Corn as high as an elephant's eye in Chilliwack

From a short camping adventure near Chilliwack BC this July.

Why does my weight go up and down when I am on a diet? Also, weigh in tips.

It's frustrating to get big ups and downs of your pounds day to day and even hour by hour.  About six pounds a day, mostly water, goes in and out.  See picture showing my 90 day weigh-ins.  The trend-line is steadybut the road is bumpy.

We measure pounds to indirectly measure calories.  3500 calories skipped is a pound of fat lost. (Roughly accurate).    But what I eat and drink and pee and breathe out are also pounds, mostly water, and not pounds of flesh.  If my diet is consistent, my daily flesh loss will be consistent.

My goal is to lose one pound a week or 2-1/4 ounces per day (Equivalent to the weight of six cherries every day).  It turns out that the amount of stuff (mostly water) that goes in and out of my body every day is 40 times bigger than that.  No wonder it's hard to get consistent results every day.

Here's a graphic.  Below it is my data from measuring one day.  The numbers are a fair fit.  (I think "metabolism" refers to some of your fat being taken out of reserves and put into the daily mix for activity.)

I weighed everything I could for one day and compared it to an online graphic.  Here's the information: (A millileter of food and drink is pretty close in weight to one gram.)

IN:
Food by weight:  1180 grams
Beverages by weight:  1630 grams.
Total:  2810 grams or  6 pounds and 3 ounces.

OUT
Urine by weight:  1780 grams
The brown stuff:  150 grams.
Total:   1930 grams or  4 lbs 4 ounces.

My beginning weight:  196.6 lbs.
My weight 24 hours later:  196.2 lbs.
The obvious IN and OUT don't balance and yet my weight stayed about the same.
Poo is a much smaller factor than pee and the rest of the loss must be in moisture that my damp breath and sweaty skin gave out.   Besides  that, extra salty dishes will temoprarily bump your weight as water is retained.  (You'll see marks where your socks imprint the skin).  Cut your salt back for a couple days if you want a great weigh-in.

And herewith, a couple weigh-in tips.
-The wise ones tell us to weigh just once a week and they are probably right since there is so much intraday variation.  On the other hand, if you don't like that, weigh as often as you are curious.
-If you use something several times a day like butter or liquor, just weigh it once, at the beginning and the end of the day.  I used to like a tiny sip of Drambuie at regular intervals and it added up to to a lot of calories, even though it was just a teaspoon at a time and "not worth weighing".  For a while I weighed the bottle morning and night.  Then, armed with the new information, cut the Drambuie from my diet.
-Your lowest weight of the day will almost certainly be when you get up in the morning, after having peed and having breathed out a lot of moisture.  This could be two or three pounds every night.
-In case you wonder, your towel picks up about a third of a cup of water (80 grams) from drying your skin.  People with long hair will get a larger number.
-If you like to weigh early and weigh often, take the things you usually wear around the house during the day (in my case this excluded shoes but included a cell phone, belt,  and long pants) and weigh them on a kitchen scale.  In my case, this worked out to 3.0 pounds, less if I wore shorts.  Subtract that figure to get your naked-as-the-day-you-were-born number.
-Your scale isn't perfectly accurate.  It's hard to read a spring operated scale closer than a pound.  An electronic scale may give a couple readings the same but ten minutes later give a different reading, say .4 or .6 pounds up or down.  An e-scale that has been bumped may need to recalibrate.  This means the second reading will be more accurate than the first.  UPDATE:  We changed from sculptured floor tile to smooth tile and the digital scale began to be remarkably consistent. If the floor isn't really flat, you are probably getting some false readings.

Robot subs with A-bombs

How does this sound?  A nuclear sub is fitted with several mini robot subs, each kitted with an A-bomb.  Launch the mini, have it travel a thousand miles to an enemy coastline and then blow itself up on the seabed, undetected.  The result is a killer tidal wave, triggered by a 10 to 100 megaton bomb.

Russia just launched the Belograd submarine.  This is one of its untested capabilities, the Poseidon AUV  (autonomous underwater vehicle).
h/t  Strategy Page.

Five-Pin Bowling Tips for Average Bowlers Plus 'One Weird Tip'.

