Monthly Archives: October 2012

A collection of stuff

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Got a few things hanging around the browser to share, and seeing as I have very little to report from my own life (sleep continues to be complex and evasive, bleh) I figured now was as good a time as any to share them with you nice people.

For starters, there is this bit of news about the fate of Representative Jesse Jackson Junior.

Yup, the son of the famous Jesse Jackson. He’s a Democratic Member of Congress who has made the news for basically just plain disappearing for months without an explanation.

That was intriguing, but what caught my interest was that when he finally broke his silence and told everyone what was up, it turned out he had been suffering from major depression.

And I know a thing or two about depression myself. And I have met enough people who were successful people with high social status who just plain wore out one day and collapsed inside, and suddenly became emotional cripples, that I can imagine what JJJ is going through right now.

He probably feels horrible for failing everyone who trusted in him and who admires him and looks up to him, and that, of course, only makes the depression worse. I am glad he is getting medical help… he needs all the messaging that this is a disease, not a failure or weakness, that he possibly can get, and a medical setting with doctors and other professionals can only help.

The latest news from the article is that he sent out a robocall to his constituents to tell them how things are going with him. Here’s the nutmeat :

For nearly 18 years I have served the people of the second district, I am anxious to return to work on your behalf, but at this time it is against medical advice, and while I will always give my all to my constituents, I ask for your continued patience as I work to get my health back.

Well put and well done, sir. Despite what the disease itself tries to tell you, you have done nothing wrong. You are just someone who has become ill. And nobody would fault a person for being realistic about how long it will take to recover.

Then there is this incredible video. You have to see this, but before you do, I need you to promise me that you will watch it all the way to the end without skipping anything, OK?

Trust me, it is absolutely worth it.

That covered, here it is :

Now that, my friends, is how you make a point. I bet a lot of people in the audience, no doubt some of them black, were agreeing with everything that guy was saying before he dropped the bomb.

That is how you get behind enemy lines to do some damage in the battle for the hearts and minds of the people. You have to start out with things they will agree with, and then take them to a conclusion they absolutely cannot accept via logically plausible steps.

This forces people to wake up from their herd stupor and actually think about what they are hearing in order to avoid the terrible conclusion. There is no other way to defend yourself mentally. Sure, it will make people angry and there is no guarantee that it will change anybody’s mind. People are quite ingenious at coming up with ways to keep believing whatever they are used to believing and avoiding having to actually reflect and examine anything.

But you have forced them to think about what they believe, and that is not easily done.

And while we are talking about changing minds on controversial subjects, how about this little bombshell from the University of Toronto : PMS does not exist.

Now let me make this crystal clear : nobody is saying menstruation does not exist. It exists, cramping exists, bloating exists, and all that.

But a group of researches at U of T set out to study PMS, only to find they could not even prove it existed. This opens up a lot of intriguing possibilities that all center around the notion that PMS might be an entirely socially constructed phenomenon.

This immediately makes me wonder what the historical evidence for PMS might be. And specifically PMS… any woman might be in a bad mood when her body is doing horrifying things that cause her a lot of pain. Men get testy when they are sick too.

Another interesting angle : feminists seem, so far, to be embracing this idea and saying “See, women are not irrational creatures because of our hormones, so knock off all that ‘must be her time of the month’ bullshit, you sexist pigs!”.

And bravo for that! But I wonder if the ladies have thought this true, because if we all stop believing in PMS, that means that you ladies no longer have an excuse for being moody and bitchy and crazy for four or five days of the month.

You will actually be fully accountable for your actions 24/7/365.

You know, just like a man.

You sure you want to go there, ladies?

Finally, we have this funny story out of Austria : A museum in Vienna has caused quite a stir by putting giant posters of naked men all over the place.

And predictably, people are flipping out over this harmless display of the human body, and saying “oh, but what about the CHILDREN?”.

As though pictures of naked people magically emit child brain warping radiations.

But to me, the real nugget of irony is that the museum is acting like they are shocked, shocked that people are upset about how they chose to advertise their latest exhibit.

How disingenuous can you get? Like you had no idea plastering giant schlongs all over the place would cause a stir. You are so full of shit your eyes are turning brown from the outside in. You knew damned well people would flip and you would get tons of free publicity.

In fact, that probably made it all the sexier for you Viennese art fags. (There is literally zero possibility that an exhibit of male nudes was put together by any heterosexuals. )

And I am all for destruction of pointless and harmful taboos via desensitization. We would all be better off without body shame and the more ridiculous and poisonous extremes of the child\sex barrier.

But don’t piss on my shoe and tell me it’s White Zinfindel. Own your provocation. Stand up for your radical action. And if you can’t own it, don’t do it.

And for what it is worth, fag though I am, I would personally enjoy giant pictures of naked men unexpectedly appearing in public.

Though sitting around observing people’s reactions might be pretty funny.

Friday Science Weregild, October 19, 2012

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SCIENCE! Isn’t it awesome? There is a reason I dedicate one seventh of my blog entries to science news, and that is because I absolutely love science. At one point I thought I might become a professional scientist, but then calculus happened and well, there went that dream.

Besides, I am much better suited to writing about science. I have crazy awesome verbal skills, I devour science news like Pac-man eats dots, and honestly, it would have been really hard for me to pick one scientific field and focus on it.

There is just so much cool stuff happening out there!

And then there’s stuff like this.

Smells On Your Cell

Finally, the innovation billions of people have been waiting for with breathless anticipation! No, not a cure for cancer or a TV so big you can live inside it… it’s the ability to transmit smells via cell phone! Isn’t that so much better?

The moment I read the headline for this story, I know exactly how it would work and how, as a result, incredibly stupid it would be.

