MPFC – If you know, you know

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, humor, satire, lampoons, parodies

Well, folks, this is a step up from Kindergarten: Everything I Ever Wanted to Know About ____* I Learned From Monty Python by Brian Cogan, PhD and Jeff Massey, PhD. Hmm. If one ignores the learned asides and references, the visual humor of Monty Python in its various incarnations is Kindergarten all the way. The bottom of the book cover has the footnote, "* History, Art, Poetry, Communism, Philosophy, The Media, Birth, Death, Religion, Literature, Latin, Transvestites, Botany, The French, Class Systems, Mythology, Fish Slapping, and Many More!" Various portions of the book do indeed treat of these items, and many more.

The authors make much of the educational background of the six Python members. No doubt, having been steeped in British culture about as much as one is able to steep, Python was eminently qualified to send-up nearly every aspect thereof. Even the "American Python" Terry Gilliam was a naturalized Brit after 1968.

The book is no parody of Monty Python; that's not possible. It is a series of riffs on their treatment of the various and sundry subjects. I have seen only one of the TV shows from Monty Python's Flying Circus, "Spanish Inquisition". The TV show ran on BBC from late 1969 to the end of 1974 and many episodes were re-run in later years on PBS. I've seen scattered bits that made their way to YouTube, and during the period that I could stomach watching PBS, I saw The Life of Brian and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The book's authors have apparently binge-watched the entire MPFC corpus several times.

I enjoyed the book. I can't write more than this, so I'll leave it to you, dear reader, to delve into it yourself.

Is half the country enough?

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, land use, agriculture, prairies, restoration, conservation

About 45% of the land area of the "lower 48" is devoted to agriculture. That is about 900 million acres, or 1.4 million square miles. Roughly one third of that was originally prairie, tallgrass, shortgrass, and mixed prairie ecosystems. Most has been converted to agricultural use. Prior to the arrival of the plow, the prairie encompassed

• Tallgrass prairie, 140 million acres, or 220,000 sq mi. All but 1% has been plowed and sowed with crops.
• Mixed-grass prairie, 140 million acres, or 220,000 sq mi. About one-quarter remains unplowed.
• Shortgrass prairie, 250 million acres, or 390,000 sq mi. About one-fifth remains unplowed.

Taken together, prairie grassland once encompassed 530 million acres, but now more than 440 million acres are devoted to agriculture, making up nearly half the total agricultural land in the US. Surveys of the remaining grasslands show that they are ecologically rich, with dozens of species of grass and hundreds of other plant species, hundreds of bird and mammal and other animal species (and of course tons of insects!), and rich soils that have accumulated over ten to twenty thousand years during the current Interglacial period.

Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie, by Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty, chronicles the history of these grasslands that formerly covered one quarter of the contiguous US. Their characteristics are governed by rainfall. The western edge of the shortgrass prairie laps up against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and this semiarid prairie is in the deepest part of the mountains' rain shadow. The eastern half of four states, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, plus the Texas panhandle, host shortgrass prairie.

Further east, a little more rainfall allows medium-height and some taller grasses to grow. This mixed-grass prairie makes up most of the area of North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas, plus the middle of Oklahoma and Texas. Tallgrass prairie is supported by the more temperate rainfall amounts in Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, northern Arkansas, eastern Kansas, and a little bit of eastern Oklahoma. The eastern extent of the prairie abutted the deciduous forests of the Midwest, which are now mostly stripped of trees and used to grow corn and soybeans.

The book's three parts cover, with some overlap, the prehistory of the prairie, the progress of its subjugation to agricultural use, and the progress of efforts to conserve and restore portions. The third part includes 40% of the book, and is clearly the authors' aim.

Rather than repeat details that are better stated by the authors, I'll just display the bottom line: Prairie soils are biologically rich, conferring great ecosystem services. These include sequestering large amounts of carbon dioxide, absorbing rainwater runoff which reduces acute flooding, and quickly taking up excess nitrogen from over-fertilization of nearby agricultural fields rather than permitting it to flow into streams and eventually the Mississippi River and the northern Gulf of America. These points are being made in courtrooms throughout the central US, arguing not only that remaining prairie should be preserved and conserved, but that portions of agricultural fields in this area amounting to several percent should be reverted to native grasses to reduce the damaging effects of pervasive monocropping.

Existing primordial prairie is also a treasure to be enjoyed. The image above is like views I've seen in a few grasslands we've visited. In the early 1980's whenever my wife and I went to visit a rancher we knew in central South Dakota, there is a spot along I-90, about seven miles before reaching Wasta, on the plateau above Boxelder Creek and the Cheyenne River, where we always stopped to get out of the car and stretch our legs. In all directions, the only sign of human life was the highway itself, and, of course, us and our car (I note on current satellite images that there are a number of billboards and a new shelter belt in the area now. Sigh.).

Other efforts are discussed, such as researching the best cover crops to preserve soil from erosion after harvest, and finding the "knee" in the relationship between fertilization and crop yields to better select appropriate levels of nitrogen application—I find it amazing that this is still so little known.

In keeping with the importance of the subject, the book is big and packed with information and gripping stories. It is well written and it rewards close reading. Enjoyable.

Greenhouse Effect – the hidden players

 kw: analytical projects, greenhouse effect, global warming, absorption spectra, saturation

Reading a book about agriculture led me to thinking about the "hidden" greenhouse gases. I am sure almost everyone has read or heard that methane is 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. I recently learned that nitrous oxide (laughing gas, also a dental anesthetic) is between 250 and 300 times as potent as carbon dioxide. Both of these gases are produced by agricultural activity, so they have increased in the past 200 years as agriculture has been increasingly mechanized, and as chemical fertilizers have been used in ever-increasing amounts. (I generated this image using Leonardo AI; it is free of copyright restrictions)

I researched in several sources to find answers to these questions:

• What were the concentrations of nitrous oxide and methane prior to the Industrial Revolution?
• What are their concentrations now?
• How to they affect global warming?
• Are there other greenhouse gases we should be concerned about?

To simplify the text, I will dispense with formatting the numbers in chemical formulas as subscripts. Thus, CO2 = Carbon Dioxide, CH4 = Methane, and N2O = Nitrous Oxide (Nitrogen has several oxides; only this one is important here).

Here is the connection with agriculture: The middle-American farm belt was created by plowing the prairie and planting grain crops. Today, by far the most important crops are corn and soybeans. The thick, rich prairie soils contained a 10,000-year store of CO2, deposited by the roots of grasses and held there as they decomposed. Plowing the prairie released the CO2 at a pretty steady rate over the past century. It is still going on. Plowing also releases stored CH4.

When I lived in South Dakota in the 1970's and early 1980's, most of the agriculture in the state was cattle ranching, with some grain crops being grown in the eastern third. Since that time seed companies have developed strains of corn and soybeans that can better resist drought, begin growing at lower temperature and ripen faster. South Dakota cattle ranches are being plowed and sown with grains at a steady rate.

Secondly, overuse of nitrogen fertilizer causes much of the "extra" to be converted to N2O. Large amounts also go downstream and contribute to the Dead Zone offshore of the Mississippi Delta.

Thirdly, cattle produce a lot of methane, and the reduction in cattle numbers in the Dakotas is more than offset by continued increases elsewhere; also, plowing the prairie releases CH4, and all this is added to the amount released by fossil fuel production. I have yet to see a credible analysis of all the sources of CH4.

Yet all we ever hear about is the rise in concentration of CO2 alone. This is indeed significant, from about 280 ppm in the 1700's to about 440 ppm today. This "baseline increase" is (440-280)/280 = 0.57, a 57% increase in the past century or so. 

What of CH4 and N2O? Let us first convert them to equivalent CO2. I'll leave out a lot of words and summarize the figures:

1. CH4 as a GHG is 80x as effective as CO2. Current CH4 concentration is 1.9 ppm; times 80 that is equivalent to 152 ppm CO2. In the 1700's, CH4 was 0.72 ppm, or CO2 equivalent (CO2eq)  of 57.6 ppm.
2. N2O as a GHG is ~280x as effective as CO2. Current N2O concentration is 0.34 ppm; times 280 that is equivalent to 95.2 ppm CO2. In the 1700's, N2O was 0.27 ppm, or CO2eq of 75.6 ppm.

Added together, these two gases presently have CO2eq of 247. The preindustrial level was 133. Let's add these to CO2 to see the real picture of the greenhouse effect at these two times:

• Preindustrial: 280+133 = 413 ppm CO2eq
• Today: 440+247 = 687 ppm CO2eq
• (687-413)/413 = 0.66, a 66% increase in CO2eq

The actual increase in CO2eq is greater than the effect of CO2 alone. Suppose we could reduce CH4 and N2O to preindustrial levels. This would subtract 114 ppm CO2eq, for 573. Then (573-413)/413 = 0.39, or 39% increase in CO2eq, compared to preindustrial. To put this in context according to the mental model held by "climate crisis" folks, for CO2 only, a 39% increase over 280 ppm would be 389 ppm. That is about where we stood in 2011; it winds back the clock sixteen years!

