Bee Extinction

The alarmist will warn us that the bee population will become extinct. The realist will state that bees are not indigenous to the U.S. and that bees only account for 1/3 of pollination. So worry not, alarmist, should the bee population die out, we'll lose only 1/3 of our crop yields, and we'll need only 50% more planted farmland to account for the loss.

Immortals – Saviors of the Human Species

22 JAN 2013

Immortals – Saviors of the Human Species

Despite the downfall of communist Russia, the president's finger has never left the close vicinity of “the button”. The world's doomsday clock, used by scientists to gauge "the state of existential global threats to civilization," is at five minutes 'til midnight – levels consistent with cold war eras. Homeland security threat level is at a perpetual floor of yellow.

Governments around the world are worried that the extinction of the human species is near – be it famine or war or bacterial or otherwise. If any humans remain after a catastrophe, it's likely there will be genetic damage that either prevents the species from reproducing, or the offspring will not be able to survive. In either case, the genetic code will be irreparably damaged. It's the genetic code of the human species – the code as it is today – that scientists, religions, politicians, and everyone else treasure so dearly.

There is an operation to perpetuate the human species past the death of the last human (as we know humans today). Operation Lifeboat is an effort sponsored primarily by NATO countries to send humans into space travel and have them return thousands of years later when the effects of nuclear holocaust have deteriorated to a level safe again for human life. There will be successive Lifeboat missions that will be staggered in perpetuity so that the fate of the human race doesn't rest on one lifeboat or one technology – the rationality being that one cannot accurately predict when earth will once again be habitable or as insurance in case other missions fail.

Let's assume that it will take 10,000 earth years for humans to safely live and thrive on planet earth. One would have to send people out into space and provide them with enough food, energy sources, medical facilities, etc. for the humans on the lifeboat to survive that long. What's more, the long-term exposure to the effects of weightlessness could spurn alterations in the genetic code to the human offspring (if you believe in evolution – if you don't, you're safe as there would be no “genetic mutations” that could lead to evolutionary changes to the DNA code.) But rest easy, space life is a viable option to preserve the DNA code. First, one must understand the effect of the speed of travel has on observed time. Enter Einstein’s Special theory of Relativity.

One tenet of special relativity is that the faster one travels, time slows down as the traveler approaches the speed of light. Take GPS satellites for example which travel at 6,250 meters per second. Despite the satellites being synchronized with the atomic clocks on earth or having atomic clocks of their own, clock-drift occurs. Clock-drift is the phenomena where synchronized clocks, clocks that are otherwise accurate when side to side, report different times when apart – notably when one travels at a faster rate than the other. With respect to satellites, the observed time on the satellite falls behind the measured time on earth. GPS satellites' clocks must continuously be reset otherwise after two minutes they (their accuracy in calculating geographical positions) becomes inaccurate. On the international space station too, clock drift has been observed. Thus, what I am illustrating is that there is a proven relation between how fast an object moves and the observed time. Now lets put a person on a ship traveling through space. This person has a clock with him. The traveler counts off 1,000 hours then returns to earth. The clocks on earth will read the hours lapsed greater than his clock, say 1,100 hours. If the traveler had traveled at an even faster rate during those 1,000 hours, earth would have experienced even more time, say 1,500 hours (it's all relative to the speed at which the clock aboard the ship travels.) So now we can put a person on the lifeboat and instead of needing to provide supplies for 10,000 earth years, we need only to provide him with a fraction of that.

We are getting closer to a viable Lifeboat program, but we are not there yet. We need to address propelling the lifeboat to speeds fast enough to effect our cause. So how fast do we need to go? If a ship has the ability to accelerate at 1g (9.8m/s²) and has enough fuel to continuously accelerate at this rate for 20 years and decelerate at an inverse of 1g for 20 years (remember, as the time is measured aboard the ship), the ship will return to earth 58,000 earth years later while the people on board age 40 years. Now I do not know how to calculate how long to travel on the lifeboat to get back to earth in 10,000 years as one cannot simply divide 10,000 by 58,000 – there are complicated formulas to determine the correct answer. What I do know is that there is no technology developed yet to thrust (and decelerate) a ship at a constant rate of 1g for several years with a limited capacity for fuel. So we have to assume that the ship will have to travel much more slowly than 1g which requires much more time aboard the lifeboat while 10,000 earth years pass by. Hence, the people aboard will have to live longer than 40 years or, much more importantly, reproduction will be necessary, bringing us back to our earlier problem of DNA mutations, supplies, etc.

