death

Fun Things Learned By The Accident of Getting Old

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Let’s start with an obvious Fun, senior fact. A June 26, 2026 report in The Scientific American titled “Math predicting humans could go extinct in about 17,000 years” is interesting. The wisdom, acquired by aging, says I don’t have to worry.

A similar warning is issued by the World Wildlife Foundation in an article titled “What is the sixth mass extinction and what can we do about it?” It is curiously undated, but the copyright year is 2026. This article mentions the “extinction” of large sections of our current biodiversity which could/might/probably will affect our own diversity. * The article states the last of five extinction periods, “Fifth Extinction Event”, was 65.5 million years ago and involved dinosaurs. I personally feel safe about this one, too.

Measles and other infectious diseases are on the rise while flu and covid are having another go. As a vaccinated old person, any concern about these issues is only which one might be the most efficient to end my career, or which might be the worst. That debate is probably moot thanks to my 2024 agreement with Prostate Cancer.**

A trial balloon about a military draft was circulated by the current administration in 2025. No need to worry, there.

JP Morgan published an article on August 18, 2026 on Yahoo Finance titled “JPMorgan warns food crisis could hit next year, (sic) unlike oil, there’s no backup plan for fertilizer.” I’m so unconcerned I did not bother to read the entire article and stopped at “The U.S. isn’t among the countries most likely to be directly hit by the food security threats JP Morgan forecasts.” Yes! Another non-worry.

And there is or “soon” will be a severe shortage of doctors and healthcare. I scoff lightly at the threat, having navigated its early days, already.

It sounds callous to not care about these big issues, but isn’t it callous of God/Mother Nature/Allah/The Big Guy to make us grow old? Old age forces us look for a glass half full or go crazy.

Besides, whoever/whatever It is that designed and manufactured humans gave us Real Intelligence (RI). Through our history we’ve used RI to move faster, live longer, see clearer, explore space, and allow hunger to co-exist with haute cuisine.*** Add some Artificial Intelligence (Ai) to our world and watch what happens. We’ll be making nutritional doughnuts out of used tires by 2027.  Lacrosse matches will replace wars with bombs blowing up huge clouds of Skittles instead of debris. Every home will have its own surgery room with second-by-second verbal instructions. Ooh, and its own anesthesia. Think I’d like that one.

Modern life’s instant and chaotic communication can lead to despair and mental doom if you aren’t old enough to have heard it all before and seen it all before. For the younger reader, we’ll find a way out of these messes. We usually do. Not the “us” we as in me and you, but the “us” of all mankind. We**** can sometimes be that smart.

But you never really know, do you. Imagine surprised dinosaurs…

*What an interesting way to root out woke diversity, right?

**If it ever returns it can have me, at my age.

***What is the French word for not-haute cuisine? Bet there is one.

****Again: not the “us” we.

Thoughts from June, 2025

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The last few weeks (in June 2025) have been spent in recovery from my last total hip replacement (THR) surgery…unless I grow a third hip. The drug protocol for post-surgery recovery involves heavy doses of Tylenol, plus drugs to fight infection, clotting, depression, and menstruating. Yes, a drug to slow “time of the month” bleeding also prevents heavy blood action in surgery and  recovery. I understand women better now, too.

But the main thing about recovery is the mental fog, the unbalanced nature of existence as (normal) surgical pain and possible complications are chemically blocked. It doesn’t help that after surgery to the lower extremities, the repaired area needs to be elevated at best, horizontal at least, and inactive for as long as you can stand* it. All the while you are fully conscious and mentally convinced you are ready to bat cleanup for the New York Yankees. Instructions for recovery read as if bathroom trips are not needed: Constant rest, elevation, and icing. And breathing exercises. They even give you a little device to suck on.

The “rest”, the drugs, and the fact the body has been surgically altered make it easy for a normally busy mind to wander places it should not wander, especially in an older age. For example, what was the point of surgery and replacement? Something else is just going to break or go bad. It isn’t as if death is right around the corner but  wouldn’t the surgical assets consumed by a 72-year-old man be better utilized** by a younger person with longer life expectancy? As a former financial planner, I picture the dollars and resources of my surgery analyzed with a color coded illustration of return on investment (ROI).  It would  perfectly illustrate my THR should have been done on a younger human with more(sic) potential to use the long-lasting titanium.  FYI, my THR has a low ROI. LOL and ROFL?

