Continuing Education

They say your mind is like a muscle. If you exercise it, it will get stronger. I believe this is true. We have all heard claims that doing crossword puzzles is good for older people, and may even forestall Alzheimer's.

I heard about a study recently where they determined that lead miners that read every day were less affected by the mentally debilitating effects of lead exposure. The theory was that people that kept mentally active had more neural connections and were able to "work around" the lost functions from damaged areas in the brain.

So there is growing evidence that you can physically improve your mind through mental exercise. It's not hard to believe, and it's not so easy to act on.

I listen to between 1 to 4 hours of podcasting each day. A lot of it is current events, and much of it is science, but I'm also improving my Spanish. I also listen to some college classes and books on tape. It's easier to listen to material than read it. You can exercise or work around the house when you listen to something. It also helps fill driving time rather than listening to the mindless drivel that the airwaves have become.

My grandfather used to talk about the most important thing you can acquire being knowledge. Authorities could always take away your possessions, but no one can take away what is inside your head. The same is true with a job. You can't guarantee that the job will be there next year or even next week, so you owe it to yourself to learn everything you can while on the job, knowing that you'll arrive at your next job more experienced and better prepared.

Why do we go to school, read books, learn subjects, struggle mightily and then just stop when summer comes or when we graduate? That's it? That's all you'll ever learn in life? What do you do from that point, just coast down until you die? I hate to think of 18 or 22 as a mental high water mark.

Two of my favorite movies are Good Will Hunting and Phenomenon. John Travolta's character in Phenomenon suddenly has the capacity to understand everything quickly and easily. What does he do? He reads most of the books in the public library. As a result, he starts figuring out deep secrets of many dissimilar subjects like plant fertilizer and earthquakes. Matt Damon's character is poor and lacked a good home. There wasn't much in the way of opportunity for him, given his upbringing. He was born with intelligence and a thirst for knowledge, and he educated himself simply by reading books on his own. The best line in the movie is when he scoffs at the pretentious Harvard student, saying "You got for $100,000 what I got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library."

No one was blocking these people from greater knowledge and understanding of the world. Oftentimes, what blocks a person is their own preconceptions. If you believe a subject is too hard for you, it's a self fulfilling prophecy. You don't try and therefore there is 0% chance that you will ever learn the subject. You were right about not being able to understand, but only by choice. The difference between a genius and anyone else is simply the amount of time and effort you are willing to put into something. School simply concentrates the effort and forces you to progress at a rapid pace.

In one of my favorite books, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, the boy genius Ender shows a natural and immediate aptitude for a competitive game that the children in his school are made to play. When he makes a particularly good move, one of his teammates says, "Packed head, Ender". The characters in the school had their own slang, and some of it was ok, but this phrase in particular resonated with me. Packed head. As in "your head is just packed full of knowledge".

It's what I try to do. I listen to scientists that are trying to understand the human mind, which is fascinating. How does it store knowledge? What happens when part of the brain gets damaged? How do you retrieve information from the brain? What kinds of electrical activity signify what kinds of thoughts or emotions? How much of the brain do we actually use? How much information can we store in the brain? Is there a limit? We try to emulate the human brain with computers. We create storage devices, each year holding more information. Each year our processors are faster. We try to program computers to use artificial intelligence to come up with thoughts independently, or at least recognize patterns and respond to them. But we have no idea what the human brain is capable of.

When I was about 10 or 12, I read an article in the paper about dreams. The article said that we only use 10% of our brains. (Recently, scientists have said this is probably not true.) The subconscious mind supposedly comprises the other 90%. This is supposed to be a part of your own brain that you do not control and do not have easy access to. The article was about dreams. It speculated that the subconscious mind could only communicate with the conscious mind during sleep through dreams. They also said that the subconscious mind did not think in words like the conscious mind, it was almost like an alien within. It communicated using symbolism, and what it communicated was all the things that you were not putting together from the daily activities. The subconscious watched everything you did, and figured out much of the "rest of the story" connections and missed interpretations, as well as clues about things going on around you that you may or may not have noticed. The article's main theme was that your subconscious mind had it all figured out and was trying to tell you all about it through your dreams. So for a few years, I kept a dream journal and interpreted my dreams. I learned many interested things and felt very in charge of my life and connected to my surroundings. That faded over the years, because it takes a lot of time to pay attention to your dreams, but the sense that you can figure it all out never did.

So I consume information as much as I can stand. Television doesn't count. Well, there is some that does, but watching television is a trap because the sexy flashing titillating content will always lure you away from the substance. Movies don't usually count, but some are very good. I'm not saying you should stay away from all the fluff and simplistic stuff, sometimes it's fun to relax and laugh at the simple things in life. I'm suggesting a balanced diet, rich in mental nutrients, protein, and vitamins.

I find that much of what you learn spills over the field you're looking at and crosses over to apply to other fields. Strange principles resonate. Like the fact that we use the word turbulence in fluid mechanics to mean highly disturbed flow, and in psychology to mean a highly disturbed mental state. In fluids, turbulence actually cuts resistance and helps move objects along, and the same is true with your mind. Often times, the things that bother you the most, that get you agitated, are the things you are struggling to figure out and learn. If you learn to ride out the mental turbulence, and not shrink from experiencing it, you will find that you have benefited from it. Often the things in life worth learning, worth doing, are hard. We need to teach that in school. We need to tell students that the horrible feeling they are experiencing is the limiting walls of their mind crumbling. Maybe then they will not fear continuing education.

Yellowstone Inn

My wife and I stayed at the Old Faithful Inn at Yellowstone this summer while on vacation. It is a rustic historic hotel that is very popular. The Inn is made of logs, and was built in 1903. You have to get reservations 6 to 12 months in advance.

