1AUGUST2026

 Let me first dabble into those wars:

• Gaza Strip.
• Hamas has agreed to disarm.
• Israel maintains skepticism.
• Palestinians mistrust both Israel and Hamas.
• 
  Iran War.
• Iran accused U.S. of escalating tensions.
• Commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is still down by 95%.
• Houthis blocking the passing of Saudi ships through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

Both the old and new versions of this blog site have seen a jump in readership from March of this year, when we flew from Honolulu to Las Vegas for a few days, then on to Memphis to visit Elvis' Graceland, followed by a cruise down the Mississippi to New Orleans.  A short stop there, then on to New York City, followed by a Viking cruise from Manhattan to Toronto.  We then boarded a train towards Vancouver, catching another train to get us there.

Original blog:

• As I compose this posting, first one on 29April2008, this daily blog has had just under 10.5 million viewers over 6669 days, or 1574/day.
• However, the first ten years averaged only 500/day, so more have viewed it in recent years.
•  On 8May2016, after eight years, I finally reached a readership of one million.  I ended with:

  I'm more and more beginning to think that religion is an important part of the social fabric.  Me?  I'll continue to be good, but still need to be convinced that these are not fairy tales, for that matter of eternal gloom is fearsomely disquieting.

  Congratulations, Pat, while writing this post, you passed one million viewers!

  This was a Sunday posting.  Click on this to read the entire article.

• Both the old and new versions of this blog site have seen a jump in readership from March of this year, when we flew from Honolulu to Las Vegas for a few days, then on to Memphis to visit Elvis' Graceland, followed by a cruise down the Mississippi to New Orleans.  A short stop there, then on to New York City, followed by a Viking cruise from Manhattan to Toronto.  We then boarded a train towards Vancouver, catching another train to get us there.

• Recent readership.  In 2026:

• January:  0.14 million
• February:  0.12 million
• March:  0.26 million
• April:  0.65 million
• May:  just over 3 million.
• June:  1.42 million
• July:  0.54 million
• I have noticed that more people read this blog during my travels.  We leave Honolulu for Iceland on Monday, August 3, then board the Azamara Journey on a cruise to watch the Total Eclipse of the Sun on August 12, followed by several stops in Greenland, disembarking in Montreal for a few days, fly to Vancouver for a couple of days, then board the Silver Whisper to Honolulu.
• 221 countries have visited this blog site.  Curiously, Singapore has the highest viewership/capita.
• Address of old blog site:  https://planetearthandhumanity.blogspot.com/

I ran out of labels in the original blog:

• So added a new version on 30September2020.  They are both identical.
• 2131 postings so far, or 217/posting, or an average of 6520/month.
• Readership picked up in mid-2023 with 10,564 in the month of May, then 31,474 in May of 2025, 46,953 in May of 2026 and 55,226 last month.
• Address for new blog site:  https://wawh2.blogspot.com/

From Wikipedia, on August 1 in history:

30 BC – Octavian (later known as Augustus) enters Alexandria, Egypt, executes Marcus Antonius Antyllus,^[1] and brings the city under the control of the Roman Republic.^[2] (date is O.S.)  Antyllus is the son of Marc Antony from his third wife.  Antony also had three children from Cleopatra.

527 – Justinian I becomes the sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire.

1498 – Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to visit what is now Venezuela.

1876 – Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state.

1893 – Henry Perky patents shredded wheat.

1907 – The start of the first Scout camp on Brownsea Island, the origin of the worldwide Scouting movement.

1927 – The Nanchang Uprising marks the first significant battle in the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party. This day is commemorated as the anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army.

1936 – The Olympics open in Berlin with a ceremony presided over by Adolf Hitler.

1965 – Frank Herbert's novel, Dune, is published for the first time. It was named as the world's best-selling science fiction novel in 2003.

1980 – Vigdís Finnbogadóttir is elected President of Iceland and becomes the world's first democratically elected female head of state.  I will be in Iceland in 3 days.

2023 – Former US President Donald Trump is indicted for his role in the January 6 United States Capitol attack, his third indictment in 2023.^[19]

Typhoon Dolphin had weakened to 140 MPH earlier today, but re-gained some strength, and is now at 145 MPH.  In the current track, the eye should make landfall over the main Okinawa island ton Friday, August 7 as a Category 2 (96-110 MPH), but north of Naha.  This is just a projection at this time.

Heard of this song?  First Day in August, by Carol King.

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A DAY TO BETTER ENJOY LIFE

Enough of wars, Trump, Blanche, and bad news.  Well, one, as awful as Europe is having with high temperatures, the largest heat dome is now in the USA.

