How strange, then, to be in a foreign land where not only do I not know the language, but the alphabet itself is foreign. Though the people here in Israel generally speak at least some English, most signs do not have English versions (why should they, of course?). I am left puzzling over random squiggles that are not associated with phonemes in my mind yet, trying to consciously identify the couple of sounds that I know. It amuses me to feel so intensely how much our civilization depends on the written word just to function, and to wonder what life must be like for illiterate adults for whom the constant stream of written information, at once intellectual lifeblood and distracting noise, is non-existent.

Hearing spoken Hebrew is just a hair better, as here or there I recognize one of the words in my micro-vocabulary: “yes,” “no,” “water,” “please,” “thank you,” “peace.” (Hmmm, that would make for an interesting plot outline). I find it weirdly fascinating to be able to almost automatically tune out others talking, since their incomprehensible gibberish does not cause mental static like it would if they were speaking a language I know. Ironically, one of the mental games that I like to play is trying to think without words—a very hard proposition (try it!). Being in a setting where the language is so foreign provides a good approximation, I’m guessing, to what that must feel like.

Every morning I run on the boardwalk by the Mediterranean. On my “weight-lifting” days I join the random strangers (young and elderly, athletic and not) at one of these gym areas and do pull-ups, push-ups, dips, and that exemplar of classic beach calisthenics, body-weight squats. It’s a perfect way to burn off the sumptuous Israeli breakfast, and there’s enough inspiration around to keep one motivated…

I found it interesting to reflect on how I feel at other people’s weddings. There’s always happiness, of course, but also a bit of introspection. When I was single, I wondered whether I would find the right man with whom to face life together. When I was dating, I thought about how contented I was and how “maybe, someday….”

Now that I am married, seeing others pledge their vows reinforces the solemnity of my own. Two people freely choosing to be partners in life, to face the obstacles together and celebrate the triumphs, to help each other grow as individuals. A couple asking their community to witness their promises, to hold them accountable, to provide support and validation. Oh, and how the future stretches out before us! What challenges will we face as the calendar turns, what fights and ailments and frustrations! And how many tender moments, how many unexpected gifts, how many adventures and projects!

Being married does not change the work that it takes to be in a relationship: communication, empathy, respect, selflessness. But being married is a constant reminder of a choice freely taken that I will gladly stand by my husband even at his worst, and the reassurance that he will stand by me even at mine.

It was with some anticipation, then, that I picked up Eckhart Tolle’s acclaimed The Power of Now: A Guide To Spiritual Enlightenment. I tried to slog through it, really I did, but there was too little psychological wheat to be salvaged from all the pseudo-scientific chaff that pervades the book.

What am I talking about? Vague references to “vibrational frequencies” that, when elevated by mindfulness, allow one to not be affected by “negativity.” Ok, I can bend over backwards and internally translate this as a metaphor of psychological states one can reach and imagery that can take one there. But then he also rails against “thought” and “mind” trapping us and being the obstacles from which we must seek liberation. I don’t buy it; it is ego and anxiety and fixation on the past and future that bind us, and careful thought can often be a liberating tool. We probably do need to take a break from being analytical all the time—but the blanket statment that rationality is an obstacle to enlightenment hardly follows from that in my book, and that is a distinctinion Tolle makes hapharzadly at best. Sloppy language, in fact, pervades the book: Tolle’s statements that past and present don’t really exist certainly are phrased to explicitly mean that physical time is illusory, but then he inconsistently backtracks from this solipsism by occasionally making reasonable distinctions between “wall” and “psychological” time.

What else? The kicker is his use of pseudoscientific jargon in ways that are clearly not meant to be taken metaphorically (or if they are, they constitute a reckless indulgence in the fallacy of equivocation): “As there is more consciousness in the body, its molecular structure actually becomes less dense.” As a scientist, engineer, and humanist, I cannot just let that slide.

What is left after ignoring, sighing, or eye-rolling through the pseudo-science is nothing that I haven’t encountered elsewhere: One must get beyond ego. While there’s no need to be passive, one must accept what is. Wherever you are, be there. I was hoping perhaps there would be some concrete practical guides to mindfulness practice, but no. It’s just your standard breathing practice and everyday presence, and more description of what mindfulness is rather than how to get it.

I’ve found better mindfulness books that are practical, focused, and secular. Jon Kabat Zinn’s Wherever You Go, There You Are is one; Mindfulness in Plain English is another. They seem mostly (but certainly not exclusively) focused on sitting practice, for which I struggle and fail to set aside time. I seem to be leaning more towards “everyday mindfulness,” re-focusing on the wide-eyed wonder and joy that I felt not that long ago when everyday life was (or just seemed) less hectic.

