Windmills of Your Mind?

People around the world will easily associate windmills or images of it, like the one below, with Holland or anything Dutch, from landscape artwork, photos, postcards, etc.  Readers past high school literature are also reminded of Don Quixote. At one time in Holland's history there were more than 10,000 fully functioning windmills used to pump water, run all kinds of rotary and pulley driven machines and later on as a source to power electric generators. Today, meticulously preserved for posterity and as tourist attractions there are only 1200 of them left and one day each May the Dutch observes National Windmill Day.

It is believed that as early as 2000 BC windmills had been used to pump water and grind grains.

Today, another image is more ubiquitous. It is the tri-bladed wind turbine that is more imposing than the old windmills for sheer size and height. The largest wind turbine in the world can be found in Hawaii. It is 20 stories tall at its hub and each blade is the length of a football field.  Data from 2015 showed that the 114 windmills in Hawaii produced 6.4% of its total electrical energy needs. 

But first, as a way of acknowledgement, let me recognize the French composer Michel Legrand's musical score of "Windmills of Your Mind" and lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman and the original vocalist, Noel Harrison, who sang the Oscar winning song from "The Thomas Crown Affair" that starred Steve McQueen. There, I won't feel bad or guilty about borrowing it as a title for this musing.  By the way, Andy Williams was the first choice to sing it but he declined. However, the much beloved crooner who passed away a while back is instead well known for his signature song, "Moon River".

I digressed.

So, wind turbines it is, for the idle mind to ponder. What do we make of the data accumulated thus far?  We will not make this an either/or debate for or against wind turbines. But we owe it to ourselves to know the hub and rotor blades - faces of the same .. 

"As the images unwind, like the circles that you find                                   In the windmills of your mind!"

The Economics of Wind Turbines 

1. The largest turbines built, so far, can harness energy to power 600 homes in England.

2. Wind turbines on average will operate at 35-65% (onshore-offshore, respectively) of their theoretical maximum capacity because wind changes in strength and direction on  a daily basis.

3. MidAmerican Energy announced they were about to build the tallest wind turbine in the US, a 2.3 MW 554 foot tall (with 173 foot blade extended) about the same as the Washington Monument. The Hawaiian turbine will look like its little brother.

4. Money Making Machine

Note to consider only the 35-65 % of capacity. 100% is only theoretical. 

5. "In 2017, wind energy made up about 6.3 percent of the United States’ total electricity generation, according to the Energy Information Administration. That’s compared with about 30 percent each for coal and natural gas and 20 percent for nuclear energy. At 7.5 percent, hydropower contributed the most out of any renewable source. Solar energy made up only 1.3 percent".

6. "The general rule-of-thumb for wind farm spacing is that turbines are about 7 rotor diameters away from each other. So an 80-meter (262-foot) rotor would need to be 560 meters -- more than a third of a mile -- from adjacent turbines. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have proposed that twice as much spacing would increase overall efficiency".

So,

What Does It Take To Harness Wind Power In Lieu Of Oil? 

1.  I calculated that each turbine will need 1.5 acres of land based on the above recommendation.  A "grand total of 1,642,000 turbines will be needed to replace oil over the next 50 years". That is assuming that the turbines operate at 100% capacity, which they will not.

Just for grins, I calculated that 1.6 million turbines will require a land area (or water, offshore) of 3,854 square miles.  That will be about the size of the state of Rhode Island. It will be silly, of course, to place all of them in one place because they will need to be spread out across the globe to be close to the consuming household that will need electricity.

2. "A 2 MW (megawatt) wind turbine weighs 1688 tons: 1300 tons concrete, 295 tons steel, 48 tons iron, 24 tons fiberglass, 4 tons copper, .4 tons neodymium, .065 tons dysprosium and more (Guezuraga 2012; USGS 2011).. an average house weighs: from 72 to 104 tons.  So each 2 MW wind turbine weighs as much as 23 homes."

3. Wind power is renewable. Keep in mind though that the wind turbine itself is not because each one has a life span of 25 years maximum based on current estimates although there is not enough data at the moment. Furthermore, maintenance on average is about $45-50,000 annually.

4. "Assuming a normal lifetime of a wind turbine, about 5 pounds of steel, fiberglass, and other materials are needed to generate 1 megawatt hour (MWh) of electricity. If you include the concrete foundation, the weight jumps up to 25 pounds per MWh." It is not a trivial matter to consider, especially that current refineries, pipelines, all peripheral infrastructures are  all "sunk" costs already - producing energy.  Furthermore, to get rid of them will mean abatement costs that are difficult to assess or contemplate at the moment.

5. If people around the world - governments, scientific establishments and financial institutions - will put their mind to it, it is conceivable that fossil fuel sources of energy can be replaced by renewable energy. The question is the will and at what expense.

Things to Consider:

A. An inventory of different kinds of fossil energy source must be maintained because: (1) hospitals and building complexes will permanently need diesel or natural gas powered engines for emergency power in case electricity goes out for any reason; (2) For national defense, tanks, jet engines, all military transports will need fossil fuel (diesel and aviation fuel). Even nuclear submarines have emergency diesel engines in case of reactor failure. (3) For all general services, fire trucks and emergency vehicles  and excavation and mining equipment will need fossil fuel. (4).  For general transportation, intercontinental air travel, container and cruise ships, excavations, heavy rail transport, etc., fossil fuel is still necessary. (5). To maintain that relatively miniscule inventory, a "skeleton" oil extraction and refining infrastructure must be maintained at tremendous cost. 

