Epistemologia

How do we know what we think we know? The first step is realize that we need to figure out how to evaluate the reliability of our thoughts. 30% of the USA has fallen into a massive, delusion, pulling everyone into the vortex of confusion. How do we start to climb out of it?

The First

In the Now, is the Known.
In the Now, is the Unknown.
In the Now, is the Knowable.
In the Now, is also the Unknowable.

For the Now is what’s known.
And of the Unknown, it may be Knowable or Unknowable.

Today’s Known may be tomorrow’s Unknown, just as
yesterday’s Unknown has sometimes become today’s Known
and other times, been recognized as the Unknowable.

The Known, the Unknown, and the Knowable, are Children of Time.
But the Unknowable is eternal.

The Second

Even as the Unknowable is eternal, it changes,
One day, we may meet some other who knows,
or figure it out for ourselves,
thereby changing ourselves.

Yet even at that meeting, the Unknowable will laugh,
as one who knows itself eternal, always sowing
a new crop of questions.

For there will always be a mystery, and it’s name is the Unknowable.
In the past, we hid the mystery, as we were the babes of eternity.

But now we are bold enough to hold the truest mystery up
as our lamp, whether it attract the demons or repel them.

We have walked enough roads to renounce the pseudo mysteries,
in favor of the real ones.

The Third

If we look with quick eyes, we will find the revealed truths of another.
A steadier gaze is required to find our own self evident truths.
All sons and daughters of the Known,
we must remember that even if
the revealed truth seems to walk with a steadier gait,
our own truth may be more reliable.

In either case, for good results, we must properly define
the conditions in which we found our truth.
That’s the hard part. Harder than finding the truth in the first place.

An always imperfect process, always leaving a piece of the
Unknown for someone else to study.

Because self evident truth is not available to the casual observer.
And no truth worth the name is everywhere eternal.

We Must Move Now

I just watched a panel discussion that happened after the screening of a new movie about the life of the great spiritually inclined physicist, David Bohm. The Dalai Lama considered Dr. Bohm to be his science teacher.

Here is the link:

I think the free viewing of the film itself is over now, but the panel discussion is free. There were MULTIPLE very insightful comments made. I THINK I watched this discussion when it happened originally on Sept. 20, 2020. But seeing it again without the distractions of the audience chat made a stronger impression on me.

If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, I urge you to listen to Marianne Williamson’s clarion call to consider compassion as the goal and purpose of meditation. This is at 37:54 to 40:23. A few minutes VERY well spent. She makes the point that neutrality in the face of fascism is not a good choice. Audrie Kitagawa, Chair of the Board of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, an organization dedicated to world peace and understanding, clearly described our impact on the world at 45:00 – 47:35. She explains the value of selfless service, and how it benefits the individual who practices it.

Finally, Marianne Williamson closed her final remarks with a call for action at 1:05:18.

“We must move now, from over identification with form.”

Fear is what tries to trap us in our individual bodies, watching out for our individual bodies, rather than watching out for the best for all!

This slightly over one hour dialogue is well worth your time if you have any interest in the interaction of science and spirit. This is the intersection of knowledge that we need to move past the current difficulties that humanity is experiencing.

Meditate, Meditate, Meditate

and

Educate, Educate, Educate!

Consequences of Critical Thinking

Chapter 2 of David Levy’s popular text book warns us that concepts must be judged by their consequences, rather than trying to fit them in to a rigid pigeonhole of true or false.

Sadly, the Republicans have made full use of this theory, but without paying attention to the other tenets of critical thinking: ensuring a relevant and comprehensive frame of reference.

While a few Republicans have started saying “Life” must refer to more than the fetal stage of humanity, Democrats have failed to make hundreds of points about the damage that Trump and Friends have done to the environment and industrial safety, to name just two subjects. Science is only of interest to Trump if it’s related to enhancing the military.

But that isn’t how science works. The whole reason for the strength and power of science is that it gives humans an epistemologically robust way to understand and influence the world.

Science has had beneficial and detrimental effects on humanity over the years. If we include the early technological achievements of humanity, domestication of plants and animals, then civilization, we got complexity, choice, and more chances for expression of our individual potential. But at the cost of the creation of a huge social underclass, deprived, to varying degrees, over the last 10,000 years, of many of the sweet fruits the upper tip of this complex hierarchy enjoy.

