Month: November 2016

I appreciate that I can still be awed when I learn about science. At a nature center recently I flipped through the first pages of a children’s science book and read a short passage about how viruses are not considered living things but may be descended from a living thing that later became nonliving through evolution.

I have studied biology for many years but this is something I had never thought much about. Reading further online I encountered the following passage:

“They may represent genetic elements that gained the ability to move between cells. They may represent previously free-living organisms that became parasites. They may be the precursors of life as we know it.”

(http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-origins-of-viruses-14398218)

Later I clicked on a blurb about “Planet Nine.” I thought it was more fake news (or hopelessly uninformed journalism) but it was from a reputable site. There may be a ninth planet, much more exciting than Pluto ever was, that is an ice giant orbiting 20 times the distance that Neptune is from the Sun. And its existence would help explain some anomalies that currently pose a problem.

Speculation over this planet, as well as all three viral origin possibilities and their implications, is mind-blowing! These topics have an inherent fascination. But somehow they are drowned out by the churn of the day’s news. Still, when they do break through, they remain absolutely gripping. Sometimes it just takes a children’s book to do it.

Included: Don’t end up like me. Never trust anyone. Read your olive oil label carefully. It may be mostly vegetable oil, and you may be a dupe.

I’ve made no secret of a burning wish to move to Pacific Northwest. For about three years now, I have talked about it casually. I even applied to a few jobs out there but never as part of a concerted search.

I don’t think my destination will be Seattle because the market there is gripped by a true housing crisis. I looked at smaller towns on the coast that have state natural resources jobs, but many of these are seasonal. Rents in Portland are going up but are not at crisis level yet. I could even settle for a suburb such as Hillsboro, or even Vancouver, WA. My job will almost certainly be a quality role in science/health/testing.

Once I begin the transplant effort in earnest, I know I will be successful within two or three months. I might even live in a car for a short time, judging from some extreme things I’ve done in the past to get what I want.

The question is: when to determine to go? When to begin? I have set and then passed by some arbitrary goals such as:

• “Once I have X in savings”
• “Spring of next year”
• “Once I get more experience in my current position”
• “Before another harsh winter happens”

Then I learned of the total solar eclipse of 2017:

https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEgoogle/SEgoogle2001/SE2017Aug21Tgoogle.html

The path of totality passes just south of Portland, Oregon. Hotels are already booked. It will be an astronomical event that I will remember for a lifetime. And let’s be honest, I’d rather not go to Nebraska to view it.

The Total Solar Eclipse of 2017 Aug 21.

Why not let this be my goal for moving west? The alignment of three space bodies is a pretty good marker for this one vital ambition of mine.

 

 

Included: Amazon’s recommendations indicate I must be pretty gay. I kinda want to read “Velociraptor” on the right there…

My alarm clock is set to play the news. I woke up on Wednesday morning to the shocking fact that Donald Trump had won the presidency. I wanted to roll over and go back to sleep and try waking up again. That morning was awful.

This outcome is an absolute joke. I am so disappointed in the people around me. I still don’t understand the explanations that pundits and the news media have offered for their own failure to predict this. Maybe the problem is inherent in trying to explain the kind of irrational backlash movement that Trump represents.

I don’t think the Trump debacle will affect my life much in the next four years. Other people will be affected, though. I haven’t forgotten about the 500 000 dead Iraqis George W. Bush and the neocons are responsible for. I haven’t forgotten the face of Terri Schiavo.

I will not despair. Four years from now a rising star in the Democratic party will be elected and we will see this for what it was: a paroxysm in the national temper, a flare-up, a fluke. The next president might even be Minnesota’s own Amy Klobuchar.

In the meantime I will take care of those around me. I will resolve to avoid sinking into the politics of grievance that motivated so many voters this year, on both sides. I will continue feathering the liberal enclaves where I choose to live. Finally, I’ll try to be more skeptical of the conventional wisdom, so that I will never again have such a bad morning as I did this week.