And another thing: quick evolution

 

"And another thing" was the title I always gave to science-y stuff that I found interesting. So why not start with one of those. Consider it a way of easing back in to heavier stuff.

 

So this comes from Smithsonian magazine, which brings news of evolution occurring in real time - in this case, about ten generations.

 

The study involved was published in the May 21 edition of Global Change Biology and related to Anna's hummingbirds (Calypte anna), a species found in California.

 

Simply (probably oversimply, so read the article) put, the proliferation of hummingbird feeders since World War II has provided the birds with a plentiful supply of nectar, resulting in longer, larger, beaks - the better to take advantage of the feeders - as well as enabling them to expand their range from southern California up the coast to British Columbia.

 

So take that, creationists: Yeah, evolution can take tens or hundreds of thousands of years, but it doesn't have to. The argument "no one has seen evolution" just won't wash. Not that it ever did.

043 The Erickson Report for December 2 to 15, Page Three: Noted in Passing

Now, a few things Noted in Passing, just a minute or two on a couple of things I wanted to mention.

First up, at last, it appears the government is taking corporate crime seriously.

Too bad it's the government of Sweden.

On November 11, prosecutors in Sweden indicted two executives of the Lundin Oil corporation for complicity in war crimes perpetrated in Sudan between 1999 and 2003.

In essence, the charge is that Chairman Ian Lundin and former CEO Alex Schneiter turned security for an oil field where the company had a claim over to the Sudanese military either knowing or criminally indifferent to the fact that the change would (and did) result in war crimes including massacres.

The case marks the first time since Nuremberg that prosecutors have brought “grave war crime” charges and indictments against individuals.

As a footnote, the company released a statement saying "There is no evidence linking any representatives of Lundin to the alleged primary crimes in this case." In other words, "We didn't actually pull the trigger, so nothin' to do with us."

Sorry to tell you, gang, that ain't how it works.

=

Here's something interesting. On November 23, the DOD announced it is establishing a new group to investigate reports on the presence of UFOs in restricted airspace.

The formation of the group comes after the government released a report in June, encompassing 144 observations, which concluded there was a lack of sufficient data to determine the nature of mysterious flying objects.

This comes after decades of officialdoms deflecting, debunking, and discrediting observations of UFO's.

What I personally find interesting is that he new group, the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group, refers not to "unidentified flying objects" but to "unidentified aerial phenomena" or UAPs, which I find interesting because I have been calling them that for a number of years, speculating that they are actually some sort of natural phenomena that are rare enough that we haven't learned yet to recognize them, much like the UFOs that commercial pilots learned not to report for fear of being grounded but which are now known by the names red sprites and blue jets and are types of lightning that strike upwards from the tops of thunderstorms.

Wonder if I'll get any credit for the name.

=

Finally, in April 2015, Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments, a credit card payment processing company, raised the minimum wage at his company to 70,000, which he paid for by cutting his own pay to the same level.

He was mocked as a "socialist," "lunatic of all lunatics," whose employees would soon be on bread lines.

Six years later, company revenue has tripled, the customer base has doubled, 70% of his employees have paid down debt, many bought homes for the first time, 401(k) contributions grew by 155%, and turnover dropped in half.

What's more, when the pandemic broke out, the company lost 55% of its business in one month. Price said the company was four months from bankruptcy. Instead, his employees voluntarily took pay cuts of an amount they each chose, seeing the company through until things improved.

And they have - to the point where those employees have all been given back the amounts they passed up.

Apparently being a socialist lunatic is not such a bad thing.

One final note: When Price made the announcement, Rush Limbaugh declared that he hoped this would become a Harvard Business School cast study of how socialism fails. It is a Harvard Business School case study - just for the opposite reason.

036 The Erickson Report for April 22 to May 5, Page Four: And Another Thing

036 The Erickson Report for April 22 to May 5, Page Four: And Another Thing

We're going to take a break now for something I keep meaning to make more common but never seem too. We call it And Another Thing, where we step aside from politics and social commentary to look at some science thing that I think is cool.

This time we start with the first picture to the right. It's a recently enhanced photo made from an original plate taken in May 1919 in Sobral, Brazil. It is, as I expect you guessed, of a solar eclipse.

It has some added color so that nice solar prominence can be easily seen. The original, of course was in black and white. But that's not the interesting part.

The second photo zooms into the lower right corner of the picture. Notice the two bright spots circled in red.

What's so special about these spots? Well, as I'm sure you knew, they are stars. What's important is that they shouldn't be there. Or more exactly, they shouldn't be where they are.

Which brings us to Albert Einstein and his Theory of Relativity. Relativity has the reputation of being extremely difficult to understand and indeed the mathematics involved in having a deep understanding of the theory are quite advanced and well beyond certainly my comprehension. But the concepts of the theory can be understood by any reasonably intelligent person. You may have to focus a bit, but you can understand it.

The basic concept to understand is that Einstein realized that we do not exist in a universe of three dimensions of space and a separate one of time, but a universe of four-dimensional spacetime. That space and time are interwoven, that each affects the other, and neither is absolute but can be distorted or warped - specifically, warped by the presence of mass.

His original Theory of Relativity, which later became the Special Theory of Relativity, described the effects of that insight in what are called non-accelerated frames of reference. That is, with objects moving in a straight line at a constant speed; more technically, objects moving at a constant velocity, so their acceleration is zero. Thus, a non-accelerated frame of reference

It became the Special Theory of Relativity because Einstein later expanded it to include accelerated frames of reference, where objects are changing their speed or direction of motion or both. That was the General Theory of Relativity - which served as Einstein's theory of gravity.

Newton described gravity as an attractive force between two objects, with the strength dependent on their masses and how far apart they are. Einstein, however, described gravity as the result of the warping of spacetime by mass. So anything traveling close enough to a massive enough object would have its path bent by the warping of spacetime. That means anything - even light.

Okay. The eclipse of 1919 was an excellent opportunity to test Einstein's idea. During an eclipse, astronomers can observe stars appearing close to the Sun, which otherwise would be lost in the glare. By comparing their positions with observations of those same stars at times when they are visible in the night sky, the amount by which their light has been deflected by the Sun can be measured.

Two expeditions went out, one to Sobral and one to the island of Principe off the west coast of Africa. There are great dramatic stories of the scientific struggles and frustrations involved, including the Principe expedition waking up to thunderstorms and getting only occasional glimpses of the Sun in breaks in the clouds and multiple plates in Sobral being ruined because it was hot enough to warp the lenses in the camera. But they managed to get enough plates to get results.

Now, Newton also predicted that light would have its path be deflected by gravity - but Einstein predicted more than twice the effect. Newton's theory predicted a deflection of 0.8 arc-seconds. Einstein predicted 1.8. An arc-second is 1/60 of an arc-minute, which is 1/60 of a degree, which is 1/360 of a complete circle. So yeah, an arc-second is small, but the size is unimportant, it's how closely prediction matches actual measurements.

