2014 « The Ramblings of An Eternal Student of Life

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Medicine ... Politics ... Web Site/Blog ...

I guess that I’m just not a Twitter person. I don’t have an account, and I hardly ever look at anyone else’s tweets. It’s kind of like Buffalo wings — lots of skin, sauce, bone and grease, but no meat. (Yes, I am a vegetarian, but I had some wings in the years prior to my conversion back in the mid-80s).

But I thought I’d give it a try here, just for the heck of it. Let’s see what I might say in a tweet about Jeb Bush:

WSJ sez Jeb is hanging out on Wall Street looking for cash. And probably finding some, probably finding a LOT. Just viewed some videos on Jeb and his lovely Mexican wife Columba. Smart, calm dude, friendly, no twangy accent. Looks like the Bush family is going to pull off the first presidential hat trick.

OK, that’s 310 characters — about twice the Twitter limit. I gather that » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:39 pm Read Comments (11) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, November 20, 2014

◊ Abbott and Costello Meet Gruberstein

Current Affairs ... Politics ...

Before I move on to “the real world”, let me offer one more ditty about the “opera buffa” that is the current political scene. As if writing an essay on recent political comedy is such a new and novel idea — wow, no one would ever have thought of that!

Anyway, let’s talk about the latest Tea Party-Republican dream come true. A man has stepped into the limelight almost as if ordered from Central Casting, to fill the role of the “Elitist Enemy of the People”. He’s an urbane, doctorate level, Harvard educated expert from the Northeast who designed a big-government program that President Obama and the Democrats rammed down the throats of a wary public. And now he’s been revealed to have clearly expressed his disdain for the unwashed masses that allegedly don’t know better, those who might not yet realize that he and Obama were chosen by destiny to pave the road to a better world. Yes, Jonathan Gruber, MIT Professor of Economics.

At first, I didn’t think that what Dr. Gruber had to say about the unsavory process by which the Affordable Health Care Act was hammered into existence within the unsanitary workshop of national politics was all that surprising or damaging. But then again, I am viewing Gruber through my own fairly educated, somewhat urban and elitist » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:18 pm Read Comments (5) / Leave a Comment

Monday, November 17, 2014

◊ Breaking Silence on the Mid-Term Rout

Politics ...

I haven’t yet said anything about the mid-term national elections two weeks ago, but I will now break my silence. I wanted to “let the dust settle”, see what the pundits had to say about it. Well, as usual, the pundits have said a whole lot of different things. Most everyone agreed that the results were not good for the Democratic Party as a whole, and for President Obama’s chances of accomplishing anything over the next two years that would enhance his legacy. There was, however, a lot of disagreement as to just how bad it all was and what the implications are for the upcoming 2016 Presidential election. I’m now going to throw in my two cents on all of this.

First off, I don’t see the election results as the sign of a “new Republican wave”, the start of an era of GOP domination of national politics akin to what occurred between 1968 (end of LBJ, start of Richard Nixon) and 1992 (end of George HW Bush and start of Bill Clinton). I think that we are still in a ping-pong era where neither party has a decisive edge (although it does seem clear that the Democrats do better in Presidential elections and the GOP has an edge in mid-terms). The voting public right now is kind-of fickle and up-for-grabs. The Democrat’s supposed “demographic destiny” propounded by Ruy Teixeira and others still seems rather tenuous and theoretical. When voter turnout hardly every breaks 60%, it still matters a lot just who possesses the most inspiration to actually take the hour or less that is required for most people to cast a vote in November (hardly 15 minutes for me, door-to-door). Most elections are determined “at the margin”, i.e. a swing of perhaps 5% of voters or less usually determines who the victor will be.

So, what were the inspirations that swung the critical 5% or so of voters on the 4th against the Democratic senatorial candidates in the key states (i.e., North Carolina, Georgia, Alaska, Iowa and arguably Kansas with an independent-candidate footnote)? The best analysis I read was from » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 1:46 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, November 15, 2014

◊ Wash Day in South Paterson

Personal Reflections ... Photo ...

