Biochemistry wk 12 - Cell Biology and Radioactivity

The daily radiation exposure comparison chart was quite interesting to me.  It drove home that on top of a CT Scan being a "crazy x ray" it really does expose the individual to many more times the amount of radiation than a x ray image will.   The difference in cvert dosage that a airplane passenger is exposed to was also interesting to me.  I am still pondering why amount changed relative to the seat?  I am assuming that the radiation is not coming from a single direction, so people in the front have less of a human shield to radiation exposure than those seated at the rear of the plane.  I confess my ignorance on the design of a plane, my intuition is that there is more structure around the wings then in the front or rear of the aircraft and I would think more structure would mean more of a barrier between cosmic radiation and passengers.

Mushrooms are also wicked interesting bioacumulators, and I can understand how the cost of using mushrooms to track the radiation in the soil would be less than using livestock.  It does still belay the question of how is the irradiated fungi or meat disposed of?  And does that create more of a radioactive hazard?

Biophysics wk12 - Life & Living Systems

• I know I’m a “living system” because…….The base of my molecules is carbon chains.  I can reproduce a variation of my self, as  noted on the paper on Autopoietic Organization " Our proposition is that living beings are characterized in that, literally, the are continually self-producing. 

• TCM and Biophysics - Again I must proclaim my novice position in both TCM & Biophysics, as such my views will not be fully informed.  In my current perception of TCM it individual is not apart from nature but a part of the biosphere.  There is a microcosmic duplication of the macrocosmic universe in each person.  In this I think that there is much more room for Biophysics to directly inform the way of knowing that is used in TCM.

Biochemestey Wk 11

1. Biochemistry is the study of the chemicals, chemical reactions and chemical interactions that take place in living organisms.

This definition of biochemistry resonates with me because it's focuses in on the chemistry aspect of the hybrid science.  Biology acts as a boundary within the focus of this chemistry.  Only the chemistry that takes pace inside living organisms please.  


I was not in class for this week, but I did read the article about MD's giving their clients placebos. Personally I think that the taboo around placebo needs to be removed.  There is such a fear of mystery in western science, if it's beyond the scope of what can be explained with the modern system then it is discarded.    


Giving antibiotics as a placebo, for example in the case of a viral infection was disappointing for me to learn.  Moving forward I hope that MD's will be much more choosey when administering such powerful medicine as antibiotics.  For me, my go to placebo is to vigorously rub any impact injury that only time will heal.  (I need a step up from a kiss making things better)

Physics wk11 - Synthesis

My Day - An excersize in E Prime

I read the clock as it displayed 7:30AM when I awoke from my slumber.  Then I met up with a friend to work out at a beach in Pacifica.  Next I believed that I was going to study in the garden with my classmates.  However, I received a text message asking me if I was going to show up for a tattoo appointment.  I had forgotten to write the appointment down in my calendar, this oversight lead to me forgetting about the tattoo appointment and double booking myself.  I canceled the study session without much time before the planed meet up.

Once the appointed time for being tattooed was reached I was bandaged by the artist I left the shop.  Now it was time for me to head to work.  I caught the SF/Milbre BART train and headed towards San Francisco.  I was in a good amount of discomfort as the fresh tattoo had begun to noticeably swell.  My shift seemed to pass slowly as there was multiple opening acts and less than 50 people sitting in the section of the venue that I had been tasked with serving.  Once the band stopped playing music and departed the stage, I was able to end my shift.  My work was over for that day and so I headed back to my home.  upon arrival I provided my cat with wet canned food which he ate.  I then went to bed and fell asleep without any problem, even though the fresh tattoo was still causing discomfort.

Synthesizing East/West thought in Physics

From that I have learned in this class, Quantum Physics is both a vast realm of science of which only the surface has been scratched.  I believe it is easier for a person to understand Eastern thought as well as Quantum Physics if one has an understanding of the other.  currently I stand as a novice in both realms, however I am fascinated by both.  I hope to deepen my understanding of physics even after the completion of this course.

Physics wk 10 - Symmetry / Super Symmetry & Sacred Geometry

My asymmetrical world -

"Sisters not twins," have become words that I live by.  I first heard this saying in regards to a friend of mine attempting to create the perfect liquid line of eyeliner.  She explained to me through the reflection in the mirror that perfection/duplication/symmetry is impossible.  If one strives for perfect symmetry in makeup application that it will lead to hours of time and emotional frustration that are really not necessarily needing to be wasted.  Shoot for an achievable goal and you will find success.  Our faces are not symmetrical, and that is something to be celebrated and not worked against.

In my work as a body piercer, I find myself pairing up earlobe piercings quite frequently.  You may or may not be aware of this, but ears are quite regularly drastically different from one another.  Overall size, location on the head, and shape can vary from left to right ear.  And so I say to myself and to my client "sisters not twins" what I mean is that finding a pleasing balanced location of the adornment to sit is the goal.  If I were to take out a measuring tool and place the piercing on the exact same location  as measured from the bottom of the lobe and distance to the side of the face, the outcome could appear very lopsided.  Such is my asymmetrical world!

Just what does this CP violation really mean?

