Lion Misery - Step by Step... (Part I)

The faded circle slash says a Lion app won't run...

So I have a new laptop with Lion...

First off you have to spend an hour or so installing the automatic updates.  These include some firmware changes that get downloaded each time your run "Software Update."  The problem is that they don't take so after each successful "Software Update" you have run it again.  It took me about six (count'm six) tries before it would succeed and report that no more update are available.

These firmware updates cause the machine to make weird beeps and the "sleep" light to flash in a funny way.  A special "progress bar" (all gray) also appears during the process.

So after an hour or so at least I had the baseline of 10.7.2 (Lion) installed on this new mac.

During the install I had Lion transfer the contents of an older mac to the new one.

When I open the new mac I can see many of my apps in the task bar have a circle with a bar hash over them meaning that they are not compatible with Lion:  most of my Adobe products, various plug-ins, tools for Roland VX systems, older Office apps, Native Instruments apps, Enfocus browser, most of what I want to use.

So first off I have to re-install Logic 9 - the old machine did not have all the parts installed so I have to redo it...  Hopefully Lion won't break the installation.  This will be a several hour project.

In the mean time I have to get access to my other work laptop via screen sharing.  Fortunately this works pretty well and I am able to use the other laptop from this one almost seamlessly (the only thing that doesn't work is the sticky-note widget stuff...).  Sharing is easy to set up and it works.

Up until this point I have been able to get everything I need on a single mac - but today no more.

The new mac requires me to use the new, backwards iOS-style scrolling where the screen follows the direction of your finger moves instead of the opposite.  This is annoying though I may as well get used to it because the ghost of Steve Jobs will not let Apple go back to rational scrolling.  (This would be rational if the keyboard was also a display as with iOS.)

So I have been going through the task bar cleaning things up or removing things that won't work.  For some things they probably will never work again which means that what I use them for will eventually fail as well (for example the Roland XV-5050 stuff).  (I'll be stuck using the 1" x 4" B/W display panel after that... thanks Steve...)

Native Instruments software also fails.  I was able to get some working by checking the "run in 32-bit mode" box in the file Info dialog associated with the file.  This is what's really annoying.  Lion is supposedly 64-bit and wonderful.  Most of what I use is 32-bit I guess.  But there is no overt way to tell.

After installing CS 5.5 I tried to fire up Photoshop - after a completely clean and error free install.

First thing off it complains in needs a "Java Runtime."  Why and whatever for - who knows - but it does.  Mysteriously "Software Update" is invoked to find one.  The new PhotoShop appears to be a 64-bit one - oh oh - it will be slooooowwww...  (actually its okay so far...  not blazing but okay).

Native Instruments uses a "Service Center" software package that manages the rest of any Native Instruments packages you buy.  However, initially it seemed not to be working.  You have to go on their web site, download the latest version, go on your Mac and remove some .plist files (there is info at NE in the support area) and reinstall the Service Center.   Then when you run it you have to ask it to not try again when it fails with "Error 6."  The rest of Komplete 7 seems to work without a problem - but I have not tested it extensively (I did have to tell Kontatk 4 to run in 32-bit mode).

In the root directory ("/" or "Macintosh HD") Lion creates a folder for incompatible software (.kexts and other stuff like Parallels found its way there on my install).  So if things stop working magically I'd take a look in there to see if I could find the problem first.  Since Lion doesn't tell you this and just does it you're on your own...

I had to go to the app store for Mac to get the latest development environment (XCode).

You end up going through the BS Mac app store stuff and then it sits there.  You have no idea when its done or what it did.  After a while I had to go looking for XCode by doing a disk search.  Finally I found what I guess the latest version is in my Applications folder.  But its not an installed XCode - its an install XCode app!

I will report the adventures of my XCode xploits (no pun intended) over on the Synthodeon blog.

(More to come...)

On to Lion...

After a long debate with myself I have decided that I need to upgrade to Apple Lion.

Most of the computers I use at this point are Macs and so on the one hand upgrading to Lion would seem like a no-brainer.

But Lion is different to a large degree.

First of all it invalidates certain applications (list here).

Now, as a vendor with many customers for which I need my Mac to do certain things I feel a certain trepidation about replacing one OS with another that potentially would shut off some capability that I need to service a customer.

Now if I could somehow know what was going to break that would be one thing - but I don't.  So I cannot put myself in a position of being on a service call, needing something and suddenly and unexpectedly finding out I cannot do what I need to do.

From a developers perspective each new OS brings new features and breaks old ones at the programming level as well.  For example, I cannot use the latest XCode on a non-Lion system.  To me this is just wrong.  Why on earth does XCode require Lion.  Ditto for iOS 5 development - for some unknown reason I need Lion as well.

So at this point I have a 10.5 (Leopard), and 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and now I will have a 10.7 (Lion) laptop.

Great.

The only ones just sit around as hot backups - at least until now.

What is troubling to me is why do these systems have to be incompatible at any level?

For example, going from 32-bits to 64-bits.  Suddenly with Snow Leopard things you built in the development environment might not work on a slightly older machine - and all you get was a cryptic message on the failure.

I think that companies like Apple are still in a position of dictating to their customers.

Microsoft, on the other hand, with such a large (especially comparable to Apple) base of customers has had to bend to the "compatibility" wind and make sure that each new version of Windows within a very broad swath remains exactly backward compatible.  (Yes I know that 16-bit Windows apps no longer work outside of Windows XP but, well, what can I say...)

Today with all the VM based technology I really don't see why we don't have systems that at some level are exactly backward compatible.

Certainly Apple, with its transition from the Power PC model to Intel accomplished this with Rosetta.

And today we have things like VMWare and Parallels that give almost perfect virtual machine representations of other machine environments.

Why are we still saddled with version upgrades breaking things?

One reason is money - every new version sells more machines (as is the case with me) as well as sells software.

I think, though, that there is a developer issue here as well.  Developers only look forward - what new features can I add, what new things can my box do, and so on.

Therefore they don't look back unless the boss tells them to.

So anyway, all things considered, I have to go and get a new machine.

Priceless

Air fare from San Francisco to Newark, NJ: $519

Camping supplies: $623

Train fare to Manhattan for Occupy Wall Street: $13

Having your $5,500 Mac laptop stolen from your unlocked tent while you attend the "Wealth Redistribution" march...

Priceless

(Based on an account by one of the protesters found here.  Maybe there is some educational value in all this...?)

The Power of Boredom

Over the last forty or so years the concept of boredom has changed quite a bit.

As a child I lived in rural Wisconsin - not on a farm but on four acres my parents had purchased in the 1950's.  There were few neighbors and those that we had lived quite a distance away. We were not rich.

In those days there was no internet, no cell phones, no color TV, nothing electronic what-so-ever to keep your mind occupied.  My parents did have a lot of books - but these were adult books and I was just a kid.  We had bicycles - but could not ride them on the road until we were six or seven.

Sure we had toys - I had a box of electrical and mechanical stuff scavenged from construction sites I had visited with my dad and from relatives.  Some blocks.  Some Lego.  An electric train.  Stuff most kids had in those days.

We also had various activities: school, sports, things like that.  Again - like most kids did.  But these things did not fill up the day either.

But all in all life was absolutely boring - a fate few children suffer today.

Thirty years ago I had my own children.  Still there was no internet - or actually there was one but it was not accessible to anyone without a university clearance - no cell phones, there was color TV.  We had quite a few books - especially children's books.

In those days we did not let the kids watch too much TV.  This was a big struggle.  We had four kids and someone always wanted to watch TV.  By this time there were things like movie players - not ones we could afford - but ones relatives would provide for Christmas.  They played some kind of disks or tapes.

The problem was we could not afford new movies so the kids played the same ones over and over and over.

While all this may sound rather boring, and in fact it was, the key thing to understand is that boring, especially for small children and even for adults, is good.

As a child I was bored a lot - there was literally nothing to do as there is today - most TV was for adults (save for Romper Room and Captain Kangaroo) - the books we had were boring after reading them ten times, and so on.

So what did you do? 

You let your mind wander. 

You imagined things.

I distinctly remember in maybe third grade seeing a tape recorder in school.  I was amazed - this was something that did cool things and had knobs, lights and switches - a geek child's delight.  However, only the nuns could touch it - as children we were not allowed lest we break it.

But when I was bored the tape recorder was something that fired my imagination - don't ask me why.  I imagined what I might do with it, wondered how it worked, what else it might do, how could I make it do more things, and on and on.

As it turns out our minds are probably designed to run free with this sort of "mindless wandering" and that a lot of our neural circuitry is tied up with this function (see this and this).  In fact, about half of our brain's function seems to be organized around this (and only sex keeps our minds from wandering).  A wandering mind also consumes a huge amount of nutritional resources.

All this begs the question of "why?"

A brain designed to wander?

I think from the perspective of children boredom actually fuels mental and brain development (obviously parents have to keep children's mind constructively focused while wondering).  Parents do always worry about things like this:

My wandering mind often took me down areas related to technical things - wires, electricity and electronics, building things, and so on.  Looking back to my childhood I see that the time spent on these sorts of things were in fact not a waste but instead allowed me to mentally prepare myself for exploring these things more formally as an adult.

With my own children I see that we probably provided too much controlled stimulation to prevent boredom - and that that was probably the wrong thing to do (sorry kids - but hey, the image above always is foremost in a parents mind...).

Today I see my grandchildren in a world of constant stimulation - TV constantly blaring, computers, cellphones, email.  This is too much as it is (see this) and further takes away from the child's opportunity to be bored our of their skull.

These grandchildren are never really bored like we were as children.

Today's parents are afraid of children being too bored so they fill their time with activities.

(Though don't worry too much because if a child perceives even an organized activity as dull their mind will wander anyway.)

But does removing boredom from a child's life harm their brain development?  (After all they're hopefully too young for sex so all they can do is be bored.)

About a year ago I wrote "32 Hours..." that addressed the amount of time today's small child spends in front of the TV (32 hours a week).  The TV is the worst for boredom because it prevents, I think, the mind from wandering too far.  (Some say the flickering screen of today is reminiscent of the flicker fire our ancestors no doubt stared into for the last hundred thousand years or so...)

Today I find that I have too much to think about and I view TV as a drug - one that dulls the mind by keeping it focused on something trivial or stupid (for the most part).

I don't condone giving drugs to children.

I guess the point of all this is a wandering mind is a crucial part of life - and it would seem that science is bearing this out (links above).

And we are taking it from our children and ourselves.

It seems like science is telling us that its okay and necessary to be bored out of our skulls...

Take the time and let your mind wander - as long as its done responsibly its a good thing.

Miscellanity...

Games

An interesting new game from Toasty Games called Parallax:





Cameras

Then there is Lytro.

from www.lytro.com

This is a camera that does not take pictures as we know them.  Instead it takes information about an image and stores that information so that later on you can change the focus of the original image.

This link is to an image of a butterfly in a woodland scene at the lytro site.  If you click once anywhere in the image the focus of the shot changes to the location you clicked.

Normally the focus is set when a picture is taken.  With the lytro camera the focus is set when you look at the picture on a computer.

How this happens is complex and requires complex software and optics in the camera.

Basically there are no more out-of-focus shots (not that modern cameras let you do too much wrong).  If you don't like the focus of the image you simply change it later.

Prices start around $400 USD.

Very cool...

Firearms

For those interested in firearms theirs a nice review of "Chicks with Guns" by Lindsay McCrum.

This is not at all what you might think.  There's a nice write-up here at Wired.  The book is available at Amazon.  According to this USA Today article some 15 to 20 million women in the USA own guns.

IQ Tests

If found this article on IQ tests the other day at the WSJ.  Some points they make are a teenager's IQ can rise or fall 20 points over a few years - of course they don't know why.

If you tested out at, say an IQ of 110, this means you could swing between "substandard" and "gifted" as a kid and no one would even notice.

The tyranny of these tests is that they control all sorts of things that happen to you in your life - if you let them - potential jobs, schooling, etc.

Now, the immutable IQ, is suddenly not so immutable.

What causes the change in IQ?  Changes in your brain - no doubt as you grow and learn.  Do these idiots really believe that your brain does not change over the course of your life?

I ask what about all the kids pigeon-holed into crappy classes, jobs and lives because of this kind of testing?  What about all the lost self esteem because some test said you were an idiot and in fact you are a genius?

Apparently the geniuses who create and study these tests recently figured out that, surprise, your brain changes over time and you can learn to be smarter (or dumber)!  Would you react the same way to a test at age 10, 20, 30 or 40 years old?  I doubt it very much...

Mrs. Wolf, for example, is a genius at mechanical repair.  Disassemble any sort of complex mechanical machinery, e.g., an old VCR tape mechanism, hand her the parts and she reassembles it - not having ever seen how it works in the first place.  Now does the standard IQ test measure this sort of thing?  No, of course not.  It requires you to monkey around with stupid diagrams like the one above to decide what fits where the question mark appears.

Will someone please email me an example from life that works like this IQ test question?

Before IQ tests adults observed offspring and found them trades and work in areas where they observer little Jr. had a talent (apprentice).  You didn't take the kid who's a whiz at mechanics and set him to work painting.  No, you found him a job doing something that his talent was helpful with.

Perhaps when the "old man" told you you'd be nothing but a failure he knew that was just what you needed to get you off your ass and learn to be smarter.  Motivation.  Being told you can't.  So you do it anyway.

Unfortunately not something you see in today's world...

Will wonders never cease.

More Contrary Health Thoughts...

I am always interested in stories about nutrition and health.  Yesterday I came across this article in the WSJ regarding vitamins and supplements.

The bottom line of the scientific reports mentioned in the article on the anti-vitamin/supplement side is taking vitamins and supplements is a waste of money unless you have some chronic vitamin deficiency.

If you read the article carefully though you see that really modern science has a hard time with vitamins at a number of levels. They interfere with other treatments, for example.  Researchers expected to see a group of 38,000 women who took a supplement to show some improvement in life expectancy - in fact the use of supplements created a slight decrease.

And then there is the placebo effect.  Do the supplements make me actually feel better or do I just think I feel better?

I think this is really the big question.

First off, what does or can science know about what I feel?  And, in the very first place, that's where you have to start out.  How do I feel?  And, I think, only you can objectively get a handle on that.

As a user of some vitamins and supplements I have had to develop my own criteria for determining my "place" in the "how do I feel world."  I believe my model to be far superior to these silly little "studies" that really don't have a handle on what's being studied and measured in the first place since, according to the article "people eat foods with multiple nutrients that can interact with supplements and skew results" and "observational trials can only show an association, not cause and effect."

So here's my real scientific model - and granted its just my model - but it seems to work for me.

Every day, more or less and with a two year hiatus for osteitis pubis when I cycled, I run an average of about 5 km.  Over long periods of time I run the same route.  I've done this for years both with and without supplements.

The point here is that I have developed a good subjective idea of how my health is based on these runs.  I know how I feel doing it, when I stop to cool down, how long it takes to cool down, what effects temperature, season, weather, etc. have on me and so on.  I have been doing it for about 22 years so I also have a perspective on age.  And, finally, I understand its effect on any stress I might be feeling - work or family related.

Now, over the last 22 years and just running, I would expect that my over all performance to fall - it would take longer to run the same distance just because I am older.  However, I also determined that timing myself is a stress I don't need so, at the end of the day, I just keep track of the effort I feel I am putting out on my run - heart rate, sweating, level of subjective effort, cool down time, etc.

So all this leaves me with what I will call the idea of an average run - I don't feel good or bad, I just do it and forget about it, and all the metrics I have are within what I will call a normal range.

This is my average healthy baseline - a proper balance point, if you will, amongst everything that is me.

I can tell when I go above it, say with more enthusiasm or feeling really good about something or running competitively, and I can tell when I go below it, say with a cold or flu or fever.

Modern medicine is allopathic - that is it treats symptoms with opposites.  For example, if you have a fever then modern medicine gives you, say, aspirin, to reduce the symptom of the fever - the notion of the aspirin is doing the "opposite" of what the fever is doing.

But without knowledge of what's causing the fever aspirin is really just like painting over rust - it does not solve the problem and the problem may very well come back.

So instead of thinking about my own health in allopathic terms I like to think of what I do as moving the baseline.  Things that are good for me move the baseline up, i.e., I feel even better.  Things that are bad, say like drinking or eating too much, move it down.

(Mind you I do not think that the position of the baseline necessarily means I will live longer - just better while I am living.)

So my world of vitamins and supplements revolves around moving the baseline up in some significant way, i.e., one I can measure or feel.

So one way I do this is physical injury - the bane of any runner.  Any runner will suffer sprains and twisted ankles - you step on a rock or in a pot hole, you swerve to avoid traffic or a dog, that sort of thing.

Now over all I would expect that suffering this kind of injury (as opposed to something like osteitis pubis) would be more or less consistently increase with age everything being equal: there are always pot holes, dogs, traffic and so on and, getting older, my joints and bones would be less flexible, my mental focus and eyesight would lessen, and so on.  This was true, for example, with my dad who ran into his sixties.

So one of the metrics I use for taking supplements is what effect it has over years on the rate and type of injuries.  Subjectively it seems that I have been able to significantly reduce the level of running problems that I have related to injury.

I "feel" this in a number of ways.  Less impact on my joints (fewer injuries as well as aches and pains) and my feet.  Fewer strains.  Less need of stretching (I seem to be naturally more flexible). And so on.

Could this be a placebo effect?  Possibly.  But I would think that I would still be subject to the same amount of external injury forces, e.g., pot holes or traffic.

So over all I feel much better than I did, say five years ago.  I suffer less doing the same job (running 5km).

Now I am not saying I run faster or that I will magically live longer.  But I am saying that over all I feel better than I did five years ago - and I am obviously five years older.

The bottom line here is that I think the modern allopathic western medicine model is completely and totally wrong.

I have been able to develop a mental balance point for my health (and not just for running).  I use that as a basis for seeing what effect, over a long term, some supplement has on me.

The same sort of baseline can be used for, say, mental concentration and focus, for strength, for any number of things.

But modern medicine does not encourage people to think for themselves - not for them to think about achieving any sort of baseline for their health.  Instead they fix symptoms - and when the fixes cause more problems, they fix those, and so on and so on until you have older people taking ten or fifteen medications a day.  They have no baseline and are instead on a drug-induced roller coaster of highs and mostly lows.

So just studying a collection of random people doing a collection of random supplements over a random time is not going to give helpful results.

Now I am not suggesting my life or health is perfect or that what I am doing will make me live longer.

What I am suggesting is that I have a much better idea of where my health is and what my behavior (including the consumption of supplements) does to it over time.

I am also saying is that "medical science" is so much voodoo for the most part - patching over things they don't understand with more things they don't understand.  Sure they can fix a broken bone but many things, the placebo effect above all others, have no current medical explanation.

Instead the model should be one of teaching people to understand their own health - to create a baseline of health for them to measure results against.  They need to teach that health is not something that a pill fixes - the goal should be no or as few pills as possible - not a pill for any possible deviation from what I (or someone else) thinks I should be feeling at any given time.

Health is not an instantaneous point - its a steady, long term baseline.  Drugs and treatments that don't move the baseline treat only symptoms and don't cure any underlying problems (and yes, obviously this does not apply to things like antidotes for poisons or snake bites).

People are not taught to think "why does by my back hurt?"  Instead they are taught "my back hurts now, what can I do to fix it now."  This thinking really precludes any sort of true cure because all the focus is on the symptom and not the cause.  (And this has leaked down to today's young people who can only rely on pills or doctors to handle their own health...)

Studies like those the WSJ describes are useless and, from what I can see, self serving with respect to the allopathic form of medicine.  The studies are just measuring random things and creating random correlations which government will use to take away our choice and right to use supplements.

At 54 years old I have been running for 22 years (I also swam competitively from about age 12 until 17).  I started writing about this about six years ago.  My health "baseline" has improved steadily (I would have expected it to decline due to age) since I started really thinking about this and working on improving it...

Of course you probably don't believe any of this.

But ask yourself this: if medical science is so great why don't the doctors live longer than the rest of us?

See this table - doctors live as long as other professionals - not longer.

Male Sexual Satisfaction: The Glue That Binds...

What is the most common predictor of divorce in a marriage?

According to this study (summarized here) male sexual satisfaction.

I found this very interesting and raise the point with Mrs. Wolf. Over the last many years I have learned a lot by observing Mrs. Wolf and I respect her opinion, particularly in matters related to "the way things really work..."

But before delving into this topic, let me give an example...

For many, many years we would go shopping together at food and other large stores.  Mrs. Wolf would always wander off and I would find there going up and down the aisles.  What was she doing I wondered?  When I asked she would say "just looking."

As the years went by and we became more aware of the way things actually work in the world it dawned on me what Mrs. Wolf was up to: gathering.  Just like in the days before roads, domesticated animals, or any of that I reasoned that Mrs. Wolf was simply "scouting out" the territory so that, when the need arose, she could go directly to the item needed without having to search.

In prehistory how would an intelligent human woman find what was needed to keep a family alive?

Certainly she would have to have a good knowledge of where resources where located.  Resources like water, herbs, food sources like berries, roots, and so on.  This of course would be a learned behavior (mothers passing this to daughters) since there were no signs around to tell you where things were.

I had noticed that Mrs. Wolf always seemed to know where everything was in the store - even a Walmart Superstore with its acres of shelves.  I, on the other hand, shopped by organizing the store into areas, food, clothes, etc. and then broke these down into parts (food -> dairy, bread, etc.) and then went to find things in those areas.  I realized that her wandering about was actually building a map of were everything in the store was - and that subsequent wanderings were simply updates to the map.

Recently the topic of why some couples remain together longer came up.  The studies above provided some fuel for the discussion.

Basically researchers studied younger couples for a number of years and determined that the best predictor for a long relationship was male sexual satisfaction (a predictor is not a cause - more like a flag, that, if present, indicates a likely outcome).

You can read the links for their opinions regarding this.

So Mrs. Wolf and I, on the way to a recent event, discussed this.

I said, "don't you think its odd that male sexual satisfaction is the best predictor of a long term relationship?"

"Not at all," she replied.  She seemed confident of her answer.

"Well, why?" I asked, "clearly women can be unhappy with a situation just as easily as a male."

"No," she said, "you don't understand..."

"Okay," I said.

"Think of it this way," she said.

"Women have historically had to rely on males for resources and for high calorie foods like meat that they themselves could not acquire.  They also have had to rely on males to protect their children.  How are they going to do that?"

"Ummmm, sex?" I mumbled.

"That's right.  If the woman doesn't provide enough sex the man will wander off and find it elsewhere.  After all," she said, "men are pretty simple."

"But what about the woman, what if he's not given her what she needs?" I managed.

"Well, its simple, she said.  Women are managing a complex system of resources in order to raise their children.  She needs the resources he offers in order to do the best job she can for her children.  Without him she would need to leave the children alone to do things like hunt or collect water.  With him she can devote her full attention to raising the children.  This gives them the best chance of success later in life.

"Sex for the woman in this role is just like all the other resources she is managing.  Just like she might suggest that the family move from location A to B in order to take advantage of some particular food source.  Similarly, sex for her is a tool for managing the man.

I pondered this as we drove.

This made a lot of sense in what I had observed in life.

"So what about this 'are wives obligated to provide husbands sex' question you were talking about?" I was referring to a discussion between Mrs. Wolf and Emma Weylin.

"Well, that's simple in this context.  So long as the man is doing his job of providing resources the woman provides sex when he wants it - within reason of course," she added.  "Even if the woman isn't really interested she knows that she has to keep him interested: so sex becomes a tool for that purpose."

"Oh," I replied.

We drove a while...

"So today things are pretty screwed up," I ventured, "women now have full time jobs as well as raise the family - leaving the man as sort of a third wheel."

"Of course," she said.  "If the woman is providing the resources for her children without the man then she has no reason to provide sex for him - unless, of course, she wants too...," she added with a wink.

I though about our own children.  Those daughters that worked full time really had a lot to do.

As the days passed after our drive I gave all of this more thought.

It certainly made sense, this reasoning, and also addressed why men view women as so complex (see image above).  Taking the perspective that the woman is really managing a complex set of resources - only one of which is the man - it all made more sense.  Woman are always balancing twenty different competing resource issues at any given time.  Men, on the other hand, are more worried about "hunting" or "making money."  The men are not worried about all the other resource issues.

Men, being goal oriented, feel their job is done for the week when the paycheck hits the bank.  Time for a beer and a football game.

Women, being relationship oriented, realize that while hubby is passed out in the recliner the kiddies still need attention, mom is coming over for dinner, cookies are needed for tomorrows bake sale, and so on.  Without these functions there would be no relationships.

Hmmmm....

As long as the man's sexual needs are being met he's not likely to wander off and make children elsewhere and thus reduce his effectiveness as a provider.  The woman, busy with her own offspring, realizes that the simplest and easiest way to keep things that was is to address his needs - sometimes (often?) without regard to her own.

I asked Mrs. Wolf about this.

"I guess woman are whores with respect to their children and the resources they (the children) require." she said.  "Without this arrangement you'd have, well, er, what you see today.  Women without men doing all the work (job, family, housework, etc.) themselves.  I guess modern woman have traded their traditional role of balancing resources for the family, which includes taking care of the man sexually, with working a full time job as well as balancing resources for the entire family.  Basically this makes the man useless and puts all the burden on women."

"I never understood why a woman would do that," she said.  "Its not like us women don't like men - we do," she added with a wink.  "Its just that we see things differently because of our historical role in the family," she added.

All in all I'd have to say its biological and Mrs. Wolf's perspective makes perfect sense.

As for the premise to this post - it all makes sense.  A wise woman who effectively manages the man in her life keeps him happy.  If he's a decent sort and fulfills his role of providing and protecting the woman can raise her children in peace.  He sticks around and she is happy - even if her sexual needs are not always (or adequately) addressed by the male - because her model is one of managing resources for children.

On the other hand, if the man acts like one of the children and doesn't fulfill his role, he gets nothing and the relationship ends.

Without this mechanism we'd be like dogs or deer or cattle.  By hiding their fertile periods and using clever management techniques a woman can keep the male interested and productive year round - bringing food, warding off threats, etc.

All in all a pretty smart model.

I guess men are simpler than I thought.

Simple, Clear, Concise.

Sometimes things come along which really require no further commentary.

Too bad those in the US, Greek, Spanish, and other "underwater" government leadership positions cannot read or understand.

Gene Simmons and Anthropological Mom (Part II)

So enough about Gene...

The really fascinating part is how Shannon stuck out the twenty eight years and, all along, was really just an anthropological mom. 

Now I don't know either of these people (Gene or Shannon) so I can only speak about what I see on the program...

Shannon, as a mother, seems to be truly devoted to her children and obviously did her best despite a whole raft of difficult issues to raise them correctly.

One the difficult issues side there was Gene's infidelity.  Here, most interestingly were the two conversations each kid had with Gene during the time when Shannon had moved out of the house.

"There are no sides in a family," they said.  "But we support mom."

Obviously these children were not impressed with the great Gene Simmons, KISS, his "stuff, his "money" or any of the rest of it.  They felt they were obligated to do what was they saw as right regardless of how difficult it might be.  (I wonder how many other "rich LA kids" see things this way...?)

These sorts of situations are difficult enough, but imagine being a twenty-something, having to hold the discussion on the worldwide video, and having to do it with your rich and powerful dad.

Now numerous times its pointed out that Gene believes in "always telling the truth."  I think that while Gene is doing this the kids are also seeing the hypocrisy of Gene's philandering.  So I think Gene's hypocrisy is a second serious issue for Shannon to deal with with regard to her children.

I really couldn't say how she dealt with this directly - but she seemed to do a good job.  The kids obviously love their dad, but not everything he does.

Now these people are not poor (Simmons net worth is estimated at $300 million USD).

But you see very little trappings of "spoiled rich kids" nor do you see, beyond what I suppose are basic necessities of high-end LA celebrity living, flaunting of riches.  Certainly they have a cushy life but what you don't see is anyone lording it over others, ridiculing those with less and so on.

It also seems pretty obvious from the family videos that she had good control over the whole family process and raised the kids in a fairly mid-western sort of environment.  No "spoiled rich kids" stuff is obvious.  No drugs and alcohol. Their house looks fairly ordinary (the previous one).  They do fairly normal things.  Mom spends time with here kids...

Imagine how difficult this must have been with Gene as a partner.

And in the end what did Shannon really want all along? 

A husband... A real, old fashioned one.  Not an "open marriage."  Not a thirty year string of one-night stands.  Just a plain old man she could call her own.

As you watch these episodes you see Gene go through a complete transformation.

(Yes I know its a TV show and I know that its not all truly "reality."  However, there seem to be enough cues available to those who have been down a transformational road to tell you something significant has happened.)

From someone who is living in a "continuous bachelor party" to a grown up "man."

What this says is that, ultimately, for the love of Shannon, he changed himself.  She never (at least on the show) beat him up directly but instead made it clear that her love for him was what was at stake.  He could take it or leave it and it was up to him.

The sign of a truly old fashioned woman.

She didn't chase after or throw herself at him.  She expects certain things from him (some left unsaid in the show but more than likely him living up to previous promises about fidelity and love).

He needed (and still needs) to live up to whatever expectations they set between them are. 

But in the end it is him who must please her.

From watching the show on and off over the last several years its really hard to accept that the most recent outcome was somehow staged or planned.  You can tell by examining their body language - there's a dramatic change between a year ago and today.

Personally I think that what happened was unexpected and that, to some degree, the show catalyzed the inevitable fall out over Gene philandering.  At first the show was probably kind of "fun" and not serious.  But as time when on the presence of the film crew probably became less invasive and the pressure of what was going on came more to the surface.  (The popularity of the show causing Gene to be tracked in more detail at all hours of the day and night, for example.)

I was never a fan of KISS.  They were around when I was in high school and still are to this day.

But Gene has made a living out of being the "Hugh Hefner" of the rock world - rock'n'roll, party, womanizing, etc.

I imagine that this change for him is on the one hand easy - because of his love for Shannon - and difficult because it sort of invalidates his prior forty years of being a "bad boy."

What gives me hope is the "Boot Camp" and "Israel" episodes.  Here its obvious that Gene is really trying to work through various personal issues - particularly with his family and his father.  Without reflecting on and changing how he views these issues I doubt he would be able to change his lifestyle.

But making the effort to change how he feels about such important personal matters shows the way to changing how he thinks about women, Shannon and his daughter.

Ultimately the sharpest barb thrown, and perhaps the most effective, is the point where someone asks  "how many nineteen year olds has he slept with?"  (His daughter is nineteen.)

That's a really touch nut to swallow regardless of who you are.

Will Gene give up his former lifestyle...?

He must in order to keep Shannon. 

Shannon, on the other hand, seems happy to have finally gotten what I think she probably always wanted: a husband.  Gene was always, to a point, an excellent father figure for his children - so Shannon mostly, I think, got what she wanted there.

There will be future issues with the kids regarding Gene's past behavior - but I would think they can be resolved over time.

Ultimately this is a story about how "Anthropological Mom" triumphs over "The Demon."

But the jury will be out for some time...

Gene Simmons and Anthropological Mom (Part I)

For the last few weeks Mrs. Wolf has become fascinated with "Gene Simmons Family Jewels."

Normally the types of things on the show were not here sort of thing.  But recently there has been a series of episodes related to his relationship with Shannon Tweed (his formerly live-in girl friend).

The series starts when Simmons daughter sends a picture to Shannon of Gene out-on-the-town with a couple of very young girls.  Later Gene comes home and is confronted by Shannon over the pictures and his lack of fidelity for the last twenty-some years.

At first Gene tries to smooth it over but eventually the issue of "trust" becomes so strong that Shannon moves out to a hotel for a period of time.  As a result Gene begins counseling and over a period of time comes to realize that he in fact loves Shannon more than anything else.  Finally he asks her to marry him (after living with her "happily unmarried for twenty eight years).  The final episodes of this series aired last night and Gene marries Shannon.

This whole series (from the cheating episode through the wedding) have caused much discussion in the Wolf household at many levels.

For one, much of the back story is very familiar to us.

Gene (birth name Chiam Weitz) was born in Haifa, Israel and moved to the New York City in the 1950's.  In the 1970's we had good friends Sam and Alice.  Sam was also born in Israel during the same time frame and migrated to NYC in the 1970's.  Sam looked a lot like Gene, possessed a number of the same mannerism and attitudes, and all-around was basically a pretty decent clone of Simmons (based on Simmons pictures from the early 1980's).  His wife however, a Brooklyn girl, was not like Shannon in anyway.

Sam had fought in the '67 war as a 16 year old soldier.  This gave him a similar sort of bravado as Simmons.  We might be riding on the parkway in Queens with Sam and his wife and, while he was talking, we drove past our exit.  Sam had no problem stopping in the middle of the road, backing up a few hundred yards, and making the proper exit.

We all decided that Sam must have learned to drive in the '67 war.

At his core Sam was like Gene in terms of achieving.  I think this had something to do with being raised in Israel during its first few decades as a country.  There was sort of a cowboy-type, wild west atmosphere that fed a young boy or man's bravado.  Everyone started out poor after the war, everyone wanted to come to the US, everyone wanted to show they could succeed here.

Like Simmons Sam was a big supporter of America and the US military (particularly as the US and military supported Israel).  At the time the only destination for Jews leaving Soviet-block countries.  As immigrants I guess he felt a strong pull - his parents (like Simmons mother) had also immigrated.

Sam was also like Gene in working things to his advantage whether at work or play.  We used to do a lot of camping with Sam and Alice in "the South."  Often several families would gather in Virginia or North Carolina for a long weekend.

Sam would always bring some sort of fireworks.  Of course all the campgrounds where strictly no-fireworks sorts of places.  But that didn't stop Sam.  I recall one time he launched some sort of spinning rocket which landed on a nearby camper's awning.  It burned a hole though it.  Sam, ever the salesman and schmoozer, ran over to retrieve the rocket and "smooth things overs."  We could hear his harsh Israeli/New York accent rasping against the slow southern drawl of the nearby campers.  Somehow he escaped without harm and with the rocket.

The Simmons/Tweed children are roughly the same ages as our (collective) friends - a bit young but only by a few years.

So from our perspective whenever we see Simmons on TV with think of Sam.  Sam has been lost to time; now divorced from Alice.  Mrs. Wolf still talks with Alice, how now lives in Florida.

At the same time Shannon, a mid-western girl from Saskatoon Canada, is surprisingly very much like us in many ways.  Both Mrs. Wolf and I are from the mid-west.  We moved to New York City in 1977.  It was like moving to another country or world, even.  At the time we had two children, Sam and Alice had one.  We met at Mr. Casual's apartment one Thanksgiving in about 1978 or '79.  We were neighbors of Mr. Casual and his wife (they also had a daughter) and they introduced us to Sam and Alice.

Our mid-western values and ways were foreign to NYC.  Though our friends, including the Casual's and Sam and Alice, were all from outside of NYC for the most part we all saw things similarly, and we all disliked NYC.  By 1981 we all left.  By then Sam and Alice had another child as did Mrs. Wolf - in fact they were pregnant together during early '81.  I remember them waddling around the streets of Brooklyn and Levittown together.

The Casual's moved away to Long Island and then Florida.  Sam and Alice to California and then Virginia.  Mrs. Wolf and I ended up in Pennsylvania.

What always strikes me from the Gene Simmons show is the dichotomy of the mid-western Shannon and the Israeli Gene.  Mrs. Wolf and Sam always interacted in the same way.

A few years back we visited Alice in Florida.  She had home movies (Super 8) from our time together some thirty years before.  The footage, the sounds, the activities, all speak of the same age as the early Shannon/Simmons footage you see on the show.  Obviously we were not at the Playboy mansion, but none the less there is still that same vintage feeling.

Over the years we have kept in touch with our good friends.  Facebook today makes this easy and we crossed paths here and there.  But thirty years is a long time.  Alice now lives alone.

Unlike Shannon/Simmons we have been married for longer than their twenty eight years together and so our perspective is different.  Mrs. Wolf would have none of this "living together" business either so, like Simmons, I had to grow up and be a man just like Gene - in 1977.

We laugh when watching the show commenting how Sam and Gene were probably neighbors or cousins in Haifa.  It brings back a lot of these old memories.

(to be continued)

Link to the Anthropological Mom series.

Moon Wake

I came across a really interesting article the other day at  www.physicsworld.com.

Researchers have discovered that as the shadow of a lunar eclipse passes over the earth the shadow cools the atmosphere and the moving temperature differential between the sun-exposed portion of the atmosphere and the moon-shadowed portion of the atmosphere creates a kind of rippling wake (bow waves and stern waves).

(Who'd have thought given that all climate science is already decided... maybe these researchers didn't get the memo.)

It turns out that, as far back as 1970, two researchers at the University of Toronto, George Chimonas and Colin Hines, had predicted an effect like this.  But the atmosphere, being so large and all, was hard to test in order to prove or disprove their theory.

Standford, around the same time, reported detecting "acoustic gravity waves" - the name given to atmospheric waves - traveling through the atmosphere.  However, since there's no direct link between a given wave in the atmosphere and known causes (such as an earthquake, nukes and thunderstorms) there was no way to confirm the U of T theory.

Forty years later, however, thanks to GPS-based technology researchers were able to, for the first time, detect both bow and stern atmospheric waves as a consequence of the eclipse.

These waves travel at about 30 and 80 km above the surface of the earth as the eclipse passes by and are detect by indirect means using the GPS signals to detect fluctuations in the arrival time of the signals.

Five years ago I wrote about Global Dimming - another interesting phenomena that seems to have escaped the notice of climate researchers.

The shadow of a lunar eclipse stirring up the atmosphere seems somehow just as interesting and mysterious and, until 2009, only a theory.

Its fascinating how things here-to-fore completely unknown just appear out of nowhere.

I wonder if the folks thinking up things like giant space-based solar shields (like this as an example) have thought through all the consequences what they propose...  oh wait - this article is from 2007 when no one knew what effect shadows from eclipses had on the earth.

Sadly, though much of this is tongue in cheek, it seems pretty clear that what passes for "science" today is really not science at all but politically-based half-baked scientific speculation.  Lunar eclipses are relatively rare - and full lunar eclipses even rarer.

But what if some idiot built a giant solar shield and put it up over the earth?

My guess is that no one today really has any clue what the result would be.

We can tell from the physicsworld article that a temperature differential would be generated.  But the one discussed in the article is very small compared to what a giant shield might do.  And the shield would be there a relatively long time as compared to an eclipse which is transient.

Science is so narrowly focused, like so many other things today.  One hand has no idea what the other is doing.

But looking in from the 50,000 foot view you see, not a monolithic, well thought out system, but instead a bunch of confused villagers running around in panic based on very narrowly perceived fears.

The PS/3 game called "Village Greifer" sort of exemplifies this...



What's so cute about this game is the sad irony it offers on how we think about ourselves, our planet, and our environment.

Maybe there really is someone up there controlling things...  up there behind the curtain... Yet we, as villagers, are really completely powerless.

Maybe that someone is really just an avatar in a larger game of some sort...

Who knows.

Copyright Justice: Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Victoria Espinel - US Copyright Czar

How would you feel if the IRS, based on a simple notification (just a quick phone call, not a formal complaint) from one of your neighbors, started sending you notices that you owed money and then, if you did not respond, started garnishing your paycheck?

You'd probably be upset; particularly if you hadn't done anything wrong and paid your taxes.

Yet in the perverse world of the US government and its arch sidekick Hollywood things are much different.

Here, according to this and this PDF, if you should download something someone who merely says they own the copyright your internet access may be directly affected: slowed down or even shut off.

That's right, if I think that you've downloaded tracks illegally from my new CD, all I need to do is contact the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) and let them know.  They'll handle the rest - for sending you notifications to slowing down or shutting off your internet - until you comply with my complaint.

Do I have to prove anything.  No.

Something you've bought and paid for legally - your internet service - is now at my whim.

No due process, no court, no nothing.

Simple, direct, cruel and unusual, and most importantly unconstitutional punishment.

Of course you can protest - by paying a $35.00 USD fee.

Can't get that big PowerPoint uploaded this morning to the office for the sales meeting?  Check that little Jr. hasn't been simply dismissing all those notifications from the CCI and your internet service has been downgraded 1,200 baud from 12 mega baud as punishment for Jr downloading a dodgy copy of the latest rap song.

Now simply mentioning something like this might bring the biggest arch-villain of all time to mind: George W. Bush.

But you'd be wrong.

Instead you'd need to get up to speed on the Obama administration's "Copyright Czar" Victoria Espinel along with other Obama Administration officials and members of Joe Biden's staff.

Old Victoria along with Hollywood elites including Disney, NBC, the RIAA and many of their same ilk have managed to coerce virtually all big-time ISP vendors (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc.) into going along with their version of "copyright justice."  The coerced agreement (linked PDF above) "requires internet service providers, for the first time, to punish residential internet-service customers who media companies suspect are violating copyright rules by downloading copyrighted movies or music from peer-to-peer networks" according to the linked Ars Technica article.

That's right - punish.

Kind of like shooting trespassers on sight.

Kind of like a lynch mob.

Kind of like debtors prison.

Kind of, well, so pre-US Constitution.

Now, given those who are so concerned about copyright, don't you think this sort of "cigar smoke filled back room deal" would be front page news?

Well its not.

In fact, Christopher Soghoian had to use the Freedom of Information Act to get the low down on this the participants were so forth coming with the details of their "deal" to the public.

Good thing this Administration is the most open so far...  otherwise we'd never know.

The real truth here is that "Big Entertainment" - like the military industrial complex before it - sees control of its "assets" slipping out of its grip.  For years big companies like Disney have lobbied to have copyright laws extended basically to infinity (see this in Wikipedia - authors life plus 75 years for corporate owners).

But along came file sharing and bingo - the tight control heretofore exercised over copyrighted material by "Big Entertainment" starts to phase out.  Worse, each new generation thinks that "stealing," particularly copywritten works, is less and less of a crime.

Technology - RIPing CDs, DVDs, audio and DVD software, etc. - all contribute to "Big Entertainment's" woes.

Of course, the real problem here is not so much little Jr. and his "latest hits" free download site.

The problem is that the existing legal agreements between copyright holders and "Big Entertainment" companies offer little wiggle room as far as courts are concerned.

This is like Adobe and font ownership.  Fonts, like music or movies, were kind of second class citizens with respect to the "I Agree" End User License Agreements.  After all, things like Acrobat were the real prize; no one, particularly Adobe, wanted them stolen.

But eventually the font owners woke up and forced Adobe to crack down on its lax policies - so things like font obfuscation were developed to prevent evildoers from pirating fonts out of documents.  Today its virtually impossible to get a piece of commercial software to embed a complete font.

No doubt "Big Entertainment's" agreements with folks like Michael Jackson's estate require them to basically do "anything required" to protect their licensed assets.

Hence we have punishment of retail internet users.

But this is okay because, well, "Big Entertainment" isn't the government, right?

Sort of like, well, "Big Finance" and all their evil...

Except the law prevents, say, Bank of America or BNY Mellon, from just "taking" your house back after you cease paying for it...

Where are the "Occupiers?"

Not down at Disney or NBC headquarters.

Yet no doubt soon, if they are not already, all those old 60's era copywritten protest songs being played in the tents of the Occupiers camping down in Washington Square, will be subject to NSA and CIA-type covert surveillance for copyright theft.

(Imagine the uproar when phone service is suddenly slowed to a crawl during the midnight Kumbya break.)

Well, I've got to go...  there's a lot to do.

There's a birthday party in the house tonight and we're planning on singing "Happy Birthday"...

I have to close and lock all the windows, check that everyone's cellphone is clear of the lyrics and any games or apps that might accidentally sing, play or show the lyrics to the song, I have to make sure that I put up the illegal cell-phone blocker and shut off the WiFi...

Otherwise this birthday will be like the last one were the RIAANSA-types in the bushes behind the house with the parabolic listening devices thought that my eighty year old mother was reading the "Happy Birthday" lyrics from one of the grandkids cellphones and broke the door down in order to confiscate it.  She had a hard time getting out of her wheel chair for the pat down so we spent the rest of the party at the local jailhouse where she was arraigned for resting arrest...

Thank God this is the most open Administration...  think were we'd be if it wasn't.

(No doubt Google, ever buddy-buddy with the Hollywood types, will be turning this blog over to the Feds - so this may be my last post...)

Doctor, Heal Thyself...

Here in the US we spend a lot of money, time and political effort on a health system that is oriented toward treating "symptoms."

Now, if you sit down and think about it, the "treating symptoms" approach seems really, well, er, kind of stupid.  So stupid, in fact, that treating my automobile the same way, at least here in Pennsylvania, is illegal.

Let me explain.

Here in Pennsylvania we have a legally mandated annual inspection program.  On the windshield of every PA-registered car or truck there are two stickers.  One for safety and one for emissions.  These stickers, good for one year, are earned when you vehicle passes the safety and emissions test you are required to take. 

They are actually two separate things.  Safety is required no matter what.  Emissions has various exemptions if the cost of repair exceeds a certain limit, or you drive under five thousand miles in a year, and so on.

Here we'll focus on the safety side.

Now let's take brakes.  PA requires all cars with disk brakes to have break pads that leave some margin above "fully worn."  As an example (I'm sure you can look this up online but I didn't) let's say that your break pads are 3/8 of one inch thick.  PA law says that you cannot pass inspection if the pads are worn by more than, say 1/4 of an inch (which leaves 1/8 inch until they are warn out).  Now the assumption here on PA's part is that at least once a year your break wear will be checked by a mechanic - leaving your vehicle safer than if you had no check.

Now let's suppose you have brakes that are squealing.

Most brake pads today have "squealers" in them.  These are small metal pieces that are designed to make noise when the pads are worn down to an unsafe limit.

So, if your brakes suddenly start to squeal its very likely this is the cause and, if you take your car in, only the pads will need to be replaced (though rotors may need replacement as well as the car ages).

Now, in the "treating symptoms" category, the unscrupulous car mechanic might "treat the symptom" of squealing brakes by removing the brake squealer, charging you for new pads, and sending you on your way.

Not nice and certainly not legal.

But really, when you think about it, its exactly what the modern medical system does 90% of the time.

Suppose you have a child with an earache.  Virtually any trip to the doctor for this condition will result in a prescription for antibiotics.  Usually there's a quick peak in the throat and ear and bingo - a script.

Does the doctor really bother to "understand" the situation.  No, not really.

He or she probably sees this all the time and really isn't too concerned about the exact cause or even if the antibiotics are what's needed given the situation.  A "standard" treatment was called for and supplied.

Now suppose I bring my car into the brake shop for squealing brakes.  There are, in fact, any number of reasons brakes can squeal, including dangerous ones where things break or come off inside the breaking system.  Some of these can cause squealing.

How would you feel if the mechanic stood at the counter, listened to your complaint of squealing brakes, and then simply changed the brake pads because that was the standard treatment for squealing brakes.

You'd be unhappy (not to say this does not go on, but various laws exist to prevent it).

You'd really want the mechanic to diagnose the underlying problem first, wouldn't you?

So why to people accept standard "treatments" for health issues then? 

Even when state law requires a more detailed interaction for things like vehicles.

Two things I see really.

One, peoples perceptions of things like cars is different from themselves.

Everyone likes a new car and, when they get it, they want the car to "stay new" as long as possible.  That's why car insurance replaces a damaged fender these days (instead of having the body man just bang it out).

It makes the car more "valuable" if its kept within spec.

But from a health perspective people don't look at things quite the same way (or at least most in the US don't).  People don't think of themselves as healthy all the time nor about getting themselves healthy again after a problem.  Instead they think about masking over unpleasant symptoms.

Every mechanic knows how and why brakes work to the nth degree.

But no one really understand many diseases (like cancer) or what causes them.  But instead of spending money on this directly we spend money on treatments for symptoms so we can feel things are okay even when they are not.

Have a fever, take an aspirin.  Does the aspirin "treat" anything?  No.  It simply thins your blood in a way so as to reduce your pain - and no one really knows why or how.  Does it make you "better"?  No. It just makes the symptoms go away for a while.

Have a cold?  Take pseudoephedrine.  It dries up you sinuses.  Does it cure the cold? No.  Does it make you better? No.

Yet if the mechanic simply pours some "gas booster" into your gas tank instead of fixing your engine's actual problem what will happen to your car down the road?

So we like our "things" to be like new.  But not ourselves.

And this is what's fundamentally wrong with medicine in the US.  We only care about treating symptoms.  Sure surgeons fix broken bones, etc. but to me this is a different part of medicine than, say the Lipitor drug push (see this).

I, for one, have grown tired of all this.

I no longer allow doctors to treat symptoms.  Instead I worry about the actual causes.

So for the last six or so years I have been working on why I get nasty coughs from flu and colds.  (Many have read my other posts on sinus flushing, iodine, sinuses, etc.)

I have a theory which experimenting on myself has so far proven 100% accurate.

The theory is this.  Coughs "due to colds" occur because mucus from your sinus travels down the back of your throat carrying bacteria and/or viruses and enters your lungs.  The mucus then settles in your lungs and throat and allows these pathogens access.

If you stop this mucus from traveling into your throat you don't get a coughs.

This same mucus causes a "sore throat." 

Again, if you stop the mucus from leaving your sinuses you don't get a "sore throat" and, if you have a sore throat, flushing your sinuses will stop the pain by killing the source of the bacteria and/or viruses.

Now I am not a doctor and this is only my opinion.

SO I reasoned that the hydrogen peroxide in the sinus flush would kill all this stuff in my sinuses and then, even if it went down into my throat and lungs, it would not give me a cough.

And it in fact works for me...

I no longer get coughs, bronchitis, laryngitis, or anything similar when I have a cold.

I used to get them all the time and it was always a direct, predictable result of a cold.

Usually I would wake up with a cough after having a cold to I surmised that while I was laying down the mucus from my sinuses made its way down the back of my nose, into my throat, and caused a problem.

So, whenever I have a cold these days, I always flush my sinuses before I go to bed.  It usually works all night and I do it again in the morning.  If I get a bad flu or the cold is bad I do it throughout the day as well and perhaps in the middle of the night.

No more coughs, bronchitis, laryngitis, or anything similar.

No medications, no doctors.  (I tried them all, too.)

I am now usually over the cold in about three days and for the most part I don't really feel it much at all nor does it impact me.

(I do also use iodine and vitamin C on a regular basis - but only recently.  I had been flushing sinuses for colds for several years predating my use of iodine and vitamin C.)

So my view is this:  Here is a simply way to stop a common problem.  Fall colds bother people for months causing medical expenses, time off work, and various other forms of misery.

The cost for me to do all of this?  Less than $2.00 USD a year.

Now I have not stopped my self from getting colds, but I have stopped the cold from causing me anymore misery than just a cold.

Sure the sinus flushing is a bit unpleasant and inconvenient - I spend perhaps 3-4 minutes a day doing it when I am sick - a little more time than taking pills, say.  I am used to it now too.

But it solves the basic problem as far as I can see and I have eliminated all my coughs, bronchitis, laryngitis, and anything similar.

This is my little "health care research" project.  It harms no one.  It helps only me.  I offer my opinions about how and why it works. 

Soon the FDA will come and shut me down for exercising my right to free speech...

Before modern times people were responsible for themselves - there were no doctors or healthcare systems.  Yet they survived.

Today we are lazy - if its a medical problem with foist it off onto others.  Yet its our body.

When your car breaks do you give it to your brother-in-law to fix for you?  "Hey Bob, here's $150 bucks, get my car fixed..." 

Right - a $4 can of gas booster and Bob and his honey are out on the town that night having fun.

Yet this is what our healthcare system is...

At least to myself I have proven there is another way.

Amanda Knox, DNA and Circumstances

Amanda Knox, as most know, recently suffered the same fate as Casey Anthony: she was set free.
The culprit here was DNA and probably to some extent the CSI effect.

DNA identification is not the simple cut and dried thing you see on TV.

DNA is made up of a string of "values" labeled C, G, T, and A (we are talking logically here and not about the underlying chemicals and biology).  Every person has a unique string of these four values about four billion characters long that makes them unique in the DNA sense.  (Think of one giant text file full of nothing but those four letters.)

Your DNA also has structure, that is, sequences that are common to all humans as well as sub-structures within those structures.

In the case of DNA testing the model is not to compare your entire DNA what that found at the crime scene.

Instead the CSI-types look for certain markers.  A marker is a sequence of the four letters that is understood to be part of all humans.  Take D8S1179 - this marker is a series of seven to twenty TCTA sequences.

Now these sequences are individual molecules and therefore hard to detect.  What the CSI-types use is something call PCR to amplify the DNA - no all the DNA - just some pieces - like D8S1179.

D8S1179 is surrounded by markers (other unique DNA sequences).  So, in order to amplify it, first we have to find it.

So PCR is given D8S1179 plus two flanking DNA values - one for each end of the D8S1179.

PCR then searches the DNA provided from the crime scene.  When it finds a match, that is D8S1179 plus the two flankers together, it replicates what it finds doubling the amount of matched DNA.

However, the DNA from the crime scene might only be 10 ^ -12 grams (.000000000001 g) of DNA.  So you have to do the PCR process at least 28 times (in the USA) to a usable result (basically increasing the matched DNA by 2 ^ 28 for doubling 28 times or 268,435,456) which gives about 250 micrograms of matched DNA.

Now using just D8S1179 is not enough because there are only thirteen unique values for it.

So the same process has to be done for a large number of markers like D8S1179 - let's say fifty - to ensure that the markers that are unique to you are not going to match someone else.

But, as always, there are problems with this.

First and foremost is the question of the purity of the DNA collected in the first place.  In the case of hair, for example, everything fed into the PCR process for amplification might come from the hair.  But what does that mean?

First off, its why people doing this wear gloves.  If I touch a piece of someones hair with my finger my DNA might mix with the DNA in the hair.  So what would PCR be amplifying?  My DNA or the hair DNA?

PCR does not "know" what its doing - it amplifies whatever matches - whether its your DNA or mine.  PCR can just as easily amplify the wrong thing.

So as the source of the DNA becomes questionable so do the results of the test.

The longer DNA lays around the more it degrades, i.e., the base pairs break apart due to chemical reactions with the air and so on.

So given a swab of two peoples DNA and a whole slew of possible markers in the US court system at least 50 (with today's equipment) markers have to have a significant match between the person and the "crime scene" DNA for their to be a true "criminal" match made, i.e., its your DNA and not someone elses.

But, as I railed about in other recent posts, this is just a statistical result.  No one has tested all the humans on the planet and their DNA.  This is what science, through statistics, thinks is unique.  And it does not mean there wouldn't be anomalies such as someone matching you even though you are not related (or at least do not appear to be).

DNA does not provide a "timescale."

While I might find your DNA in my apartment the fact that its there at all says nothing about when it was put there, as in before or after the crime.  So there's a knife on my counter with your blood on it.  The DNA-tech goes around the house collecting up my DNA - say on a comb in the bathroom - and then touches the knife.

Did the tech get some of my DNA on the knife handle?

Was my DNA on the handle in the first place?

And on and on...

In the case of Amanda Knox there was her boyfriend's DNA on the bra clasp of the dead girl and some of her DNA on a knife handle.

The bra was not collected until six weeks after the crime.  Knox's involvement at the crime scene was linked through the supposed presence of the bra clasp DNA of her boyfriend.

Her DNA on the knife handle was minimal.

The initial Italian inquest considered that 41markers had matched for the boyfriend and Knox - not the USA required 50.  But in her first go around in the Italian justice system this convicted her.

On the second go around 41 was deemed not enough by the appeals court.

And she was set free.

Just like Casey Anthony.

Did Knox kill the girl?

No one knows.

Her African boss was also convicted of murder and remains in jail.

The problem with all of this is its not a "hard" science.  We are not blasting particles into a chamber and measuring neutron dispersion within .0001% of some mathematical model.

We have, like archeology I suppose, a bunch of fallible humans running around doing things which technology will amplify by some 2 ^ 28 in order to create a result.  A result which we could not get any other way.

Then we are doing this a few hundred times and check to see if at least 50 markers match.

Okay if nothing is screwed up along the way (and now you can see why the "chain of evidence" is so important).  If someone mixes up articles being tested for DNA, or touches them, or combines them, the whole house of cards falls apart - and there isn't even a way to tell.

Which to me is the most troubling.

PCR amplifies whatever DNA it finds - right or wrong.

It relies on people to handle 10 ^ -12 grams of material in a reliable way - something you cannot see or touch.

If you can't see or touch it, how do you know its "right"?

How do you know there wasn't contamination?

The point is you don't know.  You have to rely on statistics.  Its only the probability that its right - not that it is right.

The same kind of statistics that the Casey Anthony jury felt were insufficient to convict Anthony.

New Music CD...

On Monday, 10/24/2011 I am releasing a CD of music that I have been working on for the last few years.

Details and track previews are available at: www.fall-to-earth.com

Why I Don't "Believe" In Science... (Part III)

So having covered a lot in the last couple of posts about "belief" and "science" let's take a step back and look at the "less than hard" sciences.

At least in physics we have a mathematical model of some physical process.  For example, the old highs school favorite:

  F = m * a

Where force is derived from mass and acceleration.  I personally recall doing various experiments relative to this in high school.

Here force is modeled mathematically by multiplying mass times acceleration.  Lest anyone's eyes glaze over we will not go into any more detail than that.  In terms of many earthly activities this formula is sufficient to calculate useful results.

But as physics advanced during the twentieth century Einstein show that for very large accelerations things changed.  He invented a new mathematical model.  One which addresses both low and high speed acceleration (mass becoming infinite as its pushed toward the speed of light).

All of this has been repeatedly and accurately measure over the centuries.

Now let's compare this to, say, biology or archeology.

Biology is also a very real "science" - but not like physics.  There exist no equivalent mathematical models in biology as there are with physics.  Certainly there are various laws of genetics, statistical laws on populations and so on, but these are not exact laws.  I can do the same experiment one hundred times and get wildly varying results.  Results that might fall within a statistical limit, but it would not be an exact result.

(I can use physics and engineering to design the steel frame for a building.  But anyone who designed a building based on "live" biological laws would not be too successful.)

Archeology is also considered a "science."

But its much less precise (or "hard") than even biology.  I might find something in the ground, say a dinosaur skeleton.  Various competing "factions" then try an "explain" why the skeleton, for example, has or does not have some property, say feathers.  Here there are no mathematical models to speak of.  There might have been dinosaurs roaming the earth for millions of years but we only have one hundred skeletons to look at - a ridiculously small sample size - from which we extrapolate quite a bit.

Peer pressure, seniority, departmental and other politics and political agendas, and personality all play a role in how archeology "decides" what the best "theory" is for some discovery.  And, unlike even biology, we cannot reassemble the past and run some experiment again to "check our results."  Further, at any point its likely some new discovery may appear which completely throws prior theories out the window.

Unlike physics were known holes, e.g., "missing" particles, can be surmised or extrapolated, no one can predict what someone might find next in archeology.  For example, dinosaurs where thought to walk a certain way until movie makers pointed out that in order for them to animate them in a rational way they had to move differently (just watch old 50's and 60's dinosaur movies - even those based on "science").

Generally to me these kinds of sciences are more like "social classification projects" - at least until they reach the level of "hard science" (in terms of physic, chemistry, etc.).

(But then physicists and mathematicians take over anyway because maths (no spelling error?) are involved.)

Then, at the lowest level, are those that study "models."  This involves developing a model of something and, rather than studying the something, they study the model - apparently not considering the case were the model does not accurately represent the something.

Its not that all of this is completely useless though...

Its just not a rational basis for a belief system - at least to the degree most people take it to today.

Were there dinosaurs - of course.  What did the do, look like, how did they act, when did they live.  No one knows for sure nor can they know.  They can guess, they can extrapolate, but they cannot know - at least not to the degree we know how to predict the behavior of a steel column in a building.  Say there were a million of some small dinosaur alive at any given point over the course of ten million years sixty million years ago.  That's a population of ten million millions or some ten trillion individuals.

We have maybe twenty to study.

While we can learn much from these twenty its not so easy to accurately extrapolate what might have been actually true for the other ten trillion or so individuals.  (Imagine the ones we find have some property, for example, that made their fossilization more likely than the rest...)  Our results may be skewed and we would have no way to tell...

So I am happy to accept the facts turned up by these sciences, but not their corresponding extrapolations.

Yet wild extrapolations are exactly what people love about these topics and the conclusions they put forth.

Many also try to use "Occam's Razor" to claim that the "simplest explanation, all things considered, is usually the best."

The only problem is that this only works based on what you know - like with Newtonian physics.  It tells you nothing about what you don't know and it only works some of the time.  (Its real use is to discourage people from claiming that the "light turns on because the faeries pass through the wire with torches" in any sort of a valid way.  While its possible this is why the light turns on - so far, based on factual observation - it seems very, very unlikely.)

Not the sort of engineering I'd like under my feet if I were standing on the 40th floor of a building.

So I have to accept facts as, well, facts - facts in terms of all kinds of "science" - hard or not.

But I am very careful not to believe wild scientific or social extrapolation about these facts.

Today science has become, sadly, a business where in order to get funding you have to create some interesting reason for your research to be "necessary."  Not many people care much about the sexual proclivities of the Snail Darter fish.  But if that fish prevents some hydroelectric power system from being built suddenly your research in that area becomes relevant and necessary.

The question is - "Is this objective science you an believe in?"

Or is it a preconceived belief system looking for an anecdotal or circumstantial justification somewhere in scientific fact.