Deep Thoughts – by Dr. Teine

From the time you are born to the time you die – how many of the atoms in your body present at birth are still actually there when you die?    Oh, I know there is carbon dating – but what about those atoms from the moment of conception?   Are they still there and they stay locked with you forever, or are we just borrowing them?

If electrons are constantly moving and changing, and parts of atoms are waves and particles at the same time, and all the atoms in your body eventually change over at least once – who are you really and where does the soul reside in all that sea of subatomic particles?   Perhaps the famous “God Particle” is really the elusive soul?

I suspect our next war will be cleaning up the mess in Mexico now that the cartels are building armored cars and pretty much have their run of the country down there.

Why is it that the Republican candidates, or at least some of them, for the potential presidency feel a need to trample on freedom of religion and feel those of different faiths must take loyalty oaths?   Do they secretly dream of wiping with the constitution?   What dope are they on and was it supplied by the Mexican cartels to undermine our ability to wage war against them?

A long time ago I thought that the phrase “the meek shall inherit the earth” meant that the meek were doomed to early graves.  Then I read a book recently where the author posited the same thing and I wonder – did I hear this phrase somewhere and absorbed it subconsciously, or did we both come up with it all on our own?   If the latter – is it then possible that for every thought in the world that someone else came up with it to?   And if so, with more and more humans on the planet, is it less and less likely to have original thoughts solely unique to each of us?   And if that’s true, are our brains only capable of so many possible operations in which case it becomes possible to predict human behavior?   If if that is true – are we really capable of free will or is it all just an illusion and we’re just a series of complex, but predictable biochemical reactions?

Yet more miscellania

Aka Deep Thoughts….by Dr. Teine.

1)  I think the scientists who are working on making Switchgrass produce high levels of cellulosic ethanol are wasting their time.  If you really wanted to create a low maintenance bio-renewable fuel source from fermentation of cellulose you’d pick Crabgrass.  Seriously – the stuff has almost no animal or insect pests, can grow literally anywhere (cracks in concrete), requires next to nothing in the way of nutrients and water, and is incredibly prolific.  Why not work with this stuff?   And when everyone’s lawn is taken over by this genetic engineering gone wrong – think of the fertilizer savings world wide!  No need to keep up your lawn when it keeps up itself!

2)  I would have expected a book on the battle for Okinawa in 1945, one of the largest amphibious operations ever, to be somewhat interesting.  Sadly most of the book was bogged down in minutiae on the units present, their equipment, and a long laundry list of unit battle orders.  Avoid Osprey Campaign Series #96 unless you’re having trouble sleeping.

3)  In burning wood samples this week, I was surprised how much cleaner burning Sugar Maple was in comparison to Red Oak.  Much cleaner white ash left behind too.

4)  Calcium Fructoborate is a great name for a chemical compound.

Miscellania

Random musings and thoughts over the past few days:

1) Just finished reading a book about the fighting for Iraq in Basra, Fallujah, Ramadi, Habbinaiya, and Baghdad….in 1941.  Very interesting the events that unfolded there when Iraqi nationalists attempted to push the British out and how the badly outnumbered British, through bluffing and sheer determination, pushed the nationalists out and kept Iraq and its oil reserves out of the hands of the Germans.  Had they not succeeded, one wonders what would have happened to the outcome of the war.  A pretty good book in the Osprey campaign series highlighting a very overlooked aspect of early WWII history in a part of the world just as important in WWII as it is today – oil makes the world go ’round.

2) Read two interesting articles on how messed up the education of science has become.  The first article was on how science needs to learn PR in a bad way.  Really – I think they just need to get ALL scientists to take more liberal arts courses so they learn HOW to communicate that what they’re working on is important and WHY it is important.  An article in Wired (June 2010 issue) really hits on this one well.  The other is about all the push to train more and more students to do science when there are not enough jobs, let alone interesting ones, in science for all these people to do.  Certainly someone needs to do the grunt work of churning out experiments, but really, if there is no long term career or stability for someone in science – why would they ever dedicate that much time and effort to develop a mastery of science?   I can say the article gets it very right in many sad ways, and further, I see today you have scientists with 20 to 30 years under their belt who can’t find work.  If you’re not willing to pay for high quality science work – don’t throw out the crap that you don’t have enough people going into science.   Translation:  you’re too cheap to pay for the good ones so you’re hoping a bunch of people with just enough skills (1,000,000 monkeys typing – 1 writes Newton’s “Opticks”) to get by at low pay will do it so you can throw them away later.  Morons…fscking morons.

3) I think the music in Super Mario Galaxy was better than the music in Super Mario Galaxy 2….but there are some songs from that 2nd game I would love to have on my iPod.

4) I’m torn that one of the best video game soundtracks ever made was either the music for LucasArts “Outlaws” or Sega’s “Medieval Total War 2″.

5) I’m convinced there should be a scientific study proving that when you are least able to take on more work – everyone shows up to to give you more….and somehow you find the way to get it all done anyway.