Let us focus a moment on N2O. By itself, increase in the concentration of this gas is responsible for about 20 ppm CO2eq, the last nine years of increase. This is nearly all due to overfertilization. Guess which industry complex is bigger and has a stronger lobby in DC than oil and gas? Agriculture plus agrichemicals (particularly fertilizer). I have read in more than one place that without artificial nitrogen-based fertilizer, the world's farmland could support no more than four billion people. It is very complex to analyze just how much fertilizer could be reduced to still support the current world population, but reduce nitrate runoff and outgassing of N2O into the atmosphere. For the moment, I just have to leave these thoughts unfinished. If we could come up with a plan, powerful interests would oppose it.

At this point in my analysis I wondered what other greenhouse gases exist, and how they might modify the picture. As it happens, nothing much. Here is a table I worked from for the figures above, which adds six greenhouse gases that, together, are sometimes written about in very scary terms, but have no practical effect at present:

First, ground level Ozone (O3) has a modest Global Warming Potential (GWP: 1.5 x CO2), and exists in the 1-10 parts per billion range, so it is not effectively a greenhouse gas. Then, the industrial chemicals Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6) and Nitrogen Trifluoride (NF3) have very high GWP, but exist at levels of a few parts per trillion. To totally eliminate them would reduce CO2eq by much less than one percent (see the black text at the bottom of the table)

Various fluorinated refrigerants, those highlighted in brown, have very high GWP, but also exist at levels of a few parts per trillion, so together, they also amount to less than one percent (the brown text). Thus, they present no useful "targets" for ameliorating the greenhouse effect.

My aim here has been to back off a few steps to see a bigger picture. As it happens, this points a finger where none has been pointed before, at farmers. A significant proportion of the increase in CO2eq results from farm practices. In particular, far too many farmers use more fertilizer than their crops really need. There is too much of, "a little more might help." No, it doesn't, it harms. It even harms the farmer, who spends more than needed on fertilizer that isn't helping.

I have a philosophical point to end with. I think that the greenhouse effect will prove to be more beneficial than otherwise. The "father of greenhouse warming", Svante Arrhenius, thought so. Another degree or two of warming is likely to make more of Canada and Siberia amenable to crop production, and let's not forget South Africa and Argentina. On another note, I saw an article recently with a headline, "550,000 will die of extreme heat." The subhead said, "The greatest cause of early death." The article never mentioned that 4.6 million will die from cold. Nine times as many! The subhead is, quite simply, a lie, and the article is utterly one-sided deception. I suspect many of those 4.6 million would love for their home country to be a little warmer.

Tied for the oldest sense

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, science, olfaction, nose, sense of smell

It is fascinating to watch a motile bacterium such as E. coli in motion. It trundles along, its rear-mounted flagella spinning to propel it in a mostly straight line. If it bumps into something it will back up some distance, tumble, and then move off in a new direction. Frequently, after a short distance, it may reverse course or tumble again to pick a new direction.

The latter action hints at what is going on. How does it pick a direction to go; what is it trying to reach? Of course, like all living things, it is searching for food. It is following a chemical gradient by sensing a chemical of interest in the water around it. If, as it moves along, it senses a stronger concentration, it keeps moving. If the concentration is decreasing it reverses course or tumbles to try a new direction. Its chemical sense can be called either "taste" or "smell" and is one of the two oldest senses. The other is touch. Bumping into something, or alternatively, approaching closely enough for cilia on the cell to touch the something, coupled with the chemical sense telling it, "this isn't what you are looking for," triggers actions such as backing up and/or tumbling. Touch is the other "oldest sense." The two seem to go together, and they work together to guide the cell to a possible source of food.

Strictly speaking, smell is thought to relate to chemical cues carried in the air, so the bacterium, being in a watery medium, must be using taste rather than smell. But at the most basic level these are actually the same. Chemical substances that are smelled first enter a watery layer over the sensory nerves, where they are detected.

For air-dwelling creatures, smell is a more long-range sense. Chemical substances travel through the air faster than they do through water, although both aerial and fluid currents can bring them from far away. But diffusion in still air is faster than in still water. Furthermore, when two senses work together, smell precedes touch, while taste follows contact.

The title of Jonas Olofsson's book, The Forgotten Sense: The New Science of Smell and the Extraordinary Power of the Nose led me to think, "Why didn't he call it The Neglected Sense?" No matter. He reveals the neglect that smelling has undergone through the centuries since it was placed by Aristotle at the bottom of the list of useful senses, an error compounded when Paul Broca divided animals into "osmatic" and "anosmatic": those like the dog for which smell was primary and those like humans (he thought) for whom smell was definitely not worth much. I guess that neither Broca or old Ari stopped to consider how he would detect a bad lot of wine or olive oil if he plugged his nose. Tasting without smelling could be a risky business!

I was most fascinated by an analysis to which the author refers, "Human and Animal Olfactory Capabilities Compared," by Matthias Laska in the 2017 Springer Handbook of Odor. Humans and a number of medium-sized and smaller animals were tested for their sensitivity to a few dozen scented substances. Animals tested included rats, dogs, vampire bats, a couple of monkey species…twenty species in all. The only animal with a nose more sensitive than ours was the dog!

Earlier studies that compared the size of an animal's olfactory bulbs to its brain were misleading because it is the absolute size of the bulb that matters. The roughly 60 mm³ volume of human olfactory bulbs is a tiny fraction of the brain's volume, about 1/20,000th. In relative terms, the olfactory bulb of a mouse is enormous, about 1/16th of the total brain. However, its actual size is less than half that for a human: 25 mm³. An ordinary dog (not the tiny breeds or pug-nosed ones) has an olfactory bulb six times larger than a human, which gives it a huge advantage, as was shown clearly by the sensitivity tests. I wonder if they could give a similar test to an elephant, with an olfactory bulb volume of 11,000 mm³ ?

Technical issues aside, a big section of the book relates the emotional effects that smells can mediate, such as a whiff of salty air evoking a favorite memory of a seaside vacation, or the comfy aroma of a morning coffee and bowl of blueberries. 

This also introduces the subject of smell gone wrong: COVID-19 introduced millions around the world to a life without smells, at least temporarily. An interesting consequence of the sudden loss of smell for many people was that they began to wonder how they could tell if their own smell was offensive to others! Another was the loss of interest in food, because most of what we call the taste of many foods is actually a combination of smell and taste. We can taste but five qualities: sweet, salt, savory (umami), sour, and bitter; we can smell thousands or hundreds of thousands of different qualities. So many that we can seldom describe any of them to someone else.

Loss of smell is called anosmia. In some ways, a distorted sense of smell, parosmia, can be even worse. Imagine one day finding that your morning cuppa smells like rotting onions! This can also be caused by viral infections, but there are other causes, including a hard bump on the head. Some people with parosmia can't stand to eat favorite foods, though some are able to eat enough to stay healthy by putting on a nose clip. There is a long section describing ways of desensitizing and retraining the sense of smell. Sadly none of the methods is effective in all cases, but it can be a lifesaver for many.

A side note: There is a reversible distortion of taste I have experienced, caused by an Asian spice called Tiger Claw, related to Star Anise. The seed pods are used whole to flavor soup. They aren't supposed to be ingested. Biting into one causes a shift of taste, such that water tastes like battery acid and nothing seems edible; it lasts several hours. I have numerous Chinese friends, and I wound up mostly fasting during a potluck lunch…

The author is a scientist of the sense of smell. He first wrote the book in Swedish, then translated it into English himself. His and his colleagues' work just might elevate our understanding of the sense of smell, from a "neglected" sense to one that is equally essential. And in time perhaps we'll attain added vocabulary to help us describe our favorite (or otherwise) aromas.

Flipping the script on psychiatry

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, psychiatry, mental illness, bipolar, recovery, twelve step programs

After reading Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance by Laura Delano, I became even more thankful that I escaped the depths of psychiatric treatment. Psychiatry is a black hole; getting in is easy, while getting out is usually impossible. Let me settle two pieces of business before going further.

First, a piece of extremely serious advice: If you are feeling depressed and you seek the help of a medical or psychiatric professional, do not ever loosely say you have been thinking of suicide. To be clear, if suicidal thinking dominates your thinking all day, every day, and has done so for as long as you can remember, then it is worth telling this to a professional. Otherwise, beware: if a psychologist or psychiatrist becomes convinced that you are likely to harm or kill yourself, they are required to commit you to psychiatric care in a mental hospital. That's one way of dropping straight into the black hole. If you have no trusted friend or family member, contact the Inner Compass Initiative, founded by Laura Delano. Something to ponder: psychiatrists are people, with the same foibles as all of us. Many of them got into psychiatry because they wanted to find out why they had certain experiences (see image following!).

