Category Archives: science

Have a chat with MIT’s debunking bot.

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A team of MIT researchers has made public a link to an AI bot designed to debunk conspiracy theories.

This study is investigating how humans and artificial intelligence algorithms interact. In the study, you will answer questions and have a back and forth discussion with an artificial intelligence algorithm. If you give us permission by saying yes below, we plan to discuss/publish the results in an academic forum. In any publication, information will be provided in such a way that you cannot be identified.

You don’t necessarily have to ask it about a conspiracy theory; it will answer every question with super-intelligent logic and a thorough explanation. For example, I asked it if aliens from space visited our planet eons ago and had an effect on our evolution. I also asked if there was an “afterlife.” It scientifically explained both issues in detail.

Go debunkbot.com to try it out.

And if you do, please leave a comment here about how it worked for you.

The Truth About Aging

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My thoughts on the challenges of aging bubble up after having read two pieces on the subject: the book Turning: The Magic and Mystery of More Days, written by a woman in her early 60s, and an article in The New Yorker, “Why We Can’t Tell the Truth About Aging”.

The book Turnings is a well-written conversation about how to prepare to enjoy getting older. It’s a great book to use as a stimulus for discussion, since it offers engaging exercises to examine what aging might have to offer you. But it is written by someone who has not yet experienced the realities of being truly “old”.

The New Yorker article, however, confronts the realities of aging with disturbing but necessary forthrightness.

There is, of course, a chance that you may be happier at eighty than you were at twenty or forty, but you’re going to feel much worse. I know this because two recent books provide a sobering look at what happens to the human body as the years pile up. Elizabeth Blackburn and Elissa Epel’s “The Telomere Effect: Living Younger, Healthier, Longer” and Sue Armstrong’s “Borrowed Time: The Science of How and Why We Age” describe what is essentially a messy business.

The so-called epigenetic clock shows our DNA getting gummed up, age-related mitochondrial mutations reducing the cells’ ability to generate energy, and our immune system slowly growing less efficient. Bones weaken, eyes strain, hearts flag. Bladders empty too often, bowels not often enough, and toxic proteins build up in the brain to form the plaque and the spaghetti-like tangles that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Not surprisingly, sixty-eight per cent of Medicare beneficiaries today have multiple chronic conditions. Not a lot of grace, force, or fascination in that.

A contented old age probably depends on what we were like before we became old. Vain, self-centered people will likely find aging less tolerable than those who seek meaning in life by helping others. And those fortunate enough to have lived a full and productive life may exit without undue regret. But if you’re someone who—oh, for the sake of argument—is unpleasantly surprised that people in their forties or fifties give you a seat on the bus, or that your doctors are forty years younger than you are, you just might resent time’s insistent drumbeat. Sure, there’s life in the old boy yet, but certain restrictions apply. The body—tired, aching, shrinking—now quite often embarrasses us. Many older men have to pee right after they pee, and many older women pee whenever they sneeze. Pipher and company might simply say “Gesundheit” and urge us on. Life, they insist, doesn’t necessarily get worse after seventy or eighty. But it does, you know.

When Socrates declared that philosophy is the practice of dying, he was saying that thought itself is shaped by mortality, and it’s because our existence is limited that we’re able to think past those limits. Time has us in its grip, and so we devise stories of an afterlife in which we exist unshackled by days and years and the decay they represent. But where does that get us, beyond the vague suspicion that immortality—at least in the shape of the vengeful Yahweh or the spiteful Greek and Roman gods—is no guarantee of wisdom? Then again, if you’re the sort of person who sees the glass as one-eighth full rather than seven-eighths empty, you might not worry about such matters. Instead, you’ll greet each new day with gratitude, despite coughing up phlegm and tossing down a dozen pills.

The one way to prepare for the challenges of being old is to develop a sense of humor that can help take the edge off stark reality. Judith Viorst’s book Unexpectedly Eighty seems to do just that. I haven’t read it yet, but I plan to. As I prepare for another gastroenterology test, I could use a good laugh.

