John Lennon, Natural Healing and the Church in Southern Germany

The magnificent Heiliggeistkirche.

Well, I'm on one of my tri-monthly visits to Heidelberg right now, and happened upon a couple of articles in Friday's local Rhein Neckar Zeitung that offer contrasting perspectives on attitudes towards activities that, from the point of view of the Church in Southern Germany, might appear borderline.

The first article reported on a concert entitled "John Lennon forever!" by 'Freddy Wonder and friends' in the magnificent Heiliggeist Church in Heidelberg. The Lennon concert was hailed by all as a triumph and the Heiliggeistkirche as the perfect place to hold it, despite the fact that Lennon himself had an uneasy relationship with Christianity and, for a while, practised Hinduism.

The second article reported on the eviction of the "Naturheilverein" (Natural Healing Club) from the Catholic Church Rectory rooms in the tiny village of Spechbach in the surrounding Odenwald forest. The Club has been meeting in the Spechbach Rectory since 2002, and has now grown to 300 mostly female members. They were welcomed by the local priest, Father Meier, so long as they were offering innocent-sounding courses such as 'Mushroom Identification', 'Healthy Eating', 'Seminars for Couples and Pairs' and '"Classical" Homeopathy'. So far so good, but then the ladies started to offer suspicious-sounding courses in 'Chakra Meditation' and 'Healing with Stones'. Father Meier and the Catholic elders appeared to swallow hard and turn a blind eye. However, with recent offerings such as "Healing the Soul with Shamanistic Psycho-Kinesiology" the ladies have finally danced across the line, and are thus out on their asses. Pushed it a bit too far. They are, it is reported, rather aggrieved as they have already printed 4500 brochures for 2011 with the Catholic Rectory Rooms named as the meeting place.

I can't imagine 'Imagine' being allowed in the Heiliggeistkirche 30 years ago, so maybe the Nature Ladies would just need to wait awhile? Hard to predict that one, but I do suspect that in 2040 they'll still be in alternative accomodation.

CAUTION: graphic descriptions of disease and violence below.

Excerpt from “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer” by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Mukherjee, a doctor, describes watching a two-year-old leukemia patient’s condition deteriorate as another drug fails:

"The patient “turned increasingly lethargic. He developed a limp, the result of leukemia pressing down on his spinal cord. Joint aches appeared, and violent, migrating pains. Then the leukemia burst through one of the bones in his thigh, causing a fracture and unleashing a blindingly intense, indescribable pain."

Excerpt from "JOKER ONE: A Marine Platoon's Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood" by Donovan Campbell.:

"The little kids stood in a tight knot on the sidewalk right next to our third vehicle, waving at us as we hopped in the Humvees, pleading for us to hand out more gifts.... Another explosion rang out, and the crowd of small children disintegrated into flame and smoke. From somewhere behind me, Marines started screaming out the worst words a platoon commander can hear: "Doc up! Doc up! Someone get a corpsman! Doc up!"I jumped out of the Humvee and looked around. I can't give specifics of the scene—I was too busy scanning the whole area and sorting out the enemy threat in my head—only a general impression, and it was of a macabre tableau from hell. The rocket had missed us. Instead it had impacted squarely in the middle of the crowd of small children. Dead and wounded little ones were draped limply all over the sidewalk, severed body parts mixing in with whole bodies, or in some cases flung even farther, into the street. Blood, always the blood, streamed onto the sidewalk and into the dirt, where it settled darkly in pools or rivulets. Across the whole scene drifted smoke and dust. The Marines jumped out of the vehicles and ran helter-skelter among the children, collecting the wounded and their body parts, applying first aid where they could. The docs were working frantically. I noticed, strangely enough, that they 'adn't bothered to put on their latex gloves."

Now for Jeremy's Soapbox:

We just don't get it. Why do we just accept cancer, heart disease and the other deadly afflictions? We just seem to seem to grin our teeth and bear it. People must not care, and here's why - because they only spend 0.2% of their wealth on finding ways to stop diseases. The US GDP is about $13tr and yet according to the OECD we spend only $26bn on health R&D i.e., 0.2%. Obviously we just don't care. Yet there are 1.5M new cancer cases per year in the US, and 500k cancer deaths. 1 in 4 of us will die of it, and a further 1 in 4 from heart disease. This absolutely dwarfs anything terrorism will ever do to us. If we make the effort research WILL stop these diseases. If people knew that themselves and their loved ones would be spared these diseases, wouldn't they want more than 0.2% of their income dedicated to it? Apparently not. Life is indeed cheap. We live for today, and don't care of tomorrow. Needed basic research is not funded, promising molecules are not synthesized and tested and clinical trials go unperformed.

As for energy research, improving and encouraging homegrown energy sources, while not eliminating international conflict, will surely lessen the pressure to go and fight foreign wars. Yet we pump trillions into stalemate conflicts while neglecting this simple way forward for both national and energy security. Again we fail to get it.

Science can cure cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis and the other hellish diseases. Science can mitigate the need to fight foreign wars, increasing national security via energy independence with renewable energy. Curing dreaded diseases and achieving energy independence is possible. But it takes time and resources and the short-term nature of the financial world makes it difficult for industry to do the groundwork research needed.

Energy and health research and development should be a top priority over the next twenty years. We must make sure the world's brainiest kids go into science and receive the support and motivation they need to do their research.

Why do we casually accept Middle Eastern oil as the lifeblood of our energy economy, and

two-year olds dying in excruciating pain?

