The Broccoli Wars

I’ve got three regulars who want to eat off my usual plate of broccoli and spinach with extra garlic. This doesn’t include the occasional audience to my order that stares the greens down and just has to compliment my choice. The bartender is on to this, so he negotiates with the kitchen to serve me a bigger plate of greens to share. Two of my poachers earn their free veggies by talking to me instead of texting, and one gives me hot tips on software.

It’s nearly impossible to get veggies in a restaurant anymore, anywhere in the country. Why are veggies, fruit, and even flowers shipped here all the way from South America? Is it cheaper? Have we run out?

But wait. We have plenty. At local farmer’s markets last season, I was amazed when vendors told me they packed up all the kids, fruit, veggies, and drove four hours from the California Central Valley every week. Booths loaded with macramé plant hangers had mercifully expired to make room for a street full of food growers and customers hauling it all away.

Why are food growers driving so far? Is it possible they have enough customers to be worth it? A healthy salad in a good restaurant now comes in a midget version disguised as an art form, thoughtfully composed of a dozen green leaves surrounded by six lima beans and a shallot-reduction-basil-fusion-virgin olive oil balsamic-vinaigrette served on a 15-inch dinner plate. And for veggies, now it’s wax beans and potatoes. 
These new developments just take all the fun out of my dining experience. My suspicion is restaurants are fed up throwing away veggies. They cost more to serve too. All that washing and scraping and tossing and choppin’ broccoli takes a bite out of restaurant profits, only to have customers leave it on their plates. The remains are sentenced to the dumpster.

When an upscale restaurant featuring trendy fusion vegetarian cuisine opened, a friend took me there for dinner. I walked in excited. I was prepared to Power Graze. Instead, I got another art piece on an oversized dinner plate. Amazed at the fattened-up tab and still on empty, I raided the fridge when I got home. 
I started walking into restaurants irritable before I even sat down. “Gimme those veggies” I demanded. “I know you’re hiding them back there”, not realizing if I got lucky I would also pay a premium for what lands in the dumpster most of the time.

I decided to alter my strategy. I shopped hard and found a restaurant that served sides of veggies and a personal trainer tending the bar. Surely, I had found one of my tribe. I thought I was winning with my broccoli and spinach order until I got a serving of some kind of genetically engineered species  so bitter I couldn’t eat it called “broccoli rabe”, which is mostly a cellulose stalk with tiny buds at the end.

“They usually mix those with olives, capers, and garlic”, he told me. 
“No kidding” I said, and asked if they had real broccoli with fat sweet verdant heads back there. 
“Yeah, but I have to leave the bar and negotiate with the kitchen. It’s a real pain”. 
I assumed the Irritated Position. “This rabe stuff will turn me into a Cyborg! Who are they saving the Real Broccoli for?” He laughed, made a trip to the kitchen, and I got RB. 
“Don’t expect this every time you come in here. Maybe when it’s slow”.

The next time I walked in, since Dana Carvey eats there too, I started singing his broccoli bit. This was good, the bartender cracked up. I refined my comedy routine some more. I told him I priced out bumper stickers and it wouldn’t cost much to print a pile and hand them out - 
“Free The Vegetables” 
After a few months of being an entertaining customer, I was scoring authentic veggies I could recognize. The kitchen knows me. 
“She’s out there again. Free The Broccoli.”

I walked into the local Vitamin Shoppe today. John is there and he’s very smart about everything in his store. 
“Hey John, have you noticed you can’t even find red colored fruit or blue colored berries in cans to stockpile for the End of the World without all that bad stuff in it for pies?” 
“Yeah, actually I’ve noticed that. We’ve got concentrated blueberry and pomegranate juices, about $15 a bottle. Lots of anti-oxidants and resveratrol.”

“What? That much for juice concentrate? What’s going on?”

“Darn if I know.”

I wanted to finish this blog entry weeks ago, but something stopped me. When this happens, I know there’s more out there worth waiting for. I decided to take a break. A local restaurant makes a salad worth ordering and fills the big plate. I waited until 9 pm to get a seat at the busy bar. On one side, a woman checks out my monster designer salad several times as she tries to finish a slab of meat with mashed potatoes. On the other, a man of “a certain age” is hunched over and stabilizing himself on the counter with both elbows as he finishes his halibut. Left on his plate is a nice pile of organic greens, looking good. He folds his napkin. He’s done.

I can’t watch this. “You’re not eating your veggies?”

“No, I’m full. You want them?” I tell him thanks, but I’ll pass. 
“Take them with you” I suggest. “They will keep you out of the doctor’s office. Works for me.” 
He says nothing. Maybe I need to speak up, so I say it again.

