On Universal Randomness

I recently had an email exchange regarding how we got here...


"Wow, I came upon the statement from a neuroscientist on the Internet this morning as one of the explanations for the perplexing question of "Why are we (humans) here?"  Tell me what you think.........."

quote:

"Any single brain, including yours, is made up of atoms that were forged in the hearts of countless, far-flung stars billions of years ago. These particles drifted for eons and light-years until gravity and chance brought them together here, now. These atoms now form a conglomerate — your brain — that can not only ponder the very stars that gave it birth but can also think about its own ability to think and wonder about its own ability to wonder. With the arrival of humans, it has been said, the universe has suddenly become conscious of itself. This, truly, is the greatest mystery of all."


I gave it a little thought...not too much...and responded:


"It's hard for me to fathom how randomness and coincidence brought us to where we are. The reason is because I can see how that might happen maybe all across the universe in a limited fashion -- here and there -- but it would have had to happen many times here on our little planet. We have such a diversity...have had over the eons...that it doesn't look like randomness to me. Life forms from a virus or lichen to the deep sea vent tube worms to the dinosaurs, corals and hummingbirds have all been created here. We have no proof that these exist anywhere else.

But, I know why I'm here...somebody has to clean out the litter box.

Ken"

The issue stayed with me a while and I pondered it a little more.
I worked in statistics and dealt with randomness and research for twenty years. I wonder whether the neuroscientist or others who make similar statements are working backwards rather than in a forward fashion.   Do they frame the question with the end product (us -- our existence) as the starting point? Randomness is absolute.  One should start at the beginning - not at the end. There are countless random events -- atoms crashing together or missing each other -- in the universe. There are possible random outcomes that would foster a certain outcome but there are countless random forces working against any single outcome...many more than are working to push the outcome forward. Chaos.

I can see that maybe somewhere a chemical compound randomly comes together and maybe once in 100,000 years it has a spark of life....that is snuffed out by the cold of interstellar night or the searing heat of scorching light of a nearby sun. Maybe in 100,000 tries the spark survives and something like a virus lives, sustained in some manner off of neighboring chemicals. In many cases that is as far as it goes but once in a while the conditions might allow it to grow and even replicate itself into a colony of virus thingys. Maybe once in a great while conditions would fall into place where one of these very rare virus thingy colonies get big enough to look like a stain on a rock and then, eons later, it develops into something that we would think looks like a small lichen. Billions of years go by and it has progressed to be something a astronaut would want to be careful to clean off her shoe....not recognized as a being at the apex of life's creation on this far away planet.

People - scientists - are searching for intelligent life somewhere else in the universe. They are looking for a sign -- some sort of signal from an intelligent being. So far we have not found evidence of unintelligent life in any form except on our planet. Intelligent beings are messy -- we make waste and we make clutter. We leave evidence behind when we do anything or go anywhere. Somehow, I think we would be aware of somebody else's trash if there were many similar random outcomes of intelligent beings cropping up in the universe.

Of course, next week we will have a visitation from some other planet....go figure.

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Update: interesting article discusses the difficulty of evolution   (July 2014)
http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2014/06/evolution-depends-on-rare-chance-events.html#.U74PInbnbbU

To Koi or not to Koi...

Well, I moved in to my new home on Wednesday. It was a busy day and exhausting and I have several days ahead of unpacking and organizing things just to make the place seem livable. I need to take care of the Koi Pond twice a day but it was pretty late Wednesday when I managed to get out there to clean the filter and feed the fish....barely daylight but I got it done.

Let me describe the Koi Pond for you. When I came to look at the house I saw that there was a water feature out in the front enclosed yard. I thought, "Gee, how cute.  It looks nice." There is a little water fall and the water flows down a stream and under a bridge and tumbles into a pond that is about 15' by 8' in sort of an irregular oval shape...all lined in smooth river stones. It looks nice and well cared for. There are water lilies and  bull rush looking things and some grassy things and some floating plants. I could see that there were some fish but I didn't pay much attention...I was more interested in the house.

Well, the pond is a little more complicated than that. It has a pump and filtration system and a skimmer and another filter up at the waterfall end. The plants serve as an additional filtration system. When you look closely, you see dozens of tiny little fish about 1.5 inches long. These are mosquito fish that eat the mosquito larva. Next there are a few goldfish swimming around. Goldfish eat algae and some other stuff that occurs naturally in the pond including the mosquito larva. At the top of the list are the Koi fish. Koi fish are the pigs of the fish world. They are some sort of specialized Carp. They will eat everything including those darling little plants that are living in the pond.  Koi are voracious eaters. They have a lifespan of 50 to 100 years and reach three feet in length. Koi fish are also expensive. My local dealer sells them for $45 each and these are the standard run-of-the-mill Koi fish. Some Koi fish sell for $40,000 each. I have at least a dozen or more Koi fish in all different colors....orange, red, white, mottled with black or blue/gray and in various combinations of these colors. I suspect that they are up to something and that some of the Goldfish might actually be baby Koi.

The Koi fish live by means of extortion. You must feed them twice a day or they will eat all of your plants. Because they eat twice a day and feed on other stuff if they get a chance, they poop a lot. As I said, these are the pigs of the fish world.  Koi poop provides nutrients for algae which reproduces and keeps the Goldfish happy but also clogs up the filters on the pump. So, twice a day I go out and hose off the filters to keep them clean so water can flow through. If the filters get too clogged the water level drops around the pump and it burns out...sort of like the nuclear fuel rods in a reactor, I guess. I have been doing this for a while and when I'm not here my neighbor feeds the fish and cleans the filters.  So, anyway, this cute little water feature has become something of a chore.

Like I said, I finally moved in on Wednesday and took care of the pond....everything was fine. On Thursday I got up and started working on unpacking boxes and didn't go out to deal with the pond until around 10 AM (instead of 7 AM -- AS THE KOI ARE ACCUSTOMED TO). So as I go out the front door I hear a funny sound. The water level is down about five inches and the pump is sucking air. What the hell??!!  It was fine when I went to bed. I filled up the pond from the hose (well water...no chlorine) and cleaned out the filters (nothing unusual there) and fed the fish.   By about 5 PM it was back down about two inches so I filled it up again. Next day...the same thing. I'm losing water at the rate of about four or five inches a day. The water level is usually stable with some evaporation that makes you add water every week or ten days. Great. Day two of my life at the new house and the pond goes on the fritz.

Yesterday, Saturday, I went over to the local water garden nursery that sells pond equipment and fish and plants. I explained my dilemma...I tried not to whimper too much. They said they clean out their filters maybe once a month and showed me the filter on one of their ponds and it was almost black --- much more stuff than what I have.  So, I'm cleaning the filter too much...cut it back to once a day and then maybe once a week if it works OK. She said the pump will tell me when it needs to be cleaned because it will make an odd noise...I heard that already.  

She said the leak is probably in the plumbing and not in the liner because it sounds like a fast leak. A liner leak would be slower unless it is a gaping hole.  The recommended solution is to fill up the pond and turn off the pump for about half a day to see if the water level drops.  If not, the leak is in the pump hoses or couplings. If the water still drops the leak is in the liner. If the liner has the leak then I let the water drop to where it stabilizes and then find the hole and patch it with special tape. This requires wading in the pond with the fish. I already fell into the pond once and it is slicker than snot and you can't keep your footing. I am not looking forward to this.

Since Koi fish are such a chore I quizzed her about what alternatives I would have. She said there are Koi rescue groups who will come and take the fish or the nursery will buy back some fish in the spring at a small price...like 10% of the value.  Craigslist is another way to get rid of the fish but one must closely monitor the people when they are taking the fish.  Switching over to a water garden with only Goldfish and small mosquito fish is the way to go because you can have so many more plants that you can't have with Koi fish because they will eat them. Goldfish don't require daily feeding and you can stock smaller fish to eat the algae that wouldn't live with the Koi. The filter won't need leaning so often.

OKIEDOKIE...that's for me.  I have an experiment going on with not cleaning the filters  but every other day.  I still need to turn off the pump but I can't find the switch...might have to throw the breaker if there is no switch....still looking. Stay tuned.

What I Did On My Sixty-fifth Birthday

My birthday falls on August 12th, a day that really has had some rotten things happen. Go to Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_12 ) and you will see what I mean. Cleopatra committed suicide, England declared war on Germany, lots of people died in countless wars and battles, the Nazis executed 40,000 people, Hawaii lost its sovereignty to the USA, the last quagga died at the zoo in Amsterdam....sadly, the list goes on. I share my birthday with Cantinflas, George Hamilton III, Pete Sampras,  Mark Knopfler, Buck Owens, the Queen of Thailand -- and my two insurance agents....yes, that's right.

With that heavy burden, August 12th staggers forward into the past with me riding on its coat tails. I feel a personal responsibility to make August 12th proud to have me listed as one of its native sons. I try to do something positive on my birthday.  Sometimes I do.

My day started out early. I was up by 6:30 and had a small breakfast. I got home yesterday from a 2,000 mile trip to New Mexico which wore me out a little so I was tired. I got myself looking reasonably presentable and went off to play bocce at Prison Brews. Our bocce club meets each Monday morning year round and we are pretty hard core and disregard the weather, usually.  I stopped at a local bakery and bought a dozen special cookies to share with the bocce group. We played about 90 minutes until the rain started to come down. We finally suspended play and went inside to eat lunch.  We had a great lunch with good conversation and the weather started to clear up. We decided to go out and have one last bocce game ---which my team won.  I will miss this group when I move.

