Flawed economy

I recently read a statistic posted by an NC teacher mentioning that cable TV installer pay is greater than teachers'.

Let's think of it this way. Cable companies aren't doing anything wrong. They are charging for a service and paying people based on what their company brings in and can afford. It's not illegal, it's not wrong, but is it right?

Professional athletes and upper echelon entertainers make obscene amounts of money. It's money they've earned. These earnings aren't wrong, they aren't criminal, but are they right? When my mother grew up a professional football player (Sam Huff from the Redskins) lived in their neighborhood. How did this happen? My grandparents were filthy rich, of course...WAIT. No, they weren't. Granddaddy was a colonel in the army in a modest, pretty neighborhood near DC. They were what you might call "normal" -- comfortable amounts of money. Not overpaid but paid enough. It's hard to imagine a colonel these days living in the same neighborhood as a professional athlete. Both jobs are hard. Becoming a professional athlete is very challenging, and a small number of people, comparatively, work hard enough and have the talent to rise to these ranks. They should be well-paid but are they overpaid? I think so. 

I read that there are nine million millionaires in the US. Wow, that's quite a lot of money. They must have worked extremely hard. These people are surely upstanding citizens who have left an impact on the world. Good for them. I sincerely mean that, and I'm impressed with those people. They do deserve to be rich without a doubt.

But is it possible that some people are too rich? There are children who live in homeless shelters. Mentally ill people living on the streets. And of course, the all too familiar fact that there are starving people in Africa. Why do we all feel so entitled? I include myself.

Almost no people could achieve success without a teacher. Children don't just think up multiplication, or by some divine intervention does the periodic table just appear in their minds. I've never heard of a CEO who couldn't read. Someone taught him or her that letters have sounds and those sounds form words. Most people learn necessary skills through school either public or private by a teacher.

And North Carolina feels these people should receive such low pay? Master's degree increased pay eliminated? What about restructuring our payscale system? Why is that not the option? I don't know how this would happen. I know I sound naive. I don't know how to fix it, but I know it is wrong.

Maybe I'll start a kickstarter. Fair pay for teachers. We are willing to fund a Zach Braff movie, but ignore the fact that teachers work second jobs. It just doesn't add up. 

Hiatus

Whoa. Sometimes life is surprising. I started writing this blog as a way to guide myself through school as I tried to find "what I really want to do." I graduated school 6 years ago. I can't believe how fast that time has flown by. I really enjoyed the past six years and don't regret many of my decisions, but I think I was fighting my present life and having some kind of fear of enjoying my present moment in time. I was generally happy throughout all that time, but there was this level of thinking that existed in my day-to-day that was searching for something better instead of just being satisfied. I think this impulse to seek out what is next and what is exciting is good and important, but I might have been doing it to the point of overkill. We need balance in everything, right?

So, it finally made sense to go back to design. Find a good job and do the work I have been trained to do. Maybe I'm not the best designer in the world, but I am a designer, and I can be a productive citizen of the workforce and spend my off hours just living. It is as simple as that. It seems like such a simple realization, but it has taken a huge effort for me to really feel this way. So, new job, new home, new husband (and thank god, no more wedding planning).

So, hiatus. I haven't been writing here for a while, but I really like having a place to write. I will be back here doing what I was doing before but with a different focus and a different mentality.

Living now and looking to the future (but not too much). I think I'm happy doing that.

Taste cells

I came across this today in my chemistry book, and as someone who really likes tasting things, I found this really interesting. The reason some artificial sugars are calorie-free is because our cells don't metabolize them (metabolize is a word we use all the time when talking about diet but I've learned that it really just means chemical reactions happening in cells). They just pass through our bodies unchanged. Sugar, however, is used by our bodies and is metabolized by oxygen to produce energy, CO2, and H20.
But taste is independent of metabolism. Our taste buds or taste receptor proteins have a little space where a food molecule can fit in snugly. When a sugar shaped molecule fits into the sugar receptor protein, the protein splits apart and causes a series of events that result in a nerve signals that tell the brain that you are tasting something sweet.

