Big Thoughts – Page 84 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Climate Change, Solar Output, Ice Ages, The Planet Vulcan, And Old Guys With Beards

“That’s the human body raising its core temperature to kill the virus. Planet Earth works the same way. Global warming is the fever. Mankind is the virus. We’re making our planet sick. A cull is our only hope.” – Kingsman: The Secret Service

Pugsley and sand. Yup. Hot day. Probably the influence of planet Vulcan!

The calculations proved it. The planet Mercury’s orbit wasn’t quite right. It was really, really close. Really close. But not quite. How close? If my calculations are right, Mercury was 28 miles from where it should have been. Given its orbital velocity, that was one second. One second in 88 days. And this error was found in 1843. According to the accepted physics theories, this was proof of . . . another planet!

Samuel Schwabe: Though not commonly known, all astronomers in the 1840’s were also expected to play linebacker at a moment’s notice, hence, Schawbe appearing in full shoulderpads.

This was just the sort of proof that German astronomer Samuel Schwabe was waiting for. In the previous 17 years, Schwabe had dutifully recorded the sunspots on every clear day. He wanted to be able to pick out a new planet that people believed was inside the orbit of Mercury. Heck, they were so sure it was there they even gave it a name after the god of fire – Vulcan.

Not this kind of Vulcan, silly.

But Schwabe never lived long enough to see the discovery of Vulcan (although it was reliably spotted several times in the late 1800’s) because it doesn’t exist. But Schwabe did notice (for the first time) that the number of sunspots varied over time. After 17 years, he predicted that the Solar Cycle was about 10 years in length. He was close – but it’s closer to 11. This discovery was picked up by Swiss astronomer Rudolf Wolff (what a cool name, right?)

Rudolf Wolff: Is it just me, or does he have the beard and hair of an NFL assistant coach?

Wolff began counting sunspots as well, but also gathered information on sunspot activity from all over Europe, as far back as he could – 1610. Wolf also looked at the data and determined that Sunspots impacted Earth’s own magnetic field. Wolff’s work validated Schwabe’s theory, and Schwabe was honored with the Royal Astronomical Society’s Gold Medal, the same one that Einstein and Sir Fred Hoyle (LINK) would later win (I’ve got two in my closet somewhere, I think).

CC-SA:3.0 – Robert Rohde

So, a dude named Gustav Spörer discovered a period nearly zero sunspot activity – naturally, they named it the Maunder Minimum after the NEXT people to talk about it, Edward and Annie Maunder.

Edward and Annie aren’t that interesting, but the Maunder Minimum was – especially since we discovered other things . . . like the impact the great thermonuclear reactor in the sky has on temperature. High sunspot activity correlates to higher solar output. I wish it correlated to me having more hair.

CC-SA:3.0 – Robert Rohde

Which makes sense if you look at other data, like this from the IPCC’s first report:

Clearly, it was colder when there were fewer sunspots. Is that enough? No, there are some pretty other significant adders to the climate picture (though none are larger than the input from the Sun). Other things that really matter?

Well, CO₂ has been increasing – that’s for certain. And, CO₂ is a greenhouse gas. That’s for certain, too, otherwise the Earth would be too cold for life.

And as the temperature goes up, (maybe due to, say, solar output?) then the ability of the oceans to store CO₂ goes down. Cool us off with, say, a new Maunder Minimum? Yeah, then the CO₂ that can be stored in the oceans goes . . . up again.

And the CO₂ balance isn’t very far off from balanced.

But climate is determined by a batch of things – such as the current oscillations of the North Atlantic current, the amount of Bavarian-produced PEZ®, and our Sun’s output. The mere fact that no one can explain why we have ice ages should tell you that climate science is exceptionally incomplete – it’s as if physics couldn’t explain why STOP signs are octagons.

In the last 500,000,000 years of the existence of the Earth, the climate has been pretty steady.

CC by SA 3.0, Glen Fergus

And as I looked at the graph, I noticed two data points at the end, showing projections via a mathematical model. Certainly, they’re still in the realm of habitable. But are they real?

Probably not. Climate predictions have systematically overestimated the amount of global warming over time.

Via https://judithcurry.com/2015/12/17/climate-models-versus-climate-reality/

But when I hear people on NPR® talking about climate, what I hear is a lot of panic. It’s as if the world sits on a global climate hill, and the people of Earth, dressed in clown suits no doubt, are nudging it downslope, where it will go out of control and fry us all. But 500,000,000 years of climate history says that won’t happen. And the resources that are to be diverted? What could they do to make all of humanity wealthier with all of the money being spent on Global Warming?

Back to Vulcan.

It doesn’t exist. At all. The 28 mile gap? It’s real, but the reason it exists is because of the gravitational well that bends space time – Einstein hadn’t yet explained that mass bends space . . . and time. So given the mathematics and theories of the day, there had to be a planet. The observations that showed a planet? Maybe it was aliens or asteroids? Godzilla?

So, a strong consensus of astronomers had a belief in Vulcan. No other ideas made sense. So, one could say that there was a strong scientific consensus, but it was based on ignorance of physical facts. And, congratulations to the New England Patriots, Super Bowl LII champs by consensus! Point spread was 4.5 in favor of the Pats, so they won, right?

My concern remains that there is a group of people, with almost religious fervor, who feel mankind is the source of all that is wrong in the world, the source of all that is bad. The end point of their philosophy is a hatred of mankind. We are all that is wrong with the world. The irony is many of them are atheist, just replacing one religion and sin with another. And many see climate change as a method to extract political power (and money) from the world as a whole. I do recall that in the 1970’s that the next thing we’d see was . . . another ice age.

But we are not. All light, all love, all beauty has been either made by us or recognized by us. There’s no evidence a badger ever stopped and said, “Hey, beautiful sunset.” Nope. Without a human recognizing it, it doesn’t occur. Badgers have notoriously poor aesthetics.

And large amounts of the CO₂ went to feeding humanity. Who decides who will suffer, sacrifice, and die so we can spend money to be carbon neutral, when there is some evidence that solar output is declining and might lead to a climate that’s actually colder, longer term (LINK)? I’m sure somebody will be able to pin that on people.

You can see that solar output is declining. Perhaps it’s a conspiracy?

Besides, our robot overlords after the singularity (LINK) won’t be all that tied to temperature. They’ve got air conditioning . . . maybe solar powered?

12 Rules For Life: The Peterson Strikes Back (Book Review Part II, Episode 5)

“Search your feelings, Lord Vader. You will know it to be true. He could destroy us.” – Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

The Boy and Pugsley engaged in an epic Lightsaber® battle. At the end, The Boy cut off Pugsley’s arm and said “You are my brother, Pugsley, join me and we’ll rule our parent’s house . . . together.”

As promised, there is the second part of my book review for Dr. Jordan Peterson’s new bestseller, “12 Rules for Life.” You can find the first part here (LINK). The third and concluding post is here (LINK).

You can bet I won’t call it “The Peterson Awakens.”

Rule 5: Do Not Let Your Children Do Anything That Makes You Dislike Them

Children, are, perhaps the only legacy many people will leave on this Earth after they die. Some parents are horrible and provide no limits to their children, creating tiny toddler tyrants, rather than children people like to be around. You have seen these children. You despise them. Yet they exist. Why?

Increasing divorce rates since the 1960’s increases the severity of this problem, creating fractured families. Peterson blames a LOT on the 1960’s: “. . . a decade whose excesses led to general denigration of adulthood, an unthinking disbelief in the existence of competent power, and the inability to distinguish between the chaos of immaturity and responsible freedom.”

See, I told you he was Dangerous.

This is the opposite of the nihilistic (at its core) “if it feels good, do it” philosophy that stems from Aleister Crowley’s “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” Which was written by this guy:

Wilder Rule #56: Hats make the man!

Here are some takeaways from this chapter.

Order is required – children want limits. But there can be too many rules as well, and parents are the key to sorting that out, as their interactions with their children determines the future of society. Parents seem to have difficulty imposing their will on their children.
Peterson: “Two year olds, statistically speaking, are the most violent of people.” This cracked me up. But it’s true. And you have to tame them, either with rewards or punishment.
Is physical punishment acceptable? But only the minimum amount required. The world is filled with physical punishment – just check out any middle school fight.
You need two parents because being a single parent is a tough, tough job. Single parenting isn’t preferable – Dan Quayle was right, Murphy Brown was wrong.
Understand your weaknesses, your dark side as a parent.
Parents are simulators (for their children) of the real world. Use your efforts to make them “socially desirable.”

Peterson must be an interesting parent. But I assure you, growing up at his house wasn’t boring.

Rule 6: Set Your House in Perfect Order Before You Criticize the World

This is, so far, my favorite chapter (though the next one might be even more impactful). Although I expected this to be based on an outward focus, this is Dr. Peterson adapting and providing a more generalized version of his “clean your room” lecture.

“Clean your room” is Dr. Peterson’s advice to those who have issues. And, it’s literal, not just a silly metaphor or slogan. He wants you to clean your actual room. Why? A variety of reasons – but it’s a way to start you off realizing you can make the chaos in your life go away, if only you try. And cleaning a room, making it better, is something anyone can do. It’s not hard.

