Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

The hardest part about writing a blog a day is finding a new topic every day.  Unless I’ve had a particularly eventful day, I usually turn to the news.

I  didn’t see much that really inspired me today.  Bruce Jenner deciding to become a woman might have been an interesting topic, if I had any idea who Bruce Jenner was.  Absent that, I have nothing to add to the conversation.  I think I’m pretty much with the majority on this one, at least one of the standard opinions: that’s his choice, and nobody else’s business.

Then I saw a headline on a science page that said Earth would really be chaotic if man went extinct and thought “Huh, for a couple of weeks maybe.”  Then I read the article and it said “Sure, an environmental equilibrium would be established, but the first  few weeks would  be really chaotic.”  That was the story.

Then, I saw a headline that said something about how binge watching programs on Netflix  was making people sad and lonely and I didn’t even bother reading the article, it seems so obvious to me that they’ve got cause and effect backwards.  If you’ve got hours to waste watching TV, of any variety, it’s because you don’t have much else to do.  Sort of like me with facebook.  Lots of people are sort of bored with their lives, and feel alienated and out of the loop.  That might be partly due to our modern lifestyle.  I’m not so sure, though.  I suspect that even back before the information age, even before the industrial revolution, there were  some people, probably a fair percent of the population, who spent a great deal of time sitting around the house with nothing in particular to do.  Especially in winter.  If so,  you might as well watch a full season or two of Breaking Bad, or whatever.  It’s entertainment.

Then I read an article with the headline “Why Are People So Annoying?” and it was all about how we know we shouldn’t boast but we do, because sometimes you feel you have to, at a job interview or on a first date for example (which is basically a job interview,  with drinks).  And boasting is annoying.

You know what else is annoying?  News articles which just state what’s completely obvious, but have a teaser headline that makes you think you’re actually going to learn something new.

The amazing thing about science in the world today is that it is advancing at such an incredible pace and in so many different directions at once, occasionally, (more than occasionally, pretty often in fact) they’ll discover something that none of us mere mortals even suspected anybody was looking for.

Such was the case here.  Scientists at UC Irvine have figured out how to unboil an egg.  That is such a bizarre and unexpected concept that a squiggly red line appears under the word unboil.  Science is outpacing the dictionary, and the dictionary is evolving pretty darned fast.  I will frequently read an article about some neologism and they’ll say “it’s all over facebook, Reddit, twitter, etc…” and I have no idea what it means, and it makes me feel old.

But, I digress.  They have unboiled an  egg.  It has something to do with a chemical they add to replace the proteins and a vortex of some sort.  To  say  I don’t understand the science would be an understatement.  That’s O.K.  I don’t understand how the internet works, either, but here we are.

It’s what they do with it that’s important.  They say it may speed up production of anti-cancer drugs, which is wonderful, but I think the best anti-cancer drug will probably be something cannabis based.  There’s lots of anecdotal evidence,  but doctors are still hesitant to prescribe it, even in desperate cases, because it is illegal.

They also think it will speed up the making of cheese which, if you are a cheese maker, is a pretty good thing, I suppose.  As a consumer, I’m not too bothered if cheese takes a little bit longer to mature.  Unless they come up with something that actually makes cheese better, I’m not interested.

I see a couple of other possibilities, though, which are mind boggling.  Since this has something to do with the production of proteins (again, I don’t understand the science – this is all wild, shoot in the dark speculation)it could help in the development of animal free meat, which could end world hunger and thrill animal rights activists.

Also, just the idea that they are reversing a process previously thought to be irreversible raises a very interesting possibility.  If they can unboil an egg, perhaps they can reverse the degeneration of other kinds of cells, of cells in the body for instance.

This could lead to a reversal of aging.  Which would be awesome.  Some people may feel differently but I, for one, would like very much to live forever.

It   would probably be going too far to say that religion is the cause of all the world’s conflicts.  If there were no religion, people would still fight over resources, ideology, or just because they don’t like each  other  very much.

Nonetheless, religion is driving  a lot of the conflict in the world today, so I’d like to use my blog tonight to put that into a bit of perspective.

People  have been recognizably human for about 2 million years or so, and may well have had some kind of religious beliefs for most of that time.  It’s natural.  You look at what you don’t understand, and you make up your best story.  We’ve had some kind of civilization,  i.e.   agriculture, fixed settlements, evenings around the campfire with the whole clan, folk stories and beer, for around 65,000  years.

