The existence of mosquitoes

Summer is approaching.  I'm looking forward to being able to go outside without a coat or jacket on.  I'm especially looking forward to the clear nights when I can get out my telescope and peer into the universe that surrounds us.  The one thing I don't look forward to is the mosquitoes.  It's extremely annoying to go outside and realize I'm just a big walking meal for thousands of little insects.  While mosquito repellents are effective, I hate having to take the time to apply them and then having to shower afterwards to remove them just to have an hour of comfort outside. 

When I used to travel to India, we would take anti-malarial medicines because of the mosquitoes.  We would sleep with mosquito repellent coils burning in the room to protect us.  I have no idea what chemicals I was breathing.   These devices were generally effective.  We would only have a few bites in the morning.  I've heard that scientists are working on laser targeting systems that can detect mosquitoes and fire a tiny laser to kill them.  This would be amazing technology, and I wonder what it would look like when in use.  I can imagine a tiny laser light show shooting around the room. 

We've all experienced the nuisance of mosquitoes.   They are a part of our lives.  They are everywhere, and nobody doubts that they exist.    Why isn't it the same way with God (meaning, the Christian god, but the same applies to all deities)?  If God really existed, why wouldn't it just be an obvious part of the world, just like mosquitoes are?  Why would we need to "believe"?  You don't have to believe in mosquitoes, they just exist, and that's it. 

Imagine what the world would be like if God really existed.  God would be visible and evident in some manner.  If natural disasters actually happened, the people who prayed would always survive.  I read today that an entire town in Alabama was destroyed by tornadoes, including all three churches.  If God existed, the report would be that the town was destroyed, but, of course, the churches were protected. 

If God really existed, people wouldn't have to make up convoluted arguments for why Evil exists in the world.   Either it simply wouldn't exist, or God would make it perfectly clear to every human why it does.   We would never have religious wars, because it would be obvious to everyone what God was and how he acts.  Nobody fights wars over their belief in the nature of mosquitoes. 

If it appears that I'm oversimplifying theology and I don't understand the subtleties of the nature of the existence of God and the need for Faith or whatever, well, that's not the case.   If an all-powerful, omniscient, omnipresent entity actually existed, it would be obvious.  We wouldn't need holy books full of opaque metaphors to explain it.  There wouldn't be dramatically differing opinions on the matter.  It would be as obvious as gravity, or the air we breathe, or mosquitoes.

Pray for Texas

Texas is on fire.  Wildfires have spread across the state and currently cover a million acres.  And what is the solution that has been proposed by the Texas state legislature and signed into law by their governor?  Prayer.

Yes, the government of the State of Texas signed a law asking the people of the state to pray for rain. You can find some of the text referenced here. 

I wrote about prayer previously in reference to the disaster in Japan.  This current action in Texas serves to confirm the point I was making in that post.  People really think that praying for something will have an effect.  The legislature didn't ask them to pray for inspiration on how to find a solution to the problem or for strength in dealing with it.  Such a request would indicate a realization that prayer is simply a technique for self-reflection and thought.  Instead, they are clearly asking for their god to intervene.  Which again raises the questions - why hasn't their god intervened already, and why do they think they can influence the actions of a god?  When will people realize the inherent problems with this theology?

Another problem I have with this action is the clear violation of the separation of church and state.  The government should never, ever, ever, get involved in telling people how to practice a religious activity.  More importantly (to me), the government should not be encouraging people to practice ANY religious activity.  The state of Texas was very careful in the wording of their call to prayer to be inclusive of all religions.  They clearly saw that they would be inviting (justifiable) lawsuits if they mentioned God (or Thor or Vishnu or any other specific god).  However, they still show a direct endorsement of religion in general.  By endorsing religion, they push out those who have no religious beliefs.  There are many people who feel that supernatural beliefs in gods and devils are all a bunch of irrational, magical thinking that have no place in a grown-up view of the natural world.  When the government endorses religion, it makes non-religious people into second class citizens.  It's no different than if the government passed a law asking for three days in support of "white American culture".  That would clearly be racist, a violation of civil rights, and immoral.  Why can the government get away with acting the same way towards atheists and other non-believers?