Second, a very brief mental history of myself. I was diagnosed with "Bipolar II Disorder" at age 54. In retrospect, it made certain old stories make sense. During my K-12 years, I would occasionally "flip out". Otherwise I was a quiet kid, sometimes bullied but too big for the bullies to feel safe going too far. The school I attended in grades 4-6 had an abandoned chimney, the ruins of a demolished house, at the back of the property. One day in 5th grade I led a group of kids to "Play Santa Claus" by climbing down the chimney. We returned to class covered in soot. On a few other occasions I was overcome by a burst of energy and spent the lunch period running through a stand of Sumac, holding a branch and whacking the plants. During the high school years I became the family's firewood chopper and splitter. This continued into college; it is a great way to blow off steam. During my first year at college, on two occasions I was overwhelmed by overwork—I tend to take on more work than I am capable of completing—and wound up in the school clinic under sedation. As an adult I wondered how I could be so moody, so unpredictable, but only for short periods at long intervals. I distinctly remember reading an article that quoted several creative people who discussed their swinging moods (at that time the usual term was "Manic-Depressive"); one writer expressed it this way, "When I am up, I write, and when I am down, I edit." I sat back and thought, "Oh, neither mood swing is essentially bad because both can be useful." At age 53 I made a new friend. He told of spending 10 years taking Zoloft, but being concerned that it wasn't working well any more to control his experiences of major depression. He also told of sometimes spending three days obsessively cleaning his apartment, or seven hours washing a car. I said, "That sounds manic (by this time I knew a little about Bipolar "disorder"). Why don't you mention these things to your shrink the next time you see her?" He did so and was switched from Zoloft to one of the anticonvulsive drugs that are useful in mediating Bipolar mood swings. He was re-diagnosed as Bipolar I (stay tuned). The next time I had a depressive period of my own, that had come on without reason, I spoke to my doctor about it. He prescribed a low dose of Zoloft. At the follow-up appointment a month later, I was high as a kite. He said, "OK, this is mania. Let's try something different." Zoloft is an upper, not a mediator. I don't recall which drug was used. It was apparently helpful, but I began to need a daily nap and I gained some weight. I went to see a psychiatrist, one of only two that I consider competent, named Valentine. She explained more, saying that I seemed to be between Bipolar II and Cyclothymia, and suggested using half the dose of the medication. Six months later, I found that she had moved out of state. There followed a period of yearly visits with four different psychiatrists, all "bottom of the barrel"; I could tell they were crazy, and had got into psychiatry mainly to figure out their own issues...and failed. One of them wanted me to switch my medication to Depakote. I said, "I know someone who takes that. He gained 90 pounds. I already feel bad about being a little overweight. How will this keep me from getting suicidally depressed?" I stormed out and didn't pay the bill when it came. Finally I got another competent psychiatrist, who switched me to Abilify, a low dose, saying, "This will keep depression from going too deep, and allow you to have a little 'fun' when you're manic." I deduced that it was a milder form of Zoloft. It worked quite well, but I still needed a daily nap, and continued to gain weight. Then one day, going to a scheduled appointment, I found his office locked and dark, and nobody in the building knew what happened to him. I had wanted to discuss with him how I could stop the meds completely. I had been taken by a friend to get acquainted with a man who had a severe case of Bipolar I, but had weaned himself off all medications, with his wife's help. Rather than try to find another doctor, I decided, "I'm done with this." I had another month's supply of Abilify. I cut the pills in half and took a half dose for a month, then cut the remaining half-pieces in half and used them up over the next two months. In the meantime, I consciously practiced awareness of my mood. Like the writer, I have things I can do when I am "up", which I call "open", and other things I can do when I am "down", which I call "closed" or "reserved". Now I am 78, off meds for more than 15 years. My wife, who has put up with me just over 50 years, is more relaxed: I am more stable. I thank God I was never institutionalized, and never put on a 4- or 5-drug cocktail. Such regimens are an admission of failure to find an effective treatment.

Now to the book. Ms Delano is apparently prone to overreaction to emotional stimuli. It is common for a young girl to one day look in the mirror and think, "Who is that? Who am I?" In her case, at age 13, it seems to have led to a panic attack, or something very like one. She became edgy and uncooperative at home, and after some time her mother took her to see a psychiatrist. She got a diagnosis (Bipolar) and a medication. That was the entry gate to fourteen years of increasing misery, including a few periods in mental facilities, yet she managed to complete a degree at Harvard. At one point she committed suicide but was rescued.

Along the way she was given various diagnoses—Bipolar wasn't mentioned after the first year—culminating in Borderline Personality Disorder with Treatment Resistance. Those six words really mean, "We don't know what the Hell is going on, she's just impossible to handle." This exposes the darkest part of the underbelly of psychiatry. You can't get away with stopping a psychotropic drug instantly. It is like a heroin addict stopping "cold turkey". Withdrawal symptoms are dreadful, and can kill. I experienced a little of that the few times a drug was switched for me. She had it in spades! When a doctor recommends "tapering off" a drug, they typically recommend a two- to four-week taper. That's too fast. Half a year to a year is better, and in the case of Lithium, it may take several years to wean your body from lithium toxicity. Remember this principle: withdrawal symptoms are very similar to the condition being treated. This does not mean relapse. It means the tapering needs to be more gradual.

Side note: I have read a few times that "the therapeutic window for lithium is narrow," which means that the amount that helps is only a little less than the amount that harms. Actually, that window is negative: The "help" that lithium affords is actually a side effect of lithium toxicity. Lithium "helps" by damaging your nervous system, reducing a harmful syndrome by reducing everything! This is compounded by growing lithium dependence, which takes years to shake. See the "Tapering" section of Inner Compass for more information.

Chapter 34, "Critical Thinking", deserves special mention. It outlines the sad circumstance that psychiatry has become big business. The largest proportion of political lobbying (bribery) is by the pharmaceutical industry. Doctors of all kinds, not just shrinks, are aggressively pushed (sometimes coerced) to push pills at every juncture. Analyzing the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the "psychiatrist's Bible"), the author finds that many of the items listed share more with fads than with facts. Assertions without appropriate evidence, and suppositions without logical reasoning. Maybe you've heard that "chronic depression is an imbalance in brain chemistry." Would it surprise you to learn that no such imbalance has ever been measured? Never, in spite of much trying.

A word about tapering. Drugs are dispensed in sizes of 1,2,4 or ½,¼, etc. If the basic dose is 10 mg, and you're on 40 mg, there's no 30 mg to taper to. And you may need to reduce from 40 to 35 for a week or two, then 30, and then 27, 25, 23, and so forth. What can you do? I suggest pill splitting. My wife takes a statin drug for cholesterol. But she doesn't need much. The smallest available dose is 10 mg. She splits it to 5. For a while she cut the pills into 3 pieces, but that wasn't quite enough. So if you need to go from 40 to 35, what do you do? Have the doctor (it might take a lot of negotiation) prescribe 20's and 10's and 5's. 20+10+5=35. Next reduction, 20+10=30. Then split a 5, so 20+5+2½ = 27.5, and so forth. You get my point.

I'll leave it to you to read this book. If you have any kind of "personality disorder", or know someone who has, get it and read it. Me Delano's Odyssey out of the sloughs of psychiatry is epic. Truly Epic. She is "unshrunk" now, and much happier for it. I also am happier, having escaped the clutches of a system that "disorders" everything.

So get the book!

----------------------------

A little glossary:

• Syndrome: A collection of signs and symptoms that occur together and characterize a specific condition. 
• Disorder: A disruption or impairment of normal bodily functions or mental processes.
• Bipolar I Disorder: Characterized by manic episodes, which are periods of abnormally elevated mood, energy, and activity levels. Individuals may also experience major depressive episodes. 
• Bipolar II Disorder: Involves hypomanic episodes, which are milder forms of mania, and major depressive episodes. Individuals do not experience full-blown manic episodes. 
• Cyclothymic Disorder: A chronic condition characterized by numerous periods of hypomania and mild depressive symptoms that do not meet the full criteria for Bipolar I or II. Also known as Bipolar III.

Note that a syndrome describes a condition, which may be a disorder, but not always. The condition of physical fitness, which includes strength, vitality, and energy, can be considered a syndrome. It is in no way a disorder. The key term about disorder is "disruption or impairment".

I would prefer that the three levels of Bipolar be called "syndromes" rather than "disorders." In my case, with appropriate understanding and practice, Bipolar II is a condition that I can take advantage of to experience a broader range of social interaction. Furthermore, I consider bipolar syndromes, regardless of severity, as exaggerations of the normal mood cycling that is inherent in the human condition. A doctor friend of mine (definitely not a psychiatrist; he's to sane to be one) explained it this way: 

The scale of moods runs from zero to ten, from the lowest possible to the highest possible. Most people rock along in the 4-6 range, where 5 is "contented, neither sad nor excitedly happy". After a very fortunate event, such as a promotion, a marriage proposal or acceptance, or reaching a tough goal, we feel extra happy, even excited, getting into the range of 7 or 8 for a while. This can't be sustained for long, and we settle back to a 6, and then a 5. After a very unfortunate even, such as being fired, or the death of someone close to us, we feel very low, even depressed, in the range 2-3. Death of a parent, child, sibling or spouse causes us to experience grief, a solid 2 or even 1, for about a year. But this eases over time and we resume our usual "setting" near 5. A depressive person has a chronic setting near 2 or 3. A maniac is stuck at 7 or 8. Normal mood swings run between 3 and 7, though most of the time the 4-6 range is "home base". Bipolar II and Cyclothymia swing between 2 and 8, while Bipolar 1 ranges between 1 and 9. Hitting zero leads reliably to suicidal thinking and often a suicide attempt. Hitting 10 leads to both internal distress and social ostracization for being "too crazy". Extreme Bipolar I bangs these limits on a regular basis and probably does need medication.

