Start of a new site.

Beginnings of a my new site.

Temporarily out of service...

I am going to link to another site shortly... need a fresh approach and have a few things approaching in the near future that require more than I can do on this blog.  When I get the other site up and running I will post a link.

Playing with night lights.

So the Boss and I were drying around tonight and I kept thinking, "Oh that would be a pretty picture." So, when we got home I went back out with my old camera to take some pictures. As I was out I started to try to get pictures with different types of lights behind the trees, I have not been able to go through many of them but here are a few that I think might have some promise. I cropped them but that is about it, the different colors come from the different types of lights and camera settings (not WB). Hope you enjoy.

Dr. Doolittle... I started a response to your stem cell question but the power cord on the Apple is broken. I hope to get a new one on Friday and will post it then.

ps. Glad you are home Hope, we missed your smile and look forward to your loud noises.

A journal entry on the blog?

Ahhhh, just turned up a little Black Keys. They are an interesting blend of rock and blues. As Dan would say, “good background music”.

We got the new Rolling Stone, a magazine we don’t think we signed up for, today and the main article was a faux interview with Bush. It is a four page fictional interview. Huh… why would they do that? To be honest I didn’t read the print close enough and thought it was a real interview. So, I flipped the pages, found the article, and began to read. As I started I was startled to read what he was saying. Enough so that I flipped back to the cover and re-read the title, “Bush Apologizes: The Farewell Interview We Wish He’d Give,”.

OK, so it is fake. I chuckled a little and put the magazine down. I didn’t really think much about it until later. Now, I wonder why? What is the point of trying to paint the now out of office president at a fool? It is just a dumb idea, disappointing even for Rolling Stone. What makes it worse is that is it the main article of the month.

Does this mean that if I do read an interview in their magazine that I need to look for fine print t see if it is real? From a magazine that claims to take its interviews so seriously, I believe running a fake interview as the main story makes the magazine itself totally irrelevant.

I wonder if they did the same for Carter, God knows his presidency was a home run. Grant he has done some great stuff since, but his presidency was not very impressive. May be a fake one with Clinton where he actually inhales and doesn’t mess up dresses?

Guess Rolling Stone won this fight though, got me talking about them, I guess that was their goal, no matter how low they have to go.

A good weekend

I little over photoshopped but oh well...
Well, to be honest I am having a little trouble adjusting to life without chemo. Sounds stupid I know, but it is true. I find myself thinking, well I feel pretty good, I don't have to go anywhere, what do I do with myself. So far, I have tried to catch up on my grading, get the dogs out more often and for longer periods, and clean and organize. Have a lot more to say, just don't feel like saying it.

Are you listening?

I am, and have always have, been here...

it is just many have just stopped listening to or looking for me...

Why I will eventually get fired...

A recent physics assignment:

Taken from 

"THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS A Talk with Alva Noë"

