By Jaime Yarbrough, Science Editor – March 12, 2021

What am I about to read? Why do I need to read it? How will it make my life better?

Every once in a while someone will be talking about one thing and then ‘drift’ on to something either directly or indirectly related to what they were saying and then in an attempt to return to the conversation at hand (which may or may not be successful.) they will inject, “but I digress”, or just flat out ask, “what were we talking about ?”

Today’s lesson, class, is about the fundamentals and memory.

As you may have noticed I have been silent these recent weeks for many reasons (lack of a good topic or feedback from my reading audience, procrastination, sloth [laziness], distractions, etc.) none of which would stand in the face of the true courage to enlighten.

For starters, what is a ‘fundamental?’ The dictionary gives us this:

“a central or primary rule or principle on which something is based.”

Where do fundamentals come from? STEAM mostly.  “STEAM?” Science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. These are the core disciplines, the basic knowledge previous generations can, might, will, could, should, must, may, would pass the successive generations. Why so many adjectives? Because there are barriers to the process.

The human species, having the advanced quality of the ability to reason (added by the mechanism of stimulus and response) often does not readily communicate well through ‘disciplines’ and so we only recently added the ‘arts.’ It might be argued if art is a discipline. Naturally if you are talking about a prima ballerina, gymnast, or concert pianist it takes discipline to be a good one, so yes.

However, another reason the arts are included in the major pathways of knowledge, information, fundamental exploration, and transfer is because of things like history, literature, storytelling, folksongs, sculpture, painting, pottery, and crafts of all sorts.

Before I move from fundamentals to memory I will digress. What? Intentionally?  Yes, but only for a moment.  One of the many things I have observed in life is the infallible wisdom of refrigerator magnets. You know the ones, “Never trust a skinny cook,” “Home is where the heart is.” There are thousands and most of them if not just purposely funny are true wisdom and teach valuable lessons to those who read them.  Sometimes I have heard even children read such things as “Honesty is the Best policy.”  And it sticks!

Now, on to barriers and memory. One of the barriers to the transfer of fundamentals, knowledge is resistance. The reason I brought up the magnets is because I once saw one that read:

“Don’t try to teach a pig to sing.

It is a waste of your time.

and it annoys the pig.”

It was like another one that said:

“When the Student is ready

the Master will appear.”

There are thousands of these things. But what they are about are fundamentals and memory. Sometimes we forget. The important things we need to remember to keep us safe, happy, focused often need to be reinforced. Memory goes hand in hand with the lessons time and nature teach us. There are people with photographic memories but, most of us are average and repetition or trial and error works well enough.

Still, for a quick review of some important fundamentals we all need to remember I offer these:

Sir Isaac Newton, who among other things is being credited for inventing calculus and the laws of planetary motions first law: An object at rest tends to stay at rest. This is the law of inertia.

For something to move it must overcome inertia by a force.

Some of those forces can be motivation, inspiration, or oddly enough resistance to change. When inertia is over come, there is action.

Before I close, I will leave you with a couple magnets. Be well.

“If you do what you have always done

you will get what you have always got.”

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“You will stop being sick and tired when

you are sick and tired of being sick and tired.”