Parrot Linux and Btrfs

[yogi]

I think you already know the answer to your question about gouging drug prices. The stuff you get cheap isn't made the same way as the generic or brand name product. What you get by prescription is medical grade chemicals. What you get OTC is not. The companies who jump through the hoops in order to comply with all the government requirements is doing exactly what you say corporations do with taxes they collect. They add the cost of the tax to the price but also add what they think is a fair profit margin to that basic cost. Do that a few times with drugs before they get to Walgreens and 88 cents turns into $16,95 real quick. The only additional comment I can make is that the OTC version you get for under a dollar does not have the same liability attached to it as does the scripted drug. If that OTC stuff kills you, too bad. If the same stuff you pay 16 times the price kills you, your decedents will become wealthy.



Once again the people of O'Fallon are reaching out unprovoked and trying to help me. I really don't know how to react to all this attention, but I have an idea what I will do about the latest inquiry. My wife and I received a letter from somebody I never heard of and has a return address about 4-5 miles from here. The letter was basically an inquiry about how we are doing during this pandemic. After a few kind words the writer explained how much of what is happening in today's world was predicted in the Bible and is a precursor to that infamous Agamemnon we should all be concerned about. It was not all gloom and doom and the author offered to explain it all to us in our home. Obviously this person is on a mission and at least partially concerned about our spiritual well being. Of course you know I'm not a very spiritual person but the letter sender does not know that. Thus he is reaching out to help in the way he knows best. Assuming his intentions are honorable, I think it's absolutely amazing how strangers in O'Fallon seem to care about other strangers.

I'm going to write back and express my gratitude, but also find a kind way to reject the offer. It just doesn't seem right that people who are concerned about my well being during a pandemic want to come into my home to explain why I should not worry.

[Kellemora]

Not so Yogi.
My sister used to work for a drug manufacturing company in the milling room.
They manufactured name brands, store brands, and generic, all from the same batch of ingredients.
But there was a difference in the finished products.
For the name brands, the product was hard pressed, and had a coating which makes them easier to swallow.
For the store brands, the product was still hard pressed, but not quite as hard, and cheaper glaze applied.
The generic brands were medium pressed and had no added coating, which is why they stick in your throat easier.

On a few brands of pills the inert ingredients may be altered slightly or one of the inert ingredients left out for store brands, and two or more left out on generic brands.
But the active ingredient used in all of them are from the same hopper with no changes.

Sorta like our Frozen Pizza packager made over 20 different brands, but used mostly the same ingredients, just different amounts of each is all.

We get letters similar to that, some are from the Jehovah's Witnesses, and some are from the 7th Day Adventists.
They hit the paper shredder first, and then end up as mulch under the bushes, hi hi.

St. Louis County had a No Solicitation Rule, so we got LOTS of Postcards from folks wanting to show us their products in person. They were often worded very tricky. Return this card to see if your Geo-Design matches our winning selection.

[yogi]

I understand what you are telling me about the way many drugs are manufactured. It seems reasonable to have a single source and multiple distribution paths. It also seems reasonable that prescription grade drugs would carry a greater liability, and thus somebody along the supply chain is taking on the cost of covering that liability. There probably are other variances I'm not aware of which contribute to the higher cost of pharmacy dispensed drugs. I'm not saying that all the additional costs are justified, but, the name of the game is to Maximize Profits after all. However, I do believe a lot of the inflated pricing is due to stricter control and regulations for medical grade drugs. Perhaps not all, but a lot. The addition of insurance coverage definitely raises the price.

I looked up the address of the sender of the letter I mentioned above. It's a Kingdom Hall building I've seen before but never paid much attention to it. A few Witnesses of Jehovah have crossed my path during my 75 years of roaming the earth. One I particularly recall was an aunt from my dad's side of the family. She converted from being Catholic to being a Witness and irritated the entire family with her preaching for many years. A few came knocking on our door and they were very difficult to dismiss. Aside from the message that I didn't care to hear, they seemed to be a rather aggressive lot bordering on being a cult. If there is an anti-soliciting ordinance here in O'Fallon a few people are ignoring it. I will say that no Jehovah Witnesses have come knocking on my door, but I have heard stories about them approaching people on the street. They are in interesting group of people to be sure, but way too consumed by their beliefs for my taste. Hopefully I can keep them at bay with mere letter writing.

