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GELFAND’S WORLD - Americans are accused of having no memory. This is certainly true if you compare us, say, to Europeans, who can tell you about a major battle back in the 8th century or point you to a cathedral that was built in the 12th. We are, it's true, a lot younger than that as a nation. But sometimes I have to consider that the accusation has some merit, as I dredge up memories just from months ago that seem to be ignored by most all of us including myself. (I wonder why the nightly news spends so much time interviewing people who have little to say, but skips whole categories such as foreign wars.)
Jane Goodall, world peace, habitats, and sustainability
Sustainability is one of those topics that is largely ignored. A few months ago, a group came to my neighborhood council and asked us to make a financial donation to the Day of Peace celebration. I was a bit skeptical that the proposed event would be worth the substantial donation that we were being asked. Sometimes it's nice to be wrong, and this was certainly one such time. The event drew what looked to be a thousand or more people to Point Fermin Park, all packed into the open-air amphitheater.
Everybody knows who Jane Goodall is. She became famous for studying the great apes in their home habitat. In recent years, she spends about 300 days a year on the road, talking about saving the planet and recruiting for her group called Roots & Shoots. This organization now has groups all over the globe. We should have more discussion of sustainability and the serious risks associated with global warming. I wonder if the major news media have backed off from talking about global warming because the right wing made it into a (spurious) partisan fight. Thanks to the Goodall people for bringing the discussion to Los Angeles.
Clashing views on AI\
At the moment that Governor Newsom signed a bill intended to protect Hollywood writers and performers from the misuse of artificial intelligence (aka machine learning), I attended a talk on the use of AI to predict and control the spread of food-borne illnesses such as E. coli. Certainly there is a difference, in the sense that these are separate applications for what is, after all, a developing technology. In one case, you find that the new technology is being used to do useful things that were not previously possible. Over the weekend, a local alumni group from MIT, Yale, and Princeton hosted Dr. Abigail Horn, who studied the spread of a food poisoning epidemic using the mathematical tools that have recently become available. The goal here is to be able to discover the source of such food-borne illnesses in time to limit the number of people who would otherwise sicken and die.
In the other case, we have a technology that can be misused to create nearly lifelike likenesses of people who rightfully should have personal control over the same. The best-known example of late is the way that Taylor Swift's image was used ostensibly in support of a political candidate that she clearly does not support. The entertainers and writers who supported the latest state law on AI are in pursuit of an analogous sort of protection, but, I suspect, they are looking to take protection a step further. Basically, any television or film creation that is made digitally (say by synthesizing a new version of a long dead film star) is filling a space that could have been filled by a currently living, working actor or writer. The currently living creators who want to make a living in their crafts are hoping to limit the competition that would come from digital creations.
Political graffiti by email
Yesterday, I got 21 emails from Democrats and the Democratic Party apparatus. James Carville and more. I'm actually registered as an independent, but I even get emails inviting me to fill out a questionnaire for the Democratic National Committee or something like that. Like most folks who are getting inundated with such things, I no longer open them. I suspect that there is a point of diminishing returns for all these requests for a three dollar donation, and I'm long since past it. I wonder if people on the Republican lists are also getting swamped with unsolicited emails. Curiously, the large volume of scam and spam telephone calls are completely void of political stuff.
Covid-19
Has anyone chanced to look at the L.A. County health data recently? I used to check on their page regularly, but only thought to go back and see what's happening because I somewhat whimsically got the latest booster shot the other day.
And here is what's going on. It seems that we have been enduring a slight Covid upsurge since the middle of August. You can see it in the number of hospitalizations, the number of positive tests, and the numerically averaged death toll. The difference between 2024 and 2022 is that the death toll is way, way down. It went up from a couple of people per day up to about 5. Then a few weeks later, the number started to go down a bit, and we are in the downward part of the curve at present.
I chanced to think about this because I went into Safeway for a can of coffee and thought to myself, "I might as well see if I can get the vaccine against the new strain." It turns out that they had the vaccine and gave me the shot. (And in case anyone wants to know, I had no particular symptoms other than a bit of an arm ache the next day.)
We might stop and remember how unusual it was that an effective vaccine became available so quickly. We might also take note that the vaccine basically keeps us from dying a nasty death, but does not necessarily prevent our getting a head-cold (or worse) case of Covid. This is one reason that we are not seeing the hospital wards full of the intubated and dying. Still, even 5 deaths a day in this county is a lot for any one infectious disease. Maybe you ought to think about getting the booster.
Ukraine, the invasion, and a path towards a sort of victory
We are looking at the two years and a half mark of this phase of the war. Military historians like to remind us that the Crimea phase happened even further back, and political historians remind us that the Russian meddling in the eastern part of Ukraine started even earlier. But the brutal invasion that is still being contested goes back to 2022.
So how is this three-day lightning takeover going for Russia? You all know the answer, but we're not seeing and hearing much about the war on the late-night news. For a struggle which has critical importance to the future of the western world -- how secure are we going to be against future Russian military adventurism everywhere in Europe -- this story is getting a lot less coverage than it ought to.
What's particularly interesting is the escalation on the part of Ukraine in terms of taking the war to the Russian homeland. Just a few weeks ago, Ukrainian troops took over an area in Russia itself. That area was roughly comparable to the size of Los Angeles and, although it was immediately adjacent to the contested Ukrainian area, it was not well defended by Russia.
But there is an equally dramatic escalation in terms of bombing raids deep into Russian territory. The attack on multiple ammunition dumps holding an estimated 30 thousand tons of rockets and artillery shells is a huge win for Ukraine. It combines aspects of the Doolittle raid with some real military advantages, namely that those rockets and shells would have been used against Ukraine in the near future.
And of course this all comes back to the current presidential campaign, because Trump and his supporters have made clear that they are not particularly interested in helping the Ukrainian cause. And of course it remains a puzzlement as to why all those onetime anticommunist Republicans are willing to tolerate the new party line.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected].)
