Fear of the future

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More than half (57%) of child psychiatrists in England are seeing children and young people distressed by the climate emergency, as experts warn that eco-anxiety is growing among under-25s.

Although not yet considered a diagnosable condition, levels of “chronic fear of environmental doom” are likely to be underestimated, while international research has found anxiety is “profoundly affecting huge numbers of young people around the world”. (The Guardian 7 Oct 2021)

My comment: Who can blame young people? The media, almost daily, carries reports of massive floods, hurricanes or unseasonable temperatures – and these are still small beer compared with what people will face by mid-Century. What an individual can do about this seems petty and unimportant in the scale of things. My wife and I were discussing the other day the need for our car, used sparingly and certainly not every day. But the the alternatives are few and inconvenient. We discussed panels on the roof, but a massive tree obscures the sunshine. We eat less meat and are as frugal as possible. But we walk everywhere possible. Good for you, too.

Handwriting

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Scrap handwriting?

A-level and GCSE exams should be typed on computers because prolonged periods of handwriting can be “tiring” for students, a headteacher has said. Keith Metcalfe, the head of the £9,000 per term Malvern College, has called on exam boards to drop compulsory handwritten exams for GCSEs and A-levels in favour of typed papers. He said the move would “improve fairness and accessibility for all”, adding that handwriting “has largely disappeared everywhere” and is “very antiquated”. ( The Guardian 23 Dec 2021)

My reaction: Are you serious? “Prolonged periods of handwriting can be “tiring” for students?”. Poor diddums! Your forebears have been writing exam essays etc for centuries! What Grandfather did without complaint you can do. Stop cosseting students!

Alexa

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It’s hard to go anywhere without hearing the name “Alexa”. This is particularly vexing for people whose parents happened to give them the name that Amazon chose as a wake word for its smart home device in 2014.

Amazon landed on Alexa because “it was inspired by the Library of Alexandria, and reflects Alexa’s depth of knowledge.” But most of the other 25 other women named Alexa that I interviewed were “tired of interruptions from the bot and jokes at their expense.” Some felt dehumanized and have started going by a nickname with no connection with “Alexa”. In 2020, 1,300 babies born in the US were given the name Alexa, down from more than 6000 in 2015.

My comment: Amazon’s Alexa is wonderful for elderly people whose memory and comprehension is no longer what it was. You can program Alexa to remind you to take your medications, to phone someone at a specific time, or to remind you that the carer is coming that day. Very useful.

Sorry to all the real people called Alexa! It must be very irritating; on the other hand it’s good to know that the massive Amazon makes life a bit better for those alone and forgetful.

You wouldn’t believe it!

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Moments after robbing a Delaware bank, a man stopped to deposit stolen cash in an ATM by the bank’s front door. Police say that McRoberts Williams, 44, approached a teller at a Wells Fargo in Wilmington and handed her a note reading “This is a robbery. I need 150 dollars”. After the teller handed over the cash, he left the bank, but before fleeing “made a deposit in the ATM on the exterior of the building” according to a police report. Williams was arrested at a nearby shopping center. (The Week, Dec 21, 2021)

My immediate reaction: He left school at 14. Reports suggest that he was born without a brain.

Would the military support the Constitution?

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Fewer than 1 percent of the population currently serve in uniform, and 7 percent are military veterans. The number of Gold Star families — the term for those who lost a family member to combat — is about 7,000 from Iraq and Afghanistan. There is a discussion among military families, veterans and scholars that begins with a basic premise — that civil society and military circles are culturally, socially and geographically distinct, a form of isolation with real consequences for the country.

“The last 20 years of the everlasting wars have been carried by a narrow slice of the population, and the burden is heavy but not wide,” said Phil Carter, a former Army officer and director of the military, veterans and society program at Center for a New American Security, a think tank. Carter said that Kelly’s comments echo a prevalent attitude in some military and veteran circles — a feeling of pride for taking on a tough job in some of the most dangerous places on Earth, coupled with a simmering resentment of civilians oblivious to their mission.

