Rebuttal

A concept with which I have been struggling is that I am living the self-deception of thinking I am a walking contradiction. I have asked myself many times how I can be so liberal inside while so conservative outside...i.e. my social views appear to me very liberal, but my economic policy and constitutional interpretation is very, very conservative.
Here's an example: I feel very strongly that we all should be solving international hunger crises immediately, but I feel equally strongly that increased taxation is the exact opposite way to do it. Better, I think, for people to feel the moral compulsion to help their fellow humans but have the fiscal freedom to do so on their own volition. Forced charity is not charity at all.

But it has dawned on me that (unfortunately for some) I am not liberal at all. The idea of social change is not alien to conservatives, and the idea of national (and international) prosperity is as much a part of the conservative agenda as it is the liberal. What I had been doing was trying to characterize my own beliefs and policies based on the liberal definition of conservatives: "conservatives are greedy, selfish bastards." I was forced to pin myself as a greedy jerk when it came to economic freedoms and lower taxes, but I couldn't think of myself as heartless when it came to the poor and under-represented.
But really, conservatives (and by conservatives I mean mostly the ones you don't hear loudmouthing on the EIB radio network or FoxNews television channel) are deeply committed to improving the human condition, they just prefer a hands-off attitude from government while they do it.

Anyway, I got a lot of flak from my posts about vaccinations and circumcision. Weirdly, the flak has been from both sides of the aisle. Some of my conservative relatives send me regular links from anti-vax websites and news stories. Many of these stories come from sites that don't hide their conservative agendas. Similarly, some of my liberal relatives and friends have "opted out" of vaccines for their kids, based on their own judgement.
As for circumcision, I got a weirdly opposite response. I got tons of anti-circ linklists from liberals with lots of liberal sites and the conservatives I know that have chosen to skip circ for their boys simply claimed they were opting out for personal reasons.
So I have to wonder why my proposal for mandatory vaccinations for kids and possibly the same for circumcision (sans religious belief, remember I'm a conservative) have fallen on such deaf ears. No one wants to hear it. Is this because it is nonsense? Or are the people against vaccines and circ being nonsensical themselves?

Out of pure egotism I have to suggest the latter is the truth. Vaccines, though possibly containing tiny inherent risks, also can lay claim to saving countless lives. Since the advent of modern vaccinations, the human population has exploded, and the average life expectancy in developed countries (where vaccinations are available and use is widespread) has gone through the roof. There are few other explanations for this, as health conditions otherwise have not improved. Countries that have decreased vaccination use have seen a marked rise in disease outbreaks. Humans in developed countries are not living healthier lives than they were a hundred years ago, nay, now we live on fast food, alcohol, and cigarettes. The obesity rate has risen as fast if not faster than the life expectancy rate. Cultural traits, wars, and technology have enabled us to be fatter and less healthy and die more easily than ever before. But we live on, thanks mostly in part to modern medicine and the vaccines we get as kids. But a couple kids somewhere may have gotten autism so now we're all conveniently ignoring the millions of children who survived becuase they never got polio or smallpox or the flu.

And in case I didn't make it clear above, spare me your linkspam for or against vaccines and circumcision. I know what both sides of the argument are.

The point is that vaccinations and other optional health procedures that you can have performed on your children should not be scary. Nobody is "out to get you" and no sane person really, truly wants your child to have nerve damage in their penis.
No one bats an eyelash when the doctor wants to put tubes in a kid who gets lots of ear infections, or to have the tonsils taken out of a kid who has tonsilitis. Nobody seems upset that babies get a shot of vitamin K when they are born, or that silver nitrate is often put into their eyes to protect them from gonorrhea.
The acceptability of some forms of voluntary treatment with castigation of others is entirely societal driven. These treatments have been around for decades or longer, only recently have fears arisen against them.

