GRETA THUNBERG: Humanity Has No Clothes

 According to the New York Times this morning:

• More than 100 U.S. colleges will require in-person students to be vaccinated.  As far as I know, the University of Hawaii is still thinking about it.

• 
  The Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill to clean up drinking water, a moment of bipartisan cooperation.  This is a test of how infrastructure can serve as the foundation for President Joe Biden's next $4 trillion Build Back Better plan.  You know how much money this is?  See graphic.
• 
  Amazon reported over $8 billion in profit in the first three months of 2021, more than triple the figure a year ago.  No wonder Jeff Bezos is the richest person in the world, now worth $171 billion.

• 
  The Jacksonville Jaguars selected Trevor Lawrence, a quarterback from Clemson, first in the N.F.L. draft. Here’s the rest of the first round.  Alabama had six players selected, tying the University of Miami for most ever.  Jalen Waddle rejoins Tua Tagovailoa at Miami, the pro team.
• 
  Three ways to increase vaccinations:
• The government should pay Americans to get vaccinated, Slate’s Ben Mathis-Lilley argues.
• The bioethicist Nancy Jecker disagrees, writing that persuasion campaigns can have a more lasting impact.
• I think the best way is for government to work with companies and other organizations (like churches) to only allow those who have completed the vaccination program enter any transport device, sports arena, enclosed restaurant and other related activities. 

Hans Christian Anderson published The Emperor's New Clothes in 1837.  Swindlers were able to convince the Emperor's advisor that the invisible wear they had tailored were beautiful beyond belief, so that the Emperor himself also was so duped.  Parading through town with his new garbs, the people too thought well, lest they be arrested.  However:

“But he hasn’t got anything on,” a little child said.

Or even earlier, from The Bible:

Isaiah 11:6
“The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.”

These animals, of course, effectively represent society today.

Today the parable is about global warming.  Politicians and company executives mouth supportive statements about why we need to do something about the Greenhouse Effect, but never quite get around to establishing enforceable requirements.  That is, until Greta Thunberg, then a 15-year old student who skipped school to protest outside the Swedish Riksdag with a simple sign, appeared.  Her efforts will soon lead to actual action.

Sometimes that child needs to be special to engender real change.  Greta suffers from Asperger's Syndrome on the autism spectrum, providing a unique ability to think, react and act differently from most.

Watch her Ted Talk on growing up wondering what was wrong with her and how her obsessive-compulsive disorder sent her into depression about the unreality of global warming.  You just can't be a normal person to react as she did, and in the process become the youngest TIME Person of the Year.

PBS and Hulu for Earth Day played part 1 of a 3-part series entitled:  Greta Thunberg:  A Year to Change the World.  If you don't livestream Hulu, just scan through your PBS schedule and find it, for Part 1 will play again some time this coming week.  Then, of course Parts 2/3, which will be shown at 8PM on Wednesday, May 5 and 12.

Avio Focolari made the finals of Italia's Got Talent by throat whistling:

She would be 127 years old if still alive today, but here is Mae West around a century ago:

Of course, who can forget her with WC Fields.

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PASTICHE THURSDAY

From Worldometer (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):

        DAY  USA  WORLD   Brazil    India    South Africa

June     9    1093     4732         1185       246       82

July    22     1205     7128        1293      1120     572

Aug    12     1504     6556        1242        835     130

Sept     9     1208      6222       1136       1168       82

Oct     21     1225      6849         571        703       85

Nov    25      2304    12025        620        518      118

Dec    30      3880    14748       1224       299      465

Jan     14      4142     15512      1151        189      712              

Feb      3       4005    14265       1209       107       398

          25       2414    10578        1582       119      144

Mar     2        1989      9490        1726       110      194

          31        1115   12301         3950       458       58

April   6          906    11787          4211       631       37

          20         883   13905          3481     2020    120

          21         876   14088          3157     2102      53

          28         885   14837          3120     3285      51

          29         954   15301          3019     3647      48

Summary:  

• If anything, the pandemic is getting worse.
• So here we are today in the U.S.:

As this is pastiche day, here is what I saw this morning when I sat down for the usual morning constitution:

I thought, this certainly looked familiar.  Here is the full scene:

Amazingly, just the shadow cast by the hanging bath towel created that graph of the pandemic in the USA today.

