Let Them Go

It is the very nature of humanity to have relationships come and go throughout our lives. It is inevitable. Friends drift apart; lovers part ways. Our paths are not all aligned.

Over the past 20 years, I have had people who were inseparable companions meander away as their lives went in different directions. Some of these people I mourn the loss of more than others, some of them were much dearer to me than others. Some of them are the same person that I used to know while others have changed into unrecognizable people wearing a recognizable shell.

It is these, in the last category, that I find most unsettling and the hardest to resolve. The people who are absent because they have changed so much that the person I knew is no longer there inside.

One of the most difficult things to watch is someone following that path. Seeing who they are on the inside take a path that is changing them and distorting who they are all while they are unaware of it. Watching their identity slide away through currents of hypocrisy and rationalization as their ego tries to satisfy itself and preserve its self-identity is a painful process to witness.

It’s important for us all, especially those of us with complex interpersonal webs, to know that we cannot fix other people. We cannot stop their path when they refuse to acknowledge it themselves.

It’s equally important to know that we are allowed to let them go. YOU, yes you reading this, do NOT need to rescue other people from themselves. You have no responsibility to do that. A good friend will try to exert guidance; a good friend will try to point out the path. A good friend will, usually, contribute more energy than they should to prevent the self-destruction of someone they care about. But it is not the responsibility of the good friend to follow on the path. It’s ok to say “enough.” It’s ok to cut the cord and let the person follow their path into self-implosion. It’s ok to sever their access to you when their behavior becomes damaging to you and other people in your life.

It’s also ok to be there for them when their implosion is complete and they realize they have destroyed everything in their lives for nothing. It’s ok to reach out and say “I forgive you. Welcome back.”

What is not ok is to let them destroy you with them. It’s not ok to let them gaslight you or manipulate you. It’s not ok for them to project their own horrible behavior onto you and blame you. It’s not ok for them to take out their frustrations with others deciding that their behavior is horrible on you.

If someone turns toxic in your life it’s ok to let them go. You’ll feel guilty about it. But, I promise you, it’s ok to let them go.

If someone turns toxic… LET THEM GO. You cannot fix them; you can merely help those who are willing to accept it. If they are not willing to accept help: let them go.

Political Ads, Ignorance and Propoganda

I really hate when an election is coming near.
I hate it because of the advertisements that appear.
One example that has been airing for awhile where I live is this one:

I find this advertisement particularly repugnant for a variety of reasons and none of them have anything to do with the candidate it is trashing.

This advertisement is completely disjointed and ridiculous.
The term "independent" in politics, and in the context of this advertisement, means that one is not affiliated with a political party.
This advertisement attacks Angus King's declaration of political party independence and states that his voting records shows otherwise. This makes no sense without supporting evidence and explanation - it, in short, is a terrible assertion to make in an ad because one cannot support it. The nature of being independent from either major political party means that you vote however you feel is the right direction for the people you represent. Sometimes your votes may align completely with one of the parties' agendas and other times your votes may be scattered back and forth between the two parties. Even if you voted 100% in alignment with one party agenda it doesn't mean your record tells a different story because you are still not a member of that party and, by definition, an independent.
The last portion of the ad, where it blatantly says "Maine needs jobs" is also a complete and total disjunction. It is obvious that the people who built the ad believe that commenting on the employment situation in the state will draw more attention to their cause and they are probably right. I, however, noticed that that one last comment in the ad was thrown in there in a haphazard fashion and really has nothing to do with the rest of the ad. It weakens the ad. It hurts their cause. It makes the writer(s) and editor(s) of that ad look foolish. If you want to take a direction of "too much spending" in the ad - do it. If you want to take a direction of "not enough jobs" in an ad - do it. There are probably ways you can create an ad that covers both in a productive manner - this advertisement was not one of them.

Furthering my problem with the campaigning season is the level of ignorance that many politicians seem to uncover about themselves during their speeches and interviews.
Chief among those at the moment is the, apparently, rampant belief among Republican public officials and nominees that women who are "legitimately raped" cannot get pregnant from the action. They go so far as to include a separate rider for incest (where I disagree with that as raping your children is still rape and statutory rape of your children is still statutory rape) and some of them claim one cannot get pregnant from that, either.
I firmly believe that the core purpose of politicians is to represent the people that they are elected (and paid) to represent. Their job is to PROTECT our interests when examining legislation changes and problems in the country. Their job is NOT to try and oppress the people and make themselves wealthier. Sadly, the latter is what politicians in this country have become very good at.
I recently watched a movie that dealt with trying to get from East Germany to West Germany in the 1960s as a barrier to the characters in the story. It made me realize that if you have to turn your country into a prison to keep people there so you, the government, have something to govern then you are doing it wrong. Shortly afterward this image starting floating around facebook:



and I found it very fitting.

