DAY 1: Honolulu to Kyushu

It's almost 4,000 miles from Honolulu to Tokyo, while the distance approaches 5,000 miles if going to Washington, D.C.  So you ask, why is it only 6,771 miles from Tokyo (Narita--NRT) to DC (Dulles--IAD)?  This is why planes sometimes take the polar route.

When you travel from Tokyo to Fukuoka, a distance of 675 miles, there is a sense that you are going from north to south.  Actually, it's more east to west:

Seoul is 335 miles to the north of Fukuoka, while Shanghai is 545 miles west, both closer than Tokyo.

Fukuoka is the capital of Kyushu, and has a population of 1.54 million (versus 1.48 million for for Kyoto) with a relatively high growth rate for Japan.  Fukuoka is one of the few major cities not particularly bothered by major earthquakes and tsunamis.  The city is sometimes referred to as Hakata (name of the main train station), but it was the merger of both in 1889 that created the city of today.  There is some debatable evidence that this was the prehistoric capital of Japan, and that the Imperial Family lived there.

In 1274 Kublai Khan (his grandfather Chinggis is also known as Genghis) invaded Kyushu with 900 ships.  The effort failed because of weather and bad planning.

Donald Trump take notice:  around 1276 samurai built a stone wall around the city of Fukuoka, about ten high and ten feet wide for a length of 12 miles.  It kind of worked. Kublai sent another envoy to Japan in 1279, but all five were beheaded.  Infuriated, KK in 1281 sent another 4,000 ships and 140,000 soldiers, and succeeded in this invasion.  However before actually getting to Fukuoka, another typhoon decimated the Chinese.

This is the storm that is referred to as the Kamikaze (Divine Wind).  This term, kamikaze, was used to indicate suicide attacks by planes in World War II.  Saturation bombing destroyed much of Fukuoka.

Jumping to today, a survey in 2017 found 217 homeless people.  The peak was 1,237 in 2009.  Hawaii, with 1.4 million residents, has around 8,000 today.  Tokyo, with a population of over 9 million has around 5,000 homeless.

The region's cuisine features mentaiko (Pollack roe), Hakata (broth of pork bones, with thin noodles--the green onions and Japanese pickles are free toppings, but there is usually a charge for char siu and egg slices, I hear) ramen and motsunabe (a stew made of beef or pork guts and offal...yikes, I'll know what to avoid).

While Shimonoseki in Yamaguchi is the home of fugu (blowfish), Fukuoka calls it fuku, and does not charge as much.  The following five restaurants were recommended:

• Hakata Bote
• Ajidokoro Izumi
• Tatsuki Sushi
• Hakata Izumi
• Teraoka

Why am I spending so much time on fugu?  I ate two fugu testicles  (here to the left called sperm sacs) in 1991 and for the next two years envisioned the future of Humanity.  The Blue Revolution, Rainbow Pearls, Hawaiian Onsen and many other ideas originated during this period.  When I come back from Japan I'll be really smart again.

Kyushu University began as a medical college in 1867.  According to Wikipedia, this former Imperial University is one of the most prestigious in the country:  

• There are 12,000 undergraduate and 7,000 post-graduate students, and 5,000 staff.  
• Their color is red wine.  
• Was the first Japanese university in 2000 to integrate research with education and undergraduate with graduate, to provide a more flexible and progressive program.
• They are partners in the Global 30 Project to expand international relations, where 300,000 students from abroad are expected to be attending universities in Japan by 2020.
• I begin my official visit with a plenary talk on the Kyushu University Ito Campus, followed by a discussion panel.  The red area to the left is the "new" flagship Ito campus, opened in 2005.

My flight from Honolulu to Japan began at Japan Airlines' Sakura Lounge, which is also American's Admiral Club:

Not too many people here.  I fixed myself a Bloody Mary and am finishing my posting for today.

I would say that this lounge is better than the United Club.  Maybe even much better.  Next, from the Kyushu University Campus.