“I heard you. I don’t want them”.

The week after this, I was rewarded with a herd of incoming web posts piled into a couple days. Jamie Oliver decided to take a video cam to the streets like Morgan Spurlock in “Supersize Me”. He targeted Huntington, West Virginia, where half the population is considered obese. The video viralized on the web immediately. I found it on Youtube. Then Jamie was invited to the TED conference. Now his video has taken over Facebook.

I heard Dan Buettner on NPR in my car a day before Jamie, claiming longevity is only 10% genetics. Dang. I was living on empty hope. My grandmother lived to be 104. So now I’m paying attention.

Dan identifies “Blue Zones” as locations where people live longest. In Sardinia, it’s mostly men. Their secret is a plant-based diet and their treatment of older people (who knew?). The special wine Grandmother makes has a positive effect on the grandkids too.

In Okinawa, it’s the women. Again, a plant based diet and undernourishment. They stop eating when full. They’re on the skinny side. They have no word for "retirement".

In the US the Blue Zone Award goes to Seventh Day Adventists in Loma Linda, California. Their plant-based diet is from the Bible. Their social network is their live community. They do lots of nature walks. They move “naturally”, constantly motivated into daily activity. Their body is always in motion.

All these Blue Zone people have something else in common. They share a common outlook on life. Prayer, veneration of ancestors, a sense of belonging to the right tribe, a faith-based community, and social networks. They surround themselves with the right people to hang out with. Friends are long-term adventures that are “the best thing you can do to add life to your years and years to your life” Dan comments.

My experience starting up and living in what is now labeled “green” communities verifies what Dan says. We were also committed to diversity. Members of vast age differences contributed variant views and skills, were well informed, and sources of boundless information. A passion for expression was considered a gift to the group, not a platform for debate or a smack-down opportunity.

In my view, as well as others like Hans Selye, tolerance for differences removes the acrimony of constant bickering over perceived truths. Medical science has proven this can elevate stress hormones and cause premature aging.

The next day, Extropist Examiner quoted a study walking barefoot activates your soles, sending signals to the brain to grow more neuron connections, which can prevent Alzheimer’s in older adults. Another post on Yahoo claims people who sit all day are prematurely killing themselves. Sitting is apparently leading to an explosion of non-ambulatory status in older adults. I believe it because I have to jump out of the way more often on a public sidewalk to avoid a battery operated wheelchair exceeding the speed limit.

What’s this surge in the news all about? And why is there no backlash over all this claiming discrimination? Could it be the health of Americans, regardless of age, is costing all of us a pile of money? Maybe its time to realize it’s up to each of us, with freedom so far to eat when and what we want, to eat our veggies. I cling to hope that soon I’ll see a picket line in front of a school by trim and athletic looking Mothers Against Disgusting Deprivation of veggies taking it to the next level.

If I sound opinionated, maybe that’s good. Veggies hurt a lot less than the alternative. And people are stealing them off my plate.

Reform. Health-Care Style

A seasoned and well-respected politician went on record recently describing our new century so far as The Biggest Loser. In his opinion, because people lost money, possessions, homes, jobs, and health insurance, it should be scrapped.

Losing any of this is a harsh reality. Losing all of it at once is traumatic. I know, because I did, including and entire family. But I’m still here, and my enthusiasm about what people are creating around me couldn’t be better. I hunt daily for exciting transformations I can jump into and be part of, realizing I haven’t lost my future.

What this politician seems to have apparently lost is his awareness of the historic revolution occurring in our brains. All the inventiveness in cosmology, medicine, health, music, mathematics, physics, biology, environmental science, genetics, business, communication, and social networks is hard to miss. Even more disconcerting is the realization those we voted into office could be so inattentive. For his pessimistic view, there are a dozen optimistic ones to replace it, but the grades lately on the State of the Union seem to be D’s and F’s. Dread, Fear, and now, Failure.

This is one reason why I think many in our new century are so disenchanted and disconnected from their society and the political, governmental and corporate institutions they depended on for  health of their country and their survival. Many were born in time to experience the Great Depression, first Global Wars, Ecology and Peace Movement of the ‘60’s, and now the Digital Technology Revolution of the 21^st Century. Many could benefit from an upbeat report on our brain’s ability to change, expand, and improve our world in any way we choose.

A Body is a Terrible Thing to Waste

I view our national healthcare crisis a crisis of mental health. The perceived limitations of our body and brain and lack of awareness of the massive scientific accomplishments in the last ten years is a Silent Killer. It has resulted in a self-imposed alienation by a last century mindset that is distancing millions further from society and each other, the majority who will live much longer than they planned on.

