I somehow fell away from writing blog posts. It must have happened for many people now that facebook, flickr, twitter, and SMS can consume the bits of creative energy. But I felt like returning here after getting enough sleep for the first time in a long time. Trying to keep a growing start-up happy along with two little kids take a big chunk of sleep out of my life. So in general I have been in a form of stupor when it comes to the times when I might write a posting here. But I don't like that things have gotten so stale. As usual there is no hope for a massive encyclopedic update. The pictures of life may resolve some of what happened in the past few years. I have noticed that videos are more useful than still shots to give a flavor of life. When Sarah and I look at our digital picture library we say that we never have enough good pictures and never have enough videos.

I have this nightmare that I figured I'd document. It has recurred more than once so I am now used to it. In the dream I am driving a car on a highway. But at the same time I am driving the car by remote control. The "me" that I am conscious of is the one driving the car. I can see the car at first but then I am driving it remotely with no way to see what is happening to it because it has gone behind a hill. Since I am stationary it keeps getting further away. After a while I wonder how I can keep driving the car without seeing what it looks like from where the car is or being in the car itself. The car starts to swerve into traffic on the highway and eventually at a rapid speed flys off the highway. In this case I am aware that the crash was severe. It was fatal. The me in the car had died. But the me driving the car while feeling a terrible pit in my stomach for having died is still alive. So I walk about and think about how I am still alive although I have died. I go into a town and speak to some people. The can see me and I can see them and we are therefore all ghosts/spirits of people who have died. The town is not special or heavenly. We talk and I realize that I have been wrong my whole life about death. That people can live beyond their own death in spirit. I see that there is this other next world that is not much different from this one. And if I were to die in that world there would be more and more universes that I could pass through as a controller of myself through remote control. I awoke a little confused but remembered that there was a world or two that I was living in my dream.

I don't need to analyze this dream much. It underlies the typical fears of a father and an entrepreneur. Much of what I try to do is not fully under my control. My children will be what they will be and my business is in the hands of employees and customers more than it is in mine. As things go forwards the feelings of control that come from youth slip away the more I work to establish situations that I can control. In the end I am like the remote controller trying to drive fast cars. I need to let the driver drive their own car. If I can't see what it looks like from the car it will crash.

Posted by Dan Housman at 08:22 PM | Permalink

Madeline and I played some question guessing games today. In the morning over breakfast I asked her some questions like "what fruit becomes a raisin". At night before bed she asked me questions. Her questions were as follows:

Why are the colors of the rainbow red-orange-yellow-green-blue?
If a lion is in a cage then will it be sad?
What do lions eat? A: Meat
Are our insides made out of meat?
Why do bees have stingers?
Will a bee like it if I leave honey for it on the ground?
Why is lava hot?
Why are moths attracted to light?

I was able to handle most of them but I was definitely stumped by the moth question

Posted by Dan Housman at 08:43 PM | Permalink

I was thinking about autism research since I find the science around the unsolved areas to be interesting and was especially interested in theories regarding viral infections and autism. My basic thoughts were relating to reading about how the polio virus operates to invade and compromise the central nervous system. The effects are so obvious in that paralysis and in many cases death occurs that it was easy to hunt for and find a viral cause. Measles is also CNS related in that it can cause specific CNS issues including auto-immune issues like acute measles encephalomyelitis. Again it is not so hard to find a viral cause to people who appear with spots and severe symptoms and often fatal symptoms. Measles and Polio are viral diseases that are hard to hide. There is plenty of speculation although mainly discredited around the link between vaccinations for MMR and Polio. The general issue is that autism is a developmental disorder that appears at the same time in development that the vaccines are given so causality is very difficult to establish.

But what if there are other viruses that impact children at the same developmental ages as Polio and Measles and they are ones that aren't near lethal or obvious? These viral infections of other viruses may be causal to autism by also affecting the CNS. I can hypothesize that the virus, if one existed, should be findable within a stable population with a clear autism diagnosis (non genetic) that has been hard to explain with pure genetics by looking for linkage between antibodies to a new or poorly characterized childhood virus and autism.

So I did a quick search on autism and viral causes and found something new and interesting. There is new information announced in October Nature and through NCI about a retro virus called XMRV being implicated in an adult disease called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. CFS is a CNS disease where the patient is very lethargic because of some neurological issue. The potential that a virus causes the disorder is very interesting in it's potential to be similar to how polio and measles can reach and compromise CNS functions. Furthermore there have already been people who have linked CFS with autism in terms of treatment strategies and pathologies.

David Kirby reported in the Huffington Post on some forward thinking thoughts about links to autism from the researchers studying the linkage between XMRV and CFS in that there was a preliminary study and thoughts about how XMRV might operate in children with the phenotype of autism as well as some theories around viral activation when the immune system is operating in response to immunizations.

In all I find this line of inquiry of interest because it does lead to some rational outcomes and actions if the answer is that there are mechanisms by which autism and related disorders can be caused by a virus. Mainly that the viral infection can be tested for, possibly treated in a manner similar to HIV with anti-retroviral agents, and that a vaccine can be created to prevent new infections in the population, maybe there are genetic biomarkers that confer susceptibility or liability to the infection mechanisms causing certain damage and tests can help determine risk. This is all speculative but the speculation seems less off base with a little evidence.

Posted by Dan Housman at 05:22 AM | Permalink

I decided after seeing all the little tidbits of TripIT updates in my LinkedIn network that I should join and track my travel on TripIT. Hopefully now I'll know where I am going. I am waiting for that magical moment where I suddenly realize that I am travelling to some weird city and someone I know is either living there and reaches out to me to go out for a beer (by the way this is the real value of TripIT) or I realize I am in some co-incidental travel with an old frat buddy who wants to shake down Las Vegas for a night.

Posted by Dan Housman at 06:27 AM | Permalink

As an entrepreneur I can't help find the lottery irksome. I don't mean to pick on this guy who won the lottery recently featured in the article Downside of winning the lottery. But can these people please direct their money to some ventures that have a chance of being useful and successful.

Now, the young entrepreneur is dabbling in the creation of a reality television show that melds two of his dreams: professional wrestling and beautiful women. He spends all his time promoting the project called "Wrestlicious."

I too dream of "professional wrestling and beautiful women" but this does not sound like a great use of capital.

Posted by Dan Housman at 03:11 AM | Permalink