But what I found to be really interesting is that artificial sugars taste sweet simply because they fit into these receptor proteins. These molecules are similar enough in shape that they taste almost the same. We just metabolize them differently or not at all.

Salt!

Stuff like this just blows my mind. Molecules that, alone, are poisonous to people will combine to be something that our body absolutely must have. Put sodium metal in water and it explodes. Put sodium chloride in water, and it helps water boil faster. I think this stuff is so absolutely amazing. Life is really amazing, and I'm amazed at all the people before us who have discovered these facts. I love it.

New quarter

This quarter I'm taking physics and chemistry. A big step into my new science path. I'm really happy to embrace this new discipline. It seems like the right thing to do in a climate of Rick Santorum, the rise of literal bible interpretations, a mistrust of science, and the current anti-intellectualism world we're creating. What is going on! Yuck!

I'm a little scared about these courses. I'm trying to really focus. I think I can do it if I just study really hard.

I'm reading in the intro of my physics text about pseudoscience and the author is really speaking to this poisonous intellectual climate that is threatening all the advances of the last few centuries:

"Four centuries ago, most humans were dominated by superstition, devils, demons, disease, and magic in their short and difficult lives. Life was cruel in medieval times. Only through enormous effort did humans gain scientific knowledge, overthrow superstition, and gain freedom from ignorance. We should rejoice in what we've learned -- no longer having to die whenever an infectious disease strikes or to live in fear of demons...Yet there is cause for alarm when the superstitions that people once fought to erase come back in force, enchanting a growing number of people. There are now more than 20 thousand practicing astrologers in the US who server millions of credulous believers. A greater percentage of Americans today believe in astrology and occult phenomena than did citizens of medieval Europe. Few newspapers print a daily science column, but nearly all provide daily horoscopes. Although goods and medicines around us have improved with scientific advances, much human thinking has not." Paul G. Hewitt

So, sad. This needs to change. We need scientists to solve the energy crisis causing climate change.

I'm going to keep hard working at science classes, and see where this takes me.

Low calorie diet and longevity

Human cell division seen from an electron microscope.

I have to give my dad some credit. In growing up amidst an obesity epidemic, I can remember this subject coming up a lot in conversation at home. One thing that I remember my dad saying is that when you look at the very elderly, one thing that these people have in common is a healthy weight. Maybe it seems obvious, but as people age and deal with constant senescence, having unneeded body fat is something that must be harmful to an aging body. Interesting idea. It's been a lifelong difficulty for me maintaining a healthy weight, so I'm really interested in this subject.

However, on Saturday I was reading in my human development book about longevity and found out about research at a cellular level that might explain longevity, and it really made sense to me. The idea is that a lifelong tendency to have a low calorie diet that maintains the necessary nutrients slows cell division. Cell division is perfectly natural, but with each division, we loose a little bit of DNA. Over the years, these losses are seen as the aging process. So, slowing cell division improves longevity. It made me think about my time in Taiwan where the elderly seemed to have so much vitality. I think an eastern diet, at least a more traditional one, is usually more healthy with fewer calories, and this must have a lot to do with the healthy elderly people that are seen in a lot of Asian countries.

I find this interesting but also challenging. My western diet leaves me to crave so many of the foods that I should not be eating. But reading this is a good reminder that a healthy weight has little to do with vanity. It is really does come down to long-term health.

Cancer cells

Learning about the body's capabilities at a cellular level is absolutely fascinating. Each cells is like a city with all the molecules performing specific duties doing extremely precise things like copying thousands of genes in our DNA. Studying this gives me so much respect for what our cells do. But then I read about cancer cells. They reak havoc in doing nothing but destroy the beautiful, amazing progress other cells have done in the process of living and growing. We start as one cell and our amazing cells differentiate and turn us into who we are. Then cancer comes in with complete disregard. Such a sad thing. I don't like those kinds of cells.