As a much-improved average bowler, I've some five-pin bowling tips.  There's so little on-line about five pin, probably because it's just big in Canada, that even a greenhorn who learned a few things has a contribution.  Also, I've got an excuse for you:  The tip from an experienced player may not work for you until you have muscle memories of throwing a ball thousands of times.  (Prove it to yourself by trying to apply your latest throwing skill to throwing with the other hand.)

I was bowling about 110 per game.  Then I started bowling almost every day for exercise and to feel like I fit into a league.  With about 25 sets of three games bowled per month for ten months, the average moved up to 170.   (BTW a fast pitched set of three games burns just under 200 calories, making room for more cake at dessert.)

TIP 1:  Practice.
That's pretty obvious but that's what made the difference.  Some people have a naturally good aim but even someone like me can catch up with practice.  (If you join a league and do extra practice bowling that isn't a pre-bowl, you can probably get discounts.  Bowl BC has a card that gives any league player 3 for the price of 2 games.)

Tip 2: Everything you do to deliver the ball that doesn't give the ball direction and motion is style, not bowling.  You can stand at the foul line, move your hand back, then let it fall forward while letting go of the ball and do quite well.  Most of your points come from the last fraction of a second before you release the ball.  Remembering this can help.  Improve the last quarter second of every shot.  Only when you are touching the ball are you aiming it.  ADDED:  Follow through.  This is great advice but doesn't mean a thing after your fingers stop touching the ball.  The rest is ballet.  That last fraction of a second is where you have the most influence.  That last fraction of a second is also where a lot of people give their wrist an unhelpful little flick.  That's also why I like a longer windup.  It gives me a tiny extra moment to adjust the aim, like shooting a long-bore rifle instead of a pistol.

TIP 3:  Use the marks on the lane to aim
People kept telling me this but I didn't believe them.  Instead, I'd aim for the pins.  My score jumped the day I finally used marks.  Aiming for the nearby mark is easier to correct than aiming at the far away pin, since you likely look down briefly while throwing and then have to quickly re-focus to release the ball.

TIP 4:  Watch how others in your league make the approach, and make your own choice.
It seems all the hot shot bowlers have a similar style but that's not true of regular league players with scores in the 100-200 range.  Some run up three steps, some stand at the foul line.  Some fire the ball like a bullet, others let it idle down the lane.  Some have a whisper ball and some let it land with a clunk.  I've even seen good scores consistently coming from shooting the ball from between their legs.  There seems to be an ideal form for top bowlers, but there are so many other things the average bowler can do to improve, don't fret form.

TIP 5:  A faster ball quite often takes out extra pins.
Older skilled  bowlers usually have to take it easy but it's still true that a faster ball adds a few points.  Every few dozen games when I'm trying for the last 2 pin, my hard ball drops in the gutter and jumps back out to take out the pin.  A slightly off-centre knock on the headpin can take out two to five pins depending on the impact energy.  After a fast ball, one flying pin may miss the outside 2 pin but still get it after bouncing off the side wall.  The slow roller  often leaves one or two pins behind, despite a tight aim. Every other game, I have a shot that takes out pins on one side and also the number 2 pin on the far side. Sometimes, I don't even see that other 2 pin fall down.  Apparently a hard hit pin from the first side can hit the string of the other 2 pin.  The string moves just enough to trigger a point.  (Points aren't recorded by the pin-to-floor contact but by the motion of the string over a drum).   Now read Tip 6 for the easiest way to get a faster ball.

TIP 6:  Try a longer back-swing to allow more aiming time.
I see good bowlers with a short swing but for me, it works better to have a longer back swing.   I even let my arm rotate a bit to free the backswing to reach pretty much up to shoulder height.  The reason for this is I find there's a tiny faction of a second before releasing the ball when I can fine-tune the aim.  I don't know about you, but I like a chance to patch my mistakes and that fractional second of awareness that comes from a longer forward motion, gives me that chance.  A longer backswing, gave me a chance to aim twice, once for the big picture and once for finer control.   A side benefit of the longer backswing is that the ball picks up forward momentum, without extra effort on your part, while dropping from shoulder height.  That ball, being a little faster,  may take out more pins.  ADDED: It takes little energy to swing the ball further behind you but it picks up quite a bit extra speed dropping forward without you using muscle.   In every game, there's a couple frames where a soft ball swung forward with a little more momentum would have taken out one or two more pins.

