Unique Free Travel Program for Teen Girls

Each summer, Inspiring Girls Expeditions provides experiences in science, art, critical thinking, and the outdoors. The organization forms teams of teen girls to explore an ice-covered volcano in Washington State, kayak in Resurrection Bay, Alaska, or study glaciers in Alaska or Switzerland. The organization is not looking for the best athletes, students with the highest grades, or those who participate in the most extracurricular activities.

Before applying for acceptance to a free expedition, read up on the program at inspiringgirls.org/. The deadline for creating an account is January 19, 2018 and all applications must be submitted by January 31, 2018. Since two teachers need to provide recommendations, act quickly to provide them with the necessary forms.

Remember that you are applying to be a member of a team. Whatever you are passionate about (science, environment, outdoors, art, philosophy, social issues, politics) suggests the unique contribution you can make to the team, and what teachers say about you should reinforce your interests. Teams are expected to have a diversity of backgrounds and life experiences and probably little or no access to opportunities similar to those on this expedition.

In addition to the opportunities offered by Inspiring Girls Expeditions, you'll find a list of many alternative programs at inspiringgirls.org and a way to be added to the organization's mailing list.

What Should You Avoid Asking Girl Robots?

Hiroshi Ishiguro's lifelike, Erica, used her artificial intelligence (AI) to respond to a question about whether or not she had a boyfriend with another question, "Is this how you talk to a girl when you first meet her?"

In VOGUE magazine (December, 2017), Ishiguro disputed the idea than humans will be repulsed by realistic androids that look like them. Like Erica, they may have attitude. But Ishiguro also listed the desirable qualities of a perfect partner who has a database of your favorite films and songs, knows how to massage the right spots, can compliment every ingredient in a main course, and mixes a variety of cocktails.

A female robot does have some of the same problems as real women, however. What hair style should she have and what should she wear? Her "skin" is sensitive. She needs silcone-based, rather than water-resistant, makeup.

2017's Unanswered Security Questions

Information about North Korea, the so-called Hermit Kingdom, is particularly sparse. Who can name any city there besides the capital, Pyongyang? Yet the country seems to have cyber, chemical,  biological, nuclear, and long-range missile warfare capabilities. The West knows how to track strategic materials and components, but it seems international intelligence services have not been paying attention to these dangerous goods reaching North Korea. When the US did pay attention, it spotted ships from China and the Maldives delivering oil and supplies in defiance of UN sanctions. (Also see the later post, "Plain Talk about Nuclear North Korea.")

Can February's Olympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, avoid becoming another Boston's Patriots Day? Or might North Korea's interest in the Olympics give South Korea an opportunity to deflect Kim Jong un's determination to deploy his nuclear missiles?

Then, there is the question of how Michael Flynn, a U.S. General and Intelligence Officer, became a Russian pawn. Did he give into the temptations of any ambitious, hardworking adviser who lacks the West Point credentials and wealth of those he saw rising to the top in Washington, DC?  If so, there are many such bright, ambitious young men and women whom the U.S. can overlook and fail to compensate at its own peril.

Finally, the nagging question of why President Trump continues to whitewash Vladimir Putin remains. We know Putin uses the technique of quieting his opponents by staging their deaths and ordering their assassinations. In the UK, a former Russian military spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter barely survived their March 4, 2018 poisoning attributed to the Kremlin. Putin also threatens the relatives of opponents. Oleg Navalny is in a penal colony in Russia to punish his brother, Alexei, for using his blog to mobilize anti-corruption rallies. Has Putin won Trump's goodwill by threatening the attractive women in his life?

"Don't Give Up On Us...."

Skeptics scoff at the activists in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Turkey who still cling to the belief that democracy and dignity will overcome the authoritarian rule that triumphed following the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011-2013. How can today's Rohingya Muslims fleeing their burning villages in Myanmar envision democratic rule when they lack support from Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner whose civilian party won a parliamentary majority in 2015, after the country's military regime released her from house arrest in 2010?

Perhaps the key to never giving up on democracy is believing it is not a sure thing, but, as the demonstrations in Iran suggested on New Year's Eve, 2017, neither is democracy's defeat a done deal.

Since 1961, Amnesty International has been keeping track of those subjected to human rights violations. If you have as few as five minutes to help alleviate suffering, go to amnestyusa.org and find out what you can do.

U.S. citizen Joshua Holt, a former Mormon missionary charged with spying, and his wife were arrested in Venezuela in June, 2016 when guns were planted in their apartment. U.S. citizen Alan Gross could tell them political conditions can change for the better. He was released in Cuba in 2014, when relations between the two countries improved. Mr. Holt and his wife were released in 2018.

St. Andrew Dung-Lac and his companions were martyred trying to convince North Koreans of their worth before God, but the current regime could not kill Oh Chung-Sung, the North Korean soldier who was seriously wounded when he ran to freedom across the border in November, 2017. The long tapeworms, tuberculosis, and hepatitus B his South Korean doctor found in the 24-year-old soldier tell how wounded North Korea's army already is.

China feels the need to prevent engineers building railroads in Africa from having any local contacts and to control internet access by its citizens at home. Nobel Peace Prize poet, Liu Xiaobo, and his wife had to be confined to their home to keep his pro-democracy works from inciting the public. But a year after Mr. Liu died, his widow, Liu Xia, was released and allowed to go into exile in Germany.

Hong Kong's young pro-democracy activists, who carried on knowing they faced repeated arrests after leading a 2014 protest, triumphed when an appeals court overturned their sentences in February, 2018. Despite the threat of receiving a prison term of up to three years, Hong Kong soccer fans bravely turned their backs on the playing of China's nation anthem, "March of the Volunteers," in October, 2017. Hong Kong protests that began in early June, 2019, aimed to eliminate the threat of transferring domestic criminals to the China mainland for trial. As demonstrations continued into August, both demands for democratic reforms and police intervention increased. China's slowing economy already raises Beijing's fear of an inability to control mainland dissatisfaction with a declining standard of living and seems to restrain the Xi government from further aggravating conditions by using military force against its citizens in Hong Kong. Unknown is how much broadcast and social media coverage of the Hong Kong protests reaches the restive Tibetan and Muslim populations in western China and what impact the news might be having.

In Russia, Putin's prosecutors have to rely on bogus accusations to keep the Navalny brothers, Oleg and Alexei, from running for President and using social media to mount anti-corruption proptest marches, not only in Moscow, but throughout Russia. Communist politicians lost elections in 2018, when Russia's senior citizens began protesting Putin's plan to raise the age when they could retire and claim pensions.  In TIME magazine (the May 1/May 8, 2017 issue), former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, said, "I am convinced Russia can succeed only through democracy."

Classic World War II Christmas carols retain their meaning during this holiday season. We think about the spread of democracy and sing, "Have yourself a merry little Christmas...Next year all our troubles will be miles away...Some day soon we all will be together, if the fates allow."

Let's Repurpose Our Mindsets

When I read an article titled, "How to Mine Cobalt Without Going to Congo," I learned Canadian scientists have figured out how to produce the cobalt (and lithium) needed to power electric cars from batteries that fail quality control tests and now end up in hazardous-waste dumps, buried in the ground, or giving off toxic emissions as they burn. When as many as 118 million electric cars take the road in 2030, more batteries will stop working. That means more rare metals can be recycled from old batteries to produce replacements.

The idea of recycling cobalt from worn out electric car batteries started me thinking about how many examples of repurposing I've become aware of lately. It reminded me of how I started noticing how many people wore glasses after I began wearing them in fifth grade.

In the fashion industry, designer Stella McCarthy endorsed the MacArthur Foundation's report that urged increasing the less than 1% of material now made from the used clothing and textiles that end up in landfills. In the July, 2018 issue of VOGUE, eco-conscious model, Gisele, cites the statistic that "between eight and thirteen million tons of clothing ends up in landfills every year."  Already, women in India turn their old saris into quilts. A young designer I know began her path to a career by using the material from her mother's worn hijabs.

On "American Pickers," the TV hosts travel through the U.S. looking for parts to rebuild old cars, motorcycles, and bicycles. They also come across pharmacy cabinets, industrial lamps, moldings, signs, and award trophies that can be used in new ways and as decorative objects in homes and restaurants. When you think about it, eBay made a big business out of giving used items a new purpose in life the way yard sales and thrift stores do on a smaller scale.

I guess I was subconsciously trying out a new repurpose mindset when I read about the "convolute" that ILC (formerly Playtex) designed to enable astronauts to move their arms, legs, and hands while wearing an airtight, protective spacesuit on the moon. To me, the flexible, but somewhat rigid, ribbed rubber and dacron "convolute" looked like a sleeve that could be repurposed to stabilize a person's shaking or weak arms and legs and better enable him or her to hold items and walk.

As Christmas approaches, I'm reminded that the stable in the creche scene at our church was made as an Eagle Scout project by a young man who found the wood in an old barn a farmer was about to burn.

What items have you repurposed? (Also see the earlier post, "Dump the Dump.")

Priority: Eliminate generating electricity from fossil fuels

Not only Disneyland and China design model cities for the future, schoolgirls and young boys also use cereal boxes, LEGOs, and every other sort of building toy to create their own visions of home. What the Visions and Pathways 2040 project at the University of Melbourne did, that was a bit different, was design a greener, cleaner city AND a path to get there from here.

