Matus1976 - Philosophy, Science, Politics,Art

The US is often implicated as the greatest culprit in Global Warming because it’s energy consumption is so high.  We are barraged daily with articles stating that the US is the world’s biggest CO2 producer or that if the rest of the world consumed as much energy as the US we would need 7 earths to sustain it.  The single biggest problem with these assertions is that they jugde energy consumption in a vacuum - they never consider what that energy is actually used for.  Environmentalists love to promulgate the image that the US gobbles up most of it’s energy through Jacuzzis, SUV’s and Big Screen TV’s.

The reality is far different, far more complicated, and extremely important to understand.  Consider first that China recently overtook the US as the worlds largest CO2 emitter.  See this article:

China overtakes US as world’s biggest CO2 emitter
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jun/19/china.usnews

Once this happened, the critics changed their tune, pointing out instead that the US is the largest CO2 emitter per capita.  Indeed, of course it is, the US produces 20% of the worlds GDP (yes, 20% of ALL products and services generated IN THE ENTIRE WORLD are made by the US, a mere 5% of the population)  It makes a significant portion of the worlds food supply, the worlds grain supply, the worlds textile supply, and the worlds supply of computational services and electrical and industrial supplies.   

In fact Americans produce more goods per unit of CO2 produced than any other country.  In places like sub Saharan Africa, where people burn wood and even animal waste just to cook food, they produce 10 or 100 times as much CO2 per person for the useful products they produce.  In China, people produce more than those in Africa per unit of energy used, but still much less than in the US.  In fact the US is one of the most efficient users of energy in the entire world, and if the rest of the world used energy as efficiently as the US in producing it’s goods, the total CO2 contributions to the earths atmosphere right now would be about one tenth of it’s current amount.

Consider this from wikipedia on “US Energy Consumption”
“The United States is the largest energy consumer in terms of total use, using 100 quadrillion BTU (105 exajoules, or 29000 TWh) in 2005, equivalent to an (average) consumption rate of 3.3 TW. The U.S. ranks seventh in energy consumption per-capita after Canada and a number of small countries.”

While the US is the largest energy consumer, it never the less ranks seventh in energy consumption per capita.  Concurrently, according to the World Bank, at $44,155 the United States ranks 7th in Gross Domestic Product Per Capita - The measurement of the overall goods and services produced.  (Luxembourgh ranks number 1, but does it really count?)  Comparing the Gross Domestic Product per capita with Energy use per capita we see the following (for 2005)

Country GDP / Capita (International Monetary Fund, Worldbank, CIA)
USA - $44,155
China - $2,304
European Union - $26,900

Energy Use 2005
USA - 100 quadrillion BTU’s  (Energy Information Administration and #2 is from the World Resources Institute)
China – 60.84 quadrillion BTU’s (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb1103.html  59.57 quad btu’s for 2004)
EU – 73.7 quadrillion BTU’s (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/European_Union/Energy.html for 2003)

GDP / per capita / 1 quadrillion BTU’s  (dividing the GDP / Capita by the number of quadrillion BTU’s)
USA - $441.55
China – $38.4
EU - $364

What this shows is that for every quadrillion BTU’s consumed in energy, the United States produces $441 dollars worth of usable goods and services per person.  China, by contrast, produces $38 of usable goods and services for every quadrillion BTU’s used per person, or less than 1/10 the amount.  Because of this, China has been launching major campaigns to improve energy efficiency.  The US is frequently presented as the worst offender of all the nations, and while per capita CO2 production is highest in the US, per capita energy WASTING in the US is one of the lowest in the world, and if we are to make serious headway in reducing the production of CO2, lets start by reducing the absolutely wasteful energy production systems employed in most of the world.

Cutting back on energy use in the US, or the EU, for instance, will cause increases in the cost of the worlds grain supply and much of the worlds food supply, something that will hurt the poorest people of the world the most.  How many additional people starve to death when the price of grain increases by 1%? it’s hard to say, but for the poorest of the poor in the world, small changes in prices certainly have tremendous consequences.  If we talk about energy consumption absent of energy usage and efficiency, we open ourselves up to make other problems much worse even while making little headway on the original problem.

It is extremely important to point out not only how much energy is used, but how exactly that energy is used.  For example, look at this article on “ecoworld”  http://www.ecoworld.com/home/articles2.cfm?tid=294

“Imagine that through conservation and increased energy efficiency, every citizen in the United States were to consume half the BTUs they currently consume. This is certainly possible, though very unlikely in the near term. In 1995 the U.S. citizenry consumed, on average, 327 million BTUs per year, which is more than twice what many developed countries use per capita, including the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany and Japan.”

I added the emphasis here because this article is asking us to examine how much energy the United States uses but does not ask at to look at what it is used for.  As noted, the US’s Gross Domestic Product Per Capita is almost twice that of the European Unions.  This energy is not going into Jacuzzis and McMansions, it is going to products and services the entire world uses.  Is it fair, or more importantly, reasonable, to look at energy consumption in a vacuum? That article then goes on to say -

“If, for example, everyone on earth consumed as much energy as U.S. citizens currently use, worldwide energy production would not have to go from 316 QBTUs to over 600 QBTUs, but instead to over 1,900 QBTUs!”

