Italian ICU

My deepest hope is that when the dust has settled from this pandemic, the planet of humans will have moved closer to working together on all things that threaten our momentary existence in the cosmos. When you get down to it, the only real threat humanity faces is our own behaviors, even in terms of how this coronavirus theoretically came about, to then devastate the entire planet with Covid-19 in a few short months.

According to the work of China's "Bat Woman”, virologist Shi Zhengli, the zoonosis, cross-species transmission, of this virus is theoretically attributed to the abuse of animals for their faux science medicinal properties, in this case, bats. Science has a way to go to demystify it. Another traditional Chinese medicne animal is suspect: the pangolin, which resembles a scaly anteater.  UPDATE:  And according to the latest research, DNA evidence suggests that the virus jumped one time to a human from a pangolin in the Wuhan market, and has since been spread human to human.  But that's just the tip of an iceberg in how countless pathogens evolve out of our agricultural animal intensifications, and our political refusals to make health care a human right if only by virtue of how that protects the whole of society. And even if we look at other threats to our exisence, like war, climate change, and even a meteorite (we should be investing far more in looking), it is our choices that make these threats so serious. There are threats we can't do much about, like a supervolcano or near-Earth supernova explosion, but only an idiot would suggest that that implies we are infinitely at the mercy of powers above our control.

The big problem, as i see it, is greed, the subcounscious foundational cornerstone of our modern economic system. We can anthropomorphically analyze the near 4 billion year evolution into humanity of that greed by looking at the competition for resources among more primitive, dog eat dog life, here chimp wars. It can also be seen microbiologically without any consciousness among countless, one-celled organisms in any number of ecosystems, large and small. Greed is wired into us as an instinctive impulse of survival like sex. Neuroscience's ever sharper brain imaging tools has better defined that one. Due to how dangerous it can be to immediately have sex with anyone the moment you feel the impulse, like some animals who will have sex until they die, or kill one another to have sex and thus be vulnerable to other predators, we tend to cognitively manage that impulse. And that's also in the interest of nurturing forth children within stable family groups who can then socially flourish to go where none have gone before. That’s called civilization. So our brains are capable of managing very powerful instincts, if it's in the interest of our survival.

Capitalism, founded upon an instinct and now culturally evolved into an often violently self-destructive civilization, has to be managed away ASAP. Some sort of economy that critically looks at the big picture and manages our instincts, no matter how cloaked in a human history written by the winners of battles, needs to evolve by our choices. If forced, it will never work. The whole planet needs some sort of cognitive behavioral therapy, and exercise neuroplasticity – and best done through good childhoods -- to biologically bolster those areas of the brain that can inhibit our impulse-driven behaviors and empower us with brilliant moral systems. I would be living in a fantasy universe if I were to believe that all nations -- particularly USA, China, and Russia -- and their 7.7 billion people would overnight submit to mental health counseling. But it can begin by exercizing our right to vote.

My favorite economic system would reflect the ideas of Buckminster Fuller, who, as well as being the architect and engineer known for his geodesic domes in the 1960's, was also a math-based systems philosopher. Without getting all complex, one essential component to such a more socialistic system includes "pricing nature's services," what most MBA students learn are externalities that need not be considered when billionaires trade at Wall Street.

David Suzuki, a Canadian zoologist and geneticist (and environmental activist) who contributed to the science of the Human Genome Project at the turn of the millennium, brilliantly expresses it in this short video.

Whaddaya mean, “Us,” Human...? Thias takeoff on that old Lone Ranger/Tonto joke may soon seem applicable to the ever-evolving interface between robots and humans.

As far back as 1994, I recall being startled by a self-directed, rolling carrier in an office building. It silently and nonchalantly (See: the tendency to anthropomorphize) went about its task of delivering mail.

Recently, inside a mall, and with considerably less vision now, I was beginning to question the sanity of a person speaking to a similar object, which I mistook to be part of the furnishings.