But in this chapter, Dr. Peterson starts at the basics of broken people. It’s a dark path. “Everyone is destined for pain and slated for destruction.” He takes us from mass shootings to serial killers to a suicidal Leo Tolstoy (The War and Peace author dude) who wouldn’t be around rope for a period of time, since he was pretty sure he was going to hang himself. Peterson takes us to these places, because it’s important to understand what brought them to this state.

A belief that the world lacked meaning.
Suffering (in some cases) horrific abuse at the hands of others.
A belief that God or the human race was evil.

Tolstoy, looking for all the world like a garden gnome wearing dominatrix boots.

Although Peterson starts with mass shooters, the same beliefs that led them down the road to hurting others causes some people to destroy not outward, but inward. Those beliefs are poison for the soul.

But some people, when confronted with a great evil, turn and face it right back, like Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. Dying of cancer, released in the nick of time for surgery to save him, Solzhenitsyn did what every good Soviet citizen did: he wrote critical articles and, eventually, a novella critical of the Soviet state. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was actually published in the Soviet Union. The Gulag Archipelago was published in the West. Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel® Prize© for his writing – writing dedicated to making his home country better by showing the true horror of the Soviet state. He turned what could have been bitter resentment into something that changed the world and toppled a totalitarian state.

Solzhenitsyn, looking dapper in his Soviet prison outfit, circa 1950. (image from http://www.solzhenitsyn.ru)

I went through a similar situation with my first marriage. It was constructed on mutual mistrust, and was painful for both of us. I used that experience to reflect on who I wanted to be, and used that experience to reflect on who I wanted to be, and used that . . . sorry, stuck. I figured out who I should be as a husband, and as a result? I became better than I was.

I got a better life out of my difficulties. Solzhenitsyn’s work helped end the Soviet system and made nuclear annihilation less likely and won a Nobel®. To-MAY-to, To-MAH-to.

But Dr. Peterson has a sure-fire (seriously) way to fix this: clean up your life. There are a large number of questions in this section that Peterson asks that you really think about. I’ll not repeat them all here, buy the book, cheapskate.

Peterson: “Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong.” Start to . . . because starting is the hardest part.

And how do you know if it’s wrong? Seems like if it feels good, you should do it, right?

Peterson: “Do only those things you can speak of with honor.”

And after you fix one thing? Another thing to fix will become obvious. And another. And another. After a while? You’ve fixed yourself. You’re useful.

Peterson: “You will be then left with the inevitable bare tragedies of life. But they will no longer be compounded with bitterness and deceit.”

Rule 7: Pursue What Is Meaningful, Not What Is Expedient

There is a LOT of philosophy in this book. And there is a LOT of the Bible. Peterson feels that the Bible itself is an “emergent” document – one that has properties that exceed its sum. It’s the distillation of thousands of years of stories culminating in the crucifixion and resurrection, honed and explained and shared until they have literally changed the way the Western world thinks (and paved the way for pesky things like science, freedom, liberty, and the abolition of slavery).

One emergent property is the idea that instead of instant gratification (which would allow you to lie, cheat, steal, and kill in the extreme) is replaced by delayed gratification. This delayed gratification can be Earthly in the Christian world, or it can be Heavenly. This ability to delay gratification is a significant difference between animals and humans and a defining part of Western civilization (though not exclusive to Western civilization).

Dr. Peterson explains that the delay of gratification can be compared to a bargain with reality. I can do something now-like lift weights-to create a future that I want to exist-being strong so I can drive my enemies before me and hear the lamentations of their women. No single weightlifting session makes me strong, it’s the sum of them that create the future state. But my actions, like magic, create a different future.

Honestly, Conan the Destroyer was better than this one. But the music was sublime.

As we begin the religious parallelism – the future is a “judgmental father” that wants you to sacrifice now, for a potential future gain. Sacrifice what, exactly? What limits are there to the sacrifice?

Maybe everything?

Peterson: “If the world you are seeing not the world you want, therefore, it’s time to examine your values. It’s time to rid yourself of your current presuppositions. It’s time to let go. It might even be time to sacrifice what you love best, so that you can become who you might become, instead of staying who you are.”

Powerful. And think to the parallel construction of God sacrificing Jesus to transform the human race. Just as Cain and Able had a sacrifice war, as Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son, God swaps the equation and makes a sacrifice for us, so that we might be saved.

But, Peterson returns to Cain. Cain sacrifices. And sacrifices. And sacrifices. And God says: “meh.” So Cain kills. And that is the tragedy. Cain was not necessarily evil before he became a murder, but Dr. Peterson observes: “. . . convictions must die – must be sacrificed – when the relationship with God has been disrupted.”

In this battle between the now and the future, proper action must be based on honesty, and generosity that is aimed at producing actions that make the world better – actions with meaning.

Rule 8: Tell The Truth, Or At Least Don’t Lie

I’ve mentioned (in some other post) before about The Mrs., and how I promised her (and, more importantly, me) that I would never lie to her. It gave me the power/ability/responsibility to bet truthful. “Do these pants make my butt look big?” is a question that she’s never asked me.

It’s almost as freeing as a superpower – the freedom to always be honest. One time in the B.C. (before cellphones) I was late coming home from work. Really late. It just so happens that the governor of the state of Alaska (not Palin, Murkowski) was next door talking to my boss. And there were at least three television stations broadcasting. I stayed until they left, and then went home:

The Mrs.: “Why are you late?”

John Wilder: “Governor, television stations, all next door talking to my boss – and I didn’t want all the ladies in Fairbanks to come knock down our door chasing me?”

The Mrs.: “Okay.”

No questions, no disbelief. Just . . . “ok.”

And, as I’ve said before, if I told The Mrs. that aliens took me time travelling to go dancing with Marilyn Monroe, Gary Busey and Cleopatra, well, she’d at least believe that I believed that. She might think I was as nuts as Busey, but she wouldn’t think me deceitful or doubt my sincerity.

Dr. Jordan Peterson: “What should you do when you don’t know what to do? Tell the truth.”

Peterson is a Truth absolutist. He believes (in opposition to Post-Modernist thought) that there is Truth. All things are not shades of gray. There is Truth. Additionally, speech that’s spin – meant to manipulate you? It’s a lie, too.

Life sucks. It’s going to be hard. But to make it Hell? You need to add lies.

Why not lie? It contaminates everything. Small lies become big lies. Which infect and overwhelm everything . . . it gets to a situation where “. . . lies have destroyed the relationship between individual or state and reality itself.”

The pain from lying isn’t all outward – if you lie, your character is injured, and when life gets rough (as it will) you won’t have character to support you – only lies. And lies hurt you in a different way – they create a victim mentality in you. You believe that the world should conform to the lies that you have even begun to tell yourself, and when the world doesn’t? You blame the world instead of yourself. You create a victim narrative to explain it all.

What’s the benefit of telling truth?

Peterson: “Truth reduces the terrible complexity of man into the simplicity of his word, so that he may become a partner.”

And that’s a pretty good reason to tell the truth.

And the truth is? Peterson likes Trailer Park Boys, but probably not as much as I do. Here’s a bit of Bubbles doing Bowie. Enjoy. Next Friday we’ll conclude this review, and maybe dismember some Ewoks®?

Richard Dawson, Quantum Mechanics, The Mandela Effect

“No, it’s the Mengele Effect.” – X-Files

Remember when a wax Rocky Balboa knocked out President Gore after the Soviets invaded Pakistan? Me neither.

For me it started somewhere in my early thirties.

The Mrs. and I were watching the television one night and a show called “World’s Funniest Gameshow Moments” came on. We started to watch – it was narrated by Richard Dawson. Richard Dawson was the host of Family Feud® back in the 1970’s and 1980’s. On the celebrity scale he was higher than most – parts in two big feature films and almost two straight decades on television.

No big surprise that he’d be narrating a show about game shows, right? It even makes sense.

Except he was dead. And the dead are notoriously bad at calling back their agents to get roles narrating television shows. Except Bono®. He’ll do anything.

I clearly remember reading Dawson’s death notice in the paper on a winter morning almost a decade earlier from the time we were watching the show in year 2000. It was on the right hand of page 2 about two inches from the top. I was sitting in the back of a classroom. It was winter.

John Wilder: “Hey, this is Richard Dawson. But he died. Right?”

The Mrs.: “Yes, I certainly remember that he died. Wonder when they filmed this?”

I booted up my computer. I clicked on the network icon and connected to the Internet, via a nice 56k modem.

Yes, this was the sound of the Internet in the before time. Imagine watching Netflix – it would only take 6 or 7 days to download a non-HD movie.

After I logged in, I did a quick search, and I found out that . . . Richard Dawson was indeed alive (at that time – Richard Dawson is dead now, having passed away on June 2, 2012).

Ahhh, the sweet morning scent of piano cinnamon trees.

The Mrs. and I both had very specific memories of Dawson being dead. Very specific memories, and based on our recollection it was roughly in the same year. And the same cause – cancer. But we were wrong.

Now it’s understandable when one of us is wrong. People goof. But for us to have the same, specific detailed memory was spooky.

We brushed it off. But we never forgot it. It’s the sort of odd coincidence/occurrence that sticks pretty firmly in your mind. Not that I dwelled on it, but every so often it came back up. In one instance, I was travelling for work and thought that it might be the basis for a short story.

