FREE

It is an interesting word in the English language.  Aside from being a stand-alone word, it had, over time, doggedly percolated itself into other stand-alone words,  either as a prefix or suffix, in such words as freestyle and bornfree, for example.   More so these days in the American landscape of politics and issues affecting socio-economics.  It is an adjective, an adverb, and as verbs go it can be quite forceful, unequivocally noble, though not always easily dispensed, but admirably one moral thing to bestow on something or someone.  It can be spiritually selfless, until it gets embroiled in social debates when paired with other innocuous words to become "freeloader", "free stuff", "free college tuition", or "freebies".

free:

adjective

1.   not under the control or in the power of another; able to act or be done as one wishes.

"I have no ambitions other than to have a happy life and be free"

2.   not or no longer confined or imprisoned.

"the researchers set the birds free"

adverb

without cost or payment.

"ladies were admitted free"

verb

release from captivity, confinement, or slavery.

"I will free you from this debt burden."

Biblically, we may find it scripturally soothing  from the New Testament's Book of John, chapter 8, verse 32, "and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 

For a long, long time throughout recorded history the word "free" stood for what it was as it related to, more precisely, the better side of humanity.  There are numerous words that contain "free" - over four dozens actually that are categorized as valid Scrabble "reference words" - as positive attributes, or at best neutral, except maybe for the word freeloader.  It had also become a prefix to a suffix, as an entirely modern word - "freebie".

Today, it may not be so clearly defined amidst the fuzziness of politics and the new social constructs going on in today's environment.  We'll get to that in a bit.

Meanwhile, "free" is something the universe disagrees with, as it does with abhorring a vacuum. Processes even between or among inanimate particles always come at a price.  When hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water, energy is lost between them. Likewise, in reverse, it takes the introduction of energy to split them apart back into oxygen and hydrogen. Another example to explain it is that in nature nothing is dispensed by any living thing as totally free, without cost, to another living thing, unless the former gets something in return from the latter. It does not necessarily have to be of equal value - it seldom is - but that it must be meaningful enough to either one so that the whole exchange of favors is sustained to the point that both living entities depend on it for survival.

It is a cliche now, but it still holds true, "there is no such thing as a free lunch".  When a flower dispenses nectar at great expense of its resources and energy, it does not just freely offer it to the bee without the bee performing the chore of pollination.  This symbiotic dance had gone on for millions of years.  The sea anemone and the clownfish have the same relationship that is hard to explain at first glance but now we know why.  There are thousands upon thousands of such examples.

But today we are confronted with more than just the hijacking of the word "free".  But first, it is not free from confusion either (pun intended).  Free radicals is not a verb-phrase to advocate liberating subversives or unruly college students.  However, for the sake of a healthy disposition, physiologically or biologically speaking, it must be understood that free radicals (a noun phrase) are toxic free-wheeling chemicals that can damage our cells. 

Meanwhile, the free press - now a relic connotation for a newspaper -  is now called the media - and from the looks of it "free" has actually sold out to advocating for a political agenda or social transformation.  Free speech is only free as a monochromatic description of a one-sided opinion, where one opposing side may not be allowed to express, often violently muzzled by rabid demonstration from a mob on the streets or college campuses.  Now, many college students, addled by ideas absorbed via lectured osmosis from overpaid professors, have themselves become the free radicals of academia. 

"Free" has now also become a substrate, a hidden layer beneath a false facade, for social or economic justice, again attaching the word free to another as a political foil - as in free tuition, free healthcare, and eradicating the phrase "free stuff" because it is now "public goods", as proposed by a junior congresswoman.  

"Free" has now become a pernicious word to the hardworking taxpayers on one hand,  and sweet nectar offered by politicians wanting to advance their version of social justice.  "Free" has become like sugar, or sugared water, high-calorie enticement with very little nutritional value as a social and economic remedy to the needy.

Giving away "freebies" is not a social solution.  It is a poor substitute for an economic incentive.  More precisely, it often disincentivizes work or desire to contribute a fair share of the labor. The country was founded by those who expected that only from labor and hard work  will anyone get rewarded with the fruit of their toil. Free meant only that the power to acquire anything can only be had from the personal investment of one's labor. Below is a direct quote from the same congresswoman: 

“These are public goods. They’re public goods. So I never want to hear the word or the term ‘free stuff’ ever again ... because I’m tired of already hearing some of these neoliberal folks who are trying to like flip the script on us”. 

Merely changing the label does not make it a sound policy.

The so called "public goods" do not just magically appear so she or the kind of government she envisions can distribute them like pixie dust.  Taxpayers put it there but not so they can be given freely as an entitlement to just about anyone who will lay claim to it.  Though the average taxpayer may begrudgingly pay excessive taxation, he or she in the end freely pays what is due, but clearly the revenue must not be just given freely without scrutiny.  By labeling it "public goods" the congresswoman and her squad believe it is free to anyone who wants them. And it is human nature to "want" once anything free is out there for the taking.

There is now this clamor for income equality.  It often leads to the false belief that equal sharing of wealth is now a justified objective.  These days wealth, though often mistakenly defined as having more than enough, whatever "more than enough" means, has become a questionable attribute rather than as a measure of success. Thus, it should be shared.  Why? It is never logically explained to those who have it but for those who don't, they firmly believe that they are  entitled to have some of it as a social equalizer of some dubious justification.

Here is the bottom line.  In the equation of giving and getting, there is obviously a natural limit to what the giver can give but once allowed to get, the getter almost always gravitates to a bottomless appetite to get.  That is human nature.  The welfare program is one fine example. No one can deny that there are abuses in food stamps but that is not all.

