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.

Bullshit about The Great Barrier Reef...missing all key points!

Stupid as is Stupid Doesn't..or some such horseshit. I thought Gump was way over-rated.

This article seems --if you don't ACTUALLY READ IT--to state that The Great Barrier Reef handles climate change with aplomb. The study only focused on cooling climates during periods of glaciation. That's not what's happening today. The reef is dying! It's not just about warmer sea water surface temperatures, it's about UV levels--remember the ozone holes?--and it's about rate of change, and still more, it's about pollution of the oceanic waters. I'm not going to beat the CO2 drum any longer. The VoA is a very odd place to find anything science related.

The headline is entirely misleading. I find this very troubling on a day when GOP tapped EPA heads are overwhelmingly calling for far more to be done about the issue of climate change than even current oval office sitter, Barack Obama has called for..astounding! This is the kind of stuff that gives my forehead wrinkles. No, it's not ALL due to me bashing the front of my skull into various harder things. It's also due to decades of eyebrow raising due to the apparent ignorance of others.

Amazon misses by a bit, Apple misses by miles.

I live in the tech. world. Unlike many people that write about technology stuff, I have patents.

This alone does not give me super powers, but I do have street cred.

Apple launched a new iMac(?) today with some specs that are circa 2006. A 1.4Ghz i5 mobile processor in a desktop. The mobile i5 1.4Ghz processor has about as much FPU performance as a 2006 Athlon X2 5600+. One can infer that since Intel has not made an all new architecture here, that a 1.4Ghz dual core i5 will deliver FPU performance even lower than the venerated and decrepit old AMD processor. If the "Apple club for poor performance per dollar spent" crowd comes through, they'll eat this thing up. After all, it's a mere 1,100USD.

For that level of performance you can buy a Dell XPS box with a blazingly fast real desktop CPU in a real tower and GPU AND a 24" 1920x1200 IPS panel that will demolish the iMac in any benchmark that anyone cares to throw at both machines. The Dell can often be had very well equipped for 649USD and the monitor for 375USD. The Dell machine will be roughly a billion times faster when performing intensive tasks. Okay, so that's hyperbole. I cannot give you--my gentle reader--an apples to apples comparison, because no i5 processor has ever been delivered with such a low clock speed.

One can state with a fair degree of accuracy that overall system thoughput on the Dell i7-4770 machine will be approximately 4x as fast in multi-threaded applications.

You'd have to love those rotten apples to bite into that fruit.



Amazon misses the boat by 50USD per phone and picks sub-par carrier at launch.

Amazon new Fire Phone. The phone itself seems evolutionary, not revolutionary. 3D phones don't seem to have many advocates. So, the phone is 3D. Sort of a yawn at this juncture. What Amazon failed to do was execute on two fronts. First, they have partnered with ATT which is a disaster in my area. What Amazon should have done was to make the phone available on every carrier. No doubt, ATT is getting major kickbacks for every user that signs up a Fire phone with a 2 year 'agreement.'

Secondly, they missed the price point I said earlier that they had to hit to get penetration. 150USD for the device. This is what you're going to get with your new phone. A provider that has spotty nationwide coverage, a phone with a perverted version of the Android OS, and one year of 'free' Amazon Prime. OH! And 3D that no one's really going to use on a 4.7" screen.

Unlike the new iMac, the Fire phone is at least innovative. Amazon, more than any other tech. co. of late, has been at the fore of newer, better, faster.

The Amazon Fire has millions of built-in users. Still, the phone is hobbled by price sensitivity, and carrier choice.

The iMac should be DOA, but the legions of Apple fans may buy this out of intellectual laziness. It doesn't take a semiconductor engineer to see that this is a set of VASTLY overpriced hardware, in a market where price sensitivity has always been a major concern. The new, slower, cheaper, iMac isn't even a product that loyal Apple eaters should love.

Water, water, everywhere!

Hidden Ocean Discovered on Saturnian Moon. I think it's pretty cool that inference of the ocean was derived at by gravitational anomalies in the Saturnian moon's gravitational fields. This is why curious persons everywhere should support at least unmanned spacecraft and flights. If not for the Cassini spacecraft's close fly-by, this unexpected result would have gone unnoticed. Basic science doesn't always yield unexpected results, but compared to all other human activities, science yields more unexpected results than all others combined.

More water news via scientific inquiry..

"Oceans" of water found locked within earth. No, this isn't the biblical "waters of the deep," but it's almost a certainty that religious types will try to spin it as such. Go read the article. I am literate enough in these areas simplify things further with accuracy, but for any reader of this blog, it's a easy read.

More water...

Namib Beetle Inspires C nanotube device to remove H2O from driest places on earth Carbon nanotubes are a highly interesting substance. In the water collection iteration, C nanotubes are set up as a hydrophilic, and hydrophobic array. Call me a geek--you won't be the first--but "water-loving" and "water-repelling" are clunky terms. In one of my personal favorite uses of C nanotubes, they are used to Instantaneously boot computers by enabling system RAM to enter the non-volatile state, and to replace all manner of flash memory. A very disruptive technology. Sorry about the digression into other nanotube technologies.

