Why Age?

The oldest-known living person is Kane Tanaka, a Japanese woman who is a mind-boggling 116 years old. But if you ask David Sinclair, he’d argue that 116 is just middle age. At least, he thinks it should be. Sinclair is one of the leading scientists in the field of aging, and he believes that growing old isn’t a natural part of life—it’s a disease that needs a cure.

Sounds crazy, right? Sinclair, a Harvard professor who made Time’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2014, will acquiesce that everyone has to die at some point, but he argues that we can double our life expectancy and live healthy, active lives right up until the end.

His 2019 book, Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don’t Have To ($28, Atria Books), out this fall, details the cutting-edge science that’s taking place in the field of longevity right now. The quick takeaway from this not-so-quick read: scientists are tossing out previous assumptions about aging, and they’ve discovered several tools that you can employ right now to slow down, and in some cases, reverse the clock.

In the nineties, as a postdoc in an MIT lab, Sinclair caused a stir in the field when he discovered the mechanism that leads to aging in yeast, which offered some insight into why humans age. Using his work with yeast as a launching point, Sinclair and his lab colleagues have focused on identifying the mechanism for aging in humans and published a study in 2013 asserting that the malfunction of a family of proteins called sirtuins is the single cause of aging. Sirtuins are responsible for repairing DNA damage and controlling overall cellular health by keeping cells on task. In other words, sirtuins tell kidney cells to act like kidney cells. If they get overwhelmed, cells start to misbehave, and we see the symptoms of aging, like organ failure or wrinkles. All of the genetic info in our cells is still there as we get older, but our body loses the ability to interpret it. This is because our body starts to run low on NAD, a molecule that activates the sirtuins: we have half as much NAD in our body when we’re 50 as we do at 20. Without it, the sirtuins can’t do their job, and the cells in our body forget what they’re supposed to be doing.

Sinclair splits his time between the U.S. and Australia, running labs at Harvard Medical School and at the University of New South Wales. All of his research seeks to prove that aging is a problem we can solve—and figure out how to stop. He argues that we can slow down the aging process, and in some cases even reverse it, by putting our body through “healthy stressors” that increase NAD levels and promote sirtuin activity. The role of sirtuins in aging is now fairly well accepted, but the idea that we can reactivate them (and how best to do so) is still being worked out.

Getting cold, working out hard, and going hungry every once in a while all engage what Sinclair calls our body’s survival circuit, wherein sirtuins tell cells to boost their defenses in order to keep the organism (you) alive. While Sinclair’s survival-circuit theory has yet to be proven in a trial setting, there’s plenty of research to suggest that exercise, cold exposure, and calorie reduction all help slow down the side effects of aging and stave off diseases associated with getting older. Fasting, in particular, has been well supported by other research: in various studies, both mice and yeast that were fed restricted diets live much longer than their well-fed cohorts. A two-year-long human experiment in the 1990s found that participants who had a restricted diet that left them hungry often had decreased blood pressure, blood-sugar levels, and cholesterol levels. Subsequent human studies found that decreasing calories by 12 percent slowed down biological aging based on changes in blood biomarkers.

Longevity science is a bit like the Wild West: the rules aren’t quite established. The research is exciting, but human clinical trials haven’t found anything definitive just yet. Throughout the field, there’s an uncomfortable relationship between privately owned companies, researchers, and even research institutes like Harvard: Sinclair points to a biomarker test by a company called InsideTracker as proof of his own reduced “biological age,” but he is also an investor in that company. He is listed as an inventor on a patent held by a NAD booster that’s on the market right now, too.

While the dust settles, the best advice for the curious to take from Lifespan is to experiment with habits that are easy, free, and harmless—like taking a brisk, cold walk and eating a lighter diet. With cold exposure, Sinclair explains, moderation is the key. He believes that you can reap benefits by simply taking a walk in the winter without a jacket. He doesn’t prescribe an exact fasting regimen that works best, but he doesn’t recommend anything extreme—simply missing a meal here and there, like skipping breakfast and having a late lunch.

Lifespan is a timely book, but it’s not necessarily an easy read. The science is dense, and even listening to Sinclair explain it on podcasts and during presentations doesn’t help cut through all of the nerd speak. But if you’re even mildly hopeful about dunking a basketball at the age of 50, or hiking the Appalachian Trail at 70, or blowing 100 candles out on your birthday cake someday, you might consider making room for Lifespan on your bookshelf. There’s enough useful information to make it worth your time.

This post originally appeared on Outside and was published November 9, 2019.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor

PARIS — A hugely ambitious project to replicate the energy of the sun is entering a critical phase, as scientists and technicians in southern France begin assembling giant parts of a nuclear fusion device, an international experiment aimed to develop the ultimate clean energy source.

World leaders involved in the project, or their representatives, on Tuesday appeared virtually at a ceremony for the start of the new stage of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, noting that work has proceeded despite the COVID-19 pandemic in many of the 35 contributing countries.

“Clearly, the pandemic impacted the initial schedule,” said ITER’s director-general, Bernard Bigot, who led the ceremony at Saint-Paul-les-Durance, northeast of Marseille. He said none of the on-the-ground staff has contracted COVID-19.

Scientists have long sought to mimic the process of nuclear fusion that occurs inside the sun, arguing that it could provide an almost limitless source of cheap, safe and clean electricity. Unlike in existing fission reactors, which split plutonium or uranium atoms, there’s no risk of an uncontrolled chain reaction with fusion and it doesn’t produce long-lived radioactive waste.

The project “seeks to create an artificial sun,” said South Korean President Moon Jae-in. “An artificial sun is an energy source of dreams."

Among other elements, Korea is manufacturing four sectors of a vacuum vessel, a hermetically sealed chamber in which plasma particles, derived from heated hydrogen gas, spiral without touching walls. European countries are building five other sectors.

French President Emmanuel Macron hailed ITER as a “promise of peace” because it brings together countries that decided to forego differences for the “common good.” China, the U.S., India, Russia, South Korea and nations of the European Union are taking part in the project.

There was no sign of the acute discord currently roiling ties between the U.S. and China, and India and China.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a statement read by the Indian ambassador to France, called international collaboration “a perfect symbol of the age-old Indian belief ... (that) the world is one family.”

Bigot compared the milestone phase getting under way to assembling a giant, three dimensional puzzle that “must (have) the precision of a Swiss watch.”

Billed as the world’s largest science project, ITER is gigantic. The circular device, called a tokamak, has a 30-meter circumference, stands 30 meters (100 feet) high, and is made up of more than a million parts constructed in numerous countries.

Some pieces transported to France weigh several hundred tons. Tools to put the reactor together match that size, with giant lifts that must transfer components over the walls and down into “the pit.” A key component being built by the U.S., the Central Solenoid, is the most powerful of ITER’s numerous magnets. Together, they will be strong enough to lift an aircraft carrier.

The project begun in 2006 is far from over. The experimental reactor is to head for another landmark moment in five years, described as a “trial run” when scientists launch what is called “First Plasma” showing that the machine functions, including magnetic fields and other operations.

Bigot, the ITER’s director-general, called fusion energy a “miracle for our planet.”

He said that smaller experiments are complementary to ITER. Bigot predicts a bright future for his international baby, saying he foresees a scaled-up ITER, perhaps twice as large, to provide power to the grid. But its viability and economic competitiveness must first be demonstrated, he said.

The project's estimated cost just for the EU was about 20 billion euros ($23.5 billion), Bigot told reporters. He said a full price tag was difficult to estimate because participating countries make their own contributions.

Eyesafe Display Certification

Display maker TCL says it’s earned Eyesafe Display Certification for Low Blue Light and Color Performance, which means its screens could be a bit easier on our eyes when it comes to eye strain.

