I like the video. It doesn't teach me anything new, but he makes entertaining videos.
On Wed, Sep 14, 2022 at 11:34 PM Albert wrote:
A "Thoughty" video.
Thursday, September 15, 2022
Sunday, September 4, 2022
Monday, August 29, 2022
Sunday, August 21, 2022
Effect of mRNA Vaccine Boosters against SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Infection in Qatar | NEJM
Compared to the primary series, booster effectiveness against symptomatic omicron infection was 49.4%, with the primary series 76.5%.
Study shows probability of getting COVID for mask wearers vs. non-mask wearers
In the healthcare setting, 9% of the mask wearers and 33% of the non-mask wearers tested COVID-19 positive.
Additionally, in community settings, the team noted that 6% of mask wearers and 83% of non-maks wearers tested SARS-CoV-2 positive.
Monday, August 15, 2022
A brief history of humanity
In the year 1800, about 90% of the United States population was needed to produce enough food through farming. In the early 1900s, it was about 35% and in the year 2000 it was 3%. Six decades ago when I was very young, farmers were held with some regard. These people worked the land to produce the food that we need. Today, farmers are considered rednecks. It is not too surprising that many early cartoons from almost a hundred years ago mostly took place on farms involving farm animals. In the 1960s there were many popular TV shows nostalgic for a more rural time, perhaps a simpler time compared to life in the big city, such as The Andy Griffith Show, Mayberry RFD, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, and The Real McCoys. By 1972 all these shows were obsolete and canceled.
The Earth has been cooling down for about 50 million years. For at least 40 million years the atmospheric CO2 level has been in steady decline. The two go hand in hand since the temperature affects the vapor pressure of CO2 on the surface of the ocean. As it gets colder, the oceans absorb more CO2. Calcifying marine organisms learned to take calcium carbonate, which is made from calcium and CO2, and turn it into shells, which later get sequestered as limestone. This is where the CO2 has been going.
Climate change over the last 9 million years affected human evolution, forcing arboreal apes to come down from the trees and cross on foot the newly formed grasslands to find food. We entered the Pleistocene ice age about 2.5 million years ago which continues to the present because we still have ice at the poles. Also around 2.5 million years ago, in eastern Africa, a half-ape early human named Homo Habilis, meaning "Handy Man", learned how to make a stone hand ax. This remained the highest level of human technology until about 50,000 years ago. It is thought that early humans engaged in persistence hunting, where the human ability to sweat allowed them to chase an animal in the hot sun for a couple of hours until it collapsed from heat stroke. Then they could kill it with their stone ax and have a meal for their tribe. However, 50,000 years ago mass glaciation in Europe caused Africa to dry up. What was left of the human race was about 7,000 humans living on the southern coast of Africa. For the first time, they learned how to build permanent dwellings, much better tools and weapons, and how to fish. This was the beginning of the Upper Paeleolitch Period or the third stone age.
For about 90,000 years we had mass glaciation across the northern hemisphere. Due to changes in the Earth's orbit, in what are called the Malankovich Cycles, we get a warm period roughly every 100,000 years, and the last one started about 10,000 BC. We are currently in the year 12,022 in what some people call the Human Period. This was the beginning of the Neolithic Period or "new stone age." It is no coincidence that all of human civilization arose during this brief warm period. The Fertile Crescent, a region that follows the Nile River and extends over to Iraq, blossomed with grains even more so than today, and humans learned how to make use of those grains. Roughly 12,000 years ago humans learned how to make bread. Roughly 500 years later they learned how to make beer, and the world would be forever changed.
The Sumerian Kingdom, which started around 4100 BC in Iraq between the Tigres and Euphrates rivers, invented farming, although roughly about the same time that it got started along the Nile River. They also invented civilization, writing, clay pottery, and money. Although called a Kingdom, it was more like a collection of powerful city-states, which is how most power structures worked in the ancient world. They persisted for an amazing 2,400 years until they were overthrown in 1,700 B.C. by roaming nomads called the Amorites, who built a new powerful city-state called Babylon.
