Dave Barry Year in Review 2022

Yah, there’s a lot of serious stuff I could do here (if you haven’t heard of ChatGPT, you will), but for the new year, let’s review 2022. Some samples:

MARCH:

In entertainment news, the venerable Rolling Stones announce that they will hit the road this summer for their Drool on the Microphone Tour. This will be the Stones’ seventh tour since 2003, when their physical bodies finally disintegrated into small piles of dust and they were replaced by holograms. The good news is, ticket prices for the new tour will start as low as $150. The bad news is the $150 seats are so far from the stage that the sound will not reach them until after the concert is over.

JUNE:

Johnny Depp wins his historic defamation lawsuit, with the jury ordering Amber Heard to repay the 783 billion person-hours the American public wasted watching the trial. The verdict unleashes a wave of thoughtful media think pieces the likes of which the nation has not seen since Will Smith slapped Chris Rock.

AUGUST:

In other political news, Congress passes the Inflation Reduction Act, which will reduce inflation because it says so right in the title. The act will also lower prescription-drug prices, fix climate change, reform the tax system and provide every qualified American with a puppy. This is viewed as a much-needed win for the Biden administration and a boost for the Democrats heading into the midterm elections, where they could also benefit from the fact that in a number of key races the Republicans have decided, for tactical reasons, to nominate lunatics.

The whole thing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/12/25/dave-barrys-2022-year-review/

Silly walk calories

Walking like John Cleese’s character, Mr. Teabag, in Monty Python’s famous “Ministry of Silly Walks” skit requires considerably more energy expenditure than a normal walking gait because the movement is so inefficient, according to a new paper published in the annual Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal. In fact, just 11 minutes a day of walking like Mr. Teabag was equivalent to 75 minutes of vigorously intense physical activity per week, presenting a novel means of boosting cardiovascular fitness.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/12/adopting-a-silly-walk-like-monty-pythons-mr-teabag-burns-more-calories/

The Atlantic’s top 10 breakthroughs of 2022

It’s been an amazing year in science, medicine, technology. The Atlantic has an article on what one writer thinks will be very important. Many of these have not really made the news (partly because many of these are the beginnings of breakthroughs and not yet available). Categories:

The Generative-AI Eruption
Large language models, such as ChatGPT, can answer complex questions, spit out bespoke Wikipedia articles in seconds, write song lyrics, and even conjure—admittedly mediocre—essays in the style of well-known writers. ((This has been getting a lot of attention in the past month.))
The Power to Reverse Death (Kind Of)
By pumping an experimental substance into the veins and arteries of animals that had been lying deceased for an hour, Yale researchers got their hearts to start beating again. … If we have the power to reanimate the heart or other organs of the recently deceased, at what point might we be able to reverse sudden deaths? Could we stock hospitals and nursing homes with buckets of the stuff to resuscitate patients? Should every future American household keep some on hand in the event of a terrible accident?
The Power to Synthesize Life (Kind Of)
This summer, scientists grew an embryo in a lab without the use of sperm, or eggs, or a womb. It happened to be that of a mouse. … Using only stem cells, a team at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel forged something in a lab that budded a tail on day six, grew a beating heart by day eight, and even evinced the beginnings of a brain.
The Vaccine Cavalry Is Coming
In September, a new malaria vaccine developed by Oxford University scientists was found to be extremely effective… In November, an experimental flu vaccine was found to induce a protective immune response against all known types of flu in animals. ((Italics mine.))
A Snapshot of the Beginning of Time
The exquisite photos could lead us to new discoveries in cosmology…. Behind those lush and dreamy images might lie evidence of what actually happened during, or just after, the Big Bang…. The James Webb Telescope is so much more than the solar system’s most sophisticated camera-zoom function. It is also history’s greatest time machine.
‘Unheard of’ Advances in Fighting Cancer
In a trial with 18 rectal-cancer patients who were prescribed a novel immunotherapy, researchers found that the cancer vanished in every single patient. No, not receded. Vanished. … Months later, a trial of a new metastatic-breast-cancer drug delivered similarly miraculous results.
The Obesity-Therapy Surge
In the 2010s, patients on the diabetes medication semaglutide noticed something interesting: They were losing a ton of weight. And that side effect wasn’t a fluke. Last year, the FDA approved injectable semaglutide for weight loss under a new name: Wegovy. And it’s not the only medication in the pipeline that helps people lose weight without suffering major side effects.
Cracking the Case of Multiple Sclerosis
This year, a team of scientists… reported strong evidence that the Epstein-Barr virus, best known for causing mononucleosis, is the leading cause of multiple sclerosis. Infection with EBV raised the odds of developing multiple sclerosis, or MS, by more than thirtyfold.
Legal Lab Meat
Some breakthroughs are about new rules, not just new technology. This year, the FDA cleared a California company, Upside Foods, to produce lab-grown chicken. It is the first-ever cultivated-meat product to pass this key regulatory hurdle.
New Toys for the Green-Energy Revolution
Fighting climate change will require the deployment of technologies already invented, such as solar panels and wind turbines. But it will also require new inventions in fields like nuclear and geothermal technology. This year, we edged closer to breakthroughs in both categories.

About 2,900 words: https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/12/technology-medicine-law-ai-10-breakthroughs-2022/672390/.

How the war in Ukraine might end

Wars start for a number of reasons which have been fairly thoroughly considered by historians. But why do they end? For a number of reasons. One side may decide that it’s losing and it can trust the other side to abide by a peace deal. Or one side may be completely crushed by the other side. An important part of the situation is the political situation of the leader of the side that’s losing:

…Democrats tended to respond to the information delivered by the war and act accordingly; at the very worst, if they lost the war but their country still existed, they would get turned out of office and go on a book tour. Dictators, because they had total control of their domestic audience, could also end wars when they needed to. After the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein was such a leader; he simply killed anyone who criticized him. The trouble…lay with the leaders who were neither democrats nor dictators: because they were repressive, they often met with bad ends, but because they were not repressive enough, they had to think about public opinion and whether it was turning on them. These leaders…would be tempted to “gamble for resurrection,” to continue prosecuting the war, often at greater and greater intensity, because anything short of victory could mean their own exile or death. He reminded me that on November 17, 1914—four months after the First World War began—Kaiser Wilhelm II met with his war cabinet and concluded that the war was unwinnable. “Still, they fought on for another four years,” Goemans said. “And the reason was that they knew that if they lost they would be overthrown, there would be a revolution.” And they were right.

I had not known that last bit before. Pretty amazing. And it directly relates to Vladimir Putin. Full article at https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/how-the-war-in-ukraine-might-end (approx 3,100 words).