Precious Life

Is life precious? Is it more precious now than it used to be?

 I think life is indifferent to life. It just happens and it ends as easily as it begins. Humanity is the act of trying to make life more precious. Humans to survive and live longer. Many try to improve the world because they're sure they'll have to be in that world in the future or certain their offspring will have to live in it. Humans use speech and art and massive public works as a way of making their works live beyond today and keep their memory alive in the future.

 I listen to current debates about Pro-Life and Pro-Choice. We live in divisive times where people firmly place themselves in one column or the other and refuse to see things any other way than the way they already see and believe in the world. But sometimes ideas are short sighted and don't take into account the broad arc of history. People have tunnel vision or limited vision. Like the person that walks along staring at their shoes and the ground a short distance in front of them.

 Imagine how a parent from 1865 would feel about our current debate about abortion. World population was about 1.2 billion, compared to about 7.0 billion today. There are 5.8 times more people in the world. U.S. population has increased 11 time in that period from about 30 million to 330 million today. Back then 40% of people died before they reached the age of 5. Now only 1% of the population dies before age 5. A 1865 parent with 2 or 3 children probably lost 1 or 2 already. Almost all parents experienced the loss of a child. I often wonder if most people were sad all the time, or if they simply learned how to accept death.

 Those 1865 people also just survived a war where 2% of the population was killed. Almost everyone knew someone that fought and died in the war just past. Everyone knew many young men that served. Many people today don't know anyone in the armed forces and of those that do, few know someone who died or was injured.

 Some of these facts lead you to believe that we hold life more precious today. We spent a lot of time figuring out how to better our odds of living by developing clean water, better food, and better health care. Few people go hungry today, disease is much more rare, and we expect to live much longer. So, if preserving life is important, we did a pretty good job of it. You could argue that we hold life more precious nowadays because we do a much better job of it. But you could also argue the opposite. Perhaps people appreciated life more in the past because it was so easy to lose and harder to hold onto. A great deal of effort went into staying alive. Growing food, finding shelter, staying healthy, these were much more difficult to do and people spent a great deal more time trying to do them.

 For an outside observer, someone looking at humanity's place in history, what would they make of us? While we continuously are correcting our course and trying to solve the problems we create, we do create a lot of problems. There are too many of us. We are reaching the point where the planet shows some signs of struggling to feed us all. We are impacting the environment and driving many species into extinction. We are covering the surface of the planet and leave few places wild and untouched. Some describe humanity as a virus or cancer on the earth, and sometimes we exhibit similar properties.

 One thing I believe is certain is that we'll suffer some setbacks, some pretty severe setbacks, if we don't start cleaning up our act and don't figure a way to relieve our population pressure. If we don't do it ourselves, I believe the planet will inevitably do it for us. Disease, war, natural catastrophes, or decline and loss of vitality could easily start to take over and create a downward spiral.

 The cure is not simple. It's a combination of many things. Limit population through a combination of having less children and colonizing space so that the excess population will have somewhere to go. Continually carving up the same amount of land among a rapidly increasing number of people means people will have less space. Given the way human beliefs and inclinations are, we most likely will push into the wild places and take them over. More species of plants and animals will be pushed out to make way for us. We need less people per square mile, not more. This will make life more precious because it will be less common. Beyond simply limiting our numbers, we have to figure out a way to eat without stripping the earth, and how to power our lives without polluting the atmosphere or stripping our resources bare. We need to find meaningful things for people to do with their time.

 Unfortunately, putting people on the path to a stable future seems beyond us. Politicians who have the greatest chance to make policies to change the course of our future are mostly concerned with short term gains for themselves. Big businesses with the best means to impact the future are typically interested more at enriching themselves without regard to the future of the planet or the rest of the members of society. Individuals are mostly interested in pursuing the things that make them happy today without much thought of the future.

 This is not universally true. There are visionaries and leaders with a clear view of the future. But there are not enough of them and they are not making enough of the important decisions. The best we can hope is that enough visionary leaders with a clear view of the future will be in the world to tilt it in the right direction.

Pro Probiotic

I love to think about the Microbiome. That invisible sea of bacteria and other microorganisms that are taking a ride in your stomach, coating your skin, or bathing some niche environment.

I wrote a long time ago about my speculation that survivors of our American Civil War may have had enhanced immune systems due to the exposures they had during the war: https://atresfreq.blogspot.com/2007/06/civil-war-immunity.html

I also listen to Science Friday each week and it is one of their favorite subjects. They mostly think about how the diminishing cost to sequence a genome, coupled with the ability to edit genes is bringing about a revolution in genetic engineering. Then they often muse on the fact that scientist keep finding very interesting organisms living on other organisms. They like the human gut biome, and one of the most fascinating stories about this is the discovery of fecal transplants as a way to reverse severe C. difficile infections in hospital patients. That's a whole different story, one that is delightfully disgusting and amazingly instructive.

The common theme here is that a genetic diversity and a community of organisms can get in sync and have mutually beneficial effects on each other. The overuse of antibiotics, kind of a micro organism scorched earth policy, leaves a barren microbial landscape making it easy for pathogens to take root without interference. There is a lot of speculation about how this works. Some research has shown that microbial communities sometimes are in competition for resources and produce chemicals that tend to kill or limit pathogens. Some scientists speculate that it's just a numbers game. In a sea of bacteria, no one strain can dominate.