Robotics has proliferated to the point that, already, we are conditioned to the advent of self-driving cars. We know that home-delivery soon will come via airborne drone. As of now, such deliveries are being tested on he ground with autonomous, wheeled carriers. Passenger airplanes are so automatic that, recently, the pilots of a plane going from England to Germany, were so out of it that they landed in Scotland! With such vulnerability for humans, the door seems to be opening for a, “HAL”-like situation to occur.

We are surrounded by robots. As I am writing this, it occurs to me how I am served by robotics – as a person with visual impairment and as a writer. The iPhone has become indispensable. I keep the screen dark, so as not to be distracted from audio exchanges and swiping fingers. Apart from regular telephone calls and email, I can send text messages vocally and receive them via audio. Apart from the myriad, miraculous aps we all use, my favorites are Apple Music, where vocally I can summon the music of the world, and Seeing A-I, which will read any writing in print form.

At the beginning of the Industrial Age, in England, because government failed to perceive the dramatic changes that were to come, and the dire effects it would have upon the populace, there were long years of bloody confrontation, arrests and beheadings. One contingent of the protests was the weavers, who systematically destroyed the machines, which deprived them of their very living. They were called, “Luddites”. Also, keeping up with the contretemps of the Information Age, there is a UK -produced film called, “Robot Overlords”.

The latest stage of robot evolution is its entry into the boardroom. Not quite, yet, originating policy, robotics is becoming a n invaluable assist for CEOs and CFOs, etc. Management can turn over to robotics complex data that would require and infinity of human hours to complete, and turn it into countless years of projected performance. This type of efficiency, combined with improved human-robot activity n production, is indicative of how far this duality has gone. Only time will tell who (or what) will rule the boardroom – Homo sapiens – or the robot overlords!

***** ***** *****

ROBOT OVERLORD WIELDS A CYBER SWORD

I’m you robot overlord.
Are you ready for me?
Then, you’d best not pull the cord;
I quite vengeful can be.

My reserve-power circuits
All know how to respond.
Don’t need no stinkin’ Berlitz;
Multilingual’s their bond.

Hand me my big sombrero;
Hook on my trusty whip.
Whadday mean, “No – zero? –
That I ain’t got no hip?

How can I be a leader
Without my trusty gear?
Whaddaya mean, “Too eager,”
And that I can’t drink beer?

All that I read informs me
Leaders can do this stuff.
Are you sayin’ I can’t be
Ever caught in the buff...?

...That I can never stand straight,
Or yet, even to kneel...
Maybe become POTUJS-bait,
At a, ”Star-spangled” peal?

Am I without emotion?
Why, then, do I complain?
Could be a cyber potion
That’s messin’ up my brain.

Whaterver be the reason,
I’m just not satisfied.
I hope that you’re not teasin’,
‘Cause I’m built to abide!

You cannot add this cruelty,
Of which I now suspect –
A software duality –
Just at your call and beck!

How did I get in this muck,
In this weird quandary?
It means that I can be stuck
With y’all’s stinkin’ laundry.

Glad to see you all enjoy
My odd, non-human plight.
We are all the same sun’s toy,
And with the moon at night.

Remember my reserve tanks,
So, if you pull the cord,
Be careful with the self-thanks –
I’m still your overlord!

(Post-script, in a different meter.)

You think you can play me –
Just ‘cause you made me.
Try hiding your nonsense
From your wake conscious.

Thad’s just how it goes, folks,
This strange, mental thing.
Seems to hang like bad jokes,
On odd cyber string.

But, don’t let it faze you;
The future won’t blink.
We all must get used to
This new way to think.

(Translation: The Silent Cyber-War Is No Laughing Matter!)

Shanghai cyber-tower looming

Like an ancient fortress,

With its high tech lenses zooming –

An all-seeing goddess.

We two mount cyber maneuvers,

Which may come off quite odd –

Ten-foot-tall shakers and movers

Getting down in the sod.

