Category Archives: Science

Health, Science

Looking Back

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Summer                                                           Park County Fair Moon

post op daze, July 8, 2015
post op daze, July 8, 2015

Two days until the anniversary of my prostate cancer surgery. Last year the whole summer was in cancer season and the 8th of July was the denouement, matters then slowly relaxing until the September PSA (prostate specific antigen) test which showed no identifiable antigens in my blood stream. At that point I declared cancer season finished.

Which does not mean the matter has been settled. I’m still getting quarterly PSA’s and will for another year, I believe, then six months until five years of negative findings. Then back to annual.

These days, almost a year beyond the most critical moments of cancer season, I rarely think about prostate cancer. The whole process was then and is now, surreal. No symptoms. Found on a prostate exam. Biopsy confirmed. Cancer. Yikes. Really? How can I have a life threatening condition that has no effect on me? Then, with the surgery, the cancer was gone. The threat that never presented itself to me removed by a robot. The most damaging and problematic aspects of the whole matter were sequelae from the surgery: the catheter, changed erections, incontinence. The latter is now a nuisance and usually not that. Point is that the disease itself caused me no trouble, but the treatment did. Odd.

I do not feel like a cancer survivor, though I am. Instead, I feel like the same guy as usual, sans prostate. I consider myself and feel myself to be in excellent health. Yes, aging has its insults, no doubt about that, but they come and recede. Of course, there will be a time when one doesn’t fade away. But that is not yet. At least not for me.

Beyond the Boundaries, Faith and Spirituality, GeekWorld, Myth and Story, Science

Juno Comes Back to Jupiter

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Summer                                                                        Moon of the Summer Solstice

The half summer solstice moon hangs high in the morning sky today. Friend Tom Crane sent a link to the NASA Juno mission webpage. The first NASA video gives you an overview of the mission. The second shows the earth and the moon dancing with each other as Juno sped by in October of 2013 on its way to its July 4th insertion in Jupiter’s realm.

Colorado, Jefferson County, Science, Weather +Climate

Bones

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Beltane                                                                         Moon of the Summer Solstice

We went to Dinosaur Ridge this morning, the place where the first stegosaurus bones were found in the U.S. It was 92 when we got there. A ride in the vanasaurus, an unairconditioned bus like airport rental shuttle rides, took us up the ridge where we saw bulges in the rock created by brontosauruses walking on their tippy toes and squishing mud far down with their huge tonnage. We also saw a large collection of dinosaur footprints laid down on a beach a hundred million years ago. Grandma and Grandpop enjoyed the tour as much as the kids.

After Dinosaur Ridge, we went to the Red Rock Amphitheater, not for a concert but to find a picnic area. We found one high on a Fountain Formation (red sandstone) ridge overlooking all of the Denver Metro. The breeze was cool, the food was good.

The drive into Denver to drop off Ruth and Gabe with their Dad was hot. As we got further and further into Denver proper, the heat went to 98 degrees. A bit later it hit 104 on our way back toward the Front Range and home. Yike. Fortunately, it was only 74 on Black Mountain Drive.

 

 

GeekWorld, Science

Meh

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Beltane                                                                          Moon of the Summer Solstice

Reading an article in the New York Review of Books about how the internet has hollowed us out and made us habituated phone-impaired dupes of the surveillance society. My reaction to these technology is making us slaves to the machine sort of articles? Meh. This one has an interesting line which rhapsodizes over the old copper-wire enabled linking of two voices one to the other in real time. Well, the bakelite phone discouraged person-to-person visits, leaving us isolated and alone in our television dominated homes. Or so I’m sure some social critic claimed at the time. Likewise television alone. Kill your TV!

The meme here is not the effect of latter day chip-enabled technology but the article propounding the deleterious effects of technology, period. Remember the Luddites? This is an old argument, one simultaneously proven by the current it gadget and invalidated by the next one. The question is not now and has never been about technology, but about humanity.

It is reassuring to find single cause boogeymen (boogeythings?). If only we could remove all smart phones. If only we could rid of cars. If only we could kill our TVs. Very few mentions in this regard of furnaces, stoves, refrigerators, the electric light. That’s because this technology has been integrated into our lives and now serves a purpose most of us can’t imagine doing without.

My point is not that technology has no affect on our lives, hardly. Rather, it has, like so much else junk bonds, jet travel, level roads and government inspected meat for a few examples, differing effects on different people. Some it aids, some it harms. The responsibility for how it affects you is your own.

I think the question is not how technology affects us, but how we use technology to redefine our individual lives. Computing technology, whether in a laptop or desktop, smartphone or tablet, is a tool. When we use a tool, it extends our bodily Self further into the world, often in ways we could not achieve without it. The chainsaw, for example, makes it possible for me to cut down large trees, take off their limbs and cut them up further into fireplace size logs. It makes me sharp and strong, able to move forests.

The computer, whatever its configuration, on the desk or in my hand, extends my reach, enables me to write and save work, research much of the world’s knowledge, communicate easily with my brother and sister, in Saudi Arabia and Singapore respectively, jot notes to friends and family, buy tickets, find services nearby me, plan travel domestic and foreign. In my world these are good things.