Coming Monday, we leave for Iceland, and our cruise ship from there will have several stops in Greenland.  According to Google AI:

High temperatures today reach about 59°F (15°C) in parts of Iceland and 54°F (12°C) in parts of Greenland. 

Ship arrives in Montreal, which has a high of 81 F today, then we go on to Vancouver, up to 79 F today.  Of course, this trip is to bask in the cool of a total eclipse of the sun, on 12August2026.

Another bit of good news is that Hurricane Fausto passed north of the Hawaiian Islands without causing any effect here.  Yesterday morning, from where I sit at my computer, no clouds.

And rainbows.

The other East Pacific ocean storm, Genevieve, which was a super hurricane four days ago, is now a tropical storm, and headed north, away from Hawaii.  Were you aware that hurricanes can affect weather far away from where it is?  Meteorologist blame Genevieve for strengthening that heat dome over the USA.

One more piece of scary news is that Super Typhoon Dolphin, still at 160 MPH, which at one time headed for Tokyo, is now looking to strike Naha, Okinawa.  However, the track keeps moving southward, so it remains uncertain where the eye will be in two days.

Today is National Avocado Day:

• Only declared in 2017.
• Is a super food.
• Targets insulin resistance with heart-healthy fats.
• Fights Alzheimer's with Omega 3 fatty acids.
• High in Vitamins C, E and K. 
• Used in facial creams.  Avocado is high in oleic acid content, which keeps skin soft and hydrated, while supports the regeneration of damaged skin cells.

• 
  According to Google AI:

The U.S. avocado market reached a historic milestone in 2025 by surpassing 3 billion pounds of total volume for the first time, reflecting a 4 percent volume increase and 12 percent dollar growth over the previous year. [1, 2, 3]

• 
  But isn't an avocado high in calories?  
• Yes, a whole medium sized has 320 calories and 30 grams of fat.
• Yet, this fat is monounsaturated, which is good for you heart.
• Plus, contains a lot of dietary fat.
• Solution:  half an avocado/day should be good for you.

• 
  This might be the worse way to consume avocado, but here are three alcoholic drinks.
• Avocado Margarita: Blends fresh ripe avocado with silver tequila, lime juice, simple syrup, and triple sec or Cointreau for a rich, velvety texture. A famous version is served at EPCOT's Mexico pavilion. [1, 2]

• 
  Batida de Abacate: A traditional Brazilian cocktail that blends fresh avocado, coconut milk, condensed milk, and cachaça (a Brazilian sugar cane spirit) into a frosty, sweet drink. [1]
• Avocado Smash / Zen Cocktails: Modern craft variations that muddle fresh avocado with gin or cucumber vodka, lime, and mint syrup for an earthy, garden-fresh profile. [1, 2, 3, 4]

According to Google AI:

The most popular avocado song is Dr. Jean's Guacamole Song (featuring the viral "form the avocado, peel the avocado" chant), alongside popular streaming tracks like "Avocado" by The Vegetable Plot. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Others:

"Avocado" by Cali Conscious (feat. Rastacado): A reggae-inflected track with an animated music video.

"Avocado" by Cookiee Kawaii: An electronic/hip-hop style track from the artist known for viral hits.

"AVOCADO" by Chaeyoung (feat. Gliiico): A modern upbeat track featured on solo project work.

"The Avocado Song" by Alton Eugene: A viral comedy/soul track about making avocado toast. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

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THE SCIENCE TO STOP AND REVERSE AGING: Part 2

As was expected, the USA again bombed Iran last night.  From the New York Times this morning, a graphic showing that the USA/Israel vs Iran War recycles a series of conflict and calm:

Source: Data on U.S. and Iranian attacks comes from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, or ACLED, a nonprofit that tracks global conflict. Adina Renner/The New York Times

And, by the way, Israel is still doing things, yesterday bombing a mosque in Gaza they said was where the Hamas stored weapons.

Also this morning from the New York Times:

The number of data centers in the United States is poised to explode. Source: Cleanview. Jacqueline Gu/The New York Times

I earlier this month posted on:  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DATA CENTERS.

So on to Part 2 of my series about stopping, if not reversing, aging.

• If new to this blog site, or you forgot what I earlier said, read Part 1.
• My earliest posting on this subject reaches back to 1September2009.
• Leonard Hayflick, a dragon twelve years older than me, is a professor of anatomy at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), and is previously from Stanford University. He is known for the Hayflick Limit (most cells divide 20-100 times before dying, as a limit for humans), which directed research towards the cell as the controller of aging. Importantly, he determined that the capped telomere enzyme region appeared to be the key to aging. He effectively found this biological clock in 1961, when I was a chemical engineering junior at Stanford.
• I should add that he did well, passing away 2 years ago at the age of 96.
• 
  University of Colorado behavioral geneticist Thomas Johnson, in 1988, extended the life of a worm called Caenorhabditis elegans by 60%, thus introducing this nematode to the scientific world. He chaired two Gordon Conferences on the Biology of Aging.