First, some background, from Wikipedia – stick with me, it’s worth it:

In Dublin in 1952 Erwin Schrödinger gave a lecture in which at one point he jocularly warned his audience that what he was about to say might “seem lunatic”. He went on to assert that when the equation that won him a Nobel prize seems to be describing several different histories, they are “not alternatives but all really happen simultaneously”. This is the earliest known reference to the many-worlds.

Catch that? When you flip a coin, does it land heads or tails? Schrödinger appears to be saying, “yes.”

Essentially, any time there’s a decision, the universe splits into two. One pops off and becomes another, nearby, nearly identical universe. Nobody remembers who won the coin flip to get the next beer, so these small changes that make universe splits go largely unnoticed. Heck, maybe they collapse back into themselves for not being sufficiently unique. It’s not like a big event like when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, right, or when we nuked Berlin? (I’m just kidding.)

As a side note: we have discovered parallel dimensions – check out this (LINK) for more amazing (not kidding) details.

The most common example of this theory is Schrödinger’s Cat, which is a pretty famous thought experiment at Schrödinger’s expense (rumor has it this made him kinda pissy after he heard about it). The really short version of this “experiment” is one takes a cat, and puts it in a box. There’s some mechanism that has a 50-50 chance of triggering, say, poison gas to be released with our kitty cat. Pretend it’s the radioactive decay of a cesium atom. Let’s say you set the cat-killing machine in motion, toss a cat in, and wander off. After a while, your Internet addled brain looks up from your MyFace© page and remembers you left a cat in the Death Machine again and should go and see how it’s doing.

This is funny if you like physics jokes. I like physics jokes.

Is it alive or dead? According to Schrödinger’s equation and Futurama, yes. It’s in a state of quantum superposition. And the quantum waveform collapses only after you observe it – and this isn’t some sort of made up thing – it has been proven through repeated experiments that observation (not interference) changes the pattern that light makes.

If light were a wave, it would make a pattern of alternating light and dark spots passing through the slits:

Source: Wikimedia, Fu-Kwun Hwang, CC BY-SA 3.0

Stay away from the light, Carol-Anne! The quantum collapse might put your eye out!

But if it’s a particle, it will make a dot on the back.

If you don’t check and see where the photon comes through, it makes the wave pattern.

If you check and count the photons going through (they have a way to do this) it just shows up like a dot.

Observation matters. There is some debate as to whether or not that observer has to be conscious or not – certainly Nobel® winning physicist Eugene Wigner thought that a conscious observer was required for quantum mechanics to work. And if quantum mechanics doesn’t work, the universe doesn’t exist. At all. At the heart of physics there is a (debatable) proposition that conscious observation is required to make the whole thing (you, me, PEZ®, a potential multiverse) even exist.

I wish I were making this up. I’m so not making it up – this is actual physics. You can check out this link for more background (LINK).

Back to my story idea:

The concept is there was a guy who began noticing things . . . like Richard Dawson’s death/not death. These were trackable events, but events so subtle you’d never notice them if you weren’t paying attention. Let’s say you could go back and forth between the universe where Richard Dawson died and the one where he didn’t. Not a lot of change? Probably not. But maybe, you could make yourself notice less . . . or make yourself believe you’d observed things you hadn’t. Maybe you could move to universes that were more and more different . . . and maybe you got unstuck in reality and started drifting through various universes.

Who knows? Maybe that’s what makes a certain category of insane people the way they are – they can actually observe and move through universes, or are maybe adrift – they don’t have a grip on reality, since reality keeps morphing around their consciousness.

Still haven’t figured out how to write that story. But I’m willing to bet you’re a bit creeped out right now, so I win, anyway.

Which brings us back to the Mandela Effect. It’s so named because one of the big examples is South African leader Nelson Mandela and his death in prison in the 1980’s. Except he didn’t die then – it was December 5, 2013. There are a bunch of other examples here at this great website (LINK) for your viewing pleasure. It’s like an Internet meme made of words. My addition is just Richard Dawson. And, no, I don’t remember Mandela dying before 2013. Just the Dawson story.

I had decided to do this article on the Mandala (or Dawson!) Effect prior to the X-Files doing the best episode of this season (so far) with their episode “The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat.” Just funny it surfaced right before I was going to do this one – and, yes, sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence.

Or maybe another Mr. Wilder has it right:

Jordan Peterson’s Cannon Lobster and 12 Rules for Life Review

â€œThis is Peterson, your new replacement.â€ â€“ Idiocracy

The Texans had a cannon, the lobsters did not.Â Therefore?Â The lobsters lost control of vast swaths of Texas very quickly.Â Except the Alamo.Â The lobsters won there.Â

Here is the first of three posts on Dr. Jordan Petersonâ€™s newly released bestseller, â€œ12 Rules for Life.â€Â The second post is here (LINK).Â The final post is here (LINK).Â There’s a link to the book on Amazon down below.Â I donâ€™t (as of this writing) get anything if you buy it there, but that might change over time.Â Regardless, buy the book.Â Jordan Peterson is amazing.

Peterson puts more ideas into a five minute YouTube video excerpt from a lecture than most college courses do.Â Dr. Peterson is unfailingly moral and gutsy.Â He is willing to share uncomfortable facts and naked truth, which is anathema to those that would prefer the safety of soft and pretty lies.Â He is unfailingly polite.Â And blunt.Â And Iâ€™d be fascinated to see him with a glass or two of wine in him.

Dr. Petersonâ€™s work is based on decades of study combined with a keen intellect and countless hours of work as a clinical psychologist helping people with everything from addiction to performance measurement and enhancement.Â He has earned his wisdom.

Jordan Peterson is Dangerous.Â Heâ€™ll make you think new thoughts, and question your basic assumptions about who you are, and who you can be.

We need a thousand more like him.

Iâ€™ve only read a third of the book as of this writing (it was released on Tuesday), but thatâ€™s enough to get the first four rules.Â By observation, the book is already in thirds â€“ the first four rules are about an inward focus.Â Rules 5-8 are about obtaining and creating control in your own life.Â Rules 9-12 are about facing outwards, so my strategy of breaking this review/discussion into thirds makes sense to me.

Rule 1:Â Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back

This is also the first lesson in super hero school, except they add â€œand put your clenched fists on your hips, and stare up at a waving American flag.â€Â See, Dr. Peterson and I just saved you $75 in superhero school tuition.

This is actually awesome advice, even as weird as it sounds, since adopting this pose will immediately make you feel better, more powerful and more in control of your own life.

Huh?

Yeah.Â And the secret is buried 350,000,000 years back into the past.Â As Dr. Peterson notes, that far back there werenâ€™t even trees on land.

But there was serotonin.

How do we known this?Â Crunchy, tasty lobsters whose life diverged from ours 350,000,000 years ago.Â Turns out that lobsters have social status, and those who have good status produce more serotonin.Â And a big lobster that wins the big lobster fight?Â A big boost of serotonin.Â One of the same, powerful brain chemicals in humans.

The loser?Â The loser of the big lobster fight, well no serotonin for him.Â He has to settle for having his brain melt so it can rewire itself because it literally cannot cope with his new, lower status.Â And you thought you were depressed after losing the annual Christmas Monopoly game to your snot-nosed nephew who still has a lisp.

Serotonin, winning, losing and social hierarchy have been around forever. ProzacÂ® works on lobsters to make them less depressed.

But the winning lobster wins even more and becomes more dominant.Â If he were a person, heâ€™d be setting himself up for a successful career.

Because loser lose. And they pay for it.Â Theyâ€™re sicker, they die earlier, and they have a lower likelihood of producing offspring.

Dr. Peterson then references Priceâ€™s law â€“ Priceâ€™s law pertains to the relationship between the literature on a subject and the number of authors in the subject area, stating that half of the publications come from the square root of all contributors.

Winners win.Â He brought up classical music.Â Half of classical music played is from four composers:Â Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky.Â And only a small number of the songs from those four are the most beloved songs in classical music.Â The same principle explains why Jeff Bezos is planning to create an Amazonian Interstellar Empire while you canâ€™t afford to pay your car insurance bill this month.Â Winning is awesome.

Itâ€™s so awesome that if you win?Â You live longer.Â Youâ€™re healthier.Â You enjoy life more.Â Youâ€™re confident.Â And you have all the serotonin and PEZÂ® that you could want.

And we canâ€™t all be Bezos.Â But we can stand up straight like a hero.Â It will make you feel better, stronger, and just adopting that confident pose will help spike your serotonin and stop your lobster-brain from melting into loser configuration.

Back to Peterson:Â â€œTo stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open.â€

And back to Wilder:Â â€œI want to go out of this world as I came into it â€“ screaming and covered in someone elseâ€™s blood.â€Â (This apparently is from Sniper: Reloaded, per the Internet, but Iâ€™m going to pretend I wrote it.)

Rule 2:Â Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible for Helping

This chapter has a fairly long digression on Order and Chaos.Â Interesting, philosophical, but Dr. Peterson could have anchored it more firmly to the Rule.Â Iâ€™m not complaining, but Iâ€™m not going to talk as much about it since it was rather obliquely tied to the rest of everything going on in the chapter.Â This chapter probably could have used a bit more ruthless editing.Â Again, great stuff, just needed to tie it all up in a bow.Â Dr. Peterson:Â I volunteer if you need a hand next time!

