Sgt Bales vs War

Recent information blows my PTSD theory. Sgt Bales wasn’t suffering the effects of multiple deployments. He re-up’d and saw the military as his calling. It sounds like a deliberate attack. I have a new theory. The only sane response to an irrational and life-threatening situation is to act in an equally irrational manner. U.S. soldiers are trained to fight with ‘discrimination’ and regard for civilian life. However, they’re constantly put into battle with an enemy that fights without such civility. The Taliban are known to place little value on the lives of civilians. The Afghan people live in fear of the Taliban, but the Taliban are there all the time and they know they’ll continue being there after we’re gone. They side with them out of necessity. As a result, U.S. soldiers are operating in a region “..riddled with mistrust and hostility.” In an effort to deprive Taliban fighters of cover, U.S. soldiers routinely bulldoze houses, orchards, and farms. This fuels more hostility. As a result, residents regularly assist the Taliban. They help plant IED’s and U.S. soldiers often find bomb-making material in their homes. The war in Afghanistan has put our troops in an un-winnable situation. I deplore the killing of innocent women and children (any killing for that matter) ..but the civilian population is harbouring and assisting the enemy and the Taliban have no problem getting their compliance out of the barrel of a gun. This is no doubt the case in the Panjwayi district where Sgt Bales and his squad were operating. Perhaps the only way Sgt Bales felt he could deliver a message of strength was to act with equal ruthlessness. It’s been seen before. During the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, orders were given to shoot civilians  “They're all V.C., now go and get them” [ link ]. Instead of prosecuting Sgt Bales, perhaps it’s the U.S. war in Afghanistan that should stand trial.

Sensory integration

This garden universe vibrates complete. Some we get a sound so sweet. Vibrations reach on up to become light, and then thru gamma, out of sight. Between the eyes and ears there lay, the sounds of color and the light of a sigh. -  Moody Blues 

Obama’s War on Pot

Photo courtesy of Coral Reefer [ link ]

In a shocking about-face, the administration has launched a government-wide crackdown on medical marijuana

Oaksterdam, a dispensary owned by legendary activist Richard Lee, was raided Monday morning by Federal DEA agents. Lee began using marijuana to ease his back pain after suffering a spinal injury at age 27. He and others like him have revolutionized the industry by using hydroponic techniques to grow marijuana safely, onsite and in compliance with state law. The Justice Department has been cracking down on California’s dispensaries and growers since October. Over the past year, the Obama administration has unleashed a multiagency crackdown on medical cannabis that goes far beyond anything undertaken in the past. The feds are busting growers who operate in full compliance with state laws, vowing to seize the property of anyone who dares to even rent to legal pot dispensaries, and threatening to imprison state employees responsible for regulating medical marijuana. It’s true that California has no shortage of illegal pot growers and the statute that allows for medical marijuana was poorly written. However, the state still has the right to pass laws and the power of jurisdiction. The Federal Government is overstepping it’s bounds and violating the sovereignty of the state when it repeals these laws and imposes it’s own jurisdiction.

Music never stops

“There is a road, no simple highway

Between the dawn and the dark of night

And if you go, no one may follow

That path is for your steps alone”

            Ripple by the Grateful Dead

        

The head of network services where I used to work had calendars from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s covering his wall with well over a thousand dates circled in red. Each one represented a Grateful Dead concert he had attended. On occasion, I would catch him leaning back and staring at them all glassy-eyed. He’d ask me to pick a date, any date ..and he could tell me not only what city they played, but how he managed to get there, who he was with and what songs the band played that night. You can verify the playlists online. We’re looking at a period of time spanning 3 decades. I have a hard time remembering what movie I saw at the theater last week.

Anti anxiety

The complaint I most frequently hear from former pot smokers of my generation (those who came-of-age during the 60’s and 70’s) ..is that smoking marijuana makes them feel nervous. Some describe it as so intense, it borders on paranoia. Consequently they quit and never came back. In the day, little was known about cultivating for the psychoactive effects of marijuana.

The times they are a’ changing. A new breed of cultivator has revolutionized the field. They can grow sophisticated varietals with a range of psychoactive properties. “The THC component is the same ..it is the mixture of other elements that play a vital role in changing the psychoactive effect.” Two decades ago, most marijuana smokers bought whatever their dealer had. It was illegal even for research purposes. Consequently nothing was known about marijuana other than its THC content.