Something which indeed is even more disingenuous, since the United States produces 20% of the world’s products and services!  If the United States, which makes up 5% of the entire world’s population never the less produces 20% of the products and services used in the world, why would everyone else in the world, 20 times over, also need to produce the equivalent of what the US produces!?   This makes no sense; the implication in the articles is that the US merely consumes that much energy for useless things, which is completely untrue.  Look at the phrasing above “if everyone on earth CONSUMED as much energy as the U.S. citizens USES…” Uses for what?  Producing 20% of the worlds products and services!   So lets say If the other 95% of the world, divided into chunks of 5% (to equal the US’s population) that would make 20 other ‘nations’ which are ALSO producing the equivalent of today’s 20% of the worlds products and services.  This would amount to a whopping 400% increase in the gross domestic product of the world!  Of course this would require worldwide energy production to increase, but is a completely worthless comparison.    

The United States is frequently blamed, at least implicitly, as the primary contributor to global warming when people cite how much energy it uses compared to other nations.  Yet as illustrated by this bit of googling, the US utilizes it’s energy nearly 10 times more efficiently than, for example, China, and it is in fact one of the most efficient energy users on the planet.  If the rest of the world used energy as efficiently as the United States does, global CO2 contributions would be about 1/10 of what they currently are, and more importantly worl wide products and services would be less expensive.  Efforts toward increasing efficiency in the US would result in minor benefits compared to efforts at increasing efficiencies in China and India (these nations are aware of their extremely wasteful energy usage and China for instance has launched a major campaign to increase it’s energy efficiency)   When combating major problems, it is always extremely important to understand what the best thing to do to combat that problem is, not simply what is easiest or politically expedient, and certainly not by attacking the industry of the nation that has done so much to raise the standard of living for the entire world.

Astute googlers might notice that Japan exceeds our GDP / Capita and yet consumes half the energy per capita the US does suggesting we have room for improvement.  In Japan’s case though, it is important to note that the population density of Japan is much higher (127 million people living in about 1/4 the geographic area) and the climate is more moderate (a significant amount of energy is used merely to heat and cool buildings) and occupants of the US spend considerable more energy just traveling between diverse population density centers and maintaining comfortable temperatures.

While meeting Japan’s effeciency would be a two fold increase, China, India, and Africa still lag far behind with 1/10thor less the energy efficiency intensity of the US. The United States should be celebrated for it’s productiveness and effeciency, instead of attacked as an energy glutton without context.

——————————————————–
Ergonomic Add On Desktop - Unique curved inclined sloping
desktop which attaches to in seconds. www.ErgoSlope.com
——————————————————–

Here is an interesting news bit on “non intrinsic stimuli”. 

Scientific American 60 second - January 15th, 2008.

From - http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=7A81E74F-E554-39DF-62E0C6F540A3CDF8

“ You’d think we enjoy something because of it’s intrinsic qualities, food should taste good because it molecules tickles our tongue. But it’s much more complicated than that.  For example, one study shows that drinkers knowing the name brand and ingredients increase the drinkers pleasure.  Researches at the California Institute of Technology investigated our neural response to non intrinsic stimuli, 20 subjects tasted what they thought were 5 different wines and they were give the price for each of these.  In reality only 3 wines were used, and 2 were offered twice, once at a low price and once at a high price.  Subjects consistently said that the wines they thought cost more tasted better.  Functional MRI showed no difference in taste centers in brain, but revealed increased activities in brains pleasure centers.  Somehow our brains combine both actual taste and what we expect about the taste. “

One can surmise the thought process inside these researchers heads “Hmm, why in the world would our perceptions or thoughts about something alter how that something effects us?  I thought we were just robots and responded directly in pre-programmed ways to pre-programmed stimuli”  Clearly we are not merely mechanical automatons who respond in exact ways to the same thing.  Our emotions are, in fact, automatic estimations of stimuli based on our values and our understanding.  The subjects of this study attached some value to the cost of wine, which is reasonable considering cost does roughly equate to quality in most areas.   These researchers act surprised (this is news, after all) but this is in fact the only obvious way emotions would work.  Do we all respond, emotionally to the same things in the same way?  Obviously not.  What makes me sad, might be irrelevant to you.  And what makes you happy, might cause apprehension in me.  Why is that? 

Yet we do all share the same kinds of emotions, we all feel joy, sadness, apprehension, etc.  These emotional reactions are obvious in everything from infants to tribes untouched by western conventions.  The facial expressions and body reactions to emotional responses are almost identical.  It is clear then that emotional responses are in fact automatic and nearly instinctual.  In infants, the emotional reaction exists, but the values have yet to be formed or identified, so often reactions are disjointed from what we think they should be attached to, like crying for apparently no reason. As they grow, babies learn to value certain things and soon their emotional reactions come to align with their values.  In distant tribes untouched by western conventions, the smile is still universally something of happiness and joy, the tear is still the response to sadness.  Why is this not opposite in some cultures? 