[Kellemora]

Back home in St.Loo, I had some cards in a slot next to my door on how to respond to certain groups.
It basically covered the errors they believed in, by countering with the truth, in many cases, taken from their own bibles.
They usually didn't come back after that, hi hi.
I packed those cards away before I moved, but have never found them again.
I still have about 25 boxes I've never opened, and a couple of them were from when I moved to Creve Coeur and never opened them their either. Some of the boxes just say keep for kids, or keep for family with an LTS for long term storage on them.

[yogi]

My standard response to being attacked by over zealous Evangelicals is that I can't take anything they say seriously because I do not believe there is such a thing as God. That is frequently countered by an assertion that The Bible claims otherwise. Well yeah, but since I don't believe in God then the Bible is meaningless to me. From there it's just a matter of playing mind games, if they choose, because I'm using blatant honesty to tell them I don't believe them. Well, that's how it was in the old days. Now and days they just want me to buy their magazine and go away peacefully after that. LOL

I like the idea of handing cards back to the missionaries. However, doing that effectively requires an in depth understanding of the scriptures that I do not have nor care to acquire. You certainly had an advantage in that regard. Facts always conflict with beliefs. You obviously knew about both.

[Kellemora]

All I can say Yogi is archaeologist have discovered enough evidence to prove almost all of the stories in the Bible are true.
But it doesn't answer all of our questions, and many misinterpret what they read also.
Then to make matters worse, there are thousand, if not millions of preacher who preach contrary to the Scriptures.

I would rather believe in God and thought a fool, than not believe in God and find out there really is eternal life and missed it. If you are right, and there is no God and no Salvation and no Eternal Life, we'll both still be dead either way.

I see a design in nearly everything that could not have happened by happenstance.
This is why I believe in a creator!

[yogi]

Maybe I'm not an authentic atheist because I do believe God exists, but only in the mind of the believer. I've explained my understanding of infinity in an earlier thread wherein the fact that we are all part of the same universe cannot be denied. We are created from the elements and will decay back into the basic elements when we die. In that sense eternity is unavoidable. The notion that we might remain conscious on some level to experience that eternity is nonsense to my way of thinking. We are not capable of grasping the vastness and complexity of infinity. But even more fundamental is the origins of God being inside the human mind. That mind is not a separate entity (spirit) that endures after the body decomposes. That mind is a product of self-awareness. When self-awareness ceases to exist, so does the mind.

The organization of the universe stems from the same root as does self-awareness. Without human intervention the universe is random in it's purist possible form. Randomness does include ordered events and constructs so that it's not impossible for such things to occur in a truly random field of events. However, order and organization is local to the center of self awareness. It's not intrinsic to the whole of the universe. Thus what can be seen as a deliberate and intelligent design only happens because the mind needs such constructs to navigate its environment. We don't like chaos because we don't know how to react to it. From that need to have an organized and predictable world view comes the concept of God, the super power that arranged and organized it all. Thus, most everything I've heard or read about God takes on some very human attributes. Organization and order is a very human, not a cosmic, phenomena. The obvious conclusion to be drawn is that God would not exist if humans also did not exist because the universe is random, not ordered by design.

And, should by some odd chance a God does exist, that Being would know how I came to my current thinking. It was not a choice to reject the obvious, but instead conclusions based on my life's circumstances. What kind of God would punish me for being all that I could be?

Also, regarding the Bible, the fallacy I see therein is not in it's ability to document historical events. I'm certain the clarity of some of those events have been lost in the translation. I'm not questioning that aspect of all those books. The religion teachers I've been exposed to universally contend that the Bible is the Word of God. Well, God "inspired" the authors. Since I have my doubts about God, the credibility of the Bible also suffers.

[Kellemora]

Let's take something that is one of the basic elements of all things living.
Carbon.
Carbon is an element that can neither be created nor destroyed.
That being said, begs the question.
Where did Carbon come from in the first place?
Or any other of the basic elements?

