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 |  "Putting on the Game Face" |
  This blog is a doorway into the mind of Percy Goodfellow. Don't be shocked at the lost boys of Namby-Pamby Land and the women they cavort with. Watch as his caricatures blunder about the space between audacious hope and the wake-up calls of tomorrow. Behold their scrawl on the CRT, like graffitti on a subway wall. Examine it through your own lens...Step up my friends, and separate the pepper from the rat poop. Welcome to my abode...the armpit of yesterday, the blinking of an eye and a plank to the edge of Eternity. Note: This blog is my journal. I've no interest in persuading anyone to adopt my views. What I write is whatever happens to interest me when I start pounding the keys. |
| The Writer or the Writing? I woke up this morning and there is snow everywhere. It is supposed to continue all day and into tonight. I filled the outdoor wood stove last night and sure hope there are some coals left when I finish this blog and go outside. I have to do something. I have gained 3 lbs. Those cookies and fudge of Linda’s are so good. She says we need to go on a gluten free diet. Whatever she fixes I eat and no more. Except for the fudge and cookies. My wife likes old movies. In return for going to fly with me on Fridays at the gym, I promised to watch some with her. Last night we saw Barbara Stanwick in Double Indemnity. The screenplay was well crafted and the acting was exceptional. Yesterday we ran errands. First we ordered new tires for our Prius. Then we went to the VA for my annual physical. The PA said I was in good shape and couldn’t find anything to recommend. I ordered some parts for my broken quad-copter and bought a new one. In testing it I landed in a snow bank and think I fried the chip. This RC hobby of mine is frustrating… not to mention expensive. Every time I get more than one hit on my summary statistics, or receive a review, I go back and read the piece. It never fails that I find typos and make some word choice substitutions. It is amazing how our mind sees things after the passage of time that we missed when embroiled in the writing. Sometimes I cringe and think… this is pretty awful. At other times I think, this isn’t half bad. Trying to keep a blog fresh and alive is an ongoing challenge. I think I’ll start taking pictures of my wood processing labors each day. Maybe my readers will like to see what goes into keeping warm in Wisconsin. My Canadian readers are sure to chuckle and think, Percy doesn’t know what cold weather and snow is… Then again my Florida readers are sure to see matters in a warmer light. … I sure would hate to live up North… no wonder we get all those Yankees coming south. It all depends on where you’ve been and happen to sit. There is a country song that never was very popular but that made a real hit with me… There is a lyric that goes. “Some girls don’t like guys like me… but then some girls do.” Since there are more females than males on WDC, I find that to be true with what I write. I often wonder when I detect a note of negativity, if the reader doesn’t like what I write because she thinks I’m a jerk, or how it’s written? Stated in simpler terms… is it the writer or the writing? |
| Whistle a Happy Tune “In the summertime, when all the trees and leaves are green, and the redbird sings, I’ll be true…. ” It snowed here yesterday. Wasn’t supposed to do that until today. Mark came over and cut the tops out of the walnut tree that broke off last year. I did some splitting and in the afternoon Linda and I went to see the “Hobbit.” It was a great movie and we saw it in 3-D. Tolkien had the belief that ordinary people do amazing things; that a person can really make a difference. In Bilbo Baggins we see his premise come to life. It is a great story and sets the stage for Lord of the Rings. Today I go to the doctor and get my annual check-up. Ever feel like your number is in the lotto and getting an OK for the next year is like hitting the jackpot? When I was younger I thought I was immortal. Vietnam knocked that foolish notion out of my head. Last night I was flying my Quad-copter and it landed on this hairy throw rug made of synthetic fiber. It got into one of the rotors and when I tried to fix it, broke a fine wire off the miniature electric motor. I’ll be ordering some new parts today after the doctor’s visit. There are altogether too many “I”s in this blog today. So far the count is at 10 and thats too many. In my writing I try and keep repetitive words to a minimum. Sometimes, however, its better just to bite the bullet rather than resort to elaborate workarounds. Pronouns are a good example. They can be invisible if a writer doesn’t get too carried away. Linda baked cookies and fudge this weekend and they are death to a diet. I'm drawn to the plates in the kitchen by a relentless and agonizing compulsion. If that isn't enough, having the roads covered with snow is a convenient excuse not to exercise. My dreams suck! Between dreams and Linda there is little chance I’ll ever get over enamored with myself. I see both as tethers that keep me firmly anchored to earth. They say if you don’t want to experience the lows, then don’t fly too close to the sun. Still if we fail to aspire then what else is there? Perhaps I should whistle a happy tune. |
| Who would have Imagined? I live out in the country in Central Wisconsin. My wife and I attend a small country church about twice a month. Last Sunday the minister announced that the Annual Christmas Music Festival was being held tonight and Linda and I went. As a matter of fact we just got home. The euphoria is still making my heart pound. When I retired from the military and moved back to the site where the family farm had once been, I was used to services in the South. Those southerners can really do a service and the music is a joy to hear. What I discovered in the church my grandparents attended was a rundown facility, about twenty active and aging members and the wolf barking at the door. I did what I could to energize things but lacked the social skills and was considered an outsider. Every time I tried to do something innovative I encountered resistance. As things reached the bottom I found myself in a position of finding a lay minister to preach every Sunday and recruited the woman who is pastor today. She