So if we have the same emotional capacities in response, why are our responses different?  Do emotional responses come from our genetic code then?  No, since identical twins can have diametrically opposed emotional reactions.  So the answer is again clear, our emotional responses come from our values. What brings joy and sadness to those distant people will depend on their needs and their values within their social and environmental context.  What brings joy or sadness to us similarly will be based on what we value.  If there is something we value and we see that value furthered, our mind and body automatically respond to recognizing our values furthered within our understanding as something good, and so invoke a feeling of happiness.  A new product at a lower cost which we find a lot of value in would invoke happiness in us, but to the workers who will be put out of business it may invoke apprehension or sadness.  An elderly person in severe pain may find happiness at the prospect of their own death, while young healthy full of life person would feel deep sadness and apprehension at the prospect of their own death.  Emotions are responses to what we value, if we value our life, then that which furthers it will bring us joy and things that harm our life will bring us sadness. If we value a quality of life for our friends and loved ones, than things which raise their quality of life will bring us joy.  If we value our own accomplishments over those of others, than success by our friends would cause jealousy and anger.  Emotions then are completely proper responses, but that does not mean they are automatically correct, because they are still based on our own values, which we choose and integrate into our lives, and also our assessment of a situation, which may very well be wrong.  This is why it is always good practice to introspect and examine our emotional reactions. 

The nature and purpose of emotions have been expanded by philosophers from Aristotle to Ayn Rand, and ought to be obvious with consideration and reflection to anyone.  Yet mainstream science is still very confused about emotions, swinging them from being absolutely pre-programmed and determined (as is demonstrated by Richard Dawkins equating immoral people with broken machines) or purely random, since the things which bring about emotional responses appear so different from person to person.  Studies like this demonstrate unquestionably that these “non intrinsic stimuli” exist, and that they in fact have a much more common name: Values. 

 

Richard Dawkins “Let’s all stop beating Basil’s car”
http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_9.html
“But doesn’t a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused’s physiology, heredity and environment.”

My post - The Abdication of Volition
http://matus1976.com/philosophy/abdication_volition.html
“When a person who is in love exhibits elevated levels of these opium like drugs, the scientists then interpret that to mean that they are in love because the brain has produced that drug! Which is ridiculous, of course, you do not fall in love because your brain produces a chemical, your brain produces a chemical *because* you fall in love. The difference is superficially subtle, yet vitally important to all of our conceptions of humanity and emotions. It is the difference between being a slave to your emotional whims originated in the mindless mechanistics of your biological chemistry and having your emotions be the logical consequences of the deepest values you choose. It is the difference between being a robotic slave and a thinking, feeling person.”

James Lovelock, a father of the modern environmentalist / green movement, is now a strong and outspoken advocate of Nuclear power.  In a recent SONE (Supporters of Nuclear Energy) podcast, Lovelock expands on the benefits of Nuclear power and chides the modern green movement for being based so strongly on scaring people about cancer even though today people live longer than ever before and cancer rates (when adjusted for age) continue to decrease.

The Earth itself, Lovelock says, is actually the left over debris of a giant nuclear explosion.  Planets form from the debris of supernovae explosions, where stars, exhausting too much of their nuclear fuel, explode in sudden bursts of energy that outshine galaxies.  The uranium and heavy elements the earth is made of was formed from these explosions.  The implication being that, to be afraid of ‘nuclear’ power in general, but for ‘the earth, is to ignore the very evolution of the Earth and its natural ties to Nuclear reactions.

Lovelock warns that as global warming gets worse, no rational person ought to oppose nuclear power in the face of these global environmental changes.  I would argue, in fact, that the modern green movement is largely responsible, to whatever degree it is actually occuring, for global warming, because they elevated a completely irrational fear of nuclear power and thus drove the United States to be almost wholly dependant on oil and coal.  It has, in fact, been *illegal* to build a nuclear reactor in this country since the Carter administration.  Thus dependance on foreign oil has also funded the murderous dictatorships of the middle east and bred the terrorist that now threaten the western world.

“I think we need nuclear power, urgently, and soon” warns Lovelock.  What of Nuclear waste?  Lovelock laughs in this interview, and says “I have offered to store nuclear waste in my backyard, because I know that in a proper storage container in a concrete pit there is no danger, and in fact I could run a pipe into the ground to pick up the exceess heat”  Lock notes that these the waste from nuclear power is one of it’s greatest benefits because there is so little of it!  Think of the invisible mountains, hundreds of cubic miles, of CO2 that is produced from the combustion of fossil fuels, compared to 10’s of cubic meters from a nuclear plant.  

Natural gas, he notes, though it produces less than half the amount of CO2 through combustion, is often in practice much work because, as a gas, it is piped through lines and industry standards are around 4% for leakage rates, but methane, a primary component of natural gas, is over 25 times worse as a green house gas than CO2 is.  The gas that leaks out is worse than burning the original fuel.

As I expand on in me Nuclear vs Coal essay, new nuclear technologies are even safer and impossible to melt down, and fast breeder reactors can create over 100 times the power existing reactors can, and can be used to consume their own waste.  A handful of these kinds of reactors could power the entire United States.

If you care about the health and well being about yourself and the people on the Earth, nuclear power is the way to go.  If you think Global Warming is a big issue than Nuclear power is also the best possible choice.  If you want cheap, safe, reliable electricity, Nuclear power is also still the way to go.
 