A little over five years ago a published article entitled, 

"When Welfare Pays Better than Work"

(Quote) :The federal government funds 126 separate programs targeted towards low-income people, 72 of which provide either cash or in-kind benefits to individuals. (The rest fund community-wide programs for low-income neighborhoods, with no direct benefits to individuals.) State and local governments operate more welfare programs.

During the first 150 to 175 years of this country's history none of those programs existed.  Yet the nation went on to become the modern example to all other nations in terms of product development and labor to wealth expansion never seen before. The ability to acquire was an attribute predominantly ascribed to working individuals.  The successes of industrial and agricultural corporations rested on their ability to produce goods which in turn solely depended on the people's ability to purchase them.  There had to be that or else the free-market system is doomed to fail.

And that is the crux of the debate that is raging today.  The free market system is under a growing barrage from those advocating that much should be given free to those in need.  But as mentioned above, need could easily become that bottomless abyss to which the givers of "free stuff" or what is now suddenly called "public goods" may one day find that there is no more to give.  And all because of this once noble word used to be known simply as FREE.

But there is time to address and perchance to make a course correction, and timing is of the essence.  Speaking of "Timing", the previous musing just before this one is worth a look.


Timing: a particular point or period of time when something happens.

https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2019/12/timing.html

Timing

Definition : (a) choice, judgment, or control of when something should be done.

(b) a particular point or period of time when something happens.

Timing is everything.  Or, so we're told.  That is what we know.   Or, that is all there ever is. That is all there ever will be.  

From the second definition above, (b) "a particular point" is that intersection in the fabric of space and time where and when something happens, one event at a time.   But is there some cosmic gear system that regulates all that have and are about to happen?  Or, are we to believe that everything is and should be left to chance?  Or, are these questions best left alone?  We will try to get to that.  But first ...  

Ever wondered about this scenario:  You were already in your car, about to start the engine, when, as an afterthought you wanted a bottled water, so you decided to get out, got back inside the house, and got one.  That ever so slightly changed everything.  You were a tad late reaching that first intersection outside your subdivision, just seconds before another driver ran a red light and hit the car in front of you in a fiery crash.  That could have been your car the driver hit had you not decided to get one bottled water.  Timing was everything.  Well, you'll say, "it was what it was".   As most of you will probably say, timing was everything.  We'll have to set aside for the moment what or how it was for the car that was hit.  Or, for that matter the driver who ran the red light.

A U.S. army lieutenant, commanding an outpost in Afghanistan over a decade ago, ordered his men to fire at three civilians in motorcycles approaching their checkpoint, not slowing down when signaled to stop.  Earlier that day several U.S. servicemen were ambushed by "civilians" in motorcycles in another area nearby.  The lieutenant was court marshalled, convicted and sentenced to prison for ordering his men to fire at unarmed civilians.

The lieutenant, responsible for protecting himself and his men, had seconds to make that fateful decision. He had been in prison for ten years until he was pardoned by the president.  The thing though is that recently, through advances in technology, evidence now showed that there were traces of IED (Improvised explosive device) on the body and clothing of the "civilians" - based on evidence that were kept for DNA analysis. Had the technology been around then, the soldier's life could have taken a different direction. The time the lieutenant had to make a decision - seconds - took ten years of his life and away from his family.

Today, clocks and modern replay technology has changed the world of sports.  What has not changed is the "choice, judgment, or control of when something should be done" that athletes face.

When the quarterback throws that 50-yard pass, both he and the receiver are at the mercy of timing.  A millisecond too late or too soon for the receiver to look up, jump and reach for that ball travelling at between 40 and 50 miles per hour will determine if it is a catch or a miss.  

A baseball thrown in major league takes only 0.4 seconds to travel from the pitcher's hand to home plate. A baseball hitter has four tenths of a second to decide at swinging or holding off on the bat.  Brief moments before that, the hitter's brain is making quick assessments as to whether to expect the pitch to be a curveball, a change up, a slider or a fastball and whether it will be over the plate in the strike zone. In less than half a second, the entire exercise of anticipating, deciding and swinging the bat or not, is over. That's why they are paid the big bucks. If they hit on average 1 in 4 times to get on base (batting 0.250), they're a major league player.  1 in 3 and they are a star.  If they hit 50 or more homeruns in one season, they are superstars.  Sounds awesome but remember, on average a healthy starting player may get to bat about 500 times in a season.  In other words doing something spectacular only 10% of the time is all it takes to get paid a lot of money.  Do that as a heart surgeon, or as an engineer or accountant, and not only will you lose your license, you may never practice your craft ever again. 

Timing is all there is in a constantly moving and changing world.  Of course, we are never always thinking about timing as a critical part of our lives.  We go on about our day not always aware about timing in a hyper-conscious way as a baseball hitter or football receiver does. But timing is there everyday.  The second mouse to happen upon a mouse trap already sprung by the earlier mouse gets the cheese*. (* In reality, the second mouse and any other rodent may not come anywhere close to the trap with a dead mouse or the cheese at that point).  We joke about what it is to be early if you were an early worm. That trait to be early was so beneficial and laudable for the "early bird" but obviously not so for the early worm.

The greatest timing phenomenon ever to come across in our entire history occurred just over 60 million years ago. What occurred at that one fateful moment, and with that magnitude of that event, has never happened again, at least not yet. The reason we are here today, our very existence, we owe to that single event.  It happened at a particular point and period of time.   

An asteroid the size of Mt. Everest hit earth in what we now call the Yucatan Peninsula and a good chunk of the Gulf of Mexico.  Early in the history of our solar system the likes of such an event happened constantly as the early planets were all trying to get everything together in perpetual motion, as they still do today, constantly moving, picking up debris of asteroids,  rocks and swirling  dusts until much had settled a billion times less chaotically.  It probably took two billion years.  Fast forward to a few more million years and life emerged. A few more and the dinosaurs ruled the entire earth for 160 million years.  The mammals that were around were tiny creatures, fist-size, scurrying around, finding a niche for survival. 

