The Black Railsea Prism

I think I am not going to read another China Miéville novel again, for a very long time.  This was the second of his novels that took me weeks to get past the introduction and get into the novel.  I loved the story and when I was finally hooked the story bled out in a few days & I was done, but including the first quarter I must have read at no more than ten pages a day; the same was true for UnLondon.  Still I have never read an author who could blend SciFi & fantasy together so well that you could not tell which genera the novel fit correctly into.  This was SciFan at its, well, not greatest.  If it were really great I would have gotten into it and drained it of its content in a couple days. Opps I did not mention its name, Railsea.

Railsea, I was not sure what to make of it at first.  I thought I was a fantasy version of Moby Dick, transpose the sea for a wide plain, the ships for trains on a sea of rails heading in all directions, sometimes hundreds in one direction, & moles with whales.  Giant whale sized moles.  Killer bunnies the size of elephants, owls that make mythical Rocs seem hatchlings.  Add a sprinkling of technology that turns the sail trains, the steam trains and the diesel trains into matchbox technology.  

There are two stories, the mad Train Captain looking for the Ivory Mole who bit her arm off & a story of a young boy looking for the end of the world.  As in life not all stories can be finished.  I think the reason why it took me so long to get into the book was that the word & was the most common word & it was replaced by this symbol "&"; I became frustrated with this format.  

On the other h&, it did put to rest that theory that all human languages are built to be read at the same speed, no matter if they are shock full of information dense characters or lengthy drawn out character strings.

The second book I read was over twice as long and I plowed thought it in a couple of days.  I just finished reading it, The Black Prism, by Brent Weeks.  I just noticed that there was a map at the front which I missed completely.  The story was very cool.  Magic is pulled from light and can be crafted to do certain things depending on their colour.  There are seven colours so seven magics.  Sub-Red, like our infrared, is invisible and is about heat.  Red, is about rage and passion. Orange is about swaying emotions.  Yellow is about mass and strength.  Green is about life and wildness.  Blue is about order. Super-Violet or to us ultra violet, also invisible, is about subtleness.  There are people who can't use any magic and there are people who can use one, a few that can use two, less that can use more than one and only one who can use all.

Brent Weeks wrote a very nice story with nested plots between multiple characters with complicated backgrounds and differing agendas.  The main character, on top of everything else is lying to everyone, but despite this fact is the most honest and good person in the world.  Why he is lying and the consequences go back to the distant past when he was but a child.

To say that it was gripping, would be an understatement, I read 720 pages in less than 60 hours in clouding sleeping time, work and commitments.  Oh but you might want to read it after the trilogy has been finished . . ..

Depression.

From Psychology 101

People's moods are often cyclical with peaks and valleys.  The rise the person is feeling good and the lows they are feeling bad.  Simple, but there is more.  When the person is heading down they lose energy and slow down.  When they are heading up, they gain energy and begin to rise up.  Also simple, but the combined effects are where the magic occurs.

If you can picture a circle with eight points, four at the 12, 3, 6 and 9 positions on a clock and four more between each of those positions.  Each one combines to have a different meaning to the person.  On the two positions on either side of the twelve o'clock position, the person is feeling really good and feels on top of the world.  Approaching the three position and heading down the self esteem of the person is starting to take a hit but at the same time is losing the energy to act in the world and they are sliding into depression, but can not act.

At the Nine position and heading up, the person is feeling great.  It really sucks to be on either side of the six position; life is horrible and you have no energy to do anything about it.  The worst position, however, is the the last position left: heading up, gaining energy getting less depressed.  That is the worst position because you remember the depression and it still has its grip on you, but you are getting stronger and you can do something about it.  I wish I could say that everyone knows about this, that the depression is waning and that you are going to be feeling great again, but this is the time that most suicides happen.  Also probably the time that many people do things to themselves that they would not do otherwise.  I would bet this is the time that people cheat on their significant others.  Depression with power and strength.

