Sunday, November 29, 2020

Global warming is a hoax!

 

There are a surprising number of people who believe that global warming is a hoax, even though the vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists – 97 percent – agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change. Most of the leading science organizations around the world have issued public statements expressing this, including international and U.S. science academies, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a whole host of reputable scientific bodies around the world

https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/17/do-scientists-agree-on-climate-change/

Although humans contribute to global warming in a number of ways, the creature shown below is also a major contributor to global warming.




6% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions comes from 1.5 billion cows that burp out lots of methane. In addition, a small percentage of methane gas also escapes due to flatulence.



Despite all the warnings about global warming from trusted scientific sources, the person who has done the most to most to raise awareness of global warming is a 17- year old girl from Sweden named Greta Thunberg, who started her silent protest outside the Swedish parliament when she was 15 years old.



The incoming Biden administration will address global warming in a number of ways, one of which is the appointment of John Kerry to the newly created position of climate envoy on the National Security Council.

Kerry helped negotiate the Paris climate agreement, signing it in 2016 with his granddaughter on his lap. Biden has pledged to rejoin the pact after Trump withdrew from it, but Kerry could face skepticism as he seeks to reassert U.S. leadership and gain the trust of other countries for more aggressive climate action.

https://www.npr.org/sections/biden-transition-updates/2020/11/23/938150511/john-kerry-tapped-for-newly-created-role-as-presidential-climate-envoy

One of the most surprising ways to reduce global warming is an ingredient that you would not suspect.

Seaweed.

The red seaweed is called Asparagopsis taxiformis, or A. taxiformis for short. The startup that’s turning it into a supplement for livestock is called Symbrosia. Research has shown that replacing just 0.4% of a cow’s feed with A. taxiformis reduces the amount of methane the cow produces by more than 90%. Methane is 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to contributing to climate change.

Symbrosia uses an on-land aquaculture system to grow the seaweed. They dry the seaweed to preserve it naturally, then turn that into a feed product with the not-so-catchy name of SVD.

Just a sprinkle of the SVD to existing livestock feed and poof: less methane from the cow. Symbrosia was recently selected as part of the 2020 Solver class by MIT Solve, an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute for Technology. Symbrosia will receive a portion of more than $2 million in prize funding and more opportunities via investors and venture capitalists.

Symbrosia has already received funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to analyze the use of its seaweed feed supplement at Z Farms Organic in Dover Plains, New York. A pilot began there in June, testing the seaweed supplement on a commercial grazing system.

The founder of Symbrosia is Alexia Akbay, who lives in Kailua-Kona Hawaii. Akbay, a chemist by training, co-founded Symbrosia about two and a half years ago with Jonathan Simonds.

“All research prior had been in an academic feedlot or controlled dairy setting,” Akbay says. “Meanwhile, the majority of methane emissions in the beef or dairy supply chain come from the grazing cycle — digesting grass is more difficult than corn or soy.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkart/2020/11/21/hawaiian-seaweed-makes-cows-90-less-gassyand-thats-good-for-climate-change/?sh=62b961d15c4b

 Since Hawaiian seaweed is still in short supply, there are a few creative companies who are converting methane gas produced by cows into more environmentally friendly products. Details on that process can be found at the link below:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2015/02/oh-poop.html




There are still far too many people who simply aren’t going to believe the truth about global warming, but the more enlightened souls among us are doing something about it.


Sunday, November 8, 2020

You've come a long way, baby


In 1908, the New York City Board of Aldermen unanimously passed an ordinance that prohibited smoking by women in public.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_smoking#:~:text=In%201929%20Edward%20Bernays%20decided%20to%20pay%20women,as%20in%20the%20privacy%20of%20their%20own%20homes.

In the early part of the 20th century, the anti-tobacco movement was aimed primarily at women and children. Smoking was considered a dirty habit and smoking by women was seriously frowned upon by society. As the century progressed, so did women's desire for equality.

The suffrage movement gave many women a sense of entitlement and freedom and the tobacco industry took advantage of the marketing opportunity. Tobacco companies began marketing cigarettes to appeal to women during the burgeoning women's movement of the 1920s.

 "Torches of Freedom" was a phrase used to encourage women's smoking by exploiting women's aspirations for a better life during the early twentieth century first-wave feminism in the United States. 

Cigarettes were described as symbols of emancipation and equality with men. The term was first used by psychoanalyst A. A. Brill when describing the natural desire for women to smoke and was used by Edward Bernays to encourage women to smoke in public despite social taboos. The American Tobacco Company began targeting women with its ads for Lucky Strikes. Lucky Strike sought to give women the reasons they should be smoking Luckies. They employed ads featuring prominent women, such as Amelia Earhart, and appealed to the vanity of women by promising slimming effects. Most of the ads also conveyed a carefree and confident image of women that would appeal to the modern woman of the 1920s.