There is also the matter of cycling frequency. Normal mood cycles last 3-12 months. Having a "blue mood" each winter is a sign of a 12-month cycle, emphasized or even triggered by seasonal changes. Rapid cycling is three months or less. I am a rapid cycler, which is common for Bipolar II. I have 4-8 depressive (or "quiet and reclusive") episodes yearly, and shorter periods of hypomanic mood (on the edge and extra social) in between. If I am in a quiet phase but must perform a social task such as giving a speech, I can do so, but I "pay the price" with the need to "hide out" for a number of days thereafter. When I am on an even keel or even hypomanic, giving a speech is no problem; it is a pleasure. I just have to keep myself in check when I am up; I tend to interrupt myself or lose track of a train of thought.

Perhaps all this is foreign to you. You may be solidly sane. I am so glad for that! If any of this rings a bell, recognize that you are still most likely close to normal, perhaps just "a little more than normal." Gravitate to friends or family who give you space without judgment. Be wary of psychiatry, but don't write it totally off. Sometimes it's needed. Just don't give up your autonomy to a shrink.

Freakonomics with a stethoscope

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, medicine, economics, motivation, biases

You're 48 years old. You have a pain in your gut. Over the next few days it gets worse, and you begin to have diarrhea. You see a doctor, who says it might be an ulcer and suggests an OTC antacid. That seems to help, but not 100%. Being an agreeable sort, and in the midst of a demanding career, you carry on for several months. The diarrhea and pain come and go, come and go. Then the pain gets worse, and the diarrhea gets worse, and gets darker, even tarlike. What now?

This happened to a young friend's mother, and "What Now? meant seeing her doctor quickly, getting a colonoscopy at age 49, and dying of colon cancer a month later.

Now suppose the age above was not 48 but 52. The fourth sentence and what follows is likely to read, "You see a doctor, who orders a colonoscopy. Cancer is confirmed, and removed in an operation. Several months of chemotherapy follow, and you live many more years."

When I had gut pain at age 53, the doctor should have ordered a colonoscopy, but didn't. Why? The insurance industry scores doctors badly who order too many of the more costly tests! I eventually did have a colonoscopy, but I had to order it myself! I soon had a serious operation, half a year of chemotherapy, and now I am 78. Had I waited for this rather passive doctor to get around to ordering the test, I'd have died 25 years ago. I didn't go back to that doctor. There's a further wrinkle in this, which I'll return to.

What's the difference between age 48 and age 52? I could have used 49 and 51. The cutoff for "elevated risk of colon cancer" is age 50. Not only is it hard to get the insurance company to pay for a colonoscopy if you are "too young", the guidelined cutoff is a mental barrier for your doctor, who probably just won't think of investigating more deeply.

Such cognitive biases and blind spots are the subject of Random Acts of Medicine: The Hidden Forces that Sway Doctors, Impact Patients, and Shape Our Health, by doctors Anupam B. Jena and Christopher Worsham. Dr. Jena is host of the podcast Freakonomics, M.D., and the book takes an approach similar to that in Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics by Steven Leavitt and Stephen J. Dubner, two books I have close at hand. Together, these three books emphasize that at its root, economics is the study of motivation, of why people do things.

In the dozens of cases reported in the book, the doctors and their associates plumbed the databases of Medicare and the CDC for information that allows them to winkle out the little anomalies that reveal biases such as the "first digit bias" that puts age 48 or 49 into the "forties" bin and 51 or 52 with the "fifties". Untimely deaths can and do result form such biases.

If these two doctors stepped into the waiting room and you had the chance to choose one of them to perform your yearly physical, which would you choose? (The image was generated using Leonardo AI)

Granted, neither you nor I will be offered the chance to choose a doctor "on the spot," but if you were…? Here's the wrinkle from above: Fifty years ago I would have been more inclined to choose the man, not because of race but because he's male. Since then I've had to change doctors a number of times because of my moving or doctors moving elsewhere or retiring (or the passive doctor I "fired"). I've had both male and female doctors. By age forty, a man starts getting the "digital prostate exam", sometimes called the "golden finger". Having been probed by both male and female doctors, I found that I really prefer a doctor with long, slender fingers! A female musician who happens to be a doctor fits the bill perfectly. I've also learned that women are more willing to take an extra few minutes, and more likely to think sideways in case there is a second factor, not just "the diagnosis". My current doctor is female, and is tied for best doctor I've ever had.

What do doctors Jena and Worsham have to say about that? They studied Medicare records of 1.5 million hospitalizations, and gathered information about the outcome of care by 58,000 doctors, of which 32.1% were women. The criteria were thirty-day survival and rate of readmission. After the data were normalized to eliminate confounding things, here are the key facts:

• 11.3% of the patients died within 30 days of being hospitalized.
• For women internists, mortality was 11.1% and readmission rate was 15.0%.
• For men internists, mortality was 11.5% and readmission rate was 15.6%.

Are these differences small enough to be negligible? No. More than 10 million seniors are hospitalized for medical conditions (excluding accidents) yearly. The doctors conclude, "…if male internists were performing at the level of women, there would be thirty-two thousand fewer deaths…each year." 32,000. That's 80% of the death toll from highway accidents.

Earlier in the book, we find that the month a child is born influences the likelihood of getting a flu shot during yearly pediatric exams. That influences the number of kids that get the flu. Why? The new flu shots become available in autumn, preparing to deal with the surge of influenza in the wintertime. A parent of a youngster whose checkup is in May or June is told to return to the doctor in October for a flu shot. Less than half do so. Some may take the child to a drug store clinic or instant clinic, but that is a small percentage. So kids with birthdays in the spring or fall, or even late winter, are less likely to be vaccinated, and more likely to get the flu, or to get a bad case.

The last chapter of the book dwells on the COVID-19 pandemic, and the role of politics in medicine. Humans have been called "the political animal"; politics gets into everything! The struggle for power is the source of the world's greatest evils. I'll leave it up to you to read their insipid take on the matter (sorry, docs!). Instead I'll riff on the experiences of myself and my wife.

We were reluctant to get the mRNA agent that was being called a vaccine. We learned some stories of people who survived the disease well enough, but had "Long Covid" and in some cases were debilitated for months. That tipped the scales; we decided to get the shots, which we did in April 2020. We were generally compliant with things like masking and "social distancing". By the time various "boosters" were announced, we'd done sufficient research to realize that the "vaccine" was usually useless and often harmful. Here is a point I wish the doctors had put in the book: The yearly number of serious adverse reactions to the mRNA agent is just a little greater than the sum total of serious adverse reactions to all other vaccines combined!

How many remember in the middle of the controversy, Dr. Anthony Fauci saying, "I AM Science!" He had already admitted to lying a couple of times, and had been caught in a few other lies. Here he lost all remaining credibility. He doesn't understand science, not even a little bit!

Here is what the mRNA agent does: It induces your body to create a particular protein found on the spike of the SARS-Cov-2 virus. That protein triggers the immune system to create antibodies to that single protein. It is a two step process. By contrast, a vaccine consists of broken-up viruses or proteins extracted from them, which triggers the immune system to create antibodies to most or all of the proteins in the vaccine. The extra step that came before increases the variability:

• Different people have different levels of response to a "foreign" protein. One person's immune system may produce ten or one hundred times as many antibodies as another's. This is why vaccines aren't 100% effective. Flu vaccines in particular show this effect.
• Different people have different levels of response to the mRNA agent. One person may wind up with ten or one hundred times the level of "spike protein", which in turn is subject to the range of variable response noted above.

A good portion of my career I used the statistics of distributions. I'll save you the agony of figuring out any equations. Rather, let me just say that when you have two distributions, the mathematical tool used is called convolution. The final, overall distribution is very wide indeed. In this case, a range of a few thousand to one. Also, you may have heard of the "Gaussian distribution", also called the "Normal curve", a smooth curve with a symmetrical hump in the middle. That's not what we have here. The response distributions here are more likely Lognormal distributions, which have a small number of large values and a much larger number of small values. Convolving two of these yields an extra-wide distribution, but heavily weighted toward very few powerful responses, a large-ish number of "middling" ones (centered on the "target" response the pharma company aimed for), and an overwhelming number of small to almost nonexistent responses. These small responses led to the "breakthrough" cases of COVID-19 disease among those who took the shots. For some people, the shot may as well have been distilled water.

My wife and I count ourselves lucky. We had mild reactions to the mRNA shots, a little stronger than the "sore arm" we get from a flu shot, but not too bad. The same-day response was to the mRNA itself, and the next day's soreness was in reaction to the protein thus created. We learned later that some people dropped dead on the spot! These must have been those with a super-strong response in both steps of the process. Their immune responses overwhelmed the body.

I have several friends who are doctors. One of them, because of his work, was doubly treated; he received both the Pfizer and the Moderna mRNA agents. He has since had COVID twice. But before that, he and I worked out a strategy to deal with the infection: Stop eating for a couple of days. Those who died from the infection actually died from pneumonia, which was caused by the body's overreaction to the virus. The ones with the strongest immune systems died first! What is the gooey junk that fills the lungs during pneumonia made from? Sugar. This is why diabetics have the highest risk. What happens when we skip meals? Blood sugar is reduced. It drops a lot. This hinders pneumonia.

