Living With Cancer

 As you already know, I have been battling two cancers simultaneously: lymphoma for 15 years and melanoma for 10 years.

About 2 months ago, an quarterly CT scan revealed that my cancer was growing...  but which one?  A biopsy subsequently revealed it was my lymphoma not my melanoma which was good.  However, the lymphoma growth was so large that my Oncologist suspected it had changed from small cell to large cell which meant more aggressive and a stronger set of drugs to fight it.

This wicked chemo had set me on my butt about 10 years ago and I ended up in the ER numerous times during the 6-month treatment protocols.  I was not looking forward to that at all.

A more robust lab analysis was ordered, gene sequencing, and the fact that the test was ordered indicated that something major was suspected.

Yesterday, I met with my Oncologist after about a month of worrying and was told that all results indicated that the lymphoma was metabolically active BUT NOT GROWING and not changing or transforming into something else.

My Oncologist was relieved and could not understand why I was worried especially since in my mind, he had previously been worried.  I was not sure whether to be happy or sad because of my emotions.

My Oncologist had shared what he should never have shared with me until after the fact and while he had not actually seen me for several weeks, it was more the NPs that did the sharing...

STAY THE CURRENT COURSE OF ACTION...  he said, and I will see you again in a month when you come back for treatment.  Previously, it was every other month that he saw me...  so, he is obviously worried about something that he is not sharing.

I am 75 years old and realize that if I live another twenty years which is my goal that I will be lucky...  I am confident that I will live to 80 but after that, I am not sure...  AGE is a solemn awareness of eventualities, especially when cancer is involved.

For 15 years, I had remained positive, and I need to continue that positive attitude for another 15 years.

Undersea Tunnel

 

Extreme Heat Not Causing Blackouts

Florida is set to experience heat index values of up to 115 degrees this week. Persistent, scorching temperatures covered much of the Southwest, expanding into the Midwest and Northeast in July. Record after record was broken.

And yes so far, the nation's electric grid has held firm. No blackouts, as happened in California in 2022. No brownouts as the Electric Reliability Council of Texas warned could happen this summer. No rolling power outages as the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) alerted might be an issue in the hottest summer months.

Instead, several things are going right.

Energy experts say four things have come together to make this summer, while hot, nowhere near as dangerous as it might have been had power systems failed leaving thousands without the air conditioning that's now a matter of survival during heat waves.

1. More diversification of energy sources, including increasing amounts of wind and solar
2. Better planning and preparedness
3. Higher levels of hydroelectric power due to heavy winter rain and snow in the West
4. Demand response programs offer consumers rebates to ease up on energy use in the hottest parts of the day.

"It's kind of sad that we expect the grid to fail," said Kyri Baker, a professor of engineering at the University of Boulder, Colorado who studies power systems. While the energy grid as a whole is getting creaky, the energy sources are diversifying and making it more flexible.  READ MORE...

Understanding

 

AMERICA: A Declining Nation conclusion

There are five key elements to a country's global power and domination:

1. Military/Defense
2. Economic/Technology
3. Culture/Societies
4. Demographics 
5. Resources

While our military is declining, we have more nuclear weapons than any other country on earth.  Will we use them?

Probably not...

But, the threat is still there.

The USA has always had the strongest economy ever since WWII...  our shift away from fossil fuels has damaged our economy relative to the other super powers.

Will we recover?

Hard to say...  but, I suppose that it is possible.

Going completely green is not the answer.

An alternative to electricity must be found.

That alternative could be nuclear fusion.

Our culture/society is the strongest in the world and quite possibly will remain the strongest, however, at the present time, we are divided.  A divided house will never remain standing.  Liberal/Progressives versus the conservatives is a battle that will have no winners...  only losers...  we must find a way to compromise....

We must come to terms with what kind of a country that we want to be.  That is to say:

Do we want to be a global leader and dominate the world with our military, our economy, our technology, and our intellectual property?