B. Civic duty and responsibility ought to be tempered with an open mind. There will always be a Greta Thunberg, sincere proponents of every conceivable cause but there must always be a pragmatic view requirement from each of us to make wise decisions toward anything perceived to be harmful to the environment. Drastic, draconian measures must be restrained with real assessments free of emotions and semi-truths.

Facts and information may be consistent but, as always, it is often about the story. Or, who is able to tell the most convincing one.  It is about what can be spun to garner the most credibility. It is always a matter of which tales get the most credit or persuasive power, no pun intended. 

To Be or Not To Be

 "To be, or not to be: that is the question:"

"Now, seriously", the frog complained. "I can never be  but a frog. I wanted to be a prince from a fair lady's warm and lovely kiss but it is not to be. So, my dear old Billy, William is much too formal and too upper lip, let Hamlet's soliloquy, famous or not, remain where it belongs - bound in parchment or let its echoes be heard only by those who really understand it. Or, by the multitude who pretend they do".

"I yearn to be free of flies and slimy worms from my diet, but futility is all I have and, alas, what is there not to be but me ." Poor froggy muttered to himself in utter frustration.

Now, how about ..

Why not?

It is 2:00 a.m. A love-struck young man, stroking his chin was standing on the parking lot of one huge apartment complex.  Not too long earlier he just met the most beautiful young woman at a bar.  After a couple of drinks, they both agree to get to know each other more, somewhere away from the bar.  Since they both had their cars, the lady instructed him to just follow her and told him her address in case they got separated through traffic and  they drove off.

So, there he was, thank goodness she gave him her address because they did get separated.  But then ..

The young man can't seem to remember the apartment number she gave him. 

"2 B, or not 2 B or was it 2 D?", that was the pressing question. The poor young man was saying softly to himself, a lesser form of soliloquy, but clearly no less important as he tries to recollect freshman year, English 1, second semester.

"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles"

Indeed, what sea of troubles his night became, now faced only with .. 

No more; and by a sleep to say we end ..

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; .."

Diane Chambers from "Cheers" (reruns anyone?) said it best to explain why that young man forgot the address, "His hormones had staged a coup d'etat on his brain".

Our animal friends make no pretension about Shakespeare's odes or grammar that often borders on anachronism.

A not too hungry lion one  late afternoon as the setting sun was about to bid goodbye to  the denizens of the plains of Serengeti decided to engage in a conversation with an adult wildebeest busy re-chewing half-digested grass.

"Let me ask you something", the lion said, startling the surprised wildebeest.  "I will ask this as delicately as I can. Have you ever considered becoming a meat eater?"

"You want me to be a carnivore, like you? That is the question?", the incredulous wildebeest replied with two questions of its own.

The lion ignored the questions and said, "Well, you could be spending more time, napping, resting, eat only once in a while, sometimes just once in a week, twice at most.  Instead of spending all of your waking hours munching on grass and chewing your cud till into the wee hours. And that's everyday.  What kind of life is that?"

"First of all, I ruminate on my nourishment because I am of the species known to biologists as ruminants. Our food does not run away from us and we never hurry when we eat and least bit concerned about hyenas stealing it from us"..

"Yeah, right, and you trek many hundreds of miles twice a year to find your green pastures across rivers where crocs await and tall fields filled with hyenas and wild dogs and other inferior cats.  You go one way, come back the same way and again go through it again every year of your life", the lion smirked

To which, ignoring the lion's shallow analysis, the wildebeest continued, "Second of all, we get to travel, see the sights, our ladies give birth all at the same time before we head back when the calves are strong enough.  Despite every brute that prey on us we are still millions strong.  While you number  a mere handful in every ten thousand acres of land. You call yourself king? In your life, To be king or not to be king is what, four maybe five years tops till a stronger lion or two of them brothers come along and take your ladies? You're lucky if you can retire".

Both agreed to disagree.  The lion said, "So long for now, maybe next time we see each other we'll have you for dinner".

What a morbid farewell from the lion. The macabre parting shot, was not lost on the wildebeest.  It knew what the lion meant. To be or not to be a lion's meal, that is the question. 

"To be, or .. wait a minute!"

A young lady contemplating something about a book report on English literature 101, was pulling her hair out, figuratively speaking only, of course, and she was confused.  "Why do I have to be, or not to be? Are those my only two options? Why can't I just be like so pretty, so happy and like popular in this or that and a lot more.  To be or not to be is so limiting, so confining and so like depressingly unreal".

Unreal? Not to the chicken that was minding its own business at one side of the road when a car screeched to an abrupt stop.  A tourist got out and approached the chicken. "My wife would like to ask you a question.  She'd like to know, if you don't mind of course, if you'd cross the road, and when you get there, please tell us why you did".

"You want me to be on the other side of the road and answer your question?"

"Right!"

"Would you ask your wife to come out of the car , please?"

"She'd rather not, no. You see we are sightseeing, enjoying the scenery and then we saw you.  What an opportunity to test the  age old theory about, you know, you crossing the road and all that".

