Are Bar Flies Just Sex Starved Males?

     They very well could be, if these bar flies are also fruit flies.   An article in the March 18 issue of the Des Moines Register, (I'd provide a link but you'd just hit a pay wall)   entitled  Sex Starved Fruit Flies Turn to Alcohol,  describes an interesting study.  Male fruit flies were put into cages with females who had already mated, and would therefore have no interest in sex.   The males attempted to approach the females but were driven away,  even kicked or bitten.  They were very definitely rejected.  The males kept trying, but eventually gave up. Then these males were placed in separate cages, and offered a choice of two kinds of food, one of which contained alcohol.  They preferred the alcoholic stuff, and ate a lot of it. They got very drunk.   Other males, the ones who had actually mated, were offered the same choice.  They tasted the alcohol, but didn't care for it.
       The authors said that there is a brain chemical in fruit flies which is affected by sex, but if sex is lacking, the same effect can be achieved with alcohol.   But guess what?   This same brain chemical is present in humans.  The author suggests that there may be lessons for humans here.

The Origin of Apocalyptic Religion

            We are seeing, at least in the United States, an increase in the fervor of “end times” preaching.   A large and increasing number of otherwise sane citizens accept as an objective fact that the world will end in their lifetimes.  Popular novels about “The Rapture” sell millions of copies. And the segments of our population who believe these things are not always confined to institutions.  They roam freely among us.  We allow them to own guns, drive cars, have children, and teach at our universities.  And the increase in the intensity of belief and practice of extremist, “end times” religion is not confined to Christianity—it is occurring in all of the world’s major religions.  But I do not find that surprising.  Rather, I am surprised that we are not also seeing the rise of a host of entirely new prophets within these established religions.  With world conditions as they are today, we should have apocalyptic prophets and self proclaimed messiahs stacked up like cordwood.

            Apocalyptic philosophy is nothing new, and certainly not new within Christianity.  Jesus of Nazareth himself was an “end times,” preacher, as was John the Baptist.  Jesus continually spoke of the “coming of the kingdom of God,” and his followers expected it to occur in their lifetimes.  These disciples lived out their lives waiting for the “second coming,” and Evangelical Christians are still waiting for it today.  Every few years, some evangelical preacher proclaims that he has calculated the precise moment of doomsday, and gathers his followers on some mountaintop to await their transportation into paradise.  The appointed hour passes without any noticeable event, and I would imagine that they all feel a bit chagrined the next day. Yet in Palestine alone, in Jesus’ generation, there were dozens of apocalyptic preachers, because it was the right time and place for “end times” stories to find a receptive audience.

            Throughout all history, people everywhere have been aware of some kind of ongoing struggle between good and evil.   You don’t have to be a Manichean to accept this. Evil and evildoers are a persistent reality.  But there is at least one time in every generation when evil seems to rear its ugly head more prominently than usual-- when the promoters of various evil agendas admit to those agendas openly—even proudly.  Yet as the agents of evil begin to shove their heels into the face of humanity, well intentioned people always respond to these assaults---they are willing to stand up and be counted.   For instance, in our own time, we have just seen our Supreme Court, in the Citizens United case, rule that corporations are people, and as such have an unlimited constitutional right to spend corporate funds to buy elections, and to do so anonymously.  One can scarcely conceive of a more corrupt or more corrupting act of a government against its people.   Yet people are fighting back.  We will probably see a constitutional amendment fight on this issue, and it will probably win.   We have seen the billionaires, through their puppet regime under Scott Walker, wage war in Wisconsin against public employees and workers in general.   But this too was met with spirited resistance, and may have been the beginning of the Occupy movement.  And this resistance to being enslaved by elite plutocrats is worldwide.  We’ve seen the Arab Spring, the Pro-Democracy protesters in Russia, and uncounted others. 

