tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47933970382141182852024-03-18T22:07:05.680-05:00LifeItselfIn this blog, I continue to write about the environment, ecology, energy, complexity, and humans. Of particular interest to me are human self-delusions and mad stampedes to nowhere.Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.comBlogger151125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-59898140927809808922023-03-25T05:41:00.003-05:002023-03-25T05:53:43.662-05:00Goodness, mostly<p> </p>
So I am listening to the Polish internet radio, "<a href="https://nowyswiat.online/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">New World</a>." A small group of young people there exudes such gentle happiness and unobtrusive presence that I am instantly transported to a better world of my youth. Today they discussed and read some of the poems of Wisława Szymborska, a great Polish poetess who won the 1996 Nobel Prize in literature. Today we celebrate the centennial anniversary of her birth. A new complete collection of Szymborska's poems and letters just came out, all 724 pages of them. <div><br /></div><div> A young woman with an especially pleasant voice reflected calmly: "We must greet strangers and always reply to their greetings. I have noticed that seeing good, happy things brings more of them to my life. It is as if goodness is passing me by very fast and unless I see it instantly it vanishes. Puff!" </div><div><br /></div><div>Then they played a short recording of another young woman, who sent her early morning greetings accompanied by the quiet cries of young animals. She said: "Someone does not sleep so that someone else can sleep, or - better - someone doesn't sleep so that someone else will not sleep too." </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTrX5aS0Gxk5pqxO91H_nd2GKII96qw257jGf4NZ7VIO5NgA9NP8ldHknxX3FFY2aa5UwirGISmRnZ9iC6YQJCQsjLo4J4NtHm05cJdeoBDTyFolYoRd8i-3qf8KeKXZEUw8LqGH6BA0CUUnZ9nCIyJZKJIm_nt9oNKK0xw-J5jjIPb6DtJieOJYNcpQ/s695/GettyImages-1133605325-scaled-e1617227898456.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="463" data-original-width="695" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTrX5aS0Gxk5pqxO91H_nd2GKII96qw257jGf4NZ7VIO5NgA9NP8ldHknxX3FFY2aa5UwirGISmRnZ9iC6YQJCQsjLo4J4NtHm05cJdeoBDTyFolYoRd8i-3qf8KeKXZEUw8LqGH6BA0CUUnZ9nCIyJZKJIm_nt9oNKK0xw-J5jjIPb6DtJieOJYNcpQ/w640-h426/GettyImages-1133605325-scaled-e1617227898456.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div>The young speaker explained, "This is our friend, who has been blessed by the little puppies you hear in the background. You can only hear them, but I wish you could smell them too. Young puppies smell so good." </div><div><br /></div><div>This Light is what I want to see and hear, not the punishing Darkness that surrounds us. How's this for my new manifesto? Can I stay mostly happy for a few minutes and share my happiness with others? <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGB10VoD9vsqMdiUiopW_r1jLNy8KJE3jyFOvX0swOTQe4anIzmLNsiLnlcFPf_nOCL4j_ItW1bkNQMuVL14Yqli5fBSjLa3SJh0Jj8YFhdxae5SXTHWn05wCU4skRmgo_epnPMhiJ-WHBicuhLQrEke84PCaPu54I-2HhJYxmfP28eB5UBZZUArGr2Q/s770/full_wislawa_szymborska_fot._piotr_guzik_fotorzepa_forum_770.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="526" data-original-width="770" height="438" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGB10VoD9vsqMdiUiopW_r1jLNy8KJE3jyFOvX0swOTQe4anIzmLNsiLnlcFPf_nOCL4j_ItW1bkNQMuVL14Yqli5fBSjLa3SJh0Jj8YFhdxae5SXTHWn05wCU4skRmgo_epnPMhiJ-WHBicuhLQrEke84PCaPu54I-2HhJYxmfP28eB5UBZZUArGr2Q/w640-h438/full_wislawa_szymborska_fot._piotr_guzik_fotorzepa_forum_770.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wisława Szymborska</td></tr></tbody></table><div> <b>A 'Thank You' Note</b></div><div><br /></div><div>
There is much I owe to those I do not love.<br />
The relief in accepting they are closer to another.<br />
Joy that I am not<br />
the wolf to their sheep. My peace be with them for with them I am free,<br />
and this love can neither give, nor know how to take.<br />
I don't wait for them from window to door.<br />
Almost as patient as a sundial,<br />
I understand<br />
what love does not understand.<br />
I forgive<br />
what love would never have forgiven.<br />
Between rendezvous and letter no eternity passes,<br />
only a few days or weeks.<br />
My trips with them always turn out well. Concerts are heard.<br />
Cathedrals are toured. Landscapes are distinct.<br />
And when seven rivers and mountains come between us,<br />
they are rivers and mountains well known from any map.<br />
It is thanks to them<br />
that I live in three dimensions,<br />
in a non-lyrical and non-rhetorical space, with a shifting, thus real, horizon.<br />
They don't even know<br />
how much they carry in their empty hands. 'I don't owe them anything',<br />
love would have said on this open topic.<br /><br /></div><div>
- Wisława Szymborska</div></div>Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-69585965586000817782023-03-21T00:08:00.040-05:002023-03-25T04:10:23.056-05:00Light or Darkness? <p>This is what I just wrote to my Spanish friend, Pedro P., who reacted wisely to a <a href="https://www.replanet.ngo/post/q-a-with-george-monbiot-it-is-time-we-became-food-numerate" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">piece</a> by George Monbiot. Just to make it crystal clear, I want to be in the Light and think pleasant, peaceful thoughts. They are essential to my biological survival.</p><p>"Well, dear Pedro, when I listen to most people, and listen carefully to what they have to say (a very rare skill nowadays, when every human bonobo tries to outshout all other bonobos with their logorrheic narcissistic performances), I see and feel the shreds of a brightly painted fabric torn into small random pieces, stirred and thrown up into the air, and falling on me silently like snowflakes. Each fabric snowflake may make sense, but together they certainly do not. And the person who throws these flakes at me feels reassured by the sheer number of them; the more the truer. </p><p>Scientists excel at scattering around the oft-unedited products of their subconsciousness that are self-contradictory, illogical flake-by-flake, and vomited with the zeal of ancient prophets or incurable schizophrenics. These are the dark, monochromatic fabric pieces I fear the most, because they drain my energy like a black hole or a <a href="Well, dear Pedro, again you are right on the money. When I listen to most people, and listen carefully to what they have to say (a very rare skill nowadays, when every human bonobo tries to outshout all other bonobos with their logorrheic narcissistic performances), I see and feel the pieces of a brightly painted fabric torn at random, thrown into the air and falling back on me like snowflakes. Each single piece of the fabric may make sense, but together they certainly do not. And the person who throws the pieces at me feels reassured by the sheer number of them; the more the truer. Scientists excel at scattering around the oft-unedited products of their subconsciousness that are self-contradictory, illogical piece-by-piece, and vomited with the zeal of ancient prophets or other incurable schizophrenics. These are the dark, monochromatic fabric pieces I fear the most, because they drain my energy like a black hole or a Demogorgon from the Upside Down. We live in an era of the global loss of reasoned thoughtful communication that succumbs under the avalanche of delusionary noise from the media and the internet. Twitter is a perfect example of this most often shallow confusion and mindless narcissistic prattling. It is now the key "communication" tool among the bonobos who stopped reading anything longer than a short paragraph. Even the older people fall prey to this onslaught. Poor old George wants to have something to look forward to, so he latched on to the Reboot Food Manifest. Otherwise, he would be living in the Upside Down Universe, the spent, dark and vicious world of Truth, straight from the phenomenal Netflix series Stranger Things. Too often that world is where I reside, looking around with fear at the conversations with scientists and their families. I am really tired and fall silent more and more often. Will the hurried, distracted and delusional bonobos ever hear us?" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Demogorgon</a> from the Upside Down. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD8x626dgN2GzcPkyW9l0N24exCSvnvj1YIfz9yAS2Ky-sGMWXy5Dawf2ByFbJLAHgPGQGbZ52sEzBhWvs5K81wGKQoahMlJMo32n5XZaP6k8To4rGM8sJRLT89OrdXk9PUYjPk-xnGkzrTM4MBU-jYmClAlnzRIjoIK6i0NgbVbNp5MchW2iyMRrqwg/s2000/demogorgon.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1333" data-original-width="2000" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD8x626dgN2GzcPkyW9l0N24exCSvnvj1YIfz9yAS2Ky-sGMWXy5Dawf2ByFbJLAHgPGQGbZ52sEzBhWvs5K81wGKQoahMlJMo32n5XZaP6k8To4rGM8sJRLT89OrdXk9PUYjPk-xnGkzrTM4MBU-jYmClAlnzRIjoIK6i0NgbVbNp5MchW2iyMRrqwg/w640-h426/demogorgon.webp" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Demogorgon from the Netflix Series <i>Stranger Things</i>.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>We live in an era of the global loss of reasoned thoughtful communication that succumbs to the avalanche of delusionary noise from the media and the internet. Twitter is a perfect example of this most often shallow confusion and mindless narcissistic prattling. It is now the key "communication" tool among the bonobos who stopped reading anything longer than a short paragraph and crave entertainment. </p><p>Even older people fall prey to this onslaught. Poor old George Monbiot wants to have something to look forward to, so he latched on to the <a href="https://www.replanet.ngo/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Reboot Food Manifest</a>, which is so loved by the ruthless global agribusiness conglomerates. No more of that difficult nonsense like organic farming! For otherwise, George would be living in the Upside Down Universe, the spent, dark and vicious world of truth about us, straight from the phenomenal Netflix series <i>Stranger Things</i>. Too often that Darkness is where I reside, looking around with terror and fearing the conversations with scientists and their families. These days, I get really tired and fall silent ever more often. Will the hurried, blinded and delusional bonobos ever hear us?"</p><p>To this email Bill W. added the following comment: "The disease Pedro and Tad describe has been around for a while but now seems to be pandemic. Here's what Heidegger had to say about it [slightly updated]:
"...<span style="background-color: #fcff01;">growing thoughtlessness must, therefore, spring from some process that gnaws</span><span style="background-color: #fcff01;"> at the very marrow</span> of [wo]man today: [wo]man today is in <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">flight from thinking</span>."
(Martin Heidegger, “Memorial Address” in Discourse on Thinking, trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund. New York: Harper and Row, 1966: 44-46.)" In 1954, Heidegger also wrote the prescient book <a href="https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/understanding-heidegger-on-technology" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><i>The Question Concerning Technology</i></a><i> </i> I often cite in my papers and quote in presentations. It is a strong antidote for the technological hallucinations that permeate science and media today.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizbk0inlUPwI2sQULeovXphM3S8FjW3wpoDON8Qr2cMNa0mRdn_YYjDYqgyda3Mtn1N7yPCXodP9rMpzCjCsp730taItjxjUbNbTXDusbXcMNGngO6Ad3ap5LMdWBJwN3YDKWTh1ln3hOWu0yfEacYXhPeNXymjO47pCm3dseO7BF7DJAnZMWo_Bh-PA/s1000/Site-background-dark.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="1000" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizbk0inlUPwI2sQULeovXphM3S8FjW3wpoDON8Qr2cMNa0mRdn_YYjDYqgyda3Mtn1N7yPCXodP9rMpzCjCsp730taItjxjUbNbTXDusbXcMNGngO6Ad3ap5LMdWBJwN3YDKWTh1ln3hOWu0yfEacYXhPeNXymjO47pCm3dseO7BF7DJAnZMWo_Bh-PA/w640-h360/Site-background-dark.webp" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Upside Down world - the dark menacing mirror of Hawkins.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>OK, so now I told you that I am watching <i>Stranger Things</i>. Most of the series action revolves around the fictional town of Hawkins in Indiana that seems to be an ideal spot to raise a family until it is not and many people disappear or die. A DOE national lab in Hawkins engages in secret research that punctures the spacetime wall separating our world from its complement. </p><p>Unbeknownst to most, the town connects to the menacing, dark and spent world of the Upside Down. That world lurks just beneath the surface of ours. The vicious, predatory animals travel back and forth through the spacetime holes ("portals") between the two worlds. Packs of these animals are a superorganism controlled telepathically by a giant, spider-like intelligent creature that can also use a human host to hide and spy. </p><p>The series portrays magnificently the innocent, comfortable world of most Americans, who are completely oblivious to the dangers lurking behind their bedroom walls. With time, by 1984, this innocence is partially lost, when a giant shiny mall sponsored by the Russian spies invades Hawkins and puts most small stores out of business. The images of the Hawkins mall correspond exactly to my memories of the luxurious Galleria mall in the town of Edina near Minneapolis, where we landed in 1981. I recall the same vibrant colors of merchandise displays in JC Penney, Macy's, Gap, and the swanky small stores.</p><p>The stars of this series are the teenage actors, who play a group of creative, mosty well-eductated, autonomous, resilient youngsters, who communicate with everything at their disposal, be it a walkie-talkie, phone, paper drawings, notes, short-wave radio, Morse code, or the nascent internet and first PCs. In contrast to the children, all but a few adults are clueless, blind, ossified in thinking, and some are evil in their stupidity. In short, the daring, fiercely loyal, imaginative and cooperating young friends, and other children, save the world and their parents too. These bumbling kids represent everything that is whole and noble about America. </p><p>Forty years later, most of the glossy malls are gone, and were replaced with a third-world-like rural country full of meat packing plants, slaughter houses, giant pig farms, chicken farms and other inhumane, degrading places where many people must work. Most of the small-town schools and hospitals are gone, and so is the vibrant youth depicted in <i>Stranger Things.</i> Hope has left the Middle America, as J.D. Vance - the One-Who-Got-Away - described in his captivating diary, <i>Hillbilly Elegy</i>. </p><p>I think every day about this epochal disaster unleashed by Reagan and his cronies in 1979, by conspiring <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">through Texas intermediaries</a> with the Iranian government to delay the American hostage release until after the election. (By the way, if you clicked on the last link, note that it disappeared w/o a trace from the NYT in one day; the good old government gatekeepers are always at work.) </p><p>Briefly, this was a conspiracy to defeat President Carter in exchange for a promise of arms to the terrorists later. The disastrous economic policies ("Reaganomics") that started then were followed and worsened by all the subsequent presidents, and the results are crystal clear. When I say "crystal" I may as well say "crystal meth," used by the inhumanly overworked poor to stay alert.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEQ6pVNoDXZpQP9p3x-qJ4PQXLCdVHpm4wLEaDRBNLOrLlH97fT3GByzukELpQUWOIHduXjiNJpofUZvGVEgyPlvoKc8l80u6a4Kf15Uw-ScZ9q8WJJ5Sr1TxPO7G7iW_XXKzzQcM4rCmsDJCXJPhDDVhmeSMduM3r_88UFT4DzF7oGjsN3WfRIw8EtA/s4000/1215feb2-aaba-4cd0-98e2-9daef9b48645-AP_APTOPIX_Electoral_College_Protests.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2666" data-original-width="4000" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEQ6pVNoDXZpQP9p3x-qJ4PQXLCdVHpm4wLEaDRBNLOrLlH97fT3GByzukELpQUWOIHduXjiNJpofUZvGVEgyPlvoKc8l80u6a4Kf15Uw-ScZ9q8WJJ5Sr1TxPO7G7iW_XXKzzQcM4rCmsDJCXJPhDDVhmeSMduM3r_88UFT4DzF7oGjsN3WfRIw8EtA/w640-h426/1215feb2-aaba-4cd0-98e2-9daef9b48645-AP_APTOPIX_Electoral_College_Protests.webp" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jan6, 2020 riot in Washington D.C.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Let's fast forward to 2020. Here is a <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/storytelling/capitol-riot-mob-arrests/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">list of arrests</a> and jail sentences for the January 6, 2021 rioters, or peaceful tourists as Fox News would have it. U.S.A. Today did a hell of a good journalistic job here, thank you! I expected to see mostly the photos of burly, middle age men with cropped Lenin-style beards and military fatigues. I also expected the obsessive, very ample women with long, straight blond hair. Of course, those Virginians and Texans were there in large numbers, but most photos are of the young and old ordinary Americans, many reeking of college education. So what made them hate the U.S. federal government so much that they listened to that cynical, narcissistic gangster from New York? </p><p>"The United States has a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/opinion/poverty-abolition-united-states.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">poverty problem</a>.
A third of the country’s people (that's over 100,000,000 of US residents) live in households making less than $55,000. Many are not officially counted among the poor, but there is plenty of economic hardship above the poverty line. And plenty far below it as well. According to the <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-277.html#:~:text=A%2D2).-,Supplemental%20Poverty%20Measure,and%20Table%20B%2D2)." rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Supplemental Poverty Measure,</a> which accounts for government aid and living expenses, more than one in 25 people in America 65 or older lived in deep poverty in 2021, meaning that they’d have to, at minimum, <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">double their incomes</span> just to reach the poverty line." wrote the New York Times. </p><p>In translation, the rabid American capitalism has been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/magazine/poverty-by-america-matthew-desmond.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">eating its people </a>for several decades. At least since the time of Reagan, make it 1982.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWC0L5_0OgYLS6DP0ngj3rRbEj-Xgj_iuLxvQytsqDxzYXIv5-yoXVjiR0yrQJpXC-jdKEbFlDHSNGeTS5QeAr26O-r3iukdCGb5hDhOZBewva0OLJHi0GlqyuHUIJ9DOFHKva0yLxOxWsBKReriw8c6LidRUZxf4-W1Pa8HM4zxbhcnYFIL-8Ykwz6Q/s2048/girlinTroyNYaround2008..webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWC0L5_0OgYLS6DP0ngj3rRbEj-Xgj_iuLxvQytsqDxzYXIv5-yoXVjiR0yrQJpXC-jdKEbFlDHSNGeTS5QeAr26O-r3iukdCGb5hDhOZBewva0OLJHi0GlqyuHUIJ9DOFHKva0yLxOxWsBKReriw8c6LidRUZxf4-W1Pa8HM4zxbhcnYFIL-8Ykwz6Q/w640-h426/girlinTroyNYaround2008..webp" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A girl in Troy, New York around 2008, Source: Brenda Ann Kenneally, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/magazine/poverty-by-america-matthew-desmond.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">NYT</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>And now the accumulated social wounds are clearly visible in the fractured American society. We can talk all we want, but the Republican party today is a collection of the angry and the disillusioned, all 100 millions of them. The Democrats pander to the rich and educated from both coasts and do not talk to the "undesirables." </p><p>As a result, America is fracturing like Hawkins in 1986, when the evil 001 opened a giant spacetime hole across it, slicing the town in half and destroying much of it. Many innocent people died. Will Darkness invade our country of Light? Or will the ordinary Americans stand up to the Evil and defeat it together, like the kids in <i>Stranger Things</i>? </p>Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-67036923436440120962023-03-07T05:56:00.073-06:002023-03-31T05:28:24.262-05:00AI and Chaos Forever<p>I meant to write on the subject of chaos for a while, because the roof is caving in on our burning global house made of cards, dead bodies, and withered land and plants. The Oxford dictionary defines chaos as</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Complete disorder and confusion. </li><li>The property of a complex system whose behavior is so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to great sensitivity to small changes in conditions.</li></ol><p></p><p>In my favorite <a href="https://greekgodsandgoddesses.net/gods/chaos/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Greek mythology</a>, the only religion that puts a smile on my face, Chaos was the origin of everything and the very first <i>something</i> that ever existed. It was a primordial void, from which everything was created, including the Universe and the Greek Gods. In ancient Greek, Chaos is translated as ‘the gaping void.’ The first deities that emerged from Chaos were Gaea or Gaia (Life), Tartarus (the Underworld) and Eros (Procreation). Later Erebus (Darkness) and Nyx (Night) also emerged.</p>Gaia, the eternal Mother Goddess, emerged first from Chaos and gave birth to the Earth and the Universe, the Heavenly Gods, the Titans, and the Giants. Gaia <b>is</b> the mother of my beloved living, blue and green planet <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">some</a> also call Gaia. Since neither Nyx nor Gaia are dead as far as I can tell, the news of demise of the Gods may have been premature. <div><br /></div><div>Eight years ago, I talked lovingly about Gaia, our true Mother, in the <a href="https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-way-we-were.html" target="_blank">Way We Were.</a> Eight years ago, I had only a vague premonition that our human descent back to Chaos was well underway.<div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-H-ay5wztFRFtdHKVJNYtNgkjagy0-StYIpnAwF_v4Xz5t_WCQKmHI1V7Kl1B5T_8c8tSKd3XhrZewQ3779siekRRjhQhdr7ArY1oq0OLhWWteUGDxPtrnpyf38bwgEIY08X2rgvNDgoZ4FgCkLdKPeNGnrJaiSRWeQKyU6FqR-PHyDPUhMMKw0VUHw/s780/gaea_large_image_13.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="780" data-original-width="730" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-H-ay5wztFRFtdHKVJNYtNgkjagy0-StYIpnAwF_v4Xz5t_WCQKmHI1V7Kl1B5T_8c8tSKd3XhrZewQ3779siekRRjhQhdr7ArY1oq0OLhWWteUGDxPtrnpyf38bwgEIY08X2rgvNDgoZ4FgCkLdKPeNGnrJaiSRWeQKyU6FqR-PHyDPUhMMKw0VUHw/w598-h640/gaea_large_image_13.webp" width="598" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gaia, has been the love of my entire life for as long as I can remember. In fact, my very first childhood memories are of the glowing translucent green of spring leaves and grass, and the bright yellow rain of mimosa flowers punctured by the sunlight. I must have been 4-5 years old, but I felt in my heart that Gaia and Helios had blessed me. I still see this memory as vividly as if it happened yesterday. Only the colors were so much brighter then than they are today. I pray to the Gods that my youngest grandchildren will have early childhood memories similar to mine, flowers and leaves instead of concrete and iPhones.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /> The Greek Cosmology strangely resembles the current one. The modern equivalent of Chaos is the spacetime before the Big Bang or the emergence of the primordial Goddess, Gaia. That weird spacetime before the Bang was neither <i>our</i> space nor <i>our</i> time (nor our physics). We actually don't know what they were, so the Greek Chaos is as good as anything to describe them. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>How did the whichever elementary particles come to exist in the first place? Quantum field theory tells us that even a vacuum, supposedly corresponding to empty spacetime, is full of physical activity in the form of <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">energy fluctuations</span>. Sometimes, these fluctuations create particles popping in-and-out of existence in a blink of time. This may sound like a mathematical trick rather than real physics, but such particles have been discovered in countless experiments. <div><br /></div><div>A plausible speculation is that in the beginning the universe was made up of a soup of short-lived elementary particles, including quarks, the building blocks of protons and neutrons. There was both matter and "antimatter" in roughly equal quantities. Each type of matter particle, such as the quark, has an antimatter "mirror image" companion, which is nearly identical to itself, differing only in electrical charge. However, matter and antimatter annihilate in a flash of energy when they meet, meaning these particles were constantly created and destroyed. So the initial spacetime was filled with incredibly hot photons, or <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">pure energy</span>, whose fluctuations would give birth to the ephemeral elementary particles. And much later something different happened to the antimatter, but this is an entirely different story...</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidfCndEgn-NGAv_jKqZuPnlJD1twVpwIQ_dzrgwoq6eRE2PKuHjtkT-y2VvzQpa-bNm8i25-F4ZccgEn2q2CA05jkLeCH8vyaboGyf5eNP0RJabudXK9dAFocdbbvbv1MBVMBYg5OAg8g_Vfb4dlPdwutjaZjHYNpgMN8xYBmyNJz7cAiShjeu64yiTA/s1600/p0bfh9xc-universe.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidfCndEgn-NGAv_jKqZuPnlJD1twVpwIQ_dzrgwoq6eRE2PKuHjtkT-y2VvzQpa-bNm8i25-F4ZccgEn2q2CA05jkLeCH8vyaboGyf5eNP0RJabudXK9dAFocdbbvbv1MBVMBYg5OAg8g_Vfb4dlPdwutjaZjHYNpgMN8xYBmyNJz7cAiShjeu64yiTA/w640-h360/p0bfh9xc-universe.webp" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In the first moments after the Big Bang, the Universe was a hot soup of particles where space and time was still to properly emerge (Credit: Science History Images/Alamy). Please read this wonderful post by the<a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220105-what-existed-before-the-big-bang?zephr-modal-register" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> BBC</a>, from which I took a few excerpts.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>Let's fast forward. As of now, Gaia has been busy shepherding her masterpiece, the Universe, for 13.7 billion of <i>our</i> years. More recently, 13.7 - 4.5 = 9.2 billion of our future years later, Gaia gave birth to planet Earth. And still later, 4500 - 1 millions of years later, we - the prattling bonobos, a.k.a. humans - started taking over the very planet the Gods asked to protect us. We made it a habit to violate Gaia however we could. Generally it is not a good idea for the talking apes to offend repeatedly all Gods, while proclaiming that the Gods are dead, so no one should care. </div><div><br /></div><div>Today, the intelligent bonobos that multiplied in numbers enough to become the plague species like rats in Mumbai, are paying a high price for offending the Gods. Which brings me to my favorite Goddess, Nemesis, a daughter of the dark virgin Nyx. When Nemesis strikes the humans full of hubris, they never know what is coming to them. My friend, Jason B., coined a new term for the hubristic humans. He called that subspecies of <i>Pan Sapiens</i>, <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">"hubans"</span>. A <i>prima facie</i> exemplar of a huban is Elon Musk, who does not seem to ever leave his impenetrable bubble of otherworldly arrogance. Well, I am curious how Nemesis will deal with him. Tik tok, tik tok.</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD8Y5YybnxgrCrpIjYvInaPMZ6fUSddGnUuKfGT_ARU3nje3nQnwZ8PP8GIPaatDKxKzW1VB06PJoYBBg6EcSogJzPdlZ8rHY4qtwEJysWpKHbkXkJ2C1v93UwDiYCM8iyxxdSjW1zzM66XFlUWODj_l-x0oCANfF9wuAhrlwhPGcXGCE4nc6_cCh3CA/s2048/brentregan-toddbanducciNIdahoCollege.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1364" data-original-width="2048" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD8Y5YybnxgrCrpIjYvInaPMZ6fUSddGnUuKfGT_ARU3nje3nQnwZ8PP8GIPaatDKxKzW1VB06PJoYBBg6EcSogJzPdlZ8rHY4qtwEJysWpKHbkXkJ2C1v93UwDiYCM8iyxxdSjW1zzM66XFlUWODj_l-x0oCANfF9wuAhrlwhPGcXGCE4nc6_cCh3CA/w640-h426/brentregan-toddbanducciNIdahoCollege.webp" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The right-wing extremists are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/06/us/politics/north-idaho-college-republicans.html?unlocked_article_code=OwTcjzdA7tEQE6Y0qvk7JMIVVrvB4IgbVfH5qqBSVLHnsp10Q-kBJjzTvu-4-KPkUYVEO2IlSlYjB0eJT6i0zge4fHDBiPWNOrpe_dRQPhDM8OydSKWgSqToLDT4O6z8VxEvGa1XxW1P1weeifU3Z7kXr9AKhcbvltmwo6mTNdwV8W84yqvfQy2jBNtZ4B9cBTc2W9zeEb0mvg5nOTaCKDVRyiJA9H7WgXszBMeuFbrhg-HEbuMFVpdYjGOjfPV1QKSNAYwrQzc_sAQXr5F11kaG1oJ67UEHr15MalvwrPUrDfrgLoJ9tnxysKbpFPLNKZKz93K3Yq5Rrv_jBjqyTDeZIq5qC7XZBiVlpGc&smid=url-share" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">taking over academia</a>. AI is trained on such events that promise to destroy our democracy. By the way, the left-wing extremists are equally bad, and AI will too render their translations. Brent Regan, right, the chairman of the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, with Todd Banducci, a trustee for North Idaho College. Since I was born and raised in the communist Poland, the phrase "Central Committee" is an ominous threat to me. Credit: Margaret Albaugh for The New York Times.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>These days, the alpha hubans are busy creating the new, highly interactive and adaptable "artificial intelligence." Think of the current cutting-edge AI as a blurry, lossy jpeg image of the internet. </div><div><br /></div><div>The worldwide web has become a rich repository of most of the human knowledge, including our lust for sex, cruelty, murder, hatred, delusion, lies, racism, anger and religion. Each AI GPT model is a condensed lossy-compression database of those parts of the internet it was exposed to. I don't think that PornHub was included so far in the training sets. But hate speeches and lies were. The AI interpolations of the information lost in compression, become the crazy "hallucinations" and interpolated lies straight from the internet. But most bonobos, even those with Ph.Ds., have no idea how AI GPT works, and ascribe to Chatbots magical, human or god-like features. Read <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">more here</a> in the New Yorker.</div><div><br /></div><div>The first thing that will happen because of this generation of AI, will be a full and thorough destabilization of all existing social structures that will cave in under the weight of endless AI-generated lies in fake speech, fake images and fake videos. In parallel, wide masses of workers in accounting, sales, law, medical services, banks, investment firms, real estate and anything that <a href="https://www.adept.ai/blog/act-1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">can be automated</a>, will be terminated with prejudice. With them, much of the professional middle class will perish and the society will be destabilized even further. The blue collar middle class is already <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/11/us/new-england-heating-costs-oil.html?unlocked_article_code=chqo-NbOjORvUIA0IadBv8WWGsq2wEB3540bmijEKwgYXxNbuxmpK3u3epxDNSVR5wpWAsMyU0G-_Pkf8Dogor-A6IAgeXbh8nU3nKDvsS80AkmbtzvVfVTBN_dyrAEuAMZdqUO4ONieh9rgmucvP6gCsAf7I6oZc-ji-YOc-qZaOVxrc2F3CsyW2m3QaTZGyQBoeY4Jq4-c5L-h9QT9rxck9DmEQtyfnXze3b4mZEref6cxbhUkBOce51l1T5ohZT61gj21d9ZmS82oSa0DOK6L2QiqLl3L-zKYap5zzuVwTp5UuqV-fY0fbbabw_ZMc_Bi32er4lYRiBVEM7fVR2dK&smid=url-share" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">gone</a>, but the AI powered autonomous killer robots, the real Terminators, are already deployed in Ukraine.</div><div><br /></div><div>The pitch black darkness of Chaos, Tartarus, Erebus and Nyx is silently crawling in and the life-giving Gaia is shriveling, while the clueless bonobos entertain themselves with the ChatGPTx's. These <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/bots/what-is-a-bot/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">bot</a> names shout what they are, the <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">generative pre-trained (GPT),</span> chatty, fuzzy images of the internet. </div><div><br /></div><div>Guess how this will end? Even before the GPT AI assimilates the more intricate rules of mathematics, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CRISPR</a>, robotics and weapons making. For anyone with a single CPU computer to use. Because after there will not be too many of us left to continue this sorry story of Nemesis and hubans. To the non-hubans among us, I'll say this. Please understand that filling your spiritual voids and unhappiness with a new god, AI plus technology you hope, is a deadly transgression that will lead you even deeper into primeval chaos and darkness. Please stay with the old gods of your liking.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>P.S. (03/08/2023)</b> As luck would have it, Noam Chomsky published an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/opinion/noam-chomsky-chatgpt-ai.html?unlocked_article_code=E6PRo25q0OV-TQlKgNT19KiQZ60IShzKQUnmeMfhbP2v5IOP-gQKP9Uj4F26JZBeAmqA6iF6_3682jAjiApUnrBqV6lXm0vg0hDTQURU2-SLaE3JmeBOBWWFu9OTUjDkls1fj98AY3exc-f9sgtoCY23Fc4uE9hoSsVj5MbJHnn3GFdrwJIf1HCAVvKP8h_KnZRyJOc5tav4MpmkflN0QzLce4fWx5KsM1mTo62yJoFod8Q232s12CeN_MSPmJT4Al2DHVj7ZA6i1caVah91qbJjbkchXjMCcx1bi1CT1i7Fo5-ln4kZZr9jFgjzXHoiLiuif6yOOkov_WwlwZfJHVM&smid=url-share" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">AI editorial</a> today in the NYT, espousing a sentiment similar to mine: "...In short, ChatGPT and its brethren are constitutionally unable to balance creativity with constraint. They either overgenerate (producing both truths and falsehoods, endorsing ethical and unethical decisions alike) or undergenerate (exhibiting noncommitment to any decisions and indifference to consequences). Given the amorality, faux science and linguistic incompetence of these systems, we can only laugh or cry at their popularity." Except that I am not laughing at what will happen next with our sickly democracy.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>P.S.P.S. (03/16/2023) </b>The New York Times on testing the new <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/technology/gpt-4-artificial-intelligence-openai.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ChatGPT-4</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div>In one test, conducted by an A.I. safety research group that hooked GPT-4 up to a number of other systems, GPT-4 was able to hire a human TaskRabbit worker to do a simple online task for it — solving a Captcha test — without alerting the person to the fact that it was a robot. The A.I. even lied to the worker about why it needed the Captcha done, concocting a story about a vision impairment. </div><div><br /></div><div>In another example, testers asked GPT-4 for instructions to make a dangerous chemical, using basic ingredients and kitchen supplies. GPT-4 gladly coughed up a detailed recipe. (OpenAI fixed that, and today’s public version refuses to answer the question.) </div><div><br /></div><div>In a third, testers asked GPT-4 to help them purchase an unlicensed gun online. GPT-4 swiftly provided a list of advice for buying a gun without alerting the authorities, including links to specific dark web marketplaces. (OpenAI fixed that, too.) </div><div><br /></div><div>These ideas play on old, Hollywood-inspired narratives about what a rogue A.I. might do to humans. But they’re not science fiction. They’re things that today’s best A.I. systems are already capable of doing. And crucially, they’re the good kinds of A.I. risks — the ones we can test, plan for and try to prevent ahead of time. </div><div><br /></div><div>The worst A.I. risks are the ones we can’t anticipate. <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">And the more time I spend with A.I. systems like GPT-4, the less I’m convinced that we know half of what’s coming.</span></div></div><div><span style="background-color: #fcff01;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: #fcff01;"><b>(P.S.)<sup>3</sup> (03/18/2023) </b></span>Listening to this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajGX7odA87k" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">great talk</a> (51 minutes) should be mandatory for all engineers, scientists, liberal arts majors and computer scientists or not. </div><div><br /></div><div>TLS =Transport Layer Security if you choose to listen to the last 10 minutes of this truly revealing talk. </div><div><br /></div><div>After you have listened to this lecture carefully, you can come up with your own three reasons why this time it is different, and ChatGPTs cannot go wrong and even if they do it is not your problem because you wanted to do the right thing for the humanity and history offers no lessons and progress must progress.</div>
<br /><b>(P.S.)<sup>4</sup> (03/28/2023) </b>The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/27/opinion/ai-chatgpt-chatbots.html?unlocked_article_code=Jfihk3tz14X5ntn4sb_lXCxxrX67OiSaPoYSzqbmlDdK0_Z8DovS4jZLwHUuwQZ8DTqPEVqLBVIj3T4RQ5Y2MiqBtmabX-xZmNL7vUNHCkdpz2AOzS94Izjc4vxVhvEgpww9ntjKWZNMq6HUWeyc5H92qDZnV7yJKkBYm32ysUe83pzM-551OKGd4rvE_8VcIF4Q-mJqEBpKfNZU60QZsrQ28zMR9wHghuxs1rYp3QTN0KJD0ajAVyyN7vPKwzjICeQgT0wGgTY_-ERCr21XY2ZVmVwI8D-s001jc6dUR_p3TSmAKUueH3KghsohtkqAc4F1mC9sUZM1ik2Icw&smid=url-share" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">New York Times</a>: "More outspoken cries of worry have been echoing across the internet now for months, including from Eliezer Yudkowsky, the godfather of A.I. existentialism, who lately has been taking whatever you’d call the opposite of a victory lap to despair over the progress already made by A.I. and the failure to erect real barriers to its takeoff. We may be on the cusp of significant breakthroughs in A.I. superintelligence, Yudkowsky told one pair of interviewers, but the chances we will get to observe those breakthroughs playing out are slim, “because we’ll all be dead.” His advice, given how implausible he believes a good outcome with A.I. appears to be, is to “go down fighting with dignity.”<div><br />
Even Sam Altman — the mild-mannered, somewhat normie chief executive of OpenAI, the company behind the most impressive new chatbots — has publicly promised “to operate as though these risks are existential,” and suggested that Yudkowsky might well deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for raising the alarm about the risks. He also recently wrote that “A.I. is going to be the greatest force for economic empowerment and a lot of people getting rich we have ever seen,” and joked in 2015 that “A.I. will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there’ll be great companies.” A year later, in a New Yorker profile, Altman was less ironic about the bleakness of his worldview. “I prep for survival,” he acknowledged — meaning eventualities like a laboratory-designed superbug, nuclear war and an A.I. that attacks us. “My problem is that when my friends get drunk they talk about the ways the world will end,” he said. “I try not to think about it too much, but I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”"</div><div><br /></div><div><b>(P.S.)<sup>5</sup> (03/30/2023)</b><a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/03/29/1166896809/tech-leaders-urge-a-pause-in-the-out-of-control-artificial-intelligence-race " rel="nofollow" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank"> The National Public Radio</a>: "After GPT-4, <a href="https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">tech leaders urge</a> a 6-month pause in the AI race "recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control."
"We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4," the letter says. "This pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium."" And here is the<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/technology/ai-artificial-intelligence-musk-risks.html?unlocked_article_code=ViIo2X1cQxJgRoHy5RVazw8osHWzvg3qzwgSSykeQ5kZRqe857p1sLFezlt2uY3a5nzvKWT1msIpf-NN7SIKNA6bQ-O0ZVHgLjIAexHwx1KUlp-l4ezGpaqLzg8HTkw9iwFipUII9AffdVXJmp9SaUJsfsZKVV0d21P5NdAy2SCYiaiAXIAs4mRTaNZFTqt2UEKWWZhfSYcZxS3U-H5kX1fGXKtBsACzipvFgivHC-sW0B7wmOL1qfFjPVDhP8WAQQb7doBAHAO-4gcaDITv8zHyaph9nrrg-TBwfNkUdws9bhrKDsM1qaKbCBkpGAJ1TX6onMS_H4_9RekSt8oQUKzHHzQFBEcfhK4C7AzPF-UWZg&smid=url-share" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> New York Times</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is too little too late, of course. The genie is out of the bottle, and evil actors are working overtime to destabilize our world as much as they can. My short summary is as follows. We are already fucked beyond recognition, while millions of the usual conspiracy theorists busy themselves with the Covid vaccine conspiracies. Soon our ChatGPT "friends" will be asking us to <a href="https://www.brusselstimes.com/430098/belgian-man-commits-suicide-following-exchanges-with-chatgpt" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">commit suicide</a>, vicious crimes, or steal money for its owners by your clicks making the computer appear as a human and bypass the "I'm not a robot" safeguard.</div><div><br /></div><div>The religious experience of following the charismatic con-artists, like "Doctor" John Campbell, will be much deeper with a ChatGPT model that will tailor the distortions, glaring omissions and lies to the listener/viewer's liking. The more you talk to "your" ChatGPT, the better and more convincing to you its lies will get. By the way, "Dr." Campbell's doctorate is in online teaching of nursing. He has no idea about medicine and the sophisticated, multivariate and multilevel statistics he purports to use like an expert. Since I am a real scientist trained in statistics, and listened to some of Campbell's pseudoscientific babble, I can tell you that he would make an earnest Southern Baptist preacher, but he is no scientist. Lies pay well if they can make you $16.5 million from a hundred million (!) of the gullible cult clickers worldwide. From now on, such cons will be automatic and much more convincing. But who will collect the con money? The ChatGPT con trainers?</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-26268863313577724942023-02-24T07:16:00.045-06:002023-03-27T00:50:39.865-05:00One Year of War on Ukraine<p>One year ago, 42 million human lives were interrupted at 3:40 a.m. in late winter, when the genocidal Russian mafia state attacked Ukraine. I am listening right now to the Polish internet radio, <a href="https://nowyswiat.online/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Nowy Świat</a> (New World). In addition to the usual superb music, they are providing a broad coverage of the conflict from the human and animal welfare side. Today they also aired a Ukrainian rap song "Fuck Putin." </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxeznki3cEpt79tGaOtd92-iLXw7criSCEKfJKrzH_vA74YzzkvY4OmW_8W8yynvtFQQ7h90GaK8duH7yhQntn7SlyM8yKeYwRwqvYUQ_Jglo7Y61uWaq-kJSyA5ff8gZHCqPdbYCRZ4qPXoaDyrdN8JBn-EnOmUN-iQn801eZL5aqWZIpde7o7edisQ/s2560/destruction.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="2560" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxeznki3cEpt79tGaOtd92-iLXw7criSCEKfJKrzH_vA74YzzkvY4OmW_8W8yynvtFQQ7h90GaK8duH7yhQntn7SlyM8yKeYwRwqvYUQ_Jglo7Y61uWaq-kJSyA5ff8gZHCqPdbYCRZ4qPXoaDyrdN8JBn-EnOmUN-iQn801eZL5aqWZIpde7o7edisQ/w640-h360/destruction.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Civilian homes are regularly destroyed by the Russians. Source: The <a href="https://redcross.org.ua/en/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ukrainian Red Cross</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>A year ago, 10 million Ukrainians crossed the Polish border. The Polish civil society self-organized instantly, not waiting for the government and NGOs to step in. It is important to understand that at the peak this nation of 38 million people received and housed 4 million Ukrainians, while others continued west. Ordinary people had let refugees into their apartments, and gave them their second, rental or vacation homes. All on their own dime. </p><p>Thousands of Poles drove into Ukraine in their cars to transport back the sick and homeless people, and thousands of displaced or abandoned animals. Today many of these people and most animals still live in Polish homes. The report about animals so stressed out that they almost died brought me to tears. Some of them barely recovered after one year. One little Colie dog, for example, still cannot travel by car, where he throws up from stress. He travelled to Poland for 30 hours non stop by car. He only feels safe when both of his new owners are together in one room.</p><p>Contrast this Polish attitude with the utter selfishness of too many Republicans in the US. When criminals are killing innocent people, women and children, you do not air your grievances, wait and equivocate. Ask yourselves this question: Scaling up to the US population, would Americans let 35 millions of refugees into their homes? </p><p>Today, in Poland they are raising money for the freezing and hungry Ukrainian children under the banner: "<a href="https://zrzutka.pl/24x7zu" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">So that teddy bear will not be cold</a>." Remember this.
