aliens

The Miracle of Medicine, the Mind, and Youth

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There was a time when mornings were full of life, full of energy, when running was first before breakfast, and life got better with each mile. It was a blissfully ignorant time of invulnerability and unlimited happiness, with no doctors’ threats or tests informing dietary and sleeping habits. Only God knows what could have been different to prevent The Calamities of 2023…if anything at all. Hopefully, if the medical science establishment has any sense, they will be searching for way to send patients back to the good, old, days.

Yeah. Right. In the meantime, age takes us by the hand and steers us into physical conditions with strange names and mortal consequences. Science is really good at learning about and naming these conditions but our success at eliminating them has been mixed. How long have we been donating to cancer—as well as other disease—fund raisers? There was a cancer program in the 1960’s involving chocolate bars. I supported it with an allowance big enough to buy one bar a week.

The end result of medical research at this point in my lifetime is we’ve made progress at longevity. Per Ai, my birth year of 1952 has an average life expectancy of 68.6 for males in the United States. A male born in 2025 can hope for nearly 80 years. Ai is quick to point out sex, country of origin, and income can make huge differences, both plus and minus. Ask Ai yourself for more details but—spoiler alert—America does not have the longest life expectancy. We don’t even make the top 5. Monaco is number 1? Maybe wealth is the most important factor?

But as we age, we’re finding it harder and harder to be happy about aging. Why isn’t the aging “experience” making us happier? Is it really making us wiser? We all know why aging makes us unhappy, read the first paragraph of this post. But is there anything we can do about it?

A couple of things could be done. First, look for and appreciate the humor in life. It’s there but gets lost in the mail, so to speak. The earliest humor is the simple fact the day we are born we start to die. Right then and there the clock starts and there is no stopping it. Cruel or funny? Make your choice carefully, it matters. I recently filled out a health questionnaire asking me: “Do you sometimes forget things?” I can’t remember if I even answered. Another plus for aging is streaming services for computers, laptops, phones, and televisions. You can travel world from your chair or hospital bed, watching period dramas, slapstick comedy, relevant medical shows, and take enough on-line courses to become your own Doctor…as long as your faculties are intact.

And there is it: intact faculties. Most of us wouldn’t mind living to 100 or more if we can still, read, write, walk, and wipe ourselves, right? So, are the medical miracles helping us live longer helping us know we are living longer? You’ll never know until you get there, wherever “there’ is.

One thing we should all change our mind on, is death, especially if the Near Dead Expericencers (NDE) are to be believed. Nearly all NDE people, upon their return from death, report a heaven much too nice for most of us. Many also report not wanting to come back to life, and wondering why they did.  Can we expect the same at our own permanent death? If so, why worry? And why stigmatize suicide and outlaw assisted suicide and euthanasia?

It’s Monday so the post took a somber turn, or did it? One thing that makes a difference in and about life is how you view it, how you perceive it, and how you process it. And what you should always consider is there is no other choice than what happens on the macro level: you will die.

Will you suffer cognitive decline in old age? Not if you die young. One NDE describes his experience by comparing his life to a laptop computer. There is a memory on the old laptop you can transfer to a new laptop, and then you can discard the old and recycle it. That may sound matrixy (sic) but if it helps… embrace it. And don’t forget to keep some empty thumb drives* around, just in case.

Next post we’ll talk about Aliens and how they affect modern life through movies, plays, television, and Oscar voting.

*Memory sticks, or whatever else they are called these days.

Things Seen and Heard By Older Eyes and Ears

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I heard—and saw in black and white–The Lone Ranger say this during an original Lone Ranger episode, recorded sometime between 1949 and 1957: “Any public official who abuses the public trust for personal gain is worse than any common criminal.” It was Saturday morning and I had tuned to my free over-the-air channels to get away from constant cable news about current public officials reaping Billions of dollars of benefits in the first 8 months of our new Administration. Ironically, it was the episode where The Lone Ranger and Tonto thwart a bank robbery, save the bank’s money, and return it.  Let’s make America great, again.

Interesting side bar: the Lone Ranger was filmed in color in the years 1956 and 1957 but had to be broadcast in black and white because…wait…very few viewers had a color television. The OG days?

