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The end of the Democratic primary season has brought a pause to the strange spectacle that has been the Democratic nomination process. After this pause, which drew media attention away from the President, we see a strange shift back to GW and find ourselves uncomfortably reacquainting ourselves with this latest iteration or incarnation of the President.

As long as there was another sideshow, we could forget the woeful tale of our Commander-in-Chief. There he is again, coming back into the spotlight, just as clueless, just as annoying, just as stubborn as he was when we last paid him any mind. He hopped on a plane to go to Europe for a farewell tour. You get the impression that he expected some kind of triumphant welcome and got a raspberry and a heckler instead. This time, he apologized for being beligerent and warlike in his attitude going up to the Iraq War. There was not much reaction to this, which has the feeling of apologizing for being an ass the night before when you got too drunk and acted like a fool. You can say you're sorry, but everyone has indelible visions of the stupid things that you did and can't quite believe that your apology means that you aren't capable of doing something similar in the future.

In the midst of this distraction, Representative Dennis Kucinich submitted Article of Impeachment for the President. I did not immediately realize that this is not the first time he's proposed to do this. I also thought that this was a serious charge, but as it turns out, most people are just content to wait until the President leaves and let him be. I read the Articles, and I have to say, I would be extremely pleased if he was ever made to be accountable for all his crimes and all the damage he's done to the country.

Some say history will vindicate him. I just can't imagine that. I know there are still people out there that support him and think he's doing a great job, but there are also people that believe in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, so I don't think that's a valid alternate take on the situation.

Texas Ascendent

I believe we can attribute the last 8 years of Oilmen dominating politics in this country to the 70's. During that era of inflation and a poor economy, people working in the oil exploration field were driven to the top. Big oil's rise brought many to the top strata of society. They were mostly conservative, religious, and as anyone with new found wealth, capitalists to the core. These economically advantaged people had their success drive their ideas to prominence. This is mostly because in this country, as in the world throughout history, money buys influence and power.

If you look back in history, you'll see that spending your way to prominence is not the way to form a lasting empire. The Dutch apparently funded much of the Spanish Empire because they were economically prominent. I'm not sure why they didn't form their own empire, or if the Spanish were ever able to pay them back. Imagine all of Central and South America speaking dutch today. The Dutch did not have the religious zeal of the Spanish, either. Verona is another example of a country without a specific creed or ideals, just a long run of economically prominence. They faded from history and today are mostly forgotten, although in their heyday they managed to have relations with nations on both sides of the Muslim/Christian divide.

I liked it better when we out-thought our way to prominence. We came up with better ideas and then put some blood sweat and tears into the equation to get ahead. Today's method of passing down wealth and influence and trying to rig the system to stay on top doesn't seem sustainable. I wonder what our country would look like right now if someone had come up with a 70% efficient solar cell that could be produced inexpensively in 1976 in Seattle. Imagine if wealth and innovation had flowed from some more liberal and free thinking part of the country. Imagine if our way out of the same energy crisis 30 years ago had been a sustainable and home-grown solution, rather than drilling our way out of the problem. I wonder what free thinking open minded people would have done with their wealth and power and how they would have transformed the country.

Oh well, it didn't happen that way then. I just hope it happens that way now.

Romans Always Won

I was listening to a podcast about ancient Roman history when I heard an interesting phrase. He said that the Romans always won in battle because they always handled their logistics correctly. They did everything the same, each time they moved off to war. They carried or collected enough supplies and had their transportation lines open and secure. Sometimes the warriors and the strengths of the armies were not so different, but the preparations and standardization of how to fight made the difference. So Rome dominated because they had a plan and a method.

The Roman Empire had a nice two episode spread in National Geographic a while back. It showed how their achitecture and engineering and their language, laws, and culture persisted after all this time. The history of ancient Rome podcast I have been listening to has concentrated on their wars and political development.

Roman influence has survived a long time, yet one of the things people also focus on about the Romans is that their empire eventually failed. When I was young, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire was a very popular book. Many people have simplistic explanations as to how they fell from lack of morals and opposition to Christianity to outsourcing their military. Many people have drawn parallels between the America and the Roman Empire. If you consider Rome having a reign of around 800 to 1000 years, there is no comparison to America, we are simply too young. If you want to point out influence, wealth, power, and technology, you may have something there. I was going to say that one difference is that we don't go out conquering other countries, but you could argue that we do that economically.

What is interesting is the way a winner or leader is copied and emulated, as well as opposed and plotted against. Just by virture of their wealth and dominance, Rome was always at odds with the barbarian tribes around it. Their success made them a target. It is clear that they slowly stopped being what they were as far as the transformation that made them fall from grace. They lost much of their ideas and drive.

It doesn't matter that Rome itself fell if you consider that it's ideals and ideas infected the world and survived without the actual empire in existence anymore. The same would be true of America if we were to be surpassed as a world leader. Our organization and methods have already infected the world. Look at what some consider to be our biggest rival - China. They embraced capitalism and market economies in order to get where they are today. They may still call themselves communist, but who is kidding whom here? They are communist in name only. One little factor I keep hearing in the news is how many engineers and scientist each country has or is producing. The idea is that whoever the technological leader is will also be the world leader. That's based on the American model as well as the Roman model.

