continuation from old board...groundhog musings on nicotine

[groundhogg]

and the mysterious workings of that devil of a drug .

I think on the other board I'd gathered, bit by bit, info about nicotine...that users have less parkinson's, ulcerative colitis, celiac, seems like there might have been one more thing...someone mentioned they'd run across something about schizophrenics believing they might have better symptom management if they use tobacco...I haven't read that one myself, yet...but gosh it sure fits my musings...i.e., if you'll recall (do you even WANT to... ), in a nutshell, that it seems from casual thinking and recalling things I've come across, that somehow, nicotine in the body interferes with the assimilation of the gluten protein???? Just a groundhog wondering, here, and as we all know by now, groundhog is no scientist -- has no scientific background whatsoever, rather just your average ordinary..er, um, groundhog thing type person, ya know , but these are my thoughts that I'm sharing with no scientific backing, other than matching up snigglets I've read that ARE scientific studies in bits and pieces, matching those up with other UNRELATED studies and bits and pieces of what I know of gluten problems...and then using a little groundhog glue to see if the pieces will stick together long enough to hold water...

you know...IF it does hold water...it's a hypothesis...in groundhog thinking

Anyway, if you kept up with this drama (and if you did, boy do I feel for ya ) on the other board...you'll remember of course, all of us having excellent memories...you'll remember that I intend to look some stuff up to help find that glue to see if these thought will in fact stick together...well...have NOT had time to do any real searching YET -- --but I will!!!

For now...I did find one thing on Google I thought was very interesting, and could function as one more glue molecule...and that was...there have been several reports of people stopping smoking and then finding they start getting frequent canker sores...BINGO...on the money... --at least one cause of frequent canker sores is well-established...you guessed it...all together now...GLUTEN INTOLERANCE!!!

So...maybe you've studied Gray's Anatomy...well, in a nutshell, there is a Groundhog's Physiology manual...but it's pretty short....I'll include it here:

Inside the brain there are buttons and toggle switches that cause disease. Eating wrong foods usually pushes buttons...stop eating wrong foods stops the button pushing and symptoms go away.

Sometimes, doing something wrong for your particular set of toggle switches (scientists would call 'em genes...groundhogs call 'em toggle switches ) will trip a switch to ON....and it might be stuck on permanently. Whatever tripped the lever...changes things forever...and other buttons must be accommodated respectively to obtain good health.

Remember...I am not quoting scientific, double-blind, peer-reviewed studies repeated across the world...just pulling together tidbits from existing studies here and there (some well-established, but some only done a time or two, probably) which I have run across and applying the groundhog glue to see if things fit or don't fit. Sometimes they may appear to fit for a while...and then fall apart. I highly respect the lessons in Schroedenburg's (sp.?) Cat and the Butterfly Effect (the idea, not the movie)...so...chaos might be the end result of all of our efforts to think, even scientists', not just groundhogs'.

I'll leave it at that for now .

[Jan Tz]

What is the Cat and Butterfly Effect?

[groundhogg]

S's Cat (it gives me the heebie-geebies to try to spell it ) is a physics scenario, devised by S himself. It tells of the difficulites of objective observation...it goes like this:

If you set up a box that contains one cat and one vial of poisonous gas...and it's set up in such a way that IF light behaves as a particle it affects the vial on one way, but if light behaves as a wave, it will affect the vial the other way...the two ways being either to cause it to rupture or to remain intact. After a bunch of complicated physics stuff about light seeming to behave in the opposite way that any experiment is set up to determine...the final outcome is that light seems to be both, a particle AND a wave...and that the cat both lives and dies...i.e., some things are impossible for us to truly know objectively as human beings. THat's a quick nutshell version.

THe BUtterfly effect is a meterological thing...sort of a Murphy's Law in meterology...it goes like this:

You can obseve, with satillite photos, or however, jetstream patterns, El Nino cycles, etc., around the globe and come up with reasonable forecasts of weather patterns...however...in the points where weather systems "make their moves," decide which way to turn next, etc., the forces may be so varied and unobservable that even a particular butterfly's wings flapping may create just that extra push needed to suddenly shift weather patterns away from where they appeared to be heading, and other forces take over from there to dramatically change things and mess up all efforts at prediction. A similar conclusion to the S's Cat...

