Space Force 7

I received a call from a woman whom I will call a friend, for the purposes of this declaration. For the purposes of our mutual entertainment however, I consider her an adversary on the billiard table, and while I have a chance to occasionally beat her at eight-ball, she is too expert for me to beat her at nine-ball.

She mentioned a conversation in a nightclub in Dakar, in which Declan Butler and I were theorized to be the same person.

Whomever suggested this to my friend is inexpert. Butler is a journalist far beyond my capabilities, organization and focus, and this should be clear to anyone who has followed Butler’s body of work. While we seem to share a mutual view on many critical recent developments of science, and policy, we are not the same person. Attempts to bother, annoy, or needle Butler in accusations that he is me, takes Butler away from his critical and needed work. Please don’t get involved in this nonsense and please don’t degrade Butler’s fine work in comparison to my drunken rants.

And as a final edit, if the reader has devoted any effort to social justice in their daily work, he or she should also attempt to read up on contemporary activism in France. Under threat of poverty, loss of career, loss of family and loss of freedom, French anti-passport activists have taken the lead in this activism. With good fortune and a deep respect to the Chinese people and the Chinese government, we expect that many other countries will follow the lead of the people of France, to bring humility, social justice and mutual respect to the people of Hong Kong, Mainland China, and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. To be clear, we believe that China is no worse an oppressor of its people than any other global power. But the People of China have now established the world’s primary global economic superpower, and as such, China should work to become a global example of human rights, mutual respect and social justice, not simply an also-ran. China, the USA, Mexico, Canada, New Zealand and Australia have an existential responsibility to learn from the anti-passport activists in France; A 100 meter sprint simply isn’t long enough to allow the rotational inertia of the flywheel to reach linear interaction with the medium, such as water or air. On the other hand, a 500 meter row is too long to allow for non-recovery of the athlete. So along with the people of France, Germany, Spain, South Africa, Mexico, Britain, Canada, Andorra, and the United States of America, Space Force 7 today officially endorses the continued lack of sanction for the Unsanctioned 250 meter race. And due to to this continued lack of sanctioning, for the Combined-Event U-250 for the Men’s Senior Heavyweight Division, my world record of 45.0 seconds still stands and remains undisputed.

What is it like to hold a world’s record in something as fucking awesome as the Unsanctioned 250? The reality is that no matter how bad your day is, no matter what urine-soaked concrete floor your find in your face, you simply need to remind yourself that you hold the Undisputed World’s Record, and that’s just the way it is. Does it get me laid? No. But when I find myself alone, sad, lost, broke, broken, I think of that day, that row, that moment. I actually wanted to fall off the erg, I knew by about 120 meters that something special unfolded. And I knew by 20 meters that I had one of the greatest rows of my career. And by 5 meters, time had slowed to the point where I had time to examine and treasure my seconds in fractions of a hundred. I thought of what a gift it was to be on the erg, rather than in a shell on the water, where my one perfect moment could receive the Concept II verification code. By 3 meters I had decided that any impending death from the Pain Sled would be an equitable trade for the finish line in front of me. By 2.9 meters I thought of my prayers, but I didn’t take the time to recite them. By 2.8 meters I thought of my teammates, of how much they had given to me, and how much I had taken from them. By 2.7 meters I had decided that should I survive, I would reward myself with a cigarette on the steps in front of the gym. By 2.6 meters my mind wandered, I thought of some obligation for my job that I had left unfinished. Time sped up, and then I lost control of my focus. Like all the other races I had run until that point, I had finally lost focus. And then time returned to its normal pace. The difference in this case was that I had kept focus until the final 2.6 meters, and that was enough for a world record. To this day, I know that had I kept focus to the other side of the finish line, that the current world record for the Men’s Senior Heavyweight Combined-Event Unsanctioned 250 would not have been 45.0 seconds, but rather 44.9 seconds.

Any reason why the National Institutes of Health would remove the abstract description from their own website of one of their funded projects?

