self portrait // 2017

We Are The Asteroid

The Eagle Creek fire scorching the heart of the Columbia River Gorge was likely ignited by a single human being – a careless, feckless, undeveloped human being. But the blaze that followed was fanned by all of us.

Indeed, the crime committed upon us by this fire, from larceny of natural beauty and spirit, to larceny of livelihood and economy, demands severe punishment. But what punishment restores the damage done by the Eagle Creek Fire? There is no financial edict or human service that will quickly restore the disrupted lives or the emerald majesty of the Columbia River Gorge. Punishment, after all, exists to exact closure and to discourage repetition. Neither outcome is possible in this case. Nature’s closure will take decades, and the economic rebound will require years. Moreover, repetition is likely, not from the current suspect, but rather from our continuing contribution to climate change and the political ineptitude to mitigate it. In this case, a careless spark from an individual was introduced to a careless fuel source left by all of us. Would a firework tossed into an Oregon forest cause a fire? In a normal summer, it’s quite possible. But would that fire in a normal summer explode into a hellfire of over 30,000 acres in a few days? Also possible, but unlikely.

Between June 19^th and September 12^th, PDX airport has recorded nary a drop of rain – 0.21” according to Weather Underground. This amount of “rain” is akin to combating severe dehydration by running through a yard sprinkler. Indeed, our Willamette Valley summers are normally dry. Some deem this a reward for putting up with our soggy and gray winter shadows. But a normal summer is not this dry. According to the same database, we usually expect around 2.25” of rain between mid-June and mid-September, with temperatures peaking in the low 80s and upper 70s. Indeed, heat waves are common, but ephemeral; rains are rare, but Pacific winds blanket us with nocturnal marine layers and occasional drizzle. Such historical patterns have been decreasing in recent years as we increasingly break temperature records in both single days (if not all-time records) and frequency (cumulative heat). And so despite the first half of 2017 displaying a leaderboard of cold, snow, and rain trophies, we jarringly swapped jerseys in August and September (thus far) for record heat combined with near-record dryness. In fact, 2017 featured the warmest August on record in terms of overall average temperature (National Weather Service). The consequence on our forests renders any spark, regardless of origin, capable of an ignition well beyond a normal, healthy forest fire.

Fire starts and burn area in the Western United States are unequivocally increasing (Westerling AL, et al. 2006, 2016; Morgan P, et al. 2008). This is correlated with accentuating temperatures, changes in snowpack, and longer, drier summers. Add to these data increased amplitude in seasonal variability (Climate Impacts Group, University of Washington), and the results exemplify the dire consequences of human-induced climate change. Whether a natural lightning strike, a vehicle backfire, or a hapless firework, our forests are more vulnerable because of us – not any single person. Hence, decades of reckless energy use, inadequate forest management, and failed politics are threatening to significantly alter our environment towards something less desirable and less habitable. Will our children inherit the lush and resplendent Pacific Northwest that we are so fortunate to call our home? Or will they inherit Mars (I mean that both figuratively and literally)? How many forests must we eulogize in crimson-etched silhouettes before we fully internalize our responsibilities at hand?

Alas, the Columbia River Gorge will rebound, as it has time and time again long before we agitated its repose. But the cries in its honor following the Eagle Creek Fire are in many ways selfish cries for our personal attachments to The Gorge. For this, I’m as selfish as any. The Gorge is where I go to lose my words; it’s a sanctuary of silence; it’s a place of nowhere. I often cycle through its cathedral spires in seek of challenge, solitude, grace, and humility. And so, for me, what’s immediately at stake from the flames are my emotional, personal experiences of The Gorge. But The Gorge is about much more than myself or any one person; it’s about us – the memories, livelihoods, economies, and futures we should all protect. And so instead of rallying a crucifying mob to exact an impossible punishment upon any one individual, perhaps we should direct our anger and grief in ways that bolster our communities and politics towards a cleaner, greener, and sustainable future. Regardless, the Columbia River Gorge will carry on, with or without us. I’d just prefer it be with us.

References:

Weather Underground, The Weather Company, LLC. https://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KPDX/2017/9/12/DailyHistory.html (accessed September 11th, 2017).

National Weather Service, Portland, Oregon. Area Forecast Discussion. http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=PQR&issuedby=PQR&product=AFD&format=CI&version=1&glossary=1 (Accessed September 1^st, 2017).

Westerling, AL, Hidalgo HG, Cayan DR, Swetnam TW. Warming and Early Spring Increase In Western U.S. Forest Wildfire Activity. Science. 313;940-3 (2006).

