Sorry Star Trek Fans There is No Horta

You can't read an science article in any publication these days without reading something about the search for extraterrestrial life, be that on Mars, the moons of Jupiter, or the planets orbiting distance suns discovered by the Kepler observatory.  In his new book, "The Equations of Life: How Physics Shapes Evolution", by Charles S. Cockell, the author argues that should life be discovered this life will be very similar to our own.  The extraterrestrial biology will have evolved under the same pressures, and more importantly, the same physics, from which life on our planet has evolved.  Thus things will be very familiar to us.  Or not...  One need only look at an octopus to realize just how different things could be.  Life, however, will always involve carbon, oxygen, and water.  Those seem to be the building blocks on our planet, and Cockell is spot on labeling those as the necessary building blocks for life on other planets as well.  This, however, is nothing new.  Specifically, the Periodic Table of Elements, describes everything there is to work with and suggesting life could emerge from an different combination of elements, is not to understand life, or the elements.  Interestingly, he hearkens back to an episode of Star Trek, when an alien life form, known as the Horta, is discovered.  

The writers of Star Trek actually got it right, according to Cockell.  If life did emerge from another set of elements, they would have to be very close to carbon.  The Horta was a silicon based life form.  But also, to evolve it would be necessary to  have the same basic environmental properties which would require a fluid, in our case water, and a gas, in our case oxygen, for the very basic properties of cellular life to gain energy and replicate.

Whereas Cockell has a very deep knowledge of biology he has only cursory understanding of math and physics.   I think, however, the physics he applies, is mostly self evident, at least to an engineer. Maybe not for him based on his softer back ground in biology.  This insight was so extraordinary for him he thought it worthy of an entire book. So maybe his audience is biologists. It can't be physicists, They will just yawn. 

His academic upbringing forced him to be way too repetitive. I felt like he was retelling his entire argument in every chapter.... I think 4 or 5 chapters would have been sufficient. 12 chapters just dragged on and on, beating the same dead horse... Of course he's also trifling with the creator...as any good biologist tends to do.  But that's a different subject. Still I can't help but wonder that should we find extra-terrestrial life, who is going to be the first to ask said, alien, have you considered Jesus?   Certainly not the biologist, but maybe the physicist?  

Best part for me was  his discussion of single cell evolution... Mapping out evolution at the cellular level was something completely new, not being a biologist, and I learned a few things.

This is not a book for physicists, this is a book for biologists who would otherwise wonder about evolutionary magic should they not been tuned into the preexisting physical laws of nature that constrain everything we understand above the quantum level.  Strangely, this is also not a book for biologists, at least not a written with so many of the equations he has chosen.  He's not really using fundamental laws, per se, he is just using math to calculate constraining limits.  To understand what he is doing you kinda have to have had some physics or engineering in your back ground. You can't simply assume the math works, you have to do the math, and when you do the math it's not black and white.  For the most part, he should have left the equations out of this book he has written for biologists.  Of course then he destroys is thesis, maybe.  Oh well. It was particularly annoying to me when when he presented an occasional hard number as fact, he should have been more accurate, or at least done the calculations himself.  We don't contain a tennis court of absorption area in our gastrointestinal track, he's over by an order of magnitude.   10's of square meters, not 100's of square meters as he claims.

Start with three stars because overall, although well researched, there is nothing earth shattering in this book. Deduct a star for being so repetitive. Deduct another star for using equations that will be obtuse to biologists and simply wrong in other areas.   Add a star back for his treatment of single cell evolution and of course add another star for the great use of a Star Trek reference.  Three stars overall.

MAGA, Negan's Wife, and How We Save the NFL

Park View High School in Sterling Virginia will not field a varsity football team this year. We are witnessing the end, in real time, of one of the most significant cultural institutions within the United States.  If head injuries were not bad enough the dinosaurs who profit from those head injuries don't seem to understand just how significant this shift in culture will be for our country.  I'm a soccer player not a football player, but every significant moment of my life revolved around American Football one way or another.

