Ode to the Cheese Steak

 I grew up in Philadelphia where the major culinary achievement is the "Cheese Steak" - a huge mound of finely sliced well browned meat cooked on a grill with fried onions and served on a long bun dripping with grease.

The chefs are usually bulky Italian guys with a few tattoes wearing white T shirts.










Cheese is actually optional but if desired, "the sine qua non of cheesesteak connoisseurs" is actually Cheese Whiz. If you want a steak with onions and cheese, you say in true Philly accent "Whiz, Wit". 

Cheese steaks are not just for the common man. President Obama visited Reading Terminal just to get a real cheese steak.

Cheese steaks were developed in the 1930's in South Philadelphia and South Philly is still the promised land. I lived on cheese steaks for my entire misspent youth. Unfortunately this cuisine does not travel well, and when I left Philadelphia to make my  mark in the world, a lingering nostalgia was all I had left. I once tried ordering Fedexed steaks from Pat's in South Philly for a "Philadelphia brunch" with some old friends now living in LA. But alas, the magic had passed and all that is left is a salivating memory.

M27 or Dumbell Nebula

Images were taken on October 28, 2010, from my back yard observatory with an RCX400 10 inch telescope using an SBIG ST2000XCM single shot color CCD. Two 8 min images were processed and stacked. M27 is a gas bubble ejected from a star at the end of its life. The gas is glowing from UV light emitted by the star. M27 is around 1000 light years distant.

The End of Things

The two dolphins swam side by side and carried on a lively discussion using the high pitched sounds known as the Pacific Dolphin language.  

“Why do you think the humans became extinct in the 21^st century? They had so much going for them – intelligence, ambition, technical abilities. I  know that the environment became degraded and that was the ultimate reason, but what were the real reasons?"

“ Well, they just could not stop breeding and the billions of humans did some pretty bad things – both knowingly and unknowingly. For example, in the early years of the 21^st century, their climate scientists discovered that the production of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” was trapping heat from the sun and causing the temperature of the atmosphere and even the ocean to rise. They predicted with a high level of probability the consequences of this “runaway”  greenhouse effect as increased intensity of storms, changes in weather patterns resulting in the loss of regions suitable for agriculture, extinction of animal species such as the coral reefs in the ocean which we used to enjoy visiting, melting of the world’s glaciers that produced most of the fresh water for the billions of humans, and  in rising in world-wide ocean levels resulting in flooding of coastal regions and cities and in migrations of millions of people who would be displaced by flooding and loss of fresh water. However, there were people throughout the world, and especially in the United States, who believed more in their crazy religions than in science and their religions told them that Armageddon was coming and they could do nothing about it.  These "climate change deniers" in the United States were known as “Republicans”, and they convinced many people and had an enormous amount of power in determining how the country would respond to this crisis. They just closed their minds and let the changes occur, and this behavior had an enormous effect on the rest of the world.”

 “In fact the only people who actually understood what was happening and why were the military. They could see that these changes would affect the security of their nations. In a  few countries the militaries actually took over the governments and tried to force changes in behavior, but it was already too late.  The changes were irreversible.  Even the imposition of martial law in the “rich” countries to prevent unwanted immigration simply led to wars with their neighbor countries over the vanishing resources."

“And closely tied in with these changes was the major problem that humans were innately aggressive and loved to fight each other, instead of helping each other as we do. Again, in the United States, there was actually an organization known as the “National Rifle Association” that essentially financially owned or frightened the ruling politicians into believing that guns were not instruments to kill but toys to play with and that everyone should have a gun.  This of course, combined with all the disintegration of society that was occurring,  led to a vast amount of bloodshed, and this mentality of aggression and selfish nationalism actually led countries to use nuclear weapons before it was  impossible to do so, which caused even more environmental degradation and loss of life.” 

“Very rapidly the environment became almost uninhabitable due to the lack of water and food and the radioactive destruction of the cities. Cities were abandoned and millions of people migrated northward, destroying other cities and other regions. Even the resulting great kill-off of humans did not solve the problems, and eventually the earth began to look like  the hot house planet, Venus.  I believe that the last humans died off by the end of the 21^stcentury, at least as far as we could tell."

“We dolphins also suffered greatly but the ocean mitigated many of the worst problems and our ancestors eventually evolved to be able to live in the warm water and began our rapid climb to becoming the next great intelligent tool-using species.”

“Do you think that this sort of thing will happen to the dolphin civilization?”

“It is always possible, but I believe that we have learned some important lessons from the extinction of humans”.

I Felt a Blog Coming On

I woke up this morning and felt a blog coming on. I told my wife, "Wife, I feel a blog coming on." She said "Take a Tums and you will feel better". But after a rousing “Danny Boy” on my violin, the feeling went away and I went to the lab. I spent the day revising my undergraduate course web site
(http://dna.kdna.ucla.edu/168-2010/Default.aspx) and redoing all the links. I even inserted a few edifying secret links for the students to find.

Looks like the University may have me to kick around for another three years as I explore the structure of the RNA editing core complex. The NIH renewal is not yet in hand but it looks good. Life is good but retirement always has that sparkling attractiveness of novelty.