Christianity has only been around for 2,000 years,  Islam just over half that.  Judaism  a  bit longer, but within the context of 65,000 years, or 2,000,000, it’s nothing at all.  A fart in a hurricane, a drop in the ocean.  If all of our modern religions disappear, within a generation or two they will be more or less forgotten.  No matter how much people talk about “thousands of years of tradition,” thousands of years is not all that much.

I don’t think they  are going to disappear that quickly, although I’ve seen some recent stats that are encouraging.  People still want a narrative to give meaning to their lives, some sort of spiritual fall back in a troubled world.  AA people call it their “higher power.”

I think it more likely that, as  knowledge and technology increases, that religions will start to change and adapt.  Even the Amish will use a telephone in an emergency.  Soon, religions will be changing as fast as trends in music and fashion.  New ones will come along, old ones will fade.

I cannot predict what the state of mankind will be 1,000 years from now.  Neither can anybody else.  But, just because something has existed for 2,000 years, doesn’t mean it’s going to last.

There are portals

which sounds so much more magical than doors

or zones of correspondence

or transition points

between the different

and hierarchically arranged

realms of existence

first, there was the realm of non-existence

which existed before any of this existed

and there was nothing except the laws of physics

and even those were unknown

because there was nobody to know them

and energy  could not actually act upon matter

because there was no energy and no matter

but the laws were still the laws because that’s just the way it is

and ten seconds before the   big bang was ten seconds before the big bang

even though nobody was counting

and five seconds before the big bang was five seconds before the big bang

and then there was the big bang

and that was the first portal

and then we were in the realm of undifferentiated matter and energy

but things   bumped into things and soon clouds of gasses formed

and from those clouds stars and from those stars planets

and then boom, just like that, we were through the second portal

and the Earth was formed, and the moon, and the Earth was covered with volcanoes

and getting bombarded with meteorites, and some of them had water

and then some chemicals in the water got hit by lightning,

or maybe just got tired of lying around doing nothing

and  started consuming all around them and reproducing

and became alive, and we were through the third portal

and life evolved, and grew, and plants became plants and animals became animals

and some of those animals became really huge and ate all the other animals

and then a meteor hit and killed almost everything and the cycle started again

and that happened a few times

until eventually, creatures evolved who could think, and use tools,

and communicate, and imagine an existence different than their own existence

and that was the fourth portal, about a million or two years ago, and that was us

and we spread across the Earth, and killed and ate  other animals

and planted crops,  and cut down  trees and built houses,

and cut stone from the Earth for tombs and temples

and  built empires and made new inventions, always trying to get ahead of each other,

and we made machines, and powered them by steam, and then electricity,

and the machines printed books, and wove cloth, and molded metals,

and plowed the fields and harvested the crops far better and faster than any human could,

and then we built machines that could think, and in our own image created we them

and then we were through the   5th portal

and then we were done

 

Watching The Librarians.  Part of the premise,more than just a running gag, seems to be that whenever  people ask them who they are, they say “The Librarians” and people accept it, sometimes it works into the plot and sometimes not but it’s not a profession that provokes a lot more questions.  It’s sort of a rip-offof Dr. Who, he just tells people he’s the Doctor and never gives his name, hence the title of the program.

Outside of that, it’s the usual quirky collection of characters, the tough guy, the guy with a rather loose sense of ethics, the ditzy girl, and the other girl, so it’s all gender balanced, and John LaRoquette,   who plays John LaRoquette, i.e. a somewhat annoying guy.

It’s not really my new favorite program, but I don’t hate it too much yet.

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Another person on my facebook page made the comment, which I hear so frequently, “It’s my page and I don’t want anybody posting hateful comments” and I have to wonder , what is her idea of hateful?.  Since she said ‘anybody that mentions politics’ I suspect I should probably just go ahead and unfriend her because I usually wind up making some political comment,and usually people disagree with it,  because what’s the point of having political opinions if they are the same as other peoples, and people who say they don’t like politics at all are very often the ones who are the most easily offended.  With people I know, I don’t mind seeing their vacation and baby pictures and getting updates on their lives.  I don’t usually try to engage them in politics, unless it comes up.  With people I don’t know, the only conversations I might be interested in are topics of current  events, and it comes down  to politics sooner or later.

Still,there’s no need to defriend anybody, she hasn’t actually offended ME. I’ll just go ahead and carry on being myself and if she decides to defriend me, that’ll be cool.