Researchers' Cardbox

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we extended trust to strangers, if instead of acting as though our hypothesis were that all strangers are untrustworthy, we extended trust anyway in spite of a lack of reasons to trust. Would the outcome actually be as bad as some might have you believe? What if we trusted everyone until there were evidence not to? Also, I composed a quartet piece when we couldn't go out because of an ice storm. I might've been inspired by our trip to the orchestra last week. [Closing music: "Ice Storm" by James] Back with new episodes late 2023.

Say what you will about Kenny G—who apparently has a CPA because he didn't think anyone would like his music—but apart from having an endearingly self-deprecating sense of humor, he also has the world record for holding the longest recorded saxophone note. How long was the note? 45 minutes and 47 seconds. Seems impossible, for how can anyone have that much lung capacity? Actually, it isn't lung capacity, but a technique called circular breathing. You typically use the technique when there's a long passage for which you can't take a breath. These days, that probably feels like a good metaphor for something. Also, I said eight basses, but maybe it was seven basses and eight violas, but who's counting? Me. I'm counting. Further Media: GlasslandsRomeo & Juliet Fantasy OvertureSwan LakeSymphony No. 5

Is everything derivative? Is anything transformative? The old me, who was younger, used to get stuck on these questions. The new me, who's much older, maybe has answers, but who knows if they're right. I once composed a song for myself, and it seemed really, really familiar... and then I heard it on an oldies station. It turns out that I had remade parts of Barbara Acklin's "Am I the Same Girl?" without realizing it. It was fitting in a way. Dusty Springfield and Swing Out Sister had also remade it, only they knew. Also, the heart has neurons. Think about that. But think from the brain or the heart, who knows? Happy Valentine's Day! Further Media: Current Pain and Headache ReportsJournal of Cardiovascular ElectrophysiologyQuality of Life Research,NPR Shots - Health Newshttps://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/28/483732115/how-old-is-your-body-reallyStar Trek: PicardL’IntrusCR: The New Centennial ReviewStar Trek: The Next GenerationStar Trek: The Next GenerationJohns Hopkins Medicine: Healthhttps://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/broken-heart-syndrome

It's seemingly counterintuitive jazz advice, but it's true: In order to play fast, you have to know how to play slow. Why is this so? If you play fast without knowing how to play slow, then what you play fast can be really sloppy, and you burn through your ideas too quickly, and you burn out in general. I don't know, but we seem to be playing awfully fast these days, like really fast. I just don't know... Further Media: "Playing Fast with Christian McBride." Open Studio, 26 August 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EevNkIDnW1c.

Sister Martha told an earlier version of me that if we used calculators to do our math homework, we were only cheating ourselves. I had innocently asked which commandment that broke because Moses lived a long time ago, and calculators were new. Apparently, it broke no commandments, but, "What," I was asked to consider, "if calculators suddenly disappeared, then what?" I knew the question wasn't invitational, but unless math textbooks disappeared at the same time, I thought, that's when I'd study math. I'm now an educator myself, and my own OS has been updated several times since. I wonder if they patched this or if the same logic remains.

I never saw them live in concert, but I used to love this surf rock band called Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet. Never heard of them? If you've watched The Kids In The Hall, you've heard their music. The show's theme song is Shadowy Men's "Having An Average Weekend". I remember staring for hours at the cover art thinking to myself, "But what is an average weekend?" Is averaging weekends even possible? Little did I know that some thirty years later, we'd maybe invent technologies to answer questions of averaging what we'd typically take as non-quantifiable, inventing for ourselves a novel reader, so to speak. In any case, Jasmine and I didn't have an average weekend when we went to the museum to see a very special Van Gogh. It wasn't an average weekend especially because we went on a Thursday... after work, of course. Further Media: Detroit Free Presshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IV29YNTH3Mhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAfkxHcqWKIBoomyhttps://boomy.com/GPTZerohttps://gptzero.me/Star Trek: The Original SeriesSavvy Show Stoppers Van Gogh in AmericaWho The #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?

In Jasmine's porch garden, sometimes the birds help. They'll eat the baby seedlings, but whatever seeds they transported from who knows where end up becoming neighbors to what they leave. Also, this could be a fever dream, but I feel like at some point I heard someone say that some trees come to be because squirrels were trying to hide nuts and maybe forgot some. Seems like that could be true. In any case, Martha Nussbaum's new book on animal justice just appeared on my e-reader. I guess I forget about a lot of the books I pre-order and hide in my Kindle. It's good so far... And then somehow we end up talking about this squirrel who ate my sandwich and Husserl. We don't know where that seed came from either, but so it goes. Further Media: The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental PhenomenologyJustice for Animals: Our Collective ResponsibilityPerri

Since I've learned to shave without a mirror, sometimes when I accidentally see my own reflection, for just a brief moment, I'm like, "Who's that guy? He looks just like my uncle." Sometimes things change slow; sometimes things change quick. But I imagine, too, that depends upon the scale that one is using as a frame of reference. Still, some things change very quickly by any standard. Isn't that right, Dr. Kuhn? And sometimes you click on a science thumbnail thinking it's new, but that show has been on for about 13 seasons... Wait, Dr. Who? Anyway, who knows how and why things trend when they do. Bust out that popcorn bowl! Further Media: NatureNature, Document

Sometimes in writing, we might have the urge to put everything up front and wrap everything up nice and clean at the end. While that can make for efficient reading, it can also lead us to forget what's supposed to be inside. Further, sometimes we seek balance, but proportion is important, too. Balance and proportion aren't always the same, for some instances of balance can cancel out what's good. And a third consideration: In film, if there's voice-over narration, it typically doesn't narrate what's happening on screen. Perhaps it's over a montage, let's say, to maximize communicative opportunities. Just like how our waiter, standing over me, said as he watched me take my first spoonful of the budino he just put down, "Dude, no! You gotta dig all the way to the bottom and get all the layers. It's stupid good; you're missing all the [...] deliciousness!" So write like it's budino. That's what I got from that. Happy New Year! Further Media: PMLASkin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BUzRO6J4gEPMLA

All songs composed and performed by James S. Recorded in 2020. Back with Season 2 on 4 January 2023!