All of the early western heroes had a “Moral Code”. Jim Hardy, the handsome, quick-drawing Wells Fargo Special Agent of “Tales of Wells Fargo” was constantly offered a split of the money he recovered from robbers. He never took a cent. He also had to investigate gun smuggling on the Texas-Mexican border. In 1897. Hope he is still getting royalties from his acting.

It’s becoming clear the differences in our modern political parties. You may not know it but Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. The Democratic Party at the time was split by pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions.

History needs more attention. Think no one trusts government, now? Look into the history of the 18th Amendment, the one banning sales of alcohol. No level of governmental trust could ever be lower than what happened after the 18th was passed. Nearly everyone looked for ways to obtain booze, usually by breaking the laws related to the Amendment. The subsequent years of illegal adventures are credited with elevating Organized Crime to new national and international pandemics. Payoffs, bribery, corruption…we really needed a DOGE back then.

Stop wasting valuable time on social wars, first amendment issues, and trying to debate each other, these days. We should be watching the billions of dollars(cryptos and greenbacks) of activity surrounding our new administration, his family, Tech CEOs, and wannabe richies. It’s become obvious our political system is now the Democrats, and the Richies. Current Republicans are not just okay with The Richies but want to be just like them. The Democrats might be envious, but they are the only hope for the moment, of stemming the high tide of money flowing to the top of our society, and world. Soon, laws, facts, elections none of them will matter. Just money.

In watching the history of the United States and remembering my own exposure to it the turbulent 60’s ands 70’s, one can become complacent with how resilient American Democracy is, and think everything will work out. It still might but the mess the 18th amendment caused led to The Great Depression, and we may have not ever recovered from that if it hadn’t been for World War II. The German and Japanese Empires united Americans, and we all worked together…for about 10 years. Make America Great Again?

We may need an Alien Invasion to fix things.*

Full disclosure: I have A Wells Fargo Credit Card.

*Thanks to “Independence Day”, The Movie, showing us in 1996 the our 2026 future.

Language…Words…Tools?

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The last post got me interested in the origins of words and languages. The usual suspects were consulted: The internet and Wikipedia.

The only true thing I learned is: nobody knows. In fact, according to Wikipedia, the evolution of language is such a difficult subject, its research was banned by The Linguistic Society of Paris in 1866 as a subject “unsuitable for serious study”. Study has not stopped, however, but why would it when the best theories cannot be unproven, and even the dumbest among us can have a go at it.

There is a consensus among us serious thinkers (I am now among them) that language took a long time to develop and will not reveal its secrets…ever. A theory which makes sense (as most do), is the appearance of stone tools. The existence of these tools meant the someone who invented the tools was sharing intelligence with others on how to make those tools. Makes sense. But then the theory fails to be taken seriously when we consider apes have–and use–tools of all kinds yet they can’t conjugate a verb. Or can they? For that matter, can we? And when the original tool maker pointed, grunted, and nodded approval to his apprentices, could they ever have imagined the concept of conjugation might find its way into the process?

A theory which is neat and tidy is the Alien Theory. Let me elucidate and explicate. Well-dressed and educated aliens were driving by eons ago and saw an empty-looking, green and blue ball.They stopped to take a leak and were surprised to find early humans hiding behind the bushes, watching. At that very moment, the aliens responded with something similar to our modern “WTF?”, and followed that up with an “LOL” when the the humans threw stone tools at the titanium spaceship. After washing their hands completely, the Aliens proceeded to set up tents for classroom instruction of the Native Earthians, who were forced to attend, unless they were sick. Masks were not invented, yet. Subjects were English 101 and Precalculas math. Pop quizzes were scored and failing humans were put on the spaceship for specimens to be examined on the ride home. The “smart humans” were set loose into the world to propagate their learning and population. And thus math and language were given to our world by somebody who couldn’t hold it in, any longer.

There’s no speculation on how the Aliens were treated when they got home, but Earth proceeded on its course to development, especially after the humans realized the apes “weren’t getting it” and all attention was then focused on the least hairy members of the clan/tribe/society. Shaving was invented around then, as well, using a really sharp stone. Smart, right?

Does any of this sound like a “subject unsuitable for study”?

Final thought? Language and words (and math, science, et. al.) are wonders we all should take part in, and enjoy. We will never get all the answers to all the questions, especially in our lifetimes, but enjoy the journey. Be more inquisitive about where “decimate” comes, from (deck a mate?)and less about who will win “Survivor”. Please.