Wandering Elephants

A herd of elephants traipsing through southwest China has captured the imagination of millions.

Monitored by hundreds of police officers assisted by drones, the massive animals reached Kunming in southern Yunnan province earlier this week after traveling some 300 miles from their native nature reserve, state-owned media reported.

Adam Chang was hired to deliver corn and pineapples to the elephants, which on average stand 11 feet tall and weigh 11,000 lbs.

He said what he saw was amazing.

“I saw them picking apart the corn with their trunks,” he told NBC News over the messaging and social media app WeChat.

“They are just so much more lively than those I saw in the zoo. It almost felt as if they had a holy aura around them,” he said.

While news of their migration has spread across China and gone viral online, with many expressing wonder and fascination, experts warned that this rare journey could indicate the inevitable and damaging consequences of human encroachment on the elephants’ natural habitat.

The herd reached Kunming on June 2, despite efforts from police to lure them back home. The animals took their time crossing what would have been busy thoroughfares, eating and stumbling into irrigation ditches before going to sleep in woods nearby.

After trending on social media in late May, many netizens were awestruck, while some complained about the destruction left in their wake.

Jason Cao, owner of a Yunnan mining company contracted by the government to deliver their feed, said he didn’t think the damage they caused was serious.

“Elephants are holy animals that can bring fortune and peace in Chinese culture, so we are very happy the elephants came,” he said.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Crime and Violence

We have had the second amendment since 1776 and while this amendment is designed for law abiding citizens, any half way intelligent person knows that criminals are going to find a way to provide themselves with weapons...  and, if the government and other reasonable people think that making it more difficult to own firearms is going to cut down on shooting deaths, then perform a GOOGLE search and see how easy it is to find step by step directions on how to make a bomb.

If a crazy person wants to kill people for whatever reason, would you rather have those deaths be the result of a bomb explosion or bullets from a semi-automatic weapon?

Personally, I don't want either to happen but how do you think AMERICA is doing on its war with illegal drugs?

Why do Americans purchase more illegal drugs than anywhere else in the world?

We have all sorts of police forces and narcotics squads trying to stop the flow of illegal drugs and yet those people who want them always find a way to procure them...  

Should we do away with the police because they cannot stop crime?

HUMAN NATURE dictates that the more you tell me that I cannot do something the more I am going to want to do it...

Right now, our police department is perceived as being NO LONGER APPROPRIATE to regulate Americans in cities...  but, those complaints are coming from BLACK AMERICANS not WHITE AMERICANS.  It would appear that WHITES have no problems with police and BLACKS have a problem with police because they perceive that LAW ENFORCEMENT (including both whites and blacks) are RACIALLY PROFILING them.

SO...  why is a black law enforcement person, RACIALLY PROFILING another black person?

There are ENLIGHTENED POLITICIANS called LIBERAL DEMOCRATS who believe that if we pour a ton of money into our cities and give blacks a better place to live, better education, better healthcare, and a reason to grow up successful, that it will reduce crime, especially in our inner cities.

HELL...  I think it is worth a try...  and, we should with all due haste dismantle our police departments and use that money to give blacks more opportunities.  Perhaps, we should give them THE EXACT SAME OPPORTUNITIES that the blacks perceive the whites received automatically.  NOT MORE...  just the same.

WHAT DO WE DO WITH ALL THE LAID OFF LAW ENFORCEMENT employees?

Who gives a shit about them...  we just care about BLACKS...

It is important for BLACKS TO PERCEIVE that WHITE AMERICA EMBRACES them in the same way that it has embraced whites...  except, the embracing that this country does is not for EVERY WHITE...  just the WEALTHY WHITES...

Living in a Utopia

A utopia is an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens.  The term was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island society in the south Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South America. The opposite of a utopia is a dystopia, which dominates the fictional literature from the 1950s onwards, chiefly because of the impact of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). 

However, the term can also denote actual experiments in what participants regard as a vastly superior manner of living, generally in what are termed intentional communities. In common parlance it is synonymous with "impossible", "far-fetched", and "deluded".

Literary utopias focus on, amongst other things, equality, in such categories as economics, government and justice, with the method and structure of proposed implementation varying based on ideology.  