What makes a 16-year-old GIVE UP?

I gave up pronto, I did, in 1976, on a dark afternoon in the dark country, Wolverhampton, England.

I had feverishly trained at long jumping for four summers, several times a week. My run up was paced perfectly to hit the board, with two checkmarks, my hang technique was impeccable, and I had made it to the National Under-17 final.

There it all ended abruptly! There were eight of us, and I finished a solid, emphatic last, more than a foot behind the lad in seventh place, and a meter behind the winner, Gus Udo. Outclassed, depressed, I realised the talent just wasn't there. That's what makes a 16-year-old give up. I never jumped again. Not once.

Not so my training partner Tim Newenham who kept going, threw javelin at the Commonwealth Games, became National Javelin Coach then fitness coached the tennis player Tim Henman for five years (Henman's the English guy who reached the Wimbledon semi-finals four times and lost each one, thus firmly cementing the national sense of sporting futility!). Now, with pleasure I see Tim N. is javelin coaching Oliver Bradfield from my same old athletics club, and Oliver last year threw 63m, the best throw in the world for his age, and this year over 75m, breaking the UK U15 record by over two meters. Way to go Ollie and Tim!

As for Gus, well, his 7.08m winning jump in 1976 broke the championship record, and he also won the high jump. I couldn't seem to get away from him, because we both ended up at Harvard a few years later. He, however, was the revered co-captain of the Crimson track team while yours truly gave him a wide berth. Fingers burned, you see...


Oliver Bradfield, wearing that same Norfolk County athletics vest I wore 34 years ago (brings tears to one's eyes, it does :-)).

New Musical Creation

I like to create and perform music, and my latest album, Paroxysms of Indifference, is now available for free download on last.fm (just click the icon on the right). Paroxysms follows 'Elementary' with the Parisian “Baskervilles Blues Band” (1994) and the Johnson’s Jump (2004) piano improvisation compilation.

The tracks on Paroxysms were recorded between about 2005 (I think) and last week.
Here's a description:

Tripped Hop (electronic): Was supposed to be inspired by Massive Attack’s Trip Hop style but somehow strayed from the straight and narrow.

Three Jolly Boys (Traditional English folk, Acapella): Bit of fun about women and drink but delivered too straight laced (rather angelically).

Reverie in White, Black, Blue: Dreamy improvised piano with white, black and blue themes.

Okavango (electronic): The Okavango delta in Botswana every year undergoes a remarkable river swelling, bringing life with it. You can here the flooding river towards the end.

Light on a Faraway Shore (Orchestral): Inspired by a night-time sailing approach to Milford Haven when I was 13. The bell represents the light and you can hear the yacht lolling, rain arriving with an increased swell and yawing, then, as the rain stops, the boat continues to approach the shore slowly.

Lac du Plan Viannay (Improv Piano): A remote, high lake in the Parc des Ecrins.

Fion: (Acapella). Traditional Gaelic Song. Yes, I’m singing all the parts! (Duh!... no, not all at once)

Paroxysms of Indifference (electronic): Title refers to the critical acclaim this album is sure to generate. Towards the end gets a bit Stravinsky-esque with the dissonance.

Song of the Wandering Aengus: W.B Yeats’ poem about the Irish mythological figure, set to music. Only track with acoustic guitar in.

Recording details: All music and vocals for all tracks performed arranged mixed etc by JCS. All tracks also composed by JCS except for the traditional vocal numbers and ‘Aengus’ for which the lyrics were by Yeats and the melody by D. Leitch. Software: Cakewalk, Garage Band. Light on a Faraway Shore was written using Finale Print Music and was the programmed straight into the computer using a software synthesizer. It was thus only piece not ‘performed’ using a musical instrument. MIDI-free.

Instruments: Keyboard: Yamaha Motif, Guitar: Guild acoustic with rotten strings, Piano: Kawai Grand (bass A flat slightly out of tune).

How to Win a Nobel Prize in Physics

Andre Geim : "You put [sticky tape] on graphite or mica and peel the top layer. There are flakes of graphite that come off on your tape. Then you fold the tape in half and stick it to the flakes on top and split them again. And you repeat this procedure 10 or 20 times. Each time, the flakes split into thinner and thinner flakes. At the end you're left with very thin flakes attached to your tape."

Aha! That's all it takes, then. Maybe we should quit messing around with supercomputers and pulsed neutron sources....?

Powerful Supercomputer Peers into the "Origin of Life"

ORNL has just released this press article on our research into a ribozyme, performed by Tomasz Berezniak together with Mai Zahran, Petra Imhof and Andres Jaeschke and myself. The UT Kraken supercomputer bore the brunt of the load for these calculations. The work was published in this article. Ribozymes (catalytic RNAs) were the center of a presumed RNA world at the early origins of life.

Drug Discovery Research at Oak Ridge

Well, I've been involved to some extent in human health research for a while, including participating in research suggesting a common pharmacophoric footprint for AIDS vaccine design and in helping design experimental methods for detecting single tumour marker molecules in serum.

Now we appear to be on the road to working with Milton Brown and his colleagues at Georgetown University in prostate cancer research, as part of a new NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award center. Milton heads the Drug Discovery Center at Georgetown Medical School. The idea here is to use Oak Ridge's supercomputers to help design molecules of potential therapeutic use. Jerome Baudry will play a leading role in this research from our side. I'm kind of excited about what might happen.....