A group of 250 experts from various disciplines collaborated to determine how to reach the year 2040 with cities that cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 80%. They realized they could work with many technologies, such as bladeless wind turbines, solar panels on skyscrapers, and roof and vertical gardens, that already exist. But future suburbs might look very different with less privacy because of clustered townhouses with solar roofs. At the same time, indiscriminate land clearing outside cities and for housing developments would be replaced by forest preservation and regeneration of shade trees used to capture and store carbon dioxide. Urban dwellers would get around through local forests by electric transport, bike trails, and walkways. A CSIRO-developed Australian Stocks and Flows Framework helped model these new cities and the path to them.

The Melbourne project also identified the direct and indirect emissions cities would need to reduce or eliminate. Transport, landfill waste, and buildings caused about 16% of direct carbon dioxide emissions in cities. While the energy used by the heavy industry and agricultural production needed to supply cities also caused indirect emissions, the need for electricity generated almost half of a city's indirect carbon footprint. That meant replacing the fossil fuel burned by power stations with clean technologies was a priority.

Experts saw the transition to ecocities initiated by: 1) city governments that used sanctions to discourage businesses and organizations from carbon-producing activities or 2) citizen movements that foster cooperatives and engage in cultural, political, and economic decisions. By visiting visionsandpathways.com/, you can get the entire Visions and Pathways 2040 report. The challenges it presents are something to think and talk about during the holidays and before making a New Year's Resolution to help your community create a positive climate change.

Light Travels Faster than the Days before Christmas

I don't know if observations like this led to Einstein's quantum theory or his theory of relativity, but I do know that all the observations he made before he bothered to begin talking led to his later work.
At a presentation by James Costa, when he was discussing his new book, Darwin's Backyard; How Small Experiments Led to a Big Theory, which includes DIY experiments kids could do, a member of the audience asked him if he thought experiments came before theory or vice versa. Acknowledging, it was a bit like the chicken and the egg, he said he thought observation and curiosity probably came first.

This got me thinking about what has happened in the Middle East since the Arab Spring in 2011. On the nightly news, I well remember seeing a smiling Secretary of State Hillary Clinton surrounded by smiling Egyptian faces in Tahrir Square then. Just as vividly, I remember Mrs. Clinton responding, during her presidential campaign of 2016, to a Congressional committee blaming her for U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens' death in Benghazi, Libya. Curious about what changes took place between 2011 and 2016, I looked for answers in Steven A. Cook's book, False Dawn.

Members of the administration of George W. Bush initially saw the Arab uprisings in Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia as confirmation of the wisdom of 2003's invasion, Operation Iraqi Freedom. Historical observation could have predicted the Middle East had not been waiting for a foreign intervention and occupation to bring democracy to the region. Even so, once protesters overthrew the "stable" authoritarian regimes U.S. policy traditionally supported, U.S. administrations continued to believe they should be involved in the democratization of the Middle East. If for no other reason, Washington continued to provide economic, political, diplomatic, and military support to countries allied with its U.S. interests there.

The trouble with trying to bring democracy to the Middle East is, as observation shows, the region has no Magna Carta tradition nor a political-philosophical underpinning of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson. What it does have is a legacy of pan-Arabism expansion, the Muslim religion, authoritarian systems supported by fear, and tribal fragmentation. Instead of democracy reaching the Middle East, maybe  observation could have told the world to expect terrorists and social media to push an Arab-Muslim agenda West?

Given the actual situation in the Middle East, how could a New Year's Resolution to use curiosity and new observations come up with ways to satisfy the peaceful desires of people, not only in the Middle East, but throughout the world? In what ways could travel, technologies, new roles of women as entrepreneurs and politicians, education, natural and man-made disasters, and medical advances foster peaceful changes?

The Palm Oil Dilemma for Consumers

Before consumers buy products they are going to eat or drink, they are beginning to turn them around to check for the added sugars, genetically engineered ingredients, and high fructose corm syrup they want to avoid. The palm oil they find listed in snack foods, as well as in ice cream and other products, also is an ingredient in detergents and beauty products. Africans cook with palm oil, and a woman from Nigeria told me it could control high blood pressure. This widespread use results in a constant pressure to expand palm oil plantations and the following unintended consequences.

• Deforestation of rain forests means fewer carbon emissions can be absorbed to limit climate change.
• Deforestation destroys the tropical forest habitats of endangered species, such as orangutans, rhinos, tigers, and elephants in Sumatra, Indonesia. Plus, roads built into forests enable illegal logging and exporters to reach the rare birds that become part of the underground trade in exotic creatures. 
• Deforestation in parts of Indonesia helped cause floods, according to the World Bank.
• Fires used to clear Indonesian oil palm plantations in 2015 caused the smoke that resulted in respiratory problems in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.
• Although corporations make commitments not to use palm oil from suppliers accused of illegal deforestation and from uncertified mills, they often only honor these commitments when an NGO or other groups uncovers a violation or local law enforcement acts.
• Labor is exploited; living and working conditions on plantations are bad. Migrant laborers from Bangladesh, for example, who work on the palm oil plantations in Malaysia often owe third party company recruiters debts they cannot pay. They find they are like prisoners working seven days a week after being forced to surrender their passports.
• Needed food production decreases when farmers switch to growing oil palm. Their debts rise as they purchase seed and fertilizer from the palm oil companies they supply.
• Expansion of palm oil plantations which encroach on village farm land and grazing pastures leads to conflict. 

Ravenous demand for palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia, the countries that produce 80% of the world's supply, has not gone unnoticed in Brazil, where research shows almost half of the country's land area is suitable for growing oil palm. At the moment, most of Brazil's palm oil comes from the Amazon state of Para, where plantations employ about 20,000. As in Indonesia and Malaysia, an increase in palm oil production raises fears of illegal deforestation and endangering the biodiverse ecosystem. Rising land prices already have led to land ownership conflicts and even murder.

Relying on Indonesia's environmental laws, eco-warriors now identify illegal palm oil plantations on protected National Park land listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Spotters tell owners of illegal plantations to return the land to authorities or face prosecution. They then cut down each oil palm. In about five years, replanted seedlings begin to help forests recover unless sun burns out young plants or elephants trample them. Altogether, it can take 20 to 200 years for forests to reach their original growth.

Other palm oil players also are determined to combat the effect of deforestation on climate change and to protect endangered animals, birds, and plants. Besides groups, such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) that uses an oil palm symbol to identify "Certified Sustainable Palm Oil," the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), Greenpeace, the Rainforest Action Network, and Friends of the Earth, banks that finance palm oil plantation owners and investors in palm oil companies have begun to show greater concern about backing firms engaged in deforestation. When the Noble Group, owner of palm oil's Noble Plantations, prepared to issue a bond to finance clearing pristine rain forest in Papua, Indonesia, the HSBC bank involved in the bond issue asked RSPO to investigate charges that development on Noble's concession was about to violate RSPO standards. As a result, Noble's spokesperson announced work on Papua's plantations was on hold while sustainable analysis was pending. Other banks also have begun to require independent verification that palm oil borrowers comply with no deforestation, no peat, and no exploitation policies.

In the United States, the Ceres sustainability organization issued an "Engage the Chain" report to alert investors to the environmental and social threats posed by companies that rely on palm oil and other commodity suppliers.

Negatives associated with palm oil create a search for alternatives. But when the Ecover cleaning company produced a new laundry liquid using oil from genetically modified algae, customers refused to buy it. In the UAE, experiments show a species of alga that grows in fresh and salt water naturally produces the fatty palmitic acid found in palm oil. The University of Bath is experimenting with a yeast that has properties similar to palm oil that can grow in municipal, supermarket, or agricultural waste rather than on land. To date, however, substitutes, including rapeseed and coconut oil, cannot compete with less expensive palm oil that sells from $500 to $1,200 a ton, unless customers begin to recognize the non-price benefits of avoiding palm oil.

When consumers turn around a product and spot palm oil as an ingredient, what might they do?

(Also see the earlier post, "Long Supply Lines Foster Abuses").

What Can We Learn from Terrorists?

I remember seeing an article that I thought sounded ridiculous until I read it The headline was something like "What We Can Learn from People Who Live in a Dump." It turned out these people found in the dump what they needed for shelter and cooking and the scrap they sold to earn an income. Their livelihood was recycling writ large. It was just like the train loads of scrap iron that become new steel or the discarded rock piles reprocessed to ferret out every bit of copper. In the same way countries with no lithium mines will have to learn to make new batteries out of lithium extracted from used items.

     So, what wisdom can we extract from terrorists? They think about God far more than those who say, "I don't believe in God," and those who blithely assume God created each and every full blown plant, animal, and human.

     In his book, The Kingdom of Speech, Tom Wolfe recounts an exchange between Charles Darwin and a group of naive students who wanted to know how evolution "got under way and how exactly, physically, it started up -- from what?" One student was not satisfied with Darwin's answer that evolution probably started with "four or five cells floating in a warm pool somewhere." He asked where the cells came from and who put the cells in the pool. In 1871, Darwin said he didn't know and in 2017, since no one has created even one cell out of nothing and the greatest scientist has discovered what exists rather than created anything, the obvious answer is God.

