Tools

Sometimes when I am out of ideas - and the articles on climate change that I have saved are consistently depressing, I return to my old blog and recycle. This article is one of them - re-examined and edited from one I wrote in 2015. Interesting to see how I change things from time to time.

Over the years I’ve always had a tool box in the closet like the big one pictured above.  It’s pretty basic – a screwdriver with a variety of heads, a hammer, some picture wire, some duct tape.  Any heavy jobs require assistance from a family member or professional.

But my personal organizational tool box contains some good ones which vary as I acquire more and more digital technology.  The contents here really makes a difference.

First of all – paper journals - even though paper sounds out of date.  Recently I recycled about 25 from past lives pondered and agonized about.  If I were a novelist they might have been fodder for a set of future neurotics , but dipping into them revealed somebody who was self-absorbed and rather silly. No doubt the journal I am filling now will seem the same way later.  But I do find it essential to record what’s on my mind.  A journal gets the ideas and problems out there from inside.  It can be reviewed, laughed at or cried over later when I have better perspectives.  I keep these hand written journals for a while – but not forever.  Sometimes I have a look and copy the best notes from reading or personal insight into another one and those journals are longer keepers.

In addition to the big journal – usually black – and Moleskine or a comparable cheaper brand with a bookmark and an elastic -  I have a couple of other books.  One is for ideas for blogs and things get written down if and when they come to me – (it contained the suggestion of this article among other things).  The third one is a notebook for taking notes at meetings or seminars.  I prefer to do this by hand – and try to capture the main ideas with verbatim phrases or even mind maps.  I’ll later transfer the contents to a report if they are something like minutes and meant to be shared.  Generally people who take notes during meetings capture nearly everything but don’t take the additional step of reflecting on what matters in the content.

For a to do list, appointments and the like, I now recommend Bullet Journal. I picked that up in the last three or four years and it covers everything in one place - and still analog. It has the right balance between integration and personal idiosyncracy, You can be as artistic in doodling as you like - or not.

Second – Synchronized stuff.  We move between laptops, tablets and smart phones and we need to have it all in hand and as portable as possible.  If I need reference material for a meeting, I’ll want to have it available when and where I need it.  A recent meeting had an advance portfolio of over 500 pages.  I had the option of reading it onsite on a tablet by either using wi-fi or a previously uploaded copy. In another situation I needed the combination to open a safe.  It was in a Gmail folder in message saved to a folder three months earlier.

Third – Mind Mapping.  I’ve been a mind mapper since a son responded in the early nineties by giving me Tony Buzan’s The Mind Map Book for Christmas.  He had heard me complain about a client‘s proposal.  As an arts consultant at the time I was helping plan a major civic arts facility housing performing, visual and media arts.  There was a lot of blue sky thinking and it was our role to introduce a few clouds.  Suddenly there was talk of taking one of the three components out of the plan without understanding the financial effect on operating revenue.  “If only there were a way to show how one change affects everything else - but on one page,”  I wailed.

Mind mapping does that.  I later went down to Palm Beach and became a Buzan certified trainer, but you can actually learn mind mapping in 10 minutes. If you Google How to Make a Mind Map, you can find the simple instructions.. Hand maps can be visually beautiful and works of art.  Digital maps have the advantage of reordering and restructuring with ease.  Either technique organizes and structures your thinking.  That’s how this article started and got organized. .

Fourth – Graphic Tools.  For any long term plan or project, you have to use something to see the big picture as well as the details.  Most of us think both logically and intuitively and have a preference for one or the other.  We’re exposed to a growing number of messages and an infinite number of words.  When someone says, “Do I have to draw you a picture?” out of frustration, they may be indeed on the right track.  There are many examples of digital canvasses and some of these are now available for collaborative use.  They are a simple way of uniting those with different ways to think because they combine the textual and the visual and relationships among the components are easier to see.

Fifth – Password Savers.  My current password count is 118. The list might be missing a few or have some that should be deleted.  I still have a small paper book where I wrote these down and had to look them up frequently – until I discovered that there is software that stores all of them securely and can access any of them. Basically all I have to remember now is one – which will allow me to keep all the others on file and synchronize them to my other devices.  It’s really fun to see them automatically open anything from bank accounts to online courseware – and that pause even gives a few seconds to relax and reflect.

Sixth – for now – because there will always be more to explore – (and this is updated) - is how to file emails. Get them out of the inbox by having some digital folders - like @meetings for all your Zoom ones, @action for things you have to do - but not this minute, -and others to file anything you want to keep. The reason for the @ sign is to keep at the top of the folder list.

These serve me well and I’ll keep using them for now.  What’s in your tool-box?

Worthwhile places

There is no excuse ever to be bored with the wealth of good opportunities online. Chances are that if we feel that way, we are wasting our time on all the trivia that is there as well. Two things crossed my inbox today that made it worthwhile. One was the mid=week posting of the amazing Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings, a weekly newsletter full of excerpts and wonderful children’s illustrations on many important themes - frequently climate related. Today’s relates to a book called The Songs of Trees, which already resides on my Ipad. As she says:

“It is in such lyrical prose and with an almost spiritual reverence for trees that Haskell illuminates his subject — the masterful, magical way in which nature weaves the warp thread of individual organisms and the weft thread of relationships into the fabric of life”

The book is a journey through time and space, where the writer focuses on trees in various locations and references how they influence their surroundings. I haven’t quite finished it, but it is definitely a keeper and you can find it here - or as Brain Pickings usually does, go to the public library.