The ads grew more extravagant with paid celebrity testimonials and far-reaching claims of how Lucky Strikes could improve your life. Their most aggressive campaign directly challenged the candy industry by urging women to "reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet". These aggressive campaigns paid off making Lucky Strike the most smoked brand within a decade.

Other companies followed the successful ad campaigns of the American Tobacco Company with their own versions. The Phillip Morris Company introduced Marlboro cigarettes in 1925. Marlboros were advertised as being as "mild as May" and featured elegant ivory tips that appealed to women. Other brands offered similar ads appealing to a woman's sense of beauty and style and made cigarettes an alluring part of many women's lives.

(In view of the tough image of the Marlboro Man, you would probably be surprised at the fact that Marlboro was originally introduced (in 1926) as a woman’s cigarette. The advertising theme for the cigarette was the less than inspiring “mild as May”campaign, and the brand faltered repeatedly for the next 30 years.)

The ads linking vanity and beauty were quite women specific and did exactly what they were supposed to do. Fear of weight gain remains a chief reason women continue to smoke. The ad campaigns successfully promoted cigarettes as a product possessing specific qualities including equality, autonomy, glamour, and beauty.

In 1929 Edward Bernays decided to pay women to smoke their "torches of freedom" as they walked in the Easter Sunday Parade in New York. This was a shock because until that time, women were only permitted to smoke in certain places such as in the privacy of their own homes. He was very careful when picking women to march because, "while they should be good looking, they should not look too model-y"; and he hired his own photographers to make sure that good pictures were taken and then published around the world. Ruth Hale called for women to join in the march saying, "Women! Light another torch of freedom! Fight another sex taboo!"

The late 1950s and early 1960s brought about a new onslaught of cigarette brands. Each new brand of cigarette introduced during this time advertised its unique benefits. The major new innovation in tobacco marketing was the filtered cigarette. Filters made cigarettes less harsh to smoke and offered the appearance of removing potentially harmful particles. The 1950s began the rebranding of Marlboros from an elite cigarette to an everyman's cigarette and also saw the introduction of strong Marlboro men, such as athletes, and more famously cowboys. This change in Marlboro branding meant Philip Morris was lacking a cigarette aimed at women.

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2011/10/marlboro-man.html

 

The 1950's also began a boom in advertising for tobacco companies. Ads featuring prominent movie and television stars became commonplace and tobacco companies also began sponsoring television shows, game shows, and other widespread media. One of the most popular was Philip Morris's sponsorship of the I Love Lucy show. The opener featured the two stars of the show with a giant pack of Philip Morris cigarettes. The show Your Hit Parade was proudly sponsored by American Tobacco's Lucky Strike brand.

In 1965, it was reported that 33.9% of women were smoking. Virginia Slims came on the market in 1968, and used the catch phrase "You’ve come a long way baby." This was the first cigarette to be marketed solely as a woman's cigarette. The cigarettes were longer, slimmer, and overall more elegant and feminine. The ads depicted photos of glamorous women set against photos of women doing mundane tasks such as laundry or housework. 1970 saw the release of Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company's entry into women specific cigarettes, Eve. Eve cigarettes were decidedly more feminine than Virginia Slims. Eve featured flowers or other feminine motifs on both the packaging and the cigarette themselves.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=0bgDd0VC&id=452906F06AACFB389744CD1C1C5EB0DB184D264D&thid=OIP.0bgDd0VCjtGxSsz8qFOsMgHaE7&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fflashbak.com%2fwp-content%2fuploads%2f2016%2f10%2f1988-VS1.jpg&exph=1583&expw=2375&q=you%27ve+come+a+long+way+baby&simid=608048819821283151&ck=EB92E7759368A5BA6EBE9D28DB8D40BA&selectedIndex=12&FORM=IRPRST&ajaxhist=0

The most tangible result of the suffrage movement, apart from the ability to smoke in public, was the passage of the 19th amendment on August 18, 1920, which gave women the right to vote. Ironically, though, the first woman elected to office in America was Jeannette Rankin, who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives on November 7, 1916, two years after her home state of Montana became the first state in the country to allow women to vote.

On the national level, the first woman to be elected to the Senate was Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway, a Democrat from Arkansas, who became the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate. Caraway, born near Bakerville, Tennessee, had been appointed to the Senate two months earlier to fill the vacancy left by her late husband, Thaddeus Horatio Caraway. Caraway was preceded in the Senate by Rebecca Latimer Felton, who was appointed in 1922 to fill a vacancy but never ran for election. 

