Universe On The Couch

Yesterday James Doohan died. Ironically on the anniversay of the moon landing. Usually I don't give much importance to actors as most are just lucky to get obscene adoration and money. But this guy is different. He was a LT in the Canadian Army and stormed Normandy on D-Day. A real man. Unlike Tom Cruise. Or our current President. As an actor, he spoke seven dialects before choosing the Scottish for his Star Trek character. So he was an intelligent man. Unlike Tom Cruise. Or our current president.

I'm no Trekkie or big sci-fi or comic fan either. But the original Star Trek was original and intelligent. Issues of intervening in other cultures. Logic vs. passion. A Russian as a good guy! An intelligent (and attractive) black female engineer. All during segregation and the Cold War.

James was 85 and had a young child. Meaning he was still good to go at about 80. Cool. His ashes will be sent into space.

Today is the 36th anniversary of the peak of American and perhaps Western Civilization: Sending men a quarter million miles into space to the moon and getting them back safely. A lofty goal indeed was set by JFK to do this in less than a decade.

And it was done! No easy task. In fact it would seem impossible at the time. So many things needed to be done. Nobody had gone very far in space, nor for very much time. There had been no docking in space, landing on anything or even leaving the spaceship.

Success here required advances in materials sciences, rocketry, aeronautics, communication, computers, electronics and even medicine. The benefits are with us today. The offspring include our whole computer and communications boom. Medical imaging. Materials in your car and perhaps your body.

So what have we done since? The computer is clearly an advance in so many ways to process data. The related Internet is pretty amazing too. Of course human nature has made much of it more marketing bullshit, fraud and pornography. The third is portable phones. Again this technological advance with plenty of practical benefits has turned into a mostly irritating and frequently unsafe babbling.

Sorry but a picture phone is very lame compared to the moon shot. And our culture lame as well. The sixties America was a robust industrial economy that made things. The people were educated and skilled. We had vision and dreams as a country. And money to do them.

Now our sick economy bleeds billions of wealth daily overseas. Our prosperity is based on financial shell-games rather than real value. Real Estate as a great example. Stocks are worse. The Feds the worst. Our education system is a joke. College education is for the majority a remedial eighth grade education of past generations. Our public education for children is in shambles in many areas. Can-do has been replaced with I'm a victim and litigation.

What would be the next grand project anyways? The deepest alchemy of matter itself? The deepest nature of soul? Psyche? Life itself? Nanotechnolgy? If it's biotechnology, we are already toast given the stem cell position in this once-great nation. That's OK, I'm sure China, Japan and Korea will do it for us. Besides our kids don't do science or engineering anymore. And those damn foreigners are not coming here in droves to our universities either.

The truth is we have no will for a great project. The money needed is not easily available. Corporations want more immediate results. So do the voters.

As a boy I loved the space program. We visited some of the NASA Centers and I had glossy photos and plastic models. We even shot off Estes model rockets. Then they cut the program. The future rocket scientist was introduced to toxic amounts of endogenous testosterone and then it was sports and sex until he turned... Oh, who am I kidding.

I went into medicine since that was the hot place to be. Right. Twenty years of assault on medicine have degraded the profession. I used to say I should have been a lawyer, but in reality finance like banking would have been the place to be. Nothing really constructive in the value sense, but you are the money.

The folly of humans is endless.

I still look at the sky when I'm away from the city and see the wonder of the universe in all its beauty and mystery.

The soft gloved steel hand of socialistic totalitarianism again decends on the European Union. Luckily this pan-socialistic EU looks like it's loosing ground, but thats another song. Today I address their new proposed rules on OTC dietary supplements.

The new law would essentially would limit the usual supplements (vitamins and minerals mostly) to the RDA or whatever they call them these days or something close in dose. Many other supplements would be banned.

The supplement lobby of course is up in arms. Billions of dollars are to be made here. In their advertised mythology a conspiracy between the AMA/medical profession, FDA and Pharmacuetical industry is out to stop the freedom of these highly useful treatments out of greed and power issues. Their own powerful lobby has successfully legislated essentially no meaningful regulation at all except claims to cure conditions. Of course these claims are everywhere in print and otherwise. One LA health food store I frequented had the staff pretty much prescribing to customers.

