Another Saturday and another week closer to the oppressive heat of South Mississippi…

I would like to apologize to my readers for this News Dump is a bit thin….it was all Musk and Taylor and Trump and Biden and Israel–blah, blah, blah…..it was a helluva chore to find something interesting and entertaining for this Saturday.

It appears that while we strive to live longer some biologists say that might not be a good idea….

Have you ever wanted to live longer? Well you’re certainly not alone, but a scientist has explained why this could prove to be bad for the human race.

Human history is filled with people and whole societies who wanted to live longer, to have immortality or at least escape death.

But biologist Venki Ramakrishnan has explained why humans living for significantly longer would drastically change society and not necessarily for the better.

Speaking to ABC News to promote his new book Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality, Ramakrishnan explained how our bodies age and why lengthening the average human life might not be all it’s cracked up to be.

In simplistic terms he stated that aging is essentially the accumulation of damage over time but due to the body’s sophisticated repair mechanisms, we are regularly repairing this damage.

https://www.unilad.com/news/health/humans-living-longer-biologist-venki-ramakrishnan-819788-20240418

This is ma timey-wimey thing….does time exist?

Modern physics suggests time may be an illusion. Einstein’s theory of relativity, for example, suggests the universe is a static, four-dimensional block that contains all of space and time simultaneously – with no special “now”.

What’s the future to one observer, is the past to another. That means time doesn’t flow from past to future, as we experience it.

This clashes with how time is conceptualised in other areas of physics, such as quantum mechanics, however. So is time an illusion or not? One approach to find out would be to try to prove that time is unreal using logic alone.

https://theconversation.com/how-logic-alone-may-prove-that-time-doesnt-exist-227817

Climate change is warping our seasons…..

The seasons aren’t what they used to be.

People who live in Earth’s middle latitudes are accustomed to a spring, summer, autumn and winter. If you’re in the northern hemisphere, you may have noticed plants flowering earlier than usual. It’s not your imagination: a 2022 study revealed that spring blooms are arriving a month sooner in the UK due to climate change.

For a new series on the seasons and how they’re being warped by a warming climate, over the coming months we’ll be examining the consequences of these wrinkles in nature’s calendar.

Other species can’t coordinate their activities around a date and time. Plants, the bedrock of most ecosystems, stay up to date by paying close attention to changes in light and temperature says Paul Ashton, head of biology at Edge Hill University.

Plants are among the first to know when the days start to contract in autumn, as they use a pigment called phytochrome to detect changes in red light.

https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-warping-the-seasons-221893

I did not need this research for I have known this for at least 5 years and my fruit trees have told me.

A new twists for unionization….doctors.

A new generation of doctors struggling with ever-increasing workloads and crushing student debt is helping drive unionization efforts in a profession that historically hasn’t organized.

Why it matters: Physicians in training, like their peers in other industries, increasingly see unions as a way to boost their pay and protect themselves against grueling working conditions as they launch their careers.

• It also comes amid a wave of unionization and labor actions by nurses and other caregivers across a health care system that’s still dealing with high levels of burnout.

What they’re saying: “We deserve an increased salary to be able to afford to live in one of the most expensive areas in the United States,” said Ali Duffens, a third-year internal medicine resident at Kaiser Permanente’s San Francisco Medical Center.

https://www.axios.com/2024/04/15/doctors-union-gen-z-millennial

As the rush to ban books there is an alarming amount of banning….

U.S. school districts banned more books during the first half of the current academic year than during the entire last scholastic year, a report published Tuesday revealed.

PEN America recorded 4,349 book bans across 52 school districts in 23 states during the fall 2023 semester, more than double the 1,841 titles that were prohibited during the spring term and more than the 3,362 volumes reported banned nationwide during the entire previous academic year.

…

The report found that Florida again had the highest number of banned books, with 3,135 proscribed titles across 11 school districts. In Wisconsin, PEN America recorded 481 banned books in three districts—including 444 titles blacklisted in the Elkhorn Area School District following one parent’s request. Iowa and Texas—with 142 and 141 forbidden titles, respectively—round out the report’s top four book-banners.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/book-bans-in-schools

Again I apologize for the lack of attention getting news…..apparently it was an off week.

Go out and enjoy your Saturday….I will return tomorrow with more stuff.

As always Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”