I listened to a podcast during my run today call SGU. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Their whole spiel is that you have to be skeptical about all knowledge, question the basis for any belief, and only trust ideas with a great deal of support information. They make fun of people that they believe are misguided. They have particular fun with groups of people that they feel are willfully ignorant or self-deceived about their beliefs. I have to admit that I usually enjoy their derogatory banter, but occasionally I dream up dialogues in my head where I disagree with someone, but respect their right to be completely full of shit. OK, I admit I have a tolerant streak that is also condescending and self-congratulatory. It's partly borne of the belief that people aren't going to change their minds, so it's no use trying to "educate" someone. But it's also rooted in the knowledge that people nest in the beliefs they are comfortable in, and assaulting a person's belief system is rude and unwelcome.

The podcast I was listening to today talked about this company offering "natural" or "raw" water. It's $27 for a 2½ gallon container. They warn their customers to drink it within "one lunar cycle" or it will turn green. The podcasters were having a blast making fun of the "hippies" that believe in this. They kept talking about how these people were drinking disease water and believing they were being more pure or healthy. At one point, one of the cast said something about how spring water was polluted with trash, toxins, or arsenic. At that point, I kind of got the sense that these people were going a bit too far. My understanding is that spring water is hard water, laden with minerals, but almost always bacteria or microorganism free. Now I'm not going to claim it's toxin free, as arsenic is actually a good example of a mineral that can leach into ground water. But Arsenic, like most toxins, is not a universal poison. It has to be ingested at a particular concentration in order to be lethal. People are consuming toxins all the time at sub-lethal doses. Nicotine is a poison that could kill you in one dose, but that would be something like 100 cigarettes worth taken all at once in order to be fatal. So maybe spring water is not absolutely pure, but I would never hesitate to drink it fresh from the source. I'm thinking of the giant springs in Missouri that recharge over hundreds of square miles and emerge from deep in the earth. I don't know that I would drink out of a little sprout of water in the middle of a cow field, that might not be what I consider a spring. I used to sell filters to a company that captured spring water from some big spring in Missouri. They filtered the heck out of that water before bottling it. They had a parallel operation that did the exact same filtration regime on Kansas City Tap water and bottled it. One they sold as Spring Water, the other they sold as Purified Water. I think they needed to filter the Spring Water in that case because the transport trucks could be a source of contamination. If I was at the spring, I'd drink the water right out of the ground and believe myself to be drinking something that could not hurt me.

I started thinking about the gimmick of "Raw Water" they were making fun of and realized that it could be possible that someone could deliver a water with some bacteria in it that was very healthy for you. Just like the Raw Milk trend among some people. Food Safety Fanatics believe this is pure insanity. Let's put it in perspective. People drank unpasteurized milk for centuries. Some got sick occasionally, but it was mostly an acceptable risk. People found ways around the risk by fermenting or processing it into cheese or other products. If we had high tech high speed instruments capable of seeing every microbe and cataloging it in a container, we could simply test and pass or fail raw products that in reality are full of stray microorganisms. You might also simply test the health of the cows (or goats or whatever you're milking) and keep the collection and bottling highly cleaned and be assured that this was a low risk. Society might trend that way in the future. I don't think it's completely insane to use raw products, it's just riskier than pasteurized products. Who knows what kind of microorganisms we are missing out on by sterilizing everything. Or, to be fair, who knows how many diseases we are dodging on a daily basis by insisting on high standards of sterility.

I work with a customer that grows a bacterium that I believe was discovered in a cow's stomach originally. They figured out how to grow it in large quantities (no simple feat in itself) and sell it to the cattlemen's industry as a food supplement. It allows cows to go instantly from pasture to feed lot for fattening. Cows actually have multiple stomaches and one of them has the function of housing bacteria that do a great deal of the work of digestion. If a cow eats grass over a long period of time, that stomach has a population of bacteria that are perfectly suited to break down grass. When a cow is in a feed lot for a long time, they eventually have a completely different population of gut bacteria. The transition from grass to feed lot rations makes a cow sick. They have to do it gradually, over a 30 day period in order to keep the cow from getting too sick. Once converted over, the cow's digestive system loves the feed rations and gains weight rapidly. The product my customer makes switches over their gut microbes instantly and allows cattle to go directly to full rations without getting sick. It's probably not a perfect fit to call it a Probiotic. I think of a Probiotic as a microorganism that provides a benefit. This microbe doesn't just provide a benefit, it serves a crucial function. I think we stamp microorganisms as probiotics with a connotation that this is a nice thing to have, but you can live without it. It's just a benefit, not a requirement. Any organism that does digestion for the host animal isn't just a nice thing to have, it's almost like an organ, you can't live without it. I'm guessing that since there are probably multiple strains that perform digestion that this is a bit of an exaggeration.

I love this field because we stand in the glaring ignorance of all that could be going on all around us every day. It's a whole gigantic uncharted territory to explore. Imagine the fascinating things we'll discover when we start mining this knowledge. It's one of those things that people 100 years from now will look at us in disdain because we were so stupid not to know it. But we live in this sea of invisible information all around us, doing what it does despite our oblivion to it. The universe doesn't care how clueless we are, it still is what it is. It's also kind of like ghosts. If ghosts were real, wouldn't that be wild? They'd be all around us and we wouldn't have any idea they were there. Except for the occasional poltergeist. The microbial poltergeists are how we learn that there is something there to know. Someone performs the first fecal transplant and suddenly we realize that things don't work exactly as we had always imagined.