Education, and particularly science education, is the basic foundation for any remedy to humanity’s ills.

Teaching illogical faith based “facts” to young children rots the structure to which any future knowledge will be fastened. If Mary was a literal physical virgin when she gave birth to Jesus, then no facts that we can discover or verify for ourselves are ever necessarily relevant. If 3=1, then no facts that we can discover or verify for ourselves are ever necessarily relevant.

Illogical faith based facts corrode any potential for developing knowledge in the absence of a group of similarly brainwashed people.

If God is individually protecting people from CoVid19, why bother with masks? The lessons of the great plagues of 600+ years ago, that even the cardinals were not immune to the bacteria, seem to be lost on the evangelical right. It’s medical science, a PORTION of the web of scientific progress, that has, over many centuries, allowed us to regain the lifespan of our “primitive” ancestors.

Science, more than literature, religion, history, allows humanity to double, and triple (etc.) check, our theories and ideas.

Neils Bohr, the great physicist, taught that the opposite of a fact is a lie, but the opposite of a GREAT TRUTH is ANOTHER GREAT TRUTH.

Values are great truths. But the society that doesn’t base its values on a factual foundation is eventually in for rough going.

I hope that those people who are aligned with a fact based reality can find a way to help the rest of the world clean their glasses. That includes me. It’s been very depressing to hear people saying that they are voting based on their 401k or their friend’s jobs making military equipment so we can sell it to the Saudis to kill starving baby Yeminis. That sure is Pro Life. (The last sentence is sarcastic, for those who are challenged in those matters.)

Turning Out the Lights

We need beauty even during a disaster.

It’s a sad day for me. I was listening to The 1A, an NPR talk show run out of WAMU in Washington, DC. The interview was of Tom Burgis, a brave investigative journalist who has connected the dots to show how the US real estate market has been a primary source to launder the money skimmed out of the African, South American, and former Soviet states whose citizens have been stolen from by elected kleptocrats and their henchmen. The brains and persistence of Burgis are why this post is tagged as inspiration. Burgis shows how the only way to get by in such societies is to become a criminal and refuse to relinquish power. He also shows how our current president was used to launder this type of money. New York real estate, in a country ruled by law, is a preferred investment for all the bad actors. Our current president, furthermore, is trying to make it easier for these types of transactions by working to eliminate the remaining law that the USA has used to restore stolen funds to the citizens of countries all over the world. We really seem to be teetering on the edge of a cliff, where the experiment in European led democracy could easily tip into a complete failure, leading to the ongoing violence toward and poverty of all but a few.

Read about the interview, or listen to it here, to see where we’re headed if we don’t wake up:

https://the1a.org/segments/kleptopia-tom-burgis-dirty-money/

Once a country slips down that hole, it’s a long, steep, painful, doubt filled climb back out. Just ask the the inhabitants of Kazakhstan.

A Little Dose of Wisdom

The days with the pall of CoVid19 hanging over us Americans are stretching on far longer than most of us hoped or expected back in April, when we saw the Chinese beat back the spread of the dangerous disease in Wuhan in less than two months.

I certainly do not agree with our president’s approach to managing (mis-managing) the situation, but he is correct to point to China for the source of the disease. China has long been the outstanding source of communicable diseases in the modern world, due to the intimate mixing of human waste in the human food production network, aided and abetted by migrating birds who stop in the fish farm ponds, etc. It’s time that China stop these practices, as well as the live wild animal meat markets that appear to have been the direct source of this particular disease. That said, as David Levy implies (in his book Tools for Critical Thinking: Meta-thougths for Psychology), when we are discussing human affairs, it is incumbent to consider the effects of our actions, rather than trying to fit ideas into boxes labeled true or false. So just because almost all new infectious diseases (not Ebola) start in China, it’s not a reason to call it the Chinese Virus. Because the consequences of doing that are, on American soil anyway, increases in discrimination and violence and hate crimes toward Chinese people, or people who look Chinese.

How do we gain the discernment, the wisdom, to know how to sort out the shit from the Shinola, as the old saying went. The spin from the facts. The lies from the reality. How do we gain that discernment?

We start out by acknowledging that we, as humans, take a lot of short cuts when we fill our brains with knowledge, and that some of what we think we know must have been incorporated into our beliefs before it was properly understood.

