November 30, 2006

Global Warming, Eh

It snowed enough to stick here the other day.



Snow doesn't stick here very often - maybe once every other year. This is the first time i remember snow in November, but i've only lived here since 1990. This is an early morning shot of my kitchen window view.

November 29, 2006

Occam's Razor, rev 2006

Physics gives us the ability to apply mathematical relationships to physical properties. Manual Garcia demonstrates their application, with regard to the happenings earlier this century.

"The myths we construct to express our understanding of the realities we are immersed in are limited by the range of our knowledge.

Certainly, so long as there are more than two people on Earth, conspiracies will occur. But too often we invoke a conspiracy in constructing our story of the world because we lack specific information about the sciences, economics, history and other relevant fields of specialized knowledge. Experience has shown that if the evidence allows for several explanations to a given problem then the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions is most probably correct. This principle is called Occam's Razor and is attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Occam (c. 1295-­1349) (2)."

escape or no escape

when i wander inside my mind, exploring cavernous expanses of tritely filled grey matter, synthesizing thoughts about nothing that pertains to real, images of holographic illusion appear. ideals of words of folks long dead spinning in modern jargon, problems which befell men of odder times, remain unresolved in dimensional arrays of immobile archaic goals, embedded in tradition, signifying nothing different transpires under systems unchanged by experience, time and effort. when i wander inside my mind, escaping dribs of drab reality to delve into the fantasy of creative effort that role plays some mythical creature of immense proportion, she takes out frustration on the lemming-like saps that violate transient space, relieving the boredom of their cubicle life tempered at the drive through on the way to the vidiot screen and couch potatoe nothingness. when i wander inside my mind, i tend to find few outlets that equivocate reality.

November 27, 2006

Disclaimer/Challenge

Over the weekend, i picked up an old copy of Ecotopia, the 1975 book by Callenbach that had California, Oregon and Washington seceding to form a wholistic nirvana. My thoughts about global climate change and its significance will be slightly amended to include some of this new ground philosophical basis set that i had previously allowed to linger upon my bookshelf. The pile of books in the 'to read' category is being worked through, thanks to a specific determination to limit the acquisitions. As the plan is to act and write rather than to read during the next spring season, this is planning time for collecting the effort and determining the costs, preparing the budget and writing the justification for spending. Seeing through the effort, accomplishing the goal of the task, is different than accomplishing the goal of just getting the grant. Setting the track record might catch eyebrows, but the attention is unwarrented without the means to accomplish the task, winning the big game.

Sports analogies can be applied deeper than we allow - if we think about the era in which they were developed. Tempered passions have a way of arising in unique form when suppressed via political disfavor. The creativity of the public to accomplish goals is the underlying theme behind the novel and the underlying belief behind the redile system. research directed learning requires investigation in a summary sense. Let's not think back to square one and reinvent the wheel a million times over - join the conversation on-line and express ideas for developing the framework for change. Let's use that sports analogy to compete vigorously in the tasks on hand while working cooperatively between the games themselves to make the targets of the endeavors worthwhile toward the governance ideal of our current constitution - self governance by a moral people.

Of course that may not be the goal of everybody currently playing the existing pyramid game. How long that theory holds sway will determine the actual work level for the future game at hand, where everything past is discounted under wysiwyg rules.

playing the life game

"We do nothing about the problem of big government because we feel helpless to change the system. We are not helpless. We have to recognize that major changes take time. Just as charity begins at home, so does reform. We cannot rearrange our governmental structure until we clearly understand that it is ethically flawed. We need to understand why it is flawed. We need to teach coming generations, one person at a time, the proper ethics to build a society upon. A few souls can make a large difference. In time as attitudes change, we and they will find ways to change government."
It seems that
Rozeff strikes a chord again within the timbre of Dr. Lenny's themes.

Personal ethics is often compromised by love and insight - therefore it is not ethical to rely solely on personal ethics. Group ethics kept people at bay for centuries at a time, and will again. But some things resonate right and ethics is knowing when not to choose the choice you are given. If you have no game, you play along with their game. Developing your own skill set gives you game, and we will need many folks that have their own act together to meet the fire and brimstones, or ice and hailstones that will come down the pike. Altitude is determined by aptitude with attitude. Look at what LeBron James does to opponents when they show up off their game.

