So what slightly odd things are really important to you?

[stormie]

I added 'slightly odd' so we could eliminate kids, family, dogs, mixed drinks, and pets, and move on to the nouns to which fewer people respond viscerally. Like, speed, wind, bobcats, tubifex worms, microclimates, precipitation . . .

The Notre Dame disaster had me thinking. It is a visceral punch to me, which I just assumed everyone felt, which was wrong. For me, art is one of the really important things, along with numbers, science, and a certain sort of dishonesty. The importance of these things to me is not rational, even with something as rational (or irrational) as numbers, because it is something I believe. If I were to argue the value of these things, ultimately it would come down to "because".

It was very sad when I stopped believe in the existence of justice on earth. Perhaps the reason I still believe these things are important is that I cannot prove they are not.

Hmmm.

So if there's something like this for you, what is it?

[Solfy]

Music.
Some things are solar powered. I am music powered. Songs don't just remind me of things, I feel my past self resides in those songs like a sort of horcrux, and I can access little pieces of myself by listening to them. It soothes, it energizes. Without it I would be bereft. Were I to go deaf tomorrow, it would still be there in my brain, playing on the bizarre random loop that makes me wake each day with a new, often inexplicable earworm.

Not sure if that fits your "slightly odd" criteria, but I'd read a headline recently that not everyone feels that music is an essential part of daily life and I boggled because I can't relate.

[Ludovic]

For me it is the Aral Sea disappearing. I still almost well up when I read the "was" in the Wikipedia article. But the cause of the sadness, although not the cause of its intensity, is not the environmental damage or the ruination of thousands of lives, but because the Aral Sea is on a globe: I've seen it on a globe like a little sibling of the Black Sea and Caspian sea all my life and now it is gone.

[Rat Diva]

Weather. Specifically, weather that's wrong for the season honestly upsets me. I remember one recent Christmas where it was like 70 degrees F on Christmas Eve and I was pissed, man. Having every window in the house plus the back door open (because pots boiling on every burner and stuff in the oven) was just wrong.

I guess I kind of look to it as something I can count on to always be what it's supposed to be in a world where the only thing that stays the same is change.

[JackieLikesVariety]

The Notre Dame disaster had me thinking. It is a visceral punch to me, which I just assumed everyone felt

many felt this way, maybe most (decent) people.

houseplants - because, unlike "wild" plants (you know, outdoors and roaming free) they are stuck where if people don't care for them they just wither away.

I once worked in a nursing home where someone had the bright idea to make the dining room beautiful by buying big hanging baskets of plants, lots of them, at what must have been quite an expense. Just beautiful, they were, until they all died for lack of care. It didn't take long.

nothing could have been more symbolic than all those hanging baskets of dead plants. the people making decision in that home would spend money on anything except labor, so there are constantly not enough people to DO the caring for the living things.

that continues to be true in every nursing home I know about.

[Mr. Plumbean]

My wife is really upset about Notre Dame and I'm not feeling it on a deep level. I mean, it's sad and all but I don't feel as gobsmacked as she does. I love art and old buildings and so forth but I don't know of any one that I would be traumatized to lose the same way I'm traumatized to hear, say, some asshole threw a toddler off a balcony at the Mall of America or some girl saw her parents get murdered and was kept in a guy's remote cabin for four months. That's the kind of shit that sits in my stomach for a long time.

Anyway. Uh.... animals at the micro and macro level, even ones most people don't care about. I am sickened and saddened to learn some beetle is now extinct, for example.

[Mr. Plumbean]

Actually vandalism of public property really saddens me. More than if storm damage or an unavoidable accident did the same thing. The flagrance of ruining things for everybody angers me. Like when people used to trash the U of M campus when they won a hockey championship. Saw some hooligans from Final Four had destroyed a sign at a park where I like to walk and am still stewing over it.

[picunurse]

Originally Posted by stormie

I added 'slightly odd' so we could eliminate kids, family, dogs, mixed drinks, and pets, and move on to the nouns to which fewer people respond viscerally. Like, speed, wind, bobcats, tubifex worms, microclimates, precipitation . . .