Dooce is Dead

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“Dooce” was the blogger name of Heather Armstrong.

The pioneering mommy blogger Heather Armstrong, who laid bare her struggles as a parent and her battles with depression and alcoholism on her site Dooce.com and on social media, has died at 47.

As a personal blogger back in the early blogging days, Dooce inspired and pushed the envelope for many of us trying to establish our own authentic voices on the internet.  As she succeeded in writing herself into existence, she paved the way for personal bloggers, like me, to use that public format as a way to navigate our ways through tumultuous personal times because we did not have to feel isolated and unheard.

For me, it included years of being an abused caregiver; the five days I sat with my mother while she died;  my debilitating struggle with not being about to fall asleep; my experiments with medical marijuana; and my ultimate sleep solution with an unusual pharmaceutical.

Like Dooce, I suffered from depression, but unlike her, I have been able to control mine, and, in association with that, to finally fix my sleep problem.  For years, I tried to convince doctors that my inability  to fall asleep was a matter of inefficient brain chemistry.  While my depression meds triggered certain neurotransmitters that produce the chemicals that supported mood, they did not deal with dopamine.  After doing extensive reading on the subject, I was convinced that my brain’s inability to trigger dopamine was behind both my mood swings and my sleep deprivation.  A psychiatrist finally prescribed Abilify (which triggers dopamine) and my problems were solved.

I think of what Dooce endured as she struggled to find a solution to her depression.  Her depression grew worse, leading her to enroll in a clinical trial at the University of Utah’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. She was put in a chemically induced coma for 15 minutes at a time for 10 sessions.

She finally committed suicide.  What if her struggle could have been lessened if she just were given the blend of meds that would have balanced her brain chemistry?  Why isn’t there  more research being done to produce the pharmaceuticals that will help brain neurotransmitters produce and maintain the necessary balance of the chemicals necessary for mood balance: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins?  One big motherfucker happy pill that balances imbalanced brain chemistry.

Dooce committed suicide because life’s pain was more than she could handle.

Last night on the series “911: Lone Star”, a character with the last stages of Huntington’s Disease commits suicide, using what looks like helium inhalation. I happen to believe in the right of an individual in terminal stages of an illness to choose to end their life on their own terms.

I also believe that folks should be more comfortable talking about death and dying. ,  Back in 2010, there was a movement to set up “Death Cafes”.

At a Death Cafe people, often strangers, gather to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death. A Death Cafe is a group directed discussion of death with no agenda, objectives or themes. It is a discussion group rather than a grief support or counselling session.

I, for one, would love to  have access to a Death Cafe, and even suggested that a local senior center hold one.  The idea was never even considered.

At  age 83, I think about dying, since it could happen any day, now.  I also think about living, and doing what I can to make what life I have left continue to be a hoot.  But I would love to meet with kindred folks who, like me, want to be emotionally ready when the time comes, not matter how it comes.

Dooce is dead, too young, too fraught with pain.  There had to have been a better way for her.  There has to be a better way for all of us.

I am still here.

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I am still here because I have a “mediocre autistic” superbly articulate blogger son who got me into all of this more than two decades ago and still continues to remind me why we bloggers blog.  “Because we can’t NOT.”

Most of my recent posts have been about my struggle with a Circadian Rhythm Disorder wherein I could not fall asleep — usually not until 3 or 4 am, and sometimes not at all for 24 or more hours. This went on for years, despite my suggesting to my doctors (after much reading and research) that my problem is probably a matter of brain chemistry — the lessening of the functions of the neurotransmitters responsible for the hormones that regulate mood and sleep (and many other psychological responses as well).

I tried  taking amino acid supplements, which are the precursors to the production of those “happy” hormones.  I also tried various herbal supplements that supposedly help with bringing on sleepiness.  All to no avail.