The third problem I have with this action in Texas is that it promotes magical thinking that is completely removed from reality.  It treats the wildfires as if they somehow magically appeared and only an appeal to a magical old man in the sky can solve the problem.  The reality is that the fires are caused by a severe drought in Texas.  One (very likely) cause of that drought is global climate change that is occurring because we are burning too much oil and other fossil fuels and are pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  While a lot of people oversimplify the concept of human-caused global climate change as "global warming", the reality is that we are causing changes to the climate that are displayed in many ways.  One is that areas that once had plentiful rain will now suffer droughts.  This is likely what is happening in Texas.  Of course, the (Republican) government of Texas isn't going to admit this is a possible cause - not when a significant part of the state economy is based on oil production and refinement.  It's very likely that the oil industry paid significant amounts of money to help get the governor and legislators elected.  Do you think those elected officials are going to turn around and point out that the oil industry is partly to blame for these wildfires?  Of course not.  It's much easier to ask people to shut up for three days and pray to their magical grandfather to smile upon them and solve their problems.

The Forks in the Road

We're in the process of planning a trip this Summer to go to a relative's wedding.  Like all weddings, it will be a very important day in their lives.  We all have these important days - births, graduations, wedding, deaths, etc.  On those days, we know that our lives are changing.

But what really amazes and intrigues me are the moments where our lives change drastically, and we don't even notice it at the time.  However, later, we look back, and we recognize exactly the moment when we made a decision or learned some fact that changed the course of the rest of our life.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I spent the first semester of my senior year of undergrad at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  I was there as part of the "Oak Ridge Science Semester" sponsored by the Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA).  At the end of the program, there was a dinner for all the participants (about 20-30 of us).  At the dinner, I happened to speak with one of the professors who was running the program there.  He was from a small GLCA college in Michigan (I forget which one).  He asked me if I was going to grad school.  I said I was, and listed the ones I was applying to.  They were all universities with top-ranked Computer Science programs (Stanford, MIT, Berkeley).  I had good grades, and my adviser at Oak Ridge had encouraged me to apply to those universities.  The professor at the dinner asked if I had considered the University of Michigan.  Being a native born Ohioan, I hadn't, of course.  I grew up supporting Ohio State.  U of M was the enemy!  But, he said they had a good robotics program, since they were so close to the automotive manufacturing plants.  I was at Oak Ridge studying robotics, so it was a logical choice.

So, when I was applying to grad schools, I applied to UM, just as a backup.  Well, it was a good thing.  All the other universities turned me down, but UM accepted me.   So, that's where I went.   

As I looked back later, I realized that one, otherwise insignificant, moment at a dinner in Tennessee where a professor decided to give some advice to a student caused the entire path of my life to change.  My life could have taken another path, but the one it took to Michigan has been wondrous.  I'm very happy with the choice.

I've had other such moments in my life - when a pretty girl smiled at me in the hallway and I smiled back, when I decided to answer an email that I could have ignored.  It's easy for me to think of these as just random events that happened to me, but the truth is, they have something in common.  Yes, the fact that they happened was random, but what is common is that I chose to act on the event.  I was open to a new possibility, and I chose to act.  While I might not have always chosen "the one less traveled by", I made the choices in my life, and I am happy where it's led me.