My cat, Watson, is boarding at the Vet's and since I got home a day early I decided to do some stuff around the house without tripping over the cat. He hates the vacuum and so I chose to spare him the anguish and try to run it around a little before he got home. I also did some work at my storage unit and bought some packing supplies. I hope to be all moved to New Mexico in less than a month but I have a lot of work to do to get ready.

My insurance agent came by in the evening to talk to me about some long term care insurance I want to buy. This policy would include home health services while my other LTC policies only cover residential. This is the agent who shares my birthday...exactly...same day and year.  We watch each other fairly closely to see who is doing better as we age together...I think I'm slightly in the lead but I'm not sure.  Apparently, at our age, applying for LTC insurance doesn't mean you will actually get it.  I'm going to have to wait a while for approval and I had to make a two month premium payment...it will take that long???

The Perseid Meteor Shower falls on my birthday every year so I go out and watch shooting stars on my birthday. Sometimes it is the day before or the day after depending on the sky and clouds. I still count it as if it happened on my birthday...good meteor showers are hard to find and mine is one of the best. I've been doing this since I was about eleven.  That makes it about 54 years...probably the one thing that I've done the longest in my life. I have seen maybe a thousand meteors...or at least hundreds. They say that meteors are the size of a grain of sand...I think that is BS. They are 40 miles up and moving at thousands of miles an hour. Maybe there are millions that are the size of a grain of sand but we wouldn't see them. I think we see something bigger...at least brick size or maybe basketball size.  I've seen them break into two with each part going off at a different angle. I've seen them come in in tandem, parallel to each other as twin meteors. They come in different colors sometimes...yellow, green, white or blue.  Last night there was one that had a bright but short, curving path that looked almost like a sky rocket.  I moved from my old house to my daughter's house on Main Street last November. There are way too many lights to see most of the stars here in the city so I went out to a dark area by Binder Lake at about 11 PM and just hung out waiting for the show to begin. It was pretty slow but I managed to catch seven good ones before I headed back home at 11:30.  One for each decade...that's pretty good.

So that was about it.

A Moving Experience

I am preparing for my second move in nine months. I now appreciate what those kids went through whose parents were in the military or had some other job that kept them on the move every few years. I have not been a frequent mover. My current house is transitional and I knew it wouldn't be long before I moved again but before that I lived in one place for twenty-six years. My family accumulated tons of stuff...literally. We were sort of the family historians and I have five generations of stuff going back to my wife's great grandmother. But now it's just me and I'm the curator of a family museum.

My current move is long distance....about 1,000 miles...and I have already made two trips to make the new place livable until the "big" move takes place. My last trip was with a U-haul trailer, which went fine until a wheel fell of in Wichita. U-haul has a pretty good emergency road service and I was planning on spending the night in Wichita anyway. They got me a new trailer and transferred my stuff and got me on my way with only about a 2 1/2 hour delay. This was in a driving rainstorm...something like seven inches of rain in two days.

My "big" move will be with a movong company. I've been doing this alone up to this point but I'm running out of steam. The cost is going to run about $1 per pound of stuff, approximately. I have started looking at things with a new awareness. Do I really need four or five boxes of photo albums? Grandpa's chifferobe is nice but it is quarter-sawn oak and weighs a lot so it won't be going. Great grandma's blanket chest is going because I can fill it with stuff.

Our DNA gets wrapped around some of the stuff and it can't be left behind. I'm taking my parents old Crosley radio cabinet just because it is part of me. I listened to sputnik on that thing and the news reports of our own early space program. It had a shortwave band and I could listen to Paris and (OMG) Moscow and the BBC. The actual radio is long gone and the cabinet served as a makeshift bar and DVD cabinet but I'll find something for it to do in the new place.

Moving day is about a week away and I have about sixty boxes packed already. I'm living out of the dishwasher and clothes dryer and having exceptionally large meals.  I'm getting down to the weird stuff that doesn't really go with anything else...boxes of "mixed" things that will be a surprise when I open them up. I'm disposing of things that I won't be taking. Goodwill is getting tired of seeing me so I'll probably switch to Salvation Army for a few days.

My new house is about the same size as the current house but it doesn't have a basement. I won't have any place to hide my exercise bike so I'll probably start using it. That would be good. I suspect that my garage will be so full of boxes that I won't be able to fit a car inside. They say nothing rusts out in the desert so the cars can sit outside for a while.

I'm going to miss my current house more than the one I lived in for so long. This house is about 105 years old and has a quirky personality to it. It sits on a hill  overlooking the Missouri River valley and catches some nice breezes in the evenbing and half the morning. The basement is a dungeon with a partial brick floor and a rock foundation that weeps a little in rainy weather. The garage is so old it has carriage doors and a loft. There was probably a horse in there at one time. Most of the back yard is covered with spearmint that escaped from a now vanished garden. Cutting the grass is almost intoxicating.

So I'll soon be relocated in the New Mexico desert. I'll keep in touch. Wish me luck