The central thing that I think about is our nature, our human-animal nature, our being in this world. What is a person? What is a human being? What is consciousness? There is a tremendous amount of enthusiasm at the moment about these questions.
They are usually framed as questions about the brain, about how the brain makes consciousness happen, how the brain constitutes who we are, what we are, what we want—our behavior. The thing I find so striking is that, at the present time, we actually can't give any satisfactory explanations about the nature of human experience in terms of the functioning of the brain.
What explains this is really quite simple. You are not your brain. You have a brain, yes. But you are a living being that is connected to an environment; you are embodied, and dynamically interacting with the world. We can't explain consciousness in terms of the brain alone because consciousness doesn't happen in the brain alone.
In many ways, the new thinking about consciousness and the brain is really just the old-fashioned style of traditional philosophical thinking about these questions but presented in a new, neuroscience package. People interested in consciousness have tended to make certain assumptions, take certain things for granted. They take for granted that thinking, feeling, wanting, consciousness in general, is something that happens inside of us. They take for granted that the world, and the rest of our body, matters for consciousness only as a source of causal impingement on what is happening inside of us. Action has no more intimate connection to thought, feeling, consciousness, and experience. They tend to assume that we are fundamentally intellectual—that the thing inside of us which thinks and feels and decides is, in its basic nature, a problem solver, a calculator, a something whose nature is to figure out what there is and what we ought to do in light of what is coming in.
We should reject the idea that the mind is something inside of us that is basically matter of just a calculating machine. There are different reasons to reject this. But one is, simply put: there is nothing inside us that thinks and feels and is conscious. Consciousness is not something that happens in us. It is something we do.
A much better image is that of the dancer. A dancer is locked into an environment, responsive to music, responsive to a partner. The idea that the dance is a state of us, inside of us, or something that happens in us is crazy. Our ability to dance depends on all sorts of things going on inside of us, but that we are dancing is fundamentally an attunement to the world around us.
Consider this. On the traditional conception of the mind, if you want to study experience, you shut your eyes and you introspect. You look inward and reflect on what is going on inside of you, on the inner show. But if experience, if seeing, hearing, thinking, and feeling, isn't something going on inside of you, but is something you do, then you need a different paradigm of what phenomenology would be, that is, of what a reflection on experience itself would be.
To reflect on experience is not to look inward, it is to pay attention to what you are doing, and to the way in which what you are doing is world and situation and environment involving. Suppose I am a hiker. I walk along and move my legs in all sorts of subtle ways to follow a path along a trail. But the steps I take and the way I move my legs are modulated by, controlled by, the textures and bumps and patterns of the trail itself. There is a kind of locking in. To study experience, to think about the nature of experience, is to look at this two-way dynamic exchange between world and the active perceiver.

(continued)

One experience that I've been especially interested in is our understanding and experience of pictures. If I show you a picture from a newspaper—for example, a photo of Hillary Clinton—there is a sense in which, when you look at that picture, you see Hillary. There she is, in the picture. Of course, Hillary is not there, so there is an obvious sense in which you don't see Hillary when you look at the picture. There is a sense in which you see her; and a sense in which you don't. She shows up for you, in the picture, even though she is not there. She shows up as not there. Getting clear about this phenomenon is the central empirical and conceptual problem about depiction.
One idea might be to say, well, seeing a picture of Hillary is just like seeing Hillary. Seeing a picture of Hillary produces in you, the perceiver, just the same effects that actually seeing Hillary would produce. The problem with that suggestion is that if that's right then we lose our sense of the difference between seeing Hillary and seeing a picture of Hillary. The distinctive thing about seeing Hillary in a picture is that she is there but not there. She is there but visually absent. She is manifestly absent in her visual presence. It's a kind of a paradoxical thing. There is something paradoxical about pictures.
My view is that traditional philosophy and cognitive science has been asking the wrong question when it comes to pictures. They ask, how does the picture affect us and give rise to an experience in our heads? Instead, what they should ask is how do we achieve a kind of access to Hillary, to properties of Hillary, such as her visual appearance, by exploration of something which is not Hillary, namely, a picture?
The critical thing is the relation between this model, this picture, and that which is absent, such that we can gain access to what is absent in the picture. Once again we are thrown back to this idea that the perceiving is an achievement of access by making use of skills, knowledge. I need to know what Hillary looks like in order to recognize Hillary in her picture.

(continued)

