Is it time to put aside the myth that humanity is progressing toward some ideal state of being? Is it time to cancel all mention of utopias in which individualism flourishes because the only demonstrable progression of humanity is a march toward conformity?
 
In Utopia, Thomas More wrote that in public, “a man must barefacedly approve of the worst counsels and consent to the blackest designs.” More’s famous satire has ironically led many in subsequent ages to argue that utopian life is possible and that humans progress toward it. After Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, some, like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin assumed that physical evolution has a parallel in psychological evolution and that humanity progresses toward some ideal state.
 
Is there really any general psychological progress in our species? Progress? We’re enamored by the term because we believe it defines us. We look back on our cave-dwelling ancestors and their short lifespans, and we say, “We’re not like them. We’re different. Better.” But I’m not speaking about the obvious changes in science and technology, rather of the human psyche and its societal interactions.
 
Western civilization is now enveloped in “cancel culture.” And no doubt, the naïve out there believe this is some new movement, a momentary interruption in human psychological progress. It isn’t. Cancel culture is about as old as Cain’s cancelling Abel. Now, I know you are going to say that fratricide is different from cancelling on social media or through social media, but read on.
 
Under the threat of being cancelled, people are refusing to speak their minds. They know if they say something, even the most innocuous of somethings, the “cancelers” will start cancelling. And no one is safe, not even friends or once-friendly acquaintances. Anyway, as I said, cancel culture is old. But you will want proof.
 
Look no further than the Bible, specifically, the Book of Jeremiah/Jeremias. More specifically, see Chapter 20, verses 7-10. This is what the ancient prophet says (italics mine):
 
     “…(7) I am become a laughingstock all the day, all scoff at me. (8) For I am speaking now this long time, crying out against iniquity, and I often proclaim devastation. And the word of the Lord is made a reproach to me, and a derision all the day. (9) Then I said: I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. And there came in my heart as a burning fire, shut up in my bones, and I was wearied, not being able to bear it. (10) For I heard the reproaches of many, and terror on every side: Persecute him, and: Let us persecute him from all the men that were my familiars, and continued at my side, if by any means he may be deceived and we may prevail against him, and be revenged on him.”*
 
Sound familiar? The warning is out: Watch what you say and to whom you say it. Approve the consensus. If you offer an opinion that differs from the consensus of those with microphones, you will be cancelled.
 
Tough times for an optimist and free thinker. Tough times for those who see dignity in the individual. Those who believe that humanity is headed toward some ideal state are apparently mistaken. The choice is clear: Unity of thought or cancellation by those with the loudest voice, that is, the widest audience. In Thomas More’s words, “a man must barefacedly approve of the worst counsels.” (Can anyone say “Nicholas Sandman,” the name of teen who recently won a settlement with CNN over the network’s cancelling him for just standing?)
 
Still, in these Orwellian times, there have been idealists who say, “Oh! Wait! What about human progress? What about evolution? What about the rise of consciousness that raises the soul? Aren’t we better today than humans in the past? Some would argue that humans today are better than humans of the past. Take Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s words from The Future of Mankind: ‘…owing to the progress of science and of thought, our actions today, whether for good or ill, proceed from an incomparably higher point of departure than those of the men who paved the way for us towards enlightenment.’”*
 
Really? A “higher point of departure”? A comparison of Jeremiah’s complaint about being cancelled not just by some general population but even by his “familiars” and the complaints of today’s victims of cancellation suggests that the points of departure have always been the same. P. T. de Chardin’s belief in psychic and social progress toward enlightenment stands in contrast to obvious realities. Like other optimists, he also believed that humanity is progressing toward what he termed the Omega Point of unity, as though “evolution” had a purpose, a goal. For de Chardin, that goal was a voluntary conjunction of compassionate individuals. But apparently, as our own times appear to show, the only unity toward which humanity periodically progresses is Orwellian groupthink. It is that supposed “unity” that imposes cancellation on dissenters and free thinkers.
 