Back to the Rule:

Think of how you talk to yourself when you look in the mirror or have just screwed up.Â Itâ€™s horrible.Â And if a friend talked to you EVEN ONE TIME as much as you berate yourself?Â Youâ€™d cut them out of your life pretty quickly.Â But itâ€™s much messier when itâ€™s you treating you like that, because you canâ€™t tell you that you never want to see you again.Â Just not practical.Â Unless youâ€™re an old timey vampire and your reflection canâ€™t be seen in a mirror.

I digress.

Other takeaways:

On â€œprotecting kidsâ€ from this chapter . . . you canâ€™t keep them away from the evil of the world so . . . â€œIt is far better to render Beings in your care competent than to protect them.â€Â Why anything less for yourself?

Peterson has several powerful questions at the end of this chapter, an example: Â â€œWhat might my life be like if I were caring for myself properly?â€Â And no, I wonâ€™t list them all.Â Buy the book.

Rule 3:Â Make Friends with People Who Want the Best for You

Thoroughly enjoyable chapter, with all of the backstory that youâ€™d expect in a superhero origin movie.Â Reading Petersonâ€™s version of his adolescence brought memories of mine back, as we both grew up in rather small, remote, cold places.Â And, no, that doesnâ€™t refer to our fatherâ€™s hearts.Â It ends with a friend that couldnâ€™t be saved â€“ because the friend didnâ€™t want to be saved.

Iâ€™ve had a great friend walk down the drug path, where theyâ€™d do and say anything to get more money to buy more drugs.Â Did I want the best for him?Â Sure!Â Did I try to help?Â Absolutely.Â But the last night he was in my car was the night he snorted coke in it.Â And the reason why I didnâ€™t lend him anymore money was he never paid me back the $75 that I lent him.Â Oh, he paid me back, he said.Â Left it under my front door mat.

I didnâ€™t have a front door mat.

And friendships are reciprocal.Â I was promoted at work (years ago) and placed in the partially uncomfortable position of managing the people who had been my peers, sometimes for years.Â One of them was Willie.Â Willie was a certified genius.Â When he was a summer college intern, he (and all the other interns) were offered 3% of anything they could save the company.

He saved them three million dollars.

They gave him a cool computer and a check for several thousand dollars.Â But not $30,000 to an intern.

So, Iâ€™m in the position where Iâ€™m supposed to lead Willie.

He kept coming in late to work.Â It made sense because the people that he mainly worked with were several timezones west.Â Heâ€™d get in later in the morning, and stay until 7pm or 8pm.Â Makes sense, right?

Not to the company president.Â â€œHeâ€™s late again.â€

Oh, man.Â First time leading a department and Willie was going to sink me.

â€œWillie, youâ€™re killing your career.Â The president of the company is on my back.â€Â The president was six layers of management above me.

â€œI donâ€™t care.â€

â€œWillie, youâ€™re killing me.Â Theyâ€™re going to fire me if you keep coming in late.â€

â€œOh.â€

And Willie was never late again.

A friend?Â Absolutely.Â We still talk to this day, even though we havenâ€™t worked together in well over a decade.Â If I needed to borrow silly amounts of money?Â Yeah.Â I could do that with a group of at least seven friends.Â Find those people.

Surround yourself with people who will not stand for you hurting yourself, and would do anything to avoid hurting you.Â Avoid those who you are friends with only out of loyalty, and whose motives are suspect.Â Lies?Â Deal breaker.

One of the things I love about Dr. Peterson is that heâ€™ll quote Homer Simpson.Â And Dostoevsky.Â In the same chapter. Â Â And he does it in this thoroughly enjoyable chapter.

Rule 4:Â Compare Yourself to Who You Were Yesterday, Not Who Someone Else Is Today

The Internet makes it easy to compare any aspect of yourself to the best of seven billion people.Â And youâ€™re not one of them.Â Someone is smarter.Â Someone is richer (unless your name is Bezos) and someone plays better guitar than you.Â If you get caught up in making these comparisons, youâ€™re always going to lose.

And weâ€™re not wired that way.Â Weâ€™re wired to know about 150 people really well and trust them.Â We can get to trusting larger numbers (through various means) but the competition for best storyteller was once a village-wide event, not a world-wide event.Â Itâ€™s not really hard to be strongest out of 150 people.Â Itâ€™s not really hard to be one of the best singers.

But today?Â At the touch of a button I can make myself feel inadequate by comparing myself against tons of different people.

Peterson:Â â€œWho cares if youâ€™re the PM of Canada when someone else is the president of the United States?â€

But the only real competition for me is me.Â Am I getting better?Â Am I pushing myself to be the best Wilder I can be?Â And are the people really happier?Â Was Tom Petty (LINK) happier than me?Â In a hobby, I sometimes look to see what happened to famous people who I envied in my youth.Â Almost universally, I turn out ahead of them.Â And many of them are dead, youthful, untimely deaths.Â Tom Petty or me â€“ who has it better?Â Me.

Realize that you can strongly influence your daily progress.Â Do you want to be CEO?Â Really?Â Probably not.Â 80 hour weeks every week probably arenâ€™t your thing.Â Understand how your talents can best be used, and then work like hell at being the best you possible, because competing against seven billion?Â Thatâ€™s going to kill you.

So will fighting a giant radioactive lobster with a cannon . . . more on Peterson next Friday.

Iâ€™ve written more about Petersonâ€™s ideas here (LINK), here (LINK), and here (LINK).Â Click on them if you love Truth.

Warning Signs, The Economy, Didier Sornette, and You

â€œWe have no Great War.Â No Great Depression.Â Our Great War is a spiritual war.Â Our Great Depression is our lives.Â We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires . . .â€

â€“ Fight Club

This is the corpse of FDR, brought back to life every 75 years to fight Robot Hitler.Â Notice we added a laser eye for this year.

Iâ€™ve talked about both the causes (LINK) and effects (LINK) of economic bubbles and economic depressions in two articles that won the Coveted 2017 Wilder Prize for Excellence in Journalism Related to Things John Writes AboutÂ®.Â You should read these articles.Â Theyâ€™re fun and may save your life, if you require expensive medicine from fresh squeezed bats each day and need the cash to pay for bat juice.

But what happens before everything goes straight to hell?Â What are the precursor signs before a recession or depression takes hold?Â Where are the danger signs that say . . . beware of dragons beyond this point?

Game of Thrones would not be as popular if this was the casting choice for Daenerys.

Letâ€™s start with definitions.Â A recession (and a depression is just a bigger recession) is when the economy starts to contract, and the definition is that this contraction lasts at least two financial quarters.Â A depression is the same thing, but there are great dust storms and everyone moves to California and no one bathes for a decade.

Why does the business contract?

Letâ€™s take the last recession.Â Everyone wanted houses.Â Lots of houses.Â In 2007 people were buying houses on speculation that theyâ€™d go up in price.Â Because houses always went up in price.Â And for a few years?Â Yeah.Â But when houses stopped going up in price?

People stopped building houses, six was enough for the average family.Â But if you have no new houses to roof, and youâ€™re a roofing company?Â You fire your roofing crew and stop buying shingles.Â The people you fire stop making truck payments.Â The shingle company stops making shingles, and lays off the factory workers at the shingle factory.

Prices collapse.Â Everywhere.Â And in 2008-2009 this cascaded throughout the economy.Â And the first thing that happened is that EVERYTHING got cheaper.

Perhaps the first sign that things will be going south is that . . . things are going well.Â Too well.Â Itâ€™s like the frat party at midnight before the heaving begins â€“ laughter and joy everywhere.Â And everyone believes that this party is different â€“ theyâ€™ll escape the hangover gods in the morning.

So what is a gauge of the measure of market intoxication?

The VIX.

VIX stands for . . . Volatility IndeX.Â VIX.Â Like PEZÂ®, only with money instead of those small bricks of candy that build a wall of love around my heart (my doctor calls that arteriosclerosis), the VIX was created in 1990 and attempts to predict the market volatility for the next 30 days.Â Hereâ€™s the graph of the VIX for the last 27+ years, thanks to Yahoo FinanceÂ©:

If you look closely, you can see that when the VIX spikes, people are running and screaming in the streets because the economy is collapsing.Â But what happens before the spikes?Â Everyone is calm.

And, historically thatâ€™s been the case.Â Everybody is an expert when the stock market keeps going up.

“Taxi drivers told you what to buy. The shoeshine boy could give you a summary of the day’s financial news as he worked with rag and polish. An old beggar who regularly patrolled the street in front of my office now gave me tips and, I suppose, spent the money I and others gave him in the market. My cook had a brokerage account and followed the ticker closely. Her paper profits were quickly blown away in the gale of 1929.” – Bernard Baruch, famous dead trader dude (from Fortune Magazine, April, 1996)

And thatâ€™s what that low VIX number tells you.Â Everything is great!Â Sunny sky and the wind is in your sales.Â Not a cloud in the sky.

So, one big signal is that everything is going great.Â Not sure how useful that is, but the current VIX is very near an all-time low.Â This is why in my (very brave) 2018 prediction (LINK) I said it wasnâ€™t going to blow up in 2018.Â Obviously I could be wrong, but as low as the VIX is, Iâ€™d expect some upturn prior to things falling apart.Â In 2007 the VIX turned up before everything blew up.Â So?