 Lyman Tower Sargent argues that the nature of a utopia is inherently contradictory because societies are not homogeneous and have desires which conflict and therefore cannot simultaneously be satisfied. SOURCE:  Wikipedia

The television series Star Trek was based upon a Utopia under the control of a ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT:   The United Federation of Planets.  And, it was this Federation that operated much like our United Nations but with a hell of a lot more power.  

People did not have to work unless they wanted to and if they did work they were paid according to their level of skill, not necessarily education but some form of formalized training in order to acquire those skills.  They were paid in credits but everything was provided for them:  housing, clothes, transportation, medical, etc.

And, no one bitched about it costing too much money or that one's taxes would be increasing...  it was just an accepted lifestyle.  However, there were some that rejected this space-age lifestyle and preferred to live "off the grid" so to speak but they were non violent and wanted to be left alone.

Star Trek was an instant success because of this ideal lifestyle and living conditions and complete acceptance without concerns or regret...

BUT, that will never happen today because most people do not want to be controlled by the government...  which is one of the main reasons why we wanted our independence from Great Britain.  We wanted to be free of government but we also wanted religious freedom as well...  and, the freedom to be able to say whatever without fear of going to jail.

Utopia's are nice concepts but they are impractical because of man's desire to be different...  no body agrees with everyone else ALL THE TIME...  and, this is exactly why Utopias will always FAIL...  except in Star Trek.

LIVE LONG AND PROSPER...

Because of BLM...

 I am more keenly aware of black people than ever before and now I see them as different than me in so many ways and that even though we are still Americans, we are different type Americans...  

White people live in their own communities while black people live in their own communities.  White people go to their own churches while black people go to their own churches.  Wherever I go, I always see more whites than blacks whether that is to:

• Walmart
• Lowes
• A shopping Mall
• A movie theater
• Myrtle Beach, SC
• Most restaurant
• Best Buy
• Weigel's Convenience Store
• UT Medical Center
• UT Cancer Center
• Our family clinic
• Toyota repair center
• Douglas or Cherokee Lakes
• RV camping areas
• Kohls

Before, I would not have paid any attention to what black people were doing, but now, and because of BLM and all the violence that I see surrounding BLM, I am more aware of black people around me and more cautious when I am around them and the violence they might follow.

The more that Critical Race Theory is pushed in our school systems, the more I AM AGAINST what it teaches and the fact that it is separating blacks and whites...  and, painting us as two separate and distinct races...

I don't really care if black see me as the oppressor and see themselves as the oppressed because I am not changing my behavior for them or for anyone else.  In short, I want to avoid anything that has to do with blacks and focus on the white race and what we have accomplished as a race without the help of the blacks.

WAKE UP AMERICA...

Our Brains and a Conscious Universe

As humans, we know we are conscious because we experience and feel things. Yet scientists and great thinkers are unable to explain what consciousness is and they are equally baffled about where it comes from.

"Consciousness — or better, conscious experience — is obviously a part of reality," said Johannes Kleiner, a mathematician and theoretical physicist at the Munich Center For Mathematical Philosophy, Germany. "We're all having it but without understanding how it relates to the known physics, our understanding of the universe is incomplete."

With that in mind, Kleiner is hoping math will enable him to precisely define consciousness. Working with colleague Sean Tull, a mathematician at the University of Oxford, U.K., the pair are being driven, to some degree, by a philosophical point of view called panpsychism.

This claims consciousness is inherent in even the tiniest pieces of matter — an idea that suggests the fundamental building blocks of reality have conscious experience. Crucially, it implies consciousness could be found throughout the universe.

If the researchers can answer how our brains give rise to subjective experience, there's a chance their mathematical model could extend to inanimate matter too, they said.

"A mathematical theory can be applied to many different systems, not just brains," Kleiner told All About Space via email. "If you develop a mathematical model of consciousness based on data obtained from brains, you can apply the model to other systems, for example, computers or thermostats, to see what it says about their conscious experience too."

Some prominent minds lend weight to the view of panpsychism, not least renowned Oxford physicist Sir Roger Penrose, who was among the first academics to propose we go beyond neuroscience when looking at consciousness.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

I'm Not A Professional Writer

Although, one could make the claim that I am because I have had some of my writing published in a book and on a variety of social media forums and my own blogs but none of it has been for the exchange of money, and therefore would not be considered, by me, to be professional as I think of being professional as being paid to do something.

