03 July 2015

Notes - my kingdom for a bed / denisovan / you said it for me

         Late morning. After a bad night of trying to sleep on the couch in the living room and then the couch in the media room (both are too low for comfort), you suggested the upstairs twin bed (Carol’s old bed from home and Overseas, the other Mary Lou slept on) you and Linda dismantled it and brought it down and put it up. The physical therapist, Tara, who was left a short time ago, said the bed is fine for her (and Carol is much more comfortable. Carol did well with her exercises though her knee degree from 88 to 86 was lower (because of the couches) it should be back to 88 degrees out of 90. Dr. Thomas is well please. The thinking is that within two weeks Carol should be back to living a more normal life and well on the way to a full recovery. Presently she is on the phone with Mary Lou so some normalcy has already set in. – Amorella

         1117 hours. I am relieved that Carol is more comfortable and with the bed downstairs she will have a much better night. Her pain is well controlled and that is very good as well. Linda is right on top of the situation and this is excellent for Carol as well. As they are on the phone I returned to the living room. I can take only so much sister-talk – about five minutes is my limit.

         Post. - Amorella


         You were checking the Geno.2 Project online and found material you had not seen before. - Amorella

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Geonographic Project/ Why Am I Denisovan

When our ancestors first migrated out of Africa around 60,000 years ago, they were not alone. At least two of our hominid cousins had made the same journey—Neanderthals and Denisovans. Neanderthals, the better known of the two species, left Africa about 300,000 years ago and settled in Europe and parts of western Asia. The Denisovans are a much more recent addition to the human family tree. In 2008, paleoanthropologists digging in a cave in southern Siberia unearthed a 40,000-year-old adult tooth and an exquisitely preserved fossilized pinkie bone that had belonged to a young girl who was between five and seven years old when she died.

Recently, scientists successfully extracted nuclear DNA from the pinkie bone and conducted comparison studies with the genomes of modern humans and Neanderthals. Studies show the girl was closely related to Neanderthals, yet distinct enough to merit classification as a new species of archaic humans, which scientists named “Denisovan” after the cave where the pinkie bone was found. The Denisovan genome also suggests the young girl had brown hair, eyes, and skin.

Surprisingly, the scientists found genetic overlap between the Denisovan genome and that of some present-day east Asians, and, in particular, a group of Pacific Islanders living in Papua New Guinea, known as the Melanesians. It appears the Denisovans contributed between 3 to 5 percent of their genetic material to the genomes of Melanesians. Scientists think that the most likely explanation is that Denisovans living in eastern Eurasia interbred with the modern human ancestors of Melanesians. When those humans crossed the ocean to reach Papua New Guinea around 45,000 years ago, they brought their Denisovan DNA over with them.

If this genetic mixing did occur, the fact that Denisovans were discovered in Siberia but contributed to the genomes of modern humans living in Southeast Asia suggests the species ranged widely across Asia, although their low genetic diversity also indicates their numbers were never very high.

According to one theory, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans are all descended from the ancient human Homo heidelbergensis. Between 300,000 to 400,000 years ago, an ancestral group of H. heidelbergensis left Africa and then split shortly after. One branch ventured northwestward into West Asia and Europe and became the Neanderthals. The other branch moved east, becoming Denisovans. By 130,000 years ago, H. heidelbergensis in Africa had become Homo sapiens—our ancestors—who did not begin their own exodus from Africa until about 60,000 years ago.

By comparing the genomes of apes, Denisovans, Neanderthals, and modern humans, scientists hope to identify DNA segments unique to the different groups. Early results already suggest modern humans underwent genetic changes involved with brain function and nervous system development, including ones involved in language development, after splitting from Neanderthals and Denisovans. Identifying and understanding these genetic tweaks could help explain why our species survived and thrived while our close relatives died out.

From - https://genographic.nationalgeographicDOTcom/denisovan/

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         1148 hours. While reading the above article I realized that my Grandma Stories still had a sense of my own genealogy. Early I thought, surely I am not related to those in Grandma’s Stories that are from the Far East, such as China, Korea and down into Southeast Asia, but here, being 3.1 percent Denisovans I can now say it is possible, not highly probable but Denisovans genes are what they are. It is one thing to say we are all connected but I was thinking Homo sapiens alone and it turns out we are, most of us, connected genetically from Homo sapiens, going further back almost four hundred thousand years.