On Sunday I featured Pfizer.  Here is a video of how they make their vaccine.  Another (click below to watch) of why even the 72% Johnson & Johnson vaccine is just about as good as the 95% Pfizer version.  The pause that occurred was, I think, a tactical mistake, for it forever cast this vaccine into third-class status.  With a less than one in a million chance of a clot, this kind of decision just shows that this Administration is just too namby-pamby, another way of saying too much abundance of caution.  

Oh, by the way, it was only yesterday that I indicated the $2.3 billion infrastructure bi-partisan bill was now the $3 trillion Biden Build Back Better budget.  Well, he surprised me in his speech from Congress last night with what apparently is now a $4 trillion dollar total, one where he has at least one more budget reconciliation path to passage without any Republican help.

I should add that the NFL draft will begin today with only round one.  Want to guess how many Alabama players will be selected?  The other six rounds occur Friday and Saturday.  One of the latest rumor blurbs is that the San Francisco 49ers might be inquiring with the Green Bay Packers about a trade for QB Aaron Rogers.  His comment  was that his future is a beautiful mystery.  Did you catch him on Jeopardy the other week?  Did a great job.

I'd like to end my blog today with a reference to Pat Saiki, who this month at the age of 91, launched her new book, A Woman in the House.  Interestingly enough, you can get it from Watermark Publishing, but not yet from Amazon.com.  Read this article by Denby Fawcett, who was a fifth grade student of Saiki's at Punahou, who, fresh out of the University of Hawaii, in 1952 was hired as the first non-Caucasian full-time teacher at that school.

I never had the pleasure of interacting with her at any level, but that might have been because she was a Republican in Hawaii.  She was, though, a liberal Republican, and a leader I've long admired.  She and Patsy Mink were the early female politicians in Hawaii who made a real difference for society, at both the local and national levels.

Let me finish with a short clip that makes some mathematical sense, but is yet surprising:

Further, this is Pastiche Thursday, so we need something more comical.  What about that re-run of maybe the funniest TV sketch ever...Tim Conway playing a new dentist:

It starts slowly, but towards the end, if you're breathing normally, something is wrong with you.

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AN UPDATE ON THE VENUS SYNDROME

Before getting into the Pandemic and the science topic of today, here is what President Joe Biden will attempt to do tonight in a national address from the U.S. Congress:

• Initially, the purpose was to prepare the supportive groundwork for his $2.3 trillion jobs and infrastructure spending package.  
• More recently, this has become a $3 trillion "Build Back Better" program. 
• A good part of the effort is to gain bi-partisan support by including two items that might draw some Republican interest:
• Free community college and universal pre-K schooling.
• The second is that obvious infrastructure focus, for everyone agrees that the nation's roads, bridges, airports and just about everything else, are now deficient.

From Worldometer (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):

        DAY  USA  WORLD   Brazil    India    South Africa

June     9    1093     4732         1185       246       82

July    22     1205     7128        1293      1120     572

Aug    12     1504     6556        1242        835     130

Sept     9     1208      6222       1136       1168       82

Oct     21     1225      6849         571        703       85

Nov    25      2304    12025        620        518      118

Dec    30      3880    14748       1224       299      465

Jan     14      4142     15512      1151        189      712              

Feb      3       4005    14265       1209       107      398

          25       2414    10578         1582        119     144

Mar     2        1989     9490         1726        110     194

          31        1115   12301          3950        458      58

April   6          906    11787          4211         631      37

          20         883   13905          3481      2020    120

          21         876   14088          3157      2102      53

          28         885   14837          3120      3285      51      

Summary:

• This pandemic just is not going away.
• India is now suffering the most deaths/day.
• They had 362,902 new cases yesterday.
• Brazil was #2 with 76,085 new cases, and the USA #3 with 52,046.
• Turkey was up to 43,301 new cases as #4.
• Thailand is now experiencing a new wave with 2,179 new cases and 15 new deaths yesterday.  
• Significant because it is #104 in total cases and with only a total deaths of 163.
• Thus, just in one day, it experienced 9.2% of all deaths.
• The USA had 885 new deaths, so compared to our 52,046 total deaths, that calculates to 1.7%

Recently, the New York Times reported:

This sudden rise in cases is alarming, especially as India has four the times the population of the U.S.

