Pondering life from slightly abaft

Often things seem so clear to us but we are wrong. Sometimes surprisingly so.

We gladly plop down a few bucks, occasionally many bucks, for lottery tickets and think there is a reasonable chance that we will win. But that chance is fleetingly slim, so much so as to fade into shimmering invisibility. A million to one. Ten million to one. Five hundred million to one. But a nearly sure thing, like a very long-term regular investment in a 401K retirement account, doesn’t appeal. A friend, the owner of a convenience store, relates anonymous accounts of customers who spend hundreds of dollars a month on the lottery. To them, that is their retirement plan. Hopes of hitting the big one.

We follow all sort of odd diets with mixed success and poor long-term results, because the experts’ recommendations (National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control, Harvard Health, and so on) just seem so quotidian and lack the snazzy social media seal of approval. We eschew carbohydrates without discriminating between high and low-quality carbs. We overload on meat protein because the typical American serving size is big enough to feed any three people. We consume enough sugar to sink a battleship and enough alcohol to refloat it. And then we sit on our generous behinds, persist in our physical idleness, and wonder why our weight remains stubbornly high. It’s not rocket science.

We wonder how Facebook can treat us, their customers, so shabbily. And while we glory in our belief that Facebook is free, we ignore the ancient dictum that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Which leads us eventually to the realization that we are not Facebook’s customers. We are its product, neatly catalogued and packaged and sold to advertisers and marketers and pollsters. The same is true of any “free” service such as Google or Twitter or Gmail or Instagram, to each of whom we are only a slick product.

And then there is the media, the cable and broadcast and print behemoths in which we invest our trust. The cracks begin to show when we see a live action reporter struggling against the seemingly gale-force winds of a hurricane, only to spot a couple of teenagers strolling nonchalantly by in the background. We begin to question, are there any other exaggerations or distortions? Slowly, we begin to understand that, here also, we are just a product being delivered to advertisers. And that the key objective of the media is not to inform, but to keep our eyes glued to the screen through the next commercial message. What chumps we are.

Speaking of chumps, we are barraged by a constant variety of telephone and mail and email scams. The attackers are ingenious and constantly changing and refining their approach. “This is the IRS. A recent audit has revealed that you owe $10,000 in additional taxes. If you do not pay immediately, your driver’s license will be suspended.” Or, “This is your grandson. I am in terrible trouble. Please don’t tell my parents. I need $5,000 immediately to be released from jail.”  And so on. These people are vicious sociopaths.

Is there anything we can do in defense?

You darn well betcha there is. The first thing is to become far more skeptical. Skeptical of huge payoffs. Skeptical of profit-making diet plans. Skeptical of free stuff. Skeptical of the media. Skeptical of demands for money. This doesn’t mean becoming hard-hearted, just more discerning and careful.

Next is to inform yourself. Numeracy is vital. Take an adult continuing education course in statistics and probability. And another one in finance. Become more aware of how the world works.

Widen your sources of information. Read several newspapers. Browse many websites. Watch many news channels. Expand your mind.

None of this is a guarantee. But if we all exerted a bit of extra effort, we would find ourselves more in control of our destinies, and more comfortable in our skins.

But all this aside, don’t forget to count your blessings. The beauty of an early sunrise. The joy of gamboling squirrels and chirping birds. The joy of blooming flowers.

Life is a balance. Live it empowered.

Science is in another golden age

It is a truly mind-boggling period to be alive. Every time we turn around, there is news of yet another unbelievable scientific achievement. While science has been said to have had several golden ages (as evinced by such as Da Vinci, Newton, Faraday, Curie, and Einstein), it is fair to say that we are currently in yet another one.

Here is only a small sampling of what is going on lately.

Genetic genealogy solves crimes

The analysis and understanding of human DNA has finally reached the point where old, cold cases are being busted wide open. Earlier this year, police in Washington state arrested William Earl Talbott for the 1987 murders of Jay Cook and Tanya Van Cuylenborg. And more famously, cops in California apprehended Joseph James DeAngelo as the prime suspect in the Golden State Killer murders.

Both arrests were based on a new technique called genetic genealogy, whereby the suspect’s DNA from the evidence files was used to locate his relatives using public genealogy databases. From that starting point, old fashioned police shoe leather was used to zero in on the subject. While there are some real privacy concerns to be managed, this technique promises to bring to justice a great number of heretofore unidentified serial rapists and murderers.

Robots reading your mind

MIT roboticists having been working on the man-machine interface and have made a remarkable breakthrough. Daniela Rus and her colleagues developed a system where a human controller, with electrodes worn on their head and forearm, are able to control the behavior of a robot by simply thinking their commands and flicking their wrists. This technique would be useful for able-bodied humans trying to control robots in noisy or dim environments, and also for patients with limited motor abilities, such as the recently deceased and greatly missed Stephen Hawking.

The current electrode headwear is clunky and expensive but, like all other technologies, would quickly become more sophisticated and cheaper with competition.

Fiber-optic cable seismology

In 1851, the first commercial undersea telegraph cable was laid across the English Channel from France to England. Since then, we have progressively improved the technologies involved and now there are over a million kilometers of fiber optic cables crisscrossing the world’s ocean floors.

Barbara Romanowicz of the University of California and her colleagues have proposed a method to locate under-ocean seismic activity using this network of cables. Light is injected into one end of a fiber cable and the output at the other end is analyzed. If the cable was shaken by seismic activity, the output light will be distorted. By comparing the inputs and outputs of several cables, the location and magnitude of the disturbance can be computed. Since most existing seismic stations are land-based, the technique would add a valuable dimension to the whole picture of seismic activity. This would be particularly useful in posting timely tsunami warnings.

Electronic chips in aerosol spray

If anything seems like science fiction, this is it. MIT chemical engineer Volodymyr Koman and his team have built microscopic electronic chips that can be sprayed into an environment to detect various chemicals or pollutants. Each tiny chip is light-powered and is analyzed by collecting them all up and exposing to electrodes to read out their settings. In the future, the chips may output light signals allowing them to be optically scanned. These tiny sniffers could be used to detect pollution, gas leaks, and other contaminants. Human medicine is also a possible application, with these tiny devices injected into the digestive tract or bloodstream. This is a practical application of the revolutionary field of nanotechnology.

Gut microbes relieve autism

Researchers investigating the causes of autism had theorized that digestive upsets were correlated with the condition. As a result, they suspected that relieving the digestive condition through microbiome intervention might mitigate the autism symptoms.

Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown, of Arizona State University, and her colleagues mounted a small study of 18 children with autism. They performed fecal transplants to boost the childrens’ microbiome, particularly adding the Prevotella bacteria, and found that their autism symptoms were reduced for up to two years. It’s still too soon to call this a cure, but it is certainly encouraging research.

This is just a smattering of what’s going on in the sciences. For instance, a recent experiment used CRISPR gene editing technology to cure muscular dystrophy in beagle puppies. This is enormously promising research.

There is no better time for young women and men to get into STEM studies. Science, math, biology, and physics will provide a red carpet into the enormously exciting and rewarding research of our future.

And, more importantly, you will be greatly improving the human condition. Thank you in advance, and God bless.