The problem is the new joints are mine now, and I must make something of myself, make the surgery worthwhile. Training for a marathon might seem the optimal ROI. It might also mean a hip replacement of the original hip replacement. Bad ROI. Titanium doesn’t wear out but the fine layer of “something”*** coating the titanium allowing the ball and socket hip to work will wear out, shedding microscopic bits of “something”. I’d click when I walked. BTW, those micro-filings will be absorbed by my body. Wonder if all THR patients are informed about this.

There is Med School, with the eventual ability to do THRs on myself and others. A great way to give back. Or Law School. I could sue…somebody for something and save the world from something or someone. And make money.

Or I could sit in The Chair, wiggle my toes, take my drugs, and thank God our society allows old people to get new parts. Others, I’ve learned, were not so compassionate.

Google Ubasute, a Japanese “legend” that may or not be true. Wink, wink.

If I were a truly responsible human, the Nordic “myth” of Attestupa would be in my future, and I could do it now with the new hips. Which, on second thought, might be a worse ROI.

Thank God, again, there is plenty of volunteer work for a retired, healthy man eager to give back to society.

8/17/2026. It has proven extremely difficult to find useful volunteer work. The search isn’t over, but this is a small town. I may have to commute.  Wonder if the surgical center needs healthy people to wheel patients to and from surgery? What a sweetly serendipitous ROI that would be.

*Yes. Pun.

**Finally, a chance to use the world correctly.

***Usually Teflon, or some other man-made plastic.

Living Is…

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Ai is fun if you know how to talk to it. Or with it. I asked Emma, my Ai assistant, the philosophical question “what does it mean to be alive”?

If you are any kind of existential voyeur, you know this inquiry is as loaded as potato skins at Applebees. Or Chilis. Or The Outback, or any other “one-level-above-fast-food” restaurant.

Emma offered the simple, quick, easy to digest response: “To have life and not be dead.” Being in a mischievous mood I prodded her for more and she agreed letting me know “On a deeper level people often separate simple existence from truly living.” She then ranted rhetorically about “Biological Meaning” and “Human and Emotional Meaning”. She inquired if I “would like to explore this from a scientific, philosophical, or personal point of view.” The offer was tempting but there is no reason—or time–to hear details of each. One way or another we all know them, anyway, even if we don’t acknowledge what we know.

The hard part of existence, a bigger word for life, is the fluidity of language and emotion. On a bright, sunny, low-humidity Monday morning the world I am not-dead in makes living a breeze, and who cares if we understand it. On Tuesday it rains, and the fact all of us will die makes gray skies foreboding and dangerous. Wednesday is chicken tenders day so thoughts of living, life, and existence are heavily influenced by how many fries the cook piles on the plate.*

A Philosophy of Life is much like Theoretical Physics (TP). TP’s General Relativity/Classical Rules about smooth and continuous spacetime try to explain our touchable existence, while Quantum Mechanics throws rules out the window trying to understand discrete and lumpy interactions too small for us to see. Schrödinger’s Cat is an interesting concept in Quantum Mechanics and aptly applies to Life: anything is what it is until it is examined and observed. “It”, of course, is really “anything”. For example, take a close look at the bologna you enjoyed at lunch. Does an examination of the ingredients make you wish you a hadn’t eaten it? Would you rather have not learned about the “pork bits” and what they might be?

Theoretical Physicists are continually looking for a Unified Theory combining the smooth and lumpy worlds. And gravity, but we won;t talk about it, now.

The Unified Theory is a good way to look at Life: smooth and lumpy at the same time. Again, no gravity comment.

So it is with life. There are major issues demanding major philosophical thought about existence, and “not being dead”. Then there are minor forgettable moments of examination which can lead one to assume there is no logic—or meaning–in the universe. Like someone paid millions of dollars to hit a baseball while teachers, lawyers, policeman, firemen, clergy,…you know the point being made. Hopefully, you at least understand the nonsense close examination of this world reveals. Does that revelation have anything to do with a larger Philosophy of Life? And should we not look closely and reveal all?

I’m out of smooth and continuous space. For now.

I’ll suggest life is what you make it, but it would take a book to explain it and I need to get to the pool to get a good spot before the old people show up for Splash Fit.