I am right now slipping past number three and I am not sure if I will progress through to the Nine position in hours, days, weeks or months.  Right now I almost wish that I had the power to avoid all of that right now.  Months, that sounds gloomy.  Not as gloomy as my life between age seven and age thirty where depression only lifted near the twelve mark before slipping back under relatively soon after.  Where I was depressed for months at a time and happy for hours.

I wish there were drugs that worked, but I know that they don't work, you have to believe in the drugs for them to work and I doubt them all.  I want to disappear and die, but I won't.  I will punish myself by suffering in this existence, forever.

Disappear

I came to the realization many years ago that I wanted to die.  I also came to the realization that if I did die, I would con tribute to the sorrow of people I like who like me.  So it would be best to just disappear and then die.  Disappearing is the tricky part.  If you disappear the people you like, who like you, worry and that causes stress.  So I resolved that the only way to die with the least impact was to wait for everyone else to die first.  The trouble is now that I keep on meeting people younger than me that I care about who will one day care about me and be saddened if I die.  I guess I need to just be acquaintances to them, my nephews and cousins and keep others at arm length.  There is no happiness in my existence. 

ASD judgment impaired?

Sometimes I am not sure when I write stuff whether it is because I am a man or if it is Asperger's.  I think it is because I am a man.  Cancel that.

I just had a revelation.  You see the problem is that when I write stuff sometimes I need to finish it and then let it sit; give it time to ferment.  No, not the writing to ferment, my brain to ferment.  Half the the stuff I write about I think is genius and it is not.  I think I am being smart and if I give it time, I can see that it is not.

Most often it is not if I am writing something personal and I am trying to be smart.  That is when I write stuff that blows up in my face.  When I am just writing and I let myself be smart, but not because I am trying, I am smart and I write smart.  But when I am trying, I fail.  Usually spectacularly.  Typically I am being smart but because I don't or can't explain it, it falls very flat.  

I made a promise not to speak of certain people, which is too bad because it would be a great example.  So I won't speak of them.  I wrote a friend on Facebook and I was trying to be clever and I succeeded in being creepy instead.  At the time I thought that I was being clever and I thought it was obvious, but I needed perspective, which I could not have unless I waited for a time.  What this speaks of is an impairment of judgement.

You see, there is an interesting tale to tell.  When I was in teachers college one of e teacher teachers told a story to explain that teenagers, ages 12-22 actually, were brain damaged.  The prefrontal cortex goes under repair, the last repair of the brain before it stops growing.  And during that time people are brain damaged.  What does the prefrontal cortex do?  One of the things that it does is it interprets actions; it is where our judgement exists.  When we see a big gap between rooftops and there are three people on the roof top together, one ten, one sixteen and the last thirty.  The ten year old and the thirty year old would think it would be cool to jump the distance and would walk to the edge and look closely.  They would turn around and look for the stairs, meanwhile the sixteen year old is road pizza after trying the jump and falling between the buildings. Judgement impaired.

That is sort of like what happens to me.  I will never risk my life by jumping the gap between buildings but I will blurt things out.  From what I can tell my other Asperger's friend does things similarly and rashly too. So forms the theory, now I just have to research it more.  Are Autism Spectrum Disorder people suffering from chronic judgement delay?

Well I know what the cure is for me, never try to be smart socially and when I try to be smart when I write, leave it to stew for a day or so before sending it on FB or posting the letter, or texting my friends or anything.  Try not to be smart when I talk too.

The key is not to try.  I am smart and when I don't try, I will often say many profound things; they stream from my unconsciousness and they will occasionally make me appear smart and wise, but if I try to be so, I almost always fail.  If I don't try, I almost always succeed, even though I do not know why.  

Anyways this is sort of an apology to all the people that I tried to sound smart to and I largely failed.  I will stop now.  Strangely, I don't think I suffer as badly when I blog or maybe I should wait before sending this too? Opps, I didn't wait.