Then, we move on to take action to correct the false information.

Tom Lombardo, who is now running the Center for Future Consciousness, has written a very clearly articulated and concise description of why and how we need to embrace the wisdom of looking to the future. Tom’s prescription for a better world calls for rejection (to my happiness) of the New Age concept of what he calls “Presentism.”

As a person with a very low level of cheerfulness hormones (my pen name, Shona Moonbeam, is tongue-in-cheek) I really don’t care for advice that tells me to focus on the present. The present is mostly boring and tedious, if not outright painful. But by making an effort to remember my whole life, past up to now, and hopes and dreams for the future, I feel more significant. Maybe I shouldn’t care about that, but so much of life feels dreary and difficult, that I do care to make my own edited version of my life for frequent playback. And I do hope that my struggles will ease those of some future people down the road.

What’s Wrong about the Concept of Make American Great Again?

Check out Tom’s new essay, entitled Make America Great Again? Yes, that is a question mark. The article hits home on a lot of relevant and important topics.

Random Desires?

Life builds on little things. Randomly at first, then directed, or at least guided by, some aspect of desire, which itself, is guided, at least in humans, by culturally reinforced genetic programming. Desire takes us someplace, which may be different from what our consciousness thought it had its eye on, so to speak.

Let’s put some flesh on those sentences.

My great-grandparents, the earliest generation for which I have even the least specific information, somehow met, in four pairs, and made kids. Two became my grandfathers, and two my grandmothers. I know my father’s mother had sisters, and that her parents were well enough off to get her sisters’ husbands started in business, and at least one of them got started a second time after the first endeavor failed. I guess I need to ask my dad about his dad’s siblings. I don’t remember ever hearing him talk about anyone else in his dad’s generation. As for his dad’s parents, I only know that my great grandfather was a mercury poisoned mad hatter, and that’s why my dad’s dad left Russia. My dad’s dad’s mother is a complete unknown, kindof like the mother of Abraham of the Bible.

My mother’s mother came from a big family. She was born in Scranton, PA. So I have seen photos of her and her parents. They, like my father’s mother’s parents, apparently were of some means. They were property owners soon after arriving in the USA as immigrants. Likewise, my mother’s father had a fairly large family, who had paved the way for his participation in what we now call chain migration. His relatives had a job waiting for him in the family grocery store. Eventually, he became a traveling salesman, kept company by his male and female German shepherds.

So there we have the first level of random events that ultimately led to the production of my grandparents, a necessary precondition for the eventual existence of yours truly.

Apparently, despite the existence at that time in Europe of matchmakers, I have been made to understand that both pairs of grandparents were desirous of each other. My father’s mother’s parents were apparently not too pleased with their daughter’s choice. That history wave continued to be the case, in a milder form for my mother’s mother’s feelings toward her daughter’s choice, and in full force for my mother’s feelings toward my selection. Therefore, the history wave of parental disapproval skipped from XXXX family (I don’t remember my father’s mother’s maiden name) to the Spiegel family (mother’s mother’s maiden name) where it stayed, despite my mother’s change of name on marriage.

So now we have demonstrated the move from random, or at least independent, or at least apparently independent, chains of events, being influenced and thence ultimately determined by, desire. In my father’s father’s case specifically, he was said to have fallen for Dora because “she and her sisters were considered “hot.”

Never having believed that I personally was hot, even when several boys and later men, told me that they found me to be in possession of the hotness commodity, I found it hard to believe that the grandmother for whom I am named was hot. I am to inherit the slightly colorized photo of her when my dad passes, unless he forgets to specify it in writing. In which case, I would have little hope, having become the black sheep of the family. In the photo of Dora, I do find her pretty.

Despite my belief in my lack of hotness, I still chose a mate, or allowed myself to be chosen, and despite my lifelong desire to remain free of children, nature’s pull and culture’s push resulted in my gaining offspring.

Had my dad not encouraged my interest in science, had I not decided to become an engineer, I would not have gotten the jobs at the steel mills, where I met Nick, who was a mobile equipment operator on my team when I, along with a Swedish woman metallurgist and two black men who had risen through the labor ranks into management, ran one of three shifts of steelworkers. Nick and I became friends, and we (I and spouse) began visiting Nick and his family. His daughter was “so cute,” that we began to question our desire for freedom from children. So it feels like, if it weren’t for Nick and Mary and their Nicole, I would have been able to achieve the Buddhist goal of getting off of the hamster wheel of karma or dharma or I would have been able to break what Jews call the chain of the generations.