I was driving thru South Paterson, NJ on a recent Saturday morning, and saw something that took me back almost 50 years. I.e., clothes hanging outside to dry! My goodness, someone out there is still using clothes lines and clothes pins!!! That’s the way it was in the neighborhood where I grew up. By the 1980s and 90s, most everyone in town bought their own washing machines and dryers, or used a laundromat. I thought that the fine art of outdoor drying was gone forever. But it looks like it still survives in places!

Well, this neighborhood in Paterson is dominated by recent immigrants with just-getting-by working class jobs. So maybe this is just a part of survival for these families. Well hey, I admire that, and I appreciate the opportunity, however brief, to revisit the way things were back when I was growing up!

◊ posted by Jim G @ 7:18 am Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

◊ My Newly Updated Consciousness Course !

Brain / Mind ... Web Site/Blog ...

I’m going to toot my own horn just a bit and put in a plug for my new, improved “Short Course on Consciousness“, found on my web site. I’ve spent the last 3 months doing some pretty intense reading to catch up on what’s been happening in the academic world and research community with regard to consciousness; i.e., the attempts to finally define the nature and functioning of our conscious awareness, i.e. the stuff that happens when we aren’t dead, asleep, under anesthesia, or otherwise out of it.

In some ways, consciousness seems pretty simple; and yet, when you really try to think about it and put it into context, it suddenly gets VERY complex. Around 1995, I got quite interested in the topic, given that a lot of new books and research papers were coming out on the subject. I read lots of stuff by philosophers, neuroscientists, computer experts, and psychologists about consciousness (none of that New Age “woo-woo” stuff for me, thank you), hoping to find a trenchant and powerfully incisive concept that would make it all fall in place.

Well, that concept never came along — or at least I didn’t stumble across it. So, after 2007, I moved on to other intellectual interests, mainly modern physics and cosmology. Not long ago, I looked at the web site pages on consciousness that I had put up back in 2006. They were very well » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 4:15 pm Read Comments (3) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, November 8, 2014

◊ Polar Bears, Water Bears — NOT Very Cute

Nature ... Society ...

It’s interesting how we humans can see something in nature that strikes our fancy for some odd reason, and give it an imaginary quality that has nothing at all to do with whatever it is. I think they call this “anthropomorphizing” or something. I.e., trying to humanize something that just ain’t human.

One example is polar bears. A lot of people seem delighted with the thought of polar bears. They’ve starred in movies and Coke commercials. Maybe it’s their fluffy white fur. Once upon a time, people shot the darn things, skinned them, and used the lovely fur as a rug. But that was back in the Teddy Roosevelt days. Today » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 10:00 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, November 1, 2014

◊ Uptown, Downtown, Midtown Jesus

Photo ...

Holy Face Monastery, Clifton, NJ. Manhattan overlook at dawn.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 12:30 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

◊ Ferguson and ‘Broken Windows’ Policing

Current Affairs ... Public Policy ... Society ...

Looks like Fegruson, MO might be back in the news shortly. A Grand Jury is soon expected to release its decision as to whether criminal charges should be filed against Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson for the August 9, 2014 shooting and killing of 18 year old Michael Brown by Darren. The Washington Post reports that the testimony of six local residents to the Saint Louis County Grand Jury who eyewitnessed the shooting, along with physical evidence collected at the scene, tend to confirm Wilson’s version of the story (i.e., that a physical struggle between Wilson and Brown ensued while Wilson was in his police vehicle, during a stop by Wilson to warn Brown and his companion not to walk in the middle of a busy street; Brown tried to take Wilson’s gun from him during the struggle; Wilson’s gun was discharged during the struggle, but did not hit anyone; Brown and his companion then ran from the vehicle while Wilson recovered his weapon and then got out and ordered them to stop; Brown stopped, but then starting moving towards Wilson without any sign of surrender — i.e., no “hands up”; and Wilson then raised his gun and discharged a volley of shots at the approaching Brown, hitting him at least 6 times including in the forehead, thus killing him).

