lightspeed and galaxies and biology and geology

Time travel

again a new experience

Looking at NASA space pictores, like the ones from the Hubble can be humiliating.

My desktop display has a few at this time, and one has a few billion galaxies dotted around in it.
Not a few, billyans!

When you think about it,  Andromeda Galaxy, the closest galaxy to The Milky Way, is only two million light years away, and it is calculated by some people both are collide at some time down the track, after we are history.

I hated to think of infinity when I was very young. Like thinking that God has you, and you, and you as well as me on his mind 24/7 and is all around us- both are plain creepy and scary. Now especially- is that not lurking or what ever?

Recent reports are of some starlight that is {another} calculated to be as old as the universe! That calculation is supposed to be close to 12 or 14 billion years old. Whats a few billyan tween friends?

But really, it's colossal.

Driving a car to the moon, [yeah, try it Bill Gates] is a bit of a trip too. The average Earth-Moon distance is about 385,000 km, so allowing for drink and bathroom stops every two or three hours, a sleepover some where, it would take the the Griswolds a few months if get 600km done a day... or a year or two?

And another thing, after watching the Japan tsunami videos again, (sorry, I am a Geologist)  and after reading books like these that I have just finished on my Kindle#2-

"Power,Sex Suicide : Mitochondria and the meaning of life" by Nick Lane and
"Life's Ratchet : How Molecular Machines Extract Order From Chaos" by Peter F. Hoffman, giving me a few intense weeks I tell you! Highly recommended to everyone.

So- life and nature are not connected apart from chance? An earthquake or GammaRay Burst or a small addition the a mitochondrial chromosone, and ooh la la, life is different.

DIS-ED

Dis-?

What es Dis?

Well, this is what I am lately!
Either up or down, not wildly swinging though.

Disappointed/ing,
dis-ingenuous,
disgusted/ing
disappearing/ed
dis-engaged/ing
dismissive/ed
disgruntled,
disapproved/ing

With people and government and overseas news.
With the kids a little.
With me sometimes.
Not with this cat, the other one at meow-l times anyway!


The flavour of Luck may come into it. I try to dream of winning lotto, not hard work, to make up my shortfalls in life. My swings and roundabouts are heavy hitters at the moment, but not enough to swerve off the road left or right! Driving or in decision making anyway.

It should all pan out, it's being the supportive parent that is bugging me a lot. Life is moving on, and I am swirling along, complaining about it while there are more worse off.

A good good belly laugh, more than I am getting now, helps.
[As of 28/12/12 Anyway or even a bit earlier- just tidying up my scats [hurhur, better mood today! 28Apr13]

Doppelgangers, spirit and/or body

The years I have spent being somewhat human, and therefor a participant/observer in the social and incredibly weird world we live in has has always made me notice things that are just plain strange.

Like its complexity and its Doppelgangers.

And this is besides politics and religion- Gaddafi, The Ayotollahs, Popes & Presidents [i.e. Bush], examples of the immediate present and past- and social niceties and taboos that people have taken up in order to try to take over the world from the conventional order of plate tectonics and mantle plumes [the prime driver of evolution- see Japan- recently] and the oxygen exhalers [blue green algae etc etc the original "world leaders", the secondary life drivers] and then the ones that depend on those processes [bacteria- where we are derived from according to some experts, and viruses], and of course natural selection or evolution of  those singularly spectacular processes in them selves [Wikipedia has some excellent articles on those BTW, and on the Fed too!] A little rant from an irrationalist...

Okay, we are the parasites on the face of the planet. Blue green algae, bacterium, viruses- they will out-last us all. I mean, if a few simple "organisms" are still around after a few billion years, that means that it is hard to kill em... and undoubtedly these primal organisms will be around for a few billion more years, no matter what hits the planet- asteroid or human mal-adaptions. If they and their descendants were not around, what would we be living off anyway?

So if you have read up on some biology, even glancingly like I have recently (wikipedia of course), and then look at a photograph of a crowd of penguins, bears or people- or fish or bees- they are strikingly- what? Bilateral? Left and right, two of this, two of that, one of these and one of those. Legs, arms. Faces... Similar. We need faces to identify each other or we would be like fish in the schools [that are disappearing at a rate not due to natural causes, but anyway], twisting toward or away from food and predators, and not individuals- oh, the fish might be identifiable if observed in smaller groups- like goldfish and the aquariums they live in- kids always know Their Fish!

So if there are a few "x-illions" of organisms, I bet there are countless repetitions of larger multicellular life too- Dopplegangers as far as DNA goes. Like goldfish for example. And have you heard of the expression that similar or too dissimilar personalties cause conflicts in the workplace?

Hmm. Well.

So after this somewhat laborious dissertation on geology, biology and perhaps psychology-
I believe we all have twins distributed throughout the population! Not the same town so much as anywhere.

You walk down the street, and someone will remind you of a person you know well.

It may be the way they are walking or talking, or the shrug or look they give in an exchange. Just weird.

And then you sort of know how to react to them, or just do so in an unconscious way.

