Everyday Junglist
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About me. You know how everyone says to be a successful writer you should focus in one or two areas. I continue to prove them correct.
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Jen, Will You Marry Me
For a variety of reasons, my current wife Jen and I decided to get married together slowly over the course of many conversations. Some of these discussions were heart to heart and we mostly focused on our feelings for each other. Others were analytical, rational, and cold, mostly revolving around the financial and logistical implications of a marriage. I thought it was a very smart way to go about making one of the biggest decisions of ones life, and Jen agreed. What I did not realize, was that she also felt a bit ripped off, like she was cheated, or that somehow she was not deserving of a "real" proposal. She did not get to have the romantic dream proposal on a gorgeous beach somewhere where I drop to one knee and ask for her hand in marriage while slipping a ring on her finger as violinists I hired from the local symphony orchestra play love ballads for strings in the background, or whatever (fill in the blank cheesy, romantic, cliché, interesting, dumb thing you can think of). It truly broke my heart when I came to this realization (mostly due to her being honest with me and telling me) and I owe her a make up proposal of which this article is only one part.
By Everyday Junglist4 years ago in Marriage
Why is Nobody Is Willing to Admit the Obvious? - Monkeypox is a Biological Attack
Note: The following article is my opinion. It is informed by 25 plus years of micro/molecular biology research and development experience, including significant experience in the areas of bacterial/viral diagnostics. You are free to disagree with any and all aspects of it. Though I make no claims to correctness (I never do), I do suggest you should at least consider the possibility that it is correct, and the implications thereof. It is important also to note that "Vocal does not accept stories that present personally-held beliefs about others or unfounded conspiracies as fact, or that implicate others in those beliefs." Since this article is an opinion article, nothing within it should be taken as "fact", and no one specific individual or group of individuals is implicated. Finally their is no conspiracy suggested or even implied. If there is a conspiracy at play, it is only one of ignorance and wishful thinking run amok.
By Everyday Junglist4 years ago in Journal
You Don't Have to Be Good at Math to Be an Effective and Successful Research Scientist
When I was a youngster and first expressed interest in pursuing a career in science I was told repeatedly that I was simply not good enough at math to make the cut. Grade level after grade level, teacher after teacher relayed the same disappointing news. It was great that I expressed interest in science, but that career path just wasn't for me. With a twenty five plus years career in research under my belt at this point I am pleased to inform all of those teachers and others who said the same, that they were dead wrong, but not so pleased at how damn old that makes me feel. I need to make one point crystal clear from the outset. Please, please, please do not take this article as an excuse to slack off in math or a reason for you not to study mathematics. If you want to be a research scientist, exposure to a strong math education is a must. I am most assuredly not saying or implying that math is not an important skill for a research scientist. What I am saying is that you do not need to be the second coming of John Nash, or top of your class, or even in the top half of your class in your math courses to be an effective research scientist. You can be average to below average in math and still be a kick ass researcher (in many fields but not all, see caveats below), or maybe even one of the best researchers in your field. I will leave it to others to say if I am "one of the best researchers in my field" however I can say I have had a very productive and successful career. I have been involved in major breakthroughs, developed and commercialized some successful products (and a few less than successful ones), published a host of papers and patents, presented at technical conferences around the world, and any other number of accomplishments that typically signify success for a researcher.
By Everyday Junglist4 years ago in Education
TSA Does Me a Solid
It can't just be me that has noticed a big change in the behaviors and attitudes of employees of the Transportation Security Agency over the past couple of years. Beginning around the same time as the pandemic the demeanor of the rank and file TSA worker has done a seeming 180 degree turn. The scouring, angry, and aggressive, or cold and emotionless robots have mostly been replaced by warm, smiling, and even joking and laughing human beings. Of course I am generalizing and I am sure the change is not universal but for someone who traveled a lot pre pandemic, during pandemic, and now post (yeah, right) pandemic the change is noticeable and very welcome. Also, important to note that my viewpoint is no doubt influenced and biased by my ongoing and regular interactions with US customs and border patrol at the US Mexico border. Those employees, stuck with one of the toughest and most thankless jobs in government, are some of the most unpleasant, unhappy, angry, impolite, and frustrating persons you will ever meet. In comparison, just about anyone would look good. That said, I still think the change in TSA is real and I have heard similar comments from colleagues who also fly regularly. Where the change has come from and why now remains a mystery, but my own hypothesis relates to the impact of the pandemic on the traveling public and a realization that their own jobs were in serious jeopardy if confidence in the safety of air travel was not restored. Moreover, air travel needed to become less stressful overall if they had hope of regaining all the customers lost over the course of the pandemic.
