Pain is Interesting.

I had a little problem with looking up at the stars recently. I found that if I do so, my left arm and hand break out in pain; intense pins and needles. Interesting that needles part. I also have a theory, well, more of a philosophy, of pain. Pain is something that hurts (you’re still with me here?) and it hurts because of an injury to the place where it hurts. It indicates damage that you need to attend to. Alternatively, an intense and very interesting sensation is something that feels very similar to pain but it doesn’t indicate on-going injury or even necessarily damage. So if there is no damage, you shouldn’t have to attend to it; it doesn’t matter. And if you are being subjected to something that is making you better, or it’s not anywhere near the location of the sensation, it can’t be pain, it’s good for you and just a very interesting sensation. My theory is shit. A few years back I came home from serious rotator cuff surgery, and due to an error in out-patient information, woke up the morning after with the nerve block completely gone and zero pain medication in my body. “Boy!” I said, “That was a long minute! Oh! It looks like I’ve got some more very long minutes queued up!” This went on for about 45 minutes until the meds kicked in. I knew that I was getting better, but I guess that I couldn’t just call my sensation “interesting” anymore. I recently had the pleasure of experiencing dry needling (intramuscular stimulation, IMS, aka: trigger point invasive therapy). Acupuncture like needles are used to “stimulate” "dense contraction knots" that are proven trigger points for deferred pain (pain you feel elsewhere). Dry needling is the use of solid acupuncture needles, the difference is, dry needling is based on scientifically tested results of measurable effects on physiology as opposed to 3,000 year old Chinese lore. Whether dry needling should be considered acupuncture or not depends on the definition of acupuncture, and it is argued that trigger points do not correspond to acupuncture points or meridians. There is no controversy about the fact that dry needling can “light you up”. This all relates to my theory of what pain is. I was more than certain that there was nothing wrong with my left hand. I was equally certain that sticking a really tiny needle into my upper arm could not possibly injure my hand. All this was abundantly clear as I bit deeply into the index finger of my other hand inorder to not scream and therefore frighten my good therapist’s other patients as he jiggled that needle around in my arm and I imagined my left hand being immersed in a pot of boiling water. Shit, that really hurt. My theory is shit. I am now wondering if the therapy is akin to the idea that if the cure is more painful than the initial pain, that’s when our minds can tell us it doesn’t hurt anymore, it’s just interesting. “Thanks Doc, I’m all better, we don’t have to do that therapy ever again.”

Ecce Homo.

I have often said that the execrable concept: “The end justifies the means.” comes from the belief in God, and that certainly the conceit that we humans “have dominion over nature” does as well. These are the worst ideas man has ever come up with (and most certainly, the most virulently persistent fallacies in existence, due their utter irrefutability as they are based only on faith without possibility rational proof). There is a disturbing trend in Neo-Environmental Secular Humanism that posits that; whereas man is part of Nature, and as the only rational animal capable of thinking about what is, what was, and what will be… WE TOO can do no wrong. Move over fake God; Ecce Homo.

Science was invented by amateurs. TURTLES

Science was invented by amateurs; they are still a valuable resource. There were no such things as “scientists” until 1800’s. The word “scientist” wasn’t even around until 1834; people who studied things using careful observation and record keeping were called “natural philosophers”. Charles Darwin’s five-year voyage on the Beagle started in 1831… he was called the ship’s naturalist but in reality, he was expected to be a sophisticated companion to the captain among the decidedly unsophisticated crew members. But Darwin was a man who was curious about everything, and he collected thousands of specimens and took extremely careful notes. He was a dogged observer and record keeper. But even today, the amateur observer can be of significant help in the advancement of knowledge. The advent of modern data bases and statistical analyses can even smooth over some the less than rigorous data that untrained people may collect. Finally, there aren’t enough scientists in the world with enough time, money, eyeballs, and energy, to do justice to the study of all the things on our planet and in the universe that… we just don’t know about. At the end of this blog, I’ll list some of those volunteer sites where you can help in the collection of data, no matter whatever your level of interest might be. But now; the turtles on my own property: Back in 2001 I started making a semi-systematic hobby of collecting data on the eastern box turtles I saw. From Wikipedia: “The eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) is a subspecies within a group of hinge-shelled turtles normally called box turtles. T. c. carolina is native to the eastern part of the United States. The eastern box turtle is a subspecies of the common box turtle (Terrapene carolina). While in the pond turtle family, Emydidae, and not a tortoise, the box turtle is largely terrestrial. Box turtles are slow crawlers, extremely long-lived, and slow to mature and have relatively few offspring per year. These characteristics, along with a propensity to get hit by cars and agricultural machinery, make all box turtle species particularly susceptible to anthropogenic, or human-induced, mortality. In 2011, citing "a widespread persistent and ongoing gradual decline of Terrapene carolina that probably exceeds 32% over three generations", the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) downgraded its conservation status from near threatened to vulnerable.” I would add to this: The widespread and illegal poaching of turtles for the pet trade has had a severe negative impact on our turtle populations. The jerks that capture these animals for sale to disreputable collectors are criminals. My wife and I own about 100 acres in the foothills of Appalachia. Our property has about a mile of historic logging roads and we have created some paths on which we walk regularly. Every time that I see a turtle on my property, I record some basic information. The method of record keeping I use is old school. I keep all my data in a blank field book; I hand draw the pattern on the single plate (the nuchal scute just behind the turtle’s head). Every turtle I have observed has a distinctive pattern of pigmented markings, almost always arrayed in three vertical columns. For easy reference when looking for repeats, I record the number of “spots” in each column, resulting in a number like: 1 1 1, or, 1 2 1, or, 3 2 1, etc. (see illustrations and pictures) For the most part,I have restricted myself to my own property which I have overlaid with a grid of one acre squares. Each square has a Letter and a number designation: A1, B2, C3, etc. My house and garden being mostly in square H 6. So I have a fairly precise location datum. In addition I record the turtle’s sex (you can determine this by looking at the plastron, the underside of the turtle. Males have a concave area that facilitates mating with females. Bright red eyes usually indicate a male turtle.) I try to note any obvious shell damage and healed areas of previous mishaps. In 2010 I found a turtle with someone’s initials carved into the plastron: “ J J R 1966 ”. This turtle was one of the only ones I observed that had a “negative” pattern on the scute. It was black spots on a yellow background. These days I carry a smart phone, I am able to collect a photo of each turtle I encounter. I still draw the pattern in my record book by hand. At present, I am exploring the ways that I might share these data with the Virginia Hepatological Society. But a better strategy would have been for me to explore the ways that are already set up for citizen volunteer science. Almost any area of the investigation of science that might interest you has already had researcher-designed ways to help. The few websites below will get anyone started. https://www.mnmas.org/community-science https://ssec.si.edu/stemvisions-blog/mobile-apps-citizen-science This last one has NOAA, NASA, EPA, and pretty much everything the federal government does: https://www.citizenscience.gov/catalog/#