I don't discount that bible translations leave much to be desired.
Plus I've seen copies of the various types of scrolls they refer to as original texts.
Not that I could read them, hi hi. Only the translations from them.

FWIW: I don't agree with half the nonsense being taught by the many preachers out there.
Each has their own ideas, most not scriptural, and whole religions are built on those false premises.

Some day we will know if we are right or wrong, if we know at all.

[yogi]

There is a line of thought wherein it is believed consciousness itself is evolving. It's suggested that at some point in the future we will cease to talk to each other, and they are not suggesting anything digital will overtake us. LOL Instead of talking or texting or communicating in any physical form that we now use there will be a higher level of interaction. It's kind of like ESP where you have a "feeling" something is about to happen; then it actualizes. That feeling, so it is proposed, is a form of communication on a higher level. The same kind of interaction can be seen at rallies and sports events. The crowd gets into the "spirit" of the team. And, you probably have run into certain individuals where you can almost tell what they are thinking without them saying a word. There is a psychological explanation for all that, but nobody really knows how it all works. Personally I find my communications becoming less effective over time. If there is an evolution going on, it's passing right by me.

We previously talked about how how it is possible for something to be created from nothing. That's how the current universe came into being. Carbon came right along with it. The different elements followed the same line of development as did the different forms of life we know on this planet. Their creation was by random events being just right for the situation. It takes a fair understanding of quantum potential to appreciate how that works, and I am encouraged that there is a plausible explanation that does not require a being with super powers to make it all happen.

[Kellemora]

On Star Trek they are called Empaths. Not exactly like ESP, they can't technically read ones mind, but can hear what they are thinking about saying orally before they say it. Another way is to project by thought what you want to say.
I do know some people have ESP, but that too does not mean they can read anyone's mind, only those almost on their own frequency is how I describe it.

Depending on which books you read on taxonomy, some say animals (sponges) appeared 800 million years ago, and plants only 500 million years ago.
Other books will say Man was here 7 million years ago, 2.5 million years ago, 1.4 million years ago, and that the first humans were white skin under brown fur.
Yet other books say Man first appeared in Africa 100,000 years ago.
But if we use DNA and mtDNA it shows Adam and Eve were only 120,000 years ago.
They have NEVER found a link between any Genera within any Kingdom, all Families are totally separate, even though they all share common traits.
Even within the 8.7 million species, they cannot find a common link between any of them, other than distant parental plants, may have mutated and we now recognize them as a separate species, but they are still of the same family and genera.

You tried to explain once to me how something can be created from nothing.
But I've never seen any evidence to prove that theory.
And if evolution is in any way correct, everything, plants and animals evolved from sponges, the oldest known form of life of any kind, hi hi. Which means bacteria would then technically be the oldest form of life.
And some experts claim God is only 70,000 years old, other say He is only 7,000 years old.
And getting back into your quantum concept, in the vast emptiness of space there became a cosmic consciousness. And this is what chose to fill the empty space with matter. Creating everything from nothing other than its own thoughts.

[yogi]

I'm not a Treckie so that I don't know Empaths from Enpaths. LOL I mentioned the phenomena of of Quantum Entanglement earlier on in our discussions. It has to do with particle physics wherein several particles are "entangled" with others in a group. An experimenter can look at one particle and tell something about the state of the other particles. This ability is not limited to sub-atomic distances. People have performed experiments to show that particles on the moon can and do interact with particles entangled on earth. In fact there is a contest in the scientific community to see who can measure this entanglement at the greatest distance. Theory has it that there is no limit, but more surprising is the fact that events can be determined immediately. There is no delay for the transmission of information. It all happens instantly. It sort of says there is something going on that exceeds the speed of light. Anyway, my point here is that I envision this quantum entanglement to be the mechanism by which people communicate non-verbally.

There is much we agree on in principle regarding the origins of the universe. I see your position as one known as Intelligent Design wherein some intelligent consciousness is responsible for the creation of everything we know. My position is that no such thing existed before the universe and what we see is a random manifestation of the potential to be; quantum uncertainty. Organization and design is all around us, and I contend it's built into our minds to see things that way. There is no evidence that it was created by an Intelligent Being. There is, however, ample evidence and universal agreement regarding random events.

