(no subject)

Sunday July 4, 2010 Independence Day

Independence Day celebration at Powderhorn Park. It had exhibits from two clean-water organizations; Blue Planet and the local group Blue Thumb. Also Metro Blooms, which promotes rain gardens and native plants.

"We sing about fashion for octopi." Clementown is a band for children.

I stopped at Community Action of Minnesota's table, and was given a bundle of freebies which included two CFI lightbulbs. Those I know I'll use. Also two Ecologically Correct night lights, a freezer/refrigerator thermometer, and a window sealing kit.

Went to the shopping mall near Lake and Minnehaha. Stopped in at Target and at Rainbow. Bought stuff at Cub and at Dollar Tree.

Back to Powderhorn Park. While walking through the park, paused to kick a soccer ball back to a girl and her mother.

Detroit Don King's Blues Band was on stage when I got back to the celebration area.

And then, after dusk, what I'd been waiting for: the fire dancers. Dancers breathing fire, and a bit of fire-eating. Dancers with torches, and multiple torch-holders. Hoop dancers.

I resisted the impulse to yell "Burn, Baby, Burn!"

After them, the fireworks. Which I didn't stay to see.

As I walked home, I heard a lot of fireworks and saw some of them. As I got to my neighborhood, the air was smokey.

(no subject)

Dan Goodman (dsgood) wrote, @ 2010-06-23 13:39:00

It's Not Strange From the Inside

Most of my thinking isn't in words. Some of it (the part I'm fully aware of) is in kinesthetic/tactile/visual diagrams.

For a long time, I took it for granted that I thought in words. For much of that time, I knew there were people who didn't; I didn't realize I was one of them.

cakmpls LiveJournal
2010-06-23 03:39 pm
And I always knew I was one of them, even when some people didn't believe such a thing to be possible.

dsgood
2010-07-05 10:34 pm
I remember a philosophy textbook which began by saying that philosophers reason without making assumptions. It then went on to explain that only humans can think; because thinking is done in language, and animals can't use language.

don_fitch LiveJournal
2010-06-23 04:13 pm 172.131.236.233)
Yeah, I seem to be (by most -- not only American -- standards) unusually/extremely verbal -- yet a lot of my thinking is visual. (I do not, for example, think of people primarily in terms of their names or faces, but rather in the ways they move, as well as their personalities.) I certainly cannot appreciate/understand the thought processes of people who think in terms of the pictographic Chinese/Japanese languages.

dsgood
2010-07-05 10:38 pm 75.72.187.5)
Recognizing people by their faces seems likely to be visual. However, I gather that some people remember faces abstractly. I suspect that most of the amateur sex story writers who begin by giving physical statistics for their major characters are among the latter.

Identifying people by the way they move is likely some combination of visual and kinesthetic.

dreamshark LiveJournal
2010-06-23 04:15 pm
I don't believe that anybody thinks in words all the time. Not even me, and I am extremely word-oriented.

Is there a difference between "thinking in words" and "talking to yourself"? I talk to myself a great deal (usually not out loud). But I think in other ways as well. At least there are times when I am not carrying on an inner monologue/dialogue. Presumably my brain is still doing something at those times, so I must be thinking non-verbally, right?

dsgood
2010-07-05 10:42 pm
It may be that there are people all of whose conscious thinking is in words; any non-verbal thinking is subconscious. At the other end of the spectrum would be people who've never learned language.

When I talk to myself aloud, it usually doesn't make sense; in that situation, it's definitely not my conscious mind controlling what I say.

le_trombone LiveJournal
2010-06-24 12:04 pm
I'm genuinely unsure as to how I think. I'm certainly not very verbal, but I'm able to attach words to what I'm doing inside my head. Hmm.

dsgood LiveJournal
2010-07-05 10:46 pm
Comment Posted Successfully
When you remember, what is it you remember best? Vision, sounds in general, speech, motion? Or an abstraction rather than anything sensory?

dyvyd
2010-06-23 10:32 pm
Do you ever get a dream of a diagram like a TV test pattern full of symbols, but not being able to think anything about it? I have that dream sometimes and it is very claustrophobic. It will usually wake me up out of frustration.

dsgood
2010-07-05 10:44 pm
I've never had that kind of dream.

I wonder how common it is.