“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.” Douglas Adams

The above image show two galaxies that are about 100 million light years from earth. The lower one is named NGC 5953 and the upper one is called NGC 5954. They are both spiral galaxies. The reason they look a little different is their orientation in relation to the earth. Together they are known as Arp 91. The image was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. These two are located in the constellation Serpens in the northern hemisphere. They were first discovered on April 17th, 1784 by the German-born astronomer William Herschel. They are a great example of galactic interaction due to each others gravity. Astronomers believe that collisions between spiral galaxies are common and lead to the formation of elliptical galaxies. The time scale that this takes place is over hundreds of millions of years. Image credit:  ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton; Acknowledgment: J. Schmidt. If you want to learn more about these two please check out there links: Hubble Detects a Dangerous Dance | NASA and http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/arp-91-interacting-galaxies-10128.html and Serpens – Wikipedia

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely fool proof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” Douglas Adams

This is an artist’s conception of what a “Rogue Planet” might look like. These planets are called by various names: an interstellar, a nomad, a free-floating, an unbound, an orphan, a wandering planet, a starless planet, or a sunless planet. They are interstellar objects of planetary mass and are floating in free space. Not attached to any planetary system or star. Many in the astronomy field believe that there may be more than we realize but up until recently our planet hunting techniques have not been able to detect them very well. Currently the best way is what is know as a MOA or Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics. This survey scanned the central bulge of our galaxy using the 5.9 foot or 1.8 meter telescope at Mount John University Observatory in New Zealand. The researches recorded 474 incidents of microlensing, ten of which were possible Jupiter size planets. From this observation it is thought that there are two Rogue Planets for every star in the Milky Way. NASA plans to gather more data about Rogue Planets with the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope in the mid-2020s. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. If you interested in more information please see these links: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/a-jupiter-like-rogue-planet-wanders-alone-in-space and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microlensing_Observations_in_Astrophysics and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_planet and https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/the-nancy-grace-roman-space-telescope

“A learning experience is one of those things that says, You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.” Douglas Adams

This is an image of the planet Neptune and was taken by the Voyager 2 space craft in August of 1989. In this view you can see the storm in Neptune’s atmosphere called the “Great Dark Spot.” Astronomers discovered Neptune in September of 1846 by using mathematical calculations of it’s predicted position and a telescope. This is the 8th planet in our solar system and the fourth-largest by diameter. It is about 17 earth masses. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. If you would like to learn more please see this link: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/discovering-neptune and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptune

“The quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.” Douglas Adams

This is an image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope of the galaxy called NGC 1052-DF2. It made big news in 2019 because researchers were able to ascertain that this galaxy contains almost no dark matter. It was first discovered in 2015 by the dragonfly telescope array. To refresh your memory dark matter is a hypothetical form of invisible matter or substance that typically dominates the makeup of galaxies. It is thought that 85% of the matter in the universe is dark matter. So to find a galaxy without any was a very big deal to say the least. Dark matter is called dark because it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it does not absorb, reflect or emit electromagnetic radiation of any kind. Therefore it is very difficult to detect. ( It is thought to be there or not there by a variety of astrophysical observations, including gravitational effects that cannot be explained by accepted theories of gravity unless more matter is present than can be seen. ) Because researchers did not find it here in this galaxy it makes it more likely that it is real and not less. A second galaxy with very little dark matter was found in that same area and named DF4. This discovery created a new class of galaxies called ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs). They are as big as our Milky Way but have between 100 to 1000 times fewer stars, making them appear fluffy and translucent. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and P. van Dokkum (Yale University) If you would like to learn more please see these links: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/a-ghostly-galaxys-lack-of-dark-matter and https://www.keckobservatory.org/df2-df4/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_Telephoto_Array

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.” Douglas Adams

This is an image of what is know as a supernova remnant. The image was created with the Hubble Space Telescope and is denoted N 63A. It is located in a part of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The LMC is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way and is located about 160,000 light years away. N 63A is the remains of a massive star that exploded and ejected it gaseous layers out into space. This picture is a color representation of data taken in 1997 and 2000 with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Color filters were used to show light emitted by oxygen (shown in blue), hydrogen (shown in green) and sulfur (shown in red). Image credit: NASA/ESA/HEIC and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA). If you would like to learn more about the above image please visit these links: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/like-monsters-in-the-sky and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Magellanic_Cloud and https://esahubble.org/news/heic0507/

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” Douglas Adams

HEY!! I AM LOOKING AT YOU!! THAT’S WHO!! LOLOLOLOLOLO

If you are reading this then you have continued to survive Covid 19 so far and so have I!! And that my friends is a very, very, good thing for all of us. I am still hoping that I can keep saying this for the rest of the year and the next. I really mean that, especially if you are still on the fence about getting vaccinated.

What can I say, the virus is back and it is mainly a virus of the unvaccinated. I started this months blog post on October 6th and when I checked the numbers I was saddened to learn that we added 58,000 deaths in the last 30 days for a total of 727,000. (September 6th to October 6th)

The month before it was 36,000 and the month before that, about 20,000 and in June it was 9,000. Can you see the pattern? Each month starting towards the end of June we exponentially added more and more infections and deaths. A total of about 115,000 deaths between June 6th to October 6th. Unreal. Again my question will be: How high will it go?

It has now been about 10 months since I got the initial two doses of the Pfizer Vaccine for Covid and 2 months since I got the booster shot and there does not seem to be any side effects. It sounds like the booster shot is going to eventually be recommended to everyone 12 years and older here in the United States. I am not sure why the CDC and the FDA have been dragging there feet on this but other countries like Israel ( 12 and older) and the UK ( 50 and older) have already made this jump. In Israel you are not considered fully vaccinated until you have had the third shot. Interesting to say the least.

By the middle of the month, October 15th, we were at 744 thousand deaths or another 17 thousand deaths in just 9 days. Truly this just seems unreal when I think about it. Why is there not outrage, sorrow and significant concern on a daily basis in the political arena, the media, etc… It is fascinating to watch the local news talk about how the ICUs here in Colorado are filled to capacity. That there is a shortage of nurses. That doctors are tired and thinking about quitting. That the largest increase in Covid cases in Colorado besides unvaccinated adults are unvaccinated kids in the 7 to 11 range… But then in the next breath there is a lively and up beat news piece on the upcoming Bronco game and about how the stands are filled to capacity or the recent Colfax marathon and how many people were going to show up. And I think to myself that these are Covid Super Spreader events. How many people will go home from these events with Covid and eventually die or develop long Covid or spread it to others? Of course this is not just Denver but is happening across the country in just about every major city. It feels like the “economic powers that be” do not care if you live or die as long as it does not affect their bottom line.

Two days before publishing, October 27th, the death toil was at 762,000. Even though the numbers have been trending down, that is an increase 35,000 deaths from starting this blog, 21 days ago. And we were still adding 60,000 to 80,000 new cases each day. Mainly the “unvaccinated.” Oh well what are you going to do?????

On a better note, The Pfizer Covid Vaccine was approved for kids 5 to 11!! Yea!!

Well, the fourth wave of Covid has crashed upon the USA and is now on the wane with most of the morbidity and mortality due to the unvaccinated. Unfortunately there are still about 70 million in this country that have not gotten the shot… We are making progress but not fast enough. Thanksgiving is just around the corner, not to mention Halloween, and there is some thought there will be a fifth wave. But it will be a much more “localized” event(s), mainly affecting the states without mandates and / or low vaccination rates. If your interested check out this site by the KFF: https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-data-on-covid-19-vaccinations-by-race-ethnicity/

Another good article on why the predictability (will there be a 5th wave) with Covid is difficult can be found on MedPage Today. You can check it out at this link: Delta on the Decline? Not So Fast | MedPage Today

Well enough about Covid! Time to move on to something else! The last two weeks of September and the first couple of weeks of October have been fantastic for running or getting out for any kind of exercise. Yea! The wildfires out in California had run their course, especially the big one around Lake Tahoe and this made a dramatic improvement in the quality of air here in Colorado. Of course this did not really work out for my ultrarunning plans, but it is OK. I am glad to have the clean air. It is of interest that in the middle of October, California was still having major fire issues. The Alisal Fire was at 13,000 acres and being fueled by strong winds. It was located in Santa Barbara County in the Los Padres National Forest. Luckily it was not causing air quality issues in Colorado because the winds were blowing it along the California Cost toward Los Angeles, San Diego and eventually out to sea. Of course by the end of the month the “Bomb Cyclone” had hit Cali and fires were not an issue anymore. Lol. Or at least for now.

The above picture was taken on September 9th, 2021 at about 7:30pm in the evening. It was still pretty warm during the month of September and we kept the habit of walking Marvin in the morning and again later in the evening. The county we live in had one of the warmest Septembers on record. Actually, I think that most of Colorado had a pretty warm September.

The above picture was taken on September 14th, 2021 at about 2:45pm in the afternoon. This was a picture looking toward what I believe is Cameron Peak at 12, 000 feet in the Rawah Wilderness. The air quality was excellent for the day and Marvin and I had a great time.

The above picture was taken on September 16th, 2021 at about 1:15pm in the afternoon. It was another beautiful day for air quality and Janet and I were up doing a trail / road called Michigan ditch. Here I am looking at Nokhu Crags at 12,484 feet. Just below these peaks are a couple of lakes called the American Lakes.

The above picture was taken on September 22nd, 2021 at about 4:30pm in the afternoon. Here I am looking North from the top of a hogback hill in the Pine Ridge Open Space in Fort Collins. Instead of running on this day I was out biking. By this time I had well over 2000 miles of running and walking for the year and felt that doing a little biking would be good for the body and mind.

The above picture was taken on September 30th, 2021 at about 2:30pm in the afternoon. It was finally a cool afternoon and Janet and I decided to walk Marvin a little further than usual and took him down to the river. This was along the Poudre Bike Trail in Fort Collins.

The above picture was taken on October 2nd, 2021 at about 11:45am. Marvin and I were taking advantage of the beautiful weather and clean air to get up above timberline on Montgomery Pass. This is looking West towards Cameron Pass and the Nokhu Crags. There was already a little bit of snow on the higher peaks!

The “Marvin walks” while not as exercise intensive as just running, have allowed quit a bit of “audio book” listening. Here are a couple I would like to review. They are great ones to add to your reading list.

The first one I would like to review and recommend is “A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century” by Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein. I came across this book while looking for Steven Pinker’s new book called Rationality. And I am really glad that I did. What an interesting perspective on our modern society and how it relates to our evolutionary past. The authors draw on years of teaching at the college level and combine it with their vast experience of being out in some of the Earth’s most unique environments. They take all of this experience and apply it to where we are in society at the moment and help the reader to understand some of the paradoxes we see with our contemporary world.

I liked this book so well that I listened to it twice. It was that good. I specially liked the sections on “hyper novelty” and the “sustainability crisis.” In my opinion this hits the nail right on the head so to speak. Enovation is moving at warp speed and trying to get our Paleolithic brains wrapped around this fact is what has led to a lot of the problems we see today. The “sustainability crisis” is one that is only going to get worse as time moves along. We have lived and moved to every part of the globe since time immortal. As the authors points out – growth is in our DNA. So the issue becomes where do we go from here? One of their solutions was developing a “stead state economy” and I really like this idea. But in my honest opinion it is only a stop gap measure. Now that we have completely “tamed” all corners of the earth the only real solution (the author’s do not suggest it) is to go up – into space. But that is a topic for another time.

I got this book as an audio book, but it would work well in any format. If I did it again I would have probably gotten it as a traditional book. I found myself listening to a section, stopping and thinking about it, and then going back and listening again. A very thought provoking book. Of course you can find the book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Hunter-Gatherers-Guide-21st-Century-Challenges/dp

Heather and Bret are both evolutionary biologists.

The next one I would like to review and recommend is “The Butterfly Effect: Insects and the Making of the Modern World” by Edward D. Melillo. I first heard about this fascinating book from an NPR interview with the author. Most of us realize that insects are essential for things like pollination and as a food source in some countries but most of us (myself included) had no idea that they have played a much more significant role in our lives.

The author does an excellent job in telling the historical story of silk worm cultivation and how important this development was in the ancient and modern world. Another one is the use of the lac insects to produce “lac” which is used to make shellac. Besides being used as a wood finish, lac is also used in polishes, inks, electrical insulation, cosmetics, lubricants, sealants and more. A third one that I did not know about was the use of cochineal scale insects to make the bright red pigment carmine. This has been made into dyes for clothing, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and food coloring to name a few uses. There are several other fascinating insect examples in the book.