Regardless of how the earth came into existence, be it by intelligent design or by random events, the question of how life came about on the planet has more or less been resolved long ago. At some stage this planet was a soupy ball of chemicals; lots of chemicals of the solid, liquid, and gaseous variety. Apparently there were a lot of storms too which generated lightning and plasma. Some basic enzymes have been created in a lab version of this chemical soup and getting to a single celled bacteria which leads to single cell organisms is a rather short path. Clearly, living organisms can spontaneously be created from a tub of chemicals given the right proportions and circumstances. In other words it can happen randomly.

Given that random events can create life forms there is no reason to believe we "evolved" from a single source. Over a few million years, or few hundred million, all the life forms were generated randomly over and over again. There was no intelligence to this chemical reaction. It occurred in line with the limits of the environment and within the abilities of the chemicals to interact. Evolution attempts to explain how these random beginnings of life forms refined their existence through a process we call survival of the fittest. The path of evolution stays within the laws of physics and complies with the constraints of the local environment. You won't see lemon trees in the Antarctic, for example, nor do polar bears roam equatorial Africa.

There are some people who advance the notion that inanimate objects have a consciousness. That is how they explain the design and organization they perceive as well as the cause-and-effect phenomena. That's a mighty stretch of the imagination in my opinion. In the final analysis the origin of the universe, and life therein, is a classic chicken or egg question. Did consciousness create the universe, or did the universe create consciousness? I see no compelling evidence to invalidate the latter case.

[Kellemora]

My question would be, where did that first particle come from?

It does make sense that animals, and people do evolved depended on their location on the planet.
Australia has many diverse animals, compared to the rest of the world.
Yet they all have similar features as the rest of the animal kingdom.
Two eyes, a nose with two nares, one heart, two lungs, single other organs.
Most have 4 appendages called arms or legs, with 5 phalanges on each extremity.

If they evolved separately, why are they so much alike in the important ways?

One fellow I used to talk to said it was because prehistoric birds had droppings or brought their foods to Australia, and that is what kick-started evolution there, from already existing organisms.

Some day we might break the DNA codes to learn more. See what's inside those DNA elements.
Who knows, in another 100 years we might be able to create our own people, maybe.

[yogi]

I understand that they can already make humans to order via genetic engineering. There was a lot of controversy when that technology was announced and I think the federal government stopped funding it for some odd reason. As far as making a human from scratch I only have a vague memory of reading about how that was possible. I don't recall if the experiment was ever carried to fruition, but that kind of research too would have been cut short by the protectors of life.

The first particle came from quantum potential. It's not as metaphysical as you would think, but it does take a brain more scientific than mine to explain it clearly.

As far as animals and plants looking alike are concerned, that's basic statistics. While I contend that all events in the universe are random, the opportunities for things to happen in a given environment are limited. My example of a lemon tree not growing in the Antarctic is classic. Perhaps one day such a tree would appear during a warm spell, but the environment up there is not conducive to producing tropical plants. Thus any lemon trees that happen north of the Arctic Circle die off. So it is with other living things. They adapt to their local environment and that adaptation limits the opportunities available for the next evolutionary step. Take any given life form and place it into several different environments, the result will be different varieties of the same living form. It seems like a simple analysis, but it does require knowing a bit about the workings of random distributions and the laws of statistics.

[Kellemora]

I made a mistake yesterday when I said a sponge was the oldest living organism.
It was actually the Comb's Jelly, aka Jellyfish.
If you exclude Trilobites, I think insects were the oldest known land creatures.
There were carbon eating critters in the ocean, that evolved to use the sun, which is possible the origin for plant life.
But again we hit that brick wall where no organism ever changed into another type of organism.

Even if you move up to more recent times.
There has never been a link found between the kingdoms, genera, families, or species.
Yet they all have many things in common with each other.
If a Chimp is what evolved into Man, where are there Chimps and Man, but nothing in between?

Also, if evolution is correct, why are we not seeing new creatures continuing to evolve?

