What JoeB oughta do right now... and your annual appeal to use your PROXY POWER!

This posting got delayed for many reasons. But the first of several topics won't wait. Because next week is Giving Tuesday! 

So first off...

Each year I talk about proxy activism. The best way you can, with minimal fuss or even attention, help to save the world (or do good things) by helping others to save the world for you!

Here is an excerpt from a web page where you can learn much more:

Proxy Power is the uniquely convenient — but seldom discussed — ability of a modern person to participate in activism... helping to change or improve the world... by the simple expedience of joining some group that is already vigorously pursuing that part of your personal agenda.  

It's simple: you add both your membership dues and the political impact of your membership, in order to get behind people who are striving to save the world for you.

There is a wide and eclectic variety of such organizations to choose from. The groups that you select will, presumably, contain passionate and well-informed people who agitate — or act — in ways that are explicitly laid out in the group's magazine or web site. Hence, you can know in advance how well their program matches your own hopes and goals for the world.

Of course, millions of people already do this. (I deem these NGOs one of the greatest inventions of the 20th Century - and Vlad Putin hates em!) 

In fact, the expansive range of activist organizations can be looked upon as a vast market place, selling options on a better world. Every person's own list of memberships will be different, reflecting a particular — or peculiar — set of values and concerns. A set that can adjust yearly, depending on the individual's passion...(environment? space? poor kids? civil liberties?) ...and available cash. 

Millions of dollars in membership dues pour through organizations that range from The Sierra Club and Habitat for Humanity to The Planetary Society to the ACLU and Electronic Frontier, from Donors Choose to Doctors without Borders, empowering and encouraging these groups to keep fighting or doing good works... (continues)

Seriously, you can design your list of proxy NGOs to suit all your notions of a better world, efforts that are world, national, or local! (Example: here's one helping expand a crowded elementary school in Tijuana and adding adult education.)

Again, if you have priorities, then someone is working on exactly that. Scan the Proxy Power site for suggestions. But I have confidence you can find more. Ask yourself: "What is a better world worth to me?"

And speaking of saving the world...

== Back to political perspectives, starting with what Biden should do NOW! ==

President Biden turns 81 today. And okay, his age is all folks talk about, trying to divide the only coalition that stands any chance of saving our nation and world. Only dig it: I don't care if he naps! He appointed 10,000 skilled, smart and honest folks to replace 10,000 shills and crooks and Kremlin-agent Trumpists. 

That's issue #1 for me. With Austin, Blinken etc on the job, and the intel/FBI/military officer corps now back to doing their jobs, I can sleep nights. And yeah, Kamala too. 

But sure, let's confront the age issue head on. HERE'S WHAT JOBEE SHOULD SAY: 

"Okay it's totally legit to question whether age affects my sharpness. And so, especially after watching the GOP clown-car 'debates', I want to show that not all politicians are raving ninnies. So let's have Democratic party primary debates! 

"For one thing, the contrast will be stunning. It will show how deep our bench is, stuffed with cogent adults from many generations and regions, arguing policy with courtesy and wisdom. 

"Sure I plan to be the nominee! But should we turn down free air time and a great platform to show how we Democrats overflow with vigorous, smart NON-clowns? And how we talk real issues, like saving the planet and repairing infrastructure and respecting science and advancing justice and bringing manufacturing back to America, amid the best economy in 40 years? 

"So, bring it, kids! Let's have fun showing the nation how grownups argue and learn from each other, with courtesy, mutual respect, humor and wisdom!"

What an opportunity that would be, for a win-win-win. If only.

== The totally intentional mess in the U.S. Congress ==

Oh, but what a clown car the party of Lincoln, Ike and Goldwater* has become!!

As I write this, the insane cluster-f**** in the House of Representatives continues, as the slim Republican majority - achieved through cheats like gerrymandering - continues to obey their fundamental dictum -- "Never negotiate, never govern, never legislate, never lead" vow that has been the core of the GOP ever since 1996, when Dennis "friend to boys" Hastert (Jim Jordan's mentor) ruled that no Republican may ever again do those things. 

IDEALLY the way out would be to end gerrymandering so primaries, dominated by partisan radicals, would no longer empower radical cultists to bully representatives into mania. 

IDEALLY light would drive the blackmailed out of politics. 