The stars in this photo are deflected by just under 2 arc-seconds. The ones from Principe were measured at 1.6 arc-seconds. One a little above Einstein's predictions, one a little below, but both in line with it and far removed from Newton's.

These results, that is, were the first observational proofs of the General Theory of Relativity.

They made Einstein a figure known worldwide and other predictions of his theory, such as black holes, have been subjects of both scientific study and sci-fi ever since.

Which brings me to the third image. Almost exactly 100 years later, in April 2019, a worldwide collaboration of scientists produced this, the first ever image of, the first direct observational evidence of, a black hole.

With a mass roughly equal to 6.5 million of our Suns, this supermassive black hole is located in the galaxy M87, some 55 million light years away from Earth. By the way, M87 just means Messier 87, or number 87 in the Messier catalog of deep-sky objects.

Recall you can't see the black hole itself; the gravitational strength of a black hole is so great that anything passing the event horizon, even light, can't escape. Which is why it's called a black hole. As matter is drawn into the black hole, it swirls around, spiraling in, becoming extremely hot and becoming what scientists call luminous, giving off electromagnetic energy such as radio waves and X-rays. That's what you're seeing here.

The image was obtained using something called the Event Horizon Telescope, which linked together eight ground-based radio telescopes, effectively turning the Earth into one giant virtual radio telescope and creating a resolution sharp enough to focus on an orange on the surface of the Moon.

It also provided an extraordinary test of Einstein's theory of gravity and its underlying notions of space and time. One hundred years later and we are still getting observation evidence related to the General Theory of Relativity - and Einstein is still right.

As a footnote to this, what gave me a hook to raise this now, is that at he end of March of this year, 2021, the team that did the black hole picture followed it up with the final one here. Those visible swirls are in effect an image of the structure of the magnetic field in the event horizon of that black hole.

The image is enabling astrophysicists to analyze the nature and strength of that magnetic field and through that provide important insights into the still-mysterious nature of black holes. Because yes, they are still in a number of ways mysterious and even as more and more is learned there is a considerable amount still unknown about them.

 

And I think that is really cool.

036 The Erickson Report for April 22 to May 5, Page Three: Noted in Passing

036 The Erickson Report for April 22 to May 5, Page Three: Noted in Passing

Next, an occasional segment called Noted in Passing, where we touch on a couple of things we wanted to make sure got mentioned even if only quickly.

First up, the Ohio legislature is considering a GOPper-backed bill to change the name of an Ohio state park from Mosquito Lake State Park to Donald J. Trump State Park.

So basically changing the name from referencing one disease-carrying pest to another. Doesn't seem like much of a change to me.

It does remind me of the earlier efforts by GOPpers to have something named for Ronald Reagan in every single county in the US. But at least they had the decency to wait until he was dead.

-

And here we go again: Sen. Witless Romney is proposing legislation to deal with the - according to the right-wing - supposed looming financial crisis of Social Security and Medicare, a disaster that is forever imminent but never actually arrives.

This time it's to be bipartisan 12-member "Rescue Committees," one for each of the trust funds with a deadline of 180 days to draft legislation to "improve" each program while securing long-term funding, with any such legislation receiving "expedited consideration" in, that is, to be rushed through, Congress.

It's claimed that this is a "bipartisan" effort because three of the 12 co-sponsors in the Senate are Democrats. The three are Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and Mark Warner. Truly a varied group.

Oh, and we have long known the way to secure the long-term funding for SS and Medicare: remove the cap on income subject to the taxes, a change that would only affect those making over $143,000, that is, the richest 8% of Americans.

 

But wait, that's the rub: It would mean taxing the rich, so that's obviously off the table.

-

Elizabeth Warren

On a happier note, here's another sign that Israel is finally losing its stranglehold on US policy in the Middle East, as progressives and even liberals become more open to questioning the so-called "special relationship."

On April 19, Elizabeth Warren, while continuing to support military aid to Israel, proposed conditioning the aid on none of it being used in the occupied territories. Quoting her: "By continuing to provide military aid without restriction, we provide no incentive for Israel to adjust course."

Not a very radical proposal by any means - personally, I would simply end military support altogether - but it wasn't that long ago that even suggesting Israel had to "adjust course" was beyond the pale.

-

On an unhappy note, the Arkansas House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed a resolution specifically allowing the teaching of creationism in public schools.

Federal courts - including in a case directly involving Arkansas - have repeatedly held that teaching creationism in the public schools is unconstitutional on the grounds that it is religious instruction, a fact to which the bill's main sponsor responded by saying she hoped the newly reactionary SCOTUS might feel differently.

-

Finally, while most Americans have weathered the pandemic financially, about 38 million say they are worse off now than before the outbreak began in the US.

Overall, 55% of Americans say their financial circumstances are about the same now as a year ago, and 30% even say their finances have improved, but 15% say they are worse off.

Not surprisingly, the problem is more pronounced at lower income levels and among non-whites. Some 29% of Americans living below the federal poverty line say their personal finances now are even worse that they obviously were a year ago, while 47% of Hispanics and just 39% of Black Americans say they have been able to put aside some money recently, compared to 57% of whites, and. Black and Hispanic Americans are about twice as likely as white Americans to say they have come up short on bill payments.

Despite some recent degree of recovery, the United States still has 8.4 million fewer jobs than it had in February 2020, just before the pandemic struck.

036 The Erickson Report for April 22 to May 5

036 The Erickson Report for April 22 to May 5

This episode:

- Some thoughts prompted by the Derek Chauvin conviction
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/20/watch-live-jury-delivers-verdict-in-derek-chauvin-murder-trial.html
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2021/4/15/22383392/adam-toledo-shooting-video-released-chicago-police-bodycam
https://theconversation.com/being-skeptical-of-sources-is-a-journalists-job-but-it-doesnt-always-happen-when-those-sources-are-the-police-159173
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/officer-who-fatally-shot-daunte-wright-police-chief-have-resigned-n1263949
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/minnesota-police-chief-says-he-believes-officer-meant-grab-taser-n1263817
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/how-veteran-officer-could-have-mistaken-glock-taser-fatal-shooting-n1263976
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-similar-to-duante-wright-shooting-other-cops-have-claimed-gun-taser-mixup-20210412-7b34zo47kzhtpj4n3rxjl37mze-story.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/us/brooklyn-center-police-shooting-minnesota.html

- Afghanistan
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/04/us-nato-troops-withdraw-afghanistan-911-us-official-says/173326/
https://apnews.com/article/world-news-afghanistan-troop-withdrawals-islamabad-015703a459088547531a755819897040

- Noted in Passing
https://www.aol.com/news/ohio-republicans-aim-rename-state-174607622-163054145.html
-
https://www.aol.com/finance/romney-introduces-legislation-tackle-social-163327974.html
https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
-
https://theintercept.com/2021/04/19/israel-aid-elizabeth-warren-j-street/
-
https://ncse.ngo/creationism-bill-advanced-arkansas
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html
-
https://www.aol.com/finance/poll-15-americans-worse-off-120630775-134039730.html - And Another Thing
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/may/12/100-years-on-eclipse-1919-picture-that-changed-universe-arthur-eddington-einstein-theory-gravity
https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/black-hole/

The Erickson Report, Page 3: Noted in Passing

The Erickson Report, Page 3: Noted in Passing

Now we move on to Noted in Passing, where we spend a minute or two on items that are just interesting or which deserve more coverge than we have time for but which we can't let pass without mention.

