‘Indian Summer’, the period during mid-autumn when warm weather often returns for a week to ten days, is a month late this year, perhaps due to Global Warming. Leaves would normally not still be on the trees this time of year. Yet here is the view late afternoon from my desk at home.
I today mourn the death of my longtime friend and former colleague, Gordon Joseloff, age 75. The former CBS TV News journalist in London, Moscow, and Tokyo under legendary Managing Editor Walter Cronkite, Gordon had previously worked for original United Press International (UPI).
Later, in his hometown of Westport, Connecticut, he founded, edited, and published WestportNowcom, one of the most successful online local news websites in the U.S. Indeed, he was so interested in the well-being of Westport that for eight years he relinquished his roles at WestportNow to run the town as its First Selectman from 2005 to 2013.
I knew Gordon as a fellow UPI alumnus (‘Unipresser’); as a fellow pioneer in online news (he was perhaps the eldest pioneer in those endeavors); and as a warm fixture in Connecticut, as well as national, journalism. I last saw him two years ago at the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists annual meeting, where WestportNow won a number of journalism awards..
(Her mother and aunt actually were among the five-women crew of the Spanish national champions.)
Adam Grant delivers a counter-TED speech about the counter-intuitive nature of ‘originals’ thinkers who dream up new ideas and take action to put them into the world. “The greatest originals are the ones who fail the most, because they’re the ones who try the most.” He notes that “you need a lot of bad ideas in order to get a few good ones,” plus mustn’t let doubts about yourself get in your way.
Who gets what from every dollar you pay for a cup of coffee or coffee beans? This chart from visualcapitalist.com answers that.
General Motors has received permission from the State of California to begin operating completely driverless automobiles on the streets of San Francisco.
I have a modicum of knowledge about healthcare in the United States and foreign nations, their relative qualities, and their relative costs. I’m married to a Spaniard who for the past decade or more has become handicapped with a rare combination of two neurological diseases. When I say handicapped, I mean fully-disabled, legally granted such status in both the United States and Spain. She has had some ten brain surgeries during the past decade; five during 2015 alone. She has been treated at top U.S. and Spanish hospitals (for examples in the U.S.: the Mayo Clinic‘s headquarters in Minnesota; Columbia-Presbyterian and Weill-Cornell in New York City; and Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore). We know quality care and we have massive medical bills in the United States.
I am constantly amazed by the gullible stupidity of the minority of Americans who believe in fear that ‘Universal Healthcare’ would cause a decline in the U.S. healthcare system, which is the most expensive in the world for average care and ridiculously expensive for intensive care. I’ve yet to encounter one of these stupid people who has actually had first-hand experience with hospitals in other developed nations. They instead parrot what right-wing propagandists and right-wing politicians, whose salaries or campaigns respectively are paid for by the same insurance companies desperately fund to keep U.S. healthcare expensive for Americans and massively profitable for themselves. The stupid minority of Americans who believe such propaganda are the same ones who complain or joke about American hospitals charging them $1.00 for an aspirin tablet, yet they nevertheless won’t admit how much they are being financially cheated due to the added layer of expense healthcare funded primarily by for-profit insurance companies costs
My wife and I have gotten equally expertise and specialized care at University Hospital in Navarra, Spain, as at Columbia-Presbyterian. The difference is that the Spanish hospital visit costs ten times less. Indeed, my wife unexpectedly spent an entire afternoon at a hospital in her hometown of Las Palmas de Canaria with what ultimately was diagnoses as severe dehydration, yet involved a CAT scan, blood tests, a two full hours with two doctors. The cost to use was 50 Euros ($55), and would have been zero if a specialist hadn’t been called in to consult about my wife’s neurological diseases.
In the United States, our costs would likely have been somewhere between $500 and $3,000. Indeed, my wife and I would have gone bankrupt several years ago had not the U.S. government declared her to be fully-disabled and eligible for government-paid Medicare.
A gullible minority of Americans, parroting right-wing propagandists, claim that if Medicare were expanded into ‘Universal Healthcare’, then the United States would become a “socialist” “hellhole” such as Venezuela. That’s akin claiming that enforcement of parking laws would turn the U.S. into Nazi Germany, a ludicrous claim. Do these gullible minority of Americans think that people inside the foreign nations that do have Universal Healthcare are sick or dying, refused treatment or getting substandard treatment? People in countries with Universal Healthcare, such as Canada, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, etc.? They are obviously not. In fact, the people in most of those countries have better health and live longer lives than do Americans. And none of them ever go bankrupt due to healthcare costs. These are the reasons why after World War Two every other developed nation except the U.S. chose to enact Universal Healthcare rather than choose the U.S. system.
Worried that you can’t keep your own doctor under such a healthcare system. Take a look at this nine-minute video (above) about Switzerland’s system. It’s a nation with Universal Healthcare plus private insurance, yet with much lower healthcare costs for its citizens than Americans pay.