The Notre Dame disaster had me thinking. It is a visceral punch to me, which I just assumed everyone felt, which was wrong. For me, art is one of the really important things, along with numbers, science, and a certain sort of dishonesty. The importance of these things to me is not rational, even with something as rational (or irrational) as numbers, because it is something I believe. If I were to argue the value of these things, ultimately it would come down to "because".

It was very sad when I stopped believe in the existence of justice on earth. Perhaps the reason I still believe these things are important is that I cannot prove they are not.

Hmmm.

So if there's something like this for you, what is it?

I value these same things. I value justice, not so much Justice as in our court system, that is broken, maybe beyond repair, but small justice, like honesty or having the things I hold dear being respected, even when they have no value to anyone else.
Art feeds our souls. Science is honest, maybe the ultimate honesty, as are numbers. In fact, there is no way to separate science and numbers, is there?

I'm somewhat pedantic. I have a little OCD. I've been "accused" of having Asperger’s syndrome. I'm not easy to like. But those things don't bother me as long as I have these unalterable yet ephemeral values to lift me.

[Rat Diva]

Originally Posted by JackieLikesVariety

nothing could have been more symbolic than all those hanging baskets of dead plants. the people making decision in that home would spend money on anything except labor, so there are constantly not enough people to DO the caring for the living things.

that continues to be true in every nursing home I know about.

Eurgh, reading that gave me chills because it's so freakin' true.

[AveburyBay]

Vandalism in nature - similar to the public property thing that Mr. Plumbean pointed out - it saddens me when I see spray painted rocks or so many shoes hanging from a tree that it is clearly going to die. Or idiots that topple landmark stone structures.

[Oxirane]

I love music, all kinds of music, but I'm not sure I have the same visceral feelings for music as Solfy describes. I get it, I understand it, I've seen it in others, and as much as I love music, I'm not sure I feel the same.

I do about history, I love history, I especially love to visit history...I've walked down the aisle of Notre Dame, the same aisle walked by Napoleon during his coronation, it was powerful, the same sense I've felt in walking the grounds of the Tower of London and sitting in the chapel with Anne Boleyn...walking Pickett's Charge and retracing the steps of the 20th Maine on Little Round Top filled me with awe, Lincoln was absolutely correct when he called Gettysburg, "This hallowed ground"...it's a feeling that somehow touches my soul...so when history is lost, it's gone forever, never to be the same, and it breaks my heart...now is not the time or place to debate whether one believes there should be monuments of Confederate generals standing in public, but it absolutely pisses me off when a group of thugs decide it needs to go and tears them down - have a debate, have a discussion, I understand the angst one might feel by them, so talk publicly and get a movement going, but don't take it upon yourself to destroy history...and I'd feel that way about any history destroyed by stupidity...

I love reading history, I can transport myself to that place and time, it just resonates with me...

I'd like to think I feel that way about chemistry, but I think that's more a sense of accomplishment, when I was synthesizing polymers, I loved when one would turn out like I planned but that's just matter of follow through, chemistry is predictable, the devil is in the details and as long as you pay attention to the details, it should (ha!) work out as expected...I still get excited when I mix things together and the result reacts as expected and fulfills the purpose intended, it's fun, it's a sense of accomplishment, but I'm not sure it's the same feeling I get from history...pays the bills, though...

[Slate]

Juliet balconies. I just really, really hate those fucking things. If I see one when I'm walking down the street, I'm instantly gripped in a murderous rage.

[Mr. Plumbean]

Move to Minneapolis, it'll lower your blood pressure. I don't think I see those and don't know where I would. MAYBE Crocus Hill in St. Paul? They have a lot of old school (and ostentatious) buildings.

[Slate]

I've never been to Minnesota. I like the cold, so I'd probably like it. Almost everything I know about the place I learned from Lucas and Virgil.

[Mr. Plumbean]

My wife was friends with his daughters when they were kids. (Meaning John Camp's kids, and John Camp being the real name of John Sandford).

