The World Health Organization and various U.S. government spokespeople are emphatically and hurriedly informing journalists that the strain of influenza virus A H1N1 is NOT “swine flu” or “Mexican flu.”

Why would they be rushing to make this announcement and control the way the media refer to the coming pandemic?    Why!?  Because there are fools out there demanding closing borders, halting imports of pork, and/or destroying all the pigs.

And why would those fools be making such asinine demands?  Beats me.  Is some subversive element spreading disinformation?  Are that many people really that ignorant and/or misinformed?  Do people simply rush to demand that the government do SOMETHING, anything, even if it does no good?

Or all of the above?

For whatever reasons the fools are running in all directions shouting their addled heads off for a visible government response to protect them from the invisible menace, the government (and the United Nations) have heard them.  What have they done?  They have asked the media to spin the flu in a different direction.

The official panic over the popular panic is a valid response, probably the best one they could make, because the public’s panic over potential danger is more dangerous than the virus itself.  It is fairly well established that A H1N1 is spread human-to-human.  It will spread — that’s a given.  Some of those with preexisting conditions or compromised immune systems are likely to die.  The virus’s behavior thus far suggests that most healthy people will experience a mild infection with miserable symptoms, and survive.

This is just another epidemic, going on pandemic.  The world has them, and always has.  Some of them have changed the world.  Wars have probably done more damage overall, but do people harangue their government to stay out of wars?  Most don’t.  They tend to spit on those who do.

I have an extremely compromised immune system and chronic respiratory disorders.  I’m assuming I’ll get this flu.  Though I don’t expect to die, I’m not assuming I’ll survive.  I’ll deal with whatever comes when it comes.  I love my life, but I’m not afraid to die.  That attitude is a practical matter.  I love life because I’m happy.  If I went around scared to death of death, it would take all the pleasure out of life.

On the outflow pipe at the community spring, someone had neatly printed in black marker, “Where is Dale Bilger “Pokino” call 982-1081 $100 reward.”  It is the first graffiti I’ve ever seen on any permanent part of the spring.  People often tack up notes and notices, but most don’t write on the fixtures.

Doug wondered aloud what “Dale” had done, and I supposed in response that he might have simply disappeared.  With Sheep Creek Lodge closed now, Montana Creek Lodge washed away in a years-ago flood, and what used to be a neighborly general store with chairs gathered around a wood stove, now replaced by a more modernly businesslike grocery, video rental and laundromat, there are no local gathering places any more, and it’s easy to lose track of people.

We were stopping for water on our way home from the Willow Public Library.  A few weeks ago, Nicole, the librarian, had handed me a sheaf of little forms when I stopped in there to pick up an Inter-Library Loan book she’d ordered for me, and asked me to get the family to fill them out for her.  Each had blanks for name and phone number, for a book title, and check boxes marked, “awful,” “so-so,” “pretty good,” and “excellent.” 

We were to review books we read and return the slips of paper to her by the end of this month for a drawing with some attractive prizes, including a GPS system and iPod.  She said they were important to her, because the “numbers,” the response to the “Willow Reads,” promotion, would help determine her library’s funding for the coming year.

I committed myself and Doug to reading five books each and reviewing them, and would have gone to a great deal of trouble to get the slips back to her by the end of the month, because that library is very important to me.  When my computer was down for eleven weeks a few years ago, that was where I did my blogging. 

Several times a year, Nicole tracks down and borrows books for me from distant libraries that are not in the local system.  Each time I go in there, I pick up one or more recent releases that I would otherwise have to wait years, until they’re out in paperback and showing up in thrift shops or used book stores, before I’d get a chance to read them.  Today, as usual, I browsed the discard racks by the door and donated a few bucks for a few old books, too.

This water run had a few seasonal “firsts.”  It was the first time this year that we’ve gone for water in temperatures above freezing;  first time we could actually see the ground and walk on it, not slip and slide down the hill on ice and packed snow;  first time since last September that we’ve seen mosquitoes.  As we were loading up, Doug mused, “Interrogative Graffiti would be a good name for a rock band, but then you wouldn’t be able to tell whether a spray-painted question mark was actual graffiti, or viral marketing.”