There’s been growing interest in the effects of extended exposure to blue light, especially as TV makers continue to produce bigger and brighter displays. Earlier this year, Samsung announced it had earned “eye safety” certification from Verband Deutscher Elektrotechniker (VDE) in Germany. Eyesafe says its standard helps guard against the harshest regions of blue light while ensuring high picture quality is maintained.

“Announcing that our devices and panels will now meet the best-in-class Eyesafe Display Certification sends an important message to our supply chain partners. This is a very momentous day for our company, and it marks a major achievement by our engineering and products teams,” TCL founder and Chairman Li Dongsheng said in a press release.

Super computers tackling COVID-19

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, the haughty supercomputer Deep Thought is asked whether he can find the answer to the ultimate question concerning life, the universe, and everything. He replies that, yes, he can do it, but it’s tricky and he’ll have to think about it. When asked how long it will take him he replies, “Seven-and-a-half million years. I told you I’d have to think about it.”

Real-life supercomputers are being asked somewhat less expansive questions but tricky ones nonetheless: how to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. They’re being used in many facets of responding to the disease, including to predict the spread of the virus, to optimize contact tracing, to allocate resources and provide decisions for physicians, to design vaccines and rapid testing tools, and to understand sneezes. And the answers are needed in a rather shorter time frame than Deep Thought was proposing.

The largest number of COVID-19 supercomputing projects involves designing drugs. It’s likely to take several effective drugs to treat the disease. Supercomputers allow researchers to take a rational approach and aim to selectively muzzle proteins that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, needs for its life cycle.

slow internet?

Restricted to our homes for months now, many of us have been putting up with a persistent annoyance: a lousy internet connection.

When we are working, a video call with colleagues becomes pixelated, with delayed audio. When we are relaxing, movies and video games take ages to download. In the worst cases, the connection drops altogether.

As people have hunkered down to contain the spread of the coronavirus, average internet speeds all over the world have slowed. Some broadband providers are feeling crushed by the heavy traffic. And dated internet equipment can create a bottleneck for our speeds.

Even the most tech savvy are affected. Keerti Melkote, the founder of Aruba Networks, a division of Hewlett Packard Enterprise that offers Wi-Fi products for businesses, said that in recent weeks, his DSL service from AT&T had dropped periodically. He waited several days for a technician to arrive and is now contemplating subscribing to Comcast for a second internet connection.

“I had three or four days of calls, and I had to go find a particular spot in my house where I had better coverage,” Mr. Melkote said.

At the beginning of the pandemic, my internet also became unbearably slow and suffered several outages. So I asked experts to explain what’s causing our internet problems — and the different remedies.

First, diagnose the problem.

What’s causing your slow speeds — your internet provider or your equipment at home? Here’s a method to figuring that out.

• Download an internet speed test app on your phone, like Speedtest by Ookla (free for iPhones and Android phones).
• Stand near your router and use the app to run a speed test.
• Move to a room farther away from the router and run the speed test again.
• Compare the results.

Less than 15 megabits a second is pretty slow. Speeds of about 25 megabits a second are sufficient for streaming high-definition video; more than 40 megabits a second is ideal for streaming lots of video and playing video games.

If the speed test results were fast near your Wi-Fi router but slow farther away, the problem is probably your router, said Sanjay Noronha, the product lead of Google’s Nest Wifi internet router. If speeds were slow in both test locations, the issue is probably your internet provider.

If it’s your router, here’s what to do.

If you have pinpointed that the problem is your router, the bad news is that you may have to buy new equipment. The good news is that there are many approaches to improving your Wi-Fi connection.

Start by asking yourself these questions:

How old is my router? If it’s more than five years old, you should definitely replace it. In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission removed restrictions that had limited the wireless transmission power of Wi-Fi routers, allowing new routers to be 20 times more powerful than they were before. Upgrading to a newer router will probably be one of your most life-changing tech purchases.

Where is my router placed? Ideally, your router should be in a central location in your home so that the signal covers as many rooms as possible. In addition, your router should be out in the open, like on top of a shelf, not hidden inside cabinets or under a desk, to beam a clear signal. You should also avoid placing the router near objects and materials that cause interference, like large fish tanks and metal.

How big is my home? If you have a home with multiple stories and lots of rooms, and your Wi-Fi is weak in some areas, the best solution is to buy a so-called mesh network system. It’s a system of multiple Wi-Fi access points, including a main router and satellite hubs, that lets you connect multiple wireless access points together to blanket your home with a strong internet connection.

My favorite mesh systems are Google Wifi and Amazon’s Eero, which start at $99 for a single router and can be bundled with additional access points. In general, I recommend mesh systems even for smaller homes, because they are fast and very easy to install.

Are my other devices slowing down my connection? Gadgets with slower internet technology can slow down speeds for all your other devices.

For example, the iPhone 5 from 2012 uses an older-generation Wi-Fi standard. Newer iPhones, from 2014 and later, use a faster wireless standard.

Let’s say you own a new iPhone and your teenager owns the iPhone 5. If your teenager begins downloading a video on the iPhone 5 and then you start downloading something on your iPhone, the older phone will take longer to finish before the signal frees up for your phone to download at maximum speed.

As a remedy, many modern Wi-Fi routers offer settings that can give specific devices a priority for faster speeds. Consult your router’s instruction manual for the steps. In this hypothetical example, you would want to give your new iPhone top priority and move your teenager’s old iPhone to the bottom.

Are my neighbors slowing down my connection? In apartment buildings crowded with gadgets, the devices’ signals are fighting for room on the same radio channels. You can see what radio channels your neighbors’ devices are using with scanning apps like WiFi Analyzer. Then consult your router’s instruction manual for steps on picking a clearer radio channel.

This step is tedious, and many modern routers automatically choose the clearest radio channel for you. In general, replacing an outdated router is the most practical solution.

If it’s your service provider, there’s not much to do.

If you have determined that your internet provider’s service is the root of the issue, your only option is to call your internet service provider and ask for help.

When you call, ask a support agent these questions:

Why are my speeds slow? Occasionally a support agent can analyze your internet performance and make changes to speed up your connection. This rarely happens, and more often a technician will need to pay a visit.

Does my modem need to be replaced? The modem, which is the box that connects your home to the internet provider’s service, also can become outdated and occasionally needs to be replaced. If the support agent confirms the modem is old, you can schedule an appointment for a technician to install a new one.

Or you can buy your own modem and call the internet provider to activate it. Wirecutter, our sister publication that tests products, recommends modems from Motorola and Netgear, which cost about $80 to $90.

Can I buy faster speeds? Your provider may offer packages with more bandwidth meant for higher-quality video streaming and faster downloads. Ask about your options.

As a last resort, you can turn to backups. Many modern phones come with a hot spot feature, which turns the device’s cellular connection into a miniature Wi-Fi network. (Apple and Google list steps on their websites on how to use the hot spot feature on iPhones and Androids.)

Whatever you do, be patient. In these trying times, everything takes longer.

As for me, I confirmed my slow speeds were related to my internet provider, Monkeybrains. I called to report the issue, and after more than a month, a technician replaced the antenna on our roof. Now my speeds are even faster than before the pandemic, so it was well worth the wait.

ncov2019.live / worldometer

[3/28/20] Last week, as cities across the country shut down in an effort to slow the spread of covid-19, President Trump said, “We have a problem that, a month ago, nobody thought about.” Well, somebody did. On December 29th, as Trump vacationed with his family at Mar-a-Lago, Avi Schiffmann, a seventeen-year-old from Washington State, launched a homemade Web site to track the movement of the coronavirus. Since then, the site, ncov2019.live, has had more than a hundred million visitors. “I wanted to just make the data easily accessible, but I never thought it would end up being this big,” the high-school junior said last week over FaceTime. Schiffmann, gap-toothed and bespectacled, was sitting on his bed wearing a blue T-shirt and baggy pajama bottoms. It was late morning. He was at his mother’s house, on Mercer Island, outside Seattle. Somewhere in the room his cat, Louie, mewed. Behind him hung a Ferrari poster.

