Not a lot is truly known about the cultural world of early mankind but one thing is settled; when food insecurity dropped and it became more affordable, in terms of time or money, culture flourished and expansion began.

Domestication of animals and farming took humans out of foraging and secured our place as the dominant species. Becoming a farmer meant reliable food, then domestication of the ox made it possible for a farmer to feed dozens, and the heavy plow and then later science boosted those to a point where in the developed world, we now only need 2 people to feed 98.

In the ancient past, when a good portion of blog followers were interested in the writers' lives more than in actual content, I used to write a lot more about private issues here. I don't do that so often any more mainly because I think the interest of readers has shifted - or better, the composition of readers has changed. But I am not less keen to discuss private issues today than I was ten years ago. Privacy is not among the priorities of a blogger true to him- or herself anyway, at least from my point of view.
So, what am I up to these days? I thought I could give you some update. Maybe in one of my future posts I will also summarize the various research activities I am engaged in as of late, but let's keep this out of today's post. 

Before COVID-19, it was a large number of Democrats and a tiny number of Republicans who distrusted vaccines, believing something like that they caused autism, or that FDA was in cahoots with Big Pharma, or some weird supplement was just as good as medicine.(1)

While on surveys they all claimed to believe in natural medicine and that communicable diseases were no big deal(2), when the pandemic hit, not only did they buy up all of the Clorox and Purell, celebrities and other wealthy coastal elites who denied vaccines for their kids were paying their way to the front of the line to get this one - and ironically demanding it for their children.

In 2021, it is vital that the public trusts epidemiologists when it comes to disease transmission. The cultural obstacle is that epidemiology is such a large field, much of it populated by woo. Osteopaths hurt their own reputations by not demanding that hucksters like Joe Mercola have his license revoked, while epidemiologists who want to be trusted guides now need to recognize they have to overcome suspect claims about some new fad food linked to increasing longevity, trace chemicals linked to changes in hormones, and that particulate matter so small it takes an electron microscope to see it is linked to early deaths.

Just a few weeks ago, Sri Lanka underwent a meltdown. The price of food had skyrocketed and it was all because instead of believing scientists they believed Russia or Pesticide Action Network or whoever claims the organic process "is ready" to feed everyone and switched. 

After a whole lot of people who have never farmed made the decision, its collapse was sudden. They switched to organic in May and by August exports were down because yields plummeted. People hoarded food because they knew what was happening and then the government had to create police units to raid homes and steal it so it would not be sold on the black markets that exploded in volume.

How powerful are the genes that make up our bodies? The Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research notes that as many as half of our traits may be inherited from our genes. Additionally, those double-helix DNA strands are responsible for all the proteins that are necessary for life.

In the midst of wildfires that occur with more severity because environmentalists block responsible logging and tree management in California, environmentalists who have blocked water infrastructure now say we don't need the infrastructure voters passed into law...or it would already have been built.

Mining is a messy process. It takes a lot of effort to break open rocks to get the materials needed to keep our current technological level on earth. The march of technology has produced some massive leaps and bounds in communication and quality of life improvements. However, most of these are predicated on the availability of difficult-to-find elements.

Today I am giving the opening speech at a workshop with the same title of this post. The workshop takes place at the Center for Particle Physics and Phenomenology of Université catholique de Louvain, in Belgium, and it is in a mixed formula - we will have 33 in-person attendees and 72 more attending by videolink. 
The workshop is organized by the MODE collaboration, which I lead. It is a small group of physicists and computer scientists from 10 institutions in Europe and America, who have realized how today's deep learning technology allows us to raise the bar of our optimization tasks - we are now targeting the full optimization of the design of some of the most complex instruments ever built by humankind, particle detectors.

Man's best friend learns to understand human emotions, and that can help them predict our behavior and informs their decision making.