Sweet

 

Health Concerns

Like this bear, my cancers and their treatments have a side effect of fatigue and I find myself needing a nap almost every afternoon.  This is difficult for someone who has always been active their entire life...  but, I suppose that once one enters their 70s that one's physical activities, in general, will decline.

Due to the consistent continuity of my diet, my blood work always shows that I am somewhat physically sound inside.  My glucose (sugar) levels have been steadily falling.  My bad cholesterol is 87 and my good cholesterol is 47 which my family physician that I just saw this week indicated that low good cholesterol is not necessarily a bad thing.

For the last 2-3 years, I have been counting my calorie intake on a daily basis and when I first started I was at 2500+ calories a day and have gotten down to between 1200 and 1800 calories a day but hardly ever over 2000 calories each day.

My daily diet is filled with low-fat food where my base was onions, bell peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, broccoli, squash along with constant servings of beans, fish, and chicken and maybe 6 times a year red meat.  I have also eliminated sugars and fried foods, replacing them with air-fried food.

For your information - exercise does not cause weight to be lost...  the only thing that helps one lose weight is to eat less...  in fact, many recommend that you eat small meals every two to three hours...  I have tried that and it is not easy to maintain.

My goto fish is salmon and cod and chicken is chicken.  I eat Pita bread instead of white bread.  The Pita bread that I eat is only 60 calories each although some Pita can be as high as 140 calories.

My weakness is rice and since I know that then I take the time to wash out the starch and I only eat 1/4 to 1/3 cup of dried rice with one meal/day typically with beans and broccoli.

Can One Man Save the World - John Ondrasik

 

On Being White

 What am I trying to achieve here with the title of ON BEING WHITE...  well, it all started a couple of years ago when Black Lives Matter took off around the country and from that movement the DEFUND THE POLICE movement was spawned and cities around the country caved into BLM hoping that if they did this, it would appease the black community...  unfortunately, it did not work out as it was anticipated as crime in black communities increased rather than decreased.  These two initiatives spawned the movement of Critical Race Theory that is now taught in many of our public school systems in America...

Basically:

Critical race theory (CRT) is a cross-disciplinary intellectual and social movement of civil-rights scholars and activists who seek to examine the intersection of race and law in the United States and to challenge mainstream American liberal approaches to racial justice. For example, the CRT conceptual framework is one way to study how and why US courts give more lenient punishments to drug dealers from some races than to drug dealers of other races. The word critical in its name is an academic term that refers to critical thinking, critical theory, and scholarly criticism, rather than criticizing or blaming people.  It first arose in the 1970s, like other "critical" schools of thought, such as Critical Legal Studies, which examines how legal rules protect the status quo.

It is because of critical race theory that these postings were created by me so that they could be posted and people could read what a white person thinks about this movement and how a white person reacts to being categorized unfairly by the black community.

In 1865, the Civil War in the USA ended as did slavery...  that was 157 years ago.  A generation is typically considered to be 30 years... so, that was 5 generations ago... or:

1.  father

2. Grandfather

3. Great Grandfather

4. Great Great Grandfather

5. Great Great Great Grandfather

In other words, my great, great, great, grandfather MAY or MAY not have owned slaves...  I don't know and to tell you the truth, I don't really give a shit what he did or did not do...

I don't even care what my father did or did not do...  all I care about is what I did/do or did not do/did.

My concern is that BLM and CRT are focusing on WHITES as a whole race for being the problem when in reality their focus should be on WEALTHY WHITES...  it is these WEALTHY WHITES that control our societies, our businesses, our schools, our courts, our news cycles, our law enforcement, our technology, our healthcare, and our military...  and, I say military because WEALTHY WHITES don't serve in the military under any circumstances.

I am not a WEALTHY WHITE and I have never been a WEALTHY WHITE...  which means I resent being classified as one...  consequently, I want to write about being white in America...

Two For You

 

Build Back Better

Two Moving

Shape Shifting Enabled

Physicists have discovered a new way to coat soft robots in materials that allow them to move and function in a more purposeful way. The research, led by the University of Bath, is described in a paper published on March 11, 2022, in Science Advances.

Authors of the study believe their breakthrough modeling on ‘active matter’ could mark a turning point in the design of robots. With further development of the concept, it may be possible to determine the shape, movement, and behavior of a soft solid not by its natural elasticity but by human-controlled activity on its surface.