Healthcare reform is galvanizing Washington right now, but what for and for whom? People want freedom from pain and disease, but as Deepak Chopra documented, cultures we want to emulate that are over 100 years old with lucid awareness and excellent health got there in ways most are unwilling to do. As long as there is on-demand affordable medical attention to fix the smallest of hurts, what’s the incentive? A video of a 102 year-old woman who never had a healthcare plan, carrying firewood up ten flights of stone stairs and then back down to carry up the great-great-great-grandkids, creates a shockwave of disbelief in many viewers.

The Dolphin Club, swimming out of San Francisco to Alcatraz and back daily are a bunch of “oldsters”, made famous along with others in “Growing Old Is Not For Sissies”. One of my 70-something bicycle-racing friends, who got me into racing, is still racing. He just returned from his annual group tour of 12 days of 80 to 100 miles of 7500 vertical feet daily, riding the best mountain sections of the Tour de France route. When I called him to confirm my estimates weren’t overblown, he was offended and crunched more impressive numbers for me out of his head. He also confirmed the others were younger and didn’t have to wait. His secret is not diet or medical insurance, which he barely uses. He just never gets off the bike.

The Lost Generation

In the ‘60’s, where massive opposition to an older generation ruled, the majority who were disrupting Town Hall meetings on health care reform last year were of “a certain age”. “Boomers” preparing to “retire”, targeted all they had left - their impending mortality and key politicians and lawmakers voted into office on the Internet that are younger and healthier.

Where have these revolutionaries and visionaries been all this time since they fearlessly disrupted their university campuses vigorously enough to risk their mortality and get themselves shot decades ago? Why didn’t they follow through on their altruistic agendas rather than tune in, turn on, and drop out? Are we not cheering them on because the voting majority doesn’t even know their team existed? Why did it take an ecology movement so long to get moving? Does this affect our confidence in their ability to create change? It’s tougher still, when the memorable local news on our influential elders is a 911 response to a retirement community because residents are rioting over other residents pirating their parking spaces. Do we view this as socially relevant? Is this the legacy they plan on leaving us?

When I ask someone why they are “retiring”, which is my version of getting a good night’s sleep after a five hour bike ride, they tell me they want to “stop working”. When I ask what they plan to start, I don’t get much back other than play with the grandkids and get a grip on that landscaping and the lawn. When they ask me what I plan to do, my first thought is I have to check Wiki for the definition of “retire”, because now I’m confused. I don’t plan to stop anything.

Those “retired” and planning to “retire” seem completely disinterested in communing with a younger, politically powerful, brilliantly savvy information rich generation who just might have keys to the car. Their effective lobbyists are “youngsters” right under their nose, who just pulled of a stunning revival of their discarded ecology agenda.

Generation gaps are nothing new. Older people know too much to listen to younger people who know too little. This may have sounded valid in the last century but it doesn’t now. My parents thought this way, and the exceptions are few. Isn’t this getting, uh, old?

In my local bank is a sign “donate a laprobe to the elderly”. My comment to the teller was “I thought it said donate a laptop to the elderly, and I have an extra one”. She told me she was sorry, retirement facilities don’t accept laptops. Somewhere though, R&D money is surfacing for the development of robotic teddy bears to keep company with our elders until their brains wear out, at a time when Alzheimer’s disease is an epidemic. And science has proven an active brain dramatically reduces the frequency of this catastrophic end to life. Nuns live longer and smarter because they just hang out playing complicated card games and doing crossword puzzles for entertainment.

What if retirees pooled some money after they mow the lawn and provide Wifi to nursing homes? Would helping an elder learn how to use my donated laptop to discover the world and socially network with other nursing home residents be one way to contribute to health care reform?

Do It Yourself

Self-advocacy, thanks to our new electronic world and social networks, is the gift we have given ourselves in a new century. Even now, my chosen primary care physician of many years still has the same response after a five-minute conversation. “Well, you probably know more about this than I do. Let me know what you come up with and we’ll go from there”. In no way do I view him as a clueless professional. He’s been around and still does his own research. I view him as a collaborative partner, and he goes with it because he knows I take responsibility to zero in on myself first. He takes responsibility for ruling over the final diagnosis and follows through if more is involved. It’s a win-win. We both learn, and I save a lot of money.

I don’t know anyone in my network community that doesn’t surf the Internet for answers to their illness, injury, and fitness. The load on physicians, surgeons, and diagnosticians is so huge, there is no way we can expect them to be current on everything. The minute they graduate, research as memorialized in a phonebook-sized PDR bought fresh out of med school is obsolete. Primary care physicians have dropped off the radar to make room for specialists in a thousand fields of fresh expertise, resulting in a committee required to figure out what’s wrong with us.