By the way, I picked engineering as a career choice, because I desired to be with guys. Their interests seemed more compatible, regardless of my inability to experience their attraction to me.

Anyway, back to the subject. So consciously, I was heading for having a family with cute kids, and a desire to show how effective our well planned parenting experiment would be. But that brief window of desire was interrupted by the reality of having to provide for the offspring, and stick with their other parent, whose laziness became more oppressive as the basic tasks became more burdensome. Subconsciously, I guess I was going for increased compassion for my fellow humans. I experienced being trapped by the biological need to protect the offspring. I experienced the burden of having to earn a living, not just to support myself, but others. I experienced being a hypocrite, unable to rise above the walls of the small circle defining my social responsibilities, unable to speak out against things I knew were wrong. Well, that was my excuse. Hell, it’s still my excuse. But now I don’t have kids to directly support. Just myself, my ex, and the neighbors who mow my lawn, weed my garden, and plow my snow. There are still those who depend on my finances. Or at least enjoy them.

OK. 53 words in the original impersonal paragraph, versus 925+ (due to post posting edits!!) in the version adorned with specific details. Which was more interesting? Which easier to understand? If the second version was easier to understand the gist of, did the first shed light on the fact of the universality of the experience, despite potential complete separation of particular experiences?

Please let me know!!!

Use the comment feature below!

The Moons of Jupiter, and, well, Spiders

Or How to SEE the world

Last weekend, for the 4th of July holiday, I visited my friends from my new church. The 4th of July is actually the center of the “Holy Week” for this new, semi-atheist church. The Alpha and Omega Celebration is intended to help people cement their new view of life, relatively unencumbered by what they now see as an overly limiting world view imposed by their parents before they were able to think for themselves.

They don’t believe in, as the founder says, “a Big G god.” I feel like many of them (well, the group is quite tiny…so many is relative) have embraced reductionist atheism. But the “dogma,” or “scripture,” now limited to a document entitled “The Distinctions,” allows for belief in spirituality.

I volunteered to help the founder, Dan, in whatever way I can, based on my longtime study of the world’s (and history’s, and pre-history’s for that matter) religions. I may be ordained as the first “Curate,” as soon as we sort out the fact that I finally paid dues to join another church that I have attended for over 20 years, and don’t believe I should have to renounce one in order to join the other. However, I may soon care less, as the leadership of that church is refusing to have any formal soul searching about civil rights in this nation that is now hosting our spirits’ “vehicles.”

Anyway, the moons of Jupiter. Yes, so we had our Alpha and Omega celebration at Harper Lake last weekend. I actually got in the water and swam a bit. Then I got in a kayak and tried to kayak around a bit. My shoulders were ok, which was a surprise. Concern about the shoulders had kept me from believing I’d ever be able to get in a canoe or kayak again, even as I had fond memories of these activities in my youth. Sadly, I was not able to deal with the waves from the power boats sharing the lake, and it had been so long since I had used this skill set, I needed more room than usual to steer. After the second time that I found myself heading for or being headed at by a large vessel, I went back to shore. But it still felt like an independence.

Later, Dan got out the two telescopes he had bought for the occasion. Freedom from the religious ties that bind allows us to center ourselves in the cosmos revealed by science, and call it a religious practice. After the telescope purchase motivating non-event of the partial penumbral eclipse of the moon, we turned the scope to Jupiter. Finally, I saw it. A disk, not a point, and a series of pinpricks from 1 to 7 o’clock. I realized that those were the moons of Jupiter. WOW.

I say finally, because while the optics of the telescope were beyond any hopes I might have had, the features used to control the position and direction of tube were poor quality at best. Granted, it’s still a crime against humanity that they were so good for the supposed price of $60.00. That price and its implied consequences might have gone unnoticed in the past, but not now.

I feel so different to have seen the moons of Jupiter with my own eyes. And while the eclipse was a non-event, the detailed features of the moon were more amazing than any image I remember seeing. There are fine cracks in the surface, and super bright pinpricks that are reflections from I don’t know what.

