MUENCHHAUSEN, July 28, 2016

MUENCHHAUSEN

AN ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER ABOUT ENVIRONMENT,

RENEWABLE RESOURCE TECHNOLOGY,

AND RELATED TOPICS

By BOOTSTRAP PRESS, INC.

BETHESDA, MD

JJGREENBARON(at)VERIZON.NET

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July 28, 2016

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WELCOME!

The Green Baron (TGB) welcomes one and all who take the time to read Muenchhausen. He aims to “tell it like it is” as much as possible, and avoid advocacy and ideological positions. There are enough of those to go around in other publications.

The Green Baron also welcomes comments from anyone who may read Muenchhausen. Please send comments to the e-mail address above.

OLD AGE, NEW TECH

Well, TGB is trying to bring his Muenchhausen blog back. He is soon to pass his 82^nd birthday, and as an entity from the mid-20^th century, he is sorely challenged by the new technology of the 21^st. TGB remembers manually-operated typewriters (who else remembers those!?) and actually used a Royal Portable to do much of his homework in grammar school (today called middle school) and high school. His parents obtained an IBM electric typewriter, vintage 1947, for their law office; in those days, one could only rent such a typewriter from IBM, and not purchase it. The right to purchase this machine came only after a US Supreme Court decision, or so TGB’s lawyer father told him during 1950s. So then they purchased the IBM electric and eventually took it home. After many years, it finally gave up the ghost, so to speak. TGB still has a late-20^th century Smith Corona electric that works. Ribbons may still be available for it, but should it fall into disrepair, TGB believes that persons skilled in repair of such old devices likely are no longer available.

So TGB finally went out and bought a Microsoft “Surface” 4 computer, along with a dock and a DVD player as extras (also a keyboard). This device is very light and easily portable, so TGB can sometimes go to his favorite hangout, the National Press Club (NPC, Washington, DC), and use Ethernet and surge suppressor facilities there. However, he has to learn the many intricacies of these devices and associated software, and this could, at his advanced age, be a lengthy process. Then, he needs to share any newly acquired skill with Mrs. TGB. It also is unsettling to realize that TGB often needs to appeal to his children, and even grandchildren, for help in usage of computers and associated peripheral devices and programs. One can but imagine what the future may hold in these contraptions.

TGB recalls having a conversation with his son and his elderly aunt one June day in New York in 1986. He and his son were discussing computers and software, such as they were at the time. His aunt, recalling the mid-1920s, noted, “Not only did we not have these things, but we could never imagine that such things could even be possible.”

CLIMATE AND SCOTUS

TGB purposely takes a neutral stance on the matter of climate change, or anthropogenic global warming (AGW), as it is sometimes known. For one reason, he has, since the late 1940s, had an interest in paleoclimatology going back to the Archaeologic (now called Archaean) Era. TGB reminds us all that there were multimillion-year intervals during which Earth was warm from pole to pole, even during much of the Tertiary Period of the Cenozoic Era. Then there were ice ages; the four Pleistocene-Epoch ice ages were child’s play compared with those of the Proterozoic and Paleozoic Eras. For example, the Cryogenian Glaciation of the Keweenawan Period (Proterozoic Era, perhaps 800 million years before present) lasted about 175 million years, and perhaps closed out the Proterozoic Era and, indeed, the Cryptozoic Eon. Thereafter came the Cambrian Period (Paleozoic) with its rewarmed Earth and “Species explosion”, by which new living species proliferated in the waters of the time.

But perhaps I digress. Where does SCOTUS come into all this? Well, certain prominent politicians and their staffs have moved to make public expression of doubt about predicted climate change a civil and even perhaps criminal offense under the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act of 1970, as amended. TGB expects that eventually there will be intense litigation in this regard—indeed, a major petroleum company has come under such threat—and he thinks that eventually such legal action could reach the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) as a First Amendment issue. Given the current and possible future makeup of SCOTUS, TGB hesitates to predict what the outcome of such a SCOTUS litigation would be.

DRUG RESISTANCE AGAIN

Ouch! This is something that TGB feared might happen. It seems that cancer cells, such as those of melanoma and perhaps lung cancer, are developing resistance against immunotherapy drugs, which are considered as cutting-edge therapies against certain cancers (1). It has long been observed that cancer cells can mutate in such ways as to render chemotherapy drugs powerless. Studies in this direction were led by Antoni Ribas and colleagues at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center Tumor Immunology Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. They began to get a handle on genetic changes that tumor cells undergo so they can resist the effects of immunotherapy agents. So you see, not only pathogenic bacteria develop such resistance through genetic mutation. So, apparently, do cancer cells and, yes, even fungi and insect pests.

Melanoma cells (2). 

REFERENCES:

1.     McGinley, L. “Study unlocks mechanism of cancer resistance to immunotherapy drugs”. Washington Post, July 14, 2016, p. A9.

2.   Goldsmith, P. https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/4623