One of these newly found elements is a compound called Cannabidoil or CBD. It’s responsible for the calming and pain relieving effects found in medicinal marijuana. Takes the buzz off THC so to speak. CBD is also helpful in treating a range of problems, including arthritis, the side effects of chemotherapy, asthma, sleep disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder [ link ]. CBD is measured in grams. Your local dispensary should carry varieties containing different amounts of CBD .. 0.35 grams being considered ‘good’.

21st century

Well, I dreamed I saw the knights in armor coming / Saying something about a queen / There were peasants singing and drummers drumming / And the archer split the tree / There was a fanfare blowing to the sun / That was floating on the breeze / Look at Mother Nature on the run / In the twenty first century

Photo of ~> [ Coral Reefer ]

Beauty of uncertainty

based on a study showing what happens when we discount the surprise value of unexpected events ~> [link]

House of Saud

When a modern-day “monarchy” commits the worst human rights violations on the planet, can we still call it a monarchy ..? Wouldn’t autocracy or totalitarian dictatorship be more appropriate ..? Saudi Arabia’s ruling family prohibits freedom of religion, speech and press. Beheadings and other barbaric punishments are part of their corrupt system of justice. Women are not even allowed to drive a car. Meanwhile, the House of Saud runs the world’s largest oil reserves like a personal bank account, occasionally tossing out billions to fight democratic reforms in the Middle East. Even the personal wealth of Osama bin Laden, which funded terrorist operations of al-Qaeda (including 9/11) ..was acquired through this kind of largesse from the House of Saud. Are these the people we want to sell billions of dollars worth of arms to? Of course we have no choice but to ignore the gravity of this political hypocrisy. With no coherent energy policy, our only option is to pretend these tyrants are our friends.

Wisdom of insecurity

In 1975, Baruch Fischoff identified a major obstacle to forming new memories ..ourselves. He found that people frequently underestimate how surprised they are when events don’t turn out the way they expect. He polled a group of students before and after the Watergate hearings. Respondents who felt Nixon would be exonerated (with say 80% confidence) .. overwhelmingly came back and said they weren’t surprised by the verdict (and remember being just over 50% confident). When people learn the outcome of events, they unconsciously go back and adjust the estimate for what they thought would happen. This has the net-effect of revising memory so that it feels as if they “..knew it all along”, which diminishes the surprise-value of information [link]. More recently, neuroscientist Moshe Bar says that surprise is what gives ordinary events the informative-value necessary for transfer to long-term memory [link]. What we retain are mostly the novel bits of information we pick up along the way. They go on to form a ‘pool of scenarios’, which we use to prepare for future events. So if we go around dismissing the surprise-value of information, we sabotage memory, lower our ability to deal with the unexpected ..and don’t learn as much from experience. My friend Audrey likes to say that we can prevent future memory loss by making a conscious effort to do something out of the ordinary everyday ..increase our exposure to what’s new ..or at least give ordinary events greater value than “..it's just the same old story.”

A stroke of insight

Or there and back again: Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few neuroscientists would wish for: she had a stroke and witnessed the boundaries, set by the left cerebral cortex of the brain ..disappear. She experienced the ‘enormous and expansive universe’ where we live through the parallel portals of the right cerebral cortex, which was unaffected by the stroke. She returns to tell an astonishing tale.

Priscilla Ahn

Superstitious behavior

In the rainforest you're eaten for adultery

Apparently the American public believes in superstitions that are no less primitive than those of natives living in the rainforest or suicide bombers of radical Islamic sects. Members of a Midwest Baptist church claim that U.S. service men are dying overseas “..in divine retribution for American decadence and tolerance of homosexuality.” Now, I don’t have a problem with the Supreme Court defending their right to free speech. What bothers me is when Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. goes on to imply that their beliefs represent those of American society. According to Roberts: “The content of Westboro’s signs plainly relates to broad issues of interest to society at large regarding the moral conduct of the United States and its citizens, and the fate of our nation.” In addition, he says their beliefs “reflect matters of public import” [link]. Now if I’m to believe what I’m hearing from the highest-ranking justice in the land, then Americans are indeed a superstitious group of people. “Thank God for IEDs ..Thank God for dead soldiers” .. (!?) Forget federal funding for schools. No amount of education in the world is going to counter that type of savage thinking.

