancestors in Germany and see, in about 1630, where Barthold Hake came from.  He lived in Hemeringen, ten miles from Hameln, but … before that we do not know.

And on and on.  Where would you go?  What would you want to see?

A Person, Place, Thing or Idea

They call it the Annus Mirabilis of Albert Einstein, the year 1905.  In one burst of genius virtually unparalleled,  he produced four papers that year and a doctoral thesis.  Every one of the papers was Nobel Prize caliber and every one of them helped shape our modern world.

The first three papers, remarkably were all published in the same journal, Annalen der Physik 17.  This is what they each essentially accomplished:

Explanation of the Photoelectric Effect – for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 – described light as composed of photons and led to the quantum revolution in physics.

Explanation of Brownian Motion of small particles in liquids.  This indirectly confirmed the existence of atoms and molecules.

Special Relativity.  Perhaps you have heard of this one!  It ushered in a whole new way of understanding space and time and tossed our understanding of what we perceive on its head.

His fourth paper was a further work on Special Relativity and introduced the famous E = mc2.

And, did I tell you he also did a Doctoral Thesis that year?

Years later, after the Nazis had run him out of Germany in 1933, he was courted by the best American academic institutions.  He was at Stanford and they were showing him all the magnificent scientific instruments and tremendous facilities they had and he was like a kid in a candy shop.  When one of the professors turned to his wife Elsa and asked her if she thought he was impressed, she told them that he loved it – but that they needed to realize he could do more than all that on the back of a postcard.

From his theories, nuclear energy has grown, the LASER – which he spelled out as possible – was developed, and the list of derivative inventions in many ways frame the Twentieth Century and beyond.  But, he only invented and patented one item himself – a refrigeration unit.

Just think.  Instead of all that academic stuff in his head … we could be seeing a quite wealthy Einstein legacy of Frigidaires with his picture right on the front!

This is another Friday offering in the Loose Bloggers Consortium, the list of whom are on the left.  The Magpie came up with this topic – so I tried to channel him in its creation!  Please take some time to enjoy the writings of the others on such a broad theme.  I have no idea what they will write, but it is always interesting, fun and thought provoking.

Just Play the Hand You Are Dealt

Friday I went for my semi-annual physical.  My numbers were pretty good.  But, I described the last two months of 2009 to my physician and what I experienced from them.  So … he took me to the woodshed …

Let me back up a bit for you.  My father had his first heart attack at the age of 46.  Then in 1984, he had a triple bypass – and the doctors told Mom that his prognosis was probably about five years.  So, he’s already beat them by about twenty-one years and he is cranking along as we speak, mostly because he has followed a strict physical regimen of exercise and diet.  It’s always been more struggle than he would have wished since that heart attack, though.  And, he passed a whole lot of those genes along to me!

Like him, I am determined to hang around as long as possible.  I have a lot that I want to share with my family and friends, a lot that I want to experience and learn – and I’ve really got some questions about how this world will turn out!  Add to that the fact that I didn’t have Carly until I was 40 and would like to watch her and her kids go as far as possible.  Besides, if she feels anything about me like I do my folks, I want to be here for her as long as I can.  I want to be healthy enough to travel to where she is, too, as far as that goes.

So, I am shooting for my nineties with an option to extend the warranty.  That’s why I took all the stern advice my physician gave me on Friday to heart!  He said that with my family inheritance (genes), he already was treating me in the same way that he treats people who have had a heart attack and he wants me to do the same.  So, he told me to control those factors that I can control and control them strictly.  To underline the importance of rest, exercise and diet, he told me that if I find a time constraint where I can’t eat and exercise both during the day – skip eating!  And, if someone requires me to work late hours to make money or keep people in a warehouse in business – go poor and let others find a way to keep going temporarily by other means.  And, last, he told me to keep my emotions under control.  To stay calm.

These are all things I can and will do.  And, I add another healthy hand to this, dealt to me by Maynardo the Magnificent:

I’ve got to see how these characters grow up.

As Ramana would say, “Thathaasthu.”  Or, as we would say in America – Amen to that Brother!