On Mondays Camera Girl is in charge of Princess Sack of Potatoes.\u00a0 Which makes me her errand boy for anything that needs doing.\u00a0 So today she wanted me to get the memory card from the game camera so she could show her prot\u00e9g\u00e9 what kind of animals had eaten the food she stole from me.\u00a0 Now, sure, the scraps she gives the wild beasts living in the forest are probably not premium protein anymore.\u00a0 Bits of chicken fat and skin and whatever doesn\u2019t end up on the menu for me probably shouldn\u2019t arouse my sense of outrage.\u00a0 But in these days of skyrocketing food prices, I\u2019m acutely aware of threats to my survival.<\/p>\n
But I digress.\u00a0 I brought the memory card in and popped it in the card reader slot on my laptop and reviewed the numerous files.\u00a0 But what we discovered was that Camera Girl had miscalculated the line of sight of the camera.\u00a0 She threw her largesse too close to the camera\u2019s location and thus the viewpoint was mostly above the location of the food.\u00a0 Therefore, mostly what we saw were the animals before and after they were feeding and typically at the edge of the photo and moving away from the camera.<\/p>\n
I respectfully brought this situation to Camera Girl\u2019s attention.\u00a0 But she said she did what I told her to do.\u00a0 I carefully and calmly reminded her that I showed her the line where the camera would see the action but assumed she wouldn\u2019t put the food right below the camera because it was elevated from the ground.\u00a0 She told me what she thought about my assumption using a popular breakdown of the spelling of ass-u-me.<\/p>\n
I thought this distinctly unfair.\u00a0 But what I decided was to provide her with a clear target.\u00a0 I said, \u201cDo you see the pole banged into the ground?\u201d\u00a0 She said yes.\u00a0 I continued, \u201cDo you see the rainwater drain that ends near the pole?\u201d\u00a0 Again, she said yes.\u00a0 I finished, \u201cThe line segment formed by the pole on one end and the end of the drain pipe as the other endpoint is the acceptable area to put the food. \u00a0Do you follow me?\u201d\u00a0 She said no.\u00a0 I slowly and calmly said, \u201cHuh?\u201d\u00a0 She said, \u201cThat\u2019s not clear.\u00a0 How will I know if it\u2019s on that line?\u201d<\/p>\n
I remained calm.\u00a0 I could see I was dealing with a non-Euclidean geometer and she was trying to involve me in a topological debate.\u00a0 Therefore, I changed tack.\u00a0 \u201cImagine the two points I said were the endpoints.\u00a0 Instead think of them as two opposite points on the circumference of a circle.\u00a0 In your mind envision a circle with those two points on the circumference.\u00a0 Anyplace inside that circle will be an acceptable target for your animal slop.\u201d \u00a0She shook her head and walked away.<\/p>\n
So why did I write about this?\u00a0 Well, I think it represents a microcosm of the male\/female dichotomy.\u00a0 Men use logical simplifications to model the world.\u00a0 We like reasoning our way through problems.\u00a0 Women want simple concrete rules to follow.\u00a0 They don\u2019t want to discuss theory.\u00a0 At least that is the way women used to be.\u00a0 Nowadays I\u2019m not sure what they are.\u00a0 Maybe they\u2019ve become like men.<\/p>\n
But even if they\u2019ve adopted some of the practices of men I doubt if they\u2019ve changed their nature.\u00a0 There is a difference in the way the brains of men and women work.\u00a0 We go about things in different ways.\u00a0 And from my point of view, I think there is an advantage to this dichotomy.\u00a0 These two ways of looking at things provide checks on each other.\u00a0 Too much theory can lead to error based on differences between the map and the territory.\u00a0 But at the same time without the imaginative leap and the simplification that modelling can provide many problems would never be solved.<\/p>\n
I started to expound on this dichotomy to Camera Girl.\u00a0 She told me the garbage pails needed to go out on the road today and walked away.\u00a0 And so it goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Mondays Camera Girl is in charge of Princess Sack of Potatoes.\u00a0 Which makes me her errand boy for anything that needs doing.\u00a0 So today<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1263],"tags":[300,993],"class_list":["post-18451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","tag-camera-girl","tag-the-war-between-men-and-women"],"yoast_head":"\n