Writing in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star last week, editor-in-chief John L. Micek advised us to look on the bright side, even though the light might seem to be fading.
The title of his op-ed?
Still think everything is awful? Here are three reasons for hope
I took careful note of Mr. Micek’s ‘three reasons for hope’, and ended up more convinced than ever. Everything is awful.
Mr. Micek wrote:
Yes, I know, American democracy is under assault. Russian President Vladimir Putin is muttering dark warnings about nuclear weapons in the face of heroic and historic resistance by Ukraine. Dozens of people are dead and large swaths of Florida have been devastated by Hurricane Ian…
These are bleak times, indeed. And the urge to simply throw your hands up in the air and declare yourself quit of the whole business is overwhelming. I’m right there with you.
But before you hit Amazon for the best deal on yurts and start Googling “How to become a digital nomad,” at least three things have happened in the last week that, if they do not fully restore your faith in humanity, will at least keep the flame alive.
Indeed, three things had happened that did not fully restore my faith in humanity, nor did they keep the flame alive. In fact, my faith in humanity, at the moment, resembles the cold, gray ashes in a well-used ashtray. Thanks in no small part to Mr. Micek’s op-ed.
Turns out that, on October 3, the illustrious Nobel Foundation gave their $900,000 prize for ‘Medicine’ to Swedish scientist Svante Pääbo.
Dr. Pääbo ‘s achievement in the field of ‘Medicine’? He apparently succeeded in sequencing the genome of a particular caveman’s skull — a Neanderthal cavemen — and “helped to launch a new field of ancient DNA study.”
For those of you who (like me) are less familiar with Neanderthals than Dr. Pääbo, they were creatures who looked like us — and who knows, maybe acted like us? — but they couldn’t cut the mustard and became extinct (a polite term for ‘everyone died’) about 40,000 years ago.
Based on the photos I found online, I believe the Neanderthals looked a lot like Dr. Pääbo. Maybe that’s why he wanted to sequence the genome.
What, exactly, the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome has to do with ‘Medicine’ in 2022, only the Nobel Foundation knows for sure. Maybe they didn’t catch wind of the COVID pandemic these past three years? Or the rising rates of chronic disease? Never heard of Alzheimer’s, perhaps?
Too close to home, I guess.
Every year in October, committees in Sweden and Norway award six Nobel Prizes recognizing a “groundbreaking contribution by an individual or organization in a specific field.” Per the instructions left by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, annual prizes are given for physiology or medicine, physics, chemistry, economic science, literature and peace work. (If Mr. Nobel hadn’t been such a serious guy, we might have had a prize for “best humor columns”. But I digress.)
On October 4, a trio of researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for their experiments in quantum information science, which, according to the Washington Post, could revolutionize computing, cryptography, and information-transfer by a method called “quantum teleportation.” The three physicists, working independently, each “showed that nature is even weirder than Einstein had dared to imagine. ” Maybe weirder than you and I had imagined. (But be warned: I have an active imagination.)
Will their discoveries help a man talk to his wife? I really sort of doubt it. Probably, it will simply make it easier for Google and Facebook to track my every move.
I expected Mr. Micek to try and get me excited about the Nobel Prize in chemistry, but he headed off in another direction to find his third reason for hope. A good choice, since he had struck out with the first two prizes, in terms of inflaming my faith in mankind.
He wrote:
And last week, NASA successfully crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid, all in an effort to prove whether it was possible to defend our very fragile planet from interstellar threats, the Washington Post also reported.
By themselves, any one of these achievements represent a massive expansion of human knowledge and scientific achievement.
Taken together, however, they’re not only a trifecta of weapons-grade wonkishness, but also a welcome reminder of the liberating power of education in a year in which too many parents were working overtime to get Toni Morrison’s books (also a Nobel winner) yanked from their kids’ school library.
I admit, he lost me there. NASA crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid doesn’t sound like a scientific achievement. It sounds like an accident. And if I know anything about NASA, a very expensive accident.
In what way did these three scientific events enhance my life? I will say it again — cold, gray ashes in a well-used ashtray.
Now, if someone could invent tires that don’t wear out, that would definitely qualify as a massive expansion of human knowledge. My last set cost me close to $400.
And is someone really working overtime to get Toni Morrison’s books yanked from our kids’ school libraries? Like… is that really going on… here in America… the land of the free?
And we’re supposed to get excited about a spacecraft crashing into an asteroid?
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.