Changing the theme of the blog is intellectually satisfying, but pols are much easier to write about..Of Mice and Men

I see that Gov. Rick Perry(R-Tekksus) had been indicted on felony charges. Oh how the one-time presidential candidate has fallen.

Enough about pols and their dandy ways.

As my gentle reader knows, I am all about surviving. I am not really keen on passing on my bit of the human genome into an unknown future, so I had better make this life a damned good one. I have written some about antibiotic stockpiling for an unforeseen event. I have also never taken any ABX that were not prescribed to me. Two AB exposures in my life to this point is all. Be prepared, but don't be stupid. If anyone thinks that ABX are like vitamins, the following should give them cause to eat them like "One-A-Days."

Early antibiotic exposure leads to lifelong metabolic disturbances in mice. Another good reason to only use antibiotics(ABX) when they are really needed. Of course mice and humans don't share ALL metabolic processes, but why take unnecessary risks?

This really needs a blockquote.

...The new study by NYU Langone Medical Center researchers reveals that mice given lifelong low doses of penicillin starting in the last week of pregnancy or during nursing were more susceptible to obesity and metabolic abnormalities than mice exposed to the antibiotic later in life.

Most intriguing, in a complementary group of experiments, mice given low doses of penicillin only during late pregnancy through nursing gained just as much weight as mice exposed to the antibiotic throughout their lives.

"We found that when you perturb gut microbes early in life among mice and then stop the antibiotics, the microbes normalize but the effects on host metabolism are permanent," says senior author Martin Blaser, MD, the Muriel G. and George W. Singer Professor of Translational Medicine, director of the NYU Human Microbiome Program, and professor of microbiology at NYU School of Medicine. "This supports the idea of a developmental window in which microbes participate. It's a novel concept, and we're providing direct evidence for it."

The researchers stress that more evidence is needed before it can be determined whether antibiotics lead to obesity in humans, and the present study should not deter doctors from prescribing antibiotics to children when they are necessary. "The antibiotic doses used in this study don't mirror what children get," says Laura M. Cox, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Blaser's laboratory and the lead author of the study. "But it has identified an early window in which microbes can influence metabolism, and so further studies are clearly warranted."...

Fascinating. The gut bacteria return to normal species and quantities post-AB withdrawal, but the metabolic changes seem permanently altered. The bacterial species seems to be the important bit.

The researchers are looking for the mechanistic clues. Here, I will not speculate as my knowledgebase on the topic is not full enough to venture anything like a thoughtful guess.

However, one might wonder if the trace amounts of ABX that are found in meats just might be a contributing factor to obesity in the general populace. Of course our generally sedentary lifestyles are the main component, but it seems to beg the question. Humankind certainly creates the future for humans. Our collective history screams that we do an awful job in this regard.

If I am the only one that makes this admittedly specious link, so be it. I have to speculate something in nearly every entry. It is science after all, and questions need be raised!

Sometimes Home Ownership Is Just Work...and Other Observances.

As the title suggests, home ownership isn't all fun. On days like today, it is simply drudgery. My neighbors do not care about their landscapes. Due to their lack of caring I have to almost continually hack and slash at non-native invasive species of flora. Today's exercise in futility included Japanese Knotweed(Fallopia japonica) treatment; which anyone that knows about this evil thing, knows it is a many year struggle to eradicate. I also did battle with the nearly as nasty Japanese honeysuckle(Lonicera japonica). As much as am loathe to use glyphosate herbicide, both of these species require it for effective control. I also got rid of some Virginia creeper(Parthenocissus quinquefolia), which is a native species here, but there seem no natural controls that hinder its growth.

It all seems a thankless job, but the 0.75 acres that I have staked out for weed control look better every year. I have nine gardens in this area, so I need to protect my precious plants that I have nurtured as well. Enough about that..

I did find a very odd bit about a member of the pant kingdom. Somehow I can usually segue a personal anecdote into something a lot more interesting. This may be unique in the kingdom of flora. There is a parasitic vine that not only performs the more typical 'behaviors' to its host--wrapping round it, and scoring nutrients and water from its host, but Strangleweed(Cuscuta pentagona) tranfers mRNA with its various host species.

Of course my gentle reader knows that no proteins are formed--in eukaryotes at any rate--without messenger RNA(mRNA). Sure genes code for proteins--and perform other neat tricks--but genes do not make proteins. Here is good summary of how one goes from a gene sequence to actually building the protein for which the gene is coded.

I find it fascinating that a parasitic plant has a sort of symbiotic relationship with its host at the sub-cellular level.

Now why has C. pentagona adapted do this?

Well, it is certainly not via process of thought. It is my blog so I will speculate. (Here's where I spill out some bullshit)

My opinion is that the exchange process turns off the host's defenses. Since most plants aren't really mobile, the defenses are typically chemical weapons. Yes, yes, I know that some plants have insect protectors as well, but these are unusual examples. By co-opting, and transferring mRNA with the host, it seems likely that the host would not recognize the parasite as an alternate form of life. The host reads the mRNA being transferred and there is no state of emergency declared as it 'believes' it to be its very own. I know that my speculation is at odds with what researcher James Westwood(study co-author) told Live Science, but message interception to gather data about the "host plant's growth and development" seems too anthropomorphic to me. Of course we could both be right, and/or wrong.