It’s a scientific fact many with disease recover, sometimes miraculously, through self-advocacy. By taking charge, they rocket their immune system into high gear. Refusing to be victimized by disease and not handing all the controls over to others is how humans have survived against tremendous odds. If you visit the Lance Armstrong Foundation website, there’s a miraculous story daily to prove how effective self-advocacy can be. Lance was invited on our training ride just before his disease, and even then, he was self-advocating and fearless. It’s in his blood. When people challenge me about his purported blood “enhancement”, I tell them, all he’s got in him is fearless blood. I think that alone is the key to his survival and success.

How do we patch all this? Maybe we don’t, whoever “we” are now. Too much agenda already. Live and let live. Like dinosaurs, adapt or face extinction. This is the world as we have known it, and many still don’t feel fine, so maybe it’s time for another approach. We’re smarter than dinosaurs. We’ve had some time to enhance our DNA. We’ve learned from lifetimes of experience. We’ve run out of excuses for just sitting this one out.

The Brain That Changes Itself

If decades researching science on the brain and my own experience has enlightened me on anything, it’s that we can change our brain, which is like any other muscle. It needs regular strengthening or it atrophies. Being athletic also helps enormously with the blood flow up there.  

Contrary to previous reports, we don’t use part of our brain capacity, we use all of it. Instrumentation shows every millimeter of the brain lights up with activity. We can activate all of it just by choosing to do so. There appears to be no speed limit or cap on the bandwidth of our brain. IQ tests indicate we just keep getting smarter, faster. Brains of all ethnicities, culture, and age, regardless of genetics add 3 IQ points every ten years. Since World War II, statistics add 12 more every ten years for a total of 15. Adding another 6 for being Dutch totals 21. If you live in the US, add about ten more for the heritable influences of a technology revolution approaching the speed of light, and 30 sounds like a brain revolution in action.

People want science to prove anything. We are addicted to the word. It dispels our uneasy feelings about belief, disbelief, and skepticism. It’s the new Comfort Food. “I was skeptical I existed until science proved it to me.“ If people want proof, now they have it in great supply, thanks to piles of data our brain has created through new forms of technology.

In “The Brain That Changes Itself”, Norman Doidge confirms changing how and what we think changes our brain and changes our lives. Our human vehicle is a miracle of science. We have a fully functioning R-complex, limbic system, pre-frontal cortex, and left and right hemispheric processors performing surgical distinction between calculative logic and full virtual perception, all with regenerative plasticity. We are a five dimensional, fully equipped cloud computing organism with renewable software capable of such synaptic orchestration and creative brilliance it will take another ten years for the Blue Brain Project to replicate all of it and potentially replace our brains. It’s making impressive progress, so if we’re slacking . .

As David Wilcock comments “This is not a cosmic ‘light switch’ that you sit around waiting for – it is an elective process where you either reach higher and higher states of inspiration . . .  or are further and further shaken to pieces if you cling to the riverbank in fear of who and what you are.”

