Smoking causes lung cancer. We’ve known that since 1975, when thorough research was published.
That is 50 years ago. Yet by one estimate, one adult in five in the world smokes. And vaping is making inroads especially among teens and young people.
A serious estimate shows that 100 million people died from the effects of smoking, over the years. That is more than all those who were killed in world wars.
What happened? The Big Tobacco companies waged a fierce costly campaign against the science – and succeeded for years in making big bucks on the coffins of the people.
And today? As Musk, Kennedy, Trump and DOGE dismantle the US science establishment, and its research, and when Kennedy visits the funeral of a Texas child who died of measles (unvaccinated)! — is it deja vue?
Will people die as a result of ignoring or dismantling science?
Hello! They already are. A small child in Texas. It should never have happened.
Think about it. There could be an entire cosmos, universe, co-existing with our own, but – entirely invisible to us, because its own laws of nature are utterly different from ours, and the stuff it is made of does not interact in any way with the stuff WE are made of.
This is not science fiction. It comes from a leading theoretical physicist at Cal Tech (California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena), Kathryn M. Zurek, writing in The Economist (March 18).
Here is an excerpt: “.dark matter might not be one particular particle – it may be a whole hidden sector of dark particles and forces. In this dark sector, particles would interact through their own independent forces and dynamics, creating a hidden world of cosmology running parallel to our own. There could be dark atoms…held together by dark electromagnetism. [there might be] huge dark atomic nuclei…helping form supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies. [Note: There is such a huge black hole in the center of our galazy, the Milky Way].”
Professor Zurek concludes: “The fundamental nature of the dark matter that pervades our universe is still unresolved.”
Conclusion: We don’t really know what the universe, i.e. we, the people, is made of. We know 5%. One in twenty. 70% is dark energy. 25% is dark matter. So our ignorance embraces 95% of our universe.
So – I am an economist. We claim to know everything, while knowing basically zero.
The physicists happily, gleefully, joyfully, admit to knowing almost nothing.
If I were starting college again, I would probably become a physicist. It is better to know some of the key questions, James Thurber wrote, than to pretend you know all the answers.
Strategic Empathy Is Missing in Action, in the US and Israel: And the Price is Terrible
By Shlomo Maital
Consider ‘sympathy’ and ‘empathy’. Sympathy — you offer it to those bereaved. Empathy? Empathy is shown in how much compassion and understanding we can give to another, in our actions.
Empathy is good, right? The foundation of community and brotherhood. The glue that binds us together as human beings. “And you shall love your brothers and sisters as yourself”.
Not according to the world’s richest man. Direct quote from Elon Musk: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy – the empathy exploit.” He said this on Joe Rogan’s podcast – same podcast that refused to host candidate Kamala Harris.
Empathy is Western civilizzation’s fundamental weakness! And why? Because the United States, through AID and other organizations, helps those abroad who are poor, ill, uneducated. This is, by Musk, a weakness. It invests resources in others, who exploit our compassion, when we could be buying more $100,000 Tesla cars. This, from the person now dominating US government (and destroying it), who, as far as I know, was never elected by anyone.
LACK of empathy causes wars. Here is the analysis of MIT Professor Barry Posen: “Vladimir Putin likely viewed Russia’s strategic situation through a preventive war frame. NATO membership for Ukraine would shift the balance of power against Russia, and U.S. and NATO military cooperation with Ukraine intensified during the Joe Biden administration. These developments likely convinced Putin that he did not have much time to forestall Ukraine’s NATO membership.”
The US lacked what Posen calls “strategic empathy”. Understanding how foes feel and think.
“The United States is an enormously powerful actor in international politics. But U.S. leaders often fail to consider the knock-on effects of their own policies. U.S. foreign policymakers are always alert to how the United States’ behavior affects the confidence of its allies. They are attentive to how U.S. behavior does or does not strengthen deterrence of its potential adversaries. But U.S. leaders are often oblivious that U.S. power and behavior might feel threatening to other states.” [1]
Posen shows that Russia’s Putin for years, dating to 2014 and before, felt threatened by Ukraine’s avowed desire to be part of NATO. He felt in February 2023 that if he did not occupy Ukraine now, Ukraine would join NATO – and that would bring, by force of law, the entire military might of NATO on him. His invasion of Ukraine was predictable – with a bit of strategic empathy.