Nuclear Power vs Coal Power
http://matus1976.blogsome.com/2006/06/09/nuclear-power-vs-coal-power/

Beautiful image from Argentina - 3 galaxies and a comet
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0703/3772-84mcnaught_druckmuller.jpg

French Architect proposes mechanism for construction of Egyptian pyramids.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article2405133.ece

Great comparison of the size of all objects in our solar system larger than 200 miles in diameter, gives a conceptual understanding of the size of the sun and large gas planets compared to earth and other smaller bodies.  Visually stunning.
http://kokogiak.com/solarsystembodieslargerthan200miles.html

They pretend an object is not what it really is.
In the hopes it will not be that which it always is.
Imagination, it seems to them, is meant to be absurd.
They use a gun instead of reason to make their voices heard.
 
They won’t come to ever see how their morals shape reality, the only end they care to see is violent: forced equality.
 
They pretend your mind is something that belongs to them.
It’s only meant to serve all those whose needs are still not met.
Self-destruction is, to them, a means that serves an end.
Self sacrifice and immolation make the best of men.
 
They won’t come to ever see starvation comes from equity, if equal men are made by force, they turn the best into the worst.
They pretend that you’ll provide under the yoke of force.
Their need the right to claim all you have made and force out more.
They pretend that they won’t starve without a working mind.
And they wont see where they end up is where they wished to find.
 
They won’t come to ever see their morals shape reality, the only end they care to see is violent: forced equality

 – Thosquanta lyrics

 ———————

In the late 50’s as Chairman Mao Ze Dong solidified power in "Revolutionary China" he sought to increase the standing of China on the international scene.  To do this, China had to sell it’s primary domestic product; food.  Of course in China most people producing food consumed the food they were producing.  The communist party of China issued new orders and directives, every bit of food produced by the population would be ‘given’ to the government, who would then re-distribute it according to who needed it, or rather, according to what would benefit the oppressive rulers the most.  Mao’s ruling part of China began a campaign to become one of the world’s largest agricultural exporters.  Farmers were forced to hand over at gun point the food they were growing while they were starving.  Where they were producing more than enough food for themselves and others, now there was not even enough food to feed the population of China.  People were literally working themselves to death growing and collecting their own food, and being forced to give it away.  Millions and millions of people starved to death.  In all, historians estimate, about 35 million Chinese peasants starved to death during this period in the absolute worst human famine to have ever occurred, yet few today know about it.

This famine was not cause by droughts or freezes, but instead by a controlled economy in the hands of a murderous dictator, in fact all of the famines experienced in the 20th century were at the hands of controlled economies

Additionally Communist party members were fans of an "alternative" science, brought about by philosophical Dialectical materialism, which asserts all growth comes from conflict, among other bad ideas, and also abandons the mechanism of heredity, genetics, in favor of a deadly Marxist pseudoscience, Lysenkoism.  Lysenko and his poor science caused the famines in the Soviet Union which killed tens of millions of people, and many of these policies, despite these spectacular failures, were adopted in China promulgating Mao’s famine.  Later, when adopted in Cambodia, Ethiopio, and North Korea, all produced still more man-made famines.  The lysenko ideas including ‘conditioning’ seeds to grow in cold weather by dunking them in cold water, forcing peasants to bury seedlings much deeper, and forcing peasants to cover fields with 5 times as many seeds as a field could support, on the theory that similar plants do not compete with each other for resources.

You can read more on these dreadful policies here
http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/health/hunger/famine/chinese_famine.html

Beyond that, Communist party members sought to make China a world player on the industrial scene in the world and desired to capitalize on their greatest resource; manpower from physical labor.  Tens of millions of farmers and peasants were ordered to leave their productive farms and build small communal "steel refractories" these refractories resembled termite mounds more than steel production furnaces and produced steel that looked more like animal droppings earning it a nickname in kind.

The single major change which ended this dreadful famine was when farmers were again allowed to produce food as they saw fit, and while they still had to provide a large quota to the government, they were allowed to keep any excess they grew and sell it.  Within 5 years agricultural output in China, from 1960 – 1965, almost tripled.  Production continued to climb until Chairman Mao regained much of the power he lost and instituted a "cultural revolution" where anyone eductated in the ways of the west was executed, again agriculture production plummeted as the people responsible for the radical increase were sent to prison camps or outright executed as "counter revolutionaries"  Millions of educated Chinese fled the country, and chances are if you are in a western country and have some Chinese friends, their parents most likely fled the cultural revolution.

Read more here is as well
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/319/7225/1619

Many people in western nations have a hard time believing such statistics, assuming by de-facto that governments tend to operate well and for the benefit of the people.  But government encroachment into markets does not bring about equality, increased standards of living, or a general betterment of society, it always plummets toward ineptitude, corruption, and inefficiencies.  .  No bureaucrat can ever respond quickly enough to rapidly changing climate and markets to get the food where it is needed, only the independent and rapid decisions of the millions of producers and distributors are capable of adjusting with lighting rapidity to great strains on products.  Any politician who controls immense swaths of the economy is immediately open to corruption, where the currency de jour is not product superiority but instead influence and bribery.  To the extent at which governments interfere in markets is the extent to which people in those nations suffer harder, shorter, more painful lives, and to the extent to which nations let free people make free decisions and produce the goods they desire of their own accord, and trade with each other of their own free will, is the extent to which a nation and it’s people prosper and live longer, healthier, happier lives as a whole.