         This means next to nothing or even nothing to many people but for orndorff it adds to his immediate imagination that is important in his sense of authenticity with the characters in all the Merlyn stories. This allows him to make his characters more real in his head. This may not address itself in the stories themselves but it allows him to reach further back in how it must have been some three or four hundred thousand years ago for those of higher consciousness among those who may had not had the time or circumstance to develop this consciousness yet. – Amorella

         1229 hours. I wonder how it would have been to have had a developing mind and heart without a soul? From the tools and artwork that has been found there were inklings of heart, surely there was family bonding which would lead to a sense of love for one’s parents or guardians and for one’s own offspring. This can be seen in lower primates as well as other animals – a sense of play, a sense of comfort in touching, in the sharing of food, in protection of the group. Heart surely would have grown from such experiences. It is the recognition of the sense of the soul (possibility of surviving physical death) that would be last to add.

         We can work with this line of thought orndorff. – Post. – Amorella

         1238 hours. We decided on Chipotle for lunch. Everyone is going for a burrito bowl and we all picked out what we want. This is how it will be, once a day, we eat out, so to speak, by bringing it home. Later, at four, the nurse is to arrive.

         Two other health professionals arrived and pronounced Carol fit in her present circumstance. Both had tips for her comfort and for accessibility with the walker with wheels. Everyone had leftovers for supper. Carol and Linda both enjoyed the rest of their Chipotle lunch burrito bowls. You watched some television then both were to bed in the media room. You have been thinking about the rerun of last year’s PBS’s Endeavor series, “Sway” which you just watched once again. You began to think on your quest in writing and how writing, particularly getting into the heart of the character allows you to live-the-moment in any time period you wish. You have the willing-suspension-of-disbelief to do so within context of character, setting, plot and theme. – Amorella

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Suspension of disbelief
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Suspension of disbelief or willing suspension of disbelief is a term coined in 1817 by the poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who suggested that if a writer could infuse a "human interest and a semblance of truth" into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgment concerning the implausibility of the narrative. Suspension of disbelief often applies to fictional works of the action, comedy, fantasy, and horror genres. Cognitive estrangement in fiction involves using a person's ignorance or lack of knowledge to promote suspension of disbelief.

The phrase "suspension of disbelief" came to be used more loosely in the later 20th century, often used to imply that the burden was on the reader, rather than the writer, to achieve it. This might be used to refer to the willingness of the audience to overlook the limitations of a medium, so that these do not interfere with the acceptance of those premises. These fictional premises may also lend to the engagement of the mind and perhaps proposition of thoughts, ideas, art and theories.

Suspension of disbelief is often an essential element for a magic act or a circus sideshow act. For example, an audience is not expected to actually believe that a woman is cut in half or transforms into a gorilla in order to enjoy the performance.

Coleridge's original formulation

Coleridge coined the phrase in his Biographia Literaria, published in 1817, in the context of the creation and reading of poetry. Chapter XIV describes the preparations with Wordsworth for their revolutionary collaboration Lyrical Ballads (first edition 1798), for which Coleridge had contributed the more romantic, gothic pieces including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Poetry and fiction involving the supernatural had gone out of fashion to a large extent in the 18th century, in part due to the declining belief in witches and other supernatural agents among the educated classes, who embraced the rational approach to the world offered by the new science. Alexander Pope, notably, felt the need to explain and justify his use of elemental spirits in The Rape of the Lock, one of the few English poems of the century that invoked the supernatural. Coleridge wished to revive the use of fantastic elements in poetry. The concept of "willing suspension of disbelief" explained how a modern, enlightened audience might continue to enjoy such types of story.

Coleridge recalled:

”... It was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth on the other hand was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us ...”

The notion of such an action by an audience was however recognized in antiquity, as seen particularly in the Roman theoretical concerns of Horace, who also lived in an age of increasing skepticism about the supernatural, in his Ars Poetica. . . .

Psychology

Psychological critic Norman Holland points to a neuroscientific explanation. When we hear or watch any narrative, our brains go wholly into perceiving mode. They turn off our systems for acting or planning to act. With them go our systems for assessing reality. We believe. We have, in Coleridge's second, more accurate phrase, “poetic faith.” That’s why humans have such trouble recognizing lies. We first believe, then have to make a conscious effort to disbelieve.