The division between philosophical and empirical approaches to these questions of consciousness, understanding and experience is an artificial one. People interested in the mind, have a set of questions that they want to understand: what is thought, what is emotion, what is consciousness, what is cognition? How is it that we are able as the animals we are able to do all this? Philosophy and science have been working on this together.
In fact, most of the science grows out of philosophical discussions. It is sometimes said by scientists that now that we have the new technologies of brain science we no longer need to pay attention to what philosophy has to say about these questions. But in fact—and this is just plain truth—most of what empirical science has to say about consciousness, language, memory, perception, emotion is the expression of a philosophy. It comes out of an investment in a particular philosophy, namely the philosophy of the internal, the philosophy of the individual: the mind is something inside each individual; it is disconnected from other people and from the body and from the outer world. If natural science is to gain a foothold in this area, if our own nature is to become subject of empirical science, it can only be because the conceptual, methodological, philosophical, as well as empirical questions are approached in a new, open-minded way.
Scientists ask, what is it about the way these cells are firing in the brain that makes the corresponding experience a visual experience? It's a trick question because there is nothing about the way those cells are firing that can explain that. Certainly we don't now know anything that would allow us to point to the intrinsic properties of the cells and say, it's something about the intrinsic behavior of these cells that makes the resulting experience, the smell of coffee on a rainy morning, or the redness of red. Nor can we say that populations of cells give you the solution.
We have to get bigger than that. It's not one cell; it's not populations of cells. We need to look at the whole animals' involvement with a situation. The thing about a smell is that a smell gives you the space of possible movement sensitive changes. If I am smelling something, the movements of my nostrils in relation to the source of the order will produce changes in the character or the odor. If we want to ask, what is it about this cellular activity that makes it olfactory cellular activity, the answer is going to be the way in which the cellular activity varies as a function of the animal's movement.
And that is what the brain is doing. The brain is enabling us to establish this kind of sensorimotor engagement with the world around us. This is a substantive empirical hypothesis that I am putting forward. There are profound philosophical reasons to embrace it. And I hope that scientists and philosophers will find ways of communicating so they can work on these questions together.

1) In your own words, what is this article about?
2) Is this author making an argument towards a specific type of thinking? If so, in your own words, what is this argument?
3) How does this article reflect the continued adaptation of science to the current “mind-set” of culture?
4) Ok, so this has nothing to do with Physics, so, why would I ask you to read and interpret it? How can the general concept of this article be related to physics?

One of my favorites...

John Hiatt has been making music for ever.  OK, not for ever, but a long time.  If you love good lyrics and a master guitar player... he is your man.  I looked for some of his live stuff, I want you to see how amazing he is on the guitar.  I have liked him for a long time, but it wasn't until I saw him live, totally by himself, that I started to really love him.  He as written a lot of songs that you know.  But, like Dylan, a lot of people know them through remakes from other artists.  Songs like, "Have a little faith in me", "Angel eyes", and "Thing called love" have been covered by tons of people including Dylan, Clapton, and Bonnie Rait.  Anyways, I couldn't find the live version for a lot of the songs I love, but here is one.  If you like great lyrics and great acoustic guitar give this a try.  I also posted his lyrics to "Have a Little Faith In Me".  Not one of my favorites by him, but does show the power of his lyrics.  

Dr. Doolittle, you would like him.  Nothing fake, not pretentious,  never overproduced.  Just likes making and playing great music.

My Baby Blue, Dan and Shawn, My Baby Blue.

When the road gets dark

And you can no longer see

Just let my love throw a spark

And have a little faith in me

And when the tears you cry

Are all you can believe

Just give these loving arms a try

And have a little faith in me

And

Have a little faith in me

Have a little faith in me

When your secret heart

Cannot speak so easily

Come here darlin'

From a whisper start

To have a little faith in me

And when your back's against the wall

Just turn around and you will see

I will catch, I will catch your fall baby

Just have a little faith in me

Well, I've been loving you for such a long time girl

Expecting nothing in return

Just for you to have a little faith in me

You see time, time is our friend

'Cause for us there is no end

And all you gotta do is have a little faith in me

I said I will hold you up, i will hold you up

Your love gives me strength enough

So have a little faith in me

Speaking for my dogs....

So the other night Luna looked like she was up to no good.  So, I approached her to see what she was up to.  Her rely, "Oh but Dad, I am so sweet and innocent... and a little scared.  I would never do anything wrong".

I took her at her word and turned to walk away.  This is what she mumbled under her breath as I walked out of the room, "Hahahahahahaha... sucker."

Jake simply said, "No beach, no woods, no fields.... I am not amused."

Ginger Four....Last one.

And a couple of pictures I got on a walk with Jake.  Luna was not with us because she does not like the actual woods.  She is more of a fields and lake dog.  Just to let you know the leader of the Gingers is not ginger.  His friends dyed is hair and put on his freckles while he was sleeping.  Hope and Charlie (slobber department and noise department), do not fear, we will find a new leader.  Although, with my "new" hair coming in it looks as though I might be no longer welcomed in the Ginger fraternity. 