First up, some good news in the form of one more little step : As of January 1, New Hampshire residents who don't identify as either male or female can have their driver's licenses indicate their sex as X instead of M or F.

At the same time, even as acceptance increases, there is still much ground to be gained, as can be seen in the fact that the United Methodist Church, the nation’s third-largest religious denomination, is expected to split, spinning off a "traditionalist" denomination as a home for the too-many church leaders and members who, even at this late date, refuse to accept same-sex marriage and refuse the ordination to LGBTQ clergy.

The plan is expected to be approved at the church's worldwide conference in May.

=

Meanwhile, on January 3, the American Dialect Society held its 30th annual “Word of the Year” vote, which this year also included a vote for “Word of the Decade.”

The winning word of the decade was "they," particularly as it applies to and is referenced by, people with nonbinary gender identities but also because of its increasing use and acceptance in referring to a single person of unknown gender.

Pronouns, along with conjunctions and prepositions, are generally considered a “closed class” - a group of words whose number rarely grows and whose meanings rarely change. So having "they" have an expanded meaning and use was a real treat for linguists.

=

This is kind of interesting: Tens of thousands of parking meters, thousands of cash registers, and even at least one video game are among computerized systems that have fallen foul of a computer glitch related to the notorious Y2K, or millennium, bug. Known, appropriately enough, as the Y2020 bug, it's a long-lurking side effect of attempts to avoid the Y2K bug.

Both bugs stem from the way computers store dates. To save memory, many older systems express years using two numbers - such as 98 for 1998. The Y2K bug was a fear that when the year rolled over to 2000, computers would treat it as 1900, rather than 2000.

Programmers wanting to avoid the Y2K bug had two broad options: entirely rewrite their code, or adopt a quick fix called “windowing,” which would treat all dates from 00 to 20 as being from the 2000s, rather than the 1900s. An estimated 80 per cent of computers fixed in 1999 used this quicker, cheaper option - but all it did was kick the problem down the road.

Coders chose 1920 to 2020 as the standard window because of the significance of the midpoint, 1970. Many programming languages and systems handle dates and times as measured by seconds since January 1, 1970, a method known as Unix time or "epoch time." It's seen as a standard because of the widespread use of Unix in various industries.

The idea was that these windowed systems would be outmoded and replaced by the time 2020 arrived - which was the same thing the programmers of the 1960s thought about the year 2000.

Those systems that used the quick fix have now reached the end of that window, and have rolled back to 1920 with the attending glitches.

Fixes have been issued but exactly how long these will last is unknown, as companies haven’t disclosed details about them. If the window has simply been pushed back again, the error may well crop up again.

And there's another date storage problem, one which faces us in the year 2038. The issue again stems from Unix’s epoch time: The data is stored as a 32-bit integer, which will run out of capacity at 3:14 am on January 19, 2038.

Something to look forward to.

=

Now we come to a trio of things that I won't do more on at least now because frankly they hurt my heart.

Monday, January 6: A 5.8 magnitude earthquake hits Puerto Rico.
Tuesday, January 7: A 6.4 magnitude earthquake hits Puerto Rico; it's the largest one in a century.
Three hours later: An aftershock of 6.0 magnitude hits
Saturday, January 11: A 5.9 magnitude earthquake hits Puerto Rico

Hundreds of millions in damage, at least one dead, hundreds losing their homes, thousands in shelters, hundreds of thousands more without power.

And don't forget, Puerto Rico is still waiting for $18B in federal aid for relief and repair work related to the disasters of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.

Next: An outbreak of measles in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which began early last year has lead - so far - to over 6,000 dead and a total of an estimated 310,000 cases. The death toll was more than double that from a concurrent outbreak of Ebola.

This past year saw a huge measles outbreak across the planet. Madagascar saw over 1,200 people die. Places like Somalia, Ukraine, Brazil, and Bangladesh reported thousands of cases.

Here in the US we also had an outbreak of measles. While the numbers were smaller - nearly 1300 cases and no deaths - it was still the worst outbreak since 2000, when measles had been declared by the WHO to have been eliminated in the US.

And yet we still have these idiot anti-vaxxers spewing their bullshit about vaccines. It really hurts my heart.

And if you're still not depressed, here's number three: The active Taal Volcano in the Philippines violently erupted on January 12, launching ash and steam several km into the atmosphere and causing ash to fall in surrounding heavily populated areas.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology raised the status of the Taal Volcano to Alert Level 4, indicating a strong likelihood of more violent eruptions within the next couple of days. The agency is calling for everyone within 14km - a little less than 9 miles - from the volcano to evacuate. That's about 500,000 people.

Taal is located about 70 km, about 45 miles, south of Manila.

Oh, and by the way, in case you'd forgotten: Australia is still on fire.

=

Finally, to cheer myself up a bit, here's something I find interesting and in fact rather encouraging.

Benjamin Bergen is a Professor of Cognitive Science at UCal San Diego. Every fall since 2010, he has surveyed about 100 undergraduates in his introductory language class, asking them how offensive various words are.

What he has found is that among young adults today, vulgarities of various sorts are significantly less offensive than they were thought to be back in 1972, when George Carlin did his now-famous routine about the "seven dirty words you can't say on television."

At the same time, various slurs are found considerably more offensive. So various vulgarities that used to generate gasps of shock are now met with a shrug while various racial, ethnic, sexual, and other sorts of slurs that used to be part of everyday conversation are now found offensive.

I find that to be a very good thing.

23.7 - Good News!/Not Good News!: Belief in creationism down; genuine belief in evolution still low

Good News!/Not Good News!: Belief in creationism down; genuine belief in evolution still low

Good News!
A recent Gallup poll reported that belief in creationism, the idea that God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago, is at its lowest point since Gallup began asking the question 35 years ago.

Not Good News!
That "lowest point" still meant that 38 percent of those polled chose creationism to describe their understanding of how we got here and another 38 percent said sure, evolution, change over a long time, but change guided by God - which of course isn't evolution.

Only 19 percent were prepared to go with scientific reality.

Trying to end on a hopeful note, that 19 percent is nearly double the figure from 15 years ago and has been slowly rising over that time.