Our timing couldn’t have been better.  We had all the jugs filled and loaded in the car and were preparing to get on the road when the next person showed up to use the spring.  It was someone I recognized as a local, but don’t really know.  His face and his vehicle were familiar, but I don’t know his name.  I might have done a reading for him at a Talkeetna Bluegrass or Moose Dropping Festival, or we might have attended the same high school play or grade school carnival.  It’s like that with most of my neighbors.  We all know each other, without knowing each other’s names.

I love this neighborhood, the whole Susitna Valley, the state of Alaska, our nation (no matter how troubled and imperiled), this challenged planet, and my life.  I think I’ll go consult the ephemeris to see if it gives me any clues to explaining this unaccustomed euphoria.  Some of it could be Barack Obama’s voice in the background as I’ve been writing.  Cool and mellow, and so rational, he is.  I’ve heard recordings of some of FDR’s fireside chats.  Obama’s style is reminiscent of them.

Not the magazines.  These are philosophical musings on life, and time… and stuff like that.

Time never weighs heavy on my hands.  I don’t get bored.  Last time I got bored, I was locked up.  The fifteen months I was in prison was enough time to teach me how not to be bored with time on my hands.  In the process it, killed something — a trait some people might call “motivation,” and others might call a work ethic.  Whatever you want to call it (in psych and soc jargon it’s called, “institutionalization”), I can be contented in just about any situation and don’t need to be doing anything in particular to feel okay.

I have come to realize that I have a special relationship to time.  I came to that conclusion through observations and consultations with many other people.  Few, if any, of them feel as I do about time.  For example, I didn’t feel any anxiety or regret about the passage of time as my Kid grew up.  As he gains wisdom and independence, he becomes less of a responsibility and more of a companion to me.

Aging doesn’t bother me, although I could do without some of its side-effects.  Of course, most of the stuff I’d rather do without isn’t really the effect of time alone, but more the consequences of my neglecting and abusing my body.  My parents were told when I was a babe in arms that I would not live to grow up.  My only sibling had lived only a few hours, a few years before I was born.  I came through my birth in such bad shape that nobody expected me to make it.  That fact, and my having become aware of it, has made each birthday I pass a personal triumph.  I made it!

Sometimes, I get a bit demented and start feeling as if there’s not enough time to get stuff done, but if I’m honest about it, the reason for that is simply that I choose to spend the time I have doing other stuff.  In the time sweepstakes, any way I look at it, I’m a winner.

In simplest terms, “getting hip,” (for you young people who are not hip to the slang of the Beat Generation) just means learning.  One can be hip to anything, but nobody is fully hip to everything.  That would require omniscience beyond the capacity of the human brain.  “Getting high,” in a broad sense, means simply attaining a state of euphoria.

Defining my terms is not my favorite thing to do, but many people who read what I write might think otherwise.  Communication is one of my favorite things to do, and I have found that if I don’t define my terms my communication often suffers.  Therefore, I frequently start by defining terms and often digress into definitions.  So, sue me.

I don’t remember exactly when I started studying psychology.  I started learning about the workings of my brain/mind before I started using the word, “psychology.”  Psychologists have been studying me since I was seven years old and scored about 240 on the Stanford-Binet IQ test.  The number there is approximate because nobody told me anything about my results at the time, and the only thing my mother was told was that I had scored, in second grade, at the level of a high school senior.  I later did the calculation myself.

I have always been intensely curious, wanting to learn and to know — everything.  Curiosity is probably my most dominant trait.  Curiosity, I have been told, is an attribute of intelligence.  Intelligence is one of the subjects I have wanted to learn and know about ever since people started talking (mostly behind my back) about my intellligence.

