Observe...A Story

Saturn as viewed with the eclipse; photo: NASA

    Our friend recently left after regaling us with his love of astronomy, him telling us that Saturn's rings are far from flat, their icy pieces circling like fallen pieces from a glacier (indeed, the mass of those icy rings has been estimated to be equivalent to half of our entire Antarctic shelf).  This all came about because we were driving him to the airport and we couldn't help but be mesmerized by the brightness of the planet Venus hovering so close to the moon in the sky, that and my mistakenly saying that Saturn was somewhere in the picture as well (both Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter were in the night sky some 10 days ago but have left us for the newcomers, Venus and Mercury; we do have a mini-moon now circling us, however, but it too will soon be gone).  Saturn, itself lined with both ringlets and moonlets, turns out to be quite fascinating as noted by these few tidbits from Wikipedia: Data from the Cassini space probe indicate that the rings of Saturn possess their own atmosphere, independent of that of the planet itself.  The atmosphere is composed of molecular oxygen gas (O2) produced when ultraviolet light from the Sun interacts with water ice in the rings.  Chemical reactions between water molecule fragments and further ultraviolet stimulation create and eject, among other things, O2.  According to models of this atmosphere, H2 is also present.  The O2 and H2 atmospheres are so sparse that if the entire atmosphere were somehow condensed onto the rings, it would be about one atom thick...Research based on rates of infall into Saturn favors a younger ring system age of hundreds of millions of years.  Ring material is continually spiraling down into Saturn; the faster this infall, the shorter the lifetime of the ring system.  One mechanism involves gravity pulling electrically charged water ice grains down from the rings along planetary magnetic field lines, a process termed 'ring rain'...in September 2017, the Cassini spacecraft detected an equatorial flow of charge-neutral material from the rings to the planet...adding it to the continuous 'ring rain' process implies the rings may be gone in under 100 million years.

    I don't understand much of that chemical-atmospheric talk, but those geological time frames are also difficult to comprehend since humanity as we know it has only existed for 200,000 years (although primitive humans first arrived some 6 million years ago).  Now comes the Covid-19 scare (a rational explanatory piece on the virus appears in The Atlantic), global warming (ditto, but this article from the NY Review of Books), and myriad other afflictions which we may be (or are) facing as we open Pandora's Box.  Said author Bill McKibben: The warmth we’ve added to the atmosphere—the heat equivalent, each day, of 400,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs—is already producing truly dire effects, decades or even centuries ahead of schedule.  We’ve lost more than half the summer sea ice in the Arctic; coral reefs have begun to collapse, convincing researchers that we’re likely to lose virtually all of them by mid-century; sea-level rise is accelerating; and the planet’s hydrologic cycle—the way water moves around the planet—has been seriously disrupted.  Warmer air increases evaporation, thus drought in arid areas and as a side effect the fires raging in places like California and Australia.  The air also holds more water vapor, which tends to drop back to earth in wet places, increasing the risk of flooding: America has recently experienced the rainiest twelve months in its recorded history.  In late November a European-led team analyzed what they described as nine major tipping points—involving the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the boreal forests and permafrost layer of the north, and the Amazon rainforest and corals of the tropical latitudes. What they found was that the risk of “abrupt and irreversible changes” was much higher than previous researchers had believed, and that exceeding critical points in one system increases the risk of speeding past others—for instance, melting of Arctic sea ice increases the chance of seriously slowing the ocean currents that transport heat north from the equator, which in turn disrupt monsoons.  “What we’re talking about is a point of no return,” Will Steffen, one of the researchers, told reporters.  Earth won’t be the same old world “with just a bit more heat or a bit more rainfall. It’s a cascading process that gets out of control.”

    Throw in the fall of equity markets worldwide and the disruption of supply chains (at a conference in Singapore last week, 23% of attending manufacturers said that they planned to move their facilities out of China; all of which adds to the number of financial institutions that have already done this in moving out of London prior to Brexit), one has to wonder if this market "correction" might be simply an Earth or a human "correction?"  From the Centers for Disease Control came these reports -- on obesity: More than 40% of U.S. adults were obese in 2017-2018, according to new CDC data...Overall trends: 42% of U.S. adults were considered obese in 2017-2018, with about 9% of adults classified as severely obese (BMI of 40 or higher).  Yearly trends: The 2017-2018 prevalence of obesity was the highest in nearly 20 years — prevalence of obesity in 1999-2000 was about 30%.  Rates of severe obesity were twice as high as they were 20 years ago;  On diabetes:  Between 2002-2015, the incidence of type 1 diabetes among youth increased from 19.5 cases per 100,000 people to 22.3 cases among 100,000 people.  The incidence of type 2 diabetes was 9 cases per 100,000 in 2002-2003, but increased to 13.8 cases per 100,000 people more than a decade later...Type 1 diabetes increased among those who were diagnosed at age 5 and younger, as well as among those of Native American descent.  Type 2 diabetes increased among all non-white racial groups (the CDC does add that the results were from a limited study in five states);  and from the insurer Blue Cross came a report of early onset dementia: A new analysis of claims data from Blue Cross Blue Shield finds that diagnoses for early-onset dementia and Alzheimer's disease combined have risen by 200% since 2013...Those ages 30-44 saw a 373% increase in disease diagnoses in 2017 compared to four years prior, and those ages 45-54 saw a 311% increase.  In 2017, more than 37,000 individuals were diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.  And from National Geographic came this somewhat "positive" note on how the Covid-19 virus is affecting China's illegal wildlife trade: Just how big is China’s secretive wildlife farm industry?  The closures ordered in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak show the scale of the industry, which China says it will permanently ban.  The Guardian reports the shutdown of nearly 20,000 wildlife farms, which raised species including peacocks, civets, porcupines, ostriches, wild geese, and boar.

    At times such as these it is easy to become your own observatory and just stare at the stars, to laugh with friends and try to put aside all of the negative news; but there's no denying that it is happening.  But times such as this also becomes a good opportunity to observe yourself and discover why you may be feeling as you do.  I've found that I am an observer much more than I am a participant, my friend telling my wife that people "listen" to her because she is grounded and has no pretenses; "home truths" she calls it.  Me, he said, I don't count, which is also probably true, the court jester aiming to please all parties by spitting out facts and trivia and yet never revealing my inner sanctum.  Here's how Kate Murphy put it in her book about listening: Research indicates that people who have a higher degree of self-awareness, and a related concept known as self-monitoring, are better listeners in part because they know the sorts of things that lead them to jump to the wrong conclusions and thus are less likely to do so.  Cultivating self-awareness is a matter of paying attention to your emotions while in conversation and recognizing when your fears and sensitivities --or perhaps your desires and dreams-- hijack your ability to listen well...While it can be difficult to do this kind of self-assessment, the reward is a greater capacity to understand and connect with other people.  You can only be as intimate with another person as you are with yourself.  She goes on to talk about how often we "shift" the conversation instead of "supporting" the conversation, an example being told "my dog got out last week" and responding with "my dog is always digging under the fence as well" (shifting it back to you) instead of "oh no, where did you finally find him?" (thus supporting the conversation).  Picture this with those issues above.  I got the shingles, I'm worried about the new virus, I don't think climate change is real, I support X and believe he is the best candidate or that his is the best policy, immigrants of color are a problem, the homeless should just get a job.  Is any of this worth damaging or losing a friendship?  Is any of this even worth talking about when all we're trying to do is to keep in contact?\

    Murphy noted: One of the most widely cited researchers on the topic of human relations is British anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar.  He told me a primary way we maintain friendships is through "everyday talk."  That means asking, "How are you?" and actually listening to the answer.  Dunbar is known for "Dunbar's Number." which is the cognitive limit to the number of people you can realistically manage in a social network.  He pegs it around 150...You don't have the mental or emotional capacity to maintain meaningful connections with more people than that.  But among those 150 people, Dunbar stressed that there are hierarchical "layers of friendship" determined by how much time you spend with the person.  It's kind of like a wedding cake where the topmost layer consists of only one or two people --say, a spouse and best friend-- with whom you are most intimate and interact daily.  The next layer can accommodate at most four people for whom you have great affinity, affection, and concern.  Friendships at this level require weekly attention to maintain.  Out from there, the tiers contains more casual friends who you see less often and thus, your ties are more tenuous.  Without consistent contact, they easily fall into the realm of acquaintance.  At this point, you are friendly, but not really friends, because you've lost touch with who they are, which is always evolving.  You could easily have a beer with them, but you wouldn't miss them terribly, or even notice right away, if they moved out of town.  Nor would they miss you.  An exception might be friends with whom you feel like you can pick up right where you left off even though you haven't talked to them for ages.

    In the long term, we may come to discover that we're not very different from those particles of ice around Saturn, floating in mass, layered and separated and perhaps forgetting that below us is our lifeblood, the planet that is our home.  We orbit as a thing of beauty, feeling almost invincible and yet unaware that we may be growing more and more distant with each revolution or that some of us are drifting away as new pieces come into our lives.  The world is changing, evolving as it has through the centuries; and perhaps it is time to recognize that we are doing the same.   In just a few days we will have World Wildlife Day, an actual holiday and one which prompted one editor of National Geographic to write: I’m a skeptic when it comes to “International X Day” or “World Y Day.”  Mostly they’re niche topics that give us an excuse to post photos of our cats or eat donuts.  To be clear: I’m not complaining.  But from a journalistic perspective, there’s not a ton for us there.  World Wildlife Day on the other hand—I can work with that.  The UN-designated holiday falls on this Tuesday, March 3, and its theme is “sustaining all life on Earth.”  It’s about raising awareness about the importance of our planet’s rich diversity of wildlife and what’s at risk if we continue to exploit it.  Self-awareness and listening...two big challenges for all of us.  Maybe through all the noise and static we should begin to really listen to our planet, to listen to the plant and animal life around us, to listen to our family and friends.  And maybe, just maybe, we may find that we're also starting to listen to ourselves.

UPDATED on 03/03/2020: I kept trying to update the figures on my post for the Covid-19 virus but it required an almost daily update.  The most recent figure is 3000+ deaths with 80 cases now confirmed in the U.S.  A side story on how rushing to develop a vaccine (the FDA just recently relaxed the rules for such manufacturers of testing kits for the virus) and what can go wrong, not only in the application but in the perception of such, appeared in Fortune where the Philippines mandated that children receive the dengue vaccine developed by the French firm, Sinofi.  The article is a bit lengthy but quite interesting...and this came this morning from STAT on what demographics appear to be more affected by Covid-19: A lot about Covid-19 remains a mystery, but three months into the outbreak, experts now have a better sense of who seems to be vulnerable to the disease.  Research thus far has shown that the disease is largely affecting those age 30 and older: 87% of China's cases are between 30 and 79, with fewer than 10% of infections in 20-somethings.  Only around 1% were in teens and those younger than 9.  Preliminary data seem to suggest that men may be more susceptible than women.  As with other respiratory illnesses, those with underlying health conditions seem likelier to fall seriously ill from Covid-19.  It's perhaps unsurprising, then, that the first major outbreak of the disease occurred in a nursing home, whose residents often have multiple health conditions.  As of this morning, 18 people there had been diagnosed, with six deaths.