Consider Hamas’ murderous attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Hamas leader Yihya Sinwar spent 22 years in Israeli prisons. Enough time to get inside his head? And he made no bones about it. His goal was to destroy Israel. He attacked on October 7, because he saw Saudi Arabia close to normalizing its relations with Israel – and that would forever marginalize the Palestinian cause and leave the ‘occupation’ permanent. The October 7 attack led to over 50,000 Palestinians’ death. But it has delayed, maybe for years, Saudi normalization. Or maybe forever.
And Israeli intelligence? And government? That fed Qatari billions into Gaza, even when it became clear that the money was going to Hamas tunnels and weapons, not to food and water for Gazans. The total lack of strategic empathy, to understand what Posen calls the ‘preventive war’ (you go to war to keep a worse war or event from happening), was rampant. Especially in the Netanyahu government, in power since March 2009, with only a short break.
The Netanyahu government is culpable, directly, including its head, because it lacked strategic empathy. And we, the people, paid a terrible price.
The ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War, wrote this some 2,500 years ago: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
On October 7, we learned that Israel neither knew the enemy, nor knew itself. Despite having imprisoned Yihya Sinwar for over two decades, we failed to learn, understand, and pay attention to his intentions –- even though he declared them openly.
And despite some 15 major operations and wars against Gaza since 1948, Israel and IDF did not come to know themselves — applying strategies that repeatedly failed, while building blindly on assumptions (the enemy is deterred) that were visibly and obviously false.
No, Elon Musk. Strategic empathy is not a weakness. The total lack of it is. And the price we pay is truly terrible.
[1] Barry Posen. Putin’s Preventive War: The 2022 Invasion of Ukraine. International Security, February 2025.
Greatest of all time – GOAT – is a really hard title to earn. NHL great Wayne Gretzky earned it by scoring a phenomenal 894 goals in his career. Gretzky was born and raised in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. He has become controversial, long into retirement, by supporting Trump – anathema to Canadians (I am Canadian-born and also revile this evil man). The only other players to score more than 800 lifetime goals are Gordie Howe—and Alex Mikhailovich Ovechkin. Howe was Canadian, born in Floral, Saskatchewan, not far from my own home town Milestone. His sons, too, especially Marty, were stars. Gordie was a big strapping farm boy who retired finally with the Hartford Whalers – at age 52!!
And Ovechkin? He will turn 40 on September 17. And he has so far scored an astonishing 888 goals. So he is only 7 away from Gretzky’s all-time record. Chances are he will break it this season. He hangs out on the left wing, waits for a pass – and blasts his incredible slapshot past goalies. He has slowed down a lot in recent years, but his hockey savvy is unparalleled.
Ovechkin began his career in Russia with Dynamo Moscow, and was chosen by Washington Capitals in the 2004 NHL draft. He starred in his rookie year, 2005-6, and this year has led a once moribund team into the playoffs. Ovechkin has the record for the most NHL seasons with 40 or more goals – 13! And the most 50 goal campaigns, with 9.
Hockey is a fierce, brutal contact sport. Playing at a high level at age 40 is an outstanding achievement. Ovechkin has 35 goals this season, fourth highest. Here is how the AP described his key goal against the Philadelphia Flyers:
“Confetti flew and Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle & Roll” blared from speakers as mascot Slapshot flipped the goal counter in a corner of the arena from 887 to 888. Fans chanted “Ovi! Ovi!” as play resumed. “Every time he scores, the crowd gets 10 times more involved and it just kind of blows up, and whatever happens after, they’re still always cheering,” winger Andrew Mangiapane said. “It’s a great atmosphere every time he gets a goal for us.”
Kudos to Ovi for sticking with his team, Capitals, for his whole career. In the NBA, players jump from team to team, whenever offered bigger bucks. For years Capitals were lowly. Ovi stuck with them. Maybe, maybe this year, they can win the Stanley Cup, a fitting cap to Ovechkin’s phenomenal career.