With that, I, am. outta. Here.

I may have Lyme..No, seriously.

After my tirade about Lyme or borrelosis, or whatever medicine ultimately calls the typically tick vectored disease, your humble blogger may have been infected. I removed an adult I. scapularis earlier today. I cannot fathom how the tick got through my multi-layered tick defenses. Nonetheless, the little arachnid got through, and 'got me good.' I am on doxycycline prophylaxis right now.

The offending tick was DOA. This is where reality and the CDC part company. The tick was confirmed as an adult, and while I was telling my arachnid tale of woe, the APRN concurred with my observation that adult I. scapularis do indeed have the capacity to transmit Lyme to humans. Her other degree is as a PhD entomologist.

While it was no fun BEING the news, it was good to see what laypersons here in NH have long suspected--and some knew--borne out. I should note that my vitals were checked, and my BP was high at 150/80, and my temperature was low at 87.6 F. Since my visit, I have checked my BP, and it now reads 119/66. Stressors have always given me spikes in BP that are short in duration.

Given my low temperature reading, it is likely that the possible infection hasn't yet provoked a typical immune response. This was good news. The bite area(center of sternum)shows much inflammation, and the possible beginnings of the erythema migrans rash typical of Lyme.

I knew I was at risk, so I did everything that I could to lessen the likelihood of getting bitten. Okay, the one thing that I refuse to do is to stay indoors. Here's what I have done:

1) Applied permethrin to clothing and gear

2) Applied 40% DEET to boots, pants, and exposed skin

3) Performed tick checks after each outdoor excursion

4) Stayed out of areas with leaf litter and other tick harboring areas

5) Showered after going out of doors

There appears but one way to avoid tick bites: stay inside. I am still befuddled as to how the tick managed to burrow so deeply in what must have been a relatively sort amount of time.

Ticks are supposed to be an indicator of a healthy ecosystem. I agree with this right up to the time I get bitten. I am no alarmist, but the incidence of vector-borne diseases of all kinds are on the rise in the US. Will a time come when every first-aid kit will contain antibiotics? How about anti-virals, like Acyclovir? I'll be honest, I keep a stock of Chlorhexidine gluconate handy for an AB wash. I don't use it frivolously. If the faeces ever contacts the oscillator--and I for one, am not counting on it--preparation will be key to short and long-term survival.

Don't read this and think I'm an anti-government crackpot. It is not the continuance or fear of government that motivates my preparatory activities. I'd like to see humanity reduced by say 70%. I just don't want to be in that 70%.

Less weirdness later.

Still on a vector-borne disease "crusade"

Okay, so "crusade" isn't at all accurate. I'm a pretty hardcore materialist. It is not that I am wedded to an entirely naturalistic cosmic view of everything. Given extraordinary evidence to support a god or gods belief, I would shift my cosmic perspective without issue, or comment.

Moving back to the point... After yesterday's post, I decided to look around for Lyme information. I struck tick vector gold!

Discover Magazine gives Frontline Coverage of Tick stuff. Sorry about the use of "Frontline" while posting a link, but it does work.

Discover Mag has much more than the fascinating article referenced above. If you are at all interested in this subject, be sure to read the comments. Kerry Clark, who likely has done more than any other individual to bring southern Lyme to the fore engages reader's comments. The medical community in the southern US is as bad as the medical community here in NH as to the realities of tick-borne diseases.

Also on Discover:

A fairly comprehensive treatment of the whole Lyme debacle.

The CDC(Centers for Disease Control) appear to finally coming around to the prevalence of Lyme.

CDC reports that Lyme is ten times more common than previous estimates. Ten times more prevalent. Still, even given the latest data on Lyme, the CDC is sill sticking to the old data that 95% of Lyme cases are confined to the usual suspects geographically speaking. Looking at this table, New Hampshire had the highest incidence per state on a per capita basis in 2012. That the infection rate my be ten times the number of reported cases is alarming. Even though much of what the CDC has been shown to be wrong, here's the CDC's clearinghouse for Lyme. Once again, science is way ahead of the official governmental stance. There has been much made of the medical community's slow response to Lyme and possibly Lyme-like disease. The offending bacilli are of the Borrelia genus.

In addition to the above clusterf*ck, every source I can find states that Lyme is spread only via the nymph stage of I. scapularis. This is completely wrong. Adult I. scapularis ticks are also vectors to human disease. How do I know this? It's pretty simple. My brother Bryan contracted Lyme from an adult I. scapularis. We know this to be true, as the feeding tick was collected, and two labs confirmed the species, the stage of development, and the presence of Borrelia burgdorferi; the only bacterium currently acknowledged by the medical community to transmit Lyme to humans. Discover is correct. The debate over Lyme or Lyme-like illness borders on being insane. With migratory birds, and other species that keep the disease circulating in nature having no respect for state and national boundaries, the affected areas are truly largely unknown. Anyone that gets bitten by a tick of any species in any area that has a reasonable chance of harboring tick borne vector disease should be given the option of at least a short, prophylactic course of antibiotics. That's how the medical community should be handling this issue.

