“Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements – the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life – weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.” Lawrence M. Krauss

The above image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and is called a “Dense Core.” It is a collection of dust and gas particles. The one above is named CB 130-3 and is in the constellation Serpens, about 650 light years from earth. It is thought the mass of these objects can get large enough in one place to ignite hydrogen fusion and thus make a “new” star. This is why these space clouds are called stellar nurseries. They can be the birth places of many different stars. Image credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA & STSCL, C. Brit, T. Huard, A. Pagan. If you would like to learn more please see these links: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/hubble-views-a-billowing-cosmic-cloud and https://www.space.com/hubble-space-telescope-dense-core-image

“In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.” Carl Sagan

The above image is from the recent Artemis 1 mission back in November 2022. It was captured by the spacecraft optical navigation camera. This is one of the closest photos of the Moon since the Apollo mission. This mission did not have real humans aboard but mannequins inside for testing. The first planned human mission will be sometime in 2024. Image Credit: NASA. If you would like to learn more please see these links: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/orion-s-moon-crater-close-up and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program

“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.” Christophe Hitchens

This above image is from the Hubble Space Telescope and it is of NGC 1858. The NGC stands for New General Catalogue and is an astronomical catalogue of deep-sky objects. The catalogue was created by John Louis Dreyer in 1888. The above image is consider an open cluster and an emission nebula. This patch of sky is found in the Dorado constellation which is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud. An open cluster is a type of star cluster in which the stars were formed from the same molecular cloud and have about the same age. A nebula is a luminescent star forming region and an emission nebula is one that is formed of ionized gasses that emit light. NGC 1858 is a long ways from earth at about 160,000 light years and is estimated to be about 10 million years old. Image credit: NASA, ESA and G. Gilmore (University of Cambridge); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America). If you would like to learn more please see these links: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/hubble-spies-emission-nebula-star-cluster-duo and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_nebula and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_cluster

“I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I’ve been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn’t have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I’m a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.” Isaac Asimov

This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of the barred spiral galaxy named NGC 6956. These type of galaxies have a bar shaped structure that is composed of stars at their center. It is thought that this shape is found in most spiral galaxies known so far. The Milky Way Galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy. The above galaxy is of special interest to scientists because of the presence of Cepheid variable stars, or stars that brighten and dim at regular intervals. Using this data, they can measure distances of cosmic objects with some accuracy. It was the work of Henrietta Swan Leavitt in the early 1900s with Cepheid variable stars, that gave astronomers their first “standard candle” in which to measure distance of far away galaxies. Using earth based telescopes, scientists can measure out to 13 million light years, after that it becomes the work of space based telescopes to get out to 50 to 60 million light years. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Jones (University of California – Santa Cruz); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America). If you would like to learn more please see these links: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/hubble-captures-majestic-barred-spiral and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barred_spiral_galaxy and https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/cepheids.html and Henrietta Swan Leavitt – Wikipedia

“I don’t accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me ‘Well, you haven’t been there, have you? You haven’t seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid’ – then I can’t even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. God used to be the best explanation we’d got, and we’ve now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don’t think that being convinced that there is no god is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don’t think the matter calls for even-handedness at all.” Douglas Adams

The above image is part of a close up portion of the open cluster NGC 6530. It was created by the Hubble Space Telescope. This open cluster is part of the Lagoon Nebula or M8. See the picture below for a zoomed out view of the Lagoon Nebula. This open cluster is located in the constellation Sagittarius and is about 4,350 light-years from earth. Scientist were using the Hubble’s advanced cameras to look for ionized protoplanetary discs called Proplyds. See the very bottom pictures for examples of this. So far, most of these discs have only been found in the Orion Nebula, making them extremely rare. Image Credit:  ESA/Hubble & NASA, O. De Marco; Acknowledgment: M.H. Özsaraç. If you would like to learn more please see these links: Hubble Views a Star-Studded Cosmic Cloud | NASA and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proplyd

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?” Richard Dawkins

HEY!! I AM LOOKING AT YOU!! THAT’S WHO!!

If you are reading this then you have continued to survive Covid 19 so far and so have I!! Yea for both of us!! Unfortunately some have not been so lucky, either by choice (not getting the vaccine) or circumstances (immunocompromised or older than 65). The death count as of December 5th, 2022 is still about 300 per day and due to the Thanksgiving holiday – cases are on the rise again, along with FLU. The good news is that RSV is staring to trend down a bit. Reported cases for December 5th was about 57,000, so that would mean that you have double that number due to home testing and people not testing at all. So the current infection rate is back up to about 100,000 per day now. And I am guessing that it is 2nd or even the third time around for a lot of people.

At the end of the first week of December 2022, the omicron subvariants BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 were dominate in the USA. Due to their ability to evade or side step treatment with monoclonal antibodies, these drug were pulled by the FDA. This is bad news for people with weakened immune systems and puts them at risk for developing severe disease. The drug that was pulled in December was bebtelovimab (monoclonal). Paxlovid (antiviral) is still working but a lot of people cannot take this drug if they have had organ transplants – it creates issues with the other drugs they are on. Oh well, a lot of us may be done with the virus but the virus is not done with all of us.

The above picture has still not changed. California, Texas and Florida still lead the country in deaths. And I will say this again, due to the lack of reporting by states such as Florida, this picture is a little inaccurate. One of the great missed opportunities in this pandemic will have been our public health system. We have the tools to make it the best in the world but so far we continue to fail to do that.

By the time of publishing, the death count per day for the USA was back up into the 400 range and the total deaths since the pandemic started was about 1,116, 000 total. That is about 23,000 thousand deaths in the last two months. Again hard to wrap my head around those numbers, especially when you consider the count is probably a lot higher. Covid is still considered the third leading cause of death as of this past November. Right behind Heart disease and Cancer.

If you are interested in more information from reliable sources please check out these links: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ and https://www.youtube.com/c/OsterholmUpdateCOVID19 and https://www.youtube.com/c/VincentRacaniello

One other late note is the conditions in China since they eased their lockdown restrictions this month. Due to their inability to get people vaccinated, and the short sighted view of continued lock downs up until this point, most experts warm of an impending disaster in China with Covid. Unfortunately, with the state run media, information on what is happening will be difficult at best to obtain. I am guessing that we are going to be looking at a very different China in about 6 months. My fear, besides supply disruption, will be that we get a new variant out of their population that will be the worst yet. Oh well, time will tell.

The months of November and December were great for getting out doors in Fort Collins. But with my continued knee problem, most of the getting out was walking, at least for me. Unfortunately for Janet, even with the foot issues on the mend, she came down sick with a virus at the first part of December that keep her sidelined for about 16 days. She tested multiply times for Covid with home test and came up negative each time. She did get tested for the flu and that was negative too. Looking back at her symptoms, it really seemed like it was Covid and it makes me wonder how accurate the home test were. There were reports of some home testing kit failures with the two current variants (BQ.1.1 and BQ.1) by the FDA. So far at the time of this writing I have stayed illness free for now. And hope to stay that way. Oh well.

Again it was another great 30 days for taking sunset pictures. Most of these images are from the local neighborhood lake, which gives a great vantage point for these types of pictures.

The next couple of pictures were from a trail hike / easy run that I did with Marvin on December 21, 2022. What a difference from last year. The temps this year (mid 30s) were more typical of a Colorado Front Range winter. Last year, at the same time, I was up in this same area running in shorts with no snow on the ground. Who knew that a little more than a week later – there would be the devastating Marshall Fire down by Boulder. If you do not know what the Marshall Fire was about then check out this link: https://www.marshallfiremap.com/

The images are from Horsetooth Mountain Park just West of Fort Collins.

Of all the ironies, while I was at the top of the park, I saw a plume of smoke down towards Boulder and thought to myself they are doing a prescribed burn. But when I got home, I found out it was another forest fire and there had been the evacuation of about 360 homes. I believe they are calling it the Sunshine wildland fire. While we have had more seasonal like temperatures this year, we are still in a severe drought on the Front Range. Fortunately, at the time of publishing, winter had returned to the Front Range with snow and below zero temperatures, very reminiscent of last year at this time, but a week earlier. Luckily this has put an end to the fire danger for the time being. The crazy part, is that even in winter, due to climate change, you are not safe. Fire season on the Front Range is now year round.

It was another great month for reading and I would like to share a few book recommendations.

The first book review is about Nike and the Oregon Project.  It is called “Win at All Costs:  Inside Nike Running and Its Culture of Deception” by Matt Hart.  Matt has written numerous magazine articles for the likes of Outside Magazine, National Geographic, The Atlantic, The New York Times, etc.… “Win at All Cost” is his first book and a pretty damn good one at that.  I am an amateur ultra runner, so I am drawn to books about running.  I first heard about the Nike doping scandal with Alberto Salazar from the HBO show called “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.”  If you’re interested, I believe the show was from last January 2021.  Here is an HBO clip from YouTube on the show: https://youtu.be/2G4-gUkhKYQ

So when I saw that Matt had written a book about it.  It was somewhat of a no-brainer to get a copy or in my case the audio book.  I love listening to audio books on long runs.

Most of the story that Matt tells is about the relationship between Alberto and Kara / Adam Goucher.  Both were coached by Salazar.  Kara was one of the first athletes to accuse Salazar of doping allegations.  Salazar’s coaching style comes across as what can only be described as idiosyncratic in my opinion.  His wanton willingness to use whatever was “in vogue” for performance enhancement (legal and illegal) at the time is pretty disheartening.  Kara’s part was trying to “make it” as a professional athlete while being coached by someone who was willing to bend the rules anyway possible and would threaten you with being “let go” if you did not participate.  There is some focus on the Nike organization itself, but not as much as you would think.  Of course, the Nike management had to know what Salazar was doing and by not calling him out on it, gave their unofficial blessing.  The other part of this book that was interesting was the physicians that were involved as well.  Obviously, the Hippocratic Oath really did not mean anything to them.           

If you follow the world of professional sports, like bicycling, you will remember the Lance Armstrong doping scandal from about 10 years ago.  What I did not remember, was how it all tied in to the Nike organization.  While there is not much on the Lance Armstrong angle. It was interesting none the less.

I got this book as an audio book but I think it would work better in traditional format.  Especially if you are not familiar with all the other players (athletes, Nike executives, physicians, etc.…) mentioned in the book.  If you want to know more about the author here is a link to his website: http://bymatthart.com/

Of interesting note, Salazar got a life time ban from the sport back in December 2021, but not from doping but for sexual assault of an athlete on two different occasions.  For more information on this check out this New York Times link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/31/sports/alberto-salazar-sexual-assault.html

You can probably find this book at your local book store or on Amazon. Here is the Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Win-All-Costs-Running-Deception/dp

The next book I would like to recommend is another one about running called “Running to the Edge:  A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed by Matthew Futterman.  First off, let me say, this is NOT a how to run book but more of a historical account of the legendary running coach Bob Larson and the different runners that he coached over the years starting in the 60s and 70s.  The story starts with high school students and ends with his coaching of the long distance runner Meb Keflezighi.    

The tale Futterman weaves is a good one.  Besides telling the story of the difficulties, problems and victories of Bob and his band of runners over the years, the author, interweaves his own story of trials and tribulations with running.  At the same time he mixes in a little bit of science as he describes Bob’s quest to find the formula to create not only fast runners but runners with incredible endurance. 

To reiterate, this is not a book about “how to run”, “how to train” or a book about Bob Larson’s training methods.  This is a book telling a story about Bob Larson and some of the runners he coached.   

I got the book as an audio book but it might work better in traditional format if you are not familiar with some of the athletes mentioned and races talked about.  I had to go back and replay sections, to then be able to look stuff up.  In a traditional format this would not be as much of an issue.  You can probably find this book at your local book store or on Amazon.  Here is the Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Running-to-Edge-Matthew-Futterman-audiobook/dp

The last book I would like to talk about is a book on how to be an artist.  No really, it is a book about how to be an artist.  Sounds easy, right?  Not really.  There are so many things that can get in the way of achieving a high level of creativity and craft in any artistic path.  Whether it is writing, drawing, painting, cooking, sculpture, etc.… there is always something that can side track your path.  The least of which is yourself. 

The book is called “How to Be an Artist by Jerry Saltz.  Jerry is an American art critic and received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2018.  Before getting serious about the art world, he was a “regular guy”, a long distance truck driver until the age of 41.  You can’t get any more main stream America than that.  So he gets what it like to be in the struggle. 

There are a lot of other great and not so great books on how to be an artist.  What I like about Jerry’s book is that he basically tells you how to get past or at least make friends with “yourself.”  That inner personality we all have called self-doubt.  And along the way, as a bonus, you get multiple pearls of wisdom of what it means to be in the art world and to be an artist. 

Jerry gives you all of this in concise and easy to understand steps.  About 63 to be exact.  This is what makes the book.  They are short and to the point.  Not a lot of fluff and stuffing, but more down to earth.  A pragmatic look at what “you got to do” to be someone who creates art, no matter what it may be.

I got this book as an audio book but it would work in any format.  You can probably find it at your local book store or on Amazon.  Here is the Amazon link:    https://www.amazon.com/How-to-Be-an-Artist-Jerry-Saltz-audiobook/dp   

Last but not least I would like to show case a new piece of art work. This is the second in a series called “Athena Nike Revisited.” I got the idea from watching some of the amazing women in track and field compete in running events during the recent 2022 World Track and Field Championships held in Eugene, Oregon back in July. So I thought I would do a drawing of what I feel incorporates the very spirit and determination of these female figures. To be the very best they can be. I believe these powerful and determined young women should be allowed to choose they own destinies and that includes all choices that have anything to do with their healthcare and/or bodies. And that those choices should not be dictated by anyone else but them. Watching them run with such spirit and sheer resolve gives me hope for the future. I cannot imagine any of them bending to becoming someone’s handmaid.

This piece measures 9 by 12 inches. It is done in acrylic paint on canvas paper, mounted to a hardboard frame and sealed with archival varnish.

Athena Nike Revisited # 2

This piece and other types of artwork are for sale and can be found on my Etsy site: https://www.etsy.com/shop/strugglingprotoplasm/edit?ref=seller-platform-mcnav

In support of Prochoice and the Separation of Church and State, I will donate 10% of any sales to Planned Parenthood or the Freedom From Religion Foundation, but only if you wish me too. If not, I will be more than happy to keep the money! Lol.

Well I have come to th end of another blog post! Yea! I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.

So take care my friends and if you have not gotten vaccinated or boosted, even if you have had Covid, then get it done. It would be stupid to say the least, if you were to lose your life or suffer significant disability with this virus when vaccines are readily available in this country. So until next time Adios!!

“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” Carl Sagan

“Questions you cannot answer are usually far better for you than answers you cannot question.” Yuval Noah Harari

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous…, leading to the most amazing views.” Edward Abbey