My expectation of an economic recession/depression/crack-up number one?Â The VIX will turn up prior to the fall, probably at least six months in advance.Â So hereâ€™s one indicator of future economic downturn, and itâ€™s been shown to work.Â Perfect?Â Certainly not.Â Sudden dislocations (think 9/11) could throw it right out of the window.

Currency and Trade

What else might indicate a coming crack up?Â One that was pretty popular was high interest rates.Â Back before the FED so tightly controlled the currency and interest rates by buying all of the United Statesâ€™ debt thatâ€™s unsold (yes, this is somehow legal), this was a sign that the party was going to end.Â Failing businesses led to banks only lending to the best projects â€“ the ones that could afford high interest rates.Â Interest rates were (kinda) set by the market.

Iâ€™m pretty sure this one is long gone . . . and not sure that thereâ€™s a replacement.Â The economy of the United States is such that, if we experience difficulty, other countries experience collapse.Â Think the riots in Egypt, Syria, and Libya were spontaneous â€“ no â€“ they were the result of economic trouble in the US.

Another major indicator would be if another currency became as well accepted in the world as the dollar â€“ and imports rose significantly in price.Â Sadly, if this happens, the entire economic system is near collapse.Â As Iâ€™ve pointed out before â€“ the only thing that keeps our currency going is belief.Â I can trade two pieces of paper with $100 printed on them to a liquor store owner and have a nice bottle of Johnny Walker BlueÂ© handed to me.Â Oh.Â It has to be the government that prints the $100.Â Not me.

Why?Â People (silly people!) believe in the government more than me.Â They believe the government wonâ€™t print too many.Â Just like Bitcoin () is limited in the total number that will ever exist.Â Except governments everywhere print money whenever they can.Â Except the Swiss.Â I blame it on the cocoa.

Energy

Other signs of big trouble?Â Oil above $100.Â Oil above $140 is screaming collapse.

Modern economies run on energy.Â What would we do without it?

This is from Kentucky Fried Movie.Â Good times.

Oil is consumed by every product you buy, generally in the production, packaging and transport.Â Because of that, it acts as a general tax on the economy when prices go up.Â And because oil extraction infrastructure takes years to get going â€“ high oil prices can distort the economy for years.

Cash Ban

Horrible sign. Â Venezuela will look awesome in comparison if this happens.

Math

Iâ€™ve mentioned Dr. Didier Sornette before.Â Heâ€™s a French geophysicist that applied advance math previously used to predict earthquakes to predict whether or not a bubble exists in stocks, and, if so (at least in prior work) how long the bubble had until it popped.Â He pegged that we were going to enter a singularity around 2045 or so where all bets are off, based solely on the math.Â Donâ€™t know if he still stands by that, but he produces a monthly report at the Economic Crisis Observatory (LINK).

In the latest report, of the sixty stocks in the US he studied, 35% were in a bubble.Â Thatâ€™s up from the previous month.Â From this, weâ€™d deduce the bubble is (potentially) inflating.

And Dr. Sornette absolutely called the big Bitcoin bubble a month before it topped.Â Pretty amazing.

Iâ€™d keep an eye on this work.Â It shows that thereâ€™s plenty of bubble a brewing in the record setting stock markets around the world.

And be careful.Â There may be dragons here . . . .

NOTE:Â I AM AN INTERNET HUMOR-DUDE, NOT A FINANCIAL PROFESSIONAL.Â Consult someone sane prior to making investment decisions.Â Like your Mom.Â Or a lawyer.Â Or a carnie.

12 Strong Movie Review, Exploding Tide Bottles, Rifles, and Significance

“Good Lord! We can’t get them. I never figured on having to shoot through dirt!” – Tremors

Good times. Not pictured: plastic Tide® bottle.

How many of you remember that perfect day? That wonderful day where the Sun was shining, everyone was in harmony, and you lost yourself in the activities you were engaged in? Those days are significant in their perfection – days that you remember now and that you’ll remember when you’re 50 or 60 or 70.

I imagine The Boy and Pugsley will both remember watching their dad’s form silhouetted in front of exploding Tide® laundry detergent bottle at least that long. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

One of the place where I think I’ve been negligent as a dad is in not taking The Boy and Pugsley shooting often enough. Shooting is fun, but it also teaches patience and persistence. How do you get good at shooting? By shooting. Nobody’s great at shooting coming out of the box, but by patience and practice you learn to get better – and the feedback loop is literally supersonic – you can see the result of your efforts nearly immediately. And you have to be patient. And disciplined.

Two weeks ago we went shooting, and had a great time. We brought only .22 rifles (I’m sure that in California these are registered as assault weapons or orbital bombardment cannons or something) that time. It was about 40˚F out (-371˚C for you living in Great Britain) so after a while (400 rounds or so) we decided to go and get warm. But a good time? Absolutely.

I have no idea where this meme came from, but I bet it wasn’t Europe.

I’d been watching the weather because it’s no fun shooting when it’s colder than a brass monkey in the fridge on the dark side of Pluto. We couldn’t go Saturday, since The Boy was busy with athletics.

Fortunately the weather looked good for Sunday. And on Saturday night we got home early enough to rope in Pugsley and go see 12 Strong. 12 Strong is a true story about the first Special Forces (Green Berets) unit into Afghanistan after 9/11. It’s rated “R” primarily because it features Americans being unambiguously good, moral, and upright against unambiguously evil people even though it stars an Australian as an American Special Forces Captain (Chris Hemsworth) in a clear case of cultural appropriation.

I’m pretty sure Warner Brothers wants us to share this image, since it gives sixteen buttons to share it . . .

The movie was good, in a “I love America and the values that it stands for” way as shown by the bravery of the troops, the fidelity of the spouses, and the idea that a promise made is one to be kept. In this movie there are no politics of division. And the American men and many Afghani men (almost every character in this movie with more than two lines is a man) were brave. And it didn’t try to discuss deeper issues – it had the decency to allow us to have and believe in heroes of flesh and blood.

How good was the movie? Pugsley is 12, and is now contemplating how he’s going to become a Green Beret (a little less likely for The Boy – I think he’d rather create nuclear-powered x-ray space lasers). Scary for a dad to think that? Yeah, it is. But boys grow up, and the responsibility of holding a rifle is sobering for a 12 year old, given its sheer destructive power.

My ranking on the movie? 5/5.

Okay, back to shooting. Today we went shooting again. It was one of those fun coincidences that as we left the house “Freeze Frame” by The J. Geils Band was playing on the radio . . . Pugsley started doing a dance when the lyrics, “shoot, shoot . . . deedle leedle lee” kept repeating since I think he was excited about going shooting, or “shoosting” as we called it, in an homage to Lisa from Green Acres®.

However, we also brought two additional things that we didn’t bring last time: an AR-15 I’d bought from a friend several years ago that I’d only put about 20 rounds (for New York readers – that means I’d shot the rifle 20 times) through. The Boy had NOT liked shooting it several years ago. Scary.

Also, I brought explosives with the explicit idea that we’d shoot them and create a series of explosions.

I know what you’re thinking. More on that later.

The Boy and Pugsley each jammed out a few hundred rounds of .22 down range. Then I pulled out the AR-15. An AR-15 shoots a .223 caliber bullet – really only slightly larger than a .22, but whereas a .22 comes out of the barrel at 1600 feet per second, a .223 comes out of the barrel at over 3,000 feet per second. And a doubling of speed is a quadrupling of energy. (Really closer to 8 times, since the bullet is larger.) For all of you purists – we are NOT getting into the difference between a 5.56 and a .223 in this post – go get technical somewhere else.

The Boy and Pugsley each shot the AR and pronounced it . . . amazing.

So, I thought, perhaps it’s time to mix up the explosive?

Sure.

We tried to use the .22 to initiate the explosion. You were supposed to be 100’ away . . . and we shot at it for a ludicrous number of shots (it was about 2” x 1”, so it’s not that small of a target at 100’).

Nothing.

The Boy went downrange and checked.

“You went clean through it twice.”

Hmm. I put another explosive packet together since the powder had leaked out of the first through the bullet holes. I stuck it on the side of a plastic Tide® laundry detergent jug – one of the big ones that does 5,000 or so loads of laundry. I took a shot with the AR. Hit the Tide® jug, and the explosive fell off. (Stay 100’ away, the instructions said.) I went down range and put the explosive back on. Walked back. Shot, and hit the jug again. And knocked the explosive off. (Stay 100’ away, the instructions said.) Again.

I finally determined the add-on sight that I was using wasn’t even remotely accurate, and pulled it off to use the basic sights (“iron sights”) that come with the rifle. Frustrated, and thinking the explosive was a dud based on the previous experience we’d had with the first packet, I stuck the packet back on the jug, and then moved back and I took aim at the explosive stuck to the Tide™ jug not 20’ away from me.

There was a flash. Lots of smoke.

And the Tide® jug . . . ceased to exist. Gone. Left this plane of existence. The only thing left was the label. I could see something that looked like tiny orange fragments of plastic jug, but only a few. But the jug?

Vanished.

Wow.

I felt my face. Small particles of dirt or unexploded explosives were imbedded in a dusty patina all over my face. Thankfully I was wearing glasses and hearing protection.

So, the explosive did work. And 100’ was certainly a much better idea than my 20’ – I’m guessing something about fools rushing in where angels fear to tread? I walked back to the firing line.

The Boy: “How on EARTH can that be legal???” His grin was huge.

It is, at least where I live. Your mileage may vary depending upon what location you live in. US Federal law allows this explosive to be sold because when they sell it, it’s two compounds . . . a “binary” explosive. You have to mix the compounds yourself. And you can’t transport it after mixing (without insurance, permits, etc.). You have to use it for personal, non-commercial use. And . . . you should research this yourself. I believe in California they will ____ your ____. And you don’t want your ___ to be ____. Very uncomfortable for your _____.

No. Seriously I think they’d call that a felony. But where we live? It’s Sunday afternoon.

Hint: Google® “Tannerite©” – although Tannerite™ wasn’t the manufacturer of the stuff we used, it’s the easiest search term. This is NOT a law blog – you need to figure out if this stuff is legal where you are.

So, it is legal here. That doesn’t mean it’s always used in a smart – one gentleman filled a lawnmower with a binary explosive, shot it, and it promptly lopped off a leg. But that’s the definition of freedom – not stopping idiots from being idiots. If we go too much further down that road, every surface in every house will be mandated to be made of Nerf®.

Regardless, the Tide® bottle was gone and I still had all of my parts.

Second shot? We taped an explosive packet up to the plastic cylinder the explosive originally came in. The Boy took aim with the AR, and . . . first shot it exploded and likewise disappeared into another dimension. I went to check for more things we could blow up in the car we brought (it was The Mrs.’ car) and was rummaging around in the back seat.

And found a Wal-Mart bag containing two pounds of thick-cut bacon and three pounds of hamburger. Sitting in the back seat. Of a car The Mrs. hasn’t driven in three days.

Pugsley: “Oops! Guess I forgot to bring that bag in.”

Normally I’d give him a much harder time about leaving $30 in meat to rot in his mother’s car, but in this case?

We had explosives. And guns. And meat.

It’s even better if you imagine they’re singing “gone shoosting”.

Two explosive charges and the bacon was unrecognizable. One charge took care of the hamburger. Both The Boy and Pugsley were dead-on in their shots, hitting the explosive charge on their first shot in almost every case.

We picked up the exploded stuff (left the bacon and burger for the coyotes) and packed up and went home.

But the bigger perspective?

I was talking with another dad the other day – he was coaching a group of kids at the same sporting event The Boy was at. We talked back and forth. He was coaching his own son, which he felt was really the toughest coaching he had to do. But, he indicated, he thought he’d keep coaching even after his son was done. He really enjoyed it (and he was a good coach – his team did well that day).

“You know,” I said, “it’s not the money. It’s not the things you do to things that matters in this world. It’s the opportunity to be significant to someone – to give them training and experiences that change them for the better. And these kids will remember what you did for them and how you changed them, coach, for the rest of their lives. Now that,” I paused, “is the definition of significance.”

“That’s pretty well said,” he responded.

“Yeah, I’m Noted Internet Humorist John Wilder.”

And these perfect days can be the perfect days that will form memories for The Boy and Pugsley that will reinforce their character forever.

I wonder how many perfect days I’ve got left? Not too many if I stand too close to too many exploding Tide® jugs, so I think I’ll avoid those from now on. It would be good to be around to see what happens with The Boy and Pugsley . . . Green Beret or not, I’m sure I’ll be proud of both of them.

The Biggest Frickking Scientific Discovery for a Long Time, French Artists, and Your Momma

â€œCould they be talking to us from the future?Â Maybe.Â Okay, if they can? Â They are beings of 5 dimensions!Â To them, time might be yet another physical dimension.Â To them, the past might be a canyon they can climb into.â€ â€“ Interstellar

Pictured, cool lens flares from the Saturn IV rocket first stage.Â Not pictured?Â Transdimensional aliens.Â

The Family Wilder was having breakfast this morning lunch this afternoon (we donâ€™t get up easy) and were discussing the news of the past week, and somehow Pugsley drifted the conversation into â€œhow would you make a fully functioning holodeck, such as was seen on Star TrekÂ© but for use with multiple people.â€Â The easy answer is to wave your hands about and say â€œscience.â€Â But, we came up with an explanation that would fit the facts shown on Trekâ„¢.

We then ended up talking about inserting a jack into your skull (as in The MatrixÂ®).Â The Boy was in favor of this, and was looking up surgical tools on his iPhoneÂ®.Â I noted that, no, weâ€™re probably pretty close to just being able to put a hat with electrodes on â€“ no surgery required.Â At this point, Iâ€™m pretty sure the other folks eating in the small-town diner who overheard our conversation figure we work for the CIA or . . . weâ€™re nuts.

Weâ€™re nuts.

But then I remembered the biggest story of the week:

â€œHey, did you guys here that theyâ€™ve discovered proof that there is at least one other dimension? (LINK)â€

That stopped the conversation at the table, let me tell you what.Â Pugsley was first out of the box:

â€œHow does that work?â€

I tried to explain a hypercube using a salt shaker, bits of hash brown, three cream containers and the spare plate from someone elseâ€™s table (they were nearly finished with it).

Turns out thatâ€™s a difficult thing, explaining something thatâ€™s so beyond how you normally think.Â But that brings me to one way, dear Internet, to give an explanation:

In 1912 a French dude named Marcel Duchamp (pronounced â€œJohn Smithâ€) tossed together a painting that irritated his friends, namely, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2.

This was the initial centerfold in â€œMulti-Dimensional Playboyâ€.Â The main problem was the centerfold was in 11 dimensions and no one could figure out how to fold it back up.Â (public domain via Wikimedia)

What Duchamp was attempting to show was the human body with time as a static dimension â€“ you got to see the bodyâ€™s outside perimeter.Â Imagine rolling a tennis ball â€“ but you get to see it at each point of its path at the same time â€“ it would look like a fuzzy green tube since the parts that got covered up through subsequent motion wouldnâ€™t be visible.Â Fuzzy green tubes are cool looking.Â Now imagine the perimeter of the human body heading down a staircase . . . youâ€™d have a fuzzy-topped blob of flesh with frozen waves where the body had moved through.Â Kinda like a fleshy, hairy, meat tube.Â Kinda like . . . Marcelâ€™s picture, but Marcel skipped on the gross parts.Â And itâ€™s not a surprise that Duchamp tried this â€“ he was a great mathematician and chess player as well, so his mind thought in these sorts of abstract ways.

His friends thought it sucked, and the art show asked his brothers to ask Marcel to either take the painting down or to change the title.Â After this initial reaction, Duchamp thought, â€œMerci!Â I must take my genius to New York!Â Certainly zey will understand it!â€

Marcel apparently didnâ€™t know any New Yorkers, because they certainly didnâ€™t appreciate it:

Hey, any publicity is good publicity.Â Just ask Harvey Weinstein. (public domain via Wikimedia)

The New York Evening Sun parodied Duchamp in print after his picture made everyone in New York mad as well.Â Apparently New York was a better place to be hated in, because eventually Duchamp moved to the United States and shot John F. Kennedy.

Anyway, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 is the only Cubist art I really care for â€“ precisely because it attempts to show reality through the lens of another dimension.

Hereâ€™s another good one:Â it shows a hypercube.

Yes, keep watching it . . . beautiful, isnâ€™t it?Â Imagine 4 spatial dimensions.Â Some weed might help.Â (Source, Jason Hise via Wikimedia, Public Domain)

I can draw a hypercube, but itâ€™s not really very good unless itâ€™s in motion, like this one.Â Only as it moves can you see the way that it shows another dimension.Â Ironic that Duchamp stopped time to show another dimension while this requires motion to show that dimension.

But what are the implications of this?

Nothing short of stunning.Â Last month we have a stunning disclosure about UFOs (LINK).Â This month?Â WE HAVE FOUND PROOF OF ADDITIONAL DIMENSIONS.

This has the possibility of being the most profound discovery in the last 12,000 years (second only to agriculture and the mysterious mechanism of the PEZÂ® dispenser)!

Keep in mind that we went from not understanding the radio to being able to use it â€œseeâ€ the images of galaxies 11 billion years in the past within 70 years.Â We went from not understanding the atom to atom bombs in 15 years (plus a warâ€™s worth of investment).Â We went from stuck to the ground to the Moon in 65 years.Â Transistor to personal computer?Â 30 years.

We are remarkable as a species at understanding and exploiting new ideas.Â I imagine this one has implications similar to radio, the atom, flight, and information technology.Â So, let me re-write the above:

HOLY FRICKING CRAP!Â WE HAVE FRICKING FOUND FRICKING PROOF OF OTHER FRICKING DIMENSIONS!

Additional dimensions might (and I stress might) be able to provide:

Space Travel â€“ Imagine that distance isnâ€™t the same in one (or more) of these dimensions. Step into the dimensional transformer and step outside 2000 miles away.Â Â Why Miami?
Time Travel â€“ Imagine that time works the other way or at other speeds in one or more of these dimensions. Step into the dimensional transformer and step outside 2000 years in the future.
Surgery Without An Incision â€“ Reach inside your patient in the fourth dimension. Pull out his gall bladder without breaking the skin.Â Caesarian sections?Â How about Einstein sections for having babies?Â (Since Iâ€™m the first to think if it, you should call them â€œWilder Sections.â€)
Explanations for Gravity â€“ Why is it weak? Itâ€™s like gravity doesnâ€™t even lift! Â Maybe it bleeds off into other dimensions and surrounds your mother.Â Which is why sheâ€™s so fat.
Explanations for Dark Matter â€“ Okay, dark matter is just a theory â€“ we canâ€™t see it, we can only see its effects. Let me explain:Â The planets all rotate around the Sun like particles.Â At different speeds.Â The spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy (where you live) all rotate around the Milky Way like the Milky Way is a record album.Â Sorry â€“ out of date.Â CD?Â Sorry â€“ out of date.Â Â Yeah.Â Except no spinners.Â Why the difference?Â Some say that thereâ€™s a halo of dark matter around the galaxy that causes it spin as if it is a solid plate.Â JOHN WILDER OFFICIAL PREDICTION:Â dark matter is bogus.Â Itâ€™s either gravity leaking from another dimension or gravity has a non-linear distance component.Â I actually calculated it, and it works, but it doesnâ€™t explain some effects, so my Physics NobelÂ© medal still hasnâ€™t been engraved.
Explanations for Dark Energy â€“ What is it? Why is the Universe expanding?Â What will stop it?Â When will it stop?Â Maybe . . . another question that might be answered by other dimensions.
Explanations for Why Your Mother is So Fat â€“ Oh, sorry. Thatâ€™s chardonnay, canned frosting, TwinkiesÂ®, and regret.
Explanations for Things We Havenâ€™t Even Thought Of â€“ So many things this might explain, including the Grand Unified Field Theory â€“ the theory that explains all of physics, chemistry, and why your Mom is so fat. Except we know why your Mom is so fat.

So, itâ€™s a big deal.Â A big thought.Â Maybe, just maybe, the biggest scientific discovery of your lifetime.Â And you heard about it here first.

So, who is the journalist now?Â Yeah.Â This guy.

Obamacare, Health Insurance, Ear Hair, and Looking at Breast Implants

â€œNo, Steve, the guard, accidentally looked at Medusa’s head.Â Turned to stone.Â Who covers that? Is that health insurance or Workman’s Comp?â€ â€“ The Librarian: Return to King Solomonâ€™s Mines

A picture of Fairbanks Memorial the day Pugsley was hatched born.Â I had good insurance then.Â Too bad itâ€™s gotta go . . .

Almost everything in the world (almost!) has gotten better since I was a kid.Â Well, the music isnâ€™t as good.Â And the movies are gloomier.Â And my hair has migrated from my scalp to . . . everywhere else.Â For heavenâ€™s sake, why did it have to go INTO the ears???

As I look to things that have gotten much worse in my lifetime, the number one is . . . health care costs, which is even worse than ear hair.Â Obamacare (or the Affordable Care Act for those of my readers that regularly appear on CNNÂ®) was supposed to fix that.Â In my case, my premiums nearly doubled while my deductible went up by a factor of eight.Â If my math is right, that means my health insurance is worth, on a dollar basis, one sixteenth what it was before Obamacare.

When Pugsley attempted to self-amputate a finger on a camping trip, The Mrs. took him to the emergency room.Â He came back with two stitches.Â My bill?Â Over $1000.Â And I had to pay it, in cash.Â Did he really need all of his fingers?Â Nine is a good number, right?

Iâ€™d love to blame Obamacare â€“ but itâ€™s really just part of the system thatâ€™s vaulted health care costs upwards.Â Weâ€™ve all experienced it â€“ weâ€™re paying unconscionable rates for care thatâ€™s not (in some cases) as good as it was in the past.Â I know we have fancy equipment and machines that go â€œping,â€ but the idea of a family doctor that knew you family from your birth until his death is over.

Now doctors have to see as many patients as possible to pay for their rent, BMWÂ® and the loans they took out for college, their divorces, their small airplanes, and their portion of the partnership.Â And they practice defensive medicine.Â They run tests that you have to pay for to protect their medical license.Â And if your insurance doesnâ€™t pay for the test because itâ€™s unnecessary?Â You pay for the test.

I love capitalism.Â Itâ€™s awesome.Â But our health care system doesnâ€™t even remotely resemble capitalism.

Letâ€™s start with theft.

Our current health care system was changed in the 1980â€™s.Â If you showed up to an emergency room in 1979 and had no ability to pay for care . . . they had no obligation to provide care.Â None.Â As a matter of principle theyâ€™d stabilize you, but a life changing surgery involving 20 heroic doctors?Â Not so much.

I heard a story about a woman who lost her health insurance.Â And then got cancer.Â She couldnâ€™t afford the $80,000 or so in costs for chemotherapy and treatment.

She died rather than bankrupt her family.

And, sadly, thatâ€™s the right outcome.

The economist Thomas Sowell said (more or less), â€œIf an economist was designing a car, instead of an airbag in the steering wheel, there would be a knife pointed at the driver.Â Good economists believe in in consequences for actions.â€

There needs to be an incentive for people to pony up and get insurance.Â And in the 1980â€™s they removed that.Â Now, regardless of my ability to pay, if I show up at the hospital, they have to treat me.Â Canâ€™t turn me away.

Now Iâ€™m all for compassion.Â But in this system, the person who is compassionate (the politician) forces the provider (doctor/hospital) to treat someone for â€œfreeâ€ â€“ but in reality passes on the costs to the responsible idiot with insurance and money (me and you).

Why does a TylenolÂ® cost $11 each in a hospital?

Yeah.Â Youâ€™re paying for the freeloaders.Â For the lawsuits.Â For the administration costs.

One hospital (Duke) had 900 beds.Â It had 1500 billing administrators.Â Why?Â They have to navigate through Medicare rules, as well as rules and correspondence from hundreds of different insurance companies.Â You spend a night in the hospital?Â You have 1.7 people there with you just counting the costs.

Yikes!

Of the things that determine a capitalist system, itâ€™s all missing.

You donâ€™t see those until weeks or months after the event.Â How can you make a decision?
They donâ€™t have the choice to refuse to serve you.
You donâ€™t have one if youâ€™re bleeding out.Â You go where the ambulance is taking you.Â You donâ€™t haggle when youâ€™re unconscious.
The system is so regulated that the American Medical Association determines the number of doctors in the country.Â Think that theyâ€™ll increase competition?Â Hospital regulations (mainly Federal) are extensive.
LipitorÂ®, which treats something or other, was making Pfizer $5billion a year.Â After it went generic?Â Less than a $1million a year.Â Protections for drugs are routinely extended and live longer than the original patent period.Â Apparently Viagraâ„¢ also keeps the patent system going for a long time, too.
LOL, whut?

What does a free market look like for medicine?

We actually have great examples.Â Laser eye surgery costs have plummeted over time.Â And, itâ€™s never been cheaper for ladies to become . . . ahem . . . enhanced.

Why?

People have choices.Â They donâ€™t need the surgery.Â They want it.Â So they shop around, and will only get it if the price meets expectations.Â $10,000 to not need $200 glasses?Â Not on this planet.Â And even the girl who wants bigger boobs is budget conscious, even though her boyfriend now has had laser eye surgery and can see them.

Recently several doctors have cut the cord.Â No insurance.Â None.Â Come see the doc?Â Cash.Â But the prices . . . are much lower.Â Much.Â Many are less than the copay for your insurance.Â Hereâ€™s a link (LINK).

The Mrs. and I were discussing this problem last year.Â I outlined the issues.Â The Mrs. leaned back and contemplated.Â She swirled the Johnny Walker Blue Labelâ„¢ in her glass and said . . .

â€œMake it illegal.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œMake what illegal.â€

The Mrs.:Â â€œInsurance.â€

When she said that, I immediately pushed back in my mind.Â The costs were so high . . . how could anyone ever consider that?

But then I realized that she was right.

Health insurance as a concept really took off during World War II.Â The government had frozen the wages of the workers so we didnâ€™t have runaway inflation as the tank factory tried to steal workers from the bomber factory.Â But . . . you could add benefits.Â Life insurance.Â Pensions.Â And?Â Health insurance.

This began an 80 year distortion of the health market.Â The person taking the action (you) was not paying the bills (insurance company) or writing the prescriptions (doctor).Â How could costs NOT explode under such a twisted system?

So, The Mrs. is right.Â We have to burn this village to save it.Â And we will â€“ because otherwise it will torch the whole country as Iâ€™ve previously predicted (LINK).

Until then?Â We can stare with perfect vision at augmented . . . attributes.

If only there was a cure for ear hair.

r/K Selection Theory, or Why Thanksgiving is Tense* (for some people)

“But thanks to recent advances in stem cell research and the fine work of Doctors Krinski and Altschuler, Clevon should regain full reproductive function.” – Idiocracy

This is a picture from when The Boy and I took a ride into Denali. You can read about that adventure here (LINK). Spoiler! Not killed by vampires.

Winter is coming. And it all has to do with biology . . .