An example. I have a little "racist" reaction to redheads- or real carrot tops. I am always a little selfconcious at a level that says- "don't trust them"! Why is that?  Some past experience tells me that they may be a bit annoyed at being so unique- a chip on their shoulders type attitude- that as a child they may have been picked on or bullied too much for being "so" different for their red hair? Hot tempered? A Learned Reaction Behavior? So I class them as a species I suppose, that behaves that way. "Always". And when people dye their hair red- what are they looking for really? A better social; intercourse with the rest of us? I better watch out, my cousin's boys are so good natured in contrast to other red heads- maybe a generational change has come about? Although, for some mad reason, some researcher has written up that as a Hair Type, redheadedness maybe being bred out of us due to the mass migrations all over the world, one of the northern hemisphers's unique traits will be gone in a few generations, that aberrant gene losing out as it is not a survival trait needed anymore. Or was it that the Vikings changed their preferences from redheads to blondes... [and nice boobies?]

Or another strange occurrence- a child exhibits a behavior that reminds me so much of a adult I only know through the media- they may have a similar sound to their speech pattern for example. A duplicate personalty? I will never know that media person, but it is so amusing that they are and were so alike, would they have similar personalities too?

Or an overseas friend-

Or my sister- the younger- reminds me of others so much in that generation. Are they are being cloned from internet participation or what?

A long time later

You have to read these: 

By the way, I have just finished reading a few great books or three on my Kindle#2-
"Power,Sex Suicide : Mitochondria and the meaning of life" by Nick Lane and
"Life's Ratchet : How Molecular Machines Extract Order From Chaos" by Peter F. Hoffman.
That was a few intense weeks I tell you! Highly recommended to everyone.

By ones self

Missing other company?

Missing offshore duty?

(first written 28/12/2011)

No and no, apart from the money and challenges

A call the other day from an old friend got me thinking a little bit about company and fulltime work.

As myself and a single dad, the answer is pretty easy. If I retired [ha] tomorrow, I have too much to find out, I would never be bored!
The Kindle has me sucked in, I may have to unsubscribe from three SF magazines I have been buying since '79.


27/4/2013
Things change, got myself a great job that may last a few more weeks at least as a springboard to more better work as a geo, on the second Kindle, west wall fixed, car and van running, gels in secondary school and oldest boy a year from graduation, MS under control, bank balance balanced!

Life's good.

technical help

I finally tracked down a help group

After the annual extra-large-family- gathering at Easter time, where one can spend four days literally catching up with nothing in particular but renew kinships at the same time, I was persuaded to join up with a MS help group by my aunt, a long term MS sufferer.

"Aunty" * showed me a Copaxone Injector Kit that looked pretty awesome in it's use. No needle shock as it were and easy to use. She made me practise a lot with a done syringe for half an hour. Even then, by myself using the kit, I still forgot to remove the red cap- wasteful- all over the floor when I realised. But then, I have wasted two others too! Anyway.

Some prehistory- just a few weeks before, up early like 5am for work and I was doing the self injecting thing, and not really noticing how I was holding the dang thing, and must have paused and drew back some-a little bit- blood back- Well when I realised THAT it looked like a red blob in the syringe- I went- CONTAMINATION ARFHGH$%^! Dummy! I took the needle out almost straight away and went into a calamity-oh-WTF-is-going-to-happen mode, and went and laid down on my bed.
I was feeling weak.
Then hot.
Shakey.
Could I call out to the kids?
No- was instantly asthmatic!
Cold.
Spasms wracked my baddish back most intently.
Needed to evacuate the bottom end.
In the rush to the loo, there was an urge to throw up as well.
Get there, hot, cold, shakey,
and
Nuthin'...

Creaked my way back to the bed over-thinking  what can I do? Aids? How did the thing get through quality control etc etc.

Anyway- ten minutes later or so- felt fine, like a plague had not got me feeling so weird,  not contaminated with an instant deadly virus after all!

When back at work, I did the quick rounds later on, of "Help me" type calls: the pharmacist and aunty, and they said- "shock is all, probably happen a few times the next few years, just a typical reaction".

Me- sure...

Oh yes, I do remember reading that too...

Anyway- back to Easter- my aunt encouraged me to grab a help bag kit- "autoinject2". Alright.

I had previously sent off to the Copaxone Help group, but the Join Us note had Never Arrived I was to find out.

I called the help line on the mobile phone at lunch time the Friday after Easter- leaving a message that I had tried to get in touch in November...?

A few hours late, a call back.  From "Pip! Call me Pip!" And how could she help me?

Well- my life story and a bit of quiet shock from the other end and then a pat on the back for how well I was going all by myself- but now she knew what to do for me, and would be keeping in touch and sending a help-pack and all.

Help pack with auto-inject kit arrived by HDL special delivery----

MONDAY morning!

And a few weeks later a call back.

That's great. Just need to attend the MS groups that meet around here at odd times- I completely forgot the last one.

Ah well. Not taking the MS thing lying down, but then it has not really knocked me about that much, like some people I know now- speaking of which- NS and camcer did take Chrissie Amplett of the Divinyls way the other week, that was sad as she was from over the Bay from me as a kid and my age about. Bugger.

Still walking and talking, I still have the odd tingles below the waist, but not as intensely as the initial feelings, nor has the eye sight been affected again, but then, nor has the left eye completely recovered, but I can type this so it must be getting better.

By the way, I have just finished reading a few great books or three on my Kindle#2-
"Power,Sex Suicide : Mitochondria and the meaning of life" by Nick Lane and
"Life's Ratchet : How Molecular Machines Extract Order From Chaos" by Peter F. Hoffman.
That was a few intense weeks I tell you! Highly recommended to everyone.




*And she probably might hate that moniker as she is only 12 years older than me!