99 Cannibals and 1

I imagined a story that ran this way.  In a very remote island lived a hundred people; 99 of whom were cannibals and one who was not.  One day by an overwhelming majority the 99 decided to make a meal of the one who was not.  End of story.

The longer version went like this.  The island at first had ample resources and all of the hundred people got along well.  Then one day food supply on the island started to dwindle. The non-cannibal had seen to it that he found other ways to feed himself outside of what can just be found on the island by fishing from the sea. So he stayed healthy and looked well while the 99 looked emaciated as food supply diminished. Then one critical day the 99 looked to the one who was healthy and by a unanimous vote decided to sub-divide him into 99 equal parts. In the eyes of the 99 it was well justified that one was sacrificed for the survival of the many.  99 were fed.  For one day.  End of story.

Then there was this version. The one who was not a cannibal employed a few of the 99 to help with fishing.  Soon half of the cannibals were working for him and they were well provided for so that, as a result and by consensus, they and the non-cannibal gave part of what they earned to those who neither worked nor earned anything.  Meanwhile, from the 99 arose a leader who declared that they deserved better and promised that he will see to it that everyone gets fair share of everything that was gathered from the sea.  Furthermore, the non-cannibal who had the most must give more than those who worked for him. In fact, it was so that at the end of each day he was not to have more than what everyone else had.  Since he was out numbered the non-cannibal agreed.  As days went on those who worked deliberately did less and less as it was pointless to work any harder since they will end up with the same as everyone else. Before long only the non-cannibal was fishing.  Then one day when there was no longer enough for everyone, the 99 looked to the 1 and made a meal of him. For one day.  End of story.

The moral of the story, if there was one, was that opportunities may be equally available to everyone, perhaps even guaranteed, but not everyone will want to avail of it.  And even for those who do, equal results are not certain.  Come to think of it, there is really no moral to the story.  For the 99 and the 1, it is the same sad “End of story”.

Of Mice and Lo Mein (my apologies to John Steinbeck)

There are more cook books published today of any subject or theme than any other non-fiction genre, except, of course, for weight loss and exercise books*.  The shelf space they occupy in public libraries and book stores stand as contrasting altars to those who love to cook and those who struggle to lose weight gained from... eating. People love to cook, ergo, people love to eat but hate the extra weight gained.

Conclusion: there is a conspiracy between the cookbook writers and the exercise and diet gurus.

Scientists - or perhaps they were nutrition majors who never stopped matriculating and went on to get their PhD’s in meal preparation - did a study on caloric intakes of 3rd graders and boa constrictors (big snakes for those who skipped high school biology).  They’d feed the snake with one hapless rat and a third grader with cupcake, not in the same cage, of course, and measure the amount of calories they consumed and expended.  The procedure is too lengthy to explain here (meaning I didn’t really quite understand the science behind the bomb calorimeter).  Alas, the cupcake has more than twice the calories of the average laboratory rat – snow white fur, pink eyes and as docile as a jelly fish.  Not wanting to attract the ire of PETA the rat was already dead, as if that makes a difference, but I thought I’d mention it.

As I was watching the documentary I concluded that it was such a waste of government grant money just to prove why snakes stay slim and slender with nary an ounce of fat in them.  Snakes are not exactly bundles of energy and if anything they’d put to shame the most sedentary of couch potatoes among us.  So they don’t go to the jungle gym to work out but obesity is the least of their problems, especially when one considers the odds of them becoming a cowboy boot or western wallet first ahead of excess weight gain.

So what was the point of all that experimentation? Cooked and processed foods have more calories than raw ones (rats or otherwise). That’s stating the obvious, obviously. Actually, we’re told that man’s brain capacity increased when he discovered to cook his food.  Need I say that we’re the only creatures who do?  Bear with me as I try to get to the point.  One more thing before I get there. Human brain, the ones we have now, is the biggest consumer of energy of all the organs.  It (all of 3 pounds) accounts for just 2% of one’s weight but it consumes 20% of the body’s energy consumption per day.  Specifically, the average brain consumes the amount of calories contained in about one half to one whole cup of white refined sugar, depending on what it is engaged in. That might explain why there are no fat nuclear physicists, cosmologists or chess grand masters.  Conversely, those who watch copious episodes of Jersey Shores or the Kardashians tilt the demographic weight distribution off kilter the other way (just kidding).

Let me go back to some serious discussion. So when Grog and his tribe were dining mainly on raw meat, leaves and berries, their average IQs for millions of years remained at barely above room temperature. One day Grog came upon an auroch (believed the ancestor of the modern cattle) that was struck by lightning.  It was still smoldering where a nearby bush was still burning. He stumbled upon the very first barbecue and warmth from fire.  The rest is history.  I wasn’t there when it happened but an idle mind is awash with speculative imagination unfettered by evidence or fossil fragments.

Cooked food is processed more easily by our body and the resulting efficiency makes for the brain’s quick access to energy.  Scientists claim that giving the brain more energy allowed for more and more sophistication in the thinking process and as the brain gets “flexed” with more exercise it grew almost exponentially overnight - in evolutionary terms, that is.  So our raw-food-eating animal friends are stuck in IQ plateau.  But what does that do to sushi enthusiasts and salad grazers?  The Japanese are a smart people.  They make great cars, had a monopoly (at one time) on plasma TV and digital cameras and they write in difficult scripts and I, for the life of me, could not understand one word when they talk among themselves.  After an exhaustive research I found out they invented the hibachi and the “Little and Big Green Eggs”, so we know they cook.  As it turned out, they eat sushi sparingly and certainly not to the same degree that some westerners who had taken sushi seriously, who consume more raw tuna and octopus with sake, the latter like it were sparkling water.