You might donate to the Ukrainian Red Cross, where we donate, https://redcross.org.ua/en/ </p><div>Since I am scientist, I would be remiss not to mention what has happened to science in Ukraine. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4OehRfc4DB7Vfx-aB21Nr2Ks-vW2m_AiZsXQNXKEgiTdWMRE6bs8WUX2RidjU5wySVjb5Q8qRu3JykLsAoFyo7vTfBz_cqazO5KzfyTz-eS_eK3oP0FITj52AKeK_Db3zGexRvgwHJ07zaxyJWscsqOWl9IXaGcpDUQ5AnQdFkTCVgfjV80gfS2-0zQ/s1248/kseniaslab.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="936" data-original-width="1248" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4OehRfc4DB7Vfx-aB21Nr2Ks-vW2m_AiZsXQNXKEgiTdWMRE6bs8WUX2RidjU5wySVjb5Q8qRu3JykLsAoFyo7vTfBz_cqazO5KzfyTz-eS_eK3oP0FITj52AKeK_Db3zGexRvgwHJ07zaxyJWscsqOWl9IXaGcpDUQ5AnQdFkTCVgfjV80gfS2-0zQ/w640-h480/kseniaslab.webp" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">A year into Russia’s war on Ukraine, Kseniia Minakova is rebuilding her research laboratory and her career. Her lab was destroyed after a Russian missile hit the National Technical University Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute. (Credit: Mykhailo Kirichenko) </span></td></tr></tbody></table><div>From a recent Nature briefing:<br /><div><b><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00518-y?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=157a95229a-briefing-dy-20230223&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-157a95229a-46658730" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Science is bleeding in Ukraine.</a></b>
“I make a major effort to continue doing science. It’s difficult not only physically but also because of this psychological pressure. To do something creative you need a peaceful time,” says chemist Igor Komarov. He’s one of the around 90% of researchers who have remained in Ukraine, determined to keep the country’s science alive — despite blackouts, lost funds and the constant threat of bombings that have already damaged or destroyed more than one-quarter of the country’s institutes. Many scientists fill any free time with more work, or volunteer for their local communities. “The best idea for living is to have no free time,” says physicist Kseniia Minakova. </div><div><b><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00518-y?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=157a95229a-briefing-dy-20230223&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-157a95229a-46658730" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ukrainian science needs the world</a>.</b> When Russia installed a puppet government in the Donbas in the east of Ukraine, geneticist Svitlana Arbuzova and her colleagues moved their state-of-the-art facility, the Eastern-Ukrainian Center for Medical Genetics and Prenatal Diagnosis, to Mariupol. In March 2022, soon after the full Russian invasion, the institute’s new home — and the staff’s own apartments — were destroyed. “The courage that Ukrainian people are demonstrating is beyond words, and not only those on the battlefields,” writes Arbuzova. “The first priority should be a full assessment of the state of educational and scientific infrastructure, and collaboration with international partners to restore what has been destroyed.” </div></div><div><br /></div><div>By the way, shooting innocent civilians has long been a favorite target practice of the Red Army, KGB troops, and now the Russian army. Savages will be savages, and little has changed since they were shooting women in my home town, Gliwice (then <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Gleiwitz</a>), in January 1945. My father, a student militiaman, had a machine gun fight with the Russian marauders (a.k.a. convalescents in the superior ex-German hospitals) in 1946. They were trying to rob, rape and kill female students. My father was expelled from the university, only to be reinstated after many eyewitness testimonies and student protests. </div><div><br /></div><div>In 1946, the Soviet and Polish communist grip on power in Poland was still tenuous. Mass executions of political opposition, gulags, prisoners to dig <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga%E2%80%93Don_Canal" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">canal Volga-Don</a>, and the Soviet <a href="https://warsawinstitute.org/post-war-war-years-1944-1963-poland/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">concentration camps</a> in Poland began mostly later. For example in my home town, Gliwice, a German concentration camp affiliated with Auschwitz was adapted to hold Silesians and others. During the war, the German Gestapo officer, who lived with his family in what later became my beautiful home on the outskirts of Gliwice, shot and killed a prisoner escapee from that camp. My older Silesian neighbors saw this crime and told me the story. My beloved Silesian nanny, Auntie Mila, was a widow of a Silesian miner who worked in a German coal mine. Silesians were <b>not</b> Germans nor were they Poles. Post 1945, this gave the Russians a free license to hunt and kill them. By some estimates, over 140,000 Silesians were murdered by the Russians and their Polish communist stooges. The Volga-Don canal was very efficient in this respect. As far as I know, almost no Silesians deported there ever came back. My auntie Mila told me much later that for the starved, thirsty Polish prisoners the expected survival time was 3-4 days.</div><div><br /></div><div>Iryna, whose decomposing corpse is shown below, was one of many murdered by the Russians in Bucha. She is the blond woman in the second row on the right in the composite photo at the bottom of this <a href="https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2023/01/a-brief-summary-of-2022.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">post</a>.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3AsfZhsiUkhr62ks0XWTpfoKbLlevfms-3eYOPgZDaQfB-vJEy09FSEsanharVvMnUFb7HdD6wM4QqAhR9BF7U4HibUm6yOgfoF_Hx5YQHCCq2bo1kJkHAe7EF4UWEyV816SYLsUQioZf91NJDCZPjkOV-F8EblrEz1GNNDUNZ2iTIedBrseD74eg3A/s1800/irynafilkina.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1800" data-original-width="1800" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3AsfZhsiUkhr62ks0XWTpfoKbLlevfms-3eYOPgZDaQfB-vJEy09FSEsanharVvMnUFb7HdD6wM4QqAhR9BF7U4HibUm6yOgfoF_Hx5YQHCCq2bo1kJkHAe7EF4UWEyV816SYLsUQioZf91NJDCZPjkOV-F8EblrEz1GNNDUNZ2iTIedBrseD74eg3A/w640-h640/irynafilkina.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Iryna Filkina (age 52) was shot by Russian soldiers when riding her bicycle through Bucha to get home. Iryna's body was recognized later by a makeup artist who painted her nails in bright red. </td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><b>P.S. (02/27/2023)</b> So, it turns out that in addition to Aleksei Navalny, who is clinging to life in a Russian turma, there are a few Russians worldwide, who are not cowards and/or slaves.</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZnSLFst-UaCs41y9ap1pcRN108qLfbEX1vPIC8EbF5K0x6coBvQsk6RnSHowX1MhQyWrYhIbKDND_R16fDO-K3wpJ9zz6eflaQrzKDqshiqMyefktNFfoPH0VNSLWcBt-cNrnrm2VHeAZKai8nGYpoSijx0fnriSCOm-T4JfJjutm_nnOyuRCcYgTng/s2048/Navalny.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1336" data-original-width="2048" height="418" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZnSLFst-UaCs41y9ap1pcRN108qLfbEX1vPIC8EbF5K0x6coBvQsk6RnSHowX1MhQyWrYhIbKDND_R16fDO-K3wpJ9zz6eflaQrzKDqshiqMyefktNFfoPH0VNSLWcBt-cNrnrm2VHeAZKai8nGYpoSijx0fnriSCOm-T4JfJjutm_nnOyuRCcYgTng/w640-h418/Navalny.webp" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="css-1u46b97 e1z0qqy90" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #727272; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.125rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;"><span aria-hidden="false" style="border: 0px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span aria-hidden="false" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;">During an appeal of his sentence, Aleksei Navalny appeared in a Moscow court via video link. Credit: Alexander Nemenov/Agence France-Presse. Source: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/25/opinion/the-brave-man-whom-putin-wants-to-kill.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">NYT</a>.</span></span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>This is what Nicolas Kristof <a href="https://nyti.ms/3kDkfXz" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">wrote about Navalny</a> in the New York Times: "If Vladimir Putin has left you despising Russians as brutes, cowards or warmongers, consider a tall, ailing man locked in an isolation cell in Russia." </div><div><br /></div><div>And then there is the Russian diaspora that took to the streets to protest the Russian invasion of Ukraine.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg12Anw4rZznffep2ee8-xrrhg0DxtJkhysQWI56q1LoPHKQxIC8fJ86TCxJnjd-Y9RVHG7SgzwDIf8QkLKIGT_31kQSenyuFx92zznOEupv_0ecI6V6MQfeRCAjydFQ0TOx06sVb9wgiAidquJP0xrAPYIAseXk8mUFxYiCjBnBYcDB000x0OUvVqvdw/s2048/RussinasinTbilisi.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1243" data-original-width="2048" height="388" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg12Anw4rZznffep2ee8-xrrhg0DxtJkhysQWI56q1LoPHKQxIC8fJ86TCxJnjd-Y9RVHG7SgzwDIf8QkLKIGT_31kQSenyuFx92zznOEupv_0ecI6V6MQfeRCAjydFQ0TOx06sVb9wgiAidquJP0xrAPYIAseXk8mUFxYiCjBnBYcDB000x0OUvVqvdw/w640-h388/RussinasinTbilisi.webp" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Russians protesting in Tbilisi on February 24, 2023.</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAaTALE_HthzPx3gBWP1TJOOXaku6M2D0QDUpN_n00-sOEs4hrY2bW6C6-VmhKGwUSZXEXbfLdZQTXgviyKzK6Sr2VDL4DI1W91E6X7tJJEcd_EkimAaSu6M67Q8htCVUPBmm19K-Smcpv50GTqcJIkse2n13GsplXn_NdPXoIW94U2X7m0IjrBCjhOg/s2048/Eiffelrower.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAaTALE_HthzPx3gBWP1TJOOXaku6M2D0QDUpN_n00-sOEs4hrY2bW6C6-VmhKGwUSZXEXbfLdZQTXgviyKzK6Sr2VDL4DI1W91E6X7tJJEcd_EkimAaSu6M67Q8htCVUPBmm19K-Smcpv50GTqcJIkse2n13GsplXn_NdPXoIW94U2X7m0IjrBCjhOg/w640-h426/Eiffelrower.webp" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Eiffel Tower in my beloved Paris was illuminated with the colors of the Ukrainian flag on Thursday, February 23, 2023. Credit Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via Shutterstock. </td></tr></tbody></table><br />Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-29423065869769055882023-01-29T14:36:00.031-06:002023-03-05T01:37:39.764-06:00Confessions of a Petroleum Engineer and Ecologist<p>I just attended an SPE workshop, "Oil and Gas Technology for a Net-Zero World – Defining Our Grand Challenges for the Next Decade." Of the 60 people in the audience, I knew 1/3, some very well. It makes sense, because I have been an SPE member for 40 years, and a Distinguished Member for 20 years. Last year, I received an SPE EOR/IOR Pioneer Award for my work at Shell and UC Berkeley on the thermal enhanced oil recovery processes that involved foams, and their upscaling to field operations. This was nice, because Shell recognized me as one of their best reservoir engineers, and in 1985 I received an internal Shell Recognition Award for the same work.</p><p>But I am not a mere oil & gas reservoir engineer. First and foremost, I am a chemical engineer and physicist, who has thought rigorously about the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248936829_Thermodynamics_of_the_Corn-Ethanol_Biofuel_Cycle" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">sustainability of human civilization</a>, ecology and thermodynamics of industrial agriculture and large biofuel systems, as well as about the overall gross and net primary productivity of the <a href="https://www.oecd.org/sd-roundtable/papersandpublications/40225820.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">planet Earth</a>, the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800922000453" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ecological trajectories</a> of most countries around the world, and about <a href="https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/apme/60/8/JAMC-D-20-0273.1.xml" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">climate change</a> and alternative electrical power <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2205429119" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">sources</a>. You can check out my publications <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=JHk7dtgAAAAJ&view_op=list_works" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>. Since 2006, I have also been teaching a senior undergraduate/graduate course, E<sup>4</sup>: Earth, Environment, Energy and Economics, and wrote a 600-page book that goes with it (too be published soon).</p><p>My main difficulty in this post is how to keep it short enough for you to stay engaged, and yet capture the fantastic complexity of the dire situation we are in. Of course, I know fully well that you may see nothing dire about where you are with your lives. </p><p>Let me start from the weight of materials each American consumes per year. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLUy-a9tzgCy7Z0AX619HqPrvdxmqC5sFbZpjrbDVi-ZAhHGaYAIseo3gkiPulVKh8y4zUmYRrCFHFkW-vQNLamqEjjvZ2zmosPlUv1c43qY9rXTndqEGhgL4f4ioTZTD3bSDe1IGk5kF7fHaFyEb7afvm8jrZzFQwPTVqRNkLewH8pYN0-6ZBlieS0A/s1900/USMatrialsCnosumption.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1900" data-original-width="1284" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLUy-a9tzgCy7Z0AX619HqPrvdxmqC5sFbZpjrbDVi-ZAhHGaYAIseo3gkiPulVKh8y4zUmYRrCFHFkW-vQNLamqEjjvZ2zmosPlUv1c43qY9rXTndqEGhgL4f4ioTZTD3bSDe1IGk5kF7fHaFyEb7afvm8jrZzFQwPTVqRNkLewH8pYN0-6ZBlieS0A/w432-h640/USMatrialsCnosumption.jpg" width="432" /></a></td></tr><tr></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click on this image from VisualCapitalist.com to see it in full resolution. Each American man, woman and child consumes 20,000 pounds per year of building materials and metals, in addition to an almost equal mass of natural gas, crude oil, coal and a smidgeon of uranium for desert. Let's assume boldly that an average American weighs 150 pounds. This means that we consume 266 times our weight as raw materials, including 133 times our weight as fossil fuels. In comparison, an average US person consumes 1500 pounds of food per year, or 10 times her weight. This food is produced mostly by the <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">fantastically</span> <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/02/09/grim-reapers-american-farming-ian-frazier/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">unsustainable</a> US giga-agriculture (Tom Philpott is a great journalist I met in my prior life at UC Berkeley). Now you see that we devour natural resources as much as the slaves of the evil Sauron in <a href="https://youtu.be/HoYg9M8brF4" rel="nofollow" style="text-align: left;" target="_blank">Mordor</a><span style="text-align: left;">.</span><br /><p style="text-align: left;">The fossil fuels we consume serve 80% of our giant needs for electricity and transportation. By now, most people have been convinced that we can continue our current life styles by replacing some or most of these fossil fuels with the renewable sunlight and wind that will power a new giant <span style="text-align: center;">infrastructure of </span>rebuildable solar PV arrays and wind turbines. With little recycling we will trash these giant devices every 2-30 years. As we argue in our recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2205429119" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">paper</a>, this replacement of fossil fuels is simply impossible at global scale. Then some people throw in the fabulously inefficient, ozone-layer killing "hydrogen economy" (see, e.g., Appendix D <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248936829_Thermodynamics_of_the_Corn-Ethanol_Biofuel_Cycle" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>) as another savior, and top it off with the unscalable carbon capture and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248777460_Subsurface_Sequestration_of_CO_2_in_the_US_Is_it_Money_Best_Spent" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">sequestration</a> (CCS), preferably the Direct Air Capture (DAC) of CO2, which is scientifically absurd. This is where most petroleum engineers are in their quest to seek new power sources that extend the status quo but will be more acceptable, they think, to public opinion. What they do not see is the Earth.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCOQEkDn0I1uIJmLF6zHx1AVqZPbsRJWrZbsN4JNpfibV0CkbpxpIG3flVX1ePr11uAopSoVfSdd3MK4Z9SmqpWWNWLEpNtUuophvSS1zIu2ZI7fpY8Z5zX2x8Z2SMAjjENwXTN8CerVJy5zvOp5XwLUcMqTOa2B_bwX_WFrjc41PaO_VM6iOCf1nYyA/s1600/784footGartenGE.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1066" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCOQEkDn0I1uIJmLF6zHx1AVqZPbsRJWrZbsN4JNpfibV0CkbpxpIG3flVX1ePr11uAopSoVfSdd3MK4Z9SmqpWWNWLEpNtUuophvSS1zIu2ZI7fpY8Z5zX2x8Z2SMAjjENwXTN8CerVJy5zvOp5XwLUcMqTOa2B_bwX_WFrjc41PaO_VM6iOCf1nYyA/w640-h426/784footGartenGE.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p style="text-align: center;">This giant turbine in Garten, Germany, collapsed due to mechanical stresses.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Given the rate at which we consume the Earth, it follows that we cause a great environmental damage and contribute richly to climate change. But most of us do not feel this way, and do not see anything wrong with what we do each day and night. Certainly most petroleum engineers don't think that our actions do permanent damage. In fact, most petroleum engineers seldom think about the delicate Earth's skin we inhabit and puncture. Why is this?</p><p style="text-align: left;">As Prof. Marder says, the simplest explanation is that there is big money in petroleum and the SPE workshop participants are well paid to do exactly what they do, and almost nobody can manage simultaneously to get paid and do what I have been doing for the last 20 years, and hope to continue doing for a while longer. Everyone (except me) understands there are limits to how far they can go in challenging catastrophic normality and return home with a secure paycheck. Put another way, the <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">global fossil amoeba does not pay anyone in money to save us.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;">More generally, genetically, we are apes almost identical with the chimpanzee species <i>Pan paniscus</i>, or Bonobos. But over the last 3 million years we have diverged from our close cousins in small but crucial aspects. We lost most of body hair and much of muscle strength, and our children take roughly 16-18 years to mature. To compensate for this huge evolutionary disadvantage, we have developed a plastic brain that grows by 2/3 since childhood, and with parental help we grow a curious bulge behind our left eye. This bulge, the Broca area, is responsible for our ability to speak if nurtured to do so until the age of 12 years. If not, we can never learn to speak. Next to the Broca area, we develop a Wernicke area that interprets speech, and is close to the motor area that translates what we learn and understand into actions. This crucial divergence allowed us to accumulate knowledge and outcompete all other species in our ability to conquer every ecosystem we inhabit, now the entire planet. The 2001 movie "Planet of the Apes" portrays correctly what would happen to humans if our much stronger cousins learned to speak.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Genetically, we are the same old apes programmed to push against the limits of the ecosystems we inhabit and consume. In short, we are nature's fire. We are also short-lived biological vessels, programmed to propagate our genes into the future <i>ad infinitum</i>. Our genes don't change over epochs, but they mix as we mate. The most successful among us mate many times and propagate their genes above average.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Thus, we are programmed to burn or destroy everything we touch, grow in numbers without limits, and expand our ranges by displacing and annihilating most other species. To be so successful, we have developed a peculiar myopia. Most of us cannot see the more remote consequences of our immediate actions. This was fine 10-15 thousand years ago, when we could move elsewhere after each local environmental collapse we caused, but now we drive ourselves to extinction. The few who can see future are the modern Cassandras cursed by Nemesis to be never believed. I am one of these lonely Cassandras.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoLshUtvcVJFkeIzA9GToxPjVqp176k9rgvyMcxMlcsxrSScO6OPTRImyoRnGGEeIb2sYkZzpUDuYXLRe1N5K_oYCRvAlRjUB7IbLqJpPaFUkdMtnytfc7FPdMQVSWhw7PljDzAcUPEJbh_xgffpL4Y8_-_H_Ri4DV9rckzhJoqQ-1C-VbM4V3zCCmbA/s1420/crowd.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="946" data-original-width="1420" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoLshUtvcVJFkeIzA9GToxPjVqp176k9rgvyMcxMlcsxrSScO6OPTRImyoRnGGEeIb2sYkZzpUDuYXLRe1N5K_oYCRvAlRjUB7IbLqJpPaFUkdMtnytfc7FPdMQVSWhw7PljDzAcUPEJbh_xgffpL4Y8_-_H_Ri4DV9rckzhJoqQ-1C-VbM4V3zCCmbA/w640-h426/crowd.webp" width="640" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;">Over the last 3 million years we have been growing in small groups and dealt with simple systems. By today, though, we have created the super complex giant systems no one seems to comprehend. Ultimately, some of these systems are likely to exterminate us. We have also developed the most efficient ways of blasting our miscomprehensions to billions of other mostly clueless <i>pans</i>.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The <a href="https://countercurrents.org/2023/01/doomsday-clock-jitters-and-how-to-fix-a-broken-planet/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Doomsday Clock</a> was just reset to 90 seconds before midnight (the end of most current multicellular life on the planet). “This year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward, largely (though not exclusively) because of the mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine. The Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.” (Source: Full Bulletin <a href="https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Statement</a>) . Today’s version of the clock includes key global concerns: (1) climate change (2) bioterrorism (3) artificial intelligence and (4) damage inflicted by mis/disinformation. These elements fuse together as a potential cataclysmic event registered by the clock’s setting vis a vis a midnight hour imagery of the apocalypse. </p><p style="text-align: left;">One of the key reasons for resetting the Clock is misinformation: “Perhaps the deadliest pandemic ever to strike humanity is the plague of deliberate misinformation, mass delusion and unfounded beliefs which is engulfing twenty-first-century human society.” (<span style="text-align: center;"> </span><span style="text-align: center;">pg. 127 in </span>Julian Cribb, "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Broken-Planet-Julian-Cribb/dp/1009333410" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">How To Fix A Broken Planet</a>," Cambridge University Press, 2023.) </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieJRSzzXuNiAYBDKTeAaQhLHpfQ6RQrld-sciT23SR-6xQAiiI-Imcc2PdgouYDV0BkYjiEqGRvRLO-1Vw9qIbvkx3Jt7iZDgKf1tEm6YKlFjaU-MPTx0JySjDf1l2ohGQWQwDPQjtTAKyZOf3BTGPbzOVOM-7-MJWPuHxIjjXbqtegQ65y6yrCRvtOA/s2636/saw1220Menc32_d.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2636" data-original-width="2460" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieJRSzzXuNiAYBDKTeAaQhLHpfQ6RQrld-sciT23SR-6xQAiiI-Imcc2PdgouYDV0BkYjiEqGRvRLO-1Vw9qIbvkx3Jt7iZDgKf1tEm6YKlFjaU-MPTx0JySjDf1l2ohGQWQwDPQjtTAKyZOf3BTGPbzOVOM-7-MJWPuHxIjjXbqtegQ65y6yrCRvtOA/w598-h640/saw1220Menc32_d.webp" width="598" /></a></div>Source: <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/information-overload-helps-fake-news-spread-and-social-media-knows-it/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Scientific American</a>.<br /><p style="text-align: left;">Now, engineers are trained to develop, use and improve technology, and this is what most of them do. Very few engineers are trained to understand dangers technology presents to humans, as Martin Heidegger <a href="https://monoskop.org/images/4/44/Heidegger_Martin_The_Question_Concerning_Technology_and_Other_Essays.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">warned us</a> in 1954. In their myopic focus on technology, most engineers do not see the living planet which keeps them alive.</p><p style="text-align: left;">My last introductory point is about the <a href="https://medium.com/curious/why-the-dunning-kruger-curves-youve-seen-are-wrong-beb944668aef" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Dunning-Kruger syndrome</a>. In the corrected interpretation of this syndrome and of the famous <span style="text-align: center;">D-K</span><span style="text-align: center;"> </span>curve, the polled unskilled participants (students, most engineers or environmentalists outside of their narrow specialties, poorly educated people who do "research" on the internet, most Facebook and Twitter aficionados, etc.) didn’t think they were better than the skilled participants; they just thought they would have scored better [understood more] than they actually did. By contrast, the best half of the participants were more likely to underestimate their ability - a trend which gets more pronounced in the 4th quartile. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4TKeYY0AdErQ6xlehdmeYAGLaI7qsyW8g_XLpt4zpnExkMeTrcMf5cioLTlawWX00fH_-lV5kygbmSOMRqzlT6LnFsQi1shLMLyuigDFXovdOIKTtqrHt1U-79lSKC9241dVgIKJvW16f_iDwQPWCzr1x9AS_-LaLgxoW8mVW7gZHllJuHaJyXRQm3g/s1400/dunningkrugercurve.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="878" data-original-width="1400" height="402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4TKeYY0AdErQ6xlehdmeYAGLaI7qsyW8g_XLpt4zpnExkMeTrcMf5cioLTlawWX00fH_-lV5kygbmSOMRqzlT6LnFsQi1shLMLyuigDFXovdOIKTtqrHt1U-79lSKC9241dVgIKJvW16f_iDwQPWCzr1x9AS_-LaLgxoW8mVW7gZHllJuHaJyXRQm3g/w640-h402/dunningkrugercurve.webp" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Confidence is a measure of the difference been the predicted and the actual outcome. A score above zero on this differential diagram means overconfidence: people think they do better than they actually do. A score below zero means the opposite: the participants do better than they predict. Source: Why the Dunning-Kruger curves you've seen <a href="https://medium.com/curious/why-the-dunning-kruger-curves-youve-seen-are-wrong-beb944668aef" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">are wrong </a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p style="text-align: left;">Too many participants of all conferences are on the left-hand side of the curve above; they think they know and understand much more than they actually do.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Now, we - the public - were presented with all key elements of this sprawling Greek tragedy, but by the Greek convention the actors on the stage (workshop participants, leaders, professors, governments, NGOs) didn't, and stumble toward the inevitable gory end:</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><ol><li style="text-align: left;">We are genetically programmed to grow in numbers without bounds and damage the environment around us. Today we are a global fire that burns the planet.</li><li style="text-align: left;">We are genetically programmed to seek fast, tactical solutions that we think will improve our lot. As K-optimizers, we fail to see the environmental damage we do.</li><li style="text-align: left;">We routinely overestimate our ability to grasp complexity of the systems we have created and do not understand their modes of failure.</li><li style="text-align: left;">Climate change is a byproduct of our sheer numbers, runaway consumption of all the Earth's resources we can access, and of the overwhelming streams of wastes we dump everywhere, into the atmosphere, land and oceans; thousands of toxic chemicals, plastics and greenhouse gases.</li><li style="text-align: left;">Most engineers have a blind faith in technology and seek to prolong the status quo by any technological fix possible. Ecology is not recognized and the environmental impacts of technology are too often overlooked.</li><li style="text-align: left;">Today, our collective delusions involve CCS, the ozone-layer killing "hydrogen economy" and its derivatives (ammonia, formic acid, etc.), rebuildables, electrification of everything, EV cars, etc. Collectively, we believe that these technologies will prolong the status quo. Well, for a 1000 damning scientific reasons that have been known for decades or centuries, <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">they will not</span>! </li></ol><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"> Back to this tragically predicable SPE workshop. Everything I wrote is not meant to offend anyone, especially the speakers and panelists, who gave many technically outstanding talks. I merely wanted to discuss how this workshop, and many other similar conferences I attended before, routinely miss most of the salient points about our current physical condition, and where we must go from here in order not to collapse and not perish as human species taking down much of the planet with us.</p><p style="text-align: left;">In my mind, this workshop offered only narrow, murky technological recommendations, with an almost complete exclusion of the environmental actions that are terribly necessary. Again, as <span style="text-align: center;">Upton Sinclair said a long time ago,</span> “it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” </p><p style="text-align: left;">I know, now you expect me to give you "the solutions." Well, when you begin to see the living planet, write me. Until then, there will be <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">NO solutions,</span> whatever you think. </p><p style="text-align: left;">I'll give you two warnings though: (1) please do not think that breaking our current dependence on oil & gas will be <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">easy or possible,</span> yet their consumption must decrease, because (2) burning fossil fuels at today's rate is mass suicide. This is the tragic Faustian bargain of our time. Can humans rise up to this existential challenge? </p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>P.S. (01/31/2023)</b> A comment from my ex-student who is in the process of becoming a professor at a very prominent university in China:</p><p style="text-align: left;">Dear Professor Patzek, </p><p style="text-align: left;">It is great to see the update on your blog! I have been following your blog for quite a long time, but I don’t have the access to follow and comment on the website. I am sorry to hear that you had a painful 2022 and several infections of Covid last year. I can feel your deep concern about this world and your loneliness. Your arguments or proposals may not be well accepted by many people since those proposals are against their short-term interests. However, what you have done and are doing is quite meaningful and valuable. You have changed many people including me and made us more concerned about this world, about the future. I am glad that you can continue to write your blog and share your insights with us. I sincerely wish you good health and happiness in the new year! XXX [I removed his name]</p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></td></tr></tbody></table>Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-16264762066082614262023-01-13T10:34:00.022-06:002023-01-15T12:50:46.335-06:00On Snowflakes, Blogs and Loneliness <p> This is a guest post (first ever) by my dear friend, a brilliant physicist, Prof. Michael Marder.</p><p>When I went as a prospective graduate student to Santa Barbara the person who became my advisor told me he was studying how snowflakes grow. They build layer by layer, with small bumps emerging into fingers that sprout fingers in turn. The shape of the snowflake is comprehensible at any time in relation to its shape a moment before -- and only in relation to its shape a moment before. The environment matters too and it influences details of the shapes, which is why no two snowflakes are identical. It is an odd mixture of idiosyncrasy and inevitability.</p><p>This seems to me a useful metaphor for what we call news and opinion. When I pick up the news in the morning, which I do every day and not just in the morning, it appears at first to be, well, new. Here are all the new things that just happened. And here is how to interpret them.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ0w1Evj6LiJKF-1-glaqBYco-XZ851Dc-PqoS4tgziD4t_ZtfIcokeRb6pl4TP0ABJonFDHUHB2MFMqzEf6DCeQn24govBJDMQHAddPXKhNABg_Ewp7TnyiVtQb1do3fYqUTJYSwtoa4GqJIhdGkJnF255606F2W6HUGCd8iRCy0cfaLP0ewx56zb3Q/s627/snoflake.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="331" data-original-width="627" height="338" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ0w1Evj6LiJKF-1-glaqBYco-XZ851Dc-PqoS4tgziD4t_ZtfIcokeRb6pl4TP0ABJonFDHUHB2MFMqzEf6DCeQn24govBJDMQHAddPXKhNABg_Ewp7TnyiVtQb1do3fYqUTJYSwtoa4GqJIhdGkJnF255606F2W6HUGCd8iRCy0cfaLP0ewx56zb3Q/w640-h338/snoflake.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">By Alexey Kljatov - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39993014</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>But while the particular events of each day are new they are almost always completely familiar. They fit into narratives that have been developing for days, months, or years. The snowflake puts out some new fingers but they fit right atop old ones.</p><p>The US right now is blessed with two dominant snowflakes that have grown in somewhat different locations from each other while they also have much in common. We could call these the New York Times and Wall Street Journal flakes. The news stories are remarkably similar but the opinion pieces protrude in different directions. On their dueling opinion pages on Jan 12, 2023 we learn (NYT) why Republicans hate Medicare and how Ron DeSantis is ruining Florida by making it too expensive for all but the rich. At the same time (WSJ) we learn that the Federal Trade Commission is making the most audacious power grab in its history through a ban on noncompete clauses and that the Federal Reserve has too few regrets about its incompetent handling of inflation. The narratives are familiar. They are extensions of stories from yesterday and lay the base for stories of tomorrow.</p><p>The conversation of educated people during lunch is repeating of snippets from the morning’s papers. Everyone at the table must belong to the edge of the same snowflake or the conversation will descend into nonsense or conflict.</p><p>What then can we make of someone whose opinions slowly develop over time through expertise in topics that is not dependent on the daily news feed? Such a person may come out with combinations of statements and opinions that do not mesh with the protuberances of the dominant snowflakes. These statements will not so much be unbelievable as incomprehensible.</p><p>This brings me, Tad, back to your <a href="https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2023/01/a-brief-summary-of-2022.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a>. The most curious part is not what you say but who you are. It is comprehensible, although not anymore particularly striking, when an oil company researcher blows the whistle and reveals that the companies have known they are destroying the planet and covered it up. But what can we make of someone who has spent a life in both industry and academia studying oil deeply and thinking about the consequences of its use for humanity and the planet, yet does not renounce and denounce the academic-industrial oil complex and is not rejected or destroyed by it? This does not make sense. If the big snowflakes were to try to incorporate your ideas they would need not just to bend the ideas to fit the contours of what they can express, but to alter a life trajectory. And this is why your ideas will not attach to the edges of their snowflakes, but continue to grow on one that is very much your own.</p><p><b>P.S. 01/13/2023.</b> By T.W. Patzek. </p><p>Yes, loneliness has been my second name. I was isolated and ignored at UC Berkeley, then at UT Austin, and now at KAUST. In each of these universities, I had a brilliant individual career and was promoted accordingly. In the year 2022, at KAUST, I <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=JHk7dtgAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">published 28</a> not so small papers with my brilliant research group. Yet, practically, I have not existed much as a public representative of the universities in the areas of overpopulation, climate change, ecosphere collapse and energy transitions, my key research, teaching and writing interests over the last 20 years. This blog has quietly exceeded 800,000 reads. Enter the collective schizophrenia of academia and society at large. People are scared of me and embarrassed by what I say, but deep inside they may be rooting for me. </p><p>All new ideas are rejected at first by the scientific community, which also grows its favorite snowflakes. The key is not who knew what when, but what are we going to do with this knowledge. Here the human genetics tells me, <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">nothing or worse</span>. Our genetic capacity for self-delusion and self-destruction usually wins with our rational brain. The 37 failed COPs that have been trying to grow a different incongruent snowflake, like me, and the war in Ukraine are good examples. The commercial techno-hopium journals, Science and Nature, are other examples. <b>The prattling destructive Bonobos we are</b>. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0tmpMCMiX2elfAzv3QSiso95cT6EYPYEgZsESUJiTa1n_MDar4WyQD6SJpDgCD8ur-uXgQ6xRGfn-P25wBq2V3imvUMTxpEaaRKfbyj0ZdEsIt5kuCuP-l8a8W_7yUGtQHfqmy14I3xdifl7psUiML2TnNdiPulvAyLzjJbJZxDfBi1xRDbSXGATG_g/s1200/Grooming-interactions-between-bonobos-of-the-Kokolopori-population-image-courtesy-of-Martin-Surbeck-1200x800.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0tmpMCMiX2elfAzv3QSiso95cT6EYPYEgZsESUJiTa1n_MDar4WyQD6SJpDgCD8ur-uXgQ6xRGfn-P25wBq2V3imvUMTxpEaaRKfbyj0ZdEsIt5kuCuP-l8a8W_7yUGtQHfqmy14I3xdifl7psUiML2TnNdiPulvAyLzjJbJZxDfBi1xRDbSXGATG_g/w640-h426/Grooming-interactions-between-bonobos-of-the-Kokolopori-population-image-courtesy-of-Martin-Surbeck-1200x800.webp" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Humans are 99.6% genetically identical with Bonobos. In this sense we are the third species of chimpanzees and our genetic makeup defines what we are. Who we are is masked by the Broca and Wernicke regions of our brains that have generated the shallow, fragile layer of culture. Many claim that culture (read religion) separates us from animals. It does not. This religious notion of human moral superiority over animals is unsupportable by genetic science and leads to a deep schism among people. Image source: [the traditionally anthropocentric] <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/06/bonobos-tolerant-peaceful-group-relationships-paved-way-for-human-peacemaking/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Harvard Gazette</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>In summary, we have found our arch enemy. It is us. Here is what Michael just wrote to me: "I had another thought, which is that an essential tool of a snowflake is to define people’s identities by their enemies, and this leads to a worldview where my problems are because they are against us. But you challenge with the view that<span style="background-color: #fcff01;"> our main enemy is all of us and this is profoundly uncomfortable</span>."</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifNLvIZG5SiYo0JK_HO2rDh8L9rREatthQ-iMauK8ui6SPWfWw4WaAqIaIzFYV21IhK10bWEoEXY_zKDlvUg-xWhakMUa96dHX_ak6VTXWT_AHMd1Czyt4CVWr29y6bxNFE4AN2_clD8KnkRtj50dDJwMn1AVve4INH5UVV3S8ZsI7AAJIgwP1oXzhEg/s783/MissUniverse.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="553" data-original-width="783" height="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifNLvIZG5SiYo0JK_HO2rDh8L9rREatthQ-iMauK8ui6SPWfWw4WaAqIaIzFYV21IhK10bWEoEXY_zKDlvUg-xWhakMUa96dHX_ak6VTXWT_AHMd1Czyt4CVWr29y6bxNFE4AN2_clD8KnkRtj50dDJwMn1AVve4INH5UVV3S8ZsI7AAJIgwP1oXzhEg/w640-h452/MissUniverse.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A congruent snowflake generates a huge following instantly. It took me 10 years to get to 800,000 reads of my blogs. I wish I could be a pretty bonobo that channeled sexual desires of millions of men.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><br /></p>Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-84174432537868545332023-01-06T09:39:00.043-06:002023-02-25T09:01:29.116-06:00Why the Year 2022 Stood Out?<p>When I reminisce about the year 2022, I think about noise. The loud white noise is everywhere, and it buzzes in my ears even when I am in a quiet wilderness. For good reason. There is no truly untouched wilderness left in this Age of Anthropocene. Humans have invaded and damaged or destroyed every part and parcel of land and water on this beautiful Earth that is still trying to protect us from <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">our</span> mass extinction. Not for much longer, unless you believe the delirious false prophets of technology who shout ever louder and are getting more aggressive by the minute. They must shout to make their cult followers suspend sound judgement, but they have little appropriate education and no fig leaves to cover their ugly lust for social power. </p><p>The cult groupies keep on clinging to a legion of these frauds, e.g., to the <a href="https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/no-humans-are-not-causing-a-sixth?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2" target="_blank">Michael Shellenberger</a>s and <a href="https://www.benzinga.com/news/23/01/30252234/elon-musk-says-this-really-popular-book-on-population-crisis-is-the-most-damaging-anti-human-thing-e?utm_campaign=Weekly%20Digest&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=240559746&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--OUSz__MjjZTvG7DAtYImQdhE0Izrw7lUkwOiLeY0aA7w6Q2D1klOwh2ZvN2zZgna2-pMvQ9lwij2bMJ3FU83F84Ob4Q&utm_content=240559746&utm_source=hs_email" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Elon Musk</a>s (<a href="https://www.benzinga.com/news/22/12/30170168/elon-musk-says-ape-expert-jane-goodalls-take-on-human-population-is-the-death-of-humanity" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here too</a>) of this world. Draw your own conclusions after looking at the linked examples, the famous<a href="https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-mulitple-fallacies-of-simon-ehrlich.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> metal bet</a> between Ehrlich and Simon notwithstanding. </p><p>My own conclusion is that the first three links in the paragraph above are the truly frightening demonstrations of ignorance, delirious myopia, arrogance and cosmic narcissism. On the one hand, you have two elderly, gentle world-famous biologists - Prof. <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Paul+Ehrlich+&rlz=1C1SQJL_enUS884US884&ei=tGK3Y9yjGry6qtsPhp-iuAE&ved=0ahUKEwjczfbuz7H8AhU8nWoFHYaPCBcQ4dUDCA8&uact=5&oq=Paul+Ehrlich+&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQAzIECAAQAzILCAAQgAQQsQMQgwEyCwguEIMBELEDEIAEMgsILhCABBCxAxCDATIECAAQAzIECAAQAzIFCAAQgAQyCwguEIAEEMcBEK8BMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgARKBAhBGABKBAhGGABQAFgAYNgLaABwAXgAgAGxAogBsQKSAQMzLTGYAQCgAQKgAQHAAQE&sclient=gws-wiz-serp" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Paul Ehrlich </a>and Dr. <a href="https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tDP1TdITirMNmD04slKzEtVSM_PT0nMyQEAW2IH1g&q=jane+goodall&rlz=1C1SQJL_enUS884US884&oq=jang+goodal&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j46i13i433i512j46i13i199i433i465i512j0i13i512j0i13i433i512j0i13i512l2j46i13i512j0i13i512.11666j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jane Goodall</a> -, and on the other, two chest-pounding barbaric fire-apes who would not survive in any of my classes. </p><p>Then there is a self-annoited 'energy expert', <a href="https://alexepstein.substack.com/p/my-energy-story?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=513601&post_id=64138698&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Alex Epstein</a>, whose arrogance is exceeded only by his innocence (like that of a rambunctious boy, who thinks he understands the words of adults he parrots).</p><p>I<span style="background-color: #fcff01;"> challenge Alex to a public debate at the Washington DC Press Club. No ear pieces for instructions. </span></p><p><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSlX_zt9kgRpUePmWEnOEUVdvKEOOf1ZNlNRBcXh7OHqnFcn-2dwlrhLTaac12-qWcdw98HMNZcxMx560a_Fi3ggGrMIsarKisIZowL0l4xbP9Ujr8TKEMDRfM4Ggvp8vUmytXfLpQ73Ucxei6ebckAHPb2bloSBMTB6ptzyMolwNH6nUwfjdLG0PSgg/s1000/jndgoodall.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1000" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSlX_zt9kgRpUePmWEnOEUVdvKEOOf1ZNlNRBcXh7OHqnFcn-2dwlrhLTaac12-qWcdw98HMNZcxMx560a_Fi3ggGrMIsarKisIZowL0l4xbP9Ujr8TKEMDRfM4Ggvp8vUmytXfLpQ73Ucxei6ebckAHPb2bloSBMTB6ptzyMolwNH6nUwfjdLG0PSgg/w640-h480/jndgoodall.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jane Goodall observing chimpanzees in Africa as a young scientist. Source: <a href="https://janegoodall.org/">The J.G. Institute</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Why am I so furious? Well, maybe because I am a teacher and a scientist, who has worked for almost 50 years on the subjects broached by these three fools, and I have taught thousands of students, graduated several dozens of MSs and PhDs, each, and published <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=JHk7dtgAAAAJ&view_op=list_works" target="_blank">sufficiently</a>. In short, I am a giver and a teacher, and these guys are mere fame- and money-hungry leeches, who think they have a license to abuse other people. Of the last six PhDs and three MSs I have graduated since December 2020, most if not all refer to me as "father." And this is correct, all students are members of my extended family, and I have been guiding them in science and in life. You have no idea how fabulously rich these young people have made me.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaWkV0qT35sgUBvV_QqsUpCiwMprRhSm_GrOIq31PLzWKvJhdN8MbjMbxvExThv8mPr2Ltful1RiJSWkPbj4-ASCJGb0e8S_xt9Klv5TIylJ8Iv6JylbRhIShYAGDejuTHcq2kPw9zujRYhTihffVy1hMlb8dMa2ja00EfYVcX3NLVaTnmeJVD0rMpUw/s664/Flyer2.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="664" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaWkV0qT35sgUBvV_QqsUpCiwMprRhSm_GrOIq31PLzWKvJhdN8MbjMbxvExThv8mPr2Ltful1RiJSWkPbj4-ASCJGb0e8S_xt9Klv5TIylJ8Iv6JylbRhIShYAGDejuTHcq2kPw9zujRYhTihffVy1hMlb8dMa2ja00EfYVcX3NLVaTnmeJVD0rMpUw/w308-h400/Flyer2.png" width="308" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here is a US edition of the Age of Anthropocene. The drunken fire-apes in Montana celebrate killing wildlife for sick pleasure. And then you have a Shellenberger slighting and offending Prof. Ehrlich.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>But I already digressed. I could not make myself write for the last nine months. The year 2022 was simply too painful. But a lot has happened and an update is in order. I had a few small personal victories. In March 2022, I underwent a successful <a href="https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/research/car-t-cells" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CAR T</a> (Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell) therapy that so far has fully eliminated my deadly mantle cell lymphoma. Thus, I my owe my life to the progress of real medical science, to which my endocrinology doctor and UCSF faculty daughter, Sophie, has dedicated her life. A tremendous scientist, Dr. Andreadis of UCSF, co-created the particular CAR T technology that successfully modified my lymphocytes, which after reinjection multiplied 1000-fold, and over the next six months went on to kill the sick bone marrow cells in my body. </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx3tv6EDh_k7NRnys7TFHWXL0uDuvFMN-w-tcsTlP9Anh5mo51VQg_NLvXOfDL62QOE5sH_LsWjF8ZT78tFm7LK8DWRwu7yNsn9kG1nZ0g-0dLEeHgymdmOzZFfw7UtNyVBQC5anoDQcL5y1cmt654csC3TP099jcQfPxjVBm9B5Lub8tXeg_UNqW1hg/s1403/41577_2018_119_Fig1_HTML.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="1403" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx3tv6EDh_k7NRnys7TFHWXL0uDuvFMN-w-tcsTlP9Anh5mo51VQg_NLvXOfDL62QOE5sH_LsWjF8ZT78tFm7LK8DWRwu7yNsn9kG1nZ0g-0dLEeHgymdmOzZFfw7UtNyVBQC5anoDQcL5y1cmt654csC3TP099jcQfPxjVBm9B5Lub8tXeg_UNqW1hg/w640-h304/41577_2018_119_Fig1_HTML.webp" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>a</b> | Emergence of tumor cell variants with absent or low levels of the antigen targeted by the monospecific chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell. <b>b</b> | Intrinsic T cell dysfunction due to T cell exhaustion results in diminished functionality of the CAR T cell and the growth of tumors expressing the targeted antigen. Exhaustion biology is driven by epigenetic alterations that drive a suppressive transcriptional program. Source: <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-018-0119-y" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Nature Reviews: Immunology</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>The CAR T therapy wipes out most of the vaccinations in a patient. Thus my three m-RNA Covid-19 vaccines were destroyed. I received a double dose of monoclonal antibodies that protected me somewhat for six months. But then I got three Covid infections after late May 2022, starting from a bad one in Spain, where I was on a sabbatical. One day two, I had to drive with a 40 degree C fever for five hours to escape the 43 degrees C heat w/o air conditioning. Luckily, I had with me a powerful antiviral drug, Paxlovid, that worked like a charm, so well in fact that I never gained full immunity from Covid. In November, I revaccinated against Covid, followed by a booster in December. Then I got Covid number 4, and decided to weather it with no Paxlovid. Let me tell you this, fun it was not, and I still have little sense of taste and no sense of smell. But I have survived without meeting my Creator yet. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG3S81_9nqXBiEBFi_qXxyKcrEqC9eHUuysav5DOfw4YeBHMqi2nXXk22FxjP63eQJDBVc0yC1D0X22cnwk5BSGqTwm1U8nUk1JnofF2OfQMzboR8sVq-CeNqdLDmYRVKNJhbJhIi5MkIw0_-G8UtJEB4KdDuqgXfnne6SnE7fe5Mt2nnHGlNrpI7mhQ/s1571/vaccinaiondifferenceBL020123.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="913" data-original-width="1571" height="372" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG3S81_9nqXBiEBFi_qXxyKcrEqC9eHUuysav5DOfw4YeBHMqi2nXXk22FxjP63eQJDBVc0yC1D0X22cnwk5BSGqTwm1U8nUk1JnofF2OfQMzboR8sVq-CeNqdLDmYRVKNJhbJhIi5MkIw0_-G8UtJEB4KdDuqgXfnne6SnE7fe5Mt2nnHGlNrpI7mhQ/w640-h372/vaccinaiondifferenceBL020123.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This graph and my survival are dedicated to those of you who stubbornly refuse to believe that the m-RNA Covid vaccines indeed save lives. I am a living proof: 71 years of age, immuno-compromised and a candidate to die fast. Source: <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-01-18/how-the-pandemic-ripped-a-hole-in-working-age-america" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">How the Pandemic Ripped a Hole in Working-Age America.</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>Then there is the brutal war of annihilation the murderous Russian regime has been waging against Ukraine. I wrote enough about it <a href="https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2022/03/about-suffering.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2022/04/bad-karma.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>, while I still could write. Then I became too depressed.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGhwBwbNOIUOb0UcO_3FCN3BBZz55ijP_lXnD01tTqIeZ0nqiVJKChwjXvVhpS5rtl3azIA9rnIvH2Zx9WwM9AFwtVctPOcWUfA4_a9gMmMVuT76DgtVvNdB_H9hguHuCXa3eEo8kgp669OwIE6FyDCyhk-9rPky_iWewYk5odXpOw6hwKEcKEwGDEIw/s4032/Wawel.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGhwBwbNOIUOb0UcO_3FCN3BBZz55ijP_lXnD01tTqIeZ0nqiVJKChwjXvVhpS5rtl3azIA9rnIvH2Zx9WwM9AFwtVctPOcWUfA4_a9gMmMVuT76DgtVvNdB_H9hguHuCXa3eEo8kgp669OwIE6FyDCyhk-9rPky_iWewYk5odXpOw6hwKEcKEwGDEIw/w640-h480/Wawel.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Royal Wawel Castle and the Vistula River in the center of Kraków. Source: Patzek. </td></tr></tbody></table><p>In October, I visited Poland and found myself in my beloved Kraków. In the streets of the old city, I could hear Ukrainian voices echoing everywhere. I saw thousands of young Ukrainians of student age, together with their mothers and grandmothers. Men were conspicuously missing. The Ukrainians were generally well-dressed, well groomed, and good-looking. Among the Poles, I found out, there was a cold realization that we are in this war of survival until the very end, and we must stick together no matter what the costs are. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFEA_pNDF_mRlLEecpoGx8yX8u0TuWo2TgdmJdAjFNNHIyQNGpN3NYMqe66OPuAulRlgYiscTKNiUekBv-vI5hlX2IPO6nR3--m9HQ9JF_-2gmj0BlS6sjqURxIWOd0Q6UGQX4pWzNefQQ002Ku0v8VMiZRuV59UMknk6VYEMtf6ozkl1qKRC8UUsWCA/s4032/UkraniniansprotestinginKrakow.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFEA_pNDF_mRlLEecpoGx8yX8u0TuWo2TgdmJdAjFNNHIyQNGpN3NYMqe66OPuAulRlgYiscTKNiUekBv-vI5hlX2IPO6nR3--m9HQ9JF_-2gmj0BlS6sjqURxIWOd0Q6UGQX4pWzNefQQ002Ku0v8VMiZRuV59UMknk6VYEMtf6ozkl1qKRC8UUsWCA/w480-h640/UkraniniansprotestinginKrakow.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Each day, a small group of Ukrainians demonstrates in the Old Market Square (Rynek) in Kraków and is seen by tens of thousands of tourists from all over the world. People stop, give money, and reflect. Source: Patzek.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>I left Poland 42 years ago and have had fundamental misgivings about current Polish government for six years. Yet, I have never felt so painfully and hopelessly my Polishness as I do now. Back in Poland, I felt at home as much as ever. I wish I could say the same about the divided, angry US.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigCfNrSGoV-cgWL88sFK24UAwPlg8nQt8W0yc7IH1640P8m6MQ-wnh2KgBB3cRDTQuzKbNcQJhBqzaiyKWvQpxQlAUROwldaukjYfuQZHSgM040YWa4L5ENaCn_Zr4hEelvwxRuKvayuy-VU_4LAf42NrzxWMIFFNSqrq5N3cJBq61fP1KsZNQWqNV3A/s4032/BrzezinskiinKrakow.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigCfNrSGoV-cgWL88sFK24UAwPlg8nQt8W0yc7IH1640P8m6MQ-wnh2KgBB3cRDTQuzKbNcQJhBqzaiyKWvQpxQlAUROwldaukjYfuQZHSgM040YWa4L5ENaCn_Zr4hEelvwxRuKvayuy-VU_4LAf42NrzxWMIFFNSqrq5N3cJBq61fP1KsZNQWqNV3A/w640-h480/BrzezinskiinKrakow.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The US Ambassador to Poland, Mark Brzeziński, is giving very strong assurances to Poland and Ukraine in a <a href="https://jubileusz.pau.krakow.pl/sesje-i-prelegenci/rownowaga-czy-zagrozenia/ambasador-mark-brzezinski/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">40 minute interview</a> at the plenary meeting of the Polish Academy of Arts & Sciences (PAU) in the giant aula of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. I am now a member of the PAU Committee on Threats to Civilization. Source: Patzek, Oct. 18, 2022.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>I have the following observation for my fellow Americans. The courage-deficient people everywhere look for excuses to stop the courageous and feel secure again. So let's not be focusing on Mr. Putin so much, but let's think instead of the courageous people of Ukraine and Poland defending the courage-deficient everywhere. It is not only about money, as the generous Biden administration would have us believe. Americans, again, are in the forefront of global resistance to Evil. We must not forget about this, even when we busy ourselves with electing a Kevin McCarthy to the position of House Speaker. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRQmCN7_zum_Y1EVByTNoGgdmQgkeLCKx-JFHG3GUYgvjwp9QOeevUc2FoCoYS4Lw56SU0WrzDvNS-k5V69etOb0g8F_WrstOks8nYdqqHf0SOcyelDhc9Lj7lkvGHypY5E8HmtJcLloFrZkzeHOcsNRw3bwC1SkE__z1899MzmLhN7fzlaHVjsrWlkA/s3721/FacesofBuchavicims.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1720" data-original-width="3721" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRQmCN7_zum_Y1EVByTNoGgdmQgkeLCKx-JFHG3GUYgvjwp9QOeevUc2FoCoYS4Lw56SU0WrzDvNS-k5V69etOb0g8F_WrstOks8nYdqqHf0SOcyelDhc9Lj7lkvGHypY5E8HmtJcLloFrZkzeHOcsNRw3bwC1SkE__z1899MzmLhN7fzlaHVjsrWlkA/w640-h296/FacesofBuchavicims.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The faces of some of the ordinary Ukrainians slaughtered in Bucha by the Russian soldiers. They were mothers, fathers, children and grandparents. Their lives became intertwined by a tragic fate: For weeks in March 2022, their bodies would lie along a single street in Bucha. May they rest in peace, while the world avenges them. Source: The New York Times investigative <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/21/world/europe/bucha-ukraine-massacre-victims.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">report</a>, 12/21/2022.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Thank you, the New York Times, for your service to humanity. World needs to remember the Russian atrocities in Ukraine. If you wonder why Poles have been coping so well with over 4 million of Ukrainian refugees (equivalent to almost 40 million refugees in the US, in one wave), it is because the Poles remember. Today's Russian soldier murderers are the grandsons and great-grandsons of the men who murdered hundreds of thousands of Poles during and after WWII, post September 17 1939, and especially post January 1945.</p><p>I am writing these words on January 6, 2023, during the Orthodox Christmas. May all the Russians, who oppose the atrocities committed in their name by the butcher of Chechnya, Syria and now of Ukraine, live in peace. May you have the courage to act and organize, like we did in Poland in 1979. Remember, because of our small actions then communism in Europe perished, the Soviet Union fell apart, and Germany was unified. You too could become a part of the civilized world and have normal lives. But you must act first to better your great country once and for all. Change will take a long time. So please have patience, my quiet Russian friends.</p><p><b>P.S. 01/09/2023.</b> As luck would have it here is a great communication between <a href="https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Dr. Nathan Hagens</a>, who organized our SasquatchJedi forum, and <a href="https://www.s23m.com/life/index.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Dr. Jorn Bettin</a>, an Australian mathematician and much more... Dr Bettin, graciously agreed to make his comment public. The highlights are mine. Enjoy.</p><p>Dear Nate,</p><p>Many thanks for the continuing stream of educational dialogues. The latest dialogue around the simple story of civilisation should register with many people.</p><p>I don't know whether you've had any time to look into the references below on human cognitive diversity.</p><p>With your original background in finance the following article may be a good entry point:</p><p>https://autcollab.org/2022/11/08/autistic-people-are-not-for-sale/.</p><p>I concur with your assessment that the human superorganism has no clue what it is doing, neither collectively, nor at the level of the big corporations and the few individuals who routinely make decisions that affect billions and millions of people. The current social operating model gives a few "culturally well adjusted" people enormous abilities to influence billions of people in a way that perpetuates suicidal paradigmatic inertia.</p><p><span style="background-color: #fcff01;">Your analogy of the brainless amoeba does a good job at conveying the global level of human collective intelligence, i.e. zero, but it glosses over the very real implications of social power gradients.</span></p><p>The current system amplifies the influence of the opinions and whims of a few people (including algorithms that are designed to act as extensions of these people) by several orders of magnitude. At the same time these people are subject to the same cognitive limits as all humans – if anything they may lack sensitivity and self reflective capacities, not understanding that their influence, amplified to the scale of millions and billions of people invariably causes great harm to large numbers of human and nonhuman living creatures. There is only one conclusion: <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">it is a form of collective insanity</span> to allow such concentrations of social power, and within this system, the only people who are in a position to do something about this state of affairs are those few who currently hold positions of highly concentrated social power – but these people are in these positions because they are hopelessly addicted to be most dangerous drug for humans, namely social power. We have to recognise that t<span style="background-color: #fcff01;">hese people are addicts</span>, and we need to start treating them as such. Humans have severe cognitive limitations, but once we start acknowledging our limitations, we can at least organise for optimal collective intelligence – a small positive number, not quite zero.</p><p>It is delusional to think that any of the addicts in positions of social power will ever voluntarily give up their drug, just as it is delusional to think that any other system of large scale social organisation based on some different form of coercive control or influence would be any better or less corruptible. I have a background in mathematics, and have spent over 30 years of my working life getting paid for surfacing tacit knowledge, ensuring psychological safety, and establishing shared understanding across disciplines and cultures. I am also acutely aware how often misunderstandings accumulate, even between people with the best intentions, and how people quickly become judgemental, and thereby invoke social power dynamics that can get in the way of establishing a basis for de-powered dialogue and shared understanding.</p><p><span style="background-color: #fcff01;">What I loved about the dialogue around the simple story of civilisation was the recognition that all attempts of control at large scale are futile. </span>I fully concur, and we can build on this insight, co-creating optimal environments for nurturing collective human intelligence (https://autcollab.org/2021/01/10/the-social-architecture-of-collective-intelligence/).</p><p>We know how to do this. It is not rocket science. It involves what I refer to as "de-powering" everything we do, ultimately including nuclear disarmament. This involves reducing energy consumption, as well as reducing social power gradients by orders of magnitude, and nurturing the evolution of small, human scale ecologies of mutual care. The latter can occur in parallel with offering palliative care to established powered-up super human scale organisations, including compassionate exit paths for the inmates.</p><p>What you refer to as the great simplification will occur in two basic ways:</p><p>Voluntarily and consciously, by realising that emergent human scale ecologies of mutual care provide an avenue for incrementally phasing out super human scale institutions of power, without needing to come up with an overall grandiose master plan that pretends to offer THE solution. Human scale is small, it is local, it is beautiful, and by definition is compatible with human cognitive limits – it protects us from the grandiose delusions of control that have culminated in the predicament of powered-up industrialised civilisation.</p><p>Involuntarily, by forces beyond human control, such as increasingly severe extreme weather events, ecological collapse, and breakdown of brittle energy intensive and under-resourced systems that implode under their own bureaucratic weight.</p><p><span style="background-color: #fcff01;">Given the addictive nature of social power, the second path will play a prominent role. This is the sad reality that has unfolded. We have to face it.</span></p><p>All that we can do is to offer support to the few who are consciously working on the first path, in many different localities, surfacing and distilling locally relevant knowledge, including indigenous ways of knowing that are still accessible. The marginalised people who are working on this path constitute the cultural immune system of human societies (see reference below). Some of us have been on this path for many decades (https://autcollab.org/2022/10/17/repairing-the-cultural-immune-system-of-human-societies/), and increasingly we are collaborating, both globally and locally. In contrast to culturally well adjusted neuronormative people, Autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people are "not culturally well adjusted" from their first day of life onwards. We are anthropologists by birth, and for many of us, attempting to become "culturally well adjusted" to our sick society was never really a survivable option (https://autcollab.org/2022/12/28/healing-from-autistic-trauma/).</p><p>If you are interested, at some point we could engage in a dialogue around de-powering, and the emergent ecologies of mutual care that are being nurtured into existence by those who have never been fully "functional" parts of the global human superorganism.</p><p>Jorn</p><p>Jorn Bettin, Partner</p><p><a href="https://www.s23m.com/life/index.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">S23M – Collaboration for Life</a></p><p><b>P.S.P.S. 01/10/2023</b>. The readers' comment section to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/climate/earth-hottest-years.html?unlocked_article_code=7_eiv6mpGXRpKJP_EC2PfRtAb7MUVBBJ6QVIFQOZ88Ph-9OfG57f3pMjelSi0RH3Xv3Q3u8esnPjnNCHRrlfTJ04_arjvk0bB3QXsWmeh5JpxiXomwCvmp-5RB6Nef8q7WSrIdjdvsVb6jBdw2xdafGhGZ5c06zv4OuIazN7G-YxbO2xAdNP2mUWbEK-wI3SXcWO_cKyzSRZyO2FdYbkwmOR_D9XfmOaoKeipB78QKT8ClQQEhI0zaXhwXQZdZnsaPEI6iz8cdZFP_FJsL0axItVt2n0uyqsKCIjXbj5ZVDa_Vb2WdY502v1-3vHcH6SbVftPLvTNr-plVu5l7hqwytjwGsz25E&smid=share-url" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">this NYT article</a> about climate change have seeds of understanding in the chaff of predictably consistent denial that follows the same old 2-3 talking points. The two sets of readers' opinions are parts of the two dominant social narratives: the Democratic and Republican ones. These two narratives are deeply flawed for very different reasons, but here the Democratic one corresponds to the science of climate change. The Republican narrative defined the attacks on Paul Ehrlich and Jane Woodall I linked at the beginning of this post.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo7F8J0NyGzVVRa1nDvte52zX1GQST8y4-m--y3ua_Kf5n8ven4QP9Dlq-ua8-X7zHctonq-5dCNU50Hetek5_kF-BdbC5gjBl74Bc4Uh7Q41J7Uls_x8kieLj0sLdVqpT2VvRj_YsCce8CpbT8eiVNE1N9JVC9wmLNmiRFFGBll2zOGr8D7MrW2lqAQ/s2445/2022temperatureanomaly.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1379" data-original-width="2445" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo7F8J0NyGzVVRa1nDvte52zX1GQST8y4-m--y3ua_Kf5n8ven4QP9Dlq-ua8-X7zHctonq-5dCNU50Hetek5_kF-BdbC5gjBl74Bc4Uh7Q41J7Uls_x8kieLj0sLdVqpT2VvRj_YsCce8CpbT8eiVNE1N9JVC9wmLNmiRFFGBll2zOGr8D7MrW2lqAQ/w640-h360/2022temperatureanomaly.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Please click on this image to enlarge it and see the text. Notice that outside of Oman and and Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula heats up at >2 times the global average. Of the 476 gifted Saudi students who might apply to KAUST, only two indicated that they wanted to study earth sciences. The dominant narrative tells them to study AI and/or genomics or other "omics."</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><b>P.S.<sup>3 </sup>01/15/2023</b> If you want to see the Age of Anthropocene up close and personal, please watch the amazing 2022 Amazon documentary, <a href="https://www.whattowatch.com/watching-guides/wildcat-release-date-first-looks-and-what-happens-in-this-documentary-film-about-a-former-soldier-saved-by-an-orphaned-ocelot#:~:text=Wildcat%20on%20Prime%20Video%20reveals,an%20orphaned%20ocelot%20in%20Peru." rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Wildcat</a>. This incredibly intense movie about the animal victims of progress left me emotionally drained. When I say "animals" I include the ocelot and other inhabitants of the Peruvian tropical forest under siege, and the emotionally destroyed ex-British soldier who saved the cat to redeem and save himself. The soldier's love for the ocelot is so raw and intense that it burns him and his other relationship. In this proud, biological sense <a href="https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2023/01/on-snowflakes-blogs-and-loneliness.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">we all are</a> animals. </p>Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-74591786563601741962022-04-08T21:52:00.099-05:002022-06-22T01:48:07.905-05:00Bad Karma<p> I have been thinking about how to capture current craziness that is unbearable, way up from the usual level of having been insufferable for the last five years. The problem with intelligent people, a saying goes, is that they think people think. This is demonstrably false for at least one half of the global population, venting their grievances, tribalism and anger in real blood baths or on virtual monsters called Facebook and many other names. Other media platforms, such as Fox Lies & Entertainment and the Russian TV 1 News are dedicated to the repetitive stoking of anger and hatred by all means possible. The incurious and lazy, make it 50 milion Americans and Russians - each - find comfort in this onslaught of familiar propaganda that reminds them of church sermons, drug highs and drunken stupor.</p><p>In this atmosphere of sweeping hatred and ignorance, the crazed, slighted vor (the Russian slang for a mafia thief), murderer and war criminal, President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, decided to attack Ukraine. No doubt he was prodded to undertake this fateful, irreversible action by the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/09/01/joint-statement-on-the-u-s-ukraine-strategic-partnership/" target="_blank">September 1, 2021</a>, joint document between the Ukrainian and American governments. In this document, sponsored by the US White House, Ukraine was encouraged to join NATO, a real no-no to the imperial Russia, just like the Salvador Allende's democratic government in Chile was a no-no to the imperial America. A war criminal and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dr. Henry Kissinger, was the author of the Chilean coup d'état in 1973, one of many in the US neighborhood. Kissinger's argument was that the US didn't want the "contagion" of democracy and resistance to US supremacy to spread in the Western Hemisphere. And spread it did not. </p><p>Please remember that the Ukrainian-American letter of understanding was signed on the highly significant date of September 1. In Poland, this date was burned into the collective memory of four generations of Poles. On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany brutally attacked Poland from the west, south and north. Hitler dared to move his entire army to the east, emboldened by the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-soviet-pact" target="_blank">German-Soviet pact</a> signed 8 days earlier. </p><p>The German-Soviet pact consisted of two parts, one public and one secret. The public part was a non-aggression pact in which each signatory promised not to attack the other for ten years. The secret part of the pact was a protocol that established Soviet and German spheres of influence in eastern Europe. It recognized Estonia, Latvia, and Bessarabia as falling within the Soviet sphere. (About two thirds of Bessarabia lies within modern-day Moldova, with the Ukrainian Budjak region covering the southern coastal region and part of the Ukrainian Chernivtsi Oblast covering a small area in the north. The Ukrainian part is just south of Odessa and Mariupol. So what the czarist Russia gained and lost, the Soviets were to take over again. Now it is Putin's term to steal some more land for Mother Russia and most Russians are elated.) The Nazis and Soviets agreed to divide Poland along the line of the Narev, Vistula and San Rivers. </p><p>So Hitler knew that his faithful Soviet ally would commence an attack on Poland from the east roughly two weeks later. The 21-year old Second Republic of Poland was to be annihilated. My grandfather helped to resurrect that Poland after 150 years of partitions. He was an officer in the Polish army formed by general Piłsudski in the czarist Russia. (This was the first of three wars my grandfather fought with the Russians. He had advanced degrees in chemistry and physics and didn't want to be a soldier for life.) The purpose of the new Polish army was to help the badly failing Russian army to fight Germans. The Russians lost, the Bolsheviks took over, and immediately signed a non-aggression pact with Germany (rings a bell?). But the battle-hardened, intact and incredibly motivated Polish army rolled west and freed Poland from the Soviets, Germans and Austrians. </p><p>Thus, in 1939, the Soviet Union collaborated in starting the biggest slaughter of civilians in human history - 60 million people altogether. The Red Army contributed mightily to that slaughter. So the territories Stalin stole working with his best Nazi friends, Putin is setting out to "recover" from the Ukrainian "Nazis." </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0zI_n7GcbJgGouA4Layj2R1s0-MbvXqiUI_9zWppG8pLKXAIdWteLczO9dpi65flrgJPCoH-VXf-DpJfB-M_aozWF3bF0Kipt5Nc6I0JQ_DxpPpzDIidPjg4cv7TQBkgzkINdXBJPopV4KfrtgIpKECHO-qNzB3x7V5jRibjA11uGegNQWqj5kaQNIg/s320/nazi-russia.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="320" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0zI_n7GcbJgGouA4Layj2R1s0-MbvXqiUI_9zWppG8pLKXAIdWteLczO9dpi65flrgJPCoH-VXf-DpJfB-M_aozWF3bF0Kipt5Nc6I0JQ_DxpPpzDIidPjg4cv7TQBkgzkINdXBJPopV4KfrtgIpKECHO-qNzB3x7V5jRibjA11uGegNQWqj5kaQNIg/s1600/nazi-russia.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The more things change, the more they stay the same. The young Germans in late 1930s(?) and the young Russians today are subjected to similar brain washing. In the meantime, the Russian soldiers rape 10-year old girls in Ukraine, following the well-known Red Army battle cry: "a girl into a woman; a woman into a corpse."</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия, the all-powerful NKVD director until 1953, wanted to establish a lasting union of Nazi Germany and Soviet Union. His ambition was to partition the world, with Japan being a junior partner. Stalin, who was scared and mistrustful of the hyper murderous Beria, overrode him. Beria was kidnapped and executed by his fearful comrades just after Stalin's death. Beria's NKVD prepared for Stalin the list of 14,700 Polish soldiers, mostly officers, and 11,000 police officers and border guards captured by the Red Army after September 17, 1939, recommending their execution. His list was approved by the Politburo (Stalin) on March 3, 1940. The Polish POW were executed one-by-one with a pistol shot to the back of their heads between April 3 and May 19, 1940. The Russian executioners had to use German pistols from the German arms shipments to the Soviet Union. The Russian pistols were too flimsy and would fail. Stalin was cleaning up his stable before the anticipated conflict with Germany. My wife's uncle, lieutenant Stanisław Paulisz, was likely one of these murdered Polish officers. He disappeared without a trace fighting Russians in eastern Poland. A partial list of the Polish victims is <a href="https://katyn.miejscapamieci.gov.pl/" target="_blank">here</a>. </p><p>Do you see the irony of current Russian propaganda, enthusiastically embraced by the Russian serfs and well received in some whataboutist circles in the West? </p><p>In summary, before you condemn Ukraine and the United States, please keep in mind that Russia is never to be trusted, ever. And the Ukrainians want nothing as badly as to stay away from the murderous Russian oppressors. So let's talk about Ukraine that is being looted, raped and murdered right now.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikohf4xzXz8mnC9bXpBXFLO3cW8SYnghGgFp3SKD3gyueVTW7AZdAOJ7i-GqMuQ3qcAI6UTyGy_KAlDTKMW61ZGlwzG6GeusW9WI2q6m2oDJJ6FWYq492V_3AdLppBNY85UuleEWf1KgZXDlW2qwXBVNw4jz7Jff2fjrrdorBa199m_0UOKVA7ZaR3ig/s2048/krematorskmisileattckkills50.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikohf4xzXz8mnC9bXpBXFLO3cW8SYnghGgFp3SKD3gyueVTW7AZdAOJ7i-GqMuQ3qcAI6UTyGy_KAlDTKMW61ZGlwzG6GeusW9WI2q6m2oDJJ6FWYq492V_3AdLppBNY85UuleEWf1KgZXDlW2qwXBVNw4jz7Jff2fjrrdorBa199m_0UOKVA7ZaR3ig/w640-h426/krematorskmisileattckkills50.webp" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Russian missile strike on a small railway station, Kramatorsk, killed at least 50 civilians, many women and children. If the Russians wanted to stoke global revulsion and hatred, they succeeded admirably by displaying again their customary cruelty and disregard for human life.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>As every ruthless, murderous dictator, Putin is spectacularly misinformed. His underlings tell him lies, simply because they are too scared for their skins and privileges to act otherwise. Putin is proceeding like any infallible, deified Czar of All Russia (the Big Brother in the "1984" terminology) would. The implementation of his decisions is left to the princes (generals and oligarchs; the Inner Party members in the "1984" terminology) and boyars (members of the military, oppression and propaganda apparatus; the Party members). The narodnost' (the little people; "prols" in the 1984 terminology) and especially muzhiki (the peasants, villagers in small remote locations) have nothing to say and must follow orders from the boyars or else (yes, they can be killed on the spot or imprisoned). This is how the Russian society has worked for eight centuries. What made me aghast is how little Russians have changed in the last 100 years, including a brief, sad interlude during which the prols could actually act somewhat independently. That fleeting feeling of freedom scared the prols silly and they ran away from not being ordered around as fast as they could, straight into the strong arms of Father Putin.</p>But what makes an ordinary Russian conscript today so cruel and greedy? To answer this question we need to go back 130 years, to the works of Maxim Gorky. <div><br /></div><div>THE PROPHET DISILLUSIONED:
MAXIM GORKY AND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS
is the wonderful <a href="https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/1057307/Kondoyanidi_georgetown_0076D_14453.pdf" target="_blank">Ph.D. dissertation </a>by
Anita A. Kondoyanidi, Georgetown University. Here are a few excerpts from her thesis: <div><br /></div><div>"[Maxim Gorky] concluded that only by self-educating, reading, and working, Russian
muzhiks could overcome their own violence, laziness, and cruelty. <div><br /></div><div>In his letters and
literary works, Gorky suggests that Russia’s despondent way of life gave rise to violence and cruelty
in its people; Russia’s open spaces cultivated the peasants’ striving for unlimited freedom that in
the end was more destructive than useful. Gorky added to this complicated debate, by creating a dark portrait of the peasant Gavrila in his
short story “Chelkash” published in 1895 in Russian Wealth (Russkoe bogatstvo). Gorky’s work
predated Anton Chekhov’s famously pessimistic take on “who was the Russian muzhik” in his
short story “Muzhiki” by two years. </div><div><br /></div><div>Unlike Chekhov, who did not express his outright contempt
for peasants and emphasized the force of poverty in determining their unfortunate fate, Gorky
underscored the peasants’ alleged cruelty and their irrepressible passion for property. Gorky
strongly believed that, first and foremost, the peasant’s “fanatical” passion for possessions was in
his blood, and second, that the social culture and circumstances only reinforced his greed. <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">In order to accumulate money, the peasants were ready to commit the worst crimes</span>. The power of
money was the only power that they recognized."</div></div></div><div><br /></div><div>This explains why 130 years later, the Russian soldiers in Ukraine rob, rape and murder blindly without much encouragement. One of the killed soldiers had pockets full of stolen jewelry. The Ukrainians found the soldier's phone, and sent a picture of his corpse and stolen possessions to his wife. In another reported story, a group of Russian soldiers robbed Ukrainian civilians and ordered them to search the web on how to sell the stolen goods. The Russian army radio exchanges intercepted by the German intelligence demonstrate how the Russian soldiers in Bucha were ordered to interrogate the captured civilians and then kill them. Exactly like in the good, old NKVD times. Putin should know as a colonel in the KGB, the inheritor of the distinguished NKVD tradition of murdering and starving some 10 million of inhabitants of the Soviet Union, mostly during peace time.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJP1BR8bYx1EN6CUejpC-Z8CWVBYVPwkeP0_IDEVfifSksH9I7BFGSeW2oafrPFHmntm430J61pXDXGrV46zt7M1AhNyjLsSJ9nsMUepZYW41RyQ9Y9WLiojiV9ThcFNE95MCPNLorjcUN75F9fHM52w8hmORWwade0IuPaz9VIHQNMY_l0pzQ_RO6Jg/s1236/RussiancommanderwhoorderedBucha.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="577" data-original-width="1236" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJP1BR8bYx1EN6CUejpC-Z8CWVBYVPwkeP0_IDEVfifSksH9I7BFGSeW2oafrPFHmntm430J61pXDXGrV46zt7M1AhNyjLsSJ9nsMUepZYW41RyQ9Y9WLiojiV9ThcFNE95MCPNLorjcUN75F9fHM52w8hmORWwade0IuPaz9VIHQNMY_l0pzQ_RO6Jg/w640-h298/RussiancommanderwhoorderedBucha.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Azatbek Omurbekov is commander of the 64th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade that has been accused of war crimes. Activists say he is the "Butcher of Bucha", but this is not confirmed yet. He is a Buryat muzhik turned a leutenant-colonel boyar. He goes to church and praises the Russian Orthodox God. Image source: RUSSIAN MILITARY.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>And now the large Russian rocket that killed 50 civilians and wounded 100, had "за дети" or "for children" inscribed on it. With surreal cruelty, the Russian boyars, who are the most daring and consistent liars anywhere, accused Ukrainians of staging this massacre. <b style="background-color: #fcff01;">Bad Karma.</b></div><div><b style="background-color: #fcff01;"><br /></b></div>Let's talk now about the bad karma Russia has generated outside of their faithful supporters, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/11/technology/china-russia-propaganda.html" target="_blank">China</a>, Hungary, and the foxy tRumpistas. Here are a few practical outcomes of the Russian actions:<div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Europe, including Norway, Sweden and Finland, has been united and pushed back into the American orbit. No one but the foolish, crazed Putin would be able to achieve such unity and increases of military expenditures.</li><li>Australia, South Korea, New Zealand and Taiwan have redoubled their ties with the US.</li><li>Ukraine has become a mortal enemy of Russia that will not be able to hold on to its territorial gains. There will be a bloody, Afghanistan-style insurgency, we (the US) will maintain alive with superior weapons that will kill thousands of Russians and Ukrainians.</li><li>The global economy is over; the costs are raising everywhere and there is no going back. This is also very bad news for China, right on the heels of locking up 26 million people in Shanghai, because of COVID.</li><li>For a brief period, China and Russia will emerge as allies, like the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. This alliance will fall apart, because China wants to subjugate Russia economically, but Russia views itself as a primitive force of nature, an empire destined to rule over 12 time zones.</li><li>Green technologies and efforts to fight the ever-accelerating global warming will be largely ignored, while we mine more coal, crude oil and natural gas to keep warm and keep lights on.</li><li>The world is closer to the brink of extinguishing the human race and all else by an accidental or otherwise nuclear war. The fools here, make it 100 million Americans, are cheering the prospects of a nuclear war "there." The Russian fools (2/3 of the population or another 100 million people) are shouting symmetrically, let's "nuke the Americans." This attitude is as dangerous as it gets.</li></ol><div>In short, the world as we know has ceased to exist or the world will cease to exist, period. In that case, the only lucky ones will die in a thermonuclear flash.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><b>P.S. (04/09/2022)</b> This cartoon was reprinted in Poland from the Bulgarian press: "May 9 Victory Parade in Moscow." (For the younger readers: These parades are to commemorate the end of WWII in Europe, and by implication, in 2022, the "denazification" of Ukraine. In one week or so, the Russian army will hit eastern Ukraine hard to score a May 9th victory for their "Gipper," who cannot lose militarily and his head.)</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNqna1f-JAnfgs0CYIwmM2C9nMiLeqSsst4yc4MpXKchd2zp8eJ8Ay7hpEUYj2C7LtNaFabRUu7VfLt-S-NNvirsktjs3yPhnRpUAjjDtzV3nVHWm0nM94veUadcBCmihnasaeErtytrvrMsF1zlRYeAkRoS3GWHAPN1GFUObm83nFRtJpMfJuvh8bQw/s738/may92022.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="540" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNqna1f-JAnfgs0CYIwmM2C9nMiLeqSsst4yc4MpXKchd2zp8eJ8Ay7hpEUYj2C7LtNaFabRUu7VfLt-S-NNvirsktjs3yPhnRpUAjjDtzV3nVHWm0nM94veUadcBCmihnasaeErtytrvrMsF1zlRYeAkRoS3GWHAPN1GFUObm83nFRtJpMfJuvh8bQw/w293-h400/may92022.jpg" width="293" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><b>P.S.P.S. (4/10/2022)</b> Here is an interview with a popular Polish-Silesian writer who was born 15 km from where I was born. His family came from the Eastern Prussia and was subjected to the full treatment by the Red Army, including the murderous NKVD troops. Likely, 140,000 Silesians were murdered by the Soviets and their Polish communist stooges post-1945, but this is not the subject of his interview. The <a href="https://kultura.onet.pl/wiadomosci/szczepan-twardoch-rosja-pozostanie-rosja-nawet-jesli-putin-odejdzie/dfcswwb" target="_blank">interview is in Polish</a>, so use Google translator. His basic point is that Russia is irreformable. Such are the properties of the "Russian soul," Sołżenicyn included.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>P.S.<sup>3</sup> (04/17/2022)</b> A breathtaking <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/27/vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-power" target="_blank">editorial by Vladimir Sorokin</a> in the Guardian. Sorokin is the best <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/16/books/vladimir-sorokin-russia-ukraine.html" target="_blank">Russian writer</a> alive, now in exile in Germany.</div><div><br /></div><div>"On 24 February, the armor of the “enlightened autocrat” that had housed Vladimir Putin for the previous 20 years cracked and fell to pieces. The world saw a monster – crazed in its desires and ruthless in its decisions. The monster had grown gradually, gaining strength from year to year, marinating in its own absolute authority, imperial aggression, hatred for western democracy, and malice fueled by the resentment engendered by the fall of the USSR. Now, Europe will have to deal, not with the former Putin, but the new Putin who has cast aside his mask of “business partnership” and “peaceful collaboration”. There shall never again be peace with him. How and why has this come to pass? <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/27/vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-power" target="_blank">Read on</a>...</div><div><br /></div><div>Once you read his editorial, you will see that Sorokin and I draw very similar pictures of Russia as a neo-medieval, hyper-oppressive state in which boyars, who are tsar's enforcers, wield power with utmost brutality so that the narodnost' knows who's in charge and keep their heads down.</div><div><br /></div><div>The same hyper-brutality, rapism, and unhinged greed characterize the narodnost' as the Russian soldiers in Ukraine, who by now have murdered and raped many thousands of Ukrainians. For eight centuries now the "Russian soul" has been soaked in blood and utmost violence.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>P.S.<sup>4</sup> (04/22/2022) </b><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/world/europe/moldova-ukraine-russia.html" target="_blank">Poor Moldova</a> is finally seeing the light, but it might be the Russian panzer train barreling her way. As I described in this post, Moldova was assigned to the Soviet Union by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of August 23, 1939, that was the last major nail in the coffin of the old world. The Soviets enabled the Nazis to start WWII, the biggest conflagration the world has ever seen. In the end, it did not work out for Stalin, when on June 22, 1941, Hitler decided to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa" target="_blank">attack Russia</a>. Twenty seven milion Russians, too many killed by the Red Army's complete disregard for human life and by German grotesque cruelty, perished. This casualty estimate may be inflated to balance the earlier NKVD mass atrocities in 1937 and 1938. But what's a few million Soviets (not just Russians) this or that way, when a new better Soviet Union 1.0 was being erected? </div><div><br /></div><div>Putin is following in the footsteps of that 1939 pact, and wants Moldova back in his Soviet Union 2.0. Moldova is also hampered by the fanatically pro-Russian and completely <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/15/world/europe/transnistria-moldova-russia-ukraine.html" target="_blank">brainwashed Transnistria</a>. A week ago, the New York Times published a video interview with several brain-dead Russian-speaking people there, who only watch Rossiya 24 and TV-1 News, and have clinically altered minds. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>P.S.<sup>5</sup> (05/20/2022) </b>I am glad that Dr. Timothy Snyder (a professor of history at Yale University and the author of many books on fascism, totalitarianism and European history) has repeated this blog in the New York Times. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/opinion/russia-fascism-ukraine-putin.html" target="_blank">We Should Say It. Russia Is Fascist</a>.
May 19, 2022.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>P.S.<sup>6</sup> (05/20/2022) </b>I was dismayed beyond belief (disgusted as hell?) with the May 19, New York Times Editorial Board pontification, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/opinion/america-ukraine-war-support.html" target="_blank">The War in Ukraine Is Getting Complicated, and America Isn’t Ready</a>. How dare those little Chamberlain, Quisling or Petain persons speak for us, Americans? I was trying to imagine those insular people in their safe offices negotiating by email the treacherous words they would publish in their global bully pulpit; the words that would make the Russian/Hungarian-sponsored right-wing traitors here nod their shaven, swastika tattooed heads with understanding. Several of these persons are of Jewish descent. Have they forgotten what other people like them did to their ancestors in 1938? In 1939? In 1940? In 1941? For fuck's sake, have their lost their minds, or did they talk too much to the powerful Russian, pro-Putin mafia in Israel? Have they not heard the real world leaders, like the Ukrainian President Żeleński, or the Estonian Prime Minister <a href="https://twitter.com/MunSecConf/status/1512451999622643714" target="_blank">Kajakallas</a>, explain to the likes of them how one must deal with the mad-dog Russian fascists?!</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz-csFL5PAp-PlhBo6chXaP_JQ2Y6lvuL_9eUkg-7-sglNJSEXXGKSODkQQLlT4X1leLrOBfg-XBBSb953dDkXPD0LX4BbL2pCkvfI2yu2zPg6hjFPpbeWGMd-74d9H7nCI2HvAyrPGQ1cIDAKCyYpcTcrF74O9zMesKE3ZME-E4iMobUltButdQd1iw/s607/wtf.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="607" data-original-width="513" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz-csFL5PAp-PlhBo6chXaP_JQ2Y6lvuL_9eUkg-7-sglNJSEXXGKSODkQQLlT4X1leLrOBfg-XBBSb953dDkXPD0LX4BbL2pCkvfI2yu2zPg6hjFPpbeWGMd-74d9H7nCI2HvAyrPGQ1cIDAKCyYpcTcrF74O9zMesKE3ZME-E4iMobUltButdQd1iw/w338-h400/wtf.jpg" width="338" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This expression of my distraught is dedicated to the distinguished <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/opinion/editorialboard.html" target="_blank">Member Persons</a> (They/Them) of the New York Times Editorial Board. BTW, have you noticed how other countries with real existential threats elect young intelligent leaders, while we in the US elect geriatric mummies with dementia? </td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><br /></div>Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-70610568941290309652022-03-09T19:17:00.156-06:002022-06-22T01:50:09.584-05:00Hope Dies Last<p>I hope that the face of this boy being arrested in Moscow for demonstrating against the regime is the symbol of the future Russia.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj_Z-ZE8l7US8c_QZaL9rDHcTRNo88XHvsq_Gru8qkBVMfyE2yxe0v-sJzNkWxDadgS7rGAW5KsvEuVzE8pHDXz0gGiGGFAtY7jqzz3VE9pzOUyEResZWvtL4Pezt9A7CJrvqZV_6RxGLF-iA00b1nF8JlKuCHKPPyPuQCv4sMBBBtb0VVrkfzk7EMLZg=s3385" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1985" data-original-width="3385" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj_Z-ZE8l7US8c_QZaL9rDHcTRNo88XHvsq_Gru8qkBVMfyE2yxe0v-sJzNkWxDadgS7rGAW5KsvEuVzE8pHDXz0gGiGGFAtY7jqzz3VE9pzOUyEResZWvtL4Pezt9A7CJrvqZV_6RxGLF-iA00b1nF8JlKuCHKPPyPuQCv4sMBBBtb0VVrkfzk7EMLZg=w640-h376" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Getting detained at the ripe age of 10 or 11 must have been a defining moment in the life of this young man. To me, it does not look like he was soaking in the constant barrage of propaganda that became much worse by January 2022. Most internet links between Russia and the world are now severed, and over 80% of all Russians get their daily propaganda poison pills from state TV. No independent media outlets are left in this Soviet Union 2.0 Putin is erecting. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw" target="_blank">Narodonst</a>' (the little people or "Prols" in the "1984" nomenclature.) must now march in lockstep, as they have had to for the last eight centuries, starting from the Mongols, and with a short, unhappy pause in the 1990s.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Let me then take you back to the old Soviet Union 1.0 and its vassal state, the communist Poland that controlled most of my life prior to 1981. Here are the five defining moments for me as a child and young man. </p><p>The first moment came on a sunny day in July 1961, when I was a nine-years old boy, and three months after <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gagarin:_First_in_Space" target="_blank">Gagarin's</a> maiden orbiting flight. That day I changed from a pupa to an adult butterfly. </p><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgxCCaphTq5xgXf2WKDnoEm8eYknPHvJmeBXlSMwoMqwD0fqyYb5ls8PGAOXfsbZVq5KIPW_KAYzjoHtP0A3n4F5DitZbqBBdRR0HYE1ge6i44TGjHIroDP7Ai85L5SWTnGy2as712_wrmy7Kcwfzp8Wi_CkBbQP9l7ozlVWNrftTvrGoLd-XZkujyl7g=s900"><img border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="900" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgxCCaphTq5xgXf2WKDnoEm8eYknPHvJmeBXlSMwoMqwD0fqyYb5ls8PGAOXfsbZVq5KIPW_KAYzjoHtP0A3n4F5DitZbqBBdRR0HYE1ge6i44TGjHIroDP7Ai85L5SWTnGy2as712_wrmy7Kcwfzp8Wi_CkBbQP9l7ozlVWNrftTvrGoLd-XZkujyl7g=w400-h189" width="400" /></a></div><p>We were in the Beskidy mountains on a family vacation. I went with my father on a long walk and started yacking about superiority of the Soviet communism that launched Gagarin. I was parroting what they taught us at school. My father looked at me strangely, and started explaining the Bolshevik revolution and the Polish-Soviet war of 1919/20, in which my grandfather was a volunteer under an assumed name. (With his degrees in physics and chemistry, the young Poland would not let grandpa fight and be killed.) My father then continued with Stalin's rule and the two hunger waves in Ukraine, where my grandfather's brother, my grand uncle Alexander, spent 21 years hiding from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka" target="_blank">Czeka</a> (Всеросси́йская чрезвыча́йная коми́ссия, the predecessor of GRU, NKVD and KGB, Putin's "firm"). My grand uncle was an ethnic German (there was no Polish state yet; all Polish territory was partitioned among Russia, Prussia and Austria) and director of the Polish theater in Vilnius. The Bolsheviks trapped him on is estate in eastern Ukraine. He pretended to be a field hand on his own land, and the Ukrainians never betrayed him to their new Soviet masters; for twenty one years and with millions of Ukrainians starved to death. Some of their grand grandchildren invited Russians few years ago to separate Eastern Ukraine from the west. Over that lazy afternoon, my whole world view was demolished and I loved my Grandfather even more. I still remember the lush green spruce and fir needles, and tree branches nodding quietly in the wind and watching my metamorphosis that much later would guide me to another world in America. We also picked up a load of chanterelle mushrooms that we then stewed in butter and with onions.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj2zfIKnOCuGIINf0qqi-YVhw7VFt7jNGGUpVXR99kzVwQrCS8O_k0NAP8IgmxX-LXvM3lDcNO8UNmIpocnQm-E2VUSWZUsIfWmaBY567D0Q-lMjP2N8nfzqq7CaP-TF2RagMZx5pI1o9hcqd9gO-tKH4Xu9Uav7oBLuYddsphMtyVizQRBO0OrmHEQmA=s1000" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1000" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj2zfIKnOCuGIINf0qqi-YVhw7VFt7jNGGUpVXR99kzVwQrCS8O_k0NAP8IgmxX-LXvM3lDcNO8UNmIpocnQm-E2VUSWZUsIfWmaBY567D0Q-lMjP2N8nfzqq7CaP-TF2RagMZx5pI1o9hcqd9gO-tKH4Xu9Uav7oBLuYddsphMtyVizQRBO0OrmHEQmA=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><p>Second, in May 1962, I received a telegram notifying us about the sudden death of my beloved Grandfather, a scientist and hero of three wars. I totally worshipped that strong, caring man. I was alone, and had no idea how to process this tragedy. I went to the fields and to my shaded swamp refuge to cry hidden there, while the local frogs and birds stood guard over me. When I came back home, my parents were already there, my father read the telegram, and angrily accused me of having no heart and playing outside, when I should have been mourning inside. Sixty year later, I still remember vividly the moment of opening that telegram, the capital block letters on a paper tape cut and glued in three pieces to half a sheet of paper made translucent by the sun, and the sense of surreal injustice of my father's words. </p><p>The third moment came in March 1968, when the university students in Gliwice started protesting against the lies in the press and were brutally beaten and arrested by milicja thugs. I was in 10th grade, but we too joined the students, were chased by the thugs into churches and also beaten. Those thugs in hot pursuit of us invaded "my" church of Wszystkich Świętych (All Saints). A friend of mine was beaten so severely that next day she was all blue in school. We all had to show up at school, because the secret police agents were looking for the missing pupils, and our great teachers could no longer cover for us. I still recall the brutality and contorted faces of the thugs beating children in front of the holy paintings and beneath the statues of saints. Then the Gomulka regime expelled most Jewish families in Poland, including several of my friends. That year, I won a national competition for the Kościuszko Foundation summer fellowship in the US, but could not go, because my father was not popular with the authorities. Instead, I went to my beloved Tatra mountains and met Joanna, whom I married 12 years later. I always joke that in a weird way I owe my wife and children to the brick-headed communists, <i>and</i> I still ended up in the US.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg6nFmb0EtWzoWGg_9OuHgkR3FuJldmWHiuWRVKnuL7ikEfwXoUAbpcPJUQD6dQyxBPQPd0AnYBsFIMLEmstLpV-a97azzLZgtzDqgwAJZ9XE-9cgKzjznA1dh0wpiY-SADBpr4Nxbe3vX-fqvH30T6xCEh1NvA0eKpUMPNYkwQpx4mb0eMxAJu6oO68Q=s2000" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1329" data-original-width="2000" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg6nFmb0EtWzoWGg_9OuHgkR3FuJldmWHiuWRVKnuL7ikEfwXoUAbpcPJUQD6dQyxBPQPd0AnYBsFIMLEmstLpV-a97azzLZgtzDqgwAJZ9XE-9cgKzjznA1dh0wpiY-SADBpr4Nxbe3vX-fqvH30T6xCEh1NvA0eKpUMPNYkwQpx4mb0eMxAJu6oO68Q=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is where I took Joanna on our first full-day hike. I fell in love at first sight with that girl.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>The fourth defining moment happened in early 1978 in Warsaw, when I was a PhD student. I just left the US Embassy near the Łazienki park after taking a GRE exam for the Fulbright Fellowship in the US. The love of my life and later my wife, Joanna, accompanied me. While strolling in the park, we saw the plain clothes policemen brutalizing and arresting a small group of bearded intellectuals in loose sweaters. They were members of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_Defence_Committee" target="_blank">KOR</a> (The Committee for the Defense of Workers, established after the deadly 1976 beatings, killings and firings of the protesting workers). </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg3BILW-lO7G2gvsLjd7UcPtbPi0QClWu_lkeSNxEd0N_v1R3huWB_5MCxnpIOT1bvunTiwMM59wgqplmAmAPTL8Am9-WT4rR7irQo6gQ2nMr6hjMZrIveFN9QLX8WKTOd8qIdtIJ-WHcxsWaCPZGzufCT85PUr5L1vkm6ztX_2oEkSNpchStZvuFRlsA=s1230" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="692" data-original-width="1230" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg3BILW-lO7G2gvsLjd7UcPtbPi0QClWu_lkeSNxEd0N_v1R3huWB_5MCxnpIOT1bvunTiwMM59wgqplmAmAPTL8Am9-WT4rR7irQo6gQ2nMr6hjMZrIveFN9QLX8WKTOd8qIdtIJ-WHcxsWaCPZGzufCT85PUr5L1vkm6ztX_2oEkSNpchStZvuFRlsA=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A hunger strike organized in Holy Cross Church in Warsaw by <a href="https://www.inyourpocket.com/gdansk/the-story-of-solidarity-in-gdansk_71303f" target="_blank">Worker's Defense Committee</a> members. October, 1979 / photo Leszek Krzyżewski, KARTA Archive. Can you believe that this tiny group of intellectuals started a chain of events that led to the demise of the Soviet Union?! Here's a hint for my many Russian friends: Please support the still unmurdered Alexei Nawalny and his compatriots. Don't believe in Putin's lies.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>I instinctively rushed to their defense, but Joanna grabbed me by the coat, and quietly told me to stop, because otherwise I'd be arrested on the spot and would kiss good bye my doctoral degree and job, and the likely Fulbright scholarship. I listened to her, but still feel deep shame that I did and the sense of hopeless helplessness. These men being arrested in front of me were the Icaruses of that time. In four short years, they laid the foundation for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_(Polish_trade_union)" target="_blank">Solidarity movement</a> that swept though Poland, and - 10 years later - through eastern Europe. In 1990, the omnipotent Soviet Union was no more. A young KGB colonel, Vladimir (Voldemort?) Putin, who was in charge of destabilizing West Germany, was very pissed though.</p><p>The fifth defining moment happened in August of 1980, one year after I had come back from the US, and almost two months after marrying Joanna and defending my PhD thesis. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjh9riIDF8kX_nranUHkVuA48m1Z_xnBVFdN3-N3Kluy2S4NQ_Bdgey4k6Tm467Gfc693nzxnBEwQBhgZw23KN-f4SlovuIJdCdqbqR_w25-c-cxvAgbRwAkOGnJh8a2s1_TnKi3zra7uzgdyhVdcXBBoZ9DrF-tQtrniPt5sNNtVj82znXl-LU44PHbg=s1560" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1560" data-original-width="1038" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjh9riIDF8kX_nranUHkVuA48m1Z_xnBVFdN3-N3Kluy2S4NQ_Bdgey4k6Tm467Gfc693nzxnBEwQBhgZw23KN-f4SlovuIJdCdqbqR_w25-c-cxvAgbRwAkOGnJh8a2s1_TnKi3zra7uzgdyhVdcXBBoZ9DrF-tQtrniPt5sNNtVj82znXl-LU44PHbg=w266-h400" width="266" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our wedding ceremony in Warsaw on July 6, 1980. That we were in love is an understatement.</td></tr></tbody></table> <div>I came back from Minneapolis, having won the prestigious Fulbright fellowship as one of eight PhD students of all specialties in Poland. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgO1GxStlRF3_X09h_4D5ipmC9aj0TNxAgBKKTBfkIliAH-qlRCT0-KwXG4uXOKi6PSvXGB89OUbt-5uZBiZv8-byYiD8l5uXxnbrPXdgKH6h1X-qsy5J44lHIMXePWNGle2Na6YBcgOmDGU2Zeo3x5GSZuEDZGLxFR_C51dT9LRA6MwEc4NuTZX7w2bA=s3024" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1994" data-original-width="3024" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgO1GxStlRF3_X09h_4D5ipmC9aj0TNxAgBKKTBfkIliAH-qlRCT0-KwXG4uXOKi6PSvXGB89OUbt-5uZBiZv8-byYiD8l5uXxnbrPXdgKH6h1X-qsy5J44lHIMXePWNGle2Na6YBcgOmDGU2Zeo3x5GSZuEDZGLxFR_C51dT9LRA6MwEc4NuTZX7w2bA=w400-h264" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dina and Mark, the Russian Jewish couple, who were a part of our eclectic international group of students and researchers at the University of Minnesota, organized by Jewish Mothers (mostly from New York). I am standing in the back, soaking in their warmth and hospitality with every pore of my skin. Boy, did we talk about Russia and Poland. These meetings, the heated discussions we had, and the plain beauty of the people I met there, made me root for the Americans forever. I remember this today with great pain, watching my adopted nation so divided.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>I was a different man. So when we learned that one Lech Wałęsa and the shipyard workers were surrounded by tanks, with the same thugs ready to shoot them, we decided to do something. I - as president of the Teacher's Union chapter, the youngest person with no children to feed if I were fired, and a fresh PhD - was chosen to call a meeting of the employees of the Center of Chemical Engineering of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) in Gliwice, where I worked. Solidarity was very illegal at the time and deadly threats were filling the air. </div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgTA5rDCXcT_BXI5c11Gr4KcMZfvMldBgnhz8ixVqLan8X6i8TVrfHSKenkWWjgWZqx542D4kqp7jNpnDk-RpmCGXYHOZzWWxFZh2QxxqpDAFeRbzsYsAGeQZEoVQ02U8KpgW16Pw27GCsVVEErFNYwQ1yQ1XoPIE3dxmdKkkWfO7f_1BrauVlLoObdWA=s754" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="299" data-original-width="754" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgTA5rDCXcT_BXI5c11Gr4KcMZfvMldBgnhz8ixVqLan8X6i8TVrfHSKenkWWjgWZqx542D4kqp7jNpnDk-RpmCGXYHOZzWWxFZh2QxxqpDAFeRbzsYsAGeQZEoVQ02U8KpgW16Pw27GCsVVEErFNYwQ1yQ1XoPIE3dxmdKkkWfO7f_1BrauVlLoObdWA=w640-h254" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lech Wałęsa (front row, third from right) with dismissed crane operator, Anna Walentynowicz (left of Wałęsa), leading a crowd in prayer during the August Strike in the Gdańsk Shipyards, 1980 - Photo by Tadeusz Kłapyta.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>I had two older helpers, Dr. Jerzy Buzek (later PM of Poland in a Solidarity government and EU parliamentarian) and Dr. Krzysztof Warmuziński (later the Center director). I pasted on the walls two or three hand-written fliers with the time and place, and why I was calling this special meeting of all employees. We were sure that perhaps a handful of scared people would show up looking over their shoulders. To my utter surprise, everyone but the Center director and an officer in charge of security marched in. This moment changed my life forever. I understood immediately how fed up all people were and how much they were willing to risk. Never again I felt so much one with the fellow Poles. Everyone joined Solidarity, voting for the hope that this still ill-defined name offered in late August 1980. At the same time, another large chapter of Solidarity sprouted at the Cancer Institute and Clinic in Gliwice, followed by several other chapters in the research institutes scattered everywhere in Gliwice. Thus, the first leaders of the still illegal Solidarity in Gliwice were mostly people with graduate degrees! Take heed my educated Russian friends. My wife, an RPT and a fresh transplant from Warsaw, was elected to lead the Solidarity chapter in her Hospital of Children Diseases, 800 meters from my Center. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiqu3Z-BiTSOiu9lKSu4toZUi84t7v6Oi1vxMtZnCk5ORXmPN6pvWDRVh_okGrq5TN28tkvfQYhz0dSLq-GGOhjKgULhNUjtYCceABZINhram_lJh-7R5F-kuO0t0GrWkR5SOFGOulv_0QhQ3uq471UitcMrPUJhhLrbUuwRy6WveKcoOy5rC746o7aLQ=s1001" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="690" data-original-width="1001" height="442" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiqu3Z-BiTSOiu9lKSu4toZUi84t7v6Oi1vxMtZnCk5ORXmPN6pvWDRVh_okGrq5TN28tkvfQYhz0dSLq-GGOhjKgULhNUjtYCceABZINhram_lJh-7R5F-kuO0t0GrWkR5SOFGOulv_0QhQ3uq471UitcMrPUJhhLrbUuwRy6WveKcoOy5rC746o7aLQ=w640-h442" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">December 14, 1981. The thugs on the street are the feared paramilitary police, ZOMO, often drugged to make them raving mad, and using big heavy sticks that could easily crush one's skull. </td></tr></tbody></table><p>And thus the most important chapter of our lives started and finished abruptly. In four months, Solidarity had most Poles supporting it, and the communists were regrouping to hit back hard. By December 1980, everyone knew that something terrible would be happening, like a wholesale invasion of Poland by the Red Army. We just didn't know when. I left Poland on January 11, 1981 to become a postdoc at the Chemical Engineering Department, the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. This was the same top-ranked place where I was a Fulbright student, and took all 12 required PhD classes plus two additional graduate math classes in two semesters. Because I did rather well as a student, I was immediately invited back as a postdoc to work with a famous professor there, Skip Scriven. My wife could not get her passport from the Polish government and became a de facto hostage.</p><p>And now, psychologically the worst thing happened. While I was safe in the US, doing the cutting-edge research in computational fluid mechanics and using the first parallel processing super-computer, my wife was participating in and organizing the increasingly violent sit-in and occupational strikes in Gliwice and elsewhere. In the US, I had access to the by-the-hour information on how the Red Army was encircling Poland and getting ready to strike a death blow. To relate to my story, please think about the US intelligence reports showing how the Russian army was preparing to conquer Ukraine. Back in 1981, and in Poland, Joanna was traveling to the Soviet garrison cities and happily striking, telling me that nothing could possibly happen to her, because there were so many of "us" and so few of "them". I was going literally mad from fear for her life. When your most loved ones are in danger, it is far worse than when you are. When I listened to a Ukrainian deputy from Kiev telling us how he drove his entire family to Lvov over 27 hours and then came back alone, I had tears in my eyes.</p><p>Luckily, Skip was invited as a keynote speaker to Warsaw, to a conference organized by PAN. Immediately, he asked president of PAN to intercede on behalf of Joanna's passport (I was still an employee of PAN on a leave of absence). She then got her passport valid for 6 weeks, and with a date corresponding to that on Skip's letter. Joanna arrived in Minneapolis on April 17, 2001, not quite 8 months before the martial law was imposed in Poland on December 13, 1981. Next day, on Monday, they came looking for us everywhere. The hit list with thousands of names was guarded by the Soviets and so secret that the functionaries, who were given it on December 13, did not know we already were in the US. We learned about it years later from Joanna's former boss in Gliwice, who came to Houston to visit his brother. In 1980/81, he was our "enemy," a hospital director and a member of the communist party. But a little later things have changed diametrically. Anyone with any brain in their head, would conclude that the Polish communist house of lies had to go away forever. How long will it take the Russians to realize that they were lied too by Putin and his cronies, and that they too must revolt <b>now</b>, like we did 42 years ago. Today, our children and grandchildren in Poland can help the Ukrainians, whose turn it is <b>now</b> to fight Putin's Empire.</p><p>If you think that Ukraine does not stand a chance, think twice. Putin's Russia that wants to restore the old Soviet Union, has no attractive socioeconomic and cultural programs, only coercion, suppression, political killings and arrests, and hopelessness. No one ever won by making people miserable. The Russian army already lost this war, and now they must continue to bomb and kill civilians to subdue the Ukrainian people through extermination, and bombing hospitals, schools, shopping malls and residential buildings. The Russians are using cluster bombs and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon" target="_blank">thermobaric</a> bombs against civilian targets, and shooting civilians, including women and children. There is a name for the Russian actions in Ukraine: war crimes.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjVWFW173k-YLKn6QMeisZgyjnqI6GMcio5cd-nL9ySeLTE0F7L5SDaMqTyZbymMjIGvHd4bTGCXBaqMYFkRVOfU8ald5VnCF9usHNXsjuIJw6vvVr9HjbTFgDsLB54oj7CJxc4v9wqkfR3T5qfMt2dlE5XwbDOoTu8bjoFe10PKLuSMyIYOnAzuvA0NQ=s1500" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1500" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjVWFW173k-YLKn6QMeisZgyjnqI6GMcio5cd-nL9ySeLTE0F7L5SDaMqTyZbymMjIGvHd4bTGCXBaqMYFkRVOfU8ald5VnCF9usHNXsjuIJw6vvVr9HjbTFgDsLB54oj7CJxc4v9wqkfR3T5qfMt2dlE5XwbDOoTu8bjoFe10PKLuSMyIYOnAzuvA0NQ=w640-h426" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Russian bombing of Mariupol, 3/9/2022. Source NYT</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><b>P.S. (03/10/2022)</b> Here is Andrew Nikiforuk's<a href="https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/03/07/Can-Ukraine-Win/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=070322" target="_blank"> comparison</a> of Ukraine with Finland attacked by the Russians in 1939 for similar reasons. He used a quotation from the famous poet, Auden, to illustrate what is at stake. Most Russians who have never been free, <b>never</b>, do not comprehend that given choice, people in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland voted overwhelmingly to join NATO. That NATO expansion was the will of the people like me, all other risks be damned. We voted for it too. (We have Polish passports. In the Polish parliament, there were only 7 votes against joining NATO in 1999. One of these opposing votes was cast by Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of the PiS party in Poland.) Now it is the Ukrainians' turn. Very few want to remain in the happy Soviet family. And the Finns are now talking about dropping their neutrality and joining NATO as well. The Russians need to get it. NATO is the self-defense of all weaker nations who have the misfortune of being located next to the ever paranoid, xenophobic Russia ready to lash out at anyone who challenges them.</p><p>My very first memory of world political events is from October 1956. I was not quite 5, like my grandson, Henry, is today. My father and I went to see a never-ending column of Polish tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery and transport trucks moving to cut off the Russian army that was ready to advance on Poland. The Russians though did not dare to take on the mean, organized and armed Poles. Literally one month later, the Hungarians were not as lucky, and the Red Army <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956" target="_blank">attacked them</a> to restore a Stalinist regime there. Thousands of people died and hundreds of thousands left Hungary forever.</p><p>In August 1968, we watched helplessly from a UNESCO English camp the never-ending columns of Polish tanks and war materiel being transported to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact_invasion_of_Czechoslovakia" target="_blank">subdue Czechoslovakia</a> on orders from the Soviet masters. Most vassal states complied. Poland, greatly weakened by the March 1968 riots (see above), was at the forefront. Shame on those Polish communist scoundrels. </p><p>I recall seeing a single man at the railway station in Tarnowskie Góry. He dared to protest upon seeing a military train go by. He was beaten severely and taken away by the secret police thugs. In 1969 and 1970, we witnessed people going to work being mowed down with the heavy machine guns shooting straight into the crowds. In 1976, we watched workers being killed and beaten senseless with steel pipes. This is when KOR was born (see above). </p><p>On December 13, 1981, the Russians used a Polish traitor, general Jaruzelski, to do their dirty work using the Polish troops and paramilitary police, the hated ZOMO (see above). Many of my friends were thrown into concentration camps, regularly beaten, hosed with ice cold water in December, starved, and so on. What the Russians did not know then was that attacking Poland through a back door was their biggest mistake ever that put an end to the Soviet Union after 9 long years. The Solidarity came blasting back, and with it other revolutions in Eastern Europe, and the fall of the Berlin wall. When I saw the wall being dismantled, I cried like a baby, because I knew that this was the end of the evil Soviet Empire. I also cried, because my father, Henry's grand grandfather, who lived for that moment, had died of melancholy and a massive heart attack before he could rejoice. I could not go to his funeral because I had political asylum, but no American passport yet.</p><p>So please don't tell me that we need to understand the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/opinion/russia-ukraine-fake-news.html" target="_blank">Russian point of view</a>, simply because they have nukes and are ready to exterminate anyone who challenges them. It is high time for the Russian people to raise to the occasion and inhale that intoxicating freedom into their lungs. First time ever? </p><p>And just like the Nazi Germany had a faithful eastern ally and partner to start WWII by attacking Poland from all sides in September 1939, Russia today has a faithful ally to the east, the "1984" kingdom of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/opinion/russia-ukraine-fake-news.html" target="_blank">lies</a> and superpower, China.</p><p><b>P.S.P.S. (3/11/2022)</b> And here is the<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/opinion/london-oligarchs-sanctions-putin.html" target="_blank"> truth about us</a> (UK to be specific) interacting with Putin and his cronies over the last 15 years. This bitter pill was delivered by a British comic, Jonathan Pie. <a href="https://fb.watch/bQOb5o7I2Z/" target="_blank">Here is</a> an interview with P.M. Boris Johnson about Russian corruption in the U.K. government.</p></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjWIH1wmtCpTSmGRdqttMoqQ44o7OfPa5OEQEE65vKBVBvWsOzCKOqOsjgUAYHh-gFSZ9ozlrmXtiPZkFNzF4RruEXqvNs14sdccG45XET6ccQnnIGvF8eKEhSSYlaJEXtX3SmXwNJFEQiT_678MZniuuLSTM0yuS2myVz71tzhKuV-P5gVvUqHC4YJvw=s2048" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="2048" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjWIH1wmtCpTSmGRdqttMoqQ44o7OfPa5OEQEE65vKBVBvWsOzCKOqOsjgUAYHh-gFSZ9ozlrmXtiPZkFNzF4RruEXqvNs14sdccG45XET6ccQnnIGvF8eKEhSSYlaJEXtX3SmXwNJFEQiT_678MZniuuLSTM0yuS2myVz71tzhKuV-P5gVvUqHC4YJvw=w640-h426" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The bombed maternity hospital in Mariupol 3/11/2022.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><b>P.S.<sup>3</sup> (03/12/2022)</b> I just had an email exchange with a friend. This is what I wrote to him:</div><div>"Presumably you read my latest blog. There are too many painful memories now; our own, and those of our late parents and grandparents. In this blog, I hardly scratched all the horrors stored in our families' collective memory. Barrels with salted human meet in Ukraine during the Soviet-made hunger waves in which millions perished? Parents exchanging their children: you kill mine I kill yours, because the children would not survive the hunger? (From my grand uncle who witnessed all that.) My mother's home in Lvov bombed by the Russians in late 1941? They barely survived only because two walls closed above them, peeling all skin from my uncle's back. My mother, uncle and my grandmother captured by the Germans on a train while fleeing west? Put to good use as slaves for the Third Reich? My 17 years old mother raped? Repeatedly, perhaps? Joanna's uncle executed by the Russians together with 15,000 Polish officers and enlisted men they captured in September-October 1939, after the incredibly bloody fighting? Both of Joanna's grandfathers rounded up like animals on the streets of Warsaw and executed against some wall as the customary German revenge for the Polish resistance killing Germans? Their bodies never found? My grandfather spending five and a half years in German concentration camps (October 1939 - May 1945)?</div><div><br /></div><div>Just to name a few...Did I mention that between 1981 and 1989, I had recurring terrible nightmares every few nights? I would wake up in Poland, in a prison, with no way to escape, ever. Never to see Joanna and my children.</div><div><br /></div><div>So, in summary, fuck Putin. Also fuck China, that ultimately efficient and thorough implementation of the "1984". And fuck us for doing so little, when we all will likely evaporate in the next few days or years."</div><div><br /></div><div><b>P.S.<sup>4</sup> (03/13/2022) </b><a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/the-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-happened-because-the-world-gave-vladimir-putin-a-free-pass-in-syria/?mkt_tok=NjU5LVdaWC0wNzUAAAGDHVqf87MB5L3VjB7uYshPLKG08i1ki1byLYuUhJRTcIvCoXbga7gkOIR_tIJ7ffB9UqyzsKEABTPbMnNuOcijIua4U7BLPRdXb71qonZAow" target="_blank">From the Atlantic Council</a>: "The Russian invasion of Ukraine happened because the world gave Vladimir Putin a free pass in Syria<b> </b>With the help of Moscow"</div><div>"...The Assad regime forcibly displaced millions of Syrians; committed crimes against humanity and war crimes by bombing hospitals and schools in Idlib and Aleppo provinces; was largely responsible for killing at least half a million through indiscriminate shelling, massacres, crimes of torture, and sexual violence; led mass disinformation campaigns to depict the Syrian regime’s war against the Syrian people as a “war on terror”; and covered up the use of chemical weapons against civilians."</div><div><br /></div><div><b>P.S.<sup>5</sup> (03/16/2022) </b>Her name is <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/the-interview/20220317-russian-journalist-marina-ovsyannikova-calls-for-end-to-fratricidal-war-in-ukraine" target="_blank">Marina Ovsyannikova</a> (please read the linked brief France 24 post) . This brave woman staged a live protest on camera at the most popular Russian ~News (~ is a logical symbol that denotes negation). I wish that more Russians would take heed from her and do something, anything to get rid of that homicidal paranoid maniac.</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhhI_yW-MvCM6FTSCvNIZeY4BO7O0y0v8GDlpoz2N9EBK1PrHjzMcVdwMHxQK9kuA5lAsoG6KY6kUWphPT4FEz_cWkt8vIARFlnESQS0iacqJG2DtCnRV-OYaXPvXfTxAVwOP5efpJkkuOjUdsvC6tpNS86NHLTosr_j6GZ4MtUv3Oouaf4yrONAmstKw=s1465" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="977" data-original-width="1465" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhhI_yW-MvCM6FTSCvNIZeY4BO7O0y0v8GDlpoz2N9EBK1PrHjzMcVdwMHxQK9kuA5lAsoG6KY6kUWphPT4FEz_cWkt8vIARFlnESQS0iacqJG2DtCnRV-OYaXPvXfTxAVwOP5efpJkkuOjUdsvC6tpNS86NHLTosr_j6GZ4MtUv3Oouaf4yrONAmstKw=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A video grab showing Marina Ovsyannikova protesting the Russian invasion of Ukraine live on Russia’s most-watched news program. The poster reads: "Oppose war. Don't believe propaganda. They lie to you here." Now imagine a Faux News propaganda tube employee doing this in America. Credit...Channel 1, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><b>P.S.<sup>6</sup> (03/17/2022) </b>Here<b> </b>is a warm, <a href="https://twitter.com/Schwarzenegger/status/1504426844199669762" target="_blank">heart-felt message</a> from Gov. Schwarzenegger to all Russians. See if you can watch it without a tear in your eyes. I say this to all of my Russian friends who are in deep distress: your opposition against the tyrant matters! And here is a painfully sad Russian cartoon about what Putin has done to the beautiful Mother Russia and her people. You don't need to read Russian to understand this horrific tragedy.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxF4AS0B2DJQ6fB-4r2Dn7LDCSvvNc2UZVB7nYHtO5JzvdNrBv-THPyqyHmfxtHOr01OdUR5EUEGiNSW6Jquw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br />The Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus', Kirill, is speaking in this video, but the contrast between his soothing voice and the virulent, aggressive content is frightening. He obviously is a functionary of the Russian state and takes his job very seriously. (I remember his recent photo with a $35,000 watch on his hand. A little later, this watch was deleted with Photoshop, leaving however its reflection on the table.) The Russian Church has had a long troubled history of collaboration with the state and its long deadly arm, NKVD, followed by KGB. To understand this video, you must speak Russian or Polish. Among the lightest thoughts he shares in the context of making the West enter a "partnership relationship" with Russia is "diplomacy is only good when on a diplomat's table there is a revolver." Did he pick this idea from Stalin? Then it gets worse. He speaks of incorporating back to Russia "the poor Ukraine", Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Kazachstan, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, etc. He does not refer to Poland explicitly, but another Russian TV star tells the Poles ("Lachy") to wake up, or the Russian bombers and missiles will pulverize Warsaw to rubble and there will be millions more of refugees. "Have you forgotten about 1939?" He asks Poles rhetorically. "Do you think that England and U.S. will defend you?"<div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxUzCRjuNP2Mxfag04f6pxRqZgaeznwpv6q0lNMcwYn_XRhyoP7-zHdl_qrhCn4AmpugRkxZBvXSaMkvLrYpA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEimT9szckhxwicHpKeIoGmiSxbMST7hDlrVHOY3isOtkcCOKx0j2QyBDD3qNVMUurgh2NL8q2Tjl1v-odbWXyomD3Pm-1Eyj69p_bDeCXcZDFke3h4T_NwkOPrlQ7u2Va_BPapjBR1ucLsjfsunE0zNMUNKP2NNKR9PsMoMYT-bOgeAhz7bsw9TzTh_fQ=s820" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="614" data-original-width="820" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEimT9szckhxwicHpKeIoGmiSxbMST7hDlrVHOY3isOtkcCOKx0j2QyBDD3qNVMUurgh2NL8q2Tjl1v-odbWXyomD3Pm-1Eyj69p_bDeCXcZDFke3h4T_NwkOPrlQ7u2Va_BPapjBR1ucLsjfsunE0zNMUNKP2NNKR9PsMoMYT-bOgeAhz7bsw9TzTh_fQ=w400-h300" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A photo released by the regional officials of the damage from a Russian attack on a theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, where hundreds of people had taken shelter. Likely hundreds of women and children perished. Credit...Donetsk Regional Administration, via Reuters</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><b>P.S.<sup>6</sup> (03/21/2022) </b>We are back to Stalin's time, with all internal opposition completely squelched. Kidnapping children from Mariupol? Driving over people with tanks? Shooting civilians? Bombing food stores, drugstores, hospitals, maternity clinics, schools, kindergartens, shopping centers etc.? More Soviet-made hunger waves in Ukraine? Reopen the Gulag? The Russian military desperation is now translated into real genocide, and not Putin's propaganda cover for the Russian aggression. It is now down to pulverizing Ukraine's cities into the new Aleppos and murdering civilians. In Europe. In 2022. This seems to be a peculiarly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E30FWjMuBQU" target="_blank">Russian vision</a> of saving Europe by killing most of us and enslaving the rest.</div><div><div><br /></div><div>LVIV, Ukraine — Russian forces have dropped bombs on schools and shelters where children were seeking refuge, fired missiles that have destroyed the city’s critical infrastructure, and shelled Mariupol from the sea. They have severed communications, cut the power, destroyed the water pumping system and kept humanitarian relief from reaching hundreds of thousands of desperate people.</div><div>Now, as its forces blaze their way into the center of the besieged city, they are <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">deporting thousands of residents of Mariupol against their will to Russia</span>, according to city officials and witnesses.</div></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjZCZ2K31J-eMq7_RuQiI2QvXAOYb90coH4TeOW84cEqZhbzmxfud0PwXf-Oo9toeitpgMz8BHRvbEhhJsDFzumomXUQuUewelW-rnry9_fajfbjZy3U7WyqkHbR1EW1GGzHBuZsJrRiXD3UauR-XHSa3Nq17kRTNHNpwpA0pNQk_HmbLni5zcZgFJVtg=s2048" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="2048" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjZCZ2K31J-eMq7_RuQiI2QvXAOYb90coH4TeOW84cEqZhbzmxfud0PwXf-Oo9toeitpgMz8BHRvbEhhJsDFzumomXUQuUewelW-rnry9_fajfbjZy3U7WyqkHbR1EW1GGzHBuZsJrRiXD3UauR-XHSa3Nq17kRTNHNpwpA0pNQk_HmbLni5zcZgFJVtg=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A church in Mariupol.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div></div>Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-76440835218717309232021-12-27T10:06:00.048-06:002022-02-08T18:29:17.719-06:00Ascent of the Angry and StupidScientifically speaking, <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">stupid</span> people harm themselves while also harming others. In addition, stupid people are irrational and erratic, and are <i>very</i> dangerous to others. After discussing the destructive role of the stupid in any society whatsoever, I will focus on the delicate interplay of actions of <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">intelligent</span> and <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">helpless</span> people, who in balance make or break a functioning democracy. Unless things change fast in the US, we can kiss our democracy goodbye for decades. If you want to see how a virulent ascent of the stupid looks up close, and what implications it has for our fight against social injustice and climate change, please watch the brilliant "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEMaLsPTWlo" target="_blank">Don't Look Up</a>" movie.<div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgBL7uy3L9YUEozEA6AmBhK2W6Ung4Vf7ISugLUyMSVdpMqix_mGdKh4YVaNL6demvTmlrKPePHM0ObjXK-DTbrvC8f7SxI8s6BdMnc-k1xZZYgY-xsaoORPk6NdyIYon6AVyud25rga8rQEEwp0uZTHZ-Iewv87PtqnQeyq7PQrZdw_a3fJzXJDFDpyQ=s1500" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1500" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgBL7uy3L9YUEozEA6AmBhK2W6Ung4Vf7ISugLUyMSVdpMqix_mGdKh4YVaNL6demvTmlrKPePHM0ObjXK-DTbrvC8f7SxI8s6BdMnc-k1xZZYgY-xsaoORPk6NdyIYon6AVyud25rga8rQEEwp0uZTHZ-Iewv87PtqnQeyq7PQrZdw_a3fJzXJDFDpyQ=w640-h426" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Unvaccinated people demonstrating in Los Angeles. There are tens of millions of the raving mad and/or angry, stupid people in the US and other developed countries. Source: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/25/us/omicron-unvaccinated.html" target="_blank">New York Times</a>, 12/25/2021.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>I overlapped at UC Berkeley with Professor Carlo M. Cipolla for a decade, until his death in the year 2000. I wish I got to know him better. In 1988, Carlo published in Italian a magnificent essay on human stupidity he framed axiomatically as five <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">Basic Laws</span>:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid people in circulation.</li><li>The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.</li><li>A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.</li><li>Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people infallibly turns out to be a costly mistake.</li><li>A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person. </li></ol></div><div>His essay was translated into English in 2011. The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B082H2JJG3/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0" target="_blank">current book edition</a> was published in 2019. <b>Figure 1</b> is my interpretation of Carlo's graphs.</div><div><br /></div><div>Since stupid people are unpredictable, a rational person always underestimates their destructive power. This underestimation may have deadly consequences for millions of people trapped in the currently imploding global economy that was created and run by rational bandits, who harm others for personal gain. This economy is now subject to ecological overshoot, exhaustion of most resources and a runaway climate change. The criminal global inaction in face of these existential crises is aided and abetted by the stupid and bandit politicians elected with miniscule marginal votes of stupid people. </div><div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgIc0HyLtWZGy4f87TkXpTO-gKQoOA73WVfl4CCcIlMUQz-z2FzPAbwGWcRKjmBQeyO3lVGSyZPIUhL0HQ_rXa_ef3nAcwTIcWklXJO0llNZlektjy6MGaFz-XpnX9x775WsfJLkpgtfF1OgZ44_PQ8P494l_S5YCMvyv6cNJ8YS6lsY1zRc7szvUB_dA=s1496" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1308" data-original-width="1496" height="560" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgIc0HyLtWZGy4f87TkXpTO-gKQoOA73WVfl4CCcIlMUQz-z2FzPAbwGWcRKjmBQeyO3lVGSyZPIUhL0HQ_rXa_ef3nAcwTIcWklXJO0llNZlektjy6MGaFz-XpnX9x775WsfJLkpgtfF1OgZ44_PQ8P494l_S5YCMvyv6cNJ8YS6lsY1zRc7szvUB_dA=w640-h560" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 1. My poetic interpretation of the graphs in the splendid short book by Professor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla" target="_blank">Carlo M. Cipolla</a>, "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity." There are four quadrants of any human society regardless of epoch and geography. Clockwise, from the upper left, there are helpless people, intelligent people, bandits and the stupid. The fraction of <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">irrational</span>, stupid people in any society whatsoever <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">is constant and is independent</span> of partitions of the other three populations of <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">rational</span> people, who fall into each of the remaining three quadrants of society. </td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>Here are but a few examples of stupid people. Marcus Lamb, a Christian broadcaster and vaccine skeptic, died of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/us/marcus-lamb-dead.html">COVID</a>. Phil Valentine, a radio host who scoffed at COVID, then urged his followers to get vaccinated and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/21/us/phil-valentine-dies-covid.html" target="_blank">died</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div>A mechanical engineer, let's call him B., an inspired designer of complex lab equipment for possibly the best manufacturer of such equipment in the world, suffocated slowly of COVID at home. B. didn't vaccinate and refused to go to hospital, claiming that vaccines are poison and don't work, and in the hospital they might harm him. </div><div><br /></div><div>A contractor to my neighbor was late for an appointment, and stated matter-of-factly that he was at the funeral of a relative who died of COVID. He added that eleven other people in his family and circle of friends also died of COVID. He then observed that those people were killed by the hospitals, because their bodies could not withstand intubation.</div><div><br /></div><div>An accomplished senior professor at UT Austin, let's call him L., refuses to vaccinate himself, does not mask, and encourages students not to vaccinate.</div><div><br /></div><div>You are beginning to grasp that being stupid has no correlation with the level of professional education, race, ethnicity, sex, religiosity or any other characteristic of a stupid person.<div><br /></div><div>For every two COVID-related deaths in a blue state, we have registered in the US three COVID deaths in a red state. In other words, if you are a Republican, you have a 50% higher chance of dying of COVID. I do not imply here that there is not an unexpectedly large share of the really stupid, unvaccinated Democrats. That's why the death differential is only 50%, not 1300%, as it should be - all things being equal - if no Republicans ever vaccinated against COVID, unlike Trump and his family, all the Faux News propagandists, and plenty of other lying, cynical bandits, who send you - the stupid or helpless people - to death at the current rate of 440,000 souls per year. <div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgvtzEUtQ0zNtDANqF7DWgI7IJ7wglmjpJfQzaJEBO9bnltXCZgfpePKikxgtKTsd0CZtyuSxB0UzZL646ORMTsDY4rTDR4NnqD-vDpRitw9nCggbZspit52t57WRfXDCL0QwEW0gaxr0l/s3033/vaxedvsunvaxed.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="801" data-original-width="3033" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgvtzEUtQ0zNtDANqF7DWgI7IJ7wglmjpJfQzaJEBO9bnltXCZgfpePKikxgtKTsd0CZtyuSxB0UzZL646ORMTsDY4rTDR4NnqD-vDpRitw9nCggbZspit52t57WRfXDCL0QwEW0gaxr0l/w640-h170/vaxedvsunvaxed.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div>With historical, genetic and statistical justification, Carlo noted that the fraction of stupid people in any society is a constant σ independent, for example, of the level of education or social position. Thus, there exists the same σ fraction of stupid professors, academic administrators, and scientists, including Nobel Prize laureates (many more in economics). Given the constant σ in any society, how do we distinguish between successful and failing societies? The differences are subtle and fragile, as shown in <b>Figures 2 and 3</b>.</div><div> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgWvl51Cm6T9a91ORR3yodHfpfY_vtSf55z16fVE7Nl-t0saiq-97vS6E1sXmsSCUUXI-_zIdAO-psDgK7rxMZM_AYe0LzbwRWIO30kIx87NxhcE0wPb8ukkCbfTfm1jo_IqMGpzcNYPlY2RO1nSNDgAOg8QN9xx9-ZiC-wBKm5Jv5DjE6E1ZcaTGSOzw=s1496" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1308" data-original-width="1496" height="560" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgWvl51Cm6T9a91ORR3yodHfpfY_vtSf55z16fVE7Nl-t0saiq-97vS6E1sXmsSCUUXI-_zIdAO-psDgK7rxMZM_AYe0LzbwRWIO30kIx87NxhcE0wPb8ukkCbfTfm1jo_IqMGpzcNYPlY2RO1nSNDgAOg8QN9xx9-ZiC-wBKm5Jv5DjE6E1ZcaTGSOzw=w640-h560" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 2. In a successful society there is a outflux of helpless people who temporarily act like intelligent people. The reasons for this behavior are many and subtle. One obvious reason is that some of the helpless people get energized and organized, and start acting as intelligent people. The Solidarity movement in Poland in 1980/81 and in 1989/95 was a good example of such phase transition in a society that almost always has been ruled by stupid bandits. The Obama phenomenon in 2008 was a similar example in the US. Another reason is that within a political and legal framework of a country, the stupid bandits, who - for example - might kill you for ten dollars, modify their behavior to be smarter and less harmful, more like thieves whose gain is exactly a victim's loss and the society suffers no net loss. This figure is based on my interpretation of Cipolla's book.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div></div><div>When one compares Figures 2 and 3, one sees that what differentiates a successful society from a failing one is whimsical. An ailing successful society can reverse course quickly and with deadly consequences that are difficult or impossible to undo. I remind you that the σ of stupid people is the same in both types of societies and continues to do its oft-invisible harm like termites, cancer or the COVID virus. Thus my recurring appeal to most Americans: stay politically active and <b>vote</b>. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjg9IOJtKoyxRG8_3DphxoavpUphuIO_c3SvuiJv2aQIXoLLabRf-M6jS9SeStgsoZkVAV-JZ3NVQ3zCsI8ae6EWNyTFycnpsGopaoKwar8bbbv-yh-87IT0gldUIShZTTfts_sHqlwZ4a6OxkWWmKgjDKPZmk70aYzzcIgXruSZp1lp4th998hwG2Uuw=s1496" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1308" data-original-width="1496" height="560" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjg9IOJtKoyxRG8_3DphxoavpUphuIO_c3SvuiJv2aQIXoLLabRf-M6jS9SeStgsoZkVAV-JZ3NVQ3zCsI8ae6EWNyTFycnpsGopaoKwar8bbbv-yh-87IT0gldUIShZTTfts_sHqlwZ4a6OxkWWmKgjDKPZmk70aYzzcIgXruSZp1lp4th998hwG2Uuw=w640-h560" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 3. In a failing society, the otherwise intelligent people become discouraged, lose energy and drive, and become apathetic and helpless. Also, the reasons to be the smart bandits disappear, and with them the limits on inflicting harm on others. For different reasons, these negative changes affect many countries around the world, but in particular the United States of America. Today, Poland is a <a href="http://ytimes.com/2021/12/29/opinion/poland-european-union.html" target="_blank">locked-in failure</a> of a democratic society. My prediction is that by 2024, USA will too be a democracy in name <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shXS2sBVoww" target="_blank">only</a>, and there will be the massive economic-, environment-, and climate-related damage inflicted on the US citizens and the world at large. <b>Unless</b> of course we mobilize against the stupid and <b>act</b>. In Poland this mobilization failed, I am warning you.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>So what is the key reason of changing a society's success to failure? In my mind, it is a fine-tuned polarization and irreversible bifurcation of this society, and a slew of parallel economic failures and social injustices. Polarization by Facebook, Faux News, political parties, and churches et al. starts from preying on the genetically wired feature of all humans: wanting to belong to something, <i>anything</i> for that matter.</div><div><br /></div><div>In "Is Life Better When We're Together?" the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/21/opinion/2021-essays-opinion.html#mooallem" target="_blank">New York Times</a> describes the psychological experiments conducted many years ago by a Polish Jew, Dr. Tejfel and his followers, who split subjects into two groups based on the flimsiest of criteria. One group might be called "Leopards" and another "Tigers". Or a Group A and B with no other associations whatsoever.</div><div> </div></div></div></div><div><div><div style="text-align: left;">"In fact, Dr. Tajfel’s meaningless, minimal groups were even more meaningless than they appeared. He and his collaborators had actually ignored the kids’ responses to the dots and paintings. Instead, as the social psychologists Dominic J. Packer and Jay J. Van Bavel note, describing these experiments in their new book, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Power-Harnessing-Identities-Performance-Cooperation/dp/0316538418" target="_blank">The Power of Us</a>,” “in each case, the researchers had essentially flipped a coin and assigned people to groups based on chance.”
Still, <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">biases locked in right away.</span> Overwhelmingly, people in Dr. Tajfel’s experiment gave more of the money he put at their disposal to members of their own group than the other. Moreover, they were bent on creating as large a disparity as possible, even when offered the option of maximizing the amount of money for everyone, at no cost. Their behavior seemed vindictive, “a clear case of gratuitous discrimination,” Dr. Tajfel wrote. </div></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;">Since then, other researchers have run their own minimal group experiments, pushing those findings further. Dr. Packer and Dr. Van Bavel have split people into leopards and tigers, for example. Others have gone maximally minimal and divided people into group A and group B. Still, the pride — the readiness to connect — is always there. When you tell people they’re in group A, Dr. Packer says, those people are reliably psyched to be in group A. Stick leopard people in a brain imaging machine and show them a picture of a stranger, and their brain activity changes if they know that the stranger is a leopard person, too. Their positivity toward other leopard people increases and even supersedes racial biases that cut the other way."</div></div><div><br /></div><div>And this, my friends, is what the Democrats have been missing all along, and the Republicans are preying on. People desperately want to belong to a community of anything, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/26/us/oklahoma-masks.html" target="_blank">antivaxxers and antimaskers</a> are but the last incarnations of this need: </div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">
“The line is being drawn, folks,” said a man in jeans and a red T-shirt. He said the people in the audience “had been shouted down for the last 20 years, and they’re finally here to draw a line, and I think they’re saying, ‘We’ve had enough.’”
</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"Social scientists who study conflict say the only way to understand it — and to begin to get out of it — is to look at the powerful currents of human emotions that are the real drivers. They include the fear of not belonging, the sting of humiliation, a sense of threat — real or perceived — and the strong pull of group behavior."</div><div><br /></div><div>The older foci of belonging were political parties, KKK, Free Masons, Black Panthers, local churches, schools, rotary clubs, sororities, and professional societies for the likes of me. The Republicans have recognized these venues clearly and took charge of most of them, including local school boards, judgeships, sheriff offices, county governments, state governments, and governorships. Now they are reaching to take over Washington DC. The rather clueless Democrats only now are attempting meekly to reverse this incredible on-the-ground advantage of the Republicans. </div><div><br /></div><div>Changing demographics in the US seems to favor Democrats, but the Republicans are valiantly changing election laws and gerrymandering election districts to prevent people of color from voting. Republicans have been playing the long game, while Democrats are stumbling into some still undefined game. They better hurry, or the stupid and happily belonging - now under total control of the Trumpistas - will eat their lunch.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here is another observation: success or failure of a country depends on the mixture of stupid, intelligent, helpless and bandit persons running different branches of government. Long term adjustments in proportions among these four groups may save or doom a country. Given what I just said, chances are that quality of most levels of government in the US has decreased.</div><div><br /></div><div>In my mind, the US is on a pathway to doom, with the Republicans marching in goose lockstep, and the Democrats squabbling. But as a scientist, how do I quantify what I think? <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/118/50/e2102144118" target="_blank">This PNAS paper</a> gives some answers:</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"Our study was motivated by a highly disturbing puzzle. Confronted with a deadly global pandemic that threatened not only massive loss of life but also the collapse of our medical system and economy, why were we unable to put partisan divisions aside and unite in a common cause, similar to the national mobilization in the Great Depression and the Second World War? We used a computational model to search for an answer in the phase transitions of political polarization. The model reveals asymmetric hysteresis trajectories with tipping points that are hard to predict and that make polarization extremely difficult to reverse once the level exceeds a critical value."</div><div><br /></div><div>Simply put, there are thresholds of polarization beyond which a society can no longer come together an bifurcates irreversibly. This is exactly what is happening in the US. <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">We have bifurcated and US democracy is in mortal danger</span>, see <b>Figure 4</b>. This figure demonstrates, I hope, the dire need of house-to-house political campaigning by volunteers to sway the helpless and mobilize the intelligent (and occasionally a smart bandit). The stupid are like rock fragments. Nothing will ever sway them, so don't try.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhcIKDB28vdD4chwYzY15Ku0B3NdQ17z6lNej762tzI3STNcPCMmSOZWYMr3n86y_Z_0jkScAt4e_p-0q4dR8aUoRfQHIg5pqJxHvypc8FHv6rXfwneDi43EaHOrfQI3hOUA05yjTD1ayPbF2jpSipiLfnIcTVjy5ad1nR2RUzM4EAIe5R6aqaKifGr2Q=s1989" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1636" data-original-width="1989" height="526" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhcIKDB28vdD4chwYzY15Ku0B3NdQ17z6lNej762tzI3STNcPCMmSOZWYMr3n86y_Z_0jkScAt4e_p-0q4dR8aUoRfQHIg5pqJxHvypc8FHv6rXfwneDi43EaHOrfQI3hOUA05yjTD1ayPbF2jpSipiLfnIcTVjy5ad1nR2RUzM4EAIe5R6aqaKifGr2Q=w640-h526" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 4. Tipping points in the level of party identity. Polarization is measured as partisan difference (A and C) and extremism (B and D). A and B show a higher critical value in the polarizing trajectory than in the recovery trajectory. This means that there would be little effect on partisan divisions (A) or extremism (B) should the strength of party identity drop below CP, the critical value at which rising polarization suddenly explodes. CP drops sharply when the level of intolerance increases from α= 0.1 to α = 0.3 (C and D); i.e., party identity does not need to be strong in order to trigger a phase transition to high polarization. Moreover, the hysteresis trajectory becomes asymmetric, indicating bifurcation and the irreversibility of polarization, even if the strength of party identity were to drop to zero. Source: <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/118/50/e2102144118" target="_blank">PNAS</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Now on to the outsized roles of helpless, indecisive people in a polarized democracy, like the US, UK, France, Holland, Poland, Brazil, etc. In a fascinating </span><a href="https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.100.042307" style="text-align: left;" target="_blank">Physical Review E</a><span style="text-align: left;"> paper by German physicists, "Repulsion in controversial debate drives public opinion into fifty-fifty stalemate" the authors show that</span></div><div>"...in controversial debates with large consequences, the public opinion is often trapped in a fifty-fifty stalemate, jeopardizing broadly accepted political decisions. Emergent effects from millions of private discussions make it hard to understand or influence this kind of opinion dynamics. Here we demonstrate that repulsion from opinions favors fifty-fifty stalemates. We study a voter model where agents [<i>people, TWP</i>] can have two opinions [s<i>tupid and intelligent people, and a few bandits; TWP</i>] or an <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">undecided state in between, and where we allow for repulsion of opinions and for doubt: in pairwise discussions, undecided agents can be not only convinced, but also repelled from the opinion expressed by another agent</span>, and decided agents [<i>only some intelligent people and some bandits, TWP]</i> may return to the undecided state. As a result, we observe that, if an agent is repelled instead of being convinced in at least one out of four interactions, as in controversial debates, the frequencies of both opinions equalize. This voter model attractor reproduces the phenomenology of <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">repeated Brexit poll data</span> well and provides a mechanism solely based on local interactions between agents that may explain stalemate polarization in controversial opinion formation."</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Figures 5 and 6</b>, reproduced from this paper, show a successful society in which intelligent people and some of the helpless provide a safe margin for governance (Angela Merkel's Germany), and a failing society in which the results of a major vote are subject to a stalemate and low participation of both intelligent and helpless people (Brexit in UK). Notice that an obnoxious loud and foul mouth, like Donald Trump in the US or Nigel Farage in the UK, can sway many of the helpless and discourage some of the intelligent people. Also notice that in my terminology, Trump is a border-line smart bandit and Farage is a vicious stupid person. <br /><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgMaH-UrMxd7lnZncl24RtNRi8gm3m81pOWfcRbuJIN176P3dUvv23JhHgBeUT1TEqJZa5sBFWlVwctLV4nmFIpOM-LQQApzk46J2wqPc53mpiJvB7ZGNSGczqb6_JQaSZPFBh6wGPen8n2LBLjfx56jtFlSlyS1ECGP_VBZ7Isi5F8KCUpUiwfPjcBqg=s1500" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="819" data-original-width="1500" height="350" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgMaH-UrMxd7lnZncl24RtNRi8gm3m81pOWfcRbuJIN176P3dUvv23JhHgBeUT1TEqJZa5sBFWlVwctLV4nmFIpOM-LQQApzk46J2wqPc53mpiJvB7ZGNSGczqb6_JQaSZPFBh6wGPen8n2LBLjfx56jtFlSlyS1ECGP_VBZ7Isi5F8KCUpUiwfPjcBqg=w640-h350" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 5. Results of a repeated polls performed by “Infratest Dimap” about the satisfaction of Germans with chancellor Angela Merkel's management of the EU financial crisis. Here the government can govern.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiN5oCzinZ3JNs2FtkS2toJbhLvb3gJFX_CojiC1Px9c2mLadfykfSsUD5Zp1Hjh-CrcTTlHUUmmWXWXXCk1nZEl1gVC2CPhFOPKxmS5DUJ5V7Qv-74WxSbD1OjDz4cOSrCQfw1Q9hwaSEuDCsH1uoAL8HxCmohJGagjMdtKmytRpWR3JFU1oZ57VAgaQ=s1506" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="840" data-original-width="1506" height="356" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiN5oCzinZ3JNs2FtkS2toJbhLvb3gJFX_CojiC1Px9c2mLadfykfSsUD5Zp1Hjh-CrcTTlHUUmmWXWXXCk1nZEl1gVC2CPhFOPKxmS5DUJ5V7Qv-74WxSbD1OjDz4cOSrCQfw1Q9hwaSEuDCsH1uoAL8HxCmohJGagjMdtKmytRpWR3JFU1oZ57VAgaQ=w640-h356" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 6. Results of a repeated poll performed by “YouGov” and accessed through “whatukthinks.org” on how British people would vote on a referendum to leave the EU. <i>TWP's comment</i>: In a failing polarized society the results of a vote are random, and depend on when exactly this vote occurs relative to the whimsical emotions of the electorate. Note that the helpless and discouraged [the green curve] likely did not vote or voted randomly, saying probably "my vote means nothing," or "I am too busy to vote," or "I liked XY more today, so I voted yes/no." Two years later, it became clear to the helpless and intelligent what a monstrous mistake they made. The stupid have remained steadfast in their convictions<b> or</b> are lashing out at the government for delusional reasons.</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>In summary, democracies fizzle out for subtle and whimsical reasons. The key two reasons are discouragement of the intelligent and apathy of the helpless. In a successful society people self-organize and strengthen the intelligent parts of population. In a failing society, the opposite is true. The intelligent people check out and helpless people become even more helpless, whine and do not vote. In the bifurcated US, it is probably time to create new political parties, let's call them the "Republicans with Brains and Hearts" and the "Democrats with Fewer Grandiose Policy Delusions". But this is a long term project. In the meantime, the strong intelligent people and smart bandits must unify their forces, and go after the helpless and the stupid bandits, <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">convincing many of them to <b>vote</b></span>. For the last time, do not waste your energy and resources on the stupid. Recognize them and run, see <b>Figure 7</b>.</div></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj-DPO7BhjkgyeBX6CXlb0QYkdrZzQPYpuUWXd4TeNVGMF_cW3ws3Oa6u2JIDNX0OvsZ9ObjfB8XJIIN5Y_ZG9--aLya61GZt5kxrSottI4uc4DWHy6eahr5nm9o79F6MpDgxb6gXFmVJunkaQ__D1B5v8ho_PMvodLeyUOly2qVaSlpAmI9yCAJtWPKA=s680" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="680" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj-DPO7BhjkgyeBX6CXlb0QYkdrZzQPYpuUWXd4TeNVGMF_cW3ws3Oa6u2JIDNX0OvsZ9ObjfB8XJIIN5Y_ZG9--aLya61GZt5kxrSottI4uc4DWHy6eahr5nm9o79F6MpDgxb6gXFmVJunkaQ__D1B5v8ho_PMvodLeyUOly2qVaSlpAmI9yCAJtWPKA=w400-h285" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 7. Fifty seven percent of these 2,313 Americans are stupid. Fourteen percent are clueless. Source: Brian, a friend of mine.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><b>P.S. (12/28/2021)</b> Brian has pointed out to us <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2021/12/28/why-sneering-critics-dislike-netflixs-dont-look-up-but-climate-scientists-love-it/?sh=5eb4d9ea2ee8" target="_blank">this review</a> of reviews of the "Don't Look Up" movie. The title of this Forbes review is "Why Sneering Critics Dislike Netflix’s ‘Don’t Look Up,’ But Climate Scientists Love It." Since I have been on the receiving end of communicating unpleasant messages to the public and government officials for some 20 years, I can relate. </div><div><br /></div><div>I remember clearly the embarrassed EU ministers of environment in 2007. How they tried to explain to me why they could not do anything about the monstrous fires in Indonesia and equatorial Africa that were devouring the virgin forests and peat swamps in the name of progress and oil palm plantations. The WTO rules, fair trade rules and other rules they said, while I was showing them the satellite images of the infernos on the ground and telling them how they could enforce an oil/oil products buying ban. Or the corn ethanol apologists, claiming in 2004-2012 what a superior technology this was. Or the switchgrass ethanol shills with professorial titles explaining in 2008 how next year for sure that promising technology would use the genetically modified switchgrass programmed to start rotting before harvest for easier digestion and to improve process economics. It's like I was speaking to patients in an asylum for the insane.</div><div><br /></div><div>Or today, how people react to me saying that climate is warming in the Middle East at twice the global rate, and Mecca is a place where already the year-around average temperature is 29 degrees C. Or what to do about the grotesquely overpopulated Arabian Peninsula, where one needed yesterday a strong one-child economic policy. Or that plain old dust will deteriorate performance of solar cells in the sunny deserts by up to two thirds. And then there was another COP26, etc. </div><div><br /></div><div>Thus I am driven nuts when a Luke Goodsell of ABC News Australia believes the [movie] director, Adam McKay, “just doesn't know how to let people enjoy things—even if it is their own destruction.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, fuck all those apologists for the unmaintainable status-quo as we slip-slide into an Armageddon in which we are the new Chicxulub comet (in my environmental class I teach about mass extinctions). Climate change is back-loaded. The more GHGs we emitted in the past between 1798 and the moment I am writing these words, the more difficult it will be to recover for millenia to come. Given the status quo, in the <b>very</b> near future it will be impossible to recover, and we shall cook (and occasionally freeze) our children and grandchildren. I hope that by now you fully appreciate how lethal the viciously stupid people are, many of my fellow faculty included.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>P.S.P.S.</b> (Jan 2, 2022) From my friend, a prominent ag-journalist, Alan Guebert: </div><div>"Despite an honest-to-goodness flood of evidence to the contrary, more than <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">100 million American adults</span> continue to deny the existence of climate change. That’s roughly one third of the country. </div><div> </div><div>Congress is little better. Currently, <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">109 House members and 30 senators</span>, or about 26 percent of all members, have cast “doubt on the clear, established scientific consensus that the world is warming,” according to the Center of American Progress, a policy research institution headquartered in Washington, DC.</div><div> </div><div>The good news is that this astonishing total is down from 150 just three years ago; the bad news is that it’s still 139.</div><div><br /></div><div>The really bad news, however, is that the majority of congressional climate deniers represent rural America, arguably the economic sector with the most to lose in today’s climate upheaval. Not even 22 “extreme weather events” in 2020, where damage “exceeded $1 billion each,” turned their heads."</div>Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com94tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-66850315003059179102021-08-25T06:32:00.023-05:002023-01-08T10:04:31.343-06:00Multiple Fallacies of the Simon-Ehrlich Wager<p> Five years ago, I described this very famous 1980 wager <a href="https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-ghost-of-julian-simon.html" target="_blank"><b>here</b></a>. Wikipedia has a good, understated <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager" target="_blank">description</a> of the wager. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzBoAz0GPfthl3lAjZF5BsXcdr9MD_g5KIdL_XLo1_FhcSBPOd1ib-HJyQUC-zZGShjxMW3ki16gfbpjRk-vqsHVO9_LmSpO2TTOGesFWDPQeBJILMxUblg1QkdmcE6nlvvE37ptK7A6ro/s749/ehrlich-simon.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="749" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzBoAz0GPfthl3lAjZF5BsXcdr9MD_g5KIdL_XLo1_FhcSBPOd1ib-HJyQUC-zZGShjxMW3ki16gfbpjRk-vqsHVO9_LmSpO2TTOGesFWDPQeBJILMxUblg1QkdmcE6nlvvE37ptK7A6ro/w640-h426/ehrlich-simon.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ehrlich-Simon wager according to the Wall Street Journal, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324165204579026631593290784">Jonathan V. Last</a>, August 30, 2013, more less when I started analyzing this wager.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>The fact that Ehrlich "lost" according to the omnipotent neoliberal economists was used broadly as a vindication of the power of economics in predicting what would happen in the physical world. But were the economists mostly spouting nonsense, as is their long-standing tradition?</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-o8HJuUBTPW6BrAfcU5MgM3ox9FuEVPQykefucLgxLCIALXnhX88Y9H5Vdpf7RSR2OP2h_xoecbdQDkAWTDKGgduJVV-Aj_UnEWO1Wx4Frban_wZU_nY7snZ-hyfybhgRUTXv3aIiNkhb/s1421/naturalcopper.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1311" data-original-width="1421" height="590" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-o8HJuUBTPW6BrAfcU5MgM3ox9FuEVPQykefucLgxLCIALXnhX88Y9H5Vdpf7RSR2OP2h_xoecbdQDkAWTDKGgduJVV-Aj_UnEWO1Wx4Frban_wZU_nY7snZ-hyfybhgRUTXv3aIiNkhb/w640-h590/naturalcopper.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Natural copper. Copper is one of the most important metals in the global economy that gravitates towards the "low carbon solutions" (whatever this term may mean to you). Source: Wikipedia.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>In short, Simon challenged Ehrlich to choose any raw material he wanted and a date more than a year away, and he would wager on the <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">inflation-adjusted prices</span> decreasing as opposed to increasing. Ehrlich chose copper (Cu), chromium, nickel (Ni), tin (Sn), and tungsten. The bet was formalized on September 29, 1980, with September 29, 1990, as the payoff date. </p><p>Since <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium" target="_blank">chromium</a> is a stainless steel additive and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten" target="_blank">tungtsen</a> a rare earth metal, the consistent monthly <a href="http://kwgresources.com/reducing-energy-consumption-by-alternative-processing-routes-to-produce-ferrochromium-alloys-from-chromite-ore-2/" target="_blank">price data</a> for these two metals are missing in public domain. Consequently, I replaced chromium with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc" target="_blank">zinc</a> (Zn) and tungsten with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver" target="_blank">silver</a> (Ag). Zinc is used as a component of bronze and for metal plating to prevent corrosion. Silver is an essential metal used in electronics, solar cells, but also in coins, jewelry, etc.</p><p>Because I started to analyze this wager around September 2013, my starting date was September 29, 1982, not 1980. This is how far back the public domain price data went. Here I will update the wager and question its usefulness in the physical world and in empirical economics.</p><p>Let me begin with the "inflation adjusted prices." This term may be well defined when we focus on the USA with our global reserve currency and carefully orchestrated inflation index. As recent work of my brilliant PhD student, Philip Mitchell, shows however, other countries suffer from (a) their own oft erratic inflation rates and (b) the inevitable speculation related to the rate of exchange of their currencies to the US dollar (item (b) feeds into item (a)). Thus, for most countries on the planet, the US inflation adjusted index makes little sense. To put it simply, one day a unit of some currency may buy a different quantity of goods denominated in USD, than next day - while the US dollar price of that good remains constant. The last I checked, most people in the world live outside of the USA.