Meta Values - 7

What people don't say, says more about them than what they say. 

Malice - Gasoline Leaf Blower

Regarding nitrogen oxide, the California Air Resources Board figures that using a gas-powered leaf blower for an hour emits as much as driving a Toyota Camry from Los Angeles to Denver. Of course, gas-powered leaf blowers also spew climate-wrecking CO2, but their nitrogen oxide emissions have an outsized climate impact: the EPA estimates that one pound of nitrous oxide has almost 300 times as much global warming effect as a pound of carbon dioxide.

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People use leaf blowers, blasting air at up to 280 miles an hour, to remove tree leaves, with the ultimate goal of keeping their lawns looking neat. But leaf litter is habitat for worms and insect larvae. Leaf blowers are just one reason the total biomass of insects on the planet is declining by about 2 percent per year. Leaf litter also protects and builds topsoil, of which we’re losing tens of billions of tons per year globally. So, we’re using noisy, polluting machines to do things that, in many cases, we really shouldn’t be doing in the first place.

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Then there’s the problem of economic inequality. Who actually uses leaf-blowers? In most cases, it’s low-income landscape workers, who are exposed to the air pollution and noise from leaf blowers at close range over sustained periods of time. Gas-powered lawn care has been linked to debilitating health issues like cancer, asthma, heart disease, and hearing loss; so, unsurprisingly, it’s the less-well-off who face the brunt of those health insults.

Stepping back, we see this general pattern reflected in the rest of industrial society: just as leaf-blower noise and air pollution gets shunted mostly toward low-paid landscape workers, resource extraction and polluting industries tend to be located near marginalized communities, nationally and globally. Therefore, the leaf blower just binds us more strongly to already unfair and dangerous social trends.

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The only way to avoid those ill effects would be simply to use less energy—which means doing less with machines, and more with human hands and feet. This is why electric cars are not as much of a solution to climate change as the simple overall reduction of powered transport.

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But, back to the leaf blower. Why make such a big deal over so small a problem? Compared to the existential predicaments we humans face (including climate change, hyper-partisan politics fueled by spiraling economic inequality and social media algorithms, nuclear weapons, and “forever chemicals” disrupting human and animal reproduction), the gasoline-powered leaf blower is just an annoyance. Why not just use the electric blower and leave it at that? After all, it’s better than the gas version.

Sorry, I can’t stop there. Call it the curse of knowing too much. Yes, Janet and I will keep using our electric blower where raking is impractical. But every time I pick up the machine, I’m reminded that our society’s overall socio-economic model is unsustainable and anti-life. We need far, far more than a green energy retrofit. We need an entirely different way of existing on this unique, imperiled planet—a way that many Indigenous people are still familiar with.

Buying an electric leaf blower was an interesting experiment that we may not repeat. I’m glad we kept our rake. It gets a lot more use.

- More Here

Eating Animals

Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn't motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn't enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?

― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals 

 

Another day, another "traditional" day. Another free pass for humans to feast on poor animals' dead bodies. 

Another day, where most couldn't find a moment to look at the realities of billions suffering every microsecond.

Another day, complex systems are slowly in its unique ways working on eliminating sufferings. 

Another day, impermanence of life flourishes. 

Another day, I salute the few good men and women who worked and work tirelessly to reduce pain and suffering. 

Jonathan Foer's book was made into a documentary: 

While it is always possible to wake a person who's sleeping, no amount of noise will wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.

 

The Past And Future Of Genomics

But more interesting than the exponential growth in data are the surprising things we have inferred from the data. In the heady early days of the publication of the draft of the human genome over twenty years ago, co-author Francis Collins asserted that the combination of molecular biology and genomics would “make a significant impact” on our attempt to understand and cure cancer. Despite some early instances where genomic sequencing was performed on cancer patients, like Steve Jobs in 2009, the overall impact of the new science on healthcare has been modest at best. Instead, paleoanthropology, prehistory, and history were transformed as genetics surveyed the pedigrees of the human past with a power and precision that would have been unimaginable a generation ago.

