David Ernst Chats with the World

I’ve gotten a lot of jaw-dropping mileage out of telling people that my mom eats popcorn for dinner every Sunday. Yes, for dinner. Yes, every Sunday. I mean, ok, sometimes she’s on vacation, whatever. I’m not saying she never misses a week. But when she misses one, I think she really misses it.

Anyway, sitting around a table this holiday weekend with her four siblings, I come to find out that three of them also eat popcorn for dinner frequently. Yes, for dinner. Not quite as regularly as my mom, I don’t think, but they each said something more than once a month.

I’ll have to ask around, but at the moment these are the only four people in the world who I know eat popcorn as a meal with any regularity. And they are siblings. And, to the best of my knowledge, they didn’t do it when they were growing up or anything. I don’t think their parents did it. So… what’s going on here?

I don’t know. I also don’t know if that conversation contributed to why popcorn sounded so good to me this evening. After having a relatively light dinner before an evening meeting, I told myself it was ok if I wanted to eat a dessert or something once I was home. Ice cream? Or maybe just a beer? no… POPCORN!

It was good, too.

A week or two ago, Priscilla and I were chatting about continents. I was telling her the story of participating in a “get to know you”-type game at a party, where I was to tell one truth and one falsehood about myself. I was on the spot, but pretty quickly came up with a good truth that sounded like a falsehood, but was having trouble coming up with a lie that might be true. Quite lamely (in my opinion), I eventually said “I’ve been on three separate continents in my life.” (I’ve actually never left North America, except for Hawaii).

Anyway, she started counting the continents she’d been on, and I was surprised to hear her list “America” as one. I’m mildly ashamed to admit now that I mocked her about this at the time, laughing at the idea that she might consider North and South America to be the same continent. I felt very proud of my recollection since childhood that there are seven continents: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica.

It didn’t take long in our conversation, though, before I realized that I – uh – didn’t have much ground to stand upon. Sue, Beth, and other geology-educated people with whom I’d discussed things like this talk a lot about “plates” and stuff, but I’m not sure how much geologists even believe in continents anymore. And, certainly, I’ve pretty much given up thinking that there’s any geological reason to consider Europe and Asia separate continents. And, as these thoughts were going through my head, Pri was telling me that in Brazil they are taught that North and South America are the same continent. Hmmm…

Well, she later sent me two links to Wikipedia pages, one in Portuguese and one in English. Sure enough, it seems that there is not global consensus on this matter. The English page offers a list of different models of the number of continents that are taught world-wide. It claims that the “geographic community” prefers the six continent model that considers Eurasia to be one continent.

I don’t really have any knowledge that would make me feel comfortable even having an opinion on this subject. (Actually, I do take issue with the Portuguese page’s inclusion of “Artico” as a continent. I don’t think there’s any land there, and whatever we call a continent, I think it should involve land.) However, it does highlight two deeply held beliefs of mine:

1. What’s real is the world, when we describe it we are just trying to model it with words and concepts.
2. No matter how simply something was taught to us, it might not true. There might not even be any consensus on the matter. Or, the expert consensus might be contrary to what we learned.

So, don’t be quick to make fun of someone who learned something different than you did. And… question everything.

(Kynthia told me that she once gave an impromptu speech with “question everything” as the subject. Maybe even the title. In any event, it might be one of the extremely rare phrases that would fit on a bumper sticker that I’d be willing to wear on my car.)

I woke up from an early evening nap on October 24 and turned on the radio right in the middle of Robert Siegel’s now infamous interview (at least, infamous among NPR listeners) with Republican political mastermind Karl Rove. I have deep respect for Karl Rove. I don’t like what he accomplishes, but you have to respect his knowledge and you have to respect his track record on getting people elected (that is, as long as there really is nothing illegal involved (yes, I am haunted by that Rolling Stone article by Bobby Kennedy)).

