Fame

When I was a kid my best friend explained fame to me. He said famous people have been sprinkled with pixie dust, and if you get close to them a little bit of their pixie dust rubs off on you.

As an adult I think of fame more as a numbers game. If you were to wash up on a deserted island, you would be the most famous person on that island. So who is the most famous person in the multiverse? Well I did some research on this. I had to call in a lot of favors to my buddies up in the 5th dimension, but I found the guy, well 8 billion quantum copies of the same guy. His name is Norm and he's famous for his vegan tuna casserole.

"Tuna Casserole, big deal!", you might say, but Norm is much more famous than anyone including the Beatles, not because of his charisma or even his contributions to the culinary arts, but because of simple calculus. As the sum of all universes that include a cable cooking show featuring Norm, approaches infinity, his level of fame also approaches infinity. Therefore his fame is limitless, if my application of limits is correct.

The function looks something like this   x represents one of infinitely many universes and the 2 is for how many people on average actually watch his show in all the universes. As you can see, 2 (the constant) could be any positive real number, meaning even if there were only an average of 1/10 viewers watching per universe, and there are infinitely many universes then the limit to his fame would still be infinite. Comment below if you're confused.

Norm however is an anomaly, in that he is consistently, albeit mildly, famous across every know universe in the multiverse. The point of all of this is that it is important to quantify and contextualize one's claim to any level of fame. That being said, consider John Lennon's response to the planet Earth's response to his claim that, statistically, the Beatles were more famous than Jesus. He claimed to be taken out of context. Which is ironic because not even he could "Imagine" the context or immensity of Norm's level of multiversical fame.

Even with actual footage of John Lennon's interview, his words were miss interpreted. Context is everything, but everything is hard to know, and even harder to interpret. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Now that every smart phone has a camera attached to it, we must all do our part in documenting everything. Big brother has enabled countless little brothers to record everything from paint drying to major regime changes. Unfortunately some little brothers never learned how to hold their cell phone horizontally while filming, and the aspect ratio gets thrown completely off. What's worse is when the phone glitches and you do turn it horizontally but the software doesn't know it and then you have to turn your head just to see some guy slip on a buttered floor. I also want to point out that cats haven't been this popular since agent Egypt. I predict a future cat hall of fame with golden statues of most viewed YouTube cats...perhaps a similar thing happened with the Egyptians, and cats weren't worshiped, they were just really really funny. 

This brings me to my final point, famous animal paparazzi! "Donald over here! Is it true you eat worms?"

For more on what ducks eat, click here.

Clostridium Difficile

I've been doing some research for Tig on the Infection that put her in the hospital.  It is called Clostridium Difficile, or C diff for short, and it's some pretty nasty stuff. C Diff is an aggressive bacteria that crowds out and over populates your intestines. Among other symptoms, it causes inflammation of the colon and in extreme cases removal of part of the colon or death. It kills more than 14,000 in the United States every year and affects over 300,000. You are the most susceptible to catching it if you take antibiotics. Sometimes when you take antibiotics, good bacteria that protects against infections die. This can leave you vulnerable for months.

The spores that carry the disease live for months, and you have to use bleach to kill them. Normal cleaning supplies won't do it. I got most of my info from the Center of Disease Control's website. If you watch The Walking Dead you probably know the place I'm talking about.
Here is a cheesy yet informative video that talks more about C Diff.

I recently went shopping for Tig at some random heath foods store, I cried for her a little on the inside as I realized there was no ice cream on this list. This is what a survivor eats:

• organic bananas (6 still a little green on top)
• organic pink lady apples (3)
• organic strawberries
• organic blueberries
• organic red cherries
• organic red grapes
• raw plain cashews
• brown free range large eggs (6) call me and i'll help you w/this
• organic avacado 
• amy's organic soup- lentil and lentil veg -low sodium if possible (4)
• large blue diamond almond breeze almond mild UNSWEETENED ORIGINAL (4)
• hemp milk (2)
• oat meal w/flax seeds
• kombucha- green (6)
• coconut water- (10) call me and i'll help you pick this out
• and if you have some bags in your car, use those. if not, please don't let them double bag any of this.

thanks Aaron.


On a professional note, I didn't really need to call for help about the eggs, but did anyway just to be thorough. Also I'm proud to say, non of the groceries were double bagged.

Quantum Physics

Well the most expensive game of hide and seek may finally be coming to an end. Congratulations to the scientists at CERN, who were "it", for finding the Higgs particle. It was hiding in a 5 billion dollar particle accelerator, which is exactly where I would have hidden. So what is the Higgs boson? I hear its part of a vast field of bosons that determines a particle's mass. This discovery means we could possibly travel at light speed! (Follow this link.) If I understand this correctly, and I got an A in my physics of the universe class so I'm confident I do, this discovery may lead us to an amazing new weight loss exercise routine called a Higgs Jig. A dance that would essentially eliminate our mass by manipulating the Higgs field around us. And if you make something weightless, you make it easier to accelerate. So lets just say  for fun, if you had no mass you could essentially flick someone into outer space like a bugger, unless the bugger person would just pass right through you because they had no mass. Maybe you could just kept a thin shell of mass around them...ummm here's an expert explaining the Higgs boson.

OK so he said the Higgs field is like snow, and the top quark is like a snow boots guy who falls deep into the snow. Does that help? Because if it doesn't, in the last week I've heard 9 or 10 different analogies explaining the Higgs field. All the different analogies only made me more confused. One guy said the Higgs field is like a ping pong table and some balls (particles) bounce as higher than others, another guy said the Higgs field was like his fathers acceptance which was given freely to one son but withheld it from the other, and another man explained the Higgs field using a multi variable calculus equation, which of course was the analogy that finally drove it home for me. 

Moving on to my favorite form of research, TV. Watching Star Trek is how I first became interested in quantum physics. Well Quarks anyway.

I noticed Star Trek liked to pay homage to science by naming characters after cool sounding sciencey stuff like Data, Rom, Quark and uh Bones I guess. In turn, science has paid homage to Star Trek by leading us to devolop Star Trek technology, like automatic doors at grocery stores, iPads and maybe someday a transporter. Transporter is not a very cool sounding sciencey name for a device that beams you one particle at a time from one place to another at light speed, maybe it will be called something like a Particle Shatner. For more transporter stuff read this.


Lastly, the discovery of the Higgs boson might help to explain what all that dark matter is in the universe. I only bring up dark matter to say this. If dark matter tastes anything like dark chocolate, I say no thank you sir, unless there are almonds in it, then maybe... look, quantum physics jokes are never easy to pull off. I was tempted to end on a boson the clown bit or a two massless particles walk through a bar joke, but I wont. Your welcome.  

Human Energy

I would love to prove the existence of a human energy field using the scientific method, but I just don't have the resources or the patience. I can only speak to my own experiences where I have applied trail and error in establishing a belief system, which is as unique to me as the experiences that shaped me. I admit, believing in the ability to heal someone by the use of prayer or Chi is a tough pill to swallow, and I am not one who dismisses the proven effectiveness of modern medicine or even horse pills. I only suggest that my own experiences have shown me strong evidence that having faith or a positive attitude can help the body heal a lot more efficiently. I also know that people without health insurance are much more likely to pray, because it is much less expensive, unless you are on a pay per pray program, and in that case I would recommend upgrading your service provider.

I think we are all skeptical in various degrees when it comes to things like human energy fields, Chi, or anything spiritual. The ideal for me is somewhere in the balance between skepticism and open mindedness. No one likes being taken advantage of, but there is a certain point where we have to put our trust in something beyond our comfort zone. The first time I ate a bagel and creme cheese for example, my siblings promised me it would taste delicious but I was very skeptical, probably because a week earlier they had poured pickle juice into my Kool-Aide. This gave me severe trust issues, but after a good amount of therapy from my mom I tasted a bagel for the first time and found that it was good.


Acupuncture is definitely one of those things that remain far outside my comfort zone, especially after hearing of people being left in a room for hours fully pinned and forgotten. I would much rather take neurotransmitter uptake inhibitors than lie in a bed face down and let a stranger poke needles in me. And not knowing how it would affect my nervous system worries me even more than having a rogue needle poking me in the face.

How do you measure Chi? In this clip we see a evidence of the Chi energy field. Men who have trained for years, display their ability to focus this energy. 

I've heard a lot of skepticism coming from the outside looking in on Chi, but it's interesting to see how DJ became skeptical of these journalists and how he cut them off for showing off his footage. To him, it must have felt like they poured pickle juice in his Chi, they betrayed his trust, but after a long wait and two years of deep meditation he was ready to open up to them again.


As someone who has benefited from modern medicine, meditation, and prayer, I feel like there can be a balance between them all. I think that modern medicine deals more with external modifiers that have been vigorously tested by an overwhelmingly large scientific community. But mastery of Chi, human energy, or the spirit seem to require vigorous internal and personal reflection. And prayer, even if it never reaches it's targeted deity, is at the very least a good way to focus your thoughts, desires, and gratitude. And by the way, people who pray out loud in public know full well that they look like their talking to themselves, some try to hide it by using a Bluetooth, but I think it's even weirder to look like you've reached your deity on your cell phone.