You Can Call Me Ray

As we all learned in public school, gamma rays are extremely high frequency photons which often have wavelengths smaller than the width of an atom (there will likely be a quiz following this lesson). Gamma rays are emitted from the nucleus of atoms during radioactive decay, fusion, fission and other processes about which most of us are clueless. Because they have such short wavelengths they are good at penetrating through things like clothes, skin, bone, lead and our atmosphere. Gamma rays are classified as ionizing radiation because their energy is sufficient to ionize the atoms which absorb them. In this process the gamma ray photon is basically swallowed by an electron orbiting an atom that is struck by the gamma ray. The electron then becomes quite energetic, changes its orbit and begins to behave badly, breaking the bonds the atom has formed with other atoms in the molecule it inhabits. This is bad for us because we are comprised of a large number of complex molecules which function poorly when their constituent atoms are randomly separated, resulting in things like radiation sickness, cancer and genetic mutations.

Luckily we are not often subject to large doses of gamma rays, which is why we are able to generally have children with a reliable configuration of arms and legs; an environment high in gamma rays is inevitably not friendly to life as we know it. There is a persistent level of background radiation, including gamma rays, to which we are continually subjected, and this probably contributes to some of the genetic diseases and malfunctions we experience, but the rate of occurrence is at a low enough level not to threaten the continued existence of the species. One might even argue that the random mutations which result from background radiation have made “the glory that is human evolution” possible. Whether this is a net positive I guess depends on where you are in the food chain. There is, however, a true intergalactic gamma ray monster lurking out in the vast expanse of space which could potentially ionize us all into an ionized cloud of ions. It is the mysterious Gamma Ray Burst (GRB), a kick-ass cosmic death ray which would make Dr. Evil squeal with delight.

The Gamma Ray Burst has been on the list of secret, horrible things astrophysicists must worry about since the 1960s. They were discovered by satellites we had launched to detect nuclear detonations on Earth, but the origin of these gamma rays ultimately proved to be billions of light-years from the Soviet Union, so far away, in fact, that our planet had not yet formed when they began their energetic journeys through space. The source of these bursts, which vary from micro-seconds to minutes in duration, is still the subject of some debate, but the general consensus is that they are the result of the collapse of massive stars which have exhausted their fuel and begin to form black holes (some of the shorter bursts may also result from the joining of neutron stars in a binary system). A process known as inverse Compton Scattering may result in the highly efficient conversion of explosive force into gamma rays during this collapse. While Compton Scattering may sound like something that occurs during a South-Central drive-by, it is actually a means by which the frequency of a photon is reduced through interaction with matter. The inverse of the process increases the frequency, and energy, of the photons, even unto the gamma ray range.

So, the collapse of the star releases truly unimaginable explosive force which is then converted (perhaps) by inverse Compton Scattering into a tight gamma ray beam traveling along the axis of the star’s rotation. This beam, screaming through space at the speed of light, obliterates everything in its path for possibly millions of light years until its energy dissipates adequately to allow stuff to just be incinerated. Eventually the beam subsides, leaving an innocuous signature of residual radiation to be detected by sentient beings billions of light years away. Now, this is not such a gruesome horror story, unless you happen to have been a living creature located somewhere along the beam’s vector of travel, in which case you no longer exist. The good news for us is that these Gamma Ray Bursts are apparently relatively rare, especially given the incalculable number of stars in the Universe, and they also appear to mainly originate from very distant, and therefore much younger, galaxies. It is possible that there is something about the evolution of star formation that makes these powerful GBR’s less likely as a galaxy ages. Like many things about our Universe, however, Gamma Ray Bursts are still poorly understood and new data will likely result in new theories.

Suffice it say there is absolutely nothing we can do with current technology to prevent or protect against Gamma Ray Bursts. If they originate from the collapse of a nearby star, it is unlikely that there will ever be any possibility of providential action, so, as with all manifestations of the wrath of God, our best defense is to tell our children that we love them, scratch the spot on the dog’s back that it cannot reach itself, be kind to complete strangers, if only from a safe distance, and to recognize the vanity of arrogance and the emptiness of anger. Because gamma rays travel at the speed of light, there will be no warning and no lucid moment of acceptance, and all that we have thought, dreamed, built or become will be reduced to the primal dust of creation before we notice we’re gone.