New Year’s Resolution - I won't be a Sofer

Yes, I know. On the top of your list is to get in shape this year. Again.
There’s a fancy word for mental resolve that fizzles out – recidivism. Sounds a lot better than wimping out, doesn’t it?
"I’m not wimping out, I’m just recidivising my resolutions".
Yeah! That ought to get them off you and send them packing to Wiki so you have time to strategize getting off the sofa and out of the fridge by the time you have your next conversation . .
What is it about the brain’s miraculous ability to make us wimp out on our New Year’s resolutions? A recent article by Jonah Lehrer, an Oxford University Rhodes Scholar, neuroscientist, and contributing editor to the Wall Street Journal, Wired, Scientific American, and NPR’s Radio Lab, gave me a clue. Like me, Jonah is a fan of the brain. He considers resolutions exactly the wrong way to change our brain’s behavior. "Develop respect for our feebleness of self-control", he says. It’s normal for the brain to be stubborn.
But here’s where it gets weirdly interesting. Jonah reports many experiments with willpower were identical to working a muscle. A bicep has limitations. Ask it to lift a load too heavy and the load drops to the floor. The same is true for the pre-frontal cortex, which, as I have written before, hasn’t developed in evolution like other parts of our brain. It hasn’t expanded enough to handle the load we expect it to carry. Experiments indicate after a long day at the office, most will eat and drink more after work. The "cognitive load" from an all day workout reduces self-control just like it reduces the strength of an overworked muscle.
"Most of us consider lack of self-control a character issue" Jonah says, "But this research suggests that willpower itself is inherently limited, and that our January promises fail in large part because the brain wasn't built for success."
One experiment he describes seems very relevant to this post, as well to my own experience. A group was asked not to think of a white elephant for five minutes and given another task to do with numbers. The control group didn’t have a white elephant to worry about forgetting. Next, both groups were asked to test a new brand of beer, after which they knew they would have to drive home. Sure enough, the white elephant group drank more.
Now here’s the irony for me. I was trying to lose a whopping 35 pounds on a five-foot frame after a year hitch-hiking in Europe. Those who picked me up insisted on buying me a meal before dropping me back off on the road. Back in the US, it never failed. Go to lunch with some people from the office. I order a salad. If they’re a little on the heavy side, "is that all you’re going to order? You’ll starve, etc.". Now I have to forget the "white elephant" menu staring back at me. And you know the rest.
After a year of this, I got smart. In my brain. I decided to lighten the load on my pre-frontal cortex. "Is that all you’re going to order . . . 
"Uh, yeah. I had huevos rancheros for breakfast (or lunch, a snack, or both) and I’ve got a brick in my stomach". Bam. Silence at the table. The dogs had backed off my pre-frontal cortex and the white elephant was gone. I trimmed back down to 100 pounds fast.
The same worked with my cycling training. "You’re doing 100 miles today? Are you crazy? (not an athlete speaking) . . "Yeah, haven’t ridden in a month. My muscles are twitching, can’t sleep, got pulled over for speeding and if I don’t get this out of me I’ll take on another waitperson . . ." 
Silence. I roll out the door. I only did 50 yesterday. Today to make up for it, I do 100. Brains and muscles can do amazing things.
Jonah’s conclusion? Willpower requires real brain energy. Here are a few ways he thinks we weaken our brain muscle:
Task overload – you decide to cut down on eating then do an 80 mile ride then pay the bills then do the laundry then make the dental appointment . . .
Skipping brain snacks - brains need healthy fuel.
Sit and stand up straight - this discipline alone leads to more success with other brain disciplines according to Jonah.
Delay gratification - research by Walter Mischel at Columbia University and others has demonstrated that "People who are better at delaying gratification don't necessarily have more restraint. Instead, they seem to be better at finding ways to get tempting thoughts out of their minds." Not only that, high delayers get higher SAT scores "because they know that willpower is weak. They excel at controlling the spotlight of attention. When faced with candy, they stare at the carrots."
Jonah’s final suggestion is the use of distraction:
"The lesson is that the prefrontal cortex can be bulked up, and that practicing mental discipline in one area, such as posture, can also make it easier to resist Christmas cookies. . . when a dangerous desire starts coming on, just remember: Gritting your teeth isn't the best approach, as even the strongest mental muscles quickly get tired. Instead, find a way to look at something else."
Writing is tough discipline. I’m angry today because I won’t get out and ride on a cold rainy day, pay the bills, go the hardware store . . . So, today I do something else I equally enjoy. I write. That's it for today. The next ride will be an explosion of pent-up energy and too much fun. White elephant gone.
Your next refrigerator post? Stand and sit up straight . . .

