The Day Before Surgery

It took me 4 months to get to this day from the time that my inability to walk properly first began...  My surgery was first scheduled for the middle of July but for whatever reason(s), I was offered an opportunity to move it to tomorrow which I jumped on immediately.

I had to not only get released for surgery from my primary care physician but I also had to get released from my Onocologist as well who suspended my daily and monthly cancer treatments for 3 weeks.  One week before and two weeks after.

In preparation for my surgery, I walked for 30 minutes several weeks prior to my surgery with the last couple of days spent on making sure all the yard work was completed...  this was done because of the rain that arrived today, leaving me with very little to do today except drink lots of liquids, eat light, and do stuff to pass away the time.

My wife's hip replacement surgery left us with all the items that I will need for my surgery like a cane, walker, walking stick, and a device to pick up items that have fallen to the floor.  Since my surgery will be on my lower back, I am pretty sure that I will not be allowed to bend over much for the first couple of weeks.

I have very few apprehensions regarding the surgery other than what I might experience after the surgery but I really won't know that until I get there as each person and each body is different.  My movements will be limited because I will have 2 screws in each of 5 vertebrae that will be attached to two rods and a scar down the middle of my lower back for about 6 inches.

My concern is that for the first couple of days maybe a week, I will be required to spend most of my time lying on my back or on my side rather than sitting up...  if that happens then I know there is very little that one can do in that position except look at the ceiling or sleep.  And, while there will be a lot of sleeping as a result of the trauma to my body...  laying in bed can get rather boring very quickly.

Other than than these thoughts, my last day before surgery is relatively calm...  I hope that later in the day when it is time to sleep, I will be able to fall asleep quickly and not wake up until I have to...

I have had heart surgery, foot surgery, neck surgery, and hernia surgery and never really worried about any of those surgeries other than what the hell was going to happen to me during surgery and afterwards...  those fears never happened the way I thought they might happen other than my nervousness as I lay on the table in the OR getting prepped for the surgery and no one was talking to you...

If you have been there, you know the feeling...  everything else is simply downhill from there...   however, the healing/recovery process is always slow and boring and tedious, but necessary.

AGE & DEATH

Each morning, I wake up around 7:30 and check my weight after peeing, then give a treat to our three cats, take my thyroid pill, fill up the cat bowls with morning food, make coffee, and then sit down on the couch to watch FOX News.  This routine is not just one or two days but every day...  This morning as I watch the news, it is raining in the valley and will continue to rain for the next two days after today.  Yard work was completed yesterday, so the rain will cause everything to grow.  It is also obviously humid outside.

As far as the News is concerned, it is SOS and the same news that I have been hearing for days...

• increased gas prices
• increased food prices
• increased crime and violence
• increased illegal immigration

This consistent news is of no concern to the wealthy in the country or the foolish who don't really care how much they spend, but it is a problem to blue-collar workers who are oftentimes living from paycheck to paycheck...  it is these blue-collar workers that the wealthy look down their noses on as many of the wealthy don't really consider as being human worth living...  they deserve to have what they have because they are lazy and have to motivation to improve themselves and become as wealthy as they are.

If you aren't trying to get wealthy then you don't really deserve to live...

All or most Americans, whether educated or not, only care about:

• Food
• Sex
• Alcohol
• Marijuana
• Music
• Driving fast
• Buying clothes

One issue that we all have in common is that we will all get old and eventually die...  no matter how much money we have or how poor we are...  Age and Death...  we all have in common...  and when we get old and decide to look back, there is nothing to do to change how we lived our lives.

WHEN WILL WE EVER REALIZE HOW WE LIVE OUR LIVES IS IMPORTANT...