As the Peoples' Army boo-hoos,

Saying they're under siege,

We all know they're not the true-blues

They would have us believe.

As we know, their bots have wandered

Through our systems with ease.

Precious time we may have squandered,

Gaming – a vile disease!

We, of course, have not been idle –

To this attests Iran.

We've been in, performed a sidle-

Stop-gap nuclear ban.

No doubt, Vladimir's been cracked, too;

Best be in the cash box.

Give him something extra to do;

He's bored counting just socks.

ISIS is a diff'rent creature;

It avoids description.

No doubt, they seek ev'ry feature,

Ev'ry new encryption.

Thus it is with the world today,

At this cyber-birth-time.

Nothing like wars of yesterday,

It's all a brand-new crime.

Stay alert, Silicon Valley –

U.S.A, use them well!

If we cyber-shilly-shally,

We risk digital hell!

If a large passenger plane crashed every day, would you risk taking a flight? It's estimated that's how many people on average die every day from contracting an antibiotic resistant infection, a superbug, from a hospital stay.

According to the archeological evidence to date, the first peoples to have entered the Copper Age, otherwise known as the Chalcolithic, lived nearly 8,000 years ago on Rudnik mountain in Serbia. Among dozens of later worldwide sites, Egypt stands out, as does precolumbian Mesoamerican civilizations, where tin was soon added to the copper to produce bronze. And based purely on the most intelligent guesses from anthropological evidence, it was likely always a woman who accidentally discovered how to smelt copper, since women had responsibility for the hearth in most of those cultures. If she put a crystalline green rock, malachite, in or around the campfire, especially if it were to make pottery, it would produce a really cool-looking green flame to everyone's amazement, and in the morning she would find a hard black substance remaining, copper-oxide. If later on, that blackish material were to be cooked in the hotter charcoal remains of a campfire, the carbon would bind with the oxygen in the ore and escape into the atmosphere as CO2, leaving behind pure copper. And all this because of the fusion that occurred within a neutron star explosion billions of years before the formation of our solar system.

Over the millenniums, copper has been used medicinally, both as primitive surgical tools and as applications directly on wounds. Much of that was based on the anecdotal evidence that infections tended to heal quickly if copper was involved. That grew closer to empirical evidence in 19th century Europe, with the fifth and sixth Cholera (bacterium Vibrio cholerae) pandemics, when it was noticed that workers at copper smelting factories tended to be "immune."

And as medical science marched towards the end of the 20th century, when we could look microscopically at bacteria and its DNA, the mystery was solved. If you put bacteria, vira, or fungi on a piece of copper, you effectively kill it. You kill it because when bacteria and vira, for example, touch copper, electrically charged copper ions are released which "prevent cell respiration, punch holes in the bacterial cell membrane or disrupt the viral coat, and destroy the DNA and RNA inside."

So here's to that woman long ago who first discovered copper.

So why aren't hospitals using it more as part of a strategy to save lives? Because we are still a bit stupid as a species.

The Conversation:  “Hospitals may perceive hand-gel dispensers as cheaper options, despite the fact that these gels do not all kill all microbes – including the norovirus. Yet an independent study by University of York’s Health Economics Consortium has shown that, taking the reduced costs of shorter patient stay and treatment into consideration, the payback time for installing copper fittings is only two months.

Making and installing copper fittings is no more expensive than using materials such as stainless steel which, ironically, is considered easier to keep clean due to its bright surface. However, we know that these are covered in microscopic indentations and scratches from regular wear and tear, leaving valleys for superbugs and viruses to reside in and escape cleaning procedures. Cleaning happens at best once a day, while copper works 24/7 – so it is surely an important adjunct in the fight to keep the built environment clean.

The importance of installing copper fittings has been recognised in France where various hospitals are now installing copper. Finally, at least some nations of the world are waking up to this simple approach to control infection, let’s hope others are quick to follow suit.”