Here’s the point of all these. Now I learned from our dedicated nutrition PhD’s that food is all about having enough to provide for growth, energy, necessary vitamins, tissue maintenance and the pleasure of the eating experience.  All of those cited, except for growth, if you discount finger nails and hair (for those of us who still have it), are still pretty good reasons to keep eating even after we’ve physically matured. Unfortunately, the percentages changed over time.  The pleasure of eating has taken over the lion’s share (pun is intended, I think) of the reasons we eat.  Of all the living creatures we’re the ones that take too much pleasure in eating.  I must wonder whether a garter snake finds as much pleasure swallowing mice as we like lo mein.  Whew, I finally found a way to get “Of Mice and Lo Mein” in there. To be honest I wrote the title first but struggled on how to work it into the body of the musing.  So, there!

Now we have a serious quandary. Vegetarians don’t want us to eat meat, cooked or otherwise, and PETA thinks there must be a way to eat meat without killing animals. Don’t they know that plants have feelings too.  Most Tibetans think so and I believe them.  In San Francisco they don’t want their citizens to keep goldfish in fish bowls at home. If it starts there, where does it end?  Now, cows have an ally in Chic-Fil-A whose ads feature a cow with a sign that says, “Eat mor chikin” (except cows do need to learn how to spell). I suspect there is a loose affiliation between vegans and PETA members but I can’t quite put a finger to it.  Full disclosure: I happen to agree with PETA that the annual presidential pardon on the “lucky turkey” every Thanksgiving is both silly and absurd as they question what the turkey was accused and found guilty of to be pardoned in the first place?  I think I should stop here because I have already managed to offend two groups, the Executive Branch of government plus all those who give two TV shows their Nielsen ratings.

*I can’t back up these statistics but next time you’re in a book store or public library check it out and see if it is so.

What’s Fishy with Human Nature?

I read this unlikely fish story.  In Guernsey, UK, on July 12, 2012, Mathew Clark stole a 13-pound bass from a local aquarium which he entered in a fishing competition and won the top prize money of £800. There are countless shenanigans throughout history – this is not the worst or most despicable – but this may typify the different sorts of misdeeds, uncomplicated they may seem, the motivation simple, clever yet seemingly unencumbered by guilt or the benefit of the basic ethical scruple, or regard for any kind of socially established norm of behavior.

Granted fishing is the most fraught with tales of fish tails, this incident would have had an entrancing ending if Mr. Clark’s intentions went as planned.  You see he envisioned winning the contest, keep the fish alive and later return it to the aquarium.  Not entirely implausible to pull because he used to work there.  Unfortunately, the fish died.  Obviously, Mr. Clark did not think it through very well, especially for someone who used to work at a place whose business it was to keep alive all of its fish and other water creature residents.

Everything would still have worked out for Mr. Clark if not for a keen eyed fish lover who saw the picture in the papers – Mr. Clark grinning as he held the winning catch during the awards presentation.  The person recognized the bass from the aquarium.  Needless to say, Mr. Clark’s fishy misdeed smelled and he was promptly arrested and put to jail and assessed a heavy fine.  Mr. Clark stunk like rotten fish.

Here was a case of a miscreant not thinking things through while another had the presence of mind to think through a most improbable connection by mere happenstance.  Now, what are the odds of that happening?  Of all the tall fish tales this one is true.

So, what is it about human nature that is both noble and corrupt that seems to come up in equal doses in every generation.  Perhaps not exactly in equal doses but let’s throw in a number, for the sake of argument, say, 10%.  If we review history, settling on the 10% number, it appears that no matter what generation we pick, there will always be 10% of miscreants whose deeds will come in a variety of ways and motivation.

There was always a Bernie Madoff in generations past and there will continue to be Bernie Madoffs in the future.  For this musing I will set aside the truly evil side of humanity by not dwelling on the likes of Atilla the Hun, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc. They will take up an entire discussion although, just the same, we will always have the likes of them in future generations in the same dosage as many of their kind had done in generations past.

Explaining Mr. Clark and Bernie Madoff seem simple enough based on the simplest of all motives - greed. Of course, as we all know, it is more complex than that. As our world gets more sophisticated so do the methods employed by anyone who is corrupted or has the will to commit corruption.  In the Old Testament though, simpler times by today’s standards, there was a complex story of Esau who sold his birth right to younger twin Jacob for a bowl of stew.  What Esau did was supposed to be a big no-no in those times because he sold a solemn and spiritual right for something as “basic” as food that was of temporary value, although Jacob was not an exactly honorable brother to manipulate his brother.  And then Jacob and their mother later made it even more complicated when they conspired to deceive Isaac the father at his deathbed by having Jacob pretend to be Esau to get the elder’s blessing.  The story exemplified how one seemingly trivial low point in human nature, simple as it may have begun could escalate into something complex. Mr. Clark may have nothing more in his mind than a few hundred pounds of spending money, and Mr. Madoff may not have been thinking hundreds of millions of dollars in the beginning, except perhaps for a higher social prestige, lavish parties and expensive art work.

There was a B-movie, with a 2-star rating, that reminded me of how one little trickle of a white lie could cascade into an unstoppable waterfall.  A guy called in to his boss with a little lie for not coming to work one morning.  He lied that he was taking care of a sick daughter at home.  Granted he was quite unhappy with his job he didn’t exactly want to quit.  He doubled up on his excuse next time he felt like not showing up for work again by telling that his sick daughter was now at the hospital.  So the one simple lie has taken a life of its own as he lied to his wife as well, doing his routine task of taking his daughter to a baby sitter every morning, but never said anything about not going to work. The third time he called in to his boss for not coming in his boss fired him over the phone.  Then, again bereft of any thought process, he doubled up his lie further by telling his boss that his daughter just died at the hospital.

His daughter was perfectly fine but his boss softened immensely when he went back to work the following day; his boss spoke kindly to him and later took up a collection for him from very willing co-workers to help him out.  One morning a kind co-worker went as far as to bring a home-made quiche to his home.  His wife opened the door to greet the co-worker but his quick maneuver saved the day for him as he shortened the visit without alerting his clueless wife but to the bewilderment of his co-worker.  Of course, as always with cases like this, things unravel rapidly with devastating consequences.  This was fiction but how many have we seen in real life where one simple lie intensified to more lies and ultimately to a disastrous resolution, shattering lives and reputation or sometimes resulting in violence.

