Music

It wasn't until I got into high school that our family was finally able to afford a record player.  Before that my exposure to music was whatever was playing on the local radio station or the extreme priviledge of hearing recorded music on my cousins' family record player.  As I recall the first song I remember hearing on my cousins record player was "Bonaparte's Retreat." 
During my high school years, after my Dad died, I worked more kinds of jobs than I can even remember.  Some of the money I earned was spent at the local record shop buying  45 rpm records.  My sister, Virginia, who is two years younger than me, spent even a larger portion of her disposable income on music.  In small town Thermopolis, Wyoming, just about the only choice of music available was country music.  The local radio station played only country music.  My brain still contains a vignette of my past:  I am standing in Steward's Creamery making ice cream bars and listening to Tennessee Ernie Ford singing "Sixteen Tons" on the radio.  My love of music blossomed the first time I heard Elvis Presley.  To me, his music is timeless. Unlike other singers from my past, he sounds as good to me today as he ever did. 

Somewhere I acquired a 45 recorded by The 9 La Falce Brothers entitled "The Devil's Highway."  I loved that song!  I played it over and over and over.  It disappeared when I went into the Navy.  Several years ago I thought I might search the internet to see if I could find it.  I had just about given up when I saw it listed in the inventory of a small Florida record shop.  I pounced on it.  It cost me more than 5 times as much as the record cost new and I didn't care.  I got it and it was in perfect condition.  What a find!!  The first time I listened to it I was completely flooded with memories of the past.  What a treat!!  Somehow I get great pleasure in connecting things together in my mind.  I'll not lose that record again.

While in the Navy I became exposed to a much wider variety of music than I ever knew was available.  This was due to my friendship with people who had a lot more sophistication in their rearing than I had.  I had no idea that classical music could stir the soul like nothing else.  Today my favorite composers are the great Russian artists. Among these are Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky.  I was hooked.  I started exploring all avenues open to me.  When in San Francisco I went to see The Kingston Trio playing at a little club called The Hungary I.  I loved the music of Martin Denny, Arthur Lyman and Esquivel. 

Today I enjoy nearly all types of music.  The lone exceptions are Heavy Metal and Rap.  I can't seem to connect with these.  Among my current favorites are Flamenco Guitar artists and music from Italian opera.  I am also appreciative of zydeco and jazz.  Of course I absolutely love pop music from the 50s and 60s and lately I have been listening to some of Django Reinhardt's work.

A couple of years ago I got the idea to build a digital library consisting of both full recordings and MP3 recordings.  I started work on this with my customary fervor.  After ripping several hundred albums I made a spirit quenching discovery.  Everything I ripped had a low level background noise.  It was so low it was almost imperceptible but once I knew it was there, it became as obvious as a sore thumb.  I knew I could never accept this.  Even worse, I promised to make my work available to my friends.  I set about trying to find the source of the noise.  I tried everything I could think of including shielding every component in the process with aluminum foil.  Nothing worked.  In dismay I set the whole project aside while I tried to regroup my thinking.  I have to admit being discouraged since I had spent a great deal of time on this project.  I have since aquired a new computer and have made some test rippings.  They sound pretty good.  I am about to start again.  This time I plan to be a lot more critical in the process.  I will yet fulfill my promise to my friends.  I also have hundreds of 33 rpm records which I will someday digitize.  All I have to do is live long enough to do this.

Mathematics

The poorest excuse for a teacher I have ever saw was my high school algebra teacher.  My teacher was a real piece of work.  If he were a teacher today he would be fired immediately.  He was always available to help the female students one-to-one but he had no time for the boys.  He loved to lean over the girls and look down their blouses while "helping" them.  I came about as close to failing elementary algebra as is possible.  Of course I want to blame this teacher for that but the truth is, I have to shoulder some of the blame. 

I was lucky to have the vice-principal as my counselor.  When it came time to sign up for the next year's classes, I made sure that advanced algebra was NOT on my list of classes.  My counselor insisted I take it.  I felt I had no choice but he said he would be the teacher and he said I could do it, and I needed it.  He said that if I ever had any dreams of a career in some scientific or engineering field, I absolutely had to take advanced algebra.  I reluctantly signed up.  That summer between classes was miserable.  Every day I worried about algebra.  I thought I would surely flunk out of high school.  When the new semester started up I immediately fell behind in algebra class.  I had no idea what was going on.  I simply couldn't understand algebra.  Then I got mad.  I stormed into his office and told him I didn't want to take algebra in the first place and now that he insisted I take it, I was surely going to flunk out of school.  He told me to come to his office everyday at a certain time and he would get me going.  I felt helpless.  I did go see him every day and LO!!  A MIRACLE HAPPENED.  I actually began to understand algebra.  As the semester rolled by I got a firm grasp on algebra. 