What I find the most gullible about the minority of Americans who oppose Universal Healthcare is that they vociferously object to it adding one or two thousand dollars to their annual taxes, yet don’t mind paying five to ten thousand dollars annually to private healthcare insurers for exactly the same coverage. As the British say, they are ‘penny-wise but pound-foolish.” That’s true gullibility in action.
Indeed, during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Britons celebrated (below) having Universal Healthcare–their National Health Service.
Todd Rose should know. He was a high school dropout, but is now a faculty member at Harvard School of Education’s graduate school.
Bold and short (less than two minutes because that’s all it needs) video of maestro principal conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908-89) conducting a Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra 1984 performance of Einleitung, oder Sonnenaufgang [‘Introduction, or Sunrise‘] from Richard Strauss‘s tone poem inspired and named after Friedrich Nietzsche‘s Also Spach Zarathustra. I bet you’ve heard this musical composition before, and guess who was conducting it then, too! Von Karajan’s recordings have sold an estimated 200 million classical music albums.
Asian airlines are the cleanest in the world. That shouldn’t be a surprise. What’s surprising is that there are no North American airlines and only European airline among last year’s Top Ten Cleanest list.
I was sorry to read that, after more than a quarter millennium (256 years to be exact) the Hartford Courant, the oldest continuously published newspaper in the United States, will no longer be printed in Hartford, Connecticut’s state capital. It instead will be printed in Massachusetts and trucked into the state. More than 150 printers in Hartford will lose their jobs. It reminded me of Willimantic, Connecticut, where on April 30, 2017, after 140 years of continuous daily printing, the last edition of that town’s daily Chronicle, founded and operated by my family, was printed. Here is a 360-degree video of that last pressrun.
During 2013 while visiting densely-populated Manila, an American teacher named Ken Myers noticed that if you draw a 2,500-mile (4,000-kilometer) radius circle around Mynamar (Burma), that circle would enclose half the people alive. Three years later, a Singaporean professor named Danny Quah used a computer algorithm to fine-tune that circle to only 2,050 miles (3,300-kilometer) radius and centered on the village of Mong Khet in eastern Mynamar. This has become known as the ‘Valeriepieris circle‘ after Myers pseudonym on Reddit.com, where he initially posted his map.
I routinely use the Valeriepierris circle map during the first class of my New Media Business postgraduate course every semester at Syracuse University’s school of media. That’s because generally half of my students each year are American and the others Chinese. And I find that:
I also find that most Americans don’t realize that if half the world’s population is within the valeriepieris circle, that means approximately half of all colds, flus, and other infectious diseases that plague humans originate there. So, when Donald Trump mislabels COVID-19 the ‘China virus’ he’s engaged in anti-oriental racism. He doesn’t call Ebola the ‘Congo virus’. Both Ebola and COVID-19 are believed by scientists to have originally been fruit bat viruses that first infected humans encroaching on African and Asian deep forest.
There are so many things that Americans are ignorant about Asia. One of my favorites is, as Parag Khanna noted during the 2018 World Economic Summit in Davos, “More people live in democracies in Asia than the entire rest of the world combined.” A sizeable minority of Americans tend to think that most people who live in democracies live in the U.S. or Canada. A majority of Americans are a bit wiser and tend to think that the majority of people living in democracies live in the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe. The reality is that the majority of people who live in democracies live in India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand.
After thirty years of thumb-sucking, nose picking, and other inactivity by the GOP about human-caused Climate Change.
After more than 30 years of conservative politicians sucking their thumbs when asked about human-caused Climate Change, it is finally real.
Scientific American magazines explains how to tell the difference between a real or a false conspiracy.
You know what a skyscraper is. Yet what about a groundscaper? I know the Frankfurt one (pictured) due to its excellent and soundproof Hilton Hotel.
Every see a CAT scanner with its cover off? You’ll realize why it’s covered.
Did dinosaurs walk up walls 68 million years ago? It might appear so in this 300-foot high wall in Bolivia, long before tectonic pressure turned a muddy plain into a vertical wall.
Bali won’t be accepting tourists until 2021.
Think you know how to sit while driving? Guess again. Jaguar Land Rover Chief Medical Officer Dr. Steve Iley shows you how in a two-minute video.
This graphic, showing the relative scale of small things just at the limit or slightly beyond human site, shows the remarkable size of a human white blood cell.
Here is a video of a new Amtrak Avelia train (disguised with Acela markings) test-running empty between Providence and New York City. Amtrak has order 36 of these ($2.4 billion) to run between Boston, Massachusetts, and Washington, D,C, starting in 2021. These new trains, like the Acelas, are manufactured by the French company Alstrom, with final assembly in upstate New York. Each Avelia carries 25% more passengers than current Amtrak Acela trains, has high safety and crash standards (as well as WiFi, USB and power plugs at each seat, etc.), and is 30% lighter (more miles to the kilowatt) than the Acelas. Although capable of cruising at 185 mph (300 kph), they are currently being test run at up to 165 mph (265 kph), a speed which they can reach only on the long straight section of track between Boston and Providence, Rhode Island. Unfortunately, the winding, century-old rail lines between Boston and Washington, D.C. would have to be completely rebuilt to permit true highspeed train service. The original Acela trains, which began carrying passengers on these routes back in the year 2000, will be retired.
