When the market goes to this stupid place, I want to go somewhere else, somewhere where I can be amazed, find a laugh, and, perhaps, learn something new. All are easy to do in a world so rich with human endeavors.
Amazing …
- The world’s largest carbon emitter is on track to meet its climate goals a full five years ahead of schedule, according to a study out this week. China will peak emission by 2025 instead of 2030, which it originally promised in a major climate accord with the US last fall.
The above is amazing, as China was a hard sell not too long ago with this whole climate-change thing. Now that it is on board, it seems to be taking its carbon pollution seriously, which is good for many reasons, not the least of which China’s strong commitment to the global protocol signals a strong commitment to the global transformation from fossil fuels to clean energy. So, expect their current rapid pace of shutting down coal plants and setting up solar production to continue, which means a big boost for the solar industry.
- Almost a decade in flight, the New Horizons spacecraft is approaching the enigmatic dwarf planet. What it will find there is anybody’s guess.
Simply, sending a space ship to the furthest reaches of our solar system, a trip that has taken a decade is amazing, and it shows how ingenious humans can be. It also points to the fact that because humans can reason, we will technologically solve our most urgent problems, such as the drought associated with climate change.
Funny …
Not only does technology create solutions to our problems but, along the way, it creates a host of new issues we all have to deal with.
- People’s apparent eagerness to stay connected at all times means we’re seeing more and more folk walking the streets lost in their phones. Well, we would see them if we weren’t staring at our own handsets, right?
Okay, so who hasn’t seen these absent-minded folks walking the streets? Please, raise your hand. Anyone? Ya gotta love the inane, because if you don’t, you will cry.
- Everyone text-walks. You probably walk through the streets while texting or sending WhatsApp messages to your friends and don’t really pay attention to your surroundings — only to whatever is happening on your screen.
Now have a term for it – “text walking.” So, we all agree these folks are out there, but are they a menace to anyone or themselves?
- Text walking causes collisions with poles or other pedestrians. You could, unknowingly, even be endangering your own life while you text-walk when you cross the street without looking up.
Apparently, text walking is dangerous, so what the heck are governments doing about this latest menace to ourselves?
- In an effort to put phone users on the right track and ease the stress of the disgruntled pedestrians that have to dodge them, a city in Belgium has created several “text walking lanes.”
Thank the gods for that unknown city in Belgium. Government is finally stepping up to protect us from ourselves, from us going to a stupid place.
- Research firm Pew said recently that according to U.S. ER data, pedestrian injuries due to handset distraction has risen by 35 percent in the last five years.
And Belgium is not alone in recognizing this most recent terror plaguing the streets of the world.
- Its report points out that in an effort to reduce the number of accidents linked to distracted walking, states such as Utah and New Jersey have experimented with fines for wandering texters who put themselves in hazardous situations.
Go guys go. Get those wandering texters before they hurt themselves or me, for that matter.
Educational …
True, I like to be amazed, and I love to laugh, but even more so than either of those two, I love to learn. Okay, so learning things can be amazing and funny, true, but what I find fascinating about my quest for knowledge is the feeling of hopefulness I get about, well, humanity.
- Engineers have created a functional, synthetic immune organ that produces antibodies and can be controlled in the lab, completely separate from a living organism. The engineered organ has implications for everything from rapid production of immune therapies to new frontiers in cancer or infectious disease research.
And there you have it … My turn away from watching the market go to a stupid place to finding the amazing, the funny, and the educational. Really, it is pretty easy to do.
Trade in the day; invest in your life …