Ho-Lee-Shit this stuff when way over my head.  But I will try and explain it back to you.  Because energy is conserved for every "thing" there is also an "anti-thing" that also exists, however they must also exist in different locations.  If a "thing" and and "anti-thing" meet, POOF, they undo each other and there is nothing.  So how come this hasn't happened to everything?  In my understanding it is because of the CP violation.  On the tiny tiny tiny level, once in a very long time when a "thing" is created "anti-thing" is not created instead "bizzarso-anti-thing" is created (this may or may not put it back to being the same as "thing"). Like if Bizzaro World Superman was a good guy, and so didn't lead to an epic battle between Superman & Bizzaro Superman.  Because there wasn't that mutual self destruction both can go about existing, and because of this CP violation there can be matter of "things" in existence.  And so the universe exists.

Are there connections between Sacred Geometry and Physics?

I think the better question would be, can you elucidate on the connections between Sacred Geometry and Physics.  I think that the connection between geometry and physics has become more apparent once the computational power of computers has come into play.  The fractal images that are a part of Chaos Theory show a direct link to Physics.

On a more instinctual level, as I think about why Sacred Geometry exists.  If the golden mean exists because it is the most efficient way for energy to be organized on the micro as well as the astronomical scales, isn't that in itself at the heart of Physics?  Physics is the asking of why the universe is?  In class we have spoken to the point that no question is out of the question of Physics.  Well, it would appear to me that the Golden Mean has presented itself as an answer to some of these questions. This leads me to wonder, why haven't more Physicists that I am aware of reversed engineered theory around the answer that we see in the Golden Ration?

Physics Midterm - Eastern vs Western Perspective On Where We Are In Time

Foundations of Chinese Medicine was one of the first courses that I took here at the Academy of Chinese Culture and Health Sciences.  The class was taught by Phil Settels, and in one of his first lectures he asked the class to imagine time was a condensed down to a line that ran through the room & he was standing in this moment on that line.  The question that Phil posed to the class was this; which way should he be facing on that timeline?

My thought was that time is unidirectional, it always proceeds forward.  The future becomes the present and then the past. As such, it was my view that Phil should face into the direction that time is moving.  That he should face “forward” into the future. This is a very Western Monochronic Time perspective of where we stand in time. Always planning for the future, rigid, eyes on the horizon, innovating new ways to forage ahead and create the future that we desire.

Phil’s point was that in the Eastern Polychronic Time perspective one can only see what has already come to pass. Just as the western saying goes “hindsight is 20/20” so to is the perspective of Eastern thought.  The viewer on the timeline must face towards the past, as that is the only known time that one has physically seen. The logic follows that the eyes should face towards the past. The future cannot be seen or known so the viewers back is toward the future.  The importance is placed on knowing and learning from what has already happened in order to inform the viewer as they move into the unknown future.

In our Physics we discussed the differences between Western Monochronic Time and Eastern Polychronic Time.  I find that the thought experiment that Phil had us participate in was a great example of how ethnocentrically entrenched each of us is in our view.  As was exemplified by our M-Time interpretation of the where the viewer faced on a timeline.

Physics wk 8 - Classical Physics

When I think about Newton's laws i am reminded of my childhood.  I grew up in a family with three sisters, and when we drove it would often entail three of us girls filling up the entire row in the family car.  Summer trips to the beach included driving down a windy canyon road.  We came upon a bit of a game as we would round a corner, the sibling towards the center of the turn would exclaim "Newton's 2nd law!" and add a little extra lean into the forces we felt pulling us towards the opposite edge of the vehicle.  More or less it was an excuse to go back and forth squishing your sister.  The sibling in the center just got squashed the whole time, which typically was the youngest of us (and why she thought she was the middle child for a long time).  

Newton's 2nd Law states that the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the forces acting on it, and inversely proportional to its mass.  Force = Mass x Acceleration.   With my better understanding of physics that I have now, I know that we were feeling feeling was that our bodies wanted to continue moving in a straight line & that as the car turned we continued moving forward until the frame of the vehicle acted on our bodies forcing us to also turn with it.  Though it felt as though our bodies were being pushed towards the side of the car.

Overall even if the use of Newton's Laws wasn't spot on, I am still fairly impressed that as children we were aware enough of the laws of physics to create games out of them.

Our "Energy Efficient" culture.  I agree with the liberal use of parenthetical in that sentence.  Thermodynamics, turning heat energy into work energy was the basis for the industrial revolution. Which was a tremendous advancement of technology, however that does not mean that it was the most efficient way to create wok energy.  My mind is still reeling at the idea of the sunken processor banks that are off the coast of Scotland, with all of their excess heat leaching out into the ocean.  The effect on the local ecosystem must be dramatic.  I personally know very very little about how ecosystems work, but I surly know that the water off the coast of Scotland is not naturally warm & and a large body that will consistently be producing heat has just been dropped smack dab into the middle of that watery world. 

Cartesian thought - A note that I wrote in the sideline of our handout.  You don't need a brain to be cognitive,  A living system can act with cognition, think a slime mold that can solve a maze in order to locate a food source.  Also looking at a bee hive as a system acting with cognition vs. focusing on the individual bee.  

Physics wk9 - unabashed loafing

This week I spent an extended amount of time laying down.  I like to think of it as savasana, or corpse pose.  I find it mediative and sometimes nap inducing.  My 18 year old cat likes to join me and sometimes he insists that we savasna by climbing up onto my torso and getting comfortable, he then slides a paw into the ditch of my throat and just dares me to try and go anywhere.  And with this weeks assignment including some unabashed loafing I was not going to struggle against the feline's demands to stay in bed.

 

This is what loafing with my cat looks like.

In further less static loafing, I started the process of making Calendula oil.  The flowers were grown in my community garden & individually picked and dried by me.  I've never made medicinal oils before.

At the very least, it looks pretty.