Artwork of a Political Cartoonist

 I’m a political cartoonist and fine artist who lives in western Montana. I have a BA degree from Angelo State University, where I majored in art and studied painting under Dr. Otis Lumpkin. In college I developed an interest in modern art and cubism in particular.

Cowboys are part of my ancestry. My great grandfather was a real cowboy in north Texas. My uncle was a cowboy, saddle maker, and silversmith in Arizona. I’ve long held an interest in western art, but I have no desire to repeat the usual nostalgia that continues to get painted. Instead, I combine cubism and futurism to make the western themes new again.

My goal is to paint memorable images that allow viewers to decide what they’re seeing. My paintings partially depend on the viewers’ own point of view.

— Ben Garrison

His artwork is below and in order to see it all, you will need to scroll to the left and right and up and down...

Night - Day

Disgust of Older Adults

According to a series of three studies, there is a stronger negative emotional and avoidance reaction toward unfamiliar – compared to familiar – older adults, confirming source effects of disgust toward this population. However, there were no moderating effects of filial piety – i.e., the virtue of respect towards elders. This research was published in Evolutionary Psychology.

Disgust is an important factor that links the behavioural immune system – “a defense system selected under the persistent disease pressures in an evolutionary environment” – with ageism. This system overgeneralizes at times, with people often perceiving abnormal body shape, movements, or behaviours as cueing the existence of pathogens. Aging is accompanied by physiological changes, including in appearance, posture, or movement (e.g., wrinkles, tremors). These changes could signal unhealthiness and prompt disgust toward older adults.

Some studies suggest disgust is stronger toward unfamiliar (vs. familiar) individuals, a phenomenon referred to as the “source effect of disgust.” Thus, it appears that the disgust experience can change, depending on the source of the disgust. In this work, Quan Cao and colleagues examined the source effect of disgust and avoidance responses toward older adults specifically. An important consideration is filial piety, a virtue in eastern cultures, which could be a moderating variable in the source effect of disgust.      READ MORE...

Nothing Should be Overdone

 

Driving Evolution on Earth

Mounting evidence suggests humans are now a major driving force of evolution on Earth. From selective breeding to environmental modifications, we're altering so much of our world that we're not only now driving the climate, but the direction of life itself.

Now, in a massive project involving 287 scientists across 160 cities in 26 countries, researchers examined how urbanization has influenced evolution on a global scale. They used white clover (Trifolium repens) as a model – a plant native to Europe and west Asia, but found in cities all around the world.

"There has never been a field study of evolution of this scale, or a global study of how urbanization influences evolution," said evolutionary biologist Marc Johnson from the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM).

Collecting more than 110,000 samples along gradients that extended from the cities, through suburbs and out to the country, they found that clover in cities is now more similar to clover in another city a world away than it is to that found in nearby farmland or forests, regardless of climate.

This is an example of parallel adaptive evolution – when separate populations are shaped by the same selective pressure for specific traits in different locations. It shows that the ways humans have changed the environment are having a bigger influence in shaping these traits than natural phenomena like local population genetics and climate.  READ MORE...

Hungry Cats

 

Backwards in Time

If the universe has a twin and on that twin time runs backward, then scientists could explain dark matter. (Image credit: MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images)

A wild new theory suggests there may be another "anti-universe," running backward in time prior to the Big Bang.

The idea assumes that the early universe was small, hot and dense — and so uniform that time looks symmetric going backward and forward.

If true, the new theory means that dark matter isn't so mysterious; it's just a new flavor of a ghostly particle called a neutrino that can only exist in this kind of universe. And the theory implies there would be no need for a period of "inflation" that rapidly expanded the size of the young cosmos soon after the Big Bang.

If true, then future experiments to hunt for gravitational waves, or to pin down the mass of neutrinos, could answer once and for all whether this mirror anti-universe exists.

Preserving symmetry
Physicists have identified a set of fundamental symmetries in nature. The three most important symmetries are: charge (if you flip the charges of all the particles involved in an interaction to their opposite charge, you'll get the same interaction); parity (if you look at the mirror image of an interaction, you get the same result); and time (if you run an interaction backward in time, it looks the same).

Physical interactions obey most of these symmetries most of the time, which means that there are sometimes violations. But physicists have never observed a violation of a combination of all three symmetries at the same time. If you take every single interaction observed in nature and flip the charges, take the mirror image, and run it backward in time, those interactions behave exactly the same.