Could it be perhaps, that the abstract someone incriminated them to a degree? Or maybe the the NIH officer in charge of public information said to herself or himself “Golly, this sure looks boring, nobody is ever going to read this, we should delete the words on this page, so that it will load faster.”

I couldn’t begin to guess. I’m clearly not a high-powered, highly-educated, influential medical research expert like the good folks at the NIH. I am just a disgraced physicist, arrested too many times to count on one hand, for public drunkenness and misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance. If a divorced brunette isn’t on the lips of your old pal Rick Yukon, then a bottle of cheap tequila will surely be. So I couldn’t begin to guess. But here is what I found when I entered the website for the NIH funding details for project number 5R01AI110964-05:

For some odd reason, and for which I cannot begin to guess, someone at the NIH removed the Project Number, the Contact PI, the Awardee, the Abstract and the Public Health Statement.

Now why would the NIH want to do something like that? Again, Rick Yukon is too stoopid to figure that one out. But Rick Yukon is at least drunk enough to try the Wayback Machine. And what did Rick Yukon find there? This …

It’s the description from the 2018 funding mechanism for $0.5 million or so of U.S. Taxpayer funds supplied to EcoHealth Alliance for their work in Wuhan to functionalize genetically-engineered Coronaviruses, on organisms including “humanized mice”, which are mice with genetically-engineered immune systems that closely resemble human immune systems.

Now, why in the world would the NIH want to scrub all that information? Odd, huh? Here are some snippets from the original NIH funding website, before it was deleted:

… This project will examine the risk of future coronavirus (CoV) emergence from wildlife using in-depth field investigations across the human-wildlife interface in China … A combined modeling approach will include phylogenetic analyses of host receptors and novel CoV genes (including functional receptor binding domains); … Predictive models of host range (i.e. emergence potential) will be tested experimentally using reverse genetics, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments across a range of cell cultures from different species and humanized mice.

But I have to admit, the NIH page with the deleted text did in fact seem to load a bit faster than the page with actual words on it. So maybe we should thank the NIH for helping us to save a little time, instead of accusing them of removing incriminating evidence? And for all any of us know, by the time you read this, the good folks at the NIH might just put back the text back in. But the Wayback Machine knows all, sees all.

Luckily, the folks at Nature still consider websites to be an extension of their published journals, and they still have this paper up from 2015, warning us all about the dangers of genetically-engineering a bat virus, https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18787.

Enough of this batting of eyelashes. At some point, when the connection of some four million deaths is made to a lab-released genetically-engineered virus, the people of the USA and China will need to discuss how we plan to atone for this mess. Reparations are in order, in the opinion of your good ol’ boy Rick Yukon, US$100,000 per family. That comes to about $0.5 trillion, that We the People are rightly need to pay to the victims of this monumental fuck-up.

And when we reach deep into our pockets, and when we pull out every dime we can find and then start to find little more than lint, we might then decide that genetic engineering is the contemporary equivalent of the nuclear arms race; the debris of which will contaminate our natural genomes for millions of years. Biologists who have the gee-whiz tools of CRISPR and others will need to put down their weapons, and step away slowly from their lab benches. And the biologists who have wisely decided to study organisms, rather than build their own organisms, will need to assume ownership of the field of science that the Frankenstein-experts have trampled.

Edit: 8/4/2021 – I just checked the NIH page, the necessary info is back, and no longer blank. It may have just been a glitch with the process script that was supposed to fill in the web page.

In his New York Times article, Crist Inman suggests that we should simply decide to stop being a collection and old fuddy-duddies with regard to genetic engineering. The article is behind a paywall, but here is the link to the first bit of Inman’s article on his own corporate website, https://organikos.net/2021/07/25/genetic-modification-in-moderation-appeals/. Inman’s company Organikos is a seller of premium coffees, for which Inman claims genetic engineering will be necessary to save the business from the impacts of climate change. With “organic” practically in the name of his company, and a Ph.D. in social enterprise, plus the calming NPR tones of a New York Times article, how could we not rest easy with Inman’s suggestion? In fact, he even clearly calls our fears “overblown.” Inman then suggests that the benefits of this genetic engineering will far outweigh our tree-hugging-style concerns over the integrity of natural genomes. Had I the desire to move beyond the pay-wall, I am reasonably sure that I wouldn not read a word from Inman about genetically engineering plants with scorpion genes to kill off insect predators. That’s the nature of the argument, and even the New York Times delivers on that promise with lockstep efficiency, the article shows a giant tomato blueberry with superpower-like health effects. We are supposed to not worry about how these human-engineered foods will fit into the natural world; these giant tomato-sized blueberries smeared over the face of a grizzly bear cub, or an insect that acquires attributes of that scorpion gene from the plant on which it grazes.