Dr. Lenny's game is natural resources chemistry. If we take the sports attitude of hard driven competition on the field and strongly felt cooperative effort to build the game by all parties involved - then we should draw the respect for our effort that it needs for general acceptance. Do what seems to be right by applying the tasks that you can do well, and learn to do tasks that keep your interest and entertainment value. If understanding chemistry is a chime ringer - contact me by registering into one of my classes at yourclassroom.com .

November 26, 2006

A Necessary Evil ???

monetary system:
place your trust
in floating green.
underwhelming honesty
required 2 exchange
value 4 value
taxes lemming psyche!
must translate
everything 2 $$$.
as dollars fall
expenses rise,
tho real value holds.
intensity of interest
ups cost not wealth,
yet us too dim
2 barter services
until changed 2
dollar cents amounts
allows cream be skim
by lemming tamers
on marionette strings
with accordian song
2 big monied interests
of monetary system.

(c) 2006 lemme howdt

November 23, 2006

galts gulch 07

what if we took a page out of Ayn Rand and worried about ourselves only for an entire day. start with an introspection of what we really want howdt of life and whether the path we are taking now is actually going to get us near there. assume only that we may not coerce anyone else because they are looking howdt for themselves. we get to keep what we make (earn?) and trade if we wish, or build resources to make something grander, but you may not take anything that is not ours as a group to work with. could we actually get anywhere under this fantasy condition? a pure mental experiment, cuz the PTB aint gonna change nothin anytime soon. but one where it would be nice to dream abhowdt...

November 20, 2006

Migrane - Brain Strain 4 Gain?

Perhaps it's the change in the weather from dry to wet or warm to cold, but November seems to be my personal migrane season. Dr. Lenny usually can control the problems with medical marijuana and iboprofen - the only meds that he is willing to take. Today the symptoms are acute and askew.

The headache i'm working on now has some new novel symptoms - it seems centered in the fillings in my back teeth. My nerve system is going squeamish with constant vibration - i somehow super-sensitized the whole area. This has caused neck pain, so i shall shed the day - unlax and try to calm down the mechanism, so that Dr. Lenny can be functional tomorrow. I will neither get a rabies shot, nor visit an MD, but will continue the regular regiment of morning coffee, followed by more morning coffee. Migranes mixed with caffeine withdrawals are nasty fare.

Now imagine this type of stuff patrolling cranial cavities. This wood eating fungus does some serious damage to structures that happen to get it - this one grows between the loose paint and the two by four. I like to use my pocket knife to demonstrate size in photo points - but knife sizes vary, so we added a nickel too. Notice the fractal dimension of the mold fungus and also the tree pattern - another case of geometry at work in natural systems.

November 19, 2006

Get Howdt

Join me in a short tour of pool and waterfall, followed by this morning's daybreak - a peak at the clouds. Yesterday was a day where i had need to be away from all, so Tootsie and Dr. Lenny bagged chantrelles on the Coos Bay Wagon Road and visited the scenary of Dora, Sitkom and Myrtle Point.

November 18, 2006

Annoying small devices

Dr. Lenny refuses to carry a cell phone. I had no idea that GPS surveillance was as pervasive as this link makes it appear and i consider Dr. Lenny to be well connected to the information age systems. The internet places the tools for significant research in our hands at home - i could do the graduate work that i did in the 80's from home in less than a year with modern technology. But evaluating good information from bad is the key criteria, that requires supporting what is said to be within a framework of cobbled knowledge that is previously accepted.

But that's the catch - what does it mean to be previously accepted. Research of past times often involved newspaper cache on microfiche - if somebody called up today's NYT in 20 years - would they be able to tell history from propaganda. My theory is that placing an electronic device to your head is a very very bad idea. (any device beyond hat or fork). I dislike normal telehones too, because i have had too many high pitched squeals in my ear. Plus, the funky things that phones do nowadays, like collecting bugs, just gives me the creeps - i say very little unless talking technical - that way the buggers have to understanding the meaning of words.

Living in Alice's Wonderland (or Restaurant or Chi Space) means that words now say what i mean them to say - so people can use the same words in different context and interpret what they were meant to mean. As if they think about the real definition rather than what we are told they now mean. Like 'sustainable development' or 'peak' oil. Trust us, we're from the government and we are here to help you. Good Night, Gracie. Feel free to share any other terms, including oxymorons.