This really seems like a case of evolutionary convergence, as bacteria swap genetic genetic material across species, and viruses are dormant until they enter a host's cell. Curiouser and curiouser.

That's all I have that is both new and unusual. Plus, it has brevity in its favor :)

It's summer, so wear sunblock!

This entry isn't about tanning. Well, it is and it isn't. I should note that tans are the body's way to attempt to halt further damage to the dermis due to UV-A, and UV-B exposure. Tanning itself--which involves changes in melanin production--is really the body's flaregun signaling dermal distress. Beautiful? Maybe, but too much can age a person in many, many different ways. Don't tan is always good advice.

Now onto today's UV stuff..

Record surface UV-B levels found in Andes. Some people might think that one of the various ozone holes would would certainly claim top honors on surface UV irradiance, but Sol doesn't provide the arctic zones with much energy compared to equatorial regions.

Add in less atmosphere due to elevation, clear skies due to lack of suspended aerosols, and naturally mountainous equatorial regions would seem likely places to find UV records.

In this part of the world, we might see a UV Index of 8 or 9 on a midsummer day. I try and stay indoors on those days. The research team at SETI/NASA recorded a UV Index of 43.3! For reference, a UV Index of 11 is considered extreme. Things may get worse before they get better. Current models predict further ozone thinning in the near-intermediate term(scale of a human lifetime) time scale. While this event resulted in perhaps an almost perfect confluence of several events, the events themselves are anything but rare. No doubt teams of number crunchers are scouring data looking for even higher UV spikes.

I have thought quite a lot about the worldwide collapse of amphibian populations, and while the jury is still out as to the 'whys,' excessive UV radiation does harm the eggs of amphibians. Among other detrimental effects of UV radiation are DNA damage, altering of the photosynthetic process, and changes to larvae...particularly those of an aquatic nature. The outlook is really quite grim.

Weed OD?

Unlike most marijuana evangelists, I make no claim that smoking and/or ingesting delta-9-THC is harmless. There are a couple of interesting studies that illustrate some commonalities between the brains of young, frequent pot smokers and schizophrenics. It's a memory issue. I must have missed having memory and/or cognitive issues from smoking MJ, due only to lack of frequency of use.

Enough about that. This is about the lawsuit against the a pot dispensary over a marijuana/THC overdose.

The plaintiff claims hat he was repeatedly told that there was no MJ/THC in the chocolate he consumed. I have no reason to doubt his claim. He claims he was "projectile vomiting" and "hallucinating" among other things. Being 'slipped a mickey' like that could have had far more dire consequences.

I know this from a single experience of marijuana intake via the oral route. I once ate roughly 7 gm of moderately good quality pot. In roughly 90 mins. I was blitzed, and just getting higher. The really heavy effects lasted perhaps 2 hours. The whole experience lasted perhaps 6 hours. If I did not know that I was likely in for a pretty rough ride, I would have been pretty freaked out.

Dosing someone with any intoxicant is plainly irresponsible, and potentially very dangerous. At this early stage I am inclined to side firmly with the plaintiff, as unknown "free theater tickets" are a recipe for disaster. It will happen at some point. Unsecured edible marijuana products are going to result in deaths by negligence. I strongly suspect that these deaths will be due to 'accidents,' and that makes it all seem worse. Potent pot unknowingly given to the uninitiated can be pretty scary indeed.
I hope that Coloradans get better control on what could be a real crisis. Stoned people aren't generally the most responsible with their stash; and that was before it was legal. One can easily see heads getting very loose with their weed. Someone will pay. No drug is without consequences. Cannabis is likely the most likely to cause harm when used responsibly. Colorado and Coloradans need a good dose of responsibility. Then they should be able to better dispense cannabis products.

When it comes to what you or me wish to put into our own bodies, I am very liberally minded. The WoD(War on drugs) continues to be an abject failure. However, if even cannabis users cannot abide by simple rules, that doesn't peak well of the larger sphere of intoxicant users. You alcohol and tobacco users know what I am talking about.

Another "Supermoon?"

One would think that full moon being a "Super" should denote something wondrous. Oh, it will be really Super tomorrow night(08.10.2014). But it really won't be that super. Any full moon that occurs during the top ten percent of perigee(closest to earth in this case). The gag is on the media. This full moon is barely outside the 90th percentile. Why label something when you do not possess enough knowledge to use the label?

Of course humans have to catalog everything. I will not be watching..although we are predicted to have a very good sky for viewing. Go and read the space.com article. It is good for elucidation and a few chuckles.

We will likely never see a real Supermoon--unless the earth-moon system destabilizes due to some cosmic impactor, or at least a close call--but the Supermoons I would find wondrous would be those early moon passes of, say, 4 billions years ago. The earth-moon system was at pretty roughly 0.5 its current mean distance.

Now we can get sort of sciencey. According to Newton's Law of Gravitation(inverse square of the distance between mass centers) the earth-moon system should be stable, but there is another factor in play. Tidal forces. Both of the terrestrial and oceanic types. This generates friction between the two masses. Why? Because the earth is not precisely elastic, and that transfers angular momentum from the earth to the moon, resulting in both the moon's recession over time and the slowing of its speed relative to the earth..which is slowing down as well. Those full moons would have been something to see.

