Today’s Ponder 07/15/2011

Instruction by example can only remain justifiable for a short amount of time when it is ignored, before it becomes simply, ‘Pissing Up A Rope’.
___________

Without an implied value, gold is simply a rock.
___________

Living without making the effort to become more, is simply glorified food processing.
___________

A stray thought caused me to ponder an occurrence that I have simply accepted as a fact, since I first learned of it.
The occurrence is, that nipples become erect when the breast chills to a certain temperature, or at least in relation to the bodies core temperature.

It suddenly struck me, that there could be some adaptation of evolution that caused this to happen … What then was the cause?

I tried looking for clues on the net and in what books I have, that aren’t temporarily packed away for moving. No luck from either, so I started thinking; What if the erect nipple is a trigger that stimulates the babies feeding impulse.

This could also explain part of the odd subconscious trigger that affects many adults of both sexes, when surprised with an erect nipple.

Anyway .. I wondered why nature might increase the survival of a human infant, by eliciting a response to an erect nipple, on a chilled breast.

It came to me that a single, or some combination of criteria, might benefit the infant from chilled breast milk. It is now general knowledge that human breast milk carries a plethora of beneficial bacterial flora and anti-bodies to the infant, and everything in nature has an optimum temperature, so I thought that perhaps the immune elements of breast milk, might flourish most profusely at a few degrees lower than the bodies core temperature.

I also wondered, that even with the infants stomachs less acidic environment, if a cooler milks bacterial flora would have a better chance to survive to the intestine?

So, if I assume any of this, or a related thing that I haven’t yet considered is true, then it would absolutely prove that a chill makes a nipple become erect, for the simple purpose of causing an infant to feed while the milk is at its healthiest temperature.
Which actually makes a hellofalotta sense!

It also then occurred to me, that if this were indeed true, all those tongue in cheek comparisons to that thing that pops out when a turkey is ready .. were actually fairly accurate.

Max

Absolute Freedom

Some claim that true freedom comes only with poverty.

When you posses a thing, then you must compromise your freedom to some degree so that you might retain it.

What they fail to recognize, is that to remain in poverty, we must abandon our freedom to possess a thing.

Establishing by this, that freedom can never be absolute, and might only be obtained to some degree.

We must then avoid addiction, unquenchable desire to possess and accumulate, and inequitable philanthropy, lest we become restricted by our own actions.

This being true, moderation and conservation then, is the maximum degree of freedom that a man may attain.

Paul 'Max' Conklin

Riding Processes

Riding my motorcycle frees my thoughts.

In everyday life, I am constantly barraged by snippets of conversations past, disconnected strings of theory attempting to validate too fact, and a whole ocean of other stuff, that washes up onto the beaches of my consciousness, from the depths and currents of my subconscious.

I like to calm the waters, by busying the currents with the task of driving the bike, so I can then think without interruption.

It works kinda like this …

First we must understand that the conscious part of our brain performs all the parallel processing, and our subconscious is where linear processing takes place. The conscious thought section, picks and discards information from our senses and subconscious, and is constantly comparing sensory input to subconscious experience, and many times, all in several different tangents and sub-tangents, etc...
So while the subconscious focuses on a singular train of thought and develops it in a given direction, the conscious dips in and out of all of them, constantly changing the variables and direction in real time, and sampling the output, and comparing it again with experience and input, to choose a meaning or reaction.

So, as I pick up speed and begin negotiating the curves, I begin relegating the tasks of observing the various calculations of riding to my subconscious, in the form of active, and TSR or Terminate and Stay Resident assignments.
By Terminate and Stay Resident, I mean for example; That I pick an eddy of thought, or linear processing area, and assign it to calculate distance to the next variance in our path, such as a curve visible within a mile. I then shut the calculation down, except for the tiny bit that watches for the increasing proximity of approach, and then the calculation will trigger back into full operation, when I get close enough, that I need to prepare for the curve.
This is a TSR.

Along with these TSRs, is the constant comparison of geometric planes that are constantly tracking horizontal and vertical movement, and comparing these to the pendulum that hangs from the CoG or Center of Gravity.
The pendulum itself is a half dozen parallel calculations involving; Inertia, tire angle against the road, the reciprocating properties that slight pressure on the handlebar makes as it shifts the neck-frame-fork angle and shifts the point where the pendulum contacts the road surface, how the position of my body affects the CoG, etc …

And the individual processes do not stop at this level, for instance, the inertia calculation is actually a linear process that is in a loop and fed output data from several other processes, that combined with sensory input, track things such as speed, weight, friction and height calculations, and then turns this into a formula that actively supplies feedback that modifies my physical perception of the inertia of a curve, and by this, subconsciously regulating my speed and lean, as I go through the curve.

After everything conscious and subconscious is running properly, all my conscious has to do is shuttle data around between the linear processes, and channel the sensory input, and triggered reactions to the proper pathways. And by this, I have now freed at least 85% of my conscious thought to other tasks. And as these linear calculating and monitoring processes tie up more and more of my linear subconscious thought, I have less and less questionably relevant and random thought, to disrupt my conscious from focusing on a resolution, to whatever particular situation that I intend to resolve, with deep dredging of long distance memory, or precise navigation of detail.

Whereas, just sitting at my desk will not allow this, as my subconscious is then unfettered and will constantly search, sort and present distracting data that has some vaguely seeming relation, rather than the ride’s forcing the random searching out, and allowing only a higher relevance to trigger a presentation to conscious thought.

This is just one of the kazillion things I figured out, during several hours of backroad riding to the Roost and back yesterday.

I hope you enjoyed skimming the edge of it, at least a little as much as I enjoyed riding into it yesterday.

Paul ‘Max’ Conklin