The ultimate promise of business-experts like Inman is that we have nothing to worry about because … well, because he told us that the only thing we have to fear is a blow to our food production from the air pollution, soil pollution and water pollution that we have made. But genetically-engineered pollution that can well leave its traces into the future of our planet’s natural genetics? Inman and the millions like him have decided to ride the genetic engineering bomb right into the ground, for better or worse, just like Major T.J. Kong. After all, why should it matter that actual measurements show that the promise of genetic engineering has failed to produce the benefits that we were promised? https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/failure-yield-evaluating-performance-genetically-engineered-crops

In the market of progressive ideas, we don’t need to worry that GMOs apparently can’t outperform Mother Nature as promised, we simply need to move the goalposts and declare a victory … it’s not that GMOs will feed the hungry any longer, but now it’s that GMOs will bring us everlasting life and allow an “organik” coffee industry to grow profitable beans regardless the climate. Why lose sleep over polluted air, soil and water, when we simply need to genetically redifine the plants themselves to grow just hunky dory in these contaminated conditions?

The disinformation campaign from the genetic engineering industry is now coming fast and tight. The industry has cunningly planned on the message of its sterling future to be delivered not by scientists who can vouch for some level of safety in the next latest and greatest thing. Rather, entrepreneurs with alluring smiles, casually-tossed hair and shapely limbs now need to only to make a political connection with the mark, and the job is done. “If you like progressive politics, you’re going to LOVE genetic engineering!” And then us lefties and progressives need to contract a case of selective amnesia, like a plot device coconut that falls on Gilligan’s head … we need to forget our concerns, tilt our head back in rapture, open our arms and accept our new sterling genetic savior.

From the measurements that actual scientists have taken, this seems a sufficiently well-thought plan … genetic engineering is sufficiently untraceable in its impacts that by the time our GMO warnings have become prescient, we will mostly be either dead and gone, or old enough to only worry that our applesauce improperly arrived before our favorite television game show, rather than after, as we have continually told the help.

The reality with the editors of the New York Times and experts like Inman, is that they don’t need to lose sleep over the chirality of nucleotides, and the torsional impacts on genetic backbones. They need not worry about these things for the same reason that a monkey need not worry about radio signals that warn of an impending hurricane … because when a reality is outside of our knowledge base, it simply need not exist any longer, and by the time the water is up to the monkey’s neck, it’s too late to do anything about it anyway, let alone learn to use a radio.

Gee-whiz engineering from a genetics lab left four million people dead? You old fuddy duddy, if you refuse your vaccine functionalized on genetic engineering than you are not one of us! Industrial pollution killed off some food? Get a grip old bugger, industrial genetics from the same people who broke the planet, will now fix the planet. And then perhaps at some point in the distant future, when the ham-handed mark of genetic engineering has contaminated all that exists on our planet, the little green men with the flying saucers will officially declare our planet a toxic-waste zone, one which needs to be avoided for fear of contamination. They’ll look into our past genomes, they might even see the beauty that we once had. Reminds me of an old joke …

A US government official interviewed an old Cherokee Chief. “Sir, you have observed the white man for many generations, you have seen our wars our progress, and our problems. In your opinion, where has the white man gone wrong?”

The chief replied. “When white man found this land, Indians ran it. No taxes. No debt, medicine was free. We fished and hunted all day, and then we had sex all night … only white men are dumb enough to think they could improve system like that.”

Editor’s note, we pulled these dictations off of the Notecorder DP-311. While the sound quality is good, Rick’s was apparently inebriated when he dictated these. As noted by brackets like these [ ], we have cleaned up the English a bit, and removed several profanities. These were pulled at short notice. We, the staff would like encourage a general boycott of both Frito Lay products and also Froneri products. While we are happy with the quality products that Frito Lay produces, we urge the company to work with all of their employee unions to encourage employee stake positions with the company, leading toward 51% employee-ownership of the company by the year 2040. As for Froneri (which includes Dryer’s Ice Cream) we believe that recent decision to rebrand “Eskimo Pie” ice cream bars as “Edy’s Pie” is a slap in the face to Native North Americans and First Nations tribal members. The originators of Eskimo Pie and its current eventual owners Froneri have made upwards of $3.6 billion revenue (adjusted for inflation) on the Eskimo-brand of products. This is wealth that they acquired not just because of the deliciousness of the ice cream, but also because of the exploitation of First Nations Tribes. We believe that this unlicensed branding of First Nations people is worth one-third of the profit on the $3.6 billion, which to our calcuations using industry-standard profit-cost models, comes to $400 million for the life of the product until it was now rebranded to Edy’s Pie, and which can be paid to First Nations tribal programs and business development. Previous endorsements of Eskimo Pie brand products by First Nations actors were neither authorized nor ratified. Our calculations followed the thirds, thus one third of U.S.A. sales since Russel Stover’s original branding of the product to 2021, and one-third of the “whiskey-drinking money” to the First Nations tribes that own the likeness and license of the “Eskimo-brand.”

[Tuesday is Prince Spaghetti Day.]

[I lose my Glass one day a week for the sabbath. It’s kind of like my tithe, it makes me feel good to lose it, as broke as I am, I feel like my faith takes a tiny bit of precedence, once per week, over my poverty and depression.]

[Did I ever tell you about the company I started with a proctologist from Los Angeles?]

[I just ordered my third used engine computer for my truck. The first one didn’t work, I sent it back. The second one didn’t work, going to send that back, now the third. If this doesn’t work, I have to buy the new one from the auto parts store, it’s $400. The used ones are less than half as much, but apparently I have to go through a bunch of them before I find one that works.]

[It’s strange, because even though my truck has a Ford Engine, it still seems to have some unique engine control strategies that are unique to the Mazda. Really odd, these U.S.-Japanese and U.S.-Italy partnerships. It’s almost as if the partnerships are specifically designed to exploit taxation loopholes. And I’m fine with that. I think that from an engineering perspective, mutli-nation efforts can set the bar for high levels of expertise.]

Editor’s note: The best laid plans of mice and men … there was so much profanity, racism, sexism, agism, antisemitism, and anti-Catholicism that we unfortunately needed to edit everything. We hope we have maintained the gist of Yukon’s words, if not the inebriated recitation of them.

You’re not going to find the answer you seek anywhere on this page, other than “Iceman X” by Robert Longo above, and the original music video for New Order’s Bizarre Love Triangle, also by Robert Longo.

Full disclosure, I do not own any Robert Longo pieces, though I wish I did. I’ll wager that I could have dug through a trash can at Hunter College back when I was tripping on LSD in the back of the storage closet with Amanda Reane, and probably found a sketch that he tossed in there. Longo was a force in that school back in the 1990s in a way that I’m not sure he really even cared. Hunter and Voorhees were probably the two cheapest art BFAs in the tri-state area. And here comes Longo, content to fulfill his Academic Torture Requirements (ATRs) with a bunch of broke-ass immigrants and children of immigrants from the top of some coin-op laundry in Flushing. I can’t guess to know what Longo was actually thinking there, maybe he was pissed? Maybe he loved it? Maybe he didn’t care much one way or another, because he already found the the combination lock on the contraband locker had been set to open quickly at a touch by its previous user?

But you see, Longo was, is and will be an artist. And that’s a position that physicians will likely see as useless to their practices. Not all physicians, but a sufficient number that when the shit hits the fan, they have such poorly developed skills of Nihilism, that they can’t … cope.

