MY WRITING JOURNAL

Wednesday, September 1

Tuesday, August 31

A few Funnies

Childhood obesity is on the increase...

What if your car could drop you off and then find parking by itself? According to electric vehicle entrepreneur Freeman H. Shen, this technology already exists. He shares his vision for a future where AI-powered electric vehicles will solve many of the problems cars currently cause, like smog, traffic congestion, accidents and, yes, endlessly circling the block looking for somewhere to park.

Let's Get WOKE

Stupidly Silly

PAUL SIMON: Apartheid South Africa

Paul Simon’s album placed South African music centre stage in western culture for the first time – and would also land the musician in the eye of a political storm that would result in violence and assassination threats. Mark Beaumont explores the album’s tempestuous journey

Weekends in Soweto, South Africa, circa 1985, were the best time to be a musician. The police stayed home for a few days, so they weren’t out patrolling, following the sounds of music to unlicensed rehearsal sessions to confiscate instruments and throw them in the sea.

There was no need for black artists to hide under blankets in the back of cars to get to gigs with white players in Johannesburg; the township itself came alive with music and colour. Bands struck up in every corner. Church choirs would gather in neighbours’ homes. Tribes would parade the streets singing the songs of their native tongues.

“From Zulu to Sotho to Xhosa to Shangaan…every weekend everybody dressed up with some colourful clothes,” remembers Bakithi Kumalo, a local session bassist at the time, who’d grown up learning how to mimic the tribes’ melodies on his bass. “They pass by, they sing the language and that was a good time to relax, the weekend, because there’s no government control.”

Between sessions for South African singers, recording 20 songs a day for a $5 fee, Kumalo was working as a mechanic to help buy medicine for his sick mother – one of the 16 family members sharing his four-bedroom house – when the call came from the unknown American.

His boss relayed a message from his regular producer Hendrick Lebone that an out-of-towner was coming to Johannesburg for “a big project” and his playing was requested. At first, Kumalo was nervous, an almost perpetual state for the people of Soweto under apartheid. READ MORE

Sharing

Introverts Understand Better

Many of us tend to think of personality traits as either good or bad. Being anxious, for instance, is somewhere between unpleasant and debilitating. Extroversion generally helps people enjoy life and get ahead. But studies suggest things aren't nearly that simple. Almost every "good" trait also has drawbacks, and every "negative" one confers benefits.

Anxiety, for instance, can keep you from enjoying life and taking healthy risks. It also keeps you safe and improves your memory. Introversion is similar. Being quieter is definitely a handicap when it comes to standing out in a noisy world -- studies show that just talking a lot leads people to assume you're leadership material -- but as recent Yale research underlines, being an introvert also has big upsides.

Introverted folks, the study found, may not enjoy people as much as extroverts, but they understand them better. The shy and retiring actually have a much more accurate understanding of the psychology of others than those who spend more time socializing.

Introverts are better "natural psychologists"
Psychologists spend huge amounts of energy developing and carrying out studies to better understand the intricacies of human behavior. It turns out they could probably save themselves a lot of time just by asking the wallflower observing everyone from the corner at parties.

First, the Yale team tested nearly a thousand volunteers to see how accurately they could answer questions about well-established psychological truths -- questions like "Do people work harder in groups or individually?" or "Does taking out your frustrations on a pillow or stuffed toy make you feel better when you're angry?" (The research validated answers are "individually" and "no," if you're curious). Then they gave the volunteers a battery of personality tests. The shy and melancholy definitively outperformed the jovial and friendly. READ MORE

Rocky Horrow Picture Show

During The American Revolution

A new book highlights the writings of Jane Strachey, a middle-class woman whose husband worked for the famed Howe family.

hear the bell at the gate, or the door open.”These lines, written a month after the United States declared its independence from Britain, evoke the letters written by Abigail Adams to her husband, John, while he was at the Continental Congress. Between 1774 and 1777, the couple exchanged over 300 letters celebrated for their poignant blending of war and politics with domestic concerns and heartfelt devotion.

Yet the words above came from the pen of Englishwoman Jane Strachey, who was separated from her husband by 3,000 miles of ocean. In August 1776, English Member of Parliament Henry Strachey was at the epicenter of the looming confrontation between the British and American armies in New York, serving on the administrative staff of Admiral Richard Lord Howe and General William Howe.

Jane’s letters, composed between 1776 and 1778, are buried in the Strachey family papers at the Somerset Archives in England. The private correspondence of a middle-class English wife, they have been virtually ignored by historians of the home front in Britain during the American Revolution. Yet they open a unique window into the experience of ordinary British women. And their intimate tone, everyday detail and authentic chronicling of wartime events provide a fascinating parallel to Adams’ letters. READ MORE

Jump Down

Monday, August 30

It's Just Joe Biden

Independent Press

Two Laughs

Moon Walk

Gut Bacteria

Flavonoid-rich foods, including berries, apples, pears and wine, appear to have a positive effect on blood pressure levels, an association that is partially explained by characteristics of the gut microbiome, according to new research published today in Hypertension, an American Heart Association journal.

"Our gut microbiome plays a key role in metabolizing flavonoids to enhance their cardioprotective effects, and this study provides evidence to suggest these blood pressure-lowering effects are achievable with simple changes to the daily diet," said lead investigator of the study Aedín Cassidy, Ph.D., chair and professor in nutrition and preventive medicine at the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Flavonoids are compounds found naturally in fruits, vegetables and plant-based foods such as tea, chocolate and wine, and have been shown in previous research to offer a variety of health benefits to the body. Flavonoids are broken down by the body's gut microbiome—the bacteria found in the digestive tract.

Recent studies found a link between gut microbiota, the microorganisms in the human digestive tract, and cardiovascular disease (CVD), which is the leading cause of death worldwide. Gut microbiota is highly variable between individuals, and there are reported differences in gut microbial compositions among people with and without CVD.

With increased research suggesting flavonoids may reduce heart disease risk, this study assessed the role of the gut microbiome on the process. Researchers examined the association between eating flavonoid-rich foods with blood pressure and gut microbiome diversity. The study also investigated how much variance within the gut microbiome could explain the association between intake of flavonoid-rich foods and blood pressure. READ MORE

Ball Roller

Ten Quadrillion Power Watts

Scientists used an unconventional method of creating nuclear fusion to yield a record-breaking burst of energy of more than 10 quadrillion watts, by firing intense beams of light from the world's largest lasers at a tiny pellet of hydrogen.

Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California said they had focused 192 giant lasers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) onto a pea-size pellet, resulting in the release of 1.3 megajoules of energy in 100 trillionths of a second — roughly 10% of the energy of the sunlight that hits Earth every moment, and about 70% of the energy that the pellet had absorbed from the lasers.

The scientists hope one day to reach the break-even or "ignition" point of the pellet, where it gives off 100% or more energy than it absorbs. The energy yield is significantly larger than the scientists expected and much greater than the previous record of 170 kilojoules they set in February.

The researchers hope the result will expand their ability to research nuclear fusion weapons, the NIF's core mission, and that it could lead to new ways to harness energy from nuclear fusion — the process that powers the sun and other stars. Some scientists hope that nuclear fusion could one day be a relatively safe and sustainable method for generating energy on Earth.

"This result is a historic step forward for inertial confinement fusion research, opening a fundamentally new regime for exploration and the advancement of our critical national security missions," Kim Budil, the director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said in a statement. READ MORE