Sunday, January 31, 2021

Finally ...


This set of PLOS ONE squiggles, show, for the first time, tinnitus running in a person's head in real time, something not thought possible until now. With this finding in hand,  the old saw it's just in your head no longer applies as severe tinnitus, along with hearing loss, are conditions yours truly suffers from 24/7. 

Finally, as the title for this blurb, is more than just apropos as this new found ability to measure tinnitus accurately may be the start point needed to solving a truly wicked problem 15% of us rubes constantly deal with every day of our lives.

Toons yet again :)


Porcine thoughts


The Gollum


Sleeping it off ...


Channeling Einstein ...

 Putting a lid on it

Communication breakdown ...



Yours truly has always thought cancer is caused by a breakdown of genetic communication in our cells due to, for the most part, aging as reality is quantum whereby everything is in flux due to the fact subatomic particles are both a wave and a particle at the same time, thus requiring DNA, at it's most basic level, to cope with this inevitable fact in order to keep cancer at bay. 


Lohann Wolfgang von Goethe, the 18th-century poet and philosopher, believed life was hardwired with archetypes, or models, which instructed its development. Yet he was fascinated with how life could, at the same time, be so malleable. One day, while meditating on a leaf, the poet had what you might call a proto-evolutionary thought: Plants were never created “and then locked into the given form” but have instead been given, he later wrote, a “felicitous mobility and plasticity that allows them to grow and adapt themselves to many different conditions in many different places.” A rediscovery of principles of genetic inheritance in the early 20th century showed that organisms could not learn or acquire heritable traits by interacting with their environment, but they did not yet explain how life could undergo such shapeshifting tricks—the plasticity that fascinated Goethe.

A polymathic and pioneering British biologist proposed such a mechanism for how organisms could adapt to their environment, upending the early field of evolutionary biology. For this, Conrad Hal Waddington became recognized as the last Renaissance biologist. This largely had to do with his idea of an “epigenetic landscape”—a metaphor he coined in 1940 to illustrate a theory for how organisms might regulate which of their genes get expressed in response to environmental cues or pressures, leading them down different developmental pathways. It turned out he was onto something: Just a few years after coining the term, it was found that methyl groups—a small molecule made of carbon and hydrogen—could attach to DNA, or to the proteins that house it, and alter gene expression. Changing how a gene is expressed can have drastic consequences: Every cell in our body has the same genes but looks and functions differently only due to the epigenetics that controls when and how genes get turned on. In 2002, one development biologist wondered whether Waddington’s provocative “ideas are relevant tools for understanding the biological problems of today.”




We're slowly untangling the notion of caner as it's a communicative and computational issue IMHO.

We're losing these guys ...


Striking a pose

We're losing these guys ... from butterflies to bees, the impact of man regarding habitat loss, pollution, poison and over population, for starters, is eliminating insects at record pace, something being replicated all over the world for all life as the 6th great extinction, known as the Anthropogene, is well underway 24/7, a dire situation capable of ending man's reign on earth without exception.

To whit.




Hanging by a thread

Apropos is it not?

Friday, January 29, 2021

It's all about the money/rev L


A good friend of yours truly clued me on The Spectator's excellent piece titled Oligarchy in America, an interesting and disquieting topic BRT has copiously written about starting way back in 2011, a long extinct time frame where a modicum of sanity actually ruled.



Read the entire piece, it's the smart thing to do.

Privacy 101


Data privacy aka the 4th Amendment is moot. We are under surveillance 24/7 but we already know that, right? ... But there is some hope and Apple's the one company who is walking the walk to make privacy a viable reality in the age of the net in spite of what Zuck and FB has to say about the matter.



 He's right.

A dictionary for us SF Junkies :)


White Hole

SyFi now has a dictionary!!! No longer does one have to BS to find appropriate words describing Warp Drive or Disrupter. SF junkies like yours truly can look it up in order to vet our BS. Stellar.




Thursday, January 28, 2021

Genius is ...



This amazing painting of the greatest monarch of England fascinates yours truly to no end as there is so much history in the work commemorating England's victory over Spain's Spanish Armada in 1588 but ... this blurb is not about Elizabeth and England but rather about the notion of genius and what it actually entails beyond IQ, a specific aspect of intellect so overrated as to be almost meaningless in this writer's opinion.