But the problem I have with people that opt out is that they are not doing so for the sake of the human species. Many acknowledge that vaccines have made the world a better place. Many admit that circumcision prevents or helps prevent or probably helps prevent many terrible diseases. But they exclude themselves from the group of people who actually practice those acts. They seem to think that what is good for everyone else is good for everyone else...but they have their own way. They choose to make a free choice, as is their right, and go against the grain, to go against the time-tested regimens of science and medicine.
That is their choice, or so they think. But isn't, through herd immunity, as I have written before, the whole of the world stronger for each vaccinated child in it? Doesn't my daughters vaccination prevent her not only from getting the flu, but from passing it to another weaker child?
Don't we have a societal obligation to have our kids vaccinated in every way possible, for the sake of society? People will tell you yes until your ears fall off. Or until they have kids of their own and they decide not to have their kid vaccinated, because it might cause autism.

But if I said "the United States is stronger because we all pay taxes, but I choose not to. I find that occasionally taxes don't benefit the taxpayer, and so I choose not to pay them." I would be quickly fined or imprisoned by the IRS (or not). Because taxpaying is a law, you might say, while vaccinating your child is not.
I disagree. While paying your taxes is in fact required by the IRS, the act of giving up your own earnings or time or labor for the betterment of society is not law, it is Hobbesian' natural law. It is the moralistic fiber that Darwin argued in Chapter 5 of "The Descent of Man" that makes one tribe conquer another. He wrote:

"... When two tribes of primeval man, living in the same country, came into competition, if (other circumstances being equal) the one tribe included a great number of courageous, sympathetic and faithful members, who were always ready to warn each other of danger, to aid and defend each other, this tribe would succeed better and conquer the other."

It is, Darwin and Hobbes both argued, our natural purpose and law to perform acts that benefit our species as a superceding obligation to our own personal inhibitions against those acts. To behave as an individual in ways that best allow our species to succeed and to thrive and to evolve.

So we come to this conclusion that we are bound by natural law to fight for the survival of our species, and to do so we must get our kids vaccinated. I'm not going to pretend like I believe even a tiny fraction of children get autism directly from vaccinations. But even if they do, though my heart goes out to their parents, the rest of us must continue to vaccinate our kids. Even though a few doctors argue that circumcision is unnecessary, the overwhelming majority of scientists and doctors for the last thousand odd years argue that it is not only a good idea in terms of societal pressures to fit in, but a good idea for the health of the human species.

I look to my own hypocrisies every day. Do you look for your own?

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Israel nuking Iran, cont'd.

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It seems to me, looking at the above map of the Middle East, that Iraq and Iran are awfully close, and that Iraq stands right between Israel and Iran.

It thereby goes by logic that U.S. interests in Iraq might not want nuclear missiles traveling overhead from point A to point B while American soldiers are there.

Further, although trade winds in the middle east are complex, winds commonly blow out of the North or Northeast into Iran, down into the Persian Gulf. So the nuclear fallout from an Israeli strike on Iran would travel towards Iraq and Saudi Arabia, blanketing Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and UAE in radiation.

The point is, I highly doubt U.S. intelligence wouldn't know when an Israel-Iran conflict is about to start, and I think it would be in the U.S. best interest to pull our troops safely out of harm's way. So if you hear about major troop movements in Iraq, there's a chance it's just us getting out of harm's way.


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Car Safety

U.S. highway deaths at lowest level since 1961. Of course they would be even lower if we automated cars.


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Doldrums/

Normally I subject my readership to my internal thoughts about external events. Today I'll subject you to internal thoughts about internal thoughts.

It wasn't that long ago I chuckled to myself at Freddie deBoer for quitting his blog. In a funk, he complained, and needed a break.

I enjoyed reading Freddie, though a bloody liberal and not ashamed of it, he wrote like I would write, and his criticisms and witicisms made me smile and think. But Freddie wrote some things that made some people mad and got a lot of flak. And so he quit, for a while. Which is a shame, because if loudmouth bullies can silence a voice, we live in an awful world.

Lately, my job (don't think for a minute that this backwoods blog of mine supports me, I'm forced to work a regular job) has been wearing on me. The economy has made the senior management at my company make tough decisions, and they've shown. When I was hired, I was considered sort of a "wonder boy," so much so that people at work teased me about it.

But the work we do has felt the heat of the construction industry, and I've had to adapt and take on some less interesting projects to keep my nose clean until things look up. Believe me, a combination of the construction industry collapsing and the banking credit industry pulling back (more aggressively than the Great Depression, I might add) has rocked the MEP engineering business pretty hard. We mostly do domestic work at my compnay, but other companies than ours who have a larger international market have been hit much harder. Here in America, as bad as things are, we're comparatively doing pretty well.