As the article points out, the human sense of smell is incredibly complex. In order to actually transmit smells, you would first have to be able to encode them – no small feet given how complex some molecules are – and then (the hard part) be able to manufacture them on the other end.

It would basically be teleportation. Not going to happen any time soon.

Instead, the device simply transmits a signal to the receiving cell phone telling it to release one of the pre-manufactured preset scents that come with the device.

So you can totally send someone the smell you are smelling…. if you happen to be smelling one of the device’s own scents.

That is not vaguely useful, interesting, or most importantly, what it claims to be.

And that is why I think this Chakar Perfume app is fit…. for the pit.

And speaking of inane inventions….

No More Burning Your Mouf

Here we have an invention that provides immediate relief for the pain caused by burning your mouth on a hot beverage or food.

And sure, we have all been there. Once. Or maybe twice. Coffee and pizza are the usual culprits, although for me, the most consistent offender has been microwave burritos.

(Seriously, those things are full of molten freaking lava when they come out of the microwave. What good is a product that cooks in a minute and a half if you can’t actually eat it for ten minutes?)

But seriously, who the heck burns their mouth often enough to keep a bunch of breath strip type burn aids in their product? Who is stupid enough to eat too-hot food all the time, but smart enough to think ahead and buy a product for it?

There must be some sort of advanced medical use for it, though. There are rare, terrible diseases that can cause outbreaks of chancre sores in the mouth.

Maybe those people could use it?

Soft and Crusty

Recent science has revealed that surface of Saturn’s moon, Titan (one of the fave for life in this solar system) is soft and crusty, like freshly frozen snow.

Or maybe damp sand. A recent analysis of what, exactly, happened when the Huygens lander landed on the surface of Titan. It did make a 4.7 inch dent into the surface, which jived with the theory that the surface would be soft, but then bounced out again onto the surface, where it came to rest with no further sinking, suggesting the surface has some rigidity.

So it is like that really fun (when you are a kid) kind of snow where the surface is frozen and can bear some weight, but with enough pressure you break through to the soft snow underneath.

And what kid could resist trying to cross the snow without breaking it? It was like one of those scenes where people are trying to cross thin ice, except the worst thing that could happen was a dunk in the snow up to your middle.

This suggests that when we next go to Titan, we will need to be wearing snowshoes. Or at least, our lander will need to be.

Quick, somebody contract Bombardier to make a Space Skidoo!

Is Anybody Home?

And finally, it is Big Finish time, the coolest story I came across this week, and it is a doozy, at least for a brain science nerd and philosopher like myself.

Ready? Scientists in Europe think they may have come up with an objective way to test for consciousness.

Bang! Zoom! Consciousness. If you can read this, you are already doing it.

Obviously, the first and most immediate implications of an objective and widely accepted test for consciousness would be medical. We use phrases like “brain dead” rather glibly, but there is mounting evidence that someone can zero out an EEG and still be alive, or at least, potentially alive again.

And seeing as one of the universally accepted criterion for death in human beings is “will never be alive again”, this puts medical ethics in a heartbreakingly precarious position.

The test builds on a field of mathematics that I find quite intriguing, complexity math. That is the math of determining the complexity of a system, and hence, over time, being able to tell whether a system is growing more complex or less complex.

Being a systems kind of fellow, this intrigues me. And as applied to that marvelously and mysteriously complex system known as the human mind, and the incredibly difficult question of consciousness, it absolutely fascinates me.

Consider my Spock Eyebrow fully engaged.

Beyond the medical, I am just dying to know what this technique might teach us about the nature of consciousness. The history of the quest for AI has taught us that one way to learn about the nature of the human brain is by trying to reproduce it, and a test for consciousness, in a sense, is recreating human consciousness in the form of a mathematical model.

It is no fMRI, but expanding the boundaries of our understanding of just what, exactly, is going on in our heads is always a good thing.

Seeya next week, folks!

Rainwater and poor self-care

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Well, summer is officially completely over, because that is definitely not a summer rain happening out there. It is just a preview of what the next six months or so will be like : cold dreary rain that feels like it never ends.

Meh, whatever. I am not particularly prone to seasonal depression except when, as with tonight, it happens to coincide with my own.

A rainy day doesn’t make me depressed, but if I am depressed anyhow, the rainy day can add to it a little, in a desperately poetic kind of way.

And today, I am kind of depressed. Melancholy, really. That is like depression but far less painful. It is a not entirely unpleasant kind of wistful sadness. It is not exactly a mood I would choose, but as spaces on my Great Wheel Of Moods goes, it is not so bad.

I think I am going through some major emotional processing lately, which is why I am trying not to take my moment to moment mood too seriously. I learned a long time ago not to freak out if I seem to be sad for no reason. It is just because I am processing some emotions that need processing, maybe ones that have been inside me for a very long time.

Angry for no reason is harder to manage and harder to endure. Sadness is sad, but it does not demand action against a target. Anger does. And I refuse to vent anger anywhere but on the proper targets, and those proper targets are not easy to access, so the anger just becomes frustration.

Or it gets directed inwards, and then it becomes the very bad, extremely toxic, self-loathing kind of depression that drives me to the edge of madness.

That is when I start feeling trapped in my own skin and like I am a hunted animal who needs to escape NOW, but where can I go?

Especially considering my agoraphobia?

Trapped in a house with unlocked doors. Prisoner of one’s own shell/cell. And so forth.

Today, after seeing my therapist then seeing my GP, I have been contemplating why it is so hard for me to take proper care of myself.

Before, I have theorized that I neglect myself because I am echoing how I was neglected by my parents when I was growing up. That is a big slice of it for sure. Self care echoes the care you have received. It seems sort of senseless, from a certain limited point of view, that other people have to treat you well before you can treat yourself well. Wouldn’t simple hedonistic self-interest mean that people treat themselves well no matter what?