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I should mention that there is a looming monster ocean storm in the Indian Ocean.  Now already up to 110 MPH, Tropical Cyclone Cebile will attain Category 4 strength, but thankfully, head nowhere:

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BE SMART ABOUT YOUR HEALTH

For health and longevity, get enough sleep, minimize, if not eliminate, stress, control your blood pressure, be careful about inflammation and attempt to fluctuate at the higher end of your Body-Mass Index.  Wait a minute, am I saying it's okay to be pleasantly plump?  Read on.  

Your life should of course also include adequate exercise with little sitting and smart eating.  Certainly, don't smoke, but do drink alcohol (incredible, but people who imbibe live longer).  About right are two glasses of red wine for men and only one for women.  Two glasses are 10 ounces, or just about 40% a bottle wine.  Certainly seems like a lot.

I've had numerous postings about sleep, from my recent focus on magnesium and naps, to the optimal compass direction on how you sleep, to what experts say about how much sleep you should have:

• Newborns (0-3 months ): Sleep range narrowed to 14-17 hours each day (previously it was 12-18) 
• Infants (4-11 months): Sleep range widened two hours to 12-15 hours (previously it was 14-15) 
• Toddlers (1-2 years): Sleep range widened by one hour to 11-14 hours (previously it was 12-14) 
• Preschoolers (3-5): Sleep range widened by one hour to 10-13 hours (previously it was 11-13) 
• School age children (6-13): Sleep range widened by one hour to 9-11 hours (previously it was 10-11) 
• Teenagers (14-17): Sleep range widened by one hour to 8-10 hours (previously it was 8.5-9.5) 

• Younger adults (18-25): Sleep range is 7-9 hours (new age category) 
• Adults (26-64): Sleep range did not change and remains 7-9 hours 
• Older adults (65+): Sleep range is 7-8 hours (new age category) 

Here are 21 Ways to Sleep Better and 15 Science-Backed Ways to Fall Asleep Faster.  I asked one of my younger nephews how long does it take him to go to sleep.  He said two minutes.  Here are 10 Easy Ways to Fall Asleep Anywhere in 5 Minutes or Less.  Good luck to you for any of these to work, but, certainly, avoid pills if you at all can.  I probably slept from 6-7 hours through most of my adult life, but at 15 Craigside, now have 7-8 hours.  Yet, every night is a challenge.

About your weight, I read two years ago in Scientific American:

     Could a Few Extra Pounds Help You Live Longer?

To quote:

When the researchers separated the cohorts into two age groups—younger than 60 and older than 60—the BMI that correlated with the lowest risk of death crept up a bit as people got older. In the 1970s, it was 23.5 for those who were 60 and younger and 24.4 for those who were older than 60—both still well within the normal range. From 2003 to 2013, the BMI linked to the lowest mortality was 26.7 for those 60 and younger and 27.3 for those over 60, which is just inside the overweight category.

Or in graph form:

So I did a lot of research and posted:

     OVERWEIGHT PEOPLE LIVE LONGER THAN NORMAL PEOPLE!!!

I concluded:

My reading of the above is that normal people have the same life expectancy as those obese, and the overweight with  a BMI (body-mass index--those numbers in the table above) between 25-29.9 live the longest.  Why wasn't all this publicized seven years ago?

Mind you, my personal physician and my neighbor (also a doctor), don't agree with me.  Anyway, here are few more surprising revelations:

• The ideal BMI for Italian women is 33, which is obese.
• Underweight people were 73% more likely to die.
• Those extremely obese with a BMI 35 or greater were 36% more likely to die.
• Those overweight with BMI 25-29.9 were 17% less likely to die.

So you say, but don't overweight people have more high blood pressure, diabetes, lower self-esteem and crummier social/physical lives?  Yes, but here you might actually want to credit Big Pharma and their unscrupulous relationship with the medical profession.  I still think we take too much prescriptive medication, but those pills you ingest might actually have skewed those longevity statistics to your benefit, while the extra poundage serves as the resource that carries you over during serious illnesses.

Finally, as you travel the country, have you noticed how fat Americans are?  Well, I quote from one of my postings:

No doubt Americans are probably way too fat:  35% of men and 40% of women were obese in 2014.  The 38% obesity average is an increase of 34% since 2006. 

