30 Things I Learned in April: Zombie Fires, Trillionaires and Speeding up Evolution

#250 April 1:   The EU Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of 4 older Swiss women, saying that Switzerland's failure to comply with duties under the EU Climate Change Convention harmed them. The women claimed they were unable to leave their homes during heat waves and this impacted their health.  This historic ruling will hopefully make governments take their commitments seriously.

#251 April 2:  There have never been 2 teams (men and women) from a school in the Final 4 Basketball tournament, UNTIL THIS YEAR… This year TWO schools, UConn, and NC State both have men's and women’s teams in the final 4!

#252 April 3: I’ve known about “ghost kitchens” for a while.  They are used by food trucks and caterers to prepare food and have multiple users.  Apparently, there is also a “ghost car plant” in Germany that produces cars for various companies.  Fiskers used it to produce a new EV without having to set up a whole manufacturing plant.  Magna International, a Canadian manufacturer of automobile components has a production plant in Gatz, Austria. It has produced the Mercedes Benz E Class, Jeep Grand Cherokees, and the Toyota Supra. 

#253 April 4:  This headline caught my eye:  Glasses improve income, not just eyesight.  It is an article about getting $1 readers to folks in extremely impoverished countries such as Bangladesh and parts of India.  Researchers found that when the simple readers were made available monthly income increased over $10.  Being able to see better increased the work garment workers, artisans, and tailors were able to do.  I’ll never complain about wearing readers again.

#254 April 5:  This is a little random but interesting.  Why do donuts have holes?  Supposedly doughnuts were invented in 1847 by an American sailor, Hansen Gregory while at sea.  He noticed that the twisted or diamond-shaped pastries often had uncooked centers, so he removed the dense center and found that it cooked faster with less oil and was more uniform. 

#255 April 6:  The women’s basketball tournament outpaced the men’s tournament for the first time this year with 4 million more viewers.  I watched both, but this is the first year I really got into watching women’s basketball.  Go girls!

#256  April 7:  Caitlin Clark will play against men in the 3 on 3 tournament this year.  She also participated in the 3-point shootout at the All-Star game.  And folks are worried about transgendered folks playing sports?  They ought to be worried about Caitlin!! Lol

#257 April 8:  What is the difference between a couch and a sofa?  According to a newsletter I get, a couch is from the French “coucher” which means to lie down.  A sofa if from the Arabic “suffah” and was originally a wooden bench complete with blankets and cushions made for sitting.  EBay’s selling guide used to distinguish between the two by defining a couch as a piece of furniture with no arms used for lying.  So sofas are more formal and you take a nap and hang out with your pet on the couch!

#258 April 9:  In an article about the gentrification of food in the paper it referred to kale, calling it until recently the “poor man’s collards” saying it was added to collards to stretch them and feed more people.  I will admit I only “discovered” kale when it became the “preppy” salad, and I’ve never accomplished the “massage” you are supposed to do when you wash them to keep them from tasting tough and bitter.  I’ve tasted some that were good, but I’ve never mastered the right ratio of massaged kale in cooking or a salad.

#259 April 10:  I finished a blanket for our neighbor’s upcoming baby shower. Here is what I learned:  It took about 20 March Madness basketball games or movies in between games to complete it!

#260  April 11:  The partial eclipse we had in Charlotte paled in intensity from the full eclipse in 2017, but here is what I learned: Most of my neighbors did not experience the full eclipse in 2017 and were eager to see this one.  I put out the word that our roof would be open for viewing expecting maybe 4 or 5 takers and 20 people showed up! And 13% of the sun is still a LOT of light.  While the sky dimmed and it got noticeably cooler, it was still bright and the eclipse could only be viewed through special eclipse glasses.

#261 April 12:  The Olympic uniforms for track and field were highlighted on MSN this morning and were criticized for being too revealing for the women.  Nike tried to say they used science to design them but Lauren Fleshman, a 2-time US 5000 meter champion highlighted the double standard and said it would not be accepted in women’s basketball or soccer.  But her crowning quote was “If the uniform was truly beneficial to physical performance, men would wear it.”

#262 April 13:  On the radio this morning they did a piece on coral reefs and how high temperatures are causing bleaching, often resulting in dead reefs.  The trouble is the symbiotic relationship with algae who leave when the water gets too hot in the coral cells.  If the high temperature doesn’t last long they will come back, but too often that doesn’t happen.  Researchers in Australia are experimenting with “speeding evolution” by cultivating coral that can withstand higher temperatures.  The researchers were quick to note that this is not a bullet cure but may buy a few years, a decade at most.  I’m always leery of “messin’ with Mother Nature” but I understand that we created the problem, and hopefully will have the intelligence to abate it.

#263 April 14: An article in today’s paper highlighted the medical school going up near Pearl Park.  What I learned in the article is that the medical office tower will have a lab dedicated to MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS to promote interest in STEM careers.