The bottom line on this upcoming election is that the Republican party has, in my humble estimation, thrown themselves overboard and into the deep-end of crazy, fundamentalist thinking. The people who are getting airtime from this party are showing that their core values are, essentially, no different from those of the Taliban - except their book is "The Holy Bible" instead of the Koran (I know there are multiple spellings, I am going with the easy one).
I am fiscally conservative. I like the idea of supporting people who need it but I also realize that the money has to come from somewhere. I like having my paycheck and dislike seeing how much goes into taxes. What I dislike more is the idea of my country turning into a prison where I am regulated by irrationality and religious fundamentalism. I fear being trapped in a country, unable to leave, where the people in charge will force inequality upon the people and discriminate against half the population based solely on their gender. I fear a country where progress out of that condition (because we are still living within it) has stopped and any chance of it resuming is lost.
I have now come to not only dislike both parties and refuse to join either but to actually fear the republican party and all that it is proclaiming to stand for,
I have said before that voting for the BEST candidate is not throwing your vote away since your vote serves to outline that very purpose. I have stated that voting for a candidate as a vote against another candidate contributes to the downfall of the system as it is designed to support us. I still believe these things but, I feel that the republican party has gone to the point where I may be forced to vote for the democratic nominee as a defensive play against the republican candidates. I hate this idea but I would rather do it that see the misogyny and homophobia continue to run rampant. I would rather do it than see us move more and more toward a religiously-ruled country. I would rather do that than see the continuing decline of scientific knowledge in this country. I would rather see my taxes go up for programs that allow more and more people to view welfare as a lifestyle choice (and yes, they do exist - I have seen it first-hand) than be subjected to the alternative.

Great job, republican party, you are pushing an independent away from you out of a need to defend their own position in the world.

In Contemplation of Absolutes

On the way to work this morning, like most mornings, I was listening to a podcast (for those that are interested it was "Dr. Kiki's Science Hour" which one can find through Justin.tv or the TWIT network or in the iTunes podcast directory).  This particular episode broke with the show's normal format and touched on several science topics on several articles rather than focussing on one particular topic for the entire hour.

One of these articles is what prompts this post. It does so for two reasons.

The first of these directly relates to the article. The article that Dr. Kiki summarized discussed how people are far more willing to accept the credentials of scientists in who are proposing hypotheses and/or theories that support their cultural norm over those who do not. It also pointed out that they are more able to remember scientific evidence that is presented that supports the way they WANT things to turn out.
I'm sure this is not a surprise to ANYONE reading my blog. What is interesting is that they did a controlled study (I'm interested enough that if I had the time I would go read it for more details, but I do not have the time required to find and read it) to gather data on exactly how much people tend to do this. So now, according to this study, it's FACT that people do this and not just anecdotal speculation. That is a move forward (unless, of course, you don't believe people do this in which case this study MUST be flawed and based on a bad premise :-) )

The discussion of the article, as many regarding controversial science often do, led almost immediately to global climate change. This leads me to the second topic of this post: global climate change.

I, personally, do not care, even a little bit, about your opinion on this topic; ESPECIALLY if it disagrees with mine. The only exception to that rule is if you have rational and well-thought out points that I CANNOT shred in my own mind using facts, logic and reason. I, like nearly every other person in the developed world, have been barraged with this topic for DECADES and I am tired of arguing about it with people who have irrational opinions and flawed data that they combine with even more flawed logic.

Lucky for me, this is MY blog. :-) I can post whatever I want. If you don't like it you can read elsewhere. :-)

With my preliminary statement finished I now present my stance on global climate change:

1. This is something that is ocurring.
             There are plenty of sources of evidence that date backward through the history of our species that all agree: the planet is gradually warming. They also all agree that it has been warming since mankind first starting scratching marks into cave walls.
2. We did NOT cause it.
            If our evidence shows that this has been ongoing since mankind first began scratching on cave walls it CANNOT be CAUSED by mankind. It's that simple. At that point in our history we were no more a manipulator of nature than any other animal on the planet. If this process was in the works THEN it obviously could not have been STARTED by our species.
3. We MIGHT be contributing to it in a measurable fashion
           Are we polluting our planet? Yes. Most certainly. Unequivocally. Without question. We are causing harm to the ecosphere that nurtured us as we grew from a partially-sentient animal into the fully sentient (at least some of us) beings that we are today. Is this a bad thing? Yes. Should we pursue better ways of managing our lives, resources, energy consumption? YES. Conservatism is NEVER a bad idea for those that want their resources to last. And we SHOULD all want out resources to last because we have no other home to go to when we wreck this one.
4. Carbon dioxide is not as scary as scientists make it out to be. Yes, it is a bad thing to have in the atmosphere but the thing that makes it so bad is that we are destroying the world's carbon sink. Something NONE of the media outlets will ever mention is that ALL of the carbon we dump into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels was already once in the biosphere. That's right ladies and gentlemen: we're just returning that carbon to the biosphere that put it into pre-oil form. If the earth sustained itself with that much carbon in the biosphere before it can do it again. Will species go extinct as part of the process? Probably. Will we? Maybe. Will it kill the earth? No. People who dislike this argument when I bring it up are fond of pointing out that volcanoes put HUGE volumes of carbon dioxide into the air each year and that the biosphere never had that carbon to deal with. I put out that those same volcanoes dump more carbon dioxide into the air than all of mankind's pollution combined. So, if volcanoes are that significant than there is NOTHING we can do about the carbon anyway: so why try? Of course, the counter to this counter is that the same forces that spew out carbon dioxide from the depths of the earth also draw produce large volumes of rock. The converse is that for every unit of mass that the earth disgorges through a volcano it draws back in at a subduction zone. If it did not the earth would empty and the surface of the planet would grow until it collapsed for lack of anything under it. Therefore, the summary of this point is that fossil fuel emissions are returning CO2 to the biosphere that was once there in the first place. Tectonic activity contribute to the problem AND the solution. The biosphere will survive the carbon problem. The BEST thing we can do to mitigate the CO2 in the atmosphere problem is to PLANT MORE PLANTS. Plants grow. As plants grow they take in CO2 and push out O2. That means they absorb the carbon. They use this carbon to grow. More plants means a greater volume of carbon sinkage in the biosphere.
5. Other greenhouse gasses: most people don't realize that water vapor is a MUCH more significant greenhouse gas than CO2. It has a significantly greater thermal retention property. The upside is that it has a MUCH shorter in-atmosphere time because it precipitates out as rain/snow/hail/etc. This is merely a fact that most people do not know.
6. Ancient evidence. MILLIONS of years ago, when the North American continent was FURTHER NORTH than it is now there was a thick and full forest along the NORTHERN shore. The fossilized remnants of this forest imply that the plant growth there was similar in nature to plants that live in the warmer regions of the planet now. The regions nearer the equator than where I live. This forest was sustained for MILLIONS of years. This means that for MILLIONS of consecutive years the entire planet was MUCH warmer than it is now; so much warmer that the NORTHERN SHORE of CANADA was a tropical forest. ALL of humanity has existed in less than a million years. ALL of recorded history has taken place since the great ice age. Take a few minutes to ponder that.




Now that you've pondered I'll tell you what that means. It means that that is the NORMAL level of heat for this planet. ALL of humankind's history has taken place in a period of abnormal coolness for this planet. The planet is NOT warming up: it's returning to it's natural state. There is NOTHING we can do to STOP that with our current technology levels.

7. The Sun. There are some people who have reams of evidence to correlate heating and cooling cycles with solar output. There is a study currently being conducted which has preliminary data showing that a larger and longer solar cycle of sunspots and magnetic activity (the "normal" cycle is 11 years, but there are longer cycles which make the magnitude of the 11-year cycle greater - our data on the sun is VERY limited in this respect) DIRECTLY correspond to long-term climate variations. Their current data even implies that the "Little Ice Age" of the 1300s - 1800s was caused by a variation in sunspot activity. As ALL energy on earth is derivative of the fusion furnace in the heart of the sun ANY changes in the solar output MUST have some sort of affect on the earth. Are there other forces at work that can magnify or dampen the solar influence? Yes. But at the core of the habitability of earth is the sun.

8. Heat pollution: All I ever hear about when scientists discuss how humanity is ruining the earth is our contribution to the CO2 in the atmosphere. I NEVER hear anyone talking about how we are doing to things that much more directly affect the temperatures of the planet. The first is direct heat pollution. EVERYTHING you use generates heat pollution. Light bulbs. Your fridge. Your car. The laptop I am using to write this. Your TV. Your body. Composting the waste products from your home. EVERYTHING. All of this thermal energy is being dumped into our atmosphere as raw heat. The second thing we are doing is we are removing all of the heat absorbers and converters that nature created and replacing them with heat sinks. Every tree, flower, weed, blade of grass, algae blob that we remove from nature is one less thing that can absorb the heat from the sun AND pull carbon out of the atmosphere. We are replacing those heat and carbon absorbers with asphalt and concrete. Both asphalt and concrete absorb heat ALL DAY LONG and then they release it back into the air at night. They are not absorbing either heat or carbon: they are just storing heat during the day and releasing it at night.

Summary:
This is the point where I am going to cut myself off rather than start ranting on each of the tangents that this post could generate if I allowed it to do so. The raw summary of it is that global climate change is happening. We didn't cause it, but we're helping it happen. If you want to do something plant a garden and grow more plants. Those of you who live in large, urban buildings: see if you can get roof access to grow a roof-top vegetable garden (or even clearance to put in 2 inches of dirt and lay down some sod). The plant life on the roof will help insulate the building from heat in the summer and from the cold in the winter. It will reduce the heat-sink affect of the building's roof. It will pull carbon out of the air. Plants also absorb other air pollution so it will help make your city a nicer, cleaner place.

I wish I had a place I could do this, but our backyard is already filled with plant life and our roof has a significant slope to it.

Vaccinations and the Bad Science of the Anti-Vaccination Activists

Earlier today a friend of mine posted this link to an article about the current outbreak of whooping cough in California. Along with the link she posted the following quotes:

"We need to remember that vaccines are probably the biggest reason that
so few of us lose our children when they are young," said Dr. Patricia
Samuelson, speaking on behalf of the California Academy of Family
Physicians. "They used to say in this country, 'Don't count your
children until after they've had measles' because so many would die."

And this statement of her own opinion 

GET YOUR KIDS VACCINATED.

Most of the resulting conversation was on par with what I expect from people whom my friends choose to socialize with. It was in agreement with the idea of vaccinations and carried some slight jest at some of the medical ideas that go against all known science.

But then, on the tenth response, began the anti-vaccination opinions.  The first one (response #10) was inquiring about why they have to be so toxic and draining on the young immune system. Why are they so dangerous? It was geared in an acceptable and inquiring mind. It was phrased such that the person obviously has been exposed to the controversy started by the bad science of the anti-vaccination activists but someone who seemed to really want answer, rather than someone who had already made up their mind.
I, and a couple of other people, provided them with some (admittedly, opinion laced) answers to the inquiries.

Why is there mercury in vaccines? Because it was used as a preservative in a stable and non-toxic compound: just like in your fillings.

Why give 3-4 vaccines in a single injection instead of spreading them out? Because spreading them out would have the average person receiving the last of their vaccinations when they are 20 years old. Most of the diseases we are protecting against affect people before they reach that age. There is no point in vaccinating someone against Measles after they have died from it.

Why are the vaccines now so toxic that they induce a fever? Because they always have been: it's how they work. The vaccination generates an immune response to the pathogens that generate the disease so that your body knows what to do when it next encounters those pathogens. That means it generates a MUCH milder version of the same immune response. That means a mild fever. The response burns energy which makes you tired. People are super concerned about this type of response now because of the anti-vaccination-activists but the reality is this type of response by the body has always existed. Your muscles ache after a tetanus shot. That's been a reality for a LONG time. It's not new. It's the body generating an immune response to the pathogens that cause tetanus. (Yes a tetanus shot is a vaccine).

I will come out and plainly say it. Willful ignorance of science fact is stupid. If you CHOOSE to disbelieve the evidence presented by science I will find your opinions stupid. If you want to convince me otherwise: use reason and logic. The next anti-vaccine poster was much more hostile. She, who had not participated in the conversation to that point, felt that those who were answering the challenges of the science were calling her (and those who believe as she does) stupid even though care had been given to state things in an educational way (with the exception of flatly stating that those who push the mercury in vaccines scare do not understand chemistry: which is true). Her response was angry at those who support vaccines and angrier at those who wish to discredit the anti-vaccine movement. She has anecdotal evidence on her side regarding her niece who is now exhibiting autism signs after having been given the hepatitis B vaccine before going home from being birthed. It is obvious to me that she blames the vaccine for the autism.

This is the point where I point out the cold, hard logic.
1. Are there more autism diagnosis than 50 years ago? Yes.
2. Are there more people than 50 years ago? Yes.
3. Is there a higher percentage of people who obtain health care than 50 years ago? Yes.
4. Does modern health care have a greater means of communicating data on various anomalies in behavior and symptoms? Yes.
5. Does modern health care have better tools to diagnose and treat conditions? Yes.