Longo was, is and will be an artist. If artists are blessed, they will rarely feel pain. If artists are lucky, they will feel pain in the sufficient amount.

Physicians aren’t built to these specifications. You’ve been trained as some kind of superhero, so when the structure fails, you will most likely adopt a retroactive position recenterizer that retroactively changes your past actions to your current opinions. It’s a remarkable tool, the recenterizer, ex-post facto or not. As convenient as the recenterizer is, it will do you no good. You may want to think like a physician in your failures, but in your successes, think like an artist. Take what little goodwill, money, tinned tunafish or nickle bag of Mexican pot, and put it aside. Because when we succeed, failure is around the corner. It’s the nature of entropy itself. That little bag of provisions might be what gets you through the next failure.

When you fail, keep those good thoughts near; you do good work, you help to save lives, you are paid well for your skill and knowledge. If you don’t know how to nurse yourself, watch the way one of the nurses or assistants in the ward, nurses someone who is in pain. Look at how they use their voice, their hands, their pace. If you notice the patient visibly calm, then the nurse has done to the patient what you will need to self-administer. Sometimes just a gentle touch can take away pain, it often takes very little. You’ll figure it out.

And then when you fail, you acknowledge the failure and build on that. Eugene Hutz said, “lack of failure is lack of talent.” Fail, and fart proudly. Other than your luxuries, it’s one of the few things for which you have to take credit, good or bad, to build something for which the world cannot move forward, due to its lack.

You failed, some people died. That happens. Next time you won’t fail and fewer people will die. You do need to understand this luxury however, this class to which you have ascended through your hard work and competitiveness. You have this position because we have become so sentimental over the remnants of this pointless life we collectively lead; we’re willing to let you be our gods for the promise to have our loved ones near for a little bit longer.

But this isn’t about us.

It’s about you. So, do you let this become your reality? Simply because we worship you as gods, do you believe that you are in fact gods, rather than someone with a modicum of hard work and competitiveness? When you mark the death certificate do you think to yourself, without fail, “how long would that old goat have lived if I hadn’t given the lot of them my powers of extended life”? If you believe you are without fail and error as a physician, you would be something like the minor league goalie who learned to fixate on the twitch of a wrist more than the eyes or the puck itself and then kill your career with a punch to the wall with your bare glove hand because your significant other pushed you to the edge of insanity and you blew up a contract that probably would have taken you to the Ottawa Civics.

Here’s the math …

There are about 500,000 physicians in the country. We have some average of accidental or unintended deaths in the U.S. Healthcare industry of about 250,000 per year. Something like 1/4 of all caregiver accidents are non-fatal. It may be something as simple as 100 milligrams of Prednisone instead of the correct dosage of 10 milligrams, and a little buzz in the ears, but nothing more too traceable to the mistake itself. And it can go all the way up to “Please tell me we didn’t almost kill a kidney donor, that was a close one.”

Say we double the 500,000 physicians to also include the other people in the line of fire who can screw up, like some nurses, or a pharmacist, or the physicians assistant who wrote the scrip with a 100 instead of a 10. So say we have 1,000,000 people in the USA who CAN make a major mistake versus (250,000 * 4) = 1,000,000 medial screw ups per year, with a quarter million of those actual deaths, and the rest not-deaths. That suggests that every average provider has about one screw up per year, with a 25% chance that it will be fatal. It suggests that in 6 years of practice, the physician will have a very low probability of never screwing up, assuming a relatively even distribution of skill in the industry.

There. So for the most part, there are two kinds of physicians;
A. Those who screw-up sometimes,
B. Those who fail sometimes.

You don’t have the artist’s training to work while in failure mode or screw-up mode. Art teaches how to work in failure mode, music teaches you operate in screw-up mode. But medicine sees failure and screw-up as things that can be engineered out of the system, rather than as an inevitable launching point of something incrementally necessary.

So, no answers here. You have done well, and the failures are part of the process. You can’t work without some failure. To learn from the failure, the first step is always to acknowledge that it is in fact a failure, and not some glistening mountain of peach and strawberry Jell-O.