Lizard Brain Thoughts

Posted on May 31, 2020 by RegenAxe

Common Side-blotched Lizard

Supposedly, we all possess three brains and no, your Apple brand hand brain does not count as one of them. We all have human brains (supposedly), which is built upon an earlier kind of brain, our mammal brain. It in turn is built upon our earliest brain form, our reptile brain. This so-called lizard brain manages all of our most base instincts. Think primal thoughts like the survival instincts of freeze, flight or fight. Succeeding brain forms are built on this lizard brain and deal with more intellectual aspects of life. Like, where to go out for lunch?

In education this dichotomy between higher and lower brain functions is known as the phenomenon of the wizard-lizard brain. This concept is taught to help children better manage their feeling and help them control their own behavior. Somehow in teaching, it always comes down to behavior. Now doesn’t it?

In the desert, where I have observed many a lizard in the wild, the twin defense mechanisms freeze or flight are the most commonly exhibited. When first observed, a lizard might be frozen motionless, hoping not to be noticed. If you stop and observe them long enough though, they will eventually figure out that you see them and then usually take flight. Occasionally, though they want to put up a fight. For lizards their fighting display consists of doing what looks like pushups. It’s not that they are attempting to develop upper body strength, but rather by pushing their bodies up, they hope to make themselves look bigger and fiercer and then maybe scare you off instead. Hey, I’m not a real psychologist, but while practicing on lizard brains, I like to pretend to play one and through them connect more closely with my own inner lizard brain. 🦎

Key West Little Green Heron

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Key West Little Green Heron

The Lightning Round

Posted on May 30, 2020 by RegenAxe

Lightning Scored Concrete

A lightning bolt had struck a nearby telephone pole, traveled down its length and discharged into the surrounding ground. This resulted in a black gash that had been carved into the sidewalk’s concrete, etching out the electricity’s trace. This event occurred more than a year ago, but the scar is still quite visible to us when we walk by it, a permeant record from a moment’s violence. Concrete is pretty tough stuff and other than the charred indentation, the sidewalk does not appear to have suffered too much damage. Likewise the telephone pole appears to be fine. Immediately after the lightning strike there were burned spots on the pole, but a year of weathering has all but erased those signs of damage.

Dave and Maren called us while we were out for our walk. They had big news! They are now officially engaged. Maren’s engagement ring had arrived and not waiting a minute, they immediately drove down to FedEx to pick it up. The ring originally belonged to Maren’s grandmother, but had to be resized. No word yet on a wedding date. We didn’t ask and none was volunteered. Any wedding in the near future would likely end up becoming a Zoom wedding. Their near term plans include a car trip to the cabin, followed by a new apartment together.

If not for a little thing like a global pandemic, Anne and I would be engaged in our annual summer camping trip out west now. We were scheduled to leave Saint Louis on Memorial Day. On this trip, we planned on taking the southern route, stopping in Oklahoma City, Albuquerque and the Grand Canyon. Today, we were scheduled to be in California at Yosemite. On Monday, we would have made the coast at Monterey. I am reminded of these travel plans, because daily now I am recieving cancellation notifications for all of the camping reservations that we had made. Every other day a new reservation is canceled and refunded. While many of these parks have reopened for day use the campgrounds are still closed. I expect that this process will continue through the month of June. The beauty of letting these reservations tick-off one-by-one is that I’m getting all my money back, while if I had canceled them myself, I would have only gotten half.

Gemsbok

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Gemsbok

And Now This…

Posted on May 29, 2020 by RegenAxe

Last Week Tonight Stamps

A few weeks ago, comedian John Oliver had as the theme for his weekly HBO comedy show the plight of the postal service. In this episode, he explained the situation and offered a remedy of sorts for the post office’s woes—buy more stamps. After all, it is through the sale of postage that the mail service sustains itself. Leading by example, he went one better, when he advertised the sale of his own brand of vanity stamps. Who knew that vanity stamps were a thing? Not I. His show airs on Sunday, but it wasn’t until the following Thursday that I watched it. By that time, when I attempted to order a sheet of his special stamps they were already backordered, which actually tickled me pink. This being a clear demonstration of the power of liberal slacker activism.

The reason that Oliver chose the post office’s problems as his show’s subject is that the president has decided to lambast this institution, because it would be the servant of something that Trump fears, vote-by-mail balloting. Something that in this time of pandemic would allow Americans to safely use to express their political will. He claims to fear voter fraud, but disenfranchisement is his real goal. He wants to limit the vote of older, poorer, blacker Americans and aid his own reelection this November. To this end, he has been tweeting of late baseless lies about voting-by-mail and voter fraud. These lies have been accompanied by others, most pointedly involving the unfortunate death of a woman who had been working for then congressman Joe Scarborough, now of MSNBC. In his tweets, Trump dredged up twenty year old conspiracy theories, in an attempt to smear a political opponent.

What he did though was to elicit a heartfelt plea from the woman’s widower, asking Twitter, not Trump to cease and desist. The resulting kerfuffle so embarrassed the execs at Twitter that when Trump returned to the subject of his voter fraud lies, Twitter had the temerity to add an “asterisk” on to his posts. This minor recrimination of course triggered another Trumpian temper tantrum.

Never one to hold on to a thought for long, last night Trump tweeted about the ongoing civil unrest that is occurring in Minneapolis and is the direct result of the apparent murder of Floyd George, a black man, by city police officers. His tweet echoed verbatim the threat made in 1967 by former Miami police chief Walter Headley, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Obviously, Trump did not get the hint, causing Twitter to nuke that tweet for “glorifying violence.” Twitter later explained that it was in part the historical connection of that tweet’s last line that caused the company to take action.

Is there a new sheriff in twitter-town? I doubt it, but perhaps this moderating action will result is some small measure of moderation, before people get shot. I am reminded of the tale of the troll and the three Billy-goats Gruff. One-by-one, the troll threatens the three goats, only in the end to butted on down the river This week one-by-one, Scarborough, voter fraud and Minneapolis, Trump has employed his bully pulpit to threaten others. Only to learn, he is just a user.