I have been spending evenings out in my telescope shed trying to get everything working together so I can begin imaging again. I can easily recognize almost every star in the visible night sky. But I was put in my place when I went to a “dark site” outside LA and saw the real thing. There were so many stars that I could not even identify a single one.  That is what cockiness will get you!

Recommendation

I just read a great blog that eloquently expresses many of my own thoughts.
It is called "The Secret Life of White-Wing Conservatives" and is at http://deaniemills.com/.
Check it out.

A Disturbing Thought

There is something disturbing going on in the State of Denmark. First let me stress that I strongly support President Obama and other Democrats. However, there are now a list of actions that I find objectionable:

- Expanding the useless and extremely wasteful war in Afghanistan.
- Keeping people in prison for years without any charges.
- Reinstating the unlawful "Military Commissions" of the dreadful Bush-Cheny years.
- Suspending Habeus Corpus.
- Continuing and even expanding (I think) warrentless wiretapping of US citizens.
- Failure to prosecute Bush and Cheny for illegal actions such as torture, rendition and warentless wiretapping.
- Failure to change the Senate rules to do away with the filibuster

I disagree with all these actions, but I will continue to support Obama because the Republican alternative is so frightening. However recently something appears to be happening that hits me close to home as a practicing scientist.  I noticed it soon after the oil spill began in the Gulf. NOAA was going along with everything BP was saying about the oil flow, the lack of underwater dispersed oil plumes, etc. And yet it has come out that BP probably knew all along that the rate of the spill was much higher than they were claiming. And at the same time, some independent scientists were providing rough estimates of the flow from the video that were much higher than that claimed by BP and NOAA. And then I realized that NOAA was not sending oceanographic research ships out in the Gulf to investigate the "plumes" and was actively downgrading the idea that these existed. And now I read in the media that a scientist from a local University had organized several research ships from places such as Woods Hole Oceanographic to begin this investigation as the oil was spilling so that they could  have a baseline. They had requested around $8 million to accomplish this but a normal grant request might take over 6 months to a year to go through normal channels. I believe that this has still not been funded on an emergency basis (but I may be wrong). And then it appears that BP (and Coast Guard people) were actively preventing reporters from photographing the spill or talking with the workers.

And now I read in the media that scientists employed by NOAA have been told not to talk with the media about the spill and not to divulge any data already obtained by NOAA research ships. This has a frightening  similarity to the previous Bush policies, such as not having let  Jim Hanson talk about climate change and having  non-scientist Agency heads actually modify his publications. This scares me more than all of the above actions since it appears that  science and reason are being replaced by political requirements. I can only guess that the administration wants to play down the effects of the spill for political reasons, but I truly  hope that this is not the case.

Please say it ain't so,  President Obama!

End the filibuster!

Here is a copy of a letter I sent VP Biden (and also Ed Shutz and Rachel Maddow):

I am a strong supporter of this administration and President Obama. I have a suggestion on how to finally end Republican obstructionism: End the Senate filibuster by changing the rules.
As you well know, the filibuster is a rule made by the Senate and is not in the Constitution. There was a Supreme Court Ruling in 1892 - United States versus Ballin - which found that changes to Senate rules could be achieved by a simple majority. Changing the rule to a simple majority would restore democracy to the US Senate and allow elections to have some meaning. This is necessary since the Republican Party plans to stop any legislation from passing the Senate.
I remind you of the rules to change the filibuster:
(from Wikipedia)
A senator makes a point of order calling for an immediate vote on the measure before the body, outlining what circumstances allow for this. The presiding officer of the Senate, usually the vice president of the United States or the president pro tempore, makes a parliamentary ruling upholding the senator's point of order. The Constitution is cited at this point, since otherwise the presiding officer is bound by precedent. A supporter of the filibuster may challenge the ruling by asking, "Is the decision of the Chair to stand as the judgment of the Senate?" This is referred to as "appealing from the Chair." An opponent of the filibuster will then move to table the appeal. As tabling is non-debatable, a vote is held immediately. A simple majority decides the issue. If the appeal is successfully tabled, then the presiding officer's ruling that the filibuster is unconstitutional is thereby upheld. Thus a simple majority is able to cut off debate, and the Senate moves to a vote on the substantive issue under consideration. The effect of the nuclear option is not limited to the single question under consideration, as it would be in a cloture vote. Rather, the nuclear option effects a change in the operational rules of the Senate, so that the filibuster or dilatory tactic would thereafter be barred by the new precedent.
It is time to change this rule and return the Senate to a real democracy. Only then can President Obama's initiatives be made into law.

What a Concept!