[yogi]

Also, if evolution is correct, why are we not seeing new creatures continuing to evolve?

Come back in a few million years. You will see all the new creatures you are looking for. Or, more likely, nothing living at all. LOL



Yesterday was Halloween. We weren't very confident in how to react to the current situation, but there were no extraordinary warnings or dire instructions handed out in advance. Most of the advice was common sense and most people acted accordingly. The big issue was to avoid getting close to all the ghosts and goblins. My neighbor set up his portable fire pit at the end of his driveway where he and his wife sat handing out candy and talking to the parents of the kids. We set a small table on the front porch with packets of candy laid upon it. I also put a squeeze bottle of hand sanitizer out there, but really didn't expect it to be used. The crowd was about half what it normally is, and I can't say the kids were particularly concerned about social distancing. I stayed inside most of the time monitoring the supply of sweets so that I could replenish them when necessary. Everybody waved to me through the window and offered thanks. Only one kid out of the fifty or so who came by used that sanitizer. I was impressed. We have A LOT of candy left over, especially the Jelly Bellies. Seems that kids prefer M&M's over the jelly beans. That's fine with me. The way I see it we won't run out of jelly beans until maybe a week before Easter.

[Kellemora]

You know what I meant. Where are missing critters between for example a chimp and a man.
A chimp didn't just suddenly turn into a man, it would have come in steps, and if chimps are still here, so would each of those steps still be here.

We didn't have a single kid, not even the four families who come every year showed up this year.
I didn't buy a lot of candy, but did put up a PVC pipe from our kitchen window down to a metal flower cart where we had a pumpkin and large metal bowl tied down. This way we could drop the small packages of candy down the tube to the bowl.
But nobody came.

Although I'm not supposed to have sugar. Every night after I go to bed, I have three sweet treat portions to eat while I'm working the crossword puzzles or Sudoku puzzles. One is an Anderson's Peanut Butter Bar for sure, the other two are either 3 jelly bean, 3 spicettes, or 2 hot cinnamon candies. And for the last thing, if I get to it, is a spearmint mint. They come to a grand total of only 25 carbs, +- 1 carb. Now if I had something with high carbs at dinner, then I only get the Peanut Butter Bar and nothing else, not even the mint. If I don't have the mint at night, I have it in the morning, which is what I usually save it for anyhow.

[yogi]

Technically I'm not restricted in my diet. However, my close encounter with a mis-diagnosed diabetes and the resulting consultations with a nutritionist changed my eating habits forever. I'm not as strict with the carb counting as I was back then, but I am very aware of what can contribute to an excess of sugar in my blood stream. The rule I follow is 300g carbs a day is the limit. Calories be damned. Carbs and calories kind of go hand in hand anyway. Three main meals would be limited to 75g of carbs each. That leaves room for three 25g snacks. The snacks are important in that they are timed to be at least two hours after the main meal but in practice about half way between. This is supposed to keep the insulin levels on an even keel. I lost more than forty pounds when I was thinking I had diabetes and eating the controlled carb diet. Then, after I became less critical, I gained back about 15 of those pounds. That's about where I'm at today.

One of the good things to do on any diet is to go crazy with a "pig out" day. Eat all the carbs and sugar you can tolerate on those days, but only on those days. Plus, those days cannot occur more than once a month. The idea here is that the body adapts to whatever eating routine you happen to have established. Once it adapts fully, it tends to ignore the the reason why you are on the diet in the first place. Sugars get stored more easily and fats get stored more often regardless of the protein you eat. So, when you pig out you upset the learning curve and keep the body in line with the regulatory functions attached to the diet. I found that I really didn't like the taste of sugar on those pig out days and avoid it quite naturally now. Unfortunately I don't avoid it as much as I should, which is where that 15 extra pounds came from.



You and I are thinking along different lines when it comes to evolution. We agreed somewhere back in the dark past that life didn't have a single beginning, but instead it started in several places over a very extended period of time. To answer your questions about chimps and humans, they do have a lot of similarities because they both evolved in similar environments. But the beginnings, the first chimp and the first man, are two separate entities and two separate lines of evolution. Some day, if they ever do find a missing link, then my line of thought would be proven incorrect. Until then it sounds good to me.