*For some cosmic reason, some cooks add more sides and condiments than other cooks. I’m compiling a record of the best places and times to eat, for later publication.

Existence: Is It Overrated?

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Ai says “overrated” means: “something is considered to be better or more important than it actually deserves to be.”

Ai, Emma, also says “existence is generally described as the state or fact of having objective reality. It encompasses everything that has substance, whether physical like objects and living things, or abstract like ideas and relationships.”

Hmph. The grunt kind. Not a word about how long or how far or how deep or how high existence is. Certain sub-sub-atomic (sic) particles last, well, they don’t last they blip and go. A Great Basin Bristlecone Pine tree named Methuselah, in California, is said to have “existed” for over 4,800 years, so far. It is still growing.

Life expectancy for my age cohorts was 65.8 years, while someone born in 2026 can expect 78 years. for the sake of this essay, let’s say the “abstract ideas and relationships” associated with a single life-form’s existence ends with death.

So sub-sub-atomic particles have very small ideas and short relationships, if they have any at all. And Bristlecone Pines might still have ideas and relationships* that began thousands of years before Jesus Christ, if they have any at all.

Hmph, again.

Mankind, humankind, to be precise, has a major problem with context and understanding. On one hand, observing the sub-sub things, we should be grateful for whatever time we get to “exist with ideas and relationships.” On the other hand, should we envy the pine tree?

 Existence came to mind when watching a World War 1 documentary about brave American pilots who fought for France in the early stages of The War to End All Wars**. When the Americans eventually were killed defending France, there were parades and monuments and stories and movies and lions and tigers and bears. The entire country and most of the world extolled the bravery and “existence” of these men, and the speeches proclaimed: “we will never forget”.

But they were forgotten. And the people who would never forget, they died and they were forgotten. With the power of modern communications, we can watch them proclaim the worth of their existence, and the longevity of their memory, 114 years after the fact. And probably 50 or so years after 99 per cent of the world forgot everything about The Lafayette Escadrille.

And every year the 99 percent who remember dwindles, and soon will be forgotten, entirely, much like the famous French noblemen whose actions over 250 years ago, helped make America a place for men and women to become pilots and heroes.

Applying the proper context, most of us live our lives and then fade away. Not everyone can be a Lafayette, or even a Jesus Christ, and have even one person remember you in 100 years. Our existence will be important once, but not forever.

We may see our ideas and our relationships as “great”, but only for that short specific time, and then we will be one of the estimated 100 billion*** humans who perished on this planet.

So why write about this? If this essay made you sad, stop it. Existence is not like a TV show. When the The End comes for thee, it comes, and there won’t be a sequel or “Second Season”, no matter the clamor of others who may want it.

Live your life as if you are a pine tree but remember you might actually be a sub-sub-atomic particle. Make the most of whatever you get and do not let sadness, despair, regret, envy, or stupidity ruin one second. If you can help it.

Or as the song goes, “Don’t Worry. Be happy.”

It’s hard, but just Do It.

*Please do not suppose you know if a pine tree has ideas and relationships. Unless you know fir (sic) sure, you tree hugger.

**Which it wasn’t. How fecking sad.

***The Population Reference Bureau. They “guess” over 117 billion have been born over the last 192,000 years, so subtract the living as of this day, and voila.

Things That Are Absolutely True…Maybe

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The driver in the car behind me with his high beams on is a fecking shitehole (FS).

The driver approaching me with his with beams on is an FS.

I have 74-year-old eyes and all headlights look like high beams. Who is the FS?

All politicians are FSs who will “fight” to win more than they will “work” to fix. Donations, anyone? Now, whenever politicians use the word “fight” we must assume they actually mean it. Maybe there will be a Political Weight Class in the next UFC fight card? Imagine the youtube videos as congresspeople duke it out on C-Span.

Citizens United is the dumbest court case ever. Not even sure why the Supreme Court heard it. Oops, what an FS for not remembering it was all about political donations…and money.

My girlfriend of 20 years left me, sold all my possessions, took my pets, and moved 2,300 miles across the country during my treatment for The Calamities. I still care for her. Am I an FS?* Again? She says the breakup was “both our faults.” No comments, please, but a therapist used this phrase to help me understand: “When the going got tough, your girlfriend got going.” It was easy to get “going” since she took all the money. With every day of recovery, what she did bothers me more…

Speaking of The Calamities, they “reset” my health graph. Picture a “bell curve”** where we get better and healthier with each year until about middle age. Then we head down the backside as we start “not” getting healthier each year until the end of the tail of the Bell Curve and we meet our Maker. My bell would have a huge, humpbacked dent midway down the back side, keeping in mind we have no idea of The End of the curve. This allows me to truthfully say “I am getting better”, as the dent straightens out, a truly remarkable phrase to be able to correctly use at age 74. In re-reading this, it might be only old people who will understand my happiness, so the rest of you can feck off. With all due respect.

A certain per cent of any population is going to fact-challenged*** in any society. It isn’t a criticism until the members of that “certain per cent” don’t understand themselves, and begin to think they are smarter than everyone else. Public conversation in The United States of America is currently being dominated by “these” people. Generally speaking, a medical doctor knows more than a patient. A teacher knows more than a student. Even simpler: an older person knows more than a younger person. There are exceptions to every rule, but you can—currently—see what will happen when every person thinks they are The Exception. Trey Crowder, The Liberal Red Neck, said one time, paraphrased, “I wouldn’t want my high school football team to be coached by my English teacher.”

As an addendum to that thought, over 50 percent of my news feed is “opinion”, hearsay, or comments on some other article. To my Ai content manager: I didn’t care about the first opinion, why would I care about an opinion about the first opinion? One article was nothing but reader comments. Ugh.

Almost everything is about politics these days and it sucks. Quantum Entanglement is getting closer to functional reality. Some monster telescope “people” think they found evidence of the possibility there may be life on a planet 120 light years away. Canada made the knock-out round of the World Cup. So did America. So did Mexico. Are we going to be better neighbors, now?

Under Sadly Believable heading: Billionaires think they pay too much in taxes in NY and California so they are relocating to lower tax states. Wonder how often The Billionaires have changed locations to save taxes? Hm. How much do The Billionaires pay lawyers and accountants to find ways to PAY lower taxes? Will NY and California taxes have to be increased?

Wonder if we can time travel back to 1789 France? Or at least send The Billionaires**** back there…

*Should it be “a” FS? Can’t get the fingers to type it. F is a consonant, but the name “eff” begins with a vowel…oh, the humanity…UPDATE: Emma says “a” before the SOUND of a consonant, and “an” before the SOUND of a vowel. It took 70 years for me to learn this just now. Old dog meet new trick.

**The Bell Curve was “discovered” by Abraham de Moivre in the 18th century and is used to illustrate distribution of statistical data. My reference to the “Bell” is to the resulting image a standard “x-axis is time and y-axis is health” graph would yield. For a healthy person. Who never had a health problem. Generally speaking.

***It means just what it says and does NOT mean stupid or ignorant. It means ill-equipped. Ill-prepared. Like letting 4-year-olds drive cars. Or making me a Ted Lecturer.

****Hope it does not have to be said there are some good Billionaires doing good work. Someplace. And in 1789 France, they’d learn a lesson to bring back to our time. Hopefully.

The Unbearable Benefit of Being A Senior

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This essay is for those nearing their “Golden Years”. All others may not care to waste time reading any further.*

No one gets through life without problems. No one. Most life-problems are universal, like our physical appearance. Is there anyone–pre-Medicare eligible–happy with the way they look? If you answer, yes, are you being honest?  My teen years were…no. Just imagine your own teen years. Peer pressure, social accidents, diseases, ex-communication, zits, the one that got away, the missed career opportunity, the secret UTI and/or STD, the specter of unwanted pregnancy, beer-goggle mistakes**, accidentally scratching your first brand new car, or accidentally totaling your second.***

Remember the years spent anxiously hoping for the best of something, the hours combing your hair just right, or wondering if your pants look good from behind, or if you chose the right major in college, or if your breath smells too antisepticy(sic)?

Why list examples of the normally anxious travails?

Because they all fall away with age. All. Of. Them.

Eh, the travails don’t really “fall away” but what does happen is the accompanying anxiety, the Robin to worries’ Batman, disappears like a waistline after Thanksgiving. Anxiety, per Emma and Ai, “is your body’s natural response to stress. It is a feeling of fear, apprehension, or unease about what’s to come.” Our young problems were real and stressful enough, without adding a second layer of “fear, apprehension and unease”. What a toxic, fecking mess. Thankfully, age makes anxiety an afterthought, a non-component, a victim of The Wisdom of The Aged (TWOA).