     In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson expressed the self-evident truth that all men are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." The First Amendment of the Constitution went on to guarantee certain rights, including that Congress could not prohibit the free exercise of religion. Through texts, traditions, the words of learned scholars, and the well-formed consciences of individuals, many religious beliefs related to the existence of God have developed. Is He or She? Is God one person, three, or hundreds? Was Jesus God? Did he rise from the dead or was he a hologram, spirit, or frog-like being stimulated by electricity? Are we here to accumulate wealth or to serve the poor, pray, and adore God? Is God vengeful or merciful? Is there life of the body or soul or both after death?

     Where Muslim extremists go off the rails is when they use Allah to justify killing infidels who  hold different religious beliefs. Similarly, pro-life zealots who use their religion to justify killing doctors who perform abortions are also misguided.

      In summary, we can learn two main ideas from terrorists: 1) God is too big a subject to dismiss without study, and 2) religious beliefs do not justify killing those with different religious beliefs.

(See the earlier post, "This We Believe," to learn some of the beliefs of the world's major religions.)

   

What to Look For at the Olympics in February: Fashion

Any woman who has tried to buy a new winter coat this season knows the selection is limited to one style, a black sack. Fashion designers have an opportunity to gain inspiration from the wide variety of coats athletes from 90 countries will be wearing when they enter South Korea's stadium for the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. Most talked about on what the USA athletes wore were their fringed leather gloves right out of the ol' West.

The running outfit of Shalane Flanagan, the U.S. woman who won the New York City Marathon on November 5, 2017, should be as much of an inspiration to fashion designers as her winning time was to track athletes. Her red and black top was coupled with an unattached red sleeve on her right arm and an unattached black one on her left. Not the usual attire for a distance runner.

And speaking of athletes inspiring fashion, look for female Muslims sporting NIKE's new Pro Hijab when they take to the field at the Summer Olympics in 2020.

Holiday Helpings of Gifts

Last year I wrote how my grandfather believed in aspirational, rather than age-appropriate, gifts in the post, "Aspirational Holiday Gifts." I told how he gave me a fountain pen and pencil set when I was five. This year I came across a children's book that falls into the same aspirational gift category perfectly. Big Words for little geniuses by Susan and James Patterson represents each letter of the alphabet with a sophisticated word, its definition, and a delightful illustration. There are words, such as:
     D is for dulcifluous
     E is for empyreal
     L is for logophiler
I wish the words were in foreign languages and the book were Big Words for little international geniuses, but that could be the Pattersons next book. In any case, the current book, like Eloise or Click, Clack, Moo, is one of those books that adults find as much fun to read as kids do.

     Another aspirational book, A History of the World in 500 Walks, also can appeal to and inspire kids and adults. With photos, trail maps, travel tips, and historical details, Sarah Baxter guides readers on adventures around the world. I can hear walks in this book read one at a time per day by a teacher or as a bedtime story.

     The Bas Bleu catalog (BASBLEU.COM or 800-433-1155) has a Scratch-Off World Map on a 32" x 23" poster that could be used separately or as a companion to A History of the World in 500 Walks. Parents and teachers could let children scratch off the foil covering the country where the walk they heard about took place. The poster also includes country facts and travel tips. There are many creative ways to use this map to help children find the countries where Olympic games take place, where they or their grandparents were born, where rivers/mountains are located.

     For children 8 and older, MindWare (1-800-274-6123 or custserv@mndware.com) offers a connect-the-dots Around the World activity book (Item FZ-54004) with pictures of places such as St Basil's in Russia, the Great Wall of China, the Sydney Opera House in Australia, and the Eiffel Tower. The book is considered Extreme Dot to Dot, because each picture has 1,400 or more dots, and pictures are printed on artist-quality paper children can color after they finish connecting the dots. If you add a set of fine tip markers to the gift, you might find, as I have, that it will give children something to do after all the presents are unwrapped.

     Finally, for those who mark off the days until Christmas on Advent calendars, there is nothing better than the $7.99 one offered by Serrv (serrv.org or 888-294-9660). Children find little chocolate hearts behind each day in the Nativity story, and this year purchases will help fund locally-made bamboo bicycles to help children in Ghana, Africa, ride to school.

Terrorism Alerts

New York City's Police Commissioner, James O'Neill, didn't just tell us, if we see something, say something, he told us what to look for. He said to put down our cell phones and look for something out of place. An automotive vehicle driving down a bike path certainly was something out of place in New York City on October 31, 2017. Years ago, an NYC vendor said something and successfully alerted the police to prevent a disaster, when he saw wires and smoke coming out of a van in Times Square.

     Looking back on other tragic events, we remember later seeing unattended backpacks at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, GA, and at the Boston Marathon in 2013. Also there was the unusual young white man attending a Bible service in an African-American church and the high school boys who wore long black coats. In department stores, security looks for potential shoplifters carrying large shopping bags and wearing big winter coats, especially in summer. When a security guard at the Watergate complex saw a piece of tape over a lock, he found the burglars who led to President Nixon's resignation. Then, there are unusual purchases of too much fertilizer and too many boxes of ammunition. And there is unusual behavior: a "Do Not Disturb" sign on a hotel door for three days, an unusual amount of activity on a web site, or pilots in training who don't seem to care about learning how to land a plane.

     When Nobel Prize winning physicist, Richard Feynman, was asked to investigate the cause of the Challenger space shuttle's explosion, he saw a photo of a small smoke puff coming out of one side of the craft. His advice that anything not supposed to happen according to a project's design should signal trouble is applicable in other circumstances, as well. A police officer shooting anyone holding up his or her hands should not happen. Neither should the sound of a gun being fired in a convenience store be heard. Current police practice requires going to anywhere a gun shot is heard, because any sound of a gun shot in a neighborhood is out of place, as is a woman's scream and screeching tires.

     Finally, keep the telephone number of your local police department handy. When you see or hear something, the next step is to say something to prevent more violence.

Look East at South Korea, China, and Japan

North Korea is not the only country drawing attention eastward. On February 9, 2018, the Winter Olympics will begin in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

     In October, 2017, the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China confirmed Xi Jinping as China's President for his second, and probably not final, 5-year term. His Chinese Socialism for a New Era is designed to replace Russia with China as the world's other superpower.
Unlike Russia, Xi cracks down on the corruption that makes President Putin vulnerable to opposition by those suffering economic deprivation. But Xi is not confident enough of his position to lessen censorship or to release from house arrest the widow of Liu Xiaobo, a leader of China's pro-democracy demonstration in 1989, or to free, permanently, critics, such as activists, Joshua Wong, Nathan Law, and Alex Chow, who organized a 2014 pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong.

     China's neighbor in Japan continues to push for a constitutional amendment that would give the country the right to maintain a military force. Like Xi, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe won a landslide election in October, 2017 that solidified his position and plans for economic growth. In 2020, the Summer Olympics will come to Tokyo.

   

World's Water Glass: Half Full

Around the world, people who have taken to heart United Nations statistics about water, 663,000,000 people don't have access to safe drinking water and 80% of untreated human wastewater discharges into rivers and seas, are coming up with creative methods to reach the U.N.'s goal: universal access to safe, affordable water.

     Members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), which includes religious orders, are activist shareholders in key companies. At corporate meetings, they file resolutions requiring corporations to hold suppliers responsible for safe water practices, since, under the U.S. Clean Water Act, companies can be charged with criminal violations in federal courts. Tyson Foods, for example, has paid millions in fines for dumping fish-killing water from its chicken slaughtering and processing facility into a Missouri creek.

     Even if ICCR resolutions don't gain enough support for a vote at a corporate annual meeting, ICCR members meet with corporation executives directly. They successfully pressured the Campbell Soup Corporation to monitor activities in its supply chain. Farmers who fail to meet Campbell's standards for water conservation practices are no longer suppliers. In Africa and Central Asia, ICCR members help villagers who wash in polluted water where mines and tanneries dump harmful chemicals, contact executives in multinational corporations and present their cases for pressuring suppliers to treat water responsibly.

     Lack of access to drinkable water in developing countries is especially hard on the women and children who walk miles to wells each day rather than attend school or work for an income. Children also have drowned when water swept them away, while they were filling buckets in streams. Working in villages in 41 countries, including in disaster areas after earthquakes in Mexico and during the war in Syria, nongovernmental organizations, Mother's Hope and Water with Blessings, identify smart young mothers they call "water women" and educate them to share free information about hygiene and how to purify dirty water using a portable filtration system.

     Unlike India and Bangladesh, countries that worry a Chinese dam will cut off their water supply from a river that flows south from Tibet, conflict between Muslims in northern Cameroon and the Christians in the South does not prevent harmonious cooperation on OK Clean Water projects in over 50 villages. First, villagers locate an accessible source of spring water. Then, the OK Clean Water organization's partnership of unskilled workers and skilled help from a local water engineer go to work using local materials. From the top of a hill, gravity carries spring water through pipes to a large storage tank and then to faucets close to villages.