The other was an excellent podcast featuring the climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe. I like that when she is asked, as a resident of Texas, whether she is a Democrat or a Republican, she replies, “I am a Canadian.” The video, featured on Climate One was useful in reminding us how to communicate. Hayhoe doesn’t waste time with serious climate deniers, but she has lots of time for the skeptical. She also says that we respond to change based on our values and these come not only from the mind, but also from the heart. I also like her translation of “Dominion” in the book of Genesis - as “responsibility”.

And she is proud of her work on Science Moms, which focuses on facts and other excellent resources for mothers and grandmothers.

The podcasts are recorded live and subsequently posted and you can see some good ones here. Katherine Hayhoe also has a new book coming our that I’ll add to my Ipad Collection, You can find it here.

Climate change and your Canadian vote

There are differences in several analyses of party platforms. Promises are usually aspirational but they do reveal hopes that lead to actions.

You can view the CBC’s analysis here.

MacLean’s Magazine has comparisons here.

The Public Service Alliance has weighed in here

There is one set you can deal with rather quickly. The PPC party doesn’t believe that climate change is caused by humans. Let’s hope members don’t live too close to water, trees, or certain locations with high temperatures.

Bad Thinking

I spent an hour on Labour Day attending a webinar presented by The Philosopher, entitled When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People. It was good enough to download Steven Nadler’s Book by the same name. It was a bit less easy to access a philosopher in Plato or Aristotle’s Day but this one came in an instant and was a quick read.

The writer is concerned about current American Thinking - or perhaps the lack of it, which he finds not only perplexing but even dangerous with epidemic proportions. Beliefs like denial of climate change as a hoax, conspiracy theories and a election fraud can’t be blamed just on lack of education - though poor education is a factor. A recent survey revealed that a third did not know that Auschwitz was a concentration camp and about the same number can’t name a single branch of the US government. Yet many who promote these ideas are highly educated from some of America’s best universities. By many criteria, they are good people. But the author believes they have a character flaw - stubbornness. They fail to tailor what they believe to evidence. They hold false beliefs and doing so has consequences/

What can be done about it? If they think badly, the solution is to learn to think well. There are in fact standards of how to think that have come down to us through - no surprise here - philosophy! It relates to knowing how to know. That comes from knowing one’s self - and knowing what one knows and doesn’t know - evaluating the truth of one’s beliefs.

Bad thinking involves refusal to change one’s beliefs in the face of evidence and instead relying on prejudice, hearsay and emotions like hope and fear. Many are averse to science and its methodologies. Some wrong beliefs - like a flat earth - might seem logical when you look at the horizon and holding such a belief is unlikely to cause harm to others. Other wrong beliefs - like thinking the election was stolen - lead to insurrection.

The lecture took me back to first year philosophy and a reminder that logic patterns have rules. It contended that more often than not, the faults in wrong thinking relate to illogical premises and these need to be questioned. The other common one in bad thinking is paying attention to small samples of evidence. Unfortunately even the best media often publish reports of studies with small samples, which bring on hope and fear rather than reasoned response. Retraction of bad studies don’t get the same press. In our own time press coverage of conspiracies enhance their reach.

We may not have time to go back to philosophy class - but the book does present some ways to counter bad thinking. Some beliefs may give us comfort whether we have any proof of them or not and this doesn’t present a danger to others. It’s when beliefs lead to behaviour that harms others where we have to pay attention. And there are plenty of those beliefs currently around us.

Sometimes studies help

How often do we read of reports and studies and know that all the time put in is probably wasted. They sit on a shelf for a while and then are forgotten as personnel change or recommendations seem impossible because of the cost. I was involved with one such study some years ago in which the cost estimate was $40,000. Ouch, we said - and asked how long could we delay implementing the study recommendation. The answer came back as two to three years. We did nothing. I later left the volunteer post. Recently I hears there was water damage for an estimated starting cost of $13,000 with another $30,000 or $40,000 to follow. Some years ago we had the money in the bank to proceed. Now after shutdown and other events, we no longer have it.

I was glad, therefore, to read about a study that seems to have some practical implications for something I know nothing about - except for eating salmon. I am joined by the people of the Wiulinkinuxv First Nation on Rivers Inlet BC and some grizzly bears who depend upon it for survival. The latter animals are magnificent and I saw some at close range when travelling in the Yukon fourteen years ago. One actually stood up suddenly on hind legs, but we missed the photo op.

In this case, the study looks at how a resource under pressure can be managed to benefit an entire system. Both the community and the bears depend on salmon for food. Over- fishing can deplete the stocks. Twenty five years ago commercial fishing did just that.

What was used was a new approach called ecosystem-based management. It quantifies the relationship of how much use can be made of a food resource for humans and bears without jeopardizing the salmon population in the future. At one point the location had plenteous resources of fish, but overdoing commercial fishing depleted the stock and put the people who lived there in danger from starving bears coming too close. Commercial fishing was halted.

The researcher started working with the community to gather hairs from barbed wire fences that the bears left behind. Isotopes from those hairs allowed the researcher to determine what percentage of salmon was part of the bears’ diet. Over time that percentage created a formula published this week in the Journal, Marine and Coastal Fisheries - (not my normal weekend reading, of course. I learned about it from The Globe and Mail). The researcher, Dr. Megan Adams, spent seven years to see if the bears were gradually able to consume more fish. What it showed was that if the local population reduced fishing by 10% the bears could gain the same amount and be healthy. Since commercial fishing stopped, the stocks have returned - but not at a level to resume commercial fishing.

There are lots of studies that probably please other academics, but have little functional application to make life better for both humans and grizzly bears. Bravo for this one.