All it took was one psychiatrist and a prescription for Abilify (added to my current anti-depressive) to solve the problem.  Within a week, I was back to a “normal” sleep pattern, no longer depressed, and full of creative energy.  The answer was dopamine; that’s what my neurotransmitters were failing to transmit.

While am not a big supporter of Big Pharma, and while I hate the ads on tv for depression medication, the hard truth is that Abilify is working for me.  It’s almost miraculous.

It makes me angry to know that my problem could have been solved years ago, had any of my doctors thought beyond the typical environmental suggestions for fixing sleep problems.

Finding a psychiatrist was depressingly unsuccessful until I stumbled upon Talkiatry.  I used Linkedin and a Google search to check out the psychiatrist to whom they assigned me and found that he had impressive credentials.  He spent more than on hour with me on on a telehealth visit and discussed with me all I had been through.

I agreed to try Abilify.  And, now, here I am.  I continue to have follow-up telehealth visits with him as he checks in on how I am doing.  So far I have no side effects, although I am having frequent very disturbing dreams.  I will discuss that with him during our next virtual visit.

At age 83, I want to enjoy this last phase of my life, despite the typical aches and pains of aging.  Now I can.  Drugs.  Sometimes you just have to.

The Plague of Elders

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I don’t mean that we Elders are the plague; I mean an awful lot of us Elders are afflicted with the same “plague.” It’s called There are lots of kinds of insomnia and there’s no cure for any of them.   There are a host of “remedies”, however, and I have tried all of them (see the end of this post), to no avail.  So had the author of a book I read several years ago, Insomniac, by Gayle Greene.  The book was published in 2008, and you would think there would have been some progress made since then with a treatment that works.  I contacted Greene last year to see if she ever found a way rid herself of insomnia  Basically, she said no; all she could do is schedule her life around it when she can, take sleep meds when she has no other choice, and keep looking for a solution.

Here’s a review from The Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine:   Insomniac, by Gayle Greene, provides an interesting perspective and offers support to those with treatment resistant insomnia. It also offers a fresh perspective to readers who are also medical providers. The author defines insomnia in a way that sets the stage for the discussions that follow, as “Insomnia is when you can’t get the sleep you need to feel good, for no reason other than that you can’t.” By the end of the third chapter, the reader has a very clear understanding of the problems faced by insomniacs.

Greene’s book is both a memoir and a research paper. If you don’t read the book, read the whole review.  Here are some of the facts she shares in her book

⇒ A third of the American population suffers from insomnia enough to complain about it; in people over 65, estimates are as high as 60 percent.

⇒  Sleep has little part in medical curricula today, when doctors get an average of one or two hours’ instruction in sleep and sleep disorders.  The patient with a chronic complaint of insomnia will usually be referred to a psychiatrist.

⇒  With all due respect, this is so ass-backwards, Greene states. The reason I want more sleep is so that I won’t feel depressed.  I need sleep not to avoid my life, but so that I can live it.

⇒  This is what she learned from interviewing a range of sleep researchers and experts (all given citations in her book).  We do not know….the nature of the basic neural mechanisms underlying primary insomnia.  Nor do we know the identity of specific neurotransmitters that might be involved, or even whether specific neurotransmitter systems are involved.  The genetics of the disorder are also not known.

⇒ The behavioral model (change your attitude, change your ways) has had, perhaps the unfortunate consequence of discouraging research into the neurobiology of the disorder.

⇒ Insomnia is a subjective state..  There’s no blood test that it shows up on, no biopsy or x-ray that picks it up, and it doesn’t even show up on the EEG….. How much easier it is to tell us, as many clinics do, that we have “sleep disordered breathing,” or apnea.

⇒  Exercise helps some people, but not all. “In order to make a difference, it has to intensive, enough to raise the core temperature (inside body temperature) to two degrees Fahrenheit for about twenty minutes, which happens with twenty to thirty minutes of aerobic exercise….. Since only people who are in shape can sustain vigorous exercise for twenty minutes or more, they’re the ones whose sleep is likely to be improved.

⇒  Some billionaire who has a relative with terrible trouble sleeping…should endow a private foundation. There should be patient advocacy groups for insomnia, but they’ll need to stay independent of the pharmaceutical companies.

I wish every sleep doctor would read Greene’s book, which explores the various and complex reasons why folks have insomnia, including the gut-brain connections and the individual ways that insomnia manifests itself.  For example, I have the kind that prevents me from even falling asleep, from having my brain trigger what Greene calls the “sleep switch.”  I get relaxed and tired, but that last step evades me.

At the end of this month, I will have a sleep study.  I am going to give the doctors there a copy of this post.

Of all of the remedies I have tried for my insomnia,  I have to admit that I like the effect of medical marijuana (and I like the buzz I get before I fall asleep).  But trial and error has proven that I need sometimes 4 times the recommended dose to have any effect on my sleep.  That would cost me several hundred dollars a month, and I can’t afford that.  CBD helps with my daytime energy and mood, but has done nothing for my sleep issues.  And it’s not cheap, either.

I even bought some EMF fabric shield to cover my electronics at night. At my age (80), doctors will not give me prescription sleep meds.  Hell, I’m 80.  What’s it going to do, kill me?  Not sleeping is killing me and is depriving me of having any kind of satisfying life.

I no order of chronology or non-effectiveness, here is a list of what I have tried.
  Soto Bio-tuner; hypnosis; environmental changes; behavioral modification; yoga breathing; every pain and sleep-associated OTC on the market; a range of herbal, amino acids, and other supplements (sometimes combined); oxycodone (I’m running out of my old dental RX; I only take it when I can’t take the sleeplessness any more); binaural beats; relaxation, meditation, and music tapes; hot showers; massage (when I can afford it); decades of depression meds; tapping……..

Badly arthritic knees and a troublesome torn rotator cuff preclude me from doing the kinds of exercises that might tire me out enough to crash into sleep.

“Set your alarm and make sure you get up every morning even if you are tired,” they tell me.  Yeah, sure.  After finally falling asleep at 3 a.m. or so every night, I’m not about to get up at 9.  Maybe 11.  Sometimes noon or later.  When I finally sleep, I often sleep deeply and have great dreams.  But I miss half of the day.

There are still no advocacy groups for and by insomniacs to help spread the word and urge researcher and doctors to keep digging to discover the biological insomnia triggers and causes. There are plenty of support/forums for patients, but all those do is give us more places to complain.

More on “Awe”

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The solace of amazement is the highest solace to which the free can aspire. While others experience solace in salvation, the free discover it in astonishment, mystery, and unfolding.

I am trying to reconnect myself to the feelings of “awe” that have always provided a context for my creativity, and from which I seem to have strayed. Irreverent and irreligious, I come at “awe” from a perspective that is pretty much examined in this book. Here’s a another quote:

Whereas the conventionally religious tend to resist inquiry about their faith, the internally (relatively) free tend to question their faith consistently; and whereas the conventionally religious tend to experience their faith as clear and specific, the internally (relatively) free tend to experience theirs as enigmatic and evolving. To put it more concretely, the conventionally religious tend to invest in divinities that are near at hand, that give them firm directions, and that divide the world into comforting categories (such as good and bad,Christian and non-Christian, sinful and moral, and so on). The result of this purview is that, ostensibly at last, life becomes orderly investments containable, and difficulties minimized. The internally (relatively) free, on the other hand, tend to invest in spirits/forces that lie far beyond conventional parameters, that yield minimal directions, and that apprehend the world in its diversity, complexity, and immensity. The result is that life becomes adventurous, investments daring, and difficulties animating.

Where’s the Awe?

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I have forgotten how to feel “awe” — the Carl Sagan kind of awe. ““Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.”