OR,

Do we want to be a country that gives as much as it can to its people so that they never have to work or worry about their families and risk losing our global dominance due to this redistribution of money?

Unless the Billionaires are willing to share their wealth, we cannot do both.

Currently, this country has an abundance of natural resources that other countries in the world do not have.  Our ability to grow crops surpasses all other countries in the world.  

What good are all those resources if you don't know how or don't want to use them?

Do we want to continue to dominate the world or do we want to redeploy our resources, technology, intellectual property and cooperative spirits to colonizing OUTER SPACE?

It is entirely possible, that we will have missions to Mars and Venus as well as other planets in the next few years...  certainly something concrete will happen in that regard by 2030 whether we like it or not.

Live on other worlds and not worry about earth is certainly in our future.

If so, then it does not matter if our dominance of earth is lost to another country like China.

HOWEVER,

There is another option that may be hard to swallow but will resolve most of these issues regarding a declining nation...

SHARE GLOBAL POWER WITH CHINA AND OTHER COUNTRIES...

Create militaries and defenses not for aggression but for protection of your citizens should another country try to invade...  like Russia did to Ukraine.

We don't need to be NUMBER ONE...

When the global economy shifts from the WEST to the EAST, what I am suggesting will happen by default, whether we like it or not.

Sharing Power will not work if you are egotistical...

The most difficult concept with which to deal is growing old and losing one's power.

You don't lose power if you relinquish it voluntarily.

 

Reborn

 

China's EVs Going Global

If you bought an electric vehicle in the UK this year, there’s a good chance it was an MG4. The fully electric hatchback, which launched in 2022, sold 5,200 units in the first three months of this year, the second-best selling EV behind Tesla’s Model Y.


With prices starting at about £27,000, it is also substantially cheaper than the Tesla at £45,000. And while MG is one of Britain’s most famous car brands – with a century of carmaking in Birmingham until MG Rover’s 2005 collapse – the secret to its newfound success comes from China. Since 2007, the company has been owned, and the cars made, by SAIC, China’s largest carmaker.


In the past few years, China has been churning out EVs of a quality and price that is making western marques nervous. More than a quarter of new cars sold in China last year were EVs or hybrids, compared with 13% globally. And of the 850,000 electric passenger cars imported to Europe in 2022, more than half came from China.

Xi Jinping, China’s president, has pledged to take the country to net zero emissions by 2060. In the EU, the target is 2050. For both, decarbonising the streets with EVs will be crucial, and China is racing ahead. By 2025, 13% of China’s fleet is predicted to be fully electric or hybrid, compared with 6% globally.


After an astonishing rise, some analysts are wondering if China’s EV industry can continue to accelerate, as the government winds down state support and geopolitical tensions threaten to dampen global demand for its cars.  READ MORE...

Living Off Grid

 

How To Live One's Life

I am not a millionaire

I am not a billionaire

I am not CEO of a Fortune 500 company

I am not an elected official

I am not in a position of power and influence

I am not an expert in anything

I AM AN ORDINARY RETIRED PERSON LIVING OFF OF SOCIAL SECURITY AND MONEY SAVED...

What advice could you possibly get from me???

You only get one chance at this life, so why not experience everything you can and do everything that you can?

Some people want to live their lives exactly like that and I suppose that there is nothing wrong with that philosophy...

Some people want to live their lives following the laws of God and faith's religious teachings and I suppose that there is nothing wrong with that either...

It would then appear that I am supporting the concept of living your life anyway that you would like to live your life....  and, I suppose that I am...

BUT, that is not the way I would say that you should live your life...  although, the 10 Commandments are very powerful and I find nothing wrong with any of them.

BUT, that is not necessarily the way I would live my life...

While my life is 3/4ths over at the age of 75, I lived my life with:

• Integrity - kissing no one's ass for any reason
• Honor - never violating my ethics
• Class - always gave 110% to all my employers

I stopped all those things that I perceived were controlling me, like:

• Tobacco
• Alcohol
• Laziness
• Apathy

and instituted:  Discipline and Determination

What then did I do?