Using a coding tactic known as “web-scraping,” Schiffmann’s site collates data from different sources around the globe—the W.H.O., the C.D.C., Yonhap News Agency in South Korea—and displays the latest number of covid-19 cases. It features simple graphics and easy-to-read tables divided by nation, continent, and state. Data automatically updates every minute. In a politicized pandemic, where rumor and panic run amok, the site has become a reputable, if unlikely, watchdog.

Schiffmann goes to Mercer Island High School. (Its mascot: Herbert the Snail.) He began teaching himself to code when he was seven, mainly by watching YouTube videos, and has made more than thirty Web sites. “Programming is a great creative medium,” he said. “Instead of using a paintbrush or something, you can just type a bunch of funky words and make a coronavirus site.” One of his first projects, in elementary school, was what he calls “a stick-figure animation hub.” Later sites collated the scores for his county’s high-school sports games, aggregated news of global protests, and displayed the weather forecast on Mars. “His brain is constantly going from one thing to another, which is good, but I also try to focus him in,” his mother, Nathalie Acher, said. “I’m not techy at all myself. I see it as just really boring. He sees it as an art form.”

Schiffmann created the virus project during a family ski weekend in Snoqualmie Pass. Acher, who is a primary-care doctor, said that, when he had finished building it (he’d skipped a ski day), “he was beaming as though he’d discovered the cure for cancer.” Flattening the curve has been an isolating experience for many, but Schiffmann has never had so much attention. “I’m getting e-mail after e-mail,” he said. “Every couple of seconds it’s a new one.” Some people suggest changes to the site. “They’re, like, ‘Great Web site!’ ” he said. “And then they send a massive list of demands, and I’m just, like, ‘O.K., later.’ ”

While his twelfth-grade friends worry about whether the prom will be cancelled, Schiffmann is navigating global fame.“I literally see myself on, like, African news Web sites, Thailand, Taiwan—like, everywhere,” he said. He had two podcast interviews scheduled for that day. Then he was off to a photo shoot. “I want more professional photos, because I don’t like the ones that the news places use.” (“I look weird,” he said.) A few days earlier, his school had shut down. But he had already skipped the last week of classes to focus on the site, he said, “when it kind of blew up.” His mother, whose medical colleagues use the site, had given up coaxing him to return. “Maybe learning algebra can come later,” she said. (Her son is a C student.)

Schiffmann took the virus threat seriously before many others did. “I’ve been kind of concerned for a while, because I watched it spread very fast, and around the entire world. I mean, it just kind of went everywhere.” He took his own precautions. “I got masks a while ago. I got, like, fifteen for seventeen dollars. Now you can’t even buy a single mask for, like, less than forty.” His mother chimed in. “I wish I had listened to him,” she said. “But, in his teen-ager way, he’d come down the stairs with his eyes huge and be, like, ‘There are fifty thousand more cases!’ and I’d be, like, ‘Yeah, but they’re over there, not here.’ ”

Now that the grownups of the world are finally, and appropriately, freaking out, it is hard for Schiffmann not to feel righteous vindication. “If you told someone three months ago that we should spend, like, ten billion dollars in upgrading the United States’ health care, they would have been, like, ‘Nah,’ ” he said. “Now, everyone’s, like, ‘Oh, my God, yes.’ But this is the kind of stuff we should have done a long time ago.”

***

[6/1/20] Have started to use worldometer in addition to nov2019.live.  Some of the data on ncov2019.live (e.g. New York) hasn't been updating recently.  The main worldometer page is also interesting.

There's also a discrepancy with Spain between the two.  ncov2019.live has them at 239,638 cases, while worldometer has them at 286,718.  Johns Hopkins has Spain at 263.638.  So I'll go with ncov2019.live in this case.

a new era in space travel

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A rocket ship built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company thundered away from Earth with two Americans on Saturday, ushering in a new era in commercial space travel and putting the United States back in the business of launching astronauts into orbit from home soil for the first time in nearly a decade.

NASA’s Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken rode skyward aboard a white-and-black, bullet-shaped Dragon capsule on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, lifting off at 3:22 p.m. from the same launch pad used to send Apollo crews to the moon a half-century ago. Minutes later, they slipped safely into orbit.

“Let's light this candle,” Hurley said just before ignition, borrowing the historic words used by Alan Shepard on America's first human spaceflight, in 1961.

The two men are scheduled to arrive Sunday at the International Space Station, 250 miles above Earth, for a stay of up to four months, after which they will come home with a Right Stuff-style splashdown at sea, something the world hasn't witnessed since the 1970s.

The mission unfolded amid the gloom of the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed more than 100,000 Americans, and racial unrest across the U.S. over the case of George Floyd, the handcuffed black man who died at the hands of Minneapolis police.

NASA officials and others expressed hope the flight would lift American spirits and show the world what the U.S. can do.

“We are back in the game. It’s very satisfying,” said Doug Marshburn, of Deltona, Florida, who shouted, “USA! USA!" as he watched the 260-foot rocket climb skyward.

SpaceX becomes the first private company to launch people into orbit, a feat achieved previously by only three governments: the U.S., Russia and China.

“This is something that should really get people right in the heart of anyone who has any spirit of exploration,” Musk, the visionary also behind the Tesla electric car company, said after liftoff, pounding his chest with his fist.

The flight also ended a nine-year launch drought for NASA. Ever since it retired the space shuttle in 2011, NASA has relied on Russian spaceships launched from Kazakhstan to take U.S. astronauts to and from the space station.

Over the past few years, NASA outsourced the job of designing and building its next generation of spaceships to SpaceX and Boeing, awarding them $7 billion in contracts in a public-private partnership aimed at driving down costs and spurring innovation. Boeing’s spaceship, the Starliner capsule, is not expected to fly astronauts until early 2021.

NASA plans to rely in part on commercial partners as it pursues it next goals: sending astronauts back to the moon within a few years, and on to Mars in the 2030s.

At a post-liftoff rally held at NASA's massive 525-foot-high Vehicle Assembly Building, President Donald Trump commended Musk and proclaimed: “Today we once again proudly launch American astronauts on American rockets, the best in the world, from right here on American soil.”

He vowed the U.S. will be the first to land on Mars, promising a “future of American dominance in space.”

Vice President Mike Pence, who also witnessed the launch, said that as the nation deals with the coronavirus and racial strife, "I believe with all my heart that millions of Americans today will find the same inspiration and unity of purpose that we found in those days in the 1960s” during Apollo.

The first attempt to launch the rocket, on Wednesday, was called off with less than 17 minutes to go in the countdown because of lightning. On Saturday, stormy weather threatened another postponement for most of the day, but the skies began to clear just in the time.

free books on Amazon

Besides Prime Reading, Amazon also offers free kindle books available for purchase (can you purchase something that's free?).

Here's one way to do it.

From the left of the search bar (on Amazon's web page), select "Books" from the drop-down box.

Click on the search icon (the magnifying glass).

Select the category you're interested in (in the horizontal band titled "Shop by Category").  (You could also select the category under Books in the left column.  There's more categories that way.)

Select Kindle Edition under Refine by ... Format in the left column.

Then choose Sort by: Price: Low to High in the drop-down box at the top right.

Scroll down and look.

Some books are free with a Kindle Unlimited membership.  But others are free unconditionally.

***

How about finding Prime Reading on the website?

Select Books.  Click on the search icon.

Select Prime Reading under Kindle & Audible in the left column.

It'll present a number of recommended books.

For more, click on Browse the catalog link.  Then you can choose further from a number of categories in the left column, though there's not as many choices as with the Kindle Edition books.  (But after clicking on category, you're presented with a number of sub-categories.)

CVS delivers

Nuro, the autonomous robotics startup that has raised more than $1 billion from Softbank Vision Fund, Greylock and other investors, said Thursday it will test prescription delivery in Houston through a partnership with CVS Pharmacy. The pilot, which will use a fleet of the startup's autonomous Toyota Prius vehicles and transition to using its custom-built R2 delivery bots, is slated to begin in June.