About a quarter of a century ago, I learned about dopamine and a few other brain chemicals related to learning and memory.  I was reading magazines like Psychology Today and Scientific American.  Those articles led me to other avenues of investigation and I got into smart drugs, brain food, and neurotech.  I regularly discuss these things with my family, which consists of a brainy old guy who was getting intensely into Mensa and its sex and politics about the same time I dropped out of Mensa, and a young man whose intelligence sometimes makes us elders feel stupid.

The Kid and I concluded long ago that one of the things that differentiates us from neuro-normal people is that we get high on learning.  We have asked others, and the ancedotal evidence we have accumulated suggests that those who are more intelligent (defined as those who tend to score higher on intelligence tests), generally get a bigger charge out of nailing down a new fact, making a previously unrealized connection, or mastering a new skill.  I have had some odd conversations with some dim folks who apparently didn’t even understand what I meant by “learning” or any particular feeling associated with it.

I have concluded that people (like me and my kid) who get big kicks out of learning will probably tend to learn more than people who do not generate those big dopamine jolts in their brains.  We have also theorized that the neurochemical reward system could account for our tendency to become easily addicted to video games.  Designers set them up to both drive and reward learning.

Our intuitive leaps and anecdotal evidence are being confirmed or supported by science. Recently, I found a few things online:

We used a newly developed dynamic molecular imaging technique to determine whether striatal dopamine is released during performance of a sequential learning task. In this study we localized striatal regions where dopamine receptor ligand (11C-raclopride) was displaced from receptor sites, during performance of a motor sequence learning (serial reaction time) task. The results suggest that the task induces release of endogenous dopamine in the posterior two-third of dorsomedial aspect of left putamen and the anterior part of the body of caudate bilaterally. The activations of the left putamen and the right caudate coincided with the activations observed earlier during performance of a motor planning task. Since these activations are associated with the selection and execution of a response, the activation in the left caudate, which was not observed in motor planning, is probably associated with the detection of a change in the ‘context’, and in the formulation of a new ‘rule’. Thus, the results suggest that sequential learning involves two striatal dopaminergic mechanisms, one for the detection of a change in context, and the other for selection and execution of the response.

[source: nih.gov]

The neurons that produce dopamine in response to pleasure often seem to activate just before the pleasurable activity occurs, which suggests that the relationship between pleasure and dopamine may be complex. The data on the timing of dopamine release are somewhat contradictory, but the theory emerging is that the dopamine reward signal acts as a kind of teaching tool. In this model, our brains release a certain amount of dopamine as a predictor of how pleasurable some activity is going to be. The dopamine motivates us, increasing our energy and drive and compelling us to engage in the pleasurable activity. If everything is as nice as the brain predicted, dopamine levels remain elevated. If things turn out even better than the brain hoped, dopamine levels are increased; we engage in the pleasurable activity even more vigorously. If, on the other hand, the activity is less pleasurable than we thought it would be, dopamine levels plummet.

Interestingly, learning can cause dopamine responses to transfer from primary rewards (such as tuna fish to your cat) to reward-predicting stimuli (such as the sound of the can opener). This suggests that reward in general, and the dopamine hypothesis in particular, may play a central role in how and why we are able to learn.

[source: brainconnection.com]

It was lolling around near the bottom of a half-full jug of water yesterday.  It appeared to be a discrete blob, until I agitated it a bit too much and watched it spawn several little blobs before coalescing again.

It was a rusty reddish brown in color.  As I gently tilted the translucent white jug and peered down through the mouth of it at the blob sloshing back and forth, I thought of amoebae I’ve watched through microscopes.  Too big to be an amoeba and not self-propelled, it was amorphous, more or less globular, with its color having a grainy quality, not uniform.

In the evening, as Doug was preparing to heat water and wash dishes, I started describing the blob in the white water jug.  Not particularly interested in the fine points of my observations, he cut to the chase:  “You want me to dump it?”  Thinking both of water conservation and scientific curiosity, I replied:

“I want you to pour the water through a strainer into Kermit.”  (“Kermit” is a big green enamel pot that, except when it’s moved to the kitchen stove to boil for dishwater, normally resides on top of the wood stove, providing heated water [lukewarm to boiling hot, depending on the intensity of the fire] all winter.  It was named early in our tenancy here because we three were having difficulty settling on whether to call it the “hot water pot,” “stew pot on the woodstove,” “big green thing,” etc.)  My plan was to get a closer look at the blob in the strainer without wasting a couple of gallons of water.  Any microbial growth would be boiled to death before Doug started washing dishes.

His jingly jangly preparations to wash dishes proceeded across the room, over my left shoulder, as I went on playing in Facebook Fairyland.  Then, I heard a surprised, “Hmph?!”  Doug said, “Well, whatever it is, it’s in Kermit now.”  The blob went right through the fine mesh of a tea strainer, not even leaving any visible residue behind.  *sigh*

…and today’s Doonesbury turns the focus from Alice and Elmont, back to the budding romance between Alex and Toggle.

I’m hoping the weather here will clear up by tomorrow.  At sunset on Sunday, just above the horizon, as the sky darkens, first there is the crescent Moon.  As the sky darkens even more, Mercury becomes visible just below the Moon.  As darkness deepens, your eyes adapt, and stars appear, the Pleiades can be seen below the Moon, between it and Mercury, just above the western horizon.

More at Spaceweather.com.

My new muffin recipe, like most of my original recipes, happened by accident.  I had already measured the usual amount of yogurt into the other liquid ingredients, and was pouring off a small amount of thin clear liquid that I’d rather have in the muffins than tossed out, next time I want to scoop some thick yogurt onto a baked potato or sweeten it for filling not-cheese not-blintzes.  The entire blob of yogurt in the container slid out into the bowl of muffin ingredients. 

The result is understandably creamier than usual, and the crumb holds together very well.  Until a year or two ago, I used to put xanthan gum in my batter to hold it together, but I didn’t like its mouth feel.  I had been putting up with crumbly muffins, but not this time.

Begin by lining muffin pans with 3 dozen paper baking cups.

Whisk together in a large bowl:

In a separate bowl, beat:

Then add, beating after each addition:

Start heating the oven to 375°F and spooning batter into cups in 1/4 cup portions.

Bake at 375°F about 20-23 minutes, until tops are golden brown.  Cool in pans on racks ten minutes before removing muffins, then continue cooling on racks.  Pack into air-tight containers and freeze.  Microwave frozen muffins briefly, until they’re warm, and they’re as good as fresh-baked.

I’ve got about a month’s worth of breakfasts now.  I ate three muffins while I was writing this, but that overindulgence has to stop.

* Update to the baby food story:   About a year ago, Greyfox (poet, shaman, arms merchant, dumpster-diver extraordinaire, my soulmate, significant other, and partner in crime) found and gave to me several cartons of discarded baby food, assorted strained fruits.  The bananas went first.  They made marvelous additions to muffins.  Then I used up the applesauce and strained peaches.  A few weeks ago, all I had left was three little jars of strained pears, when he found two more cartons of assorted baby fruits.  This batch of muffins used up the last of the old stuff. 

I can’t keep doing this, but for today at least I want to share the latest Doonesbury strips.

I should probably get out of the plagiarism business now.  You can find Doonesbury for yourselves online, either here or here.  The latter link there is where I went to get it delivered to my inbox every day.

Chances are, everyone, at some time in his or her life has taken chances.  Some of the ones who take the most chances never really had a chance.  The ones with the least chance of success are those afraid to take chances.

If you treat life like a game of chance, you won’t have much chance of seeing it work out according to your plan, but if you chance to discover your own power of choice, you might get a second chance.

Pushed into a corner by an abusive or neglectful partner, seeing no chance for something better, a codependent person might try to gain some control by threatening to leave and offering, “one last chance,” if the partner will shape up.  Chances are, if such a one offers one, she or he will probably offer more than one last chance.  How many last chances, I wonder, should one person get?

They are my all-time favorite Doonesbury characters.  I can relate.