So I am listing back and forth in this internal conflict: grateful to be at a job, but malcontent because the projects I am doing are really crappy and don't stretch my abilities. At some point, during my younger days, I had great, ambitious, naive plans to change the world. The part of me that had those plans is crying out from within me each and every day and I won't lie; I'm suffering. And every day I feel like that voice within me is a little bit softer.

Now I know I run the risk of sounding whiny and emo, and we all have our problems (why should you read about mine?), but this is my blog and I am sure there are readers who can relate. Freddie knew he would sound like a wimp when he said "I need a break from this" and I couldn't relate at the time because I was so inspired by my own writing, by my own fledgling development of this blog and my thoughts on many things. But it's amazing how things can change in four months.

It's just that I got a master's degree in biomechanical engineering, wrote and defended an expansive and over-long thesis, ran my own research lab, have published articles in major science magazines, given lectures to peers at large bioengineering conferences in San Diego and Vale, and I didn't think once during all that time that I'd be near-depressed in a cube farm two years later. Part of the reason I cling to this blog is because my brain is suffering from workplace underutilization.

I am not ungrateful to my bosses, there have been layoffs and I have fortunately not been included. But the work I am doing does not challenge me and I am the type that thrives upon difficulty (and rots without it). I like the phrase "I dare you to tell me something is impossible."
I see it in myself, in my list of hobbies, in my actions, and in my behavior at work. I get excited when I think about any topic to blog, but let's be honest: if you've seen my blog topics the last two weeks, they haven't been amazing. I get excited when I can do something...anything...not at work. Rather than working at a frenetic pace, I've gone to keeping one eye on the clock, excited to leave work and go home and play with my daughter (a happy, cherubic light in my dim world).

Anyway, this all makes me think about the harsh realities of others. One of my defense mechanisms is to write off my own suffering and think about those that have it worse. "Can you imagine," I think to myself, "how must it feel to stand in the unemployment line? How many proud, tall men have been cowed by that fate? Can you imagine not knowing how you'd feed your kids? Can you imagine losing your car, losing your home, losing the shirt off your back, because you couldn't find work?" I think about Jurgis Rudkus, working in the fertilizer factory, shoveling cattle feces for fourteen hours straight, grateful to have a job, and I wonder why I'm such a whiny little prig. And then that little voice within me squeaks "because you were meant for more."


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Adventures in Linguistics

Something that bugs me is when people make up their own antithesis to a word. For example, a guy on the radio just said "unexplainable."

Something is explainable, and if it isn't, then it is inexplicable. There is no such thing as the word unexplainable.


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The Science of Nukes

Last night on Savage I was listening to someone espouse their belief that Iran's government is stoically committed to annihilating Israel, and vice versa. He believed Iran is committed to obtaining nukes, and Israel is committed to preventing that, to the point that he was reasonably certain that the whole region could quickly be drawn into a large-scale conflict.
Now, after researching this topic I have found belief in an Iran-Israel war to be ranging from doubtful to definite.

One thing that is for certain is that neither Israel nor Iran believe in the "mutually assured destruction" doctrine that has kept the U.S. and Russian nukes safely underground since their advent.

So how does a nuke work? Your run of the mill nuclear warhead is about the size of a small car, and fits snugly on top of a large missile. Each warhead contains 8-10 nuclear devices, which will separate and enable the single missile to strike multiple locations...making defense more difficult.
The two main ingredients in a nuclear warhead are uranium-235 and plutonium.

Think of the warhead inside a nuclear weapon as a propane tank, like the one on your gas grill. The inside wall of the tank is lined with explosives, and the core of the tank is filled with enriched uranium with a plutonium center. When the warhead detonates, the explosives along the outside edge of the device explode, which provides intense pressure inward on the uranium core. This compression triggers the nuclear reaction.
The nuclear reaction is caused basically by the fact that the uranium hates being close to itself, so much so that when pushed together, it will decay into smaller atoms that are less "claustrophobic", as well as a couple neutrons. This is the key to the chain reaction. The uranium decays into smaller pieces and ejects a couple neutrons...and these two neutrons travel to other uranium atoms and cause their decay...which releases four neutrons...etc. etc.
The reason that this is such a massive explosion is that the release of neutrons gives of a huge amount of heat energy.