Wrapping an elastic ball (orange) in a layer of tiny 

robots (blue) allows researchers to program shape 

and behavior. Credit: Jack Binysh

The surface of an ordinary soft material always shrinks into a sphere. Think of the way water beads into droplets: the beading occurs because the surface of liquids and other soft material naturally contracts into the smallest surface area possible – i.e. a sphere. But active matter can be designed to work against this tendency. An example of this in action would be a rubber ball that’s wrapped in a layer of nano-robots, where the robots are programmed to work in unison to distort the ball into a new, pre-determined shape (say, a star).

It is hoped that active matter will lead to a new generation of machines whose function will come from the bottom up. So, instead of being governed by a central controller (the way today’s robotic arms are controlled in factories), these new machines would be made from many individual active units that cooperate to determine the machine’s movement and function. This is akin to the workings of our own biological tissues, such as the fibers in heart muscle.

Using this idea, scientists could design soft machines with arms made of flexible materials powered by robots embedded in their surface. They could also tailor the size and shape of drug delivery capsules, by coating the surface of nanoparticles in a responsive, active material.. This in turn could have a dramatic effect on how a drug interacts with cells in the body.

Work on active matter challenges the assumption that the energetic cost of the surface of a liquid or soft solid must always be positive, because a certain amount of energy is always necessary to create a surface.  READ MORE...

Creature

 

Influences from Neural Oscillations

A research group from the University of Bologna discovered the first causal evidence of the double dissociation between what we see and what we believe we see: these two different mechanisms derive from the frequency and amplitude of alpha oscillations.

“If I don’t see it, I don’t believe it”, people say when they want to be certain of something. But are what we see and what we believe we see the same thing?

A new study published in the journal Current Biology shows that this is not the case: despite their usual strong correlation, the perceptual accuracy of visual information and its subjective interpretation use separate neural mechanisms that can be manipulated independently of each other.

The study—led by researchers from the University of Bologna together with Bologna AUSL (Local Health Authority) and the University of Glasgow (UK) – showed for the first time that the two mechanisms involved are related on the one hand to the frequency of alpha oscillations and, on the other hand, to their amplitude.

Alpha oscillations are pervasive neural oscillations in the posterior visual cortex linked to attention and concentration. This is the first causal evidence of the double dissociation between what we see and what we believe we see. These findings may prove useful to develop new treatments for the neurological and psychiatric populations with altered cognitive experiences.  READ MORE...

Muscle Pull

 

Atom by Atom

Quantum computers could be constructed cheaply and reliably using a new technique perfected by a University of Melbourne-led team that embeds single atoms in silicon wafers, one-by-one, mirroring methods used to build conventional devices, in a process outlined in an Advanced Materials paper.

The new technique – developed by Professor David Jamieson and co-authors from UNSW Sydney, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), Leibniz Institute of Surface Engineering (IOM), and RMIT – can create large scale patterns of counted atoms that are controlled so their quantum states can be manipulated, coupled and read-out.

Lead author of the paper, Professor Jamieson said his team’s vision was to use this technique to build a very, very large-scale quantum device.

“We believe we ultimately could make large-scale machines based on single-atom quantum bits by using our method and taking advantage of the manufacturing techniques that the semiconductor industry has perfected,” Professor Jamieson said.

The technique takes advantage of the precision of the atomic force microscope, which has a sharp cantilever that “touches” the surface of a chip with a positioning accuracy of just half a nanometre, about the same as the spacing between atoms in a silicon crystal.

The team drilled a tiny hole in this cantilever, so that when it was showered with phosphorus atoms one would occasionally drop through the hole and embed in the silicon substrate.

The key was knowing precisely when one atom – and no more than one – had become embedded in the substrate. Then the cantilever could move to the next precise position on the array.

The team discovered that the kinetic energy of the atom as it plows into the silicon crystal and dissipates its energy by friction can be exploited to make a tiny electronic “click.”  READ MORE...

Shimmering Water

From the BackPorch

 East Tennessee is the home of NASCAR and moonshine and some of the best moonshine in the country is manufactured by country volunteers at the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains...  

But...  that is not what I like about East Tennessee...  what I like is the fact there are not many people that live here and if there are not many people, then those of us who live here and NOT CROWDED like living in some of our cities...  including cities in Tennessee like Knoxville, Bristol, Nashville, Chattanooga, and Memphis.

Both my wife and I are retired and have been retired since 2015 and while we were working, we probably spent $100 each week on gasoline.  That's $5,200 each year or about $$433 each month.  Retired, and before gas prices began increasing, we were spending about $133 each month...  So, even with these increases in gasoline prices, we have a long way to go before we get to the same level of expense when we were working...

Yes...  it is true that we don't have the same level of income these days...  but, fortunately, my wife and I decided to start saving money for retirement a long time ago...  which looking back was very smart.  We also decided to become debt free 15-20 years ago which was also a very smart thing to do as well...