1. I made myself goals and followed them
2. I created a budget and followed it
3. I eliminated all of my debt
4. I saved money instead of buying what I did not need
5. I designed a retirement plan

My initial financial goal was to have $500,000 (not including the value of my house) by age 67 and $1,000,000 by the age of 80 which did include the house.

Rationale: at the age of 80, there is not much yard work or traveling that I would be doing, so my plan was to liquidate everything and move into an apartment.

Part of my Retirement Plan included a HEALTH plan.  This plan focused on healthy eating and exercise.  At the age of 40, I stopped smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, eating red meat, fried foods, and sugars.

Caveat:  I knew that it would be difficult stopping red meat unless I allowed myself a hamburger once a month or so.

Once I got used to retirement life and not driving into Knoxville's traffic every morning and afternoon, the stress in my life was substantially reduced if not eliminated.

When I drive anywhere now, I always leave 15-20 minutes before I need to...  so that I do not have to drive fast because I am late.  I drive the speed limit and just watch the cars pass me by as if I was walking.

I make a point of never raising my voice to our three cats no matter what they do.  Getting angry is a pointless emotion to have.

During the day, I keep myself busy with tasks that expand my mind...  and once in a while take afternoon naps.  I need to walk more, but let that stop because of my back fusion surgery and the increased fatigue from my all of a sudden active cancer inside me.

I am comfortable with who I am and comfortable with my finances.  Sure, it would be nice to have more, but I don't need more.  I do everything I want to do when I want to do it.

There are no regrets associated with my 75 years even though numerous bad decisions were made.  Those bad decisions actually brought me to the place I am today...  so, were they really bad?

 

Life Changing

 

Turning Concrete into a Energy-Storing Supercapacitor

What if you could turn concrete into a viable and effective energy storage option? While that might seem a bit out-of-this-world, that’s exactly what MIT researchers have managed to do, according to reports from New Atlas. A paper on the new concrete supercapacitor is also available in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

According to this research, MIT researchers were able to take an idea from 2021 – which said that you could store useful amounts of energy in concrete – and scale it up effectively by simply adding a single additive to the concrete mix. The mixture thus became a combination of concrete, water, and carbon black.

When combined, the three components allowed the researchers to create an energy-storing concrete supercapacitor that was easy to scale up, with it only requiring a change from “1-millimeter-thick electrodes to 1-meter-thick electrodes” to go from powering simple things like LED lights to full-blown buildings and homes.

Further, because many homes are already built on concrete foundations, it’s a system that should be able to easily scale up and at the least negate some of the cost of the power consumption that homeowners are already undertaking through normal electricity bills.

It’s an intriguing idea and one that bodes well for the future of building and architecture, especially given that the researchers say a 1,589-cu-ft block of the concrete supercapacitor would be capable of storing up to 10kWh of electricity, roughly a third of the energy needed to power a home.

From there, it could also be paired with next-generation solar panels, and since concrete is available everywhere, it wouldn’t be hard to incorporate it more widely. However, it’s unclear at the moment just how effective this type of concrete would be outside, where it could get wet, so the experiment certainly requires some more thought and testing before widespread use.   READ MORE...

Somewhat Political

 

AMERICA: A Declining Nation - part III

I refer to our country as the US of America because to only use the word America is MISLEADING.  North America includes:  Canada, USA, Central America, and South America.  Interestingly enough, Central Americans and South Americans also call themselves Americans...

In Part II, I mentioned a declining Middle Class which many people, including experts, do not agree with me, so let me explain my position.

Today, the US of A has three distinct classes:

Upper - Middle - Lower

The lower class lives at the poverty level or lower and quite possible a little higher.  The current poverty level is an income of about $22,000 or less...  so, a little higher might be $25,000.

