The Rising Tide of Refugees

Population pressure and dispersal

Currently, we are seeing a troubling increase in refugee numbers globally.

I link this to ever-rising human population numbers, which will be loosely correlated with rising population densities. (Loosely, because population density also depends on area.) Population density, in turn, will be the governing psychological factor, because it can be appraised on the basis of local sensory signals (probably multimodal) whereas absolute global numbers cannot. The basis of this hypothesis is the results of Calhoun's rodent experiments on overpopulation that he carried out in the fifties and sixties, which I am here extrapolating to humans, probably as Calhoun himself intended. I postulate that refugeehood subserves in humans the ecological function of dispersal. The underlying mechanism would be what was called "instinct" back in the day, a term that I think may still be useful in getting into one's argument quickly.

Do we have an instinct to disperse?

Instinct-governed behaviors are understood to owe nothing to learning and to be solely determined by the genes, and thus by evolution. In humans, of course, this position lacks credibility, so I am here speaking of that portion of the causation of our behavior that is due to evolution and can be assumed to play a biasing role rather than a determining one.

In refugee stories, there always seems to be a dichotomy between the nasty, evil bad buys and the hapless, innocent displaced persons, but, of course, this is naive. The most likely situation is that the refugee-producing adaptation has an aggressor subroutine and a victim subroutine, both in the same genetically determined program, and we all have a copy of both hard wired into our brains. Essentially by chance, one is activated in some people, and the other in others, when population density rises, and the ancient drama begins anew.

Now here's my plan

Because therapy can be expected to be more easily delivered to the victims than to the aggressors, I suggest that we start with them in seeking solutions. Their part of the dispersal program is likely to make them overly reactive to harassment and overly apt to conclude that they have no option but to flee, when this is simply not true. A related phenomenon that I have observed could be called "defensive overreaction," in which the person jumps to the false conclusion that an elaborate, expensive solution to their problem is required. A reasonable person, however, will try all the simple solutions first, one by one, evaluate the effectiveness of each, and proceed to the next more complex solution only if the less complex solution fails. I suggest that persons considering flight should be counseled and supported in this strategy, in the hopes of stemming the global tide of refugees.

Photo by Saad Chaudhry on Unsplash

Stress Hormesis in Immune Function

 

Disclaimer 

If you are a cancer patient or at risk and are seeking a cure outside the medical mainstream, this post is not for you and offers no cures or protective therapies. This post is written for researchers.

A Different way to Support the Immune System 

Is immune cycling the answer to preventing cancer? The acquired immune system is a learning system that has to learn what epitopes to eliminate. Consider a person who experiences stress that suppresses their immune vigilance for a short time out of each year, after which the stress abates to let the immune function rebound. During suppression, the micro-cancers run wild for a short time, thereby growing large enough for the immune surveillance function to easily detect them upon its return. They are then dismantled, of course, and the immune system learns something in the process, making it a more effective anti-cancer system going forward. The analogy here would be to a cat playing with a mouse it has caught, which involves deliberately releasing the mouse and then catching it again. Since it is play, it is a learning activity; the cat is working on its game. 

Observational

Pre-civilization, human immune suppression may have happened regularly due to prolonged environmental stressors, leading eventually to cannier immune systems and lower cancer rates than we now experience. (According to Selye's general adaptation model, which represents current thinking, the final exhaustion phase of stress adaptation is associated with impaired immune function, but with purely an increase in susceptibility to cancer.)

The immune training paradigm articulated here agrees with the impression I have that cancer is a disease of modern lifestyles. Consistent with this, laboratory rats have a notable susceptibility to cancer, which can skew the results of cancer research, and they lead sheltered, indoor lives.

 

Experimental 

The following article may be relevant: Coventry, B.J., Ashdown, M.L., Quinn, M.A. et al. CRP identifies homeostatic immune oscillations in cancer patients: a potential treatment targeting tool?. J Transl Med 7, 102 (2009).  https://doi.org/10.1186/1479-5876-7-102 

Summary and Future Directions 

Hormesis is said to be present when a factor that is toxic in large doses is required in low doses for normal functioning. Is cancer a disease of too little stress? The matter may not be so simple. The possible stress benefit may be a function of the exact time-course of the stress. For example, it may be associated with a particular frequency of variation of experimentally imposed stress. The six-to-seven-day period of the cited immune oscillations would be an obvious pattern of stress variation to test.

The week time period on which work and worship is organized may represent an unrecognized past cultural discovery of this cycle.

Does everyone have the CRP cycle whether ill or not?