Soon I must decide on whether I will retire. What a concept! I never thought I would not have a lab to go to every day and play with instruments,ideas and my little Leishmania buggers. But the time comes for anyone and I do feel an obligation to young researchers not to hog limited resources for too long. What will I do, I ask myself. Well, I do enjoy taking astroimages at night with my backyard telescope, playing the violin, working with computers and programs, taking on line courses on history, science, art and music, hiking in the mountains or by the ocean, playing with my dogs, reading voraciously and traveling (although traveling these days is a chore not a pleasure anymore). And most of all I enjoy thinking and writing. But is that enough? Time will tell. And in the large view of things, this is so unmomentous. I doubt Argentina will cry for me and also not even Brazil. But last year a funny thing happened – I got really interested in a new research project and decided to try to pursue it for a little longer. Ahha, but research needs money and researchers and my 41 year old NIH grant is finally expiring in April. So I guess it comes down to whether my renewal gets funded or not. Times are tough and NIH money is really limited so I am not very optimistic. But I will try and perhaps can continue playing with instruments, ideas and my little buggers for a little longer.

December 31, 2010 - Grant update: Well my NIH grant was funded for three more years. My lab is really small now with just two postdocs and I have stopped accepting  graduate students. It's actually more cozy this way.  It will be fun to try to solve the structure of the editing complex at a high enough resolution to be able to learn something about the mechanism. 

Haiti – A Premonition of What is to Come

The earthquake in Haiti reminds us that, although we are very sophisticated and intelligent and have marvelous machines, we are essentially powerless in regard to geological events of that magnitude. All we can do is to build better buildings and wait for the movements of the plates.
        The catastrophe in Haiti is terrible but is, I believe, merely a premonition of what is to come with the climatic changes we have wrought. It is clear by now that countries today do not have the political will or foresight to accomplish the lowering of greenhouse gases required to ameliorate the coming disasters before the point of no return is reached. The consequences are horrific. Flooding of the major Eastern river deltas from the inevitable rise in ocean level will displace, if not outright kill, millions of people in the poorest countries in the world, resulting in vast migrations of refugees and putting tremendous pressure on neighboring countries if not causing open warfare. At the same time, the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas will lead to major decreases in the Indus River in Pakistan, the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh, the Mekong in Southeast Asia, the Irrawaddy in Myanmar and the Yellow and Yangtze rivers of China, all of which supply water for billions of people. In the United States, severe droughts in the Southwest will result in the drying of the Colorado River and the loss of this key water supply for the major cities of Arizona and Southern California. The drought in the California Central Valley, which has already begun, will essentially cause all agriculture in that breadbasket of the country to come to a halt. People will begin to migrate away from Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas into the Northwest and Midwest. But cities in the Midwest will have their own problems and soon will begin to limit immigration. The corn and wheat fields will dry up, forcing farming to move north where there is still enough water. Inevitably Canada will also be blocking immigration from the United States leading to inevitable conflict between the United States and its northern neighbor. Major coastal cities throughout the world will be flooded by the increase in ocean levels and no system of dikes will realistically be economically or physically able to prevent this. The loss of New York will be a major blow to the entire economic system of the United States from which it will never recover. The flooding of Washington will force a migration of the American government to higher ground, and inevitably lead to increasing chaos with the result being martial law. Florida will essentially cease to exist as a functioning state. The European countries will begin to limit immigration of the refugees from the east, initially by laws and then by force. Piece by piece, what we know as civilization will begin to break down. Trains will stop running, highways and bridges will not be repaired and the entire system of supply begin to fail.
          Sadly, we will look back on the Haitian disaster with horror and sadness as the beginning of the end.

Kabuki Seating

Every time I enter an airplane to go on a trip, I wonder why the passenger seats do not face towards the back. It is so very obvious that in a crash, one’s body goes forward, so that the well constructed seats with their impressive (and uncomfortable) headrests serve no purpose except to act as a hard barrier to the person behind. I am reminded of this absurdity every time the Stewardess goes through the Kabuki theater of telling passengers to bring their seats to an upright position and make sure the seats are fully in the upright position. They in fact do a walk through the cabin to see if these rules are being followed. I often feel like asking the Stewardess what is the purpose of this ritual but then remember what happens to anyone who complains on an airliner these days. The same situation occurs on a train (of course in Europe where passenger trains really exist), except that on trains some people actually have backward facing seats and will probably survive a crash.
If you do a simple Google search on “airline seats facing forward” you can easily obtain multiple articles on this problem. Turns out that I am not the first to recognize this. There is a long history. In fact, all military airplanes have seats facing towards the back. Obviously the military wants its soldiers to have the best chance of surviving a crash whereas domestic airlines clearly do not care about the safety of the passengers. It seems that one strong reason for this lack of concern is economic, in that backward facing seats would have to be greatly reinforced since most of the impact force is higher on the seat and this would involve substantial costs to the airline! Another economic reason is that the airlines think that passengers prefer facing forward. And yet another is that most passengers have never thought of this problem at all and airlines prefer to keep it a secret.Substantial research has been performed on this safety issue with the universal conclusion that survival is better in rear-facing seats. For example, Richard Snyder, a scientist studying airplane crash protection published a paper in 1983 with the title” Impact protection in Air Transport Seat Design” which had this conclusion.
Of course it is irrational to except that any profit-making company would on its own increase passenger safety when money is involved and when most people do not even know the problem exists. Just look at the history of seat belts and air bags in cars. But I am an optimist (except in the case of human-caused climatic warming!) and hope that this will happen in my lifetime.