Let's Live

I've been using the same razor, the Gillette Sensor Excel, for maybe thirty years. I realize there are probably better options, but I don't bother thinking about which razor is best until I run out of blades. 

I used my last cartridge of Sensor Excels this week. Dorothy looked for replacements at the grocery store hoping to prevent another episode of hirsute husband as in the photo above, but she couldn't find Sensor Excel. She picked up some disposables instead. I guess I will be adding extra plastic litter to the landfill. Anyway I can still shave, and that saved me a week of research looking for the best alternative. 

Speaking of research, I don't think much about the science behind shaving; but according to Wikipedia that is actually a thing. For example, there is the hysteresis effect discovered by Norman C. Welsh in England in 1964, the year I finished university. All the good discoveries were made before our generation had a chance to investigate, so there's nothing left to know 😅.

There are so many different razors; choosing is such a bother. If I were Gillette, I would make only one model called the Cheap-N-Quick SmOOOOOOthy, for the most comfortable, inexpensive, rapid shave so you can get on with your day free of beard and band-aids. The extra OOOOOOs signify the six nifty blades that together remove everything but skin in one swipe. When the blades get dull, there is a handy sharpener that recharges using changes in barometric pressure. The plastic handle will last until the end of the anthropocene. The SmOOOOOOthy will inspire a catchy jingle in waltz time that the great great grandchildren will still be singing when we're all gone. Warning: keep your SmOOOOOOthy clear of your nose. Six blades will turn you into Voldemort cheap-n-quick.

By now you have realized that this isn't about whiskers. There has to be a point to this story or I wouldn't be bothering to write. Here goes. 

We can let somebody else make our choices: wives (or husbands), ancestors, preachers and prophets, scientists and engineers, corporations and investors, government, the law, whoever is opining on TV news or Meta or Blogspot 😏. We can follow their simple rules and keep our noses safe. But whatever we are up to, when we make a mess, there will be no mercy.

That's life.

It's complicated.
Ask questions.
Try to do the right thing.
Avoid making a mess
or else deal with the mess.
Let's live.

*****************

Has Big Oil Hijacked COP30? Just Have a Think, Nov 16, 2025

Canadian Resource Development vs Climate: CBC News, Nov 14, 2025

Microplastics: UNEP

Fossil Fuel Phaseout Plan Dropped: COP30, CBC News, Nov 21, 2025
Electrotech, Not Fossil Fuels, Will Power the Future: David Suzuki and Ian Hannington, Nov 21, 2025

On Hiatus

I haven't been writing lately. Not sure whether this is vacation or retirement. Just to keep my voice in the conversation, here is a sample of what I was writing in November each year for the past five years. Read if you are curious, or not if not. No worries.

The Worm  Returns: Nov 2020

Belonging to The Earth: Nov 2021

Got It In One: Nov 2022

Worth The Effort: Nov 2023

What Do You Think: Nov 2024

Simply Right

Lots of opinions and evidence going into the COP30 Climate Summit. I don't need to add to the noise; but I will say one thing. It would be nice if we could just do the right thing. 

I recall years ago, asking advice of someone I trusted who said "when in doubt, do what is kind". Great. Every ethical dilemma reduced to one simple rule.

The thing is, simple doesn't work. When you do what is kind to someone whose pension fund is invested in oil, sooner or later someone's home burns in a wildfire, or their children are washed away in a flood, or their crop fails. Kindness here and now has hidden costs elsewhere and later.

Doing the right thing requires good evidence to go with the ethics, and it's complicated. Doing the simple thing is just irresponsible.

*****************

What Did Bill Gates Really Say About Climate Change?: CBC News, Nov 6, 2025

Climate Inaction Claiming Lives: WHO quotes Lancet Report, Oct 29, 2025

Climate Minister on Canada's Climate Goals: CBC News, October 31, 2025

COP30 Climate Summit Needs a Power Shift: David Suzuki Foundation, Nov 6, 2025
Bracing For Climate Catastrophe: Just Have a Think, July 2025

Ghost Pumpkins

What's wrong with orange?

Orange is great, OK, but why not white? White pumpkins were developed independently by several growers late last century, just the latest interesting variation of a crop that has been cultivated for maybe 8000 years. White pumpkins are a fine example of "it is what it is until we mess with it". Of course 8000 years has seen a lot of changes in pumpkins,  color, size, shape, etc. But it didn't start with farmers. Mutation and selection has been going on for some 3.7 billion years here on Earth before farmers had a say, and during that time evolution produced about five billion species of which 8.7 million survive including us. We arrived late, or maybe we are still arriving. I mean it continues; it's still messing with us, mutations every generation. We may yet evolve, or we may join the extinct majority. But we have a say in what happens next.

To summarize:

It is what it is
until we mess with it and it messes with us;
but we have a say in what happens next.