We are just people, and can't really study much on the earth with real objectivity, because we can't see beyond any of it to really understand all of it.

[Jan Tz]

Something for me to muse on while I hang laundry.

[groundhogg]

Exactly what groundhogs do as we hang laundry, do dishes, sweep, etc.

Actually, I like to speak of these things to my doggie as i go about necessary daily tasks. I think I really messed up the S's cat spelling badly enough to make the name not reight at all...

Let me look that one up.

[groundhogg]

here is a link to schrodinger's cat...did I even spell it right THAT time?????

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition ... 36,00.html

[Jan Tz]

The observer cannot know whether or not an atom of the substance has decayed, and consequently, cannot know whether the vial has been broken, the hydrocyanic acid released, and the cat killed. Since we cannot know, the cat is both dead and alive according to quantum law, in a superposition of states. It is only when we break open the box and learn the condition of the cat that the superposition is lost, and the cat becomes one or the other (dead or alive)."

(from the link you gave me)

I'm not sure I follow the logic here, since objective reality doesn't depend on our knowledge of it. This kind of thing comes up all the time in theology. Also, the fact that the can't be both dead and alive at the same time, would indicate that the reasoning is flawed.

I really have to work on this laundry!

[groundhogg]

I think the S's cat thing may have strayed a little bit from actual McDougalling, as we KNOW it (ha ha, IF we know ANYTHING at all).

I think my original post also has not much to do with McDougalling, rather, about the relationship of food to disease, genetic switches possibly being tripped by various factors...which groundhog will attempt to name (NAME THAT FACTOR possibly later on...unless everybody wants me to shut up ), and just the whole thing about traditional diets, observable diets...maybe thrown in with this fascination I am having right now (doggie in the picture enjoys hearing about this as we work in the kitchen) with the mysterious nature of nicotine's possible role in some of this stuff...I guess my ultimate thought...ur, um, call it PENULTIMATE thought...until I get there for sure in my own way...but the thought I thinnk that may lie down the road a ways in my thinking on this is that it's possible that in some traditional diets which contain harmful substances for people with the right toggle switches (genes, if you follow from the other posts--ask Snoop--dogg, he knows ), then in order to balance out bad stuff enough to continue on without some disease, the traditional cultures adhering to said diet might also include some bad vices...i.e.,

down in the mts. where I used to live, people ate a traditional diet that may seem unhealthy among the enlightened nutritional wise folks...but, then again, they all lived to be upper 90's...many usually did, and were functional at that age and didn't have much access to healthcare or medicines. They also included some bad habits and thought anybody who didn't was flatout nuts.

This is just a flimsy example of where my thinking is going...it's sorta macrobiotic-like...a system of BALANCE...the right poisons for their antidotes, so to speak.

I'm just amusing myself. It's not really McDougall-related, just attempting to dissect tradition and lifestyle. We do live in micromanaged lifestyles now that we seem to be traditional-less in our eating, which may be why we are all read up enough to choose McDougalling, acknowledging that it looks like the best, easiest, most practical way to try for good health and long life and all of that.

Ok...'nuff fer now

[groundhogg]

oh...by the way...let's get a little Bertrand Russelll going here...

Does objective reality really exist outside of our knowledge????

"If a tree falls in the forest...etc., etc., etc."

I'm just funnin' with ya on that one , but seriously...there's just an awful lot we can't know.

And someimtes I wonder if we aren't all really solipsists, down deep...but, then again, I CAN'T know that, because I can only be me, not someone else, not even for a minute.

[Jan Tz]

Well, yes, there is objective reality apart from our knowledge. Since I know this, it must therefore be true.

Apart from that, I think your original discussion, about the nicotine, is very interesting, and I hope you pursue your research. Philosophical musings aside, I like reading this stuff, and your line of thought is valid.

[groundhogg]

Well, that means a lot coming from you, JanTz!

I do plan to continue thinking, reading, discussing with the dog, groundhubby (he changes the subject or falls asleep sometimes, though...the dog is better for these type discussions .