No Country for Old Men

In case you haven’t noticed, America is a violent country. Based on my five minutes of exhaustive research, we have the fifth most murders of any nation on Earth annually, although in fairness we only rank 24th in per capita murders, but you have to figure that a lot of our murders are messed up by good medical care and that at least a few thousand of those missing teenage girls have actually been raped and strangled, but they’re not included in the count. There have recently been around 16,000 murders per year in the U.S. and about 90,000 rapes. There are nearly 450,00 robberies and 900,000 assaults annually, and all these numbers are actually down from highs in the early Nineties. I can’t say how many of these are cases where someone was both raped and murdered, or raped, robbed, assaulted and murdered, or perhaps raped, robbed, assaulted, murdered, insulted, harassed, under appreciated and taken for granted, but by any calculus, there are a lot of recorded acts of violence, and perhaps as few as half of some types of violence are ever reported (according to my intuition).

The United States has the highest per capita gun ownership of any nation on Earth, including Afghanistan. With well over 250 million guns in circulation, the U.S. has a gun ownership of over .83 guns per person. Since over 20 percent of the U.S. population is under the age of 15, and we can perhaps assume they don’t own many guns, adult gun ownership in America averages more than one gun per person. Statistically speaking, every person in the United States owns a gun, and about 40 percent of those guns are handguns. As the intellectually sophisticated Lynyrd Skynyrd noted, “handguns are made for killin’, ain’t no good for nuthin’ else”. Many of those quarter-of-a-billion-plus guns are also assault rifles, which aren’t well suited for non-human targets. I have to assume that we have all those guns for some purpose. It is estimated that only about six to seven percent of the population actually hunts with any regularity, so maybe we were thinking about shooting something else.

But don’t misunderstand, this is not some whiney, Liberal plea for gun control; in fact, I own a handgun myself which I ironically won in a raffle at a golf tournament, in Georgia, of course. I keep it in the glove compartment in my Dodge in case I need to shoot a terrorist with whom I have been involved in a minor traffic accident. My point is that contemplation and execution of violent acts are as fundamentally American as aboriginal genocide, roasted pork butt, racism, baseball and sweet tea. We may be a nation conceived in liberty, but we were delivered in war, grew up fighting, sometimes with ourselves, and our current geo-political domination of the world is at least in part based upon our ability to vaporize all the world’s major cities in seventeen minutes and 36 seconds. We glorify military power and indulge our thirst for gladiatorial combat in a myriad ways from dog-fighting to football to movies and video games so violent and bloody you’re not even allowed to see them in Sweden.

Now, I am not writing all this as a criticism. I am personally pathologically addicted to zombie movies, Quentin Tarantino, college football, explosions and anything where somebody is eaten by an animal. I have the mental capacity of the average female high-school graduate and the emotional development of a 14 year-old boy, which pretty much makes me a typical 48 year-old American male. Being that I am descended from European outcasts, adventurers, draft-dodgers, pirates, criminals, bad businessmen, religious fanatics, anarchists, debtors, dreamers and fools, I am suspicious, defensive, quick to take insult and resistant to authority, just the kind of person who needs to be heavily armed. I repeat, it is by no means my intention to hate on America, but we need to understand who we truly are and why we hold the values we do, because anything less leaves us open to the manipulation of sinister, selfish forces which would have us sacrifice our own welfare for their gain.

Which brings me back around to what I really wanted to talk about. I have recently observed, courtesy of our ever-watchful news media, some of our fine citizens carrying guns in a peaceful and law-abiding manner to places of political debate. These individuals claim, perhaps correctly, that they are simply enjoying their rights under the Constitution and that those of us who don’t support this can politely suck badger testicle. Fair enough, but we all know that we have the right to do many things which we ought not to do. We can ask out our ex-girl friend’s BFF, and we can try to rationalize it by suggesting that it wouldn’t be fair if she were deprived of the opportunity to enjoy our company just because of our previous association with her friend, but we all know we are just doing it to be an ass. The same clearly holds true of the patriotic Americans who parade symbols and instruments of violence among crowds who have assembled seeking to have their voices heard on a political matter. I read one clever analogy likening these gun toting scions of freedom to the rattle-snake shaking its tail in warning to an oppressive, socialist government. Reptiles, however, don’t generally support democratic institutions, and a threat is a threat. The presence of weapons in a place of political dialog simply implies that those holding the weapons will not accept defeat. They suggest that if they cannot prevail through learned debate, they will pump you full of hot lead and eliminate you from the political equation. This inevitably casts a pallor over the whole enterprise of free expression and honest exchange of ideas.

