Category: Uncategorized

20200522F Day 143: The Beginning of the End

Today is the beginning of a long Memorial Day weekend. It is also the End.

Here are some of the Universes in which it is the End:

  1. It is the Beginning of the End of our social liberties.
  2. It is the Beginning of the End of our flattening of the curve, and now infections are going to go up.
  3. It is the Beginning of the End of our fear of this novel coronavirus.
  4. It is the Beginning of the End of our belief that social distancing is necessary to stop the pandemic.
  5. It is the Beginning of the End of social distancing and shelter-in-place rules.
  6. Is is the Beginning of the End of the stock market crash.
  7. It is the Beginning of the End of requiring mask wearing.
  8. It is the Beginning of the End of high unemployment.

20200521h Day 142: Spacetime Independent Probabilistic Blockchain

My how time flies when you’re surfing through the multiverse. (Natural Bridges State Beach, May 21, 2020)
This thought is staying with me, that when we are moving “parallel”, then our experience of time is distorted.
Reading this quote again makes me smile. It would be interesting if science is able to detect parallel universes. If there is interference between parallel universes, then this should be detectable. If not, then it’s just a mental model. I find that even as a mental model, it’s a helpful for me in understanding reality.
This was just word association from Danielle’s original “spacetime on a hashtable” tweet.

20020526T Santa Cruz, CA: I took a break from blogging, so plan to revisit some of the tweets I made on each day that I didn’t blog. The above are from May 21st.

Spacetime Independent Probabilistic Blockchain: Blockchain is today used to permanently capture/guarantee a sequence of events in time. I was imagining blockchain used to capture changes in the probability of events occurring in a time and space independent manner. So the blockchain would store the current answer to the question “in a random universe within a distance of my current universe, what is the percent chance that EVENT occurs”, for a particular EVENT.

Whenever a probability was updated, then it may cause a change in other probabilities. The “proof of work” would be to come up with which probabilities would change the most and the amount of change in these probabilities. Perhaps it would be enough work to just determine whether a probability goes up, down, or stays the same.

The benefit of this over traditional cryptocurrency proof-of-work would be that useful work would be done to continuously update the probabilities stored in the blockchain and this information would be of great value to many people.

One issue would be coming up with the algorithm/system to compute the updated probabilities.

20200520W Day 141: Surfing to a Universe with more Massages

On Wed, I gave my beloved a full-body massage using her new massage table. I’ve given only two or three full-body massages. She is trained as a massage therapist, but I am not – at least not in this universe. I can easily feel that I’m a massage therapist in a parallel universe. I remember when I first felt my massage therapist universe. It was the year 2000, right after the dot com crash. Lots of jobs were being outsourced to low-wage countries where they could be performed remotely. I remember thinking how one career that would be difficult to outsource to a foreign land would be massage therapist.

Unfortunately, this inability to perform remotely is making life difficult for massage therapists, most of whom are not able to work due to shelter-at-home rules. In Santa Cruz County (and the rest of California), massage therapists are prohibited from working. This is different than physical therapists and chiropractors, who also work closely with clients.

20191218W Day -13: Noroviruses, like small naked Coronaviruses

3D graphical representation of norovirus particles based on electron microscopic imagery of norovirus capsids. (Image: © CDC/Jessica A. Allen)

20200521h Santa Cruz, CA: When I investigated what was going on back on Dec. 18, 2019, the first thing I ran across was a New York Times article by Jessica Grose on a Norovirus outbreak at an elementary school. Some points made in the article:

  1. There are multiple strains of norovirus migrating around the world. Catching one strain does not prevent you from catching a different strain;
  2. Noroviruses are seasonal and most active during Nov-Apr in the Northern Hemisphere and May-Oct in the Southern Hemisphere;
  3. Noroviruses are highly contagious stomach viruses that cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea;
  4. Noroviruses are able to live on surfaces for days;
  5. Infected people can shed billions of virus particles for two weeks or more;
  6. As few as 10 virus particles are needed to cause an infection;
  7. If there is an outbreak at a school, then kids should change our of their clothes as soon as they get home and leave their clothes and backpack at the front door;
  8. Infected people should self-quarantine;
  9. Active infections normally last 1 to 3 days; and
  10. Avoid going to the E.R. if you are infected.

From wikipedia, the following additional facts:

  1. Noroviruses are the most common cause of gastroenteritis, responsible for about 18% of all cases worldwide;
  2. There is no vaccine or specific treatment;
  3. There are an estimated 685 million cases of disease and 200,000 deaths worldwide associated with norovirus infections, 25% of which are children under the age of five;
  4. Noroviruses are named after the city of Norwalk, Ohio, after an outbreak in 1968;
  5. Like coronaviruses, noroviruses are single-stranded positive-sense RNA viruses;
  6. Unlike coronaviruses, noroviruses are non-enveloped (naked capsid) viruses;
  7. The norovirus genome is linear and non-segmented, with a length of about 7500 bases;
  8. The norovirus capsid varies in size from 23-40nm in diameter. The smallest 23nm capsids are composed of 60 VP1 proteins and the largest 40nm capsids are composed of 180 VP1 proteins;
  9. The estimated mutation rate is 12-14 substitutions per 1000 sites per year, which is considered high for RNA viruses;
  10. Diagnosis of norovirus infection is made via PCR assays within a few hours, with detection ability of as few as 10 virus particles;
  11. Infection by one strain of norovirus generally provides immunity against reinfection by the same strain for 6-24 months;
  12. Noroviruses can survive for weeks on hard and soft surfaces, and for months to years in still water; and
  13. Individuals with different ABO(H) histo-blood group phenotypes are infected by noroviruses in a genotype-specific manner.

Regarding blood-type, I found an article by Prof. Patricia L. Foster on livescience: Your Blood Type Might Influence Your Risk of Getting the Stomach Flu. Some interesting facts from the article:

  1. Noroviruses can survive in temperatures from 32 to 145 degrees Fahrenheit; and
  2. As naked-capsid viruses, noroviruses are resistant to alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

Here is a interesting quote from the article regarding blood type specific infections:

When norovirus is ingested, it initially infects the cells that line the small intestine. Researchers don’t know exactly how this infection then causes the symptoms of the disease. But a fascinating aspect of norovirus is that, after exposure, blood type determines, in a large part, whether a person gets sick.

Your blood type — A, B, AB or O — is dictated by genes that determine which kinds of molecules, called oligosaccharides, are found on the surface of your red blood cells. Oligosaccharides are made from different types of sugars linked together in complex ways.

The same oligosaccharides on red blood cells also appear on the surface of cells that line the small intestine. Norovirus and a few other viruses use these oligosaccharides to grab onto and infect the intestinal cells. It’s the specific structure of these oligosaccharides that determines whether a given strain of virus can attach and invade.

https://www.livescience.com/blood-type-stomach-flu-norovirus-risk.html

20200519T Day 140: Drive Shack Opens Up

Wind Surfing Beach near Davenport, CA – May 19, 2020

One stock that my brother recommended to me was Drive Shack. It is a Top Golf competitor that, as most other non-essential businesses, has been closed down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This week, they opened back up and their stock opened up on Tues as well, closing at $1.43.

On Tues I visited a new beach where I saw some wind surfers. It reminded me of my kite surfing in Morocco.

I also worked a bit on my RV – mainly cleaning it up and testing the fridge which still refuses to operate.