Only when we stop perceiving to think about what we have seen or heard, only then do we assess its truth-value. Watching a movie or reading a story, if we are really “into” the fiction, “transported,” in the psychologists' term, we are, as Immanuel Kant pointed out long ago, “disinterested.” We respond aesthetically, without purpose. We just enjoy. We don’t judge the truth of what we’re perceiving, even though, if we stop being transported and think about it, we know quite well it’s a fiction.

Suspension of disbelief has also been used within a mental health context by Frank DeFulgentis in his book Flux. It is an attempt to describe the phenomenon of forgetting irrational thoughts associated with cases of OCD. In the book, the author suggests 'suspending disbelief' as opposed to forcing ourselves to forget; similar to how one would put a virus in quarantine. We can thereby allow ourselves to be absorbed in the activities around us until these irrationalities vanish on their own accord. . . .

Criticisms

As in the examples of Superman's powers and Gary Larson's cartoon, it is unclear that suspension of disbelief correctly describes an audience's perception of art. If the theory were to be true, the individual events of suspension would appear to be highly selective. (It would appear that one chooses to suspend disbelief for the ability to fly, but not to suspend it for myopic co-workers.)

Aesthetic philosophers generally reject claims that suspension of disbelief accurately characterizes the relationship between people and "fictions." Kendall Walton notes that, if viewers were to truly suspend disbelief at a horror movie and accept its images as true, they would have a true-to-life set of reactions. For instance, audience members would cry out, "Look behind you!" to an endangered on-screen character or call the police when they witnessed an on-screen murder.

However, many of these criticisms simply fail to notice that Coleridge's original statement came in a restrictive clause. The formulation "...that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith," of necessity implies that there are different sorts of suspension of disbelief and specifies that poetic faith is one instance of a larger class. One need not choose to believe that a character in a horror film is a real person in order, for example, to choose to believe that the character is looking at the building seen in the following reverse-shot. More often than not, both beliefs would be equally false.

Not all authors believe that suspension of the disbelief adequately characterizes the audience's relationship to imaginative works of art. J. R. R. Tolkien challenges this concept in his essay “On Fairy-Stories”, choosing instead the paradigm of secondary belief based on inner consistency of reality. Tolkien says that, in order for the narrative to work, the reader must believe that what he reads is true within the secondary reality of the fictional world. By focusing on creating an internally consistent fictional world, the author makes secondary belief possible. Tolkien argues that suspension of disbelief is only necessary when the work has failed to create secondary belief. From that point the spell is broken, and the reader ceases to be immersed in the story and must make a conscious effort to suspend disbelief or else give up on it entirely.

Selected and edited from Wikipedia

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         2257 hours. Coleridge has been an early and continuing influence on my sense of poetry and literature; although,I believe Tolkien has a valid point. The weaknesses in the Merlyn’s books is that while I have the willing-suspension-of-disbelief I do not adequately deliver this on to the reading audience. In that sense this shows that I don’t really give much of a damn about the reader as long as I am transported ‘elsewhere’ out of this earthly environment, i.e. physics-in-totality. My place, within the story is being within Merlyn’s heartansoulanmind. This is where I am within the series as a whole, both series.

         You have a point, boy. The reader does not see the holistic aspect of you the writer, nor should they. The reader wants a story with an introduction, characters, plot, theme and a genuine conclusion to bring the work together. But you forget, the main theme of the work is on the existential circumstance of ‘being’ Homo sapiens and how this works between the lines, at least within the Merlyn books, both series. You are the human being; you feel you are spiritually not native to the physics in which you exist. Heartansoulanmind is the Reality of what Humanity is. It is the essence of ‘being’ into itself for each person. The senses of the heartansoulanmind need no eyes, ears, tastes, smells and touch to understand existence particularly with others of similar species. You have to start somewhere and that is your premise. Mind and Heart are important, but it is the soul that comes first, before the mind and the heart. The body is secondary and this is seen in proof upon physically dying and still being conscious of a state of existence. This is your thinking, your consideration of the moment. Post. – Amorella

         2314 hours. Thank you for better expressing this. I am still tongue-tied, so to speak, as to what to say. Other than the above, I have nothing else to say, and oddly, I didn’t say it, you, Amorella said it for me. - rho

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