8/22/10

The starry Galileo with his woes


400 years ago, he took out his tube, raised it to the sky, and discovered unknown worlds.

" that which will excite the greatest astonishment by far, is this,
namely, that I have discovered four planets, neither known nor observed
by any one of the astronomers before my time, which have their orbits round
a certain bright star, one of those previously known, like Venus and Mercury
round the Sun, and are sometimes in front of it, sometimes behind it, though
they never depart from it beyond certain limits. "

Now his decedent faces a screen and types - less romantic, Yes. A few typed keys and we have images, but of spaces so far our old sage could never dream.

Go outside - the blackness of most space pictures is in reality profound territories, but with just no suns there to give us light. So what we see on screen as black is in reality a mysterious bounty of free land which light cannot penetrate, and whose contents we are left unawares.

Forget this, today we can stop for a little while to consider the knowledge gained since two men last made their final breathes on our earthly abode - one galileo and mr kepler. Now we can celebrate too the sky - that bounty of the deep which is the world surrounding our world.

Glance at that picture above. Yes, a still piece of shit, but no, it's actually there, that is 2dimension hodge podge, recorded light from an instant of time, but it's there, this huge massive thing with acid rain. Where are the clubs and beers, football and high life pong parties in contemplation of these worlds? How feeble our miseries, our desires, our aspirations and ideas when we are confronted in time with the sand grain of our position. Take a deep breath and relax and think, we are a world within a world.

8/20/10

Letter of the day - definition of a badass

Pictured: Marcus Aurelius.
a ruler of land and sea - "a lord and master"

Dear Sirs,

What would be it like to rule the world, to have dominion over every land the four principle winds can even touch? Consider it, engulf the idea, breathe in the concept. Yes, it is remarkable! Indeed, We inhabit now yet a few tens of square yards of land (if you are a home owner), our 'country' inhabits a region north of some continent (if you are a native), but this man ruled regions much greater, for much longer. His age at the time: 20 something. Earthly orbital rotations prior to ours: some 2,000


The letter begging response (a smidgeon)
To Alexander, From Darius


"Behold! I send you a coffer full of gold, and an assload of sesame, to give you by these two objects an idea of the extent of my wealth and power"



and here is the reply... prepare yourself.


Reply:
To Darius, From Alexander

"
You have sent me a whip, a ball, a coffer filled with gold, and an assload of seasame. The whip portends that I shall become your ruler.. and dictator. The ball indicates the surface of the earth and the circumference of the globe which shall be under my lieutenants. The coffer of gold.. denotes that your riches shall soon be transfered to me.. In return I send you a kaffis of mustard seed, that you may taste and acknwoledge the bitterness of my victory...


My trust and reliance are in the Lord.
-Alexander:

May we aspire to accomplish as great of deeds, and do so without doubt or modesty.

8/9/10

" So natural is it to be amazed at novelty rather than greatness "

Once living now dead, this marks the 2000th year bacteria have been about his bones.
Yet words themselves are immortal - consider this passage about comets from Seneca, entailing what the common man believed about them before the Carpenters son.
Still ephemeral are his utterances "which peirce even the coolest thinkers heart."
The idea is it makes you appreciate that big ball of fire which illuminates our world, gives purpose to these eyes of ours, allows the necessary energy for the conversion of deadstuff into life stuff (photosynthesis) - on top of that people think suns are pretty, its a win win. I'm pretty certain my professor in my galaxy class actually go into it because she liked the pictures.


"
The host of stars that enhance the beauty of this Earth does not draw a crowd; but when something is different from normal , everyone's gaze is fixed on the sky. The sun has no spectators unless it is being eclipsed; no one observes the moon unless it is struggling. Then cities shout out.. But how much more significant it is that the sun has as many steps, so to speak, as it has days, and that it defines the year by its orbit; that after the summer solstice it turns so as to make the days shorter; that after the equinox it at once sinks and makes the nights longer, that it hides the stars; that, though it is so much larger than the earth, it does not burn it, but warms it, controlling its heat with periods of greater and less intensity, that it never makes the moon full except when it is on the opposite side, nor makes it dark except when its adjacant. But we take no notice of all this as long as regularity is maintained. If anything is disturbed, or something unaccustomed shines for, we look, we question, we point. So natural is it to be amazed at novelty rather than greatness.


Seneca, On Coments, Book 7 "

8/5/10

Best discovery - idea about deadstuff?

Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from Magic
- Arthur C Clark. ('invented' the satelite)


It’s 2010, I’m in a car, 120 years ago invented, about to go onto a computer invented much earlier – driving through streets w/houses & streetlamps with electricity everywhere surrounding. Out of all this – what has been the greatest discovery since Africa till Now?
That the Suns up there are made up of the things down here”, quipped Richard Feynman.
This means that those crazy pictures you see from Nasa’s photo of the day are an example of the possibilities of atoms when they rearrange according to a fixed set of rules.

I would agree with Feynman’s suggestion, but since a few thousand dollars are going into a gosh damn summer class, I better have another answer. My answer to the greatest discovery is this – it’s the idea that the atoms in the air, in the concrete, and in ourselves are intimately related.
“Yes easy enough” – No, not easy enough. That idea ran absolutely positively counter to the dogma in Chemistry to the men of the 1850s. They suggested that what allows photosynthesis and the ability for us to turn our food into poop was a special force – a life force (they called it vital force). It’s a fair idea. Look around you at life – look at breast milk – how’d that get in there? Some force must’ve allowed the female to turn her foodstuff into life nourishment. Interestingly, the very class I’m enrolled in involves this topic – those vital, majestic, vital force created molecules were deemed “organic”, the others “inorganic”.

So I’m effectively saying out of the airplane (a boring name, because at first people didn’t know what to call it so they just went with ‘a flying machine), the car (prior known as the ‘horseless carriage’) and the steam engine, the greatest invention/discovery is an idea about how life is created from once dead inanimate matter. This is trivial until you consider this; the drugs that people take for Alzeimers (or Parkinsons) are precursors to another molecule, which an enzyme will react with in the body changing it into the desired product. So basically molecules we mess around with and alter, are taken up in the body as its own. Without this ability to create ‘life molecules’, drugs for the brain, disease, whatever, are blocked. People forget that the drug active in Cannabis led to a whole new line of receptors, called cannabinoid receptors. Only after the discovery was it found that these are actually intended for other molecules, endogenous opiods – or endorphins (the drug target discovery came before the body’s own!)

Anyway, next time you consider the specialness of life matter, consider Viagra, drugs, the ability to replace vital organs by growing stem cells from that organ region – this is the golden road opened up after the life force idea was shunned, and that was only 150 years ago.
Imagine what’s hiding.