IDEALLY a large segment of 'decent' Republicans would split off from the madness, the way Liz Cheney did, and save something of American conservatism, before it is too late.

Won't happen? I know. But there IS a maneuver that might at least help bandaid the current mess!

Put up to a vote a temporary house rule allowing motions & votes to - for just two months - be done by SECRET BALLOT! 

For just those two months, the decent 20% of GOP lawmakers... plus maybe another 50% who at least aren't utterly crazy or Putin-blackmailed... would be free to negotiate and pass essential bills with Democrats, while retaining a way to tell their radicals: "Who... ME?"

It's a simple, procedural workaround... and the rule change would require only some guts and patriotism from just a dozen or so 'decent republicans'... allowing the rest of 2023 to see stuff actually done, on our behalf.

There are SO many other tactics that might shift the current chest-to-chest thumping and preening that has replaced actual, negotiated politics in the USA.

If anyone out there is interested in trying some agile toctics, my book remains (alas!) just as relevant as when I wrote it.

See Polemical Judo, by David Brin, if you are among those who still reads.

=====

* Did you know that the State of Arizona draws 17.3% of its electrical power from the spinning in Barry Goldwater's grave?  

(Yeah, I made that one up! Colbert call me! ;-)

You... yes, you... can help save the world exactly by YOUR priorities! Oh, and those killing us with their passion.

On Giving Tuesday, take a glance at what might be the best way to leverage your power as a planetary citizen! Pick a problem you perceive desperately needs solving. Make a list of ten. There's a way to pool small amounts with millions of others who together hire pros to attack exactly your combination of concerns! 

Proxy Activism, the power of joining!

Have more than just a little? In the range of a dozen millions or so? Want to change the world more than most billionaires do? Then here's a way that a mere millionaire might change the whole world of philanthropy, forever!

And yes, I am talking about the one thing Vladimir Putin hates more than enlightenment, accountable law or the USA... NGOs or Non-Government Organizations. He - and his tool Fox News - rails against the very concept. A way that Western citizens can act outside of government to make the world better for all.

== Fear isn't the 'mind-killer." It's passion! ==

All right, I do return to this. But there is a common trait shared by all of those who are propelling us into civil war. Those who are tearing us apart with passion. 

As I said in the linked TEDdish talk, sanctimonious indignation is the mind poison shared far too widely across all spectra of politics and society, having very little to do with how justified (or not) your cause may be. It holds for to ALL of those who think it’s helpful to be “mad as hell!”  …. 

See: Is sanctimony an addictive disease?  

Okay yes, sure, there are good aspects to being passionate, especially in fighting against evil! We have the trait for good reasons. But it is all too easy for passion to become far more a mind-killer than mere fear.

I'm talking about when your passion takes over, blocking all ability to carefully evaluate your foes, especially their weaknesses, and thus you become less capable at defeating them. When feeling good about your righteousness becomes more important than achieving stated goals - that's sanctimony. When the voluptuous roar of your subjectivity makes you spurn (with malice) any application of objective reality.

When you are unable to recite the catechism of reasonableness: "I am at-most 90% right and my enemies are at-most 99% wrong." Which distills down to the sacred epigram of science: "I just might be mistaken."

== Where the mind-killer is most virulent ==

First, let’s address the by-far-worst infection: the entire Mad Right. Dig it, MAGAs and confederates and Fox-puppets: not one of your incantation memes would survive close, fact-based scrutiny and you know it. 

That is the definition of insanity. 

But far worse: your refusal to wager over your howl-memes is the very definition of dishonorable cowardice. Your dads and grampas would disown you, if they saw how all of you weasel, when dared to bet on your blowhard spews.

Many of your lie-memes are concocted in Kremlin basements (who else would want you screaming “deep state!” hatred at every single American fact-using profession, now including even the U.S. military officer corps?) Of course you must clutch all the lies passionately, because the slightest glimmer of reason will shatter them.

This means there are simply no sane American Republicans left. Even those who are calm-of-tone and who claim to regret Donald Trump are still complicit in their cult’s all-out War on Folks Who Know Stuff and against every single fact-using profession. There are no incantations or magic spells to cancel or excuse that crime.