As I finished my run, I walked down my driveway and looked at the dead fountain grass tufts up by the road under the walnut trees. For the hundredth time, I thought about trying to grow something to screen the road from my house (I should say my house from the road). When we first moved in, the builders had planted pine trees in a line across the front yard. Great idea, but they died after about 3 or 4 years. We understood that the walnuts were to blame. Nothing grows well under walnuts. I heard from a nurseryman a long time ago that the walnuts secrete a toxin. Over the years I've tried to learn what it is that they secrete and if there is any way to counter it. I thought about separating my fountain grass out to divide an propogate it to make a wall of decorative grass. The same grass grows taller in other places where it's not under the walnuts. I thought about planting it with a huge dollop of bone meal to give it a good head start. Then I thought about giving it a good pocket of compost to root into. I speculate that one of composts benefits is to bring along a healthy microbiome with it. Then I realized something. Maybe the walnut trees have their own probiotics. Maybe what is going on here is a symbiotic microorganism that secretes chemicals that are toxic to most plants, but harmless to walnut trees. This would mean that the walnut trees would not have to compete for nutrients. It would tend to keep the area under a walnut grove free of competitive trees and shrubs. It would also mean that any attempts to plant shrubs, bushes, or other trees near the walnuts would work well for a few years, until the organism invaded the root area of the new plantings and pinched them off. That could be what happened to the pine trees so many years ago. They looked fine for the first year, then slowed down growth in the 2nd & 3rd year, then turned brown and died after that.

We'll know all about this one day. There will be ways to survey and map out what's going on in the soil, on the surfaces of all the plants and animals, in the air, in the water. We'll be able to know what we want to know about these invisible populations. But for now, they are just invisible silent ghosts, doing their thing with us oblivious to their secrets.

Unhealthy Habits

I went running for the first time since 9/16/17. I time my runs with the Runkeeper Ap, so my depressing record is there for me to see clearly. I also notice that the last time I ran a decent length, 6.02 miles, was 8/31/17. I blame this 4 month lapse on my health in the fall. I had a nasty cold with a severe cough, which turned into a sinus infection, and about the time I was getting over that, I got another cold, just about as nasty. Both colds had those irrepressible coughs that trigger coughing fits, and I tried to go out for exercise and could not manage it.

Then I did something truly stupid to my knee. I twisted my right knee very badly simply by trying to climb up into a super high jacked up pickup truck. I was barely able to walk for 2 days.

Then I got fat and lazy for a couple of months. That is seriously unhealthy and depressing, so don't do that.

About the time I started looking to get back into it, we had a 3 week long cold snap with temperatures around 0° the whole time.

Yesterday, the cold snap lifted and today it was 60°. I ran outside in shorts. I've got to get back into it and stay at it. One of the things that motivated me was a guy I saw yesterday at my son's birthday party. We'd never met before, and he came up to me and said, "You're the guy that runs on Milton Thompson Road."

That's scary to think that I'm that visible and that people recognize me. And I used to be that guy, just not lately. I want to be that guy again.

When I finished the run, it was so nice out that I was in no hurry to go outside. There was trash in the ditch in front of my house, so I walked the road picking it all up.

I've noticed this before, the trash falls mostly into 3 groups: tobacco, alcohol, and fast food. Today it struck me that these were all unhealthy habits. It seems reasonable that people that are not taking care of their bodies and don't give a shit about their future would also not give a shit about the future of the environment.

So maybe healthy habits help make healthy habits. Hopefully getting back in shape will get me back in shape in other ways too. I could really use it right about now.

And it could not be...

Do we have free will? Can we actually decide what to do and do it? Can we actually decide what to think or change what we think?


I listened to Smart People Podcast, episode 167 with Jonathan Levi. I should say I started to listen to this. It got me depressed, talking about how Elon Musk decided that he wanted to learn actual rocket science and teaching himself in 4 months. It talked about the discipline and speed reading speed comprehension skills this required. I quit listening. It was too depressing.


I recently binge watched Limitless. This was a TV series (one season) adapted from a movie with Bradley Cooper that I have not yet seen. The series continues the story, with a slacker musician being introduced to a drug, NZT, that opens his mind and brings the power of his entire mind into play. He's able to remember anything and absorb, sort, and comprehend large volumes of data quickly. He solves crimes for the FBI with this talent.


If I was on that drug, I'd solve cancer and mortality, disease, politics and economics. Fuck crime.


I could use the skills in my profession. If I knew all the customers and all of what they are doing and each time I interacted with them I would know if we were on track to sell something or if it was mental masturbation, I could really make some money. I'd know what to do, when to do it, and how to capitalize on it. I could solve the Frito problem in a flash.


So I shrink down into my limited self and get frustrated with the lack of progress.


Yet the nature of reality still beckons me. I sense the possibilities. I sense the potential, the limitless potential, and I want to explore that feeling, that mode, that way of fulfilling my destiny.


Desert canyon. I remember meeting the Israeli soldiers on the bottom of the trail to the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. It was so incredible to be at the bottom and dip our toes in the river and toast our successful descent. It had not yet occurred to us that the real challenge was going to be the climb out. Few did what we were doing, so it made the prospect seem tiny. It was impossible to tell if the Israelis were lovers or not. They did not appear to be. They were only 22 and they were not allowed to rent cars, since you have to be 26 to do that in the states. They bought an old beater instead. They fixed it up and started off over America, traversing from coast to coast and from top to bottom. They'd seen more than I had.


Why would a hedgeapple be an object of fascination. Perhaps the guy had never been in the woods before. On the Cub Scout hike, Paws on the Path, the adults didn't really seem to have a clue. The boys did, but they didn't stop to savor anything except the stream. This is also when I saw the Piliated Woopecker. It was calling and coming in to our area, doing a final glide path. It flared it's wings and grabbed a branch and looked down at us. It took about half a second to look at us and decide that it did not want to have anything to do with us. It flew off, still making its distinctive call.