But we are not so simple, we naked beach apes. We have a lot more going on in these crazy hotwired brains of ours than simple equations of pleasure and pain, loss and gain, sunshine and rain.

For starters, we have this crazy notion that we need to deserve something before we get it. Of course, being a social species, that makes sense. Ideas of justice (otherwise known as the ethics of what people deserve) are fundamental to any civilized species.

But in our mixed up modern world, that sense of what we deserve and what we do not can get programmed in some very strange ways, making us think that we do not deserve to be happy and therefore not able to enjoy the pleasures of life that are right before us, spread out like a glorious buffet.

After all, happiness might change who we are and introduce all kinds of stressful change and chaos. Better to just smother than ember before it can spark any change, then go back to complaining about how unhappy you are, which after all is what makes you happy.

So, to drag ourselves back towards the point, I self-neglect because neglect is all I know. But I think there may also be a much simpler reason as well.

One of the primary characteristics of depression is that it makes it very hard to have faith in any kind of delayed reaction. The deadening of one’s pleasure responses due to a serotonin deficit in the brain means that only strong, immediate pleasures, instant gratification, can get through to the depressive.

And the depressive needs that pleasure desperately because it is the only thing that keeps their mood afloat at all. The anhedonia that low serotonin levels brings means that the depressive finds life very unrewarding, and hence focuses fiercely, even exclusively on what pleasures they can still feel.

And hence, understandably, they are quite reluctant to try anything new. In their experience, the odds are heavily in favour of them not getting enough pleasure from a new thing in order for it to be “worth it” to them. With such a high reward level needed to meet that demand, it is no wonder.

And it also means that the depressive will have trouble staying with anything which either interferes with their connection to their existing dependent pleasures or which does not in and of itself provide the high level of reward they crave.

This is as true for a depressive who self-medicates with alcohol as it is for a fat dysthymic like myself.

And so things which are, by all rational analysis, clearly the thing we should do to become healthier and make our lives better are rejected or neglected because they simply cannot provide the very high immediate reward level that is required in order to keep the depressive motivated.

Hmm, once more I am talking in that clinical, scientific way. Oh well. Whatever is necessary in order for thoughts to leave my head.

So things I should be doing, like testing my blood and using my CPAP machine and exercising and eating less carbs and all that jazz, I don’t do them because they are just not worth it in my extremely poor emotional cashflow world.

And I have no idea what to do about that.

But talking it out is the first step.

Whatever n’ stuff

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For a change, let’s talk about sleep. After all, it’s not like I have a life or anything.

Got some of that super intense deep down sleep I needed today, which was a relief after a few days of pretty lousy sleep. I might still need more, I am not sure. But it feels good to have that part of my mind relax for a while.

I am seriously considering going a week without caffeine, to see if that straightens out my sleep schedule some. I don’t drink that much diet cola on a per week basis, but I do tend to drink it when I go out to eat and sometimes I have it with my nightly snack, which is particularly ill advised seeing as that is when I take my sleeping pill too.

Kind of silly to take a sleeping pill and a stimulant at the same time! No wonder it has not been working out. So at the very least, that has got to stop.

But I think I will go a week without diet cola or anything else caffeinated and see what happens. I know I will miss it. I like cola as much as the next person. And if I am eating out, it will leave me with no soft drink options, because virtually no restaurants have something both sugar and caffeine free.

When you think about it, that is kind of fucked up. Both sugar and caffeine are somewhat bad for you. It seems messed up that you have to pick one or the other if you want soda.

And what else are you going to get. Coffee? Tea? Both have the caff. And fruit juices are expensive and they do not come with free refills.

I was happy when McDonalds added fruit smoothies, because I love those, but to get one with your Extra Value Meal costs an additional two bucks, so that ain’t gonna happen too often.

Not with my tiny and beleaguered budget.

Speaking of me and money, I have been pondering joining up for this place : TaskRabbit.

The idea is that people post a task they want done, and the lowest bidder gets the contract, so to speak. So I might post “I want someone to go get my groceries” and the person who will do it for the least money gets the job. They do it, I pay them via PayPal, and everyone is happy.

So if I sign up as a “Task Rabbit” (squee!), I could do small odd jobs for people and make some extra cash, which would be great. It would be low commitment employment, which is about what I can handle, and it would let me earn income, which would do wonders for both my self-worth and my pocketbook.

But I am not going to rush into this business blindly. I am going to check this place out thoroughly and look at it from all the angles before I get myself into anything.

For starters, I will check to see what kind of a reputation they have. Plus, they say all their Task Rabbits have been background checked, and last I heard background checks are expensive, and it seems unlikely that their business model is so successful that they can afford to pay for one for every schmuck who comes in off the Internet.

So that sounds suspiciously like they might expect me to pay for it, and I absolutely refuse to pay people to get a job. That is way too scammy for me. The incentives run entirely the wrong way. It would be very easy to take advantage of people who are desperate for work by promising to hook them up with odd jobs “for a nominal fee”.

You know, “just as a sign of good faith. ”

And after that, well, why bother doing anything else? It would only cut into profits. Just tell everyone “oops, seems like we could not find a job for you, sorry! By the way, that fee was non-refundable!” and wait for the dollars to roll in.

So no, I will not be a Task Rabbit if they want some lettuce up front, even if I could afford it.

In other news, came across this bit of fannish humour for us fans of both Simon and Garfunkel and the latest Battlestar Galactica series.

Funny stuff, but I think you have to know both the series and the original song quite well to get it. I know the song very well, it is in my mp3 collection and it is one of my faves by S&G, although I think it is not quite as deep as it thinks it is.

And I must nitpick the lyrics of this parody somewhat. (Seriously. I can’t help myself.) There are a bunch of cases where they don’t scan, and there is really no excuse. Seeing as the lyrics seem otherwise well thought out, I have to wonder if it was deliberate, as a joke.

If so, not funny. Just irritating.

But still, the lyrics match the original in a very clever and pleasing way to me, which is why I am sharing this bit of content with you nice people here today.

Oh, and one last thing : Canada is the best place to raise a child in the world.

Yup, yet another international organization has recognized how awesome Canada is, this time in how great a place it is to raise a kid.

Of course, your individual results may very. I had a pretty bad childhood, and it was entirely in Canada. Not that any of that was Canada’s fault, but still.

Had to get that on record.

Still, always nice to see Canada get accolades. I think it is a pretty awesome place to live, but then again, I am biased because I have been a Canadian all my life.

The only basis for comparison that I have is my time living in the USA. And I definitely like it better here than there.

Sorry, my Yankee friends. But y’all crazy.

Seeya tomorrow, folks!

Tuesday Newsday, October 16, 2012

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Yay, I remembered to do one of these this time!

This, despite this being a pretty lousy day for me. I am in the “drought” phase of my sleep cycle, it seems. I want to sleep, but I just can’t seem to get to sleep. Plus I have a splitting headache. Hello, Tylenol, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again.

I think maybe I should go caffeine free for a while and let things sort themselves out.

And by that, I mean, “here comes another big crash when this current drought turns into monsoon”.

Why can’t I just sleep eight hours a night like a normal person?

Then again, normal people seem to drink a lot of coffee… hmmm. Mysterious.

Anyhow, on with the news!

The Truth About Romney’s Tax Plan

First up, in an admirable show of sense of humour for an official political party, the Democratic National Committee put together this cute little joke about Romney’s economic plans.

For those of you for whom the site does not work, it basically has this text :

For a detailed explanation of how the Romney-Ryan tax plan is able to cut taxes by $5 trillion without exploding the deficit or requiring tax hikes on the middle class, simply click the button below.

But when you try to click the button, it dodges your cursor, making it impossible to click it. Thus, it is as impossible to pin down as Romney and Ryan are about their specific plans.

Of course, there is a simple reason they cannot get specific about how they will pay for $5,000,000,000,000 (that’s $5 trillion) in tax cuts without slashing spending or increasing taxes : it’s impossible, and they only said thry would do that because they thought it would get them votes.

But people are finally waking up to the idea that tax cuts mean service cuts. The whole idea that government is full of waste and if you cut taxes, it will be the waste that goes, has been debunked.

And if the Romney Ryan ticket wanted to be clear that they are not there just to secure more tax cuts for the rich, then they should simply say “We will cut taxes by twenty percent across the board for everyone…. but the top tax bracket, who frankly are doing just fine. ”

There ya go. Nice and simple. But of course, that is not their real plan. Their real plan is to get that nice fat twenty percent tax cut for the rich by also offering it to everyone else, which is no sacrifice for the rich because they hate government anyhow and feel they do not use any government services, so if the cut in taxes means a cut in services, who cares? The poor are too lazy anyhow.

The Truth About Economic Stewardship

This despite the fact that the truth is also coming out about who does a better job of handling the economy. Hint : it is not the so-called “fiscal conservatives”.

Why? Because the assumptions that these people work under are simply false. Like the “infinite fat” concept I alluded to above, which allowed them to pretend that taxes can always be lower because government is nothing but waste anyhow.

Or the basic, almost universally accepted idea that your taxes are too high. Compared to what? How high should they be? What is the right amount of taxes to pay?

Or are you willing to admit that you just want other people to pay taxes while you pay none, so you can get the benefits of government without having to pay for it?

And yes, Grover Norquist, I am talking to you. You and all your anti-tax followers. If you honestly cannot think of anything worse in your life than your taxes, then you should thank your lucky stars you live in a
society that is so safe and so orderly that taxes are your biggest worry, and be willing to foot the bill for said society.

So it does not surprise me that the economy does better under left wing leadership. Unlike the group of people quite laughably called “fiscal convervatives” (who are actually fiscal anarchists), left wing people are very responsible stewards of the public purse.

They certainly are not going to fall for such obviously self-serving fantasies as “tax cuts pay for themselves”. A left winger would feel too guilty if that turned out not to be true.

But it has been at least thirty years since the so-called conservatives had any capacity for guilt, shame, compassion, decency, integrity, intellect, or honor.

The Truth About Donkey Fucking

Finally, in more lighthearted news, a local film festival in Kelowna, BC, recently failed the coolness test by caving in and agreeing to not show a film about men who have sex with donkeys.

The film is called Donkey Love, and it is a documentary about an area of Columbia where men having sex with donkeys is not only tolerated, it is a celebrated part of their culture and a nearly universally practiced right of passage for all men.

Female donkeys, of course. Otherwise it would be perverted!

Obviously, “controversial” is far too mild a word for this content, although to jaded and perverse old me, it seems like a small thing to get upset about. It is merely a different kind of culture. What ever happened to all that cultural tolerance we were taught in college?

But no, this one pushes our buttons, so not only was the film not shown, the locals deluged the film festival officials with angry phone calls and death threats.

That is the problem with these small town film festivals, I suppose. The locals are so backward. Always ready to act on emotion and break out the tar and feathers.

Personally, I figure if the person and the donkey are both having fun, who are we to judge?

Especially considering all the things which are perfectly legal to do to animals?

But then again, I am just a dirty old libertine.

Seeya next week, folks!

Pi in your ear

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Found this link and just had to share it, so I figured, why not open today’s blogification with it?