My respect for those who had to make and aim their own telescopes 400 years ago has drastically increased. My personal thanks to the workers who made the one I used, allowing me a new window on the universe, before my cataracts deteriorate my visual processing further.

The full moon is a strong anchor of my first sighting of the Dead Sea, but the stronger anchor is the memory of the nuns sharing the beach the next morning, whose eyes I felt on my wet tee shirt. I had forgotten my bathing suit. The salt water made the wet tee shirt even more revealing than it would have been in fresh water.

The full moon will be a strong anchor of my first Alpha and Omega celebration, but the stronger anchor will be the moons of Jupiter. Of course, had I not known they were there, I wouldn’t have noticed them. Ten days later, I am still amazed by the optical quality of what was most likely a Chinese telescope. A $60 National Geographic branded window to a bigger world.

I am grateful for the Alpha and Omega experience of being positioned at the body of the spider, while my technologically enhanced senses reach out in all the directions that a spider’s legs do. We can see the world as a network of spiders with a new spider body at the point of every spider’s toe. Some of the legs reach back to more central spiders, until there’s no center, because everywhere is the center.

The Widow’s Mite

My latest work of great social import. Not as good as Janice Joplin’s “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?”

If being rich proves you’re smart
show us now you have a heart.

Do it now. Do not wait.
Do not, do not hesitate.

Use your brains to educate
those who’ve soaked in ignorance or hate.

Do it now. Do not wait.
Do not, do not hesitate.

Show us you can use your mind
to uplift rather than bind.

Do it now. Do not wait.
Do not, do not hesitate.

Right knowledge gained by trial and error
pays compound interest in love, not terror.

Do it now. Do not wait.
Do not, do not hesitate.

Right knowledge gained by proper instruction
helps seed peace, not destruction.

Do it now. Do not wait.
Do not, do not hesitate.

Your wealth well used to empower
helps the human garden flower.

Do it now. Do not wait.
Do not, do not hesitate.

Don’t think you’re safe in your ivory tower
when you don’t know how to turn on the power.

Do it now. Do not wait.
Do not, do not hesitate.

Can you grow a potato or milk a cow?
Share your wealth. Share it now.

Do it now. Do not wait.
Do not, do not hesitate.

Yes, you’ll have to spend more than a dime.
But it won’t take all of your time.

Do it now. Do not wait.
Do not, do not hesitate.

Because established groups are already working
to birth a new day where fewer are hurting.

Do it now. Do not wait.
Do not, do not hesitate.

Share this song with your rich neighbor.
Be sure to visit charity navigator.

Do it now. Do not wait.
Do not, do not hesitate.

Seriously folks, click on the underlined Charity Navigator link above in the yellow box. Thank you.

Hey you creative people out there: Can you help me by putting this to music? Or improving the lyrics/ poetry?

6th Asian Heat Treat Event

Mural in Lobby of Chennai Trade Center

“I was wondering if I would figure in the post about the conference,” my colleague and friend Shankar wrote, when I still hadn’t posted anything after my return home. “You will FIGURE!” I informed him. After all, it was a lot of his unrelenting hard work that made the event happen in the first place. Here’s Shankar’s video image, while he is introducing one of the dignitaries.

Shankar, on the big screen, introducing one of the keynote speakers

The 6th Asian Heat Treat and Surface Engineering Conference and Expo was held in Chennai, India, the first week of March 2020. We all watched with dismay as the coronavirus spread, and fear and government restrictions started impacting many events world-wide. Several of the speakers who were scheduled to participate from overseas were not able to attend. There was still a lot of great content presented to an enthusiastic audience. For people who are not engineers, heat treating is a technology and an art form that makes modern technology possible! There’s some evidence that early humans were intentionally heat treating stones to improve their characteristics and usefulness as long ago as 45,000 years (or more!)

As you can see in the above photo, conferences in India are MUCH more COLORFUL than those in the USA. Of course, life in general is much more colorful in India than in the USA and Canada and Europe. That is certainly one of the things that I enjoy about traveling in India. Lots of colors and spices are what I enjoy. For those who have not traveled in India, two other senses can be challenging to deal with. Sounds, especially anywhere that they are intentionally amplified, tend to be LOUD. (I had to wear earplugs at one point during the weeklong religious ceremony that I attended in Rishakesh in 2019!). And the smells are wonderful when it’s spices and incense, but when it’s air pollution, it’s not so pleasant. As for tactile, the main difference that I experienced during this trip was that it was hot outside, and one of the Hindu temples I visited was extremely crowded inside (I literally had to be pulled toward and then back away from the shrine where I offered a prayer.) But the conference itself was in a well air conditioned hall, so it was comfortable!