Some quick news items Somebody beat me to it =( Still, mine will be better, but too slow on the draw again… http://i.n.com.com/i/ne/p/2007/34monotracer550x365.jpg

Check out this amazing Hubble image, 50,000 galaxies, be sure to load the zoomed version and explore the galaxies, 50,000 of them! http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/06/image/c/format/zoom/

On existential threats: NASA lacks funds to find killer asteroids http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/03/06/nasa.asteroids.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

"They are a threat even if they don’t hit Earth because if they explode while close enough — an event caused by heating in both the rock and the atmosphere — the devastation from the shockwaves is still immense. The explosion alone could have with the power of 100 million tons of dynamite, enough to devastate an entire state, such as Maryland, they said."

Check out my updated essay "Humanity Needs an Insurance Policy" on AssociatedContent.com

Humanity Needs an Insurance Policy
Is Self Destruction from the Rapid Growth of Technology the Answer to the Fermi Paradox?
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/137048/humanity_needs_an_insurance_policy.html

In one of Richard Feynman’s books, (one of my favorite authors, Nobel prize winning physicist, and amazingly prescient person) he recalls visiting a museum in Greece with his wife, and while browsing through the great works of art, fine statues, and beautiful Urns, he came across a stunningly complex device. Fascinated, he asked more about it. It was so complex that he thought it might have been a fake. The Museum curator, scoffing at the American finding fascination in the machine but not in the statues, could find only three published articles on the device, all from Scientific American, and all from Americans. It was found in a ship wreck, and physically appeared to be the age it was. The point of Feynman’s story was as much about the fascinating device as it was the modern Greek Culture, which practices a modern form of ancestor worship and reverence, frequently deriving self worth from the accomplishments of long dead ancestors. The common attitude, Feynman thought, seems to be that if the ancient Greeks didn’t come up with it, it wasn’t worth coming up with, and everything come up since then is hardly more than gadgets and distractions. I made a mental note when I read Feynman’s book to look into that device further, fascinated with ancient technology as I am.

Recently the New York Times science section ran this article “An Ancient Computer Surprises Scientists” (Registration required) After reading the name of the device I thought that’s a very Greek sounding word and that perhaps this is the device that Richard Feynman was talking about. Indeed it was the same device, and Feynman’s marveling at it’s complexity is yet another magnificent example of his prescience. The device, A complex geared clock looking mechanism, appears to have been used to calculate lunar cycles and planetary phases. As this article details, the device has now been examined with the latest high-resolution imaging systems. The team examining it, made up of British, Greek, and American researches were able to decipher many of the inscriptions and reconstruct the gear functions, revealing “an unexpected degree of technical sophistication for the period” In fact it is a degree of technical sophistication not rivaled for over 1,000 years. The Antikythera Mechanism is considered the worlds first computer and was probably not matched in complexity until some of the devices of the Islamic scientists of around 1000 AD.

Around the time this device was constructed, another Greek scientist invented the first rudimentary steam engine. Capable of such miraculously complex dvices, the Greeks themselves were not rivaled in science for over 1,000 years and in philosophy I would argue for perhaps another 2,000 years.

Enigma of Ancient computer http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/889

Image of the Device and artists rendition

The Antikythera Mechanism Links http://www.giant.net.au/users/rupert/kythera/kythera6.html

An Ancient Computer Surprises Scientists http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/science/30computecnd.html?ex=1322456400

My aunt, Delores, died a few days ago.  She was 78 years old, had been married for 62 ½ years, had 8 children, 24 grandchildren, and 15 great grandchildren, with 2 more on the way.  I haven’t seen her since thanksgiving and she died on January 6.  I am glad she got to live the life she did, she had a wonderful and fulfilling life.  But couldn’t it have been for a much longer time? 

I remember playing in her yard, the stories she would tell of her children, and getting accosted by a bat in her barn.  All the times we came to visit and she and Hub were always so warm and welcoming.  Ready to give you some freshly cooked food, or some cookies.  Or some Tea.  I sit and write this as I sip on some tea, I remember that she would make me a cup of tea every time I went over there, even when I was very young, it is how I started drinking tea.  The many days spent there just sitting at her table talking.  I love her, she was a good person and I will miss her terribly.

We are only able to express our emotions, our love and affection for our family, through words, and words will always be but a pale shadow of the ideas and feelings they are meant to represent.  Just saying “I love you” as I often did to DeeDee, does not ever do the core feeling enough justice.  I wish that I could have conveyed to DeeDee what I felt for her, how much I admired her and value her, but whenever I try to extrapolate on such things I always seem at a loss for words, and I can never seem to get as close to someone as I want to be.  A person’s mind is such a rich and complex place that you could explore it for their whole life and still never truly know them.  We have difficulty in even getting to know ourselves, after all.  Maybe some day we will have the technology to transfer a feeling directly to another mind, we may be able to capture the very feelings and emotional power and convey it to another person, imprinting the pattern of your feelings in your mind on theirs, in the way a physical embrace imprints the warmth and presence of another person.  But until then we must struggle to truly convey our feelings through only words and embraces.