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This shocking result only came out through ancient DNA. Not only do modern humans have Neanderthal ancestry, but some of us have Denisovan ancestry. It comprises 5% of the heritage of Papuans and lower fractions of Denisovan ancestry are found throughout Asia. There is an open question in anthropology as to whether humans are naturally promiscuous. The data from DNA shows that our forebears were sexually open to liaisons with populations and people quite different from them, and definitely forces us to lean in one direction in the debate.

Using a genomic clock, ‌Neanderthals and modern humans became separated 600,000 years ago. The most distinct lineage in modern populations, between South African Khoisan and all other humans, clocks in at 200,000 years. Our ancestors’ sexual preferences were evidently very broad. In a cave in Russia, Researchers have even discovered a young girl whose mother was a Neanderthal and whose father was a Denisovan. Statistically, the probability of catching a first-generation hybrid is low; the fact that it was discovered shows that this behavior was common.

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The Roman recollection of the rape of the Sabine women likely reflects cultural memory of events in prehistory, where victorious males obtained mates from the lands they conquered after killing the fathers and brothers of the women they would make wives. Prehistoric human males behaved like lions taking over a pack, killing everyone among the conquered except for nubile females. Genetics shows that since the end of the last Ice Age, paternal lineages are characterized by periodic explosions, where one clan seems to have replaced all the others through a process of competition and polygyny.

Call it the “Genghis Khan effect,” but the Mongolian world emperor was simply the last in a long line of “super-males” that have defined much of the last 12,000 years. They say to believe them when they tell you who they are, and the legends of the Indo-Europeans reflect a patriarchal and warlike culture, destroyers of cities like the god Indra and near-immortal warriors like Achilles, and this is exactly what genetics tell us about them. In prehistoric Sweden, the Neolithic Megalith builders who dominated the region for more than 1000 years seem to have been totally exterminated by the invading “Battle-Axe” culture. The development of agriculture was a new technology that allowed for the expansion of human societies and the emergence of social stratification, but combined with our innate instincts, genetics make it clear that the drive to extermination manifested itself in most places and most times.

We cannot avoid what human nature was for tens of thousands of years in the past. It was bloody, it was brutal, and it was typified by genocide. This is the legacy we inherit, but it is not the legacy we need to replicate. The average life expectancy in the past was also much shorter than in the present, but the application of technology and social institutions has ameliorated the toll that disease takes on the human body. Human societies are also organisms and their rise and fall are measured in the waves of change in the genes of our own species. To the victors go the spoils and the seeds of the future. But institutions like monogamy and a modicum of wealth redistribution can be thought of as social technologies that dampen the volatility inherent in human relationships, a volatility that can manifest in chaos and warfare. Not a war of all against all, but a war where winners took all.

- Read the whole piece by Razib Khan

18 Organizations, 246 Scientists And Scholars Send Letter To New Director Of NIH, Urging Shift Away From Animal Use In Medical Research

A group of scientists, physicians, ethicists, and advocates sent a letter this Wednesday to the newly confirmed director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, urging her to reduce the agency’s use of animals in medical research. Led by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and co-signed by 246 individuals and 18 organizations, including biotechnology companies, think tanks, and animal protection groups, the letter requests that Dr. Bertagnolli prioritizes funding for developing, validating, and using nonanimal human disease models. It also requests divestment from animal use in research areas where poorly predicted human outcomes have been demonstrated, such as vaccine development and liver toxicity.

The NIH is the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, overseeing a budget of nearly $50 billion   this fiscal year. Despite evidence that animal experiments are unreliable predictors of human physiology and disease states, they remain the presumed “gold standard” in basic and preclinical research by the NIH and others within the research community. This reliance on animals contributes to failures and wasteful spending in the drug development pipeline and puts clinical trial participants at risk by failing to capture unsafe or ineffective products. It also requires that untold numbers of dogs, cats, monkeys, mice, rats, and other animals be bred and used in painful and deadly procedures—estimated to be greater than 100 million per year in the U.S.

The multistakeholder letter urges Dr. Bertagnolli to provide a clear vision that prioritizes the development and use of nonanimal, human-specific research approaches. These models can account for complex and diverse human risk factors in ways that cannot be done with animals, which could contribute to the advancement of personalized medicine and the reduction of health disparities. Rapidly advancing 3D in vitro technologies, like organoids and tissue chips, can reliably mimic human biology and clinical responses in many applications, often within shorter time frames and with lower resource and ethical burdens. The existing barriers to the broader development and use of these nonanimal technologies can be overcome with high-level strategies at the NIH.