8/4/10

Guest columnist to join stuff:

Wicker has declined to post fearing academic reprisals


Jordan Phillip Wicker is a 24 year old dillante. Known as 'Wicker' to his friends, he attends the University of Depaul, works for free at a nearbye lawfirm, and is a growing & accomplished chef. Wicker's future topics will include: affirmative action and intellectual legacy, finding the self in modernity, and ties betwen law and folklore.
Comment for votes.

1852 to us all - ' The Energies of Nature which are still to be revealed '

" [To the 1852 public] The probable progress of improvement and discovery ought not to be overlooked.We are on the eve of mechanical discoveries still greater than any which have yet appeared; ..
The steam engine itself, with its gigantic powers, will dwindle into insignificance in comparison with the energies of nature which are still to be revealed; and that day will come when that machine, which is extending the blessings of civilization to the most remote skirts of the globe, will cease to have existence, expect in the page of history.
- July 15th, 1852, Front page "Other Scientific Discoveries may supersede Steam:
"

I think I've only seen a steam engine a few times. Basically water is boiled, the vapor turns a shaft, and those turn the train's wheels - this was lauded as incredible. The problem is the energy from the boiling is in the form of atomic bonds, and energy in the form of heat is lost when it's boiled - only the vapor's speed ('mechanical energy') and pressure turn the shaft. It's fun to hink there's still 'Gold' there, if we can dig into it.

For fun, California just became a state when this was written - it's now 'the most populus in the US. (there were 31 at the time) Ten years after the article is written, Lincoln becomes president. Notables: Henry ford wasn't even born, nor the Wright brothers. It would be another 50 years until the wright brothers invented 'the flying machine'.
PS - That picture is scary as shit

8/3/10

'The endless changes of reality..'


The atoms are infinite in number... they are all alike in quality but differ in shape, order, and position. Every substance, every single object, is made up of those atoms, the possible combinations of which are infinite in an infinity of ways. The objects exist as long as the atoms constituting them remain together; they cease to exist when their atoms move away from one another. The endless changes of reality are due to the continual aggregation and disaggregation of atoms.
- Demokritus, 5th century BC

Do you believe him? (all things are lil balls of charge?)
Consider a table, a massive peice of wood, supposedly the last breath, the last remnaint of some dead tree chopped long ago. Or the computer holding this monitor, its 2 feet of plastic, infinite balls of charge compose these?
What about DJ Pauly D and J Woww? Snooki, the Situation? Or the wisest of them all Vinny? How does this relate to any of it?

Easy. Check it

Bam.

What your looking at was deemed illegal by the government for 10 years.

There are actually stores who specialize in selling this, and even more oddly, only 5% of the stuff in the damn bottles they sell have this molecule in it! Benjamin Franklin said this molecule's existence is proof "God loves us and wants us to be happy!" This molecule has also ruined peoples lives - and right now, somewhere, a group of people are talking together about how they can change themselves due to this molecule's influence. (It's existence is also why the new Single Ronni had fun on episode one, and made him curse out Sam)

Two carbons, an oxygen, and a few hydrogens, a few lil things - crazy! How can that have such an affect! A few atoms! Blended in water - and you can drink it - and it does crazy stuff ! It's a simple ethanol (alcohol) molecule. Democritus from the grave! It goes into the blood, is taken up into the forest of the brain, and eeks its way into balls and holes of nerve cell receptors and transporters, landing whereever it may - it's just so happens that the nerve cells responsible for 'human will power' and human 'reward' are wooed by this little guy.

How powerful are the atoms!

BEWARE

And I didn't mention the yeast! The simple invisible beasts whose existence was doubted by the common in the 1800s when discovered by Pasteur. They are atom rearranger machines, taking oxygen from the air and sugar, consuming them, their body doing a rearrangement dance, and out in the form of poop comes the elixir of happiness for humans - alcohol!
Democritus baby!

7/31/10

"There seems to exist some hidden power, something that is playing tricks"

The will is there but its power… is deficient …there seems to exist some hidden power, something that is playing tricks… in a measure thwarting and perverting the wills designs… taking things into its own hands, and keeping the poor victim in a continual jigger. - 1872, George Huntington “On Chorea”(pictured)

Imagine going to a supermarket to get a flu vaccine – you awake 5 days later, you develop a stutter, you can no longer walk, your arms develop a flailing, the ingrained unconscious routine of swallowing becomes difficult, and you develop a british accent. You’ve never been to England.

This more or less what happened to an individual a few years ago.

What’s unique is she was a professional cheerleader for the largest grossing National Football team – the Washington Redskins. Her career was shattered and video of her odd gait has been ridiculed and made jokes on by the ignorant masses.


What’s so interesting about this case is it has happened before – on numerous occasions. The 1980s saw individuals develop Parkinson disease like symptoms from tainted LSD. The 1920s saw one of the most mysterious diseases to hit the human race – a pathogen whose cause was unknown, lead to its victims freezing in place – as if turning them into fictional statues. They also slept for days on end. The medical name is encephalitis lethargica – literally ‘the sleeping sickness’.

How is any of this possible?

When you woke up this morning to get out of bed, your legs didn’t receive a simple nerve impulse from nerve cells in the motor cortex. The common idea is that nerve fibers drop ‘acetylcholine’ on muscle fibers, this leads to the muscle shortening (‘what contraction is’) and it moves. Movement, instead, is counterintuitive.

What allows mammals and many other organisms to move is an ‘ever on’ pathway which works nonstop, a constant supply of dopamine in the Basal Ganglia (a horned like structure in the midbrain, its beautiful) is communicating with further down stream fibers, upstream, a constant inhibitory signal is stopping this excitatory signal from going thru. (oddly, your by default ‘always moving, without this constant inhibition). When you want to move, you excite cells which inhibit these inhibition cells. Loss of these dopa cells responsible ( a genetic disease) is why Michael J Fox and others have spontaneous flailings – this is what Huntington’s disease is - the nervous system is unable to generate ‘stop’ signals from the default network, allowing random excitatory movements to go thru.
(me – you can think of Huntington’s as how the brain actually works, our evolutionary ancestors probably developed some pathway/circuit that made the organism always move, only later did some inhibitory add on come along that allowed control).

Anyway, just knowing how the brain works with movement shows that enigmas like ‘the sleeping sickness’/ the case of the cheerleader/tainted LSD sufferer/Huntington’s disease patients are really characteristics symptoms from select deficits in the brain – totally explainable and interesting in themselves. Diseases and curiosities like this are interesting because t also shows how the brain normally works. (120 years ago Faraday mused on ‘How marvelously we stand upon this world.. it is here we are born bred and live.. and view this with an entire absence of wonder.. never questioning how it is we move from place to place. Well here’s part of the wonder). The cheerleaders development of a ‘british accent’ is probably not an accent but something going on with the region responsible for speech patterns, nevertheless how the ‘vaccine’ caused this is interesting.