• 
  Biologist Cynthia Kenyon, MIT PhD associated with Lenny Guarente, holding the Herbert Boyer (who was earlier mentioned) Professorship, and who previously worked for Nobel Laureate Sydney Brenner, wants to live to be 150. She has increased the life span of C. elegans by a factor of six, meaning the equivalent human life of 400 years. She has merely suppressed the regulator gene, daf-2. C. elegans is a good lab model because it only has about a thousand types of cells and is translucent, so you can see the organs. She helped found a company, Elixir, with Guarente, raising $37 million to find a Fountain of Youth pill. Kenyon believes it is in the realm of possibility that just changing the right human gene could double our lifetime. Then, who knows?
• 
  Aubrey de Grey a biomedical gerontologist from the United Kingdom, has been working on “strategies for engineered negligible senescence" (SENS), or, finding a cure for human aging. He lists seven types of aging damage, but I’ve compressed them into five:
• cancer
• mutations
• junk molecules
• death of cells
• loss of elasticity linking cells
• 
  He co-founded the Methuselah Mouse Prize (MMP), with a sum of $4.5 million to fund researchers to extend the lifespan of mice.  Methuselah reached the age of 969 years in The Bible. 
• Has been quoted to say that people will start living thousand year lives at any selected age in 25 years.
• 
  Michael West offers a personal journey in his The Immortal Cell. He was initially a creationist, devoted to dispelling evolution, but made a full reversal after witnessing the death of his father, shifting from Greek and Hebrew to biology, gaining a PhD degree, and turning to immortality science. He co-founded Geron in 1990, the first to biotechnologically treat age-related disorders, becoming a pioneer in stem cell R&D. Very simply, their goal is to take the patient’s own cells, rejuvenate and modify them, and insert them back in the person to treat diseases. Specifically, telomeres would be lengthened. Their experimental cells now double more than a 100 times. Macular degeneration and atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) will someday thusly be treated. He is now president and CEO of Advanced Cell Technology, which is the only American company pursuing human therapeutic cloning research, and serves as Adjunct Professor Bioengineering at the University of California at Berkeley.

• 
  Sixteen years ago, my posting was on Eternal Life.
• This article was released two years after publishing one of my books, described below.

Chapter 2 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity deals with immortality.  On July 15 The Huffington Post published my article on this subject (Science and the Future of Cloning: Is Immortality Possible?), the same day and time that another posting appeared by David Stipp on "Why Anti-Aging Science Really Matters."  Stipp just this month came out with a book entitled, The Youth Pill: Scientists at the Brink of an Anti-Aging Revolution

• Anyway, he drew 7 comments while mine received 222.  The best I can figure out is that his article is rather clinical and factual, while mine is somewhat conjectural.
• Remember, this was 16 years ago, so I was definitely premature in saying the following in that posting:
• There are at least two pathways to continue your presence. One does not involve human cloning. Without going into telomeres and ribonucleoproteins, let me just say that science is actually close to finding and checking the aging gene. Someday, you might be able to take a pill and stop growing old. The question is, can this technique be perfected before you get too old?
• The other is cloning, and there are two kinds: therapeutic and reproductive. The former is almost okay, while the latter is verboten, except in certain countries where the laws are fuzzy. You can expect some future breakthrough in countries where religion is not dominant.
• 
  So let's say you can afford to be cloned.  You still need to transfer the information in your brain to this new cloned you.  Elon Musk has suggested that his brain-computer interface startup, Neuralink, could eventually allow humans to upload memories and consciousness into digital immortality.
• However, when formed in 2016, Neuralink was not looking into this potential.
• More recently in 2020, How to Live Forever was posted on progress.
• I asked Google AI today, how Neuralink is doing:

Neuralink today is successfully translating specific physical and communicative intent from the brain into a computer, rather than directly downloading complex abstract thoughts. Patients with the implant use their thoughts to control a cursor, type text, play video games, and operate speech-restoration software. [1, 2, 3]

To come, Part 3.

The path of Super Typhoon Dolphin has shifted.  Formerly to Tokyo, now further south, with a median predictive path between Kyushu and Okinawa.

Dolphin:

• Became a typhoon on July 28.
• Attained super typhoon strength on July 29 up to 165 MPH.
• Today still a super typhoon at 155 MPH.

Predictive paths of Dolphin:

To end, 50 years ago today, the #1 song on Billboard was Kiss and Say Goodbye, by The Manhattans.

In the UK on this day half a century ago?  Don't Go Breaking My Heart, by Kiki Dee and Elton John.

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