Geography heightens the separation. Military families and veterans tend to be linked to military installations that populate the South and Midwest, turning those populations inward and away from the coasts, and recruitment often draws on those who already have military ties, making service in uniform a family business of sorts.

Analysts were taken aback by remarks by former House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly suggesting that discourse about those killed in action can only reasonably occur in the walled-off segments of society where losses on the battlefield are most directly and painfully felt.

“Veterans feel very keenly that America is disengaged from these wars. The problem is not going to be fixed with the idea that only people who are personally involved have the right to ask questions,” Klay said. “It’s the exact opposite.”

The notion of military service as the purest form of public virtue, at the cost of other kinds of service to others, is an alarming development, he said.
“Military courage is something society needs to have and we need to valorize it,” Klay said. “But we also need a civic body that makes this a country worth fighting for.”
In particular, Klay said, the politicized discourse around service, and who understands its burdens, obscures legitimate questions that all citizens need to engage with, beginning, in this moment, with why U.S. forces were in Afghanistan, for instance, in the first place. (The Guardian)

My comment: members of the military have to weigh their loyalty to the Constitution and orders from above against the pro-Trump, pro-gun and anti-democrat views of those (mainly in the South and Center of the center of the country) around them. Will there be another attempted coup, and if so , will the rank and file and the service retirees defend the status quo? These are the ex-fighters, trained to use sophisticated weapons. I don’t know the answer, but feel uneasy about the current and retired military rank and file.

Connection with Epicurus? Peace of mind!

Aliens are watching us?

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Aliens will arrive on Earth after studying us for years.

Uri Geller has claimed that extraterrestrial contact is imminent and aliens have been studying us for years. The 74-year-old said aliens will arrive during something akin to a “Steven Spielberg production”, possibly on the grounds of the White House. Speaking to The Sun ”newspaper” the self-declared psychic said: “I think they are studying us. I don’t know what they really want.” (The Week 14 Dec 2021)

My comment: The aliens are very welcome! I volunteer to give them a tour of China, Russia and assorted African dictatorships, completing the tour with a week in attendance during a session of the US House of Representatives. I will cap it by taking them to a rally addressed by former President Trump. After such a series of educational visits I can assure the reader that we will never hear from them again.

Elephants evolving without tusks

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Poachers killed so many elephants for their ivory during the 1977-1992 Mozambican civil war that elephants rapidly evolved to be naturally tuskless. Male and female elephants usually have tusks, but a few are born without. Because so many of the species were killed during the war the tuskless were much more likely to pass on their genes. Researchers have found that the proportion of tuskless females rose from 19% to 51% during the conflict.

They also found that the genetic mutation for tusklessness is lethal to males, and that those who have it die, sometimes before birth. The speed at which this happened shocked experts. Although the loss of tusks may stop females being poached, it denies them a tool used to strip bark off a tree for food, dig holes for water, and defend themselves. (Source: Shane Campbell-Staton, lead author of report in New Scientist)

My comment: And all for the sake of carved ornaments for well-off Chinese.

Declining births: is civilisation going to crumble?

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Speaking at a corporate event last week, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk lamented that too many “good, smart people” were worried about the global population growing out of control.

The real problem, he insisted, was quite the opposite: “There are not enough people. I can’t emphasise this enough, there are not enough people.” “Please look at the numbers,” he told the business audience – “if people don’t have more children, civilisation is going to crumble, mark my words.”

At first glance, the numbers don’t really support Musk’s argument, In the past 200 years, the global population has multiplied from one billion to almost eight billion, and it’s expected to keep growing until the end of this century, when it’s projected to reach almost 11 billion. But those figures mask a very uneven picture.

Many parts of the world, including swathes of Europe, are indeed facing a “population bust”. Romania, for instance, is set to go from around 20 million people today to just 12 million by 2100. Over the same period, Italy’s population is set to shrink by a third.

Longer life expectancy and immigration are currently “topping up the head-count” in many countries, but these compensating factors won’t always make up for birth rates that are way below the replacement level of 2.1 babies per woman. In nations such as South Korea, birth rates are less than half that. Musk has a point.