What is it then about human nature? The term is sometimes used to mean that it is inherently natural for humans to do the wrong thing, or that at least the path of least resistance being the easy thing to do is not the right way, inferring that to do the right thing is the more difficult one. Of course we do know that human nature is predominantly that of doing the right thing.  I’d say ninety per cent of the time.  Unfortunately, it is the ten per cent that gets the sensational coverage in the media.

We should settle on the fact that it is the inherent goodness of humanity that took our world to where it is today. History showed us that despots and oppressive regimes of empires and governments did not last for a long time.  However, in every era of history including the present one, there is always the ten percent.  In truth, every civilization happened to be more “civilized” than the one it preceded.  From the Magna Charta to the Geneva Convention to International Laws, humanity had been progressively recognizing and condemning man’s inhumanity to man and continues to strive to make our world a better place.  Perhaps it will take us a while to get the 10% (if that is the number, others may view it to be higher) down to zero but the direction points positively from one generation to the next; at least, we hope so.

Future of Presents Past

 “Past, Present, and Future, walked into a bar … it was tense”. (Read it from somewhere)

Regardless of social status, wealth and positions of authority, there seems to be only one universal equalizer – Time.  No one escapes it. Whoever said, “time is money” may have been on to something but no one yet has ever saved it, bank it, lend it or even gather any interest on it.  Yes, we get something in return for our time; we get paid and remembered for it but each and every one gets the same amount, yet somehow we all get different results from it.

I say though, that it is not that one has more time but it is whether one chooses to do more with what quantity of time one has.

 “The past is behind, learn from it.  The future is ahead, prepare for it. The present is here, live it.” – Thomas S. Monson

“If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.” – Lao Tzu

If that is the case then we cannot be hostages to an unchanging past nor should we be fearful of an uncertain future. Yet, we all seem to be.

While driving (at or near the posted speed limit, mind you) I’d glance at the rear view mirror and saw the winding black ribbon of asphalt receding and when I switched my attention to the road ahead the pavement rushes by at the same rate. Our car, with us inside, was traveling through time and space – the receding road was the past, the road in front the future while the present moment was a fleeting wisp, shorter than a blink of an eye, or wheezing by the countryside at precisely the rate of 95.333 feet per second.  Thus the musing began.

Humans – of all the creatures around – are the only ones who worry about the future.  But then I must  first wonder about this.  Would events change or results alter in the future if there were only simple organisms around?  If there is no one to contemplate the future or learn from the past, does it make a difference?  The world seems to be what it is because we are here to contemplate, wonder, admire its beauty and sometimes be appalled by some of its ugliness.  I know too that there are as many ways to look at it as there are individuals who try to observe it through their eyes or colored glasses. The world is what it is because we are here to observe it. We worry about its future because it could affect us and those whom we care so much about. Therefore, if there is no one to worry about it, or care, what difference does it make what happens.  What events would change from and to what, when and how, or even where are only relevant to those who have the ability to think about them.

Driving through the vast U.S. highways makes one feel as insignificant as a single blood corpuscle running through a vein that is at one moment I-10, then I-59, later 90 or 93, etc., on a huge expanse of seemingly endless roads and landscapes.  Now, here's the thing. The planet we live in, a trifling droplet in a swirling sea of stars and galactic dust that make up the Milky Way, orbiting an ordinary star, has been around for about four billion years.  Our sun, a first or perhaps even a second generation star, has been around for only a third of the age of the universe.  History had gone on and events happened  when during much of the elapsed time there was no one to observe it; much less to record or critique it. So the past, our past in particular, is like an endless reel of film that has been running in a movie theater with no one watching for 99.9999999999999 per cent of the show.  Technically speaking, that is, because although the dinosaurs had been around for 160 million years of that time, there is no record of their observations, their culture and whether they worried at all after the asteroid hit the area we now call the Gulf of Mexico – a name that has existed for just a fraction of a fraction of a nanosecond if the entire film lasted for a whole year.

If we are part of that reel of film and that it is running as we speak, we (our entire human history) appeared on it as a sliver the width of a human hair on a single frame of film. The future we are and will be worrying about is several millionth of a millionth the width of that sliver on that single frame that is about to unfold on the screen.  Despite what we hear from political speeches and rhetoric, ideological beliefs and ideal dreams of those who profess to worry about the world of future generations, the contextual time frame within which people contemplate the future is about one individual life span – short and sometimes even short sighted.  Yes, we say things such as, “we worry about our children and their children, the environment, the planet, will there be enough of our 401 K left over for our heirs, etc.,” but when the curtain of life descends to end the show for us we will no longer be around to read the review.

As musings go the mind wanders every which way and then I catch myself wondering what is the point of all these?  Oftentimes, in the course of an ordinary day, we all worry about the littlest of things and as is usually the case the things we worry about are far from what actually do happen.  Yet, we worry anyhow.  And not only do we worry about what is about to happen but we sometimes burden ourselves with the things that happened in the past.  Is that all there is then?  I think that the rigidity of our past, because we can no longer change it, is best used as a framework for the present to shape our pliable future.  Did I just write that?  A bit corny but you all know what I mean.

Of course, some of us just can’t seem to shake away the shackles and burden of where we came from, who we are by our family name or the place we grew up in or the school we graduated from.  For others the past is like a millstone on their necks which hold them back in ways that make their ability to move up and get ahead heavily weighted down. However, whether one was born with a silver spoon or found wanting of even the most basic necessities, time will “tic toc” with the same regularity for either one. Choice to use or waste time is what matters. One’s future is won or lost by just that one decision. Time is an intangible asset with real consequences without which no opportunity can ever be possible.

“The past is a ghost, the future is a dream, and all we ever have is now”, a comedian once said. The past cannot hurt us anymore unless we let it; future dreams are  untouchable until we get there, until all the tomorrows have become todays but the beauty of it is that we get the opportunity to prepare for it. What is interesting, of course, is that much of what we do today is almost always a preamble for the future. In fact, if we write down ten things we do today, for example, we will find that most of it are either preparatory for or things we need to complete in the future – an hour from now, tomorrow , days later, or for a much longer term.

