jenthehumanist

[jenthehumanist]

Only men with tiny poles care about pole size.

[jenthehumanist]

What differentiates marching from walking. Hint: it’s not that they are synchronizing their steps. Though that is part of it.

Humans naturally sync up our step rate when walking with other humans. We do this unconsciously. To be out of sync requires conscious effort. No marcher concentrates on synchronization. It’s the other elements of marching that require effort.

First, my qualifications. I was elected drum major of my high school band at the end of my freshman year. Yes, that’s highly unusual. I had been in a competition field show youth band for a few years before high school so I was as actually experienced enough and qualified for the role and was encouraged to audition for my peers. I was elected and this meant I taught freshmen how to march during summer band camp for 3 years in high school.

I never worried about teaching my band mates how to synchronize together. That comes naturally. What I taught them was how to place their feet and how I wanted their feet to hit the ground. I taught them about knee placement and height, I taught them the posture I wanted from them AND most importantly I taught them how to take a uniform stride length.

The goal was not only for all the legs to look and move in a uniform way, but also for them to be taking a uniform stride length which helps to maintain their lines. Without a uniform stride length the lines dissolve and become wavy. The visual impact of uniform foot strike, knee height, posture and straight lines created by uniform stride length is stunning. But it only really works when the lines are straight which requires uniform stride length. When you see wavy lines, it’s because stride lengths aren’t uniform.

The important thing I want you to understand is that uniform stride length is the HARDEST part of marching to master. It is what takes almost all the practice.

Which brings me to the military parade and the video of a unit that wasn’t synchronized and why everyone who knows marching was astonished by it.

The first thing you notice is… they aren’t synchronized. And they stayed unsynchronized.

This is astonishing because humans walking together will synchronize unconsciously. If they get out of sync within a few steps they will be back in sync. To maintain desynchronization takes conscious effort.

What that means is: we just saw every individual in that unit exerting conscious effort to not step in sync. You only expend that type of effort if you really really really don’t want to be in synch.

But it went beyond that. They were also taking different types of steps and had different knee heights and had different postures.

The only thing that was uniform is the hardest thing to keep uniform, which is stride length. That… was uniform. And it should not have been given their step type, knee heights and postures were not only not uniform, they also weren’t in sync!

Yet, their stride length kept their lines tight and straight!!! Despite all the other disparities in what they were doing. Like seriously.. their lines should NOT have been straight.

If they were walking normally and without thought, they would have had wonky wavy lines and their legs would not have been uniform but their step timing would have been in sync.

Instead, their lines were tight and everything else was off. And I mean, every individual was doing something different with timing, type of step, posture and knee height. This lack of uniformity should have created bad lines, but didn’t.

If they were just being lazy their wavy lines would have given them away as lazy. Lazy marchers step in time but don’t have even stride lengths. They weren’t being lazy. That was an incredibly disciplined display, because they made everything BUT their stride length variable.

Which is why everyone who knows marching is saying the only way for what we saw to happen, is that they not only did it intentionally, they had to practice it to create that display. It required a tremendous amount of discipline and practice and concentration to do what they did. Every single person in that unit had to agree to do it and work hard to make it happen.

Seriously, you have to concentrate hard to not be in sync in the way they weren’t. It was impressive what they did. Like astonishingly impressive. I had no idea something like that was even possible.

[jenthehumanist]

Was at a restaurant with hubby and son for Father’s Day.

A young man walked in who was a dead ringer for Eric Idle. So much so that had he not been a young man, I would have sworn it was Eric Idle.

Just looked up photos of Eric’s son and it’s not his son. Just a young man who seriously looks like Eric Idle.

[jenthehumanist]

Why white Christian supremacists aren’t actually Christians.

Thou shalt not kill. And yet one of these assholes, a preacher, did indeed kill. Multiple times. This morning. They are horrible people. Nasty horrible people who claim to be moral, but clearly aren’t. They clearly don’t understand Jesus teachings. At. All. Fuck them all. They aren’t supreme. They are petty assholes. And this one belongs in jail.

[jenthehumanist]

Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow dancer, except…

At a contra dance having a good time. Caller using robins and larks instead of leaders and followers or ladies and gents. A woman in a cool square dance outfit tells me… the felon said the felon secured there were only men and woman and this robin and larks.

A) who cares. B) a president doesn’t dictate language usage. C) this explains her square dance outfit.

#iykyk

[jenthehumanist]

Was watching a church service at the assisted living home and one of the preachers came up to me to give me this.

It makes me happy even though I’m an atheist.