is the real deal and God’s spirit lives in her heart. Then a new retired couple showed up who were able to do some of the things I had been unable to accomplish. The low point came when the church burned to the ground after being struck by lightening. The insurance paid for everything and the new church leadership did a splendid job with the rebuilding. In the process the church began attracting new members and one family was very musically inclined. If they lived near Branson I guarantee they would have their own show and as a matter of fact they do…. Throughout the summer they give shows in their barn not five miles from where we live. Anyway the Clausen family is very talented and Brent, the Son, teaches music.. He let the church use the music barn for Sunday services while the rebuilding was taking place. Now every year, his music students, do a Christmas recital in the local community. This was what we got to see tonight and they were sensational! As we watched tonight’s performance Linda and I were both spellbound. It was like seeing a musical phoenix rising up from before our very eyes. There were young children from seven to nine years old, young adults, and mature players and everyone was a gifted talent displaying skills that made the audience gape in wonder. I wish you could have seen and heard the music. Who would have imagined that in this rural community being overtaken by factory farms and a huge Agro industry, that still, at the roots is a fierce burning, white-hot locus of musical genius? |
| "Blest be the Ties..." Steig Larssen, (Spelled something like that) wrote the Girl in the Dragon Tattoo. I thought the series was spell binding. He died at the age of 50 and his estate went to his father and brother. He never married the woman he lived with for thirty years and she got nothing. According to Swedish Law, common law marriage is not recognized and if there isn’t a will, assets go to blood relatives. Now it doesn’t seem fair to me that a woman who lives with a man for thirty years should be excluded from her significant other’s property, earned during the years they lived together but that is the Northern European (NE) take. Don’t get me wrong, I like NEs, indeed I have a few in my family tree, but that culture is inclined at times to treat women like crap. While serving in Germany it often seemed to me that a NE male treated his car better than his wife. For those of you who are not aware, the original title of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” was “Men who hate Women.” Now I’ll grant you that women can be a pain in the ass and the term “Bitch” is sometimes appropriate, but I find it hard to believe that anyone could ignore the important role they play and not love them for their many endearing qualities. My wife Linda is the most important thing in my life even though at times she seems like a dark vortex. I try and stay upbeat. “There is nothing like a dame….nothing in this world. There is nothing you can name, that is anything like a dame!” (Is that corny or what?  )At its worst I’d prefer my wife’s maelstroms to the existence I suffered before we met. There was a joke that circulated around many years ago. It was a Catrina and Yogi Jorgenson joke… Somebody was interviewing Catrina and said, “ My goodness Catrina, you could play for the Green Bay Packers…” To which Catrina replied… “I don’t play with nobody’s packer but Yogi’s. I have a dark side but Linda’s is very different. It is a moody oppressive depression that feeds off itself and all I can do is hang on for the ride and expect some rough turbulence. In college a friend told me that if you want to know what your wife will become… look at her mother. Now that was a sobering thought that I found hard to believe but after almost fifty years I see evidence of truth in it. The flip side is that Linda sees some of my father’s less laudable traits in me. Thus we both see a propensity that could manifest itself if we “Go with the Flow.” The default is that we will become the dark side of our parents unless we intervene and force a different outcome. We have conversations about our “dark sides” and remind each other of the bonds that have held us together these many years. Remember the Hymn…”Blest be the ties that bind…” |
| Persistence When we went flying on Friday a nice young fellow at the table next to me was flying a “Quadcopter.” (QC) This aircraft is a helicopter with four rotors on the corners of a square. It is a very stable platform, much more that a traditional helicopter. The way they maneuver is through a small chip that meters out the electricity to the rotors. To ascend the stick on the left (L) is pushed forward. This regulates the speed of all four rotors and the platform goes up. To descend the (L) stick is pulled back, bleeding off the power. To turn the platform on its axis (pirouette/ rotate direction) the (L) stick is moved to the right or left. Another term for this is “Yaw.” To make the platform go forward or backward the (R) stick is moved in the appropriate direction and the same is true for left and right. While a quadcopter is perhaps the easiest of the rotor aircraft to operate, it still requires the coordinated use of both hands. Remember in grade school the exercise where you took one hand and slapped up and down over your head and with the other made a circular motion around your stomach? Recall how hard it was to get the two coordinated in perfoming those dissimilar tasks, concurrently? Another variation was the side straddle hop in gym class. These were difficult for me to learn but with considerable struggle, I somehow managed. Well, the same sort of coordination is required to fly a quad-copter. The operator (pilot) must try and do both at the same time. In the military I applied to flight school and was turned down because of my eyes. There is not doubt that if I had been allowed to go, I’d have washed out for lack of aptitude. Anyway my friend showed me how to operate the QC Linda had bought. It is small, about six inches square. Needless to say I didn’t get the hang of it to start with. On a fully charged batter the pilot gets about ten minutes flight time. So, there wasn’t really much opportunity to learn on Friday night because I only had one battery and a car charger. It takes about an hour to recharge one. Yesterday however, after the chores, I started practicing on the rug in our bedroom. I got it to climb and descend, pirouette and go forward, backward and to the sides. Not very smoothly, mind you, but in fits and start, keeping it low so if something unexpected happened I could quickly chop the throttle and land. The dog was terrified. It made a buzzing sound and looked like some sort of a weird insect. I took a playwriting class once at the Playwright’s center in Minneapolis. The instructor commented on my play that “There was a lot going on inside it.” It did have a couple of undercurrents. Writing well looks easy enough when reading a book but like flying a quadcopter there are things going on that require a lot of hard work and sweat. It takes a while for the brain to acquire these skills and even for those with aptitude, persistence is the key to getting really good at it. |