Avatar

My laptop notes on the two recent conferences I attended in LA might be scary stuff for many people - artificial intelligence, immersive digital gaming, genetics and DNA manipulation, human enhancement technology, mind control, androids, robots, personal avatars . . .
Scary enough for me to attend, as mentioned in my previous blog entry. Another big conference buzz was the upcoming film “Avatar”.
So I went to see it when it opened.
I prepared to be subliminally programmed and blasted with more “Matrix” and “2012” conspiracy theory on mind control and The End of the World. I was sitting in the back row. Through it all, the number of people who had to take off their 3-D glasses, squirm out of their seat in a sold-out theater and sprint to the lobby was staggering. . . popcorn, the restroom, their texts . . . My view was constantly interrupted.
How do you explain this in Marin County, home of ILM (George Lucas) that created the digital imagery for this film? What was nervy to these people no other ILM production and story line seemed to deliver on an opening night? Most didn’t even wait for the credits, another big no-no for locals.
I checked out some movie reviews later. Several reviewers accused Avatar of being a re-purposed “Dancing With Wolves”.
Sure, the Na’vi on Pandora looked rather native, and the White-Guy-turned-treasonist hero could have been You-Know-Who, but to me, that just described a movie reviewer who had to get up for popcorn, the restroom, text . . .
Is that all they got out of it? That’s too benign, considering the behavior of the audience at the first public showing. Is it possible many reviewers and movie-goers are unaware of our amazing technological present and our even more amazing future? Is it time, after throwing away the TV to throw another one again and find out what's really happening?
The plot for this film is vanilla sci-fi and a good dose of operating reality so far on Planet Earth. There are giveaways like the "military industrial complex", conquering space, taking down alien civilizations, and like the hero in "Indiana Jones" grabbing The Big Goodie.
The simplicity of the White Guy's predicament is what allowed me to see everything else going on in this film. His spine, blasted to pieces in an unpopular war leaves him a paraplegic. The Military transports him to a rehab Mother Ship, but he’s now worthless as a fighting machine. They decide to use him as a disposable Avatar on planet Pandora to infiltrate the Na’vi and find their “unobtanium”. (the one funny morpheme in the film).
His brain is transported to this fantastical utopia Trekkie-style, and our hero has an “out-of-body” moment on Visit One. As his new Avatar-double, he discovers he’s not only super-human, he’s got his legs back.
They can’t control him. Knocking down the furniture and everything else, he escapes his orientation military camp in a state of euphoria, running his superhuman legs and heart out.
The film has a happy ending. He dumps his paralytic reality and chooses his Avatar reality (well, what would you do?). His Pandora Squeeze, who has been assigned to him as a guide by the clueless Na’vi, demonstrates in her spare time how to do just about everything fun, including mastery of a wildly fantastic horse and a spactacularly raptor-esque bird, reminiscent of the strategic creation in the animated "Ants".
Of course this is all sci-fi. Maybe. After these conferences, I’m not so sure.
Still searching for a clue, I opened my file on brain science a week later to write a piece on Avatar. I found a torn-out article from MensVogue I bought in an airport a few years ago written by D.T. Max, a Harvard graduate and book reviewer. The title “Wired for Victory. Can a bunch of electrodes and a computer screen help you swim faster?” got my attention.
Now I’m reading it again. This sounds like the White Guy/Avatar. Max mentions “the zone” and biofeedback performed on athletes like Katy. Connected to biofeedback, she is described by her evaluator as “looking at nothing and everything”, “emptying out her brain”, and “a suspension of doubt” that results in her optimal athletic performance.
Aha. The White Guy/Avatar.
Max, at the end of his article, mentions a Morgan Stanley manager who, after biofeedback had a tennis game performance “that soared”. And after biofeedback, Max, a swimmer, was in the pool on a lap swim when he felt “a familiar light joyousness” in his body. When the pain of his messed up shoulder came up, he envisioned “speeding waves of alpha” carrying him along. Enjoying his liberating mindlessness, “I felt I was no longer alone. A dolphin was leading me. My body began undulating like a brain wave. I followed my friend with pleasure. He was always ahead of me.”
Max was describing his instant “knowingness” how to swim like a dolphin. He forgot his shoulder, the pool, time . . .
“Every so often, I would hear a distinct “ding” in my brain. The positive audio reinforcement that rewards open concentration during neurofeedback. I got out of the water. The dolphin was gone. I looked at my watch. I had broken my previous best and my shoulder hurt like hell.”
Our White Guy hated returning to the Military Mothership planning its assault on Pandora. He needed a wheelchair. He hurt like hell. Only on Pandora could he best his human self every time.
I didn’t get at all this film was another “Dancing With Wolves”. I think the reviewers totally missed the point, and maybe half the audience.
The White Guy was in The Zone, and his brain transported him there. With a little help from science.

Smacking down Santa, astrology, and myth

I have been recently checking out the hundreds of asteroids discovered by cosmologists near 1997 who were apparently unconsciously naming them after more Greek mythological gods and goddesses, like the planets in our solar system. What could be the significance of this?
Participating in the third dimension involves the playing out of The Game (I love Florence Scovel Shinn's take on this) through mythology, legend, ritual, and storytelling. When we do this, we honor our ancestry by initiating the new ones (cultural respect).
I don't doubt realities like "Indigo children" and those born with a new wired brain. These incarnates are less inclined to participate in ritual and myth because they were born with different frequencies and resonance that allow them to remember instantaneously what The Game really is.
I do think however, if we are to own our responsibility to help others through this shift of awareness, we need, as a traditional saying recommends "when in Rome, do as the Romans do".
The I Ching infers this in the hexagram "The Wanderer". When we want to learn and influence, we cross borders. We explore with the intention to enlarge ourselves through empathy. We will be diminished however, if we are responded to as if we are an alien (even if we are!). In fact, there are those who believe “extraterrestrials” will not walk the planet with us until we stop with the alienating behavior toward aliens.
Many are wanderers now, disenfranchised from all kinds of indigenous cultures, family, lovers, careers, heritage, and shaken from the harshness of diaspora.
Few of us have a village of origin now that we remain in for long. Our survival requires us to be vigilant in our awareness of our current environment. We must learn the local language and customs if we are to be effective in our influence. We must differentiate between those who want to be our friend rather than our enemy. It is to everyone's advantage we are accepted by those who come to hear our message.
My view of astrology is one of validation. The original physicists and astronomers were called astrologers, and they did a darn good job of downloading some cosmic realities it has taken Hubble to validate centuries later. They also did a great job of developing myth as a tool for understanding and linking third dimensional reality to other realities.
Many people in this dimension will always need "science". They will always need "God". And they will always need ritual, myth, and a little help coloring inside the lines. Right now, they need Santa!
I think the more we maintain our sense of humor about The Game and all its oddities and amazement, the longer we will live successfully with each other, no matter what dimension or game we choose.
I choose to believe every dimension needs to laugh at itself for perceived weaknesses, guilt, fear, or whatever incompleteness is chosen. Free will is a choice, not a default, so give Santa half a chance!

Sexuality, Part Deux

I attended a couple conferences this past weekend dedicated to the latest technology and developments in all things humanly enhancing. Genetics, robotics, mechanical surrogates, artificial intelligence, computer systems that replicate the human brain, biomimicry, longevity, dystopic science fiction, empathetic game development, N-dimensions . . .
I made a list of words to websearch from this huge table of goodies after I left. One out of four failed spell-check. This is how rapidly our language is changing to suit our desires.
From these conferences, I realize we now have numerous choices for sexual expression. Either enhancement through immersive media (a.k.a. “digital sex”) enhancement through human partnered frequency acceleration (a.k.a. “great sex”), celibacy (a.k.a. a challenge to auto-eroticism), or asexuality and old age (a.k.a. “I don’t care - anymore”). Because the biological imperative to replicate overpowers all other third dimensional synaptic processes, we can’t make sex go away, so we continue to invent new forms of entertaining ourselves. We just can’t find a cure.
To most of us, the proliferation of human sexual expression cannot be enhanced in currently perceived reality without consciousness rituals or chemicals. Either our brain chemicals or chemicals we ingest or inject. If chemical, we still have control of our free will - how often, with what, and with whom we enhance our sexual response, if admitted to or not. Fortunately, we have the professional race car industry and the aging population to thank for bringing that one out of the closet. The first wave of human enhancement.
We can also choose to immerse ourselves in real-time human interaction to maximize our innate capacity to trigger synapses in our brains. This however, involves a lot of discipline, practice, and awareness. Many of us know the extent the Japanese, Hindu, and other cultures ritualize sex to an impressive degree. When I was at Baktapur in Nepal, the temple friezes were littered with carved depictions of every imaginable sexual interaction humans could have with each other to reach a state of bliss. The Nepalese have added to the business of reproduction inventive forms of transcendent states of consciousness, a highly valued commodity.
Innovative virtual technologies offer us more choice. Not much practice involved here. Just an admission ticket or the expense of enhancement toys, surgical procedures, genetic re-mapping, virtual immersion, or embedded chips. Many of these enhancements can affect our free will however. We may turn ourselves over to be manipulated or altered so our limited human development of our senses are stimulated and enhanced. Then we just go along for the ride. Or so it seems.
What was interesting at these conferences however, was the still-present hushness about “digital sex”. It was mentioned maybe twice, and fast. Just a quickie. No formal presentations on the program. Even more interesting, the word “consciousness” was practically banned. Two conferees referred to it as the “C” word after a few others smacked it down. They may as well have tried to pull off the same thing with the “S” word.
Once paired with another human, sexual experience is either overt or covert. Chinese society is more direct about sex than Americans are. Their political controls of how humans interact with each other or the digital electronic media world are potent. Although the number of children born to a family is restricted, and the recent expose about the subjection of humans to electro-shock therapy to cure video game addiction was a shock, the Chinese culture covertly allows sexual behavior with another human as an enhancement to monogamy. It is not “penalized”.
I have always found the term “penalize” in our society oxymoronic. It implies our relationship with the aggressive part of passive-aggressive sex is a negative expression of human behavior and needs to be punished in some way.
The United States is one of the few nations with an expectation of monogamy. Humans however, can demand more input from their monogamous partner than is deliverable within the limits of human expression. This dilemma is rarely expressed openly in our society. It is tethered to endless forms of psychoanalytic, therapeutic, and religious devotion to maintain an enhancement-free experience. Tabloid news feeds on infractions of monogamy, and humans are the victims of the poison called Shame. Lack of discipline. Lack of acceptable performance. Lack of gender commitment. Lack of anything.
In my opinion, enhancement through immersive media is becoming the compromise we could make to maintain monogamous agreements with other humans and salvage our self-imposed shame. Sex is so contentious, so loaded, so complicated, and so messy to most humans, many of us are more than ready to opt out of the human experience for the virtual one. How are we to penalize humans for participating in or enhancing themselves for a virtual sexual experience?
“It’s not what you think Dear. I just spent Friday night at the FullDome Immersion Multiplex. Look at our kids. They live in that computer with their games night and day. No big deal.”
The Ultimate Safe Sex. No touchy-feely.
So, is this where we are? It’s easy to make sex a dirty word, but now we must add consciousness too? What’s next on the hush list in our brave new world?
We do like the term “chemistry” to describe that rare event with another human where some kind of bliss is experienced in sex. It's one acceptable option to a "natural" experience. But, chemistry can also make us complete idiots. Zombies. Even killers of other humans. We forget to pay the bills, and if sex isn’t consummated with our significant other, we stupidly leave crumbs all over the place so we will be, yep, you guessed it, penalized. Our life will never be the same when we are found out.
“Hi, my name is Shame, and this is my first meeting. I am a blissaholic.”
What I’m curious about regarding all this emerging technology in human enhancement of experience and body image is the pay-off. And, the potential sacrifice in our complex human arena with each other.
Your call.

It's Not My Dog

I’m descending on the bike from the top of Mt. Tamalpais north of San Francisco, and the November wind chill is to-the-bone. I break out my emergency stash of produce section plastic bags and roll them up each arm under my windbreaker for a vapor barrier. I have on my neoprene gloves and arm warmers and foot warmers and head hood with just my nose and eyes exposed. I have everything on, and still wondering why I’m the only one out here doing this in a frigid wind.
At the Depot book store in Mill Valley, I’m done with the descent and its warm and sunny with no wind. Customers are parked outside at tables in parkas with their lattes, soaking it up. Inside, I window-shop the desserts.
“Just give me that large slice of cherry pie on a napkin, no plate please”.
“To-go box?”
“Nope. It will be eaten as of, right now”.
I’m back outside. The brick pavers are warm. My pie is warm. I sit on the pavers. A dog that may be some kind of Border Shepard/Collie mix circles me. Not on a leash. Great. I’ve got irritating company. He stops with two feet between us and stares at me, then my pie. I’m ready to jump.
“Don’t even think about it”.
He doesn’t say anything. He just stands there looking at me like I am already boring him.
Fine. I keep eating. And he just watches me, then my pie. Me, the pie. Me, the pie . . . whatever. The minute I cave and give him a crumb, an owner will pounce and tell me not to feed human food to their dog off a leash.
I split off a piece of crust and hold it out in my hand. I don’t care. This is the most civilized dog I have ever met, and sure enough, he clamps down on it with the expertise of a famous brain surgeon. Nice try, but he won’t do that again now that he knows there’s butter in the crust.
Who trained this dog to have such amazing table manners? He doesn’t have any signs of dominance by an Alpha Human. I look around. No one is watching us.
“Sit.”
“Sit.”

“Lay down.”
“Sit.”

No action. Maybe he speaks French. I give him another crumb, then another. He’s so good at common courtesy, why stress him out?
Now I’m up to the second group of people passing by and checking out this delicate ritual.
“Is that your dog?”
“No.”
“You dog is so well behaved!”
“It’s not my dog.”
“Whose dog is it?”
“I don’t know.”
By the time a third guy asks me about my very civilized dog, I have been doing some thinking. What if I could behave like this in a meeting? Or waiting my turn to impress the speaker just down from the podium? Or at the checkout when they open another checkout line?
“So far he’s got all my crust. I was just thinking, why can’t I be like this? Just stand there. They all know what I want, but I’m not rushing them. I’ll out-wait them. What would I have to lose? So far this dog is scoring Big-Time.”
He laughs. “Yeah, interesting point.”

The pie is gone. I show my admiration for his character. I let him lick the napkin clean. He parts the crumbs from the paper napkin like the aforementioned brain surgeon. I fold up the napkin, he backs up, and walks off. Game over. Just like that.
I’m a little stunned. He circles the plaza two more times in hang-out mode. I get back on my bike and roll out. There he is again at the end of the plaza, no owner in sight. Stopping to water a light pole, he then trots up the street.
He’s got tags. He’s got an owner. He looks taken care of. But he’s going slow. He’s an old dog.
But, this is no ordinary dog threatened by a dog catcher just screaming to jail anything off a leash in a county very tough on vagrants. He’s a long time local with no incidences. And knows how to score. It’s obvious. They leave him alone. Who wouldn’t?
This was a great day for a ride.
Why can’t people be like that, which includes me? Next time I’m in line for something or can’t get what I want . . .