Monday, January 09, 2023

9: Storm

The Unexpected Gift of Dead Plants temperatures dropping tens of degrees in a matter of minutes ...... It was 52 degrees here the day the front was due, but the birds were already making their cold-weather plans. The dominant bluebird down at our end of the neighborhood spent much of it sitting on top of the sunny nest box in our front yard. He wasn’t laying claim to the box for nesting season, which is still months away, but for shelter. ....... And in winter, as it turns out, the plants that didn’t survive the storm were overwhelmingly nonnatives, at least from what I could tell in my admittedly unscientific survey of Nashville vegetation — another sign that these plants did not evolve for this ecosystem. Popular landscaping evergreens like Japanese cedar, skip laurel (which comes from the Mediterranean region), English boxwood and Japanese euonymus are now some dead shade of brown, while the undeterred Eastern red cedars and Southern white pines and American hollies remain a glorious green. ........ I confess I wasn’t thinking about the plants in my yard as I watched snow and ice pour from the sky the night the Christmas-week storm arrived. I was thinking about the bluebirds. How many of them had crowded into that little nest box?



Temple Grandin: Society Is Failing Visual Thinkers, and That Hurts Us All When I was younger, I believed that everybody thought in photo-realistic pictures the same way I did, with images clicking through my mind a little bit like PowerPoint slides or TikTok videos. ....... For many, words, not pictures, shape thought. That’s probably how our culture got to be so talky: Teachers lecture, religious leaders preach, politicians make speeches and we watch “talking heads” on TV. We call most of these people neurotypical — they develop along predictable lines and communicate, for the most part, verbally. ........ Schools force students into a one-size-fits-all curriculum. The workplace relies too much on résumés and G.P.A.s to assess candidates’ worth. This must change not only because neurodivergent people, and all visual thinkers, deserve better but also because without a major shift in how we think about how we learn, American innovation will be stifled. ...... When I was 7 or 8, I spent hours tinkering and experimenting to figure out how to make parachutes, fashioned from old scarves, open more quickly each time I tossed them into the air. This required careful observation to determine how small design changes affected performance. My single-mindedness, verging on obsession, was probably because I was autistic. At the time I loved a book about famous inventors and their inventions. It impressed me that Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers were so single-minded in figuring out how to make a light bulb or an airplane. They spent lots of time obsessively perfecting their inventions. It is likely that some of the inventors in that book also were autistic. ........ When I look back at all the projects I designed for large companies, I estimate that 20 percent of the skilled welders and drafting technicians were either autistic, dyslexic or had A.D.H.D. I remember two people who had autism and held numerous patents for mechanical devices they invented and sold equipment to many companies. Our visual thinking skills were key to our success. ......

hyper-focus is a classic sign of neurodivergent thinking and it’s critical for innovation and invention.

.......... I often get asked what I would do to improve both elementary and high school. The first step would be to put more of an emphasis on hands-on classes such as art, music, sewing, woodworking, cooking, theater, auto mechanics and welding. I would have hated school if the hands-on classes had been removed, as so many have been today. These classes also expose students — especially neurodivergent students — to skills that could become a career. Exposure is key. Too many students are growing up who have never used a tool. They are completely removed from the world of the practical. ......... Despite my accomplishments, if I were a young person today, I would have difficulty graduating from high school because I could not pass algebra. It was too abstract, with no visual correlations. This is true for many of today’s students who get labeled as bad at math, students who might otherwise pass alternative math courses such as statistics that would also apply to real-life work situations. There is too much emphasis in school on testing and not enough on career outcomes. The fact that I failed the SAT in math prohibited me from getting into veterinary school, but today I am a university professor in animal sciences and I am invited to speak to groups of veterinarians to advise them on their work. The true measure of an education isn’t what grades a student gets today, but where they are 10 years later. ......... and the first thing I tell managers is that they need a neurodiverse work force. Complementary skills are the key to successful teams. We need the people who can build our trains and planes and internet, and the people who can make them run. Studies have shown that diverse teams will outperform homogeneous teams. If you’ve ever attended a meeting where nothing gets solved, it may be because there are too many people who think alike. ....... Today, Taiwan produces the majority of the world’s highest tech silicon chips. Much of the specialized mechanical equipment used for processing meat is made in Holland and Germany. When I visited the Steve Jobs Theater in California, pre-Covid, I discovered that the glass walls were created by an Italian company. The massive carbon fiber roof that looks like a spaceship was imported from Dubai. The reason this equipment is coming from outside the United States can be traced in part to differences in educational systems. In Italy and the Netherlands, for instance, a student at about age 14 decides whether to go the university route or the vocational route. The vocational route is not looked down on or regarded as a lesser form of intelligence. And that’s how it should be everywhere, because the skill sets of visual thinkers are essential to finding real-world solutions to society’s many problems.