One of the most annoying things about MAGA Make America Great Again is this:
The basic premise of MAGA is, America is NOT great, at present. Understatement. Poor healthcare. Unaffordable housing. Poor schools. Wealth and income inequality. Racism. Antisemitism. Polarized paralyzed politics… just for a start.
So, how to make America great again? Place a Nazi sympathizer in charge of destroying public services. Smash alliances abroad, suck up to dictators, appoint incompetent loyalists to key positions, engage in vengeance, ….
There is another way. It is found in this new book, Another World Is Possible: Lessons for America from Around the Globe. – by Natasha Hakimi Zapata. 2025
The simple, obvious, key point – overlooked by the current Administration. Other countries, far less wealthy, have solutions to America’s problems. Right under our noses. But American exceptionalism means, that is not possible. Because .. well, just because.
Singapore (NOT a leftist socialist liberal country) has extraordinary affordable public housing. I’ve seen it first hand. Check it out, America.
Canada has national health insurance. I was born in Saskatchewan, the first province to implement it, in the 1950’s. Check it out, America. Canadians all have health insurance. So do the British – and most civilized European countries.
Estonia has income tax filing online. Fast, simple, easy. Check it out, America.
Most German public universities (and they are mostly outstanding) charge no tuition. America? Michigan has great state universities – but if you don’t live in the state, you pay $60,000 – $65,000 tuition yearly. Not including room and board.
Schools? America is not among the top scoring countries according to the PISA benchmark. Not even close. Way behind China.
Housing, healthcare, education, public services, ….things that drive our quality of life. America trails, despite high GDP per capita.
Why? Closed windows. Other countries have found wise, pragmatic solutions to key problems. The US refuses to learn from them. Costa Rica? Denmark? Learn from them? Get serious, American politicians spout.
In years of teaching managers, I taught them how to define their key operations (marketing, quality assurance, production, innovation) and benchmark which other companies did these things best, how they did them, and – learn from them, adapt and adopt. Pretty simple idea. Best practice benchmarking. Works for nations too. Yes, even for America.
Learn from others.
The most blatant stupidity is Trump’s desire to annex Canada. Why in the world would any Canadian choose to be part of a nation that is hopelessly divided politically and systematically destroying its public services? A country that blindly asserts its superiority, against all evidence, while refusing to learn from others wiser and smarter?
Natasha Hakimi Zapata’s book is MUST reading for MUSK. But don’t hold your breath.
What do we know about our 13.8-billion-year-old universe? A lot – and very little.
We know that 5 per cent of it is comprised of atomic matter – particles. They interact with us, and we can see them, study them, smash them to pieces and examine what comes out. 25 per cent is dark matter – matter that we cannot see, that does not interact with other particles and is invisible. 70 per cent is dark energy – energy that also does not interact with existing matter and so is invisible.
Conclusion: 95% of the universe is a total dark mystery to us. We know this, because if the universe comprised only the matter we observe, its rate of expansion should be slowing as cosmic bodies grow more and more distant from one another and gravity weakens.
Instead, we observed that the universe is expanding – at a faster and faster rate! Only dark matter and dark energy can explain this.
Projecting dozens and hundreds of billions of years into the future, at the current rate the universe goes dark – because objects become too far apart for us to see, and the sun has long ago gone dark, using up its helium.
But wait! There is new evidence, from DESI, dark energy spectroscopic instrument, atop an observatory in Arizona’s desert. Dark energy, it was found, is evolving, changing. It is not constant. So, we could well NOT have the cosmos go dark, but rather, stop expanding, and collapse inward, implode – and cause a new Big Bang.
I envy the physicists. They have the world’s biggest mystery to solve — and I sense their energy and joy at not yet knowing in the least what the universe really is and how it works.
And we humans? Who think we know everything? Not even close.
A third of those age 85 and over contract Alzheimer’s. I am 82 — hence, I have a keen personal interest in this disease. Despite massive research funding, very little progress in treatment and understanding the root cause has been made. And 32 million people worldwide now have Alzheimer’s.
But a stubborn, persistent and courageous woman named Ruth Itzchaki is at last being heard – according to The Economist. She has longed claimed that viruses causes Alzheimer’s. Scientists ridiculed the idea. But she may be right. She is in her 90’s – and still tireless in her research.