6) There are times (especially when #5 shows up) I wish I could go visit the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

The Brewmaster’s Table

I just finished reading an outstanding book about food and drink.  If you’re a serious foodie, or even if you’re a meat and potatoes type looking for better beer, then this is the book for you.  The author, the brewmaster of the Brooklyn Brewery, is an unabashed advocate of beer and food, and while he likes wine, he isn’t afraid to point out how inferior it can be when pairing with food.  Well, that’s not entirely fair.  Let’s just say the author of this book makes a convincing case that beer is far more versatile with food than wine, from any cuisine type to any part of the meal.  I can say that after reading this book the author is spot-on about how some beers go fantastic with dessert.  The book is also a nice guide to the many different styles of beer around the world and can give you some nice pointers on what a particular style will be before you go out and try it.  I now have a much better appreciation for the German doppelbocks I like, as well as Belgian Wits, German Wheats, and American Porters that I seem to have gotten hooked on lately.

So I heartily endorse this book.  If you like beer, then you’ll love this book.  If you’re a wine snob…well you’ll probably hate this book, but if your tastebuds are flexible and you’re open to new things, I think this book will steer you well to whole new and wonderful taste combinations.

The Wife’s Best Friend

To paraphrase a very rude Monty Python song, perhaps Pork is indeed your wife’s best friend.  Well, in Argentina anyway. Definitely in the “too much information department” here.  But damn…pork is good.  Maybe too good.

Should you experiment, please do not report in.  We have standards here by god!

Sexing up the classics

You may think this blasphemy.  I find it awesome and I agree with the artist.

What I learned from nature programs

Is that sudden loud noises can and will scare away your opponent.  The cats and I used to have a healthy understanding that if they misbehave I raise my voice and they stop….briefly.  However lately they have been disdainful of me and I must move to lesson #2 that I learned from nature programs.  To chase away your opponent, make yourself bigger than you appear and make sudden loud noises.  So now I first warn them (suddenly and loudly) that they do not wish to awaken the angry house ape, and then shortly after that first ignored warning I yell and run after them with arms swinging through the air.  They immediately scatter and run for the hills (under the bed).  However after this I’m out of tricks.  So what do I do when they ignore the big ugly arm swinging yelling ape?   Flinging poo is right out as I have been warned with permanent excommunication from the table of the nightly dinner sacrament and the bed of holy sleep should I use this sure-fire to work tactic.  Marking territory has yielded similar warnings.

So what now?   I can’t give them too much grief – they do earn their keep since they eat every spider, ant, fly, and roach that enters into the house.  Perhaps this is just payment for services rendered.  In return for pest service they reserve the right to use the premises as they see fit.   So now my last nature program lesson – this appears to be a symbiotic relationship but unfortunately I can’t tell which species (ape or cat) has the upper hand.

Yes I know it’s cat thank you very much.  But please give me at least 2 seconds to believe I’m the superior species before deflating my ego completely will you?

Electric car industry and national defense

In WWII the auto industry and many other industries were converted over to production of tanks, airplanes, jeeps, and other materials of war.  So with manufacturing going going gone in some places in the US one wonders about the ability of our nation to mass produce war material when the existing military defense industry can just keep up with current orders and repairs.

So thinking out loud as I see companies like Tesla just turned a profit and maybe we’ll see some very new industries in the next 1-10 years, I wonder if we’ll see technological innovations from the private sector transition to defense rather than the typical trend of defense technologies transferring to the private sector.  For example, I know there are several projects developing portable wind power for forward operating bases which came from the private sector first, and now I wonder if electric powered tanks, APCs, and other vehicles are over the horizon in the next 10-20 years.  No we don’t have the battery power yet but if your operational range of your vehicle can be recharged with sun or wind suddenly your supply chain changes a lot which means your mobility changes and warfare morphs again.

The Boxwood of Pure Evil

I have a boxwood shrub by my front door that is causing me some worry.  Every morning it is infested with leafhoppers that pop onto your clothing if you go past it the wrong way.  And of course they smash and smear into your clothing if you brush them off.  Every evening I see some odd wasps (which I’ve now identified as two speices of parasitic wasps for other bugs) banging against the window near this shrub.  The shrub has an odd internal decay deep in its structure (one large internal branch just upped and died so it has an internal crevice now) which is filled with some large spider webs and from time to time it serves up really odd bugs.  Last year it was a rare assassin bug and the year before that when spreading out rock mulch it was a very large centipede.

Methinks this fall after the first hard freeze may be time to really think hard about keeping this shrub.  I don’t like killing plants that look nice from the front of the house or are perfectly viable….but I’m wondering what insect or nasty it will portal in next.  I’m not sure I like having Nylarhotep as my previous gardener.  It’s bad enough that the nodding alliums in my front garden before they bloom have buds that look like translucent egg pods from a bad SciFi horror movie.

The Book

Get back from vacation and of course everything else shows up demanding my immediate attention, including the page proof stage of my current magnum opiate* – FR book #3.  Luckily I have the other chapter authors proofing their own chapters but still, I have to collate all comments from all 26 chapters and make sure they line up into one coherent document that I send back to the publisher.

I was going to print everything out and read it manually and mark it up in pen but not now.  26 chapters (not including index and preface) is 809 pages single space, which is a crapload** of printing expenses at a local copy shop.  So back to work staring at a small screen and attempting to mark it up in Adobe.

*In that it will make you greatly numb upon reading it.  Not at all addictive.  Nor is it to be confused with magnum opus no matter how proud I may be of this monstrosity.

**For those of you who use metric, one Crapload is 7.2 metric Buttloads.  Not to be confused with imperial Buttloads, which are 1.057821x of a metric Buttload.