The dream that began the Industrial Age and that found enhancement in Darwin’s evolutionary principles was that science and technology would somehow improve humanity (I would say “mankind,” but in doing so would be subject to cancellation). In looking back, most of us could understand the wonder that must have accompanied the proliferation of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century inventions like cars and airplanes. We might also imagine that increases in human populations and longevity that accompanied the Industrial Revolution prove that science and technology improved the human condition. Obviously, science and technology have played a role in physical well-being. Mostly, however, both “improvements of life”—numbers and longevity—have resulted from cleaner drinking water and more productive agriculture. But with regard to “man’s inhumanity to man” or even to “cancel culture,” the human condition is the same. One might even argue that cruelty has progressed more than human dignity or that depravity has been enhanced by technology used by genocidal leaders.
 
So, don’t look for an end to cancel culture. Don’t look for an end to a push toward conformity of thought. From prehistory to our own history, such cancelling has prevailed.
 
*The Future of Mankind. Harper & Row. New York, 1959. Chapter 1: A Note on Progress.

What makes us at times take chances when most of the time we seek to preserve certainty? I suppose the philosophers might answer that question with some complex Bayesian (Thomas Bayes, 18th cent) reasoning about how we are ultimately subjective thinkers. They might be right. After all, taking a chance is by definition a largely subjective, on-the-spot matter.
 
Think of it this way. If one sits at a slot machine with a certain amount of money, whether or not to pull away from or stay at the machine is totally subjective. “I’m winning. I’m on a roll. I should see this through.” If on the way to winning, one gets some losses, the winning is the remembered experience that conditions a person to preserve an apparent certainty. “Some losses are to be expected, but the overall gain outweighs the losses.” That is, they do until they don’t. No amount of experience can preserve certainty in a game of chance.
 
And that’s what life in general is, a game of chance. The certainty is both imposed and temporary. How certain were you before a pandemic changed your world? And now, given the conditioning both self-imposed and externally imposed by government restrictions, how different are you views from those you held in pre-pandemic times? What is the new certainty you wish to preserve? A certainty about health? Work? General safety? A certainty that no one will bring into your presence a life-disturbing, externally imposed change?
 
Are you sitting at a slot machine now expecting more losses than wins? If so, have you determined that expectation on the basis of your personal experiences, or have you determined it on the basis of external forces, such as government announcements and media coverage of the pandemic?
 
Are the people around you “pooling” information not gleaned from personal experience but rather from what “people in authority” are saying? Recall the ancient adage that if one hears something repeatedly, it becomes “truth.”
 
How do you define “taking a chance” at this time as opposed to your pre-pandemic definition? Was pre-pandemic “taking a chance” something like walking a tightrope across the Grand Canyon? Has it now become removing a face mask in public or not washing hands?
 
Yes, we definitely are subjectivists. Now we even question “objective” evidence—if we think we have it—from so-called authorities who say: “Blood plasma antibodies are the answer”; “T-cells formerly exposed to some cold or flu are the answer”; “Only a traditional dead virus vaccine is the answer.”
 
So, now you puzzle over a new “reality” imposed more by others than by your personal experience. Why? Because you see the only avenue to personal experience is an Either/Or (that is, contracting or not contracting COVID-19). In fact, your personal experience has become conditioned by the language of others and not by actual experience. Want to go to the store? To a gathering? What is your sense of risk, your sense that if you do go out, you won’t be able to preserve the certainty of your life?
 