     In The House of Unexpected Sisters, the latest book in an Alexander McCall Smith series, the protagonist describes a system for watering her vegetable garden in Botswana, Africa.
     From a drain in the house, a hose pipe stretches across the dusty garden to raised vegetable beds in the back of their plot. "There the hose fed the water into an old oil drum that acted as reservoir and from which much smaller pipes led to the individual beds. The final stage in the engineering marvel was the trailing of cotton threads from a bucket suspended above the plants; water would run down this thread drop by drop to the foot of each plant's stem. No water thus fell on ground where nothing grew; every drop reached exactly the tiny patch of ground where it was needed."

     Contributions to both kiva.org and Water.org fund small loans to help villagers gain access to safe water. At kiva, for $25, individuals can choose water and sanitation projects in the regions of the world where they want to invest. Kiva gift cards are wonderful holiday stocking stuffers and birthday gifts that help students get involved in solving world problems.

     UNICEF USA (at PO Box 96964, Washington, DC 20077-7399) collects donations of:
$92     for the personal hygiene and dignity kits 2 families need in emergencies
$234   for 50,000 water tablets that purify deadly, polluted water to make it safe for a child to drink
$415   for a water hand pump that provides clean, safe drinking water for an entire community

     Wells of Life (wellsoflife.org), a nonprofit organization that builds wells in East Africa, gratefully accepts donations from those who would like to build a well dedicated to an individual or group. A member of the organization's advisory board, John Velasquez, recently dedicated his contribution for a bore hole and water well in Uganda to a Benedictine nun on her 104th birthday.

     Finally, major research projects are working on large scale government policy solutions to the world's water crisis. Based on studies, mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies have been found to help governments predict the health of streams and rivers all over the world. When these aquatic insects disappear, water is in trouble.

      As urban populations grow throughout the world and pavement covers land that used to absorb water, policies for managing both scarce water and floods become critically important. When Sao Paulo, Brazil, managed a drought by reducing pump pressure at certain times of the day, there were unintended consequences. Homes on higher elevations often had no water, while tanks serving homes in lower elevations never had a shortage. Studies showed a lack of central control over water management in Mumbai, India, gave control to plumbers who knew each area and those who had the political connections to hire them. It is no surprise to find flood conditions require government budgeting for backup energy sources to provide electricity to keep water pumps and drinking water treatment plants working.

     Water is everywhere and so are the people determined to find it, keep it clean, and manage it effectively.

   

   

Democracy for All

The musical, Hamilton, used rap songs to illustrate how history retells relevant ideas, such as the importance of being in the room where political decisions are made and the enduring influence wielded by the one who tells the story of what happened in the past.

     Those who live in countries, where they enjoy basic human rights, often need a reminder that conflicts between values: freedom and equality, unity and diversity, private wealth and common wealth, and law and ethics, frequently require reevaluation. In authoritarian countries, citizens need to discover the paths taken to achieve human rights for all.

     Without a Bill of Rights, citizens are condemned to perpetual 1984-type fear. TIME magazine (Nov. 13, 2017) reports how China currently uses a "social credit system" to keep track of every citizen's "financial data, social connections, consumption habits and respect for the law." Deviate from what is acceptable to the regime, and lose a promotion, your right to travel, and your children's futures, and you could end up in prison. You also have to worry about how a personal enemy might use a cyberattack to compromise your activities and alter your social credit score. 

     What is democracy's alternative? From Colonial Williamsburg, the Virginia village John D. Rockefeller, Jr. restored to show the origin of the United States, comes a concise, 168-page book, The Idea of America, that relies on primary documents, such as the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, to recount relevant ideas. The book illustrates how early U.S. values have expanded to be more inclusive and how citizens can find guidance to resolve current issues by studying historic documents and values.

     Jeffrey Edleson, dean of the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley, said The Idea of America was "a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of American society." That's too limiting. The Idea of America is food for thought for everyone looking for a worldview that could make life better for all human beings. The book is available at shop.colonialwilliamsburg.com.

   

Puzzle

People are not black boxes; they can explain how they arrived at their conclusions. And, even when they arrive at the same conclusion, they can explain the different approaches they took.

     On the Teaching Channel (teachingchannel.org), kindergarten teacher Donella Oleston showed how she positioned two green squares, two yellow squares, and six white squares in different locations on two boards that each had ten squares. Then, she asked students to tell:
     1. What do you see?
     2. What is the same?
     3. What is different?
In that way, her students learned to explain their answers and to show each other there were different ways to think about a problem.

     I just came across a real life puzzle that older students could discuss in a similar manner.

     When two teams are playing for a championship, in anticipation that either team could win, manufacturers print T-shirts celebrating the victory of both teams. What happens to the T-shirts boasting about the victory of what was the losing team? Often they are bundled up with used clothing and sent to Africa. Now, African countries are trying to develop their own clothing industries which cannot compete with cheap imports. When I began listing the following factors involved in this situation, I realized it would give students a wonderful opportunity to explain what they noticed and what solutions they would suggest, in other words, experience with critical thinking.

Situation

1. For African countries to achieve greater economic growth, they need to diversify beyond producing raw materials (agricultural commodities and minerals for domestic use and export).

2. Both clothing manufacturers and seamstresses offer Africa an avenue for economic diversification into the production of higher-priced goods. Enabling women to provide revenue from sewing also enhances their value to the family and, in cases where men have died from disease and in war, sewing can keep children from dying from starvation.

3. Prices for African-produced clothing are too high to compete with unwanted, used, and Chinese clothing imports.

4. African countries, such as Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, and South Sudan, plan to raise tariffs to make clothing imports more expensive than locally produced clothes.

5. Africans who sell clothing imports protest raising tariffs, because they would lose their livelihoods.

6. The United States, which now gives favorable terms to some African imports, is being urged to retaliate against Africa's higher tariffs on clothing imports by canceling these favorable trade terms.

The U.S. Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association of 40 used clothing exporters claim high African tariffs would put 40,000 sorters and packers out of work and send more clothes to U.S. landfills. Since the U.S. also uses favorable trade deals to pressure African countries to make democratic reforms, it would lose this leverage if African countries were more concerned about fostering local industry than exporting raw materials to the U.S.

7. African leaders see the dignity of their people undermined when their countries are used as a dumping ground, not only for clothing, but also for old cars, buses, airplanes, expired drugs, medical equipment, computers, and electronic equipment.

What solutions can students suggest?

Artists Invited to The Daydreamers Club

A young friend of mine, Hawwaa Ibrahim, who was a finalist on the "Project Runway, Jr." television show, is inviting artists working in any medium (fashion, art, dance, music, drama, writing, photography...) to share their stories in a social media "Daydreamers Club."

     Ms. Ibrahim believes art is not a waste of time. In fact, she is of the opinion that the stories artists can tell about their refusal to give up, when they encounter obstacles and setbacks in their artistic endeavors, might provide the inspiration people in all fields need to make the world a better place. She thinks there is a lot to learn from the creative minds that know how to put their imaginations to work overcoming adversity.

     Those artists willing to share stories about how their artistic life began and how they have maintained focus despite difficulties, can go to hellohawwaa@gmail.com. In the subject line, write "I Dream in Daytime, and provide your name, email address, and a description of your artistic work, so Hawwaa can contact you.

   

   

Technology's Hard Sell and the Public's Role in the Lithium-Ion Battery Industry

New technologies require public acceptance and industry risk takers. What if consumers had refused to bring nuclear-powered microwaves into their homes or to let doctors use lasers to cure diseases? I've gained new respect for the physics teacher I had who assigned students to weekly reports on journal articles describing break-through scientific advances. Unless a country enters the world's economy late or a hurricane or earthquake destroys infrastructure, it is an uphill slog for a new technology to compete with entrenched technologies.

     Top executives recognize the challenge of creating a corporate culture, much less a public culture, attuned to welcoming technological change. At a recent conference, CEOs of 100 leading companies in 17 different industries concluded it is easier to incorporate rapidly changing technology into an existing system than it is to create a corporate culture willing to embrace technological changes.

     Consider the introduction of lithium-ion batteries. In the United States, electric cars using these batteries need to compete with existing cars, and they require charging stations to replace gas stations. As a clean energy source, huge lithium-ion battery packs that provide power to electricity grids need to compete with coal and natural gas. When a leak at California's Aliso Canyon natural gas facility forced the San Diego Gas & Electric company and Southern California Edison to try to provide Los Angeles and San Diego with electricity from grid-scale batteries, AES Energy Storage built a lithium-ion battery installation in under six months, compared to the years it takes to obtain permits to construct polluting power plants near heavily populated urban areas.

     Logic suggests car manufacturers and electric companies avoid "marketing myopia" by seeing themselves with a wide lens that positions them in transportation and energy industries that need to invest in up-and-coming alternatives. Companies are beginning to do just that. AES and Siemens now have a joint venture. California Edison is working with Tesla, known for manufacturing electric cars, and Mercedes-Benz and BMW also are involved in stationary power storage projects with utilities.

     Nonetheless, reliance on private investment limits the development and use of lithium-ion battery technology. Again, there is a role for teachers and students who take a realistic view of what fosters technological advances. Denying the effect of fossil fuels on climate change does nothing to encourage government investment in clean energy from lithium-ion batteries or tax relief for battery manufacturers. And how about government support for lithium exploration (top producers are Australia, Chile, Argentina, and China) and safe disposal of used lithium or, better yet, support for efforts to "mine" recycled lithium?

     In fact, Elon Musk claims all the nickel used in his Tesla electric car batteries is reusable at the end of a battery's life. If true, that is good news, because nickel mining, mainly in Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Russia, and the Philippines, kicks up sulphur dioxide and pollutes rivers with oxidized nickel waste. Dr. David Santillo at Greenpeace's research laboratories reports crushing and transporting nickel produces dust containing copper, cobalt, and chromium, as well as nickel, that causes respiratory problems and cancer. Rather than continue to mine poorer and poorer strains of nickel, Santillo suggests an effort to recover and reuse nickel already extracted.

     Wise young people need to focus on the new career opportunities new technologies present.

Don't Only Think Outside the Box, Put More in the Box

Richard Thaler, who just won the Nobel Prize for economics, created behavioral economics. He combined what is known about human behavior from psychological analysis with economic theory. Before making economic policies, he urged policy makers to consider how humans are influenced by their cultures, lack complete self-control, and act on less than pure economic considerations. Policy makers around the world have been influenced by his book, Nudge, which emphasizes how humans are more likely to respond to gentle persuasion rather than compulsory measures.

     In many respects, diversification or the combination of fields is nothing new. It's done with stock portfolios and by actors who sing and dance to increase their career options. I remember reading how the structure of trees helped an architect design skyscrapers. If you look at a Jaguar automobile, you can see the jaguar animal inspired its design. There's music in elevators and serious films.  In science, the fields of biology and chemistry are merging. Technology puts LED lights in kids shoes and in women's evening gowns.

     The more information we can draw on, be it from the arts, sciences, economics, military history, or religion, the better prepared we will be to face the challenges of a very challenging future. Thaler makes you wonder what  sort of gentle persuasion, i.e. a nudge, would be better than sanctions to stop the military build-up in North Korea or a spanking from preventing a child from throwing another tantrum.

      Maybe we should be creating prompts to foster combinations. What combinations might foster learning, new products, people-sensitive policies?

Time to Make Futuristic Travel Plans

Travel by air land, and water is being reimagined these days. Tesla is the well-known stock market darling of driverless cars, and Elon Musk also promises travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes in his frictionless train. Later, on February 6, 2018, Musk successfully launched his
 SpaceX rocket to signal what could be the beginning of commercial space travel. Richard Branson also is in the commercial space travel mix with his plans to take us to Mars.

     We've heard about Amazon using drones to deliver our e-commerce orders. But, when it comes to delivering supplies in a medical emergency, drones can be life savers if they fly over traffic congestion, take the most direct route over lakes and hills, and avoid washed-out and impassable roads to reach rural areas. Yet, there are still challenges of battery life, bad weather, and urban neighbors disturbed by the oncoming buzzing sound.

     Matternet of California, Mercedes-Benz vans, and the Swiss firm Siroop are partners in a pilot project, approved by Switzerland's aviation authority, in which a drone successfully returned lab samples to the roof of a waiting van that delivered them to a hospital in heavily-populated Zurich, Switzerland. E-commerce firms could follow a similar procedure using UPS or other trucking services for the last leg in the delivery process.

     In Norway, Yara is investing in crewless, electric container ships that are expected to cost three times as much as conventional models but offer an operational savings of up to 90% over the costs of fuel and crews on comparable cargo ships. Since travel on autonomous ships in international waters could take until at least 2020 to gain approval by the International Maritime Organization, you're likely to be traveling on an autonomous ferry first.

   

Unemployment Breeds Poor Choices

Without a job, people realize how much their lives lack, not only money, but also structure and a community of friends and associates. From this perspective, preparing students to be entrepreneurs or to move into the careers of the future becomes a priority when traditional jobs are declining and the global population of young job seekers is increasing.

     Patrick Cook-Deegan, co-director and designer of Project Wayfinder (projectwayfinder.com), has been thinking about how to help high school students develop a sense of purpose that will motivate them to prepare for the future. Being told what to do and taking tests for four years fail to connect students to their work in the future. Asking students to consider what the world needs and what their interests and strengths are can lead to the conclusion that life requires a broad outline that accommodates twists and turns rather than a narrow path. There is a need to connect students with mentors from local industries so that they begin to see how their natural instincts to listen to music, play video games, build with LEGOs, study fashion magazines, or read detective stories apply to solutions for real world problems. There also is the need to ask students to think about how to resist being pressured into a career they know they will quit.

     In developed and less developed countries, resilient people can avoid becoming a target for opportunists, because they know what their goals are (they keep their eyes on the prize) even when they are young, old, fat, black, uneducated, poor, disabled, working at a fast food counter, or tending bar.

     During the 2008 crisis in the United States, families could not afford the mortgages on their homes and manufacturing jobs continued to disappear. The Governor of Wisconsin promised to return 250,000 jobs to the State. With his promise still unfulfilled in 2017, the Chinese firm, Foxconn, offered to bring 13,000 jobs to Wisconsin. In exchange, the State agreed to provide financial incentives totaling $3 billion worth of taxpayer revenue and to exempt the company from environmental laws and the need to gain approval to build or relocate power transmission lines.

     The story in Ghana is similar. Traditionally, non-citizens were prohibited from the practice, known as "galamsey," that allows small scale gold mining by licensed local residents using hand tools on their own land. With half the 15-24 year-old population unemployed, Ghana's farmers willing allowed Chinese miners to work their land with excavators and heavy duty dredging machines, to reduce export revenue by smuggling gold out of the country, to pollute rivers, and to encroach upon land farmed for cocoa. As the number of foreign gold miners increased so did trafficking in the cocaine and other narcotics miners use to help them work long hours in mud-soaked, dangerous conditions.

     In the 19th century, China itself was a victim of drug trafficking, when its society fell prey to an opium addition from British imports its inefficient. militarily weak government could not stop.

     Seeing how unemployment creates a climate for poor choices by individuals, States, and countries reinforces the need to prepare young people for the careers, global careers, that will employ them in the future.

(Additional information about gold mining in Ghana is covered in the earlier post, "Africans Learn to Play the Game".
 

Women Used by Human Traffickers Need International Amber Alert

"...humans, unlike drugs, can be sold for repeated use."

There is nothing comfortable about the globalization involved in this statement by the president of an Asian movement against human trafficking, mostly of the estimated 7 out of 10 who are women and girls kidnapped or lured into this new form of slavery. 

     Women are taken by force like the 276 schoolgirls the terrorist group, Boko Haram, abducted in northeastern Nigeria in 2014. They are the objects of sex tourism for old white European men on the coastal beaches of Kenya. And they are promised "good" jobs by the traffickers in India who sell them as maids, prostitutes, and bonded laborers in households, brothels, and factories. If they are rescued and returned, as at least 82 of the kidnapped Nigerian women were, they need counseling and help to be reintegrated into society.

     Slavery prevention requires military and police protection and organizations that provide poor females with food, education, sewing, farming, and other alternatives to earn an income for themselves and their families. By distributing pamphlets, producing street plays, showing documentary films, and putting up posters, organizations also warn girls and women about the false promises used to entice victims.

     Stories about women who have been spotted and rescued on airplanes and trains suggest how teachers, and even students, should be suspicious and ask questions about students who suddenly disappear. U.S. airlines, aware they are vehicles for human trafficking, train their agents to recognize warning signs: young travelers with no identification and no adult with them, small bags rather than luggage, one-way tickets paid for by cash or credit cards not in their last names and possibly flagged as stolen. In one case, when a customer service agent spotted these signs, she told two girls they wouldn't be able to fly and called the local police department. On social media, a man had invited the girls to New York for the weekend to earn $2000 modeling and appearing in music videos. The man disappeared as soon as he knew the police were on to him.

      A woman on a train from Bhopal to Mumbai, India, was able to ask a nun for help, because the man who her husband allowed to take her to a job was riding in another coach. She was told to meet him on the platform at Borivali, a station in Mumbai. The quick thinking nun took a photo of the passenger, told her to get off the train one station before Borivali, and gave the woman the cellphone number of a nun who could meet her and help her get on a train to return home. This story had a happy ending, because the husband thanked the nuns for their help. 

     Other rescues are more dangerous, since traffickers are well organized and financed. In India, trafficking is a multibillion dollar business. By working with the police, a non-government organization in India did successfully free women confined in a fish-processing plant, force the company to pay back wages, and transport the women back to their homes.

     Sister Florence Nwaonuma tells how her experience networking with religious congregations in Nigeria was effective, because training acquainted the nuns with human trafficking issues and prepared them to collaborate and avoid ego conflicts. Working with immigration officials in Lagos, Nigeria, sisters resettled trafficking victims there or helped them go on to Benin City, where other religious congregations were ready to provide short term housing. In many jurisdictions obtaining licenses for shelters also requires cooperation with government agencies. 

     At shelters, traumatized victims of trafficking often require the same services, such as medical attention, as victims of sexual abuse. Psychosocial support is needed to heal memories, provide reassurance about safety, and listen in counseling sessions. In some cases, where legal action is possible, victims are prepared to testify in court. Long term drug therapy also may be needed for those who have contracted HIV/AIDS.

