Thinking about the New Year

 poor georgie’s almanack: 

Thinking about the New Year.  

There are two kinds problems in the world today, the imaginary and the real. 

Of the two, the imaginary are the most real.  

Complicit (look it up)

 poor georgie’s almanack: 

Rs and Ds Stone-WALL-ing highlights the most basic problem in America’s national politics. 

There is no middle. 

For ten years Rs said no to just about everything Ds proposed. 

Now Ds do same as each party cements its base. 

Thus, each side is complicit.

The same thing but different

poor georgie’s science almanack: 

Energy #1 in +/- 30 seconds.  

Everything in our universe seems to be exactly the same thing … but different.  

We and everything around us are just bunches of energy rearranged differently … from two-year-old sons, to two-billion-year-old suns.

reminder

poor georgie’s almanack:
“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.”  
George Washington Carver.

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth??

poor georgie’s almanack: science in +/- 30 seconds.  

Stem Cells.

Every tiny thing in our bodies exchanges information with other small things around it. 

In a womb, a sperm and egg fuse into one entity with information from the mom and dad’s body. 

That teensy new entity then looks for a contractor to build a baby, using the parents’ information (DNA) as a blueprint. 

Nearby stem cells are like handy-men who can do various tasks and are pretty good at it. One is “hired” to start making a tooth, another an eye, etc. 

Sometimes they interpret the blueprint differently. 

Washington National’s star pitcher, Max Scherzer, for example got one blue eye and one brown eye.  

brain pain

poor georgie’s almanack:  

Message from my brain after watching news channels for several hours. 

YOU HAVE EXCEEDED THE LIMITS OF MY MEDICATIONS.

Step on it

poor georgie’s almanack: 

Science in +/- 30 seconds. 

New numbers for your daily Fitbit. 

Earth orbits the Sun at about 67,000 MPH (18.5 miles a second). Our solar system (the Sun, planets, moons and other smaller stuff) speeds about 515,000 MPH around the center of our galaxy (The Milky Way) which shoots through space at about 1.3 million MPH.

Hugs?

 Dec 2, 2018

poor georgie’s almanack  Science in +/- 30 seconds

Tea leaves and teenagers, cobras, and cats … we all share much of the same DNA. 

Thus, we all are more-or-less family.

 Rats and bats may be my relatives, but I can’t get myself to love them. Trees, however, I could hug. 

Learning is golden

 

 poor georgie’s almanack:  Science (+/- 30 seconds) 

Most people are surprised to learn that skin is their biggest organ.

What Ford Found

poor georgie’s almanack: 

You can’t move ahead without having been somewhere.  

Henry Ford’s auto assembly line was hugely inspired by the dis-assembly lines in slaughter houses that moved pigs from one station to another to be processed.  

Being politically incorrect.

poor georgie’s science almanack: +/- 30 seconds.

Theory vs. Theory.  Why many politicians say they don’t believe science. 

Politician: "A theory has yet to be proven."  Thus, Global  Warming is a maybe. 

Scientist: "A theory explains how something works."  Thus, There is proof of Global Warming.

Same word, different meaning.  

  

Gravity for the serious scientist.

poor georgie’s almanack … Gravity.

Just watched five minutes of Henny Youngman one-liners and, for no apparent reason, I thought about astro-physics nerds who feel they are falling in a dark place.  

Since gravity is the weakest known force in the universe, all they need to lighten up is a little humor.

We are like the stars

poor georgie’s almanack:  Science  in +/- 30 seconds

Our lives are very much like the lives of stars in the sky.  

13.8 billion years ago a Big Bang produced a gazillion little squiggly, stringy things that eventually built big structures (galaxies & human bodies) and small ones (cells & molecules). 

Nonetheless, most everyone and everything will wind-up disintegrating in deep black holes.    

It's the worst

poor georgie’s almanack:  

Autocorrect is my worst enema!

Religion and Science

poor georgie’s almanack:  Science #2

 

Religion and Science in +/- 30 seconds

Religions, among other things, try to explain much of what can and what can’t be sensed by human observation. 

For example, most religions offer a creation story. They also provide a context to life and society. 

Sciences, among other things, try to explain what is too small to be seen and too big to grasp. They explore how things work. 

Religion and science actually compliment each other … even if their adherents don’t.

SCIENCE #1 in +/- 30 seconds

poor georgie’s almanack: 

SCIENCE #1 in +/- 30 seconds 

Science is much more interesting than politics these days because truth is stranger than fiction.  

