The recent study of dinosaur tracks in northwestern Australia revealed an extensive area over which dinosaurs walked during the Cretaceous Period. Some of the tracks are three-toed and have long been incorporated into aboriginal legend as the footprints of Emu Man, an ancient law-giver.*
 
Our connection to the past is multi-rooted. Personal memories, historical documents, and archaeological relics relate our lives to those who preceded us in this walk over the land. To those roots we can add trace fossils, such as the footprints in the sandstone of the Dampier Peninsula. We see the effects of walking dinosaurs without having any dinosaur fossil bones.
 
We don’t know the motivation for the thousands of dinosaur tracks. Were the animals moving to water from a seasonally dried out landscape as animals that migrate across the Plains of the Serengeti do today? Were they pursuing or escaping? Were they headed to a mating ground? Motivation this far removed in time is guesswork. We have some good ideas, but we can’t get into the heads of those creatures to know precisely what drove them to make those tracks.
 
Among those connections we have to our human past are the laws and customs we have inherited. Many are so durable they are like footprints in stone. They make the pavement of our culture. The reasons for some of them are self-evident. We have no problem understanding why our ancestors made certain laws or followed certain customs. But other laws and customs derive from partially or totally hidden motivations. Unfortunately, we can’t get into the heads of those who made the laws or adopted the customs we question. In some ways, everyone in the present is beholden to an Emu Man or obligated to follow the tracks he made in the cultural landscape.
 
Are you, like the Emu Man, leaving tracks others will follow without really knowing the reason you made them?
 
* http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/worlds-most-diverse-collection-dinosaur-footprints-04740.html

There are two basic kinds of breaks in regional rocks: Joints and faults. Joints are “cracks,” usually found in parallel or perpendicular arrangements and most often caused by the ground’s rise that forces the rock to occupy a larger volume. The breaks can be thought of as what might happen to the spacing of individual fibers when a carpet is pushed from its underside; though separated, the fibers still are part of the carpet. Joints can often be seen at waterfalls. Their spaces become the places where erosion occurs most easily, allowing the water to work on the downstream side of the joint. Faults, by contrast, are breaks marking movements. They can be horizontal or vertical movements or any angle of movement between rocks that border the break. Joints might be caused by earthquake-like activity (movement of the ground); faults actually cause such movement. Rocks along faults can move abruptly, and when they do, the surroundings undergo visible damage from the ensuing shaking. But another kind of movement also occurs, one called creep. It’s a slow and relatively steady warping of rock that is visible in offset fences, sidewalks and roads, and steam beds that cross the fault.
 
We do have human analogs, of course (What else would you expect me to say?). Sometimes two people in a relationship simply separate, occupy more space because of the division between them, and yet, remain in close proximity. Sometimes two people move apart as the rocks on either side of a fault, at times abruptly and earthquake-like and at other times by a slow creep of separation.
 
Look around. Live in a region of jointed relationships? Are people once part of a single unit now living in proximity but somehow behaviorally or intellectually separately? Are the separations places where erosion of the relationships is most likely? Live in a region of active faults? If the latter is your region, are the movements indicative of slow creep or large seismic jumps? Are the inexorable movements along the faults caused by those involved “finding fault” with the “rocks” on the other side?  

Operator: “AAA Roadside Service.”
NASA Director: “We’re going to need a tire repair.”
Operator: “Yes, sir. Can we start with your Triple A number?”
NASA Director: “Sure, it’s…Just a moment please. (Muffled voice) Linda, I’m looking at our AAA card, and I see I must have last year’s. Do you have the current card on file so I can give it to the operator?”
Linda (Muffled voice): “em em em em emm.”
NASA Director: “Operator, we don’t seem to have our current card. Don’t you have us on file?”
Operator: “Just give me your previous card number, sir.”
NASA Director: “Okay. It’s - - - - - - - - - -.”
Operator: “Sir, I’m showing that that number was not renewed. You don’t have coverage for roadside service at this time.”
NASA Director: “But I have a vehicle in a remote location, and it has a broken tire. The vehicle isn’t carrying a spare, and the vehicle operator is incapable of fixing it. If I don’t get it repaired, we can’t use the vehicle for our work.”
Operator: “The best I can do is to direct you to a tow truck operator in the vehicle’s area. Where is the vehicle at this time?”
NASA Director: “Uh, Mars.”
Operator: “Is that Mars, Pennsylvania? We have listings for both Mars, PA and for Moon Township, PA.”
NASA Director: “No, it’s Mars as in the Planet Mars.”
Operator: “Sorry, sir. We have no participating tow truck operators outside the USA. Could you call a local Chamber of Commerce for a listing?”
NASA Director: “@$#^^$&*%$#^& Linda, get in here. Now what are we going to do? She says we didn’t renew the AAA insurance.”
 