[stormie]

Originally Posted by Mr. Plumbean

. . . the same way I'm traumatized to hear, say, some asshole threw a toddler off a balcony at the Mall of America or some girl saw her parents get murdered and was kept in a guy's remote cabin for four months. That's the kind of shit that sits in my stomach for a long time.

I think, I hope, all sane people feel this way.

Originally Posted by picunurse

Science is honest, maybe the ultimate honesty, as are numbers. In fact, there is no way to separate science and numbers, is there?

That is exactly how I feel! We can be a little odd together <3

I HATE bad science and roll around good science like a puppy. People who use science and numbers to blind others with their opinions are . . . only slightly above pedophiles. Sly and bad, they know a bullshit pie chart will make people listen to them, even unto political policy.

I love the numbers that make science, and allow people to stretch the world beyond the visible - like that black hole, and the way it was theorized to exist, generating a massive search. Visual art does the same for me on a visceral level. Art is at it's essence not about any objective truth; it is about extending my world in a way that hauls me in.

Until I was maybe 3 I had untreated vision problems that made the world very interesting. If I take off my glasses that world is still there. I think it made me sensitive to line, light and color, rather than objects, in a fairly odd way that opened art to me. Sadly, the same vision problems help me to suck at making art.

I think some people are something they would not be thought as. A writer is someone who cannot help but write, published or no. I no longer do science professionally but I am and will continue to be a scientist.

[Ludovic]

Originally Posted by Slate

Juliet balconies. I just really, really hate those fucking things. If I see one when I'm walking down the street, I'm instantly gripped in a murderous rage.

I have to admit that that is slightly odd. I myself would hate being in a room with one, but not seeing them from the outside.

[Slate]

It's bad enough when it's just bars flat up against the wall giving the lucky owner a personal prison environment, but look at this stupid fucking thing:



Jesus Christ! What is that? It's perfect if you want to stand out there with your feet sideways while you sing Don't Cry For Me Argentina to the adoring peasants, but not much else.

Just build a fucking balcony already.

[SmartAleq]

Do you follow McMansion Hell? Because she loves nonfunctional balconies (and other bullshit architectural "features") just as much as you do.

Little omens, good and bad, have a disproportionate effect on my outlook--probably a function of anxiety. I try to get my top brain to be sensible about what actual importance these little omens have in the grand scheme of things but it's an uphill battle sometimes to really believe it. Of course, this means that sometimes a warm ray of sunshine on my face in the morning can be enough to offset a truly amazing series of bullshit events so there's that.

[Glazer]

I don't mind the railing across the doorway. I don't like that the doors open inward. They take up too much space in the room just to have a door to nowhere open.

[Jaglavak]

Originally Posted by AveburyBay

Vandalism in nature - similar to the public property thing that Mr. Plumbean pointed out - it saddens me when I see spray painted rocks or so many shoes hanging from a tree that it is clearly going to die. Or idiots that topple landmark stone structures.

Out at the end of a dirt road not far from here, there is a beautiful overlook at the edge of a 50 ft cliff. There is one beach ball sized rock at the very point extending out about four feet. A couple years ago some ass monkey scaled out there and painted his name right were everybody has to look at it. Nice going, Karl. Any sane person would need a climbing harness and some anchors to get out there.

Last time I was there, some extremely cool person had clambered out there and scrubbed off all the paint. Good as new.

[picunurse]

Originally Posted by stormie

I think, I hope, all sane people feel this way.

That is exactly how I feel! We can be a little odd together <3

I HATE bad science and roll around good science like a puppy. People who use science and numbers to blind others with their opinions are . . . only slightly above pedophiles. Sly and bad, they know a bullshit pie chart will make people listen to them, even unto political policy.

I love the numbers that make science, and allow people to stretch the world beyond the visible - like that black hole, and the way it was theorized to exist, generating a massive search. Visual art does the same for me on a visceral level. Art is at it's essence not about any objective truth; it is about extending my world in a way that hauls me in.

Until I was maybe 3 I had untreated vision problems that made the world very interesting. If I take off my glasses that world is still there. I think it made me sensitive to line, light and color, rather than objects, in a fairly odd way that opened art to me. Sadly, the same vision problems help me to suck at making art.

