reinterpreting your experiences

One general area that's had me interested for a while is how somebody can understand their surroundings in an unusual way. One example is from the time I punched the numbers on an audio listening device to hear the King Tut sounds while I was standing in line for the exhibit. Listening to the audio beforehand made it sound especially cheesy, but more importantly put it in a different context. Now I'll expand on that idea. What if you looked for video footage on the internet to see how the place you're standing looked years ago? Have you ever wanted to go to a location where a disaster had once occurred and watch a video of the disaster on your laptop computer, making comparisons? I think people ought to start doing this sort of thing more often. You could wait outside a prior class to yours to see what you're going to be told beforehand and then consider it in a different light once you're inside the classroom.

So more specifically, what's the general theme I'm getting at here? Don't focus on things passively by the way they are at present, taking life as it comes through your eyes and ears.

Geologic View, Planetologic, Astronomical Views-How are things at present the extension of matter and materials?

Material Associative View-All things are the sum of their smallest parts and their use is ultimately arbitrary, though certain aspects of their design may get in the way.

Social Associative View-Social institutions are arbitrary and maintained by certain assumed actions on the part of their citizens. What are these actions?

I'll explore one variant of this idea. There are some social institutions that demand a certain quota of participants. Society changes every day, but there are certain roles that have to be filled. Who's going to be the mayor of Spokane, and be on the city council? Starting with positions where the membership size isn't likely to change and working towards others with variable possibilities, there must be something here to figure out.

How do you find out what type of flower or species of bird you're looking at if you're not sure? My guess is that you'd look it up through the internet, but it's incredibly hard to do that. Google Images is based on things you find by looking them up, and TinEye only lets you see where an image you input appears on the web(and there aren't many uploaded so far). So the answer is you have to put the image up somewhere and ask somebody else or look for it your self in some database.

The problem here is mostly a social one, though. You can't think like this on a regular basis because nobody else around you is, and eventually the sheer masses of blind indifference around you overwhelm the whole thing from getting started. Where on Earth are all the people interested in trying new things for no particular reason?

Part Two. How do you remind yourself of your own ignorance? There's plenty of games on the web, largely derided among others as time wasters, but the 'name colors' and 'name countries' games I'd say are very useful. If you'll humor a thought experiment, you might be able to get a seven year old to write down every word they knew if you locked them in a room long enough. For somebody older, it would be a tricker thing to do. Recounting all the sights you've heard and sounds you've seen would be impossible. Maybe somebody will invent a device that allows you to look again at light as it entered your eyes but you didn't notice at the time due to inattentional blindness.

There's always stars, planets, moons, and asteroids. There's a never ending flux of political causes attributed to different days and months. Better to spot solar granules and give them different various causes and let them die out after the granule's gone.

One thing that annoyed me was in hearing about how the speculative nature of science is often swept under the rug in amateur science books when the information given is just estimates, which too often happens in astronomy books. Just how many places does this sort of thing happen? Where are the missing niches on the topographical maps along the edges of the continents? Just how well does the Africa on my nearby globe resemble the real one

Those thoughts will have to be left for now and I'll expand on them later. I've had this post going for nearly a year but had been too distracted to input it and start this blog going. Nevermind the formal introduction, I'll get to that some other time.