            The point is this:    When the struggle reaches a fevered pitch and appears to be headed to some final climax, people who believe in a God tend to assume that God is somehow involved in their struggle, and will take a prominent role in that climax.  They assume that if there is a God, and if He is good, then He could not be neutral in any moral struggle.  And since   they are on the side of good, they are on the side of God.  (Of course, no matter where you are in the struggle between good and evil, you probably assume that you are on the side of good—and God is on your side.  No evil doer, no matter how inhuman or depraved, ever failed to believe that he was acting for the greater good, nor that God was on his side.  Even Hitler believed this.)  But if God is on our side, and if God is infinitely powerful, then why does He not just swoop down with a host of angels and smash our enemies?   Why does He allow us to suffer indignities at the hands of our enemies, especially when these enemies are also God’s enemies?  This is a rational question.  In fact, it’s a very, very rational question.  And that explains why believers in “end times” religion are not necessarily irrational. 

            Sooner or later, some “end times” prophet walks onto the stage.  He says, essentially, “Yes, God is aware of your struggle—it is all part of His grand plan.  And He will indeed intervene with all His divine might to resolve this and all other earthly struggles.”    And those who hear this message ask, “But when will He do this? We have been waiting so long.”   The prophet answers:  “Soon; very, very soon.”

            For those who are weary and discouraged, this is a message of hope, and it can be extremely seductive.  And it is not all that irrational.  If you really believe in a God that cares about you and about people like you, then why would He not intervene directly on your behalf?  While such “end times” beliefs may seem strange, for many believers it may be the simplest way to reconcile the existence of evil in the world with belief in an all-good and all-powerful god.  So with the fertile soil we now have for such beliefs, why aren’t we seeing hundreds of new prophets?

Hokey-Pokey, Shakespearian Style

O proud left foot, that ventures quick within,

Then soon upon a backward journey lithe.

Anon,  once more the gesture, then begin:

Command sinestral pedestal to writhe.

Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke,

A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl.

To spin! A wilde release from heaven’s yoke.

O blessed dervish! Surely, go thou, girl.

The Hoke, the Poke, and banish now thy doubt.

Forsooth, I say,  ‘tis what it’s all about!

I found this on Facebook.  I have no idea who wrote it, but I'm a sucker for this sort of thing.

Is a Cat Microbe Changing Your Behavior?

      In the March issue of the online edition of Atlantic Magazine is an article by Kathleen Mcauliffe entitled How Your Cat is Making You Crazy. It's about the work of Czech researcher Jaroslav Flegr, and his work with Toxoplasma gondii, the parasite associated with handling cat liter.

        Since the 1920s, doctors have warned pregnant women to avoid cat litter, since this protozoon, if transmitted to the fetus, can cause severe brain damage or death.  This microbe can also have severe effects on those with compromised immune systems.  But for healthy children and adults, the result of infection is a brief flu-like disease, and then the microbe becomes dormant inside our brain cells, and has no further effect. 

            But Flegr has begun to doubt whether it is completely dormant.   He believes that it continues to tweak our neural connections in ways that cause subtle behavioral changes. Stanford’s Robert Sapolsky believes he may be right.  Sapolsky points out that when this parasite infects a rat, it turns the rat’s natural fear of cats into an attraction to cats, which lures the rat into the jaws of its main predator, which puts the parasite inside the body of a cat, which is where it needs to be to complete its life cycle.

            And the rabies virus kills its victims, but just before it does so, it changes the victim’s brain circuits in such a way as to throw the victim into a rage, where it attacks and bites anything that moves.   By then, the virus has migrated into the saliva, so that whatever is bitten becomes the next host.   In the case of both microbes, the behavior patterns produced are quite complex—so complex that it is amazing that a microbe could evolve to accomplish this. 

            We humans are not part of the cat/rat/T. gondii cycle--we are accidental victims.  So if T. gondii causes any behavioral changes in humans at all, they would not be changes that would enhance the reproductive odds for the protozoa.  But though accidental, they may still be there.   About 20% of Americans carry the T. gondii protozoa, and according to Flegr, for their entire lives, these carriers (he happens to be one) will have their brains subtly changed. They will be changed by the accidental activity of protozoa doing what they evolved to do to make a rat’s brain force the rat to seek out cats.

