The Long View

The Long View

There are few people, much less countries, that take the long view save for possibly the Chinese as their civilization is the longest running example of how a particular society conducts business on planet earth yet forever remaining a fleeting moment in a reality we will never fully understand. In writing, there is one writer who embodies The Long View and his name is Olaf Stapledon.

Olaf Stapeldon

Taking a still wider view, we see that this aeon of four thousand million years is itself no more than a moment in comparison with the sun's age. And before the birth of the sun the stuff of this galaxy had already endured for aeons as a nebula. Yet even those aeons look brief in relation to the passage of time before the myriad great nebula themselves, the future galaxies, condensed out of the all-pervading mist in the beginning. Thus the whole duration of humanity, with its many sequent species and its incessant downpour of generations, is but a flash in the lifetime of the cosmos. ”Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future

Existentialism, combined with a profound understanding of science and philosophy, permeate his writings contemplating the issue of mortality and its deep connect to an existence that doesn't care. Another interesting aspect of Stapeldon's work is his unique ability to convey how a given creature perceives reality, in this case, in the guise of an enhanced dog named, Sirius.

“So sensitive was he to odour and sound, that he found human speech quite inadequate to express the richness of these two universes. He once said of a certain odour in the house, 'It's rather like the trail of a hare where a spaniel has followed it, and some time ago a donkey crossed it too.' Both scent and sound had for him rich emotional meaning, innate and acquired. It was obvious that many odours that he encountered for the first time roused a strong impulse of pursuit, while others he sought to avoid. It was obvious, too, that many odours acquired an added emotional meaning through their associations. One day when he was out on the moor by himself one of his paws was badly cut on a broken bottle. It happened that while he limped home there was a terrifying thunderstorm. When at last he staggered in at the front door, Elizabeth mothered him and cleaned up his foot with a certain well-known disinfectant. The smell of it was repugnant to him, but it now acquired a flavour of security and kindliness which was to last him all his life.”

In the end, it all comes down to this.

“Even when all the worlds have frozen or exploded, and all the suns gone dead and cold, there'll still be time. Oh, God, what for?” ― Olaf Stapledon, Sirius

Venom

As much as I like Venom and his buddy Eddie Brock, this blurb isn't about this dynamic duo but rather about biological venom and the benefits it has for mankind as nature never disappoints if one looks hard enough
to learn why.

lIllustration by Armando Veve

There are two opposite paths to achievement in science. The first is straightforward: Identify a problem and set about solving it. The second is rather unscientific-sounding and perhaps more faith-based: Study in obscurity and hope serendipity strikes.

For one researcher, the start point was the Gila Monster.

Gila Monster | Evolutionary splitting of the genus Heloderma into species (Reiserer et al)[6]

Gila monsters — sluggish, thick-tailed ground dwellers — are native to southern Arizona and northern Mexico. They have blunt noses and bumpy black skin with tan, pink or orange squiggles. They spend 95 percent of their lives underground. Like their cousins to the south, Mexican beaded lizards, they are one of the very few lizard species that produces venom, which they excrete from mouth glands into grooves in their serrated teeth.

Something's afoot.

One of the scientists there, an endocrinologist named John Eng, was impressed by Raufman’s work with the Gila monster. He was especially intrigued by its glacial metabolism — the lizard can survive on fewer than a handful of meals per year. Eng and Raufman paired up, screened the venom again and found molecules Raufman had not observed before. They called these molecules exendin-3 and -4.

Eng recognized the exendins as a potential diabetes therapy. He had patients with the condition who needed to calibrate their insulin injections carefully to avoid both hyper- and hypoglycemia. Exendin-4, on the other hand, resembled a human hormone called GLP-1, which works as a natural insulin manager in people without diabetes. When we eat, the small intestine releases GLP-1, prompting the pancreas to produce more insulin only when blood-sugar levels get too high. The molecule also slows digestion and makes us feel full. Scientists suspected that injections of GLP-1 would be a much easier and safer diabetes treatment than insulin, except for one crucial problem: The hormone lasts only a few minutes in the bloodstream before it breaks down. But the Gila monster analogue, Eng and Raufman were surprised to note, lasts for hours.