Then the asteroid hit.  That wiped out most of the giant dinosaurs at first impact and the subsequent fires and heat.  Global cooling followed as cloud cover blocked out the sun for hundreds of years.  That sealed the fate of the giants.  Smaller species survived but more importantly the age of mammals begun.  That took millions of years.  Today, we are the dominant species.

Since no other asteroid that size ever hit again, the timing of that last one was one fortuitous event for humanity and all the living things we see today.  By the way, not all the dinosaurs perished.  They're still with us - we know them today as birds - from hummingbirds and sparrows to turkeys and ostriches.

Let's go back to that one moment sixty -seven million years ago.  Had that asteroid been just a handful of moments late or if it came by just moments earlier it would not have crossed path with earth, both traveling at tremendous speeds, and today our story or the story of earth will have unfurled a lot more differently.  But then if we go back much earlier than that, if earth as a planet forming along with the others, was not positioned at a particular orbit that is now what we call the Goldilocks zone - not too hot, not too cold - we will not be here.

So, we are here today, pondering the age-old question. 

Do we have the reason  why we are here, or do we even need to reason why?  Call it the universal gear system.  Call it fate.  Call it luck.  Call it whatever you want.  We cannot ignore the fact that along with whatever label you want to use for a reason, or none at all but pure coincidence,  there is something beyond our ability to completely understand.  Why the limit to our capacity to comprehend is itself an even more critical question.

This reminds me of another thought experiment I heard a while back. Imagine characters on a comic strip - living in a 2-dimensional world - pondering if there is a world outside of their flat world.  The comic strip artist, their creator lives in a 3-dimensional world with pen and pencil designing and creating the characters that are on a flat sheet. Don't think of that as totally absurd.  Remember the fish swimming below the water line lives in a 3-dimensional world.  Witnessing another fish nearby that swallowed a worm (attached to a hook and line) suddenly disappear from their watery world, the fish will have to wonder, "What happened, where did it go?"  It will have no way of knowing.  It does not have the ability to understand.

We are the characters in the limited 2-dimensional world, or we could be the fishes in the 3-dimensional water world, wondering but clearly limited as to what we can conceivably understand.  But we know enough, we have enough capacity to be awed by all that we see.  

We have the amazing feat not to just ask and wonder.  More than that we have the capacity to appreciate the beauty of colors, or just simply to ascribe beauty to everything we see around us.  We are moved emotionally by mere words and that we are also touched by a string of sounds.  Sounds organized into a symphony, or Schubert's sonata, or Chopin's Nocturnes, Mozart's violins or oboes wafting above a field of many other symphonic musical notes.  Those will have to tell you there is Something, there is Somebody above our limited dimensional world well beyond our capacity to understand, operating or directing the universal gear system.  We will just have to acknowledge that given our ability to ask or wonder or to ponder these things is enough as an additional reward on top of  being alive.  

There is enough there to measure or conclude that we are likely inhabiting a world beyond merely just existing. Perhaps someday we will find out why and how.

FRAGmeNT

One very interesting word. By its definition, below, it describes just about everything that is around us, what we see, what we observe, even what we are as individuals - all fragments of a bigger whole, the entire size of which is beyond our imagining.

"A fragment is a small piece that's come off a larger whole, and to fragment is to break. If your teacher writes "frag" on your paper, you've got an incomplete sentence. Fragment, meaning "a tiny, brittle shard," first appeared as a noun and later as a verb".

Interesting indeed. No word will probably best put anyone in his or her place the moment he or she begins to think so highly of his or her status or position in the overall scheme of things.  Anyone - king or subject, CEO or janitor, celebrity or nobody, no matter the gap in status or wealth - is still a fragment of a population, lost to a world much too big to care in the long run.  A fragment today, a fragment of a memory a century from now, just as all of what we know or remember of anyone or anything today are all fragments of our memories or of what's in the record books.

Interesting still is the fact that a "fragment" in the English language, though it may begin with a capital letter and ends with a period, even as a group of words,  does not express a complete thought.  It is not even a complete sentence.  But it is a rich mother lode we can all mine for all kinds of metaphor or analogy.  Think about it.  Every living thing today is a fragment of whatever it is a part of.  Anyone can or may retort with this, "So what? That is neither here nor there".

Yes, "So what?" indeed. But think about this. Interdependence is the backbone of what we know today as modern civilization.  Centuries ago, modes of behavior, manners, and the ability to not only recognize but to document what is right or wrong, morally or socially, came about because people realized that interdependence among individuals provided the framework for cooperation and cohesion.  What  historians do not usually talk about is that somewhere in our genes and all the genes of everything that ever lived is one tiny bit of information that says, "Remember you are a fragment of a whole.  Everything you do is not just for self preservation but for the continuance of your existence so that your legacy, though a mere fragment, will live on."  Not in so many words, of course, but that is exactly what keeps a species going, how survival is a natural instinct towards longevity, and why cooperation is nothing more than fragments pulling together to better the odds.

On a different level, we only remember fragments of a dream, or realize that we've only achieved fragments of our life's dreams, or ambitions.  We may only know fragments about the people we know, and so we also show only fragments of who we are to others. It is a fragmented world, isn't it?