Just like sports teams can't win forever, one country or one group cannot dominate forever either. Countries may rise or fall, but what endures is the ideas that came out of the countries through their literature or works.

That's a good question

I listen to a lot of podcasts and many of them are on science. Science Talk by Scientific American, Science Magazine, Science at NASA, Science Friday by NPR, the Nature podcast, and the Naked Scientist, to name a few.

I like the way scientists talk to each other. I find that they are usually very respectful to each other, which is something I enjoy. They love turning a subject over and inside out and looking at it from all angles. They are very patient when people call in with questions, because at least when the questions aren't that great, they are an opportunity to teach and to explain how they themselves followed a line of thinking to get to the point they arrived. When the questions are really good, they almost always say "That's a good question."

When I noticed that this was a very common response, I was a little irritated by it. It sounded so patronizing. Sometimes it sounded derogatory, like they were patting the questioner on the head. Other times it sounded like a habitual dodge, a way to buy a few seconds while thinking of a response.

Then I started to realize what it meant. Sometimes it meant, "Oh yes, that direction of thought leads to many new and exciting or unexpected things." Other times it means, "that line of thought never occurred to me." The whole root of scientific discovery is asking the right questions. Sometimes asking questions means challenging preconceptions. Sometimes it means looking in new directions. It doesn't matter what the point of the question is, it's always an opportunity to turn the object of inspection over and look at it from a new angle, which is the best way to learn something new from it. Scientists welcome questions for the most part. They love being challenged and fleshing out ideas through rigorous inquiry.

Many people don't consider what scientific thinking is all about. If they did, I think they would practice it more, because it is fun. Imagine you go to an old mansion with tons of rooms. Let's say the place was abandoned fully furnished, with nothing disturbed. I'm imagining an enormous building with dozens of rooms, long corridors lined with doors. Can you imagine exploring such a place? Particularly if you found something of great value, say a drawer full of jewelry. Scientific discovery is like that. It's an awareness that there is a vast area of information that is just waiting to be uncovered. It's the thrill of the mystery - "What's behind this door?" And frankly, it's the search for treasure.

Most fields of knowledge are not straightforward. They have many facets and are continually branching out into multiple possibilities. I often wonder when I read about the history of scientific discovery if there aren't very interesting lines of investigation that were missed as we moved forward, waiting to be rediscovered. A science fiction short story I read a long time ago was about an alternate reality where science and magic were both developed into full fledged and useful applications. When I learned about Witta and Druidism years ago, I wondered if they were not on the verge of developing a society in touch with nature, and in some ways better able to take advantage of it. We still suspect that the ancient Egyptians and Aztecs were onto things that we have since forgotten. The Incas were able to fit enormous stoneworks together without mortar, a feat we still cannot repeat. Did someone know the secret of antigravity?

There is a theory in quantum physics called the multiverse model. It supposes that each instant of time has an infinite number of possibilities that can branch from it. Should you go to breakfast or go for a run? Will you turn right at the corner or go straight? Are you going to execute some random move in the middle of your day or suddenly blurt out something in the office with little thought or care? Any little decision can lead to a completely different outcome in your day. In the multiverse theory, every alternate possibility does happen. The universe is constantly cleaving into alternate universes where you did turn right, go straight, and all the other options, like suddenly jumping on your left foot and singing opera. Scientific discovery is kind of like that. The possibilities are endless, so you just keep following those branching corridors until you find something interesting. Then you do it again. There's no limit to the search. What else are you going to do with your life?

Mapping Out Ideas

Sometimes you know where you're going, and other times, you wander around until it all makes sense in retrospect.

While there are many things in life that are pointless and there is no excuse or justification for them, some things make a lot of sense. Some journeys, some discussions, some books, some ideas, some undertakings make a lot of sense. They have a theme or purpose, they are rich with meaning.

The question is whether that was planned or accidental. I was telling Andrea about how Stephen King's Gunslinger series took over 30 years for him to write and in the end was all tied together and made sense. In fact, it tied many of his other books together and made them all make a greater sense. How could you hold a plan together in your mind for 20 years while you wrote it all out and described it? The answer in this case is that Stephen King didn't. When he got in his accident in 1999, he had just recently restarted his efforts in writing the Gunslinger series. He had completed the 4th in what would eventually be 7 books in the series. The accident left him in pain and uncomfortable. I had recently read the 4th book and was anxiously awaiting more when I heard an interview where Stephen King admitted that the accident had taken a lot out of him and that he did not have any idea how to finish the series. Yet when it was finished, 5 years after the accident, it was complete in a way that few stories are. Everything was tied in and meshed together, every element was essential in making the completed whole.

So the question is, was it planned or accidental? If it was accidental, how did it later make such sense, as if it was planned?

This is not just a phenomenon with this one book, this is analogous to what happens in many situations. Whether ideas are embedded in our subconscious and we aren't aware of them until we flesh them out, or whether working on an idea is a matter of uncovering some underlying truth inherent in the universe doesn't really matter. What is important here is that you understand and comprehend the totality of something once you have fully mapped it out.