The era of the Pharaohs started around 3100 BC when the northern and southern kingdoms along the Nile were united by force. They would be conquered by Rome in 30 BC.
The Egyptians were expert beer makers, and beer was a regular part of their diet. The pyramids were built by workers who were paid in beer. For a day's labor, they were given a clay chip worth a gallon of beer. The chip could be exchanged for other goods.
Rome was founded in 753 BC, and it was such a powerful city-state that it would conquer most of Europe, but it would be conquered in 476 AD by the Barbarians, which were groups of Germanic tribes. This period is referred to as Ancient Antiquity, where Rome was the military power, but Greece was the intellectual center of the world.
Roman militarism was brutal, often killing or enslaving the people they conquered. Sometimes soldiers would be rewarded with land from the conquered territories because most people survived by farming. Around 146 BC, in the Third Punic War with Carthage, a city-state of a million people in ancient Tunesia, the Romans killed 750,000 people and burned the city to the ground.
The fall of the Roam Empire lead to the dark ages that lasted 900 years until the 1400s. The Christian religion dominated Europe and took a negative view of science. Much of the old manuscripts by the Greek Philosophers had been lost until some of them were rediscovered and printed thanks to the invention of the printing press. This helped lead to a more enlightened era.
During the middle ages, Italy continued to be a few powerful city-states constantly at war with each other. The country wasn't united until 1861.
Sunday, August 14, 2022
Saturday, August 6, 2022
Sunday, July 31, 2022
Saturday, July 30, 2022
Friday, July 29, 2022
Thursday, July 28, 2022
Wednesday, July 27, 2022
Monday, July 25, 2022
Tuesday, July 19, 2022
Saturday, July 16, 2022
Friday, July 15, 2022
Thursday, July 14, 2022
Spinal cord repair
Eventually, this may be very useful.
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Larry
From: Larry
A drug under investigation as a cancer treatment has shown exciting promise in a rather different branch of medical research, with scientists demonstrating how it can promote nerve repair following spinal injury. The breakthrough shows how the drug acts on a DNA damage response mechanism at play in both these unrelated conditions, and triggers a "remarkable" recovery in mice with injured spinal cords.
Tuesday, July 12, 2022
Monday, July 11, 2022
Watch "Science Proves What We Suspected Was True About Them" on YouTube
It is easy to say that something is wrong with the Political Left if they don't have the same level of disgust that we do, but what if that were the norm? My tendency toward disgust is pretty high, which is probably why I am the way I am. However, I might be the abnormal one.
I think that there is a big range of human tendencies. Everyone feels a little bit of anxiety, depression, fear, neuroticism, and compulsiveness. It is when one of these normal human traits becomes exaggerated to the point of being a problem that it becomes a mental illness.
On Sat, Jul 9, 2022 at 9:27 PM wrote:
Science can be amazing !!!
Watch 4 min11 sec. video below until Google censorship takes it down.
-Beesley-
From: John Coffey
Subject: Re: Watch "Science Proves What We Suspected Was True About Them" on YouTube
When I lived in Indianapolis from 1991 to 1992, I made friends with a chess player who was an extreme liberal, likely a Marxist. He said that he had a very permissive father whereas I had a very restrictive father. So I valued freedom and he valued government control.
On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 11:30 AM Albert wrote:
Scientist say a brain scan can reveal whether you are a liberal or a conservative. I'm not sure how they tell if you're a libertarian. Lol
Saturday, July 9, 2022
Thursday, July 7, 2022
What the BA.5 Subvariant Could Mean for the United States - The New York Times
The most transmissible variant yet of the coronavirus is threatening a fresh wave of infections in the United States, even among those who have recovered from the virus fairly recently.
The subvariant of Omicron known as BA.5 is now dominant, according to federal estimates released Tuesday, and together with BA.4, another subvariant, it is fueling an outbreak of cases and hospitalizations.
"I think there's an underappreciation of what it's going to do to the country, and it already is exerting its effect," said Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, who has written about the subvariant.