(We’ll see in a matter of days whether an honest version of US conservatism still has a place in  American political life… manifest in Joe Manchin, if he comes through re: those vital bills, this month. If he does, then live with him, the way Lincoln and Grant accepted help from patriotic southerners who donned blue and fought for the Union. Grit… your… teeth and accept the miracle of a Democratic Senator from the reddest state in the nation, who ousted Moscow Mitch as majority leader and made Liz and Bernie committee chairs. That is... show some acceptance IF he eventually comes through. I guess we'll see.)

== Alas, there's plenty of crazy left-over to share around ==

Without any doubt - and with mountain ranges of proof - the monumental heap of treason and lunacy is on the entire mad right. But that does not mean they have a complete monopoly!

To the portion of the left that’s also so addicted to sanctimony that you harm the cause, please, I beg you to dig this. 

STRATEGICALLY we share goals: save the planet, increase justice & tolerance, invest in new generations, all that. (In fact, I've fought longer and harder for all those things - and more effectively - than almost any of those who keep carping me from that direction; bet on it?) 

We share overall goals and strategy. But your refusal to re-examine flawed TACTICS is a betrayal that all winning reform movements had to overcome. MLK, Gandhi, Frederick Douglass and so on spent half their time and energy on that, alas. And you who would piss on allies really, really, really need to read George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia.

Think. Strategy and goals are sacred. Tactics - on the other hand - must be disposable/replaceable with new ones that work better. It's called agility and it is key to victory.

Fundamentally, it is BS that any criticism of flawed tactics is an 'attempt to undermine the cause.' That’s a flat out lie, as bad as any clutched by the right and it makes you more like them!

It is utterly proved that some of your sanctimony-propelled tactics harm the broad coalition - a majority of Americans(!) - who share your goals. Especially the reflex to diss allies and to refuse any credit to the two persons who are (at this moment) unambiguously your leaders, who need and deserve your passionate support. 

And yes, I mean Joe & Kamala. 

Your reflex to seach and sift and growl and dig for any excuse to hate them is why we lose. It's the same betrayal as in 1980, 1988, 1994, 2000, 2010 and 2016.  Only, if you try it this time, Stacey Abrams will come after you. With a stick.

== And yes, Maher is right ==

Indeed, while I disagree with him in many ways, that core truth about tactics is what Bill Maher has been saying, all along. And not just him, but also AOC, Stacey Abrams, DNC Chair Jaime Harrison, Bernie and Liz, in their own ways. Tactics to help win in 2022 by TAKING TERRITORY away from the mad/treasonous/red/muscovite confederacy. 

And you won’t help that happen by screaming spittle in the faces of those you hope to convert.

Here’s the biggest one to fix. Cut down the obsession with SYMBOLISM! 

The entire mad right is obsessed with with symbol crap! Stop playing that mug’s game by going all sumo-grunt-shove with them over emblems. 

There are other battles - pragmatic fights - that matter far more for the planet and poor and justice, and every other good thing. Like winning.

== The Crux ==

Okay, don't leave with any impression I'm down with both-sides-ism!  While I finger-wagged at the most-fervid left, let's come full circle to recall who is far more wrong, strategically, morally, scientifically, factually and by any metric of decency or patriotism. 

I've said this before:

Yes, the FAR left CONTAINS some fact-allergic, troglodyte-screeching dogmatists who wage war on science and hate the American tradition of steady, pragmatic reform, and who would impose their prescribed morality on you.   

 

But today’s mad ENTIRE right CONSISTS of fact-allergic, troglodyte-screeching dogmatists who wage war on science and hate the American tradition of steady, pragmatic reform, and who would impose their prescribed morality on you.     

 

There is all the world’s difference between FAR and ENTIRE.  

As there is between CONTAINS and CONSISTS. 

Visualizing the future - and ways you can change it

While attending the Future in Review (FiRe) Conference in Park City Utah, I participated in talks about AI, trends in computing, visualization, entrepreneurship etc.  

Notable was this year’s CTO Challenge about “visualizing visualization,” and presentations about breakthroughs in understanding the retina and neurons, new steps in supercomputing, and risk-management software tools. Nascent companies of significance include a new type of combo solar roof that also condenses water out of the air, purifies other water, uses it to cool solar panels to higher efficiency, and pre-cool the home. (“The 24 hour solar roof Co.") Improved generators & motors, and other cool breakthroughs. Also, thorough discussion of the all-out campaign to steal the fruits of western and American creativity.

Should we fear or embrace the future? The BBC ran an extended interview with various futurist mavens at the recent FiRe, discussing innovation, and cyber-security… and saving the best for last, a bit of blather from yours-truly, about how we may make peace and live with artificial intelligences. And yes, it will be worth the wait.

Artificial Intelligence has replaced both transparency and national security as the #1 topic I am asked to speak and consult about. A fairly vivid tech business site asked me - and 21 other mavens — for predictions on how AI will impact the enterprise workplace.  

Meanwhile, are we self-lobotomizing?  It appears that  half of the American population is addicted to at least one behavior. 

We obsess over our emails, Instagram likes, and Facebook feeds; we binge on TV episodes and YouTube videos; we work longer hours each year; and we spend an average of three hours each day using our smartphones. Half of us would rather suffer a broken bone than a broken phone, and Millennial kids spend so much time in front of screens that they struggle to interact with real, live humans.  See a review of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter.

  

== Apparently, some folks are listening… ==

I’m #52 in a compilation of “Top 100 digital influencers.” Some of the people below me are brilliant! Indeed I am puzzled both to be there and by a lack of Vint Cerf.  Yes, this is one fellow’s personal list, so fine! 

Here’s video of my talk on the future of A.I. to a packed house at IBM's World of Watson congress in Las Vegas, October 2016. A punchy tour of big perspectives on Intelligence, as well as both artificial and human augmentation.

Meanwhile, wearing my “Mr. Transparency” hat, I just published: “No One Said It Would Be Easy: Copcams, sousveillance and the revolution of rising expectations,” in the first issue of the Journal of Science & Popular Culture - now available online. "Science permeates contemporary culture at multiple levels, from the technology in our daily lives to our dreams of other worlds in fiction."

 The Journal of Science & Popular Culture is a peer-reviewed academic publication that seeks to explore the complex and evolving connections between science and global society."  My article in issue #1, volume 1, is pp. 77–82 , 2017.

== Some are trying to make us smarter ==

The brilliant folks at "X" - the Alphabet (Google) company that takes on grand challenges - used stratospheric balloons to deliver emergency internet services to Puerto Rico. "Working with AT&T, Project Loon is now supporting basic communication and internet activities like sending text messages and accessing information online for some people with LTE enabled phones."

Project Loon is a network of stratospheric balloons designed to deliver internet connectivity to rural and remote areas worldwide. Loon balloons sail on winds in the stratosphere, extending the reach of our telecommunication partner’s networks into areas that are currently unconnected.This is terrific and helps make up for the way the federal government has failed 3 million US citizens down there. But it shows once again how much of our resilience depends on access to communications, a point I have been making in nonfiction, fiction, speeches and consults with agencies. Foremost...

...the chips in our cell phones could already allow peer-to-peer (P2P) text passing from phone to phone in afflicted areas without working cell towers. If this capability were simply turned on, many places would see far better citizen robustness and local problem solving!  See where I go into detail, here. And it is almost criminal that this one small thing, which might double national resilience, has been blocked by very obtuse men.

Oh, but – “Purdue Engineering researchers have developed a system that can show what people are seeing in real-world videos, decoded from their fMRI brain scans — an advanced new form of  “mind-reading” technology that could lead to new insights in brain function and to advanced AI systems.” 

One envisions how it could empower Big Brother so that no resistance will ever be possible. Or else…

…empower us all, if we can apply these tools upon politicians and the mighty, to make sure that Big Brother happens… never.

Heck... while we're peering ahead... If tachyon neutrinos exist, then there are some interesting ramifications: It isn't often that you see the word "gobsmacking" in an abstract ...

== Holiday wishes?  You (yes, you!) can save the world (personally!) ==

It's a good season to re-evaluate... and each of us taking responsibility for the future, as best we can.

For example, as we've seen in a year of weather extremes, hurricanes, fires etc., both natural and man-made disasters are always looming. I've long advocated that all citizens engage in the kind of preparedness that both Boy Scouts and Mormons practice out of habit. I also trained to be a member of our local CERT (Community Emergency Response Team). At least have a look at the program and consider taking the mere 20 hours of training. It’s all that remains of Civil Defense in the U.S. (Find your equivalent, in other nations.)

(In fact, I took it to the next level and trained to join the California Disaster Corps. I have the uniform and prepared my go bag, in case I am ever called.  CERT is to help your own community (and I’ve donned the green gear a few times.) CDC might summon me to wear dark blue anywhere in the state.)

There are other ways to be ready, without going all out to the prepper or survivalist (or even Holnist) extremes. Take this fellow’s cogent compilation of ways that you can help others, even far away, get through emergencies.

Of course we must prevent the preventable, which is why this time of year I urge everyone to read my “proxy activism” posting, that describes what average people can do to save the world — in exactly whatever set of priorities you think best!

I list worthy groups from Doctors Without Borders to Oxfam International  as well as The Planetary Society, Donors Choose (for schools) and Habitat for Humanity.

The method that I offer leaves all decisions and goals up to you, whether you view yourself as an environmentalist or a libertarian or Vegan activist! Moreover it's just right for a lazy person, (like you?) Do what I recommend and you can sit back, at least knowing that you helped others to save the world for you!

(Use each December as your season to reflect, adjust, and renew memberships. Don't worry... I'll remind you.)

One thing we do know: if you aren’t doing this much - this basic minimum - then you are one of those who later generations may curse. And they may have that power. It wouldn’t put anything past ornery humanity!

So do at least the minimum.  And then, when we narrowly save it all, you’ll get to be one of the smug ones who take credit.

Smart tech! - and how to allocate your well-targeted philanthropy

Tis the season for giving, right? We are all getting emails from philanthropic entities… and I am all in favor! But can some basic principle guide your choice? How about a strategic approach?  Start with a list of things you care about in the world. I’ll bet every one of your concerns has some NGO dedicated to making it happen. So why not, once a year, pay dues to a dozen or so? That way, through the magic of “proxy activism,” you can know you’re doing the basic minimum… hiring others to make the world better for you!  

For example combine the Sierra Club and Greenpeace with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and ACLU, plus The Planetary Society and Oxfam— six modest checks and voila! You’re a participant in eco, liberties and hunger shifts for the better and helping us move forward exploring the cosmos. Sure, it’s good to do more than that! By all means pick a political party and a candidate. A local library and food bank. A local high school robotics team. But here’s the deal; if you are doing less than a dozen such memberships - chosen by your own standards - then it’s pretty clear what kind of person you aren’t. 

Proxy activism says: “I know I’m cheap and lazy and distracted by other things.  But at least I can give my support to a dozen NGOS who will hire dedicated people to be active, saving the world in ways that I — in my lazy-distracted way — think it needs saving!” Learn more about this approach, which I have been promoting for two decades.  

A final note to those of you who believe in singularities or life extension.  Okay so you've got your cryonics contract and all that. What makes you think future people will want to revive you, just to spend money you squirreled away in investments?  Bah.  They will be choosy who they want to revive and share their world!  And they'll take into account whether any of the frozen folks truly did try to make it a better world.

Come to think of it, that's a reasonable-better standard for getting into classic Heaven.

== Interesting! ==

The new season of Xploration Earth2050 started last week. It's good to be back. You can watch both seasons on Hulu or Amazon. And yes, I give good blather.

And  now a holiday season run-down of cool items.

How can we fight back against the War on Science?  Billionaire Yuri Milner, who established the Breakthrough Institute’s new endeavor to re-invigorate SETI, now leads a group of his peers in establishing a set of big-time, Hollywood-style awards for top scientists, hopefully leading to some of the burnished prestige that comes from red-carpet treatment.  With his friends Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google cofounder Sergey Brin, 23andMe founder Ann Wojcicki and Alibaba CEO Jack Ma, Milner wants the world to celebrate the great research being done in fundamental physics, life sciences and math.  Each of the seven winners gets $3 million and a chance to stand onstage before a crowd of Silicon Valley’s leading lights, in a ceremony broadcast live on the National Geographic channel.

An interesting rumination on “algocracy”… our incipient trend toward leaving some kinds of decisions – even policy – to be decided by algorithms. John Danaher writes, “Public decision-making processes ought to be legitimate. Most people take this to mean that the processes should satisfy a number of proceduralist and instrumentalist conditions. In other words, the processes should be fair and transparent whilst at the same time achieving good outcomes. The problem with algocratic systems is that they tend to favour good outcomes over transparency and fairness.” Someone watch the source material and report back here? 

U.S. shale oil producers shocked everyone by innovating to remain efficient and profitable when prices fell below $50 a barrel, despite Saudi efforts to flood the market and drive them out of business.  Now though, at $40 or so, U.S. producers are finally pulling back... which should not be taken as bad news!  Let our oil sit in the ground when it’s this cheap, if the Saudis are willing to sell at a loss.  Now is the time to invest in re-filling the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.. exactly opposite to the Republican strategy of always selling our national resources low (to pals) and buying high. (You should see the travesty that traitors did with our Helium Reserve.)  

Merrill-Lynch projects investment opportunities in artificial intelligence, in general robotics, drones… and – well – killer robots.  Ironic, given how Wall Street is busy funding the biggest chunks of AI research, all of it aimed at developing “skynet” intelligences that will be designed from go to be predatory, parasitical, amoral and insatiable. 

== Tech Advances ==

Moore’s Law ain’t done yet?  Shrinking transistors even further… probably sometime after the beginning of the next decade, reducing the contact point between the two materials to just 40 atoms in width, the researchers said.  By simply swapping carbon nanotube transistors for conventional ones in a simulated IBM microprocessor, they were able to increase speeds by as much as seven orders of magnitude or, alternatively, achieve almost as significant power savings.

Smart LEDs will help us save the planet.  They will also communicate with the house, with each other and you phone.  Introducing “Li-Fi” — 100x as fast and capable as Wi-fi and just in time for the Internet of Things.  The good news is obvious. More info!  Faster!  Can we get all that without the bad? Smart bulbs spying on us for hackers or The Man?  

Li-Fi presents one more example of the utter impossibility of the “solution” suggested by most well-meaning civil libertarians… endless legislation to reduce info-flows. That will not protect freedom or even privacy.  Not at all.  Not even a little bit.  It never has and never, ever will. But if we can catch the voyeurs, we might prevent them from actually using the info to harm us.  Why, oh why is that so counter-intuitive?

== The point is driven home ==

They will be able to see through walls.... A team from MIT has invented "RF-Capture" – which can discern and identify persons by analyzing the reflections from ambient WiFi signals, even through walls as they reflect off the moving human body, parsing heart rate and breathing patterns. Creeped out yet? But this is only one more out of a near infinite number of examples of how futile is the routine and reflex prescription offered by modern activists recommending that we all "hide!" 

That reflex is becoming pathetic, distracting folks from the only thing that can can possibly, even conceivably, defend freedom and (some) privacy. Forget the cowardly and hopeless goal of hiding. Be militant, insisting that average citizens share the elite's unstoppably rising power to see. Our hope lies in demanding and developing the power to supervise those in power. If they are going to be able to peer at us through walls, then we must seize our right to look back.

== Future Tech Miscellany ==

How will we enhance bio-security? The National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) in Manhattan, Kansas. This state-of-the-art maximum biocontainment facility will offer leading-edge capabilities to help protect our food supply and the nation’s public health. They are beginning with a $100,000 prize/challenge for unique ideas how to do this.  

Huh. The X-Prize methodology has been really taking off.  Its advantages are huge and manifold. (1) it stimulates imaginative thinking from a wide variety of outside competitors who feel incentivized to think outside the box. (2) In most such contests, the teams each spend much more than the prize purse, in (very realistic) hope of followup patents and contracts and publicity for outside customers, even for second or third placers. (3) the prize-givers do not have to spend much till they get results dropped into their laps. (4) It is a creativity-stimulating methodology that is inherently difficult for closed or despotic societies to emulate.

Perhaps overly optimistic... Super-fast hyperloop transportation could arrive in about five years! 

Researchers have developed a method to produce the highly-sought after graphene that is 100 times cheaper than the traditional method.

Heard of “Gorilla Glass?” Get ready for "Godzilla Glass." 

People call bright flashlights "tactical" ... this one might be subject to arms treaties.  1000-Watt LED Flashlight: 90,000 Lumens

== Preparing for change ==

The first map showing the world's hidden groundwater brings us closer to estimating how much there is, and when it will run out if we over-use the resource. 

Science is offering paleontological perspective on climate change.  At one extreme is the “Green Sky” catastrophe that (we now think) drove the worst extinction of them all, at the end of the Permian, which a methane-flooded atmosphere, joined by sea-bottom hydrogen-sulfide - became acidic, killing most of life on Earth.  Let’s try not to set off a methane-release calamity of our own, as ever more of that powerful greenhouse gas fizzes out of hydrate ices long buried under the now-warming seas.

Milder but important-to-understand swings happened when earlier greenhouse eras suddenly swung negative, leading to ice ages.  In the Journal of Geology there is a new paper that describes how dust in Paleozoic times resulted in plankton blooms and reduction of CO2 levels in the air that were many times present day levels to such low levels as ice ages were initiated. 

Only note that this particular article originates from a controversial figure who was involved in the “rogue experiment” a few years ago – sponsored by a native American tribe – to dump iron dust into currents off the Pacific Northwest.  While I share a belief that experiments in ocean fertilization have been improperly blocked and should proceed, I cannot actually condone rogue and unvetted and rather unscientific “experiments” of this kind. 

The dust thing is of course related to why -- in my novel Earth -- I portray tide powered bottom-stirrers that send up plumes of ocean bottom muck into fast currents, thus fertilizing vast stretches that are now almost lifeless deserts.  This would be better than the iron-dumping experiments, since stirring simply emulates what nature already does in rich fishery zones like Chile and the Grand Banks.

== Biotechnology advances ==

The latest Great Life Hope for those who want to live forever?  An experimental drug targeting Alzheimer’s disease shows anti-aging effects in animal tests. “We did not predict we’d see this sort of anti-aging effect, but J147 made old mice look like they were young, based upon a number of physiological parameters.” Oh, but there are many ways to get such effects in mice. And any such drug… that our ancestors could have evolved to synthesize themselves … classifies as “low hanging fruit.” The effects on ameliorating specific syndromes of aging may be fine.  But it will not (I predict) affect even slightly the "wall" of 100 to 120 years.

A new test detects virtually any virus that infects people and animals. Subtypes can be identified easily. To develop the test, the researchers targeted unique stretches of DNA or RNA from every known group of viruses that infects humans and animals.  “It also may be possible to modify the test so that it could be used to detect pathogens other than viruses, including bacteria, fungi and other microbes, as well as genes that would indicate the pathogen is resistant to treatment with antibiotics or other drugs.”  

An artificial retina can be implanted and restore some sight to certain kinds of blindness. And cataracts, known to be the leading cause of blindness in humans, may soon be cured via a simple eye drop.

Scientists would like to understand what the genetic basis is for humans' apparently special capacity for logic, abstract thought, complex emotions and language. Humans and chimpanzees have DNA that's remarkably similar — researchers say our genetic code is about 95 percent identical. “Scientists would like to be able to make a genetic change and show that it really makes a difference. "But we're talking about humans and chimpanzees here, and you cannot experiment on either of those," she notes. "And so it's very challenging to prove causation."  

I guess the future is (almost) here. Take this title of a talk at USC: “Engineering Memories:  A Neural Prosthesis for Cognitive Function.”  Yes a microchip implant in the hippocampus to get around damaged areas that destroyed memory function. They aim at creating: “a biomimetic model of hippocampal nonlinear dynamics that can perform the same function as part of the hippocampus.  Through bi-directional communication with other neural tissue that normally provides the inputs and outputs to/from a damaged hippocampal area, the biomimetic model can serve as a neural prosthesis.”  Woof.

The PCS - paracingulate sulcus - is one of the last structural folds to develop in the brain before birth, and varies in size between individuals. It is linked to the ability to distinguish real from imagined information, a process known as ‘reality monitoring.’ In people diagnosed with schizophrenia, a 1 cm reduction in the fold’s length increased the likelihood of hallucinations by nearly 20%.

In an example of rapid evolution in action, three new species of wasps are turning into three new species, in real-short time.  Let's hope they don't become as terrifying as in Joe Wallace's creepy novel Invasive Species.

And finally...

"Cli Fi" Maven Dan Bloom offers the following observation: "In Isaac Asimov’s 1941 short story “Nightfall,” a journalist in the distant future on a far away imaginary planet named Lagash strikingly resembles the cynical columnists on the planet Earth. Asimov’s story deals with a kind of climate denialists. A Lagash scientist lashes out at a newspaper editor who could be someone like Marc Morano or Anthony Watts of today:
         “You have led a vast newspaper campaign against the efforts of myself and my colleagues to organize the world against the menace which it is now too late to avert.”
        That quote from a 1941 sci fi story offers a chilling forecast of a modern journalism that gives equal time to climate change deniers. Scary."