China's COVID Crisis

The COVID wave crashing across China right now not only threatens the billion-and-a-half Chinese. It also poses a serious danger to the rest of the world.

Leaving aside the risk to already fragile global supply chains, there’s a chance that the surge of infections in China will give the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen ample opportunity to mutate into some new and more dangerous variant. If that happens, the progress the world has made against COVID since vaccines became widely available in late 2020 could slow, if not reverse.

“There’s the distinct possibility that things will get out of control in China,” John Swartzberg, a professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at the University of California-Berkeley's School of Public Health, told The Daily Beast. “If that happens,” Swartzberg added, “there will be a remarkable amount of viral reproduction occurring in people and this will increase the possibility of problematic variants being produced.”

Experts disagree just how likely it is that the next major variant—“lineage” is the scientific term—might emerge in China. Ben Cowling, a professor of epidemiology at The University of Hong Kong, said the next major lineage may come from countries where the virus has already swept through the population. Somewhere in Europe, or the U.S.

But there are unique dynamics that boost the chances of a new SARS-CoV-2 lineage appearing in China. The Chinese population is huge—and might be way less protected against infection and thus viral mutation than, say, Americans or Europeans.

This disparity is partly the consequence of China’s earlier success against COVID. For more than two years, the Chinese government and health establishment managed to suppress the novel-coronavirus. This despite the pathogen likely originating at a meat market in Wuhan in east-central China in late 2019.

Thanks to China’s frequently severe limits on crowds and travel daily, the country went two years with practically no COVID. Yes, there were a few tens of thousands of cases across the vast country during the initial wave of infections in the spring of 2020. But after that, almost nothing. So few cases that the 150 or so daily new infections authorities logged in mid-January 2021 qualified as a surge.  READ MORE...

Horse Pals

 

Party of White Supremacy

Ibram X. Kendi visits Build to discuss the book Stamped: Racism, 

Antiracism and You at Build Studio on March 10, 2020 in New York 

City. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images) (Michael Loccisano)

A professor at Boston University said that Republicans are "the party of white supremacy."

In an op-ed for The Atlantic, Ibram X. Kendi, Boston University Andrew W. Mellon professor in the Humanities and Director of the Center for Antiracist Research said that Republicans are not the party of "any group of parents," but rather "the party of white supremacy."

Kendi wrote in the op-ed that Republican opposition to critical race theory means it is "clearly" not the party of parents.

"The Republican Party is clearly not the party of parents. The Republican Party is certainly not the party of parents of color. But is the Republican Party even the party of white parents?" Kendi wrote.

He stated that Republican "branding" of being the "party of parents" is a "myth" that's equivalent to "the great lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump," adding that it has been built on "false conceptual building blocks.

Kendi says that the "false conceptual building blocks" are "Republican politicians care about white children," "Anti-racist education is harmful to white children," "Republican politicians are protecting white children by banning anti-racist education," and "Republican politicians are protecting white children by banning anti-racist education."

He goes on to say that if Republican politicians care about White children, "they would not be ignoring or downplaying or defending or bolstering the principal racial threat facing white youth today."

Falling Apart

 

Preferred Pronoun Controversy

A public university in Ohio will pay $400,000 in damages and attorney fees after punishing a professor for declining a male student's demand to be referred to as a female.

Nick Meriwether, a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University, responded to a male student's question during a January 2018 political philosophy class by saying "Yes, sir." 

When the class ended, the student identified to the professor as transgender, and demanded to be referred to as a woman in the future, along with "feminine titles and pronouns," according to the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the professor in court. 

Doing so, Meriwether maintained, would have violated his convictions as a Christian.

Meriwether didn't agree to the student's request, and court documents state that the student became belligerent and told the professor that he would be fired.

The student filed a complaint with the university, launching an investigation which eventually determined that Meriwether "effectively created a hostile environment" for the student because he would not use the preferred pronouns. 

Meriwether did offer to call the student by any name requested, but the student did not accept the offer.   READ MORE...

