Posted by
Steve Smith on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/basis-for-prediction-forked-from-the-tail-end-of-anthropological-observtions-tp7595317p7595348.html
Nick -
>
> The thunder lightening thing is both apt and strange, because of
> course nothing is possible between lightning and thunder EXCEPT that
> it is going to thunder. CF living in SFO or Seattle. You've seen the
> lightening, folks! "One banana,.... two bananas.....three bananas
> ….." Yet I still like the aphorism.
I would claim it is a "failure of imagination" to believe that nothing
is possible in that banana-time. But that would be too blunt.
Unless the the lightning/thunder pair appears simultaneous (and your
horse throws you and you claim later that you were "struck by lightning"
yet have no melted belt-buckle or burn-scars to back it up) then there
is at least a tiny-bit of banana between one and the other. What we do
with that time is the point...
While human reactions are often too slow to do more than cower or fling
up one's arm, I attribute the term/sentiment to the north American
Plains Indians who were as often as not watching/hearing lightning
strike far away with seconds (or bananas) to wait. And on the plains
one often can be *surrounded* by thunderstorms... lightning flashing on
every horizon for an hour or more... *plenty* of time to contemplate
the best/worst cases afoot as the thunder rolls across the plains,
echoing complexly off of this bluff and that. a contemplation of many
forms of imminent causality?
In this moment (roughly the last month) we have been watching lightning
dance on the horizons (months ago across the Pacific in Wuhan,
Singapore, Korea) and waiting to hear the death toll on our nightly
news... not unlike many here might remember during the 60's and Viet Nam
(I was too young, had no TV but I heard stories). Now I feel like the
lightning is things like the people up in arms (carrying arms), yelling
at their governors to "let them back to work", and the thunder will be
the rise in infections that will happen a week or three after they do
followed by echoing peals of "I Tole You So!" and "Fake News" and
"Democrat Hoax!" and "Freedom isn't Free" and "Don't Tread on Me!" and
"I wish I wuz in Dixie!"
The metaphor of lightning/thunder is stretched here, and it feels a bit
more like "tickling the tail of the dragon" in slow-motion... watching
one flash of fission trigger another and listening to the Geiger
counter... (just don't drop one shell onto the other)! We are
playing with chain reactions here and most of us just aren't tuned to
think that way. Even a Tsunami or Earthquake or Hurricane is beyond our
ken, and *they* are relatively linear in progression.
>
> By the way, how many people on this list have heard the expression,
> "Red, Right, Returning" and know to what it refers.
"Red, Right, Returning" I know of as a mnemonic device used in coastal
navigation, extended from the more general starboard/larboard red/green
navigational lighting standards? How might that map to this moment of
(presumed) returning (toward) (a new?) normalcy?
>
> Ach! I don't know how you all tolerate this interface.
I don't I use Thunderbird. Gmail is at best a Frienemy.
"Tickling the forked tail end of anthropological observations",
- Steve
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