A FEW MORE AMAZING THINGS HAPPENING AROUND THE WORLD

Hawaii Mystery Woman #1 sent me a couple of video clips of some amazing things happening around the world, which inspired me to create a special posting of these.  Let me start with this clip, then follow-up with details, for some of those were priceless.  Like a baby from Thailand taking a bath with a huge snake.  Note that he is brushing the head.

Here are some chindogus (inventions that defy concise explanation) by Kenji Kawakami of Japan:

Amazing 3D Sand Art from China.  You won't appreciate the following unless you click on that link.

I've landed at Singapore's Changi Airport at least 25 times.  I need to go back because earlier this year Jewel was added at a cost of $1.25 billion.

Skytrax has been rating the best world airports since 1999, and Changi has ranked #1 now for twenty-one years in a row.  When I compare that aeroplex with the Honolulu Daniel Inouye International Airport, I'm embarrassed.  Same can be said for any other airport in the USA.  The best we can do is Denver at #32, and I think that airport is poorly designed, for the access/departure transitions are faulty.

Those were mostly oddities, but dealing with our daily lives, here are 25 things happening in the world today that you don't know much, if anything, about.  You certainly, I'm sure, were not aware that cow fart contributes more to global warming than anything else.  That didn't sound right to me.  So I checked into this statement, and found out that sometimes the concentration of carbon dioxide is equalled by methane, which is 25 times worse than carbon dioxide in causing the Greenhouse Effect.  So a good point there.

However, most of this methane (and CO2) is not flatulated, but burped, maybe 90%, or more.  But the fact of the matter, according to Christopher Field of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, is that the burning of fossil fuels is roughly 10 to 17 times greater than the warming caused by livestock belch and fart.  Certainly, he must be knowledgeable enough to know about that methane :  carbon dioxide ratio.  Then again, maybe not.

Hell of a way to end this posting, but speaking of flatulation, there is a book, Does it Fart?, by Dani Rabaioitti and Nick Caruso, providing the following:

• herrings communicate by farting
• manatees let loose when it's time to dive
• whale farts are epic
• termites fart a lot
• the beaded lacewing's hunting strategy is to fart a fatal gas containing allomone that paralyzes and kills its prey, which is usually a termite
• birds and most sea creatures DON'T fart
• a sloth may be the only mammal that doesn't fart, releasing methane by breath through the blood stream, then lungs

Finally, something you surely did not know:  human fart is about 60% nitrogen, 20% hydrogen, only 10% carbon dioxide, 5-10% methane, 5% oxygen and around 1% hydrogen sulfide, which produces the smell.  These percentages can vary quite widely, but on average, that's about it.  Fart:

• can be flammable
• ignites explosions in the intestines during surgeries 
• happens about 14 times/day (there are scientists actually measuring things like this)

Plus:

• there are numerous ridiculous calculations, such as: combine the world population farts for around four days, and that would be the energy equivalent of an atomic bomb
• France had a Mr. Methane, who was a Performing Flatulist, or Petomane (watch him on Britain's Got Talent--darn, he did not advance)
• in China you can get a job as a professional fart-smeller (this is a serious alternative medicine pathway in that country)
• a South American tribe called the Yanomami, fart as a greeting.  

Now how did I get here?

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MY GREATEST MOMENT WATCHING TV

The final performance in the first night of America's Got Talent Season 14 was the show-stopper of all-time, rivaling Susan Boyle from Britain's Got Talent, which occurred a decade ago.  You think you have a tough life.  Then along comes people like Helen Keller, who at the age of 19 months became deaf and blind...but attained worldwide acclaim.

Now, 22-year old Kodie Lee, who not only is blind, but is autistic, here with his mother.  Watch him perform Donny Hathaway's A Song for You.  If you don't draw tears of joy, you are just not human.  He got a golden buzzer from Gabrielle Union.  According to Kodie's mother, music and performing are why he is alive:

"I'm a new judge this season and I'm also a new mom this year," judge Gabrielle Union said. "It's the toughest job I've ever had and the most rewarding job I've ever had. You just want to give your kids the moon, the stars and the rainbows ... and tonight, I'm going to give you something... 

