Sunday was brutal. 95 which is way high for the Pacific Northwest. The only saving grace was that not many customers came to the nursery yesterday. And those that did, we asked what plants and trees they wanted and then marked on a map where they were to be found and sent them out into the heat while we stayed with the fans in the office. Not really good customer service but – at 95 degrees – there are limits to what one will do for money
Still hot today but if Monday last week was any indication, we won’t have much traffic. Typically, in the summer, business gets slower because people are worried that without the rains we’re blessed with eight to nine months a year, they might have to water. Truth is, they’d have to water stuff anyway for at least the first year when they plant something new so there’s really no way to avoid the summer watering.
I was down at Starbucks again this morning. I’ve gotten to know a good group of people there and most mornings there’s someone interesting to talk with. Sometimes it’s motorcycles, sometimes it’s personal histories and sometimes it’s the environment. I think I’m a natural for the sidewalk cafe lifestyle
I saw several interesting articles on-line and in a copy of Scientific American (June 2006) that I picked up last night so I’ve been writing up a storm posting and commenting on things.
One theme that I consider an essential part of the Perfect Storm Hypothesis (which is as yet unwritten because it will be a large and integrated bit of writing) has to do with essential causes. As in how does it happen that mankind has gotten the planet into the mess it is in?
Part of my thoughts about the causes relate to a favorite theme of mine, The Biological Imperatives (which I also need to write about so I have a set-piece to refer to when I use the phrase).
Another part has to do with the external and internal illusions which we human suffer from without knowing we have them. This is a facinating area which I’ve seen a lot on, in a piece-meal fashion, but I haven’t seen a lot of connecting of the dots to relate these ideas to mankind’s problems with decision making at global levels.
Related to this interest in illusions, there was an article in the June 2006 Scientific America entitled, The Implicit Prejudice, and it is about hidden biases that most, if not all, of us have. Mahzarin Banaji, a researcher, has been looking into this area since the late 80’s. She calls these illusions or mistakes in perception, “mind bugs”. And the tests that have been devised to reveal them are called Implicit Associate Tests (IAT).
There is a website here where you can go and take some of these tests and what they reveal may make you uncomfortable if you consider yourself a fair and unprejudiced individual.
I’m not going to talk any more about this here because I’m going to write an entry under Science and link to the article in Scientific American in it.
I’ve got so many things to write, I wonder if I’ll ever get half of it written.