People forget vaccines are misnomers – a flu shot is actually just giving the person the virus, it’s just the settlings are controlled and the strain is less malignant. The immune system will work to recognize the foreign invader (thanks supermarket), create a ‘recognition’ protein and begin making antibodies. The reason people don’t need to know the ‘shot idea’ is a misnomer is because when the virus is encountered again, the immune system already has developed a recognition sequence. (My intro biology professor was amazed and so interested in how encountering one virus when your 12 can be ‘remembered’ 60 years later, and how the encounter leads to the growth of immune cell workers with recognition sites for that pathogen.. forever patrolling your body until you die, just waiting to encounter the pathogen again in order to exchange blows.)

You can catch the segment of the woman if you search ‘20/20 Desiree Jennings’ on google.
Interesting thoughts, but knowledge for its own sake may not lead to celebrity or beautiful women, but it shines light on the curious affair we call ‘human existence’ and at worst, keeps us away from the thoughts of the vulgar who characterize Jennings misfortune as a ‘fake’ or ‘the work of the devil’. People forget the best treatment for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is through brain electrocution, which is really just creating brain forest fires, their just induced seizures. The miracle is the symptoms go away, but the nerve cell universe is forever altered and shattered. Also consider 30% of the people we see on a day to day basis today would probably be deemed a) crazy b) put into a mental institution of c) dead 300 years ago - that’s probably the % of people who are on some type of oral medication for mental illness. (I could write pages on this.) One last gold piece for you – the Hippocratic oath is the medical gospel for doctors and people of medicine (part of it is etched on one of the buildings on campus). It’s contents are more like a rant, in which Hippocrates is mainly arguing against dissenters, suggesting that seizures are not the mark of the devil of curse by god, but physical mishaps in the brain. (how interesting to see the same ideas replayed on 20/20 over 2,000 years later, instead of on seizures its thru motor deficits from a cheerleader).
-------------------------------------
update: Pictured: I took the quote from Huntington because he appreciates the enigma of the situation. Someone can just say 'oh, ok, it's just Huntington's disease'. No it's not. The mystery as to how you and I move, how people can be held in place like statues, how people can lose the ability to move or control their arms, even how most organisms move is revealed through this mechanism.

On 20/20: There was 'some Doctor' consulted on 20/20 for the woman, and he used hodgpodge pseudoscience and said it was 'psychogenic' as the problem. This is the 'real doctor' who is making up for the 'fake doctors'. First of all, he has to know how the pathogen (somehow from the vaccine) altered specifics at the cell level in the brain, specifically what's causing what. Huntington's disease is a clumpy protein which gets in the way of microtubules in dopaminergic cells in the dorsal striatum - it's actually a protein. It's 'clumpy' because of a nucleotide error, which affects the structure of the protein, leading to the messing up (somehow) of the cell highways (microtubules) in the cell universe (nerve cells).. leading to the nerve cell's collapse (it's believed), leading to loss of basal activity in at the circuit level in the primary motor pathway, leading to spontaneous action potentials going thru the whatever the destination is. Try that level of explanation (molecular, intracellular, to circuit, to systems) to the explaination this doctor gave - he says 'psychogenic' - is what explains her curious symptoms.

Also this knowledge makes it more interesting - how could an odd working protein mess up a whole cell - and why does some 'tubes' running across it mess it up? What does that say about the cell highway, how does it work? What's going on it there? So many more questions that add to the mystery of how 1 cell works, just based on knowing about the Huntington protein. The asshole doctor basically said nothing about Nature. The 20/20 producers should've just given him a check, allowed him to maintain his public apperance and 'honors' and then wait for him to die because he will not be remembered.

7/28/10

Things I learned from my teacher -

How a type of element combination in the universe mates
(mustard gas working this way)


It was not until the battle of Mesines in July, 1917, that the Germans introduced their blue cross and yellow cross shells containing... dichloroethyl sulphide (mustard gas) with variants as incapacitating and deadly... in 1918 the British had a mustard gas of their own make. - MR. CHURCHILL ON POISON GAS. New York Times 10 Oct. 1923
This is pretty interesting and yet scary.

Basically some molecules in the world have a bromine, iodine, or chlorine on them – and this 'class' have particular ways they can react (mustard gas among them). Their secret ways of mating is to either have a) part of the molecule just ‘jump off’ (mustard gas does this way – called Sn2) or have part just get bumped off after a fight (called Sn1) . The class are haloalkanes, and this are 'addiction' mechanisms.

Well mustard gas – get this – reacts with water – (the water from the person’s eye) and do all sorts of crap. The chlorine on the molecule will jump ship and the water will have it’s way with the sulfur center to the horror of the person the reaction is performed upon.

What a disaster.
(Edit: so I found this later.. a New York Times article suggesting that 'only 1 or 2%' of mustard gas victims died.. whereas 24% die when 'hit by bullets' ... "bullets are responsible for 25 times as many blinded as gas. Out of over 70,000 gas casualties, there were just twenty-nine men blinded in one or both eyes" - I don't know how realistic that is. When you think about a cloud of gas and 1 bullet, you would assume a cloud hits a wider volume?- GAS WARFARE IS CALLED HUMANE :Puts More Men Out of Action With Less Hurt Than Any Other Method. New York Times Mar. 1924

7/27/10

Things my teacher says - Humans have presevatives? Vitamines are preservatives? Radical traps?

Linus Pauling - who lived until age 93 - recommended 'high doses' of vitamine c to fight off the radical crusader in the air - o2.

  • The oxygen around us is a radical that is reactive.. thru mechanisms it will destroy chains chains called 'polyunsatured' fats - or butter. It will take the hydrogen away -and this reaction is the basis for dairy products going rancid - this is how 'rancid' dairy products works.
  • Napolean wanted a way to have butter sent to his troops to keep it from going rancid, so 'his men' applied hydrogen and platinum.. which will take away one of the double bonds from the polyunsaturated chain, this makes it hard for the oxygen to steal the middle hydrogen to make the food go rancid. "thus this is what partially hydrogenated means when you look at the ingredients section"
  • Preservatives in food are now the child of those first experiments.. they 'preserve' food by putting in chemicals that prevent the chains from become radicals - 'a type of radical trap' - they are molecules that when oxygen attacks become super stable
  • Humans have preservatives in them, also to help against the reactive oxygen in the air - they are called 'Vitamine A, E and C' they are radical traps
  • Anytime you breath pure air at the hospital for a long time it is actually causing damage to the patients lungs, the current atmospheric mixture 80% nitrogen, 20% oxygen is ideal
Humans have preservatives? Vitamins are preservatives? Radical traps?
(Vitamin E is the picture)
This blog's doctrine:

" But waving all common utility, all vulgar applications, there is something in knowing and understanding the operation of nature, some pleasure in contemplating the order and harmony of the arrangements belonging to the terrestial system of things. There is no absolute utility in poetry; but it gives pleasure, refines and exalts the mind. Philosophic pursuits have likewise a noble and independent use of this kind; and there is a double reason for pursuing them, for, whilst in their sublime speculations they reach to the heavens, in their application they belong to the earth; whilst they exalt the intellect, they provide food for our common wants and likewise minister to the noblest appetites and most exalted views belonging to our nature. .. It is surely a pure delight to know, how and by what processes, this earth is clothed with verdue and life, how the clouds, mist and rain are formed, what causes all the changes of this terrestial system of things, and by what divine laws order is preserved amidst apparent confusion. It is a sublime occupation to bring the lightning from the clouds and make it subservient to our experiments.. and to measure and weigh those invisible atoms, which, by their motions and changes according to laws impressed upon them by the Divine Intelligence, constitute the universe of things. Whilst he investigates the operations of infinite power guided by infinite wisdom, all low prejudies, all mean superstituions disappear from his mind. " - Sir Humphry

7/26/10

Interesting things my teacher said

"a destroyer of worlds molecule"

Never has death looked so odd. Once used in refridgerators, the molecule above was used to preserve food "One of the most important molecules in the history of man." Its also inert and won't react with much. So why is that bad? Well it won't react until it floats to the top of the atmosphere - but then it gets hit by a photon - a radical reaction occurs - it'll then react with o3 until 10,000 have been broken down into 02, depleting our ozone molecules
(plethora of 03 molecules up above = the ozone layer)

Interesting things my teacher said

  • If you mix some propane with lots of dibromine.. u can just expose the bromine to light and that's enough energy for them to become radicals.. and then u can put the container someplace dark.. and slowly and slowly the bromine's will start a chain reaction until it's completely finished.. and they've attached to the propane (sorta like the CFC attacker in the pic)
  • CFC's .. a carbon/clorine/2 florines is a chemical used to refrigerate things and has 'saved many lives'.. "an extremely important molecule that saved the world".. but it's inert.. and won't react with anything until it gets to the top of the atmosphere.. then light will hit it.. it will break the carbon florine bond.. then it'll resonate and react with ozone and make o2... so 1 cfc molecule will bust 10,000 o^3 molecules (ozone).. and is the reason why the ozone layer gets depleted from 'bad refrigerants'
  • Reason people talk about 'rate limiting' steps in a reaction is because there's usually two steps.. and the first one requires energy and only a few will get to it in a bucket load.. and the molecule can go back to the starting materials or go forward.. the idea is it chooses forward because the step is so small (smaller than backward).. hence the idea that the whole reaction depends on this initial hump ('transition state')
  • It's not always the case 'the most stable' molecule is always formed.. some hammond guy observed this and put it in terms of 'how the molecule looks midway' (transition state) - basically noticing if a reaction gives off energy.. the transition stage (first one).. will look like the starting materials .. which is obvious because that means the biggest obstacle was the first hump.. and that's presumably the rate limitor.. if it's endo and requires energy.. it means there's a big ass hump.. takes longer to get to it.. and that transition state will look like the product (more obvious)
  • Bromine and propane is a weird one.. there are 6 hydrogens in propane that are at the ends (those carbons only stick to 1 other one.. the middle carbon sticks to 2 carbons and has only 2 hydrogens) - u would think odds are bromine would replace one of the hydrogens at the end (6 out of 8 hydrogens so 75% chance).. but instead it's 8% likely to take those.. and it's 92% likely to take the 2 out of 8 in the middle.. picky SOB... main idea is it takes less energy to attach a bromine to a 2ndary carbon.... (2ndary has lower activation energy)

This is a very superficial understanding of the above topics

7/23/10

Time


What is time?
Well if I wack you in the face - it's gone. How so? 20 years can now be lost, and you remember yourself at 19 and nothing more. (search youtube) Another way, and your in a coma - 20 years hence you'll wake.. and thinking nothing has happened since this vey day.

What are these structures? Why doe Albert Einstein or Morgan Freeman on History Channel's 'Thru the wormhole' think time exits? Time is distance. It's the comparison between crest and trough. Think of this.
Bam.
Now light emanates thru a wave via tree 20 feet away from you. It travels 677 million miles per hour. Run away from it - it'll never hit you. Come toward it -"thngs" happen faster. (You must meet the waves already on their way towards you, and then the new ones emananting from the source while you travel toward it). Our notion of days has to do with the circumference of the earth. Go somewhere 2 light years away at light speed. Time stops. Come back at light speed - time goes twice as fast. The world is mass in a pool of electromagnetic waves which travel at set distances - our own brain structures measure this distance and make up terms like 'hour/second/day/etc.'

Doesn't it perturb you that the farthest star away from us took 13 billion years for its light to hit us - yet the universe is 13.7 billion years old. If time can be eliminated from structures within - how can it be physically associated with anything outside?

Try sound - any sense. - any difference we associate with time boils down to distance.

ps - Id' rather die than believe a mystic zionist in his 20s, hellbent against the common. got time down to pin point accuracy in god like fashion when he was 21 in the year 1900. (Albert einstein). He never lived to see color television, but the riddles of the universe god specially gave to him, such that he was destined to see for all posterity?. He's my hero - yet I worship him more by suggesting this than sticking to worldly facts 50 years ago.

7/17/10

Proton speaks - "you have overguessed my figure by 5%"

" How wonderful is the power of man! Chained down to the surface of the earth,an intelligent atom on a grain of sand lost in the immensity of a space, he invents instruments which multiply a thousand-fold his vision, he sounds the depths of the ether, gauges the visible universe, and counts the myriads of stars which people it; next, studying their most complicated movements, he measures exactly their dimensions and the distances of the nearest of them from the earth, and next deduces their masses; then, discovering in the seeming disorder of the stellar groupings real bonds of union, he at last evolves order from apparent confusion. The heavens.—Amedee Guillemin "

Of what Materials is the earth composed, and in what manner are these materials arranged? Interestingly, the answer this week to Charles Lyell's question is different from last week. It was discovered the lego God used - a 'radius of charge' - the proton - is 5% smaller.

(about 42 trillion protons fit into a period like this one . )

"The proton is an intrigung particle" the author of the paper discusses. "It's not a point like particle but made of quark/antiquark pairs. 3 valence quarks, which are surrounded by more c quarks.. so this makes for some distribution of charge. We have measured the area of radius of this cloud of charge" .. and it's 5% smaller. Basically the explanation is the electron was used to measure it's 'charge dimensions earlier' - now a more accurate 'heavier' muon particle gives new results. Anyway, very interesting idea.

Think how many people have periodic tables on their walls - perhaps thinking how great and beautiful it is everything around us is composed of these different building blocks, but really they are just effectively proton with matching neutron and electron patterns - and the hidden proton woman is now 5% thinner. Sorta interesting the noble prize has gone to people who have created new elements, looking at the table looking for some guess on a new one, when the very elements already discovered had mysteries staring them in the face. Is the neutron now smaller? Who knows - I don't. But interesting to consider the 'archipelagos of worlds' out there and the immensity of suns - ones which no human will ever see - down to the most minute of matter, and the ignorance hovering over our desire to understand it all. Who gives a shit about the answers, its pretty neat.