In 1984, the Democratic Party was trying to defeat Ronald Reagan, a popular incumbent. Their standard bearer that year was Walter Mondale, and he chose Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in order to capture more of the woman’s vote. Sadly, the Democrats lost in a landslide to Reagan. The only state that Mondale carried was his home state of Minnesota, but he also carried the District of Columbia.

Hillary Clinton was the First Lady to the governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton,, and she later became the First Lady of the country when he became president.

After Bill Clinton finished his second term, Hillary was elected as the first female senator from New York.  She was re-elected in 2006 and chaired the Senate Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee from 2003 to 2007. Emboldened by her success, she decided to run for president in 2008, but lost in the primary elections to Barack Obama,, who wisely chose to make her Secretary of State. During her time in that office, she visited more countries than any Secretary of State in history.

Armed with impressive credentials, she decided to run for president again in 2016, and had a 12 point lead in the polls over Donald Trump on October 23,2016. In the end, she beat Trump by 3,000,000 votes, but lost to him in the electoral college. Her book, “What Happened?” summarizes the things that went wrong, but the two main factors were Russian interference, and James Comey’s letter to Congress 11 days before the election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton

On May 17, 1954, in a landmark decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the U.S. Supreme Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for students of different races to be unconstitutional. The decision dismantled the legal framework for racial segregation in public schools and Jim Crow laws, which limited the rights of African Americans, particularly in the South.

https://www.nps.gov/articles/brown-v-board-of-education.htm

Many states in the south were slow to comply with the new decision. The “Little Rock 9” were the first black students to attend a white school in Little Rock, and Ruby Bridges was the first black student to go to a white school in Louisiana, in 1960.

Bridges and her mother were escorted to school by four federal marshals during the first day that Bridges attended William Frantz Elementary. In the following days of that year, federal marshals continued to escort Bridges, though her mom stayed behind to take care of her younger siblings.

In 1964, she became the subject of a painting by Norman Rockwell, titled “The Problem We All Live With.

 

 


 

The Bridges family suffered for their decision to send her to William Frantz Elementary: her father lost his job as a gas station attendant, the grocery store the family shopped at would no longer let them shop there; her grandparents, who were sharecroppers in Mississippi, were turned off their land; and Abon and Lucille Bridges (her mother and father) separated. Bridges has noted that many others in the community, both black and white, showed support in a variety of ways. Some white families continued to send their children to Frantz despite the protests, a neighbor provided her father with a new job, and local people babysat, watched the house as protectors, and walked behind the federal marshals' car on the trips to school. It was not until Bridges was an adult that she learned that the immaculate clothing she wore to school in those first weeks at Frantz was sent to her family by a relative of Dr. Coles. Bridges says her family could never have afforded the dresses, socks, and shoes that are documented in photographs of her escort by U.S. Marshals to and from the school.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Bridges

 

 Trump didn’t win a majority of the women vote in 2016. He received 41%, while 54% of women voted for Hillary Clinton, according to exit poll data conducted by Edison Research. Trump, however, did garner 52% of white women votes. Overall, he won 52% of votes by men and 62% of votes by white men, exit poll data suggests.

 

After Joe Biden won the Democratic nomination, he quickly proclaimed that he would choose a woman as his running mate. Although several of his primary opponents would have been a good choice, he knew that choosing a woman of color would give him a two-fold advantage, so his selection of Kamala Harris was an easy choice – as well as a wise move.

 

After this week, Kamala Harris became the first woman elected to the office of vice president. However, as she proclaimed yesterday evening, she will not be the last.

 




You’ve come a long way, baby.

 

 

 

 

 


Thursday, November 5, 2020

500 miles

 


The song is generally credited as being written by Hedy West, and a 1961 copyright is held by Atzal Music, Inc."500 Miles" is West's "most anthologized song." Some recordings have also credited Curly Williams, or John Phillips as co-writers although Phillips admits he had only rearranged it and "didn't deserve the credit". David Neale writes that "500 Miles" may be related to the older folk song "900 Miles" (Roud 4959), which may itself have origins in the southern American fiddle tunes "Reuben's Train" and "Train 45". Johnny Cash is known to have placed "500 Miles" on his list of 100 essential country songs in the early 1970’s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/500_Miles




The most commercially successful version of the song was Bobby Bare's in 1963. His version became a Top 10 hit on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, as well as a Top 5 hit on both the Country and Adult Contemporary charts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw57Vvfz57I

Although the song has been covered by a variety of artists, the version I like the best is the one recorded by Peter, Paul, and Mary, which was one of the songs on their first album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADN1lLEp3H0

The comments attached to this video, incidentally, will bring a lump to your throat. Here is one example:

Every time I hear this song I think of my dearest Lynn. I loved you so, baby. I'm taking care of our boy as best as I can but he misses his mommy so much - as I miss you. You are so far away from us in time, now. I long so to hold you again but I have to stay here until he's grown... I will always love you. Always. Thank you for loving me while you were here on Earth.

