#tirrighsmiles

 Photos taken by me from 2012 to 2015 of the people and friends of Tir Righ.

Separating psychology and physiology

 Society is dealing with many things now, from COVID to racial tensions to on going issues in the middle east to plastic trash to energy sources to.......... well everything.

One of the things we have recently come to face is gender and its differences.   Gender is not a new topic, but the notion that gender is a construct is a very new idea.  I both agree and disagree with the idea that gender is a social construct.  I think that this is an easy idea to wrap your head around, but starts with separating the physical and the psychological.  To start from the physical, there are only two genders, with a very small slice of people being stuck with a body that has both.  There are significant differences between these two genders and trying to say there are not would lead to medical disasters and needless death.  The fact that for a long period of time medical research ignored the female sex is a major mistake and one that still carries errors in our medical data as a result.  The differences between the sexes in sports is readily apparent and  leads to dividing the two genders into different groups for competitions.  It makes sense.

But.

We now enter a time when we are trying to address the systemic problems in out social system.  The notion that we should all be equal is very much a great and valuable part of a modern society.  Any group that attains an advantage in law or practise is a group that will both tenaciously hold on to that privilege and do all it can to ensure that it continues, as can be seen in all modern societies that are now being slapped in the face with how women and minorities are treated in their society.

And now we have individuals who are struggling with sexual orientation and how that fits into society as a whole.  Especially as we as a society need to come to grips with the long standing prejudice against such people.  The language that we use has no differentiation between physical gender and mental gender, and it has no delineation when dealing the fact that although physical gender is a very real and solid thing, mental gender orientation for some is a very fluid thing.  And there are many people who refuse to understand this.

We need a way to make a division between these two things.  That they strongly influence each other is very true and I see no way to sever that relationship, but likewise, there needs to be an acknowledgement that for some of us there is a difference in that relationship.

We already see echoes of this, in people using the words 'I identify as .......', or calling it your sexual orientation.  And then trying to have the mental orientation align with our language by using either gender neutral or flipping the gendered words.  And for the mental health of that individual, using those pronouns is a way to help them fit into a world that has not yet come to full grips with the idea that mentally there is a fluidity to gender that is not matched physically.

The English language has evolved to handle many concepts, and evolving to handle a way of stating that mental or sexual gender is different from physical is not a difficult task.  And it looks like it is something that we need.  

I lack the imagination to come up with a word that fits or allows us this differentiation, but perhaps it is something that will happen soon.

I need a break.

I think we all need a break.

There is chaos everywhere and the news just keeps piling up.

Riots.  Riots with good reason, and protests that should be shut down and protests that should not be.

Any peaceful protest should be able to be dealt with without violence.

Any armed protest should be met with an armed reply.

Covid and the responses.  I mean whining about wearing a mask?  Really?

China has deployed troops near Pakistan to ensure the security of infrastructure projects financed by them.  India reacts with alarm at a division of troops deployed some 60 miles from their border.

I do not know why the amount of corruption in politics is allowed to happen.  It is a stain that soils every country on Earth, and makes every person's life worse.  Yet we as a society can do very little to halt and expose and root it out.

Corporations are soulless entities, but need to be held accountable for their actions.  The people who control the poisoning of the environment should be forced to live in that poison they order to be created.

Everyone who works deserves a living wage.  A wage that is better than ekeing a scratch living.

While a few people have done something to lessen the amount of plastic in the ocean, there are a lot of people still making that horrible situation worse.

And the news keeps piling up.

The world seemed to be getting it's act together.

Human slavery is slowly ebbing into history, and spotlights shining on the places where it still happens and forcing it to whither and die is great.

The awareness that oil is killing our environment is finally making it to the front of our brains.

And the rich somehow manage to dodge more and more taxes.

And somehow they do not see the rest of us reaching for the re-set button.

I need a break.

Weird Times

One of the weird things about the whole COVID -19 thing is how conspiracies theories can build.