So, when he was predicting victory in this interview, I took it very seriously… much more seriously than I’d take the same kind of talk from just about any political analyst. And, his rationale was very believable for why the polls, which showed Democrats taking the house and maybe just maybe the Senate, were wrong. In response to Siegel saying “I’m looking at the same numbers you are,” Rove retorted:

No you’re not, I’m looking at 68 polls a week you may be looking at four or five public polls a week that talk about attitudes nationally, but that do not impact the outcomes of individual races… I’m looking at all these, Robert, and adding them up, and I add up to a Rebuplican Senate and a Republican House. You may end up with a different math, but you’re entitled to your math, I’m entitled to THE math.

This left Siegel momentarily speechless, very understandably to me. Could it really be that the polling numbers that NPR and every other media outlet were reporting were too general to really catch the tide of the election? Certainly for as much as I knew it could have been, but it was hard for me to believe that all of those polling experts were just being sloppy. But, who can tell?

Well, this is one case where we can tell. Mr. Rove, what you called “THE math” was clearly wrong. Sure, the Senate is still too close to call, and I won’t be a bit surprised if the Republicans maintain a majority there (which, by the way, might be a 50-50 “majority”, keeping control only because the Vice President casts the tie-breaking vote. But, I bring this up only as a curiosity, not because I question its validity… this is the way the Senate has always worked, and 50-50 really would be a legitimate majority in this case). But come on… the House was not even close. The Democrats needed to pick up 15 seats to control the House, and CNN is presently reporting that they picked up 28, with 13 still too close to call. If those “too close” elections split 50/50, that would be a gain of 34 seats for the Dems, more the double what was required!

So, was “THE math” just that wrong? Or was Rove being deliberately over-optimistic in a calculated campaign move? I don’t know, but the end result is that I lost some of my respect for the man. I suspect he knew that what he called “THE math” was wrong, but next time I’ll have to remind myself that preserving his image is not his motivation, he’s motivated by winning elections, and who knows what he’ll say to do it.

In any event, I’m glad he was wrong. :)

By the way, there are several election-related things I’d like to write about.  Hopefully I will find the time soon, but right now I have to get to work…

So, are other people noticing a surprisingly large number of these crickets in and around their houses? I don’t remember ever seeing them in the past, at least not enough to notice them by species. But, over the summer I started seeing them (often dead in spider webs) and Priscilla found many many of them at her house (much to her dismay).

Well, they are still here, and I’m still surprised. Priscilla now says they are cave crickets and the pictures in Wikipedia definitely look right. So, now I know their complete taxonomy and stuff, but that doesn’t tell me anything about why they suddenly seem so much more prevalent than I’m used to.

Anyone?

People complain a lot about their bad luck, I like to pause and appreciate good luck when I experience it.

I walked into the kitchen to finish cleaning up after lunch, and I bumped the compost container that was sitting on the ledge. This was basically because I decided to wrap my Afghan around me as I walked around the house. It got caught on the container and pulled it onto the floor as I walked past. So, it happened behind me. I had a guess as to what had happened, and I was afraid to look.

But, look! The container landed right-side-up, and what could have been a disgusting mess is instead just a slice of an apple and the end of a stalk of broccoli (not pictured) that presumably bounced out when the thing hit the floor.
Cool!

Of course, I’ve now spent more time creating this blog entry about it than I would have spent cleaning it up if it HAD made a mess, but think of how much happier I am writing in my blog than cleaning up compost off of the kitchen floor…

Of course, I still have to go do the clean up I was trying to do in the first place…

Do you remember my dad’s theory about weight management that I cited in this post?

“I don’t care how much you weigh, but you should weigh that amount every year.”

I realized last night that I use the exact same philosophy to trying to manage my inbox. I was well aware that I had a conscious approach, but I didn’t realize that it’s just about exactly the same idea:

“I don’t care how big my inbox is, but it should be that size every day.”

Ok, I gotta work on the wording… but, yeah, for me the number is 38, because that’s how many I can see on the screen of my mail program at one time. After announcing HoosierNet‘s demise on July 20, my inbox got out of control. Sunday night, I whittled it down from about 800 to 38. It’s remarkable how much more “together” I feel having done that. I just took care of a few emails to get it back under 38, and along with it came a good send of getting things done promptly! I think that big fat inbox was weighing on my psyche… But, look! I’ve lost weight!! Can you tell?? :)