Extraterrestrial adaptation

Robert Sapolsky

If an alien creature invaded earth by entering the brain of human beings, hijacking their nervous system and driving them to engage in high-risk ventures sure to lower their chances of survival .. you’d think some of us might notice something. Yet something disturbingly like this may be happening without notice. When mice get infected with toxoplasmosis, an alien bacterium, the toxoplasmum goes dormant inside the amygdala of their brain and reduces their fear of cats [link]. Cats eat the reckless mice and ingest the toxoplasmas where they wind up in the intestine mingling with others of their kind. Toxoplasmas reproduce sexually only in the gut of the cat, so suppressing the fear response in rats and mice is a sure way of gaining entrance into the cat intestine. Neuro-practitioners call this ‘adaptation by behavioral manipulation’ [link]. A parasite learns to manipulate host behaviors that enhance their own chances of survival. In other words, these alien bacteria learn to perform brain surgery in order to get rides to wild parties where they can exchange DNA and procreate!

Apparently these clever little creatures have found their way into people too. Nearly one third of all humans have dormant toxoplasmas sleeping inside their amygdala. Since people are pretty high up in the food chain ..the only real threat comes from themselves (or perhaps an unsuspecting bear or mountain lion). Chances are, infected individuals will start acting recklessly and wind up getting killed in a car accident involving excessive speed. So they only appear in the traffic section of the paper, or the actuarial tables of an insurance company. Otherwise, symptoms appear close enough to schizophrenia that they wind up in a psychiatric population and are never heard from again. I think I would call this a successful alien predation.

Smells like teen spirit

“High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.” – Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

When I hear someone in position of authority say “I’m going to rigorously enforce [this particular law] because, without laws ..we’d be a country of anarchy” – then I watch them go out and prosecute offenders in a manner that’s way out-of-proportion to the offense – I don’t believe they’re really acting out of fondness for the law. They’re acting out of aggression that is typical of teenagers climbing the social network in high school or adults climbing the hierarchy of power in politics.

Last year, LA Dist Atty Steve Cooley waged sudden war on marijuana dispensaries because they were accepting cash instead of trading in goods and services. Apparently the law didn’t spell out an exact currency and the term ‘co-op’ could be interpreted to mean a system of barter. Turns out he was planning to run for Attorney General of California.

Arizona Sen Russell Pearce and Kris Kobach co-sponsored Arizona SB 1070 giving police the authority of INS agents to detain Hispanics where the sole probable cause is “..looking illegal.” This certainly is a subjective cause, prone to the bias of a police officer with no training as a federal immigration officer. To me, it’s the same as detaining someone on suspicion of dealing drugs because their hair’s too long. Turns out both sponsors have political ambitions. Kris Kobach is running for Secretary of State in Kansas and Pearce plans to run for president of the Senate and someday hopes to get elected Sheriff of Maricopa County.

Last week Orange County Dist Atty Tony Rackauckas decided to file criminal conspiracy charges against a group of UCI students who protested a speech on campus last year. They face both six months in jail and, as felons, diminished prospects for the future over a nonviolent protest, which may have been rude, but certainly not criminal. I suspect that Rackauckas is also seeking higher office.

Cosmic Charlie

It is well known that the matter, making up the tissues of our body, is in a perpetual state of decay and replenishment. We are not the same cellular material we were the week before. What I want to know is what kind of ‘blueprint’ do these ‘replenishment cycles’ follow ..? What keeps me from dissolving into the atmosphere at the end of the week ..? It only makes sense that some sort of ‘cosmic memory’ exists to pass information from one replenishment cycle to the next. Because what I’ve been told, even the scaffolding gets demolished. While it may be incomprehensible to me, I refuse to dismiss it. Since I have no basis for it, I have to start somewhere familiar.

Embryonic journey: It is well known that the cells of our body already contain information about their destiny. Genetic material guides embryonic development from one generation to the next. Even this was a mystery until the discovery of ‘epigenetic memory’. The contents of epigenetic memory (epigenomes) are what persist in order to tell chromosomes how to express the characteristics of our ancestors. You erase epigenetic memory and you have ‘equipotentiality’ ..the ability start fresh and be whatever you want to be. Anyway, it wasn’t until we had a set of ‘seer stones’ that we could actually sense the presence of epigenetic memory (it resides in deep layers of DNA, at what are now called the sites of telemere and centromere). I hope someday we acquire a set of similar stones to penetrate the mystery of cosmic memory.