TIP 7  Lose the Curve Ball
Apparently a curve ball is the key to top scoring in ten pin bowling.  From what I've seen, that's not true for five pin.  It's untrue, even though I know some strong bowlers who throw a curve and do very well.  A strike with a curve ball is the result of correctly calculating two motions instead of one motion.  Why make it so complicated?  Incidentally, a fast ball with a spin doesn't have enough time to curve much and goes pretty straight.  A slow ball with spin will change direction in the first half of the alley and then settle down to go straight.

Tip 8:  Keep a calm place in your mind
I know this is important but haven't mastered it.  Having a quiet picture of the pins down there, a picture that doesn't get jostled as you move forward and move the ball into the backswing, seems to help.  Treating the backswing as an incidental while I focus on the pleasure of releasing a tight well-tracked ball, seems to help.   Holding the picture just of those lovely black marks on the alley in mind and treating all other physical activity up to the release as background chatter, seems to help.  The common feature is "a calm place in your mind".  Someone did MRI scans of pro and amateur golfers making a shot.   The amateur brain lit up everywhere with concentration.  The pro just lit up in a few spots.

Tip 9:  Animal spirits
Animal spirits, energy, a feeling of health and eagerness seems to help a lot.  How I handle the rest of my life and my weight and exercise and relationships,  helps me bowl.  A run of dispiriting shots tends to make the next shot poorer.

Tip 10:  Luck
I've asked some bowlers how much of their score is luck.  One says 20%.  A second thinks more.  When I look at a spreadsheet I kept for six months, I see games ranging from 118 to 264.  Roll with the punches and enjoy the occasional great game. For peace of mind, I look for tight shots.  If all the balls are close to where I meant, I'm pretty happy even if the score is disappointing.     When you get two or three head pins, you may feel bad, but I feel good.  The points are low but the skill is high.   By the way, you'll probably be a little luckier on your second game!  I kept track of hundreds of 3-game sets for a while and the middle game averaged about 5 points higher.  It seemed like the first game was partly warmup and by the third game I was tiring.

Tip 11: Change targets as you get better.
When I started, my goal was to keep the balls out of the gutter.  That was it!  A bowling coach told me that after you start getting the head pin more often, practice aiming for the 3 pins or aiming for the 2 pins, even before the head pin!  Learn the "crooked" shots the same way you were learning "straight down the middle".

Tip 12:  Grip    You hear people saying "It slipped".  It's often true.  This is a big deal because it's the last fraction of a second that decides how the ball aims.  The balls are heavy and large for a hand to grip but if you look closely, you'll see they are not all the same size.  If you give your hand a wipe with a damp cloth or rub on some anti-slip paste that the alley probably sells, you'll improve the grip.  If you have a choice, pick balls with a polished look.  The natural moisture in your skin will grip them better. 

Tip 13:  Don't feel bad ignoring advice from pro bowlers.  They are probably right but there's no place in your brain to file the information.  You have to lay down tracks with lots of throws and approaches to make your own map.  Then their advice begins to make sense.

Tip 14: Have some fun and make friends.
The same coach reminded me of this.  It really doesn't matter.  You're getting exercise (100 to 200 calories burnt in a set of three games depending on your energy).  You're making friends.

Tip 15: For seniors with a slow ball:   A lot of older bowlers make do with a very slow delivery because they have lost some of their youthful strength.   Swing the ball up behind you a little further, and then it will fall forward with more force when you release it.  Gravity does the job for you.   This is the same action as Tip 6 but for a different reason.   I think you'll take out several more pins every game.

Tip 16: "One Weird Tip" as they say.
I've been finding I do best when I don't look at the pins or even the mark on the lane half way down.  After confirming the pins are in place,  I let my face drop and my eyes focus on the centre-line board of the alley at my feet while raising the ball behind me. As I bring the ball down and forward, I move my gaze smoothly forward along that one floor board so that I'm looking at both the floorboard and the tips of my fingers as they release the ball.  Why does this help me?  Maybe because it avoids sudden changes of eye focus and ties the AIM to the MOMENT OF RELEASE.