If Mozart could hear in his head how the music ought to go, Leonardo, judging from his sketches, could simply see in his mind’s eye how the machine should work or the painting should look. Here, too, Leonardo’s natural technical facility is manifest, as seen in the hand-eye coordination that results in correct proportions and the cross-hatching lines that suggest three-dimensional perception. Likewise evident is Leonardo’s relentless curiosity. We watch his mind range across an endless horizon of interconnected interests; on one page, for example, a heart becomes the branches of a tree, which then become the tentacles of a mechanical pulley. How do all these seemingly disparate things of the world hang together? Leonardo wanted to know. With good reason, the cultural historian Kenneth Clark called him ‘the most relentlessly curious man in history’.

Seems I may be right about this. :)


Walking is the act of controlled falling. - Robert E.

Improv ...


As a former jazz/rock musican and currently practicing artist, the excellent Nautilus article discussing the neurology of flow states regarding the creative process is spot on as one does NOT THINK when creating anything of significance. Ask any artist what she is thinking when doing the deed and one will most often find the answer to be "nothing" as improv does this to you. After the fact is a different story  altogether as defining the end result of a given work of art, whether it be a painting, video or the making of an awesome souffle, is easy, at least to this rube who has been creating art for over 50 years. 



Exactly :)


Arizona Moonrise

Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Interdependence rules ...

Charles Darwin's 165-year-old "wind hypothesis" finally proven true

Credit: Alexey Protasov / Adobe Stock

Life impacts the environment, the environment impacts life as interfependence rules due to the fact reality is quantum and certitude but a mirage. 

To whit.

All animals adapt to their environment. Even humans, self-isolating animals that we are, are shaped by our surroundings. Every one of us is interdependent with the environment that we inhabit—it shapes us as much as we shape it.

While the Buddhist notion of interdependence dates back roughly 2,500 years, we didn't understand how profoundly the environment affects biology until Charles Darwin. Now one of his theories, long known as the "wind hypothesis," has been shown to be true. It only took 165 years to verify his observations.


The man himself.

Nature finds a way/rev XX



Nature finds a way, always. As proof, this little guy seen above, is really doing well even though his volcanic home decided to erupt and do away with his world big time back in 1991.




Repopulcation of existing or evolved life always happens as seen by the aftermath of the great extinctions earth has experienced over a billion years. Once we're gone, earth will rejuvenate just as she always has done since the beginning of time.

Monday, January 25, 2021

Worst case scenario



Global Warming is a slow motion disaster of biblical proportions but now, said disaster has become a worst case scenario due to the massive melting of ice on the poles and Greenland.





And this ...




We did this to ourselves.

Sunday, January 24, 2021

Subsidence


Subsidence: sub·sid·ence/sÉ™bˈsÄ«dns,ˈsÉ™bsÉ™dns/

noun:

the gradual caving in or sinking of an area of land.

"the race was abandoned because of subsidence of the track"

Similar: collapse, caving in, falling in, giving way, sinking, settling

AKA: The collapse of aquifers ... happening all over the world due to overuse of planet earth

Researchers have been warning about future water scarcity for decades, but new data reveals a majority of the world’s largest aquifers are already running out of water.

Using NASA satellite data on aquifer changes from 2003 to 2013, researchers from University of California Irvine published a study in Water Resources Research that shows 21 of the world’s 37 largest aquifers have passed the “sustainable tipping point,” meaning they are depleting faster than they recharge. Thirteen of the 21 aquifers cited fall into the “most troubled” category.

Most aquifers take thousands of years to refill, relying on snowmelt and rain to quench depleted reservoirs. But with climate change and drought pressuring parched communities, agriculture, and energy grids, reliance on groundwater is increasing, draining aquifers faster than natural systems can replenish them.

And this.

But scientists haven’t modeled global risks of subsidence—until now. To build their model, Sneed and her colleagues scoured the existing literature on land subsidence in 200 locations worldwide. They considered those geological factors (high clay content), as well as topology, as subsidence is more likely to happen on flat land. They factored in population and economic growth, data on water use, and climate variables.

The researchers found that, planet-wide, subsidence could threaten 4.6 million square miles of land in the next two decades. While that’s just 8 percent of Earth’s land, humanity tends to build big cities in coastal areas, which are prone to subsidence. So they estimate that, in the end, 1.6 billion people could be affected. The modeling further found that worldwide, subsidence exposes assets totaling a gross domestic product of $8.19 trillion, or 12 percent of global GDP.

The Ogallala Aquifer

The Ogallala Aquifer supports an astounding one-sixth of the world’s grain produce, and it has long been an essential component of American agriculture. The High Plains region—where the aquifer lies—relies on the aquifer for residential and industrial uses, but the aquifer’s water is used primarily for agricultural irrigation. The agricultural demands for Ogallala water in the region are immense, with the aquifer ultimately being responsible for thirty percent of all irrigation in the United States. The Ogallala Aquifer has long been unable to keep up with these agricultural demands, as the aquifer recharges far slower than water is withdrawn.

