Sunday, March 2, 2025

Strange thoughts/ creative thoughts, who can tell the difference?

 I currently in long term care, doing enrichment activities. In addition to tasks obviously related to recreation, I also assist at meals. Some residents in our LTC home need help eating.

One resident who didn't need help was at his own table and asked for gravy with his lunch. The nurse, who was closest to the resident let him know this lunch didn't come with gravy.

I asked if we could "just add food colouring to ..." and I struggled a moment to think of something thick enough to replace the texture of gravy, before completing my thought with "milk of magnesia".

The nurse noted what a strange mind I have and how out of left field that combination was. He was surprised by it enough that I thought more about it. Here are some of those thoughts.

I don't use or administer milk of magnesia. I think it is either a laxative or at least some aid for people with constipation. I will look that up to confirmation before posting this.

I have a degree in science, with a minor in chemistry. I am quite aware of what magnesium is. Again, I will check to if milk of magnesia actually has any magnesium in it. But i mostly think of magnesium as firstly a metal that burns very hot and secondly as a mineral humans need. The medical uses for milk of magnesia are a distant third in my consciousness - well, until I look them up. Okay, enough stalling:

Milk of magnesia

List of Uses of Milk of Magnesia

Magnesium is an important element that acts as a catalyst in many life processes. In addition to photosynthesis, it is also required for the oxidation in animal cells that produce energy and for the production of healthy red blood cells. Humans cannot live without magnesium which we acquire mainly from various foods.

Milk of magnesia is like a creamy colloid form of magnesium hydroxide, Mg(OH)2. It is used as an antacid to neutralise excess stomach acid. Magnesium can also be used in the form of Epsom salts as a treatment for rashes and as a laxative. A more important commercial use of Epsom salts is in the tanning of leather as well as in the dyeing of fabrics.

The important points here are that I knew the words milk of magnesia but I didn't have a strong association with it and laxatives.

And so because I didn't know much about it, only a little about it's texture as somewhat thicker than milk and perhaps similar to gravy, when I wanted a fluid with gravy-like textures it came to mind in ways it would not have to the nurse who attached more importance to its medical uses.

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One definition of creativity is the combining of two separate concepts in a new way. And my combining of two things normally not combined was possibly mostly due to my lack of knowledge about one of them.

I have a vague memory of a TV news clip or documentary show that featured an entrepreneur describing some of their work. He noted that he needed to do some new things and put money and effort into it even though he didn't know much about it. By the end of this project, which was successful but had many challenges, he said he now knew enough about the subject that he would never have proposed it in the first place if he knew then what knew now.

I don't know if this relates to the Dunning Kruger effect, not being aware of how much you are unaware of in a specific subject, but maybe. It may be that the Dunning Kruger effect is necessary for creative work, or at least helpful.


Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Steamboat Mickey is in public domain

 It has been out of copyright in Canada for a while but this is more in the news now that Steamboat Willie is in the public domain in the US.

Some links explaining it all.

Canadian Law and Steamboat Willie.

CTV explains the subject.

Legal Eagle gives a video explanation.

Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Still Alive and Naps

 Back when I blogged regularly, and missed a few days, I would title a blogpost, Still Alive...". I did the same when travelling and sent, by air-snail mail (uh, snail-air mail?). I guess that might be morbid.

Anyway, I am working in long term care, making and planning activities and I find it quite similar teaching ESL in Korea. I use a lot of activities from my ESL days with my dementia clients.

So, well, see you again in 7 weeks (when I prepare for Nanowrimo) and then again in a few years, or something.