I wanted to major in electrical engineering when I finally went to college.  The first two years of classes are about the same for any technical major.  It wasn't until my junior year that I finally had to make some hard choices.  I was working to support myself and going to school when I could fit classes into my work schedule.  I was quite dismayed at learning of the requirement to take these long afternoon lab classes that went along with the classroom work.  I simply couldn't handle that kind of load. I realized I had no fear of mathematics.  In fact I really liked math, thanks to my high school counselor/teacher.  I decided to beccome a math major.  I did get my BS degree in math, went on to get my masters degree and started work on my doctorate.  I parlayed my education into an engineering job with the telephone company, and worked a career at it.  As I look back now, I realized none of this would have happened  it it hadn't been for my high school counselor/teacher.  To this day I am sorry I never thanked him for what he did.

Health

Somewhere I have a picture of myself taken when I was about seven years old.  I looked like an ordinary kid.  However it had to be just about this time I started gaining weight.  I remember that I weighed 215 pounds when I graduated from high school.  I joined the Navy and really started ballooning up. Four years later I weighed in at 275 pounds.  I carried all this lard around, and more, for all my adult life.  I always considered myself to be in good health and never realized I was just fooling myself.  The body is an amazing machine, adapting and compensating for the shortcomings of its stupid owner.  At first the signs of change were nearly imperceptible.  It became harder for me to get down on my hands and knees and get back up again.  The solution?  Don't get down anymore!  Then walking some distance became harder and harder to do.  The solution?  Don't do it!  If at this time I had seen what was happening to me I could have done something about it.  I didn't.  I never checked my weight.  I never tested my blood pressure.  Exercise was something other people did.  I didn't see a doctor for YEARS. I had no idea I was becoming diabetic.  Finally things began to happen to me.
Lack of exercise caused blood to pool in my legs and I developed clots in my veins.  I finally saw a doctor about this.  Alarmed that a clot might break loose, lodge in my heart and kill me, he hospitalized me.  I recovered from this but didn't learn a thing.  Still refusing to keep the blood moving by doing a little exercise, the mext thing that happened was blood clotting in my small intestine.  This time I nearly died.  To keep me alive I had to have six feet of rotting small intestine removed.  I began to take notice of my health.  By this time I took enough interest to get a decent checkup.  That is when I realized how uncontrolled diabetes and weight (I was up to 375 lbs) over an extended period of time can ravage a body.  Carrying all that weight for many years has taken a toll on my right knee which was injured in an accident.  I started losing weight and soon I was down to 350 lbs.  Then one morning I woke up and had a great deal of trouble breathing.  Back in the hospital I found out how serious this was.  I had congestive heart failure.  My heart was so weak it couldn't evacuate water from my body.  All that water was pressing in on my lungs making it hard to breathe.  Blood clotting continued to be a problem.  I had a Greeenfield filter put into a major vein leading to my heart to prevent a clot from reaching my heart.  Then my heart went into atrial fibrillation.  Finally the only way this could be controlled was to install a defibrillating pacemaker.  Uncontrolled diabetes over the years have begun to destroy my kidneys.  What a mess!  Although it is way too late for me do anything to repair my body, but at least I can try to slow down the deterioration.  I have lost another 50 lbs. and am committed to continue losing weight.  I am following an exercise program.  I like to think I have finally seen the light.  I know for sure that I have used up eight of my nine lives.

Who am I?

A little over 50 years ago graduate student, Francis Crick, and research fellow, James Watson, unravelled (pardon the pun!) the mysteries of DNA.  The implications of this discovery are enormous.  Then in 2003 human genome map was completed.  Another milestone.  Several companies started up to do DNA analysis on anyone who wanted it.  DNA not only contains the code for everything in humans such as eye color and susceptibility to diseases.  It also carries a person's complete genetic history.  Through the Y chromosome in men and the mitachondrial DNA in women a time and place map of anyone can be constructed beginning with the earliest homo sapiens in eastern Africa.  This is completely astounding.  I couldn't wait to get my own DNA analysis.  The National Geographic Genographic Project was started for this purpose.  I signed up and got a DNA analysis very quickly.  It shows the route and time my ancestors migrated out of Africa.  As more and more people participate in this project, the finer details of an individuals mapping unfold.  Curiously, When I shared this  with my brothers and sisters, none of them showed even the slightest interest.  However, you too can get your own DNA analysis.  As I recall it costs about $100 to get tested.  If you are interested in this you can find more information at:

www.nationalgeographic.com/genographic

While at this site you can view and print my personal information so you will be able to see what is in store for you.  My Geographic Participant ID is:

FW35K6B6MN

Try it.  It costs nothing to look.  You will be completely blown away by this.