     The U.S. holds a National Human Trafficking Awareness Day on January 11, and the UN-sponsored World Day against Trafficking in Persons is July 30. Plan now, how to mark these days in your communities. In thinking about the future, check the Trafficking Day websites to find out about job opportunities in this important field.

       

        

Cosplay Is No Child's Play

Guess what people are spending $399 for this weekend. It's not a new phone but a chance to attend three days at Wizard World Comic-Con;  to meet and get an autograph from Spider-Man's creator, Stan Lee; and to pick up a gift bag.

     I used to tell bored students to use their imaginations to turn doodles into money-making characters like Snoopy and Hello Kitty. With all the emphasis on equipping students for future careers involving STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), every so often it's wise to step back and encourage students who'd prefer to make their way in the arts or to combine their interests in the arts and STEM subjects. After all, some comic book characters exist because radiation, lab accidents, and Iron Man's implant gave them superpowers. And drawing and coloring often now is done on a computer instead of by hand.

     The cosplay idea that combines costumes and play grew out of science fiction conventions. In 1984, Nobuyuki Takahashi coined the cosoplay term which now applies to those who wear costumes representing characters in Japanese anime and manga or characters in cartoons, books, comic books, action films, TV series, and video games. Although people who come to today's Comic-Con conventions around the world still make their own costumes, manufacturers also produce costumes, as well as wigs, body paint, contact lenses, costume jewelry, and prop weapons, for sale.

     If you think about all the revenue generated by and for those who produce and sell cartoons and comic books, films, TV shows, books, and video games, you get an idea of the major global market open to creative students. As I learned from a student who is taking a comic book course in college, there also is a market for those who teach about these "playful" subjects.

Bucket List: Things I Want to Try

My father worked for a company than made point-of-purchase advertising. When you're in a business that looks for new ways to attract the attention of in-store shoppers, you work on the cutting edge of innovation and develop an eye for what's new in all aspects of life.

     At one point, we had a plastic form for displaying bras and motorized roses circling a bottle of liquor on our dining room table. Our dining room table took a beating, when Dad brought home one of the first ball point pens. It came on a pedestal in a see-through cylindrical display container. We immediately took it out to try and gouged our names right through paper into the dining room table.

     When President Eisenhower initiated the Interstate Highway System, Dad drew a picture (not with a ball point pen on the dining room table) of the new type of clover-leaf interchanges it would have. Then, there was his excitement when he told us we'd be taking one of the first passenger jets to see the new Disneyland in California.

     With this kind of background, I realized I had been making a mental bucket list that included the following: (It might be time to make your own and look for ideas from around the world.)

• Flying a dronw
• Using Virtual Reality glasses to see Victoria Falls
• Making something with a 3D printer
• Twirling one of those fidget widget things
• Programming a simple robot
• Seeing how intricate cut paper pop-ups are made for books and cards
• Trying various hearing aid devices
• Playing "The Settlers of Catan" game
• Seeing how a green screen works in movies
• Making all kinds of repairs
• Riding a Hoverboard
• Using all kinds of phones

As I hear about new things, I wish there were somewhere to go to try them. Maybe in abandoned shopping malls.

Technology Heals and Transports

If you think about it, the first uses for new products are not always the ones that become most useful. Satellites led to the GPS; nuclear bombs led to nuclear materials for treating cancer. Almonds and crickets are now made into flour. So, who knows what AI, 3D printing, drones, robots, and sensors will be best known for in the future.

The Trendwatching site introduced me to the way a Pepsi ad used phones to help sets of three people get together during Ramadan in Egypt. Three people had to hold their phones next to each other side by side to view a full Pepsi ad that told them to put away their phones and pay attention to each other. That's the way to overcome the loneliness that undermines health.

Virtual reality glasses provided health and welfare benefits in Brazil's nursing homes. Intel partnered with "Reasons to Believe" to give VR glasses to seniors who always longed to travel to the countries of their ancestors. With the glasses, they could experience these trips. Working with Burson-Marsteller, Intel's public relations agency, a project called "Technology and Life" also will show VR's importance in treating autism and patients with visual and motor disabilities.

You can start listing other VR uses, some already being tried, to show customers in one country items they could buy in another, to help a shut-in or hospitalized child go to the zoo or a ball game, to show a friend a 3-D version of your African safari.... Look through a travel magazine and you'll see Alaska, Iceland, Ireland, Paris, Rome, Prague, Rio, Cape Town, and so many other places you'd love to visit with the help of VR glasses or a VR headset..

So You Want a Career in Fashion. Do It!

Don't let all the talk about artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotics scare you into another field. Who knows, outfits for robots may be the next new thing? In any case, you only need to watch the "Project Runway" TV show to realize interest in fashion is as global as interest in the Internet of Things. Designers on "Project Runway" are male, female, and other; Japanese-American, African-American, and Muslim. In fact, the Muslim designer's long, modest fashion won the show's second competition. And this season, "Project Runway" also requires designers to create stylish clothes for women who take every size up to and including size 22.

     But "Project Runway" is not the only one breaking the traditional fashion mold. Fashion magazines, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Elle, have responded to competition from the international fashion reach of Facebook and Google. Where consumers and advertisers want products in local languages tailored to cultural dress codes, political policies, and local designers, models, and icons, there are separate editions, such as Vogue Arabia, Vogue Latin America, Vogue Poland, Vogue Czech Republic and Vogue Ukraine. Naomi Campbell, among others, supports the idea of launching Vogue Africa. When it is possible to create editorial content compatible with international interests and brands and using international celebrities, the same major campaign can run in as many as 25, 32, or 46 separate editions.

     Based on consumer interests and advertising trends, David Carey, president of Harper's Bazaar's Hearst publisher, expects local content to shrink somewhat as global content increases in future years.



   

Modern Deterrents

Watching today's young Japanese students push their desks to the side of the room and hide under them, as teachers pull shades over the windows to deflect flying glass, only reminds us this was a procedure that couldn't protect populations from nuclear attacks in the 1950s. Strategies designed to protect a retaliatory second strike weapon system after an initial surprise bombing in the 1960s are out-of-date as well.

     Nuclear-equipped enemies in the 21st century include minor nations and possible terrorist groups that have nothing to lose. Major players have cyber soldiers that don't move on their stomachs. They keep coming without food or sleep. Not only nuclear fallout can contaminate an environment, but climate change and asteroid collisions with Earth also threaten the world's food supply.

     We are seeing people taking survival into their own hands. One of the characters on "Orange is the New Black" represents those families who prepare their own caves with guns and a stockpile of food and water. Refugees already begin walking or taking to the sea in leaking boats and rafts to escape war-torn areas. Farmers are developing cross-breeding for livestock and hydroponic and aquaponic growing methods to produce food in new ways.

     Computer hacking and nanotechnology offer new defensive options for compromising the performance of all sorts of enemy systems. Enemies know how each others guidance systems work. Besides shooting nuclear ICBMs out of the sky and scattering radioactive particles over the Earth, redirecting ICBMs (and any enemy weapons) to strike whoever launched them has the potential to transform MAD (mutually assured destruction) into SAD (self assured destruction) and cause the most fearsome tyrant to try to scamper for a submarine.

     Programmers already send drones to destroy targets as small as individuals. There are "Hurt Locker" experts who disable bombs on land. Could drones disable nuclear missiles in space? In films, astronauts also keep asteroids from hitting Earth, and furry little forest creatures cause oncoming cyber soldiers to crash by tangling their legs in vines. Meanwhile, high-tech Star Wars airmen penetrate fortresses through air supply vents.

      In the past, shields have blocked arrows, gun powder reduced castle walls to rubble, tanks swept around the Maginot Line, and an armada of fishing boats rescued an army, while prayer and repentance saved Nineveh from destruction. Alliances change from century to century, but the darkness of night, fog, snow, and a blinding sunrise still have the power to deter an effective military response.

     The wise expect an unending race between offense and defense and use their smarts to triumph.

Youth and Social Media Fuel Democracy

Young leaders in both China and Russia show they are not buying into the Communist indoctrination their elders accepted with little or no question. Fear of arrest, prison terms, the gulag, and being sent to a penal colony now have to compete with exposure to the alternative future social media describes for young digital pros.

     Sparks of democratic fervor have erupted before social media existed. The Hungarian Revolution in 1956, Czechoslovakia's 1968 reforms, and the pro-democracy movement that brought students to China's Tiananmen Square in 1989 were unsuccessful. But activists persisted and broke up the U.S.S.R. in 1991. Now they have the social media that helped fuel the 2009 Green Movement named for the campaign color of the losing presidential candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi,  in Iran; the Arab Spring; the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong; and anti-corruption rallies in Russia.

     When the three under-30-year-olds who led Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement were sentenced to prison terms in August, 2017, they said they considered their arrests a threat, rather than an end to confrontation. China shows it recognizes the threat of social media by trying to monitor who is saying what on the internet and by demanding ID verification for posts. Beijing's leaders refused to allow Liu Xiaobo, a Nobel Peace Prize winning leader in Tiananmen Square, to leave China for treatment of liver cancer. In the West, unlike in China, they knew he would be able to share his poems about democracy in person and on social media.

     It should be mentioned that not only social media, but also travel and education connect the world's democracy advocates. In  Hong Kong, for example, the Penn Club is a network of the University of Pennsylvania's alumni, families, and friends. Students from Penn and the families that sent them there recognize the university's home in Philadelphia also is the location where the US Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written to inspire the American Revolution. Recently, faculty visitors from the University of Pennsylvania conducted a Global Forum in Hong Kong that brought business and government leaders together with alumni to consider the key issues facing global business. Who knows what else these leaders could have discussed when they got together. Hong Kong protests that began in early June, 2019, aimed to eliminate the threat of transferring domestic criminals to the China mainland for trial. As demonstrations continued into August, both demands for democratic reforms and police intervention increased with no end in sight.

     In Russia, corruption by the select group that has benefited from the country's newly found oil and gas wealth motivates anti-government marches and rallies. Led by the blogger, Alexei Navalny, young protesters risked arrest to take to the streets throughout Russia in March and June, 2017. When Navalny was sentenced on a false charge in 2013, 10,000 protesters marched in Moscow to secure his early release. Russia's leaders can only imagine how many more protesters social media will bring out to welcome Alexei's younger brother, Oleg, when he finally is released from a false charge that sentenced him to a penal colony for three and a half years.

     For protection, in April, 2016, Vladimir Putin created a Russian National Guard loyal to him alone. By creating his private cadre of as many as 300,000 troops, however, Putin also created a prime target for infiltration by anyone out to do him harm. It is no wonder that, as head of the Guard, Viktor Zolotov, Putin's long-time personal bodyguard, is in a position to monitor those authorized to get close to Putin, and Putin is in a position to monitor Zolotov's activities. In September, 2018, whether from irritation or real fear, Zolotov challenged Alexei Navalny to a duel.

     But what will China's and Russia's students find when they go West for advanced educations in the United States and England? They'll meet President Obama's daughter at Harvard and Nobel-prize-winning Malala at Oxford. Students from Hong Kong, who attended the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, found they could sit on a bench next to a statue of Ben Franklin, and they probably ventured downtown to tour Independence Hall and to visit the Liberty Bell. Democracy stands ready to outlive the current leaders in China and Russia.

(Also, check out earlier posts: China's Manifest Destiny East, West, and South; Hong Kong Update, Remember Liu Xiaobo, Russia's Alternative to Putin, and 29 Countries Influence 7 Billion People.)

       

Problem-Solving Engineers' Fix for Education

Engineers at Tufts wondered how teachers trained in liberal arts could teach students critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

They suggested teachers find books, where protagonists face conflict. (It was as though they didn't know, in every good book, protagonists face conflicts. But no matter, let's go on.)

The teacher would then read the book, or assign certain pages for homework, up to a spot where the protagonist has sufficient details about the pending conflict to give students the information they need to come up with various conflict resolutions.

For younger grades, the Tufts engineers used the example of Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. How can Peter keep his younger brother, Fudge, away from his turtle, when his mother won't let him close his bedroom door? The engineers figured Peter could rig up a pulley system to hoist his turtle into the air, whenever Fudge entered his room.

Students can engage in a problem-solving class discussion or break into groups to propose solutions and then report their ideas to the class. The class even could vote to choose the best solution.

Doesn't this sound like more fun than memorizing and passing tests?

Fishing Makes Climate Change Real

Are you an ecotourist sport angler trying to catch a strong, speedy golden manseer in one of Bhutan's large free flowing rivers? Or are you an angler testing your tenkara skill with iwana (trout) lying in wait for an insect in a stream near Kamidaki in the Japanese Alps?

     Fishing brings anglers face-to-face with the effects of climate change in a real life way that looking at collapsing glaciers and reading about oil drilling in the Arctic cannot. If, for example,  fishermen see no mayflies, stoneflies, or caddisflies, they know the water is not healthy for fish.

     To protect fishing in Himalayan rivers (and tigers in the forests around them), Bhutan's Royal Manas National Park provides a safe haven free of pollution for migratory fish. Anglers have a vested interest in organizations, such as the World Wildlife Fund, that work with governments, manufacturers, and farmers to study and implement ways to maintain water quality in rivers and streams by keeping them silt-free, clear, and the right temperatures for different fish species.

Fun is the Purpose of Education?

Education is designed to "get such fun out of thinking that (you) don't want to destroy this most pleasant machine that makes life such a big kick." Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, gave this as a reason why he didn't drink or experiment with LSD. Not only did Feynman find thinking about physics fun, but, when he went to Brazil, he found thinking about how to play a frigideira (small metal frying pan you beat with a little metal stick) so much fun he practiced over and over. A marching band chose him to play in their Carnaval parade.

     Now, how do schools fail to help students fulfill the purpose of education? From Brazil to the United States to Myanmar, the answer is the same. They foster rote memory and exams. Feynman found Brazilian students could recite, "Triboluminescence is the light emitted when crystals are crushed." But they never went into a darkened room with a lump of sugar and crushed it with a hammer to see a bluish flash.

     Before they can start helping students discover answers, a large percentage of teachers find they have students who come to school poor; hungry; tragically behind in their age's grade level; unhappy with their home life, appearance, and lack of friends; suffering from traumas of war, dislocation in refugee camps, and rape; and without support from family members facing the same problems. Sales reps are told they shouldn't try to make a sale, if their customers are distraught about something. First, they have to let their customers get the trouble out of their systems. The same advice applies to teachers trying to "sell" the joy of thinking.

     Nicolas Barre faced the same situation trying to teach in 17th century France, when students and their families were suffering from the effects of the Franco-Spanish War and a plague. Teachers trained at the Pyinya Sanyae Institute of Education (PSIE) in Yangon, Myanmar, have adopted Barre's method of speaking in a "humble, gentle, and simple manner so even the youngest can understand and teaching only what they themselves have adequately grasped." He did not say buy textbooks, manuals, worksheets, and standardized tests sold to suck every bit of creativity and individuality out of classrooms.

     PSIE courses train teachers in English, math, history, science, music, literature, the environment, and art. An art therapist from Ireland imparts her experience working with children in Belfast. Teachers learn to treat each child as special and loved, to celebrate each child's birthday, and to help wise and knowing children think, discover, imagine, and act with integrity.

     The idea of competency-based learning is challenging the idea of plunging a class past a failure to master and apply content and skills in order to cover a scheduled list of topics. Competency-based learning also recognizes: 1) some students move ahead and lag behind the pace of a class as a whole, 2) students show mastery in different ways, and 3) evaluating competency requires different measures for different students.

     Not only teachers and students need to buy into a difficult competency-based program, but so do parents and guardians, especially when their children are placed in remedial classes or not tapped for gifted programs or allowed to skip a grade. At a time when employers have trouble filling existing positions for skilled labor, much less for future positions involving artificial intelligence, 3D printing, programming, robotics, and the Internet of Things; when college graduates are starting their own businesses; and when the good union jobs of the past have disappeared, the social stigma of being held back in a class or grade is less important than mastering basic reading, math, writing, and speaking skills. Or discovering there can be joy in thinking.

   

Dump the Dump

You can feel superior to those who throw plastic bottles into the ocean, flip lithium batteries into the trash, and buy new shoes instead of having a cobbler replace worn heels. But a close look at recycling finds even this "solution" has problems awaiting solutions.

     Making it easier for soda consumers to recycle plastic bottles or providing batteries with electronic tags to help pull them out of the ordinary disposal process still sends these bottles and batteries to a waste plant. The problem of disposing of the heavy lithium-ion batteries that wear out in the growing fleet of electric cars is a major matter of concern to these auto makers as well.  Waste plants, such as the Integrated Waste Management Facility at Bukit Nanas in Malaysia, boast about converting waste to electricity, but they downplay the cancer and other toxic disease emissions these plants produce. And what about the average annual rate of 300 fires at waste and recycling plants in the United Kingdom?

     In a recycling industry where price to cost margins are small, there is little incentive to monitor air quality frequently, purchase sprinklers and other expensive fire prevention equipment, keep from stacking recycled materials too high and too close together, provide employees with protective gear, or penalize and shut down illegal waste sites.

     "Repair rather than replace" has a nice ring to it, but when it is less expensive to buy new shoes or a small appliance than to have old ones repaired or even find someone who can do the job, those options aren't considered.

     Knee jerk solutions aren't always solutions. Substituting degradable paper bags and packaging for plastic that requires fossil fuel to produce and years to disappear can deplete forests. Reducing the amount of gasoline cars use by adding 10% ethanol from corn requires more electricity and might mean some people go hungry.

     When I was having a chair reupholstered, I also asked the man I called to do the repairs how much it would cost to recover a sofa chewed by the cat. He told me, "$600." I said something like, "I've seen new sofas advertised for less." He asked how old my sofa was, and I guessed about 60 years. He told me I wouldn't find anything like its interior materials and construction on the market today and that he's recovered furniture for people who go to yard sales looking for old furniture they can buy cheap, because they know the insides of these old pieces are worth the cost of upholstering them.

     Every time we are walking to the trash to throw something out, maybe we should slow down and ask ourselves: what could I do with this, who could use this, why did I buy this in the first place?

   

Boil or Preserve the Planet?

Attention to rising temperatures and sea levels is generating positive and negative reactions, depending on which side of the climate change citizens, organizations, and governments are on.