Our nation was founded on the principle that reasonable people acting in good faith could resolve their differences without killing each other. In my opinion, it is categorically and indisputably un-American to introduce the intimidation of threat of force into the democratic process. Whatever one’s views may be, we all have an implicit agreement with each other to allow the process established by our Constitution to work and to accept the results of that process until the next opportunity to effect political change within that process presents itself. This is the great and fundamental compromise required by civilization. It is not, never has been, and never can be all about one man’s opinion; there are limits to your rights because there has to room left for the rights of others. You have the right to express contempt for people and ideas, but you cannot express contempt for the system and still be a meaningful part of this country, and there is nothing more contemptuous of America’s values than the idea that you can substitute fear for reason or force for consensus. We tried it once, and the blood ran red.

The Little Dog Laughed

So who wants to know about Mad Cow Disease? Probably nobody but me, but I find the issue fascinating in a horrific sort of way. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder and does not live in a pineapple under the sea. It attacks the cow’s central nervous system, destroying motor skills and eventually degrading autonomic nervous functions to the point of death. The disease is thought to be caused by an oddly shaped protein called a prion. Prions, while not living creatures, can be transmitted from cow to cow under certain circumstances, significantly increasing the price of a Big Mac.

BSE is a member of a family of diseases caused by prions which in humans includes Classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker Syndrome (GSSS), Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI) and Kuru. The differences between these diseases are largely a function of the source of the pathogen, with some, such as CJD and FFI being purely genetic in nature; that is, the source of the prion is actually a genetic mutation in the host itself, and others being the result of the introduction of the pathogen into the host from the environment, such as vCJD and Kuru. Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker Syndrome is actually thought to be a combination of environmental prions and a genetic abnormality which makes the host more susceptible to the neurodegenerative effects.

The prion is a truly sinister agent of destruction due to its banal nature and its nearly supernatural endurance. Consisting of nothing but a protein strand, the prion, by a very complex process which I shall not even attempt to explain, uses its chemical characteristics to modify the shape of vulnerable protein strands in the host. It is immune to heat, radiation, antibiotics, prayer and homeopathic remedies. It contains no nucleic acid and is therefore outside of the definition of “living”, but it perverts the body’s own life sustaining processes to perpetuate itself. It essentially “reproduces” by turning your brain into a useless waxy plaque riddled with holes. It does this by using itself as a template and twisting the “target” host proteins into shapes that mimic its own.

Now one might ask, what’s the big deal with the shape of a protein strand? Well, apparently it is quite a big deal; a matter of life and death big deal. Let’s take your comfortable leather easy-chair parked in front of your 52 inch HD plasma TV, for example. If you flip that chair upside down, it is still the same chair, still has the same chemical components and is still the same color and weighs the same; however, it is useless as a chair. It now pokes wires in your ass and smells like warm cheese. In the same way, the protein strands are basically the same, but can no longer perform the functions for which your body made them, resulting in the slow destruction of the structure of your brain and spinal column and the loss of everything that makes you what you are. There is even one incredibly extremely rare form of prion disease which only attacks the thalamus, which among other things regulates the process of sleep. Its victims literally die of insomnia, but not before descending into months of panic, paranoia, hallucinations and dementia. Sort of like a presidential campaign.

What really freaks me out about these prions is their Invasion-of-the-Body-Snatchers-like stealth and inevitability. You will never know you have been infected by prions until you begin manifesting symptoms of neural decay, which can show up years after initial exposure. There is no treatment of any kind available; even things like pain killers that could normally be used to ease the distress of your demise are rendered less effective by the structural damage to the brain. The diseases generally progress from loss of motor coordination to confusion, memory loss, seizures, voting Republican, blindness, paralysis and death. Of course, this is the course we all generally eventually follow, even without prion disease, but it usually happens much later and much quicker.

I guess when you get right down to it, these brain-wasting diseases are so unnerving (no pun intended) because they strike at the root of our humanity. You can die of a stroke or cancer or the flu and still be who you always were right to the end, but prions deform your very essence by depriving you of yourself. Memory, judgment, personality and moral perspective are slowly and inexorably disassembled by the accelerating cascade failure of protein conversion and all that ultimately remains prior to death is a sad, dysfunctional parody of a human. Whether the prions have succeeded in erasing the person’s existence, or have simply moved it along its path, is impossible to say.