Before serving as NIH director, Dr. Bertagnolli served as director of the NIH’s National Cancer Institute since October 2022. A physician-scientist by training, as well as a cancer survivor, Bertagnolli is an advocate for patient-centered research and a champion for addressing health disparities and improving clinical trial diversity.

“The NIH has a huge opportunity here that it can’t let go to waste. We are hopeful that under Dr. Bertagnolli’s leadership, the agency will steer away from the animal use that’s holding us back and toward a human-focused research portfolio,” says Catharine E. Krebs, PhD, medical research specialist with the Physicians Committee. “Scientists, doctors, industry innovators, and the public are here to support her in this goal, to benefit both patients and animals alike.”

- More Here

Meta Values - 6

I have no beliefs, opinions, culture, tradition, fads nor ideology. There is so much reality that I will die without knowing. I spend life seeking reality. 

A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?

An Earth with climate change and nuclear war and, like, zombies and werewolves is still a way better place than Mars.

I have been saying this for 2 plus decades and finally, there is a book exposing this fantasy and pure bullshit. 

Max and I came from earth and will go back to earth. Not because we "lived" on earth but we are part of earth and -- "we are earth".   

Review of the new book, A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith.

Living on Mars, which has no birds or rain, gets less than half the sunlight per area that Earth does, and is often plagued by dust storms that further blot out the sun, could be a soul-deadening experience.

The book spends several chapters covering space law and governance, which, in the Weinersmiths’ hands, is more interesting than it sounds. They explore the philosophical question of “who owns the universe?” and shoot down a common argument “that all law is pointless because if Elon Musk has a Mars settlement, who’s going to stop him?” (“One of your authors has a brother who makes this argument. His name is Marty and he is wrong.”)

In fact, there are already frameworks that could guide space law, and the book covers them, and their alternatives, in detail. They use Earth-bound examples, like the breakup of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the governance of Antarctica to explore how various governance scenarios might play out on other planets.

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They also run through a list of “Bad Arguments for Space Settlement,” which include “Space Will Save Humanity from Near-Term Calamity by Providing a New Home,” and “Space Exploration Is a Natural Human Urge.” These detailed examinations of the stark realities regarding space travel and habitation serve as a foil to the breathlessly optimistic accounts that are so ubiquitous in popular media.

Despite often sounding like a couple of Debbie Downers, they somehow succeed at keeping the narrative upbeat and interesting. They do this with humor, frankness, and Zach’s fun sketches. Even as they shoot down a long list of space fantasies, they explore a lot of really interesting research and anecdotes (“Did you know the Colombian constitution asserts a claim to a specific region of space?”), so there’s rarely a dull moment.

The Weinersmiths view themselves not as “barriers on the road to progress” but as “guardrails” who want us to go to Mars as much as anybody. The trouble is that these self-professed science geeks (who watch late-night rocket launches with their kids) “just cannot convince ourselves that the usual arguments for space settlements are good.”

But they also assert, rather earnestly, that “If you hate our conclusions here, we have excellent news: we are not powerful people.”

And listen to the excellent interview with Zach on Russ's EconTalk.

I saw people "troubled" for wearing masks and staying home during Covid and these are people "excited" to depart to Mars - prepared to live (and poop) with 100 a pound suit in an underground bunker! 

Please depart and leave us alone. Adios!

Meta Values - 5

There are innumerable activities which are end in itself and bring immense joy. Playing with a dog to purring cat by your chest to a lazy walk to a good cry. Don't optimize nor try to "understand" them. Let magic prevail with surprise. 

Happy Birthday Neo!

Naughty, hard headed and refuse to grow up baby Neo is four today! 

Buddha's impermanence doesn't apply to him. 

Ironically, these traits of his rescued me. Thank you Neo !

Happy birthday my baby 

 

Meta Values - 4

Talk Less. Listen More. Smell. Feel. Emote. Observe, Observe, Observe Perpetually.