Footnotes:  Some other little things:  Don't wear a tight shirt sleeve that can't move freely.  Empty your pocket on the side you shoot from so you don't bump your wallet while delivering the ball.   Remember to show courtesies to the bowler to your right.  Remember there are some lighter balls available, if you ask.  If you really need it, there is a ball made with a thumb hole.  (If your wrist is weak, that's helpful, but the flat spot at the finger hole will often cause your ball to wander left or right).  Let your bowling neighbours give you tips.  (They may not be right or you may not be ready to listen to them, but you'll probably learn something)

Tip 17, The Confession:

There's so much I don't know.  Some of the best bowlers slide and have pads on their shoes and slippery powders to add.  Some of the best bowlers polish their balls regularly during play. A lot of the good bowlers pay attention to how well dressed (oiled) the lanes are and observe no-spin balls that none-the-less pull left or right on certain lanes, depending on how recently the lane was dressed.  They will also switch between balls of different hardness to change how well the ball grips the lane.

The future, ten pin version has a machine that shows perfect strikes every time:  It is unbeatable! 👌🤣

 
  

Last updated:  July 10 2022

Goodbye LIttle Brother, Hello Big Brother

One-baby-families summon big government.  Demography rules and it means "goodbye, little brother, hello Big Brother".  The math is easy.  You can explain it to a kid in Grade Three.  After two generations of one-kid-only, this is what you get:  No brother and no sisters.  No cousins.  No aunts and no uncles.   Say goodbye to a support system  and shared values outside the nuclear family of three. Going to church as a family for Thanksgiving, and singing Christmas carols with people from your neighbourhood, saying the Lord's prayer and singing "God Save The Queen" before class, cheering for the same hockey teams, watching Bonanza and Ed Sullivan Sunday nights and talking about it Monday morning: It's all extinct or trending there.

We need family and community.
Today's alternative has to be collective. 
The top candidate is The Deep State. 
A close second and gaining is the shame-chamber of Social Media.

The generation I'm looking at is the one coming right after the precious snowflakes now in the news for their petty rage.  These young adults will have no kinfolk, just parents and step-parents, and tons of grandparents.  Demography is merciless.  These folk will ask for more government and get it.  They will join digital tribes and mobs in exact measure as the family shrinks.  We need family and community.  This is today's price.

Goodbye little sister, little brother.
Hello Big Bro.

I prefer popular government to gentry rule

Those baying against populism must prefer unpopular government.     You've heard "Trumps rise proves how dangerous populism is for democracy" (NBC)  Enough of that!  I'm thinking back to Barack H. Obama's fund-raising trips to LA.  The secret service shut down entire streets for his cavalcade to by-invitation-only celebrity luncheons in gentry homes.  I compare that to crowds of ten and twenty thousand streaming out to hear Donald J. Trump in person.  Tickets free.  No roads closed. You don't have to show your wallet to get in.  In other words, a populist appeal and one unprecedented in my lifetime. .  

At the end of the day, and by that I mean by tomorrow night, we'll know if popular is coming out ahead.  Trump has been flying out for one and even two GOTV talks with hearty endorsements every day.    Congress folks will be glad of the ride on Mr. Trump's coattails.

Trump's Rise Proves How Dangerous Populism Is for Democracy

Trump's Rise Proves How Dangerous Populism Is for Democracy

Village idiots are back

Thanks to social media, the exercise of power has reverted to our neighbours, our digital neighbours. Doxing, shaming, hounding and generally keeping everybody in line is the new norm. We are giving up the freedom of the city and reverting to our old ways, pre-industrial village ways. The exercise of power is the character of government. Although parliament and congress retain powers of taxation and death over citizens, the social media village has its own laws that have garnered greater and more immediate reach. We’re at the beginning of this digital atavism. Until protocols are built to guard freedom of choice on the privately run webs, we will be pushed a little further into the night, away from civility (”Civitas”, Latin word for “city”) and towards paganism with iphones. ( “Pagus”, Latin word for “countryside”)

Clown car media parked beside Melania Trump

What's happening in Turkey as June 24 election nears

After reading Strategy Page's article on Turkey, I feel usefully informed.  Decide for yourself if this helps:
Turkey Goes To War With Itsself.

Full text of the Joint statement by US and North Korea, signed by Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un on June 12 2018

Source:  https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/06/12/president-donald-trump-and-chairman-kim-jong-un-signing-ceremony-video-and-pictures/#more-150483

English language competency by culture and race: California education stats 2017

Here's the source for the California department of education charts: https://public.tableau.com/profile/theresa.chen#!/vizhome/PercentofStudentsMeetingorExceedingStandardsonSmarterBalancedAssessment2017/Sheet1
hat tip to Ace of Spades.