I think some people are something they would not be thought as. A writer is someone who cannot help but write, published or no. I no longer do science professionally but I am and will continue to be a scientist.

I'm the opposite. I have and have always had very acute eyesight. I see things that others miss. That, combined with my ADHD/OCD, makes me AWARE, sometimes painfully so.
I've worked in scientific pursuits my entire adult life. When I retired I became an artist. I painted and did stained glass. Now, I have arthritis in my hands, so I can no longer do either. It makes me sad, but the loss of beauty in the greater world is heart wrenching.

Those people who use science to confuse and frighten others are NOT scientists. They are charlatans.

[Mr. Plumbean]

So if facts about global warming scare someone then the scientist is evil? I don't know how you can define legitimacy of science around how it makes other people feel.

[SmartAleq]

I think a better example would be "Dr" Mercola, who takes cherry picked studies, cherry picks the results then gets very ominously tendentious about whatever fictional danger he's decided to push at the moment. Being legitimately scared at scary stuff is legit--in the case of climate change, it's the people who cherry pick data to insinuate there's no problem and therefore no reason to change our current course who're the ones who need dropping off a very high cliff.

[BJMoose]

Originally Posted by Mr. Plumbean

So if facts about global warming scare someone then the scientist is evil? I don't know how you can define legitimacy of science around how it makes other people feel.

You can't. Science is not about feelings; it is about facts. Those who do not grasp that basic axiom are idiots.

[picunurse]

Originally Posted by Mr. Plumbean

So if facts about global warming scare someone then the scientist is evil? I don't know how you can define legitimacy of science around how it makes other people feel.

Read my comment again. I said,

Those people who use science to confuse and frighten others are NOT scientists. They are charlatans.

SmartAleq said it better. Thank you, SmartAleq

[Glazer]

Reading. My mother started teaching me to read as a toddler. Then she died when I was five. Later my stepmother got rid of all traces that she ever existed. My only memories of her are of reading. The one thing that couldn't be taken away.

[SmartAleq]

That's super sad, Glazer, I'm sorry that happened to you. It's good you have that remembrance though, and such a good one to have. Reading is, indeed, fundamental.

[Solfy]

Originally Posted by BJMoose

You can't. Science is not about feelings; it is about facts. Those who do not grasp that basic axiom are idiots.

That's true, but it's not the whole story. You could say the temperature today in Pittsburgh is 74°F. That is a fact. Then you have to put it in context - is that unseasonably warm for this date and this location? Is there a trend? Does the tendency of that trend rise above the noise in the data? What are the temperature trends in the areas surrounding PA? In all of North America? On other continents? Can you take that data and forecast forward? How accurate are those forecasts? What model did you use to generate them? Are the models you used accurate/complete/well-informed?

People can take facts and bundle them with other facts to tell a story that aligns with their agenda. You could bundle them with a whole different set of facts and tell a different story. People can use facts to build a model that gives them a prediction they want to see. Other people can develop different models that produce different predictions.

Scientific communities are designed to be self-policing, e.g. people reproduce other studies to validate data, peer reviewed journals are intended to weed out data presented with insufficient rigor or skewed conclusions. These systems are set up to try to minimize the impact of feelings or agendas in looking at what's factual. Even with all of that there can be a lack of consensus as to what a given set of facts means, and there are those who have zero qualms about misrepresenting facts or ignoring inconvenient ones to push their own agendas.

[Mr. Plumbean]

Originally Posted by picunurse

Read my comment again. I said,

SmartAleq said it better. Thank you, SmartAleq

That's a pretty fine distinction and a lot of meaning I was to extrapolate from one weak verb.

[Sparkers]

Sea level rise may refill the Aral Sea, and will create many new seas around the world.

While billions of dollars are donated to repair one old church, France's rural population is going bankrupt and facing the choice of suicide or civil war.

[Mr. Plumbean]

Instead of saying "using science to scare people," just say "people who lie." It's not even the fear that's the problem. It sure as hell isn't the science. It's the lying that's the problem.