However, regardless of being professional or not, I have been writing relatively seriously since 1972 and really serious in 2015 when I retired from full time employment.  My writing since since 1972 has been poetry, short stories, and opinion articles that is pretty much all that I write when posting my thoughts on my blogs.

From 2015 until the present time, I have been writing full blown novels of at least 300 MS Word pages which translates into about 450 paperback novel pages...  so, my novels are full length so to speak...  My first one took the longest time and is entitled:  The Cosmic Priesthood:  the unveiling of consciousness and is about the main characters desire to find and assemble 12 keys that he believes will SAVE THE WORLD...  The forces of evil are trying to stop him and outweigh the forces of good that are trying to help him.  That is when the Cosmic Priesthood steps in...  (completed)

Their rationale for helping our character is to maintain balance in the universe, and sometimes these Priests help and sometimes they don't.  Interestingly, there is a group of Priests that are against our character's actions...  and, the reason why is only revealed if you read the novel.

My second novel is entitled:  HOLD ON and is about one of the evil characters in my first novel and about how he tries to corner the market on honeybees.  He is also involved in a variety of other illegal activities and is eventually brought to justice but not by the law...  perhaps by the goodness of the universe one could say.  (completed)

My third novel which to this day is only have finished, is entitled:  CODENAME: Hanging Church and is about an American Spy working in Cairo, Egypt trying to track down the secret organization that is behind all the terrorist activities in the middle east, Europe, and other places.  He is also a hired assassin for the CIA, performing those duties on the side. (work in progress)

My fourth novel is a sequel to the first entitled:  The Cosmic Priesthood: Beyond the Milky Way and takes place in the year 2253 and earth has been all but abandoned and living on a variety of planets in our solar system.  There is only one government composed of all earth countries, The Galactic Corporation of Commerce and Interplanetary Exploration.  Our colonies on these planets are being invading by a society from a different galaxies in a different dimension.  The Cosmic Priests are able to tap into the power of the Cosmic Consciousness imbedded in the whole of the universe.  (completed)

My fifth novel is entitled:  Ghost Dancer and is about sex trafficking and drug trafficking on Native American Reservations all over the USA for the pleasure of wealthy individuals located in the US and Canada and maybe other places as well.  I have completed a chapter outline and have written an introduction but done nothing else.  (work in progress)

My sixth novel is entitled:  Lost Creek Diaries and is about a small college in the south, specifically in the foothills of TN beside the Great Smoky Mountains and that when the college was formed in 1835, it was created a college and as a brothel.  A slave diary was kept exposing what was going on but the practice has continued up until the present.  The Mexican Drug Cartel, The Russian Mafia, and the Japanese YAKUZA are involved as they lauder money through a Native American Casino.  (work in progress)

My seventh novel is entitled:  Caucasian Male and was started because I wanted to write about my life but I also wanted to write about what it was like living as a white person, especially in the light of BLM, ANTIFA, and Critical Race Theory.  (work in progress)

I have 7 other novels rolling around in my head for a total of 14 if I ever live long enough to write them all...  I have not really thought about publishing them and not sure that I want to go through the shit of receiving rejections...  Just the fact that I wrote them is what is important to me.

Being Sexually Fluid

The way we think about sexuality is changing. Where there was once a single, well-known rainbow pride flag, today, a wide array of colourful flags fly to showcase the diversity of orientations. People seem increasingly open to discussing their sexuality, and more unconventional, even formerly “invisible”, identities have become part of an increasingly mainstream discourse. With the open dialogue, sexual identities are becoming less rigid and more fluid.

But new data show that this shift is more prevalent in one group: in many countries, women are embracing sexual fluidity now at much higher rates than they have in the past, and more significantly than men are overall.

So, what accounts for this discrepancy? Experts believe there are many factors that feed into this progression, especially changes in social climate that have let women break out of conventional gender roles and identities. With these new insights, however, the question remains: what does this mean for sexual fluidity in the future for all genders?