The partnership marks Nuro's expansion beyond groceries and into healthcare. Last month, the startup dipped its autonomous toe in the healthcare field through a program to delivery food and medical supplies at temporary field hospitals in California set up in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pilot program centers on one CVS Pharmacy in Bellaire, Texas and will serve customers across three zip codes. Customers who place prescription orders via CVS' website or pharmacy app will be given the option to choose an autonomous delivery option. These pharmacy customers will also be able add other non-prescription items to their order.

Once the autonomous vehicle arrives, customers will need to confirm their identification to unlock their delivery. Deliveries will be free of charge for CVS Pharmacy customers.

Planet of the Humans

A new documentary produced by Michael Moore, Planet of the Humans, was pulled from YouTube overnight – a decision writer-director Jeff Gibbs called a “blatant act of censorship.”

The film was released on YouTube on April 21, and has seen 8.3 million views since its launch.

Climate scientists and environmentalists urged for the removal of the film, calling it “dangerous, misleading and destructive”.

In a letter written by Gasland filmmaker Josh Fox and signed by scientists and activists, the way the film “trades in debunked fossil fuel industry talking points” is criticised.

Following the removal of the film, Gibbs said in a statement yesterday (May 25):  “It is a misuse of copyright law to shutdown a film that has opened a serious conversation about how parts of the environmental movement have gotten into bed with Wall Street and so-called ‘green capitalists’.

“There is absolutely no copyright violation in my film. This is just another attempt by the film’s opponents to subvert the right to free speech.”

Planet of the Humans suggests electric cars and solar energy are unreliable, relying on fossil fuels. The film also criticises Al Gore for helping corporations to test “ineffective technologies over real solutions”.

Gibbs added: “Opponents of Planet of the Humans, who do not like its critique of the failures of the environmental movement, have worked for weeks to have the film taken down and to block us from appearing on TV and on livestream.

“Their efforts to subvert free speech have failed, with nearly eight and a half million people already viewing the film on YouTube. These Trumpian tactics are shameful, and their aim to stifle free speech and prevent people from grappling with the uncomfortable truths exposed in this film is deeply disturbing.”

The producers subsequently announced that Planet of the Humans will now stream for free on Vimeo.

***

The controversial film Planet of the Humans, produced by Michael Moore, was taken down from YouTube on Monday because of a copyright infringement claim. The complaint was filed by photographer Toby Smith, who was alarmed that his work was used in a film that he doesn’t support, The Guardian reports.

“I don’t agree with its message and I don’t like the misleading use of facts in its narrative,” Smith said to The Guardian. A few seconds of Smith’s video, Rare Earthenware, were used in Moore’s film, which criticizes renewable energy.

A firestorm of criticism from influential environmental advocates followed the release of Planet of the Humans in April. Among other things, the film makes the dubious claim that solar and wind power are potentially as harmful to the environment as fossil fuels and that environmentalists are essentially in the pockets of renewable energy corporations. Those claims have been torn apart by environmentalists and scientists who say that the film’s assertions are misleading.

“There is no perfect solution to our energy challenges. But this film does not grapple with these thorny questions; it peddles falsehoods,” Leah Stokes, UC Santa Barbara assistant professor and author of the book on clean energy Short Circuiting Policy, wrote for Vox.

how the world’s worst pandemics finally ended

As human civilizations flourished, so did infectious disease. Large numbers of people living in close proximity to each other and to animals, often with poor sanitation and nutrition, provided fertile breeding grounds for disease. And new overseas trading routes spread the novel infections far and wide, creating the first global pandemics.

Here’s how five of the world’s worst pandemics finally ended.

1. Plague of Justinian—No One Left to Die

2. Black Death—The Invention of Quarantine

3. The Great Plague of London—Sealing Up the Sick

4. Smallpox—A European Disease Ravages the New World

5. Cholera—A Victory for Public Health Research

***

We know how the COVID-19 pandemic began: Bats near Wuhan, China, hold a mix of coronavirus strains, and sometime last fall one of the strains, opportunistic enough to cross species lines, left its host or hosts and ended up in a person. Then it was on the loose.

What no one knows yet is how the pandemic will end. This coronavirus is unprecedented in the combination of its easy transmissibility, a range of symptoms going from none at all to deadly, and the extent that it has disrupted the world. A highly susceptible population led to near exponential growth in cases. “This is a distinct and very new situation,” says epidemiologist and evolutionary biologist Sarah Cobey of the University of Chicago.

But past pandemics do offer hints of the future. While there is no one historical example to follow, humanity has gone through several large epidemics in the past 100 or so years that eventually stopped ravaging society. The ways they came to a halt offer guidance to a world looking for ways to restore health and some sense of normalcy. Three of those experiences, Cobey and other experts say, suggest that what happens next depends on both the evolution of the pathogen and of the human response to it, both biological and social.

***

In this article, we take a look back at some of the other pandemics that humans have endured. Specifically, we investigate cholera, the Black Death, and the Spanish flu, among others. We will note any similarities and take lessons where we can.

***

Pandemics end when the virus doesn't have enough susceptible people to infect.

The catastrophic 1918 Spanish flu pandemic is thought to have infected 500 million people worldwide, many of them soldiers living in close quarters fighting in World War I. Once the war ended and people dispersed, the spread slowed as people had less contact. But the flu was ultimately halted in part because those who survived it had immunity and the virus didn't hop as easily as it did at the beginning.

If the virus comes into contact with another person but that person isn't susceptible to the disease, then that chain of transmission is snuffed out. If one person infects two, those people together infect four and so on, and eventually, the virus runs out of susceptible people to infect, said Joshua Epstein, a professor of epidemiology at New York University. "What happens typically is that enough people get the bug that there just aren't enough susceptible people to keep the chain going."

***

Even a perfect response won’t end the pandemic. As long as the virus persists somewhere, there’s a chance that one infected traveler will reignite fresh sparks in countries that have already extinguished their fires. This is already happening in China, Singapore, and other Asian countries that briefly seemed to have the virus under control. Under these conditions, there are three possible endgames: one that’s very unlikely, one that’s very dangerous, and one that’s very long.

The first is that every nation manages to simultaneously bring the virus to heel, as with the original SARS in 2003. Given how widespread the coronavirus pandemic is, and how badly many countries are faring, the odds of worldwide synchronous control seem vanishingly small.

The second is that the virus does what past flu pandemics have done: It burns through the world and leaves behind enough immune survivors that it eventually struggles to find viable hosts. This “herd immunity” scenario would be quick, and thus tempting. But it would also come at a terrible cost: SARS-CoV-2 is more transmissible and fatal than the flu, and it would likely leave behind many millions of corpses and a trail of devastated health systems. The United Kingdom initially seemed to consider this herd-immunity strategy, before backtracking when models revealed the dire consequences. The U.S. now seems to be considering it too.

The third scenario is that the world plays a protracted game of whack-a-mole with the virus, stamping out outbreaks here and there until a vaccine can be produced. This is the best option, but also the longest and most complicated.

It depends, for a start, on making a vaccine. If this were a flu pandemic, that would be easier. The world is experienced at making flu vaccines and does so every year. But there are no existing vaccines for coronaviruses—until now, these viruses seemed to cause diseases that were mild or rare—so researchers must start from scratch.

***

The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the deadliest in history, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide—about one-third of the planet’s population—and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims, including some 675,000 Americans. The 1918 flu was first observed in Europe, the United States and parts of Asia before swiftly spreading around the world. At the time, there were no effective drugs or vaccines to treat this killer flu strain. Citizens were ordered to wear masks, schools, theaters and businesses were shuttered and bodies piled up in makeshift morgues before the virus ended its deadly global march.