Bring Me Another Mint Julep

It would be a full time job to chronicle the slow slide into madness of the political Right in America and I’m too lazy to invest the time and effort to get the facts straight, but I know what I think I know and it’s pretty clear to me that approximately thirty-eight percent of our population is nuttier than a squirrel turd. Even factoring in the disingenuous parochialism of the cynical and manipulative media, there’s plenty of evidence that a lot of under-educated, under-achieving white folks with little or no dental insurance are loosing their grip on whatever small sliver of reality they were previously in contact with.

My sources for this information are not just CNN and MSNBC, but even my local Fox affiliate and the Wall Street Journal. Beginning with Sarah Palin campaign rallies and progressing through “Tea Bagger” tax protests and the recent Health Care Town Hall meetings, the tone and volume of outrage and derision directed against President Obama and modernity in general is pretty disturbing. Now I will be the first to note that I was highly critical of former President G.W. Bush and often stated that he was dumb as raw cookie dough, not to mention a war criminal, but at least I was criticizing him for things after the fact, as opposed to being enraged by the mere possibility that he might actually exercise the power of the office to which the majority (sort of) of Americans had elected him. It is true that during the Bush administration there were many Americans, myself included, who were inclined to believe that the President was putting the interests of oil companies and Halliburton above the safety and security of our nation. We were also inclined to believe that the President had a primitive view of human society and that his actions may have been influenced by a deeply rooted messiah complex. Subsequently revealed facts have generally borne this out, but for the most part Americans did not hate George Bush and even those of us who despaired at his policies felt he was likely a bit slow and that Dick Cheney was the real asshole. Just like Harold and Kumar, most of us would have enjoyed having a few beers with George and shooting the shit.

It generally holds that Liberal outrage is more often expressed through sarcasm and unflattering analogy, while outraged Conservatives typically scream unintelligible epithets and flex the veins in their necks. This is, of course, because Liberals are way smarter than Conservatives, and also at least in part because Liberals want to be sure that any unbiased observers know it (we middle-of-the-road types, on the other hand, are probably way smarter than either Liberals or Conservatives because we know that truth is complex and extremism is in fact a vice, and a dangerous one at that), but the current loathing of our President by a significant minority of Americans seems to me to have a decidedly extreme tenor to it. The bulging eyes and semi-toothed grimaces of the inbred, pathologically suspicious and exclusively Caucasian haters reminds me of the cannibalistic hillbilly families in several bad horror movies, and their general inability to coherently articulate an actual fact leads me to conclude that what they are so angry about is not a policy or even a concept, but simply an image.

You could write a few dozen dozen Doctoral dissertations about the issue of race in America and they would pretty much all start around 1607 and run through a tragic set of facts which we have all memorized and forgotten until we arrive at November 2008 and the cleansing of the national soul. The problem is, there are citizens of our fine land who still do not accept the biological commonality of humankind and who cling to fear and resentment as the Rock of Gibraltar against the raging storm of change and the ungovernable tide of diversity that is swallowing their world. As they become less and less able to understand the events that surround them, they become more and more convinced that change must be bad and that among the most likely suspects are, as they have always been, the lazy, watermelon-eating piccaninnies who don’t respect the proper order of things.

Of course, not everybody that disagrees with the President or questions the wisdom of his policies is a racist. I have taken the President to task myself on a number of issues and I am quite concerned, among many other things, about the effectiveness of any potential reform of the health care system which is overly-compromised simply to be able to claim success. There are many decent, intelligent Americans who oppose much of the President’s agenda and the freedom to express an opinion, no matter how dunderheaded the opinion may be, has always been essential to our success as a nation, but we better learn the difference between canasta and dog-fighting because dull-witted, frightened people are dangerous and complacency is the mother of regret.

Don't Let Them Touch You

I have recently been simultaneously indulging my juvenile fascination for all things zombie and my Internet addiction. I have found a cornucopia of groovy stuff, but one thing I think a lot of zombie fans (or fans of zombies) miss is that George A. Romero is one of the most insightful social critics of our age. Beginning with his often misunderstood Cold War classic “Night of the Living Dead” and continuing through various shambling and moaning incarnations which explore themes of consumerism, elitism, racism, heroism, Fascism, greed, stupidity and the inevitable rot that creeps into all things human, Romero has used our most elemental fears, especially the fear of others, to expose the cracks in the foundation of civilization and pierce the thin veneer that separates the top part of our brains from the blank, ravenous reptile slithering around at the base of our skulls.