[Solfy]

Originally Posted by Sparkers

While billions of dollars are donated to repair one old church, France's rural population is going bankrupt and facing the choice of suicide or civil war.

People are dying because they can't afford their insulin while other people are carrying around $1,200 purses. Welcome to the world.

Originally Posted by Mr. Plumbean

Instead of saying "using science to scare people," just say "people who lie." It's not even the fear that's the problem. It sure as hell isn't the science. It's the lying that's the problem.

Not everyone proclaiming their particular interpretation of facts is doing it out of malice. Some people honestly believe that they have the right interpretation and feel very passionately about their interpretation. They don't think they're lying. That's why it's so important to be able to look at information critically, and to take in viewpoints from multiple informed sources.

[Carolia]

I care deeply about symmetry. I spent a good deal of time highly irritated that the people down the road from our second apartment had two globe light fixtures with four lights each that never, ever all were working—and it was different lights at different time. I fold all the towels so that the smooth ends are out even though nobody sees them. My husband and daughter love punching pills out of packages in random order to make me crazy. I rearrange eggs in the carton if they aren’t symmetrical.

Yeah, my psychiatrist says I don’t have OCD, but I do have some “OCD-like tendencies.” Don’t even get my family started on the constant humming I am incapable of controlling.

[JackieLikesVariety]

some of y'all are going to make me cry. I wish I could hug you in person!

When I retired I became an artist. I painted and did stained glass. Now, I have arthritis in my hands, so I can no longer do either. It makes me sad, but the loss of beauty in the greater world is heart wrenching.

Originally Posted by Glazer

Reading. My mother started teaching me to read as a toddler. Then she died when I was five. Later my stepmother got rid of all traces that she ever existed. My only memories of her are of reading. The one thing that couldn't be taken away.

[picunurse]

Originally Posted by JackieLikesVariety

some of y'all are going to make me cry. I wish I could hug you in person!

Thank you, Jackie!

[Wolf Larsen]

Space flight, particularly engine starts and takeoffs.

[SmartAleq]

Ooh, good one, Wolfie!

Old locomotives. The train engine changed the world and I love seeing those old behemoths that can still giddy up and go down the tracks. Magnificent machinery, just a perfect marriage of brute force and elegance. Truly it has been said that everybody loves a train.

Precision in driving. Paying attention to spacing and smooth operation and clean lines through turns and anticipating what's coming next and being efficient. I know this is one that hardly anyone pays attention to because, well, I'm on the road a lot and I see how they all drive! I seldom take interstates just because they lull you into not paying attention and I really like paying attention to driving. A challenging trip over fun roads is better than sex by a long shot.

[stormie]

Originally Posted by Mr. Plumbean

So if facts about global warming scare someone then the scientist is evil? I don't know how you can define legitimacy of science around how it makes other people feel.

OOOh I don't think that was what was meant. What was meant was that attempting to misinform and scare people using numbers, scientific research so biased by the researcher as to make the question irrefutable, or straight up bias presented as science is evil.

I would add scientist that science just for the buxx, but that's odd of me.

[Anacanapuna]

Proper grammar.

[Zeener Diode]

Originally Posted by Anacanapuna

Proper grammar.

Would you please use that in a correct sentence, Mr. Anacapuna?

[BJMoose]

He is too busy pounding on his computer monitor right now. Please try again later.

[Mr. Plumbean]

Originally Posted by Anacanapuna

Proper grammar.

I've learned that many people's idea of proper grammar is highly idiosyncratic and most "peeves" are hypercorrective.

[Solfy]

Originally Posted by Mr. Plumbean

I've learned that many people's idea of proper grammar is highly idiosyncratic and most "peeves" are hypercorrective.

I see you've met my coworker.

[Borborygmi]

Look, I didn't want to kill him, but he pronounced 'data' as dah-tah and used it as a singular. What choice did I have?

[BJMoose]

None at all.

But did you really have to draw and quarter him?

[Borborygmi]

It would hardly have been much of a warning to the others if I hadn't.