I know plenty of physicians who personally use supplements and even recommend them to patients. Doctors have done much meaningful research here as well. Many doctors even are in support of the supplement industry views. So one-third of the evil triad is debunked.

The FDA. Their job is to protect us. They are under fire as being the bitches of the Drug Industry and there is evidence that supports that position. Congress slapped their ass hard when the Supplement Industry lobbied them hard enough. So on this issue, the FDA is pretty toothless.

And on to the Evil Drug Companies. My readers know my beefs with them. They do exert much power on the government and the medical profession. But let us not forget two things. One, they are a business and profit is a motive. You are either a capitalist or not. Without money, who would bother with making medicines? The government? Benevolent rich people?

Second is that medication has really helped people. Vaccines have saved millions of lives. Polio as only one example was a sword hanging over our children until the 1950's. Check out that history by reading or DVD. Mumps, measles, whooping cough, tetanus,... Then we have antibiotics. Insulin. Blood pressure meds. Even psych meds have helped people a great deal, despite the opinions of psychiatric history scholar Tom Cruise.

Now should people be allowed to treat themselves with supplements? If so, why not prescribe their own medications too? Big Pharm would like that-more sales. Not a good idea anyways. Antibiotic resistance is bad enough now without everyone taking a powerful broad-spectrum med for every sniffle. It comes down to safety here. And there is really little to indicate toxicity from the vast majority of supplements.

But I do see some regulations are needed. First, the damn lable must be accurate. If it says its some herb or whatever, that better be what it is. Second, it had better be the amount stated. Third, anything else in it must be on the lable. Fourth, there must be reasonable proof that the substance is safe. These are no industry standards and those above are not followed to a large degree.

But let the consumer beware. The used bookstores have health and nutrition sections full of older books touting the wonder supplements of past years. We don't hear much these days about safflower oil, brewer's yeast, mineral oil, dolomite, melatonin,...

So now more evidence mounts that this asshole ratted out one of our covet operatives for political purposes and then lied about it. Let's see...

Here is an administration that has used national security as an excuse to suspend our privacy and rights. And kill off thousands including our own people while alienating our allies and running us into monumental debt for our security on a yellowcake WMD lie. So they rat out our own people. Lovely.

Think about it. An operative is a superior person in many ways, physically and intellectually. He or she could have made big money and swollen ego in business or law. But instead they risk their lives for our security. What Rove did is treason. He should at least spend life in prison, federal with no chance for parole. Bush should resign if he had any part. Or be impeached and then convicted, removed from office. All Nixon did was break into an office. All Clinton did was get head from a chubby chick.

But after some lengthy proceedings, nothing much will likely come of this. Executive power and more bullshit spin will preserve the status quo. The masses will be more interested in who can eat feces of bats on TV and the wisdom of Tom Crewz.

Just back from the land up over.

Vancouver actually. Great place to visit. Wouldn't mind living there either. Great ethnic food in variety. Beautiful with mountains and waterways and parks. In many ways like the USA, as is much of Canada, but there are some differences. Now most of my time was in the downtown area, so appropriate comparisons are with urban America.

We both speak English. But French the second language there. Like Spanish is here. But here I will discuss the important differences observed.

The place is clean in comparison. Pride in the city? Better services by the city? People just more polite and responsible rather than selfish pigs?

Plenty of parkland. Most of the coast in fact. Miles of trails to hike, stroll, bike and skate. The lack of freeways too. Seems the interest in more in quality of life than everything a sell-out for money. Perhaps the politicians are less of the lobby bought gravy-sucking pigs.

More polite too. Really didn't encounter much rude behavior. Less cell-phone rudeness. Only a few boombox cars compared to here. Pleasant service people.

Not very many Mexicans. Few in fact. It was a bit weird to see white guys doing the landscape work and there is plenty of foliage there. Reminded me of my childhood. The hotel maids were Asian. And by that I mean Chinese, not Philipino.

Not too many Blacks either. None really ghetto. Just didn't see the segregation.

Many Asians, mostly Chinese. And mostly Mandarin speaking. Seemed mostly middle and upper middle class. Like most of the people there in general.

Not many fat people. Don't think I saw anyone really obese. They are pretty active. The papers spoke of the obesity epidemic, but the story is V. is the leanest city in Canada.

So there are a few observations. Admittedly one city and really one part of it. But it sure seems we could benefit from some of their ways.