Secondly, the two "Democrat-hated" drugs, Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, are useful not because they are anti-viral. They aren't. It is because they tamp down the cytokine reactions that lead to pneumonia. HCQ works in the first day or two, and Ivermectin later on. My doctor friend obtained supplies of both medications for himself and for my wife and me.

At the end of August, 2022, I caught COVID. Here I found out that the joke was on me. The primary symptom I had was powerful nausea. I threw up everything, and I couldn't even drink water! So I couldn't take HCQ!! I went to the one clinic in the area with antivirals on hand, and was given those plus anti-nausea pills so I could swallow the meds and keep them down. Although I'd moved to the spare bedroom the day I woke up sick, my wife got sick a week after I did. She had a very sore throat, making it painful to take any pills. She went to the clinic and also got the antiviral. Both of us recovered quickly. By the way, I had lingering low appetite, my kind of "long Covid", and I took advantage of it to lose some weight, around 30#.

A year and a half later, the above scenario was repeated. Same symptoms, same need to get the antivirals, same quick recovery. I was able to lose another 15#, and I learned what it takes to hold my weight. So I count SARS-Cov-2 my friend!

Another year or so has passed. My family doctor is in agreement with what we've done and with my determination never to get a "booster." They're too dangerous.

That is a long digression from a wonderful book. Doctors Jena and Worsham show how and why doctors make certain kinds of errors, and discuss ways these errors are being mitigated. Reading this book is useful to all of us as patients, so we have the mental tools to work with our doctor(s). We can't replace them, but we can either help or hinder their work. We all know that something will get us sooner or later. Together we can make "later" be even later, and thrive in the meantime.

Finding Rex

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, science, paleontology, biographies, dinosaurs, t rex, tyrannosaurus rex

The last summer that I was a geology student I spent six weeks in an area above Lee Vining in the Sierras. Midway through, in the early afternoon I was resting near a pond when several backpackers came by, hiking toward a wilderness area another mile along the trail. I asked them how long they would be there. One said, "A week. How long have you been here?" I answered, "Three weeks." "Wow! That's neat," another one answered. I grinned ruefully and said, "Not really." I was already getting tired of tenting. Of course, since part of my daily routine was gathering rocks and hauling 10-20 pounds of them back to base camp for identification, I suppose I wasn't having quite as much fun as the average tourist. By the end of the summer I was pretty clear that I wasn't cut out for a job that required lots of field work.

Reading The Monster's Bones: The Discovery of T. Rex and How it Shook Our World by David K. Randall, I could only admire the grit of Barnum Brown. To this day, roughly half of the dinosaurs and early mammals on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City are specimens he collected. In addition to an iron constitution, he had a quick mind and had learned to recognize the kinds of geological deposits most likely to contain great fossils. He had also learned enough anatomy to make a good guess as to what animal a new bone belonged to.

While Barnum Brown collected on most of the continents, his main stomping ground was the great fossil beds of north-central United States. This was the area made famous by the "bone wars" of Professors Marsh and Cope, from 1877 to 1982. These rivals went broke trying to outdo each other as they collected, and described, species after species of large vertebrate fossils. In the end, the biggest and baddest dinosaur of all escaped their grasp. Brown found the first specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex in 1902, and for some years, during which he found a few more, he was the only collector to find any.

The book is largely a biography of Barnum Brown, who was named for P.T. Barnum almost on a whim, because the circus was in town. The author details his "life and hard times" and the resulting drive that motivated him to seek solace in the wilderness. Yet he wasn't antisocial, as so many "mountain men" are. In addition to great strength and persistence and lively intelligence, he could be intensely social, the kind of guy who is the life of the party, whatever party he happens across. This enabled him to befriend ranchers and farmers in the field and to maintain a, if not good, at least useful working relationship with the notoriously prickly director of the American Museum, Henry Fairfield Osborne. It greased many a relationship necessary to get access and tips to the best bone deposits. Brown lived just days short of ninety years.

Rather than focus on Barnum Brown, I find most interesting the social changes in attitudes toward dinosaurs that resulted from the discovery of T. rex. All the large dinosaurs found previously were herbivores such as the familiar Brontosaurus and Diplodocus and duckbills such as Hadrosaurus. They were portrayed as overgrown cows, brainless, plodding beasts that had to move about half submerged in swamps to buoy up their enormous bulk. When the first Triceratops was described in 1889 by Charles O. Marsh, not many wondered what the great horns were needed for. Then when the first tyrannosaur was discovered by Brown in 1902, it soon became clear that those horns were sorely needed! Public interest was piqued, and as "tyrant king" specimens or replicas were displayed in a growing number of museums, museum attendance boomed.

T. rex is still the most popular dinosaur. The proliferation of celebrity knockoffs such as Barney and the popularity of tyrannosaur suits, used for all sorts of pranks, has made this terrifying beast almost a cuddly member of the household. But I'm sure I wouldn't want to stumble across this picnic in a nearby forest! (Image generated with the Flux1.Kontext engine in Leonardo AI.)

I'm a six footer. Were I in this picture, the top of my head would barely reach the larger animal's knee. Even the "babies" shown here would outweigh me by a big factor. The teeth of an adult T. rex are the size of bananas. Big bananas. Perhaps Plantains.

I have great admiration for men like Brown who can go into the field and bring back cool stuff. My style of collecting is day trips…no more weeks in a tent for me!

NET—A flawed translation

 kw: book reviews, partial reviews, Bible translation, Bible interpretation, annotations, grammar

In late February I reviewed the NET's rendition of Genesis.  See that review for background information and my impressions up to that date. NET is The Holy Bible, New English Translation. I considered at that time finishing my reading of the text and all the notes before reviewing again, but now having read the books of Moses and a few of the historical books, I think it worthwhile to write this update.

In the prefatory material, beginning on page XI, the Translation Team members are listed. A team of five worked on the books of Moses (the Pentateuch), and a team of four on the historical books, from Joshua to 2 Chronicles. I note that two persons are members on all the teams for the various sections of the Old Testament, so I presume they are the editors.

I am at present midway through 2 Samuel. Here I will focus on a few helpful notes, then on notes or translations that I consider the most egregious errors, and finally on obscure terms used without explanation in the notes, that were not found in notes on Genesis. I begin with positive or helpful items.

• Note E, Ex 4:19: The SN (Study Note) discusses the possible dates of the return of Moses to Egypt, supporting 1450 BC or soon thereafter, after the death of Thutmose III, who reigned 1504-1450. This places the Exodus early in the reign of Amenhotep II, who is thus denoted the Pharaoh of the Exodus. This is good. It is in marked contrast to speculations I encounter from time to time that the Exodus might have taken place two or three centuries later. Israel's sojourn in Egypt is stated to have lasted 400 years, making 1450 BC the latest possible date. Many exegeses confuse the city of Ramses with one or another Pharaoh of that name.
• Note C, Ex 10:22: The SN correctly points out the fallacy of trying to "explain" the plagues imposed on Egypt by various natural phenomena. God's miracles are God's miracles. A similar note is found as Note O in Dt 8:3, regarding manna. Natural products such as honeydew are no substitute for the real thing. Consider also that manna never arrived on the Sabbath day.
• Note G, Josh 15:63: The TN (Translator's Note) makes a good point that the writer was writing before David captured Jebus.
• Note d, Ju 5:27: discusses the word shadad and the NET translation "violently killed", which is better than most translations.
• Note R, 1Sa 25:37: A very good TN, that God's striking of Nabal needs no medical explanation, though this should be a SN.

Now, on to some questionable items:

• Conversions of units, such as the cubit, beginning in Ex 26:2. The numbers used, primarily 3 and 5 and the half-units 1½ and 2½, are important to interpreting the typology of the tabernacle and its furniture. They got the cubit wrong anyway (see further in the prior review). The numbers and their units belong in the text; it is best to explain such conversions in footnotes or marginal notes.
• Dt 11:13, 18: The translation of "heart and soul" as "mind and being" reveals that the translators are confused about the use of these words, and the rich meaning inherent in understanding human tripartness (spirit, soul, and body, with the "heart" composed of part of both spirit and soul). 
• Note a, Ju 5:15-16: The Text-critical note (TC) states, "The great majority of Hebrew MSS have 'resolves of heart,' but a few MSS read 'searchings of heart,' which is preferred in light of v. 16." This misunderstands Hebrew parallelism, in that a near-synonym was written to avoid repeating an expression. The two terms differ by a single letter and they rhyme. Sloppy translating!
• Note a, Ju 13:25: In the translation the word "control" is used where Hebrew has "stir." The note indicates what the Hebrew word is, but the word "stir" properly belongs in the text, and then no note is needed. "Control" is too harsh and absolutist.
• Note N, 1 Sa 1:12: It is curious that the 6th letter of Hebrew is spelled "vav" in the Notes to the Pentateuch, but "waw" in the Notes to the historical books. Didn't these scholars communicate amongst themselves?
• Note D, 1Sa 14:15: The TN states that "God" may have been used as an intensifier. This just waters down the force of the expression.
• Note E, 1Sa 24:6, 10: The word "anointed" is rendered "chosen one," which weakens the sense. Anointing by a prophet was a really big deal!

