Seems like a really good time to think about super powers.  I mean, who has beaten Death, right?  At least according to reports.  Which would later become State Media, but that’s a much longer (and more controversial) topic.

Instead, some focus on four real-life Super Powers.  But first, a word about “data collection.”  You see, most people go through life like it’s an Air Force chow hall. they mostly take what’s served but will seldom ask “Can I get mine over easy, please?”

Which is to say that “V” (as in Victim) on your forehead is only there because you assent to it.  Oh, and you have to become extremely precise in your Language because that’s a reflection of your inner clockworks.  So, remember that:

• Assent often suggests a more formal or official agreement, sometimes with reluctance or after deliberation (e.g., “The committee assented to the plan”).
• Agree is broader, used in casual or formal contexts, and may imply mutual understanding or enthusiasm (e.g., “We agreed to meet at 5 PM”).

If there is any single, easy-to-identify trait of a professional-level-trained mind, it is the simple revelation of mental acuity that follows 2-3 minutes of conversation.

Super Power #1

We will cover just two of the “Open to All” Super Powers this morning.

The first is “Teach Yourself Relationship Filing.”

In one of my books (“The Millennial’s Missing Manual: What School Didn’t Teach and What Old People Didn’t Explain“), I show how this works.

Imagine that your brain learns to classify (or categorize) everything you observe in Life into Seven Major Systems.

• Food and water
• Shelter and housing
• Energy and power
• Communications and contact
• Finance as assets and money
• Environment both internal and external
• Transportation which tends to happen by land, sea, or air…

This method of organizing your view on the world allows you to instantly have useful context in all conversations.

So, (using a graphic from my book) if you take a Core System like Food (in the physical world) it will has aspects of all the other major systems.  The Energy aspect of food is, in one case, the diesel used to power the tractor to pull the combine.  The Transportation aspect is those open hopper semi’s that are running up and down Interstate 5 in California transporting, oh, tomatoes here shortly.

So when we make FOOD the focus its system faces look like this:

If this systemic view of Life stopped here, it would be at least useful.  But, it doesn’t.  Because each of the “plane surfaces” becomes extensible both over time and location; which to me seemed a reasonable approach to the Ordination problem.

“Ordination: The act or process of officially appointing or consecrating someone (or some thing) as a religious (or thought) leader or metric. Such as a priest, minister, or rabbi, granting them authority to perform sacred duties.

Or, in this kind of thinking the declaration of our mental grid using coordinates like “Now” and “Here.”

The Plane Thinking Part

This “ordinates”  view – where Ordinate means the value of a point’s position along the vertical axis (y-axis) in a coordinate system – measures the “height” or vertical displacement relative to the origin (0,0) – must be extensible infinitely in order to achieve infinite thinking capacity.  Which is why Ordinates like Here and Now are useful.  Because their counterpoints are infinitely extensible.  “Not NOW” and “Not HERE” most people would agree are pretty “big places.”

OK – Kant, so what?  Let’s examplfy.  Let’s say we consider Food (the central or starting point in the drawing above) sand then go extensible just in the “Location and time” ordinals.  Ready?

We can quickly see how Food – a perishable – in order to benefit us, personally and usefully, over time and location – has a large number of stopovers.  Take an apple.  Might come out of a hothouse in Entiat, Washington.  Where a young apple seed becomes a seedling.  It then goes into a field, protected perhaps by a windbreak.

Some years go by and eventually this apple tree (with any luck) will be full of Delicious apples.  Along come the Harvesters.  Might be migrant farm workers, might be a newfangled computerized picker, but apples go from tree to  a storage warehouse.  Here, they may go into bags.  And after a couple of truck rides (to a warehouse and then to a local grocery store, they show up in the produce section of the local Safeway.

Next step is another Transportation aspect – the ride home in the car from the grocery store.  And a local “Food-Housing” which is the refrigerator.

Finally, you (at long last) get the apple out of the food-housing using (refrigerator) and toss it (peeled and cored) into a pot. Because you are making applesauce.  Which is really stupid of you; no one sauces a Delicious.  A tart apple, like a Granny Smith is far better.  Unless you want the higher fructose levels for some reason (diabetic?).

Point is, this one little Super Power – the ability to see connections, contexts, and modalities at every turn – transforms every thought into a trip out to the edge of the Grand Canyon of the Universe.  And it seemed like a simple – highly useful – thinking tool to share.  I mean, this being Super Power Sunday in our (still limited) way of thinking.

Super Power #2

This is much shorter – but nevertheless every bit as important as enjoying the grand conceptual vistas from the edge of Creation.

It’s Time Management.

Say, notice how we were just talking about “ordination” in our thinking? We can’t do too much about location…but time?  Oh boy!  The clock never stops ticking, does it?

Here’s a super-short overview of Personal Time Management – the UrbanSurvival (and Hidden Guild –domain-walker’s) cheat sheet:

Example Entry

Neighbor teaches martial arts.  Has a dojo in town. Highly respected sensei. Showed me some dandy aspects of the toes out and toes in stances this week.  Not familiar?

1. Toes In Power Stance:  Naihanchi-dachi or Modified Zenkutsu-dachi

2. Toes Out Power Stance: Shiko-dachi or Modified Zenkutsu-dachi

Shorin-ryu’s stances reflect practical self-defense needs during the Ryukyu Kingdom’s weapon bans (1477, 1609).  But, more important it was part of a larger discussion of Qi (as in Traditional Chinese Medicine) and how that part of the world (Asia) seems much more conscious of how to maintain balance and power in conflict.

What’s cool – and where the extensible thinking discussion goes from here?  You can take “new knowledge” and use A.I. to help distill and increase your understanding of all things.  Or, in this case, whether there are aspects of Shorin-Ryu karate that can be applied to power weightlifting.

“Your interest in Shorin-ryu’s toes-in (naihanchi-dachi) and toes-out (shiko-dachi) stances aligns with this question about their weightlifting applications. Both contexts highlight how foot positioning optimizes power and stability, whether for a karate strike or a heavy lift. The compact, lateral focus of Shorin-ryu’s toes-in stance mirrors narrow-stance lifting, while the wide, dynamic toes-out stance parallels sumo or Olympic lifting.”

As always there are a zillion caveats and warnings and if you don’t have a good sensei or trainer, probably best to practice simple exercises like the Elbow Bend.  Which is performed with alternating arms while holding a cold beer.

Seriously, if you have your mind developed to where “filing is consciously categorized” this would slot in the same general zone as Israeli Haganah and Krav Maga.  Both of which are wildly over-hyped. Or not.  Depending on who you know and how many night beach landings they have.

Extensibility into Ham Radio

Reader Hank out on the Big Island is a “recovering hippy” today, having gotten a hip replacement (they were on sale Thursday, we hear…)

But this whole “Super Powers” discussion got me to thinking about how the real value of humans is not in our ability to just “collect raw information.”  Rather it’s our ability to test fit Everything with Everything else…

While I was doing a little A.I. assisted self counseling this week, one of my “personal limits” I was working on was whether I could improve on my ability to “copy” extremely weak Morse code.  This was part of a larger session dealing with whether I would ever get my money’s worth out of an Icom 7760 (which are not free).

The answer was a qualified “Yes” but only if it involved learning to collaborate visually with the radio.  Huh?

Yeah – the idea is that you can get a “ham radio Morse super power” from listening to impossibly weak Morse while looking at a scrolling waterfall display…

Can’t make this up…

“A CW operator can significantly improve their ability to detect and decode weak signals “down in the noise” by using a very sensitive waterfall display, as the visual information can effectively augment auditory processing. Here’s a detailed breakdown of how and to what extent this enhancement occurs: