tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56703801622150367152024-03-26T23:36:26.436-07:00Visions of a Carbon Based Life FormRick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-4882680986977502762023-10-10T12:28:00.002-07:002023-10-17T12:50:39.645-07:00Gaza 2023 - How Did We Get Here?<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The recent Hamas attacks on Israel is the result of both short-term and long-term determinants, with no solutions in sight. The policies of the Netanyahu government have added insult to the injury of oppressive living conditions that reach back decades if not centuries.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gaza has never been self-governing and arguably has never been a cohesive ethnic or political entity. Part of the Ottoman Empire until 1918, it was then occupied by Britain for the next 30 years. When the UN recommended the partition of Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish states in November 1947, Israel accepted the plan, but the Arabs rejected it and launched a war of annihilation, which ended in their defeat. They came under Egyptian control from 1948 until June 1967, during which much of its population remained in refugee camps or similar conditions. perpetuating atrocious living conditions that fomented anger and violence, directed mainly at the most recent occupier, Israel. The wish for revenge among the population has fueled a renewed determination to eliminate the Jewish population entirely from the region.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The abandonment of the Palestinians has actually been a collective transgression, both in Gaza and in the West Bank. Why haven’t the nations (Egypt for Gaza and Jordan for the West Bank) of which they were a part before 1967 opened their doors to those in the territories who preferred not to be governed by Israel, instead of relegating them to impoverished refugee camps in a hostile environment? Has the hidden agenda been to leave them as a thorn in Israel’s side, even while ostensibly making peace?</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps a way out, now that Egypt and Jordan are no longer Israel’s sworn enemies, would be for those nations to revisit their commitments to their former citizens and to the establishment of lasting peace in the region. For the West Bank, that might mean Israel ceding the territory not to a Palestinian state committed to its destruction but to Jordan, its partner in peace, to take responsibility for securing the borders and ensuring Israel’s sovereignty over its own land. For Gaza, the solution may require more creativity, given its limited contiguity with Egypt and its location almost entirely within Israel’s boundaries.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Given the concurrent threat of climate change and rising seas, the viability of the Gaza Strip as a place to live might already have a limited future. Creating an alternative, welcoming homeland might provide the most humane solution for a struggling population.</span></p>Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-54378554821150007352023-07-29T12:08:00.001-07:002023-07-30T18:26:47.984-07:00Who is Protecting Children's Lives?<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While conservatives have done everything possible to guarantee the rights of fetuses to be born into this perilous world, liberals are dedicated to protecting the lives and welfare of sentient living children.</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By advocating for the rights of all children not to go hungry</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By advocating for the rights of all children to have access to medical care</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By advocating for the rights of all children to live in healthy environments free of toxins and pollution that would threaten their health and cognitive development</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By advocating for the rights of all children to be educated and reach their potential</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By opposing the proliferation of weapons of war on our streets and in our schools. Gun deaths are now the leading cause of childhood deaths, and gun suicides in the US are at an all time high.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By acknowledging the reality of human caused climate change and advocating for measures to mitigate it. Climate change not only threatens the future lives of children and future generations, it is already claiming countless lives today worldwide with natural disasters, heat waves, drought, famine, and imperiled water supplies.</span></p><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p></li></ul><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When we protect the lives of children and the disadvantaged and improve the environment for every human being and every species of life on the earth, who can that possibly hurt?</span></p><p><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></p>Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-2289203931445534472022-02-02T18:58:00.001-08:002022-02-02T18:58:35.619-08:00Renewable Energy Can Blow Inflation Away<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Aside from the crucial role of renewable energy sources in preventing climate change from making our planet uninhabitable, they also have considerable economic benefit. The current inflation crisis brings into focus the need for measures against inflation going forward. Renewables offer a powerful tool to accomplish this.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The causes of inflation are numerous. Not the least of these is energy costs. As the price of fossil fuels rises, the impact hits many areas of our economy. Direct energy costs are passed on to the consumer in the price of gasoline, the price of fuels for heating homes, and the price of electricity, each adding an inflation surcharge to each household’s monthly expenses. These added costs are already mitigated for households owning electric vehicles and those deriving their energy from renewables either directly, for example from rooftop solar panels, or indirectly, via utilities that use renewable energy sources.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The cost of fossil fuels, however, also contributes to the rising cost of consumer goods. Manufacturing goods requires enormous expenditures of energy. And transporting them from the point of manufacture through the various waypoints to final delivery consumes enormous amounts of fuel. Each step adds to the final cost of products.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Once the infrastructure to capture renewable energy is built, the cost of delivering energy becomes vanishingly small and remarkably stable. The episodic shortages, either because of naturally occurring events or the manipulation of supply by entities who control it, that have whipsawed oil prices until now would no longer occur in an economy based largely on renewable energy. Increasingly efficient energy storage systems would eventually meet seasonal demands. And the direct cost of energy to consumers would no longer threaten their security. While the price of goods would still fluctuate somewhat with supply and demand, the added effect of escalating fuel costs would no longer apply.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Climate change itself contributes to inflationary pressures through damaging effects upon crop production, livestock maintenance, forests, and other resources. The scarcity of these resources results in higher prices to consumers for everything from food to manufactured goods. And the destructive power of extreme weather events adds to scarcity and the demand for materials to repair the damage as well as an increased demand for fuels to heat or cool our homes.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Inflation is a political rallying cry that threatens to divide our nation further. But it should also be a wake-up call for those in power to unite in support of legislation designed to mitigate climate change by powering the future of our nation and the world with renewable energy.</span></span></p><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-43162124572526151042021-11-19T09:38:00.000-08:002021-11-19T09:38:27.304-08:00Where Have all the Patriots Gone?<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WWII posed a grave threat to America that was met by the greatest generation. Those Americans who did not go to war answered the call of their country to make sacrifices and pitch in to the effort to deter the foreign aggressors. They accepted rationing of goods and services, including food and fuel. Some left their jobs and professions to work in the factories that supported the troops. Most Americans rose to their patriotic duty.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><b id="docs-internal-guid-3b2bdea5-7fff-2994-bfcb-5a56f557e436" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have recently faced a more insidious and deadly threat: COVID-19. And again, Americans have been asked to make sacrifices: Get vaccinated and wear masks in public in order to deter the enemy and prevent its lethal effects from spreading. We’ve been urged to support the troops, in this case the frontline healthcare workers in harm’s way who have suffered many casualties. Many have risen to this duty, but a substantial minority have refused, resulting in a death toll nearly twice that of WWII and 140 times the toll of the 9/11 attacks, not to mention the countless left wounded with chronic disease.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Where have all the patriots gone? How would the greatest generation have responded to this threat? Do true patriots heed only the bugles of military conflict? Or, in our complex world, should patriotism mean working together to repel any threat to our fellow citizens?</span></p><p><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></p>Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-90716656212311138372021-06-30T12:13:00.000-07:002021-06-30T12:13:24.293-07:00Homo sapiens: Crafting Our Ecological Niche<p> <span style="background-color: #fefefe; color: #3a3a3a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic; white-space: pre-wrap;">All the laws of nature will bend and adapt themselves to the least motion of man.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-965fb16b-7fff-dd35-b1da-e5b4d563bb2c"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="background-color: #fefefe; color: #3a3a3a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Henry David Thoreau</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Conservation is caring enough about something other than yourself that you want to save it in abundance for someone you don’t know.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">J Drew Lanham</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As we consider the next stage of our life and of our giving, the framework for our decisions should be a vision for how the world of the future should look. The world of our descendants should be a world in which children aren’t afraid to grow up, a world of abundance that is sustainable, healthy, safe, and just, not only for people, but for every species with which we share the earth.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Greed for life, possessions, and comforts has dominated human culture until now and has cost the lives of countless other species, while threatening our very existence with climate change and the exhaustion of resources crucial to our survival. We have harvested or squandered most of the wildlife of the seas. We have driven many land species to extinction. The loss of diversity, including bees and other insects, threatens to render the earth sterile and incompatible with all life.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our quest for technological miracles proceeds willy nilly without sufficient consideration of the unintended consequences. Medical science is hot on the trail of the Holy Grail of radical life extension without considering the consequences. The longer we live, the greater the competition for ever scarcer resources. And the longer each of us lives, the greater our carbon footprint. Extending the lifespan for some can mean extreme deprivation for others and a sharper divide between the wealthy and the poor. And it could accelerate the exhaustion of the resources necessary for our species and every other species to survive.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What would my world of the future look like? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It would be a world of sharing our habitats and resources, including food, water, and shelter, with all human beings and with other species, even in the face of individual sacrifice.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It would be a world of preserving diversity. We are learning that a multitude of species is good for the health of the planet. And it stands to reason that diversity within our species is good for the health of humanity. We should create a world in which plants, animals, and humans can all flourish.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It would be a world in which we learn to understand the needs of other species and to communicate with them. We are not the only intelligent species on the planet and perhaps not the most intelligent. But for our opposable thumbs, we may never have become dominant. We must respect the mammals of the seas, including whales and dolphins, intelligent land species like elephants and their sense of community, and even some of the tinier, more alien seeming species like the octopus. Learning to understand their languages and their communities, as </span><a href="https://www.projectceti.org/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-decoration-skip: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Project CETI</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> seeks to do with sperm whales, would go a long way toward developing empathy with them and respect for their rights.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As homo sapiens, we should live up to the “wise” in our name and learn to craft an ecological niche for our species that respects our place in a diverse world and acknowledges the life cycle. We should protect our common resources and strive for equity both across species and within our own. We should be willing to sacrifice some of our individual desires in the interest of the common good and become better citizens of Planet Earth.</span></p></span>Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-76617099482056751902020-08-27T11:05:00.000-07:002020-08-27T11:05:27.908-07:00Move Protests to the Ballot Box<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> It's time for protests to move from the streets to the ballot box. While non-violent protests arise out of the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, in the current political climate a disturbing trend has developed. Overreaction of law enforcement with aggressive responses to peaceful protests has inflamed the process, resulting in escalation to more destructive activity. The underlying peaceful protests appear to be overshadowed by opportunists and other bad actors with conflicting motives, leading to a lack of clarity about the perpetrators of vandalism, looting, and other violence. Are these the actions of the protesters, of common criminals, or perhaps even of others who wish to cast the protesters in a negative light?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">This plays into the hands of Donald Trump and his supporters as they push an agenda based on "anarchy in the streets." It has led to justification of further escalation of law enforcement response, of the criminalization of protesters, peaceful or not, and talking points in campaign speeches and rallies. The perversion of events is exemplified by VP Pence's statement during his RNC speech spotlighting the murders during the Kenosha protest, while conveniently omitting that it was the murder of two protesters by a presumptive right wing extremist.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The most effective intervention to address violence against minorities in our nation would be a resounding defeat of Donald Trump in the upcoming election. Continuing protests in the street risk jeopardizing the chances of that victory. With only nine weeks left until the November 3 election, a moratorium on demonstrations should be declared. The time and energy spent on demonstrations would better be deployed in constructive activities to ensure the integrity of the election and prevent voter suppression. This could include volunteering to staff the polls in place of the many elderly poll workers who are at the greatest risk from COVID-19 and are likely to opt out of election duty to protect their health.</span><br /></p>Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-80687636538567927202020-06-14T14:12:00.010-07:002020-06-14T14:24:10.435-07:00Othering<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><font size="4">Hate isn’t about the need to suppress “bad apples.” Discrimination is too often justified on the basis of obnoxious behavior by a few members of a group. Hate and oppression is the result of “othering,” perceiving others as different from oneself in appearance, culture, or beliefs. Othering is the root of everything from genocide to religious persecution. It’s cultivated by despots in order to acquire and hold power. It’s embraced by individuals as a means of self-validation. When we “other,” we’re saying, “I’m good because you’re bad. I’m valuable because you’re not.”<br /><br />Discriminatory and violent policing of African Americans has been justified by some with the observation that black people commit more crimes. That they are more often arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated for crimes is at least as much a result of this perception as of an actual increase in crime rate. And any real increase in crime rate among this population is a direct outgrowth of desperate economic circumstances. Poor people may be driven to steal to feed their families. Rich people steal for greed or sport.<br /><br />Expelling Mexicans from our country has been justified by pointing out high profile crimes by immigrants or by naming high profile gangs. Their real offense, however, in the eyes of the haters is looking and sounding different. White males have committed many horrible crimes, including serial killings, domestic acts of terror, and many acts of sexual aggression. Heavily armed gangs of white males have created civil unrest that targets minorities with sometimes lethal results. White collar crime is a euphemism for stealing from others by gaming the system. Should we therefore propose to expel all white males in order to eliminate these threats?<br /><br />Rwanda is an object lesson in othering. In the early part of the 20th century, Belgian colonialists taught half the population of Rwanda to hate the other half. They began by defining the physical characteristics that they claimed distinguished Hutus from Tutsis and assigned official racial identities to every Rwandan. No matter that these distinctions were so arbitrary that even members of the same family were often assigned different racial identities. They then set up a power structure based on these distinctions that bred such resentment that it resulted in two genocides within half a century. Epithets, such as “cockroach,” were one of the tools with which Hutus were encouraged to despise their Tutsi neighbors. And when the last genocide was over, the veil of hate lifted somewhat, and many of the perpetrators were horrified to realize what they’d done to their former neighbors, friends, and even family members.<br /><br />Science fiction uses gruesome imagery to spotlight the threat of aliens from other worlds, a metaphor for the enduring othering pervading human culture. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card is a particularly poignant example in which the enemy is an insect-like race designated the “buggers” and presumed to be bent on our destruction. The title character grows up to realize that he’s been instrumental in the genocide of a noble race of creatures that were just trying to defend themselves from us. And we can expect that sentient AIs risk becoming the next underclass to be oppressed upon the assumption that they mean harm to carbon-based humans.<br /><br />Lest we go down the path of Rwanda and of Nazi Germany, we must call out othering for what it is and renounce it. It’s time we realized that we’re all more alike than different, right down to our genomes. It’s time to correct the inequities in circumstances and opportunities in our culture and the inequities in how we treat one another. It’s time to replace hate with compassion.</font></span></div>Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-60133366600173038032020-01-19T08:04:00.000-08:002020-01-21T19:20:17.692-08:00Arresting Aging: An Existential Threat<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: large;">Scientists are
closing in on the Holy Grail of aging research: the capacity to arrest aging
and extend the lifespan to hundreds of years. Recent genetic studies have
identified mutations in a pair of genes that humans share with roundworms, each
of which modestly extends the lifespan of the roundworm, but which work
synergistically to magnify the effect. Drugs are in the early stages of
development to alter the cellular pathways governed by these genes. If
successful, people could remain youthful and healthy for centuries, with
reduction or elimination of a host of age-related diseases, including heart
disease, cancer, and dementia. Among the benefits would be the capacity for
long distance space travel and the ability to accumulate vast knowledge with
extended lifelong learning.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: large;">But with noble
pursuits often come unintended consequences with dark implications. An early
effect could be a striking increase in the divide between the rich and the
poor. Such treatments are likely to be costly and, at least at the beginning,
available only to the wealthy. So added to differences in quality of life would
be a priceless difference in longevity. This raises both moral issues and the
likelihood of intensifying class warfare and social disorder.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: large;">Extending the
lifespan of even a fraction of the population would eventually lead to
unsustainable demands upon resources and the environment. Even with advances in
food technology, feeding everyone would eventually become impossible. The poor
would be the first to suffer, but eventually everyone would be at risk of
starvation. And as we continue to consume all manner of goods, the mountains of
waste we create will grow huge, even if we master the arts of recycling and
creating biodegradable products. We will increasingly risk polluting our waters
and food sources, impacting health in unforeseen ways that could introduce
terrible new chronic diseases and disabilities that could last as long as we
do.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: large;">Assuming that we
don’t all agree to stop reproducing, an outcome with its own dreadful
implications, the population will inevitably find ways to curb itself. One
obvious outcome would be a drastic increase in violent conflict, including
international warfare, civil wars, class wars, and genocide, perhaps inflicted
by the privileged upon the poor in order to retain the resources to sustain
their vastly extended lives. And if we fail to keep our numbers in control, the
earth will inevitably develop an immune response to fight our infestation,
perhaps in the form of more robust infectious diseases to which even the
superhuman among us would succumb.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: large;">Even if we succeed,
against all probability, in navigating the solutions to these problems, how
would we adapt to life without end? Would there be some point for most of us,
once we’ve run through our “bucket lists” to our satisfaction, that we would
decide that enough is enough? Endless life might not be all that we would
envision and could eventually become a burden that we would yearn to end. In
the prescient 1973 science fiction film “Soylent Green,” teeming humanity has
outgrown the limits of its resources, euthanasia has become the universal
prescription for ending lives, and recycling human bodies as food has become a
key strategy for preventing starvation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: large;">Our capacity for
innovation is increasing exponentially. Are we about to outsmart ourselves into
oblivion or will we learn to predict the consequences of our discoveries and
choose wisely what we pursue?</span></div>
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:"Cambria Math";
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:roman;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-unhide:no;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
line-height:115%;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;
mso-fareast-font-family:Arial;
mso-ansi-language:EN;}
.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
mso-default-props:yes;
font-size:11.0pt;
mso-ansi-font-size:11.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;
mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;
mso-fareast-font-family:Arial;
mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;
mso-ansi-language:EN;}
.MsoPapDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
line-height:115%;}
@page WordSection1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-page-numbers:1;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}
-->
</style>Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-91307581791594716102017-05-31T12:52:00.000-07:002017-05-31T12:52:57.218-07:00Creating a Deadly State of Mind<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 4.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Home grown killers with a diversity of motives have inflicted the overwhelming majority of casualties from mass attacks and terrorism over the last decade. A few have been radicalized by the influence of foreign entities. Others have been driven by mental illness. Some attacks were hate crimes against racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities. Still others were motivated by revenge or desperation. </span><a href="http://bit.ly/2rJIndT" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">US Mass Shootings 1982-2016</span></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 4.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 4.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Donald Trump has pledged to keep us safe by proposing increases in spending on the military and Homeland Security designed to protect us all from the Enemy at the Gate, while slashing funds to social programs.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 4.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 4.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The budget proposed by this administration threatens our security far more than any measures to stop the Enemy at the Gate protect it. Drastic reductions in access to health care, food, and housing for the most disadvantaged among us threaten to create a vast community of the desperate and will damage the health and development of a generation of children, who will be ill-equipped to rise from the poverty in which they are raised.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 4.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 4.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Desperate people do desperate things. How many will be driven to crime in order to survive and how many of those crimes will be violent? How many of us will die at the hands of the hungry? How many at the hands of the homeless or sick? How many will die at the hands of the disillusioned and enraged? And how many at the hands of the mentally ill who no longer have access to care that quiets the storm within?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 4.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 4.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Desperate people do desperate things and are drawn to desperate solutions. The hungry, homeless, and angry are most vulnerable to radicalization. They can be seduced by ideologies that appear to sympathize with their predicament and they have little to lose. Why not strike back at a society that seems to have forgotten them? How many of us will die at the hands of the radicalized poor? And how many at the hands of their children who grow up impoverished, uneducated, and even more desperate than their parents?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 4.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 4.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We are closing our borders and sending people back to war torn countries to suffer in squalor and chaos or to die. How many of those we turn back, who might have become loyal citizens, will become disillusioned, enraged, and radicalized. How many of us will die at the hands of the spurned and abandoned? And how many at the hands of their grieving and enraged friends and family who live among us?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 4.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-40d2ef97-600c-edf2-5c21-37a756517e10"></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 4.5pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When we deprive millions of our citizens of basic subsistence and close our borders to those fleeing war and chaos, how can we expect to be safe? How can we expect to be free? And how can we live with the shame of abandoning our needy neighbors in a nation that is supposed to be devoted to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...for all?</span></div>
Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-13508405891186717372016-09-13T17:18:00.000-07:002016-09-13T17:18:32.127-07:00The Other Inheritance Tax<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.02in;">
Repealing the
estate tax has long been a dream of Republican lawmakers. This is a
40% tax on all assets exceeding $5.45 Million for an individual
decedent or twice that exemption for a couple. Those who want to
repeal it believe that our descendants are all entitled to the
fruits of our labor and to live at least as well as their forebears.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.02in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.02in;">
I share the ideal
that our descendants should enjoy a quality of life at least as good
as ours, which makes it crucial to abolish the other inheritance tax:
the quality of life taxed to future generations for every gallon of
fossil fuel burned.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.02in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.02in;">
Global warming as
a consequence of human activity has become an incontrovertible fact
of science. The cost to future generations is incalculable. Effects
include a rapidly increasing frequency of severe storms, floods,
droughts, and other natural disasters, the accelerating loss of the
polar ice caps accompanied by rising seas, acidification of the
oceans with an accompanying decimation of marine biodiversity, and
extinctions of species leading to a staggering loss of terrestrial
biodiversity. A huge unanswerable question is whether or not we would
be one of the surviving species.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.02in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.02in;">
Sweeping changes
to the landscape of our planet will likely include coastal flooding
and the reshaping of the boundaries of our land masses as well as
regional climate changes that will threaten the food and water
supplies of whole populations, leading to mass migrations and a
refugee crisis of unprecedented proportions. Aside from the inherent
suffering of these populations, such conditions become breeding
grounds for violent conflict and recruitment to radical causes.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.02in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.02in;">
Since the process
of global warming feeds itself, much has been said of the “tipping
point,” the moment in time at which the process becomes
irreversible and life on earth is eventually doomed. Some believe
that we have already crossed it. Others suggest that it is close at
hand. It is likely, in any case, that every year in which we
contribute to the problem matters. Even the next four years could
determine whether or not we step off the edge of the cliff.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.02in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.51in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.02in;">
It is time for
those we elect to public office to put aside their differences and
address the big problems that will shape the world to come. Ignoring
or denying these problems gambles the survival of our species.
Putting off the solutions in the interest of short-term gains may
deprive future generations of a chance to live. And that’s the
ultimate pro-life position.</div>
Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-58378666918284060312016-06-13T15:35:00.001-07:002016-06-13T15:35:40.159-07:00Where Does Identity Reside?<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Having spent recent months crafting a sequel to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Methuselarity Transformation</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, I have felt suspended between the reality of my everyday life and relationships and the lives of the characters in my fantasy world. Between stints at the laptop turning out words that portray the experience of my characters, I’ve found myself drawn inside their heads and points of view, experiencing their crises and working through their solutions to the conflicts they face as their stories unfold. In this way, my characters teach me what it’s like to be them, sometimes providing unexpected lessons about the nature of experience, of consciousness, and of identity.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b id="docs-internal-guid-ae126981-4be1-91c7-0ee1-3eb2146040ff" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Brink of Life</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a woman suddenly plunges into consciousness in the midst of what seems like someone else’s life, sending her on a quest to discover who she is and to craft an identity that makes sense within the context of her present circumstances. One of the lessons that emerged as I watched her life unfold through her eyes was that consciousness is more than a state of mind. It’s a state of being defined not only by the brain, but by the characteristics of the body that is the interface for perceiving the world and for acting upon it. And each of our bodies comprises a complex array of elements that color the way we understand our surroundings and ourselves.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just a few of the ways our bodies are hardwired include the sensitivity of tuning of each of our senses (or even whether those senses are working at all), potential for muscle development and coordination, sexual preference and identification, our ability to taste salty or bitter things, our thresholds for pain and for pleasurable reward, and even the limits of our capacity to experience joy. Fold in a lifetime of sensorimotor experience within these bodies to round out the complexity of how we perceive our identities. Our adaptation to aging, to disease, and to recovery from disease further illustrates the fluid relationship between the body and the self.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Futuristic concepts of immortality have included models in which consciousness is uploaded to computers (Transcendence), embodied within digital avatars (The Matrix), or even linked to other physical entities (either biological or artificial) capable of interacting with the physical world (Avatar). These conceptions assume a model of consciousness and identity as something abstractly residing within the brain, apart from their physical incarnation. Perhaps our intelligence is separable from our bodies, but what would it take to maintain a persistent sense of self rather than just to create an authentic looking copy?</span></div>
Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-90276966664882282192016-02-19T17:45:00.001-08:002016-02-19T19:03:11.797-08:00Sex on the Reef<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When some people think of coral, they imagine chunks of rock resembling the human brain or delicately branching structures of exquisite detail and fragility. For others, coral brings to mind colorful jewelry, strung as beads of white and pink. These are all the calcified secretions of a vibrant community of microscopic animals that make their homes upon the structures that they create, animals that reproduce sexually in their struggle to survive. And struggle they must, our tiny heroes, because only one out of many thousands of fertilized eggs survives and may take hundreds of years to grow as big as the specimens that dazzle in a seaside souvenir shop.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-4ff1e9c2-fc44-f624-591a-22ef97c6d103" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the best of circumstances, our reefs teem with life, supported by a luminous community of coral species responsible for both creating the structural backbone of the reef and mediating the cycle of life within it. Cyanobacteria living symbiotically with the corals extract nitrogen from seawater and convert it to a form that is nutritive to plants, and in turn moves up the food chain of the animal population.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While coral reefs cover less than 0.1% of the ocean floor, they support astounding biodiversity that accounts for at least a quarter of all marine species, including at least 4000 species of fish and possibly millions of distinct species ranging from microorganisms and plants to crustaceans and sponges. A quarter of all fish harvested for human consumption come from reef environments. Aside from their crucial contribution to our food source, reefs provide a physical barrier that protects coastlines from the erosive effects of waves and the destructive force of storms, buffering coastal communities against the threats posed by rising sea levels and increasingly turbulent weather. Corals have also been a source of naturally occurring medicinal compounds.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These aquatic colonies and the reefs that support them have come under pressure that now threatens their existence and ultimately ours. Much of this pressure arises from human activity, including coastal development, dredging, pollution, fishing, mining for building materials and...yes...souvenirs, oil spills, even sunscreen! And the effects of manmade global warming include rising temperatures and acidification, both of which cause coral bleaching, reducing reefs to lifeless stone. Even without the need to adapt to drastically changing conditions, the slow growth of these organisms makes it impossible for them to replenish themselves without help. And marine scientists have spent years trying to raise corals with which to reseed reefs.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">* * *</span></div>
</div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Enter Mote Tropical Research Laboratory in the Florida Keys and Dr. David Vaughan, a weathered looking biologist with a bushy rust and salt beard that frames an animated smile underscoring his enthusiasm for educating visitors about corals. A pivotal moment of serendipity combined with mindful observation and inspiration led to a discovery that has accelerated the rate of coral growth in the laboratory by orders of magnitude. While corals tend to repair themselves by growing faster when broken, they grow many times faster when fractured into tiny fragments. Dr. Vaughan first observed this effect as the result of a laboratory accident and has since utilized it as a cultivating technique that has increased new colonies from tens to many thousands and is expected within the next several years to create hundreds of thousands of colonies that will be planted in the wild and are expected to rebuild reefs in a fraction of the time that nature once required.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even more exciting is the assist that Dr. Vaughan and his team is giving to natural selection. By creating microenvironments with gradations of both pH and temperature, they have managed to simulate a range of possible conditions that might occur decades from now and select coral cultures best adapted to the most stressful conditions that we can predict, while still preserving biodiversity.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All life as we know it would be threatened by the extinction of the corals. While we may worry more about international conflict and terrorism as threats to our existence, the coral nurseries at Mote may well be ground zero for the survival of our species.</span></div>
<br />Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-14206655206523253602016-02-03T20:25:00.001-08:002016-02-03T20:25:10.719-08:00Life Overtakes Art<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the challenges of writing science fiction is to imagine future technology that has a plausible scientific foundation but is still likely to be sufficiently ahead of its time to be truly futuristic. So it is simultaneously validating and discouraging when present day technological advances rapidly eclipse fictional scenarios set decades in the future.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-b23fbfe4-aa81-aead-4c6e-5968e3bbbb96" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Methuselarity Transformation</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, I envisioned a process that could arrest the aging process at the cellular level and make young adults virtually immortal. Meanwhile, scientists seem to be closing in on ways not only to arrest aging, but to reverse it.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When the circulations of young and aged mice were linked, the elderly mice became more youthful in a number of meaningful ways, including rejuvenation of both heart and skeletal muscle and an improved sense of smell suggesting some reversal of brain aging. These changes apparently derived from something in the younger animals’ blood that neutralized the effects of aging. A team at Harvard subsequently identified a protein, GDF11, isolated from the blood of young animals that appears in decreasing concentrations with age and seems to mediate anti-aging effects. This appears the closest mankind has come so far to discovering a fountain of youth...at least for mice.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While it has been painfully found in the quest for a cure for Alzheimer’s Disease that agents that work in mice don’t easily translate to effective drugs for humans, other basic science advances have potentially shortened the time it will take to determine whether such cures will prove helpful in humans. Induced pluripotent stem cells, derived from people with various disease states, can act as substrates for testing chemicals on disease processes outside the body. This same strategy might well prove useful in testing the effects of GDF11 or similar molecules on human tissue as a stepping stone to human clinical trials.</span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A separate line of investigation is pursuing the effects of CRISPR, a new technology for precisely editing genes as well as regulating gene activity. This could soon provide a way to turn on specific genes that may have a role in extending longevity. It may even become possible in the very near future to harvest skin cells from patients, induce the stem cell state, edit their genomes and then supply the modified cells to malfunctioning organs to restore their youthful states. And the next decade may even bring a real possibility of rolling back aging altogether and reversing the effects of age-related diseases.</span></div>
Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-44861718793899517292015-06-12T12:13:00.000-07:002015-06-12T12:13:18.002-07:00Conservation at a Turtle's Pace<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the last several decades, conservationists on Florida’s coasts have been protecting sea turtle nests by patrolling the beaches in the early morning during nesting season, finding new nests, and marking their locations to prevent people from trampling them. Rules have emerged to extinguish beachside lights at night during nesting season to prevent disorienting the turtles and later the hatchlings as they make their way back to the sea. Volunteers are on hand during the night to assist wayward hatchlings in finding their way to the water. This has been an exercise in faith, since the time from hatching to maturity and reproduction is around 30 years, depending upon species.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-6e0dbe8e-e92e-5206-1b78-5eef372c403a" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the Sarasota area, the Mote Marine Laboratory has overseen this effort for the past 30 years. As I walked the beach this morning on Longboat Key, I encountered excited volunteers, working feverishly to mark an unprecedented number of new nests. This has been a banner year for sea turtle nesting here. They explained to me that the sharp increase in nesting might be the proof of concept from the earliest days of the program. Sea turtles usually return to the beaches on which they hatched to lay their eggs. Many of this year’s adults may have been protected in the nest and assisted back to the sea by caring hands 30 years ago. One has to wonder who those volunteers were way back then and what paths their lives have taken in the intervening years. Could they have envisioned the return of their charges so long in the future? How many of those still alive think about their mission today?</span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is how conservation works. Small acts can have large effects in a distant future. The value of measures taken today cannot be adequately assessed in a year or two or even a decade, but must be viewed through a lens that may span half a century or more. And similarly, the cost of measures foregone must be viewed through a similar lens. Protecting species or the environment itself is an act of faith and an act of reverence for the earth. Our survival depends upon people with such vision.</span></div>
Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-56346271470031750302014-09-29T14:36:00.000-07:002014-09-29T14:36:47.738-07:00We Have Met the Alien and He Is Us<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Methuselarity Transformation</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, I envision a religion based upon messages embedded in our genetic code by an alien, and presumably long extinct, civilization. This new twist on Intelligent Design neither invokes an omniscient or eternal designer nor requires evolution to be invalid. It only assumes that some piece of our genetic code has been deliberately written at some stage of its evolution and propagated forward unchanged.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-e182377a-c350-c28b-d405-bdefd57bac3d" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Genomic SETI, the search for intelligent messages within our genetic code, has been discussed in an earlier post: </span><a href="http://bit.ly/X0iAeA" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://bit.ly/X0iAeA</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. By looking for linguistic patterns within segments of our DNA that don’t clearly code for function, scientists have made a case that these sequences are not only non-random, but bear the signature of an intelligent entity.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How advanced would a civilization have to be in order to be able to tinker with the genome and embed messages within it? In the process of decoding the genome, we have begun to reverse engineer many of the processes that build and modify it, and have come to the point that we can begin to edit DNA </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;">precisely </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in order to eliminate functions that are detrimental to the organism and introduce functions and qualities that enhance its ability to survive and to thrive. And we are already capable of constructing strands of DNA from scratch out of standardized building blocks (</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioBrick" style="line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioBrick</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) in order to make biologically based digital components or to modify nature.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The ability to use DNA as a communication medium is an almost trivial outgrowth of this technology. As early as 2005, researchers developed an alphabet based upon triplets of DNA nucleotides and encoded the first verse of a Christmas poem into the genome of a strain of the bacterium E. coli. As we become increasingly sophisticated in our ability not only to compose sequences of DNA, but also to stabilize selected sequences over many generations as organisms mutate and propagate, it is entirely conceivable that this medium will become the most enduring and practical means of recording the history of our civilization across the ages, embedded within the biology of a future world for an intelligent species to decode once it has sufficiently evolved.</span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why then would it be less plausible that an ancient civilization has endeavored to tell its story in this manner than that ours will strive to do so in order to preserve our history for eternity? To paraphrase Walt Kelly’s venerable character Pogo (</span><a href="http://bit.ly/1CBA8wT" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://bit.ly/1CBA8wT</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">): we have met the alien and he is us.</span></div>
Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-65664136549924595082014-09-26T09:37:00.000-07:002014-09-26T09:37:36.031-07:00Wooden Puppets and Four Dollar Words<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While serious fiction writing began for me later in life, my love of words has roots in early childhood. My father, who was a young adult during the Great Depression, was both frugal and articulate. Conversations with him were liberally sprinkled with four dollar words, for none of which he ever paid more than a buck ninety eight. His epistles (a word he would definitely have favored) to his children and grandchildren have become treasured remembrances of him and his distinctive way of communicating.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-73a31b36-b2cd-b745-53fb-6e48ead8b22b" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A couple of exceptionally talented creative writing teachers in high school made writing fun, Dr. Campbell in the 10th grade and Miss (not Ms!) Busse in the 11th. (We were never privy to our teachers’ given names, even in yearbooks.) Early in the year, Dr. Campbell asked us to rewrite a fairy tale in the style of a favorite author. Here is what I wrote:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">PINOCCHIO</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As it may have been told by Robert Penn Warren</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After my fight with Eve Stevens, I went fishing. I drove home and got my permit and gathered my tackle and tossed my rod and reel into the trunk and sped off. For fishing is where you go when you’ve assassinated the President or stolen a candy bar or fought with Eve Stevens. You go to fish for bass or trout or pickerel. It’s where you go to catch a perch. It’s where you go to catch a boot or a cold. And sometimes, you pull up the line, and there, all shriveled up in the hot sun, tiny and pathetic, curled into a little ball, lies a truth. You don’t see it at first. But then, there it is with the point of the glittering stainless steel hook sticking out the top. I went fishing.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I caught a truth.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For it was at the Cambridge Reservoir that I first learned the truth about Pinocchio. You can be just sitting there fishing. You’re waiting for a tug on the line and suddenly you look up and there above you is a tree. I looked up and saw a tree. And you think, “That’s an oak tree. Pinocchio was once an oak tree. Maybe that’s Pinocchio.” It’s a warm, secure feeling to be alone and suddenly realize that you have company and that company is a tree and that tree is like a person and it is not a person. And then the tree is Pinocchio, not the flesh and blood Pinocchio, not even Pinocchio the living puppet, but the essence of Pinocchio, the wooden puppet, the real Pinocchio. The living Pinocchios were not the real Pinocchios. They were something else. They were but corruptions of the Carven Switch. The second Pinocchio, the wooden boy, the living puppet, was not the same as the oaken figure. It told a lie and its nose grew. But the nose grew from the lie and the lie from Pinocchio. And each piece of nose was but the incarnation of a lie and became an outgrowth of the Big Switch. The lie became the nose and the nose took root in the body and circulated its poisons throughout the fibers and the puppet became the lie and was no longer Pinocchio, no longer just a Carven Switch.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Take a puppet and give it life and make it into a living lie. Then give it flesh and a heart and a pair of kidneys and you have even a bigger lie. Give it life so the skin sweats and the eyes weep and the gall bladder secretes its resinous fluids. You know that all you have is still just a lie incarnate. The Kindly Old Toymaker thought he’d created himself a son. You want to tell him that this is not a son, but only a lie incarnate evolved from a Big Switch. Then you stop. You, too, are just flesh and blood. No more real, less real perhaps, than Pinocchio, for he was once a Big Switch and you, from the day of your birth, are a lie incarnate. You can no longer point to anything and say, “That is a lie.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So you look up at the tree and now you know the truth about Pinocchio and about the Kindly Old Toymaker and about the Big Switch. And you feel secure in the knowledge. And you look around and see all those people who are really just lies incarnate. And you pity them because they don’t know about Pinocchio.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I knew. I had gone fishing.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(circa 1962)</span></div>
Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-14109531370126509732014-09-11T10:49:00.000-07:002014-09-11T10:49:50.683-07:00Immortality and the future of OCD<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
What business does a psychiatrist have
writing science fiction? Creating future worlds provides an
opportunity to explore how timeless psychological conflicts might
unfold within novel circumstances. While imagining the future draws
on my background in the physical and biological sciences, discovering
how changes in our surroundings might affect our emotions,
idiosyncrasies and relationships intrigues me even more as a social
scientist.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Ray Mettler, one of my protagonists, is
a deeply flawed man who struggles with crippling compulsions and
obsessions, not the least of which is his overwhelming fear of dying.
The extreme measures he takes to prevent death stymie his capacity to
experience pleasure or to live a meaningful life.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Early in <i><b>The Methuselarity
Transformation</b></i>, Ray is offered an extraordinary opportunity
to continue to live long after his body has died. In a single stroke,
his prospect of oblivion vanishes forever. How might he change once
the driving force behind his most prominent behaviors no longer
exists? Will those behaviors vanish or will their hold upon him, and
the demons from his past that lie beneath them, remain too strong to
resist?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Our ability to thrive is intricately
entwined with our quest for connectedness with others as well as our
capacity to be alone. Our shared mortality can be both a powerful
force that binds us together and the source of crushing loneliness.