Know nukes

The first semester of my Senior year at Denison University, I participated in an off-campus research program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  Oak Ridge is a government research facility that was built outside of Knoxville, TN, to develop nuclear weapons capabilities as part of the Manhattan Project.  The central research facilities are in the middle of a 34,000 acre reserve.  Originally, this was a secure, top secret area.
(By the way, I was there doing robotics research, not building weapons.  My building was "outside the gate".  I didn't even have to pass through any security checkpoints to get to my workplace.)
The Fall that I was there was the first time in 40 years that they opened up the reservation for deer hunting.  Vehicle-deer accidents were averaging one every 1-2 days.  Given the length of time that the deer population had been living unperturbed there, the local hunters were extremely excited at the possibilities of bagging some big bucks for trophies.
As the day approached, all the workers around the lab were getting more and more excited.  The local newspaper was full of articles about the hunt.  The official rules from the lab were published.  Normal limits on the number of deer that could be taken would be in effect.  The only special rule was that each deer killed had to be taken to a special checkpoint before it was removed from the reservation to check the body for radiation.
I used to tell that story, and I thought that the final punchline was pretty funny.  After what is happening right this moment in Japan, I'm not laughing about it anymore.
When I was at Oak Ridge, I listened to presentations by scientists who were developing new ways to store nuclear waste in deep mines encased in concrete.  They were calculating the probability of any of the radiation seeping into the groundwater.  These were really smart people working to solve a difficult problem.  I think they have some good solutions for this problem.  For years I've been generally pro-nuclear.   While I understand there are some environmental, security, and political issues surrounding the tasks of acquiring the uranium, transporting it, refining it, and storing the waste, I felt that those costs were justified given the value of the energy produced.
What the current Japanese nuclear disaster has reminded me of is the risk.  The risk of an accident is too high.  Let me take a moment to review the definition of risk, just to be clear about what I mean.  Risk is the probability of something happening multiplied by the cost if it does happen.  Normally, we think of risk only with respect to the probability.  If something only has a 0.00001% chance of happening, we say it has a low risk.  But if something has a 50% chance of happening, but the cost that we have if it does is low, then that also has a low risk.
For nuclear energy, the cost of an accident is extremely high.  There is, obviously, the immediate danger to the people who are directly exposed during the crisis, but there is also long-term consequences of having radiation released into the environment.  One figure I read said that the radioactive plutonium that is created by nuclear power plants will be around for the next 12,000 generations.    It will be a danger to people for a longer time than there have actually been a species on this planet that we can call "people" (or at least modern humans).  The cesium-137 that was released will be around in dangerous quantities for hundreds of years.   So even if the probability of an accident is low, the cost is so high that almost any probability other than zero makes the risk high.  And in the case of nuclear energy, the probability isn't so low.  There have been at least four major nuclear accidents in the 70 years that we've had nuclear energy.   They happen, and people die.  For decades.
So I'm not laughing at jokes about nuclear deer anymore.   On the other hand, I'm not panicking and taking prophylactic iodine tablets.  The radioactive iodine isn't an immediate threat to us, and after a few months it will have decayed to a point that it isn't a problem.  What I am doing is thinking more about how we really need to be serious about "clean" energy.  We need to understand the risks of our sources of energy and choose wisely.  And mostly, we need to reduce our overall energy consumption so we aren't so desperate for energy that we'll take it from any source, no matter what the risk.

A cup of history

As I'm writing my blog entry today, I'm drinking a glass of water.  I'm thinking, where did this water come from.  Well, from the tap, of course.  But a glass of water is made up of molecules of water.  In fact, a 8 oz. glass of water contains about 7 million billion billion molecules of water.  Although all those molecules are sitting in my glass right now, they weren't always together.  Also, it's not like my tap magically created the water out of thin air.  Those molecules came from somewhere.
My water at my house comes from a well.  The water down in the well got there somehow.  Some of it has been sitting around down there for years and years and only now is being pumped up to the surface.  Some of it has filtered down from the surface to collect and mix with the water there.  Some of that water came from a cow urinating in the field down the way.  Some came from the leftover ice in a Wendy's cup that someone dumped out of their car as they were driving down the road.  Most of it got there from the rain and snow. 
The water molecules that got there as rain or snow were up in the clouds for some time.  They got there through evaporation from any number of places: the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific, any number of lakes and streams across the country, some sweaty guy in Iowa trying to fix his lawn mower, a teapot boiling Texas, lots of places.  Most of the water in the Gulf got there from rain and from rivers and streams that feed into the Gulf.  Some got there from a seasick passenger vomiting over the side of a cruise ship.  Some came from the blood of pirates killed in ancient sea battles.  Some of the water there has been circulating around the Gulf and the ocean for years.  It may have spent time in the cells of a giant squid or passed from organism to organism in the small food chain of a coral reef. 
Before some of that water rained into the Gulf, it was in clouds that came from evaporation of water from some other part of the world.  As we go back and back in time, we see that these molecules have traveled around the world over and over again.  Each molecule in my glass of water may have been part of countless different plants, animals, and other organisms from cats and dogs to dinosaurs to ancient bacteria.  It may have helped erode away mountains and flooded cities.  It may have been locked in a glacier for hundreds of years.  
In addition to the molecules that survived intact for their existence, some of the molecules were formed during the burning of some forest when the hydrogen atoms in the cells of the trees bound with oxygen in the air to give off heat and creating a water molecule that was released into the atmosphere.   Other water molecules formed inside living beings as part of their normal life processes.  Each of those hydrogen and oxygen atoms has their own history.
As we go back further in time to the early formation of the earth, some of the water molecules were part of the cloud of interstellar dust that coalesced to form the Earth.  Other molecules rained down on the Earth as parts of comets that pummeled the planet during its early history.  And for all of those molecules, the oxygen atoms in them were formed in the tremendous nuclear furnaces in the insides of stars.  They were flung into space when the stars exploded and later bound to hydrogen atoms they encountered.
So, as I drink my glass of water, I drink molecules that have participated in the vast history of our universe.   Soon, they will become part of me, and they will join with all the other atoms of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, calcium, and other elements that make up me.   Each of those atoms and molecules has its own unique history.  This combination of atoms and molecules that I call "me" is a piece of a universe that is vast and grand and amazing.  It builds worlds and brings forth life and produces each of us.  When I die, my atoms and molecules will be set free from this particular configuration to spread throughout the world to become part of countless future plants and animals (including us people) that will inhabit this planet.    And, sometime, centuries from now, someone will sit down to have a glass of water that contains a molecule of me.

