Perfection vs Excellence

The love of my life once told me, strive for excellence, not perfection.

Why?

Perfection is unattainable, whereas excellence is achievable.

Oxford’s defines perfection as “the condition, state, or quality of being free or as free as possible from all flaws or defects” while excellence is defined as “the quality of being outstanding or extremely good”.

Perfection and excellence both are human concepts, so naturally we use these as tools in our interface with the universe. Myriad examples of the application of either concept abound, so to narrow the focus to one, consider a sword made of diamond versus a sword made of Damascus steel.

The hypothetical diamond sword.

The diamond sword is perfect. It’s been crafted out of pure diamond, one of the hardest known substances on earth consisting of a crystal lattice of tetrahedrally bonded carbon atoms, and has a razor-sharp edge that can slice a piece of tissue paper falling across its blade cleanly in two with the help of gravity alone. Against an unarmored opponent, this sword would likely slice their flesh to ribbons in the hands of an adept duelist.

However, lurking within this flawless weapon is a fatal shortcoming. The carbon atoms of a diamond are bound in a relatively brittle lattice configuration, which many practitioners of diamond cutting will attest is easily fractured. Indeed, transforming uncut diamond into precious jewel-quality stones relies on this inherent crystalline structure.




In contrast, there is the sword crafted of fine Damascus steel. Although the physical shape of this sword is the same as its crystalline counterpart, its molecular structure is vastly more complex and variable.


Closeup of a Damascus steel blade.



Research on Damascus swords crafted in ancient times has revealed that impurities in the steel ingots used to craft these swords led to the formation of what we describe today as nanowires and carbon nanotubes, structures which lend unique variability and resilience to the metal at the molecular level. In addition, Damascus steel blades have been found to contain a variety of elements as impurities, including carbon, manganese, vanadium, calcium, lead, and others.

Now envision these two blades, each executing two basic techniques of sword combat, the slash, and the parry.

The slash involves using the sharpened edge of the blade to slice the flesh of an opponent.

Slash.

Given the sharpness of the flawless diamond sword’s blade in this example, as well as that of the Damascus steel blade, and the target, say a pork belly, it seems clear that both blades will perform this straightforward task well. Indeed, perhaps the diamond will edge out the Damascus steel to some extent, similar to the way obsidian, a similarly brittle but remarkably sharp material exceeds the sharpness of surgical steel, reducing the extent of scar tissue in flesh.

The parry, however, is a bit more interactive. Rather than simply connecting the leading edge of a blade against flesh, a parry may involve blocking or deflecting a strike using the flat of the blade.

Parry.

Whether the diamond blade is giving or receiving the parry, it’s highly likely that the blade will break. Given diamond’s relatively inflexible crystal lattice, the odds are very much in favor of any impact fracturing that lattice and causing the blade at best to crack in two, at worst to shatter into the proverbial million pieces.

What does this say about the efficacy of striving for excellence in favor of perfection?

Perfection has honed the diamond blade to razor sharpness, given it crystal clarity, and made it capable of slicing flesh with the greatest of ease. The focus, and utility, of the blade are as uniform as the pure carbon it’s composed of. For the specialized task of slashing, it is masterfully suited to this role.

Excellence has granted unique characteristics to the Damascus steel by virtue of the impurities infusing its molecular structure. It may result in an incision which under a microscope appears more jagged, but the relatively flexibility and resilience of the blade enable it more likely to withstand a powerful blow.

The diamond blade illustrates simultaneously the appeal and the danger of embracing perfection. Perfection is flawless, sublime, but inherently fragile, whereas excellence, though not flawless, may better endure the onslaughts of the unexpected by virtue of the very imperfections which define it.

Vaccines: Unnatural Selection

Whether or not to vaccinate children from infectious disease is a hotly debated topic.

Bordetella pertussis, the bacteria responsible for whooping cough.

I encountered a discussion where some parents discuss their choice not to vaccinate their kids. The author cites various factors justifying this choice; that vaccines may compromise the body's ability to fight infection, may cause an allergic reaction, or hinder the healthy development of the immune system; that the ingredients of many vaccines, among which may be chicken, monkey, and aborted human fetal cells, aluminum, and various others, are undesirable to have injected into the body; that there is insufficient research to justify the use of vaccines to prevent disease.

Child receiving an oral vaccine for polio.

Evolution is an ongoing process, and the evolution of the human race is in many ways insulated from the process of natural selection. Medical science has insulated sufferers of type 1 diabetes like myself from being selected out of the population by providing synthetic insulin, an artificial means to adapt to a challenge thrust onto me by circumstance. Without this development, I would be dead, and my unique genetic heritage obliterated.

