Author: jamespatewilliamsjr

Back in the 1970s I attempted follow in intellectual footsteps of the now largely discredited sociological cultural anthropologist, Carlos Castaneda. I tested on myself several extracts from indigenous plants and mushrooms. These naturally occurring drugs discovered by shamans were as follows:

1. Jimsonweed (Datura stramonium) which I may remember contains the tropane alkaloid: atropine. Atropine has been used in medicine to dilate the pupils of human eyes for study by an ophthalmologist. It is also a hallucinogenic alkaloid. The antagonist of atropine is scopolamine.
2. Amanita muscaria (the fly agaric also known as a mushroom) contains a few hallucinogenic alkaloids including an insecticide that kills flies that feed on the mushroom.
3. Stropharia cubensis a mushroom that contains the hallucinogenic alkaloids psilocybin and psilocin.

In the halcyon days of my youth 17 – 21, I planned on becoming a pharmacognosist that is a scientist that hunts for useful alkaloids to be found in nature.  To follow in footsteps Castaneda and Manske (“The Alkaloids” an encyclopedia of useful drugs from the natural world in 70+ volumes), I would need to be well trained in botany, ecology, pharmacology, plant physiology, etc. Good thing I did not go down that path since I might have accidentally overdosed on a new alkaloid.

I have an anecdote I like to retell about obtaining samples of the mushrooms 3 above. There was a farmer on Whitesville Road next to the old Troup County High School who had cows in a large pasture. I knew that in August there would be psilocybin yielding mushrooms growing out of cow manure. A male partner in crime of mine and I just casually went up to farmhouse door and politely lied to the farmer about being students of mycology from Auburn University and we would like to gather some mushroom samples from his pasture. He said “Sure, just do not disturb my cows”.

The title lyric is from the song “Salisbury” off Uriah Heep’s second album released in the United States in the year I graduated from high school 1971. I probably was unaware of the album until late 1971 or early 1972. The album “Salisbury” along with its title track was my sexual encounter anthem back in the day. The album has other very meaningful tracks, but I will review the album later in this blog entry.

The blog title lyric is applicable to at least four significant females that entered my life then left me high and dry. I do not understand why I was abandoned and sentenced to live in misery and regret. The decades of their meaningfulness to me were the 1970s, 2000, 2010s, and now. I will not blurt out their names and where they worked. Being sentenced to solitary confinement and a singleton life is the very theme and bane of my existence. So much for my depressing facts of life.

Now back to the United States version of Salisbury. It has the following tracks in the order as written:

1. “High Priestess” by Ken Hensley
2. “The Park” by  Ken Hensley
3. “Time to Live” by Mick Box, David Byron, and Ken Hensley (lead guitar, lead vocals, and keyboards, respectively)
4. “Lady in Black” by Ken Hensley
5. “Simon the Bullet Freak” by Ken Hensley
6. “Salisbury” by Mick Box, David Byron, and Ken Hensley

Tracks 1 – 4 comprise side 1 and 5 – 6 are on side 2. Tracks 1, 3,  and 6 are perhaps best considered love songs with track 3 being especially poignant about love lost and never regained. Tracks 2 and 4 are anti-war anthems. It is interesting that there was a lot of protesting about our Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United Kingdom. Track 5 is an anti-opiate use song.

The lead guitarist Mick Box uses the wah-wah pedal a lot on track 1, 3, and 6. His use of that audio effect is as good as Jimi Hendrix with same effect or perhaps even superior to Jimi on tracks 3 and 6.

“High Priestess” is about eternal love. In track 2 the “speaker” of the song is lamenting the lost of his brother at “hand of needless war”. The setting of “The Park” is a children’s entertainment park. Track 3 is about a prisoner who is doing 20 years for killing a man who was abusing a woman. The prisoner is about to be released and wants the female heroine of the song to smile at him upon his freedom from prison. “Lady in Black” is a Goddess of War and Peace and the singer is asking for implements to kill his enemies and the Lady does not comply with warlike wishes. Track 5 is about a heroin addict who rips people off with a weapon and sometimes kills for money to get high. The album title track is a beautiful full classical orchestral and rock work of high artistry. It is about love gained then utterly lost thus the title of this blog line. Mick Box has at least three guitar solo passages utilizing his wah-wah pedal.

A genetic algorithm is a computer recipe for solving an function optimization problem using natural selection, gene crossover, and random mutations and thus mimics biological genetics.

The Traveling Salesperson Problem (TSP) is a Nondeterministic Polynomial Time Problem and thus is hard to solve in real time on a computer. The TSP starts out with a number of cities to optimally tour once in a complete circuit.

Below are runs for the 29 city Western Sahara TSP which has an optimal solution of 27,603. I get 27,601.

http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/world/witour.html

The Djibouti 38 Cities TSP 6656:

http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/world/djtour.html

I have a neat hardware “Snarling Dogs Chord and Scale Computer”, but it is a touch device which has a tendency to wear out.

I am alive today at 66 years old due to the empathy, patience, and protection of my beloved hometown: LaGrange, Georgia. I should have been dead or totally lost in 1970s and 1980s. I am deeply indebted to my country, the United States of North America, for granting me the fundamental rights that are given to each citizen namely the Bill of Rights and the rest of the Constitution of United States of North America. I know I complain a l lot about various governments mistreating me, but those entities have been quite tolerant of me despite all my shenanigans.

After almost decade and a half of many online applications, I finally was granted and honored to have three live interviews for federal jobs at my second most favorite federal entity, name redacted, in the year of 2018 and 2019. Previously, I was elated when I got as far as a telephone interview in either 2010 or 2011 and I  was happy, happy, happy until I received the rejection email. I also took online and in person tests for the name redacted entity in interval 2015 to 2017.

Multiple other paragraphs redacted.

I joined the dating website ZOOSK on May 8, 2020. I am a paying member and spent $29.95 on the basic one-month plan and $9.99 for a feature of the website I felt would be beneficial. ZOOSK monetizes all its features. I have not gotten into many conversations with the females on the website. Here is one of my opening lines:

I like your pictures and I would like to chat with you. I am James Pate Williams, Jr, which is my whole legal name and I have been open and honest on the Internet since December 1995. I think you deserve a chance to look me up online before making any return comments.

Probably a lot of people believe I should not use the preceding disclaimer initially, but I vehemently disagree. I believe that potential dates need to be well informed before making the slightest commitment.

I have made a concerted effort to add more walking to my daily rituals. Here is my current log:

May 9, 2020 23 minutes

May 10, 2020 100 minutes

May 11, 2020 80 minutes

May 12, 2020 90 minutes

May 13, 2020 120 minutes

May 14, 2020 90 minutes

May 15, 2020 145 minutes

May 16, 2020 145 minutes

May 17, 2020 50 minutes

May 18, 2020 120 minutes

May 19, 2020 90 minutes

I estimate that I cover one statue mile (5,280 feet = 1,760 yards) in approximately 20 minutes. I have not calculated the number of steps per minute or mile.

I am on at least two medications that cause weight gain and maybe eventually obesity and perhaps diabetes. The pharmaceuticals are ABILIFY and olanzapine both of which are strong anti-psychotics. I have heard that for weight loss, it is a good idea to eat small meals more than three times a day. I hate being overweight, but my genetics, milieu,  and actions have dealt me a bad hand to use a poker analogy. No, I do not believe in conscious gambling.

A graph is a set of nodes and edges. An edge connects one node to another node. Given a graph the Graph Coloring Problem involves coloring each node with no two nodes of the same color being connected using the minimum number of colors. The Graph Coloring Problem is an example of constraint satisfaction problem.