By the summer of 1919, the flu pandemic came to an end, as those that were infected either died or developed immunity.

crises lead to innovation

Economic, geopolitical, and health crises throughout human history have often spurred a flurry of innovation, production, and growth. The Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 and 1919 – which killed some 50 million people worldwide – eventually gave way to the “Roaring Twenties,” one of the most productive economic periods the country has ever experienced.5 World War II brought women into the workforce and turned factories in the US into wartime production facilities, assembling all of the materials needed to win the war. There are countless other examples.

These crises are never welcomed ones, and they often lead to devastating, tragic losses. But we must also remember that crises are inevitable – they are part of the human story and always will be.

-- Mitch on the Markets, 5/2/20

are we living in The Matrix?

If you, me and every person and thing in the cosmos were actually characters in some giant computer game, we would not necessarily know it. The idea that the universe is a simulation sounds more like the plot of “The Matrix,” but it is also a legitimate scientific hypothesis. In 2016, researchers pondered the controversial notion at the annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate here at the American Museum of Natural History.

A popular argument for the simulation hypothesis came from University of Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrum in 2003, when he suggested that members of an advanced civilization with enormous computing power might decide to run simulations of their ancestors. They would probably have the ability to run many, many such simulations, to the point where the vast majority of minds would actually be artificial ones within such simulations, rather than the original ancestral minds. So simple statistics suggest it is much more likely that we are among the simulated minds.

And there are other reasons to think we might be virtual. For instance, the more we learn about the universe, the more it appears to be based on mathematical laws. Perhaps that is not a given, but a function of the nature of the universe we are living in. “If I were a character in a computer game, I would also discover eventually that the rules seemed completely rigid and mathematical,” said Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “That just reflects the computer code in which it was written.”

coronavirus modeling

As with simulations of Earth’s changing climate or what happens when a nuclear bomb detonates in a city, the goal here is to make an informed prediction—within a range of uncertainty—about the future. When data is sparse, which happens when a virus crosses over into humans for the first time, models can vary widely in terms of assumptions, uncertainties, and conclusions. But governors and task force leads still tout their models from behind podiums, increasingly famous modeling labs release regular reports into the content mills of the press and social media, and policymakers still use models to make decisions. In the case of Covid-19, responding to those models may yet be the difference between global death tolls in the thousands or the millions. Models are imperfect, but they’re better than flying blind—if you use them right.

you look so healthy and youthful

Researchers at Stanford University report that they can rejuvenate human cells by reprogramming them back to a youthful state. They hope that the technique will help in the treatment of diseases, such as osteoarthritis and muscle wasting, that are caused by the aging of tissue cells.

A major cause of aging is thought to be the errors that accumulate in the epigenome, the system of proteins that packages the DNA and controls access to its genes. The Stanford team, led by Tapash Jay Sarkar, Dr. Thomas A. Rando and Vittorio Sebastiano, say their method, designed to reverse these errors and walk back the cells to their youthful state, does indeed restore the cells’ vigor and eliminate signs of aging.

In their report, published in Nature Communications, they described their technique as “a significant step toward the goal of reversing cellular aging” and could produce therapies “for aging and aging-related diseases.”

Leonard P. Guarente, an expert on aging at MIT, said the method was “one of the most promising areas of aging research” but that it would take a long time to develop drugs based on RNA, the required chemical.

The Stanford approach utilizes powerful agents known as Yamanaka factors, which reprogram a cell’s epigenome to its time zero, or embryonic state.

Embryonic cells, derived from the fertilized egg, can develop into any of the specialized cell types of the body. Their fate, whether to become a skin or eye or liver cell, is determined by chemical groups, or marks, that are tagged on their epigenome.

In each type of cell, these marks make accessible only the genes that the cell type needs, while locking down all other genes in the DNA. The pattern of marks thus establishes each cell’s identity. As the cell ages, it accumulates errors in the marking system, which degrade the cell’s efficiency at switching on and off the genes needed for its operations.

In 2006, Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, a stem cell researcher at Kyoto University, amazed biologists by showing that a cell’s fate could be reversed with a set of four transcription factors — agents that activate genes — that he had identified. A cell dosed with the Yamanaka factors erases the marks on the epigenome so the cell loses its identity and reverts to the embryonic state. Erroneous marks gathered during aging are also lost in the process, restoring the cell to its state of youth.

Yamanaka shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in medicine for the work.

But the Yamanaka factors are no simple panacea.

Applied to whole mice, the factors made cells lose their functions and primed them for rapid growth, usually cancerous; the mice all died.

In 2016, Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego found that the two effects of the Yamanaka factors — erasing cell identity and reversing aging — could be separated, with a lower dose securing just age reversal. But he achieved this by genetically engineering mice, a technique not usable in people.

In their paper last week, the Stanford team described a feasible way to deliver Yamanaka factors to cells taken from patients, by dosing cells kept in cultures with small amounts of the factors.

If dosed for a short enough time, the team reported, the cells retained their identity but returned to a youthful state, as judged by several measures of cell vigor.

-- Nicholas Wade, New York Times (printed in star advertiser)

Bill Gates leaving Microsoft board

Microsoft announced on Friday that Bill Gates is leaving the board, effective Friday. Gates is also stepping down from his position on the board of Berkshire Hathaway.

“I have made the decision to step down from both of the public boards on which I serve – Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway – to dedicate more time to philanthropic priorities including global health and development, education, and my increasing engagement in tackling climate change,” Gates said on LinkedIn. “The leadership at the Berkshire companies and Microsoft has never been stronger, so the time is right to take this step.”

“With respect to Microsoft, stepping down from the board in no way means stepping away from the company,” Gates said. “Microsoft will always be an important part of my life’s work and I will continue to be engaged with Satya and the technical leadership to help shape the vision and achieve the company’s ambitious goals. I feel more optimistic than ever about the progress the company is making and how it can continue to benefit the world.”

Gates co-founded Microsoft in 1975 with Paul Allen, who died in 2018. Gates was CEO until 2000 when Steve Ballmer took over the role. Microsoft’s current CEO, Satya Nadella, took over in 2014. Gates was director of the board at Microsoft until 2014 but began dedicating more of his time to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2008.

Gates is among Microsoft’s top shareholders. He owns 1.36% of shares, according to FactSet. The company went public in 1986 and is now one of the most highly valued companies in the world with a market cap of $1.21 trillion.

“It’s been a tremendous honor and privilege to have worked with and learned from Bill over the years,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

“Bill founded our company with a belief in the democratizing force of software and a passion to solve society’s most pressing challenges. And Microsoft and the world are better for it. The board has benefited from Bill’s leadership and vision. And Microsoft will continue to benefit from Bill’s ongoing technical passion and advice to drive our products and services forward. I am grateful for Bill’s friendship and look forward to continuing to work alongside him to realize our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”

Roku remote problems (adventures with)

[1/31/20] Lost the connection to the Roku remote and had to set it up again to control the TV.  I tried code 6 as described below, but it didn't work.  Then I just tried to follow the instructions are normal and it worked!  Perhaps, Roku updated the software?  I believe when I followed the prompted instructions previously, I would control the volume but couldn't turn off/on the TV.

[transcribed from my 6/13/19 notes]  When I first tried to get my Roku Ultra remote to control my Panasonic plasma TV, it didn't completely work.  Changing the volume worked, but it wouldn't turn off and on the TV.

So I experimented with different codes.  I said "no" to the code that (partially) worked and kept trying different codes.  And I finally found out that code 6 works on my Panasonic.

If the Roku remote doesn't auto-detect your TV correctly, it's still possible that you could get it to work.  But you would have to manually look for the right code via trial and error.

[12/8/15] Noticed there's a another company selling replacement Roku remotes that may have been a better choice.  The company is gcegroup.  In their description for their replacement remote is "Quality talks! For same price why buy a cheaply made item? Cheaply made remotes out there don't have the little stabilizing pads beneath buttons/keys, and makes it feel like falling into a black hole when pressing the buttons, which kills the joy of "pressing buttons".  Among all the replacements you can find on eBay, we are very confident that our product quality is the best."  Well, maybe next time..