My first friends were formed in  backyard games wearing a Cleveland Browns uniform with helmet and shoulder pads from the Sears & Roebuck catalog.  My friend David was wearing Green Bay.  One night the game winning touchdown was a pass his brother Donny threw to me, well past the time when we were called to dinner shouted by moms across fence-less yards, sun having set.  The ball, arching across a dark sky, with only the white lines encircling the pig skin, flickering in the moonlight (they painted white lines on the footballs back then).  I made the catch.  It was 1970.  We were all American Football fans back then.  Roger Staubach, Bob Griese, Roman Gabriel, they were the greats...and who could ever forget Brian's Song, Brian Piccolo who died from cancer in 1970 with the great Gale Sayers at his bedside. I love Brian Piccolo. I lived in the deep south, Alabama to be exact...to say we worshiped Gale Sayers is an understatement.  If Gale Sayers took a knee at the football game, I would take a knee.  Not only were we color blind in my neighborhood, seriously, Green Bay and the Cleveland Browns? That was back when dogs were boys and cats were girls...I didn't like cats.  I didn't have an identity, but I liked Gale Sayers.

I moved to New Jersey...if I thought we were color blind in Alabama, New Jersey didn't seem to mind a bit either.  On my street it was hard to choose a team, but you had to choose a team.  If you didn't have a team you were just weird.  But was it going to be the  the Jets, the Giants, or the Eagles.  One friend of mine had the audacity to be a Redskins fan.  I had to choose a team, and choose quickly.  I needed an identity to fit in. Quickly choosing Dallas I was in.  Why didn't I choose the Browns, I had their uniform, or the Bears, goodness knows I liked the Bears.  In that split second, I had to form an identity with my friends, and it was Roger Staubach, the role model, that flashed through my head.  Superbowl champion, Navy Officer.  I was in.  It was 1974.  My identity was Dallas Cowboys.

We moved again and I carried that identity with me unwittingly into the mixing bowl of Northern Virginia, except this mixing bowl was more of a crucible.  Who's your favorite team?  The Cowboys.   Who's your favorite team?  The Cowboys?  This was Redskin's territory and those fan's let you know it.  For me, this National Football culture would now give way to the local scene.  Those playing in the local leagues preparing to move into high school.  That scene playing out thousands upon thousands of times in every hometown from New England, the Patriots, to San Diego, the Chargers. My home town was Sterling, Park Virginia, and I was a Patriot.  A Park View Patriot. That was my High School.  We produced footballer Allen Pickett, I had Chemistry class with Allen.  And in 2000 we graduated the actress Hillary Burton.   I still remember the chills from my very first pep rally.  The marching band, lungs in shape having reported for band camp a few weeks early, now locked in the confines of a high school gymnasium bringing the roof down.  Then there were the games, Friday night lights, at Bill Allen Field.  Pick up our Friday night and it too was being recounted over and over throughout the land.  What were we learning?  We were learning how to be American's and it felt great...in particular if you scored in the closing minutes and went on to Regions or State competitions.  This year, for the 2018/2019, school year, PVHS, will not field a team.  But before returning to this discussion, let's continue with my life.  My identity was Park View Patriot.