My bike hasn’t been getting a lot of love since I moved to Seattle. Bike commuting in the summer, mostly, but not many long rides. No touring.

To charge things up this year, I decided we should do the STP in the summer. And we will. But registering for that led to registering for the training ride, the Flying Wheels. That then led to registering the Tour de Blast. And Knox went so far as to sign up for the RAMROD (yikes!). As a result, we have a biking summer sketched out. We’ve never been into organized rides, so we’ll see how fun they are.

To prepare for these events, we’ve started going on longer bike rides after work–typically 30 to 40 miles, which is not really long in the world of touring. What we’re really jonesing to do is go on another bona fide bike tour, where you cover real distance over the span of days. That is unlikely to happen this summer, as I’m saving my vacation time for other trips. What we can do, however, is weekend mini-tours. And that’s exactly what we did this weekend, driving up to Wenatchee and doing a 76-mile bike tour to Lake Chelan and back.

Oh, it was glorious! Like water to parched lips, this ride reminded me of the sheer joy of feeling the sun on my skin, the wind in my hair, and the pedals underfoot as the world slowly changed around me! So good for the soul!

On the technical side, I was intrigued to confirm what I’ve been noticing this season: my riding style has definitely changed from what it was when I started biking five years ago. It used to be that I would try to ride fast all the time, sprinting up segments of hills and then stopping to pant before continuing up. Now, I seem to have a better pace, where I can gauge the right steady effort to get me to the top, and beyond, without needing to stop to catch my breath.

View Wenatchee/Lake Chelan Loop in a larger map

And, oh! the days! They are noticeably longer, and being out just makes me happy to be alive.

I love spring.

What makes a skeptic? An outlook on the world based on the scientific method: the accumulation of empirical evidence and the continuous testing, retesting, rejection, and modification of hypotheses in light of that evidence. Scientists are human, too, and may be led astray by their own biases and quirks, but science is a long-term progressive process aimed at pruning away these false starts and tangents and leaving a coherent, predictive interpretation on matters of fact.

More skepticism would make our society better, I believe. As readers of this blog know, one of my major irritations is the sway that pseudoscience continues to hold. I am a staunch believer in freedom of conscience, so I don’t much care, for example, if people choose to be theists. What I mind is the use of superstition as a substitute for facts and rationality in areas where it matters, like public policy. You want to believe God created the universe in seven days? Fine by me. You want to pass that off as science in the schools? Unacceptable.

It was with delight, then, that I just finished reading Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time. Shermer is the director of the Skeptics Society, a group dedicated precisely to debunking anti- and pseudo-scientific thinking, particularly in the public sphere (see this TED talk, for example). His book is a good analysis of the distinctions between science and pseudoscience and brief overview of some of the major battle lines in this front of the culture wars: the paranormal, near-death experiences, alien encounters, witch crazes, cults, creationism, and Holocaust denial.

In Chapter 3, Shermer talks about “how thinking goes wrong” for both scientists and lay folk alike, and how legitimate science attempts to self-correct in the face of these errors. Here’s his list, with my own annotations:

1. Theory influences observations
2. The observer changes the observed
3. Equipment constructs results
4. Anecdotes do not make a science. And yet so many people cite them as the bais for their beliefs.
5. Scientific language does not make a science. This is a major pet peeve of mine, people invoking the uncertainty principle and wave-particle duality to justify all sorts of mumbo-jumbo.
6. Bold statements do not make claims true
7. Heresy does not equal correctness
8. Burden of proof [is on the outsider seeking to overturn the accepted and proven scientific paradigm]
9. Rumors do not equal reality
10. Unexplained is no inexplicable. This is what really gets me about so-called Intelligent Design: I can’t think of how this complex structure could possibly have evolved, therefore it couldn’t have evolved, therefore there’s a designer.
11. Failures are rationalized. Failures advance science, but tend to be ignored in pseudoscience.
12. After the fact reasoning. *Post hoc, ergo propter hoc”
13. Coincidence. “Synchronicity” my ass. It’s simple probability.
14. Representativeness. The human tendency to remember hits and ignore misses keeps psychic hotlines in business.
15. Emotive words and false analogies
16. Ad ignorantiam. “If you can’t disprove it, it is proven”— the complete opposite of science. Applies to God , psychics, etc.
17. Ad hominem and tu quoque
18. Hasty generalization
19. Overreliance on authorities
20. Either-or. “If your theory is wrong, then mine must be right.” Is it supported by facts? What about alternatives?
21. Circular reasoning
22. Reductio as absurdum and slippery slope
23. Effort inadequacies and the need for certainty, control, and simplicity. Critical thinking requires training and work.
24. Problem-solving inadequacies. We tend to seek supporting rather than contrary evidence for our views.
25. Ideological immunity, or the Planck problem. As the old school dies out, new practitioners are better able to evaluate and embrace what were once revolutionary ideas.