I remember describing to Andrea how people in the age of discovery were always making maps of the world. If they didn't know something firsthand, they would gloss over it. It's amazing how often they got the broad strokes right when they were completely clueless about the details. How is that possible? We also talked about how some trips we take can easily be described by some theme or unifying purpose after we return, when the intent when we set out was nothing near that conclusion.

I have noticed an interesting phenomenon in dreams. I could describe it as Dream Idea Packets. You may have noticed in a dream when you entered a new location or started a new activity in a dream and you already knew the backstory. In your dream, it was already in your mind, a memory of all the stuff that led up to that point, although you didn't dream it in realtime, it didn't unravel slowly, it burst forth as a complete nugget of memory. These little dream packets are sort of like zip files. Back when everything was dial-up on computers, and memory was short, you sometimes compressed files into zip files so they would take up less room. Sometimes you zipped several files into a single compressed file, taking up a fraction of the space of the original material. When you got a compressed file and opened it up (unzipped it) it was sort of like a flower blooming. All this information that was compressed into a little kernel. Actually, that is a lot like a flower blooming or a seed sprouting. All the potential for the whole plant or flower is already in the seed or bud, and then it opens up and unfurls and becomes complete. Or was it already complete when it was in the seed or bud or zipped file?

Are ideas like that? Do we have kernels of ideas already in our head and they only await the proper fertilizer, sun, water, or motivation to sprout?

Be careful what you think you know

I went to an Open House at my Alma Mater and had to go to Call Hall, which houses the Dairy Science Department. They have an ice cream shop and we always go there and get a treat while we are touring campus.

This year the line for the ice cream was very long. We did that mental calculation everyone does in such a situation, how long will it take and is it worth it, and we got in line. A man came down the hall opposite the line and was looking around as he walked slowly toward the back of the line. For some reason, he stopped at me and asked me, "How much is the ice cream?"

The question kind of irritated me, because I had no idea and didn't care. If you want it, you get in line and buy it. I fleetingly noticed that he was dressed kind of rough, but at that time, I assumed he was a campus worker, or some kind of laborer. I just told him I didn't know, and I didn't venture any kind of guess, either. I wasn't rude, but I was a bit taken aback and not really sure how to respond to him. After he left, I made fun of him a little bit, remarking what a stupid question it was.

We laughed and talked, in a good mood, while waiting for the ice cream. When someone else needed to find a bathroom, I was more than willing to help point it out to them.

As we sat outside in the sun eating out ice cream, I saw the guy leaving the building, walking away empty handed. In a flash, it all came together. I noticed his worn but neat clothes, pants held up with something more like a rope than a belt.

The guy was homeless.

When he asked the price of the ice cream, he was probably hoping that they were giving it away in celebration of Open House. I didn't know he was homeless then, and the question that I thought was stupid was very important to him. Why did he pick me to ask about the price? Did he maybe think I looked kind or something? What an ass I was for making fun of him.

I thought about running after him and getting him some ice cream, but he was gone and the impulse was weak and confused. As time has clarified the incident, I daydream that I could have tracked him down and got him some ice cream, or better yet, invited him into line with us and taken care of him. It wouldn't have cost me much in the way of time or money. The man was trying to keep up his appearance and was polite when he approached me. While I wasn't cruel to him, I made the wrong assumptions and lost an opportunity to satisfy myself that I could be a better person than I am.

The next week, I went out to lunch with my wife Andrea and I thought of something similar to this. The ice cream incident was a matter of not being generous towards someone and finding out that they were actually more worthy of attention.

We talked about many issues that I realized were similar. I have an acquaintance that sometimes seems to delight in undermining the confidence of people. His wife seems to have it all together, but my wife thinks she is depressed because she hasn't worked in a few years and seems to be without direction. We supposed that this might be in response to a steady erosion of confidence under the direction of her husband. Maybe he doesn't know he's doing it, he's just so competitive that it's a reflex to raise himself by dragging down others. I always thought that she was a mindless supporter of her husband, but now I wonder if there's not something more like a hostage crisis going on.

I was also thinking about people that asked for quotes and wanted lots of help on jobs when they had no intention of buying anything. These are high effort for little profit customers (although technically you have to buy something to be a customer). I had several incidents where I reflexively helped people that in the back of my mind I thought I should not waste so much time on. Sometimes I found out later that they were stuck in a bad situation and trying to make the best of it. My help was one of the few good things to happen to them.

I guess you'll never know everything you could know about a situation while you are in it. It's easy to realize or find out more later and beat yourself up for not reacting better. I can't live my life haunted by not knowing that someone needs help or a kind word from me. I won't always catch on fast enough. The only saving grace is the revisionist history we all play with our personal memories. My alternate outcome has me sitting in the sun with the homeless man, enjoying some ice cream and kindness.