Reading “The Rediscovery of Awe,” which inspires me with the following:

Awe is not a very comfortable standpoint for many people….hence, all about us today, we see avoidance of awe — by burying ourselves in materialist science, for example, or in absolutist religious positions, or by locking ourselves into systems whether corporate, familial, or consumerist; or by stupefying ourselves with drugs More than ever before, it seems to me, we are in need of the wisdom that awe inspires We are in need of paradoxical wisdom. We need to see the complexity of things,he wholeness of hings, which means the incompleteness and simplicity of things at the same time.

I would love to be part of a discussion group that explores how to become filled with an awe that has nothing to do with a deity or religion, but rather blooms from feeling a mythic connection to the marvels of life on this planet.

Shifting Gears: Medical Marijuana Mystery Tour #1

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here. Whatever I might rant about (corruption in politics, corporate mortal sins, our malfunctioning Gestapo) is being satisfactorily covered by my Facebook friends. My goal here has always been to deal with my own interests from, what I hoped was, unique perspectives. Whether explaining how to fix t-shirts so that you don’t have to wear a bra, or chronicling my mother’s five last days, I tried to share an authentic experience, told from my gut and my heart.

The challenge, lately, has been to find something I want to share with authenticity and guts and heart.

I will be 76 in another month or so, and my life as an older person is nothing like I imagined, in both good and bad ways.

One of the bad ways is that I have had really bad insomnia since the fall of 2014. I’ve tried just about everything available — prescriptions, OTC, herbal concoctions, TENS stimulation, exercise, meditation, visual imagery. Some worked for a while then stopped and some never worked at all.

When the state I live in, Massachusetts, legalized medical marijuana, I decided to give it a try. And also to blog, from my unique perspective as a “gray lady,” about this new adventure.

Soon I will begin “Gray Lady’s Medical Marijuana Mystery Tour.” As the Beatles sang, “The magical mystery tour is hoping to take you away. Hoping to take you away.”

I don’t know where it will take me. Will take us. Keep in mind that I’m not a very private person; I tend to put it all out there, and, as usual, you will probably learn more about me than you really want to know. Or not. What I hope is that my experiences will shed some light on how medical marijuana might enhance the lives of the elderly, whether to help us deal with insomnia, or pain and inflammation, or simply to help us just feel all-round better.

I will try to link to specific and factual information where appropriate. But mostly this is about me. Because, you know, it’s always about me.

Street-smart Feminism — wary vigilance and personal responsibility

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I have been an admirer of controversial Camille Paglia ever since I read her books back in the “olden days,” and this interview with her has some elemental points about women and their sexuality that I think are, unfortunately, ignored by most. She says:

Too many of today’s young feminists seem to want hovering, paternalistic authority figures to protect and soothe them, an attitude I regard as servile, reactionary and glaringly bourgeois. The world can never be made totally safe for anyone, male or female: there will always be sociopaths and psychotics impervious to social controls. I call my system ‘street-smart feminism’; there is no substitute for wary vigilance and personal responsibility.


Wary vigilance and personal responsibility as fundamental to street smart feminism. Yes.

What I find missing from the preparation of girls/young women to deal with unwanted male attention is the absence of an understanding that sexuality is a powerful, (to use Paglia’s word) chthonic force — a primal power that they need to get to appreciate and control. Yes, males need to understand this concept as well, and while they “get it” on a subconscious level, they need to understand it intellectually as well. But that’s a whole other discussion.

For the moment, I’m focused on young women, especially teenagers, who are not guided to reach any fundamental appreciation and understanding of the power of their sexuality (over themselves and others) and so are seduced by the advertising industry to flaunt it, while staying totally unaware of the psychology of sexuality and its complex, subconscious, Dionysian impulses. Instead, they are taught to INTERNALLY deny and repress them WHILE AT THE SAME TIME EXTERNALLY ANNOUNCING THEM.

It becomes confusing to them, as well as to the males who only see the external signals.