Of a total of 47 comments I have gathered from Exodus to the end of 1 Samuel, I see that ten are highlighted dark red, by which I indicate something really awful. Several of my comments refer to weakened expressions, such as "being" for "soul" or "leading" for "judging" and "show respect" for "sanctify". Besides these, I present just four:

• Note D, Ex 26:37: The SN derides typology and the study of symbolic meanings. Terrible advice! To the Jews, the Old Testament is history and is literally true. In the New Testament, Paul writes in a few places about the symbolic meaning of certain passages, even using the words "type" and "antitype", and in one place, "allegory". To a Christian, the Old Testament is a rich source of typology and symbolism regarding divine matters.
• Note R, Lv 7:32: The "heave offering", alternatively "lifted-up offering", is translated "contribution offering", which destroys the sense. This offering was literally tossed a few inches into the air (and then caught), and is a type of the ascension of Christ. Similarly, the wave offering (which NET properly translates) is a type of the resurrection of Christ.
• Note U, Ju 2:10: The Hebrew expression "gathered to their fathers" is translated "passed away", which obscures the beauty of this term; it indicates that there is an afterlife in which a dead person is reunited with ancestors. Many Christians think the Jews didn't (and don't) believe in an afterlife. The term "gathered to their fathers" proves the opposite. There are other indications also.
• Notes A, T, Dt 1:29, 45: More instances of a strong expression being toned down in the translation, and explained away in the note. Disgraceful!

I complained at length in the prior review that thousands of notes speak of adding or changing a word for "stylistic reasons" or "clarity". The volume would be quite a bit shorter if the historical custom of using italics to indicate supplied words had been used, and a single statement in the preface would then suffice.

I think that's enough to illustrate why I consider the translation to be flawed, and the scholarship expressed in the notes to be frequently sloppy. I don't recommend NET. Now, to explain another flurry of obscure grammatical terms. Firstly, a few more Hebrew verb tenses:

• hishtaphel - a very rare verb stem that expresses causative action in active voice.
• hitpoel (=hithpoel) - "to do something to oneself". Rare.
• poel - a verb stem based on the noun meaning "worker", referring to repeated action.
• khetib (properly ketib or ketiv, versus qere) - ketiv and qere are markings to indicate the difference between what was written and how it is to be read.

More grammatical terms almost nobody knows:

• cohortative - expressing desire, or a first-person demand.
• apodosis - the consequent clause of a conditional sentence: "If you asked me I would agree."
• protasis - the conditional clause, as "If you asked me..." above.
• frequentative - indicating repeated action, not necessarily iterative.
• paranomastic (-tia) - a fancy word for "pun" or double meaning.
• volitive - expression desire or volition; "volitional" is a better known synonym.
• asseverative - a statement made with great solemnity, certainty and conviction. Think of court testimony.
• epexegetical - added words to clarify meaning.
• talionic - a synonym for retaliation; talionic law, or lex talonis, is "an eye for an eye", for example.
• optative - a verbal mood expressing a wish, desire, hope or prayer; "if only..."
• aposiopesis - breaking off a sentence in the middle, to hint at the unspeakable or to express shock.
• adversative - in opposition to, like an adversary.
• casus pedens - probably a typo for casus pendens, the placement of a noun or pronoun first in a sentence, but modified later in the sentence. "Pendens" means "hanging".
• haplography - accidental omission of one or more repeated letters in a longer word, as philology→philogy. This is a particular occurrence in manuscript copying. "Haplo-" means "half".
• metathesis - in linguistics, swapping sounds or letters in a word, such as ask→aks or nuclear→nucular.
• homoloteleuton - literally, "similar ending", a near rhyme for rhetorical effect or to sort-of-rhyme a word that is hard to rhyme, such as "orange".
• casuistic - either resolving an ethical dilemma, or being rhetorically subtle and deceptive.
• erotesis - a rhetorical question that expects a negative answer: "Am I my brother's keeper?"
• merism - speaking of parts to refer to the whole, as "day and night" to mean "all the time".
• strophe - a defined section of a poem; often a synonym for "stanza".
• paraenesis - moral exhortation, usually basing one's argument on tradition.
• chiastic - literary structure best described as "going out the way one came in." Many stories detail a protagonist's trials to reach a goal, to be repeated in reverse order to return home.
• homoiarcton - when a series of lines begin the same way, a copying scribe may skip from one line to the next, leaving out an intervening portion of text.
• nunated - the use of the letter "nun" as a suffix; in Hebrew the letter is written differently when it is the last letter of a word.
• stative versus fientive - stative verbs express a condition, fientive verbs express actions.

I knew only four of these words previously. Even Blogger marks nine as unknown. It is a serious fault of the NET volume to omit a glossary.

At the rate I am reading, I expect to finish the Old Testament near the end of 2026. I hope I observe better results in the New Testament.

Yet another take on the origin of life, here and afar

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, science, biology, exobiology, origin of life, evolution

Seeing the book's title, Is Earth Exceptional? The Quest for Cosmic Life, by Mario Livio and Jack Szostak, I had a waking dream that this image evokes. Is someone out there, wondering if there is life elsewhere?

(It took a while to "persuade" OpenArt to make the base image, one to which I could add the other elements.)

I was surprised to find that in a book this small (just over 300 pages), the authors would deal with the two biggest questions that exist: "How did life arise?" (the question behind "Where did we come from?") and "Are we alone?" The authors survey what is currently known about the abiotic→biotic transition in six chapters, and they present the multitude of methods for finding signs of life off-Earth in six chapters. The final chapter summarizes the whole.

Concerning the chemistry and physics that might have engendered the first living cells, one must get a bit technical. So much so that they include an appendix to Chapter 3 ("From Chemistry to Biology") that one might call a pre-Primer for Biochemistry 001. In biochemistry as in geochemistry, chemistry is geometry, because the shapes of molecules matter. In fact, much of biological evolution has been taken up with creating innovative and useful molecular shapes for "doing things" (that is, proteins, particularly enzymes). This pre-Primer introduces this kind of geometrical chemistry.

Thus, Chapters 3-5 show the results of breakthroughs in recent years, that broke through a logjam that confounded the science of biotic origins for decades. They describe in particular the way certain necessary molecules could have been assembled step by step, rather than all-at-once, as earlier hypotheses required. 

There's no need for me to get into the weeds about that here. I'll just touch on this impression: Chapter after chapter filled with "could be" and "might have" sorts of statements begin to sound like a case of terminal arm-waving. What rescues this section from that fate is the salient fact that we really don't know what happened between the period, starting almost 4 billion years ago, and lasting about 0.2 or 0.3 billion years, until the time of the first unambiguous fossils of biological "something", and the time that the chemistry of Earth, its atmosphere, and its oceans, had changed enough to support whatever living beings then existed. We have a somewhat good idea of the chemistry of some 3.5 billion years ago, but only the rawest speculation about what came before. We surmise that the change came about largely because of living things, just as the later Great Oxygenation Event made an even more radical change. We still have a lot to learn!

As to, "Who might be out there?"…the only "experiments" we can perform are the various kinds of detection technologies: Telescopes of the optical, ultraviolet, infrared, and radio varieties. Contrary to the claims of the UFO (and now UAV) communities, there is no (publicly known) and concrete evidence that some kind of space aliens have visited or are visiting. A big part of the budget of NASA is devoted to ET-finding technology. It's great that a few exoplanets can now be seen, though not in any detail, and that thousands have been detected and catalogued. 

I once read a short story in which a signal is detected by SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, conducted with radio telescopes), and is found to be encrypted. The story ends with the protagonist wondering if the source is military in nature, which would not bode well for future relations. I wrote to the author, "Perhaps if the signal gets decoded, it will be bank transactions or inventory records." 

It's sobering to consider that the signals we have sent off into space by our radio and TV signals have yet to reach beyond about 100 light years, and if "someone" at a distance of 50-100 light years is listening in our direction, with technology at our level, they probably cannot yet detect it. Maybe in another 10-20 years…

Enrico Fermi's question still resonates: "Where is everybody?" How plausible is it that we are at the forefront? That, at least in a bubble a thousand or so light years in radius, we are the first planet with life to develop a civilization? Consider that it may be necessary for the Universe to evolve for 8-9 billion years, to produce a generation of stars with enough metallicity to have rocky planets that are roughly Earth-sized. Perhaps life can arise quickly once a planet's surface cools enough for oceans and lakes to exist. But then on Earth, at least, it took almost four billion years for biology to produce an animal that can build telescopes. I like the Copernican Principle, that we are about average. Maybe somebody, somewhere, developed faster and is millions or tens of millions of years ahead of us. Is that enough for them to develop the tech needed to send expeditions all around the galaxy, and find us? Maybe not.

In coming years, perhaps we will find out. Meanwhile, we have the great task of keeping the one planet we possess in good enough shape that we can survive long enough to be the visitors to someone else.