And what are you to do with the various “pools” of information, such as “masks work” and “masks don’t work”? What are you to do with numbers of deaths that frighten because in absolute terms they seem so dire while in relative terms they don’t seem much out of the ordinary? Take this headline from late May, 2020, for example: “The Most Important Coronavirus Statistic: 42% of U.S. Deaths Are from 0.6% of the Population.” * A month after that headline, this one with a lengthy subtitle occurred: “Coronavirus: COVID Deaths in U. S. by Age, Race: While coronavirus is obviously concerning and a very real threat to some people (namely, the elderly and immunocompromised), these data also show that the risk for the rest of the population is quite low.”** Or, what do you do in light of CDC data that shows how per 100,000 people, the rate of infection (not rate of death) has been 8.1 for people from age 5 through age 17; 152.9 for people 40-49; 308.6 for people aged 65-74? And how can you trust what others are saying when anecdotal evidence seems to point to contrary reality, anecdotes such as, “I went to get tested, filled out the paper, but the lines were too long so I left; yet, I got a positive result in the mail.” Anecdotes, such as, “They told me that if I okayed COVID as the cause of death on my mother’s death certificate, I would get money.” Anecdotes, such as, “I sent in a dry, unused swab, and I got a positive result.” Right, these are anecdotes I have heard and you haven’t, so they are easy to discount. BUT, what if people are manipulating the data for some reason (destruction of the economy for political reasons; lack of wisdom on what to do; personal fear; acquiring stocks in Big Pharma)?
 
In the USA, 10.3/100,000 died in auto accidents in 2013. Or, take these stats on causes of death from the CDC: Heart disease 647,457; Cancer 599,108; Accidents 169,936; Chronic lower respiratory diseases 160,201; Stroke 146,383; Alzheimer’s 121,404; Diabetes 83,564, Nephritis, etc. 50,633; and suicide 47,173.*** What if—just WHAT IF—you had daily coverage of any of these causes? What if—just WHAT IF—the 24/7 news talked of little else and focused instead on any of these causes of death? How would you then deal with your sense of certainty? How would you then deal with preserving that certainty? How now do you perceive the nature of risk?
 
Consider that as of this writing, there are 1,769 cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 Americans with 178,998 deaths (August 27, 2020 stats).**** Some 5.8 million Americans have contracted the disease (if data are correct). That is a big number, but then, there are over 325 million people in the country. What if you considered the number of people who DON’T HAVE COVID? That's 319.2 million people!
 
Yes, as a subjectivist, you have a problem. The old certainty that you sought to preserve—even if you took moderate chances—has changed. You have a new certainty, and you don’t know whether or not it is worth preserving. And strangely, your new certainty is oxymoronically an uncertain certainty.
 
*Roy, Avik. Forbes Staff. The Apothecary Contributor Group. Online at https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2020/05/26/nursing-homes-assisted-living-facilities-0-6-of-the-u-s-population-43-of-u-s-covid-19-deaths/#2a80aeb974cd   Accessed August 28, 2020.
 
**Berezow, Alex. 23 Jun 2020. American Council on Science and Health. Online at https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/06/23/coronavirus-covid-deaths-us-age-race-14863   Accessed August 28, 2020.
 
***https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm#:~:text=Number%20of%20deaths%20for%20leading%20causes%20of%20death.,%28cerebrovascular%20diseases%29%3A%20142%2C142.%20Alzheimer%E2%80%99s%20disease%3A%20116%2C103.%20Diabetes%3A%2080%2C058.
Accessed August 28, 2020
 
**** https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases
  Accessed August 28, 2020

The ancient philosopher Archytas argued for an unlimited universe. Basically, he said that if one went to the end of the universe with a staff and extended it, it would go “into” something, meaning that there was no end. Every approach to the end would meet a new “something” into which one could extend the staff.
 
And that’s exactly what happens when you try to argue politics with someone who will not yield to your logic. You can make as many fine points as you want; you can reach what you believe to be an end, a conclusion. But the mind of your opponent will provide yet another “something” into which your argument must reach. You can never get to the end because your political opponent will simply provide more space into which you must reach. “Sure, maybe what you said is correct,” the opponent will say, and then offer, “but what about this example or detail that you didn't mention?”*
 
You can never reach the end. It is possible that Archytas’ argument for an unlimited universe is flawed. It is possible that there is, as Plato and Aristotle believed, a limit, an end—THE END. But in political arguments, there appear to be no limits, no ends that any opponent can ever reach. At least, that seems to be the circumstance in today’s political universe—and maybe it has always been thus.