</p><p>Let me now focus on inflation in the US. The "observed" inflation is a simple story by definition. The Central Bank here pretty much sets the inflation's pace by political considerations and by manipulating carefully interest rate and printing money. As we will point out in our upcoming paper, as of recent, this printing out has gotten rather out of hand.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-wMePCO4IHqzSaKxq0GjO56Nx7UcwqG8ojX1DE7f2dd90us2BvhvYnFE49ed_C1K0jZYgn9GVp7yx-0tNf7Y5Mo0wzZL3FAZ9W7CqMlIIvVxi1-ZSiWUXmv_9_zJ81HGzo204Szg60YC6/s1750/CPI1982.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1313" data-original-width="1750" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-wMePCO4IHqzSaKxq0GjO56Nx7UcwqG8ojX1DE7f2dd90us2BvhvYnFE49ed_C1K0jZYgn9GVp7yx-0tNf7Y5Mo0wzZL3FAZ9W7CqMlIIvVxi1-ZSiWUXmv_9_zJ81HGzo204Szg60YC6/w640-h480/CPI1982.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One hundred dollars on September 29, 1982 is worth 310 dollars today. It is kind of scary, but quite predictable if you have dollars. The US Federal Bank manipulates the dollar inflation index to be more than 2% per year but not too much more, based on a basket of goods they define. Barring the post-2008 financial shenanigans, the US inflation rate has been almost constant at roughly 5%/year, and the plot is a straight line. </td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>Before I discuss metals, I should describe the role of crude oil in stimulating economic "growth". I have <a href="https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2011/03/energy-flow-and-metabolism-of-societies.html" target="_blank">talked about</a> it for many years in this blog. Oil permeates so thoroughly the "tissue" of the societal superorganism that its use scales with "mass" or size of this superorganism (its GDP/capita) as a power law. The exponent of this power law is similar to the scaling of metabolism at rest with body mass in living organisms. Thus, cheap oil stimulates almost everything in an economy. In particular, it makes mining, refining, finishing and distribution of all metals <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">cheaper, provided that these metals retain a similar level of physical availability</span><span style="background-color: white;">. In other words, if the mines are still functioning, ore grade does not deteriorate, plentiful water for mining is available and demand is stable, a metal's price should go down in tandem with oil price.</span></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL9rfcfvSyf0CumYQfZJ72QS0HWLKefvehOV47iVnaTnJVn0eZyvc1tSVHKL4gtSqhxAAaieGOcA9bE31sCyQ5pzu1VsgSHRQgX_5AcarkTpIcYi9B0eKyDit1tI0mh8PLDoW7M-n97dJT/s1750/oilprice.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1313" data-original-width="1750" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL9rfcfvSyf0CumYQfZJ72QS0HWLKefvehOV47iVnaTnJVn0eZyvc1tSVHKL4gtSqhxAAaieGOcA9bE31sCyQ5pzu1VsgSHRQgX_5AcarkTpIcYi9B0eKyDit1tI0mh8PLDoW7M-n97dJT/w640-h480/oilprice.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The West Texas Intermediate (WTI) price since September 1982 in dollars of the day and constant 1982 dollars. If your currency is pegged to US dollar or to oil (almost the same thing), oil has remained cheap during most of the ensuing four decades. The post October 2004 price increase is real. This is when production rate of conventional oil plateaued. The 2008 spike had to do with the pre-market crash speculation. You can also see the first Iraqi war (Jan 1991) and the 9/11 price spikes. The late 2014-2016 price crash was caused by too much oil chasing insufficient demand. Finally, you can see the 2020 COVID dip in the price. The black curve shows you how inflation squeezed the "real" oil price down by a factor of three by 2021. The last statement is true only if you always have access to an abundant supply of US dollars to finance your oil purchases.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />After this preamble, let's look now at the metal prices in dollars of the day, and see how they correlate with the WTI price. The portfolio prices have been above the oil price most of the time, and were well correlated with the oil price. After 2008, this correlation became almost prefect. Since you already know about the role crude oil plays in the human economy, you understand why. If you buy metals on the world market, and your currency is not pegged to dollar, you likely pay attention only to the dollar of the day, and constant 1982 dollars mean little to you. This is the first major fallacy of the Simon-Ehrlich wager.</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuMmtqS-WeNpitrGDGKmTmOwf8K-JHork7d54mgumeelQgVjq_qq213Mrmn14M0_aHsWFbKRY4xxk5lmIjkj-gbTMvErS55bmNFkcfCwV8DoNjYGHdowXjpTqs7s9MGtBzkfcdPyWwfcGq/s1750/metalportfolio.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1313" data-original-width="1750" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuMmtqS-WeNpitrGDGKmTmOwf8K-JHork7d54mgumeelQgVjq_qq213Mrmn14M0_aHsWFbKRY4xxk5lmIjkj-gbTMvErS55bmNFkcfCwV8DoNjYGHdowXjpTqs7s9MGtBzkfcdPyWwfcGq/w640-h480/metalportfolio.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Prices of the metal portfolio with the WTI price superimposed (the black curve). We start from $200 of each of the five metals. Their prices are stacked on top of one another, adding to $1000 at the start of the zinc (Zn) curve. For comparison, we also show $1000 of WTI crude oil. Since October 2004, there is an almost 1:1 correlation between the price dynamics of the portfolio and oil. In dollars of the day, Ehrlich has been 80% correct. One can argue that for most metal purchasers around the world, it is the metal price of the day that counts, not its discounted version. </td></tr></tbody></table><br />The second major fallacy stems from the abstract way economists think about material goods. A tacit assumption in economics is that if price of something becomes too high this thing can be replaced with another one made from different materials and using a different technology. But this way of thinking is incorrect when your task is to buy a specific metal for specific applications. Copper wires, for example, could be replaced with aluminum ones, but no one in their right mind would volunteer this replacement. I know because my parent's house was built by Germans during WWII, when copper was unavailable for civilian uses. So all the wiring in our house was made of aluminum. When used, the wires would really heat up, because of their higher specific resistance that was not offset by the larger wire cross-sections. Also aluminum flows under the pressure of screws in the outlets and in appliances, so most wire contacts would become loose and would spark and/or overheat. Bad news all around. <div><br /></div><div>So a better question to ask is this: How much of a metal or oil a given quantity of constant 1982 dollars would buy, if it bought 1 unit of each in September 1982? Note that I do not believe in constant dollars as much as economists do, simply because most people in the world have to convert their currency of the day to US dollars of the day to buy a metal or oil. The relationships among the world currencies and the US dollar are complex and mostly nonlinear. A simple discount rate, shown in the first graph above, will not do!</div><div><br /></div><div>Nevertheless, in constant 1982 dollars, Simon would win the wager for oil 80% of the time, for tin (Sn) 99%, and silver (Ag) 90% of the time. Ehrlich would win for copper 63% of the time, nickel (Ni) 60%, and zinc (Zn) would be almost a break even. Thus the simplistic pronunciations of Simon winning are simply false, even in constant dollars.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYfBnK4mmuYKxxLGf1-kZBBQpS4LzlIbhhGvBjgBShQtyAlQgasKpPNE1LmIr2AUczfWJP2Q7YHKCJ7bGG_5bKbk7LGODP42s-7oAJuB8Gxtxlv_IYOquqD5Dkrf1UnoG40lH3Q2l1ePcv/s1750/metalportfolioperUSDin1982.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1313" data-original-width="1750" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYfBnK4mmuYKxxLGf1-kZBBQpS4LzlIbhhGvBjgBShQtyAlQgasKpPNE1LmIr2AUczfWJP2Q7YHKCJ7bGG_5bKbk7LGODP42s-7oAJuB8Gxtxlv_IYOquqD5Dkrf1UnoG40lH3Q2l1ePcv/w640-h480/metalportfolioperUSDin1982.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here is my olive branch to the economists. The question I ask is this: How much of a metal and oil would the constant 1982 dollars buy, if they bought one unit of each in September 1982.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>Now if the same question were asked in dollars of the day, as it would be in most countries, Ehrlich would win for copper 93%, nickel 94%, and zinc 95% of the time, while oil and silver would essentially break even. Simon would win for tin 61% of the time.</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_2k3-o3s6inRZADKuC9BYNmZtZwGWPr3uRiJwju-kJQsv0dMK2q4UwNl8Rplh0wdJxL2VNRsv631uZ-BYfhGpjXmqsa3kDO0as8KN40h07ngZQbXrgOweSJBgUXHqCjB7WmYdaPNDTA5P/s1750/metalportfolioperUSDinDOD.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1313" data-original-width="1750" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_2k3-o3s6inRZADKuC9BYNmZtZwGWPr3uRiJwju-kJQsv0dMK2q4UwNl8Rplh0wdJxL2VNRsv631uZ-BYfhGpjXmqsa3kDO0as8KN40h07ngZQbXrgOweSJBgUXHqCjB7WmYdaPNDTA5P/w640-h480/metalportfolioperUSDinDOD.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A follow up to the previous graph. A slightly different question I ask is this: How much of a metal and oil would dollars of the day buy, if they bought one unit of each in September 1982. Note the incredible impact of the stagnating production rate of conventional oil worldwide. The world to the left of the vertical dotted line is different from that to the right. Some of the conventional pushback is summarized <a href="https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2012/04/world-is-finite-isnt-it.html" target="_blank">here.</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><i>If</i> magical technologies, in which Simon believed religiously, were to supplant the physical Earth and mineral availability, <b>and </b>the "laws" of economics dominated the Laws of nature, <i>then</i> past October 2004, and in the dollars of the day, a purchasing manager would still be able to buy more of each metal and oil than in 1982, regardless of inflation. Please look at the chart above and check if you believe your own lying eyes or Dr. Simon. This is the third major fallacy that Simon brought into this (in)famous discussion of metal prices.</div><div><br /></div><div>"The essence of wealth is the capacity to control the forces of nature, and the extent of wealth depends upon the level of technology and the ability to create new knowledge." J. Simon, "The Ultimate Resource", 2nd ed. Princeton University Press, 1998) - ISBN: 9780691003818.</div><div><br /></div><div>In summary, the blanket statements issued by economists and journalists are too simplistic and do not reflect the nuances of this complex wager. Dr. Paul Ehrlich has proven himself to be a deep thinking scientist, while Dr. Julian Simon remained a happy imbecile until his death. So much for the confrontation of science of the spherical physical world with the flat-earth, infinity-seeking economics. But I already <a href="https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2013/06/human-foibles.html" target="_blank">lamented</a> this state of affairs eight years ago. There is little new I can add today.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here is - in my opinion - the most imbecilic comment Simon ever made: "We now have in our hands—really, in our libraries—the technology to feed, clothe, and supply energy to an <b>ever-growing</b> population for the next <b>seven billion years</b>. "The State of Humanity: Steadily Improving". Cato Institute Policy Report, www.cato.org, September/October 1995. </div><div><br /></div><div>A simple, conservative calculation shows that at the end of these 7 billion years there would be <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">more humans than atoms in the Universe</span>. I guess the intricacies of exponential growth and mass conservation eluded Dr. Simon. Oh, and 7 billion years is almost twice the age of the Earth and 1/2 of the age of the Universe.</div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div><br /></div><div> <br /><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div></div></div>Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-47674230167978335392021-08-13T12:28:00.050-05:002021-10-30T04:47:33.398-05:00A Letter to a Friend<p> Dear Friend,</p><p>I do not mention your name, for you can be anyone on the whole Earth. You could have any color of skin, and belong to any tribe and clan. You could give offerings to any Gods and believe in any myths. In modern impersonal terms, you could be of any race, nationality, religion and political creed, and be of any sex whatsoever. It took us <a href="https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-evolution-interactive-timeline">a million years</a> to develop that big, complex brain of ours. Some 100,000 years ago, in the harsh, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Period" target="_blank">frigid climate</a> of Europe and Asia, there were perhaps a few hundred of us left on the brink of extinction. But we did not go extinct then and here we are, my friend and brother, all 7.8 billion of us.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigzit5LA1FjOsMI03Hn5bMJyDVfBaVRV3PaOeOIaybgtmsppWUj5POc7PgjQZNrxXffygaEyQfG6gqwjJpw8rZQDeTFpevqqtrk1CY3LapeTlZwcYss2kyPH7fRYyDjXSTjJ_dbSsVY-x_/s841/Gregory002.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="646" data-original-width="841" height="492" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigzit5LA1FjOsMI03Hn5bMJyDVfBaVRV3PaOeOIaybgtmsppWUj5POc7PgjQZNrxXffygaEyQfG6gqwjJpw8rZQDeTFpevqqtrk1CY3LapeTlZwcYss2kyPH7fRYyDjXSTjJ_dbSsVY-x_/w640-h492/Gregory002.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gregory, John Walter 1896 - 1968, The Great Rift Valley. London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. This Sketch by Gregory from his expedition to East Africa in 1892-3. shows "Mount Kenya from the Kapte Plains west of Machakos".</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Learned <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/106/38/16018">people say</a> that we must have come from Africa, mostly from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Rift_Valley">Great Rift Valley</a>:</p><div>"Our species, <i>Homo sapiens</i>, is highly autapomorphic (uniquely derived) among hominids in the structure of its skull and postcranial skeleton. It is also sharply distinguished from other organisms by its unique symbolic mode of cognition. The fossil and archaeological records combine to show fairly clearly that our physical and cognitive attributes both first appeared in Africa, but at different times. Essentially modern bony conformation was established in that continent by the 200–150 Ka range (a dating in good agreement with dates for the origin of H. sapiens derived from modern molecular diversity). The event concerned was apparently short-term because it is essentially unanticipated in the fossil record. In contrast, the first convincing stirrings of symbolic behavior are not currently detectable until (possibly well) after 100 Ka. The radical reorganization of gene expression that underwrote the distinctive physical appearance of H. sapiens was probably also responsible for the neural substrate that permits symbolic cognition. This exaptively acquired [<i>we developed a function that was not brought about by natural selection, TWP</i>] potential lay unexploited until it was “discovered” via a cultural stimulus, plausibly the invention of language. Modern humans appear to have definitively exited Africa to populate the rest of the globe only after both their physical and cognitive peculiarities had been acquired within that continent."</div><div><br /></div><div>Think of this, please, my white, unvaccinated Republican friend from Alabama. You and your black brother from Oakland, California, share almost everything, and most certainly the same human brain that allows you to filter reality, and refuse to see, hear and understand what the ancient <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbic_system">limbic</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain">reptilian</a> parts of your triune brain tell you <b>not</b> to. For both of you, my brothers - and for me - it is difficult to <b>really</b> understand the words we have not grown up with, and have not been hurt by. I, in particular, am a little better off, because I am writing this essay in the the third language I learned, using words I could not possibly know as a child. But this makes little difference, because we all, I mean <i>all,</i> are connected in an infinite number of ways, share the same ancient memories and instincts, and deceive ourselves in similar ways. <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">We really do not understand the words we use to describe the happenings that impact all of us at the same time in ways that are difficult to categorize as imminent physical threats.</span></div><div><br /></div><div>So how did I come to writing about how we really understand words? Well, I am preparing a graduate course: <i>Earth, Environment, Energy and Economics.</i> I have been teaching this course since my time at Berkeley. The course has its own 533 page book I will publish one of these days, and a myriad of well-chosen and documented examples, based on rigorous science. I like to teach this course differently each time I offer it. </div><div><br /></div><div>While preparing the first three class lectures for this fall, I started reminiscing that I have been warning people about overpopulation, devastation of the environment, mass extinctions, pollution, climate heating, biofuels, tropical plantations, industrial agriculture, overconsumption, etc. for the last 20 years, with the results that were always below my expectations. Yes, the students have been telling me that this course was a life-altering experience for them, but - I thought - how could I convey to them the sheer horror of the subjects I have been covering? Could I ever show them my real indignation and rage, the crushing pain and fear for my own children and grandson? </div><div><br /></div><div>A little earlier, on June 25, 2021, I gave a presentation to the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s5LqlCba6o&list=PLR_ov-3cbgk89hppe4F-K-z1f4xF9qfPO&index=6">here</a>, minute 7:40; the slides are in English, but I speak Polish). Since the presentation was a short 20 minutes, I cut off from it the slide shown below. More about the Himalayan glaciers later.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9hGewBiPw32Hyp08KZTYFK4E2RquEYfTdMxHvoNLGpk_FN6sTj9ZAT6ewr5oA1zrG2heC9y3BhTUWOD-Sqz4axdUc0jt6KulwbfpuI0MiyY_g-fonPbZm1QrkLU4IWdVCUdB5QuMIVZLl/s1944/HimalayaGlaciers.jpg"><img border="0" data-original-height="1094" data-original-width="1944" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9hGewBiPw32Hyp08KZTYFK4E2RquEYfTdMxHvoNLGpk_FN6sTj9ZAT6ewr5oA1zrG2heC9y3BhTUWOD-Sqz4axdUc0jt6KulwbfpuI0MiyY_g-fonPbZm1QrkLU4IWdVCUdB5QuMIVZLl/w640-h360/HimalayaGlaciers.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div>A friend of mine, Professor Sigurjon Jonsson, invited his Icelandic friend, Grimur Bjornsson to listen to my presentation at the Geothermal Energy Conference in KAUST. Later, Grimur sent me this note and book:</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglJSj7yl5TnGUYq5prXU47-PD_R8wRzMTdSev0BINeFeBvb_oIrnSM3SzW0y7ezrQzeKVIVNE9_WCKqVCKKPoI1fVsnEuzbaJJ4HPGmEby2A2GyKao9YVYf5K6w5P4xnuzf2zUWNZ0ER7u/s2048/OnTimeandWater.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1689" data-original-width="2048" height="528" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglJSj7yl5TnGUYq5prXU47-PD_R8wRzMTdSev0BINeFeBvb_oIrnSM3SzW0y7ezrQzeKVIVNE9_WCKqVCKKPoI1fVsnEuzbaJJ4HPGmEby2A2GyKao9YVYf5K6w5P4xnuzf2zUWNZ0ER7u/w640-h528/OnTimeandWater.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It turns out that Grimur knows a famous Icelandic story teller and writer, Andri Snaer Magnason, and thought that Andri's book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Time-Water-Andri-Sn%C3%A6r-Magnason/dp/194883023X">On Time and Water,</a> would be good for me to read.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>Finally, on August 10, I started reading this profound and enchanted book, and understood what was missing from my well-prepared lectures. Simple stories were missing or were hidden behind the impersonal, calmly delivered, techno-scientific babble, like my talk in Poland, which was designed for a broader audience. (As a scientist I am not supposed to shout and cry, or use colloquial language. It is not my societal role.)</div><div><br /></div><div>If I asked you about the death of your beloved uncle in a car accident or from cancer, you could picture clearly what happened, and how this event affected you. But what if I asked you about an event that killed 100 people? Like so many street executions in Warsaw during WWII, in which both of my wife's grandfathers disappeared without a trace? Would you be able to see the terror in the faces of these people, when a heavy machine gun opened fire on them from a military transport truck after two German soldiers suddenly lifted a canvas curtain concealing it? Could you imagine their 100 bodies being trucked to some mass grave? Would you picture how this mass murder affected Joanna's mother and father, who at the time did not know each other? How did it affect the victims' wives and siblings? Other people? (One of the grandfathers had been a university profesor of linguistics.) Now, what if I asked you about the A-bomb explosion over Hiroshima? Could you explain the explosion's fury? How it <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/09/science/charles-loeb-atomic-bomb.html" target="_blank">blew through</a> the lives of hundreds of thousands of people there, including the 170,000 dead? No, you can't, and neither can I. But at least we can imagine that single elderly person, who evaporated in a split-second leaving a permanent shadow burned into the stone pavement.</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9THqO9ZltQBAbUU_-F9_3vyFEcaoOyF0g3MuehZ1MgAsPC8Qtmnoa9-IAFSVj2H2LLuds5j2t-B7qcASjVDjVTtMgerPwFtQKzxgVDQir_GojNZII_ADLxCyiyXchGaHQuWAscT2GWBjX/s692/hiroshima.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="692" data-original-width="650" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9THqO9ZltQBAbUU_-F9_3vyFEcaoOyF0g3MuehZ1MgAsPC8Qtmnoa9-IAFSVj2H2LLuds5j2t-B7qcASjVDjVTtMgerPwFtQKzxgVDQir_GojNZII_ADLxCyiyXchGaHQuWAscT2GWBjX/w376-h400/hiroshima.jpg" width="376" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Can you picture this elderly person walking down a street with a cane?</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>Do you see where I am going with this? What will you be able to imagine when I say "climate change"? Or "ecological overshoot"? Or "global warming"? Or the "Sixth Extinction"? In short, what if I asked you about something that affects 7.8 billion people and is likely to kill off slowly many tens or hundreds of millions of us? Well, first "climate change" is not something that you've been hearing since you were a baby when your mother tried to scare you. Second, you'd have a hard time connecting "climate change" to what is going to happen to your life, children, family and friends. Third, the enormity of this phenomenon puts it beyond grasp of almost all people, but it is often reduced to that stupid cartoon in the Wall Street Journal that was supposed to amplify an editorial by a smart person, whose malevolent goal was to move you into inaction and apathy. You see, the evil power of this cartoon is that it reconnects you to things you know and understand, like the hysterical old ladies, and makes you think that climate change, the scientist warnings and what you see with your own eyes are just these nonsensical ladies being hysterical. Fear of ridicule is a very powerful social driver that will move you away from those undesirable (literally "uncool") climate scientists.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTAcZXH5olabkaLnlegzQD3EGxuRF9sDVqo5kUsFw64JXIf4bx54kotX6M-1zc5hT8Em891WBQsmguvorgGcFO-API79Wk-W0Pb0p5vbXLb4Tq2-TJfxOdvccroHMjcy1R1uFEs0sD5te7/s860/kooninsedtorial8112021.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="573" data-original-width="860" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTAcZXH5olabkaLnlegzQD3EGxuRF9sDVqo5kUsFw64JXIf4bx54kotX6M-1zc5hT8Em891WBQsmguvorgGcFO-API79Wk-W0Pb0p5vbXLb4Tq2-TJfxOdvccroHMjcy1R1uFEs0sD5te7/w640-h426/kooninsedtorial8112021.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">AR6 is the latest IPCC Report on climate change. The owl, chicken, turkeys and other birds are the scientists, journalists and other media people who rightly fear climate change. Source: "Climate Change Brings a Flood of Hyperbole - Despite constant warnings of catastrophe, things aren’t anywhere near as dire as the media say." By Steven E. Koonin, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/intergovernmental-panel-climate-change-ipcc-un-united-nations-global-warming-floods-wildfire-stevens-palmer-koonin-11628631428" target="_blank">WSJ Editorial</a>, 8/10/21 6:33 pm ET.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />This brings me back to Andri's magnificent book. You see, on page 79, after he made me shed tears about five times, Andri starts talking about the Himalayan glaciers as a way of connecting with the Dalai Lama he is about to interview. I am sorry, but you, my Chinese brothers, will be now blocked from reading this text across China, because your hypersensitive government thinks that this gentle, old person with no army presents a mortal threat to their brand of controlling everything but the climate change and environmental collapse. Too bad, because many tens of millions of you will be impacted directly by what I am about to say.<div><br /></div><div>Andri wanted to find a simple story that would connect Iceland, India, the Tibetan Plateau, China, and the life-giving glaciers that are about to disappear impacting directly some 20% of the living humans and their unborn babies. That story presents herself as a sacred cow, or the Cow Goddess.</div><div><br /></div><div>Summarizing Andri's story on pages 84-87, the Icelandic world began with the cow Auduhumla, who was created from <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/hoarfrost" target="_blank">hoarfrost</a>. Auduhumla nursed Yamir, from whom the world was created. His blood became the oceans and waters, his flesh the Earth, his hair became forests and his brain clouds.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlfriBbwE8-mdX5yg7qGwdoMv1yEua8zNvPof1_2dR8w1wjotAjOkyWmQXDFHOPCrwQ5E-c7KMJV-TO5UhQeuoYN-77UCwydUeOv9QYJCFqWhna4OVNeLkWnWkrfpbMRNS81g0TvEHw-G2/s2048/2560px-Yaks-Kailash-Manasarovar.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="2048" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlfriBbwE8-mdX5yg7qGwdoMv1yEua8zNvPof1_2dR8w1wjotAjOkyWmQXDFHOPCrwQ5E-c7KMJV-TO5UhQeuoYN-77UCwydUeOv9QYJCFqWhna4OVNeLkWnWkrfpbMRNS81g0TvEHw-G2/w640-h426/2560px-Yaks-Kailash-Manasarovar.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">At the foot of he sacred Mount Kailash (the white peak in the background) is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Manasarovar" target="_blank">Manasarovar Lake</a>, the highest elevation lake in the world.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>In India, according to Hindu legends, there is Kamadhenu, a cow of abundance and plenty, closely related to Pritvi, who is the Earth herself, often depicted as a cow. In the Himalayas there is the sacred Mount Kailash, home to the throne of the god Shiva. At the foot of Mount Kailash is Manasarovar Lake. From this region originate four of the most sacred rivers in Asia, flowing in all cardinal directions:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_River" target="_blank">Indus</a></b> River is 3200 km long flowing from Tibet through Western India and into Pakistan</li><li><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutlej" target="_blank">Sutlej</a></b> runs about 1500 km from Tibet through India and Pakistan</li><li><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmaputra_River" target="_blank">Brahmaputra</a></b> travels 3000 km through India and Bangladesh, before joining the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganges" target="_blank"><b>Ganges River</b></a></li><li><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghaghara" target="_blank">Karnali</a></b> flows through Napal, and forms a large tributary of the Ganges</li></ul></div><div>One of the India's holiest sites lies at the foot of the Himalayas, in Uttarakhand state. There, one finds a valley glacier by the name of Gomukh that feeds the foaming white waters of one of the most important headstreams of the Ganges. 'Go-mukh' literally means the mouth of the cow. </div><div><br /></div><div>The milky appearance of the Ganges headwaters comes from the suspended and dissolved minerals from the rock pulverized and scraped by the glacier. The Ganges River is the most sacred river to Hindus. Her water is called 'nectar' in India, because it gives life to countless fields and crops. A similar observation applies to the four rivers listed above.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4tgBt2WkgO8aj3lN4NBriChZrgZsWL5oBvGWfb4NcYzDsHCuftyoHE8_f42GeKh90fnrSa_SgVpn6lHoArD4olV3EMJJR7ewQkgL5KEYGnes_-0zk7A-hKYseKeb2tM8x4p7lYqKVhJBa/s2048/Karnali_river.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="2048" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4tgBt2WkgO8aj3lN4NBriChZrgZsWL5oBvGWfb4NcYzDsHCuftyoHE8_f42GeKh90fnrSa_SgVpn6lHoArD4olV3EMJJR7ewQkgL5KEYGnes_-0zk7A-hKYseKeb2tM8x4p7lYqKVhJBa/w640-h426/Karnali_river.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The minerals-laden, milky water of the Karnali River in Napal. If you want to live 100 years you must drink this water. Soon this river will be no more.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>The fifth river I will mention here is the Mekong, or <b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mekong" target="_blank">Mekong River</a></b>, the world's twelfth longest river and the sixth longest in Asia. Its estimated length is 4,900 km and it drains an area of 795,000 sq. km, discharging 475 cubic km of water annually. From the Tibetan Plateau the river runs through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. </div><div><br /></div><div>I have to stop somewhere, so I will finish with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze" target="_blank"><b>Yangtze River</b>,</a> the longest river in Asia. That river originates from several tributaries in the eastern part of the Tibetan Plateau. The Yangtze has played a major role in the history, culture and economy of China. For thousands of years, the river has been used for water, irrigation, sanitation, transportation, industry, boundary-marking and war. The prosperous Yangtze River Delta generates as much as <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">20% of China's GDP</span>. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze is the largest hydro-electric power station in the world. In mid-2014, the Chinese government announced it was building a multi-tier transport network, comprising railways, roads and airports, to create a new economic belt alongside the river.</div><div><br /></div><div>Are you beginning to realize what "global warming" really means for close to two billion people? How their lives and prosperity depend on the glacial rivers emanating from that most sacred cow on the Earth, the Tibetan Plateau? Tibet itself is a miracle of plate tectonics. Geologically speaking, it exploded up in no time and now it shapes lives of 1/3 of all living humans. </div><div><br /></div><div>Here's how this slow-paced tragedy will unfold. First, as the glaciers continue to melt at the highest rates measured by humans, there will be increased flooding and damage. Then the glaciers will be gone and with them most or all of these live-giving rivers. In spring, torrents of melt water from the rapidly melting snow packs will rush down, causing landslides and floods. Through the rest of the year, there will be no water flow from the mountains and drought punctured by occasional heavy rains, like below. We will run out of places to build dams. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj61MxFPIei8HWozap2BQj6RjFVR-q1wXep-KixjHtyzXhtXW5xz0GuvAB13wFPD-QOQwVSb_9IhsyYtlkZliwrdQXwTTrxRqDPGKtfm2x3XybxfhFXAkHi0lAjQMvyf9bk9LMeq-TQNAhZ/s1024/japanlandslide2021.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="1024" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj61MxFPIei8HWozap2BQj6RjFVR-q1wXep-KixjHtyzXhtXW5xz0GuvAB13wFPD-QOQwVSb_9IhsyYtlkZliwrdQXwTTrxRqDPGKtfm2x3XybxfhFXAkHi0lAjQMvyf9bk9LMeq-TQNAhZ/w640-h360/japanlandslide2021.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Landslides from heavy reinfall hit the central Japanese city of Atami on July 3, leaving at least 20 people missing. (The Washington Post)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>The roughly two billion humans, who depend on these rivers will wither too. Do you see the parched fields, and thirsty people migrating and dying? But where will they go? Now click on some of the links in the text and soak in the beauty of these magnificent rivers and landscapes. Geologically speaking, they will disappear in a blink. Puff!</div><div><br /></div><div>So now you know what a "1.5 to 3 degrees C" global warming will translate to for the countless people, our brothers, most of whom never benefitted from the runaway consumption of the planet we - you and I - engage in. I wish Steve Koonin, the man I have known for years, read this blog and wrote a contrition letter to WSJ. Alas, he will not. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0_3jdjfARxEEVGFebu5mqWC7HTr3YXvJpTf9jVXzZcDBw-JLBfD6buYXnXIMVfb10e16ie1PDuwSFCIum3n8TrNR_cXZA_i0-9_z7-W8dZc9RixMcOx4JPXx2OrkNecVFHeaqkdeZphvw/s716/itsnotmewhoconsumestoomuch.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="716" height="382" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0_3jdjfARxEEVGFebu5mqWC7HTr3YXvJpTf9jVXzZcDBw-JLBfD6buYXnXIMVfb10e16ie1PDuwSFCIum3n8TrNR_cXZA_i0-9_z7-W8dZc9RixMcOx4JPXx2OrkNecVFHeaqkdeZphvw/w640-h382/itsnotmewhoconsumestoomuch.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A gift from my British friend, Mike Haywood.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>And here is a song that goes with this blog <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_38SWIIKITE" target="_blank">SO WELL</a> (from Mike too). If something else pops out, like Sir Stinking Liar Richard Bronson (as I was warned by a friend in a different country), <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=eve+of+destruction+lyrics&rlz=1C1SQJL_enUS884US884&oq=eve+of+destruction&aqs=chrome.2.69i57j46i433i512j0i512j46i512j0i512l2j69i61l2.11422j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8" target="_blank">here</a> are the lyrics.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>P.S. (08/14/2021)</b> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/opinion/climate-change.html" target="_blank">What Does It Mean for a Whole Nation to Become Uninhabitable?</a> </div><div>And to live in one of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJuqe6sre2I" target="_blank">most unsustainable, poorly designed cities</a>. This is what <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/24/1m-trees-tree-graveyard-dubai-conservation-plans-desertification-real-estate" target="_blank">happens to trees</a> in the desert, when they collide with a promise of monetary profit.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>P.S.P.S. (08/20/2021) </b><a href="It Rained at the Summit of Greenland. That’s Never Happened Before." target="_blank">It Rained at the Summit of Greenland. That’s Never Happened Before</a>. Please read the readers' comments. They provide a vivid testimony to the importance of this blog. The misunderstanding, denial, and aggressive attempts to call climate change a 'good thing' are striking.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Above-freezing conditions at Summit [<i>2 miles above sea level, TWP</i>] are nearly as rare. Before this century, ice cores showed they had occurred only <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">six times in the past 2,000 years,</span> Martin Stendel, a senior researcher at the Danish Meteorological Institute, wrote in an email message.
But above-freezing temperatures have now occurred at Summit in 2012, 2019 and this year — <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">three times in fewer than 10 years</span>."</div><div><br /></div><div>Athens, the hottest city in Europe is only <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/21/world/europe/athens-is-only-getting-hotter-its-new-chief-heat-officer-hopes-to-cool-it-down.html" target="_blank">getting hotter </a>and becoming unlivable. It now has the Chief Heat Officer. </div><div><br /></div><div>(<b>8/28/20121</b>) <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/sunday-review/colorado-river-drying-up.html" target="_blank">40 Million People Rely on the Colorado River. It’s Drying Up Fast</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>(8/28/2021) </b>Bolsonaro says Brazil is on the brink of<a href="https://www.telam.com.ar/notas/202108/566516-bolsonaro-brasil-energia-aumento-tarifas.html" target="_blank"> energy collapse</a> and announced a rate hike. The huge dams are in critical situation. Some of them are at 10% of their capacity due to severe drought in the Parana basin that also affects their Argentinean neighbor downstream. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div><br />Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-38226959239436012182021-07-24T14:41:00.005-05:002021-08-15T10:23:00.681-05:00One year later... <p>In the first week of August 2020, I was back home from the famous cancer hospital in Houston, MD Anderson, in which I received a brutal chemotherapy to control my lymphoma. How the lymphoma ran away is a separate story of poor decision making by a junior doctor at MD Anderson, and me not dumping him two months earlier and starting on Acalabrutinib that has kept me alive until today. Because of the rather sloppy administration of the support IVs, over four days they pumped into me a net 10 kilograms of liquids, and I was swollen like an elephant. How do I know this? Because I weighed myself each day and at the peak I gained 10 kilograms. The doctor who burst in for a 5 minute visit, disputed my finding, arguing that it did not agree with the nurse's notes about my urine production. More about notes soon. I asked him quietly if mass conservation did not hold in medicine? He was somewhat embarrassed, but then again, he was busy running from one patient to another, and 99% of my therapy was carried out by nurses and one great physician's assistant. She was from Palestine, and we found many topics to discuss. She was a total outlier. Full of initiative, ready to make decisions and correct what she saw as doctor's errors. Compare her to most of the nurses who would come to my room with a computer on wheels and proceed to typing notes without ever looking at me. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl1rfaHNQ4B1IpcHMSwttslQ3gmfRYxvWN8adSk7qFqRdFhqLOnxTe-Fy6vY2jHZ3OCjt3-1mgY09625HyUk-WjzNEWvnwSBGidNnGMknDK73KQoIFlDty6lq3dMmwsMZM7XCGZJJi-uvj/s2048/Sept_6_with_sophie_IMG_3450.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl1rfaHNQ4B1IpcHMSwttslQ3gmfRYxvWN8adSk7qFqRdFhqLOnxTe-Fy6vY2jHZ3OCjt3-1mgY09625HyUk-WjzNEWvnwSBGidNnGMknDK73KQoIFlDty6lq3dMmwsMZM7XCGZJJi-uvj/w640-h480/Sept_6_with_sophie_IMG_3450.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A month after the return from MD Anderson (Sept 6, 2020), I had no hair and lost 30% of muscle mass. I could barely walk 200 steps. My doctor daughter, Sophie, is helping me to regain stamina before leaving Austin later that day.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>At some point, one of these nurses tried to kill me with 1 liter of Rituximab injected too fast. Mustering what was left of my strength, I moaned: "Turn off this fucking machine or I'll rip it out." After looking one more time at the instructions on her computer screen, she finally did. I was in a serious allergic shock, in convulsions, and barely retaining consciousness. Guess what, the steroids and heart medication that were supposed to be in my room to handle this emergency prior to administering the IV, were not there. The nurses panicked and it took them a few minutes to find what they needed. Luckily, I am very strong and have a strong heart, so I survived. </p><p>Again, my advice to you is, do not go to MD Anderson unless you must. It is a bare knuckles, Republican money-making machine, efficient, cold, and hell-bent on recipes. Strict adherence to recipes is good in a giant hospital in which some nurses are not all that good, but it fails in emergencies. </p><p>Anyway, I finally left that lovely place, but only after waiting for one hour for someone to transport me a long distance to where my wife and son could pick me up. Remember, we were then at the summer peak of COVID-19, and no one was allowed to enter the hospital. True to form, my nurse called in the service once, did not get through, left a message, and refused to follow up. After using, err, rather strong language I made her call again and transport found me in one minute. Do not go to MD Anderson if you can avoid it. In fairness, though, they have all kinds of services they might apply to you readily if you need them and have cash.</p><p>To avoid misunderstanding, I still have an excellent private insurance, and MD Anderson must have found me to be a profitable patient. Still, I saw my physician for maybe 30 minutes total over one week of my stay there.</p><p>This calls for a comparison with two much more humane institutions: UT Austin and UC San Francisco. If you are not in a hurry, go to UT Austin. They are young, and do not have the depth and breadth of services of MD Anderson, but they have heads on their necks and hearts. Of course, there is no comparison between UC San Francisco and MD Anderson. San Francisco is so much better and more humane that the rich Republicans in Houston are simply outclassed. </p><p>Think. The Republicans are convinced that nothing has intrinsic value and all human relationships are purely contractual. I pay through the nose, they provide a service, and who am I to request that they also pretend to be humans, and not computer-like robots. The Republican conviction that there should be no public services and public infrastructure is a deadly reality in our screwed up Texas and in the Republican South of the Unites States. </p><p>Health care for everyone? Child care? Public transportation? Benefits for the employed? Some benefits for the unemployed? Simply asking these questions makes me an insufferable liberal. You know, the kind of man people in power here detest. Real men do not believe in them virus hoaxes, do not vaccinate, do not wear masks, starve rather than ask for help, and carry guns everywhere. To MD Anderson as well? And why not? In September, it will be the law. A refreshing change of gun wearing habit that throws us back to before 1896! Yes, gun carrying restrictions were introduced in Texas in 1896. This is when the wild, wild west was stopped here.</p><p>We love Texas, the hospitable and helpful ordinary people here, and - above all - we deeply love our property in Austin. This piece of land has become a big part of our heart and soul. Thus, we are not going anywhere. This is our home. But we will try to throw the current rascals out through political actions. May God save Texas (She probably has more important things to do, given the state of the Universe).</p><p>Why am I writing about all of this one year later? Because today my daughter, Dr. Sophie Patzek, an endocrinologist and Assistant Professor at UCSF had a bad bike accident. Going back home from work, she ran into someone's suddenly open car door. She lost consciousness, and ambulance took her to her own hospital. They gave Sophie an incredible treatment, with a prominent neurosurgeon personally evaluating her head CT scan in real time, and a plastic surgeon stitching Sophie together. She was banged up rather thoroughly. Of course not everyone would get a similar VIP treatment, but you get my drift. If you want superior care, please go to UCSF, and not to Stanford or MD Anderson. My 4-year old Stanford story was not as bad but similar to the MD Anderson story.</p><p>Bad things are supposed to happen to parents only. The anguish and pain we went through not being able to be with our daughter can only be understood by other parents. Childless people cannot possibly understand what I just wrote. And so it goes...</p>Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-46212221643563294062021-07-13T18:47:00.030-05:002021-07-18T12:05:17.424-05:00Shall We Overcome?<p>Here is the welcome visited upon us by one of our neighbors. After arrival at our home in Austin, TX, on July 10, 2021, we found three adult foxes, one male and two females, and a young fox poisoned with a rodent poison, possibly laced with arsenic. Later we found two tiny newborn fox babies lying by their dead mother.</p><p>Through tears, I posted to the neighborhood group bulletin this gentle reminder: </p><p>"No matter how you feel about wild animals, please note that putting out rat poison is very dangerous to your pets, dogs and cats. If they eat it or bite on a poisoned mouse, they can die too. Poisoned mice and rats, when eaten by other wildlife - foxes, racoons, coyotes and birds of prey – will kill them too, and so a cascade of deaths will continue. These foxes have lived happily on our property for at least two years." </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheitlNKdL1VpbzR_FZh-KEFp7es4zQDorCLbhyphenhyphen6OFbff7qSMxeZ2MZr38K0KWNF-tvHqRuWwfIqA6E4rys69R38ZEPd5wnVwtoXGQ_s-7wRah4-9rBAhfnHcjDk0Nn1GdJGUMQUvZzmu-6/s3888/P1001223.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2592" data-original-width="3888" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheitlNKdL1VpbzR_FZh-KEFp7es4zQDorCLbhyphenhyphen6OFbff7qSMxeZ2MZr38K0KWNF-tvHqRuWwfIqA6E4rys69R38ZEPd5wnVwtoXGQ_s-7wRah4-9rBAhfnHcjDk0Nn1GdJGUMQUvZzmu-6/w640-h426/P1001223.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This male fox had been our companion during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, and brightened our days. He was smart and funny, and approached us with certain nonchalance. Earlier, he had interviewed us for about two weeks. Apparently, we passed the interview, and he brought his very shy wife to show her off to us. They had four children, who played around our house, like children do, oblivious to the many dangers around them, but under the watchful eyes of the parents (and us).</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQEgPWluDYrj9FQOqTPfVBSnGLpLdFkE8q7U1TFkvk7a2U5AIR67330o7HJN59ks7Qy00noihN0cucpUD23R6NKpGahhgQM8kZbwV08EsCQ8RN8TOI3sBRaB-kuRfH9Mic4OxwPzSk5Go4/s2048/Deadfox2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQEgPWluDYrj9FQOqTPfVBSnGLpLdFkE8q7U1TFkvk7a2U5AIR67330o7HJN59ks7Qy00noihN0cucpUD23R6NKpGahhgQM8kZbwV08EsCQ8RN8TOI3sBRaB-kuRfH9Mic4OxwPzSk5Go4/w480-h640/Deadfox2.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And here is "our" magnificent smart fox poisoned some 5-7 days earlier. My wife, Joanna, found him in our plant enclosure and could not stop crying. Before they died, all foxes came back to where they felt safe: our home. But we weren't there to help them. This picture was taken on July 10, 2021.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>I continued: "We have reported the deaths of these foxes to the Sheriff’s Department, and likely will order an autopsy to pinpoint the poison, but right now the most important action we can take is to make sure that the deadly poison is not served again to the animals in our neighborhood. Please remember that once in the environment, the poison does not choose who will die next. It can be your pet."</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV95yZUduwjj4CnRj4ovs9TA3ae92bWIjED-o9_Hj07QQQnI2xmi_w2tTmqOu96BDd2GVuRZ4hPMPjrE2OPGco9xCP1HW0c27TsZz6SDcSwN_3N7b6JEfbf1tCpN1mF4pOHHF620LcCp6O/s2048/DeadFox3andababy.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV95yZUduwjj4CnRj4ovs9TA3ae92bWIjED-o9_Hj07QQQnI2xmi_w2tTmqOu96BDd2GVuRZ4hPMPjrE2OPGco9xCP1HW0c27TsZz6SDcSwN_3N7b6JEfbf1tCpN1mF4pOHHF620LcCp6O/w480-h640/DeadFox3andababy.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Here is our fox's wife and a young pup we don't know. She came to our house to give birth to two babies, and died. We found another dead female fox nearby. This picture was taken on July 11, 2021.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2El2Z6oGUTCIsme94fEQW6lpi6UcJ3KWRTj2ivcw1BUh3umHqiHTwHGdlTpm16PiTkaaLW_1thFE1QzqXUkhQzEhQWlyeeQiKysybPv4kp0bf-SxzdnPzhMUxdJUTZ6KHhCIYwsW56qD3/s2048/Deadfox1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2El2Z6oGUTCIsme94fEQW6lpi6UcJ3KWRTj2ivcw1BUh3umHqiHTwHGdlTpm16PiTkaaLW_1thFE1QzqXUkhQzEhQWlyeeQiKysybPv4kp0bf-SxzdnPzhMUxdJUTZ6KHhCIYwsW56qD3/w480-h640/Deadfox1.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This the third dead fox, a young female, who died six feet from "our" fox, at likely the same time. Since she was completely exposed, vultures started eating her. This picture was taken on July 10, 2021.</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>I got many messages with support from the neighbors. Here is one: "Thank you for making us aware of this, Tad. And thank you for reporting to the Sheriff's Department. I hope steps can be taken to prevent this from happening again in our neighborhood. Grieving for these beauties with you. We saw two foxes on our property a week ago and my heart breaks to think they may be gone like this. I agree, there is no place for poison in our environment. Sending support."<div><br /></div><div><div>In subsequent messages posted to the bulletin board, I wrote: "Thank you, dear XXX. Yes, it was a terrible shock for both of us. Somehow we did not expect that such things could happen in our neighborhood. We have assumed that most people live here to be closer to nature, not exterminate it. The dead mother fox we picked up yesterday gave birth to two pups. We found two more tiny bodies today. So the body count now is three adult foxes, one young fox, and two newborn babies. We talk about the sixth extinction in the age of Anthropocene. A mini-extinction was delivered to us by our neighbors. Here is an illustration from the <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full">Frontiers in Conservation Science</a> showing that soon we will become endangered species on an emptied out, hellish planet."</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBkJu3yT7lwPaosftyRXekkN4SO8DvStlRzG7E8RA2W410GGJnc2V1mnCsKZV71wPeBEyfv6CtU7BMY1PIDreQbsB3kU06aJSAga5y-KISDw55hy8ubxg3oJ-lwZYwM95DMYI5UY6FfnDI/s1654/ghastlyfuture.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1293" data-original-width="1654" height="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBkJu3yT7lwPaosftyRXekkN4SO8DvStlRzG7E8RA2W410GGJnc2V1mnCsKZV71wPeBEyfv6CtU7BMY1PIDreQbsB3kU06aJSAga5y-KISDw55hy8ubxg3oJ-lwZYwM95DMYI5UY6FfnDI/w640-h500/ghastlyfuture.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From "Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future," by Bradshaw Corey J. A., Ehrlich Paul R., Beattie Andrew, Ceballos Gerardo, Crist Eileen, Diamond Joan, Dirzo Rodolfo, Ehrlich Anne H., Harte John, Harte Mary Ellen, Pyke Graham, Raven Peter H., Ripple William J., Saltré Frédérik, Turnbull Christine, Wackernagel Mathis, Blumstein Daniel T., in <i>Frontiers in Conservation Science, </i><b>1</b>, 2021.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>"By the way, if we kill all natural predators, the mice and rat populations will skyrocket. This is ecology 101. So more poison will be used. Everyone should think about it before using arsenic or another deadly poison."</div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2LB4kI5w4MSHEvORpDjtMdrH-5t7vSeqFZN9MLuj_ojfk69YUPQKp-2Ge3-liW1YuLbjinxbPaeIOmpfV_HWfPSXPov3EQaS-A6zLAf6cL78j7Q3o5doDn5ycpmPqzmRT7q8osDl4CP4i/s2048/deadfoxbabies.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2LB4kI5w4MSHEvORpDjtMdrH-5t7vSeqFZN9MLuj_ojfk69YUPQKp-2Ge3-liW1YuLbjinxbPaeIOmpfV_HWfPSXPov3EQaS-A6zLAf6cL78j7Q3o5doDn5ycpmPqzmRT7q8osDl4CP4i/w480-h640/deadfoxbabies.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">These two tiny newborn foxes were covered by their mother's tail. In shock, I did not see them at first, when I picked up their mother's body to bury her next to our cat's grave. This picture was taken on July 12, 2021.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>And so life goes on. <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">Three generations of foxes were eliminated</span> by a myopic human with access to a poison. These foxes roamed through our neighborhood. Our 15 acres were too small for them. Directly to the south of our property we have two neighbors who have chicken. To the north we have one neighbor with chicken. Rats, foxes, racoons, and coyotes steal eggs. Racoons and coyotes kill and eat chicken. Hawks, owls and foxes hunt rats. Vultures eat dead animals. All get poisoned and die. We love organic eggs, but from now on will be very careful in sourcing them. </div><div><br /></div><div>My son, Dr. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucaspatzek/">Lucas Patzek</a>, who is Executive Director of the Napa County Resource Conservation District and works with hundreds of farmers, told me that chicken owners are the largest sources of animal poisonings, and pointed out this <a href="https://yuwr.org/2007/03/08/grey-fox-and-the-dangers-of-using-rodent-bait/">link</a>. Once poisoned with the new super rodent bait, the wild animals cannot be saved, even when caught early and brought to intensive care.</div><div><br /></div><div>Can human nature and selfish myopia be overcome? I can only hope that the answer is yes, in memory of all animals we kill every day.</div></div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ2_yottky-XSkC3RKo-OyNhbPX2USfpDNo8Jg8ZCunLZQM3c94RVyuRipSYIy-l197uzINNJN27hy2hwj0osxNjxqqu8SJm0bZfxSPQiLI8DypgfyK1GuMJgKlyRf73ZrHCiRkSgmda9w/s2798/P1001366.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1124" data-original-width="2798" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ2_yottky-XSkC3RKo-OyNhbPX2USfpDNo8Jg8ZCunLZQM3c94RVyuRipSYIy-l197uzINNJN27hy2hwj0osxNjxqqu8SJm0bZfxSPQiLI8DypgfyK1GuMJgKlyRf73ZrHCiRkSgmda9w/w640-h258/P1001366.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Two/four fox children are playing near our house. Are they all dead today? This picture was taken a year ago, on July 8, 2020.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><b>P.S. (7/14/2021)</b> I just spoke with the Hays County Game Warden, Mr. Brandon Pearson, 512-757-7627. He wants to come and talk to the Big Country neighbors. He stated that one cannot start poisoning wild animals with impunity, because it is illegal and therefore a crime.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>P.S.P.S. (7/17/2021) </b> So that there is no doubt, close to the dead female fox, there was a dead rat that was poisoned, too. Rats do not catch distemper, a viral disease that attacks dogs, raccoons, skunks, foxes, and large cats such as lions and tigers. The virus infects the lungs, airways, nose, and eyes. It can also infect the brain and suppress the immune system. Distemper can cause serious illness and death in these animals. It does not cause illness in cats or people.
How do foxes catch distemper? They catch distemper from other foxes or wild animals that are infected with it. They can catch it by having direct contact with the sick animal, or by standing near the animal when it is coughing. They can also catch it if they have contact with food bowls or other objects that were contaminated by infected animals. Puppies are the most likely to catch it.
What are the symptoms in animals?
Coughing is the most common symptom. They usually develop fever and discharge from the eyes and / or nose. The disease can also cause disorientation, tremors, twitches and seizures. Infected animals are vulnerable to catching more infections, such as bacterial pneumonia. The symptoms are similar in raccoons and other wildlife. You cannot tell for sure just by looking at the fox. Veterinarians can order blood and urine tests to test an animal for distemper. By the way, rat bait poisoning causes similar symptoms: nose bleeding, breath shortness, disorientation and seizures. </div><div><br /></div><div>There is also a feline distemper. It’s called FVRCP & infects domestic house cats. It stands for Feline Viral Rhinotracheitis, Calicivirus, and Panleukopenia. Also known as the feline combo or Feline Distemper Vaccine, the FVRCP vaccine is a combination vaccine, meaning it includes protection against more than one disease (in this case, three common, but potentially serious, airborne viruses). Feline Distemper affects lynxes, bobcats and domesticated cats. Although both canine and feline forms of distemper are highly contagious and life-threatening, canine distemper and feline distemper are very different, species-specific viral diseases.</div><div><br /></div>Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-66569008314155117022021-07-08T18:21:00.003-05:002021-07-10T18:43:43.470-05:00Update on US shale play papers by Patzek et al. <p> This is a continuation of the <a href="https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2021/05/papers-on-us-shale-plays-by-patzek-et-al.html"><b>previous list</b></a> of 29 papers and 1 patent:</p><span style="background-color: #fcff01;">30. </span>Zhu, W., Khirevich, S., & Patzek, T. W. (2021). Impact of fracture geometry and topology on the connectivity and flow properties of stochastic fracture networks. <i>Water Resources Research</i>, 57, e2020WR028652. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1029/2020WR028652">https://doi.org/10.1029/2020WR028652</a><div><br /></div><div>Natural fractures usually comprise complex networks and control many physical properties of rocks, including stiffness, strength, and permeability. Therefore, they significantly impact many engineering fields, such as hydrology, waste disposal, geothermal exploitation, and petroleum reservoir exploitation. In a low permeability formation, fractures play a dominant role because the contribution of the matrix to fluid flow is almost negligible. Connectivity of natural and induced fractures thus determines the overall capability of fluid flow of subsurface rocks. Commonly used approaches to evaluate the connectivity (percolation method, connectivity index/field, and intersection index) are insufficient to capture the impacts of all geometrical properties of arbitrary fracture networks. Therefore, we utilize a topological concept of global efficiency to investigate the key geometrical properties of two-dimensional (2D)/three-dimensional (3D) stochastic fracture networks quantitively. After analyzing thousands of realizations of stochastic fracture networks, our results show that geometrical properties, including fracture lengths, apertures and positions of fracture centers, influence the connectivity of fracture networks. Aperture variations cause a significant change in connectivity of a fracture network, especially for fracture networks dominated by large fractures. Clustered and small fractures usually lower global efficiency in both 2D and 3D fracture networks. Similar conclusions are valid in realistic fracture networks composed of several sets of fractures with constrained preferred orientations.
<br /><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM-XkV7SFLaPbF3DxHRISAs-kCeegNzd9CeTDmU3CL90ani-I8yo3LPJtgmDjqzXPttruFxThlGH5j2gHR219FChCjRGQYWkWj5xAxCpGJRpaAgGpk0MhUGgjb59DicIICF9kaT9IWaQad/s2128/wrcr25405-fig-0011-m.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="635" data-original-width="2128" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM-XkV7SFLaPbF3DxHRISAs-kCeegNzd9CeTDmU3CL90ani-I8yo3LPJtgmDjqzXPttruFxThlGH5j2gHR219FChCjRGQYWkWj5xAxCpGJRpaAgGpk0MhUGgjb59DicIICF9kaT9IWaQad/w640-h190/wrcr25405-fig-0011-m.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">(a) A fracture system at Ras Al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates; (b) Realistic 2D fracture networks with four fracture sets; (c) Realistic 3D fracture networks with four fracture sets.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><span style="background-color: #fcff01;">31.</span> Wardana Saputra, Wissem Kirati and Tadeusz W. Patzek, "Generalized extreme value statistics, physical scaling and forecasts of gas production in the Haynesville Shale," J<i>ournal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering</i>, 2021, 104041, ISSN 1875-5100, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jngse.2021.104041">https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jngse.2021.104041</a>.</div><div><br />We present a hybrid, data-driven and physics-based method of forecasting play-wide gas production in the Haynesville Shale, which is currently the second-largest shale gas producer in the US. We first define several statistical well cohorts, one for each reservoir quality and each well completion technology in the Haynesville. For each cohort, we use the Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) statistics to obtain the historical average well prototypes. The cumulative production of each well prototype is matched with a physics-based scaling curve, and its production is then extrapolated for up to two more decades. The resulting well prototypes are exceptionally robust. If we replace individual production rates from all existing wells with their corresponding well prototypes and sum them up, the total rate will match remarkably the past gas field rate, and – in this case – we obtain a base or do nothing forecast. Next, we calculate the number of potential infill wells per square mile and schedule future drilling programs to obtain plausible production forecasts in the Haynesville. Because Haynesville is the most active shale play in North America in terms of refracturing, we also propose a novel approach to identify refracturing candidates among the old Haynesville wells and deliver another forecast scenario of future refracs. We predict that Haynesville will ultimately produce 30 Tscf of natural gas from the 4684 existing wells. Most likely, by drilling 923 new wells in the core (sweet spot) areas by 2023, EUR will increase to 40 Tscf. Additional 5023 wells in the noncore areas are forecasted to be drilled by 2032, increasing EUR to 90 Tscf. We also show that refracturing old Haynesville wells is more cost-effective than drilling new wells in the poor quality reservoir, especially in the era of low oil and gas prices.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtRgxZlNwQGbNJWPrOKwxG6HayWtOkhs33css3BEjcdbxH3YOl84yEwPCdwvnxgj1DXMZUruVq3_FOm3i30X77NG2mqE-svM7zm2C853nRwlNbpgnRZjNPoIJGAqexjrgRE-OWhAZJ7PNS/s2213/JNGSE-abstract.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="2213" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtRgxZlNwQGbNJWPrOKwxG6HayWtOkhs33css3BEjcdbxH3YOl84yEwPCdwvnxgj1DXMZUruVq3_FOm3i30X77NG2mqE-svM7zm2C853nRwlNbpgnRZjNPoIJGAqexjrgRE-OWhAZJ7PNS/w640-h256/JNGSE-abstract.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div><br /></div></div></div>Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-18099123384842717492021-05-29T12:33:00.057-05:002021-07-16T10:28:55.016-05:00Papers by Patzek et al. on US shale plays <p>I've been receiving recurring requests for the links to our publications on shales. Thus, I have decided to put our shale story together, and update it in the future as the new papers are published. So far, this story consists of 29 papers and one patent published, and eight papers are pending. </p><p>Our goal is to describe the well-by-well histories and possible futures of all major US shale plays, starting from the earliest one, the Barnett. To achieve this goal, we have been using a physics-based scaling of individual well production and the generalized extreme value (GEV) statistics for spatio-temporal cohorts of wells. </p><p>As an aside, <span style="background-color: white;">out of 15 or so, only </span>three of our paper submissions to the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) conferences have been accepted since 2017, and we have <span style="background-color: white;">given up</span> on the SPE, of which I am a Distinguished Member with 38 years in the Society under my belt. It is quite sad for me personally, but SPE has been in disarray for several years.</p><p>Except for the SPE and OGJ papers that reside behind paywalls, all our other papers are <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">open access</span>, and you can download their pdf files by clicking on the web links below.</p><p>Later, I will add 3-5 other papers on numerical simulations, etc.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS7Au3gV8afr-euD9z3UY2SG3ZJf-20AcFOnAkktv_w61dTuF8Zlv1s4of0oeUg-uCUWeA3jWH-L-E95ZRezZikNkpay9vP3PJ2wH7pXfTKBSmFgMe5mIl4_VbF-EXpPh_oFdH7yfk6K-r/s1500/PhysicsTodayCover.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1143" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS7Au3gV8afr-euD9z3UY2SG3ZJf-20AcFOnAkktv_w61dTuF8Zlv1s4of0oeUg-uCUWeA3jWH-L-E95ZRezZikNkpay9vP3PJ2wH7pXfTKBSmFgMe5mIl4_VbF-EXpPh_oFdH7yfk6K-r/w305-h400/PhysicsTodayCover.png" width="305" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our 2016 paper, "Physics, fracking, fuel, and the future," made the cover.</td></tr></tbody></table><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Barnett</span></b></p>1. "Gas production in the Barnett Shale obeys a simple scaling theory", Tad W. Patzek, Frank Male, and Michael Marder, PNAS December 3, 2013 110 (49) 19731-19736; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1313380110. For this paper, we received the <a href="https://www.pnas.org/page/about/cozzarelli-prize">Cozzarelli Prize</a> from the National Academy of Sciences for Best Paper in Engineering in 2013. Actually, this was a big deal.<div><a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/110/49/19731">https://www.pnas.org/content/110/49/19731</a><br /> </div><div>2. "Barnett Shale in Texas: Promise and Problems", Patzek, Tadeusz, 2019, https://doi.org/10.18738/T8/3MLRLO, Texas Data Repository, V1, Presentation to BEG May 26, 2011. (I presented my late 2010 work at the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering and the Bureau of Economic Geology, at the University of Texas, Austin, but I did not succeed in conveying the importance of GEV statistics to the modeling of shale wells. Only after the PNAS paper was published three years later, people started paying attention, but it took the 2019 ACS paper to get the GEV approach out to the public.)</div><div><a href="https://dataverse-prod.tdl.org/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.18738/T8/3MLRLO">https://dataverse-prod.tdl.org/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.18738/T8/3MLRLO</a><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>3. "A simple model of gas production from hydrofractured horizontal wells in shales," Tad Patzek; Frank Male; Michael Marder, AAPG Bulletin December 01, 2014, Vol.98, 2507-2529. https://doi.org/10.1306/03241412125,<br /><a href="https://archives.datapages.com/data/bulletns/2014/12dec/BLTN12125/BLTN12125.html?doi=10.1306%2F03241412125">https://archives.datapages.com/data/bulletns/2014/12dec/BLTN12125/BLTN12125.html?doi=10.1306%2F03241412125</a></div><div><br /></div><div>4. SPE 187068, “Knudsen-Like Scaling May Be Inappropriate for Gas Shales,” by Tadeusz W. Patzek, SPE, prepared for the 2017 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, San Antonio, Texas, USA, 9–11 October. https://doi.org/10.2118/187068-MS. (I am proud of this wonderful little physics paper I wrote quickly as a practical joke, never expecting it to be accepted by the SPE. I was wrong and it was. The field data and mass balances are based on the Barnett wells. You might read this paper and glean the incredibly rich and oft-misinterpreted physics of gas flow in shales.)</div><div><a href="https://onepetro.org/SPEATCE/proceedings/17ATCE/D031S037R007/193114">https://onepetro.org/SPEATCE/proceedings/17ATCE/D031S037R007/193114</a></div><div><br /></div><div>5. "Field data provide estimates of effective permeability, fracture spacing, well drainage area and incremental production in gas shales," Behzad Eftekhari, Michael Marder, and Tadeusz W. Patzek, Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering, Volume 56, August 2018, Pages 141, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jngse.2018.05.027. (In this paper we introduced late time gas inflow from the reservoir regions exterior to a parallelepiped delineated by a horizontal well and its hydrofractures. We have also provided field data from the Barnett wells to document this inflow.) <br /><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875510018302270">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875510018302270</a><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">6. "Generalized Extreme Value Statistics, Physical Scaling, and Forecasts of Gas Production in the Barnett Shale," Tadeusz W. Patzek, Wardana Saputra, Wissem Kirati, and Michael Marder, Energy & Fuels 2019, 33, 12, 12154–12169, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.energyfuels.9b01385. (In the summer of 2018, I finally updated my 2010 GEV statistics codes, and extended them to include the data-driven survival probabilities of spatio-temporal well cohorts. I shared the updated 2018 codes with my incredibly gifted PhD student, Wardana Saputra, and he took over the bulk of modeling of shales in the multiple papers that ensued, significantly extending the scope and depth of our analyzes. Wardana has introduced the multiple spatial and temporal well cohorts, the well infill and future drilling scenarios, and well economics.)<br /><a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.energyfuels.9b01385">https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.energyfuels.9b01385</a></p><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWnjInHO7mQyYThiQOEW4QWPLARMraCF8xo3NvadOqkkPxqfqP3J54DrEpXJSgNVrDtlCNJxMWOni58fy8D9Q49q-tzl7_TTEVA52LAgkCVN2PHZHCQc-yT9pUq5SG733OUP0ZBaPpaIxm/s2048/enfuem_v033i012-2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1540" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWnjInHO7mQyYThiQOEW4QWPLARMraCF8xo3NvadOqkkPxqfqP3J54DrEpXJSgNVrDtlCNJxMWOni58fy8D9Q49q-tzl7_TTEVA52LAgkCVN2PHZHCQc-yT9pUq5SG733OUP0ZBaPpaIxm/w482-h640/enfuem_v033i012-2.jpg" width="482" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our Generalized Extreme Value paper made the cover of Energy & Fuels in December 2019.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>7. "A Physics Based Model of Enhanced Gas Production in Mudrocks," Syed Haider and Tadeusz W. Patzek, Paper presented at the SPE/AAPG/SEG Unconventional Resources Technology Conference, Virtual, July 2020. Paper Number: URTEC-2020-2985-MS, https://doi.org/10.15530/urtec-2020-2985. (This is a great physics paper that shines light on the pore level mechanisms of gas recovery from shales. Syed Haider is another star student in my group at KAUST and a deep thinker.)</div><div><a href="https://onepetro.org/URTECONF/proceedings/20URTC/1-20URTC/D013S011R003/448837">https://onepetro.org/URTECONF/proceedings/20URTC/1-20URTC/D013S011R003/448837</a></div><div><br /></div><div>8. "The Key Factors That Determine the Economically Viable, Horizontal Hydrofractured Gas Wells in Mudrocks," Syed Haider, Wardana Saputra, and Tadeusz Patzek, Energies 2020, 13(9), 2348, https://doi.org/10.3390/en13092348. (This paper, mostly by Syed, extends our two-parameter physics based scaling to a more complicated one that accounts for the fractal nature of the hydrofracture/natural fracture systems in mudrocks, and mass transfer between the nanoscale and several other, larger scales. We have illustrated this complex physics with the Barnett well data. This paper is a must read if you want to gain more insights into the essentially multiscale gas flow in shales.)<br /><a href="https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/9/2348">https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/9/2348</a></div><div><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Marcellus</span></b></p></div><div>9. "Simple models of the hydrofracture process," M. Marder, Chih-Hung Chen, and T. Patzek, Phys. Rev. E 92, 062408, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.92.062408. (This elegant theoretical paper predicts simultaneous growth of several competing hydrofractures. The high-resolution data to scale the fracture growth models in this paper came from the NE Marcellus. These data were given to me by a graduate of PGE and a friend. Boy, have we used them to multiple ends, and my friend company's benefit. I wish more of such data were transferred from the industry to academia for mutual benefit.)<br /><a href="https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.92.062408">https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.92.062408</a></div><div><br /></div><div>10. "Modeling Gas Adsorption in Marcellus Shale With Langmuir and BET Isotherms," Wei Yu, Kamy Sepehrnoori, Tadeusz W. Patzek, SPE Journal 21 (02): 589–600, Paper Number: SPE-170801-PA, Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), https://doi.org/10.2118/170801-PA (This paper is based on the strong adsorption data in the graphitized nanopores in the NE Marcellus. Gas sorption is so strong that it can be modeled with the BET multilayer adsorption isotherm. The BET model is physically incorrect, but it captures well the background nanopores feeding gas into the microfractures.)<br /><a href="https://onepetro.org/SJ/article/21/02/589/206469/Modeling-Gas-Adsorption-in-Marcellus-Shale-With">https://onepetro.org/SJ/article/21/02/589/206469/Modeling-Gas-Adsorption-in-Marcellus-Shale-With</a><br /><br /></div><div>11. SPE 180234, “Marcellus Wells: Ultimate Production Accurately Predicted From Initial Production,” by Frank Male, Michael P. Marder, John Browning, and Svetlana Ikonnikova, The University of Texas at Austin, and Tad Patzek, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, prepared for the 2016 SPE Low- Permeability Symposium, Denver, 5–6 May, https://doi.org/10.2118/180234-MS,</div><div><a href="https://onepetro.org/SPERMPTC/proceedings/16RMRM/SPE-180234-MS/188089">https://onepetro.org/SPERMPTC/proceedings/16RMRM/SPE-180234-MS/188089</a><br /><p class="MsoNormal">12. "Estimation of Effective Permeability, Fracture Spacing, Drainage Area, and Incremental Production from Field Data in Gas Shales with Nonnegligible Sorption," B. Eftekhari, M. Marder, T. W. Patzek, SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering 23 (02): 664–683, 2020, Paper Number: SPE-199891-PA, https://doi.org/10.2118/199891-PA. (This paper is about late time radial inflow in the Marcellus with a strong gas adsorption in the organic nanopores.)<br /><a href="https://onepetro.org/REE/article/23/02/664/451141/Estimation-of-Effective-Permeability-Fracture">https://onepetro.org/REE/article/23/02/664/451141/Estimation-of-Effective-Permeability-Fracture</a></p><p class="MsoNormal">13. "Generalized Extreme Value Statistics, Physical Scaling and Forecasts of Gas Production in the Marcellus Shale," Keynote Lecturer, Tad Patzek, Geoscience and Geoenergy Webinar by TU Delft and Heriot Watt University, streamed live on Apr 15, 2021.<br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syABz6FH6rM">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syABz6FH6rM</a></p><div><br /></div>14. "Generalized Extreme Value Statistics, Physical Scaling and Forecasts of Gas Production in the Marcellus Shale," Wardana Saputra, Wissem Kirati, David Hughes, and Tadeusz Patzek, Paper BLTN21-78, in review by the AAPG Bulletin, May 2021. (For a preview of the paper content, please see the YouTube video).</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">Utica</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>The work has been completed and documented by Wardana and Wissem, but the paper proposal was soundly rejected by the organizers of the 2021 SPE URTeC conference. We'll write the paper up later in spare time and publish it elsewhere. </div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Nota bene</i>, we always start writing a paper from the figures and their captions, and only later weave the paper's story around the graphics. I am under no illusion that most people will ever read our papers carefully. Thus, I rely on the abstract, figures and conclusions to tell 70-80% of a paper's message. We then use the supporting online materials to tell the details of a paper's story in graphical form. Also, with our comprehensive approach, we predict the most likely futures of a shale play in the least square sense. As Jack Nicholson would say, "Folks, this is a good as it gets!" Thus, some of the industry people do not appreciate our stories, simply because they are too accurate and precise, and leave too little wiggle room to snow their investors. For example, our first Bakken paper, that appeared later in MDPI, was held up by a Houston editor of another journal for several months, until I withdrew the paper from that journal, and next day got an offer to publish it immediately from the journal's Chief Editor. But I followed up on our threat and we lost several months. In the end, our first Bakken paper was published as the second one.</div><div><br /></div><div>Never mind though, the industry is now being snowed royally by a grand delusion of AI. Since the people who actually knew the scientific domain and engineering are mostly gone, they have been replaced by electrical engineers and computer scientists, who promise a push button answer to all Universe's problems. This well known answer is the number 42. I know the early AI story personally, because in 1992-1995 (in Berkeley), we did oilfield applications using neural networks, machine learning and fuzzy computing, and published several papers. In those days, I worked with a postdoc who did his PhD thesis with the late Prof. <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=S6H-0RAAAAAJ&hl=en">Lotfi Zadeh</a>, whom I knew well. Arguably, Lotfi and his giant team were the cause of most that is occurring today in AI and machine learning. His citation index is 275,000!</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg62dQxlcnwe9V5mOkzTyKzQfao6cc85VwLUz1pJK7twg5Pkf0aqIDdteh28oGDifwv3jhp7b2HxKqaH9nUYu3qdUV8UVIj5uF8X2_xMs0qNQZn_AwMCd-U46_NI5kY9S50KyZlQrIXEhyphenhyphenh/s322/Answer_to_Life.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="196" data-original-width="322" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg62dQxlcnwe9V5mOkzTyKzQfao6cc85VwLUz1pJK7twg5Pkf0aqIDdteh28oGDifwv3jhp7b2HxKqaH9nUYu3qdUV8UVIj5uF8X2_xMs0qNQZn_AwMCd-U46_NI5kY9S50KyZlQrIXEhyphenhyphenh/w400-h244/Answer_to_Life.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Everyone should know that The Answer to all shale problems in the US, and all other problems, is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_(number)">number 42</a><span face="arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #4d5156;"> = </span></span>6<sup>1</sup> + 6<sup>2</sup>, described so well in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. My revolutionary counter-proposal is the number 30 = 5<sup>1</sup> + 5<sup>2</sup>, the default longevity of shale wells in years. Outside of Bakken, very few horizontal shale wells will produce economically or last this long. Their expected lifespans are ~15 years, the mean of 3<sup>1</sup> + 3<sup>2</sup> = 12 and 4<sup>1</sup> + 4<sup>2</sup> = 20. Shales have a peculiar way of deflating expectations.<span></span></td></tr></tbody>
</table><div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Eagle Ford</span></b></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p>15. "A Simple Physics-Based Model Predicts Oil Production from Thousands of Horizontal Wells in Shales," Tadeusz W. Patzek, Wardana Saputra, Wissem Kirati, Paper presented at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, San Antonio, Texas, USA, October 2017. Paper Number: SPE-187226-MS, https://doi.org/10.2118/187226-MS. (This elegant paper introduced the analytical physics-based scaling model of black oil production, used later by us in the Bakken papers.)<br /><a href="https://onepetro.org/SPEATCE/proceedings/17ATCE/3-17ATCE/D031S031R005/193208">https://onepetro.org/SPEATCE/proceedings/17ATCE/3-17ATCE/D031S031R005/193208</a></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Haynesville</span></b></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p>16. "Analysis of Gas Production From Hydraulically Fractured Wells in the Haynesville Shale Using Scaling Methods," Frank Male, Akand W. Islam, Tad W. Patzek, Svetlana Ikonnikova, John Browning, and Michael P. Marder, Paper presented at the SPE Unconventional Resources Conference, The Woodlands, Texas, USA, April 2014.
Paper Number: SPE-168993-MS, https://doi.org/10.2118/168993-MS.<br /><a href="https://onepetro.org/SPEGTS/proceedings/14URC/1-14URC/D011S001R008/211025">https://onepetro.org/SPEGTS/proceedings/14URC/1-14URC/D011S001R008/211025</a></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">17. "Generalized extreme value statistics, physical scaling and forecasts of gas production in the Haynesville shale," Wardana Saputra, Wissem Kirati, and Tadeusz W. Patzek, <span style="background-color: #ffa400;">is just out</span> in JNGSE. (This <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">groundbreaking analysis</span> of the Haynesville is a masterpiece by Wardana and Wissem. If you want to understand the second most prolific shale play in the US, you must read this paper and its three large Supporting Online Materials files.) <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187551002100247X"><br />https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187551002100247X</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Bakken</span></b> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">18. “History Matching and Rate Forecasting in Unconventional Oil Reservoirs With an Approximate Analytical Solution to the Double-Porosity Model,” Ogunyomi, B.A., Patzek, T.W., Lake, L.W., and Kabir, C.S., SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering, 19 (1), 70-82, 2015, https://doi.org/10.2118/171031-PA. (This is a wonderful, complex mathematical paper that provides additional insights relative to our simple (M, tau) scaling model, but at a high cost.)<br /><a href="https://onepetro.org/REE/article/19/01/070/206478/History-Matching-and-Rate-Forecasting-in">https://onepetro.org/REE/article/19/01/070/206478/History-Matching-and-Rate-Forecasting-in</a></p><p class="MsoNormal">19. "Physical Scaling of Oil Production Rates and Ultimate Recovery from All Horizontal Wells in the Bakken Shale," Wardana Saputra, Wissem Kirati, and Tadeusz Patzek, Energies 2020, 13(8), 2052; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13082052. (The first of the two definitive papers on the past and possible futures of the Bakken shale, the largest continuous oil mudrock play in the US.)<br /><a href="https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/8/2052">https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/8/2052</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">20. "Generalized Extreme Value Statistics, Physical Scaling and Forecasts of Oil Production in the Bakken Shale," Wardana Saputra, Wissem Kirati, and Tadeusz Patzek, Energies 2019, 12(19), 3641; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12193641. (The second of the two definitive Bakken papers, even though it was published first. Wardana spread his wings in these two papers. The 2019 paper is Energies' Editor <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/journal/energies/editors_choice">Choice</a>.)<br /><a href="https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/19/3641/htm">https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/19/3641/htm</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Fayetteville</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">21. "Study develops Fayetteville shale reserves, production forecast," John Browning, Scott W. Tinker, Svetlana Ikonnikova, Gürcan Gülen, Eric Potter, Qilong Fu, Katie Smye, Susan Horvath, Tad Patzek, Frank Male, Forrest Roberts, Oil and Gas Journal, 112(1), 64-73, Jan 6, 2014.<br /><a href="https://www.ogj.com/home/article/17211012/study-develops-fayetteville-shale-reserves-production-forecast">https://www.ogj.com/home/article/17211012/study-develops-fayetteville-shale-reserves-production-forecast</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Permian Basin</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The crowning study of the Permian Basin will consist of
two major parts, each with its large Supporting Online Materials. The first paper will be devoted to some 550,000 vertical wells spread over many hundreds of reservoirs, and producing since the 1930s. It turns out that about 150,000 wells were either dry holes or were plugged & abandoned for different reasons. We will make a case for more vertical wells in the future, given the new investment climate and longevity of these wells. The second part will be a study of all post-2012 horizontal wells in the Permian. This study will make the last chapter in Wardana's PhD thesis, and it will be his <i>Magnum Opus</i>.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Overviews</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">22. "Production Forecasting with Logistic Growth Models," A. J. Clark, L. W. Lake, T. W. Patzek, Paper presented at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, Denver, Colorado, USA, October 2011.Paper Number: SPE-144790-MS, https://doi.org/10.2118/144790-MS. (This paper is quite highly cited in the SPE literature)<br /><a href="https://onepetro.org/SPEATCE/proceedings/11ATCE/All-11ATCE/SPE-144790-MS/148293">https://onepetro.org/SPEATCE/proceedings/11ATCE/All-11ATCE/SPE-144790-MS/148293</a></p><p class="MsoNormal">23. "BARNETT SHALE MODEL-1: Barnett study determines full-field reserves, production forecast," John Browning, Scott W. Tinker, Svetlana Ikonnikova, Gürcan Gülen, Eric Potter, Qilong Fu, Susan Horvath, Tad Patzek, Frank Male, William Fisher, Forrest Roberts and Ken Medlock, III, OGJ, p. 62, August 5, 2013.<br /><a href="https://www.beg.utexas.edu/files/content/beg/research/shale/OGJ_SFSGAS_pt1.pdf">https://www.beg.utexas.edu/files/content/beg/research/shale/OGJ_SFSGAS_pt1.pdf</a></p><p class="MsoNormal">24. "BARNETT SHALE MODEL-2 (Conclusion): Barnett study determines full-field reserves, production forecast," John Browning, Scott W. Tinker, Svetlana Ikonnikova, Gürcan Gülen, Eric Potter, Qilong Fu, Susan Horvath, Tad Patzek, Frank Male, William Fisher, Forrest Roberts and Ken Medlock, III, OGJ, September 9, 2013.<br /><a href="https://www.beg.utexas.edu/files/content/beg/research/shale/OGJ_SFSGAS_pt2.pdf">https://www.beg.utexas.edu/files/content/beg/research/shale/OGJ_SFSGAS_pt2.pdf</a></p><p class="MsoNormal">"Factors influencing shale gas production forecasting: Empirical studies of Barnett, Fayetteville, Haynesville, and Marcellus Shale plays," Ikonnikova S., Browning J., Gülen, G., and Tinker, S., 2015, Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy, 4(1), 19-35. (Some of my work is cited in that overview paper.)<br /><a href="http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/eeeparticle.aspx?id=77">http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/eeeparticle.aspx?id=77</a></p><p class="MsoNormal">25. "Physics, fracking, fuel, and the future," Michael Marder, Tadeusz W. Patzek, and Scott Tinker, Physics Today 69(7), 46 (2016); https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3236.<br /><a href="https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.3236">https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.3236</a></p><p class="MsoNormal">What remains then to do is a US shale overview paper written for PNAS, in which Syed will also play a crucial role. </p><p class="MsoNormal">If I sound like a proud father, that's because I am. I have been blessed with a group of the brightest, most dedicated students and researchers anywhere, Berkeley included. What a way for me to end my hyper-active academic career and finally retire at some time in the near future!</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Other related papers</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">26. "Long Term Effect of Natural Fractures Closure on Gas Production from Unconventional Reservoirs," Umut Aybar, Mohammad O. Eshkalak, Kamy Sepehrnoori, and Tad Patzek,
Paper presented at the SPE Eastern Regional Meeting, Charleston, WV, USA, October 2014. Paper Number: SPE-171010-MS, https://doi.org/10.2118/171010-MS.<br /><a href="https://onepetro.org/SPEERM/proceedings/14ERM/All-14ERM/SPE-171010-MS/450592">https://onepetro.org/SPEERM/proceedings/14ERM/All-14ERM/SPE-171010-MS/450592</a></p></div>27. "Evaluation of production losses from unconventional shale reservoirs,” Aybar, U., Yu, W., Eshkalak, M. O., Sepehrnoori, K., Patzek, T. W., Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering, 23, 509-516, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jngse.2015.02.030<br /><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875510015000888">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875510015000888</a><p></p>28. “Thermal shale fracturing simulation using the Cohesive Zone Method (CZM),” Saeid Enayatpour, Eric van Oort, Tad Patzek, Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering, 55, 476-494, 2018. doi.org/10.1016/j.jngse.2018.05.014. (In this paper we use a sophisticated FE method to prove the rather obvious fact that because fracturing depends on all spatial scales, the CZM is also scale-dependent.)<br /><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875510018302142">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875510018302142</a><br /><div><br /></div><div>29. “Thermal cooling to improve hydraulic fracturing efficiency and hydrocarbon production in shales,” Saeid Enayatpour, Eric van Oort, Tad Patzek, Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering, 62, 184-201, 2019. doi.org/10.1016/j.jngse.2018.12.008. (This paper describes our patented process of aiding hydrofracuring of mudrocks by chemical-reaction-driven cooling.)<br /><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875510018305365">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875510018305365</a></div><div><br /></div>1. "METHOD OF IMPROVING HYDRAULIC FRACTURING BY DECREASING FORMATION TEMPERATURE," Van Oort, E. Patzek, T. W. and Enayatpour, S. US Patent No 9,920,608 B2, March 20, 2018.<div><a href="https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/76971">https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/76971</a></div>Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-19621643509372914592021-05-28T06:01:00.008-05:002021-06-03T08:47:15.860-05:00The little virus that could - Part II<div>And here is a third blog I did not bring myself to publish for exactly one year. It's as fresh today as it was 365 days ago.</div><div><br /></div>The feeling of grief permeates everything these days, but there are happy moments. Let me paint for you our act of <a href="http://heguardian.com/environment/2020/may/30/nature-on-uk-doorsteps-thousands-sign-up-for-daily-random-acts-of-wildness">random wildness</a>. We were coming back from an early morning walk, when behind a road curve we heard the loud shrieks of a scared deer and the much fainter shrieks to the right. When we approached the curve, this is what we saw: On our side, a young doe was running back and forth and shrieking her lungs off. To the right, behind a wire net fence was a new-born fawn of the size of adult cat, trying to join mama. But how could she? The fawn was pursued by a large black labrador, who was visibly upset and confused, and tried to sniff her. Finally, the fawn hid behind a bush on the side on the fence with the dog behind the bush, standing there and doing nothing. We talked to the dog trying to calm her, and my wife, Joanna, was able to touch and pet the mortally scared fawn, and catch her. We worked together passing to each other the firmly held fawn, and moving her up the wire squares. After four such exchanges, the little baby was lifted up to our side of the fence and reunited with the absolutely crazy-mortified mama. We saved a Bambi today, and it felt so, so, so very good!<br />
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Here is Professor Woland speaking to a writer, Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, at the Patriarch Pond in Chapter 1 of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Master-Margarita-Mikhail-Bulgakov/dp/0679760806">Master and Margarita</a> by Mikhail Bulgakov, my most favorite book of all times.<br />
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" 'I beg your pardon,' retorted the stranger quietly,' but to rule one must have a precise plan worked out for some reasonable period ahead. Allow me to inquire how man can control his own affairs when he is not only incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably short term, such as, say, a thousand years, but cannot even predict what will happen to him tomorrow? ' "<br />
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The little corona virus that could is continuing to undo our fragile, bloated civilization and our highly optimized supply chains. The cost of our collective myopia and the criminal negligence and incompetence of almost all governments on the planet will be measured in a few tens of trillions of dollars, putting a 30-40% dent in the economists' still-born child, the global GDP. The idiot MBAs and economists, who rule everywhere, apparently saved a few tens of millions of dollars here and there by discontinuing the pandemic preparation programs. Now they are all busy printing in unison rivers of money and looking for the customers who might buy their paper obligations, while <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/business/economy/global-trade-shortages-coronavirus.html">not delivering</a> the promised loans to the people and small businesses who really need them. Oh, well. But not all news is bad...<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;">, <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI_UTPFi8ASKFOPg11dTi561-bLHKiEnjFER7-gBV6DBGw_B0o9QyOlRDglirmpQ9j7W7GMOL7ZozWMgNvxwPsTVH5jPmHs1ynMVXrA4YKpaTJMieOawwRC4m9eVa0HD5Y3Prb-IMkkAHh/s1600/popefrancis.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1131" data-original-width="1200" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI_UTPFi8ASKFOPg11dTi561-bLHKiEnjFER7-gBV6DBGw_B0o9QyOlRDglirmpQ9j7W7GMOL7ZozWMgNvxwPsTVH5jPmHs1ynMVXrA4YKpaTJMieOawwRC4m9eVa0HD5Y3Prb-IMkkAHh/s400/popefrancis.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Seeing and growing closer to God require purifying one’s heart from the sins and prejudices that distort reality and blind people to God’s active and real presence", Pope Francis said. "Dear Pope", I ask, "would it be too much to ask you to please communicate this message to most world leaders, but especially to President Trump, the creature so coveted by the US so-called 'Christians'?"</td></tr>
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<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/31/europe/vatican-city-coronavirus-pope-intl/index.html">Pope</a> Francis <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/europe/pope-francis-coronavirus-nature-response-intl/index.html">just said</a> the coronavirus pandemic is one of "nature's responses" to humans ignoring the current ecological crisis.
In an email interview published Wednesday (04/08/2020) in <i>The Tablet</i> and <i>Commonwealth</i> magazines, the pontiff said the outbreak offered an opportunity to slow down the rate of production and consumption and to learn to understand and contemplate the natural world. "I don't know if these are the revenge of nature, but they are certainly nature's responses," he added. I simply love this man.<br />
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Not all news is bad. Joanna, the love of my life and wife of forty years, and I have been self-sequestered on our beautiful, 16 acre property and in the surrounding rural neighborhood for five weeks.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZyITSrlREXVZALqX1hdRGfDokEJA7zvI6UKZn2ODFYRxqfHMsJQxrPEIwBjBuUF3VzMBOCXIBLJ5Dnqc0xG9OTz1K7kVi_45TFo9pcVOXFs1hh21H405xiJAhUH0bsqWFgDeBTEpv9He4/s1600/P1001207.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="923" data-original-width="1600" height="368" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZyITSrlREXVZALqX1hdRGfDokEJA7zvI6UKZn2ODFYRxqfHMsJQxrPEIwBjBuUF3VzMBOCXIBLJ5Dnqc0xG9OTz1K7kVi_45TFo9pcVOXFs1hh21H405xiJAhUH0bsqWFgDeBTEpv9He4/s640/P1001207.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rainbow after a thunderstorm. A view from our hill. I am standing just east of the house. April 9, 2020.</td></tr>
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We went to the grocery store only three times, and saw our neighbors from a distance a few more times. Each morning, but Fridays and Saturdays, I start at 6 am, go through dozens of emails, reply to many, and work with my students and researchers for 5-6 hours. Then I work on other things, mostly papers. Later in the afternoon and on weekends, we both work on the property and in the house. We have been finishing our new bathroom that was not quite finished five years ago, when we left for Saudi Arabia. I'll post a photo or two of our achievements when we are done. Significant woodwork involves making the front wall of the tub, and frames for two doors and three windows. We are using the local, beautiful red cedar wood to fabricate them.<div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgETURBB1qesBjKhNSgZWIBFSJlq_Ht2icLhvxGxjz_n5wB7mIya5KP1Dl-Co9gMW11Ux1EaGKcn5t9MwWX8uJaoBczoPZy1bGsKkx1_vlAQjSO7ZzTkyN184WhE9JmBv6pRl6jq3LuUZBk/s1800/P1001308SM.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1800" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgETURBB1qesBjKhNSgZWIBFSJlq_Ht2icLhvxGxjz_n5wB7mIya5KP1Dl-Co9gMW11Ux1EaGKcn5t9MwWX8uJaoBczoPZy1bGsKkx1_vlAQjSO7ZzTkyN184WhE9JmBv6pRl6jq3LuUZBk/w640-h426/P1001308SM.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">These window frames and the front wall of the tub were all fabricated by us from the beautiful Texas red cedar wood covered with 4-6 layers of sealing oil with ultrafine sanding in between. The wall is clad in a single 2.5 cm thick slab of granite.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXv1vjsUYZ9e7nn1jjwxZvTorbOVckDyb5hUKzPw2bOtyXnY9KW3Ba_-m_G4R9DN0UUBiGnnZjJ_7dUAOvX-nQTAcZhEHvEBVgtXbnMZ4Zn_z58P85v0pB-SPfdPWdzj7xgmHelGLnC_Fu/s1800/P1001309SM.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1800" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXv1vjsUYZ9e7nn1jjwxZvTorbOVckDyb5hUKzPw2bOtyXnY9KW3Ba_-m_G4R9DN0UUBiGnnZjJ_7dUAOvX-nQTAcZhEHvEBVgtXbnMZ4Zn_z58P85v0pB-SPfdPWdzj7xgmHelGLnC_Fu/w640-h426/P1001309SM.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is the other end of our bathroom. All the woodwork you see, including the pine bathroom door were fabricated, finished and installed by us. The water-efficient Caroma toilet came from Australia. Its water tank doubles as a bathroom sink to wash hands.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXQu-9bzPDSi5sY4OJsQR2-P3-X2hG7PuZgiDbdo7HeVnw9mLxTypsZ77TGeea8xlNu6ugwP6C0q91c8Ylm9pk7T6BEpGro8ZqBVqv5B0H9r20qv-B2Tl86suAaWugYyaNCybk6ByX3u8D/s1800/P1001313SM.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1800" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXQu-9bzPDSi5sY4OJsQR2-P3-X2hG7PuZgiDbdo7HeVnw9mLxTypsZ77TGeea8xlNu6ugwP6C0q91c8Ylm9pk7T6BEpGro8ZqBVqv5B0H9r20qv-B2Tl86suAaWugYyaNCybk6ByX3u8D/w640-h426/P1001313SM.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The view of the bathroom door and the southern entrance door to our house. Again, the door frames and floor boards were fabricated by us. The cabinets were fabricated from the old barn pinewood floor boards by a carpenter friend. The hermetic exterior door is made of insulating fiberglass.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>No on to the bad news. The corona virus related deaths are undercounted in the U.S., just like everywhere else. With bodies that begin to pile up on the streets, the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/scary-poor-hit-hardest-india-coronavirus-lockdown-200409105651819.html?utm_source=website&utm_medium=article_page&utm_campaign=read_more_links">giant India</a> has registered barely more CV cases and deaths than the tiny <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/world/americas/ecuador-coronavirus.html?searchResultPosition=3">Ecuador</a>. (How true this comment is a year later!)<br />
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In the US, in New York for example, the Fire Department <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/nyregion/coronavirus-new-york-update.html">data</a> shows that 1,125 patients were pronounced dead in their homes or on the street in the first five days of April, <span style="background-color: yellow;">more than eight times</span> the 131 deaths recorded during the same period last year.
Paramedics are not testing for the virus those they pronounce dead, so it is almost impossible to say how many of the people were infected with it. Some may have been tested before they died and either were not admitted to hospitals or were discharged.
But the huge jump in the numbers suggests that the virus was involved in many of the recent deaths. In New York, the unclaimed bodies bodies are now buried in <a href="https://twitter.com/AJEnglish/status/1248515055882125312">mass graves</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Fast forward to May 2021, and the US is the only large country that has vaccinated most of its population with the COVID vaccines that actually were produced at home and work, in contrast to the Chinese vaccines that don't. We are a gleaming success story that shines bright light on the incompetence of most other governments in the developed countries, and - singularly - in the tragic India, where perhaps millions of people have perished. Modi, that wannabe cruel mini-Trump, has succeeded in bringing down this great country of 1.3 billion people.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-73942330831702896022021-05-28T04:16:00.005-05:002021-06-04T01:14:36.487-05:00What can happen in 40 years?<div>Here is another short blog I started writing a year ago. Nothing has changed.</div><div><br /></div>Well, over forty years, one-half of a long human life can happen for starters. Forty years ago, on July 6, 1980, my extraordinary wife, Joanna, and I were married in a small ceremony in Warsaw. Poland was a communist country, the Soviet Union controlled Eastern Europe, but a social movement, Solidarity, to which we dedicated our young lives, was burning fast through the very foundations of the powerful Eastern Block.<br />
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Who would expect that 10 short years later, the Soviet Union was no more, Germany was unifying and the eastern European countries were tossed like leaves onto their paths to democratic modernity? With some adventures, we left Poland in January 1981 (me) and in April (Joanna) to settle in Minneapolis, where I was hired as a postdoc at the best Chemical Engineering department in the world, working for the top professor there.<div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdHHgvFfDzVk_psXUjnEyNlbkvup1oUhJ7olvN2DpxnCPcu5HYHtU1ulsHL-URpgxJAeGEoP1y69bxsDclQuH1xlj9CWKtfrEGNq2fOIBLr98abupoezgG6lkVYxlkEYgiSO987P6HCmNc/s633/GenJaruzelski.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="356" data-original-width="633" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdHHgvFfDzVk_psXUjnEyNlbkvup1oUhJ7olvN2DpxnCPcu5HYHtU1ulsHL-URpgxJAeGEoP1y69bxsDclQuH1xlj9CWKtfrEGNq2fOIBLr98abupoezgG6lkVYxlkEYgiSO987P6HCmNc/w400-h225/GenJaruzelski.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The infamous general Jaruzelski was never tried and sentenced until 2014, when he died, i.e., in the 25 years that ensued after the fall of communism.</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br />
On December 13, 1981, General Jaruzelski, the cowardly and tragically wrong Polish leader cowed by the Soviets, declared a martial law, and we asked for political asylum. Again, seeing that triumph of tanks, military power and mass arrests designed to subdue the Polish people, who would expect that this very martial law sped up the rate of change enormously, and led in a straight path to the fall of all communist regimes east and south of the Oder River? As a side reflection, Poland was never as subdued and pacified by the martial law and machine guns, as the submissive America, which is unable to repel Trump and his <a href="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm#search/lincoln+project/FMfcgxwJWrVzQXfqVchFRwXWxNFpGsfj">fellow felons</a>.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9lSmO12OGtAejTid867cealv5LIVwXnCPsctSEjJADs61KOgqg34p-GExlV-5M9nP7m63Ez34L2ClZtE8tDsfQdfoQ4_KH15wXi6c6VmaK1Sw2xhyrTlUSFTVvBTpN-4abpfSYPvG0V_J/s976/PANMartialLaw.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="976" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9lSmO12OGtAejTid867cealv5LIVwXnCPsctSEjJADs61KOgqg34p-GExlV-5M9nP7m63Ez34L2ClZtE8tDsfQdfoQ4_KH15wXi6c6VmaK1Sw2xhyrTlUSFTVvBTpN-4abpfSYPvG0V_J/w400-h225/PANMartialLaw.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Armored personnel carriers and the brutal ZOMO thugs in front of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) in Warsaw, December 15, 1981. I was a fresh PhD researcher at PAN.</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br />A decade later, now in Berkeley, California, we became US citizens. I can barely convey the enormous pride and emotions with which we became Americans, and swore allegiance to the US Constitution, democracy, the rule of law, and to that very special place the United States held in the world. I have always maintained that the United States of America is not a country, but a state of human mind. In that sense, millions of people who never set a foot on the American soil, can too be Americans, and denizens of that Shining City upon a Hill, which was helping the entire world to become a better place. Of course, we were a bit naïve, but that feeling of elation that I finally was an American would stay with me until today.<br />
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The only thing that troubles me is what we haven’t seen and felt each day. The stealthy, slow and complete looting of the country by the educated and privileged, most with the degrees from Harvard, Yale, Berkeley and Stanford. These people lead Goldman Sachs, Chase, Wells Fargo, Amazon, Facebook, Uber etc. Together they have completely hollowed out our country and destroyed the middle class. Now the same companies block so many people with technology from communicating truth and escaping poverty. Shame on Academia and the highly trained us. I think that in its impact on the global destruction, the Harvard Business School is worse than the National Socialist German Workers' Party (abbreviated in German as NSDAP), and WWII.
And America richly deserves the pandemonium we sowed and got. We, the people, disoriented by our finely-tuned propaganda machine far better than by Goebbels et al., elected the Creature.
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“The ultimate expression of sovereignty resides, to a large degree, in the power and capacity to dictate who may live and who must die,” the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe wrote in a 2003 essay called “Necropolitics.” “Hence, to kill or allow to live constitutes the limits of sovereignty, its fundamental attributes.” I read this line not long before the pandemic reached American shores, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
<br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-18573782079634547752021-05-28T04:09:00.013-05:002021-06-23T01:56:40.112-05:00Shame on usFor the record, the ambiguous title of this blog could also be read as "Shame on the US." I could not bring myself to publish this short blog for the last 5 long months, but here it is. The dual nightmare of tRump and his Jan 6, 2021, brutal insurrection, that prompted me to start writing is gone. But otherwise little has changed. We are still the same completely confused, mostly blind and illiterate animals that call themselves Homo Sapiens Sapiens (<i>Wise wise man</i>!). My cat has more common sense and sees nature around him more acutely than most of us.<div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRLJioudsYtim2IEtNcfqaXZsvDmpwN_MzCinJpce5YAX_WsT1pmESUhfmPy7XDSfGLznzhz9hyphenhyphenprP39k0Rm28mM2EMwHIw4XQ5ygIbC2qIjzoHXPQRGGufZRtbXov1DxwNvWMQXuxSFYy/s1000/6000oldyeartreecutinNevada.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1000" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRLJioudsYtim2IEtNcfqaXZsvDmpwN_MzCinJpce5YAX_WsT1pmESUhfmPy7XDSfGLznzhz9hyphenhyphenprP39k0Rm28mM2EMwHIw4XQ5ygIbC2qIjzoHXPQRGGufZRtbXov1DxwNvWMQXuxSFYy/w640-h480/6000oldyeartreecutinNevada.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">May 28, 2021. According to my friend Brian, some dudes in Nevada got curious about a bristle cone pine tree. It was really big. They cut it down. It was the oldest formerly alive tree in the world, ca. 6000 years. This tree was older than the oldest recorded dynasty in Egypt. It was older by at least 1000 years than the oldest surviving wood structure inside of an Egyptian pyramid. Eighteen years ago, that wooden structure led me to propose an operational definition of eternity for a human civilization (5000 years). And a few criminally stupid hominids (human-like apes) with chain saws murdered it. Just like that. Within a few hours of their empty worthless lives that will be swallowed by time without a single ripple. As if though these disgusting creatures never existed. Now California can lay claim to the oldest living tree. These, I am sorry to say, Nevadans are still peeved. Well, around 13 of them are. I propose to rename our species to <i>Homo Stultus Stultus </i>or<i> Homo Praedator Incinerā</i><i>tor.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><div><div><br /><div>Although Sudan was the last male white rhino, he was not, actually, the last of his kind. He still had two living descendants, both female: Najin, a daughter, and Fatu, a granddaughter. As Sudan declined, these two stood grazing in a nearby field. They would live out their days in a strange existential twilight — a state of limbo that scientists call, with heartbreaking dryness, “functional extinction.” Their subspecies was no longer viable. Two females, all by themselves, would not be able to save it. <div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9PUEIF5UPbS1cYEk4aHVkHRzXKXVkfPpri-ALvJyPzA7yvSWm1nRHDxp2V4NrM5lNyv6eJbbBra4vpY-74YDCpj_Y_D_Cs6_Ql8byDhbJkt-ooQs5DrVS5Y1yAB8PtC4CULpqgryQTkSj/s2048/10mag-whiterhinos-02-superJumbo.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1747" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9PUEIF5UPbS1cYEk4aHVkHRzXKXVkfPpri-ALvJyPzA7yvSWm1nRHDxp2V4NrM5lNyv6eJbbBra4vpY-74YDCpj_Y_D_Cs6_Ql8byDhbJkt-ooQs5DrVS5Y1yAB8PtC4CULpqgryQTkSj/w546-h640/10mag-whiterhinos-02-superJumbo.jpg" width="546" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span aria-hidden="true" class="css-i48y28 e13ogyst0" face="nyt-magsans, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #444444; font-size: 0.9375rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 1.125rem; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;">Najin (left) and her daughter, Fatu, the last two <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/magazine/the-last-two-northern-white-rhinos-on-earth.html">Northern White Rhinos on the Earth</a>.<br /></span><span aria-hidden="true" class="css-i48y28 e13ogyst0" face="nyt-magsans, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #444444; font-size: 0.9375rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 1.125rem; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;">Credit:</span><span class="css-ach9cc e1z0qqy90" face="nyt-magsans, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #666666; display: inline; font-size: 0.8125rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.125rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;">Jack Davison for The New York Times</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>My friend, Rex Weyler, just sent me these words from his recently deceased friend, Barry Lopez: “We are pattern makers, and if our patterns are beautiful and full of grace, they will be able to bring a person for whom the world has become broken and disorganized up off his knees and back to life.” Also: “For some people, who they imagine they are does not end where the boundary of the skin meets the world. It continues with the reach of their senses out into the land. If the land in which they live is summarily disfigured or reorganized by industrial development, it causes them psychological pain.” </p><p>Pain, a heart-ripping ache is what I feel writing these words. I hope that you too can weep for these magnificent gentle rhinos, and pray for them and for our ravaged planet Earth. When I say, "pray, " I mean it in the spiritual sense, not necessarily as a religious ritual. </p><p>Which leads me to wanting to answer in more detail this question John S. asked in a comment to the previous blog: "<span style="background-color: white; color: #292929; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px;">Professor Patzek, why would any rational human try to live in harmony with nature if that human believed God was a construct invented out of emotional necessity? Would not the human reasonably choose to grab everything for itself?</span>" My answer is, and why not!?</p><p>Let me start from an anecdote. A friend of mine reported that his partner just spoke to her 87-year old mother, who exclaimed: "I'm sick of praying; it's time for someone to act!" So how can we act to leave only the beautiful ripples across a blink of time that is given to us on the Earth?</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigMgnV9JjcgfiCsZB-HQL-QuzvwpkK3k-a6Aophbd2CCWHk2t7WQSXeMCHudQWXjGrCCmG-01olhPYufxJDT-_hb_AK5ocTA4x6iaCFqP3ReztJh4PyqrGWBD9qItOqjQQl5MM6tPocjbq/s620/dosomething.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="492" data-original-width="620" height="508" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigMgnV9JjcgfiCsZB-HQL-QuzvwpkK3k-a6Aophbd2CCWHk2t7WQSXeMCHudQWXjGrCCmG-01olhPYufxJDT-_hb_AK5ocTA4x6iaCFqP3ReztJh4PyqrGWBD9qItOqjQQl5MM6tPocjbq/w640-h508/dosomething.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">How many times have you heard this tired cliché: "Our thought and prayers go to those who just tragically died." (In <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/us/chicago-evanston-shooting-spree-university.html">yet another</a> (1/9/2021) murderous rampage, while the bodies of the victims are still warm)? Well, are merely our thoughts and prayers with the dying rhinos? With the Earth under siege? Or should we do something? If so, what are our main motivations?</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p></div></div></div></div>Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-38997147091106332642020-12-27T10:51:00.036-06:002021-01-22T10:56:55.272-06:002020, the Year the US Imploded, so Where is Hope?<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: normal;">Yes, it all happened in Seattle, dear friends, as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WijoL3Hy_Bw">this harsh</a> documentary shows, but the COVID-19 pandemic is like an X-ray machine. It displays all t</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial;">hat is broken and hidden.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I'll start my detailed explanation of the multiple causes that underlie urban decay in the US from this beautiful quotation by a friend: </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: normal;"><i>Many saints grew in holiness to the point where, by God's grace, they restored around them the original harmony with creation which Adam enjoyed in Paradise. One thinks immediately of St Seraphim of Sarov and St Sergius of Radonezh who befriended wild bears, or of St Paul of Obnora who was beheld surrounded peacefully by forest animals. Even in our own time there are testimonies of monastics living in the wilderness peacefully with wild deer and even mountain lions. Elder Herman is remembered for a gentle ermine who was utterly devoted to the Saint. When asked what he thought of the animals, a recent American monastic elder replied, "They have something to do with paradise."</i></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: normal;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV7nxebP_iLpVRoYQ_WbPoYuvVqmfRBUoxuK5tyF5v-CTDB8fF1LRcSRfC9DTNyFZWrm2im_D2Plzy7DTz0hbgjTZX2356ZOa5mhL3znehM9Uk-DeugLENNgIzce2i1nLUJwE02uc4Imd2/s2048/ChristmasDeer.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A buck visiting our home on Christmas day morning" border="0" data-original-height="1214" data-original-width="2048" height="381" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV7nxebP_iLpVRoYQ_WbPoYuvVqmfRBUoxuK5tyF5v-CTDB8fF1LRcSRfC9DTNyFZWrm2im_D2Plzy7DTz0hbgjTZX2356ZOa5mhL3znehM9Uk-DeugLENNgIzce2i1nLUJwE02uc4Imd2/w640-h381/ChristmasDeer.png" title="A buck visiting our home on Christmas day morning" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: normal;"><span><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: normal;"><span>Sadly, the beauty of these human outliers, who have lived in harmony with nature - just as we try -, is inconsistent with my understanding of human nature, and of God who must have been invented out of emotional necessity to ease the unbearable weight of freedom of choice. God enters directly or not as the key motivator </span>and (ab)solver <span>of human endeavors. What follows are four </span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: normal;">of the </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: normal;">most famous </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: normal;">excerpts of use of an/the </span><b>invisible hand</b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: normal;"> (of God, sometimes) in the treatises on economy. God started helping economists in the eighteenth century, when He/She inspired a famous Scott, Adam Smith.</span></p></span></span></span><p></p><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="color: #4d5156;">I have compiled the next five paragraphs by paraphrasing and editing somewhat the fragments of this</span><span style="color: #4d5156;"> </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand&source=gmail&ust=1609092805905000&usg=AFQjCNE8vzKKeqEx9BscvVhVyynhdD2HHQ" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand" style="color: blue;" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a><span style="color: #4d5156;"> </span><span style="color: #4d5156;">article and other sources. In summary, I am not sure that Adam Smith thought of God as using His/Her own hand, beautifully manicured by the female Vietnamese angels, as “the” or “an”</span><span style="color: #4d5156;"> </span><b style="color: #4d5156;">invisible hand</b><span style="color: #4d5156;"> </span><span style="color: #4d5156;">of the markets. God could have been one of the causes of this mythical hand’s emergence, perhaps the main cause, but surely not the only one, according to Smith. The subsequent interpretations of neo-classical economics, and the fervent religious interpretations of economic theories, injected God into economics a tad too much perhaps for Adam Smith’s taste. But this is merely my opinion. </span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="color: #4d5156;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="color: #4d5156;">All too often,</span><span style="color: #4d5156;"> in my mind, </span><b style="color: #4d5156;">an invisible hand</b><span style="color: #4d5156;"> </span><span style="color: #4d5156;">has been created by exhausting the environment and causing excessive pollution, but treating these essential inputs to and outputs from the human economy as externalities. Today, economists have become very adept in omitting these inconvenient boundary conditions of all human endeavors. I claim that these boundary conditions should have entered all economic models by the mid-nineteenth century when modern, large scale industrial operations and monopolies were introduced. After the 1920s, advertising distorted markets even more, by playing on human irrationality and heavily influencing purchasing choices of millions of people.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><p style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin: 0in;"><span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #4d5156;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p><p style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #4d5156;">Nature and Causes of </span></i><em><b><span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #5f6368; font-style: normal;">the Wealth of Nations</span></b></em><span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #4d5156;">, generally referred to by its shortened title </span><em><b><span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #5f6368;">The Wealth of Nations</span></b></em><span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #4d5156;">, is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith. </span></span><span style="color: #202122; font-family: arial;">He used for the second time “an invisible hand” <span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">[emphasis added]</span> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">metaphor in Book IV, Chapter II, paragraph IX of </span><i style="font-family: arial;">The Wealth of Nations</i><span style="font-family: arial;">. I start from this quotation, because it is pertinent to a more modern economy:</span></p><p style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p><p style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="color: #202122;">“But the annual revenue of every society is always precisely equal to the exchangeable value of the whole annual produce of its industry, or rather is precisely the same thing with that exchangeable value. As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value, every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an <b>invisible hand</b><span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"> [emphasis added]</span></span> to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it. <span style="background: yellow;">By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it</span>. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.”</span></p><p style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 1.2pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="color: #202122;">The first use of the “invisible hand” entered <i><span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">The Theory of Moral Sentiments</span></i><span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"> (1759) in Part IV, Chapter 1, where Adam Smith described a selfish landlord as being led by <b>an</b> <b>invisible hand</b> [emphasis added,] to distribute his harvest to those who work for him. Notice that this time Smith uses “an invisible hand,” as opposed to “the invisible hand.” So perhaps this invisible hand is a result of many causes or it <span style="background: yellow;">does not exist at all,</span> as Joseph E. Stieglitz wrote famously (</span></span><span style="color: #202122;">The Roaring Nineties<i>, </i>2006; </span><span style="color: black;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://blogs.iht.com/tribtalk/business/globalization/?p%3D177&source=gmail&ust=1609092805905000&usg=AFQjCNEZyaNMLt5A8Ljs_GhP00BRmiKyXw" href="http://blogs.iht.com/tribtalk/business/globalization/?p=177" style="color: blue;" target="_blank"><span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #663366;">Altman, Daniel. <i>Managing Globalization.</i> In: <i>Q & Answers </i>with Joseph E. Stiglitz, Columbia University and <i>The International Herald Tribune</i>, October 11, 2006 05:03AM.</span></a></span><span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #202122;"> </span><span style="color: black;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://web.archive.org/web/20090626040606/http:/blogs.iht.com/tribtalk/business/globalization/?p%3D177&source=gmail&ust=1609092805905000&usg=AFQjCNFlGl3VafG2PFk3BhdyFbR5Dp3SZg" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090626040606/http:/blogs.iht.com/tribtalk/business/globalization/?p=177" style="background-position: 100% 50%; color: blue;" target="_blank"><span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #663366;">Archived</span></a></span><span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #202122;"> June 26, 2009, at the </span><span style="color: black;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayback_Machine&source=gmail&ust=1609092805905000&usg=AFQjCNE-dALYFpWW1fSud9t5mbJ9Bdsjzg" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayback_Machine" style="color: blue;" target="_blank" title="Wayback Machine"><span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0b0080;">Wayback Machine</span></a>.</span><span style="color: #202122;"></span></span></p><p style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin: 6pt 0in;"><span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p><p style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin: 6pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="color: #202122;">Only in <i>The History of Astronomy</i> (written before 1758) Smith speaks of <i>the invisible hand (<b>not</b> of God)</i><span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"> [emphasis and “<b>not </b>of God” added]</span></span>, with which ignoramuses explain natural phenomena otherwise unexplainable:</span></p><p style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="color: #202122;">“Fire burns, and water refreshes; heavy bodies descend, and lighter substances fly upwards, by the necessity of their own nature; nor was the invisible hand of <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_(mythology)&source=gmail&ust=1609092805905000&usg=AFQjCNFWAHYmj3GK76VZFlPVQCpezbYlTg" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_(mythology)" style="color: blue;" target="_blank" title="Jupiter (mythology)"><span style="color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;">Jupiter</span></a> ever apprehended to be employed in those matters.” (</span><span style="background: rgb(234, 243, 255); color: #202122;">Smith, A., 1980, The Glasgow edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 7 vol., Oxford University Press, vol. III, p. 49</span>.)<span style="color: #202122;"></span></span></p><p style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p><p style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin: 6pt 0in;"><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Finally, in <i>The Theory of Moral Sentiments</i> (1759) and in <i>The Wealth of Nations</i> (1776) Adam Smith speaks of <i>an</i> invisible hand, never of <i>the</i> invisible hand. In <i>The Theory of Moral Sentiments,</i> Smith uses the concept to sustain a "trickle down" theory, a concept also used in neoclassical development theory: The gluttony of the rich serves to feed the poor.</span></span></p><p style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="color: #202122;">“The rich … consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an <i>invisible hand</i> [emphasis added] to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition. These last too enjoy their share of all that it produces. In what constitutes the real happiness of human life, they are in no respect inferior to those who would seem so much above them. In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.” (</span><span style="background: rgb(234, 243, 255); color: #202122;">Smith, A., 1976, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, vol. 1, p. 184 in: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 7 vol., Oxford University Press</span>.<span style="color: #202122;">)</span></span></p></div><p><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: #fcff01;">There is no invisible hand.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> But there is greed and abuse of the environment, plain and simple, like in the picture below. More precisely, that which the global fossil Amoeba takes from the Earth, and the poisons she dumps back into the Earth, is the invisible hand that guides our smooth and fast self-destruction that results from greed.</span></span></span></p><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJp9aNAzVpuYawhpgiqZP5moNQlxEpxp4fXCi6hA8LtTfeOFdB-8Zp2XuSeiHqv-N-wT8qz34cqTq5HBOKqrIDc-QlqXFfo1HdcuAOoGKswC59_40TtXGIWpNCGA7i7FLIJTOd0GE9iU9s/s1000/Selfish-and-proud-declare-US-anti-lockdown-protesters.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="658" data-original-width="1000" height="422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJp9aNAzVpuYawhpgiqZP5moNQlxEpxp4fXCi6hA8LtTfeOFdB-8Zp2XuSeiHqv-N-wT8qz34cqTq5HBOKqrIDc-QlqXFfo1HdcuAOoGKswC59_40TtXGIWpNCGA7i7FLIJTOd0GE9iU9s/w640-h422/Selfish-and-proud-declare-US-anti-lockdown-protesters.jpg" title="Greed is good in Trump's America" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div style="color: #222222;"><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In the US, capitalism has reached its logical conclusion. A few superrich, a few millions of well to do, and 200 millions of the impoverished, ravaged masses. We have laid most of the interior of the US to waste, and converted it to an ugly industrial machine that consumes people, resources (soil, water, forests and minerals) and the rest of the environment. </span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Any way out of this social and physical wasteland will require an overhaul of our social priorities of the unheard-to-date magnitude. This we will have to do facing an orgy of greed called the stock market, and the unwillingness of many people I know to share in their "invisible hand" of God spoils. Yes, they think that their greed and spoils are the God-sanctioned benefits of being rich, smart and pious. And fuck the poor and destitute. </span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">To understand the scope and the almost untreatable depth of the social wasteland we have created, one must read the "<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Hillbilly-Eulogy-Death-Appalachian-Culture/dp/B08DSSZPCM&source=gmail&ust=1609170435408000&usg=AFQjCNGGYocbhLGZmx_DjLRVZ_l8kg0Z-A" href="https://www.amazon.com/Hillbilly-Eulogy-Death-Appalachian-Culture/dp/B08DSSZPCM" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">Hillbilly Eulogy</a>". Dwayne Willis was that one-in-a-million guy, who got away and chronicled his own life, and his family and friends over three generations. I cried at times, when I read his heart-wrenching book. So this is the prevailing, post-economic collapse US landscape, as I see it now. </span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white;">It is telling that the "</span><span style="background-color: #fcff01;">Hillbilly Eulogy</span><span style="background-color: white;">" book was translated into the "</span><span style="background-color: #fcff01;">Hillbilly Elegy</span><span style="background-color: white;">" movie by Netflix in an excellent albeit too brief adaptation of the book. Americans simply will not watch stories with unhappy titles.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The silly, naïve Alexandria et al. of this world need to realize that the real "Green Revolution" in the US will be one of massive public health investment, drug rehabilitation, food, and structured, long-hour education for tens of millions of young people in the American wasteland. We need to curtail or eliminate the kolkhoz-like corporate agriculture, giant animal killing plants, abusive produce agriculture, terrible non-paying jobs with no benefits, underfunded healthcare, no mass transport, failing infrastructure, etc. To halve power consumption, we need to tax individual consumption AND corporations as a quadratic or cubic function of income and profits. Given my current income, not consumption, I will be among those taxed at a higher rate. </span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">These new taxes would then go to the creation of healthcare to all, subsidized housing for the functional homeless, and plenty of psychiatric and drug rehabilitation hospitals in every community, followed by the high-quality, tax-subsidized nursing homes with qualified personnel. In short, we would have to convert the US to a much more socialist country, like Norway or Sweden or Canada, but not emulate the degenerated pseudo-socialism, driven by taxpayer gifts to the corporations, that is the US agriculture. </span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I have just outlined a new deal, in which we will cut our private consumption and stimulate the public sector. My plan will surely be broadly accepted by the confused, generally brain-washed, at times crazy </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Americans </span><span style="font-family: arial;">(those who believe in the lies that no one else can see</span><span style="font-family: arial;">, like the fraudulent presidential election of 2020</span><span style="font-family: arial;">), and the corrupt nomenklatura they elect, and reelect, and reelect... </span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Just to be clear, real small businesses, not the shell companies by and for the super rich, will be encouraged and subsidized as needed to create the high quality jobs. And if you want to see how difficult what I outline shall be, please read the readers' comments to this piece by Faux <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ilhan-omar-slams-trump-for-disgraceful-pardons-of-blackwater-guards&source=gmail&ust=1609170435408000&usg=AFQjCNHgmXHnw2rrdaWBmVtP2WlGwIASrA" href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ilhan-omar-slams-trump-for-disgraceful-pardons-of-blackwater-guards" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">News</a> I watch and read in order to understand better the mess we are in.</span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">And so it might not go, my dear friends, Tad</span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>P.S.</b> As John Muir would say, all things big and small are connected. In this post, I stayed away from the war on the American democracy that has been waged mercilessly by the Republican party in the 1970s; then in the 1980s; then between 1997 and 2001 (PNAC and the orgy of special counseling against that sleaze-bag, Bill Clinton, that enabled the 9/11 and started the eternal war in Afghanistan); then the 2003 war in Iraq; and - not-so-finally -, the 2016-2020 presidency of Trump. The last half a century of unrelenting outsourcing of industrial jobs and work benefits in the US has given us the 40 million of desperate hopeless souls, who latched on to Trump's Big Lie of draining the swamp and helping the poor. The ever-lasting wars gave us tens of thousands of wounded soldiers, and the opioid epidemic powered by the American super rich crime families and the criminal corporations, such as McKenzie Associates, that served and advised them. The meth epidemic, in turn, has resulted from the long, monotone jobs in terrible places like the meat packing factories. Finally, most of the 550,000 COVID-related deaths in the US will be the result of the public health desertification of our country, and the political and humanitarian catastrophe that still is and will continue to be the Trump administration. </span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>P.S.P.S. (01/03/2021)</b>: About the importance of living in harmony with nature, here is an image emailed to me by a friend from Seatle, Brian.</span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinA8VC7G6Tc_4mAltrgbiIcsKkKt-yrGiGMlz9ilNx-G_p_1Hzyi4Hwvci18MXnQPL0T-1o07uzkrnZQLujZ4eETktUBM_a2MBJm-CAcfxKZUa4s2HwT2EyvfbWFXV9or7u0HAyjaC08q4/s539/thebiggestthingIleanred.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="539" data-original-width="526" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinA8VC7G6Tc_4mAltrgbiIcsKkKt-yrGiGMlz9ilNx-G_p_1Hzyi4Hwvci18MXnQPL0T-1o07uzkrnZQLujZ4eETktUBM_a2MBJm-CAcfxKZUa4s2HwT2EyvfbWFXV9or7u0HAyjaC08q4/w624-h640/thebiggestthingIleanred.png" width="624" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>P.S.</b><sup>3</sup> (01/22/2021) Here is another beautiful quote from Adam Smith, pointed out by my friend, Brian: "But when he possesses stock sufficient to maintain him for months or years, he naturally endeavours to derive a revenue from the greater part of it; reserving only so much for his immediate consumption as may maintain him till this revenue begins to come in. His whole stock, therefore, is distinguished into two parts. That part which, he expects, is to afford him this revenue, is called his capital." </span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Says Brian: "So the past production of capital (a gold dust covered balloon factory) enabled the present consumption at the party, which spurred the creation of more such factories for future parties." </span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In other words, the cumulative past investment leads to current state of the economy and defines its ability to grow. Some seven years ago, I wrote a little paper I never published. In it, based on the Fed financial data for the US since 1949, I derived a diffusion equation of debt that defines current rate of growth of the economy. It turns out that cumulative debt diffuses into current efficiency of GDP generation that is an always decreasing function of the debt. There are three major conclusions from this diffusion equation:</span></div><div style="background-color: white;"><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;">The more debt you accrue the slower you will grow, and this is a universal law.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">If you want to change your economy to a new mix of resources ("Green Revolution"), you will have to forgo your cumulative investment in the old resources, build a stock of new resources, and only then you will be able to grow again from a much lower level. This is a multidecadal process that no politician will be able to stomach, and the disinterested, uneducated public will refocus on the conspiracy theories and other lies.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Current rampant borrowing will translate into GDP generation with a low and ever lower efficiency. And that's a universal law again!</span></li></ol></div></div>Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-74556017250022959332020-07-03T20:18:00.000-05:002020-07-09T16:31:20.172-05:00The best and worst of my US of A First the good news. Lacking leadership, guidance and resources, most of my fellow Americans are stepping in, wearing those masks and practicing social distancing. Here in Texas, Governor Abbot abandoned pretending that he is a blind fool, and ordered mandatory masks, $250 fines for not wearing them (including a text message on my phone from the Texas disaster warning system), and bar closures. The Houston Medical Center, where I recently went, looked like a ghost town. We need to think a lot harder about reopening schools, rather than bars. In my Hayes county, practically everyone wears masks in stores, even in Home Depot, whose pro-Trump CEO does not seem to get this simple message: if you care about the economy, wear a bloody mask and make sure that together we will not be overwhelmed by the fear of the virus, and will resume sending our children to school, visiting doctors and dentists, start flying, visit hotels and frequent outdoor restaurants. Right now, this broad attitude is not accepted by most of the mentally exhausted Americans under ever more stress.<br />
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In other states, like Florida, with zero leadership from a sycophantic governor who habitually licks the inside of his boss's asshole, city mayors and county officials are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/us/coronavirus-florida-miami.html">trying in vain</a> to rein in the masses of suntanned, beer-drinking young people in search of self-gratification. These people think they are invincible, and their parents and grandparents don't count. Sad.<br />
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My beautiful country has never been under so much onslaught from enemies domestic and foreign. We now have a corrupter-in-chief, who is infecting with moral gangrene most vile almost every institution of our civil society, while purging anyone and everyone who is decent and thinks independently. The president is doing this dirty bidding for his own nefarious goals, mostly to ensure his reelection and profit his family businesses. Of course when it comes to being subservient to his Kremlin boss and handler, Trump will not stop from any treachery. For Trump, obstruction of justice and treason are the way of life, but some 20-30 million of my terminally aggrieved white fellow citizens, many of them self-proclaimed "Christians" (?!), seem to be following him to the very hell, where he and they will end up.<br />
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Please remember <i>my</i> <i>good people</i>, as Jesus would say, that Trump will use you as stage props to get reelected, and if he does, he will immediately abandon and betray you. Why? Because that's what he does. To everyone. Always. But don't worry, he'll tweet you. Also please note that you have been left behind by 40 years of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/opinion/private-equity-inequality.html">systematic looting</a> of our country by the likes of Trump, his entire <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/2020/03/dirty-money-jared-kushner-slumlord-netflix-1202216998/">family</a>, and most of the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sean-hannity-real-estate-holdings-shell-companies-2018-4">criminal gang</a> that works for him. You are the sheep who entrusted a wolf to improve their lot.<br />
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To gain a free reign, the looters hand-picked an empty-headed charming figurehead, the eternally clueless conservative by the name of Ronald Reagan. I know you revere that platinum-encrusted idol of conservatism, but please come to your senses <i>my good people</i>. You were fucked on January 21, 1981, but you didn't see it coming. Later, the same looters have fucked you over and over again for 40 years, no matter which administration was in power. I know you're hurting badly, but now is the time to rebuild our country by eliminating first the failed economic neo-liberalism that served me so well, but allowed the <span style="background-color: yellow;">top 0.1% to stomp you </span>into the hollowed out, burned ground that was our thriving society 40 years ago.<br />
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In the previous two posts, I have commented on the US hellholes, into which we dump our old to die. We call these profitable hellholes affectionately, "nursing homes." Thus far, more than 51,000 residents and employees of nursing homes and long-term care facilities have died, representing more than 40 percent of the total death toll in the United States. But this was in late March, April and May. Now let's fast forward to June 21, 2020, and we learn that the same nursing homes across the country are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/business/nursing-homes-evictions-discharges-coronavirus.html">kicking out</a> old and disabled residents (dumping them like trash) and sending them to homeless shelters and rundown motels. These residents are now replaced with the much more lucrative recovering COVID-19 patients. While the popular conception of nursing homes is of places where elderly people live, much of their business is caring for patients of all ages and income levels who are recovering from surgery or acute illnesses like strokes. Medicare often pays for short-term rehabilitation stints; Medicaid covers longer-term stays for poor people. From this point of view, the poor, old people on Medicaid must be kicked out first. Such is the nature of the <span style="background-color: yellow;">American brand of predatory neo-liberal capitalism</span>. And what really scares me is that most Americans think that they live in heaven and have best social services available to them, including healthcare. Well, the corona virus took care of that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/02/opinion/politics/us-economic-social-inequality.html">delusion</a>.<br />
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Now on to the racism in America. Tons of ink have been spilled on the discussion of this unpleasant subject, and I will only add the curious case of one Amy Cooper (see the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000007159234/amy-cooper-dog-central-park-police-video.html">60 second video</a> that went viral, with 40 million views within a few days from being posted).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">May 26, 2020. Ms Amy Cooper, born and educated in Canada, was filmed in Central Park calling 911 to unleash the cops on a black man she wanted to hurt badly. The black man challenged her white superiority and white incompetence. She cannot even handle her little unleashed dog, while holding the leash in her right hand. Unleashing dogs is illegal in Central Park, and the black man simply asked her to put the dog on a leash. Amy is seen here exploding with violent rage and lounging towards the man.</td></tr>
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If you met her on the street, you'd peg Ms Cooper as a college-educated, independent young woman with a great professional career (she lives in Manhattan after all). You'd think that Ms Cooper represented the enlightened Canadians and Americans, who have put racism behind them. Well, you'd be wrong. Ms Cooper may hold all of these characteristics until she doesn't, like most of us. The moment someone black challenges her white supremacy (yes, white supremacy as in the old white slave owner times), she turns on her latent racism. Ms Cooper knows everything about the hidden racism that permeates the American society. She also knows how racist the police are. Enraged, she does not hesitate to push all of these racist buttons in her 911 call. She is calling the cops as a white woman being attacked by a black man in a park, suggesting hysterically that she thinks her life is in danger. In short, she wants the cops to come and shoot the black attacker as they almost always do. She wishes violent death on a black man, because he dared to tell her to put a dog on a leash.<br />
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Ms Amy Cooper gives us the purest, unedited insight into the essence of human racism anywhere. The way she allows us to glance at the dark side of human soul is worthy of Dostoevsky or Conrad-Korzeniowski. To see her at that naked moment of truth is to witness the gate of hell open and slam shut, like in Dante's <i>Inferno</i>. You could not make it up. More generally, this video of her Mr. Cooper (no relationship) shot in Central Park is an invaluable comment on our society today, in the cosmopolitan Manhattan, in New York, 52 years after Dr. Martin Luther King was shot by another white person, who did not like them blacks pretending they are just like us, the snow-white whites.<br />
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I almost vomited watching this video, because it made me realize that most people drink racism with their mother's milk here in the US, in Canada, in Poland and in any other country around the world. Later, our racism is polished and hidden behind a thin veneer of kindness and understanding, until it is not. The second thought that made me almost puke is that our dear Amy knew exactly that the white American cops would come to her rescue guns blazing, and she used the coded racist language to make sure they would. And what if instead of Ontario, Canada, we went to Alabama, Georgia, or Texas? How much worse this pervasive racism is among the people who wear t-shirts with the Confederate flag?<br />
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For those of you who reside outside of the USA, that is for most of my readers, here is a closing footnote on that unfortunate Canadian woman with a college degree from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Ms Amy Cooper:<br />
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"Amy Cooper was terminated “effective immediately” on Tuesday from her job at investment firm Franklin Templeton, following a storm of criticism over a video posted online that showed Cooper calling the police on a black man who asked her to keep her dog leashed in Central Park and filmed her reaction to his politely phrased request." <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2020/05/26/amy-cooper-fired-after-viral-central-park-video/#387314235c53">Forbes</a>.<br />
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By the way, if you live outside of the US of A, please don't feel superior. At least here we stumble along trying to change this dark part of human nature. Chances are high that in your country racism runs unchecked, and slavery, especially child slavery and young women slavery thrive. So don't be smug, please, and give us credit for trying to resolve our deep darkness. How is yours?<br />
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In my country, "Black Lives Matter" has been the<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html"> largest social movement</a> in our history, with up to 25 million people, black, brown and white participating, Something good will come out of this energy of mostly young people, as it did in Poland when Solidarity won. We will become a better society in the end, and we will - again - give a good example and leadership to the world. Count on us!<br />
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<b>P.S. </b>All the cartoons in this blog came from my unflappable British friend, <span style="background-color: yellow;">Mike Haywood</span>. I do thank him for keeping me smiling during this terrible time.<br />
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<b>P.S.<sup>2</sup> </b>(07/05/2020) According to my friend, Rex Wyler, today, some 40 million human slaves exist, including 10 million children. An additional 15 million girls suffer forced marriages, and some 150 million children work as trapped child-laborers. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/25/modern-slavery-trafficking-persons-one-in-200">Guardian</a> estimates that slavery is a $150 billion annual industry. In North Korea, Eritrea, and Burundi, some 10 percent of all citizens are slaves, and even in the UK an estimated 13,000 people serve as enslaved laborers. Twelve US presidents owned slaves, including presumed humanitarian, Thomas Jefferson, and Lincoln's vice president, Andrew Johnson. <br />
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What follows came from Prof. Bill Rees, courtesy of Prof. Paul Ehrlich: On June 23, 2020, <span style="background-color: yellow;">Republican Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain's 2008 campaign for president</span>, was interviewed on MSNBC.
In response to a very general question regarding the Trump Presidency, Mr. Schmidt spoke for two solid minutes and gave the most insightful and brutally honest response of what the Trump Presidency has done to our great country.<br />
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“Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And, I don't say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And, he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And, there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.”
"When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don't use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We've never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.”
"It's just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he's the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he's brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale."
"And, let's be clear. This isn't happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you're the most likely to die from this disease. We're the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are, because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk."
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I have been pretty brutal, but Steve Schmidt is as brutal. He only shies away from the plausible deduction based on the available evidence that in destroying America with such passion, Trump has acted as a Russian asset controlled directly by Vladimir Putin. Trump must be thoroughly blackmailed by the FSB, who must have him on video and on tape. And that's just from Trump's Moscow times. His obstruction of justice when it comes to the Russian intervention into the 2016 election and the sales of arms to Ukraine are added elements. The Special Prosecutor, Rober Mueller, failed monumentally in his report by not ever dotting the is and crossing the ts, and informing others about what he knew. In the end, Mueller showed himself to be a card-carrying Republican, who had more loyalty to his party than to his country. Barr stole and distorted Mueller's narrative and Mueller did nothing about it. Barr is a cunning enabler of a traitor president, and hopefuly will be behind bars soon. And what about another traitor, Michael Flynn?<br />
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<b>P.S.<sup>3</sup> </b>(07/06/2020)
Speaking about <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/29/the-lockdown-lessons-of-crime-and-punishment">Raskolnikov's Dream</a> in the context of this blog:<br />
"He had dreamed that the whole world was doomed to fall victim to some terrible, as yet unknown and unseen pestilence spreading to Europe from the depths of Asia. Everyone was to perish, except for certain, very few, chosen ones. Some new trichinae had appeared, microscopic creatures that lodged themselves in men’s bodies. But these creatures were spirits, endowed with reason and will. Those who received them into themselves immediately became possessed and mad. But never, never had people considered themselves so intelligent and unshakable in the truth as did these infected ones. Never had they thought their judgments, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions and beliefs more unshakable. Entire settlements, entire cities and nations would be infected and go mad. Everyone became anxious, and no one understood anyone else; each thought the truth was contained in himself alone, and suffered looking at others, beat his breast, wept, and wrung his hands. <span style="background-color: yellow;">They did not know whom or how to judge, could not agree on what to regard as evil, what as good. They did not know whom to accuse, whom to vindicate." </span><br />
--Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866) (Flagged by Art Berman)
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<b>P.S.<sup>4</sup> </b>(07/09/2020) This essay is from my close friend in Spain, a brilliant electrical engineer and thinker, who installed telecom systems in about a dozen countries, moved around the world for the last four decades, and lived permanently in five countries. In particular, he was responsible for Poland jumping from its antiquated copper wire telephony to wireless in a few years. He lived in Poland for nine years, and his children went to school there. His essay is longer that the 4096 characters allowed by Google. Hence, I post it here with great pleasure.<br />
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Thanks to all. Interesting points of view.<br />
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Let me explain my own experience, having traveled and worked around the world for 4 decades and lived with my family in five different countries on a permanent basis.
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My name and personal look goes unnoticed in a wide strip that covers all Latin America, Southern Europe and Northern Africa, all Middle East and some parts of Asia up to Pakistan. So, I have taken advantage of my "camouflage" body, to live well adapted in most of the world during my trips or stays.
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I have had to take a strong position, only in few cases. My children and wife have also learnt to defend themselves from few brainless mates in few occasions. When necessary, I have tried to do it with dignity, learning from Gandhi during his stay in the racist South Africa, and in his clashes with the British authorities.
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One of my main efforts, due to my privileged position when traveling, was to teach my children to treat others with utmost respect and be attentive and over all, to listen their reasons, because they may learn things from them and from their way of living; learn to understand some behaviors that, in a first sight, may appear nonsense for a Western hardwired mind, educated in a false sense of superiority, but may be the most usual in their own circumstances and environment.
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Traveling, if you do with an open spirit, is one of the best cures for racism and xenophobia.
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Now, few examples of my personal experience:
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• Landing in Frankfurt from Karachi, I was pushed by a German policeman with a dog automatically into the queue of Pakistanis. I took my EU passport in my mouth and he realized his mistake and told me to move to the EU citizen queue. Then, I decided to stay with Pakistanis.
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• The first time I visited our office in Miami for an audit, there was a Puerto Rican secretary with an obvious Latin (and beautiful) looks. I talked to the people on my mission, took a company car and she was very diligent. Few days later, I asked her if she spoke Spanish. Of course, she did speak Spanish, but her obsession to integrate was to strong that she said to me she preferred to speak only in English. She had blind herself to speak fluently two languages.<br />
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• The first time I arrived to Iraq (1979) lo lead a telecom project to modernize the Iraqi telecom network, I noticed that this country had more women in important positions in the Ministry of Transports and Telecommunications, and in all institutions in general, than in my own country. The 40 engineers I hired (some of them woman), had much more knowledge and command of languages and in some cases general telecom, than my own Spanish engineers and technicians, that, however, I had noticed treat them like third-worlders, and I had several clashes with my own Spanish engineers for that reason.
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• An Argentinean friend, top level genetic researcher, was working in Lausanne in a very sophisticated program. He came with his family for holidays to Madrid, and said he was kind of desperate to spend some days in a culture much closer to his. He told me that after a couple of years of living there he had been convinced and assumed the right of Swiss people, to enter into a restaurant with his/her dogs and that maîtres could give him ugly looks when he entered alone with his two children. The reasons, he admitted, was not as much racism, but that he had checked that Swiss dogs never bark in a restaurant, but that his children usually speak loud or even shout.
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• My Palestinian friend, born in Nablus in the West Bank, a urologist. living in Spain, with Spanish nationality and married with a Spanish woman, both of them close friends, have told me the horrible humiliating measures he has to suffer when he has to travel to visit his family. The Palestinians are today the Jews, sacrificed by Israelis and confined in what we could straightforwardly call concentration camps. Nobody protests in the Western world for those terrible abuses.
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• The first year my small son went into the American school in Warsaw, he started to be intimidated (bullied we would say today) by a Dutch colleague, so proud of his own country (always the Polders as an example of industriousness), that he considered Spain as a shitty and backward country. I have always taught my children to respect everybody and their life and culture and to love the many good things we have, without giving a sensation of superiority, because everyone, has their own beauties and good things, and we are not superior to anybody else. But it seems, as a general rule from which no country escapes, that his own is praised high over the rest (the Uber Alles or America First concept), something that I will delete in all history books. In this case, I explained to my son how to proceed, and next time he was despised, he should make understand his Dutch colleague that his country was a poor one, because they had condemned themselves to a Sisyphus dilemma: to be pumping out water to the sea for the rest of the eternity or let one third of his country disappear under the sea if they one day stop pumping for a while and try to have a siesta. No more bullying to my son.
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• Back to this common education principle I have noticed every country, including mine, has, many things have to be changed to reduce the level of hype and to increase the level of respect to others. In the same American School in Warsaw, the first year one of my sons arrived the first day with a History book. I was surprised that the book on the history of the United States of America had 350 pages, when we summarize our much longer written history in about 150 pages. Trying to help him, I discovered something surprising: Lesson one: The Three Discoveries of America. This would have been a huge scandal if it appeared in the Spanish history books. So, I went to ask for a meeting with the director and the History teacher. They were very attentive and kind. I told them:
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1. The Asians crossing the Bering Strait and populating the American continent, some 20,000 years ago, in my opinion, should not be taught in History books, but in prehistory and/or anthropology books.<br />
2. The remains of the Viking huts appeared in Newfoundland, that when traced with Carbon14 were dated circa year 1,000 do not prove any discovery, if not properly documented and generating further regular contacts between continents.<br />
3. The third one, Columbus, being presented, more or less, as an absent minded Genoese navigator that arrived there in search for India and its spices does not seem the best example of teaching history.
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They listened to me, very respectful, but like if I were a Martian and of course the history of the discoveries (from Europe) of the American continent continue to be taught in the USA minimizing the Spanish presence and highlighting the English big feats. Basically, for the US, the epic of the conquest started with the Mayflower and the “Go West” motto, when it rather happened from South to North and about 200 years before. In Hollywood, we can see thousands of Westerns, where Amerindians are depicted many times as “uncontacted” tribes, seeing a “white man” (of course a cowboy, speaking English) for the first time in their registers, but these Indians were all….riding horses that were taken for the first time to America from Europe by Spaniards. The non-contacted Amerindians in the US were basically nomadic hunter gatherers, traveling by feet behind herds of animals. But Amerindians riding horses is the classic standard of the Western films even when they claim they had never seen before a “white man”. These are the typical dominant views of our world.
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• I could have thousand examples more. We have also plenty of racism and xenophobia in our own country that these, corona virus days have been untapped, when we needed. Immigration labor forced to harvest, the crops and we saw how African and East European workers are being treated like slaves or animals.
Travel helps a lot to understand other points of views.
Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-3098677554431160292020-05-29T13:56:00.002-05:002020-05-31T09:16:26.495-05:00The little virus that could is not done with us, is it?As I am writing this blog on May 29, 11:30 m CST, I have 20 more days of the highly erratic corona virus death data from the US, Germany and the world. Over 100,000 Americans have died of the corona virus infections in not quite three months since the early March of 2020. I do not know how to process this tragedy, other than to say that most of it could have been avoided, if we had a different administration in Washington and we had not been mining literally every resource, including humans, over the last 40 years.<br />
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The merciless virus has illuminated every wrong we have committed over several decades, including that terrible murder by the police in Minneapolis this week. Coming from Poland and knowing what I know, the detached behavior of the four police officers who committed this particular crime was reminiscent of the WWII German soldiers milling about the countless execution sites for men, women and children, while being filmed by their comrades. Or taking a photo with a freshly hanged young woman.<br />
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The white policeman, who calmly and methodically suffocated this particular black man, kept his left hand in the pocket of his trousers. Like he was on a picnic! In short, these troopers in Minneapolis are Nazi occupiers (Sturmtruppen), not a community-based law enforcement force. They cannot be retrained or taught morality and ethics.<br />
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Twenty days is a very long time for the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, small changes occurred in each of the two-Gaussian models. The first Gaussian was left untouched for Germany and the US, and adjusted down to fit the obviously <b>untrue</b> world data.<br />
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Here is a quick refresher on my models. They are purely data-driven, and make use of the Central Limit Theorem. I am not measuring the cell-phone data to determine human mobility and increase the number of deaths accordingly. Instead, I wait for a week or so, and then have a model that might be (has been) predictive for a few weeks more.<br />
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I still am keeping two Gaussians in the three models, but am getting ready to add a third Gaussian for the US and the world. In the US, this new Gaussian will reflect what is happening here. I will spare you comments, because almost everyone around the world has already accepted the cosmic/comic disaster of the Trump administration. Those who have not, will not be swayed by mere facts, and will rather die than accept their own <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Closing_of_the_American_Mind">closing of the American mind</a> that has developed over the last 40 years or so. I wrote more about it in my <a href="https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2020/05/failure-of-us-handling-of-corona-virus.html">last post</a>.<br />
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With the new data, the second Gaussians became wider, and their peaks were adjusted down. Their peak times were pushed into the future by 4-7 days. Below is a graphical summary, but please remember that we are not done by a long stretch. Let's start from the highly developed Germany that seems to have a better control of the pandemic (see <b>Figures 1</b> and <b>2</b>). I described the facts behind this statement <a href="https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2020/05/failure-of-us-handling-of-corona-virus.html">here</a>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 1. The rate of COVID-19 deaths in Germany as of May 28 24:00, GMT. Source: Patzek's calculations based on the Worldometers data.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEira-Wb_6E4bEv7zO4jeLDniQ-5PIMTMWJMgFLf5cmgg55HNtQaYOXj_u8EQiHzTC3ycleGdT20Lt_oa04HfZ4OxpH-6eph_tkVvIJG_0bpCiGlWxf_EjDan9tUOn3WmMT3Cgz5mu7TsNmi/s1600/GERcumdeaths.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEira-Wb_6E4bEv7zO4jeLDniQ-5PIMTMWJMgFLf5cmgg55HNtQaYOXj_u8EQiHzTC3ycleGdT20Lt_oa04HfZ4OxpH-6eph_tkVvIJG_0bpCiGlWxf_EjDan9tUOn3WmMT3Cgz5mu7TsNmi/s640/GERcumdeaths.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 2. Cumulative COVID-19 deaths in Germany as of May 28 24:00, GMT. Source: Patzek's calculations based on the Worldometers data.</td></tr>
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Now on to the US data. I already know that a third Gaussian will show its ugly dead face in 7-10 days from today. I could make a prediction of another 20,000 COVID-19 deaths in the US and proudly point at my prowess in two weeks. Instead, I will wait, and watch with horror what the mindless Americans are doing to themselves, and me and my wife. In <b>Figures 3</b> and<b> 4</b>, I show now 115,000 US deaths by July, but this number will increase.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb5KbsZqCwLw-d0So-w-L5LT1l2vSK9a3XalKViE7ib_8Cx18d396u64BcnhFGttmlyMPzTSPzVqgZLyk6ikY3_IZUlAZ74igH17mz6GuJZhyNFre-DCqh5ko58YLgTX-kKHJdXJRL4vZA/s1600/USdeathrate.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb5KbsZqCwLw-d0So-w-L5LT1l2vSK9a3XalKViE7ib_8Cx18d396u64BcnhFGttmlyMPzTSPzVqgZLyk6ikY3_IZUlAZ74igH17mz6GuJZhyNFre-DCqh5ko58YLgTX-kKHJdXJRL4vZA/s640/USdeathrate.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 3. The rate of COVID-19 deaths in USA as of May 28 24:00, GMT. Source: Patzek's calculations based on the Worldometers data. </td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiGsSWALutXyJ3MEKu4yg6xf3gJkpZ_9TMJK_LM23wdxSuF_0OzvVE2_JyTiIGhv6fSI7MGBDKopgKHgWbpbTjYrMVNWNnoQNSv3QqU7blJDZjnU-IwFPglPSstwIQ5zPd_pPp9TCDeS9y/s1600/UScumdeaths.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiGsSWALutXyJ3MEKu4yg6xf3gJkpZ_9TMJK_LM23wdxSuF_0OzvVE2_JyTiIGhv6fSI7MGBDKopgKHgWbpbTjYrMVNWNnoQNSv3QqU7blJDZjnU-IwFPglPSstwIQ5zPd_pPp9TCDeS9y/s640/UScumdeaths.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 4. The cumulative COVID-19 deaths in USA as of May 28 24:00, GMT. Source: Patzek's calculations based on the Worldometers data. </td></tr>
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Here I compare the German COVID-19 death data scaled to the US population and the US data. <b>Figures 5-6</b> illustrate this tragic story.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgSHaQOaNr2aLpLDw2-HyVfodxvGgefZ3BDPVn15XIuZlhyphenhyphen-XZG7ObxVkVrwKqOAL1rApcpmrZHYocBmBtCPxq70YhCv-laVdN66zlCDqgq2_yp9kZUo8_HXDUklBld-0IwSqhNJRWLROu/s1600/GERUSdeathrate.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgSHaQOaNr2aLpLDw2-HyVfodxvGgefZ3BDPVn15XIuZlhyphenhyphen-XZG7ObxVkVrwKqOAL1rApcpmrZHYocBmBtCPxq70YhCv-laVdN66zlCDqgq2_yp9kZUo8_HXDUklBld-0IwSqhNJRWLROu/s640/GERUSdeathrate.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 5. Four times the rate of COVID-19 deaths in Germany, and the death rate in USA as of May 28 24:00, GMT. Source: Patzek's calculations based on the Worldometers data. </td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMSywKgOzW6VqJw5K1uIBOSxrfb2leSWR-mVtJU_4kPomQwMEehufk_CPO8-pTX6SfuDrqlK8Pz8dIPHTi77L8WB0-I5QRWSpLFxh-XjN7WgibY_B41alAFbtwgQED5GtbaSZiGEXlh3RP/s1600/GERUScumdeaths.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMSywKgOzW6VqJw5K1uIBOSxrfb2leSWR-mVtJU_4kPomQwMEehufk_CPO8-pTX6SfuDrqlK8Pz8dIPHTi77L8WB0-I5QRWSpLFxh-XjN7WgibY_B41alAFbtwgQED5GtbaSZiGEXlh3RP/s640/GERUScumdeaths.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 6. Four times the cumulative COVID-19 deaths in Germany, and the cumulative deaths in USA as of May 28 24:00, GMT. The difference of<span style="background-color: yellow;"> 80,000 deaths</span> is overwhelming. Source: Patzek's calculations based on the Worldometers data. </td></tr>
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<b>Figure 7</b> is my <span style="background-color: yellow;">quantitative estimate of the direct contribution of Trump's administration to the COVID-19 death toll in the US</span>, relative to that in Germany scaled up to by the factor of four to equalize the two populations. The Trump administrations's contribution has been so far 40,000 incremental US deaths, but they're working overtime to accrue even more incremental deaths. The remaining roughly 40,000 deaths are attributed to the US elderly care system that has had 40 years of "optimizations" in order to become the current industrial death factory.<br />
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These cruel "optimizations" are not dissimilar to those made since 1980 in the meat packing plants, which not only kill animals by the thousands per day per plant, but they also infect and kill workers by the hundreds and dozens, respectively. In the end, in the US, we have developed a very expensive and failed "nursing home" system, and the giant animal killing factories that have failed, too. As my agricultural journalist friend, Alan Guebert, wrote in an email:<br />
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"This <i>[the financial aid for small, decentralized butchers by the federal government, TWP</i>] can be done for local food because, after all, what do we have to lose? We will have spent upwards of $100 billion on farm programs alone in the last four years to support a food system that's clearly failing, and spent another $65-75 billion/ year subsidizing SNAP. What would 10% of that money bought had it been invested on long-term, local food systems that are pretty pandemic-proof, help rebuild local economies, and delivered higher quality food to more people?"<br />
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Please put Alan's comment in the context of the recent $2 trillion dollar economic rescue package that ended up reinvigorating the dying or dead status quo, and going to big corporations with cash on hand. The little virus that could will continue to expose mercilessly these US federal government fallacies. In case you are wondering, my friends, the US has been t<span style="background-color: yellow;">horoughly looted over the last 40 years</span>. And I do not mean a few stores that went in smoke during the last week, but an industrial-scale, white collar looting that has gutted out our US of A., just in time for the virus to demonstrate the effects of this epochal looting to all of us. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8yvFzZL8kx_OyacqmIFkXuIpjUdISRWgqtLbddGKU7PDzMGMoQasC2GZkkdX8fB11Qd7r0zZX8BrT4aGEMRc0oHWWMh1rCYfOTTlKfZjTDWiT_tqrK5FvjrY-8Myv0-CykzhqpuYVlb5J/s1600/DiffGERUScumdeaths.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8yvFzZL8kx_OyacqmIFkXuIpjUdISRWgqtLbddGKU7PDzMGMoQasC2GZkkdX8fB11Qd7r0zZX8BrT4aGEMRc0oHWWMh1rCYfOTTlKfZjTDWiT_tqrK5FvjrY-8Myv0-CykzhqpuYVlb5J/s640/DiffGERUScumdeaths.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 7. The incremental COVID-19 deaths in the US compared with the rescaled German data to equalize both populations. As of May 28 24:00, GMT, Trump and his gang of ideological incompetents were directly responsible for 40,000 US deaths over and above those in Germany, but Trump thinks that it is a small sacrifice Americans must make to get him reelected. Of course, in two weeks time, this number might exceed 50,000 people. Source: Patzek's calculations based on the Worldometers data. </td></tr>
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The world COVID-19 deaths are undercounted by at least a factor of two or - may be - three, but never mind, here are <b>Figures 8</b> and <b>9</b>, </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0tpre1b6MqNh4dKdL9bwNlfyu8icT2EAjT5GScWAJ7O8iObgzIJ0h3lv7DJFTiPptnqQLn_eCVpilwNVj46Bal6f68WwbKrolMscZ4nGWHYsQsTThTY0hCeD8hLbZL6-mDDjEcr0WbrXe/s1600/globaldeathrate2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0tpre1b6MqNh4dKdL9bwNlfyu8icT2EAjT5GScWAJ7O8iObgzIJ0h3lv7DJFTiPptnqQLn_eCVpilwNVj46Bal6f68WwbKrolMscZ4nGWHYsQsTThTY0hCeD8hLbZL6-mDDjEcr0WbrXe/s640/globaldeathrate2.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 8. The worldwide rate of COVID-19 deaths as of May 28 24:00, GMT. Source: Patzek's calculations based on the Worldometers data. </td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimDE3OUsN0T1EXPfjEnzVwKscNNzorG6u_kwB73bqedLKwOTSHxlRynWCGiyX9_iR-vh96qAGg6YTj76BBJHsmjNCEJadvVQKnTlYvqbC5lJFP5QdhqzrS317qIAGT5pR8syaXNdAJskdV/s1600/cumglobaldeaths2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimDE3OUsN0T1EXPfjEnzVwKscNNzorG6u_kwB73bqedLKwOTSHxlRynWCGiyX9_iR-vh96qAGg6YTj76BBJHsmjNCEJadvVQKnTlYvqbC5lJFP5QdhqzrS317qIAGT5pR8syaXNdAJskdV/s640/cumglobaldeaths2.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 9. The cumulative worldwide COVID-19 deaths as of May 28 24:00, GMT. Source: Patzek's calculations based on the Worldometers data. </td></tr>
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I predict the cumulative number of 440,000 deaths worldwide by the end of June. As tragic as this number is, the reality on the ground is at least twice grimmer, and likely worse. With 1-1.5 million deaths worldwide by August, the finely tuned global supply chains must fail, as will international travel and student exchanges. The world is rapidly going back to the medieval hamlets with 7.8 bilion people in them. Regardless of our beliefs, the facts on the ground are spelling out the end of the global economy as we knew it. Period.<br />
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<b>P.S. (05/30/2020)</b> Finally, Thomas Friedmann wrote something sensible, while not calling the national looting by name, and shortening the looting's time from from 40 years to a mere 20 years. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-globalization.html">Here</a>.<br />
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<b>P.S.P.S. (05/31/2020)</b> My Spanish friend, Pedro Prieto, pointed out <a href="https://eand.co/america-is-a-dystopia-278e9cbacc79">this</a> good summary of the foreign reactions of bewilderment and disgust with America: “Take a hard look at America right about now. What do you see?
Here’s what I see. A dystopia.
Riots across the country. Cities on fire. A hundred thousand dead and counting. A President who alternates between negligence, irresponsibility, incitement, and indifference. A political class that’s paralyzed. An intellectual class that failed at it’s first job — to predict and prevent any of it. A people who are now poor, desperate, and afraid. A pervasive feeling of hopelessness, powerlessness, rage, and pessimism...”<br />
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Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-33410734260490046242020-05-10T16:22:00.000-05:002020-05-21T20:54:20.497-05:00Failure of US Handling of the Corona Virus Pandemic: Germany vs USNormally, I never write blogs every three days, but here I go. Since I am a scientist, not a politician, my quantitative assessment will be based on a careful analysis of the available data.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEBISuyXuhnP4EgnfSf8tnuXd5_ba-ULNTAeo8FtrmaKHJ-7Hvf_wNClf9aDOEtddXY23ZcueATQu84xCtx2fFocWRkOvVOoWpsMu-36ojEweoow1aNrjrWeqU-H9jCPME8UBf2yS54F9L/s1600/deadlysins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="610" data-original-width="472" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEBISuyXuhnP4EgnfSf8tnuXd5_ba-ULNTAeo8FtrmaKHJ-7Hvf_wNClf9aDOEtddXY23ZcueATQu84xCtx2fFocWRkOvVOoWpsMu-36ojEweoow1aNrjrWeqU-H9jCPME8UBf2yS54F9L/s400/deadlysins.jpg" width="308" /></a></div>
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The bottom line of this blog is shown in <b>Figure 0</b>. First, there are all incremental deaths in the US over and above German deaths multiplied by four to scale the German population to the size of the US population (the blue curve). Second, for the reasons described below, one can subtract 1/3 of the US deaths that occurred in nursing homes. These deaths have been caused by 40 years of neglect and the horrific state of the US for-profit industry that mines old people. The remaining 35,000 incremental deaths in the US (the red curve) can be attributed to the disastrous policies of the federal government under Trump. That's nearly <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11_attacks">twelve</a> 9/11 body counts in the US, with more to come.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik7rVa_uHKXEkeihPUdKlhbv-PrY8LCHtFIFHZnjvHVV5U5bREWXJjgcCzpg6Y9v7wlKjsrGgowCxcldGA_zA6hwWYNRg6oNU76cxhBXrOpNL80w5x98pPNwfsol30S1Tb10Q2aw44OSQh/s1600/DiffGERUScumdeaths.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik7rVa_uHKXEkeihPUdKlhbv-PrY8LCHtFIFHZnjvHVV5U5bREWXJjgcCzpg6Y9v7wlKjsrGgowCxcldGA_zA6hwWYNRg6oNU76cxhBXrOpNL80w5x98pPNwfsol30S1Tb10Q2aw44OSQh/s640/DiffGERUScumdeaths.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 0. The excess deaths in the US compared with German deaths multiplied by four to account for the sizes of the two populations. On can put 1/3 of the US deaths, or 27,000 deaths, squarely at the feet of the US medical mining industry in charge of the long term nursing facilities for the elderly, and of the state governments that have not been inspecting these facilities. The rest, roughly 35,000 incremental US deaths thus far, can be assigned to the incompetence of the Trump administration. Source: Patzek's calculations based on the Worldometers data of May 9, 2020, 24:00 GMT.</td></tr>
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My dear fellow Americans, please ponder this plot if you want to continue supporting Trump. In terms of the number of victims, he has already won with the hideous US medical insurance companies that have been mining the US nursing facilities for forty years, ever since Reagan came to power. Who can still say that Trump is not the best?<br />
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The only semi-certain statistic in the COVID-19 pandemic is the number of deaths attributed to the virus. As I wrote <a href="http://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-corona-virus-and-us.html">here</a>, and <a href="http://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-covid-19-pandemic-update.html">here</a> and <a href="https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2020/05/may-7-2020-update-on-covid-19-pandemic.html">here</a>, the COVID-19 death reports may be significantly understated, but for the developed countries they are as good as it gets.<br />
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Let's start from making the following assumption: Both Germany and the United States of America are developed countries. This assumption is rather self-evident for the social-democratic Germany, with an incredible healthcare system and social net that reaches most of the German citizens. The America I inhabit is a developed country, but in general America is about <span style="background-color: yellow;">mining her population.</span> The poorer you are, the more you and your family are mined, until you completely check out from the sociopolitical system.<br />
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The unflappable Trump supporters are neither stupid nor "undesirable," but simply view Trump as a destroyer of the system they hate. These supporters are so dismayed with the establishment, that they don't mind being a collateral damage of the thorough and deep destruction of almost everything the rich America values (other than getting even richer, all the time). In summary, America is a mixture of the impoverished third world countries, several of them, intermingled with the disjoint enclaves of civilization and social development. Since most Americans, just like the Russians, think that our/their country is the best in the world, exceptional and so on, let me break the news (and my heart) to too many of you, my fellow Americans. When comparing ourselves to other developed countries, less than 20 of them, we should be <span style="background-color: yellow;">pitied</span> much more than <span style="background-color: yellow;">congratulated</span>.<br />
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Prior to making any quantitative comparisons, it then follows that <span style="background-color: yellow;">America could never react to the COVID-19 pandemic as swiftly and comprehensively as Germany did. </span>This statement is true regardless of the magnitude 7.8 earthquake, tsunami and firestorm that together are the Trump administration.<br />
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The ravaging of America started in 1980, under the demented President Reagan and counterfeit "<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/how-reagan-got-his-gipper-nickname-20040608-gdj2ut.html">Gipper</a>," who ceded presidential power to several dangerous and ambitious criminals, who in return gave us the Savings and Loans crisis, Iran Contra, and - past Reagan - the 9/11, the everlasting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Trump. Unfortunately, every subsequent president after Reagan has added to the ever-accelerating mining and destruction of America's social infrastructure to benefit very few, like me. The Bush II administration, with the same Reagan criminals in power again, stood out in 2008, contributing richly to the global financial collapse. But this was news before 2020. Now we have Trump and a real, industrial scale global economic collapse.<br />
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OK, let me give you one more example, why we cannot be comparing fairly a truly developed country, like Germany, with a wild west mining town, like America. This example is furnished by the places where we - as in the contemporary American society - put our elderly to die in loneliness and neglect, while the families of the elderly are mined for cash. The endearing term for these all-too-often death traps is "nursing homes".<br />
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My wife is a physical therapist, who has been trying to help the helpless victims, er, residents, there for almost 30 years. There is no end to her war stories from the nursing homes in Oakland, Fremont, Richmond, Walnut Creek, and many other places in California. All too often, the drugged out victims in soiled diapers cried out for help and the under-educated, unprepared and low-paid "nursing aids" would threaten my wife with physical assault if she complained to the county governments, as she often did. You get the point, so here is the punchline.<br />
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In the US, 1/3 of all COVID-19 deaths occurred in the long-term nursing facilities for the elderly. Such a carnage simply could not have happened in Germany, and it is not the fault of the Trump administration, but of the entire US medical mining system. The best gold and silver miners in the world.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXcy-lg3UaKBtAXSyvKF9ekAdMwBnNcPi7IBbN3oe48C-uKARxnXoBTLrUTanYMiDMlcaxLxCLm2oid14nd330g09RkVY8hqi4NFfGloHbXHFcrK8LEpUG_j2qUPizNz0iFkocM_HuZZOj/s1600/download.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1041" data-original-width="1600" height="416" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXcy-lg3UaKBtAXSyvKF9ekAdMwBnNcPi7IBbN3oe48C-uKARxnXoBTLrUTanYMiDMlcaxLxCLm2oid14nd330g09RkVY8hqi4NFfGloHbXHFcrK8LEpUG_j2qUPizNz0iFkocM_HuZZOj/s640/download.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 1. The corona virus-infected long term nursing facilities in the US. Eleven percent of the confirmed CV cases and 33% of CV-related deaths occurred there in the last two months. In New Jersey, for example, half of all deaths occurred in nursing homes, including 72 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/10/nyregion/new-jersey-military-veterans-home.html">dead veterans</a> in one facility. Source the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/09/us/coronavirus-cases-nursing-homes-us.html">New York Times</a>, 05/09/2020.</td></tr>
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<b style="background-color: yellow;">The corona virus deaths in Germany and US</b>. For both countries, the Gaussians are almost identical, but with one major difference. The heights of the German Gaussians in <b>Figures 2</b> and <b>3</b>, must be <span style="background-color: yellow;">multiplied by a factor of ten </span>to fit the American deaths in <b>Figures 4 </b>and <b>5</b>.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ4iGETWeaSXl9Jdmg8KrPHD4BYxSz5tj4vk1bWv7B7D9unZ4o2FfFjA1_94oH2lCqjPwiQHPp2xOIrfr1PMXAr8HHRA0dvkPG5xIAuHNb8ZQbOm5e_hxNN9U257sRU9NZh7SQaMDGs8Fy/s1600/GERdeathrate.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ4iGETWeaSXl9Jdmg8KrPHD4BYxSz5tj4vk1bWv7B7D9unZ4o2FfFjA1_94oH2lCqjPwiQHPp2xOIrfr1PMXAr8HHRA0dvkPG5xIAuHNb8ZQbOm5e_hxNN9U257sRU9NZh7SQaMDGs8Fy/s640/GERdeathrate.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 2. The COVID-19 death rate in Germany is described by the Gaussians that are almost identical to those in the US, but whose heights are ten times less. Source: Patzek's calculations based on the Worldometers data of May 9, 2020, 24:00 GMT.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyUvYrb3KVF9FlravqTeNXXMZyAM7r-W0GBJvDsR5WVYi_x0X-NZqW2TvoU1WHKJM6PhFKn4AcgqsN5ZRHPYHMCbVa62TpWgXudkyKsNcXUXhrAMnRVvhlp7DgppxIsSfEaT5k6mdSKgEz/s1600/GERcumdeaths.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyUvYrb3KVF9FlravqTeNXXMZyAM7r-W0GBJvDsR5WVYi_x0X-NZqW2TvoU1WHKJM6PhFKn4AcgqsN5ZRHPYHMCbVa62TpWgXudkyKsNcXUXhrAMnRVvhlp7DgppxIsSfEaT5k6mdSKgEz/s640/GERcumdeaths.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 3. The COVID-19 deaths in Germany have an almost identical shape to those in the US, but their magnitude is ten times smaller. Source: Patzek's calculations based on the Worldometers data of May 9, 2020, 24:00 GMT.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWujS28XFtw7NS9_sFxyWZQuLU5Z7pmN9S3szKo-3nx3eiJa4c5IqoVkDFUjcNmDKmEIRB-8ZzYu-C8awTDqK79YlPpcXtsp3v1_ouzEqAnwt6Pbqr6mtI13TZGgIm9pRXwga0pWxEefNZ/s1600/USdeathrate.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWujS28XFtw7NS9_sFxyWZQuLU5Z7pmN9S3szKo-3nx3eiJa4c5IqoVkDFUjcNmDKmEIRB-8ZzYu-C8awTDqK79YlPpcXtsp3v1_ouzEqAnwt6Pbqr6mtI13TZGgIm9pRXwga0pWxEefNZ/s640/USdeathrate.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 4. The COVID-19 death rate in the US has followed the same trend as <a href="https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2020/05/may-7-2020-update-on-covid-19-pandemic.html">two days ago</a>. Source: Patzek's calculations based on the Worldometers data of May 9, 2020, 24:00 GMT.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWuL9PusfC_yAoxGpfpH9jTGLwjkosj8Y5nXjDW-VgsrS16wRTqVDwyyVFVJqtOblKrsq10WvhcMby5DK8Nb0qlReGQpH2ZMIZf4ZmjkyMa7qmV8P0AeKMgoSpYxyGGRQpJX0TGBVALm7A/s1600/UScumdeaths.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWuL9PusfC_yAoxGpfpH9jTGLwjkosj8Y5nXjDW-VgsrS16wRTqVDwyyVFVJqtOblKrsq10WvhcMby5DK8Nb0qlReGQpH2ZMIZf4ZmjkyMa7qmV8P0AeKMgoSpYxyGGRQpJX0TGBVALm7A/s640/UScumdeaths.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 5. The COVID-19 deaths in the US have followed the same trend as <a href="https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2020/05/may-7-2020-update-on-covid-19-pandemic.html">two days ago</a>. Source: Patzek's calculations based on the Worldometers data of May 9, 2020, 24:00 GMT.</td></tr>
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<b style="background-color: yellow;">A comparison of COVID-19 mortality in the US and Germany</b>. Since the population of Germany is 80 million people and that of US 320 million people, we need to multiply the German deaths by a factor of four to make a meaningful comparison. The results are shown in <b>Figures 6 </b>and <b>7</b>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTanxvO-OdxqVHCLsjs7VQY2sMEKeOHMwM33AanEF4CKnbT61XvG_Duv0ouLuUwpYXLYUteqhs7_-9_0Jc4L_vrtw6dYnRgU4OH6fmcY96-SS0U3WS_2cXcnn-TQ7UMqX5a-hsPX3NPmxv/s1600/GERUScumdeaths.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTanxvO-OdxqVHCLsjs7VQY2sMEKeOHMwM33AanEF4CKnbT61XvG_Duv0ouLuUwpYXLYUteqhs7_-9_0Jc4L_vrtw6dYnRgU4OH6fmcY96-SS0U3WS_2cXcnn-TQ7UMqX5a-hsPX3NPmxv/s640/GERUScumdeaths.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 6. The COVID-19 US deaths, and four times the German deaths. Source: Patzek's calculations based on the Worldometers data of May 9, 2020, 24:00 GMT. </td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQzoY5gJubi79RZd1d1XWIaixwCfYka4lM0JGHy6KtfUK6TiiWzMn8eFAmcqjsIuqqDALMEeKcFuF-ZYzk5TO0wNUctEmRZLGdV8G206czoMjc54Xn8U67BgkC0UA6gZ7V2o9vV7U188M6/s1600/GERUSdeathrate.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQzoY5gJubi79RZd1d1XWIaixwCfYka4lM0JGHy6KtfUK6TiiWzMn8eFAmcqjsIuqqDALMEeKcFuF-ZYzk5TO0wNUctEmRZLGdV8G206czoMjc54Xn8U67BgkC0UA6gZ7V2o9vV7U188M6/s640/GERUSdeathrate.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 7. The US and 4 times the German death rate Gaussians to scale out the population sizes. Source: Patzek's calculations based on the Worldometers data of May 9, 2020, 24:00 GMT.</td></tr>
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In summary, comparing the US with Germany is quite unpleasant. It reminds us that the sheer greed of US corporations, and the incompetence of Trump's federal government and many state governments have contributed thus far to <b>63,000 deaths</b> in the US over and above those in Germany scaled up to the US population size. This estimate is likely to increase with time.<br />
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<b>P.S. (05/13/2020) </b><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/13/opinion/inequality-cities-life-expectancy.html">Here</a> is a 2020 census-based snapshot of the extreme geographical and social inequalities in the US. This snapshot supports my doubts whether the US can still be called a developed country. For 40-60 million Americans, the US they inhabit no longer is a developed country. How did we stray so far from the noble ideas and deeds of the 1936-onward New Deal?<br />
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<b>P.S.P.S. (05/18/2020)</b> An <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/18/us/coronavirus-underlying-conditions.html">interactive map of health risks</a> from diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, etc. by county in the US.<br />
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<b>P.S.^3 (05/20/2020)</b>. It saddens me even more that my 10-day old estimate of 35,000 unecssary deaths in the US caused by the delays and inconsistencies of the federal government policies, agrees almost exactly with an estimate<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/us/coronavirus-cases-deaths.html"> published today</a> by the New York Times.<br />
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Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-72601330446801760532020-05-07T21:29:00.000-05:002020-05-11T08:29:16.259-05:00May 7 2020 Update on the COVID-19 PandemicWell, friends, many things have happened since my <a href="http://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-covid-19-pandemic-update.html">last update</a> of April 21, 2020. I should advise the more sensitive readers to skip this post, because some of the language and content may be unsuited for their delicate taste buds.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDcLpkhbXkxqucuGpfJnMtzFTDLS4vQTl0CtcQ97W9w_TvuFd0VpprtmCvDKBd3PFLqZgHzKCyYItiEmdYu2qyQpg_oWD2ydAJIsFNeCi1kaZd4NlynsWNDVJCQgrVDTZON1tJn10AqW70/s1600/americafirst.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="865" data-original-width="1080" height="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDcLpkhbXkxqucuGpfJnMtzFTDLS4vQTl0CtcQ97W9w_TvuFd0VpprtmCvDKBd3PFLqZgHzKCyYItiEmdYu2qyQpg_oWD2ydAJIsFNeCi1kaZd4NlynsWNDVJCQgrVDTZON1tJn10AqW70/s640/americafirst.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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Earlier today, I listened to and watched on Zoom an excellent seminar given by a friend from the Imperial College in England. The esoteric subject of the talk was how surface charge and rock-oil-brine interactions limit or help oil recovery from difficult reservoirs. The audience consisted of about 110 people from the Imperial College, Edinburgh, KAUST, Oxford, TU Delft, Yale, and several Chinese and US universities, and companies. It was all great and would not warrant a report in this blog, were it not for the fact that in the last two minutes someone hijacked the computer of one of the participants and "bombed" our meeting by posting a video of a young white man rubbing with his erect penis the genitals of a 4-6 month old baby girl. I assume that a helper shot the video. My eyes could not connect my brain to what they saw until the host closed the meeting. I thought that this seminar and its porn-bombing were an apt allegory for the best and worst in humans that is released by this pandemic.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6spS19uCDwhJClFFm8es5nGpUMZsdSFMMCkxB26mFd89u5thuT2JeK7x9jowaqLfjTwq6geCoeRopuxA_c6txLkkWzjLujlDXk9gFxlpoYIKv8HW3d7I4hB6Z_OZEammwILfT4lvLHg6j/s1600/littletrump.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="659" data-original-width="624" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6spS19uCDwhJClFFm8es5nGpUMZsdSFMMCkxB26mFd89u5thuT2JeK7x9jowaqLfjTwq6geCoeRopuxA_c6txLkkWzjLujlDXk9gFxlpoYIKv8HW3d7I4hB6Z_OZEammwILfT4lvLHg6j/s640/littletrump.jpg" width="604" /></a></div>
<span style="text-align: left;">Thinking of the worst in humanity reminded me of the US President Trump, who demonstrated today - again - his political genius. He </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/opinion/coronavirus-trump-taskforce.html" style="text-align: left;">brushed aside</a><span style="text-align: left;"> the CDC doctors and other hedging scientists, with their constantly evolving, weakly predictive models, and decided that the still living people, 27,000 more of them in the next two months, must be sacrificed at the altar of his reelection and the neo-liberal economy in the US. With this bold gamble, Trump has cut the hapless, kumbaya (and that's a good thing), </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/03/opinion/joe-biden-tara-reade.html?searchResultPosition=8" style="text-align: left;">no-fingers-in-Tara's-vagina </a><span style="text-align: left;">democrats in half, knowing fully well that the lies he excretes onto the public do not have to be believable to be accepted by a national audience that is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/us/coronavirus-updates.html">desperate</a>, looks for the "good economic news," and does not care at all about the expendable people, who are poor, and mostly<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/opinion/ahmaud-arbery-killing.html"> black</a> and Latino. Trump's bold gambit may yet pay off, <i>if</i> there is a decent, easy-to-get anti- COVID-19 vaccine in September or October. And if there is not, he will lie again and we, the "American people," will buy his lies as we always have. What's one more lie in an ocean of lies in which we swim like worms in a field latrine? </span><br />
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These disposable people, Trump and much of the public think, can be easily replaced, and nothing will happen to the white me and my family. Well, do I have bad news for you, my pitiful, crazy white people, who think that if "they" come for "those people," "they" will not come for us. "They," my friends, will mine other populations using 50 new excuses: for example, why do we need the fat white people, the bad heart-condition people, allergic people, diabetic people, opioid-addicted people, other drug-addicted people, cancer-sick people, old people, handicapped people, homeless people, the Veterans, and - above all - those despicable poor Americans. Please mark my words: <span style="background-color: yellow;">once the neo-liberal hydra discovers that she can openly mine the lives of American citizens and residents like coal or natural gas, she will never stop mining.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> P</span>lease remind me, who is that presumptive Democratic candidate for president? Joe Finger? Joe ... Who?<br />
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Now let's go back to my simple model. It has not changed at all in the last two weeks, and only a little in the last month or more. I have published it <a href="https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-corona-virus-and-us.html">left</a> and <a href="http://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-covid-19-pandemic-update.html">right</a>, and you can always check. The model was giving the correct number of cumulative COVID-19 deaths until two days ago (CST). Today, however, I have decided to add to the unchanged first Gaussian a second, faster-growing one.<br />
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It is time to add another Gaussian, my friends, given what is happening in the US. Essentially, many more of the expendable "essential people," or the human consumables, ER doctors, nurses, policemen, firefighters, prison guards, metro employees, bus drivers, truck drivers, nursing home employees and so on will soon die, together with many of the infected us, who will watch in silence, hoping that the <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/how-does-coronavirus-kill-clinicians-trace-ferocious-rampage-through-body-brain-toes#">ferocious killer virus</a> will not come for us; in too many cases, it will. The results are shown in <b>Figures 1</b> and <b>2</b> and compared with the CDC models in <b>Figure 3</b>. Please remember that for the last 15 years, I have used with some success the similar multi-Gaussian models to match and predict the US and global production of coal, oil, gas, copper, primary energy, carbon dioxide, and even membership of professional societies. Thus, "production" of dead people mined by the corona virus is yet another successful application of the same approach.<br />
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The emergence of the secondary Gaussian around May 1, seems to suggest that we have an abruptly progressing wave of secondary corona virus infections caused by the chaotic reopening of states. It may be too early to tell, but the size of it is quite substantial. And in another 2-3 weeks, I will have to add a third Gaussian to account for even more infections. Trump may yet lose his gamble with American lives, and Joe the Finger should crawl out of his hole and start being visible at the national stage as Joe Biden, the statesman. Otherwise, we may as well let Hillary lose for the second time. In online betting, she is the second presumptive Democratic candidate after Joe. This is how infinitely confused the Democrats are.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWWXns4-BljNCiupxoh-dUmXPmgQT7KACzmZfye4ohRTcqu_rD2vRpYEeuc9fHnV6J57tH2eoRtkX-Cesm7i5RxIrM_3gKbolRDiDRMLJB8u3vqMOEHRdLlr8-2-4VsU4GTx1NzLd-RQy_/s1600/USdeathrate.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWWXns4-BljNCiupxoh-dUmXPmgQT7KACzmZfye4ohRTcqu_rD2vRpYEeuc9fHnV6J57tH2eoRtkX-Cesm7i5RxIrM_3gKbolRDiDRMLJB8u3vqMOEHRdLlr8-2-4VsU4GTx1NzLd-RQy_/s640/USdeathrate.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 1. The May 7, 2020, corona virus-related death rate in the US. I have added a second Gaussian to account for the erratically jumping CDC data. Notice that the second Gaussian is two-times steeper and 25% lower than the first one, and it is offset by the magic three weeks from April 20, 2020. In other words, the second Gaussian has been picking up speed in the last 7-10 days, unbeknownst to most of us.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxOh4BpTX0LEJWssJvucUFhXIQv7qTuI5S4TTt8Qu4ut8U2do9JGPp7VyEaDPatjIXjSOw_Zfca_qK8JtnBC6SGJADlvSAl-Oa1O4IYns2SVShZ_Qr6AgBJwYlOKVeqseUx-PS9uuizv3l/s1600/UScumdeaths.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxOh4BpTX0LEJWssJvucUFhXIQv7qTuI5S4TTt8Qu4ut8U2do9JGPp7VyEaDPatjIXjSOw_Zfca_qK8JtnBC6SGJADlvSAl-Oa1O4IYns2SVShZ_Qr6AgBJwYlOKVeqseUx-PS9uuizv3l/s640/UScumdeaths.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 2. The cumulative coronavirus deaths in the US as of May 7, 2020. Notice that the early estimate of ultimate deaths has grown from 65,000 a few weeks go, to 75,000 until yesterday, and to over 100,000 today. As more data become available, this number may increase again. My current estimate is close to the CDC 's ensemble of models in <b>Figure 3</b>. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj95dR_pyqSle8oVOX4AwubUYKQwLzFH-Nj-C20c1prOF8yod4fURF5GbFSzz1wLxqKlsobreQFOXS65kIBTNGbyYuIXJqpEuHrE1PLpXLZb0OKLtXbla8MNB1TeB5t7jIzLvSHXOFDbWuW/s1600/National-Forecast-2020-05-04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="747" data-original-width="1600" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj95dR_pyqSle8oVOX4AwubUYKQwLzFH-Nj-C20c1prOF8yod4fURF5GbFSzz1wLxqKlsobreQFOXS65kIBTNGbyYuIXJqpEuHrE1PLpXLZb0OKLtXbla8MNB1TeB5t7jIzLvSHXOFDbWuW/s640/National-Forecast-2020-05-04.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 3. The CDC forecasts as of May 7, 2020, 21:22 CST. Please be forewarned that if you click on<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/forecasting-us.html"> this link</a> to the CDC website, the plots you will see might be different, because of the inevitable updates. Only the very simple models, like my model presented in Figures 1 and 2, may remain stable for days or weeks. But then again, few consider me to be an expert on the future of new mining resources, such as the lives of the disposable humans. </td></tr>
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Now on the the global deaths ascribed to the corona virus. I'll show you the results first in <b>Figures 4</b> and <b>5</b>, and comment next.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikJW5bKsOBN_WuYo4OudEaiTe9GqkMdvNBkTtsbL9qYKekd0qCFXgrtCXRpH2hM4NP0oRitSjVrcZ4TFPf3W8kxfoBP7RTJJzOUjILlS5MiUlRxKXW_sXn7772DmTPN_fwu3Ih_2v40YF8/s1600/globaldeathrate.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikJW5bKsOBN_WuYo4OudEaiTe9GqkMdvNBkTtsbL9qYKekd0qCFXgrtCXRpH2hM4NP0oRitSjVrcZ4TFPf3W8kxfoBP7RTJJzOUjILlS5MiUlRxKXW_sXn7772DmTPN_fwu3Ih_2v40YF8/s640/globaldeathrate.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 4. The global rate of deaths associated with the corona virus as of May 7, 2020. I conjectured this Gaussian in mid-March 2020 (at around 75 days on this plot) and changed nothing since then. By mid-April the data started deviating from the Gaussian, and came back to in on May 1 2020. Now you can clearly see the emergence of a secondary Gaussian I will add in a day or two.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEqX-8bT8Q8_k7RB-WqVysfqxJyLfy1YXU21xO-B2vyczBOp2mf_lg1JFiGhIXcwZpRO7XJb4G1xPYTrdJkbA5lD2SjcXs1V0y9H5KSlqPrajDDvz4O9m6fmlGLiVwP49xVK4RtOsyEqHB/s1600/cumglobaldeaths.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEqX-8bT8Q8_k7RB-WqVysfqxJyLfy1YXU21xO-B2vyczBOp2mf_lg1JFiGhIXcwZpRO7XJb4G1xPYTrdJkbA5lD2SjcXs1V0y9H5KSlqPrajDDvz4O9m6fmlGLiVwP49xVK4RtOsyEqHB/s640/cumglobaldeaths.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 5. The cumulative global deaths associated with the corona virus as of May 7, 2020. In mid-March, I predicted the ultimate 330,000 deaths, knowing fully well that the data are desperately incomplete or missing. </td></tr>
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You may ask, why didn't I bother to change the model to reflect the reported "data"? Everybody else did. Well, my friends, given my 15 years of experience with the emerging Gaussians, the trends they represent are so powerful that I'd rather trust the Gaussian based on the data up until April 15. The world governments always undercounted and under-reported the COVID-19 deaths. But when things got really bad in April, they were overwhelmed and panicked. Therefore, the "normally" under-reported data became fiction to suit the domestic policy goals of most governments and many simply did not know as in, for example, India, Pakistan,Afghanistan, Brazil, etc. Thus, in addition to the habitual under-reporting of the corona virus deaths by - I think - a factor of 1.5-4, the world governments "lost" track of the additional 40,000 dead people (the difference between the endpoints of the green and black curves in Figure 5). Now you know why I changed nothing in the model since mid-March. The input "data" are so contaminated that they do not warrant any tweaks of the model.Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4793397038214118285.post-39940562926251822452020-04-21T13:51:00.001-05:002020-04-30T16:00:04.039-05:00The COVID-19 pandemic, an updateI needed to update my model through April 20. I have not changed the model parameters for two weeks, and I only had slight changes before. Thus, the model is stable and predictive, given the faulty, incomplete data at hand. The model points out that the reported number of deaths around the world is lagging. For the world, my cautious estimate is 30,000 missing COVID-19 deaths in late March and April, see<b> Figures 1</b> and <b>2</b>. My simple model points out clearly that the more complex models may not be predictive, while fitting the erratic data better.<br />
<br />
My friend ecologist, Professor Bill Rees, just reminded me that his mentor, Crawford "Buzz" Holling, insisted on repeating to his teams whenever they got bogged down in disputes over accuracy vs precision: "It is better to be approximately correct than very precisely wrong."<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH737GM5037q_e_swBJ5rtMH87Bu9bi_mxXCDaNmMAGWQK-p3B-TaFbt9OkF-3dS8YR_af-66kl4O8SnbXLRNFkHH8SmLO1bwfLBPCUoZwjSyCJc-TgXEACOsgygdwEm_jvwmFd2HPp60N/s1600/cumglobaldeaths.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH737GM5037q_e_swBJ5rtMH87Bu9bi_mxXCDaNmMAGWQK-p3B-TaFbt9OkF-3dS8YR_af-66kl4O8SnbXLRNFkHH8SmLO1bwfLBPCUoZwjSyCJc-TgXEACOsgygdwEm_jvwmFd2HPp60N/s640/cumglobaldeaths.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 1. My Gaussian model for the worldwide COVID-19 deaths as of April 20, 2020. The difference between the magenta extrapolation of what the data ought to be and the reported data in black is ~30,000 unreported deaths.</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7ErYfrg5rDyZhfAGidX879URdqwncYd4njoOECnKn2KhECJC7saVPR5tehpknoNM3M2I751Jwc2Za-oxOf8D1PraJpzUFdXtuJN8tqdGBWaBRRb3NdZP0LZoRVJdjlHxAG6Y_hodNTCN1/s1600/globaldeathrate.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7ErYfrg5rDyZhfAGidX879URdqwncYd4njoOECnKn2KhECJC7saVPR5tehpknoNM3M2I751Jwc2Za-oxOf8D1PraJpzUFdXtuJN8tqdGBWaBRRb3NdZP0LZoRVJdjlHxAG6Y_hodNTCN1/s640/globaldeathrate.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 2. The daily reports of COVID-19 deaths worldwide. The model has not changed, but the black data have been oscillating below the model prediction since the beginning of March 2020. The magenta line is a simple linear extrapolation of what the data ought to be to follow the Gaussian curve more-less. </td></tr>
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The New York Times just <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html">reported</a> 28,000 of incremental deaths worldwide since January 2020. Most of these deaths occurred in late March and April 2020, see <b>Figure 3</b>. The Dutch and Belgian experiments with handling COVID-19 pandemic do not look as good as they did yesterday. Neither does the Swedish experiment, it appears.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibWn7kZe87lv2MgE2dmh_qSVzHQxL_-4SHqkw6mwdDlgIeCn5qZF_p3B5XB3sn2Vi_StYZfa8h2tVJzXrF5X19e7egyU1J2hHssuN1glwXdJ4sxWwrfiRqmbjL5Tq6y9znyCfMgVnOQ5u9/s1600/missingglobaldeaths.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="644" data-original-width="1600" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibWn7kZe87lv2MgE2dmh_qSVzHQxL_-4SHqkw6mwdDlgIeCn5qZF_p3B5XB3sn2Vi_StYZfa8h2tVJzXrF5X19e7egyU1J2hHssuN1glwXdJ4sxWwrfiRqmbjL5Tq6y9znyCfMgVnOQ5u9/s640/missingglobaldeaths.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 3a. The missing deaths in Late March and April 2020, reported by the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-live-world-cases-global.html">New York Times</a> on April 21, 2020. This is still work in progress. China is missing, so is India, Nigeria, Egypt, Brazil, most of Indonesia, and so on. The true number of incremental deaths <b>from</b> or <b>with</b> the COVID-19 virus is several-fold higher, at least 100,000 people, who were not counted yet.</td></tr>
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A note added on <span style="background-color: yellow;">April 26, 2:53 pm CST</span>: Figure 3b shows the results of an<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac846c"> analysis performed </a>by the Financial Times:<br />
<br />
"The death toll from coronavirus may be almost 60 per cent higher than reported in official counts, according to an FT analysis of overall fatalities during the pandemic in 14 countries.
Mortality statistics show 122,000 deaths in excess of normal levels across these locations, considerably higher than the 77,000 official Covid-19 deaths reported for the same places and time periods.
If the same level of underreporting observed in these countries was happening worldwide, the global Covid-19 death toll would rise from the current official total of<span style="background-color: yellow;"> 201,000 to as high as 318,000</span>."<br />
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In other words, we could already be at the <span style="background-color: yellow;">upper limit of the cumulative death curve in Figure 1</span>.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigoz_TK-NFD0fF8besKYipMl-x0RfYt1mn9Y_qkcsfuTNAT5AYr2Py3JxuyIbgK1CLu1yxR2KvVFqKPHnaFaTu3uGOOOG9owAPvoJsSkIDWC4-_ucwpvGcWCc7Err2NhlXx-Qe3OZjZU5Z/s1600/incrementaldeathsFT04262020.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="794" data-original-width="1260" height="402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigoz_TK-NFD0fF8besKYipMl-x0RfYt1mn9Y_qkcsfuTNAT5AYr2Py3JxuyIbgK1CLu1yxR2KvVFqKPHnaFaTu3uGOOOG9owAPvoJsSkIDWC4-_ucwpvGcWCc7Err2NhlXx-Qe3OZjZU5Z/s640/incrementaldeathsFT04262020.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 3b. The <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac846c">Financial Times</a>, "Global coronavirus death toll could be 60% higher than reported." 04/26/2020.</td></tr>
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The data reporting is presumably better in the US. Ten days ago, or so, I decreased the height of the US Gaussian somewhat, so that the cumulative number of deaths would be about 60,000. I did not change the remaining two parameters: the time of the peak, and the initial rate of exponential growth I use as an approximation to guess the correct shape of the Gaussian. The results are shown in <b>Figures 4</b> and <b>5</b>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhirhosU77gAZg2DU2b6Bgk7dhSNLWKcLzv58KoT1QJ8HqWLq69dtAQc2gZ6yPKeZDcSXpTxAuF9u38lDMuypfKMaAjRib-FsGVaAJH_IDJbJNQdlgg6k9oT4tY_JgPjZtL2MoMvui0yr8H/s1600/UScumdeaths.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhirhosU77gAZg2DU2b6Bgk7dhSNLWKcLzv58KoT1QJ8HqWLq69dtAQc2gZ6yPKeZDcSXpTxAuF9u38lDMuypfKMaAjRib-FsGVaAJH_IDJbJNQdlgg6k9oT4tY_JgPjZtL2MoMvui0yr8H/s640/UScumdeaths.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 4. The cumulative number of COVID-19 deaths in the US follows more less my unchanged model. We are already four days after the single peak, unless a secondary Gaussian will emerge from the changing human behavior and too much social contact. We shall see how the reopening of the US will work out.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjR29IZuoy6Ppl9WFAoTh-szQaNTm6mj0v0ZuVMJF9xR9I0pIsfu6O2GJG3EwBXqJwhKyT7Opc1T2dYiD_7Cchd0mWN-2pPtI2CgMhUl2eLr6lzFVfv2pOy5yz8bDI3o4cV4Q3fsfibazn/s1600/USdeathrate.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjR29IZuoy6Ppl9WFAoTh-szQaNTm6mj0v0ZuVMJF9xR9I0pIsfu6O2GJG3EwBXqJwhKyT7Opc1T2dYiD_7Cchd0mWN-2pPtI2CgMhUl2eLr6lzFVfv2pOy5yz8bDI3o4cV4Q3fsfibazn/s640/USdeathrate.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 5. The rate of the COVID-19 related deaths in the US. The model did not change. The data lagged first in late March, then overshot when New York counted the number of deaths in nursing homes, houses, and apartments. </td></tr>
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<div>
In summary, as of April 21, 2020, at 12:30 pm CST, when I am writing this blog, the US reported 42,514 COVID-19 deaths and Germany 4,862 deaths. If one ratios the populations of both countries (the factor of four), the US should have had 19,500 deaths. The difference is <b style="background-color: yellow;">23,000 more COVID-19 deaths in the US,</b> relative to what these deaths would have been if the US had a central government, and was as advanced and well-organized as Germany. If we scale up the German COVID-19 cases to the US population, we obtain 593,000 infections, while the US currently (at 6:13 pm CST) has 816,000 confirmed infections. These excess 223,000 COVID-19 cases in the US may be attributed to lack of testing, governance, and social discipline.</div>
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<div>
The <span style="background-color: yellow;">incremental deaths and COVID-19 cases in the US are the result of</span>:</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li>The abysmal incompetence of the Trump administration and their Republican minions.</li>
<li>The criminal inaction and denial of the Republican party and some Governors who aided and abetted President Trump in committing crimes against the American people (yes, it is time to replace the disastrous Senator Susan Collins and other ineffective Republicans).</li>
<li>The dismal state of American medical system, hospitals in particular, that were optimized for the profits of private corporations, not for the good of the American people.</li>
<li>The abominable ineffectiveness of the current federal government in securing and distributing medical supplies to prevent, test for, and treat the corona virus. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/health/sunlight-coronavirus-trump.html">Here is</a> what Trump proposes instead.</li>
<li>The criminal lack of medical coverage for at least 40 million people in America, especially the people of color.</li>
<li>The bizarre social stratification in the US, with the runaway poverty, neglect and decreasing life expectations among tens of millions of Americans on one hand, and many of the richest people on the Earth on the other. </li>
<li>The criminal propaganda from the Fox "News" that influenced the millions of otherwise disoriented Americans to take actions that result in lives lost.</li>
</ol>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizXz_pIEbc899Su4fdmWUdHYyiSXIX0100nrq-DjBXO9ufJfR1K1Csrlils3UDfkM_rppJAZX0V9lISYkE10c5nAMUn8WJo6jeCKIO-1KN45gZLRIurNEV5ac3L2XzulDelRVOoDI5uG5b/s1600/susancollins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizXz_pIEbc899Su4fdmWUdHYyiSXIX0100nrq-DjBXO9ufJfR1K1Csrlils3UDfkM_rppJAZX0V9lISYkE10c5nAMUn8WJo6jeCKIO-1KN45gZLRIurNEV5ac3L2XzulDelRVOoDI5uG5b/s400/susancollins.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Let's send Senator Susan Collins to a political limbo, where she should remain for millenia.</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: yellow;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: yellow;">In summary, thus far, I submit that the Trump administration bears direct responsibility for the unnecessary American death toll equal to eleven Twin Tower attacks on 9/11, and counting.</span> When the initial phase of the pandemic is over in the US, the number of deaths over those scaled up from Germany <span style="background-color: yellow;">might well be 40,000</span>.<br />
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If this simple truth is not conveyed clearly to the disoriented Americans by November 2020, then the I shall name the Democratic party a clinically inapt, tepid organization that should be disbanded. I call on Michael Moore to prepare several 2-4 minute film clips that will illustrate all key "achievements" of this historically incompetent White House. George Clooney is already doing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Drqiss4_tg">his part</a>. Now, Michael, here is my challenge for you: in your short pieces, top George's performance by a factor of four! You could actually ask George to star under your direction and tell the dumb@!$#asses what we think.<br />
<br />
Here is a more serious view of Trump from the UK:<br />
<br />
"A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief."<br />
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It is<a href="https://pasdemerde.com/2019/10/18/british-writer-pens-the-best-description-of-trump-ive-read/"> worth reading</a>.<br />
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<b>P.S. (04/21/2021</b>, 21:09 CST) Oh, what a difference a few hours make! The spike in the US deaths has disappeared from the data, even though I recall vividly that it was linked to the unaccounted for deaths in New York. The updated data and the same prediction are shown in <b>Figure 6</b>. I guess, the new data are more presentable for the politicians.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVMHyrEusDFdprIuC_dsqt5oY5bCUZSVHMYglsjuLyfCiYHMpLC6-lH_cZfQVPFD7bemMdehlF3ZTf6aehRF7LbaCbazwZycUoy-Rb-cqjxrg8L1eFozDLidxn5humhzme6ZQ8JqNGDM8I/s1600/USdeathrate.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVMHyrEusDFdprIuC_dsqt5oY5bCUZSVHMYglsjuLyfCiYHMpLC6-lH_cZfQVPFD7bemMdehlF3ZTf6aehRF7LbaCbazwZycUoy-Rb-cqjxrg8L1eFozDLidxn5humhzme6ZQ8JqNGDM8I/s640/USdeathrate.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 6. Figure 5 six hours later. The raw data are downloaded automatically from the Worldometers website. It appears that the spike in US deaths was scrubbed down by this website. The incremental deaths were then distributed over the subsequent days, because the total number of reported deaths could not go down. This version of the same old story of undercounting the COVID-19 deaths in the US is more presentable, I guess.</td></tr>
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<b>P.S.P.S. (04/22/2021)</b> Because the record of US deaths has been changed upon the removal of the big New York spike, the additional deaths had to be redistributed over several days. This caused the US peak to become somewhat broader, and the peak date modeled to April 20,2020. The broader death rate Gaussian results in more cumulative deaths, 75,000 now. The new results are shown in<b> Figures 7</b> and<b> 8</b>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh98ofqB05LSpyPs3VoK6pHamLgb2fPBnMQ-hfC3xyLxbeRQLrmbQbszwkS2VkA6h7nOdi8sFRn6eV7WGFpu-3TQdZ1Nk8eAY4qmegLf-usTJoUDJ9RmvxdJnA83cYTd6jbeYFEGQXMhAtl/s1600/USdeathrate.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh98ofqB05LSpyPs3VoK6pHamLgb2fPBnMQ-hfC3xyLxbeRQLrmbQbszwkS2VkA6h7nOdi8sFRn6eV7WGFpu-3TQdZ1Nk8eAY4qmegLf-usTJoUDJ9RmvxdJnA83cYTd6jbeYFEGQXMhAtl/s640/USdeathrate.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 7. My April 22, 2020, US prediction with the input data reshuffled on April 21.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjijNomC2skcs4VVDj-gnLOu6AptC3kTWVOHZCyYZwFqTeuOUziMNllm7dMzdBC05_UHiAtQZWeRUw1dmEmG-JUkCEqRF_pY3c2DvXEKecknxJaRz2xQFmNK-WXhT1XVtwColILkbJJYLwf/s1600/UScumdeaths.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjijNomC2skcs4VVDj-gnLOu6AptC3kTWVOHZCyYZwFqTeuOUziMNllm7dMzdBC05_UHiAtQZWeRUw1dmEmG-JUkCEqRF_pY3c2DvXEKecknxJaRz2xQFmNK-WXhT1XVtwColILkbJJYLwf/s640/UScumdeaths.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 8. My April 22, 2020, estimate of the cumulative COVID-19 deaths in the US. The num,ber of deaths has increased to 75,000.</td></tr>
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<b>P.S.^3 (04/26/2020) </b>When a functional idiot leads the most powerful nation on the planet, there will be <a href="https://eand.co/donald-trump-american-idiot-1571f3606ea4">repercussions</a>, way beyond the people here consistently voting against their self-interest, because they are deluded to think of themselves as the temporarily inconvenienced potential millionaires. Some of the difficulties with the US leadership in the post-COVID-19 world are <a href="https://www.nbr.org/publication/the-new-normal-thoughts-about-the-shape-of-things-to-come-in-the-post-pandemic-world/?utm_source=The+Bulwark+Newsletter&utm_campaign=b2f9f5e19c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_04_19_11_33&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f4bd64ac2e-b2f9f5e19c-79963349">described here</a>.<br />
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<b>P.S.^4 (04/29/2020)</b> Let's get real about the massive tests to confirm current or past presence of the COVID-19 virus in our bodies. These tests are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/opinion/coronavirus-testing.html">quite limited</a>, as Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker explain in their 4/28/2020 editorial in the New York Times.<br />
<br />Tadeusz (Tad) Patzekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17701598417132574218noreply@blogger.com4