Something for the weekend #43

This is my newsletter which offers a round-up of the week’s causes for optimism, as noticed in the media. Plus discussions of the optimism/pessimism gap, and debunkings of optimism/pessimism.

* The Daily Mail newspaper is a leading purveyor of grime and crime in the UK, but at least counters this by often talking a lot of common sense. Including, the new “Seven metrics that prove the world is becoming better – longer life, less poverty, better health outcomes”.

* In the journal Nature, the paper “Impaired immune surveillance accelerates accumulation of senescent cells and aging”, from the Weizmann Institute in Israel. Translation from sci-speak: We now know more about how cells ‘gunk up’ as we age, and how this causes inflammation and ageing. A substance has been found that stops the gunk from accumulating in cells, and thus lets mice live longer.

* Science magazine on “Why Japan’s exit from international whaling treaty may actually benefit whales”. “Japan will now abandon its scientific whaling programs [and] Japan’s whaling efforts will shift to its own coastal waters and the 200 mile exclusive economic zone around them”, where it is likely to catch around “100 minke whales” per year.

* There is a new book from McFarland that systematically rebuts the damning myths and sly slurs about Winston Churchill: Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality: What He Actually Did and Said. A review from The Churchill Project at Hillsdale College praises the book for its diligence and deep knowledge, and notes that… “Though aimed at correcting error, it casts considerable light on how errors arise” in political history.

* Steven Pinker’s book Enlightenment Now is apparently new in paperback, though it’s been on Kindle and audiobook for a while now. News of the book and its message has even reached Arkansas… “Enlightenment continues to glow”.

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Something for the weekend #42

This is my newsletter in which I offer a short round-up of the week’s causes for optimism, as noticed in the media. Plus links to discussions of the optimism/pessimism gap, and debunkings of optimism/pessimism.

* “Hacking Plants To Feed the World”. A new paper in the journal Science, from U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers, shows a method for getting… “a 40 percent increase in plant production”. Plants were genetically engineered so that a natural enzyme works a little more efficiently. Tobacco plants then grew bigger and more rapidly in both greenhouses and field tests. Next to be tested are potatoes, soybeans and cowpeas.

* “How Israel’s water expertise can meet the needs of an increasingly thirsty world” “Israel is no longer reliant on the weather or its neighbours for its water needs. It achieved this by combining all available technologies to save as much water as possible. While the country is 60 percent desert, in 2013 it announced it had achieved water independence through smart planning and innovative thinking”.

* “A Bright Future” (FT, I see it free but it may be $ paywalled in future). A short review of a new book by Joshua Goldstein and Staffan Qvist, which argues in favour of new nuclear power reactors. The “first four chapters make the case for nuclear; another five knock down alternatives and any objections”. The authors claim that 115 new reactors a year to 2050 would… “make electricity generation worldwide completely fossil-fuel-free by 2050” — assuming this could be done with vast economies of scale, and without ruinously expensive bureaucracy and other costs. Which it almost certainly can’t be, regrettably.

* More than half the people in the world now have access to the Internet in some form. Across developed nations, access now averages around 45% of all citizens. Of course, “access” is not regular savvy daily use for purposes other than basic entertainment (phone games, mobile payments to buy a beer etc). My guess is that only around a 20% average make regular and extended use of the Internet for serious matters.

* “The world is becoming a better place”, an article summarising Hans Rosling’s points for a general English-reading audience in India.

* “Autonomous Martian robot completes Saharan test drive”.

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Something for the weekend #41

This is my newsletter which rounds up recent media coverage of the optimism / pessimism debate, and notes positive news. I skipped a week for Christmas, in case you were wondering.

* Robert Wright in the Financial Post, “On overpopulation fearmongers”… “It is an intellectual curiosity of our own age that despite the advent of rational optimists like Matt Ridley, Johan Norberg and Steven Pinker, Malthusians continue to command respect in some quarters.”

* The Harvard Business Review asks “Why We’re Drawn to Leaders Who Emphasize the Negative”.

* “Things aren’t as bad as we think”, a late review of Steven Pinker’s new book, for the Washington Post. Pinker also gets a mention in a short New Year editorial in Christian Science Monitor: “Hold off the forecasts of doom”.

* Bacteria Found in Ancient Irish Soil Halts Growth of Superbugs, according to Swansea University Medical School in the UK, which appears to be leading an international team and publishing in Frontiers in Microbiology. “Traditionally a small amount of soil was wrapped up in cotton cloth and used to heal many ailments including toothache, throat and neck infections. Interestingly, this area was previously occupied by the Druids around 1,500 years ago […] Prof. Paul Dyson said “Our results show that folklore and traditional medicines are worth investigating in the search for new antibiotics.”

* A Chinese moon rover has landed on the dark side of the Moon. China also now has a special satellite, Queqiao, which links the Earth with the dark side by radio for the first time.

* Copyrights are expiring again in America, after a 20 year hiatus. All 1923 published works are now in the public domain, and the annual conveyor-belt of copyright releases starts up again.