One more thing, bedbugs are another potential Lyme vector. Read the bit on other Borrelia species found in the paragraph titled: Bedbugs and Infectious Disease, and go to bottom of page for an account of a potential transmission.

The more we know about Lyme, the worse the picture gets. The funding for reasearch for what looks like a national health crisis--that's only likely to get worse--is astonishingly paltry.

If you develop symptoms that are typical of Lyme disease, try a physician. Given the rise of treatment resistant bacteria, many physicians are loathe to prescribe a course of antibiotics. While this is typically a good call, there are times--and this is certainly one of them--where the medical community is miles behind the data. Living in one of the densest areas for confirmed cases of Lyme, I wouldn't leave the office without a script. When a colleague had to have a pacemaker implanted due to a missed case of Lyme, it alters your outlook on these things.

Pound the damned table if you must. Advanced Lyme is nothing you want.

I got nothin' today...Wait! I have vector-borne diseases

No science news today. I'm certain that stuff that's actual science, not the application of science, which is technology was reported on today. I could probably really fudge another post(as I did last night), but I would much rather post less, and offer either more information than even that reported by "science news" sites. I was involved all day with applied botany. Lifting and toting many bags of softwood mulch and digging holes in mother terra can be quite tiring in ninety degree(F) weather with relatively high levels of relative humidity.

I also applied mulch, watered many plants, and did other planty things.

We also feed thirty-two(so far) identied species of avian life, and I did time aiding all those hundreds of individual birds by building and putting up a stagimg perch where the birds can hang whilst waiting a turn at the wild bird feeders.

Other yard/garden work was performed as well. I am something of a non-expert on Platycodon grandiflorus cultivars, and while not a plant completist, one that is as engaged as I am in gardening should learn as much as possible about their favorite plants. Balloonflower(Platycodon grandiflorus) is my area of study. I am also engaged in building up wildlife habitats on my little part of the world, and have been pretty successful in habitat restoration efforts.

I now count as garden/woodland regulars more amphibians and reptiles than I encountered as a youth in a more 'wild' setting.

Well, that does bring up a science related topic of concern: tick-borne pathogens.

7 April was World Health day, and this year's focus was on vector-borne diseases. I do not believe that one thinks of New Hampshire USA as a hotbed of vector-borne pathogens. Even twenty years ago this wasn't a real concern. The times have certainly changed.

The medical community was really behind the curve in NH. While we have the highest per capita incidence of Lyme, the medical community even five years ago did not generally recognize the risk. In the past five years the standard treatment for tick bites has gone from a wait-and-see if Lyme develops, to the now standard for ANY tick bite of a three day course of doxycycline(as long as doxycycline is not contraindicated), to the standard twenty-one day course if Lyme has been confirmed. I found AN article, which while only a year old, is no longer truly current.

Other rick-borne pathogens in New Hampshire:

But Lyme disease is not always the correct diagnosis.

"A lot of people are aware of Lyme, but they're not as aware of Babesiosis, Bartonellosis and Ehrlichiosis," Giard said. "Those have a devastating effect on people, and we're really concerned. So it's very important that when people go to get tested that they ask to be tested for all those tick-borne diseases, which are at epidemic levels."

Babesiosis is a human disease related to malaria parasites. It is associated with voles, chipmunks, mice and shrews. The white-footed mouse is the primary reservoir host. The Blacklegged tick is the main vector. Most human cases occur during summer.

Symptoms range from mild to life-threatening, including fever, fatigue, chills, sweats, headache, and more. Severe symptoms are more likely in people who are immunosuppressed, have had their spleen removed, and/or are elderly. Onset of symptoms is one to six weeks after the tick bite.

"When we test in our office, we're testing Lyme as well as those other organisms to determine if someone has been infected by a tick-borne bite," Giard said. "And I like saying 'tick-borne bite' because we've had patients come in whose symptomatology really points to Babesiosis rather than Lyme. We treat it as if we're treating malaria."

"Babesiosis in particular is quite nasty," Giard says, noting that it can enlarge the spleen and liver.

Giard retests patients every six hours because of the way these organism shed their DNA.

Bartonellosis can infect humans, mammals and a wide range of wild animals, according to lymedisease.org. Its bacteria are known to be carried by fleas, body lice and ticks. Scientists suspect that ticks are a source of infection in some human cases of Bartonellosis. Some people who recall being bitten by ticks have been co-infected with Lyme and Bartonella.

According to lymedisease.org, Bartonellosis is often mild, but in serious cases it can affect the whole body. Early signs are fever, fatigue, headache, poor appetite, and an unusual, streaked rash. Swollen glands are typical, especially around the head, neck and arms.