Muzzling and Agendas

Memories appear to be short in this world. People seem not to remember anything anymore. Memories are important. Long memories allow animals to know where good things can be found and where bad things can be found; it tells us how to survive. Humans are perhaps unique on this planet for several reasons having to do with memory.

Humans, but also whales it has been recently found, tell stories. This is a way to pass information on to future generations about what happened to people, often people from countless generation before and from lands far away. Sperm whales may pass on stories on navigation information through stories, but that has yet to be substantiated. Humans are unique, though, be recording their stories for future generations. Cave paintings may have been the first instance of this practice, or perhaps the only one to survive to this day. We invented books to store information for future people to learn from. Before books one person was required to pass all their knowledge on verbally and for some people that meant a lot of time spent doing so. The invention of books allowed science to flourish; it allowed accomplishments and failures alike to be kept for posterity. This meant wrong turns would not be explored again and our body of knowledge could greatly expand. 

Books meant that we could record other important things like history, a word that means story. Having a record of what we have done lets people become aware of the good and the bad that people have done in the past, so we don't do it again.

That brings me back to memories, one of the other unique things about humans, is that we can use our memories to project into the future. Sadly, though, I have begun to doubt this fact recently. People have stopped projecting their minds into the future. Perhaps that is untrue; perhaps people are just not projecting far enough into the future.

I have a memory, a long memory, compared to some people, a very long memory. I remember standing on a chair and taking out a glass in our Mississauga home, small little acrylic glass and smashing it on the floor and seeing all the pieces everywhere and I remember the spanking less. I remember peeing in the bedroom floor while my parents were getting ready for work early in the morning, I remember doing it the second time I should say. I don't remember the spanking. I remember going outside and being happy because it snowed and the days before had no snow because winter was over, but this morning there was snow again, but the next time I went out, it had melted. I remember months later playing on the street, still in Mississauga, and playing on the road in the hot afternoon; the sun had heated the road so that the tar had bubbled up and we, the neighbourhood kids had decided to pop those bubbles with our hands. I do remember how painful the hand and face watching was that night though. 

My point is I remember the weather from back in 1976. Honestly though, I did not get a true baseline until much later on what weather was like. Our family moved to Boonieland in 1977 and I got to grow up in the relative countryside. My parents mistakenly believed that the city was the wrong place for children to grow up. We did grow up wandering with friends through the neighbourhood, through creeks, up Canadian Shield cliffs, ponds and beaches. What I did not know I was doing was gathering weather data. I remember that the days were hot, I wore short sleeved shirts all summer long, but it rained frequently and some days were cool and cloudy. Our acre large front lawn was always green except on the worst droughts. The creeks never went dry and the pond dried up only rarely, once or twice in eight years. 

My years not paying attention to the climate, but living in it, provided me a baseline of experience. My in attention change when we moved in 1985 to a new town, a new climate and a new life, far from all my friends. It was also the first time that I saw digital temperature readout. Keep in mind that in 1985, I was only 13 years old, but I started noticing things. That temperature readout stated that the temperature was 40°C, the hottest that I had ever experienced at that time. 

We moved back to Boonieland within nine months, this time to a property resting on one of the Great Lakes. So, since 1986, I have been paying attention to the weather, the temperature and the lake levels that have been dropping since that year. The point is that I remember the past, and by using just that in significant past, I can project into the future about the weather and the climate. And that is just one aspect of my attention. I have been paying attention to politics too.

I have noticed that in the past thirty years that politics has been slipping to the right. Pierre Trudeau (Liberals) was considered a little left of center in the early eighties, because he borrowed heavily from the CCF and later the NDP. The Progressive Conservatives were just right of center. As the years slipped by the Liberals slipped right until they were right of where the Progressive Conservatives were and the PCs dropped the P altogether and are now very right wing. The NDP adopted more conservative practices to appeal more people, the Green party was never anything less that center, but primarily interested in the environment. 

Because the change has been gradual, altering their outlook over the decades year by year and you would have to have a long memory to know how they have changed and you would have to know history to know where they are going. My father stood outside the public debates, during the last election. He had written on postal-board and carried them as signs and was there waiting for all the people to file past him. The signs stated that voting Conservative would be a vote for the New Third Reich. The allusion was to Nazi German in the nineteen twenties. You see my father knows history better than I do and he has a long memory too. Being older than me, he recognized the changes in society and predicted where they were heading. He thought that the conservative policies were restricting information, limiting democracy and muzzling free speech subtly. He recognized that their constant pre election negative ads and election ads were undermining free thought. Just like the Nazis did in the interwar period. 

In my time, my Canadian Nazi party is riding its agenda not on hating Jews and the Outcasts, nor on the myth of the super race, but on the Economy. The Economy IS important, but it is not something that the federal government is in control of directly. The government can just pass laws that influence development, they can improve the infrastructure, and they can attract employers by making setting up in the area look like a great idea. Or you can reduce the effectiveness of dissenters and set aside environmental rules using political short cuts. Passing hundreds of little laws in one omnibus law is an example. Some of these laws stop environmental reviews of industry proposals, except for a small minority of locations in high profile places, little laws that prevent government employees from talking about their work, but are used to prevent Government Scientists from talking about their findings. Laws that reduce the bureaucracy by putting many different projects in larger departments and then cutting the programs to reduce those shuffled programs. 

You see, there was another conservative government years before, in Ontario. This government was harsh and hated and in many ways corrupt. They built a toll highway that cost billions of dollars, but when it starting earning money, they sold it for millions of dollars. This government had a health minister, Tony Clement, who ripped the heart out of the provinces healthcare system. Let me tell you how he closed a dozen hospitals.

First they talked about waste in the health care system. Whenever right wing people start talking about waste, they have an agenda that they want to push. The scrutinized healthcare they said. They said that all the hospitals had too many beds, beds not being used. They closed off parts of the hospitals, saying they were reducing the costs and these beds were not being used anyways. That was phase one. Phase two, a couple of years later, they told everyone that all the hospitals had wasted space in them and an it was costing healthcare a lot of money. So they consolidated the empty beds into whole hospitals, so that there were empty hospitals and a bunch of hospitals at full capacity. Phase three; they said, look at all these empty hospitals, they are costing us money! They demolished the empty hospitals and sold the land, they made sure that hospitals in their own back yards were safe. They made sure that the secular hospital where all the gay people who were sick went to die was demolished. The gay people were forced to go to the religious hospital that would not let gay partners visit loved ones, because they were not family.

Phase inevitable came next, SARS. It could have been anything, a horrific chain reaction car accident, a plane crash into a neighbourhood; things that happen, but not often. The point was the province had no excess capacity no where to put an extra 600 long-term patients. The closing of hospitals meant that doctors and nurses and other staff moved away and now there is a shortage across the province.

Tony Clement, ex Ontario Health Minister, is the right hand man of the current Leader of Canada, along with a few other Ontario ministers from that time. I realize that I sound like a nutter, but I see Canada heading down the path that few in the world want to go. 

The newest piece of news is that the government is muzzling Librarians and Archivists employed by the government. They are not to engage in high risk behaviours, like teaching or talking at conferences about libraries and archiving. They have to have a Loyalty Test, they say. A Loyalty test? Loyalty to whom? Librarians? Librarians love books, they respect the books. Archivists, they to love their work, they take the events of today and hold them for the future; they do not falsify data, they have no agenda. When people start doing stuff like this I think Orwell and I think Ministry of Truth; I think of Fascism and Stalinist Communism. 

Some governments go too far.

Morality found in the Hearts of Christian Men

While my argument is still fresh I will start to make my arguments of why the Judah-Christian and thus Islamic faiths are wrong. Not just wrong as in not correct but wrong for the mentality of any time, but mostly today. It is an immoral set of ideas that people cling, which justifies their evil beliefs.

There I said it; the three religions are the opposite of what they claim. Given that I have now just set myself against approximately three billion people and the majority of the worlds that I pass through and the people that employ me, I had better make my arguments well.

I could for example use the arguments of David Hume, a man who very effectively castrated god or proved that he is immoral, depending on which of the two paradigms you believe defines god, in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Is god all powerful or is god good. You can only select one. I took one philosophy course in University and guess what we talked about? University a place of learning that was developed by the Christian church to study the Bible, which the most hard line theologists now object to as their policies are about keeping the masses stupid to keep them faithful. 

I have been itching to use my arguments against proselytizers as they come knocking on the door as I did when I was in high-school. They look at me and they steer away. They last time they approached me I was at work and so I had to be polite. But my arguments start out by stating boldly, I am more moral than your religion. They of course do not believe me, but it draws them in because I have just attacked their most basic beliefs. After all their morality is the basis of their belief and that their belief is the best and they are therefore the most moral and by saying that I am more moral than they; I challenge them right from the first.

The first thing you have to establish is what their beliefs are that you are challenging. It is always best if you can get them to tell you, but it may be necessary to ask a leading question. I usually ask about the Ten Commandments. You see they will always say that the Ten Commandments are part of what they believe because Moses came down from the mountain with two tablets that stated the Ten Commandments and half of the commandments are secular and the other half are theological. Getting the theist to commit to this is easy, because they believe that it is the cornerstone of their morality. It is not entrapment to get them to state this, they believe that they believe everything in the bible is divine law; they don't. The Ten Commandments is just the start, the prologue, to Leviticus, the laws of the Jews and thus e divine laws of Christianity and Islam. So after you ask them about the Ten Commandments you then have to double check that they believe that the bible is the word of god and must be obeyed.

Once they agree, you have them, because Leviticus is filled by the scariest most immoral laws known to man. You can start off and let them feel morally strong and on sure footing by saying that you believe there is nothing wrong with being gay, "If a man also lies with a man, as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." is in there, it should be noted that that wording would make lesbians legal. They most likely feel that they have you there and will feel confident with this argument. It is always better to start softly before you start hitting them over the head, to underline their depths of their poor placement of belief.

Leviticus 27:1-9 makes it very clear that, men and women are not equal and that women have less worth than men. I do not agree with this in the slightest, therefore I am more moral than they. This is a weak argument for them if they are men; the religion is a patriarch after all. In Exodus 21:24 of the bible is where it says that punishment to crime must be equal to the damages, a tooth for a tooth a life for a life. It actually says eye for an eye but that is what it means. I do not believe in Capital punishment and neither should they, because is not the Sixth Commandment not a prohibition against killing and that if someone breaks your arm, their arm should be broken too? A little barbaric, barbarians are immoral. 

Still not convinced? The punishment for rape is marriage. According to the Bible, there is an easy way for me to end my bachelorhood, but I think that is amoral, but it if they agree with Deuteronomy, they must believe it right? Deuteronomy also tells you what foods you are allowed to eat, do you like bacon, well if you believe the bible is divine law, you are breaking it. It also says Slavery is okay and legal. The Bible goes into great detail about slavery, about how killing a slave is not the same as killing a person, that it is actually only damaging a person's property. It also states that you most free all your slaves on the High Holy Day, which occurs every fifty years, unless you acquired your slave between the high holy days, and then it may be extended. It talks about other aspects of slavery, like the children of slaves. It does not say anywhere that slavery is bad. Therefore I am more moral. 

There are a lot of reasons why I am more moral than people who believe the bible and it should be followed all the time on everything. The best stories in the bible that prove that god is amoral are the stories that show that god does not follow his own rules. The bible, also in Leviticus, tells what is okay to sacrifice and what is not okay, it tells you right in there. It tells you in Genesis. It says that it is not okay to sacrifice humans, sacrificing children is wrong it says, except when he wants you to. Everyone is chomping at the bit ready to tell me that I am wrong, god only wanted to see if Abraham loved god above all else and he stayed the knife and summoned a goat to be used in his place, but I am not referring to that story. I am referring to the one where god asks for a man’s daughter as a sacrifice and it is done.