This fundamental symmetry is given a name: CPT symmetry, for charge (C), parity (P) and time (T).  READ MORE...

Raining

 

Just A Few More Points

 

I received an honorable discharge from the US Navy in 1972 and fulfilled my military obligation in 1975 after being a reservist for a total 6-year commitment. 

I hated the military, what it stood for, and the fact that we always seemed to be involved in some kind of a war that wasn't our own but where we were invited to participate under the guise of preventing communism from spreading.

Actually, that was a lot of political and economical bullshit that was spewed out by our leaders because it was their civil wars, not ours, and protecting these smaller countries has done very little to stop the growth of communism in Russia, China, the Middle East, and Korea.

Today our country is DIVIDED...  and the division is right down the middle with 50% on one side and 50% on the other side...  but, one of the sides says that our 50/50 division can only be blamed on former President Trump...  as he was the one that caused this to happen.

For me, that is a stupid statement as one person cannot change a nation...  the change of a nation has to be there from the get-go and that one person simply brings it out...

HOWEVER, all politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, Independents, Progressives, and Socialists all have THEIR HEADS UP THEIR ASSES because in my 75 years of life NOTHING HAS CHANGED except the wealthy getting wealthier.

It is WEALTH and GREED that will be the downfall of this country...  What happens when the wealthy have it all...  They represent 1% of the population in the USA...  what happens to the rest of us?

Living in a Different World

Hobbling around like some sort of crippled person because of my lower spine L5/L6 disks, I finally understand how handicapped people might feel when having to navigate the world of people who have no disabilities at all except for maybe their mental disability of never having the desire to be aware of those around them.

I am not eligible to have a sedated MRI until the end of next month and then it could be another month before I can get scheduled for surgery if the results of the MRI prove the Orthopedic doctor correct, which they probably will...  so, I will be living like this for about 90 days...

Living like what...  you ask?

Well...

I have pain shooting down both my butt cheeks to the back of my thighs that hurt so bad, I cannot walk or properly move my legs without holding onto something.

I have difficulty bending over or getting back up from being on my knees to clean up cat vomit.

I have difficulty lifting my legs to insert my foot into the opening of my underwear or my pants without sitting down and even then my muscles don't work right.

I have to use the handrail when coming up a flight of steps and even then, I can only move one step at a time as opposed to having one foot on one step and putting the other foot on the next step up.

My hips hurt when I try to walk and the pain is mild to severe and I have never had any problems with my hips before.

However, I can sit in a chair or couch with lumbar support without feeling any pain until I try to stand up erect.  Sometimes, my knees give way and I start to collapse and have to hold onto something to keep from falling.

It is reasonably uncomfortable to stand in one place like in front of the stove and try to cook something.

I try to avoid walking upstairs or any walkway that inclines because that is difficult for me and will slow people down behind me.  Walking down is not a problem.

My Orthopedic doctor says that I did not do anything to bring this on...  that it is just a part of becoming OLD...  and, that if I had not been active most of my life that my situation would have been WORSE.

I can only take small steps and walk like a penguin with my left side dipping down more than my right.

It's not a whole lot of fun.

Something to Ponder

Follow the math...It takes between 21 to 35 days for a Russian oil tanker to get to US ports to be offloaded.


It takes between 35 and 60 days for a tanker from the Middle East to make the same trek.


It takes about 10 hours to load the tanker and up to 24 hours to unload. If it has to wait in port to get to an unloading dock, it can take up to 3 days.


The average tanker burns 2,625 gallons of diesel fuel per hour. 22.38 pounds of CO2 are created from burning 1 gallon of diesel fuel.


So, in one hour, a tanker ship hauling oil to a refinery in the US creates 58,757.5 pounds of CO2 per hour. Averaging the travel time of the tankers, that's 27.67 million tons of CO2 PER TRIP.


In comparison, your car creates between 6 and 9 tons PER YEAR.

Without going into all the equations of how many tankers come to the US per year, let alone our exports, will someone please explain; how can banning and limiting the drilling our own oil and moving it through pipelines, along with importing oil from Canada via pipeline NOT BE MORE environmentally "green" for the world!?!

The Laptop

Password

 

Mathilda

 

Secret Tunnels Between Skull and Brain

Did you know you have tiny tunnels in your head? That's OK, no one else did either until recently! But that's exactly what a team of medical researchers confirmed in mice and humans in 2018 – tiny channels that connect skull bone marrow to the lining of the brain.