Free the airwaves

Contributed by the Smothers Brothers

anarchy dot com

The Internet is like an anarchist state. No one is in charge and everyone can contribute. That’s how it should be. It puts everyone in charge of what comes and goes by a democratic process of selection. What is of interest to the most rises in visibility and what is of interest to the fewest decreases in visibility. It’s still available but mostly to the interested ‘niche’. What has no niche, or is offensive, fades into obscurity and may vanish altogether. That’s how it should be. Since there’s an open-door policy for entry, the ‘gateway’ needs to reside at the point-of-retrieval. This has been the protocol for nearly every database system I’ve installed ..the successful ones anyway. The gatekeeper to the Internet has been the role of portals such as AOL and Yahoo, or search-engines like Google. The most successful being the one that allows the most clear and manageable handle on chaos. That would be Google I believe. They have an equitable and consistent method for delivering Internet content. They call it ‘PageRank’ and it allows viewers to determine what comes to the foreground and what recedes to the background of our collective Internet experience. Rankings are based on factors such as the amount of attention a site receives or the aggregate number of links or ‘signposts’ directing traffic there. It is a most democratic point-of-retrieval system, provided they stay away from paid-ranking practices. Now they’re turning their attention to making Internet services available over the greatest number of devices and locations with their Android operating system. This has made the selection process even more democratic. In addition, it has put the Internet in our back pocket. Browser-based touch-screen phones have created a virtual ‘wallet’ ..containing a marketplace with virtual ‘catalogs’, ‘order-takers’, ‘currency’, ‘transaction-handlers’ and ‘record-keepers’. The number of services they can deliver to the palm of your hand is virtually endless. I don’t see the role of Google diminishing anytime soon.

Cosmic zone

Dawn is breaking on the continent of Capella. Overhead, the star of Davriel is still visible in a purplish blue sky. A meteorite trail flashes by. Sallareä bows her head in homage to all she does not know. She’s unaware that, momentarily, what she does not know will be paying homage back. Flickering particles of crystal enter a sector of Sallareä’s narrative-space. Passing through the prisms of her senses, they arrive and get merged in the centers of perception. A message appears in the form of three-dimensional letters stretching from the ground to the heavens ..too high for her to make out what they say. In addition, they vanish and reappear each instant. This kind of apparition calls on her centers of continuity. Then, like constructing a Klimt from grains of sand ..an interpretation begins to form that is such a departure from conventional classification, she has to temporarily step outside herself. An entity that looks like a changing constellation of linked images begins to emerge ..unraveling faster than it can stay together as a singularity. Sallareä is surprised to learn that, whoever or whatever this presence may be, it seems OK with the circumstances of their existence and wants to know if they can join her narrative-space and play.

Coastal zone

Ok, the way I look at it ..we can continue fighting the tide or we can step back and come to grips with a changing coastline. Looks like we’ve chosen to bunker down and fight. I believe this kind of old-school mentality just leads to faster erosion, more polluted water and fewer homes we can claim as beachfront property. What we end up with is a barrier that’s in constant need of repair and beaches that sicken us. That’s what happens when you build out to the edge. Ask anyone who lives on Broad Beach in Malibu or on the bluffs in Santa Barbara. The beach has receded hundreds of feet since I moved here in the 1990’s. Ask any one who still surfs the river jetty in Newport. Respiratory ailments, skin rashes and diarrhea come with the territory. You might say it's nature's way of restoring balance. I agree with UC Santa Cruz Geologist Gary Griggs and the Pacific Institute. We gotta’ retreat. Move the fucking concrete and asphalt back a couple hundred yards and replace it with cobblestones and sand. Restore a wetland that once acted as a natural filter and did a much better job at keeping the sand on the beach. Or just sit back and watch the ocean reclaim its property. What we’ll be left with are beaches of upturned asphalt, concrete pillars, rusted-out rebar and other detritus of a civilization that, for centuries, crammed its most valuable homes and businesses to the edge of the ocean.

Receptivity

Senator
Russell Pearce

I have a theory. People who rate themselves as highly ‘consistent and uncompromising’ on issues are slower to adapt to the unexpected and less likely to learn from their mistakes. To put it bluntly, “I think inflexibility leads to arrested development” (take for example John Boehner’s “Hell, no!” anti-Obama strategy, or Senator Russell Pearce’s claim that all opposing views are “treasonous”). I talked to Dr. Thompson about my theory. Although he generally thinks theories are a dime a dozen, he knows I’ve been entertaining this one for a while now. Out of consideration, he says it merits looking into and suggests some ‘assessment tools’ I could use to measure ‘willingness to yield’ on issues. I didn’t think it would be hard getting people to admit to having an uncompromising nature and I have tests that measure how swiftly people handle unexpected events in a narrative. Now I’m interested in getting started and seeing what the literature turns up. Perhaps it’s already been done. I mean, you’d think it’d be a factor in Alzheimer’s or something. If nothing turns up, the good doctor says he’ll sign a research proposal and, who knows ..there might even be research money available. I’m not counting on it though. But in the political atmosphere we’re in .. there’s bound to be some interest in the subject.