The chicken replied, "Let me quote from my favorite English poet because I think if you listen carefully, you will have your answer".

"The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all" ..,

"And I'll tell you why I won't cross the road.  See that nice café over there on the other side of the road? A block or so beyond it is a chicken coop. I escaped from there a few years ago.  I suggest, since you look famished, you go over there to the café and you and the misses have a nice country-style grilled steak dinner. And you'll have the answer to your question there".

The tourists obliged, so the husband maneuvered their car over the other side of the road and went inside.  The tourists can't wait to ask the hostess who met them with a menu and ready to seat them. "Tell me something. Do you know there's a talking chicken from across the road over there", the husband asked.

The young smiling hostess,  said, "Oh, yeah. She is part owner of this restaurant."

The chicken from across the road had another quote she just remembered,

"When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
The Oppressor's wrong, the proud man's Contumely ..,"

Note: Full disclosure to the readers and literary critics all, the Shakespeare quotes are real, the rest I made them all up.  I quoted the Diane Chamber's quote from memory and she may have said it with more alacrity. And no animals were hurt during the writing of this musing.

The Vigil of the Lonely

It is a hut. A small one. Probably less than forty square meters, which is the entire room that serves as bedroom, dining, kitchen all in one. The bathroom is the size not much larger than the old fashion telephone booth, for those who remember or know what they are. The only luxury is running water.  One faucet in the kitchen, one in the bathroom. Electricity, unpaid for months, had been cut off. The room is also the receiving area and family room.  Neither feature means anything anymore to the eighty nine year old lady sitting on a rickety rocking chair by one of only two windows.  She does not have  a family to speak of  nor is there anyone to visit her except for a middle age postal worker who comes once every two weeks who brings from time to time whatever food, mostly canned goods and week-old bread she can carry in her mail bag, mostly from the local charity chapter of a non-profit organization. The unpaid "social worker"  does it out of her own time and on her dime.  She had seen enough of these elderly people - alone and often unseen - during the last twenty three years while working for the local post office. A young family man who lives half a kilometer down the road heard the story from the postal lady so he comes at regular intervals to cut firewood for the old lady. He also brings kerosene for the one portable lamp. Both good Samaritans wonder how often the old lady gets to eat a warm meal, lately. The wood-fired stove does not look like it has been used much, recently.

                       

It is not an imagined scene nor is it an isolated case. The elderly living alone is a growing phenomenon. The saddest part is that single-person homes were just 10 per cent of total households for most of the 19th century around the world but now, the so-called modern era, it had almost exponentially rose to an alarming rate. In 2012, in Stockholm, Sweden, the number of household consisting of a single person was 60%, almost half of them occupied by old folks.

Would it have been different for that eighty nine year old lady if the little hut were a mansion?  Her life would be a little easier and comfortable, yes; but her loneliness would not be any less.  The mental anguish no less severe, the emotional need no less wanting.

You don't have to understand the entire chart below but be aware that each single dot represents the percentage of single households relative to all households.

I say, the biggest fear among the elderly is not about dying but living. Alone. 

Is it a third world only phenomenon? One might ask.  Far from it, actually. Third world population has a lower single household by far compared to first world countries and most ironically, wealthy nations have more of it.

Direct quote from World Data: "In the US, the share of adults who live alone nearly doubled over the last 50 years. This is not only happening in the US: single-person households have become increasingly common in many countries across the world, from Angola to Japan".

The biggest distress among the elderly from living alone is when no one comes to visit.  The longing for company, even at the briefest amount of time, is on top of their greatest of needs.  More than food itself, if we can believe that. 

Below is one alarming statistics.  Among those below 35 years old, suicide is the No. 2 cause of death. It is fourth in the 35-54 age group. By age 65 and over it is no longer in the top 10.

What does the data tell us? By age 65 and over the will to live and to go on living is well established in that age group. Those who had gotten past that age had gone through the entire natural cycle of life, having survived their youth, midlife, stayed relatively  healthy for the most part to have made it through, so far, and now mostly retired.  Even if not too financially wealthy, we cannot and should not ignore that they have the wealth of information and experience. Yet, by their age, they are ignored. 

The age group 25-35 registered the highest incidence of suicide.  Suicide, as explained by those in the mental health care, is not about killing oneself. It is about killing the pain that brings someone the heavy emotional load no longer bearable.

The elderly had survived all of the travails life had thrown at them.  They made it thus far.  They coped, they prevailed.

The antidote to dying young is to grow old. 

There is only one ticket on the train of life  doled out to each of us.  It is sad that some of the youth would give it up on their own and decide to cut the trip short.  The elderly are those who early on and much later in life decided to make full use of their ticket, not relinquishing their right to reach the utmost of what physically they can muster to reach their final destination.

This musing will not be of much value if it does not lead to the conversation about what  we of a certain age - we know who we are - can do to make the train ride at the later segment of our journey a little more comfortable, less alone, or simply feeling less alone, or find joy even during moments of being alone.  More importantly, what is it we can do for those among us already burdened by the heavy load of loneliness.