Ehrlichiosis is the name for several animal and human diseases. Victims usually report flu-like symptoms — headache, fever, muscle aches, fatigue — and sometimes gastro-intestinal symptoms or rash. Symptoms typically appear five to 10 days after being bitten by an infected tick. The lone star tick is the primary vector.

All in all, a rather sobering set of prospects.

I would be remiss if I didn't include Hantavirus, an often fatal bio-safety level four pathogen, with the white-footed Deer Mouse the most common vector, as well as a whole host of recent mosquito vector diseases.

Jamestown Canyon Virus And Powassan Virus are now found in NH. The former has a mosquito vector, and the latter a tick vector. We have been dealing with Eastern Equine Encephalitis(mosquito vector, transmissable to humans via mosquito feeding) and West Nile Virus(Mosquito vector) for over a decade.

I'm sure I have missed a few. In early June this year, it has been tick-borne disease that has garnered most of the coverage as our fierce winter--and subsequent spring runoff was great for tick survival, but--according to those in the field--really kept the mosquito counts down. No science, but lots of outdoor perils to be aware of..of course, prevention is the real key to stopping vector-borne disease. Mosquito repellent high in DEET should keep you free of the mosquito vector pathogens.

In contradiction to the popular--and demonstrably wrong--views about DEET being an effective tick repellent, it is simply not so. DEET is a poor tick repellent, Permethrin is a great tick repellent. I have personally fairly saturated my very light tan boots with forty percent DEET repellent and have watched black legged ticks(Ixodes scapularis..primary vector for Lyme and a few other pathogens to humans) crawl right across my boots as if I was wearing no repellent. This was at most thirty minutes after application. These were the poppy seed sized nymphs that are the most active feeders on humans, and the primary transmitters to us. DEET being effective for controlling ticks may work for some subset of the population somewhere, but here in central New Hampshire, Permethrin is the safe choice.

I would be remiss if I didn't say a bit about "bug" repellent safety. These are toxins. I cannot state with any degree of certainty that these agents are safe to use. I have read everything that I can find about the relative safeties of these two agents, and can draw no firm conclusions. Read all that you can, but consider this a warning, NO 'natural' products I have tried provide effective safety. Living here, I have tried dozens to date. One more thing, once bitten you are at risk. The longer an infected tick feeds the greater the hazard, but no one living where tick-borne disease agents exist is ever one hundred percent safe once bitten. Staying out of areas where ticks are known to be found isn't a great option. Please do not take my word for any of this. Consider it a starting point with which to conduct your own research. Have fun in nature, but try and lessen your overall risks.

Science Quiz Wrong Answer Buzzer and Mathematical Models of Evolution

First off, I reveal my one error in the CS Monitor's Scientific Literacy Quiz.

I could not recall the formula for computing acceleration in Newtons. If you take the quiz, you'll come across the 200 gram question..That's the one that got me. NO. I'm not giving you the answer. Please be honest. No resorting to Stephen Wolfram's Alpha search to glean answers. If you do this, you reinforce everything negative found in The Shallows. Don't be shallow. Wolfram Alpha was called "the coolest thing I've ever seen on the 'Net" by an astrophysics major at Hah-vid. That's Harvard to everyone not a Kennedy. We geeks know all the coolest stuff on the 'Net.

So now you know that I forget stuff I learned in HS physics. Shame that.

Okay, too much about my long-term memor..where was I going with this?

MIT Has the coolest stuff on this coast. Those CalTech kids no doubt have their biases as well. In strolling about the MIT Press journals I came across the Journal Of Computational Evolution. One would think that someone that did a summer at the venerated Cambridge, MA school would get a free sub. to a few journals..so what if I did work there in 1984. But no, I'd have to cough up $39/yr for a sub. Of course I can get the IEEE stuff gratis, but I am a member of the IEEE! A quick glance at this free article illustrates just how far CE modeling has come.

Using MatLab or Stephen Wolfram's Mathematica(there's S. Wolfram again)--simply for relative ease of development--the current algorithmic models are not only powerful tools for analyzing noted changes, but have predictive power for future courses of genetic mutations and subsequent expressions reaching all the way to phenotype. So, what does all this mean?

For my purposes, it all equates to irrefutable evidence for the fact of naturalistic evolution, and yes, toying with the equations is sort of fun.

I'll revisit this once I get some sleep, and after further cogitation of the consequences of the various algorithms.

Even the most casual observer will likely be shocked by the sophistication of these models. I find them almost endlessly fascinating, but I fear that I am wired differently than the balance of humanity.

I very likely posted this too quickly. I did not fully examine the algorithms in close enough detail to provide any useful commentary. For that I apologize.

Unlike the media, I'd much rather be accurate, than first with an observation.

Hey Maw, the Youngin's Getting Dirty Again..That's A Good Thing!

It has been said that the Internet is causing heavy search engines users to think less deeply. In fact, I just read the book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, It's not as corny as the title might lead one to believe. It concerns itself with neuroplasticity. While this is, in and of itself factual, the good news is that out search engine transformed noodles can--thankfully--be switched back to modes of heavier lifting in very short order.