A notable shift
Sean Massey and his colleagues at the Binghamton Human Sexualities Research Lab in New York have been studying sexual behaviours for about a decade. In each of their studies, they asked participants to report their sexual orientation and gender. They’d never before looked at how that data changed over time – until Massey and colleagues recently realised they were sitting on a treasure trove of information about sexual attraction.

“We thought, gosh, we've collected this data for 10 years,” says Massey, an ssociate professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Binghamton University. “Why don't we go back and look and see if there's been any trends?”

They found that between 2011 and 2019, college-age women had increasingly moved away from exclusive heterosexuality. In 2019, 65% of women reported only being attracted to men, a notable decrease from 77% in 2011. The number of women exclusively having sex with men also dropped between those years. Meanwhile, men’s attraction and sexual behaviour stayed mostly static in the same time frame: about 85% reported sexual attraction to women only, and close to 90% reported engaging in sex exclusively with women.  

Father's Day

Father's Day is a holiday of honoring fatherhood
and paternal bonds, as well as the influence of fathers in society. In Catholic countries of Europe, it has been celebrated on 19 March as Saint Joseph's Day since the Middle Ages. Wikipedia

As a father myself, I understand the importance of a father in a child's life and while my father did not provide me with what I needed in life outside of discipline and responsibility, I tried to allow my daughter to grow as she wanted to grow without my influence on what I wanted her to become.  She did well in high school, college, and in her professional life as well.

However, somewhere along the line but only after moved overseas and began living in China, she stopped all communications with me and left me with NO IDEA why she had decided to do this which served to only increase her hatred and bitterness towards me in my mind.  I tried to reach out several times, including her FB page but she still refuses to contact me, especially at those times when contact should be made like:

• Christmas
• Birthday
• Father's Day

Interestingly, I had gotten mad at my father as well and I cannot even remember why nowadays but I refused to reach out to him as well...  I think my abandonment of my father lasted for about 10-15 years...    So, turnabouts is fair play or so they say...  anyway, there is nothing that I can do about my daughter... all I can do is regulate my own behavior...

What Was There Before?

 

BLAME the GOP or TRUMP for EVERYTHING

As I have mentioned before...   I am a liberal in my beliefs and actions as ANYONE...  but, I am NOT A DEMOCRAT.

As I have mentioned before...  I am a conservative in my financial dealings as most NO ONE...  but, I am NOT A REPUBLICAN.

I am well educated

I am well experienced

I am a Vietnam Veteran

I am an anti-war protestor

I don't exercise my right to vote because that right is bullshit

But, to blame everything either on TRUMP or the GOP is like telling everyone that you have your head firmly implanted into your anal region.

One of the days, the media is going to realized that they have been fooled by the Democrats and are going to start wondering why the hell isn't our country getting any better.

Hell Trump is Gone

COVID locked down the cities

Biden gave us stimulus money

Why do we have inflation?

What did those frigging Republicans do while Trump was President that is causing us to have inflation NOW???

I mean for Christ's sake he was a WHITE FRIGGING SUPREMACIST...  you could just tell that by the words that came out of his mouth...  and, it was in his eyes as well...  And, the rest of the world hated him as well...

Now the world LOVES BIDEN...  his is like a father to all the communists, socialists, Marxists, and terrorists...

The Mexican Drug Cartels love him because of our open borders giving them easy access to moving drugs into the USA so Americans can get HIGH and zone out and not care about their future.

THAT ASSHOLE TRUMP TRIED TO STOP DRUGS FROM ENTERING THE USA...  he should be arrested and put in jail for doing that...  he's a criminal.

AND...  don't you also realize that TRUMP and the GOP caused the inflation that we are experiencing today...  By doing what they did...  caused all hell to break lose after BIDEN undid everything TRUMP had done...  IF Trump had not done what he did...  we would have have this problem...

JUNETEENTH

 ALL SLAVES IN AMERICA WERE GIVEN THEIR FREEDOM...

Since I was born Caucasian and have no desire to feel guilty because of being born white, I see no reason why I should even celebrate this holiday because it really does not pertain to me like July 4 pertains...  and, all I do for the 4th of July is cook a hamburger and put up the American Flag outside on the front porch.

I am no politician and I am glad that I never had that desire, but I fear that Juneteenth is going to send the wrong message here in the US and that after whites are forced to take a day off by either the government or their employers, that they will do absolutely nothing to celebrate black freedom...  