As to all the philosophical stuff...well...it's just fun. A bunch of us (groundhubby included, but he has less tolerance for tons of it than I do--or Cocker Spaniel related dogs do) minored in philosophy back in the olden days, in college...the small college we went to was a religious institution, and the preachers-to-be HAD to minor in philosopy...so...about half of the philsophy department was theologians-in-blossom, and the other half were skeptical antagonists...it was quite a bit of fun. Friendly fire...lots of heated discussions and all of that, but in fun, we all laughed along as we went about it.

I am apparently weird in that way...I grew up in a strict religious upbringing, but also enjoy the weirdest of philosophy and nothingness, etc.

I seem to be able to be both at the same time . I think this makes me impossible to argue with, as I will always both wholeheartedly agree and vehemently disagree with anything the other person says

But I enjoy all of it...I love the unknowing, yet the comfort of knowing at the same time on aonther level...I just love living and thinking...the human experience is really a wild ride, I think. No seatbelts included

But thanks, I do intend to gather my thought enough and find time enough to pursue this line of thought...about balancing traditions...one of these days

Oh I just LOVE the little faces

Someday, for REAL fun...I've got a good Nietzsche tale I'll somehow figure a way to work in....oh man, is it FREAKY!!!!! It's a good campfire discussion-starter.

[Jan Tz]

Well, tell the story! This is my day off, I'm lookin' for some fun!

[groundhogg]

you've gotta be kidding me...seriously you wanna hear that one?

[groundhogg]

Well let me hurry and tell it before my lunch hour is up...so i can try to concentrate on this...

Okay...this is called Nietzsche's Thought of Eternal Recurrance, or sometimes called Eternal Return.

Nietzsche, crazy ol' guy that he was, and we know he was flatout nuts, a real wacko...but he did have an imagination worth a million bucks...and here is one of his scenarios that I find quite creepy.

The setting: We are all huddled close to a warm, crackling campfire...it's chilly and dark and owls are screeching.

The story begins:

Nietzsche took three premises to begin his tale...none of which have ever been disproven by scientists yet today...

1 let's say the universe we live in is finite...contained, having spacial limits.

2 let's say that the constituents that make up everything in the universe, subatomic particles and forces that make up atoms, that make up molecules, that make up all that everything is made from...let's say those constituents, those building blocks are also finite. Only a certain amount of them inside this universe.

3 let's say time is infinite...that it is eternal, that time goes on forever and ever.

Allow me to indulge in visual imagery of this idea:

Let's take a box, a box that one sees everyday...like a large shoebox for example, and let's say that's representative of our limited space, our finite universe.

Now let's take 5 marbles. Only five marbles. And those marlbes will represent our finite constituents, building blocks of nature, of rocks, trees, water, animals, people...building blocks of ALL things in our universe.

Now, for time, we have eternity to deal with. And we know that the arrangement of tiny particles of matter work together to form matter, all matter that is the stuff everything is made from. So, since we have eternity for time, let's start by throwing the 5 marbles and seeing where they randomly land in relation to one another. Then throw them again, and again, and on and on throughout eternity, because we have unlimited time on our hands.

What we will find, is that since the box has finite space, and we have finite particles (marbles) to throw into space...eventually they will fall in exactly the same spots as before. Actually, given eternity, many millions of times they will fall in the exact same configurations over and over, and there really are only a limited variety of those configurations.

And so getting back to our REAL universe...limited space, limited particles that make up matter, and eternal time. We know that all matter depends on how the constituents, the particles, the universal marbles, we could say, how they end up in relation to one another within this limited space we inhabit. And given eternity, the same atoms and forces and building blocks fall the same way, millions and millions of time, forever without end.

And so, my fellow groundhogs, we have sat here, warming ourselves by this very fire, on these very logs, wearing these very same clothes, listening to those very same owls, and telling this very same tale, millions of times in the past, and will do so millions and millions of times more, into eternity (doo-doo-dee-doo, doo-doo-dee-doo--Twilight Zone music should be rushing through all the groundhog brains about now!!!).

Anyway...I'm trying to remember Nietzsche's THought of Eternal Return from college days, and have told it in eery gatherings many times over the years as what I think if a pretty good general freak-out tale!

[Jan Tz]

Why assume that time is infinite, instead of finite? What was his reason for that assumption?

His argument collapses if time were finite.