The moon will be biggish, but let us not call it "Super" as it does not technically meet the criteria.

I should note here that the above explanation of the history of the earth-moon system is really lacking in detail. I think that anymore detail would result in seizures and irritable bowels.

Tick Vector Meat Allergies and Ebola

Hey, it is Happy Friday!

The first bit I have known about for some time. The link between some tick bites and an allergic reaction to red meats is not new, but the mechanism now seems understood. Read on, gentle reader:

Few patients seem aware of the risk, and even doctors are slow to recognize it. As one allergist who has seen 200 cases on New York's Long Island said, "Why would someone think they're allergic to meat when they've been eating it their whole life?"

The culprit is the Lone Star tick, named for Texas, a state famous for meaty barbecues. The tick is now found throughout the South and the eastern half of the United States.

Researchers think some other types of ticks also might cause meat allergies; cases have been reported in Australia, France, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Japan and Korea.

Here's how it happens: The bugs harbor a sugar that humans don't have, called alpha-gal. The sugar is also is found in red meat - beef, pork, venison, rabbit - and even some dairy products. It's usually fine when people encounter it through food that gets digested.

But a tick bite triggers an immune system response, and in that high-alert state, the body perceives the sugar the tick transmitted to the victim's bloodstream and skin as a foreign substance, and makes antibodies to it. That sets the stage for an allergic reaction the next time the person eats red meat and encounters the sugar.

The mote that the medical community finds out about ticks, the worse the prognosis if one gets bitten. Here is where the Lone Star Tick is found in the US.

There is so little that is really known about tick-vector illnesses, that--as in NH--anyone bitten should get at least a big loading dose of doxycycline. I fully understand that it will not help the alpha-gal allergic reaction, but it does provide prophylaxis against most other bacterial and parasitic illnesses.

Now on to ebola..

Current ebola outbreak possibly far worse than we know. This hardly qualifies as news. Underreporting of ebola is likely the norm. That the official figures could be 50% lower than actual cases is eyebrow raising, but not entirely unexpected.

Read the reader comments by the armchair scientific and/or medical experts. I fear for the present of my country. Fear, uncertainty and doubt, reign supreme in the USofA. We are so fearful, we cannot--as a populace--ever get anything done on the really big issues. Yes, Virginia, fear of job loss is indeed a fear.

I see the only true hope for humanity is far less humans inhabiting this tiny blue slightly oblate sphere. No, I am not advocating any draconian measures to wipe out a few billions of people. But we could start by not replacing the fallen. Nah. That's far too reasonable to be considered. We are almost certainly doomed as 'functioning' societies. We are burning things up at many levels.

See! I told you it is Happy Friday! Have fun, and play safe!

Tom Petty

Okay, this is neither news, nor sciencey. I bought TP and The Heartbreakers newest, Hypnotic Eye. I see(no pun intended) that it is Tom and the boys' first No. 1 album. That's hard to believe. I would have thought that Damn the Torpedoes was a No. 1 album.

Initial thoughts on Hypnotic Eye...

It is not my favorite TP offering. Wildflowers snags that honor. Of course The Heartbreakers played on Wildflowers but aren't mentioned in the liner notes..if memory serves.

Damn The Torpedoes is perhaps my favorite TP effort that acknowledges The Heartbreakers. This is a very close race. There are lots of albums in the running here. 1989's Full Moon Fever and 1991's Into The Great Wide Open are perennial favorites as well.

Where does Hypnotic Eye stand? Too early to tell. I like it very much. I listened to an interview with Tom about the upcoming album..he called it "a straight-up rocker." It does have some heavier stuff, but it is more bluesy overall; and dare I say jazz influenced? I do.

One last thing..the track Forgotten Man pays huge homage to American Girl. That is a very good thing.

I am certain to give this one a lot of time, but it didn't give me the instant chills that Wildflowers did.

Anyone that commonly works with Dylan, and is a member of Traveling Wilbury's just has to make special music. This one will not disappoint.

A prediction: there will be four singles issued from Hypnotic Eye.

Ebola! It just keeps getting worse

See the latest CDC info here.

With case deaths approaching one thousand, this is the worst ebola outbreak to effect humans known to this date.

The CDC has now raised its response level to 'Level One', the highest alert status.

I am trying to find a graph that is as current as today, but cannot find one. If this graph is accurate--and I strongly suspect that it is, as the current outbreak was believed contained in May--then the curve has yet to flatten. Given the somewhat long(up to roughly 22 days) incubation period, it looks like things will get worse before they get better.

Maybe far worse.

As I reported sometime earlier, this ebola strain was first reported to be "Ebola Zaire." Then it was reported to be 97% equivalent to Ebola Zaire. Now I will go on record as stating that this ebola strain indeed seems a newly discovered strain. In addition, it now appears likely that this strain has been cycling in nature in a host or hosts in West Africa until the massive outbreak this year. Of course the likelihood that we will ever determine "patient zero" is quite nearly zero.

