Stem cell promise of irreversible damage repair - my experience. 

Writing is a form of journaling an educational experience to share and revisit a memory.

The disability status in my LinkedIn profile title, the only social media I have kept up with, comes from advanced cervical and lumbar spinal stenosis. Bone spurs in the neck with severe foraminal narrowing cause pain radiating off the spine to neck upper and lower back, among other challenges like aggravated spasms triggered by exposure to cold.  

Thanks to the wonderful world of neuropathic pain medication and GABA analogs added to my daily regimen, I’ve managed to fool everybody that I am completely normal,  just need a break from work once in a while to travel to faraway places to get my blood centrifuged and re-injected with enriched platelets, better than the one month relief cortisone shot I get here in US or Canada.

Last year, life really taught me I sucked at business and marketing. For most of 2024 I spent faster than I could make it. Humbled, I decided to take a job again, something that I promised I would never do after 55. Like the classic gangster biography where a kid is drawn to a life of crime for the first ten-grand job to cover for the $9950 family medical bill. 

Rather than risking minimally invasive spinal surgery, for disc bulge repair, I decided to opt for mesenchymal stem cell therapy.

Stem cells are believed to be uniquely able to transform into different types of cells. In the case of back related ailments, they can possibly regenerate damaged intervertebral discs, spinal cartilage and tissue that normally are not capable of self repair.

We all have stem cells within us, highest in resilience, potency and numbers when we are embryonic or nascent. They tend to reduce in quantity and regenerative capacity as we grow and age. This declines their ability to repair and regenerate tissues.

Harvesting stem cells to repair oneself can be done from adipose tissue or bone marrow from the hip (extraction is very painful even under anesthetic). They are much less effective when you are 55+, since you’re working with an extract of diminished efficacy.

Stem cells derived from baby umbilical cords (mostly harvested from banks created for this purpose) come with the promise of rejuvenation. They are virtually non-immunogenic being extracted at infancy. Expensive but magical, they may not quite let you sip the fountain of youth but definitely improve the quality of the years left to help you live it up, not just exist.

I flew 10,000 miles to get injected with stem cells (at least that’s what I hope was in the vials) that were administered intravenous, intramuscular and intrathecally. The concentration rule of thumb was roughly a million cells per kilogram of body weight.

This was combined with a somewhat equal amount of exosomes. My understanding is they are non-living derivatives of stem cells that facilitate healing processes by communication.

 Followed up by vitamin, NAD and mineral supplements, visits from therapists and a dietician.

I write this while at 10,000 meters in the clouds returning home, neck and back still dull like anchored to half a brick each, pinkies still numb and tingling hoping to be washed folded and ironed gradually in the months to come, I am grateful for the chance of modern miracles help perchance rejoin what I carelessly broke in my irreversible past. 

 The climate change crisis - the fossil fuel Greta blasphemers and the right wing this is hot air (no pun intended) deniers. This blame game is precisely what we don't need. 

Here are ways we can peacefully co-exist without stupidly swinging pendulum on either side and making this political

1. Grow more trees, save forests, lots of them. Easy cheap. The hardest thing we haven't been able to do is replicate, artificial photo-synthesis. Let every road divider, horizontal building space have greenery.
2. Carbon capture and sequestration. Use CO2 in concrete, building material, asphalt, polymerize! Develop polywood and concrete material as preferred building material, stop using wood.
3. Get back to glass bottled beverages, stop making cheap plastic bottles that end up in landfills & beget incineration. Build consumer items w/ reclaimed CH4, carbon.
4. Build more nuclear reactors with PASSIVE safety, incapable of meltdown in catastrophic failure. Augment with wind/solar/hydrocarbon, use techniques to recycle wind blades, pulverize/redeploy solar silica cells.
5. Reduce flaring of waste gas at refining facilities. Reclaim waste heat from depleted uranium/plutonium fuel incapable of fission with water/steam or at least friggin tropical plants.
6. Promote SAF & recycled hydrocarbon fuels, triple hybrid vehicles (using gas/diesel, electric for start/stop, solar perovskite roof, trunk/hood to charge DC bus.

7. Add CO2 catalyser in gasoline exhaust just like Urea DEF on diesel engines. Fix problem at root. The whole argument premise is man-made CO2 right? We should be smart enough to neutralize it at source.
8. Deploy insulation and heat-exchangers for every chiller/boiler system to reduce or recover lost heat. It may not seem like a lot but it adds up.
9. Countries lagging behind in their rail system ought to beef this up. Railroad usage by passengers reduces auto driving. North America, this goes to you. Where are your high speed trains and car-rentals outside rail stations?
10. Finally we are the idiots that got ourselves here. We only accentuate our positions as arguing "intellectual morons" by blaming each other rather than unifying to fix it. Let's do more with less.