There are a lot of "worthy causes" in the world that come barging into our mailboxes, or brought to us on television, full of visual images and melancholic background music, each in need of our support.  Do you recall any TV ad of one non-profit, solely for the elderly, not predicated on the extent of how much their retirement money can afford?  How much do talk shows discuss the plight of the elderly? The elderly, the unseen, the ignored.  We can do more, give more to support their plight.  That is where charity money we can spare should go.  But what of us and what can we do for ourselves? The lady postal worker and middle age man in the first paragraph had done more per capita than what charity work can accomplish.

You are reading this because you live in the modern era that less than a century ago was only the figment of a science fiction writer's most outlandish imagination. We cook without fire in minutes, we reached out and can be reached from halfway around the world at the click of a mouse.  And since when did a mouse adorn our desks.

Via Skype and Zoom, to name just two, we have access to family members and friends willing to share the same electronic conduit to carry audio and video images in real time from anywhere to anywhere. Add to that emails via the internet and we have what little consolation modern society has to offer.  Even when physical hobbies are now beyond us we still have that one last thing where everything actually begins, where our entire being had all started.  That soft tissue not much heavier than three and a half pounds located between our ears is our last refuge. It is our fortress of solitude when solitude is forced upon us.  But that is getting ahead of ourselves.

Nursing homes are  places full of people but where one may feel alone.

It was the late Robin Williams who said,

“I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel alone”.      

-- Robin Williams

The elderly may be ignored but they do not have to ignore what the modern world has to offer. Ride shares like Uber and Lyft are a Godsend to the old and single who no longer want to drive.  Grocery stores now offer free delivery and free curb side service, and more and more restaurants will now deliver, gourmet food or none-to-fancy.  I do not want to over assume here but I am hopeful that soon  much of the world will have realized to focus services to those unfortunate to be living alone.  Governments must respond because the elderly is not only already a voting force and growing  but the latest survey shows that they, on average, have more financial wherewithal than Gen X's and Z's and Y's or whatever alphabetical distinctions young people go by these days.

There is much hope for single home dwellers.  More and more of those living alone are coping much better than their counterparts in nursing homes.  Tragically, many nursing home residents fared worst during the Covid 19 pandemic.  Isolation served the elderly living alone the most protection, extreme social distancing aside.

What follows here is all analogy, a metaphor perhaps.

A TV Western series, "Have Gun Will Travel", that ran from 1957 to 1963, was initially a radio serial turned  TV series that starred Richard Boone as Paladin, the perfect gentleman gunslinger who helped the wronged and the bullied who sought his help and "he was able to circumvent obstacles and achieve victory where it was seemingly beyond the reach of a mere mortal".

I said enough about the show.  The reader may want to read up on it some more and that is where  the reader, I surmise, must begin his or her quest, to embark on a journey, "Have Mind Will Travel".

This much we know.  The brain makes new connections every chance it gets, or rather, every opportunity if it is stimulated enough for its neurons and synapses to remain actively "fired up". 

Direct quotes:

"The dogma for the longest time was that adult brains couldn't generate any new brain cells. You just use what you were born with, says, "Dr. Amar Sahay, a neuroscientist with Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital. "But the reality is that everyone has the capacity to develop new cells that can help enhance cognitive functions."

"Everyone" in that quote includes everyone - the elderly included.  But there is a catch, apparently.  There are no free lunches.

Just watching TV and just reading passively are not the ticket.  What is it then? We ask. What if we are past the active physical hobbies, even wheelchair bound or just home bound, to take the extreme?

The mind.  Use it or lose it.  Not only that it is easy to use, it is the one that can pry open windows to the world from where we sit, our viewing and search options unlimited. But there's a catch. Use it actively, not passively, we're told, because it has capacity more powerful than the most massive hard drive in any computer.  That is why for the brain to be only 2-3 per cent of our body weight, it demands access to 25 % of  the entire energy we consume and subsequently utilize.

For this to work, we are told to keep our brain curious and stimulated as a child would. We're supposed to get our minds set to curiosity, whatever personally you want to engage in.  In today's day and age, would you like to wonder what it is like to be on the Trans-Siberia railroad, wander through the seaside of Nice, in France, what does the atom really look like, how does the loom work, how does Google work, what number is represented by 1 googol, how do bees and ants communicate, etc.  Just throwing everything out there and all of these are literarily out there - the www.dot world and on YouTube and TED Talk only mouse clicks away. The brain wants new stuff so don't get in the habit of sticking to the routine but to what is new to it, we are admonished.

Hand-eye coordination is something we learned hard to do early on in our infancy.  But did you know that was the age brain stimulation was its most active, ever?. Do handwriting again, if you are not already painting stuff, needle work, crochet or the crossword, etc. Even keystrokes as you compose whatever it is you want to write about are beneficial, and, surprisingly, more so to those who can't do touch-typing. Calligraphy is the ultimate hand eye activity where writing is concerned.

There is much to cover.  But what are you waiting for? Write today's diary, write to somebody, get your mind on an adventure to someplace you haven't been to before, from  your chair, wheeled or not, the kitchen table, because even to the immobile, electrons will still move at the speed of light to get you to places you have not been to or things you know little about but dying to know what or how.  "Dying to know" is the magnitude of intensity your brain wants.  So, do it.