This phenomenon we call the present moment - now - is about as fleeting as a blink of an eye.  The second we think of a second it’s gone.  But this has not stopped scientists from breaking down time into even much smaller basic units.  If we think a second is short, can you imagine how short a millisecond or nanosecond is? What about a femtosecond and a picosecond or attosecond?  Well, if those are not fleeting, what about the Planck unit?  There are more Planck units of time in one second than there are seconds in the age of the universe of 13.7 billion years.  From that, the present would seem like an illusion, the past is forever gone, and the future is all we have.

When someone says he or she has no future, or if we judge someone to not have any, nothing could be farther from the truth. The future is all we have and we all have it.  Though today we as individuals have been sculpted by our past, the greatest gift we can give ourselves for a better future is what we do at the present moment.  So, we shouldn’t waste a single femtosecond.

Global Warming, Climate Change, Zombie Apocalypse …

We are not making any kind of equivalency with the above although extraterrestrial aliens will have a confusing view. We’ve already broadcast quite a bit of information into outer space since the arrival of television and the internet so astronomers and sociology eavesdroppers aboard a passing extraterrestrial space ship will have ample data on which to base a decision to stop by and visit or move on. We can only speculate on their thought process although that would be like the Incas speculating on what Francisco Pizarro had in mind in 1532, or how the natives of Cebu Island pondered Ferdinand Magellan’s intentions in 1521.

Let’s see.  Counting every broadcast from the networks, Facebook and blogs, speeches by Leonardo Dicaprio, and yes, Mr. Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”, earth does not present a pretty picture. The space alien commander will have to evaluate whether the stopover is worth it.  They’ve traveled many trillion miles with several decades of intermittent hibernation in between so a stopover is questionable if most of Manhattan will be ravaged by surging sea water as the polar ice caps will be no more … by the end of this century. Additionally, there are other perils.  They’ve catalogued 452 Zombie movies – a good indicator of our deepest fears on top of climate change. The space commander must think, “Mmm … Global warming, climate change, zombie apocalypse”. Before I forget, earth’s dominant super power just had an election and about half the electorate expressed fear that the end is near and everyone is doomed.  Immediately demonstrations on the street call for non-recognition of the newly elected leader by those who should either have been in school or working but chose to be unproductive instead, disruptive and even destructive in places where other people try to earn a living. Not a pretty picture indeed. Stephen Hawking’s concern notwithstanding, we may not have to worry about an alien visitation after all.

Speaking of worry, I will have to reprint here a quote on an 8-1/2 by 11 bond paper taped to the inside of the driver side window of the tour bus we were on just a month ago. It said, “Remember that half of the things we worry about never happen and the other half will happen anyway, so why worry?”

We had a Frenchman for a driver nicknamed “Frenchy” (what else) driving a huge bus that took us on a 10-day tour of U.S. National Parks that cover the area in and around Yellowstone National Park. My wife and I have this bucket list to tour as many National Parks as we can (this is our third, so far), keeping our tourist dollars here first before spending any in foreign places. “Frenchy” told me when I asked about the sign, in his still unmistakable French accent, “That’s to remind me personally because I like to deal with each day one day at a time but it is also a useful reminder for the Tour Director to frame her schedule day-to-day and to you the paying passengers who need to just focus on enjoying the trip and the vacation”.

Enjoyed we did although this was late in the year to be in Yellowstone, the Grand Teton, the Mammoth Springs, Jackson Hole, etc. There are many plus sides to that time of the year. The summer crowd is gone, the kids are back at school and there were not too many competing buses and tourists, ergo, we were catching less people in the background in countless photos we took.  But, it snowed in the mountains and as evening fell, the cold stood in the way of walking under the moonlight or star gazing. But it is also at the time of the year when one gets to stay at the hotel right in front of Old Faithful. A reservation that needs to be secured two years in advance, grabbed mostly by tour operators, I’m almost certain. It was an interesting time too when hotels were closing for the season literally in 2-3 days of our checkout dates.  That was how close we picked the tour dates.  We asked our waitress at dinner what she was going to do when the hotel closed.  She was going to Vietnam to do volunteer mission work in and around that part of Asia; a smart young woman to pick a warmer climate to spend the winter.

I mention the U.S. National Parks because there are no better examples to showcase America’s genuine desires to preserve, protect and promote its natural wonders. They are probably one of the few examples where politics and politicians succeeded to do the right thing for the environment without over reach. For the most part bipartisanship worked except on a couple of occasions when two Presidential acts may have been influenced by environmentalist supporters to proclaim as National Monuments a couple of places to preempt exploration for coal or oil and on one occasion a marine sanctuary impacting the local fishing industry.

The other thing I learned from the National Parks is the history of the people who had lived there long before it was called America. We call these people Native Americans. For thousands of years they lived, survived and flourished in the environment that kept changing. In reality they and all others around the world for eons survived through adaptation in the ever changing climate.

Deemed by one side as the number one problem the world faces, even proclaimed by the current U.S. administration as an existential threat, we inevitably keep discussing climate change to no end. “We”, however, is a mere fraction of the general population because this issue does not resonate much with the majority of the people here or anywhere around the world.  These discussions play out at the rarefied air of politics and a particular social rung that is so high up there to be discerned or understood by those at the bottom of the sociological ladder. It is fought between the learned elites, college professors, environmentalists from one side and business interests, pragmatists, special interests and lobbyists on the other. The elites label those who oppose them as ignorant climate change deniers while the latter call out the former as engaging in callous hypocrisy.  Labels and name calling only succeed in widening the ideological chasm without furthering each other’s arguments on merit.

A most recent but hardly covered news item highlights the argument by those who rile at the hypocrisy of climate change proponents.

From CNN on 11/14/2016: “Secretary of State John Kerry winged his way Monday from New Zealand to the Middle East on the next leg of what may be his longest trip yet, a journey during which America’s top diplomat will account for roughly 16.5 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

That’s more or less the amount of CO2 – one of the key “greenhouse gases” blamed for global warming – produced by the average American in a full year, according to World Bank data.

Climate change features prominently on Kerry’s itinerary on his current trip, an eight-day haul from Washington to New Zealand to Antarctica – where he became the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit – and on to two Arab Gulf states and then Morocco before winging to Peru and then back home.”

That might seem an unfair example but we should keep in mind that added to that are the jet-setting habits of celebrities and Al Gore as they traverse the globe in CO2 emitting flying carpets entertaining and espousing the peril of climate change.

From the NY Daily News:

“A whopping 300,000 tons of carbon dioxide will be churned out during the two-week climate change summit that began Monday in Paris.

President Obama’s flight to the City of Lights emitted roughly 189 tons of carbon alone, burning 19,275 gallons of jet fuel, reports the Daily Caller.

His entire trip will send more carbon dioxide into the air than the combined emissions from 31 U.S. homes over the span of a year.”

The point here is that if they want support to wean the world from fossil fuel emission they must first begin to remove the appearance of the profligate use of fossil fuel. That conference, for example, could have been done with electronic media linking various locations from all over the world as one global tele-conference - if they are truly serious about their cause. Let us not forget the number of SUVs and support vehicles that attended to the incoming and outgoing conferees. Many of those vehicles were weighted down with so much bullet-proof armor plating that their mileage were in single digits in traffic and perhaps 10-12 miles per gallon at best.  Climate change proponents must either walk the talk or it is just all talk or perhaps they do not really believe in their argument.

Climate change is truly an oxymoron because by its very nature climate does change.  What it gets down to is what should be believed in terms of how bad the change is, how immediate and what is our capability to cope. First of all the so called climate change deniers actually believe that climate does change but, as it does, we as a species have the ability to cope through reasonable and pragmatic solutions as opposed to knee-jerk reactions and over reach to the point of actually disrupting people’s livelihood, the economy in general and the individual’s way of life in particular.  We are being forced by excessive regulation and academic bullying over a perceived and immediate future catastrophe that is belied by earth’s very, very long history. 

Let us put this in perspective.  Imagine the present – today - to be the tip of the arrow of time. What we worry beyond that tip is a sliver of time in decades, whereas, if we must look back to a very long period of earth’s history, we see geological evidence that climate had changed countless times and in many instances with unbelievable severity, but guess what … organisms including humanity survived.  Since the first humans walked upright two hundred thousand years ago there had been several ice ages and inter glacial events in between when earth was caught between severe cold periods and extreme warming  for thousands of years at a time. Yet, here we are worrying about what will happen in a couple of decades.

At a time of more advanced technology, we as a species should be well equipped to deal with and adapt to the changing climate.  Our ancestors with very little knowledge and technology made do with what they had amidst erupting volcanoes, changing jet stream patterns, severe solar storms, reversing magnetic poles, sea level rising and receding due to polar ice cap variations.  Speaking of erupting volcanoes, Yellowstone National Park sits on top of a super volcano that had erupted three times in the past every 640,000 years or so.  Its last eruption was 640,000 years ago! Well known eruptions, such as, Mt. Pinatubo and Krakatoa and Mt. St. Helens in recent recorded history had produced so much pollution and greenhouse gases to exceed a year’s worth of vehicular emissions around the world today.  Yet their three combined explosions would be a wimpy fire cracker to Yellowstone’s 500 pound bomb.  Earth organisms had endured and survived much more severe emissions events than what we face today where we have already-in-place managed regulations.

The London smog during the early years of the industrial revolution provided the first impetus towards understanding and eventually dealing with pollution but the production setbacks did not hinder continued economic growth because the regulations put in place were not anywhere near the stifling limits that today’s environmentalists propose.  China is called out by much of the world as the number one polluter but they’re learning. Today in Dalian Peninsula in Northeastern China is the world’s largest battery capacity (in buildings over acres of land) for storing electric energy from solar and wind power. Smog is known to be responsible for thousands of premature deaths in China and India but the U.S. that has a hundred-fold better pollution management is the target by its own local activists – celebrities, unbridled bureaucrats and politicians - (mainly because freedom of speech here allows for the loudest voices to be heard).

There will be no repeat of the London smog of the 1800s but China and India must do their share to reduce their emissions. However, countries like the U.S. and much of Western Europe, Japan and a few others who have so far been diligent in coming up with reasonable measures such as cleaner gasoline, clean-burning diesel engines, cleaner processes for burning coal, exploration and production of natural gas, robust recycling practices, protecting their forests and water resources, etc. must be allowed to maintain their economies and way of life free of punishing and extreme regulations that go beyond what is reasonable and pragmatic. What initiatives these countries have come up with need to be recognized and perhaps in some cases embraced. Oppressive and politically motivated actions do not contribute much to the general public welfare other than to provide livelihood and so much power to bureaucrats and regulators that are not without financial costs to the taxpayer.

Much of the efforts and costs proposed by climate change proponents should be focused on spending for infrastructures in countries (mostly poor) that are unable to provide the necessary expenditure. These countries are in need of cleaner water, better conservation and preservation of their natural resources, but not least of all is the proper education on taking care of and expanding their forested lands.  Let us note that plants and trees are the single most important consumers of carbon and other related air-borne chemicals. Tropical and sub-tropical countries in Asia and South America suffer the most from severe deforestation.  Millions of acres of forested areas are now bare.  Devastating flood and other side effects follow but what escapes most of the attention is the fact that for every tree, every acre of plant habitat lost results in the loss of the best recycler of carbon in the atmosphere.  We share a good part of our DNA with plants and they were here first whether you consult geological records or refer to the Biblical chronology.  Plants were created first. We share 50% of our DNA even with the most widely consumed plant staple – the banana.

I am of the opinion that plants around the world may yet be our greatest ally in combating climate change.  Ecology begins and ends with them, yet they have no voice in the debate. Think carefully – lush jungles, rain forests and green acres of land and undersea forests of kelp, algae around the globe are hosts to countless organisms from plankton to mammals, prey and predators, etc. Money spent on conserving and promoting plant life is the better investment over arguments, debates, expenditures, over regulation and stalemated fights over climate change.