Something wrong with the world today, we living on the edge. 15 suggestions to re-center us

1. Charge refugees back taxes for their path to citizenship for however long it takes to catch up with legals. No such thing as a free lunch right? Homeless problem? Put them to work, any job.

2. Why choose between democrat and republican? Why not first build an agenda combining their best ideas, then choose a candidate on meritocracy to abide by those rules?

3. Not happy supplying ammo to Ukraine for a war you have nothing to do with? Back charge Ukraine for wheat once over. Too cosy with Russia? Remember it was not Putin that helped you, it was Gorbachev.

4. China annexing your land or giving you silk road debt you can never repay? Stop importing their products, start building your infrastructure now keep reducing imports every month in their face.

5. Not happy with too much or too little "green energy"? Change is evolutionary, not revolutionary. focus your efforts developing renewables, not curbing and taxing hydrocarbons. Make your alternative worthy.

6. God intended marriage between a man & a woman only? Sure, when we were 2 million worldwide, not 7.9 billion. We are like vermin, Couldn't it be He is tweaking our orientation to curtail the mess?

7. Ban nuclear weapons? Actually they are the best "don't FXXK with me" insurance. That third world war has been changed into cyber, germ, economic, drone and other wars now, they brought peace.

8. Too many Indians and Chinese in your town? Love the US green card system, based on quota of country of birth. Canada made that mistake. We have entire towns made of one diaspora tsk tsk ...

9. Privatise everything and the free market will regulate itself? We have not learnt from monopoly to quintopolys,cartels from airlines, oil companies, banks, bottled water, cocoa ... we need regulation!

10. Worried AI will take over the world?  Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity, computers need power, you can disconnect the feed breaker or pull supply transformer fuses.

11. Proud of your religion? Gauge it by the tolerance it has toward other beliefs and their people. Man made religion because he could not define nor make tangible the concept of spirituality. 

12. The maturity of a society is determined by its population growth, not rate of but actual numbers. Before circulating media on your individual folk achievements, gauge yourself with this metric.

13. There is climate change, & man made. Whether it spells doom, we don't know. If it is our own doing to curb our numbers, be that as it may. Yes CO2 prehistoric levels but we weren't there to inhale.

14. Euthanasia, abortion evil? Maybe again when we were in small numbers. You go deer and dove hunting right? You eat eggs too! What makes your right to live or birth right higher than theirs?

15. Recycling is not futile, we made it so by tossing garbage in there repeatedly causing separation futile, expensive. Ban plastics? Sure, talk to beverage manufacturers to go back to glass bottles.

 

Ukraine annexation - looking ahead into the indefinite tomorrow, into the mind of insanity

 Good day world, took a hiatus had nothing to say for 2 years.

While the west watches the systemic destruction of Ukraine by wicked czar Vladimir Putin, we shake our heads at Doctor Evil and his insanity, while sipping wine munching saltines and watching BBC world.

World leaders finally take the "bold" step of calling his actions genocide, condemning Russia, confiscating oligarch boats, closing down McDonald's in Moscow and disabling Sabre airline seat sale software.

Surely Putin is losing right? Body bags of Russian soldiers coming home, stories of brave Ukranian resistance and Russian GDP being hit by western sanctions?

Well, for starters the ex KGB FSB intelligence officer is not crazy. Sociopath, dictator, heartless maybe but far from insane. He has the nuclear Ace of Spades nobody will bet against and is a better poker player than most other world leaders. 

A few tens of thousands of lives are probably mere collateral damage in his mind, in exchange for all the uranium, wheat, iron ore, manganese and land therein.

American leaders have repeatedly told us we can out-warhead the Soviets in a nuke fight and that we are sort of dome-protected against a preemptive attack. The truth is quite different. ICBMs are very advanced in distracting a heat-sensitive counter attack with chaff, evasive tactics. Experts describe blocking an incoming missile as trying to stop a bullet with another - possible in theory but highly unlikely. No western leader will gamble on instantaneous annihilation of a few cities to save a small country they empathize with.

My Ukranian Canadian friend (I consider intellectual) tells me, there are no heroes in Ukraine sadly, or atleast none that will remain if the trend we are in were to continue. I am gradually seeing why many East Europeans are blaming the west ... trying to hand a weak boy with an axe to pick a fight with the armed bully down the street. This ends in only one way, Ukraine turning into another Afghanistan, war torn and a mere shadow of what it used to be or could have been.