*Want an example? Yesterday, I caught part of VP Pence's speech at the RNC convention. In the single sentence that I heard as I walked past the TV on my way to do something, Pence said that the 2020 violence in cities has to stop." Today, I heard a reporter with an agenda say something similar to "Pence didn't mention the death of So-n-So." So, it doesn't really matter if one makes a comment that is general and applicable to specific circumstances because the opposition will simply say there was no mention of this or that specific incident. And, as you know, with billions of people on the planet, there's no way anyone can mention all the incidents. No one can extend the staff to the end of the political universe. 

“I know I shouldn’t, but I love beignets. How can just one more hurt? I’ll exercise in the morning to burn off the calories.”
 
“Weakness of will.”
 
“What?”
 
“Akrasia, weakness of will, a term one learns in Philosophy 101. You know what is good for you, but you act contrary to your best interests. You know beignets are tasty but fattening; yet, you order more.”
 
“But we’re in New Orleans. We’re at Café du Monde; it’s jazz on the street. It’s great food. Come on, it’s just for a few days. Who can resist a beignet? Look; you’re eating one.”
 
“I know. Weakness of will applies to me, also. I probably do many things that are contrary to my best interests. Like, well, having a beer or dessert, eating too much red meat, not drinking enough water. I can go on.”
 
“So, why bring this ak… What’s it called?”
 
“Akrasia. Obviously, your philosophy prof didn’t mention it.”
 
“Akrasia. Look, we can’t always do what’s in our best interest because we don’t always know what is in our best interest.”

“But when we do know and ignore what we know, that’s akrasia.”
 
“Okay. Then basically, every human being is akrasiatic.”
 
“Akratic. That’s the adjective.”
 
“Akratic. We don’t like to admit it. We’re too involved in justifying what we do. We can always figure some justification to excuse our actions. I wonder whether anyone has ever figured out a way to quantify the proportion of actions done in self-interest and actions done contrary to self-interest.”
 
“That’s an interesting thought. We don’t subject ourselves to quantification very often—maybe not at all. We’re always on the inside looking out. To quantify requires some self-distancing, some looking at oneself from the outside.”
 
“So, everyone is akratic to some degree, but no one knows the exact degree. It would be an interesting personal experiment to see how many times I act akratically. Maybe tomorrow I’ll try to keep count, but tonight, I’m eating the extra beignet.”
 
“I’m not surprised. Well, since we’re sitting here, I’ll have another one, too.”

That people know the kindling temperature of paper is probably the result of Fahrenheit 451, the novel about book burning. Books, made from trees, return their carbon to the atmosphere when they burn. That carbon is the concern of many who fear the atmosphere will reach 450 ppm sometime in the next 20 to 30 years. Trees photosynthesize, so in the next few decades forest growth might be enhanced by the increased availability of carbon dioxide unless forest clearing outstrips growth.
 
Is it coincidental that an increase in forests appears almost contemporaneously with an increase in the number of book-burners?
 
No, probably not. Book-burners have always been with us, as have forests. In an age of increased forest clearing and increased paper production, the irony lies in the juxtaposition of a potential increase in both forest growth and book-fires. Feedback loop? More forests, more books, more book fires, more atmospheric carbon dioxide, more photosynthesis, more forests, more paper, more books, more book fires…
 
https://phys.org/news/2020-08-fossil-high-atmospheric-carbon-spurred.html

1: “You know how the travel industry has been negatively affected by the pandemic?”
 
2: “Yes, I don’t want to go on vacation…I mean, I do want to go on vacation this year, but I’m afraid I’ll die in some virus-infected hotel. You know, now they’re scaring me that the coronavirus spreads like Legionnaires’ disease. Right through the air conditioning.”
 
1: Well, there’s an alternative to cruise ships and crowded air planes, big theme parks, packed beaches, and dirty hotels.”
 
2: “What’s that?”
 
1: “How about a virtual trip to Mars?”
 
2: “I’m sorry. Did you say ‘SARS’?”
 
1: “No, Mars. Mars. The Red Planet.”
 
2: “How do I take this trip?”
 