No one tells you, that as you grow old, your heart and mind remain that of a person in their 20’s.  They never tell you that you dream just as much, want to do just as much, want to live as strong and as vibrantly as you ever did at the prime of your life.  That while you desire all of that, your body fails and crumbles, withers, weakens, creaks and aches.  That your spirit is young and alive and wants to jump up and race and run and fly at any age.  But your body protests every step of the way, and even now as I enter my 30’s I feel the small hints of it, and I know enough to see it when I look into the eyes of the people older than I and see that spark flicker at the life they *ought* to be living right then, railing against the reality of their bodies.  I know that my aunt was young and full of life even to her very last moments. 

I didn’t get to see her as much as I would like but I have spent so much time working on things.  I kept wanting to go and visit her and my uncle, I love them both very much, and of course love them as relatives, but as individuals I love them.  I didn’t see them because I always chose to work on things instead, to work on my projects and my long term goals, because ultimately I wanted to help them when I got successful.  I wanted to get a membership to Alcor so I could go see them and tell them about it.  So I could show them my bracelet and necklace and possibly have more of an impact than if I didn’t have a membership, if I wasn’t signed up for what to them would be a strange procedure that I was asking them to sign up for they would have a much harder time giving it a fair hearing.  I didn’t see them.  I chose to work.  When challenged with the question ‘What would you do if your loved one only had a few days to live?”  I always answer that I would do everything I could in those few days to try to save them.  But that means you would not be spending quality time with them.  Which is more important?  I guess it’s best to weigh the chances of success.  But to not try and to see them die, is unbearable to me.  I must act in accordance with my values.  I could struggle and struggle to try to save them and no one would ever know, it would just seem like, to them, that I was distant.  That I didn’t care.  So it seems with DeeDee perhaps, that I was distant, and didn’t care.  The truth couldn’t be more wrong, I love her and wanted to try to save her, I knew she was sick and dying, the only chance I would have would be for them to try cryogenic preservation.  I doubt they would have, but I could have at least tried.  But I didn’t, I never got the chance to.  I couldn’t afford my own Alcor membership and so was trying to get one of my businesses successful enough to afford it, so I could go to them and try to get them to sign up.  The night of her death was a message on my answering machine from Alcor, asking if they could assist me in signing up. 

Now she is gone.  Forever, Delores is dead now.  Her last breath has slipped out and her cells stopped working.  Her mind immediately starting to deteriote.  Gone forever, a beautiful, wonderful, fascinating mind, person, gone for all of eternity.  There is no afterlife, no heaven, no resting in peace, she is just gone.  She ceases to exist.  We can not begin to wrap our minds around such a thing.  We can not imagine not existing.  But one day I will not exist, and you will not exist, and everyone you know and love will not exist.  Why?  Why do we let happen?  It is not right, it never has been, and never will be.

A single person is more unique than a whole galaxy devoid of sentient life.  Then even a whole universe.  Life.  Conscious life, is the most precious thing in the universe, yet we waste it foolishly.  We risk it so we think we might value it more.  Our lives are so short that we’ll do crazier things since we have so little life to protect.  We all have known for months she would die soon, and I know my parents and brother will, and I will someday.  There is no escaping it, no evading it, no delusions that comfort me.  Just the real and tangible lack of existence.   There is no real way to console someone on the death of a loved one.  Consolation is not possible when there is absolutely nothing that can ever make you ok with something like that.  The closest we have is distance.  Our memories fade, the pain becomes constant, and then dulled, and then in the background.  Our minds adapt and get used to the world without them.  We learn to live with it, but we never get over it.  I did not mourn outwardly much tonight, I was sad, and I cried, but there was not anger, no rage at the world.   I know what kind of world we live in, I know what preciousness is lost every second, every day.  I am used to it, I think about it constantly. 

90 Billion lives since the dawn of human existence, gone forever. It is not right.  It was never right, it never will be right.  Death does not give life value, the end of something does not make it’s beginning worthwhile, death is the destruction of values, all values, the end of something is the destruction of that something.  We tolerate it because we can do nothing about it.  We make up stories and delude ourselves so we don’t have to deal with the real horror of it.  Life is the source of all values, it should always hurt, immeasurable, when a fundamental value is lost to us, forever.  They did what they could, people will say.  But we didn’t.  We didn’t do all we could.  We sat around, watching TV, playing video games, chatting it up online, going out to eat, partying, hanging out with friends.  All the while it looms over our every actions.  You will all die.  Everyone you know and love will die, will cease to exist.  What are you doing about it?  Nothing.  We aren’t doing anything.  Well tell ourselves that we can not become experts at things because we are not born that way, that we can not learn and do the things required to fight aging and death, to give us all indefinite life spans.  That no matter how hard we try we can’t do anything anyway.  But is that true?  Are we really being honest with ourselves. To do so means coming to the full and conscious recognition of how horrific death is, something we are not eager as a people to do.  So instead we all fade, deteriorate, suffer, cry, and die.  Persons slipping away into eternity forever.  You, your loved ones, everyone you know and love will die and disappear forever.  What are you doing about it?