This is from the March 17 issue of The Economist:
“For years, most research into Alzheimer’s disease—the most common cause of dementia—has been laser-focused on two proteins, known as amyloid and tau. These build up in the brains of people with the disease, forming plaques and tangles that prevent neurons from functioning properly.
Most scientists assumed that these proteins are the primary cause of Alzheimer’s disease. But the shingles studies published in 2024, along with a host of new papers, add weight to an alternative decades-old idea—that viruses trigger the disease. Per this theory, plaques and tangles of proteins could, instead, be the body’s response to an underlying viral infection. If that is true, then eliminating the virus could prevent or treat Alzheimer’s.
Ruth Itzhaki, formerly of Manchester University and now a visiting professor at the University of Oxford, has championed this idea for almost 40 years. The bulk of her work has focused on herpes simplex virus 1, best known for giving people cold sores, which infects around 70% of people, most without symptoms. The virus normally lives outside the brain, where it can lie dormant for years. It is flare-ups that can lead to cold sores.
In rare cases, the virus can also lead to massive inflammation in the same brain areas that are most affected by Alzheimer’s. In experiments conducted in the early 2000s, Professor Itzhaki found that if she infected lab-grown human brain cells with HSV1, amyloid levels inside the cells increased dramatically. That led her to suspect a causal connection.
For decades she struggled to get her ideas accepted by the rest of the scientific community. “It was considered a left-field, crazy hypothesis,” says Or Shemesh, who researches viruses and Alzheimer’s at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Most scientists were focused on the role of amyloid and tau, assuming that they were the primary cause of the disease. Critics argued that the virus theory was hard to reconcile with the fact that Alzheimer’s has a strong genetic basis or occurs in almost all people with Down’s syndrome.
But growing disillusionment with the leading hypothesis for the cause of Alzheimer’s has led scientists to cast around for alternatives, such as viruses. Over many decades, for example, tens of billions of dollars have been poured into efforts to develop treatments to reduce the levels of amyloid and tau in the brain but the results have been underwhelming—existing amyloid-targeting drugs only have a modest effect on the disease. The discovery that pathogens can trigger other neurological diseases, such as the connection between Epstein-Barr virus and multiple sclerosis, has made the link yet more plausible.
In a bid to push forward Professor Itzhaki’s theory, a group of 25 scientists and entrepreneurs from around the world have assembled themselves into the Alzheimer’s Pathobiome Initiative (AlzPI). Their mission is to provide formal proof that infection plays a central role in triggering the disease. In recent years their work detailing how viruses trigger the build up of proteins linked to Alzheimer’s has been published in top scientific journals.
One new idea, supported by some AlzPI members, is that amyloid and tau may actually be the brain’s first line of defence against pathogens. These proteins are sticky, so they can grab hold of viruses or bacteria to slow their spread before more sophisticated immune responses kick in, says William Eimer at Harvard University. In small quantities, therefore, the proteins seem to boost brain health. The presence of active HSV1 or other pathogens, however, may send the immune system into overdrive, causing the proteins to stick to each other and create the plaques and tangles that damage neurons in Alzheimer’s.
What’s more, in 1997 Professor Itzhaki found that people with a genetic variant known to increase Alzheimer’s risk, ApoE4, were only more likely to get the disease if they also had herpex virus in their brain. In 2020 a group of French scientists showed that repeated activations of the virus … more than tripled the chance of developing Alzheimer’s in those with it.
Researchers at Tufts University, working with Professor Itzhaki, have probed why such reactivation occurs. In 2022 they found that infection with a second pathogen, the shingles virus, could awaken the dormant herpes virus and trigger the accumulation of plaques and tangles. This may explain why shingles vaccination appears to be protective against dementia. In another study published in January, the Tufts researchers also showed that a traumatic brain injury—a known risk factor for Alzheimer’s—could also rouse HSV1 and start the aggregation of proteins in brain cells grown in a dish.
The viral theory has promising implications for treatment. Current therapies for Alzheimer’s, which attempt to reduce levels of amyloid in brain cells, merely work to slow the progression of the disease. If viruses are a trigger, though, then vaccination or antiviral drugs could prevent future cases.
