Bouquet #8: Eclectic Mind Food (Pigeons, Twitter-Liberals, Power of Doubt, Chicken as Meat, Aging World)
1. Pigeons and Egypt
Pigeons have been around for a long time. According to Colin Jerolmack, professor of sociology and environmental studies at New York University and author of The Global Pigeon, they first showed up in the Middle East and North Africa about 3,000 years ago – and they might have been lurking in those cities for up to 2,000 years before that! Can you believe it? It's pretty cool to think about.Pigeons were actually one of the most reliable messaging systems in the world until the telegram came along. There's even evidence that ancient Egyptians used pigeons for communication back when Amarna was occupied. You can see a bas-relief from around 1350 BCE depicting a flock of pigeons being released from their cages to fly and then return. Wild!
2. Twitter-dissing fits and the Left-Liberal mob
The liberal mob is in a tizzy since Elon Musk bought Twitter. On the one hand this writer downplays Twitter and on the other hand she disses how Elon Musk has bought it and just that will bring down the platform, which as she keeps reiterating is useless. So why bother?
The fact is that Twitter is on the rise since Musk bought it. Two independent research firms, Apptopia and Sensor Tower, have gathered data which confirms this.
3. The Power of Deliberate Doubt
Deliberate doubt is the practice of intentionally questioning our beliefs and assumptions. It is about setting aside our certainty and letting go of our preconceived ideas in order to explore new concepts and ideas. By changing doubt into a deliberate process, we create opportunities to discover new possibilities and let our minds explore different paths. Every genius has used this method to improve his/her work. Whether it was the Socratic Method (also called elenchus) or it was the way Marie Curie or Einstein used doub.
4. When Chicken became a Meat Business
In 2020, 70 billion chickens were consumed globally. Versus 8 billion in 1965. All because of a clerical error.
Cecile Steele of Ocean View, Delaware had ordered 50 chickens but the local hatchery delivered 500. And she and her husband raised them in a 256 square feet barn. They made a substantial profit. And soon they had 10,000 chicks in 3 years. This was the first time farmers raised chickens for meat. Until then they were raised for eggs.
5. New Society for an Aging World
Countries and societies are making unprecedented changes.
Apartments in Singapore’s Queenstown district will soon offer slip-resistant floors and doorways wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs. In Japan, a recently built light railway in the northern city of Toyama has carriages that, when they pull into a station, attach tightly to platforms, ensuring that the elderly don’t trip over gaps. At the Village Landais in southern France, every detail is geared toward helping Alzheimer’s sufferers live as comfortably as possible; groceries at village stores don’t have price labels, doing away with the need for residents to count the costs. (Those costs are covered by government agencies.) The idea is to give residents the experience of shopping without the confusion of transactions. Similar communities for people with dementia have been set up on the outskirts of Amsterdam and the shores of Lake Rotorua in New Zealand.
Because the World is aging.
And soon, the processes and the society will have to be geared for this kind of population.
An interesting take.
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