“This was my wake-up call. I opened my eyes to the depressing fact that there are other forces at work in medicine besides science. The U.S. health care system runs on a fee-for-service model in which doctors get paid for the pills and procedures they prescribe, rewarding quantity over quality. We don’t get reimbursed for time spent counseling our patients about the benefits of healthy eating. If doctors were instead paid for performance, there would be a financial incentive to treat the lifestyle causes of disease. Until the model of reimbursement changes, I don’t expect great changes in medical care or medical education.” Dr. Michael Greger

This is an image of a group of galaxies known as Stephan’s Quintet. It was taken by the James Webb Space Telescope and shows details that were not seen with Hubble. The Instrument that was used is called MIRI or Mid-InfraRed Instrument. It is composed of both a camera and a spectrograph that sees light in the mid-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. These wavelengths are longer than our eyes can see. It has allowed us to see new details in the dust-shrouded regions of the quintet, like shock waves and tidal tails and has reveled regions of star formation that were not seen before. The grouping of the five galaxies is actually a misnomer. Only four of the galaxies are close to each other. The left most, called NGC 7320, is 40 million light years from earth, while the other four are closer to 290 million light years away. The group is in the constellation Pegasus. It was first discovered by the French astronomer Edouard Stephan in 1877 at the Marseille Observatory. If you would like to learn more please see these links: https://esawebb.org/images/potm2207a/ and https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/observatory/instruments/miri.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephan%27s_Quintet

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

“Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, recently warned that we may be facing a future in which many of our miracle drugs no longer work. She stated, “A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it. Things as common as strep throat or a child’s scratched knee could once again kill.” We may soon be past the age of miracles. The director-general’s prescription to avoid this catastrophe included a global call to “restrict the use of antibiotics in food production to therapeutic purposes.” In other words, only use antibiotics in agriculture to treat sick animals. But that isn’t happening. In the United States, meat producers feed millions of pounds of antibiotics each year to farm animals just to promote growth or prevent disease in the often cramped, stressful, and unhygienic conditions of industrial animal agriculture. Yes, physicians overprescribe antibiotics as well, but the FDA estimates that 80 percent of the antimicrobial drugs sold in the United States every year now go to the meat industry.” Dr. Michael Greger

This image from JWST is of a merging galaxy pair known as II ZW 96. They are in the constellation Delphinus and are about 500 million light years from earth. The bright cores of the two galaxies are connected by bright lines of thread like appendages that are actually star forming regions. The spiral arms of the lower galaxy have been twisted out of shape by the gravitational forces created during the merger. The upper galaxy has had significant distortion too. If you would like to learn more please see these links: https://esawebb.org/images/potm2211a/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZW_II_96

Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Armus, A. Evans

“In 2012, the American Dietetic Association changed its name to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics but didn’t appear to change its policies. It continues to take millions of dollars every year from processed junk food, meat, dairy, soda, and candy bar companies. In return, the academy lets them offer official educational seminars to teach dietitians what to say to their clients.” Dr. Michael Greger

This is an image of the Phantom Galaxy from the James Webb Space Telescope. Another name for this galaxy is Messier74 and it is a member of a class of spiral galaxies known as a “grand design spiral.” This means that the spiral arms are more defined and prominent than in other spiral galaxies. It is in the constellation of Pisces and is about 30 million light years from earth. It is estimated that M74 hosts about 100 billion stars. If you would like to see more, please see these links: https://esawebb.org/images/potm2208a/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_74 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_design_spiral_galaxy

Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team. 
Acknowledgement: J. Schmidt

“More than two thousand years ago, Hippocrates said, “If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.” Dr. Michael Greger

This is a picture from the JWST that is of NGC 7469, an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation of Pegasus that is about 200 million light years away from earth. It is estimated that the galaxy is about 90,000 light-years across. It was discovered by William Herschel on November 12th, 1784. This galaxy has a bright nucleus and in the image above, the diffraction spike (patterns produced as the light bends around sharp edges of a telescope) makes it look like a six pointed star. Galaxies with this bright nucleus are also known as Seyfert galaxies. This name comes from Carl Seyfert, an American astronomer who first described this class in 1943. It is thought that the brightness is created by the presence of an accretion disk around a supermassive black hole. This galaxy has a great deal of dust around it and it has been difficult to study it with Hubble. With JWST and its better instrumentation, astronomers will now have a chance to peer though the dust clouds to see the starburst ring, and the central AGN (active galactic nucleus) in much greater detail. If you would like to learn more please see these links: https://esawebb.org/images/potm2212a/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_7469 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seyfert_galaxy

Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Armus, A. S. Evans

“In this world, time has three dimensions, like space. Just as an object may move in three perpendicular directions, corresponding to horizontal, vertical, and longitudinal, so an object may participate in three perpendicular futures. Each future moves in a different direction of time. Each future is real. At every point of decision, the world splits into three worlds, each with the same people, but different fates for those people. In time, there are an infinity of worlds.” Alan Lightman

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

If you are reading this then you have continued to survive Covid 19 so far and so have I!! Yea again for both of us!!

Well what the hell, Covid is still with us and will be for the foreseeable future. At some point, I am guessing that with the new mRNA technology, the scientist that do vaccines will figure out a much more effective treatment. But until then, it is what it is for the moment. Covid has now become, with a few exceptions, a serious disease of those that are older than 65 and / or are immunocompromised. New cases have dropped from the 60,000 plus range to around 40, 000 per day now. But deaths have actually gone up to about 500 per day. I am guessing that in a week or two the number of deaths per day will drop and that will be a good thing. It appears that we are in a plateau and I am hoping that instead of things going up, we will see a continued drop. But time will tell.

The new variant of concern for the end of January is called XBB.1.5 and makes up more than half off all cases in the United States. This variant overtakes the BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 that was predominate back in December. The question that I have and I am sure many others have, what’s going to come out of China? There have been some reports generated by eye witness accounts and satellite data that they may be experiencing as many as 20 to 30 thousand deaths per day due to their population size and lack of vaccination. When you extrapolate back from this you can probably guess that the number of new daily infections are in the hundreds of thousands. Of course none of this is being reported by the Chinese government. That is a lot of people for new variants to emerge. It is not a question will new variants be created but will we get one in the next 6 months that is the variant from hell?! And add in the Chinese government’s reticence in reporting and you get the possibility the rest of the world will be scrambling to play catch up in creating an effective treatment plan when it spreads beyond their borders. Oh well what are you going to do?

By the time of publishing, the death count per day was still holding in the 500 range. And total deaths were now around 1,132,000 or about 16 thousand more deaths from last month. Again, hard to wrap my head around those numbers, especially when you consider the count is probably a lot higher. Covid is still considered the third leading cause of death as of this past November. Right behind Heart disease and Cancer. Not to mention that if you have gotten Covid and survived, you are not out of the woods yet so to speak. There is an 18 month time frame post Covid, that you are at increased risk for cardiovascular complications and neurodegenerative disease.

If you are interested in more information from reliable sources please check out these links: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ and https://www.youtube.com/c/OsterholmUpdateCOVID19 and https://www.youtube.com/c/VincentRacaniello and https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

And if your interested in a short 1 minute version of day to day numbers, here is a good source. It is from the Johns Hopkins site. It is the best for a quick look. Here is the link for YouTube to subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnxJP601LarGKt_zbttd3uyl_MqVLW2s1

The month of January was a great month for getting outdoors. The wind patterns were good and it made for some great air quality days. Not our usual high pollution days due to temperature inversions. Of course, firewood burning ( I am guilty of this too), oil and gas wells out in Weld County and the number of people living on the Front Range of Colorado does not help. But most of that particulate and chemical pollution was mitigated for the month of January due the wind patterns. Yea!

So all and all, it was another good month for getting outdoors with great air quality for the most part. Here’s to hopping that February will be the same.

It was another excellent month for reading and I would like to share a few book recommendations.

The first book I would like to review is called Daily Rituals:  How Artists Work, written by Mason Currey.  I got this book because I am a “struggling artist” and most of the struggle is caused by me.  Lol.  Yep, your worst enemy in the process of making art, is yourself.  This is the second time that I have read (or tried to read) this book.  I got it in the Kindle form when it first came out in 2013.  But I only got a quarter way into it and stopped reading.  At that time, I was doing art only when time would allow or not at all for months on end.  Still working full time, family, kids, self-inflected obstacles, etc.…   All the usual things that can create barriers to making art.  And I let it all get in the way.