Similarly, vaccines enable the human body to compensate for many an infectious disease. No longer for a disease such as polio or measles or whooping cough need the body be completely unprepared for the onslaught; rather, a vaccine enables the unique signature of these and other contagions to be recognized by the body as pathogens, and enable it to produce an army of antibodies and other agents to systematically eradicate it.

Collection of poliovirus.

What if the entire human race stopped using vaccines altogether?

Many people would die. The science that goes into creating and refining vaccines would be absent, leaving the body to fend for itself against the elements, taking on from the environment whatever pathogens stray into its path.

However, many others would live. Sexual reproduction shuffles the cards of our genes between individuals, resulting in novel combinations of genetic traits, some of which will open the door to certain pathogens and slam them shut to others. For those who would survive, over long spans of time across many generations of human beings, the survivors would conceivably refine their immune systems to compensate for whatever pathogens their environment presents.

Of course, microbes also evolve, as evidenced by the emergence of MRSA; an antibiotic which is highly effective against one species of bacteria may prove ineffective against another, enabling the latter to thrive in spite of our best efforts to eliminate it. In the short term, it would seem that ideally vaccines provide relief from suffering by "tuning" the immune system to respond to pathogens. In the long term, however, the utility of vaccines is in my mind questionable.

Let's say we have a bacteria that causes the flesh to rapidly waste away and die, an uncompromisingly lethal, supercharged form of leprosy. 

Man aged 24 suffering from leprosy.

Science develops a vaccine which tunes the immune system to recognize and destroy this bacteria before it can take hold. Irrespective of whether your DNA already imparts a natural resistance to this bacteria or not, without fail a person who takes the vaccine will resist and survive. 

Now, remove the vaccine from the equation. Current and future generations must fend for themselves, and some will inevitably die, while others will suffer no consequences, having survived the bacteria by virtue of their natural immunity.

In the short term, we can dispense with vaccines and let children and adults contract diseases, suffer, and die. In the long term, diseases we fear today might be silently eradicated by our immune systems such that they no longer pose a threat. Vaccines today may indeed insulate us from suffering, and keep natural selection at bay by allowing those with insufficient immunity to withstand disease that might otherwise kill them.

"River of Time 2" by Scott Boden.

Question is, do we choose to take on nature without the benefit of safe, effective, rigorously-researched vaccines that do as they claim and prevent disease, or shrug our shoulders and keep a stiff upper lip as time marches on, serving as the ancestors of people in the far future who will benefit from our suffering in the form of immune systems tuned through the generations? 

I'm in favor of vaccines, provided that they are researched extensively so that they enable us to safely, effectively augment our ability to combat infectious disease. No offense to any of my future relatives, but if we can combat human suffering in the here and now, we should.

Vegetarians vs Omnivores

We interrupt our irregularly scheduled agenda to present a brief comparison: vegetarians vs omnivores.

Vegetarians mainly eat plant material to the exclusion of animal flesh. While some splinter groups (vegans) abstain from not only meat but also animal products like milk, eggs, even honey, others (fruititarians) strive to eat products which do not harm the plant of origin, such as fruit dropped from various fruit trees. Typically the choice to go vegetarian is inspired by sympathy for animals slaughtered for their meat, such as the plight of calves raised for the production of veal, or other animals that may endure great suffering in filthy conditions. Others may go vegetarian in order to abide by their religion. 

Omnivores eat either plant or animal material depending largely upon preference and availability. Squirrels, for example, are considered omnivores, primarily eating tree nuts, but may resort to eating meat if their primary food source is lacking. Human beings are included among omnivores, as our digestive systems enable us to digest many forms of plant and animal for nutrition. Humans also began the domestication of livestock for purposes of deriving various food products (milk, cheese, eggs) and for consumption of their flesh.

The products derived from animals, particularly pigs, cows, and chickens, and indeed the livestock itself has for many become a staple. What is a cup of coffee without fresh cream? What's a slice of toast without a fresh pat of savory butter? What's a BLT without bacon? Society has become enamored with these and many other animal products, and as a result, whole industries have developed to provide consumers their fix, whether it's a slice of crispy bacon, a blob of whale blubber for perfume, or eggs for breakfast. We purposefully harvest lower animals for our use.