Religion

I have been interested in religion all of my life.  I suppose is is part of my never ending quest for knowledge.  People are amazed when I tell them that at two times during my youth our family did not celebrate Christmas.  No Christmas tree, no Christmas celebration of any kind and of course no Christmas presents.  We were abysmally destitute and at times there was nothing in the house to eat.  My Mom had been baptized into the Mormon church when she was a kid.  We never attended church but somehow the local Mormon church in Thermopolis, Wyoming, found out about Mom's membership in the church. One Christmas representatives from the church came to visit bringing food for a Christmas dinner and some Christmas presents.  This was the beginning of my relationship with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  After my Dad died our dysfunctional pulled itself together and started healing.  We started attending church regularly and all of us were baptized.  It is interesting that today some of us have no interest at all in Moromonism and some of us are deeply involved.  I haven't been inside a Mormon church in many years and am an atheist.  My youngest brother and his wife are just now wrapping up a two year mission to England. 

After a lifetime of interest in religion I have reached some conclusions that don't set well with some people.  It is no secret that religion has been man's guiding light since he first looked up at the stars and wondered where he came from, why he was here and what was going to happen to him.  I believe man invented religion to answer those questions.  Instead of God creating man about 6000 years ago, I believe man created God about 14000 years ago.  In this country many of us look upon religion as something to practice on Sunday morning and some vague principles to live by the rest of the week.  Other cultures practice their religion every minute of every day.  I believe that religion is the greatest and worst thing that has ever happened to mankind. 

Since I am an atheist, I think I see religion from a neutral corner.  I may just be fooling myself but it seems to me that religion has outlived its usefulness.  We no longer believe that the sun is pulled across the sky by Gods.  Our understanding of the physical universe has advanced to the point that we believe that the unknown is not a fearful place but just an unexplored place.  I am certain that questions I have now can be answered.  Religion does not play a part in finding the answers. 

The odd thing is that religion which I believe to be man's honest attempt to explain the unexplainable has now become the villain.  Over the years religion has been used quite effectively to keep people in their place.  More people have suffered and died in the name of God than for any other reason.  And yet there are people who have dedicated their lives to helping other people in the name of God.

Joy of Reading

When I was a poor kid growing up in Wyoming my window to the world was through the Hot Springs County Library.  In reality it was a small library stocked with older books most of which, I am certain, were donated.  But to me it was the entry point to a vast universe.  There was one 5 foot long shelf of science fiction novels and short stories.  I devoured the entire shelf.  I can still vivdly remember checking out a stack of books and going to the City Park, which surrounded the library, and spending several hours losing my self in dreams of what could be.  Jules Verne and H. G. Wells were my companions.  An experience like this has no equal.

I always loved Robert Frost.  I am still amazed how he could take such simple words and combine them in a way to build a mental picture of incredible clarity.  His poetry always makes me feel good.  Here is one of my favorites.
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               THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
              ...Robert Frost
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Then I was introduced to Alfred, Lord Tennyson.  He was for a time the poet laureate of England and for good reason.  He had more talent in his little finger than I have in my entire body.  His poetry was on a level I could barely grasp.  Here is one of my favorites.
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            CROSSING THE BAR

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

                        ...Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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Reading it just gives me the shivers.

Although reading is still my number one activity I have lost the innocence of youth.  The computer monitor is gradually replacing paper as the means to deliver the printed word to me.  Fiction has been replaced by scientific and technical work.  Then, without warning, an event occurred that is so important it ranks shoulder to shoulder in importance with Gutenberg's invention of the printing press.  It is the invention of the electronic book.  My favorite version is from Amazon and is called Kindle.  This little device which is smaller than an ordinary paperback book can hold the entire contents of thousands of books.  Not only that but there are nearly a million titles available for instant download.  I cannot overstate how important this device is in making knowledge universally available.

Motorcycling

It has been at least a dozen years since I rode a motorcycle but every time I see one, parked or moving, it catches my eye.  I no longer have the balance, vision or coordination to ride so I would be risking life and limb to do so.  However, every time I see a bike it stirs memories within me of the great experiences I have had over several decades of riding.  I was not just a weekend rider.  Over the years I have owned several dozen bikes and have often traveled great distances merely for the joy of riding.   I commuted to work for more than twenty years almost exclusively by motorcycle.  The daily commute was, depending on where I lived, at least sixty miles on congested Los Angeles freeways.  A lifetime of riding has netted me nearly a million miles, a record few people can claim. 