Always remember though, there is more to the insatiable mind.  It is the process of keeping our mind constantly fed and excited, so we must use it or lose it.

There's more.  Its hard drive has more capacity than The Library of Congress.  Like the library we can share some of its contents and in return we must allow it to receive even more from others.  Then it will not be alone. 

 

The Future? It is All There Is

The future is all we can look forward to, that is all there is. What we know or see as reality which is the "now", the present moment, is fleeting and unrelentingly ephemeral.  We may relish and live for the moment but, alas, it moves at one second per second. Too deep?  Too cerebral?  Hardly, because when we think seriously about it,  what are we really talking about? The past, even a second ago, yesterday, our teenage years, are now all beyond reach.  The present moment we just talked about.  Remember? A few sentences ago?  All we have left, ever always, is the future.

Sixty seven million years ago and for all of 160 million years before it, the dinosaurs ruled the entire planet and had much to look forward to.  Then, in a flash, literally, an asteroid struck what is now the Yucatan peninsula.  Just a day before that the dinosaurs had at least another 67 million years - from then to the present era - to look forward to.  That one event forever changed everything.  Today, dinosaurs can sometimes only be associated with the cliché to describe a long gone usefulness of anything past its prime.

Familiar?  Oh, yes.  An up and coming politician, or a newly minted multimillionaire, a rising executive on the way up the corporate totem pole, or one charismatic religious leader, or many a personality at the pinnacle of achievement, or anything so popular and sought after, then an asteroid struck, figuratively speaking. A sex scandal, a corrupt business strategy unraveled, a new invention that rendered one gizmo past its utility, etc. and everything ended. An asteroid struck!

The future, untouched and yet to become the present, is pristine territory, untarnished, unblemished,  is ineluctably all that we and ever will have. Everybody willing to ponder it, has it. The future is the home of hope, the unopened box of dreams, the repository of our wishes, the clean parchment upon which we could write what will have come out of all our aspirations, our five year plan, or ten or twenty, or what little time we think we have left, it is also the landscape upon which our retirement shall be painted of many vivid colors, where we are free to move around or do whatever we want to do. That is until it becomes now, today, and soon only to be patches of our memory.

That might seem a fatalistic view if one focuses only on the inevitable and not what paves the path upon which we all must travel. We should not set our eyes only on what awaits us in the final destination because that is a mere point, an instance no more important nor dreadful than all the points along the way and byways we call life.

There is much to rejoice over what is yet to come.  Every slice of what seems like a hastened moment of the present is to be enjoyed, the pages of moments past merely a reference for lessons learned and recollections of joyful experiences, an unwritten journal of how we lived and how well we've affected others with whom we shared our lives.

Much too often we are told that our lives are like a roll of film, each frame a moment.  If it were so, it means that we can roll everything backwards!  But no, because it is impossible to go back in time, books and B-movies not withstanding.  There is no do over and there is no going backwards, mulligans are prohibited.

My view of the passage of time is this.  I imagine each slice of reality a very thin membrane, each  one from an infinite number of playing cards standing upright like dominoes. A moment passes and one card membrane falls forward to topple the next one, like in dominoes.  Each fallen membrane, the past second or moment, is irretrievably gone, a memory and never to stand upright again.  There is an infinite number of fallen cards behind - one event at a time, collated to make up a history. In front, an array of infinite number of strings of upright membrane-cards, spread out like a spider web of infinite strands, each a probability of what is yet to come.  The future landscape is exactly that - arrays of separate rows of upright membranes that make up the future - filled with all sorts of possibilities, sets of probabilities.  As one card topples over, only one of the probabilities, and only one, may occur, to collapse into a single real event. Not one moment too soon, the "present event" becomes a moment ago - never to be retrieved, only remembered.

It is from that definition that I say, "The future is all that we have".  But that doesn't mean it is a free lunch.  That future will be shaped by events caused to occur for each of us, either by our own doing or by others or by what happens to be outside of our control.  

Again, fatalistic?  No, because it is often said, and I believe it, that it is not so much what just happened but how well we react to any event that comes our way.  It could be a sweet flowing stream of joyous occasions or a thundering herd of problems or bad news barreling down our path. Which ever it is, we are tested at how well we take happy moments or how well we deal with adversity.  

Where ever we are at this point in our lives until we get to our final destination, there are still an infinite number of cards yet to be dealt and dealt with.  

Forget re-living the past, revising it or in any way alter parts of it to comfort or assuage ourselves because those fallen pieces are best left alone.  Remember them, to learn from their passage or relish the memory of joyous times but never re-living them.  The pieces had fallen.  Focus on the infinite number of upright cards in front of us.  It will serve as well to train our thoughts and actions at which card we prefer to fall next.  In a way, that is how we control what fallen cards we leave behind.

But what if we are left without a choice but forced to take the one and only option in front of us, you ask. Yes, that could happen. Of course, there is the question of how did one get to be caught in such a predicament, in the first place?  Often, by stern self-examination done in earnest, one finds that he or she had total control of what future cards he or she allowed to fall.  The good news is that, more readily than one may expect, the upright cards in front of us, are still more than enough to get us back on the right array of potential alternatives.  That is because only the future  still has the upright cards of hope or kindling to start the fiery wishes or aspirations long forgotten or set aside.

