Category: Manny Kagan

Fridays with Manny

  

Why We Need Bees

Many of us know that the reason we have honey is because of the bees. In Bee Culture, I found an interesting story about the chemistry of honey. However, the production of honey is the result of bees’ main activity, which is pollinating plants and flowers.

Honeybees are among the most numerous and efficient pollinator species in the world. One bee can visit more than 2000 flowers in one day. They pollinate over 100 crops grown in North America and contribute $15 billion to the US economy every year. There are 4000 different bee species in North America. Unfortunately, many of the bee colonies have declined for various reasons. 

I learned about this from an article from Planet Bee Foundation. You can find out more about them in a few documentary movies such as “Queen of the Sun” and “Vanishing of the Bees”. Meanwhile, enjoy my images of these remarkable creatures.

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www.encounterspublishing.com

Fridays with Manny

  

Morning Fog

On Friday, after I dropped off Max at his dog-sitter in the Richmond district, I was driving to my office in Daly City. However, on this morning, crossing Golden Gate Park was challenging. So, I decided to take an alternative route along the ocean. Later, I learned that traffic was due to the “Outside Lands” Music Festival, which took place over three days in Golden Gate Park. As I drove closer and closer to the ocean, the fog grew thicker and thicker, and I could barely see the cars ahead of me.

San Francisco has sometimes been called the “Fog City”. There is a meteorological reason for this phenomenon. Online I learned that the reason for this is that the Northern California climate gets very hot, especially in the summer, and creates a low-pressure zone. San Francisco on the other hand, is surrounded by water on three sides. The hot air rises, creating a vacuum for the cold, high-pressure, moisture-filled ocean air to rush in – hence, the fog. Another type, tule fog, can occur during the winter. Sometimes both types occur simultaneously.

As a photographer, I like the fog. It always creates beautiful unexpected light. I stopped to take these three images that day.

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www.encounterspublishing.com

Fridays with Manny

  

Scary Fun

Some of my neighbors started to prepare for Halloween a month in advance by decorating their front yards with scary creatures, tombstones and with carved pumpkins that light up at night.

Turns out that the tradition has to do with a 2000 year old superstition practiced by the Celts, in Europe, for the holiday Samhain, which fell on the night before the new year, October 31st, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. On this day, people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts. They thought that the Druids or Celtic Priests will have an easier way to communicate with spirits to make predictions for the future. Of course, over the many years, the holiday evolved into the fun event celebrated by children and adults and has nothing scary about it, unless you are watching Halloween horror movies.

It is also an opportunity to photograph some of the “scary” creatures.

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www.encounterspublishing.com

Fridays With Manny

  

Like Fish in the Water

You probably heard the expression “Like fish in the water”, which means the condition most of us are in, the comfort zone (regardless of our circumstances). And what happens when the fish is taken out of its familiar environment, the water? Some people did just that and as a result, we have companies like Microsoft, Google, Tesla and others. 

According to the article in “Scientific American”, this process started 375 million years ago. At that time there was some type of fish, who for whatever reasons, decided to get out. At least this is one of the scientific explanations of how fish evolved into monkeys, and they, in turn, into us – Homo Sapiens, which in Latin means “wise man”. 

I heard a story about one of these wise men, who owned fish from the ocean. He kept it in a fish tank, and every day had to drive to the ocean to replace water. Since he was a wise man, he decided to teach his fish to live in the tap water, and after he succeeded, he taught the fish to live without water, and after he succeeded, he trained the fish to walk, and after he succeeded he took the fish on the leash for a walk by the koi fish pond. It was after the rain. The fish slipped, fell into the pond and drowned. Of course, this is a joke. Koi are colorful fish of the Amur carp breeds, which usually can be found in the water gardens, where I encountered them in Maui. You can read more of my jokes in my latest book “42 Encounters with Laughter”.

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www.encounterspublishing.com

Fridays with Manny

  

What Is Noise?

We are all surrounded by a lot of information and misinformation. As a result, many of us make decisions based on our gut feelings; which can lead to devastating results, as I found out in the book titled “Noise. A Flaw in Human Judgement”. The author, Daniel Kahneman who won the Nobel Prize in 2002 in Economics, and the 2013 President Medal of Freedom, joined forces with two brilliant researchers — Professor Oliver Sibony and Professor Cass R. Sunstein. 

They call “noise” the way people make errors in judgments. Among many examples, are decisions made by the judges, who for the same crime can send a person to prison for 3 years or 13 years. Their decisions seemed influenced by the day of the week and depended on if their sports team won or lost the game over the weekend. Or the time of day – before the lunch or after. 

When you read the book, you will learn that “noise” can have an effect on many aspects of our lives. Therefore, please be sure to check the validity of the sources of the information you are using. Sometimes “the noise” can be just shared gossip and not only among children.

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www.encounterspublishing.com