So...  if there is any advice I can give, it is this:

1.  Become debt-free as quick as you can and stay that way...

2.  Start saving for your retirement based upon how much you think you will need each month when you are retired...   this will involve making a retirement plan which very few of us do...  this plan is flexible and will change over time...

3.  Establish a lifestyle with which you feel comfortable and then make sure you do not violate that lifestyle outside of an emergency...

4.  Look around your house and identify all the things you have purchased and how often you still use them...  we have a tendency to buy stuff that we use for a while and then get bored with them...  Those purchases should have never taken place...

Putin

 

Moving Cars

 

Conservative Philanthropy

Black cabinet member Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt at the opening of Midway Hall in May, 1943 [Courtesy of The National Archives and Records Administration, College Park. Still Picture Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division]

While pundits and scholars continue to debate the extent to which Donald Trump’s time in office has eroded American democracy, what is clear is that the former president’s political rhetoric breached the boundaries of acceptable racial discourse in the United States.

Trump assailed Mexicans as criminals, called for a ban on Muslims, said African nations were “shithole countries”, and referred to white supremacists in Charlottesville as “very fine people”. In his final act as president, he showed no remorse for the deadly violence he instigated during the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots with his lies about a stolen election. In so doing, 

Trump mainstreamed white supremacy and a new, more aggressive racial discourse that encouraged his supporters to resist “cancel culture”, the “woke media”, and any semblance of liberal or progressive ideas around identity and race – including using violent resistance to “take back our country”.

Take, for instance, Trump’s executive order banning federal contractors from conducting racial sensitivity training which claimed that such training indoctrinated government workers with “divisive and harmful sex and race-based ideologies”. 

From banning diversity training to denouncing the New York Times’ 1619 Project on slavery in the US and Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which offers an analysis of US history told from the perspective of the oppressed, Trump, his allies and supporters engaged in a full-scale culture war just as a “racial reckoning” was taking place at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The massive protests in the summer of 2020, which came about in response to the violent death of a Black man, George Floyd, at the hands of law enforcement, sparked a backlash from the political right which took advantage of white American fears – real or imagined – of becoming a majority-minority.  READ MORE...

Feeding Mom

 

Severe Racism at Tesla

California’s civil rights regulator said it’s suing Tesla Inc. for racial discrimination after finding widespread harassment of Black workers at the electric carmaker's factory near San Francisco.

The state’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing received complaints from hundreds of workers and “found evidence that Tesla’s Fremont factory is a racially segregated workplace where Black workers are subjected to racial slurs and discriminated against in job assignments, discipline, pay and promotion creating a hostile work environment,” Kevin Kish, the agency’s director, said in a statement late Wednesday.

The complaint in Alameda County Superior Court wasn’t immediately available on the court’s website.  Tesla said in a Feb. 8 blog post — before the suit was filed — that the company “will be asking the court to pause the case and take other steps to ensure that facts and evidence will be heard.”

The DFEH said one Black worker told of hearing racial slurs as often as 50 to 100 times a day. Some who complained about the offensive language said supervisors and managers were active participants in the abuse or witnesses to it. On a daily basis, Black workers saw racist graffiti on restroom walls, lockers, benches, work stations, lunch tables and the break room, according to the agency’s emailed statement, which provided a detailed summary of its findings.Am
The agency is the state-level equivalent of the better-known U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, with a mission to protect Californians from unlawful discrimination in employment, housing and accommodations. The DFEH informed Tesla on Jan. 3 that it had grounds to file a complaint. Tesla warned investors of the agency’s investigation in the annual report it filed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission this week.

The automaker’s shares fell 2% at 9:32 a.m. Thursday in New York.

Numerous Complaints
Tesla has more than 99,000 employees globally, and the factory in Fremont employs in excess of 10,000 people. The car company headed by billionaire Elon Musk moved its corporate headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas, last year.  READ MORE...

Cat & Fish

 

Jailed For 150 Days

US actor Jussie Smollett was sentenced to almost five months in prison after being found guilty of falsely telling police he was the victim of a racist and homophobic hate crime in 2019 – an attack prosecutors said he himself staged.

The gay 39-year-old African American was found guilty in December of “planning” the fake assault by paying two Nigerian brothers $3,500, and of lying to police in his depositions.

“You really crave the attention and you wanted to get the attention,” Chicago Judge James Linn told the former “Empire” star as he read out the sentence late Thursday.  He said the actor had a streak that was “profoundly arrogant and selfish and narcissistic”.

“This was premeditated to the extreme… You’ve destroyed your life as you knew it,” Linn said, adding that “you did damage to real hate crimes victims.”  He said Smollett was “just a charlatan, pretending to be a victim of a hate crime”.

The sentence and Smollett’s ensuing outburst capped an hours-long hearing Thursday and more than three years of legal drama following Smollett’s claim that he had been the target of a racist and homophobic attack.

Smollett did not make a statement when offered the opportunity before the judge announced the sentence, saying he was listening to his attorneys’ advice. But after Linn issued his decision, Smollett removed the face mask he wore throughout the hearing to proclaim himself innocent.

“If I did this, then it means that I stuck my fist in the fears of Black Americans in this country for over 400 years and the fears of the LGBT community,” Smollett said, standing up at the defence table as his lawyers and sheriff’s deputies surrounded him.

“Your Honour, I respect you and I respect the jury but I did not do this. And I am not suicidal. And if anything happens to me when I go in there, I did not do it to myself. And you must all know that.”  As deputies led him from the courtroom, Smollett shouted out again.  “I am innocent,” he yelled, raising his fist. “I could have said I am guilty a long time ago.”  READ MORE...

Hudson & Randall

 

Senseless Helplessness

There is something inside all of us that has the ability to motivate us or demotivate us...  whatever that actually means...  however, we are all aware of how some people are successful and some people are not so successful no matter how hard they try...  this is not an indication of good or bad it is just an indication of how it is, will be, and has been.

At the age of 74, I look back at my life and wonder about my accomplishment and while what I have done falls short of what others have done, I realize that others have fallen short of me...  so, what does all this mean?

In 2015, I retired after working 45 years and while I managed to reach retirement, my career was not all that terrific as I was "laid-off" or "fired" 10 times...  which translates into losing my job every 4.5 years...  that was not only difficult mentally on me but it was difficult on my spouse as well...  in fact, it severely reduced the trust and respect that she had for me...  this is manifested in how we interrelate with each other during our retirement.

Throughout my life, my personality has been displayed in such a way that when I retired in 2015, I retired with:

• no friends
• no family, in that, neither my brother, my sister, my daughter, and my wife really had no desire to have anything to do with me...

My current situation is completely a result of my own actions and comments over the last 67-74 years, therefore my fault is clear and undisputed...  however, that acceptance does not offset the fact, that it has resulted or manifested itself inside a deep coffin of depression.

This depression is further magnified by the fact that in 2015, I started writing novels and to date have completed 5 and I am 2-3 weeks away from completing number 6, and when I submitted one of those to a local published writers group, was told it was not up to their standards of writing and my membership was rejected.

So, what does this response mean for me as I know what it means for them?

It means: what's the point of me continuing my writing?

Of course, I could take a free novel writing course at COURSERA and see if that improves my writing and reapply...

But, I am 74 years old and by the time I reapply, I will be 75...

So, is that too old to start over and build writing skills?

OR...  what else do I do?

I have no desire to do anything else...  I have no interest in doing anything else...  although, I do have these blogs and I will continue posting here...  and, could expand what I post here...  but, is that enough for me?

OR...  I could continue writing my amateur novels, knowing that the odds are against me ever-evolving into becoming a professional writer...

Now, that's a goal to try and achieve...

So, what is it inside human beings that causes some of them to be successful while others are not successful at all?

And, is this lack of success when these individuals want to be successful that causes depression?

Do people need a network of support to keep from being depressed?

If they do not have a network of support what happens to them and/or what do they do to pull themselves out of depression?

It is an interesting journey that I have taken and continue to take and will only end with my death...  and, I wonder what the point of my life has been?  I have had no meaning or purpose all my life...  I've just existed and gone to work...  I've just done my job and looked for other jobs...  there has been no direction...  my life has just flowed from one year to the next, oblivious to what has been or what will be...  Along the way, I saw no reason for anyone to get to know me better, although we had credible work relationships as we worked together and got things done.

It was a senseless and meaningless existence and I was so busy doing what needed to be done, I had no time to look inside and understand myself...  now, I am left HOLLOW, EMPTY of that which makes us who we are...  consequently, I am retired, unfulfilled, want nothing to do, have no interests, and am alone...  it's not sad...  it's just the way it is for me...

Living to LIVE

What is Life?
Life is the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.

So, is that how we want to view our lives as just growth, reproduction, working, playing, changing, and dying?

I don't think so because there's so much more like:

• how we work
• at what do we work
• how we play
• what we own
• helping our children grow
• teaching our children
• our religious faith
• how we express our faith
• our neighbors
• our friends
• our photographs
• our memories

and, I am sure that the list is much, much longer...

Different perspectives cause us to live our lives differently, like:

• being a child
• being a teenager
• being an adult
• playing sports
• being a veteran
• being disabled
• being sick with cancer
• being sick with other diseases
• being wealthy/poor
• being uneducated/educated
• living in the south/north/east/west/middle
• living with animals
• living with children

Another aspect of life is PURPOSE...  do we have a PURPOSE?  and, if so, what is our PURPOSE?  Do our PURPOSES change over time and/or are they different?

Do our PURPOSES have any kind of MEANING?

Does it make sense that we only live 80-100 years and then DIE FOREVER?

Does it make sense that earth is the only planet in our entire universe that has a human being form of life?

Is life perceived differently when one is dying?

Do we not worry about life until we are dying?

Living life is different for each of us for a variety of reasons...  some of which make sense while others do not...  some of these reasons are based or predicated upon our purpose, our meaning, our faith, our values, our health, our family/friends, and our experiences that change over time which is part of our original definition.  Many of us don't even worry about this until we are confronted with a traumatic experience(s).  Maybe we would have a better life or at least a different life if we thought about it now.

Dancing

 

Easing Stress

MBG HEALTH

March 8, 2022 — 17:36 PM

These past two years have piled unexpected stressors on top of our already hectic lives. I don't know about you, but I have had to be more intentional about finding ways to reduce stress and foster calm daily. For me, these things include consuming a nutrient-dense diet, power walking, praying, prioritizing sleep, and doing things that bring me joy (time with family and friends, playing piano, singing, dancing, good food, etc.). I've recently incorporated a new strategy to stress less: mindbodygreen's calm+.

The science behind mindbodygreen's most relaxing supplement.

I lead the mindbodygreen science team, where we keep close tabs on the latest clinical research and carefully vet ingredients to bring you one-of-a-kind supplements. I don't recommend products I haven't critically analyzed and tried myself. That's why I can fully vouch for calm+.

The supplement's hero ingredient is USDA and EU organic certified full-spectrum European hemp oil. This heritage hemp is 100% CO2 extracted, eco-farmed, DNA-tested, and phytocannabinoid-rich, delivering 20 milligrams of CBD per serving. This cream-of-the-crop hemp oil is strategically complemented by two other plants: the world's most bioactive Shoden® ashwagandha extract (boasting 35% glycowithanolide content), and steam-distilled lavender oil from flowers that are high in linalool, a terpene known to elicit calm.*

For a little bit of insider background, we landed on this trio of botanicals because they can nourish and support multiple dimensions of our stress management physiology simultaneously.* Cannabinoids from hemp oil and terpenes from lavender interact with our intrinsic "balancer," the endocannabinoid system, to relax us.* 

Furthermore, ashwagandha is a nootropic herb that works via our hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis to bolster our resilience to stress.* And not in a vague sense, either: Clinical trial evidence shows Shoden® ashwagandha's ability to reduce cortisol and DHEA-S, actual hormonal biomarkers of stress, at 240 mg (the dose in calm+).*

Mind you, this premium botanical trio is delivered in one convenient gelcap (no tincture mess nor gummy sugars to worry about here, folks). I should also point out that calm+ is GMO-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, and major food allergen-free.  READ MORE...

Classic Sunday Morning Newspaper Cartoons

 

Listening Versus Reading

Would you prefer to read a book or listen to the audio version? Your answer may depend on several variables, such as convenience or availability. The debate about the differences between reading and listening comprehension has taken center stage once again.

Besides a preference for one over the other, the most crucial question is; which of the two helps us retain vital information, improve our comprehension, and make us more efficient?

Well, it depends.

There are numerous studies and articles on the topic, most of which evaluate both methods’ effectiveness. Individual preferences and even learning disabilities can play a role.

However, there are differences in comprehension, depending on how we consume information. One example is transcribers. They must develop excellent listening skills to transfer audio conversations into a text format. Poor listening habits won’t help someone transcribe a significant legal deposition or law enforcement interview efficiently.

It’s also important to point out that there are differences between reading or listening for pleasure versus learning. Below are some examples:

Audiobooks vs. Physical Books
Do we comprehend more information if we physically read a book compared to listening to the same material?

Remember when audiobooks hit the market years ago? Futurist suggested listening would eclipse reading as our preferred learning method. It looks like books are still with us and will be for the foreseeable future.

Having access to one version gives us options when the other isn’t convenient or available. Reading a book or magazine while walking in the park or on a treadmill is often challenging. That’s when using our earbuds to listen to audiobooks or podcasts is a better method.  READ MORE...

Dog Cage