One has to wonder about transmissibility of this new strain. Is there an aerosol component in this strain that has been lacking up till now? Or have other natural reservoirs been co-opted by the strain that humans are much more likely to come into contact with? Some of both? Something entirely unexpected? No doubt researchers are working on these--and other--questions even as I type.

This outbreak is certainly different from those since 1976. One would think that in the intervening decades that containment would--all other things being equal--far better today. That is why I have speculated that something about this strain is different. I hope that the answers are fast in coming.

Antibiotic resistant bacteria, and why I stockpile but do not use

This is a year old piece about an AB resistant bacterial strain. Oddly, it is referred to as an opinion piece.

There are more current reports that simply verify and expand the findings a bit.

Here in tick-vector-illness-central the medical community had to be dragged kicking and screaming to write scripts for agents effective against Lyme and other bacteria transmitted via tick bites. This has proven to be very unwise. Now, all tick bites are treated with a one day course of doxycycline as prophylaxis. If a person goes on to present with Lyme--or other bacterial illness--the standard course is a 21 day treatment.

This CRE issue is evolution in overdrive. The selective pressure being resistance to common and uncommon antibiotics.

This is why I have ABX on hand, but have never given myself a course of any antibiotic. In my 53 years of life, I have been on two courses of ABX. The first was back in 1980 when I was given erythromycin for a non-specific urinary tract infection(yes, I know how disturbing that reads), and the last was doxycycline to treat Lyme. I am very cautious about laissez-faire use of ABX. If only the bovine and chicken husbandry industries would follow suit. Don't expect change anytime soon. These are powerful industries, and 'Mericans want their cheap animal products. It is a matter of 'having choices' after all. No one dare do anything that is scientifically sound if it interferes with individual choices. *huge eyeroll*

It is likely the case in other New World countries with the possible exception of Canada.

If highly therapy resistant bacterial strains become the norm, then going to a hospital could be a dangerous thing to do.

One needs to be cognizant that evolution does not work on time scales, but generational scales. Fast growing bacteria can multiply in as little as 20 minutes. Let us perform a worst case thought experiment for humankind, and a best case scenario for out bacterial foes.

Let us use 1948 as a starting point. Penicillin was--by then--widely available and used. The possible doublings--and hence chances for errors in replication which could lead to resistance--is roughly 174,155,117 generations. The entire genome of a fast growing bacterial species could be replaced several times over given the geometric progression under ideal circumstances. That is really quite sobering.

Some researchers are predicting a 'post-antibiotic' future. Almost surely some microbes will defeat current medicine while others will not.

Even now, lack of exposures is by far the best weapon. Sure bacteria are ubiquitous, but thankfully, most are not pathogenic to humans.

Hand washing beats hand wringing every time.

Be informed, but don't succumb to irrational fears. Yes, I know how odd that may seem coming from me, but I do not fear pathogens--in fact, I rarely fear things which might ACTUALLY kill me--but I do believe in being prepared.

I am fully aware of my awfully clipped sentence structure that pervades this post. This post is also lacking proper linkages and segues between topics. I am simply too fatigued to care. It has been a hell of a weekend, and my brain is full. I would like to be excused now. I have the Sword of Damocles still over my head. It is not yet known if and what manner my eye issues are going to take. I have a mere eight days to get my ocular pressures into an acceptable area. One eye is really close, the other not nearly so. I'm coming to terms with the whole mess, but it still troubles.

Spacely Space Sprockets..and other tricks

NASA finds unusual effect.

If you read the article it strikes me as odd that the writer claims that "a microwave thruster system that requires no propellant does indeed generate a small amount of thrust" and then goes on to state that "solar power can be used to produce the microwaves"(which ostensibly provide propulsion). Solar energy is the initiating propellant. At any rate, it all seems very odd indeed as all things involving quantum mechanics are.

A truly geeky quote:

"Test results indicate that the RF [radio frequency] resonant cavity thruster design, which is unique as an electric propulsion device, is producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon and, therefore, is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma..."

Those darned virtual particles, now you can measure something about them, now you cannot. I need a multiverse expert to chime in and expain to me just where that virtual stuff comes from and where it goes. I suspect that it is another dimension or universe that we cannot hope to enter save for mathematically.

The measured effects are still really small. Two separate teams are off by a factor of ten. But, as proof of concept, it seems to pass muster. One has to wonder just how to scale things up to power spacecraft. Will it be simple scaling? Will it be process refinement? Will it be some of both? I would wager that the answer--if it is going to be forthcoming--will involve both scale and process.

It never ceases to amaze me that applications of quantum mechanics are thought impossible when the various predictions of quantum mechanics have been experimentally confirmed to the absolute limit of our current means to test those predictions.

I would be really impressed if we could actually warp space-time or open up wormholes on a scale large enough to be useful for something. Only really massive objects can appreciably warp space-time..might some form of virtual gravity also be able to illicit such an effect? Wormholes--at least as I am familiar with the concept--potentially take far too much energy in this universe to be technologically feasible. Might some variation of quantum mechanics be able to exploit the virtual particle/energy(vacuum fluctuation) or multiverse theory overcome what might not be a true law of nature, and more of a local ordinance?

