Day 3341

What happened to our nice weather? One day it's 70. The next day it's 30. I wonder if the entire Winter is going to be this way? Since I like consistency, these extreme fluctuations are driving me nuts. It was cold and nasty outside this morning, but Dash still wanted his walk. I would rather have slept in a little longer, but off we went. Dash continues to do better than expected. I don't know where he got his second wind, but it's nice to see him with a little enthusiasm again.

After breakfast, I filled the car with gas and did my weekend grocery shopping. The list was small this week and that was fine with me. This seemed like a day for staying home and keeping warm. Dash seemed to agree. We took a long nap together this afternoon. It certainly beat cleaning the house.

As a consumer of healthcare, I've been following the debate about how to reform the system. I have a feeling that this is going to be the next battleground that divides us even further. I was listening to a proponent of Medicare for all explain that one of the most effective ways to pay for universal healthcare would be to stop approving all these elaborate procedures for really old people. "They're all going to die soon anyway," the guy said. You can imagine how well this idea went over. It's certainly true that most of your medical expenditures are going to occur during your last ten years of life, but if you need a new knee on your eightieth birthday, are you really going to say "never mind, I'll just keep using this cane?" I wonder how this will end? When the women are all fighting the men and the young are all fighting the old, today's political skirmishes will seem like child's play.

I'd be the first to admit that the earth's population is already too large to sustain life indefinitely. I'd still like to live as long as I can though. That is the dilemma. We desperately need to slow down population growth but we all want to live. Humanity has become the ultimate Kudzu vine. Since we are at the top of the food chain, there is absolutely nothing to stop us from consuming everything in our path. There really needs to be some fire breathing dragons or evil alien invaders to keep us in our place.

I don't see how you can be a student of history and still believe that you can change human nature. We have a pretty dismal track record. This is why I'm such a fan of exploring space. We're pretty clever. Maybe we can learn to tame wormholes and conquer the speed of light before we destroy our planet and become extinct. If we thought our destiny was to expand into the universe and destroy an infinite number of other planets one by one, it would provide a tremendous source of hope.

I saw us plant a flag on the moon, but I'd have to stay pretty healthy to see the same thing happen on Mars. Population explosion or not, I'll take advantage of every medical miracle that comes my way. I'd love to see Elon Musk succeed. It would be the first step in what could become a very long journey.

Joshua is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3202

My mind wanders at the gym. I think about things. What if disease and famine were meant to be part of our existence? Did we accidentally become smart enough so that we could ignore the rules that applied to everything else on the planet? Humanity has spread like a Kudzu vine, destroying everything in its path? When I go to the doctor, I sometimes wonder if I should just eat healthy food and take my chances. I take a lot of pills that didn't even exist 40 years ago. Was I meant to live that much longer than my grandparents. Modern medicine has dramatically extended our lives and increased our numbers, but was that really what nature intended?

We have risen to the top of the food chain and eaten all the other animals. The oceans are systematically being depleted of fish. The forests have been chopped down to build houses for us. So much oil has been pumped from the ground that it is causing earthquakes. I read statistics occasionally that say there are still plenty of animals left on the planet. When you read the fine print, you discover that only a tiny percentage of what remains are actually wild animals. The vast majority of animals that remain on the planet are cows and pigs that are being raised for food. 60 percent of the mammals are livestock, 36 percent are humans, and just four percent of the living mammals on the planet are wild. I wonder if we have become too smart for our own good. Maybe our cleverness just guarantees that we will be extinct soon. Would the Earth be safe if we quit trying to live forever?

I don't know the answer to these things, but it makes the time go faster on the treadmill. I was terrible on the basketball court today. I couldn't connect with anything. Maybe some residual emotion from yesterday was seeping out of the base of my brain and destroying my hand/eye coordination. Fitbit says my resting heart rate is higher this week as well. Not good. I need to take a deep breath and just turn off the television.

We tried some new protective coverings for the bed last night, but they didn't really work. Two or three times a night, Dash will wake up and circle around on the bed to find a new position. When he does this, the blankets and protective coverings just get crumpled and wind up in a ball. This is a work in progress. Luckily, Dash made it through the night and pooped outside early this morning. I actually got some sleep last night.

I'm thinking about applying to participate in another NASA event. This one takes place in Houston, so travel would be easy. The are so many flights to Houston from Dallas that I might even be able to return the same day. This is all good. The bad thing is that I think I've lost my mojo. NASA seems to be looking for social media stars. That's definitely not me.

The catalog for the second auction came out today. My remaining art looks pretty good. The first auction takes place later this week. This will all be over soon. When I look at these catalogs it still seems strange that these things used to hang on my wall.

There was a beautiful sunset tonight. We've got to start walking earlier though. By the time we got home, it was completely dark.

Thelma is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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