Ginger 3... only one more I promise.

Ginger two

Even Charlie is amazed at their power.

Just makes me happy.

Jake leaves in disgust when I play this.

Double Video.

Two videos, one that the Boss made for the family.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Hope and Charlie, it is a curse I have had to live with for my whole life.  When you get older I will help you join the Fraternity of Gingers.  We are secret society that secretly runs the world (we have been a little lazy recently) so, I can say no more about it.

Cancer Soundtrack Minus 1!!!!!

I don't usually post things from my journal, but I kind of liked this sketch so...


Jars of Clay "Worlds Apart"

I look beyond the empty cross

Forgetting what my life has cost

And wipe away the crimson stains

And dull the nails that still remain

More and more I need you now,

I owe you more each passing hour

The battle between grace and pride

I gave up not so long ago

So steal my heart and take the pain

And wash the feet and cleanse my pride

Take the selfish, take the weak,

And all the things I cannot hide

Take the beauty, take my tears

The sin-soaked heart and make it yours

Take my world all apart

Take it now, take it now

And serve the ones that I despise

Speak the words I can't deny

Watch the world I used to love

Fall to dust and thrown away

I look beyond the empty cross

Forgetting what my life has cost

So wipe away the crimson stains

And dull the nails that still remain

So steal my heart and take the pain

Take the selfish, take the weak

And all the things I cannot hide

Take the beauty, take my tears

Take my world apart, take my world apart

I pray, I pray, I pray

Take my world apart

A couple of recent pictures.

We went to see Grandma... she is awesome.
A long exposure... or one of Dan's paintings?
Sky for Ruth

Sunsets

Some random pics Jake, Luna, and I got last week.

Cancer Soundtrack MInus Two

Tom Petty "I won't back down"

Well I wont back down, no I wont back down

You can stand me up at the gates of hell

But I wont back down

Gonna stand my ground, wont be turned around

And Ill keep this world from draggin me down

Gonna stand my ground and I wont back down

Hey baby, there aint no easy way out

Hey I will stand my ground

And I wont back down.

Well I know whats right, I got just one life

In a world that keeps on pushin me around

But Ill stand my ground and I wont back down

Hey baby there aint no easy way out

Hey I will stand my ground

And I wont back down

No, I wont back down

Blurring the line...

Ok, lets say you watched all of the video.  You now know that particles act like waves and waves act like particles.  Hence the famous wave/particle duality of light.  Alright, it might not be famous to everyone but it is cool.  Although I love the double-slit experiment, it is really just the last minute of the video I want to think about.  It was the point that physicists decided to watch the electrons pass through the slit.  It was at this point that the particles stopped acting like waves and starting acting like particles again.  Think about this for a second...

As an observer this is evidence that our "watching" affects the very thing we are watching.  This was postulated a long time ago through the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principal (too lazy to look up how to spell his name).  Again very interesting but not what I want to think about.

I want to think about the fact that just by watching, we change the behavior of particles.  We are no longer an observer, we become an active variable in the experiment.  So you say, "Kid, what are you babbling about?"  This is what I am babbling about.  If by becoming an active variable, we have evidence that our perspective on situations changes the innate characteristics of that situation.  This amazes me!  Think about the power this provides to each individual.  The ability to bring our own perspective (and desires/beliefs) into an active role that truly changes the behavior of the particles around us.  

Dr. Lemming says that he really believes the attitude of the patient has a direct correlation with the success of the treatment.  At first, I thought about the fact that if you have the right attitude, you have the right fight, you will mentally make yourself tough enough to win.  But, if you factor in quantum physics, it goes much deeper than this.  Quantum Physics provides me with the ability to actually change my surroundings to meet my perception.  I am not just a patient with cancer idly sitting by.  I am an active part in the ability of chemotherapy medicines to win the war.

How do you let your perception effect your life?

Walkin' the dogs.