            In humans, the changes which Flegr believes are wrought by this microbe are subtle, but still consistent for all carriers.  Except that in humans, the behavioral changes in human females are exactly opposite as the changes in human males.  Men who are infected tend to be more introverted, suspicious, anti-social, and oblivious to other people’s opinions of them. They are happy wearing rumpled old clothes, would prefer to work by themselves, and generally have fewer friends. Infected women tend to be outgoing, trusting, and image-conscious.  They are rule-abiding, meticulously dressed, and have a vast network of social connections.  At first, researchers could find no explanation why the behaviors of infected men and infected women seemed to be the exact opposite.   But they have concluded that there is a common denominator---emotional strain.  Women respond to insecurity by increased social bonding, and increased nurturing.   Men simply withdraw, and become more anti-social.   So we are simply seeing two sides of the same coin.

            Flegr’s data have shown (and this has been replicated) that infected individuals are much more likely to have traffic accidents.  When one considers the vast number of infected individuals worldwide (in France it’s nearly 55%) and also the number of traffic deaths, it’s possible that T.gondii is killing more people than malaria.  Flegr also has data showing that T.gondii may trigger schizophrenia in certain genetically susceptible individuals.

Check out this article: (Click on the highlighted words [Atlantic  Magazine]  above.)

Is Nuclear Power Powerful?

              For over forty years, I have been an advocate of sustainable energy.   This was in spite of the fact that, as an electrician, I spent most of my working life building powerhouses.  I have worked on coal burners, nukes, and even trash burning powerhouses. But throughout that time, I always felt that there was a better way; a sustainable way.  Whenever I would argue this, people would be skeptical as to whether sustainable energy could ever supply the voracious demands of modern living.  And I never found a simple and convincing way to explain that it easily could.

            Then recently I was driving on I 380 between Waterloo and Cedar Rapids, and off to my right I noticed the white, puffy column of steam and hot air rising from cooling tower of the nuclear power station at Palo, Iowa.   And I also noticed that the sky that day was nearly covered with white, puffy cumulus clouds that had occurred naturally.

            The Palo Nuke has been there 40 years, and is Iowa’s first and only nuke, and the second powerhouse I ever helped to build.   At full power, it produces just under 500 megawatts.  And the steam cloud that rises from its cooling tower is about the size one expects from that size reactor.   You see, for any given set of atmospheric conditions, there is a fixed relationship between the size of reactor and the size of the steam cloud.   A nuke is a heat engine, and its efficiency limited by the Carnot equation.  (Efficiency is equal to the absolute temperature of the heat source, minus the absolute temperature of the heat sink, all over the absolute temperature of the source.)  Since there are limits to the maximum temperature that a steam turbine can withstand, and since a heat sink much colder than ambient air is unlikely, this means that in the real world, no more than about 40% of the heat energy can be harvested as mechanical power.   The heat generated by the nuclear reaction produces steam, which flows through the turbine and is then condensed in a condenser cooled by water from the cooling tower.  This coolant water absorbs heat from the waste steam and becomes warmer, only to be re-cooled as some of it is evaporated in the cooling tower.  In the cooling tower, the warm coolant water flows over open slats, like a huge venetian blind, as ambient air is blown through it.  Evaporation takes place, and that’s where most of the heat goes.  In fact, except for the 40% of the original heat energy that is converted into mechanical power to drive the generator, nearly all of the heat is lost to evaporation. The more heat the nuclear reaction produces, the more heat removed by evaporation in the cooling tower, and the bigger the cloud produced.