[Kellemora]

My doc wants me up around 160 for some reason. I weighed 145 for most of my adult life. After I retired I got up to around 150, then after my heart attacks up to 155. This is where I've held now for several years, then suddenly this past two months I've dropped all the way down to 145 again, which I'm happy about, but I doubt my doctor will be, hi hi.
The thing is, I eat basically the same thing every day only alternating around a little so it is not all the same stuff back to back. I have no idea why I started dropping weight these past couple of months.
I only take two Metformin before my evening meal, and my BG has held fairly steady. It may bounce around between 80 and 110 which is in the normal range. I take mine BG two hours after my main meal.

On that I do agree, I don't think everything came from the same amino acid pool. Nor do I discount them as the origin of life.
I think the only area we disagree on is that however the universe was formed, I do see it as a big bang as well, albeit it could have been just a whimper too. But we do know it started at a specific point and has been spreading outward ever since. New stars are born, and old stars die. But how do we know or not know that this is how it was supposed happen by intelligent design.
Perhaps some day we may discover how to build all the components of a DNA strand?
And drop it in a beaker of amino acid and watch it turn into what we planned for it too.

[yogi]

I'm pretty sure I read about that exact experiment you describe. They have been able to create the starting acid and cultured it to grow into a single cell that was supposed to be living. The experiment was halted at that point because, for some reason I can't fathom, they did not want to be responsible for creating an actual life form. The point of the experiment was more like a proof of concept than anything else, and it was in no way designed to give insights into the beginning of the universe.

Contrary to the general line of thought, the universe has boundaries. We know it goes at least 13 billion light years and appears to be expanding. It could be bigger, but that's the extent of what we know today. There are scientists who suggest there are other universes besides the one we know. My thinking is that there is no such thing. Even if there are several globs of matter originating from several Big Bangs, they all together count as one universe. Regardless of the terminology, my thoughts are that beyond the unverse(s) is nothing. This state of nothing goes on to infinity so that you can look at our universe as being surrounded by infinite amounts of nothing; not even time.

I know a mechanical engineer, and any scientist worth their salt, wants to know exactly how that something came into being out of nothing. That which I call infinity is being explained as a Quantum Potential wherein it's current state cannot be determined. It's all states simultaneously and that includes the state of not existing. This seems odd to us cause-and-effect engineering types, but it's normal in quantum potential. Thus, this Quantum Potential is the state of nothingness. and the state of the universe we know, and the infinite number of states we can't begin to imagine. One of those states manifested and became the universe around us. It will disappear eventually and revert back to purely Quantum Potential, and repeat again so the speculation goes. This all means that what we see and know as the universe is a temporary manifestation of a potential that always existed. That can happen because there is no such thing as time or space in that quantum potential. Next time around a different potential will manifest. These various manifestations always existed and will continue to exist forever; that is to say it is infinite. That is how something arises out of nothing.

[Kellemora]

Seems like I read something along those lines also. But they halted the experiment because they found their starting culture was contaminated. But that was years before we know about DNA too.

I remember way back in skewl, biology lab science class, we watched cells divide under a microscope.
I don't remember what they were from, but I do remember they all died so fast each student had to get a new slide setup every 2 or 3 minutes.

I would say space is infinite, but our known universe is expanding away from a central point. This can be measured and documented.
I would not doubt there could be other universes out there in infinite space, perhaps even in different dimensions of space.

I don't understand Quantum Physics enough to even grasp what they might be talking about.
Seems like only a theory to me, that is yet unproven.
It's sorta like 2D images being claimed as 3D images. A trick of the projection or handling of the image.
Makes one wonder what they will call REAL 3D images when they come out.

On a totally different note:
I keep seeing ads for Flat Screen TV's.
I find this most surprising, since they quit making Flat Screen TV's at least ten or more years ago.
They were Heavy, Front Heavy, and very dangerous TVs to have. Easy to tip over onto someone.
I had a monitor that was Flat Screen. It still sits in the garage, to dang heavy to toss in the trash, and nobody wants them anymore. Not since LCD TV's came out.