First forward ten years and I am wishing that I had paid more attention and read the whole book.  The author gives a small paragraph or two on about 160 different types of artist, on what they did to get the “work” done so to speak.  As I read, I realized that there is “no one way” to get it done.  I could have used this realization.

Every artist in the book seemed to have their own unique work habits in making the art while living busy lives.  Of course there are some methods that were unhealthy to say the least like amphetamines and alcohol use, and some that were pretty humorous and a little bizarre even by today’s standards.  One of the things that I liked best about the book was the inclusion of some characters that would not be considered artists in the strictest sense, like scientists and philosophers.  And there were several individuals in the book that I could relate to.  The massive coffee drinkers and those that were night owls.  Lol.  Both of which I am. 

So, if you’re a struggling artist too, and want to get a small glimpse of what others have done to get the work done so to speak then this book is for you.  If you are someone that is not an artist but are just curious, then this book is for you too.  It is a fun read and entertaining to say the least. 

This time I got the book as an audio book but it would work in any format.  You can probably find the book at your local book store or on Amazon.  Here is the amazon link:   https://www.amazon.com/Daily-Rituals-How-Artists-Work/dp

The next book I would like to review is one called “Boldly Go:  Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder” by William Shatner or better known, if you’re a trek fan, as Captain Kirk.  If you have been a Star Trek fan and even if you haven’t, then you need to get this book.  It is a kind of autobiography or reflection on his life by the subject himself.  He tells a pretty good tale on his struggles in life along with the celebrations.  As a bonus, you get his pearls of wisdom on living the best life.

To be honest, other than knowing him as Captain Kirk from Star Trek, I did not know much about him.  I got the book because of his age.  He is 91 years old, and well he might not be around that much longer.  I feel that when people have made it to that age and are still mentally competent, I want to learn from them.  I want to hear what they have to say about their lives and how they might have done some things differently or not.  I want to hear about how they dealt with problems, I want to hear their words of wisdom.  I want to hear how their attitudes changed over time.  I want to know more about them.  And I was not disappointed. 

One of the things that I leaned in the book is that Captain Kirk (he will always be the Captain to me) is an environmentalist and that is something that I can relate to.  And he seems to be of the mind, like I am, that you must strive to learn something new every single day.  Great book and an easy read. 

I got the book as an audio book but it would work in any format.  I am pretty sure you can get the book at your local book store or on Amazon.  Here is the link:  https://www.amazon.com/Boldly-Go-Reflections-Life-Wonder/dp   

The next book I would like to review is called “Conspiracy:  Why the Rational Believe the Irrational by Michael Shermer.”  Now if you not familiar with the author let me say he is an American Science writer, Historian of Science, and the executive director of The Skeptics Society.  He is an author of over a dozen books mostly dealing with beliefs in pseudoscience and religion.  I first came across one of his books when I was doing a book review of Carl Sagan’s book “The Demon-Haunted World.” By the way, the Sagan book is another one of those timeless classics that is as relevant today as when it was published back in the 90s.  Now to get back to the book at hand, “Conspiracy” is the newest book by the author and is an examination of how conspiracies get started.  He gives us great examples of imagined conspiracies, like the still ongoing ones of the JFK assassination, the QAnon groups, the Sandy Hook massacre, the 9/11 conspiracy, the Satanic Panic in the 1980s and 1990s, etc.…  Some are so out there you have to just kind of scratch your head and think what the hell is wrong with people.  Lol.

Now along with the imagined ones he gives us examples of where there were real ones and how they unfolded.  Like the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln Conspiracy, The World War One Conspiracy and how it almost did not happen, The Tuskegee experiments on black men and syphilis, Watergate, Iran Contra, etc.…  What I really liked in the book was the explanation of how the real ones usually play out in haphazard ways due to the nature of chance.  Pretty interesting stuff.

Humans are incredible at pattern recognition, after all this is what kept us safe in our ancient past.  Unfortunately in our more modern age we are really “good” at seeing patterns that are not there.