[Shermer also has a chapter at the end on "Why smart people believe weird things," where he cites intellectual attribution bias ("my choices are rational, but your choices are swayed by irrational beliefs") and confirmation bias ("I block out contrary evidence.")]

I highly recommend this book as a skeptic’s manifesto and a reminder that we are not alone in fighting and bemoaning the ignorance around us. I will leave you with an inspirational quote from chapter 15 attributed to Alfred Kinsey (of sex research fame). This is a quote that I found a bit tangential to the points in the book, but which I like for the (perhaps unjustified) hope that with more skepticism perhaps we can make society more supportive of human dignity and differences:

Prescriptions are merely public confessions of prescriptionists. What is right for one individual may be wrong for the next; and what is sin and abomination to one may be a worthwhile part of the next individual’s life. The range of individual variation, in any particular case, is usually much greater than what is generally understood…. And yet social forms and moral codes are prescribed as though all individuals were identical; and we pass judgements, make awards, and heap penalties without regard to the diverse difficulties involved when such different people face uniform demands.

We know the truth is not that simple. Accidents of birth and circumstance play a large role in how a life unfolds. It is these accidental circumstances that Malcom Gladwell explores in his book Outliers: The Story of Success. His thesis is that our family, cultural, and social environments provide ever-shifting opportunities for success in a given field. These, of course, are post hoc patterns that he discerns, but his case is compelling:

• most of the best Canadian hockey players are born in early months of the year, because they are the oldest children in the yearly selection class with a Jan. 1 cutoff;

• many Silicon Valley titans were born in the mid-1950s, young enough to be part of the computer revolution but not old enough to miss it;

• the perfect birth date for becoming a successful New York Jewish lawyer is 1930, because one would have belonged to a demographic trough that meant smaller class sizes, one would have had enough time excluded from the prestigious law firms to hone legal skills and grow a professional reputation in a sub-field that would become important in the 1970s, and one would have been able to observe, growing up, one’s immigrant family do meaningful work where assertiveness and extra effort were rewarded

…and so on. Natural talent and hard work matter, of course, but what is also needed are the right sets of opportunities to appear and the initiative or luck to be able to seize them.

The book would make an interesting a child-rearing manual of sorts. Not that it is particularly prescriptive, but Gladwell does identify some common traits of success: putting in enough time to become an expert in something (10,000 hours seems to be the pattern across various fields); cultivating social as well as analytic intelligence; exemplifying for one’s children meaningful work, where the reward increases in relation to the effort put forth; noting how much of the education discrepancy among social classes is due to the availability of learning opportunities in the vacation months.

I recommend this easy but thought-provoking read.

There is a new addition to the Gardnovsky Gardens, and its name is Pops. Knox came back from a mysterious errand in Tacoma on Saturday with a rabbit. A giant, obese rabbit. We later found out (thanks to What Breed is my Bunny?, of course) that it is a fawn-colored Flemish giant.

Apparently, his biography looks something like this: he got his name because the kid he belonged to thought he was the color of Corn Pops. He shared his cage with a cat. The kid lost interest, the cat was given away, the rabbit was lonely. He’s been living outside, unfazed by his barking canine neighbors. The previous owner, a veterinary assistant, decided he was neglected. One Craigslist posting later, Pops came to join Galli at the Gardnovsky Resort and Spa.

Pops is awfully cute, but certainly needs to go in a diet: his jowls are all too conspicuous when he relaxes, all splayed out. We keep him in a rabbit hutch outside, which hutch will be graced with an HGTV-style addition before our own house will. We’ve been bringing him indoors every so often to look at him and pet him, and he seems to enjoy that just fine. He and the cat have been sniffing each other out (and I mean that literally; Galli is intrigued by Pop’s butt). Galli remains suspicious, staring at Pops in her focused huntress mode. Pops is laid back, knowing he has the advantage of size.

So far, our major complaint is that when he comes inside, Pops likes to poop (perfectly formed soft pellets) and pee (brownish syrup). We need to get him housebroken and using a litter box. He’s got a scat kink going, too: he’ll wallow in, sniff, and eat his own pellets, and he seems to quite enjoy stretching out in his own urine. Sigh. As much as I enjoy him, I’ve instituted a new house rule: you bring it home, you take care of its excrement.