The research shows they may provide a direct route for immune cells to rush from the marrow into the brain in the event of damage.

Previously, scientists had thought immune cells were transported via the bloodstream from other parts of the body to deal with brain inflammation following a stroke, injury, or brain disorder.  This discovery suggests these cells have had a shortcut all along.

The tiny tunnels were uncovered when a team of researchers set out to learn whether immune cells delivered to the brain following a stroke or meningitis originated from the skull, or the larger of the two bones in the shin – the tibia.

The specific immune cells they followed were neutrophils, the "first responders" of the immune squad. When something goes awry, these are among the first cells the body sends to the site to help mitigate whatever is causing the inflammation.

The team developed a technique to tag cells with fluorescent membrane dyes that act as cell trackers. They treated these cells with the dyes, and injected them into bone marrow sites in mice. Red-tagged cells were injected into the skull, and green-tagged cells into the tibia.    READ MORE...

Tiny Cat

 

Self-Esteem Influences Purchases

Think back to the last time you went out to a restaurant of your choosing for no particular occasion. Where did you choose to go—and why did you choose to go there? For me, it was the McDonald’s drive-through. Although you can practically smell the French fries from the balcony of my apartment, there may have also been a hidden reason that you and I chose to eat where we did: our self-esteem.

Our identity has an undeniably important impact on how we view ourselves and the world around us. A concept from social psychology labeled self-verification theory finds that we prefer that others view us the same way that we view ourselves.

For example, if you view yourself as intelligent, you likely appreciate it when someone compliments you for being a smart person. However, if you view yourself as unintelligent, you may feel uncomfortable and downright awkward when someone calls you clever. In other words, we prefer when others view us similarly to how we view ourselves because it justifies our sense of self.

How we spend our money is hardly any different. When shopping, we will often perform mental gymnastics to convince ourselves that we deserve the product we want. Self-esteem plays a key role here, meaning that people with low self-esteem gravitate towards cheaper, more affordable, and more mundane options.

Even factoring in one’s income or budget and frugality as a personality trait, self-esteem can predict which product participants chose to buy.  Research finds that we tend to self-verify in our buying behavior, meaning if we view ourselves as having low self-esteem, we will choose, consciously or unconsciously, to buy things that reinforce our self-view.

In one study, the researchers measured participants’ self-esteem and asked them how willing they would be to dine at two restaurants, one described as “cool” and the other described as “non-cool”. The study revealed that participants with the lowest self-esteem opted for the restaurant described as “non-cool” whereas participants with the highest self-esteem picked the “cool” restaurant.  READ MORE...

Cat Jump

 

Aircraft Without Moving Parts

As a kid, steven barrett, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, would watch the movie and tv series ‘star trek’ during his free time. his young eyes would gaze upon the shuttle crafts, so futuristic and dystopian that they would glide through the horizon at a lightning speed. barrett noticed how these space crafts seemed frameless, bare of their moving parts such as the propellers, and noiseless. such an observation still influences him today to the extent that he thinks, in the long-term future, planes should be stripped of their turbines and propellers to be more like the shuttle crafts of ‘star trek’ in their glowing light. at MIT, the professor did just that.

MIT engineers, led by barrett, have introduced the world’s first plan without moving parts, bare from any propellers and turbines. the lightweight aircraft relies on an ‘ionic wind’, or the abundant flow of ions produced aboard the plane that generates enough force to thrust the plane over a steady and sustained flight. through this concept and design, the plane ditches the use of fossil fuels, an element that adds to its silent glide.

As the professor spoke to the university’s official news site, he describes how the plane is the first-ever sustained flight with no moving parts in the propulsion system. ‘this has potentially opened new and unexplored possibilities for aircraft which are quieter, mechanically simpler, and do not emit combustion emissions.’ the design weighs about five pounds and has a five-meter wingspan attached to thin wires resembling fences. these wires act as positively charged electrodes, while similarly arranged thicker wires, running along the back end of the plane’s wing, serve as negative electrodes.

The fuselage of the plane holds a stack of lithium-polymer batteries. barrett’s ion plane team included members of professor david perreault’s power electronics research group in the research laboratory of electronics, who designed a power supply that would convert the batteries’ output to a sufficiently high voltage to propel the plane. in this way, the batteries supply electricity at 40,000 volts to positively charge the wires via a lightweight power converter.  READ MORE...

Opening Flowers