23.6 - Anti-vaxxers convince Somali immigrants in Minnesota to avoid vaccines; biggest measles outbreak in decades follows

Anti-vaxxers convince Somali immigrants in Minnesota to avoid vaccines; biggest measles outbreak in decades follows

Because that was related to health care, I'm using it as an excuse to raise this:

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2016 there were 70 cases of measles in the US, ranging across 16 states.

But recently, there have been 41 cases of measles in just Minnesota. Of those 41 cases, 34 are Somali immigrants. Forty of those cases involve children under 10; most of them children who were unvaccinated.

Why are the numbers so high and so heavily concentrated in the Somali community? Contrary to the bigots, it's not because of the Quran or Muslim beliefs: Vaccination rates for Somali-Minnesotan children in 2004 were as high as 92%, a rate 3% higher than the state as a whole. But by 2016, the vaccination rate for those children was just 42%, making the sort of outbreak we now see all but inevitable.

What happened in the interim?

The anti-vaxxers happened. The anti-vaxxers, still spinning their inane, thoroughly-debunked claims that vaccinations cause autism. They went to the Somali immigrant community, a community that is vulnerable and marginalized, and hosted a series of "information workshops" where they spewed their fantasies all over concerned parents - with the predictable result: Vaccination rates among Somali immigrants were cut by more than half (while the rate among the general population stayed the same) and we have the worst measles outbreak in Minnesota in decades, concentrated in exactly that vulnerable community.

The anti-vaxxers should be ashamed of themselves, but sadly, they won't be.

However, there is one thing the anti-vaxxers, consisting overwhelmingly of elite liberals, do make clear: Paranoid fantasies and a refusal to accept scientific fact are not limited to the alt.right.

20.4 - Mass marches in April

Mass marches in April

It has been an encouraging, even exciting few weeks recently, as masses of people were prepared to prove by their presence that despite what some have said, the resistance is not "fading."

April 15

First there was April 15, traditionally Tax Day, and on this one tens of thousands of people marched to demand that Donald TheRump release his tax returns as well as for increased transparency in governance and a fairer tax system that does not favor the wealthy.

Actions were planned in 192 cities and towns spread across 44 states and Washington, DC.

The two largest turnouts were 25,000 Washington, DC and 20,000 people in New York City. With several other places reporting crowds in the hundreds or even thousands, the prediction of organizers that 100,000 people would take part nationwide could well be on the mark.

Then there was the one that was sort of a surprise in that it was generated by an unusual constituency for mass public action: scientists.

What was originally billed as the "Scientists' March on Washington" grew within a few weeks from a single post on Reddit to a coalition of around 100 organizations, many of them devoted in some way to the sciences, education, or the environment, calling for a "March for Science."

April 22

So on April 22, Earth Day, people took part in over 600 marches and events, including 200 outside the US, to express support for scientific research and the scientific method.

And again, the turnout was impressive. Based on news accounts, there were at least 10,000 in Washington, DC, 10,000 in Philadelphia, 15,000 in San Diego, thousands in Seattle, thousands more in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, thousands marching in St. Paul, Minnesota and Santa Fe, New Mexico, more than a thousand in Gainesville, Florida, hundreds in Nashville, Tennessee and Montpelier, Vermont.

Hundreds, scores, dozens, in other places in a worldwide celebration of knowledge and against the rejection of science.

And if April 22 didn't convince you the resistance is alive and well, April 29 damn well should have. More than 200,000 showed up in Washington, DC for the Peoples Climate March, far outstripping the organizers' predicted turnout of 50,000-100,000.

The march began at 12:30pm, and by 2:00pm, organizers had succeeded in their goal of completely surrounding the White House. It was so large that people who had been at the very front of the march were beginning to drift away from the event by the time the people at the end of the march got started.

And even though the focus of the organizing was on getting people to go to DC, there were hundreds of events across nearly all 50 states, from the Aleutian Islands to Miami.

April 29

Early estimates were that more than 50,000 people marched or rallied in addition to those in DC, a number than may well be conservative, with marches in all the major cities, such as Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, San Diego, and Los Angeles as well as major tunouts in smaller cities.

More than 2,000 Augusta, Maine. Some 2,000 in Traverse City, Michigan and 500 in Palm Beach, Florida.

Hundreds in Denver, hundreds in Ithaca and Glens Falls, New York, large crowds in Honolulu, Salt Lake City, Dallas, in Frederick Maryland and Grand Marais, Minnesota, in Tampa, Florida and Montpelier, Vermont.

And that doesn't include the masses of people who turned out around the globe: Japan, the Philippines, New Zealand, Uganda, Kenya, Germany, Greece, United Kingdom, Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Portugal, Ireland, Sweden, the list goes on, all coming together to say in what could be the informal slogan of the event, "There is no planet B."

The resistance lives and it grows.

Two bits of science news I didn't have time for on the show

First, I now have a second reason beyond the next eclipse in 2024 to make sure I live another six to eight years.

A team of astronomers is predicting that in 2022, give or take a year, two stars in the constellation Cygnus will collide, creating an explosion in the night sky so bright that it will be visible to the naked eye.

It would mark the first time such an event was predicted by scientists.

I gather that it won't be some incredibly dramatic event, it won't be like a supernova visible even in the daytime, but it will be, again, visible to the naked eye in the night sky and it would just be so cool to be able to stand and look at the night sky and think that I was watching the explosion of a star some 1800 light-years away.

Our second bit of cool news is that in spring of 2017 nine telescopes around the world will aim towards the center of the Milky Way, around 25,000 light years away, in an attempt to capture the first-ever image of a black hole.

Black holes, by definition, do not emit visible light and we can't even "see" the blackness of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way because it is obscured by the clouds of gas that surround it.

But radio waves are not blocked by those clouds and by using a technique called interferometry that can synthesize data from multiple sources, these nine radio telescopes essentially can function as one big telescope as big as the entire Earth, with a resolution sufficient to show an orange on the Moon.

Which means these telescopes, working together, can create a radio image of the matter surrounding the black hole, enabling astronomers to "see" the black hole in its shadow.

Exactly what that will look like, no one knows. There are ideas, but no one actually knows. And that, as I think is always true in science, is part of the attraction.

10.7 - And Another Thing: total solar eclipse, August 2017

And Another Thing: total solar eclipse, August 2017

Let's try to at least end the week without any more gloom and doom. So we'll turn to And Another Thing, our occasional foray into something cool, usually cool science and at least not intentionally political.

This time we have a bit of truly cool astronomy stuff. It's something I just learned about a few weeks ago in reading a book about the Sun.

There is going to be a total eclipse of the Sun on August 21 visible in a wide swatch across the US. The path of totality will hit the coast just south of Portland, Oregon and pass over parts of 10 states before leaving shore just north of Charleston, South Carolina.

It will be the last total eclipse visible in the continental US and I believe anywhere in the US until 2024.

I am already making plans.