Religious Preconceptions

I look around at the state of organized religion in America and sometimes I wonder how it can keep swinging in this direction without any restraint. Our fundamentalist in this country have had quite a run in the last few years. They are mobilized to vote (one could argue that there would not have been 8 years of a Bush Presidency without them), they try to restrict the teaching of evolution in the classroom, they try to get their religious views codified and incorporated into government, they want to restrict abortion for everyone regardless of that person's own beliefs, they want to define stem cell research as abortion and restrict it, and they are increasingly intolerant of anyone that does not think and believe as they do. They paint much of popular culture as against them and they claim society is degenerating and threatens their morals and most be regulated. These fundamentalist religious Americans are just as guilty of closing their eyes to reality as the Taliban and other fundamentalist Islamic sects that we have painted as so out of touch and such a threat.

So why aren't more people alarmed? Is it that strict restrictive ultraconservative religious movements are always wrong, unless it's your religion?

There is much talk and fear of Iran's President Ahmadinejad. This is a man that is working on missiles and nuclear weapons and keeps saying that Israel deserves to be destroyed. We all shake our heads when he says that the Holocaust wasn't real. Whether he believes the Holocaust really happened or not, this is a political statement. Israel was granted statehood as a direct result of the Holocaust, in fact, you could say that Israel owes its existence to the Holocaust. Amadinejad's Holocaust denial is his way of taking away the justification of Israel. Does he really believe it? You can't tell. But we see so clearly that the man is insane because there is no reason to justify or defend him. If he were saying crazy things in defense of Christianity, we'd be watching a significant portion of our countrymen voicing support for his views.

There are those that want to strike at Iran, and I can't say that their reasoning is completely without merit. The problem is that even if we knew we were trying to remove a small fraction that led the country but didn't represent the views of the vast majority of the people, it still wouldn't be perceived that way. You could argue that we should invade Iran because a small group has taken control and will not allow their fellow countrymen to believe anything but what they believe.

This has striking parallels to the pre-2001 situation in Afghanistan with the Taliban. We felt perfectly justified in routing out that government. Granted, they were a anarchist style of government that did little but enforce morals, and as a result gave free rein to terrorists to use their country as a base and safe haven, but you have to admit, that other countries are guilty of harboring terrorists, they are just less blatant about it.

I've always had more scientific objections to religious movements. Denial of the age of the earth or evolution (and to a lesser extent, climate change) is often the stubborn position of American Christian Fundamentalists. Religious groups are always quick to refute any perceived contradiction to their holiest beliefs. They believe views that contradict the Bible will introduce doubt that will cause their members to reject their religion in its entirety. As a result, they often pick fights with scientists' claims that contradict strict readings or common interpretations of the Bible, and usually start to paint the scientist as deliberately trying to tear apart their religion. This is laughable, if it weren't so deadly serious. Some poor nerdy scientist finds some dusty bone and gets all excited about finding some fossils that provide some previously unseen link in the long chain of evolution, and pretty soon he's being painted as being in league with the devil. I picture some dusty dirty archaeologist with a pith helmet on, jumping up and down on some arid digging site and in the moment of his greatest joy being screamed at by some fanatic that telling him that he hates god. The reaction of the scientist is just complete bewilderment. He's totally focused on understanding something with painstakingly gathered evidence, and it never occurred to him that someone would take offense at it.

If you do engage scientists in religious discussions, you often find people of faith. I think many people are quite comfortable allowing for both science and religion in their lives. These people are not relying on the Bible as their sole source of information. In fact, they are allowing for the fact that God may be more complex than we can possibly comprehend. As Isaac Asimov said, any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. It is the same with religious beliefs. If you believe in God, how do you suppose you could possibly understand creation? Maybe that's our purpose in life, to keep picking it apart and trying to figure out how it was done.

Surge on Mexico

Lately we've been hearing from the administration about how the Surge in Iraq worked. They say it kept violence down in the areas it was active, but others point out that it exposed the weaknesses of the Iraqi government and showed that they are not making progress towards self-rule. The surge originally was supposed to buy the government time to get organized and get control so we would not be the ones providing all the security for the country.

I heard an argument for staying in Iraq voiced as, "Do you want $4 per gallon Gasoline? We can't pull out!" Oil production in Iraq hasn't been that great lately, anyway. If it was, we would expect them to pay for their own defense. I believe that our presence and the disruption of being invaded and occupied is part of what helps keep prices high, as well as promoting instability in the region. To say that we are there to provide stability seems quite a stretch to me. The problem with Iraq maturing to the point of self-government is that after the Saddam years, there is no one of any power or capability left to govern. Saddam made sure that anyone of any ability was "suppressed" (usually killed, but also exiled). Today, corruption and mismanagement is the rule. To expect a leader with a stabilizing influence that is not just trying to enrich himself or promote his own agenda is probably hoping for too much.

As I was thinking about all these issues with Iraq, it occurred to me that much of the same can be said about Mexico.

The problems with Mexico are similar in that corruption and mismanagement is causing a poor economy. In Mexico's case, the lack of opportunity this creates causes people to migrate north in search of better opportunities. Immigration resulting from a corrupt system is thought by many to be a big problem, a threat to us. So Mexican corruption causes us security concerns.

Therefore, we are equally justified in invading Mexico. We can liberate them from their crappy government and fix their dysfunctional system and make them more prosperous and less of a threat to us here. As they say about Iraq, we have to take care of their problem there so they won't follow us home. I believe an invasion and surge into Mexico is a valid response to this international crisis.