The flesh-eating zombie genre runs the gamut from the amateurishly banal to the disturbingly visceral as viewed through the prism of everything from comical self-parody to slick Hollywood “jump and holler Boo!” horror, but Romero was and is the master of taking the familiar and the commonplace and creeping the shit out of us by making it the backdrop for the disabling anxiety that emerges when friends, family and the fire department can no longer be relied upon to hold back the darkness. Being a frequently relapsed zombie movie junky, I have a fairly solid background in mindless cannibalism and often view confusing plots, bad dialog and gore as legitimate art (see http://toomuchfuzzylogic.blogspot.com/2009/04/planet-terror.html), but it is clearly not the fear of being eaten alive that drives the zombie box office; there is a much more toxic stew of psychological and sociological dysfunction at the heart of our fascination.

Starting with the Bible and running straight through to Dr. Strangelove and Mad Max, we have, as a culture, had an obsession with apocalypse for at least a few thousand years now. In fact, the peoples of the world will periodically get together and actually try to create one. Being social creatures like meerkats, dogs and ants, collective action is essential to our survival and we fear the loss of the support and protection of the pack. In a modern context this translates to panic over the loss of social order and structure and the mechanisms which theoretically shield us from violence, disease, starvation, boredom, flatulence and halitosis. We are afraid to be alone with no one to call because there is a lot of bad shit out there and we may need some help. Compounded by the primal fear of death, the ubiquitous distaste for anything rotting and our own deep suspicions about the reliability of our close associates, and even our own ability to control ourselves, the flesh-eating zombie neatly bundles a horror house of neuroses into one convenient, easy to swallow package.

Because of the kaleidoscopic terror of the typical zombie, artists like George Romero can weave virtually any social observation into the fabric of their zombie apocalypse; for example, take the allegorical mid-life crisis zombie. This is the scene (patent pending); “the moon shines dull silver under the indistinguishable pattern of the decorative valances as the middle aged woman tosses restlessly in her middle class bed with shams on the pillows and her head filled with wisps of credit card bills, children, her fading beauty and a vague, formless fear. At some level deep below consciousness her mind knows that the rhythm of her husband’s breathing has changed and twenty-five years of normalcy is slowly being replaced by something foreign and sinister. She awakes suddenly from her restless sleep to find her husband standing by the bed silhouetted in the moonlight. His posture is odd, as if he were slowly deflating, and he sways slightly in time with the breeze in the curtains. Without knowing why, she is seized with a consuming urge to flee, but instead says, ‘honey, come back to bed.’ The man turns violently as if startled by her sudden presence, and she sees the vacant, soulless reflection in his eyes. She barely has time to scream as he snarls and lunges at her. The moonlight completely washes the red from the blood.”

Of course, this is what all too often happens when love goes zombie after twenty-five years of marriage. The woman wakes to find she no longer knows the man she is married to and begins to fear what he is capable of, and he, in fact, doesn’t even recognize himself or understand why he is now driven by numbing compulsions that he thought were long since buried. It is JUST like your spouse dying in the night and turning zombie before you can wake up and figure out what’s happened. And this is entirely the point; there’s a lot of zombie in all of us and George Romero knows it. From senseless rednecks to selfish manipulators to hysterical heroines, we all eventually succumb to the virus (or radiation, or chemical formula) and feed off our fellow humans without conscience or remorse. The zombie apocalypse is part of civilization’s genetic pedigree and is simply obscured for the common observer by religious ritual, crass commercialism and the comfortably inane flow of daily life. It is only when there is widespread breakdown of social order that the majority of people clearly reveal the mindless and relentless selfishness at their core, and the pathetic few fearless and giving among us are driven to exile and slowly and randomly eaten alive by the dull-witted masses.

The question that George Romero doesn’t ask or answer is, however, the one that plagues me. The Earth’s temperature is rising. Fossil fuels are being rapidly exhausted. The population is growing and the natural environment is collapsing under the strain. The sustainability of all human enterprise is being called into question. Relationships are being replaced by possessions and our intellectual lives consist of digital pabulum spoon fed to us by media overlords seven minutes at a time. We’ve never met our neighbors and cannot identify them as they come and go under cover of darkness. Our families are dispersed, our local businesses are consumed by corporate giants, and we must increasingly rely on total strangers to safeguard our wellbeing. We cower in fear of bird flu, swine flu, chemical terrorism, nuclear terrorism, biological terrorism, teenagers, minorities, random violence, economic disaster, natural disaster, war, famine, offensive body odor, erectile dysfunction, sunspots, asteroids, boll weevils, acne and pandemic rectal itch. So George, and those of you diligently preparing for the inevitable, when the zombie apocalypse descends upon us, will we even notice it?