What if people were able to live longer than 100 years, say 1,000 years? If we could put those people aboard the lifeboat, there would be little risk of DNA mutations and no need for reproduction. There is no technology, cryogenic or otherwise, however, for preserving a human body or slowing down it's aging process. That leaves only one solution, man lifeboats with immortals. Yes, you heard that right – man lifeboats with humans who do not die. Most people do not know or refuse to believe there are immortals living among us. Immortals are hard to find as many of them have had a lot of practice in avoiding detection. What's more, they police themselves and take action when an immortal risks revealing himself as one. An immortal may be your next door neighbor who moved in two years ago and likely will move out in a few years. An immortal may be your son or daughter who has not yet reached the point where the aging process ceases. Becoming an immortal is not like that as portrayed in the Highlander television series where one must die first to live forever. Immortality is a biological anomaly that affects random people at random times in their lives. Perhaps there's a gene for it?

There is a manhunt in progress for these immortals. The backers of Project Lifeboat are recruiting immortals to find volunteers for the project – or potential shanghai targets. There is a training center (I have not located where yet) that trains immortals for life in close quarters for an extended period of time, much like those training centers used by NASA or Navies.

Immortals are already concerned with being hunted down and killed for their “unnatural” or “un<enter religion here>” lifespans or by others seeking the fountain of youth, now they have another concern on their hands – government support in the search effort. Immortals will appear to be of different ages children to the elderly as each immortal's aging process stops at a time unique to them. Luckily for NATO there are clues as to which humans are immortals, clues that I will spell out in future weeks – as I do not want to expose immortals to the world, but for the sake of mankind, I will have to – unless the immortals can convince me not to. I truly hope some immortals read this before it's too late.

“I am one of a few immortals who know why I am immortal, but I cannot nor will I ever divulge the signs I saw in myself or the knowledge I’ve gained to become immortal – for fear of my life. I can say that the knowledge I have comes from the soul as Plato believed – that the soul already has all knowledge and we learn by recollecting what the soul knows.

Though I can live for hundreds of years, I am still susceptible (though much more resistant) to disease, murder, food or water deprivation, etc. that afflicts everyone. Just know that I know what it takes to live several hundred, if not thousands of years and what made me aware of my gift. We immortals will not die of old age, “The old man's heart stopped as he slept” will never be uttered by a doctor on my death bed. More likely we will be hunted down and murdered for the sake of mankind, though it is us who will save mankind in the end.” - Anonymous

– 01 March 2013

I apologize for the delay in releasing the first of many characteristics, tendencies, and customs (traits here on in) immortals exhibit or come to exhibit. I was recently approached by a man who walked me into a conversation about immortals then brought the conversation about the hidden dangers of exposing the traits of immortals. This man did not convince me of being an immortal but perhaps he came to me as an ambassador. After lengthy consideration this man's arguments have not convinced me to terminate this blog post or my investigations.

– 23 March 2013

The “ambassador” as discussed in my previous update returned to me. Again he requested I terminate this blog. To convince me he represented immortals, he handed me a bauble – what looked to be a carving of wood, worn and ancient. It's age appeared convincing and the ambassador aged it over 4,000 years old. After a lengthy and exhaustive investigation I found similar items – though not as worn – made in Bolivia in the 1830's. I need not describe it as it was grossly misrepresented anyways. I'd feel embarrassed for the immortals if this person was indeed an ambassador, thus I will play it off as a hoax. Funny.

