From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

[giovonni]

The Man Who Seduced the 7th Fleet


Fat Leonard and some of the naval personnel he has corrupted


Remember a few months ago we had a scandal, didn’t get much coverage but a scandal nonetheless, of officers in the nuclear command who were caught using fake gambling chips, prostitutes, the usual ignorant male indulgences. Well it’s the Navy’s turn, and once again it is just as sleazy as these things always are. The thing about corruption is it almost always is about the same things, money, sex, alcohol. The point though is that something has gone seriously wrong with the Defense Department; the budgets are too large — the U.S. spends more on the military, security industrial complex than the next seven nations combined — the accountability is too small, and oversight is notably absent. And so you get this. Nobody really knows what goes on, there hasn’t been a proper audit of the DoD in decades, and it is all shrouded in secrecy. And when someone does lift up a little edge of the secrecy blanket the roaches scurry.

Craig Whitlock - The Washington Post

For months, a small team of U.S. Navy investigators and federal prosecutors secretly devised options for a high-stakes international manhunt. Could the target be snatched from his home base in Asia and rendered to the United States? Or held captive aboard an American warship?

Making the challenge even tougher was the fact that the man was a master of espionage. His moles had burrowed deep into the Navy hierarchy to leak him a stream of military secrets, thwarting previous efforts to bring him to justice.

The target was not a terrorist, nor a spy for a foreign power, nor the kingpin of a drug cartel. But rather a 350-pound defense contractor nicknamed Fat Leonard, who had befriended a generation of Navy leaders with cigars and liquor whenever they made port calls in Asia ... Read the rest

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After wave of anti-abortion laws, US sees signs of women taking drastic measures


A man walks past the former site of a clinic that offered abortions in El Paso, Texas,
in October 2014.Credit: Juan Carlos LLorca/AP

The hysterical mouth frothing anti-choice hate movement that is obsessed with taking away a woman’s right to control her own body has taken us back to pre-Roe v Wade days with very predictable results. Here is a report on what is happening on the ground.

Molly Redden - The Guardian (U.K.)

Five years into a surge of anti-abortion legislation, experts say women are increasingly turning to dangerous methods to end their pregnancies ... Read the rest

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Perspectives on antibiotic resistance: how we got here, where we’re headed


Colonies of E. coli bacteria.
Credit: CDC/via Reuters

This seems to be a day for news on the great meta-trends and how we are doing in facing them. First climate change now, in this report, the collapse of antibiotic medicine. Here is the sad news on that meta-trend. Once again short-term greed is the problem for which we cannot seem to find an answer.

- The Conversation

On May 26, researchers at Walter Reed National Military Medical Centers reported that they had detected bacteria with a gene that makes it resistant to colistin, the antibiotic of last resort. The news has health officials and scientists deeply concerned because this is the first time that the gene, called MCR-1, has been identified in the United States.

The gene was found in a strain of E. coli, from the urine of a Pennsylvania woman who was treated for a urinary tract infection in late April. Fortunately, in this case, the woman’s infection was treatable with antibiotics. What worries officials, however, is that MCR-1 is mobile. It can be passed on to other bacteria ... Read the rest

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Why are fewer people getting married?



Throughout the world, including U.S., the proportion of couples who actually marry is declining, as this report lays out. This also correlates with a decline in the percentage of people who are actively involved with a religious organization. But, as the report describes this is a meta-trend and a complex issue with many ramifications.

Jay L. Zagorsky - The Conversation

June kicks off the U.S. wedding season. Whether you love nuptials or hate them, an astounding trend is occuring: fewer couples are tying the knot.

The number of U.S. marriage ceremonies peaked in the early 1980s, when almost 2.5 million marriages were recorded each year. Since then, however, the total number of people getting married has fallen steadily. Now only about two million marriages happen a year, a drop of almost half a million from their peak.

As a result, barely more than half of adults in the U.S. say they’re living with a spouse. It is the lowest share on record, and down from 70 percent in 1967 ... Read the rest

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Why A Smart Contact Lens is the Ultimate Wearable



Here is what may be a real game changer in how we interact with the net.

Mike Elgan - Computerworld

Systems will shrink so small that they can be embedded into an electronic contact lens.
Talk about a vision for the future!

Read the rest

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Chattanooga Was a Typical Postindustrial City.
Then It Began Offering Municipal Broadband.


The Tennessee River runs through the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee

Here is yet another proof that social policies that foster wellness are cheaper and more productive, and much pleasanter, than Randian profit above all, every man for himself alternatives. It is so obvious, but so hard to learn when one is blinded by greed.

Peter Moskowitz - The Nation

Downtown Chattanooga looks like a lot of postindustrial cities: wide streets, a mix of old brick buildings, and uninspired ’60s-era brutalism. Except there’s something here that many small downtowns do without these days: people. And many of them are here not just for the usual accoutrements of your average gentrified downtown—fancy restaurants, condos, and concert venues (though those do exist here), but for something more basic, and arguably much more important: the Internet ... Read the rest

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Will Electric Cars Destabilize the World?



This is a very cogent and important essay about what is coming in the transition out of the carbon energy era. David Koranyi makes points that you will need to be aware to make sense about what is happening. I agree with him. This is not going to be easy because it has massive geopolitical implications.

David Koranyi - The National Interest

After a deep dive, oil prices are slowly crawling back up on the back of resurging demand from China and India in particular, as well as looming supply shortages from Nigeria to Venezuela. Yet oil markets are in for a rough ride, as uncertainties mount regarding oil’s continued predominance as transportation fuel in the coming decades. An accelerated adoption of electric vehicles would hasten the end of the oil era, and could cause significant geopolitical turbulence as producer countries heavily reliant on oil revenues will struggle to diversify their economies. We are already witnessing the destabilizing effects of low oil prices in the Middle East, while Russia’s aggressive behavior can also be partially explained by its domestic economic woes ... Read the rest

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Small-Town America Has a Serious Drinking-Water Problem



The thing about these water stories is that they are almost entirely local, that is unless you happen to read, and why would you, a range of local and small circulation publications you would never get a proper sense of the breadth of this problem — and it is a very big problem.

The reason I have chosen to run a second story on this issue in today’s edition is precisely to give readers a sense of what is actually going on.

My takeaway from all of it is that you would be well advised to have your water tested where you live and where you work, and your kids go to school. The research is absolutely clear that environmental toxins are the source of a litany of health problems, and it starts with the water you drink.

Julia Lurie - Mother Jones

On a sweltering day last July, a team of scientists stood before a crowded room of people from the tiny town of Sanders, Arizona, and showed them a photo of a dilapidated wooden shack covered by hole-filled tarps. This, the scientists explained, was the town's water source.

Tonya Baloo, a longtime resident and mother of two, did a double take. "It looked like a Third World country," she says. "I was like, 'Is this Africa?'"

Read the rest

[giovonni]

Chile Has So Much Solar Energy It’s Giving It Away for Free



The transition out of the carbon era is so much more complicated than the simplistic models I see in most of the media. Chile’s story presents a good example of what I mean. Based on the research I am doing I think one of the central issues, and that is why I picked this story, is that alternative energy is not going to develop on the monopolistic national grid, profit above all model. For investors and corporate executives it is going to be very painful. Wh0 will benefit I think are workers. The transition is going to create millions of jobs at the local level.

Vanessa Dezem and Javiera Quiroga - Bloomberg News

Chile’s solar industry has expanded so quickly that it’s giving electricity away for free.

Spot prices reached zero in parts of the country on 113 days through April, a number that’s on track to beat last year’s total of 192 days, according to Chile’s central grid operator. While that may be good for consumers, it’s bad news for companies that own power plants struggling to generate revenue and developers seeking financing for new facilities ... Read the rest

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Desalination Breakthrough: Saving the Sea from Salt



Here is some good news about a little discussed but very important trend: Obtaining potable water from seawater. Desalinization as presently done is expensive and productive of waste CO2. It causes climate change and is environmentally devastating to the sea and its ecosystem. This report offers a solution which, like all wellness solutions is proving cheaper, more efficient, more productive, more pleasant to live under, and more effective.

Erica Gies - Scientific American

Farid Benyahia wants to solve two environmental problems at once: excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and excess salt in the Persian Gulf (aka the Arabian Gulf). Oil and natural gas drive the region’s booming economies—hence the excess CO2—and desalination supplies the vast majority of drinking water, a process that creates concentrated brine waste that is usually dumped back into the gulf.

Benyahia, a chemical engineer at Qatar University, thinks he may have hit on a neatly efficient way to address the problem. “The goal is to solve two nasty environmental problems with one smart solution and generate useful, marketable products to offset partially the cost of storing CO2,” he says ... Read the rest

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Scientists attempting to harvest human organs in pigs create human-pig embryo

The Chimera Trend, about which I have written several papers over the years, confronts us ever more urgently. This technology is developing in the absence of almost any public debate, except in the small academic scientific and medical world, which has considerable reservations. Just start with how many human genes do you have to have to be considered a human? Do we have the right to turn animals into organ machines? We are embarked upon a course with grave ethical issues and it is not being discussed properly, and augurs consequences that we cannot even comprehend today.

Nicola Davis and Kevin Rawlinson - The Guardian (U.K.)

Scientists trying to grow human organs inside pigs in an attempt to tackle a shortage of donors have successfully created part-human, part-pig embryos.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis combined human stem cells and pig DNA and allowed the embryos to mature for 28 days, before terminating the experiment and analysing the tissue ...
Read the rest

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Scientists confirm DNA holds a second layer of information



Here is a major breakthrough in our knowledge about DNA and how it operates. It is amazing how quickly the secrets of our biological code are becoming known. The findings discussed in this report were published in the journal PLOS One.

Michael Irving - GizMag/Leiden Institute of Physics

Physicists at Leiden Institute of Physics have confirmed a long-standing hypothesis, that a second layer of information exists on top of the genetic code in DNA.

Everything that makes you you is in your DNA, but a long-time hypothesis suggests that you're not just a product of the genetic code itself, but also the mechanical cues that determine how that information folds up inside your cells. Now, theoretical physicists in the Netherlands have confirmed that this second layer of information does indeed exist ... Read the rest

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For First Time in Modern Era, Living With Parents Edges Out
Other Living Arrangements for 18- to 34-Year-Olds



The rise of multi-generational living situations, basically children being too poor to live on their own, is a major U.S. trend, as this research survey reports, although you won’t see news stories about this national transition. It is a sign of America taking on the characteristics we normally ascribe to developing poor countries.

Richard Fry - Pew Research Center

Broad demographic shifts in marital status, educational attainment and employment have transformed the way young adults in the U.S. are living, and a new Pew Research Center analysis of census data highlights the implications of these changes for the most basic element of their lives – where they call home. In 2014, for the first time in more than 130 years, adults ages 18 to 34 were slightly more likely to be living in their parents’ home than they were to be living with a spouse or partner in their own household.

This turn of events is fueled primarily by the dramatic drop in the share of young Americans who are choosing to settle down romantically before age 35. Dating back to 1880, the most common living arrangement among young adults has been living with a romantic partner, whether a spouse or a significant other. This type of arrangement peaked around 1960, when 62% of the nation’s 18- to 34-year-olds were living with a spouse or partner in their own household, and only one-in-five were living with their parents ... Read the rest

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Catholic legislators singled out by church over bill
giving abuse victims more time to sue


Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles Joseph Chaput attends a news conference. Roman Catholic legislators say they have been publicly shamed during Mass, called out in church bulletins and disinvited to parish events as the Philadelphia Archdiocese campaigns against a bill that would give victims of child sexual abuse more time to sue the church.

I confess to you I could not be a Roman Catholic. Forget about the theology. It is the moral depravity that I can not stomach. Last week I began seeing stories that the Roman church had hired lobbyists to persuade the state legislature to vote against a bill that would allow child sexual abuse victims a longer period of time in which to file a law suit. I thought it was despicable. Using the dollars and quarters put by grandmothers and children into your collection plate to pay lawyers to defend you against your sexual abuse of children was just a bridge too far. And then I came across this.

Kristen De Groot - National Post (Canada)/Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA — Roman Catholic legislators say they have been publicly shamed during Mass, called out in church bulletins and disinvited to parish events as the Philadelphia Archdiocese campaigns against a bill that would give victims of child sexual abuse more time to sue the church.

Rep. Nick Miccarelli, a Delaware County Republican, said he was shocked to learn that the weekly bulletin at his church mentioned that he had voted for the bill.

“I’ve been to Iraq and back and there’s very little that makes my jaw drop, but seeing that in parish bulletin, my jaw hit the floor,” said Miccarelli, who served two tours in Iraq in the Army National Guard. “I was in disbelief” ... Read the rest

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Early Puberty in Girls Is Becoming Epidemic and Getting Worse



I am myself a father of daughters, and to think of my girls, their reaction to attention from strangers, their sense of their bodies at those ages and to imagine them with breasts in L.A. is so very wrong. Children that age are supposed to be children, their task play and imagination, not being a sexual target. Like the epidemic of obesity that plagues us this is yet another cost of a civilization run with profit as its priority. This report presents the story of what is happening to the girls of America — Sixteen percent of U.S. girls experiencing breast development by the age of 7. Thirty percent by the age of 8.

Notice particularly the role of diet in this trend.


Martha Rosenberg - Alternet (U.S.)

Padded bras for kindergarteners with growing breasts to make them more comfortable? Sixteen percent of U.S. girls experiencing breast development by the age of 7? Thirty percent by the age of 8? Clearly something is affecting the hormones of U.S. girls—a phenomenon also seen in other developed countries. Girls in poorer countries seem to be spared—until they move to developed countries.

No scientists dispute that precocious or early-onset puberty is on the rise but they do not agree on the reasons. Is it bad diets and lack of exercise that cause growing obesity? Is it soft drinks themselves, even when not linked to obesity? Is it the common chemicals known as endocrine disrupters that exert estrogen-like effects (and also cause obesity)? Is it the many legal, unlabeled hormones used in the U.S. to fatten livestock? Some researchers even believe precocious puberty could be triggered by sociological factors like having no father in the home or even stress ... Read the rest

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The Mistrust of Science



The rising fear and distrust of science I consider to be part of the Willful Ignorance Trend that is leading us into neo-feudalism. As you read this remember that 46% of Americans believe the world was created in the last 10,000 years, with all the species more or less just as they are today. When you combine this with the wealth inequity trend it bodes to create of society of ignorant consumer peasants.

This essay describes where we are today very well. And because I agree with this, I see hope that wellness can still become our priority.

Atul Gawande, MD - The New Yorker

If this place has done its job—and I suspect it has—you’re all scientists now. Sorry, English and history graduates, even you are, too. Science is not a major or a career. It is a commitment to a systematic way of thinking, an allegiance to a way of building knowledge and explaining the universe through testing and factual observation. The thing is, that isn’t a normal way of thinking. It is unnatural and counterintuitive. It has to be learned. Scientific explanation stands in contrast to the wisdom of divinity and experience and common sense. Common sense once told us that the sun moves across the sky and that being out in the cold produced colds. But a scientific mind recognized that these intuitions were only hypotheses. They had to be tested.

When I came to college from my Ohio home town, the most intellectually unnerving thing I discovered was how wrong many of my assumptions were about how the world works—whether the natural or the human-made world. I looked to my professors and fellow-students to supply my replacement ideas. Then I returned home with some of those ideas and told my parents everything they’d got wrong (which they just loved). But, even then, I was just replacing one set of received beliefs for another. It took me a long time to recognize the particular mind-set that scientists have. The great physicist Edwin Hubble, speaking at Caltech’s commencement in 1938, said a scientist has “a healthy skepticism, suspended judgement, and disciplined imagination”—not only about other people’s ideas but also about his or her own. The scientist has an experimental mind, not a litigious one ... Read the rest

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Farm Confessional: I Hope My Family’s Farm Doesn’t Become a Golf Course—
But I Won’t Take it On


The author's daughter, Mae, on their family's farm in Ohio.

In 2013 I wrote a paper, The Transformation of the American Food System, and Its Effects on Wellness, because having grown up on a farm I wondered what was the status of farms 50 years later. Three years late everything I saw in that data has only become more concerning. Here is what I mean.


By Meg Thompson on June 3, 2016

I sat with my old friend from high school, one hand wrapped around a beer in the nearly empty bar. We had been in FFA together; we wore our stiff, blue corduroy jackets across the stage at many state conventions. FFA stands for Future Farmers of America, but the organization is quick to point out that it is not just for farmers. You do not have to live on a farm, or plan to, in order to join.

When I asked him why he didn’t want to take over his family’s farm, he rubbed his thumb against his index and middle fingers.

Money ... Read the rest

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America’s Election Shame


U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally
in West Allis, Wisconsin, United States, April 3, 2016.
Credit: Reuters/Jim Young

Here is what America looks like to those in Europe. Once we were seen as leaders of democracy, fairness, and good sense. Today, we are increasingly seen as a corrupt nation ruled by an war-crazed oligarchy driven by hate, greed, racism, and stupidity. And this isn’t some hack in North Korea writing, but a prominent writer in Germany.

Markus Feldenkirchen - Der Spiegel (Germany)

US political culture long served as an example to others. But the political culture on display in the Republican primaries has been a mixture of primary school, mafia and porn industry.

America wasn't the world's first democracy, but for a long time, it was its proudest. No other country spoke as passionately or confidently about its system of government. If things continue as they have in this primary election, those days will be numbered.

The United States' political culture served as a model for others, one that was worthy of emulation and exported worldwide. Today, however, US diplomats look ridiculous when giving lessons in democracy to others ... Read the rest

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The History of Privatization: How an Ideological and Political Attack
on Government Became a Corporate Grab for Gold



Here is a tough minded essay on the rise of the privatization trend that is
trashing the public institutions of America. It is not a pretty story.

Donald Cohen - TPM

The post-WWII era was a tough time for conservative economists, academics, intellectuals, and business leaders. Social Security, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Securities and Exchange Act, and other New Deal programs represented a dangerous expansion of government’s role in the economy and society – nothing short of a frontal assault on freedom and the beginnings of socialism in the U.S.

Today, after 50 years of attack on government, privatization is a standard conservative response to tight public budgets, a key pillar of attacks on government, and a lucrative market opportunity for domestic and global corporations. Large corporations operate virtually every type of public service including prisons, welfare systems, infrastructure, water and sewer, trash, and schools ... Read the rest

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More Americans have died in the past 50 years of gunshot wounds
than in every U.S. war combined



Five SR readers who live in other countries wrote me this morning and asked me variations of the same question, “Knowing what you know, and what you have written, would you say that a LGBT person, or a Muslim would be safe visiting the United States?” To be honest I didn’t know how to answer them, and told them so. What would you have said?

Jeva Lange - The Week

"America has a gun problem, and the solution to that problem is up to fair debate. But there is no denying that in the past 50 years, guns have killed more people than have died in every single U.S. war — combined.

Since the Vietnam War, about 67,000 Americans have died in combat.

In that same time frame, about 1.5 million have died in the US after being shot by a gun.

Gun deaths in this country are just as common as car crashes. Guns kill more people than AIDS, war, illegal drug overdoses, and terrorism combined. And when you look back over the entire history of the country — stretching back to the Revolutionary War — you learn that guns have killed more Americans than all the wars we've fought in combined. [Vox]

According to Vox's research, which could only find reliable data back to 1968, about 1.49 million Americans have died of gunshot wounds since Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. By comparison, only about 1.17 million people have died in combat since the U.S. was founded, with more Americans dying from guns during the years of the Obama administration than all the Americans in World War I.

Of the approximately 33,000 deaths a year, most are suicides, although an entire 11,000 a year are homicides. Mass shootings, such as the one in Orlando, are also on the rise."

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