Point is, if you don't have an internal belief system, you have to use the external belief system offered. The masses have lost the ability to discriminate in their thinking as to what they really can believe and what is just not.
Perhaps it is time to identify and question the basic assumptions. The earth is round. OK The sun is hot. Sh*t happens. Still OK Energy flows downhill. OK People learn from public school. Ah - may have one here that is not valid. What to do, what to do? Get rid of cell phones and use the time to think.

It is rumored that a famous scientist once said - you can be part of the solution, or you can be left behind as precipitate. Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

November 17, 2006

keeping up

luv fits the glove
hand over fist
shepherding souls
thru fog shroud mist
tumbling enlightened
slow energy flow
into glorious reality
acceptibility show
she loves me,
she loves me not
flowers and chocolates
get me off the spot

(c) 2006 lemme howdt

November 16, 2006

Got my goat

I would like to know why when the goat chained to a tree gets tangled, it always seems to need to be led clockwise around the tree to untangle the chain? You would think that normally the goat would be tangled clockwise half the time, not always counterclockwise. Does this phenomenum have a logical cause, or should i do a better data collection to see if my observation is in error - i am not the primary untangler of the goat. But time was tight and boy had to catch bus for school, so dad got the job.
This goat is one of the most patient goats we have ever had - she leads well. We are all looking forward to goat milk, goat kiefer and goat cheese in the spring - if she is smart enough to make it through the winter. Goat on a chain is a popsical for wolves and other rural predators. But our dogs like the goat and the preds usually will not mess with a pair of large dogs. The dogs don't know that the goat will be larger than they are when it is fully grown, but will weight less. And it will hold its own, specially if i can fix the fence and get the goat off the chain. (Fat chance - fences don't usually hold goats.)

November 15, 2006

Shroomin

One of my favorite fall sports is Shroomin. To take a rainy wet saturday and wander in the woods looking for sneaky peakers pushing up howdt of the ground, tickles my funny bone. It took a long while for the rain to come and wet the ground, but the chantrelles and russella's are howdt to be found. I also found this odd lichen covered burl. Wish i could take you howdt on a long walk - sometime in the future.

Percolating

Ideas of how to apply things from one field into another field keep moving in and howdt of my mental vision sphere. Yesterday was spent wandering in the woods thinking howdtloud howdtside the box looking for means of creating the understanding that we had better individually have know how to do something that has some unique relevance to a larger body of people.

If we each can take care of ourselves (have the capablility of knowing what to do and the ability to do it), we can collect people with diverse skill sets and begin collating materials to operate production facilities. We will need food, clothing and shelter in the absence of 'grocery stores' to prepare to mebbe pick up after the economic fallhowdt in a shorter amount of time, if that is our decided goal. (It wouldn't be my goal, but i hear what other folks say and personal economics seems always on everybody's mind, (along with sex)).

Identifying raw material stockpiles and increasing the efficiency of their use is only the beginning stage of development. Lemmings not only don't seem to want to hear these ideas, but also wish to legislate against you speaking or using them. Today's
Rozeff is informative in this feature.

Dr. Lenny wishes to recognize the howdtstanding blogging and information exchange going on via the work of several dedicated people that aire howdt dirty linen on-line while attempting to resist enforced lemmingdom. The triviality of daily life for most lemmings creates walls in the society against speaking your thoughts in anything more than backdoor snickers and rolling of the eyes. People are aware, but the lemming operating system gives personal satisfaction for enforcing lemmingness to nannies who insist that rules are made to keep other lemmings in line. Step up by standing on another lemmings carcass, but not too high or whack-a-mole strikes. Of course they play their own version of whack-a-non-lemming - anybody not sharing group-think.

This orchestra conductor watches the puppeteer to learn showmanship. He doubles on the accordian. The players that sound their horns tend to make the spectacle a little more relevant for those of us observing, both from within the plane and withhowdt, add to the cacophony that will generate sparks of life. The cross-links on the side of the page are a good place to join the band and start gaining liberty on the road to freedom. Lemmingdom is for the lemmings.

November 13, 2006

Energy Loss = Elected Congress

Mike Rozeff and Doctor Lenny are on the same page on too many regs. The biodiesel analysis is key - because dr. lenny watched as an opportunity for a chemist got coopted by people with visions of dallar signs dancing in their head. And the need for BATF to issue a license to run a still for the production of alcohol, a remnant of prohibition.