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The world’s largest trompe-l’œil (i.e, ‘fool the eye’ optical illusion) display is this 80 million-pixel wide and 20 million-pixel high wrap-around display in Seoul, South Korea [1-minute video].
As a frequent international business traveler, I’m sad to hear that the last Airbus 380 ‘Super Jumbo’ airliner has been assembled. It was a great aircraft on which to be a passenger: quiet, smooth (large size equals less turbulence effects). Better than a Boeing 747. Most airlines have stopped flying them. The exceptions are the Persian Gulf airlines (Emirates, Etihad, Qatar) whose route systems are based upon intercontinental flights between major cities. I think I had my last 747 ride two years ago (British Airways: Cape Town-London). I fear that I might not again get a 380 flight. I’ve mainly ridden 380s on Singapore Airlines, always a treat.
The hottest recorded temperature (134F/54.4C) on Earth since 1913 was recorded last month in aptly named Death Valley, California. The 1913 all-time record was 134F (56.6C), also in Death Valley.
Do you have ‘cabin fever’ from being stuck at home? Travel the world aurally via listening to its nature sounds. Here’s a world sound map. Click a marker and it will tell you what you’ll hear, then click ‘Listen’.
Speaking of ‘cabin fever’, if you’re worried about being quarantined at home during dark winter months, think like a Norwegian.
This article from The Atlantic monthly is the article overall report about the bungled U.S. response to the pandemic.
Consider U.S. Constitutional rights:
So if they don’t need to show photo identity cards in order to exercise those rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, why should they be prohibited from their Constitutionally-guaranteed right to vote if they don’t show a photo identity card?
If a voter has enrolled in the registry of voters and arrives at the polls to vote without a photo identity card or refuses to show such a card, then burden of proof must be upon whoever subsequently challenges that person’s right to vote? Just as the burden of proof is for anyone challenging any other Constitutionally-guaranteed right.
The most cases of voter fraud proven in the United States since the turn of the century is approximately 1,200, cited by the conservative Heritage Foundation which advocates laws requiring voters to produce photo identification cards. To people of low education, that number might sound like a lot. However, that is 1,200 proven case among 626,000,000 votes cast in the five presidential elections since 1999 (and that 626 million doesn’t include all the votes cast every second year in which there wasn’t a presidential election). Thus a 0.00019% rate. To put that minuscule percentage in context, National Geographic magazine calculates the odds of being struck by lightning during any year as 1-in-700,000, which is 0.00014%, a ridiculously small risk. If you add all the votes cast every second year in which there wasn’t a presidential election, the odds of someone fraudulently voting and you being struck by lightning are about the same. (Nothing to worry about: you’re more likely to be struck by a falling tree.)
So, voter fraud hasn’t proven to be a serious risk. Voter photo identification laws instead are a means to restrict who votes; have traditionally been aimed to reduce or prevent voting by racial minorities; and almost always defraud they and the poor of their Constitutionally guaranteed voting rights. Who advocates such laws? Political parties that want to denigrate, cheat, and otherwise control the poor and minorities.
By the way, these are the types of questions I like to ask political conservatives who back such proposals under the guise that the risks and problems have proven to be real. (which isn’t the case) or that there isn’t hypocrisy in demanding photo ID to exercise one Constitutionally guaranteed right but not when exercising another Constitutionally guaranteed right.
For example:
Or, outside of the realm of Constitutional guarantees:
Unless there is a nuclear world war or a pandemic deadlier than COVID-19 sometime this century, advances in technology will allow humanity this century to achieve the greatest change in history: the end of scarcity.
Scarcity has existed since since before humans existed. Scarce food. Scarce fresh water. Scarce shelter. Scarce money once currency replaced barter. Although 900 million humans have risen out of poverty during the past 30 years, 700 million, a tenth of humanity, still find food, fresh water, shelter, and income of even the equivalent of a dollar per day, scarce.
And even though most of the other 6 billion humans might still consider many of those things to be relatively scarce, the concept of a world soon without hunger, homelessness, or a want for basic necessities isn’t a dream, fantasy, or science fiction anymore.
Scarcity has existed since since before humans existed. Scarce food. Scarce fresh water. Scarce shelter. Scarce money once currency replaced barter. Although 900 million humans have risen out of poverty during the past 30 years, 700 million, a tenth of humanity, still find food, fresh water, shelter, and income of even the equivalent of a dollar per day, scarce. And even though most of the other 6 billion humans might still consider many of those things to be relatively scarce, the concept of a world soon without hunger, homelessness, or a want for basic necessities isn’t a dream, fantasy, or science fiction anymore.
James Burke, tells you why. In a 28-minute radio broadcast on the British Broadcasting Corporation during New Year’s Day 2018, the British author, television producer, and historian of science historian describes what will soon become the biggest change to humanity in 10,000 years. And how the economics of abundance will disrupt civilization.
If you don’t have time to listen to Burke explain it all by voice, you can read what he says here.