[11/23/15] The replacement Roku remote arrived today.  The buttons are a little mushy compared to the original Roku remote, but they all worked.  Good enough for me.

Proceeded to teach the Philips remote the Roku keys.  But at first I pressed the CBL button (which was being used for the Apple TV) and messed up the MENU and GUIDE buttons.  I actually wanted to use AUX for the Roku.

Programmed the up, down, left, right, and OK buttons.  That was straight-forward.  Then chose to program the MENU and GUIDE buttons as back and home, mainly because their locations correspond to the locations on the Roku remote.  Then the rewind, play/pause, forward buttons were also straight-forward.  I decided on the INFO button for the *.  And decided to map the replay button to the Philips L1 button because it's also labelled as INST REPLAY.

Then finally fixed the CBL mode (for the Apple TV).  Set the GUIDE button back to default (had to look in the instructions to see how to do that).  And re-learn MENU from the Apple remote.

So now the Philips is programmed for my Panasonic TV (TV), Toshiba DVD recorder (DVR), Sony Blu-Ray player (DVD), Apple TV (CBL), and Roku (AUX).  Unused so far are SAT and HD.

[11/14/15] As chronicled recently, the One For All remote has broken down.  A number of the keys stopped working.  Most of the keys for the Roku still work, but not the right arrow key.

I was going to buy a replacement remote for the Roku, but I wound up buying a Philips universal learning remote.  The idea was that I could use it to replace the One For All plus it had a code for the Roku.  And even if the code failed, I figured I might be able to learn the Roku codes from the One For All which occasionally would start working before not working again.

Anyway, the code didn't work and the the One For All seems to be degrading further, so I decided to order a replacement remote from eBay (partsoutletstore).  Looking at my entry just below, they now are going for about half the price (in the $7 range) from a year ago.  Then I can teach the Roku to the Philips.  Stay tuned.

[11/7/14] Apparently the remote for my Roku HD is wearing out.

At one time, it seemed to stop working, but then it started working again.

But when it works, sometimes I have to hold the button down for a period of time before the signal "catches".

Anyway, it stopped working again, so I went around looking for a replacement.

The Roku site sells a replacement remote (Roku Standard Remote) for $15.  Ebay wasn't any better.

$15?  Well, I figured I could use the Roku app on my iPad in the meantime.  And maybe I could find a used one cheaper on ebay.  (No such luck).

In the meantime, my remote for my Toshiba DVD-Recorder stopped working.  So I wound up buying a One For All universal remote (see separate blog entry).  Unfortunately, the pre-programmed code didn't activate the setup button in which I could enter the setup menu or access the menu to finalize DVDs.  It's a JP1 remote which apparently is customizable so I haven't completely given up hope.

Anyway, the One For All remote supposedly supports the Roku.  It has a code in the manual, but when I tried it, the Roku wouldn't respond.  However the code for the Apple TV worked.

OK, maybe the Roku HD was bad.  So I took it to my mom's place and tried it on her Roku 2.  And it didn't work.  So maybe it's the remote after all.

Then to complicate matters a bit, my dsl modem/router went bad, so I had switched to a backup modem in tandem with my old Belkin wireless router.  But then the replacement modem/router (Pace) came.

So I couldn't use my Roku app to control the Roku on the Pace network since the Roku was never connected to it.  I had the Belkin setup as I'm having problems connecting my Vista laptop to it (that's another story).  OK plug in the Pace, but don't connect it to the internet.  And let's try that.  Maybe you don't need the internet connection for it to work with the Roku app?

The Roku connected, but not to the internet of course.  But then I couldn't connect to the new modem/router with my ipad because it wasn't connected to the internet  (or something).  Anyway Roku app wasn't connecting with the Roku.  And I had a stuck Roku.

OK what to do?  Unplug the backup modem.  Plug in the Pace and connect the phone line for internet access.  Then attach my Belkin router to the Pace.  It didn't seem to work at first.  But after a while the connection took.  I think I just had to wait.

OK, so now I have two wireless networks set up simultaneously.  You can either connect to the new modem/router (Pace) or my old Belkin router.

OK,  The Roku was still unresponsive, so unplug it and plug back in.  The Roku was connected to the Belkin.  So connect the iPad to the Belkin.  Then the Roku app worked since they were both on the same network.  Then go to settings and connect to the Pace.  OK that worked.  So now the Roku is set up to go either to the Pace or Belkin whichever one happens to be running.

In the meantime, I kept trying the flaky Roku remote and it started working again, though often I would have to press the button for a while.  It seemed to be working a little better.

Hey, why not try to learn the remote with the One For All remote.  OK, look up the manual (OARUSB04G_Manual.pdf).  You have to press and hold the LEARN button, then the device key, the press the button you want to learn.  It flashes.  Then you aim the original remote at the One For All.  If the button is learned, then it flashes twice.  [Then Press and hold the LEARN key to save your settings.
The indicator light fl ashes twice.]

OK, let's try.  Hey it's starting to work!  I couldn't map the * key for some reason to the key I wanted at first so I tried the INFO button and that worked.  I even mapped the Roku play/pause key twice -- one to the pause button and again to the play button.  However I couldn't get the OK key to work.  It wasn't working on the Roku remote.  But then it started to work sporadically.  But I couldn't get it to learn.  But I kept trying and on like the 20th try or something, it finally worked!

So I finally got a working Roku again.  I had been tempted to buy a new Roku (roku.com was selling the Roku LT for $39.95 while supplies last) since I had thought the Roku unit might be bad.  But it turns out not.  So I don't have to.

yay.

now to get my Toshiba DVD-player going.

Greta Thunberg

[1/23/20] Mnuchin vs. Thunberg

[9/23/19] Teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg on Monday opened the United Nations Climate Action Summit with an angry condemnation of world leaders for failing to take strong measures to combat climate change - “How dare you,” she said.

[9/19/19] In a Tweet, the former president shared a photo of his meeting with Thunberg, calling the Swedish climate activist "one of our planet’s greatest advocates." Thunberg is in the US ahead of a global climate strike, which will see students march on September 20 to protest inaction on climate.

China to ban plastic bags

China, one of the world's biggest users of plastic, has unveiled a major plan to reduce single-use plastics across the country.

Non-degradable bags will be banned in major cities by the end of 2020 and in all cities and towns by 2022.

The restaurant industry will also be banned from using single-use straws by the end of 2020.

China has for years been struggling to deal with the rubbish its 1.4 billion citizens generate.

The broadcaster David Attenborough has warned that the planet can't be protected unless China changes its polluting ways.

Suddenly that's just starting to happen.

China is not the only country in Asia that has cracked down against single-use plastics.

Thailand announced earlier this year that single-use plastic bags would be banned in major stores, with a complete ban across the entire country in 2021.

Indonesia's capital Jakarta also is banning single-use plastic bags in department stores, supermarkets and traditional markets by June 2020.

The Indonesian island of Bali has also banned single-use plastic.

Separately, Malaysia has sent back 150 shipping containers of illegally imported plastic waste back to their countries of origin.

"[We] will take the necessary steps to ensure that Malaysia does not become the garbage dump of the world," Environment Minister Yeo Bee Yin said on Monday.

She added that there were plans to send back further containers in the near future.

Wealthier countries have been sending plastic waste to Malaysia since 2018, but officials say they are struggling to cope with the amount that is being brought in illegally.

the best year ever?

If you’re depressed by the state of the world, let me toss out an idea: In the long arc of human history, 2019 has been the best year ever.

The bad things that you fret about are true. But it’s also true that since modern humans emerged about 200,000 years ago, 2019 was probably the year in which children were least likely to die, adults were least likely to be illiterate and people were least likely to suffer excruciating and disfiguring diseases.