When each of our stories is told, it will always be about what future cards we picked and allowed to fall forward in time.  And ..

"There is no real ending. It's just the place where you stop the story."

-Frank Herbert

"Our story may have any number of endings but its start is a singular choice we make today."

-Faisal Khosa

Future cards are all we have; choose wisely.

When Numbers Lie and When They Don't

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Lucia de Berk, a Dutch licensed pediatric nurse was convicted of seven  murders and three attempted homicide, and subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment in 2006. What was extraordinarily intriguing about the case, if not alarmingly so, was that only in two of the cases were supported by circumstantial evidence in the eyes of the court while the rest was based on what is called chaining-evidence argument by the prosecution.

"This means that if the several attempted or actual murders have already been established beyond reasonable doubt, then much weaker evidence than normal is sufficient to establish that a subsequent eight "suspicious incidents" are murders or attempted murders carried out by the same defendant".

The prosecution used mathematics - more specifically the scope and power of statistics - that argued that the "chance of a nurse working at the three hospitals being present at the scene of so many unexplained deaths and resuscitations is one in 342 million".

As it turned out, in this case, the numbers were misused by the prosecutors while the science of statistics was blatantly misapplied. It was a miscarriage of justice; rectified only after a long process of reviews and re-analysis of the data that were compiled and the methodology used to convict her. The case was re-opened.  In 2007 she was fully exonerated and compensated for by the government.

Why did this miscarriage of justice happen? Did the numbers lie at first and told the truth later? Actually, numbers do not lie. Never. People do. However, numbers can be and had been manipulated, misapplied or selectively abused to favor one conclusion or sway opinions or, as in the case of Ms. de Berk, win a conviction. It is people who lie. 

There is so much about numbers but let's first focus on the Good, The Bad and The Ugly about it

The Good

Numbers, when applied properly, can project unerringly the results of a fair election long before the final tally. While predicting the weather is often made fun of, there is a method to the madness of forecasting rain or no rain.  When we hear the forecast of 70% chance of rain and it doesn't, it has nothing to do with inaccuracy.  You see, what it meant is that given 100 days on past meteorological records with the same set of conditions being observed and measured for the following day or week, in 70 of such days rain occurred while in 30 of those same 100 days rain did not happen. So, when it didn't rain the forecast was still correct. Our brain only considered rain or no rain without taking into account that the forecast actually and clearly said 70% but only so because in thirty of those days with similar conditions there was not a drop of rain.

The birthday paradox works a little bit differently but it is often met with the same incredulity.  It says that in a room of 23 random guests the odds that two people will have the same birthday is 50-50. Quite high, you say. Increase the number of guests to 75 and the odds go up to 99.9%, a near certainty.  It had been proven many times to be true.  You see, we erroneously think of two specific or particular birthdays of two particular individuals.  When we think simply of two unspecified people and two unspecified birthdays, the odds are higher than we intuitively think.

SO, numbers do not lie. That's good.

The Bad

A particular grocery item languished and unbought for sometime at a posted price of $1.50 each.  The store manager one day put all the unsold merchandise in an open bin in the middle of the isle or intersections of the isles, arranged in a disorderly tumbled mound and labeled Two for $3.00 SALE!  Would you believe they sold faster than had they remained on the shelves?  You'd wonder what happened to the discriminating customers who had avoided those same items all along.  Those are not what the store manager counted on.  He targeted those "not-so-discriminating" buyers who were swayed by the 2-for SALE. 

Lottery is the modern day siren song of the unattainable dream. But what about those who actually won?  But then what about those millions and millions who didn't? And what of those who spend an inordinate amount of their meager income on the odds of 1 in 292.2 million?

• One in 2,320,000 chance of being killed by lightning
• One in 3,441,325 chance of dying after coming into contact with a venomous animal or plant
• One in 10 million chance of being struck by falling airplane parts

Feeling unlucky? If one does not believe that any of the three above potential events will happen to them in their lifetime, why does one think 1 in 292.2 million is a good bet?

The Ugly

According to FBI data there were about 10 million police arrests last year.

"Out of those 10 MILLION arrests, there were 1,004 officer-involved fatalities

Out of those 1,004 officer-involved fatalities, 41 were unarmed.

Out of those 41-officer involved unarmed fatalities (now you might find it hard to believe), out of 41 deaths, now hear this.."

 19 were white - 9 were black

Now 1 is 1 too many, but  41 out of 10 million is a pretty small percentage! (.00041%).

Numbers don't lie but politicians may and do it often with nary a moment of encumbrance nor accountability. You see, if we listen to some of them there is an "epidemic of police killing of unarmed black suspects", or according to one congresswoman, "blacks are being hunted down like dogs by police".  One school teacher in a traffic stop for using her cell phone in a no-cell-phone zone near a school berated the policeman and told him that he and others like him (police) "are a bunch of murderers".

In that same period, last year, 89 police officers were killed in line of duty. 

We hardly hear about them nor their sacrifices.

Numbers don't lie.  People do.

Everyone who heard of Lucia de Berk's story and her conviction only had revulsion and anger at what "she had done" at the time. But, how many of us later knew about what really happened?  I didn't know about it until recently listening to a lecture on TV by a renowned physicist as he explained the power of mathematics and the misuse of it.

