This morning I got a phone call from a Native American spiritual man who happens to be a good friend of mine. He learned that his brother is now in the ICU with covid-19 and almost certain to die from it. My friend wants almost more than anything to visit him in the hospital in Texas, but knows that they won’t let him do that – and in order to get there requires a long, and very dangerous trip from California for him, being an old man. This is his second lose, earlier this year a nephew died from the disease. I feel so sad for him. He is suffering that part of losing a dearly loved one where you go from totally balled up with tears and grief, then a short and welcome “smooth” time to get take a breath and get your feet under you, only to them be taken away with another bout of devastating grief. It is such a hard time, and he being a spiritual man is supposed to be there to help others through their troubled times. Now he can’t, and both he and his brother are all along. So sad. I love you bro – wish I could do more to help!

A question concerning “how to mediate” that comes up often is whether or not concentrating on a manual project strongly enough to “enter the zone” is the same as sitting meditation. Examples of activities that result in “entering the zoom” are numerous. My personal favorite is hand planning wood. I can do that for a very long time, not actually wanting to get it finished because the effort is so pleasant. The repetition, movement, and smell of fresh cut wood has an hypnotic effect on me. Other people have reported this kind of experience while doing things such as knitting, chanting, rowing a boat on a calm lake, perhaps long distance running and other similar activities. Often when I talk to these folks about the experience of doing sitting meditation (sometimes referred to as Shamatha or “mind-calmness” or “calm abiding”) they say they “don’t need” to sit like that because their meditation practice is through one, or more, of those hypnotic inducing “in the zone” practices.

My feeling is that neither are “correct” or “the right way” – both work for some things, it might all depend upon the goal. It is a difficult topic to discuss with someone who has experienced only one approach because we really don’t have a good way to describe much of any of the experience. As a practitioner of both approaches I might be in a position of understanding the similarities and differences, but still find it very difficult to describe.

I think the first point is that “calm abiding” does not mean “without thought” – there are always thoughts. It is about noticing them, maybe even thinking about them – but not “attaching” to them. My experience with entering “the zoom” activities is that thoughts pretty much stop, it is a very different experience. Not a bad one, just a different one. If the goal is to “relax” maybe it doesn’t matter much which one you choose.

In general, the practice is to gently focus on an object of attention (the breath is a handy thing since it is always there, some people silently repeat a mantra such as “om”). Inevitably thoughts come up and the mind wanders. Eventually you notice that there are thoughts instead of the object of attention, at which point you go back to the object of attention. Around, and around, and around. Calmly watching thoughts arise without judgment or interpretation, drift on by, noticing, returning … The most important part of this whole cycle seems to be the part of “noticing” that you are thinking. This is what is being “practiced” – it is the part that we practice so that during our off-cushion time we learn to be calm and notice our thoughts rather than jump on them, get caught by them, and do things that we didn’t want to do. This might be a very different thing than what happens when doing something repetitively “in the zoom.”

There have been some interesting studies with brain scans of experienced practitioners during sitting meditation that show the mind is very active, but in specific locations. The parts of the brain that “light up” while going around this three-sided cycle of focusing, “thinking”, noticing and returning are in distinct locations, separate from each other. It seems that different parts of the brain are used to achieve these three activities. I am not sure what the importance of this might be, but I find it interesting that we seem to be “exercising” specific parts of our brains as we “practice” these practices.

I have been complaining to my friends, or anyone that would listen, about Trump’s insistence upon “proving” election fraud. However, somewhere in the middle of the night it dawned on me just how important that gift is to us all. We have been having a lot of concerns about election security over the past few elections; what with hanging chads, stories of bags of ballots thrown in rivers, Russian interference and voting machines difficult (or impossible) to audit. That worry resulted in a LOT of changes about how we do elections; then Covid came along which added in a lot of last minute work-arounds involving mail-in ballots, social distancing and all sorts of large and small changes. While these changes were being made, we sort of had to just trust that the election officers were doing the right thing and that it was all working properly. We really needed a big audit of the system, and Trump was kind enough to make that happen – he even let the Republicans pay for it! Amazing. Not only that, but he pressed hard against the judicial system to see if it might not be possible to break it in ways that could result in election fraud through intimidation and court packing (by him of course). This test isn’t finished yet, but it appears that the system is pretty darn secure and upset proof. The counting has been spot on, and almost all of the court challenges were thrown out. The one big test still coming along is whether or not he can get something before the Supreme Court, and if he does whether his hand picked far-right republican choices support him over the words and intent of the constitution.

We really and truly needed this kind of high intensity, dig as deep as you can test and audit. Once this is all finished, and it is firmly established that there was no election fraud by the Democrats, Biden and the Democrats will be in a much stronger position by eliminating concerns of the election not being fair, or tampering with the process like the last time it ended up in the Supreme Court and they decided to choose the winner instead of allowing the counting process to continue to the end. That sort of thing is not good for the incoming President. As an incoming President you want to win the popular vote as well as the electoral votes, want all fears of fraud or corruption put to bed, and want the votes to make the decision, not a hand full of justices to decide for the nation. So this is perfect for the Democrats and for Biden. Some day, a long time from today, we might offer President Trump and hearty “thank you. (Not that you intended to be giving a gift).”