I do not profess to even know enough about such matters as to venture a guess. The universe we all claim to know is weirder than we know. Other universes are almost certainly going to seem weirder still to those that do not inhabit them. Of course the last sentence is pure speculation. The sentence preceding that one is proving a much tougher nut to crack. This is why I live for science. We live in a wonderfully weird place. A place where out simian brains are not especially well equipped to handle problems very far above that of surviving on the savannah.

I am still fascinated that Newton's work preceded that of Darwin's and Wallace's by a couple of hundred years. Humanity must have had blinders on. I fear that we do still.

Life'll Kill Ya.*

*(Apologies to Warren Zevon..I was fortunate to talk to The Excitable Boy after a concert he played in Concord, NH.)

Okay gentle reader, I am not going to wade into the deep end of the pool today, for danger lurks in the warm shallows, and that is where our story comes from today.

Bacteria rarely get their due. Flesh eating bacteria, now that is news! I am not excited over necrotizing bacteria lurking in warm, shallow brackish and/or salt water.
However, here is another case where the broad spectrum antibiotic doxycycline(combined with a second AB is a first line treatment)

I recently finished a 21 day course of doxycycline for Lyme(Borreliosis). I would never advocate prophylactic use of ANY drug. However, given that I am sometimes away from the realistic possibility of proper medical treatment I think it prudent to have two different agents on hand before wandering way off the grid. My insurance paid a princely sum for my course of doxycycline. There are simple ways to obtain a good broad spectrum topical AB--say chlorhexidine hyclate, for instance--and easy ways to obtain doxycycline and perhaps ampicillin and/or amoxycillin WITH clavulanic acid to increase potency against treatment resistant bacterial strains.

Of course these things would be the last things to add to your 'end of the world' first-aid kit.

I asked my favorite pharmacist about different combinations of meds for going way off the grid, and she said that these might all prove useful.

The reason for two--or even three--broad spectrum antibiotics(ABX) is due to modes of action. If you do not know why this is an important consideration, you should not search out any ABX. Honestly. Although these particular ABX are chosen for wide effectiveness against both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, without knowing modes of action--and the various types of microbial targets--you are likely to do the wrong thing.

There is no way that I would ever attempt to procure anti-virals. The only AV class that I am even remotely familiar with are acyclovir and its derivatives. Palliative care and POSSIBLE prophylactic use of ABX are the limit of my knowledgebase concerning how to treat viral conditions in the middle of nowhere.

This post does not specify what to use for any bacterial or parasitic infection. You have to do your own research on what you are likely to confront in your area of the wild world. I am most likely a lot less ready than I think I am. Let us hope that I will never have to put any of my remedial first-aid skills to the test...again. I did save a fellow that concussed himself while riding a motocrosser way off the track. That was an easy one. Happy Thursday all! Be safe, and be prepared!

On edit: The reasons for this odd post can be found here, where I blather on about vector-borne illness, here, where I get downright evangelical about vector illnesses, and finally here, where I was tick bitten, but Lyme(borreliosis) had not yet been confirmed. All of those things comprise the impetus for today's ramble. Sorry to put you through that again.

Tech Talk, and something made news that I have been angered about for 3 decades.

Okay, gentle reader. Today I found out that Facebook is the new king of the valley.

I have been on facebook, but have never clicked on any ads..of course having AdBlockPlus with facebook silliness settings set on kill means I don't see many ads. FB now has a larger market cap than IBM. That's laughable. Facebook remains the shallowest of big things on the 'Net. That will likely only get worse. Google+ would be cool if Sergey and Larry didn't want your soul, but whilst I have an account, I only use it to make pretentious comments about Youtube vids.

Can we talk about Twitter? I still do not get it. Sure, it has morphed some since the days of your-world-in-140-characters-or-less, but Twitter remains startlingly inane.

In non-news, The sixth mass extinction event has made a headline. I have been on this since I was an undergrad in the early years of the 1980s. "Anthropocene defaunation" is the latest label, but is hardly inclusive. What about flora? Photosynthetic plants are the most vital bigger things that aide in the biosphere's ability to maintain homeostasis. I haven't forgotten about algae.. you guys are plants too. Hopefully, this issue gets big play. Given humankind's long and sordid record of sweeping the really important stuff under immovable carpets, I will not be holding my breath.

Theplanet is still warming at an accelerating rate. Warmest quarter in history just came to an end, and July is shaping up to be a scorcher as well. El Nino's biggest effect may be next year, but given record highs of sea surface temps., this year is not going to be a picnic. I have a lot more that ittitates me, but my Dr. tells to rest my eyes, and "keep taking those drops." Next appt. is for 08.12.2014. I am hoping for good news. I have done all that I can do.

Mars? Really?

Mars or Bust! NASA wants to go to Mars.

I suppose that's a lovely thing to wish for, but we should really start undoing the damage to Terra before we--as humans--go afield and screw up another planet.I support nearly all scientific endeavors, but this seems really small.Okay, let us put aside the absolute wisdom regarding sending a manned mission to the red planet. I really do not like sociology, even when it concerns science. What kind of technical issues are there? There are really only two. Adequate propulsion and life support.I am not a rocket scientist..and rocket scientists aren't particle physicists ;)

It appears that NASA is eyeing Solar Electric Propulsion to move masses to the red planet. Strangely, Wikipedia has a much better treatment on the subject.