Numbers are fundamental to the nature of the universe itself.  Humanity cannot claim to have invented numbers, nor can it take credit for inventing mathematics either.  We (humans) merely discovered them. You see, whether we are here or not, one is always less than two, or that our solar system has one sun orbited by eight or nine planets (depending on your definition of a planet), and that a typical galaxy has anywhere from 100 to 200 billion stars and there could be as many as a trillion of those galaxies in the entire universe.

A circle will always have its area defined by its  radius squared multiplied by an inviolable  constant that we also discovered to be pi. We did not invent that either.

Light will always travel at about 186,000 miles per second.  Unfortunately, bad information, gossip, innuendos, politicians' lies and the woke population's ridiculous "ban this, ban that, cancel this or that", also seem to travel at the same speed.  And the worst part is that some of the worst lies travel to much distances that originate from the very few.

Next time you hear it said and you have doubts that it isn't so, remember Numbers don't lie, people do.

A Sunrise and a Sunset at a Time

 

"Goodbyes hurt the most when the story was not finished."

                                                                                           ----- Anonymous       

I recently bid goodbye to a friend.  About two weeks ago a stroke, followed by another while at the hospital took its toll that put him on life support.  A week later, his family brought him home.  When I got there, his wife, her eyes swollen, only barely able to speak above a whisper as she greeted me, was at his bedside holding his right hand.  His sister was by his left side, stroking his face and head with a small damp towel.  His youngest son, just out of college was there as well. His labored breathing filled the quiet room. His eyes were closed and I don't think he could hear anything anymore.

I've known Tim for twenty five years. We worked at two separate companies that did business with each other. We remained friends because we shared a common bond beyond the commercial interests of our companies. I was already deep into woodworking as a hobby.  He wanted to get into it.  That's how it began. 

The message of the quote above has so many facets in it. Goodbyes always hurt.  When parents say goodbye and mourn the loss of a child, the  anguish is incomprehensibly painful for anyone to endure. It defies the orderly sequence of life. 

Tim's dad is 104 years old.  Tim - just a few months younger than I - was yet to celebrate his 75th birthday.  Tim did not talk openly about it but he had every reason to believe that he had much to look forward to before his story was finished. His mom passed away in her late-nineties just a few years ago. Everyone who knew Tim understood why he went about planning a lot of things.  Genetics was on his side. His dad is not only a navy veteran of WWII in the Pacific, he is a prostate cancer survivor.  

About four years ago Tim was diagnosed with lung cancer.  He never smoked.  There are no early symptoms for lung cancer until it is already in stage 1 or worse. Tim was experiencing shortness of breath, chronic fatigue and unexplained weight loss. A mass that tested malignant was found in one of his lungs. The good news is that Houston has some of the best cancer care facilities in the world.  Immunotherapy, a new medical breakthrough, hailed as the latest alternative to chemotherapy, was tried on Tim. Lo and behold the mass that was already the size of a tennis ball went away after a regimen of immunotherapy. His cancer went on remission but he had to undergo regular testing and check up that  routinely became  part of his life.

Tim had plans.  I thought he had more than what a typical  25 year old has, or anyone going through mid-life.  But he was not in a hurry nor felt as if he was pressed for time, or that time could run out on him.  He built a new house next to where his dad lives.  Next to it was a huge barn-size structure that he made into a giant workshop although it was more than just for wood projects.  He had equipped one area to service automotive and farm equipment in addition to what later was going to be a full fledge woodworking shop.  There is a pneumatic lift similar to a service bay at a mechanic's garage.  The air filter and a ductwork was well laid out. I have only seen the photos and I had plans to visit later this summer or fall. Tim had repeatedly invited me and my wife to visit.

Mississippi is a little over six hours by car from Houston. His dad owns a large acreage of farm land and forested area of hardwood trees.  Tim himself had over many years accumulated large acreage of his own - also deeply forested and farm land next to his dad's property. He would go back and forth countless of times from  Mississippi to his Houston condo. His wife, who still works, makes that home for the two of them. So, Tim who always exuded with positive attitude and a determination to go on with life split his time between Mississippi and Houston.  

For a cancer survivor Tim carried on with a heavy schedule.  He did not completely leave the oil industry because he still did consulting work while at the same time attended to the farm and forest management of his land, and looking after his dad's welfare. Fortunately, his dad, a living centenarian, manages to do relatively well, considering that most folks way younger than him are already in nursing homes or in assisted living conditions. Tim, aside from making regular trips back and forth for the tests and check ups he needed to have, still had time to visit with friends here and there, often accompanied by his dog.  He often would bring pieces of hardwood he would load on his truck for me. I have enough to work on for a very long time.

Tim had much to hope for.  His attitude was very much that of someone looking forward to all the sunrises he believed were still in front of many waking hours he expected to have.  We cannot blame him.  His dad is a cancer survivor.  

Just weeks ago, the cancer came back. It spread quickly.  The stroke was from a brain hemorrhage. The cancer spread so rapidly Tim's immune system was overwhelmed.  

Since that day I said goodbye to him, it was two more sunsets and two sunrises later before I received a text from his wife, "He just left us".