To say, I didn't play football in high school, would be inaccurate.  We all played football. Whether it be in the street or behind a school  Someone always had a ball and we were always choosing sides.  That was touch football but it was just as fun...and no head injuries.  But it was time to choose a college.  The last thing on my mind was football, the last thing on my mind was choosing a school in the South West Conference, the last thing on my mind was the Aggie Fight Song.  But I learned it on day one.  Reporting to Texas A&M early, you memorized it before you knew what classes  you were taking.  Why, because now I was a member of the 12th Man.  It didn't matter anymore if I liked Dallas.  The enemy was no longer the Redskins.  The enemy was much closer and took the form of a Great Longhorn Steer, BEVO, who represented the worst of the worst.  The University of Texas football team, our mortal enemy. Since Texas A&M was THE University of Texas, we referred to that little school in Austin as "texas University", little t for emphasis.  If thought I knew something about football before, I was in for an awakening.  Every, and I mean every aspect of my life was geared toward the rivalry. From, midnight yell practices, to Aggie Bonfire, to marching into Kyle Field on home games, and the events where we followed the team on away games to Houston and Dallas.  Every aspect of life surround the moments when we could stand, in the stands, for every minute our team was on the field.  One might say, if you've never stood for every minute of a football game, in the Texas sun, wearing a full military uniform, your not living.  Oh, and then when it's half-time, and it's time to sit down, as soon as your butt hit's the bleacher, you're back up.  The Fighting Texas Aggie Marching Band is on the field.  And the 12th Man always stands when the band is on the field.  My junior year I was on the color guard.  As the Aggie Band played the National Anthem from the field, and every fan stood, we raised the largest American flag in Texas high above Kyle Field, I would wear the white gloves with pride in the Texas heat.  I thought we were the greatest fans in the history of football.  That, of course is not true...just go to any other University in the country on any football weekend and you will find the greatest fans in football history.  Only the colors and the words of the fight songs will change...but my identity was Fighting Texas Aggie.

Entering the United States Air Force, after college, that identity served me well.  If you went to a school with a big football team, you were somehow in the club. If you kept up with quarterbacks and coaches you could speak a universal language, a unifying language, despite the fierce rivalries.  It didn't matter what team you supported, you just needed a team. You were also, as is military tradition, assigned a team.  In the Air Force, regardless of what school you attended, by default you adopted the the Air Force team, you were a Fighting Falcon, or you had better be when inevitably the game against Army or Navy would be on the schedule.

The football culture has been with us for decades now. It has made our Country strong for reasons too numerous to count.  It is slowly being eaten away from numerous directions.  Let's count the ways...

1) Culture that promotes head trauma injuries (Real)

2) Culture that promotes winners over losers placing vulnerable students who don't fit in at risk of being isolated, jocks over geeks (Real)

3) Culture that promotes football over all other sports in a university program (Real)

4) Culture that erodes the line between professional and amateur athletes (Real)

5) Culture that erodes the line between sports and academics (Real)

6) Culture that permits sexism in the locker room (Real)

7) Culture that permits sexual abuse of young boys (Real)

8) Culture that promotes/glorifies violence (Real)

9) Culture that promotes a decline in US Patriotism if you are allowed to take a knee during the National Anthem (Imagined)

I am not denigrating American Football.  I love it.  Too many positives to count.  Too many memories.  But here's another, When I was the care taker for a pair of seasons tickets to the Redskins, despite my love of Dallas, I would dutifully take my dad to see the Skins play his beloved Giants, just to watch them lose.  American Football is part of the American dream, it is more American than baseball, hot dogs, apple pie or Chevrolet, it just didn't fit the jingle as well.  Before we decide to fix an imagined problem, we should get to work fixing the real problems contained in one through eight.  That's what will make American football great again.  I hope the NFL is listening.

So getting back to Negan, a character I love, who ironically uses a baseball bat to give his enemies a concussion.  He also happens to raise chickens on his farm in New York, or rather actor Jeffery Dean Morgan, his alter ego does. I didn't just throw Negan in this blog to draw in my other Walking Dead fans.  Recently his wife showed up at a Pep Rally at Park View High School in Sterling Virginia, promising to fund students who want to go to football camp to boost our players numbers, so that next year we might field a team.  That could help. I hope it works.  It's worth a try.  In case you are not tracking, Negan is married to actress Hillary Burton, our 2000 PVHS Homecoming Queen.  Thanks Ms Burton for doing something.  I hope, all across our Country, other's are getting involved.  The NFL dinosaurs are currently distracted by the wrong thing.