The legend:  "Grey" is in the middle, average for all students.

Asian

Native American

Latino

Filipino

Mixed race

Black

                                                 

White

Playful means Clever. Dog likes to go sleighing up hill and down hill on his own

You know you'll want to show this video clip to someone else.

In the same spirit and the same season, this Russian crow gets the same results with a jar lid.
Carry it back up the roof and do it again.



Which brings me to a book recommendation:  Octopus
These mischievous, big-eyed, distributed-brain creatures are from the mollusc family with snails and clams and what not.  They separated 600 million years ago from the stream that led to crabs, spiders and bugs  and from the stream that led to fish, canaries (via dinosaurs), puppy dogs and humans.

Along with squid and cuttlefish, they are the only members of their family tree with what we call brains, some 200 million neurons distributed down the arms and to the steadfast eyes.  Meet your first aliens.

Six seconds to live: General Kelly

The NYT is shocked to learn that General Kelly is a patriot.  You can figure from this they knew the Obama people were not.
Quoted at the link:

"For all of the talk of Mr. Kelly as a moderating force and the so-called grown-up in the room, it turns out that he harbors strong feelings on patriotism, national security, and immigration that mirror the hard-line views of his outspoken boss," Baker warns.

I was moved moved to read this selection from a patriotic speech by General Kelly:

"It took exactly six seconds from when the truck entered the alley until it detonated. You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives.I suppose it took about a second for the two Marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into their view at the far end of the alley. No time to talk it over, or call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes before: “Let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.” It took maybe another two seconds for them to present their weapons, take aim, and open up. 

By this time, the truck was halfway through the barriers and gaining speed. Here the recording shows a number of Iraqi police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and rational men they were, some running right past the Marines, who had three seconds left to live.For about two seconds more, the recording shows the Marines firing their weapons nonstop. The truck’s windshield explodes into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tear into the body of the son of a bitch trying to get past them to kill their brothers – American and Iraqi – bedded down in the barracks, totally unaware that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two Marines standing their ground.Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread shoulder-width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could. They had only one second left to live, and I think they knew.The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God. Six seconds. Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty. Those are the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight for you, and as amazing as this selfless act of sacrifice may seem, it is the norm. In all the years I have been both enlisted and an officer of Marines, I have praised them and have chewed them out. I have promoted them and unceremoniously disciplined them. I have hung decorations on them and court-martialed them. I have visited them mangled and broken in military hospitals around the country, in lonely defensive positions across Iraq, and in brigs. I have known thousands of them over nearly 40 years, and I can tell you without hesitation or qualification that I never met one who would have run from his post that morning."

C02 Climate Science Not "Settled" But Settling Fast. A Dozen Tweaked Models Now Show Doubled C02 Response Is Smaller, Or Trivial.

The left side of the chart is Chicken Little territory. The data points added to the right of the shaded trend-lines are thought provoking.  Tweaked models and sober second thoughts are more credible.  This was originally published with data to 2013.  The update dramatically extends the pattern to 2017 although the sources vary.   h/t  smalldeadanimals

The Digital Swamp Has Overtaken The State. Welcome to The New Village. You May Be A Target.

We have rules to govern the state: Elections, rules of order, recorded votes, pages of policy minutiae, backed by threats of force, but now the digital swamp is bigger than the state and it's unruly and snoopy.  You may have more to fear from "unfriending" and blocked twitter accounts than from the state. 

In village and tribal settings, we bump into all our neighbours every week. We are often blood relatives  and take great interest in their sexual unions, their work and kids, their status, beliefs and deeds.  We like to reinforce beliefs and behaviour by shaming, story-telling, kinship rules, force of habit and brute force. 

For groups much above 100, policy trumps relationships to maintain order.  Impersonal structures develop to safely form beneficial groups of towns, cities, states, parties, armies, guilds,clubs, and NGO's.  This includes double-entry bookkeeping, secret ballots, money, reading skills, concepts of "citizen, constitution, corporation", and the rule of written law.

Source

But now we’re back in a village, a global village, thanks to the speed of light. It just got personal again.   Social media, twittering and texting, internet and email have shrunk the world electronically.  Linked-in people may be thousands of miles apart, but the digital time to connect  is less than a second and the cost is less than a penny.   Connect means “reach out" and “like”.  It also means, “Target” and "Hack."