Also, too the NYT reported:

...a major U.N. report to be released next month will declare that slashing emissions of methane, the main component of natural gas, is far more vital than previously thought to ward off the worst effects of climate change.

Natural gas is mostly methane.  In parallel, on 21April2021, Nature reported that the U.S. is particularly responsible for paying a lot more to reduce methane escape than a poor African nation:

To most, this would hardly be newsworthy.  To me, someone who is actually writing a novel on something called The Venus Syndrome, I searched with some interest.  The Pandemic has thus far changed our economy and society in ways we did not contemplate a year ago.  Global Warming will linger for many decades, and further adjust all facets of human life.  Methane, through The Venus Syndrome, could well end the existence of Humanity, and this could happen virtually instantly in a worst case scenario.  Read on.

The Environmental Defense Fund blares that methane is 84 times more potent in warming our planet over the first 20 years it reaches the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.  This is why you see numbers ranging from 125x to 15x, for the effect depends on the time frame involved.  This is why the United Nations says methane has a warming potential 28-34 times that of CO2 because that is over a 100-year warming cycle.

They go on to further say that 60% of global methane comes from human activities, with the following primary sources:

Further cited is that the 40% natural contribution could well be too low.  This the basis for what one of my books called The Venus Syndrome, described in three Huffington Post articles:

• Part One
• Part Two
• The Venus Syndrome Revisited

Six years ago I outlined what could be the basis of a novel I was then contemplating on this subject.

Clearly, our oceans, are slowly warming.  What if a certain tipping point is reached where the methane clathrates at the bottom of the sea, but concentrated around the ring of fire, are triggered by an eruption to suddenly release methane to the surface?

How much energy is stored in these deep-sea methane clathrates, also known as fire ice (ice that burns)?

And the deposits of these compounds are enormous. "Estimates suggest that there is about the same amount of carbon in methane hydrates as there is in every other organic carbon store on the planet," says Chris Rochelle of the British Geological Survey.

Read about how methane clathrates formed and why the warming ocean and permafrost will mean the increased emittance of methane into the atmosphere.  There is something called the clathrate gun hypothesis involving this sudden release of methane and linkage to the Permian-Triassic extinction eventnt 252 million years ago and Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum 56 million years ago.

In 2008 James Hanson made a presentation showing how Planet Earth could become Planet Venus through the evolution of carbon dioxide.  He did though hint that there was some danger from methane hydrates.  Barry Brook of the University of Tasmania also said essentially the same thing.  Buzzfeed picked this up and even showed an image of a possible sci-fi movie.

As far as I know, no such film is being planned.  However, Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio will play star-crossed astronomers who discover that an asteroid is heading for Earth, but no one takes their warning seriously.  Called Don't Look Up, this will be a Netflix black comedy.  Also in the cast will be Cate Blanchet, Meryl Streep as the U.S. President, Jonah Hill as the prexy's son and Chief of Staff, and Ariana Grande.

The reason why I have not moved ahead with my book, The Venus Syndrome, is that I have still not figured out how to save the world if the feared cascading methane effect of enormous quantities into the atmosphere can be reversed.  Perhaps the solution would be to prevent this from happening.  But stopping the escape of methane from the ocean and tundra is not as easy as reducing carbon dioxide emittance.  

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SHOULD THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE BE ABOLISHED?

The census figures were released, and for the first time ever (happens every 10 years) California lost a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.  If New York had only counted 89 more people, they would not have lost one.  Instead, it would have been Minnesota:

Both liberals and conservatives seem concerned that the 7.4% growth, the smallest since those Depression years in the 1930's, should be a national concern.  Hawaii grew by 7%.  Many others feel that population growth is the biggest problem today facing humanity, right up there with global warming.

• 
  Paul Ehrlich released Population Bomb 53 years ago.
• This all started with Thomas Malthus in 1798.
• However, last year, like the attitude of some noteworthy Americans today, there was a sense that a world population which did grow fast enough would actually cause problems. 
• You can still purchase a hardcover of the original PB from Amazon.com for $124.50.