Some fellow on the internet decided to do a very simple experiment : assign numbers to the musical scale we all learned about in school, and then use that to turn the digits of pi into music.

The layering was a smart idea, because as just a melody, pi kinda sucks. That is, in fact, the key to the lure of pi as music to me : the whole deal with pi is that there is no pattern that we know of to the digits. Patternless forms make for lousy music. All music requires some order… even the chaotic kind.

But, and here is the catch : human beings are very good at detecting order, especially if we engage our aesthetic senses, and music is one of those senses.

Therefore, there is a possibility, admittedly very remote, that if enough of us listened to pi turned into music for long enough, one of us might suddenly hear a pattern in it and be able to predict what the next note is time and time again.

That would require all of pi, and not just the 31 notes that the composer of the above piece uses in order to give the thing some kind of regularity.

But who knows? Maybe the human ear for music can do what thousands of mathematicians and trillions of flops of computer time have been unable to do : find a pattern in pi.

I am sure that must have some practical applications as well as just being an ages old math barrier. Would make some things easier to compute, or something.

Of course, in order to compose his tune, the composer of the above piece had to cheat slightly and use more than just one scale. There are ten digits and only eight notes to a scale, after all. So I assume that he just used the C D and E one octave higher than the previous ones.

I mean, you could go digital and use a ten tone scale where all the notes are exactly the same frequency range apart from one another, but I am pretty sure that would end up sounding horrible, at least to ears raised on Western eight tone scale music.

Those raised in a pentatonic tradition might find it quite nice, actually.

Moving on to extremely local news, right now the cells of my body are taking in oxygen and glucose in a process known as metabolism.

OK, maybe that is a little too local. Right now, rice, a chicken patty, and a banana are digesting in my stomach and probably just about to enter my small intenstine.

Still too local. I feel OK right now. Still not super happy with my life, but I am working on that. Cannot beat myself up for not being able to do what I simply cannot do yet.

And directing all my anger and frustration at myself gets me nowhere.

Speaking of anger, I was pretty angry at Joe yesterday. We are three weeks overdue on our monthly trip to Costco, where we 80 percent of our groceries, and yesterday he decided he just didn’t feel like it.

And that just made me so mad.

The first week we were overdue, it was because we were at Vcon. No problem there. These things happen. We were all having too much fun to worry about groceries.

And the second week, Joe was sick with a throat infection. Also understandable. I caught a buit of it myself, although luckily, I fought it off. Must be all that rest I get.

But last weekend, he had no excuse. And he is the driver, so it is not like we can do it without him. Costco is not built with people on foot in mind.

Last night would have been his last chance to come through this weekend. But he decided he just did not have the energy to do it. This despite having had all day to lie around in bed and listen to CBC on the radio. He was in bed when I went by at 1:30 AM, and he was still in bed at what would have been his last chance to get to Costco before it closed at 4:30 PM.

I think we would all agree that fifteen hours is a pretty good lie-in, don’t you? So to me, what he was really saying was “Nah, just don’t feel like it, and you can’t make me. ”

And this pissed me off pretty good. So for a while, I seethed about it. Then, seething wasn’t enough any more, and I started glowering.

The thing is, I can’t just confront him over it, because he already does a lot for me, including driving me to therapy and doctor’s appointments, and so I do not exactly feel like I have enough standing to just demand things of him.

And maybe that is a problem in me. I have trouble asserting myself and asking for what I want because I always feel so indebted to people and like that means I don’t deserve to ever ask for anything. That is certainly how I was raised… be grateful for whatever you get and never, ever ask for anything.

Plus, I just dislike conflict. I am a harmony seeking creature. Conflict hurts my tender nerves.

But still, I feel pretty let down by Joe and I think I did manage to convey my anger to him without quite coming right out and saying it. I asked him rather pointedly whether I needed to get more microwave popcorn or not, that being something that normally we pay for with the groceries.

And I think he got the underlying message that I am not at all pleased with the lack of Costco.

It is not exactly one hundred percent by the book, if the book is an assertiveness manual, but I think it is a good first step towards greater assertion.

And who knows, learning how to assert myself against others might lead to learning to assert myself against myself… or the universe.

Hit by the sand truck

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At least, that is how I feel right about now. I feel like I got run down by the sleep truck, and I have to tell you, the sensation is not entirely unpleasant.

Not entirely pleasant either. Right now, I am dizzy, dehydrated, and it feels like the walls are moving on me when I am not looking.

I am on to you, walls! As soon as I figure out how to look in all directions at the same time, you guys are going to be in a lot of trouble!

But I also feel more relaxed and mellow than I have lately. Finally, I got the deep refreshing sleep I have been craving and needing lately. I had been going through one of those periods where I had trouble sleeping at all (even with the Quetiapine) and when I did sleep, I awoke feeling much the same as when I went to sleep.

That is really fucking irritating.

And so I am glad the other shoe has fallen and that I am now catching up on that deep deep sleep.

And of course, with it comes hyper vivid dreaming. This time, I had another hospital dream, and luckily, it was the pleasant sort, although those have a disturbing element to them as well.

In this dream, I was feeling very spaced out (kinda like now, actually) and was just sort of wandering around random city streets, extremely disoriented. In this state, I wandered into a fairly large city hospital. Big enough that the various wards were quite large, and sort of worlds unto themselves, just like the departments in a large office building.

So there I was, wandering incoherently through a large hospital, when I stumbled into the psychiatric ward. From the point of view of my now waking mind, this seems inevitable. I have had a terrible fascination with psych wards and asylums (asyli?) for a long time.

Somehow, despite my incoherent state of mind, I managed to convey to someone there that I was not feeling at all well, and I was admitted to the ward. (Uh oh.)