Kevin Kostner commissioned these bronze sculptures depicting a bison jump. It's been a technique that began 12,000 years ago until the mid 1500. Apparently before horses and bow and arrow the young and the brave of the tribes would cause some of the bison off the cliff or ravine killing a number of them but they were careful to kill just enough for the tribe to live off through the winter.  The Native Americans, we learned, used every bit of the bison (from tail to snout; from hooves to their horns). The American Bison numbered in the millions (20 to 30 million in one estimate). Their numbers by the late 19th century were whittled down to a mere 1,091 - regrettably not in the hands of the Native Americans but by hunters and settlers  from the New World. Conservation has brought the numbers up to 500,000 in the latest survey. The country eventually realized the grave mistake and responded in the nick of time to stop what could have been a horrific extinction of a species in modern times. Since then the U.S. began an active conservation and preservation efforts unmatched anywhere else.

A view from the bus of an early October snow at the National Park.

Bison is now a common sight throughout the Park.

I am not a naturalist but I must say this elk displays a classic adaptive response. It and many of its kind would come down to the populated areas as the cold weather begins because places such as around our hotel were a safe haven away from predators and hunters and there was plenty of vegetation. There were over three dozens like this one all over the area totally oblivious to people and vehicles.

The yellow tint along the mountainsides are how the name Yellowstone came about. It is from sulfur brought up by several massive upheavals throughout history from a super volcano beneath.

The Grand Teton mountain range.

River rafting on the Snake River

While Old Faithful is the famous geyser there are many more around the Park, including numerous ones at Mammoth Springs.

"Frenchy" the tour bus French driver who provided the quote mentioned earlier posed with my wife next to the huge tour bus he drove for 10 days.


Walking the Talk:

Climate change, whether man-caused or otherwise will take a very long time to manifest and could linger for a very long time as geological evidence had proven. So, like countless folks who recognize the whole idea, I and many like me and many of my friends are planting and propagating tropical plants in our back yards.  Tropical papaya and guava trees are doing very well, granted Texas is not exactly Idaho or North Dakota. However, keep in mind that when dinosaurs roamed North America the whole region was not only Tropical but perhaps even sub Tropical.  We just harvested papaya in November from these trees that survived last year's winter.

 We just harvested papaya in November from these trees that survived last year's winter.

Preparing these from seeds planted earlier for next year's possible "fruiting"

Two guava trees this year had abundant fruit; sadly squirrels got to them before they ripened.

Barely three feet off the ground this lemon tree's bend from the fruit.

Planted last year this two foot navel orange is doing very well

These two orange trees were planted from seeds seven years ago. This is the second year of fruiting.

Philippine citrus is not only thriving but adapting so very well that they bloom year round like they typically do in the Tropics

Fig tree barely four feet tall. Our neighbor's tree is 15 feet tall

Grapes are not sweet at all (at least not yet - I'm told it will improve over time) but they do their part gobbling up carbon.

First We Dream

 I find it interesting to note that we never stop dreaming no matter our age.  The youth is awash with dreams and for us older folks we still do albeit a bit differently now but we do just the same.  And so I muse about dreams but first I poke fun with our animal friends who don’t, or do they? 

We all dream and apparently it’s another one of those attributes, as far as we know, that are exclusively human; notwithstanding claims from pet owners that cats and dogs do dream. We dream while sleeping, and we daydream when in a boring class or meeting, but the most important dream is the one that we willingly and forcefully engaged in to motivate ourselves. It’s not to be mistaken with wishful thinking which sometimes takes us to a dream-like state – mere ghostly thoughts without flesh and force and therefore no inertia to make us do anything.

First, let me muse about whether animals dream.  We can’t know if they do and you all know why.  Animals can’t talk (at least not to us or in the language we can understand) so they can’t tell us if they do, let alone explain to us what they dreamt about the night before or after a nap.  They can’t daydream because when they’re awake they have more things to occupy their brains with, such as their next meal, predators to worry about, and their young to protect and feed.

Cats probably have the most time to dream but they may not.  If they’re not napping, which is what they do 90% of the time, the brain is constantly priming the coiled spring of muscles waiting for the whir of the can opener. Dogs on the other hand spend their waking hours trying to please the master when he or she is around or spend much of its energy anticipating for the master to come home.  It is a behavior cats disdain or one they have a hard time comprehending.

Do animals dream to better their station in life as to have ambitions? Perhaps, they do?  It’s possible, in a limited way, maybe?  Well, let’s allow ourselves to become animal whisperers and ponder for a moment. Take the gazelle or the impala.  They dream to run faster than the predators that go after them; or, at the very least, run faster than the next gazelle.  Here’s a case where they don’t have to place first in the race for as long they’re not last. Their dream is simple, not too overly ambitious but it means their survival. Mediocrity, as in average, in the savannah is all right, but being dead last is not, emphasis on dead. On the other hand, let’s take the cheetah.  Its dream or ambition in life is to run faster than the gazelle.  For hundreds, if not thousands of years, it’s been an arms race for these species. As impalas and gazelles run faster and faster the cheetahs worked on developing outsized hearts, capacious lungs, an extremely arched back, non-retractable claws and long tails that act like rudders and burst to a 70-miles-per hour sprint, but only for about thirty seconds or less. Single track dreams, single minded ambitions are all it takes.

Now, the dream to run very fast to catch the fleeing impala is admirable but has the cheetah, at one time or another, not dream about switching their pursuit towards the slower animals?  For example, why not aim for the aardvark and the vlakvark (just a fancy name for warthogs)?  This proves my theory that animals don’t dream very much. This is not to say that there is no nobility in their character.  I found out in my research that in 1904 the cheetahs had a convention on the arms race.  In that convention it was proposed that the contest with the speedy prey must end. Included in the resolution was a proposal from a small but vocal and liberal group of cheetahs who proffered (that’s not a typo – it’s the appropriate word) that they become vegetarians. It was taking its toll on their adaptive ability to keep up, coupled with the fact that often times the prey they catch are snatched away from them by the bigger lions who don’t like cheetahs very much or by laughing hyenas who, in the animal world, provide an even more perverse meaning to the phrase, “adding insult to injury”. They take away the cheetah’s catch and laugh about it as they gorge on the free meal.