The following will cover ten traits of immortals which will make them easier to identify, traits on physical appearance, how and where they live, how they support themselves financially, how they police themselves, etc.:

1. TEETH
   The extensivity of orthodontic work is one indication of an immortal.
   Remember that all immortals stop aging at a time unique to each immortal, so one may stop aging at 80 years and another at 6 years. Imagine a child of six years old who's lived for one hundred years or more, relying on her baby teeth the entire time. There's little chance of those baby teeth lasting that long, let alone for hundreds of years. Before the advancements in of modern dentistry, child immortals often died of malnutrition/starvation just as old people did (due to complications of severely worn-down teeth). With the advancements in orthodontia, it became possible to replace teeth through the use of implants, bridges, crowns, and dentures.
   The longer an immortal walks upon the earth, the more they use and wear down their teeth, necessitating the need for orthodontic work. Though the need of orthodontic work is not uncommon amongst the aged – thus identifying an immortal through dental records is a futile measure – orthodontic work is, seldom, if ever, found in the young – except in the case of immortals. Children who have crowns, implants, et. al. on many or all teeth should be a sign a dentist is working on a human much older than they appear. Unfortunately, immortals will often see a dentist or orthodontist for one procedure then move to another (without the transfer of dental records) practitioner.
2. Languages
   Some immortals will often be fluent in many languages. Often, like most people, immortals are comfortable staying in one country or in countries with like languages, but there are some who enjoy living in different cultures, living in the ways of the new society, and most importantly, learning their language. When you get into a conversation with a traveled immortal, they will often let slip foreign words into conversation, especially when they are drinking. You may say, sarcastically, that many people do this too, so are immortals all around us then? No, not exactly. Immortals will often slip words of ancient or extinct languages and when caught, will pass it off as another language and may have to go to the extent where they (falsely) admit they have the pronunciation wrong.
   Don't get too confident that an immortal will speak in an ancient dialect. Anyone who's purposely lost a dialect for another (southern drawl for the Standard American English dialect for example) will, over time, speak in the new dialect as if native to him. Over time one forgets things.
3. Experts in <field of study>
   Immortals who work often gravitate to social sciences such as history, education, foreign languages, linguistics, anthropology, and sociology. It makes sense, doesn't it? Who better to understand the social sciences than those who've lived in many different cultures and eras? Being experts in fields of study have benefits – less need for study and higher pay included. But don't expect them to keep their career for long as they will need to transfer to new jobs elsewhere (more on migration in future updates). Careers are not limited to social sciences of course, as many are artisans, welders, store clerks, architecture, among others – just know that they will be masters of one or more professions.
   Speaking of linguistics, immortals are discouraged from holding careers in linguistics as immortals can easily expose themselves as immortals. I applaud any immortal, literate Egyptians (and Assyrians, Mayans, et. al. for that matter) who lived thousands of years ago. Man has spend millions of hours trying to decipher their hieroglyphics while no immortal has stepped in and corrected their mistakes or advanced their study. Perhaps all the immortals from those time no longer remain with us (remember, being immortal doesn't allow one to live after mortal wounds such as being decapitated or being crushed by a boulder).
4. H
5. X
6. M
7. X
8. X
9. C
10. I

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_drift

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity

Botanists Want You to Believe Flowers Make Decisions

I think it’s funny when botanists explain that flowers are of different colors, shapes and smells to attract insects – as if the flowers are making a conscience decision on how to look and smell to draw the insects’ attentions. Do flowers even know that insects exist? They have no brains…right? 

Botanists are correct to a certain respect – the flowers that require the attraction of insects do so because of their shape, color, and smell, but it’s not unlike flowers whose shape, color, and smell do not attract insects. For example, if one placed a certain flower in a new, closed environment where the insects were not attracted to the flower, the flower would not change its shape, color, and smell to the fancies of the insects. If the flower should happen to in fact begin to attract insects, it would only be because the insects – organisms capable of making conscious decisions, modified their own preferences to those of the flower’s attributes. Survival of the fittest, as applied to flowers, is the flowers that survive are those that just happen to have favorable shapes, colors, and smells that attract insects, nothing more.

I think it's funny that someone like me had to point this faux pas out to the educated botanists.

Dirty Pot Lickers: Match.com Tip #1: Stragglers*

Dirty Pot Lickers: Match.com Tip #1: Stragglers*: How to find the most desperate women men most compatible to you: 1. Select Search: Mutual Match By selecting Mutual Match, you ...