#264 April 15: In that vein, Beverly Purdue wrote an interesting op-ed in the paper about students recovering from the COVID academic brain drain.  Besides concentrating on test scores she goes one step further and projects what the low achievement levels will have on our economy and students’ future earnings.  She predicts the gross domestic product (GDP) of NC will drop 2..3% or $430 billion, and that these students will earn 7% less in their lifetime.  She then highlights some programs that have mitigated the learning deficiency including tutoring through the NC Education Corp.  However the money that funded these programs will sunset in September.  A cost/benefit analysis on funding is probably needed.  However, this hasn’t influenced our legislature in the last 20 years and they chronically underfund education.

#265 April 16:  Caitlin Clark was offered $76K for her first year in the NBA and a 4-year contract worth $338K where the men’s rookie will earn $12M and a 4-year contract worth $55.2M.  Do you need to have any other evidence for wage disparity between men and women?

#266 April 17:  One of the top ten bars in the WORLD is 5 blocks from my house!!  Merchant and Trade on the top of the Kimpton Tryon Park Hotel overlooks Romane Bearden Park and the baseball park AND has great cocktails and city views.  It's ranked #8 on Mandoe Medias’s Top Rooftop Bars in the World list, right behind Sky51 in Kuala Lumpur.  Supposedly their standout drink is “Kind of a Pornstar” ($17).

#267 April 18: This headline caught my attention:  “Accounting firms are facing a ‘human capital issue’”.  It was a piece about how accounting firms are having to up their technology and limit work weeks to 50 hr/week to attract workers.  While adjusting the workplace to attract workers who value work/life balance isn’t anything new, the term “human capital issue” was new to me.

#268 April 19^: Having been a homeowner for nearly 50 years, I haven’t kept up with the rental community except to gawk at all of the apartment complexes springing up along the Blue Line and all over town.  But an article about housing in Charlotte Magazine caught my eye.  I knew that 100+ (the article said 113) people move to Charlotte every day, but I had no idea the competition for housing was so robust.  According to the article, you can qualify for the lease, have a steady income and good credit, and still lose it, for many of the more attractive units may have 20 applicants for each spot.  Since COVID, more people want to rent and with interest rates high, fewer people are giving up their leases and renewing instead. The owner took a “median” budget of $1600 - $1700 to see what he could rent.  He looked at both houses and apartments.  The scariest was a house in NW Charlotte with brown stains on the bathroom walls and blood stains in a bedroom.  Two days after he viewed it, an automated message reached him that it had been rented and he had “lost out”!!  I thought it ironic that it was on Touch Me Not Lane! With just 1 exception, the houses he looked at were corporately owned and in disrepair.  He obviously worried about maintenance.

 A couple of things I learned for Earth Day

#269 April 20:  The average temperature of the earth has risen 2.5 degrees since our first Early Day in 1960.

#270 April 21:  70% of Americans are in favor of doing hard things to mitigate climate change and only 30% aren’t, so why is it such a hot-button issue?

#271 April 22:  NASA is getting ready to launch an experiment using solar sails to help propel satellites.  While there is no wind in space, solar light radiation produces pressure they believe can be harnessed in zero gravity.  The sails are thinner than human hair and are apartment-sized, folding into an area the size of a microwave.  The booms, also very thin and light are rolled up like a piece of tape and will be 23 feet long.  It will take 25 minutes to unfurl the sails.  The sails could help send weather instruments closer to the sun to serve as an early warning system for solar storms.  They also think the technology could be used to create other structures on the moon and Mars.  My question is, will this make viewing satellites from Earth easier?

#272 April 23:  The headline said, “The fried chicken is in NY. The cashier is in the Philippines”.  This is a little misleading.  It wasn’t the cashier, just the greeter or “virtual assistant.”  Several Asian restaurants in NY are experimenting with virtual assistants, greeting customers and assisting them in making orders.  It is basically a Zoom call with a person in the Philippines, working from home for $3/hr. With costs rising, Rosy Tang, a manager at Sansan Chicken said it is a way for her small business to survive.  The article pointed out that the $3/hr is about 20% of what she must pay on-site staff, and the $3/hr is twice what another worker in the Philippines would make.  Would I use a virtual assistant in a picture frame, I guess if I had no other way to order.  Would that make me want to come back to that restaurant? Probably not.  But the danger I see is eliminating the person altogether, even in the Philippines with an AI “person”.

  ‘

#273 April 24:  A town in Utah, Alta, that is only 13 miles from Denver has set up a one-room school to keep its families from moving away.  Up a treacherous canyon road, Alta prides itself on being the ultimate “powder snow” village.  With 300 full-time residents, they needed a way to keep the children in town.  The town gets 903 inches of snow a year and the road was closed 30 times last year due to avalanche danger.  All of this is pretty foreign to me in the South, but fun to read about.  They say the school has become a source of town pride, publishing a monthly newspaper with ads designed by students and sold to the ski resorts and drawing a standing-room-only crowd for their annual play.  The school has 14 students in 9 grades.

What I learned from this article is that there are 166 one-room schoolhouses in the US.  The teacher praised the concept because she can move students along a learning continuum, not based solely on age and grade.

#274 April 25: I had never heard the term “zombie fire”.  It appeared in an article in the paper about preparing for smoke from wildfires this summer, especially those we experienced last year wafting down from Canada.  Supposedly, fires up there are STILL NOT out, burning through the winder even under the cover of snow!  The article said this phrase joins “firenado” and “thundersnow” in the growing lexicon of freak-weather terms you wish you’d never heard. AMEN.

#275 April 26:  A question came up the other day about rich people and we asked if there were any “trillionaires”?  I decided to look it up.  According to Google (and we all know that is the infallible Encyclopedia Britannica of our time!) there are no trillionaires…yet.  Only 18 countries have a GDP that exceeds that amount.  Elon Musk at present is the richest person in the world with a net worth of $209 billion, so we have a ways to go before anyone can amass that much money.  The site did list 6 historical folks who probably amassed that much money in today’s dollars:

·         Genghis Khan. 1206–1227. King of Mongol Empire. ...

·         Zhao Xu. 1048–1085. ...

·         Akbar, The Great. 1542–1605. ...

·         Amenhotep III. 1388–1351 BC. ...

·         Augustus Caesar. 63 BC-14 AD. ...

·         King Solomon. 970–931 BCE. ...

·         Mansa Mousa. 1280–1337.

 

#276 April 27:  On BBC this am they did a piece about “kangaroo care” for premature infants on “How We Fix the World”.  It is partially replacing incubators in many NICU’s globally.  The idea is to replicate the womb by having mothers (and fathers!) hold the baby with skin–to–skin contact and a blanket creating a “pouch”.  They suggest 2 hr a day minimum and the more the better.  Research shows that babies and parents who use this method have better outcomes than with the incubator alone.  Temperature and heartbeats are synchronized, they eat better, moms have less postpartum depression and longitudinal studies show better cognitive outcomes.  I remember studying skin-to-skin bonding techniques in grad school, but this is clever simple, and easy for everyone to understand.  I’ll have to ask Emily if it is being used here.  I saw several US YouTube references.

 #277 April 28: The National Hurricane Center is considering adding a 6 to the hurricane scale.  Category 5 tops out with wind at 152 MPH, but 7 typhoons or Hurricanes in the last 10 years would qualify for a Cat 6 which would start at wind with 192 MPH.  However, they are also considering a scale that would use more than wind speed so that folks could be adequately warned of potential floods and the duration of the storm.

#278 April 29: Here’s a scary application of AI.  A principal in Pikesville Maryland was suspended when an AI-generated audio recording appeared on social media of him having a racist rage in a “conversation” with his assistant principal.  After a lengthy investigation, police arrested the athletic director and accused him of producing the audio clip using AI.  It will be one of the first cases prosecuted in Maryland and the US.  I’m glad they “got to the bottom” of it, but sad the principal had to be suspended and have his reputation maligned. This case was “caught” but how many will be seen forever as real?  AI is a tool, and like all tools can be used for good and bad.

#279 April 30:  The Hubble telescope has been taken offline and scientists at NASA hope to fix its gyroscopes.  I learned 2 things in this article.  I had no idea the Hubble telescope is THIRTY-FOUR YEARS OLD!!  Time literally flies!!  Six new gyros were installed in 2009 and technically the telescope can operate with just one.  They will have to work on it through the internet on the ground since the shuttle program was retired in 2011.

 

March: SAP Glasses, Millennial Theft Deterrent, Covid Redux, Climate Change Co$t$, and Mt. Etna Blows Smoke Rings

 

#219 March 1:  AI  and an eyeglass company are experimenting with offering SAP at movie theatres by having patrons wear special glasses that project the dialogue onto the eyewear.  You can adjust the placement, size, and color of the text with a handheld device.  I would pay an extra $1 or so to have this available.

#220 March 2:  I’ve never thought about microplastics until the latest articles about how they are ubiquitous in our water and even in our bodies.  According to an article in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology, simply boiling water can remove nearly 90% of microplastics. Especially in hard water, boiling calcium carbonate becomes solid and effectively encapsulates the plastic particles making them easy to remove through a coffee filter.  The strategy may be more or less effective depending on where you live and the efficiency of your water plant.

#221 March 3:   Coffee is making a healthy comeback. Study after study finds that enjoying 2 cups of coffee (my usual) may lengthen your life and lower your risk for chronic disease.  The latest is a correlational link between drinking 3-5 cups of coffee and lowering your risk of diabetes by up to 11-17%.  Coffee is a rich source of polyphenols – compounds in fruits, veggies, and whole grains. It also has as much fiber as a serving of broccoli. (who knew?  Fiber in coffee!!)  One researcher said drinking a cup of coffee was the same as a small helping of vegetables!  Let’s hear it for my morning “fix”!

#222 March 4: Mecklenburg County had one of the lowest voting turnouts in the state in the Democratic primary.  Only one small county near the coast had less.  Dave and I have said that this year’s election will be decided by those who DON’T vote.

#223 March 5:  I’m not sure what this says about me.  I am so glad that Black folks have been encouraged (allowed?) to get creative with their hair in the last few years.  Seeing all of the different “dos” during basketball games is a draw for me.  I like the men’s hair better than the women’s.  However, the women are often more elaborate with extensions and dyes, the men use their OWN hair!

#224 March 6:  The Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus is back!  After folding up in 2017 it has been re-imagined with no animals and their clowns try NOT to be scary by ditching the face paint for more muted makeup.  With no elephants and a focus on human cannonballs, and BMX riders, is it really a circus?  One of my best memories as a mom is taking the kids to the animal walk through town on the day the circus arrived.

#225 March 7: According to the paper, a “prominent BMW Board Member”, Frank Weber told an Italian magazine, that BMW will “soon” be dropping manual shift as an option.  Audi has already dropped it and BMW only offers it on its sportier models.  When I learned to drive, my dad made me learn on his VW Bug and the “test” was a stop sign on a slight hill.  I had to stop and take off without rolling back.  We still have a truck, “Bert” with manual drive.  We saw a tire cover with a stick shift logo and it said “Millennial Theft Deterrent”, meaning young people these days don’t know how to drive a stick shift.  We have noticed that now that when our townhouse complex gained more young folks, they ask to borrow our truck and then admit they don’t know how to drive it!!

#226 March 8:  The first over-the-counter birth control pill is headed to US stores.  It has already been available without a prescription across much of South America, Asia, and Africa.  Why does the US have such a hang-up with reproduction!!

#227 March 9:  Some interesting crime statistics:  Researchers at Stanford found that immigrants are 60% LESS likely to be incarcerated than US-born people and the CATO Institute looked into Texas and found that undocumented immigrants were 37% less likely to be convicted of a crime.  Recent investigations by the NY Times and the Marshall Project found that there was no link between undocumented immigrants and a rise in violent or property crime.

#228 March 10:  Science Magazine holds an annual contest called Dance your Ph.D. where grad students are invited to present their research through dance.  Weliton Costa won it for a dance video about kangaroo personality research. He also came out as gay during his research and presents this as part of “What I learned from my Kangaroo time” See it here::  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoSYO3fApEc

#229 March 11:  I hadn’t heard of Ramadan until a few years ago, but with the influx of Muslims it has become more and more common.  To greet friends who are observing Ramadan one can say “Ramadan Mubarak” (have a blessed Ramadan or “Ramadan Kareem” (have a generous Ramadan).  One of the basketball players in the ACC tournament was observing Ramadan and couldn’t eat until 7:15.  They had snacks and nutritional supplements ready for him to play at his best.

#230 March 12:  The newspaper is starting a new format where they will mark certain articles “Reality Check” to point out that they are using investigative journalism.  They will also mark other articles with “Inside Look” when they go behind the scenes or “Uniquely Charlotte” when highlighting a local story or personality.  I hope this is a new commitment to increasing local news as I’ve tracked how many local articles are in the Local section and one day it was just 2 out of 8.  Last Sunday was better with 6 out of 11.

#231 March 13:  Headline:  “EPA bans asbestos, deadly carcinogen still in use” What?  I thought that had been long ago.  According to the article asbestos is still used in brake linings and gaskets and to manufacture chlorine bleach and caustic soda.  50 other countries have already banned it.  The EPA banned asbestos in 1989 (what I remember) but the courts weakened the rule.  A 2016 law now makes it easier to put protections in place.

#232 March 14: Does plunging in an ice bath really help athletes?  According to an article in the paper, Dutch extreme athlete Wim Hof claims increased sports performance, reduced recovery time, boosted metabolism, improved blood pressure, and pain relief for arthritis, asthma, autoimmune disease, and fibromyalgia.  Wow! What a list.  The article says that while preliminary results are “promising” the scientific data and methods used aren’t adequate to support their claims.  The sample was too small and 86% of the individuals were healthy white males.  More research needs to be done on non-healthy individuals and larger; more diverse samples need to be used before scientists suggest you jump into the ice.  Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if something as simple could really produce those benefits?  It would be much better than expensive drugs.

#233 March 15: The Mayo Clinic did a massive data analysis and found that moving between Daylight Savings Time and Standard did NOT correlate with higher cardiovascular events.  The data while slightly higher was NOT statistically significant.  They are also going to study whether the rates of motor vehicle accidents are higher and other mental health effects.  Any mother or farmer can tell you that adjusting to a new time is hard for young children and animals.  I just wish they would set a standard time and leave it alone!

# 234 March 16:  It has been 4 years since the Covid pandemic was declared.  Here are some interesting facts:

·      The US had a higher rate of death than Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Spain Sweden, Denmark, Japan, South Korea, or Australia.

·      30% of Republicans have not been vaccinated compared to 10% of Democrats.

·      95% of COVID-related hospitalizations in the U. S. have occurred among people who had not received an updated vaccine.

#235 March 16:  Climate change continues to wreak havoc.  According to Jay Banner a geologist at the University of Texas at Austin, 40% of homes in the US are at “extreme risk” from climate change in the form of heat, wind, or air quality.  This was using data from the First Street Foundation.  This breaks down to 33% at risk from extreme heat, 20% from wind, and 10% from air quality.  This also results in a $20 TRILLION in real estate value.

#236 March 17:  A consequence of our politicizing COVID-19 vaccines… fewer children are being vaccinated for once common illnesses such as measles and this disease, one near eradication is on the rise.  The CDC says that 1 in 5 unvaccinated children contracting measles will be hospitalized and 1-3 per 1000 will die.  This is very sad.

#237 March 18:  Not only is the sea rising from ice melting, but the land is sinking!  According to the journal Nature subsidence is the rate the land is sinking.  It varies along the NC coast from 1.4 to 4 mm per year.  While this seems small it is 5 to 16 inches per century.  This along with the rise in the sea level puts the coast at risk for extreme flooding.  While most are due to geological factors such as cooling magma, humans can speed up the process by pumping water from aquifers and oil and gas drilling.  This causes subsidence at a much higher rate than normal.

#238 March 19: AI has come to fast food.  Bojangles is now using Bo-Linda a robot to take drive-through orders.  Not only does it take your order it can tell you if the restaurant is out of an item and up-sell you to Bo-Size. 

#239 March 20:  Why do they not publish where the NCAA tourney is being played past the first 2 rounds on the brackets?  It took multiple searches to find out that the Sweet 16 is in Glendale AZ but every site had the TV stations listed.

#240 March 21:  NC has its own state butterfly:  the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail.  It can be black with yellow dots or yellow with black dots and stripes.  Females are most often black.  I’m going to notice the ones we see so much in the mountains and see if they are swallowtails.

 

These pictures show the yellow one both with just black and with blue.

#241 March 22: Mt. Etna puffs perfect smoke rings.  These occur occasionally when vents occur in circles.  The gasses vented are primarily water vapor.  I remember seeing Etna “on fire” from one of Roseanna’s friends' houses when we were in Sicily.

#242 March 23: From Neil DeGrass Tyson:  The moon is bigger than Pluto.

#243 March 24: Walmart boasts that 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of one of its stores.  I  remember being in a town in Kansas that was part of the 10%!!  Out in the middle of nowhere.   And in Alaska, my students would come into Anchorage and stock up for the rest of the year because there were no stores close by when they went back to their villages.

#244 March 25:  Cultural traditions around the world are fascinating.  The Hindus welcome spring with Holi, a tradition where colorful pigments, called gulal are doused on one another.  This festival of colors is rooted in mythology:  when Radha complained about his blue skin, wanting to be fair, his mother suggested that he paint his skin any color he wished.

#245 March 26:  A brand new beetle has been discovered in the rainforest in Borneo.  It was discovered by a “citizen scientist” on an eco-tourism tour.  We read a book in book club by Rachel Joyce called Miss Benson’s Beetle with just this plot.  Miss Benson travels to Borneo hoping to do something special, discover a new beetle.  But she had to live for YEARS in Borneo before her discovery.  It was a quirky book about women's empowerment.

#246 March 27:  Scientists have found that they can use weather satellites to detect methane gas releases.  For instance, they detected a release equal to the annual emission of 17,000 cars by a farmer who ruptured a pipeline with an excavator.  This technique is helping identify fossil fuel operators unable or unwilling to halt major methane releases.  Big Brother really is watching, and there are consequences!

#247 March 28:  Tennessee just passed the ELVIS Act.  It prohibits AI from using a person’s voice without their (or their heirs) permission.  It opens the AI generator to civil lawsuits.  The ELVIS Act stands for Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security.

#248 March 30:  Covid did have a few positive outcomes.  When fishing tourism dried up during COVID-19 in Namibia, fishermen spent time rescuing seals from marine plastics.  They recorded their efforts on Instagram and became instant hits.  They have formed a non-profit, Ocean Conservation Namibia, and have rescued around 3000 seals since 2020.  A group in California has only been able to rescue 100.

#249 March 31:  I won’t live to see it, but the IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change predicts that by the turn of the next century (2100) an increase in sea level could be between 1.4 ft. to 6 feet.  Here is a map of what the coast would look like with 6 new feet of sea level. I remember as a kid in elementary school studying the sandhill region of North and South Carolina and learning that it used to be the oceanfront.  I guess what “goes around comes around" and the Sand Hills will once again greet the ocean. Note on the map that Los Angeles is under water as is Seattle, Boston, New York, and Washington, DC.

February: Common Sense, Neuter your Valentine, the Quietest place in America, Gen Z Knows EVERYTHING!

 

#189 February 1:  How many times have you put down an argument by saying “Its just common sense?”  I know I have! In the paper today, it was pointed out that this logic  implies that those who disagree have no common sense and must be idiots. Researchers analyzed more than 4000 common sense claims and found that there was very little sense that was truly common. Using the “common sense claim” closes down a useful discussion.  I’m guilty, I’ll try to refrain and try to understand others and state my opinion in less incendiary rhetoric.

#190 February 2:  Yesterday’s coverage of Mark Zuckerberg apologizing to parents for the dangers Facebook poses to teens was pretty dramatic.  Yet in Thursday’s paper there was an article that said that less than 10% of parents use the parental controls offered by social media companies. However, it was also pointed out that the parental controls require multiple steps that are often difficult to complete.  I think we have opened a Pandora’s Box that will require everyone, not just the companies and government regulation to close.

#191 February 3:  I’m always eager to learn new fund raising schemes.  An ASPCA in NJ has come up with a good one that literally made me LOL!  For $50 you can name a feral cat after your ex (or whoever pissed you off last) and have them neutered.  The “Neuter your Ex” campaign (because some folks just shouldn’t breed!) has raised enough money to neuter 80 animals!  They have decided to do it as an anti-Valentine fundraiser every year.

#192 February 4:  I read two great contrasting articles this morning.  In today’s paper a guy reports that his LG Smart washing machine uses the 4^th most data in his home, accessing not only his personal data but photos!  3.5 Mg.  I don’t usually subscribe to conspiracy theories, but maybe the Chinese are truly airing our dirty laundry! (Couldn’t resist!)  Another article outlined a town in West Virginia’s Allegheny Mountains, Green Bank that houses the Green Bank Observatory.  It has 141 people and is 3 square miles of the National Radio Quiet Zone (to enable the Observatory to listen to outer space).  There is no Wi-Fi, cell service, or radio transmissions.  Microwaves and electric toothbrushes are not allowed.  All transactions are by cash and you must use a paper map to find the mountain trails, no GPS.  Supposedly you can hear what the Earth sounded like before the buzz of human technology. 2/4

#193 February 5:  Without getting too political, Nikki Haley and Donald Trump often talk about taking or passing cognitive tests.  I ran across an article that indicates that asking rulers to pass a fitness test is NOT a new thing.  The difference was it was a physical test.  In   ancient Egypt, (3000 BCE) in the 30^th year of a ruler’s reign, he was required to run and finish (not win) a race to prove he was physically fit.  Only a few lived long enough to take the test at a Sed festival, and not all of them passed the test and those who did not had to make way for younger rulers.  Pharaohs were often obese consuming much beer, wine, bread and honey and suffered from maladies related to in-breeding, making physical tests a necessity. The image of Biden and Trump running a race, (beside Nikki in high heels)… literally makes me LOL.

#194 February 6:  I had never heard of an “atmospheric river” before last year.  I’ve sort of wondered how they differ from our hurricanes here in the East.  There was a good article in today’s paper that explained it so that I learned something.  Like a hurricane, an atmospheric river moves tropical heat and moisture, often with storms and wind.  But unlike a hurricane, it “flows like a river” rather than circulating around a dynamic low pressure.  According to the article, they can occur most anywhere on earth.  But I guess the east-west air currents and big expanse of the Pacific to our west coast makes them happen in California to Washington most likely.

#195 February 7:  I found this very clever.  The Apollo 11 astronauts could not buy life insurance because their mission was so dangerous.  While they were in quarantine before the mission they came up with a clever way to provide for their families should they not return (and as it turned out even after they returned!).  They signed “covers” or envelopes so that their families would have autographs to sell.  In the 90’s they hit the memorabilia auctions and some sold for tens of thousands of dollars.  The crews of Apollo 12-16 continued the tradition through 1972.

#196 February 8:  For 65 million years the Amazon has been the earth’s carbon “sink”.  By 2050 it will change from a rainforest to savanna grassland because of deforestation mainly though clear cutting.  According to Bernardo Flores in a study in Nature, at the end of this process our planet will reorganize itself, and find a new equilibrium.  But humans and other species will have to readapt to unpleasant conditions such as unbearable aridity or higher temperatures.  Welcome to global warming and climate change!

#197 February 9. 81% of GenZ believe they can write a self help book!  That’s takes some audacity and “chutzpah”!  (Gen Z are folks 12-27 – my granddaughters!! Lol – yep what teenager doesn’t think they know MUCH MORE than their parents!! Lol).  The percentage goes down to 48% of millennials (ages 28-43, like my daughter, and just 28% of boomers (me!).  The inference according to the survey is that the longer you live, the less wisdom you believe you have to impart (so much for wise old owls!!).  Maybe Gen Z is so confident because their egos have not been punctured yet.  They don’t know what they don’t know.  You learn that on your first “real” job!!  With the push for more emphasis on mental health, Gen Z does have a higher emotional vocabulary than in past generations.  With an explosion of “self help” on social media, young people are more apt to give and take advice vs. going to their parents and grandparents.  Darn!

#198 February 10:  I remember when we helped settle some Polish refugees taking them to the grocery for the first time and how almost paralyzed they became with all the choices in the grocery store.  The cereal aisle almost did them in!  I also used this analogy with teachers and toys.  Too many choices can lead children to just clearing the shelves and not really playing with anything.  This came up with in the paper in an article about Coca Cola and Dollar General reducing their different products.  Coke is removing the number of products they produce (good by, Tab!) and DG is reducing the choices, for instance instead of 6 different mayonnaises; they will only have 3 or 4.  Kohl’s has also reduced the number of colors of the same sweater they stock, and stresses a better organized store.  Of course this allows them to have less waste and discounts.

#199 February 11:  I read somewhere that of events that bring folks together in the US, Thanksgiving is tops followed by the Super Bowl.  What’s not to like about good football, celebrities, and commercials?  We could hardly play bridge!

#200  February 12:  :  Super Bowl Flu has been coined as the cause of the least productive day of the year:  the Monday after the Super Bowl!  Suggestions have been to move the Super Bowl to the next weekend which is a 3 day weekend for President’s Day or moving it to Saturday, but TV viewership is better on Sunday. Getting better ratings equals more money for the NFL. I guess they don’t care about their advertisers losing money to the Super Bowl Flu! Between absenteeism and folks being less productive, about 1/3 of the workforce is affected

#201 February 13:  Amache National Park is our newest one.  It is near Granada Colorado and is the site of Japanese internment during WWII.  National Park Service director Chuck Sams, noted that “while it is a dark chapter of injustice in our history, to heal and grow as a nation we need to reflect on past mistakes, make amends, and strive for a more perfect union.”  This philosophy needs to be used on more of our history and mistakes!!

#201 February 14:  Rev. Kate Murphy wrote a wonderful Valentine’s Day editorial.  She told of the legend of St. Valentine who was martyred in the year 272.  He would perform secret illegal marriages to get men out of serving in the military. Of course he was found out and jailed for it.  Befriending his jailer, he prayed for his blind daughter and her sight was restored.  This earned him a death sentence from Roman Emperor Claudius

Gothicus who was not a fan of Christians.  Pastor Kate ends her column enumerating the ways she intends to celebrate, from helping her 2^nd grader make Valentines, baking cupcakes for her class, going out to dinner with her  husband and then to honor St. Valentine contributing to the commissary fund in the Mecklenburg County Jail through the Black People’s Community Justice Fund.  She says, “Public love goes to the wealthy, accomplished and triumphant.  But holy love is directed toward those who are forgotten, despised, and vulnerable and cannot reciprocate. God loves both the innocent and guilty, something we find hard to understand.  This really made me think.

#202 February 15: Which brings me to another editorial about the “He Gets Us” commercial during the Super Bowl that is upsetting both liberals and conservatives (so it must be doing something right!!).  These “Jesus commercials” have been airing for about a year and are produced by Come Near, a charitable organization who has among their prominent donors Catholic organizations and Hobby Lobby.  Liberals found the commercial which featured culturally opposite characters (gay/priest; a woman in a hijab and a suburban mom, a white cop and young Black man) washing feet as Christ did on Maundy Thursday.  Liberal and progressive critics criticized the group for spending money on pricey commercials rather than social services.  While conservative detractors called it “too woke” with progressive tropes; they also pointed out that that the person on the ideological right was the one doing the foot washing (so they don’t want to be like Jesus?).  They felt it was shallow.  Then there were those who criticized it for promoting a “foot fetish”.  OK some folks just have their minds in the gutter!  Any short commercial that can get this many folks curious, engaged and talking is a success.

#203 February 16^:  Here is how men and women think differently.  I love to look at open houses and today I noticed a cute bungalow with less than 1300 square feet and contrasted it with a mansion in Eastover with 7000+ square feet.  One was less than $500K the other over $3.3M!  When I showed them to my husband his first comment was that it would cost you another ½ million to furnish the big one, while I was thinking if you could afford the big one, you also could afford a decorator and someone to clean it!

#204 February 17:  I am glad I’m not famous.  If you are famous, your private life becomes public.  While I understand that it is important for General Austin, the Defense Secretary to let the President know when he is incapacitated, but does the public need to know about his prostate and bladder issues?  And Fanni Willis was romantically involved with one of her prosecutors.  Do I really need to know about her dating life?  But would I feel the same way if a) I was on the other side of the political divide or b) if the roles were reversed and she was a man dating a new-hire?  Makes you think…. I also watched a biopic about Taylor Swift this week and she had to convince several of her publicity handlers to “let” her endorse a Democrat for Senator in Tennessee during the mid-terms.  She felt she had to speak up against the candidate who did not support the Protection for Women Act and who spoke openly against LGBTQ folks.  I guess with all of the letters to the editor I have written, I’ll never be able to run for office (thank goodness!)!!

#205 February 18:  Red crowned and lilac crowned parrots are on the verge of extinction in Mexico, but are flourishing and breeding in LA.  The conjecture is with abundant irrigation in urban gardens, they are finding the vegetation and food they need and with global warming, they are finding a compatible climate.

#206  February 19:  And while we’re writing about birds… here is a 50 cent word:  gynandromorphic!  It is a phenomenon in birds, insects, crustaceans and a few other organisms where the creature has both male and female properties.  It probably comes from a genetic anomaly.  The article showed a beautiful blue and green honeycreeper seen in the wild in Colombia.  The blue side indicates male coloring while the green is classic female coloring.  When will we learn that nature puts gender on a spectrum; and that this normal and natural!

 

 #207 February 20:  I had never heard of a “fundi baby voice”, but supposedly it is a “thing” among evangelical women.  It was referenced as the voice used by Senator Katie Britt during the Republican response to the State of the Union Address.  It is breathy, childlike and wavers between smiles and the verge of tears.  I’ve heard it from Southern women all my life (and probably used it, Bless my heart!) and never knew it had a name.  It is meant to evoke submission.

#208 February 21:  I was reading an article about Cargill a consulting firm who works on making beef more sustainable and taste better.  They have bred cattle to have more tender meat by letting consumers bring back steaks for some more tender and then tracking them genetically.  What impressed me about their business philosophy is the marriage of sustainability with consumer satisfaction.  Respecting what is important to the consumer is key.  If the public won’t buy it, it doesn’t matter how sustainable it is.  Interesting.

#209 February 22:  Today is George Washington’s Birthday.  As the Father of our Country, myths, folklore, abound in his history.  Here are a few interesting facts.  He contracted small pox on his only visit outside the mainland of North America while visiting Barbados.  Obviously he survived, and his natural immunity that resulted from the exposure was crucial during a smallpox epidemic during the Revolution.

#210 February 23:  George Washington did NOT have wooden teeth, but did have false teeth made of ivory which when stained may have appeared wooden.  And his chopping down a cherry tree with a birthday hatchet has never been verified.  It appeared in Mason Locke Weems 5^th edition of Washington’s biography.  The book’s folksy style made it a best seller, capitalizing on Washington’s popularity after his death.

#211 February 24:  This headline grabbed my attention:  “Climate change and nuclear waste are a toxic stew”. Apparently the wildfires in Texas came dangerously close to the Pantex nuclear weapons facility just outside of Amarillo.  The plant was shut down briefly and workers scrambled to build a wildfire barrier.  They feared a repeat of a disaster at Rocky Flats near Denver when a fire there spewed plutonium and radioactive dust across Denver and its suburbs in 1957.  Mother Nature will always have the last word.

#212 February 25:  A group of us were talking about Pat Cothram losing her seat on the County Commission partially because of the bad press her daughter has received from switching political parties.  Pat of course loves and supports her daughter, even though she contends that she is a Democrat and has no intention of ever leaving the party.  What we all agreed on is that we would not want to be judged by the decisions of our daughters. All 4 of us had strong daughters that often take stands with which we don’t agree.  That is the joy and danger of raising a strong woman.  I guess the “sins of the fathers” has morphed to the “sins of our daughters”… lol

#213 February 26:  There is a new NC Hall of Fame…. For BBQ!  Of the first 9 inductees, Dave and I have eaten at 3:  Stamey’s, Lexington, and Alston Bridges in Shelby.  I guess we are due for 6 road trips!!

#214 February 27:  Somehow I don’t think it’s a coincidence that sports’ betting begins in NC the same week that March Madness begins.  I’m not a bettor, though I don’t have a big problem with it.  What I do have a problem with is all of the commercials announcing it!! There was even a plane carrying a banner over the Spectrum Center while it hosts the first round of the NCAA games.

#215  February 28:  Statisticians at George Mason University looked at voting data from 2000 through 2019 and found that using mail-in ballots had no effect on voter fraud, showing no statistical increase though mail in ballots have increased especially with the pandemic coinciding with the 2020 election.  In fact illegal voting accounts for less than 1 in 1,000,000 votes.  Why are we so worried and spending so much energy on this?  I think it’s a solution in search of a problem!

#216 February 29:  Happy Leap Day!  Here’s something I learned about Leap Day and Leap Years.  There is an exception to Leap Years occurring every 4 years. There is no leap day/year in years evenly divided by 400.  For instance 2000 did not have a leap day, but February 1900 did.  How did the ancient Greeks and Romans figure this stuff out?