No, sadly, not the musical movement. Rather, the approach we now take to caring for my MIL. All our routines are slipping away, the carefully practiced choreography which has defined our lives for years no longer relevant.
I’ve been saying for a while that we were coming to a close of this chapter of my MIL’s life. I’ve been wrong before in my predictions that it would come on this day or that, before or after a particular holiday or birthday. And so I may well be wrong again when I say that we are now on the last few pages of the book.
There is something to this of that bittersweet moment, that sense of coming to conclusions you know are there, the resolution of conversations and plot lines that you get at the end of a cherished book. She no longer needs to wait for the usual markers of the day – when to get up, when to eat, when to nap. She got up this morning, and the rest of the day has followed as best we can to her wants and desires. Lunch an hour early, and including her favorite soup even though she just had it yesterday. (Campbell’s Tomato, if you want to know.) Supper about a half hour early. Bed more than an hour early. Because that is what she wanted.
Her worries we have answered as best we can, telling her that tomorrow we will see if we can help her find “the people she came here with.”
Unless she finds them on her own in her sleep.
I’ll keep you posted.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, DARPA, Expert systems, General Musings, James Burke, Music, Predictions, Science, Society, Survival, tech, Writing stuff, YouTube
I’ve mentioned previously the work of science historian James Burke. This past weekend I finished watching the last couple of episodes of his ground-breaking series Connections. Overall, you would probably enjoy watching the series, and will find a lot of chuckles over what was “high tech” in 1978 versus the reality of what we have today. But the closing bit was just stunning – it was a prediction of the need for and use of the Internet before DARPA had even begun to let the cat out of the bag. Here’s the last ten minutes:
In particular the bit that starts out at about 5:00 is the culmination of his entire thesis about change – that understanding how things change is the key to understanding everything. At about 6:45 is this remarkable passage (transcribed myself, since I couldn’t readily find it online – how’s that for irony?):
Scientific knowledge is hard to take, because it removes the reassuring crutches of opinion and ideology. And the reason why so many people may be thinking about throwing away those crutches is because thanks to science and technology, they have begun to know that they don’t know so much, and if they are to have more say in what happens in their lives, more freedom to develop their abilities to the full, they have to be helped towards that knowledge they know exists and that they don’t possess.
And by ‘helped towards that knowledge’, I don’t mean give everybody a computer and say “help yourself.” Where would you even start? No, I mean, trying to find ways to translate the knowledge, to teach us to ask the right questions. See, we’re on the edge of a revolution in communications technology that is going to make that more possible than ever before. Or, if that’s not done, to cause an explosion of knowledge that will leave those of us who don’t have access to it as powerless as if we were deaf, dumb, and blind.
Digital divide, anyone? Anyway, I find it just fascinating that Burke was so dead-on in his prediction of the Internet, even if he didn’t have the term for it, and yet even he failed to understand how phenomenally all-encompassing it would be. Whereas he thought that it would be impossible to just give people access to the information and say “go to it”, that is exactly what we’ve got – and self-organization of information and resources like Wikis make that information understandable, not just accessible.
When, as often happens, I feel somewhat pessimistic, that our greed or violent tendencies will outstrip our maturing as a culture/species, it is helpful to come across something like this. And I think that is why I read SF, and have written Communion of Dreams: because there, with all the ugliness and human folly, there is nonetheless room for hope. Look at what we’ve done in just the last thirty years – what more can we accomplish in the next forty, if we don’t destroy ourselves?
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Comics, Darths & Droids, George Lucas, Humor, movies, Music, Science Fiction, Star Wars, YouTube
In response to my last post on Friday before skipping town for a few days, a friend reminded me of this Weird Al Yankovic version of American Pie:
What adds a bit to the weirdness is that one of the people I was visiting with this past weekend was from Clear Lake, Iowa and hence is more than a little sick of American Pie, and the song was the topic of considerable conversation and humor. Having this version pop into my inbox this morning was more than a little serendipitous.
Anyway, while I usually only enjoy Weird Al in somewhat small doses, I do respect his particular variety of genius, and this is a good example of just what he is capable of. Enjoy!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Bad Astronomy, Bipolar, Carl Zimmer, Cosmic Variance, Fermi's Paradox, Flu, Genetic Testing, Health, Music, Pandemic, Pharyngula, Phil Plait, Plague, Predictions, Saturn, Science, Science Fiction, The Loom, Writing stuff
They’re mixing with the population
A virus wearing pumps and pearls
Lord help the lonely guys
Hooked by those hungry eyes
Here come Tomorrow’s Girls
Tomorrow’s Girls
Donald Fagan, “Tomorrow’s Girls” from Kamakiriad
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
I can always tell when I’m feeling better, or have gotten a bit of sleep and am able to think (somewhat) again: I get that little rush of energy, mind jumping and drawing connections between ostensibly divergent topics. It is a shadow of the way I feel when my bipolar condition swings to the manic phase, and all things seem clear and possible.
Such is the case this morning.
I read a lot of science blogs. Pharyngula. Cosmic Variance. Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy. The Angry Toxicologist. But even before he started blogging at The Loom, I was aware of the science reporting of Carl Zimmer. And recently Carl posted a link to his Seed Magazine cover story “The Meaning of Life.” It’s not terribly long, and you should just go read the whole thing.