Mexico's oil wealth is an added bonus. The revenues from oil will make the war fund itself. The Mexican people are so downtrodden, they will surely hail us as liberators. As soon as a free democratic government can be put into power, we can leave them as a strong and stable ally.

Of course that's absurd. However, the line of reasoning is very similar to what we have been told about Iraq. You can hear the steady drumbeat of concerns about immigration being repeated by the same types of people that thought the Iraq War was and is a good idea, so it's not that crazy to expect the propaganda on immigration to morph into more extreme solutions and more intense rhetoric. Just brace yourself for more lunacy, that's all I'm saying.

Many decried the Bush Doctrine of preemptive strikes on countries as a horrible idea. Bad governments are allowed to continue all the time all over the world. When is it right or when do we have an obligation to go in and take over? If a country is exterminating a minority or can't provide for their people, is that enough to take over? We can't afford to run around the world trying to right all the wrongs, but at what point do we pass some threshold where it starts to seem like the right thing to do? And why can we not, as Americans, come anywhere close to consensus on this issue?

Misconceptions

I don't know where some people get their information or how they come to believe some of the things they do.

Check that. I know exactly where some people get their information and I know exactly why they come to believe it.

In our divided political climate, there's one thing that has worked hardest to keep us divided and polarized: right wing talk shows and blogs. If you're been alive in the United States since the mid 90's you definitely know someone that is a big fan of one or another of these blowhards: Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Coulter, Savage, Drudge, and the whole of Fox News.

I don't mind if people have reasoned, well thought out positions that happen to be different from mine. What I do mind is when some illogical whack job with a talent for propaganda starts misleading people about how the world works and influences people to not worry about their own greed and poor choices - it's that LIBERAL over there that is screwing up the world.

I hear lots of seriously cockeyed statements being passed off as fact. Before I go too far, I have to say that conservatives are not the only ones making absurd statements. Rev. Wright's assertion that the government started AIDS and Rosey O'Donnell's claim that 9/11 was a government conspiracy come to mind, and that doesn't even begin to cover it.

Those are easy to dismiss as wild ravings, though. For some reason, some of the wild ravings, particularly anti-environmental ones, from the right really get under my skin. So here's a short list of some of the craziest ones.

CO2 is a natural product and it is ridiculous to classify it as a harmful pollutant. No one says that we should eliminate CO2 or that it's bad. At natural levels, it's around 5% of the atmosphere. It's fluctuated over geological time, but not much. It's stayed within a pretty tight band around an average that is about a quarter or a third of where it's at today. Today it's driving up very rapidly, and 999 out of 1000 actual schooled, studied, vetted, legitimate climate scientists will tell you that humans are tipping the scale in the increase. If you truly believe that you can't have too much of any natural substance, try sitting down and drinking 3 gallons of water all at once and see if you survive the ordeal.

Humans can't make that big of a difference, if one volcano went off, it would put more CO2 in the air than the world output of CO2. If true, my response is "so what?" Are we saying that if some other catastrophe would be worse, we should completely discount any other actions that aren't that bad? That's like saying "so what if I have a problem with cocaine, if I was shooting up heroin, I could destroy my life really quickly." Or better yet, so what about my drug problem, a truck could hit me tomorrow. By this logic, we should feel free to commit any act we want (criminal or negligent) because a comet could hit the earth some day and wipe everything out. Historically, volcanoes do erupt and disrupt weather patterns worldwide. Really large eruptions, like Krakatoa disrupted weather for a couple of years before the earth returned to more or less normal. What disrupted the weather was particulate in the upper atmosphere, not so much the CO2. It would be good to have the earth's climate system in a pretty good balance before getting a hammerblow such as this, rather than having it already teetering on the edge when hit hard by some extreme blow.

More oil is good. We should drill in Anwar and off the coast of Florida because we need more oil. Well, we are drilling in places we haven't for a long time, we're getting what used to be uneconomic reserves out of oil sands in Canada and the shale deposits in the U.S. are also being looked at seriously. We're thinking about drilling in the Arctic (can anyone imagine a nice combination of Titanic and Exxon Valdez?), and thinking about reviving coal in a big way. This is great if you believe in the rapture and figure there won't be a world to live in about 50 years from now, so it doesn't matter what you do today. Thinking that the solution to our problems is more oil is like the addicted gambler that thinks he has a gambling problem because all the casinos in town won't let him in anymore.

The latest strange flip-flop in anti-environmental propaganda was that we didn't need to increase ethanol production, and then once we did and grain prices started to spike, that ethanol production couldn't make any difference in grain prices. The 2000 to 2006 boom in ethanol made a lot of people a lot of money. When the bottom fell out of the Ethanol industry, a lot of people then started saying that it wasn't ever a valid model anyway. Now that food prices are spiking, these same people are saying that there is no way that this could be a result of ethanol production.

There is a problem with all this hot air and rhetoric. Many think that matters of fact are somehow subject to people's opinions and that we should somehow be able to express our view or vote democratically about reality. Reality doesn't care what you think. Reality has this nasty habit of disregarding your opinion and doing what it's going to do despite what you think. The problem is that complex systems do not then leave enormous signs in the sky that announce what's really happening. To find out what's really happening, you have to actually go out and do some research, not read a blog or listen to talk radio.

Decoding and Making Life

I listened to a podcast of WNYC's show Radiolab called (So Called) Life recently. You can see it at http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2008/03/14

It was all about splicing together genes in unique new ways that don't occur in nature to make new life. I was taking a very long and enjoyable early morning walk in Wamego Kansas when I listened to this show the first time.

The show starts out talking about mash-ups from the natural world. These are mythological beasts like lions with eagle heads. Whether it's Pegasus or a Unicorn, people are fascinated with the improbable mixes of various creatures. The display of fantasy creatures at the Museum of Natural History was very popular.

The desire to play god and reinvent life is something that is of great interest to people. There have been examples of mixtures of two beings in a form called a chimera. The original Chimera was a creature of Greek myth that was a combination of various animals. DNA testing has made us realize that we have humans walking among us that are actual chimeras. What happens is you have two twins (not identical) that merge together in the womb and create a single person. The odd thing about this is that different organs or parts of the body would yield different DNA results. Somehow, the body makes one of each part correctly from the mash-up of two original organisms.

Some scientists have messed around and created artificial chimeras from dissimilar animals. They talked about Geeps, a mash-up of a sheep and a goat. You can see various attributes of the input animals expressed in various attributes, a sheep head and goat fur, for example.

The interesting part of the show talked about how early life was supposedly able to exchange genetic information from one organism to another. Genetic swapping caused a rapid increase in diversity. At some point in evolutionary history, this swapping stopped. They talked about the modern stage being human directed evolution.

The story talked about changes in bacteria and other simple forms, but there is also a counter movement that believes this could end up being a very bad idea. This is expressed in the movie "I Am Legend" where genetic manipulation to cure cancer mutates into a plague that almost wipes out all human life. The question is "Do we really understand the consequences of what we are doing?"

I've often thought that as I got older, there would be a opportunities to restore or enhance my senses. I figured medical technology would be developed to repair damage or aging that would also unlock the way these senses worked, making it easy to alter those senses. Imagine being able to see better in the dark, hear like a bat, see like a hawk, or smell like a dog. Imagine being able to breath water or run without tiring. I'm not the only one imagining it. The TV series Dark Angel was the forerunner of this speculation. In that show, Jessica Alba and her cohorts were genetically engineered/enhanced humans, made to be soldiers. Of course, there are massive problems with this, as they have to be kept under tight control or they will overcome "normal" humans. This was also addressed in the original Star Trek and one of the Star Trek movies about the Kahn character played by Ricardo Montebon. He was an enhanced human tried to take over the world and had to be exiled. Still, I would like to be able to see like a hawk.

Other issues that touch upon this way of thinking is the glut of DNA testing. Medical research has a strong desire to test, learn from, and study DNA for potential problems like human disease. They could just as easily search for people that are more enhanced than the baseline and figure out which genes provide these enhancements. The technology is not that great right now. It is much cheaper to analyze nowadays. My brother is a veterinarian and offers DNA tests for dogs for $80to figure out what their lineage is. We are not that far from being able to quickly and inexpensively read the genetic codes of people or whatever animals they want. The problem here is that you have 25,000 genes, each one with multiple functions and expressions, and all interacting with each other. Our chances of getting it right the first time are surely slim. They also bring up the potential for abuse, for deliberately inventing harmful agents and releasing them into the world. That is another question.

And the Rich Get Lazier

"The rich get rich and the poor get poorer." Many have probably heard this catchphrase, which Wikipedia attributes versions to President Andrew Jackson and President William Henry Harrison. In both cases, they were stating how government power should not be used to insure that government doesn't use its power to insure that those with wealth are made wealthier. Many people believe that this phrase was somehow popularized by communist movements, but you can see that even in the 19th century, U.S. Presidents were talking about it. The ultimate source for the phrase is from the New Testament verse Matthew 13:12 in the King James translation, so it certainly is not a new sentiment.

What I find to be apparent is that the rich get rich, then they get lazy. I'm not just talking about lazy as in physically inactive. I'm talking about mentally and fiscally lazy. It appears to me that many wealthy people are not hard working, engaged, involved, innovators, but people that want to sit on a pile of money while the rules are rigged to insure that the pile grows and the government keeps their hands off of it.

I can't count the number of times I hear business owners (or people that work for them and buy into their propaganda) bemoaning "regulations". It's as if they believe that the only purpose to regulating anything is to insure that capitalism and wealth creation is checked. The same goes for taxes. You'd think taxes were some kind of evil plot to drag down the wealthy. Regulations prevent people from focusing so much on their own greed and schemes that they can trash the environment or take advantage of others in the pursuit of their goals. I don't want to see clean water and clean air regulations rolled back so some obscenely wealthy oil executive can make 10% more than the already incomprehensible stratospheric salary that he made last year. The amount of money these people spend on baubles and trinkets is more than many people make in a year, and we're supposed to feel sorry for them because they have some kind of restriction placed on what they can do? When did the privileged become such victims? I can buy into the fact that everyone should pay the same percentage of their income into taxes. I can't believe that the average mega rich person doesn't have on their payroll or on retainer, a professional that can show him how to avoid paying the amount in taxes that the system says he should pay. I'd be surprised if the wealthiest men in America paid a higher percentage of their income in taxes than I did last year. That's purely a rant of mine, I have no proof or studies to back it up, so if someone actually did a study on it, I'd gladly eat my words.