My riding effectively came to an end through an accident. The chances of having an accident in an intersection is very small but multiply that chance by passing through thousands upon thousands of intersections and eventually your number comes up, as mine did.  I completely shattered my right leg below the knee.  Today, many years later, I still carry enough steel hardware in that leg to open my own hardware store.  But it is not over.  The knee cartiledge is now gone and bone-to-bone grinding is tearing my knee apart.  Arthritis is taking over.  My doctor says I am a candidate for knee replacement surgery which will be tricky due to all the hardware I am carrying.

How do I feel about this?  If I had it to do all over again, I wouldn't change a thing.  I will carry my riding experiences with me to the grave and more than nearly anything else I have ever done, riding has defined and shaped my life.  Even complete loss of my leg would not make me regret what I have done.

Insecurity

I'm sure a psychiatrist would have a field day exploring me.  I have been an insecure person all my life and it has shaped my personality.  It exhibits itslf in some odd ways. 

When I was a kid I wanted a pair of cowboy boots.  I thought they were wonderful but unfortunately they were expensive and I never got a pair. I felt deprived and when I started making my own way in the world I pounced on this.  I bought a very nice pair of boots but was not satisfied.  I bought another pair.  And another pair.  And another pair.  Eventually I had over 300 pairs of boots.  I loved them.  Some were quite expensive.  Others not so.  I was obsessed.
The baggage of insecurity I carry is still with me. Before the landmark introduction of the PC by IBM, I was interested in computers.  I even bought an Altair kit and built one.  Having a decent education in mathematics prepared me for this.  I grew to love the machines and wanted more.  I started building and selling computers.  I couldn't get enough.  Most people are satisfied with having one computer.  Not me.  Today I have at least a dozen computers of every stripe.  Even more if counting the stripped carcasses of past machines. 

I wanted to feel self-sufficient.  I wanted to be in a position of control so that no matter what happened, I could  overcome any obstacle.  I learned everything I could about motorcycles.  I visited motorcycle scrapyards buying up crashed bikes and rebuilding them until I carried with me a wealth of knowledge.  I took long trips on a motorcycle traveling to places where I was completely on my own if I had a breakdown.  I secretly longed for such a thing to happen so I could prove to myself I was self-sufficient.  It never happened so I was never put into a situation where I had to prove my ability.  But I was ready! 

I became enthralled with photography in the salad days of single lens reflex cameras during the 1970s.  I became obsessed with being a professional photographer.  I wanted to quit my job with the telephone company and become a freelance photographer.  However, insecure people don't trade in a steady well paying job for a risky adventure like this.  As with other endeavors I took up, I learned everything I could about photography.  I read everything I could.  Once while looking at a full page advertisement for a new digital watch from Casio, I was astonished to discover that the watch was damaged.  I immediately recognized what the problem was because I just happened to own that model.  The advertising company that made the ad obviously didn't realize the watch was damaged.  I immediately wrote to Casio telling them that if I was doing their product photography this would never have happened.  They hired me to do some product photography for them!  I jumped on this with a fervor not even I could understand.  For better part of a year I did product phography for Casio.  I converted a bedroom in my house to a photography studio.  I spent a ton of money outfitting it.  I was in heaven.  After awhile things changed at Casio and they decided they no longer needed my services.  It was OK.  I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

The Fate of the Universe

THE FATE OF THE UNIVERSE

When our three score and ten are over, we depart and after a few generations most of us are forgotten. A few of us live on for a bit longer in the memory of the living because we did something significant during our tenure. But even the mightiest of us will eventually be forgotten.  here is what the poet Shelley had to say:

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Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

...Percy Bysshe Shelley
1792-1822

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The dinosaurs ruled the earth for several hundred million years, but man has only been around for about a million years and our civilization is much younger. During the last million years, we learned how to use fire and, eventually, how to make it. We developed language and tools to make life more productive and easier. However, civilization really started about 10,000 years ago with the rise of agriculture. With agriculture, man tamed the process of acquiring food. Not every minute of every day was spent finding food for survival. He no longer had to wander around looking for food or follow the migration paths of animals. He could stay in one place and build permanent structures for living and develop a society. Many societies have risen and fallen in the last 10,000 years. During the short life of our civilization, we streamlined communication through reading and writing. We used record keeping to document and then learn from the past and build on it. We have creatively harnessed the forces of nature. In the future, we may develop a source of virtually free energy (perhaps sustained nuclear fusion) and together with population control, make life on earth a paradise. Perhaps our biggest challenge then, would be learning to live in paradise where survival of the fittest would have a completely new meaning. Barring that possibility, disease, war, or some natural disaster will eventually spell the end of our society, just as it did with Ozymandias, but our species will survive. A new society may rise like a phoenix on the ashes of the old but eventually it too will end. As the eons roll by our civilization will also end and our species will evolve in some direction we can only imagine. Abilities that we are now only on the fringe of developing, such as being able to know what another person is thinking, may blossom. If we do not kill ourselves off in some nuclear war or cover the planet with some killing virus, and if some natural disasters give us a break, we may evolve into brainy creatures.