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I'm taking it easy until the sun irradiates us all.

My horoscope told me to "concentrate on the leisure angle" and "take it easy; enjoy a long lunch with friends" so here's a leisurely-written science entry for you.

First off, Happy Birthday to Alec Baldwin! Talk about an epic actor.

In honor of another movie that uses science to create fiction then removes the science from it, here's an explanation of a solar flare-based armageddon.

Solar flares are...well, let's pretend like a sunspot is a zit on the face of the sun. A solar flare is the pus that shoots out when the zit is popped. The intense magnetic fields formed by the sunspot cause a violent explosion(s) of plasma from the sun, which can travel nearly the speed of light. This plasma leaves the sun in the form of a wide band of radiation, from gamma rays all the way down to long-band radio waves. When they hit the earth, they can cause all sorts of problems.

So imagine, if you will, that a massive once-in-1,000-years solar flare comes speeding towards earth. The first thing you'll notice is that your Garmin GPS has stopped working. This is because a massive burst of ionizing electrons has fried every satellite in orbit. The three astronauts in the International Space Station will also stop transmitting...for the worst reason. In fact, it's likely the energy will be sufficient to vaporize the entirety of the ISS, so anyone looking into the right part of the sky will see a tiny explosion as the ISS fragments and burns.
Then the sky will be bathed in ionization, which will look like the Northern Lights times one million. At that point, don't panic, you still have time to hug your kids.
Most of the harmful radiation from the sun will be absorbed in the earth's magnetosphere, and will superheat the atmosphere, destroying the ozone layer. However, all life on earth's surface will still be bathed in a massive dose of gamma rays. Of course, no one will immediately notice. We'll all just look up at the sky and watch the fireworks, then turn on the TV to see the news about what happened.
Unfortunately your TV won't turn on. The EMP will have fried all electronic devices on earth, and even if you did have a working TV because you happened to have had it in a Faraday cage during the solar flare, the broadcast satellites have burned up in the atmosphere, so there is nothing transmitting to your TV anyway.
Our cell phones won't work, the radio won't work, electrical transmission wires won't work, so by that evening you'll be sitting by candlelight in your dark, cold home wondering "just what the government is doing about this."
Unfortunately, the government won't be able to do anything. By the next morning, most of us will be throwing up blood as our internal organs dissolve. That massive dose of radiation we engorged yesterday will have killed the DNA in most, if not all, of our cells, so our bodies are dying off at a rapid pace. Cells that reproduce rapidly, like skin cells and the cells that line our stomachs and intestines, will be the first to go, so watch for your skin to start sloughing off like you have massive burns and you'll start leaking fluid. You'll also probably go blind, and your senses of smell and taste will disappear. Within another 24 hours, any organs that remain, like your kidneys and liver, have shut down both from an overload of work, and the fact that your body has no ability to absorb water. By 48 hours after the solar flare, you and every other living creature on Earth's surface, will be dead or nearly so.

The lucky ones, who happened to be deep underground or underwater during the event, will emerge to find the world a desolate place. All surface life is dead or dying, so food production will be difficult. It will also be hard to grow new food, as all seeds that were splashed with radiation are no longer viable. You cannot eat the dead, they are so strongly dosed with radiation that going near them will give you cancer. Your best bet is to eat fish, which were largely protected from the radiation by the water.
Of course, that's only a temporary solution, as the complete collapse of the planet's ecosystem will soon carry over into a massive dump of phosphorous and nitrogen into the world's oceans. Algae (assuming some survived the flare) will bloom like never before, de-oxygenating the world's oceans, killing all the fish.

The world really probably would never recover, or at least not for thousands of years. The massive burn up of ozone from the flare would open the world to being constantly splashed with cosmic radiation, which would consistently wipe out any DNA-based life forms that tried to leave the deep sea. Eventually, in thousands and thousands of years, the atmosphere might recover enough for earth to support life. Maybe.


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