Death is terrible and tragic, with every single death, the sun should dim, a cold wind blow across the world, the seas should calm, all sounds and lights should fade, and everyone stop in their tracks and bow their heads, knowing that one of their own is gone.  That a magnificent human being now ceases to exist, lost to the ravages of entropy for all of eternity.  But today it would happen so frequently that we would all become numb to it, and the sun would flash like a strobe light.  We lower our flags to half staff when a member of the government passes, or there is a great tragedy.  But every death is a tragedy, and our flags would never raise if we captured them all.   

Each of us, every human in all of history, values deeply their own life.  And faced with it’s inevitable demise, cursed as the only animal on the planet consciously aware of it’s own mortality and imminent cessation of existence, we have been forced to psychological compensate for such an unfathomable horror. 

Buddhism, recognizing the immense suffering caused by the loss of a life one deeply values, sought to eradicate values so one would not suffer at their loss.  That is, in order to not be upset at the loss of a loved one’s life, one needs to absolve themselves of values, and in doing so will absolve themselves of suffering.  Such a state devoid of values is what “Nirvana” literally is.  But this is wrong.  When a loved one dies, it should be upsetting, the loss of a value is the nature of sadness.  It should wreck you to the core of your soul.  When a loved one survives, we should be happy, because happiness is the getting or keeping of a value.  Values are the basis of suffering, but are also the basis of joy and happiness. 

The Judeo Christian religions and offshoots, in an attempt to stave off the immense psychological horror that comes from death, simply made up an afterlife where everyone is miraculously resurrected to live for all of eternity in the presence of their loved ones.  Death is not so bad to them, because it means literally that we are in a better place, free from pain and suffering. 

Death is horrible and unconscionable, and there are very few psychological mechanisms we have to deal with.  They are, essentially, to be indifferent to life, and thus indifferent to death, to devalue life, as Buddhists do, to convince ourselves death is not real, as the Judeao Christian and related religions do, to convince ourselves there is value in death, or last to be honest with reality and recognize the grievous and horrible nature of death, thus suffering psychological consequences for the whole of one’s life. 

It is difficult and burdensome to choose the last, but I will not fool myself into believing something just because it makes me feel better.  I will not fool myself into believing someone loves me, that I love, when they do not.  I will let her go and live her life.  I will not fool myself into believing that there is a bag of money buried in my yard, when there is no such thing, just because it would make me feel better and more financially secure.  I will not fool myself into believing we survive bodily death when absolutely no evidence exists that even remotely suggests such a thing, just to feel better about it. 

As I stood at my aunts graveside service and listened to my strongly religious cousin, one of her children, re-iterating some of these thoughts on the afterlife, I thought about the root of this desire, and I empathize with what drives people to think these things.  Do they really truly believe that she is in heaven looking down on us and smiling?  Probably.  As he begin to admonish non believers while at her grave side, my mind begin to wonder ignoring his insulting and disrespectful tangent.  I asked god, standing there, lets see it.  Bring her back, right now.  Lets see a blinding white light and her rise from her grave, healthy and restored.  Reunite her with her husband.  Show me, I said.  Where are you?  Do you ever do anything?  She is dead, in front of you.  Bring her back and I will believe.  Of course nothing happened, and my eyes rose to the forest above as I cried. 

In the modern secularly enlightened west, it is popular to try to find some value in death.  Since these secularly enlightened people won’t be so egregious as to convince themselves into thinking there is an afterlife, and will not renounce values as a Buddhist would, they seek to convince themselves that there is value to be had in death.  We see this effort manifested in some of the popular euphemisms of our day.  Things like “Death gives meaning to life” (it does not, it takes away life) “Death makes you recognize and truly value things (It does not, it is the destruction of all values) “Death makes you appreciate life more” (it does not, since you will not be conscious to compare non-death to death, you can not value non-death more because of it, you will simply cease to be)  “Things that have beginnings must have ends”  (I prefer never ending stories) “We must die to make way for later generations” (I would prefer to know and love my great great grandparents then to have them ‘get out of the way’)  “Death is a part of life (or natural)” (so were small pox and the plague, and today so is cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, ‘natural’ is for unthinking animals and plants)  “The impermanence of life is what makes it special”  (all things have intrinsic value to you whether permanent or not)  The corollary to this last point is responsible for some of the depression atheists allegedly feel, that the transitory nature of things make them less valuable (as opposed to more) but to me, having something for sometime is better than having nothing ever.  But having something you value forever is better still. 

The problem with all of these evasions and psychological obfuscations, which no doubt had a lot of value when humanity had no option in the matter, is that it takes away the psychological motivation to do anything about death, and it also demotes life to nothing but the means to an end; death.  But life is an end of its own, it doesn’t need to be there in order to accomplish something else, it has its own intrinsic value to each and every one of us. 

I love my life, and want to live it forever.  I think that most people, if raised outside of the dominate cultural philosophically narratives that devalue life, demote values, or outright fool oneself, will eventually come to the rational understanding about the intrinsic value of life that I have, and not be so ready and willing to give it up.  They would also choose, if able to make an informed choice, to live their lives for as long as possible, coming to explore the world, solar system, and galaxy, and coming to know and truly love people important to them in the deepest sense possible, living with ancestors and descendants many many generations removed. 