First discovered between 1946 and 1947 by Bedouin shepherds in various caves in Qumran, by the Dead Sea, were scrolls upon scrolls of ancient writings, by an ancient group of people, known or widely believed as the Essene, who  independently documented accounts of the scriptures that are in The Bible.  Some scrolls were intact but hundreds and hundreds of pieces  survived only as mere fragments.  Today, most of what can be seen publicly in museums, and who knows how many are in private collections, are fragments of parchments.  And they are no less of value than entire scrolls and are in fact subject to all kinds of scrutiny by scholars, historians and scientists.  Fragments of writings too vague to get a full story seem more intriguing to researchers. Likely too, there are fragments out there in collectors hands that are counterfeit. There lies the allure and mystery of fragments.

When a young man sees from across a room a face and a smile his interest is piqued not so much by what he sees but what he doesn't yet see or know about her. A mere fragment, an image, a movement, a something - all fragments - are enough to quicken his heartbeat, enough to compel him to move mountains or forged raging rivers just to get to know her, let alone spend even fragments of time to be with her.  Fragments.

Such is our world. Such is our history.  Our future will be no more organized than a series of potentially probable fragmented events yet to occur.  A fragmented handful of individuals will lead our way or lead us astray. So far, we've been fortunate to have had a fragmented group of individuals who were there to shape the workings of civilization.  Our history is suffused with individuals the likes of King Solomon, The Prophets, Alexander, Socrates, Archimedes, Washington, Isaac Newton, Einstein and even Hitler and Stalin, Churchill, Eisenhower, many more. Each or as a group, mere fragments but enough to have affected the trajectory of history. Many countless others are lost to such a long and convoluted history as mere fragments but whose lives ever so slightly touched countless others.  

There was a fragment of a life and death of one Jose Rizal, in a tiny fragment of an archipelago of 7,000 islands in a vast area of the Pacific, just five generations removed from today, whose contribution to the lives of his contemporaries may be nothing more than a footnote in history. But today's population of about 105 million people can trace their fate to a fragment of their history that occurred one early morning 131 years ago on a field. From a fusillade of a firing squad.  Historical figures. Historical fragments. Fragmented events that took one nation to today.

Now, keep this in mind, all we can touch, affect or direct, happens only at fragments of a time. One moment now, a fragment of the past, one moment from now, a fragment of yet to come.  Yet we worry too much about what are yet to happen and we anguish over what already occurred.  That, unquestionably puts everything way too simply or much too casually, but such are what fragments give us.  

Did I not mention early on to "mine for all kinds of metaphor or analogy".  

Whoever we are, to the world each a fragment.  We are a fragment to a stranger.  And so to friends and co-workers if fragments are all that we want to reveal. The janitor or cleaning woman is a fragment to the executive leaving the office late one evening.  But so is the executive a fragment to either one, whose take home pay for tonight's labor is surely a fragment of even just the withholding tax for the executive's income.  But as fragments go, is one of lesser value to the other? 

The executive who decided to stop and talked to inquire how the janitor and his family were doing was a fragment of a moment.  The two individuals were two fragments, in a fragment of time, unknown to any observer from a far away view. Far away to listen to their conversation but what happened afterwards is what allows a fragment to loom large above all the other fragments in the world.  The executive, upon hearing of the janitor's very sick wife, alone with their two children, all waiting at home, told the janitor to go home.  The janitor protested but the executive promised he will talk to the building's manager about it. Then another fragment.  He took the janitor home but on the way stopped by to pick up some food to go for the family. But the story did not end there.  In a fragment of a snap decision the executive, with the janitor and the children in tow, took the mother of the children to the hospital, and made sure bills were taken care of until she got better and released three days later.  Two fragments. Two intersections that were but a moment, a blink, a fragment in the grander scheme we call life.  

From far away two tiny fragments that together were made large, but often in life that is all that it will take for a fragment to mean a lot more. Much more than could have been but sometimes fragments conspire to make something larger when least expected and the world is better for it.

Postscript

The fonts of the title word, FRAGmeNT, was intentional. The two letters "me" were in lower case, as intended.  Ascribe whatever you like as to what it means to you.  Although in this season of giving, it is best that those two letters are in lower case. Indeed.

Year

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. ...

                                                                  -------- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Days Gone By: Physics Offers Explanation To Why Time Flies As We Get Older"

"Now, a fascinating new study is offering up a more scientific explanation: as we age, the speed in which our brains obtain and process images gradually slows, resulting in this temporal discrepancy in memories.

Simply put, this slowing of the brain’s imaging speed causes perception of time to speed up."

Another way of saying it is that it only seems that way and in reality time is not going any faster or slower. It could also be that it is just how we remember it as a child because there was so much ahead to look forward to then, while today's older folks dread that "time is running out". Fast forward to three decades from today and these young ones who feel time is going too slowly will have aged by then and they too will be ruminating no differently from what the older folks do today.

One can be obsessed with time, another maybe nonchalant, some may even claim to be simply agnostic about the whole idea of time or getting old.  Perhaps the latter does actually make sense and that it must be the proper way. We've heard of the expression, "marching to a different drummer".  Well, maybe it is true some folks simply look at or sense time as "running on a different cadence" from the rest of us.

And there lies the enigma of time.  This takes us to this often cited statement alluded to Albert Einstein - no specific evidence he actually said it - when he tried to explain his theory of relativity when he said (purportedly),  “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.”

One thing we know for sure that is supported by history is that the measurement of time, as in seconds, minutes, hours, days, months and years were all made up by us. It is not based on some universal timing mechanism that regulates everything according to an unbreakable set of rules.  

Merely from our point of view, the shorter units of "time" were from arbitrarily subdividing into smaller units of intervals that which are contained within what it takes for the globe to circle the sun.  The number of days in it was an approximation based on the number of degrees in a circle (exactly 360).  The 365 was an approximation that needs to be corrected with one leap year every four years.  