Why are we not authorizing a Federal Holiday for all the Native Americans to whom we gave their freedom as well by putting them on RESERVATIONS...  

To be honest, I have more empathy for Native Americans than I have for Black Americans...  because UNLIKE BLACKS they were here first and WHITES took their land and their freedoms away from them...

To me, our Federal Government is making a mistake and will begin to cause more division than ever before by recognizing the different between whites and blacks.

BACK PORCH...

Recollections,

Cogitations

&

Broodings      

______________________________________________

I remember not too long ago, about 30 years or so, about the time that I moved to East TN from the Piedmont of NC, that I found myself professionally in demand because I possessed skills that were taken for granted in NC, but that were just coming to fruition in TN.  The skills about which I write were:  Total Quality Management, Statistical Problem Solving, Team Oriented Problem Solving, Process Improvement, and Strategic Long Range Planning, along with !SO 9000/2000, QS 9000, and ISO/QS Auditing and being hired as a consultant not just for these but to help organizations prepare for Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award, which had been modeled after the Deming Prize in Japan.

My cup runneth over with high paying consulting contracts of no less than $2,500/day plus expenses or $100/hour plus expenses.

In NC, all this training had already been done and was in their past and they were moving on to something newer and more progressive...  which was actually more of the same just packaged differently with a different focus like seemless manufacturing...  that was kinda silly because the OLD MAN FORD started seemless manufacturing when he came up with the assembly line.

So, I rode the crest of that WAVE from 1990 until 2015 when I retired...  after spending my last 3 years teaching business class for a local, but still small and never wanting to really grow university..  And, after having worked 60 plus hours for over 20 years, it was a difficult adjustment trying to find work to do just to fill 20 hours...  The university required 4 to 5 classes taught each semester which is 12-15 hours and then 5-8 hours had to be spent as office hours in case a student wanted to come in and talk to you about something.

So, if there were any papers to be graded, I used my time for that, and possibly class prep but there really wasn't much of that either because all the business knowledge that was in the textbook, was also in my head after so many years of working in the field.

Of course, there might be a meeting or two to attend once a month which took a couple or three hours but being a professor is BORING unless you are on tenure or seeking tenure and you need to research and publish...  then, teaching 12 hours is almost too many.

Back Porch Cogitations

The Valley was hot today...  in the 90's but the humidity was low so it was rather comfortable out on the back porch.  However, the cats prefer outside in the warmth rather than inside in the air.  The day reminded me of some of those old movies that take place in the south and there is always a big ole hound dog or two laying around on the wooden porch or dirt ground.

I waited until after 6:00 pm to mow the lawn to keep out of the heat of the sun so that I could continue to wear shorts and a t-shirt rather than cover up with long sleeves.  There was no one else outside, but then again, there seldom is as our neighbors like to spend most of their time indoors.   And, for that matter so do I but for different reasons, I suppose.

I watched only a little news this morning as it was SOS and please don't confuse this with the SOS served in the Navy mess halls...  but, it appears that national news stations get fixated on one or two topics and then spend the rest of the day and week, running those topics into the ground with redundant coverage.

Chicken Noodle News (CNN) was the first to do this when they started 24/.7 news coverage.

We have had several Hollywood actors decide to get into politics and their reasons are unclear other than they want to use their celebrity status to acquire votes so that they can attempt to force their thoughts and beliefs on others whether they are right for the people or not seems not to be of any concern to them.

I suppose they have a "right" to do this but I doubt very seriously if they would be kind towards a politician who tried to make it in Hollywood...  but for many...  turnabouts is never fair play.    Still that does not seem to matte...  especially to those who woke up being WOKE.

I have no sympathy for woke  people, nor do I have any sympathy for those cities where crime and violence is on the increase because they have defunded the police departments so that money can be diverted to helping black people can have better SUPPORT ORGANIZATIONS on their way from childhood to adulthood.

I also don't give a rat's ass about being told that I am an oppressor because I was born white and free, like the lions in Africa.  I am not who my father was nor his father nor his father nor his father or the one before that.  I am me from 1947 to the present...  no more no less...  and, my grandfather was a druggist but neither was my father or me...  so, there was no influence there...  