Who knows, perhaps this will result in finally tossing out the archaic and fraught electoral system of voting.

I found a new word, and a new field of study, in a Facebook article today. Epistemology is basically the study of how we know what we know. It is concerned with how we separate “truth” from everything else. This is a topic very much in my mind these days, as I am sure it is most everyone’s else’s mind. A common question that comes up in conversation is “how could they possibly believe that?” It doesn’t matter much who “they” are, we are all scratching our heads wondering how you can take obvious “facts” and end up with “that” belief. We are all turning into philosophers of epistemology, trying to make sense of what is happening to so deeply divide us.

We are now officially in the “holiday” season – which is always a difficult time for many reasons such as the pressures to get the “perfect” gift for those that we really love, knowing full well that in most cases if they really wanted it they already have it. We are somehow expected to know them better than they do, picking out “the thing” that they don’t even know they want. What could possibly go wrong with that?

And then we are hoping once again for the magical, special, dancing in our hearts feeling that always comes with Thanksgiving and Christmas (at least we hope it will happen like that) – except that it doesn’t seem to quite work out that way. Our missed expectations and hopes, and the darker and colder days, are the perfect formula for depression and loneliness to creep in. And this year!! Oh my, it is going to really be a mind twister, it already has – and the crazy, scary, lonely and exhausting things are likely to continue for awhile.

I am trying to brace myself for all of this – I know it is coming, and I know it will tend to be overwhelming. Right now – today- I KNOW that it is not my fault, or the fault of those that I love – I am just hoping I can remember to remember this truth. It is just how it is, and it is just one of those things to notice, watch and not add guilt for not making the magic happen perfectly. It is definitely the year to quietly enjoy each other, to be warmly thankful for whatever good things we have, to not get too excited by roadblocks, and to just kind of sit back and “go with the flow.” Hopefully we will figure out how to reach the “reset” button for 2021. Be careful out there, and try to avoid accusing anyone of not fulfilling what you want them to do – especially yourself.

I get up in the pre-dawn hours to sit in my hot tub, staring at the stars overhead. This morning was a clear, moon-less, sky. Because I am in California, in the northern hemisphere this morning’s sky featured some of my best “friends” including Orion, Gemini, Canis Major, Leo and of course the big bear Ursa Major steadily pointing to the north star, Polaris. I laid my head back on the edge of the hot tub so I could take in the entire sky and realized that I COULD see the entire sky, from horizon to horizon (plus a little) in all directions. That got me to thinking about how amazing our eyes, and ability to see, actually are. Our perception, including our eyes and our brain, work much different than a camera or a telescope. Looking straight up it like a “fisheye” lens where the entire doom of the sky (and a little ground all around) is visible and clear, but what we “see” is not uniform. The edges are there, and clear, but very hard to concentrate on. My concentration is almost all in the very center, surrounded by slowly decreasing levels of attention, not decreasing levels of clarity so much as what I can attend to with my mind. But let anything move, such as a satellite or a “shooting star” enter the edges of my attention and I “notice” it instantly. Then I shift my center of attention and see it clearly. I don’t have to focus on things to notice movement or change. How odd — telescopes don’t do that (or at least they didn’t use to – perhaps they do with artificial intelligence scanning the entire image looking for things such as movement – just like my brain is obviously doing). I found it amazing, and rather awe inspiring to notice what I CAN notice – and all of it built up over millions of years of evolution one little step at a time.

I want to share an experience that I have had over the past couple of days because it might help some people get a better perspective on how contagious this virus is. My wife and I have been “hiding out” since March, avoiding people as much as possible, wearing masks, maintaining distance, washing our hands, etc. We do everything that is recommended in the media, very seldom entering buildings other than our home. A couple of months ago I had a surgery for carpel tunnel in my wrist, which has been slowly healing and now is to the point where I should be exercising my hand by squeezing a “nerf” ball. I had to go to the local sporting goods store to purchase a ball. I masked up, as did the clerk at the counter even she was behind a plastic shield. There were only two other people in the large store. We were “distanced” by 20 feet or more. I was perhaps in the store for 10 minutes.

On Monday (three days later) I woke with a really nasty “cold” (I hope – I am going to get tested today). As far as I can determine, that brief exposure to someone with a cold was sufficient to infect me. We had both taken the recommended precautions, but that doesn’t seem to have been sufficient. Upon reflection I realize that my history of “catching” colds is similar, it just takes someone with a cold to be in the vicinity of me for it to infect me. This isn’t because I am particularly susceptible to colds, everyone I know has a similar experience. The cold “just happens” when an infected person is nearby. Since covid-19 is apparently much more contagious than the “common cold” virus, it is obvious that covid can be caught in a similar casual way.