More to the point, let's get off bitching and griping about taxes. There seems to be no reluctance by the conservatives in this country in paying taxes if the point if stomping on Iraq (check that - we're not even trying to pay for this war as it goes, we're charging it on the National Visa card). My point is that taxes provide necessary benefits. Whether it's an aircraft carrier or a smooth road to drive on, a school to educate someone or a safety net to catch those in need, these programs are part of our life and help make our standard of living so high. You can argue all you want about how the Europeans overtax their people, but the money has to come from somewhere, and whether it's funnelled through taxes or usage fees, whether it is government enforced or voluntary for individuals, we end up with the same standard of living, the same generally peaceful and prosperous society. You don't want to abandon those in the lowest strata of society, from a moral or practical standpoint, it's not sustainable.

I wrote in my last post about the manufacturer's representative business. In this business, people that have been owners of rep firms for years are some of the least motivated people in the sales force. Since hey already have enough money and they have rigged the rules to make the majority of the money in their businesses no matter who sells the most, they don't need to work that hard. That doesn't stop them from expecting high compensation for little effort. Ultimately, they allow their businesses to drift, then expect to sell it at a high and go into retirement (as if that's much different than what they did in the last several years).

I think this is a symptom of your highest class of capitalists in this country as a whole. When was the last time you saw an oil company executive offer to build a new refinery in this country? This would even out shortages caused annually by refinery operational shutdowns and maintenance outages. The oil executives have no desire to do this because it would also lead to less volatile prices and less profits. When was the last time you heard about someone in the entrenched energy industry talk about capitalizing on any new form of energy? It's stupid and short sighted. These companies have all the pipelines, the distribution network, and capital to launch new products across all markets. If they had some foresight and got in front of the energy needs of the country instead of entrenching themselves, we would be in a much better position as a nation. I'm making two arguments here: first that the people with the most market motivation aren't making a very good bet based on where we know energy industry needs and capabilities will go, and second that free market profit motives are not adequate for steering society in the right direction.

My real fear is listening to people that talk about our future as if it doesn't matter to them. I've actually heard people say, "So what if the planet melts down? I'll be long gone by then." I wonder why the uber-rich feel the way they feel about money for the same reason. At some point, don't you just have to say, "I've got enough money to last the rest of my life no matter what I do. It's time to stop pushing for more."

The Age of Stagnation

I've had vague concerns that we are living in an era where America's dominance and position are slipping in the world. I've often pointed to the current administration's unfriendly stance toward science - but it's a lot more complicated that that.

The old model that America drove to prominence saw its heyday in the 1880's - The Age of Invention. Anybody with a good idea was developing it, patenting it, manufacturing it and making a fortune off of it. Most of the ideas that made people rich also benefited society. Think of Thomas Edison's light bulb and telephone.

One thing that is often true of innovation is that it displaces something that came before it. Many times the success of a new product meant the death of an old one. The maturation and solidification of our technologies into tried and true solutions is, in itself, a way to stifle innovation. Often those who have maneuvered themselves into a position to benefit from the way things are done now find it in their own selfish interest to suppress anything that threatens their dominance and source of income.

Many people have speculated that auto and oil companies conspired to keep fuel efficient engine designs off the market by buying ideas and sitting on them. I've never seen any proof for this, but it has been true that auto companies have resisted fuel standards for years. If it was a conspiracy - it was a suicidal conspiracy of fools. Ask your local car dealer how business is right now.

That's not exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how someone without, someone in want, someone that lacks - will naturally strive much harder than someone that has all of their basic needs met.

I fear that in the environment we've built up in this country, using good ideas is more like playing musical chairs. When the music stops, you have to be sitting in a chair so someone else will be left out. Today's capitalists believe that you're not going to be rewarded for making the most out of any invention or development, but that the key is to get a patent for an idea or process and sit on it. Milking the most wealth possible out of an idea has become such an American past time that we graduate lawyers from universities just to specialize in patent law. The problem with this way of thinking is that ideas don't work best by bottling them up and placing them on a shelf, ideas work best in action. Ideas in action will necessarily be challenged and displaced by other ideas and forced to compete for prominence. These same capitalists that always trot out the excuse that "market forces" have to dominate any situation don't have the same standard when it comes to their ideas compete on an even footing. The desire to stifle other's ideas is not new. Even back during the Age of Invention, Edison tried to stop one of his brightest proteges, Nicolai Tesla, from developing an idea that would have displaced one of his biggest inventions, alternating current. And the Wright brothers tried to get a patent on flight and stifle all others that tried to make inventions or modifications to the airplane. Fortunately, they lost their battle with Curtis, and we now use flaps on wings instead of having large wings that warp and flex like a bird's wing - a construction that would have been extremely impractical on scale-up.