Pictured: The sistine chapel - paint on protons

7/13/10

Overexpression of MicroRNA in rat brain kills addiction to cocaine - makes drug taking more aversive

" What MicroRNA's are is basically these tiny RNA transcripts - so little peices of RNA - but they work in wonderous ways. They can basically go off and regulate longer transcripts - messenger RNA's that encode proteins, so these little MicoRNA's are master regulators of proteins.
We found there's one particular MicoRNA whose increase went up in the dorsal striatum where cocaine was consumed repeatedly, and we thought that was pretty intriguing.. at the time we thought it was perhaps driving the behavior... contributing to increasing motivation to consume the drug over time.. in fact it was the complete opposite... when we overexpressed the microrna. they basically stopped taking the drug.. and the more they consumed the drug, it appeared the less they wanted it - Johnathon A Hollader, from Nature PODCAST,

This is actually pretty neat - and something I wanted to show my friend.
The idea is this microRNA is a tiny peice of RNA that somehow controls the levels of expression of other genes... because these create mRNA's.. (on their way to becoming proteins).. and these micro guys can alter them. Basically an experiment found that this microRNA.... for whatever reason...was in high expression whenever rats in high cocaine environments started to become addicted.

So the logic goes - hmm, maybe it's causing the addiction? Why not overexpress it - make them incredibly addicted? Well the opposite happened - the rats began to take less and less of the drug.. and some how or other the idea is they found the drug 'less desirable'.

Nora Volkow - my favorite person in the universe - postulated that some people have genetic profiles in the dorsal striatum of the brain from the get go (called a high d2 profile) - whenever taking some drug, the drug will cause a super intense excitement of the reward region.. so much so.. that's it's 'too high'... it's almost like a shock that's not good feeling. Other people with lower counts don't get that first excessive bang.. so they keep taking the drug. She called it 'a natural protective mechanism for some people' - that's not to say these profilers can't get addicted - it's just the first few times is more intense than others.

This might relate to the rat experiment - because it suggests that somehow or other these microRNA was acting to 'fight back' against the activation of the reward pathways from the drug. The Nature PODCAST questioned the author of the study if this same mRNA is turned in all drugs (not just cocaine) - it wasn't known yet.

Questioner: So you were looking effectively for increases in protein or genes or peices of DNA that might regulate this cocaine addiction?
Author: Yes - In our study we focused on what are called "MicroRNA's" What MicroRNA's are is basically these tiny RNA transcripts - so little peices of RNA - but they work in wonderous ways. They can basically go off and regulate longer transcripts - messenger RNA's that encode proteins, so these little MicoRNA's are master regulators of proteins if you will.. and so we thought this were really well positioned to play a role in the complex behavioral roles of additction where multiple changes happen from a drug.
Questioner: So part of the study is you had rats with access to unlimited or restricted Cocaine, and you were looking at changes in MicroRNA's if you will?
Author: Ya that's exactly what we did, and we found there's one particular MicoRNA whose increase went up in the dorsal striatum (demarko: dorsal means top, striatum comes from striated which is how the tissue looks when u look at it in a micrscope) but only in cases where there was extended access to cocaine.. where cocaine was consumed repeatedly, and we thought that was pretty intrigueing... It was MicroRNA 212, and we thought it might play a role in the pasticity involved in drug use./
Questioner: And is it aiding the process of them becoming addicted to the drug or is it preventing that?
Author: Yeah (laughs) at the time we thought it was perhaps driving the behavior... contributing to increasing motivation to consume the drug over time.. in fact it was the complete opposite. What we found was indeed this MicoRNA went up when the animals had extended access and were beginning to show addiction like behaviors. . we went and overexpressed this MicroRNA in the striatum.. it was very interesting..basically in the restricted accessed animals.. those that don't really have enough cocaine to go off and show addiction like changes.. the MicroRNA didn't do anything. .. but in animals that had extended access to the drug. .. when we overexpressed the microrna. they basically stopped taking the drug.. so overtime their intake went down and down and down. And the more they consumed the drug it appeared the less they wanted it

look what Nature's saying:

First of all, the main way people have tried to stop addiction (alcoholics anonymous, therapy whatever) has been aimed at limiting the exposure to cues of the victim.. so they don't ;get a jolt (studies suggest looking at a cue is like a mini physiological hit of the drug in the brain of addicts) from the cue.. then.. they try to give the person emotional support so the 'upregulation' of recepetors/ regrowth of nerve cell size/ etc can go back to normal. That can take a while depending on whatever the pathway was.. and there's still those new nerve cells created from the learning sessions the person had initially with the drug - hence the old 'once an addict always an addict'

This is basically a novel target for addiction. The common will obviously ask " what will the effects of increasing this mRNA in the dorsal striatum of cocaine addicts in humans be?" - and who knows. But history helps. A study done earlier that restored vision to the blind in mice - literally the process of performing the miracle Jesus did in the gospels - was met with no fanfare. Freaking curing blindness for God Sakes! The problem was it involved injecting stem cells (I believe) in the retina, but what's most intriguing is these mice were BORN unable to see from the get go. Anyway, I've read stories where the blind-to-see-transition for 'humans' has started to come into effect - so here's hopin for this.

7/12/10

Newsbreak - threat of 2 ringed compound to attack plants this fall!


Many years ago today Scientists discovered a molecule that is threatening to collapse human civilization. This fall it may persist in incredible numbers again - scientists even suggest people are eating them at fast food chains now and others will sit outside their backyard and watch this molecule invest their trees while they look on with pleasure

"It's an attack by rings and Wiggles" said Professor Hensley of Cambridge University. "Basically this guy will grow ring structures to the side of him. Here he is initially - now he's really alive and jiggling and wiggling - so this 2d picture with grey is crap. But look at the bottom, thats what happened with time - he gets these 'ring things' and they close off. Now watch what this means though. "

Hensley continued. "The idea is the molecule at the top is scattered on tomatoes and on red leaves - so they're infesting them. Very much like an attack of cyborgs. But they aren't toxic, and they reflect light in the red wavelength - so they appear red. Humans have extracted it from tomoates and other crap to make red food dye. After a while the rings close and it reflects orange light. So if you put these guys on anything and watch them transform, they'll show this red to orange color change - and this is what the Creator cook did with trees, he sprinkled them on leaves, and then bam - look what happens during fall. Pretty neat".

Doctor Hensley and his lab work on these molecules, called Lycopene and Beta Carotene. Hensey won the Nobel Prize last year for his revelatory economics essay - why 'Houston Down and Bound' has lost traffic due to lack of updates, and why texting isn't gender exclusive.

