Run...(The Numbers)
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| Illustration of what's orbiting Earth; Source: European Space Agency |
In today's world it is easy to be overwhelmed by data. As just one example, there was this statistic from October in The Week on those pesky robocalls, automated calls for which the "caller" pays a mere $6 per 100,000 calls and that's only IF the call is picked up (and now there are also fake MMS text messages telling you that your Amazon/ FedEx/car order is ready, complete with a highlighted link that will likely lead to all of your phone data being stolen if you click on it...and you don't even have to be Jeff Bezos). Anyway, don't feel alone if you've fallen victim because in just that one month this amounted to 5,700,000,000 calls (that's 5.7 BILLION in one month). And according to AARP, there are currently nearly 60 different known phone and Web scams currently going on throughout the U.S. Actually, what caught my eye wasn't so much those calls but rather an "undercover" piece on LAX (the term for the Los Angeles International Airport) that appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek where a plane takes off every 50 seconds and over 100,000 passengers go through security every day, not to mention the 34,000 international passengers arriving who are knowingly (but often un-knowingly) screened 20 times before they ever exit the terminal (this will all be put to shame by the new airport in Beijing "...which provides facial recognition technology so travelers can check luggage, go through security, and board the plane without ever showing ID"). Of course much of this is made possible in space where there are 5000+ satellites orbiting our planet, a number which is expected to jump by "tens of thousands" in the next few years said another piece in the same magazine; but it's not so much the satellites as it is the over 129 million tiny pieces of space "junk" floating around (according to this month's data from the European Space Agency); no big deal you think except that the article notes: NASA says a 4-inch piece of shrapnel in low-Earth orbit has the force of 15 pounds of TNT, enough to shatter a spacecraft into thousands of pieces. Said one professor of aerospace engineering: A lot of satellites have all of a sudden gone black, and people don't know why...I suspect it's debris.
That orbiting stuff travels fast, but perhaps not as quickly as the recent corona virus* which STAT said: Some infectious disease experts are warning that it may no longer be feasible to contain the new coronavirus circulating in China. Failure to stop it there could see the virus spread in a sustained way around the world and even perhaps join the ranks of respiratory viruses that regularly infect people. "The more we learn about it, the greater the possibility is that transmission will not be able to be controlled with public health measures,” said Dr. Allison McGeer, a Toronto-based infectious disease specialist who contracted SARS in 2003 and who helped Saudi Arabia control several hospital-based outbreaks of MERS. If that’s the case, she said, “we’re living with a new human virus, and we’re going to find out if it will spread around the globe.” But their pharma report said that the other worry might be a possible contamination arriving in the production facilities that manufacture many of the world's pharmaceutical and generic drugs: China is now home to 13% of all facilities that make ingredients for medicines that are sold in the U.S., according to the Food and Drug Administration. By comparison, 28% of such facilities are in the U.S. and 26% are in the European Union...Roughly 80% of active ingredients used by commercial sources to produce finished medicines come from China, Christopher Priest, deputy assistant director at the U.S. Defense Health Agency, said in testimony given last July to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission...data is lacking on the volume of ingredients from China that reach the U.S. But a growing number of Indian generic makers purchase ingredients from China. In fact, the Indian government is trying to find ways for its domestic industry to become less reliant on Chinese suppliers... medicines imported from India account for 40% of all generics used. And roughly 90% of all prescriptions written in the U.S. are for generics.
And did I mention that the smoke from those fires in Australia (yes, still going on) are expected to fully circle the planet said the BBC on the recent report from NASA. And hey you FitBit users still trying to get your 10,000 steps in,** there was this from Popular Science and Karen Randolph, Professor of Psychology as New York University: Everyone knew that toddlers walk a lot, but when we actually counted, it was astounding. One at a time, we put infants between 12 and 19 months of age in a lab playroom equipped with toys, stairs, and a little slide, keeping a caregiver present. We filmed them, and when we reviewed the footage to track their walking, they averaged about 2,400 steps per hour. That's roughly the distance of eight American football fields! Plus, in situations where the caregiver wasn't playing with the baby, that step count almost doubled, reaching about 4,000 steps an hour. Then there's the endangered albatross, its 12-foot wingspan gliding it through countless gales and storms over its 50-year life span where it can amass its own FitBit journey of over 5 million miles, "which is about 11 round trips to the moon," said author Olivia Judson in an essay in The Atlantic.
The takeaway from all of this is that it's easy to get caught up in statistics and numbers. Beyond the Las Vegas odds-makers and the doctors who tell you that you have this long to live, and beyond the unimaginable distances of space in both time and miles, we can easily get "buried" in what are basically all predictions. Run the numbers might be good advice for those about to retire (and if you're close to retirement you may be surprised at how counter intuitive professional advice can be regarding collecting your Social Security in the U.S.), but for many people the blitz of data becomes almost numbing. How many of us truly comprehend the jump from billions to trillions that now haunts the debt load of the U.S? Or that the auto company Ford makes a F-150 truck every 30 seconds (really). We can become so cluttered with numbers that we could begin to forget the simple ordinary thing we call life. Not so Paul Theroux who at age 76 decided that he had had enough and wanted just to get back on the road, this time to discover if the Mexico he was hearing about*** was really the one that was out there. Here's part of his take which appeared in his recent book, On the Plains of Snakes: ...like the despised Mexican, the person always reminded he or she is not welcome, whom no one ever misses: I could not be more sympathetic...In the casual opinion of most Americans, I am an old man, and therefore of little account, past my best, fading into a pathetic diminuendo while flashing hi AARP card; like the old in America generally, either invisible or someone to ignore rather than respect, who will be gone soon, and forgotten, a Gringo in his dégringolade. Naturally, I am insulted by this, but out of pride I don't let my indignation show. My work is my reply, my travel is my defiance. And I think of myself in the Mexican way, not as an old man but as most Mexicans regard a senior, an hombre de juicio, a man of judgement; not ruco, worn out, beneath notice, someone to be patronized, but owned the respect traditionally accorded to an elder, someone (in the Mexican euphenmism) of La Tercera Edad, the Third Age, who might be called Dom Pablo or too (uncle) in deference. Mexican youths are required by custom to surrender their seat to anyone older. They know the saying: más sabe el diablo por viejo, que por diablo -- The devil is wise because he's old, not because he's the devil. But "Stand aside, old man, and make way for the young," is the American way.
In a sense, Theroux realized that some numbers you can't escape such as speed limits and birthdays; but then he added as he drove through "that Mexican landscape -- squalid and lush and primal and majestic," I cannot explain why, on the empty miles of these roads, I feel young. He had escaped; he had left the numbers and stereotypes and warnings behind. This now-78 year old author --one who had spent years in Africa and Singapore and Siberia and Patagonia, not to mention China and Tibet and the Kalahari and Kaisut deserts-- had learned not to trust in numbers: As an Ancient Mariner of a sort, I want to hold the doubters with my skinny hand fix them with a glittering eye, and say, "I have been to a place where none of you have ever been, where none of you can ever go. It is the past. I spent decades there and I can say, you don't have the slightest idea. Perhaps we should take note and open the door and step outside for a bit. Like Theroux and the albatross, we should stop this fascination with watching the Dow Jones or the price of Bit coins and realize that in the end, they're just numbers. The numbers will change and vanish; but we shouldn't lose sight of what else might vanish. As author Olivia Judson continued in her essay on the albatross: If, through our actions, the albatross were to pass entirely into legend, we would have diminished the richness not only of nature but of ourselves. These birds have an important cultural dimension; if they vanish, a tangible part of human culture vanishes too. More generally, if we lose these marvelous and beautiful organisms, which have evolved over such a long period and which have never existed anywhere else in our cosmos and never will, we erode our capacity for wonder, knowledge, and inspiration, and diminish the planet for those who come after us.
*Despite all of that, Quartz Obsession said not to panic since the new virus is more closely related to SARS rather than MERS; and they note that SARS has "only" a 10% fatality rate. On the other hand MERS has a 36% fatality rate.
That orbiting stuff travels fast, but perhaps not as quickly as the recent corona virus* which STAT said: Some infectious disease experts are warning that it may no longer be feasible to contain the new coronavirus circulating in China. Failure to stop it there could see the virus spread in a sustained way around the world and even perhaps join the ranks of respiratory viruses that regularly infect people. "The more we learn about it, the greater the possibility is that transmission will not be able to be controlled with public health measures,” said Dr. Allison McGeer, a Toronto-based infectious disease specialist who contracted SARS in 2003 and who helped Saudi Arabia control several hospital-based outbreaks of MERS. If that’s the case, she said, “we’re living with a new human virus, and we’re going to find out if it will spread around the globe.” But their pharma report said that the other worry might be a possible contamination arriving in the production facilities that manufacture many of the world's pharmaceutical and generic drugs: China is now home to 13% of all facilities that make ingredients for medicines that are sold in the U.S., according to the Food and Drug Administration. By comparison, 28% of such facilities are in the U.S. and 26% are in the European Union...Roughly 80% of active ingredients used by commercial sources to produce finished medicines come from China, Christopher Priest, deputy assistant director at the U.S. Defense Health Agency, said in testimony given last July to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission...data is lacking on the volume of ingredients from China that reach the U.S. But a growing number of Indian generic makers purchase ingredients from China. In fact, the Indian government is trying to find ways for its domestic industry to become less reliant on Chinese suppliers... medicines imported from India account for 40% of all generics used. And roughly 90% of all prescriptions written in the U.S. are for generics.
And did I mention that the smoke from those fires in Australia (yes, still going on) are expected to fully circle the planet said the BBC on the recent report from NASA. And hey you FitBit users still trying to get your 10,000 steps in,** there was this from Popular Science and Karen Randolph, Professor of Psychology as New York University: Everyone knew that toddlers walk a lot, but when we actually counted, it was astounding. One at a time, we put infants between 12 and 19 months of age in a lab playroom equipped with toys, stairs, and a little slide, keeping a caregiver present. We filmed them, and when we reviewed the footage to track their walking, they averaged about 2,400 steps per hour. That's roughly the distance of eight American football fields! Plus, in situations where the caregiver wasn't playing with the baby, that step count almost doubled, reaching about 4,000 steps an hour. Then there's the endangered albatross, its 12-foot wingspan gliding it through countless gales and storms over its 50-year life span where it can amass its own FitBit journey of over 5 million miles, "which is about 11 round trips to the moon," said author Olivia Judson in an essay in The Atlantic.
The takeaway from all of this is that it's easy to get caught up in statistics and numbers. Beyond the Las Vegas odds-makers and the doctors who tell you that you have this long to live, and beyond the unimaginable distances of space in both time and miles, we can easily get "buried" in what are basically all predictions. Run the numbers might be good advice for those about to retire (and if you're close to retirement you may be surprised at how counter intuitive professional advice can be regarding collecting your Social Security in the U.S.), but for many people the blitz of data becomes almost numbing. How many of us truly comprehend the jump from billions to trillions that now haunts the debt load of the U.S? Or that the auto company Ford makes a F-150 truck every 30 seconds (really). We can become so cluttered with numbers that we could begin to forget the simple ordinary thing we call life. Not so Paul Theroux who at age 76 decided that he had had enough and wanted just to get back on the road, this time to discover if the Mexico he was hearing about*** was really the one that was out there. Here's part of his take which appeared in his recent book, On the Plains of Snakes: ...like the despised Mexican, the person always reminded he or she is not welcome, whom no one ever misses: I could not be more sympathetic...In the casual opinion of most Americans, I am an old man, and therefore of little account, past my best, fading into a pathetic diminuendo while flashing hi AARP card; like the old in America generally, either invisible or someone to ignore rather than respect, who will be gone soon, and forgotten, a Gringo in his dégringolade. Naturally, I am insulted by this, but out of pride I don't let my indignation show. My work is my reply, my travel is my defiance. And I think of myself in the Mexican way, not as an old man but as most Mexicans regard a senior, an hombre de juicio, a man of judgement; not ruco, worn out, beneath notice, someone to be patronized, but owned the respect traditionally accorded to an elder, someone (in the Mexican euphenmism) of La Tercera Edad, the Third Age, who might be called Dom Pablo or too (uncle) in deference. Mexican youths are required by custom to surrender their seat to anyone older. They know the saying: más sabe el diablo por viejo, que por diablo -- The devil is wise because he's old, not because he's the devil. But "Stand aside, old man, and make way for the young," is the American way.
In a sense, Theroux realized that some numbers you can't escape such as speed limits and birthdays; but then he added as he drove through "that Mexican landscape -- squalid and lush and primal and majestic," I cannot explain why, on the empty miles of these roads, I feel young. He had escaped; he had left the numbers and stereotypes and warnings behind. This now-78 year old author --one who had spent years in Africa and Singapore and Siberia and Patagonia, not to mention China and Tibet and the Kalahari and Kaisut deserts-- had learned not to trust in numbers: As an Ancient Mariner of a sort, I want to hold the doubters with my skinny hand fix them with a glittering eye, and say, "I have been to a place where none of you have ever been, where none of you can ever go. It is the past. I spent decades there and I can say, you don't have the slightest idea. Perhaps we should take note and open the door and step outside for a bit. Like Theroux and the albatross, we should stop this fascination with watching the Dow Jones or the price of Bit coins and realize that in the end, they're just numbers. The numbers will change and vanish; but we shouldn't lose sight of what else might vanish. As author Olivia Judson continued in her essay on the albatross: If, through our actions, the albatross were to pass entirely into legend, we would have diminished the richness not only of nature but of ourselves. These birds have an important cultural dimension; if they vanish, a tangible part of human culture vanishes too. More generally, if we lose these marvelous and beautiful organisms, which have evolved over such a long period and which have never existed anywhere else in our cosmos and never will, we erode our capacity for wonder, knowledge, and inspiration, and diminish the planet for those who come after us.
*Despite all of that, Quartz Obsession said not to panic since the new virus is more closely related to SARS rather than MERS; and they note that SARS has "only" a 10% fatality rate. On the other hand MERS has a 36% fatality rate.
**Turns out that that 10,000-step figure is controversial said a piece on NPR, the benefit being the same at 7500 and even close to the same at just 4000 steps. Still, anything that drives one to exercise a bit more is important, as is diet. An interesting view on how such simple changes may indeed alter your "destined" life (and how the pharmaceutical industry may not be quite the saving grace your doctor intended) was explored in the film from director Matt Embry who has lived with multiple sclerosis for 25 years...you may be quite surprised at what you'll discover.
***Quick, what's your impression of Mexico? Cartels, poor immigrants, corrupt police, a scary place to visit if you leave the gated resorts? Said Theroux in his introduction: ...deeper in Mexico (floppy, high-domed sombreros, mariachi music, blatting trumpets, toothy grins) are the safer, salubrious hot spots you can fly to for a week, get hog-whimpering drunk on tequila, fall ill with paralyzing squitters, and come home with a woven poncho or a painted ceramic skull. Also, here and there, sunny dumping grounds for American retirees -- a tutti-frutti of grizzled gringos in permanent settlements on the coast and in gated communities and art colonies inland. Oh, and the fat cats and petrocrats in Mexico City, thirty listed billionaires...who together have more money than every other Mexican combined. But the campesinos in certain states in southern Mexico, such as Oaxaca and Chiapas, in terms of personal income, are poorer than their counterparts in Bangladesh or Kenya...Baja is both swanky and poor, the frontera is owned by the cartels and border rats on both sides...and --at the Mexico margins-- the spring-breakers, the surfers, the backpackers, the crusty retired people, honeymooners, dropouts, fugitives, gun runners, CIA scumbags and snoops, money launderers, currency smurfers, and --look over there-- an old Gringo in a car squinting down the road, thinking: Mexico is not a country. Mexico is a world, too much of a mundo to be wholly graspable, but so different from state to state in extreme independence of culture and temperament and cuisine, and in every other aspect of peculiar Mexicanismo, it is a perfect example of thatness...I cannot explain why, on the empty miles of these roads, I feel young.
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