Around 32m people around the world are living with Alzheimer’s disease. If antiviral treatments can indeed slow, delay or prevent even a small subset of these cases, the impact could be tremendous.”
Dr. Atul Gawande was assistant administrator of the US Agency for International Development until January. He’s a surgeon and a professor of health policy,
He was interviewed by David Remnick, on the New Yorker Radio Hour, on March 14. What he said speaks for itself.
“On a budget for our global health work that is half the budget of the hospital where I did surgery in here in Boston == We reached hundreds of millions of people with programs that saved lives by the millions. It is at a level of scale I could never imagine experiencing. I woke up one day to find Elon Musk tweeting that this was a criminal enterprise, that this was democratic money laundering, that this was corruption.
“…over 80% of the contracts have been terminated representing the work that is done by USAID and the, the for-profit and not for not-for-profit organizations. They work with like Catholic Relief Services and things like that. And more than 80% of the staff have been put on administrative leave, terminated or dismissed one way or the other.
“The internal estimates are that over 160,000 will die from malaria per year from the abandonment of these programs if they’re not restored, that we’re talking about 20 million people depending on HIV medicines. … you know, you’re talking hundreds of thousands in year one at a minimum, just on the reduction in immunizations, you’re talking about more than a million estimated deaths.
“[When Russia attacked Ukraine] Russia shut down the medical supply chain, and so a hundred percent of the pharmacies just closed; 250,000 HIV patients can’t get their meds. A million heart patients can’t get their meds. …they’ve attacked the oxygen factories and put the hospitals under cyber attack …this US AID team, in four weeks, we’re able to move the entire hospital records system to the cloud, allowing protection against cyber attacks, got oxygen systems back online, and were able to get 50% of the pharmacies open in about a month, and it ultimately got 80% of the pharmacies open.
Remnick: Why wasn’t this widely known and praised?
“…in that job, I had to speak for the US government. I couldn’t write for you [The New Yorker] during that time.” (Public officials are simply not allowed).
Remnick: “Is the damage irreversible?”
“I had a discussion with a Minister of Health just today and, and he said, I’ve never been treated so much like a second class human being.”
Who will ever again trust the United States of America?
p.s. I live in Israel, a country hugely dependent on the US for weapons, support, and backing. The US is busy cutting its own deal to free its Hamas hostages with dual US citizenship. We in Israel, and the whole world, we are all in deep hot water.
Yesterday, Friday, was Pi Day. March 14. 3.14 Warning: This blog has a lot of numbers.
Yes, I did bake an apple pi — for our synagogue’s pot luck supper. And yes, I added home made vanilla ice cream to top it.
Pi is 3.141592653,… It is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the diameter.
Why is it called by the Greek letter pi? To represent: Perimeter. Pi.
Engineers say in practice, e.g. building bridges, you never need pi to more than 10 digits….yet, mathematicians have calculated pi to (wait for it) — As of July 2024, π has been calculated to 202,112,290,000,000 (approximately 202 trillion) decimal digits.
I asked ChatGPT how many print pages would it take to print out all 202 trilliong decimals. Here is its answer:
Calculation:
202,112,290,000,000 digits: 1250 digits per page\frac{202,112,290,000,000 \text{ digits}}{1250 \text{ digits per page}}1250 digits per page202,112,290,000,000 digits =161,689,832,000 pages= 161,689,832,000 \text{ pages}=161,689,832,000 pages ≈ 161.7 billion A4 pages.
OK – I asked it, so how many trees would it take, to make the paper, to print all 212 trillion digits on A4 pages? Here is ChatGPT’s answer. In 3 seconds.
Calculation:
161,689,832,000 pages8,500 pages per tree\frac{161,689,832,000 \text{ pages}}{8,500 \text{ pages per tree}}8,500 pages per tree161,689,832,000 pages =19,022,333,176 trees= 19,022,333,176 \text{ trees}=19,022,333,176 trees
≈ 19 billion trees 🌳
How Big is That? ChatGPT says:
“The Amazon Rainforest has an estimated 390 billion trees.
Printing π to 202 trillion digits would require about 5% of all the trees in the Amazon.
The total number of trees on Earth is estimated at 3 trillion.
This means we’d need 0.63% of all trees on Earth just for this print job!