| Dramatic Premises and Themes It has been very difficult for me to learn to fly a radio-controlled airplane. I am not sure why but it seems to be more of the same struggle I have encountered in other endeavors of learning to do things that are difficult and complex. I bought Linda an RC plane called a Vapor. Last night we went to the gym the club uses for winter flying. I was able to make a few loops in a state of semi-control before a catastrophic encounter with the bleachers. My learning curve is progressing in fits and starts but as bad as a given trial may look I am getting better. Then it was Linda’s turn. Last week she did fairly good for the first time and got the airplane up and circled a bit. Last night however she flew into the cinderblock wall and really clocked her aircraft big-time. Try and visualize all these airplanes buzzing around a high school gym at the same time. Some are big, some are small, some go-fast and some float like butterflies. Well Linda tried to avoid the flight patter and rather than moving into the larger space tried to fly in the corner. It was her downfall. We do that in life a whole lot. Especially writers. We try and fly in the corner rather than venture into the spaces of life. We try and do too much inside the constraints of our own minds rather than venturing outside the safety of our comfort zones. However, regardless how you measure success there are costs associated with flying in the corner of your box. You not only have to think outside it you have go outside it. Linda got mad at me when I said, “Fly into the space Honey. If somebody collides with you so be it. If you don’t you are certain to run into a wall.” She did and wasn’t too happy with her husband pointing it out to her. She was upset because she just destroyed a hundred dollars worth of airplane… that learning the skill was frustrating when everything in her life always came to her comparatively easy. The same is true for my daughters. They don’t deal well with the vicissitudes ("Slings and Arrows?") of “Outrageous Fortune.” Since we both retired we have to learn to cope with each other. It is like being newly weds all over again. We invade each others space and rather than find a life outside each other we hover too much… Anyway we are trying to do more things together. Like the women I see clinging to their husbands on the back of motorcycles, I admire them for having the willingness to share their husband’s world. There are two other women who come to the Friday night flying. One flies just like her husband and the other chases down her husband’s airplane when he crashes it. Lady # 2 doesn’t smile much but, since her husband is on oxygen, plays a key role in what he can and can’t do. If there is a message in this blog I am not sure what it is. Maybe the theme is “No man (woman) is an island onto themselves.” (...Gagging sound, finger in throat.) How about “Don’t offer commentary when your sweetie pie just trashed a hundred dollar airplane?” (…That she never asked for to begin with.)” |
| The Gloom of “Duhhh…” One of the reasons I never did well in school, aside from being “Developmentally Retarded" (that was what my mother was told when I flunked the 5th grade) was that it took awhile for concepts to process through my convoluted and dyslexic mind. By the time they emerged from the gloom of “Duhhhh…” the term or semester would be over and I’d take my miserable “C” and be grateful for the charity. Then, gradually as the purpose of a class mulled about in my mind, the message would become increasingly clear,,, but first it had to pass through the Percy Goodfellow filter. I once worked with a group of engineers and my boss, the head engineer, would tell this minions, “Go and brief this to Percy and if he understands what you’re talking about then anybody will.” Now that was a left handed compliment of sorts but it was also more of the same old put down I’d been hearing all my life. My wife and daughters are extremely bright and never had to study much to get good grades in school. My wife loved school because her home life wasn’t always that uplifting. Me on the other hand hated school because it as a series of social and academic nightmares. I really don’t know where my understanding of things comes from. I just wake up one morning and the light comes on. It is that way with languages and that way with analytical skills. I took trig three times before understanding Identities. I explained them to Linda and she got the idea almost immediately and enjoyed puzzling around with them. My younger daughter is a math teacher. My older daughter has a gift for languages and writing. In school, both would look up at the blackboard from time to time, yawn and then go back to the myriad of other interests, swirling about in their heads. I used to enjoy programming computers. Writing in GW Basic (Is that language even used any more?) and C++ was fun until I got into a difficult algorithm. When that happened I had to find an abstract thinker to write it for me. It was either that or play around with the variables until the answer jived with the test data. It there weren’t too many variables this approach usually worked. More than five and I was in deep kimshee. So, to understand things, I like examples. Even better I like analogies. An analogy gives me a framework (a work table) for the new understanding I’m trying to acquire. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. |
| Connectional Minds I heard on the news the government is embarking on a new Manhattan Project. It will study energy technologies and see if there is a better way to make a mouse trap (Battery) No surprise it will be built outside of Chicago. I hope it turns out better than Solyindra. I wonder if the employees will be members of the United Federation of Geeks. Anyway this might not be such a bad black hole to pour money into. Since I am talking about the human genome in an unschooled and speculative sort of way, how about looking into the energy that life uses. Electrical energy seems to be what we know the most about and even there the understanding is murky. We don’t even know the direction in which it flows. We can get electricity to spin stuff around and light things up. There are many devices such as switches, diodes, transistors and batteries that allow man to control it, even if we don’t understand it very well. The same can be said for fire. We know how to use it after a fashion but it isn’t really all that clear how it works. There are other forms of energy such as gas compression, which operates air tools, hydraulic energy that actuates cylinders and nuclear energy that makes plenty of heat. But what about the energy that animates life? Isn’t it amazing that living things don’t make much use of the structure known as the wheel? Our bodies are muscle-activated levers and organs that squeeze diaphragms. We know we use energy but what form does it take? We can’t see it , smell it, taste it or hear it. Perhaps we can feel it, in the tingle when men and women play their minor role in the procreation process. What is interesting to me is that all the energy variations I’m aware of have three components. These are different takes on flow, pressure and resistance. If you know two of these you can determine the third. I’m not sure (A euphemism for “I don’t have a clue”) what the significance of this relationship is but it seems more than a coincidence. The brightest minds in the sciences have the capacity to absorb but a minutia of the complexity in their specialized areas of expertise. The answers to many things are no doubt laying about gathering dust on the lab tables of the past, possibilities left unexplored, perhaps on the cusp of great discoveries. The Nobel prizes of tomorrow beckon to those with broader visions and connectional minds. |
| A Sad Day Whoever created life could read and write DNA with a fluency that an educated human reads and writes. In order for humans to program the genome it will be necessary for them to be fluent in DNA sequencing as well as have the tools for reading it and writing it in a way that the results can be used to splice into existing sequences of the code. A language only seems daunting when it makes little to no sense and the advances in science are making some sense out of it. Still, what is happening is at a microscopic level and how does a human go about making changes to a code that can hardly be seen with an electron microscope? The answer is that it will take the development of reading and writing technologies that can work at an extremely small threshold, a capability that doesn’t currently exist. The code of a sequence of DNA will have to be brought to a level where it can be worked and then returned to a point where it can be executed. Working Level: At the working level we are learning more every day but there is still much to unravel about the murky processes of life. Before we start mucking about in a half-assed sort of way we need to have a much clearer understanding. Before beginning an attempt to product-improve the human genome we need an extremely clear understanding of what is happening and where it is taking place. Once we start making changes that lead to offspring we are writing on the tablet of our existence. The changes that are wrought on an egg and sperm are permanent. These changes will be passed on for better or worse to our progeny. The only way to correct a mistake will be to destroy the human units that carry the amended genetic code. Thus, and I can’t emphasize it enough, science must have a thorough understanding of what all the code says and how it finds expression in the replication, and life cycle of the genome. The Execution Level: Once this working level of understanding is achieved there will need to be a machine that takes the replacement code and pokes it into the chromosomes of an egg and sperm. The machine will have to be able read clearly the good sequences, identify the aberrant , and substitute the product-improved code for that which is seen as deficient. Now how likely is it that working level understanding will be achieved before the Execution Level hardware is on hand? Not very I fear. The temptation will be too great for the necessary exercise of patience. Once the execution level capability is available, (Before the Working level understanding is achieved) somebody is going to set the ball rolling. When it comes to pass it will be a sad day for the Human Race. |
| Genetic Family Engineering. For those of us alive today there appears to be little likelihood that we will receive the benefits that genetic engineering will someday offer. For those who are yet unborn however, some will receive benefits that stagger the imagination. Visualize two laptops, one coding an egg and another coding a sperm. This egg and sperm have the codes of their donors being optimized. By optimized, I mean code that is not conducive to long life, resistant to diseases, and designed to enhance mental acuity, is replaced by code that is. The bad code is deleted and the good code added in. Only then are the egg and sperm allowed to comingle and replicate. The result is a human unit that is what I call a product-improved version (PIV). This technology will help understand the cause of aging and diseases so those of us alive today will see some benefit. However, the big benefit will accrue to those with the money to spend on their offspring and the technology will be extremely expensive. As the product-improved human units begin to come on line we will see in them a longer life span, stronger and more athletic bodies and keener minds. The traditional model human beings will operate at a severe disadvantage that will grow more acute with each passing generation. Countries with the product-improved versions will have a real leg up on countries forced to accept the status quo. What technology will allow science to do is accelerate the evolution process giving thought to what here-to-for has been random changes tested on the basis of survival of the fittest (SOF). What before took thousands of years will be accomplished in a single generation. Those offspring will be protected from the SOF arena by the wealth of their parents, social groups and governments. One can only speculate on the social challenges that lie ahead. China has tried to curb its population growth by limiting the size of families. This has been a painful process, but it will be as nothing, compared to the challenges of Genetic Family Engineering. |
| The Wallmart analogy of protein production in a cell I used the analogy of the development of the computer and said that many of mankind’s invented processes follow a life model. A better analogy is Walmart. Walmart sells many different things and to keep track of everything and make sure stock levels are in a proper equilibrium have a process that is remarkably similar to how the human body functions. In a cell, (the supermarket) the DNA control center is in the nucleus. The nucleus is where the chromosomes are located. Sequenced on the chromosomes are genes, which are segments of DNA. A gene is expressed like a barcode and is used for making a single protein. Think of the nucleus as the store office. The store manager gets a “red flag,” on his CRT that a package of wieners has just been sold. “Hmmmm,” she thinks, “I need another package. “ So she tells the computer to search the inventory for wieners and the brand she wants flashes on the screen in a bar code. She pushes the order form button and a template flashes on the screen. She clicks “copy” and the bar code is transferred onto the order form. Then she hits “send” and a messenger races into her office and takes the order form coming off the printer. This process is called transfer. It finds the product in the inventory (DNA sequence) and gets the (Protein) order written. “Well…, an action taken is an action completed” the manager thinks smugly. Meanwhile the messenger takes the order and races out of the office and into the store. He brandishes the order form looking for a Ribosome associate. These Ribosomes walk around with these inventory readers strapped to their hips. They read the message, go into the storage area, find another package of Oscar Meyer Wieners and put it back on the shelf. This part of the process is called translation. Anyway, there you have the process of protein production washed through Percy Goodfellow’s filter. If you want a more scientific explanation go on line or read a textbook. |
| The Keepers As humans realized that corporately they had a chance to survive the rigors of a harsh planet, societies evolved a social structure that consisted of two sorts of Keepers. These were keepers of the Realm and Keepers of the Spirit. Keepers of the Realm: In the distribution of attributes that emerged from a given gene pool, some of the human units were better disposed to provide leadership. This power came from the followers but the leadership elites did everything they could to insure it stayed in the family. Since they had first choice on mates, their offspring tended to retain the best qualities the tribe had to offer. Some societies tended to share political power and in others it tended to be absolute. Absolute seems to have been the more common state and a leader, by virtue of strength, youth and the ability to know best and get others to do it, focused the corporate decision making. Keepers of the Spirit: A second group usually also emerged representing the gatekeepers of a spiritual force and power. They became the spokes-people for the unexplainable. Mankind is awed by the nature of the environment and much of his lack of understanding becomes assumptions that explain the mysteries of life. These two Keepers tend to align themselves to maintain the harmony of the organization. The political stewards and the spiritual custodians enjoy a parasitic relationship on the corporate body of the collective membership. Evidence of this extends back into history and power of the political and spiritual offices are well understood. In ancient Egyptian time there were the Pharoahs and the Priests. This relationship is still seen today, however other social orders have evolved. One in particular has taken much of the power the priest class once enjoyed. The Scientists have taken the baton of custodians of knowledge from the traditional champions of the spirit and used this power much more effectively. As more became known there was less that had to be assumed. To say the State and the Church have often abused their powers for their parochial self-interests instead of to the benefit of the collective members is more a fact than an issue that merits any debate. The point I want to make is that once the scientists had possession of the powers of knowledge, and a method for applying it, they were reluctant to return any to the church. Thus any explanation of life requires a scenario that GOD played no role in the genesis. As far fetched as the primordial pool hypothesis might seem it has the advantage of disavowing the possibility that an intelligent creative force played a seminal role. Don’t confuse this with “Evolution” which certainly played a role in any conceivable life scenario. Car models evolve from year to year but nobody will claim that the automobile invented itself. |