365-1/4 days a year, effectively as the average length of a year. 12 months divide a year, each month, alternating between 30 and 31 days except in February that has only 28 days except on a leap year when it gets 29 days and then we have two consecutive months of 31 days each: July and August. A month is approximately how long it takes for the moon to make one complete orbit* around the earth.  (*The phase of the moon is nothing more than its location to the earth relative to the sun. For example, a full moon means that it is directly opposite relative to where the sun is, thus it gets the maximum sunlight reflecting back to us, which we perceive as the full moon. That moonlight diminishes to almost nothing by the time it is about in between the earth and the sun. A perfect alignment is what we call an eclipse. Actually, its orbit is not a perfect circle so it takes on average 29-1/2 days to make one full circle).

24 hours is merely subdividing the time it takes for earth to make one complete rotation on its axis.   Minutes and seconds are just as arbitrary as well.  So, time or the concept of time is a human invention.  Really?  Really.

In some far away solar system from some far away constellation of stars,  even from galaxies far, far away, surmised inhabitants in one of the planets there, if they have advanced their civilization to some level similar to ours if not more so, they could conceivably have stumbled into a different idea of time - different from ours entirely.  However, there is no telling how it would be like.  How would they have divided the units of time.  The length of their days, between daylight and nightfall, will depend on their planet's size and its speed rotation around its access.

So, we've established our concept of time is local. And time, therefore, is really just an arbitrary concept, an illusion. I repeat, it is an illusion.  The reader, if this gets too much or rendered to involuntary rolling of the eyes, may stop here and go on about your day, unless you are curious to find out why time is just an illusion.  Understanding it or finding out, I'm afraid, will not make your day any longer or shorter, nor improve your allocation of time.   Now, you can walk away if you want or take an aspirin if the headache is unbearable and read on.

Here it comes.  Let's do a thought experiment.  We do not need a laboratory.  All that is required is an open mind and some imagination.  Imagine two huge wheels with 365 teeth (gear teeth) each positioned horizontally next to each other on a flat surface.  Imagine two people.  One sits at a location facing and nearly touching a section of the rim of the one wheel that is rotating on its axis. We call him the Sitter (S).  Imagine another person who walks along the rim of the other huge but stationary wheel nearby.  We call him the Walker (W).  The sitter observes the wheel turning and he can clearly see it moving one gear tooth at a time at a fix interval passing in front of him. He merely observes the teeth moving along but he does not have a watch or timer; in fact, he does not even have a concept of time, except he knows the gear to have 365 teeth.  Now, at the beginning of his observation, thinking about all the teeth that have yet to come along his view, he is prepared for a long haul of observation. The sitter (S) makes note of the intervals.

The walker (W) observes each tooth by walking along the rim of the stationary wheel and sees each tooth at regular interval according to his pace.  In the beginning of his walk, knowing how many teeth to go, he makes note of his pace.

At the start, (S) must perceive a slower interval between each tooth as he knows there are plenty more to come along his observation seat.  The same way with (W) who at the beginning of his walk he must perceive his pace as slow as well because of all the teeth ahead that he must cover.

Now, by the 350th, or 360th tooth, either one of them must sense the intervals to be a bit faster than what it used to be at the beginning.  The perception is exacerbated by the fact that each of them was told that at the end, by the 365th tooth, their fate is unknown.  The end is sealed with uncertainty and oblivion.  Their sense of each interval, whether as (S) or (W) is influenced by the anticipation of the end closing in.  The intervals seem to go much more quickly, made worse by their eagerness for more teeth to observe because otherwise, the uncertain end will come.  It would have felt as if the teeth were coming along much too fast.

Now, assume one gear tooth as one event.  If they were to define the intervals between the series of events then one must define the gaps in between each occurrence.  That definition is something they will sense as time. (S) or (W) are different observers but they are likely to define the gaps the same way and make sense of it in a similar manner. Not necessarily, even if the gear tooth passes (S) at the same pace as (W) is walking. They just defined the concept of time as something that merely separated the teeth from each other. More importantly, and this is crucial, the gaps made sure the teeth did not all come at the same instance.  Except that one observes each event by watching each tooth come along as (S), or observes each tooth as they walk along the rim, with (W) going from each event to the next.  Nevertheless, each gap made sure all the teeth - all the events, or every happening - do not come all at once.  Time as defined by them made sure that not everything is observed all at once.  Time therefore is nature's way of making sure not everything happens all at once and insuring it is all in sequence. A broken egg is observed as first being a whole egg and then its shells breaking and its contents all spreading out on a hot skillet.  It is never observed to reform from the skillet back to being a whole egg.

One more thing.  Someone driving along the countryside will have perceived time a lot more differently from someone waiting at home anxiously awaiting for his arrival.

Now, you know why time then becomes subjectively an illusion. If you've come this far then it wasn't so bad, was it?  I made that little thought experiment up but you will have to agree that we as individuals will observe the flow of time differently.  Now, you may argue that the clock is the ultimate arbiter and therefore it makes time absolute.  You will cite that Michael Phelps won his event by touching the pool's end ahead of everyone else, or that within the seconds left in the game the basketball made it through the hoop in time or not.  There is no argument there.  But here is where it gets weird.  Even weirder.

E.T. observing the race or the basketball game through a powerful telescope from their planet around their star XG-2 from a constellation far, far away, will have a different sense of how fast Michael Phelps was or that his time to finish was either longer or shorter relative to how the local earthling saw the race.  E.T. will also observe that the time it took for the basketful from the shooter's hand to get to the hoop is at a different rate from how it was observed here on earth. There will be no dispute as to who won or whether the basketball made it in time or not.

Let's go back to the earlier quote:

"...the speed in which our brains obtain and process images gradually slows, resulting in this temporal discrepancy in memories".