Photo by Nina Mercado on Unsplash

Dietary Therapy Against Behavioral Reversion to Homo erectus

Proposal

I propose that the most senseless crimes are due to the perpetrator having reverted to an H. erectus behavioral mode due to a combination of stress and insufficient protein consumption. I propose that the appropriate treatment is a one-week regimen of consumption of 370 grams daily wet-weight basis (the amount I have personally tried) of fish, poultry, or red meat. Carbohydrates and fresh vegetables must be included in the diet for nutritional balance. Additional hydration will also be needed. I conjecture that the amino acid arginine is the active ingredient, but this has not been tested. I have personally finished a self-designed six-day arginine regimen based on poultry, and the early results, based on mental contents rather than overt behavior, are promising. After a big protein feed, it takes me three hours to start feeling my oats, after which nothing seems to trouble me.

Physiology of Arginine 

Arginine stimulates the secretion of the peptide hormone glucagon, which has an action opposite to that of insulin, raising blood sugar rather than lowering it. Under conditions of low blood sugar, people are known to experience fear and irritability. Increased glucagon secretion will remedy low blood sugar if energy stores are available. Arginine is a semi-essential amino acid: not usually required in the diet of adults but required in the diet of young people and in the diet of adults experiencing stress, injury, or infection. Therefore, if the person is stressed, experiencing low blood sugar, and eating a diet low in arginine, secretion of glucagon may not be sufficient to correct low blood sugar levels promptly, so that low mood may last long enough for the planning of a felony. The person could be said to suffer from “arginism.” (Arginine also stimulates the secretion of insulin, but this effect is not relevant to conditions of low blood sugar.)

Evolutionary Argument

H. erectus was the evolutionary forerunner of ourselves and ate a great deal of game (for an omnivore). I conjecture that their prominent dispersal tendency was due to fighting over meat when it became scarce from overhunting, and this fighting led to ejection of refugees from the hunting group and thus dispersal. The prominent brow ridges of this species may have been selected in evolution as protection for the eyes during this fighting, and eyesight is extremely important to a hunter. 

Reductions in plasma concentrations of the amino acid arginine, which is abundant in meat, may have come to represent meat scarcity in evolution and become a trigger for savage infighting via an indirect effect on blood sugar levels via glucagon suppression. I theorize  that as a result, today people shift into an H. erectus-like behavioral mode whenever the price of food rises relative to wages, a process that can destroy civilizations. This may be exacerbated by a misguided reduction in dietary protein intake for economic reasons. (Nowadays, this would be compounded by an additional folly: saving the planet from greenhouse gas emissions by not eating meat.) 

Consequences for Diet

I recommend that those experiencing financial stress or job loss increase their protein intake, not decrease it, for example, increase it to 100 grams/day, dry-weight of protein basis, for men, but use inexpensive sources like seeds, chicken, or low-mercury fish (salmon) that have a good arginine content. Arginine supplements would be a very inexpensive remedy, but I cannot recommend them now because the idea is untested by me personally. However, the review article cited below gives the green light to arginine supplement use by humans.

If adopted by an entire population, a high-arginine/protein regimen could easily increase the birth rate, all other things being equal. This idea is based on evolutionary-psychological reasoning, and also on how the regimen makes me feel. Maybe all other things do not have to be equal.

The metabolism of arginine is linked to that of lysine by regulatory factors, so the dietary uptake of arginine should not exceed 2.5 x that of lysine. This issue will not arise if meat, flax seed, or chickpeas is the source of arginine. Divided daily doses of arginine totaling not more than 9 grams, pure arginine basis, seem recommendable based on the online literature, the full text being available on researchgate.net, doi: 10.1007/s00726-008-0210-y 

Picture credits: left, yusuf-dundar-l9ctwXKee0k-unsplash.jpg; right, screenshot from Wikipedia page, The Winged Victory.

Stratospheric Aerosol Injection by Coulombic Hoist

Reprinted from “My Pages,” Hackaday.io

An exploration of possible modern uses of clear-weather atmospheric electricity.

The idea

On clear, calm days, release tiny, negatively charged sulfur particles near ground level (but no lower than 25 cm) and wait for them to rise into the stratosphere on the sky voltage. They should then oxidize to a sulfuric acid aerosol, which is a powerful climate cooling agent if present in the stratosphere. The stratosphere begins 8 km above the surface in the arctic and 16 km above the surface in the tropics (mode = 12 km). At the surface, the electric field of the sky voltage has an intensity of 100 to 200 volts/m, earth negative, with the maximum occurring at 18:00 UTC, no matter where you are. It is part of the global atmospheric electric circuit, which is powered by thunderstorms and other electrified clouds. Solid sulfur can be negatively charged by friction, a process called tribocharging. Tribocharging is already used in one type of powder coating technology. 