However, this income is based upon a family not upon an individual.  If both members of the family earn $20,000/year then their combined income is $40,000 and they are no longer living in poverty.  

Another issue to think about, is that earning $22,000 in New York City is a lot different than earning $22,000 in Atlanta or even Knoxville, TN.

BUT...  how far up the money ladder does the Middle Class extend?

• $50,000/family/year
• $100,000/family/year
• $250,000/family/year

In 2023, the average income in the USA was $56, 980

Comparisons - 2023

1. The average Hollywood actor makes $70,000/year
2. The average Professional athlete makes $60,000/year
3. The average NBA player makes $9,000,000/year
4. The average NFL player makes $2,500,000/year
5. There are 22 million (8.8% of the population) millionaires in the USA - 30% of the millionaires are women
6. There are 756 billionaires in the USA

Proposed New USA Classes

UPPER

Greater than $500,000/year, plus Billionaires

MIDDLE

$100,000 to $500,000/year

LOWER

Less than $100,000/year

With the average income at $56,000 most of us fall into the lower class...

NOW... let's add in a wrinkle...

By the year 2025, 80% of the global jobs will be replaced by AI/robots.  The odds are that it will be between 50% and 80% in the US of A.  Some of those displaced workers will be smart enough to work in the AI field, but that vast majority of workers will not be.

The only income these workers will have will be what the government decides to give them.

Since our national debt is already extremely high and wealthy people hide their money from taxes, just where do you think that money will come from?

Will the government print more money?

If they do, it will dilute the value of the dollar, increasing inflation.

Like I said at the beginning, the US of A is trying to eliminate the current middle class and replace it with a smaller but more wealthy group of people.  It is painfully obvious that you will never be in this smaller group of people.

But with AI/robots doing the job, neither businesses nor the government NEEDS PEOPLE.

 

Just Being Nice

 

Evidence that Gravity is Breaking Down the Universe

A scientist claims to have discovered a “gravitational anomaly” that calls into question our fundamental understanding of the universe.

Astronomer Kyu-Hyun Chae from the university of Sejong University in South Korea made the discovery while studying binary star systems, which refer to two stars that orbit each other.


His observations appear to go against the standard gravitational models established by Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, and instead offer evidence that an alternative theory first proposed in the 1980s may explain the anomaly.

Analysis of data collected by the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope revealed accelerations of stars in binaries that did not fit the standard gravitational models.

At accelerations of lower than 0.1 nanometres per second squared, the orbit of the two stars deviated from Newton’s universal law of gravitation and Einstein’s general relativity.

Instead, Professor Chae theorised that a model known as Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) could explain why these previous theoretical frameworks were unable to explain the stars’ movements.

“The deviation represents a direct evidence for the breakdown of standard gravity at weak acceleration,” Professor Chae wrote in a paper, titled ‘Breakdown of the Newton-Einstein standard gravity at low acceleration in internal dynamics of wide binary stars’, that was published in The Astrophysics Journal.  READ MORE...

Never Die

 

Importance of Family

I alienated my family years ago with my comments and while I do not remember exactly what I said, I know they must have been brutally honest.  I have (or had) a brother and a sister with whom I could never identify.  Their behaviors and beliefs were never shared by me even though we tried many times to understand each other.  Their children are not that fond of me either.

While it is preferred to have a supportive family, it is not absolutely necessary for one to live a normal life with quiet but quality expectations.

It is sad but true that my wife's brother and sister care about me more than my own brother and sister and the age difference does not seem to be much of a problem as it is with my siblings.

Our parents kept us together but now that both of them are deceased there is absolutely no reason why we must continue to act like a happy or relatively happy family.

In the past, it was necessary for families to stay together and not just to harvest crops but for protection as well.  The larger the family the more protection that could be offered...  and the more hands there were when it came time to harvest the crops.

With the advent of the railroad and the motor vehicle, families became more mobile and more children left the comforts of home, to seek out their future in other states.  Sometimes, these states were close by and sometimes they were on the other side of the nation.