Glory

I was browsing through the web site of my friend, Tim Householder, when I came across one of his photographs that I find particularly brilliant.

 

Please click this link to see the full-size version.  I'll wait.

(Note: Looks like Tim took down the photo...  I think you can figure it out from the description below.)

This photo has a great David Lynch quality about it.  It portrays something mundane and normal but with a heightened feeling of reality that pushes it into slightly surreal.  There are so many things that I like about this photo.  First, there is the subject matter.  We have an award for the "Best Exhibit of Canned or Dried Beef" and it was won by a piece of beef that was both dried AND canned.  How could it lose?  I also love the composition of the photo.  By providing a wide view of the can on an otherwise empty shelf, I can imagine either of two things.  One, that this is a very big honor, and they want to make sure it is shown, or two, that this is a small, pathetic county fair with not enough exhibits to fill a shelf where a ridiculous piece of beef jerky in a used jelly jar can win a prize.  

As much as it is easy for me to act like some "big-city snob" and make fun of a jar of dried beef, for some woman in Yuma County, it's a big deal.  She worked hard, perhaps for years, to perfect her beef drying recipe.  Or perhaps it's a young girl who did this as a 4-H project, and it's her first award at the fair.  Either way, it's something significant in their life.  It's something they are proud of.  It's one moment of glory for them.  

Every day we pass by the glories in other people's lives and usually don't even notice.  And most of the time, they don't notice ours either.  Sometimes, if we're lucky, we do notice.  Every time I pass by a wedding party I think about how, even if this is just an average day for me, it's a day those people will never forget.   Likewise, on the special days of my life, it's just an average day for most of the people in the world.  I think it's important to be happy in our glories, in our victories, and in our accomplishments, even if other people don't notice or don't value them.  We should also try to keep our eyes open to notice the glories in other people's lives.  Because it's nice for them to have those things recognized, and it's good for us to be reminded that there are so many glorious things in the world.

I was fat

When I turned 39 years old, I started looking down the road to the big 4-0, and I realized one thing, I was fat.  I weighed 225 lbs. and had a BMI of over 28, a mere 2 points below being "obese".  While I could take some small consolation from the fact that I was "merely overweight" and not obese, it was a cold comfort.  At the time, I was watching my father slowly die from congestive heart failure.   I decided that I wanted to try to avoid that fate, and one good step would be to do something about my weight.

So, I did all the things that I was supposed to do.  I went to the gym 3 times a week.  I walked, or even ran, a mile or so each time in addition to lifting weights.  I cut back on all those fatty, sugary snacks that I was eating.  I really made a big effort.  On my 40th birthday, I stepped on the scales, and I was surprised to find that I had lost a total of zero (0) pounds.

What had I done wrong?  Why wasn't I the lean, fit guy that I was supposed to be?  Well, I thought long and hard about it, and I realized that I had failed to lose weight because I listened to all the hype in the media and the ads from the weight loss programs and did what "everyone knows" is the way to lose weight.  Instead, I should have just used some logic and common sense.

So here's what I did.   First, I applied a little physics and biology knowledge.  To maintain my current weight of 225 lbs with my current level of activity, I have to eat a certain number of calories each day.  I have to move that 225 lbs of mass around to do all the things I do.  This requires a certain amount of energy.   If I weighed less, I would have less mass to move around with me all day and would thus require less energy to do it.  That means I wouldn't have to eat as many calories.

Next, I looked at how I got fat in the first place.  I didn't go from being, say, 175 lbs to being 225 lbs by all of a sudden gorging myself every day on the amount of food that I would eat to maintain my weight at 225 lbs.  If I had tried to do that, I would feel stuffed all the time, I would be uncomfortable, and I would give up on the goal.  Instead, I got fat little by little by eating more than I needed each day.  My body slowly stored that extra energy as fat, and I ended up at 225 lbs. 