What’s next?  Thousands of people who care little about me are now my neighbours in time and effort but not in place.  They vote me up and down at will when I appear in the digital swamp. Most of the news and fake-news is about this phenomenon.  Trump is attacked for culture, not for policy.   The news media are players. The parties are players.  So are bakeries. So are restaurants, billionaires, and corporate giants.  So is the state.   This is the wild wild west and if you’re lucky, you’ll just be un-friended for speaking your mind.  Your safety, your job security, your wealth and your reputation are visible in the digital swamp and you may lose them.

Yeats wrote, “What rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem?”  For a few hundred years, the state helped keep order but the digital swamp is now bigger than the state.  The rules are unwritten.  What is next?  

New forms of government, cultural government are in the wings.  I want them to stay clear of my liberty to do what's best for my and my family.  Yet I want safety, fairness and community strength.      "It could be heaven.  It could be hell".

Democrats retreat to cities. Are Canada's politics different?

In the quarter century since Bill Clinton's anomalous mandate, Democrats have retreated to the cities. See counties won out of a possible 3112:

1992     Bill Clinton      1494
1996     Bill Clinton      1693
2000     Al Gore             642
2006     John Kerry        567
2008     Barack Obama  833
2012     Barack Obama  649
2016     Hillary Clinton  454 (A second source says 489)

The stunning graphic bears study.  Columns are counties.  Column height is population. Column colour is the percent advantage for the party.  Los Angeles county has 10 million citizens favouring Hillary by 25 to 50 % over Donald.  One link is 3D interactive.

What I see in Canada is the same cities/globalist trend-line but zones in Quebec and the Maritimes have their own populist back histories.  We are not immune but have some breathing room to watch the political lab to the south as it goes toxic.  This is a natural phenomenon, arising from the behaviour of complex groups, and it won't be going away any time soon. What is next?

Thank God Ottawa is more diverse than Washington

Click to enlarge (source)

If you live in Washington D.C., you probably don't know a single person who voted Republican. DC is a government town and 23 out of 25 voters went for HILLARY.  All of America's big cities tell the same story, but 9 in 10 is more typical.
 See the evidence.






In Canada this is a trend rather than a great divide.

Source at 308

In fact, if you look at this chart, it's hard to find a clear pattern.

Community of Agency explains the term "Individual".

Calling people individuals is like believing the sun and planets rotate about earth. There's no there there when you try to find out who you really are.  There are communities embedded in each other that we call "me".  The thirty trillion cells in your body are subordinate to one another yet can live and multiply on their own in a lab. They want to be fed, maintained, reproduce and have a say in who we are. The utilities are supplied by homo sapiens, moving oxygen in, C02 out,  proteins and sugars in,  fecal matter out, as well as corporate defence from T-cells and physical motion.  Sapiens uses the surplus to be an interesting animal.  Our big two-footed corpus wants new copies made, the more the merrier and that means baked in programs for males and females to have babies, baked in hard enough to prevent the personality's operating system to forget about the having-babies part.  A couple trillion bacteria make their home in our gut and groin and nose.  There may be a thousand species of them, some four of five pounds of them,  adventitious, sometimes inherited, and engaged in a free-for-all to live and reproduce, sometimes our friend, sometimes our enemy, digesting food, influencing our brain, hurting and healing us.  The mitochondria energy-packs in each cell, inherited solely from the mom, appear to be an earlier version of ourselves, a simpler sort of cell that negotiated getting swallowed up by the larger cells, in exchange for favours. Home sweet home means something for viruses too and a few of those trillions are embedded in our inherited DNA.

There's also our alternate life form, eggs and sperm.  The male Sapiens makes independently alive master copies of himself every day, more than twenty million short-lived sperms that wiggle on their own. He can ask, "Is that me?"   They won't answer but it's still a good question. A couple admiring their newborn are busy saying "that's you" and "that's my Aunt Sophie" and so on.

Influences Coexist

Out of the surplus comes the glorious me, myself and I.  I fancy to be the owner of it all but it's not clear that I even steer the glorious human thing-a-ma-jig.  But I am up front, and am the best explanation for much culture, most science and enterprise.  That's not exactly a soul, a spirit, an animus, an ego, an id, a personality, a psyche, but it's something and fun.

