Pink Elephants – Kelkhoff.com

KP

dkelkhoff — Fri, 02 May 2025 15:08:30 +0000

At an appointment the other day, a physician told me that I’d have to be on “K.P.” for the next few weeks. I looked at them with a confused face, and said “what’s that?” They explained that it meant Kitchen Patrol, as used in the military.

Of course, the next day, I was reading a book and came across this line:

we are getting hard pushed to find things for all the volunteers to do that aren’t just glorified K. P.
Heinlein, Robert A. . Starship Troopers (p. 34). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Mitochondria and Chloroplasts

dkelkhoff — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 02:20:10 +0000

I skimmed a mildly interesting article from Wired.com yesterday morning: Scientists Re-Create the Conditions That Sparked Complex Life. A quote:

Examples of endosymbiosis are everywhere. Mitochondria, the energy factories in your cells, were once free-living bacteria. Photosynthetic plants owe their sun-spun sugars to the chloroplast, which was also originally an independent organism.

Interesting. I think I’d heard that once about Mitochondria (The Powerhouse of the Cell, of course), but I hadn’t heard it about chloroplast.

Then, last night, wouldn’t you know it, reading The Expanse Book 9 (Leviathan Falls), this quote:

If mitochondria and chloroplasts hadn’t set up shop inside other organisms, eukaryotic life wouldn’t exist, including all of us.

— Corey, James S. A.. Leviathan Falls (The Expanse Book 9) (p. 321). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Seems about right.

Arete

dkelkhoff — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 20:20:54 +0000

Over the past weekend, I listened to Dan Carlin‘s 2nd Hardcore History episode about Alexander the Great, in which he used the word “Arete” as one of the key defining characteristics of the protagonist.

From the wikipedia page:

Arete (Ancient Greek: ἀρετή, romanized: aretḗ) is a concept in ancient Greek thought that, in its most basic sense, refers to “excellence” of any kind^[1]—especially a person or thing’s “full realization of potential or inherent function.”^[2] The term may also refer to excellence in “moral virtue.”^[1]

And today, wouldn’t you know it, I got an email newsletter from David Sparks, speaking about how he views happiness, and he sums it up by saying:

Pursuing your best self (Arete) + Ethical Living = Happy Life.

Generated by my new BFF, Chatty G