The mobility increased with air flight and with private jets, flying from one location to another was just like driving a car there except quicker and someone else did the driving.

Unfortunately, the family unit is no longer important in today's society; in fact, in some instances having a family is a hindrance instead of an asset.  I am speaking of those jobs where one stays away from home, months at a time.

What comes to mind here is the military and 18 wheelers that drive from coast to coast.  But they are not the only ones...  salespeople oftentimes leave home on a Sunday and do not return for a couple of weeks and then only 1-2 days with family before it starts all over again.

Being separated from a spouse and children is not the same as being separated from siblings.

As one gets older, one finally realizes the importance of family and when looking back on one's life, wished it had been done a little differently...  when one finally looks back, it is typically too late.

Tomorrow Always Becomes Today

Today, I had a PET Scan...  it was not a big deal.  You are a little more enclosed than a CT but not as enclosed as an MRI.

There is some kind of cancer growing in me and the Oncologists are not sure if my Lymphoma has transformed into Large Cell Lymphoma or into something else.

A biopsy was take a while back and was sent off to an outside lab for gene sequencing.  This sequencing is supposed to help the doctors determine which protocol of drugs to use to fight this cancer.

The PET scan is indicating which lymph node lights up the most so that it can be surgically removed and analyzed to determine the same thing that the gene sequencing is supposed to determine.

Not sure why we are doing both...  seems a little redundant to me unless the results from the gene sequencing are not back yet.  But then there is the scheduling of the surgery and more time needed for further testing.  Surely the gene sequencing will be back long before all that happens.

So again, what's the point of the PET scan?

Are we doing tests now just to make money for the hospital and saving my life is secondary?

No Respect for Law & Order

When I was 15 years of age (1962) I had no respect for law and order.  This lack of respect lasted until age 20.  During those teenage years, I was involved in breaking and entering, grand theft auto, stealing, and larceny.  Most of these crimes took place in Alexandria, Virginia, Durham and Graham, North Carolina.  Some of these crimes took place in Europe and in the Middle East.

I wasn't the son of someone who was wealthy or in a position of power.  I was just someone, seeing how far I could push the law and get away with it.

I lost my desire to be a criminal while I was in college but there were still desires in me up until the age of 30.  After 30, I reverted back to the way I was supposed to have been from the getgo.

At 75 years of age and 45 years later, I am appalled by the lack of respect for the rule of law that people who live in the big cities have.  My crimes were created simply out of curiosity, nothing more.  Today's crimes revolve around tens of thousands of dollars.

It seems like every other day, the news is reporting where a group of people, both males and females, walk into a store and in front of the security guards (who have been told to do nothing) they walk out of the store with merchandise valued in the thousands.

Shift from the big cities down to our southern border and we have immigrants coming into this country illegally...  and they know that they are entering illegally and don't seem to care.  A few agents are trying to stop the crossings, but their efforts are like spitting into the wind.

Does anyone believe that anyone one of these illegal immigrants will automatically start obeying all our laws?

I cannot imagine what fool would believe that.

Will these immigrants want to become US citizens?

My answer to that question is yes.

Do the Democrats believe these illegal immigrants will become Democrats?

My answer to that question is also yes.

What these immigrants do not realize is that in a couple of years 2025 or maybe 2027, most of the available jobs in the USA will be conducted by AI/robots.

What are these illegal immigrants going to do then?

Break more laws to feed their families?

My answer to that question is yes.

It takes discipline and determination to change your basic personality.  It was not easy for me to turn things around, but I did.  I also quit smoking after 25 years, cold turkey...  this too takes discipline and determination and will power.

All these illegal immigrants WILL CHANGE OUR COUNTRY.  They could change it for the better or they could change it for the worst.  I don't know which way it will go...  but, if crime continues in these big cities...  then it is likely to spread elsewhere.

Ancient Freezer