There is a lot of education that has has to be done before what has been termed this “rape culture” can be brought under control. Because it is a matter of awareness and control — SELF AWARENESS AND SELF CONTROL on the part of each individual.

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Low Empathy: the root of all evil

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LOW EMPATHY

I am obsessed with the conviction that our human race is devolving because we are losing our capacity for empathy. And I am not alone in believing that is the root of all of the evil in this world.

On the other hand, there is increasing research that is proving how other mammalian species are actually evolving in their capacity to feel and demonstrate empathy. All you have to do is do an online search for “animal empathy,” and you can spend the rest of the day being amazed and gratified at the increasingly widespread “humane” behaviors of our non-human brothers and sisters. (Do an online search for any of the areas of human violence in the world today – shootings, rapes, war zones…. — and you will spend the rest of the day, perhaps, starting to believe as I do.)

The tendency for humans seems to be violent. An online search for “human violence” will provide support for that assertion.

But it’s really more complicated – and overwhelming – than most folks are willing to admit.

Individual research projects are showing that there are complex connections among the healthy functioning of the brain’s “empathy spot,” the levels of the aggression hormone testosterone, the harmful psychological (and, perhaps neural) effects of violent sports/games/language, and this crisis of morality that is plaguing our species.

After spending the past few days searching online for perspectives on this issue, the best piece I have been able to find (although there are others) is “Why a Lack of Empathy is the Root of All Evil,” by psychologist Simon Baron Cohen, who offers this general definition:

Empathy is our ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling, and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion,” writes Baron-Cohen. People who lack empathy see others as mere objects.

And so we have rampant misogyny, bigotry, border disputes, extreme nationalism, racism,war, violence of all kinds.

What is fascinating to me is that the home of “empathy” seems to be in the brain itself. Scientific research has identified an area of the brain associated with empathy – the anterior insular cortex.

In other words, patients with anterior insular lesions had a hard time evaluating the emotional state of people in pain and feeling empathy for them, compared to the controls and the patients with anterior cingulate cortex lesions,” said the researchers.

This area of the brain that has been proven to be affected by a variety of variables, including testosterone levels and exposure to violent media.

One of Baron-Cohen’s longitudinal studies – which began 10 years ago – found that the more testosterone a foetus generates in the womb, the less empathy the child will have post- natally. In other words, there is a negative correlation between testosterone and empathy. It would appear the sex hormone is somehow involved in shaping the “empathy circuits” of the developing brain.
Given that testosterone is found in higher quantities in men than women, it may come as no surprise that men score lower on empathy than women. So there is a clear hormonal link to empathy. Another biological factor is genetics. Recent research by Baron-Cohen and colleagues found four genes associated with empathy – one sex steroid gene, one gene related to social-emotional behaviour and two associated with neural growth.

Contrary to what gamer developers would like us to believe, ongoing research is tending to prove that areas of the brain associated with empathy are being affected by constant exposure to violent video and other games.

New preliminary findings suggest that brain activation is altered in normal youths with significant past violent media exposure while viewing violent video games.

The reasons for our devolution are obviously complicated and involve some combination of nature and nurture and the opposite of nurture. As a culture and society, we seem to be intent on denying how we actually are encouraging a diminishment of empathy in favor of greed, selfish amorality, and vested interests — whether they be political, religious, economic, or national.

Of course, it’s easier to deny – from climate change to chemical food contamination, to promoting and glorifying violence – than it is to tackle the daunting job of trying to undo what we have done. But if we don’t, we will be a dead species before long. We will destroy ourselves from the simple lack of empathy.

I am hoping that some less corporate-manipulated and more holistic researchers will be able to bring together all of the factors that are pushing our species over the precipice of widespread violence and come up with a convincing argument for the necessity to put the brakes on across the board. Coming up with a plan after that is maybe more than government is capable of now. But if we don’t….

Having been a fan of speculative fiction my whole life and witnessing the manifestations of many of those “fictional” speculations, I don’t hold much hope.