The resolution at the convention was almost voted in for adoption except for a passionate speech made by one cheetah.  A portion of the quote went, “The impalas and gazelles, if allowed to increase their population, will graze the plains to a dust bowl.  The slow moving lions can’t catch them.  No offense to our feline cousins but compared to us they are lumbering brutes.  Impalas and gazelles will have a run of the savannah; watering holes will run dry as more and more of them put a strain to the supply of grass and water.  We are the only ones who can control their population. If not us, who will”?  That was the clincher to thwart the resolution to switch prey or turn vegetarian. The cheetah motto lived on – “If not us, who will”?  The slower impalas and gazelles are caught and therefore not allowed to procreate and the fast ones survive and pass on their genes to their descendants who will run even faster.  Cheetahs that are slow to catch impalas die out and the fast ones get to have families and also pass on their genes.  The arms race continues but the dreams remain simple.

Now we ask for the more serious question, what about us?

There was a little known Broadway musical in 1997 that ran only for three months, a mere 76 performances called “Steel Pier”.  It was obviously unmemorable as musicals go but there was a beautiful song in it that I thought was very meaningful and worth checking out in I-tunes.  It was entitled, “First you dream”.  Its opening stanza went:

First you dream,

Dream about incredible things

Then you look

And suddenly you have wings.

You can fly, you can fly

But first you dream

That is what makes us human. First we dream. Then we go after it.  Everything we have today – the discovery of the new world, birth of nations, modern farming, mass production, etc. all took seed and germinated from a dream by one person or a group of people who share the same dream. And every now and then throughout history there are even nobler ways to dream, to dream for the people, for a nation – from Washington who conceived of the idea of a free state to Martin Luther King whose dream speech moved a generation.  There were many before them and certainly more in the future after them – dreamers all.      

Rene Descartes said his famous line, “I think, therefore I am”.  Descartes and philosophers like him were thinkers, and we therefore give them credit for advancing human thought and intellectual discourse. But inventors, discoverers and founders had dreams. From Galileo to Columbus to Abraham Lincoln to Hiram Moore to Carnegie, Henry Ford to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Dell and Bezos, dreams were what they had first before everything else. So for them I coin the line, “I dream, therefore I do”.

We all dream, in big ways and small.  We may have pined for the dream girl, the dream boy, the dream job, the dream home.  None of what we do to get us to better our lives begin without first dreaming about it.  But neither should we limit our dreams to a collection of material possessions, nor social status and career.  It is not the dream home we should aspire for but a home where someone is free to dream. Where a mother can dream for her child or where two people can dream for each other.  No matter what our age is – from the youthful dreamers to those whose youth are mere memories – dreams must continue for as long as tomorrows keep coming our way. 

Borrowing a couple of quotes from Lerner and Lowe’s Camelot, “Each evening from December to December, before you drift to sleep upon your cot think back of all the things that you remember”, then dream the dream that could be as simple as just having a “congenial spot for happily-ever-aftering”.  We’ll wake up in the morning to another tomorrow. But first we dream.

Intersection

One drizzly morning, a few years ago, a very dear friend of ours was walking, with umbrella in hand and over her head, to catch a bus a couple of blocks away to go to work.  She crossed the street just across from their home where her retired husband was just cleaning up after breakfast.  As she had done many times before she walked by the same tall pine tree when suddenly at that one instant lightning struck.  The bolt of heavily charged static electricity ran from the gently swirling clouds a mile or two above to the top of the tree down its upright trunk, leaped into our friend’s umbrella, and passed through her body before dissipating into the ground.  Her death was as instantaneous as the thunderbolt.

Had she been a minute late in leaving the house or one minute sooner she would have missed the strike without even a slight injury, except perhaps for a temporary hearing loss from the deafening boom of the thunderclap as masses of air surged back to re-occupy the vacuum created by trillions and trillions of electrons jumping from the upper atmosphere to the ground below.  Her life story and that of her family would have taken a different path.  Instead, just a few days later we all gathered together to see her for the last time.  To assuage their grief, friends recalled stories of happier times to lighten the heavy burden of mourning and lift everybody’s spirits at a time of one such tragic and sudden loss.  Then invariably each conversation would turn into everyone asking, “Why”? Why, indeed?  Why didn’t the lighting strike somewhere else?  What if she decided to stay home that morning?  It is the many “could haves, should haves” that make the question so difficult to answer.

Actuaries, whose job it is to assess risks and probabilities of these kind of events primarily for insurance companies, use science and mathematics to make their predictions, in terms ordinary people would not delve into in the normal course of their lives.  While we are asking, “why”, actuaries just know it will happen though not necessarily when, how or to whom.

Are we to feel helpless against the whims of probabilities and the maddening randomness of events in our lives?  Are we caught in the utter futility or senselessness of it all and resign ourselves and sigh, “These things happen”?  These are not just difficult questions, they are impossible to answer.  We can, of course, know the when, what, for the most part how, but not why.  Even in cases where injury or death is intentionally caused by another human being, we may still not know why.

“Every doorway, every intersection has a story.”

---- Katherine Dunn

The intersection of space and time, where ever we are, where ever anything is, makes an event.  In the universe that we know, the very one that we have, nothing ever stays put.  So, as every moment passes, intersections happen as time and space collide whether we are aware of it or not. Something is always happening whether one sits motionless in a darkened room waiting for dawn to break, or when one is hurrying up to catch the last train, or when a mother is not able to sleep until her two teenage daughters come home from the movies.  Actuaries can run all the algorithms in the world but they will not read the thoughts that go through in a woman’s head as she contemplates this morning’s visit to her doctor about that lump in her breast as she prepares herself on that one dark morning waiting but not wanting for the sun to come up; or the working single mom who had to work so late almost every night but catching that train is the difference between money spent on a cab or extra music lesson for a gifted child; or all the dreadful scenarios a mother has to go through in her head each Friday or Saturday night her daughters go out and are late for their curfew.