I think those of us who have been lucky enough to have avoided being infected with covid-19 have come to believe we did so because we took all of the necessary precautions. I suspect that it is probably more likely that we just haven’t been in the vicinity of an infected person. It is probably not that we have been so careful, but it just hasn’t spread widely enough for us to come into contact with the disease, especially if we have been spending most of our time at home. I am taking my catching a cold to be a precautionary message that I am perhaps not nearly as “protected” as I would like by simply wearing a mask, washing my hands, and staying clear of people in public. As we enter what is clearly going to be an extremely dangerous period of time during the holidays, I am going to double-down my efforts to stay at home and away from stores, buildings, and people. Please – BE CAREFUL and don’t get it so you don’t spread it.

It has finally gotten to the point where nothing that we hear or see on-line or in the news can be trusted at face value. For example, the November 22 issue of The New York Times that shows up in my email each morning has a very interesting article showing extremely life-like computer generated faces. These images are being used to trick us into thinking that “real” people are posting “real” information on social networks and other places. It turns out that neither are real, neither the people nor the information. I recently posted a blog about things to do to protect yourself from corvid-19, all of which was untrue because the source I had used was promulgating lies and falsehoods. (I consider them to be lies because the original poster went to a lot of trouble making it look “official” and had, or should have had, correct information). This problem seems to have invaded most of our normal channels for obtaining “easy” information (just Google it you say?).

We are faced with a major problem of trying to decide what to believe. We are told to “check it out” – but where can we do that with confidence? It appears that we (all of us) are under attack by someone or something. Perhaps it is just disruptive people, perhaps it is just “true believers”, but more than likely it is other governments or groups within our country that are attempting to gain control. The problem is that there is an actual conspiracy mixed in with our normal chattering back and forth, and disagreeing with each other, as individuals.

The method of “attack” is to create chaos and confusion, pitting people against each other through fake accusations, fake information and now fake people. We are all defending our “truth” and accusing all the others of lying. It used to be that we didn’t think the other was lying, we just thought that they were mistaken – having made a mistake. That caused a lot of confusing and discussion, but at least we could discuss things in an attempt to unearth what the actual truth might be. That seems to have gone away – there is now no way to change opinions by unearthing facts, many people are working out of faith, not facts, and are just using their version of facts to advance their agenda. If an untruth is identified, they just shrug it off and try another version of yet another bit of fake news. Whether or not the “facts” are correct doesn’t seem to have much to do with it.

The problem is that even if you are a person that is a seeker of truth, a seeker of facts, a person that believes that the scientific approach is the best way that we know of to advance our knowledge and understanding of “how things actually are” – how do we do that? We almost never have personal access to the data, the process by which data was created, or the process by which it was analyzed. This results in the only “facts” that we have, are actually conclusions (hopefully based upon something substantial). We end up having to believe, or accept, some source as being a “trusted” source. I go to science journals, what I think are unbiased news programs, books written by supposedly knowledgeable and trustworthy individuals, etc. I have a solid and extensive background in science and related fields, so I compare what I read and hear with what I “know” (or at least think I know) to determine if it fits into my understanding of how things work. I talk to multiple people, check multiple sources of science based information, and do what I can to ferret out “the truth” – always knowing that part of the scientific process is that new information often leads to new conclusions. Theories are just theories and call always be proven wrong, but never proven true. That doesn’t mean that they have no value, it means that science is only able to know about what it knows about – and there might always be unknown unknowns lurking out there to be discovered. However, it has also been shown to be amazingly correct and useful over an extremely wide range of topics. It works, but there is always a hint of a “maybe” it is different. Almost always the new theory incorporates the old, but extends it into new areas.

I wish I had an answer of how to convince us all to keep open minds in the face of a constant barrage of obviously false information, and work together to find the truth – accepting that we won’t always be right, but that we can get better. I am pretty certain that our basic goals and basic needs are quite similar, but we can’t even seem to have conversations that allow us to discover that simple fact.

The Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rica has come to the end of its life. Broken cables have become too dangerous to repair, so the current decision is to demolish the giant antenna. What a shame! This telescope has a long history of providing important, breakthrough observations and discoveries. It will leave a BIG hole in arena of world class telescopes. Somehow I find its passing to be a sad moment among the barrage of bad news that we have been enduring this year.

I have begun a “deep dive” into what sort of education and background are important for being a fully functional “system safety engineer.” This is an unusual profession because it is so broad and gets involved in so many different aspects of the design, development, use and misuse of all manner of “things” that an extremely wide, and deep, knowledge in many fields is required. An analogy came to my mind that the necessary background is a bit like swimming in a large lake where the education, knowledge and experience are like the water in the lake. It has to be all around you. It isn’t a knowledge of science, or engineering, or cultures, or management, or math or anything in particular – it is knowledge in all of those things and more. I have begun the task of making a list of the broad areas of interest, which will be future subdivided into areas of concerning within each of those, and finally into a list of specific topics that can then be incorporated into a description of expected “prerequisites” as well as course curricula useful for creating specific classes, workshops and other educational resources to assist a new person enter the field of System Safety Engineering. It is my hope that my project will be in collaboration with interested parties through the support of the International System Safety Society (ISSS). It is my expectation that we form a committee within the ISSS to accomplish this task in time to present the outcome to the August 2021 ISSS Conference that will be held in Portland, OR (covid willing), or at virtual conference should it not be possible to hold an in-person conference at that time.