My big issue with this technology is the cost/benefit ratio. It will not be cheap to do. The reason for this is quite basic. Ion engines don't give you escape velocity energy levels. So, at present we are looking at bog standard chemically propelled initial stages, and then a transition to more advanced forms of propulsion. Not cheap. That will not get funded in the current(pardon the obvious pun) climate(another zing!).

What about life support?

This isn't your standard technical set of issues. It is more a managing humans over long periods issue where technology will be brought to bear. Will gaming be part of the equation? How about sex? I am certain NASA will want their astronauts to arrive in fine fettle. Just how does one insure mental stability as well as physical fitness over great times and distances?

We simply do not know. Are nootropic chemicals part of the answer? What about psychedelics? There are lots of unknowns, and no animal models with which to guide us. People put in isolation over much shorter time frames have not fared very well. Although the Russians claimed to have had success in attempting to model a likely environment. I would go batty.

No Mars, please. Let us clean up this rock first.

*Sigh* U.S. "lawmakers" claim that the U.S. is too dependent on Russkiean rockets.

This is mind-warpingly stupid. Experts tell science and technology illiterates that US is too dependent on Russian rockets

Ya think? Now why could that possible be?...hmmm.

Since we mothballed Apollo we haven't had a real rocket development in the US. Why? Becuase short-sighted politicians from Reagan--whom Edward Teller infamously got him and his administration to to back the stooopid Space Defense Initiative(SDI)--to Obama there has been zero leadership on hard science initiatives.

Reagan was perhaps the most scientifically illiterate president ever; until GW Bush perhaps wrested the title away.

Why are lawmakers believing these all sceinced out geeks now? For the only reason they EVER listen to reason..it is less politically palatable to do otherwise. These Washington hacks that couldn't tell a meson from a double-decker bus terrorizing the streets of Boise, Idaho by running against traffic on Interstate 84, are now ready to listen to people that they cannot understand because it scores easy political points.

These are the same people that refuse to do anything substantive about the greatest threat to our existence; global climate change, yet when it comes to ceding rocketry to the Russians, are only all too happy to listen to another set of sciency geeky types to score easy political layups. This is--in a nutshell--what is really wrong with this country.

Global climate change? "The science is still out." (Duh-fuh?)

Big giant threat from Russian rocket superiority..a problem which was directly caused by those now tasked to bridge the gap. No wonder I have glaucatomous eyes. I think that my eyes are the relief valves that keep my head from exploding over obvious hypocrisies.

I firmly believe that there should be a basic level of scientific literacy that anyone running for any office where these matters are to be entrusted. Call it the SSATs(Scientific Scholastic Aptitude Test(s)) for aspiring politicos.

I take no joy in pointing out the lack of scientific literacy among our elected officials. It gives me great pains to expose them. Let's take William Jefferson(can you imagine the nerve?) Clinton's level of scientific literacy. I don't know what kind of creds you need to be a Rhodes Scholar, but apparently skills in mathematics and a high level of scientific literacy aren't part of that program. Clinton was so scientifically challenged that he had to get advisors to explain to him the likelihood of Richard Preston's pretty awful book "The Cobra Event" becoming manifest. I will give Clinton credit. He knew that he didn't know shit about science, and took the advice of real scientists to move a tiny chunk of his policy. "It's the economy, stupid" nothwithstanding. Politically savvy, maybe, but Clinton might have had a legacy if he had ascted on global climate change. His eight years of doing nothing of importance remain a terrible waste.

There are smart people in this country. Alas, very, very few of the best minds ever run for public office.

Bing and Firefox 30

Here's another tech. post. Sorry.

I have now switched to Bing as my search provider of choice. Why?

Google wants to know everything about me, you, and the other 7 billions of humans inhabiting this grossly overpopulated rock.

Firefox 30 now gets the nod as my default web browser. Why?

Google Chrome still doesn't really offer a way to set the cache at 5MB. That's where I have Firefox set. I would state that FF 30 loads pages faster as well, but I'm not currently well enough sighted to run the requisite tests to make that call. Yes, FF still uses egregious amounts of system RAM whilst running, but faithfully releases all those MB to the pool with the closure of the browser.

Google's newest version of their terms of use is appalling.

It's beginning to shape up as Google Services vs. Microsoft Bing Services for the soul of true computing.

I don't know what Apple is doing, as I still don't understand the appeal of tablets, and as for the iPhone, when it's $30 sans contact, I may give it a look. MP3 players are not worth more than 25USD. That's why I have two Sandisk Sansa Clip+s that I paid less than a combined 50USD. I picked up some 32GB micro-SD cards for 8USD ea., and I'm beholden to no xTunes bloatware and insane prices.

I am de-Amazoning as well. I buy less and less there, as other etailers commonly offer the products and services that I need and/or want for less cost.

The Mozilla Foundation is a great group of geeks. Microsoft now seems the lesser of all evils, and the earth still isn't round. A circle is round. The earth is perhaps best described as a slightly oblate spheroid...without getting all geometry happy.

The best thing that all this competition has done is offer you, me, us, wider choices of quality products from which to choose--and many are now, or will soon be--ostensibly free. Read those Privacy/Terms Of Use Statements.

