Fit to survive?

Most of us have heard the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ and immediately think of Charles Darwin. It has also been used by racists who thought that it explained their dominance over other races. And now we have an idiot in the White House who couldn’t possibly understand the complex science of evolution, but assuredly regards himself as the ‘fittest’ - ever ! 

First, it was not Darwin who coined the phrase, and it is not a good description of how evolution works. Evolution works through mistakes occurring in the copying of a creature’s DNA as billions of cells in the body of an animal or plant multiply either as part of growth or just renewal, say of skin cells. The DNA copying mechanism is pretty accurate, but every now and then a mistake gets made – termed a mutation. Quite often the change has no effect. Other times it causes a problem, and at other times it leads to some beneficial change, some improvement. It’s just the luck of the draw, and the circumstances in which the creature finds itself at that time.

Here’s an interesting case. One minor change in the DNA coding for our hemoglobin can lead to sickle-cell anemia, not a great thing to have. However, if you do have this abnormality it gives you resistance to malaria; so in certain circumstances it’s not such a bad thing to have, the alternative being a high chance of dying. The result is that surprisingly high percentages – up to 32% -  of people living in parts of the world where malaria is still common (Central Africa, south India, and a few parts of Greece) have this mutation. It certainly doesn’t leave you feeling the fittest, but you’re fitter than other people in that particular situation who don’t have the sickle-cell mutation.  

So a more accurate wording to describe the evolutionary process would be ‘survival of the fitter for the current situation’. The change might be more fur, and because the animal is in a cold place it’s a help and so this furrier animal has more offspring. But then sometime later, because of a change in the climate or because the animal has migrated to a warmer place, then the thicker fur becomes a handicap. And that’s how all living things have evolved over four billion years from the first simple microscopic cells. This is a difficult concept to grasp, but with some cells dividing every half hour, four billion years is a very long time.

We humans went through a long and very difficult period in our early development. A natural period of climate change caused the jungle of East Africa to thin out. Like our chimpanzee cousins we had mostly depended on a diet of fruit plus an occasional bit of small mammal meat. Now we were starving and were forced to go hunt larger mammals. This developed some good teamwork skills. However, each small group or tribe would often find themselves up against another group in the next valley over. It often became a case of either they starved or you starved. Tribalism involving violence against the other was born. We evolved to be fitter in surviving compared to the other guy in these particularly difficult circumstances.

In a brief exchange with Jane Goodall once I learned that our nearest relative chimpanzees do attack neighboring groups and kill; but nowhere near on the scale that human armies or 9/11 style terrorists do, not to mention the Nazi Holocaust, or the many millions who died under Soviet communism or Mao’s purges in China. Our big brains enable us to kill on a massive scale when we so decide.

Now, instead of living in small groups with a ridge of hills or a river separating us from a tribal enemy, millions of us live in cramped cities with people next door who are a different color or dress differently or who speak a different language  - and so too often our instinct is to be on our guard or openly critical of those who are different from us.  This tribalism is deeply ingrained. This evolved stance did make us fitter a hundred thousand years ago. Now this ingrained nature is a serious handicap for future peaceful human development. 

Yes we evolved a big brain, but sometimes we can be too clever for our own good. We’re clever enough to build an atom bomb or an ICBM or hack into another nation’s computer system, but often not clever enough to turn an enemy into a friend.

So this is the creature we are. Our natures evolved in order to survive in the very difficult conditions in Africa a few hundred thousand years ago. Can this complex creature survive into the future with these two combined evolved traits of cleverness and vindictiveness?  I hope we can increasingly resolve the conflict between these two features of our nature; but there are times when I get quite worried.

Strange bedfellows

Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin go down in history as two of the most evil men. Both were responsible for the deliberate murder of many millions of people. Even though Hitler was a fascist and Stalin a communist, which in theory were supposed to be the very opposite of each other, their foreign ministers Ribbentrop and Molotov signed a pact on August 23rd, 1939. This was all so that just ten days later Germany could invade Poland and begin its expansion eastward. Then in less than two years, in June, 1941, Germany moved further eastwards by invading the USSR breaking the earlier pact, because of course agreement pacts don’t mean a thing to such evil people.

For most of my life we Western folk have been clear on these stark facts of history. Both fascists and communists were bad, and the future lay with democrats, many in Europe and North America calling ourselves Christian democrats, sometimes with a capital D. My mother would have called herself a Christian socialist, and although that was broadly accepted in Europe since WWII, it has always been looked upon with suspicion in the United States, where we had to have no truck with communists or socialists.

But now in 2017 I’m getting all confused. American evangelical leaders go off to Russia and get wined and dined by Putin folk, Putin plays a major part in getting Trump elected, while 90% of white evangelical Christians vote for him despite the overwhelming evidence that Trump, with his recorded boasts of his sexual attacks on women, is no more Christian than Genghis Khan.

So the Christian right in America has flipped right around from being for Barry Goldwater in 1964 (he lost thank god); to now supporting a sexual assaultant who is pally with a communist. A few years ago Putin was a senior figure in the USSR’s KGB. One could not hold that position without being a solid member of the Soviet Communist Party. Maybe he’s seen the light, but the only light I think he sees is the chance to rip up the western democracies while we have a sinful idiot as ‘leader of the Free World.’

This is why it reminds me of the Hitler-Stalin pact, which lasted less than two years before one side did the dirt on the other, as was intended all along. One thing is clear this time – Putin is far smarter than Trump. This doesn’t bode well for America. It also leaves me asking what the hell do Pence and Tillerson intend to get out of this, two guys who are I think a little smarter than Trump, but who I wouldn’t trust further than I could throw them.

Enough said.  

Why he’s not fit to be President.

I took great note of Rep. John Lewis’ statement that he will not attend this coming Friday’s inauguration because he does not see Donald Trump as a legitimate President of the United States. This is pretty strong stuff, and Rep. Lewis is not one for loose talk. So what’s going on?  There are several pieces to the puzzle

First, one of Trump’s close advisors is Paul Manafort, best known for his lobbying efforts on behalf of the pro-Russian Ukrainian dictator Viktor Yanukovich who was overthrown by popular demand in 2014 and then fled into Putin’s arms. Putin then invaded Ukraine annexing the Crimean part of the country, the only invasion of a European country since WWII.

Second, US intelligence has now confirmed that Russian hackers, at the behest of Putin, hacked Democratic party e-mails, and then through Julian Assange, who is wanted in Sweden on rape charges, and since 2012 has been holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London to avoid extradition, released these e-mails at inconvenient times for the Democratic party during the US election campaign, definitely and deliberately damaging Hilary Clinton’s campaign.  There are indications that Trump knew about this Russian hacking, and even a claim that he helped pay some of the hackers himself. If true, this amounts to treason.

Third, there is some indication that Russian hackers may have been able to fiddle with out-of-date polling machines in rural Pennsylvania, enough to swing that state Trump’s way. Remember him saying on the stump – more than once  - that if he didn’t win Pennsylvania then the election was rigged. He probably knew more than he was letting on.

Trump has no conscience nor political sense to see that allowing himself to falsely win the US election through help from the Russian leader might have untoward consequences down the road. But, he has no moral conscience, and as Director of the CIA John Brennan said a couple of days ago, Trump doesn’t understand the threats posed by Putin’s Russia. Let me make it clear here - I am not anti-Russian; rather I am pro-Russia, have made several visits to that beautiful country and am happy to have several Russian friends. No, the tragedy is Putin’s dictatorial rule of that great country.

Why would a Russian leader do all that he could to put Trump in the White House? Normally you might expect Putin to wish for a less conservative American leader. Here are some reasons. First, Trump doesn’t understand the fairly simple science behind climate change – even though his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago is beginning to get flooded. But Putin wants a climate denier American leader because one country that could well benefit from global warming - in the near future at least - is Russia. This is because the warming oceans and rapidly retreating north polar ice cap will mean that Russia will be able to operate some naval bases more year round from its northwest coast.

There’s another reason. Why do you think Putin is happy with Rex Tillerson, former head of ExxonMobil, becoming Secretary of State? Well the two men are already friends, and Tillerson is happy too with Trump’s promise to pull out of the Paris agreement on climate change. Not that Tillerson doesn’t accept the reality of climate change – he’s cleverer than Donald; but he has been lying for years to ExxonMobil shareholders, and is now being sued in court over that by the Attorney Generals of New York and Massachusetts. Now why are Putin, Trump and Tillerson all in bed together? Because a warmer Russia will make oil drilling easier there; and you can be sure all three men stand to gain financially from that.

But it’s not just Trump’s inability to understand climate change. He also doesn’t understand the intricacies of NATO defenses.  He keeps saying that NATO is obsolete. Eisenhower and Reagan must be turning in their graves. This is another major reason Putin worked to get Trump elected. Meanwhile, in recent months Putin has been moving his armed forces up to the borders with the three Baltic States. US intelligence has certainly informed the in-coming president. I bet he had to look up where the Baltic States are – yep that’s right Donald, once back under Russian control the Russian navy will have better access to the ocean again. It’s not very complicated. President Obama and the NATO commanders are so concerned that just in these last few days American armed forces have been moving into Eastern Europe at the request of Poland and other East European countries.

These are some of the reasons that I agree with Rep Lewis – Trump is not fit to be president; and I’ll go further and say that he stole the election with the connivance of Putin. Wow!  Just a year ago, if I’d come out with this as a plot for a movie, you’d say Nah -  it’s too unrealistic, especially with a Republican candidate supported by conservative Christians. Yep, I keep thinking I’ll wake up from this James Bond movie dream at some point.

But it’s real folks; and it will get really serious in the coming weeks. Because, if all this wasn’t enough – here’s the latest from a source in the British intelligence community. Putin has information about Trump’s sexual trysts in a Moscow hotel some while back; and about his financial dealings in Russia - just one of many reasons he didn’t want to have us look at his tax returns – not of course that he would declare these things to the IRS.

In other words, Putin has some blackmailing hold on Trump. But, sooner or later, with a lot of help from US intelligence, Trump will begin to see how he’s being used; and then boy will he get mad. Now using his finger to tweet is one thing, but losing his temper and using his finger to push The Button is quite another. That’s why I’m very worried and why I agree with Rep Lewis – Trump is not fit to be President. We simply have to hope that over the next months enough Republican congress-people will come to realize this and have enough good sense and patriotism to move to impeach him.

It’s going to get really rough

If you think I’m being a bit of a worry-wort here’s the latest Time magazine’s headline on the issue of climate change – Trump’s presidency could mean the end of a livable climate heading an article by Bryan Walsh. As Walsh points out it was incredible timing as the annual U.N. climate summit celebrated the Paris Agreement on November 7^th, only to be followed on the 9^th with the election of Donald Trump who, amongst the leaders of nearly two hundred nations (basically the whole world), will be the only one who doesn’t accept the undeniable truth of climate change.

CBS News ran a piece about the serious threat of climate change and showed a map of the USA with the states that are already, and will much more, suffering the most. They chose to color those states in red and for a moment I thought they were showing the same map that they’d showed in the early hours of Nov 9^th. Heh, folks in those Southern states and some mid-western ones who voted Trump in - I hope you’ll remember and take note when your homes and farms are flooded and the stronger and more frequent hurricanes and tornadoes roar over your homes. Not very bright; and it surely is a sad coincidence (not really) that many of these states also have the worst performing public schools in the nation.

Trump most probably couldn’t tell you what Carbon dioxide is or how it’s formed. And Vice-President elect Pence said the other day that he dislikes all science. Wonderful, don’t expect any antibiotics, which scientific research has labored to produce for you, if you get an infection Mike. But the folks who financed and pushed for a Trump victory – they know damned well what their up to. As Walsh points out in his Time magazine article, CO2 levels have gotten dramatically higher in just the last few years, so that they’re now much higher than they’ve ever been in the last 400,000 years! 

Then there’s an even more disturbing article in the current issue of the New York Review of Books written by two members of the Rockefeller family – David Kaiser and Lee Wasserman. They begin by saying that the Rockefeller Family Fund is in the process of divesting from ExxonMobil Corporation. This is because research by Columbia University School of Journalism has discovered that Exxon scientists have known for decades about the link between burning fossil fuels and climate change, and then after informing the company executives have agreed to come up with - if not downright lies, obfuscations. Kaiser and Wasserman report that currently the Attorney Generals of New York, California and Massachusetts are therefore investigating whether ExxonMobil is guilty of fraud by failing to disclose to its shareholders the business risks involved in major climate change which they are fully aware of. Of course, don’t expect any support from the incoming Attorney General.

And then if all this wasn’t enough in my readings, my latest copy of Scientific American arrived and it has an article on the accelerating thawing of the permafrost mostly in northern Canada and Alaska and northern Russia. The article by Prof. Ted Schuur of Northern Arizona University states that this “Northern Hemisphere’s permafrost zone contains an estimated 1.035 trillion metric tons of carbon in the top three meters of frozen soil, which could escape if the ground thaws, amplifying global warming significantly.”

Happy Thanksgiving folks.  

Thoughts on the size of our universe

A few days ago I read an astounding article put out by Associated Press on the latest findings regarding the size of our universe. Astrophysicists now believe our universe contains two trillion galaxies !  A galaxy is a collection of stars. Our own galaxy contains approximately 200 billion stars! These numbers are virtually impossible to get one’s mind around. Let’s be conservative and assume that our galaxy is above average in size and assign 100 billion stars per galaxy – then we end up with 200 billion, trillion stars! 

Other recent research is finding that many stars have planets going around them like in our solar system. Why for so long many assumed that our solar system was unique I can’t think. Our solar system has eight planets, but again let’s be conservative and say that the average solar system has just two planets, then we come to the figure of 400 billion, trillion planets.

By studying the light coming from other parts of the universe we know that it’s all made up of the same elements. These numbers are so huge it is certain that many other planets will be very similar to ours, with oceans and continents, and similar climate. As we understand the conditions for the carbon-based life that we have – we need a planet not too big, not too small and with a good amount of water, and circling a sun that’s the right size and strength. Let’s be carefully conservative here and say that these conditions may only occur for one in a million planets, we still end up with 400,000 trillion planets. Biochemists are puzzled by how life started on ours – that’s if you don’t involve a God intervention. But life did start up and surprisingly soon after planet Earth began its existence – about 500 million years after its creation, most of that time waiting till things cooled down from a ball of fire. Let’s be conservative once more and say that even if all the conditions were conducive, that some form of self-reproducing material only started up on one in a thousand of these life-possible planets, we still end up with 400 trillion planets in our universe with life on them. Holy cow! – there’s probably another Bryan Hamlin typing up a similar blog somewhere else J 

Having already read the morning paper with it’s Trump/Brexit/Aleppo headlines I’m not so sure about claiming intelligent life on this planet, but seeing as I’m posting this on the internet I’ll call it ‘technically astute’ or a TA sort of life. So what might be the chances of TA life on any of the other 400 trillion planets with life on them?

Even if this were only a one in a million possibility that would leave us with 400 million other places in the universe with ‘clever’ life on them. But even with all our modern technology one basic fact that we’ve learned is that you can’t send a message faster than the speed of light, and these other planets are often thousands or even millions of light-years away. So we send a message saying: ‘Hi, we’re pretty intelligent, are you able to reply and tell us how you’re getting; we’ll have to wait several thousand years for a reply.

So, it’s virtually certain that there is life on other planets, and a good chance that some of that life will have evolved intelligent forms, but little chance of any communication. Frustrating, ‘cos right now we could do with a bit of help.