US Death Statistics 2020/2021

IN RANK ORDER

1. Heart Disease
2. Cancer
3. Covid-19
4. Unintentional Injuries
5. Stroke
6. Respiratory Disease
7. Alzheimer's
8. Diabetes
9. Pneumonia
10. Kidney Disease

Total Deaths in USA:  2,854,838

Total population:  300,000,000+

Total births:  3,600,000

Population Gain/(Loss):  745,162

Illegal Immigration:  1,600,000

We have a unique situation here...  in our country with more births than deaths...  so, our population is growing especially with illegal immigration...  but, our problem are the issues that are killing us and what if anything can we do to stop all these deaths...

While cancer is not always preventable due to the ways that it attacks the body, heart disease and COVID-19 are preventable with proper diet, exercise, and good medical practices...  in fact, I would be willing to bet that most disease from which we die is preventable with proper medical practices...  diet...  and exercise...

What I don't understand is why are most Americans so stupid that they do not want to take care of their bodies???

1. Why do we still smoke?
2. Why do we need to take illegal drugs?
3. Why do we need to drink alcohol?
4. Why do we need to eat so much daily?
5. Why are we not willing to exercise?
6. Why are we not will to eat healthy?
7. Why do we still drive our cars fast?
8. Why are we this stupid?

Hey... I've Got An Idea...

LET's DRIVE THE SPEED LIMIT...

There were 42,915 killed last year on US highways...  and, most people believe that this was caused by driving faster than the posted speed limits.  While we have a vast system of highway patrol officers patrolling our highways to keep drivers from speeding, there are simply not enough of them...  

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, today's drivers don't give a rat's ass or a damn about following the posted speed limit signs.

These speeders are not just the young inexperienced drivers, but drivers who are middle-aged as well as senior citizens.  These speeders are female as well as male, married as well as single, and are driving alone as well as with others including young, impressionable children.

In fact, it is not uncommon at all, the see a family in a van, SUV, or station wagon on vacation where the driver of the vehicle, male or female, is driving in excess of the speed limit to get to their destination as quick as they can.

People who are late for work or for a doctor's appointment try to make up time by speeding during rush hour.  Actually, if you blend in with rush hour traffic most everyone is exceeding the posted speed limits in the morning as well as in the afternoon.

THE AMERICAN DRIVER WILL NOT REGULATE THEMSELVES...

Grooming

 

Unknown Structure in Galaxy

                 Artist's impression of a giant galaxy with a high-energy jet. 

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

As a result of achieving high imaging dynamic range, a team of astronomers in Japan has discovered for the first time a faint radio emission covering a giant galaxy with an energetic black hole at its center. 

The radio emission is released from gas created directly by the central black hole. The team expects to understand how a black hole interacts with its host galaxy by applying the same technique to other quasars.

3C273, which lies at a distance of 2.4 billion light-years from Earth, is a quasar. A quasar is the nucleus of a galaxy believed to house a massive black hole at its center, which swallows its surrounding material, giving off enormous radiation. 

Contrary to its bland name, 3C273 is the first quasar ever discovered, the brightest, and the best studied. It is one of the most frequently observed sources with telescopes because it can be used as a standard of position in the sky: in other words, 3C273 is a radio lighthouse.

When you see a car's headlight, the dazzling brightness makes it challenging to see the darker surroundings. The same thing happens to telescopes when you observe bright objects. Dynamic range is the contrast between the most brilliant and darkest tones in an image. 

You need a high dynamic range to reveal both the bright and dark parts in a telescope's single shot. ALMA can regularly attain imaging dynamic ranges up to around 100, but commercially available digital cameras would typically have a dynamic range of several thousands. Radio telescopes aren't very good at seeing objects with significant contrast.  READ MORE...

Relaxing

 

Seafood Reverses Signs of Aging

Researchers discovered that supplementing a diet with the sea organisms Ascidiacea, also known as sea squirts, reverses some of the main signs of aging in an animal model.

Supplementing your diet with the sea organisms Ascidiacea, also known as sea squirts, reverses some of the main signs of aging, according to a new study using an animal model.