Why am I still using Blogger? Now that, is a good question. I have written some decent blog scripts in Perl, but I can't see hosing a blog, and if I was to publish on my Comcast/Xfinity pages, my blog would have even less visibility than it does even now. That does seem more than a bit of a dodge. In fact, I do believe that it is. I can't fix all of my privacy ills in a day. There is no true anonymity on the 'Net. I really dislike this personality quirk. *shrugs*

That is all from the consumer end of my cave.

Hacking Tesla Motor car..

Yawn. Link to frivolity. This is a controlled event..or rather, non-event.

I think it would be fairly easy given enough time to hack into a true motor car. But Tesla has made all the rules, and most certainly made getting the 10K USD prize a most unlikely event against an opponent that has had time to harden itself against the particular type of hack that will bring home the 10K.

Tesla Motors should give the prize to any team that downs the vehicle's communication. It would be fun to see if Tesla's comm. could thwart a seriously intense DDoS(Distributed Denial of Service) attack. That would be much harder to defend against, esp. if a talented group could--I'd offer "would" here--take down Tesla's nascent version of SkyNet. There is no doubt that anything plugged into a network that is connected to an external source will be hacked. It is just a matter of time and technique. Remember when Macs "didn't get viruses?" I do not, but then security is quite important when working on enterprise level systems. Macs have been, will be, now, and forever, be hacked.

I know better, and I was once, while not hacked, taken over by ransomware that took me a day to totally clean out.

Tesla, you will be hacked, but not likely while you are watching. One possible way to defeat what is certain to be a hardened target is from the inside. Too easy.

DARPA is going to take a hot on their "Hack-Proof" drone software and hardware. If it flies, it is open to various forms of attack. Simple signal disruption, to a brute force EMP may not technically be hacking, but it'll kill a drone, or anything else with even a mild form of electronics. Enigma wasn't hackable, until it was. Every time one of these schemes is launched, sooner or later, they are compromised. Of course if DARPA finds the hacker, they'll really have only two choices: 1) Hire the hacker(s), or 2) Make them disappear.

I am pretty certain that I could build a decent EMP generator that would knock out a whole field of drones on the tarmac. Building a non-directional EMP generator is absurdly easy. One can envision that with proper shielding that the device could be made directional. Generating intense RF signals is hardly a secret. While I was at Uni. as an undergrad, we had BS sessions about building such things..and this circa 1980-81. In lieu of building powerful RF generators, we decided to toss together a whole series of cast off traffic lights and variably strobe them using plans that I sketched out in perhaps 15 minutes, and yes, I used the school's lithography equipment to make up a few boards to neaten up the wiring.

The EE undergrads were the hit of keg party light show spectaculars.

In the truest spirit of all-good-things-must-come-to-an-end, there was a dorm fire, and all our lighting gear was seized, never to be seen again. Many inquiries were made, but I suspect that some faculty member thought that our clever little experiment was just too cool to be given back. Traffic lights are much larger than they appear. All of ours were nearly a meter in height.

Of course we made other devices. I had just turned 18 when I entered Uni. In my six years there, I think I left some sort of mark.

I still cannot see well.

I

Still can't see, but retinal Specialist may get all Luke Skywalker on my eyes.

Alas, my IOP isn't as low as it needs to be. After 16 days of drug therapy, my IOP is still too elevated. Not by too awfully much, but a few mm Hg too high. My new bad eye is @ 23mm Hg, when my RS wnats it to be around 20. I am trying everything to get it down to permissible levels.

40 mins. of hard aerobic activity each day, more fish oil, nuts, proper hydration, eye pressure specific lowering exercise, and a host of other things.I go back in a month's time. If no progress has been made, it's laser time to the trabecular meshwork.

I need some new bits as well, but they are available, and should restore my vision in my better eye.

Aging can suck. It is utterly baffling. My internal medicine is that of a fit teenager, but my eyes are those of a centenarian..well, not really. I don't have AMD as yet. I am having a hard time getting my BP over 120 Systolic directly after aerobic work. My pulse gets into the 120PBM range, so the cardio system works.

Is there a reason for today's post? I'm certain that there is, but I am still sort of freaked out over my eye docs. appt., and my attention span has suffered...where was I?

Tommy Ramone died yesterday. Bummer.

I really have drawn a blank. Now, in Scrabble that would be good thing indeed, but not when trying to construct a blog post. Sorry about that.

My eye is still wonky, but the US might get haggis!

No news on the eyeball front. Since it is now beyond 1:30 PM EDT, I feel that a reading of my eyeball angiographs must not require immediate surgical intervention. Yay for small things. I was much more worried than my last post indicated.

In other exiting news, the US is considering lifting the ban on haggis! How exciting is that? Of course it's only a wee bit of a omnibus trade deal between the US and the UK-EU empire of evil. Just kidding to the three Americans clamoring for genuine Scottish haggis.

I cannot really read the news as yet. However, from Fox News Science comes Ancient Asteroid Destroyer Finally Found and it's a new kind of meteorite. Can Fox shit out a headline or what? At any rate, the reason I picked Fox News to provide my gentle reader with a sciency story is because of all the the great headlines found in the right sidebar...courtesy of Live Science.

