Loose Leaf Notes

1. Now that the holiday lights have come down and celebrations have faded, winter’s reality sets in.

2. Back in the ‘90s there was a popular bumper sticker that said “Question Authority?”

3. I had one that said “Question Reality.”

4. Remember the online viral phenomenon about a dress that some saw as blue and black while others saw it as white and gold. There was no consensus on why the dress colors were perceived so differently by different people, and I was stumped, but one neuroscientist offered that what the brain interprets as color may be affected by the device the photograph is viewed on, or the viewer’s own expectations, as our brains fill in the gaps. A later study showed that early risers, who are exposed to more daylight tended to see the dress as white and gold, whereas night owls, exposed to more artificial light tended to see it as blue and black.  – More HERE.

5. Now there is an either/or audio illusion dividing the internet, which shows that just by looking at a word — or even by closing your eyes and imagining a word – it can influence the way you hear the sound of a word. What do you hear ‘green needle’ or ‘brainstorm?’ Listen HERE.  

6. “Ever since the 1920s, physicists have puzzled over the strangely privileged role of the observer in quantum theory. A particle exists in a fuzzy state of uncertainty…but only until it is observed. As soon as someone looks at it and takes its measurements, the particle seems to collapse into a definite location. The late physicist John Wheeler concluded that the apparent oddity of quantum mechanics was built on an even grander and odder truth: that the universe as a whole festers in a state of uncertainty and snaps into clear, actual being when observed by a conscious being — that is, us.” Robert Lanza, NBC news

7. Our first snow storm was ice. See HERE. Our second storm was rain and ice, and this (pictured below) is what stopped me on my way home from playing Scrabble.

8. Who knew? I recently learned that the word “riband” is an accepted word for Scrabble and that it’s another way to spell ribbon.

9. “Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other what the world is and what we are, for conveying the blueness of blue and the wonder of being alive. But it is also a thing of great pliancy and creativity — a living reminder that how we name things changes what we see, changes the seer. I remember my unabashed delight when a naturalist friend first introduced me to the various terms for groups of birds — from “a deceit of lapwings” to “a pitying of turtledoves…”  Emerging from these changing terms is a testament to Toni Morrison’s insistence that language is best understood “partly as a system, partly a living thing” — evidence that language is but a microcosm of life, subject to its own evolutionary forces of adaptation to context akin to those that transformed the dinosaurs into birds. Lest we forget, words too face the peril of extinction… More from Maria Popova HERE.

10. My favorite song with walk in the title might be “Walking on Sunshine.”

11. Microscopes and telescopes / tell the same magical story / We walk on ground / like Jesus walked on water – Read Quantum Leap in its entirety HERE.

12. The word “practice” gets me running in the opposite direction. I don’t want to sign up. But I do have an everyday practice. I practice being with what is. I like to see what I find myself doing.

13. Don’t spoon-feed words / into someone else’s mouth / Don’t walk a mile / in stolen shoes… Read  How to Write a Poem in its entirety HERE.

__________Thirteen Thursday