My father worked for the federal government all of his career while staying in the naval reserves and when he retired he received TWO PENSIONS...   I did not work for the government, nor did I work anywhere long enough to have received a pension.  How frigging different can I be than that?

I was born in NC which makes me a Southerner.  And, like I said, I was born white and free.  I was born with natural athletic abilities that were never developed and I was born with artistic abilities that were never developed either.    I am not as wealthy as my father was and I have no idea if I am more happy or not.

I enjoy who I am and what I have become.

Being a Scorpion

Scorpio is my birth zodiac sign...  and, if you believe in that nonsense then according to the positive side, I am:

• determined
• brave
• loyal
• honest
• ambitious

However, this negative aspects are:

• jealous
• secretive
• resentful
• controlling
• stubborn

Some might say that these 10 bullet points fit me perfectly while others might say, not at all...  Personally, I am not sure if they do or not because I like the sign of Scorpio and don't mind being affiliated with it at all...  I can think of worse things that could describe a person and I could easily fall into those other categories as well...  I don't perceive myself as anything other than different than most and perhaps that is because according personality traits, I am an INTJ...

Rows of Houses

When I was growing up just outside of Alexandria, VA, we lived in a community called Wellington Heights where the houses were close to each other but not that close...  still, I remember my father saying that he did not want to live in a community where he could reached out the bedroom window and touch the house next door.  Now, this was an exaggeration but I have driven through communities where this is the norm...  like the photo on the left...  and most of these houses are fairly large, there is precious little room to go outside and be alone unless you construct a privacy fence in between the houses on your left and right as well as the one behind you...  obviously there is a road in front of you otherwise you would have to be air-dropped onto your property.

Some say this is still a good example of THE AMERICAN DREAM and expected by those who want to live in this type of environment...  I do not.  And, this is why I decided to remain in the South and earn less money than I could by moving up North, so that I could have a little elbow room wherever I wanted to live.  I have always had at least an acre of land surrounding my house in a variety of configurations some of which were appealing while others were not.

However, if you like this type of CLOSENESS, then this is what you should try and find yourself and even down here in the South you can find communities where houses and homes are placed side by side with space in between where only one person can walk at a time.  And the property values are so high because many people want to live like that...   you might as well stay in the city and pay rent for an apartment than have to maintain a house and cannot go get your mail in your underwear without a neighbor calling the police and reporting you for indecent exposure.

It's All Good

 There are one or two, maybe three phrases that I did not hear until I moved over to TN and a couple of them really frost my tail pipes...

I don't care to do that

Bless her little heart

It's all good

The first one really means I don't mind doing that...  and, the second one is said when you want to give someone the benefit of the doubt for being stupid...  and the third one is said, when you really don't give a shit about being pissed off anymore.

As long as I might live, I cannot ever imagine that I will ever stopped getting pissed off at something or someone...  it is just in my nature...  including getting pissed off at myself...  I mean, I can't really bitch about anyone or anything unless I am willing to bitch at myself...

AND...  it will NEVER BE frigging ALL GOOD...  that shit just ain't possible.

Somewhat Interesting

Yesterday, I had my monthly IVIG treatment and part of my premeds is taking steroids which keep me from sleeping unless I take Benadryl which I always do and did last night and had no problems falling to sleep but unfortunately and unlike previous times, I woke up after 4-5 hours of sleep and just knew that my sleeping time was over.  That took place about 2:30 am this morning, give or take, and I have been screwing around on the internet, cleaning up files, and searching out free online storage because of a recent corrupt flash drive that has or had all my recent files...  PISSER...  but, what can you do?

Well, I refuse to pay for online storage and that attitude might be a death wish for me regarding future lost files...  but, I also know that I can send myself an email with attachments and use that email service as storage.  But, emails are easily hacked.  So, I have looked in DROPBOX which offers 2 Gigs for free and let CHROME select and save my very complicated password...

Actually, I had gotten DROPBOX right after it first came out (for some reason) and I was given 6 Gigs of free storage so they must have reduced the storage amounts over the years.  Mainly, I was storing photos there and I am not sure if I really need to keep too many of them, so I will replace them with other documents that I want/need to save for a variety of reasons.