[jenthehumanist]

Gaming confession

I just missed the timing in dream light valley to photograph the black turtle with Mirabel. I was 15 mins late as I was actually being productive today and just forgot it was only until four. It is not scheduled to come back for another week!.

So I did something I never ever do. I manually set the time on my switch to 2 hours earlier. Restarted the game and got my photo. Then reset to current time.

I realize I cheated. (Sigh)

Does this make me a bad person?

[jenthehumanist]

Propaganda vs. Reality

Decades ago I was at street scene in LA waiting at a stage in an alley for the show to start. It didn't. They never told us - concert is cancelled, please leave, which would have been nice as we all would have left. Instead, at some point, a line of mounted police showed up and started advancing on us all. It was terrifying. Crowd encouraged each other to stay calm. The media called it - a riot.

[jenthehumanist]

Atheists Unite!

I went to the market today and as I was heading back to my car, there were a couple of Mormon kids they call "elders" who were asking people if they wanted to attend church with them on Sunday. They approached the lady in front of me putting her stuff away and she said - sorry - I'm an atheist.

They thanked her and then asked me - I said - I'm an atheist too! We high fived over her car. Then started chatting, we were exchanging phone numbers when the boys (elders) came back and asked us if we had just become friends because of this - and we smiled and said yes! What a great day.

[jenthehumanist]

Videos don’t do fireflies justice. They are magical.

[jenthehumanist]

How many centuries before you can consider yourself native to an area? Or indigenous?

It’s an interesting question. I’m doing genealogy. Currently looking at my revolutionary war ancestors. I’ve got 6 of them that I know of and yes, I’ve applied to DAR.

I’m also a Mayflower descendant. I’ve always considered myself a proper American Mutt with ancestors coming from various places across the full span of Europe over time.

Turns out that time span of arrival was over 400 years.

To put this in perspective, my grandmother’s family had been from the same town in Germany for over 400 years when one of them came over to join the Oneida cult. That’s a long long time.

I’ve only just now realized parts of my family have been in North America for over 400 years now.

We are clearly a family of immigrants, but at some point, should we consider ourselves native? The ancestors with my maiden name were here 150 years before the revolution even occurred! That’s a long time.

But how can we be native when I’ve got ancestors who killed and were killed by people whose families had been here for thousands of years. I’m merely a centuries old native. Not millennia native.

I don’t have an answer. Just pondering the span of time. And no, I don’t appear to have any native blood in me. Everyone in my direct line is descendant from someone who came from Europe in the past 400 years.

I suppose that is why the term indigenous is better than native for the people whose families go back millennia. I’m clearly not ethnically indigenous to North America.

I’m ethnically a mutt. But, I’m also definitely pre USA.. like, I don’t like or want to apply the term native to myself, so what is the correct term? Aside from colonizer, which was accurate for the original settlers in my family tree, but not necessarily for me as the product of those settlers and other immigrants many of whom, especially on my moms side were fleeing persecution yearning to breathe free.

if the government wanted to exile me or deport me, where would they send me, I’m from here. But so is everyone who is here. I guess that’s why I just prefer American. It encompasses everything. The good, the bad. And the scope of time and the melting pot nature of my family’s various stories.

I suspect I’m asking the wrong question. It’s just my mind was blown when I realized the time span of my ancestry in USA.

[jenthehumanist]

Sitting on our back porch and an owl flew overhead and up into a neighbor’s tree. Then a single feather started to fall. It stayed aloft for a long while, across 2 yards, finally planting itself in our yard.

[jenthehumanist]

Son and I went for a post lunch walk. It started to drizzle and then full on rained. I told him the Hawaiian way is to accept you are getting wet and just allow yourself to get wet since you can dry off after. We had a nice walk despite the rain. He’s making herbal tea for us now that we’ve changed out.

[jenthehumanist]

Kids playing hide and seek is one of the most joyous things you can overhear.

[jenthehumanist]

What greeted me as I left Sinners today. My smile was because it was a surprise. These were not there when we entered the theater.

[jenthehumanist]

I volunteer at a zoo. The volunteer manager told me that she and everyone else has photos and videos of just about every animal doing it. In fact, she’s instructed her best friend to delete her photos after she dies.

It’s not arousing to view, more interesting and funny.

So now that I know it’s a thing, I’m thinking it would make a good coffee table book. Or video series. Because the video of these two is pretty funny.

[jenthehumanist]

Books I recommend.

I was asked what books I recommend people read. Here are my top 5. #books #humanism