IIWII-UWMWI-AIMWU-BWHASIWHN

There. I made it as simple as I can. I'm done. The rest is up to you.

IIWII-UWMWI

I have been thinking (again) how we make up explanations for our experience and then discover that they don't quite work.

While this is on my mind, Ethan Siegel offers a new essay entitled Yes, Reductionism Can Explain Everything In The Whole Universe. He rejects emergence as magic.

I'm guessing that he would reject Bob Doyle's Information Philosophy which explains emergence as new information that appears with the association of objects. For example, a hydrogen atom is, by itself, spherical, while two hydrogen atoms forming a molecule together have new attributes related to their combined shape: direction, vibration, rotation, etc. None of that is magic. The evidence is real and explicable.

However, at the most complex levels of aggregation such as the human body, explanations remain speculative and predictions uncertain. The trillions of cells in a human body generate consciousness, emotion, concepts, values and intention; but the explanation of how that happens is elusive.

New ideas look a bit like magic until the evidence demands we change our thinking. Remember the EPR paradox, objecting that quantum entanglement violates the local realism of causality? Remember Einstein's "spooky action at a distance". Reductionism works because when it doesn't work we change how we are thinking. Our understanding of the universe is emergent.

Knowing how Doyle and Siegel disagree might keep us from getting stuck in one worldview or the other. Hmmm. Emergence can be understood reductively and reductionism works because it is emergent.

I got started on this idea in the previous note.

We belong to a self-organizing system that sees itself through our eyes, understands itself through our thoughts, emerges from our actions.

Too many words. How about this.

We are intentionally active components of a recursively emergent reality.

Big words. Let's get it down to one syllable per word.

It is what it is
until we mess with it.

I know, it also messes with us. Recursion changes everything. But it's getting too complicated. That's the best I can do...for now.

It needs a song and a story with talking animals and an acronym for when we type with our thumbs.

IIWII-UWMWI

Not quite there. I will work on it.

***************

Renewables in South America: Just Have a Think, Oct 19, 2025

CO2 Levels in the Atmosphere: CBC News

Solution or Problem

I've had a fever. Now I can't taste anything. Can't tell excellent broccoli quiche from oatmeal porridge. If what follows is in poor taste, or if I am not making sense, please make allowances. I blame it on the virus.

Just now, I'm working on a meme, which may go viral if I let it out of the laboratory. Here goes.

Science involves us engaging with the unknown, which is almost everything since we don't actually know much. Let's be scientific. Let's go with the evidence and keep our ideas out of it. Can't be done. Making sense of the evidence involves finding analogies with things we already understand, as in that book I read recently, "Waves in an Impossible Sea" by Matt Strassler. Here we see science groping for metaphor, making the evidence fit our ideas and adjusting ideas to fit the evidence. It is no longer just about the evidence. It becomes a metareality in our thoughts. We intended to keep ourselves out of it... and then didn't.

Science wants to avoid getting lost in metaphor. The metaphors most used in science are objective and materialistic in an effort to suppress human motives and biases and keep things "real". But it's hard to let go of an idea that works when you discover that it doesn't work. Remember the EPR paradox, Einstein, Podalsky and Rosen objecting to quantum entanglement violating the local realism of causality? You don't remember. You don't do physics.

OK, biology. Everybody does biology. Ever had an ulcer? Remember the early scientific resistance to the idea of bacteria as the cause of gastric ulcers? Remember "It's all in your head, so just relax, stop worrying and get better"? Well, if bacteria are involved, that's a new idea in our heads. Then we use antibiotics to control the bacteria and fix the ulcer. So our heads are either part of the problem or part of the solution. Our metareality has real consequences altering reality.

Here's the current version of my meme.

We belong to a self-organizing system that sees itself through our eyes, understands itself through our thoughts, emerges from our actions.

Still needs work. There is certainly more to reality than us, but for sure we are part of it. Are we part of the solution or part of the problem?

*****************

I Went To Space and Discovered an Enormous Lie: Ron Garan, Big Think.

The 50th anniversary of Quirks and Quarks.

The Big Bang Doesn't Mean What It Used To: Ethan Siegel, Big Think

The Battle For American Energy Supremacy: Just Have a Think, October 12, 2025.

What's For Lunch

 I've got a virus this week. Not much writing going on here. I offer instead a link to an article on ProgressiveChristianity.org.

From the Gospel to Science: Fergus McGinley

Yes, I agree with much of what Fergus wrote,
but to be consistent
I added my own comment to his article.

The title of this note may leave you wondering.
Science might give a detailed description of what's for lunch, down to the macronutrients and trace elements. Religion might make it an occasion for gratitude, connection, conversation and responsible behaviour. Either without the other would be incomplete. In fact there are probably many other perspectives that could lend meaning to lunch: health, climate change, plastic pollution, food waste, rampant obesity...

How Diet Affects Climate Change: Dana Ellis Hunnes, UCLA