Danger! Falling Rocks: Meteorites and Asteroids (Infographic)

Fallen Stars: A Gallery of Famous Meteorites

and

When Space Attacks: The 6 Craziest Meteor Impacts

Yes, gentle reader, those are the actual headlines from Live Science. Sigh.

These are four reasons why I don't use Fox News as a source..don't most of their science denying audience believe in a 6000 year old creation myth?

Live Science is pandering to the truly uninformed. Sure, the last article is a very geo-centric bit of provincialism, but to not at least give a passing nod to Shoemaker-Levy 9 and its really spectacular series of impacts on that Jovian planet seems like a "swing and a miss" to this astro-geek.

That's all for today as I am on eye rest, and DNS(Dragon Naturally Speaking) is giving me fits!

Given my paucity of posting, you'd think I put an eye out

Well, my gentle reader, the answer is not that far removed from reality. I have had a Central Retinal Vein Occlusion in my right eye for in excess of six years. I'll abbreviate that to "CRVO." My retinal specialist is keeping my eye pressures in the normal range, but--and this is huge and really sucks--I am now having symptoms of a Branch Retinal Vein Occlusion in my left eye, formerly "the good one."

It is still the less troubled eye, as my central vision is almost unaffected. However, the prognosis is not great.

My retinal specialist is going over my flourescein angiographs this weekend and we are going to explore treatment options on 06.30.2014..yep, Monday.

I had the new eye issue come to the fore exactly one week ago.

I was totally asymptomatic prior to both eyes becoming afflicted. I urge everyone over 50 Y/O to get their IOP(Intraocular Pressure) checked at least annually. If there is glaucoma in your family at least twice per year is recommended.

Lest you think that my condition is due to elevated blood pressure, it is not. My typical readings are 116/68. My retinal specialist confirmed this for me years ago. I can almost throw quotation marks around his remarks. He said that IOP hypertension, and arterial hypertension are some rimes linked, but not in all cases. I have great BP, but pretty lousy IOP--unless treated with prescription eyedrops that either reduce aqueous humor, or facilitate outflow through the retinal system.

There are specific groups that are genetically and/or hormonally predispoed to elevated IOP, and subsequent development of glaucoma. Then there are people that do not present elevated IOP, but develop common open-angle glaucoma. This is what I have, with comorbidity of Retinal Vein Occlusions. I'm not a medical professional, just a patient that is simply not satisfied until he has all the known facts about his condition. Thank nature I have zero other physiological issues.

That's all I have today. This post was very cathartic for me. I really need to find a way to get all Zen around these issues. More data is usually the key that unlocks the path to reasoned contentedness for me. Way down on my list of things to be concerned about is the fact that July is my birth month, and I'm due for a motor vehicle license renewal this year. There are times when the blind, pitiless universe really shows itself to be rife with just those attributes.

This post was generated with much help from Nuance's "Dragon Naturally Speaking" Premium Edition v12.

It has been a pretty lousy week.

While this isn't strictly science, it is important.

Noam Chomsky on our extinction..and other musings.

While I think that Dr. Chomsky misses the larger point that it is the greater "we" that allowed "corporate elites" to flourish, there is not much on the science side that one can easily refute. Capitalism is the exterminator of worlds. Sorry, to twist the phase that J. Robert Oppenheimer pulled from the Bhagavad Gita, but while the many ills that the Manhattan Project brought to humanity, none can compare with Capitalism. Imagine if you will a system that only thrives by extracting more and more forever from a finite world. That's Capitalism. Okay, I know what you're thinking, as I'm thinking it as well. "What the hell is Todd going on about here?"

I'm glad that you asked. Well, truth be known, I'd rather not have to answer this, but I shall :)

Capitalism, as it is now practiced, is the greatest threat to our planet. Unfettered Capitalism since the Industrial Revolution has done more to toxify the planet than perhaps all other things combined.

I have already deconstructed the notion of the "noble savage" in this post. Human beings pretty much suck for all life forms--including human life.

Unfettered Capitalism has only accelerated species extinction, and all the ills that entails by many orders of magnitude.

Since I am on a no bullshit tirade, I have to blame medicine here as well. Modern medicine has taken the principle of Malthusean catastrophism and turned it into a once quaint notion. This is most certainly NOT a food production issue, although increased food production has played a secondary role.

Take a look at this, and tell me that we are not--by any reasonable means--entirely fucked.

Oh, and while I'm pointing fingers, economists are not scientists by any reasonable yardstick. If you think I jest, while you can be continually wrong and still be practicing science, you have to make predictions that pan out. The Economist magazine is held up as some kind of Holy book, but see Massimo Pigliucci's deconstruction of "the dismal science" as practiced by The Economist in: Nonsense on Stilts I really don't know where that came from, but it holds water.

It has been said that paleontology isn't a "science" because it lacks predictive value. While paleontology cannot yet make predictions about future fossilizations, the predictive power of paleontology has yielded spectacular results. Why do you think Neil Schubin knew exactly where to look to find Tiktaalik roseae? Because evolutionary biology combined with the known dates of lobed finned fossil fish, and early amphibians were known to a high degree of accuracy. Der.

I am really getting off-base here. Shorter post: Chomsky and science 1, planet wrecking Capitalists, 0.