Where this need finds a lot of controversy is particularly in various techniques for raising and eventually slaughtering livestock. Veal, for example, requires that a calf be essentially immobilized in a pen throughout its short life, so as to deter muscle growth which would compromise the tenderness of the resulting meat. Chickens which produce eggs for consumption may be maintained in small, cramped cages, and have their beaks trimmed to decrease the incidence of cannibalism. Pigs stunned and then dipped in scalding-hot water prior to slaughter in order to retain skin elasticity may still be alive and quite aware of their pain if the stunning procedure is botched.

Ideally, an animal being slaughtered will be whisked quickly and painlessly from life, and feel no pain. Unfortunately, this often isn't the case, as many with PETA will attest based upon various hidden camera footage they feature, taken from among the worst slaughterhouses. In vitro meat (that is, meat which is essentially grown in a laboratory and has never been part of a living animal) will hopefully eliminate this issue altogether in coming decades, but in the meantime, many in the vegetarian world unequivocally decry the slaughter of animals for meat as cruel.

There is among many vegetarians, particularly vegans, a hypocrisy regarding the consumption of meat. Meat is evil, say many practitioners of vegetarianism, as is the systematic domestication and slaughter of animals for their flesh. 

What, though, is flesh? It's a form of life.

Each human being every day of their lives brings countless living creatures to death with every moment, sleeping or waking. As we live and breathe, our immune systems constantly scour our bodies for foreign organisms and, using macrophages as their enforcers, encompass these invaders and use powerful enzymes to rip these living organisms apart, molecule by molecule. With every step, our shoes may crush into oblivion countless ants, spiders, lizards, beetles, and other small insects and arthropods and reptiles and other lesser life forms, without so much as a polite warning. In the morning ritual of many who shower, shave, and brush their teeth, millions and millions of bacteria are annihilated by the scourge of antiseptic mouthwash. As we drive our cars along lonely country roads, many an unfortunate opossum, skunk, armadillo, deer, or even the rare bird may become roadkill, their life force left to ebb and ooze forth onto hot, tarry asphalt.

Native Americans hunting buffalo on the prairies of old would not simply eat the meat and discard the carcass of their quarry, indeed, they would use it for various purposes in order to survive. They wouldn’t discard half a buffalo like a few uneaten McNuggets in a Happy Meal, they actually honored their prey, and didn’t merely harvest it as a resource.

To the vegetarians I present the idea that the problem with eating meat isn't the meat, it's the people. 

People react to the suffering of animals because they anthropomorphize them. Aside from the unfortunate prevalence of various animals with human voices in movies like Bambi, Watership Down, Babe and others, people can look into the eyes of an animal and see aspects of themselves. Pet a cow or pig and it’ll nuzzle up to your hand, eager for more. Feed a chicken and it will enthusiastically peck at its food and look to you eagerly for more. 

We normally don’t want to see animals suffer. Human emotion is unique to who we, as sentient, mostly intelligent animals, are, and people generally do not want to inflict suffering on animals let alone other humans if we can help it, because we are creatures with powerfully vivid imagination. If you prick us, we do indeed bleed, and we feel the cold steel of a needle shoved into our buttocks. Unless we’re deeply twisted, we don’t take any joy in inflicting such pain upon others of our kind.

Vegetarians the world over wage their own campaigns of slaughter against the plant kingdom. Collard greens are prepared by first ripping the plants from the sandy earth, then grasping and rending asunder the leafy greens, and finally boiling the living plants in water for hours until the bulwarks of their fibrous structures succumb and go limp. Carrots are similarly plucked from their homes in the moist earth, given a gentle bath and perhaps a scrubbing in clean water, only to have their very skin peeled from their bodies and their bodies chopped or sliced into bite-sized portions. Stir-fried vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, sugar snap peas meet their doom in woks across the nation, full of hot, sizzling oils that infiltrate their structure and render previously firm cell walls into flaccid remnants of their former selves. Sprouts of alfalfa, lentil, and others find themselves drowned in copious amounts of ranch dressing, then macerated by eager human molars within bowls of salad. 

Importantly, vegetables don’t scream. They don’t have a brain, sophisticated nervous systems, thoughts or feelings, at least as far as we’re aware. They live, reproduce, and die, but they’re not human. We can’t relate to a carrot or head of lettuce or broccoli in the same way we can to a cow or pig or squirrel. A vegetable doesn’t have eyes, lips, a mouth which even at rest our brains could confabulate as representing a constant, oafish grin. It doesn’t have any redeeming features that would make us think twice about ripping it from the earth and making it our meal. As ludicrous as it sounds to relate the peeling of a carrot to a person having their epidermis thinly sliced away, it simply doesn't evoke the same visceral discomfort in the context of a vegetable.

