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 82nd
birthday, and as an entity from the mid-20th century, he is sorely
challenged by the new technology of the 21st. 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-20th
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