Westerling, AL. Increasing Western U.S. Forest Wildfire Activity: Sensitivity To Changes In The Timing Of Spring. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 371;1696 (2016).

Morgan P, Heyerdahl EK, Gibson CE. Multi-season Climate Synchronized Forest Fires Throughout the 20^th Century, Northern Rockies, USA. Ecology. 89;717-28. (2008).

Climate Impacts Group, University of Washington. https://cig.uw.edu/learn/climate-variability/ (accessed September 11^th, 2017).

maybe (the letter i should have sent)

i have a new sonic creation to share / it represents more movement towards cinematic songwriting and production -- something i sincerely wish i had the tools to do properly / it's a sound i've been moving towards since "the dark matter" a couple years ago, and the next song i complete and post ("keyless") is even more in that direction than this one / having real strings (or even a strings plugin that's better than stock GarageBand) is certainly something to wish upon

production apologies aside, i'm happy with the song / i think it conveys the frustrations and sadness i've been grappling with for over two years now / there was never any proper closure, so i feel like i've been dealing with a missing persons case / i wrote a letter about a year ago to no response / in retrospect i think i held back too much in that letter as to not ignite too much emotion and respect her (and my?) desired distance to move along / but it eventually came tumbling out anyway another year on, although now in a public way / but i guess that's the artist's way

i can only hope it helps me finally move along, as well as speak to any other wounded wrens out there...because that's the artist's way_

bandcamp free audio download [type $0]:

Molecular Bioeconomics: Day One

I found my first night bartending at a country club an interesting data point in the socioeconomics of a modern American plutocracy, whereby an economic class is more a matter of social identity and clique rather than raw output and skillset. This eliminates a “middle” and favors extremes. Furthermore, it creates an unsustainable economic foundation due to nepotism pairing personalities with positions rather than with skillset, and visa versa where applied skillset get misplaced to fulfill social expectations rather than to fulfill productivity demands.

One needs to look no further than Donald Trump’s fiasco of an Executive Branch to see the examples of this (and I'm not intending to pick on Donald Trump for the sake of picking on Donald Trump -- he really is a great example of my point). Here, highly demanding jobs requiring highly specific skillsets are filled by personalities that do not have those specific skillsets, while the skillsets that should fill those positions are wasted elsewhere, or they even introduce a cost due to misplaced potential. This is akin to opening the oven door to warm an apartment with open windows: it ends up more wasteful than to just close the windows without any oven at all. I think this plutocratic model has been usurping American democracy for the past decade to the point of supplanting American capitalism: skill and effort no longer harvest capital because most of the capital has been consolidated by increasingly powerful identities and cliques; hence, capital is aliquoted to “lucky” recipients; it is not earned.

Perhaps the only capital left is resistance. Acceptance of a plutocratic model is willful surrender of any remaining unclaimed capital. We’re seeing an example of this in response to Trump’s immigration policies. If illegal immigrants were suddenly deported, or if certain immigrants were prohibited from arriving, then the capital value (which is disproportionately held by the rich) collapses because the apparatus upholding a vertically dynamic class system always requires skill and effort as its lubricant — such as those employed at country clubs. Every giant is someone else's midget upon a creditor’s back — in other words, wealth is simply the ouroboros of a perceived giant. I love it when unsuspecting phenomena come down to thermodynamics.

Hence, I propose a new economic model whereby the model system is a living cell (our global economy) and every transaction can be modeled by the exchange of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) — every cell’s molecular currency unit. Biology has had billions of years to evolve a highly efficient economic system whereby phosphorus energy transfers are utilized to maximize work output within given cellular (global) stress, organelle (nationstate trade) demands, and even microcosm (individual) protein expenditures that reestablish energetic membrane potentials (entropy expenditure). In light of this, I think current economic models are obsolete because humans, being a tribal species, have rapidly evolved into a primordial global “Coherent" from which there is no precedent, nor time to genetically adapt to this alien identity. We are no longer organelle islands trading goods — we are a living cell made of nationstate organelles surviving among a hostile cesspool of evolutionary baggage, as well as the indefatigable vacuum of the toxic neon cosmos.

Our next economy needs to be one of mathematical algorithms utilizing a learned artificial intelligence modeled on biologic solutions to thermodynamic problems. Clearly, biology has these microeconomic solutions at its disposal given its resilience over millennia; we just need to implement them into our macroeconomic systems. Doing so is our best hope towards becoming a multicellular collective organism — that is, an organism as a singular species with one identity, one clique — one that survives and evolves on its own to become an organism beyond our current “cell,” the Earth.