This is not sustainable but you already know that, right?

Partners in crime


Its pretty well known groupers and octopuses are smart, what's not really well known is the fact both often hunt together in sophisticated fashion as seen by this amazing video.



Partners in crime indeed. :)

Saturday, January 23, 2021

1 - 45 ...

No doubt about it, America's had some really marginal presidents as it seems we often choose mediocracies to run the place including some exceptionally inept and venial individuals as seen by Trump, Harding, Pierce and Andrew Johnson, among significant others. Various polls stay pretty consistent with the top 10 but variances do occur as one moves toward the bottom feeders like Buchanan, considered by many to be the worst until Trump came along.

With this in mind, yours truly's take on presidential rankings would put W near the bottom based on his disaster known as shock and awe, the worst strategic initiative this country has ever done, aided and abetted by the weapons of mass destruction lie. Lyndon Johnson and the nadir of Nam also comes to mind as this catastrophic endeavor also was started by the Gulf of Tonkin lie even though Johnson's push for civil rights via his Great Society programs elevates his status to some degree. 

Even conservatives from Atlanta, where Mr. Cooper lives, have had it with Mr. Trump, he said. “He has tarred and feathered himself, and I think it will blemish him for a long, long, long time.”

Douglas G. Brinkley, professor of history at Rice University and a member of the advisory panel for C-SPAN’s Presidential Historians Survey, said that Mr. Trump “was a bad president in just about every regard.”

“I find him to be the worst president in U.S. history, personally,” Mr. Brinkley said, “even worse than William Henry Harrison, who was president for only one month. You don’t want to be ranked below him.”

Mr. Brinkley brought up Richard Nixon, the only president to resign in disgrace.

“At least when Nixon left, he put the country ahead of himself at the last minute,” Mr. Brinkley said. “Now he looks like a statesman compared to Trump.”

Any questions?


12 Monkeys


12 Monkeys, a masterpiece for the ages, is highlighted in a wonderful and lengthy oral history piece in Inverse. Check it out. Worthwhile to the max.

To whit.


Read on, you won't be disappointed. 

Covid-19, not 12 Monkeys but ...

R. U. R.


1/25/1921 ...

It's inevitable.

According to a historical analysis conducted by Mr. Muro and others at Brookings, recessions such as the one we’ve been in are the times businesses are most likely to replace humans with automation. This happens because, when recessions hit, revenue falls faster than wages. The result is that automation goes from a nice-to-have to a perceived necessity for cash-strapped companies.

Even when the economy recovers, that automation isn’t going away, adds Mr. Muro. While in the long run automation increases economic productivity and creates more jobs, in the short term it can mean unemployment and worse jobs for those swept aside by it. There is also the chronic and worsening problem that America is experiencing ever-greater economic inequality despite increased productivity from automation.

When she gave talks a decade ago, says Dr. Knight, she told her audiences that the robot revolution was already well under way, only it was happening behind closed doors, in places like factories and warehouses. What’s different now is that the robot revolution is happening in public, and is therefore unavoidable, even personal. In our homes, our places of work, on our streets, in our skies, robots are becoming a part of our everyday lives as they have never before.

 As stated before in BRT, it's different now.


Friday, January 22, 2021

6 for the price of 1 ...



Imagine if earth was centered inside this stellar carousel known as the Castor 6 star system. Tatoone, of Starwars fame, equipped with just two, would be a nothing while the complex light variances of the Castor system would be something else altogether with one innocent question ... would there ever be darkness? 

Even bigger ...


Super massive black holes are humongous with some giants the equivalent of mass 10 billions times greater than that of the sun but researchers are conjecturing SLAB/Stupendously Large Black Holes of a size considered not possible until now.


 

Thursday, January 21, 2021

Wednesday, January 20, 2021

Channeling Jeremy Bentham


11 years ago, yours truly wrote about ...  a most ingenious "device" to keep prisoners in check by making it impossible for any of the denizens of such prison to see if they were, in fact, being spied upon via a visionary approach to surveillance known as the panopticon

To whit ...


Fast forward to 2012 & beyond where Palantir's digital version of the panopticon is alive and well, not only operating in Afghanistan but also now in the states as surveillance and the art of tracking behavior is big business 24/7 due to Palantir's unique ability to sift through vast amounts of visual and textural content to enable the military and police, among significant others, to find specific skeins of data impossible to locate by any other means.



It gets better.



The question to ask here is ...