Chemical  Issues

A network of photochemical reactions given here  https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1620870114 [1] (scheme 1) suggests that elemental sulfur will change into sulfuric acid aerosols in the atmosphere. (The scheme is presented as applying to anoxic conditions, but in the text, it is presented as describing current knowledge of atmospheric sulfur chemistry.) A fly in the ointment is that an irreversible step is shown going from gaseous S8 to solid S8, and I want reversible, so I am still searching for a rigorous chemical precedent for the supposed transformation. DOI:10.1126/sciadv.abc3687 [2] figures 5B and S4, shows that when suspended in an aqueous solution at pH 6, solid sulfur generates sulfate when irradiated at 280 nm (shortest-wavelength end of the UVB range). That precedent isn’t rigorous either but it is helpful in addressing the question of providing sulfur in solid elemental form.

If stratospheric temperatures are too low to permit useable oxidation rates, microwave heating using ground-based projectors could be tried. (Such projectors could also be used for in-flight recharging of high-flying drones that deliver substances into the upper atmosphere.)

Electrical Issues

To charge negatively, the Teflon tube that is standard on a triboelectric gun will have to be replaced by a tube made with an electron donor, or else corona charging used instead of triboelectric charging. I calculate that to rise in the atmospheric electric field, a particle needs a charge to mass ratio ("specific charge") greater than 75.5 milliCoulomb/kilogram, which may be another factor requiring corona charging.

The figure of 75.5 mC/kg was derived by dividing g, the gravitational acceleration at the Earth's surface (9.81 m/s²), by 130 V/m ([4], section 20.1.2),  and multiplying by 1000 to get the units used in studies of powder-coating physics. 

Extrapolating from data in Meng et al., 2008, http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0022-3727/41/19/195207 [3] , 2.6-micron-diameter sulfur particles corona charged at 90 kV should fly. However, a ten-fold smaller sulfur particle will have a ten-fold greater specific charge, giving some margin to allow for discharging on the way up. (Meng et al. found 5.5 mC/kg for 35-micron diameter particles charged at 90 kV with 10 seconds of spraying, and charging efficiency as specific charge was stated to be inversely proportional to particle radius (their equation 3), and thus diameter. My extrapolation was to smaller diameters to achieve 75.5 mC/kg. Calculation: 5.5 x 35/75.5 = 2.6)

The diameter of the sulfur particle injected into the stratosphere is unrelated to the diameter of the eventual sulfuric acid droplets it produces upon oxidation in the stratosphere, because one reaction intermediate, sulfur dioxide, is gaseous.

Another possible payload particle in the Coulombic hoist (CH) would be one sulfur dioxide molecule with one electron charge on it. The specific charge works out to 1.51 × 10⁹ mC/kg, which is enormous. This only means that gravity can safely be neglected in the electromobility calculations. Air anions are known to move at 1.6 cm/s at a field strength of one volt per centimetre [4]. The “SO₂ anion” (probably a hydrated bisulfite anion) would therefore rise at 2.1 cm/s at near ground level, similar to my eyeball estimate for visible electrified particles.

Physical Issues 

At this time, my best guess as to how fast the particles would rise is 3 cm/s (because I believe I have seen it), which will take them up to the stratosphere (11 km high on average) in four to five days. This velocity will be the Stokes terminal velocity, which is a function of the net force acting on the particle, the particle radius, and the dynamic viscosity of air. The latter is 1.8 x 10-⁵ Ns/m² at ground level and 1.4 x 10-⁵ Ns/m² at the top of the troposphere (not much difference).

Ideal release conditions are low barometric pressure (i.e., rising airmass) but no clouds. This need not be a contradiction in terms if the rising air is dry to begin with. For example, dry polar air warmed by contact with arid ground should rise with little cloud formation.

Altitude Issues

However, thus far, my calculations have not addressed the fact that the sky electric field weakens with height. At an altitude of 12 km, it is only 4 V/m, versus 100--200 V/m at sea level. The altitude effect will cause the particles to stop ascending and start concentrating at a particular altitude  (a possibly useful effect) where gravitational and Coulombic forces are in equilibrium, but is it stratospheric? Unfortunately, no. Even reducing particle diameter 10-fold to 0.26 microns (which uses up our margin for discharge) only gives about 6 km, less than the minimum altitude of the stratosphere, 8 km. So, we don't get there, unless we stand on a mountain top in Greenland, but we get interestingly close with what is only the first scheme contemplated. My source for the dependence of electric field on height is figure 20-7a in https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/space-weather/online-publications/miscellaneous/afrl_publications/handbook_1985/Chptr20.pdf [4]

The weakening of the Earth’s gravity with increasing altitude is no help, because if you go up to 12 km, the difference is only one-half of one percent.

