A very smart kid

He's 8 years-old and will start college in the Fall. He finished the six years of high school in 1 1/2 years. He has an IQ of 145. 

His father said his son had struggled when he was younger to play with other children, and had not been particularly interested in toys.

An artist at 4?

Superbugs

Over time, some bacteria develop resistance to the antibiotics used to control them and eventually become impervious to them. They are called “superbugs.” It is estimated that 1.5 million people die each year from these resistant microbes.

The cost of dealing with these microbes are high. People with resistant infections spend more time in the hospital, require more care from doctors and nurses, are treated with more expensive drugs, and often have to be isolated from other patients. In the United States, it costs an average of $16,000 to treat a patient with Staphylococcus aureus that is susceptible to the antibiotic methicillin, with an 11.5 percent chance of death; if the bacteria are resistant, the cost jumps to $35,000 and the chance of the patient dying more than doubles. A study from the European Medicines Agency in the European Union, which includes England, estimated the cost to EU health care systems at €900 million ($1.06 billion).

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States have estimated that resistance costs the American health care system about $20 billion per year, to which productivity losses add a further $35 billion. It is estimated that the total costs of antimicrobial resistance worldwide is about $57 billion for health systems, with the reduction in world productivity valued at $174 billion.

Student debt is not looking good

Loans taken out by U.S. college students to finance their educations stood at $1.4 trillion as of the end of 2017, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and credit reporting agency Equifax. That makes college student debt the second-largest household liability after mortgages, and bigger than either auto loan or credit card debt.

Over the past decade, student loan debt in the nation has more than doubled after adjusting for inflation. Loan delinquency rates have also climbed during that period as more and more former students have fallen behind on their loan payments.

Recent graduates saddled with large monthly loan repayments may lack the wherewithal to purchase a home or a car, or start a business (research by the Philadelphia Fed shows that increased student debt reduces small-business formation).

Avoiding opioids

Senior citizens in California have found a substitute for opioids - marijuana. There are businesses which specialize in the seniors market. Experts say the older crowd is turning to the drug to treat a host of ailments — from arthritis to neuropathy, insomnia and chronic pain — and to avoid the side-effects associated with prescription drugs, including opioids. They sell it in a variety of products: tinctures, sprays, edibles and topicals such as lotions and oils. The basic pitch is that you can relieve your pain without getting high.

Several studies indicate that seniors are the fastest growing population in America to adopt cannabis and if the trend continues they could overtake the younger generation in terms of weed consumption. Marijuana use among Americans aged 65 and over increased by 250 percent between 2006 and 2013, according to the National Survey of Drug Use and Health. The California market should reach $6.5 billion in sales statewide by 2020.

Emma beats the machine

Wrongful convictions

There are a lot of them in America. Since 1989 over 2,200 convicted people have been exonerated in the United States, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. That's one every five days. Some have estimated that wrongful convictions range between 2 and 5 percent, meaning that as many as 100,000 innocent people may be sitting in the country’s vast prison network. Death row exonerations have, at last count, reached 162. These errors can be attributed to poor police work, unreliable witnesses, prosecutorial misconduct, juror gullibility, defense inadequacy, bad forensics passing for science, racism, and more.

Another Web

Some photos from a Duncaster correspondent

Grand Canyon storm

Dead Zones

I'm talking about dead zones in the ocean. What is a dead zone in the ocean? It is an area along the sea floor where oxygen levels are so low they no longer sustain marine life. More and bigger dead zones are forming in the ocean because of industrial waste, fertilizer runoff from industrial agriculture and climate change. There are now more than 400 coastal low-oxygen areas around the globe, and the number of dead zones started to double roughly every decade beginning in the 1960s.
The most recently published research on dead zones shows that there are five to six very large (like over eight thousand square miles) dead zones.

Wasting money

Blackmailing your wife

Seeing through walls

Tell your son to become a policeman

In Methuen, Mass. police captains are about to be paid $432,295 per year each in the upcoming budget. The same budget laid off 52 public school teachers, nine school administrators, and additional support staff as a result of a $6.5 million shortfall. Something is crazy here. 

Worth $180?

In New York you can pay anywhere from $28 to $180 for a Japanese sando, or sandwich, made with Wagyu, depending on the meat. It's a five-ounce slab of beef nearly an inch thick, trimmed to fit a square of white bread, and deep-fried in a wrap of panko. The sando is served with a side of nori-dusted fries.

Celebrating her birthday

Terrorists in Africa

Pets at play

We're killing ourselves more often

A recent report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that suicides in America are up 25 percent since 1999 across most ethnic and age groups. This has occurred despite the fact that more people are seeking treatment for depression and anxiety, and treatment for those conditions has become more widely available. Dr. Clay Routledge, a behavioral scientist, thinks that our life styles have changed so much that we have lost a sense of the meaningfulness of life. Americans today, compared with those of past generations, are less likely to know and interact with their neighbors, to believe that people are generally trustworthy and to feel that they have individuals they can confide in. He and his colleagues feel that close relationships with other people are our greatest existential resource.

Killing your countrymen

Seeing reality through maps

The world's ugliest dog

Zsa Zsa, a 9 year-old English bulldog, won the World’s Ugliest Dog contest this weekend.

A different advertising campaign

Domino's Pizza is giving twenty cities and towns $5,000 each to be used in fixing their streets. The asphalt patches must be emblazoned with Domino's logo and the phrase “Oh yes we did.” $100,000 seems like a small outlay which should get  a good response. 

How good is our healthcare system?

The Commonwealth Fund, which regularly ranks the health systems of a handful of developed countries, thinks it's the worst although the most expensive. 

The limited insurance coverage is one problem. The Fund has found, “The literature on insurance demonstrates that having insurance lowers mortality. It is equivalent to a public-health intervention.” About a tenth of our population was uninsured in 2016; that's not the case in Europe. The variety of insurance plans is another. Different insurance plans cover different treatments and procedures, forcing doctors to spend a lot of time coordinating with insurance companies to provide care. A third problem concerns primary care. We don't invest in things like home visiting, better housing, and subsidized healthy food, which could extend the work of doctors and do a lot to improve chronic disease outcomes.

Plastic kills birds in the ocean

Looking for an investment?

Magazine Covers of 2018

Not exactly a role model

The wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Sara Netanyahu, has been indicted for fraud and breach of trust. The charge - she instructed her staff to order about $100,000 worth of gourmet food and hired private caterers on 15 occasions — paid for by the state. This was done event though, according to Israeli law, Netanyahu is not allowed to order outside food when there is a cook on staff at the prime minister's official residence.

This is not her first encounter with the law. In 2016, a court ruled that she abused a former employee and had to pay him $42,000 in restitution

Another problem with climate change

Rice, the primary food source for more than 3 billion people around the world, could lose much of its nutritional value.

Scientists from China, Japan, Australia and the United States have conducted field studies in Asia analyzing how rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere altered levels of protein, micronutrients and B vitamins. They found that rice grown at the concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide scientists expect the world to reach by 2100 has lower levels of four key B vitamins. Research by others shows that rice grown under such conditions contains less protein, iron and zinc, which are important in fetal and early child development. These changes could have a disproportionate impact on maternal and child health in the poorest rice-dependent countries. About 600 million people — mostly in Southeast Asia — get more than half of their daily calories and protein directly from rice.

A strange Burger King ad

Burger King in Russia has apologized after offering women a reward of $47,000 and free Whopper burgers for life if they got pregnant with a World Cup player's baby. From the ad "Women who manage to get the best football genes will promote the Russian team's success for generations to come."

Trade war results?

The nose of an elephant

Is Texas a good sample?

Are these the words of our President or a hate-monger?

"Democrats are the problem. They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13. They can’t win on their terrible policies, so they view them as potential voters!"

"We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in—and we’re stopping a lot of them—but we’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals."

The above quotes come from The Atlantic emphasis mine

Females in charge..

..in the world of the spotted hyena. They live in sub-Saharan Africa and do the majority of the hunting, dictate the social structure, and raise cubs as single mothers. Even the highest-ranking male in the group is subservient to the most junior female. Perhaps because of female superiority, male spotted hyenas are comparatively diminutive, weighing about 12 percent less than females.

Spotted hyenas are quite interesting. They are fiercely loyal to their packs, cooperating in everything from child care to distributing shares of food. They hunt at least 50 percent of their meals and have no tolerance for waste, consuming even the hooves, bones, and teeth of prey.

Aah - for the old days

Courtesy of our Cape Cod correspondent

Another problem water spot -

- India. The Indian government has released a report that India is experiencing the worst water crisis in its history. Some 600 million Indians, about half the population, face high to extreme water scarcity conditions, with about 200,000 dying every year from inadequate access to safe water, according to the report. By 2030, it said, the country’s demand for water is likely to be twice the available supply. 

Ignoring whether or not the population is using their water sensibly and conservatively, the country faces rising annual temperatures and dwindling rain and snowfall. Last year was the country’s fourth hottest since record-keeping began in 1901, with rainfall down by nearly 6 percent from 2016, according to the Indian Ministry of Earth Sciences.

Sequoias at Yosemite

After three years of restoration, the Mariposa Grove, the home of about 500 mature giant sequoias, is open again. One of the trees, called the Grizzly Giant, is estimated to be 1,800 or so years old. The typical sequoia there measures nearly 100 feet in circumference, one-third of a football field’s length, and has bark more than one foot thick and high levels of tannins. 

Is this you?

One approach to address the housing problem

A python's lunch

What would you have guessed?

Are there crocodiles in Australia?

Some opinions of foreign leaders by our president

from the Washington Post: 

Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, who enjoys “a great relationship” with Trump as he deploys extralegal killing squads. 

North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, who is “very open” and “very honorable” in running the most repressive regime on Earth.

Egyptian dictator Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, who established himself as a “fantastic guy” with his bloody crackdown on dissidents. 

The Saudi regime, which has been “tremendous” as it purges business leaders and critics. 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is “getting very high marks” as he jails opponents. 

China’s premier, Xi Jinping, who did something “great” in making himself president for life. 

And, of course, Russian President Vladimir Putin, “getting an A” for his leadership and receiving a congratulatory call from Trump after his “election.”

America in the 21st century

Tom Englehart has an interesting article,from which I've extracted the following, as I think our days as an empire are coming to an end.

Even among their critics, who could have imagined then that, more than 16 years later, having faced only lightly armed enemies of various sorts, still wealthy beyond compare, still with a military funded in a way the next seven countries couldn’t cumulatively match, the United States would have won literally nothing? Who could have imagined that, unlike so many preceding imperial powers (including the U.S. of the earlier Cold War era), it would have been able to establish control over nothing at all; that, instead, from Afghanistan to Syria, Iraq deep into Africa, it would find itself in a state of “infinite war” and utter frustration on a planet filled with ever more failed states, destroyed cities, displaced people, and right-wing “populist” govern-ments, including the one in Washington? Who could have imagined that, with a peace dividend no longer faintly conceivable, this country would have found itself not just in decline, but -- a new term is needed to catch the essence of this curious moment -- in what might be called self-decline?

What is true?

Mining Sand

Renewable energy is catching up

Recessions over the years

Your next pet

No one really knows how many tigers live in the U.S. Estimates are that there are as many as 7,000 tigers living here, either in zoos or privately owned. How many tigers live in the wild? The estimate is 3,890. So, we have about twice as many tigers here as live in the jungles of the world. But we may have more, as many live in backyards and are not registered. Most of our tigers are born and bred in the USA.

Why so many? "People want something unique, they look for the exotic - there's a whole host of large carnivorous pets across the country: black bears are common, people have African lions, mountain lions, and then there are the reptiles, alligators, crocodiles, constrictor snakes," says Nicole Paquette, vice-president of wildlife protection at the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).

Water rising

Turning milk into beer

Milk dairies are failing or making beer. We aren't drinking as much cow milk as we used to. Prices are way down, driven by high supply and falling demand. We prefer soy, nut and other milks, and Greek yogurt. A typical dairy farm in Massachusetts gets about 16 cents per pint of milk; its brewery operations get $7 for a pint.

One German view of Trump

An excerpt from A Commentary by Roland Nelles of Der Spiegel:

The debacle at the G-7 clearly shows that the real problem with Donald Trump's policies is Donald Trump himself. There is no rhyme or reason to his actions aside from the desire -- the need -- to be the best, the most important, the biggest. The collapse of the West and the destruction of alliances that have held up for decades are merely the side effects of this unprecedented ego trip. 

At the G-7 summit, Trump treated America's oldest friends as though they were enemies. At the same time, he fawns over Russian President Vladimir Putin and calls dictators such as North Korea's Kim Jong Un "very honorable." He sees the reflection of himself in such men. He does what he wants. Agreements with partners, the rules of the international order: None of that holds water with Trump. 

Trump wants complete control and can't stand being contradicted. He always has to have the first word and the last. Indeed, it was far from surprising that he sought to impose his own agenda (the trade conflict and Russia) on the summit. The tweet he sent from his plane out of Canada, in which he revoked his support for the summit statement, was merely a logical result of his egomania. It's always just me, me, me. 

Trump's crude view of the world, his image of an America that has allegedly been exploited and fleeced for years, follows from this conceit. Because Trump thinks he is the greatest and relies only on his gut feelings, he is immune to rational arguments. He only considers his own instincts and thoughts to the exclusion of all else, even though they are based on a lack of knowledge and prejudice.

Where to get a fix

In India dumps can kill...

...and, in fact, have killed directly and indirectly. Last September in Delhi a tower of trash broke away from the mass during monsoon rains. It crashed into a nearby canal, which created a surge of sewage that flung motorcyclists into another canal also filled with dirty water. Two people died. Indirect deaths number many more; airborne particles infect people with tuberculosis and dengue fever, singed trees and turn the ground water a filmy yellow.

A lot of people means a lot of trash. Delhi is a city of 20,000,000. Trash heaps grow to 200 feet tall; about 80 billion pounds of trash have accumulated at four official dumping sites. It is the largest, least regulated and most hazardous in the world. And the city does not provide trash cans nor do citizens have the money to buy them. And, garbage collection is not guaranteed, so many residents simply fling trash onto the ground.

The problem with waste buildup has become so severe that the Supreme Court said earlier this year that air traffic control at Delhi’s international airport eventually would have to steer planes around the dumps because they are so high.

Ireland sets a new record...

...for skinny dipping! Yesterday more than 2,500 women stripped naked on a beach in the Republic of Ireland to break the world record for the largest skinny dip. The previous record was set in Australia in 2015 when 786 men and women did it.

The Irish Swim has been going on for five years. It was started by Deirdre Featherstone, who was undergoing treatment for breast cancer. It has raised over $200,000 for children suffering from cancer.

For a video of the action, click here.

A Russian Landfill

It looks alive

It's a noisy world