1: “NASA. Its Eyes on the Solar System gives everyone the chance to follow Perseverance on its journey. Can do it right on your computer.* Sure, it’s an animation, but life during the pandemic is becoming so ‘virtual’ that we don’t seem to notice the line between reality and ‘virtuality’? Not sure if that’s a word. Anyway, when I turned to the website today, I saw the spacecraft is 178 days away from landing. You can zoom in and out on the animation, click to more info, and just sit and watch. There’s no accompanying music, no talking. But if you want to know virtually what a trip to Mars would be like with your own headphones, just find a long YouTube video of ‘space music,’ and keep both videos going till the February, 2021, landing. And then, after you’ve received the donor antibodies or some vaccine, go find an Earth-bound vacation site.”
 
2: “Just a sec. Let me pull it up. Okay, seen enough. Boring.”
 
1: “Actually, I agree, and I think an actual—a ‘real’—trip to Mars would be boring. Imagine being locked up in a rather confining spaceship for months. Is there a window? It’s like an extreme quarantine. And then think of going to Mars six months there and six months back and returning after a stay of, say, six months. Think of the unexpected changes on Earth over the year and a half of Mars vacation.”
 
2: “Right. I look back over the last six months and ask if I could be projected from then to now without knowing the intervening worldwide turmoil, whether or not I wouldn’t be like a character in a come-back-from-the-past movie. Six months ago, I thought differently. Strange what a little virus can do to a planet. Strange what economic, psychological, and social turmoil humans imposed upon themselves. It’s been a trip to Mars for all of us. All sorts of dangers along the way, some of them simply self-imposed because we chose to take the trip. Hey, come to think of it, I guess six months ago, under hazardous circumstances and unknowns like a trip to Mars, we made those decisions that add up to our life today. And like spacemen under NASA’s command, we let people in the control rooms determine which way the Earth-bound spacecraft of our lives has been going.”  
 
1: “Someone returning from a two-year trip to Mars really would be astounded by the changes. Happy to emerge from a capsule, the traveler would enter a world that is largely closed like that capsule. Given the cancel culture of the times, the return of Mars travelers, unlike the return of the first astronauts, would be celebrated on Zoom with a virtual parade, canned music and applause and all and then promptly condemned. Riots would follow. Couldn’t have a parade through downtown neighborhoods because of the rioters. Storefronts boarded up. Graffiti everywhere. No doubt some group would be out and about today protesting the exploitation of Mars, the new colonialism. Poor Martian organisms, maybe little critters like microbes that have survived for billions of years, being trampled by people in spacesuits digging in the red soil. The Red Planet, they would contend, has now become a newly formed landfill for space travelers’ garbage. Would there be a Martian outhouse? Because…well don’t tell me that the astronauts are going to return with human waste. Why spend energy on the weight? Anyway, I’m sure there would be some protestors and looters riled because of the Mars travelers. Can’t do much of anything without running into some offended group.”
 
2: “If I recall, there was a lot of turmoil in the sixties and seventies when the astronauts were traveling to the moon. But then, maybe there’s always a lot of turmoil and unrest, maybe always a lot of dissatisfaction. But I also remember some considerable earthly joy that humans had traveled to the moon and returned. Were those simpler times? Hard to say. Just as there are now, there were wars all over the planet then, but there was also a growing ease of living in the affluent countries, especially in the United States. The fifties, sixties, and seventies were the  beginnings of the coddled young rebelling against…Not sure. I remember the James Dean movie Rebel without a Cause. Don’t get me wrong. I know children have always rebelled against their parents often without knowing a cause. But now, there are causes galore. Everything is a cause. So, I’m guessing that there’s a group ready to rail against Martian colonialism. Anyone’s a social warrior for the cause du jour.”
 
1: “Sure, the more people have, the easier it is for them to become dissatisfied. And when a people have a lot, they expect a lot. When they don’t get their way, they look to blame. The Buddha was right. Desire fed by satiated previous desires is pretty much the problem, and he didn’t have the exacerbating pervasive affluence of the present and an invasive media intent on sowing discontent.”
 
2: “So, what’s there to do but watch a virtual trip to Mars over the next 178 days and hope that when Perseverance gets there, we will have persevered enough to survive the turmoil, the pandemic, and the spacecraft-like confinement?”
 