The lightning and our friend met at that intersection that fateful morning because she had to go to work and nature had to run its course.  Every day around the world about three million lightning strikes occur. Several millions of people go to work – a good many of them toil in the fields and open spaces in good and bad weather.  Millions of children go to school, only a fraction of them on school buses while a vast majority go on foot.  They walk in good or bad weather.

Actuarial science and the mathematics that go along with it can run calculations on all kinds of risk conditions.  Lightning strikes are one of those entered into computer databases to calculate risks involved with lightning striking passenger planes and boats, golf courses, sporting events and community swimming pools, etc.   What it does not calculate is the philosophical equivalence of pain and grief suffered by families and community had the lightning hit a group of school children huddled together at an intersection two blocks away that same fateful morning waiting for the school bus to arrive; or the pregnant housewife who came out to retrieve the morning’s newspaper at her front yard.

One asks, “Why hadn’t that lightning hit a vacant lot instead?”

Lightning does hit more empty land and water than people, animals and property by a huge margin.  The three million lightning strikes a day around the world have a purpose.  Nitrogen makes up 78 % of the atmosphere and with every breath we take the same percentage of it, along with oxygen and carbon, goes through our respiratory system.  The nitrogen in the air though exists as a molecule of two atoms (N2) bound with a triple bond between them.  That’s a good thing because this inorganic form of nitrogen makes it usable for breathing and it is quite an inert gas.  When lightning strikes, however, the temperature of the air around the spark can go up tremendously in a fraction of a second, followed by extreme pressure as the lightning bolt pushes the surrounding air apart rapidly.  High temperature and extreme pressure developing instantaneously in such a short period of just 30 microseconds are the conditions needed to break the bonds that hold the two nitrogen atoms.  At that point single nitrogen atoms will seek and combine with hydrogen, oxygen and carbon in the air.  The process creates compounds of nitrates, ammonia and urea – vital components of fertilizer.  They’re absorbed into the ground through rain water so grass, vegetables and fruit trees can flourish.  Livestock will eat the grass; poultry will consume grain, converting some of what they ate into protein. Additionally, vegetables and fruit trees will recycle the same compounds to produce carbohydrates and other nutrients.  Legumes will have protein as well.

Our life cycle and those of every living thing is thus intertwined with the endless intersections of recycled material with time.  These recycling processes go back to the dawn of time.  Early on when life first begun whether one believes in the Creator or not the first amino acids, or at least much of them, were produced through lightning. The image of sparks coming down from the heavens was an awe inspiring spectacle that made any doubters then to think deeply about where all that power comes from and how these processes all begun. Greek mythology was one of the ways early civilization coped with the phenomenon so Zeus was invariably portrayed wielding a lightning bolt. One thing we can be certain of is that eons before man had learned to make fertilizer lightning has been doing it for the past few billion years.

The pictures of three million lightning strikes every day around the globe when fast forwarded as film makers do in time lapse photography mimic the firing of electrical signals between neurons through the synapses in our brains where billions and billions of intersections occur endlessly.  Our thought processes, how and when we make decisions, our aspirations and our dreams even as we sleep are a result of those intersecting and interconnecting  neurons firing and dissipating to no end.  In fact, our life experiences from the day we made first sense of the world around us to the day we learned to talk or ride a bike, encountered our first moral lesson, meet friends, formed relationships, etc., all came about from the never ending series of intersections.  Our daily mundane activities from the time we wake up to preparing and going to work, to what we talk about at work, who we go to lunch with, the trip back home, etc. make an unbroken series of intersecting collisions.

Why a gentle person like our dear friend who spoke barely above a whisper, who was so generous to her family and friends and on several occasions showed so much kindness to strangers, who took care to have a healthy lifestyle was at that fateful intersection of time and space is unanswerable.  Synapses and neurons could go on over drive to grapple with the question, but the quandary is still impossible to answer.  There are countless similar stories, of course, some even more tragic and sadder.  Then there are accidents at home and in highways, being at the wrong place at the wrong time to be a victim of crime, etc.  We can contemplate, we can struggle to keep looking for answers but that is all we can do but an explanation will always evade us.

Then there is the story of McKenzie Morgan, the 17 year old pilot from Wyoming whose plane crashed into the side of a 12,000 foot high mountain while trying to complete a solo-three-airport-qualifying flight.  Search planes looked for her all afternoon of that same day but didn’t see the wrecked plane because she flew off course from her designated flight plan.  The area where her plane crashed was so isolated that even hunters barely go there.  But on that particular day it just so happened that two hunters on horseback were there scouting for game animals when they saw the plane go down.  One went for help and the other went down to the crash site.  It could have been tragic because in those mountains at that elevation temperature would turn frigid quickly into the night and she had no warm clothing or food or fire. The events, first, that she survived the crash and second, that hunters just happened to be nearby, made for a much happier intersection.

Actually, there are far more happy intersections than there are tragic ones, just as far more lightning strikes hit empty uninhabited areas than people and property.  There are millions of air miles flown by commercial airlines every year, ribbons of intersecting and heavily traveled highways and other transportation arteries, doctors doing major surgeries, missionaries and volunteers going to dangerous places, and so on and on.  Fortunately, every night billions of people go home safely to their families and many are comforted in many places after natural disasters had struck or human conflict had taken its toll.  By an overwhelming number, there are far more positive intersections of people helping people than those who mean harm to others.  Despite the horrors of many wars, atrocities committed by ruthless rulers, calamities of plagues and natural disasters, population flourished and civilization has advanced.

The World we live in, our very existence, in fact, depend on endless moments of intersections.  There are more happy events than tragic ones. There are far more good people than evil ones.  There are far more questions we are able to answer than we can’t.  The ones we can’t may remain unanswered but perhaps those are the ones we should stop asking.