Kodie and his family live in Temecula, California.  He was born with optic nerve hypoplasia and was also diagnosed with autism at the age of 4.  In his early years he had tantrums 30 times/day.  However, he might be a musical savant, for he plays six instruments, has mastered classical works as well as pop and loves to tap dance.


He is best friends with 16-year old Makayla Phillips, who was an AGT semifinalist last year, who also won a golden buzzer.  He supported her during her run, and she's with him this year, hoping for a long run.

Maybe this program should be called America Draws Talent, for they come from all over the world, including, this time, 28 in a dance group from the slums of Mumbai.  America's Got Talent (AGT) might well be my favorite program on television, reinforced by Ranker, which also selects it as the best talent show ever.

A quick history:

• There was the Major Bowes Amateur Hour on radio from 1934 to 1945, and Frank Sinatra was a contestant.
• A TV first in 1948 was the Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour, and here is Gladys Knight (of the Pips) at the age of 7.  Other participants have included Pat Boone, Louis Farrakhan (playing the violin) and Jose Feliciano.  Elvis Presley tried, but missed the cut in 1953.  So did Wayne Newton and Tiny Tim.  The greatest grand prize was a finale, worth $1500.  America's Got Talent winners get a million dollars.

Maybe the most extraordinary performance I've ever seen came from China's Got Talent.  Lou Wei, at the age of 10, lost both arms touching a high-voltage wire while playing hide-and-seek.  He still wanted to learn how to play a piano, but his piano teacher in Beijing quit, so he decided to teach himself.  Said Wei:

"For people like me, there were only two options. One was to abandon all dreams, which would lead to a quick, hopeless death; the other was to struggle without arms to live an outstanding life," he said.

He won the first China's Got Talent in 2011 by playing You're Beautiful.

Why I'm particularly impressed is that he played a piano with his toes.  I more recently in AGT2017 saw Jokgu (a chicken) playing America the Beautiful on a piano.  So I made a quick search to see how this was accomplished.  There was a clip of this chicken playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and the secret was that the keys lit up when they had to be tapped.  

I have a special and sad memory linked to that tune and a keyboard, which underscores my particular dedication to overcome.  I thought, I could do what Jokgu did, so the next day went online and bought a 61-key Electronic Keyboard, which comes with 128+ instruments and 4000 programmed songs (where the keys light up).  Let's see, now, two years later, and I still can't perfectly play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.  A common joke at 15 Craigside is that someday I'll put on a theater recital.

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A SIMPLE HISTORY OF GLOBAL WARMING

On many Wednesdays, I revert back to the original purpose of this blog site, Simple Solutions for Planet Earth and Humanity.  My first real job was as a biomass engineer for the sugar industry in 1962.  In those days global warming was not a  concern.  In fact, global cooling was an issue blown up now and then in the media.

Going back in time, French physicist Joseph Fourier in the 1820's explained the  Greenhouse theory and the possible effect on global warming.  Then in the 1860's Irish scientist John Tyndall looked at what kinds of gases were likely to play a role.

In 1895 Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius became curious about how decreasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might COOL our Earth.  He wondered if decreased volcanic activity would reduce the carbon dioxide percentage to explain historic ice ages.  He calculated that if CO2 levels were halved, global temperatures would decrease by 9 F.    But as a secondary thought, he wondered about the reverse.  What if CO2 doubled, then the temperature would rise 9F.  Ironic that Arrhenius' efforts are now cited as the original basis for global warming.

In the 1930's, British engineer Guy Callendar noted that regions in the United States and North Atlantic had significantly warmed on the heels of the Industrial Revolution.  But he was not taken seriously.

The person who, perhaps, most spurred the serious study of global warming was American geochemist Charles Keeling.  Keeling studied under Harrison Brown at Cal Tech.  Roger Revelle of Scripps hired Keeling and set him up to do the measurements.  I knew Brown well when he later moved to the East Center, and I worked with Revelle on Earth 2020.