Flashing Art

Some Passing Thoughts as You Walk With Me...

Some thoughts about Easter Sunday...  if you don't mind...
 

I began a novel a few years ago that had the title YOU CANNOT GET THERE FROM HERE...  it was going to be a religious novel of sorts that focused on the trinity of man:  the heart...  the soul...  the mind...

I had not decided if it was going to be a self-help type of novel or a fictional novel but I was damn sure that it was going to revolve around the stages through which everyone passes.  These stages are:

• unconscious perfection
• unconscious imperfection
• conscious imperfection
• conscious perfection

Unconscious perfection happens to us at the moment of our birth and lasts a good year or two.  We then go about our lives for several years completely unaware that we are imperfect, but somewhere during our so-called maturity, we adopt the personality of Hamlet and come to realize that we are consciously imperfect.

I would say that in the Southern Baptist tradition that becoming BORN AGAIN is realizing that we are imperfect and we use our religious faith in a relentless but fruitless attempt to become perfect...  to become more Jesus Christ-like as long as we do not have to endure the pain and suffering that he endured on the cross.

We never really get there...  because human beings are flawed from the get-go with original sin and there is nothing that we can do to change that...  and, therein lies our problem.

The more wealthy we become, the harder it is to become or attain the level of being consciously perfect like Jesus Christ.

We hold on to what we have, not wanting to give anything up, even though we may increase our tithe as our wealth increases... but, it is not the tithe, or the faith, or the belief that gets us there.

It is the inner awareness that we have inside ourselves...  the inner awareness that revolves around the mind, the body, and the soul...  and, it is that trinity that is the most difficult to understand and master.

How long can we keep our minds empty of the thoughts that we carry around inside them during the day?  Have you ever tried it?  Were you successful?

And what about our bodies...  our physical bodies...  how well do we care for them?  Diet...  Exercise...  Relaxation...  Sleep...  Are we satisfied with the bodies that we have been given or do we try to change them...  enhance them...  make them better or at least different?

Then there is the soul...  and, my goodness...  what the hell is the soul?  We cannot see it...  We cannot feel it...  We are not really sure if scientifically that we actually have a soul, are we?  Is the soul our consciousness or our unconsciousness or both?  How do we feed it?  Train it?

  

Is the soul our ID?  Ego?  Super Ego?  But, I am confident that are hundreds if not thousands of articles, essays, and books that have tried to explain what the soul is or is not...  Of course, one PhD will explain it this way while another PhD will disagree and explain it another way.  Who is right?  wrong?

Who earned their PhD first might be the best way to decide...  or not...

Maybe the soul is simply that which we believe...  and that would include people that don't believe because not believing is actually a belief...

So, how does this shit relate to Easter Sunday anyway?  It is the mind component of the trinity...  and, perhaps the soul component as well.  And, since the mind controls the body, then the body component of the trinity is also included...  In short, the trinity overlaps with its three components like an atom (proton, neutron, electron).  As a matter of fact, the atom is a perfect example of this trinity and its interrelatedness.

And like the atom, the mind-body-soul can be further broken down into subcomponents that might be correlated with energy strings whose movements are random until they are observed.  It is this theory that gives us multiple dimensions and a multiverse...

And this relates the Easter Sunday how?

Just as the path of strings becomes fixed when being observed, the path of humans is fixed through prayer...  and it is the prayer that undergirds, strengthens, and unites the mind-body-soul.

I have just shared the tip of the iceberg with you!!!

 

Muscles

Twitter's Poison Pill

Twitter does not want to become a plaything of the world’s richest person.

So on Friday, it turned to a tried-and-tested corporate defense mechanism invented in the 1980s — the heyday of the corporate raider — to block a potential takeover attempt by Elon Musk and buy its board some time.

The mechanism, known as a poison pill, has a simple intention: to make it less palatable for a potential buyer to pursue the target company if the buyer accumulates shares above a certain threshold. 