I realize this sounds like science fiction, but our existence on Earth has an ever-accelerating expiration date that, if we are to extend it, will require appropriate application of human skill and effort. This can only happen with effective economics. Opposable thumbs may have granted us genetic liberty from our marooned island of Old World monkeys, but apposable minds will grant us economic liberty from our marooned island of Old World Earth.
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reflections on death. and life.

in an instant everything can change; for eternity, we spend resisting _
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prison paradise_

i'm excited to share a new song and video // it's been a challenging few months for me, but rather than expound i'd prefer the art explain better than i could in words [assuming i was successful at doing so]_




bandcamp free audio download [type $0]: 

Evidently all links suddenly took on this awful deep blue color on my home page. Please bear with me -- I'm trying to fix it.

Biomedical Science Has Sold Its Soul

I always wanted to be a scientist. But I didn’t want to be a scientist so that I could ask questions and investigate answers; rather, I asked questions and investigated answers and so I became a scientist. Being a scientist is not a choice as much as it is a born identity. I think most scientists were born asking questions. It’s not something we learned. Family lore has it that my own first sentences demanded explanations of mysteries rather than more basic desires. “Mommy, why is that fire hot?” I asked. Knowing only the obvious, in this case that the fire was hot, was not enough. I wanted to know why. And so I became a scientist.

As a scientist, observations are not enough. Observations are just data – information with no context, random letters with no language. The scientist’s task is to interpret meaning from Nature’s maddening babble. We are not authors but linguists forever cracking the infinite, cryptic code of Nature’s lexicon. The reward we seek is dialog. What elation it is to feel as though we’ve conversed with Nature, if even just a few words, to receive a new primer that helps us towards curing a disease, fabricating an atomic-sized transistor, or discovering a new planet! Deciphering Nature’s meaning gives us meaning. This is why we ask “Why?”. This is why we are scientists.

Yet, only five years since earning my PhD in neuroscience and I already know more graduate school peers that have abandoned science than are currently doing science. Given the enormous commitment it takes to become a scientist, this is significant. After their PhD work some of my peers became real estate agents, patent consultants, bartenders, business and sales representatives, or are even unemployed or have decamped into obscurity. Now, I respect the choices people make regardless of their background and training. It takes a diverse workforce of interests and talents to make our complex economy function. And many of those who left science did so intently and gracefully to pursue something they thought would make them happier. That said, it’s unlikely that most of these scientists upon finally receiving their PhD and/or Masters after a lifetime of investment suddenly realized that they were not a scientist. We are born scientists, after all. We don’t discard that identity any more than we ask for it. On the contrary, I’d posit that it is science that decided it doesn’t want scientists. Therein lies a serious problem.

The institution of science, with Academia as its CEO, has abandoned scientists because this institution has abandoned scientific ideology. This is an ideology that defies belief in the name of reason, defies convention in the name of creativity, and defies pragmatism in the name of risk. Science is a culture of counter-culture. We have always been iconoclasts, skeptics – antagonists to dogma because we reason with creative deduction that observations and beliefs are often illusions. Consequently, the meaning discovered in Nature’s language is rarely palatable. It’s simply not easy for our corporeal human brain to accept that we are but a lonely blue marble spiraling through spacetime among a vacuumed sea of unanswered prayers. Naturally, this unforgiving reality litigated by scientific scripture has been the subject of persecution, sometimes even resulting in imprisonment and death to its disciples. But centuries of grit committed to learning and accepting nature’s language eventually transformed incredulity into trust as diseases were eradicated, industrialized energy was unlocked, and an ambitious new human agenda was realized. Such success built the academic institutions that stand to this day – the very institutions by which young scientists such as myself accepted the PhD torch with humility. But alas, the soul of science isn’t the skeleton of an ivory-boned institution; rather, the soul of science is an abstract institution of ideas that seeks the observable truth. From this truth, however ephemeral in our possession, we as scientists all contribute. And we all extract. This communion of ideas is the soul of science. But our modern day academic skeleton has no flesh to house a soul.