Keeling measured CO2 levels on Hawaii's Mauna Loa Observatory, dramatically showing that something ominous was happening.  Computer models of Keeling's Curve consistently showed that a doubling of CO2 would warm atmosphere of our planet by 2-3.6 F within a century.

But you can do interesting things with data, and the curve below is a partial derivative of the one to the right.  

In the 1970's, pollutants in the atmosphere scared scientists to theorize that sunlight would be blocked and the Earth would cool.  Turned out that from 1940 to 1970 the postwar boom in aerosol pollutants did cool the planet, and TIME magazine in 1974 had an article worrying about the next Ice Age.  

Skeptics, however, doctored a TIME 1977 cover to show flip-flop with a 2006 cover:  The actual cover is to the right.  There is little doubt that the atmospheric CO2 level of our planet has continued to increase now for more than sixty years (from 313 parts per million in 1958 to 406 ppm at the end of 2018 and getting close to 416 ppm today).

The first World Climate Conference occurred in 1979 in Geneva, the year I joined the U.S. Senate.  The gathering led to an ozone protection agreement in 1985.  This collaboration worked so well that the Montreal Protocol was the result in 1987 to use the same action model for something like global warming, which was not yet a major issue.

In 1988 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created to be managed by the United Nations  The first UN conference was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.  After an inordinate number of gatherings and frameworks and assessments, an actual agreement was reached with the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, giving adherents a decade to meet certain targets.  The IPCC actually won the Nobel Prize, with Al Gore, in 2007.

Have you noticed I haven't mentioned even one female involved in this issue of crucial importance to the fate of humanity?  Of course, many have been involved in the IPCC and all segments of the research.  Wikipedia provides a long list of important contributions by women.  However, not one individual has attained any kind of universally recognizable role.  Maybe that's the missing ingredient, for Yale University showed how females are definitely more sensitive to the issue and would more likely take concrete steps to remediate global climate change:

A whole bunch more reports and meetings led to the Paris Agreement in 2015, which was the 21st Conference of the Parties. The following year, 175 world leaders personally signed the agreement at the UN Headquarters in New York City.  This number went up to 184.

Fabulous, right?  Wrong.  "Developing nations" like China and India were provided certain accommodations, then, Donald Trump was elected PUS (President of the United States), fresh from his past comments:

•  "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."
• "This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps,and our GW scientists are stuck in ice."
• "NBC News just called it the great freeze - coldest weather in years. Is our country still spending money on the GLOBAL WARMING HOAX?"
• "I believe in clean air. Immaculate air.... But I don't believe in climate change."

So as President, he decided to pull the USA out of the Paris Agreement.  But these protocol writers aren't idiots, for they wrote down a restriction that a country which signs cannot leave till the end of 2020, which happens to be after the next presidential election.  Another reason why my sense that the environment might be the crucial different-maker in the 2020 election.

So today, it is President Donald Trump, many Republicans (only 37% favor reducing fossil fuel use, versus 80% for Democrats), plus the oil/gas/coal industry, versus 97% of scientists and much of the world, including India and China, which have ratified the process.  Russia is still pondering about this next step.  The future of the Nation, Humanity and Planet Earth could well be at stake in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election.

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HAWAII MYSTERY WOMAN #2?

Possible Hawaii Mystery Woman #2 came into my life in the colonoscopy recovery room just a few days ago.  We chatted for less than five minutes, with both of us still in an anesthetic daze.  However, we exchanged business cards because we both once belonged to Chaine des Rotisseurs, a gourmet society, headed by Bruce Liebert, a common friend.

  

Well, after I left the room--something I later learned--someone named Peter came in after his procedure, who was into financing, and she heads a financial management group.  They talked about their field at some length.  How do I know this?