In Twitter’s case, if Mr. Musk bought more than 15 percent of the company, Twitter would flood the market with new stock that all shareholders except Mr. Musk could buy at a discounted price.

That would immediately dilute Mr. Musk’s stake and make it significantly more expensive for him to buy the company. Mr. Musk currently owns a little more than 9 percent of Twitter’s stock.

Twitter said its plan would be in place for just shy of one year. The tool will not stop the company from holding talks with any potential buyer, and will give it more time to negotiate a deal that Twitter’s board believes best reflects the company’s value.  READ MORE...

Classic Sunday Morning Newspaper Cartoons

Nubian Stone and Quantum Computers

Cuprous oxide – the mined crystal from Namibia used for making Rydberg polaritons. Credit: University of St Andrews

A special form of light made using an ancient Namibian gemstone could be the key to new light-based quantum computers, which could solve long-held scientific mysteries, according to new research led by the University of St Andrews.

The research, conducted in collaboration with scientists at Harvard University in the US, Macquarie University in Australia and Aarhus University in Denmark and published in Nature Materials, used a naturally mined cuprous oxide (Cu2O) gemstone from Namibia to produce Rydberg polaritons, the largest hybrid particles of light and matter ever created.

Rydberg polaritons switch continually from light to matter and back again. In Rydberg polaritons, light and matter are like two sides of a coin, and the matter side is what makes polaritons interact with each other.

This interaction is crucial because this is what allows the creation of quantum simulators, a special type of quantum computer, where information is stored in quantum bits. These quantum bits, unlike the binary bits in classical computers that can only be 0 or 1, can take any value between 0 and 1. They can therefore store much more information and perform several processes simultaneously.  READ MORE...

Diver

 

600 Miles on One Charge

MERCEDES-BENZ announced the EQXX, a new electric car that drives 600 miles on a single charge, twice the typical range.

Driving reported that this vehicle made it from Sindelfingen, Germany, to the Côte d’Azur with about 15 percent energy remaining.

The incredible range of this EV is just the beginning.

The efficiency of this vehicle is superb, as it accomplished the incredible journey with 100 kilowatt-hours of battery onboard.

Many newly-released EV pickups and SUVs have 200 kilowatt-hours, and GMC's Hummer EV has even more.

Driving concluded, "if you do the math — dividing those 1,008 km by the 86 kWh used — the EQXX’s on-the-road efficiency works out to just 8.7 kWh/100 km, a claim that, were there not photographic proof of the voyage, would seriously strain credibility."

The conditions that the EQXX drove in are also noteworthy.

The vehicle cruised through the German autobahn during its European tour where it allegedly was held at a steady 140km per hour.

This is highly impressive as speed heavily affects EV's power usage, according to Driving.

The vehicle also face steep inclines and cold temperatures as they drove a significant distance through the Swiss Alps.  READ MORE...

Cowboy

 

Southern Born

Born in Raleigh, North Carolina 74 years ago on Halloween, I am according to Myers-Briggs, not only a Southern Scorpion but I am an INTJ personality type.


Why Are INTJs So Rare?
INTJs are among the least common of the personality types. It’s only logical to ask: why are INTJs so rare? It seems there should be many more of us.  The truth is that INTJs are full of contradictions.

• Open-minded while seeming standoffish
• Natural leaders but hate leading
• Highly analytical but imaginative
• Love deep conversation but not great socializers
• Logical except with relationships

So, what does that really make me...  if anything?

Well...  I will tell you what it makes me...  it makes me different than most...

And, while I like being different and unique, I am left without many, if any, friends...  at least friends that I would call close...

And, the older I get, the more I have discovered that one does not need many if any, friends at all...

Being old is a time for reflections, ponderings, and remembering...  not so much in the sense of what I would have done differently if given the chance but just reviewing all that has been done or not done as one might catalog a group of plants or look at how one's clothes are hanging in the closet.

Many people say that age is just a number and that is true because they are trying to get something from you...  because age is more than just a number...  it is a true representation of approximately how long we have left to live, all things being equal.