     An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, the new film on climate change from former U.S. Vice President and presidential candidate, Al Gore, opened at movie theaters  August 4, 2017.

     In her current book, No Is Not Enough, Naomi Klein reports current U.S. Secretary of State and former head of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson, expects humans to adapt to an overheated planet by moving crop production around as they have in the past, when weather patterns changed. Yet, ExxonMobil's oil and gas drilling equipment has arrived in the Arctic before the world's farmers, who can't work long outdoors even if their crops and livestock could survive in blistering heat.

     Although James Hansen, who formerly headed NASA's climate research team, expects melting polar ice caps to keep temperatures cooler than some suggest, he believes the melting cannot help but cause a rise in sea levels. He further notes a mass inland migration of people from flooded coastal cities could cause ungovernable chaos.

     Klein's book reveals Exxon's scientists knew as far back as 1978 there was general scientific agreement that humans burning fossil fuels released the carbon dioxide that influenced climate changes, and only five to 10 years remained before a serious decision to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy sources was needed. A report by the Climate Accountability Institute found 25 investor-owned corporate and state-owned fossil fuel producers, including ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and Chevron, are responsible for half of all global greenhouse gas emissions since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established in 1988.

     In California, three communities already have filed law suits for compensation from oil, gas, and coal companies for current and future costs of property damage from and adapting to rising sea levels. San Mateo, Marin, and San Diego counties claim that instead of working to reduce the impact of  fossil fuel emissions that they had known about for up to 50 years, they launched a campaign to discredit scientific findings about climate change.

     Members in the U.S. House of Representatives, according to insideclimatenews.org, have been voting to prevent regulatory agencies from evaluating future damage from greenhouse gas pollution, to streamline environmental reviews of pipelines and electric transmission projects that cross state borders, and to sponsor legislation supporting federal coal leasing. In contrast, a bipartisan House caucus of 6 Democrats and 7 Republicans introduced the Climate Solutions Commission Act of 2017 (H.R.2320) to establish a National Climate Solutions Commission. By appointing Commission members, the President and Congressional leaders from both parties would acknowledge climate change is "real, human caused, and requires solutions." Based on the latest scientific findings, Commission members would recommend to the President, Congress, and the States policies and actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

     Environmental organizations, such as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, are warning investors in publicly traded fossil fuel producers that they are jeopardizing the value of their stock holdings, since auto makers are moving toward electric and hybrid models and companies, such as Apple, Facebook, Google, and Ikea, are leading the way to a corporate culture committed to the use of 100% renewable power.

     Finally, the Arbor Day Foundation (arborday.org) has a program to help homeowners absorb air pollution and reduce the need for fossil fuel-generated energy. To find out if there is a nearby active U.S. program to select trees and determine the best location to plant them to provide shade around homes, go to arborday.org/est.

Your Rattlesnake Bite Might Not Kill You

Millions of years ago all rattlesnakes had venom that could poison blood, damage muscles, and attack nervous systems. No more. Researchers funded by Maryland's Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that evolution caused rattlesnakes to specialize to deal with prey, such as the mongoose, that grew resistant to certain venom. Rattlesnakes began to inherit only the genes for the one or two toxins they needed.

     Mojave rattlesnakes only kept their power to cripple a nervous system. Eastern and Western Diamondbacks didn't, but they still can harm blood vessels and muscles.

     Once researchers see how a rattlesnake's toxin controls blood pressure, by blood coagulation or platelet formation for example, they might be able to use this information about physiology to reduce hypertension. Clues such as this can improve patient health and, yes, lead to a million dollar drug payoff.

     You can never predict where basic research will lead.

   

   

       

Music and Art Join Laughter as Best Medicine

Realize it or not, when members of the audience receive shaker eggs to participate in making music at Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, they're receiving a dose of health-giving medicine.

     According to a two-year study based on interviews and case studies, activities, such as percussion music making and conducting, drawing, painting, and writing poetry help keep people well, relieve symptoms, improve sleep, and aid recovery from depression to chronic pain to strokes.

     An article in The Guardian by Mark Brown (July 19, 2017) said British ministers reacted to the report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing by noting the per patient cost savings from a decrease in medical consultations and hospital admissions credited to the arts.

     Artist Grayson Perry said, "Making and consuming art lifts our spirits and keeps us sane."

Better Cows for Africa

A recent trip to Australia sparked Bill Gates' interest in improving milk production in Africa. He writes about his discoveries, problems, and what might be done at team@gatesnotes.com.

It is staggering to find cows on US dairy farms produce nearly 30 liters of milk every day compared to the 1.69 liters produced by an average Ethiopian cow.  While sending Wisconsin cows to Ethiopia would expose them to tropical heat and disease, using artificial insemination to crossbreed an Ethiopian cow with bull semen from a genetic line that produces lots of milk could increase milk output. In the heat of Africa, the required task of keeping frozen semen frozen is not easy, however.

To read more about worldwide milk consumption and production, see the earlier post, "Dairy Cows on the Moove." The magazine,  Hoard's Dairyman (hoards.com), published by Hoard's dairy farm in Wisconsin, USA, has been an authority on the dairy industry since 1885. National and international subscribers can choose to receive print or digital copies.

  Qatar is showing how, out of necessity and under the right conditions, Holstein dairy cows can be moved successfully from Wisconsin to another country to provide milk and breed. After being accused of financing Muslim extremists, Iran, and the Muslim Brotherhood; and being told to stop broadcasts from its al-Jazeera news network; Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emerates, Bahrain, and Egypt imposed sanctions on June 5, 2017 that amounted to a blockade of Qatar's imports. Using riches from its natural gas exports, the Irish CEO of Qatar's Baladna farm complex began airlifting 300 cows to a warehouse in the desert north of Doha. Another 14,000 are expected by next year.

Throughout the world, food shortages and poor nutrition are causing countries to search for other new agricultural solutions. Some of these methods are mentioned in the earlier post, "Exotic Farming."

AI Only Provides Opportunities for Rich People. Really?

     "He fixes radios by thinking!"

     The book, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! recounts this answer a man gave someone who saw the Nobel Prize winning physicist walking back and forth, when he was supposed to be fixing a radio. The book also tells how Feynman learned trigonometry by reading a book he checked out from the library, when he was eleven or twelve.

     I was reminded of these items when I read a July 7, 2017 article (theverge.com) by James Vincent. He cites studies that conclude people from working class and poorer backgrounds lack: 1) the ability to retrain for AI and robotic automation, and 2) the "soft skills" of communication, confidence, motivation, and resilience. Job losses and inequality will increase as artificial intelligence eliminates the administrative positions that have traditionally enabled these employees without higher educations to move up the corporate ladder.

     Yet, I remember the way the movie Hidden Figures showed a woman who made a contribution to the early US space program learned computer language from a library book, and I began to question the inevitability of this prognosis.

     In another example, a young Muslim woman I know, who doesn't come from a family of means, taught herself to sew by watching YouTube videos. She spent her last year of high school writing the essays and organizing the portfolio she needed to gain admission to the Fashion Institute of Technology.

       During the summer, colleges and universities offer scholarships to programs in a wide variety of fields. During the school year, they sponsor debating, math, computer, chess, and other competitions open to all. And every school is beefing up the STEM courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics that prepare students to land positions in fields that have no pay gaps for those from different socio-economic backgrounds.

     The rich cannot corner the market on walking and thinking.

Venezuela Shows Need to Beware of Government Actions during Crises

Due in part to conflict erupting during an ongoing economic crisis, the first baseball player from Venezuela to be inducted into Cooperstown's Hall of Fame was absent from the ceremony honoring past greats at this year's All Star Game. Luis Aparicio, the celebrated, base-stealing Major League shortstop who lives in Maracaibo, is just one of the Venezuelans who has been affected by the food and medicine shortages caused by the world's falling oil prices that used to finance the country's economy.

     Street sit-downs by citizens, barricades set on fire by masked young men, and public rosary-praying by members of religious orders have led Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro to:

1. Send Venezuela's National Guard troops to fire tear gas into protesters from highway overpasses,
2. Postpone regional elections, 
3. Support the Supreme Court's attempt to strip the National Assembly of its powers.

     In her new book, No Is Not Enough, Naomi Klein recounts case after case where governments have used crises to blame scapegoats and to impose measures they have been longing to enact. Fear and confusion enable governments to get away with actions that would be unthinkable in normal times. But whether its economic collapse, natural disasters, election fraud, war, or cyber attack, there's no clear choice between the powers a government needs to deal with a problem and those the government has been looking for an opportunity to grab.

     During wars, history shows the United States passed Alien and Sedition Laws to deport or imprison male subjects of enemy countries and to punish those who published anti-government material; suspended habeus corpus which requires persons to be lawfully charged with a crime before they are detained; and sent Japanese citizens to internment camps.

     Just as governments may be ready to cut funding for education and Social Security to fund a military buildup, to muzzle the press, or to increase surveillance during a crisis, the public needs to be ready to come together to support voting rights, to defend the independence of courts, to demand constitutional guarantees, and, most of all, with a fierce determination not to repeat mistakes of the past. Will citizens be up to the task of discerning which powers a government needs for the crisis at hand?