The author not only gives you a good understanding of the why and how these insects are used – but he also includes a historical perspective of the influence these insects have had in human society and culture. Insect cultivation has been a significant player in the development of civilization prior to the introduction of synthetics.

I listened to this book as an audio book but I am thinking it might work better in tradition format so that you can easily reference material that you have previously read. Of course the book can be found on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Butterfly-Effect-Insects-Making-Modern/dp

The last one I would like to review and recommend is called “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir. If you liked “The Martian” and “Artemis” by Weir I think that you will like this one too. The main character in this book is a lot like the main character in the Martian and the story line reads very similar. Of course the book is Science Fiction but there is a lot of real science mixed in. Your inner nerd is going to like this book. Lol.

In a nut shell the main character Ryland wakes up without any idea of who he is or where he is or how he got into space in the first place. In the process of figuring all this out he finds that he is in a desperate race to save humanity.

I would have to say that there is a little more SiFi in this book than in the previous two. But I did not find that detracting from the story at all. In fact it really made me stop and wonder if some of the speculative fiction will eventual be something proved to be true in some form or fashion in the future. It is one of those books that makes you go – hmmm I never thought of it that way.

I listened to the book as an audio book but it would work great in any format and can be found on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Project-Hail-Mary/dp

Well last but not least I would like to showcase one piece of newly finished art work. This is done in pen and ink, mounted on painted white board and sealed with mod podge. It measures 7.25 inches wide and is 10.25 inches tall. When hanging it the overall length is about 15 inches.

I did this one as tribute to all the women I have worked with over the years in the health care profession. In the famous words of the founder of the Leadville 100: “You’re better than you think you are. You can do more than you think you can.” – Ken Chlouber.

You don’t have to be an ultrarunner to get this quote. We are all a lot stronger than we realize and meditation can help us to find that strength and resolve when things get tough.

Om Shakti

This piece and others are for sale and can be found on my Etsy site: https://www.etsy.com/shop/strugglingprotoplasm/edit?ref=seller-platform-mcnav

Well look at that! I have come to the end of another blog post and before I close, I want to say again…. if you have not thought about “Minimalism” you should. Our growth at all cost culture IS NOT SOMETHING our children and grand children are going to look back on in the future with fondness and admiration. Remember that scene at the end of the Planet of the Apes movie (1968) when the character Taylor (played by Charlton Heston) makes the quote: “You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!” In this scene Taylor is lamenting the fate of the human race when he delivers this quote. Of course in the movie the environmental catastrophe is caused by nuclear war but could have occurred for any number of other reasons.

How much destruction can our environment take? How much indiscriminate pillaging of the planet’s natural resources can occur before something breaks? The question is not whether the earth will survive but will humanity. That is the question. Will humanity survive?

The current economic model of growth for growth’s sake is not sustainable. If we want to keep the earth habitable for humanity we need a different way of doing things. One way to do this might be to create what is know as a “Steady-state Economy.” It is a way to balance intelligent growth with environmental integrity. Let me say that again – to balance growth with environmental integrity. What it is NOT is growth for growth’s sake policy. This could provide us with a temporary solution until technology catches up and gets us off planet and out in to the vast reaches of space.

Great sounding words but you may be asking how does one go about doing this? Well, one way we can do this on an individual level is to become Minimalist. Minimalism is essentially a steady state economy on a personal scale.

And a good way to start this process on a personal level is with a period of de-growth. Stuff is stuff and you can have too much of it. Just like food. Too much of a good thing is going to cause problems. Cut out the empty calories so to speak by buying less and making good decisions on what you buy. Buy used when possible, pass it on when you are done with it, care for the stuff you already have, and if you absolutely have to buy new – look for durability, fixability, sustainable, and ethically made products that will last for years. Become the change you want to see.

Ok, enough of the soap box but if you interested and want to learn more please visit these sites: https://www.theminimalists.com/minimalism/ and https://steadystate.org/

So take care my friends and if you have not gotten vaccinated, then get it done! We all want this “Groundhog Day-Covid-Marry-Go-Round” to end. Until next time! Adios!!

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous…, leading to the most amazing views.” Edward Abbey