            I wrote that rather tedious paragraph to establish one point:  In any heat engine large enough to have a cooling tower, you can tell the size of the heat source by the size of the cloud arising from the cooling tower.  But the atmosphere is also a heat engine, and behaves by the same rules.  As I have stated, on this day the entire sky was filled, from horizon to horizon, with cumulus clouds.  And the solar energy required to boil moisture out of the ground to produce those clouds is precisely the same, for every gram of water, as the heat required at the Palo Nuke cooling tower.   To evaporate a gram of water always takes precisely 540 calories. While the size of cloud produced for any level of power will vary from day to day because of local atmospheric conditions, both the power house and the cloud bank are using the same air on the same day.  I stopped my car on the road shoulder, and as I looked at the clouds I estimated that the small plume rising from the nuke was less that a hundredth of the total cloud mass which I could see, just in the small patch of sky visible where I was standing.  Not all of the solar energy striking the earth evaporates water. Most of it warms the ground, and some of it is reflected back into space.  But just the small amount that was boiling water out of the ground, in just that area, had a hundred times as much energy as the nuke.  And yet people continue to question whether renewable sources can supply our needs.  Are they insane?

Health Ins Exec Says Single Payer Inevitable

    The 2/23/2012 online edition of Forbes has an interesting piece by Rick Unger.  He quotes Aetna Insurance CEO Mark Bertolini  as saying that the era of profit driven health insurance companies is over. He says that the ban on "underwriting,"  (which is defined in the article as: finding healthy people, selling them insurance, but rejecting customers who are actually likely to get sick) eliminates any chance of making a profit.  A single payer system would solve some of our problems--but not all of them.   Check this out.

Abandoned Satellite Ground Stations

  

            The online edition of The Atlantic posted a piece on Feb 6/12 entitled:  Earth Station:   The Afterlife of Technology at the End of the World.  This piece is about the Jamesburg Earth Station, a now abandoned satellite ground station in California in a remote valley just inland from Carmel.   Except for the empty buildings which once held the tons of electronic equipment required to decode and process the hundreds of channels of telephone, teletype, and TV signals which once flowed through this nerve center, all that remains is a massive, 90 ton, 90ft diameter parabolic dish.  The property is owned by a millionaire who mainly bought it for the land.              Yet this station allowed us to see the Apollo 11 moon landing live, and to receive live Viet Nam War reporting, and Nixon’s visit to China.  And it was the main communications link from North America to the Far East for over 30 years.

             This was a second generation installation.   The first generation rig was built about a decade earlier, a ways further up highway 101 at Camp Roberts.  The world’s first successful synchronous orbit communications satellite was Syncom II, launched from Vandenberg Airbase in July 1963.  The main earth stations to work this satellite were at Ft. Dix, NJ, near the east coast, Camp Roberts, CA, near the west coast, and the USNS Kingsport at sea.  These stations were testing cutting edge communications technology at that time, and were manned by civilian technicians from various contractors, and by a team of military technicians from the U.S. Army Signal Corps.   As a young Signal Corps technician, I was stationed at Camp Roberts and was a member of this team.  In an earlier post, I have described the Syncom project.

            After Syncom had proved that the theory of synchronous communication satellites was sound, (a theory suggested by Arthur C. Clark in 1946) the next step was to build larger satellites and larger ground stations to utilize them.  And with the Jamesburg station, that step became reality.  But the racks of communications equipment that gave us these marvels have long been scrapped, like a old horse hauled off to the knackers after a lifetime of faithful service.  Emotionally, the Atlantic piece is like Turner’s painting of The Fighting Temeraire.  It reminds us that when the noblest technical achievements of a previous generation are being hauled off to the scrap yard, we might at least pause for moment of reflection.  Or perhaps a better metaphor might be the elaborate sand paintings which Buddhist monks ritually construct,  only to be swept up and poured into a bucket—and scattered into the sea.  The monks do this to remind themselves that all material things must pass. 

            I once read that through we still have all the telemetry tapes from our moon shots and even some early interplanetary probes,  we can no longer read them because the computers and software designed to do this have all been scrapped, and we do not even have copies of the codes which would allow  us to reconstruct them.  No one bothered to save a copy. They say that the space race was a contest between East and West, and I always presumed that the “East” in this race referred to the science of the Soviets.  But perhaps we were really trying to compete with the sublime detachment of the Buddhist monks.   Perhaps the space program was the grandest sand painting of all time.