9.5 - Outrage of the Week: TheRump considering panel desired by anti-vaxxers

Outrage of the Week: TheRump considering panel desired by anti-vaxxers

In a post on my blog a bit over two years ago I - I think rather gently - went after the so-called "anti-vaxxers." These are people who are opposed to vaccinations, either of all children or just of their own, on the grounds that the vaccines, or to be more exact a preservative used in them called thimerosal, is related to a variety of neurological disorders, mainly autism. I called such folks "wrong scientifically and wrong ethically and wrong practically."

The baseline claim, which has been flatly rejected by the scientific community, is that because thimerosal contains a mercury compound, that vaccinations cause mercury poisoning with causes autism.

A few months later I gave the Clown Award to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has long campaigned on a claim of a connection between thimerosal and autism, after he used the term "holocaust" in reference to this imagined link. Kennedy insists he is not against vaccination but continues to spin tales of massive conspiracies among government, Big Pharma, and the medical profession to "hide the truth" about the "holocaust" he claims they have caused.

The fact is, there is no sound scientific basis for any of it.

The whole business arose in the early 1990s, when there was an increase in autism, or, more properly, autism spectrum disorders. People in and out of the medical community were looking for an explanation.

Around the same time, there was a push for more children to be vaccinated earlier and over a shorter time. Aha! said some, embracing the false notion that coincidence equals causality. It's the vaccinations that are causing autism! We know mercury is poisonous, so that must be the cause!

The notion really got going in 1998, when British researcher Andrew Wakefield published a paper linking autism to the MMR vaccine, the one for for measles, mumps, and rubella. It has continued as a fringe belief ever since.

There are, however, a few inconvenient truths for those true believers:

First, it developed that Wakefield's data were fraudulent. In 2010, he was found guilty of professional misconduct by Britain's General Medical Council and his license was revoked.

Next, there is not a single documented case of a connection between vaccinations and autism. Or between thimerosal and autism. Or even between mercury and autism.

In fact, the typical symptoms of mercury poisoning are significantly different from those of autism and under scans the brains of people suffering from mercury poisoning are very different from the brains of autistic people.

What's more, except for flu vaccines, thimerosal has not been used in vaccines in the US for over 15 years - even as the rate of autism in children has more than doubled over that same time.

Bottom line: There is no sound basis either in science or logic to connect vaccination in general or thimerosal in particular to autism. Period.

What there is a sound basis for, on the other hand, is the contention that these fantasy fears have created the community of anti-vaxxers with the predictable result of increases in diseases for which vaccines are routinely available. A 15% increase in whooping cough in the US in 2015, clustered in areas where the rate of vaccination had declined. Some 200 cases of measles that year in a nation from which the disease had been declared eradicated 15 years earlier.

The persistence of this fantasy about the dangers of inoculation is going to cause children to die of preventable diseases - while not saving a single one from autism.

And it promises nothing good to note that among those who question the safety of vaccines is the Great Orange One himself. He claims he's not an anti-vaxxer, just a "slow vaxxer" - that is, have the inoculations spread out over a longer period of time, even though that increases the risk to the children by failing to protect them when they can be. His reason for this is, this is a quote, is that "children are not small horses."

But despite his claim of being "pro-vaccination," TheRump met with the disgraced and discredited Andrew Wakefield and a group of other anti-vaxxers at a donor event in Florida in August.

Subsequent to that event, Wakefield said that one of his two federal priorities as an activist if I can disgrace that honorable term that much is to set up an independent board on vaccine safety.

Well, guess what: TheRump is thinking of setting up a commission on "vaccine safety and scientific integrity." According to who? According to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who met with TheRump on January 10 and came out of the meeting not only saying TheRump was planning on such a commission but that he wanted Kennedy to chair it.

TheRump's team demurred, saying the Great Orange One is "exploring the possibility" of such a committee, but "no decisions have been made." But considering TheRump has repeatedly questioned vaccination and has repeatedly publicly embraced the fringe skeptics who have lost themselves in their fantasies while denying the evidence, that is to put it mildly not reassuring.

The fact that such a committee is even being considered is an affront to reason, a slap in the face of scientific research, an insult to the medical and public health communities, and a danger to the health and well-being of the nation's children.

The possibility that such a committee could be headed up by someone who has termed the practice of childhood vaccination as having caused a "holocaust" is even worse and serves to point up the nature of the delusional, anti-science, fact-free world we appear to be entering as a nation.

And that is not only an outrage - it is frightening.

What's Left #9

What's Left
for the week of January 12-18, 2017

This week:

Not Good News: bumblebee listed as endangered
https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-lists-first-bumble-bee-species-endangered-212930972.html
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/6045/20140215/ignores-petition-list-rusty-patched-bumblebee-endangered-species.htm

Not Good News: civil war in South Sudan continues
http://worldpress.org/link.cfm?http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article61350
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2014/01/1404-bad-news-south-sudan.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2014/01/1416-update-south-sudan.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/09/2184-more-tragedy-still-hope-in-south.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/03/2416-not-good-news-un-excoriates-south.html

Not Good News: internet consumer protection rules under attack
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/01/04/its-begun-cable-companies-are-pushing-to-repeal-obama-era-internet-privacy-rules/
http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/4/14167832/donald-trump-rupert-murdoch-fcc-chair-net-neutrality
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCQTyheuvU4

Clown Award: Kellyanne Conway
http://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/01/07/nypd-captain-suggests-unsolved-rape-cases-are-not-a-trend-that/21649689/
http://gawker.com/5938849/a-recent-history-of-republicans-talking-about-rape
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/conway-trump-heart
http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2015/11/26/donald-trump-mocks-reporter-with-disability-berman-sot-ac.cnn

Outrage of the Week: TheRump considering panel desired by anti-vaxxers
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2014/12/1844-footnote-invalid-immunization-fears.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/04/2006-clown-award-robert-f-kennedy-jr.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_controversy
https://theoutline.com/post/870/trump-kennedy-anti-vaccine-meeting-wont-make-america-great
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/01/10/the-facts-about-vaccines-autism-and-robert-f-kennedy-jr-s-conspiracy-theory/
https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2017/01/what_unites_trump_and_rfk_jr_is_a_scary_denial_that_they_re_anti_vaxxers.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/11/30/vaccine_skeptic_andrew_wakefield_is_excited_about_donald_trump_s_presidency.html
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-meets-anti-vaccine-activist-after-raising-fringe-theory-trail-n705296
http://www.npr.org/2017/01/10/509185540/despite-the-facts-trump-once-again-embraces-vaccine-skeptics

Outrage of the Year 2016: Democratic Party presidential race
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/02/2364-rare-and-potentially-my-only.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/04/2455-what-now-for-progressives.html
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/after-new-york-win-clinton-campaign-says-bernie-sanders-attacks-help-republicans
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/06/2485-disqualifying-change-by.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/06/2492-part-2-issues-that-wont-be.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/11/36-democrats-refusing-to-recognize.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/11/22-but-we-have-to-carry-on-as-best-as.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/11/34-importance-of-continuing-protest.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/12/45-excuses-for-failures-of-democrats.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/12/58-latest-clintonite-excuses-for-losing.html