(1) The legislative process is out-of-date, an Enlightenment device that is way past its prime. Once thought to restrain kingly power, parliaments and legislatures are past due; and we are paying exorbitant penalties that are compounding at a rapid rate. If the outmoded and outdated package is wrapped in new paper, a change of faces in Washington, will the contents be any less rancid when we open it? If we spray the outside of the bottle with Lysol, will the spoiled milk inside become more palatable?

(2) Certain energy agencies are instructed to favor biodiesel or hybrid engine technologies when they buy vehicles, the goal being energy efficiency. The lawyers in Congress have already decided what is cost-effective and what is not. The National Biodiesel Board that represents the biodiesel industry says that it "is currently tracking more than 160 pieces of biodiesel legislation at the state level. The bills include incentives, use requirements, point of taxation clarification, authorization of studies, state fleet use requirements, biodiesel promotion, and others." The individual states of this nation share the Congressional disease. Meanwhile Congress has enacted tax breaks for biodiesel and other of its favorites.

(3) What incredible grief is brought on by such laws! What an incredible waste of energy! The compliance costs alone outweigh any supposed energy savings. And we can be confident that society will experience no energy savings from these laws anyway. We can be certain of net losses in welfare. With Congress bypassing and disrupting free markets while subsidizing its chosen favorites such as ethanol, we can be sure that society is getting net losses in energy and welfare compared with Congress doing nothing at all.

If i post any more i should copy the whole article - well worth the read.

November 11, 2006

Analogy - it's a walk on a slippery rock

Concepts of how things could work swirl around in the miasma of my chaos. Setting up mechanisms to cover the realities of life such that every member has a value stake in their own life. Our culture treats everything as advance with no retreat and removes reflection time, so that we just hurry harried on with annointed tasks rather than think about the strategic big picture or the specific little picture of immediate concern.

If you think of the meiosis model of seventh grade biology - the splitting of the cell into two daughter cells - the behavior of the DNA strands is to become elongated and unravel, such that each daughter cell can have a complementary strand. It reminds me very much of spaghetti. If you take a clump out of the hot water, all the threads are ravelled together such that you have a blob that you lather with sauce and messily untangle while you eat. Somehow, the small rectangular box and the stomachs see the same volumes of spaghetti net in an orderly fashion - but you don't want to untangle it during the plate stage.

So in the accordian of life - you have the big picture stretched open in panorama, the little picture all narrow and well focused when squeezed together. These are exactly the two points where no music comes out of the box - we need our muddle in the middle. But we have to stop treating the horizontal and verticle components of life independently of each other, because during mitosis, the other growth model of seventh grade, the DNA cleaves and scrambles, whereas spaghetti does not. Dr. Lenny seeks to develop a third perpendicular coordinate to this picture, which should help integrate the focus over time.

But this world, based on financial derivatives is cooked, just like wet spaghetti. Get ready for a real turmoil, as the need to produce something more than paperwork to take care of yourself and your family becomes the central focus of daily life. The overstructure in decay and the individual drone lifestyle make those no music points catastophe central. Best to be Howdside da Baax, watching the festivities or even better yet, be the accordian player.

Look at images you know and translate concepts into those images. Life works like biology works - but not the sterile state-of-the-art book myth biology that they teach you after seventh grade. But if you measure the different pictures on each of the different scales, you find that the same sacred geometry underpins all. Doncha love fractals? Math with me - i want to be your partner dance with me. Doncha love making up your own music lyrics to popular songs. Carpe diem.

Obit

On a somber note - third party political operative Doug Freidline passed away at 49 the other day. I met Doug in Detroit at a Reform Party meeting, where we spent an evening in a bar with several other folks at a Reform Party convention in the mid 90's. Jesse Ventura was supposed to be at the event, but weather grounded his flight in Minneapolis. Doug was Ventura's campaign manager getting ready for the gov run at the time. I still have a 'Jesse Wants You to join the Reform Party' political poster.

People Dr. Lenny's age are not supposed to just pass out and die, but i guess if it's your time to go, you save your family tons in medical costs by going that way. My condolensces to friends and family - political reformers have lost a good friend.

November 10, 2006

Bird Photo


Relevance

Okay - how can we the people come together in a meaningful way to reset the plate for the american political system in the next two years? Can we find a means to reduce regulation, offset the overwhelming advantage that people working the system have over everybody else and make it such that everybody is not just a drone wage slave to some massive corporation.