And this is when things begin to get weird. For some reason, in order to get admitted fully, I had to go through this procedure where they had to use this odd instrument to scrape skin from my back quite painfully. Then they had to check my hair for fleas and lice and such. (Makes sense. I would imagine that some of the people who end up in that ward are coming straight from being homeless and wild. )

And then, for some reason, they had to sedate me. The nurse said something about “taking care of my fingernails”, which would make sense… if I was a nervous Doberman. But at the time I just accepted it as standard procedure for potentially dangerous nutcases.

After all, they don’t know I am not the dangerous kind of loony, and given that I am a big and potentially pretty scary looking guy, I can see them wanting to make sure I was quieted down before I went on some giant crazy person rampage like I was a biker in the cop shop in a cop movie.

In the real world, fully awake, I doubt I would be quite so trusting.

Anyhow, they stuck a needle in my thigh (hurt like a bitch, ow) and watched the room get all wobbly and out of focus before I conked out completely.

So there I was, falling asleep in a dream. That is downright trippy, man. So meta.

Some indeterminable time later, I “awoke” into the dream again. It took me a few seconds to remember where I was and how I got there, and I remember thinking “I guess my fingernails are all trimmed now.”

I remember laying there, relaxed in a nice dark room, for a little while before getting up. When I got up, I somehow (dream transition) ended up being told it was time to eat, and I was seated at a table with some other patients of the ward.

And I was so relaxed from my chemical nap that I had no problem just being pleasant and making friends with the other people at the table. In fact, I was quite happy overall. I felt great. At peace, comfortable, relaxed, and enthusiastic.

Although one fellow patient, a dark and glowering fellow, said “yeah, well life stinks!” and I nodded and said “For everybody!” and he sort of growled and said “Well OK, MY life stinks” and I said, rather primly, “Then make sure to say that next time!”, and I have no idea what came over me to be such a shit.

I mean, sure, that is how I feel. People make pronouncements about life, but the only life they know is their own, and they are really talking about their own lives. So they should be honest about it, and not pretend to have some kind of insight into Life itself.

But I would never be suck a dick about it. Perhaps a happier me would feel less inhibited about doing things like that. If so, eww. Something to guard for as I recover.

Anyhow, then he explained that his life sucked because he was prone to these…. somethings. He used some word I don’t know and don’t recall. But they made him make terrible noises like a combination of extremely loud stomach growling along with a kind of strangled deep moaning.

That is a pretty bad affliction. But at that point in the dream, I began to feel weak, and conked out again. I assume that, in dream logic, I was carried back to my room by orderlies.

Sorry for that, fellows.

So then I wake up back in my room like before, and I lay there thinking “I thought I would be in that other place this time. ” And by “other place”, I meant reality. My real, actual life.

Then I drifted off again, and when I awoke, I thought, at first, that I was back to reality. But that was before I actually opened my eyes and looked around and realized that this room was nothing like the room in the “other place”.

So I deliberately went back to sleep, determined to wake up in the right place again, and this time, I did. That is when I woke up for reals.

I was completely disoriented and probably did not even know my own name, but at least I was home. In fact, I remember thinking “It’s good to be home. It’s good to be home. It’s good to be home. ”

Pretty fucking messed up, overall. I do not like it when my dreams get all meta and super intense like that, so that they warp my sense of reality and leave me feeling shaken.

Although I have to admit, I felt quite good when I woke up. It is only now that I am disturbed by the whole thing. By the reality warping, and by having to face that the idea of being in a psych ward is actually extremely appealing to me in a sick sort of way,

Imagine, no obligations, no pressure, no more being responsible for oneself, no need to be an adult. I could just live and concentrate on getting better.

No wonder I felt so good when I woke up. It was my best/worst fantasy. A complete retreat from adult life. Just do what you are told and everything will be OK.

And you even have people paying attention to you!

This is clearly something I will have to bring up with my therapist on Thursday.

And that is why I am glad I wrote it all down here.

Superstition versus Religion

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Well, I am totally bored with talking about myself again, so let’s get into some philosophy.

Superstition and religion have a long and fruitful association. Rather hilariously, one of the results of the Enlightenment was that religious institution like the Catholic Church began promulgating the idea that “primitive” people had superstition, and “civilized” people had religion.

Thus, the same people who seriously expect you to believe that only they can communicate to an all powerful sky god and save you from terrible things that will happen after you die could, seemingly without irony, claim to be saving people from “primitive superstition” in the name of damn Reason herself.

And this has largely been a successful meme. Pretending you are eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a guy who died 2000 years ago is considered religion, but astrology and crystal therapy are considered to be mere crackpot superstitions.

The message is clear : religion is superior to mere superstition.

But it is my contention is that this is precisely backwards, and it is superstition which is far more powerful and pervasive than mere religion.

In fact, religion can succeed only inasmuch as it is successful in installing superstition in its adherents, and if a major religion were truly successful in eliminating superstition, all its professional practitioners would find themselves out of a job.

That is why it is so vital for any successful religion to get their hands on the children when they are good and young, so they can instill their superstitions into their future adherents when they are far too young to process the information rationally and when, in effect, the whole world seems mysterious and superstition is their best defense.

Think about it : a small child might not grasp that they need to look both ways before crossing the street because they might get hit by a car, but if they parent successfully gets the simplified message “this is dangerous”, then the child will be safe.

This is how superstition operates. It allows us to develop aversions to things without us having to truly understand the dangers involved, and to form long term associations between situations and outcomes that help us avoid dangers we have been exposed to in the past.