Is it that or because as we get older we have so much more information in our head that we can actually process what we observe more quickly.  Early in my woodworking experience, projects seemed to get forever to finish, obviously took longer to complete as my skills were limited.  Clearly so were my access to better tools and more efficient techniques.  Today, not only do I finish projects much more quickly, the quality is not only more refined, it is a lot more sophisticated.  That is my opinion.

The larger question is this.  As we go through life, specially as we get older, do we become the sitter (S) or should we continue to be the walker (W)? We can just sit and let things go by us or should we rather be walking and exploring to get to them.  Even if we are physically slowed down, or even deprived of our mobility, we can still walk with our minds. Let us not be sitters.  We may not do it as briskly, physically or mentally, but we ought to be walkers.  We ought not to let the world pass before our eyes, let us get to the world - physically or with our mind's eye - by walking through it.

Microbe

Infinitesimally small, fleetingly short lived. That pretty much covers the physical description of a microbe - if one has a microscope and the patience to observe its 20-minute lifespan*.  (*of one bacterium, for example, but it is known to multiply to  over 2 million copies of itself in 7 hours. Add another hour and it becomes a colony of over 16 million).


Below is the E. coli bacteria magnified 10,000 times.

Since the first moment the scientific world  realized these invisible creatures were responsible for the loss of millions upon millions of human lives and livestock (from chicken to cattle) and countless non-lethal but nevertheless miserable illness and suffering, we had been waging a never ending war against them. The bad news is that we are not winning.  The good news is that we've had some significant victories.  Enough wins to have saved millions of lives.  Enough for our species to survive this far - up to today.  But the microbe is one formidable adversary.  Bacteria has a remarkable ability to mutate within hours after exposure to anything that threatens them, such as antibiotics if not taken to the entire prescribed dosage.  On the other hand antibiotics do not work against viruses.

Now, before we cast eternal distaste for the microbe, think of this greatest irony of all irony: our very existence actually depends on them - not from just a few varieties, but actually from a lot of them.  Of the million different kinds of microbes, only 1415 of them (exactly) cause illness on humans; unfortunately, almost a third of all deaths worldwide are from infectious diseases each year.  Fortunately, we live because of them too. Microbes co-evolved with us and likely influenced the trajectory of the changes we went through.

"Make no mistake.  This is a planet of microbes. We are here at their pleasure.  They don't need us at all.  We'd be dead in a day without them."

------ Bill Bryson

Life, as we come to realize is tiled with endless dichotomy.

Microbes mind bogglingly outnumber us. But even more exceedingly head numbing is the fact that if we actually put all humans on one side of a balance scale and all bacteria on the other abruptly, we'd all be sling shot  into space.  That is because all the bacteria on earth outweigh us by more than 1100 times to 1.  And that is just bacteria. When you add to it all the viruses, fungi, algae and protozoa (all belonging to the family of microbes), then there is no question, they own this planet.

Our own body is literally a planet for microbes.   That said, the one other ego-shattering sentiment is that our own bodies  are in reality planets of microbes. There are an equal amount of our cells and bacterial cells in our own body (in trillions). But most of our cells are red blood cells which we're told are not really cells (in the strict biological definition of a cell) but merely vehicles for hemoglobin (oxygen-carrying protein).  Our cells are giants compared to bacteria but when it comes to genes - those that contain information about us and bacteria - our genes are outnumbered twenty thousand to twenty million  of the microbe's own. So, in terms of the number of genes we are 99% bacterial.  But not to worry. Our cells are gigantic compared to bacteria; consequently, our cells matter more.  

Our side of the story though is incomplete as an unreadable book if we do not include the fact that our physical existence begun long before we are born.  From the moment of our development in the womb, microbes are already in our gut.  Our mothers put them there through the umbilical cord to prepare us after we leave the protection of the womb and those microbes and other later microscopic interlopers will be there all throughout our life cycle.  And indeed, life is one cycle that revolves around microbes.  Every other living thing from small mammals to the blue whale to fish to birds, even earthworms and termites depend on microbes to help process whatever they eat during digestion, even manufacture certain vitamins inside the bodies and help fight off the bad microbes.

Microbes not only help in digestion, they alone can ferment milk so we can have cheese; convert hops into beer and ferment wine; even makes fruit cake possible and for fruit cake to survive beyond the jokes about it. It makes the story  plausible for the fruitcake to be re-gifted a million times, without degrading or rendered inedible.  Termites too love microbes.  Otherwise, rotting trees and wooden rafters and posts in your home will not be of use to them, if not for microbes helping them to process pulp.  Termites own microbes.  Or, so they think, if termites are capable of thought.  In reality microbes own them too.  

Ownership of this planet is really not up for grabs. The microbes own it.  Microbes had shaped our history.  They had a far greater impact on our development as a society, even shaping our civilization. That is a pretty bold statement, you say.  I will cite just one example. 

Let me mention this first.  Recently in the news was about two cases of pneumonic plague confirmed in China. The Chinese government downplayed the threat that it could develop into an epidemic, and they may be right.  What is true too is that the most dreaded bubonic plague , or "Black Death", that ravaged Europe in the mid-14th century originated from China.  


Yersinia Pestis, or just Y. pestis, is the strain of bacteria carried by fleas.  Though rats then were blamed for the spread of bubonic plague in Europe, fleas were the direct culprit and since fleas also transfer from human to human, not just from rat to human,  rats then were only partly to blame.  Indeed, rats were themselves victims of the flea infestation.  It turned out human sanitation, or lack thereof, was much more likely to blame and in many instances the bacteria was transferred directly  by human to human contact.  Now, you know.