We won't put boots on the ground in Kiev or Mariopol and we're further poking the bear by heeding Zelenskyys cry for more weapons. 

My take? firstly - no denying Putin is the devil, but that being said accept that we may never win unless you pull a Kamikaze or Syriana to take him out, again logistically very uphill.

As long as there are nations that buy what Russia is selling, we're not exerting real pressure. That needs to change, a global boycott. China may not buy in, they are waiting to pull a similar one on Taiwan. You may not be able to enter Russia but the world could physically barricade off land/sea/air routes if it were a consolidated effort. 

In conclusion, I am not saying there is a solution, maybe there is none. But we definitely are back to the times where countries invaded other lands - pillaged, plundered and brought perdition. 

What the pandemic has taught me

1. Humanity has taken more than its fair share from this biosphere. Nature is finally fighting back. Things will never be the same going forward. Get ready for a new vectored normal of fewer clustered people, slower economies, cleaner air but unprecedented climate trends with disturbing possibilities. Akin to post war times, some opportunistic regimes will emerge more powerful with acquisition of depressed or vulnerable assets.

2. Gone forever are the days of the 10 minute news clips before movies in the cinema. Welcome to the new world of two versions of the truth, one liberal and the other right-wing. News is now relentless, tainted with politics, motivated by profits, contaminated with each spin doctor playing pied-piper to their following.

3. A worldwide virus affliction should unite us, instead it brought concealing of truth, distrust and a blame game between nations and administration organisations. Globalization is giving way to nationalization and redistribution of manufacturing channels. A definite time to start changing loyalties away from countries that played others during these times.

4. We have lost the ability to own up for mistakes. An apology is now a sign of weakness and is never to be offered. The new norm is a "what-about" counter attack. Conversely, ombudsmen attacking a culpable party select information out of context and do not convey a real picture. There seems to be swift conclusions, lesser thinking part of complex issues.

5. Do not trust "experts". We are in uncharted waters.  Percentages of population infected, likelihood of fatality, timeline of normalcy, availability of vaccine estimates, economic trajectory of rebound or depression are guesses at best or junk data at worst. Irresponsible public figures cause widespread damage with misinformation.

6. Friends, family, music, walking, simply being outdoors are privileges I have begun to tremendously appreciate. Once lock-down restrictions are over, here's hoping we are more forgiving, kinder and more grateful versions of our former selves. Our future minds don't judge a person on their affiliations, associations but by their everyday actions.

Barney purple - govern a nation with this modern dinosaur

2018 was an uphill journey, it took all my efforts and energy just to stay afloat, no blog last year.

That said, here is a new 2019 with most world socio-political-economic compasses getting polarized,
almost a contagion spreading out across nations bringing waves of intolerance, quick decisions, hatred, fear.

Not blue, not red, taking the best parts of different nations, portions of our past to come up with proven ways to make a nation prosper

1. Healthcare - Primary healthcare free for all. Extended (Dental, vision, alternate care) healthcare privatized with government subsidies based on a figure (S*) evaluated by income, valued assets (home, vehicles, number of people in household). Prevention of monopolies by healthcare providers, insurance to prevent fraud. Copay mandatory even a small token amount. Euthanasia be made legal, state to trail off  financial support for patient care in vegetative state.  Experimental treatments on cancer, AIDS, stem cell research etc jointly funded by academia/industry/healthcare where possible to help encourage pioneering technology.

2. Education - Free primary education for all. Paid secondary education with subsidies based on S*, part reimbursable with one year military service. Mandatory for all to instill discipline, patriotism and ironically, to touch on the futility of war. Universities seeking to charge high tuition to declare balance sheets justifying costs. Universities producing patents/invention with merits receiving higher government subsidies. State to encourage with grants, more vocational, trade oriented schools for skills in this ever changing world. Licensing requirements for every trade to encourage quality, fair wages and regulation.

3. Political leaders, Senators - Written promises required when campaigning for election, written balance sheets of expenses for taxpayers money, achievements. Libel/Slander penalties applicable by a public figure for false claims or unfair criticism of/propaganda against opponents. Ineligible to run for office without military service or with prior libel/slander history. Fines for proven misappropriation or corruption (well below normal thresholds of litigation). This is very important as the spoken and written word from persons of influence shape the minds of the people. Untruths are septic and dangerous and there is no current mechanism to check them.