Admirable serpents

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, science, herpetology, snakes, serpents

Let's start with a couple of anecdotes. We lived in Ohio when I was a teen. One summer my brothers and I found several small, brown snakes in a field. At first we thought they were baby copperheads. We watched them for a while. Soon we saw that when they were relaxed, their heads were oval, not triangular like the head of a copperhead. We checked in the encyclopedia (this was decades before the Internet was even a pipe dream), and learned that they were DeKay's brown snakes. Their resemblance to a copperhead was protective coloration. When bothered, one would pull its head back to make it look more triangular and strike the way a copperhead does. But their tiny teeth couldn't even draw blood. A day or two later our great uncle Verne, who lived in Missouri, came to visit. One of my brothers and I ran to the field and brought back several of the snakes to show him. He was terrified! Particularly when he saw one of them rear back and strike me, biting my finger. I showed him that it had no fangs and was harmless. He was still uneasy, so we ran back and let them go. 

Jump forward about fifteen years. One of my summer field camps during my Senior year as a geology student was in eastern Nevada, in the White Pine Mountains. I saw rattlesnakes every day. Although they can't "hear", not having ears, they can sort of hear by putting their jaw on the ground to pick up vibrations. They know when people are near from the way our footsteps reverberate in the soil. Whenever I saw one it was usually slithering away, having detected my approach already. I value rattlesnakes because they eat most varmints, such as rats, so I left them alone. Another couple of years later I was with a group of rockhounds and their families in the Mojave Desert. The first morning I took an early walk and encountered a sidewinder (a kind of rattlesnake), coiled near the camp, apparently asleep. I went back to confer with the others. Because small children were with us, we decided it had to be removed or killed. I went back and killed it. I hated to do so, but there was too much danger leaving it there.

One more story, a fun one. Before I was married I lived in East Los Angeles with a few other single brothers from the church. We had a house in a little forested valley, a kind of enclave surrounded by a neighborhood. The youngsters in the neighborhood, ages 12-15, all belonged to a gang; everyone 16 and older was already in jail or prison. The gang leader, Tony, lived next door to our house, just outside the valley. One day I happened upon a king snake coiled near our gate, between our yard and Tony's family. I could see Tony in his yard so I called him over. He was frightened. I picked up the snake; it was about five feet long. After it calmed down (it liked my warmth) I asked Tony if he wanted to hold it. He reached out and it bit him! I showed him that the little tooth marks on his hand weren't fang marks, and taught him how to ease the snake into his arms. Then he took it home to show his mother. When he came back and returned the snake to me, it reared back and bit him again! I said, "Tony, that snake's telling you that you need to get right with God. Otherwise the real 'snake', the Devil, will devour you." I don't know if Tony decided to believe in God, but his attitude toward me was much more respectful after that.

When I saw Slither: How Nature's Most Maligned Creatures Illuminate Our World, by Stephen S. Hall, I really hoped to learn a few things. The book didn't disappoint me. The eight chapters limn various aspects of snakes and their intersection with society and science. Each chapter includes a coda titled "Snake Road" with a focus on a relevant aspect of snakehood.

Studying snakes is trickier than most genres of natural history. Most snakes are very good at staying out of our way. The only exception I know of is the cottonmouth moccasin, which seems ready to confront any human who has the trepidation to enter its territory. Of course, I am familiar only with North American snakes. Other continents and countries have their own species, and their own histories of human-serpent contact. For example, half of all snakebite fatalities happen in India, some 60,000 per year. I suppose that cobras are more territorial than rattlesnakes.

In the last chapter, about the attempt to deal with invasive Burmese pythons (and the even larger Burmese-Indian python hybrids), we find that the snakes are so well camouflaged that when expert snake finders (perhaps only in their own eyes…) were tested in an enclosure smaller than a suburban yard, containing a dozen "planted" pythons, most found exactly none, and only a two saw even one of the snakes. The conclusion of Chapter Eight is that the pythons of southern Florida, descended from escaped (or released) pets, are already too numerous and too widespread to be eradicated. The chapter subtitle, "Adaptation," says it all. Snakes have been found to be genetically pre-loaded with an enormous "toolkit" that allows them to adapt to a new environment a whole lot faster than anyone imagined before.

A case in point. The females of one species of snake (I don't recall, and I didn't note it down) usually reproduce at least once yearly, after maturing in about three years. However, during a prolonged drought, they can take ten years to mature and may reproduce only once per decade. That's rather extreme adaptation, and it takes place during one generation, so natural selection isn't operating here. Rather, natural selection already operated in prior generations to produce a species that can manage such a wide range of environmental variation. Only humans have a wider range, and we need cultural and technical means to do so. A snake is born naked, stays that way, and just handles whatever nature throws at it.

We think of snakes as the prime example of being cold-blooded. It turns out that pythons are usually able to keep their body temperature in a narrow range near 85°F (29°C). That means on a cool morning snake hunters could use a thermal camera to look for them. If a snake is in the water, that won't help, but on land any thermal anomaly that's cooler than a mammal but warmer than the dirt would be worth a look.

Backing up a couple of chapters: Chapter 6, subtitled "Reproduction," is titled "The Evolution of Pleasure." It takes a pretty solid bit of evidence to determine if a snake can experience pleasure. A group of researchers gathered the most solid evidence possible: they discovered that female snakes have a clitoris…or, rather, that they have two, just as the males have paired penises (eat your heart out, Casanova). I'll just leave that right there for you to think about.

Earlier yet, we learn a lot about venom, including the likelihood that even "nonvenomous" snakes actually have a little venom in their saliva. In a "harmless" snake like a garter snake (or DeKay's brown snake) there is apparently a little cocktail of toxins that might be relevant to subduing their prey, but don't cause a reaction in us. I suspect the risk of infection from a garter snake's bite is greater than any risk from whatever toxins might be in its saliva. But venoms are proving useful. The components that silence nerves, or cause muscle tissue to die, and even the ones that intensify pain, are being intensively studied to learn what signaling pathways and cellular receptors are affected. These can then become targets for drug discovery to deal with medical conditions. Components of various snake venoms are also being repurposed as medical substances. Per the proverb of Paracelsus, "The dose makes the poison," a tiny bit of certain toxins can be very beneficial. It reminds me of the use of Botulin toxin (Botox), not only for cosmetic use, but as a safer alternative to curare to induce localized, but longer-term, paralysis without causing permanent nerve damage.

The author hopes more people will learn to appreciate snakes. I guess I'd propound a proverb here: Snakes have a lot to teach us, we simply need to learn how to listen.

(Image generated with SeeDream 4.0 in OpenArt)

Noise is about more than loudness

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, science, sound, noise, soundscapes

For about ten years I have worked part time at the Delaware Museum of Natural History (renamed in 2022 the Delaware Museum of Nature and Science). My "office" is on the top floor, above an exhibit hall. During the times the museum is open to the public, I constantly hear the sounds of children talking and shouting in the hall below. I happen to like it. Happy sounds are good sounds. On occasion I venture downstairs to wander among the exhibits. There, the sound is much louder, particularly where there is an exciting exhibit in that exhibit hall. The sound is equally happy, but at that volume, it soon gets tiring and I go back upstairs.

I haven't measured the sound level at the museum—I only recently downloaded an SPL (Sound Pressure Level)  app—but I estimate that the loudness at my desk is about 65-70 dba, about as loud as an older washing machine. Down in the hall, it must be 80 dba or more, with peaks in the 90's…there is nothing quite like a surprised child's shriek!

Near a busy highway, the loudness is also in the 70 dba range, but it is definitely not a happy sound, unless you happen to be a tire salesman and the sounds of tires wearing out leads you to anticipate future tire sales. Few of us treasure the noisy clangor of a busy city street. We go where we must, but when we have a choice, we prefer sounds that are more pleasant, and, importantly, less loud.

The coupled measures of loudness and pleasantness are teased apart for us in Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take it Back by Chris Berdik.

A definition for those needing it: "dba" means "A-weighted decibels". It is a measure of the intensity of sound, with zero set at the threshold of human hearing. "A-weighting" adjusts the sensitivity at different frequencies to match our ears' sensitivity. The scale is logarithmic, so that an increase of 10 dba means a tenfold increase in sound intensity. Most people consider a 10 dba increase to be "twice as loud," because our senses also follow a logarithmic response.

The app I used to measure sounds after I began reading the book is "SPL Meter" by Keuwlsoft. When installed, it arrives uncalibrated, and I could tell it was reading quite high. I don't have a sonic reference, so to reach an approximate calibration I used several well-reported sounds to set the calibration. Now its readings are about 15 dba lower than before and they accord well with reported measurements. I went around during the past week gathering measurements. I'll discuss a few of these below. The reading shown in this image measures the loudness of a particularly low-flying jet aircraft as measured in my front yard.

The book chronicles the very gradual development of public policy regarding noise. The sonic environment has been ignored almost universally, perhaps with the exception of some of those who plan parks and open spaces such as Central Park in New York City. Central Park is big enough to keep the city's traffic sounds at bay, and many sheltered areas are quiet and restful. Even more so, the gentle forest sounds are soothing, quite in contrast to the typically jangly background noise of a city.

The author's aim is not to add another tome to those extolling quietness and denigrating loudness; rather, his interest is the quality of the sounds that envelop us. Many of us greatly enjoy attending concerts, where the louder sounds threaten to damage our ears; this is more so at a rock concert than at an orchestral concert. But, I have attended an outdoor concert of 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky that used real cannons. There, it was worthwhile to put one's fingers in one's ears whenever the conductor pointed at the cannons! As fun as that was, I don't listen to loud orchestral music all day long. One of my relatives was a rock drummer for a while and has significant hearing loss. I am a folk singer; we don't go for volume, but for lyrics that touch the soul.