Actually - corporations suffer massively under this system too, as they constantly have to get bigger, cheaper, faster to keep up and avoid being swallowed by even bigger, cheaper faster mega-megacorp. Would the food supply collapse if Archer Daniels Midland went under tomorrow? If Monsanto collapsed, who would provide the round-up for all the roundup ready GMO corn, soy and canola planted across america's breadbasket? Now that we wave goodbye to Ford and GM, who next to bail on future committments?

When more people run to mama fedgov to save us from the system - mama fedgov has to collect her cut from all of us through the infernal revenoo sirvice. So we slave as they (we?) distort life away from observable reality to support the fictional economic world system, that makes us wage slaves to ourselves. Meanwhile the elected can do what they please, people having changed the color of congress without touching the flavor. We have two years - let's design our next government before the one we have is totally worthless. (no, it's not an oops too late - let's do something beyond talk.)

November 09, 2006

real means what?

Opening my mind howdtside the box and considering all fundamental assumptions wrong including all the things that they 'tell' you (we are they are we). Understand that fertile minds create science fiction based on extrapolation of apparently self-consistent principles to investigate universalness.

Of all the vast stories told, most are remakes of the same themes in different settings, taking values that we supposedly hold and working through a novel scenario. I guess other genres have similar themes in the stories - imagination comes in world design rather than conception of base novelty. It is rare to see an author pull off a completely workable different system in a single volume, as Rand did with Atlas Shrugged, but several trilogy sets - Foundation by Asimov, Tolkien's Rings and Heinlandocity (stories change setting, books have same ego feel) have covered so much ground that we start imagining that some of it could be real. Dr. Lenny enjoys ingesting novels when he can find the time. But i could always get back into reality and know it meant something and isn't fiction.

Now my mind is wide open, that i really really can't believe in this surrealistic world. So when presented with the idea that element 115, which by our current vogue chemistry says cannot exist for any 'real' length of time (half-life) is the alien energy source for using space time folding to travel vast distances - it just seems too fantastic (as in fantasy based) to consider spending time on. But in the context of everything the political system might ask you to believe - would it be worthwhile to pursue theoretically whether the physics of large matter elements in other solar systems with larger and multiple suns might have some keys to matter energy conversions that would make global warming a triviality (as if it wasn't already)?

November 08, 2006

Lemon/Lime Sky




Early morning sky the other day was anything but blue. Sunrise wasn't going to let overcast contain all the light - the yellow peaking howdt through green/grey is a bonus - seen only because the camera flash didn't go off. Color is such a nifty event. Had a conversation about vasoline glass, a collectible type of silica material used in the early 20th century. It contains 2% uranium oxide, which causes it to fluoresce under a black light. It likely produces low levels of radioactivity, but most of that goes on to do no harm. Or so we hope.

Can U See - serenity



This photo of the South Umpqua River south of Myrtle Creek is one of a series of photos take roughly every three weeks throughout the past year, from the same location. The first picture was during last December's floods, the latest is still on the camera. This is late October : Dr. Lenny will be very interested in looking at the collage crafted from blending the pictures and what these photo point might tell us about river process.

dialog between ends

Merika haz spokken -

Gridlock over Fascism. Will there be an orderly turnover before the bottom falls out of current empire, due to the advanced decay of the infrastructure and the vanity implied by attempting to believe all the lies offered as marginal excuses for running this system into the ground. Think skill set development : what you can do is what you can do!

Iffn ya don xpect 2 mush, ya won B2 dissa pointed, cuz yessidey ain gonna changa nuthin.

November 07, 2006

new world order

skill comes from practice, repeating the protocol over and over until you have it down and can act on rote knowledge. ability is applying the skill to a task in a setting where your partners rely on your ability to accomplish said task is crucial to remaining an accepted member of the group. individuals may distain being members of the group, due to internal politics and the need to play more than their individual role warrents, based upon an expectation that other individuals will not accomplish their roles and provide value. time demands are such that single point failures can impact a system - built in redundancy has been sacrificed for the illusion of efficiency. flying by the seat of ones pants might have worked in times past, but today, either you know your stuff or you have no value to the swarm. but if the swarm doesn't know enough to realize value, illusion is all that is necessary. skill should be developed to provide a necessary value, so when the hive implodes, membership in the new world can come with the provision of value exchange. wishful thinking.