Imagine then how Ray’s newfound immortality might affect his
relationships with those in his life who are still mortal and whom he
will eventually leave behind.</div>
Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-56562219416701679272014-08-21T08:54:00.000-07:002014-08-21T08:54:12.462-07:00Is Growing Up Just for People?<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Babies are designed to learn, according to Alison Gopnik of UC Berkeley. They are pint-sized scientists, taking in the unfiltered data in their environment and using it to learn how things work, including everything from the physical objects in their world to the emotional processes of other human beings. They are engineers as well as social scientists, dealing intuitively in probabilities well before developing any formal understanding of mathematics. And at the heart of their laboratory is play. Their days are filled with experiments, new ideas and developing skills, while the adults in their world take care of their survival needs. Our extended period of dependency at the dawn of our lives prepares us ideally for the intellectual challenges that lie ahead. Those animals that reach maturity early and are able to fend for themselves while still juveniles develop narrower repertoires of behavior and more limited ability to adapt to novel circumstances.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-0d47be46-f941-e057-0f80-6abfc26fb1cf" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So why should we expect to program digital entities with fully formed capabilities that rival ours? Creating entities that can learn from experience and are designed to seek novelty, much like the human infant, would seem a more natural way to invest our machines with the potential to become like us. And those complex functions that most define us as human, the abilities to read the emotions of others and respond appropriately to them and to express emotions in ways that stir empathic responses in others, would best be learned by experiencing wide-ranging interactions with patterns of human emotion.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the recent Sci-fi movie </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Her</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Theodore, played by Joaquin Phoenix, finds himself increasingly enthralled with his digital devices’ operating system Samantha, played by Scarlett Johansson. At least in the beginning, she is completely dependent upon him to share with her his world. Samantha grows and develops through her interactions with Theodore, becoming more and more human in her responses as their relationship develops. Through machine learning, her originally programmed capabilities expand as she integrates the data of interpersonal experience. The film leaves us pondering the limits of what machines can learn and whether they will eventually approximate us in their sophistication or perhaps leave us intellectually, emotionally, and morally in the dust.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In our rapidly evolving technological world, life overtakes art with increasing frequency. Viv Labs, a San Jose startup, is developing Viv, the next generation of personal digital assistant. Like Samantha, Viv will learn from experience to understand the nuances of human communication and will be able not only to respond to complex commands by accurately meeting the verbally expressed needs of the user, but eventually also to anticipate needs and desires from subtle clues and context.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unlike Samantha, however, who grows through her interactions with Theodore, Viv will learn and grow through interactions with hundreds of millions of Theodores. While Samantha presumably resided in her infancy on Theodore’s devices, Viv, and her various rivals, will live in the cloud and the world will be her playground. Her program will develop by active learning through her cumulative and simultaneous interactions with legions of users. An omniscient entity interacting simultaneously with the collective consciousness of humanity and living somewhere in the ether conjures images of the supernatural. But the cloud is still just a network of servers and Viv’s potential will be limited by the capacity of those servers, an enormous capacity nonetheless that can be expected to increase exponentially over time. Can the singularity be far?</span></div>
<br />Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-43287366879814468182014-08-14T16:05:00.000-07:002014-08-14T16:05:22.019-07:00Will Reading Become Obsolete?<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the post-singularity world of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Methuselarity Transformation</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, implantable MELD chips will be able to integrate seamlessly all the knowledge in the Universal Data Base with each person’s consciousness. In such a future world, we could imagine that our personal databases will update instantly in the background as new information is added to the UDB.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-5d01ca27-d6bf-4fb8-8302-47ef1caf163c" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So what will be the future of reading if the content of whole libraries can be consumed in an instant? Will the information we absorb include form as well as content? Will we have an instant appreciation of how the content is composed or of its emotional tone? And will the unending stream of information create the ultimate spoiler: stories with simultaneously appearing beginnings, middles, and endings? Our lost ability to savor mystery and suspense could become an unintended consequence of satisfying our insatiable thirst for knowledge.</span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 2014, we can still enjoy books “the old-fashioned way,” by downloading them on our Kindles, tablets, and phones (or by curling up with a good stack of paper for those so inclined). You will have the opportunity August 15 - 17 to download the Kindle version of </span><a href="http://amzn.to/1oxIqBQ" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Methuselarity Transformation</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for FREE, explore the future of reading among other quandaries we will face in a not so distant future, and immerse yourself in a suspenseful tale.</span></div>
Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-63136254945268076092014-08-12T18:28:00.000-07:002014-08-12T18:28:41.354-07:00Dying is Forever<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Avoiding death would seem to be among the most basic of human instincts. Many young adults are eagerly anticipating that the technological Singularity predicted by Ray Kurzweil will bring with it the promise of extraordinary life extension, perhaps even immortality. Immortality has piqued people’s imaginations through the ages and few would deny having had at least passing fantasies of living forever.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-a3286d44-cce9-5dec-d01b-41c20ef2882e" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So how can we reconcile the drive to live with the compelling intensity with which people sometimes experience the wish to die, even people who are extraordinarily talented and accomplished like Robin Williams? Life everlasting versus everlasting oblivion. How could anyone ever choose the latter?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While there may well be circumstances in which suffering is truly both intolerable and interminable without any reasonable hope of relief, most suffering is temporary and can be survived and most suicide is associated with a profoundly distorted perception of hopelessness, a prominent symptom of depression.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Depression, a brain disorder, can be unipolar, with episodes of plummeting mood, or bipolar, in which episodes of depressed mood and episodes of euphoric mood, accompanied by often frenetic activity and sleeplessness, both occur. In depression, in addition to the disturbance of mood, disturbances of sleep, appetite, and energy level are common, along with a distorted perception of oneself and the world, with exaggerated feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, worthlessness, and guilt, sometimes of delusional severity.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A less discussed, but more striking aspect of suicide, however, is its intensely solitary nature. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Affiliation is a powerful human drive. We strive to find others to love and to love us. We feel close bonds with our parents, children, and siblings, often even if they have betrayed us. The success of social networking is a testimony to our need for others in our lives. Our social support systems are instrumental in our capacity to resolve personal crises.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Suicide is the ultimate renouncement of relatedness. It is a solitary act, excluding others from participating in the final moments of life. Suicidal people often detach themselves deliberately and systematically from every meaningful relationship in the minutes, hours, or days before ending their lives, slipping quietly into their private night. Suicide abandons survivors, who are left to wonder what they could have done differently to prevent their loved ones from dying tragically.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I believe that aloneness is the ultimate depressive delusion that leads people to spurn life. An emotional state devoid of affiliation is lacking something essentially human that sustains us through the hardest times. It is as much a part of the brain disorder of depression as the inability to sleep or eat. And as we witness the outpouring of grief and love in the wake of Robin Williams’ tragic death, his blindness to the love that surrounded him astounds us all.</span></div>