* https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/orrery/#/sc_perseverance

I’m all for green technology and green power, but there are realities that I have always kept in focus, realities like population size, basic human needs, and the importance of cheap energy. Green energy ain’t cheap, at least not at present. And green energy is also inadequate to meet the basic human needs of large populations. Case in point: California.
 
August, 2020, has been a somewhat brutal on California. Really hot. Not to worry, right? The state has plenty of wind, solar, and hydro power, doesn’t it? No. It doesn’t. Goodbye fossil-fuel powered power plants. The Governor had to admit that the state would fall considerably short of its electricity needs. Go figure. How is that possible in a green paradise that closed one conventional power plant and lost the use of another? How is that possible in a green paradise that is closing nuclear power plants? And, how is that possible in a state that is going ahead with geothermal power even though it will be even more expensive than wind and solar energy?
 
Robert Burns nailed it. Steinbeck gave it a human touch. The best laid schemes of mice and men gang oft agley.* And the best intentions and plans of Californians who must go 100% green in the next 25 years as a state requirement, will, too, go astray.
 
And between 2020 and 2045? Well, don’t expect China, India, and developing countries to be idealistically green. California is an agglomeration of beautiful landscapes and diverse climates, but it is located where historic and prehistoric droughts have lasted long—sometimes a couple of centuries—and made life hard. Is it ironic that a state housing “Silicon Valley” as the epitome of high tech can’t supply enough energy for its citizens?
 
But, you say, the state is on the right path. The cars will be electric there. And if the state can’t supply energy sufficient for its current needs, where will the state acquire the additional electricity for millions of electric cars? Ah! The best laid schemes of mice and men!
 
*Robert Burns. “To a Mouse.” 1785.  The last two stanzas tell the tale:
 
But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
          Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
          For promis’d joy!
 
Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
          On prospects drear!
An’ forward tho’ I canna see,

The small farm across the street in my rural neighborhood houses about 11 horses. “About” because they are rescue horses, and the number seems to change with new colts added and the more mature horses moved to new owners. Anyway, the horses are there doing what horses do, eating, gathering around closely in cold weather, and occasionally running a bit. Beautiful animals. Very powerful. Maybe that’s the reason for mythical centaurs. But of course, they are also practical animals, providing both a means of transportation and a means of farming. If you want to see them in action, drive through Amish country, where horses drag plows. Or go to the American West, where horses are more efficient than ATVs because they don’t run out of gasoline in chasing down stray cattle over hundreds of square miles of wilderness. Yes, I like my truck with hundreds of horsepower, but it has limits that a single horse doesn’t have.
 
And now horses might play a role in fighting a pandemic. Scientists at the University of Costa Rica and elsewhere are developing horse antibodies that might protect humans against COVID-19. You can read about the research if you want, but suffice it for me to say that it seems to make sense because have been used to make anti-venoms that have saved many people bitten by snakes.*
 
I think what intrigues me is the connection between horses and humans. There’s the obvious: Both have four limbs and similar bones. Both have a head on one end and a butt on the other. Both have similar organs. There’s the less obvious: There’s the homologous relationship between cytochrome c in humans and horses. Horses’ cytochrome c is 88.5% that of humans. We’re related not only by general form but by molecular composition. Think about it. If you change that percentage by 11.5%, both organisms have the same cytochrome c. Are we really all centaurs?
 
But then, as cytochrome goes, we also bear a relationship to carp, which has 78.6% of the same protein; corn, too, which is 66.7% the same; and the lowly euglena, at 56.6%. In fact, we’re not unrelated in our cytochrome c to that of beer yeast—the reason for our fondness for the drink, no doubt: we’re family. But, as I often do, I digress.
 