Fast forward a few years ...

Under the brand name Byetta, exenatide was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes in 2005.

Patients who took Byetta and other exendin- and GLP-1-inspired drugs also experienced substantial weight loss, trials revealed, but pharmaceutical companies were slow to realize how useful that side effect could be. Once they did, and had improved their formulations, the consequences transformed society: Ozempic and Wegovy, followed by Mounjaro and Zepbound, became blockbuster drugs for treating diabetes and spurring weight loss. What’s more, many of them appear to have additional beneficial impacts that researchers are only beginning to understand. Some seem to be protective against kidney and heart disease and may reduce inflammation in the brain that is linked to the development of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. You might say that the Gila monster — this shy, subterranean reptile — harbored a blueprint all along for medicines that may be among the most consequential health advances of our time.

Venom delivery systems have been around for a very long time. :)

Venom is generally considered distinct from poison. Whereas poison is passive — a substance, like a laundry-detergent pod or berries from a black nightshade plant, that can be lethal if ingested — venom must be actively administered by an animal, often via fangs, teeth or barbs, usually to capture prey or defend against predators. Nature has engineered this capacity surprisingly often. There are at least 1,250 species of venomous catfish alone, each with its own venom formula. Venomous creatures include insects, spiders, corals, mollusks, snakes, lizards and a few mammals (platypuses, shrews). Many of them, such as marine species, are difficult to observe in their natural habitats, and so we know next to nothing about how and why they use their toxins.

Cone snails, may have the most sophisticated venom in the world.

In closing ...

But in the venoms of creatures that researchers have been able to examine more closely, two features stand out that hint at their significant medical potential. They are incredibly potent and fast-acting — necessary qualities if they are to aid the survival prospects of the creatures deploying them. They can be produced in advance and stored for long periods at ambient temperatures (in the animals’ glands). They are composed of hundreds — or sometimes thousands — of molecules that often serve multiple purposes, making venoms “essentially ecological Swiss Army Knives,” as a 2019 review in the journal Toxins put it. And a majority of those molecules are peptides and proteins honed over millions of years to target other animals in the host’s ecosystem, including plenty of creatures whose biology overlaps that of humans.

Read the long NYTimes piece in its entirety. You'll learn a lot. I know I have. :)

Ignorance ...

Illustration by Frank Augugliaro/The New York Times. Photographs by Getty Images

A subject most interesting is ignorance and it's unique ability to enable one to be blissfully oblivious to how reality works at any level never ceases to amaze as it comes in all shapes and sizes, something humorously depicted in Mike Judge's Idiocarcy, a film people should watch to see why ignorance's been around since the beginning of time and will never go away as long as humans continue to reside on planet earth. One perplexing aspect about this all too common phenomenon is the fact we know people who are willfully ignorant but not stupid so what gives? 

From this perspective, being ignorant's easy. Not taking the time to know while remaining true to one's core beliefs remains effortless as long as something untold doesn't come along to bite you on the ass. To learn more about this ever present human condition, the NyTimes piece titled The Surprising Allure of Ignorance awaits. :)

Aristotle taught that all human beings want to know. Our own experience teaches us that all human beings also want not to know, sometimes fiercely so. This has always been true, but there are certain historical periods when the denial of evident truths seems to be gaining the upper hand, as if some psychological virus were spreading by unknown means, the antidote suddenly powerless. This is one of those periods.

Increasing numbers of people today reject reasoning as a fool’s game that only cloaks the machinations of power. Others think instead that they have a special access to truth that exempts them from questioning, like a draft deferment. Mesmerized crowds follow preposterous prophets, irrational rumors trigger fanatical acts and magical thinking crowds out common sense and expertise. And to top it off we have elite prophets of ignorance, those learned despisers of learning who idealize “the people” and encourage them to resist doubt and build ramparts around their fixed beliefs.

Same as it ever was. - Talking Heads

The world is a recalcitrant place, and there are things about it we would prefer not to recognize. Some are uncomfortable truths about ourselves; those are the hardest to accept. Others are truths about the reality around us that, once revealed, steal from us beliefs and feelings that have somehow made our lives better, easier to live — or at least to seem that way. The experience of disenchantment is as painful as it is common, and it is not surprising that a verse from an otherwise forgotten English poem became a common proverb: Ignorance is bliss.

The contrarian view ...

But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them.” _ George Carlin

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

― Martin Luther King Jr.

You're kidding, right?

Illustration by The New York Times

Lack of knowledge regarding how the environment functions, in this case, the weather, can kill you. If one doesn't know where and when a hurricane will strike (think Florida or Louisiana), the probability of one buying the farm raises exponentially so when Musk and company actually think about not renewing funding for NOAA, a case of intense puckering comes to mind, right?

One way Donald Trump may try to differentiate his second term from his first is by slashing the federal work force and budget and consolidating and restructuring a host of government agencies.

For people who care about weather and climate, one of the most concerning proposals on the table is to dismantle the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The authors of Project 2025, a blueprint for the administration crafted by conservative organizations, claim erroneously that NOAA is “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry” and should be “broken down and downsized.” An arm of Mr. Trump’s team, the Department of Government Efficiency, to be led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, wants to eliminate $500 billion in spending by cutting programs whose funding has expired. That could include NOAA.

For starters, I don't think this will happen but one never knows, do one?

With the rising costs of and vulnerability to extreme weather in a changing climate for the United States, dismantling or defunding NOAA would be a catastrophic error. Rather, there is a golden opportunity to modernize the agency by expanding its capacity for research and innovation. This would not only help Americans better prepare for and survive extreme weather but also keep NOAA from falling further behind similar agencies in Europe. While the incoming administration may want to take a sledgehammer to the federal government, there is broad, bipartisan support for NOAA in Congress. It is the job of the incoming Republican-controlled Congress to invest in its future.

Weather of a different kind

It's endless :)

Equipoise

e·qui·poise
/ˈekwəˌpoiz/

noun

balance of forces or interests. 

"this temporary equipoise of power"

Similar:

equilibrium balance evenness symmetry parity equality

When viewing this "awesome" image, to yours truly, it indirectly connects to great art and the people who create it. Seen below is but a tiny sample. Enjoy. :)

Aja - Steely Dan
Kind of Blue - Davis
Special & General Relativity - Einstein
The Three Musicians - Picasso
Heart of Darkness - Conrad
Macbeth - Shakespeare
Double slit experiment - Young
Uncertainty Principle - Heisenberg
Light as a Quantum - Planck
Light as a particle - Einstein
Quantum Mechanics - Bohr & significant others
Propaganda - Bernays
Feyman diagrams - Feyman
The Conversation, The Godfather,  Apocalypse Now Redux - Coppo
Sultan of Swing - Dire Straits
The Blues & the Abstract Truth - Nelson
Culture, cuisine & the human condition - Bourdain
Charlie Parker
Le Etranger - Camus
Dizzy Gillespie
Electric Ladyland - Hendrix
Stevie Ray Vaughn
Oscar Peterson
Jimmy Smith
Frank Zappa
Solo works - Keith Jarret
JFK
The consummate professional - Michelangelo
The consummate visionary - DaVinci
Sophie's Choice
Waltz for Debby - Bill Evans
Jonas Salk
Vermeer
Rockets - Musk
The Blackbird - Johnson
Hockey - Bobby Orr
Football - Brown, Sayers, Brady et al
Basketball - Bird, Magic, Jordan, Chamberlain, West et al
The Bridge - Rollins
A Love Supreme - Coltrane
AI - Hinton
Talking Heads
Blackbird - Macartney
Analog computing - Lord Kelvin
Digital computing - Von Neuman
AI, chaos - Turing
Graphics Software - Alvy Ray Smith
Ray Tracing - MAGI
AC- Tesla
ElectroMagnetism - Maxwell
Animal Farm, 1984 - Orwell
Brave New World - Huxley
Incompleteness Theorems - Godel
Waiting for Godot - Beckett
OODA Loop - Boyd
Swanns Way - Proust
Moby Dick - Melville
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses - Joyce
Ian Hammer
John McLaughlin
Chick Corea
Weather Report - Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul
Bach
Goldberg Variations - Gould
Lenny
Dave Brubeck Quartet
Carlin
History - Alfred McKoy
2001, Paths of Glory, Full Metal Jacket, Dr. Strangelove - Kubrick
Citizen Kane - Wells
The Outlaw Josey Wales, Unforgiven - Eastwood
Blow by Blow, Wired - Jeff Beck
Network - Paddy Chayefsky

More entities will be added without question. :)

Stillness ...

4 of a kind :)

A few days ago, I had a wonderful conversation with a good friend of mine whereupon we discussed often overlooked similarities among musicians of stature with the first talk revolving around the ability to play in ways unable to be copied. For both of us, Eric Dolphy and Jeff Beck were the two whose sound and unique approach to their craft shows why this take rings true. With Dolphy, atonality and extensive use of extended chords sonically relates to works by Schoenberg, Berg and Varese IMHO. As for Beck, outlier applies as no one plays like him. Going beyond the Yardbirds, he just did his own thing whether it be hard blues or acid tinged jazz fusion melded with rock as seen by Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, Charles Mingus's homage given to the great Lester Young back in 1959.

On the composing side, Steve Winwood and Wayne Shorter come to mind as their works are nuanced and idiosyncratic to the nth degree. In the case of Winwood, forays into jazz, blues, folk and rock were key along with legendary collaborations with Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker.  For Shorter, work with Miles and Steely Dan were just starters for a musician considered to be one of the finest composers in jazz as per Oliver Nelson and Duke Ellington.

Extended Chords the playground of Eric Dolphy and significant others. :)

A thirteenth chord (E13) "collapsed" into one octave results in a dissonant,
seemingly secundal[1] tone cluster. 

Dominant thirteenth extended chord: C–E–G–B♭–D–F–A 
The upper structure or extensions, i.e. notes beyond the seventh, in red.

7 Steps ...

The course of Empire destruction / Cole Thomas

7 Steps to the end of empire appears to be universal whether it be Alexander

the Great's, the Mongols, the Roman or the British and now, it may be America's turn as the nation moves further into the 21st century. 

One such observer was Sir John Bagot Glubb (AKA Glubb Pasha). Army General and historian, he studied eleven empires starting with the Assyrians in 859 B.C. and ending with the British in 1950 A.D. Sir John determined that each followed a remarkably similar pattern from birth to demise. Spanning a period of about ten generations, each went through 7 Stages of Empire:

The Age of Pioneers (Outburst)

The Age of Conquests

The Age of Commerce

The Age of Affluence

The Age of Intellect

The Age of Decadence

The Age of Decline & Collapse

And what marked the penultimate age? Defensiveness, pessimism, materialism, frivolity, an influx of foreigners, the Welfare State, and a weakening of religion. To what did he attribute this decadence? Too long a period of wealth and power, selfishness, love of money, and the loss of a sense of duty.

The religion part is questionable but the rest of Glubb's take is pretty spot on but a few other entries should be included in order to complete the picture of a once great nation beginning to lose its place in the world as a viable super power for the ages.

To whit.

• Incompetent governance
• Corrupt politicians
• Rampant inequality
• Climate change
• Resource depletion
• Environmental degradation
• Excess militarism
• Education collapse
• Infrastructure decay
• Lack of vision

Follow the yellow brick road

Stupidity ...

Yours truly has written copiously about stupidity as it's never ending, something Einstein alluded to in his famous quote ... "There are two things that are infinite. The universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." When writing about stupidity, one finds it matters not where it comes from whether it be US foreign policy or how people cling to nonsensical beliefs contrary to their self interest (Trump) because accepting ridiculous ideas according to one's take on the world is far easier than questioning as questioning invokes the possibility of doubt when trying to cope with something as truly mysterious as existence .

One person who addresses this all too prevalent condition with eloquence and grace is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a courageous German theologian who challenged Hitler and lost his life because of it. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

‘Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil;

it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself

the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of

unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish

anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need

not be believed — in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical — and when facts

are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the

stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily

irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called

for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with

reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

The corollary to this is ... "Stay away from negative people. They have a problem, for every solution. - Einstein

Truer words never spoken.

Bookends ...

First edition cover

Yours truly reads a lot as you, my loyal readers know, but one book, it seems, everybody's read, but not me, is Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, a 1st person viewpoint from a preppy dealing with adolescence and angst to the nth degree. Well, in 2024, I finally have and Catcher brings back memories as a preppy who did the deed for four years in the early 60's in an environment identical to the one Holden Caufield dealt with in the 50's as my school, which will remain nameless and forever locked in time akin to the 50's, was a rather perverse monastery filled with the exact same characters described in the book. Like Holden, complaining as art form by me was the genre of the day, bemoaning how tough it was even though, in both our cases, being coddled and insulated from the real world, insured it was an absurd rant to the nth degree. 

Bringing back memories is not a bad thing as long as one's not obsessed by them. Robert E.

“I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot. ”

“I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It's nice.”

“I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.”

“Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.”

“When you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.”

Theatrical release poster by Richard Amsel

A few days ago, I again watched The Last Picture Show, a haunting and powerful film depicting the coming of age of adolescents not insulated from the world, presents, in exquisite detail, the vagaries and tragedies of life experienced by teens living in a dying town in rural Texas during the 50s, circumstances totally opposite the plush lives of characters residing in Catcher. The thing most captivating is how director Peter Bogdanovich weaves together the complex story lines from Larry McMurtry's book and give them heart rendering life through a cast for the ages, something most rare in this age of frivolous self aggrandizement issuing forth from sources like X and Facebook. 

To this rube, The Last Picture Show is one of the truly great films without question. 

“Is growin' up always miserable?" Sonny asked. "Nobody seems to enjoy it much."

"Oh, it ain't necessarily misearble," Sam replied. "About eighty percent of the time, I guess."

They were silent again, Sam the Lion thinking of the lovely, spritely girl he had once led into the water, right there, where they were sitting.

"We ought to go to a real fishin' tank next year," Sam said finally. "It don't do to think about things like that too much. If she were here now I'd probably be crazy again in about five minutes. Ain't that ridiculous?"

A half-hour later, when they had gathered up the gear and were on the way to town, he answered his own question. "It ain't really, " he said. "Being crazy about a woman like her's always the right thing to do. Being a decrepit old bag of bones is what's ridiculous.”

“Why hell yes, Joe Bob! A cripple can always get himself a wooden leg, or a glass eye, or a metal hook for a hand, or any of that mess -- but there ain't no known substitute for a big dick. I guess you is out of luck!”

“Sometimes Sonny felt like he was the only human creature in the town. It was a bad feeling, and it usually came on him in the mornings early, when the streets were completely empty, the way they were one Saturday morning in late November.”

“He had just begun to realize how hard it was to get from day to day if one felt hopeless.”

If ain't broke ...

Maria Mavropoulou

If it' ain't broke ... applies to Google as yours truly, on a daily basis, depends on Android running a smart phone and Chrome for browsing and searching the web because Google's environment works without question. Is it perfect? Not a chance as Google seems to not understand interface design like Apple but that's not the issue, legal types not knowing how tech operates at deep level is because Google's a company comprised of a vast array of integrated software code sets able to work seamlessly together due to the billions of man hours and dollars spent in developing a system able the meet the needs of a significant portion of the human race presiding on planet earth. With this said, recommendations made by Herbert Hovenkamp, a prof at the Wharton School, makes a lot of sense regarding on how to properly deal with a company as important at this one.

Remember, DOD created the F35 and we all know how that's working out so ... do we want to create another boondoggle like the F35? I thought so.

A U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter from the 58th Fighter Squadron, 33rd Fighter Wing, Eglin AFB, Fla. performs an aerial refueling mission with a KC-135 Stratotanker from the 336th Air Refueling Squadron from March ARB, Calif., May 14th, 2013 off the coast of Northwest Florida. The 33rd Fighter Wing is a joint graduate flying and maintenance training wing that trains Air Force, Marine, Navy and international partner operators and maintainers of the F-35 Lightning II.

Backgrounder ...

A recent Defense Department decision to approve full rate production of the troubled F-35 raises questions about whether Congress has the required access to the information they need to effectively oversee major defense acquisition programs and to challenge those that aren’t ready for production. A highly classified report issued by the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation to assess the initial operational capabilities of the F-35 was made available only briefly to the Senate and House Armed Services Committees. Despite many deficiencies revealed in the report, DOD approved full rate production about a month after its release. The deficiencies are apparent in even the heavily redacted version of the report obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the Project On Government Oversight. These deficiencies include the following: 

Failure to meet key availability and reliability requirements

Continued inaccuracy of the gun

Excessive logistics footprint, especially for the Marine Corps variant

Delays on promised improvements

The rapid approval despite serious unresolved issues highlights the need for more effective congressional oversight. Laws such as the Nunn-McCurdy Act and the Operational Test and Evaluation of Defense Acquisition Programs law are designed to guarantee Congress access to critical information about DOD acquisition programs so they can effectively oversee those programs. Unfortunately, congressional staff seem to have had limited access to and very little time with the report in which to understand the state of the F-35 program. Further, the statutes don’t explicitly provide Congress with a mechanism to object to a Pentagon decision to approve full rate production other than its power of the purse to decide how many to buy, and when.

Regarding Google ...

There’s no question that Google dominates the world of internet search. But in attempting to open up this critical industry to more competition, the government is pursuing a cure worse than the disease. If the government is successful at breaking up Google, history tells us that consumers and many enterprises tied to our vast and flourishing internet may ultimately pay a price.

Judge Amit P. Mehta of the D.C. Federal District Court ruled earlier this year that Google, which the Justice Department claims controls over 90 percent of online search, illegally maintained a monopoly by paying manufacturers such as Apple to make Google the default search engine on their products. Last week, the Justice Department and a group of states presented the judge with a plethora of proposed remedies. Not only should Google be required to stop paying others for default status, it must also sell Chrome, its popular web browser. It would also be barred from making itself the default search engine on its own products and disallowed from preferring its own products in search results.

The entire point of antitrust law is to promote competitive markets. Antitrust remedies are not designed to punish a wrongdoer but rather to correct the effects of a monopoly. The test for a successful remedy is whether the market becomes more competitive, with higher output or a better experience for consumers.

At this point, the Justice Department has not sufficiently explained why its proposed actions are an appropriate remedy. Some of the proposals were not addressed at any length in the judge’s opinion in the Google trial at all. Others would split up complementary products, which often leads to poorer quality outcomes and higher coordination costs, both of which would be passed on to consumers. If the government gets everything it wants, the result could remove some of the features that have made Google products so successful and result in a fractured system that requires greater user effort to get inferior results.

If it ain't broke ...