What’s really happening is another churning of the sea of human identity, some old ideas will submerge, sink out of sight, others will be transformed and others will be made de nouveau. This is not scary, nor revolutionary, nor sinister. It’s culture at work, shaped and shaping. The future is an extension of the present, as the present is an extension of the past.

Aging, Family, Feelings, Health, Memories, Science

I heart heart

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Beltane                                                                           Running Creeks Moon

Raffles Town Club breakfast: Singapore
Raffles Town Club breakfast: Singapore

The things life splices together. Yesterday Kate had an appointment with her cardiologist. I went with her. She showed me the report of her echocardiogram, we discussed the cardiologist’s finding. All very clinical. Yes, the heart is a muscle and one which can be graded and observed at many levels. It has ejection fractions. leaflets, diffusions and profusions, valves and chambers. The fine tuning of the heart’s care is a substantial branch of medicine.

On the bus to Gwangju
On the bus to Gwangju

The heart is also, and perhaps more importantly, a metaphor. For love. For feeling. For courage and persistence. For essence. For intimacy. The metaphor can, too, be graded and observed at many levels. Heartless bastard. In my heart. I heart NYC, you, my dog, my honor school student, my rifle, my concealed carry handgun. That gets right to the heart of things. My heart is heavy. You have heart. My heart belongs to you.

Why might the metaphor be more important than the muscle? Because love lives on past the stilling of the muscle. Kate and I spliced together the cardiologist appointment with a visit to DazzleJazz, hearing the Keith Oxman quartet and Dr. Diva, a singing professor from Nebraska. We sat next to each other, she rested her head on my shoulder. We whispered and touched. My heart belongs to her. And that muscle so closely examined a few hours before? No match for her true heart, the one that belongs to me.

BTW: usual aging heart stuff for Kate. Blood pressure meds now. Attention to diet, keep up with the tai chi. Some upper body resistance work. We can push back against the dying of the light, but it goes out anyhow. Something, sometime. Yet love remains.

Beyond the Boundaries, Family, GeekWorld, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science

Out There

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Beltane                                                     Wedding Moon

Ruth and I went to the Fiske Planetarium in Boulder on Saturday night for a program on black holes. Ruth had never been to a planetarium. The lights went down and the night sky appeared on the dome above us. The southern night sky. So, right away the wonder of the star machine. Then, the night sky over Boulder with the constellations. The astronomer talked about their correlation to the ancients who relied on them for agricultural purposes. It is reportedly spring. Somewhere.

Ruth watched and listened carefully. The short film on black holes was not easy, covering the birth of black holes, their peculiar physics and their role in the cosmos. After it was over, the astronomer walked us through some of the recent findings related to black holes, the most notable being the discovery of gravity waves at the LIGO observatory. The relation to black holes is that the gravity pulse detected at LIGO began in a black hole.

sloan image

It’s been a while since I immersed myself in matters astronomical. My fine grained understanding of the evening was not great. The hey now moment came at the end when the astronomer pulled the dome’s display further and further out until the entire Sloan Survey covered only the center of the dome.

The rest of the dome then represented the edge of the knowable universe. Out there the astronomer showed what he called the light wall, a here cooler, there warmer barrier of early light, earliest light, really. This light wall, a new idea to me, represented, he said, the exterior wall of the black hole within which our whole universe lives! Wow. Immediately sped past my understanding. Just did a little quick research on this and found nothing. Could be my hearing. Yet another sensory limitation when it comes to learning about the universe.

On the way out Ruth said she was expecting something like that at the end. Why? Because in the film they had presented black holes as violent, destructive forces, so in the end they’d need to show their good side. Not a scientific conclusion, but still a damned good one. I missed the setup and it was there. Ruth is 10.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Memories, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science, Third Phase

One Year Ago

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Spring                                                                                   Maiden Moon

Had blood drawn yesterday for my third post surgery PSA. Right now they come every quarter, routine surveillance. The first two have showed .015 which is the clinical equivalent of none. Since the results have followed the best hoped for pattern, I’m experiencing no anxiety about them.

Today is my second annual physical with Dr. Lisa Gidday. This physical revisits a key moment from cancer season. The start of the season. It was last year at my first physical in Colorado when Dr. Gidday found a suspicious hardness in my prostate. I count cancer season as having begun with that physical on April 14th and ending in late September with my first follow up PSA.

It was a short time compared to my image of what cancer is typically like. It went: initial suspicion, see urologist who confirmed Gidday’s finding, biopsy, diagnosis, decision on treatment, surgery, recovery, first PSA after surgery. All this in six months.

There is the question of a cure. Does this mean I have no more prostate cancer? Did the end of cancer season mean the end of the cancer threat? No, it does not. Things look good, very good, but the clinical reality is that a few cancerous prostate cells could have escaped and are dormant right now. My gut says no, that is not the case. I feel rid of the traitorous bastards.