That we can possibly benefit from our horse allies in our war against COVID-19 is a good thing. Making antibodies in horses and transferring them to humans is a cheaper alternative to the traditional medical approaches now in progress. According to Debbie Ponchner, reporting in Scientific American, Alberto Alape Giron, who is working on developing the antibodies at Clodomiro Picado Institute, “a vial of equine antibodies will cost $100 to produce, whereas a treatment with monoclonal antibodies could be 10 times more expensive.” In addition, “one 10-mL vial has about 80 times the quantity of antibodies you can find in 800 mL of convalescent plasma, which is the plasma donated by someone who has overcome an infection of SARS-CoV-2.”
 
Isn’t it interesting that we have a relationship with other life-forms yet we have so many perceived differences among our own species? Another species might be our salvation from a deadly disease while our own species daily finds ways to injure and kill. Centaurs, mythical as they are, combine humans and horses. Is there some hybrid that combines humans of diverse religious, political, and philosophical beliefs for the mutual benefit of all? Probably not. We can somehow combine horses and humans, but not humans and humans, at least not when it comes to beliefs held by those who see no underlying connections.
 
 
*Ponchner, Debbie. 17 Aug 2020. Scientific American/Medicine. Costa Rica Readies Horse Antibodies for Trials as an Inexpensive COVID-19 Therapy. Online at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/costa-rica-readies-horse-antibodies-for-trials-as-an-inexpensive-covid-19-therapy/   Accessed August 17, 2020

“What about this plot for a future Bond film? Terrorists want to bomb the Queen. After some introductory heroics that involve the spy fighting bad guys on the London Eye, Bond returns to headquarters, where Q gives 007 a tiny silver box about the size of a cigarette case. Bond opens it and sees a grasshopper.”
 
“For me to watch, this plot’s will have to have a little more umpf than that. And a grasshopper in a box isn’t typical of one of those high-tech weapons he usually gets, like an exploding watch or some ink pen that shoots darts.”
 
“No, but hear me out. So, Bond sees the grasshopper, and he looks quizzically at Q. Q then says, ‘It’s a bomb-sniffing grasshopper, and here’s his leash.’ Bond gives Q one of those looks that says (in an English accent), ‘You’ve gone off the bloody deep end.’ Q then explains that grasshoppers can detect and discriminate among the scents of different bomb materials, specifically among the vapors of TNT, DNT, RDX, PETN, and ammonium nitrate. As the plot unfolds, Bond’s mission is to find an explosive device planted in the basement of Parliament—a remake of the Guy Fawkes story. So, Bond takes the grasshopper and his Beretta and speeds over to the government building in his Aston Martin. There Bond and the grasshopper fight noseblind terrorists and find and disarm the bomb just in time to save the Queen during her annual visit.”
 
“Whoa. Grasshopper? Smelling explosives like some airport security dog? Does Bond give it a name? How about hoppy? Too rabbit-like? Where did you get this ridiculous idea? Sounds as though you’ve gone loco on locusts. Have you been eating swainsonine in your salads?”
 
“No, there’s some serious science in this. Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis studied the smelling ability of Schistocerca americana, the American grasshopper. They found the bug could detect the vapor of an explosive in 500 milliseconds.* So, the idea isn’t so farfetched as you think. What if the grasshopper’s brain were connected to a warning device?”
 
“Yeah, I guess with all the microcircuit stuff people use nowadays, hooking up a sensing system to the grasshopper’s brain might make sense. Except…well, except that we’re not talking a long-lived critter. At best, a grasshopper hits its first birthday, and then the hopping stops. What if Bond is in the vicinity of the bomb and his grasshopper dies mid-hop?”
 
“Hadn’t thought of the lifespan part for the film. Well, for the sake of the story this grasshopper stays healthy through the final movie credits, after which he’s put out to pasture, where he can munch on locoweed.”
 
“I guess your Bond idea is only half farfetched. I was unaware that grasshoppers could smell. They don’t seem to have noses. But if what you are saying is true, then I should probably reassess my own ability to know my world through my senses. I’ve been pretty smug about my abilities and knowledge; yet, there’s no way I could match a 500-millisecond recognition of volatiles wafting off a bomb. I guess I’m not really a very fine-tuned sensing machine.
 