Let's consider: what could make the sounds of a city less stressful? Nearly half of Clamor is about that, about the researchers and companies that design soundscapes. The idea of a soundscape is not to just subtract unpleasant sounds, but also to mix in more pleasant sounds.

Here is my own soundscape practice: As I hinted above, jets fly over our house from time to time. Our neighborhood is in line with one of the runways at Philadelphia Airport, and when the wind is right, the landing pattern has jets sweeping in from all directions to a spot about a mile west of our house, then making a descending beeline for the runway. Most of them are still about a mile high when they cross over, and I've recently measured their sound intensity to be 75 dba. Most of the jets are either a Boeing 737 or an Airbus A320. When a larger plane passes over, not only is it intrinsically louder, but it is usually lower, producing the louder sound recorded above. 80 dba is as loud as my lawn mower, heard from 2 meters away (where my ears are during use). Inside the house, where the background sound level is 24 dba (just a bit louder than a whisper), a jet flying over registers 48 dba, except the big ones exceed 52 dba. Sometimes I take an early afternoon nap. Since 40 dba is generally considered loud enough to disturb sleep, I do this: I turn on the clock radio and reduce the volume until I can't understand the words, but the gentle susurrus of human voices is a kind of white noise that helps me "not hear" the jets when they fly over. My nap is better as a result. The Internet is full of suggestions for private soundscapes: little fountains, audio files of forest sound, playlists of gentle string music, etc., etc.

What is a good soundscape for an office? What do you want to be hearing as you work? What, if anything, should be the background sound for a business meeting, particularly for hard negotiations? All these are being studied. Some progress is being made. Several chapters deal with various aspects of such work.

It's very important to understand that people are hugely various. In the realm of felt experience, "diversity" is much more than ethnicity. Not everyone enjoys the sounds of happy children; some people find it excessively annoying. Most people I know enjoy rock music. There are a very few rock musicians and composers whose work I appreciate; I hate most of it. I like classical music, almost exclusively pre-1900; "12-tone" and "atonal" compositions are just meaningless noise to me. I like country and folk music, but mostly for the lyrics. I like the sounds of a babbling brook in a quiet forest, as seen in this picture, taken in a small woods near our house. Many people would find it either annoying or boring. The sound intensity in this woods is as low as 50 dba, which is "quiet" as defined by urban planners.

I did the following measurements this past week:

• 48 dba outside my front door in the daytime. Most of the sound I could hear was road noise from a highway 1/3 mile (~550 m) away.
• 65 dba from the same spot, when my neighbor across the street accidentally set off his car alarm. Fortuitous timing! The sound is designed to be annoying, to get attention. Most of us have learned to tune it out, making car alarms largely useless.
• 65 dba (ranging from 62-74) seated with friends in a restaurant that doesn't play background music. The higher reading was during conversation at our table.
• 50 dba in the forest as noted above, but...
• 60 dba when crows were calling nearby.
• 82 dba, my lawnmower at 1 meter.
• 79 dba, my lawnmower at 2 meters. Note: a difference of -3 dba indicates the intensity was one-half. Power is proportional to the square of intensity, so this follows the inverse square law: -3 dba is one-fourth of the sound power.
• 64 dba is conversation in an otherwise quiet room. Note that we spoke louder in the restaurant setting.

Clamor comes along at the cusp of a revolution in architecture, city planning, and numerous disciplines that have historically ignored sound. The book is not prescriptive; it is reporting on progress as it happens. I hope in just a few years to find that the sonic environment is more and more taken into account everywhere. I am fortunate to live in a quiet suburb. May those living with more noise soon find that the sounds around them are changing to reduce stress rather than enhance it.

A star in a circle in Nevada

 kw: photo essays, investigations, maps, satellite photographs

It is interesting to peruse odd things people post about what they've seen on Google Maps or Google Earth. Recently I saw a few items that include these coordinates: 37°24'05.7"N, 116°52'06.1"W, which are easier to enter into GEarth (which I used) or GMaps as 37.40158, -116.86781. When you do, this appears:

Note, the accuracy of the coordinates with degrees-minutes-seconds, in tenths of a second, is just over 3 meters or 10 feet. The accuracy of coordinates with decimal degrees, reported to five digits after the decimal point, is 1.1 meters or 3.6 feet. I converted the one to the other, and the fifth decimal is effectively a guard digit, having excess precision.

What is this circle-star figure in the Nevada desert? Spoiler alert, if you want to call it that: I still don't know. This is a report of a journey that hasn't reached the destination. The outer circle is 242.5 m (796 ft) in diameter. The inner circle is less regular, and is about 150 m (490 ft) across. The figure is not really very large.

I first looked back in time, which is why I did this in Google Earth. The earliest clear satellite photo is from 2003, where it appears that some recent activity had taken place:

I shifted the view a little when making this screen capture, to show a series of small craters in the desert floor to the east of the figure. The craters are about 10 m (~34 ft) in diameter. I'll return to them in a moment.

The six squares in the six triangles each contain some darkish object. In 2003, which is less clear, they look like they may be battle tanks. This closeup of the area in 2022 shows something quite different:

Three of the items are seen. They look like missiles. I can't even guess about the object at the center of the figure. This is the sharpest image available at present. I wonder what the missiles are defending?

The 10 meter craters are probably bomb craters. They are much too small to represent nuclear munitions. This image shows craters from fission bomb tests in the 1950's at the Nevada Test Site (as it was popularly called):

This image has the same scale as the prior two. The central blast-exit holes are much larger than 10 m, and the collapse craters are in the 100-150 m range. Here is an overview of a 7x10 km portion of the Nevada Test Site as it appears today:

This area is about 80 km (50 mi) SSE of the circle-star figure we are looking at. The Test Site is in an area now administered by the Dept. of Energy, while our figure is in the middle of the Tonopah Test Range. Both are portions of the Nellis Air Force Range Complex, and entirely surrounded by BLM lands.

I would say that our figure is in a pole of inaccessibility. I decided to look nearby for more clues. About 2.5 km (~1.5 mi) to the west we find an interesting complex:

This image from 2022 shows three walled areas. What look like structures are really various things. The block to the left appears to contain ammunition dumps. The brown square inside a small walled area at lower center seems to be a very old metal building with holes in the roof. What look like small buildings to the right and upper center are mostly various assemblages of shipping containers. Note the black shadows of some kinds of pillars at the corners and midpoints of the walls around two of the sections. Based on a visit I made to a Minuteman missile silo I made many years ago, I surmise that these are motion detectors. I looked back into time:

The images are dated. The earliest one that is somewhat clear is from 2003. The image from 1985 (Landsat, which was the epitome of high resolution at the time!), shows at least that the complex was there already. I suspect it dates from the 1950s. The pillars are seen in the 2014 image, not before. Each image shows a different arrangement of shipping containers. The ammunition bunkers, if that is what they are, appeared after 2014 and before 2020 (which I didn't show here). The square brown thing also appeared after 2014. That's all I can extract from these images at this resolution.

Another area about 3 km (~2 mi) NNE of our figure looks like an early layout for the roads of a suburb:

The area of this image is 3.5x5 km. I included the circle-star so we can see how close it is. The dark spots along cross-shaped portion midway along the connecting road may look like dwellings at this scale, but they are really arrangements of shipping containers.

For this area also I looked into the past. I went back until the "roads" looked fresh, in 2006. The prior year, they are not present at all:

The option that comes to mind is the intention to build a fake suburb to blow up with a nuclear bomb, such as was done elsewhere; a video about one is here. The atmospheric test ban treaty (1963) would have put an end to it.

Earlier I called this area a "pole of inaccessibility." When you enter the coordinates of this point into Google Maps, it is labeled Pahrump, Nevada. However, the actual town of Pahrump is 150 km (93 mi) to the NNE. The nearest paved highway is US 95 (quite different from I-95 along the east coast), about 20 km (12 mi) to the SW. I could find no roads of any kind connecting US 95 to the dirt roads in this area.

Some dirt roads go north, but not in any straightforward way. A broad valley between this area and US 6 some 75-80 km (47-50 mi) to the north is crisscrossed by ephemeral dirt roads. US 6 goes between Tonopah and the real Pahrump, and further to the NE. In other directions, the picture is the same. I suspect the only way to get "here" is by helicopter…unless you walk, and can carry about ten gallons of drinking water. Even in winter the dry Nevada air will suck at least a gallon per day out of you; been there, done that.

Searching out roads to the north I encountered this (the area is about 10x16 km, or 7x10 mi):

Near the center of the concentric circular arcs is a hiking area called "Nye's Giant Target" on Google Maps; it has the sublabel "(small)". This image is from 2012, when the lines were clearer; they have suffered wear through time. Maybe this is a desert version of a crop circle…

There you have it. My speculations, or rather semi-educated guesses. There's no solution to these mysteries outside of military records that have probably been almost forgotten. It is simply fun to traipse around—virtually—to see what is out there.