There was even a dance performance as part of the evening activities.

This conference was supposed to be the first I attended in India, but I got a little warm up at the Royal Society of Chemistry Smart Materials Conference at Periyar University in Salem the day before this event started. Indian protocol requires a detailed introduction of dignitaries. We were honored by the Minister of Industry of the State of Tamil Nadu, Mr. M. C. Sampath, who attended wearing the traditional Indian men’s white clothing. Scottish men are not the only ones who wear skirts! The photo at this link is from a website selling clothes, and is not the Minister we heard from, but it gives an idea of this traditional garment.

Soon it was time for my presentation on the Yoga of Failure Analysis. Usually I not nervous when I give a technical talk, but here I was going to be telling Indian people about yoga! The talk was definitely different from the rest of the presentations. I mentioned how the great Patanjali, the compiler and editor of the Yoga Sutras, was teaching that direct perception of the world was a legitimate way to obtain right knowledge way back (scholars say no later than) 1600 years ago. This was at the time when Western philosophers were still completely enamored with Plato’s Ideal Forms, and distrusted any data coming through the senses.

Glittering elephant sculpture at the entrance to the Chennai Conference Center.

The audience was happy to hear that, and broke into applause. One of my major goals had been to remind my colleagues from the sub-continent that their ancient culture has more value today than many of them realize. Well, the grass is always greener….on the other side of the fence!

However, since my return home, I found out that I was apparently WAY OFF, and that Indian philosophers were actually discussing sensory input as a source of right knowledge as long as 2500 years ago. Someone I recently met at a semi-atheist church had called my attention to Matter and Mind: The Vaiśeṣika Sūtra of Kaṇāda, recently translated by Subhash Kak. Indian philosophy is just AMAZING. It has always been pretty much “self-evident truth” (at least to me, once I started thinking about it!) that there is NO source of knowledge that does not originate in the sensory organs of SOMEONE. There’s no other way to get raw data so that one’s intuition can effectively function. But Western science was held back for a very long time due to the way that Plato was practically diefied!

So, any of my Indian friends who are reading this, maybe you will invite me back in a few years to share my latest findings about how to cultivate clear thought! Subhash Kak is an engineering professor at Oklahoma State University with lots of side interests!

In addition to giving the Keynote and a second, more technical talk, at the conference, I had the opportunity to teach a short seminar on How to Negotiate Failure Analysis Work. There were about 60 people, so not everyone posed in the photo.

The woman to my right (with purple shawl) is my friend who I met in 2017 at the last ASMI Chennai Failure Analysis seminar that I presented. She traveled from Bengaluru, where she now lives and works, to attend. I was surprised and happy!
Teaching the Failure Analysis Seminar at the 6th Asian Heat Treat and Surface Engineering Conference
A Royal Enfield employee attending the conference! My neighbor Wayne loves their motorcycles, so I asked this friendly looking engineer to pose with me. See their product below!
Royal Enfield Motorcycle! A popular way to get around Asia!

Next Incarnation: A Clam

The vague longing drifted past in random waves. Reach out. Pull in. Reach out. Pull in. Reach out. Pull in. Ad infinitum. A protist was drawn toward the barnacle’s feathery legs, and was pulled in to be digested. This one was a paramecium. The last one had been an amoeba. So had the six prior to it. But finally, the content of the current had varied.

Not that it mattered. Barnacles experience taste and texture differently from any species able to write about them. Besides, who would listen to a barnacle’s complaint that the amoebas were not crunchy enough? No, Barney would not be taken seriously even had she been able to.

What did she have to complain about, anyway? Even as stuck to this rock as she was, she had the ability to act as a female or a male, in the latter case sending her second chakra organ out for fun, to a distance as much as eight times the diameter of (now his!) body. But for now, she was configured as a female.

Suddenly, the consciousness within realized that the sperm was drifting away from a passing structure. Freedom, at least of a sort.

Next time, she’d choose some clams as her parents!