Fever dreams. I can't recall if I was able to overcome the lack of sleep, or if I succumbed to it. I think maybe reality shifts a bit when you are sleep deprived.

Epic Opera Dream

Epic Dream

I was looking up at a giant treehouse-like structure and there were women rappelling through the mess of tangled branches. They were there to explore and understand the mysteries of this strange tree/city/world. I was gaping, looking up with my mouth open, when they came to the ground and completed their survey. I sensed that they did not find what they were looking for.

Then I looked down and I noticed that a sinkhole had formed. Chris Padilla had jumped in to check it out, but it was full of water and he was passed out at the bottom. We quickly rigged a way to tie off with a rope and go down to rescue him. There was someone else there, and it wasn't clear which one of us was recovering Chris and which of us was administering CPR. I was distracted, it seemed that I already knew the story and Chris was going to be fine. I had to solve the mystery of the water filled sinkhole. I noticed that there was a trick of optics and a rock shelf was just below the surface, covering half the hole, but looking like the bottom. It would be easy to dive in and hit your head, thinking you had a clear shot.

It was as if once I had discovered the trap in the sinkhole, the action leapt forward. The sinkhole I think was drained and proved to be the entrance to an underground headquarters or hiding place. It looked like an old hotel or an opera hall. I needed to find something in there and was rapidly searching before the authorities could arrive and lock down the scene.

I must have figured it out, because there was a rapid shift to a final scene. I was walking back to the campus with some friends, a man and a woman who were newfound lovers. It was exciting to discover that something had changed, the same energy that had made them become attracted to each other had also made me more attractive. It was the success of the mission, which added to confidence, wealth, and appeal. I was ready to get back to the campus and look for someone new.

This dream had the echo of an older dream where I was in a goldmine: It was a claustrophobia dream. I was in an abandoned gold mine, looking for treasure. It felt like the walls were closing in and my light was dimming and I was starting to get panicked. I found a secret way out that emerged thru a hidden panel in an old timey hotel lobby. I knew there was something interesting to  be found so I put the panel back in place and acted like nothing unusual was going on. I couldn't wait to go back to figure out what the secret was, but I hated the thought of being in that cramped mineshaft. I think the mineshaft is a symbol for a mind shaft where the treasures are inside your own head.

Destined to Repeat It

I've had fantasies about going back and talking to my younger self. One of the things I regret that I was going to counsel younger me on was the lack of confidence with women. I had several attractions over the years that I did not act on, and older me always thought younger me was a bit of a coward and should have stepped up more often. Carpe diem, what's to lose?

Now I'm newly single again, and find myself in the same position. If I see someone that I'm interested in, I immediately think of all the reasons why this can't happen and I leave it as a mental exercise, without ever approaching someone. So it's easy to intellectualize a needed action or position, it's just hard to live it.

So I was thinking about the old adage that those that are ignorant of history are bound to repeat it. What about the inverse corollary? Those that know history too damned well may still be stuck repeating it?

I've heard speculation by neurologists that lead you to believe that we can't really change our nature, that in some ways we don't have control of ourselves. It's depressing to think about, because we assume with a little counselling or training that we could become whatever we want to do. That we could break bad habits or addictions if we chose to.

I can see how this happens at the unit level in military conflicts. If you're scared, you can't understand that the situation requires courage and just conjure some up. What about politics? You might be faced with undeniable truths, but still unable to accept new policies, or enact new laws, or embrace new candidates that are better suited to address those truths. What about economics and business? You might see a technology or business model dying, but find yourself unable to let go of the old ways.

So, is it hopeless? Are we trapped in ourselves and unable to change, even it it's to improve? Maybe just being aware of the resistance is the way to overcome it.

Story Time

I was listening to Mike Pesca's podcast The Gist on 8/12/15. He had Matthew Dicks, a Moth Grand Slam champion. He talked about a storytelling exercise, which is to put ideas down in text message/twitter length bullets each day. It's supposed to be little kernals of the most story-worthy moment of the last day.

It's an interesting concept that he created to help kickstart ideas for stories from his own life. He said that one of the things that it does, unexpectedly, is to slow time down. He said the act of contemplating and reviewing each day makes time seem different.  That in itself is worth the effort.

See: http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/gist/2015/08/the_gist_storytelling_with_matthew_dicks_and_male_vocal_fry.html

Guaranteed Privacy

If you really want to be able to express yourself in complete privacy, just write a blog.

It's odd to "publish" something that you have to admit you don't expect anyone to read.  It's kind of a fun format.  I mean, someone could easily find the blog and read it, but even if I wanted that to happen, it's improbable.  I could send people the link, but that's not really why I write it.

Why do I write this?  It's sort of like singing while you run or posting the only comment on something online.  It's fun to express yourself, but you're not communicating, you're just broadcasting.  No, that's not the right word.  Broadcasting supposes that a broad audience is receiving it.

I think it's a little like putting a letter in a bottle.  There is a very remote chance that someone may open it up and read it one day, but if they do, you'll be nowhere near and you'll never know it.

Is it ego?  Is it self-indulgent?  I guess it would be ego if you expected people to read it and follow it.  It is definitely self-indulgent, but there's a funny twist.  It's different than a diary locked away somewhere.  It's different than writing on a Word document, password protecting it, and keeping it on your computer where no one can read it.  When blogging, you realize that someone could see it, you just don't expect them to.