In the manufacturer's representative business - you always know who are the "mature" salesmen. Someone that has been successful for many years has usually gotten fat and lazy. They already have enough money. They don't want or need to work hard any more - but they still expect to be handsomely rewarded by virtue of their position. This is what I fear the capitalistic class in this country have become.

One thing is certain, expecting to continue to do things the way we have always is a formula for being left behind. In the Age of Invention, the first invention brought in money to fuel the development of the next thing. In our Age of Stagnation, coming up with a good idea once, or having the keys to the castle that contains the thing everyone wants is all it takes to be entitled to an uninterrupted stream of wealth. If that sounds like a fairy tale, it is.

Attractive Algae

Being a equipment nerd with a strong interest in how we make things, biofuels are of particular interest to me. The thought of growing our energy - thus using and then recapturing the CO2 in each growing cycle is attractive for many reasons.

However, ethanol's recent boom/bust cycle is a lesson in the limits of the first and easiest solution out of the box. It's often not the best solution.

You can argue the numbers, you can juggle the books to say that ethanol from grain is viable, but the recent rapid rise of grain prices makes it abundantly clear that the corn to ethanol scheme will not pan out.

The next idea is to distill fuel in the form of oil from an unlikely source: algae. Given the right supply of fuel (nutrients) and air (CO2 for plant), algae can double in mass daily. It is 50% lipids (oil) and could be processed easily into biodiesel with current techniques.

What is more beautiful is that the algae will need to consume another resource that is currently thought of as a waste - namely sewage. Whether from municipal or livestock sources, what to do with our sewage is a growing problem in the world. If algae works at all like duckweed (a plant that has been studied extensively) it may be able not only to purify water of its nitrogen content, but possibly other minerals. If the algae residue, after the oils are extracted, proves to be useful as a livestock feed - the cycle will be complete. It's unclear if the algae could consume a significant amount of CO2, but we could see a large algae plant bubbling power plant flue gasses into the water to feed the algae.

Watching the ethanol boom pass me by without being able to capitalize on the trend, I was speculating to my cousin about how great it would be to get in on the ground floor of the coming algae boom. I told him it would be great to develop a small system the size of a septic tank for individual home use. "Let's do it," was his immediate response. Someone is going to do it, I'm sure. I've got a pond full of duckweed, and the first step is playing with designing a skimmer to harvest the duckweed out of the pond. That's my homework project this summer. I'm not sure why I was convinced it wouldn't be me to develop the technology, but I'm willing to test the theory.

Bacteriophages

I was listening to the April 4th Science Friday Episode about Bacteriophages http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200804043.

These are viruses that kill a specific strain of bacteria. Work was done back in the early 1900's in Eastern Europe to cultivate them as a cure for certain diseases. This work was mostly forgotten over the years - particularly since the rise of antibiotics during WWII.

Since the antibiotic age seems to have come full circle, with many persistent strains of bacteria developing in response to the overuse and misuse of antibiotics, interested individuals are looking again at this technology.

If a strain of bacteriophage can be found that exactly works on a resistant strain of bacteria, this would be a great discovery. The phages are said to be completely safe in humans - as they will only attack the specific infectious agent and not the body. The trick is finding the right strain. Companies are starting to submit phages for approval to the FDA, and some have gotten GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status.

The question I have is how do they propagate the phage once they find it? The guest on Science Friday talked about delivering it in pill, spray, or patch form, and warned that exposure to light would kill the phages. Is it hard to keep a strain alive and grow a commercially useful amount? How does it kill the bacteria? Once a person is infected with a phage, does it stay after it has killed all the bacteria it targets? Does your immune system possibly learn from the action of the phage and have some immunity to the bacteria after the phage treatment is over?

I wrote an entry on June 11, 2007 http://atresfreq.blogspot.com/2007/06/civil-war-immunity.html about my speculation that the Civil War soldiers were infected with so many strains of various bacteria in their disease-ridden camps that they had some kind of immunity that lasted the rest of their lives. The soldiers that survived the war lived in great numbers into their 90's. While it is also true that marching the long distances and all the physical exertions put them in incredible shape, that can't be all there was to it. It stands to reason that nasty diseases with high mortality rates would also be the perfect breeding ground for viruses that lived on those bacteria. So maybe exposure to those filthy camps also brought the antidote for the diseases in the form of phages that could develop and get a foothold in an environment rich with bacteria. Like any good mystery, you just have to keep turning the pages until the answers reveal themselves.

Friendship Expiration Date

My wife and I were getting a pizza for dinner the other night. When we went to a Papa John's in town, one we usually go. This store is where a high school friend of mine works. I mentioned this to Andrea and we talked about him. During the discussion that followed I stumbled on describing whether he was a friend or is a friend. I said, "There is no expiration date on friendship." This isn't always exactly true, but many times the people we call our friends remain friends (or at least friendly) even when we haven't seen them for years. You know the type, you see them after a long spell and it's as if the years between have dropped away. It's a mark of true friendship that the things that you liked about each other then are still true and still appealing to you. This story doesn't have a part where we got together and had a great time. Sometimes I worry about how life can get so busy that we just don't have or won't take the time to socialize. So my heartwarming revelation that there are all these latent friendships out there might ring a bit hollow. It doesn't matter - I find comfort in it nevertheless.