So, just what does this have to the topic at hand? Good question. The answer is that it really doesn't have a thing to do with dirty misbehaving rugrats. However, I do have a method. The Internet is a great big messy database of some useful, but mostly it seems, useless information. That said, the Internet allows hacks like me to tunnel tight into hard science journals. That, gentle reader is the reason for the tortuous route I've had you folliow to get to the heart of the matter.

Without further ado, this segment of "as my stomach turns" burrows right into The Journal Of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. Here's where those carpet roaming fresh humans come into play.

Yes, the link gives you access to the full journal paper. Is that so shallow? Nah. For those not inclined to read dry scholarly treatments, the paper can be summed in a few simple words.

Let your infants get some exposure to allergens and bacteria. In other words, let 'em get dirty! The payoff can be enormous. Heck, I'll even quote from the paper:

Methods

The Urban Environment and Childhood Asthma study examined a birth cohort at high risk for asthma (n = 560) in Baltimore, Boston, New York, and St Louis. Environmental assessments included allergen exposure and, in a nested case-control study of 104 children, the bacterial content of house dust collected in the first year of life. Associations were determined among environmental factors, aeroallergen sensitization, and recurrent wheezing at age 3 years.

Results

Cumulative allergen exposure over the first 3 years was associated with allergic sensitization, and sensitization at age 3 years was related to recurrent wheeze. In contrast, first-year exposure to cockroach, mouse, and cat allergens was negatively associated with recurrent wheeze (odds ratio, 0.60, 0.65, and 0.75, respectively; P ≤ .01). Differences in house dust bacterial content in the first year, especially reduced exposure to specific Firmicutes and Bacteriodetes, was associated with atopy* and atopic wheeze. Exposure to high levels of both allergens and this subset of bacteria in the first year of life was most common among children without atopy or wheeze.

Conclusions

In inner-city environments children with the highest exposure to specific allergens and bacteria during their first year were least likely to have recurrent wheeze and allergic sensitization. These findings suggest that concomitant exposure to high levels of certain allergens and bacteria in early life might be beneficial and suggest new preventive strategies for wheezing and allergic diseases.

I know what you're thinking.."Hey, this study only applies to urban cradle crawlers. I live in the sticks." Fear not uptight parent. One can certainly apply the data here to your rural papooose filler.

A really close look at the data is quite revealing. Essentially, the younger the child is during exposures, the healthier they are as they mature. At least to the age of three to four years. Exposure at three years or older gives the expected result of the child having more allergic reactions, and susceptibility to bacterially induced wheezing and atopy.* At first blush it seems that the study's authors were expecting a different outcome. Even upon further reflection this could indeed be the case. The inverse relationships between early exposures and later lack of symptoms is both a bit counterintuitive and refeshingly positive. Human endogenous immune responses continue to amaze and delight. Okay, maybe not you, but me.

* Atopy is the tendency to be "hyperallergic." Atopy has a strong genetic component. In this study, one can infer that the atopic reactions are wheezing and allergen related asthma.

Take The Science Literacy Test, and Terran Train wrecks!

Of all the places to find a very basic Science Literacy Test "The 'Christian Science' Monitor" seems a most unlikely place. The test is pretty short, and fun if you know a bit of science. Your humble author got one wrong in the test(perhaps that's why I'm feeling so humble today). Nevertheless, I scored in a rarified segment of folks geeky enough to bother finishing the whole test. Tomorrow I'll tell you which question I got wrong, and why.

Go ahead and take the test. I promise it's really easy save for two or three questions. Then we'll compare blunders.

In real news, Moon Rocks Provide More Evidence that our moon's formation was indeed due to an earth and other unknown(yet oddly named)* planetary mass 'sized' bodily collision. Her name was Theia. This really does explain a great deal about why our largest natural satellite is so massive in relation to its 'parent,' and to the paucity of water and volatile compounds. The lack of isotopic differences between the bodies--the moon and earth--while pointing to a well, common ancestry, isn't definitive proof as other planets' moons are thought to have formed alongside their more more massive parents.

The new evidence shows a difference a 12 PPM of in oxygen isotopes between the earth-moon system. The difference most likely points to that interloper Theia colliding with the earth around 4.5 billion years ago. This does beg the question that if such a massive object collided with the earth, and the crust hadn't yet formed, why can the two bodies show differing amounts of oxygen isotopes in crust rocks and minerals? The moon's surface is--with good reason--believed to have been locked in place at the time of it's genesis.

The oldest dated crust on earth is 4.4 billion years old, so the impactor's influence on terran crust would be negated by the 100 million year age difference. Still, there are almost certainly evidences yet to be discovered. One can imagine that the blast ejecta would have orbited the young earth for a great many years. If a truly early meteorite could be found with the lunar isotopic oxygen signature--or better yet--an earthly and unknown other ratio, that would almost certainly seal the case as far as the scientific community is concerned. I suspect that such early meteorites have either been eroded away, or subsumed in tectonic action, but to dismiss the possibility seems more than a bit premature.