The story goes that there is a horrible war on the horizon and all the Jews turn to the best soldier, whom they all despise because he is the son of a prostitute, and demand that he lead the people in the war. The war is going very badly and he swears that if they win, he will sacrifice the first thing that greets him at his home, if only he wins the battle. And god is on his side and he wins against impossible odds. He goes home and the first thing that greets him is his daughter. He breaks down and cries and tells his daughter his promise and she tells him that if you promised then you must do it and god does not lift a finger. The story is about hubris, demanding anything for something is dangerous because you might regret the price., but if you believe the Bible is the word of god, then it is proof that god is amoral. He could have pushed a cow forward and tripped the daughter up, but god wanted a human sacrifice, yum yum.

The New Testament I know less well but therein can be found many other instances that do not contradict the immorality of the Bible.

Cure for Deserts?

So if I claim to be a Rational Scientifically minded Skeptical person, which I do by the way, then when I get a new piece of information, I should immediately look at it explore its authenticity and then when it checks out, I would need to re-evaluate my position and change. One would think. 

That is the way it works, however, there are people out there that receive new information all the time and then decide it must be wrong and refuse to change. I believe that these people are wrong. So when I received new information this week that forced me to change my thinking on a recent blog post about Vegetarianism, I thought I would share.

The thought that changed was, “cattle farming is destroying the land.” I do believe that cutting down rainforest to turn into pastureland is still wrong and bad, but the perception that cattle farming is bad for the environment, which I did not state, but is a common environmental perception, is wrong. More specifically, cattle farming on marginal land should be increased not decreased. I was watching a TED Talk and a respected environmentalist from South Africa was talking about the problem of the desertification of grasslands in Asia, Africa, Australia, North and South America. The perception of people was that the land was drying out and turning into a desert because of cattle farming. Governments were clearing vast tracks of land or cattle vermin to allow the land to reach a natural equilibrium and return to a state of normalcy which would be preserved as a park, but all this did was to accelerate the death of the land. 

The effects of desertification are many and none of them are good. Vegetation becomes sparse and large areas between the stands of plants become exposed. Rain when it falls sits on the surface or runs away, when the rains are over the water evaporates and the land it now dry until the next rainfall. How does it get to this point? Roots of plants grow into the earth and these roots provide channels for the water to infiltrate into the ground. A well covered stretch of land holds most of the water in the ground and when the rain stops the cover deflects more of the light and the plants use the light for growth and the water is used in transpiration through the grass leaves. After a growing for awhile the grass builds up a lot of organic matter if allowed to go undisturbed. The old stalks actually prevent younger growth from occurring and the result is that old grass dies, including its roots and the next time it rains, the water does not penetrate the ground as much. As the years go by the effect is more exaggerated and desertification begins to occur. 

Because they tried everything to get the land back up to the pre-agricultural standards, exasperatedly they decided to in a limited way to increase the numbers of cattle on some land and to move them about in a pattern consistent with predatory herding. The result was that the land bounced back into production and the desertification was halted and reversed.

While I do advocate for marginal land to be used for cattle farming, milk and egg production, the results suggested that livestock farming should be increased 400%. Given that it would mean that in marginal lands would have about five times the cattle that they currently have, meat production might be the only way to keep the herds sustainably. 

The effects of cattle on desertification lands are plenty. The old or dead grasses are eaten or trampled flat against the ground. When the rains come, the water encounters a layer of grass mulch which absorbs the water and deflects the sunlight keeping the wet ground cooler and wet. Without the old or dead stalks the grass begins to spread out again and grow roots into the ground, increasing infiltration of the rain to the ground water, allowing plants to grow longer into the dry season. In addition to the mulch provided by the trampling of the grass, the cattle add fertilizer and mow the grass down, allowing for more growth of grass. The end result is more healthy grassland. 