4. Economics/Taxation - Compulsory 25% spending on infrastructure - Constant monitoring of health indices of the country via supercomputer models - GDP, Debt, Exports, currency, commodity, inflation with " simplistic "Alarms" so as to reduce speculation of actions of any one person in charge. Taxation based on S* factor. Deductions for self-employed, GDP boosters, exporters. Billionaires get large tax deductions on S* for helping under-privileged, non-profits, philanthropies, local employment, local banking and investments to make it attractive for their business and personal wealth to stay domestic.

5. Industry placement - States with lowest GDP, per capita income, highest unemployment to be prioritized with incentives for industry expansion. Again, a real-time system monitoring mix of fossil/renewable energy (this index should drop every year), population densities (draw people away from cities for jobs in newer towns by setting up industry/power generation in sparse zones, augment weak spots in the power, communication, water, sewer grids. Limits on "concrete/steel" sprawl. Requirements for parks, green areas, trails to be mandated in real-estate laws. Powerful monetary green should champion real natural green.

6. Industry engagement - Abolish PACs where industry special interests can influence political leaders with financial contributions over a certain amount. Close tax loopholes for zero corporate tax, stop short of penalizing offshoring of tax, rather offer incentives to domestic banked companies and for innovation that makes a difference to economics. Penalties for political meddling, stock market manipulation, written accountability clauses for executives with pay scales/bonuses exceeding a certain limit. Further incentives for green practices, contributions toward climate change mitigation, so the responsible folk get lowest, even zero tax reward.

7. Employment - Equal Opportunity employers should receive nameless resumes to avoid bias or stop claiming to be so. Tax breaks for companies that hire disabled, veterans, minorities, underprivileged, poorer folk with low S* numbers, phone jobs for folks unable to travel. Minimum and maximum wage laws required with accountability for wages over $350,000 per year including "pay % of it back" clauses if unable to deliver written promises. Social Security and government coffers to be modeled into Economy health supercomputers.

8. Immigration - Merit based immigration program with cap based on economic indices from #4. Refugees are offered citizenship with probation - over a longer period of time, higher tax rate for that period as payback of investment and monitoring to reward absence of criminal or other counter-productive activity. Medical tourism, sport, artistic achievers and student programs to be implemented for national profit. Failing countries with floods of refugees to be held accountable with sanctions, UN coalition assisted regime change.

9. Law & Order - Non-bailable offences include hate crimes, religious intolerance, ponzi schemes, securities fraud. Aboriginal folks to be given subsidies toward education and training for jobs in law and order. Police force to mirror population demographic in similar ratios. Handguns and Semi Automatics out of the hands of general population (law enforcement only) and automatic assault rifles strictly military issue. No private organization such as NRA to control arms industry, should be government.

10. News, Media - Similar penalties for libel/slander that apply to politicians and persons of influence are applicable on media. These truth rules extend to social media. Freedom of speech has an after-price if misused. The 24/7 media for profit discussion model is toxic. News is 10 minutes every hour on the hour, five minutes every half hour. Political affiliations to news media are prohibited.

Too extreme? Well ... for most times, I agree we do not need to go so far, maybe just some of these in some varying degree. For 2018, 2019 here and now - prolly not.  

How to live like a shameless SOB, cheat karma and live happily ever after

1. Grow a thick hide as far as maintaining relationships are possible. You will lose friends faster than a deciduous tree in fall. Just find a way to fill your day with random people and paid admirers. Money makes one beautiful and attractive, no question.

2. Accumulate lots of money, primarily with real estate. Lasting deals going gangrenous are a problem so consider flipping assets quickly. This step is essential to funding people referred to in step #1.

3. When someone accuses you of lies, misconduct, thievery, skulduggery or bad behaviour, aggressively blame them for their shortcomings. This softens the blow and will scare them away.

4. To prevent bystanders, onlookers, spectators from forming bad opinions of you, do not dwell on any one issue too long. Keep presenting new nonsense, cover up old bullshit constantly with new fresh turds of information. People will eventually get anxiety and data overload, will move on to other innocuous issues.

5. Do not ever read. Write instead. Reading makes one introspective and gives the conscience an opportunity to speak louder. Writing is a weapon of the mind, poison is very easily dispensed and does not require hazardous storage within, for extended periods of time.

6. Take graciously without giving, never say sorry, never think of equalizing the rich and poor. The most successful SOB is one who is perpetually entitled, whose very existence was a sign from the heavens to all around that you are just fortunate to see, touch or be in the shadow of such a great soul.

Amen