Time

I turned 60 this past January, which affected me a little more mentally than turning 40 or 50 did, although in truth my health is good so I feel fortunate to be able to do anything that I ever did-albeit a bit slower. My hair has become mostly gray at last and my paunch a little more stubborn, but I still climb mountains daily, thus attribute whatever physical decline I notice to the extra few pounds rather than to any particular affect of aging. That is, my body could easily walk the country a second time if my mind chose to do that, so a lifetime of walking and good genes have blessed me, and I never forget my good fortune.
        Long ago I had an intuition that I would live until my early 80's and I have thought about what I wish to be done with my body after I die. My preference would be to be laid out on the ground somewhere so that the animals and insects and bacteria could consume me in the same way that I have consumed them all my life, but that is frowned upon in Western culture; for economic reasons I'll probably accept cremation as the simplest disposal. When I lament burning up in a fire as a somewhat unnatural waste of flesh, I remember that wildfires are common in nature and that ultimately the entire Earth will be incinerated by the expanding sun-so what is 'natural' is quite an expansive definition. At any rate my family will be able to scatter my ashes wherever they choose and so that is dust to dust and atom to atom.
       In his book "When Breath Become Air", neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi describes his stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis at the age of 36, and in the final paragraph of the book he writes a simple message to his eight month old daughter who will never know him:
                "When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you have filled a dying man's days with a sated joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing".
               So life goes on, and we all grow old and die, and nature eventually reclaims even the bulldozers that scar her. All is as it should be.
   

Cuba and Afghanistan

    It's distressing to hear the criticism of the recent opening of relations with Cuba,claiming that we should not  become friendly with a nation/government that jails political dissenters. Meanwhile we continue to spend blood and billions of dollars in Afghanistan( and other middles east countries) where the suppression, abuse and outright murder of women is still condoned in the name of "honor".

Ramblings

   Finished a book called "Symphony for the City of the Dead" by M.T. Anderson, detailing the siege of Leningrad (St.Petersburg) during WW2. I had never realized what a total narcissistic psychopath Stalin was, nor how many people he was directly and indirectly responsible for killing. Because of his murderous purges before the war-including killing top generals-and his incompetence during the war, the Soviet people lost over 27 million dead. That surpasses all other nations combined. Theirs was a history of paranoia and suffering within a totalitarian system, where neighbor betrayed neighbor and people had to resort to cannibalism to stay alive after the Nazis invaded. Nothing in American history compares-at least not among the dominant white population-and it helps to explain the psychology of the Russian people today.
   In another book- "The 2016 World Almanac", I discovered that the violent crime rate in America is less than half of what it was in 1990. Back then 9.4 people were murdered per 100,000, versus 4.5 today. Motor vehicle theft is about 1/3 of what it was then- 655 vehicles per 100,000 versus 221.3 in 2013. So once again the fear mongering regarding terrorism and gun violence and the threat of crime just doesn't reflect the facts. Neither does the teenage pregnancy rate, which was 43.9 births per 1,000 girls ages 15-17 in 1960 versus only 10.9 in 2013. It had been declining every year since then. As for abortions, they peaked in 1990 at 1,429,247 versus 730,322 in 2011. The number of births to unmarried mothers Has gone up, from 399,000 in 1970 to 1,596,000 in 2013. However, the age of those mothers has increased: In 1970 50.1% of unmarried mothers were under twenty years old. Today only 15.3 percent are that young. So women are delaying birth as the traditional family unit has changed.
   Economically, Bill Gates remains the richest man with 79.2 billion dollars, and Warren Buffet is #3 with 72.7 billion. The Walton family comes in at # 8 (Christy-41.7 billion) #9 (Jim-40.6) #11 (Alice-39.4) and #12(S. Robson 39.1) That's 160.8 billion in one family( ...the rest of the Waltons probably have their own share?)    Meanwhile, 46.7 million Americans( 14.8% of the population) live below the poverty level which this year is $12,071 per person. 3,894,213 people receive some kind of government assistance, including 22.6% of employed people, with the average monthly cash input being $628.
    ....So
The Almanac is a great source of information that helps cut through the bullshit. Statistics no doubt can be deceptive, but not so much as the evening news

Global Warming?Car Choice?Free Will?

          I overheard an old man say to his (presumed) 

daughter and granddaughter, “Look at that car!” as he 

pointed at a two seat Fiat. “I wouldn’t buy that. I want something
between me and the road, and other cars.”   

The daughter agreed and the grand daughter will some 

day make her own choice partially influenced by what 

she grows up hearing. Of course the relative safety of a

 vehicle depends somewhat on the mass of the vehicles 

around it, so if most people drove small cars then their 

safety would rise proportionately. And because a small

 car is usually more fuel efficient, the danger a bigger one presents
to his family(considering the potential political unrest
 as a result of  the accumulating affects of pollution and global
warming)might make the small car much safer than the big one.

 Yet his analysis of car choice is typical of

 many people, as is reflected in the surge in truck and SUV
 sales now that oil prices have dropped again.  However, I am
wary of being sanctimonious regarding such things, for I know
 many smart people who do not analyze certain issues very
deeply, or they arrive at very different conclusions, so
 overall I trust that Creation will endure regardless of what
we humans do or do not do. Besides, that old man and
 his daughter may be doing good charity work elsewhere and
so give to the planet that way. Or the dreaded asteroid may
strike tomorrow and make all our opinions and behaviors
 ultimately irrelevant. I think it is worthwhile do our best but
 I try keep an open minded sense of humor about it too.

Paul Theroux's 'DEEP SOUTH'

   I recommend the latest book by Mr.Theroux called "Deep South" in which he travels around the southern United States and relates his experiences in his usual perceptive, no nonsense manner. Having traveled all over the world he compares the poverty he witnessed in the rural south to a third world country-a result of the local economies having been decimated by the loss of manufacturing over the last two decades. Additionally, hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid are funneled to foreign nations while a comparative pittance is directed to needy areas in our own country. He also relates the continuing prejudices that undermine black progress such as the reluctance of white owned banks to proffer loans to black business. It is a sobering expose' of sorts, and not a portrayal you see on the daily news. According to the author- who is from Massachusetts-the white rural south remains stuck in a subtle, unfinished resentment left over from having lost the civil war, and I suppose the problems of racism are no doubt more entrenched in a culture that did not even recognize the perversion of slavery in the first place. At any rate, it's a good read and worth the time.

Healthcare Revisited

     As I have indicated in earlier posts, my brother in law is a general practitioner here in Warren, so I have both 'inside' and 'outside' information regarding the American healthcare system...I Do Not have answers, only observations on the way things work. I am Not lacking in compassion for the truly needy, but become frustrated about waste and abuses in the way care is or is not provided by both corporations and by individuals who take advantage of the system. What follows is my rant against some of the patients I have witnessed....... What do 5' 1'' and 204 pounds with a body mass index of 38.54 and 5'5", 208 pounds with a BMI of 34.8 and 6'4" with a BMI of 46 have in common? They are representative of the majority of people being referred for "sleep studies" to determine why they have sleep apnea and other problems that interfere with their getting a good night sleep. And such patients are often those developing type 2 diabetes and other lifestyle caused conditions. In fairness to the doctors who authorize a sleep study, their recommendations always include 'exercise and weight loss'...often ignored by the patients. One doctor in Chicago named Monica Peek  has started prescribing lifestyle changes before medications, and her overweight  patients who ate less fat and calories and exercised 20 minutes a day reduced their risk for developing Type 2 diabetes by 58% ( 71%  for those over 60 years old)  Those put on the traditional treatment of metformin, a glucose lowering drug, reduced their risk by only 31%. So shouldn't the first course of action be lifestyle changes Before wasting a couple thousand dollars on a sleep study or other costly but less effective remedies? Meanwhile there are programs in Pennsylvania and other states by which a man with "back pain" can obtain financial "disability" assistance that allows his girlfriend to be paid to help him out the chair etc. Those commercials on TV for 'knee braces' or 'mobility scooters' ( "at No cost to you!" ) of course are paid for by someone-the taxpayers and everyone who pays inflated health insurance premiums. The point is that in addition to the out of control charges by hospitals and drug and insurance companies, many patients are irresponsible regarding their own health. Only the future will determine whether the healthcare system bankrupts the country or if additional cost controls and personal accountability will be implemented.  Now that Obamacare has forced everyone- rich, poor, sick and healthy -to become part of the system, Beth and I are taking advantage of the subsidies to purchase health insurance. (..and for all of you screaming at the White House about "socialized medicine", don't forget that the trillion dollar expansion of Medicare for senior drug coverage (part D) happened in 2003 under the watch of George Bush.)
POSTSCRIPT:   I forgot to mention the $30 billion per year that the healthcare system enjoys in charitable contributions, and the 8 billion hours of volunteer labor that the system enjoyed in 2009...probably more nowadays...What legitimate, well managed business could not do a better job with those kind of benefits? Most retail managers for instance would love to have even 10 free hours of labor a year!

More Quantum Weirdness

   This is the most recent experiment confirming the apparently random nature of the Universe, and how our senses co-create reality as we perceive and measure the world around us. No one is sure of exactly where the transition between the micro and macro worlds exists, but it's fascinating to wonder how it all relates to how the human mind constructs it's version of existence.

    >"Random number generators developed at ICFO -- The Institute of Photonic Sciences, by the groups of ICREA Professors Morgan W. Mitchell and Valerio Pruneri, played a critical role in the historic experiment was published online today in Nature by the group of Ronald Hanson at TU Delft. The experiment gives the strongest refutation to date of Albert Einstein's principle of "local realism," which says that the universe obeys laws, not chance, and that there is no communication faster than light.

As described in Hanson's group web the Delft experiment first "entangled" two electrons trapped inside two different diamond crystals, and then measured the electrons' orientations. In quantum theory entanglement is powerful and mysterious: mathematically the two electrons are described by a single "wave-function" that only specifies whether they agree or disagree, not which direction either spin points. In a mathematical sense, they lose their identities. "Local realism" attempts to explain the same phenomena with less mystery, saying that the particles must be pointing somewhere, we just don't know their directions until we measure them.
When measured, the Delft electrons did indeed appear individually random while agreeing very well. So well, in fact, that they cannot have had pre-existing orientations, as realism claims. This behaviour is only possible if the electrons communicate with each other, something that is very surprising for electrons trapped in different crystals. But here's the amazing part: in the Delft experiment, the diamonds were in different buildings, 1.3 km away from each other. Moreover, the measurements were made so quickly that there wasn't time for the electrons to communicate, not even with signals traveling at the speed of light. This puts "local realism" in a very tight spot: if the electron orientations are real, the electrons must have communicated. But if they communicated, they must have done so faster than the speed of light. There's no way out, and local realism is disproven. Either God does play "dice" with the universe, or electron spins can talk to each other faster than the speed of light.
This amazing experiment called for extremely fast, unpredictable decisions about how to measure the electron orientations. If the measurements had been predictable, the electrons could have agreed in advance which way to point, simulating communications where there wasn't really any, a gap in the experimental proof known as a "loophole." To close this loophole, the Delft team turned to ICFO, who hold the record for the fastest quantum random number generators. ICFO designed a pair of "quantum dice" for the experiment: a special version of their patented random number generation technology, including very fast "randomness extraction" electronics. This produced one extremely pure random bit for each measurement made in the Delft experiment. The bits were produced in about 100 ns, the time it takes light to travel just 30 meters, not nearly enough time for the electrons to communicate. "Delft asked us to go beyond the state of the art in random number generation. Never before has an experiment required such good random numbers in such a short time." Says Carlos Abellán, a PhD student at ICFO and a co-author of the Delft study.
For the ICFO team, the participation in the Delft experiment was more than a chance to contribute to fundamental physics. Prof. Morgan Mitchell comments: "Working on this experiment pushed us to develop technologies that we can now apply to improve communications security and high-performance computing, other areas that require high-speed and high-quality random numbers."
With the help of ICFO's quantum random number generators, the Delft experiment gives a nearly perfect disproof of Einstein's world-view, in which "nothing travels faster than light" and "God does not play dice." At least one of these statements must be wrong. The laws that govern the Universe may indeed be a throw of the dice."<

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