FOOOOOOOOOD...?

Many of us, myself among them, don’t dwell on the suffering of the package of bacon or porterhouse steak that lay invitingly on the plate before me at dinner. Indeed, many of us insulate ourselves from this reality by referring to it as a product, purchased with money from the local supermarket.

Cute enough to eat...?

 

Would I wish the animal I’m about to enjoy having suffered on their journey from pasture to table? Absolutely not. Will I willingly patronize purveyors of meat that don’t respect the notion that animal cruelty is reprehensible? No, I will not, as best I can based on how government enforces rules to prevent it. 

However, let’s not try to suggest that vegetarians and omnivores are so dissimilar, they aren’t. Each group snuffs out the life force of countless living plants and/or animals with similar efficacy, it’s just that plants are simpler life forms that don’t have the hardware to raise their leaves in protest, nor the ability to appeal to human empathy nearly as effectively as, say, a talking pig.

Bon appétit!

Just Another Day...

This is January 11, 2011, or 1/11/2011 in middle endian format.

Some in numerological circles claim that this day is one of opportunity, but not without hardship. Others interested in conspiracy theories feel intuitively that something "big" will happen this day.

Really, though, isn't it just another day??

The Gregorian calendar is today used by much of the civilized world to track and organize days. Remarkable as it is that the international community could agree upon using this convention to track the passage of time, it's nevertheless a tool, like the clock, even the chip in computers used to store the date and time.

That's not to say this day is meaningless. People will be born, die, get married, have a birthday, have sex for the first time, celebrate an anniversary, enjoy their first day of vacation, and countless other activities which will etch this date as meaningful to them or their loved ones for the rest of their lives. 

In the meantime, though, the world keeps turning, and we're just along for the ride. The earth continues to journey as part of the Milky Way galaxy from its point of origin in the distant past to wherever it's destined to go at a speed of around several hundred kilometers per second.

The day surely is meaningful, as we are living it here and now, experiencing it. It has value if for no other reason than that we're here to participate in and enjoy it. Nevertheless, it's just a convention. I seriously doubt the universe cares how we keep track of the time we occupy in life, since it's been here and will likely still be here far longer than we ever will.

Roamatherapy!

Ahh, Christmas, the time for presents, tasty food, and ruminating on the memories of days when Santa Claus really existed outside mere childhood imagination.

For the cheapskate who's always wanted to dabble in aromatherapy, and because "road aromatherapy" or "road rage smells like Christmas" didn't seem catchy enough, I present ROAMATHERAPY. 


TRY THIS

1. Go to your local live Christmas Tree seller. This might be your local supermarket with trees and wreaths out front, or some guy selling these out of a tent along the roadside.
   
   
2. Grab a discarded sprig of Douglas Fir. You also could ask nicely, but I doubt the seller would mind if it's already fallen away from the tree.
   
   
3. Using Duck™ tape, a chip clip, or a convenient crevice between the vent and the dash, secure the sprig so that hot air from the vents wafts across it.
   
   
4. Turn on your car's heater. Akin to the principles used by various aromatherapy diffusers, the pleasant aroma of the Douglas Fir is expressed from the plant material into your car's interior.

 
If your memories of Christmas are gloomy or nonexistent, hopefully this will bring you some of the Christmas cheer I associate with the holiday that is far more enjoyable than its rampant consumerism.

Merry Christmas!

 

A Thousand Words Isn't Enough

They say that "a picture is worth a thousand words". Personally, I think the value of photos is overrated.

No photo, digital or otherwise, carries the essence of the memories in real life that photo captures. As we travel down the river of time, our motion through it is like watching a film with the afterimages remaining in our trail behind us, kind of like light painting.

These "pictures" are one with the space-time continuum, and only someone with the ability to encapsulate this and peer inside could see the entire span of all these images across all time, somewhat like looking into a peephole from outside our realm of existence.

It is truly mind-boggling to think of the data storage requirements for that kind of recording, for every moment of motion of every iota of matter all across the universe for all time. If I were some Q-like being that could freely travel across time and make such observations and manipulations as an outsider, I'd probably go back to my physical life like a universe-scale photo album or video and play it back, in all aspects.

Alas, I don't have that power, but it's not like snapping a photo will do any better than my brain's comparatively feeble but nevertheless serviceable chronicle of my life. Whether a photo, a video, or the final, frantic firings of the synapses of my brain at death, "All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain."