#314 June 1: Do not pet a dog
with a red collar. Not being a “dog
person” I didn’t know this, but according to Readers’ Digest, this is an
“almost” universal sign that the dog may be overly aggressive or possessive of
the owner and may be dangerous. Yikes!
#315 June 2: SOS doesn’t stand
for Save our Ship or Save our Souls, but was meant as a backronym (another new
vocabulary word!) meaning the letters don’t stand for anything. It was meant to be just a string of dots and
dashes that attracted attention: …---…---…--- but since … = S and --- = o, it became SOS.
#316 June 3: How do you know
you are middle class? While the
Washington Post defined it partially as a state of mind, they also developed a
poll asking folks to define it. The
middle class consists of people working in white-collar professions, small
businesses, or skilled trades. Traits
include owning a home, having a secure job, being able to save money, take
vacations, have health insurance, afford a $1000 emergency, paying bills on
time, having a job offering sick leave, and having a retirement plan. That’s a pretty long list! Home ownership is becoming harder and harder
and is often the first barrier to folks entering the middle class.
#317 June 4: The same article
also gave a great explanation of why “trickle-down” economics doesn’t work.
According to the International Monetary Fund, tax cuts for the wealthy do not
pay for themselves through increased economic activity. They can lead to under-investment in
education as poor children end up in lower-quality schools are less able to go
to college. As a result, labor productivity
could be lower than it would have been in a more equitable (taxed) world. The article also cited investments in
infrastructure and child care making it easier for the working class to be
gainfully employed.
#318 June 5: Our best friends’
daughter is a brain researcher and uses mice in her research. An article in today’s paper interested
me. Sea urchins share more genetic
material with humans than fruit flies.
Scripps researchers have made a transgenic breakthrough with sea urchins
meaning they can alter their genetics and provide researchers with specific
genetic mutations for research. Since
sea urchins don’t fly away like fruit flies, and procreate fairly quickly this
makes them an ideal lab animal for
developmental biologists. This would give
researchers another option alongside mice, zebra fish, and fruit flies, which
are commonly used now.
#319 June 6: Once in a while I
learn something on the word puzzles I do each morning. I was playing around with my letters on Words
With Friends and made the word z-o-l. I
looked it up in the dictionary. Zol =
cannabis!
#320 June 7: We have a friend
who is a climate change denier. We
couldn’t believe it when the topic came up.
If this isn’t convincing, I’m not sure what is: According to Axios more than half of
Florida’s 825 miles of beaches are classified as “critically eroded”. A major part of Rodanthe on the Outerbanks
has been closed due to 6 houses falling into the ocean. According to the article, options include
protection (sand-bagging the house, building sea walls), accommodation
(building artificial dunes) or retreat (letting the house go to save the
beach). Which is best depends on
location and associate socio-economic values, but “in the end, the ocean is
going to win”. I guess it is easy to
deny when your house is on the side of the island that is gaining (vs. losing)
sand.
#321 June 8: I enjoy watching
the chimney swifts come and go every afternoon from the condos across the
street and the “Odell Building”.
According to the paper today they are on the vulnerable list, on the level
below “endangered”. This is important to
a group of parents in Concord who are trying to keep the school district from
tearing down their school: Beverly Hills
Elementary. While the parents are suing
on the grounds of not being informed in a timely manner and not being allowed
input into the decision, it is the birds that may save the building.
Two articles in the paper about being rich
and living in the middle class:
#322 June 9: Headline: “Study notes how definition of ‘rich’ has
changed in NC” According to the article, NC is in the top 20 with the largest
increase in the average 5% of earners.
In 2017 you had to earn $324,148 to be in the top 5%, in 2022 it changed
to $429,071, an increase of 32%!!
#323 June 10: On June 3 I wrote about a Washington Post article
defining the middle class as owning a home and being able to afford a $1000
emergency among other criteria. To show
how the definition of middle class is undefined, another article in today’s (June
6) paper Bloomberg news defined it as people who earn 200% or 500% of the
poverty level - $60,000 - $150,000 for a
family of 4. In the article it
highlighted a survey that said 46% did not have $500 saved, however 20% did
have $10,000 saved. I think these 2
articles just prove that you can “prove” anything depending on your view of
statistics and what you report. It is
definitely true that while the economy is “booming” when viewed through
traditional economic lens, many in the “middle class” are not feeling it. It should be noted that the survey crossed
party lines with Republicans, Independents, and Democrats expressing the same
kinds of issues. To quote: “It’s not going away no matter who becomes
president.”
#324 June 11: Another AI article caught my attention: “AI promised to
upend campaigns. It hasn’t yet” Here I
learned that the Biden campaign and Democrats are using AI, but the Trump
campaign says they have “algorithms” but no AI.
Of course, this does not account for both campaigns’ PACs. While the “deep fakes” have either not
materialized, or have been unmasked (or do we know?), the main use for AI has
been pretty mundane. One group used AI to translate messages into 6 Asian
languages and was found to be effective and another used AI to transcribe, summarize, and synthesize audio recordings of door knockers' interactions with voters. What
will AI be able to do by November? Or by the next election!?
#325 June 12: This was a pretty
scary article: “As China’s internet
disappears, collective memory is lost”
According to the NYT News Service, China’s collective memory is
disappearing in chunks. Almost all of the information posted on Chinese news
portals, blogs, forums, and social media between 1995 and 2005 are no longer
available. For instance, you can no
longer research Xi Jinping’s role as governor of 2 provinces before he became a
national leader. Lenovo’s acquisition of
IBM’s personal computer business in 2005 is no longer documented. China’s internet has shrunk more than a third
from 5.3 million sites in 2017 to 3.9 million in 2023. It is about the size of Indonesia and Vietnam and smaller than Poland and just a quarter of Japan. Controlling information and the view of
history is primary to an autocratic state.
#326 June 13: (written June 6) We are “space nerds” in our house. My dad worked on the Mercury and Apollo
projects through GE and Dave is an avid follower of Space X. Today they tested their heavy rocket, taking
it into orbit and then “landing” it in the Indian Ocean. Remember in the early test flights how we
would have to endure a communication blackout during re-entry? Using amazing cameras and Starlink satellites
we were able to watch the spacecraft the entire 1 hour+ flight – even the parts
where the fins were burning and almost falling off, making them not completely
useful for guidance. It was truly
amazing!
#327 June 14: Researchers at
Temple University’s Fox School of business researched the impact of pseudo
reviews on consumers’ on line shopping habits.
They found that funny reviews worked even when negative. What did I learn? Researchers will look at almost
anything. What I wonder is, who funded
this frivolous research that took 10 years!
Professor Mudambi said, “It was a fun study to work on because we
laughed a lot. Researchers usually don’t laugh a lot about our research
projects.” I guess he laughed all the
way to the bank.
#328 June 15: Now here’s some
research I can embrace: A group of
students at Johns Hopkins University used a class project to invent a new product
that will muffle the sound of leaf blowers.
They designed a plastic cylinder that can be added to a DeWalt blower
the quiets the harshest decibels of the blower’s sound. They designed and constructed them on their
school’s 3-D printers. While Black and
Decker will own the patent, the students will be listed as the inventors. That should look good on a resume!
#329 June 16: I’m reading a
book by Jack Claiborn about coming of age in Charlotte as Charlotte comes of
age during the Depression and WWII. In
it, he talks about the Germans blowing up merchant, especially British vessels
off the coast of NC. I knew that, but
what I learned was the US Government gave the British land for a grave yard on
the Outer Banks.
#330 June 17: There’s a popular
set of commercials for Allstate car insurance trying to get you to buy their
plan that tracks your driving and bases your insurance rate on how well or
poorly you drive. But an article in
today’s paper stated that if you check the right box (or wrong?) on any of
several apps including Gas Buddy and My Radar (a weather app), your driving
habits are available to a company called Arity which can make them available to
insurance companies.
#331 June 18: The NC Chamber
Foundation and NC Child surveyed more than 500 NC parents of children under 6
and found that employers estimate that they lose $4.29 billion (WITH a B!) in
employee turnover and absenteeism from parents’ inability to find or afford
child care. This translates into $1.36
BILLION in annual tax revenue. And this
does not even address quality issues!
Investing in childcare subsidies seems like a slam dunk, but state
budgets long ago quit making common sense!
(see #189)
#332 June 19: We live in a
townhouse. Who knew we are
trend-setters?! According to The
Charlotte Ledger, building permits for townhomes surpassed the number for
single-family detached homes in Mecklenburg County for the first time in 2021.
Permits for townhomes nearly doubled, while single-family permits fell by
one-third.
#333 June 20 An article about tax
benefactors in the NC budget highlighted a small company in Morrisville that
received $6M in the State budget to research light therapy to combat the COVID-19
virus. They are looking at shining
virus-killing blue light into the back of patients’ throats and claim that it
has no side effects and could also be used against the common cold and
flu. I think this might fall into the
“too-good-to-be-true” category and while blue light has been used to treat acne,
I’m skeptical. I’d like to read more about their research. And this doesn’t
even address the money and shady lawyer fees some of our legislators received.
#334 June 21: According to an
editorial in Sunday’s paper by LZ Granderson of the LA Times, it is not
uncommon (as in as much as 25%) for Gen Z applicants to bring their parents to
their first job interviews. They explain
this as a product of the pandemic when these no-longer teens lost much of their
social skills. The author asks for compassion rather than ridicule and cites
the well-known research that the part of the brain that handles decision-making
doesn’t fully mature until around age 25.
This, however, was true BEFORE the pandemic. While I have compassion for those kids with
anxiety issues, perhaps the parents would serve them better by doing some role-playing with them and re-teaching them social skills. This does point out that the effects of the
pandemic are long-lasting and still being realized.
#335 June 22: Is pencil a
verb? According to Wednesday’s paper it
is. You can ask, “Does it pencil?” Meaning does it add up?
#336 June 23: Another result of
the pandemic. Dave was telling me that
the folks at Boeing were partially blaming the loss of quality control and
culture to the many folks they either lost to Covid-19 or who took early
retirement during the pandemic, resulting in a “brain drain” and loss of
institutional culture and knowledge. I
think we will be learning more and more about how the world changed as a result
of the pandemic and I’m sure Boeing isn’t the only company to suffer these
results.
#337 June 24: I’ve realized lately I’ve learned to manipulate my
algorithms on MSN, Zillow and Facebook.
Want more news about the WNBA? Click on the article about Angel Reece or
Caitlin Clark. Less about Trump. Don’t click there. Need to look at houses in the mountains or in
a certain neighborhood? Manipulate your
clicks. So I can expand or change my “bubble”!
#338 June 25: A headline in
Thursday’s paper: Nevada leads as 40-year low is reached in Colorado River Water
use. According to the article, a
confluence of a robust snowpack this winter, increased conservation efforts,
and Inflation Reduction Act funding to incentivize farmers to use less water
resulted in less water being used even though the population is rising. However, the funding for the infrastructure
and incentives to farmers runs out in 2026 and the upper basin and lower basin
have yet to agree on a plan. And climate
change marches on!
ONLY ONE MONTH TO GO TO LEARN SOMETHING NEW
EVERY DAY FOR A YEAR!
#339 June 26: Here’s a unique
idea. Haley Hodge, a mother-to-be in NC roams cemeteries in search name ideas
for her future daughter. Of course, being
a young person, she posted her activities on TikTok and it went viral Some criticized her for roaming among the
dead while creating new life. But she
views cemeteries as places of history and grew up “learning history from ghost
tours in Wilmington. From the TikTok to
the history lessons and criticisms, there’s a good bit to unpack here, but I
can remember reading the credits of movies when I was searching for names. Getting some fresh air in a cemetery is
probably healthier! PS … She chose
Salem.
#340 June 27: A watchdog group
in Washington actually publishes a book called the “2024 Congressional Pig Book”
with its mascot, a pig named Poppy. In it, they publish the record number of earmarks Congressional lawmakers slip into
bills for local pet projects. They say
it is a way to get the entire nation to fund local projects. For example, the “You Cannot Be Serious
Award” went to Senators Schumer and Gillibrand of NY for granting $1.7M to NY’s
Metropolitan Museum of Art even though it held
$5B in assets. As an avid art
museum visitor, I can see both sides of this.
I guess it's just your perspective.
However, the article says that since 1991 more than $460.3B has been
earmarked. That could go a long way
toward our deficit or projects that would benefit the entire country.
#341 June 28: An editorial in Tuesday’s paper talked about climate
change and insurance premiums. It said
that you don’t have to convince folks about climate change, you just have to
point out the rise in their insurance rates or the fact that many are getting
dropped with no insurance. Dave says
that some folks won’t ever acknowledge climate change but will just blame the
insurance companies and big government.
But if it keeps them from building in wetlands then their behavior has
changed, whatever the motive.
#342 June 29: I’ve been hearing about spiders dropping from the sky for
about a week. In Tuesday’s paper there was a picture and an explanation. The
Asian Joro spider is making an appearance especially in the NC Mountains. Their webs can be 10 feet across and since
they like structures, they appear in cities or where buildings are. Yellow and gray striped they can be up to 4
inches. Though they are venomous, their
poison only works on smaller pests and their bite is less painful than a bee. While no spider flies, they can float on the
wind as babies (think Charlotte’s Web). When
our children were small we had a “writing spider” who (or who’s offsprings for
generations) built a web in the corner of our chimney by our back door. Our children were SURE it was Charlotte.
#343 June 30: I hope what I'm reading in this meme
is right. If you had asked when do we have more of McDonalds and Starbucks or
museums, I would have sheepishly said fast food. But no, according to this its
museums! Let's hear if for
culture!! And if its in a meme it HAS to
be true!!
#344 July 1: In Monday’s paper
they did a piece on Chris Cloniger, a weather forecaster and climate scientist
from Boston. He sought and got a job in
Des Moines, Iowa with the purpose (discussed with management) to bring climate
science to the Heartland. He lasted less
than a year. Management met with him
several times and asked him to tone it down and not do posts on social media
with outside groups. He began getting
death threats and it affected his health and he finally resigned. AFTER he announced his resignation, the
station was flooded with support for him.
The article did not quote some of the things he said on air, so it is
hard to tell if he was objective or anything about the tone of his reports. The
article did end with this quote: “I stepped outside my comfort zone. I went to a place that needed to hear about
climate change. And I talked about it.” How
sad that science has become so politicized.
#345 July 2 Having lived
through the Aids crisis and lost a relative to it, an article in Saturday’s paper
caught my eye. None of the 2000+ in a
study of lenacapavir contracted
HIV. The study was done Uganda and South
Africa with women of child bearing age.
This is unique as these studies are usually done with men. The results were so significant, that the
study was stopped early and ALL the women in the study were offered the
drug. The article goes on to discuss the
way drugs are priced in the US and Africa, THAT’s a whole “can of worms” as my
Dad would have said!
#346 July 3: Here’s another article from Saturday’s paper: “At a conference, a call to prioritize
stopping gun violence”. The gist was
they want more money for research. What
I learned was that we are doing more research into the cause of youth sepsis
than we are into the cause and prevention of youth gun violence even though it
is the #1 cause of death among black youth since 2006.
#347 July 4: Since the
pandemic, scientists have been studying wastewater as a means of tracking
various viruses in the population. An
article in Saturday’s paper noted that this method while it has its advantages
must be taken with a “grain of salt”.
Various factors can skew the results making conclusions “iffy”. For instance, large amounts of bird flu were
found in the San Francisco Bay Area, but upon closer look there was a chicken
processing plant and dairy farm nearby, skewing the numbers. I’m all for science, and I’m glad that folks
are looking beyond the statistics.
#348 July 5: I really did flag
many articles in Saturday’s paper! An
article about “Lucy” the 3.2-million year old fossilized skeleton made some
interesting points. Scientists have been
trying to represent what Lucy probably looked like. But when their drawings are
analyzed against what is actually known about humans who lived during that
time, they are found to be subjective and skewed toward a Western male view of
nudity (vs. shame). Lucy probably was
NOT covered with “hairy fur” and probably did NOT wear clothes (those came
later). Why are we so obsessed with sex
and nudity (they ARE different!) And it
is disheartening that it has crept into science, but good that is being called
out.
#349 July 6: When David had
surgery last month, opioids were a big issue.
They are routinely prescribed and used during and after surgery and he
resisted them because of his history with Oglevies’ Syndrome. An article
discussed this in Saturday’s paper. In
it the researchers were trying to get surgeons to only prescribe the number of
pills patients actually need vs. the standard prescription protocol. The study found that patients usually do
not take all of the prescriptions (true for our experience) and that the extra
opioids circulating in the population could contribute to as much as 20% of
opioid deaths. Studying behavioral science, researchers found success in
setting the default opioid quantity in the electronic health record system to
match the amount patients actually use substantially reduced the amount
prescribed. Busy surgeons just hit the
“default”. Another effective procedure
included sending surgeons emails that either notified them they were
prescribing more than their peers or more than recommended quantities. Both emails resulted in fewer prescriptions.
The article concluded that “Inexpensive solutions grounded in evidence on human
behavior can be powerful tools in our campaign against opioid addictions.
#350 July 7: a golf course
in Western NC is using llamas for caddies.
They are so successful, that they are fully booked! They have tried using
goats or sheep before, but they pull the grass up from its roots. Llamas only eat the tips. I remember when we were in Peru, they told us
that llamas were the “everything” animal:
pack animal, provide wool for garments, you could eat them, milk them,
and they would mow your lawn (we saw them “mowing” on the side of the road and
in Machu Pichu!)… now add caddy!
#351 July 8: Justin Fox in a
Bloomberg Opinion piece cited multiple studies of illegal immigrants and
crime. The consensus of all studies
(by both progressives and conservatives) is that illegal immigrants are about
15% less likely to commit both property and violent crimes than the general
population at large.
#352 July 9
Alabama is subsidizing upgrading roofs to
become “hurricane proof”. Folks who
upgrade will receive home insurance discounts.
Alabama hopes to avert the home insurance crisis that is being
experienced in other states due to climate change.
#353 July 10: Much has been
written about how school children fared during the pandemic. Now we are seeing children who were born
during the pandemic or who were babies and toddlers when it struck reach school
age. They too are not faring well and are showing signs of being academically
and developmentally behind. According to Cain and Mervosh in the New York Times, it is
thought to be from babies seeing masked adults and not getting visual and
verbal feedback to their actions along with being isolated from other adults and
children. This resulted in them hearing
less language and experiencing and viewing less social interactions as their
non-pandemic cohorts. As a result, many are unable to hold a pencil, communicate
their needs, identify shapes and letters, manage their emotions or solve
problems with peers. How long lasting
this deficient will last and ways to mitigate it are still being studied.
#354 July 11 Denmark has an initiative to get their meat, fish and
deep-fried camembert loving citizens to eat more vegetables. They are doing this for both health and
climate change reasons. In their
program, folks are not necessarily being encouraged to be vegans or
vegetarians. In fact, they avoid those
words. The Plant Fund is using food
festivals and chef training to increase the presence of vegetables on the
national dinner table. The idea is to
highlight the vegetables alongside of the meat. According to the article swapping out beef
for a single meal can almost halve a person’s carbon footprint for that day.
#355 July 12 Researchers at the University
of North Georgia found a stockpile of artifacts including “organic remains
(shoe soles, belt leather, etc) in the mud in South Carolina’s Lowcountry
between the North Santee and south Santee rivers. It had long been thought that there had been
a slave encampment there in the 1840s as slaves worked the rice fields. The mud kept oxygen from the artifacts,
preserving them. This data and the
artifacts will be analyzed giving archeologists a better picture of the family
life of enslaved people during that period.
A good friend of mine from college lives near there and I wonder if he
knows about the “find.”
#356 July 13: the term “climate change” must
be removed from science books before they can be accepted for use in Florida’s
public schools. Florida legislators are trying to protect children from
“indoctrination and ideological rhetoric” as many GOP leaders in the state
question the existence of climate change and the contributions of human
activities to the problem despite scientific
consensus that human-caused climate change is transforming our
environment. DeSantis said the
Legislature was “restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the
agenda of the radical green zealots.” I
find this incredibly sad and a picture of an ostrich with its head in the
sand comes to mind, especially since Florida is one of the states most affected
by sea level rise and increased storm, flood, and hurricane activity.