• 
  Four years later in 1972 came Limits to Growth, blaming population growth for using up world resources. 
• The original paperback can still be had from Amazon.com for $99.99.
• Their 30-year update in 2004 has a hardcover price of $1002 today.  
• Basically the authors said they were right.
• Then ten years later in 2014, another oversight indicated that the second version was correct.
• More recent assessments have again concluded that the book was right.
• Lesson?  Keep important hardbacks.

Earlier this month the CDC indicated that fully vaccinated Americans can safely enjoy traveling again.  Today, they loosened up restrictions again:

Here is the problem.  They keep piecemealing us to death.  But more so, this administration has settled on providing sound arguments about why everyone should be vaccinated.  That is not working.  We should eventually reach a herd immunity of 70%, but is that enough?  President Joe Biden should work with the private sector and religious organizations to ONLY ALLOW THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN SAFELY VACCINATED (meaning two weeks after both Pfizer/Moderna and one Johnson&Johnson) to enter a Federal building, eat at restaurants, attend indoor church services / auditorium sports events, and board cruise ships, airplanes, buses and trains.  

A critical percentage of Americans will only get vaccinated if they can't travel, attend concerts/movies and go out to eat.  Need overcomes illogic every time.  Unconstitutional?  Probably. But this is a war on a virus which requires extraordinary measures.

So, then, what about the Electoral College?  Five times in history presidential candidates have won the popular vote, but lost the Electoral College vote.

In the 1787 Constitutional Convention, our founding fathers were forced to compromise to come to any conclusion:

• 
  Hard to believe, but in those days, no country in the world had ever directly elected its president.
• Interestingly enough, there then were no political parties.
• They clearly did not trust the voting public.
• Large states wanted a Congress based on population, while smaller states wanted equal representation.  This is why we have two bodies as the Great Compromise.
• But then, how do you count slaves?  Another compromise came that a slave was worth two-thirds of a real citizen.
• Felt that the people, not the Congress, pick the president, but ended up having the House of Representatives select the president under  especially peculiar circumstances.  

• 
  This actually happened for the presidency of John Quincy Adams (the one in the middle--note that five people ran), who had actually lost both the popular and electoral votes in 1824 and Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, when even the House couldn't come to a conclusion, so a special Federal Electoral Commission was created.

• 
  Today, with only two parties of importance, it is clear that the House will be the final determinator if the Electoral votes end up in a tie.
• However, all the effort of Donald Trump now shows that even this process could be flawed if something illegal is attempted.

So from the beginning, the electoral process kept evolving to what we have today:

• A candidate needs to capture 270 of the 538 electoral votes, which is the sum of all two senators from each state and the number in the House of Representatives.
• A tie of 269-269 would send the process to the House of Representatives, giving larger states the advantage.
• However, with the current Electoral College, states with smaller populations end up having greater representation.  Wyoming, for example, only has 570,000 residents, but has one representative.  California has 53 representatives, each for more than 700,000.

Just before the latest presidential election last year, a Gallup poll showed that:

• 61% of Americans preferred amending the Constitution to use the popular vote to elect the president.
• 89% of Democrats and 23% of Republicans favored the popular vote.
• Over the past two decades:

So why won't the Electoral College be abolished?  Just like attempting to repeal the Second Amendment for gun control, there is a requirement of support from two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-fourths of the 50 states.  Is this good or bad?  Great for me, as I live in a small state, Hawaii.  In any case, we will need to live with the Electoral College for a long time to come, and continue to suffer from the obsolescence of the 2nd amendment for gun control.

In 2016 I reported:

Shohei Ohtani not only led the Pacific League in strikeouts (132 on 108 innings), he is a hitting star.  His fastball has been clocked at 103 MPH, and he bats third with a .341 average.  He led the Fighters to the Japan Series Title this year, with an ERA of 1.86, while hitting 22 homers with a league-high 1.004 OPS.  Shohei is 22 years old.  The last prominent player who went both ways was Babe Ruth in 1919.  

Well, yesterday:

Shohei Ohtani struck out nine after a shaky first inning on the mound, and also scored three runs and drove in two in a start like none since Babe Ruth 100 years earlier, as the Los Angeles Angels beat the Texas Rangers 9-4 on Monday night.

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