I travel with a laptop, not just for internet or business reasons, but because I can recharge my ipod, download my photographs, and exchange map data with my GPS. I did ask, when checking in, if they had WiFi. The front desk clerk was very enthusiastic about the fact that they did not, in fact, there was no internet access anywhere in the park.

This is not exactly true. They take credit cards, which requires an internet connection nowadays to confirm the transaction. They also have webcams, which we had been checking on for months prior to going, that show Old Faithful erupting (among other things). This did not occur to me at the time.

It didn't matter. Sometimes it's good to get unplugged. We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Yellowstone, and found we could completely relax without all the distractions of the modern world.

The room had only one light across the room from the bed and one outlet in the bathroom. There was also a radiator in the room, which was finicky, at best.

Don't get me wrong, the inn was beautiful and the experience of staying there was well worth it. But for some reason, I couldn't get over how stupid it was that there was no light at the bedside. They had obviously modified the inn to put lights and heat in, but the didn't make it convenient. At the time, I thought of a several clever rants about how stupid this was.

But in preparing for this post, I read the Wiki entry for the Old Faithful Inn, which says that when the inn was opened in 1904, it boasted electrical lights and steam heat. So maybe it's just the way it was when it was built.

If so, I'm a an idiot.

Adventure Index

I was recently talking to a person I just met, and I mentioned that we just took a vacation to Yellowstone. The conversation quickly became an exchange of the trips we had taken, mostly focusing on those that involved hiking or climbing. He said that he found out late in life that he was an explorer or an adventurer.

It was interesting to try to put a finger on the concept. I knew what he was talking about and I couldn't put it into words very well, either. We found that the kind of vacation we enjoyed was one where we were outside of the comforts of civilization, pushing our own limits, and enjoying some of the more beautiful things nature has to offer.

That usually involves hiking at altitude, across a big elevation difference, or in a really remote location. He explained that they had hiked Mount Washington in New Hampshire, the windiest place on the planet. He also talked about the Narrows in Zion National Park, which sounded pretty cool, too.

We had both climbed 14ers (mountains over 14,000 feet) in Colorado and wanted to do more, and we had both hiked from rim to river in the Grand Canyon.

He talked about the Pacific Crest Trail and the Appalacian Trail as places he wanted to go, and we had both read Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. I told him about a chalet in Glacier that you can't drive to that I want to go to.

So I started trying to remember what I have done that I consider adventures. I rode around in Helicopters in the military, which was pretty exciting. The best was going along the Panama Canal by helicopter, but the most dangerous was in the mountains of Panama. In western Panama in the Chirique province, I was with two helicopter pilots, just the 3 of us, when we got surprised by some weather that came in. Thick clouds blanketed the mountaintops and we couldn't fly up into these clouds, because we couldn't see or fly back down, then. We were flying through valleys, close to the ground, looking for a way out of the valley we were in and into an adjacent valley which probably had a straight shot back to the camp. While the pilots were looking up side valleys, we almost ran into a high tension power line that was draped across the valley. Talk about a stomach dropping maneuver. It wasn't over yet. The little valleys that radiated off of the main valley we were in were capped in clouds, and we wanted to find one that was low enough that we could fly through it in the clear into the next big valley over. We thought we found one, and we flew up it, in this ever narrowing slot, the clouds coming down from above and constricting us in the valley. The co-pilot watched while the pilot concentrated on flying. The co-pilot's job was to say if he could see through the hole in the end of the valley (below the clouds, but through the canyon walls) to see if it was clear on the other side. We were in a Huey, so we couldn't hover, we had to maintain forward velocity to maintain lift. The ever slowing ascent up the narrowing valley, where the pilot was trading speed for altitude was accompanied by the narrative between the pilots. "Clear?" "Not yet" "Can you see?" "No." "Anything?" "Can't tell." We had to figure it out before we reached the point where there was enough room between the canyon walls to turn around, and enough velocity to make the maneuver. We hit the point of no return and the Pilot started to turn the helicopter on it's side to go back when the copilot yelled "I see it! It's clear!" Too late, the pilot had to fall back. We traded height for speed and rocketed back into the center of the main valley, where we again turned on our side and lined up on the little canyon again. This time we sped into the canyon, aiming for the little clear triangle at the end. We came up and over the hump, with not much room to spare and rocketed in the next valley and made our way home.

I hiked for days in the Oriente, a region in the upper Amazon in Ecuador around the Rio Napa. I climbed a 14er in Bolivia on the 4th of July in 1989, but I don't know the name of it. I hiked through the jungle of Costa Rica along the route that we later put a road through, seeing some of the prettiest birds and trees I've seen in my life.

I hiked in the Grand Canyon with a friend of my from my time in the Army. He thought we could camp in the bottom, hiking down and out the next day. He did not have reservations and was surprised that you needed them at all, and further surprised that this was considered a serious subject by the Park Rangers with severe penalties. After a brief period of gloom, he decided that we would just hike down to the river in one day and back out. We retreated to our hotel room, where I nursed a nasty cold and poured over maps and travel guides, planning the adventure of the next day. I remember reading tidbits from the park brochures that warned that trying to do what we wanted to do was VERY DANGEROUS. The climate was more desert than anything else, dehydration, temperature extremes and a brutal climb were not for most people. In short, we did it. Along the Bright Angel trail, in May when the Yucca and other flowers were in full bloom. It was 39 degrees in the morning when we started and 90 degrees at 2pm when we got back. I got badly dehydrated the last hour returning, which I fixed by quickly guzzling 3 quarts of water, a cure almost as bad as the disease. We could barely walk the next day, but we did it.