We can keep a car running for generations, and as good as new, by fixing and replacing worn out parts as they fail.  But our body, that which is most precious to us, withers and fails.  Why can we not repair our bodies like we do our vehicles and homes?  For 100,000 years humanity had no choice in death.  For some 99,750 of those years, people would mysteriously get ill and drop dead for no apparent reason, until we discovered and understood viruses and bacteria.  Today we live much longer lives on average then we ever have in the history of humanity, and an average persons life in a post industrial western nation is like that of a king’s from a thousand years ago.  Our household gadgets and electricity do the work of an army of slaves.  We live in ornate palaces with running water, heated, able to communicate nearly instantly with anyone, anywhere, and demand and receive entertainment at a moments notice through tiny wires strung across the nation.  A king of 1,000 BC could only dream of such things.  Yet today more of us have these, and more and more people continue to get better standards of living.  Still much of the world lives in brutal poverty and oppression, but the world is getting better.  Too slowly, but it is getting better for people.  But even in all of this wondrous technological achievement, we still grow old, sick, and die.  But we might be the first human generation living on the cusp of a technological breakthrough, that of real, tangible mechanisms to slow and defeat aging and all disease entirely.  We may one day soon be able to perpetually repair our bodies as parts fail, and even make some parts better than before.  We may all have the ability to live as strong young healthy adults for as long as we’d like.  And if our children and parents embrace the same path, we would live forever with people we love dearly.  Combined with the rapid technological progress of humanity and the tremendous growth in global standards of living, it could be that one day, mankind, with his reason and passion for life, creates a literal heaven spread among the stars.  If there ever is a heaven or a god, it will be made by humans and in their own image.

 

Why Good Posture is Bad

 

I have often repeated that the obsession with perfectly upright backs is unhealthy and nothing more than a remnant of Victorian England era ideas. Sitting bolt uprights puts all the weight of the upper body on the lower spine. Sitting slightly reclined is better, since the back of the chair now supports some of your upper body weight. Now something I thought was common sense to anyone who spent some time thinking about it has been verified scientifically.

 

From this issue of “The Week” Magazine under the Health and Science section

 

Why Good Posture is Bad

For generations, schoolteachers and moms have told young people to stop slouching and sit upright. That advice, it turns out, was wrong. Sitting with a straight back, says a new study, actually puts enormous pressure on the spinal column and can lead to chronic back pain. Researchers at Woodend Hospital in Aberdeen, Scotland, Developed and MRI technique that allowed them to observe the spinal columns of 22 volunteers as they sat for long hours. Some were told to slouch over a video game console, some sat upright at a 90-degree angle, and others leaned back at a 135-degree angle. After watching their spines move and settle, the scientists concluded that the reclining position was by far the best for the back. Slouchers caused wear and tear to the lower spinal disks, but the vertical pressure of the upright position caused the most damage, forcing the spine’s disks and muscles out of line. “we were not created to sit down for long hours, but modern life requires it,” study author Waseem Bashir tells the London Times. To avoid a lifetime of “Pain, deformity, and chronic illness,” he recommends sitting in a chair that provides full support to the spine when you lean slightly backward, which mimics the supine position.

 

How many people have suffered through back injuries because of this poor advice? How many thousands of hours and millions of dollars have been lost, because at some point people thought this ridiculous thing?

 

 

Was more comfortable than this?

 

 

Ergonomic science is only now starting to rid itself of its pseudoscientific origins.

 

Do a google image search on “Ergonomic Chair” and everyone suggests a bolt upright, and very unhealthy, posture.

 

My product, the ErgoSlope, was designed around this position, as well as information from other studies, such as those from the UCLA Ergonomics dept which suggests appropriate arm elbow angles of 100 degrees (the natural resting angle of the elbow) instead of the 90 degree strict right angle dictated by bolt upright backs.

 

UCLA Ergonomics

 

Where did I get my idea from? Not million dollar studies or extensive research, but simply looking at the way astronauts sleep in space and from something I read in a book about the human body and space travel.

 

This is a picture from the Canadian Space agency. CSA Astronaut Bjarni V. Tryggvason is sleeping on the Space Shuttle Discovery’s mid-deck floor. Notice the resting position of the arms. The shoulders, elbows, and wrists revert to the naturally most comfortable position. These nuetral resting positions are the ones the ErgoSlope easily facilitates! (just picture a keyboard and mouse under his hands and a desk supporting those)

 

What I read was that in the supine position, astronauts can withstand tremendous G forces.

 

"Up to 30 g’s can be tolerated in the supine position without structural damage. Although head and arm movements become impossible at 6 g’s, the wrists, hands, and fingers can move at accelerations up to 12 g’s." pg 68 LIVING IN SPACE by G. Harry Stine

 

The supine position then is the easiest on the body, and the position a sleeping astronaut takes is essentially that. The original implementation of my ErgoSlope was to have a chair built around the desk.

 

 

The ErgoSlope is the best facilitation of this comfortable seating position and arm and shoulder angles. Add a nice Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard to the mix and you have a good comfortable resting position for each joint of your body.

 

See more at www.ErgoSlope.com