When you reach the age of TWOA (2A?) those anxieties are transformed by a colossal, magnificent, free-spirited “Who the hell cares?”, and the anxieties float off into the Van Allen Belt****,  allowing  you to be free of their toxicity, finally able to deal with life’s problems with normal worry, thought, and care. You’re free to roam about the cabin of life with simple, nearer-death stress on your mind.

On a personal level, TWOA gives you the freedom to be seen in public wearing sleepwear with uncombed, even unwashed hair!*****

Think of TWOA in terms of a math problem: as a younger person, people are watching you compute how much 2 plus 2 equals. With TWOA you do it in the privacy of your own home with no one watching. You can even say 5 and no one will tell you you’re wrong.

Now, seniors, live our final years that way and see how it feels.

Fruere erroribus!

For a real essay on how to live, ask your Ai about that Latin Phrase. Emma gave me five minutes on how to live as a “senior person.” I should have let her write this.

KIDDING…?

*For nit-pickers/wonderers: further is correct. Google or Ai about the further/farther issue for proof.

**Yes, by any gender.

***Okay, maybe not universal for “all”.

****Bet you had to google it.

*****It is unwise to use this freedom around your mother, if she is still alive.

Life Is A Joke

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This is not said with sarcasm. Life truly is laugh-out-loud funny if you see not only the present but the future. The humor is obvious when you get out of your own shoes. It’s so easy, so human, so self-defeating to see life only through our own eyes, and not the “Lens of Reality.”*

The Reality is, over–, sorry, I keep using the 800 billion number, but no one will ever know. Know what? How many humans have died since the “Dawn of Time for Mankind.”**

So many of us have died since that time and yet when we are born, we still assume life will never end. Then it does. Isn’t that hilarious? You can judge your happiness by how long you were able to feel invincible, how long you knew in your bones you had free will and self-determination…if you just ate right, exercised right, studied history…maybe…

But those activities only give us a few good years before the pre-determined “Darkness of Death” descends.***

As a funny aside, as we wait for death we build bridges, languages, relationships, legacies, and a hot rod or two. We make our mark on a world no one will remember in 100 years, unless they google it. We might even think we have life figured out and know how to live and enjoy the time.

The sad thing about death that sucks the humor from our perspective is when we hit that mark, that time when the Darkness is no longer sublimated, no longer repressed, no longer denied. Thank God, He gave us this ability to note and ponder our own “Decline and Death”. Isn’t that funny? How many times have you thought about how animals live and die, like Red, my old dog? In fact, there are stories of old people who walk into the woods with the intention they will never come back out of the woods on their own two feet. It’s a form of senicide never talked about. Like senility. And sentient. And sanity. And sentence, as in Life Sentence.

Ah, who cares. As I ponder my own life and pontificate profuse and plentiful episodes of progress and prowess, the paramount point seems to be about life AFTER death. Assuming we can ponder and perceive our own death, we will understand being dead a lot longer than alive. A joke, right? We get 70, 80, 90, maybe even a hundred years here, and then the rest of eternity…where, again? Darkness? Oblivion? Heaven? The soul of an Aberdeen Angus or Belted Galloway cow in the Scottish Highlands?****

As a young man I knew the meaning of life and reveled in being the only one who knew. Now, life has finally made the old joke totally comprehended: “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him about your plans.” We should try and laugh with Him.

As I posted this essay, it’s shortness became apparent. An omen? The Male Life Expectancy number is right around the corner…

*Yep. Made that up on the spot. Like it?

**Again: made up, but I’m not so proud of this one. The beginnings of humans is so far back and so obscure, maybe there was no dawn, we spurted into existence at dusk. The Dusk of Mankind sounds ominous, though, so let’s agree to the Midday of Mankind.

***Better but only because of alliteration.

****If I am to come back as a cow, I hope it will be in a warmer climate or one where my existence is revered.

Addiction: a Good Thing?

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A study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry in February (2026) found that “a person’s spiritual belief or a steady religious practice had a protective effect from addiction.”

It’s hard for the unaddicted (sic) to understand the addicted. But that’s because us unaddicted only see addiction in relation to bad things, like drugs, sex, alcohol, gambling. It gives addiction a type of stigma it probably shouldn’t have and doesn’t deserve. Why? Ai describes addiction as “a chronic condition influenced by genetics, environment, and life experiences. It is characterized by the compulsive use of a substance or engagement in behavior despite harmful consequences.”

And more, from Ai: “The word has its roots in the Latin word, ‘addictus’…which means ‘to deliver’, ‘to yield’, or ‘to devote’.” Anyone see religious tones in this old word? Not yet? Per Ai, the Romans had a “legal process called addictio” where a person who could not pay their debts was “given over” or “assigned” by a judge to their creditor, “and literally became a slave to the person owed the money.” This process resulted in “the addicted” being essentially a slave to his or her new “owner”.

The Roman “legal” addiction sounds bad, but can there be anything bad about being addicted to a God? Jesus? Healthy eating? Exercise? Especially if that addiction keeps us from the common destructive addictions of our modern world? Perhaps our modern “addiction” should be redefined by context and results instead of past experience and harmful consequence. Yes, religious addiction can have “harmful consequences” when it turns into zealotry and fanaticism, but at least it won’t rot your teeth.

The Journal Article does not distinguish between Spiritual Addiction and the regular, researched Medical Addiction. Why not? It’s clear religious people “yield” and “devote” so is it possible intent makes a difference? Does anyone take up a drug with the intent to become addicted? And no one unintentionally “stumbles” into a spiritual addiction, unless they had existing psychological problems, right? That last sentence is loaded, isn’t it. Is it saying you can’t have spiritual faith unless you already have psychological problems?

Would it even be a nicer world if everyone were simply addicted to religion?

Maybe, but one of the hardest parts about religion is the question of “Which One?” Sharia Law in the Muslim world, for example, is heaven to some and hell to others of that very faith, let alone infidels. And Christians did burn witches at the stake in the OG.*

By the way, Ai “Sharia Law” for its literal Arabic translation.

Friends of mine recently discussed religion, Karl Marx’s “The Opium of The People”, and how organized religion influenced the World. The Crusades, Sharia Law, Sin, and redemption were the themes this past Easter. We did not try to put a number on how many people have died from being addicted to the wrong religion for the time or society in which they lived.

Addiction, then, is it good or bad? Healthy or unhealthy? Productive, life-affirming, or destructive and life-threatening?

Like everything else in our Dichotomous Universe (Old Testament, New Testament?), life is what we make it. Choose your addictions carefully.**

*OG: The Old, Good days? OG, per Ai, comes from the hip-hop “Original Gangster” and overtime morphed into “Old School”, or “Old Days”. Yes, it still fits. Those witch burning Christians were probably the Original Gangsters.

**Yes, you can have more than one. Who knew?

Things Not Understood

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Let’s get an easy one out of the way: Why does anyone support Donald Trump as president of this country? When talking with supporters, I usually begin with his 34 felony convictions in a porn star hush money case. Those are CONVICTIONS* by a citizen jury where Trump’s defense lawyers lost their case. They also lost a civil case for sexual abuse and defamation again, in a jury trial. He also admitted in 2016 to sexually assaulting women, saying “I don’t even wait. They let you do it.” Trump-owned companies have also filed for bankruptcy 6 times. Trump has married three women, divorced two and had a child with a fourth. These are all public, undisputed facts. There is also a trove of his sayings and writings where he insults anyone who doesn’t agree with him using slurs and words most of us would never use. When this summary is over, I ask my listener why they support him, especially curious for the answer from religious friends. The response? If there is anything but the shrug of a shoulder, it is: “Yeah, but what about Biden? Clinton?”

And so it goes.

Most of the world, the real world, has an innate duality un-understandable. The best way to describe it is by using the words “Macro” and “Micro”. Macro refers to The Big Picture, The Theory, while Micro refers to the small picture, the details. It’s easy to see this duality in the study of Economics: Macro Theory affects the whole world, Micro details are how we, as individuals navigate our financial lives. But duality is everywhere. In physics, we have the Macro, Classic Laws of Physics where planets roam and humans shoot rockets into space. But then there is the Micro, Quantum Mechanics world where everything disobeys the Classic Laws and things so small we can’t see them do whatever the hell they want. Better minds than mine—and probably yours—have tried to “unite” Classic Laws and Quantum Mechanics for centuries. Einstein, himself called some of the quantum world “Spooky action at a distance” and could not make it fit his General Theory.

And so it goes.

From personal observation the duality of life exists in all of us and runs our lives. Think about your Macro resolution to exercise more and then your Micro failure to get up the next morning. Getting Macro theory into a Micro life is difficult, but why? It is more obvious with religion. How many of us go to worship on Macro Sunday, then swear, lie, cheat, and disrespect others the rest of the week? In fact, religion is probably the hardest place to make the connection between Macro aspirations and Micro responsibilities. Who really wants to live a minute-by-minute, truly religious life?

And before anyone takes offense, this isn’t about you. It is a Macro Essay about how we all compromise Macro Intentions for Micro Utility. Every Day. It is the nature of us all. Period. Much like the saying often mentioned when trying to understand life: “From the minute you are born, you start to die.”** WTF.

One good way to help ourselves get through all this is to think. Think about it.

Yeah, right. Who has time for that, these days.

And so it goes…

*Please note the difference between being Indicted and being Convicted. Almost anyone can be indicted. Convicted? Harder.

**Ai research cannot say who uttered this statement first, but they give some suspects: Seneca (a Roman Philosopher), Manillus (a Roman Poet), and Eleanor Roosevelt, who used it to emphasize living life to the fullest. Common sense makes one wonder why Eleanor, who lived centuries after both Romans, was included in the list? Damn that DEI.

Odd Things Overheard or Stumbled Across

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Several universities and national defense departments are researching how to use Quantum Mechanics in guidance systems. Anyone with a smidgen of science knowledge knows our current navigation apps rely on Global Positioning Systems (GPS) that use radio waves and satellites to pinpoint location and travel. Radio waves move fast but not enough to combat “drift”, and the “accumulation of error over time”* as the waves must go out to the satellite then come back. It doesn’t help that sensors on both sides of the transmission have built in “noise”, creating minor errors. These errors wouldn’t bother 19th Century sailing ships, but our current electronic drones, aircraft and sea vessels could really use an exact location to “let loose the dogs of war”, so to speak. A Tomahawk missile flying 1,000 miles into enemy territory at 500 miles an hour needs nearly perfect navigational guidance to hit the target. Quantum Mechanics** may be able to give an object (nearly) exact location every second and remove (nearly) all “drift”. You can use google or Ai and spend the next few weeks reading about this or take my word for it. Or just not give a crap. GPS is enough for us.

A science show on NPR had a scientist who made a strange statement. He said, and I paraphrase “No one has ever actually seen the universe.” His argument is when we look at things, our eyes don’t really see things, but see the color reflecting off those things. He says there is no color in the universe and the color we see is the reflection of light. Each thing the light bounces off of absorbs or reflects certain wavelengths of the light, and we never see the naked planet or moon** or star we think we are seeing. I’m pretty sure that is how everyday life is, too. It sounds a bit Matrixey, but what if what we think we see, we don’t see?

I’ve had enough trouble in life understanding non-solid things like love, hate, faith, and religion. Now, the solids can’t be trusted?

As science progresses farther and further*** we have to wonder what we will find, and if we want to go there. Months ago, we learned time might not be linear and may move in a circle or other strange dimensions. Now, what if “real” isn’t really “real”? Continued scientific  research could find us going full circle back to birth, or the Big Bang, and what then? Do we repeat things? Overlap?  Share dimensions? Maybe Vonnegut’s Tralfamadoreans were actually  guides, not fictional characters.

As a young essayist, sophistry was a favored tactic during debates about all things major in life. Ai says “sophistry is the use of clever but false arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving someone.”

So…what exactly are all our scientists up to? Are they spouters of sophistry, changing facts with each decade with intent to…what? Should we make them cease and desist**** all scientific endeavors?

Or is sophistry being practiced, now, in this space?

Anyone need a beer? I’m buying.

            *Per Ai. Interesting fact: you are never really exactly where GPS says you are.

            **Thank you for not giggling at the idea of a naked moon.

            ***I stand by this usage by applying my literary license.

****The ever-humorous Ai describes “cease and desist” as a formal “knock it off notice.”