"Black Death". It decimated between a fourth or a third of the population of Europe, depending on varying historical data.  There were two pivotal impacts.  First, there was an immediate cessation of wars.  Territorial and border conflicts stopped.  Second, the reduced population depleted the work force that tended to the fields for agriculture and livestock that rendered the lands unproductive.  

Since those lands were owned as fiefdoms by aristocrats, feudal lords and members of royalty, the diminished income and the soaring cost of rising wages (demand for labor was way higher than the supply of laborers) tipped the balance between aristocracy and the common people. Social hierarchy was no longer as severe as it was before the plague.  It did not take long for Europe's society to be reshaped to what it looks like today.  

Just to be clear though, so as not to mislead, there are many more diseases around the world that have countless casualties.  I just picked on the plague in Europe as an example.  As is well known, malaria continues to kill more people even today and the mosquito, just like the rat, is only a carrier but that the protozoa parasite is the direct cause of the malady.  

Ireland, from 1845 to 1849, was stricken by widespread  potato crop failure "caused by late blight, a disease that destroys both the leaves and the edible roots, or tubers, of the potato plant".  That period was also called the Irish Potato Famine.  About 1 million people perished.  That resulted in one massive migration of the 19th century, predominantly towards the United States.  Since then the Irish contribution to America greatly  enriched the adopted land economically and culturally in many significant ways. Just to name a few, famous Americans of Irish descent were Henry Ford, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John F. Kennedy, Randolph Hearst and many, many more.  History was forever changed because a microbe caused the Great Famine. 

So, we are torn between humility on one hand and a sense of superiority on the other because, well, first of all, we are equipped to know about microbes while they are oblivious to who we are; secondly, here I am writing about them and you reading it but there is just no way  that even collectively they can make one sense of one word here.  Microbes, singly or collectively, can never appreciate the beauty of a sunset or feel the pain of sorrow. But why is the microbe so significant?

Is the microbe a Divine implement?  For those not so inclined to assign this to a Supreme Being, is the microbe the pen and pencil of evolution?  Even more intriguing: Do the microbes represent the countless pigments used by the Creator or by the evolutionary artist to not only paint our world on a canvass with an original painting but are responsible too for the constant revisions and improvements that continue to occur today?  Setting those unanswerable questions aside, it is true we have in our hands the tools to understand the microbe.  Hopefully,  we continue to increase our knowledge and expand our understanding.  That is the best we can do because we are not equipped to totally comprehend the meaning or reasons why despite the microbe's virulence, not everyone dies from it while others perish.  That requires far more wisdom than we can conceivably attain.

Though we can take satisfaction from the fact that we are physically stronger, intellectually developed because of and not despite the presence of the microbe.  The microbe can be treated as divine insurance, or evolution's best tool for life to survive and move on in case we somehow mess things up on this planet.  The microbe will not only be the ultimate survivor but it is also likely the most plausible agent for life to re-start  and re-emerge if we mis-manage this planet's wellbeing.  We can speculate too that in who-knows-how-many millions of years from now the microbe is the likely carrier of life to other extraterrestrial worlds.  

Today, right at this moment, depending on how much you weigh, you have within you anywhere from 1-1/2 to 6 pounds of microbes in your body.  That is not to be squeamish about.  It is to be grateful for.  You are equipped with an invisible sentinel to keep you alive.  Undeniably, as I had mentioned before, so much is involved, so much has contributed to the making of you.  The microbe is that invisible component we need to be aware of. 

Postscript:

The microbe also provides us a profound metaphor for life.  Much of the backdrop for human nature and social behavior is invisible too, much like the microbe.  Thoughts, intents, even feelings are all invisible to everyone except to the person who harbors them.  Invisible that these are, their impacts are not to be trifled with.  Love, sympathy, caring, loyalty, devotion, piety, etc. are generated intensely first within us all but so are envy, jealousy, greed, criminal  and deviant intents, etc., until they are acted upon.  Like the good and bad microbes, they may be invisible but they do exist within us all.  The thought of caring for someone or to be sympathetic to others, even those that are a continent away are beneficial to the human race. Unfortunately, greed and jealousy are as virulent as a microbial assault.  The mind, like the physical body, is a harbor for virulence.  In reality history is filled with despots and dictators acting on their greed and corrupted minds to cause the death of millions of people.  Clearly more than caused by epidemics.  Fortunately for us, despots and dictators are outnumbered by those who are not. 

So far it is fortuitous that there are more vaccines of morality and caring for each other to stave off an all out malevolence to overwhelm human nature or  weaken the human spirit. 

Heartbeat

Heartbeat. The first thing EMTs or any ordinary lay person will check for sign of life on anyone unconscious or unresponsive. One beat. One definite, if not unequivocally so, sign of life. Skip one and it could mean trouble.  Yet it is the most consistently cadenced of all involuntary movements in our body.  On average, we get 100,000 of it every single day.  All from about one pound of almost pure muscle. At the first moment when conception is confirmed at the womb, one tiny little thing begins a pulsating rhythm, for nine months or so, followed by birth and growth and it will keep doing it until the very last moment of life.  The average or normal healthy heart pulses at between 60-100 times per minute, slower at rest, faster during exercise, but palpitates uncontrollably at the sight of someone for whom one is inexplicably smitten by or enamored with, and passionately unbound.

The Guiness Book of world record lists Martin Brady of England as having registered the lowest heart rate of 27 beats per minute, edging the previous 28 BPM record held by Miguel Indurain - a 5-time winner of the Tour de France. Cyclists, specifically endurance cyclists, are known for their low resting heart rates.  Not confirmed by Guiness, however, is that of British pensioner Daniel Green, age 81, who on a clinical check up registered a 26 BPM in 1981. Usain Bolt, the fastest human on record at the Olympics, was clocked at a "speedy" resting heart rate of 33, relatively speaking that is.