So… maybe it’s best to keep π digital instead. 😅🌍♻️ “
– – – – – –
Wait a second. Get that last comment! “Maybe it’s best to keep pi digital instead.” With emojis! ChatGPT has a sense of humor!
It’s almost …. Human.
It will take me a while to process that.
Happy Pi Day.
One last comment. Archimedes calculated pi in 220 B.C.E. very precisely. How? By a brilliant method.
He drew a big circle with radius 1. He drew within it a polygon (equal sided figure) inscribed, with 96 sides and calculated the sum of the length of the 96 sides, using Pythagoras’ theorem. (Each side of the polygon is a hypotenuse of a triangle). This is the low estimate of pi.
Next, he drew another polygon with 96 sides, on the outside of the circle, each side tangential or touching the circle. Again, he measured the sum of the length of the 96 sides. This is the high estimate.
Finally: He calculated: the smallest value of pi is the length of the 96 sides inscribed in the circle, or 3 1/7, or 3.142857; and the biggest value of pi is the length of the 96 sides circumscribed on the circle (outside it), or 3 10/71, 3.140845. The average of the two is 3.141851.
True value: 3.14159.
Archimedes’ value for pi is 1.000083079 of the true value.
So, we spent the next 2,255 years calculating more pi digits than we could possibly need.
Why? Same reason Trump closes the Department of Education.
In the Old Testament, Book of Genesis, God gives instructions to Abraham: “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.”
Jewish people interpret this to be a general commandment for all humanity – to live to be a blessing for others. Many of us do find ways to make others happy, among friends and family and neighbors.
But think of James Harrison, an Australian who recently passed away at age 88. He was a blessing on an unimaginable scale – he saved the lives of 2.4 million babies. I found this in a report on the BBC.
How did he do it? It started when Harrison received a massive blood transfusion at age 14, when he fell ill. He decided then he would pass it on.
Background: Blood types can be Rh positive or Rh negative. Rh stands for Rhesus factor. It indicates whether the Rhesus protein is present on the surface of blood cells (Rh positive) or whether it is not present (Rh negative).
When the blood of a pregnant woman’s fetus is Rh-positive and it gets into the bloodstream of an Rh-negative woman, her body will recognize that the Rh-positive blood is not hers. Her body will try to destroy it by making anti-Rh antibodies. These antibodies can cross the placenta and attack the fetus’s blood cells. Data show that Rh negative occurs in 6% of all women, or one in 16. Blood tests are regularly done for pregnant women, to alert doctors to the problem.
Harrison’s blood happens to be rich in a rare antibody, Anti-D, that is crucial for mothers and their babies. The BBC explains:
“Anti-D jabs protect unborn babies from a deadly blood disorder called haemolytic disease of the foetus and newborn, or HDFN. The condition occurs at pregnancy when the mother’s red blood cells are incompatible with that of their growing baby. The mother’s immune system then sees the baby’s blood cells as a threat and produces antibodies to attack them. This can seriously harm the baby, causing severe anaemia, heart failure, or even death. [Anti-D destroys the offending antibodies].
“Before anti-D interventions were developed in the mid-1960s, one in two babies diagnosed with HDFN died. There are fewer than 200 anti-D donors in Australia, but they help an estimated 45,000 mothers and their babies every year, according to the Australian Red Cross Blood Service, also known as Lifeblood.”
Harris contributed blood plasma every week or 10 days for his entire life, for 70 years. Note: Not his red cells, just the plasma. In a plasma-only donation, the liquid portion of the donor’s blood is separated from the cells. Blood is drawn from one arm and sent through a high-tech machine that collects the plasma. The donor’s red blood cells and platelets are then returned to the donor along with some saline.] The Anti-D antibody was processed from Harris’s plasma.
The infant death problem stemming from the hemolytic condition was noted in print as early as 1609. It took sleuthing by researchers in the UK, Canada and the US to figure out the cause and to find a solution. They too are a blessing, saving millions of precious tiny lives.
Elon Musk and the Trump Administration, strongly supported by Bible-believing Christian groups, are using a chain saw to decimate medical research, of the kind that brings blessings. Like Anti-D.
TIMnovate 