Crying in background.
 
So, NASA sent out a gajillion-dollar machine to a planet more than 30 million miles away and didn’t put a spare tire on the vehicle. Now, the rover’s camera, taking a Selfie, shows that one of its wheels has been damaged, and further damage will most likely end the long-running mission of exploration. So far, and yet…so far.
 
What we anticipate is rarely a problem. I’ve said it before. Here it is again: What we anticipate is rarely a problem. Get it? What we anticipate is rarely a problem.
 
* http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/wheel-damage-suggests-mars-rover-approaching-mid-life-crisis

Old adage: It’s better to give than to receive. What if that were a universal principle? Maybe it is.
 
Marco Chiaberge of the Space Telescope Science Institute says that a there is a supermassive black hole apparently running out of its galaxy at 7.5 million kph.* Doesn’t affect you. I know. But now we have another big number to deal with, one that makes the term mind-boggling insufficient to describe our brains’ inabilities to wrap their cognitive functions around a fact. The black hole, designated “quasar 3C 186” must be traveling via gravity waves generated by a force equivalent to “100 million stars exploding simultaneously.”
 
“So, what do you want me to do with this fact?” you ask.
 
“You can file it. You never know when you’ll be at some dull party. In your attempt to liven things up, you can say loud enough for more than a few to hear, ‘Did you guys hear about 3C 186?’ You know that opening is going to get some attention. Then, when they all gather and lean in to hear the gossip, you can say, ‘Yep, got kicked out. Wasn’t doin’ anything but mindin’ its business, when all of a sudden Wham! From out of nowhere this big wave comes along and sends poor 3C aflyin’ with nothing to hold onto. Almost ripped the whole accretion disk from the event horizon. It’s still goin’ and will be out of its galaxy in about 20 million years.’
You’ll get everyone’s attention for sure with that little item. Probably also get you a date with someone enamored of your erudition.”
 
Seems that even being big is no guarantee against ostracism. Can’t ask for something much bigger than a supermassive black hole, and yet, there is it, being thrown out of its former society of stars. And—here’s what makes the expulsion really interesting—before being thrown out, 3C 186 was in the center or very near the center of its galaxy. As dark as a supermassive black hole is, all such masses certainly command by size and position the center spotlight—even in gamma and X-rays.
 
There are no guarantees in social settings of any kind. Those who place their value in their position at the center of their personal galaxies can find themselves pushed out by forces unforeseen. Best for us all to realize how fickle social galaxies are. But one of the endearing characteristics of some of those who remain central for a long time is related to that adage about giving rather than receiving.
 
Oh! Well. Quasar 3C 186 will always have itself, its consuming, inward-collapsing self. Maybe that’s the reason that it received its ejection. Black holes, regardless of size, are a bit—make that very—selfish. They consume everything around them, and they don’t give back what they take in. They are, if nothing else, the universe’s biggest receivers. Nay, the biggest takers. If stars could understand human compassion, they would label 3C 186 as one of the least compassionate and most self-centered of entities. Black holes are stellar gourmands, too; they consume anything in vast quantities. They are insatiable dictators, commanding and demanding anything in their gravitational empires.
 