Life is finite although some believe that life in a religious context is infinite and it might be, but if it is...  it will not be in the same physical form that we are living life today...  that physical form is finite...

And so, I am left pondering, reflecting, and remembering...  and, while I would do nothing differently, I cannot help but think and perhaps believe that I made some bad choices along the way mixed in with the good choices.

Life is what it is...  some say while others speculate that one's life is exactly what had been intended for that life...  but, if that is the case, who intended it to be that way? and why?

If our choices have all been pre-determined then "free will" as we have come to expect it to be is bullshit...  and does not exist...  just as our choices never existed...  we are victims of someone else's design(s).

And, why does all this matter when one gets to be my age?

It doesn't and that's the point.

Whatever life is or was, it is almost gone at this age, even though I still have quite a few years of it left...

Caucasian Born

 

Ferris Wheel

Magic Mushrooms

Psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound found in "magic mushrooms," could treat depression by creating a hyper-connected brain.

By boosting connectivity between different areas of the brain, the psychedelic may help people with depression break out of rigid, negative patterns of thinking, a new study suggests.

Recent clinical trials have suggested that psilocybin may be an effective treatment for depression, when carefully administered under the supervision of mental health professionals. In the new study, published Monday (April 11) in the journal Nature Medicine, researchers probed exactly how the psychedelic works to improve peoples' depressive symptoms. To do so, the team collected brain scans from about 60 patients who had participated in clinical trials for psilocybin therapy; these brain scans revealed distinct changes in the patients' brain wiring that emerged after they took the drug.

"We see connectivity between various brain systems increasing dramatically," first author Richard Daws, who was a doctoral student at Imperial College London at the time of the study, told Live Science. Healthy individuals with high levels of well-being and cognitive function tend to have highly connected brains, studies suggest, but in people with depression, "we sort of see the opposite of that — a brain characterized by segregation," said Daws, now a postdoctoral research associate at King's College London. This sort of organization undermines the brain's ability to dynamically switch between different mental states and patterns of thinking, he said.

The study supports the idea that psilocybin relieves depressive symptoms, at least in part, by boosting connectivity between different brain networks, said Dr. Hewa Artin, the chief resident of outpatient psychiatry at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study. That said, "additional studies will be needed to replicate results and validate findings," Artin told Live Science in an email.  READ MORE...

Rabbit

 

Good Gut Bacteria

Researchers of synthetic biology based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US have devised a system to protect the gut microbiome from the effects of antibiotics.

The new study, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, reports on the successful use in mice of a “live biotherapeutic” – a genetically engineered bacterium that produces an enzyme which breaks down antibiotics in the gut.

“This work shows that synthetic biology can be harnessed to create a new class of engineered therapeutics for reducing the adverse effects of antibiotics,” says MIT professor James Collins, the paper’s senior author.
The dark side of antibiotics

Antibiotics – substances that kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria – are hugely important in fighting bacterial infections.

But there’s a dark side to antibiotics too. Increasing human use of antibiotics has contributed to the rise of antibiotic resistance, which has made many bacterial diseases increasingly difficult to successfully treat.

Antibiotic treatment can also kill off bacteria in our resident healthy gut microbiome – the trillions of microbes that live in our gastrointestinal tract and assist with food digestion, immune development and vitamin synthesis.

This causes two problems: firstly, we can lose the benefits provided by our good bacteria; and secondly, this disruption can tip the balance of the microbial ecosystem towards species that cause harm.

In some cases, these indiscriminate effects of antibiotics can have life-threatening consequences. In the US, about 15,000 deaths each year are attributed to diarrhoea and colitis (inflammation of the colon) caused by overgrowth of the bacterium Clostridium difficile following antibiotic overuse.

So, while antibiotics are an important and necessary tool to fight bacterial infections, working to limit antibiotic resistance and damage to the gut microbiome are key priorities for research.  READ MORE...