Taomeow

Dogs will eat anything. Your 'Home Science" sounds like a very useful subject (unless botched by useless teachers.) We had something similar, gender segregated -- boys were doing something in the mechanical shop and girls were knitting and sewing. I had neither the talent nor the patience for either, so my knitted goods self-limited to a scarf just big enough for a cat (should a cat agree to wear a scarf), and I also sewed a pretty nightgown that would probably fit someone very asymmetrical, with one arm three times the circumference of the other and one leg about a foot longer.

WD-40* *How to fix anything... life's most profound lesson: If it moves but shouldn't -- duct tape If it doesn't move but should -- WD-40

That's exactly what I thought too.

I am very fond of my frying pans. They are decades old (the oldest one is 70) and take heavy use in stride. In addition to cast iron I have copper and copper-over-steel ones. It's true that my 12-inch copper beauty* lost all the tin, but to re-tin it costs hundreds of dollars in our parts, so I just don't use it for anything acidic it might react with. I could give a reason and rationale for the fact that I have 7 frying pans and none are decorative or the outcome of hoarding. I use all of them interchangeably -- each of them knows what its purpose in life is and does not infringe upon another frying pan's territory. But If I was limited to just one (as I used to be), that one would be cast iron. *beauty: I mean its performance, not appearance, since it shines from thorough polishing maybe once a year and then it's all downhill for it. Scrubbing and polishing to a beautiful uniform shine is for decorative copper, not for the workhorse of the kitchen.)

We too have inherited the skill of the skillet from our primate ancestors. An FBI report from 2013 found that more crimes are committed with blunt everyday objects than with firearms -- and frying pans are quite popular. I have two cast iron frying pans in regular use and always handy. The bigger one weighs 7 lb. (For comparison -- a baseball bat is about 2 lb.) Reptilian and other malevolent creatures may want to step carefully.

When my cat was only a few weeks old, for some reason she was very interested in vegetables. Every time I come across that ubiquitous meme where a cat is being yelled at for not eating her broccoli, I find it heartbreaking. (Yes, I know it's not the cat in the original photo. Still, I can't help thinking my poor kitty may have been starving in her early kittenhood and would eat whatever... I got her when she was way too small for adoption age -- the woman selling her in the parking lot didn't seem like a reliable cat person, so, who knows. Incidentally, yesterday she brought home her first wild mouse... I mean the cat did, not that woman.)

And with a full brain you could make Cauliflower Polonaise. In my kitchen it's known as "The Right Way" rather than "Polonaise," as I inherited the recipe long before the attribution. ( "The Left Way" is just steaming it. "The Right Way" may or may not add cheese, it doesn't matter much since you can't improve much on perfection.)

Note to self: never respond to newcomers' questions until you know more about them.

"Minds are what brains do." -- Marvin Minsky, father of neural networks This statement may seem overly materialistic and "non-spiritual," but the thing is, the very notions of "brain" and "mind" are rather arbitrary. They keep discovering "brains" in places other than the skull -- e.g. there's the "gut-brain" axis, with the enteric nervous system in continuous complex communication with the CNS via complex two-way signaling pathways (e.g. the vagus nerve that equally "belongs" to the gut and the head). The immune system has a mind of its own, and the mind in the head has only indirect and limited impact on what it thinks. It's hard to draw a demarcation line. Or rather, it's somewhat counterproductive. In the organ-system-function cognitive tradition of taoist sciences, you don't separate what they "are" from what they "do." It's all one, and it splits into "matter" and "spirit," "body" and "mind" that don't constitute a whole only when unhealthy. When it's healthy it's unified.

Youtube fed a CIA guy into my feed (yum!) who studied assorted psychology disciplines toward, well, manipulation, interrogation, infiltration and whatever else they want psychology for at the agency. So he said, based on what he asserts he learned from studies, that we have an average of 65,000 thoughts on a daily basis, of which 48,000 are negative and self-defeating, and not only that but 90 to 95% of them are repetitive, thoughts we already had before, many times before, and in all likelihood will have them again tomorrow. This I think (sic) is what cultivation systems that seem to advise fighting one's thoughts by various methods are up against, and I think (sic again) it may be a worthy albeit difficult pursuit. Not to eradicate "all" thoughts but to get rid of that useless overload that consumes a ton of brainpower. "When you eat a banana 60% of the calories go toward feeding your negativity." What a thought! I'm never eating bananas again! I know three ways of turning off that loop of thoughts going nowhere. Meditation, sleep, good audiobooks read by voices I like. All three have elements of wuwei in them, though in different proportions. (For me personally, audiobooks are more wuwei in my native tongue even though non-native poses no conscious difficulty -- but my unconscious is aware of an extra effort, and my consciousness is aware of that. I can literally feel my brain using more calories from that banana.) I think periodic non-thinking times are beneficial...

a prostitute who puts out for every client willing to pay. When margarine was invented, scores of 'nutrition scientists' were tasked with proving it's healthier than butter. For one example, around the 1980s all recipes collections and cookbooks got rewritten with margarine replacing butter in them. The French didn't buy it. But I do remember cooking with it in my younger years when I didn't know better. Live and learn. I believe nutrition as a science hardly exists. For starters it's too complex and mysterious -- the most magical transformation in existence, turning assorted not-you things into you, not-me into me... sheer magic. And to make matters worse, it pretends people didn't eat for a million years before sedentary agriculture, let alone before "nutritional science" -- and step very carefully around facts. Trying not to stumble and fall into, e.g., those fire pits that Native American tribes used for 25,000 to 40,000 years in one place (tribes coming and going, the fire pit being used continuously). They roasted their bison and buffalo whole in those. No wonder nutritional scientists of today give it the widest berth -- imagine falling into something like this and all your margarine and cereals stuffed in your learned pockets going up in smoke in an instant...

I think it's one of the least mysterious statements in the I Ching. A favorable beginning (yuan), penetrating progress (heng), beneficial appropriateness (li), and steadfast correctness (zhen) -- throughout the I Ching Yuanheng Lizhen stands for the "green light" in response to your divination. A "yes," rather than what the outcome of other inquiries may be -- "maybe," "possible but not likely," "don't go there," "a hard no."

You need to graciously love yourself off.

Yayoiu Kusama, 'Pumpkin Cat,' 1990 The cat addition to Kusama's famous pumpkin motif is of debatable authorship, but I like it. Kusama is a Japanese artist presently 96 years old. She keeps working every day in her Tokyo studio. Happy Halloween!