I did not grow up with the INTERNET or the WWW and do not know it like someone who is 25-30 let's say...  but, I am learning, even though my learning curve is slow.

Interestingly, my mother FORCED ME like most mothers have a fancy of doing, to take a typing course in summer school...  Her thoughts were that I will always need typing and the idle mind is the devil's workshop...  At 73 years of age, that typing course was the single most important course that I ever took in my entire life so far...  THANKS MOM...

Using CRISPR

Can we reprogram existing life at will?

To synthetic biologists, the answer is yes. The central code for biology is simple. DNA letters, in groups of three, are translated into amino acids—Lego blocks that make proteins. Proteins build our bodies, regulate our metabolism, and allow us to function as living beings. Designing custom proteins often means you can redesign small aspects of life—for example, getting a bacteria to pump out life-saving drugs like insulin.

All life on Earth follows this rule: a combination of 64 DNA triplet codes, or “codons,” are translated into 20 amino acids.

But wait. The math doesn’t add up. Why wouldn’t 64 dedicated codons make 64 amino acids? The reason is redundancy. Life evolved so that multiple codons often make the same amino acid.

So what if we tap into those redundant “extra” codons of all living beings, and instead insert our own code?

A team at the University of Cambridge recently did just that. In a technological tour de force, they used CRISPR to replace over 18,000 codons with synthetic amino acids that don’t exist anywhere in the natural world. The result is a bacteria that’s virtually resistant to all viral infections—because it lacks the normal protein “door handles” that viruses need to infect the cell.

But that’s just the beginning of engineering life’s superpowers. Until now, scientists have only been able to slip one designer amino acid into a living organism. The new work opens the door to hacking multiple existing codons at once, copyediting at least three synthetic amino acids at the same time. And when it’s 3 out of 20, that’s enough to fundamentally rewrite life as it exists on Earth.

We’ve long thought that “liberating a subset of…codons for reassignment could improve the robustness and versatility of genetic-code expansion technology,” wrote Drs. Delilah Jewel and Abhishek Chatterjee at Boston College, who were not involved in the study. “This work elegantly transforms that dream into a reality.”  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

K I S S Theory

KISS...

Keep

It

Simple

Stupid

What I have found over my lifetime is that:

• if something is simple describe it with complex words and concepts
• If something is complex describe it with simple words and concepts

and...  when you think about it, that is exactly what has been or is going on right now in both your professional and personal lives.  Anyone in a leadership role will use these principles all the time whether or not they are even conscious that they are using them at all...  especially people of faith.

This actually started out as a marketing concept by some clever Harvard graduate but it is nothing more than a spin of Occam's Razor...

Occam's razor (or Ockham's razor) is a principle from philosophy. Suppose an event has two possible explanations. The explanation that requires the fewest assumptions is usually correct. Another way of saying it is that the more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation....

Or, another way to say it is KISS...

It seems that we are creatures of habit and our habit is to look at life simplistically because doing so any other way causes our brain to hurt after a bit of time.

C H O I C E

I remember someone telling me that another person told them that
whatever it was that they did was done because this other person made them do it...

My first blush reaction and comment to this statement was THAT'S BULLSHIT FRED...

Of course, Fred was not his real name....  at least, not at the time.

NO ONE MAKES US DO ANYTHING...  not even if they have a loaded firearm pointed at our heads...  We make the choice to respond/react or do nothing.  

But, if we did not do that, we would have been killed is the rebuttal, and yes that is true, but we all die eventually.  If we die, we will miss out on all sorts of things...  and, yes, that is true too.  But, we did not have the choice of whether to be born or not either...  and, had we had that choice, we may have decided not to be born...

We chose to be active

We choose to be lazy

We choose to overeat

We choose to drink alcohol

We choose to drive our cars fast

We choose to violate the law

We choose to have an extramarital affair

We choose to pay our taxes

We choose to be liberal

We choose to adversely react to our whiteness or blackness

AND...  to a certain extent, we choose when and how we want to die.

Not all choices that we make are good one and not all of them are bad ones either...  and, from each choice we should learn a lesson otherwise we remain emotionally, mentally, and physically stagnant.  

AND...  many of us make the choice to remain stagnant rather than try to convince ourselves that we should change...  No one can force us to change, they can only create the environment that allows us to change on our own.