I didn’t like high school biology. Not that I didn’t have good teachers, I had great teachers. They were committed and passionate about biology. I love science – don’t get me wrong, but biology seemed so . . . pointless. It was a lot of learning the proper names for things (stamen and pistil are two vaguely naughty flower parts that I all I recall, but couldn’t distinguish) and learning how a flower worked was so much less interesting than the fusion reactor that powers our solar system (Fun Fact: If you collected all of the solar energy falling on California every day, it would be very dark there!). And my lab partners (two cute cheerleaders who smelled vaguely of musk) almost gleefully did the frog dissection. There were times I think that they wished they had a dead frog, but . . .

As I’ve gotten older, I realize that there are interesting aspects to almost any subject, some of which I spend hours, weeks or even months studying until I’ve learned what I want to know. When I was younger, my biology interests mainly involved attempts at field experimentation with cheerleaders. Decades later biology came back up in my intellectual wanderings in settings that didn’t involve double features at the drive in.

This time my study of the convergence of biology and economics explained to me why half of the US population can’t talk to the other half – and can’t even understand the other half.

It starts with a wolf.

There is a bleak, windswept plane in Alaska. Off in the distance, the wolf pack follows a caribou herd, as it has for the better part of a week. The pack acts as one. A lone wolf in the north is a dead one.

The females – smaller, quicker – herd the caribou on the sides, keeping the herd moving to the west, away from the cover of the trees. The older males push through the center, finally selecting the small group of caribou that they will take and use their superior muscle to attack. The young wolves and pups follow along, sometimes play-fighting among each other, but more often imitating the adults. The play will turn to hunting as they watch and learn.

As the caribou comes down, the males feed first. Eventually the pups feed. It’s been a week, and they’re hungry. The alpha male and alpha female of this pack have been mated for life, and will stay mated until the male dies in three years from an infection due to a broken tooth, but today they have food.

A significant amount of effort is put into raising the pups, who, when they get older will split off and join other packs.

Wolves follows what a biologist calls “K” selection.

Based on their environment, wolves face a significant pressure for resources every day. They live in environments at the sheer edge of habitability, and have to cooperate to fight those environments daily in order to survive. Their young, have significant parental involvement and training. Due to the scarcity inherent in the environment they must work together to live. They only have a few offspring, but they invest heavily in them. And a mother wolf will fight to the death to save a pup – the pack works together, and is loyal to individual members.

Rabbits follow “r” selection. (The “K” and the “r” originate as variables in an equation that you’ll never use, but here’s the link (LINK) if you want to stare at it.)

It’s the opposite of K selection in many ways. r selection depends upon having significant amounts of resources available. These resources make life easy, so strategies change.

Part of winning biologically in a resource-rich revolves around having the most number of offspring. So, have as many as you want, as many as you can so your genes spread far and wide. Since resources are abundant, mating for life is silly. Mate with . . . whoever. Whenever. However. As long as you have babies. Since a rabbit has lots of babies, each gets little attention, and the idea of a rabbit protecting offspring is unknown – rabbits run away, hoping you’ll eat their offspring as long as you don’t get them.

Resources are plentiful, so there’s no real reason to work together strongly. Not that the rabbits won’t hang together, it’s just that there’s no rabbit that will ever inconvenience themselves to help another rabbit.

Biologically, the rabbits avoid competition for resources – there’s no need. Whereas the wolves focus on mating for life, promiscuity is required for rabbits. And rabbits are single parents. Rabbits are single parents who come to early sexual maturity and have children young. And they will sell out other rabbits to save themselves.

Wolves have to take part in competition, delay sex and are (mainly) monogamous in the wild. They have dual parents for raising their pups, longer time to sexual maturity and independence, and will fight, to the death if need be, for each other.

We see echoes of r/K selection in our society today. When the economy tanks? Divorce rate plummets.

As social spending goes up? Sexual promiscuity in youth goes up. Single parenthood increases.

The numbers of children born to unwed mothers goes from 3.8% in 1940 (before welfare) to 5.3% in 1960 to over 40% by 2008. The numbers stayed small as long as resources were limited, but once resources were free? Boom, many women become r-selected rabbits, which is paralleled only with the behaviors seen at the beginning of the decay of empires (which I cover better than anyone else, ever, at this link (LINK)).

But a core of society remain K selected, which was the norm prior to 1960 and the mass rollout of welfare. So, blue state/red state? Republican/Democrat? Liberal/Conservative?

Or r/K?

That’s where we find ourselves today – much of our political division now having root in differing biological strategies. When the strategy is rooted so deeply, it becomes a point of self, not something abstract. When someone attacks an idea that supports that strategy, it’s often viewed as a personal attack, rather than a discussion. Ever see a political discussion go from zero to yelling in under thirty seconds? Chances are, someone attacked one of the deeply seated r/K differences.

Hot button topics like this? Anti-nuke movement. Anti-illegal immigrant movement. Abortion. I could keep going, but I think you could do it from here.

And it’s fairly insidious – we rarely examine our individual biological imperatives – more often we end up just following unexamined urges and then rationalizing them to prove that we’re smart, not animals. We think we’re making choices, but we’re not. I imagine an unwed mother with eight children cannot even fathom, may even look down upon, the parents with 1.2 children and a perfect lawn. It’s a division that’s not rich/poor, but deeper.

What happens when the resources dry up, when the fields full of rabbity grass give way to the cold steppes of wolfen tundra? Society changes – the ability to use surplus goods for r-selected people goes away. Societal attitudes change, too.

Watch conflicts around the world and think about . . . how many of them are simply due to a difference in r/K reproduction strategy? These conflicts inevitably move a society from abundance to scarcity.

The rabbits rule the spring, the wolves the winter.

“Winter is coming,” wrote George R. R. Martin over 20 years ago. And I have to wait until 2019 to see the end of Game of Thrones.

I think I’m triggered.

Simple Way to Avoid a Heart Attack, Roman Style

“Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing, ask what is it in itself? What is its nature?” – Silence of the Lambs

So, if I’m reading this right, I’m not supposed to stress out the alligators? I’m not supposed to stress out the 400 pound armored killing machine? Okay, getting right on that.

I ran across a health article about heart disease the other day by an actual medical doctor, not an amateur Civil War surgeon like me (Motto: Splinter in your toe? Amputate.). Dr. Mercola’s theory was simple, that stress causes inflammation which causes the damage that kills you. Here’s a link to his article (LINK). Now this article was on a political site, so it wasn’t even related to the main focus of the site, but I read the article and immediately thought of you Internet. And also me, since I was looking for something to write about today.

It just might be that stress is a problem for you that actually might kill you. It also just so happens that I have a 2000 year old solution for you – all bright and shiny since I dug it up in my backyard last night:

“Your present opinion founded in understanding, your present conduct directed to good, and your present contentment with everything that results. That’s enough.” – Marcus Aurelius, Mediations 9.6

Okay, okay, you say, it’s John Wilder Talking About Dead Romans Again. And you’re right. Because they were ever so much more like us than you might imagine. Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic. And he was also Emperor. The book he wrote, Meditations, was just that. His thoughts that he meditated on. He wasn’t writing it for us, he was writing it to sort out his own thoughts and feelings.

Yeah, a Roman Emperor, able to command power few before or since ever had – King, President, Pope, and General all rolled up into one – had to work out his thoughts. This makes sense, because Marcus was the last of the Five Good Emperors (spoiler alert) and thought himself something of a philosopher. It’s like Vladimir Putin took time out of his busy schedule of wrestling bears while shirtless and dating Olympic gymnasts to attempt to deeply study and understand a philosophy of living that directly worked towards the quote from Marcus, up above.

But the quote above encapsulates in just a simple two sentences the core of the Stoic philosophy. Let’s look at how it can help you reduce stress.

“Your present opinion founded in understanding . . .”

If I were to take liberties, I would re-write that one, “Your present opinion founded in truth.”

Dealing with reality was the core of the philosophy – that’s why it came first. And if you are dealing with truth, you’re dealing in certainty. You’re not lying to yourself.

“your present conduct directed to good . . .”

So, you’ve studied and know the truth. Now you have the opportunity to turn your work towards the good. You’re doing the right thing, the right way.

“and your present contentment with everything that results.”

You did the right thing for the right reasons. You have purpose, clarity, and are taking positive action. And, the best part? You don’t have to win to win. Whatever happens, happens. If it didn’t work? You tried. Be content. If it did work? Great! This is a formula for a low stress life. The Stoics got to the core of it – things have meaning because we place meaning on them. We think that the world should be a series of results, instead of a series of truthful opinions and actions directed toward good outcomes.

What happens, happens.

I know this is hard, because every day when I try to divorce myself mentally from the outcome of an action that I’ve taken, and just be cool when it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to work out. The worst part? When I get upset about something that didn’t go my way . . . that didn’t even matter.

Perspective that I need to remember. Most things don’t matter – at all.

Back to Marcus:

Marcus Aurelius had a really, really awful son. Commodus. So bad Commodus’ wife poisoned him. So bad that Commodus’ best friend strangled him. So bad that they had Joaquin Phoenix play Commodus in Gladiator. Did Marcus have a clue that Commodus would be so awful? Probably. But he did everything he could. And his book has reached across centuries to us.

So, he did the right thing for the right reasons. And it worked.

After a fashion. To quote Marcus again: “That’s enough.”

John Wilder is not a doctor. Go see your doctor before you take medical advice from a blog written in a basement . . . .