Before the Ten Commandments

I want to go back to the time before the ten commandments, when:

When it was ok to think of my neighbor's wife while i was jacking off;
When it was ok to kill assholes who make life worse for the rest of us;
When it was ok to say "god damn it!" in lieu of "fuck" or "Shit";
When my wife and I could swing;
When I could steal back from the banks that which they legally stole from me;
When I could idolize a nude, sexy woman;
When I could work on Sunday so I could get a full 40-hr week in;
When I didn't have to honor abusive parents;
When I could gossip about someone using made-up rumors;
When I could be any religion I wanted.

Random thought #1

Look around you, then look inside. Are you acting from within, or without?

Mammograms Are Evil (and A Little Bit About Osteoporosis)

I want to begin with, being a man, I’ll leave it to women to decide the best methods for preventive health care. That being said, let me point out my thoughts on breast exams – not the fun kind but mammograms, and osteoporosis.

Would you rather knowingly expose myself to a higher cancer risk for the purpose of detecting cancer than have a lower cancer risk and not know if the cancer exists? Looking at what is being done, I’d say women would rather give themselves cancer so they know that have it rather than not knowing if they have it.

Did you know that the countries with the highest rates of osteoporosis also have the largest intake of calcium and protein?¹ Sounds counter-intuitive, doesn't it? Truth is too much protein causes a change in the body's pH level and thus has to be balanced by absorbing calcium from the bones. What's more, the more calcium you ingest, osteoblasts have to convert it into bone – but the osteoblasts die during this process. If you bombard your body with too much calcium, the body cannot properly replenish itself with new osteoblasts. Isn’t that like bombarding one's body with X-rays which can cause more damaged cell DNA than the body can handle.

There is a growing number of doctors who believe that exposing a person’s body to very low levels of radiation triggers the body's immune system to seek and repair genetic damage already existing in the body (not to mention the same genetic damage caused by that radiation event.) If your body already has cancer and its immune system is fighting the cancer, they why purposely subject a body to more cancer-causing radiology (e.g. X-rays)? Talk about keeping yourself in business!

Yes, your body has thousands of cancer cells at any given time. Now call into question from that cancer cell population those cancer cells residing in the breasts. Mammograms may be leading to the over-diagnosis of breast cancer² – where it detects cancer cells in the breast that may otherwise be destroyed by the body's immune system, but at a doctor's advice leads to the surgical removal of those cells or painful, often negative, biopsies. Quite a racket them doctors have – using a technique that causes cancer (radiation) they make money looking for and finding cancer cells, then make money on removing them. Unnecessary surgery? You be the judge. Superfluous surgery isn't a new concept. Look at all those wisdom teeth being removed, often unnecessarily.³ “It's best to remove them now before they cause you problems,” has often been an orthodontist's advice. On that rationality, maybe we should remove the breasts of women at a young age before they cause problems in the future?

Studies point out the number of cases where the mammograms detect cancers, but not the number of those they create. Would you look for weaknesses in a glass window by tapping it with a hammer? The notion of X-rays leading to cancer is a growing concern and is being studied more. In April 2012 Reuters reported a link between dental X-rays and brain cancer.⁴ Additionally, more specific to this article's topic, the American Medical Association published a scientific study involving a group of Norwegian women who had never received mammograms.⁵ Over the course of six years the women received three mammograms. Afterwards the study found that the screened women had a 22% higher occurrence of breast cancer over the control group who hadn't received mammograms. That’s like a 7% increase in cancer risk with each mammogram! As the mammogram myth article states (linked below), self-examination cannot replace mammograms. If you don't like doing it yourself, give your significant other a job he/she won't mind and task them with your breast examination.

I'd like to see a study of the relationship between estrogen therapy and breast cancer incidences – for estrogen often feeds a breast tumor and promotes osteoporosis (by depleting the body of magnesium.) Wouldn’t you know it, there HAVE been studies proving hormone therapy promotes breast and uterine cancers⁶. Maybe menopause is the woman’s body's way of cancer and osteoporosis prevention and we should not try to fight it. One has to wonder about the profit motive of estrogen therapy – the drug companies make pills, such as estrogen, to fight a woman's menopause then make more pills to fight the complications (for osteoporosis, cancer) caused by the estrogen pills.

I think women are scared into doing something that they know is harmful to themselves. An image comes into mind thinking about it. Picture a man who everyday must drive his car near a cliff and is scared he'll someday drive off the cliff. So the scared man has a solution to his fear: “I'm scared that if I close my eyes, even for a moment, I might drive over the cliff, so I’m going to open my eyes and drive over the cliff on purpose so that can brace for the impact.”

Endnote

I picture pharmaceutical executives in the board room. Exec A: “Let's convince doctors to prescribe women estrogen to fend off the effects of menopause.” Exec B: “But estrogen feeds breast cancer and promotes osteoporosis...” Exec. A: “Then we'll make pills for that too.” Exec. C: “And sell them at a huge mark-up!” (Everyone claps except Exec. B). Exec B: “We could advise women it’s safer to just accept menopause and its effects. It’s natural for our bodies to age.” Exec A: “You're fired.”

Calculate your risk of getting cancer from X-rays here: http://www.xrayrisk.com/calculator/calculator.php

Busted! 8 mammogram truths every woman must know. http://www.cbsnews.com/2300-204_162-10005216.html

__

¹ Milk Information Website. Got Osteoperosis from Milk? http://milk.elehost.com/html/osteoporosis.html

² CBS News Staff. (2012, April 3). Mammograms may lead to breast cancer "overdiagnosis" for some women. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57408605-10391704/mammograms-may-lead-to-breast-cancer-overdiagnosis-for-some-women/

³ Daniel DeNoon at WebMD Health News. (2005, May 5). Wisdom Teeth Removal Often Unnecessary Study: Taking Out Symptom-Free Wisdom Teeth Neither Helps nor Hurts Health. http://www.webmd.com/oral-health/news/20050505/wisdom-teeth-removal-often-unnecessary

⁴ Reuters Health. (2012, April 10). Dental X-rays linked to common brain tumor

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/10/us-dental-X-rays-idUSBRE8390GM20120410

⁵ Archives of Internal Medicine. (November 24, 2008, Vol 168, No. 21). The Natural History of Invasive Breast Cancers Detected by Screening Mammography

⁶ American Cancer Society. (2012, March 6). Menopausal Hormone Therapy and Cancer Risk. http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/medicaltreatments/menopausal-hormone-replacement-therapy-and-cancer-risk

Worthless Anaerobic Exercise

Go to the gym sometime and look at the men lifting weights either to build them up or maintain them. Then think about the purpose for which they practice this routine multiple times each week. The athlete builds them up for the purpose of being better at his sport. The furniture-mover builds his muscles for the purpose of moving large furniture items – else he cannot perform his job. The vain person builds them up for how he fills out a t-shirt. Then there are those (the habituals) who work them out for the sole purpose of not losing what they've spent so many hours building. Now lets step ahead twenty years when the athlete is retired, the former furniture-mover's back is shot, and the vain is married with children.

It's twenty years later and the class of habituals has now grown larger while a new group of athletes, furniture-movers, and vains have moved in line for the bench press. Now the old and new class (aforementioned athlete, furniture-mover, and vain) of habituals are working out their muscles for the purpose of not losing what they've worked for so long to accomplish. Is this a invaluable practice? To what end, now, is the means? To work out their muscles 'til the grave so that they don't lose what they no longer (or as in the case of the original habituals, never have or will) use? Is losing your muscles such a bad thing? Does the former athlete prepare for that rare day when a sports team calls him back? So one can someday help their neighbor move from one apartment to another? In case the vain finds himself back on the market? It is shameful, is it?, to lose one's muscles? No! Why is it so hard to admit that one has no further (or past) use for them? You're committing yourself to a lifetime of maintaining something you don't need. If you had to spend four nights a week in your storage shed with crap you don't use, would you commit yourself to it or would you become so frustrated with the waste of time that you give up and sell off all your crap? Ask your wife and kids, Vain, if they'd love or respect you less had you smaller muscles.

“Use it or lose it” you say? I say “Let them (muscles) go! They served their purpose. I'm done with them.” I'd rather read or play golf or video games or go to the movies or volunteer my time than, in the dead of winter, drive to the gym to work out to a smelly sweat, take a shower, then climb into a freezing cold car while still damp from the shower, to grab the steering wheels with white knuckles during the terrifying drive home. To what end? To what end? I say! Shun the bench press for nobler causes.