Great book.  I listened to the book as an audio book but it would work in any format.  You can probably find this book at your local book store or on Amazon.  Here is the Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Why-Rational-Believe-Irrational/dp

The last book I would like to give a review on is called The Rise and Reign of the Mammals:  A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us by Steve Brusatte.   Let me start off by saying “Wow,” I really had no idea that paleontology had progressed so far with mammals.  Pretty cool if you ask me.  In college I got a degree in Biology that had an interdisciplinary minor that required courses in geology and paleontology.  At the time, (mid 80s) most of the talk in these classes was on dinosaurs, not much on mammals at all.  Of course in hindsight, the fossils had to be there all along but it was not talked about much at all.  I wonder if part of this was due to where the college was located (Texas), and the significant religious influence present in the town. It was like:  “We don’t want to talk about evolution – just don’t go there so to speak.” Lol.   

The book got me hooked as soon as I started to read, especially with the story on the Dimetrodon. A large (up to 15 feet in length) sail-backed looking lizard.  At the University I went to (Midwestern State University), there were a lot of photographs and drawings of the fossilized skeletons of this animal because it had been found in the this area of North Central Texas.  One of the college professor even lamented the fact:  “That there was not one skeleton on display in the area.  That they had all been whisked away to more cosmopolitan museums in bigger cities.” 

So all we had were drawing and photographs.   At that time, we were told it was a dinosaur.  From the book, I learned that it is a very early mammal (called a synapsid) and predates dinosaurs by almost a million years.  And that humans are also considered synapsids, meaning we have one hole in our skull for jaw muscles, just like Dimetrodon.  Pretty cool.

If there is one thing that this book has taught me is that earth has had a very complex and multifaceted evolution of life, from early mammals, to dinosaurs, to mammals again, all of which includes us. And when I stop to think about it, if the asteroid that created the Chicxulub crater off the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico 66 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs, had missed earth instead, most of the animal life we take for granted, including us, would not be here.   

I got this book as an audio book but I think it works better in the traditional version.  There is a lot of information.  If you do get the audio book make sure you download and print out the significant PDF.  The pictures and diagrams help a lot in the understanding.  You can find this book at your local book store or on Amazon.  Here is the Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Reign-Mammals-History-Dinosaurs/dp             

Well, I was going to have a new piece of art work to share but that did not quite work out like I wanted it to, so I am posting a few “practice pieces” that I have done with acrylics over the last few months. In the past, I have painted with acrylics but I have approached the painting like a pen and ink drawing. Very planned out. When drawing with pen and ink – there is very little room for error.

In the process of trying to get better at my painting techniques, I started to watch other artist on YouTube and Instagram. I had not done this before and it was an eyeopener. So much possibility with painting. So this has become a goal of mine. To broaden my painting ability this year.

Another thing that I learned from an Instagram artist was the practice of using cardboard for canvas – especially for practice pieces. So cheap and plentiful if your an Amazon Prime member. Lol.

The above three large scale paintings were done a few years ago and are more indicative of a pen and ink style of painting for me. The very top one has a little bit of freeform with the flowers but it was not something I was comfortable with at the time. The next few paintings below are the “practice” pieces. Very little planning, just looking at a picture and trying to paint it. All done on cardboard over the last few months. Lol.

The next two paintings below are of a wolf face, the first one is before the “freeform practice” and the second one is after. I am still working on the finishing touches on the second one.

The second wolf face was done “more freeform” and I like it a lot better. I cannot wait to start the next one in about a month. I am hoping that the new painting technique will continue to carry over into these larger paintings.

More of my art work. The finished pieces and not the practice ones (Lol) can be found on my Etsy site: https://www.etsy.com/shop/strugglingprotoplasm/edit?ref=seller-platform-mcnav

In support of Prochoice and Separation of Church and State, I will donate 10% of any sales to Planned Parenthood or the Freedom From Religion Foundation, but only if you wish me too. If not, I will be more than happy to keep the money! Lol

Well I have come to the end of another blog post. Yea! I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.

So take care my friends and if you have not gotten vaccinated or boosted, even if you have had Covid, then get it done. It would be stupid to say the least, if you were to lose your life or suffer significant disability with this virus when vaccines are readily available in this country. So until next time Adios!!

“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” Carl Sagan

“Questions you cannot answer are usually far better for you than answers you cannot question.” Yuval Noah Harari

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