I guess it's a lot like sunbathing in the nude in your back yard with a privacy fence all around.  It's possible someone will be able to see in or will come up and pop their head over the fence, and that's part of what makes it kind of thrilling.  The risk of exposure.

I guess the other part is that when you think there's even a remote chance that someone will read it, you write the content to that quasi-fictional someone.  I heard a person say that they wrote blogs or did podcasts or some activity, as if they were writing an email to a good friend (and they kept a particular person in mind).  I guess I don't have a fictional audience in mind.  If I think about who might read this, I think it is just as likely to be someone that doesn't like me as someone who is either neutral or a friend.  Actually, if I had to make a list of people that I know don't like me, it would only be one name long.  But you have to consider that there are people that know you that really don't like you, and you'll never find out.  I believe that's just a condition in life, you grow enemies that you don't know.  People out there that are routing for you to fail.

To those people I have one thing to say: I don't know shit about you, but you're reading my blog, so who's the one having to put up with the other?  Just keep reading and don't ever let me know you're out there.  Better a silent and theoretical enemy than an active asshole in my life.  I hope you have a good day!

Love's is Everywhere

After almost running off the exit because I was so sleepy, I pulled into a Love's Convenience Store, Gas, and Truck Stop.  Love's.  WTF?  Where did this come from?  I sure as hell don't love Love's like I love Quik Trip.  That's a store to love.


Realized I needed oil and went inside.  Weird.  There was a wall dividing two halves of the store.  One side was supposedly for serious trucker types and all you civilians just stay the hell out, y'hear?  I thought it looked like a parts store, so I wandered in and looked for motor oil, which it did not have.


It did have a clerk or cashier, not sure what the title to that guy is.  He looked kind of lonely.  Said this section was for truckers and the motor oil was up front.


Went up front and found the oil and went over to the line.  It was that scene you dread.  The guy in the front of the line was hunched over, scratching off tickets, and the clerk was hunched over some machine, processing the ream of scratch-offs the inconsiderate douche was scratching off.  Cock blocked!  I watched for about a minute, not really getting mad, just noting that it was an unacceptable situation, when I remembered the lonely clerk in the back.  I went back and asked if a civilian like myself could give him money for something from the front of the store.  Yep.  Perfectly permissible.  He warns me to hold on to the receipt in case the clerk in the front mistakes what I'm doing walking out with my purchase.


2 minutes later, I'm out the door, and scratch-off douche and dim-witted clerk are statues, in the same positions as before.  While I am confident that I'm doing nothing wrong, and the clerk is several notches below the minimally alert level, I am thinking that it's good that I have a receipt.'


Hey, I've got nothing to hide, I boldly pop the hood not 25 feet from the clerk and pour the oil into my engine.  Right out in the open.  No attempt to conceal my seemingly criminal actions.


I close the hood of the car and a police car rushes into the lot with lights flashing (no siren, though - perhaps he was in "silent but deadly" mode).  Whoa.  That was fast.  Cop flies past and blocks a couple of cars at the far end of the lot in with that patented "diagonal park" move.


Not sure if it's a case of mistaken identity or a strange coincidence, but not really wanting to stick around, I casually get back in the car and drive off.


Why is a cop zipping in to confront a couple of cars in a gas station parking lot?  Will there be gunfire?  The route back onto the highway takes me in a wide spiral around the scene.  The cop is between the cars, talking to someone through the window.  Doesn't look like gunfire will be featured.  Doesn't look like mistaken identity, he seems to have business with these guys.


Why does a cop zero in on two non-moving vehicles?  Why does a cop "stop" someone in a gas station parking lot.  I'm not sure I've seen something like this before.  I imagined that there was a child custody struggle, a domestic violence incident, or an aggressive campaign for the policeman's ball, but I'll have to live with the fact that I will probably never know.

Gunning for You

I went on a weekend trip to my Uncle's cabin with my brothers.  I took a handgun that my brother gave me, as we were going to have an opportunity to shoot (but we didn't).


I was driving the next day on I-70 toward Salina and saw an oncoming State Trooper quickly pull into the turnaround lane.  It seemed that he was aiming for me and I might get a speeding ticket.  I was going 7 over, but you never know what will trigger something like that, and there were some construction zones ("am I still in it?" you think).


While I passed the police car and watched to see if I was busted, I realized something that made it suddenly much worse.  I had the loaded handgun in its case on the floor behind the passenger seat.  It was in a case, but the case was in plan view.  I shoved it under the seat and took a more keen interest in what the Trooper was up to.


He was cruising along behind the guy behind me, not trying to bust anyone.


What the hell are the laws about transporting firearms?  You know hunters drive with weapons in their car, so it can't be illegal.  Does it have to be out of reach?  Does the ammo have to be separate from the gun?  Oh shit.


Pulled into the Russell Stover Outlet after about 20 miles of fretting and realized he was no longer back there anyway.  Shoved the gun into the "trunk" in back.  Bought chocolate and thought about how bad that could have gone.


Sometimes it doesn't matter if you're a "law abiding citizen".  One wrong move and you are no longer in that category, are you?

Invisible Man

Last year, I ran the Konquer the Konza 25k run near Manhattan Kansas.  I was training for it, and doing quite well, but on Labor Day, I injured myself water skiing.  The event was 4 weeks later, and I was a little healed, but had slipped on my training and still hurting.  I ran the event anyway.  I felt OK until the last 3 miles, when I really started hurting.  I finished, and felt triumphant about it.  However, the two marathons I was going to run in the following month were put out of consideration.


This year, I signed up again.  I got some kind of cold-like respiratory infection that cut about 5 weeks out of my training, and put me behind.  Then I started really packing on the training, trying to accelerate the process.  I was still behind, but determined to go through with the run.  The weekend before the race, I did a 12 mile training run, and did something to my calf at the 11.5 mile point.  I hobbled around for a week, tried once to run on it, and decided to let it heal and see how I felt.


The day of the race, I felt pretty good.  At the start of the race, about a half mile in, my leg started to hurt, and it didn't seem possible to finish.  I had 15 more miles to go.  I reasoned that I would simply run as long as I could and see what happened.  I figured I could quit at any time.  The pain lessened, but I was not really operating at any kind of normal level.  I accepted a 2 minute per mile drop in my pace and just gritted my teeth and plugged along until it was over.


It was a completely different experience.  My iPod was out of battery (must have had the button pressed while it sat in my luggage - my fault for leaving the switch in the on position).  So I didn't have inspirational music or the audio books I was going to listen to.  I did have my iTunes on my iPhone, but beyond listening to one podcast and two songs, I didn't use it.  For once, I ran just listening to the trail.


People talked to me, but only because I was wearing the t-shirt from the run the year before.  One woman told me "Congratulations sir, I think you're the oldest one out here.  You don't see many people your age doing this." You can't tell someone to fuck off when they think they are giving you a compliment, can you?


Then I noticed something else.  I was the invisible man.  The race volunteers would be cheering the people in front of me on, then fall silent as I ran by.  Then they would cheer the people behind me.  The course photographer did not photograph me.  I finished the race and did not talk to anyone.  I simply left.


What did they see?  What did they not see?  It was an eerie feeling, even to the point of being distracting from all the pain.

Root Causes

I listened to a podcast recently (can't find the reference, sorry) that had as its premise the idea that being greatful was a cause of happiness, rather than a result.  Counting your blessings and being appreciative were not always the result of experiencing something that made you happy, but a path towards happiness.


On the other hand, there was a guest host on Savage Lovecast 8/26/14, Mary Martone who made the following comment:
The largest indicator of whether a relationship will be successful is not if you're angry with somebody or not if you don't trust somebody, but if you have disgust for your partner, or if you have distain for them in some way.  You need to make sure that someone that you commit to for the long run is someone you can look at with some kind of love in your heart and respect for the rest of your life.  Disgust can be transferred, if you are disgusted about your partner's sexual interests, you might express disgust about their eating habits, for example.


It's amazing how much complexity there is in just figuring out what's going on in this life.

Blocked

[Originally written 12/11/12 and published after noticing it was just a draft]

Listening to Freakonomics (and reading the book) has reinforced an idea of mine.  They often talk about the fact that a real analysis of some situation or system in society gives us answers that we don't like to hear.  They site examples and raise questions like, "is college worth it?" and "did the legalization of abortion lower crime?"  Things that may be reasonable and true, but that people repel away from.

Society is built on a lot of erroneous assumptions that we are more comfortable with than the truth.

I see a lot of problems that have solutions that are Soloman's baby solutions.  If you'd just be willing to cut the baby in half, you could solve the problem, but no one would be happy and no one is willing to do it.  The difference is that some of the solutions I can come up with are not going to sacrifice any babies.

Take abortion, for example.  The problem is that some people find abortion to be equal to murder and feel that it should never be allowed.  While you would have a hard time finding anyone that would tell you that abortion is a great thing, you have a lot of women each year that choose to do it as a way to prevent other problems.  While there are probably some that do it because they were not wise with birth control, and this is the whoops method of birth control, that's pretty hard to defend.  Many do it because they are not ready and feel they would not make a good parent, and trying to raise a child would limit their ability to get an education and place themselves firmly in the middle class.  Other's should not even consider bringing life into the world, as they are completely irresponsible or addicted to drugs.

My thought is that in an ideal world, there wouldn't be a need for abortions, but there also would not be any unwanted children brought into the world.  We talk about human rights, and I believe one of the most elusive human rights should be that each child should know that their parents really wanted them to come into the world.  This follows one of my other theories that one of our primary problems is that there are just too damned many people to begin with, so saying life is precious clearly is not how we're treating it.  Life is common.  We should treat it like it's more precious, and we should make it more rare, rather than more common.

My solution to the abortion divide is that we put children on birth control as soon as they are able to conceive.  Once they are 18, married or in a stable relationship, and financially secure (or in a position to expect to be financially secure), then they can be taken off birth control.  And I don't just mean women, I mean men, too.  My fantasy solution would solve another large problem, solving a lack of male control over procreative decisions.  This imbalance must be responsible for a portion of the divorce rate for men who are pressured into having families that they do not want.  The default should be that you're not able to have children until everyone involved is ready and agrees.  Then you could plan for the timing make it happen without undue complications or unwanted circumstance.

If you follow the consequences of this line of thinking, it solves a whole host of problems, not the least of which is teen pregnancy and children having babies.

Enacting a public policy that makes birth control mandatory for all pubescent teens under the age of majority will never happen.  The problem is that everyone feels their position has to be respected and because of this, no compromise is possible.  The "do nothing" option is the default.  I'm not saying that solutions such as these do not have problems inherent in them or will not need to be administrated fairly and subject to modification or exception in some cases.  I'm saying that you have to be careful doing these things, and you have to state up front what your intent is, and then you have to monitor the unintended consequences and adjust your approach along the way.  But over all, you have to make some decisions and put some policies in place that will seem strange at first, but solve the problem in the long run.  Good solutions will take into consideration objections from each end of the political spectrum, and find answers that address most concerns while moving society forward.

I do believe a world in which every person is brought up knowing they were planned for, had high hopes pinned on, and were loved before and after they were conceived would be a much nicer place to live.

The Value of an Individual: A Thought Experiment

I hate politically divisive subjects.  I hate the thought that people pick sides, stop thinking about the subject critically, and actively resist any information or argument that does not already support their position.  I find it more interesting to be able to disagree with someone, and yet exchange points of view and discuss the subject.

I hate all the debate about health care.  Is it a right or a privilege?  If you can't afford it, should you do without it?  If you provide it to people that can't afford it, how does society afford it?  What do you do about end of life care, where costs usually explode in the last months of a person's life?  If there is a concensus that a person is terminally ill, and no matter what you do they will still only life a short time, do we (assuming society has anything to say about it since they are paying the bills, or assuming an insurance company has anything to say about it because they too are paying the bills) still throw an extreme amount of effort at someone just to try to be doing something?

Well, I have a mixture of opinions, confusion, and ambivalence about these questions myself, but it's not really important what I think (to anyone but me - which is my point: who cares what I think).

I was pondering immortality (or near immortality).  As a counterpoint to overpopulation.  I believe our current medical studies will provide treatments that will reverse general aging in humans before much longer.  I crafted this thought experiment in my mind after listening to some opinions about three weeks ago, and today a Dan Carlin Common Sense Podcast came out that pondered a similar question and reminded me about my thoughts.  His point was to ask what happens when a human accumulates 500 years worth of experience, how does that change them?

My point was looking at how we would manage immortality treatments.  I'm assuming that this would be a one time procedure (possibly not a valid assumption, as it could be something that required maintenance) and that it would be expensive.

I imagined a debate about this treatment.  Assuming that it would be in great demand, and assuming that some form of governmental regulation or oversight of the procedure would be enacted, how would this work?  Who merits the treatment?  From a simplistic point of view, I was thinking in terms of a simple cash balance sheet.  Who is contributing to society and who is taking from society.  This debate comes up from time to time when people are discussing taxes, unemployment, and welfare.  I have heard the opinion that we should limit people who are a net drain on the economy or the government taxation versus benefits equation.  From a simple cost control and regulation of the benefits of health care, would the same question be applied to immortality treatments.

Think about it from a practical standpoint.  If you had to limit this in some way, if this was not something that was possible to provide to everyone, how would you determine who you provided it to?  What if some prominent party or person was rallying to prevent the "takers" from being immortal and thus permanent takers, a permanent drain on society?  What if simple planetary survival dictated that this was necessary?  As a side note, would it be reasonable to require that those that requested and were granted immortality would also have to give up any future procreation?  Would this be another separation point, a class of people who would live and die limited lifespans, but would procreate?  They would continue to mix genes and promote our evolution, so there would be some value to have a separation, the price of making a family being eventual death.

But let's say that the notion that one had to be a net contributor took hold and was determined to be a requirement.  Can you imagine how that would work?  How would you determine net worth to society?  How would you determine who was a drain?  Some might suggest just looking at a tax return, but if you used wealth as the only dividing line, wouldn't that be a recipe for a world with an increasing number of people incapable of doing ordinary labor?

How do you measure the intangibles?  Stephen Hawking would not be someone you would want to keep around forever from a standpoint of his physical contributions, but what would a few hundred years of life extension do to his ability to discover new things?  What about love?  What about people with no commercial or capitalistic success that are nevertheless loved more intensely than many are?  You have to admit that many people have a higher emotional value to society, like Nelson Mandela, for example.  Or Mother Teresa.  How would you value them?

Who gets to be immortal?  How would you answer that question?  What other answers that other people may come up with would be offensive to you?

What would you require of people who opted to be immortal?  Would you limit their wealth, because compound interest is often heralded as the vehicle to wealth, and if you live forever, does your wealth just keep increasing without limit?  Would they have a retirement age?  If you didn't, you'd have a perpetual social security drain on the system, far beyond the amount the individual ever put into the system.  What if your price for immortality was that you could never rest, relax, slow down, take it easy?  What if retirement had to be sacrificed to justify immortality?

I think in reality, as a practical matter, people would not want to live forever.  I think some would try for it, but I believe that rather than accumulating more and more experience and becoming uber-wise, they might tend to get burned out and tired of learning and working.  Many would become depressed and decide they were tired of life.  If life wasn't always threatening to be withdrawn from you, would you tend to cling to it less tightly?  Would dangerous pursuits be more attractive at some point?  Sky diving or climbing mountains would suddenly seem more attractive, or perhaps something truly dangerous like shark wrestling.

Are we even equipped to handle an extremely long life time?  Would we tend to go insane from cumulative stress or pain?  Perhaps it wouldn't be immortality, but just doubling or tripling your life span.  Would that change all the calculations?  Could materialism be lessened by immortality?  Could it be that the pursuit of experiences, achievements, or accomplishments would start to be more important than things?  Of course, if you lived long enough, your things would be rotting and breaking down and would need replacement.

I don't know my answers to any of these questions, because each answer I've proposed to myself has good and bad points to it.  I don't know if immortality would be a good thing or a terrible thing.

I do know that I would want to try it myself.  I would want to see where we are going with this life, with our global society, with the planet we inhabit.  I want to see flying cars, free energy, a restored environment, space colonization, ocean colonization, and a possible collective intelligence.  I assume that if humans were going to live a long time, they'd take better care of the planet, themselves, and each other.