Not exactly a "soul".  Not even remotely so.  The memes of memory and action in my brain are like starlings in a stupendous flock.  They look like a single living thing but are sorting out what to do next, one tiny bird-brain at a time, using the same sorting rules.   The outcome is a wonderful, purposeful somebody, a.k.a. me.  

Who's that other guy in the operating system, the one that dreams dreams? Our dream life has a 90 minute wave length and feels like "mine" but has its own rules.  We have male and female people. We also have two kinds of me in the "RAM" zone of our brain, one that dreams, one that does. They are not even compatible which means the second daily erases the first to get along in society with other Sapiens "communities of agency".

Community of agency explains why males have done a sex assessment of breasts and fitness of every female they meet within 3 seconds while also "being themselves", treating men and women like themselves in culture, work and play.  Somehow men and women treat each other both as selves and as mates in a blended way.  The agencies differs but the behaviour blends.

Existential joke for philosophers:

"Psychic hotline?"

Yes?

"I just have two questions.  Who am I and what is my basic problem?"

All morality is local

All politics is local.  So is moral choice.
If it were not so, bribery, blackmail and antifa thuggery would be null.
But local is good, the intersection of matters of state and the heart, of physics and appetite.

Bicycle Helmets will decide my vote.

Bicycle Helmets will decide my vote.  Those helmets can be strapped onto kiddies by parents, chosen wisely by serious riders, even promoted by social advertising, but should never be mandated by laws, fines and police.   British Columbia abuses the law for social engineering.  No party will defend freedom of choice and thus, no party got my vote in the provincial election.

Normal human choice, some with, some without

See below.

MOTOR_VEHICLE_AMENDMENT_ACT_(No.2),_1995

11. Section 120 is amended

(a) in subsection (1) by adding the following paragraphs:

(b.1) that a person operating or riding as a passenger on a cycle on a path or way designated under paragraph (b.3) must properly wear a bicycle safety helmet that

(i) is designated as an approved bicycle safety helmet under section 185.1 (4) (a), or(ii) meets the standards and specifications prescribed under section 185.1 (4) (b);

(b.2) that a parent or guardian of a person under the age of 16 years must not authorize or knowingly permit the person to operate or ride as a passenger on a cycle on a path or way designated under paragraph (b.3) if that person is not properly wearing a bicycle safety helmet that

(i) is designated as an approved bicycle safety helmet under section 185.1 (4) (a), or(ii) meets the standards and specifications prescribed under section 185.1 (4) (b);

(b.3) for the designation of paths or ways within the municipality, other than paths or ways that are highways or are located on private property, for the purposes of a bylaw made under paragraph (b.1) or (b.2);(b.4) for the exemption of any person or class of persons from a bylaw made under paragraph (b.1) or (b.2) and prescribing conditions for those exemptions; , and

(b) by adding the following subsection:

(1.2) Despite subsection (1) (s), a municipality may not impose imprisonment or a fine of more than $100 for the contravention of a bylaw made under subsection (1) (b.1) or (b.2).

22. The following section is added:

Bicycle safety helmets

185.1 (1) A person commits an offence if that person operates or rides as a passenger on a cycle on a highway and is not properly wearing a bicycle safety helmet that

(a) is designated as an approved bicycle safety helmet under subsection (4) (a), or(b) meets the standards and specifications prescribed under subsection (4) (b).

(2) A parent or guardian of a person under the age of 16 years commits an offence if the parent or guardian authorizes or knowingly permits the person to operate or ride as a passenger on a cycle on a highway if that person is not properly wearing a bicycle safety helmet that

(a) is designated as an approved bicycle safety helmet under subsection (4) (a), or(b) meets the standards and specifications prescribed under subsection (4) (b).

(3) A person who is convicted of an offence under subsection (1) or (2) is liable to a fine of not more than $100.(4) The superintendent may make regulations as follows:


(a) designating a helmet as an approved bicycle safety helmet for the purposes of this section;(b) prescribing standards and specifications for bicycle safety helmets.

(5) Regulations made under subsection (4) (b) may adopt by reference, in whole or in part, standards or specifications published by a national or international standards association, as amended from time to time.(6) The Lieutenant Governor in Council may make regulations as follows:


(a) providing for and requiring the identification and marking of bicycle safety helmets;(b) exempting any person or class of persons from the requirements of this section and prescribing conditions for those exemptions.