Footnote: Russian "hacking"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-government-hackers-do-not-appear-to-have-targeted-vermont-utility-say-people-close-to-investigation/2017/01/02/70c25956-d12c-11e6-945a-76f69a399dd5_story.html
http://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/01/05/russia-cyber-attacks-are-major-threat-congress-probe-hears/21648476/
http://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/01/06/us-intelligence-report-putin-ordered-a-hacking-campaign-to-har/21649595/
https://soundcloud.com/war_college/the-kremlin-had-a-plan-donald
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-intercepts-capture-senior-russian-officials-celebrating-trump-win/2017/01/05/d7099406-d355-11e6-9cb0-54ab630851e8_story.html?postshare=2211483657557606&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.ff07e992b361
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-nsa-uses-powerful-toolbox-in-effort-to-spy-on-global-networks-a-940969.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/10/13/the-long-history-of-the-u-s-interfering-with-elections-elsewhere/?utm_term=.b2f193660bbe
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-us-intervention-foreign-elections-20161213-story.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-us-has-been-meddling-in-other-countries-elections-for-a-century-it-doesnt-feel-good_us_57983b85e4b02d5d5ed382bd

8.6 - Good News of the Year, 2016: peace settlement in Colombia

Good News of the Year, 2016: peace settlement in Colombia

Since we've been doing Good News, we'll start off our look back at 2016 with our choice for Good News of the Year.

The choice this year was not as obvious as it was last year. The Good News for 2015 was easily the historic Supreme Court decision saying bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional. This year it didn't seem to me that there was one story that stood out so clearly from the rest.

Nonetheless, we did have some Good News this year, although at times it might not have felt that way.

We did, for example, see three developments on health and science news that we covered here.

One was a potential breakthrough in treating Alzheimer's based on the fact that inflammation of the brain, often associated with advancing Alzheimer's, now looks to be a driver of the condition rather that a result of it.

When mice with an Alzheimer's-like condition were treated by focusing on immune cells related to the inflammation, the progression of the disease was stopped.

Understand: This is not a prevention or a cure, it's a treatment that if it comes to fruition could severely retard or even halt the progression of the disease. It also needs to be noted that it's too soon for celebrations.

But it's not too soon to move to developing medications based on these discoveries, marking this as one of the most hopeful discoveries about Alzheimer's in over a decade.

Another health story was reported progress on a cure for Type 1 diabetes.

With Type 1 diabetes, the body does not produce the insulin the body needs, as opposed to Type 2 diabetes, where the body does produce insulin but can't use it properly.

Researchers have worked on a treatment involving transplanting insulin-producing cells into the patient's body, so the body can produce its own insulin. This works well - except for the fact that the body's immune system sees those cells as invaders and destroys them.

Now, researchers are trying what they call an "invisibility cloak" to keep the immune system from seeing the implanted cells as foreign bodies. In tests, this has worked in mice for nearly six months. That has lead to optimism that an improved "cloak" combined with transplanted insulin-producing cells could, within the foreseeable future, effectively cure Type 1 diabetes.

The third health and science story was progress against the Guinea worm, a parasite found mostly in Africa that rarely kills its victims but leaves them in debilitating pain.

In 1986, the Carter Center began a campaign to end the affliction. At that time, the number of people affected was around 3.5 million.

By 2012, the number of cases was down to 1100. In 2015, that number was down to 22 - and in the first half of 2016, the number of confirmed cases was two. From 3.5 million to two in 30 years.

The Guinea worm is on the verge of being only the second disease after smallpox and the first parasitic disease to be eliminated from the human population.

On a more immediate and more obviously political issue, there was the Good News that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the TPP, is dead or at minimum comatose.

There were also a number of scattered victories, too many to go through, victories legislative, judicial, and by ballot initiative, on matters like voting rights, gun control, privacy, the minimum wage, there was even a win for unions at the Supreme Court. Even where the sky seems darkest, there were a few breaks in the clouds.

But what I suspect many among us would consider the Good News of the Year would be the - again at least temporary - victory achieved by the courage, determination, faithfulness, and sheer bloody-minded stubbornness of the water protectors at Standing Rock.

I didn't devote as much time to that as I should have, partly due to my own shortcomings involving getting caught up in week-to-week events rather than following an on-going story and partly due to a sense that the story was being told well enough elsewhere.

But surely it was one of the top news stories of the year, and its true value, at least in my mind, lay not in the story itself, not just in the events themselves and not even in the success in at least delaying and perhaps killing the DAPL, but in the movement that made it a story, a movement that showed that the passion for Native American rights is still there, the passion for the environment is still there, the passion about global warming is still there, and most importantly, a passion for justice that can still drive people into the streets in large numbers for the long term is still there, a passion that showed again that people power can face down the massed might of the state.

Despite all that, Standing Rock is not my choice for Good News of the Year for 2016. Understand this, as is true of all the awards, is a personal decision, related to how I reacted to the news.

I'm often struck by how insular we are, how narrow our American worldview is, how little we know about the world around us, how unaware we are of events that do not, as far as we think, affect us more or less directly. So when I myself become aware of such a case, ruing my own ignorance I tend to feel it more strongly.

So my choice for Good News of the Year, 2016, is the peace settlement reached between the government of Colombia and the rebel group known as FARC - in English, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - putting, if all goes well, an end to a civil war that has been going on for something like 52 years. Over a quarter of a million people have been killed, I don't know how many more wounded, somewhere between 5 and 8 million driven from their homes. And now it may be ending. And how can that not be Good News.

Especially because it almost wasn't: The deal was announced in August but nearly fell apart when a national plebiscite on October 2 narrowly rejected the pact by a margin of 0.4%.

But a quickly renegotiated deal between the government and FARC was passed by the Colombian Congress in early December, putting things back on track - at least hopefully.

There are still potential snags: For one big one, the failure of the plebiscite, which had been widely expected to pass easily, threw a monkey wrench into planning for the demobilization of FARC. Originally, some 16,000 FARC fighters were to turn in their weapons by December 31 but because of the lack of government-built infrastructure at the UN-monitored camps where that is supposed to happen, which was caused by the delay, the deadline has been pushed back to January 10.

But progress is being made on that front, along with legislative issues such as the passing of an amnesty law, which was accomplished just three days before the deadline for action.

At the same time, there is another rebel group in Colombia. It's the ELN, or in English the National Liberation Army.

ELN, which is much smaller than FARC, having an estimated 1300 fighters as compared to FARC's 16,000-20,000, is now in the early stages of having peace talks with the government.

In March, both sides agreed to talks to start in October, but that broke down when the rebels failed to release a hostage. However, a fresh attempt at talks is to take place in Ecuador later this month.