Fertility rates have been falling in the West for a long time but the “pace of change seems to be accelerating” as other nations follow the same path. Birth rates in all four “BRIC” emerging market economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are now below replacement level. “The world’s fertility rate, which stood at 3.5 births per woman in the mid-1980s, fell to just 2.4 in 2019. This demographic transition will generate some economic challenges as the world’s population ages, but also some benefits. It will, for one thing, make the task of cutting carbon emissions “less daunting”.

Whatever happens, there’s little the “pro-natalists” can do to stop the trend “short of building a new Gilead”. The reality is that as female education improves, birth rates drop. In advanced economies, most people can’t afford to have big families. We’ll have to leave it to wealthy altruists such as Musk, with his six children, and Boris Johnson, whose seventh child arrived recently, to save civilisation. (The Economist, Harry de Quetteville, The Daily Telegraph, and Catherine Bennett,The Observer. all edited for length, 18 Dec 2021).

My opinion: We need fewer people and more and better education. A growing population may have made corporations more money, but it has not improved the lives of people anywhere. And forcing women to have children they don’t want is inhumane toward all involved.

The politics of crude vulgarity

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“My family in the rural Midwest recently told me they’ve begun to see flags flying outside private homes bearing the message, “F–k Biden.” Underneath that statement, in smaller typeface, the thought continues: “…and f–k you for voting for him.”

“If you’re surprised that politics has descended to such depths, you haven’t been paying attention.

“I first noticed the shift into the politics of vulgarity and insult in the weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election, when I occasionally began to see bumper stickers in the suburbs west of Philadelphia that read, “F–k your feelings. Donald Trump for President.” Five years later, similar expressions are far more widespread, at least in some parts of the country. When I tweeted just before Christmas about what my midwestern family had told me, some of my followers confirmed seeing the flags — in the Cincinnati area, in Michigan, in eastern Ohio. (Try your own search for the flags on Google images. You’ll find numerous variations. This is big business). “
Damon Linker, 29 Dec 2021

My question: What happened to America? What has become of us? Epicurus advised us to ignore politics, but this isn’t politics as we knew it; it’s crude, violent and degrading.

Romance scams

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Romance scams have cost consumers a record $304 million as more people have searched for love online during the pandemic. As the pandemic encouraged people to spend more time online, criminals targeted people on dating apps and social media platforms, especially older Americans. Adults 60 and older lost $139 million to romance scams in 2020, the FTC says.

My comment: the internet in its various guises is getting a truly dreadful press these days. Suggestion: confine your attentions to sites that are informed, intellectual etc. etc. That is, sites like Epicurus.Today (well, if I don’t advertise no one else will).

Quote of the day

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“To those who abuse us for simply making polite requests to wear masks or to maintain social distance in hospitals or GP practices, to those who deny the existence of the pandemic or the science of vaccination, to those who issue death threats or incite violence against us, we say enough is enough.”
(Gill Walton, chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives)

My comment: Why is it that there are so many people who despise science and scientists? Could it have anything to do with lack of science in schools, or even, lack of any useful education at all?

Just asking.

This and that

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Speculation has emerged that penguins may be aliens after scientists found traces of a chemical from Venus in their droppings.

Experts are struggling to explain how phosphine exists on Earth – 38 million miles away from Venus. Scientists in the UK who believe alien life forms may have already been detected say studying penguins could help them identify the types of organisms that exist on other worlds. (The Week, 22 Sept 2021)

My comment: I think this was brought to Earth by an asteroid. After all, why should phosphine be uniquely from Venus? And I don’t know nothing. Any better ideas?

Christmas greetings!

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At this time of the year it’s difficult to know what to say without offending someone ?

So I’ve checked with my legal adviser and on his advice I wish to say the following to all my friends and relatives:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced with the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2022, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make our country great (not to imply that either the US or Great Britain are necessarily greater than any other countries) and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms:

This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

Disclaimer:
No trees were harmed in the sending of this message; however, a significant number of electrons were slightly inconvenienced!

(My apology: The above arrived in my IN box. I copied it, but somehow it then totally disappeared. So no, I did not compose it and have forgotten who it came from. Welcome to my semi-reliable i-pad and my own old age! At least I can share it with you!)