I’ve been on a literary journey of my own now for more than 100 years. This article happens to be #500 in a series that now covers more than 60 topics, and has scored more than 300,000 “hits” in over 100 countries.

By coincidence, “500 miles” also takes on a personal significance to me.

When I retired (for the first time), we considered moving to Walla Walla, Washington because it was rated as a good place to retire. However, since it was 1500 miles away from my sister in Los Angeles, and 1500 miles to Sharon’s sisters in Minnesota, we decided that it was not a practical choice. Our second choice became Arizona, and since Kelly wanted to start her nursing program at NAU, Flagstaff became our first retirement home. Ultimately, both of our kids moved to Tucson, which became out next retirement home, in 2015.

In 2016, Kelly married a guy who had always loved Colorado, so it was just a matter of time before the two of them moved to Colorado, which happened in April of this year.

Her new home, Bayfield, Colorado, happens to be 513 miles from our home in Tucson. Meanwhile, my sister lives in Los Angeles, which is 496 miles from our house.

That’s all for now. By the way, if you check the number of words in this story, you’ll find that there are a tad over 500 words.

How’s that for a coincidence?

 

 


Zoom!

 


Zoom was founded by Eric Yuan, a former corporate vice president for Cisco Webex. He left Cisco in April 2011 with 40 engineers to start a new company, originally named Saasbee, Inc. The company had trouble finding investors because many people thought the videotelephony market was already saturated In June 2011, the company raised $3 million of seed money from WebEx founder Subrah Iyar, former Cisco SVP and General Counsel Dan Scheinman, and venture capitalists Matt Ocko, TSVC, and Bill Tai.

In May 2012, the company changed its name to Zoom, influenced by Thacher Hurd's children's book Zoom City. In September 2012, Zoom launched a beta version that could host conferences with up to 15 video participants. In November 2012, the company signed Stanford University as its first customer. The service was launched in January 2013 after the company raised a $6 million Series A round from Qualcomm VenturesYahoo! founder Jerry Yang, WebEx founder Subrah Iyar, and former Cisco SVP and General Counsel Dan Scheinman. Zoom launched version 1.0 of the program allowing the maximum number of participants per conference to be 25. By the end of its first month, Zoom had 400,000 users and by May 2013 it had 1 million users.

On April 18, 2019, the company became a public company via an initial public offering. After pricing at US$36 per share, the share price increased over 72% on the first day of trading. The company was valued at US$16 billion by the end of its first day of trading. Prior to the IPO, Dropbox invested $5 million in Zoom.

Yuan is the son of geology engineers. He was born and raised in Tai'anShandong Province, China. In 4th grade, Yuan collected construction scraps to recycle copper for cash.

 In 2019, Zoom became a public company via an initial public offering at which time Yuan became a billionaire. His wealth has increased during COVID-19 pandemic, as Zoom has benefited from the shift to online work and teaching. On September 1, 2020, Yuan's net worth was estimated to be US$16.4 billion, a figure 360% higher than his net worth at the beginning of the year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Video_Communications

 Brian and I are both substitute teachers, and we have been monitoring classes remotely (via Zoom) since the school year finally started sometime in October.

COVID19 has caused dramatic changes in our society, since millions of people now have the ability to safely work from home. Our niece in Atlanta is a psychologist, and the vast majority of her clients are in Los Angeles.

The sports world is a lot different than it used to be.

NASCAR started its season later than normal, with NO fans in the stands. Professional horse racing also had a delayed start, which caused a major shuffling in the dates for “the big three” events of the Triple Crown.

Traditionally, the Masters golf tournament is held in April, but this year, it was held in November.

Eating in restaurants virtually stopped in April, but is now available in most states, but with “social distancing” seating.

The vast majority of churches have stopped having indoor service, and weddings are a lot different than they used to be.

A wedding reception held in Maine in early August led to an outbreak of the novel coronavirus that has infected more than 50 people and resulted in one death, according to health officials in the northeastern state.

The Maine Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that it had launched an investigation into the August 7 event last Monday, after 24 individuals who had attended the wedding reception at the Big Moose Inn in Millinocket tested positive for COVID-19. On Saturday, health officials said that 53 infections have now been linked to the event and one person has died, Maine's The Portland Press Herald reported. 

 

https://www.newsweek.com/wedding-reception-leads-53-coronavirus-infections-1-death-1527006


Tomorrow, our son and his fiancĂ© will be tying the knot, and the likely venue will be at one of the botanical gardens in town, and it will be an outside event. The presiding official won’t be in the same location, and the entire wedding will take place on Zoom.

To quote Bob Dylan, the times they are changing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90WD_ats6eE