But among the entire very interesting article is this wonderful idea: that it is a mistake to try and define what life is right now. Philosopher Carol Cleland of NASA’s Institute for Astrobiology is very much in the thick of this, saying that we do not have the necessary perspective. As Zimmer puts it:
Instead of trying to formulate a definition of life, Cleland and Chyba argue, we need to develop a theory of life—an overarching explanation of nature that joins together a myriad of seemingly random phenomena. Biologists have discovered a number of theories–the germ theory of disease and Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, for example—yet they have no full-fledged theory of life itself. The underlying uniformity of life is one of the great discoveries of modern biology, but it’s also an obstacle. It represents only a single data point, and blinds us to the possibilities of “weird life.” We have no idea exactly which features of life as we know it are essential to life as we don’t know it.
A theory of life would allow us to understand what matters to life, what possible forms it can take, and why. It would let us see connections that we might otherwise miss, just as chemists can see the hidden unity between a cloud in the sky and a block of ice. Scientists are already trying to build a theory of life. A number of researchers have been developing a theory in which life is a self-organized system that can be described using the same principles physicists use to describe hurricanes or galaxies. As biologists learn more and more about how the millions of molecules in a cell work together, these theorists can put their ideas to more precise tests.
For Cleland, the most promising way to build a theory of life is to look for alien life. In 2013, the European Space Agency plans to put a rover back on Mars. Called Exomars, it will drill into the Martian crust to seek out signs of life. NASA has plans of its own on the drawing board, including one possible mission that would bring Martian soil back to Earth for intense study. Meanwhile, other promising habitats for life, such as some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, beckon. Cleland argues that finding alien life would allow us to start figuring out what is truly universal about life, rather than just generalizing from life as we know it. Only when we have more data, she reasons, will we have a basis for comparison. As it stands now, says Cleland, “we have no grist for the theoretical mill.”
Brilliant. This is not unlike the revolution in perspective which occurred with the transition to a heliocentric model of the solar system. It necessarily moves us from the bias that our version of life is the only possible model. I’ve written about this previously, but it is good to see such a complete treatment of the topic as Zimmer gives it.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
It looks like scientists have discovered the likely culprit in the collapse of the honey bee populations in the US: a virus.
Virus implicated in bee decline
A virus has emerged as a strong suspect in the hunt for the mystery disease killing off North American honeybees.
Genetic research showed that Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) turned up regularly in hives affected by Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
Over the last three years, between 50% and 90% of commercial bee colonies in the US have been affected by CCD.
And from the same source:
Also open is the question of how the virus arrived in the US. One finger of suspicion points to Australia, from where the US began importing honeybees in 2004 – the very year that CCD appeared in US hives.
The researchers found IAPV in Australian bees, and they are now planning to go back through historical US samples to see if the Antipodean imports really were the first carriers.
If they were, the US might consider closing its borders to Australian bees.
The way the researchers determined that a virus was involved is also interesting. Since the honey bee genome has been ‘solved’ (completely mapped), they were able to assay the entire genetic contents of a hive and then remove the known components. What was left included some bacterial agents which are probably in symbiotic harmony with the bees, and various fungi and other items. By comparing a healthy hive’s genetic assay with one suffering from CCD, they were able to identify possible culprits – in this case, the IAPV.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Communion of Dreams is set in a post-pandemic Earth, where a viral agent was responsible for widespread death and sterility some 40 years prior to the time of the novel. One good model of exactly how that could happen is CCD with the honey bees, though that has occurred in the time since I first wrote the book.
Now, how does this all tie together? Well, only because the researchers looking into the honey bee problem had the tools of genetic mapping available to them were they able to understand what was (likely) going on. Something similar happens in Communion on two fronts – resolving the riddle of the orphan girl and understanding the threat of the new virus. But perhaps more importantly, there is the mystery of the alien artifact and its connection the the superconducting gel, which I describe as “more alive than not” – this gets to the very heart of the issue of understanding the true nature of the universe, and discarding our previous biases.
Oh, and lastly, I’m sure we’ll see something from Zimmer about the IAPV discovery. Why? Because one of his specialties is the nightmare-inducing world of parasites, and looking at the evolutionary struggle between hosts and diseases.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, Heinlein, Hugo Award, Jefferson Starship, Music, Robert A. Heinlein, Science, Science Fiction, Space
This weekend the annual Perseid meteor shower is at its height, I think Sunday night predicted for the best viewing. It’s enough of a big deal that news of it penetrates even into the mainstream press, one of the few times each year that most people may actually be inclined to look up in the sky.
I don’t talk about music much here. That’s mostly because I don’t get to listen to music very much these days – it interfers with listening to a monitor to see if my mother-in-law needs attending. But that hasn’t always been the case, and I actually have a fairly extensive collection of (mostly) rock music, going back to The Beatles, on LP, tape, and CD.
And it’s funny – for some reason whenever I think of the Persieds, I tend to think of the Jefferson Starship song “Have you seen the stars tonight?”, from their first album (as ‘Starship’) Blows Against The Empire. Here are the lyrics:
Have you seen the stars tonight?
Would you like to go up on A-deck and look at them with me?
Have you seen the stars tonight?
Would you like to go up for a stroll and keep me company?Did you know
We could go
We are free
Any place
You can think of
We can beHave you seen the stars tonight?
Have you looked at all of the galaxy of stars?
Simple (though the actual song is fairly lush in the way that only free-wheeling rock circa 1970 can be). And few people know it, but the whole concept album owes a lot to Robert Heinlein’s novel Methuselah’s Children, and was actually nominated for a Hugo Award.
Anyway, if you get a chance, look at the stars, and the Persieds, tonight.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 