I climbed a 14er, Handies Peak, with my brother in 2000, which made us both sick from altitude when we got back. I climbed Mt. Harney with my wife and Mt. Washburn on our recent Yellowstone vacation. We went whitewater rafting on our honeymoon last year, and the year before through the Royal Gorge in Colorado. We hiked from Bear Lake to Fern Lake trailhead in Rocky Mountain National Park and saw a bear from about 30' away. I also hiked through parts of the Tahoe Rim trail. Another mini adventure I took some years back was flying to Miami, renting a motorcycle and riding down to Key West, which wasn't physically trying (except for the sunburn on the tops of my feet) but it was adventurous.

This fall, we planned a fall colors hike around the Eleven Point in the Ozarks. The rest of the future adventures are yet to be written, but as my new friend pointed out, once you get the bug, there's no end to it.

American Hubris and the Christian Persecution Complex

What do you call it when someone or some organization that is demonstrably among the most powerful, popular, wealthy, or influential person or group around is constantly sending out alarms and alerts about how things are stacked against them and everyone is trying to drag them down?

I call it a Persecution Complex. This is the conviction that forces much stronger than you are out to get you and take away everything you hold dear. For some Christians, it's demonstrated as fears that those evil schemers at the ACLU are trying to outlaw Christmas or make it illegal to practice your faith. Not all Christians have a Persecution Complex, many are quite secure in their faith. They are able to casually co-exist with others without feeling they are on the verge of losing it all. But there is an appeal by some to tug at Christian heartstrings with the siren song of persecution. It's easier to feel that you are righteous if you have to struggle to maintain that position.

Consider that the central figure in Christianity is most recognized and respected by adherents for being persecuted. Look what it got him in return. If you think of Jesus as someone trying to launch a product, in this case a new religion, being persecuted worked out great for him. I'm deliberately stating this in cynical terms. It's not logical to project a corporate sly manipulation on Jesus' motives, he obviously did all that he did out of belief, faith, and conviction. Ignoring his motivation, look at the effect. Being persecuted tugged at the heartstrings of people everywhere. "Why, Jesus is just like me, powerless and harassed by large and irresistible forces, yet prevailing in the end!" It's one of the big lures of Christianity. I have no doubt that it is a significant factor as to why Christianity is the most popular religion in the world. Christianity is not seriously challenged by any other religion in terms of number of adherents or wealth or influence.

So why do Christians feel under attack? I think it is because this appeals to them. To feel under attack is one way to keep vigilant, stay active, and continue to strive mightily to goals. I just can't help but notice the irony in it. If the biggest, most powerful person around was complaining to you that people were always picking on them, would you have much sympathy? They can still more than take care of themselves, so why are they complaining?

I feel the same way about many of the things you hear from big corporations or wealthy individuals. For someone of modest means, hearing someone that is extremely rich complain about all the taxes they pay is like listening to a fat kid complaining of having to eat too much dessert. You're paying high taxes because you're making boatloads of money! Do you think your complaints make those of lesser means less likely to want to exchange places with you or emulate your success?

This is a little bit like what we do as a nation. We have the world's biggest economy, we have the world's most powerful military, and we have one of the freest and most open societies on the face of the earth. With all of our planes and tanks and ships, we act as if an enemy that would attack us by exploding a bomb is some kind of powerful monster. He's using bombs and booby traps because he is overwhelmed by our power, not because we are weak.

Actually, I think my point is that it's tiring to hear complaints from someone that is winning. For me personally, a great example is Nebraska football fans. I'm sure there are some nice ones out there that are modest and not fanatics, but I've met several that live and die by Cornhusker success or failure. They had an incredibly long winning streak, and in my discussion one time with a coworker, he recounted the time they came to my college and beat our team. He was complaining that their fans were not treated well by our fans. I certainly can't vouch for every person at my college, so it's not unbelievable that some would behave badly. After all, it's football and not a tea party, people's competitive blood gets up, people drink, fans act belligerently - that's really no surprise. What irritated me was that instead of being satisfied with the fact that they won, or even bragging about the fact that they won, he was whining about the way they were treated when they did win. He was accusing my alma mater of being poor sports, but I would say people that win and then whine are sore winners. What do you expect? Beat someone and then they should genuflect and treat you like royalty? Beaten individuals are angry and sullen. Is there any other condition you would expect to see?

This is also a little like the current political situation, or at least before the last election where the Democrats won back Congress. If you tuned into talk radio, you saw that having the executive, congress, and packing the courts still wasn't enough to satisfy conservatives. They were still complaining about taxes, still blaming "liberals" for everything that was wrong with the country, and still raving and whining about the condition of things. It drove me nuts because when you listened to them, it sounded like listening to spoiled children. Actually, the parallel to children is chilling. Children of parents with modest means don't seem to complain as much as rich kids. I guess part of it is that poor children probably feel that no one will care, and it's pointless to complain. But when a spoiled little rich kid, who basically has the world handed to him already, starts bawling about not getting to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, there is no sympathy.

We used to understand this. Look at the way we treated Germany and Japan after World War II. We knew they were utterly defeated and helpless, probably somewhat hopeless. They had every right to expect mistreatment, every reason to brace themselves for arrogance and abuse. Look at Germany and Japan today. World economic powers that are responsible and moral allies, with healthy relationships to their neighbors. By not being a sore winner, we converted former enemies to good friends.

Fear Not

On this sixth anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, I am thinking about how our country has transformed and the direction we are headed.

FDR said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself".

George Bush said, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice ... don't get fooled again."