History

History is a record of what happened spoken from a particular point of view. It tends to be rewritten by the controlling powers that be to spin themselves off in a brighter light. Once transcripts of the ages are released to posterity, after the principal players are no longer alive, the actual affairs tend to come out in sharp contrast to the generally believed story. The more published views of an event, the closer we get truth. But what really is truth?

Historical context has arisen from published media - yet newspapers and video these days is set for palate soothing rather than information transfer. Conversations tell the stories of the times, but technology can invent events that never happened, as in Forrest Gump. I wonder if the transcripts of everybody's bugged phones will ever be made available for the record. Archive mining will be a means of the future folks understanding our current times: i hope the blog fad is caught in the context of free speech by future historians. If truth matters in the future.

An Other View

A flag of colours four
in a quasi land with quasi rules
I pledge allegiance to colours three
In memory, no longer reality

Another colour, another spectrum
for our sight, what's to fight
Protect us from the fictions, control our addictions
Security is the key, they tell me on TV

(c) 2006 Karl


November 06, 2006

Something Fishy

From Fishlink:

12:15/08. NEW JERSEY MAN PLED GUILTY FOR FALSIFYING FISHERY OBSERVATION DATA. In 1976 federal law enacted a fishery observer program to accompany commercial fishing vessels and collect data on the fish landed. The data collected from the fishery observers provides invaluable information to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, which regulates the commercial fisheries, regarding health of the fishery. The data demonstrates the populations’ health and abundance by documenting: age, size, weight, sexual maturity, etc.

In a first ever case, John Depersenaire, from Margate, NJ, pleaded guilty to falsifying the fishery report information after he never left the dock on 59 trips between October 2001 and February 2002. Depersenaire pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years probation and must repay the government his salary of $29,541. Although Depersenaire did collect data, it was from the docks rather than from out at sea. NOAA fisheries officials caught Depersenaire when they realized that no fishing captains knew who he was.

The fishery observer program allows NOAA to collect large quantities of fishery data to base their regulatory decisions upon. If the data is being falsified then the Administration cannot make decisions founded in science to protect the resource in a sustainable way to ensure fisheries in the future. For more information see Richard Degener 28 October 2006 piece in the Press of Atlantic City at http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/local/atlantic/story/6881551p-6745848c.html.


My query : De person aire ? fictional government employee engaged in fraud. Hmmm. Why did this story come out now and how widespread is this practice? How could we tell - could a news media make this sort of thing up to influence people? How much of our data is jobbed by bureaucrats paid to keep themselves employed? How far up the food chain does ther behavior go?

Hand Symmetry and its implications

Look at your left hand and compare it to your right hand. Though the image and form are exactly the same, you cannot superimpose one hand upon the other. This mirror image analogy provides a pathway to understanding the term chiral (Ki-Raal) in next few moments rant. Realize also that the back of your hand is completely different in form and function to the front of your hand - like two sides of a coin. The back of your hand cannot serve the same function as the front of either hand.

Life function is chemistry within a biologic scaffolding. The reactions that species have are based on the inputs of raw materials that interact with a mechanism of supporting that life form. Plants species have a system based on chemical reduction that is complementary to animals systems based on chemical oxidation. The processes of respiration are cyclic and the raw materials produced on one end of a coupled cycle are different than those produced on the opposite side of the coupling. Natural processes on the animal side are chiral lefthanded - so that the physical geometry of the space that causes molecular transformation can compensate in three dimensions.

The rate of this transformation, called kinetics, is dictated by efficiency and conservation of energy. The turnover rate for some enzymes in biologic systems is on the order of 10 to the sixth power - one million per second per enzyme. I have trouble comprehending that rate, but time works differently on different size scales. It is relative. Other enzymes may work at one reaction every ten minutes. But like clockwork, when enough potential energy is built up to enact the reaction, it takes place. If the materials in the pipeline are not correctly fit, like puzzle pieces forced into interlocking, then the rate slows down, but the reaction still happens and the species continues to exist. Life goes on, slower.

The amount of energy required changes as the plant or animal substitutes less efficient elements and molecules for the intented function. The element that holds up a process by not being present at the time it is needed determines the rate - it is the sole rate determining step for the entire process. This governs the entire cycle because everything else is streamlined to take place contingent on the one molecular event. If the right pieces are assembled in the right way, the thermodynamics of the system are said to be favorable. The better the system is set up, the more efficient the system and the faster the rate of turnover.