Every single day in recent years, another 325,000 people got their first access to electricity. Each day, more than 200,000 got piped water for the first time. And some 650,000 went online for the first time, every single day.

Perhaps the greatest calamity for anyone is to lose a child. That used to be common: Historically, almost half of all humans died in childhood. As recently as 1950, 27% of all children still died by age 15. Now that figure has dropped to about 4%.

“If you were given the opportunity to choose the time you were born in, it’d be pretty risky to choose a time in any of the thousands of generations in the past,” noted Max Roser, an Oxford University economist who runs the Our World in Data website. “Almost everyone lived in poverty, hunger was widespread and famines common.”

But … but … but President Donald Trump! But climate change! War in Yemen! Starvation in Venezuela! Risk of nuclear war with North Korea. …

All of those are important concerns, and that’s why I write about them regularly. Yet I fear that the news media and the humanitarian world focus so relentlessly on the bad news that we leave the public believing that every trend is going in the wrong direction. A majority of Americans say in polls that the share of the world population living in poverty is increasing — yet one of the trends of the last 50 years has been a huge reduction in global poverty.

As recently as 1981, 42% of the planet’s population endured “extreme poverty,” defined by the United Nations as living on less than about $2 a day. That portion has plunged to less than 10% of the world’s population now.

Every day for a decade, newspapers could have carried the headline “Another 170,000 Moved Out of Extreme Poverty Yesterday.” Or if one uses a higher threshold, the headline could have been: “The Number of People Living on More Than $10 a Day Increased by 245,000 Yesterday.”

Many of those moving up are still very poor, of course. But because they are less poor, they are less likely to remain illiterate or to starve: People often think that famine is routine, but the last famine recognized by the World Food Program struck just part of one state in South Sudan and lasted for only a few months in 2017.

Diseases like polio, leprosy, river blindness and elephantiasis are on the decline, and global efforts have turned the tide on AIDS. Half a century ago, a majority of the world’s people had always been illiterate; now we are approaching 90% adult literacy. There have been particularly large gains in girls’ education — and few forces change the world so much as education and the empowerment of women.

You may feel uncomfortable reading this. It can seem tasteless, misleading or counterproductive to hail progress when there is still so much wrong with the world. I get that. In addition, the numbers are subject to debate, and the 2019 figures are based on extrapolation. But I worry that deep pessimism about the state of the world is paralyzing rather than empowering; excessive pessimism can leave people feeling not just hopeless but helpless.

Readers constantly tell me, for example, that if we save children’s lives, the result will be a population crisis that will cause new famines. They don’t realize that when parents are confident that their children will survive, and have access to birth control, they have fewer children. Bangladesh was once derided by Henry Kissinger as a “basket case,” yet now its economy grows much faster than America’s and Bangladeshi women average just 2.1 births (down from 6.9 in 1973).

Yes, it’s still appalling that a child dies somewhere in the world every six seconds — but consider that just a couple of decades ago, a child died every three seconds. Recognizing that progress is possible can be a spur to do more, and that’s why I write this annual reminder of gains against the common enemies of humanity.

Climate change remains a huge threat to our globe, as does compassion fatigue in the rich world, and it’s likely that we will miss a U.N. target of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030. Meanwhile, here in the United States, Trump presents a continuing challenge to our institutions, and millions of families have been left behind and are struggling. We should keep pressing on all these fronts (the last one concerns me enough that it’s the topic of my new book), but we’ll get a morale boost if we acknowledge the backdrop of hard-won improvement.

“We are some of the first people in history who have found ways to make progress against these problems,” says Roser, the economist. “We have changed the world. How awesome is it to be alive at a time like this?”

“Three things are true at the same time,” he added. “The world is much better, the world is awful, the world can be much better.”

I also take heart from the passion so many — especially young people — show to make the world a better place. I recently published my annual “gifts with meaning” guide and suggested four organizations to support in lieu of traditional presents. Readers have so far donated more than $1.6 million to those organizations, saving and transforming lives at home and around the world.

So I promise to tear my hair out every other day, but let’s interrupt our gloom for a nanosecond to note what historians may eventually see as the most important trend in the world in the early 21st century: our progress toward elimination of hideous diseases, illiteracy and the most extreme poverty.

When I was born in 1959, a majority of the world’s population had always been illiterate and lived in extreme poverty. By the time I die, illiteracy and extreme poverty may be almost eliminated — and it’s difficult to imagine a greater triumph for humanity on our watch.

-- Nicholas Kristof, New York Times

Single-use plastic ban becomes law on Oahu

Mayor Kirk Caldwell on Sunday signed into law one of the nation’s strictest bans on plastics, which will prohibit all single-use plastic plates, bowls, cups and serv­ice ware on Oahu by 2022.

Bill 40 was supported by environmental groups — including many college and high school students — who spoke of the long-term harm to the earth from continued plastic use. It was opposed by a broad spectrum of food industry and other businesses that said the bill is vague and requires too much too soon.

The bill’s effective date is Jan. 1, 2021, when plastic forks, knives and spoons would be banned while other types of service ware would be distributed to customers only upon request. The bulk of the prohibitions, however, will take place Jan. 1, 2022. That would include polystyrene and other plastic plates, bowls and other food ware, as well as the general sale of plastic products to food industry companies unless they have exemptions.

the plastic problem

Since the 1950s, when the world was first introduced to the flexible, durable wonder of plastic, 8.3 billion metric tons of it has been produced. Plastic doesn’t biodegrade, so technically, all of that tonnage is still sitting someplace on the planet. And a lot of it is in China.

That’s because when hundreds of countries around the world said they were “recycling” their plastic over the past few decades, half the time what they really meant was they were exporting it to another country. And most of the time, that meant they were exporting it to China. Since 1992, China (and Hong Kong, which acts as an entry port into mainland China) have imported 72 percent of all plastic waste.

But China has had enough. In 2017, China announced it was permanently banning the import of nonindustrial plastic waste. According to a paper published in June 2018 in the journal Science Advances, that will leave the world—mostly high-income countries—with an additional 111 million metric tons of plastic to deal with by 2030. And right now, those countries have no good way to handle it.

“We know from our previous studies that only 9 percent of all plastic ever produced has been recycled, and the majority of it ends up in landfills or the natural environment,” Jenna Jambeck, an associate professor at the University of Georgia’s college of engineering who co-authored the study, said in a statement.  ”Without bold new ideas and system-wide changes, even the relatively low current recycling rates will no longer be met, and our previously recycled materials could now end up in landfills.”

***

After decades of earnest public-information campaigns, Americans are finally recycling. Airports, malls, schools, and office buildings across the country have bins for plastic bottles and aluminum cans and newspapers. In some cities, you can be fined if inspectors discover that you haven’t recycled appropriately.

But now much of that carefully sorted recycling is ending up in the trash.

***

By 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans. PBS NewsHour takes a closer look at this now ubiquitous material, how it’s impacting the world and ways we can break our plastic addiction.

2019 U.N. Climate Report is bleak

With world leaders gathering in Madrid next week for their annual bargaining session over how to avert a climate catastrophe, the latest assessment issued by the United Nations said Tuesday that greenhouse gas emissions are still rising dangerously.

“The summary findings are bleak,” said the annual assessment, which is produced by the United Nations Environment Program and is formally known as the Emissions Gap Report. Countries have failed to halt the rise of greenhouse gas emissions despite repeated warnings from scientists, with China and the United States, the two biggest polluters, further increasing their emissions last year.

The result, the authors added, is that “deeper and faster cuts are now required.”

As if to underscore the gap between reality and diplomacy, the international climate negotiations, scheduled to begin next week, are not even designed to ramp up pledges by world leaders to cut their countries’ emissions. That deadline is still a year away.

Rather, this year’s meetings are intended to hammer out the last remaining rules on how to implement the 2015 Paris climate accord, in which every country pledged to rein in greenhouse gases, with each setting its own targets and timetables.