7/1/10

More on the Air - Part 2 (Air has made every tree ever!)

Air makes the substance of a tree? Pray, the devil must have you! But yes it does. 



6/30/10

Fun with molecule relationships (‘stereochemistry’)

" When we heard at first that [John Brown] was dead, one of my townsmen observed that "he died as the fool dieth"; which, pardon me, for an instant suggested a likeness in him dying to my neighbor living. Others, craven-hearted, said disparagingly, that "he threw his life away," because he resisted the government. Which way have they thrown their lives, pray?...I hear another ask, Yankee-like, "What will he gain by it?" as if he expected to fill his pockets by this enterprise. Such a one has no idea of gain but in this worldly sense. If it does not lead to a "surprise" party, if he does not get a new pair of boots, or a vote of thanks, it must be a failure. "But he won't gain anything by it." Well, no, I don't suppose he could get four-and-sixpence a day for being hung, take the year round; but then he stands a chance to save a considerable part of his soul,--and such a soul!--when you do not. No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood, but that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to "
- Thoreau, on the death of John Brown

If 2-chloro-butane could speak

C1: Top of the morning to you two-chloro-butane!
C2: Most formal greetings to you dear Sir!

C1:. Pray, your resemblance to myself has quite taken me aback – are we related?
C2: Yes yes! Our resemblance is quite striking isn’t it? I see you’ve dressed your #2 carbon quite like mine with four distinct groups, we seem to be two chiral gentlemen.

C1: Is that a chlorine dash I see?
C2: Haven’t you heard? Wedges are old fashioned, I do pride myself on staying updated on the latest organic styles, but if you have a wedge, does that make you an R or S?

C1: Let me check my identification enantiomer card dear chap.
Oh dear I am an S – on account of the lower hydrogen group being placed in the back – I looked so young in those days, the counter clock-wise order of the groups is so obvious.
C2: Oh – so I must be an R since I am the opposite. Care to talk more over fish and chips?

C1: Most absolutely! However I wish to drop this dialect.
Shit’s def poppin off at 4PM at benzene’s. 3Chlorobutane may swing bye – it’s going to be epic. Drop the sir crap if your coming, lets make tonight totally beast
C2: I got you

That space pervading us always

What is this invisible space before us? Without its translucence you could not now be reading my words, and this morning you and I would’ve risen to a dark labyrinth.
What is this “air”? The ‘experts’ say this space has molecules – those of nitrogen – some argon – some sulfur. They say things are in it, continually bouncing with intrinsic pressure?

Reader, speak now! – grumble! (blah)

The invisibleness now personally spoke to you. Without those atoms of oxygen – that atom near your ear which vibrated in secret code to your eardrum – and whose code was then translated into electrical brain activity – wouldn’t have happened, it is entirely owed to that pressure.
Imagine Neil Armstrong jumping off Apollo eleven, about to speak those immortalized words without a helmet (ignore his head exploding). He jumps down – he does his bouncing – and says… “ “.
That’s what he says – the atoms in outer space are too spread out for that mystery we call sound.Let us see those invisible helpers we so ignore.
Ah yes – here’s oxygen – what one philosopher called ‘the elixir of life’

Ah and here’s nitrogen – more abundant in her air numbers than oxygen our friend, but what is in abundance is no longer precious.


Ah argon, what can we say about her that hasn’t already been said?

These 3 “men” of the infinitely small are examples of those hence forth this blog will now study, and shall catch others like them – like butterfly catchers, and analyze their wings of influence. For now it is enough to ponder these men who fill the environment before us, who are here now, were here before, and who will be here after we expire.

Think! – Napolean breathed one when he won at the Danube. One saw the assassination of JFK – another the first leap down from the trees of our ancestors – another oxygen molecule had front row seats to Franklin flying his kite – another was in the room when Thomas Jefferson signed that “deal of deals” where most of the western continent (and that land currently beneath those Californians feet) was made for mere pennies. Who knows where the oxygen molecules I just inhaled have been? I feel used – like my organs are a brothel – but they give me life – so I guess it’s a deal.

New phase

My apologies first off –the author has had an abrupt change in his situation – but the lamp of science must burn. Henceforth, topics covering the world before us will center around another universe – that of the infinitely small.
Though appearing nerdy and some-what trivial – you must understand that the nature of disease, the path to increased lifespan, the ultimate answer to the question ‘what is everything before me truly made?’ is grasped and studied by looking at this window.

Prepare yourselves dear Readers, to investigate this world with me like a modern worker of the gallows:
We shall arrest those secrets that lie before us now hidden, torture them for more answers about this world’s deep mysteries, and then hang false theories and their profiteers, who search for answers in this world for personal gain.

Read on dear Friend – for answers to riddles so orgasmic now await.

6/24/10

The compound composing the living


CONSIDER Element 6 - essential for life.
Called Kohlenstoff (coal-stuff) by the Germans, Carbo by the latin Ancients, Carbono by the Spaniards, and Carbon by the Americans - The element is what allows your body to walk, move, stand upright, and take your 1/8th inch eye goggles from "place to place". It is in all the DNA in your cells (how she's built is the reason why your DNA looks like a staircase anyway)- and she composes the structure of the very nerve-cell-rod which just got excited in your eye this instant when you saw this period - .

She's hidden in you everywhere. Well what is she?
She is mathematical I argue. Look at this.


Ah, wonderful pattern. (Click the pic) See each 'lobe' one by one, and how
they form the overall structure. So what does that mean?
It means the carbons in your body are like patterned electron flowers -
and how each of these orbital tentacles makes love to the tentacles
of other orbits is the subject of Organic Chemistry.
Moreover, she, when with her pals, dances and grooves to her own beat.
She is a writheing, moving, 'alive', dancing thingy that we've never
noticed until video of her in a chain surfaced in the Journal Nature in 2008.




Basically how she interacts (or gets messed with) other molecules, which can wack out her orbitals (steal her electrons), is a theory of why me and you age.
Though I don't know if this is right - it's an idea.
One teacher said this to me about carbon and aging.
I think overall what destroys us is the inability to keep up with genetic abnormalities in making new enzymes, proteins, etc., as we age. We are good at it when young, but the body get worse at as we age. If we don’t tax the body (eat less calories) we live longer because there is less for our body to process (excrete)"
and I sent the response to another teacher, whom replied (he's my favorite)
It's plausible. Somehow there is a balance between longevity and reduced caloric intake. I've wondered if it somehow involves cell proliferation and telomerase. Possibly an issue between simply cell turnover time and telomerase losing function over decades -- but that also is a wild guess.
The question for your teacher is, what are the things that are being excreted that are so dangerous to cells in the first place? Carbon dioxide is a major one, urea is another, etc. Oxygen and oxidation fits in there somewhere.
The general idea is it's up for grabs - but keep in mind authority means nothing in regards to truth - "Nature doesn't care what we think, she just keeps working the way she does whether we believe it or not". The idea is the child in the playground making a wild guess has as good a chance as mine (search google for the 11 year old that pointed out some discrepancy in a Nasa report on mars). Either way, we are aging now by some mechanism, and here I am typing about what humans alive today think it's doing, all the while it operates and ignores our petty opinions.