In plants, energy is stored in complex systems that act like little ratchets. There are co-factors that enable reactions and places to dump energy into reserves that build to a threshhold level, so that they are ready to be enabled when the slowest coupled event starts the chain reaction. The cascade of work causes reproduction based on photo-receptor cells and threshholds start self-contained processes that signal different event cascades through the plant life cycle. Molecules that would better work in a right-handed arrangement are left out - like dead matter waiting for a parellel universe. But biology has figured that out and favors left-handed chiral configurations.

In animals, oxidation pathways are run based on food/fuel cycles that work based on consuming plant or animal stuffs for the energy that sustains life. The output carbon dioxide is used by plants as a raw material, whereas plants produce oxygen and water as byproducts of their metabolic activity. Thus the processes work like the front and back of the hand, not like the left and right hand.

Our hands are what they are, both front and back and side to side, they are hands. If the animal and plant kingdoms are two sides of a coin, then the mechanism that the coins run really must be symmetric and chiral. That suggests that the oxidation side of the process, how humans believe food intake relates to energy, ought to be symmetric to how the plants uptake energy. Instead, we seem to have invented a new wheel - one which the consumption of energy is far in excess of what is needed to sustain the counterbalanced life-forms that earth has traditionally worked from.

Dr. Lenny suggests that we have some theoretical thinking to do with the model that we choose to understand animal based life - that food while necessary for mass-balance, may not in fact be linked to energy at all. The ratchet effect of biological systems may get swamped over in a flood of excess energy, but efficiency and conservation tend to be rules of life. People violate them at our own peril. We also seem to ignore the fact that we have an energy source with no explanation grounded in modern day science. It suggests a reformulation of modern science is necessary.

Thanks for joining me howdtside the baax today. DL

the legal cult

Marc Stevens weighs in at Strike-the-Root with a definition of the bar cult. For a long time, i was a member of an organization called JAIL for Judges, where the members sought to remove the special priviledge given by the judiciary to themselves to disrespect aspects of the law on a personal basis. With the election tomorrow, i wonder how many people will mark the ballot in favor of a judge running unopposed whom they have never met. Hopefully, never will meet. Except mebbe in a supermarket or a bookstore.

November 03, 2006

mmn - Apple thought




I really enjoy being able to walk up the hill and pick a crisp apple off the tree. I know the horse gets her share, yet there are enough on the ground going to waste that by next year will be going to bio-alternative solvent production. We shall start with apple wine, then apple mash, apple distillate, apple sauce and apple yummies, for said horse and mebbe the rabbits and chickens. Anything left becomes wormfood for red wrigglers and next year's orchard fertilizer. May try to plant olive or citrus - figuring that climate change will take this climate zone north and bring us conditions currently found in Southern Jefferson (northern california).

time pass

time can take no time at all yet
be forever in the length of an hour
the time we pass may be productive
the time we pass may smell
worse than the stench of dog fart
waiting weighs long in time's tooth
seasons change in the blink of an eye
shall reserve time to smell the roses

(c) 2006 lemme howdt

November 02, 2006

life long learning

learning is a commitment to paying attention in a specific sphere of life. by rotating frames of reference, like an opthomologist spinning lenses, we have an opportunity to apply knowledge in one field to a challenge in another. this solves einstein's conumdrum about solving problems from the same frame of reference as they were generated. if we each have a facet of knowledge in an underappreciated area, we will be ready to apply new systems with the collapse of the old systems. connect the dots for your own utility.

Grey Day

descending into chaos
preview of things to come?

order as a goal is nebulous
too much ying sans yang
accountability drives intent
knowing end prior to start
precondition for action failure
fear of change retards thought
people wait to be told: how to step,

what to say, where to be

paralyzed by inconsistency

between what is said and what is
believing in systems while
unsustainably plodding along
shuffling papers written blue
while looking at life as red

(c) 2006 lemme howdt

November 01, 2006

Aye, Matey, Right

I usually don't pay attention to the pop culture, but this one caught my eye when it mentioned silver. Two kids in Sweden found a viking horde - buried treasure, while digging in a neighbors garden. Can you image a 20 year old american graciously turning the silver coins over to a department of homeland security official?