After an estimated 1,000 “poor georgie’s almanack” postings, often highlighting irony, I will add science tidbits. They will represent things I think I have learned that I hope you find interesting.

Why is it always the virus season?

poor georgie’s almanack: 

Bad things often start small. 

Viruses of global hate are spread by too many political parties, sects, religions, the web and nationalistic movements. 

At times we all have been infected. 

(Enhanced photo of T4 virus is from an electron microscope.)

Voters with blood on their hands

 poor georgie’s almanack: 

People who vote for candidates promoting hateful racial, religious, and nationalist conspiracy theories have as much blood on their hands as the candidates themselves. 

This applies from the very top to the bottom of the ballots.

The voter and the walker

poor georgie’s almanack:

It is the first day of early balloting. 

Two hours after the local polling place opened there were 120 people voting or in-line. 

I saw exactly 12 who might not be on Medicare ... and everyone looked healthy, including the lady using a walker.  

Organic fertilizer

poor georgie’s almanack: 

Mini-molecules, soaring Sequoias, hurtling hurricanes, and swarming starlings all make brain-like decisions. 

We don’t understand our own brains, much less those that influence us. 

What if animals including humans are being farmed to feed vegetation?

I don't understand, do you?

poor georgie’s almanack:

Can you help me?  

I understand this sign.  

What I don’t understand is how the system has divided America into three political tribes, each about the same size.  The one on the left seems to be pretty organized.  It only talks and listens to its shamans and fellow tribe members.  They shout at the tribe on the right.  

The same goes for that tribe on the right, only visa-versa.  Its members shout at the left.

Those of us who like to believe we are in the middle, feel we have no one to listen to, or talk to.  We have no shamans and, for the most part, shun shouting because it is so ugly and unproductive.  

Meanwhile, we are told that as a nation, the three political tribes are equally divided into two camps.  Huh?

I don’t believe the problem is the media, which simply reflect their audiences.  

Putting it another way, the media are vehicles for feeding something deeper in America and many other countries.  They are the vessels that deliver the life blood coming from the heart of the matter.

So, what is the matter with us?  

Can someone explain this to me?

Oh, Oh.

poor georgie's almanack:

I SAID I’LL DO IT WHEN I GET AROUND TO IT.

LOOK WHAT WAS ON THE TABLE THIS MORNING.

poor georgie's almanack: 
Happy Columbus Day, more or less. 

The arrival of Old Chris in the Caribbean Sea in 1492 began the Columbian Exchange. 

The New World "got" diseases that killed about 80% of the indigenous people, plus colonists and slaves. 

The exchange was America's silver and crops (especially corn and potatoes) that allowed Europeans and Asians to grow and prosper.

I wonder why we ...

poor georgie’s almanack: 

Some say humans are earth’s dominant  organisms. 

Others think plants farm us for nutrients. (Think about it.) 

Most don’t know about previous mass extinctions of life forms. That asteroid causing dinosaurs to die, opening a niche for humanoids was just one. 

I wonder why we, worms, water flowers, and warthogs have so much DNA in common. 

Thumbs and fingers

 poor georgie’s almanack:

Opposable thumbs bring us together not middle fingers.

Does this bug you?

poor georgie’s almanack:

I dreamt that a little cricket told me a clear conscience probably is the sign of a bad memory.

   

Rape

 poor georgie’s almanack:

It takes one person to commit a rape, but a village to let them get away with it over and over.  Quote from Jessica Valenti on medium.com   

The more things change, the more they stay the same

poor georgie’s almanack: 

5000 years ago hunter-gatherers began to feed their families by rudimentary farming. 

A new book “Origin Story” reports this most dramatically improved the lives of the top 10%. I.e., those with power to tax and punish. 

Today, the top 10% still reap the benefits provided by the other 90%.  

Hmm. 

Religions and The Big Bang

poor georgie’s almanack: 

Today’s short science question is for people like me who struggled to get a C in math.  

It is about religions and the Big Bang.  

Historically many, if not most, religions have "origin" stories that begin with something like, “In the beginning there was nothing and then there were somethings that became everything.”  

The Big Bang Theory says the same thing ... almost 14 billion years ago “There was nothing and then there were somethings that became everything.” 

Einstein’s theory sort-of explains that how you perceive an event depends on where and when your brain gets its hands around it.  I think Einstein was saying “everything is relative.” 

Right?