All of which means that there are still hills to climb, particularly to overcome the mental scars of decades of war - but just a year ago those hills looked like mountains. Which makes the prospect of the end of 50 years of civil war in Colombia my choice for Good News of the Year, 2016.

What's Left #8

What's Left
for the week of January 5-11, 2017

This week:

Good News: support for the death penalty continues to decline
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/12/28/u-s-ends-year-with-fewest-executions-since-1991/
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/29/support-for-death-penalty-lowest-in-more-than-four-decades/

Good News: Americans support tougher environmental laws
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/12/14/most-americans-favor-stricter-environmental-laws-and-regulations/

Good News: public support for transgender rights
http://www.pewforum.org/2016/09/28/3-public-split-over-bathroom-use-by-transgender-people/

Good News: Obama signs law to include non-believers in protections against religious persecution
http://www.snopes.com/2016/12/21/obama-signs-law-protecting-atheists/
https://americanhumanist.org/
https://americanhumanist.org/featured/international-religious-freedom-bill-heads-president-includes-language-protect-humanists-nontheists/

Good News: 120 million acres of federal waters protected from fossil fuel exploration
http://www.aol.com/article/news/2016/12/20/obama-bans-new-oil-gas-drilling-off-alaska-part-of-atlantic-co/21632127/

Good News of the Year, 2016: peace settlement in Colombia
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2341-good-news-potential-breakthrough.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/02/2361-good-news-progress-on-cure-for.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2342-good-news-parasitic-disease-on.html
http://www.opb.org/news/article/npr-the-last-days-of-guinea-worm/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/11/32-good-news-tpp-is-dead.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/12/51-good-news-victory-at-standing-rock.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/12/44-outrage-of-week-standing-rock.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/08/2587-colombia-and-farc-sign-peace-deal.html
https://thecitypaperbogota.com/news/no-wins-colombians-narrowly-rejects-peace-accord-with-farc/14639
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/12/53-good-news-peace-settlement-in.html
http://colombiareports.com/peace-vote-delayed-farc-demobilization-colombias-peace-commissioner/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/29/colombia-approves-amnesty-deal-for-thousands-of-farc-rebels
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-congress-approves-amnesty-law-3-days-farc-demobilization-deadline/
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-35929399
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-37677853
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-38486897
https://www.yahoo.com/news/colombias-war-traumas-leave-deep-mental-scars-060028256.html

RIPs of 2016
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2335-rip-john-trudell.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2345-rip-david-bowie.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2352-rip-alan-rickman.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2353-rip-glenn-frey.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/02/2379-rip-paul-kantner-and-signe-toly.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/03/2394-rip-al-jazeera-america.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/03/2417-rips-keith-emerson-and-ben.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/04/2434-rip-patty-duke.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/05/2469-rip-dan-berrigan.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/09/2604-rip-vin-scully-sets-retirement-date.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/11/27-rip-john-zacherley.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/11/38-rip-leonard-cohen.html

Clown of the Year Award 2016, Basic Stupid Category: South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2336-clown-award-right-wing-troll.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/03/2056-clown-award-immigration-judge-jack.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/12/57-clown-award-christina-alesci-of-cnn.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/04/2435-clown-award-idaho-gov-butch-otter.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2354-clown-award-sc-gov-nikki-haley.html

Clown of the Year Award 2016, Total Jackassery Category: GOPper Rep. Steve King
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/03/2395-clown-award-right-wing-attorney.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/04/2445-clown-award-florida-gov-rick-scott.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2344-clown-award-clown-award-new.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/07/2544-clown-award-rep-steve-king.html

248.2 - Not Good News: "End of the road" for antibiotics in sight?

Not Good News: "End of the road" for antibiotics in sight?

So to keep things in balance, we have some not good news.

Something that doctors and other medical professionals have been fearing for some time has happened: a so-called "superbug," this one resistant to antibiotics of last resort, has been found in the US.

It was only a matter of time, of course, before such bacteria were found here since they had already been found in China, Europe, and elsewhere.

Strains of bacteria gain resistance to antibiotics in one of two ways: One is by plain old evolution, where due to genetic variations some are not killed by some antibiotic and so go on to reproduce until they are the dominant form of that particular bacteria and that antibiotic no longer works on them.

That, however, doesn't mean other that antibiotics don't work and such resistance can only be carried within that bacteria's particular strain. But what can happen is that this same family of bacteria, through that same process of evolution, can acquire resistance to the next antibiotic used to treat it and so over time you can have families of bacteria resistant to a number of different antibiotics.

The other means for transfer resistance is through a plasmid, a small piece of DNA carrying a gene for resistance to some antibiotic. Plasmids can make copies of themselves and transfer their genes not only to other bacteria in the same family but can "jump" to other families of bacteria, in essence "infecting" them with their DNA and so giving them resistance to that antibiotic without the need for evolution.

The superbug just found, a type of E. coli, has this type of gene. It is resistant to a drug called colistin, which is the antibiotic of last resort for particularly dangerous types of superbugs, including a family of bacteria known as carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae - CRE, for short - which health officials have dubbed "nightmare bacteria" because in some instances, these infections have mortality rates of up to 50 percent; half of patients who become infected die.

The particular strain of E. coli involved here is still treatable by other antibiotics, but the fear is that its resistance to colistin will be spread via plasmids to other bacteria - which could result in there being an entire family of dangerous diseases for which there is no effective treatment.

I don't want to get too long or complex, so let me cut to the chase. What does all this mean, in the final analysis? It means, in the words of Tom Frieden, Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), "The end of the road isn't very far away for antibiotics."

"I've been there for TB patients," he said. "I've cared for patients for whom there are no drugs left. It is a feeling of such horror and helplessness. This is not where we need to be."

But it is where we are headed.

And dammit, we have - as is so true in so many ways - we have done this to ourselves. According to a new and major study, nearly a third of antibiotics prescribed in the United States are not needed. Most of those are for conditions such as colds, sore throats, bronchitis, flu, and other illnesses which are caused by viruses, not bacteria - so antibiotics don't even work on them. But what such over-prescribing does do is help the bacteria develop resistance.

What's more, human use pales in comparison to the massive amounts of antibiotics routinely given to livestock both here and abroad for the sake of agribusiness profits.

We are headed for a situation where within a couple of decades, even sooner, people will be dying of diseases which are now curable, dying not because they lack effective access to medicine but because there is no effective medicine for them to access.

And it will be our own damn fault.

Sources cited in links:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/05/26/the-superbug-that-doctors-have-been-dreading-just-reached-the-u-s/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_p1most-partner-1
http://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2016/05/26/dreaded-superbug-found-for-first-time-in-u-s-patient-a-physicians-perspective/#752e7a786241
http://www.cdc.gov/HAI/organisms/cre/index.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/05/27/1531441/-First-superbug-resistant-to-a-last-resort-antibiotic-confirmed-in-US
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/05/03/1-in-3-antibiotics-prescribed-in-u-s-are-unnecessary-major-study-finds/?tid=a_inl
http://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2016/05/26/dreaded-superbug-found-for-first-time-in-u-s-patient-a-physicians-perspective/#752e7a786241

236.1 - Good News: progress on a cure for Type 1 diabetes

Good News: progress on a cure for Type 1 diabetes

According to a study newly published in the journal Nature, researchers at MIT and Harvard believe they are close to developing a treatment that would effectively cure Type 1 diabetes, sometimes if rather inaccurately called juvenile onset diabetes.