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From Scientific American: Are Naps good for you? (my bolding):

Several studies find that a well-timed nap can provide a short-term boost in brainpower. For example, scientists reviewed past research that focused on healthy participants with regular sleep cycles. That review, published in 2009 in the Journal of Sleep Research, showed that napping improved factors ranging from reaction time to alertness to memory performance. A brief nap can also light the spark of creativity, a 2021 study in Science Advances found. In that research, participants were given math problems that could be solved with an easy shortcut that they weren’t told about. Some participants were encouraged to take a brief, dozy nap before tackling the problems. The researchers found those who napped—and spent even just 30 seconds in the first, lightest phase of sleep—were 2.7 times more likely to figure out the math shortcut than those who stayed awake. But entering a deeper sleep phase had a negative effect on this creative insight. In other words, there may be a “sweet spot” of mental relaxation that clears the way for eureka moments.


Monday, May 1, 2023

Two from Tor: and also, Still Alive!

 It's been a while! I don't feel I have been creative in an obvious way for the past few months, so I didn't post anything here.  But these two posts from Tor - the book publishing company - caught my eye.

Seven fictional writers who clearly aren't based on reality.

Apparently Stephen King's Misery is the most realistic of the bunch.

How adaptations can be their own works of art. The TV show The Magicians, which has mostly the same characters as the books but is also weirder and maybe darker than the books, gets a lot of praise.

Tuesday, September 20, 2022

Midland Ontario Municipal Election candidates, 2022

 



Links in a mess. Here they are with little attempt to organize them:

https://www.midland.ca/elections
https://www.midlandtoday.ca/2022-municipal-election-news/nominations-closed-heres-who-is-running-for-midland-council-5723916

https://www.midlandtoday.ca/2022-municipal-election-news/nominations-closed-heres-who-is-running-for-midland-council-5723916
https://stewartstrathearn.ca/
https://www.billgordon.ca/
https://midlandmain.com/
https://www.midlandtoday.ca/local-news/cody-oschefski-enters-bid-to-become-midlands-deputy-mayor-5523733
https://www.midlandtoday.ca/2022-municipal-election-news/jack-contin-throws-hat-into-ring-to-become-midlands-deputy-mayor-5662112


Monday, July 18, 2022

The Brave Pantser - or not

 At Quora, I wrote about some of my Nanowrimo experiences. Here is most of my answer at Quora:

Profile photo for Brian Dean

Yes, most of the time.

A Nanowrimo story was set in space and I knew the setting very well; someone else had researched it and I thought it cool. I contacted the man for permission to put a story in his setting and he was happy to grant that permission. The setting was:

Building the ultimate Solar System
A while back I performed an experiment called build a better Solar System.  The game was to make better use of the Solar System’s habitable real estate.  In the game I was required to keep al…

36 Earth-sized moons and planets around a single star.

So someone else did most of the physics and I only needed to come up with the characters, plot, themes and tone. That’s all!

Okay, that’s a lot. But my story had a firm setting. So I sat down at 11:55pm on October 31, got ready and… really struggled at the start of November 1!

I wrote about some archaeologists and a university on one of the planets and then the story began to pick up momentum.

Nanowrimo only requires 50,000 toward a first draft be written by November 30, and I surpassed that number but I had nothing like a story.

I did have the actual beginnings of a story, I had solid characters, a satisfactory plot - not so much on the page but in my head or in notes about the story. I had, in short, the makings of a good (for me) story; probably not a first draft, but draft 0.6. Most of that work would be thrown out or kept as background in the actual story, but I had pantsed my way into an actual story.

And I learned so much about my science fictional setting. It was indeed fun. Not completely satisfying because it took so long in my writing for the story to appear, but still fun.

One more story about pantsing a story: I wrote a fantasy story based on some daydreams I had as a child (yes, in writing this, I see how much time I spent daydreaming. I had better become a real writer to make that time well-spent!). It had a child stolen from another world and then returned to that world after several years had passed - standard stuff. But because I was pantsing the story, I didn’t know yet why she had been taken or why she had been returned.

And at several points in the story, I could have made that choice, directed the story one way or another … and I chickened out! At every opportunity to make a decision, I passed and left it vague so I could make the decision later.

And the story was fluff. It had not meat. It wasn’t good and my anxiety about making, or not, that decision kinda poisoned the process for me. There were fun moments but the total was not fun. I needed to be a braver pantser.