While the Fountain of Youth, the mythical spring that restores youth to anyone who bathes in it or drinks its waters, is clearly fantasy, scientists are hard at work looking for ways to combat aging. Some of these scientists just had a breakthrough: they discovered that supplementing a diet with sea squirts, reverses some of the main signs of aging.

Help prevent seasonal flu
See benefits, risks, & safety information of an enhanced flu vaccine for 65+ at flu360.com Boost the immune response this flu season for adults 65+.  While more research is needed to verify the effect in humans, as the study was conducted using mice, the findings are very promising.

If you’ve ever glanced in the mirror and seen greying hair and wrinkles, or if you’ve forgotten the name of a close friend, you may desire a medication that might halt or even reverse the effects of aging.

According to a new study, this may not be such a silly idea. Researchers from Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Stanford University, Shanghai Jiao tong University, and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered that supplementing a diet with the sea organism Ascidiacea, also known as sea squirts, reverses some of the main signs of aging in an animal model.  READ MORE...

Cat Tease

 

Economic Inequality

June 5, 2022





By David Leonhardt

Good morning. We look at why economic inequality began soaring in the U.S. four decades ago.

Jack Welch before his retirement in 2001.Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Net losses
If you look at historical data on the U.S. economy, you often notice that something changed in the late 1970s or early ’80s. Incomes started growing more slowly for most workers, and inequality surged.

David Gelles — a Times reporter who has been interviewing C.E.O.s for years — argues that corporate America helped cause these trends. Specifically, David points to Jack Welch, the leader of General Electric who became the model for many other executives. I spoke to David about these ideas, which are central to his new book on Welch (and to a Times story based on it).

How do you think corporate America has changed since the 1980s in ways that helped cause incomes to grow so slowly?

For decades after World War II, big American companies bent over backward to distribute their profits widely. In General Electric’s 1953 annual report, the company proudly talked about how much it was paying its workers, how its suppliers were benefiting and even how much it paid the government in taxes.

That changed with the ascendance of men like Jack Welch, who took over as chief executive of G.E. in 1981 and ran the company for the next two decades. Under Welch, G.E. unleashed a wave of mass layoffs and factory closures that other companies followed. The trend helped destabilize the American middle class. Profits began flowing not back to workers in the form of higher wages, but to big investors in the form of stock buybacks. And G.E. began doing everything it could to pay as little in taxes as possible.

You make clear that many other C.E.O.s came to see Welch as a model and emulated him. So why wasn’t there already a Jack Welch before Jack Welch, given the wealth and fame that flowed to him as a result of his tenure?

This was one of those moments when an exceptional individual at a critical moment really goes on to shape the world.

Welch was ferociously ambitious and competitive, with a ruthlessness that corporate America just hadn’t seen. In G.E., he had control of a large conglomerate with a history of setting the standards by which other companies operated. And Welch arrived at the moment that there was a reassessment of the role of business underway. The shift in thinking was captured by the economist Milton Friedman, who wrote in The Times Magazine that “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.”  

Was Welch’s approach good for corporate profits and bad for workers — or ultimately bad for the company, too? You lean toward the second answer, based on G.E.’s post-Welch struggles. Some other writers point out that many companies have thrived with Welch-like strategies. I’m left wondering whether Welchism is a zero-sum gain for shareholders or bad for everyone.

Welch transformed G.E. from an industrial company with a loyal employee base into a corporation that made much of its money from its finance division and had a much more transactional relationship with its workers. That served him well during his run as C.E.O., and G.E. did become the most valuable company in the world for a time.

But in the long run, that approach doomed G.E. to failure. The company underinvested in research and development, got hooked on buying other companies to fuel its growth, and its finance division was badly exposed when the financial crisis hit. Things began to unravel almost as soon as Welch retired, and G.E. announced last year it would break itself up.

Similar stories played out at dozens of other companies where Welch disciples tried to replicate his playbook, such as Home Depot and Albertsons. So while Welchism can increase profits in the short-term, the long-term consequences are almost always disastrous for workers, investors and the company itself.

Welch was responding to real problems at G.E. and the American economy in the 1970s and early ’80s. If his cure created even bigger problems, what might be a better alternative?

An important first step is rebalancing the distribution of the wealth that our biggest companies create. For the past 40-plus years we’ve been living in this era of shareholder primacy that Friedman and Welch unleashed. Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage remained low and is still just $7.25, and the gap between worker pay and productivity kept growing wider.

There are some tentative signs of change. The labor crisis and pressure from activists has led many companies to increase pay for frontline workers. Some companies, such as PayPal, are handing out stock to everyday employees.

But it’s going to take more than a few magnanimous C.E.O.s to fix these problems. And though I know it’s risky to place our faith in the government these days, there is a role for policy here: finding ways to get companies to pay a living wage, invest in their people and stop this race to the bottom with corporate taxes.

American companies can be competitive and profitable while also taking great care of their workers. They’ve been that way before, and I believe they can be that way again.

More about David Gelles: He was born in New York and got his first full-time job in journalism working for the Financial Times, where he interviewed Bernie Madoff in prison. His book about Welch is called “The Man Who Broke Capitalism.” He recently spoke about the media’s role in celebrating Welchism.

Dog in Water

 

Open the Door

Are you willing to open the door to your future?

Are you willing to do whatever it takes?

Are you willing to step through the door to the other side?

Are you willing to explore the unknown?

The Doors were an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1965. The band took its name from the title of Aldous Huxley's book The Doors of Perception, itself a reference to a quote by William Blake. "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."

Do we simply see the world with our own perception in that we see whatever we want life to be?  Or, do we see life through the perception of others who have influenced us?

How much do we influence ourselves and how much do others actually influence us?

When young we were influenced by our parents and our siblings.  As we aged, by other students and after a few more years we were influenced by professors and still later by employers and/or the various social groups to which we belonged...

But whose doors of perception did we actually walk through...  ours or theirs?

We hear the word infinity but we do not really understand it...  just as we do not understand death and what happens to us afterward....  as it seems rather pointless to live 80-100 years and then it all be over when life and our universe are infinite...

Perhaps, we don't even want to open the door to perception...  afraid to see what we might find...

ONE THING IS FOR SURE...  THIS IS OUR LIFE AND NO ONE ELSES...

National Rifle Association

The NRA is an organization that promotes the second amendment to the US Constitution...  it does not promote the killing of either adults or children in the United States...  nor does it promote or sanction the use of firearms in the commission of a felony...  the organization has a lot of powerful, wealthy members who exercise their influence in the House and in the Senate to keep strong gun control laws from being passed...  however, strong gun control laws will not stop individuals from committing crimes nor will it stop criminals from finding a way to own a firearm...

We need a strong Congress to not just pass laws to regulate the use of firearms when committing felonies but we need courts that will actually send these people to incarceration camps for long periods of time to discourage that type of behavior...

Blaming the NRA is not the answer...  blaming the gun manufacturers is not the answer...  blaming the munitions manufacturer is not the answer...

WE MUST BLAME OURSELVES AND THE SOCIETY THAT WE CREATED...

When You Vote in November

 

When you go to vote in November, what do you think that you will remember???

• Abortion
• Gun Control
• Inflation
• Immigration

I would be willing to bet that you will remember all four...  but, that the only issues with which you will be deeply concerned will be the bottom two:  Inflation and Immigration...  Why do I think this?  Because abortion and gun control does not affect everyone like inflation and immigration.

Why did the United States go from a nation of being energy independent to a nation of again being dependent upon foreign oil?  This only happened recently with the Biden Administration...

Why do we have thousands upon thousands of illegal immigrants being shipped to numerous states throughout the country without permission?  So that an attempt is made to even distribute these illegal immigrants throughout the USA...

Why are we paying more and more for food and gasoline?

Why are the wealthy people in this country not worried about inflation?

Why do we not have food to feed our children?

Why do we continue to have problems with illegal drugs?

WAKE UP AMERICA...

Whales

 

Drought Stricken USA

A view of Lake Mead - in wetter times, the water came all the way up to the rocks

A once-in-a-lifetime drought in the western part of the US is turning up dead bodies - but that's the least of people's worries.

Sitting on the Arizona-Nevada border near Las Vegas, Lake Mead - formed by the creation of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River - is the largest reservoir in the United States and provides water to 25 million people across three states and Mexico. Here, the stunning scale of a drought in the American west has been laid plain for all to see.

The water level is now so low that bodies of murder victims from decades back, once hidden by its depths, have surfaced.

One was stuffed in a barrel with a gun shot wound - presumably because someone thought it would stay unnoticed at the bottom of the vast reservoir forever.

While the dead bodies are fuelling talk about Las Vegas' mob past, water experts warn of even more worrisome consequences. If the lake keeps receding, it would reach what's known as "dead pool" - a level so low the Hoover Dam would no longer be able to produce hydropower or deliver water downstream.

Californians have been told to conserve water at home or risk mandated water restrictions as a severe drought on the West Coast is expected to get worse during the summer months.

People have been told to limit outdoor watering and take shorter showers. In Los Angeles, many are being asked to cut their water use by 35%. The restrictions come after California recorded the driest start to the year on record.

Nasa, which monitors changing water levels, is warning that the western United States is now entering one of the worst droughts ever seen.

"With climate change, it seems like the dominoes are beginning to fall," Nasa hydrologist JT Reager told the BBC.  READ MORE...

Owl Hat

 

Breakthrough for Gravitational Waves

Artist’s concept of gravitational waves propagating through space.

New laser breakthrough to help increase understanding of gravitational waves.

Scientists have created a proof-of-concept setup of a new laser eigenmode sensor that offers over 1,000 times the sensitivity. After translating this work to gravitational wave detectors, they will offer the unprecedented precision needed to test the fundamental limits of general relativity and probe the interiors of neutron stars.

Gravitational wave scientists from The University of Western Australia (UWA) have led the development of a new laser mode sensor with unprecedented precision that will be used to probe the interiors of neutron stars and test the fundamental limits of general relativity.

Research Associate from UWA’s Center of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav-UWA) Dr. Aaron Jones, said UWA co-ordinated a global collaboration of gravitational wave, metasurface, and photonics experts to pioneer a new method to measure structures of light called “eigenmodes.”

“Gravitational wave detectors like LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA store enormous amount of optical power, and several pairs of mirrors are used to increase the amount of laser light stored along the massive arms of the detector,” Dr. Jones said.  READ MORE...

Dancing Man

 

World's Largest Plant

An underwater image of the seagrass in Shark Bay in Western Australia.

CNN —  The world’s largest living plant has been identified in the shallow waters off the coast of Western Australia, according to scientists.

The sprawling seagrass, a marine flowering plant known as Posidonia australis, stretches for more than 112 miles (180 kilometers) in Shark Bay, a wilderness area protected as a World Heritage site, said Elizabeth Sinclair, a senior research fellow at the School of Biological Sciences and Oceans Institute at The University of Western Australia.

That’s about the distance between San Diego and Los Angeles.

The plant is so large because it clones itself, creating genetically identical offshoots. This process is a way of reproducing that is rare in the animal kingdom although it happens in certain environmental conditions and occurs more often among some plants, fungi and bacteria.

“We often get asked how many different plants are growing in a seagrass meadow. Here we used genetic tools to answer it,” said Sinclair, the author of a study on the seagrass that published late Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“The answer definitely surprised us – just ONE! That’s it, just one plant has expanded over 180 km in Shark Bay, making it the largest known plant on Earth,” she said via email.  READ MORE...