While many have made fun of W's mashup of an old adage and a song by the Who, it is very telling. For a man that has done more to benefit from and exploit the fears of Americans than anyone could dream, this cyclic ramping up of the fear factor has been a constant theme.

But Americans are increasingly saying to W, "you can't fool us with that again".

The terrorists are a small, highly motivated, and completely insane faction. Wrapping a hatred that makes them desire to kill us in a religious mantle and trying to spread it around the world was something of a hard sell in the days before 9/11. Sure, American policy in the Israeli Palestine conflict was bound to keep a certain portion of the Arab population enraged, but as long as most people could make a decent living and not be assaulted with too many atrocities or outrageous actions (in their minds) by the Americans, they could easily dismiss the terrorist factions.

Not any more. The propaganda of the jihadist that America was something to fear, revile, and resist has been cranked up to a fever pitch by our occupation of Iraq. The recruiting floodgates are open now, despite our intentions.

I resent the fact that every time the administration's influence was slipping, suddenly a new terrorist threat would be trotted out and hyped up. The administration has used these fears to prosecute an unjustified war with little interference by oversight bodies, and has consolidated power including the right to spy on Americans under cover of these fears. For an Administration that is incapable of making any decisions without primarily considering the political impact of them, is it any wonder that the public fears these people being given more power? Given their political track record, does anybody feel that they are incapable of using increased surveillance with no oversight to peep into the private lives of political adversaries?

The terrorists are small in number and usually disunified in action. Their acts seem horrific, but in reality are not that significant. That's right, that is exactly what I said so let me explain. The 9/11 attack was not that significant in itself. Only around 3,000 people died, and we lost the World Trade Center, 4 planes, and damaged the Pentagon. While that is the most successful terrorist attack on U.S. soil, that is not a huge attack. If you lost someone personally in the attacks, it was very important and significant, and I don't mean to minimize that. I'm talking about the impact to the nation as a whole. What was a big impact was the national perception of what happened and the psychological reaction to it. If we had just had a leader that stood up and repeated FDR's assurances to us, explained that the attack was so much more lucky for the terrorists than they had any right to expect, and so easy to thwart in retrospect, people would have understood that they had little to fear personally.

Our society is not too bright about risk assessment and our media is doing nothing to correct these overblown fears and misconceptions. How many people do you know that were afraid that a person was going to wait under their car and cut their achilles tendon in a mall parking lot based on a stupid urban legend? How many people are so fearful that their children are going to be abducted that they don't allow them to play and have a normal childhood anymore? The average American is horrible at assessing risk and seeks to spend an inordinate amount of time defending against or just worrying about events that are so remotely probable as to be virtually impossible.

So looking back on what the terrorists did to us that day, I would say the worst thing that they did was teach us that we have nothing better to do but live in fear. That is the real tragedy of 9/11.

Cosmic Love Story

In 1977, Carl Sagan was working with Annie Druyan to put together the gold records on the Voyager spacecrafts. Annie was the Creative Director of the Voyager Interstellar Message Project, responsible for putting together all the sounds on the gold records.

As she worked with Carl Sagan to compile the sounds, she fell in love with him and they eventually ended up getting married.

The story is amazing and touching and can be found on WNYC's Radio Lab podcast, or look on the website at http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/08/28 and go down to the "Your Brain on Love, in Space"

Annie's brain waves, heart, and other bodily impulses were were recorded and compressed into sounds to be included on the record. These readings were taken 2 days after they fell in love. Later she asked Carl if these impulses could be reconstituted by the aliens that found the record. Carl's response was, "who knows what might be possible?"

Listening to Annie telling the story you imagine that she is able to take comfort in the fact that her love for Carl is travelling out there, waiting to be relived, forever.

Rover Update

I wrote previously about the unbelievable resilience of the Spirit and Opportunity exploration rovers on Mars.

Soon after I wrote that, a huge planetwide dust storm hit Mars. Since the rovers rely on solar power for their life and energy, and the storm was so thick that the sun was blocked out, the rovers were almost killed by the storm.

They had to shut down almost all functions except some heaters to keep the electronics warm. They told the rovers to only report in every three or four days, not to move, and to take or transmit no scientific data.

Previously, dust had accumulated on the solar panels, hampering operations due to decreased power from the sun. Fortuitous little dust devils came by and cleaned off the panels, like some kind of natural Martian car wash.

The dust storms were another matter. I wondered whether the rovers had finally met their match.

Amazingly they survived, again. Although the rovers, by definition of their long life and robust survival, could be considered "perfect", the storm made me think of another device that would have been useful. A little wind generator on an arm.

While I am not suggesting that this should have been included on the mission, it could not have been justified by the weight and given the 90 day planned life of the probe, it could be considered for future Martian operations.

When there is no sun on Mars, there is plenty of wind. Perhaps, if the generator was on a sufficiently versatile arm, it could also be powered, run in reverse as a fan rather than a generator, and used to clean the dust off the solar panels.

I am looking forward to the results from the Phoenix probe that is due to land in the Mars polar region next year to try to find signs of life in the Martian ice.

I wonder if the Spirit and Opportunity rovers will last until then?

The Fountain

Movie Review: The Fountain starring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz.

No rating possible. This is a movie about the serial or parallel lives of the characters of Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. Hugh is alternately a conquistador, a doctor, and a semi-mystic guru-like floating man. Rachel is alternately the Queen of Spain, an author, and a ghost. Watch as they try to unravel the secret of life. Literally. They discover the Tree of Life, supposedly a companion to the Biblical Tree of Knowledge from Eden and work to exploit it for personal gain. In the end, following the recurring theme of life sprouting from death, Hugh's character seeks to fly the Tree of Life into a dying star in the nebula in Orion's leg, thereby fulfilling the prophesy of the Mayan Indians that believe that the nebula is the afterlife where all souls go to be reborn. It appears that Guru Hugh was successful, but that is not at all clear. His relentless motivation for this effort was to save the woman he loved, but his quest had become maniacal in the end.

My wife turned to me after the movie ended and said, "Can you explain to me what just happened?" The correct answer to this question is, "No."

Either someone dropped several tabs of acid, ate a bag of psychedelic mushrooms, and mainlined some PCP before writing this movie, or someone is the most brilliant person ever to write a movie. Maybe both.

Not many stories leave me completely wondering what the hell was meant by the movie. I tend to like deep and obscure plotlines. But this one succeeded in keeping its meaning hidden from me.

What do you do when you don't understand something? Enjoy the pretty colors. Rachel is always cute to look at, so the movie had that going for it, and Hugh Jackman is either an amazingly versatile actor or had one heck of a makeup job or both. This movie manages to keep you completely confused and frustrated intellectually without making you want to stop watching and without making you frustrated emotionally. It's unclear to me how it manages this trick. My simple statement would be that I enjoyed the movie.

I'm just not sure why.

Rapture Zones

I heard about the book "The World Without Us" by Allen Wiseman today while I was listening to my Science Friday podcasts.

He talks about a world suddenly without people. What would happen to our works, what would happen to the animals, and what would be notable and interesting.

He was explaining the premise of his book and talked about the fact that humans would disappear suddenly, maybe from a virus. Then he mentioned that some people believe that this will happen in the rapture, the biblical end times for humans.

Later, he talked about zones that were left completely alone with no human maintenance or interference, such as Chernoble, the Korean DMZ, and a Greek Cypriot seaside hotel walled off by the Turks. Typically, many forms of wildlife thrive without people around.

I thought about how this effect could be engineered. You would keep humans out on purpose. Not like a park where you can't kill animals or cut down trees, but a true area that was completely unmolested by people. Nature Preserves in the purest sense, but not like anything we do now. I was imagining how you could get people excited, how you could sell the idea. I tend to believe that most religious people are conservative, and most conservatives think that global warming and conservation of species is some kind of liberal plot, and that they would probably resist efforts to set areas aside to never be developed. I thought these areas could be called "Rapture Zones" in order to get them to understand and accept the concept of leaving some corners of the Earth untouched by human interference.

I wrote a previous post, titled Destined for Destiny. It is the post I most worry about when I imagine lots of people reading my blog (not much chance of that!) and taking offense to what I say. My point was not that religious people do not have a right to participate in politics, or that I am hostile to religion, my point was that people that believe that the end of the world is right around the corner should not go making government policy. You want people that believe and want the world to be around for a good long time making the plans for the Earth. I have thought about what I would say to these hypothetical people, those that believe in the end times and are also politically active. This is one of my first ideas on how to bring them into the fold. What do you think?

My Energy Policy

Sometimes I dream about what I would do as President to try to make things right. I've heard many of the arguments about how the President really doesn't have that much power and can't enact changes unilaterally. I would have agreed with this before, but the recent administration shows that the President has more than enough power to screw things up royally, so I'm proceeding under the assumption that he also has the power to start pointing the country in the right direction.

One thing that I dream about is fixing the energy situation.

Powerful forces are aligned to keep things the way they are now. I believe Exxon Mobile made more profits last year than any company in history, ever (even adjusted for inflation). This in a time where we are paying almost 3 times more for gasoline than at the beginning of the administration. During recent disruptions in production, notably when the refineries and offshore rigs in the Gulf were disrupted during Katrina, but also when we have had refinery problems (such as the flooding of the refinery in Coffeyville Kansas) we have seen fuel prices spike up due to these supply emergencies. Prices never go down to pre-mini-crisis levels, and we are told that we simply don't have the refinery capacity. Yet, with all the oil company record profits, not a single move is being made to increase refinery capacity. Administration apologists and industry advocates tell us that the problem is that we don't drill enough in the Gulf or in Anwar in Alaska, but we don't even have enough capacity to refine the oil that we do get. Who has any doubts or reservations about this administration, with it's tight relationship with the oil companies that environmental regulations won't be eased and permitting processes won't be simplified if the oil industry really wanted to build new refineries?

I'm all for making money and supplying a hungry nation with its needs, but why isn't anybody associated with public policy doing this in a sustainable or logical way? Does anyone think we'll be able to keep using oil without regard to where we get it, how long it will last, or what it is doing to our environment?

I think public policy, and by that I mean Government Policy, has to force the issue. True leaders would be looking ahead and positioning our energy use and production for the future. True leaders would start solving problems early, before they become crises instead of waiting until turmoil and sacrifice are required to get us out of the corner we've painted ourselves into.

True leaders would recognize that those that are supplying us with energy now are in the best position to supply us with the new forms of energy in the future, and therefore are best positioned to benefit from a changing energy profile. By partnering with energy companies while at the same time forcing them to adapt and innovate, we could insure a smooth transition into our energy future. I'm talking about gas stations selling hydrogen, ethanol, and biodiesel. I'm talking about power companies eventually generating with fusion plants, but also helping spread solar and wind energy, connecting individuals to the grid and profiting from financing the capital costs of individuals generating and adding to the grid.

I grew up during the height of the space race, during our moonshot era. That's a big part of why I became an engineer. I miss the days when America looked at technological challenges and only calculated how long it would take and how much it would cost, not whether we were capable or whether we should even try. Please explain to me why the engineers from the country that put men on the moon cannot invent a 100 mile to the gallon car, a rooftop solar array that is affordable, geothermal energy sources, tidal energy systems, or a fuel cell that provides all the energy your house needs without polluting at all? We used to be energized by these challenges, not politically divided over them.

I would advocated a crash program to develop fusion energy, as well as a study to look at the possibility to put a huge solar array in orbit, maybe one that also serves to shield the earth from the sun to counter CO2 induced global warming until we can get our emissions under control.

We need to look at a biologically derived chemical fuel that is equal in value to gasoline that we can produce with very little energy cost. We need to look at capturing motion and sound to generate energy. We need to extract energy from our wastes, whether it's our landfills or our wastewater treatment plants.

We need to plant more trees and manage the ones that we do have so that they don't all burn up in forest fires, contributing nothing to our well being and polluting the atmosphere in the process.

We need to control our weather. We need to learn how to divert atmospheric moisture such that no areas flood and no areas bake. This alone will expand the planet's carrying capacity by a factor of 2 or 3. The skills we learn in doing this, and in solving global warming, could someday be used to cool Venus down and warm Mars up to a habitable state. Imagine humanity with 3 habitable worlds in this solar system.

This is our future. This is not some scary scenario to be feared and resisted, this is where we are going, either voluntarily or involunarily. Why should we not accept this change, embrace it, and plunge headlong into the tasks to make it a reality?

Sun Feather Hippie Soap

From: Mike Jones
To: sandy@sunfeather.com
Sent: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 7:44 pm
Subject: My Sun Feather Story

Dear Sandy,

I thought you might enjoy my story of how I found your product.

I was taking a vacation with my wife to South Dakota's Badlands and Yellowstone National Park, driving across South Dakota's I-90. The billboards all advertised Wall Drug, a drugstore in Wall South Dakota that has become a tourist attraction, and somewhat of a mall disguised in an Old West exterior. Most of what they sell there is kitch and other typical tourist fare.

We actually wanted to see the drug store part of Wall Drug, which we found inside of the complex. While my wife was buying some lens cleaner, I found their Sun Feather Soap display, prominently in the middle of the store. I noticed that the soap had a handmade look and there was a Patchouly Hemp variety. When the lady came over to help me, I gave her my mentally rehearsed line: "Is this soap made by real Hippies?"

The shopkeeper did not get the joke. She told me that the soap was made by a lady in New York. After we left, my wife's remark was, "upstate New York - definitely hippies".

By the time I first used the soap we were hundreds of miles away. It was fantastic, and my first regret was that we would not be able to buy any more, because there was no way we were going back to Wall South Dakota just for your soap, no matter how good it was.

The first time I used the soap after we finally got home, I was thinking again about how I would not be able to get the soap again. Then I noticed the little bag in the trash that we got the soap in, and I saw that it had your website on it. That was quite fortuituous.

The only thing that worries me is that the website is so professional looking and the titles of the people on the contact page so impressive, that you have totally blown my fantasy of hippies in upstate New York making this awesome soap. It doesn't matter, it's still good soap.

Mike Jones

From: Sandy Maine
To: Mike Jones
Sent: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 12:32 pm
Subject: RE: My Sun Feather Story

Dear Mike,

Thanks for taking the time to write. I have soft spot in my heart for Wall Drug. I lived In South Dakota as a child and we went there often. It was much smaller then! And the historical photos were not even framed then! I use to ride the taxidermied buffalo and palamino horse which use to be front center but has since been moved to a back court yard. I stopped by to ride them a few years ago. That was back in 1964! Thank God they were still there...however a bit more worn out than I remember them!

Some of we harder working flower children grew up to be quite successful and to change the way food, medicine, education, and even bodycare gets delivered to the market place...most likely our innovative ideas were born through our patchouly and hemp induced states.

If you want to be one of my soap groupies….please sign up for our E Newsletter! I’ll forward you the latest copy.

Sandy Maine
President - CEO

SunFeather Natural Soap Company
1551 State Highway 72 - Potsdam, New York 13676
315-265-3648 ext. 24 - fax: 315-265-2902

Visit www.sunfeather.com for this excellent soap and more

PTSD

Estimates that as many as 52,000 of the troops returning from Iraq may suffer PTSD (reference Veterans for America website). Regardless of the number, there is no doubt that many soldiers suffer from this condition.

Recent NPR reports from Daniel Zwerdling brought to light conditions at Ft. Carson Colorado, where soldiers that had PTSD were being denied treatment and harassed and mistreated if they admitted to having a problem.

One soldier fought back and won a courtmartial case they were bringing against him, and in the process, started helping other veterans that were afflicted and persecuted by the Army. He is now working for Veterans for America in Denver and his name is Andrew Pogany.

Everyone remembers the scene from the movie Patton, supposedly based on a true story, where a shell shocked soldier is slapped around by General Patton and called a coward because he wasn't really wounded. This famous example is typical of how people feel about the disease, even those that suffer through it. Certainly, the thought that men's minds can erode or snap under the pressure of combat is a terrifying thought to military strategists, trainers, and commanders. How are we to successfully conduct a war if the process disrupts the abilities of the main tool we use to fight, the soldier? In war, we use equipment and plan for the certainty that it will eventually wear out and break through repeated use without any maintenance, yet we don't treat our soldiers as if they are capable of wearing out or breaking. My analogy is ironic, because I am proposing to treat soldiers more humanely by treating them more like machines.

I was listening to a podcast about a University of Lubeck (Germany) experiment where slow wave oscillations were put into subjects heads through electrodes as they fell asleep. These waves simulate the natural waves that people's brains generate as they fall asleep. Researchers speculate that this is an indicator, or the evidence of the way the brain consolidates the activities of the day into long term memory. Many scientists have questioned the purpose of sleep, and a few have theorized that this is when the brain organizes itself and maintains its health. A recent study of a family group with an affliction robbing them of sleep showed that increasingly erratic behavior, memory problems, and eventually death resulted from a prolonged loss of sleep.

I think that this is part of combat induced PTSD. I speculate that a combination of lack of sleep, high degrees of stress from extreme survival instinct, and having to deal with a situation that is just incompatible, contradictory, and intractable would imbalance most people's minds. I believe that the sleep disruption is interrupting the proper integration of soldier's memories and thoughts into their minds. When they do sleep, the hair trigger they acquire to assist with their survival is disrupting their sleep patterns. They have a huge load of mental material to process. They think they are doing their patriotic duty for a country that doesn't appreciate them, and doesn't want them there. They are told they are in the country to help the people that are trying to kill them. They go out to do missions each day, which they cannot refuse, because they are in the military, and their instincts are telling them that this is dangerous and stupid and they should not go out there into the danger, but their sense of duty gives them no choice. They watch friends die and wonder if there is any point in their sacrifice. They listen to their training briefings about how the enemy will attack them, then they see that their threat is everywhere, or the enemy changes tactics. They are in a no-win situation. Does anyone think that a sane person can endure an insane situation long without being infected by it?

Those that come back and do seek and get help for PTSD are taught about their triggers. These triggers are sounds, smells, sights, or some kind of stimuli that puts them back in the mental situation of their distress. They often can't sleep and self medicate to escape the continued stress. Some describe feeling as if the bad situations they endured in combat will not quit happening in their mind. They keep replaying and repeating, keeping the stressors fresh in their mind. One form of treatment exposes the soldiers to their triggers in a safe environment, being told over and over that the environment is safe. Eventually, they can dismantle or decrease their own triggers. Therapy alone has helped many PTSD sufferers get some relief from their condition. Others benefit from time, which seems to erode the condition down to a less severe level. Some never really get better, and many commit suicide.

I believe that the slow wave oscillation inducer could be used in conjunction with therapy to help cure the condition. I think that the brain gets off track and cannot get back to the point where it can incorporate what is happening. With some external reinforcement, perhaps the restful, restoring sleep can be reinitiated and the soldier can begin to assimilate the things that happened and understand and accept them.

Perhaps this therapy could be used in the field. Once a soldier is removed from danger and provided adequate security during sleep, these devices could be made available to the soldier. If the use of externally boosted slow wave oscillators improves memory, as the studies indicate, it could have an additional benefit. Besides not allowing the sleep patterns to become disrupted in the first place, it could help soldiers remember and assimilate the things that happened during the day. If the mind works on the problems of the dangers it faces during the waking hours while it sleeps, perhaps the solutions of how to avoid dangers will come more naturally, and our soldiers will get better at avoiding dangers and surviving their combat experience. And maybe they can then come home, healthy and whole and enjoy the reward of a normal life that they have more than earned through their service.

Preserve What's Important

I was listening to a podcast this morning where a 9 year old girl whose parents were going through a divorce was asking for help and understanding in her difficult times.

She was asking for advice, and trying to somehow make her parents get back together. The question was, what advice would you give to her.

Without thinking, I thought "Preserve What's Important". My advice wasn't to the little girl, it was to her parents. If they have to be apart the most important thing they can preserve is their daughter's love.

Then I realized that the axiom was a simple statement of what I believe.

I consider myself an environmentalist, interested in preserving the environment in general, but also very sad to see any species go extinct. When you consider that the web of life is a rich thick tapestry with all the creatures woven into it, you don't want someone wantonly picking away at the threads. You want it preserved intact.

I want natural sites from the big and obvious like Yellowstone, to the local streams and woods left alone, unmolested by the bulldozer. Conventional wisdom from City Planners say that capitalism in the form of development is good. Communities around here are throwing money and tax breaks at already rich developers and investors to come and exploit what natural areas there are "Come here! Build! Build! Build! No restrictions!" I disagree. Those money men will come and make another pile of money off their wheelings and dealings, but they'll be gone tomorrow from our community and we'll be stuck with one less lake, one less grove of trees, and many displaced wild animals. Preserve what's important. The world before we came and trampled it and paved it.

This can be applied to businessmen. There are many temptations to do and say the thing that it would take to get that sale, close that deal, make that aquisition. What good does it do to to win today if there won't be a tomorrow because no one trusts you? Or, if you are really ruthless, and keep winning at the expense of others, what good does it do to sit alone in your house on a huge pile of money if no one loves, cares, or respects you?

Preserve what's important. For a soldier, this means your life. Do what you have to do, but get home. You can always sort it all out and learn to live with it, but if you're dead, there's no way to live with it.

Preserve what's important. For an individual in their career development, that means gray matter. You won't be able to take anything physical with you when or if the company you work for now lets you go or goes under, but you can take what you learned from your experience. So it's more important to learn than anything else you do in a job. It's the only thing you'll get to preserve later.

Preserve what's important. In your personal life, that means the love and respect of the people in your family. You have to do what it takes to keep the connections alive, insure that they have all the help they need to get through life, and make sure they know how important they are to you.

That's what is important.

Gone Fishin'

When I was a kid, my dad would take us fishing.

We lived near Lake Jacomo, built in the 50's, probably by damming up some prime farmland, and damning it to sit under a lake from then on.

We loved the lake, it had shelter houses and docks and rented out pontoon boats for fishing out away from the edge from time to time.

The lake has a great deal of land around it that was made into a park. There are no private houses on the lake, and speed boats or wave runners are allowed. This lake is an old fashioned, slow paced walk back in time.

Over the years, I've spent a lot of time out there. We went to picnics in the shelters in addition to fishing. As a teenager, I used to sneak around out there, trying not to get in trouble. I remember one time we were right next to the lake in the winter, and the lake was frozen. I was with 3 friends and we started throwing rocks on the lake ice. It made these weird eerie sounds like some demon playing the violin. I understand now that the thin ice was vibrating near some resonance frequency, but at the time, it was just an unexpected and unexplained delight.

Later, I discovered the "Hooved Animal Enclosure" where they keep Elk & Bison. Although you are not supposed to feed these animals, that's exactly what everyone does. They bring bags of carrots to stick through the chain link fence. There is something deliciously dangerous feeling about sticking a carrot into the mouth of an enormous bull elk with a rack of antlers that looks like it could shred you like cabbage.

There are great paths around the lake, complete with mud, mosquitos, and chiggers, but uncluttered with manmade things and empty of other people. One year, I discovered an old road that was blocked off with a single pole swing gate, and I decided to walk it. I found white and pink wild roses that had gone nuts, climbing up and into trees, sometimes 10 or 12 feet high. The road bed was cracked and full of weeds, but still had faint centerlines painted on it. It ran into the lake. This was a road left over from before the lake was made! How cool! Going back up the hill, I found myself about 8 feet away from a doe with 2 spotted fawns behind it. I froze, not wanting to scare it away. You never get to see deer up that close. The doe started bucking up on its hind legs, pawing at the air and stamping its hooves at me. Finally, the fawns darted away and the doe dropped down and followed, but not before I had time to wonder if the doe would actually attack me to protect the fawns. That same road yielded another find in the spring. Iris and peony beds made me stop and explore a spot beside the road. This must have been someone's yard at one time. Close inspection brought me to a pile of overgrown rubble with a bedspring still visible. So they must have bulldozed the house some time around the time the land was purchased and turned into a park. It was probably the house of someone that came here and homesteaded in the area after the Civil War.

More recently, I've taken to running the hilly roads around the lake in the park. There are plenty of droppings on the roads, showing that in an area where no humans can build, the creatures will thrive. There used to be a spot on one little gravel road where people would stop on their way to or from a day's fishing and a racoon would come out of the woods and beg at their carside. That was a few years back, and I don't know if that racoon taught her offspring the trade or not.

Last weekend while running around the lake, I saw a blue heron on the waterside across a narrow cove. I was running along a road at the water's edge and hoped the heron wouldn't notice me or care, but he finally decided that I was not someone he wanted to hang around and look at. He took off, with his 6 foot wingspan, flying just inches above the mirror smooth water. That was beautiful, but the sound he started making was less than mellifluous. Maybe it was a distress call, but it sounded discordant and alien. Not disturbing, just unexpected from a bird as graceful as that.

This fall, we plan on hiking some of the areas that are not accessible by roads. With all the development going on around here, having a wild park so near is a rare and precious thing.

Cropduster

I took a great vacation a few years ago with my brother Steve and my "kid sister" Rita. Rita is my ex-girlfriend's little sister, and a great travel companion.

We were in Colorado, going across the Alamosa County plains south of the Great Sand Dunes National Monument (why is a naturally occurring feature called a "Monument"? you're supposed to make a monument).

My brother pointed out a small yellow plane and said, "there's a crop duster." I looked over and saw this tiny plane with not much bulk to it. I couldn't see any nozzles on the wings, no piping, and no liquid tanks. Maybe I had a vision of a crop dusting plane from watching Petticoat Junction in my youth, but the plane he pointed out wasn't what I expected in a crop duster.

I said as much, which started somewhat of an eruption on my brother's part. He was mad that I doubted him, and expressed quite vehemently that he knew what he was talking about and this was a crop duster.

Rita and I found it quite hilarious. You've probably been there. At some point in your life, you will experience someone that is quite angry, yet very comical at the same time. Rita and I were laughing hysterically and when Steve wound down, we would start him up again with a simple, "I don't know...." or "I'm not so sure about that..." and it would start again. He was on a roll. He was in one of those times where "at a loss for words" is the furthest from the truth.

I don't think he was quite as furious as he sounded, because we were laughing and he kept on ranting. I think if we really offended him badly, he would have shut up and not said a word.

We had a great rest of the day, trying to climb the Great Sand Dunes, and then leaping down in large loping strides. I was "Sand-tor" that day. We ended up in Taos later that evening and it was really one of those days that are almost perfect.

I can't speak for Rita, but I can say that I really did not think it was a crop duster. Despite Steve's insistence, it just didn't seem right. The plane was just so tiny. I did not doubt that Steve believed it was, I just assumed he was mistaken. Of course, there was no way to prove it, so it was one of those unresolved issues that come up from time to time.

Until we were on the way home. Somewhere out around Garden City Kansas, after looking for ghost towns and climbing the Capulin volcano earlier that day, we were making the long drive back. Suddenly, I noticed that there was one of those little yellow planes that Steve had pointed out earlier and called a crop duster. "Hey, there's one of those planes" was about all I had time to say before it dropped down, leveled out, and started spraying a field. We watched it pull up, bank steeply, and turn around for its next spraying run.

I'll be damned. It was a crop duster.

You rarely get such instant and complete vindication in your life as Steve did that day. Somehow, it wasn't enough. To Rita and I, it was still fun and funny. Steve's rant was easily in the top 3 or 4 funny things I've ever heard in my life. Maybe it's just a show, but to this day, he still gets a little mad when we bring it up. And even though I don't remember much of what he said, to this day it still makes me smile and feel like laughing.