<br />Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-2516631643098191962014-08-11T09:18:00.000-07:002014-08-11T09:18:17.892-07:00The Race for Immortality: Plants Win!<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ray Mettler, one of my protagonists in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Methuselarity Transformation</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, genetically engineered a grass designed to grow so slowly that it required scant water and nutrients and almost no maintenance. HibernaTurf was intended to mitigate the growing worldwide water shortage while preserving swaths of easy to maintain green space.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-fd42b16c-c5da-2c3a-22be-e6d7d2222618" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">His research led him to the saguaro cactus, a model of indolent growth, from which he harvested the genetic sequences responsible for its sluggish metabolism. While his project was a resounding success, winning him fame and fortune, its unintended consequences would bring the environment to the edge of catastrophe and cast a shadow over Ray’s life forever.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">According the September 2014 issue of Discover Magazine, Ray...and I...missed the boat. The inertia of the saguaro pales before the infinitesimal growth of the moss campion. This plant has tiny leaves so tight to the ground that it defies grazing. And left alone, it seems capable of living indefinitely without signs of natural senescence. Ray might have saved himself a lot of trouble by propagating this naturally occurring analog to HibernaTurf instead of creating a brand new species. The Discover article speculates further that some organisms, perhaps including bristlecone pines that live for millennia, may undergo “negative senescence,” becoming increasingly impervious to deterioration and death as they age.</span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So what will be the next stage in the human quest for immortality? Will we find a way to stop aging at the cellular level, or will we learn how to slow our metabolism to a snail’s pace and to exist on whiffs of nutrients and thimblefuls of water? And will an extended lifespan escalate our deadly struggle to control diminishing land and resources or lead us to value life more and choose to enhance one another’s well-being and survival?</span></div>
Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-22757054854212097082014-08-05T18:52:00.002-07:002014-08-05T18:52:47.642-07:00Genomic SETI - Intelligent Design for Nerds<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Building future worlds for science fiction requires flights of imagination tempered by knowledge about how the world really works. The optimal result is a technological world that is both dazzlingly fantastic and scientifically plausible. The Internet, of course, provides considerable opportunity to validate concepts as well as to determine their novelty.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-27be0e77-a901-7c52-9a9c-d5facb94d537" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While writing </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Methuselarity Transformation</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, I enjoyed discovering some of the stunning advances that the near future might bring. One such example, vacuum tube transport, came to me one day while driving up to the teller at my bank. As I watched my credentials whoosh through the transparent tubes, I wondered “Why can’t everything travel this way...even people?” A quick Google search found that the idea was neither outrageous nor novel. A company had already been formed based upon this technology that proposed to build out a nationwide transportation network: </span><a href="http://www.et3.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://www.et3.com/</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> And a year after I wrote the technology into my manuscript, Elon Musk embraced it, propelling it into the popular media. I had mixed feelings about real life catching up to my future world before my work was even in print.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another flight of fancy led to an idea that seemed beyond all limits of credibility, yet sufficiently tantalizing to include anyway. It was so fantastic that I never tried to validate it. Perhaps our “junk DNA,” the extensive sequences of nucleotide pairs on our chromosomes that do not code for any known functions, contained coded messages from an advanced civilization, put there either in the course of designing life on earth or inserted later. I had no idea whether or not these sequences were sufficiently abundant or sufficiently stable to convey an intelligible message, but was sufficiently enamored of the notion to include it on faith and hope that more knowledgeable readers would be kind. This novel form of intelligent design would become the basis of a new religious movement that based faith upon scientific discovery. And my designers hailed not just from another world, but from another universe.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last night, I watched a TIVO’d episode of Morgan Freeman’s “Through the Wormhole” that speculated about our first encounters with aliens. Imagine my astonishment when, toward the end of the episode, he discussed current scientific inquiry into the very idea that messages from an advanced civilization could be embedded in the non-functional sequences within our DNA. First conceived way back in the seventies and revived over the past several years, Genomic SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) is the quest for evidence of other civilizations within the code of our DNA. </span><a href="http://spacearchaeology.org/?p=80" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://spacearchaeology.org/?p=80</span></a></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Underlying the inquiry is an understanding of the structure of language and patterns of code that are compatible with communicating coherently. At least one scholarly article, published early in 2013, makes the case that our DNA contains a level of orderliness that is more consistent with deliberately constructed symbolic language than with the random effects of biology. </span><a href="http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1303/1303.6739.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1303/1303.6739.pdf</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So as a writer, I again have mixed feelings. While pleased to have validation for the most speculative of my fantasies, I’m also chagrined to have overlooked the work of others that has apparently been going on for years. If only I had a MELD chip….</span></div>
Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670380162215036715.post-72423394829037989442014-08-03T16:52:00.002-07:002014-08-03T16:52:44.290-07:00Candles in the Night<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What business does a sci-fi writer have writing about the Middle East conflict? Science fiction is about the future. Many writers envision dystopian worlds while others create future utopias. Which kind of world we get will be informed by how well we find solutions to the current problems that threaten our civilization. Imagining all the possible outcomes of the disastrous situation unfolding in the Middle East is therefore well within the realm of a science fiction author.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-a831d598-9e3f-886f-1df4-1df5b6552f61" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Following the news, it’s easy to lose hope. Centuries of acrimony, exploding into bloodshed in seemingly endless replays of the same scenarios, suggests a level of inertia that can never be surmounted. Adversaries stand on the shoulders of their ancestors with little chance of meeting on level ground. How could reason ever intrude upon the dialogue with sufficient force to change its course?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the first episode of the new Sundance series “The Honorable Woman,” Nessa Stein suggests that conflict thrives where there is poverty and that a necessary part of resolving conflict is to improve the circumstances of the poorest involved. In the fictionalized world of the series, Nessa, a successful and powerful businesswoman, seeks to improve the lot of the Palestinian people by spreading communications technology throughout their world. She strives to bring together people from both sides of the conflict to accomplish this goal, which, of course, turns out not to be so simple.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So how might we imagine amidst the complexities of the real world conflict bringing together people from both sides in the interest of common goals? Is it even possible to get people steeped in the culture of hatred to lay aside their differences long enough to see one another as individuals with whom partnerships, and even friendships, might flourish?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even as the rockets fly, such efforts to engage young people from both sides in reconciliation quietly move forward. Seeds of Peace </span><a href="http://www.seedsofpeace.org/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://www.seedsofpeace.org/</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> has for more than twenty years brought together Israeli and Palestinian teenagers at a camp in Maine to engage with one another in trust building activities. While their numbers might be small, this program has created a cohort of bright young people who can no longer view one another as stereotypes and who can perhaps influence others in their home communities to open their minds.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies </span><a href="http://arava.org/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://arava.org/</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> brings Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian students together in an academic program designed to train environmental leaders to bring ecological sustainability, renewable energy, and responsible water management to the ecosystems shared by their communities and to the world. Their alumni are teaming up across political and ethnic boundaries to develop innovative projects that will benefit people throughout the region and perhaps alleviate hardship and improve the standard of living for those who have been most deprived. Within their community, at least, Nessa’s dream lives.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve had the opportunity within the past year to visit Rwanda, a country torn by the genocide of the Tutsis by the Hutus twenty years ago and now still recovering from that trauma. That conflict was striking for the intimacy of the perpetrators and victims, all members of the same community, formerly neighbors, friends, and even family members. Reconciliation would seem impossible among people who must again live side by side and look upon one another on a daily basis. And yet, remarkable steps toward repairing the schism have been taken by pockets of the population that serve as models for others to make peace. One particularly inspirational example is Ingoma Nshya </span><a href="http://bit.ly/1qIy7ba" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://bit.ly/1qIy7ba</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the first women’s drumming troupe in Rwanda, formed by an alliance of Hutu and Tutsi women, who, in addition to performing together, have founded Sweet Dreams, Rwanda’s first ice cream parlor.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If our civilization is to survive and thrive through the twenty-first century, we will need to solve huge problems: preserving the environment and its diversity, developing sustainable renewable energy, and providing sufficient water and food to maintain a growing population in a reasonable state of comfort and dignity. Diverting resources to sustain armed combat flies in the face of solving these problems. Developing new alliances in the common interest of solving the problems that most threaten us all will be essential to preserving all humanity.</span></div>
<br />Rick Moskovitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08725345074392507408noreply@blogger.com0