Wouldn't it be grand if such a find were made?

I have made no claim to be a scientist--other then in semi-conductor theory and parallel computing--so I am perhaps wildly speculating, but my lifelong love affair with geology hasn't been neglectful of continued study in the field. If some kind reader wishes to send me back to uni. I promise, I will not stop working until I have a post-grad degree in geology. Heck, I promise to work so hard as at my MS, that anything shy of a doctorate will not satisfy me.

*I stopped being amazed as to why humans have to name pretty much everything. The naming of one of the earth impactors seems a bit weird to me. Why doesn't the Chicxulub impactor have a name, when it is almost certainly the event which sounded the final death knell for the dinosaurs and lead to the 5th mass extinction event at the K-T Boundary? We have mountains of evidence for that event, and given our penchant for naming everything, why not that impactor? This is almost certainly THE event that gave rise to the age of mammalian dominance, and hence to us. How can the asteroid not have a name? Okay, I'm overdone.

This is a test

Testing, one two..ad infinitum, ad nasuseum. Yep. I've swapped in a bog standard template. Until I can re-enable commenting and all the other stuffs on the Blog, this Template will serve as a very easily read, very minimalist page. I do like the minimalist approach, but it could use some stupid CSS tricks to make it more "me."

Blog Name Change and some Tech. Babble

First of all, I am changing the blog's name. I know not what at present, but I don't want a "me, too" type of name. I have been working on the new Stylesheet, but Blogger and "don't be evil" Google seem to always find some way to break my CSS. If you look at my page source, you'll see that there is a lot of perfectly usable CSS that is maddeningly difficult to incorporate it into the latest Blogger software. Oh, it's easy enough to dump in there, but it doesn't display the way it would on, say, a less script heavy format. My pages used to display wonderfully. I used to keep my CSS current with Blogger updates, so all it took was a wee bit of tampering to have my pages appear well across browsers of any sort. I may simply open a new Blog to use as a CSS testbed. That really reeks of a disingenuous use of an ostensibly free resource, but what's a custom CSS developer to do? Too much about that.

In technology today, I found some interesting stuff.

Apple unveils new Prog. Lang.

WIRED reports programmers went "nuts" over the presentation. I yawned. Apple should support open standards. Ruby and Python are proven, and developers like working with them. "Objective-C" is new-ish, and doesn't seem to offer anything in the way of newer, better, faster, stronger, codebase development for guys like me, for instance. For almost half a year, I have been working on a email plug-in that might revolutionize the way in which people deal with a certain aspect of email nuisances. I have written it in Extensible Markup Language(XML), as well as in every language that requires special case handling to account for the differences in mail clients and/or operating systems. Sorry about that digression. Getting back on track.. I hope Apple coders like the new language, but Apple should have made the best of all moves, and used an open programming language. OpenCL and OpenGL simply aren't that open. This is really only an issue for game developers and those really tweaking UIs, but still, come on! These things are only truly open if they're supported at the hardware level, not through porting, or worse, emulation. Eek!

In other tech. news, it finally looks like Amazon is FINALLY going to be launching the long rumored "smartphone" on 18, June. I wish Bezos and Amazon well. It looks to be a 3D phone..I really don't know why that's so interesting. It very much reminds me of Douglas Adams's pronouncement: "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea..." In all seriousness, smartphones aren't all that. Call me a techno-snob if you wish. Many others have. So the phone is going to have projection capabilities. It seems only natural as Amazon had to do SOMETHING to differentiate itself from the pack. Of course Amazon does have something of a built-in userbase of millions and millions of shoppers. My forecast is that Amazon is will use existing hardware platforms--a new processor design and any attendant major tweaks to the "support staff" would not have escaped this blogger's attention--and will sell for at most 150 USD...at launch.

There was a lot more that I noted yesterday and today, but this is not a technology blog. I get enough of that at the office.

Science later!

My, But That's a Big One

No. Not that. We're talking about exo-planets FKA "Extra-solar Planets"."

Newly Discovered Exoplanet 17 Times More Massive Than Earth

Okay, if you read the article it states--I kid you not--that the newly discovered exoplanet is "17 times heavier than our planet." Heavier? For whom are these people writing? I really feel like banging my forehead into my keyboard. Are we that mathematically and scientifically challenged to have mass wrongly conveyed as weight in order for people to understand just what has been discovered?

Sigh.

The discovery itself is interesting for a whole host of reasons.

I'll choose two for illustrative purposes:

Firstly, theorists weren't certain that a 'rocky' planet could have this much mass and mot be a gas giant..like say, Jupiter. Well, I wonder just how this theory(more like speculation) was arrived at. It's foolish to base prejudices on what we see in our little insignificant eight planet system. One has to believe that more massive rocky planets have yet to be discovered. It seems to me that--mathematics aside--since the new planet "Kepler-10c" has an orbit very close to it's star, that hydogen and helium would have literally gravitated to the more massive star than a close, less massive object. I'm sure that some variant of the inverse square equation would put that right.

Secondly, if the scientific community is correct about the age of Kepler-10c--a mere 3 billion years after the universe's 'creation'--, heavier elements were available for planetary formation and much more interesting forms of chemistry. Very early life, anyone? This doesn't really surprise me as really massive hot burning stars have very short lives indeed. Lots of supernovae equate to lots of heavier elements.

I'm sort of shocked that the astronomical community has such a parochial view of things. This Pale Blue Dot(much thanks to the late Carl Sagan) is truly inconsequential on the galactic scale, much less the universal. Provincialism it seems, is not only the purview of politicians and other assorted charlatans.

Please don't get me wrong. I hold the scientific community in the highest regard possible for human beings. Nature, on the other hand, humbles us all the time, and the surprises that this discovery illuminate serve to show us just how wedded our thinking is to this insignificant speck of the universe. That said, it's the only place we have. We make our stand right here. That, in a great many ways, is a shame.

No Surprise Here: Humans, not climate, account for Disappearance of Pleistocene Megafauna

Humans, not climate, to blame for Ice Age-era disappearance of large mammals, study concludes

This poor author would have been shocked if the research pointed in ANY other direction. Heck, even though I am but a lowly semiconductor engineer, I have long thought that the latest mass extinction event was due to human activity; and just not since the Maori dined on the last Moa. We're apex predators, and the extinction vector(time of extinction and human migratory activities) of large land faunae just fit too well to dismiss the most likely factor in the onset of the Holocene Extinction Event. One could further speculate at this point that the period under the latest finding likely does not extend far enough back into time, as pre-modern hominids were likely also thinning populations of large terrestrial vertebrates to the point of no longer being able to sustain mating practices. With very few exceptions, the notion of the "noble savage" is wholly unwarranted.

I have been arguing the reason behind the megafauna extinction point with people in the field for several decades. Some have been in total agreement, others outright denial. What is really no longer open for debate is that "we" are causing, and being witness to, the sixth mass extinction event known to afflict this planet.

It is my hope that we are smart enough to start to curb species extinctions now. Our history here isn't at all promising.

The one thing we should give our children is a planet worthy of their custodial duty. It is our collective duty to make this a reality. Whilst my fingers are crossed, the rainforests burn, and the oceans become less able to trap atmospheric carbon as both surface temperatures rise, and plankton dies. There's no reason to be optimistic. But still, we must do whatever we can to mitigate the decline of the planet's toxification and subsequent species destruction.

It must be Cancer Tuesday

Below, I brought you the lung cancers breathalyzer.

Now, we have two intriguing studies about Mole Rats. Oddly, the two remotely related species have developed some tantalizingly similar adaptations to dealing with their subterranean existences which via the process of natural selection, make the small rodents almost entirely cancer free. One can imagine inducing tumor growth in laboratory conditions, hence the bit of a hedge.

The Blind Mole Rat appears to have a doubling of the genes that produce interferon beta-1, and a host of other adaptations.

The Naked-Mole-Rat appears to have a host of similar adaptive genes that enable both it and it's distant cousin to survive in very low oxygen environs without suffering all the typical ills of O2 deprivation.

That these adaptative changes both suit their hosts in their subterranean lives and appear to make it difficult to induce tumor development even when given oncogenic cocktails which prove lethal to mice is intriguing indeed. Since nature does little in the way of holding on to genetic material that serves no purpose, but ratchets up on beneficial mutations, it seems plausible that these long-lived rodents--which are neither moles nor rats--are retaining these genetic variations for manifold reasons. Plausibility does not in any way constitute fact, but once the tales of these two remarkable creatures get sorted out, don't be surprised if the low 02 and high CO2 adaptations stand quite alone from the genes that code for, and are expressed as cancer fighting battalions.

The world may yet yield to the 'misnomered' Mole Rats.

Dave Grohl..what's this about? New Diagnostic Lung Cancer Test

Okay, just to show my reader that I am not ALL SCIENCE, ALL THE TIME, I have to give Dave Grohl(Nirvana, Foo Fighters, etc.) a shout out. I love music, too. Although very little of current music causes me to take notice, Foo Fighters are really something special. Sorry, RHCP fans, Foo Fighters are where my rockin' mind goes whenever I think of bands that are still doing it. RHCP is Flea, with back-ups. Foo Fighters are fresh and a throw-back to real good rock. Apparently, Dave has inked a deal with HBO detailing the band's next album as travelogue.

That should be fun.

In other total coolness news, the full 38+ minutes of Nirvana's R&R Hall induction can finally be seen in decent quality on the web

Whilst medical breakthroughs aren't strictly science(applied technology), I can roam there occasionally as this is my party. A breathalyzer for lung cancer detection, that allegedly, not only detects lung cancers, but also--again, allegedly--differentiates between stages is really very cool indeed. The odd part about most lung cancers in the USA is that they are almost entirely avoidable. Kids these days are hopefully taught about the evils of recurring inhalations of tobacco smoke. I am not entirely without guilt here. I was shown a cancerous pair of lungs at a science museum at around ten years of age, yet I still smoked a bit as a teen, and then into my twenties while engaging in ethanol consumption. I have not allowed tobacco smoke to enter the temple of my body for approximately twenty-six years.

I also quit boozing at any level roughly fourteen years ago. Since both activities can give rise to myriad medical issues, it just seems prudent to go completely without either. I do miss the inebriant effect of ethanol, but the potential downsides far outweigh the few hours of social lubrication that ethanol certainly provides.

That's all for now. I may yet find a hard science item worthy of a few words.

I should note here that the blog isn't meant as a geek's tool to scientific nirvana(sorry about the pun). It's rather a place to start researching items that you might find interesting. In all honesty, a blog about cutting-edge advances in semi-conductor gate processes and shrinking lithography isn't likely to garner much readership. Oh, I could write about programming, web development, and all things network related, but there must thousands of blogs that already address these concerns.

At a less technical level, I could wax on about mineralogy, and paleontology, but blogs like the truly excellent Pharyngula blog and others. If there is a clamor for an amateur mineralogy blog, I would be honored to provide much more in-depth treatments about the geology of northern New England, and sites, specimens, etc. I suspect that this would have even less a following than another 'big tent' science blog; which is really what I see this becoming as time passes.

Discovery Channel and History Channel are full of utter rubbish

"Bigfoot Expert" and why Discovery Channel Stinks

This hardly warrants comment. At a time when all of humanity needs to be schooled on REAL science, two of the networks that one would think would stick to the known, do not. Discovery and History are rife with all manner of not only unproven topical programming, but demonstrably false programming.

One of Discovery's worst offenders is referenced in the above link. The History Channel is teeming with everything but history. A look at any other network is likely to uncover other offenses to the senses.

One tiny light in all of this is that it seems that both of these networks have dropped references to "aliens" in the extra-terrestrial sense. In their stead are dozens of reality shows(so-called), that aren't at all real save for programming being based on what a very few people do to earn their ways through life.

Less fill, and more hard hitting sciance and history would do both outlets some real good. I don't see it happening. They'll almost assuredly continue to wallow in least common denominator programming.

That is truly a crime when so much is at stake.

Sandy Hook as False Flag

No, this is not going to be a political post. It is going to be psychological post.

Sandy Hook as False Flag Maneuver

How can people believe that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a "False Flag" event orchestrated by some unknown entity?

The answer is that people can and will believe anything not only in lieu of any supporting evidence, but even despite mountains of contrary evidence.

From Holocaust deniers, to non-belief in modern evolutionary theory, there will always be skeptics of the unwarranted variety.

I am what I hope is a good example of a good skeptic. I believe when independently verifiable evidence warrants such a belief. I'll often withhold belief until it is quantified. As a practical scientist(a semiconductor process engineer), I believe that there is almost shockingly little that cannot be quantified.

The human brain/mind is sometimes stated as the most complex system yet known. Yet, even the human brain can be broken down and the roles of each component can be defined--yes, even quantitatively.

In order to overturn the Sandy Hook shooting, enough of the evidence must be found to be demonstrably untrue(not false, as proving a negative is maddeningly difficult). To date, no evidence other than some instructions to reporters covering the Newtown, CT has surfaced to support anything but the factual evidence of a mass shooting.

The instructions to reporters is simply an artifact of the media's manner to get people positioned properly for the best angles, and having copy ready for the news items that hit the 'airwaves.' This is how all news items are covered that are not absolutely live. That reporter cueing is given as evidence of a cover-up simply shows an obvious lack of the ways in which modern television broadcasting is conducted.

I am not in the media business, but living in the little state of New Hampshire, USA, every four years our first in the nation' presidential primaries I have seen every kind of media machination one can imagine. In the 2000 primary, I sat and ate with a secret service agent and we had a long discussion about how the media gets things correct, and incorrect. I added that most of the major media doesn't give one enough matter on a given topic in order for an inquisitive citizen to go and "conduct follow-up research without first conducting follow-up research." My lunch date got a good chuckle out of my characterization which she thought spot-on.

Summing up, one has to provide contrary evidence in enough magnitude to first challenge the official story, and that only raises the specter of doubt. It hardly overthrows things.

Do governments lie? Absolutely. Is the government lying in this instance? Perhaps, but as yet there is zero real evidence of any misdoing.

It's fun to be a contrarian. But a contrarian sans evidence is simply a nuisance that takes away from real, important issues; and in this instance likely causes additional pain to the mourning survivors.

Changing stylesheet

I'm going to work on a new stylesheet for this newly resurrected* blog.

*I use the word "resurrected" here in the strictly secular sense. This blog shall always remain a non-prophet enterprise.