Similarly, I couldn't expect to go from 225 lbs down to 175 lbs by starving myself and only eating what would be required to maintain my weight at 175 lbs.  I would feel hungry all the time, I would be uncomfortable, and I would give up on my goal.  Instead, I needed to lose weight little by little.  

So I put these two facts together and came up with a plan.  First, I would set small, incremental goals.  Instead of saying, "I want to lose 50 lbs", I said, "I want to lose 5 lbs".  This is a much more attainable goal.  It also helped me figure out how to reach it.  Instead of eating like a 225 lb person, I would eat like a 220 lb person.  What's the difference?  Just a little bit less food on the plate at each meal.   I never counted calories or weighed my food.  I also never made any food strictly off-limits.  I didn't deprive myself of the foods I wanted to eat, I just ate less of them.  Occasionally during the process I did change one little thing in my diet.  For example, at one point I switched from drinking a can of pop at each dinner to drinking water.  It was a small change, but I'm sure it made a difference.

Once I started eating like a 220 lb person is when the physics part would kick in.  If I'm moving my 225 lb mass around but only providing enough energy to move 220 lbs, my body needs to find the energy for those extra 5 lbs somewhere.  It does that by burning off some fat.  Each time it does that, I get a little lighter, and I have less energy demand to make up for.  Eventually, I get to 220 lbs.

The second, and most important, part of the plan was psychological.  I had to start thinking of myself as a 220 lb person instead of a 225 lb person.  This is a very powerful thing.  If I think of myself as a 225 lb person who happens to weigh 220 lbs at some time, it's not really a big deal if I gain back 5 lbs.  On the other hand, if I consider myself a 220 lb person who happens to be 225 lbs, then it's a problem, but it's not so difficult to get back down to my "normal" weight of 220 lbs.

Once I reached my goal of 220 lbs, I would live that way for a while to get used to it.  Eating like a 220 lb person became my normal way of eating.  Then, I would start the cycle over again.  I would start thinking of myself as a 215 lb person who happens to be 5 lbs overweight and needs to get back to my normal weight.  I would eat like a 215 lb person, and the pounds would start to go away.

During all this process, I did add some extra activity to my day.  When the weather was nice, I would go out and take a little walk at lunchtime.  It was a nice break from my work day.  I got some sunshine and fresh air.  I got to stretch my legs a bit after sitting at a desk for hours.  It was a nice addition to my day.  I'm sure it also contributed to my weight loss, but it never seemed like a chore. 

My eventual, long-term goal was to get my BMI down to the "normal" range.  I calculated that I would need to be about 185 lbs to give me a few pounds leeway to keep from pushing up into the "overweight" territory.   I was very pleased that by the time of my 41st birthday, I had reached that goal.  And I never felt like I was "on a diet".  I just ate like the weight I wanted to be.  I think this is what weight-loss experts mean when they say you have to make lifestyle changes.  The problem is that they never tell you what those changes are or how to make them.   And I think this is why most diets fail.  Instead of making small, slow changes to how they eat, people try to make drastic changes to their diet that don't represent how they will eat day-to-day for the rest of their lives to maintain a healthy weight.

Since the time that I achieved that goal, I've actually lost an additional 10 lbs.  It wasn't as deliberate of a process.  It was mostly a by-product of eating a better, healthier diet and not actually wanting to eat the way I had before.  I don't feel deprived of any foods, but I maintain my weight.  I'm not a 225 lb person anymore.  I'm a 178 lb person, and I will never think of myself as a 225 lb person again.

Green Energy

For the past 9 years, we've been in a bloody and expensive war in Iraq.  We have yet to see the full impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the nuclear crisis in Japan has still not been resolved.  How long are we going to destroy our planet and our civilization for dirty, dangerous forms of energy?  It's time to start using a plentiful source of green energy that is right in our backyard.  Squirrels.  Seriously, we have enough squirrels in our back yard to power 2 or 3 houses.  If we catch them and put them on little wheels, we could have an inexhaustable power supply.  The way those things are reproducing, they are clearly renewable.  We don't have to feed them, because they just steal what we put in the birdfeeder anyway.  So the cost is low.  It's a simple, elegant solution, and dang are they cute!

(OK, Mike.  That's all I've got on the squirrel thing.  I hope you're happy.)