That is, when this mechanism works correctly. When it malfunctions, we end up with phobias, post traumatic stress disorder, and in the worse case scenario, illnesses like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

A person with OCD, in fact, is a person at the mercy of the superstition drive gone berserk, causing the victim to be plagued by multiple persistent and extremely strong superstitions that they absolutely must obey, otherwise the superstitions will fill them with an incredible feeling of dread that it is hard to imagine if you have not been there yourself.

Back to religion now. The real message of any religion, the message that our deep animal drive that lies somewhere between simple association and actual reason can understand, is “you are in great dangers that are absolutely beyond your control except if you perform these specific rituals.”

And the rituals, of course, involve the intervention of the professional practitioners, the “priest class”, who extract various forms of tribute in order to protect you from those dangers that you would not even know existed if it was not for them.

Again, the basic nature of childhood helps them in their goal. Children are, quite literally, at the mercy of forces they cannot understand or control from the adult world. This is why children develop their own superstitions quite spontaneously, like being afraid of the monster under the bed or jumping over the cracks on the sidewalk because “step on a crack, break your mother’s back”.

Transforming unnamed fear and dread into a specific superstition allows the human mind to exert a measure of control over the random and arbitrary and unknown forces of the universe. Keep your feet from dangling off the bed, and the monster can’t get you. Skip over the cracks and your mother’s back is safe. Go to a specific building on a certain day of the week and participate in a group ritual, and you will be OK for another week, if you are good.

And often, even after the religion has gone, the superstitions remain because they still perform a function even when the largely superfluous dogma supporting it has been discarded.

Many an ex-Catholic who has not seen the inside of a church for decades will nevertheless cross themselves if they are narrowly missed by an out of control bus.

And there are all kinds of secular superstitions as well. There are the obvious ones that everyone knows about, like about what is “bad luck” (smashing a mirror, walking under a ladder) or what is “good luck” (finding a penny, or a four leaf clover).

But there are also the subtle superstitions that everybody develops that tend to fly under the radar because they operate at a very deep and subrational level of the consciousness and we are so used to them that it never occurs to us to question them rationally.

And they can have a deep and profound effect, especially if the superstition is broadly defined and hence runs deep into the marrow of existence.

For example, a person might have a superstitious belief, lodged deep in their brain, that if they are ever truly happy, they will let their guard down, and the moment they let their guard down, something terrible will happen, and so being happy is not “safe”.

Thus, this person subconsciously sabotages their own happiness because the superstition overwhelms them at convinces themselves that by avoiding happiness, they are actually making themselves “safe”.

Rationally, this is insane. What can be worse than being unhappy?

But that is the power of superstition. These associations we form can be far more powerful than our rational and conscious minds, and can even be the real force behind all of a person’s decisions, with reason left trailing behind to make up rationalizations.

And until we understand superstition as the pervasive and powerful phenomenon it is, and are humble and honest enough to recognize it in ourselves, reason will never truly stand a chance.

Friday Science Conjunction, October 12, 2012

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Here we are at another page in science history, and despite going through a period of not being able to sleep well even with the aid of powerful drugs, here I am.

I am serious, my sleep has been crap lately even with Quetiapine’s help. It takes me a long time to fall asleep, and when I wake up, I don’t feel a heck of a lot better.

Guess it is just some disturbance in my sleep cycle, or maybe something is bothering me and I can’t tell what it is consciously.

Either way, it will sort itself out eventually.

On with the science!

The Real Flying Saucer

Here is a blast from the past : the United States government has finally declassified the plans for an actual flying saucer type aircraft.

It was called Project 1794, and it was developed way back in 1956 or so by the United States Air Force. The idea was that it would reach Mach 3 or 4 at a top height of 100,000 feet, with a range of 1,000 miles.

And it got its initial round of funding and everything, so this is no mere sketchbook project, although a full working prototype was never built, as far as we know.

And judging by the results of other attempts to build saucer type aircraft, it is not hard to guess why the project did not get all that far. Generally speaking, generating thrust via spinning turbines pointed at the ground is futile. Forget 100,000 feet, you will be lucky if you get 4 feet for very long, and it will be very shaky and unstable hovering, not Mach 3 flight.

That said, it is not hard to see how this project got as far as it did, because come on… FLYING SAUCERS! It has been my deduction for some time that the United States military chooses things to fund with the same hardnosed and pragmatic attitude used by eight year old boys choosing toys on a Toys R Us spree.

Basically, they go for what seems cool and fun. So they have billions for things like stealth aircraft and flying saucers, and they want them so bad they will pay cost overruns quite cheerfully. Just so they get their big shiny awesome toys as soon as possible!

And on that basis, who could resist a Real Live Flying Saucer? That will leave those Ruskies peeing their pants in fear!

And because these thing will never actually be used in war (probably), nobody will ever know that they are nothing but shiny crap?

What do you expect to get when little boys in men’s clothes get to spend money that is not theirs?

Girl’s Best Friend

And now, something for the ladies : recently, scientists have revealed that there is an exoplanet out there that is made of diamond.

You read that right. It’s an entire planet which is almost entirely made of that lovely crystalline compressed carbon we lovingly call “diamond”.

Imagine the size of the coal it was before Superman compressed it!

And it’s only 40 light years away! Why, that is only 4 years journey via Alcubierre Drive! And so what if the surface temperature is over 3900 degrees Ferenheit! That is no object when it comes to securing the mother of all diamond engagement rings and lording it over all the other women at the country club!

Well OK, maybe we will not be going there any time soon. You are looking at a wait of thirty years minimum on that particular order from DeBeers.

And that is just to develop the technology to get there. Then there is the four years travel time, and of course, it will take a while to figure out how to cool it down, and it will take forever for all those diamond cutting jewelers to cut and polish and mount the thing on a ring as big as one of Saturn’s… you are probably looking at, oh, at least fifty years.

But if you are healthy and marry young, I am sure it can be delivered not too long before you die.

And really, won’t it all be worth it to know your husband loves you that much?

Because as diamond ads have taught us, love is measured strictly in carats.

The Spiders of Mars

Last but definitely not least, we have this story about spider-like figures on Mars.

Sadly, they are probably not gigantic black spiders the size of sports stadiums (stadia?) that prowl the Martian desert looking for their natural prey, Biker Mike.

But still, looking at a picture like this, you have to wonder what is going on down there.

Like ants on a fresh dog turd.

Right now, the most plausible explanation is that what we are seeing here are actually geysers of some kind of black liquid, probably dirty liquid CO2.

What might that look like? It might look like this :

Artist’s rendition by Ron Miller/JPL/Arizona State University

Hard not to shout “Black gold! Texas Tea!”, isn’t it? Or maybe that is just me.

And they are not there all the time :

Every Martian spring, they appear out of nowhere, showing up — 70 percent of the time — where they were the year before. They pop up suddenly, sometimes overnight. When winter comes, they vanish.

So while they are not Martian animal life, they are a genuine seasonal phenomena on Mars, which goes against the image of Mars as a cold place where nothing happens.

And who knows? Where there is an energy release like that, there might just be the conditions ripe for a seasonal life form or two, or even a whole seasonal ecosystem, like we have in some of the more extreme environments on earth.

So while they might not actually be giant Mars spiders, they might be a great big arrow saying “search for life here!” for future Mars missions.

And I am sure that we must be able to find a use for all that energy being released.

Seeya next week folks!

Another drop of the cure

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Today was a therapy day, like every Thursday. So for those of you hoping for a break from all the meandering introspection lately, sorry, not today.

But remember, tomorrow is SCIENCE.

Today was a mildly unusual therapy day, as the session was ninety minutes instead of the usual sixty. Last week’s session started half an hour late, so this one was half an hour longer than usual. It was good of Doctor Costin to do that for me. I am so used to getting screwed over in that sort of circumstance, of being the person everyone takes for granted as disposable, that I was surprised when he offered and had to ask him if he was sure a couple of times before I believed it.

And even today, part of me felt like he was not really going to go through with it. I thought I would show up and we would have an hour long session like usual and he would not even mention the whole extra half hour extension at all.

Shows how poor my opinion of people is, I guess. I really have no faith in the reliability, thoughtfulness, or compassion of others. I tend to assume that everyone will view me as nothing but a burden and an irritating, and barely tolerate me at best, and secretly want to be rid of me as fast and as easily as possible, no matter what they actually say.

And hey, duh, I know that is pretty fucked up. People like me, they truly do. Intellectually, I know this must be true. I have ample evidence that some people find me funny and fun to be with and so on. And yet, it feels really weird even just to type the words. Part of me wants to erase this whole paragraph. It’s like I feel like I am letting out a terrible secret.

But it is more than that. The secret is one I keep from myself. It is a truth I have every reason to believe, and yet, I am afraid to do so. Afraid, I suppose, of crushing disappointment if I dare to believe that people like me (and that I deserve it, that’s the big one) and then it turns out not to be true.

A lot of the maladaptive nature of depression has to do with staying on the ground rather than risk falling ever again.

Not hard to see how that is a poor choice of coping strategies.

Today’s session was quite good. I went into it feeling tired and depressed and vulnerable, and I think that meant my defenses were down more than usual, and that lead to a particularly fruitful session. I held back less, and that is always good. I try not to hold back at all in therapy, but there is only so far that can go. Despite my seeming openness, I am a pretty tightly controlled guy. There is always a limit to how well you can suppress your social instincts.

One of the things we ended up discussing is the idea of being able to suspend judgement of myself. I have had the thought before, but I did not see how I could get from where I am now to that space. After talking about it with my therapist today, I feel like maybe I imagine a way there, or at least, a possibility.

I think that normal, emotionally healthy people have a strong and stable enough sense of ability that they have a deep reserve of stability in their self-worth. They have a safe zone inside themselves and a substance and solidity to their identity that lets it weather the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune without changing much. The mountain is not much changed by the rain. But a puddle lives or dies in every single drop of it.

Now where does this stable, strong self-worth come from? I think it comes from childhood nurturing, specifically, the unconditional love traditionally associated with mothers. A person like myself, with a harshly judging father and an emotionally absent mother, plus other things happening in my early childhood that injured my sense of self, might well be left vulnerable by this lack of identity growth.

Note how my language just got all clinical and precise while I talked about these deeply emotional things? I guess that is just how I deal with this shit. Most of the time I do not even know I am doing it. I switch into that academic mode so seamlessly that it is like automatic transmission.

Which, as everyone know, costs you big time on performance.

But um…. yeah. Suspending judgement about myself. That is quite a concept. Part of me is terrified that if I suspend judgement, I will be even more self-indulgent, lazy, and worthless than I already am.

After all, no punishment, no motivation, right?

Wrong. Right now the punishment is so severe that it destroys the motivation, as well as the means to do anything. That is no way to run a railroad, my friends.

That said, learning to suspend judgement on myself will not be easy. It is the next logical step from just not beating myself up so much, but it is a much harder transition. It requires such a fundamental change in my usual lightning fast judgement and evaluation thinking style that I feel like I will almost have to grow a second brain just to hold it.

Not really, of course, that’s just a silly image to describe a feeling.

So here I am, on my mountaintop, ready to make my next sacrifice. Set fire to my grief, and let the holy fire turn it into nothing but ashes and smoke.

Creating a space within myself where it is totally safe and I am free from my own judgement (and the imagined judgements of others, of course) will be the next step. It still seems like madness to part of me, but a bigger part of me knows that it must be done.

Now to find a good-sized cave around here…