“Madrid is an opportunity to get on course to get the speed and trajectory right,” said Rachel Kyte, a former United Nations climate diplomat who is now dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University. “What the Emissions Gap Report does is take away any remaining plausible deniability that the current trajectory is not good enough.”

The world’s 20 richest countries, responsible for more than three-fourths of worldwide emissions, must take the biggest, swiftest steps to move away from fossil fuels, the report emphasized. The richest country of all, the United States, however, has formally begun to pull out of the Paris accord.

Global greenhouse gas emissions have grown by 1.5 percent every year over the last decade, according to the annual assessment. The opposite must happen if the world is to avoid the worst effects of climate change, including more intense droughts, stronger storms and widespread hunger by midcentury. To stay within relatively safe limits, emissions must decline sharply, by 7.6 percent every year, between 2020 and 2030, the report warned.

Separately, the World Meteorological Organization reported on Monday that emissions of three major greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — have all swelled in the atmosphere since the mid-18th century.

“We are sleepwalking toward a climate catastrophe and need to wake up and take urgent action,” said Alden Meyer, director of policy and strategy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, on a phone call with reporters Tuesday after the publication of the report.

Even if every country fulfills its current pledges under the Paris Agreement — and many, including the United States, Brazil and Australia, are currently not on track to do so — the Emissions Gap Report found average temperatures are on track to rise by 3.2 degrees Celsius from the baseline average temperature at the start of the industrial age.

According to scientific models, that kind of temperature rise sharply increases the likelihood of extreme weather events, the accelerated melting of glaciers and swelling seas — all endangering the lives of billions of people.

The Paris Agreement resolved to hold the increase in global temperatures well below 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit; last year, a United Nations-backed panel of scientists said the safer limit was to keep it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

There are many ways to reduce emissions: quitting the combustion of fossil fuels, especially coal, the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel; switching to renewable energy like solar and wind power; moving away from gas- and diesel-guzzling cars; and halting deforestation.

In fact, many countries are headed in the wrong direction. A separate analysis made public this month looked at how much coal, oil and natural gas the world’s nations have said they expect to produce and sell through 2030. If all those fossil fuels were ultimately extracted and burned, the report found, countries would collectively miss their climate pledges, as well as the global 2 degree Celsius target, by an even larger margin than previously thought.

A number of countries around the world, including Canada and Norway, have made plans to reduce emissions at home while expanding fossil-fuel production for sale abroad, that report noted.

“At a global level, it doesn’t add up,” said Michael Lazarus, a lead author of the report and director of the Stockholm Environment Institute’s United States Center. To date, he noted, discussions on whether and how to curb the production of fossil fuels have been almost entirely absent from international climate talks.

The International Energy Agency recently singled out the proliferation of sport utility vehicles, noting that the surge of S.U.V.s, which consume more gasoline than conventional cars, could wipe out much of the oil savings from a nascent electric-car boom.

“For 10 years, the Emissions Gap Report has been sounding the alarm — and for 10 years, the world has only increased its emissions,” the United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, said in a statement. “There has never been a more important time to listen to the science. Failure to heed these warnings and take drastic action to reverse emissions means we will continue to witness deadly and catastrophic heat waves, storms and pollution.”

The pressure on world leaders to pivot away from fossil fuels and rebuild the engine of the global economy comes at a time when the appetite for international cooperation is extremely low, nationalist sentiments are on the rise, and several world leaders have deep ties to the industries that are the biggest sources of planet-warming emissions.

If there’s any good news in the report, it’s that the current trajectory is not as dire as it was before countries around the world started taking steps to cut their emissions. The 2015 Emissions Gap Report said that, without any climate policies at all, the world was likely to face around 4 degrees Celsius of warming.

Coal use is declining sharply, especially in the United States and Western Europe, according to an analysis by Carbon Brief. Renewable energy is expanding fast, though not nearly as fast as necessary. City and state governments around the world, including in the United States, are rolling out stricter rules on tailpipe pollution from cars.

Young people are protesting by the millions in rich and poor countries alike. Even in the United States, with its persistent denialist movement, how to deal with climate change is a resonant issue in the presidential campaign.

computer debates itself

The chamber hushed as the debate got underway at the Cambridge Union and the teams launched into their carefully crafted opening statements.

The topic - whether artificial intelligence would do more harm than good - was something each side had a big stake in because both were using the technology to deliver their arguments.

Cambridge University, home to the world’s oldest debating society, was the setting Thursday night for a demonstration of what the future might hold. IBM’s Project Debater, a robot that has already debated humans, was for the first time being pitted against itself, at least in the first round.

Artificial intelligence “will not be able to make a decision that is the morally correct one, because morality is unique to humans,” the computer system said in a synthetic and vaguely feminine voice.
“It cannot make moral decisions easily and can lead to disasters. AI can cause a lot of harm,” it continued. Artificial intelligence can only make decisions it has been programmed for and “it is not possible to program for all scenarios, only humans can."

Then, the machine switched sides, delivering the opposing team’s argument.

Artificial intelligence “will be a great advantage as it will free up more time from having to do mundane and repetitive tasks,” it said, its voice embodied by a blue waveform on a screen set into a two-meter-tall sleek black monolith-like pillar.

Audience members at the society, which has hosted notable figures including British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the Dalai Lama, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates over its 200-year history, were spellbound by its first non-human guest.

U Must Have Antenna

[5/7/19] Saw this antenna on sale at Amazon and it had good ratings, so I decided to try it out.   It think it was a $25 or $30 antenna and I got it for $15.45.  [I no longer see the item being sold at Amazon -- but the 1byone antenna seems similar.]

This antenna comes with an amplifier, but I first tried it without it first.

My first attempt was to put the antenna above the hallway.  That way it had better height than if I just put it next to the TV.

The first scan caught 18 channels plus 3 channels that were weak.

Then I plugged in the amplified and it caught only 9 channels.

Finally I tried extending the cable and put it by the couch near the window.  That gave the best results catching 31 channels plus 4 weak channels.

A few weeks later [5/31/19], I hooked it up to the TV at the back of the house.  It caught only 4 channels.

Here's the results:

 CH          hallway w/amp  couch  back

 2-1 KHON-HD    x             x      x

 2-2 KHON-CW    x             x      x

 2-3 KHON-GT    x             x      x

 2-4 KHON-LF    x             x      x

 4-1 KITV-HD    x      x      x

 4-2 MeTV       x      x      x

 4-3 KITV-D3    x      x      x

 4-4 Start TV   x      x      x

 4-5 H&I        x      x      x

 5-1 KGMB                     x

 5-2 THIS                     x

 5-3 Escape                   x

 5-4 Bounce                   x

 9-1 KHII DT                  x

11-1 KHET-1     w             x

11-2 KHET-2     w             x

11-3 KHET-3     w             x

13-1 KHNL-DT                  x

13-2 K5                       x

13-3 Ant TV                   x

13-4 Grit                     x

14-1 KWHE-D1    x      x      x

14-2 KWHE-D2    x      x      x

20-1 KIKU                     w

20-2 EVINE                    w

20-3 LAFF                     w

20-4 SonLife                  x

26-1 KAAH-D1    x             x

26-2 Hillsng                  x

26-3 KAAH-D3    x             x

26-4 KAAH-D4    x             x

26-5 KAAH-D5    x             x

27-3 

32-1 KBFD-D1    x      x      x

32-2 KBFD-D2    x      x      x

38-1 KALO                     x

So I can get a good signal at my house, but it has to be at the front of the house, not the back.

Saw this video from Reviews.org on youtube comparing antennas from Amazon.  The winner was the one from Vansky.  It's currently selling for $22.99, so I'm tempted to try this next.

Then saw this video from Freakin' reviews on youtube.  The $3 antenna was just about as the good as the more expensive models.