Ideally this would have been accomplished with massive herds of roaming herd animals with predators in tow, but thanks to mankind, the great herds of Bison of North America, have been wiped out, the same for the herds of Asia and Africa and all the rest. So we can use our own, well bred cattle to do the same. Add a huge flock of chickens to disperse the manure and eat bugs and drop more guano and the effect would be increased.

Where are these locations that would benefit from more intensive livestock herding? In the rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains in western Canada and the United States, in the rain shadow of the Andes in Argentina and Paraguay. Sub-Saharan Africa, the Australian Outback, the Middle East and the Plateau in central Asia

If Fishes were Wishes

I have been sad recently.  First time this winter really, well except for the other times.  This time it comes from all the other obligations on my emotions being gone.  This winter I was called on to be strong for various people, so I was strong.  

I realized that I can't tell anyone what I had to be strong for and I can't blog about it.  There are people who read this that know me and the stuff I want to say would hurt people that I care for.  I am carrying a tiny part of their weight, so I don't want to drop them.  When a man walks with a cane, he uses the cane to take a little bit of the burden, but most of the burden is carried by the man's feet and legs; by himself in otherwise, but if the cane collapses, the man falls. 

So for whatever reason, I am a cane and if I fold I will topple my friend and I will lose my friend.  People can guess who I am talking about, but they will never know.  I have felt the stress slacken slightly and other people have taken up the burden and so now I feel my own concerns.  My own shallow concerns.  Sometimes, I find that writing this blog I pretend that I am talking to someone in particular, someone who reads this blog; it allows me to feel that I am addressing someone in particular.  Other times I wish that no one I know is reading this as it makes me think that I can use it as a form of wishing.

One of my quirks is that when I tell someone what I want and they give it to me, I do not accept it.  Part of me does this because I in a way asked them to do it, partly I feel that it is me asking for special treatment.  I firmly believe that I do not deserve special treatment.  None-the-less, if some one offered me what I wanted without me expressing the desire, I would likely accept it.  So I don't tell people what I want and I don't get what I want.  What I really want.

My friends think that they know what I really want, because they think I talk about it all the time; they think I want sex.  People who read this blog, might have a better idea what I want and for e record, it is not sex.

What I really want, ie I am not going to tell you specifics, because that would be telling you what I said I would not do, is to be needed.  

I have not been reading and I have not been writing, I guess my depression is back in full.  I was listening to a pod cast today that was talking about depression.  Specifically, the drugs that doctors give people with depression.  I used to think that my biochemistry was different than everyone else because antidepressants had no effect on me, but the podcast informed me that even the most famous pill Prozac is no more effective than a placebo.  90% of all depression is not affected by drugs.  All I was, was skeptical that the drugs would have an effect, so they had no effect.

Sometimes, I wish I was less skeptical, then happy drugs would work on me.  Another advantage to being less skeptical would be I would just lay down and accept all the garbage that comes my way through email and Facebook.  Instead I search every-time someone says this or that and usually discover that the thing that came my way is a hoax or severely misleading, or the site is lying to my friends.  I point it out and people resent it.  They want to believe the junk.  They want to believe that Europe has banned fluoridation in water.  They want to believe that vaccinations are bad for them.  They want to believe the head politician of their nation is related to the horse thief Remus Rudd.  They want to believe that the soul weighs 21 grams as proven in a research study.  They do not want me to point out that it is bullshit.

I wish that I was not lonely.

Pi day 3/14

Homeopathy

If I have a headache it would be expected that I could take any number of medications to alleviate the pain and allow me to get on with my life. There are many choices.  I could take Aspirin, originally made from willow bark, so I could just boil the correct willow bark into a tea and drink that too.  I could go for one of those modern cures like Tylenol or Advil and there are many strengths of both of those.  Some work on the pain and let you get on with life with no pain.  Some work by reducing inflammation and thus relieve the pain, like ibuprofen.  

I could take nothing too, because headaches are temporary, usually, and they will go away.  That is always an option.  I usually take nothing.  The reason is because I don't believe anything works.  I once had a terrible headache when I was out at a friend's cottage and I unfortunately let him know.  He gave me a gel cap of Super-Duper-Extra Strength Gelcap, behind the counter strength Advil.  I took it, because I wanted to be polite and I wanted the pain to go away. The pill was so big that it got caught in my throat and it took a while to get down.  After half an hour he told me that that pill was fast acting and I should have felt it start working right away.  I nodded, mostly because I did not want him to give me something else, the pain was still there, just as intense and it was there for another few hours.

There is another option that a lot of people take for many different maladies, it is equally effective for all illnesses, from headaches to Cancer.  Homeopathy, or Magic.  I may be tipping my hand when I say that but let me explain.  People who believe in Homeopathy believe that a little bit of medicine is better than a lot.  They believe that the smaller the quantity of medicine, the more powerful the effect.  They achieve this by diluting the medicine.  

They take the medicine and dilute it with distiller water.  Practitioners believe that the more dilute the end product the better that it works.  They have a notation that they put on the medicine so that you can know how dilute and thus how powerful the medicine is, XC.  That is a number like 2C.  C, means a dilution of one hundred times.  Take a liter of distilled water remove 10ml and add 10ml of medicine and shake vigorously and that resulting liquid would be a 1C solution.  If you thought that was stupid and would be completely ineffective unless you drank the full liter, then you would be correct; everyone agrees, but homeopaths agree for different reasons than you would.  Homeopaths believe that the solution is not dilute enough.  Common influenza medications are diluted a lot more, often 200C.  That is two hundred hundred times dilutions or scientifically put 1/1.0x10^200.

Take a cubic kilometer of distilled water add 1ml of medicine and mix well.  That represents a billionth of a thousandth of a billionth dilution, 1/1.0x10^21.  Or better yet take two hundred 1L bottles filled to 990ml add 10ml of medicine to the first and mix well, then add 10ml of that to the next and mix well and repeat another 198 times then you will have the appropriate dilution for the cure of the flu.  

The problem with this has to do with a special number known as Avogadro's Constant equal to 6.02214129×10^23.  This is the number of any molecule in its molar mass in grams.  Take water H2O, which has a molecular mass as taken from the Periodic table of 18g (1+1+16) and in 18g of water there are 6.02214129×10^23 molecules of water.

Alcohol, the kind that people drink to get drunk, has a chemical formula of C2H5OH and thus a molecular mass of 46 or 46g of alcohol has 6.02214129×10^23 molecules.  What is the point of this exercise?  The point is that most people have drunk some alcohol in the past and know its effects, unless you are like I was until I was 30 and never touched the stuff.  

If you take a mole of alcohol (46g) and dilute it 6.02214129×10^23 times you would be left with one alcohol molecule in any 46g of solution and a homeopath would call that a less than 24C dilution.  And then a homeopath would dilute it a lot more and would tell you that the alcohol would have become even more potent.  

Take two hundred 1L bottles filled to 990ml add 10ml of Vodka to the first and mix well, then add 10ml of that to the next and mix well and repeat another 198 times then you will have the appropriate dilution of 200C.  According to the homeopath, if you drink a liter of that solution, you will get severely drunk.  Personally if I drank a full liter of pure alcohol, I would die.  According to the homeopath I would be equally dead drinking a liter of 200C diluted alcohol.  

What do you think?  Do you think I would kill myself drinking alcohol that has had has been diluted as to have no alcohol left in it?  What about a medicine that has no medicine left in it, should it cure me?  If you think so, then I have a bridge that I want to sell you, it is in Brooklyn.

Stop

I think.  I need.  To stop dwelling on MPTR, MagicEyes and Seventh.

I tried writing something I couldn't tell anyone into a story, but realized, if I couldn't tell anyone about it, I probably shouldn't write about it.