This is one reason we have a life expectancy lower than what we should have were we not so obese.  Keep in mind:  overweight is okay, but obese is bad, unless you happen to be a female in Italy.

Changing topics, as I've had dozens of postings about the value of wine, chocolates, coffee, and even fat (omega-3 fatty acids in fish, for sure, but even beef fat), let me skip nutrition and move into inflammation (if you can't adequately read that summary to the right, click on it) a subject matter that is little understood:

• this is your body's natural protective response against infection and aliens:
• when you cut your hand, your immune system sends white blood cells there
• the result is redness and swelling, but your body is at work
• chronic inflammation
• reaction to toxins from smoking can cause cancer
• excess fat cells stored in your belly
• reaction to plaque in your artery, resulting in strokes and heart attacks
• include C-reactive protein in your blood test to determine your risk of heart attack and stroke
• aspirin seems to help prevent blood clots and dampen inflammation
• statins also work

But as I started with red wine, let me conclude by saying that this particular potion reduces inflammation, and so do dark chocolate, fish, tea, ginger, blueberry, vegetables and turmeric (where the active ingredient is curcumin, used in curries).

Nothing to do with health, but isolated and esoteric highlights of interest to your tribe also help create an aura of smartness:

• A 390-pound sumo wrestler from Georgia yesterday won the Emperor's Cup in Tokyo.  No, not the state, but country.  Levan Gorgadze, known as Tochinoshin, was a low-ranking competitor who suddenly became the best.  The heaviest sumo-tori ever was Konishiki (below, top photo) from Hawaii at 633 pounds.  Akebono, also from Hawaii, was a measly 550 pounds.

• Michelle Wie now sports pink hair.  Of course, she's been more adventurous in her past, with rainbow hair:

• 42-year old Tiger Woods rallied for four birdies on the back nine yesterday to make the cut at the Farmers Insurance Open (these golf tournaments have lost their glamour by featuring sponsors, for this is Torrey Pines near San Diego--Did you know that singer Andy Williams hosted for 20 years?) for the first time in 29 months.

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BE SMART ABOUT HUMANITY

This is the third in my series to try to make you smarter, and by the end of today, also insignificant.  I end this effort tomorrow with BE SMART ABOUT HEALTH.  Both are puns, well, maybe more double entendres, with no risqué alternative.  Then on Sunday, I'm off for Kyushu, Japan, and become a travelogue for a week.

Again, first the facts, or, at least the current state-of-science.  Let me start with the origin of water, for life as we know it can only spring from this liquid.  There are two schools of thought.  One, it was already in the material creating our planet.  Two, from comets and meteors.  University of Hawaii scientists shared the latest evidence that the water was already here.  This from measuring the ratio between normal water and heavy water. In any case our oceans could have appeared as long as 4.41 billion years ago.  Remember, Planet Earth formed 4.54 billion years ago.

Yesterday I introduced this subject by hinting that life was first created only 440 million years after Planet Earth formed.  How do scientists know?  Researchers studied molten rock from western Australia dated to 4.1 billion years ago, and in fragments of zircon found specks of graphite, where the carbon had a high ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-13, evidence of photosynthesis.  But, then, a hydrothermal vent in Canada showed evidence of microorganisms as old as 4.28 billion years.  Amazing how soon after the creation, life appeared.

These could have been biotic life (which can mean almost anything, and maybe even RNA life) and/or  procaryotes (unicellular DNA life), but they are surmised to have developed only 3.9 billion years ago, and there are two types, archaea and bacteria.  The former probably came first, being linked to thermal and salty springs, plus they produce methane in swamps.  But you ask, where do viruses and prions fit in the tree of life?  They are not alive.  So they don't...at least for now.

For the longest time biologists only classified living things as plant or animal.  However, a half a century ago, they created Five Kingdoms.  To the shock of many, in the late 1970's Carl Woese and his colleagues forced the field to add something called archaea.  Something so simple as this remains a rapidly changing very amorphous field.  Eukaryotes are things like us, but, you ask, what are CPR and DPANN?  Go check yourself.  So how many kingdoms are there now?  Depends on your country.  No kidding.