There is one going around about how the pandemic cannot be all that bad because the hospitals are half empty.

But.

The hospitals are half empty because anyone with a compromised immune system, is over weight, over 60, has asthma or diabetes are doing their best to avoid all hospitals and leaving or staying away, and putting off elective surgeries.

In Canada, this does not mean much because our health system is not profit driven.

In the USA, it means that the hospitals are not showing a profit, and indeed are operating at a loss because they need to fill the beds to make as much money as possible.  There are many places that will have to lay off doctors soon because they have no work for them.

It may seem strange, but it is a direct consequence of letting your health are be driven by profit.

And to the companies that have long demanded huge profits from health care, now that there is a shortage of patients and your profit has turned negative, too bad.  This is the system you asked for, you have to take the problems along with the benefits.

Living through a re-set

Life can hit the re-set button.

Many people have experienced this through normal events.  Marriage, the birth of a child or death of a loved one can all affect your outlook on life and call for you to re-examine priorities.

My re-set was caused by an accident at work over 12 years ago, and I am still working on the consequences of that re-set.  I have let go of many of my material possessions, and tried to quell the desire to accumulate stuff.  I still have that want for more, I just have learned to mute it better.

Now the world has been faced with a re-set, and consumerism has been slapped in the face with the difference between need and want.

We now know that a CEO is far less essential than the guy driving a truck or emptying your trash bucket.

What we as a society do with that information during the next few years could be quite telling.  I think we are all in for a blitz of propaganda that is aimed at telling us what we need instead of a measured discourse asking us what we need.  And thanks to large corporations, they will have large budgets to scream the message they want heard, but we will need to coax out the inner voices, the ones amplified by the current crisis and listen to them instead.

What I learned during my re-set was that I do not need a home, I do not need a fancy car, I do not need a large bank account.

I do need friends.   I do need family.  I do need a comfy place to sleep, and I really like a kitchen to work in.  Dogs to pet and cats to cuddle.  Conversation that is relevant to my current day.  Books to get lost in.  Water to watch as it flows in and out of my life.  Weather to remind me that we humans are small and puny.  And the ability to make friends and family smile and laugh and share joy.

And I think that last bit is the most important thing I can say.

We all need to share joy, however we can and wherever we go.

Beans n Taters

A basic camping meal that I like.

Ingredients ; taters, brown beans, wiener, cheddar cheese, smoke flavour.

Step one, scrub (or peel) potato and cut in small chunks.

Put them in a small pot, cover with water and boil until nicely cooked.

While that is happening, cut you wiener into small pieces and pan fry with a dab of butter.

Once the wiener has got some nice colour, add in the beans and turn the heat down to low.

Cut the cheese into cubes.

Drain and add the taters and beans to the pan, and stir.

Add smoke flavouring.

Top with the cheese and place in hot oven.

Pull it out when the cheese is mostly melted and enjoy.

Grilled Cheese Sandwich

I will be posting a few photo shoots of making tasty budget food while in quarantine.

First up, the Basic Grilled Cheese Sandwich.

Choose yer bread n other stuff.

The Cave was cold this morning, so the butter would not spread.  Alternate method, melt the butter in the pan and toss the bread in on top.

I was too hungry, and did not take a picture of  the final cheese oozing sandwich.  Use your imagination, because the sandwich has been consumed with glee and the pickles teamed with it were grand.

End of March, end of an era

Nobody knows what the full effects of the COVID virus will be, and considering the variance in the human condition, no one can.  But.

We can already see in a number of places the politicians and money interests are taking advantage of the distraction to alter the rules in their own favour.

And the numbers from China are a lie.

How big of a lie, no one outside the Chinese government will ever know.

A journalist took a dive at an indirect way of confirming the death tally in Wuhan, and looked into the number of funerary urns ordered by one of the four large cremation facilities in Wuhan.  That number was 50,000.  For a place that has officially reported 3,000 deaths.