I almost said that I wished that God existed

But then, I reflected. I have often said that the execrable concept: “The end justifies the means.” comes from the belief in God, and that certainly the conceit that we humans “have dominion over nature” does as well. These two inventions are the worst things man has ever come up with (and most certainly, the most virulently persistent fallacies in existence, due their utter irrefutability as they are based on faith without possibility rational proof). There is a disturbing trend in Neo-Environmental Secular Humanism that posits that; whereas man is part of Nature, and as the only rational animal capable of thinking about what is, what was, and what will be… WE TOO can do no wrong. Move over fake God; Ecce Homo.

We’re not sending our best

We’re not sending our best (to top tier universities) and it is because of legacy admissions policies and generational wealth. OK, fine, people with money can send their kids to any university they choose… nothing wrong with that, even though “generational wealth” is a biased privilege. But the people lucky enough to have had their ancestors go to Harvard, Princeton, or Yale, get another super leg up (in addition to the money thing). Their marginally competent offspring get preferential admission. Legacy admissions might be one of our worst problems in America. When an incompetent wastrel scion of a businessman runs their father’s company into the ground, the company suffers, the employees go south, but ultimately, the wastrel suffers as well. That’s a level of feedback that is lauded by our free market, competition, and the red, white, and blue American capitalistic way. It is part of the self-regulating “floating all boats thing.” Really conservative goodness. But what happens when a lawyer, judge, banker, or member of Congress fails due to incompetence? They are all playing with somebody else’s money. They may suffer but their clients suffer more. What happens when most of the lawyers and judges are in their positions due to generational privilege? Legacy admissions at our finest institutions of learning are allowing nepotism to overload our most educated and prestigious class of people (and the important positions they hold) with the sons and daughters of the sons and daughters of the lucky ones who got through the door years ago. Now it's not other people's money; it's their freedoms and our democracy. Forget meritocracy; think royalty. We can just all eat cake... or something. The solution? Maybe the Supreme Court could declare legacy admissions to be unconstitutional, thereby eliminating this type of “affirmative action”. I believe that it was Carl Sagan who suggested that, if given a fair playing field, an average Filipino street urchin would probably triumph over most of our privileged American youth. We have our own “urchins” here already, why not give them an even chance?

Alito’s “rebuttal”

Please, please, please, will a professor of logic at any level of academia; please take out your red pencil and diligently parse Supreme Justus Alito’s “rhetorical rebuttal” to the statements (that were not yet even published) by ProPublica? Regardless of your opinion of what Justus Alito did, if his “rebuttal” (which he preemptively printed in the Wall Street Journal), is an indication of his understanding of logic and the Aristotelian elements of fallacious rhetoric; we are all in a great deal more trouble than we have even begun to understand. If he applies this level of critical thinking to his day-to-day SCOTUS duties, our problems are not political; they are cognitive. I believe he would fail Logic 101 at a community college.

Do Not think of a white horse, or a Bell Curve

 A bell curve is the standard distribution of a single variable over the range of its amplitude among the total population of the data set.  It's a "bell" because, when graphed, almost every individual variable has a very low number of examples at both extremes... for things we like, think "bad" and "good".  Very rare or very likely.  The middle part is where most of the data cluster.  The shape of the graph looks like a bell, sometimes tall and sometimes flat, occasionally lopsided.  Now think about what might be being measured.

How long do cats live, or how many kittens are in a litter.  You can measure (or at least try to measure) anything.  How fast do humans talk, or how tall are boys at age four, or how well they do on an IQ Test, or how often do they pick their noses.

Now, when you walk down the street and look at the people you live among, you might not want to consider some traits that, like virtually everything else, align on a bell curve.   For example, how likely people are to believe in the moon landing in 1969, or how racist that guy in a red hat is likely to be, or think that Hitler was right about lots of stuff, or... hear me out here,

how assiduously they wipe their anus after defecating.  

We really don't like to absorb what statistics tell us; maybe doing so is too painful.  We humans (340,000,000 of us in the USA) fall into a broad range of things that can be measured.  Things, like, what is the reading grade level and how many people might be illiterate.  Or how likely people are to know the name of the president of the United States right now, or how many people believe the crazy Q ANON stuff.

Just don't think about that lefthand side of the bell curve where the "very bad" people are.  And white horses, don't think about a white horse.

You're welcome, I think.