wk 14 Which Way Forward

The articles about buildings of the future becoming living, breathing things was very encouraging to me.  I felt that it went hand in hand with the look we took at biomimicry in engineering.  I think this could lead to a much more sustainable way of life.

Erik Dakota, visionary body piercer who developed a number of now popular ear piercings such at the rook, daith, and the industrial.  I like this image I found of Erik because it catches him in the midst of a more extreme act of body piercing, as he inserts a needle across his forearm, during a benefit performance for Body Manipulations (a piercing parlor in San Francisco).  Which is a side to Erik that it could be easy to miss in a head shot where one one only see his short cut hair, black no logo cap and no visible tattoos or body jewelry.  Without Erik I wouldn't have a research topic.  Thank you Erik for all that you have done for the body piercing industry, and incidentally also for migraine sufferers.

My research topic is on the Daith piercing being used as an acupuncture treatment for migraines.  What's up with that??  I have been body piercing since 2007 and around 2012ish people began coming into the shop and asking for the piercing that will cure their headaches, toting that it was a form acupuncture.  I've spent the last two years in TCM school waiting to see if anything I learned would lead me to this Daith acupuncture location.  So far nothing has.  And so I've decided to choose this as my research topic and dig a little deeper.  As a bay area body piercer I have access to the people and publications from the body piercing industry that other acupuncturists do not.  I hope that having access to both sides of this question will lead to greater understanding.

Wk 13 Vaccination & Public Health

Compulsory vaccination, let's talk about it.  I will say flat out, this is likely to get a little dark.

The idea behind public health is decreased mortality and increased longevity, if my  understanding is correct.  Diseases like small pox are incredibly virulent and lethal, and an epidemic could wipe out great numbers of people.  Sounds like something that should be avoided.

Overpopulation is a thing, right?  Overconsumption too?  I remember hearing numbers about how if we continue to consume at the same rate as we are now that we will need something like 6 planet earths to sustain the wester human appetite.

An epidemic would be heartbreaking without doubt.  But would it be necessarily bad for the planet?  I think perhaps not.

I also reflect on a conversation I was having the other week with a woman from Canada, a point that she made was that socialized health care worked in Canada because they have a much smaller population than the U.S. Could perhaps an epidemic in the United States that wiped out, lets say 1/10, the population be a catalyst into fixing our very broken health care system?  In my opinion, it could.  And in the face of the catastrophic changes happen quickly.

As far as how to accommodate parental choice, I think that there should be more funding into educating parents about the diseases that vaccines are helping us avoid outbreaks of.  This generation of parents have not likely ever experienced any of these diseases, so hire some of social medias greatest minds to make viral videos about cow pox, pertussis, tetanus, polio, ect.  Have them playing on the TV's in waiting rooms of doctors offices instead of having sports on.  My perception is that it is easy to equate the flu to small pox, if you don't know anything about small pox, as two things that are vaccinated for.  One of which almost everyone has experience with, so, doesn't it stand to reason that small pox would be just as bad as the flu?  We need to educate to correct these flaws in rational.

Much about Non Ado

Found some medicine between my toes 

 I've found a number of moments where I can squeeze in a little time for nothing.  I find it's easiest for me to practice non ado when I am also grounding.  I think it's great that other than making sure my feet are in the dirt I don't have to be actively doing in order to benefit from grounding.

I have also found Che Qian Zi (Before the Cart Seed) at my feet on a number of my respites.  It's really amazing to me to be able to spot the herbs we use in our medicine out in our environment.  It's even the broad leaf variety and not the narrow leaf European variety of the plant.

another day, shoes off

another strain of medicine I think,


06/23 One of my favorite loafing non activities is getting a shower and then sitting down and  putting int the plug and turning it into a bath.  This is what I did this evening.  I oscillated between warm and cool water.  Let my body soak in a number of positions and just let my mind wander where it would.  It felt like the perfect way to wind down from my work week before starting the school week.

06/24 Today I spent time in the garden, I am putting it under the heading of non ado because I didn't plan on spending time the garden and I didn't go into it with a plan.  I just felt like being outside and it seemed a pleasant option.  My garden bead is full of blooming Chamomile and Calendula.  I ended up harvesting many flowers, then decided to prune back the plans from where I harvested to day as well as some other days.  I think this also allowed me to carve out some space for some purple basil that was growing underneath some of the other plants.  I also harvested some savory herbs. I bundled it all up and took it home to dry.  I also took a wandering bike ride home as well.  Just went with the traffic lights, if it was green I went forward and if it was red then I turned right.  It was a very relaxing afternoon.

Wk 6 Biology - The Patterns of Life

WOAH!!!
Podcast about Complexity & Systems
Check this out, Sam's fiancé is kinda the rad.  I have listened to like 3 or 4 of these podcasts now, it's rad how relevant they are to what we have been talking about in class.... and also some sound/music things that i am into, that i didn't expect to find others into.