Our universe began about 14 billion years ago with a big bang. Though it is hard to believe, our universe started with a speck smaller that the head of a pin and expanded more rapidly than can be imagined. Our universe contains about 100 billion galaxies and each galaxy contains about 200 billion stars. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is about 100,000 light years across. Our sun is a middle aged star about two-thirds the distance from the center to the edge of the galaxy. It is about half way into a ten billion year lifespan. Our solar system may be about 4.5 billion years old. Our sun has the mass to become a red giant near the end of its life. Inside the sun heavier elements are built from lighter elements through nuclear fusion. Energy is released in the process. As the sun ages, it expands. Eventually the sun will expand to the point where it will engulf the orbit of our planet. Life will have long since ceased to exist on earth and as the sun engulfs it, the earth itself will cease to exist. After its nuclear fuel is nearly spent, the sun will shrink down to a white dwarf and as its remaining fuel is used up, it will cease to shine and become a lifeless rock. Smaller and larger stars behave differently at the end of their lives but in all cases, their nuclear engines cease functioning. Some explode (supernovae) and some shrink down to a neutron star or a black hole. One of these eventualities will happen to every star in the universe. One by one, the lights will go out.

It appears there is not enough matter in the universe to slow down, stop and reverse the expansion of the universe. If that is true, the universe will continue to expand forever. But, since there is no intelligence anywhere to measure and record it, it is meaningless. However, if it turns out that there is enough matter in the universe, then perhaps the expansion will cease and the universe may collapse back down to a singularity. As we find out more and more about our universe, we may actually know the answer to that question within a few years. We do now have a possible explanation of it.

After Albert Einstein published the Theory of Relativity, he spent the rest of his life working on the Unified Field Theory. This would be an explanation of how the four forces in nature (gravity, electromagnetic, weak nuclear and strong nuclear) worked together. Ultimately it would explain everything. He was never able to do this. Part of the problem is that quantum mechanics, the theory of the infinitesimal, is not consistent with relativity. In the years since, many new theories explaining forces and matter have been put forward. Each new theory fixes the problems of its predecessor but introduces flaws of its own. For a while it looked like string theory might have all the answers but soon problems began to appear. Einstein’s universe had 4 dimensions: three physical and one time. String theory has ten dimensions. The introduction of an eleventh dimension seems to have corrected all the problems of string theory and, as of this writing, has not introduced any of its own. This new theory is called M-Theory (for Membrane). The strings are now membranes. Since this new theory seems to be holding together, the ultimate test is to see if it can explain the beginning of the universe. That is, how did the Big Bang occur? It does seem to do that. It may really be the theory of everything. It seems that before the big bang there were many membranes floating around and the big bang was the result of a collision between two of them. As it turns out the big bang may be nothing special. We are trapped in the universe created by the big bang but it seems reasonable that these collisions go on all the time and our universe may be only one of a great myriad of universes. Is this not amazing? It reminds me of a thought I had long ago: What if our universe is nothing more than a miniscule sliver of some kid’s toy in a long-since forgotten toy box in his room? What would happen if he suddenly remembered the toy and started playing with it?

Read Me First.....

My name is Warren Weber.  I live in Mena, Arkansas with my wife, Nancy.  We are retired.  Also sharing our lives are two dogs named Max and Sugar.  Max was rescued from the pound and Sugar came with the house.  Nancy loves visiting her new grandson who lives in California.  She also volunteers at the hospital and doing crafts like making candles and soap.  I like playing with my computer. 

It seems everyone but me has a blog.  Time to fix that.  I got the idea for this from my friend, Jerry Nix.  He has created a nice blog and I was jealous of his creativity.  Now is my chance to see if I can do what he did.  I am new at this and bound to make mistakes and I also wonder who would interested enough in whatever I might have to say to bother reading my blog.  I'll tell some people what I have done.  But not too many and only those that might not abuse my ego while I get the hang of this.

For some reason I can't make it easy for anyone to comment on my blog.  So, if you want to make a comment, just send me an email to wgwgate@gmail.com.

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog.