SeniorJunior

Contrasts in Minds Burtynsky* set out bread and cheese, salad, and olives on a hardwood table. “What took out the dinosaurs was a meteor impact,” he said. “We, the human species, are now that impact. Humans are shifting the balance of the planet, and the choice rests within us to destroy it all, or not. It’s a huge, complex thing to solve. We are a predator species run amok.” He's discussing the Anthropocene, that new geological age (like the Pliestocene or the Jurassic) that started when humans started impacting the world in a way that will leave a geologic imprint. Trump**, opinionating on global warming:  "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non- competitive." He's discussing Heaven Knows What, or more specifically some of the crazy stuff he believes. * Burtynsky is the epic photographer (he shoots epic scenes), quoted in The  New Yorker,  an epic magazine. **Trump, can ...

Russia? Ye who actually blog know you get "performance" data on how many page views you get, and where they are from. Here is one of Google's Blogspot reports on how this venerable olde thang is doing on the world blog market. SeniorJunior is now at  72,818 page views, and here is where they originate:  The darker the green, the more the viewing. The concentration of views from Russia is downright amazing to me. The complete lack of sampling from the British Isles is depressing, but hey.... Audience  Wouldn't it be weird if ... aw, forget it. Postscript Mar 31, 2017:  I just can't forget it... Almost certainly all those Russian "page views" were hacking probes. Since 2/3s of all of them are from Linux operating systems, and Linux actually accounts for maybe 3% of all operation systems, it must be those badass hackers. I hope their bots are enjoying themselves.

Give predicting a shot Why not? Badda boom. The horrifying news that there is a massive spike in the most serious form of black lung disease in coal mining country couldn't come at a more ironic time. The great NPR investigative work has put a reality light on how the coal companies work. THIS IS A HUMAN LUNG, NOT A LUMP OF COAL If you thought the worker performance pressures were bad at Wells Fargo - leading to false accounts and phony billing - how about "work 16 hours a day and outperform the guy on the other side of the mountain or lose your job" therefore expose your lungs to silicon dust at a guaranteed fatal level. SO I PREDICT that the truth will come out that not only are the miners having to drill through a lot of silicate rock (because all that's left are narrow seams of coal), but that the new generation drilling machines make A NANO SIZED DUST. This partially explains how the respirators fail and the miners get killer silicosis complicati...

Teeth Grinding Disappointment Oh, I'm steamed. (Putting "Ass" in a title is the clue.) As ye faithful readers know, Olde SeniorJunior is a fervent advocate of Fixing/Improving our tattered infrastructure. I ranted on the subject  here , here , here , here & here . All fine rants, if I do say so myself. So when our aspiring God-Emperor Leto Trump said he plans a Trillion Dollar Infrastructure Project, Trust Me... * ...I actually had a moment of optimism.  Foolish fool, you were fooled again. Briefly. Now it's all coming clear. Trump's "plan" is actually a huge giveaway to his corporate buddies, that will most likely NOT fix what needs fixing, open new projects, create new jobs, or pretty much anything else except let the rich get richer. All the rest of us will be paying Trump's buddies in tolls, higher fees for water and sewage treatment, more expensive Internet, more and bigger pipelines...and all the other benefits of "priv...

Making Bad Worse Trump's promises: Pull out of the Paris Accords; drill baby drill, revive coal, frack like crazy, cripple the EPA..... Now, Mr. President, read this and put it in your "Hoax" file... If you thought 2015 was hot, just wait Record-setting year soon will be ‘new normal’  BY   THOMAS SUMNER   11:28AM, NOVEMBER 9, 2016 From Science News - a very credible source.

It All Started (for me) in 1975 "Old/New" is kind of perfect for a blog called "SeniorJunior," don't you think? As a new - two years in - entrepreneur, I had a vision. It was 1975. I and my partner Sebastian Stone were working twelve-hour days, flying all over the country seeking and serving clients, developing our systems, speaking at conferences, etc. In general we were doing the start-up boogie. AR&D (Audience Research & Development) was starting to pop. Visions are hard to come by under those circumstances, except all that time on airplanes allowed a lot of reading.  I read a book by Louis Kelso and Mortimer J. Adler, The Capitalist Manifesto , and boom! vision time. I felt an epiphany wrapped up in the term ESOT. We were planning expansion of staff, and we wanted the absolute best people in the radio research biz, mostly people who had impressive gigs.  Even though business was picking up, we couldn't afford them.  A...

The Mice Were Right * NR (Nicotinamide Rhiboside) is the current star supplement in the Longer-Healthier-Life category (see piece below), but the vast majority of actual scientific testing of the vitamin has been on mice (and yeast, but hey...). Now real scientists have tested it on real people and reported in a real, peer reviewed journal, Nature Communications , part of the British behemoth, Nature . It's a small-sample study, but impressive nonetheless.  It is a part safety/side effects study and part proof-of-concept one. The news is all good. Even at four times what was thought to be the "regular" dosage, there are zero short term side effects.  And the presumed effect (seen in mice and yeast) of boosting the helpful NAD+ is clearly proven in humans. If you are into reading incomprehensible biochemistry, check it out here . You can read a less intimidating summary of what NAD+ does  here . BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! Next up in aging fixes is Senes...

OK, now you've made me mad. (Again) I 've said a few times in this collection of mini-commentaries that the Right seems to be nastier than the Left. Check this out. And since Ann Coulter is the cause of my current madness, be advised I said this about her over a decade ago: The Mother Superior of demonizers on the right is Ann Coulter. Her new book "The Church of Liberalism - Godless" paints all "Libs" with one tar soaked brush. She could have worked for any of the great Demonizers of the past. She would have been a star of the Inquisition or - need I say it - she would have been a fine lieutenant for Joseph Goebbels. She gets the right wing Medal of Honor for slimy propaganda. She is the Big Lie boogie queen. I.e., there isn't much new for me to add except to double down on the "big lie" part. It's the same kind of lie she (and Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, et al) tell all the time, puking untruthful generalities about at least h...

Boom O ver on me humble book blog , I needed to illustrate The Apocalypse. Searching the Net, I found hundreds of pictures. (My favorite was of the Four Horsemen was an  1887 painting by   Viktor Vasnetsov , but decided it was too religiocentric (I thought I made up that word, but nooo. Bing it.) So an H-bomb blast would have to do. Cliched, but it moved!   Thus the very first GIF for this old blogger. No big, but I celebrate small stuff all the time.  Here's the GIF: Check this old-guy-sci-fi book blog here.

Nicotinamide Riboside, Etc., Etc. Etc..... In the longevity extender greyhound race (the real rabbit is healthy life extension), there are a few contenders running around the track. We don't realize the rabbit we're chasing is fake.  But hey...* Those in the race There's resveratrol from red wine grapes, peanuts, blueberries and a bunch more foods. There's trans-resveratrol from Japanese knotweed. (Not weed!) And  Pterostilbene , a variant on resveratrol. And Metformin, the well tolerated treatment for diabetes. Plus  Rapamycin (prescription), the  immunosuppressant used in organ transplants. (This one's kind of scary to me - side effects and all.  Now COMING UP FROM BEHIND is  Nicotinamide Riboside.  This one sprang into general awareness thanks to the entrepreneur's magazine Fast Company . They had a youthifying headline: One Of The World's Top Aging Researchers Has A Pill To Keep You Feeling Young The top...

What's a "Pro-Lifer" to do? Thanks in part to slow thinking House Republicans, the zika virus is about to invade the U.S. South and bring  a plague of Biblical proportions. Every pregnant woman's baby-to-be will be threatened with horrible birth defects, life destroying defects. Without massive intervention, a whole generation of children and their families will be deeply scarred.  Microcephaly  is but the most obvious, and there are more and more discoveries of tragic impacts of this mosquito-borne disease. What is the obvious response to, say, an ultrasound examination that reveals a badly damaged fetus? Pro-Life What would you do? Especially what would you do if you are a profound pro-lifer? What do you expect your religious and political pro-life leaders to say? Pro-choice A pro-choice person will undoubtedly suffer the deep pain anyone experiences at this horrible decision, then she will go ahead and get the abortion (...

"Comments" For several years, most of my opinionating happened on this blog.  Lately, my time at the keyboard has been mostly devoted to fictionalizing.  However, the opinions keep storming up out of my deeper brain centers and are impossible to repress.  So my efforts have moved to making "comments" on various articles, columns and op-eds. I have a sneaking feeling that these tidbits get more readership than they would if they appeared only on this blog. And since they are in response to something (sometimes to other commenters commenting on the column), I don't really have to establish a context, thus I can be pithier.  I love pithy. ANYWAY.... Here are my recent efforts.  Granted they might not make any sense if you didn't read the piece I'm commenting on. But at least you can see I haven't entirely abandoned reality for sci-fi. NEW SEQUENCING   From this point, the latest comments will be here first, rather than at the ever-retreating ...