Good riddance to 3C 186. Quasars are among the brightest of objects in the universe, but that brightness comes with a cost to anything nearby. All the light that nearby objects shine on the stage of a black hole falls irretrievably into the blackness. The object that is usually so central is so because it takes from all around it to enlarge its own mass. That’s a diet of an ill-gotten destiny. How long till all around the receiver either tire of serving or simply run out of stuff to give? Although some dictators have survived until they faded away, many have been ejected from the societies they once controlled.
 
And outside the society that supported it, the receiver learns there is little to consume. The feast on locals is over.
 
The adage does seem to be a universal principle, and the expulsion of 3C 186 is an example of what happens to an entity that chooses receiving over giving.  
 
* https://www.sciencenews.org/article/supermassive-black-hole-gets-kicked-galactic-curb?tgt=more   

There are at least two ways to get garlic-breath. One: Eat garlic. Two: Eat tellurium. The former will disappear in a day. The latter will linger for weeks. Yes, eating tellurium will give you garlic-breath for a long time. In fact, you’ll stink all over, and no superficial gargling with mouthwash or washing with soap will cleanse you of the smell.
 
Why would anyone eat tellurium? I assume that no one does so intentionally though our knowledge that this silvery semimetal makes one seem to have overdosed on garlic had to come from somewhere. Well, there’s always some early tellurium worker who asked, “Wonder what this stuff tastes like?” Is this a cautionary tale about not eating tellurium? No, rather, it’s a tale about how some things have similar effects but the degree of influence varies.
 
So, those who sample garlic get a little bad breath, but garlic has some positive side effects. It seems to have antimicrobial potency and was even used to prevent gangrene before the discovery of antibiotics. It might lower lipids, and it seems to help people with hypertension. It is also an antioxidant, probably because of it allicin content. Some think that ingesting lots of garlic wards off stomach and colon cancer.
 
Not so with tellurium; it has serious deleterious effects. “Doesn't affect me. I’ve never eaten the stuff,” you say.
 
“Ah! Contraire,” I counter. “Tellurium does get into us through some veggies, but not much, usually less than 0.05 ppm. In truth, you have to go out of your way to get too much tellurium. But, again, this isn’t a cautionary tale about eating tellurium-laced foods or being exposed to the teratogenic fumes of tellurium that can work their way into the human body. It’s about other exposures, emotional ones in a society with an appetite for violence and human degradation. Give yourself this test: 1) What is my favorite TV genre? 2) Movie genre? 3) Fiction genre? 4) Do the above genres incorporate violence of any kind?”
 
We like detective stories. We like trial stories. America was, for example, inebriated by the OJ Simpson trial. Millions watched daily. Think about our brain’s diet of violence, of cruelty of any kind, of human degradation. The effects on mature adults are like garlic, but the effects on young minds are teratogenic. Like tellurium, once the fumes of violence enter the brain, they linger, and there is nothing positive about the element of human degradation.
 
​Is there a level of exposure to violence that is like garlic, somewhat beneficial with just a hint of bad breath? I’m just asking. You pick what you watch. You go a bit out of your way to ingest your programs of choice. TVs and movies (and chat rooms of hate and malicious gossip) don't turn on by themselves. You have to go out of your way to get tellurium-breath. But once you get it... 

It’s been some time now that apiologists and horticulturalists have been concerned about the plight of bees. There aren’t as many of them as there used to be, and that’s a concern. Bees, after all, pollinate, and pollination is important for many of our food sources. While the bees have been away—on vacation? Suffering colony collapse disorder?—researchers in the Australian Almond Breeding Program at the University of Adelaide’s Waite campus have developed five new varieties of almonds, and three of those five are self-fertile.
 
That presents us with a new problem. If the bees return from wherever, will they have any work to do? Looks like job losses aren’t just a human issue. In Australia, where the largest export crop is almonds, bees might soon be out of work. What will happen?
 
Are we about to have a welfare bee class? “Busy as a bee” will no longer be applicable. Genetic modification of plants might make them a permanent welfare class. Well, maybe not. There are still other plants aplenty in need of pollination. Right? But, alas, human interference is about to step in there, also. Harvard University researchers under the direction of Robert Wood have invented RoboBees designed to replace bees as pollinators.*
 
Does that introduce yet another complication? To be effective thousands of such RoboBees will have to work in conjunction with one another to pollinate a field. What if they all get angry? What if they become Africanized? Oh! No! Killer Africanized RoboBees! Keep the kids inside!
 
Have you noticed that with respect to Nature, just about everything we do to make things “better” gives us yet another problem to solve? We’re not going to run out of problems—ever. Because we have the ability to meddle and the desire to make the world in our image, we run up against the one barrier we can’t cross: Becoming an actual god with sufficient foresight to avoid unwanted and unintended complications. We intend the unintended just by meddling.
 
So, if at some time in the not too distant future your self-driving car’s windshield is cracked by collisions with RoboBees as you take a drive in the country, don’t be surprised. This is the world we have made. And every attempt to unmake it simply makes another world to unmake. So, maybe the bees will be out of work, but not us. All this making and unmaking should keep us occupied for centuries to come.
 
* http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-robobees-closer-to-pollinating-crops-2014-6

Anyone who has ever driven up or down a mountain, ridden the express elevator to the top of a skyscraper and back down, flown, or scuba dived knows what a change in pressure can do to one’s hearing. We have in our ear canals natural pressure-change sensors. At lower elevations air inside the canals has a higher pressure than air at higher elevations and vice versa, so we do what we can to even out the pressure during climbs and descents: Swallow, move our jaws, chew gum. When we succeed going higher, the air rushes out of; going down, into.
 
Seems that in life we are always making the same kinds of adjustments. Pressure too great? We do what we can to get the high-pressure stuff out of our lives. Some of us seem to succeed at the process; others try with varying degrees of success.
 
Ironically, those who succeed in lessening the feeling of high pressure on the “inside” often seek circumstances that put more pressure on them from the outside. It’s as though once adjusted to a pleasant lower pressure, they seek the battle of air pressure again. Having ascended, their planes or cars must descend to where pressure is greater, where air comes knocking at the doors to the ear canals, trying to force its way in. Equalized pressure is not a steady state in the rising and falling of most human lives.  
 
Ever notice how many truly successful leaders have found a way to equalize the pressure? They acclimate both going up and going down. They have to. No one stays at the top without some minor—or major—descent. What is their secret? How do they adjust to changes in pressure?
 
Obviously, different people use different methods just as during elevation changes some chew gum, some swallow, and some move their mandibles to equalize air pressure between ear canals and ambient atmosphere. But here’s something you might try when you believe pressure changes are inhibiting your success: Think of riding in an elevator, riding up a mountain, rising into or descending from the skies. I know, it’s just an image, but it puts you in a place. Sports psychologists, players, and people who meditate know the value of imagery. And imagery always involves thinking of place.
 
When you make place the focus, you put yourself in control. You can’t control time, but you can control place, even if it is a matter of mental imagery. Pressure mounting? Think of all those goings up and down and how you adjusted and cleared your ears.
 
Then think of the most important effect: Your ears opened, and you were better able to listen. Maybe that’s the goal when pressure mounts: To be able to listen, to hear what is going on in your environment. Listening. It’s easier when air pressure in the canals equals the pressure outside. Effective leaders know the importance of listening, and they know they can’t listen until they clear their ear canals. They also know that something as seemingly insubstantial as air can affect their ability to hear the people they lead. 

CaSO4·2H2O + heat → CaSO4·0.5H2O + 1.5H2O (released as steam) is how we make plaster from gypsum. Note the heat. That heat can be released as plaster sets, or hardens. Think of it as the heat of crystallization.
 
One might guess that an art teacher knows something about the materials used to make artworks. But maybe the knowledge isn’t any more precise than that of a child making shapes from mud and putting them on a hot sidewalk to dry and harden. In effect, sometimes we know what happens, but we don’t understand why something happens. Example: On Friday, March 23, 2007, the BBC reported that at Giles School and Sixth Form Centre in Old Leake, Lincolnshire, UK, a 16-year-old girl suffered third degree burns because her hands were inside plaster as it set. The child lost her thumbs and most of her fingers. “In the incident a girl was mixing plaster of Paris with water by hand, intending to make a plaster cast of her hand.”*
 
One might also guess that in a school that specializes in visual arts, the entire staff would understand the chemistry of the materials used to create. One would be wrong. The teacher must have had little knowledge of the heat value in a thick mass of plaster of Paris, a value that can reach temperatures in excess of 100 degrees Celsius (the boiling point).
 