“And now that you have me thinking, it occurs to me that I know very little about other organisms. Of course, even though a grasshopper can distinguish bomb scents, that doesn’t mean it knows it distinguishes among them. If a dog trained to detect the scent of bomb materials doesn’t experience fear during its Pavlovian response to them, surely a grasshopper is even less involved in the same process.
 
“Your Bond plot is silly, but it makes me wonder if we aren’t similar to those animals in the way we sense the world all the time without a conscious response to what we sense. We sense without knowing that we sense sometimes, don’t we? Take pheromones, for example. Can’t say I’m aware of them, but those scents supposedly affect me and you and everyone else. I suppose there are other things I unconsciously sense as I hop around my daily world. Love at first sight? Suffused with pheromones, do we look back with hindsight bias to believe we fell in love ‘at first sight’?
 
“Would you consider getting those brain chips implanted as Elon Musk suggests, not just in grasshoppers, but in us? Attached to some portable AI, we’ll know what we sense and think because the AI will tell us: ‘Alert! Alert! Beautiful girl approaching. Pheromone alert! Warning! You are going to stare.’ Or maybe we won’t need airport dogs to sniff out explosives. Your future Bond plot will have a TSA agent saying, ‘Passengers, be forewarned. Charlene from the TSA has been equipped with the latest implants and warning systems. Within a half second, she can tell whether a suitcase holds a bomb, drugs, or smuggled bottles of Jamaican sauce.’ If Charlene’s olfactory sense is too imprecise to detect volatiles, but Musk chips are viable brain implants, we could tie her brain to that of a grasshopper in a parallel circuit.”
 
“Uhm, you just gave me an idea for another script.”    
 
*Staff report. SciNews. 14 Aug 2020. Grasshoppers Can Discriminate Between Different Explosives’ Smells, Study Finds. Online at http://www.sci-news.com/biology/grasshoppers-explosive-smell-08747.html  Accessed August 14, 2020. Debajit Saha, Darshit Mehta, Ege Altan, Rishabh Chandak, Mike Traner, Ray Lo, Prashant Gupta, Srikanth Singamaneni, Shantanu Chakrabartty, Barani Raman. Explosive sensing with insect-based biorobots. Biosensors and Bioelectronics: X, 2020; 100050 DOI: 10.1016/j.biosx.2020.100050
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“What do you think cars of the future will be made of?”
 
“Uh. Steel?”
 
“Not if the anti-fossil fuel people get their way.”
 
“How so?”
 
“I’m going to go round about here. Earth is an iron planet though most of its iron lies deep in the outer and inner cores. Still, there’s plenty of iron at the surface to make steel. But to make something from iron requires the expenditure of a lot of energy. You can’t melt iron with a match. The temperatures required are maybe on the order of 1,800 degrees F or about 1,000 degrees C.
 
“Now, such high temperatures haven’t been a problem for steel manufacturers because they can use coal and coke. But if the green energy people get all their wishes, we won’t have access to fossil fuels. Thus, no more steel production because you can’t get that kind of energy from a windmill, a waterfall, or a solar panel in the quantities needed to melt iron and make steel. I’m guessing that future cars in a carbon-free world will be made from wood, even though wood is itself based on carbon. Or maybe there will be rock cars, slabs of sandstone on wheels motoring along beneath a roof covered in solar cells. Motoring? Did I just say, ‘motoring’? What will the engines be made from?”
 
“What’s with these anti-carbon people? Do they not realize the ramifications of their plans?”
 
“Well, I’m guessing that they are well meaning. They’ve been told that a warmer Earth is their immediate destiny, and they are scared. They are sure the planet warmed by at least three-fourths of a degree Celsius over the past century or so. They see melting glaciers. They see droughts. They see, or pretend to see, sea level rising by a few millimeters. They are sure we’re all doomed. And they see fossil fuels as the cause.”
 
“Sure, but what will they do without those fuels? There’s no way solar, wind, and water power can replace the amount of energy fossil fuels yield for an industrialized and technological society.”
 
“What do you think we should call those wooden cars of the future?”
 
“Donkey carts?”
 
“Seems appropriate. Nothing says civilized more than dumb asses being pulled by asses.”