Perhaps the most nefarious pathogen infecting modern science is corporate ideology. Academia has become a business. Except here it is data, not dollars, that are bundled, hedged, and managed with the irresponsibility of an unregulated trading firm. The preferred product in this academic sector: positive results. Positive results – those data that support a hypothesis – have become the unfortunate gold standard in science assigning inflated value to institutions, investigators, publications, grants, and spin-off companies. Like any product, positive is “good” and negative is “bad”. And when Academia increasingly flirts with marketing itself as a product of good fortune through flashy new buildings, quixotic panacea initiatives, and fund-raising billboards and infomercials, then it doesn’t have time for the often drudgingly slow, sometimes discouraging process innate to quality science. Consequently, experimental results are groomed in favor of the desired outcome so that papers can be published, grants secured, tenure installed, and endowments retained. The product – the data – must remain “good” despite its actual integrity. Under this paradigm the goal of science research is more about preserving stock value and expanding operations rather than objectively testing hypotheses.

But unlike a product, data are neither good nor bad. They are simply observations. Negative data is just as revealing as positive data, as it tells us that our hypothesis is incorrect, incomplete, or simply statistically underpowered, and that readjustments may be needed to reach the truth. Unfortunately, our current paradigm ignores negative data as an aberration in protocol (“you’re doing it wrong”) or simply unmarketable (“that’ll never get published”). But those aren’t legitimate dispositions because we proudly created a self-governed system of peer review and self-critique, and so we’re choosing to accept these excuses at the expense of scientific integrity. For example, study sections at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest public-funded reservoir for biomedical research, now expect much of the proposed work in a grant to be completed before the grant to do that work is even awarded; publications shove negative findings into “Supplemental Results” sections, if not out of the report entirely; and – perhaps most egregious – experiments are sometimes repeated only until the intended results are obtained. When such favoritism is placed on positive data then the focus shifts from testing a hypothesis to simply advertising one. The problem magnifies exponentially when others then build their own hypothesis based on these falsely advertised hypotheses, and now they too perpetuate false expectations based on previous expectations (“Because how could years of work in an entire field be wrong?!”). All the while the product, no matter its integrity, is advertised and sold to the consumers, who are ultimately the public. This is not scientific ideology. This is corporate ideology. There is no real exchange of currency, and no real investment – just a shell game of false promises and expectations. It fact, it looks a lot like a market bubble. And all bubbles eventually pop.

The evidence is mounting that science is experiencing a “market correction” through a dramatic, albeit alarming decline in public support for science. And this isn’t just reflected in ever-declining NIH funding (correcting for inflation). We live in a new age of vogue anti-intellectualism where scientists are no longer the heroes of my parents’ generation, but rather villainous conspirators plotting to swindle the public in pursuit of fame, power, and money (which sounds a lot like the current public opinion of Wall Street bankers). In an ironic twist of fate, scientists have become the spurious spiritual healers distrusted for their voodoo and ersatz prescriptions, whereas the local medicine man has regained the trust of the public placebo. Indeed, scientists are again facing persecution; we are refugees fleeing the indictments of a reigning mythological order that has no regard for facts. It’s downright inexcusable in 2016 that evolution and climate change are still debated (let alone dismissed in some cases), or that vaccines can be more feared than the return of deadly, once-eradicated diseases, or that fluoride is considered a “toxic chemical” poisoning our water supply. Furthermore, there seems to be a resurgent appeal of unproven homeopathic and “transcendent healing” approaches such as reiki, dietary “cleansing,” acupuncture, or nonsensical portmanteaus like “cryotherapy” that are used to treat conditions – some serious – that instead demand scientifically proven intervention. Admittedly, mysticism is a pill that has long been swallowed by human kind, and living in Portland, Oregon may skew my perception of the broader public’s acceptance of such nonsense, but there is undoubtedly a growing disregard for facts and science-based health care in America. The ramifications of this antediluvian mindset could be disastrous.

The responsibility for our brave new fact-free world lies mostly with us, the scientists. The scientific community increasingly sold its promises and cures like commodities until the public’s consumption became impossible with expectation. We promised too much too quickly and delivered too little too late, all the while cashing in on the public’s trust to make our ivory towers taller and wealthier. But science doesn’t cure diseases quickly, nor does it do so as a linear function of funding. The relationship between scientific output and funding has an efficiency asymptote that simply cannot be overcome with more buildings, more equipment, and more talent. Data integrity, skepticism, and patience are what ultimately deliver real scientific progress. Yet, these are the ingredients currently receiving little institutional investment. Instead, the institutional priority seems to be recruiting inordinate amounts of money by peddling impossible promises. But what happens when those promises fall short due to the innately slow pace of quality science? Well, they simply don’t fall short: “Of course progress is being made by our world-class team of experts and their state-of-the-art equipment! Just look at our positive results!” There’s simply too much money at stake to renege on the promises that recruited the money in the first place. Ultimately, the actual investment of Academia seems to be in showboating the icons of science – the science itself is secondary. But like in any committed relationship, a deceitful façade eventually collapses and the victim, in this case the public, leaves the relationship. And they’ll demand alimony.