With Type 1 diabetes, the body does not produce the insulin necessary to get the glucose in your bloodstream into the cells where it is used for energy. This is as opposed to Type 2 diabetes, where the body does produce insulin but can't use it properly so there is never enough to prevent a buildup of glucose in the blood.

For some time, researchers have worked on a treatment involving transplanting insulin-producing cells into the patient's body, which seems to control blood sugar better than drugs or injections and in 2014 a method was developed to mass produce these cells. The problem is these cells can be destroyed by the immune system, rendering them useless.

The new study tested what it dubbed an "invisibility cloak" that in effect prevented the immune system from seeing the implanted cells as foreign bodies. The researchers were able to keep the immune systems in mice from attacking the transplanted cells for nearly six months.

Obviously more work needs to be done, but the researchers expressed optimism that a combination of an improved "cloak" plus the existing ability to transplant insulin-producing cells could, they said, effectively cure Type 1 diabetes.

And wouldn't that be good news.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/01/26/scientists-say-they-are-close-to-finding-a-cure-for-type-1-diabe/21303162/
http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/type-1/
http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/type-2/

Left Side of the Aisle #236

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of February 4-10, 2015

This week:

Good News: progress on a cure for Type 1 diabetes
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/01/26/scientists-say-they-are-close-to-finding-a-cure-for-type-1-diabe/21303162/
http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/type-1/
http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/type-2/

Good News: SCOTUS rejects corporate attempt to short-circuit class action suits
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/01/26/scientists-say-they-are-close-to-finding-a-cure-for-type-1-diabe/21303162/
http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/type-1/
http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/type-2/

Good News: Texas grand jury indicts makers of doctored videos attacking Planned Parenthood
http://www.care2.com/causes/activists-behind-doctored-planned-parenthood-videos-indicted.html
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/25/1475022/-Breaking-Indictments-for-Planned-Parenthood-Anti-abortion-Activists
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/planned-parenthood-lawsuit-videos-center-medical-progress_us_5697ead3e4b0b4eb759d9a61

A rare (and potentially my only) commentary on the Democratic primaries
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/02/02/hillary-clinton-won-6-iowa-precincts-thanks-to-coin-tosses/21306679/
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/10/27/hillary-clinton-surges-in-latest-iowa-poll/
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/2/1478477/-NYT-Lede-Iowa-results-deeply-unnerving-to-Clintons-Sanders-is-right-to-call-it-a-virtual-tie
http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/hillary-bernie-math#.iy2bv2P2X
http://www.vocativ.com/news/277988/clinton-sanders-omalley-iowaflint
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/2/1478960/-Clinton-last-night-I-m-a-progressive-Clinton-today-We-ve-got-to-get-back-to-the-middle
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a41754/chris-matthews-hillary-clinton-interview/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2011/04/most-important-fact-about-libya-is-not.html
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/33299-clinton-syria-fact-check-safe-zones-ground-troops
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/29052-five-reasons-no-progressive-should-support-hillary-clinton
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-calls-no-fly-zones-syria
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/01/17/diplomacy-works-peace-groups-hail-iran-deal-clinton-talks-hawk
http://www.nationaljournal.com/defense/2014/04/25/hillary-clinton-edward-snowdens-leaks-helped-terrorists
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/34629-chamber-of-commerce-lobbyist-tom-donohue-clinton-will-support-tpp-after-election
http://grist.org/climate-energy/where-does-hillary-clinton-stand-on-fracking/
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/22/hillary-clinton-opposes-keystone-xl-pipeline
http://grist.org/climate-energy/8-things-you-need-to-know-about-hillary-clinton-and-climate-change/
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/my-day-bernie-sanders-and-hillary-clinton-two-iowa-rallies-explain-why-hillary-may-be

234.2 - Good News: parasitic disease on the verge of being eliminated

Good News: parasitic disease on the verge of being eliminated

About three and a-half years ago, way back in May 2012, I wrote something about the Guinea worm.

The Guinea worm is a parasite which humans contract by drinking infested water. In a simplified version of its life-cycle, once ingested the worm burrows through the intestinal wall and slowly moves through the subcutaneous tissues until about a year later it exits the body through a swollen, painful blister, usually on the lower leg or foot. By this time the female worm has grown from a few millimeters to as much as a meter - that's about three feet - long and has hundreds of thousands of eggs.

Trying to ease the pain of the blister, the infected person puts their feet in the water - where the eggs are released, to be ingested by the next victim.

The pain involved with the blister, which is described as feeling like the area around the worm is on fire, can be crippling.

The way to remove the worm is to catch it as it starts to exit the wound and then wind it around a stick as you slowly pull it out - slowly in this case meaning very slowly: The process can take weeks to complete, leaving people to live through months of debilitating pain, making it impossible for them to tend to cows or harvest crops or otherwise provide for themselves or their families.

It's an ancient affliction. In fact, some suggest the "fiery serpents" of Numbers 21:6-9 were guinea worms. On the other hand, 21:6 says "much people of Israel died" from these "serpents" and actual deaths from Guinea worm are rare, so I tend to doubt it.

However, there is a clear reference to it in the Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian papyrus of herbal knowledge dating to c. 1550 BCE - interestingly just 100 years earlier than Numbers 21.

In 1986, the Carter Center, founded by Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, began a campaign to end the affliction through education about the worm's behavior and improving the availability of means to filter water so that new people don't get infected.

At that time, in 1986, the number of people affected was around 3.5 million.

In that 2012 post, I was able to report that by 2011, the number of cases was down to 1100.

Okay, so why I bring all this up now? Because now I can report that the Carter Center says that the number of cases of Guinea worm in 2015 was just 22 - a reduction, quite literally, of 99.999 percent since 1986.

There's still much to do; anyone involved knows that in any such effort the last few cases are the most difficult to get rid of. But the fact remains that the Guinea worm is on the brink of being the second disease after smallpox and the first parasitic disease to be eliminated from the human population. And there is no vaccine and no drug treatment for the condition - this has all been accomplished through improving the knowledge and the health environment of the people affected.

How's that for feel-good news.

Sources cited in links:
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2012/05/left-side-of-aisle-55-part-2.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracunculiasis
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Numbers-Chapter-21/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebers_Papyrus
http://www.cartercenter.org/health/guinea_worm/case-totals.html
http://www.voanews.com/content/end-of-guinea-worm-in-sight-for-carter-center/2977461.html