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Something for the weekend #40

This is my newsletter which offers a round-up of the week’s causes for optimism, as noticed in the media. Plus discussions of the optimism/pessimism gap, and debunkings of optimism/pessimism. A shorter one this week, as things wind down for Christmas…

* “Don’t fear the future. America might well be far richer and more powerful in 20 years than you expect”. The pithy AEI article riffs on a new paid report on the potential for a ‘Great Acceleration’ toward 2040, from the UK researchers at Capital Economics and quotes some of the report.

* “There Are No Natural Resources”… “a material’s character as a resource is instilled in it by human ingenuity. This fact is true even for land.”

* “Doing the Math on Pessimism” debunks the current ‘recession’ hysteria that’s currently wafting around the media, which I can’t help thinking is partly wishful-thinking from the hair-shirt ‘global degrowth’ advocates of the political left.

* “Rethinking global poverty reduction in 2019”. On… “New Year’s Day 2019, just under 600 million people across the world (excluding Syria) will live in extreme poverty. By 2030, this figure is expected to fall to some 436 million.” In 2019, despite its booming population… “Africa will start reducing the absolute number of people living in extreme poverty, albeit very modestly.” However, Africa’s longer-term population growth means there will be numerically more extremely poor by 2030 — seemingly overwhelmingly living in Nigeria and the Congo, according to the projections.

* The belief that greenhouse warming will become dangerous… “is crowding out concern for, and resources from, all sorts of other problems that have far more immediate effects. [Problems that] are far more fixable right now.”

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Something for the weekend #39

This is my newsletter which offers a round-up of the week’s causes for optimism, as noticed in the media. Plus discussions of the optimism/pessimism gap, and debunkings of optimism/pessimism.

* ‘What have the robots ever done for us?’. Well, Stacey Nguyen surveys… “All the Things That Robots Will Do in 2019”. Maybe not all the things, but Nguyen certainly has a thought-provoking selection.

* Resources Are Almost 5 Times as Abundant as They Were in 1980 reports the new Simon Abundance Index… “People often assume that population growth leads to resource depletion. We found the opposite.”

* Energy Independence: Trump Just Achieved What Every President Since Nixon Promised, and U.S. Becomes Net Oil Exporter For First Time In 75 Years. And there’s more where that came from, as the U.S. Geological Survey announces the largest potential oil and gas resource ever assessed.

* Forestry Journal reports that…

“New Zealander Dugald Hamilton has invented a soil rehabilitation product made from wood slash [i.e.: the ‘rakings up’, after full or partial logging] which naturally replaces nitrogen in the soil. Combining live bacteria, live fungi and other additives in a liquid solution it unlocks phosphorus, potassium and other nutrients in the soil. An eight-week trial growing pines on a one-hectare block with 25 randomly selected trees versus a control showed a huge colour difference, zero loss and 21 per cent more growth in buds than the untreated crop. Mr Hamilton says the product increases the ability to grow every tree planted in hostile environments.”

Forest rakings formed into a pile of ‘wood slash’.

* “New York City is far greener than anyone expected. A new survey found that New York City now has five million trees in ‘forested natural areas’, along with over 660,000 street and corner trees.

* The Government of India is reported to have granted permission for bee-keepers to make use of around 100 state forests for honey farming. A spokesman said that these government-protected natural forests do not “necessarily” include the nation’s huge National Parks.

* And finally, “Launching in 2019 on PlayStation 4, Journey to the Savage Planet is an upbeat first-person adventure game”…

“It’s not retro at all, but Journey to the Savage Planet has this tone of sort of early science-fiction of hopefulness, that you should journey beyond earth for adventure and because it’s humankind’s mission to grow and explore and all these nice feelings, and not escaping a nuclear winter or disaster,” Alex Hutchinson [co-founder Typhoon Studios] told GamesIndustryBiz. “I miss the blue skies of the Sega games of my youth, where you’d boot up your Genesis or Mega Drive and it would always be that cerulean blue that would kick in, whether it was Sonic or whatever of those games. They always felt positive and happy and warm. I’m sick of the greys and browns and negativity…”

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When smart technology… isn’t

David Hepworth in the latest Radio Times…

“Over the past 12 months I’ve found that the only thing the smart speaker could be counted on to do reliably, other than obey such simple requests as “play Radio 4”, was bring me the latest episode of The Archers on demand. In almost every other case it proffered something that sounded a bit like what I asked for, but wasn’t.”

Very true. My Alexa voice control on my 2017 HD Kindle was useless with my voice, and after many errors was turned off — for fear of making accidental “instant purchases” from Amazon. Maybe there’s some way to “lock” it only to certain software, if you have the full speaker system? But there appears to be no option on my Kindle to: “Lock Alexa to work only with VLC Player and my graphic novel reader”.

Paging the Weekend

This blog now has a new linked Page for the weekly newsletter, “Something for the weekend”.