By Everyday Junglist4 years ago in Wander
Hypotheses I Have Known
Hypothesis generation and testing puts the method in the scientific method. Without hypotheses we cannot do science or use the scientific method. While one cannot do science without hypothesizing, one can hypothesize without doing science until the cows come home. Witness the contents of this very article for a collection of examples.
By Everyday Junglist4 years ago in Futurism
An Argument Against Secret Knowledge
It seems obvious to state that as the number of people who are aware of a given secret grows the chances of its being revealed increases. There is a point at which the number of people that know a given secret is essentially guaranteed to result in its reveal. What that number is varies greatly based on the type of secret, and subset of persons that know it, but all secrets have such a number. The power of the particular secret will reduce that number as the temptation to reveal it becomes ever stronger the more powerful it is. This is human nature and it can only be fought against, but it cannot ever be defeated.
By Everyday Junglist4 years ago in Potent
Libertarian God Questions the Need for so Many Natural Laws
God, creator of all things, the all knowing and all powerful one, shook the universe today when he/she/it questioned the need for so many natural laws. "We have too many laws already" complained the suddenly libertarian leaning God bitterly. "If I want to be in two non coextensive places at the same time, I should be able to be. And why does a thing have to be identical with itself? Why can't it be something different? Moreover, If I want something to be both bigger and larger than another thing I should be able to make it that way. I mean, I am God, right? Right? I say it's time for another way. This universe is being crushed under the weight of too many God damn laws already. Pardon my cursing but dammit I am really annoyed at the moment. It's getting so a guy can hardly breathe without some new law telling him exactly how much air and for exactly how long without the air police coming to his house to write him a ticket and fine him for daring to take a breath at all. It's bullshit is what it is, and wouldn't you know it, guess who is leading the way down this road to tyranny? Surprise, surprise, it's our good friends and step parent wanna be's, the ultimate nanny state, California. They have laws covering every God damn thing. At some point we just have to trust that people are able to make decisions for themselves and they don't need big government or God or anyone telling them how to do it." said a visibly angry God as dark storm clouds swirled around his unbearably bright visage. After a brief pause of just 10,000 years God continued "Yes, we all know (perennial libertarian presidential candidate) Ron Paul is a kook and would make a terrible president but at least he has the right idea when it comes to personal responsibility and the dangers of big government. Even the internet, which was once a place of freedom of expression and a beacon of openness has morphed into a modern day electronic mom. Look no further than Vocal.media, a two bit website with about as many views as a dinner menu in a home for the blind. Their so called community standards and outlandishly stupid 600 word count minimum policies are just two examples of big government, big brotherism run amok." God concluded sadly. With that he turned from the podium bowed his infinitely large head, and walked away.
By Everyday Junglist4 years ago in Potent
Born of Ash and Torn Asunder
There weren't always dragons in the Valley. Of course depending on the time frame one is considering, there wasn't always a valley either. Go back far enough and what is now a valley was once a chasm which split wide the floor of an ancient sea. That sea teemed with creatures that many thought were dragons, but turned out to be nothing more than rather large fish with fins on each side running the lengths of their massive bodies. When they leapt from the water, which they had the propensity to do quite often, their great fins would spread wide to each side, pushed apart by the rushing air. This gave them the appearance of flight to the naïve fishermen who first spotted them. They called them aquaero' dr'aco, and they were greatly feared. It turned out their fear was misplaced as the aquaero' ate nothing but phytoplankton. The reason they leapt from the water was not in pursuit of other fish or even sea mammals to eat, but so they might strain another ton of tasty microbial life through their gaping maws. They had no teeth nor even any jaws to hold them, and reportedly were gentle and highly intelligent. That realization did not stop the ancient Kromlize people from hunting them to extinction. They were prized for their blubber, and most importantly the webbing which was packed like a cotton plug into the gigantic plankton filtering orifice which served as the mouth of the aquaero'. The webbing could be used for many things the Kromlize found particularly useful, not the least of which was building nets to trap ever more of the giant fish. Over time the practice of net trapping decimated their slowly reproducing population until suddenly, before anyone knew what was happening, they were gone. Every last one. Dead. Species never to be seen on this world again. It is a great historical and tragically sad irony that an entire race of majestic sea creatures was wiped from the face of Lasion by an ignorant race of people using the dr'aco's own anatomy as the instrument of their doom.