Why Has America Fallen So Hard for Harry and Meghan? Whether out of Anglophilia, nostalgia, masochism, traditionalism or just a particular strain of fealty to the rich and famous, America’s quixotic devotion to the British monarchy remains strong. ....... Apparently, it’s better to be a celebrity in the United States than fifth in line for the throne in Britain. ........ Having initially decamped to Vancouver Island in a bid for privacy, they soon fled to Los Angeles in a bid for — what’s the opposite of privacy? As Harry says in the documentary, he’d “outgrown” his environment and “this was the most obvious place to come.” ........ The fact that the Sussexes ditched a country they characterize as anti-immigrant, overrun with racists and burdened by the legacy of colonialism makes Americans feel better about their own country, which also (whoops) might be described as anti-immigrant, overrun with racists and burdened by the legacy of colonialism. But Harry and Meghan see America as a haven. ........ In a run-up interview to promote her podcast last year, Meghan recalled a South African man who compared the joy at her royal wedding to the celebrations when Nelson Mandela was freed from prison. But, according to the Sussexes’ narrative, they became too popular, threatening the monarchy. As Harry put it, they were “stealing the limelight” or “doing the job better than someone who was born to do this.” ........... Rather than staying mum, they insist on speaking up and speaking out — and speaking their own truth, as opposed to the more rigorous feat of speaking the truth. When they do speak, it’s in the manicured, massaged and meditative parlance of self-care and cause-driven commerce. Words like “conscious,” “consent” and “purpose” roll off their tongues in soothing uptalk. They’ve created a “safe harbor” for themselves. This is a “new path we were trying to forge.” Their work is about “creative activations” and “building community.” ........... Harry and Meghan have outdone Princess Diana’s collaborations with the press by taking full control. They are our first reality-TV royals. And in America, while it’s wrong for someone else to invade your privacy, it’s perfectly fine — even applauded — to exploit your own. ......... You can find them on Instagram, where they initially found each other and where they chose to announce their independence (as they would say, “stepping back rather than stepping down”). ....... Like many a TikToker or Substacker, Harry and Meghan relish taking charge of the narrative. They made their documentary, they say, because, as they put it, they’ve never been “asked” for their story and weren’t “allowed” to tell it. ....... Meghan “sacrificed everything that she ever knew, the freedom that she had, to join me in my world. And then, pretty soon after that, I ended up sacrificing everything I know to join her in her world.” .......... Despite the dents and holes in their well-honed and highly lucrative story, the Sussexes have delivered an especially American take on what the American Meghan calls a “modern fairy tale.” America loves a melodrama, an against-all-odds story, an us versus them. America loves an almost happily ever after and any gossip that keeps on giving. As is now abundantly clear, Harry and Meghan are giving their all to give America all of that.

Russia’s elite begins to ponder a Putinless future Once unthinkable, the president’s removal can at least be contemplated ........ “What is next? Is there life after Putin? How does he go and who replaces him?” Such are the questions that weigh heavily these days on the minds of the Russian elite, its bureaucrats and businessmen, as they observe the Ukrainian army advancing, talented people fleeing Russia and the West refusing to back down in the face of Vladimir Putin’s energy and nuclear blackmail. “There is a lot of swearing and angry talk in Moscow restaurants and kitchens,” one member of the elite says. “Everyone has realised that Putin has blundered and is losing.” ............ This does not mean that Mr Putin is about to bow out, be overthrown or fire a nuclear weapon. It does mean that those who run the country and own assets there are losing confidence in their president. .......... “Never before has Vladimir Putin been in such a situation in the 23 years of his rule,” says Kirill Rogov, a Russian political analyst. ..... “Now he is planning and executing operations that are visibly failing.” ....... The invasion of Ukraine on February 24th was a shock to the Russian establishment, which had persuaded itself that Mr Putin would not risk full-scale war. ......... the economy is starting to show the effects of sanctions and of the exodus of the most skilled and educated members of the workforce; consumer confidence is on the slide. ........ A ceremony on September 30th, in which, after a ranting speech against the West, Mr Putin annexed four provinces in Ukraine that he does not actually control, was so absurd that it probably undermined his aura of strength even within Russia. .......... A military defeat might well lead to the collapse of the regime, with all the associated risks for those who have supported it. Mr Putin’s bellicosity meanwhile “raises the question of whether the Russian elites are prepared to stick with Putin until the bitter end, particularly amid growing threats to use nuclear weapons” ............... The only way to stop the endless cycle of imperial nationalism, Mr Navalny argued, is for Russia to decentralise power and turn itself into a parliamentary republic. In what looked like an appeal to the Russian elite, Mr Navalny argued that parliamentary democracy is also a rational and desirable choice for many of the political factions around Mr Putin. “It gives them an opportunity to maintain influence and fight for power while ensuring that they are not destroyed by a more aggressive group.” ......... Russia’s dictator wants to turn Ukraine into a failed state. Instead, he is fast turning Russia into one.

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