Three billion years ago photosynthesizing cyanobacteria evolved, producing oxygen, causing the extinction of most bacteria as the Great Oxygenation Event.  The Moon then was closer to our globe and induced 1000 foot tides.  These were turbulent times.  Life has been a wild experiment, for it is estimated that more than five billion species have lived, with 99% gone forever.  There have been more than 20 extinction events, but the three most prominent were:

• Permian-Triassic, 252 million years ago, where 96% of all marine and 70% of land species disappeared. The causes were three-fold:  meteors, volcanism and the release of methane from the seafloor, causing a runaway greenhouse effect (this is my Venus Syndrome, induced by our energy use, my first novel to come).  Called the Great Dying, reptiles then became prominent.

• Triassic-Jurassic, 201 million years ago, again by those same three impacts, killing up to 75% of all species, leaving dinosaurs as dominant.
• Cretaceous-Paleocene, 66 million years ago, by an asteroid of 6-9 miles size, eliminating 75% of living creatures, allowing mammals and birds to thrive.

Then came Homo sapiens:

The first Homo species appeared around 400,000 years ago, leading to us, now about 50,000 years old, although there are those who consider that "we" were there from the beginning, 400,000 years ago.  Key developments (years ago):

• 400,000+  fire
•     10,000  agriculture
•       6,000  wheel
•       5,500  end of Stone Age
•       5,000  earliest known writing
•       5,000  first cities--Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and in Egypt
•       2,500  democracy and Greece
•       2,000  Jesus Christ

Other inventions:

• 750BC  optics in Assyria (now Turkey/Iran/Syria)
• 100BC  paper in China
• 1430     printing press in Europe
• 1879     electricity (Can you believe that Benjamin Franklin is credited as the founder in 1872, although just the previous month, Thomas-Francois Dalibard of France beat him to this experiment?)
• 1928     penicillin
• 1946     semi-conductor
• 1990     internet

So much for facts about our past.  What about our future?

• Will Donald Trump or global warming cause our extinction?
• What about the next world war?  Remember that Doomsday Clock?  The Bulletin of Atomic scientists just yesterday advanced the time by 30 seconds to 2 minutes to midnight, the closest it has ever been to Doomsday.  This matched the low from 1953 when both the U.S. and Soviet Union exploded Hydrogen Bombs.

• As a species we are continuing to evolve.  According to Scientific American:

...over the past 10,000 years humans have evolved as much as 100 times faster than at any other time since the split of the earliest hominid from the ancestors of modern chimpanzees.

• While the evolution of humans is but a tiny part of the whole chain of life, we loom as the crucial entity to affect the future of the Universe.
• I last night attended a talk by Sara Seager of MIT on "Is There Life Out There."  Here I am with her and another Friend of the Institute for Astronomy:

• Her presentation focused on signs of conditions where life might spring.  Thus, their search, and the follow-up Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will not actually prove that there is life up there.  Ultimately finding life would be monumental, but what about intelligent life?  If such a civilization exists, the only possible contact, for incoming signals could be from millions of light years away, would be to search for them.  She indicated that Russian billionaire Yuri Milner (guy on the left) has committed $100 million to Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

• Back to Planet Earth, we have genetic techniques developing to significantly alter what we are and will become.  Countries with high moral principles will regress for a while until it becomes obviously evident that to retard "progress" is equivalent to surrendering.

• But that could be trivial, for theories abound that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will overtake Homo sapiens X.  I even went so far as to speculate that early AI will be able to bring about World Peace, something beyond the capability of  human society.  Doesn't matter, for pure logic suggests we will soon become expendable.

• Will future life be silicon-based, a more logical chemical pathway?  Turns out carbon-life dominated on Planet Earth because of our existing conditions 4 billion years ago.  Then, too, of course, silicon is symbolic of AI.

Planet Earth will still be around a billion years from now.  Humanity as we know it almost surely won't.  But what will life be, and, what is life?  Any physical encounter with aliens will be with super intelligent robots.  Will Planet Earth have smarter AI on this momentous occasion?  Will it matter?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average again broke its all-time high, up 224 to 26,617:

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