Every earth-bound inhabitant - plants and animals alike - is bound by time sandwiched between sunrise and sunset every twenty four hours. From dawn to dusk, the brightening of light and the intensity of it by mid-day and the waning to a multicolored hue in another few hours, are  what goes in between the bookends of everyday.  Each day a page, pages make a book, and for all of us fortunate indeed to complete a book, the sunrises and sunsets when tallied and bound together are what life is all about.

The most important thing to remember is that each of us gets the same allotment of time between each sunrise and each sunset.  However thin or thick a book each of us ultimately puts together, what counts is how well we spend the time between each sunrise and each sunset.  Every page is one sunrise and one sunset at a time. I believe Tim had completed his book. 

P.S. In 2016 I wrote about "Twilight" which some of you, who may not have read or just want to read it again, hopefully will find solace:

https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2016/09/twilight.html

 

 

In Awe of Flora

Flora, in this case, is not the Spanish lady's first name.  It is flora as in :

"flo·ra 1. (Botany) all the plant life of a given place or time 2. (Botany) a descriptive list of such plants, often including a key for identification .."

We, elephants, whales, minnows, polar bears, coyotes, earthworms, fleas and termites and every life form in between - all air-breathing animals - belong to half of a pair that defines the two general classifications of living organisms on this planet: flora and fauna. This follows my last musing, "CO2", and this is one of the ways to pay homage to all plant life. Without them as co-dependent, life would be unsustainable for every air breathing organism.   

But..

 "Which was here first: plants or animals?"

Quick answer is: Plants preceded animals by 60 million years !!

The long answer: For three billion years our world was populated by nothing more than single-celled life forms.  It was only half a billion years ago that multicellular organisms came into being. Then about 450 millions before us, arthropods - animals with segmented body parts similar to what insects and simple crustaceans have - dominated the landscape. But in a flash, by geological standards, they became extinct.

After that mass extinction that killed off the arthropods, "Modern" era plants, vegetation permeated the entire earth.  It was 60 million years later when tetrapods -  aquatic dwelling four-limbed creatures that breathe air either through gills or rudimentary lungs - came into being. 

From that point on, the beauty and wonders of creation unfolded to fulfil the inevitability and resiliency of life in all its diversity and every species' unwavering determination to survive, adapt and evolve. Whatever is the reader's inclination: a belief in the mystery and existence of a higher power that is the Creator or to not believe at all or straddle the fence of agnosticism, one must, however, acknowledge that for one of these organisms to rise above all the others and develop the intelligence to ponder these things, one must be in awe that however long it took, the wonders of creation are all around us, yet only we are equipped to understand it.  Not completely, of course, but at least we have the ability to peel one layer at a time the nature of our world that predates us by billions of years. 

And plants not only pre-dated us and all the other air breathing creatures, they prepared the landscape to be habitable and conducive to an almost never ending processes of evolution that to this day continues.  In addition to that, plants continue to convert the sun's energy into packets of nutrients for all the other organisms.  Indirectly, plants allow us to use the sun's energy to sustain us.  Here's how:

By now, readers of my musings will have long known my defense of what seems an almost indefensible stance - standing up for the most maligned compound on this planet - carbon dioxide and its single element that is carbon. I have my own good reasons. Carbon dioxide is what sustains plants.  Plants sustain us.  The inevitable cycle that connects flora and fauna had gone on for eons.  

There is an extremely high probability that one of the oxygen atoms that was  in about 400 milliliters of air you inhaled from the one breath you took just now was the same one that was in a gulp of air that T-Rex or some ancient bird took millions of years ago. It could also have been one of two oxygen atoms that was in CO2 absorbed by some Jurassic fern or algae, recycled many trillions of times over and over up to the moment it entered your lungs a moment ago. And then only to be part of a waste-compound that is CO2, once again, which you are about to expel through your nostrils or mouth. Then it starts all over again and again, ad infinitum.  Even while at rest - sitting down reading this - your respiratory system processed 360 liters of air in one hour.  After one 24-hour day, you expelled 2 pounds of carbon dioxide.

Yes, every breath you take is recycled material. Actually, we are from recycled material. Every species that ever lived and each of its descendants into the future will continue to be made up of recycled material. 

Genesis 3:19

"By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

In fact, the iron in your blood, the calcium in your bones go way back long before the solar system was created.

Here is something to think about.

Going by the Biblical accounts of the first chapter in the Book of Genesis are a narration of the sequence of creation that practically mirrors the order of development defined in cosmology, geology and biology supported by fossil records and other observations. 

Biblical symbolisms and allegories aside, a careful look into the sequence of creation will point to an uncanny similarity with the order of fossil evidence. Plants were created on the third day, air breathing creatures on the fifth day, while humans - represented by Adam and Eve - did not come about until the sixth day.  

11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 

12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.”  

21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.

 

23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.

If there can ever be one thing that both believers in the Biblical account and those who only rely on scientific evidence can agree on is that plants came first.  They can also agree on the supposition that perhaps plants came first to prepare the environment for airbreathing organisms to emerge, to survive and to flourish.

Both sides can also agree that life as we know it today is forever linked to the seemingly convenient arrangement for both flora and fauna to not only  coexist but to be co-dependents with each other

We must therefore be in awe of flora.

We must be in awe of the powers of the Creator and the wonders of creation.