Oh, and I assume immortality doesn't mean you live forever in the body of a 100 year old with failing physical and mental capabilities.  If you can't be in reasonably good health, there's no point to the whole exercise.  I'm not sure about pets.  Do you want your dog to live forever with you?

We're of an age.  This question may actually have to be addressed in my lifetime.

Folding Proteins

I recently heard a podcast about folding proteins.  It was an interview of a company that thinks their scientists have figured out a therapy to refold misfolded proteins in an animal's body.  Protein folding is a complex subject I won't try to pretend that I understand well.  What I do understand is fascinating.  I've been studying starch lately, and I know that when you heat starch up to a high enough temperature, it denatures, which means that the way it is folded becomes unraveled.  This is why your jello pudding goes from liquid to a gel.  DNA does this complex dance when cells divide, where it unwraps itself and rewraps itself back into a double helix that is wound around itself in a complex pattern.  I liken the close up view of a strand folding to the way a stream sometimes meanders in a valley, looping back on itself.

There are two other instances of protein folding that I know about.  One is prion based diseases like Mad Cow Disease and its human form, Creutzfeldt–Jakob's disease (also known as Chronic Wasting Disease in deer).  I once heard that the prion acts a little bit like a virus, except that it's not even RNA, it's just a protein, but its misfolded shape spreads once it's in a new host, and the misfolded proteins damage the functionality of the brain.  I don't think that is an accurate scientific description, and I'm not certain that the disease is even understood in that much detail at this time, but that's an approximation of some descriptions I've heard in the past, and I was impressed with the knowledge that the good protein and the bad protein are the same combinations of atoms in the same order, in effect the same molecular description, but just folded into a different shape, and therefore not chemically equal.  I find this to be fascinating.  It makes biology seem like a miracle when you consider that everything must work perfectly in order to work at all.  I guess it's not that surprising that shape matters, if you consider anything else you were going to make, just throwing the ingredients together in a pile means nothing, they have to be assembled into the right structure.  You couldn't just throw bricks and mortar together hap hazardously and expect to make a house.

The other protein folding disease I have heard about is Alzheimer's Disease.  Again, this may not be the correct understanding of the situation as it is now understood, and the scientific community will no doubt understand the biochemistry and mechanics of this disease much better some day than is understood right now.  From what I understand, there are amyloid plaques present in Alzheimer's victims that were thought to be related to misfolding proteins (I may be confusing this with tau protein tangles - I'm not researching this column, just writing it from memory).  One theory is that once the misfolded form is present in the brain that it spreads and disrupts the healthy function of the brain.

The company I started to explain about above is saying that they have come up with a way to refold proteins.  They claim that the body makes misfolded proteins all the time, and in most cases, the body recognizes the error and holds the proteins aside until it can break them back down into their building blocks and recycle them or dispose of them.  If they can perfect and target this therapy, there are many other diseases and conditions that could be treated.  It's really cool technology.

But the trivial reason I sat down to write this post is a bit different that folded proteins.

I was recently travelling, and one of the people at our meeting during the day begged off going to dinner because he said that he thought that his diverticulitis was acting up.  My understanding is that this means that there is a pocket in the intestines that forms a little closed off sack and gets something irritating in it, which then causes the intestinal wall to swell and further trap a portion of material.  This can cause breakdown of the intestine wall and subject that closed off portion to an infection.  This is why you should eat a diet high in fiber, kids.  Gotta keep things moving along and scoured out clean.

Anyway, I got very sick after going to dinner that night.  This started a gastrointestinal ordeal that lasted 5 days.  Did I eat something bad?  Did I have a shellfish allergy that I did not know about?  Did I catch some bug that was going around?  The guy I talked with that day was sick, maybe not with a chronic condition, but with something infectious.  Then I did something truly stupid on the way home.  While at the airport, I got a bag of Skittles.  I suspect that candies that have chemical thickeners in them could create partial blockages, creating a painful situation similar to Diverticulitis.  I had previously vowed to stay away from such foods, but unfortunately, had forgotten my vow and had not maintained healthy habits right at a time when I was already in distress.  So while feeling absolutely terrible for a few days, I spent a lot of time wondering if I needed to go see a doctor or if this was something that would resolve with a little time.  I read a lot of reports on the Mayo Clinic's site and wondered if it was possible that I had ingested some Salmonella (how could that be, and yet I was still somewhat functional - doesn't that stuff kill you?).  I wondered about the status or structure of my cilia lining my intestines.  You can really damage them, and within a few days, they will grow back.  I pondered celiac disease, and how that allergy can also damage cilia.

Then it all cleared up and I got better.  I was still thinking about it today, and I pondered the way the intestines loop around the abdominal cavity, packing such a long organ into such a tight space.  I was wondering how hard it is to have it get twisted or kinked and why it doesn't happen more often.  If you're out of shape with extra weight, it stands to reason that you're probably smashing or pinching your intestines, so why doesn't being morbidly obese tend to kill you?  How does being in shape help with the layout and routing of the intestine in the abdomen?  Does the routing change over time?  If you could trace out the path the way a kid traces a maze on a page, would it be different today that it was when you were little?  Would a group of 10 people each have different routing of their intestines, or would most people tend to have an identical route?

And then I put the two subjects together and wondered about how similar the folding of proteins is to the folding of intestines.  Is this a macro example of the same kind of phenomena?  How much do we really know about the shape of proteins' folds?  There is a website that crowdsources examination of protein folding possibilities, I've heard about it and done similar websites like Zooniverse, but I've never looked at it.

This just proves that you have a lot of time to think about shit when you're sick.