The NIH is the quintessential public trust fund for biomedical research in the United States. Its mission is “to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability,” with a specific goal to “exemplify and promote the highest level of scientific integrity, public accountability, and social responsibility in the conduct of science”. This is not the language of a business plan. This is the language of a social service pact. It is our duty to apply our awarded public dollars with utmost respect towards the betterment of society through quality science. Any other appropriation is a breach of contract. As such, when the public feels betrayed they’ll pull out of the contract, which is what we’ve witnessed in NIH funding over the past decade. The resulting resource limitations in turn further increase internal biases towards positive data and false promises, which ultimately further disillusion the public towards even more resource limitations. This insatiable spiral feeds off itself until, as mentioned above, the goal of science becomes to simply preserve existences rather than to justify them. All the while, the older generation of scientists will continue to sequester more and more of the available funds because they’ve been around long enough to preserve their existence regardless of whether their ideas are still relevant. This leaves the younger scientists with little options but to conform to the corrupted conventions because that’s what gets published (which has become a hyper-inflated benchmark of “success” anyway), which preserves their nascent career, which reinforces further perpetuation of this voracious ouroboros. And in the meantime the independent-minded, creative scientists are marginalized because they inject too much risk into the system.

This is not how the institution of science should work. Science is foremost a creative endeavor that embraces risk to conjure cleaver solutions to problems. Conservatism, while certainly pragmatic as follow-up on initial big discoveries, is not inherently scientific. Nor is it inspiring. Being a scientist in a vapid, conservative business climate is not where we found inspiration to risk big ideas of how the human brain prescribes consciousness, or how dark energy accelerates the expansion of the Universe, or how Mr. Schrödinger’s cat is both dead and alive.

The risks required by science are not just abstract. We also take literal social and economic risks by choosing to be scientists. The educational investment from our pocket and the public’s (i.e. NIH training grants) is significant, as is the time investment. Many of us delay our lives, putting off marriage, children, home buying, and other significant milestones so that we can arduously lay the foundation for a science career. Moreover, we delay (if not surrender) the expectation of reasonable pay given the importance of what we do and the hours we work, all the while maintaining sight of an ever-narrowing career path ahead. Yet we do it. We do it because it’s who we are – because we can’t not do it. What a valuable workforce! There are few fields that could claim the committed workforce like that of science. Scientists pursued their line of work because they were inspired. Yet, I don’t hear that word in the lab much these days: “inspired”. If I do, it’s in jest as the conversation distills to cynicism, “Well, inspiration doesn’t get a grant anymore”. But it can.

Inspiration drove our young minds into the science fairs, then the books, then the lab benches, and eventually the ivory halls. Without inspiration, we are not scientists. We only have to take risks to employ it again. In fact, science is going need most the very people it’s currently marginalizing. These are the risk-takers that no longer recognize their robotic peers or mentors, nor feel invited to express their creative wonder and potentially ingenious ideas; these are the people with talents of art, communication, politics, humility, grit, and, of course, raw scientific prowess. I challenge senior investigators to rediscover the inspiration that once motivated them by rewarding at their next study section the creative risk crammed into an applicant’s Aim 3; I challenge administrators to look beyond a heavily curated CV to promote and hire minds that are also full of creative wonder and bold ideas; and I challenge students and postdocs to do that clever experiment you thought about during your bike ride or your late-night bar-bender simply because it inspires you.

We as scientists built Academia and so we can restore it. If we are currently relegated as mystics by popular culture then we must accept our responsibility to confront this difficult reality. We need to reclaim our identity by becoming scientific disciples. It is our duty to spread the word of The Truth – the observable, repeatable truth of science – and again make the public believers. This starts with rediscovering ourselves as scientists. We are proud of our academic system and it has been an enormous success for our species. But that can only continue if our peers truly behave like peers: like scientists, not business people. The only product we should be selling is the truth. Yes, the truth is often the hardest of hard sells, but that’s what gives it such value. This value is bigger than any one of us alone – bigger than a publication in Science, a federal R01 award, tenure, or our spin-off company. More than dollars, it was the value of the scientific process that purified water, eradicated diseases, put satellites in space, developed the internet, and – most importantly – inspired us as kids to risk our own investment in the bank of scientific discovery. Let’s take the risk to be inspired again. The science will follow.

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