Eat our peas ...

Sometimes a President will coin a phrase that sticks in the memory. The notably verbal President Obama will be quoted for 10,000 years on "eat our peas".

Teddy Roosevelt did the same with "Speak softly and carry a big stick."

Then there is JFK "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what can you do for your country."

It is pleasant to recognize history in the making.

Post-polio syndrome

Last year fewer than 1600 people got polio and most of those were concentrated in India and Nigeria. There is hope that the disease will be completely eradicated in about 2 years, maybe 3.

Few people in the Western world remember the ravages of the disease except the victims of it, most of them in their sixties and older. Subsequent to the active disease, many decades later, the neuron-muscle synapses wear out leaving the victims fatigued and often unable to use limbs or their breathing diaphragms. This is called post-polio syndrome.

Warm Springs, Ga was discovered by President FDR as a therapy center with mineral waters and he subsequently purchased it with his own funds for therapy of other polio survivors. Not everyone survived the initial disease.

Y2K bug strikes 9 years later

It seems that some of the alleged global warming can be attributed to a Y2K bug in software of sensors that gathered data circa 2000. Here is a link to this bizarre basis for a multi-trillion dollar policy decision based on a computer programming bug.

This is not to say there might not be other data that support global warming. It might exist.

Super Rooster

At Chickstock Lynnis sold a lot of chickens and also bought a Rhode Island Red super rooster to give to Soren for his birthday. Soren and Chrissy's flock is also comprised of RIRs so it was appropriate. Super rooster was on the job very quickly yesterday. Today he was proudly herding his harem of 18 hens with plenty of crows to warn off any other (nonexistent) roosters. He looks a bit tired, but, hey, it is all in a day's work for an ambitious chicken daddy.

I'm passing into another dimension

This a pic that is definitely not copyrighted by someone else. It is me the blogger.

Optimism about the Future

Despite the immediate cares of the world, there is also plenty of reason for longer term optimism. As usual, this mostly centers around the improved living made possible by improved technology.

In health care, many and profound discoveries are being made about the origins of disease and aging. Inevitably this has resulted, and will result in advanced medications that pinpoint target the origins of medical problems. Sadly, soon to be instituted proposals to limit profits from pharmaceuticals have already resulted in disinvestment in pharmaceuticals in anticipation of a new political world order. Eventually new meds will find their way to market in other countries, but later than necessary in the good old USA. In any event, the wealthy or desperate will be able to travel to find advanced medications.

Imagine a world where cancer, obesity, and aging are conquered. It will be great for the individual. The resulting overcrowding of the world population will lead to very regrettable means of limiting population, but that can be solved by war, pestilence, famine and suicide. Whoops ... I forget that pestilence will be fixed, and, that is reason for optimism.

It has long been a truism of science and technology that advances in materials result in advances in engineering and in science. Those advances, in turn, feed back to create still further advances in materials. It is a virtuous cycle of advancement. New materials such as nanotube paper, biologically inspired catalysts, and electrochemical batteries will all have immediate application to real world living.

The late Julian Simon, an economist at the University of Maryland, is famous for his predictions that the costs of all products, over the long term, become less due to advances in technology. So far he has proven to be correct. When a raw material such as copper becomes costly, someone finds a different way to provide the same function in the final product. Alternatively, someone invents a more economical way to extract a product such as copper from abundant low grade ores hitherto ignored.