By Everyday Junglist4 years ago in Fiction
Is it Possible to Use the Scientific Method to Determine if Something is Art?
The scientific method would seem to be a poor choice for determining whether or not a given thing is art. After all, art is subjective, whereas science concerns itself with the objective. The question of what is art has plagued philosophers since ancient times and has not been answered satisfactorily to this day. I know it pains artists to hear this, but after thousands of years the best answer still seems to be, art is what anyone person says is art, or crudely, if it is displayed in an art museum, it is art. I would never attempt to propose to answer the question what is art, and it likely has no answer. That said I do think it is possible to ask if there might be a way to determine if a thing is art or not without necessarily having to "know" what art actually is. Strangely, it seems there is at least one (highly improbable though not unimaginable) way the scientific method could be used to do this.
By Everyday Junglist4 years ago in Humans
Self-Worth About Five Bucks
Local man Ted Stephens reported today that his self-worth about five bucks. Five bucks marks the lowest level his self-worth has seen since former high school sweetheart and wife of ten years Janet (Thomkins) Stephen suddenly announced that she would be leaving him to move in with Ted's former best friend Tim Crutz by telling him "Tim can satisfy me in a way you never could Ted. Sorry." It also represents a stunning fall from the near record highs his self-worth had reached in recent years after Ted had found a new girlfriend and landed a high paying job as an accountant at a prestigious local law firm. In a prepared statement Mr. Stephens said "After Jan-Jan (Miss Thomkins) left me for that snake in the grass Tim Crutz I thought I would never recover. My self-worth less than a dollar back then. However, with the help of my true friends, my family, my counselor, and a lot of hard work I was able to pull my life out of the tailspin it was in. I found a beautiful new girlfriend Kathy, finished my college degree in accounting, and accepted a high paying position as junior accounts manager at local law firm Smith-Kline & Breatchem (SKB). At SKB I quickly climbed the ladder and soon found myself leading their accounting department with a staff of six junior accountants reporting directly to me. It took years, but before I knew it my self worth around ten thousand dollars and all was right with the world. Then, out of the blue disaster struck, and a downturn in the local economy forced SKB to enact a series of austerity measures including significant workforce downsizing. I hung on for three months but eventually was let go with only three months severance and almost zero savings to survive on. At that point my self-worth less than two thousand bucks in the blink of an eye. To make matters worse it turned out that Kathy was not the ideal mate I had believed her to be as I discovered she was secretly addicted to pain pills. After I lost my job her pill addiction spiraled into heroin and before I knew it she was selling her body at the local seven eleven to anyone who could get her a fix. It was at that point that my self-worth dropped to its current all time low of five bucks where it remains to this day." With that Ted broke down, began to weep hysterically, then slowly turned and walked away.
By Everyday Junglist4 years ago in Psyche
China Admits Defeat in Secret War with America
China admitted defeat today in its 20 plus year secret war with America when it revealed that its ability to produce cheap goods and services could not keep up with seemingly unquenchable American demand for low priced tchotchke's and poor quality knick-knacks. The plan to flood the streets of America with ultra cheap consumer goods was said to be modeled on the CIAs much rumored but never confirmed plan to flood the streets of the inner city with crack cocaine in the 1980s in order to suppress a rising black populace that threatened the existing white power structure. Much like the CIA's beliefs about black youths and crack cocaine, the Chinese believed that American's would quickly become addicted to cheap crap. For both the CIA and the Chinese, the first part of the plan was a smashing success, but after those initial successes, the effectiveness of each plan began to diverge. While crack addicted black youths in the urban ghettos began to commit violent crime, drop out of school, and were sent to prison in record numbers exactly as the CIA had predicted, Americans were seemingly unfazed by their addiction to low priced knock off goods with humorously translated marketing and instructional content. While American consumer debt did balloon no collapse materialized and it was the Chinese that instead found themselves in an unsustainable position, unable to meet the continuing and growing American demand. Chinese economic Vice Mininster Wjen Zhanbo, said to be the brains behind the secret war said the following during his televised speech admitting the Chinese had been defeated. "While our secret war plan was brilliantly conceived and flawlessly executed we overlooked what now seems to be glaringly obvious, American's thirst for really shitty and poorly made crap is endless. Even the awesome power of the magnificent manufacturing machine that is Chinese industry was no match for American's lust for useless household goods and toys that break after thirty seconds of use. Ah well, hindsight is 20/20 they say."
By Everyday Junglist4 years ago in Humans