In looking at the shipping details to the other cremation facilities the reporter hit a tumbling block, in that the directors of the facilities were not allowed to tell him either the number of funerary urns on hand or on order by government decree.  I have not tried to delve into the data to verify the reporters findings, but if true the report on the pandemic deaths in Wuhan could be out by a factor of 100.

That they did not experience 3,000 deaths as reported, but closer to 300,000.

The numbers coming out of Spain and Italy give credence to the story that China has lied about their own deaths.

The original numbers are bad enough in terms of survivor rates, but going by the deaths in Spain and Italy again, the original numbers out of China look to be a lie by a factor of 10.  Europe is not experiencing somewhere between 1 -2% mortality, but closer to 10-15%.

Applied to Canada those numbers mean a heartbreaking number of deaths, even with our government leaning hard on social distancing, non-essential business closures and disaster preparing.

In the USA, it looks far worse.

The lack of decisive leadership, the lack of central planning and the dodging of response planning means their death toll will dwarf Italy and Spain combined, by a factor of at least 10.

I hate to put these numbers down as a prediction because they are beyond bad, beyond catastrophic, but the states are on their way to losing over a million to this pandemic by the middle of May, with the toll being well over 10 million before things level out a bit by the end of August.

If they make the mistake of re-opening the whole country for business as Trump has suggested for mid April, that number could be multiplied by 4.  Which would lead to an utter collapse of their government as we know it.  What would replace it is anyone's guess.

As a world wide society we are facing the collapse of the modern world, what will emerge on the far side is yet to be seen, but failed states will be common, and we are in for the roughest time the world has seen since WWII, and the death toll will be higher.

This is all based on what I think to be the real numbers for the mortality rate for COVID-19.

I cannot express the strength with which I hope I am wrong, nor the fear that I am right.

Stay at home.  Wash your hands.  Cling tight to the hope that we find both mitigating drugs and a vaccine, but both appear to months away, and the vaccine is over 18 months away at best.

COVID 19 and the long haul

I think a lot of people and governments out there are missing a major point.  We need to be in this for the long haul.

The best case scenario is that we find a batch of drugs that will either treat or slow down the rate of transmittal of the disease.  A preventative vaccine is at best 14 months away.

Avoiding large gatherings, being hygienic will do a lot to slow down the spread of the disease, but nothing we can do outside of total isolation from all human contact will stop it.

Countries around the world have closed their borders, all of which is too late to stop the spread, though it will slow it down.  What will slow it down even further is stopping all social travel.

Our efforts to self quarantine will help, the closing of schools bars and restaurants will help.

But nothing will stop it until a vaccine is made, tested, distributed and that will take at least another 16 months.

If we are lucky.

Because if the vaccine currently under testing passes all the safety protocols, it will still take a minimum of time for it to be mass produced and distributed.

And that is also assuming that the disease does not develop multiple strains, ones that are different enough to be immune to the test vaccine.

So, my advice at this time is settle in for the long haul.

Write down a list of friends you like to visit and strongly encourage them to use a video chat method of keeping in touch.

If you have lost employment or income due to a 'temporary' closing of business, start looking for alternate work as soon as you can, because that closing could last well over a year, and two years is not out of the picture.

One of the technology advances I see coming soon, is a debit/credit card machine with a viral resistant key pad, and if that works, a vast increase in the number of transactions people do cashless.

As much as I like cash and hard currency, it is also a vector for the transmission of disease, and in Canada where a lot of debit transactions take place, it could help to slow down the spread by a bit.

Could be an interesting study to undertake to see if that does make a difference, or if I am just going on wishful thinking

All for now.

Car show in Cochabamba

At the invitation of a friend, I attended a car show, which had a mix of new and old autos.  My friend is one of the people dressed in 1940's costume hanging out behind the ropes around the cars.  I only took pictures of the old cars, I hope you like them.