Finnish Underwater Ice Fishing

This clever video, like the opening sequence of Shyamalan’s “Devil,” again adroitly makes the point that our preconceived notions (what psychologists would call “top-down processing” really do color how we perceive what is otherwise perfectly straightforward information:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/11/10/164817715/finnish-underwater-ice-fishing-mystery-finally-solved

Especially with Krulwich’s admitted mystification (apparently he doesn’t much get fluid dynamics or buoyancy—no “hidden air balloons” would be necessary to keep air in an inverted underwater bucket; any curious kid actually allowed to play outdoors near a water source could tell you that!), it really reminds us to be patient with those who just don’t “get” the whole worldview thing.  It’s like the baby fish who asks his mommy fish, “So, what’s this ocean thing everybody’s always talking about?”  You may be trying to talk to somebody who just cannot—literally CAN not—see, at this time, what you are talking about.  Keep loving them.  The love gets through, even if the perspective doesn’t at first, eventually drilling a hole in the ice for the trapped air to escape to. 

Hermit Thrush Wins Audubon Avian Award for Best Original Song

The Audubon Avian Awards:

http://www.audubon.org/audubon-avian-awards

 

The Hermit Thrush was given the award for “Best Original Song.”  It is a lovely, piercing, fluting melody, and in and of itself praises the Creator (as all birdsong does, if you really listen—for that matter, “all Creation declares Him,” constantly).  But I found it particularly interesting that this song would “win” this acclaim in today’s relentlessly secular culture, considering the “English translation” of what the song sounds like, for birders:

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/hermit_thrush/sounds

(scroll down and click on the “sound” tab for recordings and “translation”)

Again, all birdsong (and frog song, and cricket song, and all Creation in its own way) always says this.  But it’s nice to know that at least some people are really listening!

Small Choices

Been a bit discouraged, lately; needed to read this, thought I would share:

"I think we sometimes let ourselves be trapped by the idea that an action is only significant if it can be objectively proven causally to effect lots of other things in some kind of big way. But the fact is that every action is permanent and significant and known and recorded - nothing goes for nothing."

                 Bruce Charlton, Bruce Charlton’s Miscellany (blog), 19 December 2012