What about the fastest heart rate ever?  No one would want to have that record. 100 BPM is considered fast for humans under ordinary conditions. However, a condition that is also a real challenge to Spelling Bee contestants, called tachyarrhythmia, was recorded at 480 beats per minute.  Fast heart rates are not to be aspired for, unless one is a mouse, which needs to pump blood normally at 700 times per minute to survive.  An elephant that according to fabled tales is afraid of the mouse, only registers 30 BPM.  

Back to the heart. The human heart. As essential as the heart is, no kidding, heart disease is the number one cause of death every year - more than influenza, pneumonia, cancer and accidents (all accidents that include traffic, drowning and falling off ladders) combined.  To be expected, some will say, "because it is the most hard working body part".  Smart Alecks will say, "but it is the most exercised" too.  

Indeed, the heart is the hardest working of any part of our bodies. Legs, arms - though they may take you hiking, swimming, running or lifting weights - don't even come close. Arms and legs don't do it 24 hours a day. The heart, even while you are asleep, continues to work.  The moment it doesn't, everything else ceases to function. Besides, arms and legs are literally out of business without the heart first delivering blood to them. One calculation, perhaps again done by some biologist or physiologist with so much time on his/her hands and an unlimited budget for equipment and over time, determined that in one average lifetime the heart had worked the equivalent of lifting 1 ton of weight 150 miles up into the air. That is way above the thermosphere; stratosphere you've heard before, so now you know there is this other layer of the earth's atmosphere.  We learn something every day, don't we? 

Of course, the heart is capable of other physiological wonders, too lengthy to list them all here. However, the heartbeat has one other attribute that may escape physiologists interests but clearly captured by every poet and romantic, oblivious to the physical and the physics of the circulatory system. The business of the heart is as much part of life as everything else. Sometimes to the exclusion of everything else. Ask the countless Romeos and Juliets out there. In every culture.  The heart too is figuratively at the heart of the business of greeting cards and the multi-million floral businesses for much of the year, that bursts into the annual event, almost coercively  in the western world - February 14.  A card, a dinner, a box of chocolate and a dozen or two of the reddest roses are the economic driver of the day.  It is the florist's equivalent of Black Friday in the U.S. - the day after Thanksgiving sale bonanza of the year. 

(Full disclosure*: I don't do the obligatory Valentine's Day. Somehow, I did an awfully good job of convincing my wife from way back when that I do not find one good reason to celebrate the affairs of the heart for a day when I do find it every day for 365 and 1/4 days of every year. It had been 48 years now and counting).   

So guys, you are welcome. But if and when you try it, summon every ounce of courage and sincerity you can muster!  You will need it. But I hope not too many will do it -  for the sake of Hallmark and the American Greetings Corp. and all the florists, restaurants and chocolatier out there.

Now, what has the heart got to do with romance?  Why is it the symbol for love? How did that become so?  Meanwhile, almost every conceivable way to express love is, among many other ways,  are these: 

First of all there is no agreement among those who researched the origin of all heart-related symbols, metaphorical or symbolic, as exactly when it all started.  Some say, the 1250's, others earlier than that while some say it was much much later. One speculation is that it came from the shape of a silphium seed of a variety of flowering plant. Ironically, it was supposed to have been used as an ancient herbal contraceptive.  Who knows, really.

And why this?

"A heart pierced by a Cupid's arrow means that when someone presents a heart, the person takes the risk of being rejected and feeling hurt. Piercing arrow therefore symbolizes death and vulnerability of love. Some people also believe that the heart and arrow symbolizes the uniting of male and a female".

And you all collectively say, many of you anyway, "Whatever?"

Some suggest, it should be the brain. That is where all the thinking originates; where emotions get generated. But what about the sage who said, "Love and thinking don't go together". And, what kind of an image can be conjured by two halves of whitish/grayish tissue; colorless almost and for all intents and purposes - one motionless 3-pound mass that looks like one white, balled up, crumpled paper mache? Or two halves of a cauliflower?  Actually, somewhat eerily, do you notice half a cauliflower looks just like a dissected half of a brain?



Forget all of that.

Let's go back for a bit more to the physiology of the heart. The heart would like to remind us that it is this indefatigable organ that gives life to all our body parts. It will tirelessly beat about 60-70 times a minute and in that time it will have pumped 5-6 quarts of blood or 2,000 gallons each day, without missing a single body part that needs it. If it misses one, it can mean one little trouble or a huge one, depending on which part.  The brain gets  15% of the heart's output but a lot more, 20%, goes through the kidney at any moment and, by the way, the heart itself gets its delivery of blood the same way other parts of the body get theirs.  Yes, the heart is an equal opportunity provider but something blocks the blood flow to it and it is great trouble!

If it has not been made clear to you, read up on it, talk to your doctor: exercise, eat "wisely" (whatever that means but clearly not always what tastes good or just deliciously sweet) but take care of your heart.  Listen to it. It talks to you at one beat per second. 

So, take care of your heart.  If you are lucky, your heart will have produced 3.5 billion beats in your lifetime. I'll save you the few keystrokes on your calculator. 3.5 billion heartbeats mean that you had just celebrated your 95th birthday.  And the one and only reason you got there is because your heart kept beating. So, at any age treat it kindly.


              

 


"With a healthy heart the beat goes on".


* My wife's birthday is on Feb. 18, so unsold plants that include orchids in their fancy pots, still embellished  with flamboyant bright ribbons are 50% off, boxes of chocolate are heavily discounted, and there might be left over fresh flowers kept fresh in see-through refrigerators at the florist's shop. Restaurants will by that time be begging to take reservations. Now, you know.