If the Post report is true, then the likeihood of a “no-bill” (whereby the Grand Jury lets Wilson off) must be taken seriously. Local officials thus fear that there could be significant protests and possible disturbances once again in Ferguson as a result. There is no doubt that many in the African American community, including a majority of its leaders, will be upset if Wilson walks away without any sort of punishment. To repeat the obvious, many African Americans have had upsetting and arguably disrespectful interactions with police in their lives, and thus well remember the many incidents reported in the press over the past decade where unarmed black community members were killed by law enforcement (e.g., Trayvon Martin, Amadou Diallo, Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, Wendell Allen, etc., with very many others not making the national news). The Ferguson situation is just another lightening rod for their angst and frustrations.

However, there does appear to be a valid argument that Officer Wilson was mostly doing what he should have been doing (other than perhaps the final barrage of close-range shots » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:51 am Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, October 25, 2014

◊ Cold Brewing and Cafestol — On Safe Grounds

Food / Drink ... Practical Advice ...

I’ve become a fan of cold-brewed coffee. Not that I go around seeking local coffee shops or bakeries that serve it. I’m talking about producing my own home brew. Thus far I’ve make it in the simplest way possible; I get out an iced tea pitcher, dump in a few cups of ground coffee (decaf, please, I’m a bit oversensitive to caffeine), pour in about 3 to 4 cups of water for every cup of java, stir it up, and into the refrigerator overnight. (Albeit, I have experimented with keeping it at room temperature for 12 hours and then refrigerating it, as to boost up the flavor extraction process a bit; thus, I often go this route). I let the grounds settle and harden, and then just pour out the liquid on top, perhaps straining the final cup for excess sediment. The end result is really good coffee, in my book; a lot smoother and a touch sweeter than the hot-brew.

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with coffee; I love the smell of a nice steaming cup of joe, but it usually becomes a different animal in the mouth, with all sorts of intertwining acids and bitter / sour notes competing for attention. Cold brewing seems to leave most of these “foreign” notes behind, and you get something a good bit closer to what the vapors once promised, the first time you ever got near that black potion of the gods. The main trade-off with cold-brewing, interestingly, is the wonderful vapors themselves; cold-brewing leaves behind many of the “voluables” that hot brewing brings out. So even if you heat up a cup of coffee that was produced cold, you won’t get the same wonderful fragrances. If you want the best of both worlds, then, make a cup of hot-brewed coffee and sniff it, then pour a cup of cold-brew for actual drinking!

Cold brewing seems like the better way to go, in my coffee book. However, there’s a problem with the way I’ve been doing it. Coffee has oily elements in it (i.e., “diterpenes”), and one of those is called cafestol. Most of the oil is ok, but cafestrol can raise a person’s harmful cholesterol levels (i.e., LDL’s and triglycerides) and possibly contribute to heart disease over time. If you don’t somehow filter your joe, you’re going to get a pretty good wallop of cafestol (and never even notice it, taste-wise). However, common methods of hot-brewing coffee » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 4:50 pm Read Comments (6) / Leave a Comment

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

◊ Axions — coming out of the darkness?

Science ...

A quick PS to an earlier post on dark matter and one of my favorite candidates to explain it (or at least a big part of it), i.e. the purported axion particles. My earlier post was entitled “The Dark Side: Have We Tripped Over Axions?“. Well, another study has come in indicating that perhaps we have. Some unexpected variations in the x-ray readings from space (coming specifically from the zone not too far from our planet, where the earth’s magnetic field has its presence) indicate that our sun may be spitting out axions. These particles would somehow be expected (by the theoretical physicists who understand all the math) to interact with the earth’s magnetic fields and cause a few more x-rays than otherwise expected.

Very cool. However, further tests need to be made to eliminate other possible causes. So, axions aren’t over the goal line yet, but they seem to be marching up the field. And I’m in the stands cheering for them!

◊ posted by Jim G @ 10:50 am Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

TOP PAGE - LATEST BLOG POSTS
« PREVIOUS PAGE -- NEXT PAGE (OLDER POSTS) »