Differences

   Two days ago, yesterday was tomorrow; and just the other day, yesterday was today.  If that all sounds a bit like semantic Sudoku, it boils down to that phrase of "what a difference a day makes."  From exhaustion to recovery, the outlook my wife and I have undergone is a shift and with it a recognition that we all have our differences, from our outlooks and opinions to our health and our skin colors.  What a person is or isn't thinking is something that only that particular person can know, for what we might see on the surface might not be close to revealing what is bubbling away underneath.  It is much the same with the geomagnetism of our planet, our earth's molten "core" slowly moving and providing our protective magnetic shield (from solar radiation); but it turns out that scientists actually still don't know exactly how it all works says Smithsonian: The geomagnetic field is generated by the liquid iron in the earth’s outer core, says Elizabeth Cottrell, geologist and curator at the National Museum of Natural History.  Researchers don’t fully understand how, but believe that liquid iron is in constant motion, both from the earth’s rotation and from convection currents, and that the motion generates electrical currents, which induce the geomagnetic field.  And so it was yesterday with all that was going on with Thanksgiving...

    Thanksgiving was a day which I have appreciated over the years but somehow took its origins for granted.  It was something about the pilgrims and the Native Americans meeting and sharing squash and other bounties of the harvest, or so we were taught in school...and which would prove to be incorrect.  Officially originating from the beginnings of George Washington, the thought wasn't to be thankful to that biparitsan celebration some 100 years earlier, but rather to the successful breaking away as a country: ...that the necessity for such a day sprung from the Almighty’s care of Americans prior to the Revolution, assistance to them in achieving independence, and help in establishing the constitutional government, says Washington's Mount Vernon site.  It was never official, and indeed had to be renewed each year by each President, something Thomas Jefferson refused to do, calling the idea "ridiculous" due to his belief in the separation of church and state.  But there were more bits of trivia, such as the fact that more bar sales occur the day before Thanksgiving than any other day... more than New Year's or the Super Bowl or any other holiday said Business Insider...makes one wonder how differently the U.S. might display its "thanks." (also noted, that Jingle Bells was originally a Thanksgiving song)  As it turns out, the official holiday would come from President Abraham Lincoln during the midst of the Civil War in a proclamation* a portion of which read: ...peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict.

    Okay, enough about that; I was trying to point out that often there "more than meets the eye," and that this happens in many fields.  Remember that tale of mental math, about how we read and write numbers from the left (so 212 would read "two hundred and twelve") yet do most of our calculations from the right?  I had mentioned this to a casual mathematics friend and fiend (it's truly his field) and he said that likely there was little incentive to change that method since much of our math came the Persian mathematician, Muhamman Al-Khwanzmi, which calculated that way.  Says the more detailed Story of Mathematics:  The world "algorithm" is derived from the Latinization of his name, and the word "algebra" is derived from the Latinization of "al-jabr," part of the title of his most famous book, in which he introduced the fundamental algebraic methods and techniques for solving equations.   Where was that in our U.S. schooling?

From National Geographic, a manaul cleaning of sewage, Haiti

    There is always a different way to look at things.  When Washington D.C.'s main water treatment company faced the reality of replacing an aging pipe system (some of their pipes are nearly 80 years old), it began studying a successful system already being used in Europe, one which processes the tons and tons of sewage (1500 tons daily, in this case) into nutrient-rich soil, a soil that businesses eagerly purchase thus offsetting the cost of the system says the piece in The Washington Post (their graphic makes it much easier to understand this rather expensive and complicated system)...and yes, there's the added benefit of extracting gold and copper from the poop, said Popular Science.   But it's something that we take for granted, isn't it, for according to National Geographic: Defecating in the open is as old as humankind (and) is on the decline worldwide, but nearly 950 million people still routinely practice it.  Hooking up rural areas to a sewer line, much less having a sewer system and treatment plant in place, is a costly burden for many areas but the risk of disease and contamination is growing too large to ignore...but how to solve the problem? (the magazine devoted its entire cover story to the issue)

Lobby at Mfuwe Lodge, operated by the Bushcamp Company

    Or take this waste, the tons and tons of fish waste, from heads and skins to excessive scrap catch (a disturbing article appeared in the New York Review of Books on part of this).  Wrote Fortune, one company is now making fashionable clothing from such waste: The rise of “fast fashion” has allowed consumers to treat cheap garments as nearly disposable, discarding them after just seven or eight wears.  They then end up in landfills, despite the substantial amount of water and chemicals needed to produce them.  Enter Tidal Vision, which acknowledges that: Changing consumer behavior to resist the allure of fast fashion’s ultralow prices could take a while (but) The company has deals to coproduce eco-friendly pool clarifiers and has developed an array of other products: preservatives, fertilizers, athletic fabrics, car seat cushions, even antimicrobial sponges.  Then there was a piece in National Geographic Traveler that listed several tourism companies boasting a new outlook last year, such as the safaris by Bushcamp in Zambia: ...the area’s largest employer, pumps more than $300,000 yearly into conservation and community development, including on-the-job training, scholarships for 350 students, 3,000 anti-malaria bed nets, and a daily meal for 1,600 schoolchildren (within a year their exam pass rate rose from 53 percent to 91 percent as teachers reported increased attendance).  Bushcamp also donates funds to the South Luangwa Conservation Society to support its anti-poaching patrols.  Or the Groupo Ecologico which works "to protect one of the world’s loftier biodiversity enclaves—the Sierra Gorda, a lush mountain region some four hours’ drive north from Mexico City."  Much of what the group does “focuses on improving the daily lives of women, so that they become the voice of conservation in their communities,” says Martha Isabel Ruiz Corzo, the director. “This has created a network of 83 small ecotourism businesses, many led by village women who previously struggled in poverty.” 

    There are always different ways to look at things, and this can apply to any of our views, from whom we decide to run our country and make our laws to what we decide to eat and where to spend our money.  Fortune had an interesting piece on the future of food and China's $43 billion intent to purchase Switzerland's Syngenta.  Why should we care about a Chinese chemical company buying a Swiss agricultural business, however mammoth the deal might be? For starters, it’s part of a wave of global consolidation in agriculture that will put an increasingly large portion of the world’s commercial seed market—roughly 50%—under the control of a few giant multinationals. In addition to the ChemChina/Syngenta union, Dow Chemical is buying, and Germany’s Bayer is in the process of swallowing up, perhaps the most controversial producer of genetically modified seed species. This combined $170 billion deal binge promises to have a profound impact on the future of global agriculture.  So what's the big deal?  The article goes on: China today maintains massive stockpiles of corn, rice, and wheat—the world’s largest reserves, the government claims, though it doesn’t release figures. The UN has recommended 17% of annual grain consumption as a reasonable global safety reserve. The U.S., which produces so much food that it’s the world’s top food exporter, holds no government stockpiles at all. Consultants believe China keeps reserves equaling a huge 45% to 60% of annual consumption, just in case.  The U.S. has huge stockpiles of oil.  The grasshopper and the ant.  Food or oil.  It's all a matter of differences.
 

*Here is the text of Lincoln's proclamation: The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.