Partial knowledge is the human way. Think Marie Curie. Not only was Marie the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, but she was also the first scientist to win two such prizes. She is known for her work with radium and polonium, both of which she discovered in pitchblende. On might think that the discoverer of radioactive elements would know the danger they posed. One would be wrong. Marie Curie carried vials of radium in her pockets, leading to her death by aplastic anemia. Seems she didn’t really understand processes associated with her materials.
 
The stories of the Lincolnshire girl and Marie Curie provide us with a question germane to our own lives. Do I carry a pride fueled by partial knowledge?
 
Look around. Some people have been injured by mixing ammonia and bleach to make a strong cleaning solution, only to unintentionally produce mustard gas. In a world with tens of thousands of synthesized compounds, all of us, including chemists, have a difficult, if not impossible, task of knowing what is or is not dangerous. Synthetic organic compounds abound, and most of them are toxic. When is the last time you handled atrazine? Ever had water in a plastic bottle? Whew! Safe there, aren’t you? There have been efforts to eliminate Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs). But maybe your bottles have been made with Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET), instead. No worry? So what if a little antimony trioxide leaches into the water?
 
Like the convenience of the modern world? Like all the materials you use without thinking? Proud of your sophistication and collections? Time to question what we use and how we use it. If even the most sophisticated of us, the brilliant scientist Marie Curie, was unaware of dangers in the very materials she discovered, imagine how unaware all of us are about the materials we accumulate and use some eight decades after her death and the creation of tens of thousands of synthetic compounds.
 
Is there some lesson in this other than that we’re surrounded by dangerous materials? Yes. And it’s a simple one. In hubris derived from our so-called sophisticated lifestyle, we daily mask our ignorance about the most fundamental materials and processes in our surroundings. We ain’t as sophisticated as we pretend to be.
 
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6485481.stm
 
 

Topologists know that the shape of a doughnut can transform into the shape of a coffee mug. The two forms are homotopic or isotopic. For many of us, the transformation seems a stretch, especially when we dunk our doughnuts into our coffee. We think, “These don’t look alike. How can they be the same?”
 
But the reality is that the shape of a doughnut can be transformed into the shape of a mug, and the opposite transformation is just as easy. We can with a little practice visualize the change, and there are plenty of diagrams, drawings, and videos to help us see how one can become the other.*
 
The difficulty we might have in visualizing the change is related to another change we find difficult to perceive: That a troubled person can change into an untroubled person. We think the shape of a life that we know is the only shape it can take. Lives, like coffee mugs and doughnuts, can be altered.
 
“No, I can’t believe he’s (she’s) changed. Once an/a (addict, criminal, liar, uneducated person, etc.), always an/a (________). People don’t change,” you might hear or say.
 
All of us can take a lesson from topology. Every mug is a potential doughnut, and every doughnut is a potential mug. Transformation is possible with imagination, mental manipulation, and practical application of a psychological topology.
 
When we look on our lives to see the many transformations we have undergone, we realize that transformation is built into the geometry of life. Become a topologist. Look for the hidden shape in the lives in need of transformation.
 
 
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homotopy
​
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=video+on+topology+doughnut+to+mug&&view=detail&mid=65DDE6EF2751207E685365DDE6EF2751207E6853&rvsmid=10BD1E3736A280E247BB10BD1E3736A280E247BB&fsscr=0&FORM=VDQVAP

Which blade on a rotating ceiling fan leads? Which follows? Do they all chase one another?
 
Bickering. Watch the fan blades called pundits chase one another on TV. Note how they always end up in the same relative position no matter how many times the fan motor rotates. In bickering the leader is indistinguishable from the follower, and relative positions never change no matter how fast the motor spins.
 
The next time you bicker or see others bicker, look up at the ceiling fan. Who chases whom?