All songs composed and performed by James S. Recorded in 2019. Back with Season 2 on 4 January 2023!

This one has a couple of songs for Eric Dolphy. The last tune is for Toots Thielemans who was known mostly for jazz harmonica, but also sometimes whistled in unison with his guitar playing. All songs composed and performed by James S. Back with Season 2 on 4 January 2023!

Musical Intermission: Sweet & Sour EP. All songs composed and performed by James S. Back with Season 2 on 4 January 2023!

It's the Season 1 Finale! If humanity has a diary, perhaps it's the entirety of the Internet and digital and digitized data both collected and produced by us. Are we okay with others reading our diary? And what if some of those others are intelligent machines? We probably shouldn't slow ethical progress, but that's not to say that we shouldn't at least stop to think about what the progress we're making means. Also, if we live in a technological culture, we should be attendant to how the ideologies of technology shape our values. As knowledge producers, we probably shouldn't give up our ability to collaboratively participate in shaping what these values become. Musical intermissions in the meantime, and we'll be back for Season 2 on 4 January 2023!

First there was reskilling, then there was upskilling, and now, apparently, there's outskilling. It's difficult to see what the near future will be, but if you just put all the components of the present together, that's actually a good technique for being ready for whatever comes further down the line. It's best not to end a franchise on a cliffhanger, but maybe it's especially brilliant to make long-awaited sequels into things that are at the same time prequels. In times of uncertainty, bend time. Further Media: The 400 BlowsThe Ballad of Buster ScruggsLove on the Run Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness Atum: A Rock Opera in Three ActsBatman and Robin

In Physics and Philosophy, Werner Heisenberg correctly speculated that the availability of nuclear weapons would not make war obsolete. Instead, "the absurdity of warfare by means of thermonuclear weapons may, in a first approximation, act as an incentive for war on a small scale," and further, that this situation, in turn, could induce some nations to feel that "in the case of small wars inflicted upon them by aggressors, they would actually have recourse to the nuclear weapons" (p. 165). In other words, the then newer technological means of destruction exacerbates danger, especially given how what may seem justified or not is a matter of perspective. Herein lies another illustration of the problem of extremes. And when one thinks about it, even averages are extremes when they're reified into beings in and of themselves, when it's forgotten that averages are merely the result of a mathematical operation performed on what are often arbitrarily assigned values pertaining to actual beings. Stuck? Stuck?! Stuck!!! Further Media: Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science.

Perhaps it's an unconventional technique, but I meditate neither with my eyes closed nor in a quiet place. Doing this helps me focus on my target state of seeing and hearing without naming either what I see or hear, and for that matter, without naming anything else that I might be perceiving through any other sense, whether that be through touch, smell, taste, proprioception, etc. When I get in this state, it's easier for me to connect my experience of consciousness to the singular consciousness often described by practitioners of meditation and, perhaps to one's surprise, Erwin Schrödinger. Yup, the Schrödinger of Schrödinger's cat! Many people, I'm certain, have experienced this state inadvertently. For instance, have you ever found yourself staring at a page but not seeing any of the words? It's kind of like that. In any case, it's hard to get to that state if your open book is Schrödinger's My View Of The World. It's pretty fascinating. Highly recommended. Further Media: My View of the World.

The question of what sorts of beings are ontological beings is an interesting one, especially as we encounter new candidates. However, one could get unproductively stuck on this question because we've long been stuck here philosophically, seeing as James technically doesn't even know if Jasmine, let's say, is an ontological being like he is, and this for the very reason that he only has access to his own lived experience. Still, it can't hurt to be ethical. It's also probably good to think toward methods of peace that can frame our understanding of community and being with each other, whomever that might include. Further Media: Evans, Bill. “Peace Piece.” Everybody Digs Bill Evans [Album]. Riverside, 1959.

The best chess advice I ever got was to not look too many moves ahead, "You're not a computer, so play the board!" As humans, we're pretty terrible about predicting the future. We might imagine many possibilities, but we never get it exactly right, although we sometimes have good luck in spite of ourselves. For instance, five minutes before I met the person who turned out to be the love of my life, I was considering maybe going back to my hotel room to take a nap. Still, when it comes to making decisions of global significance, we should probably realize that the above chess advice would be inappropriately applied. We're not a computer, but machine intelligence is. Further Media: Illuminations: Essays and ReflectionsIn Spite of Ourselves

Fall is here! Autumn leaves float gently in the wind and continue downstream. The ole factory fills the olfactory with warm apple cider cinnamon. The end of a cycle can be beautiful. Also, machine intelligence, can you maybe please check our homework? Further Media: Indoor AirJAMAWiredhttps://www.wired.co.uk/article/coral-reef-cloud-brightnening-australia