If you follow these questions the logic train is easy to follow AND it can be followed with ANY disease that has an increase in the NUMBER of diagnoses (e.g. autism, asthma, ADHD, depression, etc):

5. Better equipment means more people with less severe symptoms can be diagnosed.
4. Better communication means that more doctors can be made aware of the symptoms of any condition and perform a more accurate diagnosis.
3. A higher percentage of people acquiring health care means that the percentage who were afflicted, but not treated, are now being treated. This alone will boost the number of cases even if the population did not grow.
2. More people means a greater number of diagnoses. The only way to prevent that is to find a way to make the condition being examined rarer.

ANY of the above logical points would lead to an increase in the raw number of cases of a condition over time. ALL of the them certainly will do so.

Connecting a rise in autism to a rise in vaccine usage is foolish. One might as well do a correlative study that shows that increased TV viewing in the average American home leads to higher autism rates or that the increase in the number of homes with internet connectivity leads to an increase in autism. People grab at the vaccines because it is an easy target that can be easily connected to autism because autism manifests (often suddenly) around age 3-4 which is after all of the vaccination batteries have (at least) begun (often mostly finished).

This correlation is based on fear and feelings, not statistical data. There have been repeated studies that have examined the data and NONE of them have found a reliable DIRECT correlation. The only one that found such a correlation was published by a doctor in the UK who performed the study in an unethical and unscientific way and whose supporting university has since redacted the entire article and (essentially) disavowed the doctor himself. The ONE study that shows a causal link was falsified. The ONE study that shows a correlation was performed by a doctor on a vaccine that was a direct competitor to HIS work that could be produced MUCH cheaper and faster than his work. The one study that shows a causal link was written to boost the cash flow to the author's bank account.

Another logical point, and one which has a recent study to support it, is that modern health care is happy to over-diagnose people. The recent study showed that among children diagnosed with ADHD in grades K-2 (whose were prescribed Ritalin to treat it) MOST of them (by a significant margin) were among the youngest in their class. They were diagnosed based on their fidgetiness and their inability to pay attention in class as observed by their teachers. The study implies that, perhaps, they do not have an abornmal behavior pattern but are, instead, acting normally for someone who is 15% - 20% younger than the remainder of their class. To someone who is 20 a 15% age difference is 3 years. As we age differences in age decrease in importance yet there is still a HUGE difference in the lifestyle of the average 17 year old and the average 20 year old. Often that lifestyle change has an equally large gap in maturity. If the change is that significant at that age imagine how much more significant it must be to a 6 year old. This does not prove anything other than over-diagnoses occur. If they occur in other areas they may also occur in autism.

Lastly I want to point out the basic numbers. As there is no correlation between vaccines and autism (or any other health care risk EXCEPT an allergic reaction) the probability of having vaccine-induced autism is 0%. But, for the sake of comparison, I feel like being generous. I'm going to say it is 1 in a million. That's .0001%. At this rate, for every 100 children vaccinated .01 would develop autism. Let's compare this to the mortality rate of measles: 15%. For every 100 children who contract measles 15 will DIE. Let's compare this to the mortality rate of Hepatitis B: 50%. For every 100 children who contract this 50 will DIE.

It seems to me that .01 out of a hundred is a MUCH less risky endeavor than HALF.

The natural reaction, of course, is to say "Well, who gets measles or hepatitis b anymore?" This is a perfectly sound question with a equally sound answer: almost no one because we're vaccinated against them.
For vaccinations to prevent epidemics 80% - 90% of the population must be vaccinated. If the vaccination pool drops much below that then the pathogens have enough population to move through that they can stay alive and spread and evolve. If you eliminate the viable hosts then you eliminate the habitat that the pathogens require. The disease gets wiped out (almost).
Sometimes, like in California, after a disease is assumed to be gone we'll stop vaccinating against it by default (another example is polio). When the general population is no longer protected and the disease comes back it will spread through the population as if there had never been a vaccine. If the anti-vaccinationists get their way and vaccines are stopped (or drop below 80% penetration rate) then, within 2 generations, we will see EVERY child-killing disease making a HUGE comeback.


This will kill MILLIONS of children.
This will flood the health provision system with sick, preventing others from getting the care they need.
This will dramatically increase the number of illness-related days of work lost which will hurt the economy.

Stopping vaccines is a bad idea.

That said: I think we should ALL have the right to CHOOSE for our children whether or not we vaccinate them. But do it based on DATA and KNOWLEDGE not FEAR and SUPERSTITION.

If you base your decision on data and knowledge you will choose vaccination as the less risky option unless new studies change the current belief.