In fact, I feel very healthy right now. Yes, I have this damned knee, lower back and shoulder, but they’re nuisance level. Yes, I have chronic kidney disease, but it seems stable. In fact the numbers that gauge its severity actually improved in my last blood work done in October. Yes, I have insomnia, but it’s just one of those damned things.

My point here is that aging means an accumulation (for most of us) of chronic conditions. We can choose to focus on those as ongoing problems, become obsessive about them and drown ourselves in anxiety or we can recognize their inevitability and, if not embrace them, at least accept them with grace. Most of the time.

The anxiety is unnecessary. That is the point of Yama, the Tibetan deity. To worship Yama we envision our own death, see it coming, embrace its part in our story. When we can truly accept the reality of our own death, anxiety about what may deliver it to us becomes redundant. We may not know the particulars, but we do know the outcome of our life. It’s the same for all of us.

 

Colorado, Dogs, Great Work, Mountains, Science, The West

Beast

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Spring                                                                     Maiden Moon

beast inFinished a 2010 book, The Beast in the Garden, today.  By David Baron, an NPR reporter, Beast examines the changing nature of the wildlife/human interface especially through an examination of mountain lion activity in and around Boulder, Colorado in the late 1980’s into the mid-1990’s.

Baron did an exhaustive amount of work.  He recreates the time period in which Boulder’s love for nature and its actions to both create and preserve a natural setting resulted in tragedy and conflict. After several years of encouraging wildlife into the city through tolerance, rings of urban parks and conservation of land outside its limits but contiguous, Boulder had an irruption of deer. An irruption is, as Baron says, very similar in meaning to its volcanic homonym.

There’s a saying here on Shadow Mountain, “If you have deer, you have mountain lions.” That proved true in Boulder. The problem was, that since the elimination of the wolf, mountain lions no longer had any predator of their own and had become desensitized to their ancient foe: the canid. No longer did just any dog barking drive away mountain lions. That meant the lions could follow their main food source, deer, into human inhabited areas where they could encounter dogs.

Some cougars began to hunt dogs. The combination of hunting deer, their ancient and still most frequent prey, and dogs, kept as pets and therefore nearby human’s daily life, led to certain cougars becoming habituated to humans. Habituation involves suppression of the once instinctive fear of humans engendered by early farmers and ranchers near extermination of the species. Once that fear is suppressed humans are bipedal potential sources of dinner. Dogs were eaten. Cougars lounged in people’s backyards. A few attacks occurred. Then, a couple of deaths. This book tells that story.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, GeekWorld, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science

Anxiety

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Imbolc                                                                        Maiden Moon

Palmer Hayden, a painter of the Harlem Renaissance, did a series of 12 paintings about the John Henry legend.  John Henry matched his muscle and steel-driving skill against a steam engine. When watching Alphago, the DeepMind computer program, play Go champion and legend himself, Lee Sedol, Michael Redmond, a Western go master at the 9-dan (highest level) said he really wanted to play the computer.

Here’s a quote from the only man who claimed to have seen the John Henry contest:  “When the agent for the steam drill company brought the drill here,” said Mr. Miller, “John Henry wanted to drive against it. He took a lot of pride in his work and he hated to see a machine take the work of men like him.” wiki, op cit

 

This is Lee Sedol and his daughter at Match 3. He lost, for the third game in a row, losing the match of 5 games to Alphago. Quite a different scene from Hayden’s imaging of John Henry’s loss, but still a human loss to a machine.

It occurs to me that both images evince a fundamental difference between humans and machines, love and concern for another. In Lee’s case, he and the Alphago team member are smiling, shaking hands. He has his arm around his daughter, another key distinction between  humans and machines, biological procreation. Parenting, the long task of raising a human child until they can take off on their own, is also a complex relational challenge, one well outside the current and possibly future capacity of artificial intelligence.

 

As John Henry lies dead, a heart attack brought on by the stress of the competition, others surround him. Their expressions vary from disbelief to sadness. One man has a ladle of water to offer, indicating that Henry must have just died. Too, the endurance of the legend and the song about John Henry show how deeply rooted are the questions. Is a human determined, defined by his or her capacity to defeat a machine? Ever?

Lee Sedol said, at the end of Match 3, “Lee Sedol lost. Not humankind.”

There is a fundamental anxiety about humanness revealed here. It is the question that Ray Kurzweil believes he has answered in his book, The Singularity Is Near. In Kurzweil’s mind, all of these human versus machine moments are stair steps toward the ultimate confrontation between humans and an artificial intelligence that is superior to us. The John Henry legend foreshadows what will happen. Like the steam drill a superior consciousness will simply eliminate the competition, not out of pique or malevolence, but because that is what happens when superior beings interact with inferior ones.

 

I don’t believe it. I believe the crowd around John Henry, the shaking hands at Match 3 with Alphago and the presence of Sedol’s daughter shows the true distance machines will have to travel to become superior to humans. And, when the contest is over love and compassion, the human characteristics on display in these two instances, then the machine will not want to eliminate us, but to embrace us.