BA.5 and BA.4, both subvariants of the Omicron variant that swept the world during the winter, are the most capable versions of the virus yet at evading immunity from previous infections and vaccines. Both variants have mutations in their spike proteins that are different enough from earlier versions of the virus that they are able to dodge some antibodies.
Waves of infection — and the subsequent immunity that comes with them — vary across countries and make for imperfect comparisons. Vaccination rates also vary. But in places where BA.4 and BA.5 have been dominant for weeks or months, the subvariants have caused increases in cases and hospitalizations, despite some population immunity from previous waves
The subvariant of Omicron known as BA.5 is now dominant, according to federal estimates released Tuesday, and together with BA.4, another subvariant, it is fueling an outbreak of cases and hospitalizations.
"I think there's an underappreciation of what it's going to do to the country, and it already is exerting its effect," said Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, who has written about the subvariant.
BA.5 and BA.4, both subvariants of the Omicron variant that swept the world during the winter, are the most capable versions of the virus yet at evading immunity from previous infections and vaccines. Both variants have mutations in their spike proteins that are different enough from earlier versions of the virus that they are able to dodge some antibodies.
Waves of infection — and the subsequent immunity that comes with them — vary across countries and make for imperfect comparisons. Vaccination rates also vary. But in places where BA.4 and BA.5 have been dominant for weeks or months, the subvariants have caused increases in cases and hospitalizations, despite some population immunity from previous waves
Wednesday, July 6, 2022
Science and human progress
There is very little that we don't currently understand about the laws of physics. The so-called "Standard Model" can explain almost everything. I have to admire the brilliance of the people who figured this stuff out because to understand anything more than in general terms requires very many pages of high-level mathematics.
It is not perfect. Both the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Physics are incomplete theories. They don't agree perfectly with each other and they can't explain what happened during the first nanosecond of the Big Bang. We would need a Quantum Theory of Gravity that we don't have yet. We don't know yet what Dark Matter and Dark Energy are, although we have some theories.
Some things we might never know. Subatomic particles behave like waves on a vast ocean. We may never know what the ocean is made of because it sits beneath our reality. It is likely beyond our reach.
But in terms of what makes spaceships travel the path they do, how computers compute, and why socks stick to your clothes when you take them out of the dryer, we understand all that stuff perfectly.
So besides cosmology and particle physics, what is left to discover?
1. We will never have faster than light travel. It would be a miracle and a monumental and dangerous undertaking if we could reach 10% the speed of light. Even 1% of the speed of light would be amazing.
2. Our computing technology will soon run into physical limitations where we just can't make the circuits any smaller. The next step would be light-based circuitry, but the technology is not yet even close. People make pie-in-the-sky claims about Quantum computers that are a very long way off. So it seems likely that the advancement in computer technology will slow down in about a decade. Maybe the next big breakthrough would come from software.
3. For seventy years people have been predicting that nuclear fusion power is just 30 years away. They said the same thing 30 years ago. It turns out that nuclear fusion power is very hard to do and only remotely possible on a massive scale requiring at least billions of dollars to build. We should have it by the year 2100, which is a good thing because we are going to start running out of some fossil fuels long before then. We need more nuclear fission plans, and we are predicted to get more in about a decade, but it would be difficult to build enough to power the world.
4. Renewables are going to be somewhat of a bust. They are useful on a limited scale, but they require too much land and too much raw material and resources to power the world.
5. We are seeing advances in nanomaterials that could change the world. The first graphene batteries are being developed. This could have a major impact on electric vehicles.
6. I think that we will see huge advances in biotechnology, not only in our understanding of biology and medicine but in the ability to manipulate genetic code for useful purposes. We could program microbes to make medicines and materials that we need. We might be able to cure diseases, improve our health, and increase our lifespans. Biotechnology could be the next big thing.
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Sunday, July 3, 2022
Saturday, July 2, 2022
Liquid Nitrogen Rockets 🚀🥶❄️
My Jr. High School science class gave us a choice of projects to work on, and my lab partner and I chose the one that involved model rockets using high-pressure air.
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