The next day, I got an e-mail from this MW2 candidate, asking me out to lunch, but she starts the message with Dear Peter.  I figured something was awry, but, heck, a possible free lunch, and she had epicurean tastes.  We met at Orchids.  I'm not sure if she thought I was a possible future client, or what.  I think we both remain confused, certainly about the Peter and Pat thing.

But we had an enjoyable lunch with generous libations.  We seem to have many common acquaintances, like Dudley Pratt, Doc Buyers and other leaders of the community, some who died a long time ago.  Perhaps she was still a little loopy, so I thought I'd show her in the Style app using the Psychedelic mode to shield her identity.  That's her salad  in front of her.

We both had onaga.  As it seems like there is a mystery woman for trips, what about one for fine lunch cuisine, especially as MW1 does not do lunch.  As you know, if you keep up with this site, I not too long ago almost totally changed my attitude about life, and after a lifetime of mostly service to others, decided that I would now only look out for myself.  She also went through a similar epiphany, so that indeed is some coincidence.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, MM2 now mostly lives in Arizona, and only every so often returns to Honolulu.  I'm obligated to pay for our next meal, which won't be for many months to come, for she left for home today.  Here we are in the Style of Seurat.  You can barely recognize it, but in the background is Diamond Head, and we are very close to where the masthead photo of this blog site was shot.

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BOOKSMART : BIGGEST LITTLE FARM

Went to two movies yesterday, one was disappointing, the other, okay:

                                        Rotten Tomatoes      Box Office   My Rating
                                  Reviewers   Audiences        Mojo

Booksmart                     98                 76                #6               C

Biggest Little Farm       91                 96               #15              B+

#1 for the week was Aladdin, #2 John Wick 3 and #3 Avengers Endgame.  I don't go to children's flicks.  While there have only been three Disney-made Aladdin productions (1992 and 1996), do you wonder how many have been made in total?  I count up to 23.

I noticed that Rotten Tomatoes reviewers also have ranked 150 erotic films:

• #1       100  La Belle Noiseuse (1991)
• #2       100  The Draughtsman's Contract (1982)
• #3      97  Body Heat (1981), with William Hurt/Kathleen Turner/Richard Crenna/Ted Danson
•  
• 
  
  
• #145      9  The Blue Lagoon (1980), with Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins
• 
  

• #148      7  Wild Orchid (1990), with Mickey Rourke and Jacqueline Bisset
• #149      0  Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991), with Milla Jovovich and Brian Krause
• #150      0  Killing Me Softly (2003), with Heather Graham and Joseph Fiennes

Rotten Tomatoes reviewers only very rarely bestow a score of 98% to any film.  What they saw in  R-rated Booksmart eludes me.  The audience gave it a 76%, which was closer to the reality, while mine is south of 70%.

The two superstar students who decided on the last day of school that they should have had more fun in high school and attempt to make that all up before graduation the next day, did not articulate well, and were nowhere near the raves laid upon them.  Worse was the script, for there were transitions and juxtapositions that were ill-conceived and sensibly unlikely.   The soundtrack included 39 songs/pieces, and, well, there was no nostalgia for me, as would be expected.   The male version, Superbad in 2007, was so much funnier.  Rotten Tomatoes:  87%/87%.  Did you know Seth Rogen, Bill Hader and Emma Stone had secondary roles?  For a budget of $20 million, it made $170 million.

Biggest Little Farm is a PG-documentary that tried to be a movie...and succeeded.  John Chester wrote, produced, directed and starred, with his wife and thousands of farm and rogue animals.   Everything occurs in Ventura County, where I lived for three summers.

How they got the funds to convert a wasted apple orchard into a utopian farm could have been fleshed out a bit, but the story is about a couple and their dog bringing harmony to the environment.  Farming is not easy, and they had their share of disasters, but the lesson is to let nature help provide solutions.  There really is an Apricot Lane Farms, established in 2011, Moorpark, California, and you can visit:

This coming Friday brings Rocketman, the life of Elton John, rated 88% by Rotten Tomatoes, and Too Late to Die Young, a Chilean film earning a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating.

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