The problem of particles discharging en route is far from trivial, but charged dust particles suspended in air at ground level lose charge with a half-life of about 4 days ( https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac220 [5]), independent of composition, which is not too discouraging, but the loss will be faster at altitude, where air ionization by cosmic rays is more intense.

Engineering Solutions

We could use electrons as an ion scavenging agent, to be released under the aerosols as a way to continuously guard the ascending aerosols from cation recruitment, which is the main mechanism of neutralization of negatively charged airborne particles [5]. Electrons (as hydrated hydroxide anions) could be injected into the air by smoke-detector-type Americium discs sitting on top of three-meter-high grounding stakes driven into the ground.  The ground is 275 kV negative relative to an imaginary capacitor plate in the ionosphere. Alpha particles, the main form of radiation from Americium, only travel 4.5 cm in air, if you are worried about safety. In that distance, they make many air cations (+)  and anions (-) through molecular collisions, giving a current of a few nanoamperes per disc (a thousand times greater than the natural current descending into one square meter, 2 nA [6] [7] vs 2 pA [4]). The local fair-weather electric field will be concentrated at the top of the pole and will pull down all the cations while repelling the anions upward.  An array of these "radioelectrodes," possibly extending over many square kilometers, will be needed because a fairly strong electric field will be pulling cations in from the sides. Inside the area covered by electrodes (the “ion farm”), there may be less electric-field concentration effect at the pole tops, however, but there will be some vertical field, at least about 1.3 V/cm, and this could be artificially enhanced (see below). The ozone byproduct generation (7 molecules per 100 eV of alpha-particle energy) should be manageable. Connecting all radioelectrodes to a central station by buried wires would allow grounding independent of soil moisture and, with suitably insulated poles, would also allow non-ground DC potentials to be applied to the radioelectrodes. The latter feature would be an elegant way to control the amount of current flowing from the radioelectrodes into the lower atmosphere. Voltages far less than those needed for corona discharge would suffice; the work of molecule busting would be done directly with atomic energy (from the Americium), not electrical. 

On second thought, the grounding wires should probably be elevated on standard electric utility poles, and the ion-release devices could be affixed to the wires at 30-meter intervals, let’s say one on each pole to keep it simple. Drones could be used to replace the Americium when needed. Tubes to distribute the payload particles could be slung from the same poles. This would be convenient if the payload particles were molecules of sulfur dioxide gas, but in that case, pollution issues might be prohibitive.

Early Simulation Results

Injecting enough charge carriers to increase the air conductivity will tend to modify the profile of field strength with altitude, which could be advantageous and increase the height to which particles can be lifted. In numerical simulations in Excel, I was able to make a particle go from 6 km up to 9 km by this method. My circuit model for these conclusions was a multi-tapped voltage divider connected across a battery. The air conductivity increment due to current injection was assumed to decay with altitude z as EXP(-0.305*z) in imitation of that due to natural ground radioactivity (square root of ionization rate from [4]) and start at 4x the natural ground-level total conductivity from equation 20.4 [4]. EXP is base e. The total resistance was taken as that of the bottom 50 km of the atmosphere and the applied voltage as 275 kV [4]. The specific charge or field strength needed for lift-off was taken as a free variable. The unmodified, comparison curve of field strength versus altitude was calculated from equation 20.4 in [4]. Conductivities were converted to conductances by assuming a cube of air one kilometre on a side and the system was modelled as a stack of 50 such cubes. Resistance is the inverse of conductance. 

Replacing the exponential decay of the added conductivity with an inverse squared law with addition of one to the argument to prevent division by zero was not as beneficial. This models a single radioelectrode but I think that the exponential decay models an ion farm.

DISCUSSION

Alternative Approaches 

Other climate manipulations can be imagined, such as increasing the winter snowpack in Canada and Russia by seeding supercooled clouds with ice-nucleating proteins isolated from Pseudomonas syringae and a few other species of bacteria.

Another possibility is carbon sequestration in fertilized wetlands, but the strong greenhouse gas methane will be produced as a byproduct. Combining direct physical temperature control with carbon sequestration, however, would unlock access to a simple wetlands strategy for regaining carbon balance. Carbon sequestration in wetlands is how the non-marine fossil carbon got into the ground in the first place, and it will be readily available to us as peat fuel if we need it again some day, for example, to reverse a temperature undershoot by burning some fossil fuel again. 

The Big Picture 

Our task is not to build a cooling system, but a well-engineered control system that can either heat or cool at need. Focusing narrowly on cooling will trigger a continental glaciation sooner or later.  Suggested key words for further reading are: proportional-derivative controller, controlled system response time, industrial process control.

Every crisis is an opportunity, and the opportunity in this one is to build a system of global climate control that in the future will protect us not only from climate disasters of our own making, but also from natural climate-impacting ones like volcanic explosions, long statistical pauses in volcanic explosions, and changes in solar radiance. For the first time in history, humans are now collectively powerful enough to control the global climate. This is in large part due to our presently great numbers, so population increase isn’t all bad; people not only consume resources, but they can also do work, and there is now less than one cubic kilometre of air per person (average tropopause altitude of 11 km x 0.51 Giga-square kilometres / 8.2 Giga-persons @y2025 / 0.75 fraction of air mass in the troposphere = 0.91). Consider this your environment stewardship air allotment. In terms of weight of air per person, the same weight as water would fill a cube standing 86 meters tall, slightly less than the height of the Peace Tower (92 m) or the Statue of Liberty (93 m).

Big Engineering 

Can we relax some constraints here, given the anticipated economies of a CH system? Does injection have to be stratospheric, or will high tropospheric do? Will the high-tropospheric UV flux and spectrum be adequate to convert sulfur aerosols into sulfuric acid before they settle out? Do the light-scattering particles have to be sulfuric acid or can they be electrified mineral dust, pollen, or sea salt? A dominant consideration of particle injection into the high troposphere will be avoidance of cirrus cloud formation, as these clouds have a net greenhouse effect. Ice-nucleating particles ameliorate the cirrus cloud problem. Such particles can consist of bismuth tri-iodide or natural isoprenoid organics of 0.1 microns or less. Moreover, cirrus clouds originate in precisely the dry updraft areas I previously identified as the best release sites for the CH, which is  sixty degrees north, the northernmost boundary of the prairie provinces, so the CH lends itself to raising particles into the high troposphere for purposes of cirrus cloud thinning. A net warming effect due to overseeding is thought to be a possibility, however. 

High-tropospheric injections will be more reversible, if mistakes are made (and they will be), than will stratospheric injections, because the climate effects of a pulsed injection at this altitude last only 1 to 3 months. Geographically, the effects will also be less than global, allowing a more pluralistic and thus acceptable governance model, as well as offering the enticing possibility of regional climate tweaking. Artificial heating and cooling effects at any altitude will have to be balanced between northern and southern hemispheres to avoid shifting the latitude of the monsoon rains; any such shift would cause hardship to millions of farmers and food insecurity for many more. If a CH must be built at about sixty degrees north for it to work, the balancing CH in the southern hemisphere would have to be built on Cape Horn (56 degrees south), because there is no land exactly on sixty degrees south.

As to the pollution aspects, nobody lives in the high troposphere, and acid rain from the amount of sulfuric acid needed for climate control will be diluted over large areas and need not be net-harmful. You can be poisoned by too much vitamin D, but that does not mean that nobody should have any vitamin D. This type of situation is called "hormesis," and it is quite common.

A search should be undertaken for natural Coulombic hoists or aeolian hoists already in existence that could be modified for climate control. Electric levitation is already implicated in greatly extending how far Saharan dust travels before settling out [5].

Additional References

[6] Wotiz R (2011) Ionization Detectors. Circuit Cellar Nov 2011 #256: 60-65.

[7] Litton CD (1979) Optimizing Ionization-type Smoke Detectors. Fire Technology 15 (1) 25-42. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02101921 [not seen due to paywall].

I have a BSc in Engineering Chemistry [environmental emphasis], 1977, from Queen’s University, Ontario.

How I Fixed Dust Infiltration

This post is slightly out of scope for this blog, being a sharing of experience and how-to piece, not a suggestion for a social experiment. Call it a case study, the conclusions of which always require confirmation.

A Problem Overcome (enough)

I concluded based on copious and diverse lived evidence that I had an issue with dust infiltrating into my apartment. The answer was to seal up all dust entry points in my apartment. This is a medium-sized, basement apartment in an older WWII-era apartment block. The entry points were many and varied. To find them all, I needed a mirror and strong light to see under every overhang. If you try this, always illuminate areas from a variety of angles. 

If I cannot keep my eyes open for longer than twelve seconds without blinking, I have a problem.

The applicable maxim is not “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but “When in doubt, fix it.”

I will not be imparting all my thoughts on this topic; compile a list of rules of thumb that help you discover dust entry points in your location.

Overview

The dust is extremely penetrating and may be full of static electricity; if you can  see a crack, it’s too wide. On a white surface, an important hole can be misinterpreted as a small piece of debris such as an adhering paint chip. Biological containment facility-grade workmanship may be required, which in any event will be useful against objectionable smells, hot or cold drafts, insect visitors, asbestos, mold, radon, COVID, or whatever comes down the pike next. (June, 2023: What came down the pike next was wildfire smoke.) Moreover, this dust does not seem to settle in confined spaces: a mirror set out in a closed cupboard or closet will collect nothing, even if the space contains active dust entry points. 

To anticipate dust entry points, I sometimes imagine my living space as completely submerged in water and ask myself, “Where could it leak in?”

Whenever you seal anything, come back and inspect for new holes a day later. 

Useful Products

Sealing with petroleum jelly (Vaseline) is a simple option. This product is also useful for controlling what silicone caulking sticks to.

Using the minimum amount of a fast-drying adhesive such as plumber’s glue (Gloozit) is helpful. Gloozit is transparent and colourless, so its presence will not be offputting to future tenants and thus the landlord, if you do a neat job. (Cleans up in Varsol.) 

Before sealing anything, vacuum the area and wipe it down with a paper towel moistened with Varsol followed by a dry wipe. 

Another sealant, which is preferred because of its durability, is clear silicone caulking or white, paintable silicone caulking. You will need a caulking gun with the silicone caulking. Use lots of paper towels to clean excess sealant and buy a caulking tool to keep things neat. Paintable silicone is also useful for filling in pits in walls. Use the straight end of the caulking tool to create a flat surface after application.

In tile floors, the grout may crack and create dust entry points. Use a toothbrush to scrub the grout with concentrated bleach, wipe, rinse, and allow to dry. Then mask off the damaged grout with post-it notes, apply clear silicone caulking, tool, lift off the masking, and touch up as necessary. Clean smears off the tile with the straight end of the tool. Allow to cure overnight. The paper masking is set very slightly back from the edge of the tile, to allow the caulking to bridge across cracks that occur exactly at the edge.

To seal a big hole in an otherwise flat surface, apply a wall-repair patch followed by spackling applied with a 3” drywall putty knife. For straight, wide gaps, substitute backer rod for the wall repair patch and apply spackling as before. Contractor-grade masking tape can be useful but will not stick if you get sweat on it or on the surface it will go on. Impossibly complex areas like windows can simply be sealed off behind window film.

Because of the complexity factor, I had to isolate a closet and seal it off with weatherstripping on the frame of the door, which is now kept closed. The weatherstripping should not be too stiff, to keep down the force needed to close the door. All old paint was cleaned off the striker plate. A 1/2"-thick rectangular plywood insert was placed on the floor to hold the weatherstripping against the bottom of the door and transfer the closing force to the back wall. (A door bumper strip may also work.) I measured carefully before cutting the insert to size; this was a precision job. The weatherstripping was caulked in the corners. The crack between the insert and the floor was also caulked along the front. I ran my finger along all mating surfaces to make sure they were flat and eliminated all hollows and bumps, even small ones caused by old paint runs. Broad defects that require a straightedge to detect did not seem to be a problem. I finished with a light test on the theory that if the door doesn’t leak light, it doesn’t leak dust. Glowing sections were built up further with weatherstripping tapered at the ends and supplemented at the dicey spots with gaskets made by applying a slight excess of silicone caulking, covering it with scotch tape, closing the door firmly, and going to bed. Before starting the gasket job, put masking tape on the door to prevent silicone caulking from bonding to the paint job, which would eliminate the option of a quick undo. (A slow undo remains possible by alternately softening the caulking with Varsol and gently scraping with a fingernail.) An alternative to the light test is the stain test, based on transferring a thin layer of fresh, colored silicone caulking from the door to the weatherstripping when the door is temporarily closed. Uncolored spots on the weatherstripping indicate dust entry points.

All masking tape seals will develop loose spots over time, which can be seen with a strong light held at a low angle and moved around, and patched up by applying Gloozit with the finger. Adhesive tapes generally will not stick very long to anything that does not feel flat to the touch. This includes the tape used to apply window film. If necessary, sand the frame  flat and clean off the standings before applying tape.

Safety

Remember that older paint may contain lead and wear your respirator while sanding. 

In general, your head will be close to dust entry points during the sealing process, so you must wear a respirator rated for hazardous dusts while you work and as much as possible at all other times, until you are finished. 

Finding the Entry Points

Progress can be judged by laying out mirrors for a fixed time and assessing the amount of dust they accumulate using a strong light such as a gooseneck desk lamp. This method can be used with multiple simultaneously exposed, identical, numbered mirrors to obtain spatial information about dust infiltration. One mirror in each corner of the room and in each corner of each window and door seems to suffice, but if you are not making progress, use more. You may have to hang some mirrors from map pins. Diagramming helps; locate the worst corner and then refine your estimate of where the entry point is by examining the diagonal greater-than relationships. The observed spatial pattern can be distorted by gravity, ambient electric fields, the updraft behind the refrigerator, your own dust-raising activities (notably running the vacuum cleaner, pouring powders, or changing clothes), and any large grounded appliances. 

You will have to do maintenance on your sealing job, so keep those mirrors.

A diverse mixture of particle sizes on the mirror indicates resuspended old dust, not newly entered dust. Close to the entry point, dust is small, numerous, and irregularly spaced; dust that has travelled far from the entry point is larger, sparser, and more regularly spaced. Be open minded and don’t get hung up on one explanation of how the dust is getting in.

A mirror suitable for elevated sampling locations 

I recently put this method on steroids by using a scientific image processing package (ImageJ, FIJI package) to  automatically count the particles on darkfield images of the exposed mirrors taken at 1.6x with a smartphone (iPhone 12 mini). The camera lens was 8” above the centre of the mirror. 

The processing pipeline was: 

• set scale (I set it by knowing that the mirror diameter was 114 mm, drawing the corresponding line on the image, and inputting the known length in the set-scale box.)
• convert to 8-bit TIFF
• select a circular ROI covering most of the mirror
• clear outside the selection
• subtract background with a 10-pixel diameter rolling ball (sliding paraboloid method, no smoothing)
• threshold using the moments algorithm
• count particles between .05 and .002 mm2 in area

Many routine steps requiring familiarity with ImageJ have been omitted. All steps have to be done in the same session, without closing the app.

Clean the mirrors with window cleaner and paper towelling, holding the mirror over your head face-side down during the final wipe so that gravity takes stray lint away from the surface. Lightly spray the back of your hand and the backs of your fingers with water before doing this, so that rising warm, humid air from your hand kills some of the static electricity on the mirror that would otherwise attract dirt. Wipe slowly. Avoid using microfibre wipes: these leave micro lint in the size range of interest that can affect the results. I applied window cleaner with a small bar of sponge and rubbed it in with my finger, avoiding the rims; the mirror rims can trap fluid, leading to smudges later. Smudges should be removed, but some large lint can be present after cleaning without affecting the results. Mirrors with many flaws in their silvering should not be used. Cleanliness should be assessed using the same lighting as the photography. Smudges can appear with a delay after cleaning if they have been hiding in liquid films. If there are no smudges, a dry wipe may suffice for cleaning. Wash your hands before handling the mirrors and handle them only by the rims.

Set the focus of the camera once at the start of each batch of images; you do not have to set it for each image. 

I processed the raw counts through Excel to get the percentage of all particles captured by all mirrors due to each mirror. These numbers were then annotated onto a diagram of the mirrors layout in the dwelling, from which I drew my conclusions. Each mirror was handled in its own transparent plastic box with an easy-to-remove lid. Technically, mirrors used this way are called “witness plates.” Mirror numbers were indicated by felt marker marks on the rims that were visible in the images. I photographed the mirrors before and after exposure and subtracted the blanks when processing. When counts are low, this can lead to negative counts due to counting errors. At higher counts, always subtracting the blanks absolves you of having to clean the mirrors after each observation: just update the blanks column to the previous observations.)

Comments about Particular Areas 

Cover all air inlet and outlet registers with MERV 13 furnace filters attached and sealed with masking tape or Mulco (a clear, temporary sealant that comes off with a little acetone).

Temporarily remove everything removable, like doors, cupboards, and range hoods, to inspect behind them for cracks and holes. A door hinge can conceal an opening in the frame. Always use a permanent repair product in such areas and avoid tapes and temporary sealants, because you don't want to have to re-access the area in a year or month.

Doors are more conveniently treated one hinge at a time, after door-stopping and shimming underneath to support the weight of the door while one hinge is unfastened. Seal all empty fastener holes you find, not just in door frames, and seal around the heads of any fasteners that appear slightly canted. 

Ask the landlord to make any obviously needed repairs if the defect could let in dust. 

Standard electrical wall switches are not dust entry points if the cover plate is sealed to the switch and to the surrounding wall.

A crack or chip in a coat of paint can be a dust entry point if the paint has separated from the underlying surface, thereby creating a narrow space in which air-suspended dust can flow. Analogously, a kitchen counter made of particleboard covered in laminated plastic can develop delaminations that allow dust entry where the board has been repeatedly wetted and/or traumatized.

A dust entry point under a faucet in the bathroom (red arrow. The entire linear feature indicated was the entry point.) This one was really hard to find.

A massive piece of furniture moved close to a previously sealed moulding can push down the floor enough to make cracks around the moulding, either at that point or within a few feet to either side. Seal these cracks with paintable silicone caulking and move the furniture back to its intended use position while the caulking is still wet.

Do You Have All the Latest Patches?

Geese flying in formation: a simple swarm intelligence phenomenon 

In a fast-moving malware landscape, commonly used programs often need quick patches (code snippets) to close newly discovered vulnerabilities and keep them useable.

Let us suppose that humans are like that. Let us suppose the existence of something real behind belief in God: a human swarm intelligence that is slow-moving and poorly accessible to consciousness. This swarm intelligence would be a product of natural selection and [the rest of this paragraph is conjecture] talks to us in a language of emotions. It tracks slow changes in the environment while the conscious mind tracks the fast ones. The two environment trackers communicate via a frequency band centered on one reciprocal week. This is also the dividing line between the bands processed by the two trackers.

The week does not correspond to any astrophysical cycle; it is an invention (discovery?) of religion. 

What were you doing last weekend? Don’t remember, huh? You don’t need to; God will calculate.

Arguably, the slow swarm intelligence will occasionally fall behind in tracking especially rapid environmental change (e.g., global warming), show evidence of a weak spot in its frequency response, and need to be patched. At least until natural selection catches up. Logically, this same natural selection should by now have come up with a solution: A proclivity of humans to self-organize into some patch-applying sub-process. This would be organized religion, of course.

The last patch applied to human nature seems to have been a package of five patches: the Pillars of Islam. Before that, we received two big patches at once: Jesus’ “Love God” and “Love thy neighbor.”

However, we now live in a world that would have been inconceivable to the 12 disciples and the early followers of Mohammed, and collectively we are facing unprecedented existential threats. Is it time for another patch?

I say yes, two in fact, and the needed patches may be:

“Love Thy Planet,”

and

“Do Not Divide the People.”

The first of these precepts is already addressed by a recently-added fifth Mark of Mission of the Anglican church and a sixth Mark of Mission that speaks to the second patch was accepted on principle, then folded into the fourth Mark of Mission. The proposed patches are also echoed in the Anglican Baptism Covenant. Many other people have obviously been thinking along the same lines as myself. The new “commandments” will have to be presented and received as the voice of God to be effective, and I will not here tell organized religion how to do its job.

However, does organized religion itself need a patch? It seems to suffer from a lack of flexibility. 

Since there is little time, we cannot wait millennia to accumulate enough testing of new precepts in the crucible of life to confidently promote them to commandments from God. Thus, we must aggregate such human experience across space instead of time, using the Internet. Luckily, there are now about 5.5 billion of us able to participate, which should ensure a very high-powered study. Since this would essentially be an experiment on humans, the internet could also be used to collect the ethically required written, informed consents. See also this site before planning any studies. The observational study type is recommended at this time (2025). These two sites are geared to medicine, which frequently deals with life-or-death situations, which is appropriate, because so does religion.

The above  reasoning argues against atheism but not for the status quo. Is panreligionism the only way to ensure that you have all the latest patches? Oligoreligionism may be more practical. Are the parts of a religion severable and transportable to another religion, or must they all work together synergistically as a system? Are some severable and others not? 

However, the ideal human swarm intelligence will be a function of the details of the problems of existence we face, and these details will be a function of geographical variables like latitude, altitude, and distance from the ocean. Even with the same details, different populations will need different patches because of historical factors, such as the amount of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA they have. 

Top photo by Nancy Hughes on Unsplash

Music

Algonquin College, Ottawa, Canada

Today, while walking in a gentle snowfall, canned carols echoing in memory, I admitted to myself, "I don't understand music. I love it, and I don't understand it."

Five minutes later, I had the beginnings of a theory:

Music is the voice of the swarm intelligence.

Listen carefully, because the swarm intelligence is your ruler.

And don't be shy about being its voice yourself.

Just honestly sing out the message of your heart and

let the chips fall where they may.

You won't see where they fall.