| Function, Symmetry and Form The world is indebted to Watson and Crick for their marvelous discovery of the Double Helix (DH), which appears to be the signature structure of life. Chromosomes intertwined about one another take on a similar appearance. No surprise there. At the time (1953) it was quickly acknowledged that the two researchers had hit upon something big. Their structure, answered all that was known, building up to the discovery, and fit neatly, like a missing part of the puzzle as to what the basic building block of life should look like. That part of the discovery, of itself, would have been pretty awesome, but there were two aspects of the DH that didn’t get all the press that were every bit as wonderful. These were the shape and the ability of the construct to replicate. Getting back to chaos and the primordial pool idea, one might willingly suspend disbelief and entertain the notion that life was born of a random combination of chemicals that at a point in space and time hit the cosmic lotto. Now if you count up all the variables contained in the structure you will have to conclude that such a possibility is remote indeed. However, for the sake of argument lets assume it happened. Now it turned out that the DH also showed how a life form could replicate. This taken with the basic DH structure is astonishing to the point of being mind-boggling and every bit as complex. It takes coincidence over the cliff of believability. Think about it. Science and technology today have done some remarkable things in robotics. Say the Mars Rover chanced upon a robot somewhere on the outback of the red planet. That would be an exciting discovery but it would raise more questions than it answered. First we would want to take the robot apart and see how it worked. When that was complete there would be some Nobel prizes for the scientists who figured it out first…. Now take it a step further, assume it had a capacity for reproduction discovered under an access panel. Now that would take the excitement to a whole new level. I don't suppose anyone would have the cheek to suggest spontaneous generation or a tidal plane with just the right combinations of the iron ore, copper and silver molecule were responsible. To suggest chaos theory might somehow be responsible, combined with randomness and the long passage of time would be seen as absurd. Somebody would note that the robot was built along a vertical axis with sensors and appendages redundantly arranged in harmony with one another. This, taken with all the rest, does not happen in a pool filled with any imaginable combination of the Periodic Table lying randomly scattered about. So why is it that the DH discovery was not heralded as a proof of creation? For function, form and reproduction to have happened randomly, all in the same instant is a bit hard to fathom. |
| Randomness and Evolution…. A genesis or an enabler. Life is like a light bulb. It is a creation wrought from the elements into which energy is allowed to flow. When this happens the light comes on. The light is analogous to awareness. It is being discovered in the Human Genome Study that ninety percent of the code is repetitive strips that don’t seem to serve any real function. I will speculate that they are the vestiges of the evolution program, that didn’t pan out. The evolution sub-program left behind evidence that this or that was once tried. It is also being said that this sort of code is scattered helter-skelter about with no apparent concern for order. When I used to program, it was common that when a programmer went into a program to make changes… that often they were more interested in if the modification would work than where they appended the code. This could be the case with the evolution module. As it tried different things it wasn’t too concerned about punctuation, spacing and where it pinned the amendments. Over a long stretch of time these cluttered things up. If this is true the evolutionists might claim it as evidence that randomness is responsible for the creation of life. I submit that something other than random mutations triggered the program to start writing code. I’ll speculate that it was an emotion such as agony or despair. Further that these emotions created pain. When the pain meter reached and sustained a certain threshold, then the program, like a relief valve, would kick in and try and implement a fix. For example if the life form was about to freeze to death because a new ice age was coming, the program would write some code designed to mitigate the problem. When conditions changed and this code was overtaken by events or became obsolete then it was bypassed or turned off. Still we see it today gathering dust on the shelves of the genome, scattered all over the place. While finding a cure for diseases is laudable science needs, to be looking closer to discover the seminal code of life. What did that unadorned structure once look like, unfettered by all the change orders. The answer should settle for once and for all, the creation/evolution issue. |
| The Goodfellow Hypothesis Before the Big Bang, something unique came to be on the narrow margins between too hot and too cold. This was a compromise between extremes… the nuclear furnace of a sun and the absolute zero, surrounding matter in the vast emptiness of space. At confluences between the two, on the narrow margins where heat cooled, but not excessively, a union of the two occurred and the consequence was called life. Life became the awareness of energy and matter and evolved coming to express itself in many forms. This state of nature went on for a long but not infinite period of time until one day, life noticed that the universe was contracting. Here to for, it had expanded, and then enjoyed a brief hiatus of equilibrium but now it was noted that the galaxies were beginning to implode moving inexorably towards a locus that had no back door. Matter was being compressed and the distance between atoms was diminishing until eventually everything was going to fuse together and cataclysmically explode. This made life anxious because matter and energy had never discussed this phenomena (in their pontificating) and had conveniently forgotten to mention that now and again this sort of crisis occurred. Life saw this as an end-state and despaired what to do. Finally, it hit upon a scheme that offered the only viable course of action. This was to put seeds into those dimensions that were so small, and impervious… that they were capable of squeezing between the cracks and riding out the firestorm. So it was that a program was written, characterized by a double helix and stashed away for posterity. When all hell eventually broke loose, this legacy found itself spread to the corners of the universe, in a swirl of cosmic dust and gasses. When one of these cylinders found a hospitable surrounding it unscrewed the hatch and the seed was dispersed into the host environment. Now one component of this seed was a second tier subprogram called “Evolution,” that allowed the seed to adapt in ways that optimized its survival. How cool was that? |
| Genome, discoveries, chaos When I see the Double Helix, represented conceptually, not having ever seen one in person , it still inspires a sense of awe. It is like an obelisk left by our creator. It is a signature that refutes the Primordial Pool Hypothesis (PPH). (Which is really not a hypothesis, but rather a half-baked conjecture that represents the best, those in denial, can come up with.)A believer of the PPH has to accept that life was spawned in chaos… that a random merging of some chemical acids under ideal conditions chanced upon the perfect combination and life arose as a consequence. As humans we understand what chaos is… it is the absence of Harmony, Order, Balance, Symmetry and Awareness. (There might be some more but let me throw these out there.) There is a whole new science evolving with regard to chaos, that I can’t begin to understand, but enough is known to understand a bit about what it is. It is the Cosmic Default, the state into which the elements scatter in the absence of an outside intervention. If something doesn’t intervene then chaos randomly chooses the outcome (of a given shape and distribution of matter) in a snapshot of time and locality. It is like what a computer program often does when no input (intervention) is otherwise chosen. A defining characteristic of Chaos is the absence of a living intervention. Life is not a value in the Chaos algorithm. Chaos is the elemental condition of matter that weighs life as just another particle… in the dust from whence it came. The modeling of the Human Genome is learning more about the genes that cause diseases. For example researchers are looking closely at BRCA2, which causes breast cancer, and others such as deafness and immune dysfunctions. Hang around. There are some amazing things about to happen. How cool is that? |
| Come On Man! Someone reading a DNA sequence had better get used to no spaces or punctuation. No surprise then that less than 90% of the Human Genome, currently being decoded, is understood. That which is… sort of understood, is the inherited data needed to direct how the human body functions. This is the area that has the Science Geeks lathered up and understandably gets the most attention. Science is going “balls to the wall” on the one hand and on the other speaks with hand to mouth, in a squeaky little voice, cautioning us on the moral and social implications of what lies ahead. “Come on Man,” the people with the money are the ones who will benefit from all this research. Our own health service sector is about to be overwhelmed and is heading off the fiscal cliff with all the rest of this Socialist nonsense. In the next decade most will get to know how socialized medicine works. In a nutshell it means age discrimination, long waits and rationed health care. Listen up! Soon, some will be able to make serious enhancements to what their offspring could otherwise expect. However, unless you have big bucks… (Too bad, so sad) you are destined to have children in the category 2 or lower brackets. Plato will at last have his dream realized. A socialist utopia led by an elite class of golden fair haired citizens, who by virtue of their superior attributes will SCHOOL and lead the unwashed, in the best interests of the State. Those with serious money will soon wake up to the benefits of genetic engineering… of how to design a better body and mind. At the very least an off shore clinic will be able to squeeze the max from a gene pool’s potential and if that isn’t good enough, add in some very creative and expensive options for your unborn children. Then there will come the medical benefits. There are going to be some major discoveries in the treating of illnesses. Again, who do you suppose the beneficiaries are going to be? Death was once the great equalizer, but with the advances that lie ahead the table will be decidedly tilted. The wealthy will significantly prolong their lives and their offspring will be better equipped to carry on the legacy. In a human being there are more or less 3 billion bits of information contained on what is estimated to be 30 to 60 thousand genes. To put this in perspective, mankind gets about twice the press a fruit fly receives. Now that should really make your chest puff out… A man or woman is twice as complicated as an earthworm. A mouse, as I might have mentioned has 2.5 billion bits, only slightly smaller and 5% of the code is identical to humans. This suggests somewhere in the distant past mice and men shared a common ancestor. Do you suppose that was the underlying message in Steinbeck’s classic? |
| “Balls!” said the Queen, “If I had two, I’d be King.” Today I’m laying the groundwork for some future blogs. My thesis is that we use a life model for the things we create. I’m not talking about making a baby, although that is an example worth noting. Anyone who thinks they make babies has a bit of a conceit. We enable offspring in a very minor sort of way. The clutch and grab we give to the process is analogous to EVOLUTION in development of life… ( It’s blown way out of proportion.) What I’m referring to is that in our creative endeavors we emulate the life model. It is consciously or subconsciously the reference point from which all creation begins. A better example is Computer Science. It is fair to say that is a creation of man, however when we look at it, what is transpiring is something very similar to a process that is much more ancient. A computer program is written in a language. That language encodes bits of information that gives a computer, instructions on how to do something. It happens that a computer is an electro-mechanical device but the more we see it evolving ,the more it looks to have in common with the bio-machine we all have some familiarity with. A computer might be programmed in a simple or higher level language. Our bodies are written in a bio language in a code we refer to as DNA. It is at the source a nucleic acid that is found concentrated in the nucleus of living things. A bit in a computer program is analogous to a bit of DNA. These bits are sheathed with proteins to make chromosomes. (Is any of this sounding familiar?) In a human being there are 46 chromosomes in most cells, two of which are very sexy and the other 44, the more mundane, are called autosomal. Autosomal chromosomes are identical in both men and woman. Any difference between the sexes lies in the X and the Y variations on the sex chromosome.. In biology class we learned that through cell reduction an egg and sperm are created. A man determines the sex of an organism by passing on a Y or X and 22 autosomal and a woman contributes an XX and the same number of autosomal. Don’t you love this unsolicited tutorial on biology? Well the best is yet to come. Inside the DNA is something, for want of a better term, called a gene. This is a thread-like piece of tape that contains the code that enables a cell to produce a unit of protein. A protein is the basic building block of life that enables living things to operate in the environment that surrounds us all How cool is that? Oxford Journal of Life Sciences, Volume 9, Issue 11 Pages 2353-2358 |
Mutually Exclusive Sometime after conception and certainly by the time when your birthing occurred, you became aware. “Aware of what?” you ask. Aware of your personal identity, aware that you were alive, aware that you were in the driver’s seat of this marvelous human bio-organism you drive around. “Is that all?” you reply That’s pretty much it. Think of yourself as a dumb-ass, who woke up in the pilot’s seat of the Space Shuttle. If that’s too much of a stretch, picture yourself as a cab driver. Yeah! That’s a good analogy but with some minor variations. Nobody is telling you were to drive your cab. You have something called a free will that isn’t really all that free. There are certain things you want to avoid with your cab… like front end collisions with immovable objects or driving off the bank and into a river. You are also expected to go to a service station and refill the tank periodically and do a little driver maintenance (keep the air filter clean) go to the car wash and keep the fluids changed and the engine free of sludge. (Farting sound) One last thing that is sort of unique is having to contribute to the conception of little taxi-cabs. Granted we don’t have to do much in that regard (Pant! Pant!) but we are compelled to do our small part. Do you know that five percent of the DNA sequencing in your body is the exact same as in a mouse. I hope that gives you some idea of how special you are and if it does I hope it fosters a small sense of humility. If this is all there is then why has GOD gone to all the trouble to make us aware? Why bother....? A clueless voices whispers…. “GOD? Who the heck is that? ( the clueless one likes talking to himself.... replies, (thinking?) out loud.) I”m the end result of an evolutionary process that started in a sludge pool in the distant past, and finally trickled out the PCV pipe of history and plopped into the present. I have hung around awhile, done some stuff, and when this machine quits running, I’m gone… into a dark cavern and there ain’t no light at the end of the tunnel.” On the other hand if, you subscribe to the Christian faith, you believe you were put here for a purpose. Perhaps to make the world a better place... (It's a good starting point don't you think?) and how well you do decides a home on the cul de sac of many mansions and a seat, on the right hand of God. Now I’m glad to be having this weird conversation because basically one with awareness can subscribe to the primordial pool notion or instead to the idea of creation. The creation model has been getting a lot of flack since the slime model has been gaining in acceptance and popularity. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that they are not mutually exclusive. I could make the case that we were created with a subprogram that allowed us to evolve and adjust to the changing conditions of the planet. In this hypothesis evolution is a subset of creation and it doesn’t conflict with the fact that we were all created. If the program of life were written in a modular format, evolution would be a block, at best, located somewhere on the second tier. (Endowed with certain unalienable rights….? Now there's a conjecture worthy of debate.) Is that cool or what? |
| Grip and Strip I don’t offer this suggestion in the Exploratory Writing Workshop (EWW) because of the 13+ classifications. I almost wish I could. This is because in the EWW a significant investment in time is devoted to character development. Students do a profile sketch, which is like a questionnaire for a job application. I require them on a central character but I’m not all that enamored with using them. On the one hand they’re better than nothing but on the other sound so clinical and stale. To be honest, most of the characters I see here on WDC don’t resonate… this is to say that I find it hard to get under their skin. They come across like the store front on a Hollywood set. A great character is someone who becomes alive in the writer’s imagination and in some mysterious way, thereby, is able to get under the reader’s skins. This begs the question, how is a character created who gets under a reader’s skin? I can’t speak for everyone who has this uncanny knack for developing unforgettable characters, but consider trying what I am proposing. Take your central character and go to one of the sensual prose (SP) contests offered at this site. Then take this character and lift them out of the context of what you are writing about and immerse them in a vignette following the contest prompt. You don’t have to actually enter the contest with your vignette and when you finish you can always erase it from your computer altogether. Or you can print it off and bury it in a lockbox in your back yard. All that I can say is that your character will become more real and animate your readers. This is because the writer gets to know them in the most personal of ways and it transfers into what we write.Getting to know your character in a “Grip and Strip” gives a writer a more intimate knowledge of who they are. Just as you understand your spouse or significant other at a visceral level so will your character take on substance and come to life in your imagination. It isn’t necessary to use the SP in your written works, in order for a character to begin indirectly resonating with authenticity. As writers we understand at the gut level that there is a spirit at work inside us… some call it a muse, and our “creative energies” animate this muse, and make real the imagery that comes to life on the Stage of our Reader’s (SOAR) imaginations. |
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Love it! Especially the safety measures for us homo sapiens...