Here are your Assignments for "The Pattern of Life"

Your Blog Assignments:

• How would you distinguish between living and non-living systems
• “If you live in a city, you may not be able to get to a forest easily, but taking off your shoes in the park and feeling the grass will help you de-stress.”(Getting back to nature: how forest bathing can make us feel better)
  - what are your own experiences?
• And please keep up the blog dialog, and post a comment to a classmate's blog

Check out the following links:

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/plants/cell/
Plant Cell Anatomy

http://www.life.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/plantbio/cell/cell.cgi
Virtual Cell

http://mandalazone.com/wordpress/thinking-through-the-mind-and-the-mandala/
Thinking Through: The Mind and the Mandala 

Wk 4 Biology - The Pattern and Complexity of Life

1. Post your thoughts on Semaya article.

It is difficult for me to address the Semaya article solely from the stance of competitive sports. But that is what I am going to attempt to do for this blog. Competitors are always going to be pushing to gain an edge on one another.  This includes ways to disadvantage their opponents as well as ways in which for the competitor to excel in their own physical prowess.  This is what I see being played out with the ruling that Semaya is fighting against.  What I find to objective is that this ruling is seeking to change the natural state of the competitor in order to control the limits of a natural occurring hormone in the body.

Let's take a moment to tie this into our readings on Complexity.  Let us also assume that Semaya has also not doped her system in other ways to gain advantage (I personally believe that a majority of international level competitors, that have access to the ability to dope are likely to) Semaya didn't become the athlete that she is today in a vacuum.  All that is Semaya has to do with a very complex interplay of her parts that are her.  Change one thing and you don't just modulate the system, you could very well destroy it.  Think the butterfly effect. I think it is an error to approach the human system with this type of linear thought.  

Having competed in a very small version of international competition in roller derby over the last decade, I feel like I have had an opportunity to interact with a number of different competitor personality types.  What I have walked away with is an personal understanding that athletes wreck their bodies.  In order to be extraordinary they tax their bodies in an unsustainable way.  I believe this is a reason why we do not see many athletes with 40 year long careers where they are top in their class.  I accept this as part of being an athlete and competitor.  I think it would be interesting to have less rules than more rules.  What would happen if we allowed the athletes to make the decisions on how far they wanted to push their bodies with full access to chemical enhancements. I do not think it is healthy, but is playing collision sports healthy? I think of the traumatic brain injury incurred by football players.  I think it is at least an interesting thought experiment. 

- Comments on the "Gaia Theory" - is this now a commonly accepted theory? 

- Respond to classmates blog

2. Check out the following links

The struggle is real

I was doing much better with keeping up with my work last Sumer.  I am interested in the subject matter we are discussing and yet I am lacking the self dissaplinetha in order to sit down and work at my computer need.

 

This is my cat, I jokingly call him my tutor. He wants to be in the thick of whatever I am doing, and likely needing at least one if not both my arms and hands to hold him.  I am typing with one hand now because of this.  My cat is nearly twenty.  I know he's not going to be around for even half as long as he has already been around.  As such I find it difficult not to allow him to have at least the use of one of my hands.

But you can see how my scholastic work suffers.  I'm behind in writing,  and a little in reading and that makes me anxious.  The anxiety freezes me and I have a difficult time initiating tasks.  So at least I am typing away at my keyboard instead of not.  But, I am still not writing about how the moon phases may effect my dreams.  Or other assigned topics.  

I had to complete something before bed tonight.  So I leave you with a little note on my current struggle.  It's just the tip of my iceberg, but at least there's a dapper silver fox of a cat photo to look at.

Biology week 3 - Genetic Evolution

1.1 "99.4% of the most critical DNA sites are identical in human and chimp genes" What do you make of this?

I think that this means that there may be more to a human being than looking at our total DNA.  I am curious to know more about what percentage of the genes in our DNA are expressed?  Is it possible that DNA more or less holds the recipes for creating "life" and the expression of the genes within it are what dictates how that is expressed?  I think about the articles that we read on evo devo and how it genetic mutation came from the swapping around of gene bundles and not so much from building a new genome from the ground up.  

I believe it was explained as that nature didn't recreate the wheel.  

I think another aspect to consider is that of the microbiome.  There are more microrgaisms living on us than there are human cells in us.  SOooooo is it really only the DNA that makes a human?  Or is it the symbiotic community, for lack of a better word?  I just keep thinking about when I first learned about the mitochondria, that it has it's own DNA.  Let that really sink it.  It's not human DNA that creates the mitochondria.  It's it's own little buddy that now lives in every one of our cells.  Life is really wild.

2. Use your blog to record your impressions of Human Genetic Evolution

3. Take-Home Memorial Day Weekend Assignment-

Cambridge scientists create world's first living organism with fully redesigned DNA.

What are the key issues brought up in this article, in your view?

4.     Check out the following links on Cybernetics:

    http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/COMPNATS.HTML
Self-organization and complexity in the natural sciences

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopoiesis
    Autopoiesis

    http://www.calresco.org/lucas/auto.htm
Autopoiesis and Coevolution