Water, The Cosmic Nurterer

  One of the great mysteries of natural sciences how water forms. We know it comes from hydrogen bonding with oxygen. Yet it has not been chemically created by humans in any lab on earth. We can invent quantum computers but not a single ounce of the most ubiquitous and vital substance on the planet. Nobody even knows why. It is thought that a great amount of energy is needed to fuse the two elements into an H2O molecule. Such energy may have only been capable when the sun was born, or the supernova that formed our stellar nursery beyond 5 billion years ago.

 Many scientists think water came to Earth from planetesimals that collided with it. They would have been made of ice from forming in the "freeze zone" beyond the sun's grasp. I don't believe this is the case because water vapor can be found on every planet, even the gas giants. It was everywhere in the Solar System as the Solar System was born. Steam even exists on the sun, in dark spots, which a Stanford study from 1997 showed. It is possibly a major component of stellar nurseries, being vital for their development- no different from its importance to eggs, seeds, and fetuses on planet Earth.

U.S. Life Expectancy: The Biggest Problem with an Aging Population

               As a population ages, pressure is placed on social welfare programs as older people outpace the labor force required to pay for them (Newbold, 95).  The cost of providing services for the aging population ends up being paid for by a smaller labor force.  This can threaten the stability of a country’s economy because more energy goes into supporting the elderly than it does for children and the next generation of workers.  As the elderly require a disproportionate share of medical services, it exacerbates the problem even more (ibid.).  With an inflated market, healthcare premiums may become too expensive for young people to afford insurance, impacting their own health.  Also, the younger generation may need to stay home longer to help care for older family members before they can begin a stable career.
              To improve the situation, the minimum age of eligibility for receiving Social Security, Medicare, and pension support should be raised.  In 1965, when the U.S. implemented these services for the elderly, life expectancy was only 70.2, leaving about five years of support after retirement.  In 2025, the U.S. life expectancy has reached 79.4 (Macrotrends)- a difference of 9.2 years.  It stands to reason that since life expectancy has increased by 9 years since these programs started, the minimum age of eligibility should be raised accordingly to about 74 years of age.  However, the government may want to set the bar lower to avoid a backlash- say at 70 years of age to start.  This will help cover the mounting costs of Social Security and Medicare that weren’t accounted for when the programs started, and life expectancy was a lot lower.
 
Sources:
Macrotrends.  U.S. Life Expectancy 1950-2025.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/united-states/life-expectancy
Newbold, K. Bruce.  2021. Population Geography: Tools and Issues. Rowman & Littlefield. Lanham, Maryland

Emerald Cannonball

  The dam burst from El Nino's downpour. Rapids swelled like a rush of oil to the piston. The green boat soared with buoyancy off the sunburnt flanks, blasted down the darma hall of unparalleled vastness, angled skyward to defy the sirens of vertigo. Through the canyon it maneuvered in record time, manned by a maniac who spoke to spirits that certified immunity from death. In danger he found peace, losing himself in endurance the way distance runners conquer mountains. His victory was the canon, grandest of them all, seventh wonder of the world that bejewelled the west, last in a series of unpolished trophies.

Armada of Coral

 Deepest fathoms of Caribbean sapphire
 Reveal a diver's paradise off the Spanish main
 Littered by jolly buccaneer shipwreck
 That dusted the murky bottom to shine.
 With mass of color that burned the eye
 To tye-dye gunwales covered by sea garden,
 Where glass fish meandered through cabins
 That light had forsaken to the abyss.
 The divers swam through that lost city
 Mesmerized by the broken landscape
 Supporting new life, miniature biomes
 Consecrated from wood and bone,
 A buried treasure of human remains
 For the sea to claim as its own.
 She was reborn there in the calm
 Undulating currents of the manta rays
 Summoning the graveyard into a nursery,
 Hoping that someday, once her time is done,
 That she could complete the circle of life
 By ending it there, by becoming a reef.

Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret

I found the documentary "Cowspiracy" on Netflix because it isn't freely available. It shows how contrary to popular opinion, meat and dairy production contribute more to greenhouse gases than vehicles emissions. Methane and nitrous oxide pollute the atmosphere at higher levels than CO2, while both are disproportionately a byproduct of animal husbandry needed to feed the planet. Animals that are grown and fed to be slaughtered also require a major amount of water- one hamburger requires 660 gallons of water to sustain a cow from birth to slaughter! A further issue is that the demand for raising livestock is significantly adding to biodiversity loss, including around 80% of the clearance of the Amazon rainforest. The message is that we can conserve water, reduce pollution, and protect species by relying less on meat and dairy consumption. 

The way the film is shown, there appears to be a conspiracy by some environmental organizations to cover up this crucial fact. Most of the people interviewed look uncomfortable, either because they are hiding something or didn’t know. It is thought that they are not appropriately addressing the issue because they fear a backlash to reducing meat consumption would also reduce fundraising. There is also the threat of violence against activists, especially in the Amazon, where deforestation for livestock is growing at an alarming rate. I liked how one of the farmers put it, "If the land can't sustain the animal, humans shouldn’t be eating it”.

Snow Week

  It has been snowing all week. Not the horrendous kind that freezes over as it hits the ground, resulting in compact snow and ice that causes traffic problems for days, but the lovely flurry type snow that turns to powder when it sticks. It's the best kind of snow that doesn't ice everything over, making it fun to play in and relatively easy to drive in. The flurries were especially beautiful as I worked from home, the soft flakes slowly falling outside my window as I crunched numbers and studied geography. The only bad thing is my wife missed some work from the schools being closed or delayed, but I'm not too worried about it this time. We've made a profit since October, which is the first time since my second son was born. I was about to go deliver but then I saw the snow still falling, so I am staying home for now. This should be the last of it, according to the meteorologists.

The Sound of Heaven

Between the numbers I found mountains slammed by cannonball that the organ fired from angry pipes. A dangling sax tap danced on crystals bisected once the band split. I couldn't remember the equation, but I knew the answer anyway, so I worked backwards, doing everything in reverse algebra. A whistle came from the background, a lonely harmonica drowsy with sleep that dawn spliced open the rainbow with. As I sat there in school, bored to tears, the echo of a traipsing piano ambled up the paper, fermenting facts and figures into waxed memory. The vision was clear, and I became one with the sound. My classmates looked at me askew, an outsider with a broken pencil, who instead of hearing the lecture could only hear heaven.

Grand Canyon Deaths

  Last night I stayed up binge watching people fall off the Grand Canyon. Call it a morbid curiosity fermented by the idea of one of my favorite places being so disorienting that people forget where they are. A sandstone delirium. Actually they weren't falling, but they came close. It was after reading an account about a woman sitting on the ledge, standing up, and losing her balance only minutes after hearing the warning of someone who'd suffered the same fate. I had to explore what it is about the Canyon that turns some people into absolute fools. So many wander off-trail and pass the railing that the estimated 1,000 deaths that have occurred there seems like a vast understatement. Some of the people in these videos jump from 1,000 foot heights to a rock just beyond calamity's grip so nonchalantly that you have to wonder if they became possessed by some evil entity lurking in the canyon. The lure of the canyon is like a siren slithering across the bottom, following the river that had carved it, claiming new lives every summer. You couldn't pay me a 1,000 bucks to stand near a ledge, and I'm not that afraid of heights. It seems that for centuries the canyon has been waiting for this influx of dumb tourists who would risk their lives to post a daring selfie on Instagram. The lack of humility before nature being displayed here is more staggering than when Ian Malcolm visited Jurassic Park.

The Snow Run

  Just had an amazing experience running in the snow, while it is sticking, for the first time. Giant globs of snow were flying in my face as I blitzed through a white curtain up on the vista. It was mildly breezy too. It wasn't that scary to run on the powder that stuck because I didn't slide at all. If temperatures had been lower the ground would have froze and I would have carefully maneuvered home. It was an ideal situation for running in the snow that may only happen once in a lifetime. 

For my courage I was blessed with an unforgettable experience. Many of them are like that. It's important not to let small fears deprive you of unique and memorable experiences. So long as the risk is calculated and not too dangerous you will not regret it.

 My youngest son was waiting at the window for me to come home. When he saw me, his face lit up like an angel's. Apparently he had been worried about me getting lost or hurt in the snow. It touches my heart that he was more worried about me than being mesmerized by the flakes.

Flow

  On movie night we watched a fantastic animated adventure film called "Flow". It's set in a beautiful fantasy world that has a lot in common with earth, too much to be immediately noticeable. All the characters are animals we have on earth, but the geography is not clear. A lemur would have you believe it is set on Madagascar; a capybara South America; Italian architecture coupled with tibetan temples, huh? Plus a natural disaster that isn't physically possible, unless an asteroid struck Antarctica. Certainly it was a fantasy world, that even had humans before some other apocalyptic event rendered them extinct.

 The best thing about it is there are no words. Too many movies these days have rushed dialogue that sounds too forced, even the good ones. The film proves you don't need words to tell a great story. The lack of dialogue also challenges you to think more about what is going on. "Flow" is the first film I will rate 10/10 on IMDB in a long time.