PS - the guy in the pic was Lavoisier, who also studied Oxygen and coined it's name, while also studying carbon. I mentioned him prior - but how did his current generation reward him with his researches? He was beheaded.


For fun quotes
No element is more essential to life than carbon..
only carbon forms strong single bonds to itself that are
stable enough to resist chemical attack under ambient
conditions.. forming long chains and rings of atoms,
and these are the structurual basis for the compounds that
comprise the living cell, of which the most important is DNA.

- John Emsley, Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z guide

No one would have believed in the last years of the 19th
century this world was being watched keenly and closely
by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own;
that as men busied themselves about their various concerns
they were scrutinized and studied...

- Orson Wells, (First paragraph to the War of the Worlds)

When we look at the outside world, the primary event
is that light is focued on an array of
125 million receptors in the retina of each eye.

- David Hubel, Eye, Brain and Vision

6/22/10

Bruce Lee Tuesday and a Story from the Student Paper!

"There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. " - Bruce Lee

The Student Paper had a mathematically minded article written today, and I figured I'd post it. Enjoy!

xcosx – a lover, not a fighter – and a hiker when she’s off work from modeling for calc 2 classes. She stood in front of the board in her second modeling session (prior she was easy to paint with u substititon). The students gawked at her different appearance from the other easy trigonometric integrals.

‘How the hell am I supposed to integrate her?,’ shouted one of the artists in the class. ‘The same you did xe^xdx you ignorant prick – you use the integrals-in-parts paint brush’. Ahh shouts the class. Poor xcosx – while the students sit in their pretentiousness – jockeying with one another to see who can appear the most mathematically wise – one kid dons his N.D. class of 2013 shirt with glasses – as if he had to tell his classmates during his summer break he’s at this intutition for a credit at aother University. Another artist – a bearded old man – makes it obvious he’s only painting xcosx for medical school credit. Xcosx just sits there… while the humans with their different motives draw her curves – only 1 appreciates drawing her for own beauty – the teacher.

“You see, that is trivial – in 1990 – 75,000 kids took the AP exam – and then 110,000 took calc2 . 15 years later, in 2005, now 220,000 kids took the AP exam – a 3 fold increase. How many took calc2? It was 106,000 – a decrease! (his voice cracked when he said decrease, as if it personally hurt him)

‘ You superficial asses – whatever happened to austere beauty? Or the desire to climb the highest mountain – like George Mallory – “because it’s there”. Where are the lovers of wisdom? the true students of the ancients? Where are the Pythagorean followers – who believe and know to be true the creed that all things before you are draped in the language of number? Where are the Archimedes believers? Who when forced to bathe take fingers to their stomachs and draw mathematical figures in oil? Or who ignore the death and destruction of the world around us to finish off a diagram in the sand? – Whose completeness is more magnificent than any victory over the oppression of some warring peoples?

Dare to be great you unambitious – common – dim witted fellows. – burn with a fire for “want to” – a flame which thirsts for distinction – an urge that seeks to religiously worship the good, the just, and the beautiful!”

We all sat quiet in our seats. 'What the hell did he just say' we unanimously thought. But this story has taken place a million times – once w/the teacher as Isaac Borrow – one of the students in the audience – one who said not ‘what the hell’ was Isaac Newton. Once the teacher was Plato – one of the students who said not ‘what the hell’ was Aristotle! – When Aristotle said it – his student was Alexander. When Daavy said it – his student was Faraday. Now my teacher says it – who is listening?!

6/21/10

So beautiful!

My readers - men of leisure - hear Adam Smith talk too, about the profundiity's of our earthly habitation!

Of all the phaenomena of nature, the celestial appearances are, the most universal objects of the curiosity of mankind...The Earth had always presented itself to the senses, not only as at rest, but as inert, ponderous, and even averse to motion. ... [For opponents of Coperniocus] to enforce their objection, the adversaries of this hypothesis were at pains to calculate: the circumference of the Earth had been computed to be above twenty–three thousand miles: if the Earth, therefore, was supposed to revolve every day round its axis, every point of it near the equator would pass over above twenty–three thousand miles in a day; and consequently, near a thousand miles in an hour, and about sixteen miles in a minute; a motion more rapid than that of a cannon ball, or even than the swifter progress of sound. The rapidity of its periodical revolution was yet more violent than that of its diurnal rotation. How, therefore, could the imagination ever conceive so ponderous a body to be naturally endowed with so dreadful a movement?

link

Here's a video I made about a year or two ago. Imagine if Smith or Copernicus could actually see what they were talking about - to not have to imagine it. Humans now can actually 'float along with' the earth, and partake in that speed - and watch all of civilzation be glued to a ball surrounded in water. The glided part is towards the end. ('How ponderous a body with so dreadful a movement!')

6/19/10

A challenge to this wretchid condition

Reader, followers, hearers of my oratory, I wish to proclaim a challenge to you all, in light of this wretchid conidition. The challenge is to, when looking at the world around us, find mathematical notation and numbers - to see numbers in every star, equations in every calm, patterns in every wind, and theorems in every storm.

The winner will be greeted with undue praise and all contestants must write about what they have discovered under the comment section for this post. My firt entry is below. See comments;

6/17/10

Home grown mathematician points torch towards cure for death.

Man was created by the Earth, and lives by virtue of the Air, for there is in the air a secret food of life
- 1604, a Polish Alchemist

Jeff Hajewski is a simple man. Called 'Haj' by his friends, he's a mathematician by training, a skier/runner by bent, and a romancer of the stone. Haj's expert analysis on the effects of that 'elixir of life' - oxygen -, and him directing the publics gaze to its life preserving properties (perhaps) is the lead story.
Inhale – breath out – ahh, yes air. But so shitty is the air with oxygen, only 20% of those molecules we call the air are actually o2 (boo). But going into an environment with less of it may actually lead to brain cells communicating with germ line cells to prevent cell death – another support for that mystery of mysteries in which the brain is a phantom which constantly watches out for us while we are ‘along for the ride – unaware’.
Fun:The man who coined the name Oxygen was a gentlemen by the name of Lavoisier - he was beheaded in 1796. He was a part of the ruling class prior to the french revolution, made enemies, and was accused of "watering the soldiers tobacco"
Mechanism:Poetic contemplations aside, a study was performed on the famous c elegans (“cheap date” as an old professor called it, only because it’s very sensitive to alcohol) –basically if you took a c elegans worm, then put radiation on it, nerve cell jelly would come to life and some how start transcription factor proteins to dance near cells in the c elegans tum tum (really its germ line cells) – and basically these guys would stop another transcription complex from starting the destruction of these cells.

an image of a general overview article with the diagram of how the process works

Relation to death? One of the big riddles for why everything is collapsing in front of us (6 billion people will die in the next 100 years) is that the atom oxygen is susceptible to these types of 'redox' reactions - somehow or other it can easily steal electrons from neighboring atoms, causing them to become themselves electron hungry. This is a theory for why the body degrades with time (along with the 'shortening telemores idea' and also the 'insulin pathway' idea)

See for more mysteries:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7298/full/465554a.html

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7298/edsumm/e100603-03.html


6/16/10

the inconceivable nature of nature!

" Our whole direct knowledge of the stellar universe depends entirely on our sense of sight. To no other of our senses do any other worlds than our own in the slightest degree appeal. We touch them or hear them never...
If there were a race with higher or other senses than our own.. a whole universe of existent fact might become for the first time apparent."
- the said Sir Oliver 1887
So it’s time that I share with the world something I hold dear: Its about these two 1/8th inch black holes we have glued to our faces.. and which we get all the information we need to navigate, explore, and roam about the world – it’s about vision.

Now the whole post below are ideas from 2 years of this dialogue burned into my memory. (when you watch the video try putting it on mute and watch his facial expressions)

“I’m sitting next to a swimming pool and somebody dives in.. And she’s not to pretty.. so I can think of something else.. I think of the waves and things that are formed in the water.. and when lots of people have dived in the pool there’s a very great choppiness of all these waves that are formed in the water… and to think that its possible maybe.. That In Those Waves is the Clues to what’s Happening in the Pool! That some sort of insect or something with sufficiency cleverness, could sit in the corner of the pool and just be disturbed by the waves, and by the nature of the ireegularitys and bumping of the waves, have figured, who ,what, where and when. And what’s happening and over the pool.. and that’s what we’re doing when we’re looking at something – the light in waves

This paragraph I wrote from memory. (It's from the video above.. which I pasted after- i am that nerdy i know it) This to me is why the speed of light and relativity are not at all surprising. When you consider that this monitor that sits before you is like an object continually dropped in a pool with waves sprouting everywhere and about, it is not surprising that moving away at the speed of the wave will cause that last ’scene’ to stand still.

Move over, get this - the sense of time - is based on comparing wavelengths and digesting them, also our notion of distances in the field of vision.. color.. it’s all comparing distances of those lil fast waves... and how accurate and wonderful it is that those waves travel so quickly.. close your eyes now ... do it….. now open- see how quick it happens! All that information is there so fast.. of course the brain must digest it.. and imagine how crazy it is.. that the energy of the waves.. just the distance from crest to trough.. is all the brain has to ‘sort’ ie color the information, giving depth, putting it in 3d etc.

Take out your two fingers.. and make a space about ( ) wide…. Now hold em out about a foot in front of you and look at it.. pretend it’s a camera ok.. and you want to record the room for a friend and what your seeing.. . look how all the information you can show your friend has to come through that little spot– basically nothing.

But those are the eyes my friend, the eyes you have.. you see it’s amazing huh! And to think, even more amazing, we’re missing the best parts!:

Go into your bedroom and turn on the radio… now turn it off… now turn it on.. the music is there all the time.. those waves of radio.. 99.5 or whatever you listen to.. are in the air ghosting through every room of your house 24/7.. from the instant you were born to the instant your taken to the grave.. and you don’t need to know about it, notice it, none of it. It’s there. So is the information about body heat from your neighbor across the street.. the clues to naked people are there too.. bombarding your face right now.. it’s infrared.. see look at all this information that God has wraught. There’s gamma rays, infrared (what the microwave invisibly shoots into that space at the food) radio.. whatever.. television stations perfume the air now..

“And I think it’s kind of incredible because when I’m looking at you... the information that he sees is coming form this side.. so that there’s this tremendous mess.. of waves… all over in space.. which we say is the light bouncing all over the room, going from one thing to the other, because most of the room doesn’t have 1/8th inch black holes.. it’s not interested in light.. but the light’s there anyway.. I mean it bounces off this, and it bounces off that.. and all this is going on… and we can sort it out with this instrument.

Again from memory. It’s Feynman. That’s why the brain is so interesting, imagine two tiny windows into the universe, upside down.. behind balls of jelly.. in black and white.. not in 3d and tiny as all hell.. that’s what we get.. that’s the ‘instrument’ of the eye.. the brain does the rest.. if you don’t think that’s incredible your going to purgatory for a week.

“But you gotta stop and think about it.. to really understand.. the incredible.. the inconceivable.. nature .. of nature”

I couldn’t recite the middle part.. my memory is sketchy. I probably haven’t watched the video in 6 months.. it’s a sin I can’t go the whole way anymore. But it’s fun.

PS – On a side note.. there’s no need to say ‘electromagnetism’ when describing the waves.. there’s a difference between knowing something and knowing the name of something.. knowing the name is actually a bad thing in many ways.. it ruins the mystery.. without the name your forced to explore what the hell the thing is.. if you didn’t know what ‘oxygen’ was.. and looked it up.. you’d see.. ok 6 protons.. similar neutrons.. ok whirling about.. just enough energy to be carried by hemoglobin.. ok just enough energy to push down electron gradients in our mitochondria.. ok it’s this elixir of life.. see how wonderful that is! but the name was based on the latin word for ‘acid forming’.. that’s what it means.. its called the wrong damn name.. it's not necessary to form all acids.. this was originally the idea.. see knowing it.. it’s pointless.. knowing the name with most things just leads you astray. I hate it. Try ‘synthetic biology’ - you already know my opinion on crap like that. I visisted a woman’s blog who used that term 14 times in 1 post. 14 times. She doesn’t even know what it is. Write 3 pages describing it in the most down to earth terms.. never using more than 4 letter words. You don’t understand it, you don’t know it, it’s there in front of you, it’s how the world behaves.. using words bigger and longer is false understanding, a crutch, you’re learning absolutely nothing whatever about synthetic biology.. your learning only about humans in different places and what they call ‘synthetic biology’.

The pseudoscience world of psychology is litered by this – try ‘anger defiance disorder’ – the hidden cause of that is located at the molecular level with brain synapses.. and the riddles will be described in terms of the second messenger cAMP messing some transcription factor.. or some immume deficiency in the some brain region or some transporter disruption.. or receptor coding malfuction.. etc, resulting in such and such. The name ‘anger defiance’ doesn’t even make any sense! - the nervous system for mammals is universal, squirrels rats have the same capacitys.. this gets into ethical issues... but the only reason they are a problem is because the herd is stupid and doesn’t understand how the nervous system works.. and how our notions of art/music/etc. is a result of these kinks. But art is another topic. And fun too.